Transcript of #2474 - Dave Smith

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So, Dave, you were telling me right before the show that you are now retiring because you got an impromptu phone call and bet hundreds of millions of dollars on oil prices going down. Congratulations.

It was, uh, it was a good bet. It just wasn't timed right.

I thought you got it in on time. I thought you got it in like—

Did you?

Yeah. I thought you got it in like five minutes early.

I did not.

But how is there not a massive investigation into that right away? Didn't someone make like $1.8 billion in like five minutes?

Yeah. There's, uh, there's a lot of those, like trades like that that should be investigated that kind of never are.

Bro. How about, what's his name, Lutnick?

Yeah.

How about that one?

He's—so he's the tariffs one.

Working for the administration and also standing to gain huge if people can sue over the tariffs, right?

Well, explain the whole thing.

Well—

Do you know how to—do you know the actual details of it?

No, I don't really know the details.

So essentially he was telling everybody that, you know, don't sweat it, the tariffs are golden, we're getting them through, there's going to be no problems. Is that what it was? But in meanwhile he was shorting the tariffs?

Yes. Yeah. So he was personally shorting them while promoting them.

Let's find out what that actually is so we don't get sued.

Sure, sure, sure.

I bet he's a quite litigious gentleman.

Yeah, he might be.

Let's see if we can find it.

Look on there, it got something. I don't know what that means there.

Like, is it wild that people who are on the files visited the island and then they still work?

It was unbelievable.

Some people had to resign from some jobs.

Well, especially just him because he so—the way—there's something about a really confident liar. Like where they just—because I mean that interview clip where he's like, "Let me tell you something, I met Jeffrey Epstein that one time." He had a massage table. He said they were sex massage tables. I went right back to my wife and I said, "Honey, we are never hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein again." And that is that. You know?

Is that really a good quote?

Oh, dude. I mean—

I haven't seen that.

I don't know if it's verbatim, but that is the exact spirit of it.

Well, it's probably pretty verbatim.

Oh, let's listen to it.

Listen, listen to it.

I find it.

I'm very, very close to exactly what he said.

Okay.

Let me get this one again. What was this one?

Lutnick, Lutnick interview about Epstein. And he just sends, I mean, so like morally outraged about the idea.

There's so many people that they exist in that world where you just pretend that you're a different person. You pretend you're one way.

Yeah.

You pretend you think things differently.

It's, uh, I've been up close with people like that. I said that was my takeaway from debating Chris Cuomo. Was like, I just could—it's a weird thing to see someone just lie like that.

Here it is. Now this is the one that says he's the greatest blackmailer ever.

Which quote am I trying to find there?

Yeah, try to explain it to him.

It was, uh, let me see the keywords that would—

Downplays? No?

Downplays relationship with him. That might be it.

Because there was something on the other thing, but I don't know what that is.

What does he do?

He's, um, what's he's a commerce secretary. Uh, he was a—he was always like a money finance guy. He, I think he used to work for CNBC, if I'm correct.

In this administration, this like the wolves have taken over the hen house.

Yeah. Yeah, they sure have. This is—this is what draining the swamp looks like.

Under fire for Epstein ties, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defends visiting his private island.

Yeah, but this is—this isn't the clip. The clip was from—

Oh, at the top it says, it says, "Lutnick said in an interview last year he was never in the room with Epstein other than a 2005 visit to his apartment." Okay, so that's probably it. He said, you know, he met him once and was like, "This guy sucks."

But he specifically says that he met him, that he saw he had a massage table in his living room. And he goes, "Hey Jeffrey, what do you—you really like massages?" And he claims that Jeffrey went, "Yeah, and the right kind of massages." And that's when he decided he would never talk to him again.

Nobody likes the right kind of massages. Those are terrible. Imagine if those were legal. Just hand job massages. There'd be like no relationships. How many people are in terrible relationships just because they need sex? There's a lot of guys who'd be like, "I'm just going to hang out with the boys, just get jerked off once on Wednesday, and I'm good." Howard Lutnick downplays relationship with Epstein during Senate testimony.

Testimony. I don't know.

Oh, is this it?

No, this is from—this is from recently. This is from this year.

I did find an article that kind of—I don't even know what this website is though. I don't know if.

This old firm did not, in fact, profit from the Supreme Court tariff ruling.

It says that there was an article claiming it, and then that's why I was trying to dig through this and.

Oh, we better edit that out then.

I mean, it was reported though that they did, but I don't know what this says.

Um, it says firm is run by his two sons. Elder Lutnick announced the sale of the stake in the firm and other investors in the Supreme Court on Friday, invalidated many of Trump's tariffs. The president said, "Why don't—okay." Castor did not consider the product, which has existed for years, was humming trade on Wall Street's Trump first term tariff push, but decided against it after weighing the political sensitivities. According to a senior banker familiar with this matter, Canter spokesman said the salesman erroneously believed the firm was likely to greenlight the business.

They said in an email that they're representing 10 million in—that's right. I was trying to figure out.

Tariff refund rights.

Accuracy of all this and whatnot.

So what was the accusation? The accusation was that he had shorted tariffs while claiming that tariffs are going to work.

Yeah, the accusation was that he stood to make a lot of money from tariffs being struck down.

Um, why don't you put that into Perplexity, Jamie, and find out if that's accurate. And let it scour the internet instead of us doing it.

God, I love AI.

Yeah, it is something.

I can't wait until it takes over government.

It's going to be awesome.

It's after a while you're like, "I don't know if it could be much worse than what humans are doing with government."

It's going to be better. It's not going to be greedy.

Well, as long as it determines that human life is valuable, I feel like is really the, uh, the big.

With humans.

Let's be honest. You know, some homeless guy is taking a shit on your Jaguar.

Is that guy really valuable?

Okay, fine. Yeah, but to AI, we all might be homeless guys taking a shit.

Do you see that there was these San Francisco tech guys and they got trapped in their Waymo because a homeless guy started attacking the Waymo and yelling at them, "Why are you paying robots?"

No.

Yeah, like you're a trader, you're paying robots, you're paying the robots.

The homeless guy was upset about this?

The homeless guy was attacking the Waymo. The tech guys were in the Waymo. We were terrified for our life. We feared our safety. Because they're being attacked by a crazy person who's saying, "You shouldn't be giving money to robots."

That's an uncomfortable position to be in.

I get all my information from the Tim Dillon Show.

By the way, but they did play.

It's not the worst source of information.

It's the best source.

It's the best source.

Him and that dude, what's his name? Uh, James Lee. He's our other number one source of information. Conspiracy theorist.

There you go. There you go.

But, uh, another one, uh, a Waymo, a gal got in and there's a fucking homeless guy in the trunk. Because apparently the last person, when they left their Waymo, they opened the trunk to get their luggage out and they never closed it. So the homeless guy hopped into their fucking Waymo.

And closed it?

And caught himself?

It was in the trunk. So she orders a Waymo, she climbs in, there's a homeless guy in the trunk. And Waymo's like, "That's unacceptable."

Yeah, oh, you think? Oh, you think? Okay, the main claim is that Canter Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick's former firm, now chaired by his son, stood to profit by buying tariff refund rights that only became valuable if Trump's tariffs were overturned. But the firm insists it ultimately did not execute those trades. What critics say happened. Investigators and reporters reporting notably by Wired described Canter Fitzgerald exploring a business where it would buy the rights to future tariff refunds from importers for about 20 to 30 cents on the dollar.

I think that was based off that email and the article we read.

Yeah. It says internal materials cited in those reports suggested Canter had capacity to trade and had already facilitated at least one trade of around $10 million in rights.

That's only 10 million. Let it go, Dave.

That is small potatoes for what we're talking about.

Yeah, these kind of guys.

Uh-huh. Uh, what Canter and Lutnick's side say. Canter Fitzgerald has publicly stated that while some salespeople explored, I like that in quotes, brokerage tariff refund rates in 2025, the firm never executed any transactions or taken any position on tariff refund claims, calling contrary reports false. Follow-up recording has echoed that Canter considered products tied to the Supreme Court tariff ruling, but ultimately backed off, in part because of the political optics.

Duh.

Fuck it, that's a big duh around Lutnick's government job. Latest coverage there's no public evidence that Canter actually booked profits from this strategy, though the investigations in Congress are ongoing and focused on whether there was any attempted or potential profiteer. Are you more interested in the ethics conflicts of interest or the nuts and bolts of how the secondary tariff refund market works financially? No. So it seems like we don't really have evidence.

Well, it'll be interesting. I mean, if, uh, which is probably going to happen, um, but the Democrats take the House and the Senate in the midterm elections this year, I mean, they're going to be in that'll just be the next two years of politics will be investigations and.

Some Democrat lady just over to she just took over the seat, um, in Trump's neighborhood where Mar-a-Lago is. So a Democrat lady just won.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, look, they in his first term, they impeached him twice for absolute bullshit. So they'll go after him for anything. But I have a feeling now there's probably a lot more for them to investigate and work on stuff like this and the meme coin stuff and, you know, whatever business deal. You know, I don't I don't have the details at the top of my mind, but I do know that they said at one point that Jared Kushner would not be involved in this administration at all because he does so much business over there and it's just like, so they were like, "Oh, no, no, no, he won't."

Yeah, well, that is true.

Like maybe the post office.

That's, I mean.

The post office is pretty fucking good, dude.

Yeah, compared to all the rest of it, sure.

You can get a letter moved across the whole country for like, what is it, like 30 cents? How much is a stamp these days?

That's true. I mean, I don't know if you include the cost on the back end, like the taxes that pay for the whole thing. Maybe it's a little more expensive. But relatively speaking, yeah.

Relatively.

You can get, you know, something done.

Not a bad organization.

Sure.

In terms of government organizations, you never hear, "Except going postal." That used to be a thing. Remember those days?

Yes, yes, I do.

There was a while, like, where so many post officers went so crazy and started shooting people that they started calling it going postal, but it never, it just went away.

Yeah, young people, if you're listening to this and you don't know what we're talking about, in our day, we didn't have school shootings. Okay, we had to do it the old-fashioned way. You had to drive a postman crazy until he went around shooting people. And it happened several times to the point that that became a thing. Like these crazy postal workers.

There was a video game called Postal where you run around shooting people. It was in the, I want to say the '90s?

Yeah, that would be about the time period.

The first one came out in '97.

Yeah, yeah. And it was like highly criticized. They were like, "Weren't they like cartoon-looking characters? Can you see if you pull up a video of Postal?" It was like, they're like South Park-looking characters just blasting people. So it felt like less, if I remember correctly, or maybe that's the box. I never played it. Maybe I played it. I don't know.

Oh, this is new stuff.

This is going postal? No.

This looks way better than 1990s.

Oh, this was in the '90s for sure.

Is this the new postal?

Here's what it looked like. That might have been a newer version right there.

Oh, Jesus. You just run around jacking people.

Yeah.

So it was like the first Grand Theft Auto, really.

Kind of. I mean, Grand Theft Auto came out around then too, actually. It didn't look like this then, though.

But real weird though, right? That post office workers were just killing a bunch of people. That's what it looked like. Like that. Okay. This is what it looked like. It didn't look like that other thing. It was like, uh, it wasn't a first person thing. It was like you're seeing it from above and you're just running around killing everybody.

I played a Postal though that was a first person like that.

Maybe they had more versions of it.

Also, I don't want to show because I don't know what's, there could be some bad stuff on there.

Yeah, probably.

Dude, video games really are like crack.

No problem. I loved your, you had a rant about that years ago about how like the problem is that they're so much fun and you're not accomplishing anything.

Yep.

The last video game I got into was a UFC 3. And I loved that game. I just loved it. And then, like, I think it was, I got married, my wife got pregnant, and I was like, "All right, I got to get rid of this. I just can't." So I was at the Dojo of Comedy. It was a club in New Jersey. Great club.

They have a LA one too.

Oh, do they? Okay.

Sam Tripley.

Oh, yeah.

Shout out to Sam.

Yeah, yeah. So I was at the one in Jersey and they have in the green room, they have UFC 3. And I was like, "Oh, that's the game that I got really into." So I was there for a weekend and I mean, I just, the whole time I was there, just in the green room playing this video game. And I was like, it was like a feeling almost like a drug addict who's around their drug of choice where I was like, "I need to be away from that. Like, I will play this until I kill myself. It's so much fun."

It's a problem.

Robbie Lawler fighting, you know, whoever and just.

And they keep getting better.

Yeah, I know. Well, I didn't, I stopped at that. So I never even like learned how to play the new ones.

What number UFC game are they at now?

Five, I think.

Five.

The graphics keep getting better. The movement keeps getting more natural.

Yeah.

And first person shooters, man. Oh my gosh.

Who was the, uh, was it Joe Lozan? I want to say. Was that, was the 155 guy? Really good grappler. It wasn't his thing, like he was obsessed with video games and then he went, "I got to just do something else instead of this." So he just did Jujitsu. And then he just got like amazing at Jujitsu. I swear I think that was his story. Is that really what happened?

I could be misremembering this, but I swear I heard him talk about this in an interview once. And that there was just like, "I just played video games all day, all night." And then eventually I was like, "I got to do something productive with this." And so he just started doing Jujitsu instead.

I wonder what he's up to these days. He was a fun guy.

He was a fun fighter to watch.

Fun dude like in person too. Him and his brother used to beat the fuck out of each other on the yard, like in the front yard. They would have like full-on MMA fights, like full power. They'd just beat the piss out of each other in the front yard. I was like, "Boys, save it. Like, save it. Whale on each other." It's crazy.

That's a young man's game.

They had like a bunch of guys hanging around. It looked like it was a picnic or something like that. They decided, "Let's spice this picnic up. You and me fight, motherfucker." And they would fight, like fight, fight.

But all across this country, there are boys fighting in their yard and that was of the highest level of yard fighting. I mean, that was top 1%.

Oh, that was vicious.

Two like legit MMA professionals.

Yeah, two legit MMA professionals were mad at each other because they're in the house with each other all the time. Shut the fuck. You didn't fucking do that. You fucking, you were supposed to put that shit away.

Yeah, yeah. That was a.

You ate my food.

Yeah.

They both ended up being real fun fighters to watch.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, Joe was awesome. He was a great fighter. Yeah, he had a lot of fights in the UFC too.

Yep.

And I think it got to, you know, um, how many years was he in? I got it. I want to say he was at least in the UFC for like around a decade.

He was, yeah, he had a pretty long career.

Yeah.

Because he was fighting, I mean, he fought, I don't know, I mean, he fought like the whole, uh, like I think when he started was like BJ Pen era of lightweight and then he fought into like Anthony Pettis was the champion.

Yeah, pull up Lozan's Wikipedia. Find out when he retired.

Altista's first fight was September 23rd, 2006, and I think it says last fight was 2019.

Wow. That's crazy. 2019.

Whew.

Some of these guys just don't, they just don't want to stop. It's just too fun.

It's a very hard job to keep going for a while.

Maybe the hardest.

Yeah.

You know, like on your body.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Other than football. There's a lot of those guys in the NFL, they only last a couple of years.

