The Joe Rogan Experience - #1775 - Dave Smith

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Dave Smith is a stand-up comedian and political commentator. He is also the host of the "Part of the Problem" podcast, and co-host of the "Legion of Skanks" podcast.

The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night All day Alright, David Smith, how the fuck are you? Very good sir, thank you for having me back Cheers, cheers sir Always good to see you Fuck

You too Last night was fun Yeah it was great Good times And tonight should be fun too. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Doing gigs out in Texas with Joe Rogan right when things are all calm for you and

relaxed. Everything's great. Normal. Did you see yourself becoming the most important man in the universe? That's not real. It's just attention. No. Of course not. Who the fuck would ever see that? Yeah. It's just attention. No. Of course not. Who the fuck would ever see that?

Yeah. It's pretty unbelievable. You took the logical progression from being a stand-up comedian, an MMA analyst, to bringing down the entire regime in the United States of America. I'm not bringing down any regimes. Well, I can wish. Yeah. That's you, though. You're that libertarian

cynicist who... I don't think of it as... I think I was being an optimist when I said bringing down the regime. Well, what the fuck replaces it? All those, like, all the crazy Antifa people that want to burn it all down, like, we've got to destroy democracy. Like, and replace it with what?

Well, that's a... Yeah, I think for them, like the Chaz or something. I don't know exactly. Yes, remember that? Yeah, I don't think that's going to be much better, but I'd be okay with maybe like something crazy, like the Bill of Rights. That'd be cool just to have,

I'd be okay taking a step back toward that. But it's that attitude about bringing it all down. One of my favorite ones, I know I sent you this before, Jamie. It's this woman who said to stop fat phobia we have to destroy western civilization that seems a little extreme that kind of but that's my point is that like that is the attitude that it's so silly you know that they're saying something like where you like you haven't thought this through at all like you don't have a real plan

But you just don't want people to make fun of you being fat So you think that the best way to handle this is to destroy Western civilization? I'm trying to find it it's gonna be really disappointing when When she destroys Western civilization and then finds out people still make fun of her for being fat look at this to end fat phobia We need to dismantle Western civilization, says Philly therapist. Can you imagine someone who really needs a therapist and that's who you get as your therapist? I feel like she would definitely force that into therapy. You're like, I don't know.

I never really communicated with my father. And she's like, do you think we need to destroy Western civilization? But it's like if you just tell her, like'am if you just lost weight you'd be feeling better You'd be better. It'd be better forever. You would have less Disease you'd have less problems your joints wouldn't hurt you'd have more energy Yes, it would be objectively better for all everything about your life all aspects of your life You'd be happier your hormones would work better. Your whole endocrine system would function more fluidly.

Your heart would work better. You'd feel better. Somewhere along the line in this country, we became allergic to harsh truths. Like anything that just is like, look, this is the truth, but it's probably not going to make you feel warm and mushy to hear this. Yeah, I got another one. I got to send Jamie this right now because it's so fucking stupid. It is Adele got in trouble last night. This is like, what is happening?

This literally makes no sense. So Adele did this. I mean, I don't know what you would call it. They were calling it gender neutral, some gender neutral thing. And she talked about how much she loved being a woman. And they were mad at her. That's very offensive. They slammed her.

She was slammed for telling a gender neutral award show that she loves being a woman. Like, you can't love being a woman. It's horrible. You have to be gender neutral. us be like us we're so tolerant i'm i'm appalled she loves being a woman that's so intolerant yeah really she should be tolerant and just be like them only and only think like them all the the they them people she should only be like them. Yeah. It's a very insane request. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I think it's a reasonable request to say, hey, listen, I don't fit into these norms, and I would like to not be treated, you know, like mistreated for that. That is a reasonable request. Reasonable request to say that I demand that everybody else also does not fit into the norms, which the vast majority of human beings, like the vast, vast, vast majority consider themselves to be one of these two genders. Yeah. So to demand that they stop doing that so that you're more comfortable is a, that's a, it's like if someone is in a wheelchair and they're like, hey, I'd really appreciate it if you built a ramp. Or I'd appreciate it if you don't like, you know, I don't know, something. But if they go, I'd like everybody else to sit in a wheelchair and wheel around also. That's the only way you can get around. That seems a bit unrealistic.

Well, this is apparently a gender neutral award show, which I don't understand. And I don't understand why she said yes going to it. I'm looking at the response to it. It says the audience gave support and then all of the slams are coming from Twitter. Of course. And I looked at some of the tweets and they're already protected, so I can't see. Ah, they're already protected. People panicked. The audience at the time didn't realize that they had just heard such a horrific thing said to them. Yeah, they weren't aware. They had to get online and find out how they should think.

Yeah, man. All this stuff, though, it does... It's, you know, it's like the reason, though, why all of this, like, woke insanity is so pushed by all of the big corporations and by the media and, like, all this stuff is because doesn't it just serve as the perfect distraction? Like, while everything's crumbling and there's so many real things,

like the 20th century for the United States of America has been a disaster thus far. Like coming from being the most powerful country in the world, coming out of say like the 90s to, what is it? 2001 starts with 9-11, then like seven disastrous wars, the worst recession in a hundred years or something like that. The Donald Trump gets elected.

There's COVID. There's this the shutdowns, this whole thing. It's like a disaster. And like what we really need to talk about, what we need to focus on is that this woman said she loves being a woman the other day. And I find that very problematic. If you were like one of, you know, if you're like one of these corporate, you know, big corporations or some hedge fund manager or something, that's just, I'm just saying it's awfully convenient. It's a very good distraction. It does keep you from concentrating on it.

And one of the things that I was talking about last night. And the thing is that, like, to actually think about that, number one, it requires you actually think. It requires you actually, you know, watch something or read something and know what's going on. Then it also might require that you reflect on yourself and what role you play in all of this. You're like, I'm quite happy to ignore that and just have my new cool phone. Whereas just being outraged about someone saying a word you don't think they're supposed to say, that's easy. It takes no, it takes no sacrifice, no introspection, nothing. So people just focus on that. But we have an unbelievable problem in this culture with our hierarchy of outrage. It's not that even some things maybe aren't wrong

or you shouldn't be upset about them, but like where does this rank in terms of other outrages? I mean, like there could just be like a, it's like, oh, there was a, the Biden administration had a drone bomb, you know, killed like six innocent people. And that's like the 1037th thing that people are outraged about today. And the number one thing is just always something that's like, this shouldn't, this should not

even be in competition with that. Right. Like, what are we talking about? Like the rock pretend to be a Chinese guy 13 years ago. Yeah. We need to go after him now. But man, that video of you commentating while he does it is hilarious. God bless the internet.

God bless the geniuses on the internet. Well, when you step out and you say something silly and he said something silly. Well, that's the thing though is that it's like, it's almost like it's an interesting thing also because you have so many, so much support so many people love you that Now you have all these people out there, and it's like so what do you guys want to do here? You really want to go to war you want to bring up everything everyone's ever said that was like not the right thing to say They got the young Turks. Oh, I wonder if they had started talking about it first And then they got him with that video or if they just went right for them

talking about it first and then they got them with that video or if they just went right for them you know i don't know i don't know because i don't watch them yeah i i haven't watched them in a long long time i used to yeah i did too it got unbearable something what happened something happened and i don't know if it's attention there's something that happens people it's very difficult to stay the course and be who you are and i say this as a person who gets about as much attention as anybody gets like alive you it's hard because so many people are looking at you and also i have like managers and shit and like should you really do this and should you really do that and they talk to me on the phone i go hey hey gotta go i'm high gotta go. I'm high. I'm not changing. I'm not changing anything about what I do. I'm a good person. I'm a nice guy. But if you're asking me

to become something different because people are paying attention, well, I'm out because that's not what I signed up for. I signed up to just be myself. But something happens to a lot of people when they get a lot of attention, where they start to lean towards the things that get them the most attention, or lean towards the things they feel like get them the most support, or they start to react to the reactions of other people. And then they become reactionaries. They become different than who they really are. And one of the things is they lose their ability to have a charitable take on things. They lose their ability to be compassionate for other people. And they start looking at things very ideologically, very dogmatically, and they start falling into these traps. And you'll see it with right-wing people. You see it with left-wing people. And they get somehow or another another they feel like their emotions and outrage and yelling and being insulting, it enhances what they're saying.

It enhances their take on things. And it doesn't. It doesn't work. Like you should be maturing. It's okay to be outraged. It's okay to insult people. But it's like it should have like weight to it. It should make sense. And when you're doing it. It doesn't make sense

Come on Like what do you you did you not have a filter? Do you having too many other people influence you I do not have any meditation time like why are you changing? Like what do you becoming or is it something more sinister than that? Which I think it is for some people where it's like you know exactly what you're doing you don't even really believe in this you know that's outrage but this is a convenient way for you to kind of pile on and kind of take out your enemies there's a lot of people like that yeah there's a lot of people like that the the insincere that's that's dark it's so sad like it's like people are looking but that's also why it doesn't it's not very

effective and it's not very popular like it's kind of popular with some casuals but it loses support because if people don't feel you're sincere if they don't you can be wrong but you have to be honest like you who are you like who i don't i want to know who you are i don't mind flawed people every fucking person i love dearly is flawed all of them i like are. I don't mind flawed people. Every fucking person I love dearly is flawed. All of them. I like flawed people. I don't mind flaws, but I want to know what you're thinking. Why are you thinking what you're thinking?

Are you thinking what you're thinking because you've thought it out? Is it your opinion today and tomorrow you might come along and go, you know what? I thought about what I said and now I think differently because this, that, and the other. And okay, good. Now I like even more because now I know I can trust you to course correct. I can trust you to be honest about your missteps or why you were thinking a way that upon further consideration,

you revised your opinion. But if I think you're bullshitting me, if I think you're doing something because you're just trying to get attention, fuck all the way off. I'm not interested now. So I think you just hit on like exactly really the essence of why you're so big and the essence of why the corporate press hates you so much is that you, you have this connection

with your audience where they know it's not like your audience thinks you're right about everything. They know you're not lying to them. And that's a really important distinction. It's not necessarily like you might be wrong about some stuff and you often will admit it was like, I got this wrong or whatever. You'll correct yourself in real time, but they know you're not lying to them. And people can smell that like on an instinctual level. You watch CNN and you know, they're lying to you. They're not even attempting to have an honest conversation. Have you seen Russell Brand do Brian Stelter?

Oh, have I seen it? I've seen it. I've climaxed it. It's the greatest thing ever. It's the perfect example. It's so fake. Did you see that thing? I can't even remember if this was the segment he was doing, but

there was this one. You talk about having some self reflection, some introspection. There's this segment where Brian Stelter I can't even remember if this was the segment he was doing but there was this way you talk about like having some self-reflection some Introspection there's this segment where Brian Stelter is literally on air complaining about how people trust you and don't trust the media and he's like But Joe Rogan just gets up there and wings it that's what he's got this huge audience and everyone trusts him And then we have journalists and newsrooms and fact checkers and they don't trust us. And you're like, dude, can you, you are really going to talk about

this and not have an ounce of self-reflection and go, Hey, why is that? Why is it that people don't trust CNN? Why is it that you can't go to half the country without them chanting CNN sucks? half the country without them chanting CNN sucks. Why is that? Well, a New York Times reporter actually wrote about this. And he said, instead of demonizing Rogan, let's find out why people trust him. Isn't that so obvious? And people started attacking him. Yeah.

Why do they trust him over us? And people are like, fuck you! Play this. Play this. Sounds great, but not all opinions are created equal. No, it's the news, son of a- I'm making people not trust you, you're making them not trust me. Who just wing it. Who make it up as they go along. And because figures like Rogan are trusted by people that don't trust real newsrooms,

They're like, why don't people trust me? They trust Rogan, but I'm perfectly trustworthy. Look how loose my tie knot is. Joe Rogan, be responsible. He took horse maggot medicine the other day. Now tell me, sir, and don't tell me anything other than this, should there be a war? Yes, there should be a war. Interview's done. I'd like to see you do that, Joe Rogan.

Which sounds great, but not all... Not all opinions are created equal. What, yours are? Look at that fully vaccinated chart. What is that chart? What's that thing to the right? New death seven day average? Jesus Christ, what are you selling?

What is that? But by the way, you want to talk about processed information? How processed is that? New deaths seven day average. to talk about processed information how processed is that new deaths seven day average like uh okay show me the comorbidities roll right none of the they're not going to show you any of the data that is actually relevant they're not going to break it down in a meaningful way but i i just think that somewhere along the lines in this country now that we have the opportunity to because of the internet and podcasts and things like this and and because guys like Brian Stelter at CNN these guys have been so in the 21st century alone so catastrophically wrong about so many important things like so many that

nobody trusts them anymore they smell that this is phony and they don't want that and I think what you I don't think intentionally but I think just because it's your nature what you kind of figured out is that people were really craving just an authentic conversation. Yes. Where people can be flawed and people can just talk about, you know, things that matter and talk about them from a real perspective and just have a conversation. I'm not putting on a show for you here. I'm not going, hello, everybody, and welcome to the Joe Rogan podcast today and this blah, blah, blah. Like, none of that.

Let's be human beings here. And that was really attractive to a lot of people. And, I mean, look, man, these guys, you know, listen, the amount of contempt I have for the corporate press, I cannot, like, overstate. I mean, these are, in my opinion, and I think an opinion that's, like he said, not all opinions are equal. Like, I think this opinion is better than his. They are objectively the mouthpieces for war criminals. That's what they do. And the idea that they would have the nerve, the nerve to accuse you of spreading disinformation. I mean, you know, there's like, as they've been, you know,

pushing this war propaganda between Russia and Ukraine. You know, it's so weird that I haven't seen come up is that, you know, Vladimir Putin had bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Oh, no, you know what?

They don't bring that up because that was a lie. That didn't happen. Oh, that's right. You guys just you guys just pushed war propaganda between the two countries which own 90 percent of the world's nuclear arsenal. You pushed that on based off a lie. And you also said that the last president was installed by Vladimir Putin on some Russian conspiracy. But why don't we hear about that that much? Why is that? Oh, yeah, because that was a big, fat lie. Not to mention, you know, Assad is still in power in Syria,

but whatever happened to the fact that he was gassing his own people? Oh, yeah, that was a big, fat lie. And we know that now because there's been like five whistleblowers from the OPCW that have come out and explained that all of the evidence pointed toward that it wasn't Assad who gassed his own people. And I mean, Libya, they said Gaddafi was about to go genocidal against his own people. A study in the, they did an investigation in the British Parliament,

determined that was a complete lie. I mean, like one after the, not obviously everyone knows weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a big fat lie. And these are lies where hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of the lies. So not just spreading misinformation, misinformation with catastrophic consequences where like real human beings have had their lives ruined. And then you would be behind that whole apparatus and have the nerve to accuse somebody else of spreading misinformation

when they spread misinformation about you. Yeah. Specifically about you. Specifically about me. And they sent their doctor in here, and all he could say when you confronted him on that was like, yeah, no, I guess they shouldn't have said that. And then turns around, goes back on CNN, and goes, yeah, no, we never lied about that. Like, people see this.

He didn't totally say that. That's actually kind of a confusing thing. You could look at that out of context, and I think Sanjay Gupta is a good man. What happened was he was talking to Don Lemon, and Don Lemon said that it is true that these drugs are used in whatever, I'm paraphrasing, in a veterinary application. Right. And then he said, yes, it is. And then he wanted to keep talking. So he's like, it's not a lie.

But he was trying to talk, but Don Lemon would talk over him. And also, he's doing the thing remotely. And if you've never experienced this before, what happens is you put an ear thing in. It's like if Dave and I were in another city and we were doing a show remotely like on CNN he would talk to me and there would be a slight delay and then I would hear him and I would talk to him that slight delay ruins all flow I've done those things several times you're right about that it is a very weird thing oftentimes you don't see the person you're talking to sometimes they have them up on a monitor but a lot of times you don't see the person you're talking to sometimes they have them up on a monitor, but a lot of times You don't can write it. You're like it's very awkward. However, he could have you're right He didn't really do it. It was Don Lemon who was kind of using him as a prop to do it It's really true that it is a veterinary medicine is a horse dewormer

But you know what he didn't do what Gupta didn't do and I don't know him is you say he's a good guy like okay But what he didn't do which he could have, no, we shouldn't have said that about him. That shouldn't have been said. Which would be very easy to do. That takes the minimum amount of integrity to just go, no, you know what? It was really misleading to say that the guy was taking horse medicine. That is not true. He is an academic and he's a neurosurgeon.

Like, he's a practicing neurosurgeon. I mean we're talking about a guy who's working like 100 hours a week. Like no bullshit. He's a legit doctor and a good person. Like I've talked to him off air. He's a good person. Not everybody has that kind of ability to confront things, especially when you're dealing with like an enormous structure like CNN

that is overbearing. And you're talking to a like an enormous structure like CNN that is Overbearing and you're talking to a guy like Don Lemon. It was a big personality. Who's like the now he's the head guy He's the head guy there like Brian Stelter's Don Lemon is probably like the most trusted now that Cuomo's really Jake Tapper is the only guy that I think it's like a legit Journalist like yeah when I listen to Jake Tapper, I don't ever see him say things that I think are just fucking ridiculous and disingenuous. I think he's as legit as they get over there. But it's like, how legit can you be over there? And also, I guess maybe in defense, half in defense of Dr. Gupta, would be that there would be consequences to pay if he did that.

Even just something as simple as that. Yeah. He'd be in real trouble, but. They'd bring in that Lena Wen chick for all his gigs. But we need more. Yeah, right, exactly. She's willing to fucking. She's willing.

