The Joe Rogan Experience - #1630 - Dan Crenshaw

Episode Date: April 6, 2021

Dan Crenshaw is a former United States Navy SEAL, current US Representative for Texas's 2nd Congressional District, and host of the "Hold These Truths with Dan Crenshaw" podcast.

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day i have theory on this place this place austin good no your studio oh what's the theory tell me the theory well it looks like a spaceship Yes So here's my theory Okay Which is you had this grand master plan To get Elon Musk to admit that he's an alien He's definitely an alien But that's not correct

This was already This already existed Oh really? You bought it as is? Yeah well It's a long story And I can't get into too many details But this was a conference room

And so we converted this. The conference room was already circular. We converted it. But you put this weird alien stuff on it. Yeah, this stuff we put on. These are just sound deadening panels. So that wasn't an attempt to get Elon to admit that he's an alien. Okay, so here's how I thought you were doing this.

Okay. You've conditioned him over time, right? You bring him into the studio you're drinking with him you got him really high i didn't get him really high he barely got i don't even get inhaled did he inhale wow he took a little the rest of america thinks differently yeah he's just naturally high well pop probably doesn't work on aliens but you get him you get him comfortable right and then you put him in a situation that looks like his home base and then you and then you ask him that question right and he answered it kind of funny answered exactly

like an alien would answer it i would think um so i don't know did it work did it what do you think um his denial of the possibility of uh alien visitation was interesting and it got a lot of people like hmm yeah like you've never thought about it, really? He believes in the simulation theory. Really? Yeah. I don't believe in the simulation. It doesn't explain anything because who's running them? If they're running us, who's running

them? It doesn't explain existence. You don't understand the simulation theory. It becomes the universe itself. The idea is that... But somebody created it yes but who created them okay us listen if we are if we exist right we we do exist we agree to that yes right and we agree that we have fantastic technology that's indistinguishable from magic if you brought it to three four hundred years ago right what we experience now is nothing in comparison, especially as the laws of technology and they

expand at an exponential rate. If you look at what we can do now and look at what we're going to be capable of 100 years from now or 1,000 years from now, it's going to be impossible to distinguish between reality and simulated reality. They will develop an alternative virtual reality that's impossible to distinguish from. So the question is, how do you know if that hasn't already taken place? And maybe that's how the universe works. Maybe the idea of things being concrete and physical that you can touch

and things that you can weigh is just the experience that we've currently been accustomed to. Maybe that's not the whole way the universe works yeah i had this conversation with scott adams he was on my podcast and it was kind of i had to think about it later and um it still it still fails to explain existence for me because if we're the ones who created it then still somebody like us in a future state still created us or created the reality that we're in yeah i get that there's this kind of circular reasoning associated with it but it still fails to explain some basic but it doesn't it doesn't because here's the thing like you have single-celled organisms they they turn into multi-celled

organisms as they evolve and then eventually you get something that's sentient and also can alter its environment. That's human beings. That thing starts creating these virtual worlds. And these virtual worlds are run by artificial intelligence that becomes sentient as well. So that artificial intelligence continues to create newer and better virtual worlds. And then it's a self-sustaining system and this self-sustaining system becomes a new version of reality if you think about the the idea of multiple dimensions and even multiple universes there's there's an infinite number of possibilities

for not just life but life creating technology that we don't even we can't even wrap our heads around you know if there's things on other planets let's let's imagine a solar system where they don't have the issues that we have with meteors and asteroids okay so they did they have maybe they don't have the super volcano issues that we have so they're not dealing with extinction events every X amount of years. So they've had the ability to go from becoming a primate or whatever it is on their planet that's similar to becoming this super advanced thing without any hiccups. And they've gone on for millions of years. So we've been human beings in this form for hundreds of thousands of years. beings in this form for hundreds of thousands of years right if you go back and you take a guy from a hundred thousand years ago and you dress him up in a suit and put him in a movie theater not that you go to movie theaters anymore put him in a restaurant or in texas where it's legal

and then you you wouldn't notice he would just be a guy he wouldn't be any different than you are physically other than he probably would be starving to death right the difference in the world between 100 years from that 100 years ago and now is insane right well as if you think about what it could be like if you go a million years from now if this if there's no hiccups we don't nuke ourselves we don't get hit by an asteroid we don't have a super volcano we could have technology that's impossible to even imagine today right even in star trek they didn't imagine the internet think about that they didn't even understand cell phones right it was like kirk out like you had a fucking walkie talkie right yeah that's that's pretty close but yeah sort of but meanwhile you

couldn't google shit on it i mean there's so many things that we can do now. I mean, they were beaming themselves up in a board. But the point is that if you keep going and nothing interrupts it, your imagination can't even imagine. There's not even a way for you to think of what's possible when you have hundreds of millions of people innovating without interruption, and they go on for millions of years. millions of people innovating without interruption and they go on for millions of years what what what's possible is just your imagination is not going to be able to grasp it i get the theory i

just don't know how to believe it i don't know how somebody can believe it why not do you believe in video yes video is time capture sure i'm cat if i videotape you right now like this is being videotaped and someone is going to watch it later this is time capture you're capturing a moment in time but i can touch it i can manipulate it you can't manipulate this theory in any sort of way it's a fine theory i suppose i'm just not sure what the point of it is are you a reductionist are you one of those guys that reduces everything down to the simplest of terms? Not everything. Some things deserve a complex conversation. But in this case, my first question is, what's the point of the theory? Is it meant to explain us in some existential way?

It's not meant to explain anything. The theory is, the idea is that it is inevitable. If we don't kill ourselves, if we don't blow ourselves up, if we don't go back to Mad Max days, if we don't nuke ourselves back in the Stone Age. It's inevitable that someone creates something like the simulation, like the Matrix. I hope not. I would like to think that the human psyche and the human consciousness

is a little bit more libertarian than that, a little bit more individualized, a little bit more rugged and unable to be captured in that sense. Now, the year 2020 might have convinced me otherwise. And it scares the hell out of me, frankly. But you're in Texas now, and that's what we're all about, is that independent-minded thinking. And I would like to think that it would break the system, that it's just not possible. Well, the simulation might be something that you can exist in and use the same principles that you can exist in as a rugged individualist in reality. Like, just because it's a simulation. Yeah, but there's an answer for everything in this theory it would just it would just fix it because it's so advanced

i'm not saying it would fix it i'm saying it might be an alternative reality like it might be human beings that might have created or intelligent life might have created an alternative dimension that exists in what you would call cyberspace. Yeah. Like, if it fully forms out, like, look, what if someone in a lab, what if some scientist figured out a way to literally create another universe? Like, there's a theory about black holes. You know anything about supermassive black holes? Yeah. Inside of every galaxy is a supermassive black hole in the center of every galaxy

that's one half of 1% of the mass of the entire galaxy. The bigger the galaxy, the bigger the black hole. There's a theory that I don't totally understand, but I'm going to repeat it like as if I do, that inside that galaxy, if you go through that black hole, there's another universe inside, another universe filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with black holes in the center of them. go through each one of those black holes there's a new universe with hundreds of billions

of galaxies so the universe being infinite it's it's it's too big for dumb people like you and i not i should say i and you just call me dumb first but that's the only time it's more polite i'm minor in physics joe so i know what i'm talking about it's like five classes okay well i talked to a lot of smart people i remembered some of the shit they said i don't know what i'm talking about i can i can pull it off but the idea is that there's an infinite number of universes and an infinite number of planets an infinite number of possibilities in terms of intelligent life forms creating things. And was it Nick Balstrom? Is that the guy who was on? He tried to explain it to me.

He was saying that through probability theory, it is more probable that we are in a simulation than not. That's a stretch. Just this weekend I saw Neil deGrasse Tyson posted a video on his Instagram. I'm trying to pull it up right now. I thought he'd be more entertained by my theory about you trying to trick Elon into admitting he was an alien.

I'm trying to be cool about that theory because I don't want Elon to know I'm tricking him. Is it the gig up? It's not true. Hold on. It's probable but not true? Yeah, what you're saying. Neil Tyson was on your side of this. Yeah.

After all the thought. I got Neil Tyson on my side. Hold on. I all the thought. I got Neil Tyson on my side. But hold on. I'll take that. Like, if the simulation theory was true, we're either, like, you could take, he said you could point at any moment in the timeline, and that would be, like, us.

Like, we're, like, about to create the simulation, but we haven't done it yet, and we don't know how to. What? That's sort of why I wanted to get him. Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't have a fucking case on his phone. And I told him that was stupid. And last time I saw him, his phone was cracked. And that is proof he doesn't know what he's talking about.

He's got some knucklehead ideas. He's like, it's an elegant device. All theoretical physicists have knucklehead ideas. I mean, that's the entire point of a theoretical physicist. They got too good at math. They got bored proving theorems over and over again. But he's an astrophysicist. Yeah. Well, which requires some theoretical physics in it as well. It's fascinating stuff. It's beyond my scope to say the least. So the most advanced physics

class I ever took was quantum mechanics and it just becomes math, right? And I was not an engineering major. I was an international relations major doing a minor in physics, which is an odd thing to do. All right. But I liked it because I love science. I love math. I was good at it. So I wanted to keep pushing that side of my brain because you're working two different muscles in your brain when you're doing liberal arts on one side and science on the other. So I love doing it. But when you get to trying to explain to somebody why you don't know where a particle is at any given moment it's only you know the probability of it this becomes confusing and the math behind it is even more confusing and i was you know i'm glad i didn't advance much further than that yeah when you get

into particles and superpositions you're like wait what the fuck are you talking about it's both moving and not moving it's here and not here. It's in two places simultaneously. And if you view it, if you're observing it, it changes the way the particle behaves. Right. What? And we're not sure how. Nobody really understands it.

That's why it's fascinating. And I've also heard it. Yeah, I've also heard it explained that the reason why it changes is because there's a method that you're using. You're interacting with it when you're observing's a method that you're using you're interacting with it when you're observing it and that's what's changing it it's not that it's actually changing because you're you're observing it it's because you're interacting with it while you're observing it so i'm like well it implies that there's some magic unseen connection between us and the object

and between objects themselves i mean quantum entanglement is when you can entangle these two particles and they will copy each other even from lengthy quantum entanglement is when you can entangle these two particles and they will copy each other even from lengthy distances. This is how you do quantum computing or quantum... What's the word I'm looking for? Not a... Well, a part of computing, but basically security with quantum computers. This is sort of that theory being applied to that yeah it's

meaning meaning like it's like a peer-to-peer encryption quantum encryption it allows people to to get away with a lot of fuckery too right like that's where probably it's why we should advance it more than the chinese do well yeah but i don't even mean that kind of fuckery. I mean like psychic fuckery. Like that's that movie, What the Bleep Do We Know? Like you want to get a physicist mad, talk about What the Bleep Do We Know? Talk about the fuckery in that movie. I haven't seen the movie. You haven't seen that movie?

Uh-uh. It's all about, you know about the secret, you know about the idea of the secret, the idea of the law of attraction. I saw that a long time ago, too. There's a lot of people that believe that of this weirdness and sort of apply laws and rules to this weirdness that they have like sort of a script for and that you should follow and then next thing you know you're in a cult. And that's the end up in a cult. And someone's banging your wife and you have to pay 10%.

That's your drinking weird Kool-Aid. Yes, that's how it works, man. People are strange. You know, we want to find meaning to things that don't necessarily have meaning to them. And we want to apply rules to things that maybe don't necessarily have rules, like life itself.

You know, life itself is very bizarre. Well, the search for meaning, I think, is what's behind this, what I believe is an extravagant theory of a simulation. Maybe, yeah. No, maybe. what's behind this what i believe is an extravagant theory of a simulation maybe yeah no maybe i'm not married to the the simulation theory and in fact um i think it's more likely this is going to get real strange i think it's more more likely that it's it's an inevitable possibility rather than it's it's a reality i think it's an inevitable possibility i think if we don't blow ourselves

up there's going to become a point in time where... Did you ever see Ready Player One? Great movie, right? Fun. Yeah, it was pretty good. Fun movie. I think that's going to happen. I don't think that's far away.

That's probably 50 years in the future where you're going to be able to put on a haptic feedback suit and some sort of VR goggles and you're going to enter into some incredibly advanced artificial reality, virtual reality that's amazing. Yeah. That's more interesting than... That seems likely. Yeah. That seems likely.

Yeah. And then it's going to be a new trick of, well, how do we prevent people from... I don't know if we can prevent people or how do we deal with this obvious problem where the virtual reality becomes the preferred lifestyle, which it already is for a lot of people playing me um playing video games or on social media or whatever it is and um you know is is this is this a good thing it doesn't seem to me that it that it is my my position is that it's a thing i don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing i don't know i don't know if anything is i don't know if agriculture's a good thing or a bad thing i don't know i don't know if anything is i don't know if agriculture is a good thing everything's a trade-off yeah i mean it seems like you know the people that want to like go back to the hunter-gatherer days like you know we we're better off we're hunter and gathering oh yeah without all that books and medicine and all

that confusing shit like what are you talking about no we're better off right now like right now is the best time to be alive even though we just got through a fucking horrible year, that year exposed a lot of weird shit about our civilization. It's exposed a lot of weird shit about a bunch of really freaked out people that are just paranoid and schizophrenic. And how many people that are just fragile. There's so many fragile people in our culture. I was blown away by the politics of it i'm a politician so this is what i analyzed and i was blown away that the the conversation about how to deal with the last year became it the division the division fell upon partisan lines

right about whether to lock down or not to lock down, about whether people liked masks or didn't like masks. And at first, that seems really odd. And so I spent a lot of time analyzing this, because it shouldn't be that way. It should, it should be mixed, you would, you would think about just because what you're really talking about is somebody's risk assessment. And, you know, how they perceive risk and how they want to deal with that and how they think everybody else should deal with that. And it's strange i think there's a lot of factors involved i do think that there was some political opportunism i think that if trump says something people reactively say the opposite that's a problem right and then that's definitely part of it however um after trump lost the election he that didn't stop that that movement to go you know for pro lockdown movement

never stopped so it didn't it was not clear to me then that that was the only reason but it's but it is see the problem is once people get committed to an ideology or committed to a narrative yeah just because trump lost and now biden's in power it's not like everybody just abandons this narrative and creates a new reality based on objective truth. But they'll never even do an after action report on it to the point to where it's ridiculous. I thought you were showing us something. And so I put another few factors in there. I think some of it is the fact that Democrats tend to congregate in urban areas and it might be, you know, the virus is more in your face in an urban area than in a rural area.

That might be some explanation there. For sure, right? But it really boils down to, and there's studies on this, where our brains light up differently when assessing risk. Now, it doesn't mean that the behavioral outcomes of these studies are changed. Basically, they would take liberals and conservatives and they would give them a bet, what amounts to a betting game, and see how they react differently. Now, the actual behavioral outcomes, what they choose, didn't change all that much. But when they're doing the MRI scans,

they see that their brains light up differently. So that's interesting. So we clearly assess risk differently somehow. So I'd looked at data on the kind of jobs that we choose. And it turns out, and this is intuitive, you would guess this, that the vast majority of conservative or vast majority of dangerous jobs are mostly populated by conservatives, lumberjacking, hard labor, military, law enforcement. So there's, it's obvious that we're choosing to engage in risk differently, just overall in the aggregate. And so I think that gets at why we think differently about this. I think we're truly wired differently. And add on top of that the natural disposition of a liberal to believe in some sort of collective action, whereas the natural disposition of a

conservative is to believe that government can only do so much, right? There's life out there, and sometimes it's dangerous, and it's up to you as an individual to generally assess that. And that's also the most efficient way to do things in order to get the best outcomes in the aggregate. So these are two dispositions that are always present, and they manifest in policy outcomes all the time. And in this case, it's pretty obvious how they manifested into the way we dealt with coronavirus. And I think that kind of explains it. Because, you know, and think about it this way, too. When a more left-leaning public health official talks about it, they always give you the worst case scenario.

Well, it's possible that if you're 15, you could die. Well, yeah, it's possible, but it's also far more unlikely than even if you got the flu. They say they leave out that part. They leave out the context. They leave out the probabilities. This is why I've been so frustrated with our public health officials. Give us the whole truth.

Right. Don't just give us the most dangerous truth. Don't, don't tell us the tail end of the probability scale. Like that's, that's not useful information to us. Very, it's been very frustrating to watch how we've dealt with this over the last year around the world, not just in America. Frankly, we've had it better than a lot of countries. I think people tend to try to find a group that they can attach themselves to.

And Chris Rock has a great bit about this. You know what? You can find Mick Maynard, who is one of the matchmakers for the UFC, posted this on his Instagram. Go to Mick. You got it? Yeah. Okay. So Mick Maynard posted this from the great and powerful Chris Rock.

And this is, we can watch this because it's on his Instagram. And if Chris will holler at me, if it's a, it's an issue, but I fucking love Chris Rock. And this is one of the best points. It might not be one of his best bits,

but it's one of his best points ever because it's so accurate because he's talking about... Gang mentality. Republicans are fucking idiots and Democrats are fucking idiots and conservatives are idiots and liberals are idiots and anyone

that makes up their mind before they hear the issue is a fucking fool, okay? Everybody, no, no, hold up, everybody's so busy wanting to be down with the gang, I'm a conservative, I'm a liberal, I'm a conservative, it's bullshit. Be a fucking person listen let it swirl around your head then form your opinion no normal decent person is one thing okay i got some shit i'm conservative about i got some shit i'm liberal about crime i'm conservative prostitution iitution, I'm liberal. It goes on, but that's where the clip ends.

