The Joe Rogan Experience - #907 - Mike Baker

Episode Date: January 27, 2017

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

Do-do-do-do-do! Boom! Mike Baker, ladies and gentlemen. Boom! How are you, sir? What's going on? I'm doing good, thank you. I'm doing well. It seems like the year's going well so far. Not much to report. Hey, is that sarcasm? Are you guys allowed to use that?

I know, I know. We're supposed to have that removed when we join. But, yeah, no, it's going good. Going good, thank you. Family's great. Beautiful. Kids are doing. No, it's going good. Going good. Thank you. Family's great. Beautiful. Kids are doing very well. Business is going very well. I know everybody was most concerned about my family and my kids. Absolutely.

That's how people start off a podcast. Well, we just want to hear you're having a good time up there in God's country. Oh, yeah. Idaho. Idaho. Beautiful place. We were just talking about how awesome it is up there. Yeah.

And we're getting a lot of snow. I mean, you guys are getting a ton of snow up in the north, particularly here in California, but we're getting just hammered with snow. Yeah, they got like five feet up in Big Bear. Yeah, yeah. Big Bear apparently just got covered in snow, which is awesome. We had like 330 inches of snow up where we've got a place up in about two hours outside of Boise, up in the mountains where we go skiing and fishing and not at the same time.

That'd be a hell of a sport. Someone's probably done that. Well, you know, I do know that guys are cross-country skiing into hunting spots now. Yeah. That's a thing that guys are doing. There's actually these foldable skis, and you strap these things on,

and they can stuff in your pack when you're done, and apparently it's way better than snowshoes. So when guys are trying to traverse, like, really, you know, like, fresh snow, no know, like fresh snow, no path, thick stuff, they're doing cross country skiing. And I mean, that's tough. It's, that's tough work, but it's, it's not as tough as snowshoeing. Snowshoeing is a, is a grind for any distance. Right. But, but yeah, you know what you do see, I mean, we were skiing fresh tracks off, off the, the side backside of one of the mountains that we ski. It was two weeks ago.

And, you know, the snow was falling. There was no wind. It was just beautiful. There was nobody. I think we saw two other skiers the whole time that we were out. And it's just beautiful. And you stop constantly and just stare and look around. And you think, how beautiful this is.

And then I do what everybody does. I take out my phone because I'm going to capture the moment on my phone camera and somehow get the grandeur of this scene on my iPhone. And I always do the same thing. I go back to the, you know, I sit in the cabin and I look and I go, oh, that's a stupid photo. It just looks like white. Yeah, exactly. Is that you?

That's the picture you took? That's one of them, yeah. It's pretty goddamn beautiful still. Yeah. Pretty beautiful. It's good. I have some buddies that live up in Ketchum. They run First Light.

My friend Ryan Callahan. Shout out to Ryan Callahan. He runs First Light. It's a hunting clothing company. And they're up in Ketchum and he's always just raving about it. Yeah, Ketchum's great. That's where Sun Valley is. And it gets more crowded up there. But it's

kind of like a high-end... It's a great town. It is a high-end, yeah. Fancy pants. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Idaho, there's two blue spots in Idaho. One is Boise, a very Democrat-heavy city, and the other is Ketchum in that particular county because of Sun Valley being there.

And so we get a lot of wealthy folks. But it's a beautiful town. It's a great community. It's a year of wealthy folks. But it's a beautiful town. It's a great community. It's a year-round community. But there's some other towns. There's a place up there in Idaho called McCall, which, again, is a couple hours outside of Boise, up in the mountains. And it's a real town, right?

I mean, there's nothing fancy about it. But it's a great place. It sits right on this beautiful lake, Payette Lake. And, you know, fishing's fantastic. And then the skiing is great there the winter it's you know I sound like I'm on the Chamber of Commerce well listen man we were saying right before people from Idaho don't like to talk about how beautiful Idaho

is because they're trying to keep people out I know I know I shouldn't do that I have some friends that have a house on Coeur d'Alene and they send me pictures and you just go holy shit you get to look at that like they're on this lake and it's about 100 feet deep and you can see the ground like it's glass. You see the bottom of that lake.

You could see the logs that are down there, the sticks. I'm like, that is crazy. It's crystal clear. Wildlife up there is fantastic. Yeah, it is. And there's places like that all around the state. And the nice thing about Idaho is, I mean, again, everybody says, oh, we turn into the PBS Idaho hour.

It's a great place. It gives you a different look everywhere you go, eastern Idaho, oh, we turn into the PBS Idaho hour. It's a great place. It gives you a different look everywhere you go. Eastern Idaho, West, up North. So there's a lot going for it. The hunting's great. The fishing's fantastic. Fly fishing is amazing. Whitewater. Whitewater's going to be insane this year because of the snow. Oh, yeah. So it's a great place to be. The climbing is good. And a giant chunk of that is public land, folks. That's your land. And this is something that I put on my Instagram yesterday and the day before as well,

because there's a bill that got introduced that's being proposed to sell off public lands. And there's this one representative. What's that fellow's name? Jason Chavitz. Jason Chavitz from Utah. He introduced this bill. How dare you, Jason? Try to sell. Look, he's a young

fella. He doesn't fucking know what he's doing. Looks like he's in his 30s. People don't realize how lucky we have it to have so much of this country, public land like that where you can, and it's not just hunting folks. People say, oh, you care about hunting. No, listen to me. You could hike this. You could fish. You can

camp. You could just go lie down and stare at the stars. It's your land. This is all ours. And it's unprecedented in this world. There's no other country that has anything remotely like our public land system. We can't let them give it away. We can't let them sell it. And if anybody wants to

give a kick in the ass to hunting, I don't understand that either. Because you know what? A lot of the land is maintained by hunting. Both in the fees and also just that hunting itself is doing a great service. So I don't quite get that. I mean, I understand it. I suppose on an emotive level.

How could you kill that thing? Because he's tasty. Because I like to eat. Well, I get it. It's a kind way to think. Go to the RMEF page. You want to see money for conservation for hunting. You want to see some staggering numbers.

The Twitter page, Rocky Mountain Elk Federation, RMEF, and they post these charts that show the billions and billions of dollars that go towards conservation every year, all because of people who fish and hunt. It's great. The numbers are staggering. You go to Cabela's, and, you know, I always wondered about this. You go to Cabela's, you buy something at Cabela's or, you know,

Bass Pro, wherever you got in your local area, and, you know, routinely they're saying, well, would you like to donate a dollar to the conservation fund? Would you like to donate a dollar to, you know, of course you would. Plus the percentage of your sale goes directly to it anyway. If you buy hunting equipment, a certain percentage I forget what the number is, but it's a good healthy percentage

that turns out to be millions and millions of dollars every year. There we go. Just Minnesota, look at this. More people hunt or fish in Minnesota 1.65 million than double the combined populations of Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester and Duluth. And $3.17 billion is the amount spent by 1,649,000 hunters and anglers in a single year in Minnesota.

That's an incredibly large part of the economy, folks. And a giant chunk of that goes to preserving wildlife habitat, to preserving wetlands, to making sure that animal populations are kept healthy, to making sure that animal populations are kept healthy, to make sure that predator populations are kept in balance, and that ranchers aren't impeded upon by mountain lions and wolves and shit like that. It's an incredible number. Yeah. It's crazy.

That's just for Minnesota, right? Yeah, just Minnesota. That's amazing. And then you think of the other states all combining together. It's the reason why we have more white-tailed deer in America today than when Columbus landed. That's a fact. Look at this. Michigan, $576 million in state and local tax revenue.

Enough to support the average salaries of nearly 11,000 police and sheriff's officers. It's pretty fucking incredible. And by the way, I didn't know we could still mention Columbus. I didn't know that was allowed anymore. It's allowed. It's allowed. We can still talk about Columbus. We can still talk about Columbus. We can still talk about him.

It's kind of crazy, Columbus Day, when you find out what a savage he was. What a terrible person Columbus was. Yay, Columbus Day. What? Do we have any stevia, Jeremy? This tastes like shit. This together, I'm not a fan of this, the way it is with the butter. I like that emulsified MCT oil, but I don't want to get blended into the...

I'm expecting the other kind of coffee, and it comes out like this. I'm like, what is this? It's alright. It's alright. It's not the best. I like it. What do I know? I'm going back to the old way. You know what I'm saying? What do you think? I think it's okay. It tastes pretty good. It's just a little different taste. It's got a sweeter something. Yeah, maybe we need less of it or something.

Maybe I'm just a bitch. How much do you drink a day? How much coffee? Yeah. I don't even count it or something. Maybe I'm just a bitch. How much do you drink a day? Coffee? I don't even count it. I just keep going. I really don't. I used to. I used to worry about it. I used to say, man, maybe I should back up off the coffee. But coffee's an excellent source of antioxidants. If you're not

dehydrated, if you're drinking plenty of water on top of that, I always drink water with it. I don't see any negative effects when I go get my health stuff done and get water with it. And I don't see any negative effects when I go get my health stuff done and get blood work done. So I don't fucking back off it at all. But sometimes I do get a little too jazzed up. There's this company that we have

that sponsors us, my friend's company, Caveman Coffee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they make these nitros. They're these little tiny things. They're nitrogenated coffee that's 270 milligrams of caffeine in one little can.

Holy shit. Get Mr. Baker a Nitro. Show him all these things. I got a busy day tomorrow. I'll pop that in the morning first thing. These little fuckers. I take these before I lift weights, and I want to throw things through the fucking walls. And I do.

They're so good. It's so good. That little tiny thing is 270 milligrams of caffeine, and it's nitrogenated, which I don't know why that's good. Well, you know, I'm going to start. Seriously, I got an early call in the morning. I got an early start. Got a lot of activity going on. I'm just going to pop this in the morning and see how it feels.

Take that with you. We'll give you a few of them. Yeah. See what you can do. I'll give them to the team. Yeah, that'll be good. If you like the taste of actual coffee, it's really good coffee. If you like the taste of actual coffee, it's really good coffee.

There's a whole story behind the company, but it's this one farm in Columbia, single source, single family. It is Columbia, right? I know. I have too much information in my brain. Even things that I know for a fact, I'll say them and I'll go, are you sure? Like right away, I question myself. I think I've got to erase some of my data. I've done that. I've pared it down. I'm streamlining now. I'm simpl've got to erase some of my data. I've done that.

I've pared it down. I'm streamlining now. I'm simplifying. I'm thinking of starting a spa again. Maybe just do a little kickboxing spa and just trim down some of my memories. There's just a few too many in there. I might have to take a couple of jabs. It says my boys. Two of my boys.

Actually, all three of them, though. What am I saying? All three of them. My kids, Scooter and Sluggo and Muggsy are 9, 7, and 5. Those are hilarious names. And they're hilarious kids. For former CIA operatives' kids. Well, they're like the Three Stooges.

That's what... But they're in Taekwondo now. We looked around. We checked out a few places and we found this one that we really like. And also, to be fair, part of it is just timing. Their structure and their timing works well with other things kids are doing but they're in there how old are they and they're not nine seven and

five that's a good age to start taekwondo because then you'll learn the dexterity and the flexibility and stuff like that and if they really get serious about martial arts you can transition them to something like jujitsu or kickboxing or something like this, which I recommend. I think the middle one will stick with it. He is supremely focused. The older one does very well, but he's got a variety of other interests, right? And right now he's focused on other sports, lacrosse and basketball. But that middle one, you can just kind of watch him and see.

It's like everything else. Your kids spark on different things. And he seems to have really sparked on this. The youngest one, the five-year-old, he does great, but he's kind of sparked on candy bars and things. He's like that. Yeah, that's one of the fascinating things about having kids is to realize there's only so

much that you do to shape their personality. They come out of the box unique in a weird way. I have two daughters that are young. I have a six and an eight, and they are so different. I mean, so different. The six-year-old thinks farts are hilarious. She's so funny.

But she'll say, can I tell you something? Can I tell you something? And she'll just fart on you. And then she'll fall to the ground laughing. She's got to meet my five-year-old. Those two will get along like a house on fire. Everybody gets mad at her. You just can't do that.

You just can't be farting. And I'm laughing. They're like, don't laugh at her. I'm like, that is hilarious. She just farted on you. What's the eight-year-old? The eight-year-old's more of a girly girl? Yeah, yeah.

Much more of a girly girl. The six-year-old's a savage. She's like a little gorilla. She's really hilarious. She's very, very funny. Yeah. Well, my three just spend it. They spend all their time, like every other kid, right, but boys in particular, they spend

all their time beating the shit out of each other. Oh, yeah. And so we thought, you know what, we've been looking for a while to find the right place for them to channel that physical side of things. And now it's good because now they focus on, you know, if they're going to hurt each other, they're going to hurt each other in the proper way, I suppose. Yeah, get some sparring in. Yeah, get some sparring in.

Well, that's one of the good things about jiu-jitsu. You know, we had talked about getting your kids into jiu-jitsu. The good thing about jiu-jitsu is you can go full blast. The thing about kicking each other in the head is, boy, you can really only do that a couple of times. And then, you know, you're just not the same person anymore.

That's reality. My kids are allowed to kick me and punch me full blast. As long as they tell me they're going to do it. I let them throw full power leg kicks because I'm trying to teach them how to really sink the shin into the meat.

So my daughter will throw a left hook to the body right leg kick combination. She goes, I'm going to do it right now. I go, okay, go ahead. It's like, slap, boom. It's getting harder, man.

As you get eight and ten, around like 12, I'm going to have to tell them to stop. Okay, that's enough now. Daddy's going to have to pad up. Yeah. I'm going to put a chest pad on. But that's the difference between boys and girls. Girls, you can say, you're going to have to tell me to stop. Okay, that's enough now. Daddy's going to have to pad up. Yeah. I'm going to put a chest pad on. But that's the difference between boys and girls.

Girls, you can say, you're going to have to tell me. You can do this, but you have to tell me. My guys are like, you know, like Kato from, you know, the Pink Panther. I walk in the house and they're like lurking somewhere. And then their whole goal is to try to punch me in the junk. And they think that's hilarious. And the middle one, again, the middle one, Sluggo, he caught me one time when I came in the door, the front door of the house. And I was carrying a bag.

I'd just gotten off the plane. I was carrying a bag. And before I could even put the bag down and say hello, and the kids were kind of coming down the stairs. I thought it was like a Norman Rockwell thing. They're going to come hug their dad and adore me a little bit. You know, daddy's home. And Sluggo comes around the corner out of nowhere and says, Dad, and just punches me square in the nuts.

And it was so hard that I literally, because you know what happens. I mean, you know, you just drop, and I dropped, and he and the other two stand there and laugh in my face like maniacs. And I thought, what the, and my wife is coming around the corner, and she looks, she goes, what the hell happened? And I said, you know, I couldn't, you know. How old was he? At that time he was six.

That's what happens. You raise a little six year old in the mountains, a bunch of wolves and shit, they just start punching you in the dick as soon as they see you. That's hilarious. It's Idaho breeding. How y'all doing? A bunch of animals out there. So.

