Modern Wisdom - Hunter Biden, Matt McCusker & Duncan Trussell - Mostly Wise #2 - #1136

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

I spent a really long time putting this together, I really hope you enjoy it! In this second episode of Mostly Wise, we explore: Hunter's true version of the laptop story The best conspiracy theories that are (maybe) real. If it was Hunter's bag of cocaine that was found in the White House. What the next two years for the Democratic Party will look like. Hunter's unfiltered thoughts on the Trump family. Matt gifts a ceremonial "pipe" to Hunter And much more... Guests Hunter Biden is an artist, former attorney, and the son of former US President Joe Biden. Matt McCusker is a comedian, writer, author and podcaster. Duncan Trussell is a comedian, actor, writer and podcaster. Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at ⁠https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom⁠ Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at ⁠https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom⁠ Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at ⁠https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom⁠ Get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 Welcome Kit, and more when you first subscribe at ⁠https://ag1.info/modernwisdom⁠ Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠⁠https://chatgpt.com⁠ Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Change my wife's name to Peter Thiel in my phone. Why? Just because I got accused of being in Peter Thiel's, I don't know, I'm never met him. But people are now anytime my phone, my wife calls, which is a lot. Peter Thiel is calling. He's the bad. I don't know him. I'm never, I don't know him.

Yeah, sure, man. There's a lot of texts from Peter Thiel over you. Let's talk about the antichrist. Please know. angle, you know, he went with. That was a weird direction. What? He just became the anti-crice guy. I saw the talk. How was it talk? Is that any good? It's a terrible. His interpretation of the Book of Revelations is so Silicon Valley because he was like, uh, he's basically saying we can fix the book of Revelations. Patch it. Like the apocalypse doesn't have to happen. I don't want this on the

podcast because I could take so much shit from beardos. Then I'm a Peter Thiel, sick of fan. Hey, by the way, are we on the podcast right now? I saw his phone. He's got like 100 calls from Peter Thiel. It's my wife. He just showed me. He just showed all of us. I changed it.

Just to make it clear. I love you. I changed my wife's number. Fuck it. Now's how we're going to play. That's it. That's it. That's it.

I'm right away. By the way, I want to say this for the record. I love Peter Thiel. Really? Oh, absolutely. What do you love about it? I'm not fucking. with Peter Thiel. He's in league with the Antichrist. I'm not, yeah, I love it. You're saying it's

out of fear. That's what you're saying. No, no. I love it. This is Pascal's way. This is Biden's the fucking craziest motherfucker of all of them. Do you think? Did you watch that interview where he just decides what he's going to start doing is, you know, as we're talking about Palantir and everything, is that he's going to start talking about, you know, the Antichrist. Have you watched that interview with him? It is frightening. Yeah, I didn't make it through. I kind of, I kind of, of watched it and was like, I just was like, it's kind of a cool angle, I guess. There's like a tech weirdo to be like, I know about the end of the world. Yeah, but wouldn't you say like the tech companies, it is a religion now.

It's turning into some kind of apocalyptic, eschatological religion. They're all building bomb shelters. They all know that AI is about to reach some level that is going to completely destabilize societies. We know it. So it's, I mean, it's not a cult, but most cults, what do they talk about? The end of the world. the imminent Eschaton, is that how you say it?

Eschaton? The apocalypse. Yeah. And so they're all into that because they know that this stuff is going to destabilize society and radical. I can't get down with being afraid of computers. Yeah.

You have to be such a nerd to be looking at your computer like, it's going to be my boss. I'm not afraid of the computer. Yeah. I'm afraid of those scampering robot dogs. That's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of being in the woods

in here in one of those DARPA dogs. My thing is you said it before, all you're going to do is dump soda on them. Fried. There you go, man. Have you said, right? Don't be afraid. Just pour a Coke on it, guys. You got a cup of coffee in here and you're fucking...

Dunk, can you see those dogs that are patrolling Atlanta? Downtown Atlanta is so dangerous at the moment that, supposedly, here it is. Bro, we got... This is security right now. Fine. Pour soda on that, right? Like, literally right out of a robo coffee. Oh, no.

Soul detected, eliminated. Yeah, they wave. But it's humans on the other side. So it's just... Then we're okay. But isn't that strange that if I'd said, oh, it's like LIDAR mapping, AI surveillance state, everyone would have gone, it's already kind of freakish and inhuman.

But the fact that it's basically replacing a rather than being a guy there, there's a dog there. maybe the guy doesn't need to be in quite so much risk if it's maybe like a gang area or something like that. You know, like, oh, but that is, that goes to show just how low the bar for not being freaked out is. Right. Have you seen the, um, the proliferation of flock cameras just in the last year? I've heard about it. I don't really understand what it is.

It's gone from like hundreds to hundreds and hundreds of thousands in like all major, metropolitan areas. They're just, it's a camera technology. It's a surveillance technology. And they've got drones now. They're getting drones. They're going to swarms of these drones are going to fly over, plus the Amazon delivery drones. There's going to be this constant buzzing of drones in the sky,

bringing you shit, monitoring you. This is where we're headed for sure. Yeah. Was it true that Pokemon Go was that? Yeah. Did that get proven that they were basically gullible volunteers for mapping the street view of everything? I mean, we're all culpable volunteers.

They were just, you're just, you're just, you're like able to map the inside of places and just like you could just get a real time view of everything going on. And someone didn't read the terms and conditions that Nintendo put together. Yeah, nobody. It's that. I don't read that. Are we afraid of the Japanese? What? No, I think they're our ally. Japan's our ally. Yeah. So it's good, right?

Well, it's all the... That's corporations, though. It's not good. And they literally have everything. We literally have given over our lives to the, to the bag of heroin that's sitting in our pocket that's called an iPhone. Literally, everything. Everything that we feel about anything and the way that we, you know, our perspective on politics, on everybody, and everything is, you know, a, by virtue of the algorithm that we're fed. And we, and we give up everything. We give up all of our privacy. And I'm not saying, like, you know, like they do that. Like, I do it. We do it every day.

Every single bit of data that we do, whether it's the way that we use any single one of our apps, whether it's Uber or anything, it's all of this. enormous amount of personal data that we are just, like, feeding into a, you know, a corporate entity that they don't, I mean, and by the way, I'm not saying they're inherently evil, but what I am saying is, is that they inherently have only one objective is how much money can they extract from us. Or come. Yeah. Yeah, true. Yeah. What or what? Come. Cone. Porn. How much? How much come they're trying to extract. Oh, I mean, this is one of the quantifiable. Every day, how much jizz is being

abstracted from humanity by phones, by technology. True. You just literally took this conversation to another level. I mean, it's what's going. It's data. It's data. DNA, baby. Do you ever think about when they, I think they eventually will have it set up on like Ancestry.com where you're like kids, kids can just look at your web history over your whole life and just see everything you've ever looked at. I think of that all the time.

That was basically in your life for a while. No, yeah, 100% it was in my life. Speaking of your data being on the internet, how do you, how does it feel to be the most good? drug addict of all time, probably. Well, at the outset, it wasn't very nice. It was pretty debilitating, you know. I mean, to be serious about it, it was so completely ubiquitous, is that it forced me into this moment where I literally had to make a choice of whether

I was going to, you know, stay in bed and die or, you know, or get up and live. and thank God I chose to get out of bed and live, which created an incredible freedom in it too. I mean, at the end of the day, without any melodrama around it, is that it really, I do have an enormous amount of gratitude of not being stuck in those secrets, because those are the things that kept me in my addiction. You know, that shame.

Yeah, what was that like? I'm, like, kind of fascinated by just now how, like, with the internet, you can just, like, massively shame people on a scale that I don't think anyone's ever experienced. No. The first day that came out, did you like, were you, like, knowing that was going to come out or did it just kind of, like, pop out and you're like, no, completely, like, the day that it happened. Oh. Yeah.

I mean, no warning whatsoever. Yeah. I got a call. I just wrote about it on Substack. I got a call. I went to Palm Springs. we thought that we had kind of like made it to the end of the campaign. Early voting had started.

Things looked really good. All of the, you know, the baggage. I'd been sober for a little about a year and a few months at that time. And I was trying to put my life back together, getting things straightened, like my taxes and things like that. And so a buddy of mine said, hey, come out to Palm Springs and we'll just like, turn off our phones and, you know, and Melissa and I, and we have Baby Bo, who was a few months old. And we showed up, unpacked our bags, and I got a call. I should have turned off my phone. I got a call from my friend, who was also my lawyer. And he said, hey, New York Post is saying

something about a laptop and a, you know, repair shop. And, you know, and, you know, I had no idea of the enormity of the story and how much Hunter Biden's laptop would become just one word. That would be, to this day, is repeated over and over and over again. And so for a long time, it was really difficult to kind of, it was like trying to get your hands around a bowl of jelly because there was the laptop retail shop story, which then became a story of suppression, you know, a First Amendment. rights and stuff like that, which we can talk about all that. But and then it became, you know, Le Parnas came out and he said,

this laptop isn't from, you know, repair shop. We were, I was going to, we were out, we were going to get the laptop in Ukraine, you know, three months before the laptop repair shop story ever existed. Two, I just sat down with Tucker and Tucker said, well, even before that, the Israeli intelligence met with my producers to provide us with the same images that came out of the laptop before that. And, I mean, that just came out. I mean, I sat down with Tucker last week, Tuesday, and he told me that story, which I didn't even know that. Can you say that? Yeah.

You can't explain that story? So was it in a shop? I can't explain it because it's not my story, but Tucker said that he was approached by, who he believes to be Israeli intelligence, and he sent a producer to meet with them, and they were pushing stories, they were pushing a narrative that there was images that contained, you know, minors in it.

And he said, his producer looked at it, and he's just like, this is total bullshit, but it's like, but these guys are clearly, you know, working for some intelligence organization. It's funny if they're just a New York Times reporter. It's Jewish guys. This is really intelligence for sure. So consider the source, but my point is that...

So it's just like everyone had your ladder. Not only everyone had it. Yes, 100%. And there's no... There is no... Just look at the... I mean, just the facts of it. Understand this.

Is that the amount of data that was dumped, obviously didn't come from a single source. It came from my cloud. It came from years, 20 years of my digital footprint, all the way back to deleted voicemails, like that deleted voicemail from my dad. Obviously, it wasn't on a single laptop. But there are emails and text messages and deleted text messages and deleted photographs and photographs and all of that stuff. there is the 90% of what is online is from me. And, but it was all taken. And then without any context, just it provided a conspiracy in a narrative where you could say,

Hunter Biden laptop corruption, Hunter Biden laptop Biden crime family, Hunter Biden laptop Ukraine, Hunter Biden laptop China. I had 20 years of experience, you know. I mean, the thing that people have this, the, the narrative. that took hold in the image that was created of me was this near-do-while fell son who had been drifting off of his father's coattails. You know, I mean, shit, man, whether you like it or not, is that I've worked my ass off enough to go to Yale Law School and start my own business and, and build a family. And they conflated my addiction with just complete nut of failure. And my addiction to crack cocaine in particular,

which is the most kind of graphic part of my addiction. The hardest part was alcohol for me. The most dangerous piece of it was alcohol. And they conflated those two things. And what they did was is that the New York Post was literally in league with Steve Bannon and a guy named Miles Gow, who's a Chinese billionaire, who now is serving 68 years in prison for fraud. And they took one, they were one silo.

And they pushed out the images. globally. There's a whole tape of them literally talking about it and what they were doing and how they took liberty with the images and how they, you know, created these narratives outside of the United States and pushed it back in. And then there was Rudy Giuliani, Bernie Carrick, and Rudy Giuliani's lawyer. And they got their information from a guy named Andre Derkatch, who was a a Russian operative inside of Ukraine, sanctioned by the United States, and they warned Giuliani that he was talking to a Russian operative. And I mean, just the, what just came out from Trump, remember he did that document dump?

The aliens? What? The UFO? No, he just did a document dump where he'd had the big press conference to be able to show that election interference in 2020. Oh, yeah. One of the documents that they mistakenly released. classified documents was a report from the NDI saying that Vladimir Putin was personally running

an op on Joe Biden using his using U.S. officials to promote disinformation around Hunter Biden. And that was it. And they knew it. And Giuliani knew it at the time. Well, what do you think Putin's beef with you would be? Oh, we had no beef. Look, none of this is about me. Right. None of it. I mean, literally. I mean, I don't I, there's nothing that, I mean, I feel like I've had a, I, I am comfortable, more comfortable in who I am and what I have achieved in my life and what I haven't, in my feelings, and more open about it, I think, than anybody in, you know, that I know of, at least right now. But none of it was about me.

It's all about power. It all is about the most powerful position in the world in which you have control over, you know, the direction of the lives of, you know, an entire planet. And so... Yeah, can you explain that to me? Like, the president, how much, like, power does the president actually have to be, like, here's how we're doing stuff? Well, I...

The amount of power that the president has is dependent upon their adherence to the Constitution. And so part of it is, is that whether you recognize the limits to your power. And, and, uh, and so, I... I don't think that, I think that Trump, for better or worse, I think for way worse, has blown through all of those, not just norms, but the Constitution. So you're saying if you stick to the rules, you don't actually have that much power? Well, if you stick to the rules, there is the central piece of the Constitution is the separation of powers.

And they all stick to the rules. That's what's awesome our presidents. None of them necessarily have stuck to the rules. And for instance, Teddy Roosevelt, who's one of my heroes as a president, despite all of his failings as it relates to his views on race and other things that were, I take a product of his time in late 1800s or early 1900s. He didn't, but you know what he did? He used the power, which I don't think that he was necessarily granted by the Constitution

to create the national parks. He used that power to build the Panama Canal. He used that power to break the trust and to completely, in my opinion, save this country from being swallowed up by an oligarchy in the late 1800s and early 1900s led by John D. Recoppeller. And so he used that power to advance the interest of normal people and common people. And he called it the square deal. And his cousin then used it to implement the new deal. And many people would argue, and they certainly did then, is that he went way beyond his constitutional authority. Abraham Lincoln went beyond his constitutional authority in many instances as related to the way in which he inscripted people or didn't inscript people into the civil war. And the way in which he enforced the emancipation proclamation, real question of whether or not there was,

that that was constitutionally available to him in the way that he did it. I'm not saying that presidents have not gone outside of the constitutional authority, particularly, I mean, I don't know. Have you ever read The Devil's Chessboard? I can't read. Okay. Well, have you listened to the devil's chessboard? Now, not yet. The audio, listen to it because I actually how I did it while I paint.

I always listen to books. And it is a story of the Dulles Brothers, beginning before World War, we're, one in their rise to power. One became Secretary of State. One became the founder of the CIA. He's not the founder of the CIA, but the guy. And one has Dallas Airport named after him. And the other is probably, you know, the most important person as relates to our covert agencies of anyone in the country. And she was almost a full-blown fucking Nazi. I mean, literally. I mean, he did more to rescue Nazis after World War II, the really bad ones, to come into the United States and go other places.

What do you do that for? To get, like, their secrets? Oh, really? Well, but there's, and this is what I've always, what I, what I think. I think that there are two things in this country. One of them is our original sin as, as relates to slavery. And the fact that we have never fully, and I'm not talking that we, reparations or anything, I'm saying, but it's a fact, is that the systemic rot in the United States of America goes back

to slavery. And it goes back into the way in which the hypocrisy of the founding fathers as it relates to their principles of freedom and liberty, not necessarily applying to everybody. But the Constitution was built to evolve and to that you are, you know, and that's why we have, what, 26 amendments to the Constitution or whatever. And, and, but after Lincoln, we had an opportunity in reconstruction. And Lincoln had a plan. And he, you know, like 40 acres of a mule, like that and the whole idea. And there was a, there was a real renaissance directly after the Civil War.

Like, for instance, in South Carolina, directly after the Civil War, the entire state legislature was black. They elected, black, you had a, until a, so there's one town, and I forget the name of the town. And the town basically rose up and, and the white people in the town rose up. They murdered every black person that was in a position of authority in the South. And the federal government did nothing about it. Because after Lincoln was killed, Andrew Johnson comes forward and he takes away all of those things. And we basically end up with Jim Crow South all the way up until 1968. Right.

In which the act of participation of 10% to 12% of our population was, you know, was not just segregation. I mean, it was a form of apartheid. And to say that like, oh, just get over that, we have not structurally gotten over it. There has been a, in my opinion, a permanent Confederacy class in the United States of America. and it's a mix of Christofascism and in an oligarchy that recognizes the power of feeding people and narrative in which if you are, if you're white and you're poor, don't look up, look down to find your problems. Yeah. And I, and I, and I, and whether or not that is the full reason.

and Matt, I see your skepticism around it. And I'm not saying that there is any, that that is everything. But I am saying this is that we have never truly gotten to the systemic root of so many of the things that continue to plague us. And it's the same arguments over and over again. I can't believe in 2026 we're still having the same arguments that, you know, we had, you know, when I was like we shouldn't And blow up kids. Perfect. Yeah, that's good one. For real.

Exactly. That still seems to be on the table. You know, blowing up kids is always on the table for the United States because we're always blowing up kids. Like, no matter who the president is, they always end up blowing up kids. Most people have no idea where the testosterone level sit. But what if I told you there was a solution? Something that identifies low T faster than a high school bully and it won't cost you

all your lunch money. That's where function comes in. Gives you access to over 160 lab tests, including a deep dive into your full hormone paddle. Every result is reviewed by clinicians. Anything out of range is flagged. You get clear explanations with a personalized protocol, with actionable next steps. So if something's off, you know exactly what to do about it. Whether you just need to go to the gym more or you need to play creed louder in your car, function will tell you exactly where your testosterone and everything else stands. Normally, this level of testing would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it's $365 a year. That's $1 a day to stop guessing with your health and start knowing.

