Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - “Trump Is Shook”, Candace Owens, & The Israel Problem | Dave Smith

Starting point is 00:00:00 How did the Jews do it? Once you can control the weather. There are so many of these Ben Shapiro types. When Candice was taking the gloves off with black people, they were all like, yeah. But then it's like in this situation, where the state of Israel has just been mass slaughtering these captive people.

Starting point is 00:00:17 But as soon as you take the gloves off with them, it's like, all of a sudden Ben Shapiro's the woke. Basically, Trump's going, wow, they tried to take me out. And now he's like, holy shit, it is that easy to take me out. I barely survived this one. They will try it again. I better behave. That seems to be the only explanation that makes sense to me.

Starting point is 00:00:34 There's an obvious blueprint for Donald Trump that Donald Trump would always follow. And he's not following it. Trump's shook. You know, I really feel like the Democrats deserve to lose. And then I see Trump. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Flaygrint.

Starting point is 00:00:57 This week has been quite entertaining on Twitter. The discourse online has been, maybe I shouldn't say that, entertaining. I've got to find the right words. What do you mean entertaining? Yeah, it's terrifying. Engaging? Engaging for sure. I think the perfect explanation of Twitter.

Starting point is 00:01:15 We have Dave Smith here by the way. To make sense of this all. Dave Smith, what's up? We need America's sweetheart, dad of two, stand-up comedian, political pundit, and now endorsed by Joe Rogan as the man to go to for political discourse. I don't know exactly what he said, but it was something like genius of our time, everything he says is true, something along those lines. I don't remember verbatim, but I really think you just encapsulated the whole thing by just going, all right, so the discourse

Starting point is 00:01:47 on Twitter has been, wait a minute, this is offensive. Yeah. Oh man, how do you even say this? I mean, you can't stop looking at it. Yeah. It's just the second I open it up, I'm like, the Jews did everything? Everything? The good with the bad.

Starting point is 00:02:04 The JFK thing, I had no clue. Yeah, yeah, apparently they did that. Everything? Everything? The good with the bad. You know what I mean? The JFK thing, I had no clue. Yeah, apparently they did that. They did that. What else did they do? 9-11 apparently. But they made a polio vaccine, so it's like, it comes down the wash. Vaccines though? They made a polio vaccine, now we're back. Now we're back.

Starting point is 00:02:20 Fuck. Okay, that traditionally would have been the thing that everyone would go, yeah, polio vaccine. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

Starting point is 00:02:30 I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

Starting point is 00:02:36 I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie.

Starting point is 00:02:43 I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. you know, reach a zenith, as Akash would say. Well, with the Candice stuff specifically, I mean, she has really touched a nerve. Let me tell you something. I'm terrified of Candice. I hope that she does not fixate with, at all, have a fixation with me at any point in time, and if she does, I apologize,

Starting point is 00:02:58 because she will not let it go. Have you met her? Do you know Candice? No. She's like the sweetest lady Well, yeah, you meet her. She's just like a total sweetheart. I it's very weird though black people are happy She got her eyes off of us right now I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:03:22 Enjoy your moment while she's focused on us. But I'll be coming back around to you. She's Thanos, bro. She does not play, she will read every book. Well, she's very smart and she dives deep into things and she's diving right now into some wild conspiracies that I don't really know, like, I don't know enough about whether she's right or wrong or whatever.

Starting point is 00:03:42 But there is something that I gotta say to like, you know like, to your, the thing you're alluding to there, it's like, there are so many of these conservative types, the Ben Shapiro types, who when Candace was taking the gloves off with black people, they were all like, yeah. Fuck it up. You know what I mean? And like, and look, it's okay to take the gloves off

Starting point is 00:04:03 with all groups of people sometimes. Sometimes you need tough love. But when she was like, I mean? And look, it's okay to take the gloves off with all groups of people sometimes. Sometimes you need tough love. But when she was like, I mean, and Ben Shapiro himself will take the gloves off with black people and be like, oh listen, you wanna know why you have this? Because you're committing too much crimes. Yeah, you're committing too much crimes.

Starting point is 00:04:16 How about you stay married? How about you don't have kids at a wedlock? How about this, this, this, this? Good point. But as soon as he, yeah, what I'm trying to say is, Broken clock is right. So he was nailing it, and then... No, but then it's like, if you direct any of that energy

Starting point is 00:04:29 toward Jewish people, and again, all of these things are like, the problem is like, when you speak in terms of collectives, you always get everything wrong. Because if you're talking to the black community and you're like, hey, black people, you need to take care of your kids, there's like some black dad who's a great dad who's like, who are you talking to?

Starting point is 00:04:44 I do take care of my kids. Also, they know. There's no black people, we gotta take care of them? Yeah, right. Thank God this fucking little hat guy told us we gotta take care of them. Yeah, like the black guy who's not taking care of his kids is like, I know I'm supposed to. I don't want to.

Starting point is 00:04:57 I don't want to. But, but so like. You have black kids. So what are you saying? Yeah, I said I was getting milk on purpose. I needed an alibi. They're easy when there's these little Jewish kids, they don't run as fast,

Starting point is 00:05:10 but these black ones run fast. Come back and goes, yeah, it's easy when they're little white kids. I take care of them. But like again, like look, but what Ben Shapiro would say to that, right, is like, okay, but I'm not talking to those people, but I'm talking to,

Starting point is 00:05:24 we're talking about statistics here and there. It that is, okay, but I'm not talking to those people, but we're talking about statistics here. It's like, okay, fine, but look, then in this situation, where for the last 10 months, the state of Israel has just been mass slaughtering these captive people in the most horrific way, but as soon as you take the gloves off with them, it's like, oh, all of a sudden Ben Shapiro's the woke. All of a sudden he's the same thing

Starting point is 00:05:47 that he's been railing against the whole time. I'm offended. Safe space on college campus and all that. So I'm so disgusted. Facts don't care about your feelings. Yeah. All of a sudden they do. All Mr. Free Speech and all.

Starting point is 00:05:57 So I'm so disgusted with that, and I think what Israel's doing is totally wrong. But then, of course, with all these things, there are excesses on the anti-Israel side, and I do see that all over Twitter, too. In my replies, people who are trying to back me up, first of all, I'm Jewish, so I'm probably not gonna love, I'm probably not gonna love your gas all the Jews comment.

Starting point is 00:06:21 And then, I'm second to all. Oh, you didn't like Defcon 300, did you? But then you look at it. You're, on the second one. Oh, you didn't like DEFCON 300G? But then you look at it. You're one of the good ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which like, listen, if it ever goes down, I'll take it. But for now, I don't need it. But then it's like, you're also like, do you think you're helping me?

Starting point is 00:06:38 Yeah. Do you think you're helping the argument right now? Because no, you're making us all look terrible. I think what you do well, and I think what anybody who's actually pro-Palestine, actually pro-Palestine should do is really stamp out anti-Semitism. Be like, yo, we're not doing that. Israel and Jewish people are different things. I don't support what Israel's doing.

Starting point is 00:06:54 Jewish people, no issue with you. It's a government. 100%. Especially because that's the tactic of all the pro-Israeli people. So you're almost embracing their whole thing, is that they go, oh, you're criticizing Netanyahu? Well, that's because you hate Jews. And then it's like, so if you hand them that also, you're falling right into their trap.

Starting point is 00:07:13 Is the same thing, it's always the same with all these like weird, you know, there's always like these kind of movements that seem like they're enemies, but they weirdly help each other. So like something like Charlottesville was like the best thing for MSNBC. Because they're like, ah yes, perfect.

Starting point is 00:07:30 See, these are the Trump supporters. Even though it was like 200 people, that wasn't the 63 million people who voted for Trump. But so it's weirdly where if you become the neo-Nazi, all you're doing really is helping the progressive woke guy because you're proving their point that it's you're either us or you're a neo-Nazi, whereas like all sane people should be like, there's some room in between those two. Yes, 100%.

Starting point is 00:07:55 That's a great point. So the rampant anti-Semitism completely discredits any logical and fair criticisms of Israel and what's happening right now. I wouldn't say it discredits it, but it allows a pro-Israel voice to say, it allows them to go, well, look at all the Samsonite. And you can't just screw them because when I'm on Twitter, I'm like, yeah, it seems like they're here too.

Starting point is 00:08:19 Yeah, it's really hard to know exactly what's going on with all of that stuff. Because you know, in social media, it's almost always accounts without like a real name on them. I'm like, is this a 14 year old trolling? Is this somebody, you know, is it a 14 year old whose stepdad just beat the crap out of him or something? Or is this like a real deal,

Starting point is 00:08:39 like I have been reading Mein Kampf and I agree with them. Is it foreign government that's paying for it? Is it our own government? Yeah. Oh really? Yeah, they love this stuff. I mean they could.

Starting point is 00:08:50 Wait, wait, wait, sorry to interrupt. So, so break that down. I've heard the foreign government thing. I thought this was really interesting. So anytime there's like dissension within America, it behooves our enemies to stoke as much of that as possible, right? So they could just put the juice on it. You can buy ads, you can inflate tweets, you can do whatever you want to continue that discourse

Starting point is 00:09:08 that is incredibly, let's say, toxic or problematic. Why would our own government do it? Well, because you already said our enemies are doing it. And that's our biggest enemies are in Washington, DC. So, I mean, well, look, think about it like this, right? How would it benefit them, I guess? Well, I'd just well, look, think about it like this, right? How would it benefit them, I guess? Well, I'd just say, first of all,

Starting point is 00:09:27 have our own political leaders and our own corporate media, have they not been stoking all these divisions all these years? That's a good point. They push it more than anybody. I mean, it's like, since, basically, for the last, like, 12 years, there has been a tsunami of just pushing the most divisive issues from all,

Starting point is 00:09:48 and you know, I've talked about this many times before, but do you ever see those charts, like the Nexus charts, where they track words that are used in the big corporate media outlets, and it'll track words like, like mentions of the word racism in the New York Times, mentions of the word transgenderism, New York Times, mentions of the word transgenderism or toxic masculinity, all these things.

Starting point is 00:10:08 But it's all at 2011, 2012, it's like, and then it skyrockets up. All of them in unison, all just started doing it. Like election time. Well, it was- Well, what was it specific about? Well, it was on the heels of the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Tea Party Movement and like all these,

Starting point is 00:10:27 you know, kind of, you got a bunch of leftists standing outside the big banks, screaming, we are the 99%. And then all of a sudden, the entire corporate media and the entire political class decided, what we wanna talk about is transgender bathrooms. Because that is the burning issue of the day. And it hits right-wingers and left-wingers

Starting point is 00:10:44 against each other Fighting over something that is no threat to power whatsoever. So once there's class unity. Yeah I think that's a huge thing. Okay, slow down So there is a the Occupy Wall Street is this movement that right wing and left wing can get behind It was certainly more left wing than right wing But the message of it was we are the 99%. And we're getting robbed by the 99%. And we're getting robbed by the, and they didn't even really mean 99%,

Starting point is 00:11:09 they meant like 99.9%. They were like, it's the people who own banks against the rest of us. And the fear of that catch, of that becoming trendy, of that catching on, and there being a unified front against these banks, these people in power, makes them reposition the conversation to something that one, those liberals that are out there

Starting point is 00:11:30 have to support, they have to support the pro transgender argument because if they don't, then they're gonna look bigoted, oh wow, it's like the perfect foil. Dude, they're such geniuses, listen, they found the perfect thing that first of all, just like you said, any left liberal type can't be against, because your whole identity is that you're the non-bigoted ones, right, so you can't be against anything that might make you bigoted. You've got these bankers at the edge of the building,

Starting point is 00:11:53 and you're just like, okay, Trudy's can go to the peak. Right. And on top of that, right, it's that you found the thing, particularly with the transgender thing, that will make a right-wingers blood boil. Oh, so now they're the same group that were about to come together are gonna start fighting again.

Starting point is 00:12:09 Wow. And where do these conversations happen? Does this happen organically and then they put a little bit more gas on it or is there like a think tank in the Pentagon? I guess for sure, I think this was a straight CIA op. That's my guess. Which, by the way, there were commercials for the CIA

Starting point is 00:12:30 bragging about how they hire indigenous women of color with anxiety issues and all this stuff. And they all started pumping it out. And particularly because, look, I mean, you see how much they just bought off the left. There's freaking Bank of America floats at the Gay Pride Parade. These guys are riding down on a big bank float. Wow.

Starting point is 00:12:54 And this, it was the ultimate, think about the deal from the bank's perspective, where they went, okay, you're mad because we just wrecked the economy and then got bailed out by the taxpayers. So here's our deal. We will send all of our white executives to diversity training. Are we good now? Is that a figure? And keep looting the American people, keep raking in record high profits, but we'll focus on all this stuff. And I think that basically it's just that the elite, the ruling elite failed so much on every policy that eventually, that people were waking up.

Starting point is 00:13:34 And you know, when you had the, I think there was something, you had the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Can you describe the Tea Party movement? Well, the Tea Party was, it was like around 2010, I think it started, and it was, it, and it also started from the Ron Paul campaigns and in opposition to the banker bailouts. But it was all against like government spending. But the way it was positioned was a bunch of racists.

Starting point is 00:13:57 It was positioned as a racist thing. Oh yeah, right away of course. I had no clue that that's what they were pissed off about, government spending. That was the whole thing. Did you know that? Yeah, I knew government spending was the main one, but they quickly got positioned as like, oh, that's the racist guys. Stay away from those.

Starting point is 00:14:11 These are the same racists who ended up voting for Trump. In my brain, it's the guy who doesn't, I'm not plugged in, that's what I thought it was. Life Tour update, San Antonio, we added a second show. Las Vegas, same weekend as USC Sphere, come out there for both. Then we got Cleveland, Columbus, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Denver, we added a third show. Cincinnati, we added a second show. Rama, Ontario, Salt Lake City, we added a second show.

Starting point is 00:14:34 Reno, Nevada, we added a second show. San Jose, we added a second show. Portland, and then finally closing it out in Honolulu, Hawaii. Theandrewshows.com for tickets. We'll see you guys there, peace. All right, guys. September 6th and 7th, I'm gonna be at

Starting point is 00:14:48 Wise Guys Comedy Club in Las Vegas. I'm excited to do Vegas. And what a run of fun cities after that. I'm gonna be in Miami, Darrell, Florida, technically. September 12th through 14th, get your tickets. I'm gonna be at the Improv. September 19th through 21st, I'm gonna be in Timonium, so the fun cities tour ends, but I'm gonna be at Magoobies,

Starting point is 00:15:04 which is a great comedy club. September 27th and 28th, Greensville, October 17th through 19th, New Brunswick, New Jersey, there's plenty of dates, go to akashsingh.com to check all of those out. Thank you guys so much, let's get back to the show. Well, listen, and look, this is like what always happens, though they always try to like infiltrate these movements and push them into cultural issues.

Starting point is 00:15:25 This is what happened back with the right wingers back in like the 60s, where they would come in and like the New Republic, or I'm sorry, not New Republic, National Review and William F. Buckley and these guys, they'd come in and like, so the old right, the old right pre-World War II were always like non-interventionists,

Starting point is 00:15:45 they didn't wanna fight wars, they believed in immigration restrictions, trade restrictions, and sound money, like no fiat currency, those were the things they cared about. And then National Review came in, and they were like, you know what it really means to be a conservative?

Starting point is 00:15:58 We're against the homos. Okay? These homos are everywhere, and we have to oppose these homos. By the way, we're not gonna do the whole sound money thing anymore. We're gonna have a fiat currency. I know we're gonna fight a lot of wars. But these homos, man, these homos are all over the place.

Starting point is 00:16:12 And they're always kind of like throwing you off of the issues of substance that actually matter. And they're just kind of like, okay, well, you know how you guys were against entangling alliances and adventurism overseas? Well, we got a war in Vietnam to fight. So we're not doing that stuff anymore. But you should really worry about whatever. And it's always adjacent to Christianity,

Starting point is 00:16:33 an issue that is religious, that will overtake any government care that I have. If you attach it to my, Christianity's against homosexuality, you gonna let that happen in this country? Right, right. This is a Christian country. Yeah, cause it has to be something that is part of your core identity.

Starting point is 00:16:47 If it's not that important to you, you're not gonna latch on. Wow, it's actually, you feel guilty not latching on. You feel guilty not having a voice about it. Oh! And I feel, listen, I feel it myself. You guys know me for a long time. I'm totally obsessed with all of these issues

Starting point is 00:17:01 of war and money and banking and all government corruption. But I'll be the first to see a Lives of TikTok video on Twitter and I'm like, oh, what are they doing to these kids? What's wrong with this? Get that tranny away from those kids. What are you getting out of that?

Starting point is 00:17:16 It pulls at something deep inside. And by the way, I don't think they should be bringing this stuff to kids. I think that's really crazy. But to your point, there's probably five times that's happening in America. Well, you have no sense. The thing is, you have no sense of it.

Starting point is 00:17:27 You're like, oh, okay, so, I mean, like my kids don't go to public school, and I haven't been to a public school since I was in public school. So I don't know, I see the video of this. Is this one out of 100,000 teachers are like this? Is it one out of 1,000? I have no sense of proportion,

Starting point is 00:17:42 but I know there's a video there that'll get my blood boiling. I'm not even saying some of the distractions are important issues, right? But even a fight over, say, abortion or something like that, which is a very important issue, depending on how you see it. Again, it's facing to religion, though.

Starting point is 00:17:56 Right, it also plays on the religious thing, but it's also, it's not a threat to anyone in power. No one in power is threatened by whether you're pro-choice or pro-life. But if you're like, hey, you know, I think we should like, I think these big banks shouldn't get bailed out anymore. Or like, hey, I don't think we should fight these wars that these weapons companies are making

Starting point is 00:18:16 hundreds of billions of dollars off of. That is a threat to their bottom line. I mean, these rich people are gonna get their abortions, is my point. Yeah, they're gonna find a way. How can they be so proficient at like, distracting and stoking the culture war, and so seemingly inefficient at everything else?

Starting point is 00:18:34 Like, which government is doing it? We talked, Nassab, about how inefficient government is, but the way that you've described it, they've masterfully manipulated us for the last, what, 30, 40, 50? I would think they're efficient at getting things. I think they're very efficient. I think the government is inefficient model

Starting point is 00:18:49 is based off of a faulty assumption. So when people say government's inefficient, it's almost like, well, look, they took over healthcare, but they're not delivering good healthcare at a reasonable price. And you're like, go look at Obamacare. The profits for the giant insurance companies skyrocketed.

Starting point is 00:19:07 They're efficient, just not for us. They're incredible efficient. Yeah. You're assuming that their stated goal is their actual goal. This is fucking, yeah. This is interesting. They're the most, like what, were the Nazis efficient at killing Jews? I mean, there's nothing more efficient than government, it's just always for evil.

Starting point is 00:19:23 Yeah. So that's- Do you think they've lost control of the Psy-Up? Yeah, I think- What does that mean, there's nothing more efficient than government. It's just always for evil. Yeah. So that's- Do you think they've lost control of the Psy-Up? Yeah, I think- What does that mean, Mark? Like, if you're suggesting, which I'm with you here, is that like, this is effectively a CIA operation to create a culture war to distract

Starting point is 00:19:37 from like the actual class struggle? Have they lost control over that and you get things like January 6th and you get things where it's like, we're on the brink of a war. Ah, because of new media, because of. Now, I didn't mean to push this pillow onto you, by the way, this is just now.

Starting point is 00:19:49 You was just the problem. He made a partition between the media. You're speaking my language, Mark. So it's a good question, bro. So I think like both things are happening. So I would look at it and say they were incredibly effective. If their goal, if I'm right, and their goal

Starting point is 00:20:05 was to start a culture war, you'd look back and go, wow, they did a really good job. At the same time, I think what's gotten away from them, and this is one of the crazy things that we're living through this moment right now, is that for the first time, the state has lost the monopoly on the flow of information, which is always the most important thing for them to control, always.

Starting point is 00:20:28 I mean, look, if you think about what the government really is, which essentially is the gang that rules the land. The monopoly on violence. Well, the monopoly of legal violence. Or I should say, more specifically, the monopoly of legal violence. Or I should say more specifically, the monopoly on legal aggression. Because you can commit violence in self-defense,

Starting point is 00:20:50 I mean, depending on what state you're in, there's different rules for it. But you can't initiate violence against other people. But the state can. And that's what they have. And then they monopolize certain services, right? But there's a reason why, like, why is it that governments just happen to run,

Starting point is 00:21:06 like, the schools and the post office and the TV channels and the radios? Radio makes sense, TV makes sense, school makes sense, right, because you can push propaganda. And I remember we were having a conversation, it was actually over the stand, you're like, yeah, why do you think they run the post office?

Starting point is 00:21:20 I go, I don't know, who would want, I don't know. And you're like, well, how do you get the information around? Yeah, well, at the time, that was it. That was the only way to get the information around. That's right. So you better fucking control it. Well, why is it that, but government's never been like, we need to have a monopoly on shoes.

Starting point is 00:21:36 We need to make shoes, because everyone needs shoes. It's like actually a real basic thing. Black people would revolt. Because they're not wearing these trashy. Because we would revolt. You guys get it? Because I wear these trash knee-kits. Because we need shoes. These shoes don't match my hat. I'm Trump 1, so it's kind of fine. But the reason is because we need shoes.

Starting point is 00:21:56 Right. They don't need us to have shoes. Yeah, exactly. And it doesn't, so what's happened- It doesn't benefit their control in any way. But now, and this really is a very new thing, is that they're like, I mean look, you see how much they freaked out

Starting point is 00:22:10 about Elon Musk buying Twitter. Like why would it really matter to these people? Like just like all the political pundits, all the corporate media, they were nuts over Elon Musk buying Twitter when he said he's gonna make it a free speech platform. Real quick, do you think that these politicians are useful idiots, some of them aware,

Starting point is 00:22:28 some of them unaware, all of them aware? I'm trying to get an understanding. Do you think the second people enter government, there's a conversation where it's like, hey, this is the agenda and this is what we're gonna do? Or do you think they just kind of fall in line and then get nudged in the right direction? I think it's more of the latter.

