The Joe Rogan Experience - #767 - Mike Baker

Episode Date: March 1, 2016

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

Yes! And we're live. Mike Baker, how are you, sir? I'm doing very well, thank you. Very happy to be here. Thanks for coming back, man. Appreciate it. Are you kidding? No. Good to see you. This world's in chaos. We need to talk to a rational man like yourself who's got the inside scoop. I have never been billed that way before, but thank you. That's a bonus. In this irrational world, your rationality, you're what's deemed a rational man now. Yeah.

We've been lowering the bar. Lowering our expectations. We were talking before the show started about the current cover of The Economist that has Donald Trump dressed up like his Uncle Sam, and it just says, really? It's perfect. And it's what you want to say to everybody who has jumped that chasm. I understand that everybody's upset. People are angry for whatever their motivation. So they get jonesed up.

This is it. Look at that fucking cover. Look at that. This is what we're down to. That's brilliant. But how do you get from, okay, he's entertaining. And I understand that. Everybody wants to be entertained to some degree.

But how do you get to the point from saying it's entertaining to leader of the free world? And that's the part that I can't understand when I talk to people who are absolutely supporting him. Well, you as a man who's been deep in the world of security or CIA operative, you've got the inside scoop with how this machine runs to a certain extent. Don't you think that at this point, it's so complicated that almost no one wants to be president? Like, it's not a job that, like, people are scrambling to get anymore. Right. Nobody of their right mind would want to put themselves through it. Yeah. Or, you like, people are scrambling to get anymore. Right. Nobody of their right mind would want to put themselves through it. Yeah. Or, you know, unless you're independently wealthy.

Yeah. And just don't care. And there is, I think you're right, there's a, you think about the kid who wants to become president of the Young Republicans Club, right, in middle school. And then, you know, all through his life, that's all he wants. He wants to be an elected official somewhere So he goes maybe to the town council and eventually in his big goal is to become a congressman and god forbid then he gets That and he goes on there's a certain personality type right? That's way up its own ass That allows you to think that yes, I should be president of the United States

Yeah, I look in the mirror every morning and I think yes, I should lead the free world. So right there, I think you've got a flaw in all the people who are pursuing elected office. But then you've got the money that's behind it. You have to be independently wealthy. I watched, not that disappeared on a rabbit hole, but I lived on the East Coast before we moved out to Idaho, which is a great state. Love Idaho. Oh my God, it's a great state.

Beautiful. People don't know. No, and we probably shouldn't say anything about it. It's awful. They think it's flat or something. I had this conversation with these two guys about it, and they were like, well, you know, it's mostly farms. Like, what the fuck are you talking about, man?

It is. I mean, there's a lot of agriculture, but you know what? It has more. Here's an interesting fact about Idaho. People can write this down. If you took an iron and ironed Idaho flat, and then you did that with all the other states, the only other state that would be bigger would be Alaska. Yeah.

And the same for river frontage, right? The river miles. Rafting is insane out there. But the point being, I suppose, before we moved out there, I was on the East Coast. And my wife is involved in politics to some degree. But we spent some time in Connecticut watching the governor race there. And they would have to go from town council to town council. It works based that way.

I mean you have to get the vote of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party or the town council. And the first question any of them would ever ask was, can you self-fund basically? How much money do you have? Can you self-fund, basically? How much money do you have? And so you put that together with the idea that nobody wants to open their family up to the ridiculous scrutiny that's involved. And we get what we get. We get this crazed campaign season.

Yeah, it seems like we're down to assholes. That's it. It's the only people who want to be it. Andernie sanders is just i mean he's kind of an old kook i don't think he's an asshole i think he's got i don't think he's an asshole he seems like a nice guy actually with a lot of good ideas socially i don't know i don't know it's just it's like it's the biggest example in my opinion of picking the lesser evil i mean that's how i'm looking at this campaign it's like what's the lesser evil it's going to be hillary clinton who basically i i just i can't i don't i don't feel any sincerity from her at all it's so hard she's been in the business for so long she's been involved in

politics for so long like i don't know if she knows how to be just herself that's a good point i mean i my problem with hillary is it's purely an operational one. I know that if I had handled, I mean, even in a conservative way, if you look at what she did with the email server and her colleagues, her cohorts did, and you say, okay, it's, you know, in a conservative way, I'm looking at how bad it was. If I had done that, I would have been sent to prison. If I had done that, I would have been sent to prison. And I know because we had various counterintelligence operations and you're trying to find the leak, you're trying to find the problem. And you watch people get banged upeus is a good example. He hands over some information to his mistress who had a security clearance and he gets a couple years probation, you know, a large fine, has to plead guilty. She literally hands it over to the Chinese, the Russians and any other state and non-state sponsored, you know, hacker out there. And explain what she did for people who don't know. Sure.

She, for whatever her motivation, she initially said it was simply a matter of ease after saying that she didn't really know because it wasn't her gig. She set up a private email server in her bathroom. Her bathroom? In her bathroom at her house in New York. Who the fuck puts an email on a server in their bathroom? I know. That seems like a weird choice. Well, you're multitasking.

Maybe you don't have that much time in the day. Maybe she's constipated. She did not use that excuse, as I recall. It still doesn't make sense. It doesn't make any sense. I know. They have no extra rooms in the Clinton house. It's a small place.

They only made about $190 million over the last couple of years. So we're supposed to believe she's living in a one bedroom, one bath place, you know, 800 square feet. And so she used this and essentially the problem is traffic was directed through this

unprotected server that now, you know, and she's arguing semantics. She's saying, well, I never saw that it was classified and yet it's either classified or it's not. And you know, and she's arguing semantics. She's saying, well, I never saw that it was classified. And yet it's either classified or it's not. And you know it. And when you sign on to be, whether it's a senior official at her level or some, you know, moke that's walking around just carrying papers at the agency, whatever it may be, you sign agreements that you will protect classified information. And it doesn't say

it has to be marked classified. It says that you are aware because you go through a briefing about what is and what isn't and how you look at a piece of information to determine. So she's saying it wasn't classified when she saw it or when it hit the server. But what they were doing is essentially cutting and pasting from classified documents so that they could bypass traffic. And what their motivation was, I have no idea. Whether they thought it was quicker, whether it was easier. You know, I don't read a lot of nefarious intent. I just read an egregious mishandling of classified information that anybody else would be punished for. And it's, you know, I don't think it's going to happen. I think the Bureau is engaged in a couple of different investigations. I think they have all the information they would need to put the ordinary person, you know, or move for an indictment.

I just don't think the DOJ is going to do it. So what is their motivation to ignore it? Well, I think it's political top cover. Because there's only one other person running for the Democratic Party. Right. And a lot of people aren't too excited about having Bernie Sanders become the president. Right, right. And I mean, again, it's sort of, you know,

the left makes fun of the Republicans, as they should, because look what we've got as our front runner. But, you know, they make fun of the idea that, you know, the Republicans are all upset because their anointed one, whether it's Rubio or whomever, you know, is in the dust right now.

It's the same way on the other side, right? I mean, you know, there's a lot of people, you know, with their knickers in a twist on the left, upset that perhaps their anointed one isn't going to get in. If Huma Abedin or one of her cohorts who was involved in this, who also were being looked at in a very, very serious way, if one of them gets banged up for this, then I don't know how it doesn't spread to her. She was in charge. And, you know, I understand shit rolls downhill. But anyway, so that seems like the only way it wouldn't is the whole thing that we're talking about her in the first place, that she's just so deeply entrenched in the system. She's so political and she's washed so many hands and, you know, they're all tied in together.

And this is the fabric that's sort of keeping her afloat right now. Her whole sort of, you know, political operating mechanism. I mean, she's just so deeply entwined in the Washington system. And that seems to be what's keeping her from. I mean, if this was going on and somehow or another, this was someone like Trump, someone who's an outsider, Jesus Christ, it would chase him down. Yeah, forget about it. This is a remarkable situation. Somebody who is a frontrunner, and again, not taken away. She's got a lot of experience. Okay, I understand that. I like Bill Clinton. I like the guy.

I thought there was a lot of good things about him. It's just pretty fucked up. I don't know how else to put it. We've got Trump on one side. We've got Hillary under investigation on the other side. We've got Bernie Sanders. And I get it. I understand why people like Bernie because, hey, wouldn't you like free stuff?

Free stuff is, give me some of that. I've got three little boys I've got to put through college. Well, people feel like there's an imbalance and they feel like this is the only guy that's saying, hey, it's imbalanced. And the people that understand economics are apparently upset at him. I don't understand economics. I'm lucky I don't have to. But the people that, you know, if I was a fucking accountant, I'd shoot myself. I'd jump off a bridge.

But the people that understand it are like, this guy's policy, this is not going to work. Like, none of this is going to work. So that's an argument for other people. But the people that feel like we got screwed in 2008 with the whole bailout and the banks and all the craziness with the economic collapse, they feel like at least some guy's coming along that's addressing that and he's the only one. So that's what people are gravitating towards. And there's a lot of social stuff, like his gravitating towards the Black Lives Matter movement

and wanting to make medical marijuana legal and all that stuff. That I understand, too. But there's not one person that stands out where I go, there's my guy. There's my guy. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely 100%.

Yeah, I mean, if you could take Bernie, because I think one of the things people like about Sanders is he's been consistent over the years. Yes. Right? So he's not changing. And again, there is something to be said here in this political system where apparently you're not allowed to evolve your thinking. Right. You're a flip-flopper.

Yeah. Oh, my God. You can't do that. So that part of it, or you can't negotiate a compromise, as if somehow that's a weakness. Negotiating and compromising is how you get shit done, whether it's in government or business. But so anyway, I understand people like Sanders. They like his consistency. I understand the social side of it.

I think it makes good sense. I'm like you. I've spent most of my life overseas, some of them in some pretty crappy countries where socialism has been tried. And I understand he's a democratic socialist. And so it's a kinder, gentler form. But I've seen some pretty harsh results from those systems overseas. And I I'm surprised that I'm surprised that I understand young people jumping on that train. I'm just surprised at the other folks who are on board. There's a lot of people up in Wall Street that are saying, Bernie's going to tax the shit out of those people.

And he's said as much. Yeah. So I don't know how much he's going to tax people. I've tried to pay attention to how – I mean essentially what he wants to do is anyone who makes more than a certain amount, he wants to impose a very large tax above that certain amount. You know, figure out whatever that number is, whether it's $10 million a year or whatever the hell it is. Anything over that, he's just going to tax the fuck out of it. But the problem is that's not going to pay for everything he needs. That tax is going to roll down to the middle class and the lower middle class. And that's sort of the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. I mean, Hillary's been talking about it a little bit. She's been bringing this up.

But, you know, taxing that 1%, the 2%, the 3%, whatever it is, you know, you could raise those taxes up to 99%. You're not going to pay for free health care and education for this country. Well, not only that, everybody's always complaining about the government. There's too much government. The government's intruding in our lives. The government this, the government that. When you charge more taxes, you take more taxes, what are you doing? You're creating more government. That's just what you're doing.

The money's not going to go directly to people. You're not going to get a check in the mail, folks. It's going to go to the government. And then the same incompetent fucks that are handling the IRS and all the other shit, those are the people that are going to be handling this money. And what do you think they're going to do? They're going to create more jobs. They're going to have more people working for less.

They're going to make more money and work, get less shit done, and it's going to be more catastrophe. And it's a clusterfuck. There's too many goddamn people. And you know what? When 2008 hit, when the economy really went in the shitter, growth in terms of employment, you know where it happened most in this country? It was in Washington, D.C. I mean, you saw the growth of government as the economy was absolutely heading south. And that's just, that's the growth of government as the economy was absolutely heading south. And that's just – that's the way it works. There are certain things about big government that hold true whether it's here or outside this country.

But anyway, so I look at Bernie and I think, yeah, I get it. I like the fact that he's been consistent. I think that makes sense. But then you look at the Republican side and we go back to that picture of Trump and you think, how does that fucking happen? How do you get to this point? And you think about poor, what's his name?

Scott Kelly, the astronaut who's coming down after, you know, he's out of a long sleep up in the space station. I hope to hell that they haven't told him shit about what's happening because how funny would it be for him to land

and Trump is the leading candidate and nobody's said anything to him yet. And he just comes home, turns on the TV. It's Super Tuesday. Trump's won everywhere. And he's going to be, I mean, he's dealing with gravitation and all the rest of it. So I guess this isn't his biggest deal. Don't they get, like, internet up there?

I think he's got something. I'm sure they do. He's got satellite internet, I think. Magazine delivery. I mean, he's got to know. I mean, you'd go crazy if you're completely removed from life when you're up there. Yeah, yeah. I think I would love to think that he doesn't know and he'd be the one person who'd get gobsmacked when he shows up here and finds out what's going on. Maybe he could run last minute. Look, look, look, look. Stop, stop.

Well, here's the thing. There's no one else. If Hillary gets tossed up in this email exchange thing, if she gets in trouble for this, and it's Bernie, that's it, on the Democratic side. And on the Republican side, it's essentially down to, I mean, Cruz seems like he's fallen out of it. It's Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, and Rubio is a distant second. And people are so excited about Trump because he talks shit, he's bold and brash,ash he insults people and he's got his own money He says a bunch of crazy shit like there's a great picture of him where it's it's a photoshopped picture of Somebody made a picture of him and he's got a gun And he's pointing it out of the window of a car and it says get in pussy. We're gonna make America great again

And it says, get in, pussy. We're going to make America great again. But it just seems like there's so many like goofy white guys who are ready. They're ready and psyched to have Trump as president, like some insulting reality star kind of a president. Who wants to impose trade sanctions. That's what you want to do when the economy is troubled and and weak, that's a great idea, is to shut down international trade. That's always proven to be a smart thing to do.

There's the picture. Look at this picture. This is so fucking stupid. Oh, God, I'd love that as my screensaver. See, as a comic, I should be excited about this. Yeah, you should be. I should be like, I am going to have a great four years at least. You wouldn't have to do anything.

There would be no work involved. Every day we'd just go on the internet and it would be a rush to get to the stage quickest with the material. That would be the problem because everybody's going to have the same jokes. The folly will be outrageous. I think people are excited, though, that he's got his own money. He's not entrenched in the system, the Washington system. But God damn it. No, we can't have this happen.

We have more crisis around the world right now, more hot spots, more potential, very, very serious conflicts going on. more potential, very, very serious conflicts going on. And now is the time, you would think, whether it comes from the left or the right, that you want really clear-minded, strategic, smart, pragmatic, reasoned leadership. And this ain't it. I mean, Trump isn't the guy. Hey, great that he's insulting people. Great that he's talking outside. But he doesn't, and i'm sure this is going to

piss off i don't know how many trump supporters you've got listening but uh he doesn't stand for anything right i mean he stands for what i mean i suppose the supporters would say he stands for winning uh but what the hell does that mean tiger blood tiger blood that's it that's it it's got panther panther bits maybe Maybe Charlie Sheen could be his running mate. He'd win for sure. God. But the fact that we're even having a conversation about it, where we're talking about whether a guy like Trump is suited to be president is astounding.

We get that far in the weeds. We shouldn't even have that conversation. We should be up at the 30,000 foot level. He says, no, let's push that to the side. Well, you know who oddly is impressive to me is Ben Carson. I know he believes a lot of wacky stuff. Like he's not entirely convinced that evolution is real. He's got...

He hasn't quite wrapped his head around that one yet. He's got some wacky ideas. Like he's got a great picture of himself. He's painting that he had done at his home where it's him and Jesus is behind him and Jesus has his hands on his shoulders. It's yeah. Okay. Um, and that is this.

Oh, Jamie found it. First of all, if I was Jesus, I'd fucking smack him. Why is my head so small? Why am I hands so big? Why am I wearing a bathrobe? What the fuck are you insinuating? And I kind of got the thing. He's got that weird evil widow's peak thing going on.

Well, it's a kind of crease in his head like a pit bull. Yeah. Look, he looks like he's ready to bite your face off. It's like a Klingon head. A Klingon head. You're right, Jamie. And he's wearing a comfy hotel bathrobe. That's what that looks like.

It doesn't look like, you know, garb from the Middle East necessarily. Yeah, at all. It looks like he's just walked out of the shower. Why is it so white? Man, doctor, you're here. I don't even think they had bleach back then. Did they have bleach in the Jesus days? I mean, things were like natural cotton color.

Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure they had no tied capsules or whatever we used. I don't like how he made Jesus smaller than him either. That's kind of weird. Yeah. That's rude. I mean, you know, who knows who painted it for him. But I agree with that. I like the fact that, again, you talk about someone who's reasoned.

I like the fact that he's reasoned but he's not presidential he's not presidential and we've gotten to that point where there's so many problems with our system but one of the problems is i think that people are hell-bent on finding the candidate that they agree with everything on yeah or that agrees with them on everything and i've got you know my know, my three little boys are, what, eight, six, and four, and they know they're not going to get everything they want, right? But they also know that if they work it enough, they'll get some of what they want, and then they're going to be happy enough, and they'll go off, and, you know, the day continues. Adjust their expectations.

Adjust their expectations. But nobody wants to do that anymore in politics. And so you're getting everybody's splintering off. And so, you know, the worry, obviously, and it's not an epiphany. People are talking about it all the time on the Republican side. It's just, you know, people are throwing these verbal hand grenades out, and there's no way to repair the damage once there is some nominee, if there is a nominee. Well, Christie's trying to do that now. Chris Christie's now friends with Donald Trump.

He's endorsing Donald Trump. Jeff Sessions endorsed Donald Trump. Newt G Chris Christie's now friends with Donald Trump. He's endorsing Donald Trump. Jeff Sessions endorsed Donald Trump. Newt Gingrich is reportedly talking to Donald Trump. How much – and I don't – this sounds wrong, but how do you get to the point where you can set aside all your concerns and agree to step forward and say that he's the guy? I don't know how that works. But yeah, there's not one person that, and that's fine. So what you have to do is you have to look for

the combination of character and experience. I think that's what we used to do. But it's all bread and circus now. So that shit doesn't matter anymore. I don't know. I think we're going towards a third party at some point. Well, you can't have a president that has any secrets.

They can't have any sort of a weird kink or weird background. Like, could you imagine if JFK was alive today? What kind of shit they would dig up on that guy's life? Oh, absolutely. Because he was a freak. Great president, but he was a freak. The guy was a sexual freak. And the press corps

kept that secret. Just like what they did with Roosevelt and being in a wheelchair. There was a tacit agreement. We're not going to bring this up. Yeah, I mean, that was how they did it back then

because they felt like they had a duty to keep America strong. And they just, everybody just kept it to themselves and kept their mouth shut. Yeah.

Well, I mean, Taft. Taft was crazy. And the press didn't bring up any of his shit. How about when Lyndon Johnson literally was doing a press conference while he was taking a shit? That's right. That's a true story. Yeah, absolutely. He did a press conference on the toilet, taking a shit in front of a bunch of reporters.

He would talk to his cabinet guys. Or guys would come in and he would be dictating notes. And he'd be squatting on the pot there. And you've to admire that the guy was comfortable in his own skin. But I think that, you know, everything sectors and groups and opinions, and we're going to go after this one. Well, by definition, you're going to end up pitting groups against each other. And that's what we've been seeing. And I think that's in part, you know, why we're so fucked now, you know, and it's not a new phenomenon. I'm not going to throw all that on the current administration. You know, they've been, I think they've been more divisive than they have been unifying. But, you know, overall, as a country, and part of it may be the speed of information and all the rest of this shit, but it just seems like we're getting to the point where I think we're going to have to get rid of the two-party system.

We'll keep the two-party system, but we're going to have to have a third, maybe a fourth. There's going to have to be more potential opportunities for people because that's what they're demanding. Yeah, I agree. You know what else I think? I think there shouldn't be a president anymore. I think it's a ridiculous idea. Just a cabinet, just a committee. Just having one guy that's in charge.

I mean, we know he's not really in charge. We know. There's just too much shit going on. There's no way he could be. I mean, when something happens and something goes wrong, like someone said to me something about drones. They were talking about drones and Obama has blood on his hands. be. When something happens and something goes wrong, like someone said to me something about drones. They were talking about drones and Obama has blood on his hands. Do you really think he's in charge of all that? Do you really think there's any way this guy could be on top of the economy,

can be on top of international trade, he could be on top of international relations, and he's also piloting drones? Right. There's a lawyer in the White House, basically, by the way, who makes that call on high value targets and whether we get to go or not go. A lawyer does. A lawyer does. Whoa. Yeah, go figure. How does that work?

