Investigate Earth Conspiracy Podcast - Joe Rogan Podcast | Dave Smith Douglas Murray Debate Breakdown

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

Tonight, we dive into the fiery debate between libertarian Dave Smith and conservative author Douglas Murray on the Joe Rogan Experience — an intense exchange that tackled two of the world’s most controversial conflicts: the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. We break down where the two thinkers clashed, the key points they made, and what their debate reveals about the larger global narrative. Was Dave Smith right to question U.S. involvement in Ukraine? Did Douglas Murray’s defense of Israel go too far? This episode is a raw, unfiltered look at foreign policy, morality, and media spin.

Hello and welcome back to I'm your host, Chad, alongside my beautiful wife, Sherry. On tonight's episode, we're diving into one of the most talked about episodes of the Joe Rogan experience in recent memory, the debate between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. If you've seen it, you know it wasn't just a casual back and forth. This was a clash of world views on some of the biggest geopolitical issues of our time. The two main topics are focusing on today for this podcast are the disagreements over the Russia-Ukraine war and the conflict between Israel and Hamas and Gaza.

These aren't just foreign policy squabbles. They touch on media narratives, morality and war and what it really means to take a principled stance. Douglas Murray, as expected, came in hard to defending the West support for Ukraine and Israel. He sees these conflicts through a lens of good versus evil. Western values are under attack. Dave Smith, meanwhile, questioned those names. narratives, pushing back on the inventionalism, and calling for a more critical look at who's really benefiting from these endless wars.

And Joe, well, Joe mostly tried to steer the ship, but let's be honest, the sparks flying between Dave and Douglas made this one one of the most electric episodes in a very long time. So let's unpack it, guys. Welcome to the show. It is April the 11th, 2025. And the name of this song is, Oh my God, by Zorro. I don't know if we played this song on the show before, but it sounds familiar.

either way. There's going to be, like we said, on last night's podcast, there's going to be some people that love it and some people that hate it. I think this is a new song, though. I think it is as well. But we have played Zora many, many times. For sure. So as you guys heard, we are going to be breaking down this discussion between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. We are going to start with their debate on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Obviously, Douglas Murray coming in. He is an author where I'm going to get to his bio in just a moment. But he 100% believe. we should have be doing every single thing we've been doing for Ukraine, including sending billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine on behalf of

the United States taxpayers. And he also believes this is completely all Russia's fault. No one else basically had any influence on this war. And so if you guys have been following our podcast for long enough, you'll know why we have to talk about that. And then the other very heated debate, this is when it really got heated back and forth between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray was when they started talking about the Israel Gaza Hamas conflict. And so Sherry actually at one point said, she's like, I don't know if I even want to do this

podcast with you, but we're going to do it anyway. We're going to see how this works. We're going to see how heated we get. Now, hopefully not. Hopefully we're not. But, you know, obviously for those that have been listening for a while, you know that Sherry and I definitely have disagreements on Israel and that war and all of that, even though I don't think necessarily we're so far apart now as we used to be because we look at things differently a little bit now, especially when it's not about the Jewish people, and it should ever be about the Jewish people. Whatever Israel, the state does, should not actually be blamed on the Jewish people. There's a reason why there's many Jewish people in the streets that are protests in this war

to this day. There are people that are protesting, including the hostage survivors, you know, family that are protesting the continued war in Gaza because obviously a lot of them believe, hey, if you keep bombing these cities, the likely chance that we get our relatives back alive is going to be slim. And so it was a great debate. I want to first go ahead and talk about, we have to always say this, but we do have an ex, Facebook, Instagram, all of those accounts. We also have a telegram if you want to come chat with us on a one-on-one basis or I don't know, we often do like live streams at night randomly at 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock at night. And we talk about all types of subjects, whether it's things that we're going to talk about,

have talked about, or maybe never will. And so that's definitely a good way you can find us also. We do have a substack, which I think I'm going to start writing to a little bit more. And we do also have some content we worked on over there probably about a year and a half ago. We actually mentioned some of it on last night's Tartaria episode. If you guys have not heard our Tartaria episode of a lost civilization, please go back and listen to that. We released that last night.

Very, very interesting episode. Thank you, by the way, for everyone that's been sending messages and emails and everything else about it was a good episode. Thank you. We appreciate when you guys do that, especially overwhelmingly. So it was an overwhelmingly positive episode. So we definitely appreciate that. One of the things I was thinking about is maybe how we start this.

Now, Dave Smith actually has since reacted to this debate. He went on a podcast where he was talking about. what he believes his consensus is post-debate, right? And there was one thing I saw on social media, even on X, you know, X is a platform supposedly for free speech. And although that is likely, I guess that's probably our most used platform that we utilized for social media because I think it is the most, I guess, uncensored platform there is.

But when this debate came out, you had all of the same people that we have seen for the past two, three, four years that had the Ukrainian flags in their bio, all of the exact same people came out in 100% support of Douglas Murray. They all said, oh, Douglas Murray, wipe the floor with Dave Smith. There was not even a comparison. Dave Smith didn't stand a chance. I've literally seen this on social media. And it all come from people mostly on the left, the same people that, you know, want to prosecute J-Sixters or, you know, put Trump in jail or, you know, go with the climate change narratives and the trans movements. I mean, all of these people are on similar movements.

And I think that especially part of this discussion that we're going to break down tonight is, and it's something that Dave Smith said, you know, I understand that we have been so almost, like people either center or right have been told that you are wrong for the past four to eight years. We've been told that every single thing we think is either domestic. terrorism or we do not know our own bodies when it comes to medical freedom or that are just so much stuff. And now that Trump is back in the White House, there's a little more freedom out there with obviously Zuckerberg coming out with Facebook and saying, hey, you know what? We're going to start opening up the gates on and stopping the censorship on our platforms.

Dave said, you know, and he acknowledged maybe there is this pendulum swing going so far back the other side. And one of the things they even talked about was, you know, Nazi slash Hitler denial or the Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial has been around forever. There's been people that have talked about the Holocaust and how it maybe either didn't happen or didn't happen the way they said it was or did happen for a very long time. And it just seems like now, obviously, that the pendulum has swung so far back to the other side, you absolutely have people that are going to go so far on the other side. And it kind of discredits, in my opinion, people that are actually out there trying to find the truth.

It doesn't mean because maybe you don't agree with the Israel Hamas war, the way you see it, that also, you know, the Holocaust didn't happen or Hitler wasn't that bad of a dude. I mean, there is narratives out there like that. And we've absolutely seen same narratives from the left. And we've seen that for a very long time. but I think it's important that is it's important for debates like this. It's important for two people that completely disagree to talk it out, to debate it like it needs to be debated, the marketplace of ideas. And it's for you guys to decide who's right and who's wrong.

Now, for this show, Sherry and I obviously are not going to agree on everything. I think a lot of what we'll talk about and agree on will be between the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But I think once we get into the Israel-Gaza-Hamas situation, I think that's where. some disagreement will come in. So I want to go ahead and give you a little bit of background who Douglas Murray is. So Douglas Murray is a British author, journalist, and political commentator known for his sharp critiques of identity politics, radical Islam, and what he sees as the decline of Western values.

And so he was born in 1979. He was educated at Eaton College, one of the UK's most prestigious board in schools. He later studied English at Magdalene College in Oxford. where he developed a strong interest in literature, history, and political philosophy. He first gained attention at a young age when he published a biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wild's Lover at just 19. He has written several books, including neo-conservatism, Why We Need It, The Strange Death of Europe, The Madness of Crowds, The War on the West,

and he is also an associate editor at The Spectator, a longstanding conservative British magazine. He's outspoken on issues like the threat of Islamic extremism, the problems with multiculturalism in Europe, the dangers of cultural self-loathing in the West, and free speech and cancel culture. So when you hear Douglas Murray's kind of background and biography of what he believes in, it sounds like I would get along with this guy all day long. You know, if we had him across the table right now, I would be like,

I don't know, there would be a whole lot that we would disagree with until you talk to him about the Russia-Ukraine war or until you talk to him about the war between Israel and Hamas, that's when it's like, wait a minute, like, I thought you were this guy, but then all of a sudden you're completely opposite on these big, big issues, which usually, by the way, the left sides with except for Israel, but in particular, Ukraine and Russia. So that is a little bit of Douglas Murray. And then you think about Dave Smith. Dave Smith is nothing more than just a little stand-up comedian.

Of course, that's what Douglas Murray wanted to betray the beginning of the show. But he's also a political commentator and a prominent list. libertarian voice, especially known for his involvement in the Liberty Movement and the podcasting world. He's a stand-up comedian based out of New York City. His comedy specials, Libertus, was released in 2017. He's been on Fox News, CNN, HBO's Real Time of Bill Maher. And so mostly he's been a podcaster.

He's been on many different shows, including Patrick Beck David, where he actually debated Chris Cuomo. Chris Cuomo came on there. I think Dave Smith destroyed Chris, Chris, Chris. Cuomo on that debate. And then, of course, he's been on Gerogen multiple times, various other podcasts. And so he has made a name for himself, especially in the realm of debates and political commentation because most people, when you hear Dave Smith talk and you hear him talking

to people like, you know, whether it be historians or deep in the system journalist or people that are supposed to be really good at pushing the narrative forward, Dave Smith usually destroys these people. So I want to just kind of give you guys a brief background of who both of these people were. And then I'm going to play a quick clip real quick of Dave Smith talking about his thoughts on Douglas Murray post-debat. Listen. I left there with the feeling. I would say even a half hour in to the show, I just, I think the reaction that we're getting, you know, I've had a lot of debates where the reaction is overwhelming.

that I won the debate. In this particular case, it's just that he lost it. Like, it wasn't even that I beat him in the debate. He started out with a 40-minute struggle session for Joe Rogan that just contained probably the longest stretched logical fallacy I've ever seen anyone open a debate with. Just a naked appeal to authority, completely unclear with what he was saying. saying he literally, he came in, so in this struggle session with Joe Rogan, I couldn't make this up. This is barely before I presented any thought or argument or opinion.

I think it was before that. He comes in with this long, that is an appeal to authority, an appeal to expertise. You're having these non-experts talk about issues that experts should talk about. And I'm not saying they should be censored. And I'm not saying they shouldn't talk about it. But they're talking about it and they're acting like their experts. How are they acting like their experts? because they're talking about it.

And when they're talking about it, it was just the most ridiculous argument, the most pompous elitist, essentially telling the host of the show and the entire audience, your opinion doesn't matter. Like it was just a strategy to me that was like, you want to make everyone think you're a pompous asshole? It was wild. In there, sandwiched in this, appeal to expertise, he trashes Darrell Cooper and Ian Carroll, whose names he doesn't even know

and admits that he's never consumed any of their material before. Yet he's trashing them and then claiming that you can only talk about these issues if you have expertise. Then when he's asked, does he have expertise? He goes, well, in some things, do you talk about things you don't have expertise in? Yeah, all the time I talk about things I don't have expertise in.

Okay, well, why can you do that? You're not even understanding my point. You know, it was just like the most wild thing. And it just became clear as the show went on that Douglas Murray came to do anything but debate may. Actually, in my opinion, as we were watching this last night, Sherry, and I'm going to tell everybody listening now, you must go and listen to the entire debate because it is pretty wild throughout.

And we're probably only going to commentate on, I don't know, 25, 20 minutes of it. And it's a three-hour interview. But absolutely. Douglas Murray came on there, pompous ass. Seemed like he was better than everybody, knew more than everybody. You know, he has been to certain places. And the only way that you're able to talk about something is if you have been there. Otherwise, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

And that shows what I was going to say. It does make a difference. I know he came out as a pompous ass kind of. He came out and started like that. And he even got onto Joe Rogan about why do you have these people that are not experts? Because you're just doing damage to your audience, not letting experts being on there. If you're going to talk about these things, have people know what they're talking about. don't just have any Dick Jane and spot on here, right?