No, I mean, that's a real tough one, but there's nothing, well, I guess, I guess like professional football, there's a similar aspect to where like you're not just, I mean, look, you can go to the hospital from basketball, you know, you can get hurt and get a bad injury, but the NFL or the UFC, you kind of like, you know, every time you go into it, like there's a very reasonable chance you're leaving here on a stretcher to go to the hospital. But particularly with MMA, it's the most unforgiving sport where like you're one mistake, one mistake away from like, you know, like if LeBron James misses a wide open layup, he runs back on defense and tries to, you know, get a block or something on the next play.

Leon, what's Kamarul's mistake?

Yeah, yeah.

Perfect example.

Yep.

Kamarul's way ahead in the fight. It's in the fifth round. I think there's like 20 seconds to go or something crazy. And Leon just plants one, a perfect head kick.

Yeah.

And it was the perfect, and John Annik makes the perfect call, you know, like something had been said about him maybe deciding, you know, to quit. And then John Annik says, "But that is not the cloth from which he was cut."

Yeah.

Boom, head kick knockout. It's like, come on, man. Is this real?

One of the most amazing MMA championship knockouts ever.

Oh, ever, ever. And then just his post-fight speech, "Look at me now. Look at me now."

And then comes back and wins the rubber match.

Yeah.

Which was like, it's an interesting thing, um, how much, you know, like, well, first off, like getting knocked out cold like that, and you know better than me, but like that does a number to your body. Like that's not.

Psychologically.

Well, psychologically and also I think physically. And then also just like the confidence that that gave Leon Edwards going into the next fight.

Right.

Like just changes everything now.

Yeah. Kamarul had to be very careful because he knew it anymore. I mean, he dodged most of the big ones until the big one landed.

Yep.

So in his head, in that fight, he had a narrative. And that narrative completely changed with one head kick.

Yeah.

So going into the next fight, the narrative is now, "If you fuck up, you will be unconscious. You can't get knocked unconscious again." And he fought much more cautiously.

Yeah.

In the second fight.

I remember seeing that with, um, I felt like you could watch that when Dustin Poirier fought Conor McGregor the second time. Like, you know, McGregor had knocked him out years earlier. And you could kind of see, you know, like you could see Dustin, I'm not saying like he was nervous or anything. He's like one of the greatest fighters ever. But you could kind of just see like he gets in there and he starts and he takes a couple shots from Conor and he's still there, you know, and then he lands a couple shots. And you could see like in that first round, like his confidence growing. Like you almost got to get that out of your head that it's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy beat you there back then, but you're a different guy now."

Well, with Conor, it's all about weathering the initial storm.

Yeah.

The initial storm is crazy. He's so explosive, so fast, so accurate. And then another part about that second fight was Dustin setting up those calf kicks. Specifically because both of those guys fight southpaw. And when you both fight southpaw, if you're a southpaw like Dustin, a lot of times the calf kick's not really available. Like you have to throw it with a switch or it doesn't have the same sort of potential.

Right.

It's a slightly different potential when you're exchanging it in combinations. But with Conor, it was wide open because Conor has two things going on. One is a southpaw. Also, he had just gotten off Floyd Mayweather fight. He's very boxing heavy. Not just, but a while back. But he had really concentrated on striking with his hands. His hands were elite. So because of that, your stance is a little wider and you're putting a little bit more weight on your legs.

Yeah.

You know, and he always had a wide stance anyway. He had that karate stance. The craziest thing about that is the calf kick really didn't become a big deal even until Conor was a superstar. Like it was after that.

Yeah.

That's how recent it is.

Yeah, it's very strange that that was almost like a thing that didn't get figured out until so recently. And then just totally changed everything. Like at this point, you rare, I'm not saying you never see it, but you pretty rarely see guys kick guys in the thigh anymore.

Oh, they still do.

Well, no, but I mean, like compared to what it used to be, where it used to be like that was what a leg kick was.

Yes.

For many years in MMA. And now it's, I'd say like the majority of leg kicks are targeting the calf.

Yeah.

Like you'll see almost like a thigh kick, almost just to switch it up a little bit.

Yeah.

These guys got really good at taking those.

Yeah, you got really good at being conditioned. And, you know, we also saw a few leg breaks, right? We saw the Anderson Silva one. We saw the Chris Wideman one. There's been a few leg breaks from guys just full power leg kicking the thigh and then someone just lifts up their knee a little bit and takes it on the right where the shin bone meets the kneecap is where they like to catch it. And boy, I've seen way too many of those. I've seen a bunch in person, but because of the internet, I've seen dozens and dozens of small promotions where a guy throws that kick wrong really hard and the guy checks it and his fucking foot just wraps around the leg.

I've seen a bunch.

You recognize the thing, like that injury is so recognizable. Like I've seen it so many times now. I see it, I just go, "Oh, it's going to wrap around the calf. It's going to flop. He's going to fall down."

I've seen it several times on internet videos and in UFC fights. I've only once seen a guy continue to talk shit about the other guy after from the ground, which is the craziest shit ever, dude. Everyone else I've seen is like crying in pain.

I know.

And Conor's talking about your wife's slip.

Your wife sent me DMs.

Jesus Christ.

Yeah, he asked me to come and sit down with him and do a podcast. He's an animal. I mean, dude's one of a kind. He's one of a kind.

That's for sure.

He apparently made a post on his Instagram saying he's back. And if it's true, that would be awesome.

That would be awesome.

The idea is his suspension for whatever he took before is up. So.

Yay.

What was it? Something, uh, I think it was Douglas Murray when he wrote the article about me. He said.

Here it is.

"Mr. Confidence Returns to save fighting again. Call your grandma. Nanny, we did it. Watch and pay me. Fuck you, pay me. You fat Irish prick. You don't have my money. I put your brain to sleep." Who's that? Who's that about? Who's he talking about? Uh, C is in the casinos after the MAC loves ya's all. I got love for ya's. It's an all, it's an honor. It's light work. It's easy. For life and eternity. It's McGregor.

It'd be a lot of fun. It'd be a lot of fun to see him.

It's the greatest personality of the sports you ever know.

Yeah, that's right.

There's no one even close. I mean, he's the most dynamic personality of the sports ever known.

And he was, um, for a time there, just such an unbelievable fighter. I mean, he was like just, it was incredible what he was doing.

Danny Alvarez fight.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I was there. I was there. Well, thanks to you. Really good, really good seats. Thanks to you. But that was, that was one of the best, that might be the best fight I've ever been to live. Because that whole card was just stacked. And that is the main event was just unbelievable.

Bro, he was in the matrix.

Yeah.

He was in the matrix. He was just in the zone. You know, Dana said it best. He's like, "That kid eats pressure." He goes, "He eats it."

Yeah.

Like he thrives on pressure. Pressure that makes other people wilt.

Yes.

He like shines under that pressure.

And he had an amazing ability even very early in his career, which was like kind of, it was really unique. Like, because even like on his first fight ever, if you watch his first fight in the UFC against like Brimage, I think the guy's name is. And he was a relatively unknown at the time. But dude, the place is going nuts. He already had made so much kind of like street cred for himself. And then the Irish thing, like the Irish were really, really into it. But he, from the very first fight, he would always create these moments where it's like, dude, this is going to be the biggest spectacle that you, my opponent, has ever been in, in their career.

Right.

Like I'm not sure if you're really comfortable here, but I'm, and so it would, and even with Aldo who had been the entire division, he literally when they started the division, they started him as champion. He didn't even win it. He came in because they absolved the WEC. So he was the entire featherweight division had just dominated everyone. And he even created such a moment that like, like Aldo was like, uh.

He was the boogeyman.

Yeah, dude. He was incredible.

He was incredible.

He's one of the greatest of all time.

One of the greatest featherweights of all time.

But he got him to the point where he was like so furious that he was like, "I'm going to take this fucking guy's head off." And then Conor's just like relaxed. He's like, like he didn't care about any of the shit talking. He was just like, "Yeah, we're having fun. Let's play."

He lost his composure. Yeah. And he looked very overwhelmed by the moment. And oh, and by the way, everyone from Ireland came to Vegas for that fight. It was the nuttiest thing I've ever seen in my fucking life. The entire Mandalay Bay was overcome with Irish people. I mean, overcome like you couldn't move. There was nothing but Irish people everywhere. And they were singing. They were all singing together in the halls of this gigantic casino packed, bump, like they're waiting in line for something.

I remember, I think it was when, I want to say it was when.

Like look at all these people.

Yeah, it was nuts, dude.

Bro, this is nuts, man. They were all Irish people. Like you got to realize nobody had a following like him. Like this is actually Irish people for the Floyd Mayweather fight. They were still ride or die with him even for that fight.

I think it was when he fought Dennis Seaver, I want to say.

I think that was in Boston.

So I went to, I went with Lewis J. Gomez, my good friend, hilarious comedian. And he, me and him went to some Irish bar to watch, like we just happened to be in Midtown Manhattan. We were like, "Oh, the fights are coming on. Oh, they're playing it at this bar." You know, it was just like an Irish pub. And dude, I mean, it wasn't even that big of a bar. They must, I mean, it was shoulder to shoulder Irish people losing their fucking minds. Like it was the, it was the most fun environment to watch a fight in because they're just, I mean, they're just like, but all that singing and chanting.

That's nuts, man. Look at that. That's Mandalay Bay.

Wow.

Look at this. Oh, that's MGM. Well, they were everywhere. They were probably at every fucking casino there was. This is crazy. Imagine, imagine if you're from Northern Ireland. And you're like, you still remember the troubles. You make your way to the hotel, just came to Vegas for a little gambling. You don't follow MMA. You have no fucking idea.

By the way, I was going to say that Douglas Murray's big knock on me when he wrote his op-ed in the New York Post was he goes, he goes, you know, Dave goes on Joe Rogan and he talks about foreign policy like he's an expert. But I bet he wouldn't go in there and talk MMA with him because then Joe would recognize he's not an expert. And I was like, we do that all the time.

We do that every time.

We do that all the time.

I was like, almost every time we hang out, we end up talking MMA. And like it probably is fair that, yeah, there'll be moments where you'll correct me if I get something wrong.

So what?

But if I get it right, you don't go, you're not an expert.

That's so dumb. Imagine we don't talk about MMA because you're not an expert.

I don't know.

Silly.

Well, I watch a lot of it. I have some thoughts.

Why is he so silly? I love Douglas. I really do. I've enjoyed talking to him. I think he's a brilliant man. But I was very disappointed with, uh.

You've never been?

I'm very disappointed with that sort of strategy that you shouldn't be talking about these things that are factual. But even more disappointed with that notion. The notion that like you would never talk about MMA with me. Like you think we would, first of all, I don't think I argue about MMA with anybody. I don't think anybody. If someone has a point about MMA, I don't, I never argue. I might say.

You've corrected me when I've gotten things wrong.

Yeah. Or I might say I just, like somebody, some people think that a certain thing is going to happen and I'm like, ooh, I don't see that. I disagree. That happens.

Sure.

Yeah.

But.

Well, also like it's, whatever point you're making is either a good point or it's not a good point if it's like an objective claim. You know what I mean? So like if I, if I say like, uh, you know, when Volkanovski fought Lopez, his jab was crucial. Okay. That's either correct or it's incorrect. Like whether I'm an expert or not, I'm not an expert on fighting.

But yeah, geez, you can watch the fight and that would be correct.

Yes, right. So he doesn't see it.

Right. I saw he hit a home run. You're right.

Yeah, there you go.

That's crazy.

Well, you know, it was a weird, a weird thing during that show was, um, because it's a weird, I don't know, there's like weird incentives built into like all of this.

Incentives. Incentives are the right word. Because there's a lot of people that are saying things and you go, why are you saying that?

Yeah. Well, also from my perspective, I was a little disappointed with it because I kind of thought, I was like, oh, this could be like a really cool thing. And it had been literally, which I don't think I'm saying anything that is like betraying confidence here, but the only thing that was ever said to me, I remember you called me and you were like, what do you think about doing this? And I think I said yes before you could finish answering.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Let's do that. And then you told me that he had said, hey, he really doesn't want this to devolve into like a food fight. He wants to make this like a good faith thing. And I was like, oh, awesome. And now I feel like he like Trump, Witkoff negotiated me. Like he started negotiating. He was, because then he came in and the whole thing was about me. He didn't want to talk about the issues at all. He just wanted, and so in a weird way, I was like, well, this sucks because I thought we could have had a really cool thing. But then there was this other part of me that was like, I mean, he's really just handing this to me.

Yeah.

And so I was kind of almost like for the first 45 minutes of it, I was kind of sitting there like, oh, I can't believe he just, he went this route.

Well, if you look at it objectively, there weren't a lot of options, right?

Yeah.

It's very difficult to argue the side that what they're doing, like we were talking about Gaza in particular.

Yeah.

Like the arguing that that's not horrific. And if you're a human being and you recognize that there are human beings that are subjected to that government, just like you're subjected to ICE, you're subjected to homeland security, you're subjected to the cops. If you're a civilian, you have to listen to these orders. So if you're living in Gaza and you're a child or you're a woman and you live, you're not Hamas, okay? And the idea that you're responsible for October 7th, even if you're one of the people that cheered in the street, boy, don't you think you kind of have to cheer in the street if everybody else is cheering in the street?

No, they've slowed down a bit, but they haven't stopped.

Okay. There was nothing left, man. And that represents people's homes. That represents schools. That represents hospitals. There's no way you can argue that that's not horrific.

Yeah.

So he was stuck.

That's right. That's right. It's kind of indefensible. And so instead you pivot to arguing against this guy rather than against the issue. Well, I think that, um, you know, it's in, I can't remember if this was in the letter to America or this was in his declaration of war against America. But Osama bin Laden literally said that civilians are fair targets because you guys have elections and you vote for these politicians and they're the ones who conduct these wars that slaughter innocent Muslims.

It's kind of crazy that the world didn't at one point in time stand up and say, there's a simple solution here. Like these people should have a state. Like why do you get to control them, but they're not Israeli? Like they're kind of a country, but not really because they're attached to you.

Yeah, it's people.

Why don't you guys go buy another country and give it to them and let them have a country? Or they don't like being attached on the same small patch of dirt to people that have a totally different ideology, I guess.

Well, that's right. And that, look, I mean, it's just.

But we are.

Yeah. We have Canadians right there.

Yes, but Canadians, Canadians do get citizenship in their own country, you know?

They get citizenship here too. Boy, that's the last thing ICE is looking for is fucking Canadians.

Oh yeah.

Although your visa's expired and don't worry about it, buddy. Get on the plane.

They probably have a much easier time. Like Canadians will go, all right, guess I got to go.

Well, yeah. Also, they can just ditch the accent and pretend they're Americans and everybody will buy it.

Yeah, it's much easier.

They don't say a boat wrong.

Yeah.

You know, they could just say, ah, sorry, I don't have my license on me.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. Like, okay, buddy, where are you from? Oh, I live in Iowa. Okay, sounds right.

That does check out.

Get out of here.

All right.

Shit, that does check out.

