The Joe Rogan Experience - #2147 - Mike Baker

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Mike Baker is a former CIA covert operations officer and current CEO of Portman Square Group, a global intelligence and security firm. He’s also the host of the popular "President’s Daily Brief" podcast: a twice daily news report on critical events happening around the globe available on all podcast platforms.  www.portmansquaregroup.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast checking out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Mike Baker, it's very important that I ask you about this. What's that? Because I know you're an expert on conflict. How do you feel about the Kendrick Lamar and Drake beef? Man, I am so glad you asked me about this because my boys, you know,

I got three boys and all three of them have mentioned this in the past few days, right? And they want to talk about it, right? So Scooter will say, God, did you hear what he said? And I was like, honestly, no, I haven't. But they've all brought this up. I am completely unfamiliar with the, although it sounds like the old days, East versus West, right? In the old rap battle. I think it's a personality thing because one of them is Toronto, so it's actually America versus Canada. Oh, well, that's right.

There's a real conflict there. And which one is the little guy? Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick Lamar, that's right. Yeah, so that's what my middle boy Sluggo said. I think he's like five foot one or something. He's not a big fella No him and Drake have been going at it now four songs a piece. So eight songs dedicated to beef I think that's fantastic. I think we need more of that right? It's better than the Hamas conflict

Yeah, security guard injured in shooting outside Drake's home in Toronto. Oh, Jesus Christ Damn it. Was it drive-by? Yeah, and the security guard was outside so he was shot I think unconsciously taken to the hospital oh my god see it was do not know whether the shooting was related well take a fucking guess you think it was or was a drive-by might be related well that's when shit gets scary when people start shooting at each other yeah no I get when it was just cuz like I think it was Slugger who told me that one

of them, I think it must have been Drake who was talking about his, he dissed him by talking about his size seven feet or something, right? And that's fine. I think it's great. If everybody were just like, if the Israelis and Hamas would go after each other in song. Battle raps. Yeah, battle raps. Yeah, why not?

Yeah, dance off. That's how they should do it. Yeah. This is, it's hilarious, but. Yeah, yeah dance off. That's how they should do it. Yeah, this is this It was hilarious, but everybody's invested in this beef My oldest daughter and my wife were in the car this morning and they were having a conversation These two grown-ass women having a conversation about who's the superior rapper and they felt that Kendrick is a better lyricist Although Drake has more hits Drake has more hits started from the the bottom, now we're here.

I mean, look, he's got some bangers. They both have bang. I love Kendrick Lamar. I just wish these two would hug it out. Yeah, well, now it's moved on to the firefight stage of the battle. Yeah, well, now they're shooting. Yeah.

What did you say, Jamie? Kendrick's first big point was that it's 20 verse 1, because Drake has all those ghost riders helping him make all these hits. So that's an allegation in the rap community apparently that Drake hires ghost writers. I don't know how I feel about that. So I feel like the same way I feel like if I find out someone there's a banging song, like Beyonce has a song out.

I don't get upset if she didn't write it. Do you get upset? It's mostly only in rap that people are like, you didn't write that. Like comedy. Like comedy. Like the same thing with comedy Country song they don't care country. They do care Guys like Zack Bryan shine through because they write their own shit, but it's very collaborative the country's a collaborative sure Tennessee whiskey right Tennessee whiskey was a song Chris Stapleton

Yeah, but but you know he didn't write it and came out. I thought he did write it. No, he came out. I think he performed it. Someone else wrote it. Came out years before. He wrote a lot for other people though, correct? Yeah.

But yeah, I'm just like, I haven't even think, there's tons of songs like that. They write for each other. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. There's a lot of those guys that like, Chris Tableton made a living for a long time as a writer. Yeah.

Because people looked at him like, come on man, you ain't sexy. Meanwhile, they were wrong And it's a very it's a smaller community, right? They think you know the country music community and in that does tend to get more crossover between musicians and writers right a lot of them will start out like you said as writers Tennessee whiskey country song written by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove Originally recorded by artist David Allen co for his album, the same name, peaking at number 77 in the Billboard Hot Country Singles in 1981. Wow, George Jones, 1983 version of the song

was included on his album Shine On and reached number two on the Hot Country Singles chart. What great artist. Did you hear that Randy Travis is using AI now to make new songs because he was paralyzed by a stroke, but because they could take his voice, which is an iconic voice. Yeah. Randy Travis has an incredible voice.

But because of AI, they can get recordings of him singing and he could plug it into AI and he can still make songs. And you know how much of a recording they need nowadays to actually mimic the entire range of a person's voice as 30 seconds What less than that now start it not that long ago? It was 30 seconds now you need a snippet and by a snippet I mean seconds yeah, and you can then you can you can then mimic that voice through a range of emotions and and and Scenarios it, it's stunning. There was a guy who just got fired because he made a fake AI recording of a guy he worked

for saying a bunch of racist things. And the guy, like everybody was attacking him, he got in trouble, and then they somehow another did an analysis on it. The intellect director did it to like the principal of the high school. Right. Because he was about to get fired, so he was like, instead of me getting fired, watch this. Right, he thought he was being slick. Yeah.

But he's a dummy, and he didn't know that they can tell. They can analyze audio recordings and tell whether or not they're real. How do they do that? How can they tell? Well, that one specifically, I think someone else was like, it was a conversation between two people and they both were like, I didn't hear that and I didn't say that. So they're like, all right, well, what could have happened? I mean, I think they got the guy's computer to find out what he did.

So he must have had a secret recording and then in that secret recording, he took it and then threw it through AI and had him say a bunch of N words in there. Yeah. There's two aspects to this whole thing, right? There's the detection portion of it, right? Can you detect something like this is fake, whether it's audio, whether it's video, a combination of both. And then there's the other side of it, which is trying to stay up with the capabilities of those that are trying to do these identity thefts or whatever you want to call it. And that's sort of the proactive effort to lock down recordings.

And there's some interesting work being done in that space where if you film something, say you go to a campaign rally and you film that campaign rally, there are a handful of companies out there figuring out that you can essentially water market so that it cannot be fucked with, and that you can determine if it's an actual recording or not. And that's really, I mean, you think about how much disinformation is roiling around out there now. But detection, it's important, but it's not enough anymore.

So where the focus has to be is on ensuring that anything that's being recorded, whether it's a body cam for a police officer, whether it's maybe somebody's at a protest, right? And they're a protester or they're on the other side, whatever. To be able to film something and then ensure that it's accurate and true going forward, right? And that's a really important part because you can't... The detection side of it's important, but it can't stay up with the developments of all the folks out there, all the criminal gangs, criminal elements, and whether it's state-sponsored or not, that's out there, you know, just with this disinformation effort. So, I mean, it's a fascinating, it's a fascinating problem,

but people are getting duped constantly. It's a fascinating problem that is only going to get worse. As these new versions of AI get rolled out, it's going to be more and more difficult to detect what's true and what's fake. And people can do it on their computer so easy now. This one of Biden, he's walking and he pauses to talk to people and they CGI'd shit like that he's pooping himself. I saw that. The one where he kind of stops.

He's in that weird pause. Like he's got a fart. Yeah. You just see him poop himself. And people are out there saying, look, that's a mid-stage dementia stance, right? That's what they're saying now. They're talking about that.

I don't know about that, but... Well, something's going on. There are, if you talk about just, what do they call it, face swap, right? So, they can take a photo of somebody now, they can take a little snippet of somebody talking now, and there are over a hundred apps out there, readily available to anybody, right, that can basically do this face swap technology and put somebody else in there and criminal elements are doing it all the time. So if I'm a fraudster and I send a note, say, to somebody in procurement, I say, hey, you

need to send a check for $100,000 to our vendor, right, here's the details. Well, they might have protocols in place at the company says okay. Well first. This is a large transaction I better call the finance director right or whomever They've got a way that they can they can figure out how to spoof all of that right so you could be talking to whom you Think is the finance director, but they'll actually with the face swap technology. That's available out there right It's it's somebody having a conversation You think it's the finance director, but they're talking to you and- Completely different person.

Completely different person. Their voice gets changed, their face gets changed to look exactly like you. So I could use face swap technology that exists today. And with all the recordings that we have of you from this show. Oh, fuck yeah, yeah. 100%, we could have you saying a bunch of shit

that you never really said. And some shit that I probably did say over the years. Yeah, we've said a lot of shit. Yeah, there% we could have you saying a bunch of shit that you never really said And some shit that I probably did say Yeah, there's some shit but um, let me ask you this like when they're doing this this all this face swap technology and all this different stuff like What what can be done to try to keep ahead of it, to make sure, like from a national security perspective, like how do you, how do you keep, how do you know? Right. There's a couple parts to that. Like if Netanyahu all of a sudden has some crazy speech and says some wild shit and like,

we're going to war, like hey, is that real? Well, what they, I mean, again, part of it is like this there's a handful of companies out there and they will they they're able to again record and it instantly as it does it it embeds information right and embeds specific time location you know you're already in the recording it's in there, right? And then it's sort of a blockchain system where then on the other side, the person can look and go, yeah, this is accurate. This is correct, right?

But people have to be able to take that, and that's, I guess, where I'm going with this. People have to be able to take that step to ensure that what they're watching is accurate. So when people say, well, how do you prevent this? How do you keep this from happening? The unsatisfactory answer to a large degree is it comes down to individual people, right? Everybody has a big fucking responsibility now, more so than before, to understand what they're looking at listening to watching. Well, we're fucked. We're fucked.

Now we're really fucked. I don't want to, I don't want to, watching. Well, we're fucked. We're fucked. Now we're really fucked. I don't want to sound cynical. Because there's just too many people that are concerned about Drake and Kendrick Lamar and don't even know what's going on in Gaza. They're much more concerned with that. We have a lot of 84 IQers out there bouncing around, walking into traffic.

Yeah, 84, what, is that average nowadays? Or is that, I don't even know. I think it's 15% of the population is 84 and below, is that what it is what's the actual numbers like let's get a pie chart of IQ's see it's it's a standard deviation thing for see already I know you're above 84 just because you said that. Yeah, you said standard deviation. Any Googles with one hand. So like... That's because Carl's being petted. Almost no matter what thing you're trying to average out,

they almost always end up looking this way and 15% will always be on that side of it. Bro, what percentage? 0.1% are 55 and below? Fuck. 2% of the population is 70. Jesus. Between 55 and 70. 2% of the population is 70. Jesus! Between 55 and 70, 2% of the population. And then 14% of the population is 85. Yeah, but 34% is below 100. So most

people are between 85 and 115, and me, I'm in that sweet zone between 115 and 130. Oh yeah? Really? That's impressive. I suspect I'm to the left of that somewhere Yeah I've never taken an IQ test. I took one at two o'clock in the morning and I wasn't even awake I wanted to see and I said I should probably take some alpha brain take this bitch again and get fired up But I didn't I'm happy with my score. Yeah Really stupid, you know, a lot of people hanging out in the 85, the 115. I don't think, the real issue with all this stuff though is emotional intelligence and

social intelligence. And there's people that are very brilliant people that I know that suck at those other things and that's held them back in life. So are you smart? Are you really smart if your emotional intelligence sucks so hard? Your ability to read social cues, your ability to form meaningful friendships sucks so hard that you're isolated and nobody likes to be around you, but you have a high IQ. So I'm supposed to think that's good? That dumb. I mean it works for some people I suppose Doesn't well, that's a recipe for an unhappy life. Yeah stupid. Yeah. Well, I mean you never know you get you get somebody who's who?

You know, they're a brilliant scientist and they just they have very little social life. Maybe they're happy and in the science lab I don't know that's but I Agree empathy is I mean we try to work with our kids all the time on that, right? I mean you want a well-rounded kid. Our job is to raise not average children, but you want them to be well-rounded. And empathy, being able to read social cues, read a room, that is super important. My kids are all very kind and I love that. It makes me very very happy. They're very kind. They're kind to people. They're kind to their friends. They're kind to people. They feel bad when someone's not doing

well. They're kind. That means a lot. Yeah. I'm very happy they got that from us. Did they get that from you or did they get that from? Probably more from Mrs. Rogan. I'm nice though and I work real hard at it too because I don't have instincts to be nice. My instincts are not to be very nice. My instincts are survival of the fittest. It's very hard to put that aside. It's just kind sometimes. But it always feels better when I do.

It is. You know what? And that's how kids learn to do it. Right? I mean people always ask, you know, with parenting, the kids are watching from the time they're nuggets, right? And they absorb shit. And, you know, if you want your kid to be empathetic,

you've got to demonstrate that. You've got to demonstrate kindness. You've got to demonstrate consideration. Our boys, my daughter's great at it. My daughter is very good, and our boys are boys. And they're aggressive and competitive and all that. But I think ours probably follow the traditional sort of multi-kid path. So the oldest boy is empathetic and kind and considerate.

The youngest boy is probably a savage. Youngest boy, he's like the fucking mayor of party town. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. Because he's got to deal with the older brothers so he has to grow up quicker. Yeah, and the middle boy, he's so- He's usually better at things too. Yeah, actually, you know what? He's, as my wife says, who's the greatest person I know, she calls him the sleeper,

right? Because he kind of comes in on the radar. You don't expect him to be great at something, and then he is, right? Because he's been watching, and he's's pissed off and he wants to be better than his brothers. And then the middle boy is just like, he's just like, fuck you, get out of my way. He's the basketball player. He's down at IMG. He's into his own thing and he's a great kid, but he's just like, this is what I'm going to do. I don't know what you're doing or what you're doing, but here's me.

He's got to focus. That's because there's a lot of people around him who realize they can't concentrate on other people being happy. Got to do what he wants gonna do. I don't know what you're doing or what you're doing, but here's here's me. He's got a focus Yeah, that's cuz there's a lot of people around and realize it can't constrain other people being happy gotta do what he wants Yeah, that's right. So it is I mean it's it and I think that's not dynamic, right? It is and and you think about it and you think about they all grow up and people talk about this all the time So it's nothing new, but you know kids grow up in the same environment But yeah, and then they end up being so uniquely different in ways. They're different out of the box. Boy, genetics plays a factor. My God plays a factor. And you realize that when you see your kids grow up and you see traits that like there is no fucking way this is getting to you any way other than genetics. There's no way. Yeah. Because I mean at a certain point, yeah, they start to take some influence from their

friends. But by then, hopefully, you, they start to take some influence from their friends, you know, and they- Oh yeah. But by then, hopefully, you've kind of already set their, whatever, their moral compass, right? And they know what they're supposed to do. Maybe they stray off that path occasionally, right? But for the most part, no, I think you've got to set the parameters, you've got to set the course. Kids, little kids, want to know what the hell is expected of them.

I'll tell you one thing, reports from the front lines of kids in high school today, that woke shit's out the window. That word retard comes flying out of these kids' mouths. They're bringing that back strong. They are bringing that back strong. I'll tell you, that woke thing, it got into college, and then the high school kids the ones coming up now. Yeah, they are rejecting it I 100% agree with you and I know that because our youngest

Muggsy's like what 12 years old now and So he's in seventh grade and he it was in the complete blast zone of woke, right? Because and and like the oldest one who's you 16, he kind of had some of it. The middle one, again, didn't care. He was like, fuck you, you don't play ball, so I'm not paying attention to you. But the youngest one was in a complete firing zone of this woke culture. And you'll never meet a more conservative, sexist kid in your life. Cause he's just like, he'll come back and he'll tell us some stories from his, his school, which is a great school, but it's, it's pretty woke. It's pretty liberal.

Right. And you got, you got kids walking around as furries. You got a lot of multicolored hair. You got all sorts of things going on there. And, uh, and he'll come back and tell us stories and he just say, I just don't understand what the hell's happened. And so he works harder to sport Yeah That's what you get from a lot of people that work hard at sports people that value hard work and people that value hard work

Tend to be more conservative and more less inclined to indulge people on their mental illness, you know, oh, you're a cat No, you're not you have cat ears on they don't even look like a cat You don't even have a good costume on like you're not tricking people in the dark. Yeah. Okay? Shut the fuck up. You're not a cat. Yeah. You don't. Yeah. No. You're just 12 and really confused and I get it. Yeah. He came home one day and he said, he said some girl turned around dressed as a cat and kicked him, right? Because she thought he had pulled her tail and then apparently she hissed at him and walked away and he was like I didn't fucking pull her tail. Oh my god. I don't want anything to do with him.

Yeah so she hissed at him. Jesus Christ this is so indulgent. That's so crazy. You know what's interesting is like Tucker Carlson had a very good point when he talked about the difference between different dysphoria's like body dysphoria for like anorexia versus gender dysphoria And he said when a child has body dysphoria, and they think they're fat you don't tell them. Oh, yeah, you are fat No, you help them you see no you're not fat. This is just a mental disorder Yeah, but when someone says I'm a boy you say oh you are a boy Yeah, you don't say, your name is Dorothy. Shall we go shopping for dresses?

Dorothy, where did it come from, Dorothy? Dorothy. Are people still naming their kid Dorothy? I don't think, I think, no. Bring it back. I think Dorothy, Carol, nobody names their kids Carol. It's a beautiful name, those are beautiful names. Dot, that was the nickname for Dorothy was Dot.

I know that because I know a Dorothy. That's right. She goes by Dot. That's right. Yeah, people are like, what the fuck? How bizarre, Dot. God know that because I know a Dorothy. That's right. She goes by Dot. That's right. Yeah, people are like, what the fuck? How bizarre. Dot.

God. How bizarre. Yeah. That's a weird one. But you're right. It's the indulgence. And again, look, fine, do what you want to do. I don't need to go along with it.

