Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast - 429 Joe Rogan Experience Review of Mike Baker

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

This week I’m join by Nick Allen a retired Green Beret and host of the Lesser Known Operators Podcast. For more Rogan exclusives support us on Patreon patreon.com/JREReview www.JREreview.com For all marketing questions and inquiries: [e-mail] Follow me on Instagram at www.instagram.com/joeroganexperiencereview Please email us here with any suggestions, comments and questions for future shows.. [e-mail]

You are listening to the Joe Rogan Experience Review Podcast. We find little nuggets, treasures, valuable pieces of gold in the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast and pass them on to you, perhaps expand a little bit. We are not associated with Joe Rogan in any way. Think of us as the talking dead to Joe's walking dead. You're listening to the Joe Rogan Experience Review. What a bizarre thing we've created. Now with your host Adam

One go enjoy the show. Hey guys and welcome to another episode of the JRE review This week we got a body of mine on I'm trying to get you know what I like to call specialists on for certain episodes and a Mike Baker CIA episode. We're going to have somebody, you know, either from the CIA or some military background. But we got a guy here, Nick. He has a great podcast called Lesser Known Operators and welcome to the show, Nick. Appreciate you having me on Adam.

I hope that wasn't too much of an intro. It's tough to, you know, be a specialist in this role. It's a little different from my field, but I'll hope that I don't embarrass myself too bad here. You're a humble man, humble man, but really most people around me are specialists because I know very little about what is going on.

And when it comes to Mike Baker, he's such a staple of Rogan's show and he's kind of like one over the hearts of the Jerry listeners. But at the same time, I know so little about that world that he comes from. It's like hard for me to, I don't want to say trust him, but to kind of like follow his, his, maybe his logic on some stuff. He also seems still to this day quite protective of the CIA. I know he's retired, but he's definitely Doing some politics that don't you think?

You familiar with the term persona non grata, right? Yeah There are things that if you say them and you came from these units or organizations That you can get stamped with that moniker. And that is something you do not want to happen. You don't want to slip. So everything, not everything that he says, but most things that he does say are veiled through this version of what is suitable to go out to the public.

Hmm. So it's not just a question of like, I understand that with classified things, like even if you retire, you can't, you can't break those rules. Right. But does it go all the way down to just the basic politics of the position as well? It's like, if he starts just kind of talking some CIA shit, they're going to kick him out of the club or?

There's things people can say that are politically okay. Mike's very good at wording things kind of down into the layman. And that's why Rogan pulls him on so much is cause if Joe doesn't understand something, he'll pull them on there. Hey, can you sort this out for me? I understand it better. So Joe's very good with that. But to get back, like, there's political aspirations in play with intelligence. There's what's in the media, there's stances on things. And vague is the name of the game, really.

And you want to say stuff where people understand where you're coming from, but you're also not putting anyone in danger or burning any bridges that you've built along the way because reputation in the intelligence business or military or anything is worth way more than you can imagine. That's a good point because he is pretty non-committal about stuff. Like Rogan wants to just throw out his conspiracy theory and he's like waiting for Mike to be like, oh yeah, but Mike often is like,

maybe that, maybe this, could be a lot of things. I picked it up in the phrase that Mike keeps saying, I guess I'm not putting it correctly or I guess I'm not wording it correctly, right? He wants to say something. This is just me listening. He wants to say something, but he's not sure how to get out the right way to say it. Without taking a side. Because he's in the public eye, too. So, he has to walk a fine line. He's not staunchly this way or staunchly that way. He's more of a pragmatic center of the road approach. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you can guess a little bit his politics, but, but, uh, he doesn't, he doesn't like lean into it too heavily. Talking about the public eye. Um, yeah, obviously Mike has, I think like like, National Geographic shows that he does. He's doing some TV things. I can't remember the name of his show. Is it like Something Files?

Man, I've even watched... Black Files? I think it's that, right? Isn't it? I've watched it. It's a good show. And I loved hearing that he was doing some work for British servicemen. He also brought up that the British aren't very good at raising money for their veterans

in the same way. No, they're not good at seasoning their food. It's all true. I wish I could defend it, but it's all true. And yeah, he's over there kind of, they were doing something in the, what was it, in the Middle East on camels, raising awareness and some money.

And really it turned into a little bit of like a a DEI pressured kind of event. It was just seen as a bunch of white guys doing something. And there was kind of like this pushback that was happening. That's at the corporate level. When you're doing something like that and trying to raise money for a foundation, you have to, your biggest supporters are going to be from a corporate sponsors.

Sometimes you'll get private entities. That's just one on one person that wants to donate or somebody that was in that unit who rose to be a successful business and they're just given back to their brothers, right? But a corporate has a board and they have policies and those policies have to look good when they put things out in the press, right? And they have to think of their image and the answer to people, especially the people that have the purse strings. But when you get down to it, I've done fundraisers and there's fitness type things, or this was a recreation of a trek by Lawrence of Arabia, right? That's right. At the lowest level of it, this is just tough guys doing a tough thing in a very tough environment. And there's no thought

for that type of, oh, this person looks like that, this person looks like this. And you kind of only have that understanding. And if you were in a military unit like that, of there's no of that here. We're brothers and sisters. We're here for the same goal. There's no thoughts of that here. We're brothers and sisters. We're, we're here for the same goal. There's no thoughts of that. So it is unfortunate that that is pushed like that, but that just comes from the corporate lens of trying to get money. And you have to convey that to people with the purse strings of that's not our focus here. This is what we're doing. We're here to raise money for these injured service members and their families. Yeah. And I think you hit on something important. It's like, you know, especially in this new administration, they're really downplaying