With no real national security experience. Who's the guy? Don't even say his name. I won't say it. I won't say the name. Candyman. But – So this guy decides whether or not it's worth the potential casualties. Yeah, there's a shitload of work that goes on in getting to that point where you can say, we've got the target package, can we go or not go? And people, you know, and again, I understand, you know, people think that the agencies out there,

you know, look at the create a one world government to screw everybody over. But how the fuck could that ever happen? I don't! That shit drives me fucking crazy. The FBI and CIA can't even get along. You can't, I mean, and sometimes you look at it... Well, that's what happened with Petraeus, right? Right, exactly. I mean, there are so many, and maybe

because we talk about checks and balances, we talk about the intel committees and, you know, sort of that nature, but maybe what really keeps us, you know, safe from the one world government is the fact that, you know, there's so much territorial pissing that goes on between the different agencies. But the point being is that once you get that target package and you've got to go get approval. And the approval is not housed in the agency. It's not housed at the Pentagon. Final decision making is over at the White House.

And it's basically a legal perspective. making is over at the White House. And it's basically a legal perspective. And so once that's done, then yeah, sure, you can fire a rocket up their ass if they're still where they are and you can get the decision made quick enough. But I agree with it. So your point is correct. The president is like a CEO of a company. He didn't know what the hell's going on past his, you know, division leaders or whomever. He couldn't. There's no way he could. There's no way he could possibly know all the things that are going on that the United

States is involved with all over the world. There's no way. I mean, what do we have? How many different bases? Don't we have like bases in more than 100 countries? Yeah. Something crazy like that? Yeah.

I mean, if you just define a base as U.S., you or semi-permanent presence, yeah, it's a lot. But there's no – and not just that, but I mean every other operation that goes on, every other activity that goes on, every – there's – that's why – but I will say that that's why you want at the top, while we still have a president, that's why you want someone who's very reasoned and clear-eyed, not thin-skinned. You want someone who can negotiate. You want someone who doesn't think they're the smartest person in the room. And then they need to be able to pull together the cabinet that is going to actually start making decisions. And I think presidential candidates, even at this stage, should be required to say who's going to be in their cabinet. Who would be your choice for these various positions? That's a very good point.

But, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, you know. That doesn't really get brought up, right? No. Oh, no. No. And I think it would make a big difference.

You want to know who their team is going to be. And, you know, who knows? Maybe that would cause a scramble for top people. And then you'd – I don't know what all that would mean. But it's – let's just say it's a very disappointing political season right now. My big fear is that we're going to have artificial intelligence and that one day artificial intelligence is going to govern world policy and world issues. I really believe that. I know I'm retarded for thinking this, but I think that there's going to come a point in time where we establish rules of operation.

You know, do no harm or do the least harm possible. These are the laws. These are parameters that we need to operate in. These are the rules that we need to enforce. And this is when something like ISIS, when it gets to a point where everyone agrees, okay, we have a tremendous issue, we've got to do something. Militarily, strategically, some choices have to be made. What do we do? That you could punch this in somehow or another to some sort of artificial intelligence, and

it will dish out some sort of a decision based upon the rules of engagement, based upon the agreed upon parameters that we have set. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we're kind of marching in. I don't know that we'll ever get to that point, but, you know, we certainly war game scenarios out where you're running a large number of potential possibilities through the system.

And it is literally, like you said, it's spitting out, you know, likely outcomes. Yeah. And you're weighing that against them. Because one big part, and it's always missed because, again, there's this tendency to think that people are just out there doing shit for the hell of it. But there's a big risk versus gain calculation that goes on, whether it's at the agency or the military or anywhere else. And so you're constantly evaluating this. And part of that eventually becomes political risk, political blowback. So, you know, that's like the Benghazi thing. How did I end up on that? But you look at

Benghazi and you think, here's the part I don't understand about that. Not that you asked, but all they had to do during the course of that attack, and they had no idea how long that attack was going to go on for. All they had to do was put the birds up with the guys in them and head towards Benghazi. That's all they had to do. And then this would not have ever been a story. They probably wouldn't have gotten there in time to save lives. But they would have gotten there.

They would have been there. They would have secured the facility. They would have helped with the dust to clean up. And it wouldn't have been an issue. But the idea that they could all be sitting around in the war room watching this and not have that pop in their heads because three to four weeks down the road was a national election and all they could imagine was there was going to be some goat rope and they couldn't get to the point where they thought there'd be zero risk,

but it doesn't make any sense. All those guys on the ground wanted was to know that the cavalry had been called. They didn't expect to be saved, but they thought that help would be on its way because that's what you do. And it's one of those strange... So when you talk about scenarios and war gaming and potential political blowback and all that, it's a fascinating world where you sit in a war room and all these different sides are being debated. My perspective on Benghazi is I just don't understand why they didn't just try. That's all they had to do. And so you really think it was because of the election? I think there were more political operatives in that room than tactical operators. And I think that somebody got jammed up who wanted to spin him up and send him. And I think that

it was probably because, and again, I understand it's speculation and I send them. And I think that it was probably because, and again, I understand it's speculation and I get it. And I'm not one of those people that said they could have saved those lives. That wouldn't have happened. But I just don't understand the simple concept that one of those political operatives sort of said, you know what, if we don't try,

yeah, we might get fucked on this. Well, shouldn't there also be a scenario or at least just a rule in place that whenever there's an attack, you send in the troops? That's the covenant that's always, you're supposed to be keeping. That's the promise that's supposed to be there. Yes, the promise. That's a great way of putting it. And that's why all the guys have been, you know, and the folks that were in that program and everybody I know is, people say, why would you be fixated on this?

Why is this important? It doesn't – like Hillary Clinton said, what difference does it make? Oh, it's so important. Yeah, exactly. And for that reason that you said, there is this understanding that you will make the effort. You'll try. And nobody out there on that pointy edge of the spear expects that they'll be saved, but they do expect that someone's going to call the cavalry and try. Well, the idea that you're left to be hung out to dry, it's not like there's no resources.

That's where it doesn't make any sense. No, we have resources. Yeah. That's why it's so disturbing to people. It's like if this was a political decision, it's like to try to minimize blowback because of election coming up, so let's just not do anything. If that was the decision, well, that's contrary to the whole purpose of having military in the first place. Like if there's a fucking attack, you're supposed to send in the troops.

Particularly attack on your facility. Exactly. And particularly to make sure that that fucking never happens again. Because if you know that every time there's an election coming up and, well, they're not going to do shit because there's an election coming up in two weeks now we can go in as a time to do it yeah that's a crazy precedent to set yeah well it is and again I I wasn't there I don't know I just in looking at it all the various scenarios and knowing what resources were available and and knowing what the guys expected on the ground I just don't I don't I don't get it and you know for

a group meaning the administration that's supposed to be so clever and politically savvy, it just didn't make any sense. And now they've been having to suffer with it ever since. And aside from the fact that they just didn't fucking make the effort to try to save these people. And again, not that they would have. But how do you not how do you not try? I don't I don't understand any of it. I don't understand whenever they're making decisions based on whether or not there's an election coming up and you would do something differently if there was and people's lives could be lost because an election's coming up versus how you would behave if it was first term or first year, first term. I think it's all madness. Well, there's a risk aversion that takes hold. And we got to a point, and it's not just a recent thing. It's not just this administration, to be fair. But there's this understanding or this belief somehow that we can get to a zero risk on a military operation or an intelligence operation. So show me that we won't have casualties. Well, what the fuck does that mean?

You're in a risk-taking business. You want to try to minimize that risk for sure. What the fuck does that mean? You're in a risk-taking business. You want to try to minimize that risk for sure. But when your decision-making gets to that point and you start then – it starts feeding down through the ranks and you start getting mid-level managers rising up who believe that a good watch is when nothing happens on their watch, you've got a real problem because – It's unrealistic. Yeah. I mean you don't – again, you don't want to rush know, until you, you want to have a game plan, right? You

want to know what you're doing operationally, but you know, there are certain things that are worth bending your spear over. Now for a guy like you that was in the CIA for so long, has been involved in this stuff for so long, how exhausting is all this? Cause it seems to me that it seems like it never ends. It seems like you step back for a little while and it just piles up more. If you retire, the new guy comes in

and you look at the new guy doing it and the same shit's happening and it doesn't seem like anybody put a dent in anything. And it continues to go on like the Middle East. At what point in time I mean how I know what you're getting out there that seems pretty buttoned up I think we've got that under control it's the craziest fucking place in the world it's if the whole world okay let's put it this way if the whole world was Syria right yeah if the. It was just one big country of Syria.

What the fuck? Yeah. If the whole world was Libya. A lot of people offing themselves. Yeah. Yeah, imagine. Oh, shit. The whole world was Libya.

What? Nah, you know what? If you had told us, we spent a lot of time trying to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

And the Soviets spent a lot of time trying to get themselves out of there. About four years into their occupation there, they realized, and we know this because we've seen the Kremlin papers and we've had access to a lot of their thinking at that time. They, after about year four, they said, this is fucked up. We got to get out of here. But what could they do? So they spent the next five years or so trying a variety of things. First of all, they tried to find a government or individuals that they could leave in place that would continue to push their agenda. They couldn't find anybody. They were dealing with corruption. We know that. They couldn't get past a lot of the corruption. That sounds familiar. and decided, well, we'll just hold the urban center.

So that's exactly what we did. So they went through the same problems that we did. If you had said anything, when we were out there handing weapons systems to the Musha Dean, and in retrospect, maybe that wasn't a good idea. But if you had told us that we'd be back two and a half decades later doing the same thing that the Soviets were doing, trying to – I don't know what. What were we trying to do? Build a nation? Sell democracy where they don't have a fucking clue what we were selling?

So we don't – part of it is what you were saying. We don't learn from our mistakes. So that's why – that's probably the most tiring part is watching shit happen over and over in cycles. And every generation thinks they can do it better. And that's a good thing probably. But there's a lot of hubris involved, right? And thinking that you're going to do this, somehow it's going to be different this time. I had a guy, I was debating this guy who will remain anonymous. He was in the military. And we were in Afghanistan at that point already with trying to nation build. And I was very pessimistic about the whole thing.

And I kept saying this fucking, you know, this is not what we should be doing with our boys or women as well and our resources and everything else. I said, they don't understand what the fuck we're after here. And we did a great tactical mission right after 9-11. We did a beautiful, I sound like did a great tactical mission. You know, right after 9-11, we did a beautiful, I sound like Trump, beautiful tactical mission. And that's what we're good at. We're great at tactical missions. But then, you know, about springtime in 2002, we should have gotten the fuck out. So if you do it again, we're going to come back. And we didn't. We stayed because we wanted to build a road or improve their literacy rate by a couple of points. So this guy said,

well, it's different this time. Because I was saying, look, it didn't work for the Russians. Why do you think it's going to work for us? And he said, well, they hated the Russians. And I thought, wow, that's your reasoning is because somehow they like us? Or we're going to throw chocolate bars out to them and stockings and they're going to come running? I mean, what the hell is that point? But we have this mentality that we're going to do it better this time. So you look at ISIS, for example, and I mean, who couldn't have guessed if we completely walk out? You can debate all sorts of things about Iraq, but who couldn't have seen if you walk out of that place, it was going to devolve into chaos. place, it was going to devolve into chaos. If you leave a vacuum, it's not good. And so that's what we've got. But we keep doing the same things over and over again. And you could argue what we're

doing in Iraq, we did all those years ago after the Soviets left Afghanistan. And so we left, and it devolved into what it devolved into. And oddly enough, there were a lot of neocons who thought that was terrible. We felt guilty about that. So now we're going to get it right this time. We're going to stay. Not thinking about what happened to the Soviets. Right. I don't know. I don't know.

I remember when McCain was debating Obama when they were running for president and Obama was talking about going to Afghanistan. And I remember this is a very sobering moment where McCain said, what are you talking about? Go into Afghanistan. You're just going to send troops in? Do you understand that place? And it was clear that Obama didn't. You could tell by his body language. You could tell by the way he was speaking about it. McCain had this really clear sentence. He said, that place hasn't changed since Alexander the Great was running it. And when he said that, I remember thinking, like, whoa, what the fuck?

So then I started researching Afghanistan. Then I started researching the terrain and how crazy it is. It's like literally like trying to control, like, the Rocky Mountains. It's like back country Idaho. It's so remote. It's so impossible to get to. And then you find out that there's really only one city. There's Kabul.

And the entire country is basically, you know, there's a few little towns there's one city yeah yeah and it's just warlord they don't know what they don't know what we've been trying to sell them and it's the same with with Iraq it's the same with Libya Libya's a complete hot mess now isn't it crazy to getting rid of Gaddafi made Libya worse? Well, you know what, Gaddafi, here's that wacky thing. Gaddafi was kind of our guy on counterterrorism for a few years before he got pushed out.

And because he had found Jesus, you know, not literally, I guess, you know, whatever, however they put it. And he had started to cooperate with us. And then the Arab Spring happened. And then there was this bizarre belief that democracy was going to sweep through the region.

And the Italians and French came to us and said, you know, we got lots of interests there in Libya. Would you back us up? We had no national security interests in Libya. And yet we went in and we did what we did. And now it's a shithole. It's 130 some odd tribes in Libya. And we're still talking. Right now we're still talking as if somehow we're going to find a federal government. And that's what's going to help us. Because then one of the

generals just came out yesterday or today or whatever. And he said, well, I don't think the Libyan, you know, Libyans are going to be able to take care of ISIS themselves because ISIS now, you know, got a very strong hold in Libya because they're smart because they realize they're having problems in Syria and Iraq. They've been looking for another place. Libya is chaotic. So the general says, you know, you know, so once we get this unified government, then we can work on training and assisting and providing resources. And it's just over and over. So to answer your original question, but in a very roundabout way, yes, it's tiring because you see the same shit over and over again. because you see the same shit over and over again.

Well, I could only imagine. I could only imagine just trying to nation build and seeing these people that, first of all, you're dealing with completely different cultures, completely different cultures, completely different educations, people who are so backwards, so far gone, that taking a 45-year-old man who's so fucked up and crazy and religious

and trying to convert him to the ways of the West, like these fucking people that executed that kid the other day in the middle of Iraq for playing music, because he was playing Western music, they beheaded him. We don't understand that. We can't process that, but we have never been able to. You talk about the Viet Cong, and we used to go in and we thought we were helping a village and go to an inoculated village. And the Viet Cong, they'd come in there and kill them because they'd had contact with us. One of the first people that we hired some time ago for my company, Diligence, for all your information and security needs.

A little plug. Sorry, a little plug. One of the first guys we hired was a Russian. Came out of their GRU. And right after we'd gone in for the Tora Bora operation, he came to me and he had been a tank driver out in Afghanistan during the occupation for the Russians. And he came and you could just see it was like the intensity on his face, you know. And I had known him for a while. So anyway, he grabbed me and he said, he said, that was brilliant. He said, meaning Tora Bora,

meaning how quickly we had acted. He said, that was brilliant. He says, don't stay. He said, don't stay. They're like cockroaches. He says, meaning you step on them here, they show up over here. And you could just see in his face.

And that son of a bitch was right. And if I'd been smart, I would have dragged him back to the States and taken him into the Pentagon and had him say that every hour on the hour until somebody figured out what the hell we should have been doing. But, yeah, we don't seem to listen. Sometimes you've got to jump in. Sometimes you've got to take charge. And sometimes you need somebody who's in charge. You need a leader at the top of this food chain around the world. Because if you don't have one, you get what we get now. I would argue that part of the problem we have is the administration, for whatever their motivation, whatever their reasons, and again,

you know, fine. They want to do it. That's what they're going to do. They've stepped off the world stage to some degree. They don't want to be the world's policeman or the world's leader. They don't want to be at the top. or the world's leader. They don't want to be at the top. And when you do that, it's not as if suddenly a community of nations fills that void. Some other interest is going to try to become the top dog. That's just the fucking way it works. So it's almost like there's a balance that's already been achieved and you have to maintain that balance in some way, shape, or form. I would rather the U.S. be at the top of the food chain because I think, and some people will argue,

and there's always the folks that think we never act in best interest of anybody. Let me just pretend I'm them. The United States is the greatest terrorist organization in the world, man. Don't you know? You know what? That's exactly what I'm talking about. The U.S. has been invading countries forever, man. Why don't you just leave them alone?

Just for oil. Yeah, all we want is oil and gemstones, diamonds. Well, we definitely want that stuff, too. Well, we do want that stuff, sure. Two. Yeah. The problem is we want that stuff, too. Right, right.

But it's not that cut and dry. You've got some fucked up parts of the world. And the more I talk to people that have been to those fucked up parts of the world, the more that picture is starting to be clear and clear. The more I talk to guys like Jocko Willink who've been over there Seals people that have served over there you get this picture of this place That's not America and you get a lot of people that are talking about the rest of the world as if we're talking about America like bad spots in America like we need to fix Chicago

Well, it's fucking fixing Chicago's goddamn cakewalk compared to fixing Kabul or fixing any of these spots in the world like Syria. Yeah. And by the way, we could be at the top of the global food chain and still fix Chicago. Yes. We can multitask. But I guess that I spent enough time behind the curtain of the US government that my view is colored somewhat, right? And I understand everybody's got their opinions based on their experiences. My experience is what it is. And I don't believe the U.S. government is out there to fuck everybody over. Sometimes they make a mistake. We tend to be

a pretty self-correcting nation. We try. Sometimes it takes a while, whatever. But, you know, I would rather us be the ones up there trying to direct traffic than some other nation like China or Russia or Iran for the Middle East to make decision making. And we don't always get it right. Absolutely not. And you do have to have checks and balances. Of course you fucking do. I mean, that's where people always, you know, fall on one side of the other. Well, all you want to do is steal oil and treasure. No, I just want to try to ensure that we've got some good intent at the top of the food chain. And I think the U.S. is well positioned for that because we try.

And again, we don't always get it right, but we make that effort. So, you know, people can disagree, and I'm sure they are right now, saying, ah, he's got an opinion. But, well, yeah, I do. Well, you actually have a qualified opinion. And that's the difference between your opinion and someone who's going, the United States, man, we need to stay out of other countries, man. I think we need to pay attention to what's going on outside of the United States for sure. I just don't know what you could possibly do to sort of smooth over the Middle East and bring them up to date. I just don't know how you could – how do you bring ISIS up to date?

How do you say, hey, guys, you really – you can't execute 15-year-old kids for listening to rap music. You can't negotiate. You can't – it's not an organization that we're going to be able to deal with in a manner that would make us all feel happy because we talked them down from the ledge and they're not going to commit violence anymore. That's not going to happen. And you can't also kill your way out of it. That's the other part of it. So how do you do it? Well, you try to manage it. And you manage it in part by not allowing the extremists to have their own fucking territory, because that caliphate that they've been jonesing for all this time, that's one of the reasons why

they've been having so much success in recruiting foreign fighters. There's been a shitload of people going into that place. And they do it because, hey, look, we finally got our own turf. Now we can take that turf away. It's now much more problematic because we sat on the sidelines for some time and the Russians are in there and nobody wants to get into a shooting match with the Russians at this stage of the game. But denying them territory and then realizing that, like with cockroaches, they're going to pop up over here and then they're going to morph and they're going to be over here. We're just going to have to play whack-a-mole for the rest of our lives, probably. This doesn't go away, but we can minimize it, and we can be aggressive enough without saying we're going to try to nation-build

and also sell them something that they don't understand. So I don't know. But again, having sat on the sidelines for a while, we've created more of a mess at this stage of the game. The Russian and Iranian influence in Syria, the Iran's have more influence in the Middle East now than they've had in modern times. And this is this. They can't imagine their good fortune. And so now what are we doing? Well, now the headlines are, look, they just had elections and the reformists are winning as if somehow Iran's going to change its tune. It's insane. We've had that hope for decades and decades. And every time there's a little glimmer of maybe the reformists or the moderates are going to rise up, it doesn't happen. Well, didn't we have a part of that too, right like where we we brought in the ayatollah to get rid of the shah yeah wasn't there like uh well we we yeah we didn't so much fomented as we just stood by and

watched it happen and that would happen yeah i mean we didn't sort of influence it at all oh no the shah was our guy the shah was our guy the shah was our guy yeah we brought in the shah though right yeah yeah i mean we we and the the Shah was a son of a bitch. You know, just in the same – he was – you know, frankly, he was not much different than Bashir Assad or Assad's dad. I got it confused. So the Ayatollah came in and – how did the Ayatollah get into power? He was in exile in France. Right.