But he did make a valuable point, I think. And I think he just did it in a wrong way. And the valuable point is this. When you don't go visit a country and actually visit and see the places and talk to the people and get an association of the culture, you don't really understand their culture. Like you have to go visit and you have to stay there and you have to almost belong in a way to be an expert. in these situations, in my opinion. Like, I know I've not been to Russia.

I've not been to Israel. I've not been to the Gaza Strip. I am not an expert. But I guarantee if I went and visited these places and I stayed, you know, a couple months or whatever, I bet you my mindset probably would change than what it is now. Yeah. Just living in the culture and being around the people and getting the vibe of what the culture is all about because that does make a huge difference when you're debating about

different countries that you don't belong to. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think if you went and stayed in Russia, you might become a Russia collusionist. Well, I mean, just for example, Chad, I mean, he's in Russia. Chad Howard. He's been there for over a year, I think, now. I mean, he loves it there. And I'm sure his views of Russia has changed somewhat since he's lived there.

And I'm just saying that in order to debate about a culture, I think you have to engross yourself into that culture and understand it. Yeah, I get it. In a personal manner. Yeah, I get it. But it's like I saw a comment to the debate on X and I found it glorious, this comment. And it said, well, I would comment on what I thought about this debate, but since I've never been in Joe Rogan studio, I'm not allowed to. I mean, and that's kind of what he's saying.

And I get it. And I know he came across like that, but I think that was his intention is it's, you know, you need to have a personal experience with these things in order to really, really understand the cultures. Yeah. All right. Well, and guys, listen, I want to make sure that you. you all know that after the end of this podcast, I want your opinion on who you think won this. Even if you've watched it in its entirety already, I still want your opinion. Do you think Dave Smith wiped the floor with this guy?

Do you think Douglas Smith wiped the floor with him? Do you think Joe Rogan should have been more assertive in the conversation, which I don't actually think Joe should have been? I think Joe was actually quiet for a long time during most of this because he just wanted this debate between Dave and him and Douglas. And I think that was pretty good at moderating. Yeah, for sure. I think he was more on Dave's side, but he was pretty good at kind of staying in the middle. Yeah. Let's listen to a couple more minutes of what Dave said about the interview.

Like that was the theme of the entire show. He was there to do every single thing except have an exchange of ideas with me. Everything. It was from, it was either I'm going to go on, you know, these long appeal to authority, or I'm going to play ridiculous semantics games with you. like when I say we are at war, you'll say, we are we at war and you're not at war. Your military is having an action and you're not. And just contradicting himself constantly.

The things, he, like instead of ever taking on my argument, he would think it was a big blow to be like, you haven't been there. You haven't been there. You don't have expertise. It's so bizarre because it's like, this would be, look, I'm not saying I would agree with but at least it would make sense if Douglas Murray refused to debate me and then made a video about why he wouldn't debate me. And in the video, he said, because he doesn't have expertise and because he hasn't been

there and because, okay. But once you agree to the debate, you can't just say, I have expertise and you don't have expertise. You can't spend 40 minutes on that. It's like, demonstrate it, motherfucker. If you've been there and that gives you some greater insight, then demonstrate that and win the argument and counter what I'm saying. He would never, I mean, the entire thing, it was straw man, he would argue against what other people are saying. You know, if I said, oh,

the NED and the USAID poured $100 million into the Maid on protest in 2014, he'd go, you know, sometimes libertarians speak as if everything that happens in the world is done by America. And really, there are no other actors and nobody else has agency. I'm like, What? No, all the people there have agency. Also, the U.S. poured $100 million into a street push that overthrew a democratically elected government. Like what? No matter who I'd say, dude, his big, like, blows that he tried to land were, I'm not an expert, but I present myself as an expert. And then I said, I don't claim to be an expert. And he said, see, that's the problem. I haven't been there. I haven't been to Israel. So therefore, well, I don't know. Can't comment on it.

And then at the end, I literally cited that the Supreme Commander of the NATO forces and the four-star general Wesley Clark said that the plans to overthrow seven different governments came from Paul Wolfowitz. And he said, I shouldn't say Paul Wolfowitz because that'll make people hate Jews or something like that. I can't mention the deputy defense secretary. Anyway, I don't know. you could tell me what you thought of it, but it was a, it was, I don't really think I particularly won the debate. I think he just showed up trying to do anything he could not to debate. It was transparent. People could see through it. It was smug and condescending. And that's why the reaction is what it is. Yeah. And I do agree with Dave to an extent, but I also feel

like Dave did not assert himself enough into the conversation. In other words, I'm saying Douglas Murray had the show most of the time and he was doing all the speaking and he was the authority and Dave let him be the authority. I think he should have asserted himself a little bit more into the conversation instead of letting this guy think he was winning all the conversations. Well, here's the thing. I thought that as well, right? Last night, I even posted on X.

I actually since deleted that because as I was watching the first like 45 minutes of this, I was like, is Dave ever going to talk? because all this dude is doing is just sitting here talking shit for 45 minutes. And it got really old. Yeah, Dave was really too nice until it got to the Israel and Hamas conflict because obviously Dave is very passionate about his stance. And keeping in mind, Dave is not a pro-Palestinian protester. He's none of those things.

He's just seeing it from the vision of the outside view. And not necessarily talking 100% about like, okay, what started it? How did it start? And he did actually say, hey, you know, this is not necessarily started on October 7th. And here's why. And here's the history of this very similarly to Russia Ukraine. Actually, I think Dave left out some very, very important parts in the Russia Ukraine argument that he should have absolutely argued here. But he didn't, which is why another reason why we have to talk about it in this debate.

And that's why I say I don't think Dave won the debate. I just don't. And I think he's right. He didn't win the debate. I think Douglas lost the debate. if that makes sense. He lost it with his attitude, a lot of it. I think Dave had a lot of good things to say.

I also thought that Douglas had a lot of good points as well. But overall, I don't even think it was a great debate. Well, I think it was. And I think, you know, I actually think a little differently than you. I do think Dave won the debate. I think he won because everything that Douglas Murray said was like almost literally the same talking points from the left, which is very surprising to me that he is this big conservative, written these conservative books and been a part of these movements.

But the conservative movement and the, I guess you can say, ideologies of conservatives in the UK are much different than they are in the United States. Patriotism here and patriotism over there is a little bit different. It is. Not for everybody. I mean, so for the people that's listening in the UK and Europe and all that, I'm not saying you. I'm just saying that I'm sure you understand what I'm saying.

I think a better debate would be Ben Shapiro and Dave Smith, because I think Ben Shapiro would school. him. Well, I don't think so. No, I absolutely don't think Ben Shpry would. Ben Shapiro is losing. He's a good debater. I know he's losing a lot of audience since Tim and Candace Owens had their little split through the Jesus thing and whatever. I get that. But he's still on the top 50 every day, Chad. There's a lot of people that listen to him. And he is a fantastic debater. Okay. Well, either way. We're not going to go into that. What I believe about Benchperer is is that, yes, he's losing a lot of his audience right now because of especially his stance and kind of what

that whole company did to a lot of their influencers, the people that they brought on. But that's what he stands for. And that's what he believes. And of course, he's going to talk about what he believes. Yeah. But the problem is that if you have influencers and people on your platform that are Christians, that they believe in Jesus. And then all of a sudden they question something.

And then you basically destroy them or tried to. Actually, what it ended up doing, in my opinion, is destroy. the Daily Wire. The Daily Wire is massively down in numbers, views, everything. I mean, it's very, very apparent. Benchbear is not out there like he used to be. No, he's not. And I agree.

But I'm just saying as a person as far as debating, I think he has great debating skills. No, he's very good. And Dave is as well. And we're going to hear this. But let's go ahead and start at this point in the conversation of the Joe Rogan podcast with Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. And this is when I believe I've got it to the point where Douglas Murray and just a second, asked Joe Rogan about why he's had so many people that are maybe one-sided

on certain issues rather than people like him that are pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel. We'll start here. You know, it's certainly never my intention when I talk to someone to try to get more views. It sounds crazy, but I'm only talking to people that I'm interested in talking to. And in Darrell's case, it's because I've been a listener of his podcast for years. That's it. This is like genuinely how I pursue things. I believe you.

That's why you're here. I'm genuinely interested in your views as well, even though you completely disagree with him. That's the, I mean, this is the marketplace of ideas in real time. I agree. Although, as I say, I think you've massively underrepresented the pro-Ukraine argument and the pro-Israel argument in the last two years. I don't know. I mean, well... That's my observation.

Okay. You're totally allowed to have that observation. What is the pro-Ukraine argument that you think is not being represented enough? Well, my broad view is that, again, something to do with the algorithm, that anything that is conspiratorial about Zelensky, or the Ukrainians in the conflict does very well. Anything that says actually a Ukrainian army is fighting to try to retain as much of their country as they can doesn't do as well. I think that everything that is pushing the idea that, for instance, the Americans caused it or something like that does well. I think everything that says actually in February 22, Vladimir Putin's

tanks invaded Ukraine and they shouldn't have done, doesn't do as well. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that what Vladimir Putin did wasn't horrific. That's not my point. The point is that after that, there's a whole set of things. Let's look at, for instance, the issue of corruption. Ukraine is a pretty corrupt country by EU standards, by the, by well-bank standards. And it's been a problem, as it is in that neck of the woods. And it's understandable that if the U.S. is one of the countries putting money and arms into Ukraine,

then it's going to be a subject of legitimate interest to the American people and others, the European taxpayers. Nevertheless, you end up in this, and I know this because it's the same thing in the old media. You end up on like the new bit of the story. and there's always a risk that you will lose sight of the beginning of the story. For instance, I mean, Putin's corruption is legendary, gargantuan, and not as interesting, it seems to me. The algorithm doesn't push that. And I think that's, to a greater extent, the case with the Israel-Hamas war as well.

Well, isn't there a little bit of a concern? Like, I would say a couple things here. Number one, I'm not denying, I don't know how the algorithm works or what it's pushing. It's an interesting thing that we probably should all know more about. But I think there's a danger when you're to just classify everything as, well, the algorithm pushes this and doesn't push this. It's like, it could also be that some ideas are just resonating more and some ideas are more popular than other ideas. And there's probably, probably both of those things are at work in that dynamic. Cool.

But I also think that something like the reason why, say, talking about Ukrainian corruption, is more interesting in a lot of ways than talking about Russian corruption is obviously because, like, well, one of these countries is an enemy and the other one is one that we're sending tens of billions of dollars to. And so, yes, well, debating on between Zelensky and the weapons companies, I don't know, he says he only got $70 billion of it, but we've spent closer to $170, so whatever. But the point is that obviously, if there is a country that we are propping up funding, arming, and that's, They're corrupt. I would say my starting point would always be to be more concerned with that corruption than an enemy country, which it's almost kind of a given, is a corrupt country. I don't know.

I'm sure there are fringes of the right who might say like Vladimir Putin, some great guy or something like that. But that is, I really do not think that is the argument that most people who are critical of this, of Biden's policy are making. Sure. I mean, I think one of the interesting things that happens in this is the old cliche of losing the wood for the trees. It just happens an awful lot.

And it's the nature of the old news cycle, let alone the current one, the social media era. Actually, I remember that, so I would want to go back to World War II, let me just very quickly, I remember this debate with Pat Buchanan when he was debating much more learned historians on the subject of the origins of World War II. And the whole thing got lost in all of this sort of mad puzzle of views about iron ore production in the Bavarian forest and this sort of thing. And I remember everyone was all over the place, and the moderator turned to the historian Andrew Roberts and said,

Andrew Roberts, why did World War II begin? And he said, World War II began because Hitler invaded Poland. And those moments come along quite often at the moment, which is, yes, there's an awful lot of very interesting things to look into. There's a lot of very interesting things going on, which we should all be able to talk about and do talk about. sometimes you have to remember the origin causes of things as well. And I want to pause for a second because, you know, he's essentially saying, and this is Douglas

Murray here, obviously talking about what his argument, and you're going to hear it going forward, his argument is forget everything that the United States has possibly contributed to, either for Russia aggression towards the United States and the West, forget every argument to why Putin invaded the Ukraine, right? I mean, his, would you hear what his stance on that and why he believes Putin invaded Ukraine, which I'm not going to say, I'm going to let him say it? But he's doing exactly what he's trying to argue against. He's doing the exact opposite.

instead of given any blame or any type of substance to the conversation that, hey, maybe the United States and maybe some of the policies and maybe the Red Lions and NATO and the bio labs and the fact that although Ukraine is not necessarily a NATO country, but sounds like maybe we had weapons in Ukraine before the war ever happened. You know, let's ignore all of that. And let me just give you my one idea of why I believe Russia and Putin invasion. and why Putin's bad and ignore everything else. You can't do that.