all this DEI stuff. I think it's kind of kind of bring us back and level that playing field that was getting a little out of control, let's be fair. But even if that's gone, the whatever the corporate mind is wanting, you still have to play ball with it, right? It's like there's always going to be something that the board is looking for when it comes to donating and you've just got to kind of play with that system. People don't do anything unless they have to or want to. And it's the same in business. Right? They have to do things because there's government regulation. They want to do things

because they want profits to go up, or they want a better image, or they want to be seen in this different light. So, there's a second and third order of looking into things. They are doing X because they want to achieve Y or Z or X plus Z, something like that. I'm never good at math, but I'm sure some mathematician. You're on it. You're on it. Yeah. And they don't want to be seen as not playing whatever the popular game is at the time and being seen as insensitive and all the rest of it. I mean, you know, I get it. Talking about, well, not corporations, but government things. They jump in a doge. This is new. You know, I haven't talked about it much. What do we know about it? I mean, they're going into that US aid spending stuff, which

sounds a lot of that sounds bonkers I mean I don't have the report I just see sound bites and of course people are either massively up in arms about it like this is bullshit what a waste or they're doing this defensive thing where they're like oh the forest people are losing their jobs and you know there's a middle ground there. You want to get something done. So here's how I see it. This administration came in last time thinking they were going to lose, right?

With no plan. Right. And they came in this time knowing they're going to win. And we have, and not with the view of, we have four years to accomplish things, it's we only have four years to accomplish anything. And that's their mentality every day lost in their eyes is an opportunity lost. And with that you lose, and Mike spoke to this,

you lose some tact and then the way you do things, more of a slash and burn type of mentality. Oh, we're just going to cut down the whole forest and plant something back later, even if there were healthy trees in there. You're in Montana. You saw that bug that is destroying the pine trees there, right? Oh, yeah. So instead of trying to eradicate that little by little, they just level the whole forest. We're gonna start over. We're gonna plant everything back. That's gonna upset a lot of people, right?

Especially people who like trees. And in the government, they do not like to do things fast. There's people that have, that their whole career is there. And they will, people clamor for change. They want this change, they want that to change. But as soon as there's a system ready to be implemented, they'll push back against it for the default of the norm, because they know what that is. And you don't know what the future holds for them. default of the norm because they know what that is and you don't know what the future holds for them. Yeah.

I think it's just going to be important. Like Mike was saying to keep some tact. I know they're running out of, you know, in a sense, they feel like they're running out of time. They've got to move quick. And maybe this is the only way to do it. Like who am I to come up with how the hell those should do something? I have no idea.

But what I would love to see them do is just, you know, for example, when they released all the social security numbers, and they were like, these 200 year old people are still on this list. I think it would have been great if they'd found out that those checks actually aren't going out for the most part. And then not use that as kind of like a way to get people riled up because it's clearly going to keep creating a divide. Like why not just focus on the 4.7 trillion dollars that's not accounted for by the freaking US treasury? Like that one seems like a big problem. What's $5 trillion among friends though, really? Uh, so you've ever, you don't ever talk to your grandparents, right?

And you tell them something that's kind of shocking and they just go, oh, and they think about it. And that's that previous generation. That's, that's kind of lost now, right? Because if you tell somebody something now that's shocking, they'll jump to a conclusion right away without processing what all that is. So Elon sees something and he posts it, and then these news stories run with it, all these different directions, and people have a reaction to it, and they have an opinion. Where, and I think both sides don't see this, is,

okay, well, where's the rest of the information? Is this true? And you have to run that down. Well, people don't want to wait for that. We're quick to be outraged. We're quick to draw conclusions. And that's both sides. You're trying to combat. So they're putting out information, information, information, and you're going to have an opposing force to that. And you're seeing that right now in news. Oh, this happened. Oh, that's bad. This happened. That's good. That's bad. That's... I think we're jumping to conclusions too much. Oh, for sure. We're tweeting things out before we've barely even let the person finish telling us what is happening. I mean, we just, we love to jump on the next piece of information and share it. You know, and things get messy like that.

And I, I, the one thing that kept popping up every time they would post something though, is I was thinking the other day, you know, they could just rerelease the movie office space and now and not change anything. And it applies to this situation. Any scene from this can be applied to anything they're doing in the government right now with this doge. No doubt. The consultants.

There was some great memes too of those two. It had Vivek and, and, uh and Elon just interviewing people and brilliant. It is perfect for that. I think what is highlighted for me and what I hope is happening is exactly what you're saying. It's this slash and burn attempt because there just isn't the time. There's going to be so much pushback. It's going to slow everything down. And the bureaucracy will just get in the way of like a real good audit. So they're just flying through as many different agencies as possible. To see as much as they can in the time they have before judges

and everyone is stopping them and in the hopes of just kind of somehow putting a picture together, you know. Yeah. You create chaos. If you have enough fires burning at once, you've got a forest fire, right? Um, and maybe they don't think all of them are going to get, come be successful in their endeavors, but you've got all of these things going on over here and that's kind of like with a plan. Some of your plan is going to fail, but it could draw attention away from your main effort. So as Mike said, there's some tact not being used in this, but there's also

