Transcript of E555 Dave Smith

We have added a second show in Nashville, baby, on May 3rd. It's an early show 4 PM at the Bridgestone Arena, and, I can't even believe that. And thank you guys so much for all the love and support, and I'm honored to be performing here in, in Nashville. We also have tickets remaining for East Lansing, Michigan, Victoria, BC, and the Canada College Station, Texas Gigam, Belton, Texas, Oxford, Mississippi, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Winnipeg, in the Canada, and Calgary in the Canada. Get all your tickets at theovaughn.com/tour.

Today's guest is a comedian, a podcaster, and a social commentator. You know him from his show, part of the problem, and you also know him from legion of skanks with Big J and Luis j Gomez. We get into a lot of topics in this 1. 1 of them being the Israel and Palestine conflict, which we've been learning about on this show over the year. We recorded this on Monday, January 13th, which is why there was no talk of the ceasefire.

Just wanted to make that note. I'm really grateful for his time and his insight, and today's guest is comedian Dave Smith. I mean, that's most of my goal each day is to is to, just babysit myself a lot of it.

Well, that's a good that's a good way to do it. Yeah. Maybe have some other people help babysit you.

Oh, I'd like to get to that point. You know? I think I would like to get to that point, get a spouse, or get a, get some, you know, spouse or something. Yeah. Caretaker or even getting a hospice, dude.

I have some friends.

You just went but not dying, but just have hospice care.

But that's a new thing. A lot of guys Mhmm. Yeah. See if you bring that up. If you bring young men going to live my buddy, Caleb Presley, you know he is?

He works at barstool, long hair.

Yeah. I think so.

He does the sun Sunday conversation. Okay. He, lives in a senior retirement home.

How old

is he? He got loop holed in, I think, 33, 34.

That's that's getting an early start.

Loves it tanning, listening to him argue, stuff like that. It's kinda Florida. So it's a yeah, he gets all of that. 3 meals a day or, like, 2 and a half meals. I'm not sure what they're doing.

I feel is there a gym there? I feel like you'd feel really good about yourself in the gym. Like, if you're just, like, you know what I mean? Like, you're just, like, yeah. Fucking wrecking these full old serotonin.

Like, I'm

the only 1 going hard.

That's a good point, dude. Some guys just fucking

Like, look at this chump.

Some guy just zoned out. Somehow, I was like, I was mister Olympian 1938. Some dude's hopped up on ED pills, you know? That's gotta be the scary thing, I think, when you get to a certain age is risking the erection going for the erection because of the blood just moving all the blood to 1, you know.

Oh, yeah. You're probably gonna you probably can't stand up. To that battlefront.

Yeah.

But that's like there's gotta be something it's probably a real compliment to a chick if you're like, I'm risking it all. Yeah. I'm risking it all just to try to fuck you right now. It's got that's the ultimate like, nothing could be any better. Yeah.

I my grandfather lived in a, like a, like a, I don't know what, nursing home type deal for like a couple years before he died. He was really. The people who work there, it was just such a funny dynamic. It was like all it was like all black people from, like, the inner city

Mhmm.

And then, like, old Jews. Mhmm. And they the all the black people who work there are just rolling their eyes at these old people to hold up. My grandfather, every time I went to see him, he accused them of stealing from him. None of these people were ever stealing from him.

None of them. It was just pure racism. Like, it was just and it was like things that like he'd be like, they took the art off the wall, and I'd be like, there was no art on this wall. This is all in your mind.

He's like, there's not now.

He made me he made me move a dress. I was, like, 12. And he made me move this big dresser to check if there was change behind it.

Oh, yeah.

And then there was nothing. And I was like, there's no change behind it. And he was like, they stole it. Oh. And I was like, wait.

There was supposed to be change behind it? Like, you were keeping your change

on the dresser? Jewish change behind the dresser trick, I can't get. Say. Yeah. You're Jewish?

You're you're Yeah. Yeah. I am. You are and so, are you Israeli too? Is that the same thing?

No. No. No. No. Israel is the nation.

I have nothing to do with that.

Okay. But are but some are some Jew but someone's Jewish. They're just they're just means that they have family that's from Israel originally?

No. Not even necessarily. It's just like you it's you know, Judaism, it's a weird thing because it's like a religion, but then it's also kind of a race and then it's kind of a nationality with Israel. So, basically, a bunch of Jews went and started their own country in Israel Uh-huh. In the forties.

But these were Jews from Europe

who

went to you know, now according to the Bible or whatever, 1000 of years ago, we were all from there. But the Jews from Europe went and started there. But lots of other Jews just didn't leave Europe or didn't leave America, and so they never had anything to do With Israel. With Israel.

Yeah. Oh, okay.

But they still play on kind of like your you know, come on, you gotta support us because we're for you. We're this is the Jewish state. This is what protects Jewish people. So a lot of Jews do feel sympathy to Israel even the ones who don't have, like, any any connection, even ones who have never been there. Okay.

Got it.

Got

it. Okay. No. That's interesting. Yeah.

Because sometimes I wonder, like yeah. Because I start hearing about, like, Jewish, then I hear Zionist. And Zionist means

Zionist means I think, technically speaking, Zionist means you believe that Jews should have a homeland in what is now called Israel. So that's more like the belief that Jews should have this country over there. And then there now then there's, like, kind of a separation between that and someone could theoretically be a Zionist, but also be like, the way they're doing it over there is all wrong. Right? So you don't have to, like, support the government.

But Zionist typically means that. But now it's just kinda become it's become shorthand for someone who supports Israel.

Okay. Okay. So somebody supports the country Israel Right. Is Zionist. And what sometimes I see black Zionists, is that just like is that, like, Zionism just, like, with a backbeat or whatever?

Like, what is because I you know what I'm talking about?

Yes. That well, those guys

like, we're the reals, and I'm like, I don't know what is happening.

Thing. Those guys, they were so I grew up in New York City, and they would always be out like in midtown Manhattan. And there was no let me tell you something. And, Theo, I mean, I've come up around some incredibly talented comedians. I've seen some of the best in the world.

There is no better comedy show than being like 15 and just sitting there and watching these guys. They'd scream at people and then people would get furious back at them. I've watched like they because their thing is that they're the real Jews. And then they get like little old Jewish men will start yelling at them. No.

You're not the real Jew. I'm the real Jew. And we would just be, like, stoned teenagers just watching, just

It's like, would the real slim savings please stand

up, you know? Is that

an okay Jewish joke to make or not? That's

I mean, as far as I'm concerned, it was good.

Just yeah. Sorry. I I get I get I thought it was pretty that was pretty good.

No. So they I don't know what their whole claim is. I don't know. But they say they're the real Jews, and the Jews are just pretending to be the Jews, but they're really the white devils or something. Yeah.

Because that's a new thing I've been see I would see it, and then sometimes I wouldn't see it in the now in different when I'm in, some of them perform in different cities. You'll see a a group of black Zionists, and they're trying to get you into something, you know, and I can't tell what it is. And but yeah. And then you see you hear a lot of different terms. So, yeah.

I was just curious about that. Dave Smith, thanks for joining, man.

Absolutely.

You are a comedian and a I wanna say, like, a politico. Is that fair to say kind of?

Or Sure. You're like somebody with a point of view. Yeah. Definitely that. Yep.

I love I'm I'm obsessed with politics, and I talk a lot of shit about it. So yeah. I guess whatever you wanna call that. But yeah.

And you're very funny, man.

Well, thank you.

And, and you are a libertarian. Is that right?

Yes.

Okay. And this is awesome, man. Because so much of my audience and me really is just, like, I don't know what a lot of the terminology is. Right? Like, even asking about Zionist.

Like, you hear it, but you're like, what is it? Right? What is what is libertarian mean?

To to me, it's basically just it's the belief in, like, in in self ownership, in non aggression, and private property. Basically, the idea of libertarianism is that like you own your body, you own your life, you ought to be free. So long as you're not impeding on the rights of other people, you ought to be able to do whatever you wanna do.

Okay.

And so belief in free market capitalism, peace, non intervention, and just basically the idea of what the idea of what most people think of Americanism as. That, like, oh, yeah. You have freedom of speech. You have the right to own a gun. You have the right to own some property.

You have the right to to live your life the way you see best. And do do libertarians believe in government? Well, there's a range of of different, you know, thoughts within libertarians. I to the extent that libertarians believe in government, we believe, like, the role of government is to protect people's liberty. Government shouldn't be doing anything more than that.

Yeah.

Like, if they're doing anything more than that, then they've become tyrannical Yeah. Which I think is true I think is just objectively true. Like, no matter what is if government's doing anything that is more than just protecting property or protecting people, then it's always at the expense of someone. Even if they're giving somebody something, they're taking it from someone else because they don't actually have anything themselves.

Right. So, like, what would an example of that be, Connor?

I mean, anything. Like, even if you just took it down to, like, if the government is cutting a check to 1 person Mhmm. Well, how do they get that check?

Right. It's

not like you know what I mean? Like, they didn't pool their money together Right. People did. They took it from someone. They taxed 1 group of people to give it to another.

Got it. So any service is falls within that. Got it. Understood. Cool, man.

Yeah. I

okay. So that's good information. Thanks. What, let's talk about some things that are happening right now. 1 of the biggest ones right now is TikTok and the sale of it.

Right? Like, there's a big, uproar right now. You see a lot of videos on TikTok about what to do if TikTok disappears, where to go. People, like, there's, like, safe rooms and shit. I'm like, I think people are about they'll figure it out, but maybe some people won't.

What do you think, is behind the TikTok ban? Do you think it's actually going to get banned?

I'm very unsure about the second question. I really don't know. It'll be interesting. I don't use TikTok, and so I don't really have a connection to, like, the but the people who love TikTok, I've seen this too. They're losing their minds.

Like, they're like I I think they are some type of addicted to it. What's behind it is really interesting. And I think that that's like it's kind of a it's a it's a microcosm of, like, kinda what's going on in general, but TikTok very quietly to people who are not, like, on it and not using it. But it became, like, the main, like, news source for young people. Yeah.

And, like, in a crazy way that for people our age, if you even think back to, like, when we were little kids, it's so, like, it's hard to even imagine that it's real. It's like, oh, they now these young people are connected to information in a way that totally like goes around older people at all. They have nothing to do with it. You know what I mean? Like, and Nancy Pelosi is sitting there just furious.

Like, what is this? No. They don't care about like, they don't even know the people on TV news, you know? No. And so okay.

When I say this, I'm not just like pulling this out of my ass like there was like 1, it might have been the head of the ADL but it was someone real high up in the in the ADL who said this

and What is ADL?

The Anti Defamation League. And then there was

a Anti Defamation League. So they're it's like graffiti or whatever?

Yeah. Well, not exactly. They're not the name doesn't exactly describe what they do, but they're 1 of these, people. Yes. In fact, it was him.

It was Greenblatt. CEO of Anti Defination League. They're a league that was started by, Jewish people, and it was kind of, at at least at the beginning, I think, was to be whatever fighting anti Semitism or exposing this stuff. They've they've come to be an organization that will really try to go after and ruin anybody who's critical of Israel.

Right. I said they had some issue with Elon. Now I remember maybe a year ago or 8 months ago or something. There was something with him. Maybe that was ADL.

Okay. It's it's possible. But so they 1 of the things that they were real upset about was that from October 7th 23 up until now, TikTok has just been dominated by, you know, anti Israel kind of critical of this war. That's where a lot of the young people are seeing all the images of, like, the Palestinian babies dying and stuff.

The kids would like but people, like, be begging for food and stuff like that. A lot of, like, the ICC when they tried to send, like, condemn Netanyahu that was loose on there. Yep. Or it was real information.

But Yes. Yes. That's right. And if you remember, it was really interesting to me, but what I don't know. What is it?

Like, a year ago around now, Osama bin Laden's letter to America went viral on TikTok. It was so fascinating for me. Like, I'm I'm 41. And so I was 18 when 911 happened. Wow.

You know? And then it's interesting to watch this whole new generation of 18 year olds, like discover this for the first time. And it's like, oh, yeah. There was a bit a whole thing went down. And they're actually reading Osama Bin Laden's own letter about why he did it.

Yeah. Now, of course, they're young lefties so a lot of times, I mean, the you know, they were like, Osama was right. And, you know, I'm not saying they took, like, the best message from it, but it was interesting to watch them kinda, like, engaging.

Yeah. It's like wearing that Che Guevara shirt, you know? Yeah. You're like, I don't know exactly what he was doing, but, yeah, it seems cool. It seems like a vibe.

But then also to hear from like a person who was labeled completely as horrible. Right? Is the enemy like Osama bin Laden was and to see some of their thoughts. Right? Like to see how they believe that they came to be the enemy.

Right? Not taking a side in it, but just, like, it's kind of fascinating that you weren't able to really get some of those, in some places, in some platforms, you might not be able to hear that view.

Well, imagine I mean, like, imagine it was just like a like a personal thing. Like, if I if there was, like, if I told you I was, like, in an argument with someone, like, a mutual friend of ours, and I was like, yo, me and this guy just got in a huge fight, and you were like, what happened? And I was like, well, he's a monster. He's evil. He hates everything good.

He's made of pure venom. And I think you you might be like, okay. But, like, what's really going on here? Because I like, it's not a matter of taking sides to just be like, he probably has a a side too.

Right. He has a point of view.

He probably

has a point. And and what the American people were told, I remember when I was 18, was they hate us for our freedom. And, like, that was the that was all you were allowed to think of Al Qaeda right after 911. It was, like, they did this because they hate freedom. They hate every they hate your mom.

They hate everything about our life. They hate everything that's good. They hate that we have, you know, whatever. That we're Christian, whatever it is. And Or

do you have freedom of religion? They hate any of that. Yes. But there was all these it was like but the only way you could get that information was through, like, the main network.

Yeah. You had to listen to Dick Cheney have a conversation with some news lady on CNN or something like that. But what's interesting, I think, for a lot of these young people is when you read Osama Bin Laden, you realize that and I don't think the conclusion should be that he was right. Obviously, you're never right when you're killing civilians. Right.

But note to Israel. But he had legitimate grievances. And a bunch of those grievances are things that know that they never wanted the American people to know about because then you might have a slightly different feeling about the war. I think the same thing is true with the war in Ukraine too. It's like why they never want you to hear what Putin's issue actually is.

Why did he invade this country? It's why they all flipped out when Tucker went and interviewed him. Yeah. Because you're like, oh, shit. You get to hear his perspective now.

And it's not that necessarily the correct position is to side with Putin. It's not. Or to side with Osama. It's not. But it's it's it's not wrong to recognize that like, okay.

They he's got a point about this. He's got a point about that. Osama, aside from being an Islamist, which we all know he was And what does Islamist mean? Well, meaning like a fundamentalist, you know, not just, a Muslim, but, like, a believer in, like, the most fundamentalist doctrine of Islam. Okay.

So he was that, but then he's got all these grievances listed in his, declaration of war against America and his open letter to America.

What were some of them? Can we bring it up, you think, or is it too deep to go into?

No. No. I mean, I it's not even that that complicated. I mean, the major ones were, the number 1 was that we have military bases in their holy land in Saudi Arabia. They hate this.

They find this to be like a total and I'm no, like, expert on Islam, but from their perspective, this is blasphemy.

Oh, I can imagine that. Say if I'm going to my church or my religious place, my place of worship. Oh, yeah. And there's a guy sitting over there. And a foreign military.

Right. Foreign group loudly drinking out of a juice box or something and, you know, pouring, scale you know, so a loud candy in his hand because he doesn't give a fuck.

Yeah.

He doesn't even probably recognize that my religion even exists. He may not. He may, he may not.

But either

way But still, that's gonna make me fume.

Oh, dude. But also, like, I mean, look, if we even if just you looked at it from a not religious point of view. I mean, if there was, like, Chinese or Russian military bases in our country and we knew that, like, they're the real boss. You know what I mean? Like, it's not, let's get real.

America is not, like, on par with the Saudi government. Right. We're the world empire and they're our little satellite over there. That would make people infuriated. Yeah.

I mean, people people over here, liberals over here got infuriated about Trump being connected to Russia and that wasn't even true. Yeah. So, like, imagine it was true Yeah. And there were Russian bases, like, all over the play. People would lose their minds.

Yeah. So They wouldn't

stand for it. That was a major, that was the major 1. But it's the military bases, it was us us our support for Israel and what they do to the Palestinians. And then He mentioned that? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This was the major major part. Wow.

I didn't know that.

The beef. Yes. So they they were furious about that because they you know, Israel is not too kind to their Palestinian neighbors. And so they that was a big part of it.

Yeah. Tarp breaking over there.

Oh, yeah. And and and, you know, the war this has been the worst thing that Israel's ever done to the Palestinians over the last year plus, but it's not like this is where it started. It was going on since,

you know We had some we had some guys come on and talk about Israel and Palestine just like the histories of both of them. You know, it was cool. We had Rabbi Wolpe come on and we had, Basim Youssef? Youssef come on. And just to give, like, the 2 different kind of different sides and take us through some the different perspectives of history.

But, yes, so this was the message right here that, that Osama had written. Right? Yep. And so those were some

of his big issues? Yes. Looks like it here. I can't Okay.

Criticism of American military bases in the Middle East, condemnation of US support for Israel, accusation about US exploitation of the region.

Number number 3. So there, what he what he was specifically talking about

Let's just say it so we

Well, so what it says here is I'm not sure what we're reading, but accusations of US exploitation of the region's natural resources. And what he's talking about there is us insisting that, they keep oil artificially low, the price of oil artificially low, which is true. I mean, the you know, even just when I remember a couple years ago when inflation was at its worst. Mhmm. By the Biden administration just asked the Saudis to lower the price of oil because, you know, then, well, that'll make prices cheaper here, help face less political pressure of people being mad about gas being so expensive.

But when you really think about what that the ask is there, the ask is, hey. Make your people poorer so that our people can be richer. Mhmm. And so this was a big beef they had too. But but Then lowering the value of it, basically.

Yeah. By saying it's worth less. Right. By selling

it

for less. We get cheaper energy, but your people get less money. Mhmm. So that was 1 of their major beefs. And then the, at the time, you gotta remember because this was in the nineties or actually, I'm not sure.

The letter to America might have been later. But his declaration of war against America was, like, in 96. But so the big thing at the time was the, Clinton's bombing campaign of Iraq and his blockade of Iraq. So there's, like it's debated how many people died from it. The UN estimated at 1 point that 500,000 children had died from starvation and malnutrition.

Wow. So that was enough. So it's like he had all these grievances and a lot of them involved the US either directly or indirectly killing Muslim kids. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, look, I I obviously, you're he's wrong for doing terrorism.

But I think most of us could admit that, like, yeah, if anyone you know, if if any of us, like, children that we care about were being slaughtered, we might be ready to do some violent stuff on behalf of that too.

I mean Well, depending on what perspective you look up, Robin Hood is a tale of a terrorist. It depend on what perspective you look at

it through. Yeah. No. I mean, look. And and that's or or, you know You know what I'm saying?

Does that make any sense to you? Look at it. Yeah. Well, I think the, I think according to the British Empire, our founding fathers were a bunch of terrorists probably. Right?

Oh, when

you could look back to American history, I mean, what we did a lot to the Native Americans, sure, they had huge beef amongst each other. Yeah. But they were also blatantly lied to and taken advantage of countless times

Absolutely. Yeah.

By other people that had come in, you know, by white settlers that had come in or, and by the Spanish as well. You know, a lot of times that all gets put on to, honkies or whatever, but it was also darker honkies, the Spanish.

Yeah. So just just so you know, we don't even consider them white. Okay. So it was really your beefas with each other.

But, but let's so let's let's tie this back into the TikTok. Uh-huh. Okay. So you're saying that it's because and this I believe that yeah. 1 of the main reasons TikTok has been banned is or is there's a threat of the ban or the force of the sale is because they don't want it to be in the hands of a place where they can't have, the other side of the story come out.

