The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Michael Moynihan and Alingon Mitra

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

Michael Moynihan is a correspondent for Vice news and co-host of the Fifth Column Podcast. Alingon Mitra is Comedy Cellar regular who has performed on Conan, Colbert, and Comedy Central. He has also been a writer for Adam Ruins Everything and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

this is live from the table the official official podcast of New York's world-famous comedy seller, coming at you on Sirius XM 99. And on the Laugh Button Podcast Network, Dan Aderman here coming at you from the studio on McDougal Street with me from his home in Westchester County via Zoom, Noam Dwarman, the owner of the world-famous comedy seller. We got Perrielle Ashenbrand to my left Dorman, the owner of the world famous comedy seller. We got Periel Ashenbrand to my left. She is the producer of the show. She is also, I guess, one of the on air personalities.

It sort of evolved that way. It wasn't that way initially, but she sort of bulldozed her way on. And we have with us Alingon Mitra, who is a comedy seller regular. He was a writer for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. And he is with us now. How did you do, Alingon? Hello. Hello.

Thanks for having me. And I believe Trevor was, was Trevor just here? He just did. He did a show the night before last, I think. He did a pop-up show at the Village Underground. So did the audience know that he was going to be there or was just labeled, I believe I saw on the website, surprise pop-up?

Yeah, I mean, somehow they knew I was out of the loop. I think he put something on Instagram. I'm kind of making it up. Somehow they put out the word in a very subtle way. And it sold out like that. Well, I'd imagine it would. By the way, I was just saying before the show, I saw a picture. Do you know that Trevor Noah has a twenty seven million dollar house in Malibu?

I think it is twenty seven fucking million. I mean, what kind of net worth do you have to have to have a house? That's twenty seven. fucking million i mean what kind of net worth do you have to have to have a house that's 27 you figured it had to be worth 100 million dollars to comfortably generally speaking have a house of that nature uh i i don't know what the net worth you would have to be but uh it's got to be quite high right um i mean of course well i was going to say before you before you before you said that stuff i was just going to say that you, he's a fantastic stand-up comic. For people who've only seen him on The Daily Show, they probably don't realize what a great stand-up comedian he is.

And he hadn't done it for a long time. I'm sorry I missed the show. But if anybody ever gets a chance to see him, he was quite famous in South Africa as a stand-up comedian before he came to America. For some reason, it bothers us less. Dan and I have talked about this. It bothers us less when a show business person has a lot of money than when a CEO makes a lot of money. But it really should be the opposite because the CEO is actually producing. They might have been an entrepreneur.

They might have created something. They took risk. And now they are involved in an exchange with customers. It's an equal exchange, and they're getting their share. And that seems to me, and that's how civilization moves forward, right? All the wonderful technologies we have, for the most part, when I say most part, I mean like 99% were created by people who made a lot of money from them. But somehow we resent the businessman who makes a lot of money. And like the sports star, you know,

who has a great three point shot to make a hundred million dollars. We're like, oh yeah, that's fine. You know? Well, I think, I mean, I think they're equally egregious, but I think a lot of times people will say the businessman has exploited some labor and therefore there is that reason that people don't like that. Yeah, but it's not true. It's not true. I'm not saying it is or isn't true, but if that is the case, then there is a reason.

Right. People look at Jeff Bezos and say, well, his employees make minimum wage. And so that's where the resentment comes from, in part. Also, he's a lot wealthier. Yeah, well, I mean, I won't defend Jeff Bezos because, for instance, when they talk about Amazon people pissing in bottles, you would think if that's true, if that's not exaggerated, well, you know, there's something that shouldn't be. I mean, that shouldn't people, employees shouldn't be feeling a pressure to not leave the floor. Right now. What's that?

The bar is pretty low right now. People shouldn't be pissing in the bottle yeah no so so so yeah i i i'm not i don't say but i don't but i think people generally people on amazon make a lot of money and i know when when they chased amazon out of queens there was a discussion then of of the salaries that people were making and they were quite good and um you know the he's is complying with the law um you know i i don't know isn't there something to be said for not having such a huge monopoly and putting like every single other store well to what to what extent well who's complaining about amazon amazon without amazon how we even get through this pandemic i mean this is this

is nobody's forcing anybody to buy anything from Amazon, but their prices are so much less in many cases. And that's why we complaining about it. It's like, I mean, no, do you feel, do you feel, and by the way, years ago, we had a comedy union, a comedy coalition where we tried to get more money and successfully got somewhat, not a huge amount more, but somewhat more money from the comedy clubs. And the question was asked,

is it morally wrong to pay simply what the market will bear? Is there any moral obligation for a boss or in your case, you're not really our boss, but we'll say so for the sake of argument, is there any moral obligation for someone to pay a cent more than what the market will bear? No, none. There is a, no, moral obligation? No, of course not. There's no moral obligation to pay somebody more than they're willing to work for you for.

I mean, you could say that if somebody's desperate for a medication, you might overlay a moral thing, but if somebody's desperate for a medication, you might bring overlay a moral thing, but if somebody wants to do comedy, it's not a moral obligation to pay them more than they're willing to work for. However, a smart businessman will not pay the least. I don't, I never have paid the least and it doesn't make any sense to pay the least. Well, I think at the extreme there, like if there's somebody that came into work for you

and you saw he was coming in literally with no shoes and he was working hard and you knew that he lived hand to mouth, I think at that extreme level, there might be a moral obligation on your part to pay more if there was more available to pay. I mean, I think- It's an interesting question.

There are various things, and I feel them quite regularly in various situations that play on your conscience. As you see somebody working very, very hard and you get older and I'm doing quite well. And I see, you know, so, yeah, these things go through my mind and they affect my decisions. And frankly, you know, behind the scenes, I've done an awful lot of things that I, that I would never talk about, which, which, you know, where I, where I have risen to the occasion, by the way, thank you for the kidney, by the way, for various employees who I felt I wanted to, to do things for, or to, to be a safety net for,

but that's not a moral obligation. No, it's not an obligation where you can say to somebody you, you were obligated to do that. And, and you didn't, I guess, I guess you could also ask, is it a moral obligation to give charity? I mean, that's sort of the same question. This is the thing. What do you mean by obligation? I mean, more or less, I don't mean legal obligation. I mean, is, is, if you have a lot of money and good or cause I'm saying,

is it immoral to have money and not give at least some portion of it to those in need? Which I think is an analogous question. Religions say that. To what I had just... To a boss giving his employee more than they were willing to work for.

Anyway, should we bring on Mr. Moynihan? Listen, would there ever be a moral obligation for somebody to work for less money because the boss was struggling that's an interesting question it never comes up because we generally perceive the employee as a more morally pure person but you know the fact is that you know 50 or 60 but those are all like constructs anyway employee but it's like ultimately if it's a person whatever that level level is, that's where the obligation should be, I think. Well, actually, let's bring Michael on because I'm going to tell you guys something

interesting about this and he probably has something to say. Is he there? Yeah. So let's bring on Mr. Michael Moynihan, who's, I believe, been on the show before and we so adored him that we asked him to come back. He's one of the... He's a journalist.

He writes for vice vice don't do much writing anymore yeah i do the vice tv stuff he's a major personality i'm a major personality well thanks for having me back it's my third it's also by the way he uh he is the co-host of the fifth column podcast yeah that's the real thing that i do and i'm glad that i walked into a conversation about the morality of Amazon. You're starting off pretty light, fair tonight. Good Lord.

So let me just tell Michael what I was about to say. By the way, Mike, this is a lingon mitre. He went to Harvard, by the way. I did not. I went to UMass, actually. When COVID hit, I had wanted, I had certain employees who, you know, worked. And as a boss, you know, you have employees who are, are for lack of a better word, they're, they're loyal. They, they, they work for you long-term. The relationship is, is deep. They

care about you. You care about them. They won't leave you an alert. You don't leave them an alert. And then you have, especially mine, a lot of people were just passing through. They work for six months a year. They don't really give a shit about the job. Not in a bad way. Just, you know, they have their eyes on something else. So I had certain employees who worked with me for a long time who had families and whatever it is. And I wanted to give them money.

At first, we didn't know what the situation would be with money before the government came through. But the truth of the matter turned out to be from my lawyers that I was not allowed to give them money. Because if I were to give someone who worked for me for 20 years, who has three kids, $2,000 to help him with his rent one month, then everyone who works for me could then sue me and say I was discriminating. So this is a ridiculous example of how these well-intentioned laws put strings on a decent employer's moral or conscientious courage. But don't employers give bonuses? and bonuses are not the same for every employee that could be considered a bonus. And why would that be discriminatory?

Bonuses can be discriminatory if you, depending on how they're structured. But for instance, I can't lend, I can't lend somebody money. This is all very new. I can't lend somebody money now. Um, unless I'm ready to lend other people money. There's all sorts of crazy rules. Uh, I mean, of course I do these things anyway, from time to time, because unless I'm ready to lend other people money. There's all sorts of crazy rules. I mean, of course, I do these things anyway from time to time because it's just ridiculous. But I'm just saying like there is, so there is a sense that people like Alingan don't understand that in a free market system,

a boss is not necessarily the bad guy. And sometimes if you leave the relationship alone. I don't boss is not necessarily the bad guy. And sometimes the, the, the, if you leave, you leave the relationship alone. I don't think the boss is the bad guy. I think the system isn't good. Like the fact that you are in a position and those people are in a position where they need assistance. I think that is a bigger issue than the laws that's preventing you from giving them that money. I buy comedy cheap and sell it high. This is what I do.

And I'm teasing. So the system is the best system there is, and everybody knows that. There's no other system. I just like that this time it was like, a Lingon doesn't know, because usually it's Periel doesn't know. What do you think, Michael?

