The Joe Rogan Experience - #1001 - Mike Baker

Episode Date: August 21, 2017

Mike Baker is a former CIA covert operations officer. Currently he is the president of Diligence LLC, a global intelligence and security firm.

struggle. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're live. The president's now blind. He's been staring at the sun all day, trying to see the eclipse. There's photos of it. Mike Baker, help us out. What are we doing, man? Well, I'm telling you, that's probably, again, it's an indication that they don't have a

lot of discipline in that communications department of the White House. No one got them the message. Don't, sir, sir, don't look at the sun. Not only that, definitely don't look at the sun while people are looking at you. Yeah, yeah. Jesus Christ, the whole world is going to mock you. Don't you know that? Everybody knows this since they were a kid, right?

Even if you've never been involved in an eclipse, every kid knows don't look at the sun. It's the one thing that every child learns somehow. You know what I tried to do, though? I'm a fucking idiot. I took two dark sunglasses. I put them on top of each other. That'll work. I put one pair, and then I put another pair over them.

It doesn't work, folks. Don't do it that way. But it looks good. It does look good. I only looked for a second, and then I went, oh, okay, this doesn't work. But you know where I could look at it? I could look at it through my pool, like the reflection in the pool. You can see the eclipse.

There you go. But it never really got fully dark here. You know, we're too low. Yeah. I just came down from Idaho. I was up there in the mountains over the past few days, and it was just hippies coming in from left and right. And the entire state just overrun with hippies. And, I mean, they're parking in people's, you know, ranches.

They're just driving up on fields that have just been planted. It's the weirdest shit. It's like they don't even think. But they came out, hey, God bless them. I don't know that I was intellectually curious enough to really worry about the eclipse. There's a balance. And you know what? I think a lot of intellectual curiosity is great and a lot of hippie values are great.

But then you go too far into the hippie retard gene pool and you get these dopey hippies that are hippies that, you know, they're the worst kind of hippies. The hippies that don't really want to do any work, but they want universal basic income. They want all these, hey man, these one percenters, they have plenty of money, so the new one should have to work ever. They just passed a tax up in Seattle. It's probably going to get struck down, but it basically was up in Seattle. Well, God bless them up there.

They've decided that they're going to go against the state charter, which says you can't have a tax, an income tax. And they've gone ahead and done it for the, I think it's for the top 2% or something like that. Oh, only tax them. Yeah, only tax them. Only tax the people who are doing something. Right, because you've got to make this thing more equitable. That's hilarious. Yeah.

That's really funny. Well, what's interesting is that's the whole reason why a lot of companies like Amazon and Microsoft, that's the reason why they've located to Seattle, you fucking dummies. And they're going to pull out, and then you won't have any jobs, and then you'll be poor. But you know what? Somebody's going to pay for that. We moved out from Fairfield County, from New Canaan, Connecticut,

when we moved out to Idaho, which was the world's greatest move. Oh, it was the best move of all time. Connecticut sucks. I say it over and over again. Connecticut sucks. Sorry, folks. Yeah, but they know it, right? The people of Connecticut know it. You're good people, but you live in a sucky spot.

And their plan, the plan of the governor and the rest of the crew there is, when you need more money, tax Fairfield County, which is home to New Canaan and Greenwich and Darien and Stanford. Rich people. The people that work in the city or the people that are working in finance. And now what they've had over the past three or four years, ever since the governor's been running the shop, is people moving out. I mean, GE moved out. General Electric, the entire operation, what General Electric said, went to the state and said, I know people are thinking,

why are we talking about this? But they went to the statehouse and they said, you can't keep doing this. You can't keep jacking it up on us to pay for everything. We're happy to pay. And we are, parent or fair share. But so they did that. Senator Electrick said, we're going to move. The state didn't believe them. They've all relocated to Boston. They've got, who else is moving? Aetna, I think, the large insurance company. Now, Connecticut's known as sort of the insurance capital, right? They're leaving. Hedge funds, private equity groups moving down to Florida.

And again, great, pay your fair share. But at a certain point, everybody's got to contribute something. You can't just say that's what you're going to do. And I'm not in the 1%. I wish I was. It used to be when you were a kid, you wanted to be rich, right? Now, I don't know what people want. You want to be in the middle. You want to be comfortable. That's where you're going to do. And I'm not in the 1%. I wish I was. It used to be when you were a kid, you wanted to be rich, right? Now, you know, I don't know what people want. You want to be in the middle.

You want to be comfortable. That's where you want to be. You want to be comfortable. I don't know. I always thought it'd be pretty cool to be wealthy, you know, and I think I'd be pretty good at it. My friend Brian Callen said it best once and it stuck with me forever. He said, you know what you want to be?

You want to be to the point where you don't have to worry about your bills and you can go to a restaurant and not worry about what you order he goes everything other than that is bullshit yeah cuz everybody you know what and that's that's a good point I guess because that's you take that stress out of your life yeah and then I get well I guess you're gonna worry about it something else well people find it's yeah stress well fine stress right I mean like look at these assholes that buy these 500 million dollar yachts it's like they just realized like I don't have enough problems in my life.

I need to buy a fucking floating city. And then I got to hire a crew of 100 to work on it. Who hate me. Yeah. Who talk shit about me every time I turn my back. I mean, I want to fuck my wife. Damn it. I got to get in line.

Yeah. Is that Boson's Mate finished? Boson's Mate. I don't know if I came up with Boson's Mate. Is that a real thing? I think it is, yeah. I think there is such a thing as a Boson's mate. There's always like this ebb and flow, right?

I mean, the people that have accumulated too much wealth, especially when it comes to hedge fund people and finance people, it's like, what are you actually doing? Right. And you're using that money to influence policy, and that policy allows you to extract more money from the system, and it gets real slippery because occasionally you guys fuck up and it crashes the whole economy right like that kind of money is like very creepy but when you're talking about someone who's developed a legitimate product they sell it and they're successful they work hard they've made something some sort of building a business exactly yeah yeah they're hiring people they're yeah no there's a there's

a balance yeah for sale up in the hamptons now there's a house for sale up in the Hamptons now. There's a house for $175 million. Seems logical. Yeah, $175 million. But you know what? It's on the beach, so it's got waterfront to it. So I guess that explains the price tag. But here's the thing about that waterfront. Anybody can walk in front of your house.

Yeah, that's true. That's a huge problem in Malibu. There's this couple that I'm friends with, and their sons surf, and they live in Malibu. They have a house in Malibu, and they were surfing in the water in front of this house. This guy comes out and yells and screams at them, you know, get the fuck off the beach, because, you know, he has this $10 million house right there on the beach. And they're like, what are you talking about? Like, we live right over there, you piece of shit.

And like, not only that, anybody can be on this beach. This is the ocean, you cunt. You don't own the ocean. You don't see any private beach signs up in, and for the most part, that's true, up in the Hamptons. I think this actually has some private beach frontage, which again, so the $175 million seems somewhat reasonable. The Hamptons' most expensive home.

There it is, right there. $175 million. Oh, yeah. That's it. Look at that. Whoa, he's got a lake. He's got a lake and then further past the lake. Wow, they all have lakes.

Yeah. What is that? Is that freshwater or brackish water? That must be brackish water, right? I guess. I guess. That'd be pretty badass, though, to fish in your front yard like that. I wonder if the kitchen appliances convey.

How big is this house? Because they probably do. Wait a minute. That overhead view was the entire property? Mm-hmm. Baller. You know what, though? Here's the thing.

But look at that picture, though. Does that look like $175 million in your mind? I mean, you think the whole fucking thing should be plated in gold. 42 acres. Wow. Okay, there you go. That's what it is. Yeah.

Oh, the Ford family. Oh. Ah. Oh. Yes, the car company. Yeah. Hashtag balling on Mustangs. I think you're right.

If you get to that point where you can entertain the idea of maybe I'll put 10% down and then I'll take the rest in a mortgage, then yeah, you've probably got too much money. It reminds me of that scene in The Big Lebowski when you meet the other Lebowski and he's in the wheelchair and his wife's offering to suck dude's dicks for a thousand bucks. It's like that's the kind of shit that happens you get a trophy wife you buy yourself a mansion and your days are Just filled with stress. It's such a great movie. It's a great movie I used to use that movie to judge whether or not I enjoyed people's opinions Yeah, tell me anything about the big about your own fucking stupid. I didn't get it Okay, I talked to a lot of people they said I couldn't make it through the first hour How do you not how do you not find this funny?

Jeez, I let my kids watch it. I mean, admittedly, the two youngest walked away, but the older one, hey, you know. So anyway, yeah, I'm taking him fishing tomorrow morning. We're off to Alaska in the morning. Ooh, salmon or halibut? Salmon. Nice. And if the salmon aren't interested in us, we'll go after some halibut. This is a silver salmon season right now, right?

King. Oh, king. So you're on the open water? Is that where you guys are going? Well, yeah, we're going up to Ketchikan, which is a really interesting place by itself. And then we're going to take a plane out of there about 45 minutes outside of there to a little place called

Yes Bay. And they have a really good operation up there. And about 45 minutes outside of there to a little place called yes bay and they have a really good operation up there and you spend a lot of time and to be honest with you if the fish aren't you know biting then we just go hike and i'm gonna take my boy this will be the first time for him to go up there and it's gonna be great that's good but i've just now emptied uh the freezer of uh salmon and halibut and rockfish from the last trip so it's time to stock up again but it's just a great time of year. Isn't that a great thing to have fish that you caught in your freezer that you can go back to that you know was only like an hour old

by the time you threw it on the ice? Yeah, it's fantastic. And just also just getting up there. If people haven't been up to Alaska, get up there and see it before it melts. I don't know why I said that. I think it's going to be fine. That's depressing. It'll be fine. That's not depressing. It'll be fine.

Are you worried about it? You know what? Not in the sense that, oh my God, if I don't quit driving my wagon here, the glaciers are going to all melt away. I'm sure we have some impact. It's like everything else, right? The truth is in the middle somewhere. Right. So I'm sure we should all do our part.

But do I think we're all going to, you know, the polar bears are dying off tomorrow? No, but I don't know. God bless everybody with their ideas. Yeah. There's definitely some issues with polar bears in areas that have less ice, but apparently the polar bear population, this is something that I read about Canada, at least in Canada, the polar bear population is higher than it's been in years. at least in Canada, the polar bear population is higher than it's been in years. There's not a shortage of polar bears. But if you go over there to, like, they have hunts for polar bears. Like, they pay people to take them on polar bear hunts.

But then you can't bring the polar bear back to the United States. Like, you can keep it in Canada. You can, like, if you come from Europe and you want to hunt a polar bear, you can. It's all very weird. Could you imagine trying to pack a polar bear back into the States? Jesus Christ. No, I just shot that. You don't really. You can see what the reaction would be.

You know what? I think it's, yeah, everybody should do their part, right? There's no doubt about that. You know, don't be a douche. But the problem is, in part, it's like both sides, they latch on to one piece of information. Right. Right. So, like what you just

said you know the polar bear population grow so you know that one side will latch on and say see there's no such thing as climate change and the other side will find one piece of it and they'll latch on to that and then okay and like i said i'm a big believer that somewhere in the middle is where most of the truth sits but i'm sure i mean there's definitely polar bear problems higher north right in the ice caps and i mean, I've seen some issues where they're talking about polar bears starving up there and the lack of ice contributing to starvation deaths. Yeah. But regardless, I'm looking forward to Alaska. I think it's – regardless of what the hell happens to the polar bears, I'm going to have a good trip.

But I think it's a beautiful state. People should get up there if they haven't been up there it's amazing yeah it's one of the rare places that you could go to in america that is like real wilderness yeah that is a really wild place and you can get yeah exactly and it doesn't take it doesn't take much to get up there i mean money i just mean it doesn't it's not the effort that people i think sometimes imagine it to be right and uh yeah so it's it's uh it's it's effort that people, I think, sometimes imagine it to be. And, yeah, so it's a great trip. Kids are really looking forward to it. It's weird that it's the United States, isn't it?

When you look at the map, you're like, hey. No, you're right. You think about how it was put together. That's a fascinating story. What that's worth, people, that's another good, interesting read, is how we cobbled this country together. And sort of some of it was, you know, just incredible genius on the part of some folks. Some of it was serendipity. Some of it was, you know,

short-sighted vision on the part of the Russians or the, you know, the French. Oh, they fucked up with Alaska. Yeah. The Russians fucked up. Yeah. What did they give that to us? Like 50 bucks?

Yeah. It wasn't much money. It wasn't much, no. So we got, I guess we got our money's worth out of that by now. Yeah. But anyway, so yeah, we'd do that. And I planned this trip. much no no so we got it i guess we got our money's worth out of that by now yeah but uh anyway so yeah we'll do that and and uh and i planned this trip of course their school starts tomorrow

they're they're all three of them uh are in elementary school so their school starts tomorrow and uh and i gave my kid the option i said do you want to you know he starts in fifth grade i said do you do you want to stay here so you don't miss the first few days of school? And he looked at me like, what are you crazy? Exactly. He said, you're an idiot. I mean, that's what his eyes said. He didn't say that to me. How old is he? He's just turned ten. He's going to learn more in the woods. Absolutely. Absolutely.

For a couple of days. Yeah. Have a good time. Have a wonderful experience. And the grizzlies are out because, of course, the grizzlies are out looking for the salmon. I mean, and it's just fantastic. You know, they say that's the safest time to be around them is when there's salmon out. Yeah, they're just fat and happy. They don't bother you. Yeah, and so, you know, now if something happens to my 10-year-old,

then my wife said it's going to be my fault and it's on my head. And I can't blame her. That would be true. Do you pack when you're out there? Are you packing a sidearm? No, no, we don't because when you're out there you're packing a sidearm um no no we don't because we're when we go up there and we're going up with uh what uh uh about a dozen other guys and they and they do what the lodge does we stay in a small little sort of it's not you know i say lodge it's

a wonderful place family owned it's it's not a fancy place at all but it's a great little spot and they do a great job the guides are fantastic, so we'll have a good time. But, yeah, we don't take anything with us. I mean, it's just— Yeah, no, that makes sense. As long as the people up there—I mean, you probably won't need anything as long as the bears have fish. Yeah, yeah. They really have no—there's an area that we've shown this video before of this enormous grizzly

that gets right next to this guy who's sitting there photographing these bears eating fish out of the river. And the bear literally couldn't give a fuck about him. Just looks at him and just sort of wanders off. And there's actually a statistic that no one has ever died in this area. No person has ever been attacked or killed in this one area just because it's just overrun with salmon. They're so preoccupied this time of year.

But it's also, you know, you talk about how things change around the planet and the salmon runs are, you know, really being impacted right now by a variety of reasons. You know, it's not just one thing. But so anyway, but that'll be good. And I know that everybody was really keen to hear about my upcoming trip. So there you go. Well, you know, I mean, it is interesting to hear people's take on the climate issue because there's hard left and hard right.

Hard right is it's a cycle. It's always happening this way, and you're impeding business. Hard left is we're all going to die, and then Miami's going to drown. I mean, and Al Gore had already predicted in that movie, An Inconvenient Truth, that we were going to be covered in water in 2014, right? Wasn't it 2014 they were predicting that the ocean levels were going to rise to the point where we're going to have to start evacuating some of the coastal cities? That's right. He missed that one just by a little bit.

A little bit. Yeah, but he came out with another movie. Twelve people saw that. More Inconvenient Truth. Yeah, and nobody has watched it, I don't think. Did you see Bill Nye when he was on Tucker Carlson's show? No. It was very interesting.

Really? It was very interesting. Because Bill Nye, who's not really a scientist. What is he? He's an engineer. He's an engineer. That's right. Which, you know, is discipline-based.

You have to be smart. But he calls himself Bill Nye the Science Guy. By the way, he has an undergrad degree. He doesn't even have a PhD. Hey, I got one of those. And they were talking about climate change. And Tucker Carlson said, I'm willing to absolutely believe that people have an impact on climate change. He goes, but can you tell me how much?

And then Bill Nye kind of got flustered, and he got a little confrontational, defensive. It was really kind of interesting, because Tucker kept pestering on him. We're talking about science. So I would like you to tell me, how much of an impact have people had? What are the numbers? Is it a narrow range? Can you give me a narrow range? Is that nothing? It's just, what he

does is he publicizes science for his own personal benefit. He has that terrible show on Netflix, Bill Nye Saves the World. Bitch, you're not saving shit, okay? You can't call your show Bill Nye Saves the Fucking World. You're not saving the world with this crazy goddamn song about

gender. Do you see that? Do you see that thing? That was stunning. What in the, who the fuck greenlit that? Like, I love Netflix, but hey, a little quality control is not a bad thing. At least have somebody on set to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What in the fuck is this? Like a censor, like in that movie, Good Morning Vietnam. Somebody that sits there and reads through his material before he does it.

No, I saw that. Clearly they don't have anybody who has to approve his content. But that just shows you where his mind's at, that he's willing to say yes to that. That's someone who wants to acquiesce with no uncertain terms to the left. Meanwhile, he had a film out, a television show out years ago where he was describing gender. And he was basically saying there's two genders and it's about X and Y chromosome. I mean, which is what everybody's been told in science and biology class. Then he has this show just a few years later where now the tide has turned politically, where this is such a weird subject about gender and sexual identity and gender identity.

And so he's got these songs about, you know, like what that lady singing that song like, hey, this is fucking terrible. Like what all you're doing, it's just like the same thing as President Trump staring at the sun. All you're doing is setting yourself up for ruthless criticism that's going to diminish any potential legitimate point that you actually have. But I will say this, I don't think he really got pilloried for it, right? I mean, nobody really, I mean, there was some, there was some, yeah, I think some people made fun of him, but I think Bill Nye for the most part, he knows it. That's a very comfortable place for him to do or for a lot of people. If they say, look, I just want to get the adulation of the the left of the far left yeah then fine i mean that's what you want to do do it but you see people that kind of shift their position and are happy to be there because they know they're going to be coddled and i so i i get

why he does it because it's a base of of uh it's an audience that he knows is going to stick with him as long as he says the right things. And apparently he doesn't really give a shit about science, so he's happy to say anything. Well, I think he does give a shit about science, but I think he gives a shit more about people liking him and fitting in with this crowd of people. There's a weird thing that's going on in science. There's nothing, look, science is fantastic. It's critical for our civilization. I'm not a science criticizer.