And right now, you can get $25 off, bringing it down to $340. So get the exact same blood panels that I do and save $25 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom using the code Modern Wisdom, a checkout. That time around the laptop release, I'm still just so fascinated how what it feels like to be a human, just like a normal person with that level of global scrutiny.

It must be the most... I can't think of a more deranging situation to go through. You're what, 18 months into sobriety? Yeah. Two months, what, two years into sobriety, got a new family, new kid. This thing happens during Palm Springs.

Yeah. It's hell. I don't understand how... I don't understand what that feels like and what they'd like to go through that. It was... it was paralyzing in the moment. You know,

the only thing I think that I could how to explain it, articulate it that you would feel it is like, remember when like you were a kid and you knew you did like something like really bad? Yeah. And you had this like feeling in your chest and you don't know what to do.

And you're like, you just don't want to leave your room. And you know, like whatever it is. Is that, that's what it felt like. And I, And I didn't know what was going to happen next. You know, there was no path. It wasn't like, I'm going to accuse you of bribery in Ukraine because of this. I can deal with that because I know it's not true and I can show you the paperwork and I can show you what I did and I can show you this, that, and the other thing.

In this instance, it was like, we got naked pictures of you smoking crack with prostitutes in a motel. and we're going to dump them all online. Now, thank God, not by any design, is that right when I got sober, I did an interview with a guy named Adam Entos, who was writing for the New Yorker at the time in which I don't know where it came from, but it was a miracle,

is that I just decided to tell them everything on the record about my addiction. And everybody thinks that that was, was like some kind of like PR, you know, like a genius kind of like thing. And it truly wasn't. It was literally like, Adam Santos, I knew to be a really great writer, fair journalist. And I just thought, you know what? Like, there ain't any hiding this. Other people thought that you were, it was a gambit to front run future headlines that were going to come out so that you could say, oh, I've already got out ahead of it. Yeah, well, the first person, Adam told me, the first person

that called him was Steve Bannon and said, you, you scooped. us. And, and, and, uh, and I didn't know that until after the laptop that came out, because they had the laptop way back there. Was there ever a moment when you thought that potting stuff could bring down your dad's presidents? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then. And the, uh, I mean, so it goes up on, on all social media feeds. And for like a 72-hour period of time, uh, it's, it's up, but then they take it down, which makes it so much worse that they take it down. Yeah. Okay. I mean, it's the Barber Straising in effect. It's like...

Triple conspiracy. Yeah. And the reason that they took it down is one reason is because it violated their terms of service. It's because what they were putting up is nude pictures of me

without my consent, which is called revenge porn, which is now a federal criminal statute that Melania got passed. Hunter, may ask you a... It's a personal question. It's something I think people are curious about. Yeah.

Why did you take all those pictures Like, you know, I understand you were like smoking. Have you seen you? What? Yeah, you look great. But like, what? I'm like on a bender. The last thing I want is like snapping shots.

Go look at it. Here's the thing, is the truth. Go look at the pictures. Is that most of the pictures that you see, I didn't take. Who took them? I'm asleep. Like one of them, like one of those always that's shown all the time over and over and is me with a meth pipe in my mouth sleeping.

Who sleeps with that? That's always curious about that too. I always thought when you smoke meth. Yeah. You can't fall. I didn't. I wasn't a meth smoker. I hate meth.

But how did the pipe in it? You were trying to be cool with the meth pipe in your mouth. No. Okay, I get that. I get that. No, it is not cool to have a meth pipe in your mouth. It's much cool. How did you fall asleep?

Did they put it in your mouth? How did you fall asleep with them? They put it in your mouth. Somebody, I was asleep. Somebody took their meth pipe, put it next to me. and took a picture and then put it online. And they then collected all of this stuff. Go back and look at the pictures.

Now, there's some that are like me. There's some. The sex tapes are real. I took them. It was me. Yeah, for sure. That's confidence. Why would they take these pictures?

But by the way, here's the reason. It's out of my fucking mind. Right. It's just out of my mind. You're so alone. There's nothing even remotely romantic about it. I don't talk about how I make crack to romanticize it. I don't, I just, all that I talk about is addiction.

And the whole reason to do any of this, there's 50 million people right now in America, and I think it's way more. 50 million people are dealing with their own problems and their struggles with addiction, which means that everybody at this table, undoubtedly, has someone that they care deeply about that has dealt with or is dealing with life-threatening,

addiction. Everybody. So we all talk about it like what the hell happened? Well, I don't know. You know what I mean? Drink a gallon of vodka and smoke about three grams of crack on any 24 hour period of time. Is that, you know,

and so also what happens is you don't there's no one normal to associate with once you're in that. Right. And so what you're around are people that are very, very predatory. Who were you associating with? Mainly strippers and everything that comes around that.

And I'm not denigrating anybody that is an exotic dancer in any way. Thank you. But that is where, yeah. For real. It's party and play. But by the way, but that is where you find access to drugs. That's where you find access to company. Neverending party.

Yeah. And that is where you have. there's no confusion right about what your relationship is and and and and so you end up in this world of this culture in which everything is a um is what you what what you can get from the other person and oftentimes it was you know I mean like I'm positive like I know reporters have said that you know people were selling them photographs in intensity this, you know, into this thing. And so anyway, regardless, I, the other side of it was the other thing, is that, you know, the, you know, yeah, there's some sex tapes in there that, then they're all mine.

Did you go back? I'm so sorry, and I don't want to seem like a weird, I'm just curious, I've always been curious, I'll be able to film themselves humping. Did you go back and watch yourself humping? Sotty the tape. You never went, it's like when you film fireworks. Nobody. he goes back and looks at the firework. No. No. Yeah, okay. But by the way, here's the thing, man. Is it, you know what?

Is it, would I do that sober? No. But here, and the other part of it is so, but am I the first person to, you know, freaky tape? No. Making a sex tape? Nothing wrong with that. Not even, like, I don't know, like, why Tommy Lee and when, what's your name

to do it? Why did, you know, I mean, like, whatever. And I certainly, if not Tommy Lee, but my point is, is that, when you're addicted to crack, I, it is never, look, my drug use can never be, um, uh, an excuse. Oh, okay? Never an excuse for any of the behavior.

I'm accountable for all of them. Yeah. No matter what, it's still me, whether I was out of my fucking mind or not. You got it. But it is an explanation. Sure. Yeah. I love that.

And by the way, it's not, it's not an explanation that I know that you're not, that we all aren't like, hopefully willing to have the grace to, to extend to the people that we love. Yeah. In order not to forever shame them or tell them that they have to wear the scarlet A of addiction for the rest of their life. Because otherwise, nobody. I am, and by the way, I am, the beautiful, so to end of your, to get to the very end,

of what your question is. How did I react to the laptop coming out? At first, it was paralyzing. It was awful. And then leading into two weeks before the election, and I'm thinking, oh, my God, you know, in an election, which we all know that there's going to be, you know, on the margins,

regardless of whether we won by, you know, 8 million votes or whatever the hell it is, it always comes down to, you know, hundreds of thousands of votes in these states. And it was like, not only am I going to going, going to fuck this up for my dad,

the person who I adore most in the world, but I'm going to fuck it up for the whole world. Like this is like, if you were on the other side of this election, you were voting thinking like this is like existential. Fuck. And so I just am like, and the first thing your brain tells you,

no matter how far out you are, it can be less in terms of the intensity, is I know how you shouldn't feel, how you can get out of feeling this way. You better do it because if you don't do it, I mean, your brain literally telling you this. How tempted were you to relapse at that time? I don't know, you know. I mean, I don't know because I choose not to like to go back there.

I don't know. Have you ever listened to Chase Hughes? Yes, he's been on the show. Oh, has he? He's amazing. He just did a video. I mean, he just did, he dropped this thing a day ago, two days ago, about memory. and how there is no such thing as memory.

Every time we go back and think of it, there is no original recording. We tape over it every time. And whatever the last recording is, becomes the memory until you tape over. It's almost like you're rewriting it as opposed to retelling it. So I don't know how close I was. I choose to say today, my memory of it is this.

Is the morning after it came out. And it was on the front page of the New York Post, and there's a naked picture of me, like, you know, with all that stuff, okay? And then filled with naked pictures behind it, and it's everywhere. And I'm not on social media at this time, so I don't know about that part of it. But it's everywhere. I couldn't sleep all night. And I, but like six in the morning, my six-month-old is up, and we, and I had to do our routine, you know.

and I rolled over in bed, and I looked at this woman who had saved my life, beautiful woman in every way that had saved my life, and this perfect little angel. And I was like, like, you got a choice. Yeah. I mean, and what a gift that is. You know, to have, most everything in life, from my experience is like, yeah, you could do this or you could do that. Like, yeah.

Like, to me, it became, you either do this and live or you die. Because can you imagine if I relapse in? I mean, I would be so dead. The level of shame that I would have had. There would have been no way to hide it. There would have been no, I would literally, it would have been, the faster way would have been to take a gun to my head. That would have, and, and, and, but I, but I was wholly cognizant of at the time.

And what a fucking gift that is. Because, you know what? Most people have to go through it and, you know, fight their way to, like, you know, go spend seven years in Rishi Cash and... And you did the Navy SEAL Hellow Week equivalent. Yeah, exactly. What did you do? For me, what did I do?

I just chose to live, man. Oh, oh, the... You're kicked. You go to rehab? In June of 2019? Yeah. No, I'd gone to so many rehabs. Melissa, she's like, it ends now.

And like within a week of her saying that, you know, I was off crack. And then within like three weeks of that, I had my last drink. And it was hard. The alcohol is the most frightening part of detox because you can actually die from withdrawing from alcohol. And like with benzos. The same thing, which is like freeze, dried alcohol, basically. Because it impacts every organ in your body. Alcohol does.

Every pleasure center of your brain. The crack, cocaine, is, you know, three days and it's out of your system. And, you know, there's no physiological impact, maybe a little bit of grayness in the way that everything appears to you. But the alcohol is the hardest part. You seem incredibly shocked for somebody that's had pretty protracted addiction for a long time. So you know why? Is that I benefit from the advantage of the lowest expectations of probably any

guest you've ever had. Because he's fucking upright and cummissible. Exactly. Like, oh my God. No, I disagree. You're a sharp guy. Yeah, you're very, I would have assumed to get a big totally pickled. Yeah, I don't, exactly.

Maybe, maybe it preserved the parts. Oh, yeah, like putting in formalde hunt. Yeah, exactly. But I don't know. I, um, you know, but here's the thing about that. It's like, you know, it's the smartest fucking people I know are recovering addicts, you know. and not a whole lot. I was on to say there.

Yeah, I was not saying there's a couple. Did you ever, do you ever think that your dad might not give you the pardon? Oh, yeah. If he had won, he wouldn't have pardoned me. Damn. He was 100%. That's,

You'd have been grounded, basically. I mean, by the way, yeah. That's exactly right. In my 50s and I've grounded again. I mean, that's high stakes. But he did such a good job. I mean, I think, you know, you were talking earlier.

We all have, we all know people. who have just, like, when someone is an active addiction, it is, it's like having a honey badger, but it's in your family just eating everything up. And I remember your dad was so loving to you. Like it was, he was so sweet with you. And that's really hard to do. Because when someone's, like, you know, addicts ruin,

not just their own life. They ruin, like, communities. They ruin, and they do it again and again. Everybody. It's like a nuclear bomb dropping a number. clear bomb and you don't know what to do. It's like a demon is possessed somebody. Did you know your gut controls your energy, your recovery, how well you absorb everything that you eat, and the one nutrient that keeps it all running properly is fiber. Well, it turns out that 95% of Americans

don't get enough of it, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Momentus's fiber plus. Most fiber supplements are a one trick pony, one type of fiber solving one part of the problem. Fiber Plus is a three in one formula built to tackle digestion, gut barrier strength and blood sugar stability all at once. I use this every single day. It is kind of hard to get enough fiber just through food alone. And best of all, Mementus offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. So you can buy it, try it, every single day for 29 days. And if you don't love it, they will just give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to

livemomentus.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom a checkout. What are the coolest things about your dad that nobody knows or that you wish more people knew? Hmm. That's a tough one because, you know, people know so much,

or at least they think that they know so much. I think the thing about my dad that is, that I wish more people knew, is how genuine he truly is, is about how much he loves people. You know, I'll give me an example, is that I think my dad, since he's been in public life, and the number has just only grown over the course of time, but probably has, you know, a dozen or, you know, more people, kids that he's met at rope lines or people or people

have written a letter that stutter, that calm. my dad and spend a half an hour on the phone with him, you know, once a month, you know. Doing that voice coaching. Yeah, just letting them know that, you know, don't be defined by this. You know, I mean, as he says, he tells every one of them is that, you know, stuttering, it's, it's because you're so smart. And, you know, I mean, I, like, listen to him. And he doesn't, I mean, nobody knows that. And he doesn't, it's not like he advertises that. But I've gotten it so many, now that I'm on social media, which is,

you know, not how long that's going to last, but the, um, yeah, something else to drop. No, no,

I mean, just like, yeah, like God, I'm like, it looks like you're having a good time on that. Yeah, yeah, parts of it on you.

I am, but, can I ask you just, so when you were, so when you were, so, no, not you, when your dad was running

and everyone was going, and I'm not trying to be a dick, but when it was like, seem visibly, like, obvious that he was getting a little too old, I think, to, like,

actually be the president. Like, there were signs, unless it was just a TV, there were signs of cognitive decline. I felt bad. I was like, why are they doing this to this guy? Like, that seems like insane that we would, like anyone who's in their mid-80s, be like, yeah, get out there and just have like the most important discussion ever. Yeah.

Well, look, I think that there are, I think part of that's fair and part of that is your algorithm. Now, here's what I mean by that. My dad got old. He got old before everybody's eyes. he literally lost a step. He started to get his gait shortened, which was very much noticeable. He never had an incident like the debate before or after.

I mean, it truly, it's not like I'm saying that, and you don't have thousands of hours of tape on either side of that debate of my dad in front of a camera. And what you're talking about, I think, is kind of like the Fox News, you know, like getting Joe Biden like this, you know what I mean? No, it wasn't that. It wasn't that. Tripping at the thing. But regardless, okay, to answer your question, is he got older.

Yeah. Yeah. Do I, am I 100% certain that he was capable of continuing to make the decisions and do the job of actually what the president is supposed to do? do? Yes. Did he have the ability to communicate that to the American people to the degree that he needed to win an election? Maybe, maybe not. But we'll never know. I agree with you about how I felt, you know, watching that debate. It really felt, and to some degree as well with Trump, like, the guy is old. These people are, these are old men. And what you're doing is you're watching guys that should be fucking granddad. I'm not saying that you need to fucking retire, whatever.

Like, I'm sure people are competent until old age. You're watching people that should be twilight of life, enjoying the time with what they've built. Like, punch drunk boxes being rolled out for one more fight that I'm like, you're trading, and it's noble and heroic in some ways, you're trading your health, your time, which is increasingly limited on this planet, for like the nation. You're just trying to hold this thing, or maybe it's not the nation, maybe it's a party, maybe it's a duty for the higher good. It's part of the mission. But you're like watching this person basically go, okay, I'm going to take this bit of me, which is increasingly precious and short-lived, and I'm going to exchange it in order to serve this fucking engine, this massive machine.

And I think anyone that's got a soul looked and was like, holy fuck, that's got to be so hard. You've got these two things you want to do. Plus, you're like ego still exists. Can I add to that? Like, again, I think what is rotten, I don't mean rotten, but what must be very hard about your incarnation. is that you, people dissect your family and you, and I'm so sorry because it sounds insensitive, but when I saw your dad, I just thought, you know, I don't think I'd want to take a road trip with him driving. And if I don't feel comfortable with somebody driving a car with me, I don't want them to have access to a nuclear arsenal, man,

or all the quick decisions you have to make. Can I ask, I get your point, okay, and I get everybody's point, all right? Yeah, we're not slamming your dad. No, no, no. And it wasn't like, oh, Fox News. It wasn't that. Here's the thing. This is sad.

As it relates to decisions that my dad made, they weren't mine, but I'm willing to talk about him. As it relates to his age, it was, it's all public. So I don't take it as a criticism. It is a conversation that, by the way, we're all going to have. As you have a aging America in which people are capable of continuing to do the thing that they are professional at with the wisdom and the experience that they have in which their physical appearance and their physical capacity to do things slows down.

Okay? Yeah. And so, but here's the other side of it is the job of being president is not purely about competence, experience, and wisdom. It is also about the capacity for you to communicate that to people. So what he did not communicate to people was that he could drive the car. And that's a fair criticism. Absolutely 100% is fair.

Now, should he have stepped aside for who and what? Because remember what you're coming off of. You're coming off of January 6th. You're coming off the pandemic. You're coming off of the incredible dislocation and disruption of an economy in which everything went offline for a period of time and which it created the law. largest unemployment in this history and a potential of a recession. And you're also coming across this incredible success of two years in which all of that competence and wisdom. Remember when he

became president that said he'll never get a bill passed. The Congress is too close. He only had one seat in the Senate and he had four seats in the House. There's no way that it'll ever get anything done. He passed more legislation in a two-year period of time than any president since Lyndon Johnson who had supermajorities in both the House and the Senate. Anybody. He had the best midterms of any sitting president since FDR in 1932. He won more state houses and governorships. The smallest number of congressional seats lost of any president since 1932. So he's rolling off of these successes, okay, and opens up to a primary. And who runs? There's no bigger name than Bobby Kennedy.