what is, and with the intelligence thing, what is true that's actually making it to the media and back to you, the user? Is that actually what is happening? We don't know. Right. Yeah, we kind of have to wait for some report that hopefully is transparent and useful. And you know, hopefully they do clear up the social security thing and they go back and they're like okay this wasn't quite as bad as we thought this is actually though and these other things I think that'd be useful the problem is our media is not

going to like the conclusion at all unless the conclusion makes doge look bad. So there won't be coverage on it. Even if there is a good report, it's just kind of how it goes. I mean, the subcommittee did a great report on COVID recently. It got no press at all, but it was because most of the findings were like, it came from a lab, social distancing doesn't work. It like went against all the shit that they were saying. And it exists. And it's a, it would be a great useful piece of, you know, factual data that you could present in an argument and it would still go nowhere with a lot of people. Because they don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear it. Stick to this side, what you, what you think you should believe for what other

people believe you and go with the flow. But really in the news and news cycle, it's the same as, you know, your show or my show, right? We're selling stories and if people don't want to listen to your story, well, then you're not making any money. Right. So that's really all it is to the end of the day. It doesn't matter how true it is.

It doesn't matter how impactful it is. It matters how well the story is told and if the audience is willing to receive it. Really. Yeah. Yeah. And I think both, Iwan and Trump in their respected ways, tell a good story because people either love it or they hate it. Kind of no one's in the middle, but it's people are paying attention. And it's definitely a lot more interesting than it was. It's a

lot more interesting than it has been. Why do you think Elon does this? Like for Trump I get it, but for Elon he's the richest man in the world, probably will eventually be the first trillionaire. I mean maybe some of those Saudi kings have more money but you never know how much they have. But yeah, he's like pretty liked for the most part until he got into politics and now people are, you know, plenty of people are getting real pissed off with him. Why do you think he would put himself through it? I mean, does he just see a path to, oh, this will eventually net me tons more money and power?

Does he really think he's doing something good? I can't figure it out I wouldn't want that hate. It would be way too stressful You can brush off a lot of hate with half a trillion dollars Yeah, I think that's one of it he's you could literally buy all of the brushes You get all of them all of them He's beyond reproach at this point, right? So that's one. You've got the attitude where I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks about me. I will never have to.

He's entrenched with the most powerful people in the world, the billionaire's club, and he's at the top of the pile. That's one reason. The other one is, if you hear him talk about his psyche or his intellect, I really think that he has to be engaged in something that is so far beyond a normal person's ability to comprehend. Difficult, just take his playing Diablo, right? Best out Diablo, the number one Diablo player in the world or something like that, right? Starting all these companies, doing all these impossible things. He has to, it's a physical thing that

he has to do or he can't rest. And I think he'll do that forever and ever. And then kind of a third reason, which is totally made up by me, is I believe as a private citizen, he has paid the most income taxes of any person ever in the history of the United States. So, and that's billions of dollars just in income tax. So yeah, let him, let him bounce around in the government and see where his billions of dollars in tax money went. That's actually a really good point. Let him bounce around in the government and see where his billions of dollars in tax money went. That's actually a really good point. Wouldn't you want to?

Wouldn't you want to see where your couple thousand dollars went? I think everyone does. But that's a good point that you say that if anyone had the right, wouldn't it be the person that once paid the most taxes? They should. I think he did a speech once where he was like, I was surprised. I wrote a check for like 10 billion to the IRS and I didn't even get like a certificate or a thank you. I just found that very funny because that's so much money, dude.

Yeah. But now, now he's friends with the people. He can get his little, he gives little IOU or his little prize from the IRS and go, he's knocking at the door. He said, Hey guys, I, uh, I paid for all this. Can I, uh, can I take a look around? That would be great if they gave him a trophy. Also I needed to know five things you did last week and you're fired.

And you're fired. It's just the guy getting a coffee. They're like, you're fired, dude. You know, what's interesting about him and you know, you got AOC saying that Elon's like the dumbest person she's ever talked to which is just such nonsense. But you know that there's a lot of talk now about really where his intellect is and is he just like, you know, Asperger's and not even smart and somehow really lucky like I don't know how anyone could believe that I mean, it just wouldn't make any sense but then you get people like Kevin O'Leary that

shocked that guy and Mike was talking about this or no, I think Rogan was that he's saying they're not cutting enough So he's a guy that buys companies sees when they they're not working, either resells them or whatever he does. And, you know, smart business guy, billionaire too, I think. Like much lower, but he's got some money. You can dismantle a business and the country will still run. You can't completely dismantle the government and we'll be safe from enemies, both foreign and domestic. Correct.

Yeah. You don't want to really, I guess, fuck with the military too much, right? Not if you want to lose a huge base of your voters, uh, overnight. Sure. So you see the recent, uh, what's the guy's name? Hegseth. Sure. Did you see the recent, what's the guy's name, Hegseth? The, yeah, he did like a seven minute little monologue that they put online. It's really good. He's basically saying, look, we're working with Doge.

We're going to audit things. There's also a bunch of things that won't be messed with when it comes to funding because they're too important. It was really good, dude. It was like cool to hear that. He's a smart guy and he knows what he's getting into. He's had time in the civilian sector. Right after he got into office, he flew out to first battalion 10th special forces group and did physical training with them in the morning.