Starting point is 00:22:47 It depends on what level kind of you're at. I think that like for someone who's like a freshman congressman, no they just enter. And then someone kind of explains to them, they've already got the system locked down. It's like, listen, leadership is gonna put a bill forward. You can either vote for it or against it. You can't amend anything that's in it.

Starting point is 00:23:03 But if you vote against it when leadership wants you to, you're never gonna get put on any committees, you're never gonna rise up the ranks, you're never gonna like that. Now, the head of the Senate Arms Committee, that dude's talking to the CIA and talking, you know. Or if he's not, look, Dianne Feinstein, who was the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee

Starting point is 00:23:21 at the time, she came out, she was actually furious about this, but they caught that the CIA was spying on her. And so like, she's tasked with oversight of the intelligence communities, but they're spying on her. You know, it's like. If there's one person you need to spy on,

Starting point is 00:23:37 I would say it's the person who's tasked with the oversight of the committee. Yeah, I mean, that would be one of your first things you're gonna spy on, sure. Cause what if they're a fucking Russian spy or something like that? I think you gotta lock in in that way, I like that. Well, yeah, I mean, that would be one of your first things you're gonna spy on, sure. Because what if they're a fucking Russian spy or something like that? I think you gotta lock in in that way, I like that. Well, look, I mean-

Starting point is 00:23:49 Good for her catching it, though. Well- She's shrewd, this bitch. I don't think she's the one who caught it. Someone else, it came out somehow, I can't remember. Okay, but- But the point is that there's, the real point is that our elected representatives

Starting point is 00:24:01 are not who's actually running the government. I think you're sorry, you're also assuming they have good intentions of making sure she's running the gun. I think you're sorry, you're also assuming they have good intentions of making sure she's not a spy. I think the reality's probably- They got proxy wars to start. Nefarious intentions of we need something black and white to work with.

Starting point is 00:24:13 Don't get in the way, don't get in the way, ladies. I gotta hold this over her head when we need to push our shit through, because oh, you don't want me to expose this about you, do you? Yeah. That's what I think we would all kind of agree it probably is. Fuck.

Starting point is 00:24:23 Okay, so one thing that I've always been very, if I can't compliment you for a second, I think a lot of times the people that get, what would you call this now? I don't even call it red pill because I feel like that's too niche, but what do you call when you wake up, what is the term that people use?

Starting point is 00:24:40 Red pill used to be our term, but then now it means arguing with seven club hoes I thought we just knew in high school, but I guess that they've got to be settled on a lot of different podcasts But I don't know, yeah, whatever it is, I don't know that we have the perfect term, but whoever kind of the dissidents are that just see this whole system as just totally corrupt and fake.

Starting point is 00:25:18 And that's kinda why I liked the Red Pill analogy, because it was a great analogy from The Matrix, that's like, oh, you take this, and you realize that everything is like this carefully constructed illusion that is constructed by bad people who don't have your best interest at heart. One thing I think you've done really well

Starting point is 00:25:39 is I think you've managed your emotional state. I think a lot of people that go down this rabbit hole, they get incredibly anxious. That's a great point. They're miserable. And it's hard to not be miserable when you start seeing all these institutions that are potentially lying to you.

Starting point is 00:25:53 So I'm curious, and I wanna go back into more of what's going on, but I'm just curious, how often are you checking in with yourself so you don't become one of these people who get, they kind of go crazy. Yeah, well, no, 100%. And I've seen so much of that. And I do sometimes kind of sympathize with those guys because it is, when you start getting into this stuff, it is stuff that's so evil that you're like, it's worth dying over or flipping out over or something. You know, like even just like, just if you just go study like the war in Iraq

Starting point is 00:26:27 and like how these fucking people who wanted this war for years before 9-11 literally wrote, if you go read this, in a project for a new American century, which was the think tank of all the neocons, the people who, it was like 20 people who were the signatories on it. It was like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz

Starting point is 00:26:48 and like, you know, Richard Pearl. And I think 10 of the 20 went on to have high level positions in George W. Bush's administration. And they wrote before 9-11 that our whole plan here is to fight multiple wars in the Middle East and the first stop is overthrowing Saddam Hussein. And in their own words, they wrote, but we probably can't get public support for that

Starting point is 00:27:10 short of another Pearl Harbor type of event. And then after 9-11, they went, got it. And then like a million people got killed in Iraq. Like just that alone. If you just look at that, you're like, yo, this is like so evil. So it's very easy to flip out over that stuff. I think, at least at this point in my life,

Starting point is 00:27:31 having a wife and little kids helps a lot. It just kind of focuses me on like, that's my actual life. This is just the stuff I'm interested in talking about. I can see if you don't have that, you could completely drown yourself in this information because it's never ending. I think being a comedian before that also really helped.

Starting point is 00:27:48 It was just kind of, there was just like this light and fun thing. You're gonna see the levity in this. Yeah, right, you're always kind of gonna be like, okay, well, can I turn this into a joke? Or at least, even if not, even though I couldn't turn it into a joke, tonight I'm gonna be at a nightclub with all my friends

Starting point is 00:28:02 who happen to be hilarious people. We're all gonna be laughing, and we're all gonna be working on our sets. That kind of kept me grounded. And then also, I'm just, whatever my own insecurity is, I just, I have an obsessive need to not get it wrong. And so I'm constantly guarding myself off, like, okay, I'm not gonna just fall over the deep end here

Starting point is 00:28:24 and just believe some nonsense that's not true just because it kind of suits my narrative. I mean, I naturally guard against that, but I've seen a lot of people who don't guard against that. And it gets bad quick. And that's what the rabbit hole is probably. I'm curious, you say the government's so evil. I haven't heard you say one good thing.

Starting point is 00:28:44 Is there anything good that the government's doing they're really good at being evil They do a great job I said the thing about the Nazis what they did with the Jews put up incredible numbers Shadowed you don't think there's nothing that the government is doing that's good. Oh, no, I mean they're well intentioned Are there well intentioned? Yeah government. Oh, yeah. Yeah sure sure No, I think there are well intentioned people Are there well intentioned? Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah sure sure No, I think there are well intentioned people in government, and I think that they get shot in the head off If they're too well intended too much, but it's like it's like I Don't know like of course there's things they do that are good But in the same sense that there could be like a serial killer could still do something

Starting point is 00:29:21 That's good in his life like he might you know what I mean like he was serial killer could still do something that's good in his life. You know what I mean? A serial killer at some point, they might be like, will you donate another dollar for children who need so and so? He's like, okay. I think that the instrument itself is kind of evil. So the instrument. So anybody who plays it is just gonna be complicit

Starting point is 00:29:39 with the evil. Yeah, you're gonna get caught up in that. It's like a system you can't, but in the same, I look at the government as like a criminal organization, morally speaking. So in the same sense, if you were to ask me like, has a mob family ever done anything good? Like yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure they have.

Starting point is 00:29:55 I'm sure they were, yeah, I'm sure, right, and I'm sure they did, like even that guy, like in any of those gangster movies you watch, I'm sure there was a time when some guy was like beating up his wife and they went and tossed that guy a beating or something like that. Like yeah, there's some good things they do, sure. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:10 Sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna ask, is that American government or is that like capital G, the institution of government itself? The institution, everywhere. Gosh. Sorry, I think the illusion that we have is that every other country's government

Starting point is 00:30:24 is corrupt except ours, right? Like that's kind of how like Americans go into it. Maybe black Americans are a little bit more distrusting of the government, but once you find out that there are these government institutions or just like corporate entities in general that are operating with like high level collusion and corruption, it's kind of a staggering moment.

Starting point is 00:30:50 I think that's right, but what's even crazier to me is that people who are kind of onto the government corruption and start realizing how corrupt this whole system is, still, if there's a conflict between us and Russia, they kind of snap back to their, no matter how corrupt they see our government as being, they could still never see it like Russia. You know what I mean? It's been amazing, particularly with the war, since the war in Ukraine broke out, how many people in the US will just be like, we can't stand for someone invading a sovereign country. And you're like, you are familiar

Starting point is 00:31:23 with very recent history. Very recent. Like I'm not saying like 80 years ago we did something like this, I'm saying we're still there. We still have troops in Iraq right now. We still have troops in Syria right now. Is it like, what world are you living in that like, our, the vehicle we have is our government.

Starting point is 00:31:42 So what you think that's DC's motive is that they're just like, we just can't stand by while someone invades another country. Isn't it? Go, go. So what is your solution? Well, I mean, like ultimately the solution would be for government to stop doing a lot of the evil stuff

Starting point is 00:31:58 that they're doing. But how do we get that? I mean, look, I'm asking you as like someone I consider a leader in this idea, what would your solution be? I'm not like Donnie Dugatcha. Well, we're already in trouble if I'm looking I'm asking you as like someone I consider a leader in this idea. What would you your solution be? I'm not like done to do gotcha. Well, we're already in trouble if I'm the leader but I would I think that uh, I think I Really think that propaganda is incredibly powerful

Starting point is 00:32:16 Like as I was saying before and I think the fact that like there is so many like shows with huge Audiences now that can kind of like shine a light on all this stuff. I think that's really powerful. So in short, I think like telling the truth is very, very powerful. And then in terms of what would actually roll back kind of government corruption, I don't know. You know, I mean, I think there's a...

Starting point is 00:32:40 There's something going on. We have not figured it out yet, but I'm not saying anything positive about how Donald Trump actually governed. But the fact that there was so much hunger for a Donald Trump-like figure, I think shows something of people waking up. I think-

Starting point is 00:32:54 Even Bernie too. Bernie, Bobby Kennedy, like all these guys. Honestly, I'm not just saying this because I'm Indian, Vivek. Oh yeah, 100%. Vivek Ramaswamy was like- I mean, he took a very hard line on government corruption. I mean when he was on the pot, he was...

Starting point is 00:33:09 I was like, what if this corruption benefits us in certain ways? Like hypothetically, what if these government policies, this interventionism that we're doing benefits us and gives us a better lifestyle? Would you... if you found that out, would you still want to go through it? And if... would you still want to go through it? Would you still want to go through it if it meant getting rid of the managerial class? That's what he talks about. I'm sure you've heard the term. And he goes, the people deserve a government that represents them for better or worse.

Starting point is 00:33:39 So he's like, I will take a shittier America or higher price for food or higher price for medication, whatever it is, if we're actually making the decisions. Or there are people representing our decisions. Yeah, how would you answer that? Well, I think that, so I'd say that I think if there's one kind of universal truth that I've found in my life is that

Starting point is 00:34:02 lying to yourself is destructive. I think it's worse than lying to other people. Lying to other people is bad too, but lying to yourself is the most powerful destructive thing you can do. And so if it were the case that us going in, mass slaughtering a bunch of people in Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan and Syria and Yemen and Somalia

Starting point is 00:34:23 and all these places, that gave us a higher standard of living, then let's look ourselves in the mirror and have that honest conversation. Is that who we are? Do we, is the role of the United States of America that we are the world empire and we're going around to take your shit and give it to us? And if you wanna have that honest conversation

Starting point is 00:34:42 with yourself and then conclude yes, that's what we're gonna do, then at least have that honest conversation. I don't hear and pretend I've had that conversation. This is why no I ain't shit I've been like, yeah. All right My life is much better So either I can leave or I can just accept this is what it is and I ain't leaving Well fair enough unless there's another common empire coming and I'm jumping ship. That's the first step would be to ask that question. But I don't, I just don't believe that it's true.

Starting point is 00:35:11 I think that like, I think that it has made, there's special interests that have benefited tremendously off of all of those wars. But I don't know, I mean, I'm like looking around the country, it's like, no, I don't think this has been good for, not only our economy, but just like our soul. I don't think it's, you know, I know it's a Biden thing, he said the soul of the nation or whatever,

Starting point is 00:35:33 but there's something to that. You want people to be proud of the country they're living in. I think an American pride right now is at an all time low, and you gotta give them something to be proud of. I actually thought a lot about this. Like, a friend of mine, I gotta give him credit, Ben Uyeda, I was like, why are you proud to be American?

Starting point is 00:35:49 And he's like, I think you can be the best version of yourself here. And I thought that that was, that was the, that to me was, is America and something you still can be represented by. Yeah. And like, but it was important. I think it was like July 4th,

Starting point is 00:36:07 and we were thinking about doing a piece on it, and everyone was like, yeah, why should we? I think we have to bolster some American sentiment. This is a great country, this is amazing. There's always opportunities. We get to be fucking comedians running around talking shit, and we actually get to provide for our families.

Starting point is 00:36:19 But he brought that up, and he was like, yeah, we can be the best version of ourselves here. Yeah, I mean, I think that's always been the best thing about America is that you could kind of be the author of your own story, and you can kind of like, it's never been perfect, never will be perfect, but it's like, yeah, you could make something of yourself, and I think we very much take it for granted.

Starting point is 00:36:41 It has not been true in most of the world for most of human history, that you could come from something kind of humble and make something really cool of yourself here, and that's awesome. But in terms of the war stuff and dominating the rest of the world, I don't see any evidence that that's connected,

Starting point is 00:37:00 that the two are connected. Look, even after we get hit on 9-11, we launch the war on terrorism. In late 2001, we start the war in Afghanistan. 2003, the war in Iraq. In 2008, we have the worst financial recession in 100 years. I don't see this evidence that it's like,

Starting point is 00:37:19 oh, this is building up our greater economy. Well, it's really beneficial to Lockheed Martin and Ray Theon and them. But to the average American, it's not. I don't think so. Guys, that segment is brought to you by our newest partner, Steak. OK, you guys already know Steak. You know it because Drake's dropping half a million

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Starting point is 00:37:57 Do you think there's ever, like we hear about this term like global police and stuff. Do you think that since World War II, there's been any foreign intervention that's been generally positive or moral? No. Great question. From the United States of America? No. Korea, anything like that? No, no, I mean it's a disaster in Korea.

Starting point is 00:38:15 Well this awful bloody war ended in a stalemate, and North Koreans have been prisoners ever since. I mean it's just, Vietnam was just, I mean horrific obviously. I think Vietnam was just, I mean, horrific, obviously. I think even, like, Clinton's intervention in Serbia was horrible. There's, you know, yeah, well, it didn't go, well, Vladimir Putin knows, he was pretty pissed about that.

Starting point is 00:38:35 But, and then, of course, all the terror wars have just been, I mean, just wrecked the Middle East and, you know, spent trillions of dollars on slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people. So no, I don't think so. And it was like, you know, America was never really supposed to be the policeman of the world.

Starting point is 00:38:53 That's a fairly new thing. And it doesn't make sense. It's like you can't, the whole thing about America is we're supposed to be like a constitutionally limited republic. The idea is people are free here, with some exceptions. We got around to it eventually. But it's, I'm not saying we were perfect.

Starting point is 00:39:11 But no, the idea, I mean, come on, it's just so obvious. It's like, come on, you can't have that much power and not be corrupting. You're telling me, this is what the neocons, also those same ones in a project for a new American century. Or actually, no, it wasn't a project for a new American century or actually now wasn't a project for a New American century, but it was two of the guys it was Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan and they wrote in

Starting point is 00:39:31 The piece is called toward a neo-reaganite foreign policy It was in the weekly standard or thought it was in foreign affairs I actually think and they wrote that that was what they they were suggesting was after the fall of the Soviet Union, and they said America has to be the benevolent hegemon. What's a hegemon? You know, it basically means empire. It means controlling everything. So it's, but the good empire, you know? Like we rule the world, but like we're the good guys.

Starting point is 00:40:01 Yeah, all right. Is it really as simple as there are a few companies that benefit in a dramatic fashion by creating wars around the world? Is it that simple? No, I think there's more to it. That is definitely true. That's just a fact. But are they sitting in a boardroom going, okay, let's invent some more because we've

Starting point is 00:40:23 got some bombs to sell? Well, I think that there are, there's ideologues in there too, and they all kind of weirdly meet up. And so, like, if you have, like part of the reason that neoconservatives just totally hijacked American foreign policy is that their agenda was that we should be fighting, like look, they were saying back in the 90s

Starting point is 00:40:44 that when there was this big kind of turning point, which I think is really underappreciated by people around our age, because we were kind of kids in the 90s, and you're kind of like, oh, I just remember that as being a time when America was more America, and now everything's kind of crazy. Back then it was more what we, like,

Starting point is 00:40:59 was simple to understand. But what happened in 1991 is the Soviet Union collapsed, and for the first time in human history, there was a true unipolar superpower. Like there's really never been anything like that before. It was just the United States of America. And there was this big debate about what we're supposed to do now. Like what, and basically the Soviet Union had been used as the excuse for the military industrial complex. Military industrial complex. It falls, now there's no excuse.

Starting point is 00:41:27 They have to create one. Yeah. Dave. So this is the whole thing. Can you just say that one more time so people understand? This is really interesting. So just to rewind a little bit, right? You understand there was not really

Starting point is 00:41:42 a military industrial complex until World War II. World War two Created this is Eisenhower who Eisenhower was the five-star general who led us to victory in World War two And then later so he was president he goes listen that was his farewell address listen We've created this military industrial complex. We built up these great big weapons companies And he was basically saying there's a business of war now, and it's big business. And so they want, so now, the- Real quick, real quick, this is so important, I just wanna make sure everybody understands it. Just the term military industrial complex,

Starting point is 00:42:11 can you just briefly say, basically what that means, who you're talking about, and then we get right to it. Well, just basically that there's a big business of war now. There are these huge manufacturing arms companies that are in the business of selling weapons to the government. And there's big business here, and they're heavily incentivized to get more business.

Starting point is 00:42:31 But the way they get more business isn't like you or me, it's not like we gotta get more people to come to our shows or something like that. It's like they gotta get more politicians to sign off on wars so that they use the weapons they just sold them and need to buy more weapons from them for the next thing. So now William F. Buckley, who was probably.

Starting point is 00:42:49 Sorry to interrupt one more time, was Eisenhower's point, we need to be wary of this? Or was he like, okay. No, he was like, we need to guard against them trying to get more power. And this is five star general, Dwight D. Eisenhower saying it. The country needed to create one to win World War II.

Starting point is 00:43:05 Yes. Well, to win the war, yes, we probably needed to do that. Because everybody got on board. Ford was making tanks and shit. Yes. It became... Yes. But then we created, right after World War II, we created the CIA, which was in the beginning supposed to be like kind of like a newspaper for the president, like a secret newspaper. It's like, listen, we need to know what's going on

Starting point is 00:43:26 around the world. So you come and give the president all the intelligence of what's really going on. And then it very quickly turned into like a paramilitary secret kind of black ops thing. No offense. But, okay, so this get now Bill Buckley, But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but,

Starting point is 00:43:46 but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but,

Starting point is 00:43:54 but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, a hill, limited government, traditional conservative thing, but here's the thing, is we got the Soviet Union. So at the end of World War II, the two big winners are America and the Soviet Union, and they're communist, and they were explicitly for world domination, like they wanted to spread communism across the world, and so then there's this thing like, we have to be in this battle with them,

Starting point is 00:44:22 we gotta fight a war in Korea, we gotta fight a war in Vietnam, we have to be in this battle with them. We gotta fight a war in Korea. We gotta fight a war in Vietnam. So then in 1991, they collapse. They just throw in the towel. Nobody saw it coming on our side of intelligence. Like the CIA didn't see this coming. They thought they were gonna be around for a while. I thought it was a slow decay

Starting point is 00:44:38 and it was just kind of like an emerald. Well it was, but they didn't really perceive it. So George H.W. Bush at the time, he went over and gave what's called his Chicken Kiev speech, where he was trying to keep the Soviet Union together. They didn't want him to collapse. They were, and maybe legitimately.

Starting point is 00:44:54 Cause you'd meet the boogeyman or? I mean, I don't know. I mean, partly, I'm sure that's part of it. I'm sure also they were just like a little concerned about like what replaces this. You guys got a lot of nuclear weapons. Like what's next, you know? And I think-

Starting point is 00:45:06 Enemy who knows better than the enemy. Right, I'm sure there's some of that too. But anyway, as this thing falls in the 90s, there's a lot of debate over like, so what are we supposed to do now? And a lot of conservatives and liberals were like, oh, we can go back to being a normal country now. Like we don't have to dominate the world.

Starting point is 00:45:23 We can go back to like, we could have a peace dividend. We can save money on all this stuff. Okay. So the neocons come in and they go, they go, no, no, no, no, no. This is what Charles Crattenhamer called the unipolar moment. And he was like, look, we have a moment right now that we can remake the world and no one can stop us. No one's got the power. It used to be kind of like, well, could we get away with doing this over here? The Soviet Union might try to stop us. Or can we impose our will on Vietnam versus can the commies impose their will on Vietnam?

Starting point is 00:45:56 But he goes, now there's no one like that. We can go do whatever we wanna do. And the neocons advocated huge increases in the military budget. Even though the Soviet Union just fell, we're supposed to be pulling back on this. They haven't got huge increases. And then, of course, all of their think tanks got huge donations from weapons companies. So it's not...