And there had been for some time, because of the brutality of the Shah, there had been a hardline clerical uprising, sort of directing traffic amongst the population. So the Shah, who was our guy, was brutal and he was fucking up. Right, right. And he had a very brutal intelligence service. And so that was, yeah, that wasn't a happy chapter in the sense of was the Shah our guy? Well, yes. But have we had other guys that were despots or – not so much despots as just really unsavory people that in an ideal world you wouldn't want to associate with? But the real world doesn't work that way. There are some fucked up people out there and the fact of the matter is sometimes you got to deal with the person that's there.

Like that was the argument about what was going on in Iraq, right? That was the argument about Saddam Hussein. It's about Saddam Hussein was a horrible person. He's a dangerous guy, but getting rid of him might be worse. Yeah. And And there were a number of people that said that. And what turned that tide? And people will, you know, people like Trump himself, you know, Bush lied, people died. It was only George Bush who thought there was weapons of mass destruction. Have you heard the latest shit that he said? That if he gets into office, he's going to find out the truth about who brought the towers down? Oh, my God, no.

He's a fucking truther. He's a truther. Not only that, he's also, remember, he's a birther. He thinks Obama was bornuther now not only that he's also remember. He's a birther He thinks Obama was born in Kenya. Do you remember that yeah? Everybody's conveniently ignored this I know Yeah, nobody's going after the obvious shit, but I didn't know but I didn't know about that the truther bit Oh my god. It just keeps it keeps piling on this is a recent statement that he made Yeah, I you know what it's uh that he made.

Yeah. You know what? It's, how does that, again, how does it happen that this country, this fantastic country, and again,

I spent most of my life overseas. I can go to the deepest, darkest shithole somewhere out there, middle of nowhere, and someone will say, if I go to America, I can work this hard

and I can do really well. I just have to, you know, if I can get to America, they still, people out there in the middle of nowhere still believe the American dream. And yet you worry about it because I think we seem to be giving up on it here. If this is the best we've got, if we're willing to follow this guy, you know, down the tunnel, I don't know where we're heading, but it's not good. And I also worry about, part of it with Bernie Sanders, going back to him, is I think sometimes the young people who support him,

part of it is sort of being disheartened. Since 2008, they don't see themselves as being part of the American dream. And if you don't imagine yourself working hard and becoming wealthy, then you don't give a shit whether tax rates go up to 85% or not. It doesn't matter to you because it's not going to be you. It's going to be somebody else. Well, it's just so confusing to people that no one can get it right. I mean, everybody had these hopes and dreams for Obama and he was going to get in office. I remember there's this lady that was, when Obama got elected, she was so happy and she was saying, I'm so happy because

now I know that if my mortgage needs to be paid, he's going to help me. And it was like this really weird moment where I realized like, wow, these people don't really understand how complex this entire system is. And you're dealing with a guy who's stepping into the office right when all these banks are failing, right when all this collapse is happening. And people think that all of a sudden this guy's going to come in and he's going to have a completely different set of priorities, and he's going to find all these people. Are you losing your house? We're going to fix that. We're going to take care of that.

Right. We're going to get that back for you. Don't worry. There's 300 million people in this country, ma'am, and there's not enough money to buy everybody's mortgage back and fix it. It's just not going to happen. We voted a guy into office who had no experience. He never had a job. And yeah. And so you get what you get. And I understand. Okay. Everybody was excited. Sure. Hope and change and all that. It was very powerful message that they were delivering. It was a smart, smart campaign. But you would think that over a period of time then what we'd really want now is somebody – and again, I don't know where you find them. But somebody with that combination of experience and character and a proven ability, a track record to work both sides, right?

To say, look, we're going to be able to negotiate. We're going to compromise. We're going to find – it's not rocket fucking science to work out some of these problems. But the more problems we get and the more negative we get about them, it seems insurmountable. But we should be able to find somebody in this massive country of ours who, you know, can propose some clear-eyed ideas. I don't know. Well, for me, it almost seems like taking a guy who, this is an analogy that makes sense to me, taking a guy who's never fought before and then make him run for the UFC. And now you're going to fight in the UFC.

What was your fucking experience fighting? It's like a welcome. You don't have any experience. You know what I'm saying? All of a sudden this guy gets this job. It's the most complicated and impossible job in the world. And he's never served. He's never been overseas. He's never been overseas.

He's never experienced combat. He doesn't know what it means to be involved in a war. He's never been there physically, boots on the ground. I'm not saying he has to, but I'm saying, wouldn't that help? But wouldn't that flavor how you would understand and consider military action if you had actually been there? Whether you'd been there, like at least Bush Sr. had been in the CIA. He had been the head of CIA. Bush Jr. was classic. Bush Sr. was a World War II hero. That's right.

Right. Shot down. Bush Sr. was probably the most qualified guy to be ambassador to China. Yeah, ambassador to China, head of the CIA, a war hero.

I mean, look, the guy, but know, but yeah, you're right. Shit on now, left and right. And that's where we're at. You can't disagree with somebody's opinions without crapping on them, right? You can't just say, look, I get it. You've got different opinions than I do. Yeah, okay, fine. Let's talk.

Let's figure out where is the workable solution. Well, you have to be a speaker, too. This is the other thing. workable solution. You have to be a speaker, too. This is the other thing. You have to be this engaging, entertaining individual who I'd like to hear talk. I want to hear...

One of the things that was so great about Obama was how good he was at giving speeches. The guy's a brilliant, brilliant orator. I mean, he had me. I was like, this is my fucking guy. I'm listening to him talk. Finally, we've got a smart guy. And as opposed to Bush, who was Bush Jr., who was an awkward sort of a guy, I mean, W just wasn't that good of a talker. And people would say he's stupid.

He's a dumb guy. Go back and listen to him when he was running for governor of Texas. He's not a dumb guy. He's tired and overwhelmed. Right. You don't get to those positions by being an idiot. You may disagree with people's positions. I disagree with Bernie Sanders. I don't wish him any ill will. I'm not horrified that he's running. I think that's the way it works in this country. I disagree with the concept of socialism or democratic socialism. But at the same time, I understand and I appreciate the fact that that's what he believes and he's believed it for a long time. So great. And I appreciate the fact that that's what he believes and he's believed it for a long time.

So great. Let's – and you're right. We should be trying to help people that need a leg up. We should be trying to provide the safety net for the people that need it. We should be trying to at the same time promoting the concept of hard work and success. There's nothing wrong. Fuck it all. There's nothing wrong with success.

You work hard. It's like Monopoly. Monopoly has decided they're going to – I don't know whether for all their board games or not, but Monopoly's going to take away the paper money and give you a bank card. What? Yeah. Is that real? Yeah. I couldn't believe it when I saw Hasbro, which owns Monopoly. They said, well, we're going to use a bank card from now on. So all those kids out there

because, I don't know, maybe they don't want them to learn how to count paper money because maybe it's unseemly. I'm reading something into it that's not there, obviously. You might not be. Yeah, it's part and parcel. My kids, they started playing basketball a couple of seasons ago. And I remember the first league, they didn't want to keep score. Oh, yeah. That's a big one. What the fuck? Yeah, you're not allowed to be a loser. Yeah. We don't want to put these kids through stress. My daughter was playing softball. Nobody won. What the fuck are you doing? What happened?

Why are you playing? Get off the field. Let's go do something else if nobody's going to win. You've got to feel bad. That's part of being a kid. You feel bad and you go,

that fucking sucked and then you practice. And you know what? Those kids know. I could ask my six-year-old, I could ask Sluggo way into the third quarter of a basketball game.

I'd say, what's the score? And he would know the score. All the kids knew the score. They're all keeping score. And so we're just blowing smoke up the parents' ass, and consequently we think we're being clever with our kids by saying, eh, this will be fine.

But I don't know how I got off on this. My kid walked off the scooter, the oldest one, walked off the lacrosse field and looked at me, and he said, so how did I do? And I said, well, honestly, do you want me to be honest or do you want me to blow smoke up your ass? And I said it, and I didn't realize it. I didn't know why the parents were around. They were horrified.

And then I got dressing down. But he said, God bless him. He said, I want you to be honest. And I said, well, you didn't really try as hard as you could. I said, you know, you don't have to be the best, but you've got to try really hard. And the only reason that other kid was scoring on you was because he wanted it more. And I said, and you can do that.

And you can tell kids that they're not playing their best in a nice, constructive way. But God forbid we should hurt any of these little snowflakes, right, by telling them this crap. And now what do we get? All those kids that started years ago when we started this movement to not keep score or anything, now they're all at Yale or Amherst. And they think that being contradicted means they're being persecuted. And so we created this monster ourselves. And now a lot of those people,

they look and they don't believe because they've been told they're victims and the system's rigged and they're getting fucked every day. They don't believe they can be part of the system. So sure, they look at Bernie and they think, yeah, that's about right. That's what we need. And they find like-minded people. They band together. They all agree on the same thing. And they're having a battle right now to try to see who can be the most open-minded, the most liberal, the most accepting.

And that's where the competition is. The competition is being the most left-minded, the most liberal, the most accepting, and that's where the competition is. The competition is being the most left-wing, the most progressive. They're fucking each other over on progressivists. Progressivists? It's madness. It's so madness that it's not even a word.

I can't even have a word for it. Progressivists. You can make a new word. George Bush made that up. We're getting to a weird point where we're trying to coddle people, and we're not allowing them to experience defeat. We're not allowing them to experience discomfort, which is how people grow. If you don't feel uncomfortable, you don't learn.

You don't learn from you. Every mistake that I've ever made made me feel like shit, and that's how I get better at things. Yeah, because you learned I don't want to feel that way again yeah so how do i get better how do i how do i do this but if you don't do it with wrestling that's a good question that is you get pinned or you don't get pinned okay you know i mean how the fuck they call it before the you get pinned okay no one won you look like you're approaching a pin so let's stop it how are they gonna do that because i'll tell you what, man.

This fucking times I got pinned when I was 14 years old, still fuck with my head. I've been carrying that all these years. I'll be in the gym lifting weights, think about some kid who pinned me in fucking high school and I'll get angry. Little Bobby Schwartz, this motherfucker. If I ever find him. I'll start doing extra chin-ups for that prick. I'm going to go find where he lives. But that's what motivates you. It motivates you.

You know, I mean, getting tapped out in jujitsu. There are guys that have tapped me out that I literally, like, when I'm tired, I will think about them tapping me out and I will push further. That is the only thing that motivates you is that feeling. It's one of the only things that's really a powerful motivating factor that everyone can relate to is that feeling of defeat, that horrible feeling where you go, you know what? I got to get better. I got to get better because someone's better. And the idea that you're saying that no one's ever better, you're perfect. That's not true. That's not true. You get better at stuff. There's always somebody. Just like I tell my kids, there's always somebody that's going to be bigger than you. There's always somebody that's going to be smarter than you.

That's fine. All you can do is the absolute best you can do, and you work at it. And if you fall down, you know, fucking pick yourself up. You've got to learn how to lose. Yeah, you've got to learn how to lose. Learning how to lose is an important part of being a grown-up. But we've got, I mean, look at, again, look at this. The irony of kids in expensive colleges, you know, denigrating free speech because it upsets their feelings.

Progressive is- Are you fucking kidding me? Progressive is- Progressive is- We got to look that word up. Can we get some help on this? My God. Yeah.

Well, the idea of being a progressive is a great idea. You want everybody to be equal and you want equality as far as the law and how people are treated and how you address people. And no one starts out in a worse spot. But once that's established, then you got to compete. And you have to. And it's good for everybody. It's good for you. It's good for me. As long as you're competing fairly, that competition generates a lot of good things. First of all, it generates ambition. It generates success. If you overcome these obstacles that are created by competition,

you understand what needs to be done in order to achieve things. If you're going to go through life and you're never going to have any obstacles, you're never going to have any character testing moments, you're not even going to know what you're never going to have any obstacles. You're never going to have any character testing moments. You're not even going to know what you're capable of. No, you're certainly not. I mean, and that's not much of a life lived. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're not tested and you're not pushed

and you don't fail, I mean, I remember times when, yeah, it just, it didn't even, you knew it wasn't going to work out, right? Yeah. But you just, like you said, it made you work harder. It made you push harder. And you realized, it's like, you know what it's like?

It's like interrogation training. I don't know why this is popping in my head. But it's interrogation training. The whole point of interrogation training is to break you down so that you realize you've got a point where it's just going to happen. So in interrogation training, like, is it training you to be able to deal with being interrogated? So what do they do? I mean, you also have the other side of the coin, which is, you know, learning, learning how to interrogate and negotiate and all the rest of it. We like to call it negotiation. So, but the idea being is that, you know, when you're in

interrogation training, the idea is you have to understand that at some point, no matter who you are, you're, it's going to fall apart. And then what you need is you need to be able to pull yourself back together again. So the idea of interrogation training in part is to show you that, A, you can go farther than you thought you could. But also at some point, you're just going to say, fuck it. I mean because depending on where you're at, you're going to break. I mean it's going to happen. And when you do, you've got to be able to, otherwise you're just a puddle of goo, right?

You've got to pull yourself back together again. So it's a bit like that. Failure, like you said, failure teaches success. Failure drives success unless, you know, unless we're creating a culture of just fucking mediocrity. Well, we are. Yeah, well, we are, yeah. Well, that's a happy sign.

Well, you have to learn the consequences. You can't nerf the world. You have to learn the consequences of fucking up. And if you don't learn the consequences of fucking up, you never understand what it takes. There are people that work harder than you. There are people that are smarter than you. There are people that want it more. There are people that are more ambitious. There are people that are more intense and more focused and more disciplined. And if there are not, then somehow or another, we're all perfect and equal. And that's not the case. That's not the case.

Well, this competition fuels everything we have. Like, look, here's a perfect example. Every year, cars get faster. Why do they get faster? Because they're fucking competing against each other. Chevy is competing against this company. They're competing against Ford. And they're all trying to make a car that goes zero to 60 in a half a second. And every fucking year they get closer to that.

I mean, there's one reason for that. And it's because there's other cars out there that are doing a better job. Their skid pad numbers are getting higher. Their quarter mile numbers are getting lower. They're getting faster. They handle better. They're getting safer. They're doing this because of competition. And that's the only thing that fuels innovation. Competition fuels innovation and this desire that everybody has to, I want to get the newest, greatest shit.

And whether you're talking about cars, whether you're talking about phones, it doesn't matter what it is. It's everything. And human beings. Why else do they have the Olympic records? Why is everybody trying to break records? I mean, in the UFC, we're constantly going over statistics. This guy's won more fights. This guy's landed more significant blows.

This guy's landed more submissions. You're competing. This is why people like watching things like the UFC. It's because it's contrary to this participation shit that's going on. This participation trophy bullshit that's going on with little kids. And like I said, I go back to that same point, which is that we're not fooling any of them in a sense. Over a period of time, we create

a bad precedent and a bad mentality. But at that moment, the kids know what the hell the score is. They know what the hell is going on. And they know that it's bullshit when you tell them they're wonderful every time that they're not. I mean, if I told my kid every time he finished a practice or a sports game, you know, hey, you did great.

I mean, it means fuck all. It means nothing to him at a certain point. And then he loses, what, he loses respect, but he loses also motivation. He thinks, well, fine, if I'm great all the time, what the fuck, you know. A better thing to tell them is, you know, this horrible feeling that you've got in your stomach right now. Use that as fuel. Fuel yourself with the fuck- fuel. Fuel yourself with the fuck ups, fuel yourself with the failures, but it doesn't mean we love you less. Like your parents

and your friends are going to love you no matter what. You know, Randy Couture said this to me once we were talking about fighters and how he talks to fighters that he's training. And he said, the most important thing is you can't be afraid to lose. It's going to happen. At one point in time, if you keep fighting, everybody loses. But you have to think to yourself, what is important in life? Your family loving you, your friends loving you, they're still going to love you. There's still going to be all those pieces are going to be in place if you lose. Accept that and then go out there and do your best. And as long as you've done your best, you can keep your chin up

and you can understand that whatever failure that you've experienced there, whatever mistake, this is like a mathematical problem. You've learned. Well, you can't throw a one-two and then drop your left hand and you get hit with a counter right. Now you know. But if you don't get hit with that counter right, you never know. If you go through life just throwing a one-two and winning every time,

you think you've got the perfect game plan, then you teach that to someone else, and that person realizes, well, no, this game plan's no good. You've got to keep your fucking hands up. If you don't keep your hands up, you get hit. There's a certain reality. It's one of the reasons I keep going back to fighting, but it's one of the reasons why people like fighting,

because it's so absolute. Right, absolutely. Other than subjective decisions, but it's one of the reasons why people like fighting because it's so absolute. Right, absolutely. Other than subjective decisions, because decisions can be fucking bullshit. But other than decisions, when someone hits you, they either hit you or they don't hit you. It's very clear. It's very decisive for the most part. And there is no fucking about it. It is what it is as opposed to so much the rest of the world or where you're trying to find examples or whatever where it's just gray and murky.

Same as a score. If a ball goes in a net, it goes in the net. That's it. It goes in or it doesn't go in. And to raise kids to have this foggy concept in their head that it doesn't matter. Well, no, it does matter. It fucking matters a lot. Here's what doesn't matter. Your parents are going it does matter. It fucking matters a lot. Here's what doesn't matter.

Your parents are going to love you. Your friends are going to love you. If your parents don't love you because you didn't drop a ball in the net, your dad's a piece of shit. And that's something we all need to learn. Yeah, and there are parents out there who like that. Holy smokes. We all experience those.

We've all seen them. I've seen them when my kid was going to soccer practice, I was watching his dad screaming his daughter. And I was like, God damn it, dude. Don't do that. Go hustle. Let's go hustle. Let's go hustle. You like all the fucking sports terminology.

Let's get that one. We're going to need to get that one back. We're going to get that one. If you're a parent and you're living your life through your kid's sporting exploits, go fucking do something else. Encourage them and give them what they need to succeed. But don't value yourself through what your kids are doing in sports. And there's so many parents out there that do that. I coached for a while.

My daughter, who's now in college, she played a lot of softball. And so I was coaching at one point before she got to the point where I had nothing to offer. And so they had to actually get coaches who knew what they were doing. But I remember at one point there was this one dad who was just like, he was just a complete douche and he was always a douche and he'd just show up and he'd, and he'd berate his kid and his kid was fantastic. And she was a wonderful, and one time she actually walked up to me and she was, you could tell she wanted to cry, but she didn't. She was a great kid. And she apologized for her dad's behavior in the dugout

because the dad was like leaning over the fence and screaming. At that time, she was 14, I guess, and I said, look, honey, it's not your deal. It's not your fault. Then I had to go over and I said, look, fella, you're a fucking douche. And I said that to him, and I thought he was going to try to take my head off, but he was a big boy, but he couldn't argue with me. I think he knew deep down, he knew, yeah, okay, the guy's right, I am a douche.

And I said, you've got to leave, you can't come back. Wow. For a kid to apologize for their parents' behavior, but yeah, you're right, you see it fairly often. Parents get fucking heated up. There was a crazy story about a dad who killed another dad in a hockey fight. Yes. You remember that?

I remember that. The kids were playing. The kids apparently had got into it on the ice. And this fucking big giant guy beat a guy to death. Yeah. Beat a guy to death in front of his kid. There was another guy. This guy, I think it was in Connecticut.

