The Joe Rogan Experience - #1519 - Mike Baker

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Mike Baker is a former CIA covert operations officer. Currently he is the president of Diligence LLC, a global intelligence and security firm. His new show "Black Files Declassified" is now available on the Science Channel.

Hello, Mike Baker. Hello, Joe Rogan. Brought your laptop this time, huh? Look at that laptop. I got a pad of paper. I got a pen. There's many issues. Thank you for my COVID test.

Ah, yeah, we needed that. Yeah, we're doing them every week now. I don't even know how many times I've been tested, but it's good to know. It's good to know. It's odd that you can travel across the country and find that some places it takes you 10 days to get a response. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes to get a response. That part I don't understand. Well, those super-duper ones they have at the White House, they can get those in 20 minutes. The ones we have here, you can get the – well, the 10-minute one – see, the antibody blood test will show you in 10 minutes whether or not you have –

this is the FDA-approved ones that we use here. They show you whether or not you have active antibodies, meaning a recent infection. You're probably currently fighting off the virus or whether or not it's an old infection. So you had the virus and beat it. And then the nose swab will say definitively if you've got it in your system. Now, if they come back during the course of this show and say that I've got it, am I quarantined in the studio? Well, the antibody is already negative. so most likely you don't have it.

Oh, good. Okay. I feel better. There you go. Turn this thing towards you. Sorry. That's better. So how do you feel about all this?

Are you weirded out? No. You haven't been here since COVID, right? Yeah. We were, I think the last time, it was before then, just before then. It started to settle in. And then I traveled last, it was mid-February, I was in New York City, and it was starting to, people were starting to be aware, right? And they were talking about it a little bit, but there were really no changes in behavior. And then it really hit and everybody

went into a hurry lockdown. And the good thing is pandemics don't last, right? So we're going to get past this. This is not like the zombie apocalypse. So I'm not one of those people that, you know, is hiding in my bunker, even though I like my bunker. What kind of bunker you got? I got a good bunker. I bet you do.

But you have a real one, right? I do. I do. One that screws like a fucking submarine. A little periscope that comes up, looks around the compound. It looks like a fucking submarine. A little periscope that comes up, looks around the compound. It looks like a gopher. Yeah, we use it for a variety of reasons. But I'm worried because it's serious, and of course it's tragic to lose anybody,

and we've lost over 150,000 people. But you've also got to keep this in context, right? I mean, we've had pandemics before. Pandemic just means it crossed international boundaries. So there's an element here. Two things can be true. You can believe the science, which of course you should do. You should pay attention to statistics and data and do the best things you can do. But you can also look at it and go, we're kind of fucked because part of this problem is the coverage of it because of political reasons. Not to jump right into the political thing, but, you know, I can't help but think that we wouldn't have quite as much confusion and we wouldn't have quite as much, you know, the angst that people are feeling. you know, the angst that people are feeling. If it weren't for sort of the visceral hatred that exists out there on some sectors for the president. And again, I don't have a dog in the

hunt, but I have a feeling like the tone of coverage will change in November if Biden wins. And science doesn't change, right? It's still the same fucking virus. But I just have a feeling that we'll see a tone change. Suddenly, it'll be a little bit more about if Biden wins. It'll be more about, yeah, let's look on the bright side. Let's get this coverage sorted out. Let's get the country working. Let's do these things. And, you know, again, you can believe both things.

You can believe that we're fucked because of the politics, and you can also believe the science. Both things. You can believe that we're fucked because of the politics, and you can also believe the science. My friend got tested, turned out positive, and the doctor asked him what his political leanings are. And he said, why? And he said, well, I really believe in hydroxychloroquine, but a lot of people who are Democrats who don't like the president don't want to use it. I'm like, that is hilarious. And he goes, hydroxychloroquine, when used correctly, he said, particularly in the early stages of the virus, seems to be very effective.

Now, there's all these people that are coming out and saying it's not. And there's all these people that are coming out. And I talked to my doctor about it. And I said, well, why do you think that it's because the doctor that I use currently, he recommends it for people that are high risk as a prophylactic. That's the way Trump is supposedly taking it. He's like, it's actually there's a study that shows that it's very effective. A study from Italy that shows it's very effective as a prophylactic. And he says, also

when you get it, you catch the virus and then you get it quickly. So if you can get hydroxychloroquine in you quickly. But you know, look, I'm a moron. I don't know who the fuck to believe. So I read all this shit. I'm like, well, do I believe the doctor? Do I believe all these other doctors

that say it's bullshit? Do I believe that whole team of doctors? By the way, Andrew Schultz has a fucking hilarious video on hydrochloroquine. Like what is it? He did one of those Instagram videos. So go check that out. But it's, it's one of those things where it's like, I wish the president didn't talk about it, because then we would know what the fuck it is. Is it good? Is it bad? I mean, are people really not taking it just because the president is the one who endorsed it?

Like, that is so crazy. Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about that, right? That's so crazy. So it's, yeah, and people don't know, like, to your point, people don't know what to believe, right? And it's one thing if the reporting or the dissemination of information is partisan during normal times. But you're talking about a public health crisis. And you would think we'd set all of that bullshit aside.

I mean if we can't come together as a country during a fucking public health crisis, what hell's wrong but and it's both sides both sides are tossing hand grenades at each other so it's not just one side or the other i'm gonna send jamie this right now because this is from newsweek this is why it's really confusing this is from newsweek and this is from uh a professor of epidemiology from i believe from yeah from, from Yale School of Public Health. And he says the key to defeating COVID-19 already exists. We need to start using it. And he's recommending hydroxychloroquine. Did you get it there?

Yeah. Look at this. Like, this is a fucking real problem. This is a real doctor, a professor of epidemiology. Like, what the fuck? Yeah. I mean, and you see some folks coming out, some doctors coming out and saying, well, it doesn't work in patients. And then it turns out you read further into the story and it doesn't work on patients who are already seriously ill.

Yes. That's what they're saying. Right. And so, but you have to, the problem is nobody makes it past the headlines for the most part, right? Right. And more and more people are getting their bullshit information from Facebook, you know, user groups. And nobody reads down. And, you know, to be fair, media outlets know that.

So they'll bury the contradictory information, you know, in the 20th paragraph or something. Because they know no one's going to venture down there. Everybody looks at the headlines and goes, yeah, see, that convinces me or supports my theory. But, yeah, I look at this and we've been doing everything you can do. We've been wearing masks. I don't see what the bullshit is about the masks. Wear a fucking mask when you're out in public. Why?

Who cares? You get used to it. You know what's better? Bandanas are way better. You can breathe out of them better. Yeah, yeah. Plus, it just looks good. Yeah, you feel like a bandana.

Looks good. Yeah, if you got your horse waiting outside. Do you know that whole video where there's a bunch of doctors that keeps getting removed from YouTube and Facebook? With a bunch of doctors talking about hydroxychloroquine and Z-packs and zinc. Everybody's like, you need to listen to this lady. Then it turns out the lady believes that the cause of impotence is spirits, and she thinks there's alien DNA in vaccines.

Is that what she said? Yeah, it's a little odd. She's completely off the reservation. Oh, you're not supposed to say that, right? I think you're not supposed to say off the reservation. Oh, you're not supposed to say that, right? I think you're not supposed to say off the reservation. Oh, well. It's offensive to Indians. Damn it.

Okay, hold on. Let me make a note of that. That one I didn't have on my list of what's offensive. I was taught by a Native American lady. I'm not supposed to say that one. Oh, she's off the chain. I think you could say that. Off the hook?

It might be offensive to dogs. But off the chain is good, right? It's not crazy. Shit, I need a new crazy term. What's a non-offensive crazy term that's not... Well, I shouldn't say not going to offend anybody because there's no such thing anymore. Ooh, fucking nuts. How about that?

We just go with that. Yeah. She's a doctor. She's a legit doctor, but apparently she is nuts. Yeah. What do you got, Jamie? What did she say? Okay.

Yeah. What do you got, Jamie? What did she say? Okay. Summer reported that a 2015 sermon that laid out a supposed Illuminati plan hatched by a witch to destroy the world using abortion, gay marriage, and children's toys, among other things. Emmanuel claimed that DNA from space aliens is currently being used in medicine. Okay. She also offered prayers through her website to remove generational curses transmitted through placenta. Yeah, yeah.

Seems legit. No, I see where she's coming from. Trump addressed the video. Hold on a second. Saying, I think they're very respected doctors. There was a woman who was spectacular. She was spectacular, placenta. I'd pay money to hear him say placenta.

But he said of hydroxychloroquine, I happen to think it works in early stages. So that's the problem. See, when he says that, and then the lady who believes in witchcraft says that, then maybe it does work, but the problem is a fucking lady who believes in alien DNA and witchcraft

and generational curses transmitted through placenta. I wonder what's children's toys. I mean, I got kids. Now I gotta worry. Which ones would you assume? I'm gonna go with Mr. Potato Head. Yeah. That fuck.

Yeah, I mean, most of my kids, basically, now all we got around the house are Nerf guns, right? And so, like, any time you walk around... Do you remember the Pink Panther where you'd walk around the house and then Kato would, like, leap on him? That's what it's like around my house now. You're going to get popped in the air hole by a Nerf bullet at close range because you never know when they're going to sneak up on you and use these things. And so, but that's about all we got anymore. That and we do have some Legos, so I hope she wasn't talking about Legos. If she's talking about Legos, then we know she's really crazy.

Yeah. But I think to your point again, part of this is it would be nice if the messaging from the White House was better. Let's face it, on a number of things, we wouldn't have quite the chaos that we do right now. Well, he's basically using the same strategy he used to be a famous person. He says wacky shit. He speaks off the cuff. He doesn't care. He doesn't have a filter.

And you can't, you just can't employ. It seemed like you could do that and become president, but you can't do that and be president. Like, people are not willing to, like, let you talk like that while you're the president. You have to know exactly what the fuck you're saying. What do you think is going to happen in November? That's a good question. I'm not, listen, I'm not buying these polls. I'll tell you that.

I don't believe them. Because first of all, who the fuck is answering polls? I've always said that. Well, that's right. The dumbest people in the world are the ones who answer polls. So out of the dumbest people in the world with nothing to do, most of them are picking Biden or more of them are picking Biden. But says who? Says all of the media outlets that want Trump to lose? How do we know? How do

we know if they're being accurate? I mean, look, I believe there is a large group of people that are very uncomfortable with Donald Trump being the president. I absolutely believe that. I believe there is an also large group of people that are very uncomfortable with a man who seems to be mentally compromised winning the election and doing so by hiding. I mean, the guy's never, he was just at another thing the other day and he forgot where he was. Did you see the video? Yeah. Yeah. No, until he comes out with his VP pick, all bets are off as far as I'm concerned on Biden. That VP is going to have a bucket of lube and she's going to dunk it in there and stuff her hand up his ass and she's going to be working him like we can at Bernie's.

There's no way that guy's going to be doing any talking. I don't know if he could do that, I guess physically. You're going to have to. Kamala Harris is a strong woman. I think she could do it. Do you think she's the pick? She could win. She could do it. She would make sense to people because she's a powerful

woman. She's a former district attorney. She's a powerful person. She's got, you know – She's got name recognition. Yes. She's got that. She's got a commanding presence.

Yeah. But, you know, for what it's worth – I mean, A, look, he did something kind of wacky. I understand why he did it because, you know, that's the world we live in. He did something kind of wacky. I understand why he did it because, you know, that's the world we live in. But he's backed himself in the corner and said, okay, I'm going with gender and demographics rather than, you know, identifying the most qualified person. So, okay, fine. That's what it is.

Very strange thing to do, though. Yeah, it is. But, you know, the Susan Rice, I will put out a – I would be much more comfortable with Susan Rice than I would be with Harris, frankly, just given the work that she's done, the things that she's done, right? On National Security Council, she was UN ambassador, she was Assistant Secretary of State, she was, what, National Security Advisor for four years. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up picking her because he worked with her very closely for eight years. And she doesn't have the name recognition. But I don't know that in this election cycle that's as important as it has been in the past. Isn't there some controversy with her regarding Benghazi?

There is. But and rightly so. Right. She went out. The whole story was she went out after, wow, how many years? Man, isn't that incredible? Going on eight years ago, September 11, 2012. So shortly afterwards, she went on TV.

She did a series of interviews right afterwards as sort of the face of the administration talking about this. And she utilized a bunch of talking points that had been prepared by the intel community, right, led at the time by John Brennan and some others. And in that, that's where it famously blamed the video that came out and the protests in Cairo and then, oh, my God, it escalated. You mean that movie? That movie, yeah. What exactly? See, okay, listen.

You used to work for the CIA. Used to? I don't know if you still do. Let's be honest. Well. But used to? We're going to start. I don't know if you ever get out.

But that movie seemed like if there was ever some movie that was made to sort of be used as a cover-up, that movie did not look like a real movie. No. Well, it wasn't really. I mean, it wasn't a cover-up. That movie did not look like a real movie. No. Well, it wasn't really. I mean, it wasn't a James Cameron movie. Explain to people what the fuck we're talking about. It was made by an independent filmmaker, and it was perceived as very anti-Islamic.

But the bottom line was, for Susan Rice, if you're just looking, because you've actually pinpointed the one chink in her armor, right? I can't say that anymore, can I? You can still say chink in your armor, but you have to say it quick. Quick, okay. You have to run right through it. You can't say chink, one, two, three, four, in her armor. It's like you can say pussycat, but you can't say pussy.

You've got to roll right through it. Yes. Yeah, okay, all right. Pussycat. You can't say pussy. You got to roll right through it. Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right. So that's the problem with her is the Benghazi issue. But look, the bottom line is if you don't believe that Joe Biden is likely going to be the president for four years if he gets elected, right? For whatever reason, then the VP pick is incredibly important, more so than we've had in a long time. More so than ever. Yeah, more so than ever. Yeah. And you want this to be a serious-minded individual. If you want to hang that, if you'd rather see him pick somebody like Karen Bass or Tammy Duckworth

or someone, rather than someone who's had the range of experience within government that Susan Rice has had. Again, I'm not shilling for Susan Rice. I'm just saying- But you'd prefer her. I would prefer her just because I respect those areas that she's worked in. I'm more focused on our position overseas. I'm more focused on the foreign policy and that sort of thing. And I realize that she's taken this hit for Benghazi. Of course she is, rightly so. But, you know, this is a game of compromise. Could you explain why she took the hit, though?

So we kind of glossed over it. So there was a movie. Right. This movie was erroneously blamed for being the cause of the attack. It wasn't the real cause of the attack. It was not. What was the real cause of the attack. It wasn't the real cause of the attack. Was not. No. What was the real cause of the attack? Well, the real cause of the attack was we ignored signs of increasing activity in Benghazi at the

consulate that we had there. We ignored, at the time, advice and suggestions that we beef up our security out there. And we allowed for a – we didn't allow for, but we were not prepared for the attack that took place on September 11th in 2012. And immediately afterwards, the line from the administration was, oh, shit, nobody could have seen this coming, right? Because there was a spontaneous protest because of this anti-Islamic movie. It was a hateful video. That's how they referred to it in their talking points, a hateful video. Then they tried to back it up a little bit by going, well, yes, some jihadist elements hijacked that legitimate protest over a hateful video in Benghazi. And who could have seen that coming? Bottom line was they should have seen it coming. So, yes, she should take some flack for that. But I guess my point is we got to compromise at some point.

Again, it's not like I'm still amazed. OK, 2016, we had a choice between Clinton and Trump. 2020, we got a choice between Biden and Trump. What the fuck's happened to our country? 330 plus million people, and this is what we got. But I'm just saying, so you're going to have to set aside some of your concerns and figure out who is going to be best suited. Why didn't they just have Susan Rice run as president? Because, like, she would have a legitimate chance.

Well, again, without the name recognition, right? And there's still a lot of game that gets played, a lot of theater and politics. So, oh, my God, have they ever run for president before? And so that's what Harris has going for. And I'm not saying she's not capable. She's certainly capable. But, again, look, here's the thing. I'm more comfortable with Republican policies related to foreign policy, related to national security concerns, related to the economy to some degree. Republicans aren't fiscally conservative anymore.

