This Past Weekend - #632 - Dave Smith

Starting point is 00:00:00 Here's a question. If you walked into a stash house and found it full of $20 million, how much would you steal? That's the question Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have to answer in Netflix's new movie, The Rip. They play a team of Miami Cops alongside Tiana Taylor, Stephen Yun, Catalina Sandino, Moreno, Kyle Chandler, and Sasha Kaye, all trying to decide, are they the good guys or the bad guys? This movie is an edge of your seat thrill ride the entire time, keeping you guessing till the very end. Don't miss The Rip, only on Netflix on January 16th. Today's guest is a comedian.

Starting point is 00:00:40 He's a political commentator. He's a podcaster. You may know him from his shows Part of the Problem and Legion of Skanks. I caught up with him last time about a year ago, so I'm grateful for his return. Today's guest is Dave Smith You see, man You too, brother

Starting point is 00:01:14 Yeah, I'm looking forward to it Kids are so funny, dude Yeah, I bet Instead of playing hide and go seek They'll play like, who killed Charlie Kirk So that's the craziest thing about about Candace's kids Like kids are talking about Egyptian military planes and shit

Starting point is 00:01:35 Yeah like instead of pin the tail on the donkey They're like it's like pin the small wiener on the McCrone Like yeah They just have a different kind of like I mean yeah Their kids are beautiful Sorry let me just turn this off They're beautiful children

Starting point is 00:01:51 I end up talking about them a lot I feel like it's like a little I'm like dude Do not bring up that ladies of kids again Well And I don't I've never gotten to see mixed children Up close that much

Starting point is 00:02:03 Like I just don't get a You know I've never had that kind of opportunity Really? Yeah You didn't grow up with like mixed race kids? Yeah they had to mixed race But a lot of them The dad was gone or something

Starting point is 00:02:12 So Yeah I mean They're mixed race I mean Yeah that's true So one of the parents Was gone Yeah and I don't want to just blame

Starting point is 00:02:21 on the day, but one of the parents was gone. But, um, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I guess I haven't seen it with both the parents are around and it's like this functioning, like, uh, type of thing. Yeah, okay, now that makes sense. Mixed race functioning families. Those are, those are rare. Function, yeah, like something that could create a Ben Simmons. Yeah, that's true. I didn't see too much of that.

Starting point is 00:02:41 You know, weirdly, I knew, um, now that I'm thinking about it, I knew black kids who had a full family together, but all the mixed race kids that I'm thinking of didn't have dads. Well, I think it's an inter, you know, at when we were kids, it was probably a, I don't know if people were super geeked in some areas on like racial, like, like biracial parents living together or interracial relationships. I remember, um, we had a bus driver, this fellow Milford was his name and he, like he had a lot,

Starting point is 00:03:16 he'd done a lot of things wrong and one shouldn't have been driving children. And anyway, he would end up knocking up the lady that swept his bus out. He knocked up the lady that swept out the bus who was a black woman. Can I just say just on that? Yeah. Impressive. Yeah. That's an impressive thing to be a school bus driver and to just pull the black chick who's sweeping up your bus.

Starting point is 00:03:37 Like that's just a good place to start from to get laid. You just, as a dude, you have to respect that. Yeah, shout out, Milford. He was a ginger too. And this was a time when the science wasn't even there on them. you know there was I had a black chick to like go back to her black friends and tell him she just

Starting point is 00:03:52 she just fucked a ginger school bus bus driver like that's that's crazy well they probably thought she was coming up at that time it was different times right but chew girl yeah oh okay shoddy getting Irish okay

Starting point is 00:04:07 but the crazy the crazy the craziest part was yeah I guess I could see him he's up there and he's like just having a cigarette or having a dip or something after a drive or a hall or whatever they would call it what do they call that a hall i think they would call it a hall your hauling the kids to school my route probably i think so yeah there'd be your route after driving my route and um and he

Starting point is 00:04:32 heard that broom start going in the back of that bus and he's got him a little and start scratching his crotch a little or something who knows brother that's love hey love can strike that's the craziest thing about love like love doesn't know any boundaries between race is or anything. Yeah. And it's a, it is at least to some degree in involuntary reaction. Like, you don't really get to choose. You know what I mean? Like, it kind of just happens to you. And then you're like, ah, shit. I love this chick now. Yeah, that's the tough. That's the tough part. And sometimes you don't find out until later, kind of, or you realize that you were just kind of messing it up, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know what you mean. I had that with, um,

Starting point is 00:05:13 but with my wife and with both my kids in a weird way. Where it's almost like, I remember having moments. It's like you start realizing how deep you are in. I remember having this one moment with my daughter. I think she was, she must have been like four months old. So like I've been a dad for a while. And I just haven't like, my wife was like running the supermarket. And I was just like bouncing her on my knee or whatever.

Starting point is 00:05:33 And she just, I don't know, she just like yawned or like looked at me in some way. And I remember just having this realization where I was like, oh, shit. Like, I love this little baby. And then I just started having this panic attack. Like, I was like, something bad's going to happen to her one day. Like, something. You know, like, no one gets through life without something bad happening to them. And I was like, oh, my God.

Starting point is 00:05:54 Like, I have to deal with that. It was just like, nothing happened. And I had already been in love with her. It's just like, it just hit me. Yeah. Like, oh, crap. I'm in real trouble here. I'm in for this gal.

Starting point is 00:06:04 Yeah. And I still am. Yeah, that's great, dude. One more year. And then she's on her own. Yeah. But I'm still, I'm still in. Yeah, I guess that, like, is a father-daughter love different than a father-son love?

Starting point is 00:06:15 Do you have each gender child? I got one of each. And yes, it's different. It is. Well, it's like a different, I definitely, like, my wife points it out a lot. And I notice it too, but I'm definitely harder on the boy than I am on her. Like, there's just kind of a natural thing where you're just a little bit more like, you just have more of a thing like, you know, your daughter, when my daughter's three,

Starting point is 00:06:35 if she like falls, I'm like, oh, sweetheart, are you okay with my son? I'm like, come on, you're tough. Get up. You know what I mean? You just have a little bit more of that. And I definitely have more of, like, I feel like. I feel like more of a pressure to be like a role model for my son

Starting point is 00:06:49 that I don't feel for my daughter. This is your wife's job. Yeah, and also my wife's awesome. She's like, she's really sweet and smart and she's a great person. And so I always kind of felt like with my daughter, I was like, oh, well, she's already got an awesome role model, you know, and like my job is just like to love her

Starting point is 00:07:07 and to provide and protect her and stuff. But with my son, I was like, oh, I got to teach him how to be a man. And you're like, all right, I better figure out how to be a man real quick so I could teach him, you know? Like, I don't know what that means. And it's just like, there's a lot more stuff

Starting point is 00:07:22 with having a son. It made me understand not having a father better in a way. You're like, oh, I get there was supposed to be this here that there wasn't, you know? And so, yeah, it is totally different. Like, there's a different thing like,

Starting point is 00:07:42 having a little girl like you just like I was just like she has me wrapped around her little finger she knows it she always has my son it's a whole different thing obviously I love them both equal

Starting point is 00:07:55 it you know it's not like more than the other but it is a different a different type of thing yeah I've just never thought about it I never thought about it from like a yeah I guess yeah it's like the mom would probably be more the role model for the daughter I mean obviously there's a father-daughter

Starting point is 00:08:06 relationship but the mom would be more the role model I think I'm like I'm the role model of what her expectation for a man is going to be. I think about that a lot. You know what I mean? I think about that, like, the way I treat my wife in front of her and stuff like that. Like, I'm like, I always want to make sure that she, you know, you know, her expectation is

Starting point is 00:08:28 that a guy would be really sweet to her and, you know, stuff like that. No, but with your boy, you're like, oh, I'm the one he's going to be like trying to be like. And you're like, oh, man, that's a whole pressure. Don't be like me You see him one time Being like you and you're like Oh this kid's screwed Yeah right

Starting point is 00:08:47 He's just vaping in the yard I'm off the vapes I don't vape anymore Dude I'm off three I might be off almost a month right now I can't even believe Were you smoking or vaping? I was vaping

Starting point is 00:08:58 Yeah I get scared of that shit man I did it for so many years too Yeah oh I'm so at risk adverse right now When it comes to vaping I won't even like Any smokes tax I wouldn't even fly in a Newark right now

Starting point is 00:09:11 Like, just because it's just the idea that there's some smoke stacks in the distance, like anything could set me off. Yeah, well, you want to get through that beginning time, for sure. And I'm getting close, so I can kind of feel that we're like, it doesn't even pop into my head. The toughest parts are like if I'm having a conversation in my car and I'm driving, that's kind of the time I would like it. And then that's also the time where I'm most able to go get one because I'm like,

Starting point is 00:09:35 I'm in transit. I can pull off somewhere and pick one up. Yeah, I know what you mean. Well, as you get older too, like all those, the health things get scarier because it's not so like way off in the future anymore. You're like, oh, you're like, oh, but you got to smoke for 30 years before that does you're like, I'm at 30 years. And you're like, oh, all right, oh, shoot, all right. But it's a different thing. When you're 15, you're like, yeah, in 30 years, there's a problem, whatever,

Starting point is 00:09:59 who cares. What idiot would smoke for 30 years? That's what you tell yourself at 15. Yeah, right. And then you go, if I make it another 30 years, that's fine. Like, I've had plenty of life. But actually, then you're 45 and you're like, oh, 50, whatever that. I've got to start a rough IRA. That's when it gets weird, dude. Everything's getting weird, man. Dave Smith, good to see you, bro. Yeah, dude, you too, man.

Starting point is 00:10:22 Thanks for having me. Yeah, we met up around this time last year. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. As we, it's funny that we set this up, like, really quickly, and they snuck in a regime change war in between when you said it's 48 hours we planned this. And they fit a whole regime change in that 48 hours. Well, it's good to know that they're making them faster. Here we are.

Starting point is 00:10:43 And it's happened, man. The crazy they had that the photo came out of Maduro and his wife. I guess they picked him up. Well, the U.S. plans to run Venezuela and tap its old reserves, Trump says, after operation to oust Maduro. What were the actual hours after an audacious military operation that plucked leader Nicholas Maduro from power and removed him from the country, President Donald Trump said Saturday the United States

Starting point is 00:11:08 would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations. At least they're being honest about that part. Yeah, it makes you wonder kind of what's going on. What were the exact attacks that happened? Does it say? Like, did we go kill a bunch of people? Yeah, we definitely killed some people.

Starting point is 00:11:24 There were a bunch of attacks, and then there was like an elite team that went and got, that was able to kidnap Maduro. And I know, so Mike Lee, the senator posted on Twitter that he had spoke to Marco Rubio and that Marco Rubio had said something like the other attacks were like in service of the mission to get Maduro. So like I don't know what that, you know, taken out their defenses or something like that. But so I mean, I don't know even where to start here, right? But so there's a lot. There's been obviously for for months now,

Starting point is 00:12:03 there's been like they've been attacking, they've been bombing the boats that they're claiming our drug boats, but they haven't really demonstrated that they are. It's kind of just taking their word for it. Right. And we don't know. You just see this video. You see this footage of like a black and white and then like a zooming in of a night goggles. Right. And there was that whole controversial double tap strike where they came back to kill the survivors, which there was a big controversy about, you know, because that's illegal under international law. You'd have to demonstrate that they were like still in the fight. And then there was, you know, I guess Pete Hankseth had said someone else made

Starting point is 00:12:34 the decision. But then they claimed that they were. still trying to get in the fight. It's all kind of sketchy. It's not exactly clear. Marco Rubio, who's the Secretary of State and also the national security advisor, and he's had that position for most of the last year, this has been his pet project for a while. He's really wanted to get rid of the Maduro regime in Venezuela. The drugs thing has always just been an obvious bullshit pretext.

Starting point is 00:12:59 I mean, like, there's no... That's what it feels like to make. Well, if you just look at the numbers, Venezuela is responsible for like a tiny fraction of the drugs that come into America and like almost none of the fentanyl and if you really had a problem when people look at like the OD deaths the fentanyl is really where the action is there

Starting point is 00:13:15 and that's all from Mexico from parts made in China then even when like Donald Trump or Vivek Ramoswamy or some of these guys would have real tough language about the drug cartels on the campaign trail it was always the Mexican drug cartels

Starting point is 00:13:30 they were always saying that because they could at least point to that and say look that leads to fentanyl which leads to all these overdoses Now, those numbers have been going down and getting better, but I think some people, people I love, but some people have falsely, like, attributed that to the attacks on these boats off the coast of Venezuela, when really all that is is that there's a secure border now. And so less of the stuff is getting in than was under Joe Biden. Oh, for sure. But so, so then cut to, what was it, last week, it got, uh, well, I'm going to bring

Starting point is 00:14:06 this up, right, go ahead, go ahead. Venezuela is involved in trafficking cocaine, but current data shows it is responsible for only a small share of the drugs that actually end up in the U.S. market, especially compared with droughts through Mexico and Central America. The U.S. government classifies Venezuela as a major drug transit country, mainly for Colombia cocaine moving towards the Caribbean, Central America. But even that would be more of a justification to deal with Colombia. Right. Than it would be.

Starting point is 00:14:29 100%. A DEA fact sheet cited in 2025 reporting says 90% of cocaine reaching the U.S. is produced in Colombia and enters through Mexico without even mentioning Venezuela as a primary corridor. Yeah. And there's some other reasons I want to go into, too, why people think that what we're doing down there. But yeah, I just wanted to get some of the stats. Sure, sure. No, that's important.

Starting point is 00:14:49 I'm glad you did. Where were you? Well, so last week, if you remember, Tucker Carlson had said that he had, he had, He had a source saying that Donald Trump, his Donald Trump was addressing the nation that night, and he had said that Donald Trump's going to announce, you know, an escalation in the war or a declaration of war, which, you know, technically the president can't do, but I guess we're way past that. Yeah. That he was going to announce that he was going in there. And I had a couple, I had a couple of people I know who were, like, close to it who said the same thing. And then he didn't, which was kind of strange.

Starting point is 00:15:19 And he also, like, he interrupted your regularly scheduled programming. Like, it was a presidential address to the nation. Yeah, a week ago. But then, like, didn't really announce anything. I didn't see that. Just announced how great the economy was or something like that. And so then it came this week instead. But this was, look, it's an unbelievably successful operation as of right now.

Starting point is 00:15:40 And so that's, well, maybe I got that wrong. I said last week, I guess it was a couple weeks ago. On the evening of December 16th, political commentator Tucker Carlson set off a firestorm when he claimed that President Donald Trump was poised to announce U.S. military invasion of Venezuela during his primetime address. But as the hour came and went, no such announcement. announced and materialized. President Trump made no mention of Venezuela nor of any military operation targeting the embattled South American nation. What if he did that because he didn't want Carlson to actually have called it? No, it wouldn't

Starting point is 00:16:08 have been that. You know, I don't know. I mean, it's like, I don't know. It's possible that he was planning on doing it and then backed out of it. It's possible Tucker got bad information. It's possible that plans just changed or whatever, you know, but the thing did come a couple weeks later, so it does at least seem like there was something that might have been, you know, accurate about it. Um, but look, I mean, I guess first and foremost, this really wasn't an incredible success just in terms of a military operation. Like, you know, I was shocked. They got it. Yeah, me too. Got it done. And then they checkmated. They took the king and queen. Dude, there's a, well, that's right. I mean, and okay, so this picture now. And now it looks like

Starting point is 00:16:48 he's playing one of those games with those things dropping you have to catch him or whatever. Like, I'll be like real good at it. You're like, whoa. That's how he knocks people out like that. He's got crazy speed, if that's all he was doing. But it's just, this is so, because I first saw this morning, I was like, who is this? I thought it was like one of those, like, the mass singer or whatever they were doing, like at the military or whatever. I was like, who is this?

Starting point is 00:17:08 I just couldn't figure out because I just saw the image. And then I realized, oh, my God, that's, that's Maduro. So evidently, the vice president was in Russia at the time. And the vice president demanded proof that he's, that Maduro's alive. and then Trump tweeted this out so not clear whether it's like in response to that like here's the proof that he's alive but it does seem like they have him and his wife

Starting point is 00:17:32 and I just say like the success of the military operation like I know there's you know there's been all types like historically of attempts by the U.S. and the CIA to kill Saddam Hussein or to kill Castro or all types of other leaders and they have succeeded in something. Noriega they got him and whatever

Starting point is 00:17:53 but like there's been attempts to like kill or capture all types of leaders but for it to happen like this like in one day in one attack going and get them i mean we even in in 2003 i think we were in iraq for a couple months before we got saddam hussein you know um so they got him okay but one of the things that's so fascinating is like it's almost like like the last 25 years don't exist when you go on like i go on social media today and you just see all the war hawks all got their mission accomplished signs up. Like they're all celebrating like, look, we got them when really getting them. I mean, look, it's impressive they did it in one day without like a lot of boots on the ground. You know, we got a real badass military if people haven't noticed.

Starting point is 00:18:38 Like the most badass group of fighting men that have ever been assembled in human history. But we know we can kill these guys. Like we know we could kill Saddam Hussein. We know we could kill Omar Gaddafi or Gaddafi or Bashar We could get him out of power. It's like the question is what comes next?

Starting point is 00:18:56 That's always the question. And that's the question that D.C. has always gotten wrong for 25 straight years. So like to see them celebrating when there's not even, we have no idea what the hell is going to come next now. And it's not even a situation like Iraq or Afghanistan where we were militarily occupying the country. So it's a lot easier to direct who comes next when your troops are on there. We don't even have that right now. Trump just said he's going to run it. He said, we're going to run it, and then we'll decide who to hand it off to.

Starting point is 00:19:25 Well, that's fucking vague. I mean, all right. Like what? And since when, you know, I listened with a force of like over 100,000 troops, substantially more than that, over 200,000 at one point, I listened to for 20 straight years, every Warhawk in this country lie through their fucking teeth about how capable this Afghan government that we had just built up there was. And how, no, I'm not saying Venezuela and Afghanistan are the exact same thing. But I'm just saying, like, that was with a 20-year military occupation and all this backing and hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons. It fell apart in two days. You know, so like the idea that-

Starting point is 00:20:04 Monkey bars, remember all that shit? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, and so- And they send that out there were doing like those tire drills. Yeah, we have, we, our guys lost to that. Yeah, dude, we were doing, they were doing those like running through the tires, like, get your knees up type of shit. Like they had. And they were, and they were like, huh?

Starting point is 00:20:19 We fucking kind of nailed it there, didn't we? had PE teachers over there like just it was unbelievable and so anyway I guess they're just like the hubris of just being like you know like look I don't I said people were kind of giving me some of the anti-war people actually were kind of giving me shit today because I just I posted something on Twitter where I was like well I hope this works well like I do I hope it works out well like I I would take it working out real well and then okay that doesn't look as good for the non-interventionist types like me like see this one works well okay it's already done now so like I hope it works out but to watch people celebrating as if it's a given

Starting point is 00:20:56 that that it's gonna work out it's dude so you're and by the way we didn't at least as of now Donald Trump kind of like diminished the opposition leader and is at least floating out the idea that the the vice president can like kind of maintain a transitional control in Venezuela yeah so we haven't even overthrown the communists or anything like that yet and the idea that right So what exactly is being done? That's the biggest question, right? Because he was arrested on narco-terrorism. This is Del-S.

Starting point is 00:21:25 And gun charges. And evidently, U.S. gun control covers Venezuela now. There's a couple of theories of why we're even doing this, right? One of the reasons is because there's certain countries that are outside of, like, our kind of comfort grid, right? And there's certain countries that are outside of our banking system. Yes, yeah. Right? And Venezuela is one of those.

Starting point is 00:21:50 And so, and they also control a lot of oil. Well, so in a weird way, like, one of the things I like to do with these wars is like you can kind of peel away the excuses. So, you know, for what, so when people, you know, say, oh, we're fighting the war in Iraq to spread democracy or something like that. And then you could go, okay, so we're close allies with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and like all these other countries. but we have an issue about democracy. No, sorry, that's bullshit. Because if it was, or then they'll say like, oh, we have to support Ukraine because of Vladimir Putin's human rights abuses. And you're like, wait, human rights abuses, but you sent $25 billion to Netanyahu in the last two years?

Starting point is 00:22:34 Like, nah, I don't think human rights abuses is really the issue. And then even they'll say like, well, it's because they're socialist. And it's like, we've been arming the Kurds in Iraq and Syria for decades now, also socialist. So like, nah, I actually don't think. So it's like, you kind of can peel away some of these bullshit excuses and then go, what's it really about? And I got my best guess on this is that two things I think play huge influence in this. Number one, Donald Trump, who always seems to just see a deal. And that's all, you know, like, in his mind, he seems to think.

