Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - Is World War III Happening? And Will Smith Like Pretty Girls, So There’s That

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

With Rachel in Europe, Van’s flying solo to address the evolving conflict in the Middle East with HuffPost’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed. (0:00) Intro (3:14) Father’s Day (23:35) Israel-Iran attacks (28:48) Akbar Shahid Ahmed joins the show (1:03:09) GOP Rep calls for ‘nuking’ Gaza (1:08:04) Minnesota lawmaker shooting (1:21:08) Van hates Caitlin Clark (1:28:56) Stephen A. Smith loves solitaire (1:40:39) Will Smith’s new song (1:53:00) Glaze of the Week (1:59:56) N-----ism Host: Van Lathan Jr. Guest: Akbar Shahid Ahmed Producer: Donnie Beacham Jr. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, yo, yo, thought lawyers. What is up? Howie learning is on is I, Van Lathen, Jr. Rachel is not here today. Just to let you guys know from the jump. There's no Rachel today. Rachel is in Khan. Can or con, Donnie?

Is it Khan? I think both. It's either one. If you're trying to be fancy, it's Khan. But then if you're like a layman, it's can. Can, Khan, Khan. So there's the Can Lion Festival over there. and Rachel is representing Spotify

and to a degree higher learning over in France. I'm seeing a lot of people talk about going to France right now and Rachel is over there. Now, I wasn't aware of what the CanConn Lion thing was, but I guess it's a big international ad convention that happens in the south of France, and everybody goes to it now. Some years ago, some friends of mine had gone to it,

and Rachel is there now. I have high hopes for Rachel in France right now. High hopes for Donnie. I'm hoping for like a little romance over there. Don't you think after the skunk thing, it would be good for Rachel to have a trist with either an American that's at Cannes as well or some like French guy, some French dude?

What if she came back with a Jacques or Jean? Jacques Le Doux. I feel like, yeah, Paris is a romance city. I've never been. But the people I have heard who have been there, I have heard negative things about France. That, like, you go in thinking that it's about to be a beautiful, romantic experience. And then it's just kind of gross rats and dirt and trash everywhere. But I don't know.

I've never been. What? Are you telling me that France sucks? That's what I've heard. I've heard that people have, people say that it's not as cool as you think it is. Like, you go in with your high expectations and then the food isn't as good as other places might be. It's just, I've heard down. opinions on France. I feel like I was in your presence when I heard somebody talking down on France in L.A.

at some point a few months ago or a few years ago. I've been to France before. I've been to Paris before. It's a long time ago. And the happenings that happened on that trip, particularly the flight, led to me not flying for 10 years. See? Okay. There you go. Well, no, not on the trip, but on the flight. On the way to. We're going there. And then the plane goes down in the fucking oxygen masks come out and that leads to me not get on the plane for a while. I was like, fuck it. Not happening. Okay. Um, look, we're going to miss Rach. We have some people that are stepping in. We have interviews today. Higher learning is Van Lathen and Rachel Lindsay, Rachel Lindsay and Van Lathen. That is what this show is. But in the absence of Rachel, we must still deliver you guys

a show. So we're going to have some people help us out. Before we get to what we have on the show today, and it is probably one of the worst days not to have Rachel, because we have an absolutely packed news show. I do want to touch on Father's Day real quick, because this was a particularly tough Father's Day for me, Donnie. Was it your first Father's Day as Junie's dad? No, this was my second.

Second. But the first one, I was just a few months in as a father. This one I feel like there's a little bit more experience and it was a little bit, you know, it was a little bit more of a journey to get here. But it was a good one. I enjoyed my time with the little guy. So as a dad, it's Father's Day, your kid is a little bit more sentient now. I don't know if that's the word, but he's evolved as a life for him. He's doing stuff.

As a new dad, what was Father's Day like for you? It was awesome because I, so I'm. I'm realizing that you had a hard time too. So you're asking me this question, but I'm also trying to keep in mind your feelings because a big part of my father's day was spending it with my father. And I feel like I have hard times on mother's days.

So I understand the hard time that you had this weekend. And I think because I don't have my mom, I try to involve my dad in, the holiday a little bit more than I think I maybe would have if she wasn't around. So it was me, him and Junie and Janay, we went to this museum. That's not far from us. The puppetry arts museum. I felt like this would be a good thing that Junie could experience because he's walking around now and he's super active. So I felt like he could walk around, see Elmo and Kermit and Big Bird in real life and be able to see my dad, see him, see that.

these things and that was awesome. He was super into it. He made a face that I've never seen him make when he saw Kermit like he was legitimately starstruck. Very cool to see. And then we went to this nice Mexican restaurant not far, asked some tacos and chills. And, oh yeah, before that all started, we watched the Tigers lose to the Reds. So it was a good, a good Sunday with the fellas and the wife and she really like made me feel like a I don't know like super blessed honestly very very blessed to have Janae in my life and Junie and yeah I was feeling good coming out of Sunday that's fantastic I felt like shit um I'm sorry it's okay but seeing so many of my brothers and my homeboys that are great dads uh was fantastic it's something

very awesome about what you just said very amazing, very special. It's the black grandfathers thing. In our family, we have a black grandfather's curse. There's a curse on the black granddad in our family. I never really knew any man

who was actually my grandfather. My father's father was in an interesting situation because he died when I was very small, but even if he hadn't have died,

he actually had another family. And that was his primary family. I see. So my actual last name shouldn't be Lathen. It should be grayer if, in fact, they were married. Well, it should be what it is. My grandmother is my grandmother. And I am a latin because of the nature of that family.

But there was never an example for me of black longevity and wisdom in an older man like the father of my dad. We had older patriarchs in our family. Obviously, there was Big Papa. He died when I was six. There was my Uncle Pete who was around. There were older black men. But as far as the guy who raised my dad to be able to look. and get wisdom from him and sometimes even perspective on my father from that person,

that person wasn't around. And now it's not going to be around for any children that I might have because my father is gone. So I'll have to kind of give them stories of their grandfathers, of their grandfather, shall I say, through pictures, which is a very interesting thing and something that I've only been thinking about in the last couple of years, like how this works. On my mother's side of the family, it was a similar type of situation, but I actually didn't know that my granddad who had just passed away was actually not my mother's biological father until I was around 15 or 16 years old. So just thinking about that pattern and the longevity that exists there says two things. number one, you know, when you have black men from Louisiana dying at age 65, 66, 67,

like I said, my dad and none of his brothers made it to 70, then a guy like me who came out here and put career in front of family and all of that stuff either has to deliver children in my 20s or 30s, which a lot of people do in Louisiana, obviously, or, you know, you're not going to have that much time. Your father's not going to have that much time with his, with his grandchildren. And so now it's just, it's something that,

it's just an interesting thing. It's, I would have liked to have some perspective on my father from people, beyond those who, who, who, who kind of raised them in an uncle type of a situation. Like,

I would have wanted to know what he was like growing up and, some of the things that he said to me that maybe weren't like super duper grounded in who he actually was or whom he actually was because he obviously told stories of himself like he was fucking Superman. But I was thinking about all of these things yesterday, all of that stuff. It's very empowering to hear you tell, you know, three generations of Beecham men hanging out. And I know that your mother isn't with us, but these holidays are corporate holidays, but they're also meaningful for reflection in terms of like what it means to be a member of your family

or what it means to be to carry on for generations and like where it kind of puts you in your life when you think about Father's Day and think about what where you are right now where a lot of my friends are yesterday was a day where I just really took it to myself and was like damn is there a part of my life that I'm really not indulging into is there a part of me that should be should I be a dad should I have a family am I being a little selfish

in the fact that my mother doesn't have grandchildren and my dad never got to hold my son or anything like that like what are the sacrifices that I've made and how those things affect me was a big deal was weighing heavily on me yesterday kind of feeling the absence

of not just my dad but what it would have meant for him to kind of be able to see a different part of me or for me to be able to communicate with a different part of him. And that will probably continue. I'm 45. If I have children, shit, I'll be old at their graduation, running around in my 50s trying to play catch. You know what I mean?

And then if they have kids, I'll be on my 80. So it's like, you know, it's just an interesting thing in my family. There's not a scarcity of male figures. They were all around me. But there is a little bit of chaos and not a lot of stability in the way we hand things down from generation. But also, you know, we do it by committee. We do it by committee. Like everybody had to kind of do everything.

I was just, I don't know, I'm babbling, but I was thinking heavily about my dad yesterday, man, and about the whole deal. It's tough. How did you spend the day with all of this on your mind? What were you up to? Went to the movies and hung out with Bozeman. Those were the two things. Went to the movies, hung out with Bozeman. I did think about one thing, though.

Yesterday, that was very important as it relates to my father. I told a story on Instagram about that. And I think it's important. as I talk about what my father was good at, also dehumanize him and talking about what he wasn't good at. So I told a story on Instagram as I was sitting down, kind of dealing with all of these feelings. And the story was about this time that a guy came to our door.

Did you see the post, Donnie? I didn't. Tell me about it. Crazy. No, it's father's day. Didn't even come check on your boy, man. Donnie was like, I'm with my son. And I'm with my dad. We're good over here.

Why don't you take your lonely ass over there and cut love with the dog? Okay. We're hanging out with Kermit. We don't even checking in. Thank you, Donnie. I appreciate that. No. So the story was about this time that I used to sleep on the couch when I was a kid.

I would watch movies till late, late at night. I just started sleeping on the couch. Sleep on the couch, get up. I never even in my room. If I was in my room, something illicit was probably going on in there. But I was sleep on the couch. So one night, boom, boom, boom, guy knocks on the door, bangs on the door. And it's like two, three in the morning.

So I get up to go and answer the door. About the time that I get to the door, I hear no. And my father walks past me and he answers the door. Long story short, this guy has some people after him. This is Baton Rouge. And he needed somebody to call the police. I'm not sure how he decided that our house was going to be. be the house that was going to call the police or like what was going to go on but he needs

someone to call the police. But dad said, hey, I'll walk with you to a circle. Hey, we can call the police from there. But I can't have the cops and everybody coming to this house. And I don't know if people are going to think that you related to us or whatever, but I can't bring whatever you brought with you to my family's home. So I'll walk with you over here. Make sure you get to call somebody or whatever.

but I can't do that. I was pissed off at dad because I thought, you know what, like this guy needs help. Why don't you help him? The same bleeding heart that you guys hear on this podcast, I've been this bleeding heart forever, don't know where it comes from.

And my dad did actually to me what a lot of you guys did to me on the squatters debate. Everybody was like, hey, Van, if you care that much about it, why don't you let an unhoused person come live in your house? And my father actually did the same, thing to me. He says, well, you got a shotgun in your room. You know, I had a 20 gauge. He was like, well, if you care so much about it, why don't you go out there with him? Obviously didn't want to go

out there with him. So he was like, yeah, okay, cool. And he was like, you just make sure that you do all your work. Don't fuck with no drugs and be the person answering the door and not be the person outside of the door. And that was kind of the story that I told about my dad. And he always came up with things like that. He always came up with ways to distill information to me where it made sense. But there were also things that he couldn't do. And those things affected me profoundly too. He didn't have the language of the vocabulary to do a lot of things. Particularly I felt like for a lot of my life that I was his cross to bear, that I was the thing that tested him more than anything. So in two minutes, not to belabor this before we get to Israel and Iran, I'll tell you something, a time that I specifically frustrated him.