But that's so accurate, is that what a lot of people are afraid of is being alone. They're afraid of being attacked. And one of the things about today's culture, particularly with social media, is that it's an attack culture. It's a bully culture. And a lot of these people that are doing the attacking and they're doing the bullying, they've been bullied in the real world. So they want paybacks. They're trying

to bully people online. And that's what you see. There's a lot of like low status males, a lot of like really weak people who have never really overcome physical adversity or they're not successful, but they found a way online to gather up a group of people that resonate with some of their opinions and they can attack people and they do it all day long you know there's i find that to be the most it's fascinating the most probable if somebody's uh saying something extremely crude and awful to me online it's probably a a younger man it doesn't necessarily sometimes it's older men who have failed their life and they've just they've decided that this is their stand this is their line in the sand they're going to draw whether now they're going to be anti-racist or they're

going to be you know uh anti-homophobic or anti-transphobic or whatever it is and they're going to attack all these people whether or or these people. There's so many different ideological pathways that you could choose, that you could get a group of people that agree with you, and then you fight against anyone that opposes these ideas, and you do it in a really aggressive and nasty way, which is something that we should push back against, period. Ideas should be something that you should be able to discuss and and debate and analyze you should be able to sit down and go why do you believe in the

simulation theory you know and we shouldn't be like well you're a fucking idiot joe rogan that's why you agree it should be like yeah i'm a fucking idiot yeah but that's not why i agree with this that's not why i look at this i look at this why I look at this. I look at this because I'm curious. And I see all the various components. You know, I think there's a lot of truth on both sides. But the problem is when you ignore the truth on a side that doesn't fit with your ideology, then you're not interested in truth. You're interested in what Chris Rock is talking about.

You're interested in supporting your gang. Yeah, and that's your gang or team. I always say that you're either wearing a blue jersey or a red jersey, and then you act accordingly. And you repeat these sort of mantras that you think you're supposed to repeat in order to gain favor within that group, make sure they know you're part of the loyalists there. And if you don't say the things, then that group gets distrustful of you. But this is a problem we have on the right. So I think the left is power hungry. I think the right is paranoid.

And we tend to look for betrayers in our midst. Wait a minute. Who's paranoid? Who's power hungry? Which one? The right. The right is more paranoid. Can you switch it back and forth, though?

Left is paranoid sometimes, too. Look, everybody's on a spectrum. And I should say that in the beginning. I'm analyzing in the aggregate the coronavirus, why people fell on partisan lines on that. But look, I recognize that not all liberals are risk averse to this extraordinary degree. I recognize that. We're all on a spectrum from the left to the right. But in the aggregate, this is sort of what we see.

And then in politics, as you're talking about, we put on these jerseys. And so I'm just talking in generalities. of course the left can be ultra paranoid um and of course the right in in its extreme form can can can exhibit more power hungry tendencies but it but it tends not to be and if you and if we look at the policies actually being implemented that tends not to be the case but what i see on my side because i'm always dealing with my side we not to be the case. But what I see on my side, because I'm always dealing with my side, we tend to be looking, instead of thinking how to persuade, this is the problem I have and I'm trying to change, not that I have, I mean that I think we have, we talk about fighting all the time. And I say, look, we have to define fighting as persuasion. Persuasion is the name of the game in politics. Look, I can go charge a hill as a SEAL, and that's fighting, right?

I mean, and it looks cool, but I'm going to die, okay? What I really should do is communicate, maneuver, and kill the enemy that way. In politics, the fight must be persuasion. And too often, we get more concerned with saying the things, saying the slogans, saying the things that make us feel good, that help us recognize one another as part of the same team, wearing the same jersey. I think that's what he's getting at. And if somebody veers from that, well, they're a traitor. They're not one of you. And then they're automatically wrong.

And instead of saying, I knew you were going to say that, let me tell you why it's wrong. Let me explain it to you. Let's have a debate about it. We get really mad. And we go online and we call names because we haven't actually done the background work to at least understand why we think what we think. And when you understand why you think what you think, that's how you can persuade people. That's the name of the game game and the reason i say we're paranoid is because and and and i was you know we're always looking for rhinos on our side right republicans and name only i've never used that word against anybody even even if i think that explain that what does that mean it's a it's a commonly used term in conservative politics the rhin rhinos. Oh, yeah. Mitt Romney's a rhino.

Susan Collins is a rhino. Wait a minute. Mitt Romney's a rhino? He's not conservative? Because he turned on Trump. Oh, that's hilarious. And I can disagree with him for doing that. But the name-calling frustrates me.

Because it's a way to bypass debate. Name-c because it's a way to bypass debate. Name-calling is always a way to bypass debate. Right. That's always the use of it. It never has good intentions behind it. And so whether you're calling somebody a rhino or establishment or a sellout, this is not useful. This is not useful. Even if you think it's true, then explain why it's true on that particular issue.

not useful even if you think it's true then explain why it's true on that particular issue and what tends to happen and this happens certainly on both sides is is that sort of puritan thinking drives out that more moderate member of the party okay one of those yeah cheers cheers my wife my wife said i wasn't allowed to your wife loves you come on man you're having a sip this is uh the most american whiskey available it's very good buffalo trace um it drives out those more moderate members that you need to actually persuade people and especially in certain districts and so look i've i'm a very i don't i don't think i take any left-wing positions i'm very conservative like what do you mean by you don't take any left-wing positions like what are left-wing positions that you oppose?

Well, what issue do you want to talk about? Anything. Healthcare, on their energy mix, on taxation, on border, on just about anything. We disagree. This is the nature of politics. This is healthy disagreement here. Well, let's go to healthcare. Okay.

Wouldn't it be nice if everybody had healthcare? Yes. The left is right about that. Right. And this gets to another point I think you were kind of making earlier, which is there's good ideas on both sides. I do think we have to listen to what the left wants sometimes, not all the time. It depends. But on health care, are they wrong to say everybody should have access

to good health care? Is that a wrong statement to make? No. Of course not. I think of us as a community. I think of the united states as a community and i think if there's someone in the community that is uh that's hurting because of bad circumstance or bad fortune we should be able to take care of them the same way we're able to keep the power grid up the same way we're able to fix the bridges we should be able to provide health care to the members of our community so the question is how I get

here's where I get conservative I think we should also make people personally responsible for their own health I think you should step up and say hey I want you to have health care based on your current circumstances but I also want you to do the work to get your health better and that's where I think we need to make a division and I'm not I'm I'm as left as I am right because I'm I'm left on so many things but I'm right on so many things too like Chris Rock said I'm I'm pretty fucking conservative on crime you know I get angry when when I I see lax crime or lax law enforcement. When I see people not supporting law enforcement

or not understanding the nature of crime or not understanding what happens when criminals realize that there is no law enforcement. Right. Like, Jesus Christ. Incentives matter. It matters a lot. And I think that's what you're getting at.

Human nature matters. And to say that incentives matter, it might be a conservative position. I think you could also say it's a classically liberal position. You know, if I were to try to categorize you, Joe, I'd put you in a lot of classically liberal areas where you're believing in free speech and free debate.

And these classically liberal ideas that our country was founded on, it does seem to me now that the Republican Party is the only one defending these more classically liberal ideas. Now, in health care, again, this is sometimes this is what I always say. Look, we have to and I think Jordan Peterson's puts us the best way about the balance between chaos and order and the balance between the left and the right. The left representing chaos, the right representing order. Now, it's not derogatory to say that they're representing chaos. It just means they're representing constant change.

Yes. But that's unhealthy left by itself. Just like maybe an adherence to pure hierarchical order is also unhealthy left by itself. And so a balance is needed. But to solve the problem, to solve problems that you want to solve and to get to the change that we agree that we want to make. Now, first, we have to agree on the change. Now, in this case, we do. Everybody should have access to good health care.

Yeah, we all agree on that. Sometimes we don't agree on the change. Like on the border, we don't agree. The left wants to go a totally different direction. Well, let's just talk about health care first. Let's go to the border, too. I would love to do that, too. I'm sticking to health care.

Don't worry. So they want people to have access to healthcare and they want to do it through Medicare for all. Okay? We say no. You can't do it that way because if you do,

there's trade-offs associated that I don't think that we should bear. What are those trade-offs? Well, the trade-offs would be one, it's really expensive. So you have to double or triple people's taxes

to pay for the amount of care that they want to give. Double? Or triple? Double or triple at least. That's what every study would show. And this is not disputed by the way this is i'm not i'm not saying things that a that a democrat would would disagree with um this is this is well known this this has a large cost like if someone's in a 48 tax bracket how do you triple their taxes that's a really good

question that's the problem um that's it you're talking in the aggregate and look in like nordic countries that do do this for instance um they we have the most progressive're talking in the aggregate. And look, Nordic countries that do do this, for instance, we have the most progressive tax system in the world, by the way. Nobody believes that, but it's actually true. Nordic countries tax their middle class exceptionally more than we do. Okay, well, our top 1% pays 40% of taxes. You know what, that share increased after the tax cuts under Trump. Do they have a benefit to that tax increase? Sure, they have a large welfare state. So they have a very large welfare state. Do they have a lower crime rate?

That's the trade-off. Do they have a lower crime rate as well? I'm sure it depends on the location. I'm not sure that's associated with the particular discussion about welfare necessarily. But going back to health care. So that's one trade-off. It's expensive.

And the second trade-off is if you're talking about Medicare for all, and under these bills that they propose, you are reimbursing doctors and hospitals at a Medicare rate. Okay. That's a really important part of it. That effectively means price controls. That's how you maintain that budget that you say you're going to stick within. That's how Canada does it. That's how the UK does it. That's how all these countries do it. So there's a particular reimbursement rate. We're going to pay you this much for this service. We're going to pay you this much for this drug. That's price controls. Anytime you have price controls, you have less supply. That's an economic truth that you can never escape. If I say that I'm only going to pay you a certain amount

per episode, well, you're recalculating how many episodes you're going to do, no matter what. Everybody controls their supply based on a price. Now, if you think you can get more for that price, you'll increase your supply. This is always true in healthcare. It's why during the pandemic, this was made really clear. We have more ICU beds per capita than any other country. For instance, we have more ventilators per capita than any other country. We have access to far more drugs than any other country. For instance, we have more ventilators per capita than any other country. We have access to far more drugs than any other country. We do, because we make most of them here, because there's a profit incentive. Why don't we make most of them in China? On some of the more generic stuff. That was a problem during the pandemic that was being

talked about. When it comes to your next generation drug, that's made mostly by American pharmaceuticals, because there's a profit incentive. Is it invented by most American pharmaceuticals but then produced by China? Is that what the issue is? They might produce like a certain compound or something in China. It was not our most exceptional drugs being produced in China. There is supply chain issues that we're addressing that we should address. Is there a hierarchy of drugs?

Like essential drugs? Like there's a hierarchy of drugs? Like essential drugs? Like there's a hierarchy of businesses, essential businesses? Well, there's the most advanced kind of cancer drug, for instance. Like you're only going to get that here in the United States. You're only going to get it in terms of the way it's invented or the way it's processed and produced. I mean, get it, period. Get it.

Because we make it? Right, because we make it. And that pharmaceutical company might offer it to Australia or the UK, but the UK says, well, we're not going to pay you that much for it, so they just don't get it. So depending on what country you're looking at, a lot of times you'll see, like Australia, I think, has access to maybe 60% of the drugs that the United States has access to.

So we get something. We pay too much for our health care, but we also get a lot for it. You're much more likely to survive cancer in the United States. You're much more likely to survive rare diseases. The left will throw out this stat that says we pay double what other countries pay for health care, but our life expectancy is the same. That's playing with statistics a little bit because life expectancy also includes suicides, homicides, these things that have nothing to do with the quality of your healthcare system. Now, those are problems to be sure, but they have nothing to do with the quality of care that you're getting when you have a really, really rare disease. Here in the United States, this is the place you want to be. This is where people are coming from

Canada when they have things that can't be solved there because it takes them six months to get an elbow surgery. So we are getting something for our profit incentivized healthcare. When you put price controls on it, you're going to get less of it. I talked to independent clinics all the time, they're like, we're just going to close if we have to take Medicare rates of reimbursement for our for the care that we're giving. We're just going to close, we can't make a profit that way. Hospitals probably won't close, they've done a good job, you know, aggregating different hospitals together to make more profits. but they're going to fire doctors. They're going to pay doctors less. Now you have less of an incentive to go to medical

school. You definitely have less of an incentive to go to be a primary care doctor. All of these problems start to compound, and your healthcare system starts to look a lot like Canada or the UK, specifically Canada for what Medicare for All is. And Canadians flee there, again, when they need really, really specialized care. Okay, so what's a better way to do this? I mean, I would say simply, the way Obamacare works, and the way Medicare for all would work is it puts the money in the pockets of the insurance companies in the case of Obamacare, or in the case of Medicare for all simply is it's a one payer system right to the doctor or hospital and then they negotiate that price. A better way to do this, and this starts to look a little bit like, say, Switzerland, where you put the money in the pocket of the patient, the patient then controls it.

Now think about, here's something else we agree on that people need, food, right? People need food. And so what do we do? Do we create these government run food production facilities and distribution facilities? Do we do we tell the grocery store, look, okay, this person's going to go buy some some cereal, and then we're going to reimburse you for that cereal on the back end? No, we don't we give the person a food stamp a voucher, and then they go buy what they want is the issue that they're buying what they want? This is where it gets weird, right?

It's like if you give someone food stamps, should you say, well, you can only buy real food? You can't use food stamps to buy cigarettes? Maybe. It's a different conversation. Can you buy cigarettes or food stamps? No. No? No. Can you buy booze?

No. It would be the same with health care. Can you buy Coco Puffs? I'm not going to let you distract me here. It would be the same with health care like it's a lot of people have health savings accounts okay so this is a tax deductible basically a tax-free zone you can put money into but you have to spend it on health care so yeah there's there's qualified things that you can spend that money on imagine a system where you

put your money into that health savings account the government if you can't afford health care the government puts some money in there and then you have a choice of insurance plans to buy. Or one thing I'm working on is direct primary care. And this is separate from insurance. But we need to get back to this place in America where you feel like you know who your doctor is. You have a quarterback for your health care. And that quarterback is your primary care physician. And a lot of people don't have that.

You might have that. I have a specific doctor I always go to for just basic stuff, just really basic stuff. Usually telemedicine involved, usually just a phone call. You don't go to them when you break your arm, but they're your primary care doctor. Now, direct primary care is a system that's already growing in America. It's about $75 a month on average, and you have total access to a doctor. So it's more like a gym membership than it is insurance. And there's no co-pays, there's no third party insurance. That's what I want to normalize in America to get people to this point. And again, you could put

that money on a debit card for the poor. Explain what you're saying. When you're talking about that money, where's this money coming from? How does it get allocated? Like, what are you talking about? Yeah, so instead of spending all this money on Medicaid, for instance, take the people who are eligible for Medicaid and even above that rate, and you could have a tiered program. Instead of wasting all that money on a Medicaid program that doesn't have improved outcomes, by the way, every study shows this. What do you mean by that?

It doesn't have improved outcomes? It means that when you compare people from the same socioeconomic status and they're in medicaid enrolled or they have no insurance at all their health outcomes are no different so again malarkey is that fucking around with statistics a lot a lot of studies have shown this but hold on you're talking about someone getting medical care or not getting no no they still because you always get medical care how so you you just show up the hospitals never turn anybody away it's a myth it would be a myth to say that but but is it true that people that have medicare were more likely to go to a hospital take care of stuff versus people that ignore that issue no they don't have health insurance

it's not for whatever reason it's it's not So if you have no health insurance and you worry that this is going to put you in debt for the rest of your life, you're in the same line as someone who has medical insurance who can go to a whatever, emergency room, whatever it is, and deal with whatever personal issue they're dealing with and not worry about it being something that ruins them financially forever. The same motivation, the same motivation the same the same action yes you get your health care either way again our pricing system sucks our payment system sucks that's what everybody's pissed off about when you're in when you're enrolled in medic i'm not saying i'm not saying medicaid's fault that you have worse outcomes i'm saying isn't it a problem though that we're dealing with these giant numbers of people and we're

trying to figure out like what's the same action like if you have someone who has health insurance versus someone who doesn't have health insurance just naturally i would assume someone who has health insurance is going to get medical care more often or at least seek out medical care more often is that unreasonable um it doesn't end up turning out that way necessarily because they're just because their deductibles are so high so you know that when you go seek out hey i just want to check up on something so you got a six thousand dollar deductible is that what a deductible is for medicare for all well in bernie sanders idea of medicare for all you would never pay for anything and again that sounds really nice does sound nice it does sound nice until you but i explained all the trade-offs you're you're

getting with that you're getting a much you you've you've driven profits out of the system completely how do you do that what bernie sanders wants how do you merge the two i'm trying to i'm trying is it possible i well the way i'm explaining it i would i would say it is right how do you have your cake and eat it too because i'm not willing to sacrifice the quality of our system for what bernie sanders wants i'm not willing to make us look like canada we're the last country in the world truly innovating okay so now now if we were done innovating if we said we don't we don't need any we don't medical medical devices and pharmaceuticals all of it if we didn't need anything else if we were at our maximum if we were at the pinnacle of success when it comes to medical technology then you might be able to make the argument okay like a moral argument okay

the government should just confiscate all this technology and distribute it equally maybe i still don't think it would work very well because you know you also you also have to conscript doctors into and doctors and nurses and hospital administrators into this into this sort of um system where you're forcing them to work the amount that you want them to work, which is problematic. So how do you get both? How do you maintain the incentive to innovate? How do you maintain the incentive to hire more doctors and to compete with one another? The only thing that drives better quality in a system is generally competition and some kind of choice associated with that. So again, this is why I brought up the analogy with food stamps, because there's a way to do it. And it's putting the money, it's empowering the patient to make

those choices. Okay, it's not saying we're going to leave you out to dry. It's saying, let's empower this patient instead of putting them in this Medicaid enrollment. Because the other problem with Medicaid, by the way, is a lot of doctors won't take it because of the reimbursement rates and because of how difficult it is to deal with the government. Nobody likes dealing with the government. The reason hospitals can make a profit at all is because insurance is why our insurance is so expensive. Because insurance companies are paying 150% of the cost of a procedure, whereas Medicare

might be paying 60 to 70% of the cost of a procedure. So if you make everybody pay 60 to 70% of the cost of a procedure, you're going to get less supply. So is the idea that the reason why Medicare is only willing to pay 60 to 70% of the procedure is because they believe the procedure is overpriced? It's a negotiation. It's a, um, it's a formula. How do they justify that? Well, they're saving money.