Starting point is 00:23:07 He's an opportunity. His military is telling him, we can take this guy out and put our people in. And then I could get huge oil sales. And then I could turn around and say, look how good this economy is. and we win the midterm elections and whatever. He always has like, he sees. Yeah, I can sell Trump oil. I can sell, like, baby oil from Trump.

Starting point is 00:23:24 I can sell, yeah, the new gold shoes. Like, when the gold shoes came out? Yeah, he looks at Gaza while the rest of us are all like crying for the baby who's being crushed to death by cement and screaming for his mother who can't come help him because there's no bulldozers in Gaza. We look at that and go, oh, my God, the human tragedy. Donald Trump and Jared Coucher see beachfront property. Like, that's like where their mind goes.

Starting point is 00:23:45 They're like, God, that baby's ruining this bulldozer's opportunity. No one's going to want to relax with a mitai with this crying baby. We've got to get this baby out of here. So they're not like ethnically cleansing because they believe in greater Israel. They want to ethnically cleanse so that rich people can enjoy a sunset on the beach. There's just always got to be a better place to have a mitai. Yeah, right. So anyway, but then the other thing, and I do think this is a real part of it,

Starting point is 00:24:10 is that Marco Rubio is Cuban, and they're also allied with Cuba. Now, a lot of this stuff with like the allies, it's kind of like if you heard any, you know, like the BRICS agreement stuff that's like really advanced over the last few years. Is that the stuff with China? China and Russia and all them. So like what happens is that if you're,

Starting point is 00:24:28 the U.S. is the world empire, the most powerful empire in the history of the world. So if you're on the outs with us, you kind of have no choice other than to make friends with the other people who are on the outs with us. Because those are like your only options left. Like that's actually why Fidel Castro

Starting point is 00:24:44 went communist to, begin with because he was enemies with the United States of America. And so what were you going to do? Right. You got to ally with the Soviet Union. You got to have some boys. Right. It's like going to prison, right? You got to join one gang or the other. And so a lot of them, they end up having friendly relations. But the belief is, and they've said this quiet part out loud a bunch of times, I don't know if this is true or not, but they think that the regime in Cuba will fall as a result of this regime being overthrown. And there's a whole bunch of Cubans in America, Mark Rubio being one of them who understandably really hate socialism in Cuba, but remember it as like

Starting point is 00:25:21 a successful country before then, even though I think Rubio was actually ruined before the cash, his family was like Cuba was actually ruined, you mean? No, no, no, I think Marco Rubio, if I'm remembering this correctly, his family got kicked out by like the Batista regime or they had some beef with them. But they would. But they want to overthrow the communists in Cuba. I want to get done what my parents wanted to get done type of energy. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. And so, you know, which is somewhat understandable, I just think, like you should be up front with that and not try to use the U.S. military to like live out your personal fantasy. In a weird way, it's a similar thing with Israel. Well, it seems like that's a lot of

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Starting point is 00:27:20 Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosure at ACORNs.com slash Theo. This episode is brought to you by Amazon MGM Studios' new movie, Mercy, only in theaters January 23rd. Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson star in Mercy, directed by Timer Beckmobatov, set in the near future, Justice has a new system. trials are now powered and run by artificial intelligence that have access to every camera,

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Starting point is 00:28:27 Don't miss it. Get tickets now at mercymovie.com. Yeah, it's like you kind of get Trump in there, and he is a boss. You know what I'm saying? The dude is like, mercil, like, you almost want to say merciless. I don't know if that's the word. I mean, he's He's

Starting point is 00:28:47 He's him I mean, he's exactly I don't even fucking how to describe him, dude But you know what I'm saying? It's almost like I don't even know how to describe things He's a different kind of person man Than almost anybody else for good and for bad One of the things you just said though

Starting point is 00:29:04 Was just about the Venezuela thing There was another article A guy was talking about a paper tiger And it was kind of a challenge to the Bricks country like to that outside group. And first I want to get, what is a paper tiger? What is a paper tiger?

Starting point is 00:29:21 Well, something that appears to be ferocious but is really just, you know, like made of paper. Like the idea is that like, oh yeah, you present yourself as strong and powerful, but you're really weak. It's like a bluff. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:32 Yeah, and foreign policy, a paper tiger is a state alliance or threat that looks militarily or politically powerful from the outside but is actually weak, limited, or unwilling to act when challenged. I always love that, by the way, Which is like, if they're a paper tiger, then why the hell we got to fight wars against them then? You know, like essentially, because this is what they always said about Russia.

Starting point is 00:29:49 They'd say in one breath, John McCain would say, Russia is just a gas station with nukes. So they would go, all they are is this, you know, they got some gas and they got some nukes, but they got no economy and they got this tiny GDP. And then in the next breath, all the hawks go, if we don't fund Ukraine, they're going to take over Poland and reconstitute the Soviet Union. You're like, well, I thought they were weak. Yeah. So, like, which one is it? Are they taking over all of Europe or are they not? Because if they're weak, then maybe we don't really need to worry about them. Yeah, there's a lot of hypocrisy that goes on, you know?

Starting point is 00:30:21 I mean, it's constant. This guy is just an interesting take, I thought, just about this stuff. Then we can get it out of our systems. The Venezuelan issue is both crucial test of paper tiger quality on the part of all the great powers now. China, Russia, and the United States. China knows very well that the fentanyl excuse to start. stop the alleged fentanyl trade into the United States, is used by Trump to mobilize for war against Venezuela, where China is the largest of them international investors. If China and Russia

Starting point is 00:30:56 let the U.S. make a regime change, kill President Maduro, and destroy the Venezuelan government, and replace it with Mrs. Machado or something else, what's the credibility of the two of the three powers in Bricks to assist anyone, even themselves. That's the paper tiger aspect. If it's the case that neither China nor Russia can deter, nor Bricks, Brazil, India, and the others, Iran can deter the United States from destroying invading Venezuela and destroying its sovereign government. If they can't, then Bricks is a paper tiger too.

Starting point is 00:31:37 Just kind of interesting. It is interesting. All the little things that could be a part of it, right? Because it does just seem kind of confusing. Like, most people could not pick out where Venezuela is on a map, right? Most of us had never even thought of Maduro or heard of him before, probably within the past month, right? Unless you, like, you know, I mean, he's had a very interesting story as, like, coming up as a bus driver and being like a man of the people and everything. But then seemingly getting compromised and, like, overwhelmed by wealth and power over time.

Starting point is 00:32:06 and then like a lot of his influences and stuff were very like socialist influencers and stuff like that and so but but then but like also to your point like imagine you know when you're saying so many people couldn't have you know picked this out on pick Venezuela out on a map or something like that I mean if you just think right so we I was here a year ago with you how drastically different things are

Starting point is 00:32:30 just a year ago I mean like a year ago Donald Trump had his highest approval ratings that he's ever had. He was the greatest political comeback story in American history. Just something that was totally like, it was amazing the way he not only came back from like, say, where he was right after January 6th,

Starting point is 00:32:49 when the question was, whether he's going to go to jail and going through all the trials and getting shot. And then to not only come back and win the popular vote and win every swing state, but he won the culture. He won the youth. It would have seemed impossible just a few years earlier. Black kids were calling him daddy.

Starting point is 00:33:05 Literally, Black, it's, John Jones is doing the Trump dance at Madison Square Garden. I think we were both there that night. And just a crazy, crazy thing, right? And now, you know, he's totally, like, divided his base. There's an infight in the repose, all this stuff. But anyway, so a year ago, when people were so excited about Donald Trump coming in, you never met one Trump supporter in your life who went, now we're going to get regime change in Venezuela. That's why I'm excited that Donald Trump.

Starting point is 00:33:35 Trump's here. I mean, people wanted no new wars. They wanted the border secure. They wanted the economy turned around. They wanted inflation dealt with. Nothing. There was never. There was no demand from Trump's base. And so this is like one more example of Donald Trump just siding with the warhawks over his own people. And one of the things that really, I find it like to be so, it's such a like an intolerable humiliation of Donald Trump supporters is that all these guys, the warhawks, Mark, Marco Rubio, Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, like go down the list. All of them. Ted Cruz, every last one of them.

Starting point is 00:34:14 They were the never-Trumpers. Like, I don't know if maybe some people just weren't paying attention to politics as long as I've been. They were the never-trumpers. Anyone but Donald Trump. They ran a front-page cover of National Review saying never-Trump, anyone but Donald Trump, all of them. Ben Shapiro said on issues. because it's a matter of principle, I will never vote for Donald Trump.

Starting point is 00:34:39 He said he would hold his nose and allow Hillary Clinton to be an elected president before he sent his, at the time, massive audience to support Donald Trump. And now Donald Trump turns around and makes Little Marco his national security advisor.

Starting point is 00:34:55 Remember how he embarrassed him in the debates? Yep. He called him Little Marco. He used to tear him apart. And you know what he used to say? Man, oh, dude, I hope I'm getting this right. There was, I believe there's a tweet. you could probably find it, where Donald Trump said something like Sheldon Aidelson will be able to control Little Marco.

Starting point is 00:35:13 And that's why you can't let him be president. And that's the guy, the lady's husband? Yeah, he died, but Miriam Aadelson is still alive. And they're his biggest donors. They've given him like hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, yeah. It's a, and that's, I don't even think that, like if you counted the money for his first run,

Starting point is 00:35:31 his second run, and the midterms, they're probably close to a bill. billion dollars that they've given. Look at this tweet right there. Sheldon Aedelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. Wow. I agree.

Starting point is 00:35:46 He agrees with that. Just to be clear, and this is just a fact. This is 2015. Nobody, nobody has been molded into more of a puppet for the Aedlesons than Donald Trump. And Donald Trump now, which I know you've probably seen a couple of it, it's so crazy. and I'm not saying this is the case I don't think this is the case

Starting point is 00:36:07 but it almost seems like Donald Trump is like mocking them when he'll talk about how much they just care about Israel like he'll open he goes out of his way about who that who just cares about Merriam Adelson and Sheldon Aidelson

Starting point is 00:36:23 that he'll go they gave me a lot of money and they called me all the time and they always come by and they're always asking for something and it's always for Israel and I do it all I give it all to it like he's just openly telling you that these, look, Miriam Edelson is a Palestinian, Theo. She was born before the creation of the state of Israel in what is today Israel. Am I right about this?

Starting point is 00:36:44 What year? Born in 1945 in, yeah, you could say Israeli-American, but there's no such thing as Israel in 1945. Israel wasn't created until 1948. She was born in Palestine. She was born in Tel Aviv Mandatory Palestine. Mandatory Palestine, right. So she's from there.

Starting point is 00:37:01 Now, is this a new term mandatory Palestine? It was a term at the time. It was. It was a term at the time where they basically, like, they were like, oh, we're not doing imperialism anymore. We're just doing mandates. It's mandates where we come in and run the country. And we'll take some of the resources, too.

Starting point is 00:37:18 It's just such an interesting term, mandatory. Okay. So she was, that's where she was born. Oh, let me just say about him. So my land, she was Palestinian. Yes. So now, he was born in America, but. Who's Sheldon?

Starting point is 00:37:31 Yeah. Sheldon was born in America. He's black or no. No, he's not black, actually Jewish fellow. He is on record saying that his biggest regret in life is that he wore the American military uniform and not the IDF uniform. So these are like Israel firsters, openly,

Starting point is 00:37:48 and Donald Trump says as much. Oh, yeah, well, he just, I mean, Donald Trump is definitely, you know, like, they just had an announcement the other day or he was in a, he was at a event where they, he said he was Israel's best president. They said, you're Israel's best president. Mark Levin said he's the first president. first Jewish president.

Starting point is 00:38:06 It's wild. By the way, Mark Levin called me a Nazi. He did? Yeah, two days ago. Oh, gosh. On Twitter. No, he called me a neo-Nazi, to be fair. Oh, that's cool.

Starting point is 00:38:14 Which is nicer. Well, new. Yeah. Like, he wasn't actually claiming that I was a member of Hitler's, you know, National Socialist Workers Party. Yeah, that's impossible, first of all, for you to pull off. And second of all, neo-Nazis, I don't think it's not even determined what they're going to do with their whole plan yet.

Starting point is 00:38:31 Yeah. No, we're still working on it. Yeah, you got to play that. And you got to play that out. But it is a funny, like, I'm literally all, essentially, my politics are all just like, like, I'm against, I'm against wars and government. Like, I just want government to have less power and fight less wars. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:38:47 Which is strikingly similar to Adolf Hitler, as everybody knows. That was what he was known for, too. But that's the biggest, individual rights. That's the biggest weapon, though. I mean, even Tucker was talking about this. It's the biggest weapon of people like him, I guess, to just call you Hitler or to call you an anti-Semite. It's just like it's, I don't know, and it's

Starting point is 00:39:07 a weapon that's kind of out of bullets a lot of times. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. We've talked about that before about how it's just been used so much. What is this part right here? And these people do like Israel. Hold on. And he loves Israel too. That's true.

Starting point is 00:39:26 Six years ago, I was up here. And I said, this is our first Jewish Now he's the first Jewish president to serve two not consecutive presidencies. We thank you for everything. Like there's another one? No, well he's saying like that he lost and then came back in

Starting point is 00:39:51 that he served two terms. But like you could have just said served two terms. Like what was the, and also he is like, which is very weird to see done to Trump, but a lot of people are making it, he's kind of like big dog in him. Like he's like, you know, like kind of pulling. You know, like kind of pulling him closer. It's all very bizarre.

Starting point is 00:40:06 But, yeah, it's true. That's a little condescending. Donald Trump is the most pro-Israel president in American history. There's no question about that. But the thing is that, like, what's omitted there is that actually all the other presidents were pro-Israel too. They would just have some demands on Israel. Like, they would just go like, hey, could you just stop doing this? Right.

Starting point is 00:40:28 Because this is a huge problem for us. And then Israel wouldn't stop doing that. And then they would get annoyed at them. And then so like, there's lots of examples like this, like both George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama made a big thing out of asking him to stop building settlements on the West Bank. Could you just not do that? Because you're expanding these settlements, causing all these problems.

Starting point is 00:40:47 The whole international, you know, community is outraged by it. And then they just wouldn't stop. Yeah, that's one of the things that caused a lot of riffs over the years, too, was just the taking over of Palestinians' homes. Like people walking in, and it was known. It's not a debated thing. Oh, it's on video. Yeah, there's tons of video of it.

Starting point is 00:41:03 So it was just, but it was walking in and taking over Native Palestinians homes, just taking it over and kicking them out. And I think after 30 years of that, it just became too much for people over there. So, well, the one poll I saw was, they said, it was before October 7th. They said, who do you sympathize with more? The Israelis or the Palestinians? And it was plus 48% pro-Israel. And then taken, like, a couple months ago, it was plus one for the Palestinians.

Starting point is 00:41:30 So it was a 50-point collapse, right? So anyway, we had speculated because Israel's in this situation where everybody's turning on them because they just committed a genocide in 4K and forced us to fund it and we're all appalled by that. But at the same time, they have the most pro-Israel president in right now. So they could look at the writing on the wall and go, this is the best opportunity we have right now. And then a lot of us, and I said this on Rogan last time I was there, I go, they might

Starting point is 00:41:57 move to annex the West Bank, like to formally just take the whole thing. now is their best opportunity to do it. Now, Trump came out and said, kind of unprompted, it was in a Politico article. He said, someone asked him about that and said, and he goes, no, I will not let Israel annex the West Bank. And so they go, well, what are you going to do if they did annex the West Bank?

Starting point is 00:42:17 And he actually said they would lose support from America if they annexed the West Bank. And then- And we say annexed to West Bank, this means take it over completely. Just take it over and claim it as part of Israel. Which, by the way, they've in effect already done, but they haven't formally done it, okay?

Starting point is 00:42:30 So now, so this is the Politico piece. So then cut to a month later, J.D. Vance is in Israel. And the Knesset holds a vote over annexing the West Bank and it passes. They intentionally, now this was like kind of a symbolic vote or whatever, but they, Donald Trump, who's been the most pro-Israel president, goes, I'll fund your genocide, I'll arm your genocide, I'll bomb around for you, I'll shoot down the Iranian missiles coming. back at Israel in response. We'll bomb the Houthis for you. You bomb the negotiators of a deal I'm trying to make

Starting point is 00:43:11 and I'll still work with you. You'll still get funding. One request. Just don't annex the West Bank. And they go, nope. And we're going to intentionally vote that way while your vice president is here just to let you know

Starting point is 00:43:24 that we run this shit and you don't. And that for all the billions, For all the billions you give us, we're still in charge. It's just too crazy, man. Fucking gangster. It is gangster. You got to admit that. I mean, oh, dude, you have to also, there's like a gangster part of you that's like,

Starting point is 00:43:41 fuck, these motherfuckers are not playing, dude. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, no question about it, man. And that's all it is. That's all any government is at the highest level is gangster shit. Yeah. And that they are really, really good at it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:56 Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. let's talk about like so it's been a year since Trump's been in you said some of his base is kind of split now it does feel a little bit like there's like this how do you feel like Trump's done in his first year like what are things he's done that you like I think he's been terrible and I assumed he probably would be a disappointment and I supported him last year just because I thought like all things being considered it was better for our country that he win than Kamala Harris win

Starting point is 00:44:23 and also the Democrats just so deserve to lose Like, you just can't reward that. Well, Kamala, yeah, I just saw the Kalamazana. We had a senile president, and they all pretended we didn't. It's just too crazy. That was too crazy. They also, like, I mean, their, look, I mean, their policy on COVID, their policy on Ukraine, and then don't forget, they were a full year into backing the genocide when it happened.

Starting point is 00:44:46 So they were, you know, they deserve to lose. Donald Trump has done a really good job in securing the border. Right. You know, we had a really open border under Joe Biden. we have a secure border now. Aside from that, it's just been disastrous. I mean, I just couldn't, and not even just disastrous, like the policy was wrong, but just the way they handled it.

Starting point is 00:45:08 I mean, the handling of the Epstein scandal is got to, that goes down in history as like the worst handling of a scandal I've ever seen. Literally from all these guys running on, we're going to release this stuff, Pam Bondi having that thing where she gave the influencers, the binders. Remember them holding the binders up in the distance? And then it turns out there was nothing in them that was new. And then they pivoted on a dime to there's no such thing. I don't even know what you're talking about.

Starting point is 00:45:34 You're crazy to think there was a thing to be released. And then to turn around and then they turn around and Mike Johnson said it will end the political order if we vote for Thomas Massey and Rocahanna and Marjorie Taylor Green's bill to release the files. And then they turn around and get pressured into voting for it. And now they're just redacting everything and like it's just, I mean, just, he lost so much credibility on that. Obviously, the, I think bombing around was terrible. Well, let's go one thing at a time. Sure, sure.

Starting point is 00:46:02 So, look, so, yeah, break up some of those pictures that they just released, too. What was with the photo drop right before Christmas? It's all so bizarre. Like, what is that a picture about? If you're a married guy, you know what I'm saying? Like, what are you doing there? Yeah, I mean, like, you're a married 60-year-old guy? Yeah, listen, I'm never going to be in a position with some chick like that.

Starting point is 00:46:24 I'm a married guy. It's a weird thing, yeah. I mean, now, again, it doesn't give us that much more information, and we don't see your face, but sure does look a lot younger than him. Yeah, go through some of these. I mean, this is kind of, I mean, it's all just kind of wild. Kevin Spacey and Bill Clinton there. And was this at Epstein Island?

Starting point is 00:46:41 Allegedly. Allegedly. And there's some photos. This is the best thing. Look at these photos. Everything redacted in them. These could be photos from anybody's phone. Everything redacted.

Starting point is 00:46:53 and then one Mark of the Beast or something from Zodiac Killer on the one that he'd drawn on. Just bizarre. I mean, it's just like... It's so strange, man. Why? Why would they just show us some of this stuff right before the holidays? Are they just trying to, like,

Starting point is 00:47:08 everything now you start to, you have to think, is just like, is it trying to distract my attention from something else, you know? And the news reports, they don't even tell you about the real shit that's going on anyway. Yeah. So most of the stuff that's happening,

Starting point is 00:47:20 here's the crazy part. We don't even know anymore. Like most of the most serious shit that's going on. Yeah. We don't even have a clue. Well, I think part of the thing, look, the Epstein, the whole story is so, like, it's so dirty. Like, it just stinks. I mean, you just look at it and you're like, dude, look, we know what we know, but knowing what we know, how could you possibly piece this together that it's not some huge scandal?