And I felt like it defined what he thought about me for a long time. He was hitting me baseballs. And my father was a college baseball player, played baseball, played semi-pro, played a little pro, all of that stuff. He loved the game. So he's hitting me baseballs to get me ready for me to start playing baseball myself. I play my entire life. And when he would hit me the ball, I would field the ball, but I would flip my glove over. Have you ever seen a player do that, Donnie?

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. Rather than come to the ball, get down, and scoop it and throw it, I would flip my glove. He hated it. I don't know why I did it. I don't know if I was looking at Ozzie Smith or if I just, you know, naturally had a little flare with me. I'm a fancy person. I use cuticle oil this morning. Do you ever use that?

I don't, but I file my nails during recordings. It's just like a habit. So I know what you mean. I take care of the hands. I didn't used to. What age did we get to where we wanted to have pretty hands? This is a, well, I'm going to be honest. I've always had pretty hands, even as a football player.

It was just a thing. My hands are smooth. I take care of my moisturizing, very soft hands. But I haven't necessarily took care of my nails until recently. This is like a going on two years thing where I've filed my nails instead of cutting them. So legitimately, my nails used to grow. And I used to tell people, don't worry about it, they'll break off on the basketball court. Yeah.

The ball would hit my nails They would grow up I peel them off I'd be spitting them out on the bow Be like don't worry about them They're going to break now I look at look at these Donnie look at the people

Let the people look at these are I So motherfucking gorgeous Anyway But for whatever reason I was flipping my glove over flipping my glove over And getting to the ball

My dad was like If you get a really hot shot The ball's going to eat you up And you need to stop doing that. You need to learn the fundamentals of the game, get to the ball, field it, and get ready to throw. Stop flipping your glove. So I remember we're out there and something starts to happen. He is lasering baseballs at me. And I at this point am desperate to show him that my way can work. Like desperate to show him. I'm not missing the ball. I'm filled in the ball clean.

he is lasering balls at me. And then it gets to the point to where he's right. The shots get so hot that I can't fill them. I have no extra time. I mean, the ball's coming on a late hop. So I just got to get to it, throw it. Some of them I'm even blocking. The ball is hitting me in my chest.

It's hitting me in my arms is whatever. But I am desperate not to let any baseballs get past me. And he gets me out of it. I stop flipping the glove. I stop flipping the glove. I just start getting right to the ball and throwing it. Start getting right to the ball and throwing it. It gets to the point to where when you see me,

I would turn my glove over and almost put it on the ground prior to the ball being there just to be ready. So he won. And not right away, but a couple of years later, you know, he comes to a game. He's like, I see you don't flip your glove. I just wish you would listen. I wish you would focus. I wish you would listen. I wish you would focus.

He'd be like, son, this is his, his words, not mine. You're so talented. You're big, you're handsome. You're all of this. I just wish you would focus. If you could focus on one thing, there's nothing that you couldn't do. And I've never been that.

I've never been one that could focus. I've always been somebody who indulged, but never focused. Indulgence is one thing. I indulge into things for entertainment. I indulge into things for information. I indulge into things for culture. But I don't focus.

A lot of the podcasters that you hear are people who are really indulgent, but not people who are incredibly focused. Like, that's why a lot of the podcasters that you're listening to are not great leaders because there are people who can indulge into a lot of different things and talk about them. But maybe if they had focused on those things, they would be doing the things that would be podcasting about.

Some of them have in past lives. And maybe you used to be a director and now you, it was too much for you and now you're talking about films or whatever. But for me, that's always been the thing. And that broke his faith in me. He didn't have the language of the vocabulary to be able to explain to me what he wanted for me.

Never. Couldn't do it. And so the fact that I never lived up to the talents or the, the expectations that he had was such a profound disappointment for him. He felt like he kind of had the son that he wanted, but he wouldn't do what was asked of him. And he never really knew how to say it. So he would just drop it.

He would just be like life is going to teach you. I can't do it. I can't make you do it. I can't make you do all of this stuff. My dad was a little undersized. I wasn't. My dad was a little clumsy-footed. I wasn't.

My dad was a little slow. I wasn't. Highly emotionally intelligent God, but, you know, he didn't have certain, all of those things. And it just bothered the shit out of him that I wouldn't attack those things.

in the way that he would have. And so, you know, after, after it got to the point to where he had completely let go and my way was kind of working, he kind of in a way told me, hey, you turned out all right, kind of in a way, in his own way. But he just never had the, vocabulary to let me be me ever he didn't have the emotional regulation to figure out how to deal with an eccentric son and that was his that was the real limiting thing the thing that put the most distance between us and once i like forgave him for my weirdness i doubled and tripled

down into it. And the reason why I thrust my weirdness onto you guys is because in a lot of ways I'm looking for somebody to accept it. The reason why I throw all of this stuff in y'all's faces

in the world's face is because I know that it bothers people. You know what I mean? Because the one guy that I wanted it to not bother, it bothered the shit out of him. And I beat him down with it and I eventually beat him.

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predict the spread, total points and even the game winner. Sign up and get a $25 bonus. Offered by Fandul Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant. 18 plus. Bonus is non-withdrawable and expires seven days after receipt. Trading direct. derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manager activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions apply. See terms at bandool.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms. So we have a guest coming in, Donnie.

We have a guess coming in. But before we get to the guess, I guess is Akbar Shahid Ahmed, who's coming in and talk a little bit about this stuff. Before we get to the guest, I want to just make sure that people have an understanding of what, happened with the Israel attacks on Iran. There's a way that this is being talked about in the media. There's a way that this is being described. And I don't know that the actual death of what happened is being discussed in a robust way. Donnie, if I was to ask you what happened between Israel and Iran this past Friday, what would you say?

I would say it started on Friday or the assault started on Friday. Israel launched some early morning strikes that reportedly hit more than 100 targets. Senior military commanders and scientists reportedly were killed. That set off a tip for tat back and forth between the two nations. in real life and online, which is a new. When would you say that the operation started? Friday is early Friday morning their time. Okay.

So the interesting part is that's not when it started. This actually started last December. It started when Israeli Mossad agents embedded themselves into Iran around December, even earlier. They covertly smuggled drone parts and munitions, including hundreds of quad helicopter drones into Iran. They use suitcases. They use trucks.

They use shipping containers. And they assembled these things near military installations. These Mossad agents used. used assumed identities, all different type of spycraft to get deep, deep, deep into Iranian infrastructure so that when it was time for Israel to strike Iran, that they could do two things. One, take out surface-to-air missiles that the Iranians would use to defend themselves against airstrikes from the Israelis. and also, like, decapitate the military intelligentsia of Iran. This, the airstrikes that Israel commenced on or enacted or whatever you want to say on Friday the 13th were the culmination of months and months, maybe years of work for them to get to the point where they could not knock out.

the Iranian nuclear capability, but really decapitate Iran and change the regime. And the reason why I asked you to give me the example of what it is that you believe this to be is because the way this, none of this is this information that I'm talking about. I mean, this stuff is in the Washington Post. It's in different places. You can go out. Actually, to be honest with you, there is a Wikipedia page that has a, all of the

has the entire timeline of this on the Wikipedia page and I'm reading a draft of it right now because the page was active yesterday but as I'm reading it right now the page has been deleted which is also very interesting but the draft

still remains and when you look at what Israel did and wants to do it's clear that the goal here isn't to needcap Iran's nuclear capability.

It's to change the regime. Now, look, if you believe that the Iranians are crazy genocidal maniacs that are funding the Houthis and Hezbollah and Hamas, then you might say,

hey, that regime needs to go. They are one of the world's biggest sponsors of terrorism. You know, however, if you are against American and Israeli, hegemony in that region, then you would wonder why it would be okay

for the Israelis to take unilateral action against a sovereign government and change their regime when they haven't been formally attacked. This is a preemptive strike that I'm not sure is legal by the rules of international law. And when you look at all of the sponsor, My craft and the work that went into this.

I mean, we're talking about months and months and months of work for this to happen, which makes me believe that this is strictly a power grab, to be honest with you, by the Israelis and the West. And that everything else around this has kind of been a ruse. But we're going to bring somebody in right now, so I don't just drone on about it. Akbar Shaheed Ahmed, who is a reporter for Huffpo that has been covered. covering this issue for a long time. We've had them on before. He's joining us again on Hire Learning. Akbar, are you there? Good to see you again. How are you? I am well. I just went

into briefly what I believe this, this military exercise from Israel, this war from Israel to be about, which is if you look at the degree to which Massad was involved early on in embedding themselves in Iran and the amount of work that went into this. Am I wrong for thinking that this is actually about changing the Iranian regime and decapitating their militaries to weaken them and force them out? Am I wrong to think that? I think you're right to think that the infiltration and the long-term nature of this shows that it was not about what they're saying, right?

this idea that Iran was rushing towards a bomb. We had to do it right now because they were about to get a bomb. That's clearly untrue. I think there's been a long desire for regime change inside Israel, but they are giving a mixed message on that because they know what that sounds like in the U.S., right? They know what that sounds like to Donald Trump, and they don't necessarily want that to be clear or transparent

because they know it could weaken U.S. support for the effort. Well, you know, I think that, We had a conversation. Me and Donnie talked. A lot of people believe that, first of all, before we get into what a lot of people believe, what happened? Why on Friday the 13th did Netanyahu and the Israelis decide to strike Iranian targets and cripple the Iranian nuclear program? when we were in active negotiations between America and Iran to stop them from enriching uranium and developing nuclear weapons.

What was the thing that made the Israelis go? It's time to go. The precipitating factor is really the changing approach from the U.S. Right. So Donald Trump has said, I want to get back into a deal with Iran. He has said, I want to pursue diplomacy with Iran. he has stopped in April and in May he stopped Natanyahu from doing strikes, right? Natnyahu has been wanting to do strikes this entire time.