But there's a weird thing about people that are a part of science, where their own egos and their own need for positive affirmation sort of supersede any critical thinking. So there's certain subjects that cannot be discussed. There's certain things that, like, they're almost like, it's almost like science religion. You know, so there's certain subjects that aren't're they're almost like it's almost like science religion you know so there's certain subjects that are aren't even open to scrutiny well i think that's right i think part of it is is is also we have gotten to a point where you can't and i don't know how you you walk it back but you you can't have conflicting ideas in the same statement or the same sentence and an idea things conflict all the time right and

the and you can have uh truths that that collide with each other and don't it don't necessarily make sense so but it seems as if now everything has to be in absolutes right and whether it's climate change so you can't say you know if you if you just have this middle of the road you know discussion where you say well look of course you know course, humans, I'm sure, have some impact. I don't know what that is. And this is a problem, and we do have to do our part, and we do have to work to try to be the best we can be, but that's not good enough. You've got to be sort of totalitarian about the whole issue, And it's not just that. It's any argument. It just seems as if, and it's not just the millennials. I'm not one to, you know, beat on, you know, the young kids

or the generation of whatever we want to call them nowadays, because I know a lot of good kids that are out there that are working hard or they're in the military, and it's a fantastic, you know, group of folks. So I think we're just fine in that regard. But there does seem to be something about each successive generation. And we've gotten now to a point where people have a hard time processing this dissenting opinion idea. And that starts to shut down debate. And it starts to shut down the idea that you can have a discussion about science where you have these conflicting ideas. And how do you resolve them?

That used to be the whole concept about science is that test theories and come up with what works and? Anyway, I think it's because we're attaching egos and personalities and virtue signaling to the actual hard data itself But here's here's the thing that we should all be concerned with pollution. We should all be concerned with human waste We should all be concerned with the damage that we're doing to our water the damage that we're doing to our water, the damage that we're doing to the environment. There's a host of different things that human beings are involved in that are creating irreparable harm to the environment. We should absolutely be concerned with that. But what's weird is that you hardly ever hear about that. You hardly ever hear about doing something to curb the plastic in the ocean, doing something to eliminate some of the sewage waste that

goes into the ocean. There's a ton of different things that we're doing that are huge issues. But instead, you hear about climate change, and it becomes this ideological left versus right battle, which is very weird to me. And I understand that climate change is a real issue. And if the ocean water continues to rise, coastal cities really are fucked and if the temperature does rise, we really might have to migrate to more, you know, better climates.

But there's a lot of other shit going on that seems to get ignored during this process. Well, interestingly, I mean, you know, I'm old enough to remember when plastics, that was an issue, right? Plastic bags or, you know, keeping the oceans clean or, you know, don't be a litter bug. I mean, it was more of a, it was things that you could accomplish, right?

It was things that you could do, the community could do. So you would have these community drives to pick up trash or to not use plastic bags or to, you know, whatever it is. And it was stuff that you could do and you could see some results and it you felt good about it and you know who knows maybe we've gone past that now and so now that's not good enough because you know now we've got to save the planet well you save the planet these little steps at a time right if every community says well I you know I'm sorry I can't do anything about the polar bears so fuck it I'm just gonna worry about myself but if you if you bring it back down to those little things like you Every community says, well, you know, I'm sorry, I can't do anything about the polar bears, so fuck it. I'm just going to worry about myself.

But if you bring it back down to those little things, like you were maybe implying, then I think we're better off. And eventually you do make a difference. But if all you do is talk about climate change and save the planet, people just get overwhelmed. It's like a lot of other things in life, and you just think, fuck it, I'm just going to focus on other shit. But it's just so strange that climate change has become this of other things in life, and you just think, fuck it, I'm just going to focus on other shit. But it's just so strange that climate change has become this weird ideological debate between the left and the right. And when it comes to plastic, there's a solution that's been around for years for plastic. There's biodegradable hemp plastic.

It's existed for a long time. If they just legalized hemp farming nationwide federally, let people grow hemp in mass quantities, you could turn that into plastic. You would never have to worry about water bottles again. You would never have to worry about garbage bags. You would never have to worry about anything because it's all be plant-based plastic, which is real, biodegradable. You put it in the ground, it becomes dirt. There's nothing wrong with it.

So what's the holdup? Well, federally, hemp has been illegal since the 1930s. That's what it is. And all that goes back to William Randolph Hearst conning people into making it illegal so he didn't have to switch over his paper mills from wood. That son of a bitch. That son of a bitch. Yeah.

Hearst. That's right. I forgot. You know what? He's the guy who did that. Yeah. Wow. It's amazing.

Him and Harry Anslinger and what they did is they organized an actual campaign against hemp as a commodity by demonizing this thing that they called marijuana, which wasn't even the name of cannabis at the time. Marijuana was a name for a wild Mexican tobacco. They applied that name to cannabis to say that there's this new drug that's making Mexicans and blacks rape white women and they you know he was a piece of shit that William Randolph Hearst Yeah And he printed all these articles in his papers and they made reefer madness and all that stuff all those movies that they made back In the day have you ever seen reefer madness? Oh, it's wonderful. It's great. It's not a good makes me want to get her Yeah, and then and then of course they made citizen Kane And that turned Hearst into a household name and, you know, a relatively benign character. Yeah, Orson Welles.

I wonder what he did to Orson Welles. He must have fucked with him a little bit, don't you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. When did that movie come out? Citizen Kane came out in... A long time ago. Yeah, yeah.

People are like, why are they talking about Citizen Kane? I want to say it was the 50s. Oh, it was earlier than that, I think. Was it? Yeah, yeah. Was it? Yeah. Was it? 1941. RKO.

RKO. Pictures. It's a great movie. Still to this day, it's a great movie. I watched it on an airplane. I couldn't believe it. I was on an airplane not too long ago, and I was looking through the movies, and I was thinking, am I going to watch anything, or am I going to?

No, I did not. And Citizen Kane was on, which was strange. and Citizen Kane was on. I couldn't believe, which was strange. It was right there in the middle of all these typical Marvel and DC Comics movies that you would expect on a plane.

That's odd. So I started watching it and the dude next to me in the seat next to me kind of starts, you can tell when someone's watching your screen, right? Right.

Looking over there. Finally, he taps me on the shoulder and he says, what are you watching? And he was, you know, he was probably a couple years younger than me, but not much. And I said, I'm watching Citizen Kane. Never heard of it. Never heard of it.

Which I guess, no big deal. Fine. But Jerry Lewis died and people are probably saying, who's that? He's probably one of those dudes at the gym that talks too much. Yeah. He's one of those guys that comes up to you while you're benching. Hey, let me ask you a question. Am I doing this right?

Or even worse, you should drop your shoulder a little bit when you do that. Oh, those fucking guys. Because what you'll do is you'll stress that, and then that'll be better for you. Okay, thank you. I love those guys. Yeah. They use big words. Try to convince you they know what they're talking about.

So, speaking of Citizen Kane and Orson Welles and conspiracies, last night I rewatched the episode of Geraldo Rivera's Good Night America when they introduced the Zapruder, because you know Dick Gregory just died? Yeah, yeah. They introduced the Zapruder film to the American public 13 years or 12 years, 12 years after Kennedy's assassination. And then I went and read that paper, the articles that was printed a couple of weeks ago that you even tweeted about it, about the CIA questioning the official story of the JFK assassination.

Yeah. That was interesting, wasn't it? Yeah. As a CIA guy, what do you think about that? Well, first of all, that Zapruder film, That's the most watched piece of film in history of film. Is it really? Which is really interesting. But, yeah, it was interesting that the, you know, as typical with a lot of these things,

the headline doesn't necessarily actually match once you get into the body of the story. agency, had some concerns over the idea that perhaps Cuba was behind the assassination, or the Russians to some degree, or more likely in a combination of the two. Look, I think, you know, do I think that he could have taken that shot? Yeah. It was not, yeah, it was not, I've been up in that book depository from that point of, that vantage point, we did a story on the whole issue, the conspiracy theory, and what could have happened, and we tried to find some new witnesses,

and, you know, could he have made that shot? Yeah, that was a, it was a straightforward effort for someone who had some training. He was, you know, he wasn't the world's best shot, but he had sufficient training to make that shot. Now, that's separate from his motivations and any potential support that he may have gotten during the course of that.

And I think that he, in his mind, he genuinely felt that this was going to get him into the revolution, right? That this was going to, he had a very unhappy experience in Russia when he was over there living, came back, saw what was happening in Cuba, desperately wanted to be part of that, took an unexplained trip down to Mexico, which could well have been in an effort to find somebody who could support his desire to take some sort of action. Whether he had formed

in his mind that's what he was going to do at the time or not. So, you know, is there still a possibility that the Cubans, which would have, the intel service there would have had the file on him. I mean, he was a very, very well-known quantity, obviously, by that time for the Russians. The Russians were solely responsible for training up the Cuban intel service. So there's a massive file on him and they knew who they were dealing with. They knew his weaknesses. They knew his motivations.

They knew what to do in terms of trying to get leverageable information on him. So I think that the jury's still out. I'm not, and I'm not a conspiracy guy, but I think there's enough there that says, you know, yes, it's kind of like what we're talking about with climate change. I believe this, but this is all, this also could be true. So I think he could have taken that shot for sure and succeeded. I think it's also possible that he may have had the encouragement of, in particular, the Cuban intel service through the Russians.

Because at that time, in particular, they didn't do anything, the Cubans didn't do anything without the Russians' support, blessings, and direction. So that is entirely possible. Do I think that there were a variety of other things at play? Did they help him get the weapon? Was there actual logistical support in there? I don't think so, but maybe. Nobody wants to think that something that impactful could have been just one guy who had a dream about being a hero of the revolution. It's such an awful thing to think about. You want something bigger. You want something more behind it.

And I will say the one thing that I think there was something else to was the MLK issue of Martin Luther King assassination. Well, let's get to that for sure. But here's the thing about the Lee Harvey Oswald assassination. A lot of people think that there was people in the grassy knoll and that they shot at the president and there was more than one shooter. That's possible too. And here's the other problem with people saying that Oswald could have never made that shot. Of course he could have. 100% he could have.

Is it likely? Listen, people throw three-point shots that have no fucking business on a basketball court, and they hit nothing but net. It happens all the time. It doesn't mean it's not likely that a guy could get off three shots that quick, but it is possible. There was more time in there than they originally thought. There's some misinformation out there about how condensed that time frame was,

and now after they've, you know, research has seemed to work fairly well, that time frame extended a little bit. But he had, more importantly, he worked up there, so he had the opportunity to recce that site, right? So it was like he was sitting in a blind waiting and figuring out, you know, what am I going to be doing here? And that's a tremendous advantage. And clear daylight, targets moving

right in line with you. There's no wind. Not only that, it's not that far a shot. No, it's not. It's not like everybody thinks it's like a half mile away or something like that. I mean, how far was it? It was 150 yards or something like that? Yeah, I'd have to go back and it's been a while now. But I've stood on that spot where the limo was and hooked up at the site. I stood up there and looked down and it's not that far. It's a total makeable shot on a deer. Like if you were going to shoot a deer with a rifle, you'd be like, oh yeah, that's definitely in my effective range.

How far is it? 265 feet, 81 meters. That ain't shit. That's a bow shot. You could shoot an animal with a bow from 80 meters if you're really good and there's no wind. So that's a really close shot.

So the idea that he couldn't make that shot, he's a bad shot, that is so fucking stupid. He absolutely could make that shot. Anybody could make that shot from 81 meters. That's nothing. We looked at the grassy knoll issue. We looked at what the train yard engineer reported seeing with a sort of a puff of smoke that he thought he saw over by the fence line. And we looked and he's like, yeah, you could, you know, from that position, they opened that place up and we were able to go back up there and you could see it. We ran a couple of tests and fired off a few shots. And that's always fun. If you want to have a good time, take a rifle to Dealey Plaza and fire off a few shots without the tourists knowing what the hell is happening.

And the Dallas police, by the way, were tremendous during the course of that. Why did you guys do this? We did this a while back for a show called America Declassified, which isn't running anymore, but it was on Travel Channel. Jesse Ventura did that. He went up there with a Manlinker

Carcano, same rifle, and he was like, this is an impossible shot. No one could make this shot. It can't be done. Can't be done. I love Jesse. I think he's awesome. But I'm like, he wants everything to be a conspiracy.

Right, right, right. He's significantly on that side to the point where he's leaning always towards a conspiracy. What you want to do is you want to do every investigation. This company that I've got, we do a lot of investigations. And you've got to build, just like with a homicide case or anything else, you've got to build it on stable ground, right? So you have to start from the very basics. Because if you start building ideas and investigative inquiries

on something that's not sturdy underneath it, you know, not based on evidence and fact, then you've got a problem. The whole thing becomes suspect and usually comes toppling down. So you know, you've got to keep an open mind about all these things, and I think it's important. Right now people are going, well, I'm sure that agency, the CIA was involved, so I'm a terrible source of information. I've heard that before. You can't talk credibly about this because, you know, the CIA was involved. So I'm a terrible source of information. I've heard that before. I said, you can't talk credibly about this because, you know, the CIA was involved.

But here's the thing. If the CIA was involved, it's not you. You weren't there in 1962. Last time I checked, I was not there in 1962. And also, I will tell you this much. Or was it 63? It was 63. If the agency had been involved, this is the honest to God's truth, If the agency had been involved, this is the honest to God's truth, there's no way that secret is still kept. People can't keep their yap shot. They can't. And secrets have a way of coming out, and certainly a lot quicker now than they used to.

Now. The idea. But the secrets then, I mean, we're talking about so long ago. How much, I mean, we're talking about more than 50 years ago. What would get out? It's like the D.B. Cooper issue. My biggest reason for believing D.B. Cooper died and his shoot

is hanging off a tree, and that's a vast wilderness up there, is that people just, they can't help themselves. At some point, people talk or somebody talks,

somebody associated with it or someone nearby or somebody involved or somebody on their deathbed or somebody says something they shouldn't have. It's, you know, the idea that they've maintained this sort of secret over a period of time, I find hard to believe.

I'm not discounting it. Again, you've got to leave a little space open for something that could be just amazing. But, you know, anyway. So that was that. But, yeah, I agree. That shot was not a tough tough shot 81 meters ain't shit That's nothing and particularly those conditions and I will say those conditions were ideal Unfortunately for that event people are like there's a video of me shooting a fucking hard drive

At a hundred yards a hard drive. You must have hit it on the edge Oh, we're just getting rid of some hard drives. We thought it would be fun to take it to the rifle range. So I take it to the rifle, and obviously we're dealing with modern rifles. They're probably more accurate. But I'm shooting something that's basically two inches high, laying it down on the ground at 100 yards and blowing it to smithereens. That's how accurate a rifle is at 100 yards. You're telling me he couldn't get a headshot at 81 meters

That's crazy again. No, she no wind. Of course. He could good light. Did he though? Who did he that's right? Yeah, that's the question is, you know We have some pretty good indication as to what he was thinking and what is obviously what his motivations were and that's important Well, he definitely was in with the Russians definitely was involved in a lot of weird shit with communism He was in with the Russians. He definitely was involved in a lot of weird shit with communism. Who knows what his entire full background was? There was a lot of covert shit going on. on that and they would have thought about would they have actually you know, no play on what's intended, but would they have pulled the trigger on an operation trying to push him into doing an act like this? No, it's indirectly through the Cubans, exactly.

Especially if they thought like this crazy fuck might go ahead and do this for us. This is after the Bay of Pigs. People have to realize there was a lot of people pissed off at Kennedy. We lost a lot of people. Khrushchev hated Kennedy. Well that infamous video where he's banging his shoe pissed off at Kennedy. We lost a lot of people. Khrushchev hated. Everybody. Khrushchev hated Kennedy. Yeah. And so.

Well, that infamous video where he's banging his shoe down on the table, we will bury you. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was, the environment was right for them. And again, the Russians, it shouldn't be any surprise to anybody when you talk about what they did during this election. I mean, they've been doing this forever. Right.

You go back to 1940s and the Russians were spending a lot of time and effort and money here in the States trying to keep us out of the war back before Hitler invaded Russia when they were allied with the Nazis still. So they spent a lot of time. They set up independent associations, supposedly. They paid off a lot of unions and union members, journalists. I mean, they were doing everything they could to create this or to strengthen the idea of isolationism just to keep us out They've been doing this for as long as they've been around right so anybody who says I can't you know It's shocking the Russians would be engaged in this is that's ridiculous

They've always been again, and we by the way have been engaged doing that with them what that's what I hear I find I've heard that online I find that Alex Jones hard to believe The thing that bothers me the most about the Kennedy assassination is the universal support for the magic bullet theory. I think that fucking bullet is ridiculous. I've shot things. I've shot a lot of things. I know what happens to bullets. Everybody that I know that's a marksman, everybody I know that's a hunter, they see a bullet that has hit bone.

It fucking never looks like that. When a bullet goes through two people and comes out looking like you shot it into a pool of water. That's what it looks like. I don't buy that at all. And the convenience of finding it on Connelly's gurney when they roll him into the hospital. Oh, look guys, we found the bullet. And it's perfect. I don't buy that for a fucking

second. And the problem is, there's more metal fragments in Connelly's body than we're missing from the bullet itself. I think that bullet itself, look at that bullet. Get the fuck out of here. That thing didn't hit shit. It's exactly right. I've argued with

people that have never shot guns, and they will actually prove it. They broke bones. When a bullet breaks bones, they get fucked. Well, it's a jacketed bullet. When a jacketed bullet breaks bones, it gets fucked. Well, it's a jacketed bullet. When a jacketed bullet breaks bones, it gets fucked. You're talking about something that's going, I mean, how fast does a bullet from that rifle

go? It's gotta be. That would be an interesting thing to pull up. I would imagine it's in the thousands of feet per second. It's gotta be. When it hits bone, it's gonna blow all over the fucking place. There's always distortion, even if you're, you know, I mean, so I... I don't buy that bullet. When you have a conversation about this and it is somebody who has no shooting experience or, you know, it's just, you think, all right, that's fine.

I understand why you're fascinated by it. But when you do your research, you know, it's like with news. Read everything, right? Read the Wall Street Journal. Read the New York Times. Read the Financial Times. Read the Economist. But read everything.