Well, you know, it's... I'm not as far as, say, like a Milton Friedman, you know, who's a Nobel Prize winning economist in 1972 or something, who made the argument that a corporation has no obligations to anybody but its shareholders. And that's how every corporation should operate. And that far into the point of it. You know, obviously, government policy is a problem. And this is this is I mean, you know, you shouldn't have to be substituting for government policy, particularly in a state like New York, which has the highest tax burden in the country. The city has the highest tax burden in the country. So people were actually getting assistance. But this is slightly different in the sense that if you're giving people money out of this sort of generous instinct because they're good and loyal employees. And of course, you know, big corporations, faceless corporations have things in place to prevent this stuff from people passing through. So you can't get health insurance at Starbucks until you work there for six, eight months or something like that. So there's all those things that actually exist in corporations. But the second you do that,

it's not necessarily a legal problem in the sense that it's a law but there are the employment law in this country and particularly in this state is so wacky that the second you do something that that that as noam says could be discriminatory which is a word that is so elastic now that is what it does is it makes people back away from everything they try try to flatten everything. Don't give bonuses anymore. Don't give people, I've seen this in companies, titles anymore. Because people get very, very touchy about titles, particularly in journalism. And they'll start going to, particularly if it's a guild thing, they'll go to the union and they'll say something. And then it causes an enormous amount of problems.

The reason that journalism shops, you know, these are ones that are really left wing, by the way, who have opposed. I think the most recent one was, was it Mother Jones? That I think was opposing their own employee union. No, the other one. One of them. The guy who wrote

the How to Be a Socialist book. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nathan Robinson. Nathan Robinson, yeah. Dresses foppishly and has a fake accent. Yeah, he was upset. And, you know, I think the guy is like how to be a socialist.

He is a socialist. And he was trying to defend himself. But the problem is not that he doesn't want to be generous to his employees, I don't think. I don't know the guy. But in the situation we're in now, the second you do that, the guild has an enormous amount of power.

And you are on the wrong end of that. And it's just not worth the fight. If you can prevent that fight and just say, look, I'm going to be generous to you, Trust me. That is a better thing for pretty much every boss left, right, or center. And that's what, you know, people try to do and say, look, you just, I'm going to be, I'm going to be great to you. And like Amazon does that for instance. So, I mean, the fight for 15 is something we've been hearing about for how long now? Four years, $15 minimum wage. That is the minimum wage at Amazon. It doesn't mean that Amazon's a great place to work.

It doesn't mean it doesn't have its problems. So why are people peeing in bottles? Why are they peeing in bottles? Not because of the 15. It's because of the hours. They're not allowed to take a break. So I'm not entirely sure how much of that is true and how much of that is based on individual managers.

I don't believe it's company policy because that would be against federal law. I'd imagine federal criminal law. But it's still completely insane that Jeff Bezos has enough like extra cash to like fly himself to the fucking moon or wherever the hell he went. Well, that's a good use of rich people's money. Well, I mean, couldn't he have wiped out like starvation on my planet Earth? No, no, he couldn't have, unfortunately. Well, the theoretical. I want to be on your side here because the trillions of dollars that we've given to individual, you know, African countries, for instance, a woman named Dambisa Moyo wrote a great book on this called Dead Aid. You give

people money. It doesn't necessarily create, solve problems or create more money. It creates sometimes dependency, sometimes thievery, sometimes entrenches bad people. So, I mean, I think my positive thing about Jeff Bezos doing that is at least he's wasting his money, you know, learning lots of things about space that will be beneficial to all of us, I hope, in the long run. Well, Perrielle, what would you have him do from now on? No longer make any money from all the future products that he sells? No, but I do think I don't. Even if he makes a penny per transaction now, he's going to get famously wealthy.

No, I have no problem with people making money and being successful, but I do think that we have a moral and ethical obligation for some baseline level of equality where people can afford basic healthcare and medicine for their children. And, you know, just, you know, sort of crazy things like that. You know, Jeff Bezos is not responsible for that. I didn't say he was, but I think that the level of, you know, inequality.

But even if we had all that, there'd still be people worth tens of billions of dollars. And you'd still be complaining about Trevor Noah's house. I'm not complaining about it. Well, shocking. Shocking. Although it was a big house was twenty seven point five million dollar house in Malibu. I could show you a picture. Are you serious? Yeah. Although Dan said funny is that isn't

apparently. Well, I'm not going to comment on that. You can't, but I can. Apparently there's a problem. There's a problem. And I think you on that. You can't, but I can. There's a problem. There's a problem. And I think you'll agree. You know, we we are very bad at looking both looking at both sides of a ledger. So you can take out your magnifying glass and identify things that are going on in this capitalist country. They say, well, we should really prove that.

But you also at the same time have to acknowledge everything that capitalism produces, including, I mean, we talked for years about our terrible healthcare system and then which healthcare system produced three vaccines. You know, I didn't see those European socialist systems throwing off vaccine after vaccine. mRNA didn't come out of, out of France. So, you know, There's also often a conflation there that is wrong, is that we have one of the best healthcare systems,

if not the best healthcare system in the world. We have incredibly bad health insurance. Those are different things. And getting to that coverage is obviously a huge problem, and it's something that we desperately, desperately need to fix. But, you know, it's not a coincidence that, you know, Michael Moore makes a movie where he goes to Cuba and, you know, celebrates the fact, doesn't people, you know, Michael Moore makes a movie where he goes to Cuba and, you know,

celebrates the fact doesn't tell anyone that you can't get any supplies, but everybody has a, you know, their own personal doctor who has like can't even get a fucking bandaid and doesn't note that when Fidel Castro was sick about 10, 15 years ago, he secretly flew to Spain. He didn't, I mean, he couldn't fly to the U S obviously he didn't stay in Cuba for that. So, I mean, we have this weirdo kind of look at, you know, health care, for instance.

And on, you know, Jeff Bezos, for instance, gets all this shit. And I think the reason that Jeff Bezos gets most of this shit is not because he's just because he's the richest guy in the world. It's because he's not outwardly political. You know, George Soros makes an enormous amount of money and does it, by the way, in ways that I think people would be uncomfortable with. Doesn't he give a lot of money? I'm listening.

I'm sure Jeff Bezos gives a lot of money. Jeff Bezos' wife, by the way, just gave away how many billion dollars? $10, $15 billion? She's now the richest woman in the world from that divorce settlement. And she's given away billions and billions of dollars. That's amazing. And I think they probably do a lot of stuff quietly, too. George Soros has made a lot of money destabilizing currency markets.

I mean, we know that and I have no problem with Soros. But he doesn't get as much heat is because he's kind of on the right side, the correct, not the right side, the correct side of the political ledger. And that is true, I think, of a lot of people who are very ostentatious about what they do with their wealth, provided it goes to the causes that critics enjoy. Is that perhaps why people in show business, Noam, were you sitting over there when Noam said that generally we're a little bit easier going on show business people to make a lot of money? We don't judge them as harshly. First of all, do you think that's true? And second of all, if it's true, do you think it's because show business people are often on the left? I think it's true. I mean, I give you a great recent example.

Rachel Maddow just signed a contract for $30 million at MSNBC. $30 million. She went from a nightly show that was trafficking in utter BS about the Russia stuff for four years. I mean, honestly, there's a lot. I mean, it's not, it doesn't mean that where there was smoke, there wasn't any fire. Eli Lake, my friend, wrote a great piece about this, about what was true and what wasn't. But they were trafficking a lot of shit that wasn't true. But, I mean, you remember that thing when she was going to reveal Trump's tax? It was like Geraldo's vault, like nothing happened. And it just rolled off her back, and that was it. $30 million, and now the five days a week show is one day a week. Now, if you take it at 261 work days a year, I did this calculation this morning,

and that's five days a week, which is obviously not working. She is making over $100,000 a day. Rachel Maddow, no one's saying, what the fuck are you doing with your money, Rachel Maddow? You've already been making a fortune. You have this palace out in Western Massachusetts. Take the money. You need five. Let's say you need five, which is still a lot. Take the 25 and give it away. Why is no one demanding that of her? Well, she goes on TV and she says the right things. Yeah, absolutely right. And no, and no, and no famous progressive to my knowledge has done that. Like, okay,

I'm going to take five and NBC, you give 25 to the, to the charity of my choice. They just, they talk a good game. I'm betting this. Which one? That no one's been giving away 75% of their income? So Michael, I wanted to get your take on Afghanistan. Oh God.

Really cheery subjects, no. Well, we can talk about something else if you want. No, no, I'd rather, well, we covered that last week. Yeah, but not well, not well. But he's always got a good insight. Who'd you have on that didn't solve it? We had on a comic, Lynette Palladino, who was in, she was in Iraq, I'm sorry, but she is a veteran.

And I thought we did cover it well. We covered it well, but I don't know much about it. Lynette knew something about it. I think Michael, being a public intellectual, probably has insight that he can bring to me. You don't think I have insight? No, I don't, actually. Well, I can say briefly that I just find the whole thing

deeply depressing that we're, what, how many days now? Two or three from the 20th anniversary of 9-11 as we, you know, scurry out of Afghanistan, leaving people behind in, you know, a disastrous 20 years. I wouldn't say it didn't solve anything, because if you think about it now, there's there's somebody in Afghanistan walking down the street in Kabul right now who's 20 years old and didn't know the brutality, the knuckle dragging scumbaggery of the fucking Taliban, 1.0, and supposedly this one's nicer, it's not, where they were publicly executing women in soccer

stadiums and filming it. You could find that stuff on the internet. And they didn't have to deal with that. So they had school, they had female judges, which there are quite a few of in Afghanistan who are now being hunted. They had an integrated workforce, military, et cetera. And so there are people who actually live that life. And I don't think it's anything to sneeze at to say that for 20 years, people did actually have something resembling not a democracy. I mean, they did have democratic elections, but something resembling a functioning country that wasn't ruled by seventh century lunatics. So that's something, but it wasn't worth it for us in the long run. I mean, the answer has to be no.