Trump said no then, he said no then, but as we've approached June, we've got to this point where the nuclear talks have not got a quick win, which is what Trump wanted, but everyone said would be hard. And so it was more of a yellow light from the US. So I would say two things, right? Like one is the Israelis certainly saw that if they wanted to be. to stop the diplomacy, this was the moment to do it. They didn't want to let it progress further to get close to the clinching a deal. But also the US gave a different signal. It gave a yellow

light and Netanyahu took advantage of that. You saw Trump then retroactively say, you know, there were all these strategic leaks saying, oh, this was actually all coordinated. This was a master plan or strategy. I think we should be very skeptical of that, right? What we know is the Israelis have had this plan in place for a long time. And so they got this sense that Trump wasn't going to stop them now. Has Israel's opinion on the region changed? You know, the Assad regime in Syria fell. They have, I guess, crippled Hamas in Gaza. Is the Israeli opinion on the region now that in one fell swoop following October 7th that they can get rid of all of their enemies and establish U.S. Israeli hegemony in the region? I think there's a belief that US support, which they really thought would at some point be called into question, right? They have, from the Israeli perspective since October 7th, they have really at no point faced any restriction on the billions in American weaponry that they got on the American weapons that defend them, right, from facing the cost of their own actions because there are U.S. troops in Israel who prevent Iranian retaliation, Hamas, Bullah, from affecting regular Israelis.

has a US diplomatic support. That hasn't gone away on the President Joe Biden who initiated it and really took it to an unpressed-seeded level. And Trump has kind of continued that. So I think, yes. So if you are the Israelis, you're looking at it and you're thinking strategically, this is our moment. Iran looks weak. We've gone after all its allies in the region. But I think this is a, there's a degree of hubris that you can have, right? And we can talk about that with the regime change talk and the way people are kind of saying this will be quick and easy, like the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, we know how that ended up. But there is a degree of ego that's certainly developed and maybe overconfidence, right? So just because you're able to infiltrate, decapitate doesn't mean

you have a plan for not having a chaotic, violent region and a lot of backlash for the years ahead. With the Chinese and the Russians stand for regime change in Iran with their close ties to the government there? I think you're going to see stronger pushback, particularly from China. Russia is a little more of a fickle friend and has its own kind of long similar intentions with Iran. But I think China is looking at this as a precedent, right? And there's a lot of concern there of what does impunity, what does a sense of no predictability mean for them?

And there's also a really big economic factor for China that we have to remember, which is, you know, we often talk about U.S. energy independence and not needing Middle East oil anymore. China needs that Middle East oil. South Korea needs that Middle East soil. Japan needs that Middle East soil. China as a country looking at the global economy and making money does not want a broader war and certainly doesn't want Iran to shut down those strategic oil export waterways. Was there any evidence that an Iranian breakthrough in terms of developing a nuclear weapon was imminent? Was there any evidence that this had to happen on Friday? So U.S. intelligence actually said not too long ago, you know, just earlier this spring, that Iran was not rushing towards a bomb. So that is the public testimony of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence to see it. So that's what U.S. intelligence says. Europeans also believe that Iran, while it could go, right, it was closer than it's ever been, but no one felt the decision had been made for Iran to race towards a bomb. And as they were

going through these negotiations with the Trump administration, it was very unlikely they were going to do that in this moment. So, no, I think that's a very, there's limited basis. You know, the strongest Israeli argument is Iran's capabilities had increased over all these years. And that's true. And that's the direct result of Israel encouraging Donald Trump to rip up the previous nuclear deal, right? If we still had that nuclear deal, we wouldn't be here. Okay. So Trump decides to get out of the nuclear deal that Obama negotiated specifically to injure the legacy of President Obama, ostensibly, that's what it looks like, right? What did that nuclear deal ensure in terms of checks over the Iranian nuclear program? So it, the nuclear deal did a couple of things.

It required Iran to commit to a limit on how much uranium it would enrich and to what level. And we know that Iran remain in compliance. It also gave international inspectors a huge amount of access and transparency to Iran's nuclear facilities. It was actually the most transparent program that has ever kind of existed. Important to remember in this moment that Israel has its own secret nuclear program that no one has access to, right? But Iran did give up that. Pretty bad kept secret, though. Pretty bad they kept secret. I mean, they sometimes talk about it. So Iran gave that access, but Iran didn't see the benefits of the deal, right? So Iran was supposed to get all the sanctions relief and economic ties to the outside world.

That didn't really happen. And then Trump put sanctions, sanctions, sanctions, once he ripped up the deal, Iran did wait a while, waited more than a year before it started to take the steps that made its nuclear program more concerning, right? So it started to shut off access to international inspectors. They started to enrich to a higher level. In this attack, the initial attack and the Iranian retaliation, there's been a lot of talk about civilian targets. And what is a civilian target and what is a military target? When you see the bombings that are happening all over Israel right now, people are saying that the Iranians. Iranians are purposefully targeting population centers.

In the attacks that led to this outbreak of fighting, people are saying that the Israelis went after military targets that were embedded into civilian areas. Like, for example, if a general lives in an apartment complex, you blow the apartment complex up to kill the general, everybody else in the apartment complex dies. what is happening in terms of the targeting of civilians by each side in this? So let's hone in on that example you give of the general and the apartment complex, right?

Because the real, the basis of international law and civilian protection is really what's called proportionality. Like, even if something is a legitimate military target, you are not allowed to have a disproportionate civilian toll, even if it's a legitimate military target. That's what international law says to which Israel and Iran are parties. Both sides have been hitting civilian infrastructure. We know that, especially in the last couple of days, Israel has started activating even car bombs and kind of low-range drones and missiles across civilian neighborhoods in Iran. Iran's missiles, many of them intercepted, have hit apartment buildings, killed elderly people in Israel. I don't think either side is doing a great job of protecting civilians here. I think two years. you have to see that in the context of the ongoing war in Gaza, right? Which is approaching the third year, the second year anniversary this October, every single standard and expectation of protecting civilians and warfare was destroyed in that war. And that was done primarily by the US and Israel. Right.

So while you can see certainly there's Iranian, that's concern about Iran's targeting, the breaking of the system happened. really through the Israeli process. And I think now Israelis are saying, look, we're so precise, we give warnings. You know, you've seen Israel issue so-called evacuation orders. Again, that doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to be proportionate in your targeting.

And I think what we're seeing right now, Iran said today, there was a huge number of women and children killed in the last round of strikes. Even if you're going after military targets, it doesn't look proportionate. back and forth that's happening right now in the American media is how much the U.S. population wants to be involved in this. You have the government of the United States, Democrats and Republicans, by the way. I saw Lindsey Graham and a Democratic counterpart on one of the Sunday shows yesterday, and they were both in lockstep with what they believe.

Israel's right to defenses, back in Israel and this preemptive strike on Iran. There doesn't seem to be very much disagreement in American higher politics about this. However, the population is different. And the political talking heads don't seem to be in lockstep with the president or the government in whether or not to fund or to have America be involved in this. particular operation or this war or, to be honest with you, Israel's behavior in the region, period. There's a lot of dissent, even from some of the stalwart magaites about what we can and should be doing. So I'll ask you this. Is this America's war? How much did we know about this going into this?

did we play footsy with the Iranians in terms of these diplomatic talks just to give cover so that Israel could attack? Were we actually surprised that they wanted to attack? Did we sign off on this? And how involved will we be going forward? Will we provide 30,000 pound bunker busting bombs for them to destroy the really embedded Iranian nuclear capability? How much do you think we've already been involved? and how much are we going to be involved in what happens now? This is 100% America's war.

There is no way it is not America's war. It would not be possible without American military equipment for Israel, and it would not be possible without the American, the sense of confidence that the United States has provided to Israel. And I think, you know, you'll see lawmakers, you'll see political pundits say, no, no, we're not involved yet. We're not involved yet. But that's narrative, right?

That's PR. If you think about what most Americans feel and what really most people around the region and the world feel, it's indisputable that this looks like America's war. And I think that's also part of kind of a disconnect, right, between Congress, which has an average age of I think it's like over 70, right? And the general United States population, it also has a connection to do with there's just never been accountability for U.S. leaders on involving the U.S. in military conflict of, conflict after conflict, right? And so there's not a cost to someone like Lindsay Graham going on TV who is asked to bomb every single possible country for the last 15 years and saying it's a good idea to do it again when suddenly we haven't seen the world get more peaceful with his tactics. All that said, to your question about, was there a plan, right? Was the US thing footsie?

Was this a ruse? We're talking about President Donald Trump. We're talking about a decimated U.S. foreign policy establishment, we're talking about a Secretary of Defense who is in chaos, right, and a state department that's firing hundreds of employees regularly. The U.S. government simply does not right now have the capability, I think,

to be running some kind of really strategic operation with Israel. I think that there actually is a really sincere desire from Donald Trump. We've seen that consistently in his messaging, even as Israel has been striking, And as Iran has been striking back, right? I think you wouldn't see from a President Joe Biden while Iran was hitting Israel, killing Israelis.

You would not see a president Joe Biden say, I still want to cut a deal with the Iranians. So that tells us something about Donald Trump. He does want to. What do you mean by that? When you say that tells you something about Donald Trump, does that tell you that Donald Trump is actually the anti-war pro-piece candidate that he says that he is? or does it tell you that Donald Trump is uncomfortable with this because of the position that puts them in politically? That's an interesting thing that you just said.

Yeah. I don't, I do not think Donald Trump is the pro-peace anti-war candidate at all. I think he, but I think he simply doesn't care about the lives of Israelis any more than he necessarily cares about the lives of civilians anywhere, right? Whether they are Americans, immigrants in this country, whoever. I mean, there's just not a deep fixation. Like Joe Biden had a personal. empathy towards Israelis in particular and arguably not towards Palestinians, that doesn't exist for

Trump, right? So he's more of a dealmaker and I think it gets to ego, right? It gets to, if we want to talk about his brand, it gets to the fact that he has in so many conflicts, Ukraine, Gaza, now Iran, wanted to be seen as this big peacemaker. He wants a Nobel Peace Prize. So that desire is there. And he's empowered his negotiators to cut deals in Syria. It's kind of worked, right? Where he's put his personal friend, Tom Barrack, to oversee that. Steve Whitcock, a negotiator on Iran, hasn't borne fruit. But Donald Trump, I mean, you mentioned his Maga movement,

and there's a lot of voices saying President Trump, you promised us no new wars, America first. Trump has already come back and said, you don't get to define America first. I define America first. So it is what I feel on that day. And I think that's the way to read him. But his desire for a deal is strong.

Can he pull off getting us back to diplomacy? That's very, very hard at this point. Why would the Iranians want diplomacy now when, I mean, you essentially have to bomb them into oblivion. If I was the Iranian regime, I wouldn't want a nuclear weapon more than ever right now because these attacks wouldn't have happened. If I had one, what incentives do they have to come back to the negotiating table now? So yes, I think there are many people in Iran making that argument. You've seen it in the Iranian parliament already. There have been calls to end any negotiation with the U.S., rush towards a bomb.

There is a kind of deep resistance at the very top of their leadership, Ali Khamene, the Iranian president and supreme leader. There is an actual personal resistance to developing a nuclear weapon, right? He has not wanted to do that for a long time. I also think Iran, for a long time, has sought to separate the U.S. from Israel and deal with the U.S. differently, right? So I think there's still an interest in doing that, but it will take them a long time to get there. Number one, they're certainly not going to do it under bombing.

The Iranians do not negotiate with a gun to their heads. They will only get more assertive and in unpredictable ways. It could be cyber attacks. It could be proxies, could be all kinds of things. number two, they will not do it until they feel, to your point, incentives, they're not going to go into negotiation with a weak hand. If all they can get from the US is maybe we'll tell Israel to not bomb you for the next six months. A, why would you believe that? B, that's not enough, right? They want economic relief. They want some kind of indication that their position in the region is more secure. And they need leverage to do that. So they're going to either enrich, to a higher degree, there's been some talk that they might actually back out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to which they are signatory. Israel is not. If they make out of that, if they back out of that, that gives them something else on the table that they can say,

okay, if you want a deal, like, you have to give us something, so we give you that again. So that, but it'll take a while. I think you're not going to see a return to nuclear diplomacy at least for several weeks, if not months. World War III was trending on Twitter. What are the chances that this becomes a wider regional war or that we get something that spills over into our worst nightmares? Yeah, I mean, look that. We are dealing with a nuclear power, Israel.