Do you see the shit that's going on in the airports? So are they using, they're using ICE now at the airports because first of all, how many ICE agents are there? Aren't they busy? How do you have time to put them in all the airports? How many fucking airports are there?

It's in the low tens of thousands. There's not that many of them.

Right. So like how many airports are there? There's a lot of airports. Okay, so you're putting ICE in the airports? Where are you getting all these ICE guys? Are you hiring new ICE guys to take the airport jobs? Like, is this like, it takes seven weeks to train them. So do they have like a surplus of like an ICE factory where they're churning them out and putting them out there?

I heard, so I didn't see any of them. I flew out here the other day and I didn't see any of them, but then I did see people saying that they were at the airport I flew out from later that day.

Up to 150. That's not a lot. Immigration and customs enforcement officers were deployed at airports across the United States on Monday. So I, of course, you know, you get on social media, somebody sends you something and somebody sent me something. I'm not sure if it was true, but it was like, look at the difference between the lines at the airport before ICE was there and after ICE was there and tell me that only 10 million illegal aliens got in.

They're like, what is the real, we were talking about this last night, like what's the real number? What is the real number of illegals in the United States?

We don't know.

You were saying something about Ann Coulter.

Yeah, well, she had, um, and this was from a while ago. So this was, well, she had, she had in her book, Adios America, she had, I believe it was from Bear Stearns. I could be wrong. Double check me on that. It was one of the big finance companies that they had put a thing where like they put it between like 30 and 50 million total in the country.

Geez.

And.

50 is wild.

Yeah. And this is before Joe Biden and them. Now, I don't know. Maybe they got those numbers wrong.

This is before Biden. So what year was this book?

I want to say 2014, 2015.

Oh my God, that's 10 years ago.

Yeah. A lot of them, a lot of them have come in since then.

Well, at least 10 million, they believe, came in through the Biden administration. So over four years.

Well, I remember the numbers being like during the Biden administration where they'd be like, it was something like last month, there were 700,000 border apprehensions. And you're like, well, geez, then how many were just floating? And you'd see those big caravans coming in and stuff. I mean, look, it's a huge, that still is a huge scandal. And as much as I have really been really criticizing Trump and the Trump administration since last summer, you know, he's done a good job in securing the border.

Even if you think that it should be open and those people should be able to travel freely, they should. There's no one's illegal on stolen land.

That kind of shit.

You know how much sex trafficking happened during that time of children? You know how many children were trafficked that way? You know how many children were dragged across the border and sold to psychopaths?

Oh yeah. Oh, it's horrible. I mean, I saw, um, oh, there's Ann Coulter with at least 15.

At least 50 million illegals in the country today. See my book, Adios America, for the analysis from Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters and numbers crunchers from Bear Stearns.

I was right. It was Bear Stearns.

This is 2022, this post. Wow.

The book is even older though.

The book is like, the book is from before, I want to say 2015, but it's around then. Is crazy.

That's crazy.

Supposedly this is the book that got Donald Trump on the immigration issue. At least I've heard, I've heard Ann Coulter say that before. Maybe that's right. Maybe that's not right. But, um, but yeah, I mean, look, it's like, it's also a particularly, it's a profound like act of treachery for a government to do that to its own country. Like to allow that and really facilitate that to happen against the will of the domestic population.

Because they're ICE agents. Because they can get doxed.

Well, that's their concern. And look, I understand that.

That's a real concern.

I understand that concern.

It's organized.

But at the same time, you know, there is a balancing act there. And, you know, a lot of people, like a lot of right wingers will say, hey, look, if you're, you know, if you came here illegally, then that's a crime. You're here illegally. That's the law. And hey, I get that argument. But also, the supreme law of the land is the Constitution of the United States of America. And I've seen a ton of videos where there were masked ICE agents, not even identifying themselves, going up to people, telling them that you have to answer my questions. You don't have an option to walk away, which is like not true at all.

Well, that was my take on it. So you can't accept people that are masked, that don't have any paperwork, that don't have a warrant on the streets in militarized situations. Because if they're using it for this, which you agree to, that opens up the door for them to use it because you won't take your vaccine or because you did this or did that or whatever the fuck it is. If a different person gets in power, maybe they're going to use it for something you don't support. It's just not something you're supposed to accept.

That's right. You don't want to accept that.

Here's something that someone told me that is, this is a very credible source that I can't reveal what the source is, but they told me that there are people in this country, and not just a few, but many, many that are affiliated with terrorist organizations, directly affiliated, but they've applied for asylum. And because they've applied for asylum, you can't deport them until they go through the entire process.

That is wild.

That is wild. So there's people that are known, at least terrorist sympathizers. They're in direct communication with terrorist networks. They've done things with terrorist networks and they've applied for asylum. So you have to go through this long ass process through the legal system and it's up to a judge whether or not this person who may or may not be a part of a fucking sleeper cell gets to stay in America.

Yeah.

Suicidal empathy. That's what Gad Saad calls it. You know, I think he's right.

I think he's got a fair point there with suicidal empathy in terms of the idea of like that we, that we cannot say on some level that it's like, no, look, we have a desire to preserve our society and we want to do what's best and we don't have to, out of some feeling of guilt, turn our country into something worse than what it otherwise would be. So I think he's got a point there. I think, and look, I'm not a big fan of Gad. He literally just, him and like Sam Harris and a few others, they literally just trash me all the time and refuse to engage on a single thing I've said.

Gad doesn't engage with you?

He calls me Wikipedia Dave on Twitter. And it's a, well, look.

I like the guy.

Look, I have a different relationship with him than you do.

Well, that's true. And I'm a big critic of Israel and he's a Mossad agent. So there is that. That is part of.

You think he is?

He's admitted that he worked for Mossad.

In the past?

Yes. Yeah. I guess he would say he's not currently.

He retired. Like I used to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I used to work for Newport Creamery. I don't represent them anymore.

I think it's a little bit different with the Mossad thing.

But I also think that the big component that I think all of those guys are missing is that we also create more enemies with our foreign policy. And that's not to say that like, you know, they always kind of caricature my position on this. Like I'm not saying Islam is all peaceful and there are no problems in the Islamic world or anything like that. In fact, I don't think any religion has truly always been peaceful. But, you know, for guys like, say like Sam Harris, who these kind of like pretend intellectuals who have spent, he spent his entire career talking about how violent and irrational the Muslims are and how you can't even draw a cartoon of Muhammad or Muslims will want to do violent stuff.

During Ramadan.

Yeah. Like that is, you know, that is not just a political figure to Shiite Muslims. That is a, so at the same time, it's like, okay, I'm fine with saying, okay, you don't want to have suicidal empathy. My buddy Keith Knight, who's brilliant, works over at the Libertarian Institute. He had, I forget what he said, but he said something like, okay, I don't want to have suicidal empathy. Let's also not have homicidal empathy, you know? And so like maybe it also is like, as we were tying into that whole conversation with, no, I'm okay, thanks.

Yeah, it's all nuts. It's the Sam Harris thing. I should clarify this because he's apparently talked about me again recently on Bill Maher. We didn't not talk because it was his idea. It was me. He wanted to do a podcast with me. He wanted to do like a COVID, you know, wrap-up, like to, you know, go over everything that happened, all the mistakes that were made and his position, my position, because that's where we kind of like separated.

Lockdowns.

Lockdowns.

Didn't work at all.

All the above. All the above. He didn't want to talk to Brett. And I said, that doesn't make sense to me. Like you talk to everybody. You have debates with Muslims on stage.

Yeah, that's right.

That doesn't make any sense. Like why wouldn't you talk to Brett? I don't think he wanted to talk to Brett because I don't, I think he didn't want to talk to Brett because Brett's right.

Yeah.

I think it's, and I think it's indefensible.

No, I completely agree. I mean, you know, I had a.

By the way, I don't hate Sam. You know, he could say all the crazy shit he wants. He also said, like, I don't think you should interview Gaddafi. Guess what? I would. If Gaddafi was alive, 100% I would interview Gaddafi. Gaddafi, did you ever hear Russell Crowe talk about Gaddafi?

I don't think so.

He did a clip that went viral that was on this show where he talked about why they wanted to get rid of Gaddafi.

Right.

And like, well, they talked about how evil Gaddafi was and how he subjugated his people. You can't say you can find that. Russell Crowe on Gaddafi. He wanted to create a United States of Africa.

Yeah.

He wanted to get him on the gold standard. He wanted to get him off the US dollar. Like he had some very dangerous ideas.

Now he also supported Palestinian resistance.

Yeah, that was it.

I know, I don't know. That's a fun little sound thing.

There's no sound thing in there? Oh, there it is. Here it is.

We are taught, for example, to regard Gaddafi in a certain way. Okay? But if you look into what happened in his country while he was the leader, you look into the fact that every person is given a house at a certain age. You look at the fact that everybody's education and healthcare is free. You look at if somebody showed a particular talent for something that required further education overseas, all of the costs of that were paid for by the government. Now, these are all things put in place by the same country's leader that we're told is evil and corrupt.

Yeah.

So it doesn't quite balance.

Well, there's also US government interference. That's a, that is one that we definitely monkeyed with. I mean, he ran afoul of the United States government.

We are taught, for example.

Yeah. There was the famous clip with Hillary. I showed a friend of mine the other day that he hadn't seen it and he couldn't believe it was real.

Yeah.

Where she was on this show and gets unconfirmed information from.

Dead.

And she goes, "We came, we saw, he died."

She was so excited about it.

But laughing. And then that led to Libya, at least for a while, becoming a failed state.

And there's, and you know, the thing is that they called that Hillary's war. She really, she was the Secretary of State at the time under Barack Obama, but she's really the one who championed that. And I believe Obama wrote in his book that he was 50-50 and that Hillary really pushed him to that. And he said his big regret was that he didn't think about what came next after Gaddafi. Because I wonder why we haven't learned that lesson yet. Like after Iraq, you never thought of that.

Listen, but thank God Trump's figured it out.

Oh yeah, that's the, yeah, Trump's figured it out. We'll go in this drastic new direction of getting the seventh war that they wanted.

Don't be a pussy Dave. Jesus Christ. Did you see that one? I don't know what military expert was on television who said something about we need to, I'm a fan of boots on the ground like Rome. Like, hey fucker, Rome didn't have nuclear weapons and drones. Rome didn't have drones that hunt you.

Yeah.

Like we talking about boots on the ground. Should we fight with swords? Should we get everybody to fight with swords? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

The fuck are you saying?

Well, also like what, what even is the plan with boots on the ground? Like what are you talking about here? You're going to take an island? It goes, okay, well then you're going to be a target. You're going to be target practice as long as the Iranian regime is still standing. And if you're talking about militarily occupying the country like we did with Iraq or Afghanistan or something like that, this is a huge country with 92 million people. How many soldiers do you think you need to occupy that country? At least half a million. And probably you can't do it with that.

Because I don't think that's happening.

Yeah, this is maybe slightly more popular than Vietnam. Going in, it's less. I'm sure Vietnam by the end was very, very unpopular.

Well, Vietnam going in didn't make any sense, did it? There was, I guess the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Most people in America were like, why are we doing this? What's going on? You're drafting people to go to Vietnam? We're fighting communism in Vietnam?

Yeah.

What?

Well, they called it Vietnam syndrome that the American people had, which is that we didn't want to fight a war again after that. From their perspective, that's a syndrome. And it's really something. They think, by the way, Ben Shapiro used this same line called. He said, Trump finally broke Iraq War syndrome. Because they think, see, from Ben Shapiro's perspective, the illness is after you lie the American people into a war and slaughter a million people.

Right.

You know, bloodless on the American side or very, very limited, you know, injuries and deaths. And they, you know, they weren't like quagmires that went on forever or whatever. But of course, after the Persian Gulf War in '92, we went on to be bombing Iraq for ever since essentially. You know, I mean, for 30 straight years after that.

Well, we were still at war with that country.

They think for a million people being dead.

Yeah.

What is public support? Let's put that into our sponsor perplexity. What is current public support for the Iran war in America? First of all, how will they know? No one's asked me. You know what I'm saying?

That's a fair point.

Like that's what I always say about polls. When was the last time you answered a poll? When was the last time anybody called you up and said, Dave Matt, first of all, when was the last time you ever picked up the phone if you didn't know who was calling? And then when you do answer, when was the last time you said yes to a poll?

I don't even remember ever getting called.

It has to be the dumbest of dumb people that answer those polls. So then you got to realize, out of those stupid fucking idiots, even how many of them think the war's a good idea? It's even unpopular amongst them.

I mean, what does it say here? Most recent national polls show Americans overall oppose the current war with Iran and think US military action has gone too far. A Quinnipiac poll finds 54%, what is Quinnipiac? Quinnipiac? Poll finds 54% of US voters oppose US military action against Iran and 39% support it. I wonder how many of those 39% are.

Well, not too much. We don't have the numbers.

A poll reports about six, right? What is the number of Jewish people in America?

2%? Something like that?

Six in ten adults say US military action against Iran has gone too far. Only about a quarter say it's been about right. 25%. Poofa. First of all, you know, whenever you're talking about these kind of things, it's like, who, again, who are we talking about? Who was asked? Finds Republicans largely support the military action around 86% support. Whoa.

Yeah, there's.

Really? Because I talked to a lot of Republicans that think it's a terrible idea. While large majorities of Democrats, around 92%, and independents, about 64% oppose it. 92%. Who are the 8% of Democrats that are like, let's fucking go? You think maybe they're Jews?

They work for CNN. They work, you know, whatever.

CNN thinks it's a good idea? No.

Dude, CNN is running cover for Donald Trump during this time.

Come on. For real?

Oh yeah.

No way.

Yeah, they put up a poll the other day. They had a graphic that said 100% of MAGA supports the war in Iran. There's, it's like.

CNN said that?

After all these years.

Say he liked it or something like that.

Oh, but hold on a second.

CNN likes me.

Is that running cover or is that making them look bad? Because most Americans don't support the war. And most Democrats, 92%, don't support the war. So if that's the case, wouldn't that just make it look like these MAGA people are a fucking problem?

I guess.

Oh my God. MAGA GOP view of Trump. Can I hear all he says it? Or would it be a problem?

That's not him talking. It's someone else talking.

Oh, okay. That seems bonkers. It seems bonker. Approve 100%. How many people did you ask? Two.

Well, there's.

Two guys with MAGA hats on.

If you notice the way they say this, right? So they don't just say GOP voters. They say MAGA GOP voters. And so what they're doing here is that they're filtering who they consider to be MAGA. And who they consider to be MAGA are the people who still say they support Donald Trump. But like 100% of the people who don't support this war stopped supporting Donald Trump over it.

Right, but look at this little thing on the bottom. They don't show you. 66%, 31% split amongst non-MAGA.

Right.

Well, is that non-MAGA Republicans? Is that what you're saying?

No, I think that's non-MAGA Americans, I believe.

How, like the whole MAGA thing is like, how did, we're so fractioned as it is.

Yeah.

Like this whole idea of right versus left as it is. And now you've got a MAGA section of the right.

It's all just ridiculous, dude. But it's a way to describe it as anything other than what it is, which is the most unpopular war in American history going into it. And for good reason. Look, dude, he didn't even bother to like sell us on a propaganda campaign about it. It was like the laziest, like just lie, just lie us into it.