Starting point is 00:47:46 I mean, like, already when you just go, okay, so there's a guy who was convicted of pedophilia or convicted of soliciting, prostitution from an underage girl, you know, then a decade after he's convicted, or at least eight years after, he's still, like, in the most influential circles with all these, and then for national security reasons, you're telling me that this has to be hugely redacted. Like, what the hell? This just makes no sense. And his connections to Ehud Barak and Mossad, now all being known, it's just too crazy. And Donald Trump, I mean, I think, I think, I think covering.

Starting point is 00:48:23 up the Epstein thing the way he has, has, like, profoundly hurt him in a way that isn't even measurable on polls. And, like, his poll numbers are lower than they were, and I'm sure that's a big part of it. But there is something where, like, look, the fundamental animating spirit of Donald Trump's political existence, his central promise was drain the swamp. Yeah. You know, like, the reason why people love Donald Trump is because everybody on some level, that D.C. is just corrupt as shit and that they're screwing all the rest of us over and they face no consequences for it. And there's something about covering up the Epstein thing that it's like, oh, when it really came down to it, you didn't want to drain the swamp. You wanted to protect them.

Starting point is 00:49:11 And maybe because you're pretty close to it. You're a gator. Yeah. Oh, it's just so twisted. And one thing that Tucker Carlson said that was interesting to me, um, yeah, I mean, some of this stuff is just I mean, weird writings from the Lolita books on these women's bodies. Very strange. I mean, that's really wild. Just bizarre. There's Noam Chomsky, legendary anti-war leftist. Steve Jobs.

Starting point is 00:49:40 I'm sorry, not Steve Jobs, Bill Gates. I apologize for that, Steve, R.P. A couple bow and arrows. But yeah, just bizarre that these would come out right before Christmas is it kind of like keeps your attention focusing on that. And also, it's like a drip. It's like a morphine drip. And delivered in a way that is more confusing than illuminating.

Starting point is 00:50:01 You know what I mean? Delivered in a way where nobody's attempting to actually get information to you that you can even try. I mean, like, obviously, like, good journalists will be tearing through these documents. I think they said there's like 1.7 million more to come. Journalists will be tearing through these for years. But like, I think you just can't. It's like lost after a while. Well, also, I can't.

Starting point is 00:50:20 Look, man, I know, I know people get. people get tribal about politics and I know like there was a whole when I came out like a little over a year ago and I said I was going to support Donald Trump in the election I know the Trump people were like yeah Dave Smith's on board and then and I always knew I was like listen guys you're gonna be mad at me when he does something I don't like and I'm back to criticizing him but like if we're just being fair about this I just I can't not say this shit dude dude cash Patel and Dan Bonjino made millions of dollars dude like they made so much goddamn I mean I don't know cash did a lot of big shows Dan Bongino had a huge show. He made millions of dollars all day long talking about this Epstein scandal, how they were going to get to the bottom of it. He even said, Dan Bongino, I guess he's leaving now, but the deputy FBI director even said on Tim Poole show that he had it on good authority that Jeffrey Epstein was connected to Middle Eastern intelligence. Now, which Middle Eastern intelligence do you think he was talking about? Which middle of, Epstein was surely working on the Saudi payroll or something like that. Like, yeah, okay.

Starting point is 00:51:24 So, like, they said this. And they promised they were going to get to, and not just did jack shit, lied through their fucking teeth, told us there were no co-conspirators, there was no sex trafficking, that he killed himself. Like, hey, Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, you looked me in the eye, not to me, but to the American people, and said he killed himself. I've seen the proof. Why can't we see that proof?

Starting point is 00:51:48 I don't even know if Cash can look somebody in the eyes, first of all. Cash, you looked all of us in the eyes simultaneously. It is funny. When you start to look at Cash Patel, you're like, there's no way this was the guy. How did we ever think this was the guy? And Tim Dillon has, Tim Dillon has totally kind of like, Tim Dillon has brought this guy's life down, but to a manageable level, to a realistic level. Like, yeah, those guys, it makes you realize that there's something above the FBI and the CIA

Starting point is 00:52:16 that gives them what they, then you're allowed to work from here. Yeah, yeah. Here's the, it's like you sit at the kids table at Thanksgiving. Yeah. And you play with these, you know, we'll give you, you can do the drug charges and a little bit of this and that.

Starting point is 00:52:31 But otherwise, we're going to handle the big shit. That's right. That's right. Or it's either that they never really got in control and there was a level of control above them or that they were lying and that they, or that they sold out or that they were compromised, but there's some answer to it. But there is something where, like, you just, the credibility damage on all of them.

Starting point is 00:52:53 Like, like, just the amount of, like, street cred that Cash Patel had a year ago compared to now. And Trump, too, I think. All of them. All of them. But some of it is also, I think, is, um, it's the communication, right? It's like, why not come and say, hey, I got in here? I'm not even allowed to see the things that I really want to see.

Starting point is 00:53:11 Yeah. And I'm also not allowed to say the things that I really want to say. Yeah. Right? Like, if you said that, or if you said, like, honestly, there's so many, this Epstein stuff has to go through so many hands before we can even put anything out to the public so that everybody can safely get their stuff for that, that, that it's unbelievable. And the best we're ever going to get is this. Well, the other thing, the other thing that, because didn't he say that they'd seen everything and there was nothing there? Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:53:38 Can you pull that up? I think he said that on Rogan. Now they're saying there's 1.7 million documents. Like, did you go through all of those yourself? Like, are you confident? Yes, he did say that. You and Dan had a sleepover or whatever and just stayed up all that going through those.

Starting point is 00:53:50 And you also just know, right? Like, it's like, you know, if he had come on Rogan a year earlier, you know, he would have been saying a whole different thing about that. And so it's like, you got to at least explain to me, like, what changed from there to now? Because otherwise, you leave us just speculating,

Starting point is 00:54:04 like, I don't know, dude, either you're compromised or you got put in your place or you're just a liar and a fraud. Yeah, let me see what clips. Oh, here's a clip we have. This is a Tim Dillon. there's a cash Patel

Starting point is 00:54:15 Rogan clip that Tim Dillon covers this is this is good Mattel talking about why they can't put the Epstein stuff out because it will re-victimize the women we're not going to re-victimize women what we're not going to put that shit back after it's not happening

Starting point is 00:54:31 because then he wins not doing it who wins he's dead it's too ridiculous man I mean play it look the victim if there was a video of some guys or gal committing felonies.

Starting point is 00:54:47 But there is. And I'm in charge. Don't you think you'd see it? Yes, but that's why everyone's confused. Pam Bondi said there were videos. She's the Attorney General. She goes, there's hundreds of hours of video. That's a quote from Pam.

Starting point is 00:54:59 But get the Pan Bondi quote up by the videos. There are tens of thousands of videos of Eppsie with children or child porn and there are hundreds of victims. So that's Pam Bondi. Now let's go to Cash Patel, who goes, so if there were things, let's go. Cash Patel, everyone. If there was a video. Don't you think you'd see it?

Starting point is 00:55:15 If you have access to it. If I have it. Period. If I have it. You got it? Where else would it be? This is why Tim's a better comedian than me because he could just be so funny with this shit and I'm just, it just makes me so angry. Like even just watching that, I'm just like furious. So I don't even think of the funny thing to say.

Starting point is 00:55:36 I'm just like, because dude, what does that essentially come down to? Trust me. If I had it, don't you think? I would. And then, and what is cash really trading in his trust for? Is we liked you because you said you were going to get to the bottom of this shit. That's the whole thing we liked you for. So you can't turn around and then go, and now I'm here, but wouldn't, you know me. I mean, I would. And look, dude, it's, it's, there's a broader thing that's involved here, right? The point is that the drain the swamp, Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, their whole brand. The whole thing was that look,

Starting point is 00:56:09 there are these criminals in DC. And look at all the things that they've done. And look at all the things that they've done. And they would all talk, it wasn't just Epstein. They would all talk about Russiagate, the 2020 election. I mean, look, what these guys are claiming, and I don't know about the 2020 election, but they're 100% right on Russiagate and Epstein when they were talking about it before they sold out, is that they go, look, the intelligence agencies framed a presidential candidate and then the sitting president. They framed him of treason in order to unseat a democratically elected president of the United States of America. That is the biggest scandal in the history of the United States of America.

Starting point is 00:56:49 These are huge crimes, sedition, treason, very serious crimes. And nobody's paying a-up. They locked down the whole country based on pseudoscience. They fucking, they covered up a senile president. They covered up a pedophile ring. And now you guys are in charge of the Justice Department. How many indictments? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:57:10 Zero. Zero. And then you're going to sit there, and Cash Patel is going to tweet out a picture of, like, some dude throwing a sandwich at a cop and go, we got him, because this is Cash Patel's America, boys. People don't get away with crimes here. Like, that's, oh, wow, great job. Wow, Cash Patel. We're all so impressed that you brought down Chauncey Billups. Like, okay, that's great, you know? Like, that's great. But, like, that's not exactly what we were voting for. Can a cop get a free rupe? I don't care how he gets it. And that sandwich was still pretty good. Yeah, how he gets it, dude. A cop would love a free Rubin, dude. It's the top of the year, and I find that to be a nice time for adding in something new. Trying something different, for sure.

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Starting point is 01:00:15 Betterhelp.com slash Theo. Dude, and I got to say another one who is somebody personally, who I really like in the administration, is Tulsi Gabbard, which we don't hear that much from her these days. But she came out and had a press conference several months ago where she announced, and this is a pretty big deal. Like, a lot goes on these days, Theo, but this is a pretty big deal.

Starting point is 01:00:38 The director of national intelligence came out and said that she had found proof that Barack Obama committed her words, treason, and that she had sent the proof over to the Justice Department. And I will say, reading through some of those documents that got released, it's a pretty big smoking gun. Really?

Starting point is 01:00:54 Like, yeah, they basically had... Let me see this. U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has released a previously classified report, which he says points to a treasonous conspiracy to undermine the results of the 2016 presidential election. It seems as though Trump administration is willing to declassify anything and everything except

Starting point is 01:01:10 the Epstein files, Democratic Senator Mark Warner said. But that doesn't have anything to do with this, right? Yeah, it's just a distraction. Yeah. The report Gabby declassified was prepared by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee is dated 18 to September 2020. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at a distraction as spokesperson for Obama said.

Starting point is 01:01:28 Huh. Well, one of the things that was revealed in the documents was that, There was a... Sorry, one thing. Sure, sure. It was declassified on Wednesday, a day after President Trump accused former President Barack Obama of leading an effort to falsely timed to Russia and undermine his 2016 election campaign. Is that what the documents were about?

Starting point is 01:01:46 Well, what the documents showed was that there was essentially a national security analysis. It was, what do they call, the threat assessment analysis after the 2016 election, where the intelligence agencies had reached a consensus that there was no meaningful interference in the election. Of course, for RussiGate? Of course there was it. Now, if you remember the central claim of Russiagate was there were two aspects to it.

Starting point is 01:02:16 One was that the Russians interfered in the election on behalf of Donald Trump and number two, that Donald Trump was involved in the conspiracy to do so. That like Donald Trump and the Russians were working together to overthrow the election. If true, that's the biggest story in American history, right? That the sitting president is a foreign spy.

Starting point is 01:02:36 But what Tulsi... Now, it had been... The part about Donald Trump being involved in the conspiracy had been completely debunked. It was all based off the steel dossier. It was all lies. It was all... Hillary Clinton, uh, op, research, you know, campaign bullshit that the CIA and the FBI jumped on. But what Tulsi Gabbard revealed was that they didn't even believe the first part of it.

Starting point is 01:02:56 Wow. They didn't even believe that Russia interfered at the time. And so anyway, but the broader point to that is, so the director of national intelligence came out, said there's proof that Obama committed treason and that she sent it to the Justice Department. And that's the last we heard of that. Right. And like, well, what the hell? At some point, you got to come through on one of these things. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:03:14 Yeah, that's it. There's never any explanation for a lot of stuff. There's never any real communication. Yeah. The, yeah, the Russia gate thing was just like, obviously that was ridiculous. Remember it was just that they were getting a lot of ads to, to, to, on face. And it was like 30 grand worth of ads. It was like nothing.

Starting point is 01:03:31 And Facebook was, I think they were, I don't want to say they were convicted, but they admitted to helping to influence the... 2020. Yeah, they admitted to helping influence Biden's campaign in 2020. Well, not only that, but Zuckerberg on Rogan's show, Rogan asked him about the Hunter Biden story. And he was like, yeah, well, we didn't censor it the way Twitter did, but we turned down the signal so no one could. see it. And then he says, he offers this. Joe didn't like ask him. He just goes, well, you know, the FBI came and visited like a week before. And they said, be on the lookout for a big Russian dump. It's going to be Russian influence. Russian interference in the election again,

Starting point is 01:04:14 which never happened the first time, but it was going to happen again. And so then he said that essentially he thought that was it. So when it came, he was like, oh, the FBI taught. So it's not just Facebook interfering. It's the government. It's the, it's the FBI interfering to put their thumb on a scale in an election, by the way, against the current commander-in-chief. Yeah. Like, the current sitting U.S. president. It's even worse than, like, if they were interfering, which would still be really bad, to keep, like, the president's competition out.

Starting point is 01:04:41 But they're insubordinate. They're interfering to unseat the guy who is the head of the executive branch right now. And it seems like that that led to also Trump getting reelected the second time because it was like, oh, well, the system, whatever this dark system is, that already feels dark and feels controlling hates him so much that they must hate him because he's the guy that's going to help he's the guy that's going to make things different no that's that's right and um there's and and also because it was just like the um i think the when they when they went after and when they weaponized the justice department to go after him that played into that too like they just rated

Starting point is 01:05:16 mara lago they're trying him for some bookkeeping issue in new york i mean none of this makes any sense at all it's obviously just that like these shadowy forces don't want this guy in and so that was a huge part of Trump's populist energy. Yeah. Yeah, it became like, well, yeah, if the justice department isn't fair to him, right? That's the one thing it feels like that we would have, you would hope we'd be fair in this country, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:05:40 It's like a sense of justice. There's some sense of justice here. And when that starts to fail, you have to start to, you, there's a part of you that just cheers for that guy. It's like, oh, he can't even get any justice, you know? Yeah. Oh, that's right. It's just, how do you think, um,

Starting point is 01:05:56 How do you think things look as we go into 2026 here? Because it's just baffling, man. Like, I was hoping to see more things where it's like, okay, we're building things. We're bringing businesses back and we're going to start to see certain jobs and opportunities come back to different areas. And if they are, why when you talk about that more and share that more and inspire people more with that, you know? Yeah. I think that's some of the communication that would be nice to hear more of. I think you kind of have to, you kind of need a couple years to kind of see.

Starting point is 01:06:26 maybe what they're going to do with some of these tariffs, if we're making money from these tariffs, what does that go into? You know, maybe it could be set aside and said, well, the money that we're keeping from these tariffs, it's going to go here, here, and here to support these things or to rebuild these efforts, you know? You know, the thing is that we're like,

Starting point is 01:06:45 the problem in America isn't that the federal government doesn't have revenue. I have a huge tax base. I mean, we bring in more revenue now than we've ever brought in before just through taxes, forget the tariffs. um the problem is that no matter how much revenue dc brings in they spend three times as much you know i mean we're we're 38 plus trillion in debt and you know the real it fucking feels like

Starting point is 01:07:10 a number of kid would say yeah well and but the crazy thing is right is that our government is so big that the 38 trillion isn't even nearly enough i mean it's like the 38 trillion is just what they racked up on the credit card they were spending our tax revenue that whole So they spent tens of trillions of dollars of our tax revenue. And even that's not enough. They can't tax enough and they can't borrow enough. And so then they just print the money. And this is really the central problem that everyone's living through today is that.

Starting point is 01:07:40 If you could go look this up on like charts, but like between essentially from the financial collapse in 2008 to today. So like from and George W. Bush had printed a ton of money too. But if you just look at like Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump again, we printed something. like a third of the money that's ever existed? Like the answer has just been always. Just keep printing money, keep flooding this is, and now people are looking around,

Starting point is 01:08:06 and they're going, wait a minute, why is the price of everything out of control? It's crazy. Like the Democrats who won, not just Mom Dani in New York, but also the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey that they just won in this last elections in November, all of them ran on what they call now

Starting point is 01:08:23 the unaffordability crisis. But like, what is unaffordability? That just means you've debased your currency, right? So this is kind of the... Now, so the answer is we've got to stop debasing our currency. Like, the solution would be a gold standard or something where you don't just print money out of thin air. But the problem with that is that you can't really be a world empire and do that.

Starting point is 01:08:43 And so in a weird way, you really do have to... I mean, you can't be a giant welfare state either. But you kind of have to make a choice between, like, Donald Trump siding with the Warhawks at every turn, or Donald Trump siding with the American people. and not debasing their currency anymore. But he doesn't want to do that. In fact, he wants quite the opposite.

Starting point is 01:08:59 He wants the Fed chairman to lower interest rates. He wants more money to be lent, more money to be printed, because he assesses that that'll be good in the short term and help him win the midterm elections. But of course, that's like what got us to this place to begin with. So once you're not willing to compromise on actually cutting spending, and you want to keep the empire strong, now you've got to come up with other schemes.

Starting point is 01:09:22 Well, maybe we put a tariff on Chinese goods. Maybe that'll make them more expensive so people will want to produce here. But those type of schemes never work out, man. You just can't tax your way into prosperity. Yeah, we'll put a tax on ball caps or whatever, on butto-scotches or whatever. Because real people got to pay those taxes, too. And it just comes back to the people. It's like, I don't know where it's such a spot where it's like,

Starting point is 01:09:45 it's like how much more can we take? We're also gotten too comfortable. Yeah. You know? It's like we're too comfortable. Like how? It's hard to be like, yeah, I'm going to go and talk about this or I'm going to go protest about this or I'm going to not pay my taxes or, you know, it's hard to, and when you're

Starting point is 01:10:09 like, ah, but, you know, we got Netflix, we got this. There's enough food in the cupboard. Yeah, when you're comfortable, yeah, that's right. People aren't going to, no comfortable country ever leads a revolution, you know. But at the same time, one of the things that I feel. that's a good statement man no comfortable country ever leads a revolution well there's a but i will say we're getting on coming it's just like but there's a big trend i think we talked about this a little bit last year but this was a big trend one of the things that i'm really optimistic about

Starting point is 01:10:39 that i just think is really interesting is that so like one of the crazy things and you were a big part of this but one of the crazy things that happened in the 24 election was that the whole like the whole corporate media uh what used to be called the mainstream media, which seems like a ridiculous title for them now, because, like, they're not the mainstream at all. But they kind of had to admit it was over. Like, if you there was... You see a CBS clip?

Starting point is 01:11:05 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're like, which is crazy that it's the first one. Yeah. Like, it's, you're the first one who mustered up the thought. The courage? Here, here, play. Yeah, because they sent this white guy to do it, too. And this is, CBS says that, uh, starting today, they will be reporting the news more from the average American

Starting point is 01:11:21 perspective rather than solely the opinions of the liberal elite. It's just such a funny thing to announce that CBS is going to do news. You're like, hey, guys, we're going to try something new here. All right? And this is a crazy thought. I had a crazy thought. We were workshopping this for a little while.

Starting point is 01:11:35 What if we reported the news? And not through an angle that always protects, you know, Goldman Sachs. Maybe we'll do it through an angle that's like for you. Is that crazy? Yeah. Let's hear it. A lot has changed since the first person sat in this chair. But for me, the biggest difference is people do not trust us.

Starting point is 01:11:55 like they used to. And it's not just us. It's all of legacy media. And I get it. I get it because I've been hearing about it from just about everybody for more than 20 years as I've traveled America on this assignment or that. My mom's neighbors in West Virginia, my own neighbors in New York City, thousands and thousands of conversations in between. Sometimes people want to talk to me about our coverage of NAFTA or the Iraq War. Other times, it's all about Hillary Clinton's emails or Russiagate, or more recently, COVID lockdowns, Hunter Biden's laptop, or the president's fitness. It's like, you mean when you ruined the country? Does that come up? Does it come up that you destroyed the greatest country in the history of the world? Yeah. You had people fighting about

Starting point is 01:12:41 shit that you knew wasn't real and never even an apology in any of that. Yeah. Dude, my neighbors and I didn't talk for like a year and a half because of the Russia gate shit. I was like, that's complete bullshit. I could just immediately I knew when I saw it. Like, none of this makes any sense. Russia. Rush is a bunch of fucking rusted out of vehicles. And all these stories. And kids carrying stone dolls made out of stone, which I respect because there's a lot of like, you know, you really learn to do something if the doll is heavy. You know, there's something about that that I really respect. But this, I just knew, it just seems so ridiculous.