You absolutely cannot do that. And I agree with Dave Smith's point here is like we're not necessarily as concerned about, you know, the Putin and Russia side of this. But when we're giving Ukraine billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer dollars, which, as Dave Smith says here, 70 billion. So where'd the rest of it go? We've talked about the corruption in Ukraine. We know Ukraine is corrupt.

We also know Zelensky is literally an actor. He is not a politician. They brought him into this government as an actor. He does a great job, by the way. He, you know, in the beginning of this war, when he was out there with the soldiers and his flat jacket and he had the helmets on and the rifles and all this shit, and he had all these photo ops to where it looked like he was the great and glorious leader. Yeah, battling with them.

They called him the next Winston Churchill. They sure did. My opinion with Douglas, the way he goes about it is if you think about, you know, as me being a first grade teacher for so long. I always tried to get the main idea. What is your main idea? What is what you are trying to get across? His main idea is what was the beginning of the story. What started the war? And his, I guess what he's going after is what started the war is what we lose interest in. What happened in the beginning? Not what's happening now, but what happened in the beginning, what started this war? And I think a lot of times people forget why wars were

started. And the people that started the wars should be the ones responsible. And he also was mentioning, you know, things don't make news unless it's in conspiracy. You know, people want to be interested in conspiracies. You know, that's why we have a podcast. We love conspiracies. We love to hear the gossip and the bullshit. But what really happened, what started the war, we're losing that vision is what I think his point was. Yeah, I get that's his point, but I think he's wrong because, you know, I think there's one thing that we have learned about conspiracies is that conspiracy theorists are like, what, 99 to 1, it seems like over the past like three, four, five, six years.

It's like every conspiracy that used to be a conspiracy is now coming out true. And I'm not saying all of them. I mean, you got to think, I mean, I'm not even going to say it, but there's probably some flat earthers out there. I don't think that conspiracy is true. There are a lot of conspiracies out there that are wild and crazy and that are so fringe that it's insane to talk about. Or at least right now, who knows?

10 years from now, hell if I know. I mean, maybe we'll be walking to the edge of the earth and it's flat. But either way, you know, the reason why conspiracies of Ukraine does well and what he says is the actual cause of this war does not do as well is because I think that people are very smart. This is a great awakening. Listen, if you, if you, you're basically saying that the population of people, the consensus of people that are out there gathering information, whether it be through mainstream sources,

alternative sources, social media, you name it, and also just research, studying, you know, going through the rabbit hole of how everything is worked out from the Soviet Union to the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union and then how the Ukraine and Russia conflict happened. By the way, it didn't just start a few years ago. This has been going on for quite a while. You know, when you look at that and you give what I. call the jury, which is the populace of the people, the facts, or at least what is presented,

the jury is making a decision. And that is why, likely, the conspiracy theories of Ukraine are doing well. And the bullshit narratives that mainstream media always push of why Russia is bad, why Putin's horrible, and why Russia actually invaded Ukraine doesn't do so well because we've always been lied to. And I'm not necessarily saying because we've been lied to about everything else. that it's, you know, we're absolutely 100% guaranteed to be lied to about this. But all I'm saying is you're giving a jury the evidence and the jury is deciding. And I think that's why the conspiracy aspect of this does well.

And whatever bullshit they're pushing does not. I totally agree with you. And I think, too, that he has a different belief of why the war started than Americans, or most Americans, at least that are conservative. In his belief, this war started because Putin, wanted his whole country back. And he's going to talk about that, I'm sure. You're going to get into that clip.

So I think, too, the reasoning of the start of the war is a misunderstanding between two parties that are having a debate. He believes, oh, it's all Putin because Putin just wants the glory. And he wants his whole, you know, USSR back and everything back the way it was. And he deserves that country back. And he's going to go get it back where most Americans are saying, no, no, no, no. that's not what's going on here. Yeah, I agree.

Now, let's listen to some more. I have to stick to keeping that in mind. Yeah, well, I certainly agree with. People are pretty bad at the moment of keeping that in mind. Like, you can very, you can concede Ukrainian corruption. You can concede all sorts of things and still not lose sight of the thing of, if Russia rolls tanks into neighboring countries. Yeah.

It can't be allowed. Oh, well, listen. Okay, so on that, I think we have an area of agreement. And I do think, like, even while I much prefer the path that Donald Trump is pursuing to the path that Joe Biden pursued when it comes to the war in Ukraine, and of course, this is, you know, Donald Trump's thing is once you piss him off, he's going to call you every bad nickname that there is. And sometimes when you don't piss him off.

Well, sure. But when he's like, I believe he said that Zelensky started the war. Yes, he did. Which is like, okay, all right, that's a little bit ridiculous. He said Zelensky started the war and Zelensky was the dictator. Yes, okay. All right. So, Trump said that?

Yes, he said, but it was after Zelensky pissed him off. He said Zelensky started the war? Yeah. But it was, this is how Donald Trump is, love him or hate him for better or for worse. Donald Trump, it's like if he feels that you disrespected him or came at him, he's going to be ten times more vicious to you. By the way, this happened two weeks before the disastrous Oval Office meeting. Yeah. And I wrote the next day, the cover.

in the New York Post, which was a big picture of Vladimir Putin with the headline, this is a dictator. Just again, as I say, not to lose track in all of the melee, not to lose track of the basic facts. Well, look, I will say this. As somebody who is, I'm very anti-war, broadly speaking, and I do agree with you that it should, like, we should be able to have conversations about all the things that led up to the war and all the different, you know, like blunders that were made, and also still recognize that Vladimir Putin invaded a country and is responsible for, you know, at least hundreds of thousands of people dying. And, you know, my Scott Horton, who I always try to promote on here, he just wrote this book called Provoked.

I think it's the best book that's been written on the history leading up to the war between, it basically takes you from the collapse of the Soviet Union up to the war in Ukraine. And even in that book, the book is called Provoked. And the argument is that Western policy was very provocative toward Vladimir Putin, and there were a lot of off-ramps that could have been explored and should have been explored. But he has an entire chapter in the book where he is saying, like, look, Putin had a lot of other options. He didn't have to do this. It's not as if any of that justifies his invasion. And so I do agree with you that whenever we're talking about a war, particularly a war of aggression, that should always be in the front of people's minds. I mean, you can criticize, you know, I would say, I think I'm consistent on this across the board.

You can criticize lots of things about the insurgency in Iraq, certainly. But you should remember that George W. Bush invaded the country when he shouldn't have. And I want to stop for a second because, you know, as we're talking about this and as Dave Smith is pointing out here that, you know, it's not necessarily just U.S. policy. But the reality of the Russian aggression has been the fact that even in the Putin interview, with Tucker Carlson. And it's not just a Tucker Carlson. So don't take Tucker Carlson or Putin's word for it. I mean, we know this to be fact that, you know, the amount of times that Putin tried to

allegedly have a decent or at least cordial relationship with the United States. It sounded like the United States consistently was like, not F you. We don't want any part of this. They literally had Russia to a point where Russia was not going to build nuclear weapons or they were going to get rid of nuclear weapon systems. Instead, what the United States did was they went and built a bigger nuclear arsenal. They, I think it was Russia and the United States that was going to work on an anti-missile missile system together.

Yeah, Russia wanted to collaborate with America and we said no. Yeah, absolutely. We 100% said no. We said no, we're not going to do that. And we didn't even really say no. We just started building our own nuclear arsenal. we pulled Russia out of the weapons, I think it was like the space weapons defense system. We kicked them the hell out of it.

We were going to work on that together. And then obviously Putin was like, okay, well, what the hell? Now, me also, I'm not saying that every problem in the world, including Russia and why Putin's like he is and all of that stuff is all United States' fault. We're going to get to that point, especially as far as the Russia-Ukraine war situation goes. but absolutely United States policies and the rhetoric towards Russia for many, many, many, many years

has definitely played a role leading up into where we are at right now. I mean, you guys got to think if you've listened to our podcast for any amount of time, you know, before Donald Trump got into office, you know, we were very worried about the fact that we could actually go to a hot war with Russia,

a nuclear war, direct war between Russia and the United States because of the rhetoric that was coming from the Kamala Harrison Joe Biden administration. And, you know, many people believe that the Iranian situation, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, that's a proxy war between Iran and Israel. So you got to think of it that way. And yes, they do have boots on the ground, but mostly like Hezbollah and a lot of those soldiers, they're firing rockets all the time in.

They're being supplied with weapons systems from Iran. And then also those same groups are also firing on ships, our ships, everybody. And then Iran's like, well, it wasn't us. It's the Houthis and it's Bala. So anyways, let's listen to some more of this. Off lies. So I'll, I say that when my government does it. I'll say it when the Russian government does it also.

That being said, there's a very strong argument that there were many policies that the U.S., you know, NATO and Europe as well, but mostly the U.S. pursued, that were just almost like if you wanted to come to this inevitable conflict, this would have been the policy to pursue. give you the best chance to end up there. One of the, you know, I was with a British military friend recently and somebody asked, what does the fog of war mean? And he gave a brilliant example of what it means on the battlefield, which a lot of people don't understand. There's a version of the fog of war in history as well. The great Czech writer Milan Kondera had this beautiful phrase in a book of his from the

90s called Testaments betrayed. where he said, the odd thing about mankind is he said, we walk through life in a fog and we stumble along a path and we create the path as we stumble along it. He said that's not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is that when we look back, we see the man and we see the path, but we don't see the fog. Everything looks inevitable when you're standing in the present.

Everything looks like it was going to happen this way and you have these endless, often fascinating, often futile explorations of what might have been. But it doesn't take into account the fog. It's a very good point. And the fog of Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union, was pretty considerable. The efforts in the 1990s to bring them into a more obvious part of the international order failed. My own view has always been that in part we missed an opportunity. to pay a kind of civilizational respect to the Russians, which they deserved.

But also throughout the period that people now say there are all of these off-ramps, and now so many people claim that NATO went around the region desperately trying to provoke the Russians into some kind of war or inevitably leading them that way because of NATO expansionism. They never take into account what was in my mind. memory and experience very clear, which was NATO didn't go around recruiting. People came to NATO. Countries came to NATO wanting to join precisely because they feared the aggression that Ukrainians have suffered since February 2022 and indeed before. I was in Georgia just after the 2008 war began, the country, not the state. It has to be confirmed. Otherwise, people like, one? Who invaded Georgia?

Can we attack Georgia? They're not bastards. But I was in the country of Georgia, and Putin had tried to invade them and had seized South Settio and Avakasia. And they were desperate to join NATO. In fact, they were desperate to join the European Union. I rather frivolously said to a Georgian friend, if you want, we can swap. You can take our British membership of the EU. But in the NATO thing, they were desperate for it.

And they were desperate for it precisely for the reason that many of the Ukrainians were desperate for it, which was only way to stop Putin expansionism. So, you know, in the whole fog of the post-Soviet era, that is one of the many things that gets left out of the conversation. And by the way, Putin's actions in February 2020 and since all he's done is provoke two new countries to join NATO and his borders with NATO have grown. That's true. The Finland and Sweden wanted to join. And the only reason Finland and Sweden wanted to join was because they too are scared. It's a heck of a thing to get the Swedish to join a military alliance. It doesn't come easy to them.