We need three masks. If we don't have three masks, 85% of us are going to die. Well, not anymore, Joe. The science has changed. Oh, the science has changed. Now the science has changed. She said the other day that we need like a third group now who recognizes that the science has changed. Now the science has changed. She said the other day that we need like a third group now who recognizes that the science has changed. So basically it's like we recognize that we did everything right, but the science changed now.

And so now that would be wrong to keep doing everything. And so now let's stop doing all the crazy stuff. But go to James Lindsay's Twitter page. He had something about her like I didn't even know that she had said. That's so outrageous. And he said, don't forget that this is the same woman that said this just like a couple months ago about unvaccinated people, like some ridiculous quote about unvaccinated people, by the way, which many of them have had COVID.

Many of these unvaccinated people like myself and like my friend Dave Smith, we've had COVID and the CDC has finally come out and said that if you have had COVID, you have better protection from Delta by something like 6X. Which usually when the CDC comes out and says this, it's what anyone paying attention has known for a very long time. But yes, they are finally admitting now that what all of the studies have indicated that natural immunity is substantially stronger. Not like a little bit stronger, much stronger, much longer lasting. It's just in every way the best protection you can have. Yeah, I mean, I wish that wasn't controversial.

Did you find it? He tweets all day, so I don't know. He tweets all day. I've just looked at the last active. He's tweeting 30 times. What? There's a lot of tweets in the last hour. He tweeted an hour, 30 times in an hour? Two hours ago, there was like five, ten more.

Can you imagine being his wife? James, get off the goddamn phone. The fuck is wrong with you? It's further down. I know. I assume so. Keep going. Hold on. I know. I'd assume so. Keep going. Hold on.

I love him. But goddamn, he's a Twitter warrior. Oh, yeah. No, and he's ready. He gets into it with people. He goes back and forth with them. He's out there. He's swinging.

Would it have been yesterday? It could have been yesterday. It could have been yesterday. Twitter's curated in a weird way. I only open it two or three times a day Because there was a time like yesterday or the day before where every time I would open Twitter And I'm not I don't look in my mentions at all, but it was all about me I was like Jesus Christ my mentions were all about you so I can imagine yours would be

Something that's escape trying to find out about you crazy changed a little thing in the top corner to like change the timeline so it's in chronological order. They reset it every so often. Oh, okay. It's like, um, either way. I think one of the things that's happened over this most recent cancellation, I've spent substantially less time online and it made me feel better. Not just because I'm not reading about me, like mean things people say about me, or supportive

things people say about me, which is a see about me which is a lot of it it's been very nice I really do thank all the people that have been very supportive very loving I really appreciate it but I just don't think it's good to even read stuff that's not about you I think what I should be reading is like fucking AP articles like news articles I should be reading like real, news articles. I should be reading, like, real news. That's what I should be reading. That's kind of it. Like, all these hot takes, I mean, maybe I should dip my fucking toes in that pool every couple days or so, but the reality is, like, that's not good for your health

because these perspectives, they accelerate the culture war because you see, like, this ridiculous perspective, like, people getting mad at Adele for saying she loves being a woman, and you get angry, like, for no reason, and you see like this ridiculous perspective like people getting mad at adele for saying she loves being a woman you get angry like for no reason and you're like what the fuck and then you chime in and well it's it's unbelievable how much it creates this uh there it is oh there we go i think is this the stuff nope okay well that's one of that's pretty funny though she said it's easier for people to get vaccinated when they don't have their freedoms. We have four posts here that are all stuff that are from her.

That's the one. Unvaccinated people should not be allowed to leave their homes. There you go. Look at that. This is fucking September. In September. Unvaccinated people should not be allowed to leave their homes. Honey.

That's crazy. What about an unvaccinated person that's recovered from to leave their homes. Honey. That's crazy. What about an unvaccinated person that's recovered from the... Aren't you a doctor? Yeah, well, what drives me crazy about this also is that it's not just like the... Right, like there's the... It's not even as if she's following the science, right? Because the science would tell you that... Their favorite term, follow the science.

The science would tell you that actually, you know, someone with natural immunity is safer leaving their home than a vaccinated person and also that there there could be a million other metrics but what about someone who has a negative covid test yeah exactly but regardless of all of that the thing that drives me crazy about the you know like when uh dana white got uh confronted by that uh reporter who said are you a doctor you know are you a doctor? You know, are you a doctor? It's like, look, some people, there's a fair argument to be made to say that like a virologist has an expertise in viruses

that the rest of us don't have. And that's fine. It's a less strong argument when you're censoring all of the virologists who disagree with you. But once you're talking about public policy, then everybody gets to be a part of this conversation. You can't just be,

cause you're now talking about, you may have a little expertise, but your expertise might be in viruses. Or if you're like an, you know, an epidemiologist in the spread of viruses or an immunologist in the immune system or something like that. But if you're talking about,

okay, this policy will contain this virus. It's like, yeah, but are you also taking into account what effect that would have on the economy? What effect that would have on the psychology of the people? What effect are you all of these experts? And now you're talking about, how about just the belief in liberty? I mean, like you're telling people because they didn't consume a pharmaceutical product, they're not allowed to leave their home. I'm sorry. Being a doctor does not give you like some expertise in that, that I, as a regular free person, am not allowed to also have a say in. And like my counter to that is like over my dead body.

Are you going to lock me in my house? Like give me liberty or give me death? Am I not allowed to feel that way? Isn't that, wasn't that supposedly the spirit of this country? So that's, that stuff just like, this, this is a really evil authoritarian mindset that's on display there. Not just that, like, Hey, I think it would be best if we did this, but that I believe I have this medical expertise that now gives me license to strip other people of their most basic freedoms, the most basic freedom, the freedom to leave your house. Do you think it's enforced on a corporate level? Do you think there's conversations about this or do you think it's encouraged?

And then when you think it's like what we were talking about earlier, when it comes to like different podcasters and YouTubers and the like that once they start getting attention for a certain thing, they lean into it. And so that warps their perspective. Do you think that's what's going on? I don't I don't think it's just one or the other. So I think there's multiple factors going on with a lot of different people. So part of it is that and I've experienced this a little bit when i've like kind of been in in little bits and pieces in the corporate press world it's a very insulated bubble well you should

talk about that the time you used to work with ce cup yeah yeah so you did a thing with brian stelter oh yeah yeah yeah no i met all these guys i did i did panels with them i was uh so i was a why did they stop calling you well i was a so basically what happened was I got hired by Essie Cup to be a contributor. I like her a lot, by the way. She is, I will say, very different politics than her. Yes. She was nothing but great to me and gave me an opportunity on her show and I'm very grateful for that. She holds herself up with dignity.

She always does. She is a- She conducts herself very well. I don't know her super well. Like, we did the show together a lot. I was doing it, like, several times a week and we would do the show together and work together. We never, like, hung out or anything like that. So I don't know.

But she was always nothing but very nice to me and I really liked working for her. She was very nice. I think she's wrong about a lot. But so they hired me at her. She had a show called Unfiltered. And I was one of the contributors on it. And I think they had no idea what they were getting with me.

I think they were like, oh, Dave's like a stand-up comic and he makes jokes about politics. So perfect. He'll come in here and be funny. And, dude, I mean, they had, when it first started, they had a segment at the end of the show where every contributor got to bring their own topic. You know, like their own, like, here's the topic I want to talk about. And this is what's going on in the news. And they literally called me at one point because, like, four days in a row I had talked about the war in Yemen. That was, like, all I wanted to talk about every single time.

I was like, this is the worst thing in the world. It's the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying. Babies are like vomiting themselves to death. And it's all because America's supporting the Saudi led war over there. We could end this in a day with a phone call. And then it'd be like, tomorrow,

what do you want to talk about? It'd be like, well, the war in Yemen is still going on and babies are dying and we could end this with a phone call. And they're like, the fourth day, they were like, you have to talk about something else. You have to pick a different story. And then the fifth day I went in and I was like the war in Syria is all America's fault and babies are dying and we could end this in a day and then like they stopped doing that segment where the contributors got

To pick their story at the end. I don't know if it was because of me I think it was because of me, but I had some fun moments on there Where I'd get to like argue with with all of them and then like as it went on and on i think it just uh i think it just wasn't helping her and she didn't what they just they started using me less and less and uh they did renew my contract i had a six month contract then they renewed me for another six months but then by the end they just stopped letting me talk about war like if war came up i just wouldn't be on the panel anymore they'd bring in one person and kick the panel off and little things like that so i kind of got the hint and then by like the last two months i was just like listen i could just walk away we don't have to do this and what was you had an interaction

with brian stelter yeah so i was on a uh a panel with with brian Stelter once. What year is this now? 2017. And the topic was what Brian Stelter's favorite topic is, was misinformation on the internet. Because he's the guy, his job is to basically be the guy who covers the press. So he's the beat reporter on the media. And every week he comes in with his assessment on the corporate press and he goes, A plus, doing great work, except Fox News. Everyone else is doing great,

but the real problem is there's this misinformation out there. And there was a video at the time and it was, I believe it was like the number one watched video on YouTube of the week. And it was a stupid video. It was about how the um, the Parkland

shooting that, that shooting in, uh, Florida at the, at the high school there, um, was, uh, an inside job. It didn't really happen. It was all crisis actors and all this stuff. It was stupid, just dumb conspiracy. That's not true at all. The shooting happened, people died. Um, but he was going off and off about how dangerous this was and why people you know how do people believe this stuff and I was basically saying to him like the thing I'm trying to say now like it's like well have a little bit of self-reflection ask yourself why is it that people don't believe you guys and and I was arguing with I was like look there's so many real conspiracies that you guys won't cover that are really interesting,

but you won't cover it at all here. So then you leave, you cede that ground to somebody else. And I was, this was all fair, but I was talking to him about like why I used to listen to Alex Jones back in the day, like what I found so interesting about him. And I was like, well, back in the day I found Alex Jones and he's talking about all these things like, you know, Operation Northwood and stuff like that. And I was like, there's no way that's true. That couldn't be real. And then you go research it and you're like, oh, it is real. Explain that to people that don't know what you're talking about.

So Operation Northwood was this plan. It was during the Kennedy administration. So in the early 60s, JFK was president, I don't know, 62 maybe. And basically they had this plan, which was signed off by the joint chiefs to have a false flag attack, to shoot down an American plane and blame it on the Cubans as a pretext for war to go to war with Cuba. And John F. Kennedy heroically said heroically Said no like what are you guys insane? When you're president you don't really know how they run things and you get in there the Joint Chiefs of Staff pushes that onto your Desk yeah, they want to arm Cuban friendlies and attack Guantanamo Bay and you're like what yeah wait a minute Wait a minute. There's no real like a fake war you're making a fake war

What? Yeah. Wait a minute, wait a minute. There's no real, like a fake war? You're making a fake war? Yeah. Like you're faking an attack. And you're like, but how are we going to convince people that they actually killed people? They go, because we're actually going to kill people.

And then we're going to blame it on the Cubans. You're going to kill Americans? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What the fuck? So you're going to commit an act of war on America. Now, to any normal person, I'm sorry, you look at that, you go, that's fucking interesting, man. Yeah. Like, that's crazy that our government was willing to do normal person. I'm sorry you look at that you go. That's fucking interesting man Yeah, like that's crazy that our government was willing to do it then and then doesn't it lead to a series of next questions?

I'm not saying a series of next beliefs, but questions if they would do it then would they do it now? Right were they so dirty then but they've cleaned everything up now what evidence is no one was punished That's the thing. It's like there was no one jailed. Well, one guy was punished. Well, one guy. Few times. Yeah, but other than that, like no one did time. So like everything evolves. And you got to think that if this is the attitude of the Joint Chiefs and various people behind the scenes in 1962, why are we supposed to assume that that somehow or another is better today 60 years later? All of the kind of like deep state entrenched powers have only gotten more powerful and out of control since then. I mean, like this was very new.

Like the CIA was created in the 40s. So you got to think at this point in time, this is a fairly new thing. Like we didn't really like this. This was new. This was supposed the CIA when it was created was supposed to be basically like a newspaper for the president. Like the idea was like, they're going to gather information and give it to the president. So he has good information, good intelligence about what's going on. It wasn't going to be like some paramilitary organization that goes and launches covert wars all around the world.

Like this, this grew into this monstrosity that it is today and has been for decades. And, but anyway, so I was making this point to Brian Stelter that it's like, you know, and then I said on air at one point, I use the example, I go, you know, Obama signed into law in the National Defense Authorization Act of whatever year it was. I think it's 2011. I might be wrong about the year, but it was one of the NDAA acts that Obama signed into law, had the provision that you could detain American citizens without charges and hold them indefinitely. And Obama noticed that provision himself because he added a signing statement to it that said, my administration does not plan on doing this.

You would never use that. We wouldn't use it, but I'm signing it into law still. And I go, that's, that is dangerous. And, and at one point I said, this was on air. At one point I said to Brian Stelter, I go up, I go, now listen, those, you know, now the fact that people don't trust the media and that there's all these conspiracies in plain sight that aren't reported on this manifests itself in silly things sometimes like some video saying the parkland you know school shooting was crisis actors and didn't happen and he corrected me quite outraged and said it's not just silly it's not just silly it's dangerous and i said to him i go what's much more dangerous is the president of the united

states signing into law the right to detain American citizens without charges and hold them indefinitely and a media who doesn't cover it. And, you know, it's much more dangerous as weapons of mass destruction are being created by Saddam Hussein that leads us into war with Iraq. And I just don't understand. It's almost like I don't know if those guys are like being intentionally dishonest, but I don't understand how you couldn't think that through and realize. I think they are. I think there's a bridge they won't cross.

Yeah. There's a bridge they won't cross where certain things they won't discuss. They're too problematic and they just leave them alone. And then they'll focus instead on things that are easy to digest and that a lot of people will agree with. Yeah. But the result of that has been what? That the trust in media has completely collapsed. Yeah.

Their viewership is completely collapsed. And now they're furious that you, you know, they're like on some show on CNN talking about how dangerous you are. And this show on CNN, you probably have easily 20 times more people listening to your show than theirs. So that's the result of all of this. We have news groups. We have a lot of people working behind the scenes. We have reporters.

We have people who study. And all of that. Yeah, that's right. We got Jamie and Google. He's one-handed Google. He's not even using two hands. And he's better. And he's beating all of those guys.

He's getting you real-time Information much quicker than sometimes. I mean sometimes it's confusing like Google's confusing I prefer uses duck duck. Oh, but that fuck he's sticking with the Google. No Jim for people who don't know Jamie really runs the show here. What's that? I know how to use it It's not hard to use duck duck go Jamie doesn't have time to figure out duck duck go he's a busy man it's my default search engine sir well you do get stuff on there that you can't find on oh yeah yeah you you want to look up some nefarious stuff that's the place to look yeah yeah well that too and and you know but it's unbelievable the kind of and so my guess even back to what you were

saying before my my suspicion is that it's part that people are very insulated in their world and they kind of like have this thing where it's like, well, everyone agrees with this because everyone they talk to agrees with this. That's an issue with New York and L.A. in particular. Yes, that's very true. And then within those circles, within New York and L.A., they're not even getting out there and like talking to like firefighters in Staten Island. You know what I mean? They're in like the upper west side or something or you know um and so there's that and then i think there's also a lot of these these like these games the corporate press game the politics game that like all of these the bureaucrat game, they tend to be a magnet and then they tend to be an area where very dishonest, narcissistic people, like they're drawn in and they rise up. Those are the people who are like drawn in and those are the people who are rewarded by those systems. So you get a

lot of those people. And then on top of that, I think there is some blatant, flat out lying, corrupt people who are straight up in bed with big corporate interests who are there to do their bidding and not there to know exactly what they're doing. Like they might be maybe working with intelligence agencies or they might be working with whatever pharmaceutical companies or things like that. And they have an agenda and they are just lying. Now, I'm not saying that's everybody, but I'm saying those people exist as well. That people like it's, there are people there. I mean, you see these think tanks that like are funded by weapons companies that push for every single military, uh, like, uh, um, every, every single, uh, military intervention. Now I'm,

I refuse to believe that this is all just the fact that like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin really believe it's a noble cause to fund a think tank that wants to push for military intervention. I think there's corruption there. I mean, I don't think that's too, you know, crazy of a reach. If you want to be a part of that system, there's rules.

Like if you want to be a part of the CNN system or the MSNBC system, there's rules. There's rules in the way you communicate. You don't have free reign. And it's a problem. That's why people like Crystal Ball and Saga and Jetty are thriving. That's why their Breaking Points show is killing it. It's why Kyle Kalinske is killing it. It's like Jimmy door is

Killing it because people believe them and they'll give you uncensored unfiltered Honest information and their real opinions on things. Well, that's it though It's like people have the perception much like with you that all those guys you just named that they are not lying to them And the reason is because they are not lying to them. Yeah, that doesn't mean they get everything right exactly It means that they're not intentionally deceiving you and there's no one behind them pulling their strings Yeah When Krystal and Saga went live that was a very important moment

Because it wasn't like the hill was holding them back and I think think rising on The Hill, the show they do now is excellent. It's still very good. I love it a lot. I still watch. I think they do a really good job. The Hill is really, as far as like structures, I mean, it's kind of a corporate structure that disseminates the news. It's very good. It's probably the best one outside of these independents. But to be an

independent in today's day, it's hard. It's a sneaky thing. You have to find your way through the Salmon River and climb up the net. You got to get through somehow. You got to climb up the ladder. It's hard. It's not an easy thing to do. And that's one of the reasons why I try to boost their signal, like a Matt Taibbi or Glenn Greenwald or anybody that's a legitimate, independent journalist that I think is doing really good work. You got to highlight these people. This is what we need to be paying attention to. And guys who work for big companies that are like Josh Rogan, who's legit as fuck, who works for the Washington Post. These people are out there. They're real. They're out there and you can trust them. Yeah, who's legit as fuck, who works for the Washington Post. Like these people are out there.