I'm small government, but I'm more aligned with that. The fact that I don't like the character or the behavior of Trump, right? I mean, that I disagree with the fact that he gets out there, he doesn't have an edit button. It doesn't mean I don't appreciate the things that the administration does in certain areas, like our China policy or other things. So I think the Democrats make a mistake thinking, okay, well, people don't like Trump, so they're going to vote for this thing over here, right? And if this thing is a hybrid between Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, who, you know, got shafted once again in this, you know, this round of Democratic primaries, and if they tilt hard left, primaries. And if they tilt hard left, it doesn't mean just because you don't like Trump as an individual that suddenly you're okay with hard left policies. But I think the Democrats make

that mistake. They think that that's the solution to Trump. Go as far away from him as possible. Yeah. And then you can't find a center. I think exactly. That's the solution. I think the solution is somewhere in the center. And when you see shit like what's happening in portland and seattle i think people are more aware than ever now that civil unrest is like it's it's very strange it's very strange to watch them try to break into that what was the building in portland they were trying the hatfield courthouse the federal courthouse yeah that was insane. Watching that was insane. I don't understand the motivation. Connecting that to, how do you connect that in Portland, the most liberal city in the country? Arguably, right? Probably the most liberal, the most progressive.

Seattle, Portland. Right there. How do you connect that to Black Lives Matter? I mean, how do you connect that to George Floyd's death? How do you connect that to Black Lives Matter? I mean, how do you connect that to George Floyd's death? How do you connect that to – why? I just don't understand. Why would you try to break into the courthouse? They're trying to recreate what went wrong, what didn't work in Seattle, right? That whole zone, autonomous zone.

That didn't work. I mean, that was nonsense. It was crazy. You made a worse version of America in six blocks. That didn't work. I mean, that was nonsense. It was crazy. You made a worse version of America in six blocks.

It's like one of those little tiny, little, you know, like if you took a glass dome and you put like little animals in there and you let them eat each other alive. I was like, we're going to create utopian glass. Like they made a worse version of the United States. They put up borders immediately. They stopped people from coming in. They had armed guards. They wind up using police ties. They didn't have cops, but they have people that act like cops and beat the fuck out of people for filming.

The whole thing was madness. They had murders. It was crazy. It was quick. I mean, look, Portland, I know Portland extremely well. My parents lived in Portland for a couple of decades. It's a beautiful place. It used to be a hell of a place.

But over the years, and I know Republicans and Democrats who feel the same way who are in Portland and the surrounding area, and they all feel like this place is slowly circling down a toilet because of local and state management. And so what happened in Portland, not really a surprise. You know, it's the same – the people that do this sort of activity, right, that have been referred to as Antifa or anarchists or whatever, the same sort of trustafarian, you know, bottom bottom feeding folks in really any city in the world who engage in a WTO protest because it's cool to get out there and protest. I don't understand the mentality.

But if you try to figure out a motivation for them, you know, you'll lose your mind because they really don't have one. You could take 10 of those people out of Portland who are engaged in sort of the violent activity and ask them, well, why are you doing this? And you'll get 10 different answers. They really don't have. It's not like that. And the sad part about it is they hijacked very legitimate protests over really serious, important questions about how do we improve policing around the country? How do we get to that point? And I'll tell you, the most disappointing part about it is, after the tragedy with George Floyd, if the focus had been on, okay, here's what we have to do. We have to

seriously, not just lip service, we have to improve the policing to solve this particular issue. How do we do that? Well, there's certain logistical things you can do. You can improve your vetting and hiring of police candidates, right, of applicants for the job. You can do that. That's a protocol you can put in place. You can improve the training. That costs money. So defunding the police is kind of fucked. You can improve the training and make it continuous. It's not just a one-time thing. It's a continuous training on how to respond to situations. It's like weapons training. If you don't keep doing it, if you're not always practicing, it just doesn't work, right? And then what can you do do you can also improve disciplinary action right those

are those are concrete things that you can do they're not easy right but it's it's not as heavy a lift as deciding in the aftermath of the george floyd tragedy that what we're really going to do is we're going to remove racism from the hearts and minds of people hey this is not going to happen right i'd like to think it would in theory theory, hey, great, get rid of racism. But what this should have been was a protest about doing things that actually will impact meaningfully people's lives. And it veered off because people wanted to feel self-righteous. It veered off into, well, you have to prove how pure you are. You have to remove racism, right? Now, I know black people that object to white people. I know white people that object to people not of their race. I know Hispanics that don't like people of non-Hispanics. Racism exists, sad to say, right? In all mankind, it's a human element of nature.

Would you rather spin your wheels and act self-righteous and try to say, well, we're going to have this exercise where we remove racism from mankind? Or would you rather say in the aftermath of this, let's do the things that can actually make a difference. And that's what we didn't do. And then legitimate protests over the anger and frustration about all this got further hijacked by, again, Antifa, anarchists, whatever you want to call it. I think that's a big part of the problem. You know, Ben Shapiro and I had this conversation about the protests and this term where they

are large, mostly peaceful protests. And he had a hilarious point. He said, O.J. Simpson had a mostly peaceful night the night he killed his wife. It was only three minutes of the entire day that wasn't peaceful. Like, that is a fucking great point. Yeah. But it is true in the protest that most of those people want the world to be a better place.

Right. The problem is the people that hijacked that and are trying to light the federal buildings on fire and smash monuments, you know, particularly, I mean, like, they're going after Abraham Lincoln. I mean, Jesus Christ. Right, right. He's the guy that freed the fucking slaves. Like, what are we doing? Are we going to erase history?

Yeah. I would have loved if Abraham Lincoln could have had a time machine and gone to 2020 and understood what we know now about systemic racism. However, he lived in the 1700s when he wrote with a fucking feather. Okay? Give the guy a break. The world was a weird place back then. Well, and that's part of it, is trying to judge people of the past by current morals or current understanding, current thinking, is pretty absurd, right?

It doesn't justify past bad actions, but you know what? This idea, yeah, that you're going to erase history or remove history or not learn from it going forward, it discredits the ability of people to have rational thought, right? To understand and look at a context, look at something in context and say, okay, nowadays that's unacceptable. But okay, I get why these things occurred. It's tragic or it's regrettable, whatever. But I mean, look, in the UK, they were attacking the statue of Churchill. Yeah.

I mean, holy fuck. It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, I think I said, did I just say Lincoln 1700s? I meant 1800. Well, it was 1865, right? Yeah. But either way, the idea that this guy is supposed to be a perfect person back then,

look, history is supposed to be about the things that happened, the people that made a difference, and how we got to where we are today. And Lincoln is a big part. The 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation, that's a big part of how we are who we are today. Proclamation, that's a big part of how we are who we are today. Look, it's horrible that the early settlers brought over slaves from Africa. It's horrible that slaves still exist today. All these things are horrible.

They're horrible. But taking down statues of people that made a difference and made change. Look, if you want to take down statues of Confederate generals and stuff like that, there's a good argument there. It's a good argument that maybe we shouldn't have those or maybe we should have them somewhere. You know, like the same place we have a statue of Genghis Khan. Right. Like maybe they shouldn't be, you know what I'm saying? Is there a statue of Genghis Khan? I'm sure there is. Yeah, somewhere. Somewhere in Mongolia.

There's got to be, right? Genghis Khan killed 10% of the fucking population while he was alive. But it doesn't mean there shouldn't be some recognition of this historical figure when you're talking about 2020. Well, I think, interestingly, and this doesn't, again, you know, you can, the problem is nowadays, right? You've got sort of the righteous mob on the left and the righteous mob on the right. And the problem people make is they try to placate one side or the other thinking somehow they're always going to be pure enough. You're never pure enough for the self-righteous mob, no matter where they are on the spectrum. Right. They're always finding a new benchmark. There's always that opportunity.

But a lot of the Confederate statues out there were put up in an effort to, and this sounds weird, but in an effort to try to unify the country again, right? In the aftermath of the Civil War, and there was this element of saying, let's try to – and so you think, okay, that's a – You know, a lot of them were put up actually during the Civil Rights Movement. Right, right. They were put up when they were thinking that people were getting too highfalutin and they wanted to celebrate. And that's absolutely true. Those are the really cheap ones too.

It's true. They're really shittily made because they made them real quick. But I mean – so the point being is I agree. If you want to take those down, well, sure, yeah. I mean, why would you? You have a statue of some Confederate leader. Fine, take it out. Take it off the streets.

That makes – I get that, right? And if that helps people feel terrific, put it in a museum or whatever you're going to do with it. But George Washington? George Washington, yeah, I know, exactly. Abraham Lincoln? It's funny. When they were taking down Confederate statues, Trump once said, what's next? You're going to take down George Washington? George Washington, yeah, I know, exactly. Abraham Lincoln? It's funny. When they were taking down Confederate statues, Trump once said, what's next? You're going to take down George Washington?

And everyone was laughing, like they're not going to do that. But yet they are going to do that now. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? And two things, again, as always, can be true at the same time. Somebody could be, you know, doing some things you disagree with vehemently. They could have also done something that helped move the country forward.

Did something that had extreme positive effects. Well, that's the Genghis Khan argument, you know. He opened up trade with China in the process of killing 10 million people. He opened up trade with the East. Was he a free trader? I didn't know that. Oh, yeah, sure. He's a free trade guy.

Free trade slash raper. He was our first NAFTA. Murderer. He killed so many people, they changed the carbon footprint of the earth. Yeah. The New York Times had this crazy article about it. He literally killed 10% of the people on earth. He was an angry man.

Look, it's awful that we have history that's filled with terrible acts and deeds. acts and deeds. But I don't think that removing statues of people who tried to make a difference, you know, within the context of their time, you know, with Lincoln 1865, with George Washington 1700s. I mean, you're talking about people that when they were doing this, they were the best example of humanity that you could find. They were the best example of what we had. I mean, when George Washington was the first president of the United States, I mean, you want to talk about a fucking radical undertaking, this crazy experiment in self-government while they escaped from the grasp of Europe. I mean, it's really nuts.

Yeah. And again, I think there's an element here that we missed the boat maybe again, right? We've gone through these. It's not like we haven't had protests before, Black Lives Matter protests and over the same issues of police brutality and all that. But it all falls into that same bucket from my perspective that we don't do the hard things, right? The hard things would have been to say from a local, state, and federal position, let's enact these different protocols that can improve policing. Let's do those things that we need to do. That's a heavy lift in a way. The easier things are, let's tear down a statue, right? Or find a way to make us feel better about ourselves

without necessarily having to. And it's like this shell game, I think, that the politicians sometimes play. And you saw it in Portland where, you know, okay, let's just placate this for a while. It'll make everybody feel better and then the protests will die down. Well, Seattle's the best example, right? When the mayor came out and said, she called it, maybe it's the summer of love. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 67, the summer of love. yeah yeah 67 the summer of love have they totally squashed that now is that that whole place brought back to the original business

owners uh i you know i i don't know is the answer to that question i i do know that they've you know they've been looking at how do we do um community-based policing how do we defund the police and yet still have something that resembles a response to the citizens need for security? I don't know what any of all that dribble means. If you want to improve the policing, it's an investment, right? It's not defunding. But again, defunding and saying that and saying that's what I'm for. It's an easy fucking way, right, to feel good and to placate people. And then you don't do shit. And then five years from now, we have another incident because you didn't actually do the things that make policing better.

Well, you get where you got in New York City. It gets even worse for the citizens because now the police don't have any faith at all in the government. They're not respected. They're not appreciated. And you've seen this giant uptick in crime because their presence isn't there anymore. Yeah. I mean, it's really crazy, man. It's like a movie.

I've never thought if you went back to March when we shut down, I never thought I would be sitting here with you at the end of early August here. And we would be talking about this. I would have never thought that this would have taken place, that we would have legitimate civil unrest in this country, people getting shot in the streets and protests. You know, I know that there's a real concern in a lot of these cities that someone's going to try to recreate what happened in Seattle, recreate what happened in Portland, and they're worried about it. The thing about it is it seems so organized. It really does.

It doesn't seem that haphazard. It seems organized. How do these things get started? How do you get something as big as these Portland riots? Well, it's a really good question. And sometimes what you see is what appears to be a grassroots movement or grassroots activity happening just kind of swelling up from from a couple of neighborhoods yes there was an element of that but you also see like if you're talking about um you know um talking about activist environmental groups as an example you'll also see some commonality between some of these groups. You'll see commonality in communications advice, in financing, in legal assistance and support from national groups, right? And yet,

it's in their agenda. It's to their advantage to make it appear as if it's a grassroots movement. So that all stays in the background. I'd argue that, you know, yes, some of this, and again, not to disappear down some rabbit hole where it's a George Soros-funded thing. That's where I was going. Yeah, but I mean, you know, are there some elements that help with communication support or transportation assistance or legal advice or whatever it may be? Absolutely. You know, advice or whatever it may be. Absolutely. Very rarely is there an actual genuine organic grassroots movement that has no outside organizational support. That's this spontaneous and this big. Yeah. But again, look, I-

We're putting our tinfoil hats on. But if anybody can put that on, you can put them on. I left mine out in the car, but I'll go get it. You've been on the inside, you know, working for the CIA. You know how it works. Well, we very rarely organized things like this. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that you know that you guys did it. I'm saying you understand how these people operate.

Right, right. In a way that someone like me doesn't. And also, again, look, we've talked about this in the past. I'm not necessarily a conspiracy theorist. But sometimes, yeah, sometimes you've got to follow the threads that you can pull on. And sometimes it takes you down an interesting path and you think, okay, maybe there is something to this. I wouldn't say you're a conspiracy theorist, but I would say you're open to the possibility of conspiracy. Like when you and I talked about the Martin Luther King assassination and you took a big pause and you said, that one does not make

sense. No, I agree. I still feel that way. Yeah. That one is filled with holes. And I agree as well. I looked into it much more after you and I talked. And it's, yeah. That's very strange. And the way that you sometimes can get actually further into it without kind of disappearing down some of these peripheral side stories and issues is money, right? Look for funding, look for issues of where did money go? Because that sometimes will take you down a more legitimate path, right? A lot of times investigations get built on very shaky ground because you start with a theory or whatever. And you're never starting on firm ground. Sometimes when you follow the money, it keeps you a little more grounded. Right.

Yeah. Follow the money. Follow the money. Well, that's the thing with this. It's like, where is the money coming from? Like, where is the money coming from that organizes and helps these people get out of jail and all that jazz? Well, and there's certain things that...

Let's go back to Portland for a minute. Okay. minute. One of the problems is I think the media, journalism in general, you know, isn't anywhere near as curious or concerned with investigation as it used to be, right? It's easier now to just say, this is where I'm at. I'm subjective. Of course, I'm subjective, you know, and so here I go. Here's my, here's my, there's the idea of objectivity in journalism is pretty much out the window. With Portland, early on, for instance, they published mugshots and names of, I think there were maybe a dozen of the individuals who were arrested for violent activity, right? Violent activity. Now, a curious

journalist, you would have thought, would have said, let's do some research. Let's look at all these people and let's look at their backgrounds. You know, it's already public information. They've already posted it. Let's dig into this and find out who are these people? Are there any linkages or any commonalities between all these individuals? Can we find something that's interesting there? Maybe we won't, but let's do some investigation, right? You'd like to think that's what journalism used to be, but it doesn't seem like it is anymore. But that doesn't happen. I think there's a problem. And here's one of the problems. Most journalists are left-wing. There's a giant number. I don't know what the percentage of it is, but if you want to go with whether it's Newsweek or CNN

or the New York Times or Washington Post or many, many, many, many of these papers and organizations lean left, there's a dirty secret. The dirty secret is Antifa acts as the thug enforcers of the left. The people that do things like this, whether you approve of violence or disapprove of violence, what they're doing is they act as the people doing the dirty work that many people on the left think has to be done in order to enact real change. Now, if you had the

same thing in the right, imagine, my friend Tim Dillon said this, imagine if the Proud Boys were lighting Portland on fire. Can you imagine if we had a Democratic president and the Proud Boys were trying to break into the courthouse and light Portland on fire? People would go fucking crazy. It would be terrifying if it was a different political ideology but the same exact actions. different political ideology, but the same exact actions. So because these actions are done with the correct political ideology, you know, under the guise of, you know, racial justice, under the guise of reforming our government, so then everybody's okay with people literally burning books. They're throwing books on a pile.

Yeah. That's a Bible. So go ahead. You can do that. It's fucking crazy. They're burning Bibles. What does the Bible have to do with it?

The Bible gives a lot of people comfort whether you believe in it or not. You're throwing stacks of Bibles and then you're lighting them on fire

in front of a courthouse? What if they'd been throwing the Quran? Right. Good. Happy. Very good example. Very good example.

We'd all be losing our minds. But Pelosi, you know, Nancy Pelosi came out and said, well, people are going to do

what they're going to do. Really, Nancy? Really But Pelosi, you know, Nancy Pelosi came out and said, well, people are going to do what they're going to do. Really, Nancy? Really? Well, she's an odd duck, that lady. She's decided to call it Trump's virus now. Yeah. She's obviously fucking with him, which part of it I appreciate. It's kind of adorable.