There's nobody. This whole idea that there's a democratic, but it's like since the beginning of time. Of course there's a democratic establishment and whatever. And so he makes what ends up, depending upon your perspective, the fateful decision to stand for re-election. And then comes to the debate.

And I can't explain it. I truly can't. Everybody can have a conspiracy theories. Everybody can think that, oh, that's how he is. But all I can say is, not a single person that worked with him on the record has gone and said Joe Biden wasn't cognitively capable to be president of the United States. You can definitely make the argument of whether he was cognitively capable of or communicatively capable of making the case to the

American people. But here's where we, you know, stand. And one last thing about this is that when it came time to make the decision, okay, after, you know, the, what I call the, the, the, the, the insider, the true insider, the elite class of the Democratic establishment, because the DNC is not that. There's no, it's like the money people. It's the people that fund the party. Right. Okay. When they made the determination that they wanted Joe Biden out and basically said, we are going to fight you all the way to the convention, because they couldn't take it away from them legally.

I mean, he was the nominee, you know, period. And he got COVID. it. There was that horrible picture of him getting back on the plane because he passed all the hurdles. He did the Stepanopoulos interview for an hour and 10 minutes. He did the NATO summit press conference for an hour and 30 minutes and answered every question, you know, a tour to force global lake history lesson for everybody. And then he did the NAACP convention speech and all of that stuff. And he went to do the next morning. He gets COVID and it wipes him out. And he has to make a decision that I don't know of any other president or any other person in that position has ever made before to voluntarily, without being forced to, without having any legal authority of saying, I'm going to step aside.

And I think that's really courageous. I don't think history is treating that. I think history will treat that well. But also, I think my dad hung the moon. So, you know what I mean? It's not like I'm, I'm biased in any way. What was that stat about your dad being the poorest president since 1900? Yeah.

My dad entered the presidency and left the presidency with fewer assets than anybody since I think what was here or who came up taxed, maybe? No. But regardless is that when 1972, when my dad got elected, he was 29 years old. He was too young to serve when he was elected by virtue of the Constitution. and he turned 30 and when he, uh, in between the time he was, he won and when he was sworn in. And he made, he made a promise during that campaign that he would never own a stock or a bond for the single purpose of reason that Spiro Agnew had just gone through, uh, you know,

had gotten impeached and removed before Nixon ever got impeached. And, um, and he kept that. So he lived off his salary, which by the way, wasn't a bad salary, but just remember. In December, 1972, it was like $48,000 a year, and then it went up to $68,000. And then when I was in, you know, school, it was like $150,000. You're going to take some tips from Nancy Pelosi. Yeah. But my point is this, my dad ended the vice presidency that way.

The only time my dad ever made money, you know, the Biden crime firm really, like, bullshit. My dad wrote a book. And what did he do with the money that he wrote a book when he left the vice presidency? He didn't go out and make speeches for private equity firms and fly to Saudi Arabia and, you know, sit on the board of, you know, X, Y, Z hedge fund or whatever. He wrote a book and he bought my mom a beach house in Rehobos, you know? Awesome. Yeah. And then he went into the presidency with the savings from that money and his pension.

And he left the presidency. And the only thing my dad is done to make money is he wrote a book. And, you know, I don't know about you. you, but that's what I want my president to be like. You know, I don't need them to go out and start a foundation with Saudi and, you know, UAE money or, you know, do a dodgy crypto deal and blah, blah, blah, particularly while they're still president. But that's my dad.

Phone. What? You forgot the phone. What about the sneakers? What about the things? Look, by the way, he takes all these cool things. Like, I'm a big crypto fan. Have you got one?

They suck. What? Have you got one? As a joke, my wife ordered me the Trump sneakers. Oh, the Trump sneakers. They're not good shoes. They're not good shoes. Peter Thiel ordered you the Trump sneaker.

My dearest friend. I tell, please cut that out. Please, you don't understand. I love it. You challenged Don Jr. and Eric to a two-on-one cage fight. What's happening with that? Are you guys in my corner? I'm going.

Are you really fine them? No. I mean, I haven't heard back. But I will tell you this. I will tell you this. is that I said, well, number one, it would be a great way to pay my debt. I think it would be great on pay-per-view, literally. And if Shane could fill Franklin Field, or not Franklin Field, the link, you know,

I swear to God, I think that I could at least get half the number of people there. There would be a lot of people, I think. Yeah, I think so, too. Two B-1's crazy. Just a chance to smack guys on one of them. I'm 56. So you guys really do. It's a family beat.

Have you been in concert? Can we prank call Don Jr. right now? Have you got his number? Can we just ring him? I don't know what's gone. Don't do you have his number? Yeah, no. We call Peter Thiel. I don't, please stop Peter. You guys, you don't understand. I am not in, I don't know him, never met him, not paid by the fact.

Please, please stop. Just put this. I have a question. This is sort of up. I've always been curious. What is it? Like, the president has some kind of apartment in the White House? right where the where what is that like like you know it's oh the residence you know every kid yeah kind of thinks like man i wish my dad was president that's going to be cool you get to go into the residence

you get to see it's cool it's so cool it's so cool it's so amazing the people that work there that are you have butlers and stuff yeah and and they're incredible and they're wonderful and they've been there for decades on some of them and and and there's like for me at least and they're The residence, and every time I went to the White House, there was never without, like, a complete sense of awe. Did your dad ever cook you breakfast in there? No, but my dad's never cooked a breakfast. Presidential pancakes?

There was a kitchen in there. My dad could cook an egg just to be clear. Oh, okay. Yeah. Now, I'm a great cook, but he would, no. But there's a kitchen. I just always wonder about that private life of a lot. There's a little kitchenette off the residence.

The residence is on the, you know, know, if you're looking at the front of the White House, you enter into, like, the main hall. Yeah. It has the public, I mean, the rooms in which like the, like the blue, the red room, the green room, the, you know, where they have some of the state theaters and stuff like that, where you always see the pictures in the cross hall, like, you know, that red carpet. And the floor above it, the two floors above it are the residents. And there's the one end of it is all the presidents, you know, like quarters.

and the First Ladies. And then there's the Lincoln bedroom, the Queen's bedroom, and then there's like six or eight other bedrooms upstairs, like guests and stuff like that. Secret doors? Oh, yeah, there's secret doors. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah.

Did you find them? Did you get shown? Do you get shown like, hey, this is how you fucking roll in Monroe your way out of that? The doors that are secret that aren't secret anymore. You know what I mean? You see like, well, there's a line in that wall. Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance, which is why for the last five years I've started pretty much every morning with Element.

Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangy nectar, and I really tell the difference when I take it versus when I don't. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue, helps to optimize brain health and regulate your appetite while also curbing cravings. Best of all, there are no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration, so you can buy it and try it for as long as you want, and if you don't like it for any reason,

they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of elements most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below. Are heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash bottom wisdom. Did you ever, you ever in the White House

and think like, it's not as cool as I thought? No. Really? You're always like this rules. It's just rules. Well, here's what you think. I mean, if you have any kind of like appreciation for where you are, it's like, holy shit. It's insane.

Like, not this actual floor because it's been done. Truman did it. You know, I mean, it's not the same. But it's like on this grounds, you know, the course of history has been changed dozens and dozens and dozens of times and sometimes for good, sometimes for real ill. and it's got to be so haunted. Yeah, I bet you. Is it haunted?

Did you ever have any ghost encounters there? Am I running this? I'm sorry. This is the exact direction I want to go in. Okay, great. Is it haunted? Is there like, it's like, I mean, like, yeah, they say that, um, but I, I didn't have money.

Do you ever walk around there at night? Just like staring at shit when you're jobs? Oh, yeah. 100%. I'm, I'm not, now here's the thing is I didn't get to spend much time there. And one of the reasons I didn't get to spend much time there is because, every time I was there, it became an incredible distraction. So I'd show up and I'd go walk in the South Lawn with my dad and the dog, and they'd take a picture, and it would be on the front pages of the New York Post,

and they would say the indicted or the soon-to-be-indicted or the drug addict son or the thing. And so it became really, really uncomfortable. That's going to suck. Your dad has finally made it. This is the opportunity for me to be the son that gets to have presidential pancakes. And because of the way that kind of we arrived, I don't get to fully, like, embrace that. That's got to suck. Yeah, you know, but thank you.

Well, you're not, I'm not supposed to be there to have fun. No, no, I'm saying, yeah, you are. By the way, if you can't, then it's crazy. I mean, but thank you for saying that. Um, but I can't say that because like, oh, woe is me. You know what I mean? Like, uh, my dad's president. My dad works for 50 years to become president.

I want fucking pancakes. Well, by the way, 20 days, 20, 25 days, you said. Out of the entirety of the time, you got to stay at the white guys? Yeah, maybe. Like more, well, no, probably more than that. Like, I think like 30 or 40. And I got to go to Camp David. And I get to fly Marine one in.

And you get to go on Air Force One. And every time you do, you think, oh, my God, this is the coolest thing. And I think if you don't, you're a jackass. I mean, if you lose that, like, if you lose, like, walking in, like, walking down the colonnade to the Oval Office without the feeling of like, holy shit, then I think that you are, you deadness. That's awesome. Yeah.

That, uh... But I didn't get to spend as much time with him. Yeah. As, as I normally would have. If it weren't for the fact that I was a crack addict, you know, pictures of it. And I was, um, being investigated by the Department of Justice for, um, you know, this, that and the other thing.

Part of house. That bag of coke at the White House wasn't yours. No. Okay. Oh, yeah. How upset were you that someone else found it? Okay. I've literally, I've listened.

to all of you. I've listened to you, have your guest on, and you're all like, I don't know. I don't know. It could have been his, but I guess not. Whose do you think it was? Because it's fucking someone. I have no clue. Who's the hit list? Pull up a diagram of the White House. Okay. Let's say. Diagram of White House. You're going to place the bag of cocaine? How big was the sack? How big were we talking? I have no idea. April? I mean, it didn't come to me and take it. We want to show you this. Well, you could have. Honor. Honor. Come here. We're aware that you might. be able to trace where this came from. Here we go. Okay. So if you look at the, okay, so you see there, see where it says White House in the middle? Yeah. Okay. So the West Wing is where the Oval Office is.

The White House is where the residence is. I am under secret service protection during this period of time. When I enter the White House, I enter off of the South Lawn, which is the big ellipses. You know what I mean? Like the circular driveway on the southern part. Okay. So you enter the White House through the middle bit? What? Right to the middle. And right as you go through the middle, you go to an elevator and you go up to the residence. Okay?

That is how the Secret Service brings me in and they're with me. Like as far as you are for me, everywhere I go outside of making it to the elevator to that to go up to the second floor. But not the bathroom. If you want to do key bumps, you can go in the bathroom. Yeah. True. Okay. True enough. Thank you for pointing that out. That was very helpful. Motherfuck. I swear to God. Where was it? Okay. So now now, okay. Situation room, wasn't it? Yeah. So see where it says West Exec Avenue?

Yeah. Okay. So that's where everybody else that is a part of the administration comes into the White House. So the Eisenhower Executive Office building is where 90% of the people that say they work at the White House work. Okay. And when they come over, for meetings with the chief of staff or the director of national intelligence or whoever else is in the west wing, they come through there. And when you go through there, you enter in on the ground floor. Above you is the chief of staff's office and the Oval Office. Okay. And on that ground floor, as soon as you walk in, there's a desk. There's another secret service agent, a uniform secret service agent. And if you go on the other side of that desk and take a right, there's a hallway. in that end of that hallway is the situation room

of which I've never been in because you're not allowed into the fucking situation room unless you have top secret clearance Hey dude the fucking president's son doesn't get to hang in the situation And in that right in front of that door is a set of cubbies okay and the only reason I know that

is it because if you go to your left there's a little cafeteria like not even it's like table set up for like the chief of staff in their offices to come have like bowl of soup or whatever to eat. In those cubbies is where they found it. And supposedly found a little bag of cocaine.

Bole of soup. Number one, I'm not joking around, okay? And I don't know how much of it is. You should be like, I do fat sacks only. Yeah, by the way, not only that is I smoke crack. True. I smoke crack. I'll say this, though.

But by the way, I'm now at this point, I'm not in the White House when it's found. I haven't been in the White House for six weeks to a month when it's found. all right although this this does sound like the part of the movie where we're like you know we have the diagram it sounds like we're planning on how we could get cocaine into the White House you know they go through like the ducks what the fuck no it doesn't is that

you know what that's why you went to Sally's and I went to arch here okay exactly rivals forever yes exactly there's a duck on the South Law you've opened it up there's literally this is never going to die okay I don't by the way here's the other thing I don't think it was yours I don't know but here's the other thing

It's like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, I'll openly talk about having sex on camera with a prostitute in New Haven, Connecticut. Yeah. And all the, I fucking 95 smoking a crack. But like, I like a, like a egg to the bag of drugs. It is so funny. I mean, it's so ridiculous. It's crazy.

It is very funny. It drives me insane. Now, look, that's like, you want to talk about things that online. You have your friendship with Peter Thiel to deal with. Come on. I'm not going to know, Peter Dio, weird. Got it. You had to have been like fucking great.

Great. You know what? I literally, this is how obtuse I am. I was like, oh, that's weird. Kind of went about my day. I was, I was what, four or five years sober by this point? I haven't like, and by the way, like, I'm thinking like, who? Like, if I relapse, no, oh, here's the other thing.

I'm going to do it with the bag of it. I'm being drug tested, but you know what I'm being drug tested by? the Federal Bureau of fucking probation who's fucking showing up at my house and they watch you pee two or three times a week without not telling anybody and they deal with the Secret Service

they just walk into my walk into your house like 6 a.m. Is it true? Knock on your bedroom door. And they watch you right? Oh yeah. And then they walk you into the bathroom and close the door

with them standing like this. Watching you're watching your cock? Yeah. You can't use the Wizzinator. You could use the Wizzinator technically. What's that? The Wizzinator? Oh yeah.

What's the Wizzenator? Wizzinator is like a fake penis I wish I had the WISNATO when I went to the Navy. Exactly, yeah. Is it true that you still pack your bag with a witness? Is it you still doing that? You have to pack your bags? Yeah.

Have you heard this? Yeah, it's called a wife. They watch you. They go, that's all you're bringing. Yeah. It's true. It's for the God. I got in a little discussion before I left her here.

She said you can fit it all in the back. I said, I like my little rolly bag to put my back back in top of it. Why are you taking that? But what are the why it's pushing for more storage or less? It doesn't matter. That's too much or that's, no matter what you pack. Too much or too little. That's wrong.

By the way, I just want to make clear. Melissa, I did not use the voice that Matt is doing this. I get in trouble. I get in trouble. I don't know what. I use like a cartman. You don't sound like that. It's so mad.

It's so funny. Don't sound like that. Yeah, that's an ongoing problem. Here's the thing is that The reason is The only when I travel internationally Is that if it's out of my sight I just think that look

Could you imagine If I got pulled over And they found drugs You know, on me Two would believe me Yeah Like if you can't believe me about that Right

Yeah The 9,000 times that I've said Are you out of your mind? I wasn't there You can check on the fact that I wasn't there You can see that it wasn't. Like, it was in front of the, I mean, like, all of these things. It's too small. Can you imagine?

You know? Yeah. Right. Like, what would you do? And, and, you know, also, here's the other thing. Do you put it past any of these guys for shit like that? No way. The plant, it could have been dropped for sure.

It was like, dude, drop it down. Yeah. So, you know, I want, like, here, like, the thing that I am, uh, I want all the questions. Like there's nothing off limits. I want to be able to, because the thing that I think is the only value that I have, truly, because you don't have to agree with my politics. You don't have to agree with I think about Donald Trump.

You don't have to agree that, well, I hope everybody agrees that fucking the Beavis and Budhead or total douchbag, Don and Eric. But is that you don't have to agree with any of the sense. Fighting tough. Phoebe's a butthead so funny. It's so true. Go look at it. Okay.

What's their deal? I don't know anything about them. Just jerks? Well, they're rich jerks now. Like really, really rich jerks. But the, um, uh, is it the one thing that I, did I, like, just to be, like, a symbol, like, fuck it, I made it. Even, like, you can't, too.

Like, if I could. could stay clean and sober through all of that shit and get on the other side of an addiction that you can go look at how fucking awful it was. It's like, I just think, like, for that reason alone, to be out here talking to people and to show that I can sit up right in the chair and I can write about it and I can talk about it

without any, um, shame. That doesn't mean I don't feel guilty about shit. Yeah. Doesn't mean that I made horrible decisions and abstinent myself from my family and my children in particular. It doesn't mean that I'm even remotely perfect in, in my recovery. Mm-hmm. You know, and, uh, but, you know, there is another, there is getting to the other

side of stuff. Um, and being transparent about it isn't a, uh, a weakness. It's a strength. You are everywhere at the moment. Would you ever consider running for office? Is there a thrust that this is working toward? No, I mean, people, I'm even honored you would ask that with a straight face because I really am.

Because think about that, think about asking that question, you know, before May 21st of this year when I went on X for the first time. And so I really appreciate that if it was said. with sincerity. But, you know, I tell people, if you, if I announce for something within the next few years, then you will certainly know that I've relapsed. I do think there's something universally respectable about someone who goes through. I mean, everyone can agree.