Softball also. It's girls softball. You know, they get very competitive. But how the fuck do you get so wound up about about any really anything but so this guy this dad went after literally got upset because his kid wasn't getting enough playing time and so the coach turned and walked away the guy picked up a bat and went after him and and hit him in the head with a bat and put him in the hospital yeah yeah yeah i remember that yeah he hit the coach right yeah he did yeah yeah because you know kid wasn't

getting enough play i mean mean, okay, yeah. My daughter needs more playing time. Competition, and that's what people are afraid of with competition. That's why they're coming up with this idea of participation trophies. There's a lot of people that are moving away or trying to move away from this. They want a kinder, gentler world, and they think that's the way to do it. That's why I'm happy to be out in Idaho. We don't necessarily go for the kinder, gentler world out in Idaho. It's too fucking cold and you have wolves.

It's too fucking cold. You got coyotes and wolves and bears and shit that are going to eat you. And yeah, so it's very much a sort of pull your boots up and just get on with it. It's a very good culture out there and it's a great place to raise kids. And I couldn't be happier because the outdoor activities are just fantastic. The climbing and the rafting are incredible. Skiing is obviously great. Fishing and hunting is fantastic. I mean, I sound like the Chamber of Commerce.

No, you do. But it is a beautiful place. I have a friend who has a house in Coeur d'Alene. And they send me pictures. And you're just like, Jesus Christ, that's real? That's a real place? You can fly up to Spokane. And that's the easiest way to get to Coeur d'Alene.

Do you drive there? Yeah, you drive. It's about 40 minutes or so. That's it? Yeah, from Spokane. But if you drive from, if you fly into Boise and you drive up to Coeur d'Alene, it'll take you about a century and a half. It takes a while. Because you've got to go through the mountains. It's a big fucking state. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, again, it's interesting because that and Wyoming and Montana, that whole part of the country, it's just still a little bit different.

The urban centers are all starting to kind it also hardens you a little bit to the realities of changing climates and the realities of just wildlife and all the dangers and all the wonderful things that come from nature. Right, and that's it, and the expansiveness of it kind of humbles you a little bit. You drive up, we're very fortunate,

we're not that far from Yellowstone, I mean, not far being a handful of hours drive. And you go up to a place, and if people haven't, and they're listening, haven't been to Yellowstone, good God, do yourself a favor and go there. Don't go during high tourist season. But if you want to see something that just is stunning, spend a few days up in Yellowstone. And it really does, it puts you back a little bit. And it makes you realize, A, how amazing, you know, this planet is, B, how incredible this country is, and it also kind of puts your priorities a little bit more in shape. We tracked a bunch of grizzlies up there for a Travel Channel show, and there were times when you just, you'd forget what you were doing, you'd just stand there and just stare

out there at the scenery. And, of course, it was a Travel Channel show. I was supposed to be co-hosting, and yet I was just gobsmacked. I didn't have the words, which is not good for a co-host. Apparently, you're supposed to be able to describe what you're seeing. And I would just say, man, this is fucking incredible. And they'd say, okay, you can't say that. You can't say that.

Not allowed. It's a Travel Channel. Can't they just beep it? But, yeah, you would think so. I don't think they wanted – they didn't want that impression. But, yeah, getting out to nature. Seeing that environment, seeing the wild bison and buffalo and wolves and all the – just the landscape. And you learn also where your food comes from, right?

And I think that's part of it too. And that toughens. Like my kids, you know, they know where their food comes from. They know what it takes to go out hunting. They know what fishing's all about. They understand it. You develop a respect for it. You understand that the world's not equal. I mean, all those precious animals out there, those bison are going to get a baby bison. I watched a baby bison get dragged down. And I was with somebody who was on the production team that was like, well, we should get in there and help that baby bison get dragged down and you think, you know, and I was with someone who was on the production team that was like, well, we should get in there and help that baby bison. What is it getting dragged down by?

Wolves? Getting dragged down by wolves, yeah. So you guys were there while this was happening? Yeah, and they've actually, Yellowstone's done a wonderful job of bringing back a number of things. And there's a fairly active wolf population up there. The bears are looking great, the grizzlies and everything. But the point being is that, you know, if you grow up out there, I think, or if you spend a lot of

time out there, you understand that, yeah, life isn't fair, right? And if we just keep telling our kids that life is fair and everybody gets to be equal, that's not the way it works. And even in the human, you know, species, it's not the way it works. Like you said, somebody's always going to be harder, tougher, smarter, more intense. And that's a good thing. Well, here's the thing, though. It doesn't make you less of a person. It doesn't make you loved less. And I think people value – there's a real problem when people think that winning is the only thing because it's not the only thing.

There's a giant spectrum of things that we value. We value camaraderie. We value friendship. We value intelligence and a sense of humor and someone who's interesting and fascinating to talk to. There's so many things that people value out of a human being. That being the best at one thing that you compete in is not the only thing in life. Right. And this is a real problem with athletes once they retire. Because all of their sense of self-worth a lot of times is wrapped up in competition. And they have been obsessed with greatness. And then afterwards they feel this like hollow, sad life.

It's a big issue with fighters. A gigantic issue with greatness. And then afterwards, they feel this hollow, sad life. It's a big issue with fighters. A gigantic issue with fighters. They're trying to find something that takes that over. A lot of times they turn to drugs. Because the high of competing is so intense. So many classic situations where great fighters turn to drugs. Joe Lewis. Sonny Liston.

You can go down the line. Aaron Pryor. There's a lot of great fighters who turned to drugs later in their life because they just didn't know what the fuck to do. Right, right. You're always looking for something that's going to fill that void, I think. And one of my brothers flew F-4s in Vietnam for a couple of tours, and he was one of those guys.

He was like that guy's was that guy's name? Robert Duvall's character in Apocalypse Now. Just one of those guys that, you know, he appreciated the moment, right? And he appreciated the rush that he was getting. Smell of napalm in the morning. Oh, yeah. I mean, and so, you know, and by the point being is that, you know, he came back and it was like, you know, now what?

I mean, he's a great guy. He ended up, you know, and by the point being is that, you know, he came back and it was like, you know, now what? I mean, he's a great guy. He ended up, you know, being a senior pilot of the commercial airline and he's never had an issue. But at the same time, you can always tell that when you sit down, you know, over some drinks, you know, there's always that. That was, you know, that moment in time, you know, that was that event or that was that activity that I don't know if you ever fill that again. You don't ever get to that point again where you're experiencing that same sort of rush or that challenge. But you get addicted to hitting 11 when everybody else is hitting 6 on a good day.

A crazy day today, I got up to 6. Imagine if you're Chuck Liddell. He's like, oh, what did you do today? You did a fucking mile? You ran a mile you fuck you know it's like the the idea of danger and reward of consequence these are these are all they're so intense to someone who's been involved in like really heavy competition i see with fighters all the time this very reluctant decision that they have.

They're very reluctant to step away from the game when they've been knocked out a bunch of times, and they start to lose their chin, and they start to experience some cognitive issues, and it's so hard for them. And they need someone to step in and grab them and go, listen to me, man, if you don't get out now, it's going to get real ugly in the next couple of years.

And you could reach a point where you're never going to bounce back. You get a few more knockouts, three, four more knockouts, and you might be fucked for the rest of your life. And we see it now with a lot of NFL players. We've definitely seen it with a lot of fighters. I mean, Jesus, look at the greatest of all time. The greatest boxer of all time is a physical wreck. Muhammad Ali is in the worst shape of literally any public figure that has ever been so graceful and beautiful in his movements and the way he talked and so charismatic. And now you look at him and he cannot talk at all. He cannot walk. That is a direct consequence of boxing. Well, like you said, look at the NFL and look at what they're finding

now. That's filtered down to the youth. You don't have full contact football at an early age. It's a good move. A lot of parents now are just refusing to have their kid play football. I have friends that they'll let their kids fight.

They'll let their kids fight, but they won't let their kids get involved in football. Because they're like, look, if you fight and you get really good, it's you and one guy. And you might get hit, and you're probably going to get hit. But if you do your diligence and you work on your technique and you understand footwork and you understand the rules of engagement and you understand, like, correct strategy as far as movement and do all your work in the gym and understand how to defense. Number one,

that's the number one most important thing. If you do that, you're going to mitigate a lot of that issue. You're going to, there's a lot of fighters that walk away from the game and they're okay. It is possible to do. Look at Floyd Mayweather. Yeah.

Yeah. Fucking guy's 49 and oh, and he's fine. You might not like him, but right. He doesn't get hit. He doesn't get hit. I mean, You might not like him, but shit, he doesn't get hit. He doesn't get hit.

I mean, the difference between him and a guy who decides to bite down on his mouthpiece and just slug it out and to see who's the last man standing, there's a giant difference in his strategy and the consequences of his strategy versus a guy who just likes to put on a show for the fans. That guy's going to be in a fucking wheelchair when he's older. Just the other day I had a deal with Sluggo, the middle boy, because he's been at Jones to play football. And so then he found out that the only league available was flag football. And he looked at me.

He's not that age. He's almost seven. And he says, well, what's the point? That was his comment. He says, what's the point? I said, well, honey, I don't know what the point is. You raised an interesting question. I said, so let's just focus don't know what the point is. You raised an interesting question. I said, so let's just focus on other sports.

Get involved in jiu-jitsu. Yeah, yeah. That's what I always tell someone who's got a kid and they want to get their kid in martial arts. I got involved in martial arts at an early age, but I got involved in striking. But it was because there was no jiu-jitsu when I was a kid. But if I had a child that was interested in competing, I would get them involved in jiu-jitsu because you might a kid but if I if I had a child that was interested in competing I would get them involved in jiu-jitsu because you might get your arm broken but guess what they fucking put you in a cast you'll heal up you'll learn to tap next time you know what you'll get your arm broken falling out of a tree yeah you could easily when did you start how old were you when you

started I got serious well I started my first I took karate when I was 14 but I really got serious when I was 15 I took a really got serious when I was 15. I took a little kung fu when I was younger than that, but I didn't get serious until I was a sophomore. Right before, like in the summer of my, right before freshman to sophomore. So 14 to 15. During that time, was there some reason why you got interested? Well, I've been interested because I was small and I didn't want to get picked on. There was definitely that. But the big thing was, it was just straight luck. I was a baseball fan. I went to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. I was walking home and as I was walking

home, me and a buddy of mine were going to the T, the public transport. There's a giant line because it was the baseball game. We got let out. So we were walked by this Taekwondo school and I walked upstairs and it was this long staircase up to the Jaehyun Kim Taekwondo Institute. And as I was walking up, just by luck, there was a guy named John Lee, who was the national Taekwondo champion, national light heavyweight champion. And he was training for the world cup and he was in just peak training for the world cup and i as i got up to the top of the stairs this i heard this sound this whomp and then this like chink like these like chains like chink whomp chink and i was like what the fuck is

that sound and as i got to the top of the stairs there was this area you had to take off your shoes and you had to walk in you could watch these guys train and john lee top of the stairs, there was this area you had to take off your shoes and you had to walk in. You could watch these guys train. And John Lee was kicking the bag. And he was doing this spinning back kick on the bag and bending this 100-pound bag in half and sending it flying. And I remember thinking, I got to learn to do that. I couldn't believe anybody could hit anybody that hard. I'd never seen anything like that in my life. The guy that you were with, the buddy that you were with, did he go up there too?

He quit. He was a buddy of mine. Still a buddy of mine, actually. We're still friends. We watched it together, and I became obsessed. I joined right away. Interesting. I joined right away.

That guy, John Lee, became a big influence on me. He taught me a lot. He was living in Boston? Yeah. Yeah. And he wound up having a lot of drug problems himself. It was crazy to watch as well. But that guy taught me.

He took me under his wing. It was crazy. Just total random turn of events. me walking up those stairs at the exact right time that that guy was there i mean who knows i could have walked up the stair it could have been a children's class right exactly exactly i would have been like this is bullshit let's go get exactly yeah i walked up there and the baddest motherfucker in the country was killing this bag it was just perfect timing yeah and And life's a lot like that. I mean, you know, there's this shit that happens and you think, wow, that's, you know, whether it's happenstance,

coincidence, or it's supposed to be that way, who knows? But, uh, yeah, I don't know why. I don't, I mean, you could add all this meaning to it and you might be right, or you might just be guessing. But to me, it was a gigantic moment and decision in my life to go up those stairs and to see that guy doing that changed my whole life because that became my life. And from 15 to 21, that's what I did every day of my life. I mean, I trained every day. And that's what you got to find. You got to find whatever is going to spark. You see parents do that all the time with their kids.

You know, I want my kid to be a baseball player. And they just push and push and push. Instead of saying, look, I want to expose these kids to various things and see if they spark themselves. Find the thing. Find the thing. Because part of it's got to be internal. You can't for a period of time, and then, you know, that's it. It's only going to go so far.

But if you can find that thing like you did that sparks something and the kid realizes, you know, I could become really good at this and I enjoy it and it sets me apart. It makes me different. It makes me special. God bless, you know, if you can do that with your kids, you're halfway home. I didn't even know if I could be good at it because I didn't have any talent. I mean, it wasn't like I walked up there and all of a sudden I was the man. Right. You know, I walked up there and I was like, holy shit. I was surrounded by black belts who were kicking people's heads off.

And I was like, this is insane. It was just, to me, it was so terrifying. But it was also, in a good way, it was very much like a cult. Because in a good way. Like, they didn't take advantage of you, but you had to bow. You had to say yes sir there was some intense discipline and you got to see some intense consequences to fucking up yeah because i got to see a lot of guys get knocked out you know i saw a lot of guys get knocked out in

tournaments i saw guys get knocked out in practice and there was also the belt system the belt system i think in martial arts is very important for kids. Because, like, you start out as a white belt, and you get that blue belt. Like, here's a perfect example. Anthony Bourdain is 58 fucking years old. He just got his blue belt. And he told me he was the happiest he's ever been in his life. More important than anything other than, like, the birth of his child.

It was like, to him, it was like, I fucking did it. And here's a guy who, like, I fucking did it. And here's a guy who like used to be a heroin addict, smoked cigarettes, just drinking all the time, had a terrible lifestyle. His wife, who's obsessed with jujitsu, got him to take a jujitsu class. And then all of a sudden, for whatever reason, that switch goes. I look at him there. Yeah. There he is getting his boob out.

And for people who don't understand, that is a very difficult accomplishment to get your blue belt. It is not easy to do. It's very hard to do. And that, if you can get your blue belt, and he's like, I'll never get my black belt. I'm like, bullshit. Listen to me, man. If you can get your fucking blue belt, you can get your black belt. Just keep going.

Yeah. You know? But it's that, like you said, for kids, it's that success. Yes. Which runs counter to sort of the concept of team sports right now anyway with kids. So you give them that opportunity. And I've got, again, the middle boy who's six right now. He's that kid who likes to know what the parameters are and likes to know that there's a system in place, right? So he's the kid of all of them, and he's very aggressive, too. He's a very physical kid. So we've been looking at what's out there and where we live to see where would be a good spot for him. But he's definitely the kid of the three that he looks at that and he goes, I get it.

I can go from here to here to here to here, and that's a good thing. Well, if you want to get him involved in martial arts, we'll talk afterwards, and I'll find out what's near you. That would be good. Find out what's good. But I can't recommend that enough for kids, for young boys especially, because it takes away this fear of engaging with other kids. It takes away this fear of getting your ass kicked, a fear of the unknown. If you don't know how to fight, you wind up getting involved in fights accidentally because

you posture, you stick your fucking chest up, and you don't know. The consequences are so alien to you that you wind up talking too loud or trying to bluff someone. And you can fuck up and run into the wrong dude. In a way, it's like concealed carry permits. It's like concealed carry permits. If you don't know what the hell you're doing, and if you don't have the discipline, and if you're not constantly training, yeah, there's a serious potential for fuck up with that. It's a serious potential for fuck up, and that's my own issue, my personal issue with all these fucking states that are open carry states where you don't even have to have any training. Like, I think it's kind of crazy.

I think, first of all, I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment. I have guns. So let me get that out of the way. But I think you should learn how to fucking use a gun before you should get one. How can you, how come I can get a car, I have to go through all this shit, I have to learn how to drive, I have to fill out forms, I have to learn the rules. I can just go get a gun. All you have to do is just not be a criminal and you can get a gun. That seems crazy to me.

The training aspect of it is anybody who's serious about weapons, anybody who's dealt with them, anybody who's had to carry them for a livelihood, you gain a real appreciation for how quickly things head south. And the idea that I agree with you 100 percent, and I'm a huge supporter of the Second Amendment. And the idea that I agree with 100 percent and I'm a huge supporter of the Second Amendment and I got a, you know, big old walk in safe and happy to have it. But at the same time, if I just can't get behind the idea of people going out and not training, not practicing. And that's not a large, not a large, but I have you know what? I'm about to speculate, so I probably shouldn't. But there's a decent percentage of people who go out, they buy it, and then they put it in a lockbox. Hopefully they put it in a lockbox. And then that's it.

And then maybe sometime they're going to need it and they don't know what the fuck they're doing. So it's the training and you just have to be constant repetition, constant repetition. Because if you do need to use it, everything else shuts down. Constant repetition, constant repetition, because if you do need to use it, everything else shuts down. And, you know, all your little, you know, controls go away, and you're depending on your big muscle mass and repetition and muscle memory. And if you haven't been practicing, you're fucked. Exactly.

You might as well turn it on yourself. And that's the same thing with fighting. It's the same thing with everything. When you're nervous, all the training comes out, and that's where you're going to fall back on your training. If you train incorrectly, you're going to perform incorrectly under pressure, and that's the same with firearms, the same with everything. If you don't prepare – but see, we have this country where everybody's like, you're trying to take away our guns. We're trying to take away our guns. No one's trying to take away our guns. No one's trying to take away your guns. But I think the idea of firearms, owning a firearm being a right, I think it should be a privilege.

And I think much like driving a car is a privilege. I don't think you should keep anyone from doing it just arbitrarily. But I think you should prove that you know what the fuck you're doing before you put other people in danger. That's what we have with cars. And by the way, in speedboats too. You ever gotten on a lake and you got some drunk asshole who's never gotten behind the wheel of a boat before and all of a sudden he's doing 30 down the lake and you think, what the fuck?

Some rich dickhead who buys a fucking one of those cigarette boats. Yeah, exactly. You ever seen those videos of those cigarette boats that go 100 miles an hour and people flip them up in the air and everybody dies? Yeah, like a fountain boat. Those things are insane. And yeah, you'll get somebody who'll buy one and then they'll show

up on the lake next thing you know you know your kids out water skiing and you're you're you know fearing for their life because yeah but but so point taken i think you know you know uh i don't know how you would tie in the uh the purchase with the the training with the uh showing approving the ability uh i don't know how you do that but extremely difficult yeah very difficult and i think a psychological evaluation isn't a bad idea either i don't think it's a bad idea to ask people a bunch of questions you know i mean just try to get someone who's a qualified individual to uh talk to this person i mean you're not gonna you're gonna have some fucking psychopaths that are going to be able to trick you. But that's just, you're going to weed out some folks that could be a problem.

And people have a problem with that. Well, you're trying to take away our guns. What if these liberals get involved in this process and they say no one's qualified. That's what they want. Don't you understand? Don't you understand? It's a slippery slope. It's a slippery slope. It's a slippery slope.

Do one thing and it's all going to fall to hell. Yeah. No, that's a HIPAA issue. How do you share medical information? How do you share information from a psych's office? And, you know, it's, again. And assuming they've had medical attention. Yeah.

There's a lot of fucking nuts out there that haven't had anybody look at them. Right. You know, and the other thing is, I've never woken up in the morning and thought to myself, good God, I've got to get myself another.45, or I've got to get myself another AR-15. And I've got to have it now.

Right. I have no problems with waiting. And I've got teams in my company that do nothing but due diligence on people, right? And now it's not for purposes of a weapons permit, but I know how difficult that process is, even for relatively straightforward due diligence. And so the idea that I have no problems

with expanded background checks, and I know a lot of people right now are screaming and saying, how did you do that? Oh my God, how did you do that? But again, I'm a huge supporter of the Second Amendment. I'm an NRA member, all the rest of that shit, and God bless it. But at the same time, we have to be able to find those ideas, those answers, or at least talk about them without immediately starting to pull the pins on the grenades and throwing them at each other. And that's going back to the earlier conversation about politics and everything else.