It doesn't come natural. And these countries joined because like Georgia, like Ukraine, they desperately feared Putinist expansionism. And they weren't wrong. Okay, but I get your point. First off, the war in Georgia in 2008 actually came, was it two or three months after the Bucharest summit where NATO announced that Georgia and Ukraine would be entering NATO. So just making that point that the NATO aspirations came first.

But listen, I don't think you're wrong. I don't think anybody is ever implying that like we've expanded NATO through force and that the countries who were joining, or at least the governments of the countries who were joining, didn't want it. Although in the case of Ukraine, there's a great piece in the Washington Post about this in 2006, where joining NATO was actually very unpopular. And there was a lot done, and largely because they just didn't want to take on the headache of the conflict that this might provoke. But, you know, the question, I think, isn't necessarily like, do these countries wish to join NATO? Of course,

I think most countries in the world would like to join NATO. I think most countries in the world would like the most powerful government in the history of the world to guarantee their defense and subsidize their defense. The question is, is that in America's interest. And in terms of of your point of seeing through the fog. I mean, look, there was, as you know well, in the 90s, in the late 90s during the first round of NATO expansion, there was a lively debate amongst this. I don't mean a debate amongst outsiders or non-expert experts or whatever. I mean, within the real deal experts, the wisest gray beers in the national security apparatus,

there was a real debate with at least three secretaries of defense who warned against this. Robert Gates, Robert McNamar, William Perry, the Secretary of Defense at the time, almost resigned said his biggest regret in life is that he didn't resign over it. George Kennan was able to see right through that fog. He literally said the Cold Warrior, founder of the containment strategy, saw right through that fog and goes, this will inevitably lead to a conflict with Russia. And his exact words were, and then when there's a Russian response, everybody will say, look, this is why we needed to expand NATO. But the point here is, okay, even within that deep debate, which there were lively debates about, even the people who were on the pro

expansionist side of things, like Henry Kissinger. Even he said, Ukraine would have to be a special arrangement. Ukraine will not come into NATO because obviously that's leading to a war with Russia. And so I don't think it's unreasonable. And I think this is a fair thing that we should do in all conflicts is like to have as a, as Meersheimer puts it, to have strategic empathy, to say like, hey, listen, let's let's reasonably place ourselves in the other person's shoes. and say how would we react if somebody was expanding their military alliance that is explicitly anti us and is bringing it up to our borders and now is openly for years and years and years saying that we are going to bring your largest neighbor where you have very important strategic

interest from your point of view into our military alliance and you are saying over and over again this is our brightest red line do not do this and then they keep flirting with doing this over and over. Then they back a street push that overthrows the government there. Don't you think maybe that would be a provocation? Absolutely. It would. And that's the biggest deal here is NATO's expansion. The fact that Russia has continually said, and we had, Russia had deals with the United States for years and years and years. And every single time Russia would have a deal, we would bring in another country. We would go further east. And they had.

in agreement with Russia to say, hey, look, we'll do these things, these things, these things, as long as you do not expand one inch east. That was literally the term and the phrase that Putin and Russia's government used towards and for the United States. The United States said, we promise we will not move one inch east. And guess what happened? Not only one inch, we move country after country, after country, after country, until the inevitable Ukraine situation.

We get to one of the only freaking countries around Russia that is not NATO on the western side is Ukraine. And even Ukraine is technically not NATO. They are like a proxy NATO. We essentially still have all of our interests at heart in Ukraine. We did overthrow their governments. We have a lot of stuff there. Yes, you're right. Yeah, I'm sorry.

100%. So even with Ukraine technically not being a part of. NATO. Well, what does NATO really mean? And it really just shows that Ukraine was a part of NATO because although not, you know, signed on the dotted lines, but look what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine. What did we do? Well, we sent them hundreds of billions of dollars. We, we, listen, for people that say that we don't have soldiers on the ground there, we do. We have people that have to be on the ground in Ukraine because a lot of these weapon systems, no one in the Ukrainian military know how to operate. The only way that you can operate, the only way that

you can operate these things is with the United States technology and intelligence, and especially certain officers, agents, and military officials have to be on the ground for these weapon systems to operate. They are utilizing our satellite systems from the United States, everything for a lot of these guided missiles, these weapons systems, you name it. So listen, it's the same thing as if Russia came over to Mexico and it was like, hey, we're going to start doing all this shit. Hey, we're best friends of you guys now.

We're going to put these bio labs in here. We're then going to send over our intelligence agency to Mexico, and we're going to ensure that this Mexican government is pro-Russia instead of pro the United States, right? This is what we're going to do, and we're going to send our intelligence director over to do this. We're even going to fund and have help funding through various means, such as the Open Society Foundation of George Soros and many of these other NGOs, where they funded a lot of these overthrows of the of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine,

which everything was pretty decent in Ukraine at that point in time. That was 2014. Yes. And even in the regions of Ukraine, that was more heavily pro-Russian during this time. You know, Ukraine used to bomb and missile the shit out of these people. And these were, you know, definitely like the pro-Russian districts of Ukraine.

I think it's what, Donbass and the other. But once you, almost say that NATO is a world military against Russia. Absolutely. It is. I mean, if you're Russia, you have to think of it that way. You have not only, as Dave Smith says, the biggest military force and power in the entire world, which is the United States, most people believe, and especially if

you start considering some of our advanced technology, that most people don't even realize or understand that we have. We're talking about plasma weapons. We're talking about orbs. we're talking about reverse engineered, God knows what, anti-gravity machines, you know, it even goes back to MH370 stuff. And there's a reason also likely why the United States has not been invaded since what, World War II in that degree.

I mean, we weren't technically invaded in World War II, but Pearl Harbor was hit. You know, that's not likely going to happen anymore because most countries probably realize the advancement of our technology and our weapon systems. But make no mistake, you know, Russia has always. said that if in the event that Russia is backed into a corner to where we will lose Russia, we will utilize every single nuclear missile in our arsenal. Because if we're going to be destroyed, so will everyone else. And so all we've done over this past, especially like five or six, seven, eight, nine,

10 years, we have pushed further and further and croaching on Russia's country with NATO, which is a global, like you said, military power that the United States, the Russia's biggest enemy controls. And I also have to say this. I agree with completely what you're saying, you know, that NATO could have pushed this war, you know, getting Ukraine to, which Ukraine never signed a deal with NATO, nor do I think it was going to happen. But just the threat of it happening was like Russia, it was not going to do that. But also think about what Trump's doing now as far as you. Ukraine. He says, we're no longer going to help you unless you give up your mineral rights.

So we also have to think about what is in Ukraine that everybody wants. Because if United States wants those mineral rights, I bet you Russia wants some as well. Yeah. So we can't just blame it totally on NATO. Well, I get your point there. Listen, I mean, and Trump with the whole mineral rights thing, hey, we'll help you if you give up your mental rights. And Trump's main argument to that is that we've given you over $100 billion, we should get something in return for this. And if we can get those mineral rights in return for all of the money that we have paid you, and I think in Trump's mind, he's just saying, I didn't make the decisions on how much money we're going to send to Ukraine.

But if, since I haven't made those decisions, how can I make us the money back at least? And that is his standpoint on this. I don't necessarily, I mean, I know that Ukraine has mineral rights. But do you not think Putin would want the same rights? Maybe. Maybe that would be a reason? Well, he does. But also, Russia has insane mineral deposits.

And not only that, most people don't realize that Russia supplies so much of the world with so many valuable goods is unbelievable. And we still actually depend on those goods from Russia around the world. And yet we're doing and we're involved essentially in a proxy war against Russia. While at the same time, Russia is still supplying the world with so many of the world. with so many of these goods. It is so crazy because Russia understands that their economy, it depends on the United States and the West. They can't just say, we're going to cut you off.

Well, they are trying to make a new economy and new money. Yeah, they're trying to make a new money, a new economy, the bricks and all that stuff. And if that ever goes through, then they don't have to depend on actually exporting goods as much they do to the West. Probably be really in trouble. Yeah, the West absolutely will. There will be so many things from Russia that we will no longer receive. I mean, think about this.

There was someone that made the argument about China and all the pharmaceuticals. If China, you know, we're in a terror war right now with them. Trump's got it at 125%. If China one day wanted to say, hey, you know what? Screw you guys. We're cutting off all your stuff, all of our pharmaceutical exports to you. Do you know how much that would destroy American medicine? Because I don't know what the actual number is, but I think it was somewhere in the ballpark of like 70-something percent of pharmaceuticals that we utilize a medicine.

and today that everyone, not everyone, but so many people depend on in the United States to survive those ingredients come from China. Yeah, they would. It would be like life threatening to a lot of people. What would be life threatening to me is T.MU. Oh, God. I'm sorry. I had to say it.

All right. There's not a whole lot more left with this Russia, Ukraine thing. There's a couple of points we have to get to before we get to the Israel Hamas situation. So let's listen. First of all, two things. If you want that strategic empathy that Meish, I'm not an admirer of, but if you want to do that, you can do it the other way around as well, surely. Yeah.

I mean, do the same thing with the Ukrainians. Absolutely, yes. The Latvians and others. Yeah, but I would never, Douglas, but my response to you was never, I can't understand why the Latvians or the Lithuanians would want to be a NATO. I understand, yes. Right, right. And I can understand why Russia were thought.

that Ukrainian membership of NATO was a red line. I can understand that. But that wasn't why Putin invaded in 2022. He, and I think that, and I think there's an oddity, if I can say so, maybe this particularly comes across on the libertarian bisexual side. But the, I think there's an oddity of the, uh, let the record show him a happily married heterosexual man. They all say that. I think there's an oddity that sometimes particularly happens on the libertarian side, which is a, which is a presumption that things only really happen in the world because we make them so. And, you know, Russia invades Ukraine because of American policy in Eastern Europe post-199, 1990.

Something happens in the Middle East because of American policy. And I think it's a very blinkered and parochial view of things. Because my experience in countries around the world is that there's a heck of a lot, going on that America is frankly not really involved in. Well, that's certainly a straw man of my position. No, no, no, no. But what I'm saying is, it is very, in fact, it's partly since you very kindly raise the issue, Joe, mind your book.

It's one of the things I find, democracies and death cults. It's one of the things I find very interesting about this with democracies, which is it is one of the things in the nature of a liberal democracy that because we have the right to air our opinion, because we have the right to criticize our government and much more, we end up doing all of that. And there is a misapprehension people can come to. I don't know if you do, but they can come to, which is effectively we are the only force that causes action in the world. And there's a reason for that, which is that we have, thank God, a say in how liberal democracies are run and how we're governed. And we can chew over all of the disagreements that we have.

But when a liberal democracy comes against the kind of rock like a death cult, a totalitarian regime, a dictatorship, like Russia or the Iranian revolutionary government, there's always this temptation to say, to focus our attention on our own side because we can't do a darn thing about the other one. It's a version of, you know, the great late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said when he was ambassador to the UN, he had this great rule, sort of known among those who to know about it as Moynihan's rule, which is he said, if you sit at the UN or the UN Human Rights Council, or any of these bodies, you would come away with the belief that the most abused people with the fewest rights in the world live in America and other Western liberal societies. and he came because we're the ones that talk about it. If there's one incident of racism in America, the whole world knows about it. Everyone reads it, there'll be protests everywhere. If there's one incident of racism in North Korea, it's not going to make any news. And then you have on top of that the fact that the way in which despotisms and death cults and dictatorships work, the information just doesn't come out. And Moyni's rule ended up being that the,

is an interesting point. He said that his rule by the end of his time in the UN was that the number of human rights violations that occur in a country happen in exactly inverse proportion to the numbers of claims of human rights violations. Because only the countries which care about it and which such things can be aired in are ever going to get it out. But the point of Moynihan's law and the warning of it is, be careful not to come away, the mistaken idea that the freest and most liberal societies are the worst. And I think there's a version of Moynihan's law that applies, whether it's to the Middle East, to Ukraine and Russia, which is we come away with this, people may come away with the impression that the bad things in the world effectively all come from here.