Well Whether it be about Palestine or about anything.

No. The cover story, the reason they claimed at first that they were trying to ban it was because of China, but it really wasn't until the war broke out in Gaza that this pressure kinda started mounting. But the China thing I mean, I don't know. You know, I remember, like, Tucker did a whole thing on this back when he still had the show on Fox News, and he was showing the thing where, like I I don't know. Have you ever seen, like, the way the algorithm on TikTok works in China compared to the way it works

in America? There's just more educational and fun.

The number 1 trending video for 17 year olds in China is like a kid playing the violin or something. And then ours is just some chick twerking, you know, like on a sports car or something like that. And then they were like kinda saying like, oh, see, it's China's poisoning our kids' minds. But I always thought I mean, I don't know what the answer is, but like isn't it possible that our kids are just Poisoning our minds. Yeah.

Like their algorithm is just showing them this garbage and their algorithm is showing them this. Because like if I go if I just made a conscious effort to go on Twitter every day and only look up like violin lessons, I'm sure that's what the algorithm would start sending me after a while. So I I've always, like, been suspicious that it's like, I think our culture is just messed up and that's Oh,

we're our worst enemy at the Yeah. A lot of the same time because it's like we want certain things, but we're not willing to, let go of any comforts or any or really battle some of our addictive natures, you know? Yeah. I think some of that's too is just a side effect of capitalism and a side effect of comfort over time and a side effect of, like, kind of deterioration of our society, you know, like, even if you look at, like I was reading this the other day about pornography. Like, a lot of the the videos in progress, someone would be like dad's daughter.

Dad's when you really think about the fact that that's how they're you know what I'm saying? It's like, there's somebody has a dark goal to tear down, like, that little things, like, family, things that matter. You know what I'm saying? Like, so,

You know, I I was wondering I remember asking a friend about this, like, this was a while ago, but it was 10 years ago or something like that. But it was like when I started noticing that, I was like, what's up with all the porn categories of, like, family swap and this and that? And a buddy of mine said this to me and I thought, oh, man, that kinda makes sense. But he was like, oh, you know what it is? Is he goes, nowadays, like, families are so broken up and mish mashed and everyone's from divorces and everything that so many people grew up with like a stepmom and stepsiblings.

So you just be a kid and then all of a sudden, you got like these new girls who aren't your mother and sister. Right. You know what I mean? Like living in your house and so like that's what led to that which I don't know if that theory is correct or not.

It sounds like bad dude.

It's kinda I was like, yeah. Either he's a really sick person or you're on to something. That guy sounds like

he was building a like, he was literally using you to build a case for for a future indictment he was gonna face. But, no, it's kinda He came out

with it really quickly too. Like, it

was It's like, we just signed this signed this petition right here, Dave.

I'm so glad you asked. I've been dying to talk to someone about this.

But let me I'm trying to tell this. What were we talking about in my mind just

like TikTok and then

But TikTok. Yeah. Like, yeah. We're also part of the our own pro it's like, we just keep creating this stuff, but, or just ridiculousness. We and we get addicted to the ridiculousness.

But also some of that's part of the freedom of just being in a place where you can make whatever you want. And you have that, like, freedom of creation kinda to an extent or freedom of your own creativity. Some places you can't even really be creative in because it's not, it's not not allowed, but the expressions of certain creativities aren't. Yeah. I don't buy the shiny I don't I don't know if I buy the Chinese thing or not because to me, it's like, aren't all these apps, like, all of them seem like they're foreign to me.

Yeah. Like, they're

And what difference does it make? I mean, I I I just you know, I know people were giving me shit because I said something about this on, on Pierce Morgan show the other day. But, you know, they were trying to make it out like it was it was the topic was about how, Mark Zuckerberg just announced that he's gonna let people talk on Facebook again or whatever. And, you know, they someone was arguing with me that, like, well, the government the US government has to, like, have these conversations with Facebook because all of these foreign governments are trying to propagandize us. And I'm just like, I don't know.

After the last few years, how how are you gonna tell me that the that DC should get in charge because other people are trying to lie to us? Like, all of the most blatant, most consequential lies have come from my own government. So, like, I just don't get worked up over this, like, Iran is trying to propaganda. I agree. Okay.

So, like, tell me, when was the last time Iran had, like, an effective propaganda campaign that actually, you know, like like, led to something in America? Okay. Well, my own government had this country, like, literally had people, like, cutting family members out of their lives because they

didn't take a vaccine Yeah. And the Russia gate hoax.

About these yeah. The Russia gate you literally sat here all you guys For 4 years. And literally told us that what, if true, would have been the biggest story in the history of the United States. Nothing true at all. But but but imagine if it were true, like, you were making the claim that the sitting president of the United States of America is involved in a conspiracy with a hostile foreign power.

It was all bullshit and all you guys still have your jobs. Yeah. All the people who sold that are still the ones complaining on the news today that no 1 trusts them without even thinking about that. Yeah.

And you could ask in regular I'm a pretty regular guy, I think, you know, like and I don't mean that in, like, a braggy way. I just feel like I try to, you know, I try to be smarter sometimes. It's hard for me. I didn't I realized I just have to try my best at where I'm at. And I I thought immediately Russia.

I was like, they're running out of steam. They have an old dude. A lot of people go over there for perverted stuff. You know, it's like, I could certainly see a lot of our leaders passing through there.

And you know what I'm saying? We'll do

a few favors for Russia because they don't want some videos getting released. But I don't think that this old you know, this they're they don't seem like they're on the cusp of of, like, chain like, holding us at bay for something. You know? I just immediately, I didn't pass the smell test to me.

Well, also just that it's Donald Trump. I mean, like, say whatever you want about Donald Trump. He was a known commodity. He's like the most American thing. He's the most famous rich guy of all time.

Like, you're telling me he was a Russian spy? It just made it made no sense. And then they had nothing. They had no evidence to support Never.

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Like with this TikTok ban, I'm like, well, because if news is getting out there. Right? About all types of things. It could be like, there was also a lot of, Barbara O'Neil. Did you see those clips on her?

She's a medicine woman. An Australian medicine woman. Okay. But there was a lot of, like, natural remedy stuff that started to e just be put out there. Like, I don't know if it was valid or not, but it was like you would see a ton of it.

Like like so basically, opposition to all these medicines you all these, like, prescriptions you need. Like, so I could see certainly how no but, like, the powers that be, if they exist, don't want a lot of this type of information out there. Oh, yeah. Of course. With Palestine.

You know, I don't think, you know, I I don't under you know, I don't understand what's going on over there. I mean, that Netanyahu guy

I mean, what he's doing to these people is, like, it's the most inexcusable, just horrific thing in the world and the fact that you know, like I said this on Rogan's podcast and I I got shit for it but I stand by this. But it's just like, you know, it's just like throughout all the history, there's just all this horrible shit. There's just slavery and wars and genocides and ethnic cleansing campaigns and all this. And every single point in history, there there was someone there who would justify it. I'd be like, no.

We have to. We have and for we have reasons why it's okay to do this. And they bend over backward and twist themselves into pretzels to explain why. They are the real victims and they really have to do this to these people because if they don't, then they do it to them. But it's all indefensible.

You're like, you just defend an evil shit. And I feel the same way about Israel, man. Yeah. Like, it's just to defend what they're doing to a group of people who are captive, who they've been occupying since 1967. You know, you've been occupying a bit they have they don't have a military.

They don't have a government. They don't have an air force. They don't have a they have no means of defending themselves. Yeah. And you are just destroying the place.

But you're not letting the news out. That's the thing. Right? You're not letting people get a fair take of what could potentially be going on there. Right?

You're not letting it you're doing everything you can to stop that. Right? To stop that.

Always do. They all you know, the only thing that's different is that now it's actually a challenge for them to do that. So throughout but every war relies on lies and every war relies on totally dehumanizing the enemy. Because if you can't do that, you're in a lot of trouble. You know, if you leave just a little inch of humanity for those people, then immediately you're gonna go, oh, 0 my god.

What are we doing? Yeah. Because if that was your, like, brother's kid or your nephew, your son, your you'd lose your mind about someone doing that to them.

Oh, well, I think it's like, I'm not an anti Israel guy. I am a but that guy seems it just seemed he gives me this vibe that it's evil. Right? And it's not something I'm making in my head. It's something that starts inside of me.

It's not like I'm, because I know it because I knew it when I, went to Cuba when I was in college and I would see people that would come up to the windows and they weren't allowed to share what they they're, they had to whisper if they wanted to tell you something. Right. Or when we went to the libraries there and they only had books that started at Fadell, their history books started at fucking Fadell.

That's great.

So if you're a kid and you wanted to, you couldn't, you didn't exist. Your grandparents didn't even whoever your essence didn't exist, you know? So and they had I read a quote somewhere that the the, yan yahoo guy that his father said that, oh, he didn't like Arabs. Right? And he didn't like the essence of Arabs.

And that to me was just like a thing. Like, that's the same type of shit it seemed like that Hitler would have said. Like, I don't like whatever the the the granule, the grain. I don't like this the the atom of this person. I don't know, man.

Maybe and and I don't know.

No. It's listen. I mean, it's, there's, you know, my

It just makes me say and the biggest thing, it just breaks my heart, like and so I know when that kind of shit's happening or my feel, it's like that's where it comes from. It's like, you know, it just like I don't know. I've always had a barometer for, like, the underdog, I think, you know. And maybe that's all maybe some of it's that too, you know. I don't know everything.

I don't know a ton of history, you know. But but, yeah, some of that shit, you it just fucking hurts me. Think about how many children have been killed. How many kids have been killed over there? Estimation.

I mean, the estimates, I think, are have been so far, they're, like, undercounted. I think a lot more people than we initially thought are dying. But it was I think I saw the estimate the estimate was that 2 thirds of the dead were women and children. So I don't know what, you know, exactly the breakup between the women and children is, and I don't know if there are good numbers on that. But Gaza is 50% children.

Like, that's 1 of the major things that makes it such a humanitarian

Well, yeah.

Because it sounds like such a fun place to kids, Gaza. If you tell the kid, like, where are we gonna go? You know what I'm saying? If you're, like, we're gonna go to Yemen or Gaza, they're gonna go there.

1 of the parks at Disney World. Yeah. It's like And I don't mean that. Got Gaza.

Dude, it's back here. Conservative figures show that more than 6000 women, 11,000 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last 12 months.

I mean, it's way this is way, way undercounted.

It seems like it to me. Yeah.

For today like, as of right now, I think the estimates are

much higher. Here's the toughest part of my a lot of my Jewish friends are heartbroken by this, man. Yeah. And they'll come to me and, you know, and we'll be talking about it, you know, because, and they're just like, it's just sick that this is the guy who's representing us, you know, and that this is the choice. I don't understand why, but I guess if you live in Israel, then you feel like, well, these people are gonna kill us.

And so you don't have you have to you have no choice but to support your governor.

I mean, I don't know if you have no choice, but there but there's definitely, like, there's this human impulse and it's this is always what's going on with all these wars on both sides.

Alright. You can't

get in trouble for talking about this, do you think?

Yeah. Probably. I don't know if I don't know. But yeah. Maybe.

I can't really get in any more trouble. Have you been

in about a lot of trouble?

Well, I've been talking about it so much for the last, year. And I don't know what trouble even means anymore. I mean, I'm fine. So, like, some people seem mad at me on the Internet, but I don't care. And so it's I Fuck.

It seems okay. But, you know, of course, like, you I could totally imagine that if you were like, let's say, 1 of your family members was killed by Hamas militants on October 7th. I could understand where you'd have the attitude. You'd be like, ma'am, let's go fucking fuck this

guy. Attorney O'William Wallace.

You know? Sure. But that's but that also is the same thing that's going on with the Palestinians, right? And it's so a whole bunch of them, in fact, a lot more of them have seen their family members killed and stuff and so they're ready to go, you know, like slaughter as many people as they can. In the same sense that, like, right after 911, Americans were like, hey Let's go.

Let's go blow some shit up. I mean, I don't know. You tell us who did this and let's go blow them up. And then, like, even if it's not exactly the people who did it, you know? Okay.

I mean, when we fought the war in Afghanistan even, forget Iraq that just had nothing to do with it. But in Afghanistan, it's like it wasn't Afghans who attacked us. It was it was some Arabs who were Saudi Arabians. Yeah. Right.

It was Saudis and Egyptians, right, who were hanging out in Afghanistan. And then we the with the special ops missions, we drove them all out and destroyed all their bases. And then it was like, okay. We got this Taliban here. Well, they're not exactly guilty of it, but, well, something's gotta be blown up and so we're gonna go fight those guys.

So but then the thing is that if you the thing with Osama bin Laden's letter is that you're like, oh, but that's kind of their motivation too. Like, they're also a bunch of people going, hey, we just saw a bunch of our people get killed. We're gonna come fuck some of you guys up.

Yeah.

And so that's kind of the attitude everybody has.

Yeah. Well, that's the crazy thing. It's like you use and the the toughest part is the people are the ones who have to go and shed the blood. The people are the ones who have to have the blood shed

Yep.

Based on what their leaders who they elect and they would never elect them and tell them to do that, then choose to do. That's what I'm just like, how does this but then that's how things that's just being alive, I guess, in in in human sometimes as sad as that is or that's just how humanity's gone for a long time and society has gone and war has gone. But, yeah, you have to think how many Iraq Iraqi people who had nothing to do with 911, if if they had nothing to do with it, were affected by our military presence over there and are just waiting in the wings to affect harm on new America.

Well, I mean, there's this is why we had to deal with that insurgency over there that took us so many years to ultimately lose to. You know, there's people people don't like when you invade their country and destroy their homes and kill their relatives and stuff like that. And, yeah, imagine if you think about that first of all, nobody in Iraq had anything to do with with 911. I mean, there were some Al Qaeda members who came into Iraq to fight as part of the insurgency after we invaded. But, like, when we invaded, there was no 1 in Iraq who had anything to do with 911.

And They must have been like, what the fuck? Well, imagine, particularly if you're a you're like Saddam Hussein was their problem, not ours. Like, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator but he wasn't our brutal dictator. He was the they were the ones who had to live under Saddam Hussein. So now they're living under this brutal dictator and then they got the most powerful military in the history of the world invading and just wrecking the country all because the well, we could get into that, but largely because Netanyahu wanted us to do it.

They didn't really?

Netanyahu is a huge, huge part of the war in Iraq.

Why do we keep supporting him?

The it's there's an interesting dynamic. I mean, there's a lot of things going on. So part of it is that there's the well, there were the neoconservatives who were really big in the George w Bush years, and they were, all of them fanatically pro Israel. There is there is APEC and there is the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center. And there are these organizations in the country that will they it is their business to ruin your life if you're against Israel, particularly if you're in politics and you're against Israel.

I mean, they just poured insane amounts of money. They lost, but they tried to get Thomas Massie, primaried out of his congress seat. He's the guy

that doesn't wanna have APAC guy. Right?

Yeah. He's the only 1 who doesn't according to him. The only 1 who doesn't have an APAC guy. So they do not like him. But do but is there The other there there's lots of other factors involved in this.

There's also, like, things like, there's blackmail, operations. There's, like, like, Epstein, stuff like that. And then there's also, evangelical Christians in this country fanatically support Israel as well. So there's, like, a whole bunch of forces that Israel has a, let's say, a a very outsized influence on US policy.

Is there something that I guess that yeah. I guess I don't understand why we would support it while they're doing that murdering.

Yeah. Well and then even if you

Unless there's something I don't under like, that's also the thing. It's like, or do we are they just our best friend from a long time and that's just what it is? And so it's like a like, I I I just I I worry that I just also don't understand, like, the history of much as why why there is so much support there.

Well, it's been But you have to have

a support in the Middle East. You have to have, like, a friend in there.

Well, that's been that was the thinking for a long time. Right.

You

know, and that's it's, and and that if we had you know, there was a big concern or a lot of people in the American security apparatus back in the day that the Soviet Union was gonna take control of the Middle East. And if they really controlled that oil supply, then they would be too strong, and we'd have a real problem on our hands. This is why, Jimmy Carter, who just died, he, in in 1980, declared the, what's known as the Carter doctrine where he was like, listen. We are treating the Persian Gulf like it's America. If essentially saying to the USSR, they had already invaded Afghanistan.

And it was like, if you invade Iran, we are going to fight on we're gonna fight with the US military because we won't let you have all of this. So that's always been a concern, and I do think that Israel being kind of like our buddy there felt like, okay. This will be a good way that we can control the region. But then, you know, this is, yeah. He this was at his State of the Union in early 19 Yeah.

The Carter doctrine was policy proclaimed by president of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union address on January 23, 1980, which stated the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interest in the Persian Gulf. So there's a ton of business interests over there, and there's a ton of, like, peacekeeping or what we believe is peacekeeping over there.

By the way, there's just a it's interesting here. Right? So this is he's saying this in January of 1980. It was in 1979 was when the Ayatollahs had the revolution in Iran. So this is the government that's in Iran today, our mortal enemy, they had just come into power.

So what Jimmy Carter is talking about doing here is defending Iran against the Soviet Union, like this country now that is the 1 that they all want war with. Back then, he was like, but but if you know what I mean? If Gorbachev or whoever was Gorbachev in there yet by 80 yeah, I think so. They'd be like, if he goes and and moves on Iran, then we're gonna come to the defense militarily of Iran, which is just kinda weird to think about now.

So this was saying that if Soviet if the Soviets intervene, then we're gonna come and defend Iran.

Yeah. And they had just well, they had just, they had just, lured them into the war in Afghanistan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who you see down there, he's the national security adviser. He had been the 1 who really pushed this this policy of luring the Soviets into Afghanistan, to give them their own Vietnam was the idea. And I a lot of people credit that as 1 of the major factors that brought the Soviet Union down. And so that so we had lured them into a war in Afghanistan, but then they got real concerned that, like, while they're here, they might also just go take a round.

So we better send them a message, like, if you do that, you're gonna have problems.

Wow.

So that was the idea was to keep them out of there.

Just shows you how much we've had, like, once you become this thing that's this entity that's trying to control everything, how many it's hard to keep you know, they say, like, it's hard to keep track of the lies or whatever. That's not really it, but it's hard to it just seems like hard to manage. It's hard to be an air traffic controller for the world, you know, especially when the the planes have different religions and ideas and histories and beliefs and, you know, hopes, you know, it's that's

Oh, it's it's in the I mean, the job yeah. I mean, imagine it's just impossible.

It's impossible. That's what I'm saying. It seems impossible. And especially at a time when our own country is struggling so much. And I don't know, may I I hope yeah.

I don't mean to be, like, mean to Israel. I just don't understand. I, you know, I love my Jewish friends. I don't understand that shit, though. I don't understand why, why they're doing that over there.

And then I think it falls in the power of this this the the the wealthier person to figure it out, you know? Well, that's right. That's exactly right.

And it's that if you're coming from if you're in a situation where you're look. When when it comes to Israel and Palestine, it's not there's no parity between the 2 of them. It's not like, oh, these are 2 nation states around the same strength. Like, Palestine does isn't a nation state.

They don't have a government. There's a halfway house of of people of of Arabs. Yes. Exactly.

And so there's when Israel has all the power, all the leverage, all the chips, and if you're in a situation where everybody's saying, hey. You guys have been, like, at war for so long and we want peace. Well, who's supposed to make the first concession when 1 side has all the chips? That's okay. Obviously, you need that side.

Don't push me don't push another bullying video at me

Yeah.

Unless it that's gonna be the first 1 that you fucking

Right.

Cite. Exactly. That's the thing. And that's the shit I don't understand sometimes. It yeah.

I don't know. I don't understand how we would have media that would be, like, so anti bullying and then this fucking bullying is going on. Yeah. And it's, like, well, what what kind of who's believing you? You know?

Or what or what are we doing? I don't know. And also, I don't fucking know, dude. And I'm, like, 9 days off in nicotine. So

Oh, are you really? Yeah. You gave up nicotine. Yeah. Good for you, dude.