We are dealing with a near nuclear power, Iran, and we're dealing with everyone else in the region on tenterhooks and feeling terrified. You know, yesterday I was talking to a really, the U.S. official who talks to a lot of Middle Eastern counterparts. And what they were saying to me is, everyone thinks they could be next, right? That Israel cannot tolerate a single other power in the region. So what does that do? Does that push us towards a regional arms race? Does that push us towards a situation where Iran feels this is all or nothing? Let's pull out all the stops and freeze global trade,

target U.S. bases in Iraq. There's a lot of concern about that, that U.S. casualties will actually be the kind of forward defense for the Israelis. And there's just also the risk of unpredictability, right? You don't know, especially given that both Iran and Israel have embedded military headquarters, military capacities very close to an in-residential civilian neighborhoods, the risk that something unintended just leads to a spiral of emotionality and violence, right? something really gruesome, some horrible attack or some misguided missile, hit something

sensitive, and then we're off to the races. And it's just escalate, escalate, escalate, fight to the death. It's really high. It's really high. And I think it's a measure of, it's a, it's a measure of where we are as the US as well, in that there's just no faith in the US. While it's an enabler of this conflict, there's very little faith in the US as a moderating influence under Donald Trump because, again, while he said he wants deals, he said he wants to be a peace advocate, we haven't seen him deliver and he hasn't created that capacity inside the government to do that. You need expertise. You need negotiators. He's firing diplomats. Is there a chance that the Iranians take some action that directly impacts Americans in their pockets,

It's like closing off the Strait of Hormuz and, you know, costing, what is it, 20 million barrels of oil a day that then cannot be shipped to the West that would then spike oil prices or make oil prices. I'll never get around. Spike is go down, rise. That would then, you know, make oil prices go up, make gas prices go up. Is there any type of economic retaliation that the Iranians could take that would affect people's pocketbooks here in the. the West. Yeah, I think that's, you know, that that calculus is happening among Iranian officials right now. They, they could, as you say, freeze the trade of hormones, freeze exports, freeze oil exports, which has that domino effect of increasing prices, of making things more unstable

and unpredictable for China and the global economy, which then comes back and hits the US. It also is, it's also just beyond what the Iranians intentionally want, already the World Bank has said that global economic production is just going to collapse this year because of Trump's tariffs. Right. So you're injecting this new layer of uncertainty when the global economic picture is already pretty dark. All that said, I think the Iranians going back to that idea of them trying to pull the U.S. away from Israel, trying to see. seem like the reasonable player. Right? And they're savvy and often cynical regime. They want Israel to look like the bad guy and themselves to look like the good guy, right?

And they're going to work to promote that narrative. With that being on their minds, I think it is unlikely right now that they would hit the streets of hormones, that they would hit some of their neighbors like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, which would really be destabilizing. I think right now they're not there yet. But they could get that. And in terms of also affecting Americans, just important to remember there are 40,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East, right?

Trump has not reduced the number of U.S. troops in the Middle East. He's increased it and dispatched more. So there's a lot of people there who are at risk. Is the U.S. is a little back and forth about this, is the U.S. energy independent enough to where Iranian oil doesn't really affect us too directly in terms of like, is that a thing?

Yeah, the U.S. not buy what consume Iranian oil, but everyone the U.S. trades with us. So if Iranian oil gets more expensive than, you know, the Europeans, Asia, everything gets more expensive. Okay. Final couple of questions, you've been so generous with your time. What does the conflict stand now? We went from this really breathtaking intelligence and military operation on Friday to the Iranian retaliation to now Israel targeting Iranian economic infrastructure, oil fields, things like that. Where are we right now with it?

And are the Iranians starting to get a little bit queasy about their capability to actually hurt Israel? And on the backside of that question, give us an overview of what the Iranians, military capability looks like. No. I think where we are is the Iranians did a really interesting thing where they they immediately launched barrages at Israel within less than 24 hours of their military leadership being decapitated, right?

So they were demonstrating resilience. Then you saw some of their missiles go down for a couple of days and then yesterday suddenly dramatically go back up. So the Iranians are trying to manage unprepared. predictability, they're not going with everything they have immediately. I think you'll see them mirror what Israel does in terms of its strikes. And so there's a lot of, some days could be more intense, some days could be less for the next couple of days.

I don't think we're at a point yet. We're certainly not at a point of Iran bending the knee to Israel. We are not there because we've seen the rally around the flag effect, right? where today, for instance, Israel targeted Iranian TV, state TV, and there was a newscaster on live television as her news studio is being bombed, right? So images like that are telling Iranians, we may not love our regime, but everything we know and expect is at risk. And also, they've all seen the images out of Gaza, right?

You've seen the Israeli government in some cases, say, we're going to turn around into Beirut. That's not necessarily scaring them and saying, oh, okay. okay, we want to bend the need, that also often has the effect of we will stand up to you, you're not going to do this to us, especially among Iranians, who are very nationalistic and proud population. In terms of that capability, it's really dispersed, including their nuclear capability. Right. So their nuclear expertise, their nuclear sites are across the country, and their missile sites are also kind of all over. So while, yes, Israel has been able to targets on their launchers, their ability to keep going has shown us that the Israeli intelligence,

while it was extremely impressive, was not comprehensive. This is also a regime that knew this fight might come. And we haven't yet seen while Hamas and Hezbollah, its allies closest to Israel, are severely weakened in this moment. We haven't yet seen its other allies, the Houthi militia in Yemen, the militias in Iraq, very close to Iran. we haven't seen them come into the fray yet. And I think that's the next question, too, is does Iran flex that muscle to push back against the Israelis? The Israelis, for their part, have said, based on my sources, they've been telling U.S. officials, we want to go for at least two weeks.

And they've been floating all kinds of ideas, like assassinating the Supreme Leader. But again, we can't fall into magical thinking, right? There is not a scenario that I see that any expert is seeing right now where just, is really forced is going to get us to some dream world where there's a pro-Western Iran or an extremely conciliatory Iran. I don't think by getting that. You mentioned that there is a lot of animus towards the regime in Iran. Just really quickly before I ask you my last question, say more about that.

The political makeup of the people in Iran, you see protests against the regime there. Do there is a narrative coming out from the Israelis, from the Americans, from Western media that secretly, they want this regime change. Is that true at all? There's like a lot of anxiety and frustration with the regime, right? It's frustration over corruption. It's the sense that while ordinary Iranians have gotten poorer under international sanctions, the members of the regime have gotten richer. There's a lot of money in Iran. there's also strong suppression of women's rights activists, any civil society group, any independent group.

But the Iranian regime has been really smart at kind of releasing some of the pressure, right? Letting some of that desire for change come into the system. So, for instance, you saw a more kind of pro-reformed president elected last year. So the regime has been smart in that it hasn't let the tension and the animus grow to a point where I think that narrative you're talking about. would be true. And certainly where, certainly, you know, this idea that Iranians will be on the backs of Israeli bombs overthrowing their regime is so fantastical and so out of touch with how Iranians think. I think it's not even worth thing. But yes, it's a horrible regime, of course, and suppress its people and people want a different kind of Iran. They don't

necessarily want Israel's vision of Iran. All right. I guess my last question for you is when do they stop? When does Israel stop? Like what is the goal here? We've seen sort of, I don't know, almost amorphous goals in Gaza. We want to destroy Hamas. We want Hamas completely gone.

We want the hostages back, which getting the hostages back. I mean, I'm sure everyone will want the hostages back. But here it's we want to weaken the. the Iranian military to the point to where they can't develop nuclear weapons, we want to take out their nuclear capability. Without those 30,000 pound bombs, it's going to be very hard. They don't really know where all of these military facilities exactly are. When are they going to be satisfied that Iran no longer poses a nuclear threat to Israel? When will they stop?

I think the freeming of your question assumes that that was their goal, right? I don't think they knew what their goal was. I don't think they necessarily, if the Israeli government had wanted, if their chief goal was limiting Iran's nuclear program, there is a tried and tested way to do that, which was the Iran deal. They could have let Donald Trump go back into that. So I think a lot hinges on whether Trump tells them, I want to pursue the deal because the shared goal, right,

among Trump, among Israel, and even that Iran has said it could accept, shared basis is no nuclear weapon for Iran. So how do we get back there? It really hinges on Donald Trump going to the Israelis and saying, as you say, I'm not going to give you those bunker busters, and you need to stop because I want this deal. And that's, so that that hinges on the White House. I don't think the decision comes from Tel Aviv. And certainly Netanyahu has not been swayed by the hostage family's movement, which has felt so let down by him. He has not been made by political opponents,

it's going to come from outside Israel to change us thinking. We've barely talked about Netanyahu. We've barely talked about him. That was the first mention of his name. How dare me? How dare me not bring up Benjamin Nyeniahu? Is this war good for him?

This is his dream. I mean, he's been waiting for it for many decades, but I don't know. You know, I think he's a creature of political survival, but he is not a master strategist. And that's, that idea of, is it good for him? Is it going to, in the long run,

he wants to go down as not only Israel's longest serving Prime Minister, which he is already, but the most iconic leader, the defender of Israel. I would argue many people are arguing in the region, turning off so many people in your own neighbourhood, not to mention the West, not to mention the US, which you need as your primary patron, are you serving your country's long-term interests? And I think that's really valid doubt there. For now, though, yes, escalating war,

But it's his goal. It distracts from Gaza. It distracts from the absolute failure on our hostages. And it distracts from the fact that on all other metrics, Israel's economy is plummeting. Its credit rating is plummeting. It hasn't been able to move on from October 7th because every few months, it seems,

he's mobilizing tens of thousands of reservists. People cannot live their ordinary lives. Right now, 100,000 Israelis are stranded outside the country. So it's good. It's a distraction. but that long term, I'm skeptical. Agbar, man. What a wide ranging and deep interview.

Thank you for joining us on higher learning. This is probably going to be going on for a couple of weeks. So as things change, and I'm sure they'll be changing quickly, can we hit you back and bring you back on the show? Yes, please. Yeah. All right, man. Thank you for joining us on higher learning, brother.

Stay safe. Yeah, those really fun. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, Reliable Internet means everything for your business. even this podcast. That's why I trust Spectrum business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum.com

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Dot sweetgreen.com. Thank you to Agbar. Before we leave, I want you guys to hear, I'm going to play this in full if we can. This is GLP, Representative Randall Fine, talking about nuking Gaza. In an interview, though, last month, you said this when asked about how to treat Gaza. In World War II, we did not negotiate a surrender with the Nazis. We did not negotiate a surrender with the Japanese. We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender.