Why, why, why is it not worth it for us? Well, I mean, there's a couple of points that people make, I think is that we, for the past 18 months, no one died. There were no American casualties costing us a lot of money. It was inevitable that there were going to be. I mean, like we see what happened with that suicide bombing out in front of the wonderfully named Hamid Karzai Airport. You know, that stuff like that is was destined to happen, whether we're going to pull out or whether this ISIS-K factions or these sort of other factions, we're going to start waging war on the government in Kabul or the Taliban. The thing about it is,

is that there's no stability. We didn't provide a foundation. We were basically holding it up. And I have a lot of friends who disagree with me on this. I respect them greatly. And I was most certainly, I was in the city on September 11th in 2001. I very quickly became a war hawk, particularly with Afghanistan, as a lot of my friends did. And a friend of mine, Jake Siegel, who's been on my podcast, and I'm sure no one knows and should have him on this one. He, you know, joined up as a guy from Brooklyn joined up and one of the smartest guys I know, and was spent, I think, four tours in Afghanistan. And even he's like, I mean, we have to leave. How come we didn't do anything that we could walk away from that? Like, how come 20 years wasn't enough to be like,

OK, now you guys got it from here. Can I be a total fucking asshole? Yeah, for sure. That's why we left. I mean, our remit was not to rebuild Afghanistan. It wasn't despite the fact there's a lot of conversation that slips into the rhetoric despite the fact there's a lot of conversation that slips into the rhetoric of the Bush administration quite a bit. And I understand that. I mean, it would be a lofty and noble goal. But the assholish thing to say is that, and people get very mad about this,

is that Afghanistan was not ready and is still not ready. And the reason one says that is that the Taliban never went away. They skedaddled to Pakistan and Pakistan is an ISI. The intelligence service was supporting them and different factions and the rest of it. And when they came back like a hot knife through butter and everyone, even the Afghans were like, I cannot believe they're in Kabul already. So, so Tiffany Haddish's Netflix show, they ready wasn't about the Taliban. So let me ask you a few questions, Michael, because I find this endlessly interesting and the notion of

what is worth allowing people to lose their lives for and what is worth money, these are very difficult questions, but let's look back at Korea. We lost, I don't know how many casualties in Korea. We took a lot of casualties. 30,000, I think. 30,000 people died in Korea.

Now we see this beautiful country. I think it was closer to 200 because it's been less every time, and it was 56 in Vietnam. All right. And we lost a lot of lives in Korea, and now we have this beautiful country, Korea, South Korea, and stability and all the happiness and fulfillment that people are having over there. And the question is, was it worth it? Was it worth it, the American

lives? Would we do it over and say, no, let's let it all be North and save all those American lives? No, I mean, it's a very good question, particularly when you realize that we kind of waited it out in Korea, because people don't remember that Korea was a military dictatorship until the 80s. There was no freedom in South Korea in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. It was effectively a military dictatorship. There were assassinations and all this stuff that happened. Then it became that kind of sub-Japan economic powerhouse that it became. Would it have done that at that point without the United States' help? Well, there are two different questions. Let's presume for the sake of argument that it wouldn't.

Yeah, sure. So there's two different questions. One is the 1950 to 1953 question, which is engaging in a war, which we could have won quite handily had the Chinese not invaded on the side of the North Koreans. So, I mean, that was an actual Cold War, hot war, right? We're fighting Soviets and actually fighting the Chinese military. People tend to forget that we went to war with China in the Korean War. I mean, and it never ended. So, 1953, there's no armistice. There's a stalemate. We're still technically at war with Korea, which is another reason that we're still there because sort of legally that is this, that we're in a state of war with Korea.

I remember that because Hot Lips Houlihan was worried about being assaulted by Chinese soldiers. Yes, that's right. That's right. Hot Lips Houlihan is making you remember all the important details. Go ahead. No, I just, I think that it's, that was in my mind, that would be a necessary war, particularly in 1950, because we're five years after the Second World War and the Soviets become our enemy very quickly when they take gobble up Eastern Europe. stomping towards South Korea. And we prevented that from happening. Would it have happened? I mean, these counterfactuals are really hard, but would it have happened if America said, we're going to leave you here, we're going to provide you with weapons, and we are going to bomb the ever-loving fuck out of the North Koreans if they dare step over that unbelievably misnamed demilitarized zone, which is the most militarized place in the world. But, you know, I mean, it is,

it's hard to say. It really is hard to say. And I think that having the backing of America just, you know, in word and deed probably would have done something to North Koreans did not want to fight. They don't want to fight that fight because they know they'll lose. I mean, I think that the sum total of all the American lives shed each each one of these conflicts, most of them could be said you know maybe it wasn't worth it but the but the overall result of the world that we're living in and america's contribution to it is worth it it is worth it and um you know if if the youngest afghani that had ever known the brutality of the of the the Taliban was 55 years old now.

If we just stuck it out, maybe it still wouldn't work. Or maybe you wouldn't be able to put the genie back in the bottle anymore. And maybe and, you know, there's so many there's so many dominoes that can fall the risk of pulling out when we don't really know what the effect is on Iran getting an atom bomb and terrorism. There's so many unknowns. Or a report today that the Chinese are taking over Bagram Air Base. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's insane. I mean, this is also it sends.

I mean, I'm arguing against myself here because I think it's a complicated thing. And I'm not even sure where I land at this point. But it is a complicated thing, primarily because of what it shows to the rest of the world. Yeah. I mean, the last time we said we were going to do something, which was the red line in Syria, it was crossed, nothing happened. Not long after, the Russians cleaved off half of Ukraine

and said, this is ours, and we didn't lift a fucking finger. And this happened, obviously, in Georgia before that, when Abkhazia and South Ossetia were taken by the Putin regime. And I keep on wondering what is going to, particularly when the Chinese have abrogated all of their treaties, responsibilities with Hong Kong,

free, wonderful place, shutting down democratic newspapers, arresting people. What is going to prevent them now? Who's going to prevent them? Nobody. From walking into Taiwan and just saying,

this is ours. It always has been. You have fucking John Saina giving teary apologies in Mandarin that he referred to Taiwan as a country. I mean, this is an enormous amount of weakness that, you know, will not go, you know, unheeded by the Chinese and unheeded by people that we have John Cena here. He is right behind you to choke me. And I also have a feeling that that if you if you actually look at what we're going to save in terms of money by leaving Afghanistan, it's not as if all that

money is just going to be saved. They're going to pay those same people to be somewhere else. They're going to build those same weapons and they'll be kept somewhere else. I'm sure there's some money saved maybe. But just because we spent thirty five billion in a year in Afghanistan doesn't mean next year we're going to save 35 billion dollars. I mean, the total cost of our of our 20 years there is lower than the total cost of the forthcoming budget of 3.5. Could we have built a nationwide high speed rail system instead? The solution to everything. But then The final point

I think was about the same. The final point, which really doesn't get enough attention except from a few people, is that we had a moral obligation to these people. How could we have actually left these... At worst, when the deadline

came, we should have said to the Taliban, shouldn't we have, listen, we're getting everybody out as fast as we deadline came, we should have said to the Taliban, shouldn't we have? Listen, we're getting everybody out as fast as we can, but we're not going to leave until we get everybody out. The other 15,000 people here, the American citizens, the green card holders and the Afghanis who we are going to treat as constructive American citizens because the technicality of a passport. Talk about moral obligations. Yeah, they had special immigrant visas and they're stuck there. They risked their lives for us. That's enough for me to get chased out. No, I'm sorry.

We have to go now. The Taliban says we have to go. This is crazy. We have a deadline that was agreed to with people who have agreed to absolutely nothing in the past. I mean, it is amazing to watch people dealing with the Taliban and watching Tony Blinken, who I've interviewed a couple of times and I have a certain amount of respect for. He's a very bright guy. To watch him twist himself into pretzels

and say that, you know, the Taliban are our partners here. I mean, imagine hearing that fucking sentence on like September 15th, 2001. So our partners, the Taliban in Afghanistan, you'd be like, what kind of fucking bizarre world are we living in? It's kind of even weirder than Donald Trump becoming president. Like seeing that in the future, like us having that negotiation that we're partners with the Taliban or that Trevor Noah would have $27.5 million? I wouldn't have believed that Trevor Noah had a TV show, much less a 27.5 million. No, Trevor Noah was a big talent.

Alingan, what's your take on Afghanistan? No, I mean, to your point, and this was ultimately America's contribution is a good thing. I can get behind that, but I don't know if the reasons we went into Afghanistan was to rebuild Afghanistan. And because it wasn't presented as a rebuilding effort, it's like going in or like kind of tricking America into going into this effort. I think that's more of the issue, because like if if that was what we were going to do from the start and we all agreed on it, that would be one thing. But it wasn't that. Well, I think the answer to that, Michael, probably want to say something. I think the answer to that, I think that's right.