I mean, I guess were were you, like, smoking or vaping or just doing the pouches? Oh, I would do, I

was smoked I was, I was vaping.

Okay. Yeah.

I

was vaping. It's sad to say it as an adult too, like, slipping off to slurping on some

I know. I'm I'm I vape all the time. I'm totally embarrassed by it. I wish I was a man and I just smoked, but I've I don't know. But, Yeah.

But if you go on your porch now and light a pipe, somebody will shoot you with a fucking musket. Yeah.

And no 1 will feel bad for you. Everyone will side with that guy.

Yeah. They'll be like, oh. They're like, free the slaves, and it'll just fucking pull right up and fucking pop 1 in you. But so do you believe that the TikTok ban what do you really believe? Or do you think we're still figuring it out?

Out? Do you think that our, elected officials will, let it stay around? Trump seems like he's wishy washy on it

even though Yes. He seems like he's not exactly clear what and and it's weird because the talk was, initially, the talk was, like, that it was a China thing, and Trump always tried to be the most hawkish on China. But even he does seem like he's not doesn't really seem like he's got strong convictions about getting rid of it. My guess is that TikTok survives. I don't know if I'm right or wrong about that.

Frank McCourt and someone else is gonna

be buying TikTok, they said.

So I think the thing is that if they sell, then they escape the legislation because, basically, it was saying it's because it's owned their parent company is owned by the CCP or whatever. So it you know, I have a feeling I think that there's been there was a real move to really censor the Internet over the last few years. It seems to me like it's failed and that they're just they've accepted they're not gonna be able to do it.

As the deadline for a potential TikTok ban in the US approaches billionaire and former Los Angeles Dodgers owner, oh, hell yeah, Frank McCourt's Project Liberty confirm making a formal offer to ByteDance, the platform's Chinese parent company, to buy the social media giant's American assets. And he was gonna do it within conjunction with 1 of the guys from sharks. Good evening, sharks. Whatever that show is. Shark dance or whatever.

Shark boy. No. There's a woman.

Shark tank?

Shark tank.

There you go. Okay.

Shark

tank. Who was it? Danny or something from Shark Tank?

Oh, 1 of them billionaires was gonna Yeah. Throw in.

Kevin O'Leary. So him and Kevin O'Leary, I believed, I believe, don't quote me on that, was supposed to be

The videos are short on TikTok. Right? Isn't that the idea?

There some of them now can be longer. Some of them can be I think 90 seconds is the link on Instagram.

Right.

TikTok can be a couple minutes now.

Here's a weird thing how the Internet has kind of, like, very organically grown into almost it's almost like long form or 7 seconds. Yeah. Like, there's no there's no, like, middle ground anymore. It's always like, okay, we wanna hear a 4 hour conversation or give me 6 seconds of whatever you got, and then we'll do a 100,000 of those. Yeah.

Yeah. It

is kinda true. TikTok videos can range from 3 seconds to 60 minutes long Oh. Depending on how you film or upload the video. But this also could have been from chat gbt. I don't know where or from AI, this fact.

And so who knows if they're harboring that from years ago and today. Videos or images and TikTok stories can go up to 15 seconds long with a display after 24 hours if you put in the story.

So the way I look at it is kinda like it's like if you had, like so like a buddy of yours or something was in, like, just an awful relationship. Mhmm. You know, like, just like the chick he's with is, like, the worst. Oh, because, like, you hate her and she's shitty to him and she she's so mean to him. She cheats on him.

She's just the worst. And then, like, if he breaks up with her and he's like, I'm just dating. I'm dating a bunch. And you're, like, great. Thank god.

You're, like, back out there. Go find someone else. That chick was a nightmare, you know. And they'd be like, well, I'm meeting some nice girls but I'm meeting some real awful girls too. It's, like, ah, okay.

Well, whatever. Just get out there and and that's kinda how I feel about like, I'm just happy that the young generation isn't consuming the corporate media. And, like, I'm sure on TikTok, they get some bad stuff and then they get some good stuff. But at least you're out there, like, shopping around and you're not just listening to, like, CNN tell you that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and we need to go fight this war with them or just listening to MSNBC tell you that Trump's a Russian spy or whatever. It's like, alright.

Yeah. Get out there. Mingle a little bit. See what kind of crazy person's on TikTok. I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah. 1 of them might be like, oh, it's, you know, 1 of them is like, it's the Jews, and then someone else is like,

you know, whatever. The gays or whatever.

The

gays or okay. Maybe some of them are wrong, but at least you got a shot of meeting someone who might have something interesting to say to you.

Yeah. That's interesting, man. That's certainly yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, at least you're kinda out there meeting people.

You're there's definitely everything. There's, like, people shooting each other. There's Mexican stuff. There's dancing. There's, you know, Baca Neo.

There's people getting their nails done. Sometimes you pop into a live, you don't even know what's going on. You're just in some kids live and he's eating a burger. There's some kid eating look at this fucking burger. There's some kid, like, in a broth who lives, like, the under a brothel or something in Scotland, and somebody gave him a big burger.

And he just made this video. He's like, look at this burger. And it's like state parties, state parties, stocked up boys. And it fucking went crazy. Right.

And that kid could be the next governor of Glasgow. Right. But it's like, that's the thing I think. Cause people also can maybe over time, maybe, they get to know you. I don't know what it is, but yeah, I think it's fascinating, man.

And TikTok, it does pull more my information and that's the only thing I just want it to be fair. That's my thing. I just want it to be fair. Don't say that this, this truth can't come out. If this truth can't come out, like just make it fair.

Yeah.

You know

what I'm saying? If if if America isn't a country that's American and it's a country that's owned by other countries, tell me that. If that's the case, but just let me live fair. Let me

live through the truth. No. Look. 100 100%, I completely agree. And then also, it's just like I think like I was saying before, I don't trust any of you motherfuckers to be the arbiter of what is true and what isn't true.

So forget anyone having this control over getting to decide what's misinformation or what's disinformation because it's the old it's like the old, Lord Atkin, quote about like, you know Atkin's diet? The he's the original. No. It was before that. He didn't figure that out.

But he's the guy Or Atkin

or Atkin?

Atkin. Man, am I messing with Atkin, I believe. He's the 1 who said the the quote about, power corrupt power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. But it's like as soon as you have the power to determine what the truth is, then you're corrupted already just by, like, having that power.

And I never liked fucking rich people anyway, bruh. Facts, dude. I fucking hated them. I didn't hate them, but I didn't fucking like them. Yeah.

You know? I don't yeah. I just I don't know. And maybe yeah. And I have money now, and that's true, but I'll never fucking really have money, motherfucker.

You know what I'm saying? Not, like, deep inside of me. You know what I'm saying? Yes. Like, that part of me will never have any fucking money, bro.

Now you need 3 more generations of Vons before you're, like, a real rich prick who just thinks they're better, like, an old money.

Oh, deep inside, dog. I'm a real fucking wigga, son.

You feel

me? What else did we oh, but Kevin O'Leary, I think I wanted to get that right. It was 250,000,000 they offered to investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary is willing to pay up to 20,000,000,000 for TikTok calling it a legacy opportunity. I think that that is a steal.

Well, Elon bought Twitter for 44,000,000,000, I think. Right?

But he's getting his use out of it. I mean, he doesn't sleep.

He seemed to be enjoying himself on there.

Is he addicted to Twitter, do

you think? He tweets a lot.

How many tweets does he have right now? Let's see how many tweets he has. I mean, he tweets a lot. And he tweets more than we think, I think, Dave.

It's, it's cons I've clicked on his thing before and been like, Jesus.

How do we see how many?

It used to show you right up at the top. Point 66.5000

posts right up the runner's name at the top.

Wait. So hold on. 66.5000 posts.

I wanna, like I thought that's what it said. Can you find out how do there you go. Right there. 66.5

Do you

see how many I have? I'm curious. How many tweets have I ever sent? Like, I wanna compare this to Are you big on there, Davie? I mean, I use it pretty often.

Yeah.

22,000.

Alright. I'm I'm falling behind. But how long have you been on? I've spent too much time on Twitter. 2012, it says there.

How long have you been on? Well, it says January 2012. So I guess that's And

how long has Elon been on? I guess he was on before, but when did he start really getting in?

I think it was I think a lot of his have come recently. You know? Back here. Yeah. He's real.

And it'll be, like, late at night too, and they'll be, like, just, like, a bunch of them.

All hours. Some of it's on, like, a Barbados accent too. He does

he seems like he's enjoying Like, boss. He's enjoying kind of

Bureaucracy. Dogecoin. Doge. Doge. Vivek.

Vivek. Bus. Yeah. His check is very, kind of, Archipelagian sometimes or something, Barbadian. Yeah.

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I know they're not in everybody's price range, and, and that's understandable. But at the same time, I wanna support my friend, and his amazing company. Yeah. What's what's censorship? What do you think censorship looks like like right now?

Do you think it's changing?

I it seems to me it's definitely changing. I mean, really drastically. And it's, it's not gone. Like, there are still people who are getting censored and there are still there was a thing, like, a couple weeks ago where I guess a a group of people who let's say, the people who liberals would call anti Semitic and I think you know, like, people who talk a lot about the Jews, whatever the I'm not, like, trying to add my own value judgment into this, but whatever you think you would call it. A lot of them lost their blue check marks and, like, stuff like that.

What?

They were accusing people of doing anti Semitic?

Yeah. Yeah. So there was there have been like, there are but I mean, to compare it to, like, I mean, during, like, 2020, 2021, 2022, I mean, you couldn't if you said anything about, like, the vaccine or whatever, I mean, you know, I know you felt it with you know, you had the thing when Dana White was on. You were talking about sponsors giving you a hard time and stuff. There was a total not just on social media, but in general, there was a total, like, feeling that, like, you weren't even allowed to say anything that went against the regime.

Oh, I appreciate it. The regime is this.

That's a great point.

And if you are against what they're doing right now, it's and I mean, I, you know, there's always pressure. Like, there's always, like, you'll get called names or something if you do that. But for a while there, it was straight up, like, you would lose your your accounts. And for a lot of people, like, for for me, that was a scary prospect for a long time because it was kinda like we had at least in the comedy world that I'm in and in the political shit talking world that I'm in, it's I'd kinda long ago accepted like, okay, I'm not gonna get like a corporate job. Like, no big corporation is gonna hire me at this point because which is fine.

But then you're like, oh, there's this Internet thing so you can have your show on the Internet. You can have your own fans. You could have but then when You got your

own voice. Yeah. But then

you're like, oh, they might come and take that away.

Yeah.

It's not just that you can't get Saturday Night Live or something on Comedy Central or something like that, but it's like, oh, they could come and, like, you know, if you you could have your podcast, but if you can't have if you can't be on iTunes or YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or whatever, you're kinda screwed in this world. And so I am very happy that at least now it at least kinda feels like the the dominant culture seems to more be like, no. We should be able to say what we wanna say right now. I think that's a very positive change. But are

you are you thinking you're gonna take me down for talking about yanyahoo?

No. I think you're gonna be okay on this 1. But I don't know. I mean, you know, I would hate to say that and then, like, next week, you just show up at my house and you're just like, hey, man. Can I crash for a while?

Because you you ruined me. So that's I'll be like, alright.

But you can be anti Netanyahu and not, and that's you can I can have that belief if I want, right, if I don't like his practices?

Of course. And it's oh, it's so ridiculous, the idea of, like, in the in the same way if you were, like, well, I don't like Joe Biden very much. And you'd be like, so does that mean you hate Americans? And he's like, what? No.

I just don't like this guy. And you could hate the whole government and not hate the people. And then and it's only with Israel and they intentionally do this where they conflate this thing where it's like, oh, if I have the if I like, if I was like if I came and told you, like, you know, the government of France just did this thing, I think it's terrible what they did. And there's lots of terrible things that the government of France has done so I could pick some but like whatever.

That doesn't mean I'm not gonna cheer for Cyril Gaughan when he fights.

Yeah.

You know?

But and you were like, you're an anti Frankite. You hate all the French people. You feel like, that doesn't even make sense as a response to I have a problem with the government, you know? But they tried it. They they used that, you know, with Israel where it's like, oh, if you criticize them, you hate Jewish people.

What if that's that's stupid?

It started becoming the boy that cried wolf because they would say that for everything.

Yeah.

And then it would be like, well, what do you you're not even yours you're doing this. Yeah. You're saying this. I this isn't true. Right?

Yeah. And it's not even clear sometimes, like, what do you even mean by that? Like, what are you even and also, I do think just, like, the whole wokeism stuff has been so rejected, especially recently, that you're, like, people are kinda sick of just, like, like, accusations of bigotry aren't actually a response to someone, you know. Yeah. If you're, like, if if if I say, I think what Israel is doing is wrong, and your response is, well, you're a bigot, it's like, no.

Your response should be, oh, I don't think what they're doing is wrong and here's why. And then we could actually talk about it. But just to call someone like, oh, you're a Jew hater, you're racist, you're homophobic, you're it's it's just played out and tired.

Yeah. Let's talk about Zuckerberg a little bit because he just had that kind of about face sort of on and Facebook. They just had that kind of about face on Rogan where he was talking about, where's that clip? That clip, yeah, right here where he kind of, says the Biden administration would call Meta to scream and curse at them to censor true information on their platforms. This is what Zuckerberg said.

Mhmm. Right? What do you say? Play real quick a little bit of it.

Okay. These people from the Biden administration would call up our team and, like, scream at them and curse. And it's like these documents are it's all kind of out there.

Do you

record any of those phone calls?

I don't no. I don't think I don't think we were but but I think

I wanna listen.

I mean, their emails the the the emails are published. It's all it's all kind of out there. And, and they're like and, basically, it just got to this point where we were like, no. We're we're not gonna we're not gonna take down things that are true.

That's pretty ridiculous.

They want us to take down this meme of Leonardo.

Yeah. What do you think about this? To me, the I just don't know if I I don't because Facebook didn't do the best job of you know, they had issues over the years with the Hunter Biden thing. Right?

Mhmm.

With Russia stuff where they wouldn't let people say this is bullshit. Like, they really chose to decide what was misinformation. It's okay. So it just seems weird that suddenly people are calling and screaming. I left, like, the the simple facts, and you're like, is this like it seemed like now you're trying to seem

like like that wasn't happening the whole time and

you weren't listening to it before type of vibe.

Yeah. It's a very, like, convenient retelling of history.

Yes.

For Zuckerberg to go, so the government was saying we have to censor these things that are true, and we were like, no. We're not gonna do that. Okay. What really happened is the government said you're gonna censor these things that true and he said, yes, sir

Yeah.

And did it for 8 fucking years. Okay? And then at the end of these 8 years when Trump wins a dominant victory and now the guy who you kicked off of Facebook is now president again and now the whole culture's turned against you and he's threatening to, like, you know, like look into you. He's And there's a lot of, like, pretty quasi illegal stuff that was done. So now you said, okay, we're not gonna do this again, while Joe Biden is literally on his hands and knees pooping his pants Yeah.

On the way out with terrible numbers and Donald Trump's coming in popular again. So okay. Yes. So for him to spin that as the government said we should do this thing and we said no, that's ridiculous. Okay.

That's not exactly what happened.

It seemed like he's just out back here trying to slurp back onto humanity. Now If you That's a slurp job.

Yeah. I I I agree. Now there's and this is why Joe, you know, remains like the biggest show is because he just gets these moments. But if you the last time he was on Rogan's podcast was 1 of the most interesting admissions and it was before he had done this 180 and turned around. But when Joe asked him about the Hunter Biden thing and he goes, so so like the story with the Hunter Biden laptop, how did you guys handle that?

And Zuckerberg said the FBI came to us and told us we're there's about to be a big Russian dump. So they must have known that this laptop was about to come out. Wow. And they went to Facebook, told them preemptively it's Russian disinformation. And that's why they censored the whole thing.

And that is like that admission is like blatant election interference by the FBI against the sitting president which makes it that even that much worse because, like, in some on some level, like, if the FBI or the CIA or someone like that was like interfering in an election, you'd already be like, okay, that's crazy illegal, unethical, you know, unconstitutional. Like, we don't have a democracy if we have 3 letter agencies interfering in elections. Right. However, you'd assume at least they were doing it on the side of the president who they work for, not against the president who they work for. Now, we're in a level of like treason.

Like you're working against the commander in chief who you're supposed to say sir, yes, sir to and follow his rules. You know, I mean, okay. You if you're at the FBI, you're in the under the justice department, but still, like, the president is

that So this was in this was in Trump was in office?

Yeah. But this the 1 I'm referring to yes. This 1 this is when or I don't know when the podcast was, but he's talking about the Hunter Biden story, which was October of 2020. So right before the election when Trump is still in office.

Okay. Let's play a little bit of that.

How do

you guys handle things when they're a a big news item that's controversial? Like, there was a lot of attention on Twitter during the election because of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the needle. We

have those to.

Yeah. So you guys censored that as well?

So we took a different path than Twitter. I mean, basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us. Some some folks on our team, I was like, hey. Just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. There was the we we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election.

We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump of of, that's similar to that. So just be vigilant. So our protocol is different from Twitter's. What Twitter did is they said you can't share this at all. We didn't do that.

What we do is we have, if something is reported to us as potentially, misinformation, important misinformation, we we also have this third party fact checking program because we don't wanna be deciding what's true and false. And for the I think it was 5 or 7 days when it was basically being, being determined whether it was false, the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it. So you could still share it. You could still consume it.

Do we say the distribution is decreased?

Okay.

That's good. It got shared.

How does that work?

It basically yeah. So saying that they had some effect on it, though.

Yeah. Well, he goes on to say that it was a meaningful, impact that turning down the signal had on it or what. But what's interesting is that he blatantly says that it was the FBI who came to them and, like, told them that this very true story, which was a real scandal, that was an October surprise that, you know, very clearly could have moved the needle in the election. They suppressed that for 1 reason only, and that's because they wanted Biden to win and not Trump to win. And Zuckerberg played a big role in that.

Not as big, I guess, as, Twitter, at the old

Oh, yeah. Dorsey admitted it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I look. I do think to some degree, these guys are under duress from the government. I mean, they're threatened, and all types of pressure is put on them to go along with the censorship stuff.

And to be, you're basically become communication in the universe. Like, you are like, if everybody had to talk in, like, a hallway, you're the hallway.

You know? You're Yeah. Well and and if you think about, like, even just the, you know, if you think about the how much government cares about controlling the narrative, you know, 1 of the things that's really interesting from the the more recent clip that you the 1 we played first here, you know, he says that they were really upset about a meme.

Oh, yeah.

It was Leonardo DiCaprio. Leonardo DiCaprio meme. Like, they were really upset about that. Oh, dude. This which literally said isn't that fascinating in a way that they are so threatened by, like, you making a joke about their bullshit?

But if you, like, zoom out, right, and think about it, it's like governments always insist on controlling, monopolizing information. You know, controlling the narrative is the most important thing to them. That's more important than controlling the money or the banks or the the laws or anything. It's like controlling the narrative, controlling how people think, what the the kind of like the range, the Overton window of allowable opinion or what, you know and that's and you see it all the time. You see they spaz out when people are just outside of the realm of allowable opinion.

And even if you think about, like, the way think about the way our government's set up. We're, like, okay, the government there's, like, a a a group of, you know, services that the government has a monopoly on. And they had a monopoly on the schools, the post office, you know, like It's also dump. Even it's like wherever the information is coming from, the media, the universities, you know, these are always the things that governments get involved in. And then, all of a sudden, there's a revolution.

And now, the, you know, the the public square is Facebook and Twitter and these social media. So now these people are in control for the first time of this. So of course and and what really happened was after Donald Trump won in 2016. They really started cracking down

on them. Yeah. That's holy shit.

The guy who wasn't supposed to win won and he did it by utilizing social media Yeah. And going around the the corporate media and going around the political machine just to talk right to voters. That really shook them up. And so, yeah, they hold Zuckerberg and and Dorsey and all of them before congress. They threatened the shit out of them.