And Trump came out when Herman Cain passed away and he came out and said, well, he's very sad he passed away from the China virus. He just keeps doing it because he knows he does this and he knows he can hijack a news cycle. And he came out with this idea of the election and possibly a delay because the post office, he knows what he's doing and everybody rises to the bait. He knows there's no way in hell they're going to delay the election. Not going to happen. Now, ideally, he wouldn't have thrown that out there just to get a rise and just to steal the election or the news cycle. But he does it.

Why do you think he said that? Well, I think he was trying to – A, I think because, what do I know? But it almost seems like he just enjoys, right? Fucking with people. Fucking with people. Yeah. And I think he knows what he's going to get, which is, again, what he got, which is a couple of days of, oh my God, hand-wringing, and I told you he's a dictator, and of course he's going to. And then my favorite narrative of the left is, well, he's not going to leave. If he loses in November, he's not going to leave. That's my absolute favorite narrative from the left so far. Yeah, I keep hearing that, but I've seen no evidence that that's true.

Well, if you repeat something often enough, then it gets to be true. It was like when we had the chemical weapons issue in Iraq, remember? We had one source, but if you report that, it gets in the reporting channels, and then somebody else mentions it or refers to it, and then you've got two mentions. And pretty soon people forget it only came from one source of information. Elon Musk, please hurry up with your neural links so we can read each other's minds and people can't lie anymore. It's so important. Wouldn't that be nice?

It's so important. He's ready to go, man. I'm telling you. We are two or three years away from being able to read each other's minds. I tell you what, that would be brilliant because I used to say that at the agency, right? We used to get boxed fairly regularly or polygraphed very regularly. And I hated the polygraph, man. My polygraph foul was huge because I'm one of those—I'm kind of a—I don't want to say I'm a Puritan,

but I'm one of those Quaker people who feels guilty about everything, right? I feel like if I took a pencil when I was a three-year-old, you know, my God, I've got to confess it, right? So I had a hell of a time during polygraphs, right? And then I'd get irritated with the examiners, right? One time I had one of the examiners say, you seem to know a lot of foreign people. And I lost my mind, right? And so I literally went after her and said, you know what job I do? Do you know what my fucking job is?

And I just snapped, right? Protect fucks like you. Yeah. So they're like, what do you mean I seem to know a lot of foreign people? And so, but I used to say all the time,

I said, man, if they could just like make a colander that would come down on your head and read your thoughts, I would be happier than a pig in shit because then I could have been out of this thing in five minutes. Look, I'm happy to admit my faults.

I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I'll tell you exactly what's on my mind. It's not all pretty. But I'll let you in. I'm a good person, but I have dark thoughts sometimes. Go ahead, take a look. But I'll do that if you'll do that. I don't want any lies.

The lies are the problem. The distortions are the truth. Did you imagine the implosion of media if we had mind reading and we find out exactly what's going on in the New York Times, exactly what's going on in the Washington Post, exactly what's going on? Whenever you see questionable stories, you're like, what the fuck is this? Is this true? Is this bullshit? Is this propaganda?

Who's telling them to write this? Why are they writing like this? What's the narrative behind this? Well, they get away with it because it got in curious public, right? I would argue in part, right? I think they're overwhelmed. Well, yeah. Overwhelmed by information.

I don't know if it's a curious thing. It's a matter. I think that's one of the things we're dealing with now with all this activity. People have more free time. They don't have obligations because they can't work. Yeah. Because so many folks are fucked and they're out of work, that makes people more apt to be activists, more apt to get out there in the streets, and it creates actually more

chaos because you're having more people involved in these things and they really don't have anything else to do with their time. When you're out there, you're screaming and you're fucking holding arms and you're saying, you know, we will overcome. You really think like you are doing something. I mean, it really does. I'm sure it feels good. No, a lot of this is about, you know, feeling like, I mean, you're making a difference, right?

Even if you aren't. I don't know whether we've talked about this before, but I think one of the – you're absolutely right. They're overwhelmed with information because we have so many more outlets, right? There's so many outlets for gathering information. Most people are reading social media all day, but very little else that's real. What drives me crazy is, I mean, you just do it. You can spend five minutes doing it, right? Just go while you're walking around.

Maybe not now because everybody's hiding in their hidey hole, but just the constant with the phone. If people have five seconds of free time on their hands, they don't know what to do. So they get their phone and say, okay, well, you know, if nothing else, at least I look like everybody else staring at my phone. But I think one of the interesting things is with news dissemination is you go back to, you know, the 50s, the 60s, 70s. We had a shared moment, right, every day, for the most part, right? Everybody would sit down at whatever, 5 o'clock or 11 o'clock across the country, and you'd watch the news on one of three, basically three outlets, ABC, NBC, or CBS. And so for that moment, if you think about it, the vast majority of people who were paying attention to news were

getting their news delivered from the same one of three sources. There was a commonality there. And they would process it differently based on their own experiences and beliefs. But at least there was that point of commonality. And that disappeared. That doesn't happen anymore. Right. And I don't know where I'm going with that. I'm just banging on

about it, but I find it interesting. There's no objective news source anymore. That's a problem as well. There's a left news source and a right news source. There's no straight up Walter Cronkite person that's given us the facts. Well, Walter had his own beliefs too.

Maybe it's a bad example. No, no, no. But it's as close as you're going to get to a good example, right? You just didn't know it. It wasn't in your face. I would like to see someone today that tells you the real facts. Well, I've said this before. It's a cash-heavy business. If you had the capital to set up an outlet that simply told you what the fuck happened that day, right?

And here's your news. I'm not going to have any opinion hours. I'm not going to have any commentary. We're not going to have a panel discuss it and tell us what it might mean. We're just going to take the top events of the day and maybe two or three times a day, here's your news, right? And we're going to take the time to research. And that was the other thing about having a newscast at five and a newscast at 11. You had all day long as a media business

to check your facts, to get it right. And you weren't playing beat the clock with every MOOC with a smartphone, right? Who now thinks they're a blogger or a vlogger or whatever. So yeah, but I think that would be, I think it would actually be very successful because I think people do want – they want the ability or the comfort of thinking, yeah, maybe this is legitimate. Yeah. They want someone who's pure that way. I think the only people that are doing it like that are independents. There's a few of them out there. There's a few of them that are just calling it that are independents. There's a few of them out there. There's a few of them that are just telling, they're calling it like they see it. If you want political information,

my sources are Kyle Kalinske, Jimmy Dore, and The Hill. Those are the ones that I go to because they'll call out people on both sides and they show the problems. The Hill's a particularly good show because you have Crystal who's on the left and Sagar who's on the right, and they're honest and they're intelligent and they talk about things and they disagree. But they're also friends and they've been on the podcast together. But they'll tell you, here's the issues and this is why this is wrong and this is why this is corrupt and here's the influences. And this is where you're being misled. But you could deliver the news.

Think about it. Even on the political side, even reporting on Capitol Hill, you can deliver the news. You can say, you know, during the course of today, this is what happened. Yes. Right? Now, it's not going to blow anybody's skirt up because it's not exciting and it's not titillating and it's not, you know, it doesn't fire you up to hate the other side. But you could do it. It's just, you know, again, it's a talk about setting up, you know, field offices and that's an expensive business.

And to do it and to be completely unbiased. Yeah. You're going to have a lot of people working for you. Like, good luck keeping them all unbiased, especially today. She's getting her graduate degree. You're going to get kids that have gone through this system that we're trying to rectify. The university system today is filled with woke politics. They're indoctrinating kids. This idea in their head before their frontal lobe is even fully formed of what is good and what is bad and what is right and what is wrong and what you're supposed to do.

A lot of it is, it's very liberal. She used to talk about that. She said she rarely had a debate. She rarely had a moment where she would speak up in class and take the opposite point because there's no upside to it. I want to get good grades. And when people think you're a racist and then the professor will hate you. Right. And that was it. And that was a big part of it. She said, look, my goal here was to get good grades. And it was clear that taking the opposite position from the professor or the teaching assistant wasn't going to get me where I wanted to be. No, you're fucked. And people adapt too. That's the other thing about human beings.

When you're confronted by a large majority of people that think one way, you will change and amend your thinking to fit in. We don't like to be on the outside. We don't like to be, you know, there's a few very strong-minded rebels out there in the world, but most people are conformists. Most people just, they think they're rebellious, but they're rebellious along with a group of other people that think almost the exact same way, and those are the people they hang out with. Right. I got on the tube one time when I was living in London a few years back, and it was during, there was, it wasn't the mullet craze. It was the goatee craze, right? Every dude was wearing a goatee.

So I came back from, I was, I forget where I was working overseas, but while I was out there, before I went back to London, I thought, ah, fuck it, I'll grow a goatee. That seems to be the thing to do. So I grew a goatee, right? I get back to London and it literally was like the next day I was back there. I get on the tube and I walk into the car. I'm standing there and I look down the car and every dude in that car had a goatee and I thought holy fuck so I went home in shape

but I guess my point is you're right you want to be I'm a rebel but I'm only going to be a rebel with a bunch of other people you're typically unique yeah exactly but it's part of being a human being and I think we need to recognize that

we need to understand that this plays a large part in your belief system. It's not necessarily that you're right or that you're wrong. And be very, very wary of people who say they are right. I am right because we're right. We know because we're right and they're wrong. Well, it's a cancel culture. It's a cancel culture, too, is a big part of this. It's part of being a fool.

Yeah. Yeah. There's certain things you could be right about. You could be right about mathematics. You could be right about chemicals. And you could be right about science. You could be right about things. But when it comes to political things and sociological things, when it comes to matters of culture, there's opinions.

And sometimes opinions vary. And there's opinions. You know, and sometimes, you know, opinions vary. And there's a spectrum along with it. And there's some people that hold that opinion that are really fucking crazy. And there's other people that are very reasonable that hold a similar opinion. But they have a justification for it. And they have a rationalization for it. And they have thought behind it. And this is, you know, one of the beautiful things about doing a podcast like this is

when we're talking about, like, phones, like, leaving your like leaving your phone for three hours i don't touch that goddamn thing and i get to have a one-on-one conversation with someone where we're locked in with headsets where your voice is as loud as my voice and it's in my head we're looking at each other across the table it's a very unusual thing and it's been a massive education for me yeah massive to be able to talk to people like you and all the interesting and intelligent people that I get to talk to. It's changed who I am as a human being in a big way. I talk to you and then I talk to the folks that are interesting and intelligent.

Interesting and intelligent? Come on, man. I think the cancel culture thing and this idea that people want to think in absolutes. thing and this idea that people want to think in absolutes. Again, I go back to the same point all the time, which is like, be careful, everybody. Just be careful because you're never going to be pure enough. And then you start seeing everybody getting devoured. Matt Taibbi had a good example about that when he was talking about Alex Jones getting kicked off of Twitter.

And he's like, whether you agree with Alex Jones or not agree with Alex Jones, this is a bad thing. He's like, because it's not going to stop. He goes, when you tell a guy, you're not allowed to have those opinions and those thoughts, and we're going to remove you from the discourse. You can no longer participate in communication. You set a precedent and that you're going to have a slippery slope. And then it's going to come for you because the standards are going to change. And you're seeing that you're seeing that with with Liberals you're seeing that with people who are liberal But don't toe the line about maybe specific gender issues or trans issues or or whatever it is very wise from the New York Times

I mean right there is my friend. She's about as liberal as you can get perfect example. Yeah. Yeah, I mean she's a feminist She's a Jewish woman. She's super smart and intelligent and educated but she's also independent enough to understand like that there's a fucking cult going on this woke cult and people are going to wake up to it you know my friend bridget feticy she found a journal that she wrote when she was 24 and she's you know she's in her 40s now she's laughing i hope she's in her 40s i didn't i don't feel she's not not her 40s. I didn't... I don't feel... She's not being... 30s? No. She's wise. Late 20s? Late 20s? She's 13 years old. She's wise beyond her years. But she's a very...

She's 39. Google her. 37? Whatever. She's awesome. I love her. She doesn't look a day over 41. But she read something that she wrote when she was 24. And she's like, Jesus Christ, I read it. She's like, I must have been. She goes, I was like AOC back then.

She goes, I was so crazy. It was embarrassing to read. And now having more life experience and encountering more hypocrisy and craziness in people, now she has a more nuanced and balanced perspective. How old is she? She's 41. She's 41. See, I was close.

Yeah, look at that. Come on, bro. What did I say? 40s. So they're 40s. I was? I was right. You son of a bitch. That's in the 40s. I felt bad that I aged my friend. But there's a lot of people like that. Look, man, when I was in my early

20s, I was probably well, I'm pretty liberal now, but I was probably even more liberal back then. I just, I think that there's a certain amount that I really like about Republicans. The value of hard work and discipline, family values, all those things, particularly as of become a father and become someone who makes money and understands where taxes go and understands fiscal waste. I'm a fiscally conservative person, but I'm a socially very liberal person. And I find myself like a man without an island.

No, I agree with you. Again, I'm small government. I think everybody just got to stay out of everybody's kitchen. I don't understand the interest in social issues. I mean, people, as long as you don't hurt anybody else, I don't give a fuck. If that makes you happy, Godspeed. But can I say Godspeed anymore? I think you can still say that.

Okay. All right. But I got to say it together. I can't say just God. Does God have a gender? I don't know if anybody knows. Should we say Yahweh? Yahweh.

Yahweh has no gender. Yahweh sounds like a chain of gas stations on the highway. Yeah, with a convenience store attached to it with Slurpees and shit. Oh, I used to love Slurpees. Cola. Cola Slurpees. They're delicious. I like that blue one.

Whatever the fuck that non-natural drink is. What do they even call that? I drove up to the boys' finished swim team the other day, and I had all three of them, Scooter and Sluggo and Muggsy in the car, and I said, hey, let's stop. You guys are hungry. Of course, because they're young, they're like, yeah, let's go to McDonald's. So I asked Muggsy, the youngest, I said, what do you want?

He says, nuggets and that blue thing. So I got up to the window. He says, can we help you? And I said, yeah, I'll take 10-piece nuggets and that that blue thing. So I got up to the window. I said, can we help you? And I said, yeah, I'll take 10-piece nuggets and that medium blue thing. I had no idea what it was. It's raspberry flavor, blue raspberry. Blue is raspberry? Yeah, it's like slushy something.

But raspberries aren't blue. Not that I know of. But once you finish manipulating them in the DNA category. Who knows? Genetically modified raspberries. But now I'm thinking about Slurpees. It's a delicious beverage. I wish it wasn't so fucking terrible for you, and I wish it didn't give you brain freezes,

because I'm greedy. When I get a good Slurpee, I hammer that sucker. And then I go, oh, the brain freeze. They say you're supposed to rub your tongue on the roof of your mouth to stop the brain freeze. And you do that also to stop sneezing. Oh. Which now is like the, you know, somebody sent me that. I'm sure, I don't know who even came up with this, but they said that sneezing in public is now the equivalent of shitting your pants in public. Oh, it kind of is, right?

Because everybody's so freaked out about the pandemic. Coughing is the worst. Yeah, coughing, yeah. My dog does a reverse sneeze. I was worried that he was, like, choking. And then the vet says, no, that's like a reverse sneeze. First of all, one of my guys that works here told me that. And then I talked to the vet about it.

He's like, yeah, when a dog goes, it seemed like he was choking, but it's like a reverse sneeze. So I talked to him. I'm like, hey, man, you okay? And he's wagging his tail. I'm like, he seems all right. Like, do I take him to a vet? What the fuck is that noise? I just got another dog. Got a

golden doodle. Oh. Yeah, because we just decided, look, because we've always had big dogs. And I thought, well, let's get another dog. What the hell? So it's part poodle, part golden retriever? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And great personality. She's dumb as a brick,

but big. She's going to be a big, probably about 100 pounds. Jesus, that's a big one. Big golden doodle. Massive paws. It's already bigger than we ever thought she'd get. Why is that so big? I don't know. I thought you didn't want a big dog. Well, no, we wanted another big dog.

The other one we've got now is Hendrix. He's also an idiot. I should have just named him idiot, but he's the greatest dog I've ever had. What is he? He's an English golden retriever. Great. Oh, my God. I love golden retrievers, man.

Marshall's the first golden retriever I've ever had. Yeah, he's beautiful. You had him here the last time I was here. Beautiful dog. I can't get over how much I love that dog. Yeah. They look at you with like everything they got. Yeah.