They're real. They're out there and you can trust them. Yeah, there's still a few people out there who are doing like really incredible work. They are. But they're few and far between. Yeah. But there are those people out there. And like I think Glenn Greenwald is a great example.

Matt Taibbi is a great example. They're two of the best examples. Aaron Matei is a great example, an excellent journalist. And I would say everybody at antiwar.com. That's really, if you want to know what's going on with foreign policy in this country, antiwar.com. I go there every single day. It's like the best news coverage of what's going on everywhere in the world.

Scott Horton, the great Scott Horton, who's an Austinite, by the way. Oh, is he? He lives here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I gave you his book on Afghanistan back in the day. He just wrote a new book called Enough Already, which is like a history of all the terror wars. If you wanna read one book and understand

what's going on with all the wars, read Enough Already, it's incredible. Scott Horton is a genius. Did you give me it back in LA? Huh? Did you give me the book back in LA? Yeah, it was back in LA. Read enough already. It's incredible Scott Horton is a genius Huh, did you give me the book back in LA? Yeah, it was back in LA It's still in LA. Yeah. Well, we're going back to get it We're going back to scoop up most of the studio bring it back to here because the gym is moving next door Oh, yeah. Have you been been next door? No, I don't think so. Oh boy. Oh, you're expanding this into wild, dude Yeah, here we go. Yeah. Yeah, we got a lot of wild shit. We got a yoga room. We got oh geez

Yeah, we got you're turning this into more what the LA thing was bigger way bigger twice as big. Oh, yeah Yeah, a lot wild shit here. Yeah Throughout the years it always gets like crazier. Okay. I remember the first time I ever did the show, um, at, it was before the crazy huge one, uh, in LA. It was like the, the original studio out there. And it was like, it was real, like, you know, it didn't, it was, you didn't know exactly. It wasn't clear where the studio was and I was looking it up and trying to find it from the address. And I walk in and I knock on the door and no one's out in that first room. And then I just push and the doors open, you know, and I'm like, I'm nervous.

I'm coming to do Joe Rogan experience for the first time ever. And I just walk in and I was unsure if I was in the right place or just walking in. I'm like, hello. And then I look over and just see the big Wolverine. Werewolf. The werewolf.

I think I'm in the right place. We got a new werewolf coming too. Look at you. Pat McGee made a new one with all hair. The other one was like fake hair, some of it, and some of it's real hair. The new one's all hair. He uses yak hair. You've done something really incredible here, Joe.

I don't know. I don't exactly understand it, but it is incredible. Just do what you like. Yeah. Yeah. There's something just really like, one of the things that I find really interesting, right, is like in the push to, I guess the push is to shut you up,

is more or less the, from the Surgeon General to Brian Stelter to all of the people who are like, you know, whatever, all the artists and all this stuff who are like, you know, whatever,, all the, the artists and all this stuff who are like, you know, whatever, want you de-platformed or something like that. It's like, okay. So even theoretically, let's say they got you, which they're not going to, but even theoretically, if they did, it's like, is that really the problem? What, what do you do with your audience? But like, do they think if you just stopped doing this if you just quit tomorrow then everybody who listens to you would just go okay i guess we'll just

listen to brian stelter now i guess we'll walk right back into that world well the thing is they've been able to silence some people right there was they were able to silence milo like milo doesn't exist anymore he was removed from the public conversation. Which is wild because if you go back to like 2016, was it? Like what was the year where Milo was everywhere? I think 16 was really the year and then maybe 2017. He was a phenomenon. And he had a crazy in that he was a gay guy who was like really right-wing but also really fucking smart like he was on Bill Maher right remember was on Bill Maher and Bill Maher was comparing

Christopher Hitchens he went on that was a it was shortly after that that he got taken down because he went on Bill Maher and he killed it yeah I'm Bill Maher and I think that was almost like the the moment where it was like we better do something There was a lot of things happening, but it was the Leslie Jones thing It was the Leslie Jones things because she was in Ghostbusters and you know he had said some mean shit about her and you know called her ugly or something like that and maybe some racial stuff and then there was a bunch of people who also tweeted at her. And then apparently,

the accusation for removing him from Twitter, the accusation was that there was a bunch of other accounts that either him or the same IP address was using. My perspective on that was, like, he was, was he working, what organization was he working? Was it Daily Wire? No, he was originally with Breitbart, I believe. Breitbart, that believe and uh and then I think he left them at some point that's right it was

Breitbart Daily Wire is uh sorry Ben Ben Shapiro in fact I think uh Ben Shapiro and him had a real beef I believe Ben Shapiro was the sub like one of the people want to say that Ben Shapiro's a fucking Nazi or he's alt right he was the subject of the most anti-Semitic attacks. No, he's a Nazi. That little hat's a Nazi. That's what the Nazis were, Joe. It was like for a whole year. Whoopi, actually. The Whoopi thing was, first of all,

I 100% support Whoopi's ability to express incorrect opinions. Yeah. I don't think she should have been removed from that show at all. Even though those ladies try to deplatform me all the Like, I don't think she should have been removed from that show at all. Even though those ladies try to deplatform me all the time, I don't think they should be deplatformed. I think the best way to counter bad opinions is with good opinions. And I don't think there's anything wrong with someone expressing.

And I don't think what she said was so ridiculously outrageous. I understand her perspective. I don't agree with it at all. But I, and also historically it's incorrect. Literally Hitler was trying to create the ultimate race. Like saying that it's not about race is like, that is everything. Well, it's about, right. So it certainly was from the Nazis perspective and it certainly was from the Jews perspective. Like, and it certainly was from the Jews perspective Yeah, both groups considered themselves a separate race So, you know now look I'm Jewish and my grandfather escaped

Nazi Germany and the rest of my family was all slaughtered there. So on behalf of Jews, I forgive what Was yeah, our dad is tattooed, but it also wasn't the thing is. Yeah, I know it's not the problem here Is that there's no like? Sanity or nuance so it's almost like if she said the wrong thing then we have to treat that like as if there's no difference between if you said i don't think it was a racial issue i just think it was an issue about humanity and how evil men can be as what she said so if you said that or if you said um i don't think the holocaust ever happened or if you said that, or if you said, I don't think the Holocaust ever happened, or if you said, I believe the Holocaust happened and I wish it would happen again. Like as if there's no difference between those three things. You know what I mean?

Like we treat all of them. It's like, well, you misstepped when speaking about the Holocaust. Therefore, go away. So what she said was inaccurate, but it wasn't malicious. And it wasn't like a I hate Jewish people type thing. And then the next day she goes, eh, I got that wrong. I was wrong about that. I apologize. Any sane

world would go, thank you. I appreciate that. And that's how we work things out. When a prominent person like Whoopi Goldberg has a misstep and then corrects herself and apologizes, then we all get to understand things. The correct way to handle that is to leave her on the air and have more discussions about it.

Maybe have Barry Weiss come on or maybe have another Jewish scholar come on. Have someone come on and say, well, this is why this was offensive to other people. And I'm sure she would be apologetic. She's not a bad person. She's not a bad person by any stretch of the imagination. bad person. She's not a bad person by any stretch of the imagination. She's trying to express herself, but at her perspective, which was

it's personally oriented on being a woman who's experienced racism towards black people. So she's looking at it like these are white people, and then the Germans are white people too. Which is understandable. You could understand where from a black woman's perspective, who doesn't know what she's talking

about. Now, she shouldn't have acted like she knew what she was talking about but whatever but that's what they do yeah that's literally that's their business model 90 of people do as you know but she but where you would look at them and go okay but they're they're all white so how could this be a racial issue the other thing that's interesting is that it's like do you consider jewish people to be a separate race? Because if not, if you say Jews are white, then technically you could argue that Whoopi Goldberg was correct, even though the Nazis believed they were a different race and the Jews believed they were a different race. If you think they're all white, you go, they were both wrong. So it wasn't technically a race issue.

But again, this is right to me. So it wasn't technically a race issue. But again, this is right to me. I go if the Nazis ideology was completely motivated by genetic racialism. So, yeah, I would say the answer there is that, yes, at least the perpetrators of the Holocaust were saying that they were doing this, you know, to clean out and create the, you know, the Aryan nation descendants from Atlas or whatever their weird ideology was. But I do think that, you know, even talking about like the Milo thing and with a lot of these other guys, one of the things that I really hate and I wish we could fix in America, and I really, I think like to be to be successful, to be a, like a thriving country going forward, we almost need to grapple with this. And this isn't like laws or policy. This is just like kind of a spirit of liberty and tolerance that we need in this country where, like for me, for me personally, if there, if there's a person, you know, sometimes you have these people who are like very contrarian kind of provocateurs.

And they might, let's say they say four things. And one of them is like kind of interesting. And one of them is like blows your mind. And you're like, that is such a good point. Like such a phenomenally good point. And I never thought about things that way. And then they say one thing that you think is dead wrong. And then they say one thing that you think is dead wrong. And then they say one thing

that is wildly offensive and wrong. Now, what the woke police and the council mobs will focus on is the one thing that they said that was wildly offensive and wrong, and therefore they should be canceled for that. But to me, I'm like, I like that guy. He says every now and then he'll say something that's really thoughtful and makes me think about things in a different way. And then when he gets something wrong, I can disagree with him. I don't want to cancel people because they occasionally

get things wrong. I think that a lot of times those types are the ones who will hit on a really important truth. And that we need them. We need them around. We can't constantly silence them. And you see see even what you were talking about before we don't But don't you think there's value also in correcting them and finding out what their mistakes were and also then we get to see how They react yes, because if they have said something that's wildly incorrect, and then someone comes along and says hey

This is why you're wrong like with the would be Goldberg thing like This is literally about race like they were trying the Whoopi Goldberg thing. Like, this is literally about race. Like, they were trying to create a master race. That was their plan. Right. It had been so stated. Read Mein Kampf. Like, listen to Hitler's speeches.

He was trying to create a master race. It was race. Like, just because we're talking about melanin, you know. Right. We're talking about, you know, origins're right we're talking about you know origins of original you know ancestries like that's that's you can't just say it's not about race but the way to deal with that is not to suspend whippy goldberg whoopi goldberg shouldn't be suspended she's not a bad person she's like anybody that's on tv spitting out hot takes with four people

talking over each other you're gonna say some dumb shit they're all talking over each other that is the worst first say some dumb shit. They're all talking over each other. That is the worst. First of all, there's a reason why I have headphones on, so that people know. Because when Dave and I are talking, especially if there's a third person here, it's very easy to talk over each other. You don't want to.

And when you hear, I hear your voice and my voice at the exact same level. It makes you aware of it it locks you into the conversation and you don't talk over each other as much they don't have that so they talk over each other constantly so that creates like a kind of there's an anxiety to express yourself and like you you're under the gun and it's like they also have a time constraint because each segment is only you know whatever minutes long because they have to go to commercial. It's not a great place to discuss things that are nuanced. And they don't give each other the room and the space to talk about things.

They don't have the time. They need more time. There's a reason also why this show is three fucking hours long because I feel like there's some things that every now and then you'll run into a subject that needs an hour and a half on its own and it needs no interruptions And we need to work things out and talk things through and even then I might have to revisit it a week from now Or I might have to you know talk about it a month from now

And you find out more about people that way you find out like how much they have to say Yeah, that's something instead anyone can come up with a sound bite or repeat a sound bite And in a lot of times in those shows people people aren't even interested in having a discussion like that. They're just trying to get their talking point off. Yeah. And then, you know, kind of drown out anybody else. But I do, to the point you were making, like, yeah, I think there's real value

in those people then being confronted and then seeing how they respond to the thing. But also it's not, what's important to know is that you don't know necessarily beforehand whether they're right or wrong about that point, because maybe they're confronted and then they have a really good counter argument. And then you go, oh shit, actually, maybe you're right about that. You know? And so it's just like, this can't, this whole thing is going to go in such a bad authoritarian direction, which we're already going in, if you want to say

we decide what the official narrative is and anybody who goes against that is crushed or silenced or mocked or ridiculed or whatever, and then that's that. Then we just go with what the official, you know, like what the regime decides the talking points of today are. I mean, unless the regime is always right, that is a disastrous path. Well, even then, it's not enough information. You need more people communicating. The regime by itself should not be the only people that get to discuss

very important, nuanced, complex issues. You need other people. You need different perspectives. You need scholars. You need people that are psychologists you need people that are you know whatever philosophers different perspectives help give you a a mandala of ideas that you can kind of like look over the great landscape of thoughts and say oh okay and then find out where you sit into these things like there's people that are like very pacifist, very peaceful, very non-confrontational. They look at things very differently than a person who's aggressive, who's, who's maybe too confrontational or.

Yes. And you need both. Yeah. I think, you know, I was, uh, I was, so I was, uh, me and my wife were, this is a couple of years ago. This was like right before all the COVID stuff. And me and my wife were at, uh, like a family friend's, having dinner. And she's a college professor and she had a few of her friends over who are all college professors. And we were in her living room, like having drinks after dinner. And this one guy who's a college professor, he, uh, he leans into me and it kind of like in a low voice, goes uh he goes you know i actually agree with a lot of your politics and i remember just having this moment of being like why are you whispering motherfucker like we're in our mutual friend's house like is this a dangerous thing yeah he wants

to pay for his volvo this guy is super smart way smarter than me. He's like a really, really smart guy, like teaches at a very good university. But there's a personality trait there that's very like a little passive. Like I don't want to rock the boat. And if there is a time when say the establishment, let's just say is all pumping the same narrative about, I don't know, for the sake of argument, mRNA vaccines, who knows what it might be?

But if everyone's pumping the same narrative, there's a certain personality type who's going to be willing to stand up and say, I think you guys got this wrong. I think there actually might be something much more to this. And that's not always necessarily just like the smartest person there. It's oftentimes someone who has some intelligence intelligence but also has the personality to be a little bit confrontational to be willing to say something outside the box that's how experiencing yes yes exactly and that's also the same type of personality often that will say like if they get it wrong we'll say a kind of fucked up thing you get it wrong yeah but we need those people yeah

we need those people and and like you said you want them to be corrected when they get it wrong. But we need those people. We need those people. And like you said, you want them to be corrected when they get stuff wrong, but you don't want them to be silenced because when they get stuff right, it's often the most important thing ever that they got right. And if you have a business model, like The View, where it's just people giving their opinions, and you punish

people for the opinions that you find to be wrong, like that, you're fucking up your own business. Like that's not the way to handle things. I'm 100% in support of Whoopi Goldberg keeping her job and not being suspended and letting her express herself. And she's obviously thought through like, who the fuck is 100%? Like there's very few things that you can talk to me about where my opinion is rigid, impossible to move.

There's a few things. Sure. I mean, really moral things. Right, right. Murder and rape and torture. I'm not going to convince you any of those are okay. Yeah, there's things like genocide and infanticide. Yeah, of course, of course.

But then when it comes to conversations where people are giving their opinions about things, I feel like you've got to allow people. I'm not the fucking producer of The View, but you've got to allow those women to express themselves. Even when they talk shit about me, like express yourself. It's okay. Like I'm in support of that. I'm in support of you criticizing me. I don't think you should be silenced. I don't think you should be suspended for saying that something incorrect about like the Holocaust. I think someone should come along and correct you and then you should correct yourself and then we're good. And then let's keep moving. And I like, okay, so if you have, you had

Dr. Gupta on your show and you had Dr. Malone on your show, both making Dr. Malone on your show both making completely you know Contradictory arguments like they see things in a completely different way, you know If anybody who was a big fan of the episode with dr. Malone was saying I think you should have that episode with dr Gupta pulled off. I'd be like that that's insane. Right. Like, even if you agree with this side, that's insane that you shouldn't like be able to hear from the other side and what their perspective is.

Like a little bit, all it takes is like a minimal amount of humility and a minimal belief in the free expression of ideas to say, no, what we want to do is have both of them. What'd be really awesome is if they were both there together. say, no, what we want to do is have both of them. What would be really awesome is if they were both there together. But the thing is, it's like there's this opinion today where you have to have this thought process that's accepted by a group of people that have deemed this to be the most appropriate or the only opinion that you can have. And anything that varies from that, even if it turns out to be incorrect, there's never

a course correction. For instance, the idea of the lab leak, and this is the thing that I brought up in that video that was talking about misinformation. If you brought up the lab leak eight months ago, eight months ago you'd be removed from social media. They'd be like, you're a piece of shit. You'd be banned. You wouldn't be able to post on Facebook.

Now it's on the cover of Newsweek. These things that used to be deemed incorrect are now discussed openly and often. The fact that- Well, the signs changed. Yeah, all the signs changed. No, but that's right. I thought that was a great point,

and I thought that was a great video that you made. I would have opened it with, you know, dear blood-soaked monsters of the corporate press. But besides that- Well, I was talking to my friends. No, I know. I was talking to the regular people out there. No, you're right.

And that's a really crucially important point that you made. And we've had over the last, what is it, almost two years now of COVID since March of 2020. It's really hard, I think, for any of us to really express or understand what a profound change has happened to our society. I mean, this is, you know, it's like a friend of mine, someone I really admire very much, Jeff Deist, who's the president of the Mises Institute, which is the greatest institute in the world. Can I spell that? M-I-S-E-S. What is that? Ludwig von Mises, the greatest economist who ever lived. Great classical liberal economist who revolutionized the way people think about economics.