Starting point is 00:46:15 So now they get to thinking. Right, exactly. Right. You know, so like, is it one thing? Is it as simple as there's this business who has this? It's like, no, there are like these people who I think do have these beliefs. If those beliefs happen to be weapons companies should make a ton more money,

Starting point is 00:46:31 the defense budget should be increased by $200 billion, a whole lot of weapons companies are like, I like that young man. I think he's got some important ideas. And so then the system kind of perpetuates itself. And then, go, go. There's no fix to stop that though. Even if you get the truth out there to everyone just like Akash is honest answer We're not going anywhere

Starting point is 00:46:53 Well, I mean like yes, and no why would they ever stop because nothing because nothing lasts forever. I mean look the Soviet Union Why did they ever stop? there's eventually they just kind of realized that the jig was up and the people were on to them and they didn't want to be a part of it anymore. And they were like, I guess we could force them all to stay. We could go put down these revolts, but there just wasn't the will anymore. And I weirdly do see America getting closer

Starting point is 00:47:19 to that position where, like, at a certain point, the evil people in Washington, D.C., maybe they would be like, you know what, National Guard, go put down this movement. And the National Guard, they're like, they don't even really believe in this thing anymore either. They're like, it's kind of wrong what you're doing. But then they just throw trans in your algorithm

Starting point is 00:47:36 and now we're not caring about you. Well, that worked for about a decade so far, so yeah. That's one way to play it. No, look, I'm not saying who's gonna win this or not, but I don't think it's, look, what is crazy right now is that like, if you think about even the COVID, there was a, I'm trying to remember exactly what time this was, there was like, they came out,

Starting point is 00:47:58 I remember saying this to Rogan one time in the green room at the mothership, where I was just like, you know how crazy this is? That they were like floating out the idea of doing another round of lockdowns. It was like right at the end of like the Omicron variant or something like that, and you know how they do these things? They put trial balloons out there. You know, they go, we're thinking about having

Starting point is 00:48:21 a national vaccine passport database, and then like people get furious and then they go, no,, you know, passport, database. And then like people get furious and then they go, no, no, no, no, we were never gonna do that anyway. You know, they're always testing like what they can get away with. And they floated out lockdowns again. And it was just like for three days on Twitter, everybody was like, I will burn this place to the ground

Starting point is 00:48:37 if you try to do lockdowns again. I was like, that's not happening. And I said to Joe, I was like, you might be the reason why we're not having lockdowns again. Like you may have just changed the course of the, like if it was all just corporate media and there wasn't, you hadn't like broken that paradigm,

Starting point is 00:48:55 they may, I don't know for sure, but like they may have been able to get away with this again. And so stuff like that is like, I actually think there's a lot of that going on where there's things that, you know, it's like you can't see the counterfactual. Something voices that are not under their control. And what could they have gotten away with

Starting point is 00:49:10 if they didn't have that, you know? Exactly, so we're just comparing it to what exists, not what it could have been without, I guess, these like free voices. Does that reach globally, you think? Because like, did they impose that anywhere else, like a late stage Omicron lockdown or whatever? know I do think I don't you know I don't know I don't think so didn't China have a second lockdown I mean they can do

Starting point is 00:49:33 whatever they want but you know would be the benefit of another another lockdown well them like who profits off that oh it was really good for big business man lockdowns were great for big business because it totally, it killed all the small and mid-sized businesses. All the competition. Put their competition out. And then everyone's ordering from Amazon. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's all like, it was very good.

Starting point is 00:49:55 It's a big wealth transfer like those couple years. And then for all the, oh yeah it was the largest transfer of wealth in human history. That's what I had read. Yeah. Oh no it clearly was. I mean it's just the bills that they were signing. I mean they It was the largest transfer of wealth in human history. That's what I had read. Yeah, yeah. Oh no, it clearly was. I mean, it's just the bills that they were signing. I mean, they printed like six trillion dollars in 2020 and handed it out.

Starting point is 00:50:13 You know, I don't know, like American people got like 1,200 bucks and then the rest went to corporations. Yeah. You hear a lot of buzzwords in these types of conversations. Companies like BlackRock is always brought up. Why is BlackRock evil? They don't seem good.

Starting point is 00:50:32 And why not? Like you'll hear, they're buying all the single family homes. Okay, they're not allowed to do that, are they a hedge fund, they're allowed to buy all the wheat. You know what I mean? But why are they specifically bad and why are they worse than another hedge phone? Well, I think, I mean, I think it's as simple

Starting point is 00:50:49 as that they're like, they're the biggest. They're the best. Or them and a few others. And it's just, you just see kind of like, this thing being consolidated into like, just what it's like Vanguard, and you know, there's like a couple really big ones. But it's also just that they're like,

Starting point is 00:51:04 in these crazy, corrupt partnerships. It's not, it's like if a company gets really big organically, like just in the market, I mean, it's like, you rarely see people angry about that. NVIDIA is a good example. Well, it's anything where it's voluntary, it's just kinda like, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:51:23 that's what people are choosing to go to. They're choosing to get their products from there because they like the product or whatever. But when you're getting, say, big because you're getting all the government contracts, or for example, with some of these big companies where, and by the way, Vivek Ramaswamy wrote about this in his book, really interesting, one of his books,

Starting point is 00:51:45 Woking, I think, where it's like, they'll have these state pension funds. So they have the pensions for all, every government employee in California, say. So they've got just billions and billions of dollars, because the only people who have good pensions are government workers anymore. And so they get to choose where they're going to invest that money.

Starting point is 00:52:06 And they'll be like, oh, OK, we'll invest it in these companies. But only if you meet certain DEI standards. Or only, you know what I mean? So it's like... So they impose their will on the companies. Yes. They kind of impose their own cultural agenda through financial means. But it wasn't like a bottom-up thing.

Starting point is 00:52:26 Like whenever it's a bottom-up thing, you don't see this type of like resentment over it. Like if there's like a bottom-up thing, like I do think like the acceptance of like gay marriage was very much a bottom-up thing. Eventually people were just like not, yeah. Not everyone, not everyone was cool with it. It took some of us longer than others.

Starting point is 00:52:43 But you know what I mean? But it's like, but this is different. This stuff all being pushed is totally top down. Okay. What's happening, what happened on the Twitter spaces? You popped in with Candace, what was the conversation? What's going on? What has she latched onto?

Starting point is 00:52:59 What does she care? What is she trying to do? She feels that America has been taken hostage by Israel? Well I think from what I understand, it kind of started, so she was over at the Daily Wire, and I do think this was, you know, like I don't know Candace like super well, but we've done shows together

Starting point is 00:53:20 and we've hung out a little bit, and she seems to be very genuine to me. But she I guess had just had a baby. And she's had, I think, several kids in a short period of time. Two, right? I think three. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:53:34 But like, and so she had just given birth, and the war in Gaza kicks off, and she started talking on her show about how heartbreaking the images of all these dead kids in Gaza was. and she started talking on her show about how heartbreaking the images of all these dead kids in Gaza was. And I guess because it was a Daily Wire show and the people were around her and stuff,

Starting point is 00:53:53 and people started flipping out at her like, oh, Israel has to do this, how dare you criticize Israel, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, I'm just saying it's sad to see dead kids. And when she got that kind of pushback, I think, because I think that's her personality type, she was immediately like, I'm doubling down on this now, and I'm gonna really dig into this.

Starting point is 00:54:14 And she got more and more critical of what Israel was doing and the Israeli kind of relationship with Israel, which there's a lot to criticize there, the more you look into it. Our relationship with Israel? Yeah, the relationship. What is our relationship? What is misunderstood about our relationship with Israel? Well okay, so John Mearsheimer, who's like just, I mean, like just a total genius and

Starting point is 00:54:36 one of like the, I think, world, the kind of leading world intellectuals on like foreign affairs. The way he put it, which I think is more or less right, is that it's unlike any other relationship between any other two countries. The relationship between the United States of America and the government of Israel is like, they get unconditional support from us.

Starting point is 00:55:01 We prop them up in everything they do, no matter what they did. And no matter whether we want them to do something else, whether they do exactly the opposite of what we have. If we just go, hey, I know you've done these nine things, could you just not do this 10th thing? It's a real problem for us. They go, no, we're doing the 10th thing,

Starting point is 00:55:20 and we still fund them while they do it. And that's true for a lot of different reasons. Why? Well, part of it. And that's true for a lot of different reasons. Why? Why? Well, part of it is because there's a very powerful lobby in the United States of America called AIPAC. Yeah, what is AIPAC? AIPAC is the Israeli lobby.

Starting point is 00:55:37 And basically... Is that actually what it is? Yeah. Yeah, it's the American-Israeli lobby. What does that mean? So, technically, they'll say they're not a foreign lobby, they're a lobby of Americans, lobby on behalf of a foreign country. So it's kind of like...

Starting point is 00:55:54 Are there other lobbies that are like this, like for Qatar? Are there other lobbies that are like this for Saudi Arabia? Nothing like APEC. Nothing like APEC. But there are other countries that are financially incentivized. They certainly have, yeah, there's business interests all around, but APEC, but there are other countries that are financially incentivized. They certainly have, yeah, there's business interests all around, but APEC is particularly powerful and is very good at getting people in a lot of trouble

Starting point is 00:56:14 if they're critical of Israel. And on top of that, then you have this kind of widespread belief amongst evangelical Christians that the Jews kind of have to be in control of Israel in order for Jesus to come back and save them or whatever. Boy, did that work out for the Jews, huh? I mean. Well, if you listen to the evangelicals,

Starting point is 00:56:33 it's not gonna work out well, ultimately. They get Israel for a little bit, but you're not coming along for this ride, just so you know. Like, that's not actually, it doesn't actually help you that much, but you better accept Jesus pretty soon. They'll convert.

Starting point is 00:56:47 If you see the J-Man come back, you got it, right? Yeah. Hey, if he comes back, I'll sign up. Comes back, let's go. I'll tell you. He's back! He said he comes back. Let's go.

Starting point is 00:56:58 Listen, I'll tell you, and you can, as a Jewish person myself, we are a stubborn people. Okay. And I can see a lot of Jews, even if Jesus came back, just being like, no, no, it's an illusion. But so there's a weird relationship where, because of a lot of different circumstances, American politicians have an inability to put any pressure on Israel,

Starting point is 00:57:27 but are required to support them. So what are those circumstances? Again, I truly just don't know. And I think this is important because this helps people veer away from anti-Semitism. And I would say, yeah, because all that stuff is stupid, by the way. But I don't wanna empower these fucking idiots.

Starting point is 00:57:41 And I think people are insecure, I think they're insecure to ask even questions. Oh, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, but I think they're like concerned to ask questions because they're like, I don't want to come across as one of these people that I see are just blatantly anti-Semitic.

Starting point is 00:57:54 Yeah, yeah. And I don't want to stay silent. Giving them any amnesty. No, listen, I completely understand that, and it's like, I don't know. Because there's no question there is an absurd amount of anti-Semitism online right now. But there are questions that are not anti-Semitic at all

Starting point is 00:58:10 that we should be able to ask and get to the bottom of. And like steel man the answers. Like literally give, what would APEC's best argument be? Well sure, but also if you don't, it's almost like if you don't ask these questions that are reasonable questions, then you cede the ground to the Jew haters and those are the only people who are asking these questions that are reasonable questions. Then you seed the ground to the Jew haters and those are the only people who are asking these questions

Starting point is 00:58:27 and then they seem like, how come no one else is willing to talk about that? So if you want to be critical of Israel and not Jewish people, you say, hey, here's the issue. And not just that, but like- We just want to know about the relationship. But dude, the best critics, or at least a lot of the best critics of Israel

Starting point is 00:58:40 are Jewish people. I mean, the tradition of Jews who criticize Israel is like, I mean, from Noam Chomsky to Max Blumenthal and Glenn Greenwald, there's a ton of Jews who are like. That's the other conversation I wanted to get to eventually, like, what do Israelis think right now? And I think that, you know, we might have lost a plot with that a little bit, like, America got tons of criticism

Starting point is 00:59:02 for the war in Iraq, right? And there was a separation, though. I think people would be like, America's fucked up. But I like American music. I like American TV shows. I like American culture. But America was fucked up. And there was this separation. And I feel like with Israel, there isn't that much. So I'm curious what the people there. Sure. Well, we'll get to that after. Well, well, either way, I mean, that's a, you know,

Starting point is 00:59:23 it's a it's a really good point. And in fact, it was in Osama bin Laden's declaration of war against America that he basically said, like, look, here are our grievances is what your government's done to us. And since you guys have free elections, and you've elected this government, you are also fair game and we can also kill your citizens. And so like, but I'm just saying, that's the mentality of Osama bin Laden, who if you follow the story, not the good guy in the story.

Starting point is 00:59:52 You know, and so like, that's the mentality of saying that like, you're not gonna separate like the actions of a government from like some dude who runs a bakery or something there, like they're all the same thing. But we do elect him, I mean, he has a good point. Yeah, but at the same time, you can't elect them. I mean, he has a good point. And he makes good hollering. You can't hold regular people responsible for the crimes of their government.

Starting point is 01:00:09 And especially you, when you look at how corrupt and nefarious governments can be and how they can restrict the people's ability to be represented, of course. But the idea in a true representative government, it would be like, hey, you put that guy there and he is doing your bidding. We now know that that is not the case.

Starting point is 01:00:25 You can't hold us accountable. Because we are kind of held hostage. Yeah, well that's right. So that separation should exist and there's that protection. But the logic is, if it was a true democracy, the logic would make sense. I can kinda get where you're coming from.

Starting point is 01:00:40 I'd still say. No, because you don't know what they're gonna do once you elect them into office. They told us a bunch of things and then they can flip the script once they're in. Okay, that's a fair point. But if they went into office with these ideas and we elected them for that reason,

Starting point is 01:00:53 you could at least hold the people that elected them accountable? I mean, I guess. I don't think you can kill them, though. Yeah, I don't know. Listen, I always tend to be on the side of people against the corrupt power fall. And also, who was running on a,

Starting point is 01:01:04 hey, let's kill everybody in the Middle East policy. Yeah, even in those situations, they always kind of propagandize people into thinking they need to do this or it's not gonna be in their interest. Look, as far as like how the people in Israel are feeling, I'd say that like let's say pre October 7th,

Starting point is 01:01:23 just like historically, there's always been always been a much wider array of opinion on Israel inside Israel than there is in the United States of America. And there's been there's been a tremendous pressure put on the Israeli government by Israelis to to not be so brutal to the Palestinians over the years. Like there's a lot, listen, it was in a, I mean, it ended up making its way to our press too. But on October 8th, Tal Schneider for the Times of Israel wrote a huge piece about how for years Benjamin Netanyahu

Starting point is 01:02:01 propped up Hamas. And like, it was like the next day. It was like, this is your creation, or maybe not creation, but at least you've aided them for your own purposes for all of these years, and look what happened now. You got all of our people killed over this, and now we got this war on our hands.

Starting point is 01:02:18 And so they were pointing the finger right at him, whereas on October 8th, you wouldn't have had, if someone had said that here, that'd have been crazy radioactive. And so there is a diversity of opinion. Also, like anything else, there's this kind of rally around the flag effect, and after October 7th, there was a lot of people in Israel who were like,

Starting point is 01:02:39 let's go get these guys no matter what, which is kind of the same way we felt after 9-11 and all of that. Absolutely. And by is kind of the same way we felt after 9-11 and all of that. Absolutely. And by the way, the same way the Palestinians feel after some Israeli strike kills a bunch of them and they're like, let's go get them. They're easily galvanized. Have you heard that there's congressmen or like a signed an APAC handler?

Starting point is 01:02:57 Like there was a dude from Kentucky that signed that. Thomas Nasty. So break this down. Yeah. So break down APAC, how they influence, break down this that the- Do you believe that? Like is it- No, no, it's actually true.

Starting point is 01:03:08 There's a checklist. If you're gonna be in Congress or the Senate, like part of your thing is you do the trip and everyone gets to say, I've gone on that trip to Israel. It's their birthright. Oh wow. Wow.

Starting point is 01:03:19 Yeah. But yeah, I can't deny it because someone, I've gone to a talk and then they'll come to me and they want me to pledge my 1800. So you're Jewish like me, right? So how crazy is it that you? Not like you. A little different.

Starting point is 01:03:37 Okay, fair enough. So you're a good one. Yeah. Both your dicks are cut. That's okay. We're really talking about it. How crazy is it, right, that even that, so I mean, I don't think I have mine anymore,

Starting point is 01:03:49 I'm not sure, but I don't think they would let me in, but just being Jewish, you have what they call a birthright to go to Israel on them, a free trip, and you can also become a citizen there anytime, like you have a right to Israel. Yet, the people living in that land for hundreds of years before the Zionist project have no right to return to their homes.

Starting point is 01:04:16 They still have keys, some of the older ones there to their homes and they have no right to go back to it, which is just so wild to me. But anyway, that's kinda of neither here nor there. I'm sorry, what was the question? Hey, Pat, just the explicit. Yes, well, Thomas Masson. Overarching conversations,

Starting point is 01:04:30 how you deal with so much. Thomas Masson's telling the truth about that. Yeah, they trod. Or maybe first can you just explain how lobbying works in general, and then break down. I'd say it like this, okay? So after 9-11, Colin Powell went to George W. Bush.

Starting point is 01:04:47 Colin Powell was the wisest member of the George W. Bush administration. Still pretty bad guy, but he was by far the wisest of the people in George W. Bush's room. And the thing he told George W. Bush after 9-11 was, you have to make a two-state solution now. Like this is the time to do it. You just hit 9- was, you have to make a two state solution now. Like this is the time to do it. You just hit 9-11, you have record high approval ratings,

Starting point is 01:05:09 this is the time that you can cram this through and get it done, and you have to do it, and why? Because he knew, he goes, this is at the heart of why we have this terrorism problem. Like a big, the central reason why they hate us is because we prop up Israel and they kicked the Palestinians out of their holy land. And they, you know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:05:29 And then there were other reasons too. They didn't like that we had our military bases in Saudi Arabia bombing Iraq and all of these things. But he really pushed them to do it. And George W. Bush agreed. He was like, okay, I mean, if Colin Powell tells me that's what I gotta do, I'll go do that. And then it was Tom DeLay in the House of Representatives

Starting point is 01:05:46 who said, if you push for a two-state solution, I guarantee you're a one-term president because AIPAC will turn on you in a second. We will whip every evangelical Christian against you. Like, it's just over for you. And so he just gave up on doing it. Oh, interesting. So that's kind of, effect how it works. So the

Starting point is 01:06:06 evangelical vote is tied to the Israeli lobby in a in a way, even though they're really not tied for like the future, but for the immediate kind of Yeah, this is like the thing you're saying with like, there's two different things have the same interest. Yeah, right. Right's interesting is you go from, I mean what percentage of Americans are Jewish? I mean, by the 2%. 2.2%.

Starting point is 01:06:31 I'm not gonna tell you about to say too many. Too many. Too many. So, if the evangelical Christians are tied to, I guess, let's just call it American Jews. I know American Jews that don't all have the same opinion, but let's just call it American Jews. I know American Jews that all have the same opinion, but let's just call it percentage-wise. You take that 2% and you increase it significantly.

Starting point is 01:06:51 Oh yeah, but there's a lot of evangelical Christians in this country. There's like tens of millions of them. So now it's not such a minor, I think a lot of times the people are looking at and they throw that number around, like why do we have so much consideration for 2% of the population?

Starting point is 01:07:02 Well because 2% of the population and a large swath and a huge voting block all agree on a really important thing for their identity. So you're not really looking at 2%. Got it. Now it's making sense. So you start, but you do, it kind of built up this culture. And again, this isn't anything like that, it's not, the problem when people go down the path

Starting point is 01:07:25 of just like the anti-Semitic stuff, just hating Jews in general, is that it's like with anything else. It's like the same mistake that feminists make whenever they talk about men. Or when a feminist will just be like, they'll be like, 95% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are men.

Starting point is 01:07:45 And then they extrapolate from that some comment on men. But you're like, but that's not men. That's like this tiny substrata of men, the tiniest of men. You know what I mean? It's like being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company does not explain the life of an average man at all. And then you're like, oh, well, you could also look like, you know, prisons or homeless or all that, you know, it's just like, whenever you try to collectivize people,

Starting point is 01:08:08 right, it's just, it's much more complicated than that. But it's also like, there are, Jews are very successful, broadly speaking, and so, all right, when you, if you offend Jews, there ends up being consequences that there aren't necessarily for other groups. I mean, look, if you think about like, say, let's imagine like black people in this country had the wealth that Jewish people have.

Starting point is 01:08:37 And after the George Floyd thing or something, someone- The government would start making sneakers. So now the government's making sneakers, okay? And they're making them good sneakers. But now the government's making sneakers, okay? And making them good sneakers. But so after George Floyd, someone goes like, ah, he was on fentanyl or blah blah blah, I don't think the cop did anything wrong.

Starting point is 01:08:53 You think that guy would lose his job or lose his pet? There might be some black people who are like, no, you know what, we're gonna punish this guy for saying that thing. So that does end up happening, right? People do kind of get punished for speaking out against this. And then that starts building up like a resentment against it.

Starting point is 01:09:09 Well, yeah, well, who resents it? The people who speak up about it, for sure. Twitter. Yeah, and a lot of people on Twitter. Do you get fired for simply speaking out, or do you get, or punished, rather, or do you get punished for saying something that is not true?

Starting point is 01:09:25 I think there's definitely been cases of people getting punished for saying things that are true. I mean, I remember Pat Buchanan said once, this was years ago, right? This was like in the 90s. And he was talking about the first war in Iraq, the Persian Gulf War under George H.W. Bush. And he goes, nobody in America wants this war in Iraq except for some weapons companies and the Israel lobby. And they flipped out on him for saying that. And they liked it. Did they?

Starting point is 01:09:54 Yes! Well, why would they flip out? They totally wanted it because they're, because you're just not, it's anti-Semitic. What are you saying? Oh, you're saying the Jews want war. You're saying that Jews are manipulating us into war, like something like that. But like, no, he was talking about a very specific group and look for- I mean, aren't there like minutes? Aren't there like records that show that they have

Starting point is 01:10:11 been? It just doesn't matter. Yeah, but like it just- If they have been. That's what I'm trying to say. Well, they certainly were lobbying for it. No question about it. Look, Ben- Why would it be advantageous to them? Well, because they were, Saddam Hussein was a big rival of Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu came and testified before Congress in 2002, right after 9-11, this is now going to the next, and he came over and testified as a regional expert

Starting point is 01:10:34 that if we just overthrow Saddam Hussein, democracy will sweep the region and it'll have all these positive reverberations, and oh, by the way, you should also have a regime change war in Iran, that should be next up for you guys. But it is just kind of all his enemies, like all his regional enemies. He's lobbying us to get our young boys to go fight a war over there on his behalf.