That needs to be the same here. There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this culture, and it needs to be defeated. Did you really mean to say that the U.S. should use nuclear weapons against a people because there's something wrong with their culture? Of course not. What I was saying is that we didn't negotiate with evil in World War II. We defeated the Germans. We defeated the Japanese using any means that were necessary. And the same needs to be done in Gaza. Newk in Gaza would be a terrible idea. the fallout would drift into Israel. It would kill the hostages.

The point that I was making was we didn't sit down and say. For example, women and children in Gaza, who, you know, the innocence? I think war is a messy thing. And I think that when you defeat evil, you have to do what is necessary to do it. Israel cannot live next to a country that a huge percentage of the people wish to destroy it all of the time. They need to do whatever is necessary. And I don't know what those things are in order to get unconditional. surrender in Gaza. And I think that's what they're doing right now. Yeah, you, I mean, you brought up

nuking them, though. So, no, I didn't bring up, I did not bring up nuking them. You literally said, that's not what I said, no. You said the same thing should be done. You said the same thing in terms of getting, I, that is taking me out of context. I said, in the same way we did what was necessary to get Japan to unconditionally surrender, they need to do the same thing over there, no matter what that is. I don't know what those tools are, but it took us nukeing Japan, not once, but twice in order to get them to unconditionally surrender. And it's estimated that saved a million American lives in the process. My point is we didn't sit down and go, oh, no, civilians might die. Let's not get Japan to surrender. I believe the Palestinianism in Gaza is on a level of evil that we

saw in Japan and we saw in Germany back in World War II. And I believe Israel needs to do what's necessary to defeat it. And I won't apologize for that. So that's Randy Fine from Florida. And when we're talking about the impunity that a country is able to act with in the region, that's the type of political support that you have. That is an American politician. We've heard talk like this before from the more genocidal right-leaning members of Lacud or, you know, a couple of different people in the Knesset that talked a little bit about this. but that's an American representative talking about nuking people in Gaza and saying the only reason why it would be a bad thing

is because that fallout would drift into Israel. He called their culture evil and said that the only way to deal with them is annihilation. So when you're asking yourself some of the questions about geopolitics that dominate that region, you have to understand that there are some, not all, but there are some that view the strife or the struggle in the region as that of a struggle between civilization and barbarism, between good and evil and between people and animals. And remember, you don't negotiate with animals. You train them or you put them to sleep.

That's it. Two things you do with animals. You train an animal how to do exactly what you want them to do or you eliminate an animal. An animal is a lower life form than you. Therefore, its sovereignty, its freedom, its determination doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is how it can serve you and how it inconveniences you. And if you look at a group of people or more specifically a culture like that,

you will never in any way negotiate with them in good faith. So we'll move on now. Donnie? Melissa Hortman, top Democratic legislator in the Minnesota State House and her husband, Mark, were shot and killed early Saturday morning. State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, a vet, were also shot multiple times at their home, but they survived. So police said that Vance Luther Bolter, who's 57,

he wore a latex mask imposed as a police officer when he shot the victims at their homes. And then he exchanged gunfire with police at one of the crime scenes before managing to flee on foot and escape. There was a manhunt that ensued. Bolter was arrested yesterday, Sunday, And he is going to face first degree murder charges and he was just federally charged with six charges. Two counts of stalking, two counts of murder and two weapons charges. Obviously, this was a gigantic story over the weekend as each side tried to, I guess he was a political orphan.

Each side was trying to send him to the other person's house. No, go stay with your mama. No, go stay with your daddy. This is your child. No, this is my child. It seems as if this guy had a very distinct. political ideology and he had more people that he had wanted to harm and kill. Like you said, largest manhunt in the state's history, two counts of stalking, two counts

of murder, two weapons charges. Everyone wanted this to be a symptom of something other than what it's actually a symptom of to me, which is the disintegration of American political discourse that exists right now. Now, it would be stupid to say that political violence doesn't have a long history in the country because it does. Some of our biggest and most lauded leaders were the victims of political violence, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, his brother, Ronald Reagan was shot. But there seems to be a recent disintegration of American political. discourse that leads to this now. And it's interesting, just like what that coincides with, it's just very, it's Trump.

So if we look at some of the things that have happened since 2016, you've had the shooting at the Republican baseball practice where Steve's Galise was shot, a plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, which is the governor of Michigan. Obviously, the January 6th, Capitol insurrection. A candidate for Louisville mayor was targeted, was targeted a Democrat, targeted as a shooting attempt. The campaign headquarters

February 14th, 2020. Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked at his home. The Democratic National Committee office was shot up. New Mexico Republican headquarters were torched, burnt up. The Trump assassination attempts, two of them.

Elon Musk's Tesla properties were set a blame. I don't know if I really, political violence. I guess it's political violence. It's a political reason that they were doing it. Sometimes when you look at these lists, you go, oh, I mean, it's not, whatever.

And then you have the Minnesota shootings now. All of this stuff is political violence. And all of this happens when you have a belief that the side that you're dealing with doesn't recognize your humanity. And see, this is what happens. What happens is if you have political enemies and those political enemies are policy enemies,

then there's a way for you to approach them on the basis of policy and try to get to the end of that. But if you are in an existential fight with people for your existence, then you have to kill them. You have to kill them. So if we're fighting for our way of life, if we're fighting for the existence of this country,

if these people want to shred this country, if all these brown people and black people and gay people want to take America and make it into something that is grotesque and ugly and bad, Then those people got to die. And that plus social media. Social media is a huge component in this because it robs all of these conversations of nuance. And you have the good people versus the bad people.

And now you're in a fight not with who you can compromise with, but who you can actually live with. Who is worthy to be on the planet with you. The common thread is that we descended into this madness, this spiral that we're in right now. after we got a major political figure that sought to dehumanize, debase, and insult people at every chance that he got. Someone who decided that he could decide, he could make the determination about which people in this country deserved rights, which people in this country, which countries were shithole countries

and which ways of American life were worth defending, you know, and which ones were worth completely eliminated, eliminating from American political discussion. And there's really no way back now. I guess the question would be who is going to put this flame out, who's going to put the fire out? Because there's a cost. And the cost is these people that lost their lives. The cost is, you know, other people who are going to resort to this type of violence. But it kind of seems like we're almost in a war where it's,

going to be who can stack the most bodies. Not who can make the most concessions or whose ideas are the best. It's who can stack the most bodies. When I saw this being talked about on Twitter, I didn't see people talking about this in a way that showed any compassion for the victims. I saw actually people looking at this and saying, this is your child. This is your child.

This is your child. out. Not really talking about how disgusting it is for something like this to have happened. So I don't know. So we're riding together on the podcast. It's us to get to get to me and Donnie. Me and Donnie. It's a boys. Because Ashley's in Europe as well. Where the fuck is Ashley? She's in London, England, I believe. I don't know if it's London exactly, but yeah, she's overseas. Holding it down. Man time. Man time. Man time on high. learning. Donnie, are you afraid about the future? Am I afraid? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not. But it's because I try to, I try to not be afraid. I try to actively do things that keep my mind off of the news, even though the news is a huge

part of my job. So there's like a compartmentalization of things that I do to keep myself from being afraid. So I can't say that I'm actively afraid, but concerned yes, I am not currently afraid. I think I know why you're not afraid. Why? There's something about

blackness, and you tell me if I'm wrong, to where there is a proximity to understanding violence. I don't want to go too far. When I see things like this,

I go, yeah, I understand how fucked up they are. But at the same time, something violent happening doesn't shock me because growing up, violence was always a consequence for me. I always knew that I could say something and get fucked up either in my home or out on the Street, always knew that violence met black activists. Most of the stories that I had heard about black people that had ever endeavored to stand up for themselves or their people, it ended in violence. It ended in somebody being shot. It ended in somebody being violently dealt with, in political violence, and it ended in economic violence. When you heard about Tulsa,

when you heard about Nat Turner, when you heard about, uh, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. When you heard about Malcolm X, when you heard about people just around the way, it always ended in violence. Violence was on the other side of you trying to do something. And so when I hear about it happening, like even the smack, Will Smith smack,

when I saw that, oh, he talks about, he got smack, it happens, right? So I think we do, as a culture, have to kind of identify this for, how shocking it actually is supposed to be. Not how shocking it is, but how shocking it's supposed to be. We've made peace with a lot of the violence that befalls us, but it's not supposed to be that way, right?

You're not supposed to be smacked for having an opinion. You're not. You should be able to have an opinion and not be smacked. Now, does that mean that sometimes I think that you deserve to get smacked for your opinion? Yeah. But I'm wrong. I think you say some shit to somebody and you should be able to get smacked around.

I do. I believe that. But that's not right. You shouldn't be getting smacked around for what you think. You should be able to say your opinion. You should be able to do your thing and not be smacked around. It's just for me, whenever I've been out of line off code or whatever, either in my house or out of the street, I've been smacked around. Smacked around.

You smack, you got to defend yourself. But we're to a point now. where violence is becoming increasingly culturally codified in America. And to me, it just so's something. You get to a point to where the ante keeps getting upped to where two days from now, two weeks from now, if not one guy, but if 20 guys, if 30 guys attack the DNC or attack the RNC or if there is the first battle of the American Civil War that happens,

which is being increasingly desensitized to the fact that we can't talk to each other anymore to the point to where it seems like something's around the corner. It seems like something's coming. Seems like we're on the precipice of something actually happening that we can't correct from. And maybe we're already there. But as I saw this, I felt outrage and I felt shocked.

But I had to feel that outside of myself because it seems like I'm hearing and seeing this stuff so much that I'm getting used to it. And the fact that the man that's responsible for this, in my opinion, Donald Trump, has been codified by so much of the country by the fact that they voted for them.

So it seems like this version of America is what Americans want. It seems like they want a version of the country where the penalty for political disagreement is death. It feels like this is what you voted for. As a matter of fact, this is what you voted for. You voted for a version of the country that favors authoritarianism. You voted for a version of the country that favors election denial. you voted for a version of the country that favors

insolity you voted for the mean version of America. You voted for mean. And you're getting your mean now. Uncut? You're getting it. So I don't know. I don't know. But I feel like

I can handle more violence than most people. Like it takes something it takes violence against a protected class for me to be like, ah, you know, a man gets smacked. I'm like, oh, whatever. But see if Will Smith

would have smacked like Lupita Nyango, that would have been, I've been like, what the fuck is wrong with Will Smith? But he smacked Chris Rock, and I was like, ah, you know,

but we do need to, I guess, realign our expectations there. All right, Donnie. Let's go to Kailen Clark. Let's do that. She had a big game this weekend. She returned from injury

as the fever faced. the defending champs, New York Liberty. Kaelin came back to score 32 points in total 25 in the first half, first appearance in five games. Did you watch it? I did. I did. What's your opinion on Kaila Clark?

What's your thing with her? She's a dope basketball player. Fun to watch. Yeah. Yeah, like the style of basketball that she plays is exciting, fun to watch. I mean, I'm particular to your grinders. you're like rough and tumble players, but she has a style that you can't deny is fun to watch.