Oh yeah, I saw that. That was a 10th special forces group out there in Germany. Dude, that's sick. This is the guy in charge of that now. It's like, I wouldn't get through that workout. And he is like, no, no problem at all. Just jump in. It shows a lot too, cause you know, it's good optics, but he was a,

I feel like at heart, you know, he's, he's a soldier and he just wants to show the guys that he's, he's one of them. Um, and that whole loyalty aspect, you know, that I, that I hear from, from military people that I've talked to, special forces guys I've done podcasts with. I mean, this, he's not just going there to have a photo op. Like, these are his brothers, like people he cares about. I mean, the idea that he would get in this position and then somehow turn his back on the people that these active service men, it doesn't seem plausible. I mean, he would have to be such a piece of shit to pull that off.

There was two sides of the coin, right? How do you know a politician's lying? Because they're lips are moving. They're speaking. Yeah. So as long as you take everything with a grain of salt, yes, he is a politician, but he can still be one of the boys or girls as well. He did a brilliant that what he did with Fort Liberty and renaming it back to Fort Bragg, but a different Fort Bragg. I read that. That was beautiful. I mean, what a workaround because are you familiar with Fort Bragg issue? I've heard of Fort Bragg. I didn't know they changed the name.

All right. So Fort Bragg, North Carolina, that's just outside of Fayetteville, was named after a Civil War general, General Bragg, right? That became not okay a few years ago during the Biden administration, and they changed it. It was the only base, I believe, that they changed to a nondescript name. So it went to Fort Liberty. Every other base was named after another soldier or, you know, who had accolades during battle or their service. So that left open the opportunity as soon as Hegeseth got in, he, and I, in my mind, I think this is what he did. He said to his aide, hey, bring me the whole roster of everyone that's ever served in the military. It might be digitized, but I assume there was a book.

And he flipped it open to the B's and he's B, B, okay, here we go. We got the Braggs. All right. Is everybody taking notes? He goes, all right, Bragg, corporal, kicked out of the army for alcohol. No, not that guy. And then he got to the next one. And he went, oh, four article 15s. No, not that guy. And he went, okay, brag. Perfect. This guy has a purple heart. This is the one. All right, we're going to rename it after a different brag and call it the same thing. I love that. I mean, that's what a workaround. You can't change it. You can't change it back at that point, because you've now givenaround. You can't change it. You can't change it back at that point because you've now given it. You didn't change it back to the original person. You said, here's a

prestigious new person that served in world war II. But everyone knows it still means the original guy as well. Everybody who ever served at Fort Bragg still calls it Fort Bragg. Right. So, Fort Bragg still calls it Fort Bragg. Right. So, beautiful move. That is, that's brilliant. And yeah, making it somebody else, now they would have to dishonor him or her to change it. And it's like, that's not happening.

Now, what was the deal? He was a Civil War general, was he on the South? Is that why they didn't like him? Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, they changed 14. I wasn't 14 or 17 base names, uh, in 2021 or 2022, I think. Dude, what a slap in the face.

It just seems useless. It's like, even if your motivation is to just, you know, improve the lives of others or make them less sad about whatever, slavery or something, there's better ways that go about it than changing base names. It just seems like a lot of extra work. You got to buy all new signs, business cards. That's, you know, if we're talking about governmental waste, that costs are nothing compared to what the government wastes on things they don't need. No doubt. But yes, it is, after

the Civil War, Congress got together and they drafted a bill and turned it into law that accepted all of the Southern, oh God, I hope I'm saying this right or I'm going to get shredded here. It accepted all of the Confederate soldiers into the Union as veterans of the United States of America're all us veterans. So yes, those bases are named after Confederate generals. But if my history is correct, they were all accepted into the union, into the United States of America as us veterans after the war was over. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah, then it makes sense. Yeah. So it, it angers people why they did it and made other people happy. Why they did it. It would, I think it did. I think it alienated, uh, some of the base of people who would serve in the

military, uh, and it made some people happy that were never going to serve in the military, no doubt, but there's a political aspect to everything. Yeah. Talking about military conflicts, they, I don't know if you saw this, but recently, and I guess it came out first on Truth Social. I don't have that app, but Instagram, Trump put it on there. And it's like this odd AI kind of, it seems like a vacation commercial where it's showing the rebuilding of Gaza, but with American stuff. And it was, I just watched it yesterday, it just hit me as like, what is he saying?

I know he's talked about, Trump has about like going in and owning Gaza or whatever. This sounds, it sounds like a lot of work. I don't, I don't know if that's the direction. Oh, okay. Trump says a lot of shit. Yeah, of course he does. Of course he does. Uh, brain assault, right?

Just everything. There's not a thought. He's never had a thought he didn't put out into the ether. And I think that's what got him in trouble last time is he's like, I got to tweet about this shit. Take his phone. When you're speaking, especially to the president, every nation is listening to what you have to say.

And sometimes you'll just throw shit at the wall and see what their response is. Going back to Mike Baker's, like the intelligence side of things, you'll just put stuff out there to see what the reaction is to what the other side does. There's this dance of truth and not truth. And on his side of the house, you're not selling stories, you're buying and selling secrets, right? And the president, that's your main spokesperson for the nation. And he could just say stuff that he wants his allies to react to, he wants his team to react to, he wants to judge what they do so that then they can maybe make a real plan or a cognizant plan moving forward. Yeah.

He can say, but he does say a lot of stuff. So I feel like some of the time his team has to react and go, okay, well, let's, let's see how that plays out in media first. Yeah. It's almost like, like a clever distraction that the media has to kind of work its way through. And then he can just blow it off as like, Oh, clever distraction that the media has to kind of work its way through and then he can just blow it off as like, Oh, it was just an interesting AI thing that I retweeted or just posted.