I don't need to celebrate it. I don't need to. But that's what's expected. It went past like maybe I'm a little bit different I'm gonna go through a phase in life now It's like I'm going through a phase and you better fucking well accept it. It's also there's celebrated There's like a value a social value to having anxiety There's a social value to what you will call childhood trauma

You know or social value to like everybody has PTSD from like it could be from like high school it could be like from minor stuff but it's it's looked at as oh we have to be you know we have to be considerate of someone's past now everybody's got trauma everybody yeah that's part of life but the the the answer is not to over indulge every single aspect of everyone's ideas so that you do let a kid wear a fucking tail and ears and run around the high school and be a freak. Because like that's not good either. That's not healthy.

This is crazy. Well, it's not healthy and it's confusing for those kids too, right? I mean, I honestly believe if you address it properly, right, and you deal with it, it's long-term better health for that individual, which is what you want. Oh, I never said. Everybody wants that. Yeah. But we've got, I don't understand.

Now, if you want to go to a, once you're a grown adult and you've got your own job and you pay for your own apartment, you want to go to a furry convention, God bless you. God bless you. I just don't think you should be able to wear a fucking tail in school and hiss at people that just seems that seems silly yeah it seems silly also my friend's son goes to a school where you can't wear hats so you can't wear hats in class but kids can wear like fucking duck ears or yeah ducks don't have ears like don't they how do they hear they have they don't stick out okay I was coming up

with a stupid animal for some reason duck but that's how you know I'm not invested in this idea I think a duck without ears would be a good-looking duck you had fucking dog ears or cat ears whatever you think you are a raccoon stop our boys school so yeah we can't wear hats either our boys schools yeah they can wear hats but they can wear these stupid fucking ears is my point yeah you know it's like a headband I guess or you know this time of year is a great time of year It's a great time of year because speaking of hats and everything is it

This time of year is is crew cut flat top season So the youngest one Muggsy went ahead and the other day and got himself a buzz cut It's nice. There is I go, all my brothers and I, we knew it was, summer was approaching when my dad would say, okay, there we go. And we had the home Clipper kit, right? And there was something great about that flat top,

that crew cut, right? And so anyway, he's got his crew cut going on. And I suspect he's the only one in this entire school that's got this. And it's a good look for him, right? And it also, you know, again, I think there's so much happening in the school in terms of the way kids are, what's the word I'm looking for, coddled, right? I feel proud about Mugsy because he comes walking into school and there's no mistake and like this kid is not

This kid is not angsty. He's not worried about anything, right? He's he's got the crew cut going on Yeah, this is a very unique challenge for these kids to get through this bullshit and come out of the other end Understanding that no one's coming to save you you're responsible for yourself in life, and you got to get after it You got to actually do something if you want a successful happy life You have to be engaged in some sort of a pursuit something that you enjoy Whatever the fuck it is find it go for it hard work is important the world really does operate on a meritocracy Except in corrupt situations, but it's also battlefield, right, for these kids. The minefield is probably the better way to put it.

So you've got, yes, you've got the kids, you want them to do all those things, right? Play sports, be involved in hobbies, activities, whatever it is, stay busy, focus on your grades, be balanced, be nice to people. But they're walking through this minefield. Every day there's a potential for them to upset somebody who's looking to be upset. And I'm talking about 12, 13, 14, 15-year-old kids who are looking to be insulted and very quickly use the system that's been put in place, which caters to them.

And so it is, and and and and you know my boys You know I've run afoul of that system a couple of times for you know it's lunacy maybe speaking Their mind maybe not saying calling someone of them. Yeah, yeah addressing someone as a plural yeah I one of my kids went with a they them went to school the they them and this girl wore fucking makeup She wore makeup and dresses, but she said she was non-binary and she would get upset if someone didn't call her a they or them how old at the time 11 12 12 yeah 12 I guess yeah what the fuck man were you worried were you worried about that sort of thing when you were 11 years old I didn't even know it was a thing no I don't

think I realized it was a thing until I was 50. Yeah. I never heard of non-binary. I mean, I would imagine that there are people that are asexual. They're not interested in a physical affection. They're probably on the spectrum. God bless you. But is that what non-binary means?

No, but that's like asexual. Asexual, I get. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you say you're not a boy or a girl, okay, if you were a puppy and I wanted a boy puppy or a girl puppy, which one would you be? I know you're not a puppy. You know, like this is the thing with the Supreme Court justice with Katanji Brown Jackson who said she's not a biologist. They asked her what is a woman. She said I'm not a biologist. They asked her, what is a woman? She said, I'm not a biologist.

Right, but you're a woman, so how about take a shot at it? Like, if I brought you a puppy, how do you know if it's a boy dog or a girl dog? Can we use that same judgment for humans? Is that possible? Isn't it true in the majority of cases that a woman has ovaries and a vagina and they can have babies for the most

part. Yeah, yeah for the most part yeah. Yeah. Well just try to watch people like just lose their minds try asking somebody like that you know is there a difference between a man and a woman? Imagine asking that to a Supreme Court Justice 20 years ago. Imagine Ruth Bader Ginsburg 20 years ago somebody asked her she'd go shut the fuck up with these stupid questions. I'm here on the goddamn Supreme Court to get shit done, okay? I'm not here to hear, what did you ask me? What a woman is. Why don't you ask me what paint is?

Now ask me what tires are. How about a bunch of other shit? What's a pencil? Shut the fuck up. What are we doing? But it's also, but it's university administrators. It's anybody in a position of leadership who's afraid of getting bullied, right? And so that nobody wants to state the obvious.

We went through the whole pandemic with one side screaming, believe the science, right? And then now they're like, well, I know, you know, it depends on the context of whether a man and a woman are different. You're thinking, look, you can, again, do whatever you want to do. But if you're, if you're a girl, but you identify as a boy, then you're a girl identifying as a boy and vice versa. That doesn't seem complicated to me. Also if you want us to trust the science, you've got to make the science trustworthy.

You can't leave the science in the hand of corporations that stand to profit if the science reflects one thing or the other. You can't do that. Because they do it, They've done it forever They've been fined for it. You know they do it. You know it's standard practice you know that they run multiple tests and multiple studies and they'll throw out the ones that don't show any positive results and they finagle the studies to show some Kind of fagasy positive thing and then they'll start prescribing it to people.

And they do it for money. You know they do it for money. Everybody knows they do it for money. So shut the fuck up about this science thing until you can sort the science out. Until you know the science. Unless you have a third party, non-biased, where there's not a revolving door between the government organization and the pharmaceutical drug companies, which we know there is. And we know that they pharmaceutical drug companies, which we know there is. And we know that they know there is, so we know that they know where the fucking bread is buttered, and they know how to get things through, and then looky-doo, he works for

Moderna now. Looky-doo. Eli Lilly. Oh my God, look. Looky-doo. GlaxoSmithKline just hired them. You know, I mean, look, I'm not, everybody should make money. I'm glad pharmaceutical drug companies exist. They make awesome stuff.

But you gotta be honest, and don't hit me with that trust the science shit if you haven't made the science trustworthy. Stop. Yeah, and it also can't be a moving line. Either you do or you don't. And it can't be based on where you fall politically, which seems to be how it works, right?

And so it's whenever it's, yeah. We trust some science, just not chromosome. Not to, yeah. That chromosome stuff is fascist. It's very subjective, very subjective. I wanted to ask you this before I forget. When you were working for the agency, did you guys, I know that there is a program where they use special effects makeup

to change someone's appearance. Have you ever seen that in person? Oh, yes. How does it look? Well, it gets better all the time. So, can I go to a concert? Could I sneak into a concert with a rubber nose? Yeah. Get me a nice blonde wig. That's what we used to do. We'd hand out rubber noses and googly eyes. Then nobody would see us coming.

Like Clark Kent. Yeah. No, we have a disguise unit at the agency and I'm super proud of them and I was the benefit of their expertise on numerous occasions because you might guess I mean I spent almost all my time with the agency overseas in operations and there's some places where I don't blend right in and so I know so they blame you just like on Team America world police yes one of the greatest. Hans Breaks, Hans Breaks. How good is that movie?

That's the greatest movie ever. They're the best. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the fucking best. Oh my god. When they did the puppet sex. Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Did I switch their names? Yeah, the puppet sex scene, when they thought, OK,

a few minutes of this is making people uncomfortable. Let's keep going with it. Well, you know, the original is far longer. Yeah. The original, she poops on his chest, or he poops on her Yeah The original she poops on his chest or he poops on her chest and she pees on him or he pees on her God they're really... Look at this guy Muhammad Jihad

Mubarakallah, Muhammad Jihad Mubarakallah, Muhammad Jihad Mubarakallah, Muhammad Jihad Muhammad Jihad Oh shit, come on Gary, act You have the power Oh shit. Act. Act.

Act. Man, this is taking me, this takes me back. No. He's an actor, bro taking me, this takes me back. He's an actor bro. God it's so good. He saved them being an actor. One of the greatest guys. That's a fucking amazing movie.

That really takes me back to the operational days too. Such an amazing movie. Yeah, the disguise unit is fantastic. And it's John Mendes. So this is from the disguise unit? Wow. She was there, she was a. She was you know senior officer there Ever were you ever talking to someone you know I think this motherfucker's wearing her disguise

No, but I've talked to people wearing disguises I've had the full overhead masks how good that is with glasses on with sunglasses on that's crazy I never did wear the the monkey outfit Didn't do that one. But look how good that looks. That's insane. Now, and here's the thing about this is that because what they did was they went to Hollywood and there's been this liaison for years, years and years between the agency and Hollywood

when it comes to special effects, when it comes to makeup. And again, and it's horses for courses. So sometimes you need a light disguise, right? I'm not giving away any secrets. This is just stuff is all out there. So you get a light disguise, it's for a brief cover for action. There's not going to be engaged in it. So what would be a light disguise?

Like a rubber nose. It could be like a wig, it could be facial hair, a change of glasses, it could be just a change of hair color. In reality, if you're out on the street, I know I'll probably disappear down a rabbit hole and people will be like, oh, this is fucking boring, but if you're out on the street and you're in a surveillance exercise, say, and you're covering a target, then all you got to do is you're just talking about switching up your look a little bit. It could be a hat, right?

It could be a coat. It could be a backpack, whatever you're doing. So it doesn't have to be much. And then you got the full other side of the spectrum, which could be a full overhead mask, right? Which is, that's a process, right? You got, I mean, it's just like with Hollywood. I mean, there's no difference.

And the key is when you're out on the street and you're in disguise, nobody is thinking that person's in disguise. So it's dependent upon your bearing. I've seen people in disguise who don't pull it off well, right? Because they're worried, like, oh, I'm in disguise. People are thinking I'm in disguise. Nobody gives a shit. Everybody's worried about their own little bubble out there.

So it's your body movements and your body language. Right. It's your bearing. How do you comport yourself? How do you carry yourself? Are you confident in it? And also do you understand that the vast majority of people out there, no matter where you are, right?

Fourth world country, US, wherever, they're not thinking about it, right? And I've had extended conversations with people in disguise where they don't give a fuck, they don't know. And it is remarkable how good they are at this, but that unit is fantastic. Did they give you like a rubber muscle suit ever? No, I never got a fat suit, no. A lot of them muscle suit. But I know one of the guys I worked with,

he got a fat suit. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, changed his weight because that's also one of those things where you know you yeah, you're looking to right I mean you're just working to alter your profile and Weight is a big part of him. What is the fat suit entail? Is it like a skin one where it looks real or no mostly it's under your clothes right and so it's like a it's padding Basically, but it's quick you have to be able to do this quickly look

I've been on the streets of you, capital cities around the world where I'm on a motorcycle and, you know, I've got, I've got a helmet on. That's a pretty good disguise. But you got to get off that motorcycle at some point and walk the streets or go somewhere, whatever. And so you've got to be able to do these things quickly, right? Or you're, so again, not, not giving away any sources or methods, but I will say the disguise unit and Mrs. Mendez there who they just showed briefly, she ran that operation to a great person and a great

part of the agency. But it is acting. There's no difference. So this is what I was going to get to. Do they teach you how to walk casual? They teach you what to see in someone that's tense? Well, yeah. I mean, you spend a lot of time, yeah, you do.

That's a good way to put it, I guess. You spend a lot of time observing people, right? And understanding, and part of that is you're trying to get a sense of, if you're trying to get a sense of whether they're lying, you're watching for certain things. You're watching for their body movement and the way they're behaving and the things that they're saying. A lot of times they're just... They're not consistent with what they're saying, so that's not necessarily watching their movements.

But a lot of times if you're trying to get on side with somebody, right? So if I'm trying to develop a relationship with the deputy foreign minister of whatever from some country, right, because they've got inside information on their nuke program, then I'll spend a lot of time thinking about and watching and observing that person and eventually I'm mirroring that person's activities, right? So, you know, if you're sitting across from somebody and they lean on the desk, right, and they start talking to you, they move in a little bit closer, well, I'm going to do the same thing.

I'm going to come in. They don't know it. They don't understand it, but it makes them more comfortable, right? So if you start mirroring their actions, their activities, that's just one of those things. It's a small part of it, but it's one of them. My buddy told me that when you see people leaning against a wall, that we see people in foreign countries leaning against a wall, nine times out of 10, they're American.

Leaning one shoulder against a wall, he said it's a very American thing to do. Lean against doorways with one shoulder, leaning against a wall with one shoulder. Yeah, I wouldn't make a lot of book on that, because it's a Western thing more than just an American thing. I've seen, you know, I'd spent a long time in Europe and, you know, Italians will lean

against the wall. Spaniards will lean against the wall. But it is a Western thing. So if you're walking the streets of Vladivostok or wherever, then you have to be aware of it. Also, little things like how you eat, right? How do you hold your fork and knife? I mean it could be it could be anything that could you know show out as a certain cultural Handle so way that's different people hold their fork. Well, you know

If you hold your like if you hold your knife here and you hold your fork here, right and you just keep eating with this Hand you don't switch the the fork over to your your dominant hand, right, and you just keep eating with this hand. You don't switch the fork over to your dominant hand, right? That's an interesting take. And I mean, like if you're over in the UK, you see it all the time, right? People just kind of eating like this, right? Just pushing their food onto their fork. There's 15 things that stand out. Americans are known for leaning on things while standing still. Aha! Aha! There's a habit that CIA even trains aha If CIA trains Americans to unlearn when trained to be a spy

Don't worry We could still stand out on our own two feet Americans are always eating on the go one person living in Europe was asked if America if they were American because they were eating a Bagel while walking. Hey, we got a fuel up for all that small talk Americans are known for being loud and friendly and our accents are a dead giveaway. Well yes, that duh. Americans love small talk and are super friendly. Okay. Americans are known for wanting ice in their water, a habit that might seem

estranging countries where ice is not commonly consumed. Americans often greet people with, hey how are you? The greeting may be seen as too friendly or even mocking in some cultures. Americans are known for leaving tips. Are they? Okay, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Americans have a reputation for being confident. Okay. Even if you're walking.

Even if you're walking in the wrong direction. Americans are known for enjoying sweet treats for breakfast, a habit that may be seen as strange in other cultures where breakfast is typically a savory meal. Americans are often seen as being obsessed with their appearance and constantly checking their appearance in mirrors. It's because we're the shit. Americans are known for wearing tactical sunglasses, a style that we've seen is unusual in other countries. Okay. Americans are known for saying y'all. Oh, God. Okay. Americans are known for the love of baseball caps.

Yeah. Especially when worn backwards. Americans are in love for the love of saying the US or America when asked if they're from even though these terms Refer to the entire country Americans are known for their friendly grins and making eye talk. Okay. Yeah. Yeah Basically just a leaning against the wall thing that seems odd. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, that's interesting. But I yeah, I've seen a lot of leaners in my time So but yeah, those all those things it's good to be aware of but

You were saying with the fork and knife thing that yeah Europeans keep a fork and one hand and knife or other they cut They don't switch hands. Yeah, what people switch hands? I've seen that a lot here in the states where people like they'll eat You know, you'll cut you put down you'll eat and maybe it's just because I hang around with a lot of posh people I don't know. Yeah, they're like that's a I'm not saying they're not your left hand sucks so hard that you have to swap out swap out. Yeah, you're scared of the force I think it's considered very Etiquette also you're a bitch for not being able to cut your food with your left hand to know both those things you make

You a bit It's just a lot easier if you also if you just kind of push You're pushing around right there like that and but then again, you know, you could do it If you want to eat quick, you got a two-hand thing. So John's magazine here that says that that's an American style Apparently to hold the fork in your dominant hand and switch So yeah, that's the bitches of America. So let's say for this steak for instance No, look, there's even pictures There's pictures to explain this to us. How you cut to it. Yeah. Zigzag style or something.

So fork goes back and forth. Now let's take a close look at the details. This is ridiculous. Actually that guy holding it like a dagger looks like my boy's eating. I bet that dude's very boring in real life. Or a serial killer. Or an etiquette teacher. Yeah, either one. But the disguise thing is fascinating. And I've been, like I said, sometimes it can be very simple. You slap on, I know it sounds silly if you slap on a fake mustache, but you're just changing

your profile quickly. And so it doesn't. I will say there were times when you'd get a disguise kit and it would have a baseball cap in it and you'd go, I don't think so. I think a disguise kit and it would have a baseball cap in it and go I Don't I don't think so. I think as we're overseas and probably not a baseball cap Yeah, so who's putting together these some disguise kits for you? It's the I mean the the outfit again. It's the it's the disguise unit and the disguise unit isn't aware of cultural differences Oh, no, they are but I'm just saying saying in the old days, because I'm fairly old, but in the old days they'd throw in a ball cap and you think like,

okay well. You're giving it up here kids. Yeah, so, but yeah. Hey, what do I know? So is there any video of people wearing these disguises where we could see what they look like? I found another video, I was just trying to, I didn't want to come up.