Like if you say, but I understand that. But if you say it costs X amount to repair an ACL surgery, and you blow your ACL out and you've got to repair it, if Medicare is only willing to pay 60% of that rate, what are they saying? Are they saying you don't deserve any more money because it's not worth that much? Right. That's what they're saying.

And this gets to another problem that the Trump administration fixed, which is price transparency. Because this is the other thing. Nobody seems to know how much anything costs. Okay, so the way we price out how much things cost in healthcare is based on these formularies that are derived from CMS, which is Medicare. With CMS? CMS, which is Medicare and Medicaid. It's Medicare and Medicaid. It's the government organization. And derived from private insurance. And so that's how we sort of analyze what it costs. But you go ask a hospital, not all hospitals, but many, and they're like, well, I can't tell you exactly how much it costs. I'm like, well, what do you mean you can't tell me? So price transparency something is a rule that was imposed recently that will fix this problem and get us to this point where we can finally start shopping around. Now, some hospitals do do this and they make a big deal out of it.

They say, look, here's our prices. We're posting them. A lot of independent facilities will do this as well. This is what it's moving towards. The direct primary care system that I was just talking about, that's getting at that truth. What's like, look, this is what your care costs. Here's all the services you get for 75 bucks a month. Again, it's not insurance. It's not catastrophic, but here's all the services you get. Now you have a relationship with your doctor. You never have to talk to insurance. It's just he

or she is there all the time. So what do you do about insurance? Go back to the food stamp analogy. Put money in a health savings account and allow you to choose what insurance works for you. Wait, hold on, stop. When you say put money in a health insurance account, what does that mean? Where's that money coming from? So do you get to allocate how much money goes to this or to that? It would be means tested just like anything else.

Means tested, how so? It means if you're poor, you poor you get more if you're you you don't get any money but when you say the money goes into some sort of account like what the individual the individual wants but the individual who wants health care like what happens if that money runs out what if you have so many health problems what if you're just unfortunate biologically you'd be buying insurance with that with that health savings account so the you would be buying insurance yeah it would be up to the individual to choose right which insurance they they buy or don't buy so they would have to be educated on this yeah that's why you have a direct primary a primary care doctor as well so the primary care doctor would also have to educate you on you already have to be educated

on it i mean that that that that that problem already exists how so in the sense that we have private insurance out there and you've got to choose on obamacare between gold plans and platinum plans and all these things well you have to make a choice you don't have to be educated you can just make a choice right yeah but choice choice is important there's this there's this idea out there that nobody knows how to make choices um for their things that's a that's a common refrain i hear from the left people are just too stupid to do it. It's not that they're stupid. It's just they don't understand what's going on.

It's complicated. But look, we have systems in place that score these plans as well. And these are insurance plans. So I would categorize this in three phases as well. Primary care, insurance, and then catastrophic and pre-existing conditions. So say cancer and pre-existing conditions, lifelong care needed. We already have a system for that too that works rather well. It's at the state level reinsurance programs, meaning the government steps in and basically

subsidizes that insurance plan when it gets too expensive. And that's where we kind of pool our money. That's the collectivism. They do? How so? How does that happen? Let's say you need your discs fused. You have a spinal issue. Where's that money coming from?

That's probably just insurance. I mean, I don't know. That's a lot of fucking money for spinal surgery. What if your insurance doesn't cover that? How does one deal with a deductible? So the way a lot of states have innovated through this is getting waivers from Obamacare. Because Obamacare legislation is extremely regulatory, is that a word? Burdensome.

And so you get waivers, and then you set up your reinsurance program at the state level. waivers and then you'd set up your reinsurance program at the state level. What this basically means is when that dollar sign hits too much in order to, in order to prevent the insurance company from increasing premiums on everybody, they basically pay them back on the back end. The patient never really sees this. So that's how you deal with those really, really catastrophic cases that do cost exorbitant amounts of money. So there's a, there's an answer for everything on this. And again, what do you get from this that you're not getting from Medicare for All? You're maintaining the quality of the system. You're maintaining those profit incentives. And you're maintaining that

choice and competition. And you're empowering the patient to actually choose. In Medicare for All, you have no power. So are you defending the current options that are available, or are you trying? Oh, no, no, no. I'm advocating for change on this. But what's the specific change? What do you think the specific change should be? Liberalize HSA accounts to an extraordinary... You've got to do this in steps, right?

I would lay this out. HSA? What is that? Health Savings Account. The thing we talked about. Government puts money... Instead of governments spending hundreds of billions of dollars, wasteful dollars that don't have the outcomes we wish they had where's that money going to what's the waste well a lot of it's through fraud for instance because people who are not qualified for medicaid

still get on medicaid um doctor what makes someone qualified for medicaid it's a means tested so it's a matter of how much money you make right right so there's a lot of people that make money that don't want to spend that money. Right. They lie. This happens with any welfare program, right? There's a lot of fraud and abuse that happens in all of these government programs. When you put trillions of dollars of taxpayer money into a program, there's a lot of people that have an incentive to try and extract as much money as possible out of those programs. That's just, that's always going to be human nature. So that's, and they don't seem to have the outcomes that we'd like them to have. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't appear to

anybody or to any of the people studying this who've done, again, there's a lot of university studies on this that would, that would indicate what I said. You don't get any better outcomes, even though we're spending all this money. So what might be a better way to do it? better outcomes even though we're spending all this money so what might be a better way to do it and a lot of us think that that empowering the patient with those funds um but also but also ensuring that they have that quarterback as well in the form of a primary care doctor uh would be would have much better outcomes maintain the profit incentives that actually make our health care system have the high quality that it does have, but also ensure that we meet the left's goal of getting people access to good quality healthcare.

Have you argued with anybody on the left about this? Have you ever had a debate? Every day, because I'm on the healthcare subcommittee now. But have you had anything publicly where people can sort of watch this? The Joe Rogan show. Yeah, but it's only me on the other side. I don't really understand what I'm talking about. I have ideas about what I would like. I would like everybody to have health care.

That's it. Yeah. Well, by the way, that's basically their only point. Yeah. Well, that's what most people would like. They would like everyone to have health care. I don't think they understand. They don't understand the trade-offs.

And everything has trade-offs. There are no solutions solutions in policy making there are only trade-offs and if we're not honest about the trade-offs with medicare for all we're going to go down this path and you're going to end up in a place that that is that is less than ideal i promise you that with much higher taxes, worse outcomes, and less quality. It's not a good place to be. But we can agree on the overall goal. And again, that's where the conservatives do have to listen to the left sometimes. And sometimes they do have these aspirations that I think are worth trying to attain. But then you have to solve a problem within a framework. And this is where I'm constantly criticizing my liberal friends is, what's your framework? What are the principles by which you solve problems?

See, I can name my principles. I can name the questions that I ask before I solve a problem. How much does it cost? Is that sustainable? Am I infringing on anybody else's rights when I do this? Am I adhering to the basic notions of checks and balances and the rights of localities and states to make their own decisions that might fit their population the best? There's a series of questions. The left doesn't tend to ask those questions.

It seems to me that every time they propose a solution to a problem that we agree is a problem and needs to be solved, that solution is sort of like the first thing that sounds good. How so? Well, Medicare for all. People need health care? Okay, just give everybody health care. Right. Right, but it's like, oh, people should have higher wages?

Okay, just raise the minimum wage. No problems, right? No tradeoffs. They pretend like there's no trade-offs with any of their solutions, and I reject that. And I'm always trying to expose what those trade-offs are to people and explain to people why there's a real reason why we should have a debate about this.

And there might be better solutions. Better solutions that maybe take a scalpel to a problem instead of a hammer. And those solutions have to be tailored around, I think, classically conservative principles. It is fascinating what you talked about earlier, that people who are involved in dangerous occupations, whether it's soldiers or fighters or firefighters, they generally tend to be conservative because they have these occupations where they test themselves whether they're forced to be tested where they're forced to be tested whether it's uh their will their discipline their ability to understand the consequences of whatever it is they have to engage in.

And there's real life risks, real risks. And people who don't get tested and people who are maybe uncomfortable with the idea of physical risks or don't understand what the consequences of their, of physical risks are because they don't engage in them. Maybe they don't engage in anything physically. Maybe everything they engage in is intellectually. Maybe they don't blend the physical world with the intellectual world. They tend to be more liberal.

It is really weird. It's really weird how there's like this line in the sand where you ask a person what do you do for a living buddy and they go well i'm a navy seal i go that fucking guy's gonna vote republican yeah what do you do for a living well you know i'm a social worker oh well for sure you're right you voted for biden harris we have dispositions that are different you know yeah like, I mean, you should do things that are hard. They help you build capacity. You should do things that are hard. It's like chapter eight of my book, Fortitude,

American Resilience in the Era of Outrage. I'm not like plugging it or anything. You just did. It's okay. People plug things. It's okay. But you're right. You should do things that are hard.

That should be a quote. It should be a picture of your face, and it says you should do things that are hard and and you do it all the time i mean you know you you might choose i mean you probably do a lot of hard things you're an extremely productive individual which means by definition you're doing something that is challenging in order to reach the kind of the next the next horizon that's all i do i don't like to do things that are easy i don't like things that are easy i don't do a fucking single. Other than like love my family, there's not a thing that I do that's easy. Yeah.

Everything else I do is hard. And the only reason why the things that I do that are, which are easy, are easy, it's because I put in the work to make them easy. Whether it's stand-up comedy or martial arts or anything. That's a good way to put it. That's all it is. The reason why they're fairly easy, like if I roll with a white belt it's fairly easy why is it fairly easy because i've been doing jujitsu for 30 fucking years that's why it's easy it's not not really 30 years but it's 25 or whatever

it is but it's that that's it's it's fact check it's i'm just being honest it's time it's all just time it's time it's time and effort but you have to put in time and effort and the problem with this world today is there's so many people that are given participation trophies and they're they tell you you're special period you know and you're you know you you're a you're a fucking curve model you don't have to lose weight you're this you're that you know everyone's amazing everyone is amazing in their potential everyone is's the worst thing you can tell somebody, though. The worst thing you tell someone is they're great without doing any work. The self-esteem movement is detrimental.

You should have high self-esteem no matter what. You're perfect the way you are. Your truth is what matters. Just tell us your truth, and we will mirror it for you. I think we need two things. We need both. We need you're okay. Everyone has been in a down state.

Everyone has been low. Everyone has failed. Everyone has been weak. Everyone has been unworthy or felt terrible or just fell short of their goals. But you're still loved as a member of the community. But here's how you can feel better about yourself. And one of the best ways to feel better about yourself is to push yourself into a realm

where you didn't know that you had the capacity or the fortitude to enter. Whatever the fuck it is, whether it's playing chess or whether it's swimming whatever it is push yourself find a place where you didn't know

that you can get to and get there and then you'll feel better because life is bizarre and it's bizarrely challenging and if you decide to not engage in any challenges

and you just want you just want the benefits you just want you just want accolades you just want love you just want accolades. You just want love. You just want respect for just existing. Fucking frogs exist. Everybody exists.

Trees exist. They don't ask for anything. You're asking for something because you want to, in some way or another, you want to quantify and you want to figure out a way where whatever you're doing with your life is more valuable than what you realize you probably should be doing. What you should be doing is pushing yourself.

What you should be doing is trying to figure out what makes you satisfied. There's lows and highs. There's peaks and valleys. And unless you experience those valleys, you don't understand and you don't appreciate the peaks. And some people don't want to experience the valleys. They don't want to experience failure. They don't want to experience the uncomfortable feeling of pushing themselves. They don't want to experience that fucking darkness of not knowing if you can keep going.

But forcing yourself and then getting to the bright light of success. Getting to the bright light of understanding your boundaries and your limitations, and that these are flexible and that you can expand those boundaries and expand those limitations and become a stronger version of who you are today. But people don't like that because it makes them uncomfortable. So what they want to do is chastise all the people who are calling out for them to be better and get angry at all the people that are forcing them into a position where they have to look at themselves objectively and understand that they've got some flaws but we all have flaws but a guy like you who's been through buds who's

a navy seal who's wearing an eye patch for a fucking reason because you're a blown up right you're a guy who understands the real physical consequences of actual danger, real danger, and real work, real hard work, and overcoming those things. And a lot of people don't like that. They don't like being forced to acknowledge the fact that some people have experienced things that they couldn't possibly understand, and they couldn't possibly comprehend. Yeah, there's a lack of perspective out there. And, you know, at the end of Hell Week is the most elated that any man will be, because you end Hell Week on a Friday afternoon, and you've been through hell. I mean, your body is swollen, it's beaten, you look like a bag of shit. It's really impressive what we do to these people, and that they can sustain it for what starts about Sunday and then ends Friday afternoon. And you're elated. But people, you would think that you'd go to sleep immediately, but it's not what happens.

There's a problem where we have to get guys to sleep on Friday because they have, it's almost like they're elated. Yeah, there's a euphoric feeling and they won't stop talking i would not stop talking and then i ate like a whole tub of ice cream and i threw it all up it was really weird and then you don't really sleep that much anyway because your body's really bloated so you also pee all night but anyway um but yeah so you don't sleep so you think you'd be tired but you're not because at a certain point you're just because you get that brown shirt so that's what happens, if you haven't been through hell week, you wear a white shirt after, after, after hell week, you wear a brown shirt. It's a very significant thing. And then you find out that the training just gets suckier. And so that, that sucks. So the euphoria

is gone. And then you get blown up and who knows, but, but that moment is special because there's value in suffering. And in today's society, we have convinced ourselves that there is no value in suffering, that the entire role of, say, government is to end your suffering. But this is a false promise. Not only is it a false promise, but it will create a weak society that is unable to sustain itself. That's a really important point. And I think there's deep truth in that. This is why victimhood politics is so dangerous. And I would say populism is too. I think the two are almost indistinguishable from each other.

People are always trying to talk about populism on the right and the left. And I say, look, here's what populism is. It's telling you what you feel. It's mirroring your feelings back to you. It's telling you what you want to hear as opposed to the truth. I think that's a decent definition of populism. I don't like it. feelings back to you telling you what you want to hear as opposed to the truth so that i i think that's a decent definition of populism i don't like it i don't like people embracing it um it doesn't just mean hey things that are good that people are for well you know what a lot of people

are for sixteen hundred dollar checks that are free that doesn't mean it's a good policy right that's a good example right people voted if they voted and said do you want a hundred thousand dollars for a year? Yeah, totally. Everybody would vote yes. Yeah, why wouldn't you? Yeah. But is it a sustainable policy?

No, of course not. Right, of course not. And it kind of amounts to the, I think, drastic lurches in welfare policy or infrastructure spending and all of these things that we're seeing. It's populism on steroids. It's telling you what you want to hear. And that's not truth. That's not truth. And we have to get back to truth.

And we have to get away from this victimhood mentality where we actually elevate this idea of being helpless. See, that's what's changed. That's what's changed in the last decade. It used to be that, well, you might feel some shame if you were the type to, you know what? You know what? I just, I need some help. I feel bad about it. I'm going to get back on my feet, but I need some

help right now. That used to be the sort of American way, right? We need a safety net. Nobody would disagree with that. We need a safety net. We need to help people who have truly fallen on hard times, who lost their jobs because of COVID. But does that also mean we need to provide a $1,400 check to somebody who never lost their job and whose biggest hardship has been zoom meetings of course not but over 100 million people were getting checks that never lost their jobs 100 million easily it's way more it's way more than that i'm cutting it off at 100 million so hold on explain that to me when we when we send out checks the direct cash payments i've always been against direct cash payments so these the covid stimulus checks yeah so because they go out to anybody who makes those checks that didn't lose

their jobs of course what yeah if you did the cutoff was like 75k a year so that means a minute wait a minute that means every federal well not so people a lot of federal workers getting any money because of the pandemic still got checks? Yeah, these were never based on your situation. What? Yeah. Really? It's ridiculous. I didn't know that.

I thought you had to lose your job. I thought there was a problem. Yeah. Wait a minute. So people who never lost a penny. So if you look at their tax receipts, you look at what they made in 2019 versus 2020. Correct.

They didn't lose any money. Yeah, no, it's based on just your income. So I think 75K a year was the cutoff. But also if you're a married couple, 150K. And if you have kids, then it's even more. I've got a lot of active duty military friends who are getting thousands of dollars because they have kids. And they're like, why? This is such a waste of taxpayer money.

I mean, do your duty and go spend it on a local business. I thought the money was allocated to people that lost money because of the pandemic. No, no, no. Because we already have a system for that. It's unemployment insurance. Our system works fine for that. And this was always my thing. It's like, look, I'm in favor of temporarily boosting payments to those who are unemployed on unemployed insurance.