Starting point is 01:13:14 Maybe 50 years ago, maybe, but not today. Well, right. And then just, like, as he just casually mentions, like, or lockdowns. It's like, oh, yeah. Like when they turned our country into a totalitarian state, remember they did that for a year plus? And you guys did what? You guys, you're sitting here. You're the journalist.

Starting point is 01:13:33 You have this role as the media and you always talk about how important this role is, right? And then they lock down the country. And you decided in that moment, here's what we'll do. We'll demonize anybody who's skeptical of this. We'll call you names. We'll shame Americans for demanding some degree. of basic liberty during a crisis. And then, by the way, you know what happens as a result of that when you do it?

Starting point is 01:13:58 Which, by the way, there's been a ton of studies on this now. They didn't even, the lockdowns didn't even slow the spread of the goddamn virus. It wasn't even like there was a benefit that you got this cost in exchange for. It did nothing. The lockdown areas, the things spread just as badly as they did through non-lockdown areas. Mass compliance had nothing to do with anything. But, you know, what was real is how many families got broken up over lockdowns. How many AA rooms were closed?

Starting point is 01:14:22 and people couldn't go to get recovery and ended up relapsing or losing their life. How many people fell off the wagon during lockdowns? How many people who were like on the edge ended up losing their apartment, ended up living outside on the street? No, all those guys, they got to live with that tragedy. But your response is to go, finally,

Starting point is 01:14:40 after all these years, I'll acknowledge some people were upset about this. We'll do it a little bit differently going forward. Like, shouldn't you resign and disgrace? Like, just, I mean, like, listen, I'm trying to be reasonable here. I really think you should fall on a Japanese sword in public in front of a lot of people.

Starting point is 01:14:57 But I will accept resigning in disgrace and picking up garbage on the side of the road for the rest of your life. And they've shone that dude they caught jerking off in the Zoom meeting, remember? Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. He faced more consequences.

Starting point is 01:15:12 Tubin faced more consequences than any of these guys. That dude, at least they made him come on. Because he was jerking off during a Zoom meeting, which first of all, who doesn't want to jerk off during a freaking Zoom meeting and who hasn't if most of your body's off screen? How do you not?

Starting point is 01:15:27 Yeah, it's an impossible challenge. Is it crazy, Theo, that I get now because I do this, you know, whatever, the weird career that I have is? But like, I'll get all these people now, like high profile people who will be like talking shit about me. It'll be like, Dave Smith,

Starting point is 01:15:41 what does he know? What does he know what he's talking about? He's some comedian. He's not an expert. And look, fair enough, what the fuck do I really know, right? I am just a comedian who's read a lot about this stuff

Starting point is 01:15:50 And I get on shows and I talk about like, it's like this. It's not like that. So like, fair enough, call me out. I'm just a guy. And if people want to listen, they can. If they don't, they don't have to. But I'll be arguing, like, I'll be arguing on Twitter with Dinesh D'Souza or recently David Wormser.

Starting point is 01:16:06 Remember last time I was on here? Wormser? So I remember last year, I told you about the, the clean break memo that it was the neocons wrote to Netanyahu to get away from the peace plan and to overthrow Saddam Hussein for Israel. So the guy who wrote it. is now talking shit to me on Twitter. The Neo-Cuy. He was at the Pentagon.

Starting point is 01:16:25 He was at the State Department. And they'll say things to me. Pretty cool. They'll be like, Dave, this guy's a comedian. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Dude, you were the architect of the war in Iraq. Go away forever. Like, you don't get to tell.

Starting point is 01:16:36 You get to come out here and go, who does this guy think he is? Who do I think I am? You got a million people killed and didn't get punished for it. Just kindly, go away. Is that an unreasonable request? I know.

Starting point is 01:16:48 But anyway, the CBS guy. And guess what's interesting is at least he's acknowledging it. I guess. It's just bizarre. Now, by the way, also, in the background of this is that CBS News was just purchased by the Israel lobby. Yes. And so this is there.

Starting point is 01:17:01 There's a lot. I'm sure we can really trust you now. Yep. Let's play a little bit more of that clip of the guy that was talking. Fitness for Office. The point is on too many stories, the press has missed the story because we've taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. or we put too much weight

Starting point is 01:17:21 in the analysis of academics or elites and not enough on you and I know this because at certain points I have been you I have felt this way too I felt like what I was seeing and hearing on the news didn't reflect what I was seeing and hearing in my life. You're living in a dystopian time

Starting point is 01:17:42 bro. Yeah it's like and then is it too much for me to ask that you resign in disgrace? Right. You know like it or in disgust? I should say, like, I'm saying, like, if you're going, I've felt that same way too at times. Well, then what the fuck, man? Like, no one's putting a gun to your head. So leave and blow the whistle and become all of our hero. And go have the biggest podcast ever.

Starting point is 01:18:02 You know, like, it's not even like a difficult thing to have done. It's not even like, like, there is more culpability for you than there was for the average Nazi soldier. At least the average Nazi soldier was like, I'll get shot in the head if I don't do this, you know? Like, you had nothing except giving up a 10 million. dollar salary or something like that like you know and and and by the way you could still go make lots of money because the people would rally around you if you did something like that and like it's like

Starting point is 01:18:28 when there's that tape of um if you're not going to tell the truth what are you like you know i'm saying i mean that's your job right it's like but it's like if you're not going to try your best to figure it out i don't know it just i couldn't imagine sitting there regurgitating lies like just how much it would make you crawl on the inside yeah yeah no it's an it's an amazing ability i mean I've been close up with it. And it was one of the things when I debated Chris Cuomo. It was like one of the things

Starting point is 01:18:55 that really was like, it was startling to see because how comfortable he was just lying. Like lying through his teeth a demonstrable a lot. Like I would say like there was one point in it and the Patrick Bit David production staff always be grateful to them because man,

Starting point is 01:19:12 they got my back that day and they had the clip. They pulled it up real quick. But I went, he went, look, I don't think the guys at CNN should have mocked Joe Rogan for taking ivermectin and i went you did you mocked joe rogan for taking ivermectum and he goes no i didn't i go yes you did i've seen it i've watched you do it and then he goes no i didn't and then they pull up a clip of him going jo rogan ivermectin i mean horse dewormer and the entire room because it was a live show the entire room goes oh and then he goes oh no no no

Starting point is 01:19:40 i was saying like the veterinary version not the regular version you go what version do you think joe rogan was taking you think joe rogan went to the pet store like yeah you He's got a few bucks. I don't know if you've heard, you know? Is that a fucking pet co? Do you think he drove and parked at a petco and walked in there? That's the gerbil cages? Like, believe it or not, Joe Rogan can afford doctors.

Starting point is 01:20:01 That's the part of the grooming the dogs right in the front when you walk in? Hi, I'm world famous Joe Rogan. I was here to pick up some ibupectin. I have a prescription for my dog. I'd like to fail. Oh, you got worms, Joe, huh? But these people who work in corporate media, man, they get real comfortable just saying, like a knowing lie that they.

Starting point is 01:20:19 They will just repeat because that's the business. But the thing that's interesting to me, and this is the last year, right, is that they admitted it. Because this was true five years ago, too. Five years ago, four years ago, Rogan had a much bigger audience than CNN had, but they would still pretend like he was the fringe and they were the mainstream media. But after Trump got reelected, they admitted it. They all said, we need our own Joe Rogan. Like, they admitted that the podcasting is where it was. And part of that is because Trump very wisely.

Starting point is 01:20:49 And I guess I've heard that it was his son who convinced him to do it. But he went on your show and Joe's show and Andrew's show and, you know, like some of the other ones. No boys. Yeah, I don't know them. But like, yeah, they're a huge I've learned. And so he wrote this kind of podcast wave where the new media was. He went to them. It was smart of him.

Starting point is 01:21:10 Very smart. And then there were interesting. And I thought it was really it. Like even when on your show with him, one of the things that was cool. Like we've never really seen that just like in the middle of a presidential season. where a president comes in and just doesn't really talk politics. It talks about like his brothers' struggle with alcoholism

Starting point is 01:21:25 and you're like, oh, wow, we kind of get to see a candidate in a new way. Now, one of the things I think that's interesting about this now, what's happened over this last year, is that a lot of those guys, and I remember arguing about this with people at the time, but they were kind of like, oh, now the problem is that all these podcast bros are just Trump stands now,

Starting point is 01:21:46 and they're all going to just support him no matter what. And I was like, no, I don't think so, dude. Like, I don't think... That's never been the thing. And so what's interesting is that this whole media environment, like, if J.D. Vance wants to be president, like, I'm not saying he has to come do your show, but he kind of has to come do your show. He kind of has to go do Rogan's show. He kind of has to, like, do... Or at least he's turning down a big opportunity not to.

Starting point is 01:22:09 And so... And it will be known by people, I think, if you don't go do Joe's show, if you don't do... You know, I'm trying to think of, like, Schultz's show. show that... You got at least to some of them. Or go sit with Tim Dillon. Yeah. That would be amazing.

Starting point is 01:22:25 Well, because you know this will do huge, huge numbers. Right. And you know, though, that it will be... That Joe's going to do his best job to be... You know, he's going to do what he does best, which is he's the best to do it. But I just think that they're going to be controlled. Right. That's the thing.

Starting point is 01:22:39 And they're going to have to answer some questions next time. And, like, that's one of the interesting things right now, right? Because, like, there was over this last year, really. I mean, it's the last two years, but really over this last year. there was this huge, like, this huge split in the right wing over Israel, obviously. Was that the biggest calls you think? I think that, look, obviously, Charlie Kirk being killed was a, but look, Charlie Kirk was already dealing with it before he died.

Starting point is 01:23:07 Like, it was a dynamic at turning point. It was a huge scandal when he had Tucker and me and Megan Kelly at turning point. And then he went on Megan Kelly's show and talked about how all of his own were like flipping out on him and how crazy it was that he had been such an ally and they were turning on him just for hosting a debate and hosting a few voices that were critical of Israel. Not really that many on it, actually. But this was, this has been a huge split, but it's not a split like it's 50-50. It's a split like the entire youth is against this unconditional support for Israel. A huge portion of, you know, like Candace and Tucker Carliners, and Tucker

Starting point is 01:23:49 Carlson and Nick Fuentes have been surging over this last year. They're bigger than ever. Meanwhile, Ben Shapiro is like losing a thousand YouTube subscribers a day. Mark Levin is just getting ratioed every time he opens his mouth on social media. And so what's happening now is there's this dynamic where... I thought he was Jim Kramer. I didn't even know who you... I kept the...

Starting point is 01:24:11 I could see confusing those too. I got confused. Go on. But now there's this situation. Well, so, but I'm saying now you have this dynamic where J.D. Vance wants to be the Republican nominee. Well, like, 80% of the base is against, is for America first, not for Israel first, you know?

Starting point is 01:24:29 And now, and particularly with all those shows we were talking about, like your show, Rogan's show, Tim's show, Andrew's show, all these guys. Your show? My show, all of us are like, we don't want to fight wars on behalf of Israel. So it's like, where do you go now? Now there's a real media environment.

Starting point is 01:24:47 I'm not saying it's perfect, and I'm just naming the comedians. a lot of other great, like, news shows out there, too. Like, breaking points with Sega and Jetty and Crystal Ball is a great show. Like, there's a bunch of really good shows online that aren't in this corporate-controlled media environment where they're actually going to have to face some of this stuff going forward. So I'm like, I'm very optimistic about that kind of long-term that we've, like, cracked the state's

Starting point is 01:25:11 monopoly on propaganda. Yeah, it is going to be interesting because you're going to have to answer, I don't know if you're going to be able to say you're a pro-Israel candidate. It's going to be tough. Now, here's the thing is that, and they're going to be in a Charlie Kirk type situation here, and I'm not talking about Charlie Kirk's assassination, but I'm saying the position that Charlie Kirk was in right before he died, and the reason why he was sending those text messages to Josh Hammer and them that I have no other choice than to abandon support for

Starting point is 01:25:38 Israel, and while he was complaining about all that stuff on the Megan Kelly show, is that he was caught between a rock and a hard place, which is exactly what J.D. Vance is going to be caught between now because you've got well look in order to in order to lead an organization like turning point USA you need your young activists and then you need your donors right you need billionaires to give you money but you need young activists to show up and so charlie kirk was in this position where he's like dude the young activists are completely against this shit but the donors won't even let you host a debate about it let alone take that position and so what do you do there and now jadie vans is going to be in a similar position too.

Starting point is 01:26:16 If you come out and you say, I'm pro-Israel, well, man, I mean, at this point, that turns a whole lot of us off. But if you say I'm anti-Israel, that's a tough, in Washington, D.C., you can't survive there for long. So he's got to try to walk this tightrope that is becoming more impossible by the day.

Starting point is 01:26:36 He's going to need a strong mascara. You better put your best mascara on for that one. Type shit, and I like JD, man. He knows. I like J.D. too. I like J.D. I even would like J.D. I even would like to maybe be able to support him. Yeah. But I'm in a position right now. I don't see how I'm going to be able to, at least from my perspective, because you're coming off of you're going to be attached to the administration that

Starting point is 01:27:00 did everything Netanyahu wanted and covered up the Epstein scandal and didn't solve any of the major problems in the country, short of maybe the border. And also J.D. Vance, what are you going to say? What are you going to run on? This time we'll really drain the swamp. Right. Like, are you going to, and also, just because Trump is Trump, he can't really criticize Donald Trump because he's still his vice president as he's running a presidential campaign. It's a tough spot. Yep. Bro, he's good.

Starting point is 01:27:26 That's the tightest rope in the world. Now, there is something about that tightrope that I can tell JD, like, loves. Like, he wants to challenge himself. He's a guy who's challenged himself a lot in his life, and he wants to challenge himself. So he's going to try to navigate that. That's going to be super tricky to figure out because those are, I mean, that's like his, I mean, that's just like a, it's such a fine point. Yeah, well, you've, I think, you know, you see it like already.

Starting point is 01:27:51 That's such a fine point, man. Well, it's happened a lot just with, um... And it's kind of become Maga versus America first, too, is kind of where that thing, where that, uh, where the Republican, kind of the right divide is. Like, yeah, I was, I mean, I like Trump the first time because he was an underdog. I was like, oh, this dude is just some guy, like, I know he's Donald Trump and I know he's, like, been known for crooked antics and, um, dodging, like, um, contractors and shit over the year. But then also

Starting point is 01:28:20 it was like fuck if this guy wins I remember when he won the first time I remember driving down the street and thinking oh shit

Starting point is 01:28:25 anybody could be president and it was the feeling you had when you were a kid a little bit like dude I can be president but just the idea that anybody could be president because there's something

Starting point is 01:28:35 about Donald Trump that even though he's a billionaire he's such a regular guy billionaire like he's a billionaire the way the average guy in a trailer park

Starting point is 01:28:47 would be a billionaire if you gave him a billion dollars. He's not pretending not to be a billionaire. Right, but it's also just like it's like, how about we make it the biggest gold sign ever? It's like someone who never had money who just like wants to show off that he's got some. Now I see why him and Kid Rock are so close

Starting point is 01:29:02 because Kid Rock is like that. He's like, let's make it like this, dude. Yeah, it's right, which I love that guy by the way. But he's awesome. Last time I was down here, I met him I did his show, which was so much fun. He does like a comedy show in the Nashville Comedy Festival. I did that last night.

Starting point is 01:29:20 He's a awesome guy. But so Donald Trump, and then also you had, he speaks like a regular guy. Like he doesn't speak like a highfalutin academic or something like that. He speaks like a regular guy. Regular people can understand him. And then he announces, he's running for president. And again, his pitches, drain the swamp. And I'm going to fight for you.

Starting point is 01:29:42 I'm going to fight for you to win. And then because he says that, every media apparatus, every Hollywood actor, academia, and the entire political class all hate his guts and are working against him. And so he's naturally just cast as like the underdog, the guy who's there for you, who's going to take them. And then he sits in South Carolina. It was so ballsy. And Donald Trump always had an amazing ability to, like, say the obvious truth and then

Starting point is 01:30:07 give you permission to also agree with him. So, like, he goes in South Carolina, of all places, at the Republican primary, and he looks at Jeb Bush, and he goes, your brother lied us into war. And, like, and this was an amazing moment in American history. So he says this to Jeb Bush. And Jeb Bush goes, that's very offensive that you would say something like that. Then he doubles down on it. He goes, they lied.

Starting point is 01:30:31 There were no weapons of mass destruction, and he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. Like, the biggest accusation you could make, your brother led, I mean, you're looking at South Carolina. It's one of the most militarized states in the union. At the Republican National, he's like saying, your brother's dead because of him and his brother and what they did, you know? And then that night on all the cable news, it was unanimous by everyone who knew, all the experts, all the ones who say, I'm just a comedian, I don't know what I'm talking about, they're the experts. Every single expert went on TV that day to say Donald Trump is done. He's finished. Because let me tell you one thing you can't do in South Carolina is insult, the military, and George,

Starting point is 01:31:10 W Bush and blah blah blah blah and then the next day at the primary Donald Trump dominated just destroyed Jeb Bush who walked away with like 1% or something like that just destroyed him and so and then that guy ends up side by the way did you see this the other day this is this is how bad the Trump administration has done one year in you know who just praised Donald Trump on Twitter Jeb Bush uh-uh jeb Bush you're lying I swear to go it'll be right up there at the top. It might think is that first one. Yep, right there. Pinned tweet. The Islamic Republic does not represent the great Iranian people. President Trump continues to demonstrate historic leadership on a round. So why Jeb Bush is now praising Donald Trump. And why is it because

Starting point is 01:31:56 Jeb Bush woke up and became a lot better on stuff? No, it's because Donald Trump is finishing off what was the seventh country on General Wesley Clark's list of seven countries that were to be toppled. Oh, that's true. If you remember that, which people, people try to give me shit for bringing this up. Was that with the neoconservatives? Well, yes, it was him talking about the neoconservatives plan that they had just instituted under the George W. Bush administration. And this list of seven countries, with Sudan being the one exception, now Sudan did collapse and fall into a state of civil war and the country broke off. And I think there's still a horrible civil war going on there.

Starting point is 01:32:35 Good athletes. Very good. But of the other countries, okay, there's six left on that list, Israel, the U.S., or both have attacked all of them. Yeah. Since that point, bombed all of them. And the last regime change was supposed to be Iran, which, okay, Donald Trump stopped short of regime change there, but he did launch a war against them over the summer and still flirting with it. And still flirting with it, that thing is not over at all. We're at halftime.

Starting point is 01:32:59 Again, like the Mission Accomplished banner, like the people with Venezuela right now, they always love to celebrate immediately. Oh, Dave, you warned this might be a catastrophe. but look, it was just 12 days. You're like, yeah, but look, it's not over. Like, I'm old enough to remember very vividly in 1991 after George H.W. Bush led the Persian Gulf War, and all the Warhawks were celebrating what an easy success the war in Iraq was.

Starting point is 01:33:25 But then we went on to bomb that country for 30 more years and lost trillions of dollars and a million Iraqis died and 5,000 of our bravest young soldiers died, and then like 30,000 committed suicide in the aftermath of the whole thing. So you sit there celebrating these wars right after, you know, like in the immediate aftermath of them. Netanyahu and Trump were just talking the other day

Starting point is 01:33:48 about when they're going to bomb around next. That thing ain't over at all. But anyway, the point being, Jeb Bush loves Donald Trump now because he's siding with the Warhawks. He's siding with the neocons against his own voters. That's, I mean, I don't know, like, whatever you think about him, you have, there's, you have to respect his ability. Oh, for sure.

Starting point is 01:34:15 Unless, now what about this part? Do you think that, uh, do you think that assassination attempt was real after this much time has passed? The, uh, the Butler, Pennsylvania one? I mean, did you see that reverse camera shot that came up the other day? No, I don't think so. They showed the reverse camera shot of the Butler PA shooting. This was like a new footage that hadn't been shown. Oh, really?

Starting point is 01:34:43 No, I missed that. Yeah, this is just new. Hasn't been shot? Oh, no. Either that or they're covering. We don't know. Either that or they're covering him. We love you.

Starting point is 01:35:00 We love you. We love you. We love you. Now, they've ushers in photographers from the left side of the stage. This is kind of bizarre. Thank you, President Trump. We love you. That is crazy.

Starting point is 01:35:22 The flag was lowered in a position. Is this real? Or is the flag being lowered or is the camera moving? That's a good question. That, if they paused to lower the flag, though, that is, but we are, that everything just feels now like we're living in a kind of like a diorama or something like, we're walking in a total Truman show, it feels like a lot of times. It does, it does feel like, uh, like one of those time travel movies where like you go into the future and everything's wrong. And you're like, oh, someone's got to

Starting point is 01:35:55 go back and fix this. What did we do? Something was supposed to happen different. Dude, Trump, show this a little, go back to that flag lowering. I want to see that part. I mean, that's... Flag is lowered into position. It doesn't look like the camera's moving. Dude, that's crazy. That's crazy.