Let's put on a fucking firm tinfoil hat right now. Let's get a double layer Reynolds wrap, fucking crease the edges, fold it down. Why would he want to do this? Why would he want to, look, I am not denying that the regime of Iran is a giant problem. I'm certainly not denying that if I was Israel, I would not want them there. They hate you. They're trying to get a nuclear weapon. They're right there. I get the Israel position.

Well, Trump himself has said, which literally this would be like considered an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory if anyone else had said it. But Donald Trump has openly talked about many times how the Adelsons give him all this money and they come by every day and all they have is another demand on behalf of Israel. Donald Trump also very early in his political career got in trouble with the Israel lobby and then immediately pivoted to blaming, to winning their favor back over by saying he would tear up the JCPOA, the Iran deal that Obama got us into.

Right, but before the bombing, there were people in the streets that were protesting.

Yes.

And people were killed because of that. A lot. That's the other thing is that that regime is like they clamp down and they do it with public figures. They killed a very prominent wrestler from Iran.

Yeah.

Really, two of them. They killed one a few years back. The UFC tried to step in and somehow they're stop it, but he was also one that was accused of protesting against the government.

Listen, I don't know about this most recent one. I'm not saying this is true at all. I don't trust any governments, but he was, they claimed he killed a few cops. That's what the Iranian regime said he was being hung for. Now I don't know.

The wrestler?

Yeah, the wrestler.

Oh, I didn't see that.

He was convicted of that, whatever that means in a mala run court, you know? So I'm not saying that's right at all, but I will say this, right? Donald Trump, when he launched this war, and there's been a whole lot of just false claims that have been made. But he said specifically that they killed 32,000 protestors. There has not been a shred of evidence presented to back up this claim. Now, I'm not saying it's not true. I'm not putting it past this government that they would do that.

Well, when you say died, does it mean they killed the protesters?

Well, that's unclear. That's not what they are claiming, but then the CIA, at least there was a piece in the Washington, excuse me, in the Wall Street Journal where they had said, and this was like a week and a half into it, that they estimated like 6,500 or something like that. But this is a huge question, right? And it's not clear at all. Like were they lining people up and just executing them for the crime of protesting? They hung the wrestler. But I'm saying the people who have been killed here.

Iran protest death toll could top 30,000 according to local health officials. And this is from Time Magazine. As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on January 8th and 9th alone. Two senior officials of the country's Ministry of Health told Time, indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll. So many people were slaughtered by Iranian security services that Thursday and Friday it overwhelmed the state's capacity to dispose of the dead. Stocks of body bags were exhausted, the official said, and 18-wheel semi-trailers replaced ambulances.

Now, listen, all I'm saying here, man, is that you got to be, I've just seen this movie play out a lot of times. You got to be really careful about these accusations that are made in the run-up to a war. They're basically saying we have a source who told us this.

What year was this? I mean, excuse me, what date was this?

January 25th.

January 25th.

So the protest started in late December and then in January. This is what time?

But Putin was unable to independently verify these figures.

That's right. Listen, the claim being made here, right, is that, look, in this point, they said in two days, in two days, 30,000 people were killed. If that is true, that is up there with one of the biggest massacres in human history. The biggest massacres during World War II were like around that, the numbers.

It says, as of Saturday, US-based human rights activist news agency had confirmed 5,459 deaths and is investigating 17,000 more.

Yes.

So that's at least close. So we're in the neighborhood, we're in the 20s just if what they're investigating turns out to be accurate.

If that's the case, but we're talking also here, Joe, about like NED-funded US-based NGOs who are really around hawks, you know?

Good point.

And so, and I'm just saying like, look, the claim, the claim here is that around, you know, I saw a bunch of the Zionists online when this was first coming out back in January. They were like, oh my God, they've already killed half as many people as died in Gaza in just a couple days. And you're like, right, that's a pretty, that's a hell of a claim, right? I mean, like if you, just from following wars all these years, if you started carpet bombing Tehran, Vietnam style, carpet bombing Tehran after two days, that's the type of death toll you'd be looking at.

Well, the thing is we don't, they don't have internet access to the West.

Well, they shut down the internet during that period. But there were pictures that came out. All I'm saying is that if you had numbers like that, you would expect there to be some evidence that you could point to. And there's like one picture where they've pointed to like a couple dozen body bags and been like, see, look at this. But look, maybe it's true, maybe it's not. I'm very skeptical of these claims when they're made right before we launch a war. But I think the other point is that at least according, and there has been some evidence of this, right? There were police stations that were burned.

Not only that, in the past, our agencies, our intelligence agencies have engaged in nefarious practices where we have conscripted certain people to go and light things on fire and blow things up and create these events to accelerate.

Front page of the Jerusalem Post, they were bragging that there was Mossad within the protests. So now look, I don't know, but also the thing is this, right? If you are trying to overthrow a government, a government will kill you for doing that. And that's true about every government, including our own. Including our own. If armed protesters went to try to overthrow Barack Obama's government, he would kill those people if they were actually a threat to do that.

Ashley Babbitt was murdered on January 6th.

And every single left winger in the country went, well, that's okay. It was an insurrection. And by the way, every single right winger in this country, when this Pretty Guy got killed, we're like, well, he was interfering. Oh, I saw it. By the way, the Pretty thing was the most textbook example of a bad shooting. There's just no defending it. They had disarmed the guy. He's down. There's six of them. They panic. They put six bullets in him.

Do you know what happened though? Do you know, do you know the whole story of the gun?

The gun being removed?

Yeah, do you know the whole story about the gun?

No, I won't.

Okay, the gun is a SIG P320.

Right.

A SIG P320 is notorious for accidental discharges.

Right.

There is a video of the copper moving the gun, walking off.

Yes, I saw that.

And the gun goes off.

And is that his gun for sure?

Yeah.

Because I thought that hadn't been determined whether or not. I heard people speculating about that.

I've watched the video multiple times and I've watched other people's analysis of it. Obviously, I'm no expert, but I do know something about guns. And that gun in particular, it's been demonstrated online that it will go off. There's a cop inside of a precinct, he bends over, not touching his gun, gun in the holster, and it goes off. There's a video of a guy on a range and the gun just goes off. And he goes, whose fucking gun was that? And the range master goes, is that a SIG?

Wow.

Because it's a P320.

SIG, I should be real clear, SIG makes a bunch of guns that are awesome, like the P365 is like one of the best carry guns in the world. There's a lot of guns they make that don't have this issue. But that particular gun that Pretty had with one in the chamber is fucking knuckleheads walking around with one in the chamber. Absolutely. And I'm just saying, the only point I'm making is that it's clearly, it was a fuck up. I'm not saying like they wanted to execute the guy. I'm just saying like they had the gun taken from them. They didn't communicate that to each other. They freaked out. But literally all it took was seeing one video 11 days earlier where he kicked the back of a cop car.

Yeah. He's backed off of regime change or the idea that.

Are they even talking to him? Is someone talking to him? Like who is he talking to? Do they know who they're talking to? Because it's not like they're meeting in person.

Donald Trump said.

Some guys on the phone, I am free to negotiate. He said, Donald Trump himself said the other day that he goes, negotiate, we're negotiating, negotiations are going great. And they go, who are you negotiating with? And he goes, a person we believe to be in charge. And then they said, so is this the new supreme leader? And he said, no. No. No one's heard from that guy. We don't know where he is.

It's some hacker in his basement in Belarus.

It's not.

He's talking with an Iranian accent and he's got them convinced.

Well, it's just.

I have the authority to negotiate. Let's be partners. Let's be wire one million Bitcoin to this address.

Well, everything I'm seeing publicly reported today is that Iran is like, no, we're not in these negotiations. We've made our terms clear. And their terms, what they're asking for is something that Donald Trump is not going to be able to give them.

What's that?

Their demands were that we stop attacking immediately, like that part they might get, that we pay them restitution for all the damage so far.

Well, that's a lot of money.

Essentially that we leave the region. I mean, they had a few other things there that were just like.

And they want them to open up a Terry Blacks in Tehran.

Yeah, this one was really important to us. If we could just get one.

One Terry Blacks barbecue. We don't have good barbecue here. It doesn't seem like if he's not really negotiating with this guy, if it's like, if that's not true and he's just like putting this out there in the public as like a negotiation ploy, what a clusterfuck. Because you're dealing with people that don't mind dying. They believe, I mean, these are very religious people. They're fanatical. They believe they're going to go to heaven. They believe they're martyrs and they're fighting for Allah.

Well, they've also been.

And they've been attacked.

Well, that's right. And they've been preparing for this for a long time. You know, and they, like there's, you know, people make a lot out of the chants that the Iranians, you know, they chant death to America.

What do you got there, Jimmy?

Sorry, it's a...

This one?

And who's in control of it? Will Oman still be able to control the flow of oil?

Be jointly controlled.

By who?

Maybe me. Maybe me.

Do you want the United Nations?

Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is, whoever the next Ayatollah, look. And there'll also be a form of a very serious form of a regime change. Now, in all fairness, everybody's been killed from the regime. There's automatically a regime change. But we're dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid. The people within know who they are. They're very respected. And maybe one of them will be exactly what we're looking for.

I mean, dude, this is such a fucking mess. This is such a mess, dude. I mean, this is just too ridiculous, dude. And the, you know, the thing is that a lot of people, you know, I've spent a long time at this point being against this war. Because this war has been telegraphed since, you know, the Bush administration wanted to do this shit. And at least for like 15 years, I've been publicly opposing this war. And one of the reasons why so many of us oppose this, and it's a shitty way to be vindicated, but is that, look, Iran is just not like any of the other opponents in the global war on terrorism.

They're probably right.

And so now we're in this situation where we're already in a quagmire. It's already like over a dozen Americans have died. I think a couple hundred wounded at this point. Israel isn't giving real numbers on what's going on there, but there's some pretty substantial damage and definitely some Israelis have died. And I'm sure thousands of Iranians have died at this point. It's cost, I mean, Pete Hegseth just asked for $200 billion. I don't know if it'll get up to costing that much, but this thing is certainly already in the tens of billions.

Well, the only way it would work is if there was some sort of a deal with whoever the fuck is going to be the new guy in charge. And they did come to some sort of an agreement and they did give them some compensation for all the shit we blew up.

Yes. Well, that right.

But just print some more money for that.

Sure.

And inflation go up.

But look, here's the thing is that it's not just Donald Trump. There's two other participants in this war, two other entities in this war. There's Iran and there's Israel. Okay. Now, is Iran going to accept that? Maybe. But look, just like the 12-day war, look at the position you're in now. We're relying on the mullahs. You know what I mean? Like that is not an ideal situation to be in. And then the other factor is that there's Israel, who also gets a say in this for some reason, because we allow them to.

Yeah.

But he said Israel and Iran don't know what the fuck they're doing. Because Donald Trump, so after he drops the Bunker Busters, he goes, that's it. You know what I mean? We're taking the off-ramp. And then he said, I want to work out a ceasefire now. And then after he said that, Israel just started lighting up regime targets, just bombing the crap out of them. And they weren't bombing nuclear facilities. They were just bombing like government buildings. And they've been doing a bunch of that in this war as well, bombing local police departments, things like that, just creating chaos.

They just don't want anyone that's organized as a threat to Israel.

They don't. It's all about Iran's support for Hezbollah.

Yeah.

Is that they want Southern Lebanon, which they just, Katz, their defense minister, just announced that they're going to occupy.

Yeah, that's crazy, right? They just announced they're going to be occupying another country.

That's what it's about, man. And look, I mean, it's not, again, this isn't like a conspiracy theory. The guys all tell you this in their own words. Benjamin Netanyahu was asked point blank a few months back what he thought of the Greater Israel Project. And he said, it's very near and dear to my heart. Like this is the point of denying the Palestinians a state for all these years. You can't let the Palestinians have a state because then how are you going to take that all over someday? That's all supposed to be part of Israel. And the US ambassador, the US ambassador, not the Israeli ambassador, the US ambassador to Israel is on record saying that God promised Iraq to Benjamin Netanyahu.

Exactly.

No, you named it after that, dude. That doesn't count.

That's crazy. And they took the spot where it was.

Yeah. I mean, like.

They took over and they did it in a horrific way, like the Nabka.

Yeah.

You listen to some of those soldiers, the translation of some of those soldiers talking about what they did and even laughing about what they did.

Yeah. Some of them even smiling.

In 1948?

Yeah, because it's not, it wasn't in 1848. You know what I mean? Like these guys were alive, maybe not so many of them now, but like 20, 30 years ago, you could put a video camera in front of one of these guys and ask him to tell their story.

Right. It was like 78 years ago. It wasn't that long ago.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so, you know, look, I mean, the idea here that America after just 25 years of catastrophic failures, launching wars of choice, wars of aggression, lying the American people into it, just slaughtering millions of people and like bankrupting this country and really severely degrading the country with these wars. The idea that we would jump into another war of choice for Israel is just too, like this is too crazy, man.

Yeah, that was what we were all supporting. That was the one thing that he was saying that was so promising to so many people that were independent, that were on the fence. They're like, this guy wants no wars. All right. He wants closing the border, which I think is a great idea. He wants no wars. That enough, let's go.

Well, especially considering the fact that, well, like even if there are some things about Donald Trump that maybe you don't like, but the other guys are saying we want to keep fighting forever wars, and this guy is saying we should stop doing that. That's enough to go, well, then he's better than you on net. And don't get me wrong. I mean, I endorse Donald Trump in 24. You know, people give me shit for this. Some people like that. Some people give me shit for it. But I do, I kind of view it like this. Like, and I really, I will say, maybe I'm a little biased here because I love you, but I don't think I'm being biased.

Yeah.

Also, there was an interesting dynamic happening in 24 where, okay, this wasn't, you know, Donald Trump, they had actually tried to throw him in jail, maybe even tried to murder him. We never really got any answers on that one. He now had Bobby Kennedy with him. He now had Tulsi Gabbard with him. He now had, oh, you know what I mean? Even JD Vance, like a lot of these people who were supposedly much more non-interventionist. There was reason to hope that maybe it wouldn't end up here. But anyway, I guess my thing is that you played such a huge role in this.

They got out of that on the scale.

Yes. Well, that's right. But then all the, and I want to, you know, he said some nice things about me when he was on here the other day with you. So I will say some nice things about Konstantin Kassen, who despite our disagreements, I really like that guy a lot. But he is, I could be wrong. I could be missing someone. He's the only guy I've seen who supported the 12-day war, but is really skeptical about this. And I've seen so many people, it's unbelievable, dude. Like they just, so like the 12-day war comes for the first 48 hours of it. They're like, dude, Israel's doing this on its own.

I like that guy a lot. I like him a lot. I like Francis a lot too.

I do too.

Their show, Trigonometry, is one of the best shows. Agree with them or not agree with them. They're always reasonable. They're never ideologically driven. They have opinions that you may or may not agree with, but they're real clear about their opinions and why they believe what they believe.

Yeah, that's right. And I will say.

And they're great guys.