They just stare at you and they're just like, whatever. When I wake up in the morning, he waits for me outside the bedroom door. And then we have this little like routine. I go, good morning, sir. Good morning. And he starts going, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. He picks a toy up. He has to have a toy in his mouth for whatever.

You know, Goldens always want to have something to show you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's got like, he goes and gets, he has a box of toys. He's so spoiled. He's got like a box of stuffed animals. He runs over, grabs a toy, and comes over. Ooh, ooh, ooh. And I go, good morning, sir.

Good morning. And then, you know, usually we go work out together. Yeah, yeah. Ours will spend all day out in the compound trying to catch squirrels. He's fascinated with squirrels, like a lot of dogs are, but he's never caught one, but he's convinced. And that's the great thing about retrievers. They're always optimistic.

Marshall's caught one, and it got pulled down from Instagram. See, only picture, Marshall's picture with him and a squirrel in his mouth was apparently offensive. It was pulled from Instagram. Good God. I think it's still on my page. Shh, I shouldn't have said that. They'll find me.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So it got pulled down because someone said, oh my God, how could that dog have a squirrel in its mouth? Yes. Killed a squirrel. I don't know. That's what dogs do.

That's what cats do. Well, what was going on was we had chickens and the squirrels were stealing the chicken's food. Okay, yeah. And Marshall would have loved to have killed the chicken, but we would not allow that. So he found it amusing that squirrels were on the menu.

That's fantastic. I had a terrier one time that would great, Jack Russell Terrier, and she and this cat we had, which was an outside cat, had a deal. The cat would catch chipmunks, bring the chipmunks still living to the Jack Russell.

The Jack Russell would take the chipmunks, shake it to death, and then drop it and leave it for the cat. And then the cat would bring the remainders, the entrails eventually, to the front door and leave it kind of like laid out there like an offering to us. Isn't that strange that cats do that? It's such a weird thing. It's weird, but it's the way of the world. Their relationship to the cats, to people, is so bizarre because they're basically, they just accept the fact that you're big enough that they can't eat you. Yeah. But everything smaller than them is dead.

It's fair game. I had a bit about it. You cannot have a pet cat and a pet gerbil in the room together at the same time. There's no agreements. You can have a dog that's a good dog, and you can have a pet ger and a pet gerbil in the room together at the same time. Like, there's no agreements. Like, you could have a dog that's a good dog, and you could have a pet gerbil, and the dog's like, that's a fucking rat. You're like, no, no, no, that's Mr. Fluffy. Mr. Fluffy's our friend.

And the dog would be like, oh, okay, okay, okay. The dog just said, no, that's a fucking rat, man. Are you sure? That's a rat. You're like, no, no, no, that's not a rat. That's a gerbil. He's our friend. And the dog, if it's a good dog cat there's no rules like that with cats cats like

you can go fuck yourself the moment you let that cat go he's gonna kill that gerbil it's a hundred percent of the time it's true it's absolutely true they make that sound you know the cats exactly yeah their mouth starts moving really fast they just know oh my god they're so focused on killing something they are murderersers. They kill billions and billions of birds and mammals every year. House cats do. And when people find out that number, scientists found out that number, they were stunned. It wasn't that long ago.

It was maybe a decade ago. They did an account of how many cats kill animals and what the number of animals were. It's stunning. Billions a year in this country. You've got to wonder, like, what would the ecosystem look like if it wasn't for cats? We've got a hybrid house outdoor cat now that roams around the neighborhood and then comes

back occasionally when he wants to hang out. And yeah, it's the same thing, right? Well, at least he's out in the fucking chain. He's in the food chain. Right. If your cat is out there, he's risking his own ass chain he's in the food chain right if your cat is out there he's risking his own ass too there's owls and hawks yeah yeah they will take your fucking cat out especially where we are man i tell you i saw it wasn't that long ago driving

uh down by the boise river saw this hawk come down just bam hit the water came up with a nice trout oh god it's so wow hawk took a trout out. Right out of the river. I know eagles do it. Incredible, yeah. I didn't know hawks do it. No, they can. It's fascinating.

Again, you know what? I've been advised before I came out here. Not to talk well about boys. Not to talk well about boys. In fact, I had people sending me notes saying, just tell Joe we're full up. The women are ugly. It's just like all this bullshit.

Just say, shut up about Idaho. Well, you remember when I did that show down there? Yeah. I was saying to myself, I even said to the audience, I said, I get it. You guys are going to keep this a fucking secret. Yeah, yeah. Boy, I'm going to say it one last time.

This is it, last time. Last time. It's a great fucking place. It's a great fucking place. You've got to come back out and do another show. I mean, whenever that happens. When people are great fucking place. It's a great fucking place. You got to come back out. Don't know the show. I mean, whenever that happens. When people are allowed to travel. Yeah.

Whenever you're allowed. I did shows in Houston about a month ago, and I felt real scared. Afterwards, I was like, what am I going to get other people sick just so I could tell jokes? It's going to be tough to read the crowd when everybody's wearing a mask, too. A lot of people weren't. Yeah. A lot of people had them hanging down as a chin strap.

Yeah. I like that. A chin strap or an earring. And I think, what the fuck? Pretending. Yeah, yeah. Just pretending they're doing something good. See, I got my mask on here.

No, I, I don't know. We dodged the bullet. I did a whole weekend at the Houston Improv. It was an awesome time. Hung out with Dan Crenshaw and Willie D from the Ghetto Boys. Had a good time. It was a lot of fun. But after it was over, I was like, this is not worth the risk.

I don't want to infect anybody that I know and love, and I don't want the crowd to infect people. And even though the health department cleared it and they did temperature checks and they social distanced it, it's not – you can catch it. It's too goddamn contagious. Well, that's just it. And, you know, and again, you can believe the science and, you know, but at the same time disagree with kind of the coverage and think, you know what? If we just – again, going back to the whole idea of objective news, it would be interesting to see what the coverage would be like if we had objectivity in journalism. And – but it's not going to happen, so I'm just talking out my ass. It's not going to happen.

I think there's an opening for it. And I think these independent people, like I was talking about, like Kyle Kalinske and Jimmy Dore and The Hill, and these people that are doing it with politics, I think they've opened up the possibility that someone could do it with just general news. Politics is a very attractive way for someone to get into the game because it's very click-baity. You talk about all these issues. You make a YouTube show. It doesn't have a large boundary that you have to cross financially. There's not a large price you have to pay before you can enter the game. All you really need is a camera.

It sets up. You have a background. It doesn't have to be any particular kind of an interesting background. And with most software tools for video editing, you could do a lot of shit. But honestly, we don't, you know, I don't know. I'd argue the last thing we need is another political show. I think maybe.

But, you know, I don't think the last thing we need is another political show. I think the last thing we need is nuclear war. But I think another political show is better than that. But I think that a regular news show, I would like someone to do the same goddamn thing with a regular news show. But the problem is if you funded it, like if I said, hey, we're going to do the JRE News Network.

We're going to treat news the way I treat everything in life. I don't know. So I ask questions and I want to know what the real truth is. And sometimes I'm wrong, but if I'm wrong, I correct myself. If we just did a JRE News Channel, then you'd have to hire a bunch of fucking people. And then who knows if they're going to share my philosophy and take on things. They're probably not going to. So someone's going to have to organically come up with a version of it.

And then there's the problem there. Like, what's their sources? Are you going to send journalists out in the field? And who are these journalists? And what's their qualifications? And how much do they understand about which subject they're covering. Well, I think that is a great, you know, the great myth. I mean, it was never, you never had 100% objectivity, right? I mean, it just never happened because of some of the

reasons you're talking about. It's just like with intelligence reporting, right? Once you get the raw intelligence off the street, right, you can have an asset tell you something. In that moment, it's just raw intelligence. It doesn't have a right or a left or whatever. It hasn't been through the spin cycle. But once that intelligence gets reported back to headquarters, and then it starts getting its way through the analysts, and then it makes its way to others outside of the agency, if we're talking about the agency, and it starts getting to the NSC, you know, and every, by the time it finishes getting through all those different cycles, yeah, there's a spin to it,

right? And you've lost that. So, yeah, to your point, you're, yeah, you're absolutely right. You put reporters out in the field, they're going to have a bias as to who they talk to, right? And those people are going to have a bias, and then it's going to get back to the field, they're going to have a bias as to who they talk to. Yeah. Right? And those people are going to have a bias. And then it's going to get back to the editors and they're going to work on it. And so, again, I realize that we're not talking 100% objectivity, but something better than what we've got. Something better than what we've got would be nice. And I think the only way that's going to emerge is it's got to emerge independently. You can't get this with funding.

independently. You can't get this with funding. You can't create that sort of a thing with a lot of money behind it and a bunch of different people with vested interests and biases. You're not going to create that. It's going to have to emerge independently. And I don't know how. I don't know how, but that's almost what you need. It's almost like you need individual shows that cover individual subjects, like you need an unbiased environmental show that tells you, hey, this is what we really know currently about fracking. This is what we really know, and this is how we know it, and these are the people we're talking to, and you have a whole fucking show just dedicated to the dangers,

pros and cons of fracking, and then have the same thing for coal and the same thing for solar and the same thing for coal, and the same thing for solar, and the same thing for current nuclear technology, which might be the most promising thing that we have, but everybody's fucking terrified of it. Well, then what you're getting, though, is you're continuing to slice and dice your sources of information, and what are you doing?

You're still overwhelming the people, in fact, more so. Yeah. And they're like, what the fuck? That's true. That's true. I don't know uh maybe like a news show is just it's there's too much news like you can't really have a new show because if you have an hour show like good evening this is the 11 o'clock news like like how are you gonna

fit it in an hour you're gonna fit this whole world's crazy chaos well you got the intro figured out though that's good. Thank you. I talk like a newsman. Drive safely. Be careful out there. Did you get a chance to look at that chaos book that I told you about? Yeah. Yeah. Tom O'Neill, who is a friend of my good friend, Greg

Fitzsimmons, wrote an insane book that took him 20 years about Manson and the CIA and LSD and what did you think about all that? Well, you've touched on some, I mean, it's, or Tom touched on some really interesting things. And what I liked about his book, and I went through it, I read it, is that he's actually, I think, very honest about the shortcomings of what he ended up doing, and the research that he went through, and where he couldn't draw connections.

So I give him a lot of credit. I think it's well worth the read, and it's a hell of just a personal story that it took him this fucking long to make his way through with a variety of reasons. Luckily, it's been a tremendous success. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's really, he sold out almost immediately. And the paperbacks are sold out, too. I mean, I think they're reprinting it.

Well, look, Manson is a huge draw, right? It is that, but it's also a fantastic account of all the things that happened with the Manson family and all those people that were alive back then about how this guy kept getting out of jail. They kept arresting him, and they kept saying, this is above my pay grade, and they would let him out. Yeah, and for me, that's the strangest part about the whole story, right? I mean, you know, this idea that, you know, was Manson, you know, a lab rat for the CIA and, you know, how far down that rabbit hole do you want to go? Well, O'Neill is pretty clear about that, right? It's not a particularly solid connection. It's a tenuous connection, I think he called it, between one of what used to be a contractor, a researcher for that old chestnut, MKUltra.

Jolly West. Yeah, Jolly West, yeah. What did you think about all that? I'm sure you know about Operation Midnight Climax and all the stuff that's absolutely true. Yeah, I don't know. It'd be interesting to know how many people are aware. I mean, I know some people that that's what they do. Let's explain Midnight Climax.

Operation Midnight Climax was a CIA-funded program where they dosed up Johns. They created brothels and dosed up Johns with LSD against their knowledge and without their knowledge and let them fornicate and have a good old time with these ladies of the evening. Man, my God. And watch them and film them and study them. I know with these ladies of the evening. Man, my God. And watch them and film them and study them. I know. And when you say it that way, I'm in if you want money to produce that movie. But it is actually, yeah, it's true.

It fell under the sort of umbrella of this MKUltra, which is public knowledge. I'm not, you know, obviously we're not talking out of turn. Well, let's also give them the benefit of the doubt. When LSD was synthesized by Albert Hoffman, they really needed to figure out what the fuck this was. And they needed to figure out, like, could this be used against Americans? Could this be used against the president? What is this?

Is this a truth serum? Like, what are the benefits? What's the pros and cons? And what are the dangers of this stuff? From a national security angle, it's very important that they did study it. Right. And so from context, and again, we talked about that towards the beginning, which is something we don't

normally do, right? So we're judging people from history now. And so we're not using context of, well, what were the conditions? We're talking about the 1950s, the 1960s. Well, yeah, late 40s. I mean, so what have you got? You got the end of the World War II.

You got the Cold War. It's the late 40s. You've got the Soviet Union that is heavily invested in a variety of experiments. Mind control, brainwashing was sort of the term of the culture, right? And brainwashing was a big issue. Not a big issue, but it captured people's imagination back then. So the late 40s, early 50s, it was Korean War. Yeah, we had an existential threat, right? We had nukes pointed at each other. We had drills in schools, kids hiding under desks i mean what the fuck so with the fear that the chinese or the soviets were going to develop uh mind control abilities

was uh pervasive and it's sound i know you know you talk about it now and everybody rolls their eyes and goes oh my god but you're absolutely right that you have to understand the context with which then alan dallas who was the at the time the director of the CIA. By the way, the guy who Kennedy fired and wound up being a part of the Warren Commission after Kennedy was murdered, which was very strange. Yeah. Oh, I like that. I like where that could go. I like where that could go.

So anyway, we got Alan Dulles, who in 53, early in 53, says, all right, we have to understand what the Soviets are doing, particularly the Soviets. But we also had, you know, again, I'm sure some folks listening know all this, but a lot of folks probably don't. We had POWs returning, American POWs returning from Korea. That was a big issue, right, because some of them came back, again, quote, unquote, brainwashed, you know. And some of them didn't want to return because, you know, again, brainwashing, you know, mind control that, you know, perhaps the Chinese had developed these techniques. So initially, the idea was defensive. How do we protect ourselves against this new threat within this Cold War against these enemies who appear to be devoting a great deal of resources against this? Well, so initially, it started out as a defensive effort.

MKUltra was the umbrella name for a whole bunch, over 140 projects, sub-projects underneath NK Ultra. And it was all based around chemical substances, use of chemicals, use of drugs, behavioral issues with human beings, creating false memories, deleting memory, influencing the behavior, again, of individuals. There were a variety of projects that fell under this MKUltra. And it was, again, starting out as a defensive issue, but then quickly became sort of an offense. How do we become the leader in all of this? Which is typical, right? It's typical in how things develop.

It's like cyber warfare. You know, initially it's defensive. And now you think, okay, now we got to figure out how to make it work on our behalf. And sometimes it's important, like when they shut down the Iran nuclear program with a virus, essentially a computer virus. Absolutely. And where this went off the rails in a handful of ways, in many ways, was testing on unwitting subjects, things such as LSD and a variety of other substances. Yeah.

Whoops. And those subjects, unwitting subjects, ranged everything from in federal prisons to state mental hospitals. And that's where Manson comes in. And that's where Manson comes in. And that's where Manson comes in and a variety of other people who – it's just – I would recommend people dig in. Don't settle on just one account. And one of the things that people should also do if they want to read about this is read any testimony that came out of the CIA.

And there was some testimony. There were documents written by the Inspector General back in – and this time period was about 53 through at least officially acknowledged 64, 1964. And then the program was wrapped up. Supposedly, there were still federal programs, military programs, others that were still looking into issues related to the use of chemical substances for everything, again, from interrogation to behavioral adjustment. And a lot of these things were funded through cutouts. So you'd set up, again, this is early 50s, mid 50s, early 60s, set up financing vehicles through, say, what appear to be non-threatening grant programs, you know, from research institutes. So you'd loop

in academic institutions or researchers. And MKUltra had at least acknowledged anyway over 80 academic institutions and others that were either wittingly or unwittingly working on their behalf in various research programs. So, yeah, this Midnight Climax program, basically, they'd kit out a safe house as a brothel, and they would have the hookers slip LSD or whatever substance to the Johns. And then behind a mirror, you'd have a supposed like a researcher, right? I mean, this is where it got weird. Sitting there, you know, having a drink and watching these, you know, the hooker and the John have sex. And then they'd be analyzing the impact of the LSD on them

in terms of their ability to talk. And would they, you know- Was the hooker in on it? Yeah, the hooker was in on it. And was he an employee of the CIA? You know, and it wasn't just the hooker in on it? Yeah, the hooker was in on it. Was he an employee of the CIA? No, and it wasn't just the agency. The army was involved in these things as well. But they would get cash payments

and oftentimes the get out of jail free card. Ladies, if you're out there. Ladies, if you're out there. Yeah, if you're out there. Listen to me. Come on. Whatever you need. Come forward. I'm here for you.