I'm sure he's right that they were on the phone cursing and screaming at him and putting all types of pressure. So fine. If Zuckerberg I would be much more sympathetic if Zuckerberg had come out on Rogan's podcast this time and been like, listen. I've just I've under the weight of this pressure, I gave in.

Right.

And I became like a a a tool for the regime to censor people but I don't wanna do that anymore. And so now I'm committing to this. I'd be like, yes. Yeah. He's a hero.

But the way he kinda like yada yadas over like, hey, when the government wanted us to do this stuff, I was like, no, man. I'm not gonna do that. I'm cool. Right, Rogan? Or you're like, not exactly.

Like, it almost seems sometimes the way he he almost seems like a doll. Does he a little bit when you're, and I don't mean it in a bad way. I just mean it in an interesting way. I'm fascinated by the guy. I mean, the I can't imagine what his life is like or what he's like as a person, or what it's like to talk with him.

I would love to have that opportunity, but I am, yeah. I'm just so curious as to like the pressure if he feels it. You know, they had that 1 moment where like they had all those families that had people had been, solicited or whatever young people had been caught by traffickers or, like, approached by traffickers or, solicitation sexual can you bring that up? It was, faith. It was Zuckerberg before congress.

Watched the moment that meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the families of victims during a hearing on online child safety. That's what it was.

National television. Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed

by the police and pictures?

Would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people?

I I I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I in our hope to you doing industry leading efforts to, to make sure that no 1 has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer. Wow.

Okay. That's good. I think it just seems like a robot doing it.

Like, that's That wasn't great. That wasn't a great moat. That's

why I wondered, does he feel? It seems to me like he doesn't have a lot of feel in him.

You know? Yeah. Listen. That's yeah. To to apologize, I don't even exactly understand what they were like.

They're

I think a lot of them lost hands.

Kids who got trafficked or something like that.

And I'll have to look into that. Yeah.

But that also shouldn't be done. Like, an apology like that shouldn't be done with reporters flashing all this. I also cannot stand I'm sorry, but I just hate the grandstanding of politicians in congress. Like like, I think Zuckerberg's, like, response to that should have been like, you preside over the biggest war machine in the history of the world. So if you want to talk about apologizing to innocent people who have got you got your work cut out for you.

You focus on your apologies but I would love to invite like any of these parents if they wanna sit down in a private room after that. We can have a long conversation about this. I agree.

And

then like give a real moment or like, you know, you can't if someone like loses their kid or their kid's raped or tortured or something, it can't just be, like, a, I'm sorry that happened, and we are working hard to make sure it doesn't happen in the future. Yeah. You wanna sit down and be, like, hey

That's a great point.

Tell me your story. Like, let don't don't even hear from me. Let me hear from you. You tell me your story, and then I'll try to, like, empathize with what you've gone through. But geez.

Yeah. That's a great point. They shouldn't they shouldn't put him on the spot to do it right there because that wasn't really helpful.

Because they're not looking for a sincere apology. They're looking for a political stunt to be like, I got Zuckerberg to admit

Right.

That he would had, you

know, his run. And the families always get wheeled out for that kinda stuff.

And I also don't like that the air is always like it's always a question of what you should be censoring. And, like, listen, I'm sure we would probably agree, right, like, if there are people trying to traffic kids or something like that, like, yes, okay, you'd wanna kick those accounts off or report them to the police or whatever. But it's always congress like talking about how dangerous the freedom that people have is on your site. Oh, it's so dangerous that people can communicate and people you gotta clamp down on this. Right.

And it's like, personally, I'm much what is it? The the old I think it's a Thomas Jefferson quote or maybe I'm getting that wrong. Actually, it's not Jefferson. But whatever the quote was like, I, it might have been Hamilton, but it was like, I'd rather deal with the inconveniences of too much liberty than those associated with too little of it. Yeah.

You know, it's like I'd it's always like they're always warning you about the problems of too much freedom. Oh, everyone can communicate. That means people are gonna come get your kids. I'm like, I'm sure that is there is that concern and like, you know, I got little kids. I'm I'm concerned about that stuff, but I also kinda feel like, okay, I'll handle making sure my kids don't, you know what I mean, get, you know, taken advantage of on the Internet.

And how about the government get the hell out of the way so we can tell the truth? Yeah. So it was Thomas Jefferson. See, I should be sure of myself.

I would rather be exposed to the inconvenience of attending too much attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. Yeah. I agree. Why not on that side of it? Yeah.

Facebook has had issue. I mean, remember when they had there was a thing where they had there was, like, these canyons or something. See if you can look that up. It was a they were looking up information. They were using people in Africa to to look up.

They were the fact checkers or whatever, and I think there was a lawsuit. Facebook content moderators in Kenya called the work torture. Their lawsuit may ripple worldwide. I'm not even sure what happened with this. What would when was this?

Oh, it's 2023. Okay. On the verge of tears, Nathan

recalled I admire you for trying.

Oh, thank you. Yeah. On the verge of tears, Nathan recalled watching a video of a child being molested and another of a woman being killed. 8 hours a day, his job as a content moderator for a Facebook contract that required him to look at horrors so the world wouldn't have to. Now is among nearly 200 former employees in Kenya who are suing Facebook.

It's so wild, where work let me see. The group was employed at the social media giant's outsourced hub for content moderation in Kenya's capital of Nairobi where workers screen posts, videos, messages, and other content from users across Africa, removing any illegal or harmful material that breaches its community standards and terms of service. Can you even imagine having to moderate the stuff in Africa?

Someone's job is actually to watch a child being molested and then be like, nope. That video can't go up on Facebook.

This is bad. The moderator from several and that was I shouldn't that wasn't a fun time to joke. I'm sorry. That wasn't funny. And I love Kenya.

I've been to Mombasa. I love Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico. I love it. I've been there.

Oh, no. Do not touch that girl. Yeah. You're okay so far. You're okay so far.

Nope. You are banned.

The moderators from several African countries are seeking 1,600,000,000 compensation fund Woah. That's a lot of money. After alleging poor working conditions, including insufficient mental health support and low pay. Wow. Wonder what happened to that lawsuit.

If you find out that something happened, let me know. But they've had issues over there. And I'll say this, well, that's not really it. But, I can't imagine I can't imagine having to be actual person doing that work. But that's what it comes down to.

You're basically having to moderate the entire world of communication. You've taken on that responsibility. You know?

Well and I know that, you know, it was I think when when the, I think it was the Egyptian revolution, which, you know, didn't last that long, but they what they when they a real I I believe and forgive me because I haven't, like, I'm not the expert on this at all. I haven't read that much about it. But, like, when they overthrew Mubarak, I think that was, like, a real genuine revolution where, like, the it caught the people really did agree, like, we want this dictator gone. But I remember that they were it this was, what year was Mubarak overthrown? I I wanna say it was, like, 2,010.

2,010 That was in Kenya? No. This is in Egypt. But I do remember that that was 1 of the things that people were making a big deal of was that there were these giant protests that ultimately ended up bringing down the government. And it was all organized on social media.

You know, everybody's like, oh, we'll meet up here. The protest starts here. And then it was, like, almost like the first time that they were like, woah. There's real power in these things. And, you know, if you could, 2011.

So, like Oh, the power of social media. Yeah. That's just like, yo, I mean, you're gonna get if you could overthrow governments with these these things, you're gonna get, you know, you're gonna get a lot of attention from governments who are gonna be very concerned about what's going on on these sites.

Yeah. Well, it's just interesting. At what point do you think that there could be a revolution in America? Because if it if it if if people don't trust the FBI now, they don't trust the CIA now, you're not sure that your FBI isn't out to get your own it's like, who what is even like,

It's well, right? And then and then on top of that, like, you had say someone like Donald Trump. Look, the first time Donald Trump ran. Right? All of the political class, all of the media, all of Hollywood, they all said this guy is unacceptable.

You cannot support this guy. He still won but he also won on, like, a razor thin margin, lost the popular vote, and just happened to win the right swing states against Hillary so there was, like, a little bit of a caveat. But then after January 6th, with how much they pumped into, like, this is the worst thing ever and look at this horrible guy. You could never support him. Then they go after him with the, with the legal Well cases.

Then he almost gets his brains blown out on national television. And then after all of that, all the years of he's a Nazi, democracy's over, he's Hitler, the American people go, well, we like him even more now. Like, that's just so crazy. It's so crazy that there's just trust in every American institution has evaporated. They have nothing.

I mean, it's unbelievable that the most famous Hollywood celebrities can't move the needle at all. The entire

In fact, they it's an ant time Yeah. If they get the second 1 of them is involved, I'm fucking out.

Well, that's right. It almost like well, that is and I mean, look, even me, I I will admit I'm guilty of it too that I I right away, you know, you see another celebrity. They'll be endorsing Kamala Harris tonight and I'm like, what did you do at the Diddy party? Yeah. What do they got on you?

You know, what do you like, it's just there's so much mistrust of the whole thing and it's you know, the the thing about it is is a lot of us like I said this in our conversation already today at 1 point. I don't even remember if it was about Russiagate or COVID or what, but I said all those people still have their jobs or whatever. Yeah.

You know,

if you if you look at the New York Times or you look at CNN or all these places, they still got people there who sold us the war in Iraq and they still have their jobs. You know, like, they didn't get fired. These people make great money. They're still at the and nothing. But it's like the it's something almost like spiritual.

There's always a price. Even if you think there was no consequence, oh, there is a consequence. And so, like, you just think for so many years, they lied us into wars, the, into financial recessions. They they lied about everything about COVID. They lied about Russiagate.

They lied about all this shit. They lied about Joe Biden not being senile. They lied about Kamala Harris not being retarded. They lied about everything they could think of. Yeah.

And there is a price for that. And the price is that no 1 believes you anymore. Yeah.

Not even people that believed you believe you. That's what's crazy

Yeah.

Is watching people that were, like, devout believers come on over and not and be like, I just don't believe these people. You know?

And then there's so many people like that. So, like, could there be a revolution? I mean, you know, there's the American government is still so powerful. It's not like they're getting overthrown anytime soon. Right.

But And we're not saying that, government. No. If the if the government is listening, I've I've highly recommend everybody follow the law. Yeah. But there is there there's been a revolution in communication already.

There's been a revolution in the media. I mean, they all this happened a while ago, but after this election, they all kind of admit it. They all kind of admit that, like, look like Donald Trump did, like, your show and and Schultz and

Oh, that blew my mind.

And this was a huge factor for him, you know? And this was and I I will say, I think particularly yours was I mean, obviously, Rogan's was was humongous. Oh, yeah. But particularly, the interview with you saw, like, a a much different side of Donald Trump than I had ever seen before. And that's crazy.

It's crazy that there's been this revolution. I mean

crazy. You know, there's there hasn't been there's not a lot of people where I'm from who even get to ask questions a lot of times.

I don't think

there's not

a lot of there's not a lot of people where I'm from whoever even getting to raise their hand in front of a president and ask a question about something that means something to them. You know, a lot of times, yeah, you just get pigeonholed into being some type of way. And so then as a person, as part of even just a group, you start to feel like, well, I don't even fucking exist. You know what I'm saying? And I think that's part of how I always felt my whole life.

I don't nobody nobody gives a fuck about poor off white kid. You know what I'm saying? That's the last fucking group. And so, yeah, I think, I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying, man.

I'm just I think it's a a really great point. I mean, I think if you think about it, like, at least my whole life. Right?

Well, finally, we made our own voices because you don't even see that I am a voice. You don't even think I have a fucking voice. And so finally, I you don't think and you also you don't think I work hard enough to fucking put my voice out there.

They called it flyover country. Yeah. With that's what they call flyover country. And what is flyover country? Everything except New York and LA.

I know.

Right? The whole rest of this annoying country that you gotta fly over on your way from New York to LA. There if you think about, like, when we grew up, me and you grew up in the era of the TV. Yeah. There wasn't we didn't watch shit on YouTube and, you know, this didn't exist.

We watched what was on TV. And TV was made in New York and LA. Yeah. That that's where it was made. And every show, whether it was Seinfeld or Friends or whatever, it was all these shows were about living in a city on the coast and they were about people who live there.

And then just think about how bizarre that is. You have this giant country that occupies the middle part of North America called the United States of America. It's this huge country and you only have representation from these 2 coastal cities. And this has now been totally blown open where it's like, yeah, I think for the first time, people in the middle of the country, in the south of the country can actually have a voice. And why shouldn't they when there's tens of millions of people who, like, fall into those categories?

Yeah.

Look, it's crazy to me being in stand up comedy. It's been a total revolution since the when I started. Like, the the path for how you become successful is so different. Podcasts weren't a thing when I first started. And so having a revolution in government, that still seems like we're not there, but there has been a huge cultural revolution in over the last 15 years that are In communication?

Or in what is it called?

Yeah. I think I think in in media, in entertainment,

in in comedy, and yeah. So Trump has his new cabinet picks. Right? Has he picked all of them yet or not?

Yeah. I think I think he's picked up. I mean, there might be some more, like, smaller positions that he still gets to pick Okay. Like, judges and stuff like that. But I he's picked I think he's picked his cabinet.

What do you feel like, who were some of your favorites? Who were some you're kind of on the fence about? Doug Collins got fucking picked?

The coach? The basketball coach?

Remember he was with the Wizards, dude? Wait. Are you

talking about Jordan's coach Doug Collins, or is this someone else now? That's a different Doug Collins.

Oh, damn. Who's that guy?

Doug Collins was got the Bulls right there, and then Phil Jackson came in

and took all the glory. I remember that, dude. That's a great point. That's never really talked about, is it? But what about, his some of his cabinet picks?

Who do you like? Where where you at with some of that?

I love, okay. Well, the best ones to me by far were Bobby Kennedy for health department was just amazing. I think that's really gonna shake things up.

Is he 1 of the first doctors that's never been in charge of the health department?

That's a good question. I don't know. No. I think no. I think the guy who's in, the head of it now was a lawyer too.

So I'm not sure. But he is the first, like, real outsider and real critic of the American, like, health state. And so that's really interesting. He also put, which I'm sure has a lot to do with Bobby Beam at, HHS, but he put Jay Bhattacharya as the new, head of the Draft Kings? The Jay Bhattacharya?

Yeah. He sounds like a bookie.

Oh, dude. Yeah. Well, he's got a a I think he's Indian. I don't know.

Oh, Bhattacharya is Indian?

Why? I may I might be wrong about that. If I'm wrong, I apologize. But he was 1 of the signatories on the, the great Barrington declaration. He was amazing during COVID.

He's like 1 he's like a a brilliant, you know he's got a degree, I think, in economics and in science. Jay Bhattachary, bring him up.

He sounds like he's from, Madras, New Jersey, dude. Bring him up Jay Bhattachary. Let's Get a little gander at him. I just wanna get a peek at him. I haven't seen his face before.

Bhattachary. Oh, yeah. I like this guy.

He was phenomenal during COVID. Really? Like, like, a goddamn hero. Just calling out all the bullshit and, like, weird him. Dude, that would be great.

A super, super smart scientist who's, like, really understood why lockdowns were terrible and why the vaccine mandates were insane and all of

that stuff. Oh, I that's you know, I'm

So he got Fauci's old job.

Really?

Which is gonna be real interesting. Yeah. Head of the NIH.

Heck, yeah. That's cool.

Now all these guys gotta be confirmed by the senate still, so that's not done. But the other great pick was Tulsi Gabbard as director of National Intelligence. Mhmm. I Macquarie? Do you know who

that is? Like, Marty? I'm not sure. Marty Macquarie? Can you look him up?

Marty Makari for FDA commissioner.

Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't know enough about this guy.

He has a great book called The Price We Pay. Bring up 1 of his books. I wanna I wanna talk with this guy. It's about the insurance, the whole the the scam, What Broke American Health Care. There's another great book he has too.

Dude, 1 of his books, he has this thing, like, where they were going to black churches. Okay? He's a, surgeon. Let me see. Martin and Del Marcar is a British American surgeon, professor, author, and medical commentator, where they were going to they were convincing giving people scans at their churches, showing them that they needed, like, their blood vessels dilated or shunts put in their legs, And it was just and the and doctors were making a ton of money through Medicaid.

It was just this big scam. And a lot of the doctors were funding the groups that would go, and they would do it at black churches and black, religious get togethers. And they have tables set up. And they were just using these people, basically, sending them through as just like a fucking, as a, varicose vein mill. You know?

Wow. Unreal.

And just making tons of money. I'm sure.

Yeah. But he he talks about that. He talks about a lot of neat stuff. Oh, that's another 1. Blind spots.

When medicine, that's the 1 I've been reading. When medicine goes wrong, that's 1 that I've been reading. But he seems like an interesting guy, but he got put in. That's what I'm excited about. Gabbard, you said.

Who else is in there?

Kash Patel, who's took over the FBI. Oh, really? Director who is he was a huge critic of, like, Russiagate and a lot of the crazy stuff that a lot of the election interference that the FBI has been doing. Again, you know, we're gonna see how there were reports out. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but that Tulsi Gabbard was saying she's changed her mind on government surveillance and now she's okay with the intelligence agencies spying on us.

You know, DC has a way of poisoning people. But how does that happen

to you?

But, also, I'm not throwing her under the bus or nothing like that. I think maybe she's saying what she needs to say to get confirmed, and then she'll do some really great stuff once she's Could that

be something that happens?

Quite possibly. It's, you know, it's hard to say. But it is like there's all types of pressure and and then there's probably pressures that I don't know about at all that when you're actually on the inside, there's probably all types of threats and things like that that you gotta deal with. So I think these these picks were all very, very good. He had a bunch of really bad picks that I did not like.

Let me see. Let's finish this 1 though. Gabbard 43 was born in the US territory of American Samoa, raised in Hawaii, and spent a year of her childhood in the Philippines. Yeah. She's definitely, I love the way that she talks.

You know, I love how just, her own she's always seems to have her very own voice. But when you get in, like, who compromised? What did they use to compromise? You think that's what I always wonder.

I mean, I think

I don't know. You just did you say do you're gonna have to do what we want or we're gonna kill you? You think that's

what it is? It's possible. I mean, I wouldn't put it past some of these people. There are a lot of killers in our government, you know. I also think that sometimes it's just the way the machine works.

And it's like, well, you're never gonna be able to do anything unless you do this or unless you do that. You know, I it was real interesting the way, there the way that Obama got rolled when he first came in and he had a lot of these plans, like, we were gonna end these wars and we're gonna do all these things and we're gonna and he just immediately ran up against the machine and it was like, you have no idea how to actually control this thing. And I gotta say, I think that happened a lot to Trump too when he first came in. And Trump had a lot of plans. And I think that I think Donald Trump looked at it like, hey.

I've been the CEO of this big company. I've been the boss before. I'll go be the boss again. But it's like, that's not how this 1 works. This is a whole different thing.

It's not like when you're really the boss and you dictate orders and everyone follows them. And he you know, Donald Trump, he ran in 2016 on what was such a great idea at the time was and he used to say this on the campaign all the time in 2016 because back then, the war in Syria was still going well, it's like raging. And he would go, why are we even in Syria? I don't care about overthrowing Bashar al Assad. He goes, Russia said they're only in Syria to kill ISIS.

I was like, okay. Well, we wanna kill ISIS too. We're against the terrorists. He goes, so why don't we stop trying to overthrow regimes in the Middle East, work with Russia to take out all the terrorists, and then we could just leave the Middle East, and then we could all be front we could be friends with Russia. And he openly ran on that.

I was like, yeah, that's a great idea except then you get in there and the media is saying you're a Russian spy every single day all day long. So now how are you gonna make a deal with Russia? Right. When everyone's saying

you're a Russian spy. Oh, they tricked you then because If

you make a deal with Russia, that'll just be proof that you're a Russian spy. And so then Donald Trump went, no. I'll be hawkish toward Russia. And so he went out of his way to prove what a Russian spy he wasn't which is like, oh, so they got you. So you couldn't do what you wanted to do.