I want to see what it looks like. Yeah. I want to see how, because I saw one on Instagram but I don't know if it's real. It's real and wired, same lady, I think here she transformed it looks like. Yeah, let's see. Okay, cuz I saw one on Instagram But I don't know if it's real and wired same lady. I think here she transforms probably the reporter Yeah, just imagine again. And what are you doing? You're you're So here's a lady right they gave her a mustache. They gave her some wacky hair Wow, that's incredible I

Wow That's incredible I don't know she tricked me. No. No, what's going on? That was not that one's not the best one Yes, not the best but that's and then that's also then they brought up the fork and knife in the video Thing boy, they love that fork and I'm holding a cigarette comes up in the video and now you hold a cigarette Yeah, it's very quick here. They just show like comes up in the video and how you hold a cigarette yeah it's very quick here they just show like like the way you either between the fingers forward like that is that American pinching it and who pinches it I don't know I've seen people here pinch it so I don't yeah and shows a guy doing a very quick thing like

people that pinch it here they're probably like European music that goes from a suit to just like taking it off, putting on a hat, and now he's in disguise. See, it can be that simple, right? And particularly if you're in surveillance or if you're doing counter surveillance, you got to be aware of these things. Did you see that I had a guest on the podcast that came with my friend Josh Dubin who works with criminal reform and getting innocent people out of jail. So we had this guest that came on,

and then after he was on the show, wound up killing somebody, cut some dude's head off. Yes. Yes. Yes. And the unfortunate surveillance footage where he tried to wear a blonde wig and walk around. But he didn't realize, I think he didn't realize how good modern surveillance cameras are. Yeah. It's like crystal clear that this dude was wearing a

fucking wig. Yeah. Yeah. That was. Yeah. It's a hell of a story. Crazy story. I was trying to explain that to my daughter last night. This is what happened. Oh God. Yeah, that's interesting. That video that you just showed, because there's been some talk about the protests on campus, right? And the fact that all these outside agitators, activists, and then the students, the actual students, the ones that are actually affiliated with the university, most of them are wearing

masks, right? Right. And part of it is, I don't know, it's- They're mentally ill. Yeah, they're mentally ill. I photograph people every time I see them. I photographed one today. Saw somebody walking outside with a mask on. The dumb kind, too, the surgical blue stupid one. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

That doesn't do a goddamn thing. But this was, I think, was a solidarity thing. They're all wearing masks, and part of it was also, I think, they were thinking they couldn't be identified And then there's a lot of talk about retinal scanning right so how much of the face do you need in order to identify people? Right and it's not much right retinal scanning. It's not a hundred percent accurate So there's other things you have to do so would you be able to retinal scan that lady with that crazy outfit on? Yeah, yes retinal scanner, and then know that shit would work.

The mustache. Which is, and that's a great point. Now you have glue on your face for nothing. That shit is tough to take off too. It's not good. So yeah, and that's a really good point because now it's made the life of somebody who's working in operations a lot tougher, right?

Because of the ability of... And it's got to be a country where you're operating where they've got the resources and the technology, but it makes it a shit ton tougher to get away with things, right? And as does the ability for communications intercepts and tracking of phones and all the other things. So, you know, while... it's always the same story, right? Technology has got an upside and a downside, but the face recognition, the retinal scanning, it's creating all sorts of problems from an operational perspective overseas.

And here, of course, the problem is, you know, people are talking about civil liberties and, you know, invasion of privacy, and, you know, so you've got some students out there and they're covered, and next thing you you know they're identified, right? Now they're suspended and fine. Not only that, some of them aren't getting to graduate. There's one girl I was watching this video where they just told her she couldn't graduate because she got arrested. Well, you know what?

What do they say? You play stupid games? Yeah, you win stupid prizes. Yeah, so. They all think they're doing something great. They think they're going to fix it. It's, you know, a lot of misplaced energy with tents. With tents. Yeah, with matching tents. And that's the part. Look, again, you know, hey, God bless the actual students who are out there feeling like they're being a part of something. I get that.

They're young people. Most of them are gormelists. They're just saying, whatever. This is their moment to shine. Most of them couldn't find Gaza on a map of Gaza. So I think that that's one side of it. I can't... whatever. But it's the coordination of it all by the various outside groups and the activists and

the funding of it, and the potential for that funding and the coordination to tie back to groups like Hamas or Hezbollah, which basically means you're tying back to the Iranian regime, because that's the only reason those groups exist. But nobody seems curious about that, because a lot of the media wanted to portray this as just like kids being kids. Oh, look, this is their moment to shine as student activists and isn't it wonderful? And it's their Vietnam protests and bullshit. Some of it, okay, fine.

So it's layered, right? So some of that's true. You got those kids that are just doing that. But there's the incuriosity of the media to say, well, what the hell's behind this, right? And what groups? Is it Students for Justice in Palestine? Is it US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Sami Dune, which has connections back to Hamas? There's Education for Whatever, Just Peace in the Middle East.

There's groups that have been actively engaging in this. And that's why you get the coordination of all of this. But nobody asks, okay, what's behind it? Just students. No, it's not. It's a coordinated effort. And then you look at those groups who are always active in this realm, and always looking have organizations disinvest from Israel or to you know promote causes that are

anti-israeli right and then you say okay well who's funding it right so you look at these groups and you say okay where's the money coming from the money's always coming from the same places right the Tide Center right which is part of the Tides Network which gets significant funding surprise, from Soros's Open Society Foundation. You get Westchester People's whatever, Action Coalition. So you get these groups and you get the legal support. So all these people, the activists who are getting arrested, they can turn to Palestine Legal, which provides legal support to the activists and the NGOs

that are engaged in all this. Again, they're getting their money from charities. A lot of times the charities don't know they're putting money into these groups, right? It goes into the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, right? And the Rockefeller Brothers Fund provides money to these NGOs, you know, like Justice for Palestine or whatever. Then, and Rockefeller Brothers gets funding from Soros, Open Society Foundation as well. That guy seems to be a bit of a problem.

Right. Yeah. Now his kid is even more of an activist than George is. Of course. His kid is, yeah. Kid inherited it. Kid inherited it. Make up for the fact that he inherited it by being extra woke. And he he is an extra guilty. God for having all those billions. You should feel guilty. Yeah. Yeah, exactly

How can you live with yourself? Young sorrows that what you're talking about though is a very important point that this is not organic and That this is this is what I was gonna get to earlier when I was talking about social media How much do you think foreign governments have an influence on certain trends and certain things that people are talking and promoting and pushing and being a part of on social media?

Because I think it's a big factor. I think it's a big factor with a lot of things. And I think it's a big factor with all the most insane woke shit. I think they push it as far as they can so that the stuff that's not as insane that was insane just a couple of years ago seems less insane now. It seems more palatable, and then they just keep moving the goalpost. I think you can do that through social media with kids.

You can kind of engineer what kids accept. Oh, 100%. And the answer is, yeah, how much do they do? They do a tremendous amount. Look, the Iranian regime, nobody's happier with these protests on campuses than the Iranian regime. And they've even come out. The foreign minister, Khamenei himself, the Ayatollah came out on his official X page, who knew, and praises the protesters. And they talk about the oppression and the violent tactics of the police and suppressing protests, which is crazy when you think about what the Iranian regime has done to anybody who dares protest inside Iran.

They executed a world champion wrestler over that. Yeah, constantly, right? They're trampling of all rights, not just women's rights, everybody's rights, right? So it's bullshit, but people, I don't know, people buy it. They only have a peripheral understanding of the workings, the inner workings of all this stuff. But then the Russians and the Chinese, they're all taking advantage of this as well. Chinese bots have been out there trolling around and promoting the chaos.

If you were to switch on television in Moscow or in Tehran or in Beijing, you'll get a lot of coverage of these campus protests. This is ideal for them. It's exactly what they want. And it feeds into their larger narrative of trying to discredit democracy and say what a losing system it is, right? Capitalism. And so, you know, but again, people are incurious, they're busy, they're trying to just do their lives, whatever. They're not taking the time to sit and think, where am I getting my information from? What's the validity of this information?

And if they don't do that, then to your earlier point, yeah, we're fucked. Because it comes down to individual responsibility. You gotta focus on where your information is coming from. And right now, you could argue, whether it's the face swapping techniques, whether it's AI that can mimic, and whether it's for criminal purposes or whether it's for state sponsored efforts to try to put the knife in into the American system or the West, you know, we are, it's democratized misinformation, right? It's made it so that everybody can engage in it, not just state sponsors but everybody because all those apps are out there, all the abilities out there

and you've got an incurious public for the most part that doesn't take the time. And an uninformed public. They did, most of them are not even aware that there's foreign elements that have an influence on our culture. Yeah, which is, which is shocking if you think about it, right? It's shocking but so few people are aware of anything other than what's going on in their own life and what's going on at work. Well, life is messy and it's tough and you're trying to raise kids and you're trying to put food on the table.

You don't have time. I talked to some of my friends about this stuff and their eyes glaze over. They don't even want to know. I'm busy, bro. Yeah, but you know what it does? I mean, look at the state of... Look how dysfunctional we are right now. I mean, this is remarkable at times. Again, everybody wants to think it's always the worst time.

It's not the worst time. We've had worst times. Civil War, I think, was pretty bad. We've had more dysfunction, I suppose, at times, but the technology speeds it along. We just have more people, so the potential for more of a shit show is there. That is ultimately, when people always talk about, well, how do you... You can't just use detection. You can't be on the defensive all the time, trying to identify, okay, that's fake, that's

fake, that's fake. You've got to rely on people to say, you know what? I'm not going to buy everything I read. I'm going to pay attention and I'm going to think about it a little bit and I'm going to chill the fuck out. But it's not in human nature apparently right now. So yeah, we've got a problem. And those nations, particularly Iran, China, and Russia, are having a field day right now.

We are making it very easy for them. And think about it, we got the fucking election coming up in November. So think about what that means in terms of disinformation. And it's remarkable. We live in a very interesting time. I think we're going to be fine. It's a very resilient environment, I suppose. So I try to be positive.

It's fraught with peril. Yeah. Well let me ask you this from a perspective of someone kind of understands all these different influences and all the things that are happening in these universities. What can be done to sort of like unwind some of this fuckery? If anything at this point I mean are we just gonna operate from here on out with this understanding that our kids get indoctrinated to this preposterous, ridiculous way of thinking where they're taught these Marxist, Leninist ideas as if they make any fucking sense and that they've ever worked anywhere and if they

don't always lead to totalitarian, authoritative governments that take over and enforce all these socialist policies, which is a fucking nightmare that happens in every single regime when they go socialism. So what can be done to sort of like unwind some of this bullshit in colleges and balance it out a little bit? Like there's nothing wrong with having ridiculous ideas, as long as those ridiculous ideas can be challenged. But if you're the only one that gets to talk and you just indoctrinate these kids and no one comes

along and says hey you've never even functioned in the fucking real world. Like this shit that you're teaching these kids unless they go into academia they're fucked. Or you're gonna ruin corporations with this ideology because it just it doesn't jive with capitalism It doesn't jive with and oh, yeah, we're gonna tear capitalism down. Okay. Well, then what fucking idiots then? No one has any incentive to get anything done. Well, that's great for you because you've never done anything Yeah, so you think all these people that did things even if you don't agree with them, even if it's Bill Gates He still built that fucking company. That's his. He did it.

Do you want to be that guy? Then go do what he did. If you don't like what he did, then you can talk about it, you can protest about the idea that you should, everyone should have to give all their money away, and there should be no billionaires, there should be no capitalism, and all the money goes into, and then who's in charge? And who gets to tell you what you can do and Not do who gets to tell you you can't have your money anymore Who gets to take your house away because it's too big shut the fuck up, right? This is like so short-sighted and so stupid that it's so hard for me to believe that it's being taught in universities

Right or the the idea now what they're saying is like you got a big house. You got a couple extra rooms You know what you should do. Yeah taking these fucking Yeah, that we haven't we haven't bothered take in some migrants. That might be murderers. Yeah, that we haven't bothered to vet. Yeah, that guy with a 13-tap dude on his forehead, bring him in. Yeah. He's fine. He's a nice guy.

He's trying to clean his life up. That's why he walked here. Yeah, and the border's fine. Don't worry about it. It's all good. It's fine. It's only like 20% Chinese nationals that are of military age. No, the staggering number of Chinese have come across the border in the past six months.

It's wild. Yeah, it is fascinating because you think, what accounts for that increase? They want to learn MMA. Yeah. These are the best gyms. A lot of even the Chinese champions that come over here to train. Really? Yeah.

So maybe that accounts for what, 20,000 of these? No. 26,000. 30 of them. Yeah, 30 of those guys are future LMA stars, future UFC stars. But I mean, you look at the universities and think, yeah, university is supposed to be a place where you exchange ideas. So that's great.

You want to talk about it, you want to have classes in Marxism or whatever, you want to talk about it. That's great. But you're right. You need to have that discourse. You need to be, you know, again, I keep reverting back to examples of the, you know, real world and from my own experience. My daughter went to undergrad

and grad school and she kept her mouth shut for most of that time, six years, because she always knew, as she said, there was no upside to her arguing in class. And she's a centrist, right? But that's not popular either. You can't be a centrist on campus. No. You can't say there's good ideas on both sides. So I know. Fuck that there. Terrible person. So yeah, so she went through school

and that's a terrible thought. Yeah. Right? Particularly when you're paying for it. But she worked out fine. She's great. And she understood the joke, right? She got the joke. But it shouldn't be there. Right. You shouldn't have to decipher that for four years. You shouldn't have to like, oh, let me put this through the bullshit filter. Right. Okay. Let me just get through this class and figure out what's applicable and what I need for my degree. Yeah. But unless, you know, I do think there's some bounce back on the corporate side with DEI, for example, right? I think there are a number of companies out there, just as with the climate change. I watched oil companies do this complete left turn saying, we're going to make over half

of our revenues from green energy in the future, near future, like a couple of years from now. You think it's not going to happen, but they have to play that game for a while. Then they come back and go, it's not going to happen. You know what we're doing? We're investing in all of this shit, including fossil fuels. So I think that whether it's that or whether it's kind of the pushback on DEI from corporations that are saying, you know, maybe it is a grift, right? Maybe you've got all these DEI grifters out there and they got it. It's a cottage industry.

They can make a lot of money off of this bullshit. They've got a lot of government grants and all this thing. But I think there's some pushback. Universities, I think,'s some pushback. Universities I think are a tougher issue. I don't think, unless parents and kids just say, I'm not going to that bullshit... I mean, look, have you seen some of these kids at these supposedly elite universities talk? How the fuck did they get into these universities? Because they most have passed the application process.

Well, some kids are just really bad at talking. They're good at school work. I'd say that's what it is. Yeah, yeah. Could be. Could be. Well, I think, you know, you basically have to just memorize what they're teaching you. That doesn't require a lot of critical thinking. And then when you have to think on your own and say, what does from the river to the sea

mean? What do you mean? What river are we talking about? What does that mean? Yeah, what sea are we talking about? And what does that mean? What happens to the Jews that live there? Where do they go? Do they go back to Germany?

Yeah. Like what are you saying? That's an interesting phrase. I will say that, you know, you talk about Hamas and the Israeli conflict now, and it's, I mean, there's a minefield here. Actually, one of my managing directors for my company, Portman Square Group, for all your information and security needs. Thank you.

One of the managing directors knew that I was going to sit back down with you and they said, look, I know you're probably going to want to talk about Hamas. Is there any way you can do it without pissing off people? That's cute. Yeah, that's what I thought. So you want me to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian issue without upsetting somebody? And she's a brilliant person, but I don't think that's going to happen. But I will say it is, it's obviously it's complex, but it's complex in part because

it's not absolute, right? And everybody talks in absolutes when it comes to this, right? It's Hamas, it's a Palestinian, Hamas is a terrorist organization, so fuck them, but it's a Palestinian problem or it's the Israeli problem. You know what? If you look at their history, there's problems on both sides. And yet we talk about it like it's black and white, one or the other. This problem's never probably going to get solved in our lifetimes anyway, but it is disturbing when you hear some of the kids, the actual students I mean,

try to explain what this is, and what this problem is, and talk to me about the river to the sea. Which again, you can say that phrase in 10 different circumstances, it's going to mean 10 different things to 10 different people, it's going to mean 10 different things to 10 different people. Right? And that's legitimate. You have to understand that that's, okay, I get it.

Israelis view that as like you're talking for a destruction, genocide of Israelis, right? Because that's a destruction of a group, right? Not a war crime or something, not a crime against humanity. Genocide is your intent is to destroy the group, right? And so they'll see that. Palestinians, some Palestinians, not Hamas, Hamas has it in their charter. They know what river to the sea means, right? It's taking over that entire territory and, you know, fuck Israelis.