And they're like this great institution. They really kept his work and the work of Murray Rothbard, who's probably the greatest libertarian philosopher in history. They're basically what taught me everything I know is the Mises Institute, and I love all those guys. So Jeff Dice is the president of it, and he said, he was on my podcast, Part of the Problem, available wherever you get podcasts. And he said, which I really liked,

he was like, you know, this really stuck with me. He goes, when you're living through a revolution, you don't necessarily know, oh, the revolution started today. And now I'm in the revolution. And this is five days into the revolution. You know, it's not till like years later that you look back at it and go, oh, I guess that was a revolution. Now, I don't know if that's exactly how you would describe the COVID regime, but in many ways, I think it's changed life more than a traditional revolution would. You know, like if a regime was overthrown by a coup and someone else took power, it certainly wouldn't necessarily upend every single social norm down to like showing your face in public or shaking hands or what you're allowed to do or what the rise of

COVID has done has been really like unbelievably profound. It's changed everything about our society. And the idea that while this is all happening, you're not allowed to like question it, to think about like, I'm not sure this is the right decision. I think maybe this is wrong. I think maybe we should do this. That all throughout it, these voices have been silenced off of social media, and they've been really demonized in a very aggressive way. And so many of them have turned out to be right. Not all of them were, but the official narrative coming from the regime

has been wrong so much. I mean, you know, they talk about spreading COVID disinformation. The entire establishment talking points have been disinformation from the beginning down to the biggest one. I mean, lockdowns. They just had this. I'm sure you saw this huge Johns Hopkins study that basically their conclusion was that lockdowns did next to nothing to mitigate COVID deaths and caused far more deaths. And if you talk to objective virologists, like people that understand respiratory viruses, and if you got them alone, like you got that professor alone, he could say, I really agree

with you. They would say the same thing. They would tell you the same thing. Like this is going to spread. Like you're not going to be able to stop this. This is not something that you can mitigate that easily. And so while the lockdowns were not mitigating the virus, which, again, it's not just this one study. I mean, you can see this by looking at the places that had lockdowns versus didn't have lockdowns and the effects. And while they're not doing anything to mitigate the virus, they were destroying people's lives. You look at the suicide numbers? Yeah, well, there's certain deaths of despair numbers that were really high up. But I mean, look, when you look at the, there were, I think it was something like 400,000

small businesses that were closed that will never reopen. 75% of LA restaurants at one point were gone. It's every one of those is like somebody's life dream being crushed and the ripple effects from that. Decades of work. Childhood obesity rates have gone up 50% since the beginning of this. Really? I mean, how many generate, I mean, double check me maybe on that number, Jamie, but it was, I believe it was 50% childhood obesity has gone up. Now, this is going to be four generations before you fix the

damage that's caused by that. And at the time when you were opposed to lockdowns as someone who was opposed to it at the time, I remember hearing this. You were selfish. You didn't care if grandma died. You just wanted to get a haircut, like all these things, the way people would just be like completely demonized when at the time we were just making the argument that you're like first off you're ushering in totalitarianism and you're destroying the lives of tens of millions of americans i don't think people saw that part the ushering in totalitarianism now i don't think that i waited that because they didn't equate the government being able to mandate your behavior in terms of like whether your

business could be open or what have you. They didn't equate that with totalitarianism. Even they thought it was like a temporary restriction upon your freedoms that is for the greater good of everyone. And that's how it was kind of sold. Well, 15 days to flatten the curve was the, you know, the weapons of mass destruction. Obesity in U.S. children increased at an unprecedented rate during the pandemic. Unprecedented. Look at this. Among a cohort of 432,332 people age 2 to 19, the rate of body mass index increased roughly double during the pandemic compared to the period preceding it.

The greatest increases were seen in children aged 6 to 11 and in those already overweight before the pandemic. The national weight gain will surprise few pediatricians who have been warning since the pandemic began of the likely effects of reduced physical activity and the increased screen time. But the rate of change is striking. The monthly rate of BMI increase nearly doubled to 1.93 times during its pre-pandemic rate. The proportion of U.S. children who are obese was rising at 0.07% a month before the pandemic, but 0.37% a month, five times faster after the virus appeared. Wow. Yeah. Look at this.

An estimated 22% of U.S. children and teens were obese last August, up from 19% a year earlier. That's awful. Yes, it's horrific. Yeah. What exactly is the cost of that? I mean, how do you even measure that? Well, the problem is it's very hard to lose weight.

Gaining weight is very easy. Yes, once you, and once you become like obese as a child, you've, oh man, I mean, you've put yourself so behind the eight ball now for the rest of life, you know. So, you know, it's almost like it's, you know, the only way to have a perfect study on all of these things would be almost like if you could run the counterfactual, like if you had a time machine and you could run back in time and not do the lockdowns and stuff and then see what happens. And of course we can't do that. But the point is just that like, look, they were, they were wrong. It's almost objectively wrong about the lockdowns. They were so,

it's so understood that they were wrong now that let's just put it this way. The Biden administration is blaming the Trump administration for the lockdowns at this point. That's, that's what Jen Psaki said when she was questioned about this study. Well, look, the lockdowns were long. She's like, well, the lockdowns have been the previous administration. It's like, yeah, but it was your guy, Dr. Fauci, who was in there, you know, like pushing them the whole time. But no, they just went, no, no, no. That was the previous administration. Even though Joe Biden was praising Cuomo and praising Newsom and all of the governors who were doing it at the time. They wiped their hands of that. We have nothing to do with that.

That's Trump stuff. Okay. So everyone admits they were wrong about that. White House blames Trump for COVID lockdowns. Oh my God, five days ago. Yeah. White House. That poor lady can't catch a break.

I bet she would be normal without that job. That is just not her job. How do they call you? They call you spreading misinformation. They have a professional liar who just goes out and bullshits and spreads misinformation. That's what the job is. It's not a good...

It's a weird gig, too, because why does she speak for the president? He picked her? He goes, I think you'd make a good face for a liar? Well, it's also like when Trump was in office. The lady that I really liked at the end, what's her name? Kylie? No.

Kayleigh McEnany? Yes. Yes. She was the best at it. She brought receipts. I've met her. She's very nice. She's a savage.

She is. She's razor sharp. That lady, she brought receipts. When they would say something like Trump said this, she'd be like, interesting. Because on CNN, you said this, and then you said that, and you said this. Good day, sir. You just see her lick her thumb. Oh, yeah?

Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. And then she would leave the podium, drop the mic. Yeah. She was very good at it. She was. But it's just, so look, they got the lockdowns completely wrong. They had us, you know, they had segments on the news about how to wipe down your groceries.

I mean, it was things that like- Well, at the time they thought that that was a thing to do though. I'm just saying- That's really where the science changed. No, I'm just saying what they got wrong. Yes, they got that wrong. But that, I don't think that is categorized as misinformation because it's not like there's contrary information that's better.

At that time, like when they were dealing with the stuff that was coming off of those cruise ships, and one of the things off those cruise ships, they were finding evidence that COVID lived on surfaces for up to 14 days, which is terrifying to people. So that is where the spray things down came from. I completely agree. I do not think that that was a lie. I think that that was a lie. I think that that was something they got wrong. I'm just making the point that it's not as if the official

talking points are getting everything right. They're getting a lot of this wrong. And it's hard to know what, not with that. I mean, I trust that that was just, they got it wrong, but with a lot of the other things, it's, you never know for sure exactly what they were lying about or what they got wrong with this. But the point is that you can't silence anybody who's saying, I don't think the official answer to this is correct. Because you don't know that you're correct. They were wrong about outdoor masking. Turns out they were wrong about indoor masking, at least with the cloth masks, it seems now. That's much more accepted today than ever before.

It's on CNN. That was a Lena Wendt thing. She said it over and over again yeah Klaus master nothing more than facial decorations ever is like yeah what they've also by the way Fauci himself has admitted to kind of this noble lie thing yeah but he would say things that he knew were lies but because these lies would get the best you know response out of them and in that case how do you trust anything that the guy has to say?

You don't. Right. You don't. But one thing that masks do do is they let people know that you're not an asshole. Yeah, that you didn't vote for Trump. No, it's like not even that. It's like you want people to be safe. If you walked into a restaurant, I'm not saying now.

Now it's kind of preposterous, but it's still enforced. There was a guy who just got pulled out of some school council meeting. He was a father that was in the audience, and he didn't have a mask on. They physically assaulted him and pulled him out of the meeting because he didn't have a mask on. Like, folks, you're looking around at all these people with cloth masks on. This is nonsense. It's been proven to be nonsense.

We know it's nonsense now. But at one point in time, we didn't know it was nonsense, and when you would go to a restaurant and you wore a mask, people knew you were an asshole. And I think that was a good thing. It was like a way of signaling to everybody that you care. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think the problem, what we're dealing with these news sources, is the same kind of problem we're talking about The View and the same kind of problem when they're talking about me. kind of problem when we're talking about the view and the same kind of problem when they're talking about me is that the answer to like, if people, more people believe me or trust me or want to

listen to me talk, the answer is not to silence me. The answer is to you to do better. The answer is for you to have better arguments. When you're on television talking about how I'm taking horse paste and you know, that's not true. I'm taking horse dewormer. Instead of saying, which you should have said, how did Joe Rogan get better so quick? How come he got COVID that's killing everybody and he was better in five days? Negative in five days, working out in six days. How come? That's never discussed. So it's like, he's taking ivermectin. I think ivermectin was one of the things that I took that was that did something but I think really Monoclonal antibodies was the big one and that's the stuff that got Trump better in four days. He wasn't taking ivermectin

I think there's something legitimately really beneficial about monoclonal antibodies has been proven but yet they just pulled them They pulled the authorization for them, which I don't understand that at all. Why don't they discuss that? Why don't they talk? Why don't they have an expert on explains why? that at all. Why don't they discuss that? Why don't they have an expert on explains why, even though there is still a prevalence of Delta cases, they still exist, and monoclonal antibodies are very effective against Delta. Right. So, I mean, all of this is kind of predicated on the assumption that they're being honest and trying to, why wouldn't they talk about this? But they should. I agree. Because this is my perspective. If you're in business, and your business is the news, and you want to get more people to pay attention,

you should be honest. And my thoughts for CNN, my advice to them, I don't hate CNN. I used to go to them every day for the news until they started fucking hating on me. If you want to do better, just fucking change your model. Change the way you do it. Stop this

editorial perspective with guys like Brian Stelter and Don Lemon that nobody listens to. Nobody is like chiming in saying, oh yeah, finally we get the voice of reason. Nobody thinks that. Have people that give out effective news, objective news rather, and I'll

support you. I will turn around 100% and I'll be the people that tell, I'll be one of the people that tells people, I saw this on CNN, watch this on CNN. CNN has a different business model. They're, they're just being objective news now. I'm with you. I said this once to a Essie cup and Don Lemon, um, bet when I was, when I was working over there at Turner. Um, and, uh, I said to them, and I wasn't even like really trying, like, I don't want to help them, but sometimes you just can't help, like just give your like advice. And I said, and this was in

2017, if you can remember the environment back then. And I said, look, if you guys really, you know what you guys could do that would really help and hear me out, because I know you're not going to like this. Give Trump credit for something. Pick something you like. One thing you've liked. Maybe it was the First Step Act, that criminal justice reform, you know? He let some people who were doing life for pot or whatever out of jail. Pick one thing you like and really praise him for it.

And then the next time you criticize him, it'll hit much harder. Yes. Because people will be like, well, yeah, like they give him credit when they think he did something right and they'll hit him hard when they think he did something wrong. Because what hit him hard when they think there's something wrong

They go because what you're doing right now is it's just all day every day Trump did the worst thing ever Trump did and now People are like you're just in the business of trying to make them look stupid So even if your goal is to make them look stupid, it doesn't have any weight to it You know like it's not gonna. It's not gonna, but it's that thing. It's like they're confined by their format. They're confined by their environment. They're confined by these small segments that last for seven minutes or whatever it is in between commercials. They have producers that are overlooking everything they say. You don't get a real, like an honest perspective.

You get a corporate perspective. That's right. There's a mandate. honest perspective. You get a corporate perspective. There's a mandate. There's a format that they're trying to make sure that everybody abides by. And then there's a narrative that you have to follow. Well, the thing that's crazy too is that, and you were saying if they were going to tell the truth or be honest, is that... So the last time I was on the show, is that, so the last time I was on the show, back, what is it, April, I think, of 2021,

we had that clip that went viral that Fauci called you out for. And I was re-watching it the other day, watching the clip and then watching his response to it. And it's funny, and it's funny thinking about this with the childhood obesity numbers that we were just looking at and all this stuff. And basically what you said was you go, you know, if you're a 20 year old healthy person, what I'd advise you to do with COVID is make sure you're still really healthy. Make sure you're getting a lot of exercise.

Yeah, it's kind of paraphrasing. But now you said, I don't know if you need the vaccine. It's like what's really important is you being really healthy. This was this was the spirit of what you said. It's like what's really important is you being really healthy. This was the spirit of what you said. And Fauci's response to this, which I was literally just listening to the other day, does not age well. It's really, first off, he said, he goes, he's like, no, Joe Rogan, what you don't understand is that you get the vaccine to protect other people. Because if you get it, you can't spread it.

And you're like, well, that didn't age so well. And then he says at one point, he goes, if you don't get the vaccine and this is almost word for word what he said, you could pull up this clip. Fauci responds to Joe Rogan and see it. But it was almost word for word. What he said was he goes, if you're a healthy 20 year old and you get COVID, you may not experience any symptoms, but you will likely spread it to a bunch of other people. And his claim was that an asymptomatic person will likely spread it to a bunch of other people. And his claim was that

an asymptomatic person will likely spread it. And I'm like, I'm sorry, but if you're looking at what is misinformation, or let's just say incorrect information, I do not think the science backs up the idea that someone with no symptoms will likely spread it to other people. I don't think that's correct. I think you're incorrect. This is what I think happens. I think what is asymptomatic, like categorized as asymptomatic, is you don't feel that bad. And if you don't feel that bad, you can spread it. There's a lot of people with very healthy immune systems, especially young people that can spread it and they give it to their parents. Their parents get really fucking sick. Certainly that does happen. Their grandparents get really fucking sick and their case is technically asymptomatic because okay all they have is like a headache that's real

sure no listen now that might happen and i guess those would be mild symptoms technically right if you have like some people think of it as asymptomatic because you don't have covid symptoms like you don't have fevers you're not in the hospital you're not coughing you don't have respiratory issues okay you can easily give it to someone and have the most mild of symptoms. Here's something that I need to correct, okay? Or I need to express myself on this, because a lot of people think that I think COVID's not a big deal. That's not the case at all.

I think it's a very big deal to a lot of people, but it's not a big deal for everybody. It depends entirely upon the individual. And one of my problems with all this whole thing is this enforcement of this one size fits all approach to health. And I just, I don't buy that. Oh, I, so by the way, just to be clear, I completely agree with you on that. I mean, COVID is a really nasty virus and it has killed a lot of people. And if you are sick and have a weakened immune system, if you have

comorbidities, you do not want to get this thing. It is very dangerous. Less so with Omicron, but still dangerous. And so that's, I completely agree with you on that. I'm just saying that, look, first of all, the claim was, if you want to talk about bad information that may have led to real damage in COVID, Joe Biden, the president of the United States, straight up said, if you get the vaccines, you will not get or spread COVID. How about Rachel Maddow? You remember her saying that? Rachel Maddow said, we know for a fact, this is it now. It stops with you.

You get the vaccine, it stops with you. It doesn't go on. Now think about this, and I don't know exactly, I don't know if anyone could measure these numbers. How many people got these vaccines when they first came out and then thought to themselves, well, I can't get COVID now. Maybe had what you're saying, the sniffles had mild symptoms and went, well, it can't possibly be COVID because I'm vaccinated and went and spread that to a whole bunch of people. So I'm not saying like, I've been talking about COVID and the COVID regime for like basically two years on my podcast. I'm sure I've gotten some things wrong. I, you know, I'm not'm sure I've gotten some things wrong. I'm not saying you haven't gotten some things wrong and maybe that's true,

but for anyone to be pointing the finger, like you got things wrong and this is dangerous and led to all of this, like the most catastrophically wrong things that have really led to real world catastrophes have all been coming out of CNN and MSNBC and the White House and Dr. Fauci and all of them. That's all I'm saying. I completely agree with you. COVID is nasty. A lot of people

have lost people, you know, even if it's somebody who's like, you know, if you're, if you're 91 and you have several, you know, health problems, but you would have lived till say 95 and you get COVID and die at 91. I mean, that's awful. That's awful. That person might have had four more years with their grandchildren and their children and all of that. It's a horrible thing. And it's terrible.

I'm just, you know, anyway, just to make that clear, I agree with you. It's a nasty virus. I'm just more concerned with the totalitarian regimes that are sweeping the entire Western world. That's the problem, right? The real problem is that once you give governments power, they don't give it back. They don't want to give it back. What's fascinating to me is watching what's going on in Canada right now, because the truckers have taken over Ottawa, right? They've just overwhelmed Ottawa with thousands and thousands

of trucks. And so now they have these laws where you're not allowed to refuel them. You're not allowed to give them food. GoFundMe tried to steal the money, which is wild. They got $10 million in donations for the truckers, and GoFundMe thought it would be great if they gave that money to the charities of their choice. You fucking imagine the gall, the gall of that after they, listen, I'm not saying they shouldn't have supported Black Lives Matter. I think you should support, I think GoFundMe should be available to anyone who wants to use it for anything where people can argue that it's a good cause. And the Ottawa truckers, a lot of people think that's a good cause.

Black Lives Matter, a lot of people thought that was a good cause. The fact that you can make a distinction between one and the other if they had taken all the money that was donated to black lives matter and they said you know what we don't agree with this we're going to give it away to the charities that we choose be like fuck you you are yeah people would go goddamn crazy and a charity that's kind of like even though they shouldn't be like opposed to each other but that's just like on the other side of the political aisle like if you went oh black lives matter we're actually going to but that's just like on the other side of the political aisle. Like if you went, Oh, black lives matter.