Right. And instead, you gotta do this.

But this time, they may not have the value of the media.

Well, that's they don't. They for sure don't. I mean, I think I think and and Unless they

come and kill the podcasters and stuff, do you think that they could do that? Have you ever worried about your own safety?

No. I don't know. I've always I've always felt like I flow I fly at a nice you know, I'm far enough from the sun that I'm I'm okay. Yeah.

Same. I don't know what I'm even doing.

Well, right. So I'm not and also, I just I do think, like, there's too many of us and there's too I think, like, the toothpaste is out of the tube on this and I don't think I think even they've finally realized that, like, even if you know what's funny? When they were coming after Rogan a couple years ago when there was that major push and the artists were, you know, Neil Young was saying, I'll take my music off Spotify or whatever. Yeah. I remember talking about it then.

And you're like, so what do you what do you guys even think happens? Like, let's say let's say, hypothetically, you could take Joe Rogan out. Right? What do you think? His audience goes back to CNN?

You think everyone who was listening to that is gonna go, okay. I guess we plug back into The Matrix now. They're just gonna find somebody out. They're gonna find someone else probably more radical. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Probably not not less. And so I think they even kinda know they can't really, you know, stuff. But I do think I think the 2 things that make it that that make the dynamic very different this time for Trump well, like like you said, it's that the corporate media has been destroyed. But the 2 things that really destroyed them since the first Trump president presidency to this 1 is Russiagate and COVID.

They just They were such big stories and they got them so wrong and everyone kinda knows it now. Like nobody, you know, nobody believes in Russiagate anymore. Nobody is sitting on No 1 on television is going, a Russian spy is about to retake the White House. Then none of them are saying that. None of them are saying, hey, we were wrong about all of that.

But if they weren't wrong, why wouldn't they still be freaked out about it?

You know?

I'm just amazed that none of them ever come on and said, hey, you know what? I wanna apologize for wasting your fucking time. That's what I wanna do. I wanna apologize that we didn't care enough to even really look into things truly, and that we wasted your time. That would be, like, a real thing to do.

Right? Like, I just yeah. It's like that's why sometimes you're like, are the people running this thing? Do they have any human feelings? Because that's why I don't see a lot.

It's like, you would think if you really cared about your customer base at all. Right? Yeah. You would go and say, hey. I'm sorry.

I got this wrong. We this was wrong. Or we didn't we didn't know it was wrong, but we didn't even try to do our best practices. We got caught up. Something.

Right? Listen, man. I mean, they hate they fucking hate this country, and they hate the people of the country. And I don't, like, just say that to be, like, to make a sensational claim, but it's like, if you if if my kids are were hungry and I was feeding other kids, like, what conclusion could you draw from that other than, like, you don't love your children. You hate your own children.

Because that's, like, your number 1 responsibility. What do you mean you're feeding other kids while your kids are going hungry?

Yeah.

It's just too evil to even wrap your head around. And that's that's literally what our government does.

Dude. Yes.

That's me

right now. That's what they do. Is they feed other countries that don't need it, by the way, you know, not just the ones who maybe do, but ones who don't need. Well, our people are here, like, starving. I mean, I'm I'm not trying to, like, overstate it like there's mass starvation.

That

kinda sucks.

But I

mean, I should say surviving a hurricane or fires or whatever.

Oh, I agree. I think I was thinking today, it was like, hey, well, Ukraine, can you give us back some of our money so we can pay our teachers better, so we can feed, people who are starving in our own country, so we can get homeless people off the streets, so we can help cure some of our mental health, so we can help repair some of this fire damage for people that were uninsured, or help the displaced people that are over here. You know, just countless things. I mean, I could go on and on, but it's like yeah. It just feels like we're just being money laundered a lot of times.

Well, even just and and and to, like, like And I know

that these people have problems, but it's like, you know, the perfect example for me was that Karen Bass lady from with the LA fires. Right? I've never heard of her before, and she seems like a nice woman. I bet she's, a great woman. But she was in Ghana unless she was on vacation.

She was in Ghana, Africa Yeah. While this was happening. And if she was on vacation, then do she should be able to do whatever she wants, and she should be able to do whatever she wants anyway. Just in Los Angeles mayor freezes up. This is exactly how people should be treated.

Do you owe citizens for being absent while their homes are burning? You regret cutting the fire department budget. Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this is unfolding back home? But can you look up was she in Ghana on vacation? That's what I need help on.

But she's in Ghana. But it's like, why are you even in Ghana? Like, you are the mayor

of a town. Know, and they knew that, like, big windstorms were coming, and they knew that, like, this is a danger, you know, with wildfires and stuff. So it's just you would expect you'd be around there. But it is you know?

It's hard to point fingers at this point, though. Like, it's like, obviously, things were bad. They had their reservoir that was dead empty that was, like took countless 1,000,000 of dollars and held 1,000,000 of gallons of water. Just a lot of bet. Just, you know, I don't know.

It's heartbreaking. What's happening out there is heartbreaking, but that's the weird part. It's like, why is she even you you have peep we have how much do the people have to suffer or be struggling in our own country for our own country to be like here? And what who how are we electing these people that aren't saying, here, America, we're gonna help you first.

Yeah. It's unbelievable. It's it's totally outrageous, man. How was that happening?

I just don't understand how it's happening.

Well, I mean, I do think perhaps it's kinda like what you said earlier. Like, part of this is that we we have just, like, acquired such a level of wealth and power as a country that it's almost like, you know, the politicians who now control the tax base of the American people. They feel like gods where they're like, we can do all of this stuff. I mean, I remember when and and I think this was sincere. I think Joe Biden actually heard and understood this question and had a moment of of being lucid.

But it was when the war in in Gaza first broke out And some reporter asked him and was like, they were like, well, you know, you're all in on this war in Ukraine. You've already given them 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars. And now you're saying you're gonna support Israel. Like, are you sure America can take on another war that we have to foot the bill for now? And he goes, of course.

This is the United States of America. Of course, we can do it.

Who said that Ricky Gervais? Joe Biden.

Joe Biden. Sorry. And and I'm sure in some way, Joe Biden, like, believes that. You know? Like, Joe Biden is a is a child of the unipolar moment after the Soviet Union collapsed, and and America is dominant.

We can do whatever.

We

can do anything. This is America. We can do whatever we want to. It's like you just haven't updated this script because, like, it's 30 years later now. And, no, we can't just do whatever you want to.

And, you know, we just found out through this you know, it's like, okay. Yeah. We could do whatever we want to but we can't tax people enough to raise the money and we can't borrow enough to get it. So we have to print the money and then we deal with this price inflation we've been dealing with for the last few years. It just like destroys working class people.

And it's like, yeah. I guess if you don't care about that, we can do it. But if you do care about that, then actually, no, we can't. We don't have limitless funds. And but and I'll just say with this.

Right? Look. You think about the United States of America, the federal government. It's the biggest, most powerful government in the history of the world by far, by any metric. And yet as we're doing everything, as we're backing the war in Israel as we're backing Israel's war, we're backing, Ukraine in this war.

We're overthrowing regimes all around the world. We're talking about what the they have a summit where they talk about what the temperature is gonna be in a 100 years. The government's trying to manage everything. And yet, the most basic functions of government have all gone to shit. We can't win our wars.

We can't balance our budgets. We can't protect our borders.

Post office sucks, dude. I was in the post office, like, 3 weeks ago. Right? There's no there's a home I wanna say I don't wanna say homeless, but pretty homeless guy in there. Right?

Yelling faggot over and over again. Right? Just yelling it into the fucking distance or whatever. And, dude, I'm second in line. Right?

So I'm like, you know, but nobody even came to help him. We're in there for 7 minutes. I just walked out. I'm like,

you know Well, that's the thing. But this is But

that's the US postal system in a nutshell.

And and California is a little microcosm of this. Right? It's the biggest state government, has the biggest budget of any state government.

Trying to turn our whole country

into that. Everything. They're trying to say, oh, we're gonna have electric cars and we're gonna have a new power grid and we're gonna have all of this. Meanwhile, the most basic service, like, make sure your fire department has enough water in the area where that is known for wildfires spreading. Like, the the most basic thing you fail miserably at.

And then you're gonna talk about all these pie in the sky visions of how you're gonna run the world and do all this shit and it's like, no. You're not good you're not good at this. You're not doing anything right. And and there is something interesting about that where it's like when you try to take on way too much, you end up failing at the most basic responsibility that you have. Yeah.

Oh, always. Yeah, man. It's wild. And,

also, when you push when you position yourself as this, we will handle it all, you don't let other societies and cultures, kinda create their own narrative and wherewithal for themselves, you know

Yeah.

In a weird way, you know.

Oh, I think that's absolutely right. Yeah. Oh, I think that's true that's true, like, internally in America and throughout the world. But even, like, you see, like, at you see, like, in America, like, the rise of the welfare state, like, when it was really in the sixties seventies when when welfare became huge and then churches get diminished. You know, it's like, oh, because that used to be Right.

What people would do if they needed help because they'd go to the local church and kind of ask them to help. So it's like, oh, as you try to take care of everything, you end up killing and boxing out this other more organic thing where the people themselves would actually figure out, like, who in the community needs help.

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I saw a lot of people got fucked up out there in LA. Saw Whitney's video. I felt awful.

Yeah. Whitney's had a lot of videos. And

she has. Well, I meant the 1 where she was crying and stuff with

Oh, I

didn't see that 1. 0, maybe I did. I'm sorry if I did. I've watched a couple of hers. I wake up at about 5:15 and watch TikTok for, like, 40 minutes every night.

So I'm not Get it while you can.

I know. I'm not doing that good. Here's 1 thing. Yeah. Play that Mel Gibson right there.

I just love the way he communicates. K.

I have 3 friends. I'll tell you a good story. Okay. I have 3 friends. All 3 of them had stage 4 cancer.

All 3 of them don't have cancer right now at all. Preach. And they had some serious stuff going on. And what did they take? Yep.

Jesus. They took some what you've heard they've taken? Ivermectin, Fenbendazole. Bendazole. Yeah.

That's

it. I'm hearing that a lot. They drank hydrochloride something or other.

There's studies on that now where people have

proven that they've drinking methylene blue and

Okay.

Hold on. Blue, which was

a fabric dye. Okay. Stop. Now we're getting into breaking bad tears. Sorry.

That's part of the that's the wild part of that, you know?

Yeah. Look, man. I mean, by by default on this is to go, I I probably think that's not true. Like, I don't know. But I also do I I don't know a lot about, like, medicine and the health stuff.

No. But I will say my my eyes were definitely opened over COVID to, like, how corrupt the whole thing is. And so it is almost like now when people say stuff like that, I'm a lot more be like, alright, I'm listening. Yeah. Like, maybe.

Yeah. I'll give you 12 ounces. Give me 12 ounces of methylene blue. You know what I'm saying?

I'll try it. I don't know. I mean, like, if

I had stage Give me a chaser.

If I had stage 4 cancer and, like, they were, like, there's nothing we can do, I'd I'd be, like, hey, Joe. Can you get me Mel Gibson's number? I wanna talk to him and his buddies about what they did. I don't know. Why not?

Oh, yeah. I would be drinking fucking pool water or whatever happened, you know, whatever it needed. Did, what was 1 thing else that happened the other day? Yeah. We're supposed to start shooting a movie.

Me and David Spade wrote a movie, and we're supposed to start shooting it last week in LA, but, the fires so now it's just up in the air. It's been, like, kind of bizarre, you know. But the weirdest thing about LA that I'm hearing is, like, I'll get a text from a friend or talk to a friend who's crying, you know, their home is burnt down. Then I'll get a call from a friend who's like, hey, man. Do you want me to go over by your place and move your, car to my apartment or whatever because in case the fire switch wind?

And I'm like, I think I'm okay right now. And and I was like, what do you have? She was like, I'm going to a couple auditions today, you know. And so it's just such a crate it's

like still normal shit happening in the middle of all of this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting.

And that guy lives right I mean, he's going along the 405, like, right where the border of, like, where the next evacuation it's just it's amazing. I remember when I lived there during some of the last fires, you'd be driving the 4 5, and there would just be fire on both sides. And it almost feels like, it's, like that, what's that place in Florida with the adventure park or whatever? 6 Flags. It almost has us it because you can't believe that it's real.

I know you mean.

In Hollywood where shit is a lot of things are made and manufactured and created. So you're like, well, of course, this isn't real.

Well, it's 1 of the things about cities that are real strange, like, these modern cities where there's millions of people. And I saw this a lot during COVID, particularly in New York and LA where it's like it's almost like there's nothing that people won't just adjust to because they're kinda trapped there. You can't really get out. You can't, you know, and so Mhmm. It's almost like, alright.

Well, they're doing this now. Alright. I guess we gotta live that you know, in New York, it's just like, alright. There's homeless people all over the subways. That guy's jerking off.

I guess I gotta just, like, walk around here and get to my work because I got it. What else am I

gonna do? Better bring my cumbrella with me. Yeah. This is the kind of stuff it was. This is very intense.

This must have been, 2017 from Andrew Mutts. This is Wow.

That's a wild picture.

But, bro, this same highway, same spot, Skirball Drive. Keep playing that for a minute? I mean, that's insane. Like, how should you be able to drive this it just

I mean

It's very there's something very bizarre about the, like, juxtaposition of just going about your daily life while this craziness is happening right there.

People live there. There's people

Yeah.

Like someone right now in that car, like someone's wife calls their cell and they're just like, would you mind stopping at the store on your way home? Yeah. Like, we're out of milk or whatever. And they go, okay. Fine.

I'll stop by there and then just look out their window and they're like, oh, God's angry.

Alright. Yeah. Gosh. Hey, Siri, play, Spotify. Play, Firework by Katy Perry.

You know what I'm saying? There's somebody picking up a song and then realizing, maybe not right now or some guy smoking. He's like, oh, it's already fucked anyway. You

know? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, what? Is this really gonna be the problem?

It's just people be it's just people are still gonna be people. What else was something else that I wanna talk to you about? Oh, some of the Trump's picks that you're not excited about.

Marco Rubio at the state department, I hate. And what does the state department do? Well, I mean, there it's a pretty big responsibility. I mean, there is the state department basically interacts with the rest of the world on behalf of the United States of America. And in recent years, I mean, the state department is is involved in a lot of war making even as much as the defense department is.

And, I mean, the 2 2 examples I could think of, like, right off the top of my head were the war in Libya overthrowing Gaddafi was enormously, led by the state department under Hillary Clinton. And in 2014, the backing the Maidan Revolution that overthrew Yanukovych in Ukraine was mostly done by the state department. And so the Marco Rubio is like a real neocon warhawk and has been for many years.

Does neocon mean?

Well, neocon, at this point, has kind of like, I'm using it in kind of the informal sense. It's basically just come to mean, like the the war hawks who push for war after war after war.

Oh, they want war.

Always more regime change wars. Always the next target. Always the next thing. The the neo like the self Marco Rubio is not a self described neoconservative. The people who actually called themselves neoconservatives was actually like a small group of of people.

This is the Wikipedia probably has some good information on it here. But these were guys who really they really took power under George w Bush. A lot of them were in Reagan's government and in George h w Bush's government, but they really took over, when George w Bush was in power. But, yes, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Douglas Fyde, all these guys, Paul Wolfowitz.

Yeah. Do they make do we think that they make money off of war?

Well, I'm it's a fact that a lot of them work at thick think tanks that are funded by weapons companies. It's a fact that Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton. I mean, like,

these things are true. So they are

connected to interests that make lots of money off the wars. But so there a lot of them basically were they were not all, but a lot of them were Jewish. And a lot of they were leftists who they came over and kind of became conservatives in the second half of the twentyth century. And they were so they in the nineties, there were these, there was 1 major think tank that was called the Project for a New American Century. And they basically wrote out all their plans of, like, what they wanted to do back in the nineties.

And and the major thing was that they wanted the Project for a New American Century. The idea of it was that right. So this it was a neoconservative think tank in

Okay. DC.

And a lot of these same people, I mean, Robert Kagan and William Kristol were were the the guys who founded it. But if you look through the name of signatures, you'll see Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, you know, Richard Pearl, a lot of these guys. Now they basically they this was, if you could imagine, in the nineties, this is right after the Soviet Union collapses. This is where what Charles Krautzenheimer, who's another neoconservative who's dead now, he called the unipolar moment. And what that meant was that it's like, hey, for the first time in the world that for the first time in the history of the world, there is 1 global superpower that is more powerful than any other country that's ever existed.

Now that the Soviet Union's gone, it's ours. So what do you wanna do? Now there was this big divide amongst conservatives. A lot of conservatives, what are called the paleo conservatives, it was like Pat Buchanan and guys like that. They were like, well, now that the cold war is over, we can come home.

We were fighting this war because it was the cold war because it was the Soviet Union. But now that the Soviet Union's gone, we can disband NATO.

I want

him to listen to some Don McLean.

Yeah. That's right. Bring bring close all the bases. Bring everyone home. We could go back to being a normal country was the idea.

We don't have to rule the world. We were never supposed to rule the world. And and Pat Buchanan's idea, they were only doing this because the Soviet Union existed. But then there were these neoconservatives and they went, no, no, no, no, no. Now that we control the world, we have to come up with a project for the new American century.

We want another century. The 20th century was dominated by America and we wanna make sure the 21st century is dominated by America. And this is but I'm not exaggerating. You can go read these paper. You can go Google Project for a New American Century and you can find all this stuff.

And they said their plan was they were like, look Statement of principles they released on June 3, 1997. Yeah. There's if you go to the calls for regime change in Iraq, they might have a good link there that would be like, the document. I'm just blanking on the the name of some of the documents that they put out. But they basically said, no 1 can mess with us.

And so what we need to do right now is we need to have multiple wars in the Middle East. We need to have regime changes and get rid of all of the old allies of the Soviet Union, put in our people who we like. Specifically, advocating regime changes through a determined effort

to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The letter suggested that any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Hussein even if no evidence linked Iraq to the September 11th attacks.

Well, listen. You gotta understand a lot of this stuff was written this this is in the nineties. This is before the September 11th attacks that they were talking about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. They actually say there's 1 paper, and this is what the, the 911 truthers, they would love to hang

on to this. So they said they did 911 because they wanted this to happen.

Well, there's 1 thing. It was in the nineties. I can't remember what year it was, but I you could find this. But they say basically, they go through this whole thing of how we really wanna overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and then we wanna fight multiple wars in the Middle East and have multiple regime changes. Wow.

And they actually said in the paper, they go, but it would be very challenging to get enough popular support to do something like this short of another Pearl Harbor style attack. So they literally say, we really kinda need an attack on America in order to work up enough support to go fight these wars. Now that isn't that isn't proof that they did 911, but it does certainly indicate that

That they know the recipe.

Well, at the very least, when 911 happened, they went, yes. Now we got our so this is 1 of the the worst, you know, like, the worst thing that that ended up happening was that when 911 happens, George w Bush is president and all these motherfuckers are in power. So they got their opportunity. And right away after 911, and we know this because the 4 star general, Wesley Clark, himself said that he he was out of power at the time, but he went to the Pentagon and he said that he saw plans late 2,001 already drawn up for the invasion of Iraq. So, like, as soon as 911 happened, they were like, okay.

We're going to use this to go overthrow Saddam Hussein. Now, alright, if I could pull it back a few so a few years before 911

Mhmm.

In 1996

And in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly unless there were some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a New Pearl Harbor.

Yeah. So that's I mean, the this was their words.

And that's all the PNAC or whatever?

Yes. This is this is PNAC, the Project For A New American Century. Okay. Now, is that a lot of these same people involved here, but there was a letter okay. There was a letter written

Dark artist, Yeah.

So check this 1 out. In 1996, so just 4 years before this report, there's a a letter that was written by Richard Perle and, it was not Douglas Fife. It was Richard Perle and, Wormser and David Wormser was the other guy who wrote it. And so 2 of these neoconservatives. And they wrote this letter.