Come forward. Come on the show. Let's talk. You can wear a Boba Fett mask. Okay, we'll hide your identity. I don't know why I said Boba Fett. But, I mean, just imagine. I mean, so it's, okay, so this was clearly, you know, clearly was off the rails, right?

And they had one of the guys that was involved in this. He was with what used to be called the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. A guy named White, George White, was, you know, involved in like the San Francisco cat house. And, you know, according to the stories, he'd sit there, you know, with a martini in his hand and watch the couple have sex. And then he, and he would have like prepped the hooker to say, okay, after sex, now this appears to be the best time to get them talking. So ask them about their job and let's see if they'll talk about their job. The idea being, could we influence and like, and trap potential assets overseas for operational reasons? You know, was there some. Was there some use for operational purposes?

But basically it was just George getting his rocks off, watching couples having sex. Very, very strange shit. But you're right in that – and so again, this went on until 64. MKUltra, interestingly enough, not to spend too much time on it, but Richard Helms was the director at the time in the early 70s. And he and a guy named Gottlieb, Sidney Gottlieb, who was the head of technical services at the agency, they agreed that the smart thing to do in 73 before Richard Helms left and Gottlieb left, the agency was to destroy all the records.

So they purged all the records of MKUltra that they thought existed. This was investigated in the church committee back in 75. And then 76, I think it was, they found a bunch of financial records that had not been purged because they'd been kept audits of, and again, you're talking about like 149 subprojects of MK Alter. So you can imagine each subproject has its own accounting and you got to turn in your receipts for the LSD that you bought or the hooker you're paid off or whatever. So here's my receipt. Can I have my $12 or whatever you paid for a hooker back then? And so probably not 12 bucks. But they found some financial records. And so that became then the matter of another

investigation up on the Hill. And Stansfield Turner, the time the CIA director testified at that point. And that's why I brought my laptop, is because Stansfield Turner's testimony is actually pretty interesting, as far as MKUltra goes. And he talks about, we've attempted to group the activities covered by the 149 subprojects into categories under descriptive headings. Wouldn't you?

In broad outline, at least, this presents the contents of these files. wouldn't you in broad outline at least this presents the contents of these files uh the headings of the categories of all these various projects that ran under mk ultra and this gives you a pretty good quick sense of what they were doing at the time research into the effects of behavioral drugs and or alcohol there were 17 sub projects probably not involving human testing this is a testimony from the director of the CIA, Stansfield Turner. Fourteen subprojects definitely involving tests on human volunteers. Nineteen subprojects probably including tests on human volunteers. While not known, some of these subprojects may have included tests on unwitting subjects as well.

While not known? While not known. And then six subprojects, definitely involving tests on unwitting subjects. Research on hypnosis, acquisition of chemicals or drugs, aspects of magician's art. What? Magician's art? Yeah, like slipping them a Mickey or something. How do you do that? Sleight of hand.

Studies of human behavior, sleep research, behavioral changes during psychotherapy, motivational studies, studies of defectors, assessment and training techniques, polygraph research, funding mechanisms for MKUltra external research activities, research on drugs, toxins, and biologicals in human tissue, activities whose subjectives cannot be determined from available documentation. Anyway, it goes on. But it gives you a sense of what the hell was happening during this period of time. But again, this doesn't justify it. Obviously, it doesn't.

But you're absolutely right that to have a full understanding of this, you have to look at the context of where we were at that time. And where we were was smack dab in the height and elevation of the Cold War, knowing that our adversaries, our existential threats, were engaged in this sort of behavior. Now, George White was not really a researcher or anything. He was just sitting behind a mirror watching some people get off. So clearly, and all the unwitting subjects involved I mean but look they were slipping LSD to agency employees without telling them really yeah oh

yeah yeah and and I mean it's just yeah it's so it's not that long ago but it's not we have to think about it in terms of the same way we thought about Abraham Lincoln. In the context of the times, this wasn't such a horrendous thing to do. They didn't know any better. Really, they didn't know what these substances would do to people. And there wasn't a lot of ways to find out. You know, the Harvard LSD studies that they did that they believe in part were responsible for the Unabomber. There's a lot of other shit that were responsible for the Unabomber. There's a lot of other shit that was responsible for the Unabomber, including particularly his childhood.

But they did a lot of these studies because they didn't know. I mean, it's one way to find out. I mean, how do you get responsible human subjects? How do you get people to do? Well, there's not a lot of ways other than just test people. Right. And unfortunately, yeah, what this ended up being was, you know,

like using the most marginalized people out there, you know, like sex workers or prisoners or whatever. Right. Or Johns. Yeah, Johns or just, you know, but that whole thing. But where Tom O'Neill's book is, you know, is really interesting in a couple of ways is if you jump,

so MK Alter kind of finished up in 64 officially, right? That's when the inspector general came out from the agency and said, you got to know, you can't do this. They had a new inspector general and they looked and said, this is clearly not where we are supposed to be. But interestingly, Clearly not where we are supposed to be. But interestingly, funding mechanisms, you know, that were used to, again, to dole out grants or to provide a cutout between government and research that was being done. You know, did some of those continue to exist for other programs, other research? And in 67, you have the Summer of Love, San Francisco, and Tom O'Neill writes about this and it's very, very interesting. that were supposedly getting funding from the National Institute for Mental Health, which had previously been a funding mechanism also for MKUltra a few years in the past. And Roger Smith was a guy who was getting his PhD in criminology.

He was working at the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, and he was also Manson's parole officer. And to your point, Manson was like, he was like a brook trout or a rainbow trout that is in some catch and release stream, right? He was constantly arrested during the 67, 68 period. And remember, the killings happened in August of 69. And, you know, he kept getting released. And he had been in prison, right? In 67, early in that year, he'd been released from prison. So he was on probation. Any violation, certainly some of the things he was getting arrested for, should have sent him back to prison, but he wasn't. So that to me is one of the most

interesting parts of the book is this revolving door that Manson was in. And eventually we all know what happened to him. But yeah, working at the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, that's where Manson would go along with some of his followers. you know, part of a study and, you know, they were, I'm sure, you know, getting their LSD from there. But also this guy, Jolly West, who was involved in MKUltra, also ended up having an office at the Haight-Asbury Free Medical Clinic. So, but again, to Tom O'Neill's point. Do you know that clinic closed down about four months after Tom's book came out? Been open for over 50 years. It's crazy.

What are the odds? Yeah,'s crazy. What are the odds? Yeah, I know. What are the odds? I didn't see that coming. Yeah, but I mean, you know, again, I like the book because he does seem to be trying to let the facts of all his research lead the way rather than trying to prove a point that he comes up with at the beginning of his book. Well, he also exposed the prosecutor, Bugliliosi and all the issues that was going on with him

that led to him wanting to follow the narrative that they had laid out, that Manson was trying to incite a race war and ignore all the other indicators that there was some deeper connections. And ignore all the other indicators that there was some deeper connections. And, yeah, was Manson a – was he an informer for the bureau or for local law enforcement or some other outfit? You know, that's – Hard to tell. Hard to tell. But it's compelling in light of the fact that he kept getting released.

He seemed to have a get-out-of-jail-free card. He also seemed to have an unlimited supply of acid. That was what's fascinating. And he also seemed to employ the same techniques that apparently the CIA had employed when they had done experiments on prisoners, including the fact that he would force them into weird sexual situations and pretend to take LSD himself but but not really participate and then, you know, influence them. And he seemed to be doing things to them in terms of like trying to alter their

behavior and getting them to do things that were outside the norm, including murder. Yeah. I mean, did he see, yeah, did he have a sense from his time there at the clinic or dealing with, what's his name, Roger Smith, his parole officer, who again was also a criminology doctor, a doctoral candidate, I guess. And so it was, you know, but look, Manson was, you know, he was not a rocket scientist. He was illiterate for the most part until he ended up in prison and maybe- Which is why it was so weird that he was able to manipulate so many people so well. Right. But it was also, it's like, he was the perfect guinea pig.

I mean, you're talking about a guy who spent half his life in federal penitentiaries. Yeah, yeah. And also, putting it in context of the time, what else did you have going on? You had sort of this, again, this awareness of the impact of LSD on the counterculture, right? So you had federal agencies like the Bureau, for example, worrying about, oh, my God, what's the, you know, what are these hippies going to do next? You know, and, you know, they were worried, obviously, about the Black Panthers, but it was also more than that. It was the, again, the entire war movement. Yeah, just the general counterculture and the impact of drugs on it. And so it's a fascinating, I think it'sculture and the impact of drugs on it.

So it's a fascinating – I think it's a very interesting read. And I think it's worth the read because, again, he's spent so much time trying to make his way through and get this book. 20 years. Yeah. It's a crazy story. And if you haven't heard the podcast, please listen to it with Tom O'Neill. What number was that, Jamie? You have any idea? What number was that, Jamie?

Do you have any idea? But it's just, do you think that those times and the shift between the 50 seemed like that is even more of a radical change in culture than we're experiencing today. We're experiencing a lot of turmoil today, but so much of it you could attribute to the problems, the economic despair with COVID and the lockdown and then the George Floyd murder and the Black Lives Matter protests. And there's so many different, like, tangible factors you could point to. Well, I think in the pandemic is certainly a massive part of it because if you think about it, and this, you know, this in no way minimizes the importance of the protests and trying to get, you know, policing the way you know that everyone agrees it should be but the you know if everybody was working and we didn't have the

pandemic right i would argue we wouldn't have seen the protests in portland we wouldn't have seen there is this this this like we talked about earlier yeah these people are they have too much too much free time but um i i don't But I don't know. I mean, I remember, I'm old enough to remember, you know, somewhat as a kid, the race riots of the 60s. It's just general upheaval, right? And I remember, shit, I remember my older sister, you know, down in the basement painting protest signs with a bunch of her friends. And they were going to head downtown to a protest. And I had two brothers that were in the Vietnam War, and there was a lot of—they were definitely at odds with each other, right?

Here's my sister protesting the war. There's one of my brothers flying F-4s in the war, another medic. So it was a very tumultuous time. I don't think that's where we are now. So I agree with you. I think it was more upheaval then. But it's incredibly disappointing now. I thought we were, maybe it's obviously naive to some degree, but I kind of thought we were further along than we are now, it seems. Yeah. And so the, you know, it's, yeah, it's very disappointing and frustrating to see where we're kind of at at this moment in time. And again, part of it's heightened by just the uber partisanship of everything. But yeah, but I don't think we're there. And I think the pandemic has given us all too much time to

reflect on shit. Also, everyone's so scared that we're projecting it onto other subjects. And this fear and anxiety, it just accentuates or exacerbates all the other problems that we have. First of all, there's the financial fear, which doesn't seem like there's a way out of it. For a lot of people, for low-income people and people that are losing their jobs and people that are losing their businesses, there doesn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel. There doesn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah. No, and, you know, we're very fortunate in that we, you know, we've been right out that side of it, right, with, you know, with the economy and all that. But, yeah, all the people, I mean, look at the situation currently with just the unemployment and how quickly that took place.

We were riding high as far as the economy goes just a handful of months ago. And now the number of people who are worried about do they have a roof over their head because maybe they're going to get evicted or what the fuck. Now I can go back to work, but I can't because my workplace isn't open anymore. Well, you used to hear that everyone is one paycheck away. Right. That was the thing. Most Americans, like 40% of Americans, are one paycheck away from being broke.

Well, what the fuck are you doing now? We're five months later? What does that mean? Well, that's 600 bucks a week, right? I mean, and I know I get it, right? The government can't continue to keep kicking cash out the door, right? But it's not enough, but it's also, I mean, what the fuck's wrong with our politicians, right? I mean, they're agonizing over this, right?

We've got, you know, how many trillions are we in debt? And so, fine, but solve the problem now, right? The pandemic, it's not going to last forever, right? We're going to figure this out and everyone's going to get back to hopefully some relative normalcy. But in the short term, the fact that the Democrats and Republicans can't come together and resolve this, they're bickering about, well, what do we do with the next bailout bill? Or do we have one? Or how much is it going to be a month? And you got people legitimately standing at the door wondering whether they have to leave their apartment or not or whether they'll have a place to come home to or how are they going to feed their kids. And you got these fucking idiot politicians who are just playing games with us.

And it always happens. They're paid. They're paid. And if there's no consequence to them, then shit doesn't happen. I firmly believe that with Washington, D.C. Nothing happens in Washington unless the politicians personally feel as if there's some consequence to their situation, their position of power. And they're acting as if there won't be any consequence. And so they're talking about, oh, we're going to be able to get

this done before our August break. What the fuck? They're going to take an August break? I mean, I was stunned by that today when I was talking to somebody in DC and they're saying, yeah, well, they're trying to rush us through before the... Who takes a fucking break in a pandemic? The middle of a national crisis. Yeah. So, but that's what I... Well, we got to go back and see our constituents. Constituents would probably tell you to stay in D.C. and get something done. But I don't know. I just, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't do any good to sit around and pitch and moan.

But I think, you know, unless we have term limits and we have campaign finance reform, we're going to be talking about this forever. Or mushrooms. Or the aliens. Slip some LSD to a bunch of unwitting politicians and see what happens. What do you think of all this Pentagon UFO, we've recovered crafts, not of this world talk? Okay. Yeah. I think two things I think, again, can always be true at the same time.

I don't think we're the only intelligent life out there. I mean I'm classifying us as intelligent. I don't think we're the only intelligent life out there. I mean, I'm classifying us as intelligent. But I also don't think we're hiding some alien spacecraft somewhere. So why do you think the Pentagon would come out and say something like that? Well, I think, look, we did a, here comes a pitch for my show. For Black Files Declassified. That's Black Files Declassified. Black Files Declassified. That's Black Files Declassified.

Black Files Declassified? And how could one watch this show? My God, that was a good first season, wasn't it? It was on Discovery on Science Channel. Ah, I love Discovery. I love the Science Channel. We did an episode on Advanced Aeronautic Threat Identification Program, AATIP, which was the Pentagon's admitted, you know, came out and said, yes, we have a program that we ran a program. It's no longer in existence called AATIP, which was designed to identify unidentified aviation threats,

basically. So it's not talking about UFOs necessarily. It could be a hostile, you know, prototype aircraft that, you know, what is that? I talked to Commander Fravor. Yeah, you go. David Fravor. Yeah, David was in here. Yeah. And he explained his incident off of the coast of San Diego. And he said they tracked this thing. It dropped from 60,000 feet to one foot above the sea in a second.

Yeah. A single second. And it wasn't just him seeing this, right? No, no. It was the radar operators on board. And his wingmen. Exactly. Yeah.

So, but I think... They said it was tracking them, and then it actually actively blocked their tracking. And then no visible means of propulsion. Exactly. No heat signal. Yeah. I mean, so I think it's... Look, and he's a very credible witness.

He's as credible as a jet. Yeah. Right. And so... He's not very credible witness. He's as credible as a judge. Yeah, right. And so – He's not the only one. Yeah, not everything. What do you think of that? Yeah, well, I think – yeah, I think we don't – here's what I think.

We haven't resolved that issue. We don't know. There was no final report that gave some sort of conclusive evidence that said this is what this object was. It is considered still to this day to be an anomaly, perhaps. They don't – just no clarification, which is interesting in all by itself. And again, it kind of goes back to this. Look, are we the only intelligent people? No. But do I think that the government is capable all these years of holding a secret like that? No, I really don't. I think there's much like

with MKUltra or anything else, eventually shit hits the fan, stuff comes out. And I don't think the, I'm not one of those and I say this and I'm sure a lot of people disagree, but I just don't think that the government is capable of keeping secrets for the long term, certainly not of this magnitude. But I think there are certainly things that have happened that we can't explain. What do you think that is? And one of them would be the citing by Fravor. Yeah. Yeah. So – but materials – materials that aren't from earth – look, shit hits the earth from space all the time.

And that qualifies as a material that is not found. That's not what they said though. Right. Well – They said they've recovered crafts not from this world. Yeah. I'd like to. I would want to sit down with the individual saying that and say, okay, clarify this, please.

I'd want to take them to one of them brothels. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Oh, absolutely. I'd sit there with a martini behind that mirror. Hey, man. Tell me what you really saw. There you go.

Bring one of those hookers in from the 60s. No. No. No. No. Don't do that to her or him. No. I would want to know, though, what is actually happening,

and why would they come out with a statement like that? Well, I'm going to tell you something. This is between you and me. It's the second season of Black Files Declassified? We're going to be looking at that. Why do you think? I don't know what the – that's the big question is why would they say that. Right.