And then he can blow it off as nothing if the optics on it are too squirrely. There's a kind of genius there in a political way. Yeah. And especially since our news cycle attention span is five, how long are reels? Uh, 90 seconds. Yeah, about that. Yeah. So that's a lot.

How long our attention span is till the next real comes up. Yeah. It's a good point. It's wild out there, dude. When I watch the, you know, the footage and all the the aftermath of where Gaza is, I mean it's destroyed. It's unbelievable how much destruction there is. For one, I didn't even realize it was that big to have that much stuff destroyed. But now it's just this rubble wasteland.

It looks like post-apocalyptic, like a nuke went off type of thing. And you know, I know so little about the aggressions there. You just always hear like the Middle East is all fucked up and it's not going to get better and there's no answer. That's about the depth of what I understand when it comes to this. And it's like, and then you hear him saying, and I guess people knew this, I didn't know that Iran is kind of like was pressuring Hamas to do all this stuff or supporting them to do it. Uh,

that seems like a dangerous move for Iran. It's ballsy. I feel like they're going to get fucked up. Um, yeah, what's your take on, on the chaos over there? Yes, Iran is a nation state that has overtly or covertly backed, whether you want to call it counterinsurgency or terrorist plays for a long time now. That's one thing a lot of American, it doesn't get trickled down to America, right? Is that veil of on on the intelligence side, there is so much going on behind the curtain, that not only do we not

understand this happening, that we don't understand what we don't understand. Like we don't know what we don't know. There are so many things going on behind the curtain. And that's why I get back to Mike, right? His opinion is all of these factors. It's kind of like Jarvis in the Marvel movies, right? And when Ultron comes in and it's all of these factors at play and it has to come out as a coherent speech to where people can take that and run with it, right? Where you've got your CIA background, your consulting background, your life as a personal or as a celebrity, kind of like a celebrity and as a subject matter expert. And then he's read on to things that, like I said, we lot. Now, going back to Iran, do they back

these things? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely they do. And that's, I think Mike said it best, That's, I think Mike said it best, that this is one way the world works, right? There's a lot of shit going on. Everything's not all sunshine and rainbows. There's some bad people doing some bad shit to good people all over the world. And hopefully some people or nations are starting to be fed up with it. As he said, he said, I never thought I would see some of these Middle East nations stand up and say Hamas has got to go. Right. He said that several times and this guy's seen some shit. Yeah.

Yeah. That's wild. You know, I just feel like, you know, and we haven't obviously been close politically with Iran for a long time, but, um, you know, I mean, clearly America's getting involved in some way and we're involved in everything. Of course. Exactly.

Fingers are everywhere and all the pies. And you know, even if it's just funding Israel to fire some rockets over and direct, it's just like, what are they hoping to get out of it? It just doesn't seem like there's a win there for them. The base of it? The base I think is they don't want airplanes flying into skyscrapers on American soil ever again. Right. But I'm saying Iran. What's their

motivation? Yeah, they just hate us that much. Yeah, my Iran has a stated objective and I should have looked it up before I came on what that objective was because he didn't say it but I believe what he was alluding to was the destruction of Israel right It's like that important to them Whether or not your religious right your beliefs are important to you right? Yeah, there's are Way more important to you. Right, yep. Theirs are way more important to them. And that's what they believe.

Belief will get you a long way and people will die under torture before giving up their beliefs. Sure. That's dedication. Yeah, it'll also get you fucked up pretty hard by the US military. So you got to be careful. No. You know what, diplomacy should always be the first line of defense, second line, third line. But as soon as diplomacy fails, you want to lead with your right. You said you were a bouncer before, right? And you always got to be

poised to make those decisions. War is terrible. It exacts a terrible price on both sides. **Jay P. Horten** No doubt. **Sven Horten** The people that really pay the price are the civilian population. And yes, you take this nation down, but we saw what we did in Iraq. We toppled the country and the civilian population suffered the brunt of everything we did there. And it turns out we were there for bullshit reasons. So maybe it's a big decision to send soldiers off to die for their country. And it's a bigger decision to carry all off to die for their country. And it's a bigger decision to carry all those hundreds of thousands or millions

of civilian lives that you're going to take in the process of bringing down a country just to fit our political fit into this political realm. Yeah. That's, that's the hard part for me as just a very isolated or I guess insulated individual that doesn't touch war, doesn't go near it, sees, you know, closest I ever get, I guess, is talking to people that have been there. But other than that, it's not giving me an idea of like, how things have to go down.

It's just tough when you see, you know, I have a one year old daughter and there's footage of them like pulling these kids from Gaza out of the rubble. And you know, just the destruction and the death, it's like, it's just difficult to see. And the whole thing is like, would you rather not know about it? Dude, I'm not gonna lie. What was the guy in the matrix ignorance is bliss while he's eating a steak. He says, I don't want to know nothing. Yeah, nothing. There's, there's a part of me that when I see some of that stuff, yeah, it's too confusing.

It's like on the one hand, I'm like, oh, they, these people have to do something. They were attacked. They can't find the people they're trying to get. And then all of a sudden you just, when it comes to any little kid suffering, it just kind of scrambles my brain and all my logic. And you just think, I want that to stop. Like to live in a world without that. How do we get there? What are we doing?