The letter is called a clean break, a new strategy for securing the realm. And it's written to Benjamin Netanyahu who in 1996 was the 1st year that he became prime minister. Okay? And in this basically, what this was all about is that they were the neoconservatives were saying, hey, here's the new strategy. Okay?

And the new strategy is in the early nineties, you had had these Oslo Accords, which were the, was there an Oslo process?

The piece and that was, like, the Oslo Accord. It was

to try to get, that was supposed to help with Palestine. Right? Yes. So Bill Clinton is famously was a big deal when when I was a kid. It was Bill Clinton had, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, the leader of the PLO and the the, prime minister of Israel here together to work out.

We're finally we're gonna do a 2 state solution and we're gonna make this deal. They they brought them together, shook hands. I mean, after years years, you know, decades of bloody fighting, this was like it seemed like an amazing step forward and Israel committed to what they call a peace process. So eventually essentially, they committed that they're like, you know this land that we know is not ours that we've been occupying since 1967? We do have to give this back to you.

Like, we have to give this to you and we have to have a 2 state solution of some sense. We will do that, but there has to be a process that we go through. So, you know, better than nothing at least. Right? So this is what what started.

Now then Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, was assassinated by a right wing Israeli by, yeah, by a Netanyahu supporter, assassinated him for betraying his own country and talking. But Israel was still on the hook for promising to eventually give the Palestinians their own state. And the the clean break memo and it's a little bit coded, but it's basically like, listen, We gotta get away from that. We gotta get away from this peace process. And the the idea of, like, giving the Palestinians their land, this threatens Israel's stability.

Now, for years, okay

I could see them thinking that though for sure.

Sure. Now for for many years, the thinking which culminated in the Oslo Accords, right, the reason why there was this peace process is that the thinking, the Yitzhak Rabin thinking was that, listen, you have the Arab world who hates Israel's guts over their treatment of the Palestinian people. And so you have to make peace with the Palestinians so that you can be friendly with the surrounding Arab world so that they don't all hate you and you can coexist and you can you can be prosperous. Right? Now, the clean break is essentially a break from that line of thinking and they go no no no no.

You don't need to make peace with the Palestinians so that you can then make peace with the broader Arab world. What you need to do is overthrow the regimes in the broader Arab world that are pissed off at you and that way you won't have to ever make peace with the Palestinians. You'll never have to give them land if we could just overthrow Saddam Hussein and then overthrow al Assad in Syria. And so they lay out this strategy and this is the the the clean break the clean break, excuse me. And these are our our top neoconservatives who end up in the George w Bush administration explicitly saying that the reason they wanna overthrow Saddam Hussein is because he's a problem for Israel.

And when, years a few years later when, 4 star general, Wesley Clark, who, by the way, recently, in a debate with my friend Scott Horton, admitted that these plans went all the way back to 96 and not just 2001, which he had said before. But this was the famous I don't know if you've ever seen it before, but the, 7 countries in 5 years. So this is Wesley Clark. You can pull up this video if you want to. It's it's pretty interesting and and has a lot.

This is when Are we

really down a rabbit hole right now?

We're doing

a we are?

Well, this is when

you told this is when

Rogan told you, if you wanna talk about Syria, I'll take you down a rabbit hole. But here's the rabbit hole.

11. About 10 days after 9:11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw secretary Rumsfeld and and deputy secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs

So he's talking about the guys from PNA.

Staff who used used to work for me. And 1 of the generals called me and he said, sir, you gotta come in you gotta come in and talk to me a second. I said, well, you're too busy. He said, no, no. He says, we've made the decision.

We're going to war with Iraq. This was on or about the 20th September. I said, we're going to war with Iraq? Why? He said, I don't know.

Wow. He said, I guess they don't know what else to do. So, I said, well, did they find some information collect connecting Saddam to Al Qaeda? He said, no, no. He says, there's nothing new that way.

They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq. He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments. And, he said, I guess if if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail. So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, are we still going to war with Iraq?

And he said, oh, it's worse than that. He said, he reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. He said, I just he said, I just got this down from upstairs, meaning the secretary of defense office today. And he said, this is a memo that describes how we're gonna take out 7 countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.

I said, is it classified? He said, yes, sir. I said I said, well don't show it to me. And I saw him a year or so ago and I said, you remember that? He said, sorry I didn't show you that memo.

I didn't show it to you.

I'm sorry. What did you say his name was?

I'm not gonna give you his name.

So that's that's essentially the part to show. But so there's so this

was joking around, you think, or he's being serious?

Oh, he's being serious. He was just asked about it recently, and he was like, oh, yeah. No. This is this happened. And he actually said in this more recent he had a a 1 on 1 debate against Scott Horton and he, when Scott brought this up, he goes, you know, it actually went back further than that.

I had seen those plans back in 96. It was the the neoconservatives. Right? And so the neoconservatives, the ones who were in charge of the the w Bush administration, or were at very high posts in that administration, this was their plan. And as they had mentioned in the clean break, explicitly for Israel.

Like, it was to change the dynamics so that Israel, what we would take out all of their enemies and put them in a situation where they never had to come through on the peace process. And so that's why or at least a huge part of the reason why we fought a war in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, in, why why we've, backed Israel through all of these proxy wars. It's all about that. And it's this is what even more so than their treatment of the Palestinians, this is the thing that I'm that that I'm furious at Israel about. It's like, what is with this, like, pressure of, like, lying my country's people into war after war after war that does nothing but create disasters for us?

Well, we always looked at then

as certainly, I think as the you start to get looked at as the bad guy if that's true. Yeah. You know, you start to get looked at at the bad guy if you invite me to come help you, you know, or if I have the bullets, you know, and you have me come along and and and fire the gun even if you give me the orders or whatever, I'm still a murderer. You know? Right.

I'm still complicit. A clean break, a new strategy for securing the realm is a policy document prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Pearl for Benjamin Netanyahu, then prime minister of Israel. Key points, abandoning the Oslo Accords, and the concept of a land for peace, reestablishing the principle of preemption rather than retaliation.

So just to be clear, because, again, they're saying these in kind of like and this is how they talk about it. Right? So it's all coded a little bit. Mhmm. But abandoning Oslo means the peace process.

The concept of land for peace, meaning, like, this concept that the Palestinians deserve their land. Get rid of that weird concept. And then number 2, think about how creepy that is. Reestablishing the principle of preemptive rather than retaliation. So in other words, we don't wait for you to attack us.

We just start attacking you right away because we know you're going to. So, essentially, giving up on the idea of a just war. Like, giving up on the idea of, like, oh, we were attacked and, therefore, we go to war. And instead, we'll just keep attacking you because we've decided you're going to attack us in the future.

But now part of you say if this is all true. Right? What you almost have to give Israel credit as well because they're fucking gangsters. That's another thing. It's like

No question.

Some of those people are like, you know, you hear people say stuff about, you know, why we're fun Israel and this and that and why you know, but then you're also like, well, if if like, they prob like, they did it. They if we're still playing by all these old rules of like, you know, like Game of Thrones style shit and fucking, it's a dog eat dog world and occupying land and all that kind of stuff. If you're still playing risk. Right? Yes.

But you're convincing everybody that we're not playing that way anymore, but you're still playing that way. It's fucking really gangster.

If might makes right and the only thing that matters are are the laws of conquest and who's winning is is winning, then okay. Sure. You gotta give it to them that, like, hey, you've done it. But, okay, if that's your feeling, then fine. But then you don't get to cry these tears about, oh, October 7th was so horrible and they did this to us because, hey, you're just playing the game of might makes right and whoever can kill the other side can kill the other side.

Yeah. And then also okay. Even if you're playing by those rules, I'll respect gangster. Like, I respect gangsters. Sure.

Yeah.

I just wanna know what the rules are.

But right. But then at the same time, the you also gotta understand that we live in a new world now and, like, we were all the stuff we were talking about before, like, people can talk about this stuff now and people can communicate. And I'm sorry, but if that's the case, then what I'm rooting for is what's best for my country. And none of these wars made my country better, you know. In fact, they made it much, much worse.

You know, all we got to show for the war in Iraq is is, you know, thousands of our bravest young boys dead, tens of thousands of them killing themselves in the wake of it. Tens of thousands more injured and horribly just a shell of themselves.

And unsure of what they're I think in and I don't know if people would wanna admit this or talk about it, and it may be anti American for me to say it. But I think the definition right now of of being American is frayed in some ways. But what they were fight I mean, the truth of let probably close your eyes at night even, like, what was I fighting for? You know? Yep.

And and maybe that's messed up. Is that messed up for me to say that? No. I'm just speculating. I don't know.

No. I don't think so. I've heard a lot of combat vets say the same thing. Yeah. So I don't think that's messed up at all.

And I think

that's I think that's right at the core of why they had you know, there were wars, you know, like World War 2 was was much more bloody and vicious than any of the fighting in the terror wars, and we didn't have suicide rates the way we do now. And I do think a huge part of that is because, like, those guys felt like, hey, we were liberating Europe. Like, there was they didn't come back and feel like, oh, what the fuck did I even do that for? You know? And a lot of these guys, they come back and they're like, oh, I was straight up lied to.

Like, I was lied. Oh, I was just a pawn in your than some rich guy's game, and that included me, like, doing all types of shit to people that is very hard for any civilized person to do. Oh, your conscience

can't hit. It's a it's a teeter totter.

Well, you immediately you know, you put yourself in a crazy situation. So, like, look. If I'm going to if I'm gonna break into your house with a gun, like, once I've already made that decision that I'm gonna break into your house with a gun, whatever justified me to getting to that point, there's now there's a whole different dynamic where now, like, okay. I could say, hey. I'm just trying to break into your house with a gun.

I'm I'm gonna be the good guy here. But if I break into your house with a gun and you run up at me with a gun, I gotta shoot at you now. And then once that's over and when I'm back home, you go like, I mean, from this guy's perspective, I broke into his house. Who was really the aggressor here? I mean, sure, I shot him because he raised his gun at me, but, really, I was the 1 who went and so this is what it's like for an invading arm.

And and also, it's not And what

were we even doing there? And when you find out that a lot of the people were Saudi Arabian or something and we didn't even deal with it, it's like, what was going on? Oh, I can't even imagine.

And it's also like there there's something to be said for the, you know, even if you, like, if you fought a guy let's say, like, you know, back in your in your drinking days or something like that, you got into a bar fight or something like that and you fight a guy who's around your size, you know, and you go and you end up, like, winning the fight even. It's like there's still something different about that than if you just went and beat up a dude who was like a third of your size. You know, like, at least when when we fought in World War 2, the Nazis were very powerful. It was at early in the war, it wasn't clear exactly who was gonna win. But Iraq, you know, for the US military to go fight or it's like, come on, dude.

This is a this is a joke. We took down their government in a matter of weeks. Remember they had

those videos of them training on, like, jungle gyms and stuff? Remember those videos? Oh,

yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think that was like Al Qaeda. Or something. But, yeah. It's it's still like yeah.

Yeah. That was their the the monkey bars or whatever. It's all just so ridiculous. There's no way you're gonna go fuck those people up and not be left with a little bit of a feeling like

Fuck. We beat

up the What did I just do? Yeah.

You beat up a weekend to do. Yes. Yeah. Damn. Who were some Trump picks?

Some other cabinet picks you're not sure about, you feel like?

I know I, I'm blanking on his name. I know his national security adviser. I really didn't, like, and I heard some statements from him that I didn't like. You know, Pete Hegseth was an interesting 1. I don't really know enough from Montana?

Is that that guy?

Is he from Montana? I'm not sure. I know he was a Fox News guy for a long time. I've met him

a couple times. Former Georgia congressman is up first. Let me see. What's he know about Pete Hegseth? Trump's, hegseth 40 4 has developed a close rapport with Trump, a military veteran and popular conservative media personality with a large following as of his own.

Yo. He hosted, like, the Fox Morning Show for for years.

Oh, I think I remember who he is now. America's white sons and daughters are walking away, and who can blame them? Well, I think he's talking about the military. Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. No. He was so I met him back in, I wanna say, like, 2016 or something like that. And he was, like I think he had pretty standard, like, Republican, you know, politics.

I think he he from what I've heard, he's kind of changed a bit over the years and has been become much more skeptical about a lot of the wars. I do remember there's 1 moment I always thought was really interesting that I saw him on 1 show on Fox News.

Mhmm.

And this was such a not Fox News type thing for him to talk about, but he brought up and went into pretty graphic detail the epidemic of warlords raping little boys in Afghanistan. And this was this was a major thing that a lot of the guys who served in Afghanistan talk about. But so when we were we were against the Taliban, we were trying to overthrow the Taliban, and a lot has been made in in America and and rightfully so about how the Taliban are really brutal on women's rights. They, you know, they don't let girls go to school. They don't let women have any type of freedom.

However, on the other side were these tribal warlords who we were propping up. And it is true that they would let the little girls go to school, but they would also rape the little boys. There's like an epidemic of it, and they'd they'd bring and so the dynamic was that our soldiers over there weren't allowed to say anything about that because they'd be like, well, listen, these are this is their customs and their way of life. And so they would talk about how they could hear the screams from the little boys, like, in their rooms and stuff. And so what He talked about it on Fox News which just kinda gave me the impression that I was like, oh, maybe this guy is willing to kinda like tell the truth in a thing where it's a little uncomfortable in an audience that isn't typically used to hearing that.

So we'll see. I don't know, though. He used to really support the wars. I'm not sure where

he is now. Interesting. Wow. There's a lot going on. Yes.

You think that Trump's, that things are gonna be different this time? Do you really think that say, there is this deep state. Right? Do you think we can really get away from it? Or it's a is it just a lost cause?

And and sometimes it's like, I almost just wish they my thing is, I just wish they would I I just wanna know. I don't like I don't like not knowing. Just tell me. I'll do what I'll do the game.

You know

what I'm saying? But tell me what the game is. Tell me what

the rules are. I understand that impulse. I I think that I think the best part of Trump winning is that there it's been the cultural effect of all of it, I think, has been amazing. Like, I I really think everything, like, from November to now has just been great. It's been great.

There's been this big reset that we needed in America. It's like the corporate media is crumbling. Wokeism is receding. Like, the insane kind of political correctness of the last few years seems to be, like, largely defeated. I think all of that is great.

I don't think the deep state is going anywhere in in the next few years. But that I I don't like, in turn I'm very optimistic long term. I think that, you know, it's it's easy to say, like, we're never gonna beat this thing and it's all it's always gonna be this way. They have so much power. We have so little.

But the truth is, like, you know, communism fell. Slavery was abolished. America declared independence from the British monarchy. You know, these things all would have seemed impossible and you could have easily said, oh, this is just gonna be here forever. It's just the way of the world.

But it it it wasn't. Those things are gone now. And I think there's no reason why America can't have, like, a great kind of a great reformation, a great return to the the best things about America, a huge increase in liberty and decrease in awful state corruption. Like, I don't see any reason why that can't happen, especially when they don't have the propaganda machine anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, it I've always I've always thought, like, the sand like, it all gets remembered. Right? Like, I think sometimes it's like, are we just is is America still suffering from, like, what it did to the Native Americans here?

You know? And I know that's kinda wild, but they had, like, the, there was a line that they put. I think it was on the Mississippi called the something frontier, general frontier or something, where they're, like, we'll prom it was, like, just a deal that they'd made with the Native Americans. We promised we will never cross here. This is your land.

It will always be your land. And then within 30 years,

it

was like, you know. And it's like, I just feel like the ground remembers. It's like sometimes it's like, you're just you can't completely escape sin, I don't think, you know, or wrong. I don't think you can completely escape, but you can feel like you can. And you might in your generation, in your life.

But what you're gonna leave is something that's not it's in the end, it all has to be even. And so I just feel like, you know, like, the ground just keeps the score.

Yeah. There was something was it to you? I can't remember. But there was something Jordan Peterson said about that that he was, like, how you can't get away with lying, how you can't, like, twist the fabric of reality and it not snap back at you, and there is something to that. I don't know if it's exactly perfect, but, like, there is something to, like, where no matter what you know, it's like it it's true, like, in a relationship.

Like, you know, if you think, like, oh, maybe you're like, oh, I could get away with treating my wife shitty. And maybe you even can because she'll take it for a while. But, like, ultimately, there's gonna be a price to pay for that. You kinda can't get away

with it. Be a Dateline episode.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's

so cool. Are gonna side with her. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's all gonna cut You can't

Well it's the same way you could stay up you could stay up for 3 days in a row and not sleep. But then like on that 4th day, you're gonna just fall out and be in deep because like you owe REM sleep.

Right.

You owe it. Like, you sorry. We gotta the universe has a receipt for you of REM sleep that you owe for the last week.

The invoice.

And there's there's something about how, like, you know, it's like, okay. I could, like, I could go on my treadmill right now and, like, go run for 20 minutes and that will suck. I hate those 20 minutes when I go run on my treadmill. Or I could eat a big piece of cheesecake and just love the next 20 minutes and feel so good. But there's gonna be a price to pay for that.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna feel better about myself. I'm gonna be in better health if I do the running. There's just this weird thing with the universe where it's like you kinda can't cheat the system and if you try to cheat the system, there's always a price associated with it and now you owe that price. It may come later in life.

It may whatever. You know, like, if I if if I wanna, like whatever it is. If I wanna be really shitty to my wife now, it's, like, maybe I think that gets me some advantage in the short term. But then when my son's older and he remembers that and he hates me, it's, like, oh, okay. There's the price for me not being good to his mom.

So you always like in life in general, you're always better off if you air on the side of, like, doing the right thing so that you don't owe these prices later in life. I see it all the time. You see it with, like, old men who were like shitty drunk dads and were and now they're alone and they're old alcoholics and they're like, oh, man. The ultimate loser here is you. Like, you got like a grandkid you never met, you know?

And you got it's like this You can't cheat this game. So you're better off just doing the right thing and not accruing all these these debts. Yeah.

I, what do you think about Elon and Vivek? Do you think that that is, is that really something that's gonna have an effect on on things? Who do they have to answer to because they're not an actual government entity. Is that correct?

Yeah. So it's it's it's it's ridiculous, but it's also really interesting. And yeah, Donald Trump just gave him a made up department that they're in charge of. So they're not technically a a government department. Department of government I think they did.

But it's not a real government department.

Government efficiency does. So it's not real. But this I've been saying this for a while. I feel like we've entered this kind of, like privatized communism, I call it. Mhmm.

Where and and you could call the and and this wouldn't maybe be considered communism, but it's privatized democracy. Right? It's like we have like, we don't have the post office anymore. We have Amazon. Right.

We have email. You know, it's like it's all been privatized. Right? We don't really realize it. There's still everybody's like, the government sucks.

It's like, yeah. But the government's a company now. It's some other company that's doing the shit that the government used

to do. Well, right. It's so instead of the game because because what it is is that in most people's minds, they have kind of, roughly at least, the idea of, like, capitalism versus socialism. And I understand. I'm speaking, like, like, with a broad brush here.

But, like, they're like, okay. So, like, on 1 hand, you have, like, the government is isn't involved and it's all, like, competition in private companies. And then on the other hand, you have like the government's much more involved and the government takes over these services. But really, what we have isn't either of those. What we have is gigantic multinational corporations that long ago bought off the government.

So you have this huge government that's involved, but it's just working for these private interests.

But it's just wrapping paper. Exactly.

Yeah. So, like, I think that's I think that's exactly the correct way to look at it.

But the belief is that we still have this thing of freedom, and you still do kind of have democracy in some ways. Right? You could still run for an office. You could still vote for someone. But it's it's certainly feels things feel more manufactured.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, even, like, that's why I think very the Uber wealthy, they don't care that much about the police and shit because they have their own security. They have they're not fucking worried about that.