But Palestinians can say it and it means something else. It's a yearning for whatever, freedom for a homeland. So there are variances in it, but that never gets discussed sometimes because people are just screaming at each other like every other fucking subject out there. Right. That is the issue, right? And then of course, when you are on a college campus and all this is being encouraged by these groups that are funded

Yes, then you seem like if you want to be a good person You have to be a part of this group you have to go there and be a part of this protest And we see a lot of that. Yeah Yeah They're just there because they're they think they're supposed to be a good person to be there and they want to make all their friends Think they're a good person. They're carrying around signs and yelling out these things got the keffie on and they're like hey look at me I'm in the encampment. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here But you know it is a fascinating time if they allowed debates Because if you could see a pro-israeli and a pro-palestinian

Debate like a real legitimate honest intellectual debate and discussing all the various issues like from the beginning of the formation of Israel to back in the history of the land, and then what's going on today, all the treaties, all the different things that have happened, all the different peace talks. That would be a fascinating opportunity for people to hear both sides of this conflict and try to get a better understanding of it instead of just running out there with signs and camping on the lawn. It's like universities and these places of higher education are supposed to be where these difficult conversations get sorted out.

Exactly. Because you're supposed to have the smartest minds and to bring in the smartest minds from either side. There's brilliant people that are pro-Israeli and brilliant people that are pro-Palestine. They're brilliant. And if you can get them together and have them sort out your details, all the people in the audience can get a better, more informed understanding of how complex this conflict is. And that is supposed to be what universities are for. That's what it should be. It should be a place where people can sit down and learn something about something very difficult, which is international conflict. These crazy moments in history where we get entwined

with military conflicts that are happening all over the world, and it's nowhere near you. And it's complicated shit, man. And to just run out there with a sign because these fuckers are organizing this on campus, it messes everything up. It messes up everybody and to have like only one side's perspective heard, messes up everybody, the whole thing's a mess, man.

Well, I think that the students for the most part, again, the actual students who have an affiliation with the universities, look, you know, the pro-hamas groups, the pro-Palestinian activists, they tend to view the students, I believe, as essentially useful idiots, right? Window dressing. And it gives it a sort of a veneer of, as you pointed out before, sort of this organic grassroots movement that's sweeping the nation when in fact there's this underlying infrastructure that's always out there trying to take advantage of opportunities like this and the chaos. And then aside from that, then you've got this other 30,000 foot problem where you've got the Iranian regime and others who are promoting this and pushing for it.

Look Hezbollah, Hamas, they've got a lot of money. They have, again, not to disappear out of a rabbit hole, but the leaders of Hamas are extremely wealthy. Ishmael Hanyay and Marzouk and Mashal and the other cacts, they have billions of dollars because for years, people say, well, how could that be possible? Well, for years and years now, they have been receiving a great deal of money. Conservative estimates from Iranian regime, Hamas gets maybe a quarter billion a year. Qatar, it appears, gives them even more than that.

There have been years when they've given about $400 million to Hamas for a variety of reasons, right? Ostensibly. And part of that money coming from Qatar is by agreement with Israel, right? Because part of it is over the years the idea that you're buying quiet, buying peace, right? And so, yes. And so there was a process in place to try to track that money that came in. Just same with the Palestinian Authority from over in the West Bank.

But that's a lot of money, right? Not to mention even the money going to UNRWA. Right, and this is sort of the same situation with Ukraine too, right? We don't really know where it all goes, and some of it definitely goes- In the pockets. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There was a guy. Did you see that guy? I forget what what his position is in?

Ukraine, but he's driving around in a Rolls Royce This fucking six hundred thousand dollar and he's driving around in a house. He's driving around a house He's got a fucking Rolls Royce and he's got the only Rolls Royce in Ukraine this one whatever it is. Yeah, is it a specter? Is that what it is? Is it a phantom? Maybe it's a phantom Well, you got I mean, it's a fucking and so and that's been a but isn't that crazy? It's like the scene in Goodfellas. Yeah, where the guy has the Cadillac. He goes. Yes What the fuck what are you doing? Did I tell you didn't I tell you? That was a great scene.

What a great scene. God. Yeah, it's... You got a video of that dude driving around in his Rolls Royce? Before I fall too far, is it that car? I don't know. I was saying this is false. False.

But this is from a year ago. No, no, this is a real recent one. He's driving around. But it might be fake too. Central Bank governor. That might be fake be a it all might be fake. Yeah Well, you can't politician Ukraine politician Rolls Royce write that right in Google politician crane Rolls Royce politician because this

Mm-hmm videos go to videos Mm-hmm videos go to videos. Oh I was news fake BBC news clip Ukraine's ex-army from a month ago. Yeah ex-army chief paid to leave Ukraine No, that's not it. That's a different clip, but this is but this is a good example, right? I mean you're you really got a dick Ukraine protesters discover lug luxury cars allegedly belonging to allegedly belonging to 2014 when the fucking coup happened well Ukraine has always had problems corruption. Yeah, yeah But I forgot I forget what this guy's position was but he was driving around

It's not Russell Brand Some guy had no idea Russell Brand was Ukrainian. Is this it? Rolls Royce Spector. That's it. Where 600,000 Ukrainian politicians pay with US and EU money. Ukrainian politicians pay with US and EU money. Look at his fucking car. Look at that car. Sweet.

Look at that car. That's it. That's the video. Bro, that's a house. That guy's driving around a house. God damn it. Is he driving it himself, I wonder? Of course he is.

That's a bold move right there. Of course he is. That's a beautiful car. You know, you fucking drive that car You stole that money. God hard work. Well, that's that's again Yeah, when you talk about like whether we're talking about money that goes to To the Palestinian cause and gets filtered through Hamas and that's they better never carve off billions of dollars for themselves they live in big lives and cutter and Turkey, but Part of the problem with Ukraine has been in terms of... Well, they've got big issues. One of them has been explaining why it's

important to the American people. The administration hasn't really accomplished that yet, in trying to say, why are we doing this? They should have been doing it from the very start. Did you see them wave their flags in Congress? Yeah, well, yeah. They, right? They should have been doing it from the very start. Didn't you see them wave their flags in Congress? Yeah, well, yeah. They wave the Ukrainian flags. I don't know what you're saying. Yeah, well- They explained it.

They explained it. Here we go. Just wave the flag. Yeah, but you remember, at the very beginning, everybody had a Ukrainian flag on their front of their house and everything. Right, but to see it in Congress and they're passing that aid bill, it's like- Oh, yeah. Who handed those out? Yeah, yeah.

Where'd you get those? Exactly. Did you guys get those from home? Yeah. Who's telling you to wave those out? Yeah. Where'd you get those? Exactly. Did you guys get those from home? Yeah. Who's telling you to waive those? Got them from Amazon. This whole thing seems coordinated. You want to tell me about how this happened?

Plus also, where's the money go? That's the other big issue is the transparency and how are we spending this money? How are we spending your money, the taxpayers' money? And look, I fall down on the side of I don't want to see Putin win. And he will win without significant support that gets to the point where he feels so much pain he actually negotiates a settlement. We're not going to get to a victory in this war. That's bullshit.

The idea that Ukraine is going to win the war and claim all their territory, bullshit. It's not going to happen. You think they're going to reclaim Crimea? Putin's going to give that up? He'll probably go to tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield before he does that Right and so you've got you've got to get but you've got a you got to hurt him enough So that he says oh fuck it okay, because if he's hurt enough that means at home He's facing some dissent right and that's the big thing for him

He doesn't you know he just wants to hold on to power, right? You want your two versions of what's going on? I hear the war has already been won by Russia and Ukraine is down to like a minimum amount of soldiers They've lost half a million people Rough estimates like no one really knows what the real estimates are. Yeah, and then I've heard other stories where Ukraine is actually doing much better than people think and Russia has hemorrhaged people because they're essentially just sending people into the front line. They send in prisoners and they're just using bodies to win this. Well both sides are accurate. Both sides are true, right?

So yeah, Ukraine has been hurting. They have a, what, Russia's got a three to one manpower advantage in terms of population, what they can do to recruit and put more people on the battlefield. And Russia has a, no problem with sort of a meat grinder strategy, just throw bodies at it. And the stats on fatalities, on casualties on both sides are completely bullshit. There's no transparency really, and it's kind of understandable why. You don't want to tell the other side how many soldiers you've lost or injured. Zelensky came out a while back and said,

we've suffered 31,000 fatalities on the battlefield. It's higher than that and it's higher on the Russian side because of their strategy and the way they just, Putin doesn't really care, so he throws bodies at it. The Russians are making headway on the east, right? And they are making an effort to push through those front-line defenses that Ukraine has up on the eastern side of Ukraine. And the lack of armaments, the lack of munitions, while Congress and the US couldn't figure out what they wanted to do, that was a decided

problem for Ukraine. If that continued, then yeah, Russia will win. They will push through and they will eventually end up in Kiev. And look, Putin's already engaged in shenanigans in Moldova, in Georgia. They're working very hard behind the scenes in Georgia to split Georgia away from the EU, and that's because they're worried that Georgia could eventually be part of the European Union and they don't want that. And so they're engaged in all sorts of activity there off the radar, which they do very well.

What does that mean? Well, disinformation and political influence campaigns, instilling personnel that are... There's a party there in Georgia, the Georgian Dream Party or something, that's pro-Kremlin. They're pushing very hard on a variety of fronts. They're pushing a bill that's sort of like a foreign agent bill, which is a Russian tactic to basically single out anybody who's got foreign influence or foreign involvement. That could be NGOs, it could be media, independent media, and the Russians have used that foreign agent bill very successfully. My point is that it depends on your thought process.

If you think that, okay, Putin takes Ukraine, who gives a fuck? That's all. That's all that's going to happen. He's not going to try to reconstitute the former Soviet Union in some fashion by going after a couple other states. He wants a buffer zone with the West, which is what the Soviet Union was. He wants to rebuild that in some fashion. Not the same, that in some fashion, not the same, right, but in some fashion.

So my experiences and other people's are different, so that's why you end up with differing opinions and God bless, but mine is that he's not going to stop there. So my belief is you've got to hurt him enough, get him to the table, and call it good. And that good may look a lot like the way things were in 2022 when they started the invasion. And that's going to be unsatisfying to a lot of people, but at least you end the fucking conflict. Right?

And fine. But I think that's where this goes. The idea that the only outright winner will be Putin if we back off and say we're not going to provide you with certain armaments, certain weapons to allow you to inflict enough pain to stop this. And this is an incredibly complex and dynamic environment because the US is, the White House, the Biden administration is pushing very hard on Zelensky to not attack any targets inside of Russia, right? The Ukrainian military is like, well, fuck it.

Why aren't we attacking Russian oil refineries, right? And energy infrastructure, like the Russians are doing inside Ukraine. That's been a tactic of the Russian military for quite some time now, right? You just, because it impacts morale of the population, it demoralizes people. So the Ukrainian military is saying, do that.

The White House is saying, no, we don't want to escalate, so don't do that. Now the other side of that coin is if you fuck over the Russian energy infrastructure, what does that do to oil prices around the world and what does it do to gas prices at the pump when you're in an election year? I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist But but then you got the Europeans and you know my crone is over there saying well You know if Keith asks we you know I can see putting French troops on the ground in Ukraine You he's trying to distract from the fact that his wife's a man, right? I like that. No, it's wildest one. Yeah ever heard Yeah, the fact that Candace Owen is like I stake my reputation on this like are you fucking sure? Yeah?

Yeah, it's this way you want to go is this is this how you want to be known I'm so confused by that one. Oh, I've tried. I've tried to look into that one. I really have and to my own embarrassment I've looked into it. My point is like this person, this woman that he's married to, even even even even if it's a man. The real problem is they had a relationship when McCrone was 15. Yeah. And she was 39. That by itself is wild. Yeah. Because if it was the opposite, if it was a 39-year-old man who was a teacher and a 15-year-old girl was a student, this would be horrific. Everybody would be up in arms. Well, the greatest line about that is, what was his name, Berlusconi, right? The old Italian Prime Minister, someone asked him what he thought of Macron's wife and he

says, well, he's got a good looking mom, doesn't he? So anyway. Was this the guy? Well, no, I did a little research on this. Ukrainian MP? So anyway, but very was this the guy This is the story that came out was this was that okay this super dope He looks like a dude to be driving around a roll voice The story is he's super rich guy has a bunch of dope cars, but I found the post on what nine gag Which is like many dope cars

They found the VIN number and the VIN number was is to a car from last year So I don't know that it makes Maybe that makes sense that what do you mean? This is not the plate numbers to a car from last year and the story was saying that it's for a new like a brand New car. It's this yeah, but those are hard to get first electric specter and yeah Yeah, but those are hard to get like there, 20, 23s that are for sale right now. Like you know, it's like, like when I got a, if you go looking for one, like I got a Nissan, a GTR, I had to get a 2023.

2024s weren't available. Like when I got it. So that could be, yeah. You get a Nismo. And also. If you get one of those Rolls Royce Spectrums, those are fucking hard to get, dude. And a brand new one that's a 2023 with zero miles on it could be what you're buying new. And I'll tell you one thing, this guy could have, you know, he could have carved this

money out corruptly from a variety of sources over the years, right? So this is a lot of ways to mix the money. Yeah, that's the bottom line is I get bitches with me car. Look at this car. That's a really good accent. That's a very good accent. This is basically your house. No, this is multiple of your house.

With the right disguise, you could walk the streets of Ukraine. I can be a Ukrainian wrestler. Give me cauliflower ear. I walk around like I'm in a hunch, like I'm ready to shoot a double. Like you're in a hunch like I'm ready to shoot a double like like here in a hunch Yeah I think that uh There's definitely a lot of corruption over there and to deny that yeah

I'm sure you saw that one thing where Candice Owen was going back and forth to the New York Times When they were saying what evidence do you have of Ukraine being corrupt? She's like, oh, you mean your fucking newspaper stupid Yeah, she said these these different articles about the rampant corruption in Ukraine do you have a Ukraine being corrupt?" She's like, oh, you mean your fucking newspaper, stupid? Yeah. And she said these different articles about the rampant corruption in Ukraine. It's decades, right? It's always existed. And we've known that, and we've known that. But anywhere you've got vast sums of money coming in for a variety of reasons, which is again, I'm always astounded when people

say, oh, there's no way that the three top leaders of Hamas are worth $11 billion collectively. I think, okay, well, even if it take a tenth of that, and you think about these guys running Hamas, which supposedly, I mean, they've been governing since what, 2007, 2006, supposedly for the benefit of the Palestinian people, and they're sitting on billions of dollars. And you think, and so that's why, fuck them us. I understand the Israeli perspective, which is we can't allow them to retain control. I get that. I understand that operational perspective.

The problem is that you're not going to win the narrative. You're not going to win what's happening on the international stage. And sometimes the Israeli government can act like they don't understand how public relations plays out. Look at the past couple of days, what's happened. So Hamas wasn't going to accept the ceasefire. Hamas has turned down opportunities for a ceasefire. They say, okay, the other day, 48 hours ago, whatever, they said, we're going to walk away

from the negotiating table. Fuck that. Knowing that Israel is ready to do some limited operations in RAFA because they're not stupid. They've got a very good intelligence network. They understand what Israel's about to do. right? They say, we're walking away from the negotiating table. Israel says, okay, fine. Evacuate Eastern Ra'afah. We're going to engage in some targeted strikes against Hamas targets that we've identified. Hamas turns around shortly thereafter and says, ah, we accept a peace proposal, a ceasefire proposal from Egypt and Qatar.

Look at us. We're accepting a ceasefire proposal and Israel's moving on RAFA. On one hand, that's a brilliant communication strategy. Now you've won the day on the international stage. Exactly what they knew would happen, just like what they knew would happen after the 7 October strikes, they knew what was going to happen. They knew that civilians were going to die. They understood that.

And again, everybody's got their own opinion, minus Hamas doesn't give a shit about dead Palestinians. In fact, that's their currency. That's how they work the game. And so they understood what was going to happen. Israel was in a bind. They got to respond. They're in an urban environment.

It is fucked up, right? And too many people have died, right? I don't necessarily believe the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry in terms of their statistics, and also they don't separate out how many combatants were killed, right? They're just like, oh, 34,000 people have died. So people imagine, oh my god, 34,000 civilians. Well, thousands and thousands of those people are fighters, they're Hamas fighters. Again, it's horrible.

I'm not saying it's not, it's awful. Both sides are problematic here, but what I am saying is Hamas has a much better communications, public relations operation. So they knew what Israel was about to do. They claim, oh, we accept the ceasefire. The ceasefire was completely different from what had been presented by Israel and to Israel, just during the past 48 hours. They say, no, this thing is not what we've been talking about.

We don't accept it. So now they've moved in on RAFA and they've lost yet again the narrative on the world stage. So now they're the ones who are causing problems. Anyway, so it's kind of fucked. But again, the point is also when all that money is sloshing around, of course you're going to have people who are benefiting from it. And in this case, it's people like, you know, Hanye who who, you know, can sit in Qatar, you know, with all that money.

And what are they worried about? They're worried about losing a revenue stream, right? They know that if Hamas is destroyed, you think Iran's going to continue giving them a quarter billion dollars a year? Are Qatar's going to allow them to live this lavish lifestyle and give them money? Are they going to continue to be able to extract taxes from money coming in, or from goods coming into Gaza, or put tariffs on things coming in, to the tunnels, the contraband.

No. So, in part, it never changes, right? Where there's situations like this, whether it's there, whether it's Ukraine, wherever, yeah, you're going to get this. You're going to get this level of corruption. And so I'm not surprised at all when people are worried about or concerned about what's going on with Ukraine and we give them another $61 billion and how much is that is ending up in pockets.

But I'd argue that that's part of the problem that the government, the US government has faced. They haven't done their job. They haven't provided as much transparency as possible and accountability to the American public and so you lose the support of the American public who had been just two years ago waving their fucking flags and putting Ukrainian flags on their Twitter sites and all the rest of that bullshit. What do you think happens to Gaza if you had a guess? Look, this, and go back to the Romans, right?