Starting point is 01:36:17 And it's crazy to think this is how long they were they had this dude up on stage. Like, get him off of the stage. It was crazy. And then it's odd behavior shows how they stage the famous photo. And then he starts moving. The camera people come around.

Starting point is 01:36:30 Like, wouldn't there be people pushing the camera? hammer people away, like whoever could get close to them right now? Well, look, I mean, explain to why his press agent went to grab photographers after shots were fired, then they lower the flag into frame. It's just wild. It is weird.

Starting point is 01:36:47 Also, Trump had the presence of mind to be like, let me make this a photo op one way or the other. I mean, clearly, he said, the first thing he says is wear my shoes. Like, he's like, Trump is so cognizant of being the alpha and like, he's just the ultimate genius marketer so he knows like even in this moment

Starting point is 01:37:07 I got to be strong get my shoes on I'm not walking out of here barefoot you know I'm gonna throw my fist up I'm gonna like like he's so that's like it's amazing how hardwired into you that has to be you know what I mean to have it in a moment like that I've always thought there were just

Starting point is 01:37:22 so many questions about how this could have possibly happened and that are things that are really not answered and it went by fast. And there's, and there seems to be no even, like, desire to get to the bottom of this. Like, we got to figure out what happened, obviously. No. Because the, because the people who are supposed to be figuring out what happened there, it's, it's, if, well, they're making apologies at CBS about how they're going to do better going

Starting point is 01:37:46 forward. If they're the ones, if they are somehow the same ones who created this, yeah, then of course they wouldn't keep looking into it. It would be so, it would, that's, that's at the, that's where you realize it. It's like, oh, of course they wouldn't, they'd have know because you couldn't maintain a real strong enough desire to continue to look into something if you knew there was absolutely nothing there. Yeah. Right? Especially if you had created the falseity.

Starting point is 01:38:11 It's like, bring that back up though. That flag lowering is unbelievable. Bro, they lowered the flag into the shot. That is crazy. Oh, they staged a famous photo. That's crazy. They lowered the flag. And then what are the other things that says

Starting point is 01:38:31 is that how the Secret Service has always been prepared to act after an assassination attempt? That's not even, and that's not even mentioning how his ear apparently re-grew, this new camera angle makes it look really suspicious. I do think it is interesting how they just allowed photographers to get right there. Like, wouldn't you think, what if somebody's coming to stab and what if one of these people? Right, right. Oh, no, you would think you're in a moment of complete chaos and confusion. You have no idea where the threat is. They have no way of knowing if it's a lone gunman. They have no way of knowing whether there's a team of people here, right? I mean, this is. And what happened to that shooter?

Starting point is 01:39:01 Well, they ultimately killed them. Yeah, they took them out. Or they just put some kid on a roofing. If they remember, they said that they couldn't get on the roof because it was too slanted. But then they killed the guy and his body didn't roll off. Even a dead corpse stayed on the roof. It was, all of it made no sense. And then they said he had no internet history.

Starting point is 01:39:25 It is very, very bizarre. This is fun to talk about and look at, huh? It's wild, dude. That flag lowering is bonkers. Yeah, that's a little strange. And the, but the wound to his ear, I mean, bro, how of what are the odds? And also just the way he turned at the moment. I mean, it's the craziest thing ever.

Starting point is 01:39:47 It'd just be like that a shot was coming at him and you just, like you rolled with it. Like, you're a boxer rolling with a punch. Wear my shoes. Yeah, where my. Yeah, bro. I thought he said, where my Jews, too. That's what I thought he said. That would have been crazy if he said that.

Starting point is 01:40:03 And then if someone went, well, obviously, they're here. Yeah, yeah. He's like, just makes sure I got my boys with me, you know? Dude, you know, it's weird and this is totally... But, dude, where are my shoes? Did he have them on? Did they get knocked off or something? I guess, I guess he hit the ground at first, so I guess he lost them in the shuffle of that.

Starting point is 01:40:16 But imagine, first of all, imagine being, going to something like this and wearing shoes that are comfortable and casual enough that you could slip right out of them. You got to have some balls. I'll say this. Whenever Trump does pass away eventually in time, if he does, they got to auction off his balls, dude. They got auction off his balls. He should start thinking about provisions for that.

Starting point is 01:40:39 He's already over the average life expectancy, or right up there, I don't know. They said they were going to put, they were going to create a $250 bill with his face on. You see that? Yeah, probably because all the money he's printing. It'll only be worth 20, but they'll make you a nice Trump bell.

Starting point is 01:40:57 Yeah, the Trump $250 bill refers to the H.R. 1761, the Donald Trump $250 bill act introduced in February 2025, our representative Joe Wilson. Did it pass? The bill proposed an exemption to laws preventing living people on currency, though it's a symbolic proposal. The bill was introduced in the House of Representatives February 2025. Its future in Congress is uncertain. His proposal is often facing. significant legislative hurdles. The U.S. currency denominations haven't gone above $100 for general circulation. You know, I don't know if you feel this way, but I just find myself over the last year just really getting tired of a lot

Starting point is 01:41:41 of this stuff. And like, it'd kind of be like one thing. If Trump was doing all the right things, and then you wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, you'd be like, yeah, okay, sure. You know, like, that's fun. And I like triggering libs as much as the next guy. So, like, that's or let us have a, let us have a game each year, a competition and whoever, whatever country

Starting point is 01:42:01 wins a competition, it's like in America, South America, whoever wins gets to name it, gets to have it for that year. Well, that was a great idea. But it's like now after like, when you're just like kind of like being Israel's bitch and then you're burying the Epstein stuff, but I repeat myself, it's like, and then he goes like, we're renaming it to the Gulf of America. You're like, shut up, dude. Like, give me something serious. Yeah. It starts to feel like you're just insulting me. It's like you start, like, bragging about how you're redoing the White House or how much nicer it looks than when Joe Biden was there. Like, you know, I don't care, man. Like, the average guy, like, people who are making $70,000 a year can't afford to live.

Starting point is 01:42:39 Yeah. You know, like, that's a real thing that we're, we live in a society now. In my, in my grandfather's day, you could just work. My grandfather worked at a factory. That's all he ever did. By the end of his life, I think he had been made floor manager of the factory. But that was his whole life. He just worked in factories.

Starting point is 01:42:55 All his buddies worked in factories. None of their wives worked. They all owned homes. They all had two cars. They played poker on the weekends. They sent their kids to college. They participated in, like, the country, in the ownership class. They owned their house, you know?

Starting point is 01:43:10 Today, a 25-year-old, even if they got a job where they're making 70 grand a year or something like that, they're living with a roommate. You know what I mean? And the chick is working. And they don't know how the hell they're ever going to buy a house. The average house is going for 700 grand. You know no idea how they're... And they're ovulating stressed eggs and then they're making DS down syndrome

Starting point is 01:43:28 children half the time. Yeah, yeah. And those kids are back in the factories. You know what I'm saying? And we don't even know because there's so much goddamn poison around and all the stuff that Bobby Kennedy always talked about.

Starting point is 01:43:39 It's like, I don't know. I don't know any of which one of them was the culprit or not. It's like, is it the fact that we do 50 vaccines now instead of 12 or that there's plastic in our water or that there's all these chemicals? Like I don't know that all our food's over processed and all this shit.

Starting point is 01:43:52 I don't know. But it's bad. We lead the. world in like a disease. Come to America where we don't care if we take care of our health or our like our procreation. Well think about even like right the Epstein thing which look nobody knows exactly and I guess probably will never know exactly like the entire details of what type of intelligence operation this was and even when people say like oh he worked for Mossad or something like that. You're like, well, somebody doing what Jeffrey Epstein was doing wouldn't have been like

Starting point is 01:44:27 an employee of the Mossad. You know what I mean? They would have had an actor outside. We know already that he was organizing meetings for the Mossad and Russian like oligarchs. We know that Ehud Barak was coming over and like staying at his house and stuff. And that, you know, that Alan Dershowitz was his confidant and his lawyer. He's all tied up with Israel in the Israel lobby. But so if it is what it looks like, which is like, are you telling me that like a foreign government that, by the way, is our welfare state that art, we pay portions of our taxes to every year, you're saying they ran an op to rape American children, American girls to compromise people, or at least there were American girls raped in the process of this network of events and that you're covering

Starting point is 01:45:16 that up? Like, and then you're going to sit here and tell me about how you redid the White House or something, and I'm supposed, or even just like the moment, like when he called the reporter a fat pig, like he called some female recorder a fat pig. And then you're just kind of like, dude, you're a scumbag. Piggy, whatever.

Starting point is 01:45:33 But he's like, you're a scumbag, dude. And it was over an Epstein question. Was it? Tense exchange that President Trump had with the press aboard Air Force One is now going viral. It stems from the words that he chose to try to get a female reporter to stop asking questions

Starting point is 01:45:49 about the Epstein file. Here's the clip. Yeah, Jennifer, go ahead. And, go ahead. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Beguyen.

Starting point is 01:45:58 Oh, so dark. That was Catherine Lucy. Yeah, that shows like a, there's a nastiness to Donald Trump. And when it's harnessed the right way, we all loved it because the people he was taken on were so evil. And so when Hillary Clinton goes, good thing. Someone with your temperament's never president. And he goes, because you'd be in jail. We're like, yeah, dude.

Starting point is 01:46:17 Get her, you know? But then you turn it around and like, look. This wasn't someone in the liberal media asking you about Russiagate for the 19,000th time. And you're like, shut up. She was asking a totally legitimate question. Like, sir, you campaigned on releasing these files. Your FBI director and deputy FBI director and attorney general all told the American people they were going to. She asked a totally reasonable question about the files.

Starting point is 01:46:43 And then he just goes to this vicious, like, insult. And I don't know. Look, I know there's a lot of people out there still support Donald Trump. That's fine. But, like, I'm out. I just don't. I can't. I can't defend that shit.

Starting point is 01:46:55 I mean, no, it would be crazy if the lady had a name tag on that said piggy, right? That would, if there was another angle that then showed that. And you go, oh, man. This is like one of those videos where I blame the cop. But then I saw that the guy had a knife. Oh, shit. It's almost like a family guy. We're like, quiet.

Starting point is 01:47:12 And then after people go, oh, you see Trump go, it was Piggy. This is her name. I was just, I don't know. Or if it was Halloween or something, you know. She's dressed up as Miss Piggy. Yeah, that's the only way that I think that would have made sense. I'll apologize if that, if that information comes out. That just, I think that irked me because, like, it was like,

Starting point is 01:47:35 you start to assume, okay, maybe the girl's thick or like a, you know, or has some thighs or something like that, maybe. Right. Or it just isn't a body style that he likes. And so that that's why he was, like, trying to find us. Yeah, yeah. You think, like, he was trying to say the thing that'll have her crying tonight when she gets home or whatever. One thing that would hurt her feelings.

Starting point is 01:47:55 And everybody hates that. And also, but it's just over, it's clearly in that example, it's over his defensiveness. Yeah. His insecurity, that this isn't going well for him and that he's covering something up and he looks bad. But it just seemed. Yeah. You remember when Elon said, when him and Elon had their split? And that was the thing Elon went to.

Starting point is 01:48:15 That was his go-to when he got real furious. He goes, oh, yeah, well, let me tell you something. It was like your girlfriend saying you have a little dick when you break up or something like that. His go-to was you're Trump's in the Epstein files, and that's why they haven't come out. And that was before he made his whole move to, like, publicly try to cover them up. And I do, I got to say, does make you wonder, does make you wonder what exactly did Donald Trump do. He definitely knew the guy. He definitely partied with the guy.

Starting point is 01:48:41 And he's on record. I don't know if you ever seen this. A videotape of him talking about how Jeffrey Epstein likes the ladies young. Like he knew something about that Do your best to find it They have the quote I've known Jeffrey I've seen for 15 years Terrific guy he has a lot of fun to be with

Starting point is 01:48:56 He likes the beautiful women as much as I do And many of them are on the younger side From 2002 I'm almost positive I have seen it on video But that's the statement But still like A really weird things to say about a guy

Starting point is 01:49:11 Who six years later gets convicted For soliciting an underage prostitute Like Yeah It makes you wonder what type of control these higher entities have, right? Yeah. Because do they do something like that with Trump where they say, okay, we're going to, we have a bullet that's so accurate. Because who knows, maybe they used a drone, right?

Starting point is 01:49:32 You know what I'm saying? And had it 20 feet off or hidden behind the, you don't know. They could have, you know, they could have done something like that and just said, okay, if you don't do this, if you don't, whenever this phone rings, if you don't pick it up and do it. whatever said, you're going to die, right? You have to just wonder what kind of things are they using, because that could be the ultimate thing. You know, I'm saying? We're going to harm someone from your family.

Starting point is 01:49:55 Yeah. Well, it's something people have always wondered about because, you know, you get people who, like, we know, right? We know for a fact that these are people who will lie the country into war. You know, like, so these are people who are comfortable with, like, like killing a whole lot of innocent people for an agenda. And in fact, I think like Henry Kissinger even kind of said, like his whole worldview was that once you rise to the upper echelons of power, there's no such thing as like morality anymore. This is like a grand

Starting point is 01:50:36 chessboard kind of, you know? And so like once you look at things like that, like just think about like if you were, you were like, if you're willing to make the decision to send Israel more weapons after you've seen what they're doing with those weapons or even you'll go over there and like Nikki Haley autograph a bomb that's about to go be dropped out like even if you even if you somehow supported what Israel was doing which I don't know how you could but even if you did like you'd go look it's so horrible that they have to do this but they've got to get Hamas out or more people will end up dying or something you know whatever your rationalization or justification was you still recognize a lot of these bombs are dropping on kids I'm not going to

Starting point is 01:51:14 autograph it. There's something like, it's so tasteless and evil. But so you're already that type of person. What else would they do to control people? Well, it seems like Killen's not off limits. So it does make you wonder, like what, and we know some things like from history.

Starting point is 01:51:31 Like we know the way, say, like the FBI was blackmail and Jack Kennedy, where they were basically. Were they? Yeah, they, uh, yeah, yeah, it's all, it's all been like a, um, well reported on and documented. that um in fact jack kennedy you mean

Starting point is 01:51:46 john of kennedy yeah so in fact even in the in the movie that they did they had because his wife's an exam was jack kennedy Jackie Kennedy yes yes yes but they called him jack uh for that was his nickname but uh no they they um what's his name um the head of the FBI

Starting point is 01:52:02 um oh the JFK movie uh Hoover um John Edgar Hoover like presented Bobby Kennedy was the attorney general and he presented him with a whole long, like, a document, all the women that JFK was cheating on his wife with. And then gave him a like, you know, don't worry. There's, we have all of this.

Starting point is 01:52:24 We'll make sure it doesn't get out, you know. Hey, who are you thinking of nominating for a FBI director? Because I'm thinking you do me again, you know, like, they did. And he just had, and so there's all types of different levels of that shit. And you know what's messed up, dude, is like it's dark and it's twisted, but some of it also sounds kind of like, there's an excitement. And there's a there's an addiction about the nefariousness. Yeah, I think so. There's something tantalizing about it, you know? And I bet there's something I bet that's true with just power, right? You know, like just the power has got to be a drug. Everything must just be when I was when I first started stand up. So this would be like I started in like late 2006 and this was somewhere in 2008. So I'd been doing comedy for like two years and it was my first road gig that I ever did. Uh, Jay O'Kerson brought up. me, and it was in Detroit at a Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle. And they, at the time, like, none of us had, none of us sold tickets or anything like that,

Starting point is 01:53:22 but they papered the room. So it was a full room. And I had only, I had maybe been in front of like 70 to 100 people in, like, my biggest shows. And this was a 350-seat room, papered, I was super nervous, but they were an unbelievable crowd. Like, it was easy. They were just white, I was a brand-new comic, you know, it was probably doing, like,

Starting point is 01:53:40 kind of horrid jokes, but, like, they worked and I was getting less, but I had never done a room of like 350 people and they were hot they were just white hot they just loved everything it was easy and just the i remember the feeling of just killing with a room of 350 people which i had never experienced before and it be almost like just being like intoxicating you know like oh just like you know it's just so great and like almost like there's nothing i could do in life right now that could ever recreate that because you know there's something about being a new comic too that like even doing like a big room now it's still fun it's still great but it's not quite like that first when you're so nervous and then it's so awesome and then it's so.

Starting point is 01:54:17 But so like imagine the feeling of power when you could like move nations. You know, like you could make a decision. And I'll tell you there's this tape of Hillary Clinton right after they overthrew Omar Gaddafi, which was her big, they called it Hillary's War. It was she was, and even Barack Obama in his memoir said she was really the one who pushed him over the edge.

Starting point is 01:54:39 He was like 50-50 about it. Hillary Clinton really got him to do it. And they wanted this to be the thing she ran on. Against Iran? No, this is against Libya. This is when they overthrew a more Qaddafi in Libya. And she comes, and this is when you might remember, there's like her famous thing where she goes, she goes, we came, we saw, he's dead.

Starting point is 01:54:58 Ha ha! And then just starts cackling, laughing. And you can see in her the sociopathic excitement that she just overthrew a government of a nation. Like, and now Libya has been a failed state ever since and probably hundreds of thousands of people have died and there's open air slave. market still to this day. And even by the time she was running for president in 2016, she couldn't run on this anymore because it was five years later and the whole thing was a

Starting point is 01:55:20 disaster already. But look at the happiness in her face. Look at the excitement. So, I mean, that is the land of unconcerned. Yes, we came, we saw, he died. Did it have anything to do with your business? I mean, she's talking about a human, however you feel about Murmark Gaddafi, you was a rough dictator. She's like about a human being who was dragged through a street by. an angry mob and sodomized to death. Like, I'm just saying most normal human beings would have at least a thing in them

Starting point is 01:55:50 where you're like, you probably aren't cackling about that. Yeah. Like a couple days after it happened. Yeah, I just, I guess there's another world where it's like, it's just dark up there. But yeah, people are toppling nations. People are thinking about world power and world control. Moving trillions of dollars around, you know?

Starting point is 01:56:08 Like, it's a, so there's an element of that. And then, you know, there's obviously an element of like there are ideologues. Like there are people who believe things. Like the guy David Wormser who wrote the clean break strategy who I was arguing with, he believes things. Like he's got a worldview, right? So he's a Jewish neoconservative who believes that the relationship between Israel and the

Starting point is 01:56:29 U.S. is in our interest and all of these things and believes that Israel is the cradle of Western civilization and that if we topple these regimes, it will improve the region. But the reason why a guy like David Wormser can go to Washington, D.C. and actually get things done isn't really because everyone there is an ideologue. It's because weapons companies will fund the think tanks that produce that type of bullshit. Right. Even though it's the dumbest shit ever. His whole plan was that like they would install a Hashemite in Iraq and that the Shiites of Iraq would have to listen to the Hashemites. It's all ridiculous. It's like they're like a, it's like a Muslim lineage that's

Starting point is 01:57:13 supposedly is royalty or something like that. Like the King of Jordan is a Hashemite. They're originally from Saudi Arabia. I forget the whole story. But they're not native to Jordan. They're Arabs. But anyway, the whole plan is ridiculous. But the reason why like Bill Crystal, like all the neocons, their think tanks were

Starting point is 01:57:29 funded by like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, it wasn't because those guys believed in any of it is business. It's just like, yeah, there's going to be another war. We'll get to sell a whole bunch of weapons to the government and rip them off, you know, and make hundreds of billions of dollars. So, like, it's not, so like, I don't know, there's just all these things going on at once, and I don't know exactly how they control everybody, but it sure is interesting watching all those guys. You know, you just like, you watch Cash Patel on a podcast and then Cash Patel, you know, when he's in power. And man, are they different people?

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Starting point is 01:58:55 Eligibility restrictions apply. See Golden Nuggettcasino.com for details. Please play responsibly. It's wild. I mean, the wildest thing to me is how kind of accessible everything kind of seems. it's like the fact that like comedians or trying to be comedians well we're comedians you know

Starting point is 01:59:18 comedians like ourselves or people that have started a podcast at some point that the fact that we're all that I don't know sometimes it just blows my mind well it's crazy that we're involved in it somehow

Starting point is 01:59:30 not involved like in an egotistical way like we have something but it's like yeah it's just like what the fuck are we doing dude we and it's it's only because the news just completely fucking shit itself

Starting point is 01:59:41 Well, there was a weird thing that happened at the exact same time. There were these two phenomenons where number one was that the media had like been exposed in a really big way. And there were a lot of issues they were exposed on, but I do think the two most devastating ones to them were COVID and Biden's senility. Because the two things are that number one, like I mean there was WMDs in Iraq really degraded. the institutions and things like that, the Obama recovery. There were a lot of things. Russia Gate was a big thing. But like if you look at, say, I remember arguing with people about this.