We're actually going to give that money to like some pro-life charity or something like that. In Quebec, you can't buy groceries unless you're vaccinated. We need to look at this and make sure this is true. But when you get to that, I know someone was telling us this last night. It was,

is a Canadian. So he might be right about that, but that is, yeah. See, make sure that's true that is... Make sure that's true. It's wild. And the way Trudeau talks about people who are unvaccinated, the way he said that they're

misogynists and rapists, or racists, he said they were misogynists and racists. You're in the demonized class all the sudden you are you're you're deciding you're taking people that have a perspective on a medical intervention and you're deciding that you're gonna demonize them in the worst possible ways with no evidence and isn't it something that so many of these people, like say the nurses who are unvaccinated,

the truck drivers who don't like the mandates, that they were the heroes. Right. These were the essential workers. Yes. The healthcare workers. Yes. These were the people in New York City. They were clapping at 6 p.m. every day for these workers.

And those same, there'll be nurses who worked through a year and a half of the pandemic. And they didn't want to get the shot. And didn't want to get the shot. And now all of a sudden, these are the you're out of there. Not only that, the CDC has shown that these nurses, which most of them got COVID. I'll say this. If you were working

through the pandemic the whole time, 100% of them either got COVID or learned how to protect themselves from getting COVID. There's no other option. It has to be one. Literally around COVID positive patients all day long. But we But when we're learning from this, from this whole pandemic is not just about authoritarianism and a lot of the issues that we're dealing with about ideologies and how rigid people are, but also about how fragile our civilization truly is when confronted with any kind of adversity. Yeah, that's exactly right. People are so fragile and most people, they rely upon existing structures, whether it's the office

they work at, whether it's the neighborhood they're in, they rely on these sort of structures in order to have any semblance of normalcy in life. And when forced upon themselves to be confronted with the unknown, to be confronted with open ended possibilities and having to make like moral and ethical decisions based on your values and how you feel about people, not based on whether people want you to condemn someone for their choices or attack people for choices. Like, I know a lot of people that hate people that have been vaccinated. I'm like, do you know how crazy that I don't know him personally, but I mean, people online have seen them like attacking people.

Like they attack Trump. They boo Trump because he talks about how you should get vaccinated. I got it. You should get it. I think you should get it. It's a good thing. I thought it was You should get it. I think you should get it. It's a good thing. And they're like, boom! I thought that was so interesting though.

Just like the politics of it goes so interesting to see Trump losing his base and then like how he handles that and then he's caught between this thing

where like Donald Trump's like, like he's got the narrative in his head figured out. He's like, well, I did the vaccines and I'm the greatest so that's the greatest

and I get all the credit but then he's losing his people. Unvaccinated to be accommodated at all times in Canadian Walmarts, Costco's to ensure they're buying pharmacy products only. What? Accompanied, excuse me. Unvaccinated to be accompanied at all times. So to make sure they're not getting food?

Yes. They have to buy pharmacy products only. So how do they eat? Well, I don't know. But in Quebec, that's what this guy was saying. In Quebec, you can't go to a grocery store unless you're vaccinated. Vaccine passports to enter the vicinity went into effect on Monday. This mandate includes all businesses with surfaces.

But here today, today in Alberta, I think they dropped their vaccine mandates. And I think this is in response to the truckers. That's interesting Yeah, feel truckers are on that. You don't want to fuck with truckers And then you need them to get your stuff. We really all are we like to be very removed Yeah from how that Maya my father-in-law is a trucker. So I know a little bit about the trucking world It's great guy, by the way One of the smartest people I know too and he's a he a trucker, and all his friends are truckers and stuff. So I like kind of just from, you know, marrying my wife, and he's my father-in-law,

I kind of know about that world a little bit. But it's unbelievable how easy it is to not even kind of think about it. Not even think about how vital this is. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. I go on my computer, I order a thing, and it's here. There were no trucks involved. Someone drive it, bro. But then you get out on the highway, and you're like, what are all these big cars everywhere?

You know, but like, you're like, no, that's the whole thing. As much technology as we have, this entire economy is all still built off shit being trucked from one place to another. That's how your gasoline gets to the gas station. That's how your food gets to the grocery store. It's a big deal. Yeah, this is a different thing, though, Jamie. I want you to pull up Alberta drops vaccine mandate or mask mandate. It's harder to find that. Because you're on Google, bitch.

Get on DuckDuckGo. You'll find it right away. DuckDuckGo was on this weeks ago. You want me to Google it on DuckDuckGo? DuckDuckGo it? Well, Jamie, you can't Google it on DuckDuckGo. You have to DuckDuckGo your way there. He's so Googled.

He's so corporate. I think Jamie's been secretly sponsored by Google. You know DuckDuckGo is also compromised. Oh! I'm just saying. I'm not the first person to... You're going to throw that accusation? You're going to besmirch the good name of DuckDuckGo right here?

Alberta, Canada. Truckers. Same stores pop up. Canadian provinces begin backing off vaccine mandates. Jamie. Begin? What does that mean? Alberta caves to trucker protest ends vaccine.

Click on that one. Washington Times. Alberta caves to Canada trucker protest ends vaccine. Click on that one. Washington Times. Alberta caves to Canada trucker protest ends vaccine passports. That's what I said. I know. I'm just saying I don't know what the Washington Times. Get off of Google. The Washington Times, I don't know that that's the number one source of my first choice is all I'm saying. Is CNN better?

I wouldn't have picked that either. What is the Washington Times? Exactly. Is that even a real newspaper? That's all my point was. I mean, it sounds like a real one. You know how I judge newspapers based on how much you're trying to sell me at the bottom? Like when it gets to the bottom, do you want to live forever?

Here, look. I look at the sponsored stories and look at the sponsored stories. Okay, look at the sponsored stories. Never Trump, Jonah Goldberg, picked up by CNN after resigning from Fox News. No, it's Biden who's a real SOB. Nancy Pelosi. Look at the stories they're trying to push, and then you go, all right, what is the headline you're pushing?

Well, hold on. These are real stories. Nancy Pelosi's son allegedly tied to fraud and bribery scream. I believe that. Sounds legit. Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez staying off Twitter due to backlash. Is she staying off Twitter? How the fuck do you know?

How do you know? You have her phone. Fuck are you talking about? I know she's off Twitter because I got her phone. I'm so tired of talking about this. I'm so tired of talking about COVID. I'm so tired of talking about the pandemic. One of the things that I really loved about coming here to Texas is like they didn't treat it the same way in California.

My friends in California are still living in hell. Yeah. I think a lot of people are tired of all of this. You know like you were saying before, when you're like, if you're on social media, you have this perspective of the world. And then like if you remove yourself from that, it's almost like you remind yourself that there's still real life.

There's a real life. You know, it's like when you get on, like, and a lot of people, I think, are really tired of the COVID regime. Like, they just want to go back to normal life. A lot of people are really tired of the culture war bullshit because so much of it is manufactured and they just want to go back to real life. You just don't see this as, I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't exist at all. And I've noticed it in standup comedy that it's things have changed where like particularly in like liberal cities, there's certain things if you talk about

trigger audience members more and things like that. But in general in life, you just kind of like, you go, you know, you could watch like, you know, social justice warrior type, you know, social justice warrior type You know college campus activists on online and you know The fat phobic person we were saying before and they're all this like white privilege and this and that and all this you're like Oh my god, there's like all racism is everywhere. I think you like go to the supermarket, you know, like hey

Some black guy steps in front of you and he's like, oh, excuse me and you're like, no, you're good, sir I got a pound of roast beef. There's no everyone's everyone's where's the peaches? Yeah, like everyone's just get I used to use this example a lot as like what I just like said what the free market Like does to people is that I would just cuz I'm Jewish and I lived in New York City Then I'd be like I can literally like walk outside this before uber I used to say this all the time, but you can put your hand up and a Yellow cab stops with a Muslimlim driving and i'm a jew i just help put my hand up and i get in and he drives me to where i want to go and then he goes thank you sir god bless and i go thank you sir have a good day and that's and it's just because like well he wants some money and i

want to ride and we're all kind of working together and we might have wildly different views, but we get past it. I like different people. I like talking to like a guy who's a Sikh. I like talking to a guy who, you know, comes from Scotland. I like talk. I want different people. It's fun. See, this is it.

That's one of the beautiful things about New York City is that it's so filled with so many different folks and everybody has to interact with each other. The thing about LA that fucks everybody up, one of the things, is that everyone's in their goddamn car. So you're in this isolated environment and you go to where you're going to go and you don't ever just melt with everybody.

And New York City, when you're on the street, man, everybody's walking. It's just filled with all kinds of people from all parts of the world. It's a crazy thing, but it was a real interesting place to grow up. And I loved New York City. I hope it gets back to being kind of the vibrant city that it once was. How is this Eric Adams guy doing?

I think he's terrible so far. Really? Real disappointment. I like the fact that he hired his brother. Gave him a fat job. Yeah, whatever. I think that's fine. His brother's last job was parking cars for like 20 bucks an hour.

Now he makes a quarter million a year. What's up? Yeah. Well, there you go. He's taking care of his family. I like that. Now he doubled down on all the COVID stuff right away. And I think it's just been terrible.

That wasn't like his plan getting into office allegedly, right? Didn't he have like a different? I mean, I think he said things that were almost vague enough to not turn the voters who might not have liked that off, but it was like right away. But isn't he like, his thing is he's a former cop. So his thing is to be more tough on crime and people are very excited about that, right? Well, I think that was one of the big appeals of him because crime has really risen quite a bit over the last couple of years in New York. And this was coming off of New York. Like New York, when I grew up, I was born in 83. So I grew up in New York in the

80s and 90s. And New York crime was a major problem. And it got way, way better. My whole life, the crime rate was going down and down and down and down and then all of a sudden it started coming back and people sort very upset so I think that was a big part of his appeal was the kind of like we're gonna take care of street crime and understandably people were attracted to that message but I think it was very very a bad sign to me that immediately getting in there the first thing he did was like continue the emergency power acts and the vaccine passport and all that stuff. So I think they're dropping the mask mandates though. I think that's the new thing in New York city. Oh, I saw that, um,

in New Jersey, they're saying they're going to drop the mask mandates for, for schools, which is really great news. And I think that's, I think that's incredible. And it's one of those things that like, you know, is, I know you just said you're tired of talking about this. But one of the worst things is, you know. I'm exhausted. Masking up kids. I think it's just horrible. It is horrible.

I'm wondering what the world's going to look like in two years from now. I wonder what's going to change and whether or not we're going to get out of this better. Like, you know, that's one of the things that does happen whenever human beings are confronted with any sort of an adverse situation where it requires adjustment. It's like, there's a possibility and an opportunity for growth. And it's not completely outside the realm of possibility that we do figure out how to grow and get better. 100%. I'm optimistic. I think that, first off, I just think there's no option. So you might as well be optimistic. And I think that there is, you know, even if like from my perspective where I'm like, well, you know, talking about everything I've been talking about since we've been here and how the regime is so corrupt and they're liars and they've. But I look around at this and I see the fact that I think the collapsing trust in all of these institutions is a great thing. I think the fact that people are like waking up to this stuff is incredible. It is because we have options. Yes. Because we have

the Glenn Greenwalds and the Matt Taibis and the Crystals and Saugers and the Jimmy Doors, because they exist. Yes, I agree with you. Yeah. And also just that I think that we can like we have the capabilities to have a more prosperous, a freer, a better, a kinder society than ever before. We just haven't put it all together yet. And that that's like we just got to shun the voices that disagree with that. We have to like reeducate people to the fact that like the most important thing is getting along. Compassion, being kind, but being a part of a community, being nice to each other. What I hope people learn from everything over, say, like the last, you know, I don't know, five years or so, even before the COVID stuff.

And I think this is what I was saying, like people are tired of the culture wars and all this stuff. This is a big part of the reason why I'm a libertarian. And I believe in drastically reducing government is that politics is so poisonous. And this is one of the major problems with the COVID stuff in general is that now politics became everything. Politics became finding out, you know, whether you're allowed to go to work or whether you're allowed to visit your father or whether you're allowed, you know, everything was a, was dictated by a governor and political differences are like wars. Even when they're mini wars or cold wars, it's like, it's a war. When you have a political difference with somebody, you're now fighting over who is going to rule over the other person.

Like this is why once every four years tensions rise so high over, is it going to be Hillary or Trump or Biden or Trump? Because one of you is going to lose and have to be ruled over by the other one. Do you remember when, when Biden won and then they started putting out lists of people that supported Trump, like legitimate politicians like AOC,

we shouldn't compile a list. It's like, what are you like? What the fuck are you saying? And it's but here's what's so fast And I was saying that I was at um this event called a freedom fest in South Dakota This summer a really cool last place. I'd ever want to go dude freedom fest in South Dakota You would have loved it. How was the food? Okay, not the strong point, the food. But it was some really great people there.

And South Dakota also, by the way, has zero restrictions. No steakhouse? Never had any. Oh, that's right. But North Dakota did. Yes. And North Dakota suffered greatly. Yes, that's right.

Where South Dakota's thrived, right? Yes. The only state in the union that never had a lockdown for one day, never had a mask mandate, never had any mandates by the state. They were great on COVID. Who's the mayor? Noemome right christy gnome christy gnome she didn't do so great she said a legalized pot she had a real opportunity to do that and didn't but she was great on kovat you win some you lose some anyway um but she but so i was talking there to the crowd about like this stuff like the idea of like political differences versus differences yeah

and i was like look like if you look in the crowd somewhere here there is like uh there's a christian sitting next to an atheist like you know it's like a big crowd like it was like a thousand people there so it's like somewhere this is true in the crowd there's a christian sitting next to an atheist you guys have the most profound differences in the way you view the world. I mean, like literally one of you believes the other one is going to burn in a pit of fire for eternity. And the other one, you know, believes that you are delusional,

basically, that you believe you have this personal relationship with something that doesn't exist. And you're just sitting next to each other. And everything's fine. And like, maybe you'll have a beer later. No one cares. But we're going to war over whether you're a Democrat or a Republican Yeah, like it's only when the differences are political that this becomes this crazy

Culture war because it interferes with your life like if this guy doesn't eat bacon because it's in the Quran That doesn't fuck with you But if they if it becomes political Let's say that you're you the kids the school that your kids go to, the public school, is now going to teach Muslim prayer in the school. You go, well, wait a minute. I don't want my kids being indoctrinated with stuff I don't believe in. So my point is just that when you reduce government intervention, when you reduce the size and scope of government, what you end up getting is more peace. You end up getting things where it's like people can have disagreements. We can have different cultural preferences. We can have

different feelings about gender or whatever, you know, like we can have all COVID, whatever it is, and we don't have to go to war with each other. And I really do think that, like, I believe that in order for this country to survive and to thrive. We need liberty. That's like the answer. It's the answer to all of this. We need the government to stop doing all of the evil stuff that it's doing. And we need a spirit of liberty where it's like,

look, we can disagree with each other and not have to go to war with each other. Well, let me ask you this, like being a libertarian and reducing government is what you're really interested in. So if that's the case, what are the things that get drastically reduced? Like besides the obvious ones like military and what's what is what are the things that you feel there's egregious misspending or overspending on?

Well, I mean, OK, so. Right. I mean, I know you said besides that, but I'm still going to just read. Number one is ending all of the wars. I mean, it's just been, it's been one disaster after another. Millions of innocent people have been killed as a result of the wars in the last 20 years. We have nothing to show for them. Nothing. And so we should end every last one of them. And the biggest one, the biggest one right now is what's going on in Yemen. And there's talks that they're going to escalate that. You're talking about Yemen again? Yes. But you were on CE Cup five years ago it's still and and literally there and no one listened to me then and Fortunately no one has yet and now they're talking about escalating it, but it's the worst thing in the world

What is the biggest explain what's going on? So? All right. So basically Obama started a war in Yemen. I mean it's it was Obama's started a war in Yemen. I mean, it was Obama's government working with the Saudis to launch a war against the Houthis in Yemen. And basically the backstory to it is that Obama had really, the Saudis were pissed off at our government and they're a big trading partner in ours. But number one, they were against the war in Iraq that George W. Bush started because they kind of were the only ones who saw obviously how this was going to go. And they were like, you know, their big enemy is Iran. And you were like, well, if you overthrow the Sunni minority government in Iraq, obviously the Shiites are going to take power. And then Iran's going to have all of this influence in the region.

So you're just empowering our worst enemy. So don't do this. But America wanted to do it. Israel wanted to do it. All of the neocons wanted to do it. And so the war ended up happening. And so the war happens. It went exactly that way. It was the it was a gift to Iran. And then Obama came in and he, you know, made the deal with Iran that also really pissed off the Saudis. So Obama said, and you can Google this and you can find it. He said in order to placate the Saudis, he supported their war against the Houthis in Yemen. So we got involved in a war, which has turned into a genocide to placate one of the most evil governments in the world, the Saudis. So Obama,

that's what Obama, the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize, gave us. Besides, you know, for funding bin Ladenite Islamists in Libya and Syria and committing literal treason, he should be tried for war crimes and literally spend the rest of his life in a cage for what he did in Yemen. Literally launched a war of genocide to placate the Saudis. Is that really the only motivation for us getting involved? It's, I mean, yeah, they're basically that they're a big business partner of ours. And we were pissed off and we were worried about losing that relationship. In this war, the United States is part is what so

basically well okay so it's really it's the Saudis and the UAE are really launching the war but it's always I mean it's the Saudis doing it but with American weapons for the first like several years of the war we were literally refueling their fighter pilots as they were doing it and they're they're conducting the war in the most brutal, egregious way. I mean, they're bombing farms and they put a full blockade around the country. So there was something at one point that was in the ballpark of a million cases of cholera. I'm not sure if they were actually all cholera or there were some other similar like infections

that were but it's been hundreds of thousands of people who have died in this war the UN said it was the number one humanitarian crisis in the world and it's it's these are you know infectious diseases that aren't that are targeting or that that disproportionately hit babies I mean there's babies dying. And Yemen, by the way, before all of this was the poorest country in the Middle East. And they put a full blockade around the country. And this has been going on forever. Obama started it. Trump continued it through his entire presidency, funded, you know, funded the Saudis even more than Obama had gave them even more, you know, weapons. And Biden said he was going to end

it. And he said he was going to end the war. And there were some people, I will say Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul were both really great on this in the Senate, trying to bring awareness to this, that we got to end this. This is like, this is a genocide at this point. And Biden said he was going to end it. And he didn't. He backed off of that promise. And now I guess the Houthis launched a few attacks that hit the United, the UAE. And so now they're talking about escalating the war. That's like the biggest one to me is like cut the military budget drastically. Stop. Stop fighting stupid wars. Anyway, on top of that, I would say that we need to end all corporate welfare. Can we stop before you move on to that? Sure. So what the motivations that they have for getting involved in wars that benefit Saudi Arabia are.