I think that, number one, the main reason we went in there was because we'd had enough of al-qaeda and they had i think we even offered uh the taliban to give up bin laden and we will leave you alone and they refused yeah yeah but we were expecting a no by the way we were also under the sway of an idea at that time which has been discredited but but maybe it shouldn't have been totally that. The only way to permanently change this trajectory, the Wolfowitz idea, was to bring freedom and civilization to the Middle East because democracies don't make war and democracies are less brutal. So there was this idea that we were going to transform the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan. And yes, some people will put it,

we're doing it for their benefit, more likely doing it for our benefit and their benefit. But George Bush's, I think it was the second inaugural speech was, you know, very idealistic about bringing liberty and freedom. And I think it was sincere, like wanting to bring this beautiful life that we have to these people suffering around the world. No, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, it's absolutely naive and Bush's part. And I think it's funny to go back and see that people

accused certain elements of the administration. No doubt this was true of some people, but of like rank Islamophobia, where if you look back and you say, this is Islamophilia, these are people that are saying, these are nations that are totally capable of democracy. If we provide them with the tools and get rid of the people that have the yoke around their neck, they will be capable of democracy and it will be great. I mean, the Paul Wolfowitz's of the world who, you know, there's enough to complain about Paul Wolfowitz, but I think he did actually believe it. That doesn't always mean much because you can believe a lot of the very, very big difference is now we have a volunteer army. So that does take a bit of a different kind of look at it, the people that are signing up, knowing that the potential to go into harm's way and die. And it was Milton Friedman that got rid of the, helped get rid of

conscription in the 1970s. And last week, I made the point that. That if you're going to go to war, everybody should contribute and everybody should be involved. It's just not moral as far as I'm concerned to have an all volunteer army and just, you know. But anyway, that was right. What about because of what? Because it's just it's just like people from lower economic status going into it? Partially. I just think that... Oh, I got reamed. I got reamed because Lynette said, well, no, the army is not made up of people from lower socioeconomic groups. And I don't know the statistics, but I think a richer person is probably less likely to join the army. Well, I think that's statistically very much true.

That's what I said, too. I'm, too. I'm not sure. There's, I think that on the Vietnam thing, that there was a lot of, you know, CCR, Senator's son kind of stuff. But I don't know that it was as stark as Clearwater. The reference to Creedence Clearwater Revival. I did use the acronym.

For our younger listeners. For the older crowd, I just used the acronym. I mean, haven't there been just so many articles about how scandalous it is that the military sets up shop at low-income high schools around the country? I don't find it very scandalous.

Mostly because I don't... I think it's kind of condescending to think that they're of weaker mind and are easily susceptible to the siren call of the marine recorder. It's also because people in certain areas. Right. That's what I said. Sure. I mean, but there's also nobody's weaker mind. No, no, no. But I mean, why would people there be? I mean, there's great economic opportunities in the military for people who are middle class, too.

You get your college paid for, you get an incredibly good pension, et cetera. But I think it's also in certain areas of the country where there's heavily presence, heavily military presence is that they just have a different kind of outlook on the world. And that's, I think that's kind of what, what, what follows it more than anything is, you know, military bases, you drive in certain places in the country, there's an American flag every three seconds, military flags, POW, MIA flags. And they tend to be places where you don't want to go around talking about defunding the police. Even taking

the economic element out of it, I still think there's something immoral about paying people to do the dying for us. There's something not right about that. Well, it's the same thing as, I mean, is it immoral for that to be true of the police too, or paying them to die? It's not as extreme. I mean, it's it's a matter of degrees.

I say more cops got killed last year in America than soldiers got killed in Afghanistan. How is that true? Yeah, it is true because zero got killed in Afghanistan. OK, so my answer was that I kind of I kind of I hear his point, but I think that we'll make smarter decisions, hopefully, if without the constraint of having a lot of Upper West Side Jews not wanting their kids going off to be drafted. You know, like, well, I mean, I'm not I'm not even sure what war I'm not even sure we fight the Second World War. Anyway, Jacob Siegel would disagree with you. I'm just saying that, you know, the, the,

the, it, it puts a kind of a popularity con people have wildly different cultural views about what's worth dying for and who will go fight for their country. I don't say with any pride that I could totally see myself evading the draft of almost any war in history. I'm being very honest. And and but but, you know, that doesn't.

But we needed to fight those wars. You know, I get it. So if there were to have been a draft on September 12 or 12, you would have been in like Manitoba or something. Well, he was too old even then. I was too old. But I just, you know, I am. Right. I'm in. I'm in.

He would have been like in his late 30s, 20 years ago. Let me put it this way. And we talked about this last week. The people said, would you send your kid? Would you send your kid? Well, truth is, a lot of the people in the military are the ones who most wanted to stay. And people like John McCain, who went through what he went through and was still ready to risk the American military in various ventures. I am in nothing but awe and admiration of these people who are ready to die

for something greater than themselves. And it's my own moral shortcoming that I don't know if I have that in me. Now, maybe I do. I haven't discovered it. Maybe I've never been tested for that. No, you know, it's a very deep thing. Going risking your life for something. I don't know. I wouldn't want to risk my life, but I also wouldn't want to live as a coward for my entire life.

And I bet it gets started. No, but if anything pushed me, you know, if anything pushed me to toward military service, it would be knowing that. That if I avoided it for the rest of your life, I mean, maybe in Vietnam, you could get away with it because people kind of let it slide. But World War Two for the rest of your life, what were you doing? And if you're that age and people are spurs, bone spurs, you know, everybody went and we got to move on to something else. I want to let me just say one thing, but the well, but this is like in a military like a burial where everybody has to serve, not everybody's in combat.

So I think that, you know, you're not out there on the front lines like you'd be probably running like the army newspaper writing like comic jokes. Yeah, well, Yasha Mounk said something, Yasha Mounk said something very, that always stayed with me, that he said that you would think that physical bravery would be the rarity. But he said that throughout history, actually, it's intellectual bravery, which is much rarer. People are ready to stand up against their peers. He says people, the camaraderie of all going off together to fight for a cause seems to carry the day. Anyway, Noam wanted to change topic. I want, I want my, we could talk just to give you a,

just an overview of what we could discuss. We could discuss Joe Rogan, Ivermectin. Oh, okay. Or we could discuss abortion in Texas, or we could discuss a comedian that lost his life in LA due to a laced. Okay.

Let's do it. Let's do Rogan and Ivermectin. Yeah. Who's got a view on that one? I mean, OK, let's do it. Let's do Rogan and Ivermectin. Yeah. Who's got a view on that one? I mean, it's amazing that every thing that I flipped on or every website I went to, the top story was a comedian took a drug that was prescribed to him by his doctor, which it was he got a prescription. Can you give me the primer on the story? I don't.

So basically, Joe Rogan catches covid. I presume it's not clear if he was vaccinated or not. It seems like he probably wasn't. He said at one point he was in line to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and they stopped production for some hyperventilating reason about rash. I can't remember what it was. But so he gets COVID and says, as you would expect Joe Rogan to do, that he's taking ivermectin along with about 300 other things that, you know, he probably hawks on the show every day. And the guy talks constantly about all these fucking pills that he takes.

So they're like supplements, supplements and like, yeah, I mean, like creatine powder, whatever it would be. I mean, the stuff that probably has about as much efficacy as ivermectin does. But he takes a lot of this stuff. And so this was just the perfect red meat story for people who don't like Joe Rogan and don't like that. The fact that, you know, cause I I've listened to Joe Rogan a reasonable amount of times. I don't know his politics. I still can't get a handle on his politics.

Bernie comes on and he loves the guy, but what people really hate him for is that he has other people on and treats them with some measure of respect who he's not allowed to have on. Right. And so obviously the backlash here was that, oh, my God, he's taking ivermectin. It is horse deworming, blah, blah, blah. And this becomes one of the worst jokes over about a 72 hour period of people, people making horse deworming jokes. And I actually read on Twitter that that ivermectin was discovered by a Dutch scientist named Horace de Vermeer. I think it's more of a Dutch joke, actually. I read it because I wrote it. In any case, it's better than all the ones coming from people at MSNBC, I have to say.

But yeah, it's just this attack on him is is disingenuous on a bet in about 50 different ways is that I don't if if I got COVID, I would not take ivermectin. I think that's crazy. I don't think it's worth, you know, wasting your time with something. I would I'm also vaccinated, too. I would get vaccinated. He didn't get vaccinated. He got, as far as we know, he didn't get vaccinated. As far as we know, I think it probably maybe would have mentioned it, but he did mention that he was going to, and he didn't. So that's about as much information we have on that. But I imagine he would have said if it was a breakthrough case, but yes, you're right. We don't know. He did something which I found slightly disingenuous. He keeps talking about the ivermectin, but he also kind of took the monoclonal antibodies. He did that, too, which we know work.