Usually state-run unemployment insurance runs at – it's at a formula that would make sure that you're not making more than you would have if you were already employed because you don't want to have a disincentive to go back to work. What we did in the initial stages of the pandemic was increased that to 600, an extra $600 a week. If you're unemployed, I'm okay with that for a few weeks during hard times. The problem is Democrats want to keep it forever. And now every business I talked to is like, I can't hire people.

I have so many job openings right now. Can't hire anybody because we still have it. It's $300 a week, but we still have it. It means people are getting paid to stay home. There's a distance. They're making a purely rational financial decision. But again, that's one conversation.

That's at least a debate to be had during hard times. But the direct cash payments, that's nuts. That's nuts. What are the direct cash payments? That's the free money. That's the free money. So this is the people that, even though they still make the same amount they made in 2019,

in 2020, they got a big check for no reason. Yep. 100%. That seems crazy. And that's well... If you didn't lose your job... If you do the math, that's well over 100 million people. And they just got it.

They didn't ask for it. They just received it. So it's not something they're guilty of. Yeah, yeah. They just received it. But it gets to the cultural argument that we're talking about. There was no backlash for this. Even on the right, I remember I was a little frustrated with the president,

or the ex-president, Donald Trump, the president I voted for, that he was pushing for those $2,000 cash payments. But don't you think that he was doing that politically? And I didn't vote for him. But that's the point. But don't you think that was... But that politically and i didn't vote that's the point but don't you think that's the point that's political that's exactly the point there's an incentive now to pay people off with their own money and it's not good yeah but it wasn't don't you think that he was in a desperation situation where he just wanted to get re-elected i mean he's coming through this was in december he was already he'd already lost oh so in december after he lost

he's still but he didn't think he lost he thought he was still in every conversation it's a good conversation he thought he was going to somehow or another get reinstated i don't i don't know if he ever truly believed that but um he was pushing for it but yeah it is on the on the victimhood side that's this is the demise of the republic when when when people are comfortable with being bought off with their own tax dollars and being comfortable even more than that comfortable with being told that they're victimized and that some other group is is responsible for that victimization right so it's not just a bad situation they're in a bad situation someone did it to you and maybe it's

the one percent maybe it's those those%. Maybe it's those mean corporate giants. And now those corporate giants are trying to get all woke and get on the Democrats' good side. Like they always do. Yeah. Because they want to maintain their little piece of the pie. That's where it gets tricky, right? Where they manipulate the narrative and they realize where people's heads are at. So they try to jump on board.

Yeah. Do you want to go into that into the georgia and everything um georgia's a weird situation right because uh i don't understand why people are so upset and why somehow or another it it seems to be that the the narrative is that this is uh this is a racist decision like they're trying to get people to... Explain what's happening. They're trying to get people to... You have to have ID to vote with a mail-in ballot.

Is that what they... Yeah, so you have to provide now your driver's license number on your mail-in ballot. Is there anything valid about the idea that somehow or another this is racist towards black people? No, it's absurd. But is there an argument where they're saying it,

maybe they don't understand how it's written out and they're being manipulated? What is the reason why so many people... It was part of SNL, right? No. It wasn't in the monologue or one of their sketches this weekend? What is it about it? MLB, the Major League Baseball,

they're pulling their their all-star game from georgia because this why are they doing that yeah i mean i i would say this you find me a group of people that that doesn't have ids you find me them find me them and first the first thing we should do is is get them ids right um but but first find me them and you go into any black neighborhood and you interview people and you ask them this extremely insulting question. Why can't you get an ID? And they're going to be like,

I have an ID. What are you talking about? I have an ID. You have a driver's license. You have a social security card. Why do you think I'm so stupid that I can't figure out an ID? What is the ID that you have to have?

You have to have a photo ID? Just a government issued ID. A regular ID. Just a typical ID. So can it be a social security card? Can it be a driver's license? Driver's license. In this particular case, we're talking about a driver's license.

And if you lose your driver's license, you can still get a photo ID, right? You would still get it. Yeah. I mean, I don't know the details of the Georgia law, but this gets back to the basic notion. Democrats think all voter ID laws are racist. But let me ask you this. Why is that? Why do they think that's racist to have an ID?

They have it in their heads. But what's their argument? I wish I could tell you. I don't actually. I've never heard a good argument except to say that on the average, minorities have less access to IDs. But what about poor people that are white? Like people that live in West Virginia, coal mining towns?

They don't care about them, first of all. And second of all, they also have IDs. Who's that? The Democrats. The Democrats. The Democrat people who are saying these things. But is that just because they're trying to push this narrative to maintain power or to try to push people into this position

where they believe what they're saying? If you're asking me, yes. Yes. That's what I think. And I'm not trying to build a straw man argument. What's the argument against it? What's the argument for the idea that this is racist to ask people that they have to have an ID?

It's about mail-in ballots. Is that correct? Do you mean what's my argument? No, their argument. Is it about mail-in ballots? Is that what it is where you need an ID? You need a valid ID to mail in a ballot? is that what it is where you need an id you need a valid id to mail in a ballot is that what it is and the new georgia law is that yes because previously it's

signature verification i'm not a fan of signature verification because you could forge someone's signature when i was a kid i used to forge ace freely's signature you could try and like how are you assessing this right i mean this is difficult so you're assessing a signature that somebody put on like the pad at the dmv like, this is difficult. So you're assessing a signature that somebody put on the pad at the DMV 10 years ago. And you would have to have a signature expert in order to do it correctly? And this goes both ways, too. Yeah. I mean, how are you doing this?

I don't like the way this is done in any state. When you're dealing with millions of ballots, who's looking at those signatures? Let me give you a stat real quick. In the 2020 Democrat primaries, so the presidential elections in 2020 for the democrats about over 500 000 ballots were thrown out thrown out mail-in ballots thrown out so why are they thrown out there's only two reasons well because of signature mismatches and maybe other clerical errors but here's the thing when a signature is mismatched there's only two one of two possible reasons attempted fraud and the election official did the right thing.

Or the second possible reason, the election official did the wrong thing and threw out a valid ballot. Shouldn't it be like fingerprints or something like that? It seems like signatures. If you look at my signature from like a year ago and today, I'm getting lazier. So you either have it, it's either easy to attempt fraud or you're throwing out valid ballots either way i don't know 500 000 it's over it's over that but yeah and just and just the 2020 election is it subjective like is it do people challenge this do people say like hey man that's my fucking signature yes yeah so you can cure ballots

but how do you know like what if you vote and they say your signature is no good? Yeah, well, then you can cure it. Then you can go through a process to cure it. But how do you find out? Depends on the state. This is exactly why you shouldn't have an overuse of mail-in ballots, because it's so complicated. So mail-in ballots were, not established, but they were reinforced because of COVID, right? And the left wanted this, the right didn't. Why is that? Because of what I just explained. But what is the disparity between the left and the right when it the right didn't what why is that because of what i just explained

but what is the disparity between the left and the right when it comes to mail-in ballots i'm having trouble like giving you their argument because i don't understand it this is like oftentimes i get where they're trying to go and i can and i can present their argument they were more risk averse the idea is that people on the left are more risk averse so they don't want to do it in person yeah yeah yeah well there's that But I think that was more of an excuse You think so? Yeah because I mean they're going to grocery stores

No no no no I know a lot of people that were terrified of being trapped in lines I know I have friends on the left that didn't want to vote in person Because no I'm telling you I know Did they go to a grocery store? Yeah but it's a different thing You're not stuck in a line

No you are stuck in a line No you're not You're interacting with more people at a grocery store. Yeah, but no, you're not. But grocery stores give you this big six-foot gap. They do in voting lines, too. Yeah, but do they? Yeah, absolutely.

I passed by a voting line. I saw these motherfuckers sandwiched in next to each other. No. There was people waiting to get outside of the post office to drop mail-in voters that were sandwiched next to each other. I never experienced that. It's possible, though, right? Yes. I mailed it in.

I voted for California, but through Texas. Okay, but you didn't vote in Texas. Sort of a halfway protest vote. But I did. I was in Texas. But you weren't at a voting station. Mail-in. But you weren't at a polling station.

I went post office. But you didn't go to a voting station. But the day of the vote. You went to a voting station. Mail-in. But you weren't at a polling station. I went post office. But you didn't go to a voting station. But the day of the vote. You went to a post office. Yes. There was a fucking line of people trying to do that. That's a totally different discussion. Okay.

I understand what you're saying. If you went and voted in person, this is what it would have looked like. You would have talked to somebody who would have shown them your ID. They'd give you a little piece of paper. You go to a machine, and you vote, and then you leave. You never actually interact with anybody. And everybody has to stand six feet apart yeah they're actually really so it's no different than the the supermarket yeah i would say there's less human interaction at the voting station because in the supermarket i have to give that person all of my stuff

they touch it all right all right they scan it and then they put it in a bag and then i leave i'm also walking around the supermarket with a million other people so i mean but i think people if people are going to supermarket but they won't go vote in person i i question their their motives here i understand what you're saying i think they were trying to get more mail-in ballots okay but then the question is what you're saying but for individuals they were worried about risk assessment and they were saying well is there a way that i could have less risk well there, there's a clear way. That way is mail in your ballot. That way you never have to – that one day you don't have to be in a group of people.

Yeah. Do you understand that though? But look at their perspective. It's hard to understand because it's not rational. It is rational. Here's why. Because it's one more day. Because every whatever it is, every X amount of days where you have to go to the grocery store and get your goods you can do that and figure out a way to avoid people and put a

double mask on fucking the same thing with voting but you can't you gotta it's one day but the sanctity of secure voting is an important thing i agree we have a we have a real problem i'm playing devil's advocate you understand what i'm doing here get it. I'm saying for people that are risk averse, for them that one day was like, is there a way that I can avoid large groups? Hold on. That I can avoid large groups of people? There is. That is mail-in ballots.

Yeah. So the Democrats were enforcing this concept that if you mail in your ballot, that's why way more people mailed in their ballot on democratic sides that's why like pennsylvania was so weird right yeah because in the the beginning they they only count the people the first counts were the people that showed up and those people were predominantly republican but then as time went on they started counting in the mail-in ballots which were predominantly democrat i mean kyle kolinsky called out. We had a podcast we did election night with Tim Dillon and Kyle Kalinske, and Kyle explained exactly how it was going to go down.

He said Pennsylvania is going to look like it's going to be Republican in the beginning, and then it's going to eventually turn towards the Democrats because they're going to start counting the mail-in ballots late. Well, he explained exactly what happened. And he also said there's going to be a lot of people that call shenanigans well those people were the fucking president donald trump was saying all overnight all of a sudden i got all these votes that were for the fucking democrats how'd that happen what happened because if you understood the democratic the process of mail-in ballots versus people showing up in person you should have

expected that so okay so right fine i'll assume that their intentions are pure and they're genuinely scared of the voting booth and just the individuals not the party not the party yeah there's a collectivism there that i think um is very frustrating to me and i think the messaging should have been honest and science-based what's the collectivism that? That, hey, this is the thing we say, so we say it. And we just say it over and over again. Voting is dangerous. Right, but when so many people do that because they do believe that. Yeah, I just, I don't see how you can say that you're the one who follows the science

and then also say that it's less dangerous to go to the grocery store than it is to go voting. It's just not the case. But let's assume the intentions are pure. I don't want to quibble on that. Who said was less dangerous though you're is this a you just a second ago i mean basically okay but i'm saying what i'm saying is not this less dangerous but that there's a day that you could avoid danger if there's a day you can avoid danger by mailing in a ballot oh granted your their intentions are pure their intentions are totally pure 100 there's no right

there's no way that they want fucker you no way that they want a system that just makes it easier to generally have some organic voter fraud. If Trump wins, they're happy because it's what people want, right? Yeah. Okay. But it gets back to the problem the right has with mail-in ballots generally is this problem with how do you verify it? How do you deal with chain of custody issues? The sanctity of an election must be self-evident, in my opinion. When I go vote in Texas, and you'll do this eventually, you'll vote in Texas, and it'll be different from how you voted in California. I voted in California. So I know when I go to

California, I just tell them my name. I don't show them an ID. Now, I could sell them any name. All right? That makes me feel uncomfortable. Wait a feel uncomfortable Wait a minute, what are you saying? In California, do you show them an ID when you go vote? Or do you just always vote by mail Because you're Joe Rogan No, I don't remember I'm being honest You have to be on the voter rolls

In the proper area But you can say any name This makes people uncomfortable You can say any name. This makes people uncomfortable. You could say any name if you're on the voter roll? You don't have to show an ID. If I just show up and say I'm Dan Crenshaw, and they go, oh, Dan Crenshaw hasn't voted. They might catch it. They might not.

You don't have to show your ID. In Texas, you do. Really? In Texas, you do. This is why we care about voter ID. I don't know why it doesn't make sense to people. Well, I think it should be biometrics. That's a possibility.

My perspective is, why is it okay that I bank online, but I can't vote online? If I use Apple ID, Face ID, and I look at my phone, I can get into my phone, I can check my email, I can do all the different things that I do with my phone. I can get into my phone. I can check my email. I can do all the different things that I do with my phone. And supposedly it's secure because it recognizes my face. Or if you have an Android phone, you can use your thumbprint. Why can't we do that to vote? If your thumbprint is a unique signature of the individual, we agree that. We agree that Apple ID id like they allow me

to go to a store and buy hundreds of dollars worth of food with my face look at my face i put it next to the thing and i'd say how come you can't vote i'd say a couple things about that you know online banking mostly secure but banks still still segregate about hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year for banking fraud. They budget it in. So they know it happens. Wait a minute. Hundreds and hundreds of millions. There's fraud in banking.

With all the banks. Right. There's ways to get around systems electronically for really smart people. It does happen. And so the thing is, is how much are we willing to accept for voting? Now, I would argue that we should not accept anything. I mean, Marionette Miller Meeks in Iowa won by six votes. I won by 155 votes in my first primary.

155. Or six. So, you know, forget about the conspiracy theories of hundreds of thousands of votes being changed overnight. Like, forget about that. Let's talk about six votes. Did you feel like...

And you know how easy it would be to do six votes? Because how many states did you hear about where your mail-in ballot is coming to your home and it has somebody else's name on it? Maybe because they used to live there. Maybe it's your dead relative. How easy would it be to just send it back in? Boom, six votes. Six votes in one household.

Especially if you're dealing with millions of votes like how many of those are getting verified this is the point that we're making and this is also why i say look just show up and vote let's show up and vote have an id why is this so hard and if you're if you're disabled if you're truly disabled you can't make it to a voting station let's have a system for you to vote by mail this is basically what we have in texas i think we need to stiffen it up a little bit which we're doing but this is basically what we have in Texas. I think we need to stiffen it up a little bit, which we're doing. But this is basically what we have. When I go vote in Texas, I can't figure out how I would cheat.

I can figure out how I would cheat in California. I can imagine it right away. But I can't imagine how I would do it in Texas because I have to show them my ID. They look at it. They give me a little piece of paper. It's on an electronic voting machine. Okay, there's no paper either. Maybe you should have paper backup. Okay, that's a reasonable thing to say. piece of it's on an electronic voting machine okay there's there's no paper either maybe you should have paper backup okay that's a reasonable thing to say but there's no way that somebody else

can go and fudge my ballot after i've given it in either this makes me feel happy this makes me feel like the integrity of the election is actually self-evident this is all we're trying to get what do you think is going on in georgia like why do you think they are saying that this is the new Jim Crow and that because it's a swing state that's why is that what it is because Georgia voting laws their new voting laws are still far less strict than say like New York and Delaware everybody's been having a field day with this just comparing liberal states to Georgia now I have seen that that it is fascinating that like New Jersey is far more complicated than Georgia. And why aren't they Jim Crow laws?

They're not. Because they're not swing states. Right. Because the Democrats are complete opportunists, and these woke corporations have completely fallen in bed with them. So we're talking about Major League Baseball, that they pulled their all-star game out of Georgia. Do you think that this is just entirely because of optics?

God, why? Why are they doing that? I think... God, why? Why are they doing that? I think, well, of course, they didn't read the legislation, right? There's always this belief that whatever Republicans do with election law, that it must be Jim Crow. Isn't it also influence?

Like, someone tells you, like, hey, this is racist. You don't want to be a part of something that's racist. You're like, I don't. Well, the president said it, right? Because there was some rumors that players were going to ask for it. And then the president gets on ESPN and says they should definitely do it.

And what do they do? They definitely do it. But the problem is there's so much fucking information out there. And there's so much chatter. Like the president said that like soccer players, the female soccer players should be paid what the male soccer players are paid. And how would that work? Well, that doesn't make any sense. soccer players are paid and how would that work like well this doesn't make any sense the reason why what whether it's basketball or the only one's got a good argument is claressa shields who's like

the best women's boxer in the world she's got a good argument and she brought it on the podcast that like she brought up her own uh ratings on television shows and and when she was on versus when males were on that males were getting paid more than she was when she's but her ratings were just as good yeah her ratings are just a good argument that's a good argument yeah but like the wnba there's no argument that they should be getting paid as much as lebron james like if anybody tried to bring that up it would be shot down so quickly because who the fuck is going to see unfortunately who's going to see the WNBA? It's a small, certainly there's a lot of fans, but it's a small amount in comparison to the actual NBA. That's where it gets weird.