Is it negotiations in terms of like oil access? Is it negotiations in terms of like control of the region? Is it like compromises in terms of like they make these compromises in terms of like we want to do this and you want to do that. So we'll allow you to do this. We do that. And then we'll work together. to do this and you want to do that. So we'll allow you to do this. We do that. And then we'll work together. So there's, I, I, there's several really big, like, um, financial incentives, uh, behind it. Um, the number one, uh, Saudi Arabia buys a tremendous amount of weapons. Um, so there, this is worth a lot of money for, for. There's also the whole petrodollar thing, where it has been this agreement for a long time that Saudi Arabia will peg their oil to U.S. dollars and only trade in dollars.

And this does a lot to keep our currency afloat. That was part of the reason why the war with Iraq happened, right? why the war with Iraq happened, right? Didn't that have something to do with them taking their money, like they weren't going to put their oil on the U.S. dollar anymore? Supposedly, Saddam Hussein, around the year 2000, had a plan to start trading oil in gold and other assets and not using dollars anymore. I've also seen people say that Gaddafi had plans to be in on this.

I don't know if that's true or not. I do think it's interesting. I do know that very shortly after we got off the gold standard, after Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard, that we made this deal with Saudi Arabia in the 70s where they would only trade oil for dollars, which in some ways kind of replaced the gold standard. Like, look, dollars aren't redeemable for gold anymore,

but they are redeemable for oil. And so you got some commodity kind of behind the money. And that allows us to print as much money as we want to without suffering the consequences of it quite as drastically because there's still some value to the money for other people. We can export our dollar around the world. I'm sure there's other motivations that I don't know about, that I don't know for sure

what they are. But I do know that hundreds of thousands of innocent people are being slaughtered over these wars. So whatever exactly the motivation is, it ain't worth it. And it's also one more crazy, you know, addition to all of this is that we're fighting on the side of Al Qaeda over there. Like Al Qaeda is fighting the Houthis. There's still a pretty sizable Al Qaeda presence in the Arabian Peninsula and particularly in Yemen. And they're the enemies of the Houthis. We're fighting on the side of Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda against the

Houthis because they're on the, because Iran kind of likes them. It's nuts. And we need to just stop doing it. And it's insane. While our country's falling apart, we're still trying to like remake the world. It's just, it's bananas. just the idea though that the reason why they're making these concessions to these other foreign countries is that ultimately does help America in some sort of way well I mean I'm sure they would like a CIA guy or someone who's like involved in this sort of international politics yes kind of explained not saying that you would agree with them but but explain to you the motivation or why it's beneficial to be involved with these countries.

Well, yeah, I mean, I've heard, I have talked to several of them and I've heard a lot of their arguments. By the way, there's also a lot of those guys who would agree with me on this, or I would agree with them. I should probably say more accurately. I mean, I'd highly recommend anybody who wants to know what's really going on to listen to Colonel Douglas McGregor who is as smart and as decorated as you could possibly be and he's the guy who really makes the argument the best that we should be completely out of all of these wars is he

retired uh yeah I believe he is at this point yeah Yeah, I believe he is. But he was actually, I believe he was McMaster's boss at one point. But McMaster's, you know, rose up, I guess the political stuff with it did a little bit better than him. And he ultimately became, you know, the guy and he didn't. But also might be because of what their views are on this stuff. But yeah, there are people who will make these arguments. But really, usually the arguments that, you know, they come down to like, well, I mean, it's like the way the wars were sold. It's like, well, we had to go into Iraq because of whatever weapons of mass destruction. Or we had to go into Syria because Assad was killing all of his own people. Or we had to go into Libya because he was about to go genocidal.

Or we had to go into blah, blah. Yemen, they don't really try to make this argument as much for. It's just kind of like it's never discussed. It's just there's just no there's no real strong defense. And it's been going on. So how many years now? It's like we're you were talking about eight years, seven years maybe now. Yeah. And it's been and it's just and now they're talking about ramping it up after Biden promised to end it. And now they're talking about ramping it up after Biden promised to end it. You know, MBS purchased the most expensive painting of all time. Do you know about that?

No. I just watched a documentary about it last night, actually. I just finished it last night. It is a crazy documentary. And I think it's called The Last Da Vinci. See if you can find that. But it's about this very controversial painting that i've been obsessed with okay i'm obsessed with i i get obsessed with people that believe things that don't necessarily make sense and i get obsessed with hustles and this seems to be like both of those things connected together. There's this painting called Salvador Mundi.

And there's these people that find sleepers in the art world. And what they do is they go through collections and they, is that what it's called? What is the name of it? Yeah. The documentary? Is it The Last Da Vinci? There's an article about it. Right.

But there's a documentary. Yeah, correct. Yes, yes, yes, yes about it. Right. But there is a documentary. Correct. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So this painting. So what's a sleeper? It's a painting that they look at and someone's auctioning it off for a relatively low amount of money. But it might be very valuable. They find these occasionally.

Someone found a drawing recently that someone bought at a yard sale that was worth millions of dollars. And I think they bought it for like 50 bucks. And someone recognized the handiwork. And they're like, oh, my God, I think this is. And they bought it. And it turned out to be like hyper valuable. weird because this one this guy found it and it's in this thing in this uh this you know where they're looking at these paintings that are going to go up for auction and he purchases it for like a little over a thousand dollars and he ships it to new york and these art experts start going over

it and they think it's the lost leonardo da vinci and so they have to it's been overpainted which means somebody painted over the original painting so they have to strip it down this is where it's squirrely so go to the Salvador Monday and then find what it looked like before restoration because this is what I didn't understand. This is wild. It was way worse than that. Because he painted it, but hold on. He painted it on wood. Da Vinci would paint things on wood.

And so he painted on wood, and there was a lot of evidence that he prepared for this. Like there were sketches. If you scroll back up, you can see that. These are sketches that he had drawn of like the way the cloth would fold on because it's a painting of jesus it's the way the cloth would fold on jesus's arm so and there's evidence that he was working on this painting there's also copies of this painting and one of

them got uh one of them got displayed in the louvre in Paris because the MBS, the owner of this painting, wouldn't allow them to put it unless they put it right next to the Mona Lisa. He wanted them to call it the male Mona Lisa. See, that's a copy right there, that one down there. But I want you to see if you can find, Google what the original image looked like after stripping away the overpaint. And it's so damaged. There's so much missing from the painting. So this painting, that's what it looked like. So this painting that sold for some, like in the sea in the bottom, that circle, that's actually a knot in the wood. And so a lot of the painting was missing. So the painting that sold for $450 million, the most expensive painting ever, was painted over by a woman in New York City.

That's what it looked like before she started restoring it. So she just filled in the gaps, basically? She filled it in an amazing way. Like, what she did's amazing. That's before cleaning. That's what it looked like. So these crazy cracks and gaps, this woman worked at it for five years straight. All she did was paint this thing.

And at the end of it, like, see those, like it shows you, scroll back up where you just were? Scroll back up, please. Right there. So that's what it looked like on the left, and that's what it looks like after her work. So all those white spots where the painting was missing, she did all that. All the shading had to be consistent with the time period, and it had to look like a painting that was old. The hair, everything.

Look how much. They said some egregious amount. I think it's like 90% of this painting was really painted contemporarily by this woman who painted over the painting, which I did not know they did. So then she just sold it as if it was. She did not sell it. She did not say it.

She was hired to restore. Okay. So she's a legitimate, bona fide art expert who was hired to restore this painting. So she thought she was just doing a job. She was doing a job. Right. But she also is convinced that this is a Leonardo da Vinci. However, other people who are art experts that have nothing to do with it say bull fucking shit.

They call bullshit every step of the way. They mock it. They're like, this is a terrible painting. No fucking shit. They call bullshit every step of the way. They mock it. They're like, this is a terrible painting. Like, no fucking way. But Sotheby's had this amazing video. I know so little about art that when you go like, oh, this is a Da Vinci, I go, oh my God, he's just so amazing and so talented. And then someone goes, that's not a Da Vinci.

That sucks. I go, yeah, that's pretty bad. I don't know. I don't really know. Is it good? Is it not? You tell me. The documentary is incredible because the documentary is not just about the painting itself, but it's also about the psychology of selling it.

And one of the ways that this thing was selling, one of the reasons why it became an issue is because there was this French guy who was selling these paintings to this Russian oligarch. guy who was selling these paintings to this Russian oligarch. So this Russian guy was this billionaire, was spending all this money on paintings. And he found out because of an article that he got ripped off by this French guy. He thought that the painting cost 130, I think it was $135 million. That's what he paid for it. But the French guy got it for $75 million. So this French guy was marking up all the paintings he sold to this guy, but like as much as a hundred percent. So this, this guy got fucked. And so he realized this by this, and then

he made him auction off everything he ever bought from him. And so one of the things they did is they brought it to Sotheby's and Sotheby's made this incredible promotion, this really elaborate promotion selling this painting. And one of the ways they sold it was videotaping people's response because people thought it was a da Vinci. They videotaped people, including Leonardo DiCaprio. So Leonardo DiCaprio is in this video staring at this. So they took it from the perspective of people looking at the painting. People were crying and weeping. And this is part of what Sotheby's did to sell this. That's brilliant psychology.

Oh my God, it's amazing. And then they put it on display, and no one knew who was buying it. It turned out to be MBS. He was buying it, and he has it in a yacht. That's where it's displayed, which costs the exact amount of his painting. The yacht is like a half a billion dollars too.

And so he's got this painting that's probably not Leonardo da Vinci, but it's definitely whatever it is, it's mostly painted by this lady. Whatever it is, it's the most overpriced piece of art ever. Maybe. Even if it is da Vinci, it's

half not him. Best case scenario. Yes. See, the thing is, if it is da Vinci, wouldn't you rather have the one that's not fucked with, that's just cleaned, that looks like shit? Like, rather than someone comes along and paints over it. Like, go back to the original one after cleaning. I'd rather have the one with all the pieces missing that was just the Da Vinci. Yeah. Because once someone else fills in the gaps, it's no longer like his painting.

Right. Like this is the original one. Like if that was up there, like, yeah, man, if you go to Italy, and I've been to Italy many times, and one of the more amazing things about Italy is the art. There's incredible art all over the place, like so many different churches and so many, and a lot of it is really worn out and

old but but through that it's amazing because you get to look at this art that's been weathered by time yeah that's kind of part of the like appeal of it and like that by itself right there if they could actually attribute that to da vinci that should be worth way more than the lady painting over it. But I don't know if they knew the lady painted over it. This is the thing. It's not clear. When they show the painting and they say this is like a lost Leonardo and it goes for $450 million, I don't think they said, by the way, this is what it used to look like before this broad in New York City who really knows how to paint and she's an amazing Fucking artist. It's really crazy her perspective, too She's like they're saying that I did this but I could never have created this masterpiece

I'm like ma'am. I kind of disagree. You're pretty fucking incredible. You could fill that in I feel like you could just paint that I feel like she could paint it too I mean this idea that I mean, this idea that, I mean, maybe it's like a wine taster. But then there's a great documentary about that too. There's a great documentary called Sour Grapes.

Have you ever seen that documentary? No. It's the same kind of documentary. It's one of the reasons why I love it. It's a hustle. Sour Grapes is about this guy, this gentleman who is a wine expert who was selling, he was buying at auction very expensive wine,

like really old, very valuable, very rare wines. Like hundreds of years old? Yes, some of it, some of it hundreds of years old, some of it just decades old. But the point is he was selling this wine to all these wealthy buyers. So he would curate this collection of all these wealthy buyers so he would curate this collection of these incredible wines and then he would sell them to people

well then someone figured out that some of the wines that he was selling were counterfeit and then they started doing an examination and where he fucked up was he sold the wine to the Koch brothers so one of the one of the Koch brothers who had bought millions of dollars in wine from this guy

got fucked because one of the gentlemen who worked for the original company, the original vineyard, was like, we've never made a Magnum in that year. We didn't make it with that label. This is misspelled. This is incorrect. And then they started doing a deep dive. And then they go to this guy's house. They fucking raid his house.

They find out he's got these aged labels. He's got things that are, yeah, like this is stashes of old corks and labels were discovered. And how do you say his name? What is his full name? What is his, Rudy? He's like, what is his, Rudy. That's right. So what's really funny is my friend Matt is in this documentary and I didn't

know until I was watching it. My friend Matt is a legitimate wine connoisseur and Matt loves wine. Like he has a giant warehouse and it's like a wine room in his house filled with wine. And one of his birthday parties, I went to his birthday party and And on his birthday party, it was all of his wine friends. They had a wine tasting. So we went to this amazing restaurant and they would bring you over a small plate of food and then a flight of wines. And so they would all taste it. They would all swirl it around. And

I don't know much about wine, but the wine was was incredible for Rudy That guy was at the wine tasting and I recognized him So this guy went to jail for this for a long fucking time like he went to like a serious fucking prison in Colorado What's fraud right? Oh, yeah? He's still like they don't even know how many bottles of this fake shit are out there circulating They don't know how many people were involved with him. Don't rip off billionaires, man. They got a lot of resources to spend if they figure out you did that. They certainly did. But the point is, it's the same thing. It's like people that want to have this very exclusive, very rare thing.

And so like they get romanced by the auction, by the idea that they're going to be the one that has it, you know Oh Ed's got right in his basement. So that's what's so interesting about it is that we're such weird animals That's what it's like the psychological like appeal of something because the truth is that you could just get look You could get someone who's a good artist to paint you a picture That's real nice that you like looking at you could get a good bottle of wine that you enjoy drink Yeah, but you are so interested in having this thing that confers with it status or something like that. I don't know exactly what it is.

Collectors. You're a collector. Right, and there's something that you get off on that, like, I've got the thing. That's very interesting. It's so interesting. And then if you have that mentality and then you find out that you've been ripped off. Oh, my God. How furious you must be. Especially if you're a billionaire and you fancy yourself to be an intelligent person who's an expert at this one thing that you're obsessed with, which is wine.

And they show this Koch brother going through his basement or his, what would you call it, his wine cellar. And it's incredible. It's a collection. It's a massive collection of all these wines. And he's so proud of it. And wine cellar and it's incredible its collection It's massive collection of all these wines and he's so proud of it and then it turns out it's bullshit And then you find out an asshole in it. Oh, I mean furious. Yeah, he's like well I have 40 billion dollars to spend I'm getting even with you, sir So also the Koch brothers are like probably the worst or up there with the worst billionaires to piss off because they're also like Koch brothers are like probably the worst or up there with the worst billionaires to piss off because they're also like politically connected.

So they're like, well, let me just call the DA, who is my good friend, and the senator who I funded. And in this documentary, what's really interesting is this one guy, like the thing about wine is like I don't know how many real experts there are and how many people are just pretending they can taste the differences in these wines. I feel like I could fake it. I don't think I can. No, I don't know anything. They swirl it around. They take smells and they put it in their mouth. And a lot of times when they're tasting it, they have a bucket and they spit into the bucket because they don't drink it.

Right. They just swirl it around their mouth and they spit it out. It's wild because if they tasted and drank it all, they'd be hammered. So to avoid being hammered, they spit it out. So they put it in their mouth. They get the flavor of the wine and they spit it into like a bucket. It's wild shit. So in one scene, there's this one guy who's like a pseudo expert, right? I don't know if he's an expert or not.

And he's like, this is one of the wines that rudy sold me that's real and you can taste it it's absolutely real it's like it's got hints of oak and citrus and whatever and then another guy tasted he goes he smells he goes how long ago did you open this and he goes uh you know like two hours ago or something this is bullshit he goes, you know, like two hours ago or something like this. This is bullshit. He goes, this is fake. This is flat. It doesn't have nearly the complexity of the Chavez-Wajwul or whatever the fuck it is. I've had Chavez-Wajwul before, and it's so much richer and denser.

This is skunk piss. And he's like, what? And you see the other guy who's like not sure. He's probably like a fucking stockbroker or something. Like doesn't really know. And this guy is like a real wine expert. He's like a pseudo wine expert. He's like, what? And you see him confronted.

Like his ego is shattered because this guy is actually the guy who knows about this thing. It's like, boy, have you guys missed the mark? Wine's supposed to fucking taste good. It's supposed to be, oh, this is delicious. That's not what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be, this is a good tasting wine. We'll have a nice conversation over dinner with a good tasting wine. You guys are missing the mark. You've taken a thing that's supposed to be a drink that people enjoy that makes you feel

good and put all of this just psychological importance on top of it to create this entire structure that is absurd. It's absurd. Like, it just makes no sense. Have you ever had a really expensive bottle of wine? I really don't like wine. Oh, you don't? I've never liked wine.