Starting point is 01:10:56 Now when you call that out, if you call that out, it's very easy to sound anti-Semitic. But you don't have to be, you don't have to hate Jews to just point out that it's like, well, hey, look, there's a foreign government lobbying us into a war. Question. It is their job to lobby us. Sure. It is every country's job to convince the more powerful countries to do the things that they want. Don't we kind of got to blame the evangelical Christians? I'm just like, you can't, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Starting point is 01:11:35 no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, manipulated into supporting a foreign government because of this thing that they believe in that now and without them the lobbying wouldn't work based on what I'm understanding from you. I think all of it. You need the numbers and you need the votes

Starting point is 01:11:52 it's not just the money you can't just pay the politicians you still need votes at the end of the day. I more than agree I think there's a lot of blame to go around and there's a lot of people. That's a blanket statement but I guess what I'm just trying to say is, I don't, I don't totally believe that you could do this without voting support. Oh, no, 100%. So you need a group to come and support blindly, and it seems like they're supporting blindly. But isn't it groups like APAC and evangelical groups

Starting point is 01:12:20 that tell them which way to vote? They're, there's- Wait a minute, say it, but let me get that down to me, so I understand. It's the groups that are telling them which way to vote. So it's like I'm going to blame the actual general. I guess what I would say is if I'm a country, right, and I'm friends with America, I'm trying to get America to do everything I want. Of course.

Starting point is 01:12:37 I'm like, yo, these guys are trying to knock down our door, they're trying to kill us, should we just take them out? Can we get the better trade agreement with China for this thing over? Every day I'm calling up America and I'm like what can we do to make my country's life better? Yeah, but the criticism of Israel is not what they do to America, it's what they're doing to Palestine. But, but well I think there's, it's twofold, it's like yes there's criticism for that 100%, but it's the fact that we're supporting it, which makes our discourse here

Starting point is 01:13:05 so intense. And so, if they were doing it. Look at it on paper. Why are we agreeing to do these things, and then we see the politicians, like why are the politicians agreeing to do these things? Exactly. So the person you get mad at is the person

Starting point is 01:13:18 who's forcing the politicians to do it. Yeah, it doesn't stop on Yahoo in that. That's who we should be accepting. Who is saying, all right, we'll follow this little path? Like, who's his? Yeah, well, look, again, so there's all types of blame to go around, right? But like, I wouldn't let Netanyahu off the hook

Starting point is 01:13:34 for that either, because it's not as if like, he's just advocating that like, oh, we get more foreign agents. Can I clarify that position? He could be advocating for something disgusting, horrible, horrific. That's bad. But he, let's say he's doing what he believes is the best thing for his country.

Starting point is 01:13:54 We as Americans should be able to look and go, that's disgusting, horrible, horrific. We're not supporting that. And then one day he might be like, yo, here's this cool technology, we wanna trade with you. And we'll be like, well, that's really cool. Yeah, we'll do that trade. But it seems to me, and again, I might be like, yo, here's this cool technology, we wanna trade with you. And we'll be like, well, that's really cool. Yeah, we'll do that trade.

Starting point is 01:14:05 But it seems to me, and again, I might not know, that because of this large bloating voting block, these evangelicals that will blindly support whatever Israel wants, we are manipulated into the support of these things that we find horrendous. Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that.

Starting point is 01:14:23 Too simplistic? No, give me pushback? Give me pushback. Sorry, many people have their resurrection. Many people have their issue, trans bathrooms. The masses are easily manipulated. You just find the hot button issue for any voting block. You can flip them. I just gotta press the right button.

Starting point is 01:14:40 So their button happens to be this. But this is very tricky because in order for what the evangelicals want to happen, they need to secure the Jews in the Holy Land. And if the Jews simply go, hey guys, if you don't support us in this war, we're not going to be in the Holy Land. J-Man not coming back. So they have to go, we got to keep them there, whatever they got to do. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying.

Starting point is 01:15:04 It's bigger than trans-bath bathrooms is what I'm trying to say. It is. The stakes are high. I can't speak for an evangelical, but I think if you ask most people and they're like, hey, if you see the images, what's going on in Gaza, how do you feel about that? I think most people will be like, that's bad.

Starting point is 01:15:18 It makes me feel bad. But if the group, if APAC or if an evangelical group is like, they are holding hostage their group of voters to force politicians to do their bidding. So I don't think it's the actual people that are just like, nah, we need to keep sending money to Israel. I think it's the group that's telling the politicians like, hey, if you don't keep sending money to Israel, I'm going to get my whole voting block to vote against you next term.

Starting point is 01:15:42 Yeah. So I'm not putting it on the people at all. I put it all on the groups that control the people. And they control the news cycle to say Hamas is doing X, Y, and Z, it's all Hamas, we gotta get Hamas out of here. You can, yeah. No, sure, there's horrible manipulation and propaganda going on.

Starting point is 01:15:54 There's no question about that. What I'm saying is without that specific group, maybe they find another group. But without that group, I don't know if it's possible. Yeah, I don't know either. Do you think it is? I think that there's no question that that voting block has been like indispensable for them. So you know, but but then again, to

Starting point is 01:16:13 your point, it's also like it's not just you know, it's like every evangelical, I shouldn't say every, but so many evangelical pastors are out there like preaching to their people, and you got to support Israel, and you got to support the politicians who support them So it's a it's a again. It's like there's I Don't know what any one of these factors not being there. We might be looking at a different equate. How do you disconnect the two? Yeah, well, like is there no conversation within the event? I imagine there is There's even debates and this I just don't know enough about, like I don't know enough

Starting point is 01:16:46 about whether this is like theologically correct or not, but there's a whole other argument, which I tend to think that they're right, that there's a whole other group of Christians who are like, by the way, this is a complete misinterpretation of the Bible. Oh, really? That we don't need Jews there. This is not a real thing. Yeah. This is just, that's like,

Starting point is 01:17:05 so again, I don't know enough about that. I mean, there's like specific language in the Bible that says, like specifically in the Old Testament, that like all people, or like anyone who goes against Israel, and it says exactly Israel will be cursed and all people that support Israel will be blessed. And that's word from God. And so people like evangelical pastors interpret that

Starting point is 01:17:21 literally to say the nation of Israel, whereas other people interpret that to say, oh, this is a metaphor for God's people, that all the people that are a part of. Written way before the creation of the state of Israel. So it's like not clear that that's what they're referring to. But it is in reference to like the Old Testament nation of the Israel Jews.

Starting point is 01:17:40 So it is what some people would say is a metaphor to say all of God's chosen people. Yeah, but that's Old Testament, aren't y'all the New Testament? Well, hold on, hold on a second. They work in tandem based on interpretation. But God's chosen people being the Jews. Being Christians is what a new interpretation would be.

Starting point is 01:17:56 That Israel is in reference to all people that are Christian that follow God, that read the Bible and Old Testament, New Testament. I don't like this one. Shifty, did you hear anything about this? Keep it that way. What has your interpretation been? What have you been taught?

Starting point is 01:18:11 So I was brought up that everyone was God's chosen people and that's what Christians are. If everyone's God's chosen people, then God doesn't really have a chosen people. Well, not everyone. That's like if everyone's beautiful, then what does that mean anymore? That Israel loves you. Well, not everyone. Then we gotta, it's like if everyone's beautiful, then what does that mean anymore? Come on.

Starting point is 01:18:26 That Israel's basically. He is a Jew. Yeah, exactly. We gotta be. We gotta be. Listen, it's in there. Okay. I mean, I can only go so far.

Starting point is 01:18:36 No. That all people could be chosen, that Israel's a metaphor for all Christians of the world. Okay, so are you familiar at all with the evangelical discourse about this? I'm not super familiar with it. I know that there's been like, I've heard like some Catholics and like Orthodox Christians

Starting point is 01:18:56 really giving pushback to the evangelicals about this because they don't believe any of that stuff. They're like, whatever it is, I don't remember, I just don't know enough, but it's something like, yeah, that's not even what Israel means by that, Israel means something else, it certainly doesn't mean any political group that was formed in 1948, you know what I mean, that's not right.

Starting point is 01:19:15 Either way, that's not what motivates me is what is the correct interpretation of the Bible. I'm just saying that I like personally I think this is really bad policy for Israel I think it's totally self-destructive for them and they do I mean I think they've totally turned global opinion against them. They're now like they're now on the precipice of a much wider war They've had conflict with the Houthis in Yemen and with Hezbollah in Lebanon. With Iran, obviously, there's always building tensions there, and so it's like, oh, you're looking

Starting point is 01:19:52 at this much wider regional war with the world opinion turning against you. The most destructive thing is lying to yourself. Yeah, yeah. Is there not a strategic advantage? Yeah, wasn't that their plan, maybe? Is there not a strategic advantage to having, I plan their plan maybe? Is there not a strategic advantage to having I heard people say this like having a democracy in the region Like a Western alliance with the thing is like first. I don't know. I mean

Starting point is 01:20:19 the issue is that Israel isn't really a democracy and Like they I mean they're a democracy within Israel but Israel has had control of Gaza and the West Bank since 1967. And you could kinda get away with occupying a group of people for a few years after a war while you're figuring out what you're gonna do or on the transition to giving them their independence or something, but they've been occupying.

Starting point is 01:20:43 And they'll, I already hear in the YouTube comments, people will be like, well, they pulled out of Gaza in 2005. It's like, yeah, and then they put a full blockade around the country and they dominate every single inch of what happens in Gaza. But, you know, if you've been occupying, it's five million Palestinians between, or something in that ballpark,

Starting point is 01:21:02 between Gaza and the West Bank. None of them have any voting rights. None of them have any rights at all. And so how long can you have control of an area with a whole bunch of non-citizens who don't have voting rights before you sit there and go, but they're the only democracy in the regions. Like, not really.

Starting point is 01:21:18 I don't know, I mean, I don't think we would consider it a democracy if you had half your population just was completely disenfranchised. So I don't think, I just totally think that's wrong. And also I think that, you know, us being, I'm not even saying like we shouldn't be friends with Israel. I think we should in fact. And like I think that, I think that a few months back, I mean after Israel killed that Iranian in Syria and Iran sent all those rockets at it, we helped defend Israel and so did Saudi Arabia and Jordan. But, like

Starting point is 01:21:52 okay, that's somewhat reasonable as far as interventions go. But like, the idea that we're unconditionally behind Israel and do nothing, you know what I mean, for the Palestinians. I don't think that helps us at all. And in fact, I think it's a huge part of the reason why we're so hated in the Muslim world. But it wasn't always like that, you know? What do you mean? Okay, so after World War I,

Starting point is 01:22:20 they set up what's called the King-Crane Commission. And they went around, they were basically trying to figure out what we were going to do with some of these areas like the Ottoman Empire had just fallen. The Ottoman Empire falls, you've got to organize some stuff. And they went and they surveyed thousands and thousands of people. They went to Palestine at the time, they went to Syria, and Syria, they asked them

Starting point is 01:22:42 who they wanted to rule them in a League of Nations mandate. And they overwhelmingly voted for America, because there was just like this positive feeling about America in that part of the world. Like it was like, the French and the British they hated. You know, because they had like been horrible to them. But America was like seen as like, oh, that's the freedom people, the city on a hill.

Starting point is 01:23:04 Like we like those guys. And so, I'm not saying, that's the freedom people, the city on a hill, we like those guys. And so, I'm not saying, whenever I bring this up, people love to go, what about the Barbary Wars or something? I'm not saying we never had any conflict with Muslims before. But the serious hatred that we have. That's a deep cut, by the way. Barbary Wars? It's like, yes, in 1801.

Starting point is 01:23:21 People are bringing that up. Yeah, they do, they like to bring it up. This is, okay, they do. They like to bring it up. This is, okay, go on. But I do, I think that like, I think it's, there's a lot of costs. Didn't Jefferson send like the Navy to. I think he made the Navy to send them there.

Starting point is 01:23:37 Yeah, what a fucking. And it's a crazy story by the way too, which is like, I don't even know, I don't know enough about it to really speak. Yeah, your followers are too smart. Yeah, well, there is like, I don't even know, I don't know enough about it to really speak intelligently. Yeah, your followers are too smart. Yeah, well, there's maybe, I don't know. Okay, go on. I got some dummies out there, but like,

Starting point is 01:23:51 it was something, it was like the, I know the British and the French, they used to just pay them off. Yeah, and it was pirates, essentially. They were just pirates, and they were like, if you wanna sail through here, you gotta pay us off. And America said, fuck that. But you could imagine.

Starting point is 01:24:04 We said it in a boys' voice. And America's like, fuck that. But you could imagine. We sendin' the boys. But there's something about Thomas Jefferson, you know, like the author of the Declaration of Independence, and they're like, yeah, there are these pirates and the French and the British just pay them off. And Thomas Jefferson is like, a free people do not pay off. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:24:19 Because no one man can own the oceans. And you know, like had some highfalutin' belief about it. It's just autistic. And then, really, just like, but so then he, like, raises up this Navy, sends him out there, fights this war, and I really don't know this, but you almost just, like, wanna, like, run the math on it.

Starting point is 01:24:36 You're like, you spent more. You spent more, didn't you? You spent a lot more than if you had just paid him off. Probably coulda just worked, but. Military-industrial complex. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second, man, because we got a little experiment to do right here. Your boy needs to try some rocket fuel, okay?

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Starting point is 01:27:35 Now let's get back to the show. I mean every country does that, I'm pretty sure. They make a navy to protect their trade interests. China didn't really have a navy until they started shipping shit internationally and and they're like, all right, let's get a Navy sentinel. I mean that makes sense. Yeah, you got to send some security with it. Yeah. Yeah. But you were talking about the, what is it, wars with Muslims in the region. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 01:27:58 And basically having... So there was a positive sentiment towards America in the region, at least after World War I. Yeah, it was certainly much better than it has been since then. And then, you know, the creation of Israel pissed off a lot of people, obviously. And you know, I'm not trying to make this a one-sided story, because I do think that there's obviously been atrocities committed on both sides and all of that's bad, but I just like a lot of, you know, like you can go on YouTube

Starting point is 01:28:33 and you can find like Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager and all these guys, they have like these videos, they'll be like, you know, the brief history of Israel by Ben Shapiro. It's like, well, the Jews wanted to start a free country, and then the Arabs attacked them. I'm not even exaggerating. That's the story of their history.

Starting point is 01:28:51 And it's like, I mean, there was a middle part there that you kind of left out. And I understand the need for a Jewish nation when they historically get persecuted, slaughtered, whatever. I just feel like maybe you just give them the Dakotas. You know what I mean? We got some states we're not really using. Have you heard a good foreign policy solution for the region

Starting point is 01:29:12 like that protects Israel from getting ran over by Iran or any other aggressor. Yeah, I mean like the- But also preserves Palestinians. Yeah, at every point that there were like meaningful negotiations, it was always basically predicated on the fact that 67 borders, and what they mean when they say 67 borders, basically the way it happened was as Zionist settlers before Israel was created started moving to what was known as Palestine then.

Starting point is 01:29:48 And they were trying to get more and more people to move there. First, they had a lot of trouble getting, as most Jews who were in London or New York or wherever were like, I'm an accountant and things are okay, and I don't really feel like going to be a poor farmer in Palestine, like what is this project? After World War II and after the Nazis were defeated,

Starting point is 01:30:12 it really picked up steam and a lot of people wanted to move. There was a lot of, it's a really interesting history. They discovered Sephardic. Well that also happened like a little bit later, as the Sephardic Jews all came. They were kicked out of neighboring Arab countries. So, basically they had been working on creating a Jewish homeland there for decades.

Starting point is 01:30:36 And in 47, when the British basically got out of there, because the Jews had become terrorists, and basically drove them out of Palestine. They kicked it over to the United Nations, which was brand new, and the United Nations was like, well, why don't we divide up the land? Like, they made a recommendation. It wasn't like the General Assembly had no authority

Starting point is 01:30:56 to just like carve up countries, but they were like, this is what we recommend. And they recommended that the Jews get 56% of the land and the Arabs get 44% of the land. And that was really not based on anything. I think Jews owned like 10% of the land at the time or something like that. So the Arabs were like, no, this is ridiculous.

Starting point is 01:31:15 Like this has been our home for hundreds of years, thousands of years. Like, no, we're not giving them the majority. And then a civil war broke out and about 750,000 Palestinians were kicked out and never allowed back in. And those are the people who are in Gaza and the West Bank to this day.

Starting point is 01:31:36 Or the children, grandchildren of them. And some of them are in Jordan and Lebanon and stuff. And so like this, and then the neighboring Arab countries attacked, they fought a war, they fought a war again in the 50s, they fought a war again in the 60s, they fought a war again in the 70s. I mean it was like, there were major problems that came along.

Starting point is 01:31:55 And it's a very rich history with a lot of, you know, this side story or this side story, but you could at least grant that, unlike what Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager say in their videos, no, there is a Palestinian side to this story where a lot of those people were genuinely wronged, and yes, there were some Palestinians who embraced terrorism pretty early on.

Starting point is 01:32:16 It was a very bad strategy for them, has not worked that well for their people, and also is just horrible and wrong. But America ultimately coming into this, which the US was not at first, but ultimately deciding that we will be unconditionally on one side of this conflict, I think was not smart or fair or wise. And how did that happen? Was that APEC even back then?

Starting point is 01:32:43 Or do you know? Yeah, I mean, it's, I don't know exactly. You know, there was a lot of interesting stuff kind of behind the scenes. I don't know exactly. I know that there were, there was definitely some blackmail stuff going on. The Ben Gurion was definitely at least attempting

Starting point is 01:33:04 to blackmail Alan Dulles for a while. This was in the 60s, who's the head of the CIA here. Oh, Dulles Airport, right? I believe the airport is named after his brother. But check on that. His brother was Secretary of State, I believe. I think they wouldn't name the airport after the CIA director.

Starting point is 01:33:21 That would just be two in our face. Like what, you get an airport? But whatever, they worked pretty closely together. Yeah, tell me, who's the airport named after? John. John Dulles, yeah, he was the secretary of state, I believe. Alan Dulles was the CIA guy.

Starting point is 01:33:35 But I don't know exactly, I'd have to brush up on when exactly APEC was created and how much, when they gained all their influence. But one way or the other, they ended up getting American support, and I don't think that's been good for anyone involved, including Israel. There's a weird thing, like, it's kind of like being on welfare isn't good for you.

Starting point is 01:33:53 You know, if you're able-bodied, you can work. And it's kind of like there's this moral hazard that comes along with being like, like dependent on someone in perpetuity. But you don't learn to be your own. Like, no, the actual healthy thing would be like, hey, if you're gonna create a nation here, then you gotta be sent along with your neighbors.

Starting point is 01:34:13 You gotta know the repercussions of your actions. Yeah, you gotta work out your own balance. There's no repercussions when you're hanging with the boys. And also, and this is one of the major problems in Ukraine too, is that when the biggest, baddest country in the history of the world, the United States of America goes, we got your back, you end up getting a lot ballsier

Starting point is 01:34:29 than you otherwise would be. You're like, okay, well I'm gonna go start a fight because my big brother will come bail me out. And it's like, no, you should actually only start a fight that you actually think you could win without us. What do you think the resolution of that will be, Russia-Ukraine? Oh, I mean, I think it's ultimately gonna be essentially what the peace deal that was

Starting point is 01:34:50 on the table at the beginning that they made them squash which is that Russia's gonna keep parts of it you know keeps parts of it NATO doesn't get in military industrial complex makes billions of dollars everybody's happy so where we started yeah yeah everybody except the Ukrainians yeah well everybody's happy. So where we started. Yeah, well everybody except the Ukrainians. Yeah, well everybody's happy except the Ukrainians, but what's interesting is if they accept the deal, then the military industrial complex doesn't make billions of dollars. So we gotta stretch this out so that, you know,

Starting point is 01:35:16 they can cash in a little bit. Yeah, it's interesting to look at. What's that? No, can you ask on the Israel side, like what's the, oh yeah, there's no solutions, there it trade-offs, what's the short term and the medium term that you could think would be agreed upon? Well, so let me, I'll do long term first almost, is what I would do,

Starting point is 01:35:35 which is again, it's like this similar thing with Ukraine, it's like what's frustrating about all of this is that it's kind of like, I'm not saying like every precise detail is known, but the broad strokes is obviously there. So, the UN recommends 56% for the state of Israel, okay? Then they go to war.

Starting point is 01:35:56 Israel wins the war, and they don't just take that 56%, they take 78% of the land, okay? Then in 1967, they go to war with Egypt and Jordan. They win again, and then they take 100% of the land, okay? Then in 1967, they go to war with Egypt and Jordan, they win again, and then they take 100% of the land. So the last 22% is really what we're talking about, which is Gaza and the West Bank. Every single peace deal that's ever been on the table, and I'm not saying what the craziest leader of Hamas yells on social media or something,

Starting point is 01:36:23 but like, when they actually sat down in the Oslo Accords, at Camp David, at any of this, it was always about that last 22%, which that's what they mean when they say 67 borders, is they're like, okay, you get the 78%. Oh, really? Not the 56% that you were supposed to have in the beginning that we didn't even think

Starting point is 01:36:38 was fair back then. Not the 78% that you get that, but give us our last 22%. That's the deal. But on that, just going back to what you were saying, they went to war, when you get that, but give us our last 22%. That's the deal. 67% wars. Going back to you saying they went to war, when you go 67, when you go 73, when there is a war that happens, it's like why do we get to go back to the negotiating table after it's gone one and say, alright, sorry about that, let's go back to this negotiating table.

Starting point is 01:37:01 I understand that perspective, like yesterday's price is not today's price, 100%, but I think like according to international law, you cannot take more land due to war or conflict. I think that's what- There's a lot of international laws, you're also not allowed to like do settlements. But I also get that sentiment. Like, you keep, you know, we're occupying this land, you keep attacking us, all right, well then it's gonna be ours. I get that feeling. Okay, fine.

Starting point is 01:37:25 Yes, can you tell us the laws though that? Well, okay, so there is, it is, I'm not an expert on international law, but there is, it is, the settlements are definitely illegal. You're not allowed to transfer your population into occupied territory, which they continue to do in the West Bank. And yes, I do think that Andrew's right,

Starting point is 01:37:41 that like you're not supposed, you're not really allowed to seize land from a war I mean this this idea is like a very this is the old water the old order the whole reason why we have International law is that no you can't just go win a war and then say your land is ours But the problem beyond that is that it's not like Israel Conquered Gaza and made it part of Israel or conquered the West Bank and made it part of Israel, they're just conquering it and holding the people there, forever.