Yeah. And once you, once you see it, then you know, right? And like, I wish I didn't know, but you do know, and there's no going back on that. Yeah, that's true. The most, the most important thing with any of that knowledge is to realize that you have, you are so blessed and what you have and where you have it and the situation that you're in. And you can't take anything for

granted. Can't even take the hot water in your house for granted, right? You know, just think you get to go home and take a hot shower at the end of the day. That wasn't a thing like 75 years ago. Some of the people in the world never had that. So yeah, it's bad. Be happy for the situation that you're in. Be happy that you live in the geographical location that you do and just kind of realize that it's something that is out of your control.

There's nothing you can talk about it and people can listen to you and have their opinions and things on that. But it's so far out of the realm of your control that it's kind of C'est la vie. Yeah, it's a terrible way to look at it, right? It's just a hard truth to swallow. Ultimately, yeah, It just really is. What was your take on, you know, kind of circling back to just these, we talked about Hegseth and just kind of how he's representing things right now. He's given people confidence in that position.

We have, what's his name? The new guy in charge of what the FBI is? Yeah. Is he also in charge of the CIA then? Is it like the whole military, I mean the intelligence stuff? No, CIA is, you know, Federal Bureau of Investigation is generally inside of the borders of the United States and the CIA is generally outside. Those are two different entities. They have different, not to say there isn't any crossover and they don't work together,

but they have different heads of leadership and they have different mission sets. Okay. Does that fall under Hegseth then? CIA? Oh, you're pushing me here. So he's Department of Defense. So he's our secretary of defense. I don't think so. I don't think so. Because there's the DOD has its, oh man, I hope I don't get torn up on this one. Eight branches, army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, I hope I don't get torn up on this one. Eight branches, army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, Space Force, the weather station and public health are the eight branches of the military.

Okay. Jeopardy question for the day. Yeah, that was good. Well done. NOAA, National Oceanographic Fum is, is a branch of the military. Okay. So they don't encompass really any of what we traditionally know as like the intelligence agencies then. So the NSA is not part of them. I don't want, I don't want to speak out of turn.

That's okay. I'm sure we don't need to know, but it was just interesting that he brought up the CIA director under Obama and and a quote from him saying that we don't steal secrets. And it just seems to be not that Hegseth or Patel or any of these people are maybe going to talk about how we lie and we steal and I just feel like they're more real. That clearly is a massive lie that is nonsense. The CIA is up to all kinds of shady shit,

and it probably has to be to keep us safe. For Mike to just laugh at that statement as he did, he's in a much better position to say that's the biggest pile of shit I've ever heard in my life, of course, for stealing secrets. That's what intelligence agencies around the world do. You know, you're, you're setting up assets and you're working them and trying to influence them and get the things that they know back to the people that you know. And, uh, it's this, like I said, it's this dance and yeah, we're absolutely fucked.

We had the whole generations of war about it. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And you know, all of this kind of, so you've got the CIA lying about this. You've got money just flooding over to the Ukraine, which really was always traditionally known as a very corrupt country. And then there's this new narrative that was like, oh no, Zelensky's, you know, sorted the corruption out.

Yeah, like that shit can happen overnight. That would take more than a Doge effort to sort out. And then we send them billions of dollars and it's like, how are we going to audit through that? Is Doge going to do this? I think there's going to be a shitload of fraud and corruption going on in that direction. I wouldn't say every time, but anytime you're sending large amounts of money overseas into a foreign government that you don't have control on. Yes, there's a possibility that that money is not going where you think it's going, or maybe you know exactly where it's going. You know it's fraud on their side, but you're sending it for a legitimate reason, and then they're going to do whatever they want. Maybe you're buying political interests,

you're buying favors or things down the road. Um, 32 years ago, uh, I believe the Ukraine was known as the United Soviet socialist Republic, right? Oh, damn. So it was part of the USSR and before 93, right? So all those people that are, they're still alive. It's not that long ago. No. So it's to say that there's there might be some lingering corruption. Absolutely. There may be. There might be a lot of it. Are we sending money over there

to support our interests in the region? Yeah, we did it. What? Have you read the book Charlie Wilson's War? When the Afghans were in, we supported the Mujahideen Afghans in Afghanistan, late 80s, early 90s, against the Russians. We just dumped tons and tons and tons of money. Oh, that's right. Rambo three. Exactly. We just keep repeating, we're just doing what we've done before. It's just because now we're in an age of such an overarching media presence that it's televised like it is. We've done this before. Yeah.

We did it, you know, in Vietnam, and then we got sucked in for 13 years there, or 12 years. It's something we've always done, and it goes back to where we are influencing other foreign entities to get what we want and to further the political goals and position of the United States of America and our allies. Yeah. And something that comes up for me when I hear about this too, is it's not even just like what the corruption is that's happening in Ukraine. And you know, Mike hit on it saying that Tucker was out there and they went to this like fancy area resort thing. And there's a bunch of

super rich Ukrainians and his suspicion is this is where some of the money is going. But the bigger thing is who's sending the money knowing that it's not really being looked at and it's like, are there a lot of people on our side of the, of the border that are in, you know, they're US and they're somehow getting a bunch of kickbacks and money and maybe this shit's been going on forever too. I have nothing to back this up or support it. It's just a suspicion.