Your particular grinders, what do that mean? You know, I'm from Detroit. So most of my teams have grit. Pistons, young team right now, they're not flashy. I mean, they have a flashy player, but it's like, you know, defense first shut down. Yeah. A game 88 to 84 would be.

be a great game. Like, oh, that shit was nice. Yeah, I realized something when I was watching this game. I hate Caitlin Clark. Hater. Hate her. Hate it's a strong word. Nah.

But it's the right word. I hate her, and I think that's a good thing that I hate her. I think it's a good thing that I hate Caitlin Clark. By the way, hate is an okay word to use in sports. Sports is the only place where the word hate, is okay to use. Yeah. Yeah.

I agree. I've used it in sports more than any other context. And I feel like we're talking about sports. I'm not saying I hate her as a human, but, well, I don't know. I can't speak for you, but. Yeah, no, I don't hate her as a human. I don't know her as a human. But I think about all the athletes that I've hated over the years.

And I've hated them because of either excellence or annoyance. Yeah. I hated Christian Leitner because he came to Baton Rouge and, drug shack, fucking tough game to watch. I hated Tim Duncan. I hated LeBron James at different times, both because those guys threatened the dominance of Kobe. Dylan Brooks, hate him.

Bruce Bowen, hate him. Tom Brady, hate them. Oscar de La Jolla, Grayson Allen, every member of Alabama football since 2007. Hate all of them. They annoyed me. They beat me. They bothered me.

I hate them. And now I hate her. I was watching Taylor Clark play that game. And I was hoping that them shots wasn't going in. I was, I mean, I was hoping that them shots wasn't going in. LSU beat her in 2023. And the entire conversation around the game was her. Yeah, I get that.

Now I'm understanding. It was her. I hated her because. of that fact. I hate Caitlin Clark because of who loves Caitlin Clark. There's this like douchebag, bro

army that follows her. A group of people who would have done nothing but dis the WNBA before, but are now super invested into the WNBA because she's in it. I hate that. I hate all of those guys.

I hate Caitlin Clark. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? Like I hate her for good cultural sports reasons. I'll like Kaylin Clark's never won on any level. Right? No titles, period. No titles.

She got no rings, no high school ring, no college ring, nothing in WNBA yet. But I hate her because I know she going to win a lot. and my hate for her is almost like a scab than I'm putting on, right? I'm insulated myself from the fact that she is so excellent and I, she's an enemy, a sports enemy. Like there's nothing you can do. All she do is wine, pout, throw tantrums, and bust ass. Well, you just said there's nothing you can do.

I was about to ask, is there something she could? do to turn that hate into a like. No. Not a love. No. Like, she can't get a like. There's nothing she could do. This is written.

My hate for Caitlin Clark is written. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her because she is so fucking good. I hate her because of the way some of these people love her. Like, I hate her. And it's a good, strong sports hate. It's a type of hate that the.

WNBA should want. They should want this type of hate because it's consequential. You know what my therapist told me one time, the great Coley Williams? Donnie, what's the opposite of love? It's not hate. I feel like I see that coming,

but I don't know the answer. It's indifference. Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that. The opposite of love is indifference, and you can't not have an opinion on Kael and Clark. That's what you want. like she is as consequential a figure not just in the w nba but in sports culture as i've seen

recently you cannot not have an opinion on kately clark you can't and my opinion is i don't like that shit and it is it is not rational there's no reason for me to have hated tim duncan but tim duncan stood in opposition to coby lebron james for the time that i didn't like him he became a Laker, but he stood in opposition to Kobe. And that made me not like these motherfuckers. And with Kail and Clark, I watched this game and it made for a bad day that she was busting ass like that. So fuck her.

I hope she goes two for 17 in the next game. I do. That's dark. You rationalized it. You did rationalize it, I feel like. You made it make sense. It doesn't feel like it's hate for no reason. It feels like there are several reasons that, I mean, I get it.

I understand the hate. The hate makes sense. So, I mean, yeah, stand 10 toes down in it. I will. You know, people are going to read this the wrong way, but I don't like that shit. I don't like her. And there's plenty of athletes that I love, that I should not love, plenty of them. I just like the way they play.

I like DeAngelo Russell. I just like him. That nigger has caused me more grief than anybody. I just hope that DeAngelo Russell does well. I like Jordan Poole. Yeah. For some. I like Jordan Poole.

I used to watch Jordan Poole would be like, oh, man, I like Jordan Poole. You know? But those are athletes I probably shouldn't like, but I don't. I don't like Kail and Clark. I hate Tom Brady. I hate Derek Carr. I hate some of these players. And she's.

Derek Carr. I hate Derek Carr, bro. I rooted for Derek Carr so hard. He seemed like a good guy and he's talented, and I was hoping for it to work out in New Orleans. But, yeah, did not. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters.

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summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. All right. Big deal or no deal? Let's talk about the Stephen A. Smith thing. Yeah, staying in the world of basketball during game four of the NBA finals, Pacers versus Thunder. Stephen A. Smith got pictured by a fan playing solitaire on his phone as the game was playing out. So it went viral and he responded to the post after it went viral. He said, yep, that's me. Who would have thought? I can multitask, especially during timeouts, all caps. I hope y'all are enjoying the NBA finals. This is going seven games now. He posted. Is this a big deal? Let me dig deeper on this, Donnie. I want to point back to a seminal moment in the history of

ESPN. I'm going to ask you if you remember this. Do you remember when Mark Cuban came on first take to challenge Skip Bayliss and Stephen A. Smith on Skip's thoughts about the finals between the Miami Heat and the Dallas Mavericks. No, I'm not. No. Okay, I'm going to give you a moment here. I'm going to, okay, so this is what happened. So this is actually, this actually didn't happen during the finals between the Heat and the Mavericks. this happened between the finals between the Heat

and the Oklahoma City Thunder. If you guys remember, I think the Oklahoma City Thunder lost in five to the heat, five or six. LeBron James was the finals MVP. The year before that, the Heat had lost to the Mavericks, right? And if you don't remember what happened in that series,

LeBron James played just abysmally in the fourth quarter, abysmally, not just bad from the standpoint of his shot making, but his aggressiveness, he looked aloof, unengaged. We're talking about in the NBA finals. This is him with the Miami Heat, this team that was supposed to be this grand and great dynasty. And they came up short against Dirt. Novitsky and a team full of really motivated role players.

Now, they did have Jason Kidd who was a Hall of Famer, but he wasn't the Jason kid in his prime that we know of. Then the Mavericks were a well-constructed team, but no one expected them to beat the Miami Heat. All right, this conversation happens because Mark Cuban is apparently watching Skip Bayliss talk about the finals or watching him tweet about the finals. And he decides in his mind that Skip Bayliss doesn't. doesn't know anything about basketball.

So he comes on to first take and fucking torches Skip Bayliss. Torches him. And the way that he torches him is he takes the game and deconstructed it for Skip in front of Skip. So Skip goes, Skip is like, LeBron James didn't want it. LeBron James didn't have the fire. He doesn't have the clutch gene. And Mark Cuban is on the show going,

okay, so LeBron James lost the finals because he didn't want to win the NBA finals. Is that what you're saying? And Skip is going, it didn't seem like he wanted to win. And Mark Cuban's going, well, what did we do as the Dallas Mavericks to neutralize LeBron James and make it so that LeBron James was ineffective? how did we play LeBron

from a basketball perspective to make him not be able to affect the game in the fourth quarter and when I was watching that it dawned on me that Skit Baylitz couldn't answer those questions and if you go back and you listen to it right now if you were to ask Skit Baylis

who is an expert on basketball culture who is an expert on sports culture to deconstruct the game and look into the actual game and give reasons as to why something is working or not working, he was not prepared to do it. And Mark Cuban, who is coming at basketball from an analytical standpoint, was doing it. He was saying, this is what we did in this situation.

And we knew that if we made LeBron James make a pass, that it would force him to just having him make a decision would force indecision for him and make him pass the ball out. We knew which way he wanted to drive. We knew that when we needed to send help, we knew how we wanted to play him, we had looked at them and come up with a plan from a basketball perspective

to take the greatest player in the world and make him into a spectator. And he was seeing parts of the game that Skip wasn't seen. to me that moment is indicative of attention that exists inside a sports culture that is playing out with this video of Stephen A looking at his phone. It is a tension between people who have been grown on tape culture, on two guys arguing about a thing,

and that being sports analysis, and people who want to be smart about basketball. People who want to be able to look at basketball and say, hey, this is what they did at this point in the fourth quarter. This is the adjustment that was made. This is the way that the rotations tightened up. And when you listen to some of the basketball podcasts that are the more popular basketball podcast, I'm not talking about the ones that's just crazy, entertaining, like Club 520 and some of the other ones. When you listen to some of the biggest ones, that's what they're doing.

That's the way they're talking about the sport. They're talking about the sport from the standpoint of who actually knows the sport. If I were to ask you right now, yo, what kind of problems do the Portland Trailblazers have in terms of their salary, their personnel, and their future? What do they need? There are guys out there who know that team so in and out to where they can say they need this type of big, they need this type of wings, this is how much money they have left over in the cap. This is the style of coaching. This is this, this and that.

This is this. And the question that people are starting to ask is Stephen A. Smith one of those guys. Because he is the biggest name, probably him and Bill and a couple of other guys, the biggest name in basketball broadcasting, the biggest name in sports broadcasting. But if you're looking for a more nutritious analysis of these sports and what's happening between the lines and on the court, Can he do that? Now, that's never what first take has been about. First take has been about really kind of empty calories as far as what it gives you from the takes.

It's incredibly entertaining, insanely entertaining. And I'm not saying that. But it's sort of something, it's almost like your morning coffee to get you ready to go out there and do whatever. But if there are people who believe that that's not what Stephen A. Smith does, that now he is the same thing. Skip Bayliss who would be occupying the seat and some other guy like Mark Cuban would be able to come in and really tell him what's going on on the court. And then you see him playing solitaire during game four to NBA finals. That tells you that maybe those people are right or they feel like they're right.

Now, this is one snapshot in the game. And it's completely unfair, totally unfair. totally unfair to surmise that Stephen A. Smith was not paying attention to this game. Totally unfair to surmise

that. Totally unfair. However, if there's a tension between people that want to get smarter about these sports and basketball

and want nutritious conversation about these sports and not just have a conversation about this guy's legacy and this and this and that and all of that,

if there's a tension about that, then this picture looks bad. Like, Like this, it looks bad because it looks like the biggest sporting event in the world in terms of basketball is happening. And he's playing solitaire. Even if he would have been checking his text messages, maybe he's checking what's going on and their trades coming in. But he's playing solitaire.