Starting point is 01:38:08 Like, it's an unsustainable system, and the only, look, nobody, I shouldn't say nobody, but I'm not saying, and whenever any of these real negotiations were happening, it's not the claim is like, you all have to go back to Europe, or you all have to go live somewhere else. That's obviously a non-starter. All this from the river to the sea stuff

Starting point is 01:38:30 is not helpful at all. But I do think the obvious thing is that like, look you got five million Palestinians living in this land. They have to get to have something. And it shouldn't be Israel's decision even. Like why do you decide whether they get to have their own government or they get to? You know it's like they should have their let's say that there is a Agreement reach right and it's they get the 22% it's back to whatever was 67 borders or okay 60 some borders whatever that is

Starting point is 01:38:58 How does Israel protect itself from another version of Hamas coming in and saying hey, you know what we, we don't want those. We don't want that agreement. Actually, we want 46%. River to the sea. Actually, we want 55%. Yeah, we want River to the Sea. What are they supposed to do? If they just relinquish total power in a vacuum, what would happen? So this is a, I always love this quote, which I think I always butcher, but there's a quote from Thomas Jefferson, when he's talking about slavery. And he said, we have the wolf by the ear and we can neither afford to hold on to it

Starting point is 01:39:35 nor to safely let it go. And essentially what the big concern was is like, okay, these abolitionists are saying slavery is wrong, but like, I mean, if we are saying slavery is wrong, but like, I mean, if we just release these slaves, they're gonna come kill us. We've been enslaving these people forever. We've done horrible things to them.

Starting point is 01:39:52 Like, if we let them go now, they're gonna all come kill us. And you can understand where like that was a concern at the time, and a somewhat reasonable one. But in hindsight, if you look at it with the moral clarity from like 2000, yeah, you can't enslave people, I don't know. That's just not an option.

Starting point is 01:40:09 So you just can't, so if that were to happen. So you're saying they have to assume the risk? Well, yes, I'm saying that if Israel were to give Palestinian independence and then the Palestinians attacked Israel, we'd be having a different conversation at that point. But the fear of that is not enough to justify keeping people in such a situation.

Starting point is 01:40:30 And what would that conversation be? Well, I mean, look, the other thing about this, I'll just say, is that there's a lot of reason to think that that wouldn't be the case. And that, look, like, when there were peace negotiations going on, there was a lot of support behind the Palestinian authority. And when the peace negotiations collapsed, Hamas's support went through the roof.

Starting point is 01:40:53 And it's almost like the more desperate people are, the more they're like, oh, let's go blow something up. Whereas if they think there's actually hope and there's actually a chance for prosperity and a better life, they're much more likely to not engage in that. Now I'm not saying that's a guarantee. If I were Israel, I wouldn't disarm tomorrow, you know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:41:11 Like Israel's got a pretty bad ass military. It is still hard to believe that they allowed October 7th to happen in the way they did. I'm not speculating about anything. I don't really have any solid evidence on any of that. But it's just, if you know anything about Israel and how much of a fortress it is and how prepared they are, it's, the wait time just makes no sense.

Starting point is 01:41:34 It's a tiny country. Like it's, but they could pretty easily just like not let that happen again and like have solid border security, but that would be I think I think ultimately besides that and and I won't even speak on the west bank side that's a complicated thing and I I the hard right has always said like if there was a two state it's Gaza it's not it's not also the west bank but you have Gaza thousands of rockets for years. So what's the border security? Do you believe that had there been just real peace, at least from Gaza, over years and

Starting point is 01:42:13 years and years, the way that they took away all the permits for all the workers that would come daily, do you believe that Israel would try to be in, quote unquote, enslaving them? Or do you think, hey, build it up, let the money come in properly, not go into Hamas's, you know, the kids, the billions of dollars. Like I truly believe the same way we made a deal with the Abraham Accords and within one year, a million Israelis went to the Emirates. Like they were dying to create business,

Starting point is 01:42:42 to spend their money. Like I truly believe that if just not West Bank. I truly believe that, if just not, let's make, I'm talking Gaza, if there was peace, there would have been that exact same sentiment. And I think that that's what Israelis are like. There it is. Well, yeah, but I mean, it's, look, I mean, Israel wasn't occupying,

Starting point is 01:42:58 or if you don't like the word occupying, wasn't dominating any of those countries. And so the idea that you're gonna, like I mean, first of all, just the point you made about the money not going right into Hamas' coffers, to be clear, Israel won't let sugar or potatoes or all types of humanitarian aid into Gaza, but they would facilitate cash payments

Starting point is 01:43:20 to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars directly to Hamas, because actually that was the big secret that Benjamin Netanyahu was intentionally keeping Hamas in power in Gaza. But I don't think the standard can be we're going to dominate you and keep you in grinding poverty and then with impunity whenever we want to go on these bombing campaigns. I'm talking pre-October 7th, like this has just been the status quo in Gaza and you got to stop firing your rockets back at us

Starting point is 01:43:50 and as soon as you start acting peaceful then we will tell you that we will allow you. Which order does that happen in? If Brooklyn is firing rockets into Manhattan for years and years like they're gonna respond. I don't think that there were bombing campaigns without. But now we're getting into chicken and the egg. For sure. And in order to do that, we have to go back to, what, 1920? But we keep going back and I'm like, what's the next topic we're gonna find?

Starting point is 01:44:14 Well, listen, I grant you that it's hard to say when you go with each one of these things, you go, well, which was a response to which, right? But if I'm just being honest here, you go, this was a response to that, which was a response to which, right? But if I'm just being honest here, you go, this was a response to that, which was a response to that, which was a response to that, which was a response to a bunch of Eastern Europeans moving to a land they didn't inhabit

Starting point is 01:44:34 and kicking hundreds of thousands of the people they're at. Like, that's really what the first thing that this is a response to. And it's just kind of hard to get away from that. Now, again, I'm not saying that means Jews are going away anytime soon. I'm not, it's just like, hard to get away from that. Now again, I'm not saying that means Jews are going away anytime soon. I'm not, it's just like, look, the Native Americans, like that problem here, right, is like solved, pretty much.

Starting point is 01:44:53 But if we were talking back about like- The old fact. Yes. So, but I'm just saying, if we went back to like, well, look, were there instances where Native Americans attacked, you know what I mean, like settlers, and look, were there instances where Native Americans attacked, you know what I mean, like settlers, and then they were responding?

Starting point is 01:45:08 Sure, but what was the first thing? The first thing was us coming over here. For sure, but not as much. And so now, to the degree that there are still Native Americans around. But you could make the argument that there were always Jews there. Even though these Eastern European Jews came,

Starting point is 01:45:23 there were Jews that were Sephardic Jews. Oh, there was always a small population, yeah. No, and part of the reason why the- And there were no Americans here when the natives were here. That's why it gets a little different. Fair enough. But look, the Jews there also did, pre-Zionism, live in relative harmony with the Arabs.

Starting point is 01:45:41 I mean, it's one of the reasons- I've heard back and forths on this. I've heard, like, and I know everybody uses their own arguments, but like, there's gonna be a skirmish, does that skirmish, and maybe that's too reductive, define the entirety of the relationship if there's a hundred years of peace and then this horrible thing happens,

Starting point is 01:45:58 does that mean it was horrible the whole time? I don't know, but I have heard both arguments. The early Zionists even said it was part of the reason why they wanted to make their homeland in Palestine. Because it was so welcoming. Well, I mean, I don't know if I'd say so welcoming, but relatively speaking, the Ottomans and the Arabs had been better friends to the Jews

Starting point is 01:46:19 than the Europeans had been. That was really where they dealt with the brunt of their. So maybe the argument shouldn't be that they had this amazing relationship, maybe the argument is, it's better than them white people were treating us. Basically, everything is compared to what? Yes, that's better, I think that's more digestible. Because I've been kind of told there's this,

Starting point is 01:46:40 I've been told, and maybe it's propaganda, that during, I've probably even regurgitated it, during the Ottoman Empire, the Jews flourished with the Ottomans and they were best friends. I'm like, oh, it must have been harmony. See, I was saying pre-Zionism, because during the Ottoman Empire also was, this is kind of, I mean, it depends on what point

Starting point is 01:46:58 during the Ottoman Empire you're talking about. I mean, there's a, because I think that it's like 400 years. 500 years, yeah. So it's more like, the problems, at least from my understanding of this, the problems got worse and worse as kind of like the Zionist experiment

Starting point is 01:47:15 got more and more aggressive. And there were a lot of mistakes made along the way. There's one figure in Zionism who I find is my favorite was Hime Weitzman, who was like, do you know who that is? So he was like kind of the godfather of Zionism for a little bit there. For Hercz. No, no, no, after Herczl, but like before Ben-Gurion.

Starting point is 01:47:36 So he was almost supposed to be David Ben-Gurion, who ultimately became the first prime minister of, he was like ahead of him in position, and he's been, I know it was, yep, that's him. That's that Jew. That's Colonel Sanders, he makes chicken. Well he went on to make some very tasty chicken. Of course he changed his name by that point.

Starting point is 01:47:54 But so he was, I know it was Darrell Cooper who did this amazing, this amazing podcast series. It's basically a book on tape, but it's like the best, man, it's like 30 hours long or something like that, but if you really wanna understand the history of the conflict, it's the best thing to listen to. It's just a brilliant guy. But he said that he calls him the last humanist Zionist.

Starting point is 01:48:20 But so, Haim Weizmann's whole theory was that like, look, if this is going to work, there's only one way it's going to work, which is that we have to like, just smother these Arabs with kindness. And we got to bring all this investment in and make their lives so much better than their lives were before we got here. And that's the only way that we're actually gonna have like a meaningful, sustainable homeland where we're not at war with our neighbors.

Starting point is 01:48:49 And this was fairly like, this was swallowed by the Zionists for a while. And it was really after World War II when like Ben Gurion and all these other guys, Menachem Begin and these guys were like, no, no, no, you're living in like a, like you could almost hear it from an American perspective. They'd go, you're living in a pre-Holocaust world.

Starting point is 01:49:09 Like the same way they'd say pre-911 world. Like it was almost like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was all nice and good before. But like these guys just tried to exterminate us. So now we're gonna take what's ours and we're gonna do it by any means necessary. And we gotta embrace terrorism to kick the British out. And you could see, you're talking like 1946, 1947.

Starting point is 01:49:29 It's Martin and Malcolm. Look, America just dropped two nukes on Japanese cities. We just burned Germany to the ground. Who the hell, and they just got Holocausted. Who the hell is anyone to tell us that we're not allowed to break a few eggs in order to make what we wanna make. And by the way, as a Jewish person,

Starting point is 01:49:47 I'm sympathetic to that. I understand that mentality. But at the same time, you could also go from the perspective of Palestinian Arabs, you're like, hey, we didn't do that. That wasn't us. Why are we paying the price for what some Europeans did? You're like, hey, carve up a part of Germany and give it to them if that's what happened. Why are we paying the price for what like some Europeans did to you?

Starting point is 01:50:05 Like hey, carve up a part of Germany and give it to them if that's what happened. Like why are we the ones? These people didn't try to exterminate us. Those people tried to exterminate us. Right, so there's, you know, it's just like the tragedy of history. You know like on every sitcom ever

Starting point is 01:50:18 where they would like tease the couple that's supposed to get together. Like this was our childhood was always like, you know, like yeah Rosalind Rachel, they're about to get together and then this was our childhood, was always like, you know, like, yeah, Rosalind Rachel, they're about to get together, then, ah, she got the wrong message, and now there is, and now it's two more years until they get, you know, it's always like, you guys were right here,

Starting point is 01:50:32 just to make this work. And so, I just think the whole thing could've gone a lot better, but for us to be a country thousands of miles away, to not be like, listen, if your family member was killed on October 7th, I'm not gonna sit there and talk to someone and be like, you really shouldn't be leveling Gaza right now because I know if my family was killed on that, I'd be,

Starting point is 01:50:55 I'd be, I mean, I think especially like, you got a kid now, man, it's like, when you have kids, you kind of like, you understand a different level of that. I mean, you could always understand like your friend or like your parents or something like that, but you're like, I mean, like I got two little kids, you're like, dude, if someone hurt one of my kids,

Starting point is 01:51:14 just the levels of evil that I could sink to, it's really not very hard for me to get there. But as soon as I start thinking about it, I'm like, kill anything that moves. Kill anything, and so I totally understand that. Makes you understand human behavior way better. But this was the worst versions of it. So, you know, what originally woke me up,

Starting point is 01:51:33 got me really interested in politics was Ron Paul's presidential campaign in 2008. And this was the point that he made. I don't know if you've ever seen this video, it was Ron Paul versus Rudy Giuliani. And it was in George W. Bush's Republican Party. If you're like, for younger people, I know there's a lot of younger people

Starting point is 01:51:49 who listen to this show, and I think like, I don't know if you could fully appreciate what the culture of America was like post-9-11 when George W. Bush was president, and the whole tone of it was like, it's like, look, you're either with us or you're with the terrorists. By the way, the reason they hate us is because we're free.

Starting point is 01:52:05 That's their beef with us, is that we're free. So what can you do with that? You really can't do nothing. And they're gonna hear from us real soon. So we're gonna explode them all to death because what the hell else can you do with that? And Ron Paul got up and he was like, look, they don't hate us because we're free.

Starting point is 01:52:19 They hate us because we're over there. That's why they're coming over here. Right, and so there was this thing where it's almost like, it reminded you how, like these aren't his words, they're my words, but like, it's like, okay, so you know how 9-11 happened? And then immediately we were all like, we're gonna go kill you guys. It's like, yeah, that's how they feel, too.

Starting point is 01:52:39 That's like exactly how they feel. And so I do think there's something where it's like, both sides. Right. So the same way that if you're an Israeli after October 7th, you're like, burn this whole thing to the ground. It's like, yeah, but I think that's also the mentality of all those people and God. And then weirdly, they'll sit there and they'll go,

Starting point is 01:52:54 they'll be like, well of course we have to burn all of Gaza to the ground. Did you see the videos of them cheering after October 7th? And you're like, yeah, but I think they're kind of doing the same thing you're doing right now. You know what I mean? Like, did you see Nikki Haley went over there and she's signing bombs?

Starting point is 01:53:09 What a fizzle. She's like, yo, how fucking sick and twisted is that? That's like the darkest thing I've ever seen in my life. And then the same people who will see that go, and did you see, they were greeting the people on October 7th like they were heroes when they came back. And you're like, that is also pretty sick and twisted. Yeah, all of this is pretty sick and twisted.

Starting point is 01:53:28 I think you guys actually have a lot in common. Yeah, I think I do. I was just startling similarity. Benjamin Netanyahu. We hear this name nonstop. Pretty sure he's a Jew. But who is he? Do you think that he's a Jew. But who is he? Do you think that he's net negative, net positive for Israel?

Starting point is 01:53:49 Unbelievable net negative. And what is he inspired by? What is he motivated by? Is this personal interest? Does he have a group that is pushing him in a certain direction? I'm so removed from it. I don't even know what to think about this person. So maybe like a little... So okay, so he's a member of the Likud party.

Starting point is 01:54:09 Isn't this a recent thing though that he's a member of Likud? Didn't he have to partner up with them? No, no, no. He's a member of Likud, but then they've partnered with people who are like a click to the right of the Likud party. Got it. So essentially... And it's a parliamentary system, so they need as many... As many of these...

Starting point is 01:54:24 Right....so they'll go many as many as they can. And in this kind of somewhat ironic and tragic thing, so like when he was heat before October 7th, you know, he had huge protests against him out in the streets because they were trying to like crack down on the power of their Supreme Court to give him more power essentially. 30 weeks in a row. And then October 7 7 brought everyone together. Against Netanyahu for 30 weeks. And so now if you could imagine, right,

Starting point is 01:54:50 in this parliamentary system, all the liberals are furious at him. But now what does that have the effect of politically for Netanyahu? Then the only alliance left for him is everyone to the right. So he's now got to cater to these extreme right groups, even far to the right of the Likud.

Starting point is 01:55:08 And so anyway, the Likud party was founded by Menachem Begin, who was one of the terrorists before the creation of Israel, and a brutal one at that. And anyone can go look this up, this isn't like a pejorative, like this is, they said in their own words that they were embracing terrorism. But anyway, so the Netanyahu doctrine,

Starting point is 01:55:33 as it's been described, was essentially, as you talked about the Abraham Accords earlier. So when I was a kid, Yitzhak Rabin was the prime minister of Israel and he embarked on what are known as the Oslo Accords, the peace process. And essentially, I mean, the Israelis had committed back in the 70s, okay, so the 70s they had a meeting at Camp David and Israel vaguely, if you could think 1967

Starting point is 01:56:04 they took over Gaza and the West Bank. By the 70s, the US was kind of like, listen, we're gonna give you, in perpetuity, billions of dollars every year. We're also gonna give Egypt billions of dollars every year. This was basically like, we're gonna bribe you guys to not go to war anymore, okay? So like, you guys make a freaking deal

Starting point is 01:56:23 because you've been to war four times in 25 years or whatever it was. So it's like, okay, we're gonna, you gotta stop. And then it was kind of thrown in there like, and by the way, you gotta eventually give the Palestinians a state. Like you can't just rule them forever. And they kind of agreed to that.

Starting point is 01:56:38 So in the 90s, this was supposed to be, oh, they're finally doing it. And you know, Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat and Bill Clinton took pictures together and did all. And these were good faith negotiations or both sides were. It's politics. So it's.

Starting point is 01:56:54 It got close. Yeah, I could paint a rosier picture of it than is actually the case, but at least, certainly much better than the place that we're at right now. But I hear both sides were not operating in good faith. Meaning that they were. Yeah, there's probably truth to that too.

Starting point is 01:57:06 So there was all types of stuff from both sides, and there were all types of political pressures. So one of the very real political pressures, and I've heard this story about, so when Arafat went back after initially, it may have been initially signing, or it may have been one of the subsequent meetings, but people were throwing,

Starting point is 01:57:24 Palestinians were throwing their keys. They had their old keys from their homes in wherever, these Palestinian villages that are now part of Israel. Like, you sold us out, because they are hanging on to some dream that they're gonna take back over the whole thing, which is like just never gonna happen. And so there's political pressure on him there.

Starting point is 01:57:46 And then, you know, there was also some political pressure on Yitzhak Rabin, like there was that right-wing Israeli who murdered him. Yeah, that seems like pressure. There was also some of that pressure on him. Wow, so both sides, there are factions, the people that are not happy. There are the right-wingers of respectively

Starting point is 01:58:02 of either side, right? And they control the discourse. Hamas are the right-wingers within respectively of either side, right? Because even Hamas are like, Hamas are the right-wingers within Gaza. They're the hardcore ones. So anyway, so, but so the Yitzhak Rabin, loosely speaking, and this is somewhat, you know, rose-colored glasses looking back at it, but it was kind of traditionally what the view was,

Starting point is 01:58:23 was that, look, you have to make peace with the Palestinians, otherwise you're never going to make peace with the broader Arab world. That was the traditional thinking, okay? And that, and because the beef with the rest of the Arab world was over the Palestinians, right? And all of them essentially refused to recognize Israel because they didn't recognize Israel having, well, either they didn't recognize them at all or they didn't recognize them having control of Gaza and the West Bank.

Starting point is 01:58:50 And essentially what the Netanyahu doctrine was was he was like, no, no, no, I can flip this thing. And the Abraham Accords were really like a culmination of the Netanyahu doctrine. He goes, no, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go work out deals with the surrounding Arab countries so that I never have to work out a deal

Starting point is 01:59:11 with the Palestinians. And then Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, had the brilliant idea that, hey, we got a whole lot of money. We could just bribe the shit out of all these countries and give them new fighter jets for you and a little money package for you. And it kind of worked until October 7th, you know, where you go like, oh, all right, yeah.

Starting point is 01:59:35 It worked in the sense that you let the Palestinians know that your case, because the only hope for the Palestinians ever has been like, maybe the rest of the Arab countries are coming at some point. And then when you see them make all these deals, The only hope for the Palestinians ever has been like, maybe the rest of the Arab countries are coming at some point. Again. And then when you see them make all these deals, it's like, nope, you will be subjugated forever, you now live in hopelessness.

Starting point is 01:59:53 More desperate. And that culminated in October 7th. Oh shit, you've created a desperation. There would be even more supportive. No one's looking out for it. Of a terror group. Oh wow, I didn't even think about that. So Kushner's getting all this credit, like he's actually pushed these countries closer.

Starting point is 02:00:09 Oh I hated it. Do you remember arguing with him? When in reality he's created that type of... You need him, Austin. You need to fight for us. I remember getting in a big argument with Tim Pool about this, like a couple years ago. I love Tim Pool. But we got in a big argument about this where he was like, I don't know Dave. You're all about peace

Starting point is 02:00:27 You got to like Donald Trump. I mean the Abraham Accords all these peace deals I'm like which one of those countries were at war None of them were at war with each other Yeah, the UAE and Israel weren't fighting a war and then he went over and worked out a peace deal He bribed both of them with my money. Have you seen an f-35? We're giving them fifth gen fighters. This is the best counter argument I've heard. They are pretty bad.

Starting point is 02:00:52 That is really interesting. I never looked at it like that. I think that, again, I'm such a casual when it comes to these things, but I figured that Jared Kushner's efforts out there were universally accepted as his finest achievement. He was kind of looked at as this, he was kind of positioned almost by Trump

Starting point is 02:01:11 like this bumbling idiot's son-in-law. And then when people look back and reflected on what happened with the Abraham Accords, they were like, well no, this is fantastic, what just happened. But it does create a sentiment, you can imagine within the Palestinian people, that there is no hope,

Starting point is 02:01:25 and no hope can lead you to support a terrorist organization. Cause the thing is, if you just, well look, if you're just a casual though, it seems so, like that on the surface. Cause you go, I don't know, the Arabs and Jews have always been fighting, and then here we went over and did a big deal with the Arabs and Jews.