And I don't have an answer for that. I don't know. And that's why I say it – It's a shocker. It definitely bears further investigation. That goes without saying. If there was a thing that was coming, they would want to prepare people. And I think if you wanted to prepare people, the best way to prepare people is to slowly give them signs that some shit is about to go down.

And one of the best ways to say we have found things that are not of this world. Okay, think about that for a little while. We'll see you in a few months. A few months of accepting that without any... See, there's no event, right? It's just a statement. What was the exact wording? Can we bring that up?

Yeah. The exact wording of... Here it is. Yeah. Crashes. Harry Reid said he believed crashes of vehicles from other worlds had occurred and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades.

Yeah. Now, you know Bob Lazar. Do you know the story of Bob Lazar? Yeah. Bob Lazar was in here and he said some things that were ridiculed but turned out to be absolutely true. One of the things that he said was that there was this element, this element 115, and that they had figured out a way to stabilize this element in these other planets. And that's what they used to propel these vehicles with a different kind of propulsion that manipulated gravity. And it essentially had created some sort of a warp where they didn't,

they weren't subject to the same laws of physics with this propulsion system that we are with what we have which is just igniting fuel and you know pushing the explosion pushes the the rocket right into this into space which could explain sort of the Fravor sighting yeah the way he described these vehicles in the 1980s and the early 1990s is exactly the way Fravor's vehicle worked. Exactly the way the gimbal video worked. These things, for whatever reason, they fly one way and then they turn sideways. Like if you had a plate, the plate turns up and down. And then that's the way it travels.

And then somehow or another, that's how it travels insanely fast, that it does something to manipulate gravity around it. It sounds super weird. It does. But the fact that this guy talked about this in the early 90s, and then this is the exact video that the Pentagon refers to, and then this is the exact video that the Pentagon refers to, that you actually see these objects that they can't explain, that don't give off a heat signal, that move in this exact same way at spectacular rates of speed. And then that's how the TikTok craft worked too. Right.

Well, I mean, yeah, there's a leap there necessarily that you got to make. I don't want to make that leap either. I know what you're saying. For years, I was like, it's all horseshit. I mean, again, I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I'm just saying there's certain parts of this. Like, okay, Harry Reid talking about it. Well, look, Harry Reid was very interested in this stuff. in this stuff. He, you know, he allocated some federal funds to one of his buddies in Nevada to, you know, create a sort of a center, you know, forIP, right? And you don't really get that answer when you say, okay, Lou, was AATIP holding on to materials that came from an alien craft? No. What they're saying is-

Maybe it wasn't AATIP that was involved in that aspect of the – Maybe it was an ATIP. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I get that. And again, I guess what I'm saying is I'm open to say, yeah, fine.

Like anything's possible, I suppose, in this world. Things that I do know is it's – I have a really hard time believing the government could keep this all buttoned up over a period of time. Isn't there a genuine ridicule factor for coming forward that would help? I mean, that's a part of the whole thing about all the UFO stories. They're so ridiculous. Well, that's why they set up AATIP to begin with, right? It was so that they could have sort of a legitimate outlet and a place for this to go. But yeah, Fravor himself

talks about it. Look, it's not in their best interest to get back on the carrier and say, by the way, we spotted an unidentified flying object. But they did. And yeah, and you're right.

So the natural tendency is to kind of look the other way or roll your eyes. And that can act as a deterrent. Yeah, I don't know. But I do think that it bears further investigation. There's no doubt about that. that the Pentagon was running, you know, for the minimal cost of that compared to the cost of another air asset or, you know, platform of some sort, I think they should have kept it going, right? And they should have normalized to some degree because it's in our national security interest to know, have the Russians or have others developed materials, right? Or propulsions. Everybody's working on new propulsion systems, right? Everybody that has the ability and the resources.

So hypersonic crafter, that's just coming, right? That's going to happen. And whoever wins that particular race is going to be further up the food chain than everybody else. So it's in our national interest to be exploring any legitimate or potentially legitimate sighting to understand what that is. That doesn't mean you're chasing UFOs or sort of spacecraft from... It just means you should know what the hell that is or what's out there. So I'm a big proponent of that. I'm just saying also you have to proceed with caution. For sure. I mean, I feel like the new normal that we're experiencing right now in the pandemic, it really illuminated to me how easily human beings adapt to things. We adapt to everything. We really do. We just accept it.

Well, this is the new thing. We exist like phones. We accept the fact that we just always have a phone on us now. And when you and I were growing up, there's no fucking phones. Did you have phones on the wall, right? I mean, when you and I were growing up, there was no fucking phones, right? Did you have a phone? You had phones on the wall, right? Yeah. With a cord. Sure. And if you were lucky, you had a long cord so you could take the phone away from your parents when you talked to your friends.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We used to have the dial. We had the dial. And then when we got the push-button phones, I thought we were the living shit, right? We got the push-button.

You were a rock star with a push-button. Man. And then you'd get you know you take that phone if you got a call from your girlfriend whoever you and you were younger you go and try to get as far away from your parents as you could you know whisper i can't remember i can't talk when they came up with star 69 yeah remember that somebody called you and they hung up you press star 69 69 and it'll call them right back. You're like, hey, motherfucker, I got new technology. You can't just be calling me.

What do you want? I remember when I first used that. People were like, how'd you get my number? I said, star 69, you bitch. Now everybody's got one of these, including Muggsy, my youngest. Which, oh, by the way, I told him I would mention this. The oldest boy, Scooter, who's just turned 13, he walked by yesterday before I got on a plane. And he said, where are you going?

I said, I'm going to Los Angeles. He says, why are you going to Los Angeles? And I said, well, I got a couple of meetings and I'm going to sit down with Rogan. And, you know, he's watched some of your podcasts. I'm sorry. Yeah. Only the good ones. No, the appropriate ones, the appropriate ones the age appropriate ones

I don't know which ones those are there are none good luck yeah there are none and but he says oh he says great now as we're having

this conversation about you Muggsy walked by and he's eight years old and he walks by and he stops and he listens for a second and he goes

Rogan and I said yeah and he says you gonna see Rogan and I said yeah and he looks for a second and he goes don'tan? And I said, yeah. He says, you gonna see Rogan? And I said, yeah. And he looks for a second and he goes, don't know who he is. Turns around and walks away. And I thought, yeah, that's it.

That's what I'm gonna tell Joe. That's perfect. But even Muggsy's got a, even he's got a phone, right? How old is he? He's eight. Damn. Actually just turned nine. You gave an eight-year-old a phone? Well, you know, in case they're about to get mauled by a bear, it's good. Well, yeah, that's important. Or lifted off the ground by a hawk. Just turned nine. You gave an eight-year-old a phone. Well, you know, in case they're about to get mauled by a bear. Well, yeah. It's good. That's important.

Or lifted off the ground by a hawk. Or a UFO. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the other thing is like, you know, again, the idea that they've, we've had visitors from another planet, but they just decided, they got bored with us or something. I don't know. And decided, nah, fuck it. It's not worth it.

Who knows? I don't think they're doing that. I think they're waiting for us to fuck up hugely that's what I think how much more time do they need I think they're closing in these assholes are really close to entering war with China

or Syria or Iran yeah well the China thing who knows we haven't even talked to I know everybody whenever they hear I'm going to be doing this I'm sure they probably think I'm going to come on and bash China. Well, the China thing is an interesting one, right? I mean, it is a very interesting one right now because China has been buying up a lot of assets when they realized that the pandemic was kicking in. And there's a lot of companies that are – China owns a large stake in them now.

Yeah. Yeah, no, it's – look, again, they – TikTok is about to get banned. Oh, TikTok, that's going to piss off my middle boy, Sluggo. He's a- Well, Facebook, coincidentally, Facebook or Instagram, I should say, is about to release Reels, which is their version of TikTok. Remember how they like, they fucking cock-blocked Snapchat with Instagram stories?

Well, they're about to cock-block TikTok with Instagram Reels, and then they're going to lure all the kids over to reels. Yeah, well, that's the thing. By the time we get, and I'm sure it happens with your kids, so by the time you get hip to whatever trend they got, I just said hip, to whatever trend the kids have, they're two trends down the road. Yeah, TikTok is old school, Dave. Right, right. They don't give a shit anymore. Yeah, they're doing some new stuff. But the thing about the TikTok thing that's interesting for – this is the tinfoil hat part.

Put that on again. There's always been this talk that Facebook helped Trump win the election. Yeah. And they have been the least reluctant – the most reluctant, I should say, to censor Trump stuff. And there's a lot of people that think that Mark Zuckerberg is in some way, or Facebook is in some way responsible for getting Trump elected because they benefit from all the interaction. They benefit from... And it's one of the last places where conservatives can freely

discuss things and not... Except the hydroxychloroquine thing they've taken that down um but facebook owns instagram and instagram has reels and if tiktok if trump comes in right but reels has not been released yet correct i think so i think it's early august which is like any minute now okay right so where are we the third what is today. Yeah, it's the third. So if they come along and they ban TikTok and introduce Reels at the same time, I'm going to be a little suspicious. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree on that. But I think what's going to happen is I think they're going to orchestrate a deal. Microsoft will take over at least the U.S. operation.

U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, they'll take over those operations of TikTok. I don't know why that would be particularly appealing to Microsoft unless they take the whole global community of TikTok users, right? Which is whatever, 800 million. I mean, there's got maybe 80 to 90 million or so in the U.S. But I think they want to get a deal done by September sometime. Well, Microsoft has missed the ball when it comes to mobile.

I mean, they fucked up. They made some critical errors that they could have had a Windows phone that was as big as the iPhone. They were right there. They had their phone that looked like Windows 10 where it had the little tiles. I remember I was at the Ice House and some guy had a Windows phone and I was like, what is that? And he's like it's a Windows phone. He's shown me. I go

that looks pretty fucking dope. I go, how do you like it? He goes, I like it a lot. And then it never went anywhere. We're talking like, this is like 2000... When did they come out with a Windows phone? 2008 or some shit? Something like that. And they just decided it come out with the Windows phone? 2008 or some shit? Something like that.

And they just decided it wasn't worth the revenue stream or wasn't worth the effort? I think the iPhone came out, if I remember correct, in 2007. I want to say 2007. Okay. I think the Windows phone was right after that. They just fucked up. 2010, the iPhone came out? No.

The Windows phone. The Windows phone. Okay. So a few years later, and they just dropped the ball. They never really caught on. And this is back when Android was really clunky and shitty. And that happens quick, too, though. Because if you don't get in on the market, right, pretty quick, it's, you know, you're always playing catch-up. Yeah.

But now you're right. I mean, you know, I look at the technology. I look at the phones. I look at the technology, I look at the phones, and I'm not super excited about my kids having phones. But at the same time, then it becomes—it's less so during a pandemic, but it becomes a security issue in terms of I want to be able to track them and know where they are. And short of microchipping the kids, you know, then the phone is a pretty good way to know where they are. You just have to, as a parent, you just got to be on lockdown all the time with them, right? Because it's just a, you know, it's a window into a lot of shit that you don't want kids of that age to be paying attention to. Right, exactly.

I mean, literally the whole world. Basically, yeah. Yeah, you give your kid a phone, you're basically, they have the internet. They have everything. Yeah. And you're basically, they have the internet. They have everything. Including clicking on things that put viruses and, you know, all sorts of malware on their computer, on their phones.

Yeah. No, and that's, you know, again, obviously that brings us back around to TikTok a little bit. But, yeah, it is interesting. The relationship that we're in right now, people were having a conversation the other day about, are we in a Cold War already with China? And the answer is yes. I mean, you know, we don't have nukes pointing at each other necessarily the way we did during the Soviet days. deal with it properly, right? And, you know, developing better trade protocols, developing a better understanding of their agenda,

their interests, that's a good thing, as long as we do it, again, properly. China scares the shit out of me. You know, I was watching a video the other day of the Uyghur Muslims and what they're doing and rounding these people up and forcing them on trains. It's terrifying.

It's like, what are they doing? And they have no accountability. They don't have to – No, no. No, Xi literally has set himself up. We talk about Putin saying himself as president for life, but Xi literally has set himself up as president for life. Now, if the Chinese economy goes you know, goes sideways in a big way, all bets are off, right? And he may not be as stable as he's been thinking, but he spent years

now strengthening and building up the intel apparatus within China, you know, for his own purposes. And further moving away from this idea that somehow China was going to have a rule of law, right? That doesn't exist there. I mean, they fucked over the people of Hong Kong. And we could have cared less, right? Everybody was all upset and angsty and protesting about Hong Kong. And oh, my God, we stand united with the Hong Kong protesters. And then we got, you know, up our own asses because we're all rightly so worried about the pandemic. And, you know, we got an election coming in November. And, you know, while we're all looking that way, you know, Xi saw an opportunity and just fucked them over.

Right. And there's no consequence. There's no consequence for U.S. citizens. Yeah. Yeah. And there's really no consequence. I mean, so far anyway. There's, you know, a few talks of sanctions and some, but it doesn't mean anything.

They essentially use the pandemic to decide to impose the same sort of restrictive laws that they have in the rest of China with Hong Kong. Yeah. Where Hong Kong used to be under British law and then it in 97 it transferred over to China? Yeah, and it was going to be 2047. That was the playing field they had in Hong Kong up until 2047. What kind of goofy-ass deal did they negotiate where they gave it up in 97? It's so stupid. Well, yeah. I mean, they- They ruined. Yeah. They really didn't have an option, so they felt that they were negotiating as best they could. There was a sense I think at the time that, look, we either do this and guarantee some runway for the people of Hong Kong with some pseudo-democracy or China is just going to say, fuck you, get the hell out and it's ours. I don't think China would have done that because, look, they need Hong Kong as a legitimate financial capital,

right? But I think what's going to happen now, given what they've just recently done, is, you know, they're going to turn Hong Kong at best into a pass-through for hard currency, basically. And, you know, you're going to see a lot of people moving out, not just, you know, not just expats and, you know, financial institutions, you're going to see a lot of the more successful and educated Hong Kong citizens who are running businesses there, who have been running businesses there, saying, fuck it, it's not worth it. And so I think the Chinese regime, I think, has probably fucked themselves over in a way. But it's just an indication of Xi's mindset.

He doesn't really care. And it's just like their buildup of military capabilities in the South Pacific. They're working in cyber activity. They're continuing hoovering up intellectual property. It's not going to stop them. I mean, now, it's better that we do make an effort. It's better that we do put sanctions on them for a variety of reasons, including the Uyghurs. But will it change overall? Will it change their behavior? Probably not. It's so weird. It's so weird to watch it happen. It's something that people weren't really terrified of 10 years ago. They weren't worried about China taking over the world. But now it seems like it's a real possibility. Yeah. And in fact, it wasn't that they weren't worried about it. They were looking at China like, it know, it's a great marketplace.

You know, this is where we need to be now. And you could argue that tech companies still do that, right? The tech companies, they don't look at China, you know, as a threat to national security. They look at China as an opportunity, right? And they always have. So that explains in part, you know, sort of their behavior towards the Chinese regime. But yeah, make no doubt about it. Xi's got his eyes set on being at the top of the food chain. So, you know, we can either deal with it or we can pretend it doesn't exist. Do you think they're going to ban more companies the same way they banned Huawei? Well, it depends on what happens in November, right? I guarantee you the Chinese government would like to see Biden win.

Really? You know, and this is people who subscribe to the Trump as Putin's puppet will scoff at this idea. But look, the Russians, I think, would prefer to see Biden win as well, right? I mean, they can get back to business as usual, probably ease up on the sanctions. You know, the left, the hard left anyway, has been very successful over the years at this Russian narrative. And fine, it worked for them. You know, they'd spent three years in this, you know, pushing this particular narrative. But I think overall, the Chinese, the Russians, they would prefer to see someone like Biden come in. I think they feel like it would be a more collegial approach from the White House, less confrontational.