And there is quite a lot to be said for some of that, but there's not everything to be said. And much of the world runs on a dynamic and a dynamo, which you can't do a darn thing about, other than to try to understand it. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, again, I certainly, there is truth to a lot of that. And I think that is a fascinating kind of dynamic where there is something about kind of like, you know, I noticed this even just with my own kids. Like, it's like, when you have kids and you raise them really, you know, like you're really sweet to them and you don't hit them and you give them a good life. small things end up becoming huge, like, things in their mind.

Like, someone pushed me at the playground and it's like, whoa, this is, whereas, like, the way I grew up, that would have just been kind of like a non-event. But anyway, I think it would be certainly incorrect to assume that everything that happens bad in the world is somehow a consequence of U.S. meddling. I also think that there's people on the other side here, maybe the people who are more neocon-leaning, more war hockey leaning. they have a tendency to only focus on the bad things that everybody else does and act like our policies have no impact on this.

Right. So very specifically, you know, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I'll just get two like bullet points on this. And there's, we could talk about a lot of this. But look, number one, in 2008, as you well know, right, the Joe Biden CIA director, who was the CIA director for the entire war up until Donald Trump just came back in, He wrote the Nietz-Means-Memmo to Condoleezza Rice, a private cable to the then-secretary of state when he was ambassador to Russia to let her know that this flirting with bringing Ukraine into NATO is going to end up in a war.

And by the way, the Russians don't want to do it. His words exactly. If you keep pushing with this, the Russians are going to have, they are going to have to make a decision that they don't want to make, which is whether they intervene or not. And number two, Straltenberg, I might be butchering that again. but the head of NATO, he himself said that Vladimir Putin sent him a draft treaty in late 2021 and said, look, if you just put into writing that you will not bring Ukraine into NATO, I won't invade.

Now, if you want to argue that this, this pre, I admire your appeal to authority to the head of the CIA. It's not an appeal to authority. How is that an appeal to authority? You regard the view of the CIA director on that occasion as being useful for your argument. But secondly, there's an oddity to believing what Vladimir Putin says. No, wait, hold on, you didn't let me finish my point. So don't believe what he says. I'm not going to pretend to read his heart and mind or something like that.

But at the very least, you handed him the giant excuse in order to do it. I mean, maybe he doesn't really believe it. But this is his argument to his own people and to the world. that it's like, look, and we put him in a position. You know, you hate Vladimir Putin. He's such a terrible guy. Well, we put him in this position where he gets to now very plausibly say to the international community in the same way that if the Soviet Union had survived and the United States had

and they were. He doesn't very plausibly have the opportunity to do that. He invaded Ukraine because he wanted to annex the whole country because he was trying to pretend that the whole place had been run by Nazis. Well, I mean, okay, the whole place wasn't run by Nazis. There's certainly worse than Nazis. But this is what he told the Russian people. Pause.

Sorry. This is something I heard last night. I knew you're going to pause in there. Yeah, we got to. He said that because he's completely wrong on that one. No, he's absolutely wrong in this one. So the fact that Ukraine is not ran by Nazis is complete bullshit because in large part it is. I mean, the Azov battalion for one, one of their strongest battalions in the Ukrainian military is Nazi.

They have literal swastikas and everything on their uniforms. Not only that, if you go throughout Ukraine and you guys can go back and listen to our Russia Ukraine episodes, probably, I don't know, just listen to any of them. We talk about this a lot. I even believe we have an episode where we deep dive into the Nazi connection with Ukraine, but they have statues in Ukraine that are Nazi like generals and like people, that they adorn and the people that they hold true and dear to their, especially militaristic, I guess, ideologies or belief systems. Now, I'm not saying to everyone in Ukraine is Nazi.

That's not what I'm saying. It's the same issue that we're going to get into momentarily with Israel. Yes. So I'm not saying that everyone in Ukraine is Nazi. I'm just saying there is huge and massive influence would the Ukrainian military being Nazi. And guys, just so you remember when this war first started and I was like, what the heck? Because Putin said, oh, this is a neo-Nazi country. We got to get rid of the Nazis. I'm like, Chad, what is he talking about Nazis in Ukraine? Like, that made no sense to me.

I had no idea. I didn't believe it at first until we started digging and doing our own research. Yeah. And then as like, holy crap, he is not. not telling a lie. He's not just calling them Nazis to call them Nazis. They're really Nazis there. And it even goes back to World War II and Hitler and all of the involvement in that region

and some of their leaders. And I mean, I'm telling you guys, go do your research. Go listen back to our episodes about Naziism in Germany in Ukraine. In Ukraine. And look at even their statues they have throughout the area. Look at who some of the people they look up to. Very similar, you know, back what, eight years. years ago when we were taking down statues of some of our leaders.

Well, they didn't take down these statues. They still hold them in high regard. At least their government military does. And so when Putin said this and started talking about this, mainstream media went crazy. And they're like, oh, my God, Putin is trying to tell everybody that this is a Nazi country and there's Nazis in their military. It's completely debunked. Let's revisit Politifact or factcheck.org to make sure that. Putin is lying.

Oh my God. I mean, this is where the narrative always goes, right? And it's like, no. Let's get these people to fact check. Yeah, but like, but let's be real. There is a massive Nazi movement in Ukraine. There has been for a very long time, including back into World War II. I mean, there is a lot of history for that.

You guys can research it for yourself. Probably don't do it with AI because I'm sure they'll try to twist the story. But there are tons of videos about Nazism. inside of the Ukraine. So even to what Dave Smith and Douglas Murray is here talking about, where how much involvement did we or did we not have in the fact that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine, you know, Douglas Murray wants to make this argument that Ukraine or sorry, that Russia and Putin only wanted to evade Ukraine to get their country back, to get their whole, the old USSR back. I don't believe that at all. I just do not believe it. It would not,

in my opinion be worth it to Putin to do that, especially considering that if the United States and NATO and the West would have stayed the hell out of Ukraine's government and their politics and everything else, I just don't think you would have had the situation happen between Russia and Ukraine that we see today. And even Trump has continually said, if I would have been present, this would have never happened. Yeah, but now I'm, I don't know now because I just feel like Putin does not. not have good faith. I kind of thought, well, maybe when Trump comes in, this war is going to stop because he does

have good faith. And maybe he just doesn't like the administration that's in with America and doesn't want to deal with them. And maybe as soon as Trump comes in, he's going to make a deal. But now I'm almost feeling like he doesn't give a shit about who's in administration. No, I don't think so. He wants what he wants. I think Trump is a little different towards Russia right now than he was his first go

around. I really do. I think that Putin doesn't have good faith like I was hoping he would. I know. I get that. I'm just going to say it like that. But I also think in some ways. And listen, I'm not saying everything that Putin does as good.

He's not. He is a dictator. He is. He does kill his political opponents. I mean, it seems like that's literally what exactly happens. You know, he used to be a part of the KGB,

a very brutal force in Russia. Trump said he was going to stop this war in two days. It's still going on. Well, of course it is. But it's also because I think that in a lot of ways, and I still go back to this, I think Trump has been infiltrated across aboard, whether it be with the Russia situation, whether it be with the Israel, especially

the Israel situation and A-PAC and all that. But I think Trump has been infiltrated. I think that he has compromised in some ways. Well, I think it's Putin more than Trump. I think Trump wants to come to the table with a deal and Putin is not ready for a deal, I don't think. No. He may not be, but I don't know.

It depends. But if it gets done, it's going to be done under Trump, I believe. but either way, it's still, there's just still this situation that I just don't quite know what's going on with Trump and the peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. But there's a couple more minutes of this. I'm blaming Putin just so I put it out there. Yeah, that's fine. I'm not disagreeing with you. Oh, he also brought up, listen, when he announced.

You can lie an awful lot when you're a dictator and you have the ability not just to run all of the media, but to kill your political opponents. I mean, you can do an awful lot. Sure. None of this. You know, I just got back from Ukraine again the other week and it's so weird. I saw the Oval Office meeting as it happened from a trench in the front line between the Russian and Ukrainian positions in the east of the country. And it was so weird seeing the way in which this country's territory was being talked about by outsiders and particularly by America. because there's so many oddities about it.

But the people who are fighting there, the soldiers on the front lines, the ones I was with, they're not fighting against Putin forces because of NATO expansion or anything. They're fighting because he lied to his own army. He lied to his own people. He lies to the world. And he decided he wanted to gobble up Ukraine because he wants to. to reconstitute the Soviet Union. And as a result, these young men are in dugouts in the middle of winter,

fighting Russian soldiers because the Ukrainians' homes are 30 kilometers behind them. And I just, I think among much else, that's stuff that cannot be forgotten about. None of this is simply about NATO expansion or this or that. It's about a country whose people are suffering in their third year of war. And it's almost total war. It's as much total war as we've got in the modern age. But that's not, I'm not disagreeing with any of that. I'm not saying the Ukrainian people were fighting because they wanted to keep their country.

People don't very much like being invaded by foreign countries. I understand that completely. And I've also always said throughout this whole thing, that is their right. They have a right to do that. We as Americans have a right to, you know, have an opinion on whether our government ought to be funding and arming the thing. But all I'm saying is that I'm not making an appeal to authority here. I'm just saying that you have the top people in the Russian government all unanimously saying like this is our red line. You keep flirting with NATO expansion into Ukraine.

And then you have all the people at the top of NATO and at the top of the U.S. government admitting it too. And going like, yeah, this is the whole beef. So why is it like these two things aren't mutually exclusive? No, no, they aren't. But I mean, they weren't going to expand NATO to Ukraine. Well, they kept flirting with it, and you know this. The Ukrainians wanted membership, and it was very unwise whenever anyone from the rest of the West even flirted with it. Didn't Connoll Harris openly say that NATO was going to join you?

Yeah, shortly before the war. Ukraine was going to join NATO? Yeah, I never saw her as the Kissinger of our era. Which I agreed. Now, there's some area of agreement, Douglass. He's the guy for that. Well, obviously, that guy's the future. But okay, but it is still the vice president of the United States of America.

And it's, listen. Yep. And that's the biggest point here. You know, this guy tries to downplay Kamala Harris and the fact that she came out openly said stuff about Ukraine joining NATO. And not only that she come out openly say stuff about Ukraine joining NATO. And this is what I wish Dave Smith would have talked about and said. But we literally sent Kamala Harris to Ukraine.

They did a press conference with Zelensky instead of meeting with both Putin and Zelensky to try to stop. this, right? So as as a president, maybe you go over and say, hey, we're going to meet with Putin and Zelensky. We're going to go talk to both of these, both of these leaders. And we're going to try to get to some type of agreement or ceasefire or whatever. And, but instead, what did, what did Kamala Harris do? She went over, had a literal press conference with Zelensky. And on video, you guys can probably find this. She said, yeah, we are really considering bringing Ukraine into NATO.

We're very excited about this. You know, that's Kamala Harris, right? And so she went there with Zelensky in front of the world and basically said our move is we want to bring Zelensky and Ukraine into NATO. And this was the last straw with Putin. This was about a month before, I guess, Ukraine invaded NATO. and this was the last straw. And, you know, they don't mention this. It wasn't just that Kamala Harris had this vision or this thought or this statement about Ukraine potentially coming to NATO.

It was a press conference. She literally went to Ukraine, just like we did, by the way, back in 2014 when they had a more pro-Russian president in office. Well, our CIA director at the time, about two or three weeks earlier, had went to, you. Ukraine. He had what I believe was planning this coup against this government, the maiden protest, which was a very violent protest. And then you start hearing about, we did a podcast on this not long ago, you start hearing about who also the funders of these maiden protests were. It was the Open Society Foundation, the George Soros Foundation, which George Soros owns the Open Society Foundation. And then you think about the Black Lives Matter movement, the Antifa movement during the

Summer of Love and the 2020 riots and all this shit where our cities and the United States were being burnt down. Guess who was also funding those riots? It was the Open Society Foundation. It was George Soros. It was that entire clan of the globalist in the World Economic Forum. And this is who was funding it. Yeah.