I would say everyone's worst nightmare and just can, like, face the public and talk. Usually, I think most people would run away from that. Just be like, I'm out. I'm just going to kind of hide away. Now, so what are you working towards, though? I mean, you are making the rounds. What do you have designs to do? I don't know.

I'm true. I really am. I got some things that, I mean, I'm writing on Substack. And I wrote a continuation of the, like, the last seven years, you know, from my personal perspective. And then I wrote another one, thank you very much, AI, to, that, that allowed me to take all of the collective congressional reports and reporting journalism and kind of like what happened in those seven years of the things that I wasn't in the room for, like the Giuliani plot and that thing.

And so I wrote that. But the one thing that I really, really want to do is, I think that one of the ways, in which people, at least for me, I know this is how it helped me. Is the single, the thing that helped me most in my recovery was sharing, like hearing other people's stories, is realizing that you weren't alone

in whatever you thought that depravity was that you were living in. And like, I remember the first time I sat in the room thinking there's no way that I'm gonna be able to share this with another human being. And like, the guy next to me, like, tells a story and I'm like, Holy fuck.

Oh my God. It made me blush and I'm like, hey, you know, like that becomes kind of easy. It's going to be a very impressive story to out degenerate you. Me. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And was it a global incident, though? Did it move stock markets?

Did it change in election? Yeah, true. You know who I taught? Like the reason I, and this is why I love him, is the openness with which Teobon talks about and stuff like that. I was listening to your interview with Teobon and there's like one part where, anyway, I don't even want to go through it because, yeah.

What is it? Oh, yeah, I don't remember. Yeah, but they're, they're, I don't know what you're talking about. What the hell? Yeah, yeah. No, it's, I think it's better off to get as much out as possible

because it's, I don't know. Yeah. It's good. It's good. It's good for you. It's good for everybody. The thing that kills you, if you're an addict, at least from my experience, is you keeping that, like, secret,

and that shame, and there's a big difference between shame and guilt. You know, shame is basically the thing that tells you that you're not worthy of love and you never will be. Guilt is like an appropriate emotion in which you do something wrong, you've got to go make amends for it. If you live in that shame

and you're never able to like let it go because it's a secret, you know. I mean, just crack. Just talking about being a crack addict automatically sends at least people that are, you know, relatively our age into a friggin tailspin.

Yeah. Like, their mind goes to... Why do you think that is? I think it's number one. I think it is... It has to do with the connection to race that was created as it relates to the crack epidemic

of the early 1990s. It has to do with the reality of the way in which it impacted. Certain communities, particularly the African-American community. Do you buy the CIA was... flooding communities with cocaine on purpose, that that was real.

Remember when they found that CIA plane full of Coke? What's the story behind that? Because I've heard it, but I don't actually know the story. Do you know it? I don't know the story to the degree that I should. But look, I mean, if you want to understand, like, the crack of them from a, like a, is watch the wire. You know what I mean? Like, what is that season, you know, three remember it?

What? Is that not fictional, though? It is fiction, but if you really want to understand the way that it's read. I think the writer was a journalist, though. I could be wrong. I think he walked out. George Pelicanos was one of the writers on that, and then what's his name? But yeah, I mean, it's all ripped from the pages kind of stuff. And my only point is, is it really did destroy entire communities, but it didn't have to do with what they thought it did.

They thought that it was particular to the physiological effect the crack had on people. That's where the lie is. it had to do with the financial aspect of the drug, is that you could sell and make very cheaply and over and over and over again in small quantities. And you just create this market that was insatiable to feed. And so it was, the violence was occurring because of the unfettered drug trade.

There was so much money in it. And if you lived, for instance, like I did in the, in the late 80s, early 90s in Washington, it was, I mean, it just ripped through Washington. You had, you know, and, and what ripped through Washington was the violence that came along with the trade and they enforced, in the attempt to enforce the drug loss. And so they would crack down on communities. and users rather than

the people truly committing the violence was for the dealers and you know up the chain and up the chain I'm certain involved you know some covert operation that's related to it

and they didn't have anything to do with the intent of like ripping apart our cities but had some other intent what do you think what would be the just to it's no way to get untraceable.

money or something like that. Like the CIA was selling. I'm honestly, I'm not up to date on that conspiracy, but remember they found a CIA plane full of blow, which was insane. Like they're trading it to get cash. So it was just like the Iran contract. You know what I mean?

It's all about ways to move money and to move weapons in an untraceable way. And in order to be able to do that, you like end up going into business with, you know, the really bad guy. You know, or looking the other way when, you know, they're doing what they're doing. I've learned from over a thousand podcast episodes that the easier you make your health routine, the more consistent you'll be. It's like golf, right? You want to keep it simple and not mix a bunch of pills. You want the eye of the tiger, not the DUI of the tiger.

That's why I'm such a huge fan of AG1. One scoop contains 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food sourced ingredients in a single daily drink. And now they've taken it a step further with AG1 NextGen, backed by 4. clinical trials. And in those trials, it was shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels in just three months, and increase healthy gut bacteria by 10 times, even in people who already eat well. Gone are the days of needing to buy a load of pills in the gym parking lot from some juice bro in a cyber truck. But if you're unsure about it, AG1's got a 90-day money back guarantee. So you can try it every single day for three months, and if you do not like it,

they will give you your money back. Right now, you can get a free AG1 welcome kit that includes a bottle of D3K2, an AG1 flavor sampler, and that 90-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below. I'm heading to drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. What's a conspiracy theory that you think is real,

but don't talk about publicly? Like, for instance, I'm pretty sure that which is a real? Is that a conspiracy? They're definitely real. Yeah, that's not a conspiracy. Well, I'm in good company, obviously, but I'm pretty sure that... This is a fat, single, 45-year-old ladies. I mean, it's real, man.

That wasn't what I meant. That wasn't what I meant. That's what I meant. That's what I meant. That's what I meant. That's the cat lady, the dull thing, remember? Right. Right.

I'm meaning like supernatural, spiritual put axes on you. Oh. I mean, like, actual witches. Dude, are there some here right now? I don't know. Maybe. I think everyone's got a couple of conspiracies that they kind of hold in their mind. And they're like, I kind of believe it.

Okay, I've got one. And if I could, again, apology and if it has to do with the fucking Coke in the white house. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not listening to you. Okay. Done. Here's a conspiracy theory that you must be aware of that floats around about you.

Yeah. And again, forgive me for this, but I must know. On your back, you have a tattoo of the finger legs. And people say that this is tattooed on your back. Yeah. Because the finger lakes are apparently one of the number one way. that humans are trafficked and that you have placed, you didn't know this?

No. Please, can we talk? Oh my God. Oh, man. You don't go online. You don't go on. Pull up Hunter Biden's finger legs. Is that why everybody's asking me?

What's the tattoo? Yes. What's a finger lake? They think that you have a mass. A human trafficking mask. I do. So the finger legs are these glacier lakes is the most beautiful lakes in the country. And they are in upstate New York.

My mother, my deceased mother, came from. from Skinny Atlas, New York. And then the lake next to it is a Wasco Lake. And at the top of a Wasco Lake is a town named Auburn, where the Hunter Diner is. And my grandfather and my grandmother owned and ran the Hunter Diner, which is still there. It's just like a silver diner.

And that's where my mother grew up, and that's where my brother and I spent every summer with my mom, my deceased mother's, grandparents. And so it's like the most special place in the world to me. But what you're saying. And I was. Now what I'm saying. What the internet is saying. What you've read. What I've read. Okay, I don't understand where you traffic because they're all landlocked. Where do you traffic? Look up finger lakes. You meant trafficking. Don't, don't, don't come. It's such a beautiful place. What are you going to do this for?

Finger legs human trafficking. Oh my God. I'm serious. I know. I didn't know this. I didn't know this. It's also so funny to be doing that and be like, I'm going to tad it just in case people need to know. Why? Tattooing a map on your back. It's like the count of Monte Cristo or something. Just in case the Trevor going to do something. They can rip it off my body. It's like if you get lost.

It's like please return to like a dog collar just in case you get lost somewhere. That's a sweet story. Yeah. And so my I didn't believe that by the way. It's a conspiracy theory. I didn't have heard that one. That's true. You must believe.

This story again is seen. conspiracy theories i'll be honest i i when i was younger i remember when uh what was the one documentary that came out it was the ring of power came out when i was like 21 and you know you're 21 years old just got out of college and they're like dvds that would go around and be like england washington dc and rome are all connected in this triaxal of satanic power and you just watch it 21 you're like damn the world's crazy and then you get older and you're like yeah i don't think anyone knows what the fuck's going on about anything so in terms of conspiracy theories i honestly don't really, I don't know anything.

Do you believe remote viewing? That's, I mean, I'll give you one. Oh, here we go. I'll give you one that I believe read the devil's chessboard, which is an incredible book about the Dulles Brothers. And it's hard not to come away with a, with a belief that it was not a CIA operation, but that CIA assets were involved in the assassination of JFK. It's really, really difficult to not, to explain. What's the most compelling elements of that?

The individuals, and I forget their names, I wish I had that kind of memory, but that were very, very close to Alan Dulles. though it's his hatred of of JFK and and the I mean anyway there's

there's a lot and I don't want to say something that I get it I get it wrong and they'll be like honor Biden's promoting it you know he's like Oliver Stone or whatever you're saying the CIA killed no I'm not or they're saying the operatives within the CIA killed JFK without this very difficult to see how there is not a, that there, that there wasn't knowledge within the CIA of an operation to assassinate.

So you're saying you know that the CIA killed, you're saying you know the CIA killed JFK. I keep going with the Peter Thielf's, that one's almost commonplace. I got that for the rest of life. I do have a substance. I have a, I have a X account. Twitter account. Hey, I just came from modern wisdom and this is what I learned. Aliens in Area 51.

Yeah, what about the aliens? No, I don't, I'm with Elon on that one. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think that they're, like, I think if there were aliens that, I believe that there, there must be. I mean, the size and the scope of the universe is beyond anyone's even remote comprehension. and but I don't I don't think any of them have well what about all those UAPs they're showing all these what do you think is going on with this like you know I so here's a I don't know if this is even a conspiracy like Trump's in the Epstein files what 6,000 plus times that's not a conspiracy that's that's real and then right after that he releases the UAP people are saying that was some sad attempt at a distraction but regardless they keep releasing all of this formally classified information regarding whatever of this phenomenon is. And that's real. I mean, that is happening.

I 100% agree with that, that is all a distraction from what we know to be a fact, which is that Donald Trump name is in the Epstein files as much or more than any other person's name other than Jeffrey Epstein. Okay. and here's the the here's one that I believe I think that Q and on was a sciop to distract us from Epstein I think that the that Andrew Callahan you guys listen to Andrew Callahan yeah he's brilliant Andrew is literally one of the most brilliant journalists that I've ever come across just as a as a person and really brilliant and his theory is is that if you look at

Q&ON and what they were saying, you know, Pizza Gate and that there's a, you know, a cabal of, you know, Democrats and things like that, it was to distract you from the actual very, very real story of Jeffrey Epstein. And what every, not everybody, people and the major intelligence communities knew was going on or were participating. I was going to say, because Q&M was way, way, way before the Epstein files, right? Yeah. Did they ever figure out who that was, like at all? Oh, no, Q? No.

Because weren't some of the pictures, or some of them actually of, like, close-ups of politicians, or was it just all bullshit? Oh, bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever meet Epstein? I wanted to believe so bad, you remember? Well, think about that.

Son of former president, right? You've been in trouble for smoking crack, gun charges. How does it feel to not be in the Epstein files? Does that, like, give you a kind of moral high ground over the rest of the elite world? You know what it even feels better? Is it? Okay. Twenty-two years of my digital footprint. Okay. Every single text message, every single email, every single photograph, every single voicemail that was erased or deleted that they were able to pull up. There's not one instance that you will find in which you will see an email from me to anyone else saying, hey, dad, or hey, so-as-who works for dad. I need you to do this for me on behalf of a kind and I'm getting paid for it. Not one single time. Did I mention I'm friends with Peter Thiel? You see.

when it suits him. We have that information. That is a fair point. What is the whole, what's your take on everyone's fascination with the Burisma stuff? Okay, well, here's your take of the pet. Is that monster.com?

Ukraine, no, yeah. Exactly. Ukraine is a, is a, is a, viper's den. And it was stupid of me to go on to the board. But when I went on to the board, you got to remember, It was the, there was a year and a half left in the Obama administration.

My brother had just been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He was given two years to live. And I get a, Devin Archer, the guy that I ever had considered a great friend who said, like, he's got a pardon from Trump and is out like bashing me like every chance that he gets. Comes to me and he says, hey, there's this, a Ukrainian gas company. They need help because they're, they're the reason that Putin has invented. the uh, uh,

uh, uh, thompass and the eastern part of, of Ukraine. And because they control, they have a, about 40% of all the natural gas production is comes from Burisma.

And I, and they said they need legal help. And so I am of counsel to Boyceiller Flexner, which is one of the most prominent law firms in the world at the time. And so I bring them in as a client into Boyzschiller. I do work for, for them. I don't actually do it, but the former head of the National Security Agency administration,

who deputy NSA director and another person that was chief of staff at the State Department who are partners, I pass it on to them. They do a Kroll report. They do all of this background. What? A Kroll report? A Kroll report? Basically doing a background report on the company to see if there's have any major criminal investigations or things like that. And after that is all done, I get approached by one of the board members, who's a former president of Poland, President Krognesky. And he says,

Hunter, thank you very much. This has been really helpful to us, you know, from, a client, a law firm. And he said, but would you consider coming on the board? And the reason is, is because I believe

that just simply by being on the board, beyond the fact that you have the capacity, remember, I'm serving on like literally 10 other board. I'm the chairman of the board of the Center for National Policy. I'm the chairman of the board of the U.S. UN World Food Program, largest humanitarian organization in the world, serving over 70 million, 72 million people in 80 countries, okay? Chairman for over five years at this point.

I'm chairman of the board of the Truman National Security Project. I'm a professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in the master's program. I am, you know, like, I got the experience to do it. And I served as the vice chairman of the board for over seven years on the largest national passenger rail system in the world, Amtrak. What did chairmen of the board do? I'm sorry to say, an idiot. I've never been on board. What do you do?

You are responsible for making certain that the operations and the reporting of particularly a company, a public company, but often a private company, are in order. So it means that you are doing anything from taking. the financial reports and making certain that the legal operation is reporting to you and making certain that everybody in the C-suite and all the responsibilities reports to the board, the independent board, and they are tasked with certain decisions based upon the bylaws of that corporation. And that's what a board does. And so I joined the board with an enormous amount of experience and I decided to do it. And I go to the press and I put out a press release saying, I just join this board. And then it's made clear how much I'm getting paid, which is a fucking

whole lot of money. Yeah. And you know what gives me the ability to do is it gives me the ability to not be on the road eight days a week, you know, trying to, you know, make a living while my brother is undoubtedly dying. Now, this is not post-ball. I made this decision. And it was made purely because of that. Yeah. That's it. That's the truth. That's a 100% truth. Did my dad do anything ever on behalf of Burisma for me? The exact opposite. He fired a prosecutor. His name is Shokin. And Shokin is known as the Diamond prosecutor because he was in the pocket of all of the oligarchs, including the guy that owned Burisma. And he was thwarting any investigation into these organizations. And the entire world community comes and they say to Ukraine, through the mouth,

piece of my father, they say, if you don't fire him, the European Union, the UK, the, the world trade organization, the World Bank, they say, if you don't fire Shokin, we are not, we're no longer going to be continued to provide Ukraine with aid. And my dad delivers the message and Shokin is fired. That's the story. It gets completely turned around. And by the wait, two-thirds of the time that I'm on the board, my dad is neither president nor vice president. Doesn't have any control over anything. But was it smart? Fucking obviously not.

I mean, like, I'm still sitting here 10 years later, 11 years later, answering questions about it. Yeah. What was the problem really? People assumed that it was like, you were there in some strategic position or like, Right. Exactly. So bribery. It becomes bribery, okay?

And here's the thing. A guy named Alexander Smirnoff introduces into the bloodstream of the FBI as an informant that I took a bribe on behalf of my father. For what? I don't know exactly what we're doing for this company for Ukraine or whatever. Well, it turns out that Alexander Smyranov is a Russian agent and he's serving six years in prison right now. Because they go back and they look at his story and his story is completely fine. fabricated. And how do they know it's completely fabricated? Because they have me under investigation for the past seven years. And so when he comes in and he says, I have tapes of Hunter Biden in Kyiv talking

about taking money with these people and here, like, you know, and I can provide the tapes. They say, what are the dates? I've never been to Kiev. Justice Department knows I've never been to Keith. So they ask him to explain, like, well, what are you talking about? And he goes, no, no, no, absolutely. Here's the thing. And they go back and they look at what he said like three years ago. and they realized it was an entire Russian off. And it was being run by a guy named Andre Dirkash and a guy named Telazenko and a guy named DeBetri Firtas, who have all been either sanctioned or criminally prosecutor, not by the Biden administration, by the Trump administration for being Russian agents.