I love red wine. I was in Florida once, and me and my friend Mark De La Grotte, shout out to my homie Mark, we were eating at a restaurant with a bunch of UFC employees, and Mark and I like red wine, and we were going through the menu, you have what you gonna do you want to get some wine and he goes yeah I go let's get some let's get a good bottle of wine and so they brought over some Ali and I go you know what I've never had like a real good bottle of wine like what's a real good bottle wine it's like well how much you want to spend and so he goes to his list and he brought about $1,200

bottle wine like wow okay fuck it like let's see i've never had it we had this it wasn't that good man it was kind of like weak it sounded like it was like almost like watered down it was like vinegary or something or maybe it was like too old it was like from 1972 dude you got fucking rooted but we there's a thing they gave you there was quite a few of us there was like, you know, 10 staff that we were all going to dinner with. All the production staff. And then after, you know, we had that bottle of wine, I go, let's get a

2018 bottle of wine. Let's get a regular bottle. It was way better. It was way better. I enjoyed it more. It was like $40. I'm like, this is a better bottle of wine. Like, this is so crazy that, like, this $1,200, but what is it so crazy that like this $1200 but what is what are they looking for like what is it

about it that's what I'm obsessed with that's what I'm obsessed with about the Salvador Mundi that's what I'm obsessed with with the Sour Grapes documentary I'm obsessed with this obsession that people have with like these like very subtle differences and things that only someone

who's like deeply studied can understand. But it's also, I mean, what's interesting to me is just the psychological factor in it, and I think it's got to be at least a lot like a status thing. Oh, 100%. That people are just like, look, this is what lets you know that I'm up here, and we're hardwired

to really care about status. That's just the thing, because that's just the way it is. When that guy was drinking and it saying it skunk piss and the other guy was like shattered You can see the look at his face. He just got punked. Yeah. Well you just went from being I am mr Wine expert to being exposed like your whole life is now taken down Yeah, nonsense a bunch of nonsense it's but it's there's a thing about humans where we get obsessed with these little minute details about specific things it's fascinating to me well it's also one of the reasons why it's what fucking really holds back i mean i'm sure in some ways

it propels human advancement you know um otherwise we probably wouldn't have it but it also it's like what holds back a lot of these things is that it's very hard for people to admit when they're wrong and they'd rather just double down yeah because it's very it's a very difficult thing to do very to admit you know you've been wrong especially about something major yeah i mean in the political, I see this all the time. Even when people say they're wrong about stuff, they tend to try and like, so, well, we don't really believe that anymore, but here's why we're pissed off at this guy now. And you're like, okay, but you should really probably spend some time on this.

Like I do that way that I mean, just shoehorn politics back into everything with that is one of my beefs with all the right wingers who now kind of admit the war in Iraq was a big mistake, but they don't really spend a lot of time on that. You know, it's just kind of like, I guess we were wrong about that whole thing. Back in the time, the day after 9-11, the mentality was, obviously, we got attacked. This was horrible. We have to make sure this doesn't happen again. The way to do this is to be proactive because the time has come where we need to act because we've been sitting back and letting on and obviously this is not a good strategy because we just lost The World Trade Center. Yeah hours and that's that's like I think in many ways the most tragic

misunderstanding of what the of what America got wrong after 9-11 Is that the assessment? This is why Ron Paul to to me, is the greatest living American. And he was completely right about what he says, that his whole point was that, no, we weren't attacked because we were sitting back and doing nothing. We were attacked because we've been intervening in this part of the world for decades. And we built up so much anger over there that people were willing to be recruited to come be suicide bombers just to get us back. And that that was the huge mistake. And so if he is right about that, which I believe he

is, then the response of like we now we really need to do something is the worst possible response. And I think we fell right into what bin Laden's trap was, which was like bin Laden explicitly said. I mean, this was his goal, his his goal He didn't think toppling the World Trade Center was going to bring down the United States of America He thought that he could lure us into wars that would bankrupt our country and that that could bring down The United States of America and so that was kind of the whole plan. What do you think happened with bin Laden? it's very strange that they never showed his body. And it's very strange that, like, I wonder, you know, there's one Navy SEAL that's credited with shooting him, right? Or at least, if not credited, he's publicly stated, this is the man who shot bin Laden and he sold books.

And then a lot of people either disagreed with him or disagree with his choice to go public with him Yeah, I've met that guy before but I you know, I don't know It did it certainly seemed really shady That they did it the way they did it that you wouldn't feel like just and it's surprising that you would think just for Political reasons just for like to bring closure to the american people you'd want to like demonstrate and they got rid of his body at sea right which is wild too and they had some excuse that didn't really make sense over that um but what's the excuse and something like religion yeah we had to do it consistent with like a muslim burial or something like that yeah which it's just none of it really added up but anyway i mean i don, I don't know. I mean, I do. I do tend to think that, you know, I think bin Laden's dead and he was once alive. I don't know exactly what happened there. But to me, the bigger thing that's just like so crazy is that. So we got him in. What was it? 2012. And here we are in 2022. We just ended the war in Afghanistan,

you know, a few months ago, and then we still have wars going on all throughout the Middle East that no one really seems to care about anymore. Isn't Bin Laden's son an artist or something? I think one of them was, yeah. He's got a very, I mean, his whole family is a very rich, connected Saudi family. A lot of them weren't like with his terrorist thing either. Like he was like, oh, that's crazy. Uncle Osama.

Well, his terrorist thing was fueled by the fact that the United States funded the Mujahideen to fight off the Soviets. Well, right. So there were several kind of like layers to it is like that number one, right? So in 1979 to 1980, we funded the Mujahideen, which was his group and funded, armed and trained them on how to lure a superpower into an unwinnable war and beat them through guerrilla warfare to bankrupt their country. I mean, that one kind of came back to bite us. But then ultimately what happened is that we, so we used these guys and then we ultimately radicalized them against us. And so we, the Americans basically propped up the governments in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia.

And these were the governments that they were really like opposed to. And particularly it was the George H.W. Bush's war in Iraq. So if you guys do you remember the not as popular war in Iraq that everyone said was just a cakewalk like that? in these specials on TVs. And this just showed how great it was that America can go to war now. It's like the Soviet Union collapsed. We're the superpower in the world. And look how easy war is. We can just go right in there, topple these countries and win.

We don't even have to take the guy out of power. You know, easy peasy. Except 30 years more of war with that country. And one of the little side effects of that war was that it really pissed off Osama bin Laden. And we put these bases in Saudi Arabia to launch the war, you know, in Iraq. And that really pissed off the bin Ladenites because this is like, you know, their holy land. And now there's this foreign military with bases in their land. So this was infuriating to them. And then the blockade against Iraq, the sanctions and the continued bombing campaigns by Clinton, where like hundreds of thousands of people died. They were really furious about that. And there was so much like provocative. Have you ever seen the thing where Madeleine Albright was asked about the 500,000 children dying in Iraq.

You ever seen this? No. Jamie, can you find that? Madeleine Albright, 500,000 children dead in Iraq. Now, just to keep this in mind, they're not talking about the George H.W. Bush's war. They're not talking about George W. Bush's war. They're talking about Bill Clinton's sanctions on Iraq, the blockade that they had around the country in between those two wars.

And they ask her, this is the type of stuff that really... I'm not saying... I know there's people out there who will argue it's like, no, it's because they're crazy terrorists and it's all of this. I'm saying this is the type of stuff that turned young, angry Muslim people to be willing to join up with Osama bin Laden's cause. And it's, do you have it? I found a recent article about the protest. No, just like YouTube.

I'm looking. YouTube it. Madeleine Albright, 500,000 kids. It should come up quick. It's like pretty famous fucking thing. But yeah, that's it. The second one right there. Well, it's not linked to YouTube.

Oh, oh, oh. It's linked to a website where they're hosting it. All right, all right. But yeah, it's just a pretty crazy little moment of what the mentality was for... We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.

So that's, yeah, you know, 500,000 children starving to death is just an acceptable price to make sure, you know, that we keep our foreign policy going. A crazy statement, but it's also a crazy question. Is the price worth it? Nobody wanted 500,000 kids to die, right? So saying, is the price worth it? And then you know, it was like a UN study that found that it might've been like, maybe it wasn't 500,000. It might've only been a couple thousand children, a couple hundred thousand children. But this is, this type of shit was going on. And this is real. This is what bin Laden, you know, wrote about in his declaration of war against America. The, basically the complaint was that we, uh, we prop up, uh, brutal dictators in the Muslim world. We prop up Israel, who's oppressing the Palestinians,

and that our military interventions in Iraq and in other Muslim countries have killed a whole bunch of innocent people. And this was the shtick he used to recruit people. Whether he believed it or not, I don't know, but this is what he used to recruit people. And so the lesson of 9-11 should have been that if you, if you do these things in the middle East, if you have these military interventions, if you kill all these people, if you have your secretary of state on television saying the price of 500,000 dead children over there is worth it,

you know, there's a cost to that. And in this case, the cost turned out to be 9-11. And the cost turned out to be that people, you know, people are going to hate you so much that they're willing to try to come kill people over here. And in response to that, we decided, well, the lesson is that we got to go fight more wars over there. And it's been 20 years of fighting wars since then 21 years of fighting wars since then and there's only more bin Laden night terrorists than there were before It's been and and trillions of dollars and you know millions of lives I mean like there are millions. I agree with it. I'm not disputing it. Is there any argument that?

People make that is even remotely compelling that if we didn't do that, there would have been a superpower with nuclear capabilities that is run by a brutal dictator that would have had substantially more control and more ability to enforce their regime throughout the world. I haven't heard anyone make that argument. I think it's almost impossible for anyone to argue that as bad as they were, that Saddam Hussein still being here, Gaddafi still being here, would not be a better situation than what we've had. Can I say this to answer that question? Because I think this is very relevant to what you're asking so, um Bill Kristol, do you know who he is? Right? So he was the the editor for weekly standard for a long in many ways

He was the leading intellectual neocon so the the Cheney the Cheney I kind of Intellectual who was all about all of these wars So he had a debate a like a so it was an Oxford-style debate at the Soho Forum, which is this debate thing in New York City run by Gene Epstein. He's a brilliant economist. He puts together these debates. He debated Scott Horton, the guy I was just telling you about, who's my guy on foreign policy. It's really great. I highly recommend people check it out. It's on YouTube. So there's Bill Kristol and they're debating about regime change wars and

whether they're good for America or not. And one person asked bill crystal and this is bill crystal he is the you know bush cheney we have to you know we have to go fight all this war on terror is the biggest cheerleader of all of it and they asked him what can you look at to one intervention one military intervention that was successful like what intervention, one military intervention that was successful? Like what, what is one military intervention that you could look at and say, this was a success. And he said the Balkans in the nineties, which I don't agree with, but leaving that aside, he did not even try to point to one of the, he would not even try to say Iraq or Afghanistan or Somalia or Libya or Syria or Niger or Yemen. He would not even dare because no one, even he could not possibly come up with

an argument to say that this would have been worse. What did these guys say went wrong? Like when they say like what we, what we have done, would have done differently to be successful in these places where we would have mitigated all these lives of innocent civilians and well there there will be some people who some of those right-wing hawk types who would have at the time at least blamed Obama for not being hawkish enough you know he just shouldn't have he shouldn't have draw down he should have surged more yeah and if only that we could have won it. But the problem with that is that, I mean, he I mean, he sent in like 70,000 troops to Afghanistan. Right. Didn't do anything. Just extended the war longer. Look at what happened as we left. It was the same thing as would have happened in the beginning.

as would have happened in the beginning. McMaster thinks that we should have left 10,000 people in Afghanistan to keep the Taliban from coming in and taking over. And then if they wanted to get out their equipment, they should have done it slowly. They shouldn't have just left everything behind. Well, I think the problem with that, and I don't know, I'd be interested to hear how he would respond to this, but this is a big thing that people like.

So we had a very small footprint in Afghanistan toward the end. Right. And there wasn't that much violence. And so then a lot of people tend to have this attitude of like, well, then why do we pull them out? We could have just kept them in there. But that's not exactly true. The thing is that we had a deal with the Taliban that we were leaving and the deal was kind of a ceasefire until we leave. But we're leaving. And the Taliban was keeping to that deal. But if we now Joe Biden came in, thefire until we leave, but we're leaving. And the Taliban was keeping to that deal. But if we now Joe Biden came in, the deal was we leave in May and he pushed it back to September. And the Taliban was kind of like, all right. And they kind of kept, there still wasn't a lot of violence going on, but if we hadn't have left, there's no guarantee at all that they would have

kept that ceasefire. They might've got right back to war, in which case we would have needed a hell of a lot more than 10,000 people there to do it. So there, I really don't think there was any way, um, to do this. The best way to do it would have been to not fight the war to begin with. We never needed to go to war with the Taliban. I mean, even if you wanted to go to war to take out Al Qaeda, we did that very quickly after nine of the nine eleven and they had uh... they had uh... uh... bin laden cornered at one point and a whole bunch of the military people there were asking for uh... offer backup they didn't give it to him

they let him escape into pakistan and then decided the mission was regime change against the taliban which was never necessary is all the stupid from the beginning. But I don't think it's so evident that, and I think Biden, which I don't give him credit for a lot of things, but I think he was right about this, that he realized that he was going to be caught

between two decisions, which was either to pull out or surge. I don't think there was an option to just keep the troop levels there. And I think he just wasn't going to double down. Have you seen the latest Kyle Dunnigan, Biden impression? No, I don't think I have. Kyle Dunnigan and Kurt Metzger created a new Biden one. They've got it so down. His Biden is fucking amazing excellent it's so good it's so good but here play it because it's it's on the instagram i put it on my instagram too it's so fucking good here

we go give me some volume united states my fellow jama, the nation is in a crisis. The Decepticon variant Hobo 19 is still killing fat people. Inflation is destroying our car jobs, and now that Ukraine is being sexually raped. That is why

I've asked Congress to order a full-scale attack on Joe Rogan. Not Joe Rogan. The Russian guy. The guy with the shirt. Pony Rogan. The Russian guy. The guy with the shirt. Poodie Tang, man. He's a bad dude. We've got to come together, man.

He's got our cranes. He's got all our cranes. We need a better Build Back. The Build Back Better Plan, man. You say it three times fast, pal. You say it. God, piece of shit. Anyway, let's start the show.

God damn, that is perfect. It's so good. But it's so crazy that, like, if you did that with Obama, people would go, what? That doesn't make any sense. Well, yeah. Doesn't make any sense. If you do that with Clinton, but that's not how he is. But you do that with Biden and people go, oh, God, that's so close. Like there's so many times where he just says a non-word.

And you're like, what? How did you just do that? You didn't even correct yourself. You just plowed over this non-word that you said? It's unbelievable. It's like a real emperor has no clothes type situation where it's like even like the, like most people in the corporate press,

like Fox News aside, but like CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC types, they hated Trump so much. And I understand why they hated Trump. You know, they wanted him out, thought it was an embarrassment, incompetent, he pissed them off. So they're like, they hated Trump so much. And I understand why they hated Trump. They wanted him out, thought he was an embarrassment, incompetent, he pissed them off. So they went in with Biden.

But now they're in this position where they have to pretend that they don't see what we all see. Like you just have to pretend. You're not seeing the... They're like, oh, he's a totally competent leader. He's got all his thoughts together. Totally. Too young. I'd say too young for the job, probably.

Nobody's saying that but they have to pretend that you don't see a guy who's clearly too old has clearly lost a step is like completely out of it and it's i i gotta say i i enjoy it and i like him being the face well dude he's only a year in yeah it's gonna go bad he's a year in he's a year and he's he's aged 40 years in a year. I mean, if you just go look at a speech, I think Joe Biden was I think he always thought he was smarter than he was even back in the day. But if you listen to a clip of Joe Biden five years ago, seven years ago, listen to the way he talked. He is clearly lost a couple steps oh yeah since then and not even before he got into the white house like he was and now since being in it's it's bad um yeah i don't know how

this whole thing's uh gonna go it's not gonna go with him he's not gonna make it into a second term unless they fucking have that dude in a hyperbaric chamber every day for 90 minutes and they fill him up with steroids and antioxidants and and then they got kamala harris who almost will have to be their next no i don't think so well the problem they're going to have is like i understand why you'd say you don't think so and part of that's because like people don't like her and she's not good at this um but the problem is the democrat kind of woke establishment, how can they really argue that the vice president, who oh just so happens to be a woman of color, that she should be skipped over? For who?

She has the lowest approval ratings in history. Well, why do you think that is, Joe? Because we live in a racist society. No, I'm saying she can make this argument. No, she can't. Not her. The problem is she's so bad. She really is.

She's the worst. You know, do you think it's time? I think it's time to do what we're always doing where it's always the time. The time is now to be doing the things that we've always been doing. Like, what? She is incredibly bad at this. She's so bad. She's incredibly bad at this. She's so bad. She's incredibly bad at this.

She's so bad. But the problem is, if they do go with her, I mean, man, is she beatable. They're not going to go with her. They're not going to go with her. She couldn't make it past the primaries of Tulsi Gabbard. Remember that? Oh, yeah. Tulsi Gabbard nuked her.

Yeah, it was great. It was glorious. She didn't have a goddamn thing to say because it was all true. Everything she said was accurate. And it was a great thing that she took her out on. Like, it's like this idea that I think one of the things

that is the most infuriating to regular people is that it's like the, and this is one of the things through COVID that's been infuriating to people. You see these videos of the other day

with Stacey Abrams in a classroom. Oh my God, isn't that crazy? All the kids have masks on, but you don't. And she's obese. Right. And you're fine imposing these draconian rules on everybody else, knowing that you're going to live above them. And in Kamala Harris's case, it was the most despicable hypocrisy that you yourself laugh about how you smoked weed, and yet you, as a prosecutor, threw other human beings in cages

for lengthy prison sentences for the same thing that you laugh about when admitting you do it. Like, how despicable. It's despicable. Yeah. And then when Stacey Abrams got confronted about that photo, she cried racism.