Putting down a Jewish uprising in Judea, which is essentially Jerusalem area, right? West Bank, you know, they call it the West Bank now, and you know, Israelis still call it Judea. Do I think the problem's going to be solved? No. In the short term, will the conflict end? Yes. But then what happens to all that area that's been destroyed?

They got to rebuild it, right? And that's- And who rebuilds? Well, they've been trying to put together an Arab states coalition, right, of countries that would then be responsible for a couple of things. The rebuilding of the infrastructure and also security, right? Because again, no ceasefire, no permanent ceasefire is going to be accepted that allows Hamas to be the governing authority there, right?

So the US has been pushing very hard to have the Palestinian authority run by Mahmoud Abbas, who's been in charge of the Palestinian Authority for, God, 20 years now. And he's not popular in Gaza. They were kicked out. I mean, they were... Well, there's been a rift with the Palestinian groups, factions, for some time. You go back to when was the PLL? PLL was started in like the early

70s. Yasser Arafat, remember him. Looked a lot like Ringo Starr and they were never photographed together so I still think there's something there. I was going to investigate that on the next season of Black Files. Maybe just a little bit of a small mustache. Yeah. Costume, Roman nose. They looked a lot alike. Looked similar.

Yeah, looked similar. I would be able to tell if they were in a room together Yeah, but but they never were is my point. Well, I would he be Fuck you doing hanging out Yasser Arafat. Well, Arafat was a he was he loved music He doesn't got the Beatles were great. But anyway, um, so Yasser Arafat PL PLO, gets put together. See what I'm talking about? Look at this. Yeah, but his nose.

Ringo's nose is clear. He's more Arab. He looks more like Yasser Arafat than Yasser Arafat does. Doesn't he? Doesn't he? Maybe we're on to something here. I mean, come on, dog. This is what I... But you see what I'm talking about.

Look, look. Yeah. Pretty fucking similar. You changed the sunglasses. Yeah, just nice little CIA disguise. But Yasser could not play the drums the way Ringo plays drums play dumb Yeah, played maybe didn't want to throw everybody off two of my boys the oldest scooter in the youngest Muggsy They play drums. They played drums for a long time. They're very good both of them Muggsy in particular loves the Beatles right and and he'll tell you he said Ringo is completely underrated as a drummer, right?

You know not in the drumming world. They all know he's great, but in the music world He's kind of underrated period is yeah important part of the Beatles. I never understood why they decide that guy sucks. Yeah The Beatles come on fuck's wrong with you. He married Barbara Bach. What do you want? Yeah? He did well She's not lady to Katherine Bach, is she? Do I sound like an idiot if I say who's Katherine Bach? From the Dukes of Hazzard. Daisy Duke, dude. That was Katherine Bach? Yeah. See, bro, she was fucking hot as the sun, son. What was the other guy? What was it? There was like Cooter and Skeeter and... There's Bo and Luke Duke and then there was Roscoe P. Coltrane

He was the sheriff Yeah, I remember him Roscoe P. Coltrane and then there was Cooter who ran the garage I knew there was a Cooter in there And then there was Boss Hogg That's right Boss Hogg was the man

They don't make TV like that anymore You can't even show that show anymore because of the Confederate flag on the roof of the General Lee They have to all that right? Yeah, they blur it out. No. Yeah. No, you're right Yeah, do they handle that with this CGI that now so you can still watch that show? Cuz I think there's a car show. Is that what they do? Yeah I think so cuz there's car shows where you can't go if you got a General Lee Cuz if you have a real like they used to to do the O-1 on the side. Yeah.

Yeah. See? Okay. That's what it used to look like. Yeah, that's right. Amazon considers pulling Dukes of Hazzard from video because of the Confederate flag. But didn't they CGI out the Confederate flag for the show? CGI out Confederate flag.

CGI remove flag. flag yeah Google remove flag remove flag consumer products divisions decided to cease licensing replicas of Duke's a hazard generally okay that makes sense yeah remove the flag Warner Brothers announces removal of Confederate flag from the Dukes of Hazard. They were removing it. Oh, from all merchandise. From all merchandise. Okay.

Not on the show, not on the old video. They sold up until eight years ago, they sold Confederate flags. You know what they could do is they could... If they want to renew the license on that thing, they just put an LGBTQ plus whatever flag on top of there. It is kind of... TV Land pullskes of hazard amid the confeder flag I heard that they were gonna put it back up and CGI the flag off. I like the people Apparently have enough time on the hands to worry about this shit. I think I like you know what offends me Let's just fucking generally it's kind of bizarre how they didn't think that was offensive in the 80s right right

There's a lot of shows you couldn't... Remember Starsky and Hutch? Remember Huggy Bear? I think he was a pimp on Starsky and Hutch. You couldn't get away with that shit anyway. Oh, that's right. Huggy Bear. I love a Huggy Bear. So anyway, moving back to the PLO, so back then, part of the rift between the Palestinian Authority

and Hamas is, Hamas came out of the first Intifada in like 80 whatever, 87. But they took exception with Yasser Erfah because he basically denounced violence as a way to attain the Palestinian objectives and goals and everything. He was like, okay. Remember, he was involved in signing some peace accords in Madrid and Oslo Accords and everything. So Hamas, in their charter, basically is like, no, jihad is the way to go. Violence is the way that we're going to... It's liberation, not negotiation.

They have all these sayings in their charter about this. But there have been problems and eventually they had an election in 2006, I think, in Gaza. And Fatah, Yasser Efrat's party, the Opiolo party, was up and was expected to win, didn't win. Hamas won, and during the course of the next year they actually got into a war between Hamas and PLO or Palestinian Authority and Hamas booted them out.

So, they govern. So, when you think about Palestine or the Palestinian state or whatever it is, you've actually got two completely separate entities. You've got Gaza run by Hamas and you've got the West Bank run by Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. Is the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank, are they popular there? Yeah, they're popular enough. Yeah, they're popular. They continue to govern.

They continue to be in charge. They are better placed. Is the Israeli objective that the Palestinian Authority Control all of Palestine. No, they don't see that's that's where it comes in the US Secretary Blinken and others have been pushing this idea that somehow the Palestinian Authority will will be the governing body in in Gaza and You know Gazans look they don't they don necessarily, you know, they don't want that. He's actually less popular.

Mahmoud Abbas is less popular now than he was even before the 7 October attacks. And Israel is saying, no, look, you know, Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, they haven't even denounced the attacks of 7 October, right? We don't want them, it's like, in their mind, it's almost like just trading one for the other, right, if they're the governing authority. So I think when you say what it's going to look like, it's probably going to be, and Israel said, we don't want to occupy this shit. They stopped occupying Gaza in 2005.

They were like, done. Now they still controlled the border and they controlled the coastline, and the one crossing, there's basically two crossings there, Karem Shalom crossing with Israel and Gaza, and there's the Ra'afah crossing. But, you know, they're saying, no, we don't want them governing. So it could end up looking like a some type of UN, Arab states type of coalition, right? That then is there and they're responsible for security of Gaza and they're responsible for, you know, the rebuilding effort, but he has a long ways to go, right, to get there. So Israel is not trying to take over Gaza. They don't want it. Yeah, they got, look, you have to go by...

They kind of leveled it? They kind of leveled it, yeah. I mean, look, and people cry genocide, you know, they're saying genocide, you can debate, you have to go by- So they kind of like leveled it? They kind of leveled it, yeah. I mean, look, and people cry genocide, you know, they're saying genocide. You can debate the meaning of genocide, but typically in terms of academia and people that talk about these things, you know, you've got war crimes, you've got crimes against humanity, you've got genocide, and they all mean different things, right? Israel wants to destroy Hamas, right? You have to ask yourself, is their intent to destroy all Palestinian people as a group to just get rid of them?

Is it like what they tried to do with the Armenians all those years ago or the German effort against the Jews? Is that what they intend to get to make this group disappear or is their intent to destroy Hamas, a terrorist organization, that has been attacking them and continues to attack them and it's in their charter because it's in the Iranian regime's objective and their mind is to remove Israel. You could argue what Iranian regime wants to do is genocide, right? They want to remove Israel, right? That's pretty much the definition of genocide.

So again, it depends on how you... But there's obviously a disproportionate amount of military power. Well, yes, again, between the two, of course, yeah. Yeah. But you have to say, okay, are we are we lumping Hamas into the Iranian proxy network? They built a belt of terrorist organizations, right? Whether it's Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or Hamas, or the Houthis, or the Hezbollah of North, they've created this network of proxies designed with the objective of removing Israel at some point, right? Because that's the stated purpose of the Iranian regime.

They want the destruction of Israel. Israel at some point, right? Because that's the stated purpose of the Iranian regime. They want the destruction of Israel. So you could argue, well, look, all of that together, that's the military power, or is it just this one group? Now in a confined sense, yes, of course, Israel's got far more military power than Hamas as an organization, right? And again, it doesn't... it's not one thing or the other. It's horrible what the Palestinian civilians go through and have been going through.

You could also argue that Hamas knows exactly what they were going to go through when they instituted, or they instigated the attacks. They did get support and training from the Iranian regime, so the Iranian regime knew what was going to happen, right? So what do you think the stated, what is the purpose of the attacks? The attacks are not just to kill those 1200 people. No, it's not. No, you're absolutely right.

And part of it is tied to the desire to scuttle the Abraham Accords and the potential normalization of relations between Saudis and Israel. That really worries them, right? And Ismail Hanyay, right, came out, head of the political wing of Hamas, came out after the attacks and talked about this and glorified the, and also said that, look, people, our Arab brothers, our Arab states should realize that Israel is not... You will have no peace, basically, with negotiations and with relationships. So he was clear in the way that he put it that he was sending a message to the Arab states about this idea of normalizing relations with Israel.

So, that was part of it. Part of the desire was to tank those discussions, which were pretty well underway. And now we're back again. They kind of took them off the table for a while. But the Saudis in the US have been having some pretty good discussions recently over the normalization of all of this. I think it's in the Arab states, look, Bahrain and Morocco and others all understand too that long-term stability down the road is going to come from normalization of relationships and

some long-term ability to have peace, which is part of the problem. They don't want, you know, that's why they don't take Palestinian, you know, they're worried about the Palestinian refugees, right? You say, well why doesn't Egypt open up the crossing and set up a refugee camp across the way from the Ra'afat crossing? Well, in part because they're worried about their own security. Egypt's been building a big wall. They've been adding to their wall down along their border with Gaza Strip.

So look, they formed the PLO. Egypt was in charge of the PLO all those years ago, back in the early 70s. They were essentially, the leaders they put in place in the PLO all those years ago were basically just puppets for Egypt, right? And part of the reason why they were putting those people in place was because they wanted to minimize sort of the radical Islamic extremist actions, right? And the acts that they took against Israel because they wanted stability. The families down there, right?

Whether it's Qatar or the Saudis or the Egyptians or whatever They're just as worried about radical Islam Right and the potential for them to lose control and to lose power as are the Israelis and others in a sense, right? And that's necessarily from the physical sense, but they've attacked, you know, Arab families before Arab leaders before so It's a complex problem. I guess what I'm saying is there's a lot of moving parts here and sometimes it all just gets thrown into one simple minded argument. It's good or it's bad. Israel's committing genocide.

Palestinian people are terrible. No, there's so much fucking more to this. So again, I don't know that there's any solution that will be long, long-term committed peace in the region in our lifetime, but in the short term, I think the conflict, when it's wrapped up, I don't see how it ends with Hamas still being in control of Gaza. I think that's a red line for the Israeli government. Now maybe Netanyahu doesn't last as a leader of the government and somebody like Benny Gantz takes over and they're more inclined to say, now, you know what, just for the sake

of some peace right now, let's just call it quits. But- Do you think that's possible? Yeah, it could happen. Netanyahu's got a lot of internal issues, political issues, right? But I think- Well, that's something that we talked about before, the people protesting on the street for months, hundreds of thousands of people protesting on the streets about Netanyahu

expanding power with their courts. Yeah, and I think that if there's a change, if there's a change in government, fine, they do what they're going to do. I just think that from an operational perspective, and this is just operational, I'm not talking about the moral, the ethics of the whole thing, of people dying or this, I'm just saying from an operational perspective, leaving Hamas in place isn't going to create any even midterm peace. Is it possible for them to get Hamas in place isn't going to create any even midterm peace. Is it possible for them to get Hamas out?

It is possible to- Do they have to keep doing what they're doing, just bomb the shit out of everything? Well, they do a lot of targeted strikes. They do a lot of, yeah, there's, look, it's fucking ugly, right? There's no, you can't sugarcoat any of this and say, well, they're just, so when I say targeted strikes, I'm not saying it's all very surgical and people aren't getting... Of course, people are dying. And you're not going to remove them.

You can't get down to zero sum here. It's like counterterrorism. You never reduce the risk down to zero. So when you're talking about Hamas, you can't destroy them in the concept of saying they're all dead because the leaders are still... Like I said, they're fat and happy sitting in Qatar and Turkey and elsewhere. That's where they're hiding? They're not even hiding, right?

They're guests. This is how fucked up some of these Middle East problems are. They're guests of the Qatari government, right? And we know they're there. And so did they go there when the conflict started? No, oh no, no. No, these guys have been living abroad for years, right? They've been living abroad for years. They've been living abroad for years, and in part because Hamas runs a network of businesses

and charitable organizations just like Hezbollah does. Hezbollah's got a global presence. They're sitting over there in a country that is also one of our key non-NATO allies. So we have our largest Middle East base there in Qatar. So it's only just recently, and recently is like the past week or so, where the US has broached the idea of say, look, if Hamas doesn't accept a ceasefire, then the Qatari government needs to move these people out. They need to expel them.

And whether the Qatari government would do that or not, because they're playing all sides. The Qatari government does... They've hosted the Taliban, they've hosted ISIS leaders. Nice parties. Nice parties. They're a great party. What a great party to host. The canapes are delicious. It's a lovely time and the conversation.

I'm just trying to paint the picture that it's more complicated than somebody sitting on a campus at UCLA might imagine. To your point, it deserves more debate. It deserves more intellectual open conversation. Not necessarily when you talk about who's right and who's wrong. How about focus on how do we fucking solve the problem? And the problem is maybe intractable. If the problem's a two state solution, then maybe this thing is just never going to work

because maybe a two state solution is the best idea this thing is just never going to work because maybe a two-state solution is the best idea, but if one side or the other is not going to accept it and both sides have pushed back against it at various times, then what do you got? Where's it going? The thing is most people never get to hear this wide-ranging perspective like you just laid out with all the different factors. I'm sure there's more factors Yeah, but all the different, you know significant pieces that are in play here

Yeah, and I think that's but you the same thing happens with every major issue, right because Again, if you turn on the news You get a three-minute piece of news about a major crisis happening, right? Like the Ukraine conflict and whatever. Not everybody wants to sit and listen to details about Israel and Hamas or wants Ukraine or what Iran's doing with their nuclear weapons program or whatever, but we tend to have ADHD as a nation, I think. So again, people are busy, people are just focused on other things, but it deserves more conversation, it deserves more detail and not the bullshit that gets thrown out there

from one side or the other, right? Sort of the hard edges. Or the shit that comes in from outside elements like the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians who don't have our best interests at heart. So again, we keep going back to the same thing. If people aren't curious and they don't take the fucking responsibility upon themselves to understand what it is that they're listening to. Is it verifiable?

Is it credible? Whatever. Get a balance of news. Don't just sit and get in a silo and listen to shit because you agree with it. Have a conversation with somebody who disagrees with you. That's very interesting. Yeah, it is. Yeah.

It's very valuable too. If you have the ability to just let someone talk and engage in them and not get upset and angry. Just why do you think that? What do you think about this? That used to be an admirable trait. Well I think that's why, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass, but that's why I think your show works, right?

It's because you have conversations. Now you piss people off because I think sometimes people have a hard time putting you in a box, right? And that makes people uncomfortable. If they think, you know, okay, I know where he's coming from, and then you have a conversation where you're listening to something completely on the other side, right? And you're not just saying, well, fuck you, that's wrong. You're saying, well, why is that? Right? And you're having people explain things. That can piss people off, right? Because everybody wants to identify, make a quick judgment and say, move on. And judging is

a lot easier than thinking. It is a lot easier. It's super simple. Yeah, it's very fucking simple. Thinking is fucking complicated, especially when you're dealing with layers upon layers, decades and generations of conflict, like you are in Gaza and Palestine and Israel. It's nuts. Yeah.

I don't know where it's going to... I mean, again, I think the US is in an interesting position. They're not the key mediator here. They can exert pressure on Israel to some degree, but Israel's been very clear and said, look, this is existential for us. If the shoe was on the other foot, if it was the US that was facing this sort of threat. Right, if we were attacked by Mexico. Right.

Canada. Canada's a threat. But Canada's too close. Yeah. At least Mexicans speak Spanish. It's easier to- That's that. Yeah, at least Mexicans speak Spanish. It's easier to Yeah, meanwhile, there's way more Mexicans over here than there are Canadians Right. I don't know. I don't know if I trust the Canadians

I think they're coming across the border at night when we don't see them. I think they're in a cult. Yeah That fucking Trudeau's got them in a cult. Yeah, the fact that they voted that guy in again is mind-blowing Yeah, like how what are you fucking paying attention? Your country's literally falling apart and you guys are so wrapped up in one ideology or another you don't course correct. It's like if Newsom was the governor, not just the governor of California, but if he was the president, he was running the same policies on our country. I don't know, he was thrown out there.