Starting point is 02:01:40 Now it looks like they're kicking it, they're partying. Yeah, it seems totally good. We did shows in the Middle East. But what were they fighting over? And was that situation ever actually resolved? Oh no, this was just papered over by all of this. I'm gonna tell you how we solve this, okay?

Starting point is 02:01:52 First of all, Dave's people, the Ashkenazis, have caused all this problem. It is, it is. The Jews are separating. If we make more agreements with all of the Arab countries, remember, Israel is 55% Sephardic. They're Arabs, we love it. Moroccans haven't met Israeli Moroccans yet.

Starting point is 02:02:11 Once they go over, people will be like, love these guys. Then we bring them all together, push the Ashkenazis out. Actually, no, no, we need your brains. We need your brains. Oh, your mind? Damn. They can work remote. They can do remote. I have a question. This plan is the most Ashkenazi thing I've ever heard.

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Starting point is 02:03:23 and top tier culinary craft for as little as $6 per meal. To sign up, all you gotta do is visit cookunity.com, simply pick a plant and then select your meals from their menu and let the renowned chefs do the cooking for you. And Cook Unity is offering flagrant listeners 50% off their first order and 10% off their next three weeks when they sign up at cook unity.com slash flagrant that see oh, okay you and I t y dot com slash flagrant now let's get back to the shizzle But I do have a question like every time we do talk about the past and going back Say first like all the people that don't know this story like we're 40. We've heard this over We know the layers now you're talking

Starting point is 02:04:02 I know nothing but but a lot of people like Gen Z are hearing this and then coupling that with like from the river to the sea and then all the people are like, wait a second, is that like a war cry? So they don't believe we should have this and now we're defending our current, right? Not mine, I'm not Israeli, but like, what would an Israeli, how do they act with that?

Starting point is 02:04:22 Like, wait, do I have to prove that I just fight now, I guess, because that's a war cry that you're saying, you want me gone, what are they supposed to do? Well, I mean, the tragedy- Not Americans, but like- Look, the tragedy is really the last nine months. Because, you know, it's like, nobody wants to ever hear this ever,

Starting point is 02:04:42 because it's like, you just kind of sound like a pussy or whatever, so it's like that you get dismissed immediately. But look, after 9-11, there was like, people forget how much we had the world on our side for like this brief little moment. They had candlelight vigils in Tehran about 9-11. And like, you know, I mean, I know like, you know, there are Shiites and Al-Qaeda Sunnis,

Starting point is 02:05:05 so there's a little something there. But like, also part of it was just like, ah, people see that, and they're like, oh dude, this is horrible. Like, we're, you know? And if, if you could imagine, if George W. Bush had done what they did, say, for the, you know, the special ops missions in Afghanistan and take out the Al-Qaeda bases.

Starting point is 02:05:27 And if they had trapped Osama bin Laden and Tora Bora when they could have, and they allowed him to slip out so they could pursue this terror war and get their war in Iraq that they wanted. Yeah, it's real interesting little detail there. But like, let's say we had done it, and that was it. We just, okay, these guys hit us, we're taking out their bases,

Starting point is 02:05:47 and then we went, hey, listen, okay? We, once you come here and kill our people, that's over the line and we have to go kill you. But there are grievances that were brought up here that are somewhat legitimate, and we have been unfair in our treatment to the Muslim world, you know? And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna,

Starting point is 02:06:02 you know what I mean, like step back on that. Like, we had this powerful opportunity. So like all the things that the worst right-wing hawks complain about the Muslim world, there certainly are a lot of problems there. And then we could have shown that we really were the good guys and kind of like won over a lot of support there and really moved them in the right direction.

Starting point is 02:06:23 And likewise, if after October 7th, listen, for the entire history of Israel, up until Netanyahu, they always handled the terrorism problem with targeted assassinations and special operations. They never treated it like a military problem. You can't just, like the most, or one of the most densely populated areas in the world were just going to level the place. I mean, this was the worst way to handle it. or one of the most densely populated areas in the world, we're just gonna level the place? I mean, this was the worst way to handle it.

Starting point is 02:06:47 If they had just been like, listen, if that's it, the people who were responsible for October 7th are going to be brought to justice. That is number one, non-negotiable. However, we do recognize that the status quo is unsustainable, and we want to move, we are starting a new peace negotiations in a good faith position.

Starting point is 02:07:05 Any group of Palestinians who's here on the other side to negotiate, we're ready to sit down at the table. They did have an opportunity to not turn world opinion against them. You know what I mean? And so, of course now after the last nine months, now it's tougher than ever to get back to a position like that.

Starting point is 02:07:23 But it at least has to start with stopping this Hi, hypothetical scenario. This is something I'm concerned about but I think that was beautiful I agree with you, but I do have a concern Let's say You go back to the borders. You say hey, we are going to stop you can use occupying whatever word you want to use We are going to completely remove ourselves. You guys are on your own you can use occupying, whatever word you wanna use. We are gonna completely remove ourselves, you guys are on your own.

Starting point is 02:07:45 Imagine there's gonna be some support from the Muslim world as well, maybe the United States of America, blah, blah, blah, doesn't matter. But the message goes out there and it's sent essentially, but if there is one attack, we are going to respond in kind. Are there not nefarious actors in the Israeli government potentially?

Starting point is 02:08:04 That could stage, what is that called? A false flag. A false flag? Like this is, I mean Americans, we've done this. Why wouldn't any other country do it? So it's, even if you have everybody operating good faith, how can you even trust an attack that would come over? It's, it's.

Starting point is 02:08:21 It's a very good point. It just feels helpless, all of it. Well, that is a very good point, and I could see that it feels totally hopeless. But I would just say, again, you're right. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I would also say that, you know, England and Ireland are right next to each other. Yeah. Cool.

Starting point is 02:08:42 You know, things are cool. You still have to try. There has to be a process. You know, Russia and Germany or like, you know, maybe that's not the best example right now, but like France and Germany are right next to each other and these countries are, there would have been a time not that long ago where we would have been like, this is just never gonna work, you're never gonna get past this and get to peace. But they did. And like, yeah, so it's,

Starting point is 02:09:08 it's a, you know, there's this guy, Gene Epstein, he's a really brilliant economist. And I remember, he always said this, he called it his case for radical optimism. And he goes, he goes, if you were sitting around in 1845, and you're like at the height of slavery, and you went, you know, in the next 20 years, I think slavery is gonna be abolished

Starting point is 02:09:31 across the Western world, anyone would have been like, you're out of your mind. Like, the abolitionist parties got like 1% of the vote, they were regularly lynched, like, it was like, there's no way we're getting rid of this institution, which has been here for all of human history. But like within 20 years, it was gone.

Starting point is 02:09:50 So even when things seem at their most hopeless, it's like, I don't know. We also live in a world like, clearly we're living through some type of like major revolutionary paradigm shifting moment right now. I think that's pretty obvious. Things are, between just how much the corrupt nature of politics is being exposed, the decentralization

Starting point is 02:10:13 in the flow of information, the rise of artificial intelligence, I'm not even claiming to understand what the implications of all of this are, but I don't know, maybe we could be radically optimistic that something much better could come along. Overall gonna die. There's an interesting book on that fact, factfulness, have you heard of this book?

Starting point is 02:10:30 I don't think so. This dude Hans Rosling, he's like a Norwegian dude. But basically he like charts. God, I don't trust them. He like charts over like the course of human history that things have progressively gotten better. That like, there's more accessible drinking water, more people have access to transportation,

Starting point is 02:10:44 there's less child mortality So even as things improve we also get a distorted view of like how bad things are Yeah, the starkness between the goodness and the badness starts to actually come out I know you said you don't want to predict the what do you but I'm gonna ask you to do one What do you think the ripple effect is of the sentiment in America? Seemingly turning res when I was growing up, you were just pro-Israel, no one questioned it. Then starting about 10 years ago,

Starting point is 02:11:08 people started being like, whoa, what's actually going on over there? I don't know if I'm pro-Israel, I might be pro-Palestinian. And it seems like the majority of people are feeling that right now. What is the ripple effect of that, do you think? So really, that's a good question, man.

Starting point is 02:11:22 That's a really good question. I mean, there's no doubt that that is right and you know I've done like I've done like a bunch of debates on this topic and like I Debated Dennis Prager and I'm debating like a bunch of these other guys and it's almost like there's this weird You see it where there's a real generational gap We're like part of it is that younger people are just getting their information from different sources, and they're not getting it from the same old corporate media.

Starting point is 02:11:49 So the debate would always start with Dennis Prager just saying the stuff that you could've gotten away with, I'm sure, in the 90s. But now you're saying it to me, and he's just like, he goes, the conflict in the Middle East is that one side wants peace, and the other side wants all the Jews dead.

Starting point is 02:12:04 And I'm like, but that's not true. He's like, oh, all right. Well, I didn't realize we were allowed to tell the other side of the story. So I do think a lot of it is just that people are now coming into contact with other narratives and other stories, and some of those are oversimplified on the other side too, you know?

Starting point is 02:12:22 And it's not that they're perfect, but I do think. Sorry. No, I do think there's people aren't gonna buy. Look, even when it comes to our country, not just Israel, I mean, we're not like a blindly patriotic country in the way that we used to be. It's interesting to see. It's really interesting to see.

Starting point is 02:12:39 I also noticed that like, the same thing that happened with corporate mainstream media, I think is happening with like YouTube journalism as well, where it's like at first there was this democratization of information and you were putting truth out there and speaking truth to power. And then the truth gets a little boring sometimes and the views go down. Yeah. So then you start chasing those views again. Do you chase a view? Maybe you'll tell the truth about a specific narrative

Starting point is 02:13:09 that's really clicky. And it's almost like watching what happened with CNN and Fox News and MSNBC, I'm like watching it happen on YouTube as well. It's kind of heartbreaking. I mean, I'm sure you must have, you hope that we are kind of like, at least like old enough and wise enough

Starting point is 02:13:28 and we're not like, you know, I mean, you know, the three of us knew each other literally when we had nothing. When we were literally like, like if someone offered you 50 bucks, you're like, I have to go do this thing. Because there's $50. And so what am I insane?

Starting point is 02:13:43 What a dream. Like I mean, it was, like at a time. We brag about that the weekday thing. We'd be like in the East Village and someone would be like, if you walk to 135th Street right now, I will give you $50. And you're like, well, I guess that's, you know. But okay, so you're not in that situation anymore.

Starting point is 02:13:59 So you try to kind of like rise above some of these incentives, but you feel it. You feel the incentives when you're in this world where it's like, I know you guys could do podcasts about like the dumbest shit that would get huge, huge numbers. We actively push back against it. There are things that obviously we're curious in that are fun. Like bringing in the Egyptologist guys over here.

Starting point is 02:14:20 Sure, sure. Dude, we have- Israel Palestine, super fun. Well, look, but I'm just saying like the dumb shit. Exactly. It's so easy to have like certain people that you're just not interested in, and it's just not fun, and you have to take the,

Starting point is 02:14:35 I don't even look at it as a hit on views. You have to like maintain the integrity of your show. Yeah. I think you gotta do it for your audience, but you also gotta do it for you. You see people lose themselves. Their identity just becomes views. It doesn't become the whole reason

Starting point is 02:14:45 why we started talking in the first place. Oh my God, when you said like every Twitter account that's always like, what do you notice in this video? Any thoughts? You're like, dude, you're not even saying anything. Like, what is this? This is just engaging for you. And I look!

Starting point is 02:14:58 I know, I know. What am I supposed to notice? You're like, what do you notice in this video? Like, nothing! It's just Taylor Swift walking on a stage. What am I supposed to see here? I don't see any of that. What's that guy's name? You're like, what are you noticing in this video? Like nothing! It's just Taylor Swift walking on a stage! What am I supposed to see here? I don't see any of that. What's that guy's name?

Starting point is 02:15:07 Matt Wallace or something like that? Is there a demon somewhere? Should I not even mention him? Is he like a... No, I don't know. I don't know. But I know that exact account. I didn't have anyone specific in mind.

Starting point is 02:15:15 I was just like, see these things. Real grifter. But I remember one time, and I won't even say who this is, but it was just like one of like the dumbest political commentator guys who's got a huge, you know, like, Can you say it to us and we just bleep it? He made a video of a segment of me on Rogan. So a video, a segment trying to take apart my arguments.

Starting point is 02:15:38 And it was all really, really stupid. And so then I did a segment on my show responding to it and just dunking on him. And dude, it got like some of the most numbers of anything I've ever done. And it's almost like when you see it, you're like, oh, I could just find the dumbest content creators and just take their thing apart.

Starting point is 02:15:58 And just get like, and there's like, all of the incentives are to like do that. But then you're like, but I don't wanna be that guy. Do you remember Red Eye? Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a really fun show for comics And there's like all of the incentives are to like do that, but then you're like, but I don't want to be that guy Do you remember red eye of course? Yeah, it was a really fun show for comics on Fox News. It was super late and It was it was really fun. It was genuinely fun. I would assume you did it. Oh, yeah Book me and Anyway, I remember going on

Starting point is 02:16:26 and I was so naive to all this. I liked just trusted news. I mean, I was such an innocent little fucking kid outside of saying horrific jokes. I was like, the news is real. And I remember going a few times and they were bringing us some story of something happening on a college campus.

Starting point is 02:16:40 I remember, I even said this out loud. I was like, wait, so is this just what we do? We find the most extreme left-wing thing, and then we just act like that's normally happening everywhere? And the rest of them looked at me like, is this guy a fucking idiot? Like, I do that. That's our entire business model.

Starting point is 02:16:56 That is the whole thing. I genuinely did get it. Sir, you are sitting in a room in a building worth $300 million, and it's all paid for on that model that you just called out in front of everybody. Oh God, dude. You gotta find that clip.

Starting point is 02:17:13 I bet you it's up there somewhere and I'm just like, oh God, that is the hack, that is the model. That's when it stops being news, it stops being journalism. Oh, but Fox News was always, in a weird way, it almost became the thing you almost respect more because it's so transparent and obvious, but Fox News was always like,

Starting point is 02:17:34 just like Sean Hannity comes over and he's like, the Democrats wanna institute communism and take away football. You're like, what? You know there's some grandpa out there who's like, they want now, what? They're just the dumbest liberal. So anyway, to the point though, it's that you just got to, the only real answer is you kind of just got to guard against that. And even though these incentives exist, you always kind of got to try to be like-

Starting point is 02:17:58 Guard against for yourself. Yeah, yeah. Let me not just do the thing that I don't want to become. Because you do watch a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of accounts out there that are just like. I'm gonna give you, I don't know if you'll take it as a compliment, I mean it's a very, very high compliment. I know you guys differ politically, but Jon Stewart to me, and I differ with him

Starting point is 02:18:15 on a lot of politics stuff, but I think he's fucking incredible in that he is the smartest person in pretty much any room he walks into, and he does his best to be nuanced within his thoughts. And I feel like a huge problem since he left is there are a lot of not even reasonable terrible facsimiles of him that just lean one way to try to give you. I feel like you are again a different version because you have different thoughts but you are the you are the guy to take that that matter.

Starting point is 02:18:42 Oh well thank you. Because you'll do the intellectual heavy lifting. I think that's what John did and I think a lot of people that aren't guy to take that matter. Oh, well thank you. Because you'll do the intellectual heavy lifting. I think that's what John did. And I think a lot of people that aren't willing to do that, you have to just take a party line because it's easier. It is so much easier to just write. And you gotta talk every day. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:18:58 Every single day. And it's like, I don't wanna read every single book. You'll fucking read the books. I will read books, yeah. But I do, look, I think John Stewart. Well, they're not boring. No, I know I can't read if they're boring, but okay fair enough But I guess I'm saying it's a boring to me. You're gonna you're gonna You're my guy you're gonna look at you're gonna look at an argument someone made in a reference from a book that they that they brought Up and I imagine you will you might buy that fucking book. Yeah, I've done several times even when I hate

Starting point is 02:19:22 you might buy that fucking book. Yeah, I've done it several times, even when I hate. Yeah, I've done that. There was one thing where I had to buy this book from the Brookings Institute, which I really hate. I hated to send them money, but someone was claiming there's this book that totally refutes my point, and then it wasn't until 250 pages into the book

Starting point is 02:19:43 that they addressed the thing I was saying, and then they didn't refute it at all. They just asserted. They were like, that's not true. And I was like, did I just do all of this for absolutely nothing? So yeah, that's my torture. But most people won't do that.

Starting point is 02:19:58 And they want to outsource that. And I think that there are times like this where especially with this specific situation, where people are terrified to kind of share an opinion because they don't know what that opinion will do on either side. And they look, they gravitate towards people who are gonna do that intellectual heavy lifting

Starting point is 02:20:15 to figure things out and slice things thin enough where you can comfortably speak about an issue. Well, there's, and look, man, like there's, because there's levels to all of this stuff. And so when it comes to like being like the most informed or like an expert on, so like I'm not that good. There's people with like levels of expertise above me. But I do think kinda to like your point,

Starting point is 02:20:34 like John Stewart, particularly with his original version of The Daily Show, there was just, again, it's like the, I feel like the bar's kind of low. I also feel like that's why I look impressive because the bar is just so low. But it's like,'s why I look impressive, because the bar's just so low. But it's like there was a thoughtfulness there. There was something in Jon Stewart where he kind of had a view that was like,

Starting point is 02:20:51 okay, he's put some thought into this, and he actually had, and then it was like, everyone after him, every version of that show after him. They just want to be famous. Let me say the talking point that the audience already wants to hear. And this also just happened with Late Night and Jen. And by the way, it's not even a comment on these people's talent because Stephen Colbert

Starting point is 02:21:12 was like enormously talented on the Colbert Report. And Kimmel was like hilarious back in the day. It's just that it's almost like the economy became. Just say the thing, don't take any chances, just say what you already know is gonna get you, it's like, listen, there's a $200 million check in this for you if you just get out there and how about your joke is, the unvaccinated should die, ain't that right?

Starting point is 02:21:38 Okay, and it's, I do think for anybody, even if you are just like a Democrat, and even if you kind of agree with them, it's like, this is no way to live. Like your artists aren't supposed to be genetic replicas of the last thing that everyone all day said today. This is terrible. God, I hate that stuff.

Starting point is 02:21:59 And also like for us, I just, like when the three of us like first came up, were coming up in standup, it was almost like when the three of us like first came up, were coming up in Stand Up, it was almost like before the rise of all that. And that was like the cool thing. It was like, no, everybody was like unique and different. And everybody was saying things that were like wild and offensive or this.

Starting point is 02:22:18 But like. Yeah, because it wasn't mainstream yet. But there was this beauty in the art form. It's like really what I fell in love with Stand Up comedy over, was that you could go kind of like, if you somehow could combine this like really wild thought, but then also hitting on something true that everyone kind of knew and felt.

Starting point is 02:22:34 And then you could bring the whole room together in this moment, this involuntary moment where they all went, ah! This guy got us. There's something so beautiful about that. And then even in stand-up, I mean, ah, this guy got us. There's something so beautiful about that. And then even in standup, I mean, you know what? I remember like over, really it was like after Trump got in. It was like in 2016, 2017, 2018,

Starting point is 02:22:55 the rise of like the woke mindset in standup comedy was so bizarre to me. I felt it was happening before that. And I think Trump was, maybe when it hit its zenith, but when Trump won, I was like, one, I think silver lining to whatever, however dark you think this cloud is, people are realizing that woke shit is,

Starting point is 02:23:12 it's a rat for it, the clock has started, it's gonna run out. Yeah, maybe that's right. But it was wild there, it was like at a fevered pit for a while. It was really funny. Nausea. It makes so much sense, like stand up is so hard, And so imagine if I just need to get a quick laugh.

Starting point is 02:23:27 Yo Trump sucks. Just saying it everybody. Yeah. It's like give it up to God. Yeah. You can get an applause break for nothing. Also they're so terrified. The audience is in there and they don't want to be ostracized by their friends or their co-workers or their community. So like I'm just going to laugh at things that I'm allowed to laugh with.

Starting point is 02:23:45 And then there's also the true believers within the crowd where it was like we had empowered the person who kind of wanted to be offended to like, oh no, you're right, you're right to interrupt this whole show right now. Yeah, you tell them, how dare that person with his male privilege on stage or whatever say this about you?

Starting point is 02:24:05 I remember early in that time, right, when things were getting a little bit sensitive. Naturally, I'm gravitating towards a thing that's a little bit more wrong, distasteful, defending a position that you really shouldn't defend and trying to find some logical thread to make it all make sense. But it was so sensitive.

Starting point is 02:24:24 I remember there were like, there were comics at the seller who thought I was like big MAGA. And I was like, no, I'm just doing the thing that we all supposed to do. Yeah, remember like four years ago when we were just making crazy jokes? Yeah, I'm just doing that now. It's just crazy to defend that guy.

Starting point is 02:24:44 But they truly believed it. That's how sensitive, when even the comics were propagandized. That's what I'm trying to say. Audiences, I'm fine. I think whatever you want. Well, it's also a certain type of comedian, and I know you were always this way.

Starting point is 02:24:57 I was always this way. You were always this way, Akash. Not every comic is like this, but would have that thing of being like, well right away, like if everybody is like, if everybody is against Y, well like man, if I could be Thor Y and make the whole room laugh, like if I could do that and still win it all over, then that would be like the ultimate achievement

Starting point is 02:25:19 in comedy right now. And it's like, it's naughty. If you get them on that, it's the most fun. It's naughty. Yeah. And they remember. If you get them on that, it's the most fun. And so it was a weird time where like even, you're like, yeah, this is what we've always been doing, man. And then all of a sudden, like it was like, no, that's illegal now.

Starting point is 02:25:35 So, and you're like, oh. We came here to agree tonight. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one, I think, negative effect of Jon Stewart is he said things he believed and he made them funny and he was intelligent. But then a lot of comics, I were like, oh that that is comedy

Starting point is 02:25:48 Yeah, he's so saying the things I believe. Yeah, he was so influential in the way that he did comedy that maybe people thought Okay, I gotta be right. Well, it's kind of like, you know, how like Doug Stanhope is like one of the greatest comedians to ever live. Every comedian inspired by Doug Stanhope sucks balls. Like they're just the worst. It really is a testament to how great he is. He is so great. It's like, you know, you can't do that. He can't.