I even know a friend, Hatem, who had a heart transplant. He got COVID in the recovery of the heart transplant, and he recovered quickly on these things. Trump recovered quickly on everybody in the public sphere that we know taking these monoclonal. And Rogan talks as if, you know, this is evidence that the ivermectin worked and that's just ridiculous. It's a sentence that's true, but misleading when he said, I took ivermectin comma, I got better. I don't know if those two clauses are related, but I mean, you could take, you know, antibiotics when you have an infection and the whole time you could be smoking menthols and then say the menthols cured it. It's like, well, no, you're also taking antibiotics. So, I mean, it's

not, I agree. It's totally disingenuous. And I think the whole ivermectin debate is ridiculous, but it's also empowered some of the most like ridiculous people on the other side of this to go after Rogan in the most disingenuous ways, keeping in mind that Spotify, which gave them $105 million dollar contract. He's probably richer than Mr. Trevor. He's probably richer than Trevor Noah. People actually listen to his show. So he has he has an enormous amount of money. And this is what happened at Spotify is that in somebody at Spotify sent to us at the fifth column podcast some, you know, internal stuff. and it was incredible like the

fact that joe rogan existed in spotify caused a like like the november revolution there was like a revolt internally and said we can't be paying this guy he's a like a neo-nazi he has on proud boys he's a vaccine anti-vax guy i mean roan did say you should get the vaccine. I mean, he said it. I mean, Trump said that, too. They both have, I think, kind of dodgy other views on on on this stuff. But they did actually say it. So he also said he also said that if he were young and healthy, he might not say. Yeah. I mean, it's so that got him in a lot of trouble. I think he's wrong about that, too. But I understand the instinct because just looking at the numbers young healthy people do not die of covet uh the issue is not about dying it's about spreading right well it's also about having a very bad week yes and potential

long-term consequences that's also true and but and as for me if i can avoid nausea and vomiting uh i want to do that i mean but that initial instinct which he did apologize for you get a lot of shit for it he apologized for it but the initial instinct of a guy who is a comic you know i mean he's not a fucking doctor and he always prefaces things and you can say this is disingenuous in itself but he's like i'm i'm a dope i don't know what i'm talking about and the the premise of the podcast is me just talking to my friends and this is how i talk to them right and you talk about the things that are in the news and the big of the podcast is me just talking to my friends. And this is how I talk to them. Right. And you talk about the things that are in the news and the big thing in the past couple

of years has been COVID. Right. So he has this conversation about it in looking at the death numbers. Young people don't die. If I was young, I don't know. I wouldn't do it. Yeah. But the thing about Rogan is that you say that on any other podcast and nobody gives a fuck. Right. Say it on that. And all of a sudden, because he he's popular he has to watch what he says he has to blah blah blah and so people were offended by the fact that he was you know he's promoting ivermectin if people are taking medical advice from joe rogan they're anywhere that's it there are a lot of like i feel like uh lingon hasn't chimed in so chime chime yeah no i mean if he has if he has influence, I think he has an obligation to be smarter with what he's saying. But he believes it, though, you know, so that's

the hard thing is that he believes what he believes that that ivermectin cured him. I don't. Oh, I guess with the vaccine, if he was the vaccine thing. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's boring to parse what Joe Rogan said, but, you know, he did say get the vaccine. And when he did, you know, off the cuff and to your point, I think is is that's kind of right. You know, he came back and said, I was an idiot. Everybody pointed out to me. This is why I'm a fucking idiot. I apologize. I take it back. He did the next show, which, by the way, is a lot more than, you know, anybody else does. I mean, there was a fake ivermectin story dinging around the Twitter sphere and, you know, tweeted and covered by MSNBC and tweeted by Rachel Maddow. And she still has the friggin tweet. We're being too hard on him. We're being too hard. No, I know. I'm actually being soft on him,

saying that he did the great thing of actually going back on it and apologizing, which people in media tend not to. But I read on Facebook a comic whose name I won't mention, saying basically wishing Joe Rogan doesn't recover. But this kind of thing. Was it another one of your tweets? Can I just can I just say another comment? But but people had that. I read a lot of that kind of sentiment toward Joe. But I'm not so comfortable with the

oh, I'm just a comic when you have this clearly influential part. But as Michael said, he believed it. Olingan, Olingan, let me just say this. This happened a couple months ago. It's perfectly reasonable point of view to say a minuscule

number of people in my risk profile die. Minuscule. And there's a, there's a vaccine, but you know what? Trust the science, the FDA still doesn't have enough data to approve that vaccine. And nobody can ever tell me what the long-term consequences of the vaccine are. And we know from, there are past medications that have been approved in 10, 15 years later, we find out that there turned out to be complications no one knew about. So I don't think it's smart for somebody young and healthy like me to take the vaccine. Now, you can disagree with that, but that's not a ridiculous point of view. Well, it is pretty irresponsible. Yes, it is, because it's not just about you getting the

vaccine. It's also about you killing somebody's grandmother. Like, we have a responsibility to each other also as a society, not just to ourselves. We have some responsibility to each other, but that doesn't, but that's not the... Why do I have to smoke in public? Most people feel their responsibilities to their own life first.

Well, I mean, then why are there so many other vaccines? Listen, we talked about it. So in a few months, they're going to approve the vaccine for my four-year-old. And I'm going to get my four-year-old vaccinated. But if you help me up to a lie detector test and I said, no, nothing to worry about. I'm sure it's fine.

Of course, I'm going to be nervous about that. That's like, I don't know what the vaccine like i told you they found out now that um babies who got antibiotics in the first two years of life have a higher rate of certain intellectual deficits you know they find these things out okay let me let me play devil's advocate though like we vaccinate our kids with measles mumps rubella the flu shot you don't know what's in any of those things, right? Yeah, but they do know exactly what's in them. We know exactly what's in them. I mean, I don't know what's in them.

The internet could help you. You just look it up. It's there. But the thing is, we also have been doing that for a very long time. And I think that, I mean, I completely understand them's point. The thing about vaccines is this is a different type of vaccine. It's an mRNA vaccine. So what's interesting about that is it doesn't give you a dose of the poison. It's different. But we have never had a vaccine in the past, none ever, that have not exhibited negative characteristics if it was a failed vaccine in any time period that wasn't the

first six months. So usually you find, but who knows? I mean, we don't know. There's also a lot to expect of people to, to, to understand this stuff. Hold on. Cause the point I made got glossed over. It's really, it's really crucial to this idea of whether it's, he's giving a rational argument. Now it's changed. They recently, two weeks ago, whatever the FDA approved Pfizer. Right. But prior to that, it was on its face a little absurd to say,

you should be taking that vaccine because you should trust the science. When the people in charge of telling us whether the science was adequate to prove the vaccine, we're like, we don't have enough data yet. The jury's still out. So prior to the FDA approving it, how could you really argue with someone who says, why should I be more incautious than the FDA? There's no more hideous phrase of the past year and a half than trust the science. Because science, I mean, that's all I can say. But science isn't a thing. There's not like a thing that's called science. It's a process of discovery. We figure things out. And trusting the science has been, you know, look at what scientists are saying and believe them. I mean, you should

kind of do that because you don't have any other option. When you go to a doctor, they tell you something. You're not going and, you know, cross-checking it and saying, I want my own. You're trusting that opinion. You have to do that in some sense, right? Some of us do double-check. Trust but verify.

Trust but verify. It's paranoia. That's okay. Trust but verify. I like that. Yeah, that that's okay yeah i like that yeah that's reagan to gorbachev but wait let me ask you this though he didn't finish his point no no it's it's fine but but the thing about the science has been has become this cudgel that a lot of people that i know in brooklyn in particular and i saw there's a guy at the school where my daughter goes and said you know i believe science it's like i don't even know what that means. I truly have no, I know what you're trying to signal, but that is a meaningless statement in the sense that when this all started, I was wearing fucking rubber gloves. I was literally, I looked like

a pervert or a murderer or something. I was on a shoot for this Showtime. I did a Showtime thing about COVID in the whole crew. Like it was insane. We all were, and then we were spraying everything down. We didn't do any of that. The science told us to do that. And we trusted the science. The science was wrong, right? Right.

In this airborne transmission, there was no point. Does anybody remember a point in which somebody said, oh, by the way, you don't have to fucking wipe down your Cheerios anymore. And you don't have to spray guys. No one said that. It just kind of faded away. Right. Because we stopped the first time learning of it. Yeah. Like the hand stuff. It doesn't, it just doesn't matter. But in over an overabundance of caution, the science was wrong for good reasons because we didn't know. And I'm, I don't blame scientists for saying that. I actually think they're right to have done that

because that was an overabundance of caution. But the science, quote unquote, changes. The science on a million things have changed. But they were saying that too, right? Like, we don't know. Not really. Oh, I feel like it was understood in the beginning that like, look, we are not 100% certain

how this thing is spreading, but we have a sense that this is what is happening. And as a result we want these people to wash your hands and wear the gloves and keep social distance like i felt like those things were they all said switch microphones yeah no they didn't say that but that's what we did here at the yeah yeah i mean that was probably also not necessary no definitely not like i didn't think they were coming out and saying it is a fact that this is how it happens yeah i don't think that's pretty much i mean look the same thing is true of the lab leak theory it was to

suggest that and that is basically where more people experts on this have landed but to say that initially was to be a conspiracy theorist no one said it was wrong because they didn't know it to be wrong but they basically called you a conspiracy theorist not basically they did in washington post headlines i mean members of the senate would say, you know, some, who is it? Maybe it's Josh Hawley or something, who deserves a lot of slings and arrows, but Josh Hawley, you know, repeats conspiracy theory. That's the cudgel bit, you know, of saying we didn't know that not to be true, but they're just developed very quickly this thing where on both sides of the aisle this thing became so fucking ideological so quickly that you know when i went

to shoot something and it was among trump people i would go in a place with a mask on i don't want to get fucking covet i'm on the road going into like trump rallies with a bunch of mouth-breathing lunatics i mean people go out to rallies they're as a special type of person. And I don't want to get COVID. I put a mask on and Jesus Christ, it's like, you might as well, like, like be flying a pride flag and walking in there. Cause they're like, what are you doing? Why are you? And I ended up taking it off because it made my life difficult. It made shooting difficult. I'm like, why is this so weirdly ideological all of a sudden? I would say when, when people say believe the scientists, what they're I guess saying is believe credentialed scientists, you know, because even if they're wrong, they're less likely to be wrong than you. Joe Rogan could say that in prior to all this in the early day, early August, I think there was 90,000 prescriptions of ivermectin being written per week.