And I think that's just where we're at. Look, I mean, you know, Bill Gates, Bob Gates used to be the director of the agency, right? And he's worked for a couple of administrations. And he said himself that Biden's never been on the right side of a foreign policy decision. So that's one area where, again, going back to what we talked about earlier, is if he's going to choose a vice president, I'd rather he choose somebody who's got as much national security and foreign policy experience as possible. Because I think that's one area where he's going to be lacking. Even though he says, oh, I've worked in foreign policy all my life. It doesn't mean anything just because you were there. It doesn't mean you've got

good judgment or, you know, anyway. What do I know? Do you think that the policies that Trump's put in place for China are actually beneficial to the United States? Do you think it's a good step? Yeah, I do. I do. Because it's put them on the back of China. I mean, it's put them on the back foot, right? That's not a bad thing. Made them a little less sure about, you know, what they're doing. They've had to think about things a little bit more. They have had to... Sanctions. I'd like to see that happen. I think what we're seeing now, though, is obviously the pandemic has deflected a lot of attention. And also, you know, the closer you get to any presidential election, the less shit gets done. So I don't know that anything meaningful is going to happen over the course of the next handful of months. And who knows what the fuck's going to happen in November.

What do you think is going to happen? I agree with you when you said earlier that, hey, you can't believe the polls, right? So I don't believe the polls. I think people are tired of the, who are exhausted from just sort of the general drama of having somebody like Trump in the office. So I think there's a potential for a lot of people who may like the policies or some of the policies and prefer them to a hard left agenda or a left agenda, I think there's a chance for them to say, oh, fuck it. I just, I'm too tired and I don't want that. And maybe they'll look at Biden and think, eh, it's a return to some normalcy. Will there be debates?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll bet there ends up being one. Well, if there's a debate, that's where it all falls apart. That's where the wheels come off. Get ready. Get ready to fucking kick. Trump campaign manager, we want more debates against Biden and sooner. The first one's September 29th, maybe? They're probably pumping Biden up with steroids and alpha brain right now.

Could you imagine? He's probably in a lab somewhere. They got a vat from on it. It goes right into a fucking IV. I think I heard there's something like 16 states would already technically be done by voting by September 29th. So they want to try to have some before that. But I think they're only supposed to have three or something.

Say that one more time. 16 states could be finished with voting? By that time, 16 states will already have voted. Because they're doing it with mail-in ballots. Yeah. God, this is going to be so strange. This is going to be such a contested election no matter what, and I'm really worried about the chaos that could ensue after it's over.

Well, think about that. I mean, look, I'm a big fan of going to the voting booth, you know, actually getting out, driving or walking, going to pulling the fucking lever. So can't they do it outside? Yeah. Can't they social distance? I mean, obviously, you know, weather permitting, but, you know, fine. I think the problem is, look, until Trump talked about, you know, the problems with the post office and, you know, mail delivery

and the idea that we're going to have mail-in ballots as opposed to absentee ballots. You know, before that, you know, what, nine out of 10 people, that's not statistically accurate, but I'm sure a lot of people would have said, the fucking postal system, they can't deliver the mail. Right. Right. And, but now because Trump comes out and says, it's going, oh my God, I love the postal system and I'm, he's trying to destroy the postal system. And I'm he's trying to destroy the postal system.

And I'm thinking of it's like what he did with hydroxychloroquine. Yeah, exactly. It's the same thing. Right. Right. Look, and I've ordered hydroxychloroquine through the mail. It hasn't arrived. So what am I to think? But I touch death. So I but can you imagine if we have an election where you do this and then you don't know the results for five or six or seven days because they're still counting ballots, right? Oh, my God. Yeah. Can you imagine what that reporting is going to be like? And all the paranoia on both sides, the right and the left going up.

You know, exactly. The whole thing is that period of time could be fucking crazy. These really crazy right wing, the really nutty conspiracy folks, how are they going to handle that? Yeah. Well, that's it. And you got people on both sides, right? Crazy is not limited to one part of the spectrum. So you got people on both sides.

And the beauty of the elections in the past have been by the end of the night, you got people on both sides. And if you, the beauty of the elections in the past have been by the end of the night, you got a winner, right? And now if you don't know, and you can't tell me that, and it's not, you know, I'm just saying the realities are, you got to be pragmatic. You want to go with all, you know, mail ballots or whatever. Hey, just be aware of the fact that you could have a lot of problems, a lot of disqualified ballots because of a variety of reasons, a lot of lost ballots, a lot of people. And so if what you want to do is sow chaos, right, and dissent and further this divide, then yeah, that's a pretty good way to do it. Or you can figure out how to fucking get everybody to the ballots, right, to the polling booths and make that happen. Just fucking do it. Right. And if you want to have ballot voting booths where people wear masks and, you know, and hazmat suits and everything, fine. Right. But figure out a way to get people to the voting booth.

because I don't think that the mail-in thing could be wrought with fraud like the White House. Like Trump, it could be lots of fraud. I think it's just pragmatic says you could have a lot of logistical problems with that. Well, I don't understand why they can't vote online. Why can you bank online but you can't vote online? How is that not – Yeah. And the thing is if you could vote online, if people didn't have to physically go to a place, do you know how many more people would vote?

It would probably be insane. Because what is the number now? Like what percentage of people now vote? Is it like 40%? Yeah, somewhere in the 40 percentile. I bet we'd get that bitch up to 70. Yeah. I bet we'd get it up pretty high.

If you could register on your phone and vote on your phone, my God, why can't you do that? Well, there's security issues related to that, as we all know, in terms of the hijacking of the – or the security of the system that would be in place. People click on every fucking link someone sends them in a text message. Yeah. What's that click? There's that. Text message. Yeah.

What's that, Click? There's that. No, I agree with you in the sense that it would, theoretically, it would improve the turnout for sure. And it would certainly make life easier for a lot of people. I just don't, as with, and again, my issue with the mail isn't the fraud issue so much as just the logistics of it, right? And that delay. Yeah. And also the potential to have a lot of ballots just being disqualified or being put in question. The same thing with online voting. I'm worried about the chaos.

I'm worried about the civil unrest. I really think that could be the big one. I think if Congress would do its job, they would just say, you know what? The elections are coming. They're going to be right on time. And you're going to go to your voting polling places. And we're going to put in place special times for elderly citizens to vote if they want to have a super safe environment. They can only vote like that. Just like you do at Costco. Costco in our area had like 7 to 9 a.m. It was only for people over 60. Fine. If Costco can do that shit, I'm pretty sure we could do that with voting booths. Yeah. How hard would that be? Just make it happen.

But again, it's- Do temperature checks. Socially distance everybody. Everybody wears a mask. Do it right. Give it plenty of time. Set up enough booths. And if you want to do it over a two-day period, fine.

Why not? But at least you're establishing protocols that are – yeah, I don't know. I worry about the chaos. If you're going to let people vote by mail in September, how about let them show up at the polls that early as well? So you really could socially distance everybody. You really could absolutely ensure that everybody's safe. Yeah, just spread it out. Spread it out.

Over a designated period of time. We have five business days. And you'd have it like open scoring like a boxing match. It would be fucking tremendous. As you roll up on the voting booth, you got the numbers right up there. So it's like a Jerry Lewis telethon. I'm going to go in here and fix this.

Goddamn hippies you're gonna elect that biden he can't even talk damn it yeah he's a dictator of the marxists trump's a dictator he's not gonna leave the white house if he loses do you understand that we're gonna have civil war that man won't leave he's a tyrant yeah i just wish there was somebody i could get behind i wish there was somebody that just made behind. I wish there was somebody that just made sense. Somebody just like that stood out and just like, that's our guy or girl. Yeah. That's the

person. Condoleezza Rice and Nikki Haley. I would like to see that team. Yeah. I mean, for the Republicans, I know that on the damn side they go, oh, no. But that would have been a good team. Well, one thing, if Trump does lose or if he goes to, you know, if he makes it to 2024, that's going to be real weird because who is next in line there? I've been telling Dan Crenshaw he needs to run, but he's a young fellow.

He's got plenty of time. Yeah. Who knows? He's a very reasonable Republican, though. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's, again, that's- Pence is waiting on a sign from Jesus.

Yeah. But he would be the, you know, if Trump wins, you know, he would be the- Yeah. Yeah, the next guy, theoretically, in line. If he wants it. I mean, some guys don't want it, right? Like Al Gore. Yeah.

Didn't Al Gore want it? Oh, he did once. That's right. He did kind of want it. That's gore yeah i didn't know gore wanted oh he did he did kind of want it he wanted it then yeah um yeah i i don't know i just think i think if we we're not going to walk the dog back right so it's not like i keep talking about centrists and moderates and both parties and that's just not gonna fucking happen so you know we have what we have we're not going to get a third party that's going not going to fucking happen. So, you know, we have what we have. We're not going to get a third party that's going to be legitimate. And so what can we do? What sort of things could be done that could change the dynamic or at least get us more likely to have

centrist candidates willing to work with each other? And I keep going back to the same things, which are term limits and campaign finance reform. But then I think, well, that's just never going to happen because it's not in their self-interest. And so, you know. Aliens. Aliens. I think you're right. I think you're right. That's what we need. In a few months time when they come out and go, it's not just aircraft that we've recovered. It's the actual aliens. You know, it's interesting. The beginning of the pandemic, I was really hopeful. One of the reasons why I was really hopeful is because people seemed nicer. It was like post 9-11.

Yeah. When everybody was concerned and, you know, they just felt like there was more humanity in the air. And I felt like that at the beginning of the pandemic. People were nicer. They were more polite. They were feeling fear and they realized, like, hey, you know what's really important? Health and family and your loved ones and people you care about.

That's what's really important. So we're all going to lock down and we're going to stay at home. And me and my family, we didn't go anywhere, man. We just played games and we watched movies every night. And in a lot of ways, it was a bonding experience. We had a lot of good times together. We cooked all our meals at home because we couldn't go out to dinner. And we just stayed at home and played.

And we were very fortunate that we have a yard and we have, you know, a dog and we went swimming. Right. But, you know, it wasn't that bad. It was just, you know, it was a time to be thankful. And I felt like I felt like that for my neighbors, too. It's like we were all in that together. Yeah. No, I agree. And that only lasts for a short period of time.

And then it's, you know what it's like, I always equate it to like a power outage, you know, in a community. And everybody's kind of pulling together. It's sort of like you're camping, you know. For a few hours. Yeah, for a few hours. And then everybody's down at the Home Depot

fighting over the last generator. And everybody's worried about toilet paper and bullets. Toilet paper. That was a weird fucking thing. The weirdest shit. My friend Duncan had, was it? No, Tom Green. Tom Green had a really good point. He's like, I think what happens is toilet paper takes up a large amount

of space on the shelf. So when toilet paper starts going away, people see that empty space and they start panicking like, oh my God, I need toilet paper. Because if you have like a thousand people trying to get toilet paper in a supermarket, you're not going to- It doesn't work. No.

No. I was stunned. I didn't see that coming. No, me neither. You know, we tend to have a pretty good stocked pantry and the silo's full. You have a silo? No, I just said that shit. Is it right next to your bunker?

It is. It is. It's got it. Yeah. Go out there and get some corn. But yeah, I couldn't believe it. We walked into the local Albertsons and shelves were bare. No toilet paper.

Weird. I thought, what the fuck's up with people? Just buy what you need. And I never thought we'd have a run on paper goods. And so it didn't take very long, but I agree with that. Initial period of time, we were worried about our elderly neighbors. Can we get them anything? Are you worried about your friends? Can you help them out in some way? And yeah, I feel the same way. We were very fortunate in that we could stay comfortably at home and hang out with the boys. And then our three little dudes, man, after a couple of days,

you're thinking, okay, I got to get outside. I can't hang out here anymore. I had a lot of friends change their opinion on the second amendment. Yeah. They were coming to me. Yeah. I had guys like beating around the bush. So what do you have to do to get a gun? Like, oh, okay.

I have a real good friend and his wife was like, you are never having a gun. We're never having a gun in this house. The moment the pandemic hit, you have to get a gun. We need a gun. She was immediate. We need a gun. And he was laughing. He's like, she told me to go get a gun.

We're on the phone howling. Go get one. Go get one. She said, go get a gun. I'm like, that is so fucking funny. Go to Piggly Wiggly or wherever you get your guns. You know, she's a good person. It's not that she's a bad person.

It's just her idea was that guns are for bad people. And you have a gun in the house, you're more likely to shoot each other, and you don't need that in your life. And I think a lot of those friends that I have who have wives like that, they look at me like I'm a caveman. Like, oh, this dickhead, he likes to shoot elk with a bow and arrow, and he's always shooting guns. And he says he's a liberal, but I don't even believe him. Yeah. I'm like, look, this is the same reason why I know how to fight. Self-defense is fucking important. Like, if some shit goes down.

How many goddamn videos have you seen where two people are in a fight and neither one of them knows how to fight at all? Oh, my God, it's a schoolyard slap fight. It's terrible. Yeah. I don't want to be that guy. No, and I work with my boys to tell them the same thing i said look this is what we have and so we we spend a fair amount of time on it and i i'm not creating bullies no i'm creating guys that can defend themselves their brothers and their friends right and if you if you see that and

and you need to take a stand then you need to know what the hell you're going to do otherwise you're going to get smashed in the face and you're not going to like it. My kids are allowed to hit me. Not my 23-year-old. She hits fucking hard. She can hit hard. She's really powerful. But my 10-year-old, my 10-year-old leg kicks me at least once a day. I taught her the spot to hit and she fucking digs in with the shin.

Oh, my gosh. She hurts me. A little 10-year-old girl. Well, they're there They're there leverage at that height, you know, they're yeah. Well, she knows how to do it, too She's been doing it. She was I mean I enrolled her in martial arts when she was five years old Okay, so here she is at ten. She she knows how to kick So she's like she like put her Dukes up like go ahead go ahead get in there and she's slam She slams that shit in there is

Terrifying how hard a ten-year-old can kick you in your leg. Yeah. It fucking hurts, man. My problem is they lay in wait, right? Ah. You know? Muggsy punched me in the junk one time, dropped me to my knees. I shit you not.

He just literally, I wasn't even expecting that. I turned around. He came around the corner. He caught me right in the junk. I was on my knees gasping, as you do, right? It's happened a few times, and it never feels any different. And he sat there. He didn't sit there.

He stood there, and he laughed maniacally, and then he wandered off. And I thought, good God. But it was a hell of a shot. It's not a good spot to get hit. When I was younger, I was convinced that i was sterile i was like there's no way i could be having kids i've been kicked in the balls i don't know a hundred times like no no bullshit by grown men yeah i've been kicked in the balls a hundred times i'm like there's no way my balls work those fucking batter things god those poor nuggets. I should have known, though.

I have muscles. My testosterone works. My balls probably work, too. Yeah, you know. I mean, you survived. I just assumed they were just a fucking bomb shelter. But I've had people say the same thing. It's like, what would you recommend for home defense?

And it is, and it's been a remarkable increase in the past three to four months. Isn't it a nutty, like, 40% increase or something crazy like that? Yeah. I mean, and to me it makes sense. I mean, you know. They realize. Yeah.

I mean, why wouldn't you? I mean, you know, home defense, it's a pretty basic thing. But it is surprising. And I do have friends who, same way, who would like to purchase something for that purpose, but their spouses are like, no, absolutely not. Even still. Find a new spouse. Because if your life's dependent on it and saving your family's life and you realize at that moment that you were wrong, you could get a gun safe. It's not hard to keep everything safe.

You just have to be diligent. You be intelligent. You do the right thing. You keep them locked up. It's not that hard, folks. It's really not. But it does come down to, again, the problem is always the people that buy, have no education, and then don't train.

Exactly. And those are the people that are dangerous, right?, and then don't train. Exactly. And those are the people that are dangerous, right? And they're dangerous to themselves. They're dangerous to their kids. And it's hard to train them. I mean, it's hard to be – Depending on where you're at. The thing is like some places have basic firearm safety that you have to pass.

I mean, I think I had a pass. I fell on a fucking – like a multiple choice. It's easy, right? But they – Sorry. it's crazy multiple choice yes yes no bullshit but what they don't do is you don't have to show physical proficiency there's places that you have to go where if you want to bow hunt okay yeah you have to be able to hit i think it's like a paper plate size target you have to be able to hit like X amount of arrows at, I think it's 30 yards or something like that in order for them to pass you for a bow.

But some places not. It's not consistent. But with handguns and guns, you could just go buy one. If you pass that test, no one, I mean, you have to know like on paper what you're not supposed to do. But in terms of like showing any sort of proficiency or, I mean how many people have guns and they've never even shot them? They don't know which way is safe. No, I know.

And that's the worst thing you can do. So if you're going to do that, then don't get one. I'm a big believer in that. Just don't buy one unless you're going to practice. And you're going to constantly work that mechanism. But, you know, I've taken a handful of concealed carry courses in the past, and a couple of times just out of curiosity to see what they're doing. And the training is, or the courses are not that good, right? And then, you know, they spend a fair amount of time on the legal issues, right? Because that's a big, you know, carrying a weapon is a pain in the ass, right? It's a real pain in the ass. And it's fraught with potential problems.