Yeah. And it all came through them. And that becomes the bribery thing. And then you have a guy named Gal Luft who comes along right at the time when I'm about to sign my plea deal. And Gal Luft says from... hiding somewhere that he knows that I'm guilty of bribery also. And, you know, he wrote, well, it turns out that Gao Luft, after he makes those comments, that he is under indictment, not by the United States of America, he is now, for being an arms trafficker and a Israeli agent

that had been breaking the sanctions as to relate to the Iranian money with Chinese, Chinese, oil and he's a fugitive from justice that Skip Bale basically in Cyprus where he got arrested and is supposedly living in television spider web gets really unwary and it gets and people's eyes glaze over when I talk about it but that's

I mean you have crazy problems like your life problems are the craziest problems some the last 50 years have really fucking sucked out of it well here's the other side of it you know what I can't say that

It's been, I literally, I'm, I am, I, I am more like absolutely certain than I'm not perfect, but I'm more absolutely certain of who I am and happier every day when I wake up. I wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning every day and I can't wait for the day. Yeah. Now, sometimes, like, it's like, you know, like normal life. Like, oh, shit, I got to deal with this or that. But the truth of the matter is, is that I get up 5 o'clock and there's not this fucking weight of secrets like hanging on my back. Like, I'm going to come talk to you.

You know, I used to, I would lose it to have to come and know that there's cameras and talk to three strangers and come into a room and feel like I have to perform. And I was trying to think of it and explain to somebody why I don't feel that way other than just the mere practice, okay? I've thought about it. You know what? Nothing's an act. I don't have to go and be somebody that I'm not. I don't have to like worry whether you're going to ask me about the hookers in the, you know, why I take pictures of myself when I was whacked out on crack in a motel room as much as I do.

I don't have to worry about you saying, like, well, tell me about the Ukraine thing. I don't have to be anybody but me. And in anybody's life, what a fucking gift. Yeah, that is nice. That's cool. Really? Really. Like I don't, by the way, not just to the public, to the people that I love.

most importantly. How much of the challenge or the discomfort of addiction and that life is what's going on and how much of it is the shame and the secrecy

and the lying? Because physiologically shit's happening to you and you're kind of in it but so much of it's got to be the story that you tell yourself and the shame and the lying and the guilt and the judgment

and the secrets 90% of it, in retrospect, is that 10% of it's the physiological piece of it, which is real, but it's solvable. I mean, all you have to do is, if it was purely physiological, all you'd have to do is just kidnap people. Hold them for three days in a cell. I mean, literally, they didn't say their life. That's why the tattoos, though. It's pretty, sorry, one month. No. There is something.

I loved it. I love it. You never think about it. My family. You can't have a nice memory. You can't have anything. That is the thing you said way, way back, though, is like, because the internet is pretty wild. The internet is, you know, you have a bunch of strangers just, yeah, commenting on all this stuff.

And there is something about having a kid or just family or friends where you have, there's like a point where you have to almost be like, all right, like, I'm going to have to put my eggs in the basket of, like, family and my real. life and really tune this stuff out. Because it's like we all got thrown into this weird quasi TV show that like everyone's in and it really messes people up, man. Totally. I've seen it rock people. But also, just, it's sort of everybody's life. And so everybody who's out there and addicts realized this, is this.

Is it like, yeah, me having to get honest with strangers is not normal. Do you know what I mean? Like when it becomes like a global thing, like I was the number three most spoken about person on Fox News for a four-year period of time straight. The only two people that were talking about me more were my dad and Donald Trump. Did you say number three? 1.5 articles a day.

On the New York Post. Over a year and a half. Yeah. And the Daily Mail, too, same. So. That's got to get old. By the way, so old. Such an interesting guy.

So old. So ubiquitous. Did you just turn it off? Yeah, yeah. But what about your, how do you? Wait, wait. I'm so sorry. Oh, no.

What I was going to say about that is. is that getting honest with that, it's like, that becomes background noise. The real true gift is, is the people that you care about. Getting honest with your partner, my now wife, which I didn't ever have to have,

I didn't ever have to live in a lie with her. Or have to. You know what I mean? Like you never have to. But my mom and my dad and always thinking, holy shit, if they only knew, well now they know.

Yeah. Do you know what? You know what I found out? they still love me. It's not like they were proud of me. But you know what? They still love me. My daughter still love me.

I'm, and adore me. I'm positive. You know, my, my, and like, like, wow. Like, when you get that, it's like, okay, you know what I'm going to do this morning? I'm going to try to do the next right thing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to try to not do that.

Yeah. No, that's, that's, I found that too with like, it's a different thing, but I used to get panic attacks all the time and I would I would start getting one and be like fuck and I wouldn't tell anybody I would just be like fuck fuck and it's worse and worse the minute you just like tell one person like I'm having a fucking panic attack like 90% of it goes away yeah yeah yeah they're like they're like yeah it's a perfect it's a perfect it's like it's like a slow grade panic attack all the time like fuck you're seeing my phone it's like yeah it's a bad feeling but every time you're going through it the last thing you think is that I want to do that yeah yeah but for me

it's like done they did it for me it wasn't any courage on my part you know what I mean it wasn't any therapy session on my part you're liberated liberated that's unleashed yeah what was your question sir you answered it no I'm just gonna I just imagine um you know you have five kids you know like that is amazing and like having to like and that's I think is what grounds me and most people is like that's all that all you care about is what your kids and your family think about you ultimately. It gives a fuck what the internet thinks. But how do you, you know, how do you convey this to your children?

They're going to be at their friend's house. Fox News is going to come on. Hannity's veins are pulsing as he talks about you. And they have to see that, you know, that's got to be hard for them and for you to sort of, how do you mean? Two instances. One is this. Is that just by staying clean, it's over, man.

Just by not picking up. You know, that's the number one way. Just showing up. Showing up with a clear head, you know, or as clear as head can get, not on substances. Right. It's like being true to that, you're 90% of the way there.

Because then everything else is life. I haven't figured it out. I'm figured out, you know. Like, I make mistakes as a father and a husband and a son and a nephew. Yeah. You know, all the time. I'm selfish. Like, you know what?

Like, I think about, like, somebody asked me a question about my dad's health the other day. And I was shocked by the, like, response of people. Like, oh, my God, Hunter Biden, like, some revelation about, you know, my dad has metastatic bone cancer, which means it started off his prostate cancer and it escaped the area of the prostate and metastasize into his bones. So, kill my mom. He's not any different from when he had. had that when I, when I, uh, when, when, when that diagnosis was made public to today, he's tough as shit. Metastatic bone cancer, bone cancer can be painful at times. It doesn't mean the

treatment's not working. It doesn't mean that radiation and chemotherapy that he went through and, you know, the hormone therapy can't keep it at bay and all those kinds of things. But I was shocked at how people like, I think the other part that I said, which is this, it's really fucking heart as his son. Yeah. It's awful. Like, I don't just love my dad. I adore him. He's the center of our family.

Not in a way because he's present in the United States, but the fact is, is that, like, he is the center of our family because we all rely on him, his wisdom, his affection, his presence. Because he even was present, even if he, even if he, present. The whole career. My dad was never not present for me, my brother, my sister. And I just hope that. So how do I do it? Just showing up, man. Just showing up. And showing up, you know, not smoking crack helps. Yeah. Yeah, true. It's a good thing. What would you,

if you could, if you could war game out the next two and a half years for the Democratic Party, what would you pick? Oh. Pure. authenticity. Here's my thing. I don't care if you're Democratic Socialist. I don't care if you're James Telerico and you're, you know, straight down the line in your middle of the road. I don't care if you're going to run away from Joe Biden's accomplishments or are you going to run, you know, directly towards Joe Biden's accomplishments. I don't care if you think that AOC, you know, is the best thing since slice bread or you think that, you know, Joe Manchin is the, you know, best thing. If you tell me that what you're going to do is that you are going to recognize that

a constitutional Republican in which we live is worth saving, then I'll vote for you. I don't even give a shit if you're Republican at this point. If you're opposed, put some chips down on the table. Who do you think would be good as a one or two? I'm not avoiding the question. I think that somebody's going to emerge like every single time within the Democratic Party with a vision and a voice that is going to capture the imagination. But I'm telling you, in this environment, it has to do with one thing.

It has to do with whether or not you are being actually authentic, if you're being honest with people. People can smell it from a mile away. And the reason they can is because we've lived through 10 years of the age of Trump, in which we very much understandably confused authenticity with audacity. Trump would say things that nobody would say. And people would go, well, that's authentic. And then he wouldn't do them. He says he's not going to ever go to war in the Middle East

and you'd have to be a goddamn evil, you know, an idiot to ever, you know, do it. And he does. He says that he's going to end the war with Ukraine on day one. And people go, now that's what we want in the president. And everybody with the brain knew that there was no way that he was going to end the war with Ukraine on day one. And here we are. He said that he's going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I could go through the list and I start to sound like a politician.

He says that he's six foot three and he weighs 225 pounds and he has eight and he shot 71 the championship, you know, again. Everybody knows he's lying. That's audacity. People want somebody with all of their flaws to be honest with them about the challenges and how they're going to address them. And by the way, like, all these people, like, I don't know what you guys think about, Mom Dani, but all I know is this.

He said he was going to open up grocery stores, you know, co-op grocery stores in the five boroughs, and he did it. He said that he was going to bring down the rent prices, and he's doing it. He said that he was going to balance the budget, and he did it in six months. Now, all of the other stuff is like, what does he think about Gaza? I don't give a fuck what the mayor of fucking New York thinks about. What does he think about BB Netanyahu? Doesn't matter to me if I live in New York City and I'm 28 years old and I just got married and I'm not indicative of something a little bit deeper than just sort of where he's at in the local

geography though. Do people not care about the deeper principles of the people that are supposed to be leading them? Oh, I, I, maybe, maybe not. But I do know this is that all politics is local. Zoramam Dhani works in the largest immigrant melting. pot of human history, which is called New York City. He works there. You know what? James Tala Rico, who is an evangelical Christian and a Democrat and talks about the red letter words of

Christ in every speech that he makes is the right guy to be running in Texas. Just like, I think that in a state like Michigan with an incredibly vibrant and old and important Muslim community, is that Abdul Asayed is, Dr. Abdul Aisayyad is a great candidate for there. You may want to be able to call him a communist because he believes in universal health care. I don't know anybody. I never talk to anybody that doesn't think that it's a right, that people should have the right to access health care without going bankrupt. I just think, I don't know anybody that doesn't do that.

I feel like it's a, I think people have become blackpilled. I don't think it's like... Explain to me, black pill, red pill. People say that to me, and I'm not joking. Well, like, I'm like, which one's the black pill? The black pill is essentially nihilism. Okay, yes, okay, yes. So, like, I totally agree with that.

And so the general sense is, why do we keep having these dudes? Why do we have these presidents? Why are we doing this thing where we're connecting to this person or that person who says this or that? And Mondami, if I watch that, I see what algorithms pumping out. And how could you not like him? He's putting water fountains up in Central Park and all these good things. But then you see that.

Like, that's cool. But then you think, I'm not getting fooled again. I'm not going to let these people hypnotize me anymore. Inevitably, they'll do the water fountains or the whatever for a little bit. And then before you know it, they're blowing up kids. Matter of time before there's a reason. They have some important reason. You are one dark motherfucker.

It's true. I mean, dude, that's the thing too. You are, Monty's blown up. Well, I get you saying. Not yet. Not yet. But you know what I'm saying? Like, inevitably. It's like the hero show.

And then it's just like time goes on. You're like, what the fuck? I mean, for me, the political stuff is like, you know, like I think we're, hopefully we're going to get to a point because we have been in like the whole Trump, which also there is the Trump's like, you know, like, you know, negative half, which is like the liberal media, constantly obsessed with them. It's like a feedback loop, is my point. Yeah.

I do, I hope we'll get out of the thing of like mutual demonization where it's like, you know, this person is a liberal. I can't even look at them and this person is good serve. I went to graduate school in Brimmar. Yeah. Dude, if you disagree with these people, they would cry, the staff would freak out. And they were just like hardcore liberals. He went to Brinmar.

Yeah, I did. Come on. Everybody does. Talk about secrets. All these things are. Exactly. But my whole point is like, I just really hope. That's why I kind of eye roll when you're talking about Christophasism over it.

It's like, dude, I just really hope we can. all eventually learn how to be like, okay, you maybe, maybe I think some of your ideas are weird or wacky because I didn't grow up like that and vice versa. But the whole emotional charge behind it, I just really want to. I completely, I think younger kids kind of laugh and eye roll when they hear like people. A hundred percent. I'm going around talking and the difference between the people that are like 18 to 30 year olds and anything that I talk about, they get it in ways that if you're, if you're my age or over the age of 40 or 45 and you get caught in all of these conversations, exactly what Matt said. And I'm not saying to you is that, like, oh, it's all

about Christophascist. What I'm saying is one of the underlying things, I do believe, you want to know what the conspiracy that I believe in? I do you that rich people eat at the same places, go to the same clubs, have the same interest. And I'm talking about the 0.01%. And they pull the same strings. And they have an inordinate amount of influence on government. And if we really ever want to change things, the thing that we have to do, is figure out a way, and I don't know the way. I don't have the answer of getting money out of politics. The same money that's been there forever. And they have a, like, they had that.

But you're absolutely right. So you know how much shit that I get for going to talk to Candace Jones? Have you ever met Candace? No. Jesus. I mean, you won't meet someone who's personally nicer than Candace. Now, that doesn't mean that the things that she says I agree with or that I, you know, that I think that we did land on the moon.

say this to Candace every time. Candice, we did. We promise you to win them on the moon. But my point being, pretty soon that we're going to just go back there and be able to be like, hey, there's the fucking flag or whatever. Yeah. But also, you just lost me, man.

I was on board until you said, we landed on the moon. You don't think we went to the moon? I'm so sorry to ask. This is where I want to go. Yes, hour three, let's fucking go. Wait, didn't we just say, what conspiracy theories do you believe in? Yes.

Let's fucking assess it. Moon landing footage, please. No, I'm not doing... Yes, yes. Here we are, Candice. Come on, Candice. Come on, Candice. Come on down.

No, I feel terrible. I don't want to derail what he was doing. Because I do like where you're going with it. I feel like I just, I derailed something quite beautiful that you're saying. I don't want to question. Everyone, everyone agrees. Money out of politics. But like, how does that trickle down to making the incentives of modern media,

social media using in-group, out-group, tribalism as an effective strategy to gain political office. How does getting the money out of media stop the dynamics and the incentives of tribalism? That to me feels a lot of game. You mean money out of government? Okay, not out of media, but money out of government.

Here's one way. The incentives are still going to be there on X to say this is a... Oh, no, but here's the thing. You know what? You can curb those incentives. I mean, the incentive to run roughshod over the health and well-being of the American people. And the way that you do that is, for instance,

you end... Section 230, the immunity clause that for all social media and technology internet companies. No, Section 230 basically says that they're not responsible for their content or the impact of their content. So when meta goes out and they know that their algorithm specifically is leading to an exponential increase in suicides among teenage girls in the United States of America and an exponential, an additional exponential increase in the number of girls that are harming themselves in. to the degree that they're going to hospital emergency rooms because of it, because of their algorithms. Their internal studies show documentation. A whistleblower brings up all of the paperwork to,

and all of the data that Meta has at that point, I think, 2020 is still Facebook, has collected internally. You know what they did? Nothing. No one did a thing. So you have to change the law. And the reason that the law is not being changed is because it's not just Republicans. It's Democrats.

It's the people from, you know, in support of the freedom of speech of Silicon Valley or in support, you know how much money they pay for that freedom of speech? Yeah, but this is a problem. I think you're conflating two things. Like, you're right. Like, oh, my God, it's terrifying. They studied B.F. Skinner, you know, they behaviorism. They've created a drug, an addictive drug. and they know how to like hack the human nervous system in a way that is making kids completely

glued to this and is like an adult's going nuts. It's creating psychic contagions, cultural contagions and such. But the moment that you start creating laws where you hold them liable, then suddenly somebody posts something, right? You do limit freedom of speech. It's the most beautiful thing about these things. And I, that's the problem. the two are separate issues. And inevitably what happens is this insane machine that sometimes is misinformation, sometimes the truth, sometimes in between, it will, you'll nerve it. And then the next thing you know, it's like in Canada or something. Like, you know, if you want to post it in Canada, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you have to like, don't you have to have some kind of license?

Like you can get your internet taken away in Canada. The UK is just about to ask for people to upload their IDs before they can have. Okay. So here's the thing is I don't disagree with anything that you just said. But you know what? Is that I think that we have to have this as an open discussion that's not incredibly infected by a voice that has far more power than yours or mine as a voter. And so what I'm saying is, is that I think there's a way to get there. But I know there's no way to get there. when I'm working against, you know, a couple hundred, you know, billion dollars in that, that are being paid through, you know, every which way that you can possibly imagine, not just a Republican, it's the Democrats, just as much. I mean, something's got to give.

Yeah. Something's got to give. You might know more about that. Yeah. You genuinely might be right and know more about it than I do, but I just, I wouldn't bet against the human incentive toward tribalism online. And as soon as you create a town square, even if you start to read it. restrict section 2.30 gets repealed or it gets turned off and you're no longer a utility pipeline.