Yes. Before you form your opinion, right? And everybody's so siloed nowadays. And you get the same thing with conspiracy theories. I absolutely believe this, and I'm going to discount everything else that's out there. Yeah. Or just not pay any attention to it. Yeah. It's hard to say. And here's another thing.

The magic bullet path. People are like, well, how is that possible? Well, let me tell you something. That's the most's another thing. The magic bullet path. People like, well, how is that possible? Well, let me tell you something. That's the most believable thing about the magic bullet theory is the path of the bullet. Because bullets do wacky shit when they hit bone and you can't predict it at all. I know a guy who in Iraq, they shot a guy in the head from the front and it went out his eyeball. The bullet came out of his eyeball back forward

it ricocheted inside of his skull and came out his eye yeah you can't i mean again you can't you're right you can't predict it they'll try to model these things and figure out but you know there's an unknown there and so yeah i agree i mean i think that again it's it's one of those things where it it it's never going to get resolved um and it it's one of those things where it's never going to get resolved. And it's going to continue to live on because, A, it was such an important event in the history of the country. And, B, I keep coming back to that same thing. People don't want to believe that really awful shit can happen sometimes in a very simple, straightforward way. And so it's much easier to think it was a broad-based conspiracy. There were lots of moving parts. Sometimes bad shit happens, and it's just as simple think it was a broad-based conspiracy. There were lots of moving parts.

Sometimes bad shit happens, and it's just as simple as it seems. That is possible. Conversely, people don't like to believe in conspiracies, especially when it's involved in an assassination of a president. Right. You know, the reason why they came up with the whole magic bullet theory in the first place is pretty shady. In fact, the reason why they did it is because a guy got hit by a ricochet underneath the overpass and they blamed that bullet on one of the one of the shots from lee harvey oswald in the book depository so they said well all right so now we have less bullets that could have hit kennedy we have all these wounds and we have to attribute a series of wounds to

one bullet right right so that was the the thought behind it. But the Zapruder film was the one that got people weirded out by it. But I'll tell you what, man, I've watched that film a bunch of times. And one of the things that don't jive is if he did get hit from the front, you know, his head goes back to the left. Why is the blood spray out forward? See, it's weird the way the impact of the blood is. It's like the blood sprays forward and then his head goes back into the left. It could have possibly been that he was hit from the front and the back at the same time.

That's entirely possible. I mean, that is a tactic you would do, right? You would roll someone into an area where they would be in a crossfire and they would get shot from both sides. If the grassy knoll was, in fact, a second sight for a shooter, then by the time it hits that corner and starts its path, just before the shots were fired from the book depository in Oswald, if you're going with that, if you had another shooter up on the grassy knoll, you're basically looking right at the the uh the the front of the vehicle and because of the way that it it's positioned and the knolls kind of turned and then it's just that it's just that there's not a lot of concealment up there right and they had that they had the the fence the picket fence it's not the original one that's there anymore, but it's basically in line with it. And there's plenty of pictures of the previous fence that was up there at the time. And you did have the train yard engineer report sometime after the fact that he saw a puff of smoke,

that he wasn't quite sure what that was all about, and he'd seen a couple of people back there. So that's an interesting thread to pull on. was all about and he'd seen a couple of people back there so that you know that was that's an interesting thread to pull on right and and I think that that it's been you know it's been researched ad nauseum doesn't mean it you couldn't still find something it also doesn't mean anybody's gonna really find a conclusion after the fact right right today yeah no and that's right and you know it's like everything else this time marches on, you lose, you know, you lose witnesses, you lose, you know, people that were there

on site. And then even witnesses. When someone gets shot, especially when the president gets shot, you'll have five different stories from five different people and gun shots heard from the moon. Nobody knows what the fuck's happening. Well, you get that from just from a robbery. Or a car accident. Yeah, a car accident. You say, what did you see? If you separate people out, you're

right. You get five different versions from five different people. And, you know, so eyewitness accounts tend not to be particularly credible. And you've got to, you know, you've got to take them, and then you've got to, you know, match it up with other information you can pull together forensically. But it is fascinating. You know, who knows where it's going to be. D.B. Cooper's back in the news a little bit.

Is it really? Yeah. Initially, it was because the Bureau was saying, okay, we're closing this case. And then there's some talk now over the past day and a half, two days, that they might have found something up in the wilderness that might be a piece of the chute that he had. And I know. Really?

They haven't bottomed that one out yet. D.B. Cooper, more new evidence of parachute believed found but how they know that's his parachute Yeah, the thing about I mean it could be but the thing about something that's that long ago We have to realize how many people die in the woods every year. Yeah. Yeah, and when you go when you come out the back of that plane Good luck. Yeah, and and also he was in a suit. He was wearing loafers. He lost his shoes. So he hits those, that wilderness, he hits

those trees and it was cold that night and it was wet and there's going to be a manhunt on in the morning. No, he had his parachute and he had the bag with the money. They had given him money.

That's it? That was it. No wilderness gear at all? No. Well, not that they know of. I mean, who knows? Maybe underneath his business suit he was wearing something, but I don't think so. And what was the time of the year?

It was late in the year. I think I'll have to go back and check again, but I think it was November. What part of the country? Up in the wilderness up in Washington State. Oh, he's dead. The night before Thanksgiving. Before Thanksgiving? Yeah, that guy's dead. Yeah. I mean, it's just... You're not going to make it. You've got to make your way out of there.

It's nighttime, and you know that... And, you know, again, there's going to be a manhunt starting immediately. Do they even have a shelter? No. That Stroud wouldn't survive up there. But there's been all sorts of theories. Oh, he jumped out and then some people met him. Well, I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly.

Good luck finding him. Right. How are you going to be able to be... No, that's so silly. People jumping out of an airplane with no GPS. The odds of finding that guy, he doesn't have a flare? Yeah. Like, what does he have?

How are you going to locate him? Yeah. Are you going to just find him in the woods? That's what I think. And there was some talk, well, because some of his money was found after the fact, stacked in a little part of the river that seemed unusual. It seemed like it would have had to make a pretty amazing journey from the wilderness down through the stream system out to the river

and then be found on this sandbar. And it was all stacked one on top of the other. But it had the serial numbers. And so there was some thought that, you know, how did that get there? Did it naturally just float down there and end up on this sandbar and covered in sand and eventually it was found by some kid that was on a picnic? Whoa. You know.

I wonder if you spent that money slowly. how long would it take before you get busted? Yeah, it was $200,000 back in the day. Just a little bit here and there, you know? Buy a bicycle, seems good. Buy a TV, no one say nothing. Buy a bicycle. He's a little kid, you know? Pedal my way to California.

Parents come in his room, he's got a 50-inch TV. What the fuck's going on here? You don't even have a job, you little kid. Pedal my way to California. Parents come in his room. He's got a 50-inch TV. What the fuck's going on here? You don't even have a job, you little punk. DB, what the hell are you doing? Where did you get that transistor radio? Well, if it's a kid who found it, I'm sure it's DB's. No, he reported it.

The kid was with his family, and he reported finding it immediately. The Bureau went out there and dug up the entire area in a fairly large effort, trying to figure out, was there more money there, how did it get there. I'll switch the test. I think if they found his money, he's dead. He's not going to jump out of a parachute and then leave the money behind. Well, there was some thought that maybe he was doing it as a ploy, right, to kind of distract and think, okay, he's dead because the money's there.

Right. But, again, it falls into the category of, you know, it's never going to be resolved, I don category of you know it's never gonna be resolved I don't think and it's a fascinating story. It's America's only unsolved hijacking am I right about that I think I am America's only unsolved I was it all the money did they find all of it or what? It was just a small amount. It was not it was not a large amount So he did not if he if he planted it there. He was smart enough not to put it all there Yeah

That's a weird story that DB Cooper's a weird one because a lot of people, they tend to look at him like some sort of a folk hero. There was a connection with him that they were thinking he was this guy who had shot, I want to say shot family members and murdered

family members and then went out and did that crime. There was some suspect that was on the loose from some sort of a homicide that they connected to the DB Cooper case and they thought that somehow there was a potential that they were related that it was the same guy yeah he loses some of his charm if that's the case yeah it'd be just a guy that's you know thinking I'm gonna hijack a plan for some cash and where's your money how the where'd the cash come from they brought it on the plane they landed and they gave get the money? Where'd the cash come from? They brought it on the plane. They landed and then they got the passengers

and most of the crew off of there. And then everybody was in the cockpit with the door closed. In the old days, the back door would open up with steps and he went out the back door. They had a back door indicator, which is how they kind of sensed about where he would have gone out.

Anyway, I sound like a D.B. Cooper. How high was he up there when he jumped? Again, I have to go through my notes, but... Like a regular commercial flight? No, no, no, no, no, no. They dropped down to, I want to say about 10,000 feet. I can't remember. Still pretty fucking high.

But they're not really sure because the door came down. He could have been in there for any period of of time and he had instructed them to drop down i forget again what altitude he was at but you know it's just it's amazing um that these things continue to go on and we love mysteries we love mysteries and conspiracies and uh which is why the the new trump administration is so interesting well Well, he loves conspiracies, doesn't he? He believes a bunch of crazy ones. Like he was just retweeting that one about, what was the general that they attributed to? Pershing. Yeah, Pershing.

Yeah, dipping the pigs, the bullets in pig's blood. Yeah, and there was never an attack, Islamic attack in 35 years. That's not even a true story. No. But again, who, why? Why are you doing this? Who's telling him that? Why are you talking about this?

Just stop. Yeah. There's no. Look, I didn't vote for him. I didn't vote for her. I just thought we could have done better in a country this size, right? I'll tell you one thing he's doing. He's fucking it up for future idiots.

Future idiots. Oh. They're doomed now. I don't know. I would not underestimate our ability to hire somebody worse. Do you think they're never going to be someone like, maybe they'll be like a new version of him. Like someone like him, but they dial it back a little bit. Yeah, maybe so.

I just think people always say, well, this will be a course correction, and we're going to go back to having really responsible. I'm thinking, this is America. Don't imagine that it could actually get better in that regard. We could be even more dysfunctional from a political point of view. Well, what's weird is I was watching this interview today where this guy, this fucking pencil neck dork, was supporting Antifa violence and saying that the only way to fight against fascism is violence. And I was like, oh, Jesus. And then there was this other guy next to him who was saying no That's not true

The way you fight it is with a peaceful protest like just happened in Boston Like that's the best way to handle it where there was I want to say there was more than a hundred thousand people in Boston Wasn't there what how many people in Boston came out? Let's see if we could find that out and it was completely peaceful and the the not I think there was like 400 retards With KKK banners. you know writing up their grant proposals to do a study on on his psychology but you know you look at um you look at at the first amendment and you think if you like the first amendment then you got to be all in right it's not like you can say and that's the kind of the beauty of this country right you know you got to let the douchebags speak right right and that's what it is it's speech but we've gotten to the point where

now words some by some folks are viewed as violence words aren't violence i don't think this is just my own personal opinion words aren't violence you gotta let everybody speak because that's the first amendment you go down you don't want to start picking and choosing slippery slope right and so you know yeah we but we can all agree that there's no space for them. They're assholes, but there's also no space for violent, you know, counter demonstration. There is space for protesting it because they're absolutely wrong, right? I mean, that's, again, this idea that you should be able to argue both, right? No, you can't respond with violence.

And yes, you guys, you shouldn't be here. If you're going to hold those views, it's abhorrent. You are protected by the First Amendment. And so that's fine. It doesn't mean we have to like it or in any way condone it. But you've got to gotta know okay that those sort of fringe ideas are going to exist and i agree the best way to resolve it is peaceful demonstrations massive peaceful demonstrations to show you know sort of the weight of where the good thoughts are

yes and then uh political process yeah right, you know, work through the political system as dysfunctional as it may be. But anyway. Just encouraging people to violently attack people that have differing ideas than them that aren't being violent is never the answer. No. It's just not the way to do it. And by the way, that's a fascist approach. Yes. You're right.

You're right. Anti-fascist takes a fascist approach. Yes, you're right. You're right. Anti-fascist takes a fascist approach. Yeah. I mean, literally, you're enforcing your ideas to the point where you're silencing others with actual violence. Which is the mark of a totalitarian state also, is if you say you can't have these views. Well, yeah, of course, we can all hate those views. But again, it's the idea that what you say is violent to me.

No, it's not. It's fucking speech. Here's the other thing that Trump fucked up. He called those protesters anti-violent protesters, or anti-police protesters. Yeah. Like, come on, man. That is not what they're...

They're not protesting against police. There might be a few amongst them that say stupid shit about the police. Right. But again, just like with the other side where you've got... I mean, what do you got? 100 or 200?

I didn't... who would imagine? 15,000 counter protesters. Where the fuck are these Nazis hiding anyway? I mean, that's the thing. You know, my dad didn't fly in World War II, you know, so that somehow you could have a resurg on the left that wants a violent solution to this or honestly believes that violence against police is somehow the answer, which is insane. But again, there you go. Truth is somewhere in that middle, right? I mean, get rid of the fringe, and we've got to figure out a way for the folks that are in kind of the comment space to work together. And otherwise, I mean, A, I don't think the Democrats care whether the Republicans care. In fact, they're happy that shit's not getting done. But as an American, again, I didn't vote for him.

I didn't vote for her. But I would like to see the government work now. Who did you vote for? You know what? I just said, fuck it. I can't. You too. I know. I couldn't bring myself to do it i couldn't bring myself and i hated doing that right yeah because i so you voted top down right yeah what they call it yeah yeah i mean i what i did

was i i you know state uh elections important you know those sort of and that's fine i but it it it's very painful to say I can't justify doing that. And I know people, and then people lose their minds and they go, well, that means you voted for him. Or that means, no, it just means we should have been able to do better in a country this size. And, you know, maybe you hold your nose and vote for the other side. I don't know. Well, at least she represented a conventional approach to politics. Right, that's true.

There's no doubt about that. That's super conventional. I don't enjoy a lot of aspects of her personality and what she's done with her career and the obvious deception. The Clinton Foundation, which is just riddled with problems and now doesn't even exist anymore, apparently.

They shut it down, didn't they? Yeah. I wonder what they did with the remaining balance. He probably just has whores flying in from Russia. What are we going to do with this? We got all this money. We got to transfer it somewhere. Well, there's got to be a place to store it.

Here, let me put it in my pants. He's wadding up hundreds, stuffing them in his pants. He was in America, or is. I guess he's not dead yet, so I don't want to kill him off. But he's an amazing political individual. That guy could make you think that, you know, I met him once overseas. This sounds dodgy, but in Saudi, I met him at a party. It does sound really sketchy and so but he had that

ability right now again i wasn't a fan necessarily but i you know again you just want whichever administration's in charge you want it to work you want for the country to move forward right but so you met him and it's true what people used to say about him which is that he made you feel like he was talking right to you and nothing else was important right he wasn't one of those guys that looks over their shoulder thinking is there somebody else I should be talking to her and and so yeah he was a charmer a friend of mine told me he was talking to him and a woman though and Clinton like essentially almost turned his back to him and like like all comes like forcing him out of the picture.

Then he just, I'm just going to block you right here. I'm just going to pull out some of these hundreds I got stacked in my pockets. Woo. Man. In a party, huh? Yeah.

Partying with Bill Clinton. Yeah. In Saudi Arabia. I like to get drunk with that dude. Yeah. You know, and I'll tell you what, I mean, George Bush, that'd be a guy I'd like to sit down and have a beer with.

Yeah. The Bush family, a good bunch. I know people are going, oh, my God, I couldn't stand his policies. But, you know, sometimes it comes down to a personal thing, and you think, yeah, you know, maybe the guy's got some, you may not like his principles, but he sticks with them, right? He looks extremely reasonable now. Yeah, exactly, right? There was one time where the Supreme Court had a ruling that he didn't like, and there was a speech where he gave, and I've seen it quoted in print, and then someone showed a video of it.

But he was essentially saying, well, we have to uphold the decision of the court. I'm not happy with it, but this is the way our system works and and then it went to Trump talking about the Supreme Court you know not backing his travel ban and all the different various things that he's lost in court and he just goes everywhere he just like you know I just like the the personal attacks and there's no I mean the problem there's no discipline in the White House and I know that everybody thought well let's get something different in there let's get a business but let's we don't want the politics as, and I know that everybody thought, well, let's get something different in there. Let's get a businessman. We don't want the politics

as usual. Well, you got that. But there is a requirement, there is a need for the machine to work in a certain fashion, in a sense. And yes, there's lots of things you can change, and that's a good thing. There should be some change in that government, but the way that the place works in

Washington, but the communications there, the lack of discipline. I mean, for crying out loud, they just put in place the new communications director at the White House, 28 years old. She's 28 years old, never done this sort of thing before. And she's the new communications director. She replaced Scaramucci after his 10-day reign. And why did she replace him? Because she listens?

She's just willing to do what Trump says? He just said, you're the guy for the job. mean, she says, you're the girl for this. And she's she's worked within the Trump organization and I guess just viewed as loyal and loyal. So that's it. But, I mean, there's no consistency. And you see these things happen. You see, you know, the messaging get out, and he gets ahead of the message, or they need to play catch-up then. And people like Mattis and John Kelly now and Pompeo and others are trying to race to make sense of some of these things. And there's this self-inflicted wound after wound for this administration. It seems like one of those homemade derby carts that they roll down a hill

where you know the wheels aren't going to stay on, and you kind of can't look away. You're like, wow, how long is it going to take for this thing to fucking completely fall apart and start doing tumbles down the hill? You've got to come up with a name for that cart. You always have to name your soapbox derby cart. But, yeah, I don't know where it's going to go. I just think.

But as a guy who's been in the intelligence community for so many years and you're, you know, stepping back. And there was also a real issue with him being at odds with the intelligence community and diminishing the intelligence community. Yeah, that was a strange or sort of an interesting narrative. It didn't really. It got overblown to some degree. I mean, the people, in the sense that the people at the agency, you know, at the end of the day, they just take, whoever's in charge, they take their marching orders from. Right. It's not, and I know people don't believe it because, you know, everybody likes to feature films and everything, but it's a pretty apolitical organization.