The game is boring him. That looks bad. Yeah, it does. I feel like this also feeds into. the, or it adds to that ESPN, I feel like, criticism, which is popping up a lot where I feel like journalism, they say, is getting phased out of the network in favor of ex-athletes and personalities, where it's like, what take do you have or are you an ex-athlet? And I think the, not to speak on the ESPN higher-ups, his intentions, but I feel like that influx of

ex-athletes is to give some of that in-game analysis to counteract. And I think, act the hot take aspect of the network. But I don't know if it's like living up to what it could be or used to be when you had journalists doing it, not ex-N-Ba player, Y and Z. Well, I mean, ESPN also got rid of Zach Lowe. And look, obviously Zach Lowe works for the ringer now. And so, you know, I've never met Zach Lowe, don't know Zach Lowe. But what I do know is he knows what the fuck he's talking about when he's talking

about basketball. He knows what the hell he's talking about. Now, there are people on the network that do a fantastic job and analyzing stuff. Chenet, fantastic job in her analysis of stuff. I'm not saying that ESPN is devoid of people who analyze the sport and break down what's happening between the lines. I'm not saying that at all.

But what I am saying is that that hasn't been their focus. Their focus has not been making smarter sports fans in basketball, in football, in football, that is definitely what they do. In football, they have a bevy of people that come on there and talk about the actual happenings of what goes on. And, you know, it feels like all of the football people

can do that. But in basketball, it seems like the takes are about, you know, who wants it more, who's clutch, who feels like this. Sometimes it's about Stephen A and what athlete he's going back and forth with. It doesn't seem to be very much about the game and the sport. And that's fine with me.

I can get that from so many different other places. I don't really need to get that from first take. But it's not like it's on first take. It's not like that's what they do. And that's probably not what it's a morning show. But if people are criticizing that, that's more what they're criticizing rather than criticizing this image. This image is a little unfair.

But that's kind of what they're criticizing here. It's a little bit what they're criticizing. The idea that you could be in that spot and not actually be watching the game when the game is supposed to be the most important part of all of this. You know what I'm saying? What about this Will Smith record? Yeah, Will came out with a new song and the video, Pretty Girls over the weekend, that has gotten some mixed reviews.

I listened to it. Did you listen to it? Yeah, the shit is, the shit, whack, though. Is it, I don't think he's, I feel like it's a, play a little bit. I don't think I can play a little bit of it. I will live to get your reaction, but, I don't think I know this is not going to be able to make the show. Okay, it's fine.

It's what. It's what? That's okay. Is it? Yeah, it's a little bit of, why is it whack? That shit, whack. I like the video that is age-appropriate women. I mean, it's classic Will Smith, I feel like, while still it got a little bit of an updated sound to it.

Like, it feels like this fits in Will's discography. He doesn't feel outside of his realm. I mean, this is a Will Smith song. I mean, I feel like this is better than a lot of the stuff that I was listening to from his album. Okay. So, do you understand that, to me, you get to a level of an artist that if you drop wax shit, it's actually okay? Okay. Go on.

So when you first start now, this is like the evolution to me. When you first starting out, you're in your first five years, you better not drop too much whack shit. Because like, it's like Will Smith is in his Big Three basketball era. When I see those guys out playing in the Big Three,

you know, they don't look the same as they looked when they was in the NBA. But they don't have to. I know who they are. Like, I know who they are. I know them. and I know what they were at the peak of their powers. I don't have to pretend like right now,

like Montres Harold is the same player that he was when it was Montres Harold in the league. I don't have to pretend right now that Joe Johnson is the same player that he was when he was with the Hawks. I don't have to pretend like that. I'm looking at Joe Johnson, and it's guys that watch the game and go, God damn, I don't see why Joe Johnson don't still have a contract in the league.

I can see why Joe Johnson don't still have a contract in the league. He'll bust your ass. He'll bust my ass. He'll bust their ass, but he won't bust them NBA niggas asses. Their asses will not be bused by Joe Johnson right now. Joe Johnson is 43 years old. But I can still watch him and be entertained by the fact that he can still do what he's doing to some degree. But I don't have to pretend like his game is the same.

And for a lot of the guys that went out there in the big three, my cousin Glenn went out there in the big three. nigga was like almost 400 pounds or something like that big. But I know what he was at his height. This is Will Smith in his Big Three era. This is him in his Big Three era. And I fuck with the Big Three. I'm not dissing the Big Three.

I'm saying that like we're watching older guys do shit and it's not always going look great. And this is whack. He looked crazy. He talking crazy. Like I like pretty girls. Man, it's a lot going on that you should really be. Don't get distracted, Will, by the pretty girls.

It seems like a lot of shit you need to be focused in on. And so don't get distracted by the pretty girls. It's off. The whole thing is off. Well, I've been seeing people saying that if you have read his autobiography, you get this song and it makes a lot more sense. I have no idea what that means. but I've seen several tweets and comments that are like,

well, if you read the autobiography, you'd have a better understanding of what this song is for Will. So take it for whatever that means. Donnie, I'm an MCU fan. So I'm willing to do the work to enjoy a piece of content. I'm not going to read a whole fucking book to make a three-minute and 50-second song or whatever it is makes sense.

Is it okay to tell somebody that no more rap? It's not. Because it's like, Will Smith can do whatever he wants. Will Smith is a cultural deity. But right now, if Will Smith is going to rap, like, it got to be some game, don't it? It got to be, like, I give Jay Z this.

JZ, Nass, so many guys that rap crazy as they get older. The thing that makes them stand out while they're rapping as they get older is they are not rapping about the same stuff that they were rapping about when they were 25 or even 35. The things that they are rapping about now are things that we can imagine them going through. A, Jay-Z comes out, he says, he don't want to use the money phone. Everybody get mad. It's like, what you expect, Jay-Z don't want to use the money phone at 48. years old. Jay-Z coming out and he's rapping about, you know,

property values and all of that stuff. Like, I expect that from him now. I expect to hear family man elevated brother raps. If Jay-Z came out right now, you're mad at me. I don't fuck him, I love him. I don't hate him. I don't play them in another one. I'm like, bro, you replace him with another one.

You're 55 years old. You're about to replace your fucking hip. Trying to keep up with these young girls. Like, I don't want to hear that. Like that's not what I would. And so when I'm listening to the will, when I see it, it's just, it's not that he can't, it's, it's whack. It's the shit is whack. I mean, no.

I don't, I don't hate it. I think I was reading about it before I heard it. So my expectations were that it was about to be horrible. And then because it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, I might like it a little bit more than I would have otherwise. But he's about to go on tour. I feel like this is the start of the tour situation for Will. And I mean, I don't know how he's living his life. Maybe this is his truth.

Could be. This is Will's truth right now. Yeah. The question is, has the smack unlocked a midlife crisis for Will? Because I recently recognize that I'm going through a midlife crisis hard. Mm-hmm. Like hard. And I'll tell you when I realized I was going through a mid-life crisis.

life crisis. So I understand Will. It's not this hat, by the way, this young ass hat. It's, I was on the basketball court and, you know, I'm playing against this kid. And this kid is not a good basketball player. But he's fucking over me. Like, he's, I'm big. I'm not playing all the time anymore. I'm older. He's fucking over me. He getting to the basket. He can't play. He really can't play. But in this situation, his youth is just a dominating. right now. And I actually said to him, I'm like, hey, bro, you're not good. You're just young.

And I'm like, that's some old nigger hating that shit, boy. Should it kept that in the draft. It's too late. You said it. Yeah, bro. That's some old nigger hating ass shit. I said, you're not good. You're just young.

I actually had to apologize to him after that. I'm like, that's some old nigga hating that shit. My bad young blood. My bad young blood. Hey, young man, let me tell you could be anything you want to be in your life right now, man. I'm just saying, you know, you ain't got to, I ain't my prime out here no more. You know, I'm out here for the cardio to make sure my heart don't explode pretty soon. You know, it ain't got to do me like that, young blood.

So there was hate. So I have to be intentional about aging gracefully because if not, hair transplanted. I thought about getting like a John Wick muscle car. Like I'm starting to see the end of the line. You know what I'm starting to see the end of the line. So you have to be intentional about ageing gracefully. You have to want to do it.

You have to want to get older in a graceful and respectful and dignified way. It's not something that just happens. You have to say, you know what? This is what I was then and this is what I am now. You have to say I'm off the basketball court. I'm on the pickleball court. You have to be intentional. about it, right? Or you have to say I'm playing half-court. Or you have to make the decision

to get your body in peak shape when you out there. So the young nigga can't fuck off you, meaning you can't do it both. And so when I look at Will doing this, I'm like, I wonder if the smack made Will go, fuck it. The Hollywood has kicked me out. I'm not a part of the movies anymore. The Academy say I can't come back. So let me go back and grab back Big Willie. Or let me grab the fresh prince. Since I'm not Will Smith the movie star anymore, they took that from me because of the smack, even though he rebounded with some big hits. He's like, maybe now I'm the fresh prince again. It seems like kind of the same identity stuff that was going on with him even before to me. Like when I see this, it's like, I would rather listen to a Will Smith interview.

He'd be dropping so many jewels. Take the jewels from the interview and put him into music. do like are there records about ayahuasca I would like to hear the ayahuasca record I'd have to take another listen to his last album which I mean I'm going to be real with you I probably won't but I did the first listen

I feel like there were some of those moments within there where he was hidden on things that felt like interview jims just in lyric form so I think some of that is there. This, I think, feels like the intention of it is to be another

Will Smith summer bot which I don't know if it's going to happen, but I think that was the intentionality behind it. But I feel you on him coming back to his like rap comfort zone after being, I guess, temporarily kicked out of Hollywood. But it's okay to say it's whack.

Will Smith dropping something whack doesn't even matter. He's knighted. So he can be whack if he wants. Will has earned the right of whackness. but that record sucks and the video sucks that sucks

but he could you don't have to it don't have to be good now if he want to drop music just for the sake of dropping music that's cool you know what I'm saying if he want to play in the big three playing the big three if he want to do whatever we want

do your whole thing but it don't have to it don't have to be dope It don't have to be But it's whack though A question Pretty girls or peanuts to elephants Oh shit I gotta give it to pretty girls bro

Damn I got to Wayne Win Manuel I gotta give it to pretty girls bro This don't apply to Wayne no Wayne Wayne got to do better because Wayne Wayne still Wayne like 42 43

Wayne still He's still primed enough He's still rapping like a guy Will Smith took time off from the rapping. Wayne, Wayne still got classics left. Wayne got classics left. We know he got classics left because the rapping on that album is not bad.

It's not bad rapping. It's bad concepts on that album. You know what I'm saying? It's not like he lost his fucking fastball. He just, I don't know, man. All right, last one. Actually, no, let's get to Glaze of the Week. Glaze of the week.

You're on somebody's meat. It's the glaze of the week. Glaze of the week. Glaze of the week. You're sucking dick. Simon Gubadia, after spending four months in ICE detention, Simon Gubadia, who is the ex-husband of Real Housewife of Atlanta's Portia Williams. He's taking a calm tone to Trump and the administration.

He said, Donnie, like I refer to him, we are very similar. We're both Gemini's and some of his antics. I certainly can understand it. Sometimes I would say that we are misunderstood. I don't have any animosity towards the situation. I don't have any problems with Trump like any other CEO or chief executive who I am. We look to hire the best people we can find and the issues that he's dealing with are no different than any other organization. I feel I have a very unique perspective on this situation, considering I was there for as long as I was. And there are so many things that I saw that I feel like I can have. help this administration with. Okay. So who is his nigga again? He is the ex-husband of Portia Williams. I believe he was a millionaire on his own right. The millionaire in his own right.