That's going back to the earlier conversation about politics and everything else. Probably no other – well, there's other emotive issues, but certainly with the Second Amendment, the idea that you're going to spend a little bit more time on a background check. If you've got to rush into the store and buy your handgun and get out of there as quick as possible, what's that all about? I mean just take – you can take a little time. There's other ways to kill yourself. Yeah. So I don't know. But again, nobody exists in the center anymore.

Nobody exists in the middle. Exactly. Exactly. Even a guy who supports the Second Amendment, saying something like that could be problematic and you're going to get criticized for it. Oh my God, if I run for governor out in Idaho, I'm sure someone's going to pull that one up. Did you see what he said? Yeah.

And you're thinking, ah. How is that a problem? Yeah. I just don't understand how anybody could be against background checks right it doesn't make any sense to me how could someone be against training how could somebody be against firearm education how could somebody be against that yeah when you when you get a hunting license you have to go through a hunter's safety course right and the hunter safety course is pretty extensive it takes takes a long time. There's a lot of questions you have to answer. You have to know, why the fuck is that the case with hunting, but it's not the case with

a gun? Yeah. What about self-defense? So shouldn't you have to have all these, shouldn't you have to have an understanding of how to use a safety? Shouldn't you have an understanding? And then the variations in training for, or classroom work for concealed carry permits. You got great training programs and then you got less than great, significantly less than great.

And you're talking about carrying a weapon out in public. And that is an enormous responsibility. And I think it's important. And I think it's just – it falls in line with what we're talking about. But how do you get to that point if as soon as you raise that issue, again, people start throwing hand grenades at you and you think, well, wait a minute. I'm just – I'm raising this as a possibility. Maybe there's something – some other tact here that we can take and not just the Second Amendment. Every fucking thing out there, right?

Obamacare. It's either all this or all that. Instead of saying at the early outset, what would have been wrong with saying, let's do preexisting conditions. Let's keep kids on their health plans for their parents a little bit longer. And then let's try to figure out where else we can make improvements. But it's all one thing or the other. I think one of the things about owning a gun, and this is very important to anybody that has a gun, you should want to be educated in proper firearm safety. If you have a gun, you should want this.

So training shouldn't be something that you would fight. It should be something that everybody would embrace. If you have a gun, you understand the dangers and the consequences of having a gun. You also understand that you need someone to show you how to do it right. If you don't have anybody puts it in your head, always have your finger off the trigger. This is the safety. Know it. Know it when it's pushed back, you're here. When it's pushed forward, you're ready to rock. Know these things. Understand these things. You're here.

When it's pushed forward, you're ready to rock. Know these things. Understand these things. Well, I think it's – yeah, if you live out west, again, not to – I mean because down south you could argue the same thing about hunting culture and everything else. But there's a certain appreciation for both the use of weapons and the responsibility involved because there are so many people out there that hunt. and the responsibility involved because there are so many people out there that hunt. And there are so many, I mean, I would suspect that, I mean, everybody I know that owns a weapon goes to the range or they're out practicing their target hunting before hunting season shows up. They're working the problem. I don't know that that's true in the major urban centers.

I don't know. I mean, I have no idea, but- There's a few people. I mean, there's ranges that you can go to where, I mean, you can take firearms lessons. The thing is that it's not mandatory. And then there's also the variance, the different rules that you have in different states. Like Arizona is an open carry state, right? Right. So you just go to the store,

you're not a felon, you get a gun, just walk around with a gun. Yeah. You just have a gun. Right there on your hip and you think, okay. You don't have to know shit. Yeah. And it causes problems. I mean, depending on who you're talking to in law enforcement, there's a lot of folks in law enforcement that look at it and go, yeah, I mean, it's not what they would prefer. It's not up to them to make that call. But at the same time, I look at it and I think if there's one issue that probably summarizes the sort of the emotive nature of politics nowadays, it's probably this one. I mean, I think that we've gotten past the whole

gay marriage thing and, you know, the abortion thing always flares up and always will probably. But the Second Amendment, you know, and so you do think, okay, well, how do we, because the default position for the administration is always, you know, it's always, you know, blowing it up, right? And so, you know, they misplay it as well. I think if there was more compromise, more discussion in the center where they could have this quietly outside of the realm of media, but they just seem to be unable to do it. So every time there's an incident, the first thing you see is somebody from the administration up behind the podium, you know, making statements and talking about gun control. And that fuels the other side. That fuels the right and the side where things are just trying to take away all our weapons, because they see this, and there's nothing reasoned going on in here.

There's no reasonable consideration of the pros and cons of this issue, and no one's stepping in the middle. You know what it's like? It's like the FBI and Apple dispute. That's what it's like. It's like the same thing. You. That's what it's like. It's the same thing. You got all on one side, you got all on the other. And the reality is, you know what, we could have found a solution here somewhere if, you know, if we'd been, I don't know. Although, who knows? I don't know. Apple seems to be inclined to draw a line under this particular issue right now. So this particular issue is they're trying to get into that guy's phone, the killer who killed those people in San Bernardino. They want to get into his phone. And the FBI wants Apple to engineer some sort of a backdoor. Well, here's what it is.

So this guy, Saeed Farooq, he had three phones, at least, that we know about. Two of them he destroyed. He completely destroyed them. And the Bureau has been looking. Nothing recoverable off those systems. And they've asked a lot of people for assistance. So they had the other phone, which was in his truck, which is his work phone. It belonged to the county. And so they went to the county, Bureau did. They went to the county when they pulled this phone out of the truck. And they said, we need to get the information off of this thing. Because you know what?

A phone nowadays, everybody keeps everything on their phone, right? Right. And so they got the support. They pulled, and they found out that he had shut off the function that uploads data to the cloud in October. And so they were able to get everything up to October. But then that's two full months prior to the attack. So they said, okay, well, we can't get this. And the phone has this default position where if you try the password 10 times, and it erases everything. So they took the phone, the Bureau took the phone to Apple,

and this was well before they had to go to get a court order, well before it became public knowledge. They actually went and had numerous quiet conversations with Apple. And they went to Apple and they said, literally said, you can take the phone, keep it on your campus, keep it in your facility, put it in a, we don't, you know, wherever, put it in your lab. All we're asking is for you to create a systems information file that you can force on that phone, that one phone, and pull the text, which then allows you to brute force the password, right? And get the texts off of there, get the data off of there that exists. And then you can destroy the SIF, the systems information file. You can keep the phone. We don't even need to touch it.

You know, whatever. You just give us the shit that's on the phone. And Apple has been helpful in the past. They've been helpful in the past. has been helpful in the past. They've been helpful in the past. And this time, for whatever motivation, they've decided to draw a line in the sand and say, no, we're not going to do this. And it's not as if they haven't been helpful. And there's an ongoing dialogue. And so it's disingenuous to say that Apple is now the bulwark for privacy, because they have been helpful in the past, and they'll continue to be helpful, I suppose, in their own way. But for this particular phone, for this one

time, where they could have held onto the phone, created that SIF, destroyed the SIF, at that moment that they've pulled the text off, said, that's it, that's done. So now what Tim Cook is saying is, not that it's creating a backdoor. He's not saying that. He's saying it creates a precedent. is not that it's creating a backdoor. He's not saying that. He's saying it creates a precedent. But the precedent was already that if the Bureau goes through the process that Congress has set

and then goes through that process and gets a court order, and the court then looks at it and says, yes, you've got probable cause, you've got reasonable concern here, they provide a court order, then they go and they make this request for assistance. You're also talking about a dead guy. Talking about a guy who shot 14 people.

Whatever it was. Killed 14 people. I've heard all sorts of things. I've heard people say to me, and again, I understand, don't get me wrong, because I understand fully the importance of finding the right place on the pendulum for security and privacy. I get that. I get that. And that's an important discussion. I'm not saying it's not.

You should always have that conversation. But part of that is then during the course of that conversation, Congress, the courts, they make those decisions. Where does that pendulum settle between security and privacy? And then it settles here? Okay, fine. Then that's what the Bureau or whomever has to go through to get approval to get some assistance. And that's where it stands. But, you know, to say that, because now you've got all three branches of government have said, yeah, we think that really, we could use this information off of this phone. But I've heard everybody say, well, why don't they just do the rest of the investigation? Well, of course,

they've fucking done the rest of the investigation. They've done all the other investigative steps. So what are you saying? In a situation like this, you just want them to do 80% of the investigation. And if you know that you've got material on here, which may lead to operational activity in finding other people who were involved or finding people overseas who were in somehow assisting or whatever it may be. If you're saying, well, just now, you know what, for the sake of this, we're not asking for a backdoor. They're asking for that one phone. And that's where this whole thing is really headed south. And it's become this idea that, you know, which is erroneous.

But I understand what Tim Cook is saying about the precedent, although not really, because, again, they've done this before. For some reason, for this one, they're drawing a line. So anyway, but I've heard that. Why don't they just do the rest of the investigation and skip this part? What? I don't follow that logic train. And then the other people are saying, well, why don't they just get it off the metadata? And that's another one of those things where people never believed what the government was saying. But the meta fucking data was numbers and volume. That was it. There was no information to be had there. You could sit in a fucking room full of metadata and not know what the hell you're looking at. You had to go through the court process to then get that particular numbers information. So here's my

question, because this is what came up with the Edward Snowden thing. They were saying that the government is monitoring all cell phone data constantly, and they can get information all the time. Well, this kind of proves that not to be true. Yeah, but people don't look at it that way. They don't make that leap back and say, oh, well, maybe that was a fallacy. Yeah, sure, the metadata was sweeping up all those numbers and volume. But again, it's not enough. To what end?

Yeah, and so some people would say once they realized what it was actually doing, then they say, well, but that's so what? So they're just collecting the shit in the basement. It's not doing any good. So they shouldn't even collect that information. So what Edward Snowden was talking about is essentially just when it pertains to email. I mean, he said they're collecting all this information that the NSA is collecting all this information in regards to cell phone data. They're recording cell phone data. They're recording every phone call. They're recording all these text messages.

Yeah. So is that not true? Well, no. Frankly, I'm here. Of course, nobody's going to. Again, this is very emotive, right? So there's all these people out there. They're going to say, fuck you.

You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Fucking CIA. Fucking CIA. Of course. Yeah. No. Illuminati. There is nobody right now, unless you're a terrorist, a terrorist suspect, or a criminal, there's nobody in the government who gives a fuck about you.

I'm here to tell you that. So your dick pics are safe, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, your dick pics are absolutely safe. All your vagina pictures that you've been floating around to all your boyfriends are okay, girl. Those are secure. Nobody's going to route those around to anybody else. Anybody who would rat you out for those is a piece of shit and un-American in the first place. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's a really eye-opening thing, though, because this case kind of throws that all into jeopardy, because everybody was concerned, like, hey, the government can check in on all your phone calls and all your text messages. Well, this would clearly be a case where they would want to do that. Right. So they can't do it here without the judge granting this order. that. So they can't do it here without the judge granting this order. So tell me why there was a recent court order that ruled in favor of Apple.

They did. And that was in New York. And that was an interesting case as well. And that's probably going to set a precedent for maybe, maybe, we'll see, because it's a little bit different. What the judge essentially was saying in that case, and it involved a narco trafficking investigation that was going on. And by the way, this isn't just for terrorism. Imagine what if this was for pedophilia? Imagine a large pedophilia ring. What are you going to say? No, we don't want to catch those fucking douchebags that are involved in that because privacy? You know, I understand the privacy aspect, but each case has to be looked at on its merits.

And if you say through the courts and through the Congress that these are the hoops that the Bureau has to jump through, and they jump through those hoops then, then what? Then it's up to each company to decide whether they want to support it or not. I don't know. That seems strange. But anyway, the point being is that the one in New York, the judge essentially was saying, well, look, you want the courts to make a decision on this for something that Congress should really make a decision on this. And so in a way, his decision was a pushback against the concept that the Bureau was basing this on, which is a very old law. And so the judge is saying, look, relying on a law that's a couple hundred years old or whatever, maybe instead we should be having this looked at through the legislature. And so there was an

interesting sort of legality to his response to this, but it definitely favored Apple. And sure, that's great. Let's legislate it. But do you think that just maybe there are times when from an operational perspective, you might want to move a little bit quicker than asking Congress to take up an issue and debate it and then maybe eventually come up. So maybe occasionally you're going to have moments like the San Bernardino shooting where you've got a phone in your hand and all you're asking Apple to do is take possession of it. And who knows? Maybe their problem is they're worried that if they create the SIF at that moment, someone's going to steal it from them, one of their employees. So maybe they've got an internal security issue because then they can destroy it. The Bureau's not asking for that phone back.

They're not asking for that SIF. They're not asking them to do it on any other phone. What is a SIF? It's a systems information file. Okay. So you just force it onto that phone and that bypasses the passwords. So essentially what the court has done is made a very conservative interpretation of the law.

Right. And basically saying that we don't believe this is a place where the courts should be deciding. We believe you should be taking this to Congress. And so therefore, I don't see why you're legislating or asking us to make a decision on this. See, I understand the common person's perspective. They don't trust the government, the whole Edward Snowden thing and the wiki leaks thing everybody's freaking out about that and then they look at this saying well

this is the slippery slope again this is the thing that if the government has access to your phone but we're talking about a fucking mass murderer and a guy who's already dead and we have one phone yeah yeah it's and and so to say that you're going to only do a limited investigation, even though you know you've got potential information. But isn't there a way to do it like on an individual basis, just one phone only forever? That's what they're asking. That's what they're asking.

But can it be that you could never grant access? I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me. You wouldn't want to get access to that guy's fucking data. And here's where, and I think going back to that overriding theme, which is nothing resides in the center anymore. You're right. We do have to be concerned about privacy. And I agree. Okay, what happens if you don't big brother?

But there are times when, you know, operational concerns probably override at least an element of this where you common or reason to people can exist in the middle and say, yeah, on this occasion, because you've gone through all these orders, and because we've set up this protection now, meaning Apple holds on to it, but that's not the way it works. And so, therefore, Apple comes out and says, and then the misinformation, oh, they're trying to create a backdoor to all our Apple devices. By the way, what do you think Apple does with their devices that they sell in China? You think the Chinese government would allow Apple?

Someone's got to talk about this in the media. Do you think the Chinese government would allow Apple to sell devices that they can't get into? We could ask Apple. We should ask Apple. I'm sure it would be an issue, but I can speak from a friend that I have that worked at Google. They had a gigantic issue in China with Google because they have Android phones. And that was a big part of the issue, is the government wanted to have access to phones. They also wanted to have access to what you're

searching. They wanted to know what people are searching. They wanted to limit Google searches. There was this gigantic issue they were having. Then on top of that, Google was having to deal with the fact that China was kind of ripping off their system and creating their own version of it. China is the largest state sponsor of economic espionage and cyber crime, cyber hacking in the world. And counterfeit shit. And counterfeit. They openly support counterfeit shit to the point where there's entire stores that have Apple logos. They sell Apple products, and none of it is legit. All the computers are fake.

All the phones are fake. All the laptops are fake. None of it is created by Apple. It looks exactly like this shit right here. And it's just, oh, man, they don't have laws to stop that. No, there's not a rule of law there, even though they were talking about this for a while. They've been saying, oh, you know, it's a new day. And this is, again, this is why you're going back to that. No, there's not a rule of law there, even though they've been, they were talking about this for a while. They've been saying, oh, you know, it's a new day. And this is, again,

this is why you're going back to that, you know, everything goes back in circles. But the idea that we need a leader right now that's reasoned and pragmatic and smart and, you know, clear-eyed is, you look at China and you look at, A, you look at their economy

and their economy is heading south. And if Xi Jinping, their economy is not doing well, their growth projections are way off. There's always been this belief that their numbers have been cooked in numerous ways. Xi, the head of China, has been consolidating power. He's been creating new security apparatus. He's been hiding behind this anti-corruption drive to some degree, which is, again, part of his consolidation of power. And this idea that, oh, somehow this rule of law is coming up. Nobody

actually believes that. And they are continuing to be incredibly aggressive in economic espionage. I mean, they're not the only ones out. Everybody acts in their own best interest. But the Chinese have, I don't know, four dozen plus academic institutions that are funded by the Chinese military, the PLA, that have responsibility for economic espionage, developing new means of basically stealing shit. They've got a couple dozen at least information warfare units that we've identified run by the PLA that are specifically designed to hoover up intellectual property and research and development and all the rest of that, not just from us, I mean, from around the globe. And, you know, we, so the idea, yes, the idea that

we would do business there and believe somehow that the authorities there in China aren't going to have our shit. They're not going to have whatever it may be, a pharmaceutical company that sets up a facility out there isn't going to lose their R&D. Of course they are. Everybody knows. Anybody in a serious manner who's doing business out in China knows as soon as you set foot in there and you establish yourself manufacturing or just sales, whatever it may be, your information becomes their information. It's just going to work that way. Well, that's a problem, too, because all our shit is made over there.

A lot of shit's made over there, including stuff from Donald Trump. But who knows? Maybe he's going to bring it back to the States. Well, I have a friend who works for the Bureau, and he was explaining to me how Chinese espionage works in the United States and how they catch people, that a guy will come over here and live a completely normal life and won't look like there's anything going on with him whatsoever. Family guy, no weapons, no crime, no nothing. Befriend someone who works in some sort of an intellectual capacity, whether it's for some sort of a corporation that makes computers

or something that works for the United States government in rocketry or whatever. They befriend that guy and then slowly make their way into the point where they say, listen, I know people that can pay you a lot of money for some of the information that you have. And by the way, this information is out there anyway. Everybody has an information. And it could be much less, oftentimes it's much less threatening than that. It's just like I need – maybe I could have you consult with me on a paper that I'm writing for a very legitimate organization. I mean a lot of these folks come over here and they start going to school.

And then they get a grad degree. And then they get a job. And then what do they want? Well, the Chinese authorities want them to get another job. And eventually they end up at Northrop Grumman or they end up at Lockheed or they end up – it doesn't matter, DuPont, Dow, wherever it is, information is of interest to them. The Chinese are a little bit different than we are. We tend to be very targeted, very specific in our tasking in part because we're a smaller operation than they are.

They devote a huge amount of resource to this. But they just hoover up whatever is out there and then then they make a decision that isn't interesting or valuable to them or not. And, you know, again, people will say, well, you know, you can't be coy about this. We do that too. Well, you better hope we fucking do it because otherwise it's a hugely unlevel playing field. Otherwise we're sweet angels out in the field of murderous criminals. Right. And all we're doing is, you know, yeah, we're all precious snowflakes. And we're all just trying to get together and not keep score. This is where Hillary's email problem becomes a real issue.

Right. Because she, by doing this, and this sort of is in a roundabout way, we're bringing it all back, puts it in perspective why it's so dangerous that she had this unprotected email. Because by copy and pasting classified information or deciding through her own decision-making process or the people that were with her, what's okay to copy and paste and what's not okay to copy and paste, not whether or not you go by the established protocols of top secret or not top secret or clearance or whatever

clearance level you have. You're handing that over. And the interesting thing is, they don't necessarily care. I mean, obviously, it blows their skirt up to get top secret or clearance or whatever clearance level you have. You're handing that over. And the interesting thing is they don't necessarily care. I mean, obviously, it blows their skirt up to get top secret information. But they'll take anything. They'll take it all. They'll take the daily dribble that goes on through her email and just to gain a better understanding as to what makes a person tick or who are the people around her. They're looking for potential targets.

And that's part of it. You're looking for where is there a chink in the armor? Where is there an opportunity to, you know, to get in to her organization? Is there somebody on the periphery? It could be a landscaper. Hey, now I know who landscapes their – great. You know, it's like you're targeting a company. Well, who are you going to target?

You're not going to target the CEO. You're going to target the cleaning service. You're going to target the secretary or the caterer. And so, yeah. And again, I get it. It's like with Benghazi. People roll their eyes. Oh, the private email server.

But if you've been involved in this and you understand how aggressive it is out there, again, not just the Chinese or Russians. Everybody's at it. That we need to understand that it was a serious problem. It was a breach. And, again, going back to the same thing, if it had been me, yeah, sure, I would have been done up. You know, if it had been somebody else, I would have been banged up and probably done time. So it's a little discouraging. That's kind of crazy that it is something that someone would go to jail for, and yet.