So. So, um, what's your take on this Trump versus the intelligence community jazz that seems to be going on right now? Because I couldn't wait to get you in here to get an insider's perspective on this. Because I've never seen anything like it. I mean, I've never seen anything like what's going on. He was talking shit about flu shots today. He's like, flu shots are the biggest scam ever. Like, are you sure have you done

research are you a doctor wow wow yeah i know that whole and he's and he's kind of appointed not appointed but he's brought somebody in as an advisor on that who is you know against vaccinations whatever that term is and now the the intel thing uh there's so many ways you can take this it was a you know basically it was a self-inflicted wound. It was unnecessary. There was no reason for him in the early stage of this, when that narrative started to build about, oh, there's this rift building between Trump and the intel community.

It was because of his tweets, right? And it was because of him questioning the intelligence about Russian meddling in our election system, you know. And now to talk about that just for a second. Of course, the fucking Russians were meddling. The Russians have been meddling in U.S. politics and and campaigning over here in a way since they've been around. As have the Chinese. As have the Chinese. You could go back to and people should.

This is a fascinating period of time in history, back to like 1941. Go back to when the Russians were still in an alliance and a pact with the Nazis. And so from the Russian perspective, their goal, their point was to keep the U.S. out of the war. And so what did they do? There's an isolationist wing in the States. And Roosevelt was under a lot of pressure. Roosevelt was becoming very close to Churchill. He understood the threat. He was one of the few people that did at the time. He understood how important it was going to be for America to get into this battle. The U.K. was about ready to fall. And so the British were actually running their intelligence operations out of New York. They had a place over in Rockefeller Center. And because they were worried, the island was going to be run over by the Nazis. So you have this going on. The dynamic with the

Russians was that they were still in this pact, you know, with the Nazis. Stalin didn't see this coming. He didn't see that, you know, and the Nazis were running a very large propaganda campaign, a diversion effort to ensure that the Russians wouldn't know that they were about to invade. So the Russians spent a great deal of time and money and resource here in the U.S. influencing U.S. public opinion about staying out of the war. There's no reason to be in the war. Why would you want to get into another war in Europe? And they bought journalists and placed newspaper articles. They paid off journalists. They were setting up associations that were supposedly independent but were run by the Soviets. They were setting up associations that were supposedly independent, but were run by

the Soviets. They were influencing unions, dumping money into unions and bribing, basically, to get them to steer their membership to isolationist, you know, agenda. So to say that, oh, I don't know if the Russians were men, like, of course they've been doing it. That's the, and then all throughout through the Cold War, you know, that's, this is what they do. cold war you know that's this is what they do so you know but it the narrative because it always has to be simplified uh i think as far as the media is concerned the narrative was that they influence the election well no they were meddling but they weren't hacking into election systems they weren't hacking into voting booths and and changing these things so So when we say meddling, what they were doing is essentially they were getting information that was private, that was being distributed between the Democratic convention.

Right. They were definitely involved in the DNC hacking, for instance. They were definitely involved in picking up- So how were they involved? Were they involved where they directly did the hacking to the Democrats, or were they privy to the information because someone sold it to them or got it to them? As with most of these things, usually there's cutouts, right? So there's plausible deniability. But the Russians have been very... Oh, I'm sorry. No worries. The Russians

have been very adept over the years at creating mayhem, creating chaos around democratic institutions. Their whole goal is to chip away at public trust in a democracy, and not just here in the U.S., but everywhere. I mean, you know, and obviously that played out in proxy wars out in Africa. So again, I guess what I'm trying to say is it should have shocked no one that the Russians would be engaged in this sort of thing. But Trump, again, a self-inflicted wound. He hadn't gotten the full briefings yet. He hadn't seen the intelligence about this. And prior to that, then, he's sending out a handful of tweets saying, I don't know, I question it.

It didn't make any sense. You have all the opportunity in the world to question the intelligence. And the time to do that, you know, you're sitting there, you're getting the briefings from the heads of the agencies, which happened. And then if you notice, after that briefing, his tone changed completely. And he came out and, you know, OK, well, the Russians were involved. Right. And it didn't make it. now he had to walk that back. So then he goes out to the agency and he has a meeting, which I think was a great thing.

I was really happy to see that he did that. And so soon in the administration, he goes out to our headquarters out there in Virginia. And, you know, he got sidetracked, but that's his personality. He starts talking about, you know, the inauguration numbers. He starts talking about the media, you know, he got sidetracked, but that's his personality. He starts talking about, you know, the inauguration numbers. He starts talking about the media, you know, the unfair media. Well, you know what?

You could just go out there, thank the people, say you're looking forward to working with them to protect national security interests, shake some hands and leave. But it's not in his nature, right? So he's going to get sidetracked and he's going to talk about other things. And then that becomes the story, you know, not not other things that he's doing. He's talking about spending more resource on on on human intelligence. Right. Because and that's something that gets talked about and is done in cycles. So after 9-11, what happened? Well, suddenly, George Tenet, the director at the time, was instructed. You've got to get more officers. You've got to get more cadre. We've got to recruit people.

We can't just rely on signals and intercepts and, you know, technology. So that happens over a period of time. He's talking about revamping the DNI, or maybe, you know, taking it apart. Well, that's been talked about for many years. The DNI was put together after 9-11. And, you know, it's a big layer of bureaucracy, frankly. So some of the things he's talking about— What does that stand for, DNI? Director of National Intelligence. So James Clapper was the previous guy going in there or running that. And it's going to be interesting because the DNI was no—

from Mike Flynn, who's now the national security guy, he had a rocky relationship with the DNI. And it feels like they basically pushed him out of his last position in the intel community. So it'll be interesting to see how he deals with this issue of do we restructure. But I guess my point being is that, you know, and I don't really have a dog in the hunt. You know, was Trump my preferred candidate? Well, no, but now he's the president. And from my point of view, now you want it to work.

Now you do everything possible. But just like with anybody else, you look for the good and you say, that's great. And if something you don't agree with, well, then you can say that too. We got that right in this country. We don't have to agree with every single thing that any president does. We can disagree with the policies, but we don't have to slag people off. And if I veer off and say, well, I don't think President Trump should have veered off and talked well I don't think President Trump should have veered off and talked about inauguration numbers in the media when he was standing there in our lobby in front of the stars on the wall you know I get I

get you know a couple hundred tweets you know saying you know you're a fucking idiot you know how could you say that well I say it because you know what well how how is that somehow insulting you know I'm gonna like some of the things that he does I'm going to like some of the things that he does. I'm not going to like some of the things he does. That's the way it works, right? But I don't know. I'm veering down a rabbit hole right now, but I think it's because I'm getting pissed off because, you know, we've for the past eight years hated the fact that Obama supporters were adoring of him and said everything he does is brilliant. Now they're – some of those folks are doing the same thing with the new president. And like I said, I'll be honest with you. I'm happy she didn't win. I'm ecstatic that Hillary Clinton didn't win, frankly. But that doesn't mean that I've got to now stand up and say everything Donald Trump does is great.

I wouldn't do that with any president. What was so troubling for you about her? Well, let's see. Where do we begin? I felt like, you know, obviously I'm trying to pick my words carefully here. Because I'm trying to be diplomatic. I think, you know, I didn't like what I perceived as a lack of character. I didn't like what I perceived as...

Again, here's the problem. I didn't like either of the candidates. Neither candidate was my choice. Neither candidate was, I didn't really have a choice. Neither candidate was my, I didn't have a dog in the hunt. Um, but if I looked at, at her, I just felt like there was, there wasn't anything there. And I felt like we had the past eight years. I felt like with the previous president, again, I liked some of the things he did. I didn't like some of the stuff that he did. But I was always concerned that he didn't have principles that he stood on. That he said, you know what, this is where I draw the line. And these are my principles. This is what I believe in. And I felt like she was similar in that way. And I think we've just

had enough of sort of that bend in the wind and do whatever we're going to do. This country's lost a lot of leverage overseas. And I know people say, well, that's good. We shouldn't be the police person around the world. You know what? The fucking truth is somebody's got to be. And if we're not at the top of the food chain, that's fine. We can step off because we want to build more roads here and we want to spend our money here. And I get that. And that's important. But if we're not, if somebody's not at the top of the food chain, somebody else will try, or it'll be chaos, or it's a vacuum.

And it's not a community of nations that gathers together and acts in a global community spirit. Our interests don't align very often with other countries. We have certain allies where it does. But no, that's not how it works. It's chaos out there, and it's pretty nasty at times. And so I'm a big believer in, yes, we shouldn't be out there policing everything, but we're going to need to, and we should want to be at the top of the heap.

Well, it definitely doesn't seem there's any benevolent superpower that's looking out for the world's best interests outside of us. No, and people raise their eyes. You say something like that, and I agree with you 100%. People roll their eyes, and they go, ah, it's bullshit. America's out there. Then what? Right.

Who are they? Right, right. And I get those feelings. I understand where those people are coming from. I get this idea of anti-globalization. I get this idea, you know, they're anti the whole idea of the military industrial complex controlling all the resources of the world. I get it. I totally understand.

But know this. There are some bad countries out there. Not bad people, but countries that are run by dictators. Countries that are run by extremely ruthless people. And a lot of them have access to some significant military power. Yeah. And you're absolutely right. I mean, of course, we make mistakes.

Obviously, we make mistakes. But, you know, I spent almost all my life overseas and, you know, I spent a long time peeking behind a curtain and we try to self-correct. We may take a wrong turn. We may do something that, you know, okay, okay, fine. That isn't working out. But we tend to try to do the things for the right reason, regardless of which administration it is, you know, and just as a as a as a principle, a fucking idiot. You know, that's not how it works, but that's how it works. Everybody has to speak according to their own experience. My experience is that.

Most of my, you know, childhood and adult life overseas. And I've seen a lot of weird shit, and I've been to a lot of difficult places. And America stands, again, a few allies. The Brits. I'm partial. I'm a dual citizen. But the Brits are right there with us. Canadians, who doesn't love the Canadians?

New Zealand, Australia. You know, there's a small community there that tries to be principled, tries to do the right thing. Everybody else out there is acting purely in their own best interest. And our interests and theirs almost never align, whether it's Russia or, you know, parts of Europe or, you know, wherever it may be, Latin America. So, yeah, somebody's got to be at the top of the food chain, and I just prefer to be us. Yeah, I mean, there's massive criticisms of the United States, and a lot of them are valid. It makes a lot of sense. But human beings are just flawed.

This is the most recent country. This is the newest country. And this is the only country that exists like this, this experiment in self-government that exists today. There's nothing like it out there. And the more you look into it, you have a much more intense and deep understanding of it than I ever will because of your experience in life and all the different places that you've been and all the things that you've seen. But there's no way, if you look at the rest of the world, there's nothing remotely similar to what's going on over here. This is a crazy place. It's a crazy place as far as innovation, a crazy place as far as creativity and art and film and comedy and music. And just there's so much bubbling in this one part of the

world and and liberties and freedoms and things to do i mean great you know like the protests on inauguration day great go out and protest yeah now don't fucking go blow up a limo don't throw fucking chairs through starbucks and shit like that they did a lot of stupid shit and that's you know that's a small you know a small group and that's fine and it, I suppose. But you know what, when they're out there talking about oppression and being oppressed in America, my thought is always the same. I always think, you know what we should do? We should reenact the standard mandatory service. Everybody should have to serve two years, whether it's in the military or some international component where you go overseas and you spend a little bit of time in some shithole,

and you see how bad it is and how bad it can be. But all these people that walk around here and talk, and I get it. We could do better. Yeah, we could do better. Of course we could do better. They're right in that sense. They're right in that sense. But we need a balanced perspective.

Right. That's it. That's, I guess, what I'm saying, a balanced perspective. How did it happen? Because this is what was confusing to me. How did the FBI, and now eventually the FBI came around to the CIA's conclusions, but for a long time the FBI was disagreeing with the CIA about whether or not the Russians had anything to do with hacking the DNC? Yeah, I think the big disagreement was really over motivation, right?

Was that what it was? I thought it was an evidence-based thing, that they didn't see any evidence that the Russians were involved, which eventually became clear, and now there was arrest. There was an arrest, an unprecedented arrest, a couple of days ago, right? Yeah. But you're also talking about two different groups.

So the FBI is law enforcement. So when they look at something, they're looking at it from a law enforcement perspective. They're looking at gathering sufficient evidence to prove a case. Basically, that's how they look at it. The agency is an intel operation. And so they're gathering pieces of information. You know, it's not an evidentiary chain thing.

So let's just get, you know, the preponderance of intel. Let's see where it leads us. Some of it's going to be conflicting. Some of it's not well sourced. But let's all see what it tells us, you know. And so part of it is how they approach reaching a conclusion. But, you know, they were both going to get to the same place, because eventually they sit down and they compare notes. But part of it was the difference of

opinion over the motivation. And motivation is the toughest thing, one of the toughest things to prove in this business, in intelligence. You know, you can say, okay, they did this, but, you know, unless you've got a source sitting in the tent who was there, and part of the conversation when somebody said, well, you know, this is why, or, you know, this is how we're going to do this, and this is a reason, without that sort of sourcing or, you know, intercepts, it's tough to prove motivation. So it took a while to kind of get around to that notion, and it's still, to be honest, you know, it's still a little bit up in the air. We're probably never going to get, unless again, we get our hands on a really quality, good source. That may still be a little

bit up in the air. But the bottom line is the Russians, yeah, the Russians were engaged in doing what they always do. Covert action, propaganda campaigns, whatever it may be, their 30,000 foot view is always the same. They want to sow a sense of mistrust. They want to create some chaos. They want to kind of chip away at the belief that democracy is a great thing. And they did. Look how much time was spent talking about the integrity of the election system and whether we actually had a legitimate president or not. That's a win.

So you've got a couple of colonels in the FSB, which was the old KGB, who undoubtedly have been promoted as a result of that operation. And who got... Someone got arrested from the FSB. Who was that guy? Yeah, I don't have those details in front of me. Just some token guy that pissed off Putin? Exactly. So I throw him in the

fucking hole for a while? Yeah, he just said the wrong thing, you know. That's unprecedented, right? They never publicly arrest their guys like that. No, well, they have for certain things, for corruption issues, if they get sideways, you know, from internal

arguments, you know, then you'll, it usually doesn't make the news because nobody really gives a shit outside of Russia. And they do now because of this. Because of now, yeah, because people want to talk about it. What bothered me about this, sorry to interrupt you, but what bothered me about this was the narrative. Because the narrative was Russia hacked the elections. That's what

everybody kept saying. And that's what all these Democrats, these left-wing people were saying, to try to pump up this idea that Trump was not a legitimate president. Russia hacked the election. Russia hacked the election. Well, no. Someone, maybe Russia, whoever it was, put that information out that the DNC had sent through private emails. But the information

was what they sent. I mean it wasn't, they didn't hack anything. They didn't get into any election machines, they didn't get into the voting machines, they didn't do anything other than release information that was supposed to be private that indicated a bunch of really shady shit. Yeah, exactly. I mean, all those Bernie Sanders, how pissed off must you be if you're a Bernie Sanders supporter and you realize how fucked over he got? Yeah. Well, he seemed to have made peace. I guess he's a politician, even though he says he's not. I mean, at the core, he's a politician. He's just a weirdly principled one. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know what? he's a politician. He's obviously a politician. He's just a weirdly principled one. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know what?