And you see difficulties because people don't understand the ramifications of it. They don't understand that it's, you know, it's not fun. It's just, it's, I don't know how else to put it. It's a big responsibility. It's huge. But you're right. Typical training, depending on where you're at in certain places, it's very difficult to go out regularly, get to the range once a week, which is what you should be doing. Yeah. Yeah, you really should. I mean, when I take a week off and I go to the range, I feel a little rusty. Like my first few shots, I feel a little rusty. Yeah.

It's muscle memory, but it deteriorates, unlike some things, right? It deteriorates quicker for a variety of reasons, but God, I can't emphasize it enough. So all those people that have rushed out in the past four months to buy weapons, you better be exercising that thing. Yeah. Please find a place where you can go, please, and learn. And I mean, even if you don't shoot and you make sure you understand how to tell if there's not a round in the chamber, understand dry firing, aim it. Even if you're just going to dry fire. Like I have friends that are competitive shooters that if they don't shoot every day, they dry fire for 30 minutes every day. Yeah. You know, they practice.

Yeah. And it's also, you know, understanding the mechanism, right? Understanding the machine. And so spend time, right? Take it apart. And it's also understanding the mechanism, right? Understanding the machine. And so spend time, right? Take it apart. Put it together. Take it apart. Put it together.

Just keep doing that. Cleaning it. All those things help you become more aware, and it also builds a sense of responsibility, right? It makes you understand the importance of handling it properly and storing it properly. So, yeah, this always sounds like a- Like a gun store. A public announcement. Yeah, yeah.

Like a gun store. I want to talk to you about remote viewing. Ah. Ah. Ah. Men who stare at goats. Yeah. You're going to do-

Are you going to do an episode of that for your- What's the television show again? Oh, thank you for asking. It's Black Files Declassified. I'm not sure if we've talked about it. It's on the Discovery Science Channel. Science Channel, yeah. And we've just – we've had an order for a second season.

Oh, congratulations. Yeah, thank you. So we'll be doing at least eight new episodes here. Are you going to do one on that? Yeah. On remote viewing? That's the plan. So tell me what you think about it.

We're putting together the show map. You know, it falls in the category of, once again, kind of like what we talked about with MKUltra, the idea being initially it was a defensive concern over what are our enemies doing, right? And so the concepts behind remote viewing, much like the concepts behind understanding behavioral conditioning or false memories, creating new memories, it started because we were concerned about what the enemy was up to, and the enemy being the Soviets in the old days and the Chinese. So what do I think about it? Eh. A cynic, I guess, is the best way to put it.

Yeah. I'm not necessarily buying the idea of remote viewing, of sort of how we want to refer to it, mind control. But I understand why there was interest. I understand why there were programs designed to try to figure this out. Who's the granddaddy of that stuff? There's this one guy who's famous. What's his name? I remember him from the Art Bell Show. Yeah.

I got to meet him. God. Jamie will get it before show. Yeah. And I got to meet him. God. Jamie will get it before us. Yeah. You know what? I'll bet the agency made me forget that. He's a little fellow. I was about to recall and then suddenly I couldn't.

Got him? Oh, that's not him. Ed Dames. That's him. Ego Swan is the guy who invented it though oh he's just a different guy so Ed Dames

is the guy that I met yeah I met him you met him yeah see if he's still alive because I'm going to talk shit about him

if he's not is he nice guy at least find out what kind of condition he's in before he's in a very nice yeah

very nice guy believe it at that yeah I didn't I didn't believe it I didn't buy it He's in a very nice guy. Believe it at that. Yeah. I didn't believe it. I didn't buy it. But he was telling me that they actually got some actionable data from his remote viewing sessions that they used. I believe they used for Bin Laden. He was saying.

I'm like, man. Again, look, do I think that there's certain things you can do to to to train your mind to perform better i think yes absolutely yeah sure right so that kind of shit no no um so yeah i think that's look they they had a program the military had a program for quite some time called super soldier and it looked at a variety of things right in concert with some various intel community agencies and it looked at a variety of things, right, in concert with some various intel community agencies. And it looked at a variety of things, including the issue of remote viewing. But mostly what they were looking at is how do you enhance performance out in the field?

How do you make a soldier, you know, stronger, smarter, safer, faster, all these things? And ultimately, where they settled was essentially technology, right? I mean, this issue of, you know, they ended up on things like the X suit and other things that can enhance- Exoskeletons. Yeah, exactly. It can enhance your abilities to exist and to, you know, to hump shit out in the field. But also, you know- When you say hump, you mean carry things. Carry stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gotta be really clear. Listen to the show you're on. Sitting in the safe house in San Francisco in the 60s watching some hooker hump some John on LSD. Good God, think about how weird that must have been. So weird. Bunch of freaks. And you could kind of do whatever you wanted

because you're the government. You've got a green light to do this. Well, guys like Sidney Gottlieb, who was the head of that operation, and guys like George White, I'm sure they couched what they were doing. Because they knew, you know, once it veered off into those whole unwitting testing and all the rest of the shit they were doing, you know that they knew. They were aware. Sidney Gottlieb was a very complex individual, right? were aware. Sidney Gottlieb was a very complex individual, right? But he knew what he was doing, but that ability to couch it in terms of, you know, we're fighting an existential threat,

so we're doing this for national security. I mean, I think it can kind of make it easier for a person to overlook sort of the questions, the ethical questions, because you're doing it for patriotic reasons, but you've got nukes pointed at you from the other side, and you legitimately feel like, okay, we're going to do this. Anyway, I'm not sure where I was going with that. But, yeah, the idea of super soldier, fascinating stuff. So how far have they gotten with the exoskeleton shit? Well, I mean, they've got several prototypes, a handful of companies out there. Russians have deployed. What do they use for a power source?

Well, see, that's part of the problem. Batteries and battery technology being what it is, that's still a problem. Yeah. And that's it. And whoever comes up with the better battery always wins, right? And so what they've found so far anyway is, and they've got some prototypes that don't rely on batteries at all, right? They're just use of essentially spring technology. And it's taking pressure off of the key joints, allowing you to lift heavier. And that's really where these things have come into play so far. You're not seeing super soldiers out in the combat, fighting each other and running at high speeds and carrying loads of shit. You're seeing it in a fairly pedestrian ways so far in logistics, right?

And, you know, the guys that are loading trucks, right, and they're doing that in 120-degree heat and need some help, right? So the exoskeletons have been very successful in that regard. Other technology, though, information and how information flows to the warfighter, right? So sort of the Google Glass concept and what they're doing with that. Augmented reality. Augmented reality, but the ability to feed information to the soldier in real time. you know, in real time. And then also to take information from the soldier in terms of their biofeedback and, you know, blood pressure, heart rate, that sort of thing. That's all very,

very important stuff. The problem is sometimes you can, as you know, you can overload that individual, right? When shit hits the fan and everything starts to shut down, you don't necessarily want a lot more information coming in sometimes, right? Because you're focusing, right? And so all this data, you know, sometimes that's not particularly helpful. But the ability to do it in the proper situation is very important. So there's a lot of research still going into that. It's just that the early days of, you know, remote viewing and other ways of creating a different type of warfighter, it's more a pedestrian effort right now.

Again, Russians are engaged in the same thing. Chinese are engaged in the same thing. Just like we're all engaged in the race for hypersonic unmanned vehicles and weapons. I'm worried about genetic manipulation because I'm worried that we're not going to do it, but they're going to do it first. And that like the idea of a super soldier, like using CRISPR or some of these gene editing tools, that that actually could be real. That you, I mean, you like in a place like China where you don't get to decide what you do for a living, they really could recruit a large number of people

and sort of develop soldiers in that regard. Yeah, and I don't think that's in the realm of the impossible, and I don't think it's not being done. I would be— Sure, they're doing it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I'm thinking like 50 years from now. When we're like, is it ethical?

Should we do this? And you have a bunch of senators debating it meanwhile in china they're fucking full steam ahead yeah and i think and here's where it's interesting is because you know i again people listening or there'll be some folks listening going well you know come on fucking ethical the u.s of course the u.s government's doing it and um but we are fundamentally different yes mltras, as we were talking about it, yeah, that was a horrendous situation. Violation of rights.

Right, went right off the rails. Shouldn't have happened. Was exposed, right? Which is all by itself an indication of how we're different, right, from the Russians or from the Chinese. You think the Chinese are going to hold some in their committee hearings?

They're going to call to the carpet the PLA intel operators and say, well, what have you been doing? Oh, my God, this is terrible. Are the Russians going to do that? Putin's going to call the FSB and throw them out there in a committee hearing? No, bullshit. So when people want to talk about how the U.S. is engaging, well, okay, yeah, we've been off the rails at times.

We do tend to try to self-correct whichever administration's in charge. But more importantly, we do have, and I hope we maintain it, we have had a track record of transparency to, again, to, you know, compare it to our, is it 100% transparent? No. Should it be? No. But compare it to our, those others? Yeah.

We do a pretty good job. Yeah. Yeah. So. I would agree. So this remote viewing, did they ever get anything out of it? Was there any data that, was there any, anybody, was there ever anyone who was really good at it or better at it? Was there any data? Was there ever anyone who was really good at it or better at it? Was there anything

to it? No. So how does it still a subject? It captures the imagination. I mean, it's like, how is Manson still a subject? Well, he's fascinating and it was a fascinating period of time. Remote viewing is I think it's fascinating. Again, it's like... So it's like

psychics. They wanted to find... Don't police still actually use psychics for certain... Like they try to find bodies and shit? Is that ever... Is that just in mystery theater or PBS or something? I don't know. You always hear about it.

I guess they do. Like the police bring in psychics? Maybe. Do they really? I don't know. A very good friend of mine who was a homicide detective in the U.K.'s Met Police, he works with me now in my business, Diligence, Diligence USA, for all your information and security needs. He never talked about a psychic ever being brought in, and he handled a lot of cases. It's always on those TV shows.

Yeah. And when I had asked him about that, I guess the point of bringing it up is I asked him and he said, no. Is that what he said? Yeah. No, no. I don't believe so. But yeah, nothing really, I mean, again, maybe there's a file sitting in the retired records

office of the agency, you know, and we're never going to see it. But as far as I've seen, there was never any record of success from it. But I get why it's of interest and why people are fascinated by it. It makes sense. Yeah. I mean, it's like everything else. I guess the government had to find out whether or not MKUltra, like when they were doing that, like, let's see. There's only one way to find out.

Well. If you don't believe in it at all, but it turns out to be true. And there are a few people that have developed techniques. Like, look, hypnosis is real. Hypnosis is weird. You know, maybe there's something to this shit. Maybe if you just follow the right techniques and get yourself in the right mindset, you have access to information that's not available any other way. And hypnosis, again, was part of the MKUltra subprojects, right?

And it's because there was concern that, you know, the enemy had this research or that they were making headway. And so, again, a lot of things that develop initially, it's because it's a defensive response, because we learn something about what some hostile entity is doing. And then you have to move immediately to, okay, well, do we need this for offensive purposes? Because if they're doing it, do we need to have that capability? Right. And I'd always argue with certainly when you go into the realm of cyber warfare, yeah, you better have that capability, you know, both sides. Well, that's where things like that Neuralink technology is very interesting because if somehow or another you really can communicate with someone

who's not there without using any words, which is what Elon said to me, he goes, you're going to be able to talk without using words. Well, if you can do that at a distance, like if you can literally guide someone, like say if you've got someone who's on a mission in Afghanistan and you are watching on a satellite and you can guide them without giving them any noise, without saying anything to them. And you can give them all the data, whether it's through augmented reality like glasses or something like that. Save a lot of lives and get a lot of jobs done. Oh, no. And they're doing that.

I mean, you know, Aberdeen and other areas, I mean, they're working on some pretty amazing technology, right? And so that ability to feed a lot of data, like if you're about to go through a door, right, you rock up on some target, you know, and you need to know what the hell is going on, and you've got that ability to, you know, make that happen, that's tremendous, right?

It makes for a safer, smarter, better soldier out there. And that's an important thing because that actually saves lives, like you said. So that is happening. It's the idea of communicating without— It's the woo-woo shit. Yeah, that's the part that may be further, communicating without, you know. It's the woo-woo shit. Yeah. That's the part that may be further down the road than Elon Musk thinks, you know. Did you have an open mind when you went into this remote viewing discussion, sort of?

I, you know, I mean. A little crack in the door? Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah. I mean, I think you have to. Look, nothing's 100%, right? It's like you were saying earlier, right?

We always want to think we're absolutely right and i don't i don't ever assume i'm absolutely right on something unless it's two plus two right i mean okay that's that's pretty proven but but um so i think you have to go into anything and any anytime you're going to do an investigation you have to leave the door open a little bit for the unknowns um but you do have to build what you're doing on something sound. So you can't, you don't want to base your decision making on just a theory or an allegation or a belief, right? You've got it. So every investigation needs to be built on something solid. Otherwise, it's just falling apart. And so that's kind of where we, you know, did I mention Blackfriars Declassified? Isn't that coming out?

That's second season. Did I say that? Oh, well, in the pandemic world, we probably won't be able to film until later this year. Yeah, how do you film it? Yeah. Can you just wear masks? I'm going to just wear, yeah, I'll wear a mask. Yeah.

We'll just stand ten feet apart from each other. Every episode, I'll wear a different mask, like a full overhead mask. That's a good move. Yeah, it'll be fun. Yeah, we'll wear a mask. We'll just stand 10 feet apart from each other. Every episode I'll wear a different mask, like a full overhead mask. That's a good move. Yeah, it'll be fun. Yeah, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. I mean, shit, this entire town in Los Angeles has been dealing with that bullshit, right? All these people out of work and production companies and all the independent contractors who don't have jobs because nothing's filming.

And nobody knows how to film and they don't want to take on the insurance. So it's hit that industry hard. I know everybody's like, oh, my God, it's hit the entertainment industry hard. I think what a lot of they're doing is quarantining people, testing them and quarantining them, forcing them to stay on set, quarantining them in a hotel they've rented out, things along those lines. I know Tyler Perry has been real successful at doing that, but he's smart. He's got his own studios.

He's got his own setup, and he just has everybody locked down at the place where they're filming. Yeah, but, I mean, all those people that don't have that option, right? I know a lot of folks that are working as camera operators or sound men or just anything in the business. They're fucked. Yeah, they're fucked. Well, for the longest time, the UFC was the only sports entity that was functioning. And we've been doing shows at the UFC for several months now. Yeah, yeah, which is a good – it lends itself to certain activities.

Like the NBA now, they can operate in this bubble, right? But baseball, I don't think football is going to happen. But, I mean, it's interesting. Everybody was so hopeful. Yeah. And they're like, ah, we'll get it sorted out by then. No, not really. Although my boy Sluggo, he couldn't be happier.

He's a basketball freak. And the fact that they're playing. Yeah, it is nice. Look, it's nice. Audience or no audience, at least people at home have something to watch. I'm very thankful that the UFC puts on all these fights. It's given me some interesting shit to watch. What are you going to miss?

You're moving out of here. What are you going to miss about California? I ain't going to miss shit. You haven't practiced that before, have you? I'm an impromptu kind of a guy. I'm going to miss the comedy store. I'm going to miss my friends. There's a lot of restaurants and a lot of people I know out here that are good people.

I just feel like this place is overwhelming and overcrowded, and I've had enough. And I like change. It's exciting. Yeah. My next move will probably be Montana after that. I'm going to go Texas and then Montana. Yeah, don't come to Idaho. We're full, man.

We're full. That's what I hear. Yeah. That's what I hear. Don't come to go Texas and then Montana. Yeah, don't come to Idaho. We're full, man. We're full. That's what I hear. Yeah, don't come there. Don't tell anybody. I look forward to seeing you in Texas, man. Yeah, come visit me out there. Yeah, I definitely will. I'll take you around. Get you to some real barbecue. Austin's a great town and all of Texas is interesting. I'm a fan.

I'm excited to go there. Alright, Mike Baker. Thank you very much, sir. Next time I see you, you'll probably be in another state. He'll be in Texas. I'm excited to go there. Yeah. All right, Mike Baker. Thank you very much, sir. Next time I see you, you'll probably be in another state. He'll be in Texas. I'll wear my boots. You got cowboy boots? Are you kidding me?

I got like half a dozen pair of cowboy boots. Are you kidding? Jamie's going to buy some. Yeah. He's excited about it. Look at him. Thanks, man. All right, thank you, brother.

Bye, everybody. See you soon. Woo. That was great. Thanks, man. Yeah. That was good.