Mishandling classified information. Yeah. I mean, you can't... It's a serious offense. It's a very serious offense. And particularly when you're a senior official, good God, she's a very smart person. And she shouldn't... So this idea that somehow she just didn't know or she was too busy or I don't know how my BlackBerry works or whatever.

What a load of crap. Anyway. So, yeah. Well, this whole... yeah. This whole... This brings us back to this whole Edward Snowden thing. What's your position on this, on that guy? And what he did in sort of exposing the

fact that the NSA was involved in this wide scale, this gigantic sort of information gathering process. The hoovering up of a metadata program that's gathering this stuff up. Well, first of all, again,

I think everybody should have spent a little more time understanding what the actual technical aspects of it were. Well, his description of it, though, was problematic. He was saying the people that worked with him were accessing the emails of ex-girlfriends, and they were spying on people. Do I believe that maybe that might have happened? Well, yeah, it's a human system, so yeah, there's going to be some fuck-ups there's no doubt about

it so that's a problem right well i mean i i don't know what the ins and outs of uh nsa are you know in terms of their protocols for you know uh protection firewalls on on systems at uh you know at government agencies tend to be if they're used properly or pretty robust but at the same time you know any human system it's like it's like tsa is someone tend to be, if they're used properly, are pretty robust. But at the same time, you know, any human system, it's like, it's like TSA, is someone gonna be asleep at the wheel and somebody gets through with a shoe bomb? Well, it could happen because a human system. But where do I stand on it? No surprise. And, you know, again, it's all based on what your experiences are. And I get the fact that people, you know, consider him a hero or whistleblower, whatever they want to call it.

He signed paperwork that said he was going to protect national security interests, that he was going to properly protect the information that he was given responsibility for seeing. And he didn't do that. And he also, despite what people may want to believe, he caused a lot of damage, a tremendous amount of damage in terms of information that was released about the way that we do things here, sources and methods that were of extreme interest to not just a terrorist organization, but extreme interest to Russian interests, extreme interest to Iranians. That's weird that he's in Russia right now.

Yeah, I know. Go figure. Ha! Yeah. So did he do any good? I don't know. Did he do any good? Well, you know, having that conversation is always good, but we can have that conversation without him doing what he did. And we should. And part of that responsibility lays on an aggressive and inquisitive, constantly aware checks and balances that exist within government. So the Intel Committee and the Senate Intel Committee and all these people, they tend to play a game in Washington. They know what the fuck's going on, like with the interrogation program or rendition program. These people were briefed. They knew what the hell goes on.

But there's a political game in Washington where they they get to express outrage when something becomes a political football. Right, of course. So, but, yeah, so did he do any good? Hey, we're talking about it. And that's important. Again, I keep going back to that. I'm not unsympathetic. It doesn't sound right.

I understand. I appreciate the importance of finding the proper place on the word. I'm not unsympathetic. Doesn't sound right. I understand. I appreciate the importance of finding the proper place on the pendulum. But I have probably an overriding appreciation for security because of what I did. And I understand that other people have an'm saying is I look at it from my perspective. I don't look at him as a hero or whistleblower in any way. I, you know, I signed same agreements and I'm expected to live up to those just like anybody else who does. He didn't. He found a way that he thought was appropriate to make his point. I don't have no idea what goes on in his head. I just would have thought it would have been nice if, I don't know, we made the point in a way that also protected our national security interests a little bit better. How could that be done, though, without exposing what he... What exactly did he expose? He

exposed the fact that they were gathering up metadata, but there's been people that have said that it was more than metadata. Well, he talked about surveillance programs and there were lots of little bits and pieces because he misappropriated, he stole a lot of information that was then essentially, Essentially, if anybody thinks that Edward Snowden was smarter than the Chinese authorities or the Russians and that they didn't get a hold of everything and that somehow he just secreted that information with Glenn Greenwald and a couple others and those who have interests that are completely against ours didn't get a hold of that information, it's a pretty naive thought. Last time, I don't believe that Edward Snowden is smarter than the PLA and the resources of the FSB in Russia. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he's like the Lex Luthor of IT. I don't think so. But as an example, the surveillance programs supposedly that we had against European leaders. Remember the outrage with Angela Merkel and the fact that we're listening in on some of

her conversations, the ones that we would have access to. Oh my God, really? Really? Because you know what they're doing? They're listening in on the conversations of their allies. And I mean, the French, the former head of the DGSC, the French Intel service, turned to the head of France at one point when the head of France was, you know, Sacrebleu and Soutalor and how could we be doing this? And, you know, and the former head and Soutalor and how could we be doing this? And the former head of the intel service looked at a French guy and said, are you fucking me? Are you kidding me?

What do you think we do? This is what we do. So this is just always what he's exposing is something that everybody knew. So the mock outrage, you're saying it's like mock outrage. It was Kabuki theater in Europe for sure. I mean, all the angst that supposedly- Kabuki theater? Yeah. I mean, the hand wrwringing and all the,

oh, I can't believe that our Americans would be, our allies would be doing this. So they kind of assumed that everybody was doing it already. I guarantee you what was going on in the back rooms was the intel service directors were all, you know, sitting down, and I would hope to think that our director was looking at them and saying, what the fuck? You know, and they were probably having a drink

and saying, yeah, okay, we get it. We get the joke. You know, everybody's doing this. And so the idea that somehow drink and saying, yeah, okay, we get it. We get the joke. Everybody's doing this. And so the idea that somehow we're the bad guy. Look, the French intel service is incredibly aggressive, as an example. And there have been numerous cases where they've targeted U.S. corporations for economic espionage and the idea that somehow, you know, people should be shocked that one nation is acting in its own self-interest and listening to other nations. Again, same theory with economic espionage. We better hope we're playing offense and defense in the way the world actually works.

It'd be great if we all held hands and, you know, winged monkeys on unicorns, flew out our asses, and we could all sing songs together, but it's not how the world works. So we, you know, anyway. So that's me disappearing down a rabbit hole. But this rabbit hole is kind of important to talk about because you actually have some pretty deep knowledge about this rabbit hole. And this is some of the things that get speculated left and right and back and forth. And either you take one side or the other and everybody argues about it. I mean, no one wants the government to have unchecked access to your emails, your phone calls.

I absolutely agree with that, yeah. And that's what people are worried about. Again, that slippery slope that is headed towards that. But what you're saying is that everyone has always spied on everybody's phone calls. They've always been involved in monitoring leaders whenever they could. And then it's not just—it's standard. It's standard protocol. Every nation acts in its own best interest. Sometimes it seems like the U.S. is the only one that apologizes for it. But if you did nothing else other than approach foreign policy from the

perspective that every nation acts in its own best interest, we wouldn't get caught short as many times as we do. Look at Putin. I mean, Putin absolutely is an old school KGB guy. He's always regretted that the Soviet Union fell apart. He considers it a huge catastrophe, probably the biggest catastrophe, he called it, of the 20th century. And he's been busy ever since trying to figure out how to rebuild at least an influence, if not territory. was, five, he made one of his first statements about how it was a horrible thing that the Soviet Union fell apart. And then a couple of years later, three years later, the troops rolled into Georgia. And they still own territory in Georgia. And people don't talk about that. Abkhazia and South Ossetia, they've still got large numbers of Russian troops

in there. So he got that. He got Crimea. you know, Eastern Ukraine is for all intents purposes going to become part of Russian territory. And he's always been the same way. He says what he means. He acts in Russia's best interest. Chinese are the same way. We always seem to feel like that's unusual. I mean, I remember times when we'd be engaged in some counterinsurgency operation overseas and we'd dress them up and we'd give them money and party hats and we'd train them. And then they'd go out, meaning the foreign service, the foreign military, and they wouldn't act like we would. There would be problems or there'd be human rights abuses or whatever. And the Senate, the Intel Committee would say, I can't believe this.

How come they're not? Well, because they're a fucking different culture, just like you talked about earlier with the Middle East. You can dress them up and give them money and training, and they're always going to act differently. It's just the way the world, but we never seem to quite get that. And it's sort of like this acting in your own best interest. We always seem to be, well, we do it, but we feel like it's unseemly somehow. Every other nation out there is doing it. Allies and others, everybody. So is this a part of the problem with people getting access to information on how the world works?

As time goes on, that information becomes more and more accessible, and people get more and more upset about things that essentially have always been like this. Is that what's going on? Yeah. I mean, I think that's an interesting way to put it. So people have a problem with it, but they don't offer up a solution. I mean, the argument is always the United States should do better. We should be better. We shouldn't spy on our American citizens. We shouldn't spy on foreign leaders. We should be the shining beacon of democracy and of honor throughout the world.

Right. And, you know, that's a lovely idea. And we try. And that's kind of going back to what I'd said earlier. I, you know, and people will disagree. But again, I've spent a lot of time overseas dealing with these issues. And we try, right? We don't always get it right. But we try to do that. We try to be that, you know, that bright beacon. We try to be the right direction, do that. We try to be that, you know, that bright beacon. We try to be the right direction, all those things. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I remember one time I had a guy in a foreign service, a foreign military. We were sitting having a drink and they'd been engaged in a long conflict. And anyway, this guy says, hey, he says, he says, thank you for bringing us democracy. And then he paused for a minute and he says, please don't do it again.

I always thought that was a great line. I always thought, yeah, I get what you're saying. But yeah, it's not that easy to bring democracy. And bringing democracy doesn't really work. It doesn't really work. And you know what we, so yeah, so what do you do? You end up dealing with people that are unsavory. You end up dealing with, with countries that, you know, Hey, we'd love them to be more in step with us, but it's just not the way, it's just not the way it works. And so it seems incredibly confusing. And

I don't think anybody's ever offered up a reasonable scenario where you could take places that are like the middle East and straighten it out. No one's offered some sort of a step or a program where you can say, well, here's where they are now. Here's the human rights violations. Here's the real problems they have with religious freedom. This is how we can get them out of that and we can get them to a place where the United States is, where people have much more freedom. The United States isn't free. Freedom is freedom is an illusion man it's an illusion yeah it's not we're not totally free no one's totally free there's no there's no total freedom but it's also

uh it's also because of the way the world is yeah i'm telling you i'm here to tell you i've again i've been to a lot of places, and we won the lottery. And I realize everybody's coming from different positions and places in life, and it's pretty fucked up for a lot of people here sometimes. But this is a good place to be overall, and there still is the potential, even though it may seem far off sometimes for some people, but there's still the potential. If you work hard, you can do really well in this country. And even those times when, I don't know, maybe I'm just kidding myself. Maybe I'd like to continue believing that. And maybe,

who knows? Maybe it's not true. I got young kids, so I'm going to continue to believe it's true. I think it's true for the most part, but I think it's complicated. And I also think this is a very unusual place. This country is only a couple hundred years but I think it's complicated. And I also think this is a very unusual place. This country is only a couple hundred years old, and that's weird. It's weird to believe that we really essentially founded in 1776. I mean, 200 plus years is not long at all. You're talking about... It's going to what you're... I mean, 1776.

George Washington knew the importance of intelligence. He talked about the importance of intelligence in the Revolutionary War. I mean, the first, I'll probably get this wrong, but the first entry into the, what do they call that book of expenditures? You know, that accounting book that they kept? Anyway, basically the first entry was to pay for spies. And it was. It was to establish a spy network, I believe, outside of Boston. And so they understood, even at that time, the importance of it. So yeah, to your point,

yeah, there's been telephones, there's been people listening in. And you need to check and balance that. You need to ensure that it's not overreaching. I get all of that. I'm just saying that when you do find that point and Congress enacts a law and the courts, you know, go with it and say yes, when you do that, then you're jumping through the hoops that have been put in place. And you've got to, you know, theoretically, again, the place to, you know, you would always like to think that we have committees up on the hill that are inquisitive and aggressive in their questioning and, you know, are paying attention. inquisitive and aggressive in their questioning and, you know, are paying attention.

But when all that is done, and you'd like to think if you have an operational concern and you go through those hoops that, yeah, you'd be able to get the job done. Kind of bringing it back to the Apple thing, I guess. So I think kind of in a lot of ways, we're talking about a lot of similarities that we have. On one hand, we have the the ideal utopia we have the shining light of honor and dignity and then you have the dire consequences of the worst case scenario yeah right and and we're trying to we're kind of in the the mix right and that's that's sort of life well that is life that is absolutely enough and i think that's people it you know there's one thing you learn in the agency is that it's not black. There's nothing black and white about the world. And you learn, the CIA is very good at teaching you how to sort of exist in the gray areas and understand that you're never going to get all the information that you want. folks, are the feature films where they get all the details and, okay, now it's time to go.

Let's do that operation. I remember most of the stuff that I was doing, most of the operations, on the back of mind, you're thinking, boy, I hope this doesn't get fucked up. Because if you wait for all the information before you do something, something bad is going to happen. It's going to be a fucking go-up. You've got to get off the X at a certain point. And usually that's before you have that full comfort. And so they teach you very well how to do that, how to do risk versus gain calculations and how to figure out, okay, this is what we're going to have to do. But you've got to make a decision at some point. The world would like it to be, again, sort of a zero risk.

That's why we always talk about counterterrorism. They say, well, when are we going to get this over with? Well, we're not. It's's just a we have to evolve as a species yeah yeah that's really what's gonna right it's gonna have to come down to something pretty fucking astronomical yeah yeah to have no more violence no more crime no more espionage no more no more hate yeah yeah i don't you know what i suspect that ain't happening in your lifetime of my life damn it i! I know, I know. It's so disappointing. What if we give everybody mushrooms? I might do the trick. I don't know.

That's it. Mike Baker for president. Give everybody mushrooms. That's the tagline? You don't want to be president. Nobody wants to be fucking president. I really think we should get rid of presidents. What would we have instead? I think a giant committee of super intelligent people that aren't entirely responsible. Not one figurehead. I think the figurehead is a primate thing.

I think we always want the one alpha primate. Yeah, the big silverback. Yeah. He's going to make the decisions. The whole leader of the tribe thing. But that shit just can't work with 300 million people. It's just too crazy. And they all go gray so quick.

They get so fucking old. Oh, man. You look at them. There's so much pressure on those guys. Yeah. And you know what? It's also, yeah, you look at President Obama. Yeah, right.

He was a good-looking guy, a smooth-faced, handsome, young, vibrant-looking guy. He's got a head of white hair. Not only that, his face has fallen off his bones. He looks so tired. He hasn't slept in years. I was going to say, the weight of that job. But someone has always shouldered it, and somebody's always wanted the job. But wasn't it a different weight?

Was it different? I don't know. You could argue. the job. But wasn't it a different weight? Was it different? I don't know. You could argue... He was dealing with the recession, the depression, and dealing with World War II.

I think it's always been... It's just a terrible job. It's a terrible job. Part of it, I think, the biggest problem now is the speed of information. So everybody's a fucking journalist on Twitter. Everybody's a judge and jury through the speed of information. Nobody bothers to check facts anymore. Everybody's racing to get ahead of just had that one newscast or two newscasts in the evening and now you know let's fucking throw it out there and hope that you know we don't get it wrong so i think that weighs on on anybody who's in politics uh

maybe it serves a good purpose as well it keeps who knows maybe it keeps them more honest i don't know but uh anyway i think that has something to do with it. Look at Obama then and now. Look at this photo. Look at this. Jeez. That's incredible. That's a 20-year difference. That's a 20-year difference in less than eight years. That is 2009 to January 2016. Yeah, if we could throw up like a seven-year split on Trump now and see what Trump will look like after seven years in office.

He's going to look like Jabba the Hutt. His face is already fighting gravity. Wow, yeah. That in office. He's going to look like Jabba the Hutt. His face is already fighting gravity. Wow. Yeah. That poor guy. He's so rich, too. Jesus Christ, what are you eating? None of them are healthy.

How about Bernie Sanders? Bernie Sanders is going to look like a question mark. He's going to bend completely over. Yeah. His posture is so awful already. Someone should teach that guy how to stand up straight. And he's not that much older than Clinton, right? He's only a couple of years older than she is.

Clinton looks like shit. Yeah. Well, she's not holding up that well. She doesn't look good. Well, neither does Bill. He looks like shit. Oh, jeez. They rolled him out and I think they realized right away that's a bad idea.

Well, didn't he have – he had like some serious heart surgery, right? Yeah, he did. He did, yeah. But he's a smart son of a bitch and he he was fortunate in a lot of ways, and he governed well, and he understood the importance of compromise and negotiation. And that was still at a time when you could do that, I think. I don't know whether it's still possible. I mean, look at some of the shit that comes out of the Capitol Hill where, you know, I mean, Scalia is barely dead. People are saying, we're not going to listen to anybody who gets proposed to come in here and replace him.

And you think, well, you probably could have held off on that statement for a little while. Well, Democrats were so excited to get a liberal in there. Yeah. Oh, Obama can appoint a liberal. Yeah, exactly. Let's go. Let's go. And now he's throwing a left curve and said, well, maybe I'll, who knows, maybe somebody who's a Republican.

And you can imagine that's- Is that what he said? That's what he said, yeah. He said, I forget what the guy's name is. He's a former. You can imagine. Is that what he said? That's what he said, yeah. He said, I forget what the guy's name is. He's a former governor. Fucking sellout. Yeah, exactly. Obama's a sellout.

What about hope and change? Now we've got to get Bernie in there because he'll hold the flag up high. I would love to go camping with Obama. Just spend a week with him. Just get drunk with him every night. Just tell me everything. What the fuck is going on? What is that gig

like the guy's only three or four years older than me it's got to be a good feeling too with that last day i mean i know there's probably there's obviously a lot of sadness and there's a lot of worry about well how am i going to be remembered but that last fucking day when you finally get the hand over the keys get the hell out of there and go have a you know a few pops and not have to worry about waking up in the middle of the night because some disaster is going on yeah but he's still got a he knows too much so the middle of the night because some disaster's going on. Yeah, but he knows too much. So the consequences of all that knowledge have got to have been weighing on his head. All these pieces that are in play, where are they going to wind up?

In a book. With a book deal. Oh, a book deal. Book deal. But I don't mean that. Yeah, but that's- I mean his own conscience. No, yeah.

His mind. And then also the fact that he's got to have secret service for the rest of his life. He's driving around in bulletproof cars forever. That guy can't go to the fucking mall. You give up your right to go to the movies. Well, I wouldn't mind if I didn't ever go to the mall again. Quite frankly, I'll be president if that means I can't go back into a mall. There's so much he can't do, though.

Yeah, no, you're right. You can't go to the ballgame, buy a ticket at the last minute, and go in and just sit in the bleachers. Could you imagine if you do that and say Obama comes and sits down next to you with a dog and a pretzel and it's a Coke and a beer? He would be selfie-ed to death. They would swarm him. If he didn't have Secret Service, they would smother him with selfies until there was no air. He would suffocate.

He died of selfies. He probably should have held off on the whole selfie thing when he was in the White House, so to be fair. Walking around the White House with a selfie stick was, I don't know. Selfie sticks are unpresidential. Yeah. I think there's certain things you do and you don't do, and whether it's him or whether it's any other president, I think there's something to be said for

maintaining the dignity of an office. Look at him there. Yeah, there you go. Hey, look at you. How hard is it to fucking take a selfie Just by yourself man You don't need a camera to do that That just seems weird

That's odd What a sign of the times that is though Seeing him there with that magic wand With a fucking phone Well did you see him before when he was like Peering around the corner with his sunglasses Pretending to be James Bond You know what also I bet he has this iPhone 6 and not the 6 Plus because they, well, we don't want you

to look excessive, Mr. President. It's probably a decision. Yeah. Go with a smaller phone, Mr. President. It should be a little bit more approachable. We don't want you outrageous. Like, I want a Viper. You can't drive a Viper.

Viper. But it's an American car. You can never have a Viper. Can you imagine if the president drove a Viper. Can you imagine if President drove a Viper? On a Ford 150. Corvette convertible. Fucking big Elvis sunglasses. I'm free, you fucks.

If it was me and I finished up, I would drive away from the White House on my last day in an El Camino. This is the fact that drives my wife crazy. I've always wanted an El Camino. What year? You know what? You give wanted an El Camino. What year? I've always kept my Al for, you know what, you give me an El Camino from every year, it was manufactured, and I would be a happy boy.