And that was by by doctors. I mean, they're credentialed and they were writing prescriptions. Joe Rogan got his. So it's hard. I mean, who do you believe? I mean, there are a lot of there are a lot of studies going on now about ivermectin. When people call it a horse dewormer, that that's already a conclusory statement because there is it's also given to humans for other. It is also a human drug. Anyway, let's, let's use trust the science as a segue to abortion because there's a, there's a controversy. Apparently there's some people out there who think it's okay to kill a,

a entity with a beating heart brain that sucks its thumb and feels pain. Apparently we don't trust the science. We don't have enough science to tell whether that's alive or not. It's the best thing to have this conversation with a bunch of folks. Where does trust the science come in? Where does trust the science come in saying it's okay to kill an eight-month fetus? Nobody's saying kill an eight-month fetus okay and seriously it's really irresponsible to start that conversation off like that well i i'm i'm being i'm being outrageous but the truth is

that science is not the friend of roe versus wade and the three trimester theory of human life it is that is not a trust the science point of view. Anybody who thinks that science magically shows us that actually the stages of human life fit neatly into three trimesters, that is not trusting the science. That is not what this abortion song is about. You know the comedy seller is going to be picketed in like three days.

Like the anti-abortion comedy club. You don't want to know how many, you don't want to know how many times I've been responsible for abortions. I'm not pro-life, but I'm also not, I'm an honest person, I understand. Well, if I may quote Noam's father, it's murder and we're just going to have to deal with it. That's right.

So, but can you, can you, because I don't really understand, what is this Texas law? What the hell were they, what is this texas law what what the hell were they what is it do you know you're not allowed to get an abortion after six weeks no that's the law no that's not the law michael can you tell us a little well the yeah the law is this weird convoluted wildly unconstitutional uh construct that you're like rather than because you know i mean the supreme court ruled in, and you cannot decide the state cannot say, okay, you know, we're going to decide to ban

abortion. So they have to get around it, right? And that is actually what people suspect will happen if Roe v. Wade was a 73. Actually, I'm sorry. I was 73. But I've come my own error there. But that's what people expect to happen. It's, you know, oh, this is bad law.

It'll kick it back to the states. And that's what most anti-abortion people want. So rather than doing that and waiting for that, the unbelievably boring and convoluted thing is effectively creating this law where people can report those, you know, there's this $10,000. It's just this crazy, crazy, crazy thing. And there is literally no way that this will survive a court challenge. And, you know, there's this $10,000. It's just this crazy, crazy, crazy thing. And there is literally no way that this will survive a court challenge. And, you know, by the way, the Supreme Court, when they kicked it back down, did not rule on the constitutionality of the law. They were just saying that this has to be dealt with in a different way. I suspect that I actually suspect

if it went up to the Supreme Court, they would they would strike it down pretty quickly. And I mean, I think the Alito kind of Thomasases would probably be a seven to two kind of thing, but we'll see. I mean, we'll have a guess there. But the thing about it is the time period, and the time period is very, very specific. It's a time period in which people often don't know they're pregnant. So six to eight weeks, you usually don't know. It's around that time you know, and then this is trying to kneecap you and saying, you're fucked. And of course, there's no exception in a law, which is actually not about abortion itself, because it's about how to prevent it without outlawing it.

And again, I'm doing a very, very quick job on this. But there's no special cases for rape and incest. I think there is for the life of the mother. You can't be suing then if the woman might die. How many how many people in Texas even agree with this? This law was was created by legislators. And yet, if you did a referendum in Texas, would would would the average Texan even be behind this? I think polls show that they wouldn't, that most Americans. Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, there was there was every Republican in the state legislature,

including one Democrat voted for it. And, you know, the the I did a special on Texas, the future of the Republican party in Texas, like four or five months ago. And everywhere I went, people have these T-shirts on. And it's kind of a, you know, attack on Rogan in a way, because it says, don't California, my Texas, because so many people are leaving California because it's a nightmare and the taxes are lower in Texas and Austin Innovation Hub, et cetera. And they're very, very worried that it's importing politics like liberal politics to the state. So the penalty for abortion, my understanding from this law, is greater than the penalty for rape at this point.

I think that's true. Yes. What's the penalty? That's true. Well, you can, first of all, sue. But it's not a criminal law. It creates a civil action. It creates a civil action.

So you can't, so there's no jail. No, but you can sue the abortion provider. Can you see anybody? Can you sue the mother? I think I have to look at the actual. You can see the Uber driver who took the woman to have an abortion. Well, that's people speculating. But it doesn't say that in the law specifically.

But I mean, all you have there, there's a website where you can denounce people. It's now offline. It's been taken offline by hackers. It's been like denial of service attack and now it's offline. It's not because they thought better of it. Fucking psychotic. It really is. I mean, look, the jurisprudence in this is that so many people in the Federalist Society,

the conservative kind of legal association, have said this is crazy and stupid. I mean, there's not a lot of conservative support for it as an actual law. They think, you know, this is look who signed it into law. Governor Greg Abbott. What does Greg Abbott have? Presidential ambitions. Who signed into law? I was I was there at the school board meeting in Florida when the anti-CRT stuff went through. It's a very flabby, doesn't make a ton of sense. There's not a lot of examples of it in Florida, the critical race theory stuff. And that was signed into law by DeSantis because DeSantis also has aspirations for 2024. All of

this is actually about 2024. I mean, Donald Trump looks more and more likely that he's going to run, but Donald Trump might go away, but his voters are still there. And all these people are just trying to figure out how to get the red meat to these people because they don't have any of the creativity. They don't have any of the onstage personality, the ability to like, you know, like be a performer. Maybe Joe Rogan will run.

Yeah. You comparing Joe Rogan to Donald Trump? So just so everybody knows, the law says, I know we got this rape. The law says that you can sue an abortion provider civilly for $10,000. $10,000 a thing. Yeah. So I don't know what that, I mean, if I were a doctor, I don't think that would stop me from performing an abortion.

I mean, imagine the sheer number. Well, but for each case and all of a sudden you have insurance for these things. I'm one number two. Everybody knows that as soon as there's an actual case, unless they overturn Roe versus Wade, abortion is a protected right. So there was no standing in this particular case. But as soon as there's actual real controversy and somebody gets sued for $10,000, I don't. Yeah, I'm going to be very, very careful with this because this is the thing that, you know, boomerangs back on you. Imagine the exact same bit of legislation and you can transpose the exact same bit of legislation onto gun rights. I mean, this is enshrined in the Constitution, not specifically. You can make

that argument. It's a well-regulated militia, etc. If you did this for gun rights, conservatives would be pretty pissed off at it, right? Start suing places that sell the guns, start suing the gun manufacturers, etc. There have been attempts to do this in the past, to suing gun manufacturers. It was even recently, I think, with Parkland.

It was Remington or whoever made the AR-15. And so this kind of thing, if you want to do that on a state level, you better, you know, sort of war game all of the things that you like, that they might do the same thing to you. It's just not a good way of setting policy. It's terrible. I mean, if you want to actually, you know, win this debate, win it on the merits, win it in the courts. Also, the people who are disproportionately affected by this are women who are of low income because wealthy women are always going to have access to abortions.

So I think Texas would, too. They just drive over state lines. Well, I mean, if you can, some women don't actually, you know, are not able to do that. So exit question on abortion. I thought for a long time that as horrible as this sounds, that if Roe versus, no, it's a great way to preface. If Roe versus Wade were actually overturned, this would actually end up being a very good thing for the country because

this is, this is going to be with us forever. And it's only going to get as science tells us more and more about the life of the fetus is going to be even more difficult to say that this is, there's nothing to protect here. And I have a feeling like Obamacare, the conservatives talk a good game about repealing it. But if they actually were faced with it, very, very few States would outlaw all abortions. And then we'd have this off the table. It's a political question like Ireland. Ireland handled it politically, you know.

And Lingon in the constitution. I mean, I think that anybody thinks that Roe versus Wade was based on something is really, even Lawrence tribe has said Roe versus Wade was not based on anything in the constitution. It seems in a democracy, it's kind of a, kind of a question, you know,

when do you protect a human life is the kind of a question that self governing people ought to be able to decide for themselves. How about women? And I think there's, and I think there's very little, what's that? How about women to decide for themselves. And I think there's very little... What's that? How about women can decide for themselves? Why is the government in my

fucking uterus? Well, I think you know the answer. No, no, no. I don't. If I'm raped by my father or my grandfather or my uncle or some guy walking down the street... Listen, I understand. And I respect the fact that women who will have to bear the brunt of this, uh, have a visceral interest in

this issue. I get that. And that's, and that's correct. However, to go from that to saying that only a woman can care about whether or not we do or do not kill a fetus of any age, even up to the ninth month. That is, that doesn't hold because there's not just the woman's life there. There is the baby's life, but also Paul's show that women are not that different than men when they pull on how they feel about abortion anyway. So why don't we have people get vasectomies? Why don't we do that so that you can't get us pregnant? And then it's not an issue? Why doesn't that become mandated? In the end, when you see a seven, a seven month old fetus or six month old fetus being extinguished, anybody says there's nothing to talk about there. I don't really respect that.

Nobody says there's nothing to talk about. The statistics. Well, if you say, if you say it's just up to my body, that means nothing to talk about there, I don't really respect that. Nobody says there's nothing to talk about. The statistics... Well, if you say it's just up to my body, that means nothing to talk about. It is, but that's not actually what I was going to say. What I was going to say is that if you look at the numbers, the number of people who get abortions at

seven months is almost non-existent. Let's talk about those numbers. Let's talk about everything else. Cause that's what it really is about. The trend now has been to expand the it's no longer safe, legal and rare, New York and some other state, you know, they, they took a lot of pride in extending the, the on, on a saleable right to abortion, right to birth basically. Right.