So the idea that the president of the United States would say that women whatever should be paid the same as male whatever, that's like saying women comedians should be paid the same as Dave Chappelle. Well, that doesn't make sense because more people go see dave chapelle because he's more famous yeah like it's nonsense so this is like a weird little game you're playing right you're trying to the outcome has to matter right you're pretending that it's sexist when it's really just what you know it's it's a meritocracy it's it's what it is it's like people go to see the fucking nba it's a giant sport it's huge if they had a female nfl and the the female nfl players demanded the same amount

as the male nfl players like okay like how many people are going like where's the revenue coming from how are you earning this money there has to be a value associated with right with whatever activity you're engaging in but in the case of the georgia thing i mean the egregious part about it was it was just lying it was just lying straight up i mean the washington post gave gave biden four pinocchios on this talking about washington post did yeah they fact checked the hell out of him for it because he's saying oh you can't get water if you're in line in georgia they're closing down voting over here what they did is just but here's lies right but here's what's true you can't give people water if you're an electioneer

i can't wear a joe biden shirt and give you water but that's the case in texas by the way you're not allowed to electioneer well but it's not just that within a certain distance of the poll you're not allowed to give people gifts right correct so you can't give them anything right you can't give them cookies you can't give them coffee you can't give them water this is the case in right most states right how the fuck those people that are trying to get into america get biden shirts do you know what i'm talking about yeah yeah what's that what's what's that what's going on with that because these are organized events and they're well-funded. By who? It's hard to say. The drug cartels certainly have an incentive to fund this, Mexican drug cartels,

because they make millions and millions of dollars a month. So you're going to get charged about $300 per head to cross the southern border. You're charged? By the drug cartels. They control that border. When you say charged, like who's getting charged? The person that wants to come across?

The person. So if you want to come across, you give the cartel $300 and they get you across? More or less, yeah. And so they'll take you to the landing zone, they'll put you on a raft, and they say, okay, go turn yourself into Border Patrol. If you have kids with you. If you don't have kids with you, you're a single adult, you might have to pay more because now you need coyotes to actually like get you

across and escape border like i said that like a mexican yeah yeah see what i did there yeah okay you did that oh i speak spanish i went to high school in colombia did you really yeah you went to high school in colombia yeah how much coke did you do um none you know it's like if you're in colombia i think you're supposed to do coke right i guess you're supposed to drugs are a much bigger problem in american high schools than they were in colombian i could imagine like it's probably a detriment to do coke in colombia yeah my dad was an oil gas that escobar shit i used to have a photo of pablo escobar by my old studio and people got mad at me for having this like I just

had it this was a weird moment in history it is a weird moment in history I was there in 98 to 2002 so the Escobar days were long over but um it was it was dangerous you still couldn't drive between cities uh we had to have an armored car because our we didn't have an armored car initially it got shot up so um it was dangerous uh it was more of a guerrilla warfare problem um yeah and in that time frame and now it's an amazing country it's an exceptional example of um of what a country can do and how how u.s partnerships can work and it is weird how they kind of cleared up a lot of the problems that they had in the escobar days.

And part of that is there is something about the Colombian culture with an adherence to a basic sense of Western justice and rule of law that they were eventually able to climb out of this. I love Colombia. I still go back for high school reunions. Do you really? Yeah. I'm going back for my 20th year next year. Why were you in columbia for high school what did your parents do they're selling coke oil and gas joe geez import export

business don't don't ask any more questions did you you ever see that tv show uh trafficked no i don't watch narcos religiously um that's actually filmed in colombia it was pretty it was pretty well done um mariana vanzella right that's her name she's uh she was a guest on the podcast and she does this show uh called trafficked and it's uh there's a lot of different aspects of the show whether it's uh guns to mexico or one of the things she did was, it was Colombia where they were talking about cocaine, right? Yeah. And she actually went to the places where they grow the coca leaves

and dry them out in the field. And she sort of dispelled a lot of the myths. Like a lot of people think that the cartels are growing all this coca leaves. It's not. No, that's a supply chain just like anything else. You got poor farmers doing that. So that's always a political policy problem in Colombia.

You can go destroy these fields, but then you have all these farmers who now don't have fields, and then they join the guerrillas. Right, exactly. So then they join this Marxist guerrilla movement. So, yeah, all of these, it's a long, complicated story. Long, complicated supply and demand story. Yeah.

Yeah, and that's what it is. And this show really shows when you see the people that are actually the chemists that do all, add the chemicals to the leaves and create the cocaine. that put the cocaine, the processed cocaine, in backpacks and then walk for 24 hours through the forest and get this stuff to whoever it is that brings it to America. It's very strange and eye-opening. And then it goes to the Mexican drug cartels, who are some of the most elite organizations on the planet, and they're right south of our border.

You know, it's easy to get into a fight with ISIS and the Taliban. That's actually easy. I know sometimes you lose an eye, but it's generally easy. Mexican drug cartels are serious. I mean, these are well-trained, well-funded organizations that are very, very serious people. And the reason they charge money to go across the border, well, one, because they can, because they have power, but also it's risk-free. See, it's risky to transport drugs across a border or personnel or whoever you want to transport, because you might get caught. When you get caught, you're definitely going to jail. Single adults, our system works okay. We generally deport those back. It's very difficult for us to deal with family units. There's a long history for this.

I can explain it in detail if you'd like it basically started in 2014 because of a court settlement case that made it impossible for us to hold people and then adjudicate their claims and then deport them at least on a timely basis so it initiated the catch and release process that we see today Trump basically fixed it more

or less in the last year Biden immediately reversed his policies. So when you're charging about $300 a person and you have 100,000 people crossing every month, that's $30 million. It's a really good business and it's risk-free and it's extremely easy. So to answer the initial question about how they got t-shirts, I mean, that's a good guess. A lot of people will be like, well, Soros organizations paid for it. Maybe. I actually don't know.

They do tend to advocate for open borders, so it's totally possible. And they obviously have the ear of Joe Biden because he reversed the policies they wanted him to reverse. Anything's possible. I'm just saying the most likely scenario is these smugglers organize these people and they get them through. Why do you think they advocate for open borders? What's the motivation for that? Yeah, because we're on opposite ends of this. I mean, not you and I.

I mean, me and the left. I want to note something. The outcome that I'd like for health care is the same that the left wants. I want everybody to have access to good health care. I don't think we want the same thing when it comes to the immigration border issue. I think they want more illegal immigration and I want less. Why do you think they want people to have the opportunity to live a better life? That's the best.

Rose-colored glasses. Yeah, but I agree with that statement. But then, okay, so how do we do that? We have to have a process for people to apply to our country, and we have to process them in an orderly fashion. Because we'd agree on that, right? Right. And so we have that.

I mean, it might not be perfect. It might make some changes here and there. But we basically have to have a system. Because if you surveyed the entire world at any given moment, and I've actually seen surveys on this, they estimate maybe about 40 million people would snap their fingers and arrive in the U.S. right now. They just leave their home in that second. 40 million. So you obviously can't deal with that at any given moment. So you have to have a process. So the left is constantly trying

to deteriorate that process to the greatest extent so that more and more people come across. And then they call it compassion. Well, there's nothing compassionate about it. And here's why. Because you're cutting in line in front of people who actually go through the process. My stepmom's Peruvian. Everybody around us knows somebody who's a legal immigrant who just got their citizenship and how proud they are when they get it. There's lots of people who have valid asylum claims, too.

African countries, especially. What about the Chinese Uyghurs? OK, speaking of the Georgia thing, you know, you know, it really ticks me off. You got Coca-Cola. You got Apple creating statements against the Georgia voting law and how they're going to pull. Now they're so mad about it and they're going to do something about it. Meanwhile, they are happy to advocate against a bill in Congress that would help protect Uygh muslims in china because because it hurts their supply chain these people are so full of shit it's it's hard to imagine it is hard to imagine

but will you explain to people that don't understand what we're talking about what's going on with the uighurs in china yeah because it is it's scary very quickly um there's a there's a there's a minority population in china that is subjugated by the chinese government they're putting basically labor camps forced labor labor, forced sterilization. It's a serious humanitarian crisis. It's been going on for a long time. But it's widely ignored. It's discussed, but there's no policy that's been enacted to sanction.

And so this is a bill that would do it. It's called, it's like they were to protect the Chinese Uyghurs Act. It basically just makes it more difficult to import products from that area. Now, some companies have done that. I'll give maybe Patagonia a little credit here. Now, they're always woke virtue signaling. It's kind of annoying. Every product they have must come from petroleum.

So, you know, spare me is what I say to them. But, for instance, they, I believe, did change their supply chain to have less of it come from these regions in China. So it can be done. And this bill would do that. Coca-Cola, Apple have both lobbied congressional members against this. Against? Against that bill,

because it hurts their bottom line. But they're happy to woke virtue signal about Georgia. They're so full of crap. Is there anything about the Georgia law that makes sense to you that they're arguing against? No, I mean, even the Washington Post fact-checked Biden's claims. Wait, wait, well, makes sense in what way? Like from the left side?

Anything that you say, I can see why this would more likely impact lower income, minority neighborhoods? They've said this all the time, all the time. And it gets back to this notion of can black people get voter ID? Can black people get IDs? Right. And if you believe the answer is no, then what you need to do is help them get IDs because they need IDs for everything. Right.

It seems like that's a much easier solution. is help them get IDs because they need IDs for everything. If you really believe this was a problem, and I know they don't because they're disingenuous, but if they really did, then the obvious answer would be to help them get IDs. And I'm working on legislation that would give grants to states who implement voter ID laws and have it free to get an ID, a government-issued ID. It needs to be free. It needs to be accessible because you need it for everything everything i know this is an argument and this is something that's being currently debated but is there anybody on the left that supports this that is uh against this voter id legislation that's gone through in georgia that is like a logical intelligent person that argues against it uh like like so so somebody i generally respect but still yes mad about it um i can't think of any you know people i don't know to answer your question

because it seems like we're we're arguing from one position right well a me i'm just curious and you understand it and so i'm i'm saying i'm reading this and i'm am i wrong i'm reading this and it's just about id it seems like you should be able to get id and we're not talking about like immediately like you need it next week to vote for the president united states we're talking about some you should have it some shit that's going down in 2024 right that's what we're talking about we're talking about like you have now three years to get an id in order to be able to vote for the next president that seems like it should be a lot and i'm sure there's votes in between now and then yeah but that's the big one

look they're against voter id laws period why i don't understand why well the stated reason that they give is because it's it's they call it voter suppression and they say it's harder for minorities to get id now any logical thinking person immediately refutes that four out of five americans believe voter id is a good idea has there any debates been done on this it seems like i would like to see i mean not just seems like i would like to see someone from the left who supports this idea that voter ids are bad are they all so every member of of democrat congress i believe voted for hr1R. 1 is their premier election reform bill from the left. They passed it out of the House last session,

passed it out this session, questionable whether it would get through the Senate. This is a lot to this bill, but one of them undermines voter I.D. laws in states. So they don't like voter I.D. Why? I don't know. Their stated reason is that, right? It hurts minority voters. And you and I look at that and you're like, that's ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense. And go talk to minorities then if you believe that. They have IDs.

It's ridiculous to assume they don't have IDs. It seems like it's way easier to get people IDs than it is to get them health care. It is way easier. Doesn't that, right? And also, here's another fact. Every time voter ID laws are implemented, or any election integrity laws are implemented in Republican states, minority vote share goes up. It continues to go up. There's no evidence of suppression.

There's literally zero. So they invoke these Jim Crow era visuals for people because they want you to believe that we're racist and they want to pit you against each other. They want the identity politics. I mean, if you're asking me what I think they really think, this is what it is. It's you're a victim, you're being oppressed by somebody else, and your only way to fight back is to vote for me because I'm going to give you all the stuff. I'm going to make sure that you make it. Now,

it's always a lie, right? I'm going to end your suffering. Gets back to our original conversation. I'm going to end your suffering. This is populism. I'm going to mirror your emotions. If you're down, well, it's not because of something you did. It's never because of something you did. It's always because of something somebody else did and they happen to be on the other side of the political spectrum. If you vote for me, I'll fix it for you. I'm going to give you things, free this, free that, free this, and I'm going to make you, keep you angry. And you can never solve this, right? And that's the other dirty little secret. You can never solve this, this set of problems that is delivered to people. It's keeping people, this is why I don't appreciate progressive politics, which is

different from liberal politics, by the way. I would distinguish between the two, but I don't appreciate progressive politics because it is designed for power. And the only way to keep power is to make people believe that they must give it to you and that they're not empowered themselves. And what's the best way to make people, somebody feel like they're disempowered? To make them feel like a victim. We're talking about the differences between the way the left looks at things and the right looks at things and the manipulation that goes on, getting people to vote for the left or vote for the right.

How do we bring everybody together? Like, is there a way? Is there like a clear path where we can sort of... I think liberals and conservatives can be brought together i think progressives are out on their own progressives are out on their own but what about q anon people they're out on their own too yeah they're out on their own too they have the critical race theory people all the like super hardcore lefties and then the q and there's an article in the federals todayals today that critical race theory is QAnon for the left.

Yeah, that's actually a great point. It's a really interesting article. And it's also state funded. It's taxpayer funded. It's an interesting theory. Well, it gets to my point about QAnon is about, what is it fundamentally about? It's about paranoia, right? Paranoia about a conspiracy.

Remember I said this before, the right deals with paranoia. The left deals with power. Well, the left deals with paranoia as well. But critical race theory is fundamentally about power hierarchies. It's fundamentally what it's about. And manipulation. And gaining that power. And manipulation. And playing on people's guilt.

Yeah. Playing on the concept of you don't want to be classified as one of the most abhorrent things that someone could be classified as. A racist. So what's the best way to show that you're not well become compliant and follow our guidelines and do what we and then you have these grifters that cling on to that that use this as you know their platform in order to elevate their own social status and elevate their own profile that gets real slippery oh i tell that to my own side all the time i'm like you have to be careful of the grifters who make money off of your outrage yes and then what are they what's the first

thing they do they tell you that i'm the traitor yeah i'm the rhino i'm like i have to earn your vote man yeah like i actually have to campaign to people i know it's really fascinating the grifters the people that like in their adult life have completely shifted their perspective on things and they realize like you know what there's a lot more money on being left or there's a lot more money and being right and then they just completely side with one group like you don't recognize any of the concepts that you thought were most important just four years ago like now you're a hundred percent on this other side who who are you talking about i'm not talking about anybody in particular. I'm talking about this ideology.

There's a thing that happens, whether you're left or you're right, where you're looking to be a part of this group, and you can sort of sell the other side out in order to gain access to this other group. And people do it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like the Lincoln Project type. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good example.

Explain that to people. Explain the Lincoln Project. I hate them. It's fascinating. project type yeah that's a good example so explain that to people explain the linking project because i hate them it's fascinating so they they started out as this like where are the ones who are in like bill crystals in this in this category as well um a bunch of other like supposed conservatives that were like you know we're trying to maintain the integrity of the conservative movement and we think donald trump is terrible so we're going to start a pack against him. That's how it started. And it's like, okay, well, I can kind of see, fine, I disagree with you,

but at least you're making some kind of rationale. But then they're going after, like Susan Collins, they're going after the most moderate Republicans possible. And it becomes pretty clear that they have no intention of maintaining the integrity of conservatism even a little bit. They've just found out that all their dollars come from liberal donors and they need to keep perpetuating those mantras, those slogans. And they shifted.

Yeah, they just totally shifted. They did totally sell out the principles they supposedly stood for. And frankly, they've fallen off pretty quickly. What were the principles they initially, they initially proposed? It was, I don't follow them that closely, but it's usually, they usually use platitudes like the integrity,

the integrity of the office, just the sense of dignity, right? So not, they don't, they're careful not to adhere to certain policy positions because then you can call them on it, right? It's always about dignity and integrity

but there was also a fascinating aspect of it is that after the election was over they wanted to attack the people that were supporters of trump yep and then make lists they want to keep going they wanted to make lists never stops yeah but there was it was also like punish those people yeah and this was something that came out like whenever someone says i want to make a list of people like hey hey hey hey hey it's a little like fascism yeah this is you're getting dangerous here this is a weird thing you're doing the biggest lie of of this century is that there's this like american right-wing fascism the the only fascism i see is well i mean those blatant example is the Antifa crazies who deliberately engage in fascist tactics to implement their little form of utopia. But also, like what we're talking about in Georgia, all these woke corporations engaging in what they're engaging in.

This is fascism, this forced conformity. Yes. And fascism, there's lots of kind of definitions. Everybody says, well, it means Hitler. What's the classic definition of fascism? We look we should let's let's put it on wikipedia and i'll kind of extract from that because i was looking at it earlier today i knew we'd talk about this but a lot of it has to do with the force compliance it's mostly yeah compulsory here it is conforming fascism is a form of far right i don't know why they call it that. Because that's the big lie of the century.

Authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and the economy, and of the economy which came to prominence during the early 20th century Europe. We'll stick with this definition for a second. Isn't there another definition? Here's a here's a better definition there's whole books written about it and it's hold on a political philosophy movement or regime such as that of the fascists that exalts nation and often race above the individual and stands for a centralized autocratic

government headed by a dictatorial leader severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition okay forcible suppression of opposition is the way most people can think of well it's what most people think of when they think of fascism is the forcible suppression of opposition that makes more sense and i think that's the correct way look because these definitions gets very specific about the second one they make it about race yeah but that was only that other one that other one which is like that seemed more cultural and seemed more uh current yeah the second one looks more like just a basic definition of authoritarianism to me a tendency toward the uh or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control i I tend to like the first definition here.

It says, because it says often race, but not necessarily. And that's important because it's not necessarily race. Mussolini's fashionism was not centered around race. Hitler's was. But severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition. That's exactly what we're talking about. That sounds to me exactly like the extreme left right now. But what gets tricky is when they're calling it right wing.