Well,

that's the crazy thing. And it has really it's been 1 of the things that I think turned Americans against Hollywood, But there's something about, like, kind of the, like, elite progressive, you know, like, the the people who lecture everybody else about guns and support gun control, but they have armed security. Right. The people who are offended that Donald Trump talks about building a wall, but they live in a gated community. The people who, you know, go Talk

about climate change but then take private planes everywhere.

Dude, you could go endless, endless examples of this. They talk about you. If you're upset about what they're teaching in your local public school, they say you're a bad person. Meanwhile, their kids go to private school. They don't have to deal with what's going on in the you know what I mean?

It's like at every they're totally insulated from the effects of the policies that they support. And so, you know, anyway, to go back to the Doge thing, what I think so I I had a dinner with Vivek, like, a couple months ago.

People say he's a

neat man.

I never met him.

He's I I like him a lot. He's he's, I've gotten to know him pretty good over

the last few years.

Bangladeshi or Indian guy?

He's he's Indian, but he's American. He was born here. Yeah. Yeah. But he's, first of all, he's brilliant.

He's very, very successful. And I will say, you know, I won't, like, divulge too much stuff that we said in private, but he is really big on this Doge thing. And he's like, listen, man. Me and Elon got some tricks up our sleeves and we're gonna get some we're gonna be very effective with this. Essentially, what they're gonna do is make policy recommendations.

Mhmm.

And their recommendations already are gonna be massive cuts in government spending, which is

Oh, yeah.

I think the absolute correct answer. Me too. And so I'm at least excited to see that, like, that's being interjected into the public. And him and Elon are both I mean, these are brilliant guys. So maybe they could really come up with something here.

I agree. Well, it's just amazing how where our country keeps going more and more in debt. In the end, we're gonna have a loan to some other country, and that country is just gonna be like, now you belong to us. Right?

Or the whole thing has to, like, crash, and then we're we're setting ourselves up for For failure. And and even just now. Right?

Like And I don't wanna sound too gloom and doom too.

But even just now, it's like, forget it. Like, the debt is a major problem, and we're going off, like, the fiscal cliff, and we're not gonna be able to keep this up. But even just right now, the reason we're racking up so much debt is because the government spends so much money every year. And this is that is the corruption. It's not like a symptom of the corruption.

It's like you got an organization in Washington DC that, by force, extracts $6,000,000,000,000 of wealth away from the American people every year and then give it out to their connected friends. It's like

the most like It's fucking it's, it's laundering.

Yeah. It's it's the most criminal shit in the world you could imagine. The only reason why we don't think of it as criminal is because it's so big and successful. But if anyone did it on a small level, you'd be like, oh, I know what that is. That's a gang.

That's a crime. Like that's and and and even and and like I said before, the other big thing is that in order to have such a big government, what you need is because you can never tax people enough to pay for all this shit and they can't even borrow enough money to pay for all of it. So they have to just constantly be printing money. And that sends us into living in an inflationary world where everything's constantly getting more expensive and the value of your dollar is constantly going down. And, again, this is if you're rich, it's fine.

If you own stuff, you can kinda protect yourself from it because the value of your your assets goes up too. But for middle class and working class and people on a fixed income, this just destroys them, absolutely destroys them. I mean, look, the price inflation over the last few years has just, like I don't even know. You know, the Federal Reserve keeps numbers on this stuff, but don't know if they've done it over the recent wave of price inflation. But how many marriages get destroyed by this?

You know, like, people commit suicide over stuff like this. I mean They don't care.

Yeah. And they don't think about that. It's the same way they didn't think whenever they, they don't care. They don't it's simply they didn't care that every, AA room and meeting was gonna shut down when they Yeah. When they started COVID, you know, or whenever COVID started.

It's the same way that they didn't care about the pill epidemic that's taken 100 of thou 600,000 lives. And not only not to mention the the, ripple effect of those deaths that have broken the hearts of mothers and and children and wives and husbands. They don't care. I just that's what it feels like anymore. It feels like they don't fucking care.

So what can I do now? Well, it's also look at But then also, I also have to remember that throughout history, people have lived in this exact same space, feeling like their government did not care about them.

And and worse. I mean, in much worse space.

Worse. You're right. So that's why I think other countries, like, well, this is hey. Welcome. Yeah.

You know, welcome to what it's really like, you know, to exist.

Yeah. Okay. Fine. But, like, at the same time, that doesn't mean should have better. Yes.

That's right. Look. I mean, so there's there's lessons to take from all of that stuff. Right? Like, there are people in the 20th century, we had 2 world wars, you know?

Like Yeah. Tens of millions of people just got caught up in this for no fault of their own at all. And I'm not even talking about just like the standard textbook history. Like, there were people who just happen to be Germans. You know what I mean?

They weren't they didn't necessarily even support the Nazis or anything like that. There were ethnic Germans. Uh-uh, Daryl Cooper just put out the prolog for his new World War 2 series. And the first 1, it's so good. But all talking about, like and this is like a forgotten chapter of history.

But after World War 2, ethnic Germans, not even living in Germany, weren't even living under the 3rd Reich, just in Eastern Europe, just got totally, like, slaughtered by the millions, raped and beaten and ethnically cleansed. Like, there were so and that that this is obvious. I only lead with that because it's like the 1 that people don't know as much about. But, like, obviously, there were Jews who just happened to live in Germany or in Eastern Europe. There were Oh, yeah.

Russians and Poles and just

all types of people who just got destroyed. So no. Okay. People have had it much worse. But at the same time, I do think it's your point being you know, especially when you see, like, the corporate media and you see the way they freak out over, January 6th.

The way they freak out over, you know, whatever it what would be. Any the latest thing Donald Trump says. And then you sit there and you go, yeah. You a 100,000 people die of overdoses in this country every year. And by the way, calling them overdoses is not entirely accurate.

Poisoning is a good term. Yeah. Poisoning is more I mean, when you're talking about the Fentanyl thing, I mean, at least for me, when my whole life, when I thought of what the word overdose meant, what overdose meant to me was essentially like you, you become such a drug addict that you build up such a tolerance that you gotta take so much drugs in order to get high. That eventually, you have to take so much that it kills you before you even get to, like, feel good. Mhmm.

But that's not the same thing as someone thinking they're taking a Percocet and it actually has Fentanyl in it and then they just kill themselves. That's not exactly an overdose. Right? Poisoning. Yeah.

You got poisoned.

And that company didn't even face any random causes. They're still allowed to come into America. I know it.

And this isn't even something that comes up.

People care, but they can't do anything. Right.

Well, what I just say is, like, it's just like say say, like, okay. I understand that, like, some people broke some windows of the capitol building on January 6th and I understand that AOC was real scared for 20 minutes or whatever. Okay. But, like, that the amount of coverage and outrage that that gets compared to a 100,000 of your fellow Americans being poisoned to death every year I know. And it's not like it's a 1 to 1.

It's a 100 to 0.

I know.

Like, this just doesn't even come up. It's not even like

a Until Hollywood is like, oh, we'll make a series about it. Yeah. So we'll make now we'll make money off of it.

You will this I'll say this, dude, and this is like I'm I'm mildly embarrassed to admit this. But as somebody who's, like, obsessed with this shit and talks about politics all the time, it wasn't until Bobby Kennedy ran for president and he goes, he goes, you know, America leads the world in chronic illness. And I remember being like, is that right? Do we lead the like, I didn't even know that we led the world in chronic illness. And there's like just it took Bobby Kennedy.

Why is no 1 else who's run for president ever brought this up? How is this not a thing that we all talk about all the time?

Well, Bernie Sanders talks about a good bit of it a lot.

Well, he talks about Bernie Sanders talks about the health insurance stuff. He talks about the Medicare for all stuff. But I never really heard anyone talking about what Bobby's talking about in terms of, like, why are we so sick? Like, forget whether you think we need universal health care or private health care or whatever. Like, whatever health insurance you're talking about.

I'm saying, like, why do why are we so sick as a people to begin with? Yeah. And that's more about, like, what we're eating, what the, you know, like, what, what we're consuming. I know.

But okay. Then, say if there's these forces and they see, like, okay. We can poison them this much and we can make the money here and this. But why what do they get out of all of it? Or do you think there's just such a level of wealth and control that after generation and generation, you just start to see it as a game almost.

Like, that's that's the part I can't understand because I couldn't understand. Like at a certain point you start to do well and then you wanna help other people. Like whether it's like build a facility for drug people or whatever it is. Right? Like get clean water, like do something pot.

Like I can't understand getting to the part where you start to see people just as nothing more than some, than basically ghosts to launder your money through, really.

Well, I do think that when you get well, obviously, like, so control. A lot of it must

be control.

A lot of it's control. So much of it is business. You know what I mean? Like, so much of it is just like, there are these companies that make tons of money off this shit. But I do think that there's, like, a mentality that gets developed when you get to a certain level of power where, like, you know, the same thing like with, you know, like, if there's companies, like, if there's a little mom and pop store, they kinda know everyone in the area and they kinda care a little bit more.

They're more connected to the community. When you're talking about like a giant corporation, you're just kind of like a cog in a machine to them, like, they're but when you get to, like, the top top level of power and I think they've been pretty explicit about this. I mean, Henry Kissinger pretty much, like, admitted this in his own words that people are pawns on a chessboard. And that's the way they look at it. It's not they don't believe that they are, like, they're almost above what me and you would consider morality.

You know what I mean? It's like they're they're at this super high level where it's like, listen, we're do we're moving these pawns over here so that the Soviet Union collapses. Is. And, oh, yeah. It sure does suck if you happen to be a Vietnamese person, but we're at war with the Soviet Union and so you're just pawns on a chessboard and that and that's what they're doing with Ukraine right now.

What they're doing with Ukraine right now is just using them as cannon fodder to hurt Russia. And they and they pose as the ones who care about Ukrainians so much. But, really, they just led them down as John Mearsheimer said, the primrose path. They went, go ahead. Fight this big bully who could totally fuck you up.

Go ahead. Fight him. We got your back. To Ukraine? Yeah.

To Ukraine. And by we got your back, not like the military is gonna come in and actually like back you up, but we'll just give you weapons so you can keep going out there and dying. But it'll hurt the Russians also, and that's the goal. And you're like, it's a it's a real sickness if you start looking at human beings that way. Yeah.

What did

Kissinger say bring that back up? He said military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.

Is that real? Oh, jeez. I knew he had some quotes about that, but that 1 even surprised me. I was like, oh, jeez.

Where was he from? Kissinger?

Where was he originally from? Eastern Europe?

It's a good question. Henry Kissinger. Bring him up. Get to there.

This is the secretary of state under Richard Nixon. Scroll up. Born in Germany. Okay. Born in Germany.

A Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution. Maybe that's what made him believe that. That probably was what led to his belief.

Oh, I mean, I'm sure it I'm sure that had a profound influence on who he was. Yeah. Man, it's

heartbreaking. Then at Harvard University, very smart guy. Yeah. Oh, he was

a genius. Super, super genius. But, look, I mean, I think a lot of that even, you know, when you talk about the Nazi connection for his views, but a lot of that a lot of that is true with the Israel stuff too that it's like, you know, a lot of this it's like people who, like, went through a lot of the shit that they went through got it in their minds that, like, you do whatever you have to do to make sure you're the 1 in power

to survive. Yeah. I get it. Look. That's what I'm saying.

The sand remembered or, you know, or the it all there's you can't it it's all remembered. The big brain of a time, it holds it all. You know? The whatever it is, the soul of time, it holds it all. Yep.

And it's, it's interesting. It's fascinating. It's painful. It's it's life. You know?

It's death. It's all of it. It's like I think it's just like, I don't know. Some of it makes you fucking sad, you know, and some of it, like yeah. Maybe it's easy for me to just sit here and, say things from, my home that has heat in it, you know.

I don't know. I don't

But that's life. Right? Is that there's, like, life is that there's, like, constantly tragedy all around us, but then there's beauty all around us also. Yeah. And then if you can kind of, like, reconcile yourself with the tragedy and accept that, you can really enjoy the beauty in in life.

Yeah. And that's, you know, that's the best we could try to do. But, yes, you're right. We speak from a a position, as the lefties would say, from a position of privilege and we're able to but at the same point, like, my thing is kinda like if you are in that position and we're fortunate enough to, like, be in a heated studio and in a comfortable environment or whatever, then, like, okay. So then we should try our best to kinda rise up above like what I was saying before we're like, hey, if you're an Israeli Jew and 1 of your family members were killed on October 7th, of course, you're gonna be like, go get those guys.

And if you're a Palestinian who saw 1 of your kids get killed by an IDF, you know, mission, of course, you're gonna be like, let's go get those guys. But from our position of not being in either of those positions, we should at least be able to go like, okay, let's try to calm things down. Let's try to like push for peace. Let's try to go like we understand how both of you could feel that way but understand where the other 1 feels the same way you do. So like at least sometimes there's an advantage to be, like, on a perch in a little bit of a better situation where you can kinda see things and go, okay.

Let me at least call balls and strikes on this and not just kinda flame more conflict which is what people on the ground are doing.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I've always just, like, I don't know. I I think I just if I feel like something's the underdog, then I'll air I'd rather air on that side Yeah. For me.

It's like, somebody's, oh, you got mad somebody's gonna get mad. You fucked up. You've you chose the underdog. Like, alright. Yeah.

My bad. You know? I just that's like I just think that's how I feel. How do we know, like Dave, tell me this. Is there any country where if you live in the country, you have to, you have to, like, like, commit to that country.

Well, in what sense? Like, what do you think

America just starts to seem like this place where everybody can just commit for their other country if they want to.

Yeah. Well, I think that's 1 of the things that is been a big catalyst for Donald Trump. Right? The whole America first thing. Like, this idea that, hey, like, we should be for our country.

I think that there was particularly after World War 2, which is really when you had the rise of, like, the the current world order. I mean, obviously, the Soviet Unions were part of it and then they fell, but the the kind of American dominance started really after World War 2.

Mhmm. I

mean, we won and we dropped the nukes. And the situation was that all of the industrialized world had been destroyed except for us. And the war touched everyone, basically, every power except us. And we lost some men there, but we still came out, like, with the homeland. We had a

big head start.

Yes. Well, let's start. We got in late, and we developed the nukes. And so just it all and we used nukes. And so it was like, oh, they have this new weapon that nobody else has.

And so after that, the the Which was sick, by the way, too. Horrific. Oh, just like I mean, totally inexcusable and disgusting and Which

almost makes you wonder, do we have our just our judgment day coming, you know?

Well, I or Not us.

We didn't do it. You well, that

you would hope. You would hope that the universe can pick out who was involved at least to some degree and who wasn't. But in some ways, you know, there's this great old, John Quincy Adams quote, which I'll probably butcher, but maybe you'll pull up so I get but it's like, it was something like if we go around the world looking for monsters to destroy, we will become the dickatrice of the world, but we will lose our own soul. And that was which is pretty profound that he said this back in the early 1800, I believe. What does

the dickatrice mean?

Like dictator. Like a female version of of dictator. So, like, we'll rule we'll rule the world, but you'll lose your own soul or something like that. I might be butchering this quote, but that's essentially the the gist of it. The point was that you're like, oh, you go dominate the world, but you lose your own soul.

Like, you you know, you're you kinda you take over everything else, but you lose the essence of who you are.

Well, it's the same thing as, like, being like I think like somebody like Jim Carrey or some type of a celebrity. You put so much of you out there Right. That you are all over, but you don't know who you are anymore. Right.

And there's all there's a weird, like, you know, call like, there's a weird equation to that. But after World War 2, America kind of took on the mantle of being like, okay. Well, we're gonna rebuild Europe. And and there were arguments for why we should. We're we're gonna we're gonna be the defense of Europe.

We formed NATO so that we could protect Western Europe because they weren't in a position to do it for themselves. And it just it's almost like we became then the country that was always in the business of welfare for other countries. Right. And I think what happened with Donald Trump where a lot of people were is that aft particularly after the years of the terror wars that were such disasters is that people started to kinda reassess that and be like, well, look. We're not in a situation right now where Europe is destroyed and you know what I mean?

Like, where the, like, the only ones unscathed by this war. Europe is rich. They're fine. A lot of these other countries are, like, in they're stable. And we're $36,000,000,000,000 in debt.

Our our dollar is getting weaker. Our culture is, like, totally pitted against each other. Things feel like they're kind of falling apart here. And so it's just it's a different proposition to go like, hey, you know, my family is taken care of and doing really good and I'm gonna help out this other family who's like friends of ours. That's a totally different proposition than, like, when my family's falling apart and are broke and hungry helping out somebody else.

Like that's like that's just a different thing. And so I do think like there should it's it's healthy and normal and natural that there should be a movement in America that's concerned with America.

Oh, yeah. Well, you have people too who's who lost their grandfathers, who lost their siblings, who lost their great grandfathers to, helping liberate other groups and helping Yeah. Around the world, helping be those, military presence around the world, you know, and who served. And they thought that that meant something, you know.

Yeah.

That there was some value, that it meant something, that the American flag hasn't hadn't just been pitted by hadn't just been divided as if it was a conservative emblem. That's crazy to think that somebody got fucking half of America to think that the American flag stands for, like, rednecks or something. Yeah. Think about that shit. People don't wanna think about that.

People don't wanna think that, oh, that's true. There's a little part of me that caught that took that bait. You know what I'm saying? And wondering who's who has put the bait in front of you and then see the hook, man. There's a fucking hook.

Yeah.

Well, like, if loving America is right wing and free on a hook.

And then

Free speech is right wing and working out is right wing. Yeah. Well So shouldn't we all be right wing then? Like, what are we even talking about now?

Like And then and then I think that that's all changed. It's like you have democrats that are republicans. You know, you have people that don't know. You have a ton of people that wanna be libertarians that don't know what it is. And so that's 1 of the reasons why I think we wanted to learn from you what it is.

What is a libertarian idea of health care look like? What does that look like?

Well, I look. I mean, the libertarian idea with all of this stuff is to, like, actually get the government out of the way and let there be a real market. Yeah. I mean, so much of the problem in health care in general is that it's just it's not a real market like any other market. The the prices you good luck even finding out what the prices are.

It's the only business you could walk into where no 1 in the room knows what the price is. Yeah. And it's not and and because, like, you know, I remember, is there's this 1 time that my it was, like, years ago. Like, it was, I think, before we got married, but me my wife was, like, she had a month where she had a lapse in her insurance and so she had, like, 1 month without insurance before she got on mine or something.

Mhmm.

And then and she had blood work done the month that she didn't have insurance. So we get some bill, you know Like blood

work or whatever? Oh, like, okay.

Yeah. Like, taking her blood. And so we get a bill for, like, $1400. And my wife calls them and she's, like, oh, yeah. I I think what happened was she she went to the doctor when she still had the insurance, but then they sent it to the lab after her insurance expired before the new 1 kicked in.

So she's stuck with this bill or whatever. And they and she goes, she goes, oh, so this, like, fell, like, in my lap so, like, I don't have insurance. And they go, oh, you're uninsured? And she was like, yeah. And they go, oh, we'll knock 70% off.

Wow. Just like that. Now, party I remember in the moment being kinda like or this is many years ago when I was, I'm doing better now than I was then. But at the time, I was like, oh, sweet. We just knocked 70% off.

But then as soon as I'm like, sweet. I'm like, wait a minute. That's all? The prices are inflated by 70% for everybody else who has, who who has insurance? It's like this and it's all because of these crazy overregulation, over government involvement.

It's just literally things work better when you have a free market and there's real competition. Yeah. So that's the libertarian, answer to almost everything is like deregulate it. Let there be real competition. Let it be privatized.

But if these private companies fail, let them go out of business. Don't come in and bail them out. Let them actually have to compete for who can provide a better service to their customers. That's when we get good things. Yeah.

And there's a and another part in that book where the, Marty Makari, that doctor who's just who got, is gonna be appointed by Trump. He he talked about how, yeah, there was a guy whose father had, like, a stroke, and they kept him in the hospital, and they could do a procedure, and they're like, it's like a $150,000. And the guy's like, what the fuck? We can't do that. And they just, they kept kind of, like, holding him off, and eventually, they're like, yeah, it's $15,000.