Bernie would have been a better candidate. Oh, for sure. I think Bernie would have been a better candidate. Joe Biden would have been a better candidate. Although, you know, you always like the person sitting on the bench, and then they get in the race, and they're not, you know. That's true, too, right? They might have dug up some shit about both of those guys. But Bernie was an interesting guy in that there was not a whole lot of people that are in his position for as long as he is that have the kind of principles he has. Like when he was able to say, you know, why don't you release the transcripts of all these different speeches you gave to all these banks that you got paid a quarter million dollars?

And he goes, I'll happily release mine because I don't have any because I wouldn't take a penny from those people. There's not a whole lot of people who can say stuff like that in a big debate. Yeah. And, you know, they rallied, they got together, and they decided to rig the primaries. And they rigged it. They really did. Yeah. That was what the Russians exposed.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she was a real piece of work. Incredible. Yeah. So I think there's, and you're right. Now, I guess what, you know, obviously what people on the far left side are saying is, well, but without that, if they hadn't released that information, then it would have been a different ballgame. Right.

Because we wouldn't know how fucking corrupt she was. We wouldn't know that Debbie Wasserman Schultz had done what she'd done. And Debbie Wasserman Schultz wouldn't have gotten fired from the DNC and then immediately got hired by Hillary's campaign. I mean, they picked her up in a couple of minutes. Yeah. Well, she obviously, they want to keep her happy. Yeah.

You know, you don't want somebody walking out of that organization with a chip on their shoulder and talking. Exactly. Especially after what she did for you. I mean, they rigged the primaries. They really did. And people should be upset about that way more than anything else. This idea that Russia did something. that we should have known. We should have known about it because it's a crime. That kind of corruption is essentially collusion. It's a crime. It's a conspiracy. It's a real conspiracy to their interrupting a democratic process.

And that's what they're doing. Right, right. And that was far more so than an outside force doing what you expect them to do anyway, frankly. What the Russians did, they always do. Yeah, so I think it would have been a great, how interesting would those conversations, though, in the Kremlin or at FSB headquarters where they're talking about this. Yeah. And they're thinking about it and they're planning it. Someone had to write a note, right?

Someone had to sit and say, you know, I got an idea for an operation. And they had to say, you know, they're a bureaucracy like everything else. And so they would have had to sit and say, you know, I got an idea for an operation. And they had to say, you know, they're a bureaucracy like everything else. And so they would have had to sit and figure this out. And then it would have made its way to Putin because, you know, this is obviously the concern over the blowback and the publicity of it all. So Putin clearly knew what was going on. But, again, that's just the way it works. Stalin knew back in the day, knew exactly what they were doing, trying to influence public opinion here back during the early World War II. So, yeah, there's no surprise.

The Chinese do the same thing. Every, you know, every nation that's got the resources. I mean, hell, of course we do it, too. People always say, well, but we do it. Well, yeah, of course we do it. You know, I'm not saying we don't. Yeah, they all do it. It's half of the weird competition that's going on.

And you better hope we do it, in a sense. I always say the same. People say, when I talk about cyber hacking or whatever, people always go, yeah, well, you don't have any right to talk. The U.S. does it as well. I think, well, yeah, that's actually a good thing, given how aggressive and how nasty the world is out there and how we're constantly being hit and attacked out in cyberspace. I mean, yeah, we better hope we're good at it. And if people knew how often, how consistently and constantly our commercial and public sector infrastructure is probed and tested and attacked on a daily basis, people wouldn't sleep at night.

All they have to do is watch Showtime series Homeland. It's too super accurate That's it. You ever watch that show? I don't watch a lot of those shows I'm not a good person to watch shows like that with my wife tells me that all the time Yeah, it's gotta be like me watching those karate movies. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The Karate Kid, of course. Well, yeah That was that's legit as fuck. But like there's some like that movie warrior I got mad at that movie. I'm like you can't fight two days in's some like that movie warrior i got mad at that movie i'm like you can't fight two days in a row like that they don't although they did do that in japan recently crazy assholes

japan at a tournament i think they fought three days in a row jeez japan takes to the next level they don't give a fuck in japan they just they just go crazy they put they pit together this woman gabby garcia she's six foot three maybe more maybe more. She's at least six, too. She's a solid 240. And they put her in the ring with a 50-year-old woman who had bad knees. And she beat the shit out of... Is that you? Sorry about that, man. Shut that. Look at that.

Put that thing on vibrate, fella. But they put her in with this woman who's literally 50 years old. She's about five feet tall, and Gabby Garcia ran over her like a train. It was horrible to watch. They don't care. Japan will have crazy fights. They have freak show fights. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, look at all the shows that have come out of there, to be fair. All the weird shit that ends up on our TVs usually comes from Japan. One of the big arguments was that the Russians definitely wanted Trump to win because if they didn't, then they would have hacked the RNC and they would have released their emails too. But that's a hard argument to make because you don't know that they said anything inappropriate. You don't know that there was any collusion. Well, and there was also attempts to hack the RNC. And the RNC, as would one company to a next, not every company is running the same security protocols on their infrastructure. So the RNC had different security protocols on their infrastructure.

But they were probed and tested and attacked. And that idea that they wanted Trump to win, frankly, if Putin sat there and thought to himself, well, what I want is what's in my and Russia's best interests. Well, then I'm going to go with a known quantity. I'm going to go with Hillary Clinton because I know what I got there. And it's not tough. But Trump was like pro-Putin. I mean, he's basically saying Putin's a smart guy. Putin's a great guy.

We can do deals together. Yeah, but he's too smart. He's not going to take that on face value. I mean, he knows he's reading all the same shit and watching all the same shit that everybody else is, which is that, you know, Trump is in the past has kind of been all President Trump has been all over the place and talked in different directions. And so, you know, it's not as if Putin would hear and say, oh, he likes me. And he's not like that. He's like, I bet we could be friends and so in just a just a what's best for my best interests it's you know i'm gonna go that route business as usual business

as usual and i know i'm not going to get any pushback for the shit that i do because she is just going to continue the same things that have been happening they're going to continue to withdraw off the world stage and this idea that somehow hillary clinton was a warmonger what the hell that where did that come from? So I'm not necessarily buying the idea that Putin wanted President Trump to win. That's an interesting perspective. I would have thought that he wanted him to win just to throw democracy into the shitter, just to fucking throw a big monkey wrench into the gears. He probably felt that a Trump victory would do that.

Yeah, you're right. There's a possibility there. But, you know, Putin is an interesting cat. And I just have a feeling, though, that, you know, again, they make these decisions based on what's in their own best interest. And I think they would look at the track record of Obama. They would look at her track record. They would look at an unknown quantity, you know, and again, they're not going to buy what he just says on the surface. It's just not going to, you know, it's not, they wouldn't be as simple as that. And they would look and think, yeah, let's go with what we know, you know, because we know we can steamroll that, you know, and this over here, we don't know. Now, what was, so what was the point of them meddling and doing what they did? Well, again, it goes back to the same thing.

They're just trying to create instability, chaos, and some sort of sense of mistrust of a democratic institution. Now, how much of a factor do you think it is that Hillary was not ever prosecuted for deleting all those emails after a subpoena? for deleting all those emails after a subpoena. Because it seems like that, in any other case, if you do something like that, top secret clearance, you're found to have violated it, and you delete all those emails. And people are tired of hearing about this from the left.

They're like, are you still bringing that up again? But I got to think that in light of what you said about them trying to hack into the RNC, but no evidence that they actually got in, but they did get into the DNC. And you think about all the different security errors that they've made, especially with her having that private email server and all that. The shit with Humo was using the same goddamn computer and printer that Anthony Weir was sending his dick pics out on.

I mean, holy shit. It's chaos. You couldn't have written that as a sitcom. Yeah, if that was on House of Cards, you would have gone, well, they're going over the top now. Yeah, that's not believable. They're jumping the shark. Yeah. Yeah, as opposed to when the Secret Service agent slept with the president and his wife.

There was that. What was that? That's when I gave up on the series. It's not that far yet. Oh. Hey! Oh, son of a bitch. Damn it. You son of a bitch. Can we rewind that? Can we rewind that? Goddamn spoiler alert. You son of a bitch. Oh my God, all people out there.? Goddamn spoiler alert. You son of a bitch. Oh my God. All people out there.

Stop now. La la la. Oh, now I'm going to go home and hit myself in the head. Yeah. I'm going to try to forget that. Yeah. You know what? I just made that shit up.

It didn't actually happen. Appreciate it. Season two. I'm fucked now. Now I'm just waiting. Who would have? Now I'm just sitting there waiting for a fucking threesome. Secret service sleeping with a president.

That wouldn't happen. That'd be crazy. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's already done. That'd be crazy. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's already done some gay shit, right? Yeah.

It's a weird show. But that was the point where I said, okay, I gotta find myself another program to watch. So, but yeah, it's... That's what you were like, this is unrealistic now.

Yeah, that's not, that bullshit wouldn't happen. That's where I draw the line. I'm sorry about that. Don't you think somewhere out of all the presidents that we've had, somewhere a Secret Service agent has slipped it into the misses? I guarantee you. I guarantee you somewhere along the line, somebody fucked the president's wife.

I think it was Taft. I think it was the Taft administration. Could have been. They would have done it. Look, those are savages back then. Oh, man. Those people were barely human. Those were cavemen with clothes on.

Yeah. Secret Service would- You go all the way that far back? Shit. Did you see that one female Secret Service agent who said she wouldn't take a bullet for the president? Whoa. Yeah.

Well, that's your job, hooker. Well, that's exactly right. Did they fire her yet? Not yet, but I suspect that she will be disciplined because if you're a... She went on Facebook. She put it on her Facebook profile. Oh, what a good move. Yeah, and she openly supported Hillary Clinton.

Put that on her Facebook and said that she would not take a bullet for President Trump. And you think, well, you know, you are in the Secret Service. That's your job. Okay, here it goes. Outrage at woman Secret Service agent and Clinton supporter who said she would not Capital letters risk her life to protect President Trump Secret Service agent Kerry Oh Grady wrote last October that she would rather go to jail than take a bullet for Donald Trump Well, she definitely get a better job

Okay, Oh Grady removed the post days later, said she wrote it after being overcome with emotion following Trump's grab them by the pussy video. That sounds like a music video. That's like a two live crew music video. That's it. She insists that she would be willing to do anything to protect the president.

But O'Grady has also made numerous other posts criticizing Donald Trump. Wow, okay. Well, see, I'm not quite sure I understand the conflict there. She said she would rather go to jail than take a bullet for Donald Trump, for President Trump. And then she insisted she'd be willing to do anything to protect the president. Well, now she does. Now she does.

She removed it. She wants to keep her job. Secret Service says they're looking into the post after a complaint. That is a dangerous position to take if you are a Secret Service agent. We're not talking about someone who's a just regular civilian. You're talking about someone who's, that is your whole job. And you have, you got to be, I mean. She's a sack in Denver.

Geez, I didn't realize that. She's been with him for quite a while. Look, she knows better. It's time for, I would say, you know what, that's dishonoring the service, the Secret Service. And, you know what, maybe, I'm sure they'll ice her, put her in some admin position. But you have to, in that position, right, if you're a Secret Service agent, you can't say anything critical like that publicly about the president. No, absolutely not. That diminishes the entire position.

Once you retire, you can say whatever the fuck you want without violating any sort of laws, any sort of agreements that you've signed. But once you're in there, that is the job. Yeah. It's like if you were in the agency and you're overseas and you're campaigning on behalf of one of the candidates. Yeah, it's crazy. It doesn't make any sense. So I'm impressed with her understanding of social media by posting something like that on Facebook. She was overcome with emotion, though. She was overcome with emotion.

She probably had her period. People get crazy. Maybe she had a Xanax and a glass of wine. She's like, fuck that orange asshole. Grab him by the pussy. How dare you? Yeah. What a weird time, though, that that guy actually said that and still got elected. And he won.

I mean, that's how much people didn't want Hillary Clinton to be in office. I know. And that's the thing. By the way, did you see that little clip that was making its way around at the inauguration, on the inauguration stand of Bill Clinton checking out Melania? Yes. I thought it was Ivanka. Isn't it Ivanka?

Could have been either one, frankly. She's so hot. His daughter's so hot. Oh, my God. Yeah. God. Jesus Christ, those jeans. The look was fantastic.

The look was pure Bill Clinton. Well, he was like, fuck it. It's over. Yeah. I don't have to hold it back anymore. Look at it. Oh, yeah. Look at it.

Oh, yeah. Oh, good Lord. Yeah, he's shaking. He's licking his lower lip. I love when she turns around and looks at him. Look at that. Oh, my goodness. And then he looks. He gives licking his lower lip. I love when she turns around and looks at him. Look at that. Oh, my goodness. And then he looks.

He gives her a quick look. Yeah. What? And she turns. Once he looks at her, he's like, listen, bitch, you know who I am. You know you live with a wolf. Look at that outfit. You know you live with a big old gray wolf.

Hi, everyone. I'm Ivanka Trump. I want to remind you. I wish you live with a wolf. Look at that outfit. You know you live with a big old gray wolf. Hi, everyone. I'm Ivanka Trump. I want to remind... I wish she had a fucking accent. What's going on there? Oh, it's her giving a massage. Oh, this is like a porn film that they did. A fake porn about Ivanka Trump.

They always do that. That look. That look was just fantastic. It's the best part of the inauguration day. It's over. It's over. I can be me again. I'm tired of it all.

That would be the only reason I wanted, or I would have wanted Hillary Clinton to win. The only bright spot, I guess I should say instead, the only bright spot to her winning

would have been that he would have been back in the house. Fascinating as a first man. Oh, man. On a rampage. He'd probably be on a rampage. Watch his mouth.

Yeah, I love his mouth. He bites his lower lip. He says Ivanka. He like mouths Ivanka. No, I love his mouth. He bites his lower lip. He says Ivanka. He like mouths Ivanka. No, he doesn't. Does he? Let me see. Oh, he does! Oh, Ivanka. Oh, yeah. Look at her.

Look at her. This is amazing. Her looking at him is fucking amazing. But this look, when he looks over at her, it's like, I don't care. And it's an angry look. He shut her down. One more time. One more time with the look. Let me see this again. Watch this.