Am I right, Michael? I think that's the, it was funny when I, when I lived in Sweden, you know, socially Sweden, they had far more restrictive, uh, abortion policies than the U S did, um, on, I can't remember what week it was up to, but it was, it was, uh, it was, it was a lot, not a lot. It was, you know, noticeably lower than, than, you know, New York, New new york state and yeah there's been these debates about you know remember the partial birth abortion stuff i mean what i i only see that in one way because i mean it's an issue that i tend never to talk about publicly because it has there's no winning in a conversation about abortion but you know to talk about it at seven months eight months nine months six months whatever it's not so much to talk about, is it something that's happening frequently? I mean, if it is, that's kind of troubling.

It's to talk about that, that just even have that conversation is to acknowledge that there is at some point where you have to realize that the baby has not been born in, there is a moral issue there. And that is, you know, to even just to say like, well, no, it's, you know, up until nine months. And there are people who do say that actually, I mean, not too many, but when they do say no nine months is too much, then you have to ask them, well, what is, what is the limit? Changing the whole conversation when you turn it to, let's talk about seven months, because as I'm pulling up right here and I'll be happy to really fact check this abortions at or after 21 weeks represent one percent of all

abortions in the U.S. So why don't we talk about the ninety nine percent of what abortion really is? But even at that point, I think there's there's this truth here that you have to acknowledge at a certain point you're determining when life starts. Sure. Yeah, that's my only point. It's not that it happens frequently. It's just that by acknowledging that, it is like, okay,

then we actually do have to have a conversation. It's more than I avoid. How many unarmed black people were killed like George Floyd last year? I mean, what I'm saying is that small numbers of, I mean, I'm not saying it's murder, but if you want to say it for the sake of art, small numbers of murders are worthy of attention, are they not? But let's talk about, listen. I think it was 19. I don't know.

I thought the conversation was also that the 99% of what goes on is also important though. No, us as black men had seen the ultrasound of my son at three months, sucking his thumb. He would have fallen off his jet. We, they had no concept at that time of what it is they were actually talking about. And it's troubling to, I mean,

it's just troubling. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not pro-life, you know, I'm not pro-life, but I know that. I don't know.

Don't hold it. Don't hold the gun to my head. Hold on. I'm not not I'm not I'm not pro-life. You know, I'm not pro-life, but I know that. I don't know. Don't hold it. Don't hold the gun to my head. Hold on. I'm not pro-life. I'm not pro-life, but don't hold the gun to my head and tell me why I'm not pro-life. I can't give you an answer. It's just too inconvenient to be pro-life. It's not about inconvenient.

It's about that. It's not that straightforward. It's not straightforward. You err on the side of life, right? That's the obvious thing. I don't know. It's interesting that everybody who's anti-abortion is also for capital fucking punishment. That has nothing to do with the other.

I don't know. It's punishment. It seems that murder, if murder is murder, then it's and what happens? I mean, it's just. It'd be different if the baby committed a murder. Exactly. At three months. Then it'd be kind of similar, right?

Anyway, I was really making the point earlier, and I think it actually is an interesting point that trust the science is good until the science becomes inconvenient, no matter what issue you're on. You know, I mean, I think that trust but verify the Reagan line about Gorbachev, new leader is going to be. Well, yeah, OK, we'll try it. But we should we should have a skeptical eye. And particularly something like covid is that, you know, it's always developing. And I think that the same thing is true about abortion, that as science has changed in a lot of ways, and as technology has changed, that it kind of changes some people's minds.

The fetus is also always developing. Yeah, I'm still- Listen, time flies when Michael's on the show. I wish you, first of all, I wish you'd come hang out on the olive tree more often. A couple of times you came to hang out. I'm going to go to time. Yeah.

Where do you, where do you live? I, well, I moved. No, because I didn't, I moved way out East.

Yeah. Montauk. A little before that. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit, but close, but yeah,

I just, during the pandemic, I flew. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm pretty Hampton. No, what am I? I'm fucking Bridge Hampton. What is he, Trevor Noah?

I'm not Trevor Noah. I'm not trash. No, I live in Sag Harbor. Let's deal with the final issue, Michael. What's the issue that you find yourself thinking most about the last couple of weeks? I find myself thinking about the same issue, no matter

what the news cycle is. And it is always free speech and, you know, variations on free speech. And, you know, particularly now where I don't think about the First Amendment as much as I used to. I think about, you know, the kind of abridgments of free speech from big corporations and from, you know, companies. And that stuff just seems to be all around me. And it seems that nobody really gives a fuck about it. And that's the thing that has been really worrying me for the past couple of years.

Because it just seems to be getting worse. I thought it was going to turn a corner. And it really hasn't. What would be like the highlight examples of? Oh, God. You know, there was one the other day that didn't really create any

storm at all, but there was a guy who was a gaming company. Did anyone hear about this? In Texas. And he said, thank God for this abortion law to seg between these two subjects. And he didn't say, it wasn't even that explicit.

He was like, that he supported this like tweeted. And he didn't say it wasn't even that explicit. He was like that he supported this like tweeted. And now he's unemployed. Right. And as Noam said, you know, if you look at opinion polls in America, pretty evenly split on abortion, it goes back and forth. But it's you know, it's right there in the middle, pretty much. And I do not hold his view at all. And it reminded me of the first version of this was the guy at Mozilla do you remember the they created uh firefox and everything and he was the he donated like a hundred dollars or two hundred dollars to this uh anti-gay marriage uh ballot initiative in california and he had to leave his job i mean they basically forced him out of there and it's like i this is not a free speech issue in the classic sense of like you know the government has nothing

to do with this it's a private company they can do free speech issue in the classic sense of like, you know, the government has nothing to do with this. It's a private company. They can do whatever the hell they want. But I don't like the instinct now of the people that have what is considered, and not even necessarily in Texas, you know, alien political views that they can no longer actually earn a living. That kind of thing bums me out. I mean, I think he's wrong about everything that he thinks on the abortion law. The situation, the guy said, thank God for this abortion law. And then it got out, basically.

The Twitter mob forms and they fired him. Yeah, yeah. For a political opinion, it was on his private Twitter account. And they just, I understand both sides of this too, by the way. I think it's wrong, but I understand that the company doesn't want to take the heat. What they don't understand, by the way, is that if you keep your head down for a little bit of time, it goes away. Well, that's what Noam always has said.

He said that he understands that they have to make a business decision, but he thinks it's the wrong business decision. It is. And that like if Netflix had stuck by Louis, it would have blown over and it would have been fine. That's exactly right. But in the case of Louis,

which was a thousand times worse because there was a thousand times worse because there was a Stalinist element to it too. There's a great book called The Commissar Vanishes about what this Stalinist did when they would purge somebody. And it was pre-Photoshop. It's this crude taking them out of all the official photos. And that's what happened to Louis when you go onto HBO. I was working for HBO at the time. I was doing a show for HBO and, you know, fuck them because all of a sudden on HBO Go, for HBO at the time. I was doing a show for HBO. And, you know, fuck them. Because all of a sudden on HBO Go, I guess at the time, before it was Max, all of Louis' material was memory hold.

Like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, honestly, that instinct is so perverse to me. And it is Soviet. That is exactly what you do. You airbrush people out of history because in this moment, they've done something that you consider morally reprehensible. You probably don't even consider it morally reprehensible. Everybody that I talk to would, you know, kind of sotto voce say, yeah, you know, I mean,

he asked people, it's just a weird fetish, et cetera. So if it was morally reprehensible, would it be okay then? No, absolutely not. Oh, so like a Cosby special? No, God no. No, absolutely. Yeah, I so like a Cosby special. No, God, no, no, no, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, if you have a choice on the streaming platform to press play on something,

you don't have to, it's not in your face all the time. And because people are bad people, you don't go around eliminating access to their art. And if that were the case, think of the paintings that would come off walls. T.S. Eliot was a Nazi. T.S. Eliot was an anti-Semite. I mean, you know, Ezra Pound was actually a fascist living in Italy. Pablo Picasso. The Cantos are great. I don't want to not have the Cantos. I mean, Roald Dahl. Roald Dahl was an amazing anti-Semite.

By amazing, you mean you agree with everything. He was fantastic. Original original Holocaust denier. He's like the numbers are a little high. Coco Chanel also. There's a lot of anti-Semites. Patricia Highsmith, who wrote Cognizant Ribbley, really not a fan of the Jews. I mean, isn't it slightly different if they're still alive? Like if you're pushing play, they're getting money. No, I look.

I think if you're an anti-Semite, that is very, very different than the guy at the gaming company who has a view of 50% of the population. I mean, it's a pretty standard view of like, I don't want abortions to ever be performed. That's something I disagree with, but I don't want to live in a world where people aren't allowed to disagree with me or disagree with people that I live around in New York City. You know, that's, I think, I think kind of the chill that happens is not the government. It's just people keep their head downs, get their heads down. I mean, I talked to journalists. Do you tweet? This is the question. Everything that you think about? No, they tweet 10% of the things. And it's primarily because

they're not crazy views. They just don't want to deal with potentially having to walk down to HR and say, why did you tweet this? Everyone is mad at us now. No, I get it. I'm talking about more for the purpose of getting the principle, the extreme morally reprehensible. Somebody who's a rapist, you find out he's a 100 percent allow his stuff to exist. Yeah. Yeah. He's alive. Yes. And I continue to make money from. Sure. Pushing play. Sure. Yeah. You've alive. Yes. And I continue to make money from sure. Pushing play. Sure.