Yeah, genuinely good dudes.

Great guys.

I really liked, you know, I get in a lot of like the shit show, like arguments. I find myself in them. I probably should be better than them and just not engage, but I'm not and I'm petty.

What do you mean by shit show?

Like where it just becomes like an insult thing or, you know, like I debated Alex Barron's or it's just kind of, it's kind of embarrassing in hindsight, but like, I don't know. It gets me really angry when a guy's calling me a Holocaust denier or something like that.

Well, the thing I was saying was kind of silly. The way he was saying it was silly and he was just trying to play gotcha with you and then you called him a faggot.

Yeah, it's not my finest moment.

You could tell he was really shaken by that.

Well, it's just.

He expected that.

I kind of have a thing where like, look, I'm really into this shit and I nerd out on it and I'm obsessed with all of this for whatever reason. It's just like my calling in life. But I'm also a stand-up comic at heart, you know? And so like as soon as someone goes like, oh, I want to be vicious, you're like, oh, you want to be vicious? Because like I'm pretty good at being vicious. So like I could do that. And you're probably not used to hearing this type of vicious shit that like comics say to each other. But one of the things that I really appreciated about Francis and Konstantin was when I went to do their show, it was just like, it was genuinely a good faith conversation.

Well, sometimes in our lifetimes where it's been an issue that we are dealing with the consequences of the relationship.

That's right.

There's never been a time in the past where people were completely aware of, oh, there's no other reason why we'd be going into Iran. Like most people, most people don't think.

100%.

It wasn't for Israel asking us to, Netanyahu's consistent visits to the White House.

Oh, you can't even, you can't even pretend otherwise. I mean, people can.

But people do.

Yes. Well, they try to, but people.

Coleman Hughes just got in a debate with Glenn Greenwald about it.

I saw that they did it. I have not had a chance to watch it.

Yeah. Somebody sent it to me and it was, you know, I'm being a good boy when it comes to social media. It's been so good for my brain.

Yeah.

It's kind of remarkable. So I got a new.

Just staying off, you mean.

Yeah. Yeah. My new phone, I'm not going to put anything on it. I'm going to have my old phone and leave it at home. And I'm not going to be able to look at it. So when I have to post things, I got to post it on my other phone that's not going to be with me. I'm not doing that anymore because I just think eventually, ultimately it rots your brain. But you do get some cool debates and some insight into what's going on. And I don't know what Coleman's argument was, but Glenn and Coleman were arguing about Israel's influence on this.

Well, I'll be very interested to watch that. I do respect Coleman despite disagreeing with him very adamantly on this stuff.

Very smart guy.

Very smart guy. No question about it.

And a very nice guy.

And look, one of the things I really respect about him is when I did his show, he literally starts it by going, he goes, you know, almost all these debates I see you in, like you're kind of debating issues and then people just debate your character. And he goes, I'm not doing that at all. I want to talk about the issues the whole time. And I just genuinely appreciate that.

No, agree with him or disagree with him. He's a super reasonable guy and a very nice guy. I like him a lot. I like him a lot. Whether I agree with him or disagree with him, he's a wonderful person.

This agreed. This is what I will say about his position on this, which I think is kind of interesting. So number one, when I was on Piers Morgan with him right after Venezuela happened, and he was, his position, I don't want to mischaracterize it, but I think this is pretty accurate, was he was like, look, a lot of people are comparing Venezuela to Iraq or Libya or Syria, but like that is a different region, a different culture, a different religion.

At the UN.

Yeah, yeah.

Cartoon. A bomb cartoon with percentages of the enriched uranium.

And like a Daffy Duck bomb. Not like the bomb that'll blow your beak around to the other.

And he was already up real high. He was already up real high. No, dude, he was on record saying that Iran was three to five years away from getting a nuclear weapon in the '90s.

In the '90s.

I mean, it's just, he's just been lying through his teeth. And there is something, look, man, there's something really profoundly dishonorable about trying to lie another country into war. Like not even trying to sell the war to your own people and have your own military do it, but because you can't.

There it is.

Yeah, there we are. We were up to 90%.

First stage. No, it was first stage we were at. He was saying they've hit the first stage. Oh, oh, oh, excuse me. Okay, yeah, you're right. I guess this is, we can't, we can't go any further.

Bomb.

It's just so ridiculous. And he knows, he knows he's lying.

He's like your friend that like you've been friends with since high school and every time you go out, he gets you in a fight.

Yeah.

You're like, dude, don't do this. Like those guys over there are a fucking problem. Let's go over there and fuck them up. And like, you know, all your buddies are like, dude, this guy again.

Did I use that exact analogy when I debated Josh Hammer at Princeton University? And, or maybe it was in the Charlie Kirk. It was one of the times I debated him. But I used that exact analogy. He was like, is Israel an ally? And I was like, no. It's like, they're not a good friend. If your friend's getting you in a bar fight every night, stop hanging out with that guy.

Bro, Tim Dillon did an ad for NeuroGum and NeuroMince on his podcast where he's like, I have a friend, let's just call her Erica. And he does this Erica Kirk ad. He doesn't say it's Erica Kirk for NeuroGum. Have you heard it, Jamie?

I don't think so.

Oh my God. Oh my God, it's so funny. Oh my God, it's so crazy. He's so out of his mind. I fucking love him so much. I'm so happy Tim Dillon's in the world.

He is the.

He's the best. If you're not listening to his podcast and you want a rational but hilarious take on all the fucking madness that's going on with not just this war, but the Epstein files, his episode, the Epstein files, I hardly ever tweet about other people's podcasts, but I hardly ever tweet, but I posted it. I'm like, this is one of the best podcasts about anything ever.

His ability, Tim's ability to like rant, it like.

Like a hilarious rant that is laced with excellent points, but it's just hilarious the whole time. And just him going off is second to none.

And he's sober. He just puts on his magic glasses.

It's him and Fuentes are the top two.

But he buries Fuentes.

Fuentes is really good. Fuentes has very.

Tim can do something different than anybody else can do.

Yeah. Well, his ability to blend sarcasm and just celebration of chaos.

Yeah, it's second to none.

Best rantor that's ever walked the face of the planet.

I remember when I first met Tim in New York before he moved out to LA after that, but when I first met him in New York, and he was, I think, like he was a green stand-up. I think he hadn't been doing it for that long. But I remember just like being on podcasts with him and just being like, yo, this dude is going to be a fucking superstar. Like it was just like his ranting, like ability, like he would go off on things where you just find yourself like, like you almost have a moment where you forget you're on the show with him.

Listen to this ad. Listen to this.

I mean, whatever they're paying him, they should pay him more.

Yeah, it's not enough. No one can pay him enough. He's the GOAT.

Well, that'll also just make you remember that product forever.

Yeah. No, he's the greatest of all time.

It might be a, oh, I'm trying to figure out how to turn our racetrack sign on all the way. Is it broken? God damn, we need a new one. I'll get a hold of Bobby. He's the GOAT, dude. He's, he just, yeah, I had someone in the White House come up to me and go, is Tim Dillon really gay? I go, yeah, he's really gay. Like you think he would fake that? Yeah. He goes, how long have you known him? I go, I've known him forever. He's really gay. Yeah. Well, he will. He's a real good undercover, but every now and then you see it come out.

Subprime mortgages. And he was a part of the housing crisis.

That's right.

And he was doing cocaine back then.

He did topple the US economy for a while.

But then he got into comedy. He more than made up for it. He's more than made up for that.

This is where he belongs.

Yeah.

He belongs in front of that screen with the glasses on, just going on these insane rants.

Oh, yeah.

He's so funny, man.

And look, the Epstein files take was fucking genius.

That was great. Dude, his thing about Sam Harris having a meditation app and also supporting genocide is like the most hilarious thing ever. Like what human being does both of those? Such a great take on that.

Oh, he's so funny, man. Yeah, we're lucky, dude. We're part of a really cool group of people right now. You know, it's a very unusual time that the mainstream has lost all of its power of influence on people. It still puts out information. It still puts out shows. But they're.

Trying to look like you.

But they're funk. That Jake Tapper thing was so crazy. I was like, what are you doing? Are you doing a podcast now? Like, what are you doing?

It's such a perfect, like little microcosm, though, of like, it's almost painful. Like, I'm like, guys, just can you hire me? I mean, like, I would explain this to you.

No, no, no.

Because they're so trained. They're so, it's like if you get a dog and that dog has been maybe a, yeah, a cat might be a better example. If you've never had a litter box in the house and the cat's been pissing all over the carpet, you are always going to have that cat piss on the carpet. That's what that cat does. You're not going to fix them. If your entire life you've been spitting out nonsense from a teleprompter and now all of a sudden you have to be yourself, you've been functioning in a world of executives and producers where everybody goes over every little thing you say and do.

You got to have mics for like everything.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Their whole setup is they're all trying to look like podcasters.

No, wait a minute. They put mics out like podcasters. That's crazy. Imagine if they think that's all it takes.

But, well, this is, but Joe, talk about completely missing the point, right? It's just fundamentally missing it. Is that they go, they actually go, okay, so all of these people have left, you know, watching cable news in droves. And now they, a lot of people listen to podcasts. They'll listen to you or Theo Vaughn or whoever it might be. And a huge reason, right, why people, a huge reason why you've been number one for so long now is because however anyone feels about you, you're authentic.

Yeah. Well, that's why it works.

And because you guys in the corporate media are all professional liars and have lied to the American people about the last 17 crises, you know, they don't trust you anymore. And so then their reaction to that is you go, well, what if we pretended to be podcasters? Like, no, you dummy. That's the whole thing. This is just proving further how inauthentic you are.

Do they have fucking meetings on this?

100%.

100% they do. Dude, they all, this was to me, despite the fact that I, you know, and people can tell me shit about voting for Donald Trump and they could say I should have known better and whatever. I was a huge critic of him in his first term and I'm a huge critic of him in his second term. But the best thing about Donald Trump winning in '24, and I did predict this right, I'm not always the best with predictions. I'm pretty good on issues, I think, but I'm not great at predictions. They're tough. But the best thing about Donald Trump winning was that the corporate media finally admitted it. They had been pretending for so long.

I think both of them suck. And I think the adherence to the ideologies that the left supports or the right supports is out of their fucking, you got to be out of your fucking mind. Whether it's these crackpot Christian nationalists that think that this whole war is a way to get Jesus to return on a white horse. Do you see those guys that were talking? Yeah. During the readiness fucking meeting, that, I think that's nuts too. I think the woke shit and all the chaos of the fucking last four years of having a completely open border and the justifications of all these things, that's nuts too.

But I think that.

The Democrats aren't ever going to get someone like me because I'm not with either or. I'm not with either or. I'm with whoever fucking makes sense and no one makes sense till AI comes along.

And I think they're going to do a really good job.

President Perplexity is going to run this country fairly and balanced. I'm willing to try it at this point, dude.

I'm fucking, I'm dead serious, man. As long as it doesn't like do something to harm people, as long as like that's its goal is just to manage society.

It's a big if that you got there. But yes, if we can get that.

Well, but what you just said, I think is really, well, this is something that I'm encouraged by, is that I think what you just said there, I really do believe that you speak for super majorities of the American people. And that's why even though Donald Trump has shattered his coalition by lying us into this stupid war on behalf of a foreign country, that coalition is still ripe for someone else to pick it up and run with it. And that's kind of what I'm hoping. I hope Thomas Massie runs for president. I think, by the way, they're doing a big money bomb for Thomas Massie on March 30th.

Yeah. Well, then okay.

What is MAGA then?

Well, if that's like, I don't know. Like my position is always like, if you're saying if not supporting covering up the Epstein files or not supporting a stupid war of choice, a war of aggression on behalf of Israel means I'm not MAGA, then okay, I'm not MAGA. I'm not attached to the, you know, the phrase make America great again. I don't care. Then fine.

But if that phrase sucks, here's the thing. Like first of all, America is great. Make America greater, I'm down. But make America great again, and then it becomes a movement of a bunch of fucking dorks. Because a lot of them are dorks. A lot of them, these really weird fucking uninteresting, unintelligent people that have got something they cling to. And there's a lot of people that are just real genuine patriots. And they're all lumped into this one group and you got to accept the dorks too. Fuck that. Like the concept of making America great is a great idea.

Yeah, what is George Carlin said, people are great as individuals.

Yeah.

But when they get in a group, man, they're the worst things in the world. And that's why it should be about the, like the issues. It should be about your principles and what you believe in. And you should be like, look, like I've said many nice things about Tulsi Gabbard over the years and I was extremely critical of her over since last summer until now, because I think she's lying us into a war, which is the war that she was always opposed to. The one. The one. She sold no war with Iran t-shirts. She, like this was really.

How is she lying us into this war?

So, well.

Because that's a big statement.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, and it's true. So last summer, so Tulsi Gabbard had given her, as the director of national intelligence does every year, they give their annual threat assessment. And then she testified before Congress about it. And she, it was very clear in her annual threat assessment that Iran was not attempting to build nuclear weapons. That they had not yet made the political decision to attempt to build nuclear weapons, let alone like are actually going for it. And she testified before Congress saying the same thing.

Let me see what the post says.

Sure. This is from, if you could find it, this is from last, it must have been last June.

Right, but is that a fact? So if they're enriching uranium up to 60% and they just have to enrich it further for the ability to use it in nuclear weapons, that is a couple of weeks away.

Now, but not before it would be, to build a bomb and to make it deliverable. I think all the experts say at least a couple of years. But the point aside from that is that at the time, and this is over now, but at the time, Iran was still members of the JCPOA. They were still in it. So it's like.

What is that?

This is the Iran deal that Obama got us into. Obama is horrible on foreign policy. He's the butcherer of Libya and Syria and Yemen and he surged in Afghanistan. But in Iran, he made a deal with them. And the deal, but it wasn't just with the US and Iran. It also involved Russia and France and England. And there were other countries involved in it too. And the JCPOA said that Iran couldn't enrich above, I think it was 3 to 5% or something like that. And they were staying in it.

And when did America get out of the deal?

Donald Trump toured up in his first term, I want to say 2017 or 2018.

And then they immediately started enriching?

No, they went up a little bit and then I think there were a couple of Israeli attacks and then they went up to enriching at 60%. But so the reason we knew they were enriching up to 60% is because they were still members of the JCPOA with an inspections regime who was going in there and saying they're enriching up to 60%.

Right. How much do you actually know about enriching uranium and what it takes to turn into a bomb? Let's read what she says.

Sure.

New intelligence. Confirm what POTUS has stated numerous times. Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed.

Oh, no, I think this is after. This isn't the right one. Her tweet was before.

This is from June.

Yeah, this would have been just shortly before this.

Very recently.

Her tweet was before we hit Fordo.

Yeah, this is June 25th. There's a recent one though. Oh, edited June 25th. Yeah, but it seems like it was still edited the day it was posted.

Probably.

But can you go to her page? Because she doesn't tweet a lot. She's not a psycho. She's not one of those. If she tweets, it's generally something important or someone from our team. So is this the, hold on. Above that. Overwhelmingly elected by the Americans. Click on that, show more. I think that's it.