Starting point is 02:00:21 A couple of people who I like and respect, but I was arguing with them about. So when I was supporting Trump in 2024, they were like, dude, what are you doing? You had all these criticism of Trump's first term. He did all these bad things. And now you're supporting them. And I was like, look, man, this is going to destroy the corporate media. And that's like the most important thing in America right now. what they said, their counter to me, and at the time, we were guessing, because we didn't

Starting point is 02:00:45 know where this was going to go, but their counter was, they go, yeah, but Dave, last time Donald Trump came in, the media ratings actually went through the roof. Like MSNBC and CNN got higher ratings out in 2016 when Trump came in. And I was like, yeah, but that's because of Russiagate. They got everyone to watch because they said they had this bombshell story. And then that turned into nothing. But the big difference now is after COVID and after Biden being senile, no one trusts those guys anymore. So they're not going to come back. And I turned out to be right about that prediction. Like the numbers didn't go back up this time. And so anyway, there is something there where, like, COVID affected everybody. It wasn't like the war in Iraq. Like, yeah, you kind of know they lied

Starting point is 02:01:28 us into war and a whole bunch of people over there died. And maybe if you know someone who went over and served, you know, and if you're lower on the socioeconomic scale, you're more likely to know someone. But, like, a lot of people don't know anyone who went over to Iraq. And it didn't really happen here. It happened over there, you know? And yeah, we deal with the occasional terrorist attack or something like that. But, like, it did. But COVID affected everybody's life directly.

Starting point is 02:01:49 And it all got proven to be bullshit. And then Joe Biden, it was just, you don't need to pick up a book or even read an article to look at Joe Biden and the average guy could just go, yeah, this guy clearly has lost it. And you're lying to me. And so that happened at the same time, the media blew every major crisis of the 21st century. lied through their teeth and were exposed. And the technology got to a point where essentially you could have,

Starting point is 02:02:14 you would have needed like a multi-million dollar budget to have a studio in a show just a decade ago or two decades ago. Whereas now, now we live in an environment where some random guy can just post something and then he'll have like the CEO of the daily wire going, this kid's a bigot. Did you see that the, not the CEO,

Starting point is 02:02:36 It was the, like, some title, some higher up at the Daily Wire, tweeted some kid, just some kid who made like a video. He had asked a question at a turning point event and then made some video. And then he goes, look at the Nazi youth scum. So like some regular, like the point is when we were younger, it would have been impossible for you to even get the attention of that guy. Oh, if you'd ever got, who was the guy on the today show, the black guy? kind of chubby, lost a lot of weight.

Starting point is 02:03:07 Oh, yeah, yeah, Al Roker. Yeah, you would have never been able to get Al Roker's attention. No, you can't talk to Al Roker, that's Al Roker, dude. It's Al fucking Roker, dude. Yeah, it's like, that's Al! Yeah, like, maybe you would see a famous person on the street one day, and that'd be, like, exciting. But the idea that now some kid, some 25-year-old, like, right-wing kid

Starting point is 02:03:28 could get, like, a journalist at the New York Times, furious. You know, and like, and even this story, which I got to say, I am a little bit skeptical of the kid Shirley, I think is his name, right? Because I saw one, because I did see the other day that CBS, I believe it was, did send a camera crew down to one of those places that he claims were, and there were kids there and stuff. And they should, so it was all, it was not exactly what he was representing it to be. I do think there's probably widespread fraud there. But I'm just saying making the point that this guy, at least to me, was an unknown, unknown entity as of last week. he got like, last I had seen it was over a hundred million views on the video. And so it's not CNN who's breaking that story.

Starting point is 02:04:09 It's not NBC or CBS. Nobody believes them anymore. They've lost their credibility. I mean, they're sitting here semi-apologizing for not even really apologizing, just saying, kind of mildly admit something. Like, shouldn't there be a class action lawsuit against them? Yeah. Is there any code of liability?

Starting point is 02:04:30 Like, could there be a class action? action lawsuit against them against for just yeah well that's right it's not even like you go to jail or there's a lawsuit but how about just like mass firings yeah resignation something no instead and then for anyone paying attention you're like dude we know what just happened the israel lobby just purchased you barry wice is now in charge because you guys are bleeding support you're you're not even in the business of news you're in the business of an agenda yeah obviously right like it's almost like so I don't even like, sometimes with people like Barry Weiss and Ben Shapiro and all these guys, people who are certainly not fans of mine. But it's like, I would at least just appreciate, just admit you're the Israel lobby. Then at least we could have an honest conversation. At least admit your priority here is Israel. And then we could talk about like. And pro just skewing things pro Israel. Yes. Like they just had those announcements of like that they need. Who was the guy who just said we have to adjust social media? Are we going to lose the First Amendment?

Starting point is 02:05:34 Do you see that guy? Oh, yeah, right, yes, yes. I did, I did see the video in bookmarked. I forget what the guy's title was. But also just these people are like so concerned about, they'll be like, you know, there's this rise of anti-Semitism. And like, fair enough, I personally, and maybe I'm biased because I'm Jewish, so maybe I'm not, you know, the one to speak on this.

Starting point is 02:05:53 But like, personally, I've always been very critical of Israel and the Israel lobby. But I'm not, like, critical of Jews. I have regular people or regular people. and you shouldn't judge individuals based on groups. I'm against collectivism, unlike Soranamam Dani. Like, I don't, I'm an individualist. But if you're real concerned that there's a rise in hatred toward Jews, isn't it kind of reasonable to go, like,

Starting point is 02:06:16 maybe you shouldn't have prominent Jews out there saying, we're going to repeal the First Amendment? Like, maybe that's not helpful? Yeah, I don't know if this does help. I mean, I just don't understand why this guy, Just an Israel cybersecurity billionaire, Shlomo Kramer, says it's time to limit the First Amendment. We need to control all the social platforms and take control of what they are saying. Let's see this.

Starting point is 02:06:40 I know it's difficult to hear, but it's time to limit the first amendment in order to protect it and quickly before it's too late. What do you mean? I mean that we need to control the platforms, all the social platforms. we need to stack rank the authenticity of every person that expresses themselves online and take control over what they are saying based on that ranking. The government. The government should control the social media. Yeah, that's what you want to hear out of a thick, out of a thick Israeli accent.

Starting point is 02:07:19 But fuck anybody who says that kind of thing. Yeah, that's right. No, you're my enemy now. Yeah, you're the enemy, dude. You're going to control what we say in. But this is a crazy part, to protect the First Amendment. It's George W. Bush's line about the free market, is he said when they asked him about the banker bailouts.

Starting point is 02:07:35 I thought you were supposed to be a free market guy. Now all of a sudden you like socialism when it's big banks that fail. And he said, I had to abandon the free market to save the free market. That sure is a nice way of saying nothing. Actually, you just abandon it. You didn't save it at all. You just bailed out a bunch of rich bankers. And actually, government taking control of what people are allowed and not allowed to say

Starting point is 02:07:56 isn't preserving the First Amendment. That's just, this is straight up Orwellian newspeak. But it's, we're just, everything is, there's, there's this,

Starting point is 02:08:06 it's, there's another level of control. It's, I think like it's never been more obvious that there's another level of control. But, but also that people are nervous, because I don't know if you'd have a guy

Starting point is 02:08:17 saying this sort of thing. I mean, a lot of social, they're freaking out. A lot of social platforms. I know TikTok just got bought by, um, Ellison,

Starting point is 02:08:25 um, from Oracle, and there's a lot of concern that they're going to try and, you know, limit or dictate what can be said on there, you know? Yeah. Well, that's what, look, I mean, that's what all of this is about. And this is kind of what I meant by, like, at least just be honest with it. Look, like, the reason this guy's saying this, and the reason they just bought TikTok, and the reason Barry Weiss was just installed at CBS News is all for one obvious reason,

Starting point is 02:08:53 Which, it's the letter that Charlie Kirk wrote to Benjamin Netanyahu, and Benjamin Netanyahu, right after Charlie Kirk got murdered, read a couple lines from that letter, but he didn't read the whole letter. Did he write him a letter? I don't even know that. Yeah, so the letter basically says, we're getting killed out here. The Israel side is getting annihilated. Dear Mr. Prime Minister, one of my greatest joys as a Christian is advocating for Israel and forming alliances of the Jews in the fight to protect Judeo-Christian civilization. So Netanyahu reads that part. You know, then it doesn't mention any of the rest of this.

Starting point is 02:09:25 Most recently, I'm proud to have taken over Ambassador Huckabee's show on TBN, where we continually support Israel and the Jewish people. My team and I have spent months analyzing these trends into debating ideas that could help you in your country push back against the disturbing developments. Anti-Israel sentiment can undermine American support for Israel. The purpose is letters to lay out your concerns and outline. If you get down to it later, I mean, he just,

Starting point is 02:09:50 he basically, what he's, he's just saying here is like, listen, he has a whole proposal for what Israel has to do for their new PR strategy, but he's very brutally honest. And he's like, you guys are getting killed with the young people here. And so anyway, that's just the point, is that all of this, that's why you're talking about limiting the First Amendment, because everyone's talking about how evil the Israeli regime is. Everyone's talking about how much undue influence they have over our government. Right, so why not just be, to be honest about that. This is what, like, I wish they would just tell us why we pay Israel every year, right?

Starting point is 02:10:22 Like, and I know some of it is that they just buy weapons, and it seems like it's like this, it's like a lot of defense and technology stuff. And, and that's a lot of it. It's not like we just send the money there. But, I mean, we do send the money there, but then it's used to buy weapons. You know, it's like part of a... A percentage of it is spent on our military company. So, yes, a percentage of it is redistributed from the working class in America to Israel.

Starting point is 02:10:44 But don't worry, a percentage of that is also redistributed from the working class to big weapons companies. So if that makes you feel better. so that they can use those weapons to drop bombs on behalf of Israel on like Houthis in Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East. Right. And then they can sell new weapons to our government. And then we can also weaponize those countries to fight back against us.

Starting point is 02:11:04 Right. Right, right, right. Oh, and also, you know, and look, I mean, it's the same, it's the crazy thing with like these, these guys celebrating the success of Venezuela. You're like, look, dude, the war, we just had an Afghan who murdered a few American citizens, right? because he was one of the people who was a collaborator with us in Afghanistan. And so we felt we had to protect him by bringing them in, as we brought in a whole bunch of them here.

Starting point is 02:11:28 And also, who was a collaborator with us in a war means what? He was a 20-year-old who grew up in a war. So, yeah, there's a whole bunch of like PTSD and crazy shit going on there, too. How many of those are we going to have out of Venezuela? The answer is we don't know. We don't know. It's a total guest. Yeah, right.

Starting point is 02:11:45 Oh, yeah. No, and I'm real, I am real concerned about that stuff too, man, Because this is, this is what motivated a whole lot of the terrorism problem that we've had to deal with from the very beginning. And so you think you're going to just fund and arm this genocide for two straight years. There's a whole bunch of people who really do hate our guts over that. But regular humans like us, regular American people are the ones that suffer because we're the ones out on the street that are walking somewhere. If there's a mass shooting, like these rich people, these fancy or, you know, like these elites, they never deal with anything like that. you know like they're all have security and are protected it's like it's the everyday person out on the

Starting point is 02:12:21 street he's got to worry about some psychos you know going off well that's but that's the whole thing dude too about the nature of our decadent elites that's so infuriating and there's so many examples like this right where like even during covid if you could think about like how much their lecture and everybody else for not wearing a mask but then you see gavin newsome or you see nancy Pelosi she ain't wearing a mask they're at a fancy restaurant yucking it up right but it's people who They live in gated communities, but they call you a racist if you believe in a strong border. They got armed security, but they believe in gun control for you. You know, they destroy public schools, but they send their kids to fancy private schools.

Starting point is 02:13:00 So they don't got it's like they don't got to suffer any of the ramifications of the hell on earth that they bring for all these other people. And obviously like the biggest victims here are the Palestinian people. But yeah, it's also the American taxpayer who gets ripped off. And we also open, look, Muhammad Atta, who was the lead hijacker, right, who flew into the North Tower, he was radicalized when Israel slaughtered a bunch of people in Lebanon. You signed up with Osama bin Laden that week, I believe. It's like this is one of the main, it was one of the biggest grievances that Osama bin Laden had, was your support for Israel and what they do to the Palestinian people. His other grievance. In his letter to America, I believe it was in there.

Starting point is 02:13:40 And he had two declarations of war against America, which I think were even more interesting. than the letter to America. But he lists his grievances very clear. He didn't like that we had our bases in Saudi Arabia. And why did we have our bases in Saudi Arabia for the dual containment policy against Iraq and Iran? Well, who needed Iraq and Iran contained? You know?

Starting point is 02:13:58 Like, it's always, and so it's like we do this at our own peril. Yeah. It's almost like the elites. They just, they open up like the game of life and we're all the pieces. And we're all the like, and they're just playing this thing. Like, it's not even real to them. Oh, it's your turn. Yeah, go to the community.

Starting point is 02:14:14 community chest, get some money out of there. Oh, go over there. You want some houses? Sure, selling. You want some oil, get a railroad, whatever you need. Oh, your dad, oh, whatever. Oh, it's just so crazy. Yeah, but like you said, it is more, it's so much more exposed now than ever before. It is.

Starting point is 02:14:29 And that's what makes the, that's what makes the time so interesting. Yeah, I will say this, it's interesting. This year is going to be interesting. Do you think that things get even crazier this year, or do you think, because I do think there becomes a level of kind of like exhaustion, right? and it becomes a level of like, we're not going to get any truth. We're not going to get,

Starting point is 02:14:49 and then truth, people who are trying to seek truth, right, are trying to share truth, that they're not even going to be able to be allowed to put their information out there. I think, that's probably the biggest fear of this year for me. It's hard to make predictions.

Starting point is 02:15:06 I don't know I'm saying me. I'm just saying for other people. No, I understand what you're saying. I think it's hard to make predictions because so many crazy things happen. and so many things are going to happen. So like now, right, okay, well, what happens with Venezuela? That's a huge question mark,

Starting point is 02:15:20 and that's going to have a huge impact on where the rest of this year goes. But where things are right now, my best guess is at the end of this year in November, I think the Democrats are going to destroy the Republicans in the midterm elections. And I think they're going to run and win on affordability.

Starting point is 02:15:42 which has been this, you know, which I hate the term, because it's like, they literally just like, it's price inflation. We already had a term for this. It's debasement of currency. Now you come along and you make some other term and then you go, oh, and the answer is socialism. So the answer is we need more government, even though the whole problem is that we have so much government, we can't afford it. We have to print the money. So like, I think they've got it completely backward. But at the end of the day, that's actually what people care about, man. People are getting killed out here. What they actually care about is that it's like, you know, I talked to my father-in-law who's a truck driver and has been a trucker for 50 years or something like

Starting point is 02:16:20 that. And he's, you talk to him, you know, he's like, listen, I see how much taxes they're taken out of my paycheck every week. And the price of everything just goes up and up and up. That's what he wants to talk about. You know what I mean? Like that's what the entire working class of America's thinking about. As a Trump could sit here and bread. that he degraded Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program

Starting point is 02:16:44 no one cares no one cares like the to the extent that people care were against it and even the people who are for it's not

Starting point is 02:16:52 so I just think as of right now he hasn't delivered nearly enough he overpromised like crazy and the Ukraine war on day one you know all these things which I think he's tried to at least do that but he's failed so far and so unless he can rack up some wins

Starting point is 02:17:08 like some real clear W for the American people, not I liberated the Venezuelans, which no one believes was actually the goal anyway. And the last thing we want as a people here is to have the, now there's like this stress of like, okay, well, what do we have to do to take care of them now? What's that going to cost us?

Starting point is 02:17:27 Right, right. Where were they, you know, like, what were they really doing? What are you guys really trying to do here? It's just like, it's just whatever. It's a shame to me because also like, look like, if you take Zoron, Mom Dani, who just got sworn as the mayor, of New York, right?

Starting point is 02:17:41 Like, they, it was such a funny thing, man, because they, first off, they ran Cuomo against him of all the people. Like, he was the establishment figure, the murderer governor who, like, killed all these old people and locked down the city and just had all this baggage. And then he's also a huge Israel supporter, a friend of Netanyahu's and all that.

Starting point is 02:18:03 And so they thought the way to attack Mom Dani was to go, like, he won't even commit to visiting Israel. And you were like, dude, everyone hates Israel right now. Like, what? So, but in his speech the other day, he has this line that, of course, a bunch of the conservatives are flipping out about, but he said we're going to, something like, we're going to shake off rugged individualism in favor of collectivism. And I just find it so interesting that the guy, the one guy who's run for mayor, it's not

Starting point is 02:18:30 a position that matters for foreign policy, but he would at least, you know, I don't like socialism and I don't like wokeism. And he was one of each. but he at least stuck up for the poor Palestinians a little bit and I kind of liked that but it's so funny to hear that guy embrace collectivism

Starting point is 02:18:45 when like hey you want to see collectivism look at Gaza that's collectivism that's collective punishment that in fact what is the defense oh here you want to play the clip yeah play the clip

Starting point is 02:18:55 we will draw this city closer together we will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism if our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat. Well, let me, let me say my point. So the, look, when I say

Starting point is 02:19:17 what's going on in Gaza is collectivism, what the number, and I've done like a bunch of debates on Israel, Palestine over the last couple of years, like, you know, dozens of them. And the number one defense, I'm sure you've heard this back to, right? Like, the number one thing that an Israel defender would say to you is don't start a war. You know, they'll go, this is war. Yeah, innocent people are dying. It's terrible, but it's war. And Hamas started the war, and this is what happens when you start the war, and therefore,

Starting point is 02:19:48 it's on Hamas, right? And so, like, no, look, there's a lot of things wrong with that defense. Like, part of it is that, like, okay, yeah, but what about a brutal 60-year occupation? What about being kept as permanent refugees for 80 years? What about you killing a whole bunch of people? Like, who really started it? But the most fundamental thing that's wrong with saying that's why you don't start a war is that the people we're talking about didn't start a war. But two-year-old girl didn't start a war.

Starting point is 02:20:13 What are you talking about, man? Yeah. This mother who's who just lost her child is she didn't start a war. She just, you got, half the people in guys are kids. They didn't start anything. They just got fucked. They just got born into hell, you know? Like that, they didn't start anything.

Starting point is 02:20:29 And so collectivism is like saying, oh, you're collectively responsible. No, you guys, as a you guys started this war. You go, that's just what bigotry is, man. That's just blaming everybody for the sins of one group. That's saying a black guy mugged me the other day, therefore blacks mugged me the other day. Like, no, they didn't. There's some other black dude had nothing to do with that who is just getting blamed for that, you know? And so it's interesting to see the guy, say, like, oh, we'll shake out.

Starting point is 02:20:56 Actually, individualism is the reason why. What Israel's doing is wrong. It's collectivism is what would justify it. What do you think will be different with him in officer as mayor? And do you also think, some people think he, he's actually for the opposition, really. I don't know. Do you ever see, he had one of my favorite woke tweets of all time.

Starting point is 02:21:19 What was the, did you ever see the, it's the defunding the police queer liberation? If you just look that up, Mamdani, defunding the police queer, Queer Liberation. I believe the tweet still hasn't been deleted. It's the, it's a great, like a woke ad, uh, madlib. Queer liberation means defund the police.

Starting point is 02:21:41 Zohran mom doddy. Like, he was real into that woke shit back then. I just love, it really does feel like you just picked out woke words and put them all together. Um, but that's, I don't think, I think this guy's just kind of like an intellectual lightweight and, uh, kind of goofy. I don't think he actually gets that much done in New York City as my guess. I can't imagine.

Starting point is 02:22:04 But maybe. I don't think any of it's good. If he gets any of his plans through, it ain't going to be good. Well, you know what I like? I think, and this is just my perception, right? I can be totally wrong. What I liked about him was, I just felt like he was the underdog. Well, that is true.

Starting point is 02:22:18 No, he was. He was, and the entire establishment was against him. That's the thing that always gets me. It's like, are you the underdog? Well, I get that impulse, and I do, I share that too. And that could be a trap. I was kind of rooting for him to some degree too because of that same dynamic. I guess it's just like the problem is that like essentially the Republicans endorse a whole bunch of socialism.