Presidential chubby. Here we go. Here we go. It's a mean, angry look. I bet he gets angry. I bet when he yells, it's scary. Yeah. Now it's a highlight. A highlight of the day. Whether or not you believe he's killed people He's definitely been responsible for people dying as president

That's 100% He's made those decisions, people have died That's in that fucking beady brain of his And when he looks over at her He's looking at her with those eyes Don't make me kill you, dude You know you live with a wolf The wolf, the old gray wolf

Oh man He would have been awesome in office again. Oh, just roaming the hallways. What we need is girls who can keep their fucking mouths shut. Do we have those girls? Do we have those? I'm going to need a car. I got to go into town.

What an animal. What a fucking animal that guy must have been. Wow. What's crazy about him is the stories of him just pulling his dick out. That's something that people do in college when they're drunk. Yeah. You don't do it when you're the president or former

president. Usually you don't. Just pulls his dick out. Who knows what Andrew Jackson got up to, but I think Bill took it to a new level. I would imagine there was no one like him before. Think about it. JFK was I think JFK may have been, because who knows? Because he had

the benefit of the press hiding his activities, right? Yeah, they all knew about it, and it was a different time. And he was only in office for how many years? Three, what, three years, I guess, or two and a half? 63, got killed, right? Yeah. Two and a half years. Yeah.

Who knows what he could have done if he didn't have back pain. No kidding, right? He was all fucked up on all sorts of different... He had some significant health issues, right? Yeah, he was on all sorts of meds. But he still managed to find himself around the White House. And back then, they would heal you with witch doctors. What kind of fucking medicine did they have in 1963?

They had pills. You should take some of these pills, Mr. President. Well, they would put them on speed, too. Didn't they have them on amphet had pills. You should take some of these pills, Mr. President. Well, they put them on speed too. Didn't they have them on amphetamines and try to jazz them up? But back then I was, you know, get your doctor, write you a prescription, here you go. This will make you feel better. This will get you through this tough week.

Mama's a little helper. Yeah. Or mother's a little helper, I guess. Mama, where am I from? The South? The position is such a crazy position I mean, it's really there's no one that's really qualified to do it and every time someone gets in it's like okay Let's see what kind of flaws in your character gonna be revealed by this Yeah

and in that case when you look at it that way at least from the point of view of representing a stately sort of like You know like an intelligent articulate leader Obama did a great job in that regard. No, and that's why- Very measured. That's why the people on the left love him, because he was the projection of the intellect. He was, and fine, and he was. He was sort of one of those folks you look at and you go, that's our president. But again, you could say he did certain things well. And I would say from a foreign policy perspective, it was not good.

But, you know, you got to be able to say there was good and there's bad, you know. And that's where I'm worried about with the new president is that I'd like to think that all those supporters aren't just going to say everything he does is good, that you still got to. But they always do that. Everybody does that. They did that on the left. What am I talking about? I mean, hear what's going on right now with the Dakota access pipeline where everyone's blaming Trump for this They forget this all started while Obama was in office all over this where they were putting easements on people's private land when they were

arresting these ranchers for protesting against it trying to keep these guys from drilling into their fucking private land that was all during the Obama Administration all of it. Yeah, I know. I know. But he gets, you know, he said, I'm walking out the door. Yeah. I'm going to cancel this. Yeah, he stopped it knowing that Trump was going to kickstart it right back up and he

would take the blame. Yeah. It's all craziness. Same with the Chelsea Manning commutation and all. You know, that's... Well, how about Chelsea Manning right after he commutes her says that he's a weak leader. Yeah, I know. Says Obama's a weak leader. Bitch, I know. Says Obama's a weak leader.

Bitch, I just let you out of jail. I know. You could be in jail forever. You could be in jail forever. You could die in jail. Or in May, you get to go to a ball game. Look at that. Look at that.

I mean, I don't think he's going to want to go to a ball game. In May, you get to go to Disneyland. It's a she. How dare you? A she. How dare you say that? Yeah, right. It's not Bradley.

It's Chelsea. She who was formerly known as Brad. Yeah. Brad. Well, they're not going to pay for her medication anymore now that she's- Probably not. No. That's a drawback I guess that she will figure out.

I think she'll just do a podcast. The Chelsea Manning Hour. Yeah. Chelsea Manning Experience. That's it. Yeah. Hosted on the Death Squad Network. Why not?

Why not? You know what- She makes some money. Yeah. She has got to figure out a way to exactly earn a living. She'll earn a living. She'll be on Fox News. On The View.

Yeah, The View. Fox News. They're going to bring her in. As a contributor. Bring her in on Red Eye. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. What the hell?

Come on in. Give me a sidekick on a talk show somewhere. What kind of psychological damage is being in solitary confinement naked for like three years? How bad does that fuck you up? Because she was in solitary confinement for a long time and they wouldn't even give her any clothes. Well, I mean, I...

Him, her. I have her, I... Him and her. I think... Him originally. Formerly known as Brad, I think. Formerly her. Probably had some clothes.

Probably had some... I don't think so. Non-suicide watch clothes. I think that was the whole deal is that they kept her naked. They were saying it was tantamount to torture. I don't think, I'm not buying that. You're not buying it? It sounds good, though, right?

It sounds good, but yeah. It's a good episode of Homeland. Yeah, I'm thinking it may not have happened quite that way. Find out if they kept her naked just for a goof. Find a picture. No, don't find a picture. Don't find a picture. Yeah, not yet.

Let's wait until we're done with all the nips and tucks. But you're right. I mean, okay, you know what? You just got your sense commuted. Yeah. Shut your fucking mouth. Say thank you.

Yeah, exactly. How about a thank you? How about a thank you? Saying that he's a weak leader. Although there may be some mental issues there. I'm just saying maybe that he, she was not,

you know, up to snuff or feeling, you know, leveled out. Who knows? It's one of those things. Here it goes. Most graphic passage of the letter. Manning's description of how he was placed on suicide watch for three days from the 18th of January. I was stripped of all clothing with the exception of my underwear. My prescription eyeglasses were taken away from me and I was forced to sit in essential blindness. All right, your prescription eyeglasses. It's like if someone took my contacts away from me.

You know what? I'd be happy. When you're in darkness, you don't need your glasses, dude. Yeah, he's not in darkness either. He said he was in total blindness. Well, essentially blind from not having his prescription glasses. Oh, blind. Yeah, his underwear. It was three days. But you see how this happens now.

Suddenly he spends three years naked and in the dark. Yeah, it was underwear. It was three days. But you see how this happens now. Suddenly he spends three years naked and in the dark. No, it's not. You know, the truth is, again, I'm not saying this from the right wing or from the left wing. I don't give a fuck. But the truth tends to always be somewhere in some defined middle. The parameters shift on the middle, but you know. He also describes the experience of being stripped naked at night and made to stand

for parade in the nude. Parade? Is there a parade? Parade rest. Do you think they had horses? A condition that continues to this day. In quotes, the guard told me to stand at parade rest. I don't know what that means. Parade rest for about three minutes.

With my hands behind my back and my legs spaced shoulder width apart, I stood at parade rest for about three minutes. I'm embarrassed. Oh, my God. Embarrassed is torture. I shouldn't be embarrassed. I don't understand that because you can look at me naked. I'll just tell you right now. If you want to stare at me naked, me without any clothes on, if you don't beat me up,

if you're not beating me or torturing me and you're just staring at me naked, yeah, that's my dick. What do you want? Sorry. What do you want from me? There's my butthole. Go ahead. You want to look? What the fuck kind of weirdo are you? You have one too, don't you? You want me to look at yours? I don't want to look at yours. How about that? I'm less weird than you, you fuck. And all that talking

would go very well in a military brigade. No, I think you'd probably beat me to look at yours? I don't want to look at yours. How about that? I'm less weird than you. And all that talking would go very well in a military brigade. No. I think they'd probably beat me to death. But again, it's okay. Her sentence is commuted and we can now move on. Maybe. Until she starts her podcast.

Another question is, there was a lot of people that thought he was going to pardon Bo Bergdahl. Sergeant Bergdahl, the fellow who walked into the Taliban camp and turned himself in, walked off his post. Do you remember this guy? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why did they think they were going to- Well, a lot of people thought that Obama was going to do that, or President Obama was going

to do that as well. Really? And- I thought maybe Snowden. I thought Snowden would have been a very interesting one. But apparently what he said, and it made a lot of sense, was the difference between what Chelsea Manning did was Chelsea Manning was arrested, went through trial, was convicted, and then he pardoned her and commuted her sentence. That Snowden never faced trial. And so because he fled and because he went to the, you know, essentially our enemy, to Russia Russia to live there. I can't do that.

No, no, no. Particularly when you, again, this idea that somehow he kept all the materials safe from the Russians. Just correct me. And the Chinese. He spent time in Hong Kong. And I carry, you step foot in Hong Kong

or it's certainly, you know. They walk by your cell phone with a wand. They know where your mom lives. Yeah, they know what the fuck you've got. And this idea that somehow, you know, Glenn Greenwald, who's an interesting cat. I'm not saying he's not, but Glenn Greenwald and somehow Snowden

were going to beat the Chinese intelligence service and the FSB is, might be a bridge too far. So you'd have to have some pretty deep technological information to be able to do that. I mean, you'd have to really understand how those networks work. And maybe Snowden would be able to protect

certain aspects of what he was talking about. I think we have to remember, though, also, he was not Lex Luthor. I mean, sort of the narrative got built up that he was a mastermind at NSA. High school dropout. He was an admin guy in IT. He was an IT admin guy who identified a weakness. Hey, fair go to him. He figured out a weakness in the systems and how to manipulate that. Not that someone can't be a high school dropout and be brilliant. Right, exactly.

But he was a high school dropout, isn't that? I believe that's correct. I think he got his GED. He was obviously a fucking genius. He's a super smart kid. But, you know, the whole thing is very strange. It's very strange because on one hand, look, nobody wants their goddamn emails peered into constantly when they haven't done a damn thing wrong. When you think of a free country, you think, well, hey, I'm a free man. I have a good job. I pay my taxes. I don't start any trouble. Why are they looking at my email?

So in that sense, a lot of people felt like they were vindicated in their fears by this guy coming out and Edward Snowden releasing that information. I get that. Yeah. But how did you see it? Well, I saw it as, I saw it in more of a simplistic operational perspective. Because again, what we talked about before, everybody looks at these things from their own life experiences. My life experiences are different than somebody who hasn't done this. But, you know, you sign up your fucking agreements.

You sign. You commit yourself to protect national security. You commit yourself to treat classified material honorably. So just like the Secret Service agent, you know, when you start making posts like that on your Facebook, this is against the whole gig. You're breaching your agreements. And, again, people will hear that and they go, well, but he was doing a service. He's a patriot. They do have this bullshit out there about how he tried.

He tried several times to go and talk about this. No. He never brought it to the New York Times or Washington Post or any of those places? No, I mean internally. It was like, he's got the narrative that says, well, I talked to my supervisor. I tried to get this out there and everything. And once again, the truth is not exactly in either side's narrative.

The far right that goes after him and says he should be hung for treason, that's bullshit. No, he shouldn't. But you know what? I do believe he should face the court system. People are going to disagree with that? Fine, fuck it.

That's what I think. But the idea of, you know, some of the people went histrionics and said, you know, you should be hung. That's ridiculous. That's not how we operate. I also get the idea that people felt like that was good, you know, ultimately that we had that conversation. And I agree with that point because we should always have those conversations. But there's a way to do it. There's a place to do that. There's a manner of doing that.

But would we have had that conversation without him? Because I don't think we would. Well, yeah, and I don't necessarily disagree with that, but I think that the point is that, yeah, you're right. What failed us was up on Capitol Hill, where they fail to do what they're supposed to do up there as politicians. There are protocols in place, and a curious public or a curious people's representatives are always supposed to be having these discussions about where on the spectrum between security and civil liberties and freedom, where does that pendulum rest at any given time? Um, these people up on the Hill, uh, in the Intel committees, there's a, there's a well-worn path from NSA, from the CIA, from others up to that Hill to brief those people on every fucking thing that goes on. I mean, it just, this just, you know, people are going to like they don't know and then they get outraged and they stand up and say, well, I just saw him all angst ridden. Horseshit. Those people didn't ask. They didn't pursue. They didn't ask the questions. They didn't demand that we have these discussions internally. And so I think, you know, politicians in part drop the ball. They don't do what they're doing. The healthiest thing we can have, of course, are people up on the Hill who are constantly questioning the system, constantly talking

about it, because you're right. And it's very important. You have to figure out where that goes. Now, another bomb goes off somewhere and that pendulum is going to swing back to security. People are going to say, fuck it, I don't care. You know, check my shoes, do whatever the hell you want to. But, you know, read my emails. Just keep us safe. Particularly if it's a big incident, God forbid. But that's why I guess my point being is that pendulum is constantly moving. Well, does that frustrate you too? Because that's where the conspiracy theorists come in.

Whenever something goes on and there's any sort of a terrorist attack, conspiracy theorists jump in and say this is a false flag because they've been trying to erode our privacy and erode our civil liberties and this is the way they do it so instead of looking at it in a broad perspective like looking at it saying well okay is it possible that a terrorist active a terrorist act took place and now they have to tighten up security because of that no no no no people are matt automatically go to no they orchestrated the terrorist attack so they could tighten up security because it's this overall global plan to turn this into one world government. One world government, yeah. Well, I hope I get to be in charge of that one world government. That's all I can say. I would make a hell of a one world government leader. Do you think so? How would you do things differently?

No, I'm just kidding. I would hate to be in charge of one world. Could you imagine what a goat rope that would be? I wouldn't even want to be a mayor. In the new world order? I wouldn't want to be a mayor in a town. Being a mayor in a town, if you've got a town of 10,000 people,

you're going to have 4,000 that fucking hate you. Yeah. Retail politics, I think, are the worst. Local politics. And you see, in Idaho, hey, look, we're talking about Idaho again. Everybody's like, oh, for fuck's sake. But in Idaho, as an example, I can walk down the street in Boise and bump into the governor, lieutenant governor.

We have a nice chat. They're great guys. I mean, they're great people. Ranchers and, you know, they do this. And in Idaho, they do. There is a point to this story. I'll get to it in a second. But they have the legislature just in office for three months.

They do all the work they need to do. Then they get back to their damn jobs, right? Insurance broker, car guy, rancher, whatever it is. So it's kind of the way it should be. You don't need people governing you 12 months of the fucking year. It's not necessary. But the – see, I forgot the point of the story. But anyway, you've got this environment where you can watch the local politics.

That's the point of the story. And you can see the congressmen because I'm on the flights with them all the time. And the senator, Senator Risch, great guy. He's on the intel committee. Brilliant guy. But you see what they have to do to stay you know, particularly the congressmen. They're always campaigning. They're always raising funds. They're always politicking. It's just, and you think that it's pretty fucked up, you know? And so that's why I'm a big fan of term limits and a big fan

of saying, you know what, there's nothing set in stone that says our congressmen, congresswomen have to be just two-year terms, right? We did that in the old days because nobody wanted to be in D.C. because it was a swamp and they had to get back to their farms and actually earn a living. So stretch that out to four years, say you can be a congressman for a total of eight years, you get two terms, you can be a senator for two terms, six years each, and then get the hell out, go back to your jobs, do something else. And I think we would deepen the pool of potential candidates. We would see other people come up, rise up. We'd take some of the money out of it maybe.