Well, this is what she testified to Congress this time. I was referring to a different one from that. But I also think this is a lie. I mean, for her to say that the president determines what is an imminent threat or is not, no, either there is an imminent threat or there is not one. This is like saying the president determines the weather or something like that.

Right, right, right. But you're taking her words out of context. She's saying something that's factually correct. As our commander in chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat. That is true. And whether or not to take action, he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people, and our country. That's just an actual fact.

Okay, yes, fair enough. But when she testified before Congress, they asked her like, they asked her point blank a bunch of times about this. And then she goes, that's not my job to determine what's an imminent threat. That's the job of the president. And if he says it is, then it is.

Okay, so look at this here. Initially, she's contradicting Trump, saying that Iran did not rebuild after the 2025 strikes. Contradicting Trump. So this is also from Time Magazine. So she's saying that. Now, what you're saying that she said earlier was a lie is not a lie, dude, because that is actually her way she.

Well, I wasn't referring to that.

I understand. But you did say that was a lie, what she said was a lie.

Okay, fair enough. That was not a lie. But it is factually actually correct.

And if you're in a position like she's in, where you've got that guy breathing down your neck and you're forced to make a statement, you've got to tread very carefully on this tightrope that you're walking.

Okay, fine. But let's just say, hypothetically, that you know for a fact that Iran did not pose an imminent threat. And then that's your answer when you're asked if they did. Fine. It's not a lie, but it is very misleading, to say the least.

How much, okay, hold on. Intel Chief Gabbard declines to say if Iran posed an imminent threat to the US. She declined to say on her own, personally.

But she did.

This is the congressional testimony.

Yes, yes, yes. I think this is what I was referring to here. And she does at one point say that it's not her job to make that determination, which I do think is her entire job.

It's interesting.

Look, maybe I'm being a little harsh by saying lying in that example. And fair enough to your point there. Like that technically is a true statement. I do think it's very misleading. And I do think that she really was the one who advocated against this specific war for the reasons that we're seeing unfold right now. And I do think, I get your point. It's a very tough tightrope to walk. The options are essentially, I think, to do what Joe Kent did and resign or to stay on and support the thing. I mean, I think it's kind of hard to thread that needle.

Right. Do you think that there is any value in being one of the few reasonable voices that has his ear?

Yeah.

If ultimately it is his responsibility to determine what's an imminent threat and what is not, I would imagine that she gets access to most of the same classified information that he does as the director of national intelligence. I don't know though. I don't know how it works. But what can she do other than try to be a voice of reason? If ultimately this guy is going to do what he wants to do, right? And he's going to do it also what Israel wants to do, clearly.

Oh yeah.

And he's talked about it. You know? And also in his first term, I'll never forget this fucking conversation that he had with Steve Hilton. Because I think it was one of the first times since I was in power.

I remember.

I've seen a president say, and Steve Hilton, by the way, I've been friends with him for 12 or 13 years. Met him and his family in Maui on the beach when my daughter's really young and his kids are really young. They became friends. We've hung out together, vacationed together. He's a sweetheart of a guy. I love that guy. And when he was interviewing Trump, Trump said that there is a military industrial complex and these guys want to go to war.

Yep.

And we were like, what? This is crazy. You're just saying that? Like you're just saying that. It's one of the many reasons why a lot of people liked him.

Oh yeah.

Because he would do things like that, where he would completely break protocol. And just say, let me know. Let me let you know, rather. Let me inform you. There's a bunch of people that want to go to war. And they're pushing me all the time to go to war. That's what they want.

It was so crazy, dude. Because also, even Eisenhower, when he coined the term, it was in his farewell address to the nation. He was literally like, this is my last stop and then I'm leaving. Trump was just in the middle of his presidency and he goes, all of them want war. They all want me to be in war all the time. If it was up to them, we'd always be at war. And I do, you know, now, look, that was great. I thought actually the one to me that was even crazier was if you remember when Bill O'Reilly was interviewing him and he's talking about Vladimir Putin and he goes, he's like, oh, well, you won't, you know, at the time, Donald Trump, which he had run on, he was saying, we should have detente with Russia.

He's like Putin's killed people.

Yeah, he goes, Putin's a killer. You want to have detente with a killer? And he goes, we got a lot of killers too. And then he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean we got a lot of killers too? And he goes, what was Iraq? What was that? We got a lot of killers on our side too. And then Bill O'Reilly was like, well, I mean, Iraq was a mistake, but he goes, yeah, we got a lot of killers too. And I love that, by the way. I mean, that was a.

That's breaking protocol.

Yes, yes. Well, I think this is kind of, I think, one of the main reasons why the establishment revolted against Trump the way they did. There's something very scary to the powers that be about a guy who, like, by his very nature, like, I don't even think he's capable of not letting things slip. You know what I mean? Like, he's just, that's who he is. And that, you know, was a big thing that people really didn't like about him. Very interesting to me is that so many of the never Trumpers have come to define his presidency.

Tell those guys to all stay off Twitter. There's not one thing that they ever say that makes them look better. They get in these silly fucking, they just feel like they're going to make some stupid fucking statement and then refute a couple of people and don't understand the crowd reaction when you've got thousands of people tweeting against you now. Thousands, just attacking you, destroying you, posting memes, posting videos. You said this and you said that. You piece of shit.

It's amazing.

It's crazy.

I got to say, I do love that dynamic of it.

I love it too.

There's something that.

That's why I stay off of it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, look, there's problems with it, but there is something about that dynamic now that was just never true in the past where it's like, look, I'm not saying it's perfect. And obviously there's bots and there's things like that. So it's not like a, but the people kind of get a voice in a way that they never had before. And there is something kind of cool about that.

100%. I love it. But it's not all the people either. It's a lot of fake people. There's a lot of like state-sponsored actors.

No, that's true. That's true. There's manipulation. But there was always manipulation in the old order also.

Do you see this YouTube bot farm that they just busted?

No.

They busted this fucking warehouse had cell phones all rigged up for YouTube views where people would just, they would just hire a company and say, hey, you know, part of the problem is not getting enough views. I'd really like to blow the fuck up and get to number one. And you hire them and they can get views.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Well, that's also, I mean, I guess if you got advertisements, that's legit fraud.

100%.

That's like actual fraud.

100%. And kind of a weird loophole where I don't think it's illegal.

Yeah, that's got to be.

So there's a bot thing.

It's got to be some type of fraud though. If you're like, if you're intentionally doing that. Like maybe if you didn't know.

Right. But listen, Twitter pays people. X pays people to post. So you pay based on engagement, right? That's how you get paid. So you farm out engagement. So like what percentage of what we're interacting with is just horseshit?

Well, I got, so.

What does it say here?

I know this story just happened. A guy got arrested and had to plead guilty because he made, I think, I think what happened is he made a fake band and then he bought to.

Yeah, he had an AI-generated song.

Oh wow.

It played billions of times. In an effort to mimic the genuine streaming activity of real consumers, Smith pled guilty today, conspired to commit wire fraud. Wire fraud.

So check this out though. I heard a similar story in Japan where.

First of all, let me stop you right there. Michael Smith generated thousands of fake songs using artificial intelligence. Hey, hey, hey. Stop talking shit about AI music because it's not fake. Those are real songs.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Don't say fake songs. They're real songs and some of them are fucking bangers. Unfortunately, some of them are really good.

You're going to like what I was going to say then. A guy was doing this in Japan and it got viral. And so he hired people to be the band. And now the band is a real band. Kind of popular.

So AI is creating jobs in this case.

Yeah.

Well, you know, so I had a.

Shifty Brent rules though. You can never create him in real life. He's the guy who does the 50 Cent ones.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen quite a few of those.

But that guy was, first of all, that guy was real, he'd have lungs like a fucking ultramarathon runner because the flow, like how can you even have air to say what you're saying? Like someone was saying that to me. She was like, I think you couldn't do this. And my argument was Eminem. I was like, yeah, you could. You just have to be wicked at it like Eminem. Like Eminem in his prime, that motherfucker could spit in a way where you're like, I can't believe he's still talking.

Yeah, it was, I remember there were a couple of his things where I was like, I don't, can he actually do this? And then I saw him do it live. And not like I was there.

Because you're still.

I saw it on YouTube. Like where you're like, oh, he can actually rap like this.

I saw him recently. I saw him recently. It was fucking great. He's still great. He's thin. He looks good. Yeah, he was killing it, man. He was killing it. But the speed in which that he can rap made me go, maybe AI is not bullshitting. But you know, 50 Cent himself was like much more casual in his delivery.

Yes.

You know? And it was much slower. This Shifty Brent AI version is like, damn. That was a real person?

That'd be pretty great.

He would be the greatest artist on earth.

You know, I got, there was a guy, I can't remember his name, but just like the other day, some guy, he works for Fox News. And he came out and had a whole post about me. And he goes, he goes, Dave Smith's account is clearly botted by foreign.

Dang.

Like, and I'm almost, like when he said that, I was almost kind of like, there's a weird thing, like I know I've never paid for anything, but like, I don't know, you know what I mean? Like what someone else might have done or something like that. But I asked him, but I, so I replied to him and I go, wait, what evidence do you have of this? And then he, his post was that he said, because I had 900,000 followers on Twitter, but I'm playing Laugh Boston this weekend. And he goes, that's a 300 seat venue.

I play that venue sometimes too.

Obviously.

Well, I was like.

First of all, he doesn't understand.

I was like, you just don't get comedy clubs, dude. Like this is not, and first of all, I'm doing five shows there. By the way, come on out this weekend.

Great club.

Great club.

Great club.

One of my favorite weekends of last year.

It's a fucking great room.

But I was like, look, man, I sold out all the shows last year, hoping to do the same this year. But I go, that is any, like I just know the industry of stand-up comedy pretty well. And I was like, anybody who you're saying would be selling more than this, so what? Selling out big theaters or selling out a stadium or something like that? All the people who do that have more followers than me. So like, he's not even right about the ratio of it or whatever.

Right. He doesn't understand numbers.

But then, but then I kind of like, I grilled him on it a bit more because, listen, I'm kind of like you. Like when you were talking about suing CNN back in the day for slandering you. Like, I'm never actually going to do it. But I don't mind saying it. You know what I mean? So like I got, so I tagged Fox News and I go, hey, Fox News, shouldn't you have some evidence if you're going to make a claim like I'm clearly botted by foreign influence or whatever?

Fox News actually said it?

The guy works for Fox News.

Was he on Fox News?

No, he's at his Twitter.

Just on Twitter.

Twitter. But he's like a Fox News contributor or something like that.

Right. But I'm a UFC contributor. It wouldn't be like the UFC section.

Yeah, I guess that's true. So I don't know. Maybe it would just be him and either way, I'm not suing anyone. But I did want him to just, I go, just admit you don't have any evidence for this. Like just retract that.

Well, here's the thing. I would agree that your account is botted because you're a very controversial public figure.

I'm sure I'm a focus.

I'm sure my account is botted too.

Right.

I'm sure Jamie's account is botted.

Definitely is.

100%, right?

I'm.

Show you the evidence.

I think Jamie might be a bot himself.

We're all botted, man. If you look at, you know, we've brought up this up a million times, but there was an FBI, former FBI analyst who analyzed Twitter before the purchase. And it was his take that as much as 80% might be artificial. Now this is back then. This is before Elon purchased it. I think they've done, they've taken some steps to try to ensure. One of the things is you have to, you could go to the person's page, you could see what country they're posting from.

Yes. I like that a lot.

Yeah, because there's a lot of people that are like pro-America and you're like, hey man, you're in Pakistan. Like what's going on here? This is kind of kooky. So there's a lot of that going on.

I've had, I've had before where people go like, oh, Dave, you always say Israel's trying to lie us into war, but this is America. We decide what war we're going to fight. And then you click it, Israel.

Yes.

So Dave and Israel talking, saying that.

But at least we're getting steps to know those. Listen, if it wasn't for Elon Musk, we would be fucked. I've said this before, I'll say it again. History will go back and look at his purchasing Twitter. And it has changed the course of communication in this country for the better.

No question.

I know a lot of you thought, oh my God, racism is up and all this stuff is up. That's people. That's the internet. That is an accurate representation of people. It's not good, but it's also accurate. And the only way that's going to change is if the other voices are more compelling. And at least now they have an opportunity to do that.

Yeah, well, and you have to kind of engage in this, whether, and I'm not saying you have to be on Twitter or something like that. But I'm just saying like if you want to, you know, I would love very much to get to a place where like, you'd be like, hey, let's all agree that we're not on board with the bigotry stuff. And I mean this like, whether it's against white men or whether it's against black men or whether it's against Jews or whether it's against Muslims or whatever. And I see a whole lot of all of that. And I'd love to move past that. I also would, like, I wish there was a way that like Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson could have like a cool conversation.

I wish Santa Claus and Jesus would come meet me for dinner.

Well, both would be nice. The latter is more likely, I think, too, at this point. You know, I had a weird thing. I don't know if you saw this, but Ben Shapiro had, he made this video about like, about Pierce Morgan and like going at him over having me on the show. And he went into this whole thing. And so he says to me, or he said, you know, he insults me a few times or whatever. And then he goes, now I can hear Dave Smith right now. And his response to this is, debate me, bro.

And he's not willing to do that?

He goes, no, because you're like so, he said, because I won't, I don't debate such intellectually dishonest people or something like that. Which I thought was a weird criticism of me. Like you could say I'm wrong, but I do believe the shit I say.

Yeah, I don't think you're in the, I don't think in any demonstration of any, I don't think there's a single moment that I could point to that I think that you've been intellectually dishonest. I think that is like factually incorrect.

Yeah, thank you.

Well, that is gaslighting. You are very honest. You're a very honest person.

Well, thank you. I try to be.

No, you are. That's one of the things I love about you. You're honest about your fuck-ups. You're honest about what you're incorrect about and what bothered you.

Plenty.

About things that you've said. You're very honest. So that's a silly thing to say. That's total gaslighting.

Well, it's also, well, I look at it like this. And I don't, you know, honestly, like obviously Ben Shapiro wanted to debate. I would do it.

I hated everybody before all this shit went down.

Well, that's the thing. You go, dude, you can't say I'm beyond the pale when you're known for debating 19-year-olds who are confused about their gender. You know what I'm saying?

Everybody.

I don't know if you remember this. And this to me, I actually think is very interesting. But I don't know if you remember this. But on this show, Ben was on years ago. And there's, you know, years before October 7th or anything like that. But he was saying, he was talking about Israel and his defense for Israel. And you went, you go, that's interesting. Would you ever debate someone, you know, who's a critic of Israel? And just generically, not about a specific person. And he goes, absolutely. I'd be happy to do that. And you know, the thing about guys like that is that, particularly with Ben Shapiro, for the last two and a half years, his number one issue, Israel has been the number one topic of conversation.

Right. If you don't like Dave, sit down with Scott Horton.

Sure. Absolutely. Scott Horton's way smarter than me and knows way more shit than me anyway. So talk to him about it, dude.

Yeah. I mean, if you're saying that this is the reason why you won't do it, that sounds crazy because wouldn't you want to debate someone who's intellectually dishonest? Because it would be so easy to refute them with facts.