Starting point is 02:22:41 You know, like there's a we have giant entitlement programs that, you know, Social Security and Medicare. They're actually both of those programs are socialist programs, but there's socialist programs that redistribute money from a poorer group to a wealthier group, which is pretty indefensible when you think about it. Like, young people are poorer than the old people that they have to work to pay their Social Security and Medicare payments for. That's pretty wild. But they're assuming that it's them. Yeah. Supposedly. But what's actually happening is you're transferring wealth from a poor to a richer group with the promise of, like, you'll get some back one day.

Starting point is 02:23:14 Medicaid is actually a welfare program that redistributes from working people to poorer people. But they're giant socialist programs. The military itself is a giant socialist program. It's a big government program. So the Republicans endorse a ton of socialism, you know, and then the Democrats, whenever the Republicans, you know, lead to disaster, they go, well, what we need is even more. What we need is even more government, even more socialism. And there's just what America really needs is Ron Paul, who's, you know, just turned 90, and I think he's got one more presidential run in him. But I'm not sure.

Starting point is 02:23:50 He might be done. I don't know. His emails are getting. But look, the point is the real. Look, I love Ron Paul. But his emails are getting a little bit. They need a spell check and you can tell. All right.

Starting point is 02:24:03 Listen, that's fair. The guy's not perfect, but he's the closest to it. Look, he could be perfect. I'm just saying he's got to spell check his shit. Okay, fair enough. But also, we just went through the Biden thing. I don't think you can push an old person like that. No, I'm just, I was, I'm joking about him being, he's not running for president again.

Starting point is 02:24:17 But Ron Paul was right about everything. He was right about just about everything. And he's, and the real answer to all of this stuff is actually Americanism. Like true Americanism. the best part of Americanism, which was always, and that's why that Israeli guy talking about limiting the First Amendment so infuriating. The best, what America needs is the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, what we were always supposed to be, what we abandoned long ago. That's actually what we need. And, you know, I saw a good friend of mine who

Starting point is 02:24:48 I love and really, really respect, who I think is brilliant, Darrell Cooper. And he was saying on Twitter today that like he goes dude it's not even point it's pointless to make the argument that this war in Venezuela was unconstitutional you know he goes it's a pointless argument to make because we've shredded the constitution years ago and we've already accepted that presidents have these these war powers and so like I mean I don't want to mischaracterize what he was saying but I think it was essentially something like that like the argument just rings hollow but I just kind of respectfully disagree where I'm like no man like we either have the constitution or we don't and it's a whole lot better to have it and could anyone read the Constitution and actually this is where he said stop whining about the action

Starting point is 02:25:28 in Venezuela being unjustified or unconstitutional or whatever you look weak and might as well be complaining that it doesn't follow Hamarabi's code Trump knows that American leaders are judged about whether they win or lose nothing else now look he's right about that to an extent right like if Venezuela turns around tomorrow and is a bastion of freedom or something like that then that's a huge win for Donald Trump and he's going to be able to brag and people will go oh Dave you care about morality in the Constitution but this worked So, like, he's right about that. But the point is that it's like, dude, if you just, like, the Constitution claims to be the law of the land.

Starting point is 02:26:03 The Constitution is what created this government. So if you're going to accept that they don't have to live under that own Constitution, which they put a hand on the Bible and a hand in the air who swear. Our politicians, Donald Trump, the political class who swears to God in front of all of us that they will uphold and defend this document. Like, I'm not arguing any of us are bound by the Constitution. But they are. They swore an oath to it. You know what I mean? Yeah, they went into politics. That's their... Yes, their obligation in front of their nation and in front of God was to defend and protect the Constitution. And you can't tell me, dude, that it's constitutional for a country that clearly poses no threat to us, even if the drug accusations were true. It's not like an immediate... It's not there's nuclear missiles lined up on Cuba and the president has to take action.

Starting point is 02:26:50 It's you had all the time in the world to come to Congress to have a debate about this. and for our elected representative government to, you know, like vote how they feel about the war, make their arguments to their kids. But if you're telling me that our, the legal justification that they're going with is that he's not the president. That's what Marco Rubio said. No, we didn't get the president of Venezuela. We just got some drug dealer. He's just a gangster.

Starting point is 02:27:14 He's not the president. That was Marco Rubio tweeted today. That's the, like, dude, come on. This is so illegal. This is so unconstitutional. And if you're just going to sit back and allow a government to be that, like, Okay. Well, that government who can violate the Constitution against Venezuela is powerful enough to violate every American citizen's rights as well. Yeah, it's weird. It's like we, you have to, if you stand up for it, you have to stand up for it, you know?

Starting point is 02:27:35 That's right. And also, one thing that was interesting was whenever Ken Burns was here, we talked about the declaration of it. Oh, this is a secretary Marco Rubio right here. It says Maduro is not the president of Venezuela and his regime is not the legitimate government. Maduro is the head of the Cartel de Los Solis, a narco-terror organization, which has taken possession of a country. and he is under indictment for pushing drugs into the United States. Who's he, he's being indicted by us. But what proof do we have that he is the head of the cartel de los Solis? Zero, zero has been offered. Zero has been offered.

Starting point is 02:28:04 It's not even clear the thing exists. Yeah, I was looking forward earlier today. It seems to be like some low-level mid-network thing. It's all bullshit. And look, like, what they could say, which might be true. I'm actually not sure, but this might be true. But they'll be like, he lost the election, or the election was illegitimate or something like that. It's like, yeah, like I referred to them on Twitter as a sovereign.

Starting point is 02:28:22 nation and some, a bunch of people were saying, oh, they're not a sovereign nation, but it's like, listen, man, first of all, we do business with dozens of countries that just don't have elections, like that are just aren't democracies at all. And also, you're saying the last election was bullshit. Isn't that what Trump said about us? Like, is that, so by your logic, could anyone just come in and depose the Biden? Like, even right winger, Trump supporter, who believes the 2020 election was stolen. Do you really believe that China or Russia could have come into America two years ago and just kidnapped Joe Biden

Starting point is 02:28:56 like you would have no problem with that I think you'd right away be like no no no motherfucker we will decide whether our illegitimate government stands or falls or what and so all of these things this is all just complete nonsense I wonder how the people there feel well there were some people celebrating for sure

Starting point is 02:29:12 I saw that but then also some of those celebrations were happening in different countries and stuff like that so you don't know exactly what was going on one of them was also from a soccer game after a soccer game in the streets so you don't know some of exactly what's happening. And that also doesn't mean it's going to lead to something that they'll be celebrating. I mean, look, this could be a nightmare for them. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, a bathist party, right? The Sunnis are like 20% of the Iraqi population. And I think 60% are

Starting point is 02:29:40 are Shiites. Definitely like, there's a super majority of Shiites in the country. And so when Saddam first got toppled, a lot of people were celebrating. So a lot of them weren't Shiites who had been brutally oppressed by Saddam Hussein. So they're celebrating, but they didn't know that they were about to enter into the most brutal civil war where just hundreds of thousands of people were going to get killed. Again, I'm not saying because it happened that way in Iraq, that means it's going to happen that way in Venezuela. But the idea that the people are celebrating day one, like, okay. Yeah, look, Maduro was not a good guy. And he was a socialist dictator.

Starting point is 02:30:13 So like, okay, fine. There's people happy he's gone. But that don't mean that what replaces him can't be worse. Yeah. yeah it's just and then if we're involved in it you know um how much are we there to help that's the question that you used to feel different it used to feel like we're there to help and then now it's like are we there to serve somebody's interests you know um and not even like a regular person's interest right um yeah that's right one thing that ken burns said uh and he did like the ken burns

Starting point is 02:30:43 documentary he just um he's a documentary you know he is uh he has a new documentary about the american Revolution, but he said that the Declaration of Independence, it talks about the pursuit of happiness, right? And we talked about it being like an active document. It's not like a receipt, right? It's like a, it's kind of a, it's an evolving document, right? Like, we're not guaranteed to have an America, right? Yes, was Benjamin Franklin's line was right. Some woman said, what have you given us? And he said, a republic if you can keep it, which is like a great, like, and then Thomas Jefferson had some line where it was like the tree of liberty has to be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants and patriots.

Starting point is 02:31:28 So like even they were going like, this thing is going to have to be kept. Like there's going to be a process of having to continue this thing. Like it's not just like, oh, it's written down on a piece of paper. So it's a magic potion. And now this guarantees a free society. But I will, and I will say also like, because there's like this debate about like a propositional nation versus like a blood and soil nation or something like that. And I'm not saying like America isn't just a nation of ideas. It's a nation of people like who actually existed and a

Starting point is 02:31:58 common culture and a tradition and like all of those things and Christianity and like there's a lot of forces there. But the fact that our first founding document is the Declaration of Independence and the fact that we became the wealthiest, most prosperous, freest country in the world is not a coincidence, dude. And, like, it's so beautiful that there's no country in history that is started. The starting place is that we say man should be free. And also, I love this about the guy, it's like in like the first sentence or the first couple sentences, they say it's self-evident.

Starting point is 02:32:36 They say it's self-evident that God wants us to be free, which is not actually self-evident, but I just love that as a starting point. that it's just like, you know what, here's our starting point. We're not debating that. There's a God, and God wants us to be free. And then it says, and these are my words, not the thing, but then it says, governments are just a thing that man institutes to protect our liberty. And if government's not protecting our liberty, then we have the right and maybe even

Starting point is 02:33:04 the obligation to violently overthrow that government and institute a new one that will protect our free. Like that concept of like the individual and freedom and the natural rights. It never happened before in time. It had never been like based on a government or a country based around that idea. Well, I think that idea had never really occurred. I mean, it had been like I think you were coming out of a time where there was a lot of colonialism. It was like us as a group and what are we doing for, you know, our flag and our, you know,

Starting point is 02:33:32 or what are we doing like as a group, you know? And then America was like, no, we can be free. you can be free. Yeah. I think it lit the pilot light of like creativity and individualism in people. Yeah, no, that's right.

Starting point is 02:33:46 And was something always to strive for like even when we weren't living up to it. And in fact, even right, like, I mean, and look, the civil rights movement is complicated and stuff. But at the heart of it, that was Martin Luther King's, that was what he said in his famous, I have a dream speech where he said,

Starting point is 02:34:01 I forget the exact line, but it was something like, he said, we went to deposit our check and we were told there were insufficient funds, or something like that. He had a line like insufficient funds. But essentially what he was saying, which he did spell out in other speeches,

Starting point is 02:34:17 was that he's like, you said all men are created equal. You said all men have inalienable rights. So what are we talking? Like he was able to play on that to go, right? The metaphor is a bad check marked as insufficient funds. But it's basically, but the bad check is that he's saying,

Starting point is 02:34:35 like, look, we have these constitutionally protected rights here. Highlighting how the nation defaulted the promissory note of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, leaving black people to cash a check for liberty that came back unpaid. So he was able to say, hey, look, if the Declaration of Independence means what it says, then you can't have Jim Crow. What are you talking? And so, like, even, like, it was always something that we, and then, of course, America did

Starting point is 02:35:00 relatively to every other country that had ever existed have the most free market economy ever. They're the most free market laissez-faire capitalist country that was ever created. and that led to the most prosperity ever. We didn't become a rich country like in the way that the French or the English did. It wasn't like, oh, you're an empire that goes around and colonizes other countries

Starting point is 02:35:20 and extracts their resources back to yours. We just built things. We just had factories and men who worked and you know what I mean? So anyway, I just, I think that there's like, there's been a huge, like we've gotten away from that as a country for far too long.

Starting point is 02:35:38 Do you think as people we have, or do you just think that just as the upper realm and as the leaders and as the politicians? I think we've, look, as people, I would say, we've allowed our politicians and our government to get away from all of those things. And for the government to amass. Because we've been eating, we've been too comfortable. Well, and they've just been amassing more and more power. And it's like a, it's this buildup effect where they always take a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And then you get to a point where the government spends like over $7 trillion. a year. It's like unthinkable.

Starting point is 02:36:11 And forcing most people in a lifestyles that makes it tough for them to even have time to see who they're voting for and to know what's going on. That's right. And it's so hard to even know what's going on. It's so hard to find good information and real information. It's just, you know, and now it's like, where do you even get that from?

Starting point is 02:36:27 It's really, really tough. Because you can't, like the news. You got to just believe anything Candace says, man. That's the new world we live in. I don't know, dude. She's pretty, I mean, she's brave, dude. Oh, she's brave. That's an understatement. That's what we're saying at the beginning that, yeah, um, yeah, dude, her kids play, like, instead of playing, uh, cops and robbers, they played, who killed Charlie Kurt?

Starting point is 02:36:47 That's so crazy. What do you think about journalism? Before you go, we've got to get you out of here in a little bit. They just had the, um, they just had this stuff in Minnesota recently where the, the, where this young guy, Nick Shirley, I'm sure you're familiar with him now, and like you were saying earlier, like in a week, everybody knows his name. Now he's been YouTube and he's been doing kind of like, I would say kind of vigilante journalism for a while.

Starting point is 02:37:13 But like he kind of, he was going to investigate some of these Somali daycare centers. What were your thoughts on some of that? And then what do you think about vigilante journalism? Like, I think this is just going to be like gasoline on, on just like anybody becoming a journalist now. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think it's great.

Starting point is 02:37:32 And again, that's not to like vouch for this kid or something. No, you know, Andrew Callahan's been doing it for a long time. I was like, I think those guys are really important, and one of the things that I found so fascinating about this was just that, look, like, there's been, there's been reporting on the fraud in Minnesota before this. And there's even been, like, they claim some indictments and stuff like that. But like, dude, just the fact that this guy is driving the media narrative now. And then you see CNN and CBS and then, they got to now respond to him. Like, he's, it used to be, and I remember, like, when I started paying attention to this stuff, which. It's been like 20 years or something like that now. The way it worked 20 years ago was that the New York Times Sunday paper came out every Sunday. And then that dictated what all the corporate media outlets were going to talk about for the next seven days.

Starting point is 02:38:24 Like this was in the Times. And so it filtered out. Now it's this guy with a YouTube channel or with a Twitter account. And they can go and kind of like they can expose that like there's this scandal. and then, like, by exposing the scandal, it also exposes the media and the Justice Department. And it's like, why is this kid the one who's bringing us this information?

Starting point is 02:38:47 Right. But I do think going forward, that's going to kind of be the new normal. Well, we already had the information, right? I think a lot of the information was already there. But it is interesting of how it served to you and how what you'll, like, why now is it so much, did it seem more real because he was right there with the people

Starting point is 02:39:06 and you're hearing the people. Sure, I think so. And all the windows are blacked out at all these places. And then some of it, like the leering center, that seemed too on the nose to me. Like, that almost seemed fake. It just seemed crazy that no one would catch this. I mean, like, that, yeah, it did seem almost a little bit too much. You're telling me a parent is dropping their kid off there or even somebody that works there

Starting point is 02:39:27 that is pretending and they're getting money and they're going to have that. It just seemed, that seemed like staged. It seemed almost too on the nose. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. But what is interesting is that, you know, Tim Waltz, he ran on this as vice president. He said it at the vice presidential debates that he was bragging about how they upped the money that was going to daycare and that him and Kamala Harris were going to take this program and federalize it and bring it to the national level. It's just, it really is something.

Starting point is 02:39:56 You know, I don't know. I find like, I think there's so many interesting conversations about all of that. But I think that, like, it does, it kind of ties back into the stuff I was saying about inflating the currency. destroying the purchasing power of the dollar now everybody it's so weird to me when you think about like when i was saying like my grandfather could have his wife not work and own a house and we are so much richer than he was the technological advances between then and that we should be living at such a higher standard of life and yet almost no young people can do that today like literally the only people i know who can do that today are like rich successful comedians like if you know like

Starting point is 02:40:31 rich people could have their wife not work that's the only people who really do that these or I know. It breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that both parents have to work all the time if they don't, if they don't really want to. Well, so now while these Democrats are talking about how the more socialism, right, the government should provide your child care, your daycare for you now. It's like, does anyone ask like, do we want to live in a society where our kids are raised in daycare? Like, I don't know. I got, I got little kids. And I know people and I know when I say this, people get upset sometimes. I don't mean to be like judgmental of you. Personally, because I know if you put your kid in daycare, then this seems like I'm attacking you or something like that. But like, I just can't imagine people drop their babies, babies, babies off at daycare. Dude, I managed a daycare, dude, but I was like 15 and a half, bro. Dude, I love you. I would never drop my babies off with you at 15 and a half. Are you crazy? No, when I was 15, I might have been 15. I might have been 16. But dude, I remember one time, I stayed out really late. My buddy and I were been actually stealing boat radios to put a radio into my car and we're like, oh, dude, nobody's monitoring these boat radios like at the marina let's go there get some radios out of the air but there's some different there's like some of the wiring is different or whatever anyway

Starting point is 02:41:43 fucking nightmare so we just got to work and i was like well dude i'm just gonna lay in my car for a little while because we'd we'd been drinking a decent amount so i was like i'm just gonna lay in my car for a little while and then um i'll wake up whenever the sun pops up and then i'll um manage a daycare or whatever and then so dude bro i fucking i guess the sun like it wasn't that hot or whatever I parked like where like the tree like I was in the shade of a tree too much and I did one of the um the owners or whatever came over and knocked on my windows like at eight and I was supposed to be there at 630 it was like 8 am and dude it was like my car to smell like vodka and had all these fucking radios all over my hands were cut up from like getting

Starting point is 02:42:23 the radios out and um anyway nightmare but yeah bottom line dude I ran a dude we you probably shouldn't send your kids to that daycare yeah but I'm just saying there anybody can do a daycare right and we dude we watched Terminator I remember with them kids and them kids were little yeah they shouldn't have been watching it you know yeah that I appreciate your honesty there

Starting point is 02:42:45 but it is like a thing where I shouldn't have been well I still feel bad sometimes I still wake up and I'm like fuck they shouldn't have been watching it well there's one scene where you see like three tits in it or whatever or total recall total recall that's I remember that that's the three two we're watching total recall and there's a scene where the three tits are on there and there's all these kids looking at and I'm like dude y'all shouldn't be watching this

Starting point is 02:43:02 And we were, we were watching it. That was a problem. I sometimes I forgot that I wasn't, I felt like I was in the class or whatever. Well, I will say a lot of the reason I think why, you know, these people who are like the big government progressives and stuff like that and the whole kind of like neoliberal culture in America, which is always kind of like for years been demonizing,

Starting point is 02:43:26 you know, straight white men and demonizing patriarchal families and all of this. There's a reason why, like, big central governments don't like the family structure and religion and community and all of those things because they're all a hedge against their power. And the system, right, like this, inflating the currency that leads to all the things we were talking about, right? But that is actually very good for the political class. It's very, like, inflation in general is very good if you hold debt. if you're a big debtor, inflation is your friend because you pay off the debt. Like, if you want, if you want to buy something, but the money is worth a lot less. Well, now your hamburger used to cost five bucks.

Starting point is 02:44:16 Now it costs 15 bucks. That sucks for you if you're the person who wants to buy it. But if you owe a thousand dollars and now, you're selling hamburger, you're $15 a pot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you owe less than you did before. So like if you have debt, inflation is your friend. and also in the old well in the old it's not a bad thing to have in an inflationary environment but in the old system like in the old order right my grandfather would work at the factory all day long my grandmother would work you know taking care of the kids and managing the house and

Starting point is 02:44:46 cooking and cleaning and all that stuff all day long but only one of those incomes was taxable right my my grandfather's was taxable but you can't tax my house wife grandmother but if she goes into the workforce. Now there's two taxable incomes. Then you hire a daycare worker. That's a third taxable income. And so there's just way more revenue going to the federal government when the government's raising your kids rather than your mother. Yeah. But it's not really so good for the babies. No. Like it's better for the babies if their mom and dad are the ones raising them or their grandmother or their aunt or someone who's just inherently always going to love them more than some worker at a daycare. Well, that's why when a kid's mom comes to pick them up from a daycare as opposed to your babysitter,

Starting point is 02:45:28 to come and pick you up or something. There's just a different feeling about it. Even watching it, there's a different feeling about it. Yeah. You know, and then it's also like if you get someone else to work, then you need another car. Now they need another car to get to work, right? And so then you have gas lobbyists and auto lobbyists

Starting point is 02:45:43 that are going to push for those things. You need those things. That's right. I don't know. But then also it's like, dude, I feel so bad sometimes because I get stuck in these circles of just being like a Debbie Downer sometimes, you know? And I don't think that that's not good.