Whoever's in the administration, they're going to prioritize their national security concerns. Your tasking comes out of that. And then you just march on and do your job. And yes, the director is an appointed position. And, you know, John Brennan was certainly much more political in the previous administration than previous directors have been. But, and the operational level, you know, down at the street level, people just get on with it. You know, they're human. So, of course, you know, down at the street level, people just get on with it. You know, they're human. So, of course, you know, they may have their own personal preference. But I spent a long time there and behind the curtain. And, you know, they just tick on and do whatever.

You know, there were people that weren't happy with Obama. There were people that weren't happy with Bush. There were people not happy with Trump. That doesn't, you know, just tell us what the priorities are. Tell us what the tasking is. And we'll get on with it. You know, and go out there and do the collection operations we're supposed to do. It just seems like there's no one person that's ever going to be able to fill that position.

It seems like that position also gets bigger and bigger. The responsibilities get bigger and bigger. I mean, the presidency. Yeah. It seems to me that at this point in our history, the history of our society, we kind of have to look at that position and wonder whether or not it's even logical to give so much power to one person. What would you do? Good question. How do you create a...

Council of elders. Everybody sits around like a hand-carved desk in a underground lair yeah makes decisions that sounds pretty good oh i like it yeah it could be like the knights of the round table yeah i think it's yeah you know what i don't know i think virtuous people coming doing a by committee i wonder if the founding fathers you know i'm sure there's been also you know reporting on that i just never read it but the founding fathers if they consider that as an op as an option probably not but i wonder if they consider the kind of population growth that we've experienced. You know, the real problem with the founding fathers is as brilliant as they were, there's no way they could have ever seen the Internet coming.

No, no. Nor could they have seen people wanting to stay in Washington for 36 years or 42 years and become career politicians. They were all just interested in doing their duty and serving the way they were supposed to or they felt obligated to, and then getting the hell out, right? Getting back to the farm or whatever their job was because nobody wanted to stay in Washington for any longer than they needed to.

So, yeah, you're right. Could they have foreseen all? No, definitely not. And so does that mean, what does that mean, though? Well, it means amendments to the Constitution as we've done in the past. Think about how crazy it is that someone forms a new country, and then 400 plus years later, it is the preeminent superpower in the world, by far. That's pretty crazy.

You've got these countries that have been around for thousands and thousands of years. that have been around for thousands and thousands of years. Like, imagine a group of freaks and misfits that branch off from America, get in a boat and float over to Costa Rica or wherever and take it over. Yeah. And then it becomes the superpower. It is astounding. And then, again, going back to what we talked about towards the beginning was cobbling it together,

understanding that we needed to get our hands on everything west of the Mississippi. Now, clearly there were some issues there. But, you know, it's sort of that vision that says we're going all the way to the coast. All the way to the water. We have to. Otherwise we can't control it. Right. And that's, I mean, it's an astounding history.

You're absolutely right. But, you know, it'll be interesting to see. Obviously, this is probably the stupidest statement people will hear all day is, you know, where we're going to be in, say, another 200 years. Because I've got a theory that says where every generation is making it easier for their kids. And eventually you hit a point of diminishing returns and everybody's just a big pussy. And so that's my theory. I haven't come up with a name for it yet.

You're not alone. Yeah. The big pussy theory. The big pussy theory. That could cover different things. Sopranos. Yeah. That's a big puss. You're not alone. Yeah. The Big Pussy Theory. The Big Pussy Theory. That could cover different things. Sopranos. Yeah. Plus, that was great. That was a great show. I wonder, yeah, I mean,

I wonder how much there's gonna, there are parts of the world where obviously things are way more difficult than they are here, and maybe we're losing some sort of a competitive edge because we've made our lives so easy and haven't replaced the convenience of civilization with something that tempers our human instincts, like some difficult tasks, rite of passage for young

men, something that develops character. Instead, we're making safe spaces and making words violence and making it so we have trigger warnings. And there's no winners. No winners, yeah. We don't have to win. Thank God we're in a—my kids are getting old enough now where their sports leagues no longer—for a while there, it was just driving me crazy as a parent going to a game

and realizing that they weren't keeping score because they didn't want to upset anybody's feelings. Oh, my God. That's the whole reason why people get better, you fucks. Yeah. Meanwhile, the kids are keeping score. The kids know for sure. And kids don't want you to blow's feelings. Oh, my God. That's the whole reason why people get better, you fucks. Yeah. Meanwhile, the kids are keeping score. The kids know for sure. And kids don't want you to blow smoke up their ass, right?

You know what I mean? They'd come off the court and if, like, you know, like the oldest boy, Scooter, he's 10 years old. He plays a lot of lacrosse. He's been playing for five years. And so he really likes it. And he does well. But, you know, I'm not raising a Division I champion there, right? Right. But he plays other sports, too. So there I'm not raising a Division I champion there, right? Right.

But he plays other sports, too. So there's sort of a well-roundedness there. But we came off the field one day, and we were walking along, and all the parents were kind of marching off, and the game was over. And he says, how did I do? And I said, well, you know, you could have done better. I said, I just get the impression you didn't try as hard as you could. What do you think? And he looked at me irritated, right? He looked at me like, I can't believe you didn't just say I did great. And so he said, what? And I looked at him, I'm walking along and I didn't

realize the parents were within earshot. And I said, well, look, you know, Scoot, do you want me to blow smoke up your ass or do you want me to be honest with you? And to his credit, he said, no, you should be honest with me, even though he wasn't happy about the honesty. He said, you should be honest with me. And so we tell kids that they know better. You know, if you tell a kid that they're great and they're doing wonderful and they didn't, what do they take away from that?

They take away from it that you're kind of bullshitting them. Right. You know, unless they're just super, super young, they get it at a pretty early age. Well, here's something that's important to relate to children, that you are not your accomplishments. You are you. And the only way you are going to get better at accomplishing things is to be 100% honest about the amount of effort you put in and what the actual result of that effort is. effort you put in and what the actual result of that effort is. Whether it's a failure or a success, that does not define you. That defines your participation in this particular activity.

It is not you. You are an individual that will hopefully learn from all of your endeavors, but you're never going to learn shit if you lie to yourself. You're never going to learn shit if somebody makes this this, nobody scores a point, and there are no winners, and there are no losers, and everybody's amazing. That's not good. It's a good voice, by the way. It's not good because there's going to be people out there that are fucking driven and psychotic, and they're going to get ahead. There's people that are task-oriented and goal-oriented, and they have an idea ahead of them. They're them gonna try to figure out how to make this happen they Have a goal they want to reach it And if you're competing with that person in any form of life, and they're not burdened down by the bullshit

That we give so many kids today They're gonna have a massive advantage and this idea that this kid who's been coddled and treated like he's always gonna be a winner that Somehow another they're gonna be happier is fucking crazy. If that kid can't process what's true and what's not, and the kid can't process criticism, constructive criticism, you don't just stand there and berate your kid, of course not. That's just as bad as the other thing. Absolutely.

The guys that stand there, everybody's seen them, right? The dads and sometimes the moms that stand on the sideline and berate their kid because the kid's jeopardizing his scholarship to some D1 school. Morons. But, no, I think you're absolutely right. The sooner they're able to assess that equation, effort and result, and compare it to what's going on around them, and then understand it.

I mean, say one of my and then one of my boys, you know, they play basketball and they enjoy it, but it's not their primary activity right now. So they tried out for AAU. Right. And they got in, but not at the top team. And they were upset about not being placed on this top team. And I said, you don't, and I didn't say it quite this way, but my point was you don't deserve to be on the top team because you're not working as hard as those kids that are working hard, and that's their thing. They wanted to be there, and so they put in the effort.

You are happy playing, and you could be there, but they put in the effort you are happy playing and you could you could be there but you're not doing it yet right and so therefore you you know a don't get down on yourself but b don't certainly don't get down on anybody else because they put out the effort and they accomplish something that that you didn't right so i mean it's a you know you're always trying to find that balance it's just i don't we're not doing our kids any favors right now. I just think we're, not obviously as a of the conversations they have in class and the discussions and what passes as debate nowadays, which is not much, right? The idea of the old debate where you can voice your opinions and they can be different than somebody else's and you can, you know, hash it out and you can have a winner and a loser, but that's fine. You go away and

you come back the next day and you have another rousing debate in that class. It doesn't really exist. You know, it seems like anyway anyway because everybody's so afraid of saying something that might be offensive or not offensive but just might be upsetting right now and there's a difference between being upsetting and being offensive we're trying to nerf the world i mean that that really was what it is we're trying to all the hard edges that you might bruise yourself on we're trying to push it put a cushion but you need to understand that when you fall down, it's going to hurt. So that way, next time you're thinking you might fall down, you'll correct your path. It's the whole reason why people do difficult things.

You do difficult things to understand your boundaries, to understand your limitations, and then to try to improve those. Try to raise the roof on your expectations. Raise the roof on your whatever limitations of your abilities, learn from whatever those are and improve. It's like interrogation training. In interrogation training, when you're working with people, the goal is to show them that it's okay.

At some point, they're going to have to talk, right? Right. And so when you're going through the training, the point of it is to get them to that point. They realize that, okay, you know, it's not the end of the world. I know that at some point I'm going to end up talking, right? I'm going to say something. I'm going to have to do that because I can't, otherwise I'm either dead or I'm completely broken. And the idea is if you do that and then the rest of the training and beyond that, you're building them back up because they understand that now, if God forbid something should happen, they get picked up and there's actually an interrogation going on, in the back of their mind, they understand

that. And they're able to process it so that if they do get to that point where now, okay, I'm going to have to talk, I'm going to have to come up with something, and then it's not completely devastating. It doesn't leave them completely broken. And they can walk back because they understand, I got to that point. I understand what my boundaries are, but I can work within that. I don't know where I'm going with this.

Are you saying interrogation training like an agent gets interrogated? Yeah, yeah. I mean, interrogation training in general for our outfit, for the military, it's basically the same. We do a lot of cross training. But this is not interrogating an enemy combatant. Oh, no, no, no. I'm talking about you going through interrogation training. So what do you tell them to do?

It's like, say if someone gets captured in Afghanistan or wherever, whatever. Well, I mean, the bottom line is, you know,

you try to avoid talking. Right. But it depends. Part of it is you've got to assess who you're dealing with, right? You've got to assess what you think

their parameters are, what could be coming down the pike, in other words. Right. So how is this, and that's part of the training, too, is understanding what different groups, what different places could mean, what that interrogation could look like, how bad it could get. So you're processing that. Part of it is understanding what it is that's okay to give up.

What are you going to say that's not going to put anything in jeopardy, anybody's lives or any operations or anything in jeopardy? Part of it is, you know, then you've got to understand, you've got to stay close to the truth, right? The problem with it, if you, you know, where you start getting people out on interrogations is where they can't remember what they've said. Right. The closer you are to the truth, the easier it is to remember what you've said.

Right. So, and these things, I mean, if it's a bad situation and you're in there day in and these things, I mean, if it's a bad situation and you're in there day in and day out, you know, and you're, you know, you're sleep deprivation and they're, you know, knocking you around and there's no food and it's, you're going to have, you're going to have a hard time keeping track of even the basic things. So you, you know, you're trying to keep it as close to the truth as possible and as minimal as possible, you know, in terms of damage. You go in, you know, and typically you've thought

through all of this. It's like everything else. You do your homework ahead of time and God forbid something should happen. And, you know, usually it won't. But anyway, the point being is that, you know, the ideas in the training portion of it, you want people to understand that, you know, everybody's got a breaking point, right? And that's just, that's the way it works. And some it's, you know, it's here, some it's further down the road but everybody's gonna break and you don't want that to devastate the person if it should happen you know knock on wood but anyway that was apropos of nothing no it's it's important I mean it's it's an interesting topic because I mean understanding that

there's going to be severe penalties and that there's going to be severe penalties and that there's going to be repercussions and that, you know, this is a bad situation you're in. And understanding that going in is going to help you a lot more than if you go in there from, you know, a soft, padded world where you don't think there's going to be any adversity whatsoever. No, that's right. And that's all where, you know, just to finish that thought, is that the interesting thing about, people talked about the interrogation program that we had,

obviously, right? And I don't want to revisit that. And, you know, the left did a very fine job of grabbing the moral high ground and saying either you're talking to people or it's all torture. Okay. But the point being is that even if you don't ever intend to use any enhanced interrogation techniques, you don't want to tell the enemy that. Because once you tell them that you're constrained by the Army Field Manual, as an example, that's all you can do. Guess what? Every MOOC out there fighting us and wanting to harm us is carrying a copy of the Army Field Manual in their back pocket.

They don't, you know, despite the fact that they did for a while, they don't live in a cave. And so once they know what's coming down the pike, that's gone. Their incentive is gone, right, to talk to you. Because once you know, once you don't have that unknown, if you're not sitting in some, you know, squat box and the temperature's, you know, up and you haven't eaten and you're thinking, what the hell are they going to do to me next? You have no idea. If that's gone and you don't have that anxiety, that intense anxiety, then you're okay. Mentally, you get yourself to a nice, happy spot.

You're comfortable. They're feeding you get yourself to a nice, happy spot. You're comfortable. They're feeding you. They're just asking you questions. They're just asking questions, and you're, you know, you can hold out for a much longer period of time. And, yeah, maybe there'll be some clever, you know, person working in the interrogation facility, and they'll develop a personal relationship over a period of time, you know.

But you know what? By then, your operational information has lost its interest, right? And the shelf life on that stuff is not particularly long, typically. So anyway, that's, yeah. So when you're in a situation where you have to extract information in a very short period of time because it's critical, because lives are at stake. The old ticking time bomb thing. I mean, if you're stuck in some situation where, you know, someone's got a dirty bomb or, you know, what have you. There's a terrorist attack that's being planned.

You know this guy has some information. What is the best way to get it out of him? Is there a best way? You know what, there's not really because it's all dependent on the individual. And that's where it's, so much of this, you know, it just, again, the argument got sort of corrupted, hijacked,

whatever. Because of waterboarding? Yeah, it just became such an emotive issue. But it's an enormously labor-intensive process. Even in those cases where you think, okay, we've just picked up a high-value target, and we feel that they've got operational information that we really need to know related to whatever. It's not as if you don't go in there and start beating them over the head with a two-by-four. Nobody does that. Maybe some liaison partners in fourth-world countries would think that's—

Is there a fourth world? There's a fifth world, even. What's a fifth-world country? I've never even heard of that. New Jersey. Connecticut. Connecticut, that's— Connecticut outside of Hampton. Dan Malloy is the president of the fifth world nation of Connecticut. So, you know, it's down to the individual. It's knowing your homework. It's having all the information that you can at your fingertips about, okay, well, who is this

person? Who are his associates? Who else have we picked up? And what have they said up to this point? Do you have anything like that, that you can walk into? If you walk into an interrogation and you haven't done your homework, you're screwed, right? It's going to show out really quickly. And they're going to figure it out for the most part. Not to say that every detainee would be Lex Luthor, but they get a sense pretty quickly. So you really got to have it buttoned up, have as much information as possible so that you know how to direct the conversation. If anything is said at all, volunteered at all, is there any credibility to it? What can you do with that information? You take it back and get it corroborated by another.

Your Siri is, you got to shut that off, man. Siri is transcribing everything you said. Yeah, look at that. It's the fucking cia man yeah they're doing that they're listening to well now what about um what about using um like chemicals like what about like mdma have they ever tried giving detainees ecstasy um no i mean i don't know 60s you know maybe the 1960s i'm sure i'd that's say you'd be surprised. No, I'm thinking a series still listening to me that do that big brother. She knew well Listen, I don't know. You know what it is. It's not the government. It's it's Google

I hate to break it to you Google, but you can listen right now on YouTube Yeah, the fucking covertly attack people's phones doing that asshole stuff No, it's you know what? There's there are and again we they might not know enough about ecstasy I need to get on the team if I just talk to him if I just get get alone

I'm telling you you give these guys two hits they'll fucking tell you everything massage that'll be your code name they'll be so nice to you yeah it just

changes everything that's they'll be so nice to you they'll just just give them like some delicious food and give them a back rub And just go Listen man

America's awesome So tell me what you know About that plot That we want to know about Yeah You don't want to blow anybody up man They can't be your friend How could you do that

Oh yeah Yeah if you kill people They can't be your friend Oh you're right Yeah I think that would work I don't know why We didn't think about that But

It seems like it wouldn't work But you know why You haven't done ecstasy Yeah well there you go Have you done it No Yeah see there you go I Have you done it? No. Yeah, see, there you go. I've done it.

Trust me. It'll fucking work. Just give people two hits of ecstasy. I'm serious. All right, after the show, I'll tell you what I'll do. We'll get on the jet, and we'll go back to headquarters. It seems like what I'm saying is bullshit. No, no, you know what?

It seems like I'm joking around. But I'm telling you, what that stuff does is, first of all, it kills all of your inhibitions. Gone. All of your anxiety, gone. And all of your insecurities, gone. And what you're left with is this over-serotonin, over-dopamine state where you just love everything and everybody. If you could give that to enemy combatants, I guarantee you, if you could talk to them, you would get shit out of them that they would never want to discuss. Yeah, I think, you know, people won't buy it when I say it, but there are tremendous

constraints on what can and can't be done. If people had gone through and actually read all those DOJ memos that were released. That's what you bring me in, buddy. There you go. That's what I'm talking about. The chemist. I'm a chemist. I'll come in with a fucking lab coat on, some fake glasses so I look smarter than I am.

Give me a stethoscope. I've always wanted a stethoscope. Or maybe like in club gear, you just show up. Oh, yeah. There you go. Take them out for a rave. Yeah, like high water pants, Italian shoes. Now you're talking.

Sort of the 70s hustle. Yeah, just bring me in. I'm telling you. Just let me try it once. Yeah. I could fix a lot of shit with some chemicals. I'll put the idea forward. I'll see what they say.

And then if, you know. The reason why they don't think it would work is because they haven't done it. Yeah. If you get anybody in the Bureau or anybody in the CIA or wherever who has done ecstasy, they would listen to this and they would not want to say they've done it. Right. So it would be a real issue. But if you, I'm telling you, you give people two tabs of ecstasy and then start asking them questions.

Plus also, it would have been a much happier facility. Oh, yeah. Can you imagine? But not the next day. Not the next day, no. Next day is rough. I remember the first time, well, I only did ecstasy once, but the next day I did it, I was in a coffee shop trying to read a boxing magazine. I literally could not read.