Exactly. So come.

It would be perfect. It's like dating, it's like sparring a guy who knows fake kung fu. You know, he thinks he's got a death touch and you're Dustin Pouria. You're like, oh yeah, bro, lace the gloves up. Let's go.

Well, that was kind of my thing with the Douglas Murray thing too, where it was like, at a certain point, you're like, dude, you can't just say you're an expert and I'm not an expert. Demonstrate that then. That if that's the case, then it should be easy for you to just chop me up in front of the world right now.

There was also some things that you had to correct him on.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, like he just got it wrong.

And you could see like the tremor in his eyes, like, oh shit. Like they don't want to give up that ground because they're playing a very different game. And the game is not, let's be intellectually honest about what we think is going on and what we think is good and bad about what's going on. Versus I'm trying to win. And one of the ways I try to win is by, I can appeal to authority. You're not an expert. You know, you're not a this, you're not a professor. You don't, you've never been there.

Never been.

Yeah. That kind of shit. That is all like hack ass fake kung fu moves. You know, you're going to try on Francis Ngannou. You know what I mean?

Yeah, like okay, so good luck with that.

You saying shit, not that I'm comparing you to Francis Ngannou. That's very disrespectful to Francis.

Certainly not when it comes to fighting.

You'd much rather fight me.

This Ronda Rousey card, they got Francis fighting Philip Lins. Philip Lins, who's a light heavyweight in the UFC. And the UFC cut him. And he's fighting the scariest heavyweight who's ever walked the face of the earth.

I mean, proxy him.

Next to him. Primetime ouster over him. Primetime ouster over him when he was uber him, I think is even scarier. I think because he was way skillful. Like he was terrifying when he was on the sauce.

Yes, but even.

I think Francis was the thing where.

Francis almost has a thing where it just seems like you have to fight a perfect fight against him.

Perfect.

Which Stipe Miocic did. The first fight with him.

He took a lot of shots. That's the thing about Stipe. Like Stipe could take a shot.

And you would see he would like jab him and he'd be rocked, but he'd still get the takedown and he'd still, and he exhausted him.

He'd beat him with skill, strategy, experience, everything. But in the second one, DC said it best. He goes, a patient Francis is a fucking terrifying thing.

Dude, my favorite, my favorite commentary ever in a fight was when DC said, it was just so hilarious to me. It was so real. Like he just meant it. But it was when Francis Ngannou fought Ghan and he grappled a little bit in that fight, which we had never seen him do before. But there was one point where there, he was on the ground and he like took his back or something like that. Like he passed his guard or he took his back or something like that. And DC just goes, oh my God, he's doing jujitsu now. It was like he was speaking of a robot who just learned how to feel feelings.

Yeah. A guy that's that much of a destroyer that learns how to take backs and strangle people too and control you from the back and blast you unconscious like he did with that dude in the PFL in his last fight. Took his back and just blasted him into the netherworld.

Yeah, that's scary.

He's the scariest guy that's ever fought in the UFC.

Props to that dude for taking the fight.

Scariest natural clean guy. I should say that. With a cavity.

Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough.

You know, because we only got a couple ouster over him fights where he was uber him. And the big one being Brock Lesnar. That was the big one.

And of course the other fight on that card that they added, which is huge, is the Nate Diaz.

Well, here's my point.

If Nate Diaz is fighting, I just, I'm paying whatever you're charging. I'm going to be wherever it is.

And it's Mike Perry.

Great fight.

Bad motherfucker.

Yep.

That's a great fight. But my point is, they also have Robellus DeSpain, who's on that card. Who's a six foot seven Cuban taekwondo expert. Who's a heavyweight, who's a knockout artist. Like why do they have him? He's fighting Junior Dos Santos. And Junior Dos Santos is, you know, he's had a long, he was an all-time great, but he had a long career. And he's had some bad knockouts.

And some wars too, dude.

Bad wars. The wars with Kane Velasquez took years off his life.

It was almost criminal that they didn't stop both of those fights.

Well, they were definitely horrible and terrible to watch. But the point is, Robellus is huge. He's a real heavyweight. He's a big giant knockout artist. Like that would have been an interesting fight versus Francis. Big super tall guy that's hard to hit.

Yeah.

And if it just is a striking fight, the problem with Robellus, he got exposed in his last UFC fight on the ground. He got beat up. His ground game is not that good. Could have gotten better. But on the feet, that's a little bit more interesting to me than Philip. Although Philip's a skillful fighter. You know, he's just, he's used to fighting at light heavyweight. The UFC cut some. And now all of a sudden he's fighting against Francis.

Yeah, that's a little bit of a mismatch. But hey, I mean, you know, we've seen crazy shit happen in MMA before.

I think it's pronounced Felipe. Felipe Lins. But he's a good fighter. It's not a bad fight in that sense. But it's like, you're going up against a guy with a chip on his shoulder that they're paying $20 million. He's the lineal, I don't know what they're paying him. I'm just guessing. But he's the lineal heavyweight champion of the world. The real one. Like if you really like plotted out, no one beat him for the title. That's a crazy fight. It's like, that's how shallow the heavyweight division is outside of the UFC. There's so few fights for you to get Francis for.

It's very hard to find gigantic men who are excellent fighters, I guess.

There's a lot in Russia. Okay.

Yeah.

There's guys that are fighting in other countries that are really good, that are coming up. It's just like, it's hard to get them over here. There's Josh Hokit. He's a bad motherfucker.

Oh, what's his name?

The wrestler dude who's crazy, who has these crazy speeches after the fight, puts on an American flag bandana. And he said, Brittney Griner has a dick. Like, Brittney Griner's a man. I forget what he said. But he's just nuts. But he's also like really smart about marketing.

Who's the other guy? You talked about him several times. He's the Olympic wrestler guy.

Oh, Gabe.

Gabe, yeah.

Yeah, Gabe.

Steven?

Yeah, he's not in yet though. He's not in. I had him on the podcast. He's not in the UFC yet.

Yeah, but he's in the UFC.

When he's in the UFC, he's going to be a fucking problem. Olympic gold medalist, elite wrestler, moves like a cat, 250 pounds, young, super dedicated, and just recently learned striking and is fucking people up with his hands.

Yeah. And is picking it up quite quickly.

And is a Jon Jones protege. So he's been being mentored by the GOAT and absorbing his mindset. And that guy's helping him. He's investing his time into training. If you're a young guy, you know what a fucking boost of confidence, the greatest of all time, says you're going to be the man. You're going to be the fucking man. You just stick with this plan. And they're bringing him up the right way. He fought in dirty boxing. He fought some small MMA organizations. He's just like building up experience.

Yeah. And there's not, there's never been a lot of, but there's not really right now in the heavyweight landscape, there isn't really like a Frank Mere or what's his name? Minotaur.

Nogueira.

Nogueira. Where there used to be these like guys who were like kind of known for fighting off their back. You know what I mean? Like most heavyweights don't really like fighting off their back. These, even the guys who are really good at jujitsu. I also think just in general, fighting off your back is a lot harder than it used to be.

Fabricio Verdum was the greatest at it.

Yes. Yes, that's a great example. He was incredible.

He was the best at it.

But there aren't really that many guys like that. A lot of these guys, you take them down.

They're in trouble.

They're in trouble.

Yeah. And when you got a guy like Gable, guess what, bitch? You're going to get taken down. And there's not a fucking thing you can do about it. That is a next level wrestler.

I saw the one, one of his recent fights where he's finishing a double leg before he realized he knocked the guy out. It seems like it.

He kills him with a left hook and he's so fast that as the guy's collapsing on the way down, he shoots a double, connects, takes him to the ground while he's unconscious. So before the guy has a chance to drop, that's how fast he is. He's already on him, taking him down and pounds him out while he's already unconscious.

Yeah, that was scary.

Ooh, that guy's a problem. He's a problem. And that's an American heavyweight motherfucker. We need one of those. We need some American champions. We're down.

Get him in the White House.

Yeah. I mean, are there any American champions right now? Who are the American champions? Mackenzie Durn is the straw weight champion. So she's technically an American. Although her dad is a very famous Brazilian legend.

Okay.

Yeah. Megaton Diaz is her dad. And she was a jujitsu, Brazilian jujitsu champion. But she is American. So she's a champion. Other than that, who?

Sean Strickland's fighting for the title.

Kale Harrison.

Kale Harrison. That's right. Kale is, so it's only women that are the Americans. Yeah. Look at that. Boy, you're going to see a lot of those dudes with those beards.

That's the kid coming over here. You're going to see, oh, Joshua Van is an American. That's right. You're going to see a lot of those dudes. That's a caveat though, the Joshua Van. No disrespect for Joshua, because I think he's an awesome fighter. But he won that fight.

We got to have a rematch on that one.

That was a freak injury. I mean, he fell and dislocated his arm. It's a complete freak injury. And Pantoja still hasn't fully recovered from that. So it was pretty bad. Whatever the fuck. They said his shoulder dislocated and his elbow.

Yeah, I remember hearing that afterward. It looked like it was just his elbow.

But they said, the doctor said it was his shoulder. And so what the thing about the elbow is, the elbow is a less complicated joint, right? And so when the elbow gets dislocated, if someone just pulls on it, it can pop back into place. So like saying that there's, as long as they don't know what they're doing, right? Because you don't want to do it like Yuri Prochazka's team did and rip his shoulder apart and then need surgery. He probably needed surgery anyway. If it was dislocating like that, it was probably loose. But the point is that like his elbow might have popped back into place by the time they brought him backstage.

That was unfortunate. Because that was a real interesting fight.

Dislocate a lot. You know, and you know, sometimes people dislocate their shoulders and don't even realize they do.

Oh, really?

And I apparently, according to my, this orthopedic surgeon that I went to back in the day before I realized that stem cells could fix it. This guy was convincing me that I had to have surgery. And one of the things he said, do you know that your shoulder has been dislocated? And I said, it has? He goes, you didn't know? I go, no. He goes, how long, how many times have you hurt your shoulder? I go, how much time you got? I can literally sit down and talk about it. How many times I've been commored? How many times I've been fucking arm blocked? How many times I've been caught in a triangle? How many times, you know, posting on the ground, I've jostled my shoulder?

I'm worried about, I'm worried about the new model for the UFC.

The Paramount model?

I'm worried about the Warren Aran and the new UFC model. This is what keeps me up at night.

I get it. So what are you worried about with the new UFC model?

Look, I'm no genius. But it seems to me like I'm a hardcore fan of the UFC, right? So I was, you know, I order every pay-per-view. Everyone. You know, and so every, any Saturday, if I'm on the road in my green room, we're watching the UFC. If I'm not on the road, I'm either at home watching it or I'm trying to go to the event if it's in town.

Right.

So then it's like, okay, ESPN is over. We're not doing that anymore. So then they're going, we're switching to Paramount. Now I already had Paramount because like my kids like some shows on Paramount.

Yep.

So now.

Landman.

Yeah. Oh yeah, I watch Landman, great show.

Woo.

So, you know, so like I have Paramount Plus. I'm like, oh, okay, well, that's easy enough. And then I'm like, so wait a minute, hold on. So you tell me, I just get every one for free now? I just don't have to order pay-per-views anymore? And there's just something about that. Now I'm not saying whether this is Paramount's mistake or the UFC's mistake or whatever, but just like the basics of business to me go, so you just had a loyal customer who's very happy to pay for every pay-per-view. And I'm just not now. Like this just, on somewhat, now I understand it's because Paramount gave them a whole bunch of money, but on some level I go, number one, I go, but how is this good for business if the customer no longer has to pay for a thing that I was happily paying for?

Okay, let me correct you.

Okay, sure.

First of all, Paramount, the idea of doing this and investing $7 billion into the UFC over the next few years, the positive that they're going to get from that with loyal new customers is massive. So if you're.

So it's introducing it to a whole new audience.

If you're a loyal pay-per-view buyer, if you spend, what is it, 70 bucks for pay-per-view?

I think something like that.

So 70 bucks for this big-time pay-per-view card, now you get it for free. You just have to pay for Paramount Plus every month for the year. You're saving so much money.

Huge amount of money saving, yeah.

So the amount of new people that are going to go, oh, this is awesome. I don't have to pay for pay-per-view anymore. I pay for Paramount Plus and I get all these awesome shows too. Because Paramount Plus has a ton of great shows.

No question, it's a great deal for the consumer.

So you get roped in through that and then you go looking around on Paramount Plus and you stay a loyal subscriber. They have all these years with this new influx of viewers from the UFC deal to build up more of a library, more shows. It's huge for business.

Okay, fair enough.

They can take their app from where it is now and take their streaming model from where it is now and quadruple it over the next X amount of years.

So they're, okay, so for them, they're bringing in the whole UFC audience.

And how many people would look at a pay-per-view card? And look, I would buy every one of them. Even when I was working for the UFC, I would go on ESPN Plus and I would buy them. Even though I was there. I was like, I want to be able to watch it in the gym when I get home. I'm going to buy it. And so you've got all these people that were looking at those cards that were like, this one, I don't know. I don't know if that's worth 70 bucks. If you're on a budget and you're looking at this one, you're like, who's fighting?

I think they upped it to maybe 12 or 13, but I'm not.

Let's find out so we're accurate. But you're saving so much money.

But also on ESPN, they charged you something like that too. Like you had to pay an ESPN fee and then you had to pay for each individual pay-per-view. So no, listen, I'm saving a lot of money off this.

Okay, it's 13.99 a month or $139 a year for the ad-free premium plan, which includes showtime. New and former subscribers can currently get any monthly plan for $2.99 a month for the first two months.

It's not bad.

So for a new subscriber, you could try it out for two months for $2.99 a month and watch every UFC for $2.99 a month for two months. It's fucking worth it.

No, that's.

And then you're going to get this huge influx of people that, you know, if you're on a budget, you're not going to subscribe to Paramount Plus. You already got Netflix. Netflix costs X amount of money. Maybe you got HBO Max. That's X amount of money. I can't afford Paramount too. I don't want to pay another 10 bucks a month or $14 a month. Now you just, it's easy. Like no pay-per-views.

Yeah. They made a lot of wives of hardcore fans happy. I'm sure for that. I don't have to buy these pay-per-views anymore.

Paramount shows.

Yeah, they get the Paramount shows and they don't have to do that. All right, fair enough. I guess it's just, in some ways, I guess, and I don't really have much of a mind for business, but in some ways there's just a thing where it's like, we've always done it this way. Now we're doing it a whole new way.

Yeah, but it's been on streaming for the last few years.

Yeah, that's true.

So it's always been on an app anyway. And then Paramount, you could get it on Apple TV, you can get it on Android TV, you can get it on all these different things. It's like there's no reason to not have it. It's easy. It's just great for, as a business move for Paramount, it was a smart fucking move. Because you get this built-in hardcore fan base. Now, have some of the cards been lackluster? Yes. But guess what? That has always been the case.

Yeah, and that's just a matter of time.

Eventually they'll be.