And it's crazy when you go onto their website, they act like they're trying to help people of the world, feed the hungry and do all these crazy things to help all these people. But in reality, these people are funding wars. Because that's what they want to do. And I wanted to make a quick point about the war in the fighting when he said Ukrainian people, of course they wanted to stay and fight for their country. No, they didn't. They wanted to get the heck out of there.

Well, there was a lot of them that did. I mean, but listen, let's be fair. And the same for the Russian soldiers. When they first came with all their little cannon things or whatever, when they had that borderline coming. Yeah. So many of those guys got demolished and they were not trained properly to even, you know, be in a war. I'm talking about 17, 18-year-old boys. Yeah. And even younger in some cases.

Both sides, I don't think really wanted a war. Well, of course not. But what I will say is that, you know, yes, 100 percent, you know, we talked to J.D. on the podcast, J.D. is over there in Ukraine. I don't know if he still is, but one thing J.D. said was, you know, the fight and the heart of these people in Ukraine is, is immense. I mean, it is something he had never witnessed before. And he said the resolve of these people. But some people got kidnapped to be forced to fight. Absolutely. But there were also 100% people and men, especially, that obviously were going out and

wanted to fight for their country, just like we would be if this country was invaded as well. It doesn't matter about the politics of it. It doesn't matter why this happened. You're going to fight for your country. No matter who started, no matter how it happened, there are so many brave men and women in Ukraine that have fought this war. There's also so very many brave men and women that fought and died in Russia.

Same way on Ukraine. Wars are not good, no matter what it is. And most of the time is caused by politicians and these bullshit decisions based on our government. And I wanted to bring this up because I bet a lot of us have forgot forgot about this. But do you remember the Warner group? A Wagner group. Why don't I always say call him Warner? It's the Wagner group.

The Wagner group. Do you just give them a brief summary of what happens? end. Well, it was the Wagner. I mean, they're just a military contract company. You know, they're kind of like Blackwater used to be. We utilize Blackwater in the Afghanistan and Iraq War. We utilize Armagh Group for that war.

And the only reason you utilize military contractor companies is because of the international laws as far as your engagement and all this stuff. So military contractors often in some cases do much more heinous shit that they can get away with. And a lot of these group in the Wagner group were actual prisoners that they got out of prison to fight. Yeah. And this is on the Russian side.

Yeah. And then so I guess at some point in time, there was some big disagreement between the Wagner group, which is who Russia employed. They hired the Wagner group. And Przinski, I think that was his name, he was the leader of the Wagner group. Once he went into Russia with his entire people, because I guess maybe they weren't getting paid, whatever the case was. Then you have him like a month and a half later on an airplane that was shot down or hit by a missile.

But before that happened, they had a standoff with Russia, basically. Yeah, they didn't. They had a standoff with Russia, the military. They said, hey, we're here. We're here to stay. There was some talks. And then a month later, the leader of that group was dead. Don't know what happened with that group.

But either way, oftentimes when you hire military contracting groups or companies like that, you're trying to avoid international crimes or, you know, like war crime type stuff because oftentimes these military contractor groups are not, they're not under the same oath. They're not bided by the Geneva Convention and all this stuff, just like Blackwater wasn't, just like Armour Group wasn't. There are many stories about the Afghanistan Iraq War that the United States hired Blackwater and Armour Group. You know, I think it was Blackwater Eric Prince, Armour Group.

I can't remember who, I think Armour Group was more, Armour Group was more a European military industrial complex company. But either way, they were military contracted companies that went into nations. They did very heinous shit in many cases that the United States military couldn't do because of Geneva conventions and all this shit. But these military contractors were hired guns. They were guerrillas. They were fighting guerrilla warfare.

It's almost like hiring a terrorist organization that are trained. Some of these guys are ex-military, ex-special forces, all this shit. And they join these groups and they go over to these countries. and do way worse shit than the United States military is allowed to do. So that's the way you got to think of Wagner Group. Yes, they did send Wagner Group into Ukraine. And they were some of the biggest fighting forces against Ukraine. They probably were likely directly involved in so many of the deaths from Ukraine, Wagner Group,

until that kind of dissolved. I don't know if they're actually still around or not. But either way. I want to go ahead before we go on too long, we got to get into the Israel and the Hamas, Gaza debate. So this was the debate between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. I don't know how much we're going to break in on this, but at the very least, I do want to at least play this part of this. And Sherry and I will break it down as best we can.

Here you go, guys. People have been indoctrinated by very bad actors into this, and as a result, have excused a trust. or make excuses for them, make excuses for the people who do them. I think, in addition, it plays to some of the darkest things of the regional mind, as well as the international mind. The aims of Hamas, their stated aims, include the annihilation of the Jewish people. And October the 7th, they had their best go at doing that. and the fact that in a decision between whether or not you're on the side of the people who want to dance and live in peace with their neighbors or whether you're on the side of the people who want to rampage through a dance party bar in the early morning macheteering at people.

I find it amazing that there are so many people who don't know which side they're on. But there are a lot of them. There are a lot of reasons for that. But one of the foremost reasons is the fact that the state of Israel has been uniquely libeled, has been uniquely lied about. Its history has been uniquely lied about. It has been uniquely put under an international spotlight and then misrepresented in a way which I cannot think of many other countries in the world that have been treated that way. and there are deep reasons for it and shallow reasons for it. The deep reasons include some of the most ancient bigotries of the human heart,

and the shallow reasons are people who don't know what the hell they're talking about. Okay, I think that there's, look, I'm not going to speak for what every person out there believes. I don't exactly agree with like the characterization that there was no outpost. of like feeling after October 7th. And certainly like everybody I know was just like, oh my God, this is like a horrific atrocity. And like an unprecedented terrorist attack from Hamas, the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history against Israelis. And it was horrible. I think what a lot of there, I'm not, I'm not arguing that there are no people who are actually pro Hamas or there are no people who are actually like hate Jews or something like that. I do think there

what happens is that a lot of people get put in that category who do not belong there, much like we've seen this over the last year and a half where a lot of people, you know, you have John Pud Horowitz calling Thomas Massey anti-Semitic scum because he said, we're dead broke. We can't afford to fund everybody else's war here. People have been calling Tucker Carlson anti-Semitic all over the place. These are two guys, Thomas Massey and Tucker Carlson, who have never uttered the words the Jews in their life. They're just not anti-Semites at all.

So there's a lot of people, I think, who are when they're critical of the Israeli government's response to this, get lumped in as pro-Hamas. I will certainly say that's certainly not my position. I think your description of them, death cult, by the way, the same term that Daryl Cooper used to describe Hamas, I think is an accurate one. And it was horrible. But I think that the, you know, I think that your characterization, first of all, of that they gave the Palestinians a state in 2005 is just wrong. I just think that is not at all an accurate way

to describe the disengagement, which we could get into more if you want to. But first of all, I would just point out that if the two-state solution was achieved, I assume you're arguing it was taken away after that. You're not still arguing that the Palestinians have a state, or are you saying they have had a state since 2005? They were given a stage in the Gaza. And when did it, when was it taken away? Well, they kind of screwed it up for themselves on 7th October. So you're saying from 2005 all the way till October 7th, there was a two-state solution. It had been achieved. Well, it was another state, yeah. Okay, but that would be two states then. No, it was another state. It was different from the PA. Okay, right, but I'm saying a Palestinian state. Yeah. Okay. So what's

interesting about that is that this is not how, like, this is not how any of the leaders really describe it. I mean, when Netanyahu himself is not claiming that they had already achieved a two-state solution, why are you talking about this? What happened in 2005 in the disengagement was that essentially Israel went from occupying the place to surrounding the place. And they've had it under a brutal blockade since 2007. And yes, you were right. Why do you think? I don't agree the blockade was brutal by any means. You don't think the blockade of Gaza was brutal?

How brutal do you think the Egyptians are? Pretty brutal. Yeah. They laid a loud stuff in. Okay. I mean, some stuff has gotten in. Yes, that's true. More than some stuff.

More than some stuff. Okay. Some from, I'll say this, right? Because there's been different levels of blockade, even before 2007, going back. I know in 1996, they had like a pretty strong blockade that year. According to the World Bank, it contracted 40% of the GDP of Gaza. So just for reference, the Great Depression was a 30% contraction. This was in 1996.

For one year, they gave them something worse than our Great Depression. That was just one year. From 2007 on, there's been a blockade of that country. You don't think that's kept the country poor? Why do you think there's a blockade of any kind? Why is there a blockade? Well, I mean, the argument from Israel would be. No, why do you think?

I would say, okay, I think that the disengagement, I think, Smotrich was correct when he said that, I'm sorry, my mistake there. I think the, which another quote that I'm sure you're familiar with, but Dove Weisscliffe, who was the senior advisor to Sharon, was the prime minister at the time. He essentially said the reason we're doing the disengagement, the reason we're doing this is so that we can put the peace process in formaldehyde. This is the reason we're not asking my question. You're not asking my right-wing Israeli politicians. But what do you I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm saying, so I think they disengaged in order to kill the peace process. I think they put the full blockade around the country for the reason that they've always

kind of done it there that, yeah, they don't want too much stuff getting in. They want to keep them, as they put it, on a diet, and they don't want rockets to fly into Israel. The second one is a kind of important one, isn't it, the final? Yeah, it is. If the Palestinian leadership in Gaza after 2005 had not from the get-go decided to use Gaza as a stock. stockpiling place for rockets to fire into Israel, all of it would be different. If they had just resisted the temptation that so many of us do in our lives to stop keeping RPGs in our cellars and then Katusha rockets in our children's bedrooms, all of it could have been different.

If that desire to live in peace beside your neighbors had superseded the desire to stockpile rockets, it would all be different. Yeah, or if Israel just hadn't occupied them for 60 years, it would all be different, too. They weren't occupying. They weren't occupying. Well, you believe in self-determination, I'm sure. Yes. Believe in individual rights, yeah, sure.

Okay, individual rights. And that includes the right to make bad decisions. Yes. The Palestinians in Gaza, when they voted in Hamas, made a very bad decision. Yeah, of course, Douglass. Hang on. Hang on. And in the years after that, they made bad decision after bad.

decision. It was a very bad decision to continually fire thousands of rockets into Israel. It was a very bad decision to use what boats came in early on and to use the smuggling networks from Egypt, not to bring in supplies you could actually build a thriving society with, but to bring in rockets. It was a very bad idea. No, there was not starvation in Gaza after 2005. No, there was no deficit of goods coming in. I've been plenty of times. There's no deficit? No, there are plenty of, there are plenty of, have you been to the crossing points? No. When were you last there at all? I've never been. You've never been. Am I not allowed to talk about it now? I've never been to, have you ever been to Nazi Germany? Are you allowed to have feelings about them? You can't time travel,

but you can't, but you can travel. Okay, but so what? So what's the point? Like, no, I find that. Lots of people have been there and agree with me and lots of people have been there and agree with you. Yeah, but if you're going to spend a year and a half talking about a place, you should at least do the courtesy of visiting it. All right. I just think this is a non-argument. You don't think? No, I think it's a non-argument.

But if you're an ex- well, you have to go and touch the ground. No, I think you have to see. I think it's a good idea to see stuff, particularly if you spend a career talking about something. Yes. I have a journalistic rule of trying never to talk about a country even in passing unless I've at least been there. Okay. It's a sort of normal, it's a normal thing to do. You're talking about, hang on, you're talking about crossing points. And not only of you've never been to a crossing point in either Egypt or in Israel, but you've never even been to the region. Okay. Again, I think this is a non-argument.