They do. But that other definition is rude. It's wrong. I mean, if you're a person that is not very sophisticated. It's right wing Europe. And that's the part they leave out. Because there's a big difference between the right wing of America and the right wing of Europe.

The right wing of Europe does tend to be hyper-nationalistic in an ethno-nationalistic way. And that's what they're feeding upon. And so they say, well, you're on the right wing of the spectrum here, so you must be the same thing. And now, of course, that just ignores basic facts and a basic sense of history and geography. But that's what they're doing. And if you're actually being objective about the definition of fascism, and let's use that definition, what you're seeing is in this sort of unholy alliance between CEOs, education institutions, Hollywood, late night comedy, it is a forced conformity. Cancel culture is a tool in that forced conformity. And so this is what we have to be awake to, in my opinion. That's, I think these CEOs are just really afraid of like a thousand Twitter comments. Now, you and I see that and we're like, that doesn't mean anything.

I trend on Twitter once a week. Well, who cares? You know, it's not a big deal. But for them, that's everything. Now, that's me being kind to them. I think in their boardrooms, they might. When are they going to get past that? I don't know.

I mean, I don't. I don't. I mean, it's ridiculous. You have 300 million people in this country. If 200 people get angry at you, they're willing to change policy. They do. And my goal is we're fighting back now. I don't know how much you follow me on social media, but I was hitting this one really hard all week.

I'm like, we will not stand by and watch this anymore. You're going to feel pain when you jump into the political arena from now on. That's my message to them. How are're going to feel pain when you jump into the political arena from now on. So that's my message to them. How are you going to do that? Well, just whether it's public pressure. You know, in Georgia, by the way, in Georgia, the last thing they did in the state legislature in this last week was remove the tax break that they'd given Delta Airlines.

So now it's getting serious. Now it's getting serious. And do I like legislative action for political speech? No, I don't. I don't like where this is going, but I hope that sends a message. You need to stop this. You need to stop taking such a deliberate side in the culture wars. It's one thing to lobby for your, for your company's look, Hey, Hey, this bill affects my company's bottom line. I mean, look, you need to know this because now I have to lay off a hundred thousand people. That that's a perfectly fine.

I think that needs to happen. But if you're going to come into the political arena the way they are in such an extravagant fashion, well, now you're in it. Now you're in it, and we're noticed. And you know what? Two can play at this game. Right, but that's the problem. It's only one that's been playing at this game. Only one has been, and that is not the case anymore.

That's where it gets dangerous right and that's where we where you have really really big problems that one side has been manipulating this narrative yeah and and making people abhorrent and racist and and fascist and whatever it is if you don't agree with them and hoping and praying that people don't look into the actual bill or the actual legislation and look at the the facts of whatever you're discussing instead just go by the narrative the narrative is this is racist or this is fascist or this is nationalistic it's dangerous because of this or that and without people actually examining all the different parts of the bill or parts of the legislation and discussing it and i and i hate that and both sides do that now i

think the left does it in a much distant more disingenuous and malevolent way because i mean to call me a racist is a really big deal that's a really but you think i'm racist because i'm for voter id that's a really big you think i'm for jim crow laws because i'm for voter id well explain what actual jim crow laws were that's why it's really weird that's like state sanctioned segregation yes you know i mean like clear i mean like keeping people like literally forcibly keeping people away from voting i mean there's there's a really bad history there. You can't ignore that. But it doesn't exist now. But you can't equate the two. It's insane.

Because it's rude. And to call somebody that is such an extravagant form of insult. And this is why I try to go a few layers deep when I argue for why I voted against a bill. You know, I do these kind of here's the truth videos on my Instagram and they're on YouTube and everything. But, you know, just why did I vote against it? Because it's easy to say the talking point like, well, it would reduce jobs, right? It would reduce investment in jobs and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But people want to know why. People generally want to know that next layer of reasoning.

It's easy to provide that for them and so i do and um the democrats tend not to and they they're very good at singling in on and focusing in on that emotional just that that heartstring and they're tugging on it we should call somebody a racist as an extreme statement is there anyone on the left that's pushing back against this this concept that the georg Georgia law, that this idea that's being passed is negative? Is there anybody that's saying, hey, let's look at what this is? I haven't seen it. Nothing?

I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm just saying I haven't seen it. Because there's a compliance. Yeah. What would be their incentive? Right. I mean, look, the Democrats I like are all out of Congress now. Not all of them.

I still have friends there. Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi. Yeah. The incentive would be to appeal to the center, to people that are rational, but they look at some of the things in the... That was a problem with Donald Trump, is that he's so polarizing that people who maybe would lean right don't want to vote for him because he stands for a

lot of things that they don't like and they like and and then when you add they didn't like the style not just that the capitol hill insurgents well i mean but but that was before the vote right i mean after right but it epitomizes what their opposition is yeah Is that he's saying, go there and have a strong presence. And then you get these QAnon fuckheads. And they burst through and take pictures with their feet up on Nancy Pelosi's office. I was really pissed off about that. I mean, anybody who follows me knows how strongly I was pissed off about it. Yeah, well, you should be.

Everybody should be. The style argument is, well, you should be. Everybody should be. The style argument is, yeah, you're absolutely right. I'm not going to run from that statement. 40,000 people in my district voted for me and not for President Trump. Yeah. 40,000. That's a lot. That's a lot.

Well, you're a reasonable guy. That's about 13%, 14%. That's what a lot of people on the right are looking for. They're looking for a reasonable person who has their shared beliefs, but who's not a rude person, and also a person that they can identify with or support because that person, they represent hard work and conservative values, but also like a unity of united states not my sense is that people generally if i'm going to categorize them people don't like to be

categorized or labeled and you know you're one of them and uh most people are like that but i but just for the sense of political science that i kind of daily i engage in daily i i tend to all right and it kind of gets me in trouble sometimes people like well i don't believe exactly that and i'm like i'm not, well, I don't believe exactly that. And I'm like, I'm not saying you do. You don't have to. I'm speaking in the aggregate. I realize there's a spectrum.

But my sense from these past elections is that America is a center-right country because Republicans won pretty handedly in the House. And I think we're on track to do pretty well in 2022, especially with the Democrats proposing the things they're proposing. Well, what do you think is the problem? the reason why they don't win across the board is that the candidates themselves candidates mean a lot we had a lot of good candidates this time around and um look people the yeah people generally agreed with trump on the issues and you can look at the polling on this before the election he would win on the issues all the time and then

he would lose on on characteristics do you think if the pandemic didn't election, he would win on the issues all the time. And then he would lose on characteristics. Do you think if the pandemic didn't take place, he would have won? Yeah, probably. Because the economy would probably be booming. Yeah, it'd be really hard to beat him without the pandemic. The pandemic was not a good thing for him. Who the fuck is going to survive that? Because when you're a politician, as the country goes, so goes your polling or the way people feel about you.

Yeah. No, it got in his head. And yeah, people punish you unfairly or unfairly for any given externality that might happen. And there was a look. He was, I think, unfairly treated. I was a big defender of trump's policies during the pandemic now that's different from his press conferences i think i think one of the reasons he he lost popularity was because of those press conferences that eventually stopped

but um they didn't they didn't work for people people didn't like him now i see past it because i'm not an emotional guy like i know i've never seen trump in this emotional light i'm not you know i just don't so i I look at, well, what is this administration doing? And what's he really saying? That's what I look at. And I think it was entirely defensible. And I defended it vehemently throughout the past year, because I'm very much against lockdowns. I'm very much against mandates. I think the federal government did exactly what it should have done, which is invest a lot of money into helping or at least creating a customer base for vaccines, create a PPE distribution network, help people get free health care

for COVID. That's exactly what it should have done. That's about all you can do. There were so many people that were like, Donald Trump's responsible for 500,000 people being dead. That's such an insane statement. It's so insane insane but so prevalent. And look at every single

COVID graph of a trend of infections or even death rates, however you want to splice it and then compare it to lockdown states versus non-lockdown states compare it to lockdown countries versus non-lockdown countries. Everybody ends up in the same place. This is a thing that we have to

deal with. Or better. That's what's really uncomfortable with people when you look at Florida. Now, is there an issue going on right now in Florida where cases are on the rise because of the Brazilian variant? Is that true? I'm not following it exactly. I feel like I saw. I don't want to get fact-checked on it. You know who I saw that from today?

I do know Texas continues to decline rapidly. Yeah, it does but we haven't got those florida fucks coming over here giving us their cooties well they're having too much fun i mean it's you know it's spring it's miami why would you leave listen man the difference between california and and texas from someone who's lived in both is so palpable and just the feeling of being here californ'm going to defend Southern California a little bit. They're living off of fear porn. Yeah.

You lived in LA. I lived in San Diego. It's a little different because it's a military place. It's a big difference. Big difference. Huge difference. Yeah. No, I agree.

It's a better place. It's a better place psychologically. I want to see Orange County and below just become its own state. It might be. It might be in the future. I'm going to defend. I mean, I've spent 10 years there. I've got, you know, I love it, right?

Now, I think it's getting a little worse. You know, I do follow it closely. Wasn't there a new crazy mayor of San Diego that's arresting people for going outside without a mask on or something? Yeah, they're being a little crazy. I might have made that up. But for the most part, though, huge difference. Like, look at the housing situation in San Diego versus San Francisco. And I know because I bought a condo in San Diego in 2008, right?

And I've never been able to raise rent on it. But in San Francisco, that would, of course, not be the case. You'd be doubling rent by this point. So why is that? Well, it's a basic supply-demand issue. They allow buildings to be built in downtown San diego whereas they don't in san francisco is that really what it is but isn't it supplying the demand because of the tech community and they have so much fucking money yeah well they also they have the not in my backyard community which

again is a fair i guess i mean if you don't want things built there and you you advocate against it but how can they say not in my backyard when they allow people to defecate on the streets hey good question it's a i'm not defending like that is literally like the the lead place on the planet if you want to shit on the street right that's the place to go like i'm a big fan of shitting in public on the street whoa san francisco's your spot like there's an app for it it's weird too because and you're seeing this in austin a little bit also which is this this this culture around being a vagrant because in san francisco and because i we would have um training trips there so like i know the area pretty well over the last like decade or so and those training trips forced me to walk around the city a lot all parts of the city and what i noticed was is these are not necessarily people, not all, a lot of them are maybe meant to have mental

illness or drug addiction, but a lot of them are young, able-bodied people engaging in what looks to me like a, like a, like a vagabond culture. And I saw it when I was driving here to see you in Austin, um, where I'm like, Oh, who are these like young guys waving to people in tents under under the uh underpass it's really interesting they look like they don't they don't look like vagrants in the traditional sense they don't look like people with mental illness they don't look like people who have truly fallen on hard times they look like they like living this is weird they're young able-bodied people so what is going on here well people imitate their atmosphere and if people are allowed to live in an environment where you don't have to figure out a way out of

your problem where you can just sort of slide into some sort of predetermined yeah thing and if the government allows it then why wouldn't you well if this the city allows you to camp out and the idea is like listen this is extenuating circumstances. This is a very unusual time. A lot of people out of work. A lot of businesses have shut down. A lot of people can't find any sort of reasonable way to make a living.

We're going to allow you to camp out for a little while, and then we're going to sort this through. But this has been going on for 10 years. I don't know that. I've only been here for seven months. No, no, I'm not Austin. I mean in San Francisco.

Right, but in Austin. My time in San Francisco was a long time. In my seven months here, I've seen itin i mean i mean in san francisco right but in austin in san francisco was a long time in my seven months here i've seen it grow yeah yeah yeah that's uncomfortable because i i see san francisco and i've been to san francisco and i see la i see venice which is fucking chaos if you go down the beach in venice you just you can't believe it people that don't know what los angeles is really like today because i've been to venice but i don't remember it like we were described you got to go there but I don't remember it like what you're describing. You've got to go there now.

You've got to go to downtown LA now. It's madness. And you look at it, you're like, the only thing that comes into mind is I've got to get out of here. And that's what a lot of businesses are doing, and that's what a lot of individuals are doing, and a lot of wealthy people. You're not going to fix this any time in my life. There's too many people.

There's tens of thousands of people in tents on the street that's it's that's real that's a real number the exodus is real too and um that existed in san diego to an extent um much much less it's much less that it's it's embodied in like the eastern part of downtown i have friends that would say i don't want to live in san diego because it's too conservative i'm like that's why it's so clean jesus and they would be like not conservative but it is it is conservative relatively compared to los angeles and they were like oh i don't they fucking they're they're rough with pot i'm like oh come on man really just hide it like just not smoking your fucking apartment like don't just don't smoke on the street but but la statement that's the kind of people I'm rolling with.

But when they would go down to San Diego, they would worry about being busted with pot. Like that San Diego was more Republican. It was more conservative. I'm like, but you go there. There's like more to life than being busted with pot too, isn't there? Sometimes. Quality of living.

Depends on if you're a pot junkie. But I straddle both worlds in this way like i'm a disciplined person but i also like pot like i like a lot of things these lefties like but i like a lot of things these righties like i like guns i like hunting there's a lot of things i eat meat personal responsibility yeah i'm personal responsibility discipline it's a it's a core tenant of my existence is discipline yeah and i i understand the struggle of being disciplined i understand where these people are coming from but i just i just think we we have to find some fucking middle ground and that's what concerns me about our culture right now our country our community

is that there's no there's like and i i think a lot of this is accentuated by social media and these uh these echo chambers that people engage in it's like people are more and more inclined to dig their heels into the sand instead of to look at what the other side is saying go is there any validity to what they're saying is there any like like i'm looking at this georgia thing where everybody's opposing it i'm like is there any validity to this it's like maybe the maybe the fucking, maybe if there is some sort of a compromise, maybe that compromise is like, let's help people get IDs.

Like let's, instead of saying that this is all racist and terrible, like how much time do we have until the next vote in Georgia? Isn't it, can't we like have some community outreach program where we help people get IDs? Isn't that better? Look, I, yeah. And I have a lot of trouble understanding the left's intentions when it comes to the election stuff i know we've kind of beaten that dead horse yeah but it's it's spooky it's spooky to me because

i'm like why is this the one thing you don't want regulated because like every other aspect of life you want ultra regulated why is this the one thing where you want like no rules on it yeah it seems strange to me and it makes me feel like you want to cheat right yeah that's that's that's how it makes conservatives feel and that's how you end up with the chaos that we've had well i think the narrative is like on the left it's already been established and that narrative is you've got to make voting more accessible to people yeah and whether that is not requiring identification, whether it's mail-in ballots, whatever it is, make voting more accessible to people.

That's what they say, but in practice, it's like, who doesn't have access? Right. Who? Nobody. It's easy. What percentage of people don't have a driver's license? Nobody.

And if you don't, then that's a real problem. You have a DUI. And you need to get something that, or a government ID, because the question isn't necessarily a driver's license, but a government ID. Right. Because nobody says, hey, it only can be a driver's license. Nobody says that. It's always government ID.

So if that's the problem, then by all means, let's fix that. Well, there's a suspicion. People have suspicion about the government. There's a lot of people that don't want to get the vaccine because they're worried about the government. That's also that exists in minority communities and in more poor communities. What are your thoughts about this vaccine passport concept? Because a lot of people find that deeply problematic, giving the government this ability to let people travel or not travel based on whether or not you've been vaccinated. The left cannot let go of COVID. They can't let go of it. They want it around. They want to keep spending money based on this sort of moral stance that we need to keep supporting

communities because of COVID and that we need to keep doing things and taking excessive action because of COVID. They cannot let it go. Why do you think that is? need to keep doing things and taking excessive action because of COVID. Why do you think that is? Because they love collectivism and they love centralized control of the economy and society. I recall a definition we were looking at earlier. Yeah, sounds like fascism. And again, I always distinguish between liberals and progressives on this one.

Okay, I think there should be an alliance between real liberals and conservatives in the future, and that's how we're going to solve problems. I talk to Brett Weinstein all the time. Weinstein. If you talk to him all the time, you know his fucking last name. Jesus. Harvey Weinstein.

Brett Weinstein. All right. Anyway, I think... Anyway, he's like, I'm a hardcore liberal. He's like, I'm a radical liberal, He's like, I'm a radical liberal. And we just agree on so many things because he's a classical liberal. And if you're going to describe yourself as liberal, you mean the classical sense in most cases.

And you want nice things. You have the sense of compassion and you want nice things from people. Maybe it's health care. Maybe it's to take care of people when they fall in on hard times. These are good things. These are not bad things. These are not things that conservatives even disagree with. Now, we generally have a different philosophy

on how to find solutions for those problems. That's the center, I guess. If we're always like grasping for the center, which a lot of people are, and I always kind of question, like, what do you mean by that? But maybe that's the right way to look at it. Liberals are good at having enough empathy and compassion to see what might need to

be changed. Conservatives are good at finding the solutions for that change that maintains the good things that got us here in the first place. You can't burn down all the foundations of a society just because you're not at utopia yet. utopia is defined as in greek as being nowhere and you'll always you'll always burn things down to grasp for that you can't get to that point so i think that's the right alliance um kind of i kind of forgot what the initial question was well it's it's all well you're talking about the difference between uh a classical liberal well when you say classical liberal i always think you're trying to like pretend you're talking about the difference between a classical liberal. When you say classical liberal, I always think you're trying to pretend you're a liberal when you're really a conservative.

Because there's a lot of people that use that term, classical liberal, and it's like, what do you believe? Things get sneaky. I think there's a real problem with definitions. There's a real problem with like— You got to focus on the definition. What Chris Rock was saying, though, about like gangs, like that you have like, I'm more conservative and I believe you have these predetermined patterns of behavior that people subscribe to without any independent thinking, without any objective thinking. And it's a real problem with human beings. Like, I think ultimately what everybody wants is what's good for the community.