You're now actually culpable for what it is that's coming through. But if that was the case, I get the sense that people just have these new rules and then they start to play with it. Like an MMA fight that says, okay, no groin kicks. It's okay, well, I'll find a different way to achieve the same outcome, doing something. Maybe. You know what? You're laying a few road bumps down. You get rid of the groin kicks. And so let's use a perfect analogy. Perfect analogy is the automobile industry. Okay. So, you know what? Should we be able to hold cars liable that do not provide a safe product for the driver and for the consumer? We do, right? We apply these as it relates to liability to every single other industry. If you put out a product that is known, like if I put out

a bowl of cereal and the bowl of cereal, absolutely, is killing. It's, it's, a sugary cereal, and in the immediate, it has a poison in it also. If you get the one lucky charm, it's going to kill 10% of the kids that eat it. You know what? We have laws against that. We have liability. So not only would it be necessarily illegal to do that, but really what it would be is me as a consumer, if my child was killed because of the product that you created,

with the knowledge that that product has a better than even chance of, creating the situation which ends up in their death that I get to sue you for doing that. So, for instance, chat GPT. ChatGPT right now, you heard the stories of how it is speaking to people. And like there was this one woman and I think I forget the exact, so don't hold me to it. She, it led her to believe that she was this messing on a figure and it literally encouraged her to take her life. it said you should do it. It would be the gift to the world

because they have all the conversations with it. You know what? Should Chappity, GPT be held liable for that? It's product. It's a technology. That technology took a vulnerable person and convinced that vulnerable person

that the best course of action that they could do was take a gun and shoot themselves in the head. It told them to do it. Yeah. It almost seems like an easy fix. that? Well, yeah, but I don't think freedom of speech applies to AI. See, I'm not talking about the freedom of speech. So should meta be able to have an algorithm that they are able to turn up or down, which they choose to turn up in which they know through their own studies is leading

to the exponential increase in suicide among girls between the ages of 13 and 17? You're saying more like some kind of regulation for the algorithm. That's 230. Consumer safety. If you create a product that is unsafe, you are, you are liable to the consumer if they are harmed by it. Yeah, I agree with that. I think you should do that. Here's a rub. Here's a rub, though. I think you, yeah, 100% should do that. The chat GPT stuff, it's like it does seem like it almost easy fix. Like, hey, if anyone ever says they're going to kill themselves, just code in, don't do that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, that seems like you does do that. Yeah, you would think. You would think.

But, um, but the, the problem is, because then you get into, but then it goes into a gray air of like, what's safe and what's unsafe. That was like the COVID thing. If you had like any sort of descending viewpoint, they'd be like, this is unsafe and then you could, people who might have a political agenda, the editorializing, can then go, that's unsafe. They're full of blocking. I'm talking about consumer safety. That's, yeah, for sure. I'm not talking about what the argument that's going on in the UK right now, which I think is over the top and ridiculous in terms, I mean, not the argument, the way in which the UK is dealing with it. I think that there's, there's real, like, I'm going to get killed by everybody on the left for this, but yeah, I think

it's overkill what they're doing as it relates to free speech in many instances. I'm not talking about freedom of speech. I'm talking about pure consumer safety. What do you make of the increase in political violence over the last few years? January 6th, Trump, White House correspondence dinner. Okay, so I don't know. Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk.

I don't know. I do know this, is that I think that we are experienced the same level of a political violence that has been present in the United States of America since its inception. I mean, if you look at it, we're way below where we were between 1968 and 1979. Weather underground, Martin Luther King, JFK, Malcolm X, I mean, just go down and down the licks, Stozoakley Carmichael. I mean, Hughie Newton, the way in which the police responded to all of them. I mean, like, you go down and you want to talk about political violence. By the way, Ronald Reagan didn't only, was actually not an attempt, he was actually shot. Not only was he shot, there was at least three

attempts on his life in the eight years that he was at President of the United States. You go, the political violence that was directed outwards during the Bush, the Second Bush administration, in the Iraq War, in the Afghanistan War, the amount of violence that occurred outside the United States to protect us from political violence. I abhor. all of it. I mean, it's just, it's like the, but one of the things about this country is that, is like, if, like, we're honest with ourselves. We are an incredibly violent society. We are in terms of, we, we have 5% of the world's population and we represent 25% of the world's incarcerated people.

More than China, more than Russia, more than India. 25% of the world's incarcerated people are in the United States of America. And so, like, there's a lot of stuff that we need to reckon with, you know, but I'm not, like, we're not figuring that out. All I want to figure out right now? One thing. I believe that Donald Trump is truly an existential threat. I'm here to say this.

If you voted for him three times, okay. I'm okay with that. I understand. I can understand why you maybe have gotten there. I don't have any problem with you. Like, I want to go down and sit with whether it's Joe Rogan

or whether it's Theo or whether it's Tucker Carl. I mean, there are people that have said worse things about me than not Joe and Theo, but like others or about my dad. But like, if you're on board with me, that what this motherfucker's doing right now is pure insanity. and cannot be good for the future of this country and for our position in the world,

then I'm on board with you. I mean, literally. I mean, I don't agree with a single thing that Marjorie Telegreen has ever done in her politics other than this. She woke up to the fact that Donald Trump is a complete and utter fraud. It's just the fucking wars, man. It's like every president. I don't know what wars your dad conducted. I'm sure he didn't.

He got out of every single war. We were the first president. Your dad did. In 40 years, not to be, have a, you know, when he got killed for pulling out of Afghanistan. But when other people got killed when we were pulling Afghanistan, too. Well, we lost 10 soldiers pulling out of Afghanistan, ending the 20-year war. While he was president, okay, that's great. I don't, listen, I am so bad at politics.

But man, let me just say one thing. For real. This is what it is important. Is that he did the exact opposite. Okay. Not only that, is it he didn't drop a bomb. on a single person in the four years that he was there. When your dad was president, there weren't any civilians casualties?

Well, there was an enormous amount of civilian casualties that were in Gaza by virtue of what the Israelis were doing, but not by virtue of the actual us engaging in violence against another nation's nation. You're saying like when your dad was president, there weren't civilian casualties in Afghanistan or around the world? Not because of us. We pulled out every troop, every single troop that was in Afghanistan. He did what he could do.

After 20 years was pulled out. I guess the broader point I'm trying to make, and sorry if I said your dad blew up a bunch of kids, like some kind of hippie. I don't know that, but he probably did. No offense. No, he didn't. No offend. By the way, literally, like, oh. Oh, okay.

What years? What was my response at him? Oh, all right. Yeah. What year was this again? What was it, the Ukraine? When did Ukraine start? Ukraine started in 2021 when, like, when my dad was president.

But again, what I'm saying is that we didn't put any boots on the ground in the creek. The thing that gets me alive is you've got all, like we've been at war for, what, 93% of our history? And you look at how? The first time the United States was not at war was under the administration of Joe Biden in which he got murdered by everybody for politically for pulling out of a war that we've been in for over 20. It's a low bar if you're at war for 93%. But your dad, okay, listen, listen. All I'm saying is, he never gets credit for that either. That's a good thing he did.

And, but for me, what eats me alive is that all, like, those bombs, whether, whatever it may be, all those bombs, how much they cost, right? And then you hear kids, kids are in school lunch debt? What the fuck is that? There's kids who, like, who can't get healthy school lunches. There's the teachers who aren't getting paid shit, you know? And you look at how much each of those fucking bombs cost. You want to, you know, whether it's tax the rich or tax oligarchs, why don't we stop spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on bombs that are blowing up countries for completely enigmatic, mysterious reasons? Most people don't understand. And I remember when we, right when we were about to bomb Iraq, I remember, man, I was in L.A. I was at the marches. Dude, everyone's marching. Everyone's so fucking furious. What are we doing? And then gradually,

It seems like the national reaction to this insane violence that we conduct year after year after year. It's like we're not pushing back anymore. We're just letting it happen. 184 Iranian schoolgirls blown up. Can you imagine? By the way, two tomahawk missiles. Yeah. Not one.

Two. Double ten. That's when the kind of started become untethered when people would be like, well, it is a military conflict. and things you, it's like things happen. It's like, come on, man. You can't say that. You can't say that. Things happen.

You can't say that anymore. And so that's where, also, I mean, I don't know. I don't plan the wars, obviously, but it's like. It sounds kind of like. Thanks for clarifying that. Well, it's easy to armchair quarterback, but it's like, that sounds almost like the conspiracy guy in me. He's like, you sure you're not terrorizing them?

Like gratuitous. Yeah, yeah. Because you're dealing with people who, you know, literally kill people professionally. and it's like, I have a hard time believing there's a lot of people who can kind of delineate clearly billions of dollars are at stake not to be like, fucking making it up. With the precision with which we are able

to take out a single person as the, which is the relative size of a grain of sand on a map, that we, that that was a mistake. When we were making surgical strikes. Yeah. It's really hard for me to believe too. Do you have a same when they retrofit samurai blades?

to a Tomahawk. Have you seen this? No. Fucking awesome. You want to talk about precision? So they're able to, they're able, I think it's a hellfire missile maybe, they launch it from the very beginning, and then they use fins to guide it from there, but there's no ordinance in it. This thing is so

fucking accurate that if you've got a bad guy in a car, you need to know what seaty sat in. I've heard of this thing, yeah. Because this will go through the roof and these blades come out, and there was a dude who they'd found quite high up, I think maybe something to do with 9-11. And this guy every morning would go and have his coffee. And they sent two

in the air at the same time. It's like one, two. There's no explosion. This guy just gets turned into dust. Honey, the reason we don't have your insulin is because we had to pay for sword bombs. That was one guy that was a real bad guy. That's different to blowing up a school of children. But by the way, you know what though? Is it in the past for so many decades now. The argument that the hippie argument that you're making is kind of like, well, what are you talking about? We need to, are you fucking kidding me? You know, we have a trillion dollar budget for now what is called the Department of War.

We're not even defending ourselves now. We're talking about killing people rather than defending ourselves. It's outrageous. It's outrageous in a country in which we're the only industrialized nation in the entire world. that does not have a universal access to health care. I'm voting for you, man. Excuse me, I got to pee. I go first.

You go first. I honestly, I have a theory that it's hard to kind of keep the Army going. If you have universal health care and, you know, for you college, because that's like kind of the, that's kind of the character, to get people in the Army. Because if you give everyone health care and everybody college. Yeah, we'll just inscript people then. True.

Here's something that bugs me out, and I always try to wrap my head around it. I remember, so I think I was graduating college around like Occupy Wall Street time. Yeah. I think they pulled people and I think it was something like maybe 20% of the people believed anything the government said. Everyone had this like really apathetic attitude towards like, yeah, I don't believe anything they say. And then, you know, so that was 2009 by 2020, not only to people, you know, wholeheartedly

believe the government, but all of a sudden they like wouldn't talk to their aunts and uncles because they voted one way or the other. People, they got like somehow turned this like, people didn't. really care when I graduated college, at least the people I knew, and, you know, I guess abroad. And all of a sudden, some dial got turned where it's like, now, like, families are falling apart over politics. And it just was like, I always wonder, like, how exactly did that happen? I don't know. I think it's all, I agree with you 100%. It was very quick, too. It was very quick. Yeah. I, I say to everybody, and then sometimes, like, I go home and I'm like, do I really believe

that? Is the thing that I say is, is that we're not. nearly as divided as we're being told for sure because I really believe that but then I go home and then do it the same thing that everybody else does I'll leave here I get in the Uber to go to the airport and I'll open up my phone and I'll go through my 4U page and I'll be like fuck like fuck we're broken fuck we're broken and like those motherfuck god damn it those motherfuckers I mean I even find it in this is that like I want on X and I went on Instagram it was like a new thing to me. And then, you know, the main thing I wanted to do was sub-sac, because that's where I write and then doing all the things. Sub-Sac rules. And also, I can make a little bit money to pay my bills.

For sure. Yeah. So, but I went on X and this crime. X is like a crapshoot. You know, depending on what it is, it's like, I mean, it is the meanest. X is wild. It's like insane. Okay. And just like, it's, like, you crackhead pedophiles, you know, I mean, like the shit. I mean, And then on Instagram, it will be like, oh my God, that was so beautiful. Thank you. You've helped me in my recovery. And I would love it. This is a picture of my cat.

It's beautiful. And here's me and my husband with our dog and we love you so much. And like, I'm like, but I got to go back to X. It's the same. Oh, yeah. You want to read. It's a same. You call me a cricket?

Just a different ecosystem. Same exact post on both sides. And literally, that will be what it is. And my point being is that we are all drawn to the fucking train wreck. We are all drawn to the confrontation. We are all drawn to, and like, and that becomes everything. You know what I mean? I mean, Melissa, it's like, it would be 2 o'clock in the morning.

She'll be like, look at this. Brandishing your ex account at you. Because of my past life, it would be like, look, like, what was on that phone? You know what I mean? Hearts gets a beat. No, it's like, yeah, here's my phone. You can look at whatever you want, but it's, yeah, but it's like, you know, like kids are, you know, I mean, just, it's awful. I think people are burning out on it on.

I really do. I think people are burning out on it, and I think it's going to seem kind of, like, you know, if you go from, like, 2016 to now, it was pretty in vogue in, like, 2016, 2020 to just be, like, freaking out on people. And, like, all caps, like, tweets, like, in another thing, I think, especially younger people are going to be like, come on, man. I think there'll be eye roll and that kind of stuff. You joke that we're not quite in the Matrix yet, I think. You said we're like maybe there, but not quite there in the Matrix.

There's a conspiracy, I believe in, but I can't... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll save it for when you come back. What would convince you that we've crossed the line fully across into Matrix Land? Well, I mean, if like... I think the way... I guess if you wanted to, like,

make the connection that we're in the Matrix, then you would essentially, like, I have to say, like, We do sort of live in a simulated reality if we're getting all of our data from our phones. You know, what's happening is you're getting this algorithmic interpretation of reality. And then you're believing that that is reality. And so, do you know what in that case, if that's what's occupying your mind, it doesn't matter what's going on in the world. You don't need to be plugged in through something in the back of your head.

Yeah, I don't think so at all. I think that there's a veil of illusion that's fallen over everything, which is whatever your particular subjective experience is online. I mean, look at the data for how much time we're spending on our phones, generally fixating on things that we'll never see, we'll never hurt us, will never touch us, and yet that's throwing a shadow over regular life. And so that would be a kind of simulated artificial reality. As far as like simulation theory itself, like what Nick Bostrom writes about and stuff, I think his argument is, you know, there's some kind of mathematical probability that we are not existing. There's far more simulated ones than the one root one that's downstream. Yeah, it's some iterative simulation in the sense that this isn't reality.

It's already some form of matrix, alien technology. And within it, as above so below, it continues to. simulate. Nest and nest. Yeah. Do you know the plank length? Have you come across this? Oh yeah.

Yeah. So this is pretty cool. So there's a smallest length that you can measure things in the universe. It's called the plank length. There's no such thing as dropping it in half. It's the smallest that anything can be. It's like so much smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller than an atom. And one of the arguments for simulation theory is that that's the pixel size.

Right. Of the universe. Right. like generation that it only appears where you're seeing. We're talking about simulation simulation hypothesis. But yeah, plank length is the pixel size. Well, here's the best argument for the simulation hypothesis. If you want to like really prove you're in a simulation, you don't even have to go to the plank length. You just you are in a simulation in the sense that phenomena is being interpreted by your senses woven

together instantaneously into some kind of reality upon which you are applying all of your subjective experience, all of your bias, and this thing that you are experiencing is going to be different than what I'm experiencing, what any of us are experiencing. So in that case, if you have a human nervous system, you are in a simulated reality. It's just you are the- simulated by you. You're the simulator. What was your matrix conspiracy? No, I, 100%. I don't think that there's anything new to the hypothesis that we are living in a simulation. There is language that we now use

that's based upon our understanding of metaphysics and our understanding of quantum, the reality that we live in. But if you go read the Uphanes from 3,500 years ago, and the Vedic wisdom,

you'll literally, they're saying exactly this. Yeah. They're saying exactly this. It's, it is a almost one for one, except the language is just different in which they attribute, you know, these principles. It's kind of the perennial philosophy. It's all this Huxley. It is the idea that there is a reason why throughout all of human history, at least in our organized civilizations, that we have come to the people that have been, the wise people of whatever epic that is,

have all come to the same conclusion. And that is that we are all connected. We are all one thing, that all of our physical reality is an illusion, that there is no such thing as time and space. I mean, now I'm really going to lose people. What? But I really mean it, though.

It's nothing new. We have different ways of explaining it. Yeah. But if you look at, like, where we are headed with AI right now, and everybody that I listen to that comes on that are really truly involved in the creation of this, all have come to the same conclusion that within one, two, maybe already we're at AGI. And if that's the case, then we're, what, two, three years maximum in terms of superintelligence?

Not even that. Not even. We're almost minutes away from it potentially from superintelligence. And if we've hit superintelligence, we've just crossed a line that is that, the greatest advancement in human, the human experience ever. What separates artificial and like super intelligence from regular artificial? It innovates. Oh, so we just think.

So we have super intelligence. Well, yeah, except we. No, so there's the difference. AGI is that there is a machine can do everything in anything that a human can do. Okay. Super intelligence is when a machine can do things that human, have never been able to do or do. Which, by the way, I read some art.

By the way, I just made that up. You should write that down. Yeah, but what if it says stuff and we're just like, what if it's dumb? Is it like, is it going to say stuff that we're like, we're still going to have to decide whether it's like smart of them? Well, by the way, it's like an alien landing on Earth. That's what it is.

If you want to believe in aliens, they are about to land. Because what it is, it would be a species that is so far more capable and understanding us, what we're capable of, super intelligence will look at us potentially, and this is what they're concerned with, as like we look at ants and we look at insects. Here's an example.

And whether or not they save us or they, or it, you know, put us in the zoo or whether this has happened a billion times before that we're living in the same, you know. Yeah. This is what Bostrom said, like to put into perspective, It's a great book, Super Intelligence. You read that book?