Take a little bit of the influence out. Take some of the influence out of it, yeah. If I know somebody's going to be in office and on the Ways and Means Committee for 36 years, I'm going to invest a lot of effort and time in that individual if I'm a lobbying firm on K Street in D.C. But if I don't, if that person's not going to be there, I'm going to, you know, I'll figure out how to work the system, I'm sure. But I'm going to, it's going to, it's going to at least shake it up a little bit. And I think it would take some of that money and influence out.

But I don't know where I was going with that story. That was pretty boring. No, no. You were just comparing the difference between local politics where people have an actual job on top of being a local politician. Yeah. I mean, look, it's a dirty business as soon as you're in the business of governing people. You're in the business of controlling people. You're in the business of trying to pass laws that help the people that put you in power in the first place.

And it just gets real squirrely. Yeah. It's a little dodgy. How about that dossier on President Trump? Remember that? The dossier that came out that was supposedly... Who did it? BuzzFeed? Did the BuzzFeed...

I think they were the ones who printed it. The recent one. The Russian was supposedly engaged in shenanigans with Oh, that stuff. The peeing on the bed stuff. You know what was ridiculous about that? Major news sources were reporting that as an unsubstantiated rumor. Like, you can't do that. You can't do that.

That had been out and circulating. But how could they possibly entertain that when they know it's an unsubstantiated? You can look at the New York Times, and you can pick up the New York Times on any given day, and they've got a front page above the fold story that's relying almost exclusively on anonymous sources. That's insane. So, you know, I don't think – but it was. It was amazing that they would run with that, and it was a complete bullshit report. Oh, and it's such a hatchet job, an obvious hatchet job.

I mean, it's like a hack wrote it. I mean, oh, he's getting hookers to pee on him. Yeah. Like, come on. And supposedly the narrative became then, for those that would like to have believed it, it became, well, the person that wrote it is a very distinguished former MI6 officer for me, the British Secret Service. And they, well, no, not really. Was he? No?

No. In the world of political opposition research, this shouldn't surprise anybody, is populated by a lot of sketchy dudes. No way. Yeah, I know. I know. Somebody should do a series about it. Yeah, like Homeland. surprise anybody is it's populated by a lot of sketchy dudes um and no way yeah i know i know somebody should do a series about it yeah like homeland but yes but real real uh but anyway so yeah that was a that was a fascinating little glitch in the old uh on the radar but i don't know i know it's it just it seemed so strange and excuse me one of the strangest parts was his response to it.

Everybody knows I'm a germaphobe. It's like, what? And he's like, I tell all my people, when you go to Russia, they're filming anything. Don't do anything stupid. Don't screw around. Don't get peed on. Do you really think I would just have people peeing on me? Yeah.

He's got a point there. Yeah. I mean, it is ridiculous. I agree with it. As a tidy person, my wife would say, I'm a very tidy person. My first thought would be, who the fuck's going to change these sheets and all this? And now we've got to shampoo

the carpet. What the hell? Yeah, it depends on how much they've had to drink, obviously. What if they've eaten asparagus? Who's into that? That's what I really want to know. And what happened? It's usually, I've talked to girls who are dominatrixes, and one of the things they tell you, it's always these guys that are like big time CEOs.

They run corporations. I've heard that word. They have all this power. Yeah. Type A's. They want you to tie them up and shit on their head. Okay. That's what it is.

Well, when you describe it that way, I can see what the attraction is. Yeah. I get it. Whoa. Man. Yeah. That's what it is. Well, when you describe it that way, I can see what the attraction is. I get it. Whoa, man. Yeah, but it was, again, that got out there completely unsubstantiated, but it became the narrative, right? And people would start talking about it. Let me tell you about it.

I overheard a conversation today. Hopefully these people that I overheard aren't, you know, I hope they are listening. I was at the hotel I'm staying at while I'm in town, and I was standing at the bar getting a cup of coffee to go this early this morning. And there were two fellows sitting at a couple of chairs. And they were talking about the new administration. And you could tell they were seriously angst ridden about the whole thing. They were hyperventilating, very upset about it. And one of them said, well, I tell you what I'm worried about. I'm worried about this whole Muslim ban thing and, you know, returning to the days of being a white supremacist nation. What?

Mind you, both these guys were white. And the other guy goes, doesn't even blink an eye, doesn't even question what this guy has just said. The other guy goes, I'll tell you what I'm worried about. I'm worried about him signing an agreement with Russia. And next thing you know, they go to war together in the Middle East, not just one country, the Middle East to get their hands on all that oil. And the other guy says, in response to that, says, that's already happening. And they were serious. And this is what happens, right?

Where were these guys? Well, you don't have to tell me where they were. They were in a hotel lobby. They were dressed well. So you don't know who these guys were? I don't know who they were, but I mean, they were dressed well. Distinguished? Distinguished, you know, mid thirties probably. And they really believed what they were dressed well. So you don't know who these guys were? I don't know who they were, but they were dressed well. Distinguished, you know, mid-30s probably. And they really believed what they were saying. Well, they were reinforcing each other. And I'm not saying it doesn't happen on the other side.

Of course it happens on the other side, too. But that's the point. People are fucking going crazy. They're losing their minds. And it's not just now with President Trump. Obviously, you had people on the right that were doing the same thing with the previous president but i you know i wanted to turn around and say something to them and at least just say excuse me like do you think you're maybe over there i was having dinner not that i not that i sit in over in eavesdrop on people this is your

move this is my move this is my thing intelligence agency collects data that's how it works yeah just go and you know it tends to be i'm did dinner in new york week, and there was a table next to me, and I was just sitting there. I was waiting for my colleagues to show up, so I was having a drink, and I was listening to the conversation. And they were, again, sort of feeding each other about, you know, apocalyptic, you know, results from the election. And one of them said, this is the worst thing, and he was absolutely serious. And these guys were probably in their early 60s and dressed very well. You could tell they were, you know, and their wives were with them and they, you know, socialized in a 1% group. And one of them says, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to this country.

And that actually did make me then interrupt, which is rude, admittedly. But I said, look, I hope you don't mind me. You know, I overheard what you said. Does that include 9-11? Does it include Pearl Harbor? Does it include the assassination of Lincoln? Does it include the Great Depression? You know, how do you define the worst thing to ever happen to our country? And I know the guy looked at me like, you know, I was a douchebag and I was, you know, at least so at least he recognized what he was dealing with. So at least he recognized what he was dealing with. All right. But I said, again, I'll go back to my drink, but I'm just curious. And there was no give and take. There was no, I didn't get some magical response.

Yeah, I guess I was being over the top a little bit. But no, that didn't happen. No, they just went back to them. So I don't know. We should all just chill the fuck out a little bit. Well, people get on their team and they stick with it, whether it's team left or team right, which is why all those people that are anti-war refuse to go crazy about Obama and the drones. Yes. If you look at all the drone deaths that happened during the Obama administration,

what percentage of them were innocent civilians, it's pretty staggering. But you don't hear about that from the left. All you hear about from the left is that the right is a bunch of warmongers and they're doing terrible things. Look, terrible things are done. That's how the world operates. It would be nice if we didn't do terrible things. Yes, it would be. It would be nice if there weren't places in the world that were horrific right now.

All I could think about is what would I do for a living? What's my revenue stream at that point? What would I complain about? Yeah. What do you think about what's going on right now in Israel? Well, that's pretty significant, right? Explain to people what's happening. Well, I mean, at the 30,000-foot level, sort of not to start from a different direction,

but at the 30,000-foot level, we've lost a significant amount of leverage in the Middle East. So as an example, when previous Secretary Kerry from President Obama's administration talked about going to a conference to talk about peace in Syria, it's a joke. It's ridiculous. We don't have any influence in there. We're not the player out there anymore. We're not, because again, this idea that we're going to step off the world stage a little bit. As we did that over the past several years, Iran in particular has realized more influence, more leverage in that region than they've had in modern times. And they're ecstatic. They can't believe their good fortune. And, you know, I'm not just beaten on that whole, you know, ridiculous nuclear agreement that we ended up signing, which if Secretary Kerry was telling the truth and saying that it was all based on verification, we're kind of fucked. Because I'm here to tell you, we don't have really good verification on their programs.

And we haven't had it for a long time. So we rely on the Israelis to a great deal and some of our a couple of our other allies out there who have better human-sourced intelligence. But if it was down to us, we'd be flying a little bit blind because it's a tough, tough target. So anyway, the point being is the Iranians saw an opening over the past few years to do what they wanted to do for a long time. And now they have an increasingly tight relationship with Iraq, of all places. The Russians saw the same thing that the Iranians saw in the Middle East. And we'll get to Israel in a second, but Israel is just kind of sitting there, right? Like Fort Apache, the Bronx. So Israel's sitting there. They're questioning whether we've got the same sort of commitment to them over the past few years. Russia sees the same thing the Iranians see. So Russia goes in

and they start doing what? Well, they've signed weapons agreements, arms agreements with Iraq, of all places, right? Iraq. They're selling hardware to the Iraqis after everything we were doing in there, all the blood. And, and then they've done the same thing with Egypt. They've signed weapons agreements, significant weapons agreements with Egypt. They haven't had a relationship with Egypt since the Nasser days, going all the way back. And increasingly, you know, obviously the Russians, you know, they were never, ever going to give up on what they had in Syria.

They've got one port for their Black Sea fleet. That's it. And it's in syria they're not gonna the idea that we were going to work together this is one of those fallacies again where you think well maybe you know our interests are aligned as far as fighting isis no they're fucking not you know they they are not at all and so the idea that somehow we were going to you know work you know and that russia had the same sort of agenda russia was never, never going to let Assad go unless they had a rock solid replacement who was, you know, on their team. So they've created this alliance. Turkey, in the meantime, is kind of slid in there as well with that same pact. Again, because we kind of stepped off the stage and people were curious and when people are not curious, but people were confused.

Where does America stand? Where are we? What are our commitments? And when we don't say it out loud, when we don't prove it, then they start looking elsewhere. So Germany and Turkey start creating an alliance. The U.K. and China, you know, create economic alliances. You know, France and Russia working together and again in counterterrorism. You start getting these weird alliances that have been built up over now the past recent few years. And then we're surprised that somehow the European Union is kind of coming apart a little bit at the fabric. And so anyway, but the point being is then Israel sitting there, Fort Apache, the Bronx.

Obviously, Netanyahu and President Obama, not exactly the tightest of relationships. And, you know, they don't have a lot of options. It's not like they could look around and say, well, we'll align ourselves with somebody else to protect our, what is obviously an existential threat for them. They don't have a lot of options. It's pretty much us. And so that kind of creates the environment that we currently exist in. Now, obviously, there's a feeling that there's a bit of a sea change, and that the U.S. is recommitting itself to Israel, to its alliance. Look, it's the only democracy, legitimate democracy out there. And, you know, again, like with any alliance, we should always be able to question and everything, but we should understand that we've got to make these things as

tight, you know, so that there's no visible daylight between us and our key allies that others, because they're always looking for that daylight, that others could play off of and look to take advantage of. So that's a 30,000-foot look at the region. It's very disconcerting. There are six or going on seven failed states in the Middle East right now. And every one of those poses, in a sense, a threat to Israel because— What are they? It's Libya, Iraq.

Afghanistan, Yemen. I mean, Somalia is obviously done. And when you say by failed states for the uninitiated, what you mean is they essentially don't have a real government. There's no real government. Yeah, there's no sense of control. So we're talking about millions of people. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. And, I mean, Libya, it doesn't get much in the press because the previous administration had no interest in talking about it because they had pushed for the regime change in Libya and that was that was a disaster we had you know now again let's you know I don't want to relitigate Iraq or Afghanistan or anything else frankly I think it was a drastic mistake but it goes back to what you were saying earlier to interrupt you sorry what what you were saying saying earlier was that this idea that we shouldn't be involved in policing the world. The real problem with that is when you pull back, you create this vacuum.

When you remove leaders, as brutal as they are, you create a vacuum. And as horrible as Saddam Hussein is, it was almost better for those people when that guy was in power than having what's going on right now, which is essentially, yeah, I mean, it's, it sounds horrible to say something like that, but, and the same with Libya, same with Libya, absolutely. And the funny, not funny, it's terrible to say that that way. But the strange thing about Libya was Gaddafi was working on our behalf in the world of counterterrorism for several years leading up to his being removed. The only folks that were involved in that exercise that really had national interests in working on our behalf in the world of counterterrorism for several years leading up to his being removed. The only folks that were involved in that exercise that really had national interests in Libya were the French and the Italians.

And they somehow convinced the previous administration to get involved and that it was a good idea. And now, I mean, look, Libya's got, what, 130 some odd tribes. It's even worse than Iraq in the sense of sort of a fractured tribal environment. And it's a disaster. So what I mean by each failed state potentially poses a threat to Israel is that what you get is you get the sucking sound as all the air leaves the country, and it becomes chaos. And chaos is where a group like the Islamic State or al-Qaeda or Boko Haram, that's where the extremists make their money. That's where they make their hay. So they gravitate to places like that.

It's guaranteed. And, you know, so I don't know how we're going to— it's way above my pay grade when you talk about, well, what does President Trump do now with the Middle East? Well, he met with Mattis, and he met with a bunch of folks over the Pentagon today, and one of the things he said is, you know, we're going to take action and destroy Islamic State.

Well, good luck with that. You know, that's one of those things where it's a nice soundbite, but nobody should actually think that if we somehow rid Iraq and Syria of the Islamic State, that we've solved the problem. You're creating another vacuum and someone else will come in and fill it. I mean, how do you take a place like that and turn it into a democracy? That's the real question, right? Yeah. I don't think you do. Just can't. Too much deeply ingrained behavior. Yeah. I mean, think about what it took for our nation, right? And we kind of want to,

we've got short attention span, so we just want everything to happen in an accelerated fashion. We had to leave. Yeah. We're going to install democracy in Iraq or something. The Afghans still don't have a clue what we were trying to sell them.