Why do you like El Camino? I don't know why. It's irrational, and my wife hates it because she thinks it's a horrible-looking car. Do you have one? I don't. You're a grown man. My latest buy was a Wagoneer. Remember the old Jeep Wagoneers with a wood panel

on the side? You bought one of those? I bought one of those and it's actually being redone at Buck's 4x4 in Idaho for all your automotive needs. So you bought it and you're refurbishing it? What year is it? Yeah, it's the last year they manufactured it.

91. It's got original shag carpeting? Yeah, it's the last year they manufactured it. 91. 91. And it's got original shag carpeting in there, and it's just a brilliant vehicle. It's got the big bench seat. Remember the bench seat? You'd have the bench seat. But those weren't good when you went around corners. You slid all over the place.

Well, depending on it. If you had the girl by your side, then, you know, that was... Yeah, you'd take a hard left turn. Oh, what are you doing over here? Man, those bench seats and... But everything's mechanical. Look at that. Yeah. You like that, huh? Mm-hmm and, but everything's mechanical. Look at that. Yeah.

You like that, huh? Mm-hmm. Mm. That's a good looking car. That's a piece of shit. That is not, how can you say that? Look at that son of a bitch. That's a fucking ugly car.

That is a car right there. And you know what? That thing weighs about 400,000 tons. It is solid steel. I tapped. What the fuck did that? I know. What happened to that one?

I'm serious. You tap. That's been, yeah, that's like happened to that one? I'm serious. You tap. That's been, yeah, that's like a remod. Someone did something weird. Yeah, that shouldn't happen. You want it classic. You want it classic. That's right.

You keep it classic. Wow. You like the wood panel? Oh, are you kidding me? Of course, yeah. Jeez. Who doesn't? How can you?

This invalidates everything, all the common sense that you've laid out on this podcast the last two and a half hours. I'll bet there's a lot of people out there that would look at the Woodside Wagoneer and say, yeah, I get it. That's a great vehicle. Or the El Camino, to be fair. A lot more throwing up in their mouth. Yeah.

Well, thank you for that. But yeah, that's sort of the... I know. And then another thing, the 57 Bel Air. I'm a big Bel Air lover. Oh, that's sort of the, I know. And then another thing, the 57 Bel Air. I'm a big Bel Air lover. Oh, that's a beautiful car. That's a beautiful car. There's no doubt about that. I sit and watch for entertainment, and my two older boys will sit there and just be

as happy as clams watching with me. I'll watch Barrett Jackson. Ooh, me too. You know, our Mecham auction. Me too. Fantastic. Ah, see, look at that. That Mecham auction, one time I got caught in a rabbit hole

sitting in my house, and it came on. I watched it for two fucking hours. Just watch people buy cars. That's all you do. It's insane. And it's just... There's just so much in it.

Look at that. Well, there was a 1970 Challenger. That's been tart about. Look at that. That's a beautiful goddamn car right there. Wow. What a car. Yeah.

What a shape. I know. Is that a 55 or a 57? That's in the old days when... Is that a 57? 57 Bel Air. Wow. What they would do was, I mean, it was all based on aspiration, right? So we had the space program

that was starting to build. And you could see it in the vehicles. You could see what that time was like by looking at the cars and the excess of it all, the dreaming. All the chrome, too. It's pretty fucking special.

Look at that bumper. God, the shiniest. It's such a strange shape, too. So gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. And then there's the Mercury Sun Valleys.

Mercury Sun Valleys are another good car. I could go. Anyway, Nomads. I mean, there's just so many good cars out there. This girl went to high school with her dad at a 55. Oh, my God. It was gorgeous. It was one of those cars.

Did you ever get to drive it? No, no. I didn't know her that well. And he would never probably let anybody drive it. But he would just drive by. There was two cars in my neighborhood when I grew up. One, my sister's boyfriend's brother had a 65 GTO convertible. Cherry red.

He was the king. This guy was the king. He would drive down the neighborhood and everybody would go, oh. Yeah. Cliff Jewett was his name. It said chirps on his license plate was chirps. And he would drive this thing and he would slam through the gears. And the wheels would go.

Because they had little skinny-ass fucking shitty tires back then. And then there was another guy. But those cars. Oh, my God. There's something about those cars to this day. They're commanding the top dollar now. Fuck yeah. It used to be, you know, you'd be in the 50s, and that was when the big dollars were.

But now they've gone back into the muscle cars. Yeah, but there's a year that they go, you get to where they're not worth anything. Like the 1980s. Right. They're not worth shit. Well, you remember that point in time, it was a very sad point in time, when all of a sudden you realized that the Trans Am, the Camaro, the Mustang, they all started to look just the same.

Mustangs fell apart. Oh, Mustangs were pieces of shit. But now they're beautiful again. Yeah, yeah. No, they've done a good job of trying to revitalize that, but there was that period of time when, considering that Camaro

used to be 68, 69, remember? Oh, the best. 69 Camaro is one of the greatest looking muscle cars of all time. And Hugger Orange. They made a Hugger Orange and there was a color that was beautiful.

See, you lost me again, you fuck. Yeah. You had me and then you went with orange. If you saw this thing, though, it's a special color. Hugger orange 69 Camaro. You got to look that up, yeah. Anyway, so I'm not sure how we got into that.

That's actually not bad. That's actually not bad. But you know what? That 69 Camaro shape is so fucking spectacular. It is the perfect muscle car shape. I mean, it's hard to beat. It's hard to beat that. That's about as good as it gets, man.

And that's pulling top dollar now in those auction houses. Well, they're taking those now, and they do what they call pro street conversions. You know, they take a car like that, and they do everything. They do a resto mod. Right. So all the brakes are new. They have modern suspension. You know, they have these Art Morrison chassis that are custom built for those things.

So they take out their funky frames and they put in a really spectacular, well-designed frame specifically made. Look at that fucking car. But those things never used to show up at auction because it was like, yeah, look, it's not original. But now, yeah, it's pretty insane. There's still a lot of people that like original. Yeah. They're assholes. They want to die in a car accident.

Those fucking things. You hit the brakes, and it's like, you better be ready. So I'm having that Wagoneer redone. Yeah, because I got to drive those kids around in there. But are you going to get modern brakes put in it and everything? Oh, yeah. Yeah, the whole thing's been... Basically, you know, everything except the wood.

Are you going to do the engine? Yeah. What are you doing to the engine? The. Are you going to do the engine? Yeah. What are you doing to the engine? It's a complete rebuild on the engine. What kind? Fuel injection, because first of all, that's what you want. You don't want a carburetor. Oh, my God.

Especially in Idaho. Well, I had it for a while before I put it over at Buck's 4x4 for all your automotive needs. Gas in the carburetor. Yeah, exactly. You start it up. I'd run out there. I'd be in a hurry.

I'd jump in, and then I'd think, what am I doing? Anyway, if anybody out there is looking to sell their El Camino, you can get in touch with me. Wow. You're really that deep in it, huh? I don't know. Part of it is I remember as a kid, I had a great Hot Wheels collection. And I remember the El Camino was one of my favorites back then. To me, it looks like a pickup truck fucked a Chevelle.

Yeah. Basically, I can't argue with you. You're right. Yeah. I love Chevelles. So to me, it's like, why would you have that when you can have a Chevelle? A 69 Chevelle, one of the most beautiful muscle cars ever created. But a 69 El Camino?

Like, wow. There it is. There's the Hot Wheel. Yeah. That's nice. See? I think that's mine. I think you got a picture of my very own Hot Wheel.

I got one of those sitting on my desk in the office. That's disgusting. People walk in and they stare and they go, why do you have this fucking toy El Camino? Google a real 69 El Camino, Jamie. Let's see what a real one looks like, not a Hot Wheel one. Not a Hot Wheel one, no. That's not a bad looking car, though. You know, it's the front is so good looking.

Yeah. Go down that one, the one with the black and white right below that. Ooh. That's not a bad looking car, though. You know, it's the front is so good looking. Yeah. Like, go down that one, the one with the black and white right below that. Ooh. See, look. See, the back looks like shit, though. The front is so good looking. The back doesn't look that bad, but. You know, it's a place to put your dog and, you know.

So, anyway. I forget that. You can't drive with your dog in the back of your truck out here. We do that all the time. Can you? Was it illegal out here? I suspect somebody would turn you in, right? Somebody would say, how could you dare put your dog out in the back of your truck and drive down the street?

That's got to be abusive. I was in Northern California this weekend. Some guy was driving around with his dog in the back of the car. And my daughters are freaking out. They're like, he just has the dog. The dog's just running around in the back. Like, that's what they do. We drive down the street and I see kids in the back of pickup trucks.

I mean, do you remember that car? Hello, Idaho. That's what they do. We drive down the street and I see kids in the back of pickup trucks. I mean, do you remember that car? Hello, Idaho. Remember that car? Yeah. Remember that car that had the plastic seats with the handles in the back

facing towards the rear? What the hell was that? That was- That was like a Subaru. Yeah, that was some kind of car. What the fuck was that thing? It had plastic little seats

in the back where you could put the kids and they had little handles. That was their safety feature. It was little plastic handles that the kids could hold onto as you drove down the road. At the highway doing 70 miles an hour after having a couple

of martinis at the O Club. Is that a Subaru pickup truck thing? I don't remember it was that. I feel like it was. I had a Volkswagen station wagon. I got a picture of one. A Volkswagen station wagon. Oh, wow. A rear-facing seat.

My dad had a Chevy that had the rear-facing wagon seat, and we also used to fight, me and my brother would fight over it. And, you know, we literally would go to the officer's club. My dad would have a few drinks, and then he'd pile all the kids back in the Chevy wagon and barrel down the highway as we're all flying back and forth over the seats, arguing with each other and fighting about who gets the rear-facing seat. And there was not a fucking seat belt to be had. Well, you remember those Toyota Land Cruisers that had the seats that faced each other?

Right, the side-facing seats. Yeah, the FJs? Yep. FJs 40, is that what it was? Yeah, it was FJ40, right? I forget what it was, but it was not that long ago. Because they had those in the Land Rovers for years and years and years. And including, I want to say like 10 years ago,

they were still building those things in the back. Really? Yeah, I think so. It's not that long ago. No, I don't think so. I remember it was an option because I got a Land Rover one time, and it was probably, okay, to be fair, it was more than 10 years. It was probably 15 years ago.

But I remember that was an option to get was the back seats. And I thought, at what point am I ever going to use these? Yeah, maybe the FJ40, but that was way more than 10 years ago. See, the FZJ80 was a classic Land Rover. And that was like, I think they stopped making that in 97 or 98. And that's a classic one because it has a solid front and rear axle. And those motherfuckers can drive over everything. They just, you know, to this day, people refurbish them.

Land cruisers are a great vehicle, too. You see those. I mean, we used to put those things through all sorts of shit overseas. Osama bin Laden special. Exactly. All the Taliban had those land cruisers because they never broke down. You build that exhaust pipe up over the top of the roof for the, you know, crossing the fjords. Yes.

The fjords. All the fjjords. Yes. The fjords. All the fjords in the desert. The fjords. Yeah, the snorkel, the desert snorkel, the safari snorkel, they would call it. Yeah. Bin Laden. We just released more documents from Bin Laden. Yeah?

Yeah. More documents? Yeah, the CIA released about 110 documents from the Bin Laden raid. Oh, that's right. It was also about, like, what he wanted to do with his money when he died he wrote a will for his 29 million dollars he had 29 million when he died yeah i'm surprised i'm surprised he didn't have more frankly his dad was worth billions well it's just weird that he was living in some fucking strange compound and everybody kind of knew it yeah yeah i know that was bizarre we're having dinner tonight. Should we invite Osama? No. Are you kidding me?

He was in that weird compound, like hiding out. Yeah. That's so strange. And we got lucky because he was looking to move. He was looking to get on the move again. I think he probably sensed in part because he'd had some problems with one of the facilitators that he had. one of the facilitators that he had, and he was looking actually to replace one of his people that actually dealt with him, sort of his liaison guy between the Pakistanis and al-Qaeda and him.

And so if we'd held off or if we hadn't found him and then only had a month to plan, it could have gone completely the other way. We could have shown up and it would have been an empty place because he was actively looking to move to a different location. Well, it's kind of funny that the way they had to do it was do it in the middle of the night, land helicopters, one of them crashed, break in, and then shoot him that way.

But really, they knew where the house was. If we were really evil... If we were evil, yeah. Just drop one right on the house and fucking incinerate that thing. Well, and they talked about that as a scenario and the decision was,

look, there's women and children in there. How many people were in the house with him? He had his extended family with him. There were, there were,

I don't know, seven or eight plus guards, but the women and children were in there. And the decision was made, no, we can't do that. We can't fire a rocket down there because we don't want to take out all those people. That's an indication, you know, again, people are going to say,

well, fuck you, you just want to go after the oil. But, you know, trying to do the right thing. So designing an insanely complex operation like that. Just to save those people that were with him, essentially. Right, and to do the right thing. And the idea being, well, maybe we can recover him alive. Is he the only one that died in that raid?

Or other people died too, right? Guards died, yeah. Did you ever see photos of him? Did they let you look at the photos of his dead body? Allegedly. Is anybody listening? No. No? So it's just between you and me?

Just us. No, no, I didn't say it. But if you did, you could do something to let me know that you did. You could just act weird. Act like you're trying to hide something. Right as I asked you the question, I'm like, he can't fucking answer this question. Yeah, but no, it was an insanely complex operation. You know, full-size mock-ups, you know, put together of the Abadabad compound. Again, talking about what we were talking about before, muscle memory.

Right. You know, how many fucking steps do I have to go? Right. I'm here. How many steps do I have to get to the end of this wall? Right. You have to know exactly how his place is laid out, where he could possibly be. How do they do that?

Well, that's all that work. People think that somehow we just rocked up on his place. That was eight plus years of insane effort trying to locate him and then confirm it was him and then design this operation. And so there were a lot of a lot of moving parts it wasn't just like we said oh look great you know now we got him that was fucking impressive that he was able to hide for that long yeah it is but there was a lot of uh accomplices yeah and mainly like the pakistani intel service um the uh you know incredibly duplicitous had

someone actually uh as his liaison officer in the PACI Intel service. And there were a lot of people, yeah, that had a vested interest in making sure that he stayed hidden. And so I know people say, well, he was a tall bearded dude. You should have been able to find him. Well, it ain't that easy. And, you know, it's not as easy as in the feature films. It just doesn't work that way. It's not? No, I know. I know that's disappointing for a lot of people to hear. But it was a great operation. And it's interesting that they've

released these documents and at this point in time, and it is, it's fascinating to see kind of inside his mind a little bit more and understand to what degree he did or didn't have sort of operational understanding of what Al Qaeda was doing at the time. Yeah. So anyway, for those of you that are looking for something to read. Zero Dark Thirty, that movie, how accurate was that movie? Did they make up the people? Yeah. Like the girl who was like in charge of everything and over there telling Navy SEALs?

Yeah, it's a composite of people. It's like Hollywood does some things really, really well. They do the military recreations very, very well. I mean, it's incredibly well. And then they take bits and pieces and turn them into a character, which is what they do. And that's the nature of it. A dramatic representation of what kind of went on, but not really to make it juicier so they can do it in 90 minutes.

You've got to make it a story. You've got to condense it down. If you showed what actually happened, the audience would kill themselves out of boredom because you'd be watching eight years worth of surveillance and eight years worth of struggling to understand what one credit card receipt meant in relation to something that was happening over across the other side of the world. Right. All these things that go into this that nobody ever sees. So they, you know, they condense it down, it turns into a movie. And then, you know, up on the hill in Capitol Hill, they get confused and they don't realize that maybe it's a movie, you know. And so they,

I don't know if you remember that kerfuffle they had after they released it, where they called them back and said, well, you know, maybe, you know, over the interrogation program, maybe you didn't tell us everything, you know, and you think, well, no, they just made a fucking movie, you know, I mean, because and there were people that were upset with, you know, Zero Dark Thirty because they thought it put too much importance on interrogation. And there are people that thought it didn't put enough importance. And I'm thinking it's a fucking movie. Part of it's just entertainment. You're not watching a documentary. But anyway. Well, there's a movie that they made. I don't know if you saw it.

The Foxcatcher movie that's based on Mark and David Schultz, the wrestlers. That movie is just filled with bullshit. And it's a real problem for Mark Schultz, who was an Olympic gold medalist, one of the best wrestlers the United States has ever produced. And that guy's alive. His brother got shot by that crazy DuPont fuck. But Mark's alive. And they changed all sorts of shit in that movie that doesn't make any sense.

Historical shit about his career as a wrestler, his career as a wrestler his career as a UFC fighter they they put they they even changed the time where the UFC was invented they made the UFC they made him watch the UFC like almost like six or seven years I think before it ever really existed and then on top of it the guy he watched fight was a historical character big daddy goodrich gary goodrich was one of the original pioneers of mma and he in the movie is watching gary goodrich fight paul herrera when in reality he fought gary goodrich in his first ufc fight also in the movie mark schultz isn't fighting in the ufc in his first fight he's fighting in the movie, Mark Schultz isn't fighting in the UFC in his first fight. He's

fighting in some small organization, and it's kind of sad, and he's fighting a white Russian dude. He fought a black guy named Gary Goodrich. Gary Goodrich is a historical figure. It's historical fact in the world of mixed martial arts that Mark Schultz was one of the greatest talents from wrestling to ever compete in MMA. And Gary Goodrich was a real pioneer. A guy who was very dangerous, and Mark took him down at will, and it was kind of crazy to watch how good of a wrestler he was. Well, in the movie, they bullshitted their way through all that.

He didn't even fight Gary. Was there somebody who served as a consultant? Oh, who knows, but Mark went crazy after the movie was released and went on this Twitter rampage. We were supposed to do a podcast about it, but he's an odd guy. He's very elusive. He's talked about doing it and I said, look, man,

let me know when you want to do it. I'll fly you out. We'll talk about it. But he went on this rampage about it on Twitter and then someone compiled a website where they talked about all the things that they got wrong in that movie and all the stuff they made up in that movie to make it more interesting. But the story itself is fascinating. That's a punk guy.

Anytime anybody releases a story or anybody signs over something or anybody picks up a book and says, I'm going to make a movie out of this, that's it. It becomes an editorial process. It's like saying, how does raw intelligence get out of the field and then suddenly become something it's not? Well, it gets into this editing process and you've got a bunch of people taking a whack at it, you know, over at the National Security Council.

And eventually, you know, they've got to spin on it. Well, I can kind of understand that if you're talking about someone who died before things were recorded. Right, right, right. You know, like you're making a movie on Lincoln. You don't really know what he said. You've got to kind of put words in his mouth. Fill this in a little bit. Yeah, right, right. You know, like, you're making a movie on Lincoln, you don't really know what he said, you gotta kind of put words in his mouth.

Fill this in a little bit. Yeah, what did he say to his wife? Yeah. Let's make up some shit he said to his wife. Yeah. But Lincoln's dead. Mark Schultz is alive.

Yeah. And he's not that old. I mean, he's in his, I think he's probably 50 or something like that. Did they talk to him about it? Did they? Oh, yeah, well,

whatever they talked to him about it, he fucking wasn't happy when the movie was released. Yeah. So I don't know. Right, right. You know, they made him look gay in the movie.

They alluded to some sort of a weird gay affair with him and DuPont. They gave him frosted tips. It was very odd. It was very odd what they did. I'm impressed you know what frosted tips are. Well, I've seen them before. Frosted tips, I don't know. They're out there.

Sounds like a strip club saying or something. Yeah, I know. You know. I know. You know. We all know. Yeah, who hasn't had frosted tips? Let's pretend we don't know. That's right. I don't know what the hell that is. Yeah, when I had hair- Where's my El Camino? I never had frosted tips, but I could have. I could have been talked in. I could have fallen into the wrong crowd of people in my 20s, and I could have wound up with frosted tips. You could have been walking to the tee after that game at Fenway and walked upstairs to a hairdresser's and said, that's it, that's for me. And you saw the perfect guy with Frosted Tips.