I was like, God, I can't even concentrate enough to read a boxing magazine. I literally could not read. I was like, God, I can't even concentrate enough to read a full sentence. This is terrible. And was it just pretty much that day after? No, it took a couple days. That night I went on stage and it was terrible. I went on stage that night in Dallas. If you went to that show back

in 2001 or whatever it was, I'm sorry. He's apologizing. Yeah, it was a terrible show. I just had no energy. My brain was just like, I felt like my brain was a dry sponge, like someone had just squeezed all of the juice out of my brain. Yeah.

See, it's those after effects that just, you know, you think. Not worth it. No. But there's ways out of that. There's a. Just keep on it. No, there's nutrients that you take called 5-HTP.

5-HTP actually converts to serotonin in your brain. It's the building blocks for it. So what you do is while you're tripping, you're supposed to double down on 5-HTP, and it helps you as you come off of it, your serotonin jumps back up. Not 100%, though, but to a manageable state. Dude, you do have to be a chemist, though, to do all that, right? Just got to be clever. Most people just buy a couple of tabs at the club and call it good.

Well, if you're really smart, you actually take L-tryptophan and 5-HTP because L-tryptophan converts to 5-HTP, and you should also take adaptogens like some B vitamins and different things as well. L-tryptophan, is that what's in turkey? Yes. Okay. Yeah, but not much in turkey. So you can just have a turkey sandwich, a turkey club.

A nice turkey club while you're on the ecstasy. Apparently that's bullshit. That crash that people always say from turkey that, you know, it puts you to sleep. Apparently that's all just carbs. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That makes sense.

Yeah. Massive amounts of mashed potatoes and stuffing. Right. And just like, you're just overeating. See, I can believe that. Yeah. Yeah. Although I do love stuffing. Listen, I can believe that. Yeah. Yeah. Although I do love stuffing.

Listen, bring this information back. I'm talking to him. You don't even have to bring it back. It's happening right now. It's happening right now. They're hearing this. They are. They're listening in the watch center.

They don't know. It's only because they don't know. And Langley, they're taking notes right now. You know, he might. I am right. I'm telling you I'm right. Just try it once. It doesn't hurt anybody.

They're not going to die. They might have to change some laws to get that to happen. Fuck the law. Who the fuck knows anything? Bring me in. There's no laws. I show up with a suitcase and a smile. I'll get you guys some UFC tickets.

We're good. We will buy it. No, we'll get you a lab coat. Get you a special disguise. I would love to fly in once. Just let me try it once. I guarantee. Just someone who's not totally despicable.

Like, you just got a little issue with this guy talking. It just changes your chemistry. I mean, it will erase any inhibitions you have. It sounds all very Mengele-like, though. It does, but it doesn't hurt anybody. That's the thing. Yeah. Yeah.

I think right now people are losing their minds because we got back on the interrogation thing. I thought that was over and done with. Oh, on your side? People in the business? Yeah, well, just people in general. I think everybody just, people just got so tired of it.

Well, they definitely did. People got tired of the war on terror. Nobody wants to talk. Not that I want to talk about it, but that's what happens. You think, where's the end? And people just, I'm just tired of it. I just want to talk about it, but that's what happens. You think, where is the end? And people just act tired of it. I just want to move on.

I don't want to think about it. And something happens, and people are reminded that it's still going on. There's still people out there that want to hurt you, and yet we're all just so exhausted from it. Well, I think that's also, I mean, you could make an analogy to some of the stupid lies that Trump has told. He tells so many lies that he's just like, I can't even be bothered. This can't even be a scandal. Because there's so many of them. You just get overwhelmed by it to the point where you can't process it anymore.

It's exhausting. It's exhausting. And the idea that – and it kind of works both ways, right? It works in the sense that the tweets and the bizarre statements and the things are exhausting. And then on the other side, the people that want to make all of that stuff the death of the republic every day, it's the death of the republic, that's exhausting.

And you say, who's running the shop? Who's keeping things moving forward? And I don't know, you know, I mean, we've got some good people in government, some really hard-working people trying to do the right thing. And yet it's just And I don't know, you know, I mean, we've got some good people in government, some really hardworking people. For sure. Trying to do the right thing. And yet it's just, I'm not particularly confident right now.

What do you think is the worst case scenario right now? So you say you're not confident. Well, I think we could have, we could see the market, you know, kind of stall at this point. I mean, I think people have been amazed at how the market was resilient, and not just resilient, but blasting upwards and showing apparently no concern for how disheveled the administration has been over the first several months. Hasn't the market been on a steady increase since 2007 or so? No, but I mean— 2008 was the crash, right? Yeah, yeah. But since that, since the recovery... It took a long time. It took a long time to come back. But then, yeah, right. I mean, it's not...

But what I'm talking about is the time since the election. You know, the markets showed this ability to kind of ignore what was happening, right? What was sort of the chaos that the media is reporting on and all the various things. Don't you think that they were encouraged, though, by his remarks about business? Oh, sure. That he wanted to encourage business? Tax cuts? Sure. Absolutely, yeah. And some of the deregulation, which has, you know, okay, to be fair, you know, there's been a fair amount of deregulation.

But tax cuts, not so much. And so I think now, you know, the market's starting to look at that and think maybe we do have an issue here. Maybe it's not, you know, going to work out the way we thought. So maybe that slows down. I don't think North Korea is going to be launching any missiles. They're not suicidal, right? I mean, they're not. Again, ecstasy and what's his face?

I could see him doing it. Kim Jong-un. What the fuck's his name? The basketball player with the shit in his lips? Rodman. Rodman. Send Rodman over there with ecstasy. With a little bit.

I could see Kim Jong-un. That's what I'm saying. I could see him do that. Rodman definitely does ecstasy. Now that I could get behind. That's an operation we could work on. Because that's not targeting detainees and all those regulations

we've got to worry about. But I think if Rodman willingly offers up ecstasy and Kim says fine, then it's too consenting adults. Yeah, we don't even allow Rodman to go back over there anymore, right? But Americans aren't allowed to go back there. Yeah, but not right now, I suspect. Although if Rodman wanted to, I'm sure he'd be welcomed. Did let him go? Yeah, yeah. That's our answer to everything. Sent Dennis. He was a hell of a ball player in his day.

He was. People forget. People think, you know, he's such an interesting cat now. Yeah. But people forget what a great basketball player he was. Yeah, he just sort of went crazy. Yeah. Yeah, look at him. Remember this? Look at this picture. Oh, yeah.

Remember that? Yeah. Bad as I want to be. Was that a book he had on or something? Well, I mean, you can't knock the guy for trying to be unique. Yeah, no, he's unique. But he was, again, he was a hell of a player. Oh, he definitely was. Man, that's a hell of a player. Oh, he definitely was.

Man, that's a good look. I haven't seen that before. I got a jacket just like that. Tropical jacket with all the palm trees. What is that he's wearing around his neck? Is that a fishing net? Could be anything. Yeah.

That's, man. It's like a silver Mr. T thing. See, I could look at that and say I could never pull that off. I could never. You could. I couldn't do that. Like for Christmas? Yeah.

Halloween, but not for Christmas. Not Christmas. And besides, when Christmas, when the season arrives, I put on my handmade New York Giants sweater from my daughter, and I don't take it off until after the Christmas season. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty manky by now, but it's a great sweater.

Why do you choose to do that? Because it's the Giants. Oh. Yeah. Also a Giants fan. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, one of those guys. Just cling to it, huh?

I do cling to it. I cling to it. Past glories in so many ways. Maybe I should see if it can help you. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm not in the government anymore. So, no, no. Those days are, even so no no those days are

even the possibility of those days just like I mean unless maybe I get older and I just you know just want to see

kids just slip dad a tab you know and see what happens tell dad to calm the fuck down yeah there's only one way I've told my kids look if things get bad

if I start to you know God bless my mom my mom's 98 and she's all there. She's great. My dad passed away when he was 90. He was all there.

And so I've got a knock on wood. I'm hoping to make it a good long ways. But, you know, I've also seen folks deal with the problem of, you know, onset dementia and just Alzheimer's, the problems that creates horrible things. I've told my kids that. Well, I haven't told them, but I told the oldest one. I said, just wheel dad out to the back, and you guys all take turns shooting at me.

Whoever wins gets the house. Is that really what you told him? Yeah, the oldest one. To shoot you? Yeah. He'll win right away. He's a pretty good shot. Yeah, but then he'll go to jail.

You don't want that. No, it's Idaho. I'm sure there's got to be some law in the books that says it's okay to, you know. No, that's not true. You're right. Where do they have that? Assisted Suicide is in California now. California, and I think Oregon or Washington.

You posted something about Idaho, about people that were going up there for the eclipse, and I retweeted it. It was fucking hilarious. From the sheriff's department. Lincoln County Sheriff's. That guy knocked it out of the park because everybody was thinking the same thing. Everybody was like, because literally

you know, the hippies I don't know, maybe they're not hippies. That's not fair. Let's call them hippies. Let's call them hippies. They'd pull their camper or their Volkswagen, right out in the middle of a planted field. A freshly planted field, a freshly

planted field. Because not everything is fenced and gated out there, right? There's a lot of space. And you think, come on. Or they'll take their, like the guy said, they'll take their Prius up in the back roads. You know, you think, it's not going to work out. It's not going to make it. The funny thing was about the dogs, too.

Yes, our dogs ride in the back of the truck. And occasionally, some slow learners take a tumble. Yeah. But don't go to pet them. They will bite you. It's not your truck. It's their truck. And you'll see that. You'll see people, A, they get upset because you'll drive around with your dog in the back of the truck. And B, they'll walk up and

want to pet it. And you think, don't do it. Leave him alone. He's a good dog but that's his truck. The other thing about people having guns is, yes, everybody up here has a gun. This is Idaho. And the wildlife, the wildlife will kill you. Yeah, everything will kill you.

And it will hurt the whole time you're dying. Yeah, that sheriff, it was great. It's a great fucking post. We got great law enforcement. I just got stopped. We were up in the mountains, and I was racing to get to the airport on Sunday, yesterday. fucking post yeah we got we got great law enforcement i just got stopped i was uh we were up in the mountains um and i was racing to get to the airport on sunday yesterday and so i was coming through the canyon um and uh heading back into boise from up in the mountains and and

uh i was doing about well i know what i was doing because the sheriff told me what i was doing he stopped me he said you were doing 76 now this, this is a nasty-ass canyon following the river, you know, for most of the way. And, you know, you should be doing about 35, 40. But I was just humming, you know, and I was thinking, I'm making good time here. And then the sheriff was out because he's trying to catch hippies. And he stopped me. But they're just great. You know, if you show them respect and polite, it's like a lot of places, right?

It's not just Idaho. Right. But the guy was like, yeah, you know what? I'm sorry. We've got to give you time. But how's everything else? And you end up chatting, having a great time, having a conversation. You don't mind getting the ticket, and Bob's your uncle.

But anyway. Mr. Baker, your white privilege is showing. Yeah. That's what's happening right there. Is that what's happening? It's a bunch of white privilege right there. Yeah. That's what's happening right there. Is that what's happening? It's a bunch of white privilege right there. Yeah. All right.

You know what? That's probably the case. Now I feel bad. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to double what I send into the county. That's beautiful. I'm going to pay twice the amount that I should. That's nice.

Just so that I self-flagellate. Yeah. It's not like that's a hobby. Most cops are great. I've always said that I think that it's cops Oh like most people most people you run into are fine Most people you run into are great Occasionally you run into an asshole and then you have a problem and then you run around going all people are all assholes

No, no, you maybe one out of a hundred, you know, and I think with cops It's an insanely difficult job, insanely stressful. Did you see that video that one officer who was trying to get that fellow to stop, and he was wearing a body camera, and so he had asked him to stop, and he matched a description of, I think, of robbery, and it's been on video quite a bit. And so the officer is trying to get him to stop, trying to get him to stop. He won't stop. He says, I will t tase you and he's coming around right so he's the guy won't take his hand out of his pocket and that's it so the officer sees that his hands in his pocket when he gets kind of starts you know pie in that chart there and he kind of gets around and he sees the hand and he

starts saying take your hand out take your hand out. His body camera's running and the guy pulls out a weapon and shoots him repeatedly. And it's all there. It's a perfect example of how difficult that job can be. And it's astounding. So I don't know whether that video is available. Yeah, it is available. I've seen it. Yeah, there's a bunch of those.

I mean, I've seen one of them where a guy pulls over this one man and and the guy was a Vietnam vet, gets out of his car, he's got a rifle, he's yelling at him, get back in the car, put the rifle down, put the gun down, and then the guy starts shooting him. And he's shooting multiple rounds into the guy's car, and the guy starts screaming, and he goes around by the passenger side and kills him. It's all on camera and video. You have to realize this is a routine traffic stop. Pulls him over for speeding or whatever it was. And this happens. And it can happen all the time. And that's something that's on a cop's mind every time he pulls somebody over. And you might think, hey, I'm a good person. I'm not doing anything. So I was going five miles an hour over the speed limit. You know, why is this guy got his hand on his gun? Why is this guy freaking out? Well, maybe watch that video. You know, maybe he's thinking about his kids. Maybe

he's thinking about getting home to his family right exactly and that's and there's nothing that and again i mean this idea that you can't say two things that that some people might you know think oh that that counteracts the other yeah anytime there's uh you know a case of police brutality deal with it we gotta deal with it of course but it's a terrible job. It's a difficult job and it's a dangerous job. And those those two statements can coexist. Right. And so you can support the police and you can also support efforts to stop police brutality wherever it takes place and ensure that it doesn't. But you can also support the police and the difficult job they do and the efforts that they try to make to protect communities. Yeah, the last thing you want to do is alienate them further. I mean, that doesn't do anybody any good. You're denying the idea or the possibility there are any good cops. Well, that's fucking crazy.

But it's a really convenient thing for people to say, fuck the police, because you don't get a lot of pushback, especially when something happens. You don't get a lot of pushback. You look like you're some sort of a liberal hero. It's a very slippery slope. And the people that want no cops, well, okay, well, what about guns? What are we going to do now? Are you going to just let criminals run everything? No, no, the good people with their flowers are going to take over.

Shit breaks down really quickly. Real quick. And it's been a long time overseas in some pretty difficult environments. And you see sort of the worst nature of people. And, you know, and again, I agree with you. I think the vast majority of people are good. You know, they want to do good. They want to do the right thing.

They don't want conflict. Most people don't want conflict. Right. But things can break down and people can do things that other folks that are trying to do the right thing couldn't even imagine. Right. And, yeah, so anyway. Like shoot cops. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you have to think, I would never shoot a cop. Why is this cop being so mean to me? Because he doesn't fucking know you. Right. Right. You know? He doesn't know you.

You're doing something wrong. He's pulling you over. And you've got to comply and be polite and call him sir and try to diffuse a certain situation and be as friendly and as polite as possible. Yeah. And that's not, and again, that's the same. You can give your kid, no matter who you are, you can give your kid that same advice. Right. Look, the law enforcement has a difficult job.

And, you know, so just if you're stopped, just. Comply. Comply. Nobody's ever – you just got to be concise and smart about that. And I tell my kids – and I try to demonstrate by like when I stopped and the sheriff came up and my kids were in the car and I was polite and I was saying – and he got to the window and I said, I don't have any excuse. I was racing to get to the airport. I was speeding. I know it and I have no excuse and that sets the tone immediately right and he understands

I know it helps that he looks in there And he sees a big dog and the kids and everything and he's right that brings it down a little bit There's no doubt about it and so other situations. They might be more on edge because they don't know they're not sure and You know so yes where there's problems, deal with it. We've got to take care of it, but we can also acknowledge the fact that the police have a damn difficult job. Yeah, and it doesn't mean that there aren't horrible mistakes

and horrible cops and people that are under pressure that do terrible things. There's some videos of people that comply and still get shot. It's a terrible tragedy. No, absolutely. They make mistakes because they have the wrong mindset or they're not trained properly. Or they're all PTSD'd out

and they're just not designed for that job in the first place. I mean, it's very difficult to tell who's going to crack under pressure. The pressure of the day-to-day situation that a lot of cops find themselves in. Yeah. No, it's... But the idea that you're right. The idea that you'd remove law enforcement and somehow we're all going to live in, in a peaceful community.

Crazy. Those anarchists drive me fucking nuts. We don't need laws, man. Shut your fucking mouth. Get rid of all the laws and universal basic income. That's going to be a, yeah. Good luck. What if we do out the guns? We gather them up and melt them down. Not mine. Make Martin Luther King Jr. statues everywhere. We were talking before the podcast started about what could possibly go wrong in Afghanistan. What could possibly go wrong? That Trump was going to make some sort of an announcement.

And you were talking about the idea of privatizing the military over there and bringing in contractors. Talking about it from the point of view that I don't agree with the idea. Yeah, exactly. And in terms of disclosure, right. I mean, my company, Diligence, we've got a security services group. And starting back in 2003, we started building up a fairly significant presence out in Iraq, right, as private contractors, providing support to the infrastructure operations that were going on out there. And what's the benefit of having a private contractor for the military as opposed to, like, military forces?

Well, at that time, most of our work was actually for the infrastructure companies, right, because the military is not going to be providing support. They need the same level of security. So say, if Halliburton is building up some sort of a new business there, they would hire you guys to come in. Exactly. And so that's an important effort because, you know, they need the same level of security that a forward operating base or a military base or facility would need, you know, but the military is not going to allocate resources for private companies. So a lot of what the private contractors were doing was that. And then also private contractors, you know, getting contracts to provide additional security support or logistical support to the military, to military facilities where they can't, you know, they can't afford to allocate resources to perimeter security and to the degree that they

would like. So private contractors come in and help with that, or providing support in the movement of dignitaries or whatever it may be. Point being is we were out there for quite some time in Iraq doing that, and we were there at the beginning of sort of this private contractor thing, right, and people started becoming aware of it, and we started working with groups, including Eric Prince's group. We didn't work directly with him, but what I mean is that the various groups that are out there doing these contracts and this work, you know, realizing they needed to start to form an association or start to get some sort of, you know, grip on how this thing would look,

right? So that there was some consistency amongst training and what were the regulations for, you know, the various companies for, you know, weapons and everything else. It's complicated, but, you know, long story short is, you know, we had upwards of 400 people, I guess, out there at a point providing security and intelligence support. So I've got some experience in this. And now what's happening with Afghanistan is that one of the options that's been being considered is handing over. We've got about 8,400 troops out there

right now doing mostly training missions, training operations and support for the Afghan troops. So the idea was, well, let's let the private contractor take that over. Let's move that out and let's not have the brave men and women of the U.S. military engaged in Afghanistan ad nauseum. You know, and this idea is being pushed to some degree by Eric Prince. And he's said things like, well, if you want to keep having this conversation, you want to have the conversation 10 years from now, fine, let the military keep doing it. Or we can be more somehow efficient. Can you explain to people who Eric Prince is from Blackwater? Yeah, he came out of a wealthy Michigan-based family.

Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, is his sister in the current administration. And so he started Blackwater, and they became sort of the face of, right? Because they did very well as a private contractor business. They got good contracts, and that was good. They had some issues and some problems. Very controversial.

Very controversial. They sold the business, renamed it, and then renamed it again and yada yada yada but the point being is that the idea that somehow you're going to privatize this operation in afghanistan expecting then if you i guess here's the thing he because he said well it'd be about 10 billion dollars a year which would be a savings on what we spend now you give private contractors you know a 10 billion dollar trough to eat at, you think they're going to end it anytime soon? There's no fucking way.

So if we want this thing to just drag on ad nauseum, fine, privatize it and put that profit motive up there, and you think somehow it's not going to happen. It's never going to dry up. I say that as a private contractor that's been involved in it. Well, I appreciate your honesty. It's the wrong thing to do. And if, and on top of that, if we're, I guess the overlying, the 30,000 foot view that I've got is that if it's important enough for us to be there, then that's a military function. That's, then we have to commit in a way that,

you know, we're not right now, we've been in this sort of stalemate situation right over there. And now we're somewhat surprised or people are surprised that the Taliban is resurgent. Well, where the hell did they think they were going to go? The Taliban don't have any place to go. So they're going to wait us out. This was entirely predictable that some and we're trying to sell them this pseudo-federal democracy. The Afghan people don't understand, for the most part, I don't think. Maybe I'm just too cynical.

But they don't understand what the hell we've been trying to sell them for all these years. So this doesn't diminish all the pain and sacrifice and suffering of all the people that have been out there and the lives that we've lost. It doesn't diminish it at all. What I'm saying is that we need to think about what's our end game, what's our objective. So if we're worried now about the Taliban resurging and ISIS, you know, kind of coming back in, well, fine. But let's say this is our objective. And to meet that objective, then we're going to need more troops on the ground. And let's see how that plays out. I don't think a lot of people are going to be happy about it. You don't necessarily do things to make people happy if it's a national security interest.

If we decide that that's in our national security interest, then, yes, we need to commit and do it. But handing it over to a privatized force, to me, is just slightly left of insane. It doesn't make any sense. And it's always easy for people to stand around and talk tough and say, we just need more troops. Well, I don't know that the objective is sufficiently clarified to say that we need more troops. I haven't heard, I don't care whether we improve the literacy rate of the Afghan people by another percentage point, or if we build another route. I don't think that's in our national security interests. And so I think we need to be a little bit more clear about why we're there or what we're hoping to accomplish at some point. We wanted to be there so that they wouldn't use it as a playground for terrorists to then develop and plot and plan and attack the West again.

So maybe the thing that we should have done was go in there, kick the shit out of them like we did in Tora Bora and elsewhere, explain to the remnants of the government, if you allow that to happen again, we're going to come back and we're going to do this again. And we're very good at that. We're very good at strategic operations. And we could have done that. And maybe that's the thing we need to do now. And then that government's been corrupt for a very long time.

Karzai government, holy shit, they were completely corrupt. And yet we all rallied around Karzai as if he was, because he dressed well. His brother was a heroin dealer. Yes. Yeah. Awful. And the current government, is it any better? Well, they're a little more clever at hiding their corruption, but it still exists.

And more importantly, the tribal society there doesn't really get this idea of a strong central government. It kind of runs counter to thousands of years of self-governance out there. But anyway, so that's the thing. So what's he going to say tonight? I don't have a clue, but I think he's got limited... What's he going to say? We're going to cut and run? We're going to leave? That's one option. We're going to increase the number of U.S. troops

on the ground? That's one option. There it is right there. It's up. Trump appears sending 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Is that good? Now, here's the thing about when it comes to operations over there and what the objectives are. One of the things that I've been hearing from people that are in the military that I know is they say they are happy that Trump is supporting them and that Trump is kind of essentially giving the reins to the military saying, look, this is what you guys do. I'm not going to get in your way.

In fact, I'm going to support you. And there seemed to be one of the few groups that is fairly universally happy with his decisions in that regard and with the people that he's appointed. I think that's right. I think law enforcement as well, I think is, you know, if you feel like you've got top cover, you know, then, you know, and that was one of the problems. I mean, people talked about the, and we talked about it briefly about the idea of the, you know, sort of the narrative of, of sort of a battle between Trump and the problems. I mean, people talked about the, and we talked about it briefly, about the idea of the, you know, sort of the narrative of sort of a battle between Trump and the intel community. Well, the intel community had a problem with the previous administration because they kept shifting the goalposts. They were going to criminally prosecute people in the

agency for engaging in that interrogation program and rendition program that had been approved by the previous administration. That, you know, that creates some ill will. So the fact that the military and to some degree others, and certainly law enforcement, feel as if they've got this top cover from the current administration, that is a good thing. And if you're willing to not politicize all of this and make every decision related to national security based on how you think it's going to move the polls, then that's also a good thing. As long as you're getting good, solid advice and you're consistent in your decision-making process, all those things are good. I don't know enough about Trump to know how he makes those decisions, but he does have good, Mattis is a good, Pompeo is a good

person. John Kelly certainly is a great guy, McMaster, all these people are solid people who in any other administration would, you know, people would be saying, yeah, that's great. You know, they're very highly regarded, but sort of there's this cloud over because it's Trump. Right. And people are still not sure how things play out in that administration. But if he does listen, I think, yeah, that's a good thing. But sending 4,000 more troops, that's not quite 50% on top of what we've currently got there. What does that allow us to do? Well, some of those troops are going to have to be involved in security operations of the trainers. Some of those troops are going to have to be involved in,

you know, logistical support, intel collection support. So will it make us more effective in defeating in the short term some of the pushback from the Taliban and identifying and taking out more ISIS? Well, sure. Okay. And then what? I guess that's my question. And then what? What do we want? What are we doing there? What is our objective in Afghanistan Afghanistan today in 2017? What is the objective? I couldn't eloquently not that I could have eloquently do shit, but I couldn't I couldn't state what our endgame is there I think it's I would suppose in a big picture. It's to create a stable society that will be a bulwark of

Some form of democracy have we ever done that though? mean, have we ever successfully been involved in nation building? We have, yeah. Where? When you think about post-World War II. Oh, okay. But that was, again, different times. I mean, so you can't compare necessarily, you know, chronologically. But, like, when we've invaded places or when we've been a part of like, look what's going on in Libya.

I mean, we we supported that revolution and now it's a fucking complete disaster and a terrifying part of the world. Yeah, it's a real hot mess. And nobody wants to talk about Libya. And, you know, we didn't have a national security interest in Libya. And yet we allowed ourselves to get in there. Why did we do that? A lot of pressure from the French and the Italians, who did. And I think we felt it was somehow, I don't know why, but maybe there was a feeling as if it would be easier, more containable somehow. But, I mean, shit, there's more tribal history, more tribes in Libya than in Afghanistan.

You've got like 130 some odd tribes in libya it's another thing i watched recently as a country yeah so i watched qaddafi's death again recently watch the whole capture of him and the the whole thing was just fascinating to watch this brutal evil murderous dictator all of a sudden get caught by these common people, these rebels, you know, like, you know, outside of his palace and freaking out and his hair's all fucked up. But the weird thing is, he was our guy. He was our evil dictator, right?

He had renounced nuclear weapons. For a while, yeah. He had gotten on board, for the most part, on sort of a counterterrorism program to provide assistance or at least support or at least not impede. gotten on board for the most part on sort of a counterterrorism program to provide assistance or at least support or at least not impede uh i'm not saying he was yeah he was he was a complete son of a bitch but it's interesting isn't it the dynamics involved and so we decided it was better to support the french and italians and topple him and now you know it's i mean but that's always the case you know isn't always case too that we have these dictators, we prop them up and

then after a while, Jesus, this fucking guy, we're going to get him out of there. Like Saddam. Yeah. Yeah. Like sort of same, and Hussein lasted a long time in that position. When you think about the horrific nature of some of the shit that he did and his sons did. Oh yeah.

His sons were completely. Monsters. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good point. Oh, yeah. His sons were completely – Monsters. Yeah, yeah. And that's a good point. But, hey, how did his presence when they were at odds with Iran, how did that help our overall sense of strategic foreign policy?

So things happen, and you don't get to pick and choose sometimes. I guess maybe you do, but then it would be kind of a strange world. But you've got to deal sometimes with the people that are out there. So it's, I don't know, 4,000 more troops in Afghanistan. Is that going to somehow solve a problem? It's going to, I suspect, kick the can down the road again. It's like Vietnam. What would you do?

Where did the Viet Cong have to go? They had nowhere to go. Right. It's a totally different situation, though, isn't it? Because the Viet Cong really didn't have any threat to us. Well, what I mean is, what did we think was going to happen? Right. They were going to outweigh us.

They were going to outlast us. The suffering was nothing in their minds compared to what we were going through and how we were processing it. So I guess that's what I mean. You can't, yeah, everything is relative. But, I mean, with this. What would you do if you were in the situation to call the shots? Like someone said, hey, Mike Baker, what do we do about Afghanistan?

Yeah. You know what? I'm not saying it's an easy, by any means. It's where a it's above my pay grade. But B, I think ISIS creates a different situation there. If we hadn't seen ISIS develop and start to impact to some degree things that are going on in Afghanistan, then I think we could be better off just saying, OK, we're going to figure out a way to work with the Taliban. I mean, the Taliban, I think at this stage of the game, could be contained within Afghanistan without allowing their place to be used as a shelter for terrorism. I say that now, caveating, saying now you've got ISIS and that's a different kettle of fish because they're at odds with each other. So what are we going to do? End up, you know, in some weird fashion supporting the taliban and their efforts to you know stamp out isis right i i don't know it's a it's a that gets real weird yeah this is what we're talking thousands of years of history of failed efforts in afghanistan and do i think do i have the hubris

to think that we somehow are going to solve this? No. So, you know, maybe the answer is just find that point on the curve where you can support an existing government that you can hold your nose and live with. It's, you know, corrupt and, you know, but at least they're working in the counterterrorism realm, you know, and they're supporting those sort of interests from our perspective. And yet, you know, I don't think we're ever going to get to that point where we see a stable, self-supporting, you know, pseudo-democratic nation exist there. I just don't think it's going to happen. So that's a hugely unsatisfying answer. But, you know, maybe it's like pollution. You do little things, you know, and hope that it helps, and maybe that's what we're doing here.

You know, if you just start from the point of view of saying, we're going to create a bulwark of democracy, you're overwhelmed, it's never going to happen, so you don't do anything back out of it. Part of me just, I hate the idea of leaving, right? I mean, I think a lot of people do who... Well, they think we're going to create a vacuum, right? Right, and quite frankly, that's typically what happens.

And particularly with ISIS, in a presence there, they would see that and they would see an opportunity. Now, they're at odds with the Taliban, and the Taliban is pretty brutal. Could they handle it on their own? Meaning, could they destroy ISIS on their own? Who knows? Maybe. But it certainly complicates the situation. Especially if we just decide to somehow another support Isis. No, that's never gonna happen We never know I mean, excuse me. Oh, it's not a Taliban. Yeah their battle against Isis. I could see that

I could see elements of the Taliban saying look we just want fucking self-govern, right? Okay, we get it Did you ever imagine a scenario where the United States would support the Taliban because they were at war with Isis? And then Taliban could soften their stance on some things we reach some sort of common ground Well, look we're kind of on the same side with Iran against Isis, right? Yeah, we're not supporting Iran right in a way. We are in the sense that we're We're trying to kill the same people right so who would have thought that you know four or five years ago so it's that's how nutty isis is yeah yeah yeah everybody can agree everybody can agree it's the one group that everybody can agree on um but yeah i don't know it's interesting so that's what the president's going to talk about

this evening four thousand more troops i you know he could have said we're going to leave and the people that hate Trump would be up in arms. You could say we're going to add four thousand troops are going to be up in arms. You could say we're going to give it over to the private contractors. They'd be up in arms. It doesn't really matter. So there's going to be a lot of opposition to this regardless. If there's a clear, defined mission with an end game fine i just haven't heard i don't know what that is yeah and maybe they maybe they've said it i just haven't seen it well it seems like the only way we're ever going to get peace and harmony in the world is if there's no fifth world fourth world third world or second world just one first world everybody has like suburban problems yeah

yeah is that even possible? No. I mean, an equitable society where everybody's on the same footing? Impossible. Maybe if you have universal basic income. Across the world. Yeah, and get rid of law enforcement. Drain the 1%. Yeah, exactly.

Crack everywhere. I don't think that's it. It's not going to happen. That's so disheartening for people though. A guy like you has so many years of experience in intelligence agencies that you would say that there's nothing

that could ever be done that would give peace in the world. Like generations from now we're still going to be dealing with the same issues we're dealing with now. Maybe if the chemist can figure out a way to get us all some ecstasy. maybe that's going to solve it. It's the way it is. It's human nature.

We go through periods of peace. You go through periods of prosperity and during those periods it kind of helps to lift everybody up and they get to a certain level that they didn't imagine before. They're still trailing. Are we ever going to get to a point where we're all the same?

I don't... I mean, hey, great, but I don't see it. Here's a perfect example. The United States and Germany, right? We were at war in the 1940s, and now we're absolutely at peace. And Germany is prosperous, and it's a great country, and everything's great.

I mean, I would wonder what would have to take place for this to be a worldwide thing where the rest of the world sort of rises up to an adequate level of civilization and we no longer engage in the potential global war that we're all looking at right now. We're really looking at the possibility with Russia and with North Korea and all these different players. There could be some sort of a twisted World War III going on. Yeah. Russia, I think, is punching over its weight.

I mean, at the end of the day, Russia's got a GDP equivalent to a mid-sized EU country. I mean, so they just, you know, Putin is very clear he wants to rebuild the Soviet Union to some degree in some fashion, right? And he's done it through some territory. He does it through energy policy, through meddling like they always do. But so, you know, I don't think Russia. But to your point. Yeah. As with the U.S. and Germany, could we see a way that the U.S. and Iran, for example, could find common ground and suddenly 40 years from now be at peace and not only at peace, but supporting each other's economy and, you know, have that sort of interaction. And I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. Damn. Can I pour you some coffee? No, I'm good. I'm just thinking, I'm just like, it's just at a certain point in time, it just, it's very frustrating to think that, i guess the pace of progress is so incredibly slow when you look back in history this is probably the safest time to be alive ever so

there's been some progress from you know the roman times to today there's obviously been some worldwide progress oh sure yeah yeah longevity and and you know stamping out disease and all the rest of those things yeah we're not this is you know for what it's what it's worth, it's a great time to be alive. And people that are walking around every day trying to find a reason to be offended or finding that... It's because there's no real conflict that they have these issues. Right. The hordes aren't coming over the border to rape and pillage.

There's no Great Depression. There's food that's pretty easy to find. They did find the plague. They did. Found the bubonic plague on some ticks, right? Yep. Where was that? Was that in Arizona?

I think it was. Goddamn Arizona. It's in response to Joe Arpaio getting arrested. Everybody's mad. I wonder if that's what... Wasn't there some talk about Trump pardoning him? Yeah. There it is.

Bubonic plague in Arizona. Fleas found carrying the infectious disease. Thereing him. Yeah. What is he? Yeah, it is. Bubonic plague in Arizona. Fleas found carrying the infectious disease. There you go. Wonderful. You know, and that's where it's going to be. It's not going to be. This is my, for what it's worth. I put this along with my big pussy theory.

But it's not going to be the North Koreans, you know, firing off a missile or whatever. It's going to be this idea. It's going to be a pandemic. Something that we didn't quite see coming. Right. A mutation of a disease or something. Because I do believe in the idea that nature takes care of its own eventually, just like a deer herd or whatever. And eventually the overpopulation issue becomes a concern.

And that's how the earth tends to reset itself. Yeah, that is always how it works. Yeah. That would suck. But another reason to be in Idaho. Bubonic plague. I mean,

they have three human cases in New Mexico, that article said. And then they found it in fleas in Arizona. Oh, jeez. Yeah, well, everybody go see your doctor.

Well, they won't survive the winter in Idaho. what else has been going on? What else have we had? You tell me. Eh. The guy with the inside track. Yeah, well, there is that. The man with a suit coat on yeah I know I get that you know what I have in here also is a pocket

square I pull that out when I do a TV interview I pull up my pocket square just to get a little classier well people tend to think you know what you're talking about when you have a hanky I learned that from Guy Ritchie explained the pocket square to me did he yeah he schooled me in it it's his theory so this is not something i was working on and developing this is his theory no it's not his theory but he is uh very well educated and very well thought out in regards to his choice of suits and a man wearing a well tailored suit damn is he's not still married to mad No, he got rid of that check a long time ago. But he had a kid with her. Whoops.

Oh, oh. There you go. Yeah. I remember Madonna. As soon as she started seeing Guy Ritchie, I was living in England at the time, and she just suddenly, out of nowhere, had a British accent. I love it. I love when people do that.

It's fantastic. I love that. I love when white people talk like black people. I love.... I love when people do that. It's fantastic. I love that. I love when white people talk like black people. I love... It's my favorite. Or a Chinese guy talking like a black guy. That's even better. A Chinese guy? What if you heard that? I've seen it.

I've seen it many times. I'm a big fan of transracial. People that think they're the wrong race. Yes, that's a new thing. It's one of the few trans things you can mock still. Can you mock it? Yes.

Okay. Openly, and I'm not letting it go. So what would that be? Rachel Dolezal, that lady. Right. Who ran the NAACP in Spokane. That's right. So she identified with black people.