Starting point is 02:26:13 But it's not, there is like this weird thing where like, it's like, no, that guy's really good at it. You don't have the thing he has, which is a one in a billion thing. And now you're just trying to be like, let me get up there and say something. Man, don't do that. It's great because the honesty

Starting point is 02:26:28 and the people try to be honest the way that he's honest. They're like, you can't, it has to be honest the way you're honest. Yeah. They don't have the chat, they don't have the affect, they don't have the ideas. Yeah. He's a truly brilliant guy that is so pure

Starting point is 02:26:42 in the way he does it, he makes you think that that's how you are with your friends. And you are not. You know what? He might not be. He has worked on that craft for fucking 40 years and that's why it seems so natural. And you're also, you're looking at him like,

Starting point is 02:26:56 you know, whatever, 20 years into his career or whatever it was at the time when he was inspiring people. It's like, that probably wasn't him three years in either. You know, like he was probably just figuring out how to tell a joke and stuff, but you're trying to jump right to that. So yeah. Yeah. Okay, anything else going on in the world? I know we have limited time.

Starting point is 02:27:13 Are you voting in November? Do you vote? That's a great question. I'm going to ask. We didn't even talk Trump-Harris. Okay. You don't have to say who, but I'm just curious. No, I mean I would tell you if I was going to. I mean, like, I don't know. I just probably not. I don't really believe in voting. I was going to say, I'm not I'm not a big. Well, I mean, I just I think.

Starting point is 02:27:34 If you're if you're let's just say it takes you an hour or two of your day to go vote, if you're taking an hour or two of your day to do anything that you have a one in 140 millionth of a say in, if it was anything, I would look at you and be like, isn't there something better you could do with your time? Like, that's crazy. Like, that's just, literally, we would not do that

Starting point is 02:28:00 in anything else in our lives. It's kind of, I think, this like this ritual of the religion of the government. It feels like a social responsibility. Yeah, I would say- I also just don't like, if I were to vote, it would be some type of protest vote. Like I wouldn't, you know what I mean? And it doesn't matter. I mean, I live in New Jersey. It's going to be a, it's going to go for that. There's no real like so. I also just you know, I really feel like the Democrats deserve to lose this election for several reasons.

Starting point is 02:28:34 I think I mean, look, the the the biggest things that I say of the Biden-Harris administration were like the first big project was we're going to get this vaccine and as many people as possible, no first big project was we're going to get this vaccine in as many people as possible no matter what we have to do to get it in them, force whatever we have to do. And the whole thing was sold off of lies. The thing didn't work the way they said it would work and most people didn't need it. Then it was we're all in on funding the war in Ukraine, which I think is like the most reckless policy in modern American history. And then they just totally weaponized the justice system

Starting point is 02:29:08 against their political opponent. And like, if that doesn't mean you deserve to lose, then I don't know what would. Then I see Trump. And I'm just like, I don't, you know. So it's on the other side, like I'm literally coming off of them, I'm like, these Democrats have to lose in order for this country to survive. And then Trump's up there and he's like, full immunity for cops.

Starting point is 02:29:34 You know, you're like, what? What type of plan is that? He didn't even say qualified immunity, because I don't even think he knows the difference between the two. But it just goes full immunity. Full immunity? Like they can just do whatever they want. And I just hate the campaign he's running.

Starting point is 02:29:50 OK, help us understand the last few weeks. Biden steps down. Well. Oh, do we have a little? Oh, I mean, that was a straight up coup. They just totally stole this. And we're being a little hyperbolic here, I imagine. I mean, that was a straight up coup. They just totally stole this. You know, and you- And we're being a little hyperbolic here, I imagine. I mean, I don't know.

Starting point is 02:30:09 I don't know how hyperbolic we're being. Straight up coup. It's like a metaphor. It's a little hyperbolic. Well, look, let's just look at it, like the facts, as we have it, okay? I love it. He's about to win this. Well, again, tell me where I'm wrong.

Starting point is 02:30:21 I read a little something on this. So Joe Biden has been obviously in severe cognitive decline for many years now. The entire media is like in emperor's new clothes mode. You're not allowed, the week before the debate, the new propaganda term that was rolled out was cheap fakes. I don't know if you guys remember, it was the shortest lived propaganda campaign ever.

Starting point is 02:30:42 It only lasted a few days. Cheap fakes? Yeah, cheap fakes. You know, it sounds like deep fakes. But you see, there's all these cheap fake videos online. Now, cheap fakes are different than deep fakes in that they're real. But they're out of context. So people are putting out these videos that make it seem like Joe Biden's in severe cognitive decline.

Starting point is 02:31:05 But this is all just, this is all right wing disinformation. So this is what every corporate news outlet was saying the week leading up to the debate. Then the debate happens, it goes so catastrophically bad that they have to do this crazy 180 degree turn. At least he told the truth. Yeah, right, it's like they're struggling with how do we grapple with what you're, which was like,

Starting point is 02:31:26 I mean, the debate performance itself was like, it's like, yeah, how did you guys let it get to this point? You pretended that it wasn't a problem until literally, it's not even just like a grandpa out of a nursing home. It was like, the guy who's really not doing good within that nursing home. Like your average nursing home, you know, take patient is doing better than this guy.

Starting point is 02:31:48 There will never be a worse debate ever. By far. In the history of televised presidential debates, it was by far the worst appearance. Nothing even comes close. So right after the debate, the entire media has to turn on him, and they're like, someone else has to come get him.

Starting point is 02:32:01 He said he's gonna go, he goes to Camp David, and he has a meeting with all his inner circle. It's like, Jill Biden and Hunter Biden and his closest advisors, and they all go there. Hunter's advisor is probably the best. Yeah, the Hunter's advisor, you got me. You can do it. This thing's gonna turn around, bro.

Starting point is 02:32:20 Tomorrow we're gonna be up by 10 points, I got a 10 point plan, follow these 10 points. But tomorrow we're gonna be up by 70 points. I got a 10 point plan, we follow these 10 points. But anyways, so they go there, so he decides, it comes out, he goes, no, I'm running. I beat this guy in 2020, I'll beat him again this year. That's my legacy, I'm gonna beat Donald Trump twice, I'm running. It's just not working.

Starting point is 02:32:39 They send him out on a series of interviews and things like that. He blows every single one of them, every last one. And he really, it was just terrible because now, it was like the story of the emperor's new clothes or whatever, this was after, now someone's already yelled out. He's naked. He's naked.

Starting point is 02:32:55 And so now there's a microscope on it. So every little thing, these things that were happening for years, but when he came out there and he was like, hey, my vice president Donald Trump has been all over the country. And you're like, your vice president Donald Trump? When he's like, hey, my vice president Donald Trump has been all over the country. And you're like, your vice president Donald Trump. When he introduces Putin, Zelensky's like. Yeah, he called Zelensky Putin.

Starting point is 02:33:11 Oh, Jesus. So it was really bad. But he's still like, no, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have a meeting with him where they're strong-arming him. They're like, we're withholding $90 million from your campaign because you have to step down

Starting point is 02:33:25 and step aside. He goes, no, I'm not leaving, okay? Then, according to Cy Hirsch, who's a real legit reporter on this, and I think he's right about this, Barack Obama comes in, goes, listen, we got Kamala Harris on board, I got the entire donor class,

Starting point is 02:33:44 and I got the congressional leaders on board. You are out. We are invoking the 25th Amendment and removing you from office if you don't voluntarily drop out of the race. And Joe Biden says no. The day that that letter came out was a Sunday. That Sunday, on the Sunday news shows, The day that that letter came out was a Sunday.

Starting point is 02:34:08 That Sunday, on the Sunday news shows, you can go watch Face the Nation and Meet the Press from the Sunday Joe Biden's, the letter comes out. Biden's surrogates are on the news going, why are we still talking about this? He's made his decision. He won the primary. This is the democratic process. It's his choice if he wants to run for it, and he's running.

Starting point is 02:34:27 It's Trump versus Biden. Get used to it. Those are your two options. Who do you want to be president? Mere hours later, the sitting president of the United States of America, a few weeks out from convention, announces that he's not, after telling you, yes, I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I'm doing it announces that he's not after telling you yes, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it announces he's not and he doesn't do this with an address to the nation. Yeah. He does it with a letter on personal stationary with a signature that

Starting point is 02:34:58 does not seem to match other Joe Biden signatures. That's it. Like whatever. I forget even the signature. But like it's like that is such a weird way to do it. And then it's on Twitter, but like that is so bizarre. And then we don't hear from Joe Biden for another three or four days. And so all I'm saying is if you look at all the information, it seems like what happened is that their next move was to just put that out.

Starting point is 02:35:23 And literally before Joe Biden is seen from again, the funds are already being transferred over to Kamala Harris. The move, I think it was presented to him as a fait accompli, as the French say, that it's like this is done, you've already been removed. What are you gonna do now? You're gonna go back out there?

Starting point is 02:35:40 And look, they could just say, if he went back out there and went, I never wrote that letter, they'll be like, well, we'll say you did, and you forgot, because who's gonna really believe you anymore at this point? And so it's like, and I'm sure, my guess is, they had all types of other,

Starting point is 02:35:56 I mean, his son's in a legit legal, has legit legal problems. So they're holding other things in. I'm sure there's all types of other things that they had on him, Lord, it's like, hey, how do you wanna play this here? Do you want your son to go to prison for the rest of his life,

Starting point is 02:36:07 and your legacy is totally destroyed? Or do you wanna be, and you know, as soon as he stepped down, the corporate media went right back to, the greatest president ever, a selfless decision that he made for the good of his country, he would step down,

Starting point is 02:36:21 and then, and now we're into this new propaganda campaign which is that Kamala Harris is a cultural phenomenon. We're all supposed to believe that. That sounds like a straight up coup, now that you put it that way. Yeah, you might be right about the coup. So help me understand the Harris phenomenon, right? Because I think she's universally accepted

Starting point is 02:36:38 to be kind of like a bumbling idiot about three weeks ago and then that immediately transitions to this undying love, and even if it was a corporate propaganda push, it has transferred to the public effectively, meaning they're convinced, like if you ask audiences in the city if they're excited about Kamala, they will cheer, and if you ask them why the city if they're excited about Kamala they will cheer and if you ask them why

Starting point is 02:37:07 They will not say a word dude. You know what's crazy So how does that happen? What's crazy as of a week ago? I think I think a week and a half ago you go to Kamala Harris calm her website There are no policies on her website. Yeah, I don't know about now, but it was just donate buy merch comics have more information on Kamala Harris Pretty smart Take the time figure out what all your policy is gonna be because she didn't know she was gonna be running a month ago

Starting point is 02:37:37 Yeah, like well, I mean you expect her to have a whole presidential plan for the country. Yeah Yeah, overnight not overnight. You're the vice president. No, because then you throw any of those things up, then now it's shot down. Part of your job assumption, Al, if the president gets assassinated, you're in charge. So you don't have any, you don't have no plan. Joe Biden croaks, he's 90 years old.

Starting point is 02:37:57 And when the president's Joe Biden, don't tell me this hadn't crossed the line. Yeah, yeah. And then if she would've put that up beforehand, it'd be like, oh shit, she's trying to push him the fuck out of here. I'm talking about weeks later. I think the answer is just that policy isn't their strength

Starting point is 02:38:11 and so why even get into that? You know, those crowds that you're talking about, I mean, look, the truth is that the Democrats haven't since Obama had anyone who's like an animating figure, like what's motivating those people is that they hate Donald Trump. Exactly. And there's a tremendous sense of relief because they had this crazy liability of a senile guy. And now that's gone.

Starting point is 02:38:35 They're embarrassed. Yeah. I think they actually were quiet. Like all these people that are Harris supporters were anti-Trumpers. They felt embarrassed supporting Biden. Because support for Biden, I think was, I mean, it was a huge liability for the country. Like you would put the country

Starting point is 02:38:52 in a potentially dangerous situation by vocalizing your support for this guy who's definitely senile. And also just the pretending that you don't see it. Exactly, exactly. So you feel fraudulent, right? And the second there was another option, they fucking jump on it.

Starting point is 02:39:06 Right. Which makes sense, but to see that now turn into enthusiasm is. Well, I think the enthusiasm's more like, oh shit, we might have a chance to win. I think that's interesting. I think that's part of it. That's interesting.

Starting point is 02:39:19 I think also, look, there's a reason why Kamala Harris was picked to be vice president. And the, you know, it's like the progressive DNA gets really into historic firsts. You know, there's something about that. Look, this is why Joe Biden picked her, because if it's Joe Biden, it's just, hey, okay, we're gonna redact Donald Trump

Starting point is 02:39:42 and in favor of the establishment of the guy who's been in politics for 50 years. It's like, eh. But if you could attach to that the first vice president who's a woman of color, then okay, all right, we got a little something that we're working with here. And so now they're rolling this out. I think she's benefiting from the contrast between,

Starting point is 02:40:02 like, you know, I mean, the bar was like, she can walk and read words off a teleprompter. That's where the bar was at. She can do both of those things. She knows, she just got off of this plane, and so she's not gonna try to walk back up the stairs onto this plane.

Starting point is 02:40:17 Don't walk up the stairs. She knows she can walk up the stairs. She can tackle stairs? Same numbers. She's really excellent at walking up stairs. She's black. Like, it's's a little bit of that, but then there's also, I do think that liberals much more so than Trump supporters, they do kind of respond still to the corporate media signals.

Starting point is 02:40:40 And so if you just start telling them all day long, this is exciting, they're excited about this, they start to, I also think there's been a tremendous, so I have, this is totally anecdotal, I don't know what this means, but I've gotten like 30 text messages at this point about donating to Kamala Harris, about different, and I've like, I don't donate to, one time I've donated to Tulsi Gabbard

Starting point is 02:41:01 when she was running, it's the only Democrat I've ever donated to. And it's just like, and so there's a lot of astroturfing of like making, and all that money that they were withholding from Joe Biden, they pumped right into Kamala Harris' campaign. And so there's this attempt to build her up. I would, I think a lot of it's an illusion. There's gonna be, there's still gonna be several more hurdles for her that she has to debate Donald Trump at least one time.

Starting point is 02:41:27 She's gonna have to sit down for tough interviews. Kamala Harris has this thing where she can read a teleprompter speech with no problem. You give her a teleprompter speech, she'll read it. When she's asked tough questions, she seems like she just took like a 600 milligram edible like just kicked in and she starts going into this like space is above us and around us.

Starting point is 02:41:50 Which is like I don't understand it exactly. Maybe she's very nervous or something. I don't get why she goes into that. But well, I don't know. I mean I don't really trust that elections are free and fair ever. I've never done, way before Donald Trump ever started saying that I never't know. I mean, I don't really trust that elections are free and fair ever. I've never done before. Wait before Donald Trump ever started saying that. I never trusted elections. So I don't know.

Starting point is 02:42:09 But it does seem like, okay, they're going with her. There was a reason why everyone was assuming it wouldn't be her even if Biden dropped out. Because nobody believed. Yeah. Okay, so now there's support. Now explain Trump. Trump is at all-time high. He gets shot. I mean, immediately the day after, I'm like, just hand him the election. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:42:32 He gets over. There's no way that they could make up this kind of ground. Fight. He's a hero. He did it in this prolific fashion. He's got his fists in the air. Fight, fight, fight. It's almost like that happened 30 years ago. Nobody is even talking about this anymore. His campaign seems to lack energy. What the fuck is happening in Trump land? Something really changed in Donald Trump since he took that bullet. And I don't know if you guys notice it, but to me it's very clear. I mean, it's like he first off at his convention speech, he was like totally affected by it, you know, understandable. But it look, there's an obvious blueprint here for Donald

Starting point is 02:43:13 Trump, that Donald Trump would always follow. And he's not following it right now. Well, look, I mean, what was it? What did he say about Russiagate? It was a witch hunt. They were out to get me. Right? Yeah. What did he say about Russiagate? It was a witch hunt. They were out to get me, right? What did he say about all the criminal charges against him? It's a witch hunt. They were weaponizing the Justice Department against me. And if he wanted to keep this story in the media and make this the story of the whole thing,

Starting point is 02:43:37 he could just say what, I mean, look. Everybody thinks the CIA tried to kill me. They allowed, listen, after framing me for treason, and then weaponizing the justice system against me, oh, the Secret Service just happened to allow someone with a sniper rifle to get within 130 yards of me and get a clear shot at my head, this guy who's, you can see on video,

Starting point is 02:43:59 is scoping out the area for an hour plus beforehand while people on the ground are screaming, he's got a rifle on that roof, and they didn't yank the president off the stage. He could, Donald Trump always stokes conspiracy beliefs. He always does this. He could easily just be poking this thing and make this the biggest story and totally make this,

Starting point is 02:44:21 like this is what Trump always had the ability to do. He decides what's gonna be in the news cycle today. It's a superpower, you know? And he is very clearly not doing that. Dude, Elon Musk asked him the other day on their spaces about it, then he just started praising the Secret Service for what a great job they did. That was the first thing he did, he said,

Starting point is 02:44:39 the Secret Service is amazing, what an amazing job. So my conclusion, Trump shook. So basically Trump's going, wow, they tried to take me out and by they, that means the CIA or the alphabet agencies, the powers that be, and now he's like, holy shit, it is that easy to take me out? I barely survived this one, they will try it again, I better toe the company line, I better behave. Listen, I think that seems to be the only explanation

Starting point is 02:45:05 that makes sense to me. Holy shit. And I think Donald Trump, Donald Trump, look, when he ran in 2016, he said, it was like, I'm gonna drain the swamp. And that was like his, but the thing is, when you're talking about draining the swamp, you're talking about rolling back the biggest honeypot in the history of the world.

Starting point is 02:45:25 I mean, like, you're talking, you're drain the swamp, like, okay. That's gonna piss a lot of people off, baby. Yeah, like, if you wanna actually, Tucker Carlson said this, but like, I think he's dead right about it. If you really want it to drain the swamp, you have to be ready to die, you know?

Starting point is 02:45:39 Like, you have to be ready to sacrifice your life for that mission. Yeah, I actually fear for the Vic if he wins. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I don't think Donald Trump was ever ready to die for this, you know? I think Donald Trump was, like, the way his mind works is like, I'm tremendous. I'm very smart.

Starting point is 02:45:58 These other people are very stupid. I see the obvious solution to this. You know, like he would always just be like, you know, it's kind of just like, yeah, we shouldn't fight stupid wars. It's bad business, you know? So let's not do that anymore. I don't think he had any clue

Starting point is 02:46:10 what he was actually up against. And I think that probably, yeah, a bullet whizzing by your head and being like, yo, their plan was actually to blow your brains out on national television. That might make you think, ooh, I don't know if I wanna piss them off. Also, the Secret Service are still responsible

Starting point is 02:46:30 for his security going forward. And so my takeaway is just like looking at it, having observed Trump over all these years, I'm like, oh, for the first time, he seems really shook. Like he seems like, yeah, he's worried about this. I don't think he wants to die. I would say even before that, because he, first time he was running,

Starting point is 02:46:50 he was running on I'm gonna drain the swamp. He gets elected, there was no drainage of any swamp. Like I think immediately once he got elected, he got talking to in a way where it's like, oh, he knows what he can and cannot do. He even bailed out Hillary. Did you hear him talk about Hillary? He's like, we could he knows what he can and cannot do. He even bailed out Hillary. Did you hear him talk about Hillary? He's like, we could have done horrible things to her,

Starting point is 02:47:08 but I think we should move on and. Yeah, no, like, this is my point. She's just going. You didn't hear this? No, yeah, yeah. Say what it is. Well, they were like, you know, there were all these campaign promises of lock her up,

Starting point is 02:47:18 but you didn't end up locking her up. And basically, his response was basically just like, you know, we said things on the campaign, but how about we're all just nice to each other? No one's gonna lock anyone up. No one's gonna assassinate anyone. Yeah, come on. You lock up a president's wife, a secretary of state,

Starting point is 02:47:30 that doesn't look good for America. Yeah, it's like, wow, look at the energy shift in that. So is he running now, despite all of this, just to free his criminal record? He could free his criminal record by stepping down. Yeah, I think. I think that's a negotiation away. So then why is he putting himself through this fire now they need a patsy well I think deep probably I think Donald Trump is motivated by what

Starting point is 02:47:53 Donald Trump is obviously motivated by I mean the guy who's like well it's not just power it's like tension it's yeah it's like you know identity like what you know he's the guy who has to build a huge skyscraper and put his name and gold letters on it. And the fact that he was a one-term president, I think, really bothers him. The fact that he, the narrative is he lost. You know, he has to constantly correct that any time anyone thinks so.

Starting point is 02:48:18 And I think he wants to come back and win again. But I don't know what exactly he wants after this assassination attempt. And I don't know what exactly he wants after this assassination attempt. And I don't know, you know, I think he wants to win still, but he also kind of wants to signal that it's like, hey, come on, man, like, all right, drain the swamp.

Starting point is 02:48:36 Well, all right, everyone's talking about drain the swamp. Let's just like, you know, make the swamp a little better than the swamp. Here's a question I wanted to ask you. Robbie Slovic, who you probably know, another very smart political comic. I really trust him. Throughout the election cycle, I've been asking him,

Starting point is 02:48:50 what do you think Trump's chances are? He's like, Trump has no chance. He even said after the bullet was by his ear, he goes, people are gonna forget this. Trump has no chance. The only time he was worried was the debate. He's like, Biden is in such bad decline, I don't know. But people aren't gonna vote for Trump

Starting point is 02:49:04 who are in the middle. They're just not anymore. But Donald Trump has hijacked the Republican Party. So let's say he loses this election, gets bold again, and is like, you know what, fuck it, I wanna run again in 2028. What are Republicans gonna do? Like, how do they get their party back?

Starting point is 02:49:21 I mean, I think he's just too old at that point. I mean, Donald Trump is going to be 84. No. What does he say? Oh, wait, you're saying next election? You're saying if he was running 28. That's too much. I don't think it's possible that he's going to run again there.