He's, no, he was the ex of one of the ladies from the show. Portia Williams very nicely. It's nothing to do with her. At the end of this year, we are going to do glaze of the year. What we're going to do is collate, put together, all the biggest glazes for the year.

And we're going to let the audience decide what the glaze of the year has been. So we're going to take maybe not 52 weeks of glazes. That's a lot for you guys. But we're going to take a bunch of different glazes and put them together. Maybe we'll choose, Donnie, the glaze of the month each month. And then we'll put them together and let you guys choose a glazer the year. Yeah. This right here.

is way up there already in glaze of the year. This is the front runner. I've never seen anything like this before my life. This motherfucker was put in jail. What is it about Donald Trump's dick that makes these people want to get on it? This dude was put in jail. They put this dude in jail.

This dude spent four months in ICE detention. Like what? He spent four months detained by ICE. and came out and said, Donnie, like I refer to him. What is the deal? Like if four months of detention

can't get you off somebody's dick, nothing can. I've never seen anything like this before. I don't have any animosity towards the situation. I don't have any problems with Donald Trump like any other CEO of chief executive. So you were detained for four months and you have no problem.

with the administration or the person that is responsible for your detention. You don't have a shred of self-respect to the point to where you could come out and be like, hey, I'm not saying that it was Donald Trump directly that led to this, even though it was. But he's responsible for the detention of not only me, but all types of other people who are in the same situation

that won't be afforded the same light or scrutiny than my situation was because I'm somewhat of a celebrity, you still riding dick after that? I have a very unique perspective on this situation, considering I was there for as long as I was. There's so many things that I feel like I can help the administration with. How about helping them not take people like yourself and put them in jail, which is what you could be doing except for the fact that you're choosing

to ride dick. We have to have a larger conversation about why dick riding is where it is right now. I'm telling you, I've said it before, Dick riding will destroy this planet. I'm not even joking, guys. Dick riding is going to destroy the world. I want everybody to wake up in the morning and ask themselves a question,

yo, am I riding dick? Am I on a nigga dick? And then don't feel bad about it. it. It happens. Just take a step back. I have a thought. I have an opinion about something. But let the first question that you ask yourself be like, am I on the nigger dick right now? Because what dick riding does is it robs you of your objectivity and your ability to see what helps you and what hurts you because of the allure of dick riding.

The allure of it. This guy was in jail four months. and he came out and all he could think about was riding Trump's dick. He'd have nothing negative to say. I don't understand what's happening. He had nothing negative to say. He had nothing negative to say. Not even one little, you got to say one negative thing.

You got to be like, you know, I get it, but I don't feel like Donald Trump is even Ryan Garcia, another dick rider, right? Ryan Garcia, who's been Dick Rod and Trump all this time, all of these guys that Dick Rod Trump, the whole Manor Circle that Dick Rods Trump, all of them, right? Even these guys are like, hey, maybe we shouldn't take hairdressers and just throw them in the prison in El Salvador. And that's probably wrong.

You know, it's probably wrong to fund the Israeli regime without any type of conditions on what they get. That's probably wrong, you know, because at least have a little self-respect. But I will say this. Trump's black dickriders are way worse. and his white ones. Way worse. Way worse.

The white Trump dick riders at least have some self-respect to not make themselves look like fucking fools in front of the people who come to them. But the black ones that are on his dick? Oh, they don't have any type of thought about embarrassing their fathers

and mothers. I can believe this. You put me in jail and I'm still on your dick. Simon. Woof. All right, Donnie, this is yours. This is yours right here. Let's let's get out of here. What a weird, what a weird pod. Pastor James David Manning, who is running for mayor of New York City. He's on a campaign trail right now discussing to him the issues that matter most. Let's hear from Pastor Manning. Horse hair belong on the horse's ass. That's where I belong on your head. Don't belong on your head. Out in act legislation that you can't have braids if you work in the hospital.

You're standing there trying to give the patient an IV in your hair dropping in their mouth. They can't breathe their eyes and open and chewing on your hair. I don't know what happened to them. You can't have braids and false hair, horse hair in the hospital. Horse hair don't belong in the hospital. Horse hair don't belong in the restaurants. Horse hair don't belong in the schools. horse hair don't belong in the horse hair belong on the horse's ass that's where i belong on your head

you agree with pastor manning is this a platform for the people play the other one donnie the real problem is niggerism that's the real problem that's the problem in all ghettos that's the problem you know niggerism where you got people who have just been they have been they have died in the wool if you will against white americans against American structure and they have no work ethic. You can't get a job. You can build all the jobs you want. You can't make these young boys go to work.

They're not going to do it. The schools teach niggerism, you know. And that's why the immigrant problem is issue with such a major issue, is because Latinos, Mexicans have not been indoctrinated with niggerism. Niggerism is to let the government take care of you. The government owes you everything. The government owes your house, it owes your education, it owes your income, it owes your track phone, it owes your pair of sneakers. I mean, and this is niggerism, and that's what all the black, the Hamite, if you will, politician and progressive, if you will, Jafel politicians, that's what they teach.

And niggers have just been beat down to the point where they have no work ethic. Detroit is suffering from a case of niggerism. And $100 million, they ain't going to go nowhere, except into the hands of all the things. of drug dealers of politicians and it'll be right back where it started from. Niggerism

in Detroit. Okay. All right. All right. Okay, Donnie, I got to ask you question. You want me to take this seriously

or what you want me to do? I mean, okay, yeah, he's running for mayor. He's running for office. He's on the ballot. So,

yes, this is a serious thing to be taken. Okay. So he's hilarious. Okay. Yeah. He's hilarious. I laughed.

So I got to say that he's hilarious. It's the first thing I have to say. I'm sorry, I don't have the maturity to deal with this in any other way to say that that's funny. That's funny. And he's obviously playing some type of role, right? He's an idiot. Now, tell Pastor Manning this right now,

you're an idiot, you're stupid. Either you're stupid or you're committing a ruse against people. You're stupid. If you were to bring up Detroit and the reasons why certain social ills play Detroit, there are real socioeconomic reasons as to why. Those reasons have to do with decisions that were made. Some of them are complex. Some of them have to do with globalism.

Some of them have to do with local policies that affected people. Some of them have to do with racial tension that existed into the, the city that forced the tax base outside of the city that left the inside of the city, Tarot and people to figure out their lives then. Almost everything he said has an actual intellectual answer. But Pastor Manning is playing a character. He is playing the character of a very entertaining buffoon. And I don't mind that.

I don't mind a clown. I don't mind a clown. But if I'm going to take it seriously, I'm going to say that the belief that it is somehow niggerism that has led people to their situation is part of the trick bag of white supremacy obviously everything that he said niggas feel like they're old niggas are actually owed that everything besides maybe the track phone i'm not sure about the track phone but everything that he said that black people are old they're actually owed they're like actually owed it they're like actually owed it if you

If you are a black American whose lineage in this country goes black to slavery, there's nothing that America doesn't owe you. That's a fact. That's a fact. Now, I'm not saying that there's not going to be competition in your success in America. There will be. And at the end of the day, you will decide how far that you go. However, if you're a black American who helped, whose ancestors helped, build this country, then there are things that were supposed to be a available to you at your birth that are not available to you because of intentional decisions

made by this country. You were supposed to have had a home. You were supposed to have schools. You were supposed to have clean schools. You were supposed to have safe schools. You were supposed to have hospitals. You were supposed to have banks. You were supposed to have land. You were supposed to have all of that stuff. You're supposed to have the right to vote, the right to assemble. You were supposed to be safe in hospitals. Your women were supposed to be safe in hospitals. All of that stuff, you were supposed to have it. Everybody else has it, particularly white people. You don't have it because it was decisions were made for you not to. Decisions were made for you not to be able to buy a house. Decisions were made for you not to be able to own land. Decisions were

were made for the food that you eat. Decisions were made for what goes on inside of your mind. Those decisions were made. That happened. This is not niggerism, as as Manning would say. This is not niggerism. This is history. And it's another reason why they don't want you to learn this history

because they don't want you to think by any means that you, that people never worked on these problems and never figured these problems out. And then America just went, no. No, no. We've decided where you're going to go and where you're going to live and this is where you're going to go and this is where you're going to live. Now, you might think like that's a cop-out. Like I'm saying that there's no way for you to be successful in America because there were all these decisions made for you to be unsuccessful in America before you were born. That's not what I'm saying.

It is your job to get up and make yourself successful in America. However, your job has been made harder on purpose. I'll say again, it is your job to figure out. between you and your community, how you're going to be successful in America. That's your job as a black person, your job. No one's going to do that job for you. You either do that job through just intense individual individualism.

You either do that job through intense individualism, ha-ha. Or you do that in community. But that's your job. That's your job to be an American success story. I'm not saying that it's not. That's true. It's your job. Once again, you either do that by yourself.

Fuck everybody else. I'm going to kill, kill, kill, hoard, hoard. You do it the Western European way or you do it in community. That's up to you. You can make that decision. But your job is harder because of things out of your control. And anybody that's telling you that it's not is selling you some bullshit. Your job as a black person in this country is harder because of decisions that were made

two, three generations ago and that continue to be made now. And those decisions are on purpose. Do with that information what you will. Like go figure it out however you want to figure it out. I had to figure it out. The other successful black people that I know had to figure it out. You're going to have to figure out how you become successful in this country

if you want to be. You're going to have to figure that out. And it's going to take some sacrifice and it's going to take some hard work that for sure is true. But the obstacles that you will face will almost certainly, certainly be worse because of historical and systemic dysfunction.

And there's nothing that this motherfucker can say that's going to change that. Nothing. He can't say shit. He can choose to live in this, whatever. Running from mayor is funny. It's funny. We didn't make the choices.

The choices were made for us. The choices were made for us to live in food deserts. The choices were made for us to not have access to health care. The choices were made for us. Redlining. That's a choice made for us. White terrorism, contract buying, all of that stuff. Disenfranchised.

All of those choices were choices that we had to react to, not choices that we made. And if we figure them out, we're going to figure them out together. But we're not going to act like. We just got up and decided, you know what? We'll fail today. We'll fail. Our children will fail and then their children will fail. We love failure.

We're addicted to it. We're just going to decide right now not to eat. We're going to decide right now to have terrible living conditions because that's what we enjoy. Our culture is so bad that what we want we want more than anything is to starve. That's fun. So I don't know. That's as serious as I can take this because this is actually very funny.

It's hysterical. The horsehair thing is hysterical. The niggerism thing is hysterical. It's a bunch of lies, but it's hysterical. All right, we got to get out of here. What a weird pod. Thursday is June 10th. Rachel will be gone another day.

I think that we should probably podcast, but we'll let the audience decide. I'm willing to do this. We're going to let the audience decide about whether or not they want another higher learning. I don't think we should do that. That's dangerous. Yeah, I mean,

we don't have the studio on Thursday. So if we do it, it'll be remote. There is that as well. We're not doing it. We're off. Rachel will be back Monday, guys. Let's see y'all. Let's see how peace.

Bye.