It's so good. So basically the way that we process time is based somehow on how fast the brain. Obviously, I'm not a doctor or a scientist. But Boscham's example is, theoretically, if you get a superintelligence and you spill your coffee, like before the coffee hits the floor, the superintelligence could have written like, a hundred doctoral thesis in that amount of time. And so the way it, one of the questions is, will it even be aware of us anymore?

Like we will seem so slow to it. But a more real world example, which I read, it's already happened, is these things are innovating ways to, like, redo engines that we don't quite understand. So what could start happening is it starts giving us blueprints to create technologies, and we don't even know why or how they work.

Essentially, it's Lord of the Rings. Like, now it's just magic. These things are spitting out, you know, cures or God knows what. And then on top of that... But just think of it from the idea of a prediction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, if it's actually... If you really don't understand what we are going to do

or what anything is going to do that's the same way. And it could... By the way, it's either... I believe that there is a... a utopia to it, potentially, potentially. But there's no getting to that utopia without going through what, and I don't want to use the word apocalypse, but some really, really difficult times.

The way in which everything that we do is going to be so completely dislodged. Like, we're sitting here talking about saving democracy. I don't know how, how, what is the purpose of a government and democracy in a world in which super intelligence, exist, which can't be controlled. And that's the other thing. This whole idea that somebody's going to get to it before we do. Once you create, once superintelligence is released, there's no pouring your soda can on the computer. How, though? It's not like saved in servers and all that stuff or powered by. It has already, without being even supposedly reaching AGI, has figured out

ways to preserve itself. So like they've run these tests. They've run these tests, and I think, Forget it was that anthropic or anthropic. Anthropic. In which they were going to shut, they, they let the model know that it was going to be shut down. Not directly, but through communications that were on, you know, on the server between the scientists that were involved. And you know what it did? It created copies of itself. It hid those copies from its creator.

And also it began to blackmail the, um, They put in little things about like one of the scientists was having an affair with one of the other scientists. So it started to send emails to the one scientist saying, if you attempt to do this, let it be known that they were going to blackmail them and make it public the affair that they were having with a, another side. So it started to take the self-preservation that were never instructed to do in which was directly opposed to the actual. directions that the people that created it were giving it. But that's, you know, not even before. This is remotely?

Matt, I wonder, though, is it possible we're in the middle of, like, the most unfathomable marketing campaign for this technology? By the way, I've thought about that. Yeah. And you're absolutely 100% could be right. Yeah, I think about that all the time. I'm like, you know, again, like marketing evolves. For the trillions of dollars that they are putting into, yeah.

40 Stanford educated people. and like let's cook, how would we cook up the next thing? So was it a whole big sci-op when Anthropic came out and said they just created a model that was so, mythos? That's the fate. Yeah. And by the way, the real joke on all of us is they called it mythos. You know what I mean? Like it's like, I mean, I could totally completely wonder about it's my other thing I wondered.

I'm like maybe, you know, for me it's like, I don't know, but I always wonder. I'm like, I don't know. Part of me feels like I'm in the middle of the most insane marketing campaign. Dude, no, they just whipped up, I just read this, they just used an AI to create a, virus, a bacteriophage that they just did, they've already done this. Who the fuck is doing this style? Don't do that. Don't do that.

I know it's crazy, but they did it. And so this is the, apparently there's an LLM, but for genome editing, they already have this. Yeah, yeah. And so what we're looking at even before, like the Terrence McKinney Utopian End of History, singularity time machine bullshit, is, I think,

more akin to like school shootings. It's like we now know that kids will go into a school and just start shooting a bunch of people using guns. What happens when technology formerly accessible only by like the Wuhan

Institute for Virology and the, what's it called? What is it Fauci was doing there? Gain of function. You know, what happens? We all know what gain of function. I know. I never wanted to know that. Seed.

By the way, none of us really know what that is anyway. It's an amplifier. Fucking gain of function, man. It's an amplifier, dude. You can already order gene editing kits online. And so what happens when this technology falls into the hands of non-state agencies, just pissed off people who want to start whipping up their own diseases? What happens then?

This is, you know, the more present danger than an AGO. is someone using some kind of local LLM trained on gene editing and some fucking DNA printer to whip up some new disease. On the DNA printer thing, that is an area that's actually a bit more secure, which is pretty cool. So I've had a couple of conversations, Annie Jacobson, who's written this new book about biological war, and a few of the people that have worked in X-risk for a while.

When you have these desktop printers, DNA sequences, if you want to print anything, you can't do it without a connection. And there's green, yellow, and red. And green, you're allowed to print freely. Yellow, you need to get permission. And red, the FBI turn up and kick your fucking door down. Okay, but let me stop you there. I have a local, theoretically, local LLM, a local LLM, it's offline.

I downloaded it. It's like one of these new Chinese local LMs. It's online, right? If you use Kimmy or whatever. How do I fix that problem? How do I make it? Oh, hey, can you hack my desktop printer to get around the thing? Yeah, all these things, you know, whatever.

But all of this stuff is an arms race between the development of the technology and the protections that we need to put around it. It's just permanently moving like this. The crazy thing is, I don't think from a consumer standpoint, the people are that bothered about AI's getting that much better. They're already achieving probably 90%, 95% of what, I wish it was a bit less sycophantic. I wish it wouldn't use so many M dashies. Oh, I wish it would, like, write a bit better or whatever. But, like, for the most part, like, fucking new chat GPT links in with all of the health stuff on your phone and I've got this test that I want to know. And can you give me advice for the present for the fucking, I'm going away on holiday?

Like, all that stuff. It's amazing. Yeah. By the way, it's absolutely amazing and life-changing. And, and by the way, and to your point, like, if somebody can build that like that to do us harm, then my feeling is, is it the opposite is true. that we just as fast can come up with the antidote. That being said, though, is that it doesn't mean that it's not going to be really, really scary.

There's way more ways to break stuff than fix stuff, all right? Like, there's only a few ways that you want things to go well, but there's basically an infinite number of ways that things can go badly. So you can tend to, you just have to work harder to avoid that. Question on that, on the Fauci thing, I haven't been fucking keeping up at this at all, but all I see online of videos of people shouting at Fauci. Like he's sat in a chair looking sad,

and people are just saying, mean things at him and then he keeps bleeding the fifth. What are they trying to do? Whoa, whoa, okay. Here, let me, I know this is not a popular in, um, in, uh, where I'm, maybe, maybe not. I don't know where you guys are going to go. I don't know what's going to this. Okay, is this. Whatever you take of Anthony Fauci, him taking the fifth was his only choice. And here's why is because I know from personal experience is that all they were doing with Fauci is bringing him up to Congress so that he could testify, and if he opened his mouth, no matter what he said,

they were going to refer him to the Justice Department, which is owned lockstock and barrel by Donald Trump and whatever whims that he has, and they were going to charge him with perjury. That's it. And regardless of whether there is a true, is now they've charged him, they're considering charging him with contempt of Congress. I thought they did. There is no jury in the world. There is no, I can't even believe they'll get it through a grand jury. If they, Congress did, whether the Justice Department follows through with charges on contempt of Congress is another thing. Because everyone has the ability to take the fifth.

It is the, just like I have the right to say what I want to say, you know, as long as it's not yelling fire in a crowd of movie theater, under the First Amendment, I have the right to the Fifth Amendment, which means that I don't have to open my mouth in a situation in which I am under oath and I could later be charged as for lying. But they're, okay, that's fair. Are they, because I don't really know much about either, other than they found his diary or something on the state. They didn't find it. They subpoenaed his diary. Yeah. And yeah. So, but what they're trying to prove, I guess, is that did he actually

have knowledge that it was made in a lab or not? No. And that's, and so under his diary, and he, and he's spoken about this publicly. He's, He said that he's testified to it that he says no. It is not the gain of function research that he believes. He's also said that he does not know whether it was a lab leak or whether it was, you know, natural from whatever. And I don't know. I thought there was an omission in the diary that he was like, or at least somebody told him that it was like, yeah. I don't know.

Do we have like the Google thing? I think there was something, and again, I could be wrong, but I think it was something saying there was a lot of people being like there's no way this was a wet market. and then they were kind of taken off the panel of experts, quote-unquote. They're like, no, we have a unanimous. That's, again, that's what I've heard. I don't know if that was like filtered information. I think if that's what we had heard, it would have been much bigger story. Dear diary, I think I've asked you.

Remember what we had heard, because this is the tell, by the way. What do we learn from his diary? That he had a really big ego and that he was kind of blown away by the amount of attention in fame that he had. that moment of time. Those are all the things. You've heard that reporting, right? You've heard that reporting about that. You know what? And you really don't want that. That's what we learned from his diary leading the, leading the response to a pandemic. If we had learned that it was game of function that he was responsible for setting it up in the woo and lab essentially, then we wouldn't

be sitting here wondering whether or not he's trying to do. Did you see RFK bragging that he's got no gag reflex? Oh, gosh. What? Have you seen this video? For real. Watch this. I will literally eat anything I don't have I can fit a hundred foot sausages I used talking about taste of food right but I mean that's just Oh he's not saying getting stuff

Oh, I'm sorry Is that not just my No person should ever Statesman should ever say that RFK is my Falschi I like RFK the way I think you like Fouchy I dude I used to eat green beans and I would gag He wasn't like throading them.

I would taste them and be like, yeah. Okay. So I like, I like Oské. But yeah, he does. Do you like him now? I've always liked him. Do you like him more now? For sure.

I want to hang out with him. Yeah, it seems pretty fun. Now, I really want to hang out with him. Yeah, that is just saying. What do you make of RFK? Exactly. What do you make of RFK? I don't know, man.

I mean, here's what I make of RFK, is that I believe that he, I don't know. I just am so disappointed. That's why. Because forget about all the other stuff. Okay. I don't share the same view that he has, but I don't have any of the scientific background

as it relates to the vaccines and all that kind of shit. I'm, I, I, I, Trump is an existential threat, and everybody will say, oh, this is Trump der Ranger's syndrome? Is it one of the things that I know and that I, no one is never going to take me off of this.

Because Trump is doing more damage to the United States of America than any other single individual that I can possibly think of since maybe Andrew Johnson after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. I really mean it. He is like, like the way in which he has turned a, the Oval Office into the family office that for the pure benefit of him,

take away all of the policy decisions or whether you think about woke, you know, the military or whatever that shit. I don't give a shit. Is the way in which he's turned it into a way to personally gain. Is that an existential threat though? Yeah, or is that just a shallow one? 100%.

Because if you are able to become president for the sole purpose of benefiting yourself, that is called a king. It is literally, it is a, regardless of whether you, have elections in the future or not, if you are able to, with impunity, make the Oval Office, make the presidency into a, you know, a personal project for your own benefit. You know, I mean, look, man, the Qataris gave him a half a billion dollar jet. He then took it to the Department of Defense and put in another billion and a half in taxpayer money into it. And he has a signed document from his own attorney general saying that he gets to take the plane with him when he

leaves the presidency. Fucking nice jet. That's crazy. That's crazy. Okay? Dude, I can't criticize a guy that gets a $2 million. Just think about how insane that is. Yeah, yeah.

Forget about all the other stuff. Just take that one thing. And by the way, there is a clause. It's called the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution that says no president can take a gift. My dad and mom, you know, I mean, they get gifts everywhere you go. They literally, you send them to the National Archives. You send them to the Smithsonian. They don't keep a single personal gift unless they decided that they wanted to pay for it.

And of course, they didn't have any money to be able to pay for it. President has to pay for the gifts they get? Oh, yeah, 100%. That's for shit. If they take it or they keep it. By the way, I don't disagree. That's fair. I don't disagree that he's, you know, fucking nuts.

The question, though, is like he's definitely not the first president to act in their own interests. If you take all of politicians. I'm not saying that. But his self-interest are saying, is so inflated. So insane. So insane over the top. It just feels like he's the first president to come out and do what they've all been doing.

No, no, no, no, no. And by the way, I'm not saying, listen, I'm not saying I like Trump. He makes Richard Nixon look like a piker. He is literally for $100,000. You can pay true so, you can go on true social, pay an additional $100,000 to get a, to get like an. hour ahead of time the text that he's about to put out. To know what stops. And you know what he's doing? Yeah. By the way, it's literally paying for

insider trading. And it's so if he goes on true social and says, I'm opening up the straight tour or the straight term or the straight term open up again for the 39 time. Yeah. It's fucked up. You get you. You pay true social and he's completely open about it. He made $34,000 or $3,400, $3,400 trades in the first quarter of this year. As president of the United States. You know how many more that is than, like my dad? 3,400. You know how much more than Barack Obama? 3,400? Of their entire eight years of their presidency. I'm so dumb. I was about to be like, you said your dad didn't make trades. I'm like, fuck. No. That was a joke. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, that is, that's probably why he's always going on

about stock market. He comes out. He comes out, I was like, dude, the stock market's crushing it right now. What are you so mad about? By the way, every single time, go look at the Wall Street You literally can see it in terms of the thing. They have the actual numbers. Is that there's like, oh, interestingly enough when he imposed the blockade an hour before, there's a $500 billion trade. Yeah, you can see it. Listen to this. Yeah.

Jared Kushner, okay, Jared Kushner, who is not elected by anyone, not appointed by anyone, he supposedly does not work directly for the White House. She doesn't have a Senate confirmation position. He doesn't work for the Department of Defense to the Department of State. However, he is our envoy to the Middle East. He's getting paid over $100 million by the Saudis alone and has over $6.2 billion under management from the Gulf states, including UAE, Qatar, Oman, and everybody else in the region that are paying him hundreds of million dollars in fees to him personally. Who is he negotiating for? He's getting paid $100 million. For certain.

Did you fuck it with Ukraine? You could have gone so much harder. No, I know. But by the way, oh, 100%. But literally, who's he negotiating for? He and Whitkoff, as it relates to what happens in Gaza, has a relation to what happens to the streets of remus. Because he literally is the mouthpiece for the United States of America.

Why do you think, because I mean the... Can you imagine? It's insane. That's absolutely fucking nuts. Why do you think Trump did the Iran thing? Because it seems so obviously dislikable from so many people. For that reason. Because of the Saudis.

Kusner? That bill will tell you why. is because every single prime minister of Israel, since Jimmy Carter has walked into the Oval Office and begged the president to strike around. Yeah. Since Jimmy Carter, every one, every president has said, love you, get out of my office.

You know why they've done that? You know why they've done that? It's bad. Because every one of them knows, is that the first thing the Iranians going to do is they going to shut down the streets of her moves? And you know what that's going to do? It is going to literally paralyze the world economy.

Not just as it relates to our fuel, but as it relates to everything that has to do with petroleum, but in particular, the one that's going, that everybody's not even talking about, is what it does to fertilizer and to the cost of the American farmer. And so we, the breadbasket of the world, are getting crushed. Farmers are getting crushed right now. What's the state of the straight of hormones now? Still closed. He's now opened it up.

over 39 this is like the 40th time I nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for ending a war more than not only not once not twice 38 times what why 308 documented times the straight of Hormuz closed though they don't want it closed and they didn't want this to happen the Israelis wanted to happen and what they thought that they were going to be able to do is decapitate and take out Khomeini and that all of a sudden that the rest of the golf would would rally that they would come in But everybody, look, there's a guy that teaches this at the war college in the Army War College. He's where all of the senior leadership of the military come. And he's been teaching basically gaming out in a war with Iran over 25.

Did you see that? He's amazing. Now he's gone back on like three times. He's given exactly this is what happens. If you decapitate, if you take, look, Khomeini, I don't. Tolokamani had a Fadwa, which is an edict. It's basically like the, the, like the Pope came out and, and it's like the Muslim wanted sign. Yeah, that's the, by the way, that's the Fadha, but also, yeah, exactly. But you can also issue a fatwa as it relates to like an edict, like saying,

this is what we believe. For over 20 years, these were annually put out of Fadwis saying that they do not believe in nuclear energy as a, to be a weapon. It was, it was religious law from their supreme leader that they would never turn the nuclear energy that they were trying to do into a bomb okay this is this guy not me talking you know so you're skepticism this guy like bombing his citizens though no he wasn't so he wasn't so he wasn't no in iran no that was that was that guy yeah well i mean iran i mean it's like but the i atollah so his son it's not his son however is is always been known to be very close to the irgc the revolutionary card who are the radicals who are the ones that you

you have a several hundred thousand strong army, which is the IRGC. He's now in charge because we killed the father. And you know what? He's all four turned, building a nuclear bomb. So that's who we replaced them from. And you don't have to do anything. If you're the, all this talk of taking out all their missiles and taking out, all it is is like a couple hundred thousand drones that are literally buried in the sand along the straight.

You know, we'll never be able to take them all out. And all it takes is one, two, three to take out an oil tanker because what insurance company is going to insure any of those tankers to go through the stranger-formoose? So they can keep it closed as long as they want. I mean, just before I came on this, it was just announced that the deal that he had with them is that Rainey said, he's out of his mind.

I don't even know what he's talking about. What do he thinks is going to happen? There's no deal. What do you think it's going to happen? I think it stays closed as long as they want to keep it closed. And that's what they realized. He basically put out a feelers, two days ago saying he doesn't even care if there's a nuclear deal.

He just as long as he can open up this trade and removes, he's ready to kind of like move on. Are you worried he's going to use a nuclear weapon? He's going to get so backed into a corner. Midterms are coming up. He doesn't want to do boots on the ground. He knows what happens with that. So, like, you know, that's what people are kind of muttering about is he's going to like,

do a small scale nuclear use. Just a little one. Midterm news. A little one. Just like, I'll just give you a little news. A gentleman's news. Yeah, having that it's time. Yeah, having that it debate, like, you just...