Starting point is 02:49:36 I don't agree with Robbie on that. I mean, I think that certainly if it was Trump versus Joe Biden, I think if there were real elections, I think no question Donald Trump was Trump versus Joe Biden, I think there's, if there were real elections, I think no question Donald Trump was gonna win that. Look, Donald Trump was down pretty big in the polls against Hillary Clinton and ended up winning. He was down substantially more in the polls than he ended up, like it was,

Starting point is 02:50:00 he did better than he was polling in 2020. That's how Trump always is. He always does a little bit better than he was polling in 2020. That's how Trump always is. He always does a little bit better than he's polling. He was even up in the polls in every single swing state against Joe Biden. Now it's kind of returned back to where Trump typically is, which is like the polls say he's gonna lose, but there's a lot of closeted Trump voters out there.

Starting point is 02:50:19 I think what Robbie's probably underestimating is that there's real, the inflation is really killing people, dude, and the immigration is really unpopular. And I think that really, really hurts the Democrats. Now, that being said, I'm more on the conspiratorial side where I'm like, all the signals that I've seen so far is that the powers that be will not allow Donald Trump to be in the White House again. So if you're saying-

Starting point is 02:50:48 Not even with his capitulation? I mean, maybe, maybe, I don't know. Maybe that could be a game changer. But I will say that all the signals for the last four years have been that all the most powerful people are telling you, this guy will not be allowed to be in the White House again. And those people have a lot of power.

Starting point is 02:51:11 You bet against the CIA, you usually don't win. You think some mail-in ballots or something worse? I mean, what have we seen already? I mean, I don't know what the next step above this is. I think, I certainly think that like it is, listen, whatever, man, I don't know what the next step above this is. I certainly think that it is, listen, whatever, man. I don't wanna say anything that could get anyone's channel in trouble, so I'll just say in hypothetical. Say it and we'll cut it.

Starting point is 02:51:33 Okay, so in hypothetical country. Do you want us to cut it or are you just gonna? No, no, you can put that. I'll try to say it in the best. Let's just say, I was reading this novel the other day. There we go. About this crazy corrupt country that totally changed the way they did elections on the year that the guy that they didn't want to win

Starting point is 02:51:49 was up for reelection. It just seems a little bit suspicious, you know? So like, I don't know. You guys decide. I don't know what the latest YouTube rules or whatever it is, so I don't know what I'm allowed to say. But I certainly, I don't know anything, but I definitely have my suspicions

Starting point is 02:52:04 about what they would do, and I don't think it would be that hard for them to do that. That would be my question. My question was gonna be, how accurate do you think Trump was in 2020, saying, break, still, and blah, blah, blah? Okay, so I'll say it like this, right?

Starting point is 02:52:17 So I've read a lot about like, U.S.-sponsored colored revolutions, which is like where they'll, they're basically like these CIA operations and they've done them in like Serbia, and Iran, and yeah. What they'll do is basically everything they did in 2020. It's almost like down to a T, like everything.

Starting point is 02:52:40 From like, though they get protests in the streets, which remarkably they are able to control in a way that is like really wild to me, but it is amazing how like that whole BLM protest thing, it's amazing how quickly the Democrats could turn that off. Soon as Joe Biden's back in there, it's like, well, that's off, you're not on the streets anymore. No, and in the middle of COVID,

Starting point is 02:53:00 when they were telling everyone to stay inside, they just sent all the signals out, you're allowed to go out now, if you're doing this protest thing. There was big money people who were bailing out the worst of the rioters, like these people would be getting arrested nightly and they'd be raising money to like bail them out.

Starting point is 02:53:15 I believe Kamala Harris even donated to one of these organizations, double check me on that if I'm right on that. But regardless, then there was like, you know, like the media campaigns against the guy, the lockdowns being prolonged even way past when it was obviously like unnecessary and not mitigating the virus.

Starting point is 02:53:36 I think a lot of that was kind of to tank the economy. There was mass censorship in 2020 of pro-Trump influencers, just anything. Yeah, just getting kicked off. And then they totally overhauled the way we do voting with no real mechanism to verify that these cards were coming from the right places. And so I don't know, looking at all of that,

Starting point is 02:53:58 after Trump lost, I could understand why any one of his supporters would be like, this was not fair. Especially after they had framed him for treason. And the whole Russiagate thing was completely made up, dude. It was all based off lies. The total deep state, like, Psyop is not true at all. It was totally laughable that Donald Trump was in a conspiracy with the Russians. Just bullshit.

Starting point is 02:54:19 And so now, Donald Trump, in Trumpian fashion, had no idea how to wield power or how to combat this, so he just bitched and moaned about it. And then he sent his lawyers out to be like, we have proof. And then every time they went to court, they just got thrown out of court, because they had nothing.

Starting point is 02:54:38 They had nothing other than what I just said. They were just beating, they were like, no fair. This whole thing's no fair. And the judge would be like, around here we need evidence, you know what I mean? You can't just come into court and go no fair. But looking at all that stuff, you're like, I mean it's clearly like, you know.

Starting point is 02:54:55 A lot of circumstantial evidence. Yeah, yeah, and you could just look at it and be like, look, they're clearly like kind of setting this whole thing, how far did that actually go? I have no idea, I'm not gonna say anything about any of those voting companies, I don't have that money to pay those lawsuits, but I also don't know. I'm not trying to say anything more than I know, but I'm like, you could look at this and be like, it does seem like it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Starting point is 02:55:13 The weird thing, with all the stuff we were talking about, the way Donald Trump, which has always been one of the most fascinating things about him to me, is the way he triggers left-wing people, like the way Donald Trump, which has always been one of the most fascinating things about him to me is the way he triggers left-wing people, like the reaction that he gets out of them is so, it's so enraging that it's like blinding them to anything else.

Starting point is 02:55:37 So I've never really liked Donald Trump. He's never been my style. I don't like that, just a million things about him I don't like. But I was never so enraged by him that I couldn't be like, oh, this is a kind of fascinating moment right here. This guy's running against the system and winning. And so it was almost like a lot of those left-wing people, they're just like, oh, I hate Donald Trump. They're like, well, he's a Russian agent. They're like, that's right, he's a Russian agent. They'll just jump on whatever the anti-Trump narrative is, they'll jump on it

Starting point is 02:56:06 and then you'll be like, hey, you know that was the CIA who told you that. And you know, left-wing guy, you're not supposed to like the CIA. Since when do you like the CIA? Like there's just no more even critical thinking. So it's like, you don't have to like Donald Trump to look at this and go like, it does seem like

Starting point is 02:56:22 there's something going on here. Yeah, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and some of these guys who it's almost like they are trying, like they have a, like a startup oligarchy. Like they're just like, hey listen, this oligarchy has failed us so much that like we have to start our own oligarchy. Who are these guys, the tech guys?

Starting point is 02:56:46 Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, these guys. And I generally do kind of go like, well, I mean the current oligarchy is really failing. The country. So maybe these guys would be better. I mean, they're certainly not principled libertarians or something like that. They're not me.

Starting point is 02:57:02 You know what I mean? They're willing to get CIA contracts or whatever it is. I think my read on it is kind of like, I think these guys, first off, they're brilliant. They're very successful. And I think they see the current trajectory as a real long-term problem. And that they're kind of like, listen,

Starting point is 02:57:23 this is gonna be really bad for business ultimately. If we keep going in this direction, this whole thing's gonna collapse and then we can't do what we're doing right now, which is making billions of dollars. Yeah, a bit bad for their business right now, US businesses. Sure, well, I mean, maybe, I don't know, to the extent that it overlaps, maybe both,

Starting point is 02:57:40 I don't really know, but it does seem like there's no question that like Elon Musk, you know, I tend to kind of take him at his word that he wanted Twitter to be more of a free speech place to some degree. I think he believes that to some degree, but there does seem to be a dynamic there

Starting point is 02:57:58 where it's like, I do also think he wanted to kind of let the pro-Trump people back on to Twitter. And that that was kind of like a big part of, if you're gonna let the people who have been kicked off, well who is that? It's mostly the pro-Trump people who have been kicked off. Not exclusively. But I don't know, there's an interesting force there

Starting point is 02:58:20 where they are really behind Trump now, especially with JD Vance, who's Peter Thiel's guy. Why did Elon back off of the $35 million a month that he said he was gonna give Trump? Oh, I wasn't even, I heard someone say something about that, but I don't know. I think he tweeted it. I don't know that.

Starting point is 02:58:36 He said, I'm gonna go. And then he just backed off of that. I didn't hear that he backed off. Yeah, he backed off. Wow. Yeah. Pretty quickly. Someone probably crunched his numbers.

Starting point is 02:58:44 They were like, you know, someone probably crunched his numbers. They were like, you know, you spent a lot of money on this platform, really? Another 35 a month? So that was, I was a big Elon Musk fan. Now I find it all a little bit disingenuous to buying Twitter for free speech. I don't care if you let pro-Trump people on,

Starting point is 02:58:58 but I'm a little annoyed when all your tweets are suddenly pro-Trump. And it's like, do you want free speech or do you want your guy to win because it benefits you and that's fine Just don't present yourself as some fucking guy putting on my cape and I'm letting you guys speak Well, maybe the the argument would be that he thinks his his guy can only win if there's free speech But that free speech is still the principle, you know what I mean? Those things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. I mean, I do think that,

Starting point is 02:59:31 like I don't know, I don't know what's in his heart or what is his brain that works differently than all of our brains do. But I think what he exposed with the Twitter files was pretty wild. It was a service to the American people that we know that. And that it is kind of like, it's obviously a little bit of a gray area,

Starting point is 02:59:54 but if the idea of the First Amendment was that in the public square, you can go make whatever argument you wanna make, and if people wanna listen to you, they can. Well, the public square is outdated. The public square is social media now. And so if you're saying that you could be out there making arguments, which in many cases,

Starting point is 03:00:13 people were making correct arguments, like about lockdowns and vaccines and how they were not, what they were sold as, and the government could come in and put pressure on these companies to silence you. To me, that's the most terrifying thing, because like I was saying earlier, that's the whole prospect for, oh, maybe we could actually save this whole thing,

Starting point is 03:00:34 it's because they've lost their grip on control. So if you have that, then it's almost like the First Amendment is meaningless at that point, because if the government can control that, you're screwed. So I'm sure he's a flawed person, but to the extent that he's rolled that back a little bit, I'm pretty grateful for that. I'll say personally, I at least feel,

Starting point is 03:00:54 I felt like through 2020, 2021, 2022, I felt like constantly I was navigating through this fear that I was gonna get shut down. And I had to constantly be like, all right, man, how do I say this in the way that's best gonna not be? I mean, I can't tell you how many tweets back before Elon Musk took it over where I wrote it and then went, I don't need it.

Starting point is 03:01:20 Dude, what am I doing? Am I gonna risk everything over because I wanna say this one thing? And even just getting people like me to make that calculation constantly, it's a real chilling effect. And I don't feel that way as much anymore. So maybe that's just my feeling about it.

Starting point is 03:01:37 I don't know if that's right. No, I think it's probably a net positive and I do think the free speech is important. I just don't necessarily trust his intentions as he presented them. Yeah, no, you might be right about that. And also, look, he has kicked people off still. There are people who still aren't left back out,

Starting point is 03:01:49 which is almost like a weird thing because he'll say constantly, he does kind of contradict himself, he'll say, hey, look, as long as you haven't done anything illegal, then you're allowed to say it on X because we're for free speech. But then Kanye tweets like a swastika flag or something, and he bans him, and you're like, all right, well which one is it?

Starting point is 03:02:08 You know, like, I mean, I don't know, either you believe in this or you don't. So he certainly hasn't been like 100% of what he said, but I think it's probably better. Yeah. And also, you know, the thing with Kanye, it's like he was just trying to get kicked off anyway. I think, you know, that was gonna happen.

Starting point is 03:02:23 Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if, I wonder if we need an adjustment period for the fullest form of free speech. So I think the knee-jerk reaction to what we're seeing on Twitter, even this week, is like, what the fuck is going on? Maybe you can't let people just say whatever they want. But I think that is what happens when you give someone a sports car, they drive it as fast as they can go. And I think eventually it takes time,

Starting point is 03:02:49 but the people that are consuming this stuff eventually start to weed it out. We go, oh, this is just like. It's a good analogy, man. You're like, listen, we're gonna crash that first car. All right, so we're gonna crash this first civilization. That's it. But if you give us a few.

Starting point is 03:03:03 Civilizations, we got this. But I think, again, it's not like you give us free speech and we're like, I'm gonna behave with all this freedom that you're giving me. I'm gonna go do some wild shit. It's spring break, we're in Mexico, something's gonna happen. And then after maybe, I don't know, five years, 10 years,

Starting point is 03:03:20 a few different election cycles, when you start to realize the same pattern's happening, maybe people are less manipulated by them. I feel like right now, we're consuming content like our parents respond to Nigerian credit card scams. You know what I mean? I'm on the timeline, like the Jews did what? My parents are like, no, I just got to pay the tax,

Starting point is 03:03:43 and then I get 10 million from this Nigerian print. Like I am that susceptible to information. And it's great. I intentionally don't click on things so I don't introduce any of that to my algorithm. So it's like I almost have to buffer myself from certain news or from certain free speakers just so it doesn't like muddy up my timeline

Starting point is 03:04:03 and it sucks because I want to see it all but then I don't want to see all that type of shit. Did Ari ever tell you about the thing he did when he took charge of his algorithm or whatever? Like Ari, it's such an Ari thing, but he just did this experiment where he wouldn't click or search anything except puppy videos for like a month or something.

Starting point is 03:04:24 It was just all puppy videos and he actually got it to where the algorithm was just showing him puppy videos for like a month or something. It was just all puppy videos and he actually got it to where the algorithm was just showing him puppy videos and that's all it was. And he was like, yeah, I was pretty happy for that month. You know what I mean? He was like, yeah, you're gonna get a effect on me. But it is a weird thing too. I don't believe that.

Starting point is 03:04:38 I believe it would be like puppies dressed as Hitler. Puppies cut off, it would be puppies, but it would be all the others. I know just from doing such a deep dive on the war in Gaza and just trying to keep up with the news about it constantly at first, it was after a while where I had to stop doing it on social media because it's like, ah dude, I can't watch, listen, I want to be up on what's happening, but I can't watch videos of babies dying every day. Like, what am I doing to my soul right now

Starting point is 03:05:08 to just like be constantly seeing this? We all gotta figure out how to navigate this. At least though, to your point though, it's like, I just, I think that, you know, like with Candice and with that space particular, the one thing I am grateful to her, I had so many people coming at me for just being on there. And the crazy thing, and this is what bugs me,

Starting point is 03:05:33 is it's not even the people coming at me are disagreeing with anything I said on there. They're just like, how could you be there with this person? I'm like, yeah, but I don't really do that guilt by association thing, man. Like, I don't believe in that. And then also it's like, well, if we're gonna play this game, then let's play it out.

Starting point is 03:05:49 Like, who do you have on? And what have they supported? And what have they, you know, and it's like, okay, like, yeah, like, on the side that's critical of Israel, there are people who have said bad things about Jews. On the side that's pro-Israel, there's a lot of people who have said real bad things about Palestinians,

Starting point is 03:06:03 you know, and like, there's, okay. I can't not talk to anyone. I've talked to lots of people who are pro-Israel too. But also, like, look, Candace does say over and over again, like maybe she's wrong on some of the conspiracies that she's talking about, but she does say over and over again that she has no problem with Jewish people

Starting point is 03:06:22 and she doesn't hate Jewish people, she loves, she has lots of Jewish friends, and she doesn't hate Jewish people. She loves, she has lots of Jewish friends. She's always had lots of Jewish friends. And I do appreciate that she's at least saying that. And the way I look at it is it's always like, oh yeah, you try to silence these people, it's like some Freudian thing.

Starting point is 03:06:39 You repress something, it always kind of re-emerges in an uglier fashion and you're like, okay, you know, you try to suppress this one, watch it re-emerge as someone who's not saying that anymore and now they're just like, no, you know, like all of them. And so. I think that's part of what got Trump elected. Yeah, yeah, maybe. And like, so I think that the way,

Starting point is 03:07:00 like the way it should be handled is like, if those guys are saying something that's so wrong and offensive, then it's like, all right, so take them on and win the argument. If it's so wrong, it should be really easy to just destroy their whole thing. And I'm not saying the marketplace of ideas is perfect, but it's better than the alternative.

Starting point is 03:07:20 Which is the restriction of all. Yeah, just it's dictated from top down what is the truth and what isn't. This is the price we gotta pay for it. Have you seen the people getting arrested in England and I think even in Canada for the things that they've said? I don't remember the exact details. It's like Facebook posts or whatever.

Starting point is 03:07:35 There's a guy recently just got arrested. Yeah, I don't know much more than that. Like I basically read that that was happening. But they have freedom of speech. And that's the thing, like they have freedom of expression or whatever it is, but that's a bullshit way of saying, you can't say what you want. Yeah, that's right. That was happening. And that's the thing, like they have freedom of expression or whatever it is, but that's a bullshit way of saying, you can't say what you want.

Starting point is 03:07:47 Yeah, that's right. Go express it. I am expressing with my words. Well, not that, you can't. I think that's a really, really dangerous path to go down. Is that, you know, and look, you know, what happened in Canada, I know this is, you know, you said the Trump assassinations 30 years ago,

Starting point is 03:08:02 so this is like 500 years ago, but you know, know it isn't actually it's only a couple years ago that the way they cracked out on those trucker protests was really insane. Seizing bank accounts and then seizing the bank accounts of people who donated money to them. Wow. Like not even like you were out there or did anything but you were just like hey I'm gonna throw a few bucks to this cause. Wow. Like jeez this is freaking creepy. We don't wanna go in that direction. Yeah. Okay.

Starting point is 03:08:28 Are there any countries you feel are doing it, like any countries or governments you feel that are doing it right, that America would be like, eh, we should maybe model ourselves like they're doing. Or the closest to right. Closest to right. I'm a big fan of Liechtenstein. Really like what they're doing over there.

Starting point is 03:08:43 Very low taxes. No, I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, all of them, all of them have their own problems. I don't know that there's any country that I, you know, the country that I model that I like us to be a lot more is the United States of America. You know, like that's like what we were always kind of supposed to be. And what I think in many ways we did a better job of in the past. And there's obviously certain things

Starting point is 03:09:06 we didn't do a good job of in the past. But I think that like, you know, so I'm 41 and I was born in a pre-War on Terror America, like a pre-911 America. Remember all those rom-coms where they would always end with the guy running up to the plane? You could run up to a plane. You could just go in the air.

Starting point is 03:09:27 We weren't all treated like terrorists and stuff. We didn't have these crushing deficits and these endless wars and these unprotected borders and all of this stuff. And I think we could just go back to being more of a free country. Honestly, to me, I think the Declaration of Independence is the most amazing document

Starting point is 03:09:50 that's ever been written in the history of the world, and that's our founding document. Let's try to live up to that. That's the example I'd like to follow. Okay, last question. How did the Jews kill JFK? Okay, so, once you can control the weather, you say. Everything else.

Starting point is 03:10:09 Man, nice and sunny, let's say. Yeah, you got magic bullet really. A little fog would have rolled in even. No comment, but if you want to find out the answer, I'll be on a Spaces with Candace Owens. Yeah. What was she saying, and is that a real conspiracy? Or is this like just trolling?

Starting point is 03:10:24 No, there's a real conspiracy that Israel was involved in the JFK assassination. Again, it all, like I do not, this is not a claim I'm making at all, but there is a conspiracy out there that that, I think there is evidence that the Israelis were attempting to blackmail Alan Dulles, as we said before.

Starting point is 03:10:44 That would be the connection there. Alan Dulles was fired from the CIA by Jack Kennedy because he was furious at him because he was totally working against him. And it was a big thing, but JFK fired the head of the CIA and supposedly, and Bobby Kennedy told me this is true, that he said he's gonna crack the CIA into a million pieces, like that he was basically like,

Starting point is 03:11:10 I'm going to war with the CIA, I'm gonna destroy this organization, and then he took a nice limo ride through Dallas, and then on the Warren Commission, which was to investigate what happened in the Kennedy assassination, they put Alan Dulles on the Warren Commission, which was to investigate what happened in the Kennedy assassination, they put Alan Dulles on the commission. Which is just like the biggest signal of like,

Starting point is 03:11:31 yeah, oh, we'll be looking into this, you know? So I think the theory is extrapolated from, oh, they had Alan Dulles blackmailed and therefore the Israelis. There were issues between David Ben-Gurion and John F. Kennedy. He was very upset with them over nuclear testing or something.

Starting point is 03:11:47 I don't know that conspiracy that well inside and out, but anyway, that's the theory. I never, look, again, with all this thing, I think the thing to keep in mind here, and then by the way, all the real hardcore anti-Semites, this is where they'll say, see, this is why Dave's working for the Jews too, because he's just telling you to tone down

Starting point is 03:12:04 the temperature or whatever. But even if the Israeli government was involved in that, it's like, yeah, governments do evil things. That's all over the place. Doesn't mean you gotta blame, you know, Barry the dentist who lifts up the blocks. He didn't have anything to do with that, I promise you. And he does really good work.

Starting point is 03:12:21 But you're gonna pay. You're gonna pay for that work. Dave Smith, ladies and gentlemen. Dave, tell them about your show where they can watch more of this. You just started going, what, four days a week now? Yeah, yeah, I go four days a week. Part of the Problem is my podcast.

Starting point is 03:12:36 It's available everywhere, but if you wanna support the show, partoftheproblem.com is the place to do that. Plus you get an extra episode that's only for members, and, but it's up on YouTube and iTunes and all the other things. And then Comic Dave Smith on Twitter and ComicDaveSmith.com for all my road dates. Let's go.

Starting point is 03:12:53 Get out and go see him. He's a great standup as well. Well, thank you so much, Dave. Thank you, fellas.

Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - “Trump Is Shook”, Candace Owens, & The Israel Problem | Dave Smith

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