Yeah, and this would have been a completely different conversation that you and me are having right now. Like Iceman from Top Gun. Remember? Val Kilmer. Val Kilmer. Val Kilmer. He's not looking as good as he did back in the Top Gun days. He kind of slimmed down

a little bit he got back to like a more manageable form but form he definitely shape he went

he went full Trump for a while he just ballooned up to this strange sort of that's odd because he was a fucking beautiful man

he was young and handsome he did Tombstone there's the frosted tips baby there it is look at that come on Iceman look at that he's fucking in the Air Force That was a hell of a movie. He did Tombstone. There's the frosted tips, baby. There it is. Look at that.

Come on, Iceman. Look at that. He's fucking in the Air Force wearing that hairdo. How does a guy go from that to, have you ever seen that photo where it's like LOL? Remember when I used to be Batman? You ever seen that picture? No. Where his fucking face looks like a giant pie.

Yeah. Yeah. I saw him one time over at the Chateau Marmont. I was sitting there working on my laptop and I look up and he's across the room and I thought, there's something familiar.

But it was during his large stage. Yeah. I remember staring thinking, there's something familiar about that dude. And it took me forever

to figure it out. And finally, I was about to close my laptop and I thought, aha, it's a Huckleberry guy. There he is.

Hey guys, remember when I was Batman? What the fuck did he do? Did he just get into booze? Was he just boozing it? Donuts. Donuts and booze. Bring a lot of people down.

Oh, no, stop. Oh, my God. Just stop. Stop doing this. Bring up some pictures of the Camino. He got so big. Look at his belly up there. Look at that one.

Go up. Look at that one. Wow. To the right. Look at his belly. To the right at that one. Go up. Look at that one. Wow. To the right. Look at his belly. To the right. Oh my Jesus Christ. Now I'm turning that roll down.

I don't want that roll. Well, actually, look at his face there. He's not as fat with his face as he was in that, remember when I was Batman. Oh my God. He got big. That one's got a Travolta look there a little bit. What the fuck, man? I wonder what he did.

People need to age better out in this town. People need to age better. They need to learn to age gracefully. It's hard. Well, you know what? The doctor just tells you, hey, man, I'll just give you a little nip and a little tuck and we'll be fine. You'll be good.

I'll tell you what. Look, Mike. Talk about a slippery slope. You're a good looking man, but we can make you a little better. You can get some frosted tips and pull those eyes up a little bit. Is it going to make your mouth look a little bigger? That's a weird one. That's not a good one.

We're going to make your mouth a little bigger. That's the weird one that women develop this mouth that looks like they could eat your head. Yeah. They're fucking, they get this joker mouth because they're pulling your face, and in pulling your face, they stretch. They do something crazy where they're stretching your mouth. They tighten the vagina, and they enlarge the mouth. Nothing wrong with tightening the vagina.

I know. I guess I just realized what I was saying. Some medical procedures make sense. Yes. If I had a vagina, I'd want to tighten it. I know this is exactly what people would expect us to be talking about when I come in on an afternoon. On this podcast, yes. Because this in on an afternoon. Well, on this podcast, yes. Because this podcast will go south.

Well, it has. Will? It has and will. I think it might have. I wanted to ask you one question before we get out. Sure. Because I think we're closing in on the three-hour mark. The interrogation school that you were talking about,

what do they do to you when you're in interrogation school to try to get you to understand what it's like to break? Are you allowed to talk about that? To some degree, yeah. I mean, what you go through is a lot of what the enhanced techniques are. Yeah, I mean, waterboarding is done to us, to our people. So you got waterboarded? Is anybody listening?

No. Okay. Why do you keep telling me that? I keep imagining, because we're probably actually just recording this. You're just being nice to me. Actually, you're not even recording it. This is just happening, and it's going to go in the we're streaming live yeah yeah anyway uh the point being is yes that enhanced uh uh interrogation

techniques including sleep deprivation which is probably at the end of the day uh sleep deprivation white noise stress positions um a an interrogation facility is a very finely controlled, very labor-intensive place. And it's not like people think, wow, it's like Abu Ghraib. Well, Abu Ghraib wasn't an interrogation facility. Abu Ghraib was a military holding cell run by people that didn't have the experience. They basically turned it over to junior officers and people that shouldn't have been in there running a facility like that. And it was completely wrong.

But an interrogation facility, you go in and it's all about doing your homework. You don't ever go in and sit down with a detainee unless you have done all your homework. You know where you want this conversation to go. You know the questions you want to ask. You don't want to appear to be wavering. You don't want to appear to be unsure. And if you don't do your homework, it's like a polygraph. If the polygraph operator doesn't do his homework, a lie detector, if he doesn't do his homework, that exam is fucked. Do polygraphs work? You know what? In a way. It's not a science. So it's not, it doesn't work in the sense that, yes, it will tell if you're lying or not. It's a tool in the

kit bag of understanding what kind of person you're dealing with. So for some people, it works because they feel guilty about everything, right? And so they remember that in 1902, they stole a pen and now they feel bad about it. So they're going to, you know. And so the physiology of it is starting to react. And that allows for the operator to go, well, there's something strange about that question. They reacted a little bit differently. They're breathing, you know, whatever it may be, the sweat. They had a reaction. They had a reaction.

Now let's go in on that a little bit. But I guess my point being is that or interrogations or even negotiations or interviews. I mean, if you're out there and your job is to interview people, well, then, you know, you know what it's like. You got to know who you're talking to. And that's how it becomes effective. But in training, yeah, you go through all these things and, you know, it can be fairly intense. But the idea, again, part of it is to show, well, look, this is what it does. This is how you can deal with it.

This is how you stay close to something that's plausible. It's like an alias or a back story, whatever you want to call it. You want to try to keep it close to the truth. The problem that people have in interrogation sometimes is they'll say something that's not true. Now they've got to remember that. Then they go back in for another session. They've got to remember what they said before. Now if they say another lie, now they've got to remember those two things.

And pretty soon after three or four interviews, they're trying to remember this string of lies where what you really want to do is you want to try to keep it as close as possible to whatever the truth may be so that you don't have to spend all your time struggling to remember what was the hell i said last time so like if you lied to someone that you're interrogating that's what you're saying no if someone's being interrogated or someone's okay yeah i mean that's and or or you know the interview process i mean that's it's just so anyway i don't know where i'm going with that other than to say that it's um it's and whether it's military whether it's my old outfit or whomever um it's an important uh of training because, again, you have to understand what's possible now. It's a changed world, right? The DOJ and the White House and everything came out and said- Can't torture people anymore.

Well, you can't use enhanced techniques. That's a funny one. Yeah. So there you go. And now people are screaming, enhanced techniques, that's fucking torture. That's all you do. But, I mean, the idea being is all you can use is the field manual, the military field manual.

What does that mean? Well, it means I couldn't break my daughter with a military field manual. You couldn't? I don't think so. What does the military field manual allow? And what I mean by that is I don't mean to be, I don't mean to be flip or dismissive.

What I'm saying is once people out there know what can and can't be done. They know how much they can take. They know exactly what they can take. They know exactly what's coming down the pike, and they're just going to keep their yap shut. And people say, well, but you can develop a relationship with them. Well, no shit, Sherlock. That's what we did. Most of the time, all the information we got, basically, if people took the time to go through DOJ memos and look at the actual information,

if people took the time to go through DOJ memos and look at the actual information. Most of what we did was based on conversing, based on knowing who you're talking to, doing your homework, figuring out how the pieces fit together, and talking to people. But those people don't have much incentive to talk sometimes if they know that, well, you can't do shit to them anyway. Right. And so- All they have to do is keep their mouth shut, and you're saddled down by the rules. The advantage of enhanced techniques—

You should do air quotes when you say that. Enhanced techniques? Yeah. Do air quotes. And what I mean by that is— Enhanced techniques. Yeah, enhanced techniques. That seems like the perfect representative.

Yeah, I know. And there you go. And I know that's also—it's like everything else, right? It's like all the other discussions we've been having in terms of people base this on their experiences. And so there's people that you're never going to shift off this position. You're never going to shift off of this other position. It was all torture or it's not. And there's some things that exist between talking to a detainee and what is torture. The United States is noble when we don't torture people.

Yeah. Well, yeah. I want them to think that we do. I don't want to, but I want them to not know what's in the kit bag. Okay, so enhanced techniques. So when you say enhanced techniques, is sleep deprivation in the enhanced techniques thing? Yeah, sleep deprivation. So you can't do that anymore? No. What? No. What? If you read what

took place, people read those DOJ memos and realize how much, if they actually took the time, and understand all the back and forth that took place between the field and headquarters over, well, can we do this? Can I put my hand on his chest and push him against a wall? Well, okay, build a fake wall so it's not, can you do this? Okay, no. What can I do? And there was back and forth and back and forth over what could be done. And, yeah, okay, it's not supposed to be nice and it's not pleasant. And we can argue, and obviously people do, I don't – torture is wrong and we shouldn't do it. But do I think that there were some things like a sleep deprivation or stress positions or noise?

What's a stress position? How does that work? Well, you know, like put your forehead against the wall and walk back, you know. And then, you know, I don't know. Oh, so lean your head on the – Lean your head against the wall and walk back, you know? And then, you know, I don't know. Oh, so lean your head on the- Lean your head against the wall and walk back and stay in that position for, you know, 15 minutes or whatever. You make them do that?

What if they don't? In the old days- Yes. Yeah. I mean, no, people are pretty compliant in an interrogation facility back when they didn't know what was coming down the pike. Right. And that's why I keep saying the same thing.

I don't, I don thing. I agree. Shouldn't be torturing. But at the same time, we shouldn't also be telling the hostiles what we can and can't do. All right. You say you shouldn't be torturing. But what if you have someone who knows that a 9-11 is about to take place and you got to get information out of them? What other ways are there if you have a small window of time? It's not really. The unsatisfactory answer is it's not really. Torture doesn't answer is it's not really. Torture doesn't really produce information. I agree with Senator McCain and lots of other people about that.

People will say whatever they need to say to make whatever that horrible torture is to stop. And so it's not from an operational – you know, again, I understand there's a moral aspect to it. I tend to just look at things from an operational efficiency point of view, and it's not good. You can't count on information. So beating somebody up doesn't get information out of them, cutting off their fingers doesn't get information out of them, but does sleep deprivation? Not that our hostiles out there, not that people that are after us wouldn't do the same. Of course they'd do that.

Of course they would. But they're not really after accurate information. They don't care. It's a different world that they exist in. If we're after actionable intelligence that you can count on, then it's just a very, very labor-intensive process. Well, there's ways to get people to talk, right? Well, yeah. Up to a point?

Psychologically speaking, sure. I mean there's ways to get them to comply. And that's part of the process is in a well-controlled environment, sleep deprivation or white noise or stress issues. And how do you keep them awake? What do you have to environment, sleep deprivation or white noise or stress. How do you keep them awake? What do you have to do for sleep deprivation? You keep them standing or you keep moving them from place to place or you pump in some Arabic music or baby crying or whatever it may be. And you just keep them awake.

I mean, again, it's labor-intensive because you've got to keep checking on them, making sure they're awake. But you do that in a controlled environment. We're not talking about five days of this. And again, if people took the time to understand or read, they would realize there were a lot of doctors, psychiatrists involved that were saying, yeah, you can or you can't do this. It wasn't, you know, again, I get conflicted because I understand why people are so emotive about it, and I get that. And I do agree there's – you have to look at what you can and can't do, and you have to be very, very critical about that, and you have to be very careful.

But I guess I keep coming back to the same thing is we've kind of given up the ghost. From now on, going forward, everybody out there knows what we can and can't do. And so whether we were going to do it or not, which we weren't in terms of the torture side of things, they didn't know that. And so you could speed the process up of getting them to comply to some degree because they didn't know what was coming down the pike. And you keep them on the back foot and you keep them guessing. And that's your advantage in a situation like that. But, yeah, again, I keep coming back to the same thing. I get it.

I understand why people are so, you know. And to be fair, the left really did a great job of framing the argument. They really took it and said you're either talking to somebody or it's all torture. Well, if torture doesn't really produce actionable information, then it makes sense to not torture people. Right. Absolutely. And that's my point. Yeah. Yeah. That's my point. But you can't give them ecstasy and hookers either. No, it's not. You can't give them nice things. Yeah. It's not supposed to be a pleasant situation. And so people say, well, I can't believe you would put somebody in a stress position or you would make them uncomfortable or you would keep them awake for 36 hours. I can't believe you would. Well, really? I mean, what the fuck do you want? Of course. And we'd always try. You'd always try

to develop relationships with people. That is, in fact, the best way to do it. Develop, try to, you know, find out about their psychology, try to find ways to get them on side, to get their sympathy or to bring them on board, whatever you can do. But to just say we're taking all these other things out of the kit bag, whether we're ever going to use them or not, and here's all we can do, you're pretty much guaranteed that there's a lot of people out there who are walking around in Syria and Iraq for ISIS carrying a field manual in their back pocket who know exactly what we can do and we can't do now. But isn't there ways we circumvent that by not doing it on American soil? No. No?

No. I know people like to think that. They like to think that there's some secret CIA holding place that you can take people on the moon. Of course. And you can stick rockets up their ass and they start talking. On the moon. That would be costly. That would be a lot of money. Too much money.

A moon station. But like Guantanamo, for instance. A lot of dark shit has gone on in Guantanamo, right? No, actually, you know what? No? Here's where people would say, ah, I can't believe it. Guantanamo has always been more about a holding facility. And you could argue that the – depending on how you want to frame it.

If you want to say it was all torture, fine. argue that the the the depending on how you want to frame it if you want to say it was all torture fine then the torture or the enhanced techniques whatever for the most part took place overseas in uh facilities that you know we were running that were temporary or our host countries were running and that's where i would much rather have we treat people a lot better than some of our allies do frankly and particularly a lot of our Middle Eastern allies. Yeah, I could only imagine. There are a lot of guys in Guantanamo who would like to stay in Guantanamo right now, frankly, than go be repatriated to the Middle East. Really?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? Rather than go back and face Egyptian justice? Yeah. Or the Jordanians? Yeah, absolutely. But, in all fairness, though...

I mean, again, I know people are going to say, well, they know what I actually want to... They're not clamoring to stay in Gitmo. Don't get me wrong. I'm saying that they are treated better in that facility than they would be if they find themselves suddenly in an Egyptian prison. If they were interrogated by our allies.

Right. So, but haven't there been people that have been found to have been detained there that really were innocent? Let's put it this way. Did we throw out a big net and err on the side of caution when we were picking people up off the battlefield? Yes. Did we do a lot of good by removing a lot of these people and some of the key players off the battlefield and out of the operational system within al-Qaeda and some of their supporting elements? Yes. So it's not a satisfying answer because it's not black or white.

It's not all bad. It's not all good. Again, like we were talking about before, the gray. It's the gray. It's unfortunate but a part of reality. It's the way – I don't know. And yes, what are you going to do? Close it down and say, well, we're sorry.

Recidivism rate for people coming out of Gitmo is up in the 30 percentile rate. It's a third plus. Well, you think that actually going to Gitmo would probably encourage them to want to fucking hate America more, wouldn't it? Yeah. I got no problem with that. I think that's probably a fair statement. Do I want them back out on the battlefield looking to kill us or our allies? No.

I think, you know, but again, you know, what's the answer? What's the, are we going to close Gitmo and bring, you know, the 46 or so that we're never going to repatriate over to U.S. soil? Who knows? I mean, if the president gets his way, I don't think he's going to get it past Congress. But again, it's one of those things. He wants to close it down, right? He wants to close it down.

And what does he want to do? There's 46 people that are being detained? Well, there's 91 there. But by the time you get to the ones that just aren't going to find a home. I mean, look, the Bush administration and the Obama administration, we've spent years and years

trying to find places for these people. It's not like anybody didn't want to try to get these people sent somewhere else. That's been a goal of this administration and the previous one. And there's just some folks who just aren't going to find another home. So there's about 45, 46 of them. And the idea would be bring them back to the States, I guess. Jesus. So how do they catch these people? I mean, it's all various different ways, right? Right, right. And that was old days. You don't hear us talking about catching a lot of people anymore.

And part of the reason why is because you'd rather just paint that target and blow the fuck out of them than risk your career picking up somebody and then getting accused of mishandling a detainee or all the crap that can happen because suddenly they've decided a program for capturing somebody and bringing them back to Guantanamo or wherever is not appropriate. So what you found over the years, recent past, is it's a lot easier to just smoke them than to pick them up. I hate to say that. I mean, that's a sad thing to say. And so what does that mean? From an operationally efficient point of view, that means your pipeline of potential intelligence is drying up because you're not picking these people up live. It's just easier to whack them.

That is a harsh reality. Well, it's part of the way it works. Everybody was getting their ass kicked for being involved in of the way it works. Nobody wants, everybody was getting their ass kicked for being, you know, involved in a approved program of whether it was rendition

or the interrogation program or, you know, whatever part of that or the periphery. And, you know, people look at the drone program and think, well, that's really expanded

under Obama. Well, no shit because it's just, you know, just take them out. You know, we don't want the heartburn. So that's why the drone program has expanded,

because capturing detainees is more problematic politically. You think this administration wants more people to put in Guantanamo? Isn't that fucked up that it's easier to kill someone politically, like to have civilian casualties, and the civilian casualties are pretty fucking high with drones, right? Well, yeah, I mean, again, under the theory that nothing's going to be perfect, they try everything they can to limit that. But yeah, of course, there have been civilian casualties, no doubt about that.

Isn't that something crazy, like 80%? No, no, it's not that high. You could argue even one's too high, right? Right. But it's not, you know, again, once again, the same thing. Numbers get thrown out on one side. Yeah. So it's not 80%. It's not zero.

We've had unfortunate incidents. There's no doubt about that. And like I said, one's too many. But at the same time, I guess my point being is the drone program has expanded in part because it's perceived as cleaner, which sounds awful. And it is awful because, again, from an operational perspective, I'd rather have my hands on that detainee to know what they know. Right. And once you smoke them, you're not going to know that shit.

What if they come up with a way one day to actually, I mean, I know that they have something called fMRI, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery, I think it's called, where they've used it, I believe in India, it was a real problematic case, because they convicted someone for murder because they had functional knowledge of the crime. And people who I talked to this neuroscientist, who was she was like a kind of an expert in fMRI. And she said, that's a huge, there's a huge problem with that and

that would never fly in the united states because functional functional knowledge of the crime could have been established through her interrogation process through questioning through asking her about the case she could have functional knowledge of the crime scene so like proving it through an fmri she's like is, it doesn't work. So, what they're convicting someone on is something that would never fly in America. But what if they could? If they could one day figure out a way that would- Sounds like Minority Report or whatever that movie was with Val Kilmer before he gained weight.

Was he Val Kilmer? No, it was Tom Cruise. No, it was Tom Cruise. Same guy. Yeah. It's the same one. We've never seen them photograph together. You notice that? It's like Yasser Arafat and Ringo Starr. I think they were

in a movie together, man. They were in Top Gun. Of course they were. What am I talking about? I forgot. I had my memory wiped clean by seeing Fat Val Kilmer.

So, oh, well. You know what? I got to tell you, this has been, you know, I'm sure the viewers are tired of it, but I've had a great time. I had a great time, well. You know what? I got to tell you, this has been, you know, I'm sure the viewers are, you know, tired of it, but I've had a great time. I had a great time, too.

Thank you very much for doing this. I really appreciate your candor and your openness and, you know, exploring some uncomfortable and difficult subjects and giving us some inside information that is very difficult for people to get any other way. Unless they're talking to a guy like you, a lot of it is speculation and bullshit and posturing and reading websites that might be completely inaccurate. So I think you've helped us a lot. Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. I just encourage everybody, just read everything you can. Don't settle on one source of information. The right and the left make that mistake.

And again, we're getting to a point where it's pretty fucked up, right? We've got to find a way to get back to, you know, the center and get shit done. Otherwise, I don't know where we're heading. But, anyway, that's my last little bit. But this has been a great experience. Love the show. And I really appreciate it. And I'm going to check with you about my middle boy's martial arts training.

Yes, please do. Please do. I'll help you out. Thanks, brother. I really appreciate it. All right, folks. See you out. Thanks, brother. I really appreciate it. All right, folks. See you tomorrow. We'll be back with Ian McCall.

We're going to preview this weekend's UFC and have some fun. See you then. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.