People are always looking for money. Right. People are always looking for money or what's in it for me. And as I said earlier, nobody does anything unless they have to or want to. So politicians are serving because they want to serve the American people. Can their allegiances be swayed? Absolutely. They're people, right? Unfortunately, that, unfortunately, that some of our traits as people can kind of bend their morals or what they believe a certain direction over time, or by influence. The longer you have a standing relationship with somebody, the more you're

inclined to see their point of view, right? I'm not saying there's no corruption. I hope as somebody who serves this country for the time that I did that that is not the case, but I also realized that people are people and they can make a decision that benefits them every once in a while. But you know, a hundred billion dollars is a lot of money. It's a lot of money. That's a, that's a lot of money. There's some, I mean, that would make people do horrible, horrible things, I think, to get a hold of it. Oh, you've watched crime documentaries. You've seen people stabbed for $5 in their pocket.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you w you wouldn't, you know, if you're a bad guy, yeah, I'll nuke a town of, uh, civilians for a billion dollars. Absolutely. Yeah. That's like, you can, I couldn't put that past somebody. I think it's surprising. A terrifyingly surprising amount of people would do that.

That's just too much, too much money and power. It would make you go, it would make your morals go blind. I believe. Jorg Pedersen said it best when he talks about, when people say what would they have done during Nazi Germany? Oh, they would have been the good guy. And he goes, no, you wouldn't have. You would have gone along with the crowd, just like Germany did, just like the rest

of the civilians did. You wouldn't have done anything. Everyone likes to think of themselves as this righteous being, but we're just people. And we unfortunately want to fit in. And it's very difficult to stand up and do the right thing a lot of times. Yeah. I mean, a similar thing was happening during COVID, I think. Very few people were standing up against it for very long. And it was just, you know, we're all busy. We're all tired. We're all just trying to get by. And a lot of us are just not looking for problems.

So I get it, but you also see a lot of character too. You do. COVID was crazy, right? You also see a lot of character too. You do. But then there's so many filters of people's perspective on the COVID thing, right? And then, you know, somebody posted on my Facebook, how is it out by everybody? And this was a person from overseas

and everybody from all over the world put in how it was by them. And I said, oh, here in Wisconsin, we never heard of COVID. But when I was doing some hurricane relief down in North Carolina recently, I was talking to a medic down there that was in a city center, right when COVID started breaking out in town. And he said they were 60 calls negative on their roster. So every time that they would clear up a call, they would call and they were all for COVID. And he the way he described it, he's like, it was

like never any nothing he'd ever seen. And he'd been in natural disasters, and, and seeing horrible things. And he said, when the outbreak of COVID in the city, he said it was unbelievable. So you got the extreme end of the perception there of the person actually in it. And. So you've got the extreme end of the perception there of the person actually in it, and then you get out to the country and that person has no idea what this person knows and that's like America, right? You've got this huge division of perspectives and it's how do you, how do

you get people to see from the same lens? You really can't. Yeah, that's, that's not easy. I mean, especially because across the board, they've got to come up with some plan. They can't be like, all right, if you're in the country, you don't have to worry about it. But if you're in the city, it's this. They're like, this is the rules. Everyone try and follow on. And if you're on the different ends of those spectrums, it's going to be much harder to make sense of it

Yeah Now well people in cities making decisions for people who live in the country. Those are that's gonna be a clashing Yeah, that's a bad move. That's a bad move for sure. The last thing I want to hit on Probably the biggest kind of conspiracy-esque part of the podcast. And of course, Rogan had to hit it up. Recently, they declassified some of the RFK files, which is something Trump said he would do, obviously, no, not JFK, I mean, RFK is clearly pushing for it and Trump honored this.

So now we have these new JFK files I don't think they've been released for everyone to look at yet but it's like they're getting there. Mike doesn't really think they're gonna have a lot in Joe is kind of in the same boat, begs the question why keep them hidden anyway if it's like barely anything you know what are your thoughts on that type of stuff? Like when it comes to like redacted, you know, covert stuff, and then they would release it, it's like, do we ever get the whole story? You're never gonna, you will never get the whole story because I'm gonna get it right. So Mike said on a previous episode, um, Brogan said, well, what if it's true? And Mike said, well, I'm going to have to rethink my life.

Yeah, I remember that. He has dedicated a significant portion of his life to this idea that the unit, the United States is a certain way. And if way and if things turn out to be different, then he's going to have to rethink his life. That's where I think Mike's opinion is, he's like, it better not be fucking true. It would be quite the blow to the CIA. **JASON LENGSTORF** I know why I would hold on to something like that, that people really want to see, is to offset bad press. If they're just holding it as a distraction, possibly is one way of that. They could just say, you know, bad shit's gonna come out. That's not gonna go our way. But we can mitigate it if we just have these in the chamber. We got aliens, we got dinosaurs are still alive. We got, you know, the JFK files. What else? What other, you know, conspiracy could we go out there and quash if bad news?

That's just me thinking of how to mitigate bad things that happen. But, or there's something in there that's detrimental to the United States government and its position. Yeah. I mean, part of me is like, well, they just wanted to wait for the potential of the people that were involved to be dead, which they are now, I'm sure. So kind of covers that. Um, and second to that, if it was that damning to the CIA, I mean, can they stop the release of things once they get declassified?