They don't have a fucking clue. And a guy that worked for me when I started the business, the business had been up and running for about a year, and I had a Russian working on staff. Very interesting cat, was a former GRU,

military intelligence, and had been a tank driver. And he had been out in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Was still carrying some shrapnel around for that. And when we went into Tora Bora, I remember he came up to me, he was visibly shaken. And he said, that was brilliant, really brilliant, but don't stay. He says, they're like cockroaches. You step on them over here, and they come up over here, and you fucking step on them, and he was really, you could tell this guy just was, you know, he was starting to go off, and he was absolutely correct. We should have gone in there, did our tactical mission, which we're very, very good at, and then left, but we were feeling the pangs of guilt from having left previously after we had that operation to get the Soviets out of there. And by the way, you know, I'm one of those who are happy to admit

that maybe if you sell shoulder-fired weapon systems to, you know, a bunch of folks in Afghanistan, at some point it's going to turn out to be a bad idea. So you have to go back and buy them back. Yeah, that was a piece of work. But anyway, point being is, we should have left at that point, but we were feeling guilty about having left before. And the idea was like, oh, if we just stayed, then Al Qaeda wouldn't have found a home base in Afghanistan. And who knows what we might have prevented. And the honest guy's truth is, they would have found a home base someplace else. And we would have just been sitting in Afghanistan for another 25 years, right? I'm leading up to now. So anyway, um, I think that's one of the most frustrating things about international conflict. When, when people start thinking about it, especially people like

me that have nothing to do with it, you look on the outside and you go, how does this ever get resolved? How does this ever get fixed? Does it ever get fixed? I mean, is it even possible? I don't think, I mean, it's not going to end. I mean, when I say it, I guess, you know, I'm referring to Muslim extremism, jihadism, whatever you want to call it. Never. It's not in our lifetimes. No, not in our lifetimes. And it's got to be on several levels.

So I'm not saying, you know, you know, there's that old saying, you can't kill your way out of it. But, you know, it doesn't mean you can't make a good faith effort. Jesus Christ. But at the same time, you have to work it on other levels, right? That's a meme right there. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. You can't kill your way out of it. Can we just remove that as well as my spoiler on the House of Cards?

No worries. Who would have imagined? That show's 20 years old. I would have thought you'd seen it by now. God damn it. I just started. I just started a couple months ago. I'm only on season two.

Hey, well, anyway. But the, yeah, so the, I forget where I was going with that. We're killing your way out of it. Oh, yeah. But you have to work on other levels, too. So you got to build, yeah, of course you got to work with communities. It's a huge lift. And the local and the state and the federal authorities here in the U.S. are actually spending a lot of time trying to build some level of communication and trust with the Muslim communities here in this country.

Because at the end of the day, if you just want to talk about somebody popping off and doing something horrible here in our country, again, the concept of the lone wolf attack, whatever you want to call it, in our country, again, the concept of the lone wolf attack, whatever you want to call it, your real only chance of identifying that individual, because they're not coming up on comms and it's not on the radar already. They're not associating, unless they do, maybe they do, but usually they're not associating with known targets. And so your best bet is a mom or a dad or a brother or a sister picking up the phone and saying, I'm worried about, you know, whomever. And I think that's probably more likely to happen now after San Bernardino. When that San Bernardino attack happened, there was a lot of people that knew those folks were really into guns and saying a bunch of crazy shit. But they just went, let me just get out of here.

Nothing's going to happen from this. Let me just leave these fucking loons alone. And then they wind up, you know, killing a bunch of you know and I also don't want to be folks you know Islam a wonderful new word yeah they also used to people who have left Islam which is hilarious really yeah I and her see Ali they call her Islam a phobe yeah I didn't know yeah she had female genital mutilation when she was a baby they cut her clitoris off and She's lived under that oppressive regime She risked her life to get out of there

She risked her life to come to the United States and they still call her an Islamophobe for anyone that said I mean This is like it's fashionable. Anyone says anything critical about Islam, but you become an Islamophobe or a bigot Yeah, you're a bigot and then yeah, you're yeah, so somehow it somehow it's... I'm not even sure how we got to that point, but... Well, it's the left. You know, people go... I mean, it's just like the far left gets nutty, the far right gets nutty. Far reaches of any ideologies, they all... you know,

they're blinded. They're blinded by their beliefs and they are supported by other people who are equally blinded. Yeah, you're right. You're right. On the far edges is where the zealots tend to reside for either side. The fringe.

I think we just came up with that. I think we just developed that theory. Not really. I think it might have been around for a while. Yeah. You're learning a lot of new stuff here, folks. But when you talk, when you have this, you know, you have just a massive amount of experience when it comes to foreign relations. And when you're talking about the almost like hopelessness of creating peace on Earth, you know, like that concept is always what everyone's always wanted, right?

Peace on Earth. That's what we all want. Right. But when you talk about the Middle East and you talk about how hopeless it is, and then you go back to, like, the fucking Carter administration. You go back previous to that. I mean, it seems like it's always been a mess. Yeah. No, and it's, you know, when you look at the relations that these countries have amongst themselves, it's pretty fucked up.

And then you think about, you know, our relations, our efforts with them, and that's on a whole different level. But there's, I don't want to say it's it's never possible that's too pessimistic but from a pragmatic point of view um i think we just have to be realistic in our foreign policy and we have to do what we can to create allies to do you know do our best always acting in our own best interest and just get away from this concept that we're somehow it's a community of nations all working together for the good of the world. Some groups do, like I said, you can have your allies and that's a great thing and we should always, you know, look to promote that. But, you know,

ultimately, I think we're the only nation sometimes it seems that apologizes when we act in our own best interest. We almost feel like it's unseemly or it's not the right thing to do or whatever. It's bullshit. Every other nation out there, including our allies, our close allies, they look at it first and foremost. How does this benefit me? How does this benefit our country? And if you just assume that's a principle in dealing in foreign policy and then you also assume that another principle is that nothing is unconnected, nothing happens in a bubble, then with those two things as guiding principles, you've got to start to creating a foreign policy that makes some sense and is beneficial. Again, the difficulty is in at what point do you exert your influence?

At what point do you decide to be the police person? But isn't that just evidence? I didn't say policeman. Right. See? The good man. That conversation about Bradley. Bradley, you turned it around.

I did. But don't you think that that's evidence of the fact that it's because of the fact that we are essentially the premier superpower in the world. And everyone else is a very distant second. So it's kind of like we're the big boss. We kind of have to go, well, you know, we probably shouldn't be doing that. And yeah, no, I think it is tough. I mean, because you again, you I agree with those people that say we can't be policing everywhere. You talk about China. It's a good issue. It's when you say we're the lone superpower. You know, some people would say, well, what about China? And, oh, I just said it like President Trump does, China. Then part of China's problem is, well, they've got several, but one is that their economy, you know, this idea that somehow they were going to rise to the top of the heap in the world because of their economy, I think has always been flawed. There's a lot of, we spend a lot, my company spends a fair amount of time looking at Chinese companies on behalf

of financial institutions and others from outside of China. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of bad paper there floating around. They've got some problems, really shaky problems in their infrastructure, in their economy. And tied to that is a problem that if they can't manage the slowdown, if they can't manage it, it's not good for us either. So we have to hope that they do. But if they can't manage a slowdown, and part of that is in their economy, and part of that is managing or putting a damper on people's expectations. They've kind of gotten away for some time now with people thinking,

oh, I'm rising up. I'm coming up out of the poverty class. I'm getting up to the middle class. I can be middle class. Well, there's only so far in that economy they're going to go, and they've hit that ceiling, basically. So there's a lot of discontent, in a sense, and a lot of problems that they're trying right now to mask. I don't know whether they're going to be able to do it, but we should all hope that they're somewhat successful since, again, nothing happens in a bubble and we're connected.

So if they have significant problems, there could be issues. So I've never been, you know, when people say, well, what about China? China's sort of a rising superpower along with us. Well, yeah, militarily. I mean, you know, but we're still way ahead. We're still well ahead. But isn't it like a mutually assured destruction

ahead thing? I mean, we're all fucked if we go to war. I mean, if we really have a world war that involves nuclear weapons, the whole planet The whole planet's fucked. Yeah, yeah, except for I know except for right. I know yeah, so come on up So it's good. Yeah, isn't that kind of weird though that it's like that I mean We are the the big superpower as long as none of these people like Iran or Pakistan or anybody who has nuclear weapons as long as

They don't launch anything as soon as they launch everything. We're all fucked So we got to kind of keep everybody from launching everything. And you've raised really where the crisis is. The crisis isn't with us and Russia going to war or us and China going to war. The crisis is a smaller nation with nuclear weapons losing its shit and doing something stupid or some of those materials falling into the wrong hands. with nuclear weapons losing its shit and doing something stupid, or some of those materials falling into the wrong hands. Those two scenarios are still the ones that are most worrisome.

You look at a country like, I hate to say this, you look at a country like Pakistan. That was just going to bring them up. Yeah. I mean, if Pakistan didn't have nuclear weapons, we would not really be all that interested in Pakistan. It's a sketchy place. And, you know, Shane Smith was telling me about Shane Smith, the head of vice was telling me about what is that one city in Pakistan that he was talking about and that he said is essentially the most dangerous spot on earth.

He's like, there are so many murders created in this city that you can, Karachi. Was he talking about? I think that's exactly what it was. He was just saying it's an insanely dangerous, murderous place. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's a, although was just saying it's an insanely dangerous, murderous place. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, although there are parts of Pakistan that are beautiful. I'm sure. Yeah. Parts of hell are probably nice too. A nice spot outside of the lava. Yeah. Aside from the lava.

But it's, yeah. So I think it's those places like Pakistan that really have your word. Iran, they continue their march. This idea that somehow that agreement stopped them from developing. Even the previous administration couldn't keep that shill up. Are you worried about Iran? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. In the sense that, again, they're continuing their testing,

their ballistic systems. I think they're still continuing spinning centrifuges, and we don't know about it. They've got a lot of hot women, though. Yeah, well, there is that. There is that. Yeah. Those hot Persian broads that come over here. Woo!

Man, Persians, yeah. There's something about their bodies. They make them good. Yeah. Stout genetics. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. How do you account for that? You're a dangerous nuclear power, but you've got these really hot women. So it's could put the two of them together and make something happen. Yeah

Yeah, you know there was a like Bill Clinton Yeah, let's make it happen There was something that was going on Where Trump was really like openly criticized for saying that he wants to put America first. Yeah. And I thought that was so strange. And people were saying it like it was one of the most horrible things a president has

ever said ever. And I got so confused by that. I'm like, isn't that what every country says all over the world? So you want them to put America second? Yeah. Somewhere in the top five. Yeah. Yeah.

Sixth? Is that really being altruistic? What does that mean by someone being upset that he wants to put America first? I mean, if there's bad treaties, if there's bad agreements, if there's anything that doesn't favor us, or

our economy, or our safety, why wouldn't you want them to put America first? That's really weird. Here's where I think we are with that. Maybe I'm completely wrong on this theory, but if Donald Trump was any other ethnicity, then saying America first would not be construed as racist. I think the far left construes it as racist because he's a white guy.

Right. So if Obama said that- And they view everything through race. They view everything through race, as far as I'm concerned. You think if Obama said it, they would think he's being conciliatory to the right and, you know, that he's like trying to drum up patriotism or something like that? I think they'd say, yeah, look, he's trying to fire up the economy. It's all about

jobs. And I just don't think it would be, you know, I just don't think it would have the same impact. And I think if Hillary Clinton said it, I think she would get a pass. I think you're right there. So, you know. Well, she said some crazy shit about Russia that we should be able to respond militarily to the cyber attacks. I was like, you really can't say shit like that.

And apparently what was said was that they had said to the Russian people they were in contact with, look, this is all just rhetoric. Don't worry about it. But that's what I was reading. I don't know if that's really how it goes down. Yeah, look, this is all just rhetoric. Don't worry about it. But that's what I was reading. I don't know if that's really how it goes down. Yeah, no, it's pretty crazy shit. When you start trying to imagine what's that line where another nation engages in some sort of cyber shenanigans and we're going to respond militarily, the Pentagon is still trying to figure that out. The Pentagon has been working on this for some time. How can you respond militarily?

What do you do? They haven't done anything. But the idea of what are your protocols for cybersecurity, for cyber attacks, cyber warfare, they're still trying to figure that out because it's so freaking difficult. But think about, in this particular instance, what we're talking about is not really cyber warfare. It's someone getting a hold of some emails.

So you read my emails, I'm going to launch a bomb at you? Yeah, it would have to be. I'm hoping. I would think the threshold would be higher than that. I would think so too. Taking down infrastructure. But if you want to look at it from a simplistic point of view, I mean, that's really what they're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's where you're right. The rhetoric's got to, you can't do that. You can't engage in that sort of conversation or, you know, that's why I would like to think that the

new president would have, you know, or would start to have more and I think it may be happening more discipline and sort of the messaging you know cuz you got to you can't yeah can't say shit out there anymore well that was driving me crazy because I would tell that to my friends who are Hillary supporters and they you know they would try to ignore it I go how can you ignore that that is a fucking crazy statement you hacked my email so, so I'm going to launch the military at you. Yeah. But there's still confusion.

Even if you think about, there was a cyber attack by a nation state against our electrical kit, for instance. Right. Took down the, there's only three grids in this country, East, West, and Texas. So they took down the East grid. Think about that. the East grid. Think about that. Now, if it's a serious and coordinated and sophisticated attack, you know, you may be down for three, four, five, six weeks, seven weeks, could be longer because we don't manufacture a lot of that gear for the system anymore here in this country. Right. And we're putting, you know, lipstick on a pig for most of the patchwork quilt of the power

grid. And so it's a fairly frail thing anyway. But if they take that down, then you think to yourself, well, how do we respond? Do we do the same to the attacking nation that engaged in that? Do we respond militarily? And that's where, you know, again, the Pentagon has been sitting there trying to figure out what do we do? What are the protocols? What are the responses? What line do we need to see before we? So, you know, it's a whole different world. And this is something to really pay attention to because going forward, when you talk about, well, you know, maybe something happens and you get people starting to launch nukes.

Yeah, maybe, again, you get some crazy ass, you know, leader of a small nation, you know, that decides to do something or something, or they get overrun, and it falls into bad hands, whatever. But more likely than not, what's going to happen is something that spins out of control in cyberspace. And because we either overreact or we underreact, and then we're playing catch. I don't know. So it's a constant game of arbitration and coordinated communication and trying to soothe things out and keep things from getting too crazy. Which is why, again, I sometimes make fun of diplomacy, but diplomacy is very, very important. So you've got to have those communication channels open all the time. People have to be talking. Intel services talk to each other all the time. People have to be talking, you know, you know, Intel services talk to each other all the time, even when, you know, two countries or even when us in another country going at it in the media, you know, or we're really, you know, the Intel services tend to be working together, keeping their line of communication because they know

it's pretty serious shit. You got to do that. And things can get sideways really, really fast out there. And so, you know, you got to hope that, you know, the conversations continue. And we've got good people. I look at the new administration's sort of second and third tier folks, you know, where crap actually gets done, you know, not the cabinet level or anything, but the down, you know, second, third tier. And they brought in some good pragmatic people. They've got some smart folks. They understand, I think, the, you know, the way the world works. They're measured in their response. Now, does any of that matter? Because the president can be...

Kind of a loose cannon. Yeah, he's his own guy. He's going to make his own decision or feel like... Who knows? This caught everybody by surprise. Did it really? No one saw it coming? Maybe there were a handful of people. I think there were four people in the entire country.