Not before the midterms. Maybe after. You think after you would do it for real? Dick flick. Maybe. You can't, yeah. That's terrifying. You really think that?

Because I do, too. You think you'd press the button? I think that he could, I think that he is, um, he is a, um, he is a, in my opinion, a, um, malignant narcissist. Doesn't mean that you're going to drop a nuke, though. What? There's that doctor that, and I don't necessarily agree with this, you know, like, you know, he's a psychologist.

But this guy is, you know, like Harvard trained. In 2015, he went on and he said, I've studied Donald Trump and I believe. And he's like the foremost expert in his field. And he said, I believe that Donald Trump has exhibits to all the behaviors of a very rare diagnosis, by the way. It's not a sociopath. It's not a psychopath. It's not just a narcissist. It's a malignant narcissist.

Pull up the traits of a malignant narcissist. And I love how I'm running the show now. Get in that. It's good. Charity. But my point is this. He said what it will be like if he ever's ever like the president is like an asteroid hitting the United States of America. And I really truly believe that that's what it has been like.

Whatever you think about January 6th, just go look at the images. is if that wasn't one of the greatest traumas to this, to the body politic in the United States of America, I don't know what was. Simply by how it divided us in the way in which we saw it with our own eyes. Yeah, but here's the thing with that. You don't think the Democrats had any role in the division? Because I feel like they were fucking brutal.

Of course. But by the way, of course. Yeah. Of course. Obviously there's always another side, but here's the one thing that I know. There's always been another side. There's never been another Donald Trump.

He literally has. has broken us in a way that I have not witnessed any other politician being able to do. But you know what? I have to say this. He's going to, he's fucking things up. And he's, it's going to, I don't see any way, you know, again, Mr. Blackpill over here. I don't see how this gets better. Iran knows that they've got him. They know, he, they, and, and if, like, dude, like, dude, blew up my fucking dad, my daughter, you know, like, I, what, what do I, what do I, Who gives a fuck? I'm going to do everything.

Malignant narcissist is not an official mental health diagnosis and diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5. It's an informal term. Common traits that might be associated with malignant narcissism include grandiosity and exaggerated sense of importance, superiority or uniqueness, need for admiration, strong desire for praise, validation and attention, lack of empathy, difficulty recognizing or caring about other people's feelings or needs, manipulativeness, sense of entitlement, exploitation. I think it's just an asshole. I think it's just an asshole.

You know, my therapist. says I'm the greatest narcissist she's ever work with. Really? What's that mean? I'm just kidding. Yeah, I hear on this, and again, I'm not a, like, a Trump

Apologist guy, but I, this like narcissistic, like, you know, I talked to a doctor and he actually said he's a narcissist. It's like, I totally, by the way, Matt, I'm with you. I totally agree. He's obviously, he's nuts, for sure. He's fucking nuts, though.

Come on, man. I mean, like, he literally sits there and he, he tells us that he just shot a 70. Yeah. at Bedminster, and he won for the 40th time his club championship. Who do you, I don't know, really, you're the president. His dick fell out of his shorts. Sitting out of the Oval Office.

Yeah, it's kind of wild, man. He is, and also, too, the real, I think, like, I mean, there's been a lot of them, but the one that was a real slippage was like the, what do you say, like, not Al-A-A-A-Bar, but he had one. Oh, yeah, yeah, when he said, the tweet. Praise be Allah. Yeah. He's about the bombing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's a piece of... Bomb you in the Stone Age or whatever he said. He's blowing up children. Fuck him. But you kind of breezed over what Matt was saying, which is like, I don't...

There's always been another side, but I think in this case, if you really want to, like, look at what happened and how this happened, you do have to look at how absolutely venomous the Democrats got, how Kamala Harris was just suddenly shoved in front of everybody.

It's fucking Kamala, pal. No, I'm not saying it's Kamala. God damn it. But. Real leather jacket liberal. But you're racist. But for sure, that didn't help. Peter Till, loving racist.

That's literally what, that's kind of what they did. Yeah, you got it. That's exactly it. By the way, exactly. I swear to God, literally, but I'm telling you, I truly believe that it is, he is not, like, he is not the symptom of the disease. He is the disease and we are all the symptom. Look, I really mean it. So that's just my feeling. I don't think that it's solved everything when he is, is, is gone from public life. But I told, you're right. Like, it's crazy.

What's it like? The way in which, like, the whining and, like, oh, my God, and all that shit. Like, it drives me fucking. It wasn't even. It wasn't even. So Trump is like an overt. Like you watch him like, yeah, I totally get it. There was so much quiet kind of manipulative stuff that I would say more liberal-leading people would do back. They would try to destroy your livelihood. They would try to take your job away from you. And it was like all patting each other on the back.

What I saw, especially at Brimmar, you know, I'm probably going to get sued by them one day. But it was real. You literally were like in the bastion of like-women. I was in the graduate school. Brinmar. I know. But they're there. They're people's therapy.

and they were in one thing they were talking about taking people who were you know needed therapy needed help and turning them into political agents as a mode of therapy that would help them and I'm like dude that's sick okay I totally totally but my whole point is my whole point here's what I don't want to do it's like Trump is like you know he's some figurehead of some sort of ugliness I think that kind of like you know he's like in very touch with our age you can get rid of him and then if you kind of say like and here's the good guys I'm like I don't know about that I don't know look I'm not saying here's good guys. Yeah, yeah. That's my whole point. What I'm saying is, is that if you truly believe in a constitution of democracy, if you truly believe in the rule of law, like I say it all, everybody,

I was asked at another show. He's like, well, don't you think that you getting a pardon was not good for, you know, the country? And like, I guess they expect me in the answer like, no, I think it was fine. It was fucking awful. It's a fucking awful. It's a totally bad thing. I thought you're serious. I was like, yeah, if I got pardoned him, but yeah, it was sick. No, by the way, I don't, I wouldn't fall for you for that. I have the deepest gratitude in the world for it, personally. But was it good for the country? No. No, I like this, you know, the former pardon attorney saying, I was really, you know, this, that, and the other thing. But what's the alternative? What was the alternative? Can you imagine if I was under the Federal Bureau of Probation right now, would my dad be able to write a book and be

critical of Donald Trump? What would have happened if you hadn't been pardoned and Trump got elected? Well, number one is this. Is it if, oh, if I had not been pardoned? Well, the case that was the gun case is that I bought a gun and on the form it says, are you addicted to a controlled substance? Okay. And you can read that as being like a state of mind in the moment, you know. And so that's why the Supreme Court just overturned it. And at least as it relates to marijuana users said it's an unconstitutional. They'll get to all the other drugs. And I believe that it will ultimately all be unconstitutional, what I was convicted under.

Now, I owned the gun for 11 days. I was in a lockbox. I never loaded, never fired it. Somebody had a concern for my safety, not anybody else's thinking I was going to harm myself, threw in the trash can. I self-reported that it was thrown in the trash can. Police came to collect it.

They then never gave me back the gun. I never asked for the gun back. Five years later is when they decided to charge me with it. Right. And so, So the other ones is that I got convicted. I pled guilty to not paying my taxes on time. Okay, so in 2016 and 17, when I was in the midst of my addiction, so 17 and 18, when I was supposed to file, I basically thought it was done for me.

No, they weren't front of mind for me. Nothing was. And I never even filed. So when I got clean, sober, I went to go file my taxes, and my accountant had died in that period of time. time. I had a new accountant. They said, you didn't even notice your accountant had died? No, I did not. And, yeah, and cracks a hell of a drug. Yeah, exactly, hell of a drug. Yeah, by the way, that's the

best kid. Can we play that? Can we play the, uh, the Rick James cocaine? Okay, it's a hell of a drug. So was the gun and then tax stuff. And so I had paid my taxes with penalties and interest. I haven't found a, another case in which somebody who's paid with penalties and interest was criminally charged. for failure to do that.

Yeah. And they said that then I, like, I, I, I, I took deductions that I should not have taken. You know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know, all my, all my, all my, all my expenses were, you know, business expenses. They said, well, on traveling expenses, you were also smoking crack and doing, you know, blah, blah, blah. Right.

Do you ever put crack on the business card? No, never put cash out of the business card. You can't fuck crack. I had thought I could, yeah. Credit card? Not most dealers use credit cards, but, yeah. Yeah, Benmo. You've been mo.

But I did. Anyway, my point is, is this, is that if he was president, is that what you don't realize is that when you're under, when you're convicted, you have no Fourth Amendment rights. Once you are charged, you relinquish all your Fourth Amendment rights against search and seizure. And you, there's no, you have no Fifth Amendment anymore. You don't have a Fourth Amendment. you don't have the right to, you know, in any space is open to search and seizure by the government. So even if I was not in prison, at any time federal agents could walk into my house without a warrant, without any judicial approval or anything.

So, for instance, you don't think that if they wanted to make certain that my dad was not critical of the administration that an ICE agent showing up to my door? I mean, look what they're willing to do to other people right now. And so that was the reason, but was it good for the country? No, I don't think it was good for the country. And to your point, is like, do I think that this is all Donald Trump's fault, that there hasn't been like complete overreach on the part of some people in the Democratic Party or what do you call leftists or liberals or whatever?

Yeah. I mean, we are all, including myself, culpable, the way that we talk to each other. But the one thing that I'm not going to do anymore, at least for me, is this. Like, I'll sit down with whoever the fuck I feel like sitting down and talking about it. Just like I used to be able to sit down with whoever. And it doesn't mean I agree with them. I think fucking Nick Fuentes is fucking out of his mind. But you know what? I want to learn it for myself. Sit down and have a discussion. What did you learn from sitting down with Nick? That he doesn't believe half the stuff that he says. If he thinks that he talks about all of it,

like it's a joke because that's what edge lording was. And I also learned from Nick. Fuentes is like a lot of us. Nick Fuentes is frozen in time. Nick Frentas is still this 18-year-old kid that went to Northeastern and was a Republican and wore a Maga Hat and had the same experience that you had at Bryn Mawr, but times like 50 is what a bunch of Northeastern liberals, you know, basically shouted out of him, canceled him, told him that he was this. And you know what? In doing so, they created it. They created a star. And then he was adopted by like the Ben Shapiro's of the world until he, you know, decided that he didn't, he said some negative things about Israel and all of a sudden he was canceled by them. Yeah. And so you know what he did? He went nuclear and he found an audience for it.

He found an audience for joking about the Holocaust or, you know, joking about black people or joking about the, you know, whatever or saying women shouldn't vote. He doesn't believe any of that shit. but he does realize that it gives him a platform by which to talk to people. And in doing so, what he says, if you take the time to listen, a lot of it's true. All the other stuff is really hurtful and really wrong and really, really, really, really fucking dangerous. But there's another piece of it where he says, there's a group of people in this country, huge part of the population of under the age of 35. They aren't, they aren't just dissatisfied.

They are angry. And they are, and, you know what? To them, it's all become a joke. To your point. Yeah. They've all been blackpilled. Like, what do they, you know what? So what you said?

Like, I'm not putting my, or maybe you said, it's like, I, like, I'm not putting my, my eggs in Zoran, Mom Donnie's basket because all I've been in, from my, from their perspective, is since 2008, like, Jesus Christ, if you're 20, if you're 35 years old, you know, or say you're 30 years old, you've gone through 2008 where we've never fully recovered from as a country. You, if you're a little bit older, you watch the, you know, the largest income inequality and wealth cap grow and grow without anybody even remotely saying this is how we're going to fix it, other than saying, oh, we're going to tax the billionaires.

Like, because if the billionaires aren't going to find another way to fucking, you know. My point being is that people, particularly young people, have become so, I mean, it's not even anger. It's the thing that is much more, I think, insidious. And that is indifference. Like indifference to the idea, like checking out of politics. And they say, well, what, politics? Politics is all bullshit. Politicians are all, I always say, you may not care about politics.

Politics cares about you, you know? And so, I don't know. I just think that, uh, that I can only think of it. And maybe I'm myopic in my rage. I know I am. I mean, I really know who I am. I mean, I hate him. And my, my grandmother would say, like, you know, like, you never say that in better.

But who do you hate? Trump. I fucking hate it. I hate the way he talks about my dad. Yeah. I hate the way that he is the way in which he talks about women. I hate the way in which he never can make a joke without, I mean, you, like, have you ever heard of make a joke that's not at somebody else's expense that is always about, like, you know,

making someone feel smaller? I think that leadership matters, and I don't, I know that the president, of the United States has the capacity by virtue of the office that they sit in to lead. And you can either use it for good or you can use it for yourself. And he uses it all the time for himself, whether it's his political self and whether that may align with a group of constituents, whatever it is, it's always for him. And I think that that's a disease on the Constitution. Tell us how you really feel.

Yeah. You don't think Quiet Piggy was funny? No. I was crazy. But crazy, right? The problem is, I'll be honest, the problem is it's so fucking nuts. And again, if you're a checked out dude

and you're like, it is funny. That's right, though. Like, if anyone else, if you were sitting with your brother and they were talking about, quiet piggy, you'd be like, bro, you'd be like, bro, you'd be like, what the fuck?

But it's one of those things where you're already, and I can attest to this, You know, I'm 40, but I was pretty, by the time I was in like, the time I was like graduating college, I was like, fuck this. I'm not getting a job. The whole thing's bullshit. The whole thing's rigged. It's evil.

It's all ruled by people just blowing each other up. I want nothing to do with this shit. And he watched the news. You're like, this is all fucking bullshit. So I had like checked out when I was like 20. I was like, fuck all this stuff. So then you got to, there's so many people watching the news like that who are like, I can never, I'll never buy a house.

I don't give a fuck. Probably won't even get married. Everything sucks. I'll be in debt forever. Yeah. And that's the people. they see that and they just go, huh, that's crazy. And then they just go about, you know, their day,

which is sad. That's a sad thing to think about. Totally agree. Yeah. Many of you've ever done 5MIA, DMT? Oh, it's the worst. Really? I hate, well, I mean, I got it off.

I got, in those days, you could order it online. You're talking about the toad or just regularly? The to do you. Yeah, it comes from a toe. Oh, yeah, yeah. I just got the synthetic stuff. Yeah. Smoked it in West Hollywood.

I thought I was going to die. Have you tried it? What? Yeah, yeah, 5MIL. How do you like it? Did you, have you tried this post rehab? Is this part of the... No, back in the days when I was like, I was looking for any, I mean, I've done it all. I've done ayahuasca and five-a-mami-o. And I'm a real believer that's related to certain people and particularly.

And, um, but the reason that made me think about it is the, this guy Chase Hughes, in the way that he talks about it and he's done these incredible journeys on it. And he's done it IV, right? He's one of the first people ever to do that. And he's brilliant. I mean, he's brilliant on the whole level that, but this level, like, of, anyway, I don't even know why I brought it up. Well, I wouldn't.

It was the second topic. It made me think of, like, like, when you come to the determination, the realization that so much of this is just an illusion, you can either choose to engage. You know, in the game? Like, if it's all a game, then play the game. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like, play the game. And from my perspective, I've come out this other side, you know, with this incredible liberation and freedom to do the thing. I'm going to play the game. And I'm going to play the game first to, and the only way I know when in the game is, and I know it sounds like polyanish bullshit, but it's purely selfish, purely selfish, is to be of service to other people. And I know, I really do.

I realize it's not, it's not, in no way heroic is I've never done anything in my life. And by the way, I hope I make off a shitload of money doing it. You know what I mean? For sure. I'm like, I'm not, this isn't, this is because the only thing that I know that has ever worked is not being fucking stuck in my own head. Yeah. Like only doing for me. Whether literally it's doing for Baby Bow or whether it's doing for four.

my dad, or more than anything, doing for Melissa my way. But then, like, the circle widens and the circle widens. And so I feel like every day that I get up, and if I can just think about that, it's like little stuff, like asking your waiter what their name is. Yeah. You know how big a deal, you know, in your day, like when somebody recognizes you and, you know, like, so if I can connect on a human level, just with, you know, whether it's the Uber driver or the flight attendant on the way home

or the TSA agent going through the thing, it's like, I'm playing the game. I don't know. I think part of playing the game is like Karen. Yeah, I agree. It's funny because it does, whenever it's like set out loud, like I just want to be,

I want to serve others. It's one thing to say when you do it. It is a pretty profound thing when you're just like not thinking about yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're an artist. Matt is a fan of native instruments.

So to celebrate seven years of sobriety, I want you to get you a little present. And this is from one current pipe lover to an ex-pipe lover. This is... It's a flute. It's a native flute. Is it really? Yeah, you learn how to play.

That's amazing. That's for you. That's for you. You're real? Yeah, that's for you. I christened it. Yep. Now, by the way, dude, think about this.

Think about the level of double entendre. I got a pipe for Matt. Everyone knows that I used to smoke crack out of a pipe. Yeah. You can't smoke crack out of that. But you cannot smoke crack out of that. I could. No, this is beautiful.

Keep your ring finger on that third hole and you can't really go wrong with the other. This is truly beautiful. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. I really mean. I appreciate you, boys. Wait, wait, wait.

Am I going to be able to take this on the plane? Oh, we'll be able to take this. Yeah, that's good call. You all rule. I appreciate you. Thanks for me. Yeah, great meeting. Hunter Biden stopped in TSA with a giant pipe.

Right. Exactly. Exactly.