Yeah. You've got a contract and you're like, you can't abrogate a contract because let's say, let's say it's in the contract, right? Well, if it's a morals clause in the contract and, and you think it's bringing like disrepute to your company,

I don't, I mean, they don't have an obligation to keep it. No, no, no. A company has no obligation to do anything. They have an obligation.

As I was saying that Friedman said to their shareholders. And that is it. I think sometimes they mistakenly believe that their business will be adversely affected by this stuff

when it's often not the case. It's actually often opposite the case. And you see what happens when people go into Substack and do this stuff on their own. They start making a lot of money because there's a huge audience

for this stuff. Joe Rogan got a $105 million contract because for fucking five years, nobody in media, everyone knew why, because there was a huge audience for this kind of material for people that were a little heterodox in their views, not extreme in any way, but, you know, didn't like wokeness or whatever it might be. There was a huge, huge business opportunity for a lot of people there. Nobody took it. Nobody wanted it. And finally Spotify did. And, you know, there's a million, million people that could have, you know, Barry Weiss is doing it on her own right now after being around other times and making a lot of money

doing it. And a lot of people are making a lot of money doing it. Sam Harris makes a lot of money doing it. There are opportunities for people. Why are you mentioning all the Jews? You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's basically all Jews. Because it's the entertainment industry. And Lingon, let's not pretend for a second that we don't know what's really going on with human nature. People

love to be offended. They're looking out in the world every day to try to find something they can get offended about and get attention for and as a way to dress up. But it's played attention for and and as a way to dress up both ways it's a way to dress up the controversy to get their brand out but it's also a way to dress up their worst part of human nature the bully the meanness the condescension uh and and dress it up as righteousness and had everybody pat you on the back for and social norms and look at

afghanistan look at look at how we failed in these countries. It's because social norms are very, very powerful, and we can ruin everything we have with these fucked-up social norms where we used to have a social norm, which is let everybody say what they want. I don't like it. All right, move on. You didn't like it, it's no big deal. I would take issue with removing something from a library,

but I wouldn't take an issue with something getting taken down from HBO. If it's. I think what Michael is saying is that is that whether you think it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. A lot of these corporations, according to Michael, I think I agree with him, wrongly believe that it's bad for business to leave up certain people. Yeah, they're scared. Now, maybe Cosby, it would be bad for business to leave his shit there. But but but Louise was probably overkill from a business point of view. But what's the difference between taking something out of a library or taking a showdown or taking a piece of art off a wall

at a museum because of a government? Well, it's a good point, actually. I mean, even privately, because this I mean, there is a woman named Abigail Schreier, who's right for the Wall Street Journal, shared a book about transgenderism and that made a lot of waves, a lot of controversy. I haven't read it. I can't defend it or say it's bad, but it really, really pissed people off. And there were a couple of examples of that being pulled out of libraries after complaints from a small number of people that said, your library is stalking books that are transphobic and are bad for transgender people. And that's taken out. That book is a specific worldview. It is a specific argument. Something Louis did in 1999 has nothing to do with what he was accused of and the New York Times wrote about. So, I mean,

when people take things out of libraries, they're trying to suffocate ideas. When they're taking it off of HBO Go or whatever, they're trying to save their ass. Cause they think that they have no, they literally have no idea of who watches their product because they all live here. We all live amongst each other. We're all offended about it. We're all talking about it all the time. I mean, I wasn't offended, but everybody talked about it, you know, ad infinitum. But if you went out to the middle of the country, people aren't talking about this stuff. I think the level of the country, people aren't talking about this stuff. I think the level of hypocrisy is also insane. I mean, disappearing fucking, this actually

happened, disappearing Woody Allen movies from rental from Amazon, who he had a deal with, by the way, and who he sued because they broke the deal. That is fucking crazy that you cannot get Manhattan, Annie Hall. I think this might have changed, but there was, look this up, it actually happened. And these are people that have an enormous market share. So when they take that away, that takes away the capability of a lot of people to get it, right? So that's a bad thing.

I don't like that. And I just want to say- Market values though. Like I don't think that the only obligation a corporation has is to its shareholders. I think- I don't know. Okay.

I agree. There was a time when we weren't this way and we got along just fine when the Grand Dragon and the Ku Klux Klan would be at a talk show when Pat Buchanan would write basically Holocaust denial columns in the New York Post and people would be outraged by the column. But nobody expected him to be fired. You know, we were we were able to we were able to manage it. We were able to hear things that offended us, really offensive views, and then go on with our day and and not pretend that this was violence. And I feel triggered. I can't. It's all

bullshit. Anyway, the one place you can see all this playing out, and it's very, very depressing to me, is to the point about Nazis and having them on TV or having them in Skokie, Illinois, which was a suburb of Chicago, which had a lot of Holocaust survivors. And a Nazi named Frank Collin wanted to march there in the ACLU. Four Jewish lawyers defended the right for them to do it. They showed up and then they scattered. The march never happened because guess what? People came out and said, fuck you guys. You're dressed up in Nazi outfits. That guy, Frank Cullen, by the way, unknown to most people because I tracked him down,

was later, I think, revealed to both be Jewish and to be a pedophile. So the guy was kind of fucked up. These are the people. It's not like there's 7,000 of these people. There's usually a couple of weirdos, right? And by giving them the attention and saying, you can't talk, allow them to people. There's usually a couple of weirdos, right? And by giving them the attention and saying, you can't talk, allow them to talk. You know why? I think I can beat them in a debate. I'm fairly confident that if I'm next to a Holocaust denier, a neo-Nazi, I'm probably okay.

And I think that's going to happen. And we should allow them to do that, allow them to debate, allow them to assemble. And the ACLU, which was a great organization defending this, and again, mostly Jewish lawyers in New York at the ACLU, have now gone a totally different direction, much to the consternation of the old guard, Nadine Strossen people of the ACLU. Why do you say about like a Canadian? That's really none of your business. I didn't see it coming, Michael, but you managed to sneak in. You managed to sneak in one last story about a Jew we should be ashamed of. That's why I come on. You're a virtual Jew shamer. The Nazi pedophile one. By the way, this is I wrote a call about this one time and I can finish on this,

is that there is a person that has my exact name. and the reason I use my byline, my middle initial, who is in fact a neo-Nazi, and quite a prominent one too. So it's been difficult at times. I actually had to write a column and say, I am not a neo-Nazi. And this was probably six years ago. His wife emailed me with a very simple thing that said, he is not a neo-nazi he's a white nationalist i swear to god oh i have this email and i said i just a distinction without a difference but i appreciate your your correspondence well we gotta wrap it by the way how often your fifth column podcast how often do you guys do that weekly and then we do a patreon too so we do

actually twice a week so we have a big patreon thing too which uh we got a bunch of subscribers and uh yeah so we do it a lot everybody should So we have a big Patreon thing too, which we've got a bunch of subscribers. And yeah, so we do it a lot. Everybody should listen to that podcast. That is a great podcast with a great rapport. It's very funny. It's thoughtful. That's one of the great podcasts.

I hope it does very well for you. Thank you, I appreciate it. And we did a live show at the Comedy Cellar a couple years ago. Yeah, you should do another one anytime you want to. Do another one, yeah. Anytime you'd like to, just let us know. All right, well, it's always a pleasure to have you on a link on a, you have anything else you want to say a link on? No.

The other thing everybody should do is. So you're not still working for Trevor. No, no. So what are you? Not after this podcast. I hope we didn't say anything bad about Trevor because I have, I have nothing. I did, but I'm just, I'm not. Michael's a guest and we, we don't, we don guest and we don't censor our guests. He can say what he wants. I don't want to think that I adore Trevor. I have nothing

against him personally. Just kick a little money to charity. That's all I'm saying. Go ahead. So do you have... Are you writing now or are you just a full-time doing stand-up? Doing stand-up. Doing stand-up, yes. And I was trying to say that everybody should

also check out Alingon's TikTok. Yeah, TikTok, Instagram at Alingon Mitra. My book, Iris Spiro, Before COVID, a novel available on Amazon in both Kindle version and paperback and also

available at barnesandnoble.com. Is that true? Yeah, that is true. He wrote a great book. Dan, why don true? Yeah, that is true. Oh, God. He wrote a great book. Dan, why don't you have copies that you can give out? He wants people to buy them. I'd rather they buy it.

Oh, Dan. You give a book like that, well, whatever. Well, I offered Judd a copy. He said, don't worry, I'll buy it. Everybody I offer a copy to says, no, no, I'm going to buy it. So then I stopped offering copies. Anyway, his book is terrific. Pardon?

Did they actually buy it? I don't know. But, you know, I got a dashboard that I can go to that shows me how many sales, but I don't know who. Esty, I gave one to. All right. Michael, thank you very much for coming thanks for having me i hope i did okay i'm on painkillers because i have a toothache but i i can't really tell what do you want oxy yeah a codeine and tylenol yeah ivermectin yeah bob beckle you know bob beckle they all

liberal guy yeah who died yeah he yeah he came into the to the olfactory one night he was telling me these great stories about all the debates he did where he was totally coked up and on drugs and he had no recollection of, of anything he said. He was a colorful character. He, I can say this cause he's dead.

He told me one time that he put cocaine in one of those old lockers, you know, in like a grand center. And then he lost the key and he doesn't, he doesn't know what happened to the cocaine. He said it was a lot of cocaine. This is Bob Beckel. Told me that story.

Be careful. He was a great guy, right? Fantastic. He was hilarious. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I can't say this, even though he's dead. I'll leave it. I won't say it on the air.

I'll tell you another story another time. Be careful. Cocaine now is being laced with fentanyl. So be very, very careful. Perrielle, do you have any final plugs, thoughts? My books are also available on Amazon. Bye, everybody. I got to go. Bye.