It's not really them that chooses, right? It's like the freedom of information act and then plus, I don't know, presidential executive orders. Like, do they still get to pick and choose what goes out? Whoever's in charge could pick and choose what goes out? Whoever's in charge could pick and choose. And like, like Trump said, he only has a classification, you know, security clearance up to a certain amount to say a certain things, once you're read onto a program, just because you know, it doesn't mean you can divulge those things

until it's deemed declassified. And when, when you hear somebody say top secret clearance, there's many levels to that clearance that go up, down the road. So what stands out to me, okay, why would they not release it? Okay, maybe nobody in there is affected, right? That's still alive. But what is the second and third order of effects of releasing that information? Does that lead to this incident that happened? Or does that have breadcrumb trails that lead to something else that happening that we don't want to divulge those secrets? That's a good point. That's still something that could be active. So under everything, there's a trillion other actions that happened

as a result of that. And I use 9-11 a lot. 9-11 was a nexus event that bifurcated history, right? Everything changed. Yeah, everything. And back in November 11th, 1963, when JFK was killed, that was a major event I mean that was it right everything changed the president changes that's international news that's another nexus event and there there could be stuff in there that led to other things that nobody's proud of yeah that's a really good point and that's kind of what I'm worried about is like, we finally get this information

that, you know, the conspiracy theorists and the, the nosy historians just can't wait to gobble up and instead of answering some of the questions, it creates a thousand more and I've just got a feeling that's what it's going to do somehow. There's always, there's always more. There's always more information. You never, you never know everything. You can't know everything. Yeah. You can't. But Joe brought up something interesting and I can't remember Evan talking about it, but Evan Heifer from Black Rifle Coffee, Um, his theory for the JFK assassination possibly is the guys that, what was it? They didn't get air support or something during the Bay of Pigs.

There we go. Now as an, uh, you know, former operator, could you get pissed off enough if you got stranded or hung out the dry or whatever, to have your like, team of, you know, dare I say, professional assassins, in a sense, get so mad that you come back and kind of Jason Bourne some stuff. Because it doesn't seem to happen very often. And I just kind of feel like, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. And I just kind of feel like I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.

Modern times, something like that becomes much, much, much more difficult to accomplish. The further you go back in history and the less technology that is attached to the way we conduct all of our lives, yes, that becomes more and more plausible because now there's no cell phones, there's no tracking, there's no GPS, there's no, you don't have the ability to have surveillance on something from a satellite dish like you do now. And you see who's meeting up with who and whose IP addresses are linked up with you. There's this digital web now that the government spends a

tremendous amount of money to make sure bad things don't happen here, whether they're illegally spying on US citizens or not. They want to make sure that there's no terrorist attack or anything similar like that. The farther you go back in history, the easier that becomes. Are you asking me, could somebody become mad enough to kill the president? Uh, well, I mean, it's happened in history many times before, uh, just recently almost. Yeah. Oh yeah.

And it has happened successfully in the past. And thank God that guy was a complete dog and can't shoot for shit and. Joes the wrong, what was it? Sites he'd had an iron site. He didn't even have like a proper good gun. Also, I know nothing about guns, so don't even ask me about that. All I'll say is that is luckily he went for the movie shot of in the movies, you always shoot somebody in the head, right? Yeah. In reality, you shoot them center mass and they

go down because you have a, you, a, if you're aiming for the center of their body, you have six, eight inches every direction of kill shot to where they're going to go down. If you hit them, if you go for the head, if you miss a little bit, you're going to miss in that environment. So luckily he wasn't cognizant of that point that you don't shoot for a small target at a, when you know you're only going to have a second to get a round off. Yeah.

And talk about those moments in history, like you pointed to 9-11, JFK assassination, these huge turning points, things were kind of never the same again. You could basically say that for that Trump assassination attempt. That day didn't happen. Right. Yeah. But with kind of equal results, like things change forever. As soon as I saw that show on the TV, I was like, Oh my God, he's 100%

gonna win this. Like there was just no doubt in my mind from that moment on. He's pumping his fist. People kind of downplayed that to be like, Oh, he just used it as a photo. I'm like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. You have no idea how badly you'd be shit in your pants. If something like that happened. Like I would be crying and I wouldn't get up and I'm not, I'm not too that happened. Like I would be crying and I wouldn't get up. And I'm not, I'm not too proud to admit that. I would be terrified. He just stood up, did that. That's some brave shit right there. That's some resolve, right? He's, you know, he just does what he wants. He says what he wants, when he wants. He said he was going to become president. He did.

After that happened, I said, I said, well, that bullet didn't kill Trump, but it definitely killed Biden. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. It was over and all whoever ran against him, which, you know, was Kamala. I mean, anyway, Mike Baker, legend. Um, glad he was on love to have him on. I think he comes on kind of like every quarter, just to kind of clean up the news. About every 100 or something like that.

Is it like that? Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's a good little recap just to kind of put in order like all the stories we've been told, the things of the news. It's a nice perspective that I can kind of add in to my, all right, what the fuck is going on in the world stuff and it's just a bit of a breath of fresh air. And sometimes I approach to. Yeah, yeah. And often I leave his episodes, you know, a little kind of like I need a beer because it's a bit of a shock. But it's good to have him on.

And a pleasure to have you on Nick for this episode. I think we're going to do more of these. And there's always some military guys coming on. There's FBI talk, CIA talk. We're, I think you're hopefully going to be our guy for a bit of that Intel and we appreciate you today. Yeah, I would love to have, I'd love to come on and talk to you some more. I really enjoyed this. I don't think we touched on it in the beginning, but I guess my qualifications or background in this, I was a Green Beret for Special Forces Group.

Got medically retired in 2018. So just want everybody to know, I don't claim to know everything. And if I said something incorrectly, my mind can be changed. I'm not closed off. So pointed out and I will make a correction in my way of retaining information.

So. love it. All right. Thank you, Nick. And thanks everyone for listening. We really appreciate you and we will talk to you next week.