Sean King. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah, he's another one. But he denies it. He says that it's actually, that everyone is wrong. His mom, his dad, his birth certificate, people he knows. They all lie to him? They're lying to everybody else, and only he knows.

Oh. He says his mom had an affair with a light-skinned black man or something. It's not my business. Yeah, who knows? Exactly. Exactly. with a light-skinned black man or something. It's not my business.

Yeah, who knows? Exactly, exactly. I can't find enough energy, given everything else that's going on, to be offended by very much, frankly. I just don't care. I like people to live their own lives. If you're happy, God bless you, just be happy. I'm way more amused than I am ever offended

by things like that. I'm amused. That's a good way to put it, yeah. That's a good way to say it. You, that's a good way to say it. You're more amused than offended. I just... Do you know Rachel Dolezal, the chick from Spokane? Because she got in trouble,

you know, because everyone was mad at her, she changed her name legally to the blackest name the world has ever known. What did she change it to? Young Jamie, pull that name up. This is a wonderful name. And I would encourage anyone that wants to be transracial to do the game the same thing. N-K-E-C-H-I.

I don't know how you say that. Nkechi Amare Diallo. That's her new name. Ready? Wow. Here we go again. Nkechi Amare Diallo. D-I-A-L-L-O.

Hmm. What? Holy smokes. I like the description, though, that they give her. She's a former civil rights activist. Well, I guess because she was fired. Former Africana studies instructor. What's Africana?

She decided to give up the civil rights activist thing. Yeah, silly goose. But it was great when she had like a fro. Look at her over there with the full white family, orange spray tan. From Lincoln County, Montana. Little Ruthann's

girl. But she feels like she identifies with black people more. She likes their culture more. And, you know, there's always been people that like the culture more and talk like they're a part of the culture. But you don't say you are. Yeah, that's the new thing, though.

Isn't that appropriating? And aren't there people that are offended by the idea of appropriating? Like, if I opened a Mexican restaurant, people would be offended because I shouldn't do that. I should just, you know, I don't know what I should do. I know black people that were furious at her. And I know other people that are also black that were laughing hysterically at it. They thought it was what I think.

I mean, it really doesn't affect you. It's preposterous. And not only that, don't be infuriated by the fact that she got caught. I mean, she's not like having any undue influence. This is all ridiculous. No, exactly. And also, again, it's this idea that people are walking around looking for reasons to be offended.

Yeah. And it just seems exhausting. It's like everything, and so I don't know how people do it. I don't know how or why they do it. Maybe they just don't have enough going on in their lives. They don't have enough objectivity. Yeah. I mean, they get caught up in the momentum of being pissed off about something

But the cultural appropriation or pretending you're something like look at how many fucking people pretend They're Native American because it makes them seem more spiritual Jesus. That's always been an issue. Yeah. Yeah, there is Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Why was just trying to remember her name? That's right. Is she gonna run if she's gonna run in 2020? That's always gonna be a problem. You lied and said you were part Native American to get some sort of a scholarship. That's right. Harvard, wasn't it? Harvard? Yes.

Oh, look at that. Yeah. I will say this. The world is so funny. When we went into Iraq in 2003, early 2003, people started looking at the business opportunities of Iraq, right? I remember there was that whole idea, excuse me, that there was going to be all sorts of business opening up in Iraq because I don't know why they were thinking. But so then it became people looking for contracts, government contracts, commercial sector contracts, to do business in Iraq. And so the idea was suddenly there was a mad rush to open up minority-owned

and veteran-owned and women-owned businesses. So the idea was if you had like an Inuit Indian, you know, Eskimo, who was supposedly in charge of your business, that gave you extra points when you were weighed in the bid for a contract that you were going for. So there became this cottage industry, much like the casino business, of trying to find tribes that you can represent in order for them then to open up. And you're creating essentially a tribe to have a casino. Right. Because it gives them certain advantages.

So it's an interesting world we live in. Well, the Native American casino business is very weird in that regard. And also that a lot of people in these areas, because they're a certain percentage, and I think it's as little as one-sixteenth Native American, you can get a check. So if the casino is raking in the cash, the people that are a part of that tribe all get free money. Yeah. So these casinos are just generating, like, fucking billions of dollars a year. Oh, yeah. Some of them do very well.

Some of them are kind of, you know, marginal. But, you know, there are a number of them that do very well. And, you know what? And for some of these, I don't know about you, but some of the, I tell you what, if you want to be depressed, go to, you know, there's certain Indian reservations in this country that are just awful. Oh, my God. The level of poverty is just astounding. Alcoholism. facilities for the kids. And that's just not, that's not right. Right. That's not, we should, we should be far better than that. There should not be. Well, Native American reservations are very strange when you think about like how long ago it was that these tribes people were, you know,

roaming the earth in nomadic fashion and living the life they did before the Europeans came. And that now they've become the segmented part of our population that's sort of a part of America, but has their own kind of like nation inside of a nation and has weird rules. Like the way they have it up in Canada, they call them first nation people, but in Canada, it's real weird in regards to wildlife. Like, I don't know if you know how it works up there, but they can shoot anything they want all year round. And they have it that way in Washington State as well.

Right, right. With elk. You know, they hunt elk all year round. Their rules are so different. Fishing is the same way. They use spotlights for moose. So, like, they drive at night with 4x4s. The moose see the spotlight.

They freeze. They blow them away with high-powered rifles. And they can kill them as many as they want all year round. We used to go spotlighting kangaroos. I lived in Australia when I was younger. Where did you live?

I worked on a sheep station. You lived in England? You lived in Australia? I've lived in a lot of places but I'm now in, I'm in my last place now. I know, I'm not,

I'm never moving. But yeah, we used to go in Australia and worked on, lived on a sheep station out there, massive property. And we'd, you'd get in the back of the truck, you know, with the spotlights and you go out and those kangaroos are hard as shit to hit. They are tough hunting. Now, were you guys doing that for population control? Yeah.

Because there's too many of them? Yeah. Did you eat the kangaroos? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, not. It must be delicious. You know, it, it, it can be, you know, depending on how old they are and- How you cook it. But the tail is actually the tastiest part.

What? Kangaroo tail. Yeah. I don't know about all that. But, no, I don't mean the ass. I mean the tail. They have a big tail because it bounces around. I've seen them on TV.

Yeah. There you go. Saw them in real life. Yeah. So they, but anyway, they are hard to hit. They are completely unpredictable in their movement, and they move fast, and they jump. The fences they can clear are impressive. I don't know why I'm talking about spotlighting kangaroos.

I've seen a lot of these massive herds or packs or whatever you call them of kangaroos roaming across the field. Some people have no idea what the numbers are you know I Have friends that live in Australia They tell me like there's places that are just infested and there's nothing they can do they don't know what to do Yeah, so they literally have to gun them down because there's no predators it is yeah, that's exactly right I mean what do you got dingo's not gonna bring down a you know a Kangaroo good luck feral cat you know It's yeah, so this they, they're all over the place.

Great little animals, though. They're cool. Yeah. Yeah. They're kind of cute. And they're tasty. Yeah, look at these fuckers. There you go.

Bouncing all over the place. Kick that cat in the water. Kangaroo call starts today. Look at that. Jesus Christ. So many of them. And people are upset. I guess these people are upset at the kangaroo call. You're always So many of them. And people are upset. I guess these people are upset at the kangaroo call.

You're always going to have that. Whoa. That one got stuck in our fence. Yeah, I mean, whenever you have an animal that doesn't have any sort of a natural predator and they just free free ball it. Exactly. And Australia is such an

interesting place. Every time they introduce a species to try to solve a problem, that species just takes off. Yeah. Yeah. It just, and it's, it's, it's never ending. I was trying to explain to someone the other day about the cats there that they, they hunt cats, like, like what we think of as a pet. And they were like, why? And I'm like, listen, I know it doesn't seem right, but the feral cat population is just run out of control. Like we did a podcast once. We pulled up the feral cat population in America and what it does, that they kill billions of birds and rodents in America. Yeah. And someone was like, no, that can't be right.

I'm like, listen, the scientists who do the study are shocked. Cats are fucking murderers. We had a cat, a great cat named Charlie, who's now died. But he was not to a cat for the most part, but he would kill chipmunks. And he would lay the chipmunks out in a row, like an offering. And he was incredibly efficient. We tried to keep him indoors, but, you know,

the guy, he just wanted to be outside killing something, so. It's his fun time. Yeah. And then come in and you open up a nice fresh can of cat food

for him, like, thanks, Dad. He's got a little bit of chipmunk in his tooth. Oof. Yeah, but the feral cats, yeah, in the ranches, I mean, you'd be out

repairing fences or something and, you know, you just kind of get off or they'd spook the horses or you'd put your hand down to pick something up they just come out of nowhere and they're just you know they're bastards yeah they're not what you think they're not kitties yeah they're not kitty cats it's not like hello kitty yeah they're like a wild small predator that's extremely vicious and you know they kill things all the time the The feral cat problem in the United States is insignificant

in comparison to what it does in Australia, though. Australia, they have devastated ground-nesting birds and all sorts of other species because they're an invasive species. Yeah, and there's nothing, again, there's nothing really good about dingoes, maybe, but, you know, they're not going to put a population as now. So, dingo ate my baby. Where you live is fascinating because you've got, you got everything up there. You got grizzly bears. Yeah. You got a, you guys got a healthy grizzly

population. I have a buddy who went black bear hunting up there and they could not find black bears. They just found a horde of grizzlies. Okay. Yeah. They suck grizzly after grizzly after grizzly. It's amazing. I mean, it is, and it is, it's such a good thing. And when you see the, sort of the health of the, of the wildlife population, it just, it makes you feel really good, you know, and it's, you know, it's hard to explain. I mean, people, I was up in Yellowstone and, and once again, I'm always amazed at how people interact with wildlife when they're not used to it right and yellowstone is probably the best place to see that happen because there's so many tourists during the the busy time of year and they'll just there's no regard for the fact that it's a wild animal right and even the bison and the bison will kill you in a hot second if they get pissed off right yeah and you'll get these tourists that'll you know get out of that car and you know and and uh the husband will be taking a picture and telling his wife to get a little bit closer, get a little bit closer. Now, maybe he's doing it deliberately, right?

But it's an amazing thing. Yeah, I'm sure he looks fine. But it's amazing. That's another place for people. If they haven't been to Yellowstone, go to Yellowstone. Yeah. It's incredible. Well, it seems like a zoo to people.

You see these gigantic, furry, Star Wars-looking things out there. I mean, that's what a buffalo looks like when you see it in real life. You're like, is that real? Yeah. They're so big. They are. They're massive. And we were there, and at one point, it was getting to be twilight,

and I came around a corner, and I was with a couple of the rangers, and there was a vehicle stopped. It was a minivan. It was stopped on the side of the road, and there were half a dozen people out of this minivan. And they were all kind of fussing about, you know, and just a little bit in the field there on the side. And what are they doing? And then it became clear that there was a little calf out there a little bison calf it was gotten separated from the herd and i guess they had seen

it but now you could hear it it was kind of over there bleeding and and uh they wanted to get it they wanted to round it up meaning bleeding yeah yeah yeah not not bleeding um although that that was probably the next step in this calf's evolution. They were trying to figure out how to round it up and get it back to its correct. Oh, wow. And the rangers, you know, said, oh, here we go again. And they said, I mean, look, this happens. Unfortunately, people don't realize its nature.

So they had to get out. And I stood there and listened while they explained to these people, look, this calf is somebody's dinner now. It's going to be found and devoured by other forces of nature out here. Most likely wolves. Yeah, and that wolf population is coming back up there, which is great. And so these people were horrified. They were amazed that the rangers wouldn't do something like, I guess, catch the calf,

put it in the back of the truck, and drive it to the herd. Take it to the zoo. Take it to the zoo. Take it to the herd. Or take it home and bottle feed it. It's not much you can do. And most likely if its mother left it behind, maybe there's something wrong with the mother as well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, who knows what the reasoning was behind it. But it was interesting. It was a good lesson.

But the places, the park system anyway, I think we've talked about that before. It's just astounding in this country. It's amazing. Oh, my God, yeah. And the natural, the rather national parks that we have, and in Idaho in particular, you guys have a lot of public land. We've got a lot of wilderness. The Frank Church wilderness is insane in terms of the size.

I've read a really good book called The Big Burn, if anybody's looking for a book to pick up and read. It's about this massive forest fire that took place, mostly in Idaho. And it was during the course of Teddy Roosevelt's time. So it also covers Teddy Roosevelt and his efforts and the way that he got kind of turned on to conservation and the beginnings of the firefighting profession, forest fires. And it's a fascinating read. I mean, you think about it, people get here and go,

really, I'm going to read a book about a big forest fire? But it's incredible. And they weave in the history and the time of the administration and how they were declaring parks and what they were doing and how they tried to tackle this fire and what that meant for future conservation. And it's a fascinating book. So it's called The Big Burn. I'm drawing a blank on who wrote it. But if anybody's out there listening and wants a book, pick it up. How did they try to stop a fire back then especially a massive wildfire you know doing

a lot of the same things that they do now right cutting lines and and breaks and trying to deprive it of fuel feeding it back on itself um it was uh just manpower just sheer manpower and trying to um and you know putting up the the smoke towers and creating them. Back then, that's what they were doing. What's a smoke tower? Well, you know, out in the middle of nowhere, you try to space out these outposts, these little points on the top of the mountains where you can identify smoke and try to catch it. You know, like if you've got an electrical storm, boom, then all of a sudden you see some smoke and you

realize you probably got a start of a fire. You want to get on it as quick as possible. So then, nowadays you'll call in the smoke jumpers and they'll go in and that's an insane job to try to contain it, put it out. But there's always been debate. What do you do? Do you let it burn? How do you deal with these things? It depends, I'm sure,

on the weather forecast as well. Weather forecast and a part, you know, it was politics. And it was, I mean, back then in Roosevelt's time, it was all the timber barons, right, and the mining barons and the railroad barons. And, you know, they weren't interested in Roosevelt's idea of claiming land for the public. Right. And so, you know, it was, I mean know it was I mean it's a fascinating it's a fascinating read and and again sort of go back to that same thing that we talked about it before how did this nation get cobbled together and how did

it end up looking the way it looked and Roosevelt had some real vision oh he really did I mean we're so thankful we should be so thankful because of that vision we have this incredible national park system and all this public land I talked to a wildlife biologist who said that that's one of the reasons why we have all these issues with like bark beetles and all these different uh dead tree issues that when we get a forest fire today it's like so out of control because we don't allow these burns to take place which they do naturally in nature right yeah and that's part of it, because you can imagine what happens. If you don't do that, you develop the fuel over a long period of time, and then you get

a devastating fire. Right. And also, apparently, the carbon from those trees burning is actually good for the ground, the soil. It is. No, it is. And the ability of the land to bounce back, I mean, you know, we see it in Idaho all the time.

I mean, when you get up in Montana and other parts of Wyoming, you see how quickly, yeah, the environment can bounce back. How often do you see, like, wolves and grizzlies and stuff like that where you are at? Wolves more than grizzlies. The grizzlies will still, yeah, they'll still, you know, they'll try to keep to themselves. But you're see more wolves? A ton of elk, yeah, more wolves. We've got a lot of, everybody's got coyotes. They're so resilient.

They're like the cockroach of the mammal. Yeah, they're pretty incredible. But it's, yeah, it's, I'd say if you're, you know, if you're looking at an accessible trip, I get asked this all the time, what would you do? Where would you go? If you had like two weeks, take the kids and drive them somewhere.

I would just point the car towards Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and just head up there and then just see what you can see. You got plenty of opportunity, a tremendous number of excellent parks. And, you know, show the kids something different. Yeah, just let them understand these vast, vast swaths of land that are just open wilderness. And take the electronics away, too.

Yeah, give me your iPad. Oh, yeah. Hide those in the trunk. We're starting, the. Yeah. Don't. Yeah. Hide those in the trunk. God. We're starting. The kids all start school tomorrow. And they know as soon as the school year starts, that's it. They don't get to touch electronics now.

That's a good rule. Yeah. No more. I mean, unless they have homework or something like that. It's just too easy to find escape in that. Yeah. From life. And that life is critical for young minds.

Even being bored. I was reading something about the power of boredom and how important it is for creativity. Boredom? Yeah. Kids are never bored. They never have to think of something to do. That's interesting. They can always just look at their phone or look at the TV. And it never activates that part of their brain where they're searching and thinking.

That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that. But you're right because we tend to plan everything for them. Okay, now you've got to go to your whatever, your hockey lesson. Now you've got to go to lacrosse. Now it's going to be baseball. Now you've got a chess club or whatever the hell you're doing.

Yeah, you're right. And it's also kind of goes back to that idea that we used to manage these things for ourselves. And so kids would go out and they would organize their own teams. And I worry about that, too. I mean, God, you know, just the ability for kids to meet up at a playground and say, okay, we're going to, you know, maybe it happens and I'm making too much of this. We can't have that because Bobby keeps getting picked last.

And it's terrible for his self-esteem. Meanwhile, Bobby's going to become a software coder that makes the AI that runs the world. That's right. That's what happens. All the chicks are going to want Bobby. Bobby gets pissed and Bobby becomes Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. I just said chicks. Am I allowed to say chicks? Yes, you can still say chicks. Just like you can still mock transracial people.

All the dames. All the broads. That's where you get tricky. All the broads are going to want Bobby the coder. Broad's a weird one, isn't it? Because they're not really that broad. Yeah. How'd that happen? And dames. We're not really private dicks from the 1930s.

So I guess. Is that what a dame was? Yeah, a dame was. I don't know. I think of the Maltese Falcon or something like that. That was a dame? A private? No, no, no.

I mean, they would say that. They would say, yeah, the dame walked in. My life changed. Right. But broads is a weird one cuz it's fun to say Brods is like a bunch of guys. He's fucking broads. Yeah, if you broad I loved saying that I feel like I should be smoking a cigarette on say a cigar for sure. Yeah, yeah martini There's not a whole lot of things that chicks can say about us like that though like bros

It's sort of like how black people never had a replacement word for the N-word for white people. Like, honky just does not have any negative impact. It doesn't work. But, like, girls... It's a throwback. It's a real historical throwback, honky.