Anybody else who said, yeah, I knew this was going to happen, they're just blowing smoke up your ass. I don't think there were a very small number of people, I guess, that actually saw that this was developing and was going to happen. Now, I had friends that jumped on the Trump train early, really early, back when you thought, wow, you're what? You're doing what? But I think, you know, did they see something, or were they just looking for a campaign they could ride? I don't know, you know. That is part of the problem, right?

Right, yeah, everybody's looking for a job, in a sense. Well, there's also, I don't know if you noticed this online, but there's a bunch of weird sort of now very obvious right-wing guys, but people that were just sort of online commentators or they would have a blog or a little of this or that. And then when it kind of became a movement, this Trump thing became a movement, all their stuff got really pro-Trump and they started using words like cuck, calling people cucks, and falling into these camps where you're just seeing these tribal sort of behavior patterns play out. Yeah.

Yeah. No, absolutely. And some of that is because, again, you've got people that are thinking, okay, look, this could actually happen. I would like a job. I'd like to be on the winning side. I'd like to jump on the team. I'd like to be one of the people considered as an ally instead of an enemy. And, you know, fine.

That's the way the game works, I guess. It's bizarre, though. It's bizarre to watch. Yeah. I mean, early on, I signed on to a national security letter with some other folks and basically said that, you know, we didn't believe that Donald Trump, now President Trump, was the right candidate for from a national security perspective. Right. And, you know, I took some heat for that. But some of those folks are now looking for jobs in the administration. And I think I don't get it. What did you do? But I will say this much. I once, you know, once the person wins, and this is maybe where I have a hard time understanding some of

the angst that's out there. Once the president gets in, you've got a duty to work and make the country go forward and work. And so I've got no problem supporting the administration in the sense that I want them to do well. And I don't think there's anything incongruous with that in the sense that I, yeah, it wasn't my candidate, you know, fine. But now that he's in, I want this place to do well. And so I want this administration to do well. I'm glad that they've got good people coming in. But, you know, I still say there's going to be things that he's going to do that I'm going to say, yeah, it's great, good, excellent. And there's going to be things that he's going to do that I'm going to say, yeah, it's great. Good. Excellent. And there's going to be things he doesn't think what the hell is that? And, you know, if you can't be in that position and you've always got to be all on board or all against, I don't see how people live that way.

It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Do you think it's possible that he could pull this off and he could be a good president and he could listen to the advice of the people that actually know how the world works and stay off twitter i don't think it's possible you can stay off twitter i don't think it's just like that old scorpion right on the back of the tell me can't end tweets with sad anymore sad you can't say that anymore yeah he's gotta stop that can't just say sad i don't think that shit's gonna end but um could he surprise people could good things happen as a result of a change in administrations? Could the economy, you know, see a bump? Sure, of course. I hope it happens. I really do hope it happens. I really hope he really does commit to rebuilding the infrastructure. You know, that's what I think could get a lot of great jobs and would do a lot of good for us.

Yeah, no, I agree 100%. Yeah, roads, bridges. Water pipes. Water pipes. I think that there's – and if he goes in that direction, if we see that – now, again, you've got people questioning sort of the spending. So, you know, the jury's out on what they do with taxes. It seems like they're going to go in a decent direction on the taxes. But, yeah, I think it could surprise people because I think what people are missing is they see chaos. They see a lot of chaos.

But you could also argue it's actually a beneficial thing to have a lot of people talking at you, taking a lot – because they do seem willing to listen to a lot of different people, right? At least at an early stage. I realize that could change or know, and I don't want to make too much of it, but they do seem like there's a lot of different voices that are being dragged in and saying, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? Now he's going to make his own decision, but we get lost. We don't see those things happen. You know, it's like the discussions that they've already started about how do we realign the intel community so that it's more efficient, it's more efficient it's more effective that's a good conversation to have but we don't see that because people get lost in the tweets and they get lost in you know the

various headline of the day the cult of personality yeah and there's and there is to be fair there's a media out there that wants him to fail as soon as possible I mean they're just hoping that he why do you think that is because he's criticizing them because he's openly going to war with them sure I guess that's it's it. And also, you know, I mean, let's be fair. This is not I'm not saying anything that people are going to be shocked by. But, you know, this was not their candidate, never would be. He stands for everything they don't like. It's a very, you know, part of the media is very insular, obviously. Again, this is all stuff that people know. So it's no surprise.

But there's a large portion of the media out there that really wants him to fail, and they're actively working towards that end. So again, you could go back to the previous administration and say, well, look what Fox News was. They're always questioning President Obama. That was one voice, fine, and some talk radio. But I don't know. So I think there's a good chance, not a good chance, there's a chance that the president could turn out to be a lot better. There's probably a good chance it'll turn out to be better than people thought. And, you know, you would like to think that everybody would want that to happen. You know, who sits around and hopes that, obviously, again,

there were people on the right that wanted Obama to fail. Okay, that course, again, but it's what we were talking about before when you said, you know, sort of the zealots on each side. I don't understand that mentality. He sits around and says, I hope this guy fucks up. Really? Because, you know, you're living here. Right.

So, and this is your country and you got kids and you got, you know, whatever. They just want to say, I told you so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They want the other side to fuck up. They want the other team. But, you know, that's the problem is they're looking at it as the other team instead of looking at it as one big team. Once it gets in, I mean, we're supposed to be all on the same side. Once a guy gets in, you might criticize his movements.

You might criticize his decisions. But ultimately, you should want him to do well because it will be good for the entire country. And you can disagree with policies, fine. But, you know, if you disagree, then fine. Get out there and do something constructive about it. Right. I mean, donate or go, you know, work in some sort of volunteer position or, you know, canvas your neighborhoods.

Do the, you know, the political thing. I mean, people made a lot of fun of the Tea Party, but look, the Tea Party did what, you know, you're supposed to do in a democratic society. They organized. They, you know, politicked. They organized. They politicked. They worked. They canvassed. They got representatives elected. And they

pushed their agenda in a proper manner. So, fuck it. Maybe the far left will get over its butthurt and they'll actually start doing that shit. Well, hopefully. Hopefully it just leads to more discussion, more debate, more communication and more people having a better understanding of how the system works. Yeah.

I think if one thing that we can look forward to with Trump is that he's so transparent and if something pisses him off, he's immediately going to talk about it. That we're going to get to see more and understand more about how it works behind the scenes. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's right. and understand more about how it works behind the scenes. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I think that's right. And I think that's one of those things that people look at and, you know, unless they hate them, they look at that as a positive and they think, you know what? I'm happy that he's out there tweeting because I want him to bypass the media and tell me what's going on and,

or that sort of thing. And so, and I think he genuinely believes that that was a big, a part of why he got elected. So he's not going to, he's not going gonna change that shit Why would he yeah, so love it? They get crazy when look everybody looks at someone who's in power whether they're the president or whatever it is

They look at them as being some irreproachable Some some person of like much higher moral cloth and value and intellect and when you see him He's clearly not right right, You know, he gets mad. He starts shitting on Rosie O'Donnell. You know, he goes after people and you go, this guy's like me. He's nuts. No, that's right. And that drives the media crazy, too.

It drives the academics and others that have, you know, typically occupied the far left. It drives them crazy because he does look, you know, preposterous. Yeah, on every level. Yeah, I've got very, you know, progressive liberal friends who, you know, that's the first thing they say. He's such an idiot. He's so stupid. And he appeals to all the stupid people out there. I said, you know what? You know, how do you think you ended up with President Trump? By spending eight years telling people how stupid they are. Yeah. Right. And minimizing their importance and making fun of them.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, fun of them. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there you go. Congratulations. Well, it's definitely a part of it. I mean, and he played off of that really brilliantly. He's a very smart persuader in that regard. You know, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, who predicted this whole thing a long time in advance

and took a big hit for it, told me it cost him millions of dollars, people boycotting him, hating him. And by the way, he doesn't even vote. He's not voting for Trump. He says, I don't want to have a dog in the war. He's like, I don't want to have a dog in the fight. He goes, I feel like I can be objective about it if I don't talk about it or if I don't vote. Right, right.

And so he's not voting. He didn't vote for Trump. He didn't vote for anybody. And he said what he thinks is that just Trump is an excellent persuader He's like he's his powers of persuasion are amazing Yeah, and he goes in the way he understands how to manipulate the press and say outrageous things So they talk about him constantly so he gets free press I mean what he did in that sense Scott was totally right and he was Scott was looking at it completely objectively

He's not a Trump supporter right right many people accuse him of being so, and that's why he took so much heat about it. He's like, he's going to be president. And they're like, you're a piece of shit. And they hated him because of it. It's really fascinating because when you get to know Scott, you realize he's a brilliant guy. But he's unafraid to discuss what he actually believes will take place, regardless of whether or not people think that's what they want. Right. He, right. No, it's smart.

I mean, I didn't know that about him. The podcast I had with him is really entertaining, if you ever want to listen to it. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Who doesn't leave me? I'm like everybody else. I got a few of his cartoons clipped out and stuck up on my cubicle. Okay, I'm lying.

I don't have a cubicle. You don't have a cubicle. Probably out of a bunker in a basement somewhere. I got an office you Bunker in a basement somewhere. Yeah, I mean, an office you could rollerblade in. Remember when Dick Cheney was in the bunker? Yeah. Where's the bunker?

Is there a real bunker? I can't tell you where the bunker is yet. You don't have to tell me where it is. Tell me if it's a real thing. There's a real bunker, yeah. So he really was in there? Yep. Why did he go in there? And Bush is out there running around on the surface playing golf.

Cotton, you know what? Bush is out bass fishing and shit. He's like, hi, y'all. He didn't go bass fishing after 9-11. He was doing everything, man. He's out there drinking beer on the dock. Yeah. Cheney's seven miles underground. With no communications. Tell Dick he's going to need to stay down there.

It's still bad out here. Why did he, why did Cheney go into the bunker? Continuity of government. Oh. Yeah. So in case they killed Bush, Cheney would be tucked away. Really? Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's the same reason why you don't let everybody stand on the inauguration stand during the inauguration.

Right, right, right. You randomly choose somebody as the designated survivor. Well, whenever they start talking about how security is so locked down, I remember that guy who was the sign language interpreter for Obama. Yes. Who turned out to be a complete psychopath who didn't know sign language at all. Yeah. And he was up there just making fucking gang signs and shit. It was fantastic.

And this guy was standing three feet away from the fucking president. Nobody vetted him. Nobody fucking did anything. There have been a few security screw-ups there was uh a little while back um before that incident you're talking about the guy at one point yeah the guy in the elevator which was an oh yeah exactly yeah yeah we talked about that yeah yeah yeah that was explain that that was a great uh a great uh story not not great in the sense that it was a fuck-up, but at the same time, it was fascinating. So, it was, where? At CDC? He went down to Atlanta.

I think that was it, right? The president got on the elevator and he had his detail with him, obviously, and this one fellow went to get on the elevator. Who does that? Who even thinks that the president is there? Oh, you know, keep the door open. I gotta get on. I pay taxes. I got my lunch. I got to get to my desk. And so he gets on.

The Secret Service has asked him to leave, obviously. First of all, he shouldn't have been on there. They should have had, you know, a couple of guys standing outside the door. They asked him to leave. He won't leave. He rides up, basically. And then as it turns out, he's armed and he's a guard, right? He's a private security guard for that facility under contract with the company that had the contract for security. He was armed. They didn't even know it. Secret Service had no idea. Yeah. He's got a concealed weapon and he's in the elevator three feet away from the president. Yeah. Unbelievable. So there've been little situations like that. It's a tough, tough job.

So there have been, you know, little situations like that. It's a tough, tough job. You know, that Secret Service operation, I know it, you know, it seems like it only makes the news when there's some, you know, bad thing that happens to fuck up or something people find funny, like, you know, some hookers or whatever. But it's a tough-ass job. I can only imagine. And we should kind of applaud them how few of those fuck-ups ever happen. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. we should kind of applaud them how few of those fuck-ups ever happen. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And, you know, they do, it's kind of a thankless job in many, many ways.

And it's just really, it's always high stress. It's always stress. And so, yeah, I give those folks a lot of credit. Just like the FBI. FBI's staff with brilliant people, great people. Well, just imagine this woman who made this Facebook post about not being willing to take a bullet for the FBI. FBI's staff with brilliant people, great people. Well, just imagine this woman who made this Facebook post about not being willing to take a bullet for the president. What if she said that about the CEO of Allstate? Right. You'd be like, yeah, good move.

Don't take a bullet. Like, that's how crazy the job is. That there is a consideration that she might one day have to take a bullet for the president. Yeah. And apparently, I mean, she wouldn't. Okay. Fair go. Maybe she would. Yeah. Maybe she would now. Maybe she's. Yeah, maybe she would now. Maybe she's just angry and maybe she would do her job because she's a patriot.

Yeah, hopefully so. That would be nice. But I think she's going to at least be on ice for a while based on that. But, yeah, you know, it's – and that's true of any executive protection detail. Obviously, it's a heightened situation when you're talking about the president or, you know, U.S. dignitaries or whatever. But anybody in that business, there's no room for ego, can't have an ego. If you're, you know, bodyguards, people think about bodyguards, and they tend to think about somebody who's, you know, protecting, you know, the Kardashians or something, you know, it's not, you know, a celebrity bodyguard. But the executive protection world is a fairly large business, and it's a really tough industry, and there's no room for egos, and it requires a real variety of skills, diplomacy, common sense on top just a sort of a thankless job. You know, you're often dealing with principals who really don't even want you there, you know,

high net wealth families, high net wealth individuals. And they just need it. So they tolerate it. Right, they tolerate it. They don't really want you there. Or, you know, they think after a while you're just there to carry bags. And so the folks that do those jobs, you know, in serious details, it's really tough. And then, like, out in Hollywood, you know, you sometimes get, you know, the body's, you know, in serious details, it's really tough. And then like out in Hollywood,

you know, you sometimes get, you know, the bodyguard, you know, they hire whoever happens to be biggest. And that's the worst thing you can do. You don't want some, you know, some big, thick neck guy out there thinking that he's going to protect you. And he's the best guy when it could in fact be the five foot two woman who's going to be actually the smartest because she's got all the right skills. She's got the combination, you know, and if you've got something busting up on top of the principle, you've already fucked up, right? You've already missed the opportunity to sort the problem out. So. Right. Sometimes it's better with a physically vulnerable person because they take steps to make sure that it never gets to that point. Whereas the big guy thinks he can handle it. He always looks to handle it or,

you know, yeah, exactly. So, you know, again, I'm not sure how we veered off into that conversation, but it's a fascinating world. And, you know, it's, again, heightened when you're talking about a president. Yeah. Beyond. Yeah. about Putin and Russia? I mean, is that something we need to go back to? When I grew up, I mean, you and I

are pretty much the same age. When we were in high school, you remember that fear? Like, everybody had this fear hanging over our head that we were going to go to war with Russia. It was going to be

a mutually assured destruction, nuclear war. There was nothing we could do. I used to go to bed sometimes. I'd think about that. When I was like 14, I'd be like, fuck, I don't want to die

in a nuclear bomb. Exactly. No, 100%. I mean, I remember when in elementary school, you know, we'd have the duck and cover. Oh, yeah. Right? You get under your desk.