Go back and watch Rose Namajunas versus Carlo Esparza. There's been some fights back in the day that just weren't great. And there's been cards that, even though they look good on paper, in reality, they weren't so fun.

Yeah, but I also, I'm with you, because I remember you used to say this back in the day all the time. But I am like a purist fan in MMA in the sense that like all of that is like, I don't care. Like if you're like, oh, it's boring, you're like, it's the most exciting sport in the world on its worst day. Even in a fight that's a bad fight. Because if you remember the Frank Mier Cro Cop is a good example of this where it was just a boring fight the entire fight. And then there's a spectacular knockout at the end of it. And even if that doesn't end up happening, you're always watching like that could happen at any moment.

It always can happen.

I also, I also am with you. I believe in like, I don't believe in stand-ups. I don't think anyone should ever be stood up. I don't think you should be separated for a stalemate or whatever. It's like if someone puts you in that position, then yeah, you got to get out of it.

You got to get out of it. If they're not doing enough on the top, that's silly. Sean O'Malley explains why piracy led to the UFC's massive Paramount deal. Oh, interesting.

There's a lot of people that will pay for it every week, but there's a lot of people that won't.

That makes sense. They're streaming it illegally. That makes sense. I knew there was a lot of that because there were sites that you could go to and people would openly talk about it. You can go to it and just watch the pay-per-view. It's a good move, dude. It's a good move for the business. It's just like, they just need a few banger cards to make people forget about the stale ones.

That will happen. It's inevitable.

You're going to have stale cards. I'm concerned about the White House fight. I'm concerned about it not just from a security standpoint. I'm concerned about it because it's outside. It's June and it's in Washington, DC. When you, if it's hot out and it could very well be, like what's the average temperature?

I looked this up the other day. Average 67% humidity in last year or 2024 was 100 degrees on June 14th.

Okay.

That's tough.

Okay.

And I think it's supposed to be at noon also.

Yeah, that's an issue.

Okay, okay, okay. That's a fucking big problem, dude. That's a big problem. You are going to radically affect their performance if you make people fight in 100-degree temperature with 67% humidity outside. You're also going to radically affect my ability to do commentary. Okay? My fucking head doesn't have any hair. The top of my head is going to be beet red. I'm going to have to put some toxic sunscreen on it. You're going to see me with that white zinc powder that the surfers use on their nose. It'll be all over the, I'll make like fake hair with like white zinc.

80% chance of thunderstorms with highs in the mid-80s.

Okay, are they building a tent? Is this outside outside or is it outside in a tent? Are they going to have like fans blowing cold air on us? You know how much DC's going to complain? That fucking dude, he's going to be right next to me. His shirt's going to be soaked.

Yeah, that's a bit of an issue.

You won't be able to tell with mine because I always wear black anyway. But everybody with a white shirt or a blue shirt, if Anak has a light blue shirt on, his pits are going to be fucking filled up with sweat. It's going to be ridiculous.

That also like really legitimately changes the actual fight itself.

100%.

Isn't that like the rendering of it?

Okay, so there, I don't see any AC there, bro. How are you going to get AC on those people? What is that going to be like? That sounds fucking insane. To do that in June, just because that's a fun time to do it? I mean, if I was Justin Gaethje or I was Ilya Topuria, if I was Justin Gaethje, I mean, first of all, he has to take the fight. It's a historic fight. It's at the White House. He's a true red-blooded American. He wants to win the title at the White House. Come on, you have to do it. But he's 37 years old. He's had a long career and he's fighting maybe the most lethal guy he's ever faced.

Yes.

And one of the greatest lightweights.

One of the greatest lightweights of all time.

And by the way, and I know MMA math is never perfect, but you look at what Oliveira just did to Max Holloway.

Yeah.

Who I love. He's one of my favorite fighters of all time.

Love him, yes.

You look at what Charles Oliveira just did to Max Holloway.

Bro.

And then you think about the way Ilya Topuria handled him.

Flatlined him.

The first round.

And not what was to me almost as impressive as the knockout was handling him on the ground.

Yeah.

Passed his guard. He tried to take him down. Think about the way he got one of those body locks and tried to take him down. Think about the way how helpless Max Holloway was for that. How helpless a whole bunch of guys we've seen are when he gets his hands around you. And Ilya Topuria, he tried to do that. He ends up on top and passes his guard right away. Also, he ate a really clean elbow early in that fight and just was like nothing.

Shook it off like it was nothing. He's a special talent. So, but then again, when you are dealing with special talents and great, great fighters like Justin, who this is probably his last opportunity to fight for the title, I want that under the perfect conditions. I want that to be in an arena where it's 72 degrees and air conditioned. I don't want it to be outside. I don't want there to be any additional stress or distractions because you're warming up at the White House. Like what do you have? Tents with mats on them and these guys are going to be slipping around in puddles of sweat.

Shadow boxing in the situation room before you come out.

Who's going to slip on sweat and blow their ACL out? You know, I mean, if you ever done striking on mats when a bunch of dudes have been training like in a class, it's so fucking slippery, man. If it's that hot, it's going to, unless they have these mats and where they're getting set up in air-conditioned buildings somewhere. Unless they have a facility.

Yeah, maybe they can do that.

I hope they think that through. I hope they think that through. I hope they prepare it. It's just, I don't like, I like the idea that it's like this big celebration of the UFC, that the president loves the UFC so much, wants to do it at the White House. But in practice, I don't like it at all because you've got two world titles. You know, you've got the interim heavyweight world title and then you've got this world title with Justin and Ilya at 55. I don't like it. I want those, I want those to be at the T-Mobile.

Yeah, yeah.

These are amazing fights. I don't want anybody fighting when it's 100 degrees outside. That's crazy.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but also I would think it's, you're going to get sweaty so quick in weather like that. And that is a big deal for like grappling and stuff like that. I mean, like that's a huge advantage if you're trying to not get grappled by someone.

Here's another factor. These are people that just were radically dehydrated 24 hours ago. And then you're asking them to compete in a sauna. You're basically asking them to fight in a sauna.

That is still so crazy to me that there's not a way that we can just get two guys who weigh 180 pounds to fight at 180 pounds.

I've had this conversation with them.

Instead, we have to have two guys who weigh 180 pounds cut down to 150 pounds and then rehydrate up to 180 pounds to fight at 180 pounds.

And weaken themselves, like radically weaken themselves. I see those guys the day they weigh in. The worst ever that I ever saw was Travis Luter. So Travis Luter.

And Anderson Silva? I remember.

Yes. He missed weight. But I was backstage for all of it, right? So this was back when the weigh-ins were the time of the actual weigh-ins. It wasn't the ceremonial weigh-in. Like now they give him more time. You can weigh in in the morning and then by the ceremonial weigh-in, which is usually 5 p.m., usually these guys have significantly rehydrated. They do it slowly, but they have a process to it. But Travis missed weight. And so I was backstage while they gave him X amount of time to make the weight. And dude, he couldn't walk. He was shuffling. Shuffling.

Right. And he was dying, I guess, right? I mean, that is what you're looking at.

And then 24 hours later, he has to fight the greatest middleweight of all time. He has to fight Anderson motherfucking Silva in his prime.

And dude, for that being the story, did remarkably well in the fight.

I mean, he got viciously bowed.

It was elbowed in the triangle.

Yeah, yeah.

That would not have happened if Travis wasn't compromised. Travis was a real problem back then.

Yeah.

He was one of the best jiu-jitsu guys to ever compete in MMA.

And he was stylistically kind of like the best shot against Anderson Silva at that time.

Exactly.

And because Anderson Silva just looked untouchable. And he got him down and got him into good positions a few times.

Even though he was fucked from the weight cut. But the thing was, he never made the weight. So even if he beat him, he wouldn't have got the title. The whole thing was fucked. Yeah, but it's like I've advocated for, there's a solution. One of them is multiple weight classes that are additional to what we have. Have one at least every 10 pounds and it probably should be more. And a lot of people push back against that, but listen, 10 pounds for an elite athlete is a big fucking deal. 20 pounds is crazy. So when you go like 85 to 205, that's crazy.

Exactly.

We don't care about who's the best at dehydrating.

Anything that hampers your ability should be removed from the equation, especially if it's something like this. But there's a solution. First of all, there's a real silliness to the MMA weight classes. And why I say silliness, our names that we use have been owned by boxing for more than 100 years and the names that we use are for different weight classes than boxing uses. That's dumb.

Yeah.

That is dumb as shit. Like if you want to have a 170-pound champion, fantastic. But don't call it a welterweight. Because welterweight is 147. It's been 147 for over 100 fucking years. The fact that you have a 147 champion and you call that, or 145 champion, you call that a featherweight. Featherweight is 126.

Yeah.

That's what it's been in boxing forever. Lightweight has always been 135. That's what Julio Cesar Chavez was the champ of. 135. 135. Lightweight's 155 in the UFC. Like come up with your own names.

Yeah, it's true.

Why do we still have these stupid names?

I never thought about that. It's a good point.

They attached these names to it when they first started developing weight classes. Because it used to just be one weight class.

Oh, another one on this. Why, and I think you've mentioned this before, why am I not getting the leg reach?

They do that sometimes.

Do they?

Yeah, they do that.

Because I've seen like, but on the regular tail of the tape, it'll still just be reach.

Yeah.

Where it's like, but in this, because that actually, for MMA, that's such a huge deal.

Sure.

Like it's such a huge, because like if you're.

Because you're kicking.

Yeah, if you're in kicking range of me, but you know what I mean? But you can't touch me. Your jab doesn't matter as much as in boxing, you know?

Right. And some guys, they have really long legs for their torso.

Right.

Like my friend Larry, my friend Larry Jones from my taekwondo days, he had this short torso. What is this?

All those leg reaches longer than Steve Baes.

Whoa, that's crazy.

Is that right?

That's crazy. Steve Baes just has a way longer torso. That's nuts.

The help steps are the same size.

Oh wow.

Yeah, that's crazy. Well, Aldo was such a good kicker. It's probably part of the reason why. My friend Larry had this short torso, like really short, but he was like 6'3" and he was all legs. And he was this insane kicker. He was like a freak. Like he was made in a lab. And when guys would fight him, like you'd see guys in tournaments fight him, they'd be like, what the fuck am I going to do with this? Because his reach was so nuts. And he was so fast with his kicks and you couldn't get anywhere close to him if you were in his weight class and you were normally built.

Right.

He was built like, his torso was shorter than mine. But he's crazy long legs and long arms.

Yeah, that's it.

Like some people are just built certain ways. And for striking, it's a giant problem. There's another thing that makes Ilya Topuria so fucking unbelievably impressive. He's not tall at all.

Yeah.

You know? And he's just flatlining people.

Oh, I mean, Charles Oliveira looked so much bigger than him in that fight.

And so much bigger than Max too. Oliveira is big. It's like, look, the sport's fine. It's not in trouble. The sport's not in trouble. The heavyweight division's in trouble. The heavyweight division is kind of fucked. It's in a weird situation. The Alex Pereira thing is very interesting. Alex Pereira versus Ciro Gand is very, very, very interesting. Because Ciro Gand is a problem. That guy's a problem. He's super athletic. He's really fast. He's super skillful with his striking. His Muay Thai is absolutely elite.

And has anyone, because even Francis, like I was saying before, grappled with him a lot in that fight. Obviously, Jon Jones took him down and choked him. But has anyone really stood toe to toe and beat him up?

No. No, no one's beat him up toe to toe. Taito Iwasa went toe to toe with him and tried to, but he got lit up.

Yeah.

Dude, Ciro Gand is a problem.

And even in the little bit of Tom Aspinall, it looked like he's tough. He's tough to fight like that, man.

Not just tough. He was like getting off on Aspinall and it didn't look good for Aspinall. I mean, it's very unfortunate that he got his eyes poked. I mean, that we really never got to see what happens if you drag Ciro into deep water. The way Tom would adjust it for the second round or third round.

Which we've never really seen out of Tom either. It was very interesting that we got robbed of that, you know, but.

Yeah, we got robbed of that. And poor Tom, he's had two fucking eye surgeries and then he felt like the UFC disrespected him. The whole thing's a mess.

Well, I don't know about the UFC, but a lot of fans did disrespect him. I saw that. Which is crazy. It's just like, this is really stupid.

We talked about this last night. It should be one point, period, if you poke someone in the eyes.

If you poke someone in the eyes, one point.

Well, especially if the fingers go in the eyes. If it's like a glancing thing like that, maybe get a warning. But in a nutshot, straight nutshot, one point. The glancing thing, maybe a warning. I just think that could be up to the judge's discretion upon view of the replay.

Yeah, well, the thing is that, and we were talking about this last night, if you, so if you land a nutshot and it's accidental, as it almost always is, you know what I mean? You're trying to throw an inside leg kick and it comes up.

Well, okay.

Maybe not. I said almost. Almost always. But so I just see this all the time in MMA. It's the first one. It was an accident. This guy gets kicked in the nuts. He needs a few minutes. Usually they don't take the full five or whatever they're offered. And then you just go back. It's like, look, even if it was an accident, that's such an advantage to the guy who kicked him in the groin.

Yeah, you hurt him.

Like you hurt this guy and now he's got to get back to it and there's no, so like it does seem like there almost has to be some accounting for that. And there's, I think there's still, it's still a very young sport. I think there is still too much referee discretion. Like there's too much, like there should be like an official rule for what we do in this situation.

Especially those kind of fouls. It's like it doesn't exist in basketball, right?

Yeah.

If somebody fouls somebody in basketball and everybody sees it, that's a foul.

Yes.

Right? And the crowd will go nuts.

Usually.

Right? Usually.

But it'd be like a real one, like throwing someone to the ground.

I can show you examples. There are some fucking wild things that don't get called for whatever reason.

Don't you think that's a little bit of the corrupt referees? I'm not saying all of them, but that is one thing that's been 100% proven is that referees do get paid off in order to influence gambling lines.

Yeah, there was that one referee who confirmed that it was the Sacramento Kings versus the Lakers, which was like a series that was like notoriously, like everyone was like, yo, it was crazy. They didn't call any of these fouls on the Lakers and they called all these fouls. And then a ref came out and was like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's what we were. And it does kind of make sense because it was the Shaq and Kobe Lakers. You got to get them in the finals, dude.

Yeah.

It was big money.

God, it was so gross.

His defense weirdly was like, they didn't, no one told us what to do, but you kind of know what they want. So you sort of do it and then you keep getting put on good games and you keep getting the good stuff.

Hang him. Public hanging. Fuck you.

We can deal with congresses inside our trading, but basketball must be a fair.

Bad judges' football.

Hang them.

Hang them all in front of the kingdom.

All right, dude. Anything else before we wrap this up? No, thank you for letting a non-expert talk MMA with you so much.

I love talking to non-experts.

Dude, thank you so much for everything, as always, dude.

My pleasure, brother. Thank you.

You're the fucking man. I love you, dude.

You're the fucking man too. I love you too. We'll have fun tonight, right?

Are you coming? Are you leaving?

You got to go.

You got to go.

Ah, damn. Last night was fun.

There was a lot of fun.

It was good times.

A lot of fun.

All right. Bye, everybody.