They moved off of Pete Buttigieg and some others but now Newsom is still there. He's unwinnable. Buttigieg is incompetent. He's unwinnable. Well you could argue that Newsom also is incompetent. A hundred percent. But that slick fucker. I think they were trying him for a little while but then they decided to just run it

with Biden again which is just absolutely wild. Absolutely wild. Well, I was pretty convinced that this was going to be the month they were going to remove Biden. I was like, I don't. Yeah. I was like, I think May. I talked to Tim Dillon about it.

He put that idea in my head. Yeah. And I think I was like, you know what? That totally makes sense. May seems like it makes sense because if you're going to really get a new guy in place, if you know, Biden is like, you guys, I got a problem as a thing just be here on the sidelines I'm gonna work really close with Governor Newsom and I think for more years pause that was actually brilliant it's it's fucking crazy it's

fucking crazy that these people are gaslighting us but they can't they can't move him out but if they move him out they got to move Kamala Harris out right where they've got to elevate her to the top of the ticket which is nuts yes I'm gonna happen well no one's you have to be the nuttiest fucking Democrat and I know a few I know this one nutty Democrat that I'm come because I've got friends or I see him I'll say hi but this this motherfucker is a Kamala Harris fan you know thank, Madam Vice President. He's one of those.

How do you get to that point? How do you- You're retarded. You just completely give in. There's no critical thinking at all, and you're just fucking blue no matter who. You ride or die. Well, that's what... I assume that they've looked at the scenarios and they thought to themselves, we can't have Biden step down and put somebody else at the top of the ticket.

So we've got to clear the ticket entirely, right? Because we can't run Kamala Harris as the presidential candidate. And we certainly can't bring in Newsom, a white dude, to run the top of the ticket and keep her in place, right? That's not an optic they're going to put up with. Also, she's just not valuable in that spot. She doesn't gain you, she doesn't gain confidence that we'll have a great vice president if he kicks the bucket. And bro, how are they keeping him alive? What are they giving him and where do I get it?

Well, she'll be president. What do I get when he's on? I want to try it. As an able-bodied man of complete control of my cognitive functions. I'd like to know what that fucking cocktail's like. I was going to say the cocktail that they gave him before the State of the Union address, whatever they gave him then, that fired him up just long enough to make it through. Just long enough. Boy, he must have slept for a week after that. I bet it's some high dose stuff, whatever it is, and I bet it feels great.

Yeah, in the moment. And then I think there's probably a dose stuff, whatever it is, and I bet it feels great. Yeah, yeah, in the moment. And then I think there's probably a come down. Oh boy. Yeah. But, yeah, so she'll be president. This is my theory. That's crazy. I know I've lost a bet with you before on Trump, but I worry that, look, I think the Republicans can't really go after Biden's age completely

only because Trump is what, 78. Right, but he's not as compromised. No, absolutely not. Right. And that's absolutely true. But I just, I think that what's going to happen is that you have to have a perfect storm for Trump to win in terms of the independents, right, and suburban moms, and you have to have a perfect storm for Trump to win in terms of the independence, right, and suburban moms, and you have to have enough people come back into the tent, right, to vote for him. And I just, I don't know that I have

enough confidence that that's gonna happen, so we end up with President Biden and Harris again, which means we will have President Harris. I hate to say that, right? You know, I hate to say that, right? You wish well on everybody, right? Good health and all that. Yeah, but come on. Come on. Come on.

Yeah, please. Are you kidding me? Come on. It's not going to... Two years into this next tenure, she's president. But isn't Trump ahead in a lot of polls in the swing states? He is, but again, I don't know that I'd make bank on polls nowadays. This is going to sound like I'm going off topic, but after the 7 October attacks in Gaza, I think that the survey was done in maybe January and February timeframe.

They released it in March. So a Palestinian research center based in Ramallah, I think, in Gaza. I forget where it was, but anyway, they ran a survey and according to this poll that they did of residents of Gaza, over 70% supported Hamas' 7 October attacks. 70%. Over 70% supported Hamas' attacks. It was a miniscule amount that thought that Hamas was responsible for their troubles. It's like less than 10%, I think, that thought that Hamas was responsible for all the chaos

now happening, despite the fact of what they did. But they supported what they did, according to the poll. Now, you peel that back and you think to yourself, okay, well first of all, the survey was done in Gaza, so somebody knocks on your door and says, do you support Hamas' actions on 7 October? What the fuck do you think I'm going to say? Right. Of course I'm going to say yes. It's kind of like if you walk up to somebody in San Francisco on a crowded street and say,

do you support President Trump? No. So, I don't know that people are particularly honest at times in surveys and polls. Especially in these circumstances. In these circumstances. But you're right. Most surveys, most polls show him some points ahead. And don't get me wrong, I'd love to see less regulation. We got all sorts of problems on the economic front. And one thing we could be doing as a government is peeling back some of the regulatory environment that's fucking us over in a lot

of ways. Not just the economy, but it impacts our national security down the road. How much... When you hear about shenanigans when it comes to voting, when you hear about like particularly corruption involved with mail-in ballots when it comes to voting, when you hear about particularly corruption involved with mail-in ballots, it seems to be a sticking issue with people. How much of a security issue is that, the mail-in ballots thing? Yeah. Look, if there's an opportunity for fraud or chaos, some people somewhere, whether Democrats

or Republicans or whatever, if there's a fraud opportunity, there will be an element that will try to play off of that. Especially if they think that it's imperative that this happen for this future of democracy. Future of democracy. It's, oh my God, I'm saving the country despite what I'm doing. So yeah, that's a potential- Despite what you're doing being very un-American.

Right, exactly. Because you're engaging in voter corruption. So I don't have any insight or insight information about to what degree there's a problem with mail-in ballots and voter fraud, but to me, I tend to be a little more simplistic. I remember a lot of elections where you just show up, you show your ID, you fill out the form, and then by that evening, you found out who won. It didn't seem to be that complicated. Nobody seemed really disenfranchised.

So I would like to see us just go back to the normal way of voting. Do we vote on it? How do people decide whether or not mail-in ballots are appropriate? Because the reason why they were there in the first place was COVID. But now that it's there and it's set up, now there's this resistance to get rid of mail-in ballots. But if that is the thing that keeps us closer to corruption, and it seems to be, that's the thing that's an element that you can fuck with.

And you do this all the time in the business environment or whatever. You look at your protocols in place, you remove lack of controls where fraud could seep in. It's a common thing. It shouldn't be difficult. So then you have to look at it with some skepticism. Are you genuinely concerned that somehow there were vast swaths of the population that were disenfranchised and not able to vote, or just can't get themselves an ID, which I think is an insulting stance to take for a lot of people.

I'm sorry, you're not smart enough to get yourself an ID. But you need one if you have a vaccine. Yeah, but you need one if you have a vaccine. If you want to work. Or from Sam's Club. If you want to feed yourself, you need one. But you don you need one if you have a vaccine or you need one. If you want to work. Yeah, or from Sam's Club. You want to feed yourself. You need one, but you don't need one to vote because that's racist or something.

So yeah, exactly. So I think to me it just seems like we should look at it from a perspective of the way that you would do it if you were running a business, which is I want to minimize the potential opportunities for fraud. How do I do that? It's very fucking simple. Seems fucking simple. I mean, You can phrase it that way. But that's not how they're doing it right now.

Is that something that can be voted on? That's the question. I have no idea. Who decides that- Leave it up to the people, you mean? Who decides that mail-in ballots are still legitimate? Well, I guess that was a federal or a state decision. I think is I don't know that's a very good question Yeah, I who knows cuz I have friends that believe there was no voter fraud at all and I have friends that believe that 100% Trump won. Yeah. Yeah, I'm the same way. I've got both sides and you think okay. Well, look, someone's gonna be wrong

Well, and they and usually the answer is somewhere in that range, in the middle. There's some fraud. Was it enough to like fuck things over? Who knows? I don't know. But again, I keep going back to the operational concerns, which is just minimize the potential for fraud. Mail-in ballots have always been... Mail-in ballots have been a thing, right?

You're serving overseas or whatever. But there was a protocol for it and it was very straightforward and very clear. Now the concern over ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots and having months to get your thing, having weeks pass before you know who won. Right? Crazy. Yeah. Talk about instilling skepticism over the credibility of your voting system. Take weeks to figure out who won a fucking election. Is there a real danger that Trump could win but lose, meaning that he could win the election

but lose his court case? Oh. And literally have to go to jail while he's the president? I mean, this was the topic of discussion at the Rogan house today was it well They were trying to figure out like because yeah, he could he could he could there's nothing that says he can't govern from jail Him in jail is he in danger of actually being put in a jail for these crimes of not... What did he do exactly? He paid a lady off and I guess he did it in a secretive way or in a...

Well, he did it in the same way that Arnold Schwarzenegger did it. He did it in the same way that a variety of people who are trying to suppress a bad PR story do it. So I think the trial that's going on right now involving Stormy Daniels in New York was the least favorite trial of the Democrats who are the most keen to see him put in prison. They all felt as if this is probably not the one to start with, but they started with it because Alvin Bragg was dead set on doing it. He just like, I'm going to throw this out there.

And a variety of other entities had looked at that case and said, we're not going to push it forward. And so they've put this forward. I don't think that there's anybody other than the hardcore Never Trumpers, the people that are just desperate to see him in a jumpsuit who believe that there's any merit to it. The analysts that you watch across the board, even the hard left ones, they tend to speak in caveats, right? They're not completely convinced that this was the way to go.

So I don't know. But having said that, if he gets convicted and if there's like some, you gotta go to prison, sounds so fucking bizarre, how did we get to this point? Right. Then I don't know of any, I don't know of anything that says he can't continue to run or be elected. What he's being accused of, is this generally a crime that people actually have to go to jail for? No. Has to go to jail for?

No. Has anybody gone to jail for that? No. They're trying to tie this in to sort of the campaign issue of campaign funds, influencing of the campaign. That's what they're trying to tie it into. Well, of course, he's trying to suppress a story that he thought would be bad or that they thought, his team thought would be bad for a campaign.

But that in and of itself, so they got to tie it into how the funds were expended. They've tried this in the past. And again, it's not like there haven't been countless dudes who did the mess around and then had to pay to get the story suppressed. There are PR firms that specialize in that sort of thing. So I don't know. I don't see that this is going to tank him. There's probably other cases out there.

Is it a case where, yeah, there's probably more cases waiting? They're going to keep throwing it at them. Yeah. They've got a timeline of cases. And look, the Democratic strategists have been, they stick to a message. They're very smart and they're very disciplined, but they all sat in a room somewhere and they looked at these various things. They looked at the election calendar and they looked at where the primaries are and they looked at when they could maybe get these trials going.

And the idea being, let's just keep this thing rolling. Keep him in the news as being in a court. Right? The idea that he's got to sit there and can't leave, you don't see that, that's not a typical move, right? But now he's locked into that court on whatever, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday and Friday or whatever. So with the idea being he's not out on the campaign trail. Right. But he's also in the. So with the idea being he's not out on the campaign trail. Right. But he's also in the news and his supporters think that he's being unduly prosecuted or unfairly prosecuted.

Right. And that it's a political prosecution. And that all they're trying to do, which is essentially un-American, is suppress their political rival. Right. And that is a large number of people in the country. A larger number every day, I think, as this goes on, is it getting more of an understanding of this case. Like, the problem is, if you're a Democrat and you support this, if he does

get in power, now he has this ability. You have to understand there's a precedent that's been set. And if you don't think that Biden has a shitload of things. So let's say Biden loses, okay? Let's get really crazy. Let's get really, really crazy. Biden loses, they inject him with stem cells for three years, and then they roll him out in 2027 like, let's do it again. Trump won the second term. We saw disasters. It's a business. That was, and they say, you know what? He's been sharper than ever. like let's do it again! Trump won the second term we saw disasters of the business that was and they say you know what he's been sharper than ever and you get these New York liberals who just gaslight the shit out of you I saw that video and I'll tell you I'm pumped he's as sharp as a tack he's never been better

sure he's old but that's his superpower. His work ethic looks fantastic. He is so kind he's such a good man he's the father but that's his superpower. They tried that for a while. His work ethic looks fantastic. Oh my goodness. He is so kind. He's such a good man. He's the father of our country. We're so lucky. I read an ex-post by, admittedly, a guy that works for a consulting firm in D.C., right? He's a Democratic strategist, but he wrote this glowing thing about how, oh, Biden's had this great couple of weeks.

Man has he had a good couple of weeks. He's on fire. Yeah, he's on fire. Look what he's done in the Middle East, right? Four more years. Well, you could argue that part of our problem was we coddled the Iranian regime for three years, and that's how things got to this stage. And now what? Suddenly he's had a good couple of weeks. They're not leading the charge on any ceasefire negotiations. In fact, you could argue that they're making national security decisions related to Israel based on domestic policy concerns or political concerns.

You don't want to lose the youth vote, you don't want to lose the Arab American vote by being overly supportive of Israel. So there is some concern here. But isn't that losing the Jewish vote then? Because we talked about this yesterday, that 70% of Jewish people identify or vote as Democrats. Yeah. I know. And what's that all about? I've never been quite clear on how that number worked, right?

It's interesting. Yeah, it is interesting. But anyway, I don't want to say that they're making too many decisions based on domestic political concerns, but I think that they are. That's just the nature of the game. And so I don't think I'm being overly cynical. But yeah. What I was getting to was that if Biden did, if we went crazy in 2027, they get him on stem cells and they put him in a hyperbaric chamber every day for four hours and he's

sharp as a dagger. Look at him, knife. He's sharper than his uncle Bozie was. Imagine if Trump goes after him because there's a lot to go after. If they started uncovering the emails and the Burisma stuff and the fact that he said he'd never talked to any of his son's business partners but Hunter Biden's former partner said that at least 20 phone calls the fact that he allegedly used a pseudonym when he was exchanging emails all that's nuts yeah all that is nuts well if that if that

was the case if now Trump gets to go after him this is now we're dealing with insanity now we're dealing with every time someone is president They have the power to prosecute their political rivals for unnecessary Means which is the whole argument of immunity, right? This is not the thing that should be a thing that decides whether or not a guy gets to run for president No, it's a that's a very fourth world thing, right? I probably get in trouble for saying fourth world people. Oh my god, how can you denigrate the fourth world? Well, we're heading in that direction. I don't know. I'm not sure where we stand.

We have to first world. That's scary. Recalibrate. Maybe there are no first worlds anymore. But when you find out, I mean mean we found out that the 1% of the world is $34,000 a year when you hear that you go. Oh, that's why they're walking over here. That's why this is all yeah That's why this is all nuts. Yeah, like yeah, like this is first world as crazy as it is. This really is first world Yeah, well look I know I'd spent most of my life overseas and I met a lot of people in some very bizarre environments and some sort of remote areas, and they all had this idea, you know, get to America, work hard and you could do who knows what, right? So it's still, and it still continues to be, a very dynamic and driving element of people

overseas. I think we forget that sometimes. And certainly you could look at the campus protests and go to, well, okay, maybe the youth of today. But that's not true either, right? Because we can fall into that trap and say, well, the fucking youth of today don't understand how great they have it. Every generation has said that about their kids.

Well, not only that, if you look at, every generation has said that about their kids. Well, not only that, if you look at every generation has said that about their kids for sure, but if you looked at this population of college kids and you could remove these kids from their friends and with total immunity and total anonymity, get their real opinions on all this stuff. I guarantee you there's a lot of kids, they say some of this is so crazy and you can't have opposing opinions and we just sort of accept it and we move on

and it's what percentage of the kids are out there, tense, intense, what percentage of the kids are out there blocking the roads and protesting. I bet it's a small percentage. It's a very small percentage. It's a lot of people, and then there's a lot of people that go there that probably don't even go to that school, right? Right.

Well, if you look at the arrest statistics so far, say it's not a completely accurate number, about 2,400 arrests, right, campuses across the country. And the statistics are starting to show that, you know, upwards of half of those arrests, those people have no affiliation with the university. They're not college students, right? They're outside either agitators, activists, however you want to refer to them, right? So yeah, I agree with you. It's not... We're not talking about a lot. And again, I would argue that, you know, from the outside activist perspective, yeah, I agree with you. We're not talking about a lot.

And again, I would argue that from the outside activist perspective, again, whether it's students for justice in Palestine or the other groups that are involved, they look at the students themselves as just window dressing. Again, sort of useful idiots. But I will tell you one thing, is you can get cynical sometimes about the state of the youth, however you want to call it, the youths. But then I took my oldest boy, Scooter, for his candidate visit at the US Naval Academy a couple weeks ago.

That is a way to strengthen or reaffirm your belief in where we are as a country, right? When you see the kids that are there, holy fuck, right? And I probably shouldn't say that when I'm describing all the kids there, but what great kids, right? They're still out there. They're still out there, and that's the point. They're still out there. There's a lot of them.

There's a lot of them. What we were saying earlier, like, you know, oh, the generation before, I think this is the best generation. It's just there's so many morons. But in terms of just the sheer number of people that aren't, it'll surprise you. There's a lot of great people in this country. Yeah, and again- We have our problems, and we're going to always have problems, but one of the ways we find

solutions is by having problems. And that's one of the ways we find solutions is by having problems and that's one of the ways we come to understandings and the people that are trying to stop you from discussing this That's the real problem. The problem is not disagreement folks the problem is people trying to stop people from discussing very important subjects and That is look fucking all hail Elon Musk because that motherfucker stepped in spent 44 billion dollars and shifted the entire though the whole like the environment of social media is very different because X is the Wild West yeah it's very different everywhere everything has to kind of relax just to

kind of keep up with it because the the whole power dynamic the whole bell curve He shifted and now you got this one dude is like I don't give a fuck. I'm gonna post ridiculous memes I'm gonna talk shit. I'm gonna say funny things and remember where he was a darling of the left for Nazi now it's crazy. It's the worst Having one of his cars was like a virtue badge. Like my friend made fun of me because I had a Tesla. I was like, dude, I don't give a fuck what you say. If you get in this car, it'll change your mind. Remember that South Park episode with the Prius?