I don't understand. No, no, it's not a non-argument. It's not an non-argument. If you're insisting that you're an expert of some kind, or not claiming you're an expert, but still talking about it, about the provisions going into Gaza or not, if you've never seen any of this going on. So you're not allowed to speak about things that you've read about. You can only speak about things that you've seen with your own eyes. You can talk about what you want as you're proving. But that is a different matter from spending an awfully long amount of time

talking about an issue in a region you haven't even had the courtesy. to visit whilst developing all of these views about it. I mean, Jerry, I know you want to say something. Go ahead. And this is my point when he was saying, if you have not visited the culture or stayed there or had any time with the people there, you don't know what's going on. Right now they're debating about if there were starvation in Palestine previous to 2005. Yeah.

Murray is saying they didn't have any of that. It was a, you know, a pretty good country. They had all this stuff. The worst thing they had was the government of Hamas. And Hamas is a bad terrorist group that ran this country. And I think that was what his point was in the beginning of this whole debate is you can't really reflect and debate about it if you've not actually seen it for yourself. I don't agree with that. Because really what Chris is saying or whatever his name is, what's his name?

Douglas. No, the other dude. Oh, Dave. Yeah. What Dave's saying is there was starvation, and Douglas is saying there wasn't. And the only way to determine who's going to win that debate is somebody that has visited the place. He said it wasn't happening. I was there.

Were you? No, I wasn't. I don't agree with that. And I'll tell you why. Because, you know, if you think about that the fact that Israel deficit 40% of the GDP of Gaza during that time, well, I would assume that that 40% of the GDP was not. weapons that was coming in from outside of Gaza. I highly doubt that weaponry would be considered in the GDP where Israel is literally in control of this region.

There is no two-state solution. Israel was not in control of that region. They were, absolutely. They border it. It was an open-air prison. Listen, Gaza was allowed to exist in that area, but Israel controlled that area for years and years and years and years and years. And especially after Israel became a nation in a country, Gaza was controlled.

I mean, you know, the term that so many pro-Palestinian protesters, the reason they want to say open-air prisons, although, listen, I am definitely not a pro-Palestinian protester, pro-Mas or any of that shit. All I'm saying is, is that 100% Israel controlled every single aspect of that region, of that area. And when you're- They were controlled by Hamas. No, but listen, but also too, with Douglas Murray, where he's saying, you know, you can't vote in Hamas and then expect for great things to happen. No, he said they made very, very bad decisions. But I know what you're going to say. Do you think they wanted to vote for them?

Yeah. Obviously, not probably. I don't know. I don't know because a lot of these people were indoctrinated into thinking the way they did. Yeah. And you've got to remember that. That's the same thing we complain about here in the America. are in America with our education that were indoctrinated.

Well, listen, but here's my point. It doesn't even matter about that. The biggest question is, like, how many of these Palestinians actually even voted for Hamas? We don't know. Well, they obviously had a voting system. Yeah. Okay. But do you know how much shit we've talked about our own voting system?

Supposedly the most just voting system in the history of the world? And yet, for some reason now all the sudden that the Hamas and Palestine's voting system is is so amazing and good and true? These people were indoctrinated to hate Jews, not Israel, but Jews. Well, Jews hate them probably too. And that's the way it is. And when they make choices to keep bombarding and sending bombs to Israel, as he was saying, I'm not sure.

I'm not an expert on any of this. All I know is October 7th was a very, very bad thing. And this is why they decided to go into Israel and do all these horrible things. to Jewish people in Israel and expect not to be retaliated on, give me a freaking break. If that happened in America, if it happened in America, like 9-11 supposedly happened, look what we do and how we respond. Yeah, we did. Well, we invaded a country.

We lost shit tons of money. We lost shit tons of troops. Not only do we invade Afghanistan, we also invaded Iraq for various bullshit reasons. but then also we created this indoctrination of many Americans that hated than Muslims. And so you have to understand because of that act on September 11th of 2001. And I think that's even more important, actually, why we should get to the bottom of what actually happened on 9-11. Because the fact of how it changed our consensus and our beliefs and our relationship with the Muslim world, regardless of whatever you think of the Muslim world, or you think they're extremists or whatever.

I never said that. I'm not saying you. I'm saying people in general. But the very least, after 9-11, many Americans believed, hey, our war is against Muslims. Our war is against the people that are not like us. They're not. They're on the other side of this belief system or argument. And to be honest with you, as far as a Christian nation, a Muslim nation, I mean,

kind of both them do agree or believe in Jesus to some degree. But either way, I'm not saying that 9-11 didn't. happen necessarily because of Muslim ideology. You've got to dig into why 9-11 actually happened. Well, it's an extremist. That's the difference. It absolutely is. It's not a religious belief.

It's when you get to an extreme belief in religion that is outside of religion, which you guys know, I don't even believe in religion anyways. So religion's not like a great thing for me, but when you go on an extreme side saying you have to kill somebody else because of their religion, I don't agree with it. Yeah, but also, too, is that, no, I 100% agree with that. But all I'm saying is that after 9-11, we felt like everything our government did in response to that is okay, whether it is to kill civilians or not kill civilians, whatever, invade a country, invade Afghanistan, and invade Iraq. And then you think about all these people that had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden. My point to this is, is that even after 9-11, right, you had the Taliban, you had ISIS, you had the Muslim community, which in large part,

when the United States of America, alongside of many NATO countries, as far as Great Britain and in Australia, and they invaded these local villages throughout Afghanistan, throughout Iraq. You then created this hatred of these people in these regions against Americans in the West. You created that because of they invaded their country.

And do you think that these people in these regions like hated America to begin with and they just, they loved the fact that 9-11 happened. Now, listen, there was some of them that probably did. But also the reality is, is that many of these people in villages in Afghanistan and Iraq and all this stuff, they were victimized by the same exact people that may be carried out 9-11. ISIS used to come through villages in Afghanistan and kill the shit out of people.

I mean, because they were the authoritarian leaders. They were the dictators of this nation. And so there was so many of the people of Afghanistan that hated ISIS. They hated the Taliban. They hated Osama bin Laden and all of the leadership that was over the terrorist organization and groups. Because oftentimes they were victimized. They had their kids beheaded and killed just because maybe they weren't extremist enough. Or maybe they didn't believe in this enough as they should.

Or maybe it was just a fact that these people are pieces of shit and they are actual terrorists. But these are the people that were leading. And so what I'm saying is, even in the case of Palestine, in the case of Gaza, you have millions of people that are in this region that are led by Hamas, which is a terrorist organization, very similar to ISIS. And so imagine the fact that if you actually believe that all the people in Gaza actually cared and loved and liked Hamas, you're wrong. They were, I mean, this was a totalitarian state. This was a dictatorship. And I'm not saying that everybody in that, in that country, love the Jews or love the West. I'm not saying that.

But everyone didn't hate the Jews. Everyone didn't hate the West. They just wanted to live a peaceful life in their own freaking country in their own region. And then after October 7th, yes, I believe Israel responded in a very bad way. I think Israel responded by destroying the entire area. They leveled it completely. And the amount of civilians that have died in that war, innocent women and children and kids that were just completely obliterated, I don't believe that is the right answer to a response

from October 7th. I just don't believe that. There's no way. That's like saying that, you know, we did, say, for example, The United States government did something in another country, which would do all the freaking time. We go over and victimized countries on a regular basis and then say that just so happens to be that other country we somehow go over and do shit against.

They come over and destroy us and obliterate, say, New York City and Chicago and all of this. And they kill everyone in all these cities. Like, do you think that you would still be like, well, we did that? So I guess it's cool to do that. The point is, is that Dave Smith and Douglas Murray here are debating an argument between Israel and Hamas war. It's not to say that you should not be able to retaliate. Well, it's not saying you should be able to retaliate against who came on October 7th.

But it's just the fact that like, do you justify your retaliation with killing everyone in Gaza? But are you justifying it on the fact that Israel is actually trying to do that? Or are you justifying it on the fact that Hamas is hiding behind the people, the boys, the girls, the moms, the dads, the schools, the hospitals. They're hiding in all these places to basically make a barrier of their people because they don't give a fuck about their people. Well, I will say this. I mean, I don't know what my, I know what I would say. I'm just telling you in America, on American soil, Americans, if the same thing were happening here, we would not hide, we would not hide behind our children, our mothers, our schools,

our churches, our hospitals in order to fight a war. And that's what Hamas is doing. And it's making it very hard for Israel to get the job done. And not to mention that, but Israel. did, they sprang out all kinds of pamphlets. They have told people, listen, this is where we're going. This is where we're bombing. Please move out of the area.

Get out of there if you don't want to be killed. You know what Hamas does? They keep them in the area so they'll be killed. Hamas uses their people to be killed. It's not Israel. It's Hamas. Okay. Well, so if you want my opinion, number one, this is a war between Israel and this other

faction of people, which is Hamas. I believe also Palestinians. I don't think to the degree, in my opinion, that Israel has carried out their retaliatory attacks on Palestine. They've been very strategic. No, they haven't. They leveled the entire area. They killed any and everything in the entire area.

Do I think that they didn't know they were going to kill thousands and thousands of civilians? Absolutely, they did. And so on the same token, you're saying, oh, well, the Palestinians didn't care anything about Jews. Well, apparently Jews didn't give a shit about Palestinians either. They didn't care about the citizens and the civilians of Palestine. Who started the war? Okay, but that's a good argument because you can go back in history to figure out who actually started the war.

Okay, well, that's fine. Israel believes that they are entitled to all that land. Israel gave Palestine that land. I don't even necessarily agree with that. And that's why I don't want to really get into a huge argument about this. But the point is that I never, ever think that anything should be justified by killing an entire civilization of people. people. But do you think that Hamas should be using their people as a shield? Oh my God. Because that's what's happening. We all use our people as shields. And we all, we all would. Other countries would as well. If they cared about their people, they would get them out of there. But instead they used them. Oh, really? Okay. Well, what about the Jerusalem Post article about that? Israel knew about October 7th was going to happen beforehand.

That has nothing to do with that. Yeah. If you cared about your people, you'd get them out. I'm not going to try to argue. Yes, this is a debate. And this is a debate. is something that we disagree heavily on, Chad. But I did talk to one of the number one prosecutors in Israel, and I asked her this question directly. I'm not so sure she even is in speaking terms with the government or not, but I asked her directly. I said, did Israel know the time and place of this attack? And she said, Sherry, no. We knew that they were trying to plan an attack. We had been doing surveillance. We've been watching, but we did not know the day or the time. She could have been lying to me. I don't know. But the point is the attack happened. Yeah, so you ask an Israeli attorney that is a part of the government in large parts to where they sue terrorist organizations, and yet you think that she's going to be honest with you. I'm saying, Chad, you have to understand wartime as well. You're acting like Israel is doing this on purpose. They're slaughtering all these people on

purpose. I don't know. I don't think they're doing it on purpose. I don't know that they aren't. I think Hamas uses their people as a shield is what I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. So you think if Israel has this belief and it's not even belief, but maybe maybe a certain faction, these people do hate Jews. Can you agree with me that Hamas is using their people as a shield? I think some. Yeah, absolutely. For sure. Well, when they're putting bombs and all these things in schools, bedrooms, hospitals, churches. Do you not think that? Have you saw the map?

Have you saw the map of Gaza now? I understand that. There is not one building that is left upright. Not one. I know, but I'm also saying when you're in war, that's going to happen. Oh, yeah. The entire region is going to be devastated. Israel did give advance notice and let them know, hey, we're going to be bombing in this

region. You need to move east or west or wherever they had to move. They gave advance notice as much as possible. I don't think Israel is just. just this genocide group that just hates Palestine. I think they're going after Hamas and they want to demolish Hamas for good. It's not the people. It's Hamas.

No, it's a terrorist group. I think they want to demolish the ideology. Okay. And that could be part of it too. And that means everyone. Yeah, they told everybody, hey, move. And then no country's one of them.