They want for themselves selfishly, but they also want for their friends and neighbors and loved ones and family members. They want what's good for everybody, but they can't agree in what is good for everybody. And then when people don't have, they look at people who do have, and they go, well, how the fuck do they have?

And then some grifter will come along, and they have because they've taken from you. And therein lies the problem. Because if you're not educated, or you haven't like deeply researched the ideas especially with an objective perspective you can sort of believe a lot of these grifters a lot of these people that come along and they they say crazy shit like tax the rich or eat the rich and like oh Jesus Christ had how did they get rich would not did they did they get rich from stealing or did they get rich from

discipline and hard work and decades, decades in the trenches? Because you're dealing with two very different things. Well, a classically liberal philosophy would ask that question because there's a sense of justice involved with any question. And that sense of justice is, did somebody infringe on your rights? And what are rights? Well, life, liberty, property, generally speaking, in the classical sense. Now, you can go further back in time before classic Enlightenment principles came about in the 18th century. But then you're dealing with feudalism. Then you're dealing with tribalism. Then you're dealing with what I think a lot on the left want to bring us back to, the sort of subjugating people into different identities and hierarchies based on those

identities. That's a really bad place to be. They want to bring us back to that moment in history. What the Enlightenment period did was say, look, you can keep dividing people up all day long. Eventually, you just get to an individual. So maybe we should look at how individuals act and then have a really rational structure about how we define incentives and how we define justice. And justice should be defined as person A infringing on the rights of person B. person a infringing on the rights of person b yeah or person a you know making it um in a hierarchy for for unworthy reasons something other than a meritocracy that would be an injustice now i know you said that the the left is fascinated by covid or obsessed with covid but we didn't really cover it like oh sorry that was the original question i got really philosophical and no it's okay that that that was the original question well what do you think it's obviously a bad idea it's not and it's obviously a bad idea

because like the and a lot of the well-intentioned people on the left tend to they're well-intentioned but they do tend to live like they're still in grad school and i know because i went to harvard in a in a policy school i went to the harvard kennedy school after the military and there's an infatuation with being able to design the perfect policy on paper. Now, that's the first step, of course. Now, the second step is how do you implement it? And also, again, whose rights are you infringing on when you implement these things? These are the questions they don't ask. This is what a conservative always asks. Again, when I talk about how to solve problems through a framework of limiting principles,

this is what I mean. You have to ask these questions. And so what is the practicality of this? And it's not practical at all, frankly, depending on what they mean by a COVID passport also. Maybe we should define that first. But it's one thing to ask people like, i don't know wear a green bracelet if uh if you already got the vaccine and you've already had covet or both either or but it's not that it's like limiting your ability to travel which is an excessive infringement on your rights

and also and also is it really even scientific given the trends that we're seeing i mean in all no matter how you approach this question it it seems like a really bad idea. When you say, is it even scientific, what do you mean by that? Meaning we've been traveling for a year without vaccines. Well, in a limited aspect. Some people have. I travel a lot. Limited capacity.

Yeah. I mean, it's somewhat limited. Well, no. If you look at the airline trends, it's severely limited. Fairly. Yeah. I spent a lot of time at airports over the last year. Well, you do.

But that's personal. But I know how crowded they are every time I'm there. And yeah, there was definitely a time period where there were ghost towns. But that hasn't been the case for many, many, many months. But it's still not even 50% of what it was a year ago. Yeah. Or a year and a half ago, I should say. I don't know the exact numbers.

I don't know what it is either. I just know that we've been living with it, just like you have to live with a pandemic. You don't have a choice. Here's a big difference. Maybe everything boils down to this difference. The right believes, look, you don't have a choice. You got to make the best of it.

You got to keep living. You got to mitigate risk where you can, but you can't mitigate risk at the expense of everything else. And the left says, no, no, no, you have to mitigate risk at the expense of everything else. No cost is too high because if it just saves one life. This is the fundamental difference. The problem they don't take into account is it costs a lot of lives. It costs a lot of lives through suicide, depression, drug addiction.

There's a lot of people. The school's closing has been excessively bad and there's no science to indicate that this is that this is what our kids need i have a friend who lives in nevada and their community was ravaged by suicide with young kids and they're devastated by it and they're trying to figure out like what there's a massive escalation of suicides in high school age kids because of the pandemic lockdown you have a higher chance of dying from the flu if you're under 20 years old why doesn't dr fauci ever say that why does it why does he go hey you could die if you're 14 you could yes you could but you have to contextualize the information

you're giving this is why america has lost trust in their public health officials because they never contextualize anything. They never give you the probability of risk, which is crazy. Fauci, in the beginning of the pandemic, when he said you don't need to wear a mask and then changed it. He did, changed it.

But he said the reason why he said that is because he wanted the first responders and all these different healthcare professionals. He should have said that at the beginning. Well, it was a real weird thing because once you lie about that publicly because you're doing it for the greater good of all the people, then they're going to go, well, what are you saying now?

And why are you saying that now? And then like when Rand Paul confronted him and said, why are you wearing two masks when you've been vaccinated? Isn't this theater? Yeah. And he's right. He is right. And you could see the panic in it. And also saying to people, give them an incentive to get vaccinated.

Say if you get vaccinated. And don't make it COVID passports be the incentive. Right. Say you don't have to wear fucking two masks if you've been vaccinated. Like you have immunity. Why are you wearing two masks? It's in this theater. Like Rand Paul's done some really interesting things.

And he's a doctor, by the way. He is a doctor. Well, he's an ophthalmologist, but he's not a specialist in infectious diseases. Like Rand Paul's done some really interesting things. And he's a doctor by the way. He is a doctor. Well he's an ophthalmologist but he's not a specialist in infectious diseases but he knows enough about it and the way he's saying it is not illogical. He's not making any errors. It's not illogical at all. No. And he's also a guy who's got COVID

as are you. And it's a real confusing thing because you're dealing with something that for the most part, most people, other than people who are obese or with preexisting morbidities, you know, like I think the average of people who died from COVID, it's 2.6. It might even be higher now. 2.6 comorbidities. Yeah. Which is a lot.

And also the average age is, I believe it's over 78. I want to say that's about correct. For people who die. And we're not discounting people that have long-term issues with it. But we're also, I mean, this is something me as a person who has literally dedicated most of my life to fitness and health and wellness. It's infuriating to me that you don't take into account that a healthy body can deal with this. And a healthy body can, like, your immune system works. It's a real thing.

You know? And this idea that there's nothing you can do other than, like, put three masks on and hide, that's not true. Like, your immune system varies depending upon your rest, your vitamin intake, water intake, exercise. Vitamin D is a major part of this, and it was just never explained by our highest health officials. Nor was obesity. 78% of the people that are hospitalized. Well, you can't fix obesity in a month's time.

You can in a year's time. Well, yeah. We're a year in. My friend Laura, Laura Bura bites she went through this beats she gets mad and i say bites oh see you're not fucking up all the time i'm not the only one who scares up the last name well it's spelled wrong yeah it's be i yeah you have no moral high ground it's beats but she'd be anyway she's fucking hilarious and she was on here last week and she realized that the the height of the pandemic that at the beginning of it that most of the

people that were dying or that were hospitalized were obese. So she lost 40 pounds. And she put herself through this rigorous exercise routine, restricted her calories, and she feels so much better now. And I'm like, you should be a spokesperson. You should be the person expressing to people

personal responsibility. She lived most of her life. She's 36 years old. She lived most of her life like this 36 years old she lived most of her life like this and now all of a sudden she realized like oh my god i could die not to mention all the other health benefits associated with this you know covid's still only the third leading cause of death the first is still heart disease which is primarily you know often caused by obesity obesity just being unhealthy yeah then cancer then covid COVID. And cancer also, a lot of it is caused by inflammation, obesity, poor diet choices.

Everything causes cancer, but this whiskey causes cancer. No, this whiskey's good for you. That's probably true. But you talk about health care. How do you solve the health care problem? People just need to be healthier. We have one of the most obese countries in the world. That's a fact. And it causes a lot of our health care problems it's one of the reasons that our health

care is so expensive you know and our insurance is so expensive because you do have when you paying that premium you do have to accommodate for a lot of people who use health care way way more than you do right well that's why people have looked at the morbidity cases in terms of percentages with America versus other parts of the world. And the other parts of the world where people are generally more active and thinner, you have better results. Even places where people are poor, like Egypt and Nigeria, they have a much lower... lower african countries have done really well with covid asian countries yes now now there's a few reasons that the theories at least is why that might be the case in asia they're dealing with sars and coronaviruses all the time their immunities are probably well built up against it right i've seen studies in japan because japan wasn't hit hard but they've seen studies in japan where you know well over half of the people tested had antibodies. So they clearly had it, but they never even noticed. Right. So, you know, it's just, and also they're not fat.

That's a big part of it, man. It's a big part of it. When you're carrying around all that excess tissue, you're compromising your systems. All of your systems, your cardiovascular system, your immune system, everything is compromised by this massive amount of excess body mass and inflammation. You're dealing with a lot of different issues that compromise your health. Yeah, but it's mean and compassionate if you tell people to work out. Even in schools, I mean, you look at videos from the 1950s of gym classes,

and it's pretty hardcore. I remember gym class, and I don't know that it was hardcore, but at least we were active. And there wasn't a lot of excuses. There's a lot of meanness to it, too. Like, dodgeball was fucking mean. Do you have a bad story about dodgeball? No, I'm fine.

Sounds like you do. Nope. Sounds like you were picked on. I was one of the mean people. You were one of the mean people. For me, give me a fucking ball and allow me to throw it full blast at people. I enjoyed the shit out of that. But I was also on the wrestling team.

You're a bully. I wasn't a bully. Sounds like you were a bully. If you gave me an opportunity to be mean, I would be mean, though. But the problem is you tell people that it's not their fault. And that doesn't empower them. What empowers people is tell them, here's a way where you can do better. Here's a way where you can improve your health. Here's a way where you can improve your health.

Here's a way we can improve your fitness. Here's a way we can improve the outcome. You know, I know so many people that they eat shit. They eat garbage food and they're fucking sloppy and they don't exercise, but they can't wait for the vaccine. They're like, my God, man, my God have you have a an opportunity you have an opportunity to do something you've had a fucking full year where you're hiding and you still been eating cheetos and getting fatter you know the average american like there was a there was a study done on people

i think it's 40 of the people have gained an average of 30 pounds yeah i don't get that the i've heard that the covid weight yeah Yeah. It's like the freshman 15. That's not okay. There's no excuse for it. Well, the freshman 15 makes more sense. You're drinking. Yeah, fair enough. You know?

Yeah, that's true. You know, you're away. Your parents aren't around. You're eating pizza. I don't know, but you're like 18. Like, how do you gain... Anyway. Because you're fucking studying all day.

Are you? That makes... I don't know. I barely went to college. It makes more sense to me than the COVID thing because there's a real physical consequence. No, it's BS. And if you pay attention to the news, everyone knew. They closed my gym.

And my gym, this is early days, back when we were all in it together. Right. Back when it was a little bit novel. The first week? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. First two weeks to slow the spread. Yeah.

Fuck you. Yeah, what happened then, man? And my gym rented us equipment. So you use it. And so you use it. You figure it out. What do you mean your gym rented you equipment? I could go take equipment from the gym because they were closed for a few weeks.

So they were like, hey, if you want to check out equipment. What kind of equipment? Well, I got whatever you wanted. equipment what kind of equipment uh well i got whatever you wanted um i mean i got uh uh some kettlebells and um uh no i got two 65 pound dumbbells and i got a barbell with 45 pound bumper weights and so that i could use then i would just like i would just run i live in an apartment in houston so i would just kind of i would go up the parking garage with stairs stairs i would just do shit i don't know i would just be creative and just work out with it and i was in pretty good shape frankly um but maybe better shape because it was like that was when you were really locked down i mean that was

like everything's on zoom like i really didn't wasn't doing anything that didn't last all that long but in texas it didn't last all that long didn't last all that long in la it's basically exactly the same as it was a year ago it can't be that bad it's not much different it's 25 restaurant capacity we have as of a few weeks ago they opened up restaurants that's 25 only isn't it i think that's true what is the restaurant capacity of uh los angeles inside dining i think inside dining is like 25 so unacceptable and i remember this heartbreaking video and it was in los angeles and it was this woman she had finally gotten she had like spent all this money she'd created this outdoor dining area and and then they and then they closed down outdoor dining either or also this is not science

based so this is what hold on really more to that across the parking lot yeah i know i know that was why she was so mad because some hollywood studio was able to set up their picnic tables and film whatever the hell they were filming right there because and that was her breaking point because the unions had supported the politicians and that's exactly what it is and so right across the parking lot from her she was watching her business deteriorate why right across the parking lot there was massive amounts of people who are dining outside and it's hard it's horrific and that lady was crying and yeah i mean gavin newsom should be recalled i hope that movement works out for whoever's you know whoever's pushing it i mean he certainly made all the mistakes that you can make to get recalled.

The dining outside is a big one. The fact, I mean, there's a lot. There's a lot. You compare COVID numbers from California. Dining inside, excuse me. Literally anything. You compare COVID numbers from California and Texas. And California and Texas are always really good two states to compare

because one is completely controlled by Republicans at the state level and one is completely controlled by republicans at the state level and one is completely controlled by democrats maybe at every level okay and they're and they're both similar in size uh we're both border states we're both major major states okay and so comparison of policies is always a nice thing to see that's why we're always talking about texas and california when you look at covid trends they're basically the same are they comparative in terms of like population density though yeah well what do you mean like density but los angeles has like fucking 40 million people in it no it doesn't have 40 million people well they don't count the mexicans they don't count all the illegal people they have no idea how many

are there but i mean there's at least 20 million people in Los Angeles. Can we agree to that? No. No? Isn't LA 20 million people? No. What is it? There's no way that's possible. Okay, what's the population of LA?

That's pretty much Los Angeles County. I mean, it's really... Oh, County? What do you mean County? It's all connected. There's no fucking getting away. Oh, it's a big sprawl.

Anyway. Yeah, but listen to me. But Texas and California are not that different. There's a big difference in terms of population density. If you try to drive. If you try to drive. You're saying density.

If you try to drive. Manhattan has the highest density, for instance. Yeah, but nobody drives. If you try to drive from L.A., if you try to leave L.A., if you're in Santa Monica and you want to drive to Disneyland. Sure. It'll take you a year. It takes forever.

It doesn't take a year. No, of course it doesn't take a year I'm joking But it takes hours and hours How much do you love Disneyland? That's a lie That's 2019, that's two years ago So now it's $20 million

It's more $10 million in LA Can you look up Harris County? So like Houston How many is in Los Angeles County? That's the county I hit. 10 million? That's a joke.

It says 4.7. 40 million in the state, right? Yeah. 40 in the state? About 40 million. I think Texas is smaller. But look, I guess the point I'm trying to make is they're comparable. And so it's good to compare policies and just what's going on.

And for COVID in particular, trends were basically the same. Los Angeles is not where it's a sprawl, just like Houston's a sprawl. I think Los Angeles and Houston are very comparable places. We both have downtowns. They're both major, major sprawls. How many people live in Houston? Can we look it up?

It's less. It's just under five. In Houston, though, but Los Angeles. But what about harris county that's oh see you're doing what you don't like me doing it's 4.7 i'm attaching all these other people you're like no no no don't do that but you're trying to do that to houston huh i've just said they're comparable these are comparable urban sprawls houston's only 2.3 yeah they're comparable difference bro well it's eight million fucking people the fourth largest thing goes new york la chicago think about how many people died in the holocaust it's less than

the difference between houston and la it's a lot of people that's an interesting way to look at it i'm just talking about numbers bro just talking about numbers all right this does la win or something yeah yeah we win for sucking more.A. wins for having more fucking humans. But the problem with L.A. is it's always been liberal. So it's like there's no competition. It's like everyone in the Hollywood business, in the movie industry, in the television industry, you are punished if you have any other ideology other than progressive and liberal. Oh, yeah.

You're punished. By the way, Houston isston is very it affects your bottom line very very blue all major cities are very very blue houston's very diverse the difference is there's a balance in houston between the state government being very red and the liberal city government and so dallas is like less blue but not much pretty. Pretty blue. Is it the same as Houston? Yeah. Pretty much? Yeah, yeah, Dallas. Austin is completely blue.

Austin's weird blue. Austin's like California, just like a different type. Again, I differentiate between practical liberals and progressives. So what the fuck keeps Texas red? Farmers? Ranchers and shit? Well, first of all I mean it's not like everybody's blue and inside Harris County of course I mean um you know I win and I'm

only in Harris County my district is an urban suburban district and I win by 13 14 points that's what I think we need is more people like you yeah I agree joe rational republicans you're not mean-spirited ideologists you're just a fucking rational person it makes a lot of sense i think we need people who listen to what the left want like again like they want some kind of change and you gotta like you gotta listen to it because a lot of times it's you know it's it's expressed in a very emotional way and maybe it's health care and health care is just a great example because it's, it's expressed in a very emotional way and maybe it's healthcare and healthcare is just a great example. Cause it's like,

yes, maybe we should get people access to better healthcare. Why not? People who are falling on a hard time should be helped, but if they take advantage of the system, should they also be helped? No, of course not.