Yeah. Just, like

Yeah. It's just insane.

Every couple of days, they would just call them back, like, we'll do it now. We'll do it now. And he he he was visiting America from another country, and he decided just to go back to his own country and have it done there. But he was just shocked at how just the price went down because they were gonna possibly lose the patient. Right?

Which is the way that businesses should be. The potentially you could lose the customer. What about the Federal Reserve? What is it? And is it fucking us?

Oh, yeah. Totally. Oh, it's the worst

thing I've

heard about this. Ben asked me.

Worst thing about our government is, is

because I noticed this. If I make money and I pay taxes on it. Right? And then if I use that money to pay somebody for something, they have to pay taxes on it. If I die, I get taxed, like, 30, 40% on the money that I'd already paid taxes on.

Oh, yeah. And then you like, I I mean, it's insane. And then when you if you think about how much money is actually taxed, I mean, like, it's not just like that you pay taxes on, but then if you go and buy something from someone else, then they gotta pay taxes on the money that you already paid taxes on. It's just it's nutty. But the Federal Reserve is the central bank that's, so the it's it's all kind of confusing because they call it, like, the Federal Reserve and so you kinda get this impression that it, like, well, it's part of the federal government where they keep reserves of some money or something like that, but that's not what it is at all.

It's technically not even a part of the government. It is. It's the worst of the government and and the worst of not the government. Right? So it was created by an act of congress in 1913.

Okay. It's the the, treasurer the head of the Federal Reserve is appointed by the president. So it's, in that sense, very much a part of the government. Okay. However, it gets to maintain its status as a private independent company.

They print the money and then lend it to us. So they charge us for using dollars at all. They make money off the fact that we use our own currency, that they're just given the right to print out of thin air So

they're a bank.

In effect, in effect, print out of thin air. I mean, most of it's done on computers these days. Mhmm. But so what they do is they it was created by a bunch of powerful bankers. There's a great book on this called The Creature from Jekyll Island, that really goes through the whole history of it.

But unfortunately Let's go

to that book, The Creature from Jekyll Island.

Oh, it's a good 1, by, g Edward Griffin. Okay. The Yeah.

Let's see. We have to order it right now, but let's go back to

that Yeah.

It's a great book.

I highly recommend everyone reads. Also, Ron Paul and the Fed is another great book on the Federal Reserve also. But so they are so, essentially, they print the money and then lend it out. Now they lend it out to what are called their member banks, meaning all the big banks. So JPMorgan Chase, Schwab Yep.

Bank of America, all the

Wells Fargo.

Yes. So they lend it out to them and then those banks lend money to the rest of us at a much higher interest rate than they got it for. So all of the banks now are in the business essentially of getting free money. They just get the money at low interest and lend it out to us at higher interest. So they all get rich off of this.

It allows the government to spend as much money as they want to because they can print as much money as they want to while it destroys the currency of the rest of of us. And the worst thing about the Federal Reserve from from my perspective is that it lets the government get away with just really evil things that they would never be able to get away with if they couldn't print all the money to so, you know, you could do lockdowns and then just hand out checks cause you can print the money. But if you couldn't hand out the checks, you probably wouldn't be able to get away with lockdowns. You could fight a war in Afghanistan for 20 years. Now if you had to tax people for that war, if you had to say, okay.

Listen. We wanna fight a war in Afghanistan so every quarter, we're gonna come to you for another, you know, 10% of your income. There'd be massive pressure from people to end the war. Right. But since they just print the money, they're able to keep it going for for 20 years.

Wow. And it also does a lot to, like, distort markets and just mess everything up because they pump money into markets where there's no real demand for there to be growth there. It's a it's a huge scheme. It's privately owned. We don't even have real information on it.

There's never been a full audit of the Federal Reserve. There was Ron Paul was the only 1 in congress who was really pushing for an audit. Mhmm. I I think Thomas Massie also was, but never got it done.

The federal government sets the salaries of the board's 7 members, 7 of the board's 7 governors and and it receives all the system's annual profits after dividends on member banks' capital investments are paid. The Federal Reserve earned a net income of a 100,200,000,000 in 2015 and transferred 97,700,000,000 to the US Treasury. So they make some money in there. They made $5,000,000,000. Yeah.

But there's but the thing is that their books have never been opened and audited, so we don't really know exactly what's going on. Are we banked? Are we based on gold or not? No. We haven't been on gold for many years.

We have it was in 1973 or 71, was it? Nixon suspended the gold standard, and we've never been back on it since then. 71. Sorry. I shoulda had that 1.

Why did they suspend the gold standard?

Well, so basically Wait.

Let me say the gold standard was a monetary system that linked a country's currency to a set amount of gold. So so our currency was actually backed by an actual Yes.

The gold. The idea was that you could, for every dollar you printed, you had to put away a certain amount of gold. So okay. So what I was talking about before after World War 2, Europe is destroyed. America is still left stable.

This is when America, they created what was known as the Bretton Woods agreement. So, essentially, America was like the dominant power in the world. We had the huge portion of the world's gold at this point. And so the deal that we came up with was essentially that other other countries would peg their currency to the dollar and we would peg the dollar to gold. So you were kinda on a dollar stand you were kinda on a gold standard if you went on a dollar standard.

Got it.

And we set the price at $35 an ounce. So for every $35 we printed, we had to put away an ounce of gold. Okay? So this In the Fort Knox? Yeah.

I think that's where it was supposed

to be.

Also, has not been audited, but I think that's where it was supposed to be. Empty, I'm sure, dude. Who the it's, I think, long gone. But so okay. So then you have, so this starts in the, what year?

Late forties? I'm sorry. Bretton Woods started? I I wanna say forties. Yeah.

The gold standard was largely abandoned during the great depression before being reinstated in a limited form.

It had so we had gotten off of it and then gotten back onto it. But so what happened is when we're we're on the Bretton Woods standard, we go onto it in the late forties, so through the fifties and into the sixties. Okay.

And that

standard was early it was it was before the war ended. Is that right? Okay. And that

standard was that for every ounce of gold, we had so much money.

That's right.

$35. Yes. And then other countries had panned their, or using the dollar.

Currency to the dollar. And So they're holding dollars. Right. But the dollars are redeemable in gold. Right.

Like, that's the idea that you could trade them in for gold anytime you want gold.

So it's all real.

There was

a checks and balances system.

Right. Except that they we started cheating and we started cheating really blatantly. And so in the 19 sixties, if you could think about it, right, America is doing a lot. In the 19 sixties

Oh, yeah.

We have the great society. We created, Medicare and Medicaid. We put a man on the moon. We fought the war in Vietnam. America is just spending a ton of money.

And so what happened is that our a lot of people were holding dollars.

Right.

And they're holding dollars that they're promised are good are convertible to gold. And I believe it was mostly led by France, but I think England was involved in this too. But they essentially called America's bluff.

Mhmm.

And they went, you know, you guys are spending a whole lot of money. I'm thinking we'll take our gold. Like, we got all these dollars. We'd like to convert them into gold. So they called America's bluff and Richard Nixon was like, no.

And so the way the way he spun it, it was just a giant default. Slick Rick. It was just a huge default to the world. For sure. Like, we're just not no.

But the way he spun it, which is actually pretty laughable if you it was he was like, you know, the French are trying to destabilize the dollar and we will not let this attack stand. So I have to temporarily, those were his words, temporarily suspend the convertibility from dollars into gold. So he basically told them, go fuck yourself. You know, we don't have gold, but we do have a much bigger military than you, so you will take this, you know. And then, you know, throughout the years, I mean, America just came to continue to dominate the world so there was no real option for France to do nothing.

But it ever since then, we have not been on a gold standard or any standard whatsoever. It's They can print as much money as they want to with no limit.

It says the Nixon shock was the effect of a series of economic measures, including wage and price freezes, surcharges on imports, and the unilateral cancelation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar gold. Although Nixon's actions did not formally abolish the existing Bretton Woods System of International Financial Exchange, the suspension of 1 of its key components effectively rendered the Bretton Woods system inoperative. Wow. And what happened to all the gold in Fort Knox then?

Your guess is as good as mine. Can we look that up?

What happened to all the gold after the Bretton Woods system?

I don't know what

I mean, I think they would say they still have it, but, again, it's like much like the Federal Reserve. I I believe I don't think Fort Knox has been audited in all of this time.

Wow.

So I don't think we really know. You know?

We gotta get in that, bitch. I'm gonna ask Trump if I get to see him. Vance would give us an honest answer, I think.

Are you going to the inauguration?

I think I'm gonna go because, well, first of all, I got excited to go. I got invited to go and then I never will get to go again.

Are you going? Yeah. Just because I got invited and it's just kinda like, how could you not go? I mean, it's just it's like it's American history and it's also this was such a big election too. It feels like such a seismic shift.

And I got invited, and I'm just like, come on. I mean, I don't know. I I I can't I'm too much of a history nerd to not be like Yeah. You have to

go. That. Yeah. And I love that you always seem to have, like, an this open ended like, you're not really you're not attached. You don't it feels like you don't really attach yourself to, you don't get overly attached.

Well, I try to be I try to be attached to principles, you know, and not be attached to politicians. So, you know, it's like I I supported Trump in this last election just because I thought Kamala Harris was I thought she was such an insult to all of us, you know. Like, it was like, come on. You can't actually do this and and to to not have a primary and then just hand select her and then all the all the lying about Biden, all the going around with the Yeah.

The lying about Biden was crazy.

I just couldn't stand that. So I supported Trump. But as soon as Trump starts doing something I think is wrong, I'll be the first 1 to be like, yeah, dude. This is he's fucking up.

Oh, yeah.

I just I think that's the way everyone should be. I think people are way, way, way. I hate I'm also glad for that that election season's over. I hate when people get so, like, dug in Me too. Where it's like you're not even really being a person.

You're not even really having a conversation anymore. You're kinda getting into this, like once you pick a side and you're, like, I've decided my side is the good side, they're the evil side, now you're in a, like, ends justify the means conversation.

Trying to make the world fit that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're and it's also just a thing where it's, like, you would see this all the time Yeah. Especially during the election.

I mean, I remember being on a couple of these shows that I do where I I think I said to Piers Morgan at 1 point, like, I was just like I was like, maybe everyone will be willing to have a conversation in a couple weeks once this election's over. But right now, everyone's just in their dumb like because you're you get to a point where you're like, I gotta just win. My side has to win. And it doesn't matter about, like, telling the truth. It doesn't matter about actually grappling Yeah.

With what the other person said. So I try my best to to stay away from that. I think it's not good for you.

Yeah. I think, you know, I think that's really how I am. I'm not like I'm not the I was never the biggest Republican or the biggest Democrat. I feel like I was always I mean, I guess I voted Democratic had voted Democrat most of my life. You know?

But, I want there to be more parties than there are. You know, I want I just want things to be real, or I just wanna know what's really going on. I just don't like being, like, taken advantage of. That's the thing I don't like. And so, yeah, I think that's my biggest curiosity, you know, usually is, is trying to think trying to get things to be fair.

And, yeah, just to have a voice if I'm right or wrong. You know, I tried. You know, I tried to speak up for what I felt like was seemed like tried to be the best, you know, or whatever I thought was the best. But then sometimes you're also so deceived you don't know. And that's 1 thing that's kinda fascinating about life.

And that's 1 thing that I think does get me up these days. It's like, what a tricky fucking little Game of Thrones we're in. Right? And everybody should feel that way. And you get up and you see where are they tricking you?

Who's tricking me? Who's fucking me? Who am I fucking? You know what I'm saying? And it's crazy and it's

it's 1 of these weird things. Right? Because it's like someone'll you know, it's like someone online who you don't even know. You could see a video and someone's saying something really compelling and you're like, oh, it's interesting. And then you're like, oh, yeah.

But people are liars. Yeah. So, like, this guy might be lying to me. Or the guy he's talking to about might be lying to me. And, you know, there are things like this all it's like, you know, there's you know, part of the thing when the people in on CNN or whatever, they'll be like, there's misinformation on the Internet.

Like, they are right. There isn't misinformation on the Internet. I thought did you see the thing with the Hollywood sign on fire?

Was burning?

It's going super viral. Like, everyone thought And he wasn't? Hollywood said, no. It's just a doctor, you know, AI image or whatever.

Yeah. Heard it burned up.

There are people who will lie to you, but then at the same time, the person on CNN who's like, oh, all these guys are lying to you, you're like, yeah. But you're lying to me too, man. So that's the weird thing navigating this world. There's just, like, all this information and so much of it's bullshit.

That's a dirty fucking Halloween. And your life is at stake, and that's what does put some that's what fucking puts something on the line. You know? Yeah. And that is something that's kind of inspiring, man.

Yeah. That and and yeah. And if you don't speak up and you don't try to say the like yeah. It just, like, that's what you gotta do, man. Use your fucking voice.

You know what I'm saying? Use your voice. Is there anything that you would like to talk about, Dave? You have a tour coming up or anything like that you wanna

Oh, I'll be on I'm I'm on the road, like, all year. So comicdavessmith.com. Yeah. I got I've got a bunch of ticket links and dates that are up there already, and there should be more on the website in the next week or so. But yeah.

You going to Bozeman?

I'm oh, yeah. For my the first time ever. I've never been to Montana before. Beautiful, dude. Really excited, to go out there in a few days.

And then Louisville, Fort Wayne, Key West. Oh, wow. That should be fun.

Maybe Nick Swartz will be down there at the bar. He spent a year in Key West during COVID at the fucking Is that true? Yeah, dude. He went. This is alleged, and I love Nick.

And he's he came here and told the story. I think he spent $1,000,000 at a hotel there.

Just staying in a hotel every night, basically. Yeah. I guess if you do that for a year, you could rack up a lot of money.

Down in the Florida.

Yeah. I

went to Key West for it's supposed to be 10 days. 10 days? Yeah. And I was there a

year and a half.

I heard that you ran up a bill at a at the hotel there that was, like, astronomical.

It was insane. I stayed at a resort on the beach for

a year and a half.

And it cost I heard $1,000,000. I

don't think it was a million, but it was it was a lot of money.

If you tipped, did you tip?

I always tip.

What do you think it was? When you say a lot of money, how much was it?

I mean, it was definitely probably half a mil for sure.

I never I feel like I feel like it was more than that.

It might have been. I I kind of don't wanna know.

Yep. See? And that's our Federal Reserve right there.

Well, that is it's true. And that's how our Federal Reserve operates. For $50 on my grandpa's dollar, but there there you go. Yeah. You can't stay at a resort for a year and a half, man.

That's gonna be a really big bill.

But then also, man, it's so, like, spike. That's nice. He's like, you know what? Fuck it. The world might be ending.

I might have, like, lung AIDS or whatever the kid you know, whatever they were calling COVID. And I'm gonna go sit I'm gonna have a margarita and listen to some Jimmy Buffett.

There's I definitely know people who did worse during the pandemic than that.

Oh, yeah.

So that's not bad. Yeah.

Yeah. Montana's great. There's a great place to eat there. Can you look up the farm in Bozeman, Montana? I think that's what it's called.

Oh, by the while I'm, plugging things, I should mention this 1 to, make my friends happy, but we are and, dude, man, you gotta come. But we're doing a Skankfest in, New Orleans. No way.

Yeah. When? During the Super Bowl?

Where

When is it? I

believe it's in November. Oh. But it is if you haven't been to Skankfest, it's the best comedy festival in the world. And, we've done it in Vegas for the last few years, but we're moving it to New Orleans this year. Very excited for that.

I've never done comedy in New Orleans before.

Yeah. New Orleans is a 1 of a contact place to do comedy. Oh, there's the crew right there. Atel, Dylan, Bobby Kelly. Who else in there?

Is that Bert in the back? Mark? Yeah. That it Bert. Mark.

Louis j. Look at him.

Who's j with eyeliner on?

I know. God, that's hot. There's Christine. Right? No.

No. What is it? Her. Christine.

Christine and Rebecca.

Yeah. Christine and Rebecca.

They are the they are the they, like, run the whole festival. They do a phenomenal job.

Yeah. Christine is

Shout out to Christine and Rebecca. Rebecca runs the, owns the Creek in the Cave in Austin. Oh, great. Comedy.

Oh, I've seen her before. Yeah. I was just there 2 days ago yesterday.

That's a fun room.

Oh, yeah. It is great, man. Austin's man, Austin, dude, it's really I'm like, man, you can do so much stand up there.

It's a it's a

It's like the new Hollywood it feels. It's some like the new comedy, it really feels this

is the time I really felt it. Every time I go there, dude, it's just like I felt and even before Rogen opened the mothership, obviously, like, more so now, but even before then, it was just kinda like, oh, there's like an energy here. It's like fun to do spots and hang out. And there's like it's I feel like in New York, like, even which is where I'm from where I started. Even when I go back there, like, I don't I like feel like I don't know anyone anymore.

But, like, in Austin, be like, oh, all my friends are hanging out. You know what I mean? Like, it's it reminds me of what it used to be like in New York where it always every night would be all my friends are hanging out. Now I get there, I'm like, I don't know who half of these people are. Yeah.

It's just that I guess that's part of just getting old. Part of that's getting older too.

Yeah. It is. Did I I know since you said you're Jewish, did I offend you with anything I said?

No. Okay. No. Of course not.

Okay, man. Thank you.

I was waiting for you

to go further. Further about what?

You you disappointed me. I did? I'm just kidding.

Oh, yeah. If you

do really tear into the Jews. No. No. No. No.

You didn't offend me at all.

Okay.

Yeah. I think

you made I think you made perfect sense.

Yeah. Some of that some some stuff is hard to talk about. I think I'm trying to do a better job this year of, like, being brave about trying to talk about some things even if it feels kinda scary. Yeah. Sometimes I have a tough time, like, like, saying, hey.

Slow this down so I can make sure I know what I'm thinking too. Like, it's been a burning at being conversations has been it's on it's it's harder than you think, I

think, sometimes. It's a skill set. It's a real skill set. And there's a difference also between just, like, there's, like, just, like, doing your own thing, like, just ranting is a whole different skill set than, like, talking to somebody. You know what I mean?

And I do think that, like I think there's nothing wrong with, like, being, like, hey. Alright. Hold on. Let me think about that for a little bit. In fact, I think not nearly enough people do that Yeah.

In conversations. Be like, You just said something. Let me, like, actually think about that for a sec.

Yeah. I I need Rather

than just give you, like, my first the first thought that comes to my mind, let me actually give you, like, what my genuine thought is. Yeah. I'm gonna try

to focus on that a little bit more or unfocus on it a little bit. So just leave a little bit more room for things. What was 1 other thing I was gonna say? Yeah, man. I just I love the way you're able to think and share, and it feels very you always feel to me like you, are being genuine to what you believe, and that's something that I just, I think it's important.

You know? Because I think that people can know that that's true. Whether you're right or wrong about stuff, you feel like, well, this is how I feel, you know, and this is what I think. And, yeah, I just appreciate it. I feel like we're in a special time where people are trying to figure stuff out.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I appreciate that and I do that's always what I admire in other people. So that's kinda like what I always try to do. Like, I I'm sure I'm wrong about a lot of stuff, but I'm not lying about anything.

And I'm not, like, I believe everything I'm saying.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm try yeah. I'm trying my yeah. And a lot of it's learning, and it's just interesting, man.

We're lucky to be able to be alive and think out loud and, and grateful to anybody that listened. And, you got Skank Fest

in New Orleans later this year. You have, comicdavsmith.com? Comicdavsmith.com, and then that's my on Twitter, that's my handle too, comic Dave Smith.

Yep. And, Dave, thank you so much, man. And, best of luck this year with, with comedy and everything, man. I might see it at the inauguration, bro.

Hell yeah, dude. Alright, man. Have a good 1, brother. Thanks for having me.