Yeah, this is how disgusting my opposition is, that they would use this event on Black History Month. Oh my God. It's so crazy. Isn't it? It's one of the things I hate the most about COVID, or I shouldn't say hate the most, but one of the things that makes me real uncomfortable, and I noticed this even here today, like in the hotel that I'm staying at, where it's like, it's here in Texas.

So like most people aren't wearing masks. Like I'm not wearing a mask in the hotel and stuff. And they don't say anything to you about it. There's no mandate. And so now the, the staff is, which is a little weird. Um,

and some people there are, and it's like, fine if you want to go ahead, but most people aren't. But then it's like, you see like the maids coming and they're all masked up and like, I'm not. Yeah.

And they're like, come in to clean your room and they have to wear a mask and I just hate this like feel like there's already this thing where it's kind of like, hey, like you're cleaning my room for me and like it's already a little bit of a weird feeling like I'm just relaxing and you're cleaning everything up and then you have to, I've been at clubs

like around the country where like the busboys have masks on and you're in this environment like you're on stage, you're having a lot of fun you're telling jokes everyone's in the audience they're having a lot of fun they're drinking they're laughing everyone's having fun the one person here who's working and doing you know kind of a this isn't really fun i'm bussing tables and that's the guy who's got to wear the mask i guess it's for appearances but you just like let him well he's being told he has to i'd imagine it's It's much worse for me when I see these gala events where all the participants are maskless and all the staff have masks on. And they're standing there with their hands behind their back.

Like your servant class? Yes. They can't even breathe out of their mouth and nose? Yeah. It's fucking weird, man. It's weird. I was watching Bellator the other day, and the Bellator fighters,

I don't know if it's like a commission thing for, they were in Arizona. They had to put their masks on as they got out of the cage. So here they are having fucking wars in the cage. And then, look, safety first. And then they get off, they got to put this fucking cloth mask on on they were waiting for them at the gate so as soon as they open maybe it was like a Showtime rule cuz I get showtime MMA it's like this

you're like it the guys like in your guard and you cut him open with an elbow and he's just bleeding directly into your face but then when you leave they're like don't forget a cloth mask yeah Yeah, you got to put that mask on when you walk outside this fucking fenced-in environment of doom. Safety first. I'm so looking forward to this weekend. Israel Adesanya and Robert Whitaker. Fuck. That's fucking, that's an incredible fight.

That's the fight, man. At 185, that's the fight. Bobby Knuckles versus the king. Can Whitaker close the gap between what happened that first time and now? I mean, he's a really, really tough, talented fighter. But, God damn it, Izzy really starched him that first time. Stylebender is so good. His striking is so elite.

The problem with what everybody does compared to what he does is man you see in the paulo costa fight where paulo costa i mean you're talking about a guy who walked down yoel romero right paulo costa smashes people he just puts it on people it comes forward like this juggernaut and stylebender just picked him apart just picked him apart found those openings and just kept chopping at him and then you see like a look on his face like towards the end of the first round He's realizing I'm fucked here like I can't even touch this guy I'm gonna lit up like he was trying to walk him down and then out of Sonia's footwork So good that he just like couldn't like walk him down

And he keeps like he keeps like stepping off to the side and hitting him with different shit And then he's hitting him with these leg kicks and he can't get the timing. And then you kind of see it starting to settle in where it's like, oh, now his leg's really compromised. So now he really can't walk him down because he's just dancing around him. And then he's like looking low and coming with high kicks and stuff. And you're like, oh, shit.

Like you just see it start to settle into his mind. It's like you're in quicksand falling deeper and deeper into it. You're like, I'm fucked. And then i'm more fucked and more fucked and then the people who really once they stop he humps you the the the people who really appreciate stylebender if you talk to like really high level muay thai people really high level strikers they're the ones who like dude what he's doing is art it's art like the first fight with Whitaker like towards the end of the first round he had him fucked and then when he KOs him he's like leaning back avoiding a shot and cracks him yeah no it's

so good he's so good but I want to see like what adjustments Whitaker's made I mean obviously I think he's had at least three victories Pull up Robert Whitaker's well he beat cannon near he beat Gaslam mm-hmm And I think there was another one in there. I think they were all decisions But also they were pretty one-sided super tough guys and very tough guys and very dominant performances. Yeah, I Mean and you know remember gastelum had a war with style bender uh yeah oh darren till yeah that's right the other one that was another big one yeah yeah so those are three like elite fighters and i believe very good strikers and i believe he had takedowns in all of those fights which was not typically the way he had fought

i mean like i'm sure he's always had some wrestling, but he wasn't really using his wrestling. I don't remember any fights where he took guys down before then. He was always just knocking guys out and stuffing takedowns and knocking guys out. And so it kind of adds an interesting element to it that he's now been, like, using his offensive wrestling a little bit more because for the Israel Adesanya fight,

whether or not he can take him down, I think he really needs to at least make Israel Adesanya think that he might be trying to take him down. Well, Marvin Vittori got him down a little bit in the first round, but then Israel put the stop to all that shit, and he fucked him up. And Vittori's another one. Vittori's a fucking gorilla. That is a big guy. When I'm standing next to Vittori, I can't imagine how

he makes 185 pounds. I mean, when he's so big, he looks like a heavyweight. Whitaker is not that type of big. No, he's not that type of big. But Jan Blachowicz, on the other hand, is a really big guy. And he was able to control Israel, take them down. And really the ground game was where he scored probably the most points and had the most dominance in that fight without a sign yet. So a lot of people look at that performance and say, well, if Jan can do it, maybe this is the way that someone can beat him. I don't think Whitaker is obviously not as big and as strong. But what he could maybe do is I think at least if he can land a takedown or two and at least be able to mix up the threat of a takedown with his very good striking,

which is probably not as good as Israel Adesanya's striking, but still very good. I mean, you don't want to get hit by that dude. Maybe that's his way to have a shot. I wouldn't bet on Whitaker in this fight, but I do. I'm interested to see it. It's very interesting. Because Whitaker is so smart, and he's really young still. I think

Whitaker just turned 30. How old is Whitaker? I feel like he's 30. I feel like he's a couple years younger than Disney. Yeah, that sounds about right. He's turned 31. Okay. So he's just turned 31, and Israel is 32 or 33?

So this is 32. So the most interesting fight right now is that fight, but that's only because alex pereira doesn't have a lot of ufc fights there's still a lot of questions about whether he'll be able to like deal with you know make wrestler like if he can get if he can go through the ranks and get enough wins where now it's he justifies like a title shot but if he does that would that would set up like the biggest middleweight fight ever yeah that could be set up after this fight if if pereira gets one big victory i mean think about

yuri prohaska right yuri's gonna fight for the light heavyweight title yuri starches vulcan ozdemir and then he starches dominic reyes and they're like get him in there title fight that's enough yeah i mean i think that's the same with Pereira. I mean, Pereira, the first guy he beat was, you know, not an elite fighter or a top contender, a very good fighter, but he knocked that guy out with that flying knee. But he did, am I getting this right? I think he got taken down in the first round, right? Yes.

So I think he got taken down and held down for a little while. Then they reset in round two, knocks him out. So it still leaves you with this question in your mind of like, obviously we know the So I think he got taken down and held down for a little while. Then they reset in round two, knocks him out. So it still leaves you with this question in your mind of like, obviously we know the guy's striking is insane. His knockout power is insane. But if a guy at this level already took you down and held you down, what if Derek Brunson fights you and that guy gets you down?

I mean, what's going to... Maybe that would be a good fight, because isn't Brunson fighting Kananirin right now? Brunson's fighting Kananirin. That's a big fight, too. So whoever wins that fight, if Brunson wins that fight, which is big, because Brunson is a very good wrestler, then you see Brunson versus Pereira. That actually, if Brunson would sign up for that, that makes sense. Or... It doesn't make sense for Brunson, though.

If you don't want to do that... Because Brunson so high he probably no he probably wants a title shot yeah he wants to fight Sean Strickland and then winner gets a title fight or something like that but maybe they're not going to do it that way and they'd rather build this story and put him in there with someone more likely to strike with him Sean Strickland I mean bro Sean Strickland might grapple with him though I mean Sean Strickland's boxing is excellent but I don't know if you're Sean Strickland and you're fighting that fight. If you were in Sean Strickland's corner, wouldn't you be like, maybe try to take this guy down? Strickland's an unusual character because Strickland stands so

straight up. He stands completely straight up, but guys can't take him down. His boxing's very good. That jab is incredible. His distance, his ability to understand distance is so good. That jab is incredible. His distance, his ability to understand distance is so good. And they attribute that to all the rounds that he spars. He apparently spars a lot. He's like, he just gets to the gym and he goes to war with everybody. He just does a shitload of rounds. And because of all that sparring, he has this amazing sense of timing and distance.

And that guy, Jack Hermanson's no joke. He's very good. And he had no chance in taking him down he never came close hermanson's an excellent fighter but whoever the judge is who gave him that fight should not judge fights anymore never again i mean that's insane insane he went around he definitely didn't win the fight you gave him the fight you gave him the whole fight who looks at that fight and feels like please take me through it explain to me Which three rounds I don't know who the judge was we don't even have to call that person out, but whoever it was

Don't do that again Stop you don't know what you're doing not only that this isn't even a complicated fight to judge right This is not like a jiu-jitsu match Where you know like look if a guy takes a guy down and if it turns into like a more of a jiu-jitsu Situation where he comes really close to finishing with a triangle really really close to finishing with an arm bar, but he gets out of it and then he hits him with a punch. Like, who wins that exchange? Complicated, right? There's various factions that would think that the jiu-jitsu guy scored.

Other people say, hey, he didn't submit him, so it didn't count. He didn't take any damage. I see those two different arguments, but in this case, it's a stand-up fight. He didn't take any damage. I see those two different arguments, but in this case, it's a stand-up fight. Or even in a stand-up fight like, let's say, Nate Diaz-Conor McGregor 2, where you had this round in the second round where Conor McGregor drops Nate Diaz a couple times. But he drops him with one punch. Nate falls to his guard and he's like, come on in, come on in. And he backs up.

And then at the end of the round, Nate Diaz puts him against the cage and just unloads with these combinations, hits him with a ton. Now, what do you value more? There's a debate there. This isn't boxing. This isn't like an automatic I have to score it because you drop down. He's telling you come down with me and you're backing off. And then he hits. But this wasn't even anything like that.

They're just standing. One guy's trying to take the other guy down and can't, and he's getting punched in the head more than he's punching this guy in the head. Clearly, like his whole face was swollen up. Yeah. I mean, it's a really bad decision. And the fact that it was a split decision, like, I see that it's heartbreaking. That drives me crazy because if you don't know the way it works,

folks that are listening, when the way the UFC's pace structure works, say if you're Sean Str strickland you know i don't know what he got per that fight let's say he gets 250 000 he might get 250 000 to fight and 250 000 to win like he might get an additional x amount whatever his paycheck is to win so like when they have that kind of a pay structure you're literally getting robbed of half your pay because a judge sucks or two judges suck. All he takes is two judges that suck. One other guy like that guy and you're fucked out of your money. Yeah.

Did you have someone's a big John McCarthy used to say this where he goes that judges have some someone's livelihood in their hands and refs have someone's health in their hands. And there's like a lot of there's a lot of pressure on that. It's a very important like thing. And most of us, I mean, some people are a little bit crazy, but there are fights out there where it really is close. And it's like, look, I understand where someone might see it this way. Someone sees it the other way. I understand. So I rewatched recently the Dominic Cruz versus TJ Dillashaw. Oh, yeah. And that fight is so close, man. Very close.

And there's so much action. And it's like, I don't really know. I mean, this is. Great fight. Cruz ended up winning it. I have no problem with that. I'm sure someone in TJ's camp would be like, no way. We won that.

I get that, too. It was great. I mean, Dominic was like landing these takedowns, but then TJ would pop back up. And then you're like, well, how much does that count for? Right. I mean, he got him down, but he pops right back up. I mean, I don't know. It's like all this stuff is very hard.

I forgot that Dominic beat TJ. Yeah, he took his title. Took back his title. Wow. And then he went and lost to Cody. Cody Nol cody nola yeah yeah dominic cruz's last fight was incredible incredible that was one of my favorite fights i've ever watched it was a dominic cruz fight like he like he's 37 years old i think now and not just that turn back the time but he got caught bad first round in the first round and then fought a dominant Cruz fight after that.

And he got caught by Munoz, the guy who knocked out Cody Nola. Munoz can crack. It was like, it answered every question about him. It almost made you go like, Ooh, this guy is,

hasn't lost anything. He was moving as good as he's ever moved. He was striking as good as he's ever struck. And his chin held up too. So you're like, well, that's a problem now for that division. That's a good argument for him not getting

some fights stopped that were stopped, like the Henry Cejudo fight, where he felt like it was stopped too soon. Like he's like, yeah, I get hurt, give me a chance, I'll get out of it. That was a little bit quick, that stoppage with Cejudo. He did get hurt. He got hurt a little bit quick,

but I'm in his corner in that regard. Like I feel like a referee has to take into account the resiliency of the fighter. And guys like Dominic Cruz, his mind is so strong. I was so happy to interview him. Yeah. Because I love the guy. So watching him win like that after, like,

I mean, no one has had their resolve tested more than Dominic Cruz. He's had so many surgeries. He's had so many fucking catastrophic injuries. He missed years of his prime. Yeah. Missed years of his prime. Like when he was the absolute best guy in the division, no question.

Yep. Came back, got the title back, then lost it, then had more injuries after that. Yep. Came back and just sort of watched that. It was like, at that point, it's like, I don't even care how how you feel about him you have to be rooting for this dude at this point yes you have to be yeah i mean or not i mean whatever he's an i guess you don't have to but i think you should amazing commentator too he's one of my favorite commentators he's he's so technical he's very good at like breaking down scenarios and what's happening because he's not just an mma fighter

but he's and not just an analyst, but he also coaches people. So it's like his, and you know, he has a website now. I believe he has a website dedicated to tutorials specifically on his footwork, which is amazing. I mean, Dominic Cruz is like a real innovator in terms of footwork and movement. Like when he came along, it it took alpha male many fighters to fight him before they kind of cracked the code and they cracked it with cody but i attribute a lot of that to cody's skills lined up well with dominic skills cody was a very good wrestler who is wicked boxing

knockout power and he's fast as fuck yeah the speed was a big factor in that too. Big factor. And that had, I mean, and it was also the team at Alpha Male had prepared Uriah Faber, TJ. They had prepared for Dominic so many times. They knew what to expect. They had a lot of his patterns sort of in their head. Yeah, for sure. Who else is on this weekend? Oh, Taito Iwasa and Derek Lewis.

For who gets to be that guy in the division? That's a good fight, too. Derek Lewis and Tai Tui Vassa is a great fight. You know, they're talking about Jon Jones and Stipe for an interim title because Francis has to get his knee reconstructed. Well, I saw Jon Jones tweeted calling him out. I hope that happens. What else is going on in this card? Anything else?

Scroll. The Pete Bull. Yeah. How about Andrej Lovski? Still doing it. Fucking swinging. Keep swinging. It's the cannoneer Derek Brunson.

That's a big fight. It's a very big fight. Ever since Derek Brunson dyed his hair blonde, he's undefeated. You don't want to see blonde Derek Brunson in the octagon. That's a very tough guy. Blonde Brunson's the wrong guy. Well, he does seem to have really turned a corner where he kind of went from being this guy who was almost falling into a gatekeeper type status, like we start thinking you're

a real contender if you can beat Derek Brunson, to going on this streak now where you're like, ooh, Derek Brunson is actually really looking like he's putting it all together now. That's pretty interesting. That's another example how goddamn good Stylebender is. stylebender lit him up like a christmas tree yeah yeah he did that was that was the one with that but that's almost what i meant by that is that was the fight where we all like kind of started realizing how how good he was putting it together for mma yeah you know like where you're like oh wow and he can he can really deal. And with a wrestler too. And he was really able to deal with that. Such a great sport. Yeah. It's the best. I never get tired of watching fights. I never, never get tired of it.

It's the only, uh, it's the only spot. I mean, I grew up loving, like I loved basketball and I loved, I used to, I used to play basketball. I used to love watching baseball and football and all this. I don't watch any sport anymore, but I watch all the UFCs. Yeah. Because I just can't. It's like I got two kids now, and I got a career and got all this stuff. So you're like, look, I can only justify so much time

that I'm spending on this. Yeah. You know? And it's like, but there's one, I'm going to pick one, and if I have to pick one, that's like I'm not going to miss the UFC.

Exactly. I don't care. Dave Smith, you're the fucking man. Thanks for coming. I appreciate you. Thank you so much, brother. I always enjoy it. You're the fucking man thanks for coming I appreciate you thank you so much brother I always enjoy it you're a fucking I'm just

in awe of you dude it's incredible what you've you've built here man well it's a glorious accident and whether you want it or not now you have it okay I'll take it oh can I just say that by the way you know my podcast part of the problem but me and Lewis just started doing an MMA podcast.

Oh, nice. Yo MMA Rap. Every week we wrap up the last week in MMA. And we're just idiots about it. Is your logo like Yo MTV Raps? You know it is, Joe Rogan. You know it is. But we're just literally, it's just being silly and funny and having fun with it.

Beautiful. But yeah, check that out. Beautiful. All right. And Instagram, Twitter, it's all Dave Smith? At Comic Dave Smith on Twitter, at The Problem Dave Smith on Instagram. Okay. Beautiful.

Thank you, brother. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.