So they couldn't actually leave their country. And then even their places that they were told to go, they bombed. Why do you know other countries want them, Chad? I don't know. You do know. No, it doesn't matter to me because that's not, look, I'm not pro any Muslim, whatever. Why do no other countries want to take these refugees in? Well, I think they're afraid that the Hamas is going to get into their countries.

And it's their ideologies. Maybe, but it's not all of them. I mean, there were at least 60,000 Christians in Palestine. Okay. And I hope that they survived. You know, this happens in war and I hate war. and I don't agree with war. But when somebody on the Hamas level attack somebody like on an American level,

don't think that they're not going to come back and tell you fuck around and find out because you're going to find out. Yeah, I understand that. But even if the United States was bombing an entire region and killing everyone that was in it. They tried to give notice, Chad. Okay. Well, they, whatever. But my point is, is that you can't, in my opinion, you can't be like, all right, well, it's cool that 60,000. civilians died or how many ever does.

I don't even know. It's not cool. I don't want to see anyone die. Well, maybe I don't know. I don't even know if I want to see terrorists die. But something like what is your resolution to it, Chad? What would you prefer Israel to do? Well, I would prefer that, look, I don't know because I don't know what the solution is in

that region. What I do know is that, you know, yes, you do have a problem with a terrorist organization that runs that region. There's no question about that. it needs to be some type of democracy or some type of republic of the people that they actually vote for the people they want in. And the reality of that is, is like, I don't know for sure that these people actually voted in Hamas.

I highly doubt that they actually voted in Hamas as their leadership. You know, there's something that Dave Smith and Douglas Murray go great in the detail because at one point in time, the Palestinian authority actually was the biggest concern for Israel. So then, I guess Israel started funding in some ways some of the Hamas movement that brought in and came into Palestine to essentially overthrow the Palestinian Authority. What that only ended up doing was then creating a terrorist organization inside of Gaza. And then now the result of that is October 7th. And then now the result of October 7th is thousands, like damn near 100,000 civilians

have been murdered. Do you honestly think this was thought up only by Hamas? Or do you, who do you think? I have no idea. The main player in this is. I mean, it could be Iran. You know, the reality of it is, is that I, I ran. I just don't understand why they give a shit really about Israel.

Israel is, yes, it is a very big power play from the West, from the United States. Maybe that's why Iran sees Israel as a threat outside of Israel. being a close partner with the United States. I don't think Iran necessarily would give a shit about Israel because they have their land, they have their country. Why would they care about Israel? I don't know, except for the fact that I think that Israel is like the little brother of the United States. But do you do realize after Biden unfroze all that money to Iran,

that wasn't just Biden. It was Obama sent. That's when October 7th happened. Yeah. And Obama sent like billions of dollars. to Iran as well, like in cash money. I mean, it was almost as if we were helping Iran fund these groups around Israel. So, you know, you got to ask yourself, like, how much U.S. involvement is in this?

Why would we be funding Iran when we're trying to say that we don't want you to create a nuclear program? So we're going to give you multi-millions, if not billions of dollars in these deals. Like, that makes no effing sense to me whatsoever. Look, I mean, I'm not at all. I'm not at all anti-Palestine. I'm not at all any of that stuff. My thing is, is that I just think that we just don't understand the entire history of the region.

I don't think we fully understand who's in the right and who's in the wrong. Whether or not you're Jewish, whether or not you're Christian, whether or not you're Muslim, I don't think there is a streamlined direct, I guess, path to who's right and who's wrong in this. I don't know. I mean, we could get into more of this. Let's play out the last few minutes of this piece from Douglas Murray and Dave Smith. I mean, now I slightly get an idea of where you're coming from. You've read about this blockade.

And so you imagine that that's what it is. I imagine you've read all the people who say that Gaza was a concentration camp. And you probably think that too. Am I right? I mean, again, literally a concentration camp, it shares a lot of similarities, I would think. Wow. Well, as I say, you can't time travel back to the Nazi era, but you could go to the Middle East and actually visit it. It's not hard to do.

The World Bank said in 1996 for the one year of the blockade. Now the libertarians are quoting the World Bank, I do it. It doesn't mean anything. This is a non-argument. Yes, I'm saying the World Bank did their own analysis of this. And they said that it was a 40% of the whole year. Hold on. You've got to stop interrupting and let him finish the sentence. The World Bank said that 40% drop in the GDP of one year due to the blockade.

And there's been a blockade from 2007 on. So are you saying that this hasn't had an economic effect? Is that the argument? No, of course it'll have an economic effect. So you're saying you have to be on the ground and do an audit of the blockade in order to be able to comment on it? I think you should at least know what it is, what the territory is, what the situation is in the region. Yes, absolutely. And the only way to do that is to be there in person.

I think that's the best way. It's not the only way, but it's the best way. For sure. For sure. If you have never seen the countries in question, you've never spoken to the people in question. You've never interviewed anyone. You've never gone around. You've never seen the terrain and so on.

And you've used Wikipedia. I'm sorry, no, that's not the same thing. Okay. Well, I've not just used Wikipedia. But didn't you write a big piece when the war in Ukraine first came out titled something like, I've been to Ukraine and they can win. They can repel the Russians. So you could go there and still get it wrong, right?

No, I was with the Ukrainian armed forces in 2022 when they were retaking territory from the Russians. Right. The last time they had any advances. Yeah. Yeah. I said I can see how they can win, which would be advances like that. Yeah.

You said if we just fund them or if we just armed them, that they can then, they can repel. I said that the Ukrainian army was making great successes, which it was when I was with them in the fall of 22. Listen, there were lots of people who went to Iraq and said, we'll be greeted as liberators. and it'll be paid for in oil and democracy will spread through the region. So I don't know. Either take on the arguments or don't. But I'm saying, but your argument is incorrect.

Okay, fine. Well, then present a counter argument to it. But to just tell me I'm not allowed to talk about something because I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert. So you shouldn't talk about it now. You haven't been there. Yeah, I know. But you keep playing this game where it's like the whole opening to this podcast was like

the non-experts talking about this is such a problem. Now you're saying because I haven't been there. I can't talk about it. Is there a blockade there that's caused? causing economic devastation or not. According to the World Bank, there is. First of all, I don't think it's a game. I don't think it's a game at all.

Me neither. I'm not playing a game. Okay? But this is semantics. No, but this is important. I've seen plenty of this up close. I've seen plenty of this with my own eyes because I do believe that one of the things you should do if you're talking about something is to see it.

Yeah, you've established that. Is there a blockade? The blockade that existed, to the extent it existed, was a blockade to try to make sure that the Israelis and the Egyptians knew what materials were going in and out of Gaza after the first rocket fires when Hamas, in fact, before Hamas was elected. The Israelis and the Egyptians, the Egyptians didn't do a very good job of it, were meant to be trying to make sure that the materials that went into Gaza were not materials that could be used to build up the Gaza and Hamas war machine. The reason why trucks get searched is not because the Israelis want to search through grain or flour. It's because they wanted to stop the trucks containing the arms and the munitions that the Ghazan Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters were going to use the fire against Israel. And I'm sorry it just makes the most obvious strategic sense, as the late Great Jordan Rivers once said, if as an appeal to authority.

That one I like. She also said Michelle Obama's a man. Yeah, I know. She did that. I'm saying she got everything right. So continue. Go ahead. So there's basically the argument.

And it goes deeper than that. I mean, they really get into Dave Smith arguing with Douglas Murray about the, I guess you can say the validity of killing thousands of civilians of Palestine based on October 7th. and the history. We're not going to go into all that because, as you can already see, Sherry and I do not agree necessarily on this conflict or maybe even the response of Israel versus how it started, all of that. And to be quite honest, we're not experts on the history between the two regions.

Nor have we visited them. Yeah, well, whatever. And I still don't even, I just don't think that you have to visit somewhere to be an expert in it. No, just like we were talking to our friend of Ukraine, what's his name? Yeah, J.D. J.D. You, he even told us you don't understand the culture or the terrain or anything unless you're there in the moment. And I think that does play a huge part in debate.

You can't debate on something you don't firsthand know. Yeah, but also you can. And it's fine. We're debating it right now and we still disagree. So it doesn't matter. We would not be able to have a podcast at all if we can't debate or talk about things that we've never been to. I'm just saying I think it is better to understand the cultures, I guess. And excuse me, and see it firsthand.

I get what he's saying is what I'm saying. Yeah, but this guy's also saying that Ukraine has no Nazi ties. And yet he's been there. So did he miss that entire part? I don't know because I've never been to Ukraine. And I know that. And so does historians know that? And you can literally just see statues throughout Ukraine that are pro-Nazi people that the military

and the government look up to or at least, I guess, still allow in their country. You know, and people can argue that maybe in the United States about slave owners or whatever, but like how much emphasis. And especially if you have military units inside of Ukraine, like the Azop Battalion, that are pro-Nazi, they are what, I mean, if you really want potentially a white supremacist, maybe that would be who you would want to call out. But, you know, this guy's been to Ukraine. So he should know all of this.

He should be able to know much more about this than we do. But yet what he's doing on this podcast is saying that this don't exist. This is crazy that you would ever say this. He's also saying all this other bullshit that is nonsense that we know for a fact is true. But yet if he's been to Ukraine, he should know all this. He should be given a direct report on all of these things. Although we have not been there, we know is true. We know is true.

It's not like a debate. I get your stance. I get your stance. I do get your stance. But I do agree that it would be better to at the region and understand the region to better debate it. That is not. So you think if you're standing in Ukraine or Israel that you're going to know much more than we know right now? No, I think if we spent time in Ukraine or Gaza,

or Israel, I think we would better understand the region, the culture. Well, listen, listen. The way people live, I would think you would better understand that. It's just like somebody coming from Europe to America. They don't know our culture. They can see on YouTube and, you know, but unless you experience it, like if you go to Mexico, for example, I mean. Well, sure, you know what we should do. We should travel the world.

No, we should go to Gaza and experience it because I'm sure that we'll be able to report. But guess where we're going to report from? We're going to be ghost. We are literally going to be ghost. So, guys, if you want to know our report after we go to Gaza, you're going to have to sense us in the ether because we are going to be dead. Oh, my God. I'm saying I'm saying I get his point.

It's not a great point, but I do understand where he's coming from. Well, we should go to Gaza. Guys, you're just going to have to pray to God and see if he can relay a message from us because wherever we're at because I'm sure we'll be bombed within a couple weeks from us getting there. That's not the main point, though. Listen, we're not experts on this, which is why we're not going to go too much in detail on this. Guys, you let us know what you think about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and also the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

We're going to close this with Fire by Haypon. Until next time, guys, we love you. Peace out. Peace out, guys. And I'm not popping a brace. And I'm not popping the brace. I'm too competitive. I like the narrative.

I don't know best in the league. Who you comparing with that is. Fettered at them top of the throne that it's me How you're moving up on the speed I just been bringing the heat I just been bringing the fire Bringing the fire I just been bringing up bringing up

Bringing a break in the neck can stop me They know that I'm bringing I'm bringing the plug in the I got the fuel of my face Trust me I'm making the name We are not one in the same I am on top of the game I cut out the line on my brakes and that's what the drivers are insane.

Heart of a chair, adrenaline rushes is numb in the pain. I'm too competitive. I like the narrative. I don't know best in the league. Who you comparing with that is infedited? Top of the thorn. It's me. How you're moving it's up on the speed?

I just been bringing the heat. I just been bringing the fire. Been bringing the fire. I just been bringing a, bringing the fire. And they can stop me. They thought I was underdog. I did not fear, not one of y'all They thought I was underdog

I didn't not fear Not one of y'all They thought I was underdog I do not fear Not one of y'all They thought I was underdog I did not fear Not one of y'all

I'm too competitive I like the narrative That don't know best in the league Who you comparing With debt is in fetid Top of their thrown It's me How you moving someone

To speed I just been bringing the heat I just been bringing I just been bringing I just been bringing I just been bringing The brigging up Bringing up bringing up

Bigging the fuck And neck can't stop me.