It doesn't work. I don't remember the last time I heard anybody actually say it. White trash? Like, whatever. That doesn't hurt. Yeah. But, like, broads is a funny

derogatory term for women. Women don't... I guess bros, they have bros. Douchebags. Yeah. That's probably more to the point from their perspective. Bros is white oriented though. Bros are always white people. You never say a bunch of bros and it's black guys.

I didn't know that. I didn't know that. What do you got, Jamie, what do you got? If you're younger, you'd be a fuck boy. Oh, that's true. It's a little bit of a younger thing now. That's true. So you don't want to be called a fuck boy.

Right, but that's for black people, too. Like, black people, like, that's Ian Edwards has that hilarious bit. It's everywhere. It's universal, though. It's across the board. So we can all agree on fuckboy. Yeah. I don't know what that means.

I don't, I don't, does it mean like a derogatory term? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Because, I mean, in some circles, who knows? Maybe that's a good thing. I don't know.

Right. Yeah. Maybe some cougar wants a fuckboy. Yeah. I'm sure I'm using this wrong. It's like speaking Italian wrong. I'm sure I'm not getting it right. I think you got it right.

Eh. Because if you're in a situation where you're like an old broad who's got a lot of money and you want some young fuckboy. Yeah. And he wants a car. Right. Yeah. It's a good move.

I know. Yeah. Although that fuckboy's not going to settle for a Prius. You. It's a good movie. No, no. Although that fuck boy is not going to settle for a Prius. Handsome personal trainer. And Cougar's going to have to spend some cash. Yeah, she's got to

get him a Ferrari. Sort of like how the guy who owned the, what was it, the Clippers? That guy. The old man, what the fuck's his name?

Donald Sterling. Sterling, yeah. Remember he had that broad? He got her, he had a broad, right? He did have a broad. She was a broad. She's a broad.

Yeah. And he got her like a Ferrari and a Bentley and bought have a broad. She was a broad. She's a broad. Yeah. And he got her like a Ferrari and a Bentley and bought her a condo. But the broads used to work in the steno pool, right? I mean, you know. The what? In the steno pool. What's the steno pool? In the office environment back in the 60s. I think that's what. Steno pool?

Stenographer pool? Stenographer pool, yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah, you know, you'd have to get, you know, Marge to come up from the steno pool and she would take notes and then, you know, do'd have to get Marge to come up from the steno pool, and she would take notes and then do the letter or whatever that you'd put on paper, and you'd post it in the mail, and that's how you got business done. Whoa, that's a steno pool. There you go. Look at that.

Wow. There's a lot of broads in that steno pool. If I was one of those broads, I'd be like, I'd rather be a hooker. I got to get out of here. Looks like there's some dudes in there, though. Probably. That may not be a steno pool. No. Maybe just a couple gay guys. Did they allow them to work with women back then? I don't think so. What a steno pools to cubicles and back

again. Wow. Fuck all that. You learned about steno pools, I learned about fuckboys. That's a trap and a half, though, isn't it? Imagine working in a place like that. It's like, what? Where are you going from here? Yeah. And the other one was the telephone command center. Jamie, take that picture up on the upper top, the colored picture. Look, right there.

The one with the color in it? No. The one with the girl holding up the sign? Oh, that one. Look at that. Swimming in the Steno Pool by Lynn Peril. Oh, right there? The one with the girl holding up the sign? Oh, that one. Look at that. Swimming in the Steno Pool by Lynn Peril. Oh, God. A retro guide to making it in the office.

Fuck. Look at that modern office equipment there. Lower left-hand corner. Yeah, look at that typewriter. That gives you a sense of the date of that book. No more writing with a crayon. See, nowadays, the office environment is much more writing with a crayon. See, nowadays, yeah, the office environment is much more dangerous now, I think.

It's much more fraught with potential for hazards and landmine. Look at that recording device there. Boy, look at that thing. See? So he was talking and she had to transcribe all that? Is that what was going on? It's like a dictaphone. What is with the guy with the bowler hat? This is a movie.

That guy's like a spy or something. What is with the guy with the bowler hat? This is a movie. Oh. That guy's like a spy or something. Oh. Yeah, that's it. Because, you know, we all used to dress like that. I don't know if you can zoom in on that, but that was actually, we would get that after we completed training, they would actually give us an outfit like that. The white hat. Yeah.

And the bowler hat. That's nice. And then we would set off on our adventures. Like, what is that new movie? The Kingsman? Is that what it is? A bunch of spies out there kicking ass? I have not seen that.

Teaching you deadly skills, like how to kill people with a pen? Yeah. Did they ever teach you, like, skills, like how to use, like, regular things you find? Improvised weapons. Yeah, sure. Field expediency. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like knowing how to fire whatever weapon you pick up off the ground. Right.

It's just simply knowing, you know, what would up off the ground. It's just simply knowing what would work. And most of it's common sense, right? I mean, in terms of what would actually do the job. But, yeah, I mean, it's just field expediency. Which is good. Was it in Mattis' quote? It's very practical information. Be polite, be professional, and have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

That was Madison? Mattis. Who was that? Oh, I thought you were talking about John Madison or James Madison. Wow, they were tough son of a bitches back then. No. So Mattis. Okay, Mad Dog Mattis.

Yeah, pretty sure. Boy, President Trump loved to say Mad Dog, didn't he? Yes. He was absolutely in love with Mad Dog, with that name. Well, he liked it because he had his own hit man. Yeah. You know? I don't know. Where do you think this is going Well, you liked it because he had his own hit man. Yeah. You know? I don't know.

Where do you think this is going? Do you think he's in for four years and... Not anymore. Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet. That's the kind of guy you want in that position. You want a guy who thinks like that, and anybody who doesn't understand that, well, I'm glad you're not in that position. Yeah, and that goes back to Afghanistan.

We were talking about, what's the end game if you're going to do this don't let it let's not draw you know kind of let's not do this thing where we're dying by paper cuts or whatever you want to call it it's just and that's kind of where it's been i just feel like we've been in a holding pattern yeah for years now when it comes to afghanistan without really knowing where we're going or where we want to be when we get to the end of that road. And, you know, so somebody like Madison and people in general in the military understand if you're going to do something, you do it to win. That's your objective. And I worry that, well, maybe 4,000 troops is not exactly doing it to win.

It's doing what they feel they can get away with. Right. And I don't know where that gets us at the end of the day. Yeah, I know. This whole Trump thing is getting weirder and weirder with every Right. And I don't know where that gets us at the end of the day. Yeah. I don't, this whole Trump thing is getting weirder and weirder with every day. So to even predict where we could be six months from now, forget about four years from now or three and a half years from now. I think that when you look at some of the stuff that he does, you really have to wonder about his mental

health. And I don't, I don't say that like, you know, there's a lot of people that are saying that I think because, because they would like to think that he's mentally incompetent. It'd be convenient for their argument. But when I read that, I don't know what agency it was, was trying to get the IP addresses of people that visited an anti-Trump website. Did you hear about that? I did. Like Sessions was working on that. That's insane. Yeah, it is. Because I could have visited that site. If somebody sent me a link, you've got to see Like Sessions was working on that. That's insane. Because I

could have visited that site. If somebody sent me a link, you got to see this crazy anti-Trump site. That doesn't mean I'm a part of that community or anything like that. You can't get IP addresses from someone who visits things online. Either side, anytime. I don't care which administration it is. I mean, you can argue. I mean, yeah, it's just the potential for abuse of power. I've always agreed with that. I'm a small government it's just the potential for abuse of power. I've always agreed with that. I'm a small government person. So the potential for abuse of power is always there and needs to be monitored. The potential is catastrophic.

Yeah. Because as soon as people lose confidence, and that's one of the biggest issues with Trump as a president. If people lose confidence in the institution, like one of the things that was very disturbing to a lot of people was that when he had those Russians over and he was explaining how ISIS is thinking about using laptops as bombs. And they're like, Jesus fucking Christ, this is top secret shit. You're not supposed to say that. Because then this could potentially compromise people that are embedded in ISIS, that are distributing this information. Like you have a bunch of people. You're giving up this information.

There's a trickle-down effect, and it also diminishes the potential for people to trust the office, trust the person running it. We see that all the time. You see that. I mean, the previous administration had problems where they sort of in their desire to rush to the podium to declare a victory in something. There was a disregard for sources and methods, a disregard for the importance of occasionally, you know, secrets are good in many cases when it comes to intel operations. You want to, again, you want checks and balances. I completely get

that. And of course, people are like losing their minds. I can't believe it's a CIA guy talking about checks and balances because, you know, I'm sure he doesn't believe it. But it's true. The place, you know, for that is in the committees and up on Capitol Hill, where you're supposed to have an engaged, aggressively curious, inquisitive operation up there between the various committees that are supposed or charged with overseeing, you know, the work of the intel community. And oftentimes they do know exactly what's going on. They just play this game where they disavow any knowledge when it looks like there's political blowback. There's a fairly well-worn path between Langley, as an example, and Capitol Hill for the briefings telling people, this is what's going on. This is what's happening. And then,

you know, the general unwritten understanding is, you know, they're going to be assholes if it becomes politically expedient to do so. They'll disavow that they knew about it. They'll demand, you know, so it's a game that gets played sometimes. But yeah, I think that it's hard to say. I've got friends who are very hard left, and they're convinced that Trump's on his way out in the not-too-distant future. I think that's a lot of wishful thinking, but I don't think he's going to make it four years. I might be wrong. It just doesn't seem like it. I think he's also a guy—

He's incredibly resilient, though. He is. He is. He's unusual in that regard. He's also a guy, though, that wants love and respect and wants to be a winner. Everything he does in regards to business, decisions, he'll tank something personally himself to declare a victory. You've got to wonder whether or not he would put someone in position, you know, to say like the fake news is so out to get him that what we've done is we've created a structure that's the best people for the job. And then I'm going to concentrate on business and helping them from the outside.

I mean, you could escape. Right. And have some sort of escape route. There's not there again. It's it sometimes seems as if there's no grownups in charge of the messaging that comes out of the White House. And that's been the case since day one, basically. And part of it is maybe people say, well, that's the way he likes to play it. He likes to play people off of each other and he likes the chaos. Well, you know what? He never ran a big organization. People imagine or thought if he didn't spend any time up in New York and having watched the Trump organization for years and years and years, if you hadn't done that, then you imagine it to be this massive organization.

Well, it's not. It's always been kind of a family business, right? So the chaos that's around that shouldn't be a surprise. What is a surprise is that he wasn't sharp enough or whatever. I don't know what it is, to understand the importance of inserting the discipline in there

and at least, if nothing else, being consistent and disciplined with the messaging that comes out and just quit the fucking tweeting.

Just stop the tweeting. But people say, oh, I love it. That's what makes him him. Well, for people, it's entertainment, you know, it's like, it's a makes him him. Well, for people, it's entertainment.

It's a portal for fun. For fun. I mean, that's what you're getting out of it. You're seeing the stupid shit he writes and go, oh, my God. And you correlate some of the times that he writes it. Yeah, it's only like 2 o'clock in the morning. Yeah, isn't that interesting? But that's the thing.

Again, I get it. I understand that people are excited to have a genuine person who's not a politician in there. And, you know, there's some benefit to shaking the system up for sure. It needs some shaking. But, you know. I don't know how much shaking has actually been done. I don't want to. I'd rather the president not spend as much time watching TV or tweeting and working to try to accomplish something major in the way of tax reform or even the health care problem. Good Lord, we're not even going to get that done.

I think there's also a real problem from the top down when the commander in chief likes to personally insult people. I think when you do that, you make that kind of behavior not just acceptable, but standard. Yeah. Well, it's like with your kids. I mean, they kids, you know, if they, or probably more to the point, it's like people, we talk about the fact that nobody can keep their yap shut, right? So secrets get out there right now. And that's because we've created this environment. If it's okay for a former defense secretary or a former head of the CIA or whatever, when they get out to write a book, right? And they're getting paid millions of dollars to write that book. So you know they've got to cough up something interesting.

If they do that over a period of time and they've been doing that, then people down below think, well, why the fuck? Yeah. We all signed the same agreements to keep our app shut, but maybe it's okay. Right. So it starts at the top I think you know and it's just like with parenting you know I mean they gotta see you do the things you tell them to do otherwise kids are sharp enough to think well you're not doing it

so I think it's you know I don't know where I was going with that I tend to get down a rabbit hole and distract well this is a distracting subject because it's really difficult to see how do we get out of this? Like, okay, we've obviously got this guy who's run the country, who's doing a lot of things that people don't enjoy. They don't like, they see a lot of problems in it,

and they don't see a real light at the end of the tunnel. It's like, what's the best case scenario? Is this guy going to get us in a fucking war with Korea? So we realize, like like oh north korea and us we you know we're going to war now this could have been avoided we got to get rid of them i mean what what's the worst case scenario that has to happen where we can survive as a country but still just recover from this that war thing the north korea thing is is uh you know Korea thing is kind of frustrating in a sense, right? Because nobody should be out there thinking that

and I'm sure very few do that somehow we got to that point with North Korea because President Trump is president. Right. We got to this point with North Korea because we kicked the can down the road for two and a half decades of failed foreign policy with North Korea and in part with China. And so they've been

very clear about what they wanted to do. And now they've gotten to that point where they've created the weapons program and the ballistic missile program that they want or that they are close to having. And, you know, when you get to that point, you naturally lose some of your options, you know, so the decision tree gets smaller. And, you know, Trump happens to be the president in office now, when North Korea reaches that stage. And North Korea is pretty consistent in the way that they've been behaving. You know, they're always doing the same thing. They throw their teddy out of the cart when they get upset and they want some attention or they feel they can get something out of it. Typically, they do get something or China gets something that then they're willing to

rein them into some degree. And just like, you know, Trump could well be the guy sitting in office when Iran gets to that point, because anybody who thinks Iran is not spinning the centrifuges and continuing to work on their weapons capabilities is somewhat insane. I mean, there is no... John Kerry said the whole Iran deal was based on verification. And we don't have verification.

We haven't gotten access still to some facilities that we would need to see. We signed off, or the previous administration signed off on a study or an assessment, basically just to get the deal done because the Iranians insisted that that investigation into their capabilities at one of their military sites come to a close. It wasn't like we suddenly got answers and we were satisfied that there was no, and we just, okay, that was part of the deal, so we'll end that investigation but we don't have that verification so trump could my point being trump could just be sitting in that seat uh when north korea gets where they are when iran

possibly you know because that could happen sooner rather than later and then yeah then you'd like to think that the person in that position would be rational. Yes. A little more reasoned. I read an article today that's saying that him saying all that crazy shit about fire and fury that the world has ever seen might have actually been what he needed to say when you're dealing with someone like North Korea. I mean, it was obviously an opinion piece. Right. But the argument was that when you're dealing with someone that's as fucked up as Kim Jong,

you're probably better off having someone as crazy as Trump as president, who's going to say some ridiculous shit like that. So this guy goes, all right, this guy's just as nuts as me. I mean, there could be, and frankly,

those messages that he, those things that he said were probably more important in terms of how China received them than how North Korea received them. And honestly, 20 plus years of measured diplomatic language and restrained talk didn't really do anything. It just kicked the can down the road. So, yeah, maybe a different approach in a measured fashion. But the problem is because of their sort of the perceived chaos, nobody has the confidence to believe that he's doing it in a disciplined, reasoned way. Right. So they don't look at it and go, yeah, he's saying that's a message he's sending. Right. They just look at it and go, he's just, you know, blasting off another tweet.

Except Scott Adams. Scott Adams is the only one that believes this is some large, clever, master plan. Wait a minute, Scott Adams. From Dilbert. Dilbert! Yeah. Do you know about that? No. Scott Adams is like the most rational, logical, intelligent Trump supporter that's ever lived. And he's not really a Trump supporter because he didn't vote for Trump

because he talks about these things. He doesn't want to vote for president because he doesn't want to have a stake in the game. But he believes that Trump is a master persuader and that everything he's doing is because of the art of persuasion. It's very interesting. That's interesting, yeah. It falls apart under scrutiny. He kind of fell apart with these arguments with a podcast with Sam Harris.

It's pretty fascinating, though. I mean, I can see where people are, and I've heard that from Trump supporters, you know, where they talk about how everything's measured, everything in his own way is actually disciplined. Because I've said numerous times that I think they lack discipline. And they say, no, no, no, no. Actually, this is all part of the plan. And I'm thinking, hmm. It doesn't look like it's part of the plan. Because you've got other people that are in those senior positions that seem to be scrambling to catch up to the plan and if it was part of the plan you'd like to think it was

you know it was it was part of a conversation amongst the uh the cabinet but yeah anyway uh yeah so i i don't think i don't you know i don't think we're you know missiles aren't going to be flying between us and north korea i think china may actually see at this stage of the game, they may see that they need to affect a different mindset for North Korea. And they may be doing that. And part of it may be, again, not necessarily because it was a reasoned, thought out plan, but Trump's comments about the trade imbalance with China, right? And if the Chinese legitimately thought that we were going to, you know, put that under the microscope and maybe attack them on the trade imbalance in a serious way, then maybe they look at that and go, okay, if we can get them to back off, then yes, we're willing to extend ourselves and actually listen to the sanctions and take part in the sanctions and, you know, exert some additional pressure on North Korea that maybe they weren't in the past. Because China always acts in its own best interest.

And so they're looking for something. What are we going to get out of this? And maybe so maybe that's, you know, anyway, in the meantime, it seems to have resolved itself to some degree. But I do worry that, you know, once again, we're just kicking it down the road, you know, I mean, until there's something some sea change where, you know, maybe somehow we can affect a unified, you know, Korea with China's assistance. It's going to have to be with their assistance and blessing, obviously, or something along those lines to get actual deterrence, you know, off the table and more of a removal of the nuclear threat. You know, we're just going to be doing the same conversation another couple of years when they rattle the cage again and we have to figure out how to resolve it. And the further you go down the road and the better their capabilities

get, the fewer options you have. Well, Mike, I'm sufficiently depressed. Thank you very much. That's my job. Let's meet up again in six months if the shit hits the fan. See how it's going. I'm sorry. No, it's always fun talking to you, man. I appreciate it. I appreciate your insight. I went off on a tangent there.

We both did. That's part of the program. Cool, man. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it. Thank I appreciate your insight. I went off on a tangent there. We both did. That's part of the program. Cool, man. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right, folks. We'll see you soon.

Bye. Sorry about that. Ow, it's gross.