I don't. I didn't see that one. Thank you. There was a whole episode about people of South Park buying Priuses and feeling incredibly super self-righteous. It was fantastic. It was fantastic It was almost as good as their their their smack in San Diego, bro. It's a thing in California

It is a real thing that some of my liberal friends that I know what you're doing you fucks you're waving a flag That's not even a good car. You don't even like the way it looks. What are you doing? Yeah? Yeah Yeah, I hear with that fucking but thing but now he's, yeah, you're right, now he's a Nazi. See, but the Tesla thing made sense to me. I'm like, okay, when you drive one of those things, you get both things. You get to feel like you're better because I'm out here doing something amazing

for the environment, and then also, you get a fucking time machine. That thing moves like a time machine. It doesn't even seem real real how fast those things are did I tell you did I tell you when I rented a I ended up? With a Tesla I think I might I don't know if I told you about that when I show up at a rental car place And I forget even what town I was in and I hadn't asked for an EV But I guess now they're kind of like they're pushing out. Yeah, so the guy says oh, yeah, we got a Tesla for you I said, okay, fine. So he hands me the card, right?

That little card thing. So I'm like, all right. So he's out there in whatever, space 428. So I wander out there and I stand and it's locked, right? So now I'm standing there thinking, well, I don't have a fucking key. I don't have a clue how to open this thing, right? So a guy walks by and he goes, oh, you just tap the card on the car. So I'm out there like tapping the fucking car.

You're tapping the door handle? I'm tapping it all over. He didn't tell me little panel right there, tapping on that. So I'm tapping the fucking car. I look like a monkey fucking a football and I'm just like, what the hell? And so finally, finally the guy walks over and he goes, what are you doing? I said, I'm trying to open the car. So he goes, oh, it's this.

He taps it, car opens. I go to him and he says, hey, thanks very much, man. And he walks away. Did you know how he did it? Did you pay attention? Well, I watched him and he just hit that one spot on the, on the little panel there by the door. And so I was like, okay, got it.

So I sat down in the car. Now I don't have a clue how to start to fuck her. And so I had to Google I'm saying I'm not I'm not gonna walk back all the way over there and say look I'm such an idiot. So I sat there and I Google how do you start a Tesla? Right, right and I had to sit and watch this stupid video and it was fine. And then I will say yeah I was I was very impressed. I loved it. It was a great experience. I had never done that before And then bizarre how fast they are. It was a great experience. I had never done that before. Bizarre, right? Yeah. Bizarre how fast they are. It was crazy, right?

They're bizarre. And then, you know, then you got to figure out how to charge it and that was a whole nother go-rope. Oh yeah, and then you got to make sure that there's chargers available. Right. And some places there's a fucking line. Yeah. You got to wait an hour to get on that goddamn thing.

Right. And then you got to sit in there for an hour. And we're all going to drive electric vehicles when you don't we don't have the capacity Yet, right. I mean, come on. We don't have the grids not ready for it yet No, not only that the fucking source of the minerals is a horror story. Yeah Yeah, I meant to tell you there's a great story in which was a Wall Street Journal today And I love when they have stories like this because I'm thinking no no shit Sherlock. It's about it's about access for the defense industry to magnets, rare earth magnets, which you

need for everything, submarines, F-35s, whatever. Think about what you need it for. Magnets are also for, obviously, for a variety of everything else, household appliances and shit. 92% of rare earth magnets are controlled by China right now. Materials and manufacturing. And so now the US is suddenly realizing that they've got an issue because a while back, a handful of years ago, they put in place a law that will actually come into effect

in 27 in a big way, which says no magnets from China where the materials or the processing or manufacturers in China. So we don't have the capacity. Why can't we get them after 2027 from China? Well, that's kind of when they said, that's it, because we want to be in control of something this critical to a variety of things. Do we have the cap capability? Well, yeah, I mean, we have the cap capability? Well, yeah.

I mean, we do. Look, rare earth, it's interesting. Rare earth minerals are not, they're not called that because of their rareness, right? They're actually, you know, you could all your critical minerals are more difficult to get your hands on. But it's the refining process that's kind of makes them difficult. And we can get them, we could have this capacity. We could have had the capacity for years and years and years, but it's the regulatory policies.

So it's like the mining industry in the states is moribund. It's almost dead because we've put in place so many regulations that say you can't... No, we can't do that. It's bad for the environment. Well, you know what's worse for the environment? It's the way that they fucking mine these things overseas, whether it's in China or Africa or wherever else. And so we've kind of shot ourselves in the foot with this, but they're now starting to catch, anyway, it's a good article, Wall Street Journal.

So if they're going to catch on, like, where do they get these? Is there a place where they can do it where they don't ruin everything? There's another article I found right below. It's talking about Mountain Pass, which used to be a huge place. If it was oil it would be considered Saudi Arabia. Is that where the Donner Party died? Yeah, maybe between California and Nevada. Is that where they died? World's number one source of rare earths. Bro. Started in a gold rush and then production changed and things changed. Is it still the number one source? Mountain Pass is arguably the best rare earth

asset in the world. Whoa. If it were oil, it would be Saudi Arabia. Let's start digging, bitches. He was talking about the refining of it, and that's why I think this article starts talking about. Yeah. So we don't have the refineries? Yeah, we need to. And so they're starting to put money into, whether it's us or the Australians or the Germans or whomever, they're starting to And so they're starting to put money into whether it's us or the Australians or the Germans or whomever, they're starting to realize. But good news is they've figured this out. But while we were paying attention to whatever we were focused on, China was dominating above 90% and knowing, strategically thinking ahead years ago, thinking what's going to be important.

And they're not playing the same game in terms of regulations and environmental concerns and practices. And that's a good thing. We should have environmental concerns. I'm not saying that. No, we certainly should, but China's not having these concerns. No, they don't have it. One of the wildest things that, you know, these social media bots, you know, who knows

what countries are using these, but there's a lot of them that are being run by foreign countries. And they'll a lot of times be like real inflammatory about climate change. And if they're funded by China, while China is building coal plants all the time, don't they have like hundreds of new coal plants that they're building? Yeah, opening up, I forget what it was, two a week or so, new coal plants. Yeah. And the EPA just crushed the coal industry here over the past week and a half or so with some new regulations that are going forward in terms of what you have to reduce your emissions

by. Isn't the solution nuclear? Isn't that the solution? I would say the solution is all of the above. It's everything. And yes, eventually work towards something that makes sense on the green energy front, but yeah, nuclear is certainly a big part of it. We get in this mindset.

That scares the shit out of people. It's like everything else. We get one, it's got to be all this or it's got to be all that. It's like the way that we have arguments. But yeah, you're right. People should look at, like if you have an environmental activist group, right, and a lot of times they'll want to shut down a mining operation here in the states. It looks like it's a grass root, just like the campus protests.

Looks like it's a grass root thing. It's just a neighborhood organization that's against this idea. You got to dig into it a little bit. Then next thing you know, you find that there's outside elements involved because it's in their best interests. China's figured this out. We've talked about this before. They figured out that the way to impact the US for their own good was to impact local

and state regulations and regulatory policies towards things like mining, right? It helps them in their cause to dominate the industry or to dominate whatever that market is that we're talking about. So again, it's just a matter of peel back the layers, pay attention, think about what you're doing. I did want to- This article talks about the overbuilding of plants, but they're going to run less frequently to keep their capacity high, and then it's asked why, and that they might just be doing

it just in case. Yeah. In case case what? Well, maybe that's they're preparing for their electric cars. By the way, China has the most advanced electric car suspension that I've ever even heard of. It's so good that you could drive over speed bumps and you could have glasses balance on the hood. Well, it sounds like that old Saturday Night Live skit where they said the ride was so smooth in the Lincoln you could conduct a circumcision in the back. So they had a rabbi in the back of a Lincoln doing a circumcision to show how smooth the suspension was.

Well, this makes that look like a motorbike, like a motocross bike. Holy shit. These things go over everything, and they stay flat. They don't feel anything. The car just stays flat as it's riding over all these bumps. It's nuts. And if you see how it works, like all the different things that are moving around inside of it, all the machinery

that they've developed to have this insane suspension, it's crazy. China is like really innovating right now in the field of electric cars. And in the field of cars period, but their electric cars have made massive leaps. Cause just a few years ago, I think Elon dismissed a lot of their electric cars, but now he's like, no, no, no no these are like really legitimate

And they've got they've got their version of a Rolls-Royce. That's like a million dollars, and you can't even get it Yeah, we've seen these Chinese Rolls-Royces. They're insane Yeah, and they've also and part of that is because they've been strategic about locking up Critical minerals right overseas in terms of you know getting in there working with countries to lock up that market and also to dominate completely the refining side of things right they've got the confidence in knowing you know where that where they can take this is so this is like okay we can dominate the ev market you know because we've done the that we've done the hard work ahead of time

this thing while this is there that chinese version of a rolls-royce and it's supposed to be sick like you get inside of the like oh my god this car is incredible But you can't even get them in America Yeah, I like my Jeep Grand Wagoneer better Jeep Grand Wagoneers are great, but I would drive this Dope-ass Chinese luxury sled this thing looks insane Hey, you know that that thing you sent me about the Manta. Yes remember that? Yes, yes, that's that SEAB ship. Yeah, the under- It looks like a UFO.

It's fantastic. It's that U underwater unmanned vehicle. That's it right there. That's sick. Yeah. That's what I hope America's making without me knowing with my tax dollars. And we are. Here we are.

I hope they're making shit like this. Look at that thing, man. That is so cool. Like that is, if you imagined like what was going to be like the kind of technology that is in 2024 and like 1967, that would be right up there. Yeah. Like a spaceship that they use in the ocean. Yeah.

And it's fantastic because it is, you can manufacture thousands of them, right? And they're for very specific purposes. They're long duration unmanned vehicles underwater. Low power, right? So interesting, they're doing that thing called energy harvesting, but they're getting it from the gradient salinity in the water and the change in saltiness in the water. But it is fascinating, but part of this is- Can you explain that? How do they do that?

No. I'd like to say that I'm a gradient salinity aficionado, but I'm not. But this is interesting because we're behind the curve in developing, particularly from a naval perspective, these new capabilities. And we're seeing how the drones and the unmanned vehicles from a naval perspective have impacted Ukraine, and their ability to attack the Russian Black Sea Fleet. We're seeing what the Houthis are doing with them. And we've been a little slow to the game. And so it's interesting to watch now that they're developing things like this, which you can take apart and then ship someplace.

It doesn't need to travel underwater to get to where it's going. You just ship it off, you put it together, you assemble it, you put it in, and it's got a variety of uses and can carry payloads, but it is fascinating. But there's also, we talked about AI, and there's something else that DARPA's been doing, because this is a DARPA-related project as well, is something called ACE. They've just finished an AI and machine learning dogfight. They've created a X something, X62, which is an... Yeah. So autonomous.

Now, you put two guys in there. There's still pilots in this thing. It's a modified F-16 essentially. You got two guys in there, there's still pilots in this thing, it's a modified F-16 essentially, you got two guys in there but they're not flying it. So they've conducted actual dogfight scenarios against a human crew, an F-16, right? And it's remarkable. This plane is using AI and machine learning to dogfight basically. And is it winning against people?

Yes, yeah. Oh! And, you know, so you still have a couple of guys in there, but they're just there like an autonomous truck, right? They're just there in case things go wrong, right? They can take control. Oh my God. But it's unbelievable.

And in the sensor tests, yeah. That is insane. What is the range? Well, in the virtual tests, well, it would be the range of an F-16, right? I mean, it's you you've you've got So the all the everything is computing all the that's all happening Right and it's learning on the plane and it's making decisions faster than the human pilot can do it It's not connected to the internet at all with sky with Skynet or whatever the fuck Starling Starling

Starling yeah,net, bro. Starlink? Yeah. But I wanted to bring that up because that is, to me, that's remarkable. It's insane. That's insane that it's doing it in real time with a jet. It's crazy. But if it makes sense, there's no margin for error.

It would get it perfect. And the virtual tests that they did, the virtual tests, they were undefeated against humans. Oh, fuck. So, yeah, you think about what that means down the road. Okay, so what do you think these drones are that people keep seeing? Or these UAPs, I should say, should say drones. Some of them they think are drones, they're like hovering over ships. Do you think these are foreign government?

China can make electric cars that advanced, and we can make drones that are pretty fucking advanced. What kind of shit do they have? Well I think most of that UIP sightings, and I think it's important for them, I'm glad the government and the Defense Department's finally at least come forward to some degree to say, look, we've got an interest in this, we want to investigate, we want to know what these things are, these sightings that we can't readily identify off the bat. Look, we were tricked out in the Korean War. The Russians designed the MiG, whatever it was, the MiG-15 maybe, and we had no idea,

right? So they come out, they roll out the MiG-15 against... We were still using old rotor aircraft from... Propeller aircraft from World War II in Korea at the outset, and we didn't know that the Russians had advanced material science to the point that they had so that they could build something like this. So it would be insane for us to think somehow that the Chinese, who have proven themselves to be brilliant at reverse engineering other people's technology, haven't figured out something else. So yeah, there's always this game of trying to understand how advanced they are.

And I suspect some of the UAP sightings are definitely probably Chinese. I don't think the Russians necessarily, but not that they wouldn't try or not trying, but I suspect the Chinese are further advanced on this. And they've stolen a lot of technology from us over the years and we've talked about that. I think a number of the UIP sightings that get listed are just that, but that's why they do it. That's why they have an office now that they've admitted to that investigates, because it's a national security issue.

You've got to know if a hostile state has created something that we are not aware of, propulsion or material science or whatever it may be. How much of that stuff could be kept secret and for how long do you think? Is it equivalent in terms of the physicists that are working on this in China versus the ones that are working on it over here? Is it possible that somebody made some sort of a propulsion breakthrough? Well, yeah, anti-gravity or something. Yeah, well that was the thing.

We had this lady that went missing. You know that story? Yeah, yeah, anti-gravity or something. Yeah, well that was the thing. We had this lady that went missing. You know that story? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she was working on an anti-gravity device. And she went back to China for a little bit and then came back here. There's been some talk about, there's various people, Sal, Salvador Pais and some others who have been working on supposedly on things similar, various propulsion systems, anti-gravity. How do you change the laws of physics?

I don't know how long that could be kept secret for. Could you keep it secret for a little bit though? Yeah, yeah, you could. But at some point, you know, it's going to get rolled out and someone's going to get wind of something. It's human nature. And we're always trying, we're always working just like the Chinese are always working against us.

We're always working to understand what they got. And so, you know, I'm not a big believer that, you know, you keep secrets of an immense nature like that for a long period of time. Well, if they did keep it a secret, if that's what the tic-tac thing was that was 2004 Yeah, it's hard to imagine them having that complex Propulsion system that's so alien from what we currently know Yeah, and have that 20 years ago and no one hears about it. No, I know I know then that's that is long time That is the I've been in conversation with some folks who want to do a new series

on UAPs, right? And I keep coming back to that incident, right? And Fravor and the folks that were involved in those sightings as one of those things. Like if I had to... because a lot of things can be explained away. That one still is a tough one. That's a tough one. Yeah, there were a lot of things can be explained away. That one still is a tough one. That's a tough one. Yeah, there were a lot of eyes on target, radars and the wingmen, and there was a lot of things here that just didn't add up.

The physical movement of it. If all the machinery works, if all the sensors work, if all the detection equipment, if all that stuff is accurate, that thing's doing something that no one's ever even seen before. Oh, no, absolutely. No sign of propulsion system, speed of movement, change of direction. Everything was so bizarre. But that's, again, what we're looking for. And we're moving and eventually we get in that direction.

Eventually you have an explainable technology that could create something like that. Back then, like you said, I know maybe- It's 2004 so long ago in terms of technology. Yeah, I know. It sounds crazy, but 20 years ago is a fucking totally different world. Well, there's that exponential advancement of technology as you go along and as you create things. Which is really crazy if that was ours.

So if we had something like that in 2004, who, where, what, how, how much money, where'd you get the smart guys? I don't think that would have been the case because I think that that we wouldn't have heard about it because I think they would Have had a classified briefing with Fravor and say you saw nothing. Don't worry about it. Mm-hmm you know, it's all done that's the case or do you think they allow some talk about it because a Lot of the talk is nutty. Anyway, a lot of these people that yeah even you know, you're right. Yeah, I Am open-minded about the idea to a certain extent, but a lot of these people, they could be telling you

Bigfoot stories. It's like, they're the same kind of folks. There's people that just see shit, and it makes their life way more interesting, and then there's people that have really seen those things. I have good friends that have seen things, that have done bizarre things. Yeah you've talked about that.

And I agree, I've talked to a couple of pilots that were out in Iraq and they said we were flying nighttime, saw shit that we couldn't explain, we had no idea what the fuck it was over the skies of Iraq while we were on a sortie. And so yeah, I'm- Well then it gets to like Tucker Carlson territory. He believes they're like spiritual beings. Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure... He thinks they're like interdimensional travelers or something.