Good luck with all that. Yeah. I remember one of my friends, you know, one time we're sitting under the desk and Mark said, started talking and I looked at him and I had older brothers, you know, so they had already told me how bullshit that whole exercise was. But I realized that my friend Mark here, sitting there as we kind of ate our lunch underneath the desk, you know, it seemed like this was going to do it. This was going to protect us.

And I remember looking at him, and I told him, I said, Mark, this is not going to stop a nuclear bomb. There's no way. That thing's going to just blow the shit out of us. And he was like, oh, my God. And I think I ruined the kid for life. And then you go on to work in the CIA, and this poor dude's still shaking in a corner somewhere.

Oh, my God. The protective duties. So anyway, no, I think we should be worried about Putin in the sense that his agenda, his interests don't match up with ours. We should be worried in the sense that he honestly believes that the biggest catastrophe was the collapse of the Soviet Union. And he's never believed, he's never believed that there was a peace dividend from the end of the Cold War. Never, ever thought that way. And we did. There was talk about up on Capitol Hill after the end of the Cold War, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we could shut down the CIA. What do we need that for anymore? And that was the same thought that happened after World War II. World War II ended and Harry Truman, you know, signed

an order that ended the Office of Strategic Services, which was the old precursor for the CIA. Shut it down. Took two years, two years while the Soviet Union started building up and rampaging for the president to think, you know, maybe this is actually a good idea. So then he created the CIA at that point. But, you know, we thought we were going to get some sort of dividend out of the end of that. And it just wasn't going to happen. The Russians never, ever believed that. Putin in particular and his cohorts never thought that was the case. So yeah, we should be concerned about Russia. They're not going to ever be, it's not going to be a bipolar world again where they're the other major superpower. But in the sense that we need to deal with him realistically, we should always talk,

fine, let's do a diplomacy, but we just need to be pragmatic and understand, look, we're not going to, our interests aren't the same. And as long as we keep that in mind, that's sure. Talk all we want to him. What the fuck? He's a fascinating guy. I mean, what he did by, you know, running Russia, stepping back and being sort of a puppet master for a while and then jumping back in in 2012 and running it again. Yeah. I mean, that's, um, you know what I mean? That's the type of behavior that people are terrified of when someone is just sort of a blatant dictator masked as a democracy. Right. And he doesn't even really try the masking. Not anymore. After 2012, he just kind of ramped it up. Yeah. And look, he's done in part, and when I say that he thinks it was a catastrophe, those are his words. He said that the collapse of the Soviet

Union was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century. And he's absolutely serious about it. So he's been trying to rebuild that in some fashion or another ever since then. And it's not just territory, although he's done a pretty good job of that. We forget that before Crimea, he rolled troops into Georgia, not the state of Georgia. You're thinking, oh, my God. Really? That doesn't make any sense. I don't think Mike knows what he's talking about. But into Georgia, the Republic of Georgia. And I'll be damned, but he's still got troops there. He's got a lot of troops there in Abkhazia and south of Sessia. And then he's also obviously took Crimea. And why did he take Crimea?

Well, because it's important to his fleet. mean it's not gonna it's not gonna happen he's not gonna risk losing that and then you know part of uh the ukraine and but it's not just territory that he's interested in it's leverage it's influence and that's where when we go back to that conversation about the middle east and we realize what they've been doing in the middle east in particular they've been active in other places but but mostly in the Middle East. That's all part of this same process. And so it's not a mystery why he does things. If you take him at his base word, which we should do because he tends to say exactly what he intends to do most of the time and not try to read our values into it,

right? Not say, well, I'm sure he doesn't mean that. I'm sure what he means is like, you know, he wants to get to democracy eventually, but that's a lot of horseshit. But we tend to mirror our values on other people, right? So when we were talking about, you know, earlier about how, you know, there's not another nation out there that really kind of approaches global concerns the way that we do with a certain set of principles and desires, even if we make mistakes, and obviously we do from time to time, of course, then, you know, you look at Russia and you think, you know, he doesn't do that. He doesn't look at something and go, hmm, maybe that would be best for all of us. I don't think he's ever had that thought. You know, he literally is single-minded in his desire to do whatever will build back up Russian influence in the world.

So we have to be pragmatic about it and dealing with it. And to get a better understanding of him, I think there's a great podcast between Sam Harris and Garry Kasparov, the chess champion who's a big critic of Putin who's managed to stay alive somehow or another. And I guess because he's just so famous. But that was a thing with one of his political opponents. He thought that if he was public, he would be much less likely to be killed. And they shot him right in front of his fucking girlfriend in public. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's... There have been a number of incidents like that. There's a bunch of those. I mean, he's on a totally different level. But Kasparov highlights the fact that he's a former KGB agent. And he says, you have to understand the mentality of the KGB. Like, once you are KGB, you are KGB for life.

I mean, there's an extreme form of nationalism and patriotism and this loyalty to the KGB. Yeah, and he's absolutely right. He's not going to change. But again, we do this thing where we, you know, it's basically called mirroring, right? And then we get tripped up. You can look at Iraq and Afghanistan as an example. Of course they're going to love this.

They're going to love democracy because we love it. And we want to do well. We want to improve their literacy rate. And we want to do these things. Well, that's all great stuff, but it doesn't work in the sense that that's not how they view things. You know, Karzai looked at that and thought, it's a shitload of money that I'm going to be able to steal here. The entire Karzai family was just completely corrupt. And remember, there was that period of time when we just adored him. It was adulation, you know, how wonderful his car is. Look how well he dresses.

What the hell? So, yeah, so Putin, I think, again, not in the sense that we've got some World War III coming up against Russia. That's not the case. That's not why we should be concerned about him. Although you do have to, you know, again, worry about military buildup, worry about their nuke to, you know, again, worry about military buildup, worry about their nuke program, you know, and what they're doing with theirs and what we're doing with ours. Unilateral disarmament, not a good idea, you know, whether we're talking about Putin or anybody else.

You can always want peace and you can strive for peace, but I have not seen a world that works differently. You've got to do that through a position of strength. I think these conversations are so important because when a guy like you talks about this, you're not talking out of your ass. And you get a chance to understand how crazy this situation is worldwide and how difficult it is and what a balancing act it is. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And, you know, it's tough. I wouldn't want to be like the

head of the State Department. I mean, the chief diplomat. That's a tough-ass job, right? Yeah, you don't get any sleep. No, but you've got to do it. And you've got to keep that level. It's just like fighting terrorism. It's like fighting the Islamic State. You've got to do it on several different levels. Community outreach and, you know, trying to solve problems here.

Doing it militarily. All these things have to work together. We've got to be smart enough to do that. So the same thing with dealing with Russia. Yeah, but the narrative that somehow Trump was being played by Putin, was his best friend, that's all. I'm not buying any of that shit. I think what we'll find is that— You need to watch more Keith Oberman videos.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I know, I know. There's a coup. Who doesn't love Keith Oberman? A silent coup. A blood a coup. Who doesn't love Keith Oberman? A silent coup. A bloodless coup. I think what we're going to find is what Trump probably, I think, maybe, again, who knows? Just call him Putin's puppet, please. Putin's puppet.

I think what he's thinking is, you know what, we need to, as an example, the military. We've got to build up the military. Well, he knows that, you know, he's smart enough to understand that, you know, we got that wall to fall because we outspent the hell out of the Russians, right? We, and also part of it was Reagan. They actually didn't know if Reagan was crazy enough to hit the button, right? And so that unknowing, that uncertainty about what Reagan was all about, combined with the fact that we were outspending them and they couldn't keep up, that's what brought the Soviets eventually to realize, yeah, this is, you know, we've got to realign things because this isn't going to work.

As soon as they found out that Nancy Reagan based all of her decisions and all of her advice on astrology, they were probably like, wait, what? Yeah. Hold on. Get them on the phone. We're going to need to talk this one out. Is this real? Hold on. Get him on the phone. We're going to need to talk this one out. Is this real?

Is she being serious? Astrology. Yeah, what was that astrologer's name was? Gene something. I remember that. Find out what that is. Nancy Reagan's astrologer. Or if we can bring up that picture of Bill Clinton again. I never get tired of looking at that.

Ivanka. Come on. My favorite thing is his look to fucking Hillary. Don't look at me. Fucking Hillary. Just't look at me. Fuck you. Just growling at her. That white man's bite, you know, bite your lip. You almost feel his hips starting to move.

Oh, yeah. Here it is. Sister of Nancy Reagan astrologer Joan Quigley. Nancy listened religiously to what Joan had to say. Wow. Joan Quigley. Nancy listened religiously to what Joan had to say. Wow. Joan Quigley, huh? Even the flight schedule of Air Force One. Wow.

News, I don't know how big it is right now, but this is... Trump signs order to bar some refugees signaling prioritizing Syrian Christians. Letting Syrian Christians through? Yeah. That's ridiculous. That they'll have priority. How do you know that they're going to be fucking Syrian Christian? How do you know they're really Christian?

They're going to have priority. They'll probably be wearing a cross. Oh, well, that's a good move. That sounds crazy. Identifying specific countries with Muslim majorities and carving out exceptions for minority religions flies in the face of the constitutional principle that bans a government from either favoring or discriminating against particular religions, Romero said.

This is the Trump quote. Okay. If you were a Muslim, you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it's almost impossible, and the reason that that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody, but more so the Christians. How is this the president? He's so unfair. Everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody, but more so the Christians. How is this the president?

He's so crazy. You know, I believe that's a run-on sentence. It might be a little bit of a run-on. Trump said in an excerpt of an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. Oh, thank God he's talking to them. Is Jim Baker still on that? Jim Baker's selling food. Have you seen Jim Baker, that video?

Let's end with this, because this is now an e-friend of mine. Jim and Tammy Faye Baker? Yep. Tammy Faye died from Diet Coke. Diet Coke gave Tammy Faye brain cancer, and she died. Holy shit. She used to drink jugs of Diet Coke every day, and she got the cancer. I like how people say the. Yeah.

Got the cancer. That's what I said. By the way, Diet Coke, I'm just fucking around. I don't really think. Don't sue me. I don't really. I like how people say the. Yeah. Got the cancer. That's how I say it. By the way, Diet Coke, I'm just fucking around. I don't really think. Don't sue me. I don't really think she got cancer from that. She probably got cancer from Jim Baker's dirty dick. Coca-Cola Company on line four.

What is this? Apocalypse Trow? We tried to tell Evangelist Jim Baker's survival food. He sells survival food, and he sells it as a potential base for your table. What he wants you to do is take these buckets. Did they pull that video down? I think so, yeah. Oh, no way.

Okay, so it's like the walls of water bricks. Yeah, well, he sells these buckets of food. They must have pulled it. They must have had him pull it. What was the guy's name that runs that YouTube channel? Let's give him his propers. The whole video is gone, so it doesn't say the channel either. What's the...

Oh, his channel's gone? I mean, no, the channel's not, but it doesn't say who the... Oh, look at the sad face there. Do a little quick search to try to find that dude's name, because he's got a bunch of really hilarious videos. But he made a compilation of all the wackiest moments on Jim Baker's show where he tries to sell the survival food, and he's got, like, this table that he sets down.

Instead of on, like, legs, it's set down on these buckets of survival food that he recommends. This is where you store your survival food. You use it as the base of your table. It's sort of a mid-century modern look. Well, it's stupid because you can't get your feet under the table then. Here it is. What's the dude's name? Vic Berger.

Vic Berger presents Jim Baker's Buckets. Yeah. So he starts, this is Jim Baker. This is what he looks like now. He's got himself a new Tammy Faye. And so he's got all those buckets of food behind him. Oh, that's him right there. Yeah.

And that's his new gal. I could not have picked him out of a lineup. Look at that. So this is his buckets of food that he's selling. It's hilarious. And to the right, what is that? Buckets of milk? This is what you should be doing.

New bulk sampler bundle. 23,375 servings. Wow. Only $2,500, by the way. That's really a bargain. And half of that goes to Jesus. And look, he's got a shovel with it. Why do you have a shovel?

Well, for eating. I guess you've got to eat with the shovel. It's got big portions. Cook on that shovel. Look at those two guys. Jesus Christ. Oh, man. So you're scooping that bulk sampler bundle.

He's reaching in and eating it. What the fuck is he eating? So why does he need the shovel if he could just eat it with his hands? Because he's an animal. Yeah, look at that. That's how he eats pussy, too. With his hands. Just gets right in there.

Just picks him up by the ass. He got that from Bill Clinton. Let me see Bill Clinton one more time. Yeah, let's end on the Bill Clinton. No, you got to end on the Bill Clinton. One more time. Oh, look at that. That looks super appetizing.

That's like curry. It looks very appetizing. It's like a wonderful butterscotch pudding type of. And who doesn't want, if there's an apocalypse, who doesn't want to just have buckets of pudding lying around? Yeah. Oh, look, you mix it. Oh, you mix it.

Good, so that's what the shovel's for. Yeah. Jesus Christ. He is going to have diarrhea like So that's what the shovel's for. Yeah. Jesus Christ. He is going to have diarrhea like nobody's business as soon as this commercial's over. Oh, and she's eating it with her hands, too. Oh, she uses a spoon. The new Tammy Faye. Yeah.

Yeah. Powerful. Good times. So let's pull up that Ivanka video one more time. We'll watch this, and then we'll send you off into the business. You want to give a plug to your security company? You know, I'm always happy to mention it. Diligence for all your intelligence and security risk

mitigation needs. You work with corporations and stuff? There it is. We do, yeah. Oh, here we go. There we go. Hey. Yeah, good job. Good job, Ivanka. Biting that lower lip. If he just started gyrating

right now. Here it comes. Here comes the look. Fantastic. She's just glaring at him Oh, there it is And she took a deep breath Look at her face She nods She nods And she's fucking burning on him

Look at her That look She is so pretty though, she looks like a young Tracy Lourdes. And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to wrap it up, Mike Baker. Joe, thank you very much. Thank you, brother. Thanks for coming back. If the world falls apart, we'll see you in six months.

Please do. Can you explain to us what happened and what went wrong? I'll do it. I'll do it. You got my word. All right, folks, that's it. We will be back on Sunday. So we're not going to be here for the Fight Companion on Saturday,

but we're going to play the fights and not watch them. So I'm not watching them on Saturday night. I'm going to record them here, and then we're going to come in on Sunday, and it's going to be Brendan Schaub, Eddie Bravo, Brian Callen, and my pal Jimmy Burke. It's going to be a good goddamn time, folks. So if you want to get in with us, Sunday, 7 p.m. Pacific. Don't watch the fights

before then. We'll have it on record. We'll probably fast forward through the commercials. I don't know how we're going to do that. We'll figure it out. See you soon. Bye.