They should be punished. Grifters should be punished. People, people want a better life. So should they be able to process themselves through our immigration system yes but should they be able to just claim that they have some kind of asylum and then cut in front of the line in front of everybody else who has waited years no and so right but if you're dealing with like exceedingly poor people that are from another country that are trying to do better for their life to get across the country it's very difficult

to get asylum right isn't it yes however however here's the problem so it should be difficult yes and about only about 10 percent end up getting adjudicated for asylum only about 10 because it means for you to claim to asylum you have to prove that you've been persecuted politically for your gender, for your religion, or something. Okay, there's an actual legal standard. And in the end, only about, especially from these Northern Triangle countries, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador,

only about 10 to 15% end up making that cut. Now, if you're coming from Ethiopia, I bet that percentage goes a little higher. Okay, but what if you're a person that lives in Mexico? Or Syria. If you're a person that lives in Mexico, and maybe you're not persecuted, but you want to do better for your family,

and you go, you know, United States, there's a lot more possibilities. There's a lot more opportunity. And so what they end up doing is they go, and they say, well, I'm claiming asylum. I'm running away from violence and political persecution. They know what to say. They have notes, even.

Right, but outside of asylum, what are their other options? The normal immigration process. What is that process? Like if you're a person who's like a poor person who lives in Mexico. It's hard because there's tens and tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people who would want to apply for it. So you have to have a system. You have to have a line.

All around the world. All around the world. And so the question is you cannot advantage somebody just because they have the geographic advantage of being able to walk across our border. It's not fair to the rest of the world. If our moral high ground is sustained because we believe that people who are being persecuted truly have a right to come into our country, and we do believe that it's within our laws, then you you have to make it fair for everybody and you can't clog up the system for people who are clearly taking advantage of it i look two years ago when this crisis was happening because it bubbles up every once in a while when they think they can get away with it and i went and because i speak spanish i was able to talk to a whole line of migrants that was there right at the texas border i talked to some families from guatemala and um like i said like that i asked them why they asked them why they're there and

they said well you know and they they give their line like well we're fleeing like poverty i mean it sucks they're basically like it really sucks down there right and i believe them they're obviously telling the truth then i get at the end of the line of this cuban man and there's no way that i and i i do have training and telling if somebody is lying and being able to interrogate somebody, this guy was not lying. This guy was an N is trained engineer in Cuba, been jailed multiple times,

managed to escape, escape to the central America. And it eventually made it up this way, claiming asylum for that reason. That's a pretty good story. And it was pretty clear as he broke down in tears that he was probably telling the truth. It's pretty obvious that people who have talking points written down when they're turning themselves into border patrol about what to say,

because you have to, because the first step to this process is, you know, proving that you have some kind of claim to asylum. It's not adjudicated yet. You still have to go to a judge. But you have some kind of claim. Now, the way the Trump administration got a hold of this problem was to say, okay, fine, you have a claim? Great. Let's have a portion of you at least remain in Mexico,

in Mexico City. A portion? Yeah. Part of your family? No, no, no. I mean, it ended up being maybe five to ten percent of people who who are claiming asylum we're gonna have some of you wait down there and you'll you'll you'll get your hearing down there um we'll make agreements asylum cooperation agreements with northern triangle countries like guatemala and honduras and el salvador and we'll say look you can actually apply down there or apply in a neighboring country i'm

confused why would you have a percentage of them stay in mexico city because it's a disincentive because now you're you're creating a disincentive you're creating a disincentive because there's a good chance that we're gonna there's a least a chance that you're when you cross that border you're going to be sent back immediately and you can claim your asylum there once people got word of this they were like well i don't really want to make the risk i don't want to pay the drug cartels that piso that i had to pay i don't want to make the journey how do you say piso but you say the other words so well piso is just pronounced piso isn't it peso no no no no i'm not saying peso i'm saying piso what are you saying that's a different word what What's the word? What does piso mean?

It's just like a head count thing. It's just a thing. Do you know what that means? It's just what they call it. Piso mojado means wet floor. Well, piso means floor, yes, but that's not. I know there's different words. That's just what Border Patrol told me they call it.

It's like a slang term. I thought you were saying peso wrong. No, peso is a monetary currency. Piso is a floor, but piso in this case is a slang term i understand okay slang term yeah as i understand it okay and unless unless they told it to me wrong but that's what they've called it so right um so they disincentivized people by making it more difficult by so you think in doing that they eliminated a lot of the fuckery yes they did and covid restrictions also helped us basically you know re or push people back so you think that most of the people that are progressive that look at this uh immigration issue and are more liberal

and more they're more open to this idea of open borders the reason why they're doing is because they're kind of compassionate but they haven't looked at the actual statistics of what this means and what happens and why and what's the incentive. Is that what you believe? That would be a kind way. A kind way. It depends on the person. What's the unkind way? You want more illegal immigration

because you want them to eventually become citizens and vote for you. Right. So I think at the higher ends of the Democratic you know, the democratic patriarchy, that's what they want. Because like every policy you propose to me, increases illegal immigration. What's the worst case scenario? If that happens, like, let's say that more and more people embrace this idea of open borders and illegal immigration, and allowing those people to vote. And then once they get in there, they're going to vote for the

same people that allowed them to get into the country, what's the worst-case scenario? I'm not sure what the worst-case scenario is. I mean, pick every hyper-progressive policy you don't like, and I suppose that would be the worst-case scenario. But in some countries, that's not the case, right? Like Cuba, the people that emigrate from Cuba tend to be very conservative.

That's one of the weird things about Miami. Venezuelans, too. Right? Miami is, Venezuelans as well, because they're dealing with the social unrest. Anybody who even links themselves to socialism, they're like against.

So, you know, again, I don't know. I just know that's not, I'm not hyper concerned with the political ramifications of it because in the end, if they end up becoming citizens, fine, I'll just i'll just i'll just convince them to vote for me right but the question is about justice what is fair what

is moral and and do we give people a free pass because they had a geographical advantage to to to take advantage of our system claim a sign when they had none end up here and because here's the problem i don't know that i really finished this thought but what trump did was basically disincentivize people coming across by saying hey adjudicate your claims down there what biden says is hey let's reinstitute catch and release so 90 of the people coming across now in family units by the way this is that's an important statistic i'm not going to get fact checked on this single adults still get sent back there's still a lot of deportations happening but if you're in a family and if you have children with you, that's your ticket. And that's because of a Flores settlement agreement that happened in 2014.

It's a court case. But and I won't get into that, but that's why it happens. So you get catch, you get released and you say and they say, hey, come back for your court date. Now, who really shows up for their court date? Not many. The left claims a lot do. They're lying. They're relying on certain studies that took place only in New York City, very specific

population. A much better indication of this would be a pilot study in 2019, I believe, that DHS did that showed that out of about 7,000, I think it was 7,000 or 9,000 migrant families, 90% didn't show back up for their court cases. Because why would they? What incentive do you have to show back up? Even if you show back up for that first one, why would they? What incentive do you have to show back up? Even if you show back up for that first one, why are you going to show up for the second, the third? And definitely not going to take, definitely not going to adhere to your deportation order.

When we do a deportation order in America, we don't like lock them up and put them on a plane. That's not what we do. We say, hey, take 30 days, please leave. What do they do if they contain contain someone they find out they're covid positive well not what they do with an american this is infuriating to a lot of people because if you're an american and you go overseas you still need a negative test to come back into the united states guess what you that you absolutely do not need that to be an illegal immigrant so what happens what happens if you cross the border? Do they test people?

No, the Border Patrol is not testing people. When people are getting tested and you're hearing about these numbers, like dozens and dozens of people tested positive, that's because NGOs are probably testing them. So it's not government. What's an NGO? Like a non-government organization, like a church or some other immigrant activist organization

that's helping these people. They're generally the ones testing them. So a charity organization. Yeah, yeah. Some organization like that. It's not necessarily a government organization. What do they do when they test someone positive? Like, what if someone makes it across the border illegally, they get detained, and they

turned out to be positive for COVID? Well, they're already past that point. What do they do with them? They don't turn them back. So they allow them to infect everyone else in the containment facility? Well, again, Border Patrol and our processing facilities, they don't have the capacity to test everybody there,

as I understand it. Currently? Yeah. So it's highly likely that what you're saying is absolutely happening. And then if we do end up testing a huge group of people later on that's generally what happens and you see that a lot of them are test positive did you see the video that ted cruz posted where he was at the border and this woman was telling him not to film things and you look these people were just sandwiched in

there like sardines yep what did you think about that i think um i think it's proof that the bite administration is now dealing with which is when is when you have an incentive for thousands and thousands of people to cross the border every day, it's really difficult to deal with. But isn't it also that they were politicizing this idea that Trump was detaining people and separating families and then putting people in these cages? But Biden's doing the same thing. He's doing the exact same thing. But the issue is it's hard, right? Yeah. And that's the issue.

And that's what conservatives are trying to explain to people. Instead of making it a partisan issue. Right, right. Because, yeah, I don't like repeating the same slogans that the left was repeating two years ago. Kids in cages. No. Hey, guys, here's the lesson to be learned here. We have a rule of law. We have a process.

You have to adhere to the process. to be learned here. We have a rule of law. We have a process. You have to adhere to the process. If you don't, then you're doing a disservice to the American people and their sense of sovereignty. Not only that, but you're doing a disservice to legal immigrants who are trying to do it the right way. This is unfair on all levels. You remember when Obama was talking about this? Obama was talking about this when he was running for president. They used to be very pro-border security. It's a crazy video when you watch them discuss it. You can make them debate each other on their clips. Yeah, it's like Obama sounds like

a Republican when he's talking about the rule of law. I can find Chuck Schumer doing the same thing. Yeah, it's sad that these things become tools in order to get their side elected. It's really sad. And I think it is. Again, there's certain issues. People are like, well, why can't you find the middle? And I'm like, sometimes

you can if the objective is the same. If the objective is the same, we can work together. If the objective is not the same, we can't work together. Now, here's where the hippie idealistic aspect of my own personality comes into play. Because I go, well, what would disincentivize people to try to illegally immigrate? Well, the best strategy, I think, would be to make their country a place where you wouldn't want to leave. Well, there's agreement on that.

Right. That would be the best. Like, is there a way where we could make these places where these people flee from? Yeah. How would you do that? Well, I think our foreign policy needs to focus on our own backyard. I think we need to look at the Western Hemisphere as a place to invest in and to focus on foreign policy. For sure, for sure.

But we have an issue with illegal immigration. The way to stop that would be to make these places, if you find the primary places where people illegally immigrate from, what would be the best way to enhance those places to make that less likely? To give people opportunity in those those places so what people yeah is that outside i mean am i just thinking like we know we passed bipartisan legislation

in the last session um along these lines like look let's invest in this this is a worthy investment plan colombia which is the the the u.s led plan that got colombia to where it's at right now is an extremely amazing success story. And it's now, again, you've got a Colombian people and a government that you can work with. And so that's a requirement anytime you do this. And it's rare, unfortunately. Do you have the same thing with Northern Triangle countries? Yeah, you kind of do.

I mean, look, you had, what was it? Which president was on the Tucker Carlson show recently? Either Honduras or Guatemala? Or no, it was El Salvador. It was El Salvador president. And this is obviously a guy we can work with. He wants to work with us. The Mexican government, you know,

they're going down an interesting track right now, which I don't quite understand. However, they definitely don't want caravans of people coming through their country, and they definitely don't want to keep empowering on a financial basis the Mexican drug cartels. They want to work with us on all... This is why the Trump administration was so...

It was so easy for them to engage in these agreements with them. And the fact that the Biden administration just ripped them up on day one was absolute insanity that was a request from immigration activists that from the from the from the far left that want more illegal immigration um for maybe political purposes and that's all that these democrat politicians are listening to now not all of them you always ask me for so who's on the left who's saying something different well uh there there's actually multiple Texas Congress members, Democrat Congress members who at least have somewhat spoken out against the Biden administration for what they're doing. Henry Cuellar is probably the best.

He's probably the most bipartisan member that I can think of. I mean, he's on gun legislation with me, that guy. All right. So shout out to Henry. Henry's Henry's a friend. But, you know, again, true liberal. he's representing his constituents how about that like if you don't want to label people he's representing what his constituents want and his constituents who who mostly have hispanic last names by the way they still don't want illegal immigration right there's this myth

out there that that you can just group hispanics into this category and it's just not true as somebody who grew up in south america um you know i think i understand the culture fairly well you just can't and it's not obvious to me that they just want illegal immigration on top of illegal immigration they want the opposite they're voting constituents they they want fairness so when we bring let's bring this fucking podcast home. How do we fix this issue? How do we fix this ridiculous bipartisanship? Or ridiculous partisanship, rather, that we have? There's a ridiculous polarization between the two sides. A ridiculous right versus left narrative.

How do we come together? How do we join together? Because the problem with whether it's a guy like trump or whether it's a person like biden these people that pull us in the left or pull us towards the right and then make being in the center a crime or make being in the center something that's chastised like how do we bring everybody together what do we do you're a politician i'm not going to give you the you're a congressman i'm not giving the answer you're totally come on i'm going to give you the answer you're told you want. Come on! I'm going to say this. The nature of politics is opposing sides, and you're never going to escape them.

You have different dispositions, and those dispositions are rooted in psychology. They're rooted in human history. In today's manifestations, we call them the left and the right. We call them Democrat and Republican, but they've been longstanding for a very long time. And there's two different dispositions. One believes fundamentally in a good, good natured way that if we just had enough power in a centralized way that we could just we could form humanity into a more utopian reality. I don't believe that. That's not my disposition. My disposition is I think you should structure government with a set of incentives and with a light touch, simple rules for a complex society, and that you should acknowledge that bad things can happen and that risk can happen, but that the best possible outcomes come with that simple approach to governance and a simple set of incentives, and that you cannot

fundamentally transform human nature the way you'd like to because these different dispositions will always manifest no matter what that's that's the first truth and so those dispositions always manifest into different policies and we will disagree on those policies. And it's not clear what the center is, necessarily. All right, there's people who have like left leaning tendencies and some right leaning tendencies. Maybe they claim that they're, you know, fiscally conservative, but socially liberal is something you hear a lot. That doesn't, that doesn't actually turn out in the data that way, the way I would like it because I, so I don't know how to like campaign to that group necessarily. They're not a base that you can rely on for voting. Okay. They're just people with different ideas. Now, sometimes they have different ideas because

they just don't know all of the facts. And sometimes they just legitimately do know all the facts and they just legitimately have different ideas. Either way. I can't, I don't know how to differentiate. And so it's very difficult for a politician to rely on that as a voting base. You're always going to have your voting bases. These are some truths that you cannot escape. And then another one would be, it's very hard to define the middle. None of this is bad. None of this is wrong. We have differences in our None of this is wrong, okay? We have differences in our politics and our ideas,

and we created a system. The masterful thing about the American system is that we've created it in a way that allows us to have these debates in a vigorous way and transfer power in a peaceful way. Even if it was messy this time, it's still transferred. And we dealt with it. And that's an amazing thing. No constitution is older than ours.

Can you imagine that? There's a lot of countries that are way older than ours, but no constitution is. No constitution enshrines inalienable rights the way ours does. There was some genius in the founding. We should appreciate that. That's the center, I suppose, is that classical founding that we agreed upon at one time, where you can't tell me what to do. You can't infringe on my rights. It's a live and let live philosophy. That's the American way.

The more we try to veer from that, the more we're going to end up in these pockets, because the more the left goes extreme, the more the right feels it needs to go extreme to respond to that. I think that's what I see happening, generally speaking. And so what's the best way out of that? It's tone, I think. I think it's tone. I think it's, look, know why you believe what you believe and be able to express it in a rational way.

If you can't, then you shouldn't trust that person. And debate, and debate heavily. And if Congress is gridlocked, then Congress is gridlocked. That's fine. Remember, those are laws that must affect every single person in America. There's nothing wrong with gridlock in Washington.

Okay? Because guess what? You can still solve your problems at the state level and the local level. You can still go vote in your school board elections. You know how people vote in their school board elections? Like 3%. You know how people complain about their education system? A lot more. A lot

more. Yeah. Go get involved in your local level and get informed and be humble about it. A sense of humility frankly is maybe what you're looking at. Like I know what I believe. I know why I believe it. You're not going to

change my mind in a really big way, and that's fine. But if you're going to take a really hard position on something, please know why you believe it. There's no shame in ignorance. It's not your fault you don't know a lot about why Medicare works the way it does. Or any given subject. Any given subject. It's not your fault. You're trying to get your kids to school man yeah but but don't but but but at least be open-minded

about it and let's have rational conversations online even my supporters will be like i'll go to like an event and i'll be taking pictures with people and somebody will say to me oh man i give you so much hell online i'm like why like you're bored you obviously you obviously like me but like you're you're contributing and this is from my own side like you're contributing to the toxicity that we're all feeling they haven't been expressed they haven't been explained that yet the problem with people online is that there's like it's too easy to just be negative it is it's too easy and that's negative. It is. It's too easy. And that's a problem. It is.

And that's what you're sensing. That's why you're sensing this division. And there is division. And look, I do think, I'm speaking from my own partisan hat here, but I do think the Democrat Party has taken on positions that they never would have taken on 10 years ago. I think they've moved way to the left. I don't think the Republican Party has. I can't distinguish my current Republican Party

from a policy perspective from Reagan's. Now, the tone is different, and that's what needs to change. When are you running for president? Last question. Nah, you've already asked me this. I asked you that a year ago. Not soon.

Not soon. Dan, you're a good man. I appreciate you very much. Thank you, brother. Thanks for being here. You're a good man. Thank you. I support you. Bye, everybody i appreciate you very much thank you brother thanks for being here you're a good man thank you i support you bye everybody thank you very much