Skinwalker Ranch and... If that's true, then the world just got so much weirder. Imagine us trying to deny that this whole time, but that's really what was going on. Yeah, although you know what? It would help to explain a lot of things maybe, and at least it wouldn't seem like we're, you know, I don't know. Yeah, I'm not, you know me, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe that because again, going back to your point, I don't believe that people

can keep secrets for a long period of time, right? But what about the Kennedy papers? Well, there is that. Okay. All right. Well, or the one that we talked about this before, Martin Luther King. Yeah. That's the one that if you're gonna really dig in I just you're never gonna shift me off the position that there were state local officials federal whatever involved in that it just doesn't make

sense still. Some conspiracies are real. Exactly yeah some of Some of them are real. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's, yeah, you go back to the OAP thing, it'd be insane to say that there's no such thing. My favorite one is the Roswell one, because if that one's real, the Roswell crash of 47. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. That one, I'm not, yeah, I don't know. I don't know, seriously, I don't know.

You're looking at me like, you know. It's an interesting one. You just look at me like, you know, come on. Come on, bro. If you know, you wouldn't tell us. That's't know. Seriously, I don't know. You're looking at me like, you know. It's an interesting one. You just look to me like, you know. Come on, bro. If you know, you wouldn't tell us. That's the problem. Or would I? No, you wouldn't.

You wouldn't be able to. But maybe if you wanted to give me more disinformation, you could give me some nuts. There's a whole segment of society out there that believes that I'm just here to push disinformation. That's my job. Well, you're here because you're a nice guy and you're a smart guy

and you actually know what you're talking about. And so I don't. I know what I read and I go, oh my God, what does that mean? And so I can have you in here and you can explain things from a guy who actually understands the complex. You had the best explanation of what's going on in the Middle East I've heard yet. Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

Do you mind if I do now on the heels of that, do you mind if I do a little shameless marketing? Oh, do some shameless marketing. Okay, so you know, we've got the President's Daily Brief, the podcast, and that started up in September. It's done remarkably well, despite me being the host. Yeah, and so it's every morning, every afternoon, we touch on, we hit the top issues, critical issues of the day, international stories, conflicts, whatever. And because it's done well, that's the weekdays, that they're going to launch a weekend version,

extended weekend version on our YouTube channel. So we're going to video. So starting Saturday, May 18th, we're going to take the PDB. It's going to still be during the weekdays on Spotify and all your other podcast platforms. But then on Saturday, May 18th, we start with this, the situation report. It'll be an extended version on YouTube with video. We're going to have guests, which leads me to my question of how do you interview guests? But it's going to be great.

News, commentary, we're going to have some very interesting people. Same idea, touching on critical issues and stories. We're going to just stick with the facts. We're going to stay away from opinion, right, which I think is one of the reasons why the PDB has done well, is that it's 20 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon. We hit the facts, try to stay away from opinion. Occasionally I might, you know, make some stupid remark. But for the most part

it's just a little bit of context and then you get on your way. Bob's your uncle. A little bit of personality flavored in with... A little personality. Yeah, I try not to inject too much because nobody wants that. But yeah, it's good. People need to hear these kind of balanced perspectives on things. I think it's very important that you provide it because you're actually a person who really understands these conflicts. Because most of us, the whole idea behind it's so alien. Like what the hell's going on over there? Like it takes so long to try to

penetrate to just like, oh so who's funding that? And then Iran is doing what? And then so why do they want that? Oh there there's accords? And what do the accords mean? And what happens? Oh, okay. All that stuff is fucking complicated. It's hard to find a singular source where you could just sit down and read it all and have it all make sense to you. I think that was the reason why we talked about that.

That was the reason why I said, okay, I agreed to do it was because they said, look, we want to stick with the news. We want to try to get back to the old days. Here's the news. And again, it's always going to... there's going to be a little context or analysis in there, but for the most part, just give people what's happening. Tell them what's happening. Don't tell them how to think about it necessarily.

Just tell them what's happening. And the President's daily brief's got a great... it's got a great staff. It's not like I'm doing everything. I'm just sort of like the monkey crashing the symbols together. There's a very unfortunate sort of combining of the people that give you the news with people that think they're activists, or people that think that it's very important that you stick to a very specific narrative and ignore information that's contrary to what your belief system says.

Right. Well, if all you do is just say, here's what's happening, right? Here's what we know is happening, right? And you don't try to, again, you don't try to tell people what to think and you don't try to say, okay, we're going to approach it from a particular point of view and leave out half of what's happening, right? Right. Yeah.

So just, and it's like that old thing. I mean, you know, there's still some news outlets out there that do a good job of just presenting facts, but most of them, like you pointed there, most of them are opinion-based. If you look at... If you sort of look at... There's a survey that regularly looks at the news in terms of objectivity, and it And it changes somewhat. And interestingly, your show doesn't change much, right? It's always kind of, it's right up there in terms of, because you're not, you know, other news outlets disappear off of there,

or they change position in terms of relative objectivity. But yours has been very consistent, but you've got outfits like Fox News or CNN, and they'll drop off the radar, right? Because they become nothing but opinion, right, for a period of time. Then maybe they self-correct and they realize we need more news, we need more facts. So they'll come back on the survey and come up higher in terms of relative credibility of actual news.

So anyway, it goes back to our original story. Everybody's got to be a little bit more careful because it's getting more dangerous out there in terms of disinformation. It's getting weird. It's getting weird when, you know, we've talked about this before, but it's an important number. This guy who used to work for the FBI, who analyzed Twitter and said he believed that it was as much as 80% of them were bots. Seriously?

Yeah. I did not see that. Pull that up, Jamie. It's crazy, because he might be right, man. Like, there's really sophisticated ones. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then there's ones that are very crude.

There's ones that are just like a bunch of letters and a bunch of numbers. And it's someone just retweeting like patriotic things. And you know, okay, I know what that is. Top cybersecurity expert claims that more than 80% of Twitter accounts are probably bots. And this is 2022. So this was in the process of Elon buying this. All this stuff was going on.

So that's interesting. Yeah, they were looking at this and they were saying, like, when did he buy it? I think that's part of the catalyst, I thought, because he wanted to find out how many were bots. But they told him it was 5%, I think that's part of the catalyst, I thought, because he wanted to find out how many were bought. Right. But they told him it was 5%, I think.

You mean old Jack, what's his name, the guy that ran Twitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think Elon felt like they didn't base it on enough of an analysis. They based it on a small number of accounts. I can't imagine it's 80%, right? I can't imagine it's- That sounds crazy. Yeah, it does sound insane. I'm sure it's higher than 5% sure sounds higher than 5% tweeted Musk along with the tagging the news article

Okay So Dan Woods global head of intelligence and cybersecurity company f5 Who spent more than 20 years of the US federal law enforcement and intelligence organizations told the Australian that more than 80% Of Twitter accounts are probably bots. Yeah, so nuts law enforcement and intelligence organizations told the Australian that more than 80% of Twitter accounts are probably bots. That's so nuts. Yeah, it's somewhere between five and 80. Even if he's halfway right, even if it's 50%, let's just say 50, 40, let's even say 40%

is crazy. 40% of her are bots. But that is, that's probably, you're probably getting to accurate because just the Chinese alone and the Russians, they invest an enormous amount of resource into this because they know it's effective, right? They know how damaging it can be and why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? Right.

In this cyber era, it's a way to influence people's opinions. It really is. It's crazy how well it works. And if you can just get like arguments going on Twitter, you know, people get engaged in those, and you do like start a fire and run away from it. Yeah, yeah. Can I ask you one more question? Yeah.

What is your, what would be your best advice for interviewing people? Because like I said, we're starting the show and it's going to have guests on it. Do you have one thing that you've learned over the years in terms of talking to people and getting the best out of what they say? I think it's just a numbers thing. I don't think it's one thing. I think it's like everything else. Like you realize when you're being clunky,

like I do it all the time. I really, I don't like, yeah, I interrupted too quick. Like I didn't know like when to step in, when not to. It happens all the time. And so you always got to like try to get the most out of your guest. That's my, my idea when I go into a conversation is I want to talk to, and we're going to talk to each other, but I'm just trying to get the most out of you You know, I'm trying to encourage what you're saying. Just like ask more questions I'm trying to just genuinely engage with what you're saying Okay

Get the most out of you the problem with a lot of people when they host things is generally like you want to talk and so She wants to talk you start talking Yeah, and then sometimes you talk too much and then the guest doesn't talk enough. And it's like it's a balancing act. But I always go into it with the intention of whatever this person's doing, help them make it the best version of this discussion that I can provide. Okay. Yeah.

No, I know what you mean about the... because you go on a news show and the question is five minutes. And you think, okay, well, that question includes a lot of the talking points that you producers asked me to send to you. So all right then. Okay, no, that makes sense. Those shows are so limited, man. It's a real problem.

Because if this is how most people consume complex information, it's too limited. There's just your explanation of all the shit that's going on with Gaza and Israel, just that alone. That had to take 15 minutes, right? Yeah. And you're making these summaries that are easily digestible. Well, yeah, and they'll say, you know we got 30 seconds left, how are they gonna solve the problem in Gaza? Jesus Christ! So crazy! It's just like that format of a limited amount of time to talk about complex things. Right. In this day and age it just doesn't really make sense anymore. But it's how people I mean whether it's that or whether it's the you know I get my news from TikTok, I get my news from X. No, that's the way to get it.

TikTok's the way to get it. They're gonna be the most honest. There's definitely, when you find out the difference between American TikTok and Chinese TikTok, like Chinese TikTok's doing it right. It's all like science achievements, athletic performances, martial arts. Yeah, there's no way that Xi regime

would never let their youth get on American TikTok. You think you could be a dude giving makeup tutorials and Chinese TikTok? They'll fucking find you. They'll find you. Yeah. No, it's true. And so that's always a thing when I talk to my kids about it. And I always tell them, don't use TikTok.

Don't get on TikTok. And you know, it's... But... They're going to do it. They're going to do it. Their friends are on it. Everybody's on it. It's crack. Yeah, it is.

Those kids are cracked out. It's an incredible time suck, which again, they know. The Chinese regime knows. They understand this. But think about TikTok in terms of its disinformation capabilities going into an election. The White House has a problem because the Biden campaign team has been using TikTok and at the same time, they're trying to say, we shouldn't use TikTok. I think it's a danger. It's a national security issue. But we found it very effective for reaching the young

market, right? And so they have no grounds to stand on when they talk about a national security issue. They got a problem. They got to figure that one out. Again, not to get overly political. They're dancing with the devil. Yeah. You made a deal with Xi. Again, not to get overly political. They're dancing with the devil. Yeah, you made a deal with she. She, sorry. But if it's, that's the thing is if like this is little dance and they can make you more effective and make your opponents less effective. That's a crazy manipulation of the way people think about things. And you don't, you don't think that that's true, but it's just like what percentage of what side are you getting? If you're

getting like 80% of your information that's very specific to one ideology, that's not good for anybody. And kids aren't thinking about that. It's been a progression, right? It used to be from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. That's where young people get in their news, right? Now they've aged out and now young people are turning to TikTok and they're getting their news. And they're not thinking, okay, of course they're not thinking about it. They're not thinking and now young people are turning to TikTok and they're getting their news out. They're not thinking, okay, of course they're not thinking about it. They're not thinking, I wonder if the Chinese regime is constructing this in a certain way. But of course they are.

Of course they understand, and that's really the danger. People talk about the danger of TikTok as their ability to harvest personal information. That's a problem to some degree. But the bigger problem is 170 million American users of TikTok being vulnerable and reachable by a Chinese regime that does not have our best interests at heart by any means. So that's the bigger issue I think rather than the harvesting of personal data, which Amazon and Google and everybody else, hell, they has it. They got all that shit. So it's not... Yes, it's a hostile regime and yes, they're harvesting your data, but I think

it's more of the disinformation campaign and the potential for that that is the problem with TikTok. Because if you can control, rather, if you can control, if you can control exactly what percentage of stuff gets out, like if someone, if you can limit someone's reach, like if someone posts something and it's some right-wing philosophy and they post that and they immediately tag it as such and limit its reach, but then you take the other one and you expand its reach, whatever the contrary position is, and you promote it and you push its reach, whatever the contrary position is, and you promote it and you push it out everywhere.

How much of an effect does that have on young people? Well, and that's the whole point of the game anyway, is you're suppressing and you're promoting. And again, you're doing it to an audience for the most part that is very vulnerable. And so, yeah, again, I don't know that they're going to ban TikTok. Somebody's going to come in and view that as an opportunity buy, right? And I think so they will be able to sell it even though right now ByteDance is saying, absolutely not, we're not going to sell it. I think they probably will, right?

I don't see them banning it from app stores. So I mean, think about the angst that would create amongst the tweens and the teens. I think the fear is the language that's being used here, though, too, right? That this could be interpreted as the ability to censor other social media sites. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that you really can't give the government that power,

especially based on what they saw on the Twitter files. Yeah, yeah. You can't just suppress. If you're looking to suppress accurate information, because you don't like what you think that's gonna do for an election, like that doesn't seem like you should be able to do that. This seems like that should be, that's not good.

Don't do that. If you develop an organization that is allowed to do that to all of social media by law, you're in territory that's real slippery now because it's just so ripe for corruption. It always goes back to this, which you talked about before, which is this idea that, well, okay, if one president can do this to another former president, then the next one goes, the next one goes, and it's the same problem, right? Hey, it maybe sounds good to us right now to censor something or to suppress something, but we're not going to be in charge forever unless they've figured that out, how they

can be in charge forever. It's so dangerous. It's so dangerous that it's so ubiquitous. It's so dangerous that it's it's so ubiquitous It's so everywhere and you don't know how much of what people are seeing is being manipulated Right. Well again, you know not to not to beat a dead horse but you know if people could take away one idea it's that you gotta It's incumbent upon you and you know Whether it's for you or whether it's for the sake of your kids

to be curious and to actually make the fucking effort to understand what it is that you or whether it's for the sake of your kids, to be curious and to actually make the fucking effort to understand what it is that you're seeing and reading and hearing. And yes, it takes time and maybe it sounds daunting and you'd rather have the government do it, right? But that's not a good idea, right? I think it comes down to individual responsibility, like a lot of things in life. And I don't know that I'm optimistic about that as being the solution, but I don't see another

way around it. We can detect, we can create apps to protect and be proactive. You can do all those things which are incredibly important, but ultimately it comes down to the individual. If they don't take it upon themselves, yeah. To go back to our earlier point, then we're fucked. Yeah. Well, I have hope.

Look at you! Look at you! Glass half full. I'm a half full kind of guy these days. I feel like... That's because you got kids. It's also because I know that most people are good people and That I think people get swept up in madness

I think they get swept up in tribalism and that's a real problem with someone that says polarizing is Trump, right? Yeah, and it's a real problem because you have to accept the nonsense that Biden is okay if you're on the left. Both of them are like, they lock up like the fucking dolphins versus the raiders. People get on teams, man. They're like, fuck the dolphins. That's what it is. People get super fucking tribal. It's in our nature.

We have to fight to avoid it. The more extreme that you get on one side, the more extreme the other side gets because they think, look, and again, you get this notion that I'm saving the country, one side or the other, right? The heart edges of both sides feel like they're the ones that are trying to save the country. Yeah, and they have to win just like they want the Yankees to win. Oh my God. It's really like that.

It becomes the number one team. It's the biggest sport and You know, that's why it's important to have a big personality. It's part of the whole stupidity of it all Yeah, and AI is gonna save us from that you think that yeah, you don't believe you It's gonna be much better government It won't even be controlled at all by people hey, but It runs on its own algorithm that it created after it realized the flaws in the way human beings are processing reality. Do you know what the US government's trying to do right now? They're trying to get China and Russia to sign up to an agreement, essentially an international treaty, that would ensure

that AI does not alone run nuclear weapons systems, right? And there is no treaty that prevents that right now. There's no treaty that prevents taking the humans out of that decision-making process. Oh my God. So, I mean the Russians did during the Soviet Union days. So they're going to be playing like some kind of crazy World War chess game with supercomputers. Yeah. But right now. With supercomputers. Yeah, but right now the US is committed to this idea that we're not going to take the

human out, but the Russians and Chinese have not. Then no one's going to commit to that. Why would you commit to have the best weapon of all time? We already said that these fighter pilots can't compete with these things that are AI controlled. That's nuts. Yeah, it's a problem. I was about to say that. There's a it's it's a it's a

problem I was about to say there's a statement of the obvious I've gone three has fucked what are they gonna do I did not see the top gun three gonna do I didn't see top gun too well you're on American sir did you watch it I watched a little bit of it I know I know it was fun kind of wasn't in the mood to lock in that vibration. I know. It was a fun kind of movie though. It was a one time. For me, Top Gun was kind of a one time. Top Gun was fucking great.

It was a great movie. Goose, God. And I will say, I'm very impressed with Carl. I haven't heard him snore this entire show. He's kept it together today. God, he's a cute dog. He's the cutest. Yeah. All right. All right, man.

Anything else? No, man. I always... He sufficiently scared the shit out of us. I'm sorry about that, man. Like you guys do. But again, we have hope. This is always a pleasure, man.

I just... I love this and, you know, I've said it before, but, you know, the time flies by, you sit down, you think, I don't know. I don't know if I've got enough to say in the time here here and you always you know yeah, you always take it someplace like the Kendrick Lamar thing I still still fucking worried about that. Yeah, I hope they hug it out. Yeah, all right. Thank you Mike. I appreciate you people. Bye Thanks for watching!