Starting point is 02:45:58 No, no. And I think, no, you're right. It's not good. And you don't want to. And I also don't think we should be a downer. Like, I'm still somewhat pessimistic on the short run here. Like, I don't think things are going to, all these problems are going to be solved tomorrow. But like, we do, we're at the precipice of a new age. That's going to be something wild that none of us can really understand. You know, I was, who was it was saying, might have been Jimmy Carr? I can't remember. Somebody was talking about when AI gets pointed. at physics and then we can like actually have AI like inventing new things about physics because like all the things that have like really changed our world are related to the study of physics like you know and the fact that like dude my grandfather fought in world war two like this is a thing that happened in the previous century there were two world wars you know things looked pretty bad there for a while yeah people getting slaughtered by the tens of millions in world war one fighting and, you know, 17-year-olds fighting in trench warfare and stuff like that. And now we live in an age where, like, an infection that would have killed you, you know,

Starting point is 02:47:06 a hundred years ago is like, you go grab some amoxicillin, you're fine. You know, people, literally, you get strep throat. That's like no big deal, man. Strep throat without amoxicillin is a really, really big deal. And so we have, oh, my son was saved with an open heart surgery that just 30 years ago you just didn't have. and I would have lost a kid. So we do live in this amazing time. And we all have more of a voice

Starting point is 02:47:30 and more of a platform and more opportunity to work together and find truth. Like I think there's a lot of really beautiful shit going on. But part of that beautiful thing is that we can expose how ugly this corruption is. And man, even as somebody

Starting point is 02:47:45 who's really lived in the world of being furious at these guys for how corrupted it is, the more you get, the more information you get, it's so much uglier than you. So it's like a metaphor for life in general, right? In life, you got to deal with, there's like tremendous beauty and there's tremendous tragedy. And we all have that within us and you all, and you got to

Starting point is 02:48:04 somehow, like, stomach the tragic part of it so that you can get to experience a little bit of the beauty, you know? Yeah, and even we're able to sit here and at least, like, feed ourselves, we're able to talk about things. Like, there's places where people have no freedom at all right now, you know? Yeah. This is this video by Jimmy Carr here. Jimmy Car drops a wild take on AI and physics. Oh, yeah, it was Jimmy Carr. I was right. He's excellent. Oh, yeah, and this was on, I think it was on, is this on trigonometry? Yeah, he's excellent. Let's play it. The other thing is physics. So, this is Peter Thiel's point, but minus the screens from any room were living in the 1970s, right? So nothing's happened in physics since 72. String theory

Starting point is 02:48:47 has not got us anywhere. But if you take the compute power of AI and point it as at physics now, everything else in science is stamp collecting. Physics is the real thing. That gave us everything. Every bit of technology that we have comes from the physics department. And what happens when you point AI at that? That feels to me like something

Starting point is 02:49:13 that people aren't really thinking about and is incredibly, could be incredible. We could have a world of plenty where there's no, you know, if we increase productivity by 50 times and there's a human flourishing, fantastic. I hope that's the world we live. But they've, but we've done that and they haven't. And I'm not disagreeing with Jimmy.

Starting point is 02:49:38 This is obviously, this is just a hopeful thought that he has. And it's a beautiful thought. Yeah, look, like, who knows? Or maybe the AI will become our overlords and we'll live in some terrible. But, like, you know what? There's still that hope. And so then, you know, you got to keep moving forward. And there were more hopeless times than this.

Starting point is 02:49:55 Oh, for sure. And I do think that it's like, look, it's quite possible that we're going to come into an age where it's essentially impossible for politicians to propagandize their own citizenry. And it does seem like we're moving much closer to that. And that, what do you mean by that? Tell me a little bit more about it. Well, look, I mean. What does propagandaize their own citizenry mean?

Starting point is 02:50:16 Well, look. Just so to be clear. So living through, so in 2001, I was like 18. I was born in 83. I was 18 in 2001. So you had 9-11. The whole country is totally traumatized. For all of 2002, the whole, we invaded Iraq in 2003. For all of 2002, they just laid out this war propaganda.

Starting point is 02:50:39 And there, which was, you know, the Israelis played their role in the Israel lobby, of course. And Benjamin Netanyahu came and testified before Congress that, you know, all this stuff. And Perez was a former prime minister. of Israel wrote an op-ed in the Washington, in the Washington Post, and Ehud Barack, Jeffrey Epstein's good friend, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, all saying, you know, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, and if you overthrow him, blah, and they convinced Americans, I mean, they really convinced Americans that Saddam Hussein was had or was building nuclear weapons, and he was friends with Osama bin Laden, and if we didn't go overthrow him, he was going to hand

Starting point is 02:51:19 these nukes that he didn't have off to these terrorists who he wasn't friends with, and that they were going to nuke Kansas or something like that. How many times do we fall for the same fucking trick? But the thing is, all people, everybody who people look to to get their news, like the entire Republican base. They were getting their news from Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, who would just, and Mark Levin, and these guys would just repeat the government propaganda over and over and over again. They were nothing other than, in effect, state propagandists, just repeating it. And then liberals looked to the New York Times. And Judith Miller was repeating the state propaganda. And her Source was Chalabi, the same source that the neocons had, who, by the way, turned out to be like an Iranian spy, essentially.

Starting point is 02:51:58 But regardless, they were able to, today, if Donald Trump was trying to sell us on something like that, he doesn't have Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, who will just repeat his propaganda. He's got Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. Those are the biggest right-wing commentators in America. They're going to destroy that propaganda for, you know, like, it's like the media, it's not state media anymore. actually independent media. And so their ability to, like, launch another propaganda campaign like this is just, it's not what it used to be. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:52:30 And so I think that leads, you know, this leads the potential of a much better world. Yeah, I mean, even today when we're looking at the Venezuela thing, we can pull up clips of other people's thoughts and theories on it. Yeah. So we can get a bigger look at it. Yeah, that's right. And they actually have to kind of, like, face our ideas now. Like, it's interesting.

Starting point is 02:52:47 Like, even, even if you watch the, I mean, I get it a lot. they flip out about me, but like if you watch the way they flip out about Candace or the way they flip out about Nick Fuentes or Tucker Carlson or someone like that. It's like, but they have to flip out about them. You know,

Starting point is 02:52:59 in years prior, they would have just marginalized and ignored these guys. And they tried for a long time. They sure did. Well, they got Tucker fired from Fox News, right? It doesn't matter. He's bigger.

Starting point is 02:53:09 He's bigger now. So now what are you going to do? And then Nick Fuentes, what are you going to do? He's banned off everything, you know? I mean, he's on, I guess, Twitter and Rumble. But so what are you going to do?

Starting point is 02:53:18 And he's huge. It's bigger than ever. He may be bigger than ever. You had him on your show. Yeah. How was that? What is he like? Is he big or is he small?

Starting point is 02:53:25 He's not big. He's not a big guy. He's a small. I mean, he's not like tiny, but he's not. Somebody said he rides a bike. Is that true or not? I did not see him on a bicycle. I can neither confirm nor deny.

Starting point is 02:53:35 I believe he took an Uber in the studio. Someone said he wrote a bike to him. Oh, listen, I'll be honest. He told me he took an Uber to the studio. I did not see with my own eyes how he got there. He could have bike. Not an Uber black. It was certainly an Uber white.

Starting point is 02:53:49 No, you know, Honestly, my, my impressions, I like Nick. And my, oh, he seems like a fascinating. I mean, he's obviously fascinating. He's fast. He's, people are fascinated by him. Well, he's brilliant and he's hilarious. Um, which is already something that just like, I just like that.

Starting point is 02:54:05 I like funny people. He's fucking brave, dude. He's definitely brave. And, you know, we have, we have some pretty large areas of disagreement, I think. Um, but I've always kind of believed, like, I've always kind of believed like, okay, so then it's just Maybe this is kind of like a little naive or something, but my attitude is always like, all right, so we got some areas of disagreement. So like, hey, let's talk about them. And let's kind of like, let's have more conversations and more debates and more, you know what I mean?

Starting point is 02:54:32 And just, you know, I think he gets a few things wrong. But then again, he gets some really major things right. And I think that this is part of the reason why they're all so scared of them. You know, if you want to say that like Nick goes down a road of like racialism and even, it's not exactly. that he, like, it's not that he, like, is praising Hitler and Stalin. He's saying some complimentary things about them or something like that. But if you want to say that, like, going down this road of, like, racialism and kind of revisionism about some brutal dictators in history, if you want to say, hey,

Starting point is 02:55:12 that's wrong and that's off limits or something as, like, a cultural rule or a cultural norm, Well, how the hell is the guy who's defending a genocide going to tell me that that's the case? You know what I mean? It's like, oh, you guys are going to tell me like, oh, Nick Fuentes is morally reprehensible, says the people signing the bombs that are going to drop on babies. I agree. Sorry. So you've lost that. It's just like, to me, it's like, that's over.

Starting point is 02:55:36 You lose the ability to gatekeep this conversation. And now people like us will decide who the hell we want to talk to. And I decide Nick Fuentes is a very relevant, interesting person who I'd like to talk to. Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with talking to most people. That's what I think most of the time. Every now and then there'll be somebody like, I don't think I would talk to them. But also, it's wild that people assume you know everything about somebody when you're going to have them on a podcast or you're going to talk to them.

Starting point is 02:56:02 It's like, dude, sometimes I haven't looked like I'll know the person. I'll be intrigued by one or two things I heard from them. But I'll have no idea sometimes if they were, you know, if there's been other stuff that people widely disagree with or whatever. Well, yeah, yeah, like the responsibility then, which I think, is ridiculous is that it's like you're endorsing everything they've ever said if you agree with them on one thing or something like that. But I do think, you know, when Nick was on Pierce Morgan, who, by the way, for the record, I really like Pierce Morgan too. I'm not like, and so I like Nick,

Starting point is 02:56:31 I like Pierce is funny. I love Pierce. I think his show is actually really great. He's great and he has on a lot of great guests. It's a circus at times, but I think it's like a really important circus. Dude, that's a great statement. Some of these things are circuses, it's, but it's a really important circus when you talk about like podcasting or some of these types of interviews it's like well he had he had like he said a ton of things he had wesley clark debate scott horton he had um he had uh norman finkelstein uh norman finkelstein debated benny morris like these like huge very interesting debates with really brilliant people you know and like and um but anyway so when nick was on it was almost like there was the conversation that was going on uh they're both speaking past each other

Starting point is 02:57:11 completely it's almost like pierce does not understand the phenomenon that this kid is, but to me, the more meta, like, kind of analysis of it, like, what was going on there is that what, what, I think what Nick represents in a lot of ways is, okay, there's been now in the country for at least 30 years, maybe a little more than that, really exploded in the last 15 years, there's been this attempt by every single institutional force to police, what Americans are allowed to say by shaming people as racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, all these is...

Starting point is 02:57:54 And look, you know, because the funny thing about someone like Nick is people will make the point, they'll be like, well, look, you could criticize Israel without criticizing the Jews. And you're like, yeah, hey, I do that every day. And you know what I get called for it by Mark Levin, a Nazi?

Starting point is 02:58:10 So it doesn't matter. So what Nick, in a way to me, at least, represents is a big, you to that whole game. I reject that whole paradigm. If you're not going to police me by calling me sexist, racist, or anti-Semitic, because I say I am all those things. So now what?

Starting point is 02:58:26 You know, so now, so if you come at Nick the way Pierce did, where you go, you play, let me play a clip of you. That's horrible what you said right there. I think you're a bigot. And he'll go, yeah, fuck you. I am. Whereas when I talk to Nick and I go, all right, dude, listen, I think shutting conversation down with accusation of bigotry is fucked up.

Starting point is 02:58:44 but what do you actually believe here? He actually opens up and gives you a much more nuanced take and like, now, is he a few clicks to the right of me? Definitely. And he's a sensationalist though too. Sure.

Starting point is 02:58:56 And there's a lot of sarcasm and all of that. I could see him being a conductor or I could see him being a the guy at the circus who's like dealing with all the animals. He would be perfect at that. And I say that respectfully because yeah, he's just,

Starting point is 02:59:12 he's good at doing it all himself, right? But you have to have those moments that are that are bonkers out there or that seem bonkers to people. Yeah, absolutely. I also just think, like, in that, you know, it's like from doing stand-up comedy, which, you know, I know you, know, too. It's like, you get, you, you develop a bit of an eye for talent. And it doesn't even mean, like, it's not a question of whether, like, you agree or disagree or whether they're your favorite comic or not your favorite comic. Like, but you could, you could love really edgy, really filthy comedy. And you'd still go, Nate Bargettsey's a beast of a talent.

Starting point is 02:59:44 You know what I mean? Like, you just recognize talent. He's very good at what he does. And Nick, Nick's ability, like, just as a broadcaster, his talent is, like, legendary. I mean, he's like, he's second to none. Maybe there are some tied with him, but, like, Tim Dillon's ability to just rant into a camera. Nick Flintzes is that level of ability. And so there is a part of it, too, where you watch, you watch all of these guys

Starting point is 03:00:11 you know freak out but you're like look man the kid's really good at what he does he represents a lot of people he was de-platformed for having views that actually a lot of people have and also there's just

Starting point is 03:00:24 look like there's nuance to a lot of this shit I think that being racist and where was he de-platform from from YouTube? Yeah YouTube he was kicked off Twitter he was kicked off like everything at one point I'm not sure what he's back on now and I haven't I don't know

Starting point is 03:00:38 a lot of the stuff that he's you know I don't know a lot of the things that he said. I mean, I know I've heard him say the N-word. I've heard him say... He's definitely said that. Some other stuff. But some of the same-war clips go hard, dude. I'll be honest with you.

Starting point is 03:00:50 And some of them, I've seen black people... Loving them. Do mash-ups and loving them, dude. Well, there's always been something weird. There's always been a real weird dynamic about how being offended. Being offended by words or jokes or race is such a white chick thing. But they project that onto black people. But actually, black people, because I've known a few of them.

Starting point is 03:01:10 are like the least offended people ever. Like, you know, it's just, so there's a weird dynamic there too. Also, though, and I'll say, maybe this will be a real controversial thing to say at the end, but I do think that there's, we've, we've lived under a world order for a long time where being a bigot is the worst thing in the world. It's like the worst thing you can be as racist, you know, and part of that is because, you know, we live in the world order that defeated the Nazis. And so the biggest villain of all time is viewed as the racist and the greatest.

Starting point is 03:01:40 greatest liberator of all time are viewed as the anti-racist and the biggest villain in the religion of modern America, like the devil is Adolf Hitler and Jesus is Martin Luther King. That's kind of like the way popular, you know, the culture is constructed. I think that there is actually a lot more nuance to bigotry and that everybody has a bit of bigotry in them. But I think that America, it is true to some degree. that Americans have been replaced by immigration policy from their government. America went from being a 90% majority white Christian country

Starting point is 03:02:18 to now being it's like in the 50s percentage and may even be a majority minority country in the next couple decades and then white people might ultimately be a minority in this country going forward. And the mainstream media demonized white. Yes, this was done against the will of the domestic population. There was never a referendum on open borders

Starting point is 03:02:36 and massive racial change in America because it would have failed. The country wouldn't have supported it. And there is going to be a group of people, not just white people, but there are going to be a group of people who wish that America remain majority white. And that doesn't mean you have to hate black people or that doesn't mean you have to hate Muslims or hate Latin American or Latino people or whatever. It's like there's nuance between, there's a view where you go, hey, I want America to remain majority white because that's kind of what America's always been. And I want it to continue being what America's always been. that doesn't mean I want to re-institute slavery

Starting point is 03:03:10 or have a genocide or something like that. And if you're a white person, you're like, well, what the fuck? I don't exist. Why am I supposed to root for my own destruction? Yeah, I don't have a place to exist at? Fuck that, dude. Well, it would be crazy to go.

Starting point is 03:03:21 I'm just so sick of like, there's just so, it's like, yeah, it's just so sick of white people are always the bad people. I'm sick of your movies of white people are always bad people. And that's one of the things that's craziest about, um, the genocide stuff. It's like, well, now you have a group of people.

Starting point is 03:03:37 you have Israel and their government that has set the bar for who the new bad people are. Dude, they act like it's anything but. Dude, I was listening to Mark Levin gave a speech about the rise of anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism and he discusses doesn't mention the genocide. Like, as if that's not a part of it. It's like everything, it's like you mentioned everything except there's this one tiny detail you're missing, which is that you committed a genocide in 4K. Well, you're talking my whole life that if somebody is doing like something like that,

Starting point is 03:04:07 that Hitler and the Nazis did, that it's wrong, right? All these movies, all the books, some of that, many of that I've paid to see and paid to read and wanted to absorb. You see Obama's speechwriter? She's this Jewish chick Obama's speechwriter, but she goes, the Holocaust training really backfired. Because now people are conditioned to see,

Starting point is 03:04:26 like, when a big, powerful state is just killing helpless captive people, that they view that as the same as like the Nazis do it. So she's actually going like, oh, the real problem with all this Holocaust education is that now people are pissed off when we try to do it. They're like, Jesus Christ, lady. You said that out loud into a microphone?

Starting point is 03:04:46 Yeah, here it is right here. Yep. And so while in the 1990s, you know, a young person probably wasn't going to find Al Jazeera or someone like Nick Fuentes, today those media outlets find them. They find them on their phones. It's also this increasingly post-literate media,

Starting point is 03:05:01 less and less text, more and more videos. So you have TikTok just smashing our young, young people's brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza. And this is why so many of us can't have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything that we try to say to them, they are hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments, and they are just seeing in their minds carnage and I sound obscene.

Starting point is 03:05:29 And, you know, I think... Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. We see the dead babies. And that, believe it or not, these dead babies are having enough. effect on people, Theo. People are feeling feelings. Who would ever have thought? When we witness children being tortured to death by the tens of thousands, we think about

Starting point is 03:05:45 that. And your bullshit propaganda doesn't work as well. This next part is actually the craziest part. I don't want to pause it, Ms. Hurwitz, and hear about the statistics at the moment. Which, by the way, it's not even like she has a statistical argument to me. I know, but they try to build a graph or something. It's more like I see, I've seen thousands of images. of dead kids, and then you're calling me a bigot.

Starting point is 03:06:10 And it wasn't a choice I made with my brain. It was a choice I made with my heart, you idiot. Yeah, right. It's not like I, you can't rationalize me into thinking that genocide is okay. You cannot do it. I don't care how many graphs or people you interview or someone. You cannot do it. It's not a, it's not in here.

Starting point is 03:06:27 It's in here. That's how I know it's wrong. Yeah, come on. Let's go. Let's play a little more. The very smart, I think, bet that we made on Holocaust education to serve as anti-Semitism education. In this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit because, you know, Hall-Cost education is absolutely essential. But I think it may be

Starting point is 03:06:46 confusing some of our young people about anti-Semitism because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews. And they think, oh, anti-Semitism is like anti-Black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people. So when on TikTok all day long, they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians. It's not surprising that they think, oh, I know, the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel.

Starting point is 03:07:11 You fight the big, powerful people hurting the weak people. Well, yeah. And a captive people, a people who can't leave. Don't have the option to go anywhere. Imagine you can't even leave. Yeah, like that's a big part of it.

Starting point is 03:07:24 But it is like Saw. It's like a huge game of fucking Saul. But it is amazing just to me that she said that out loud and didn't think to herself Oh, huh. That's the scary part. Like, man, oh, if I just looked at this from the other perspective, yeah, what I'm saying

Starting point is 03:07:38 is that like, oh, we're actually against holocausting powerless people. It feels sociopathic almost to be like, oh, yeah, I don't know. I don't know, man. Yeah, it sure does. Sociopathic is a good way to put it. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like, yeah. She's talking about the topic of all of this shit, whether it's Charlie Kirk's letter to Netanyahu or that conversation or the guy at CBS News or like any of it.

Starting point is 03:08:01 The topic of all of them is we're losing. How do we get back to winning? So, like, at least they're acknowledging that, like, shit, this just isn't working anymore, man. And I do think there's something beautiful to it, man. I think there's something beautiful where, like, even just you just making the point that you just made, where you're like, look, this isn't something in my head. This is something in my heart. I just saw a child being tortured to death. I'm not okay with this.

Starting point is 03:08:21 And when I say tortured to death, I just mean, like, a building crumbling on them as their bones crush and they cry out and no one comes to save them is pretty bad. And then, you know what, Ben Shapiro could come up with all those fancy arguments in the world. But the audience is looking at that and going, I'm not with you on that. But just how are you still creating? And I don't understand how somebody could still be creating an argument. I think that's where the weird disparity comes in. Like, I can't even, you know, I mean, yes, I make a lot of poor choices in my life. And I've done a lot of things that are not great.

Starting point is 03:08:50 But, but yeah, I don't understand how you could just think that that's okay, you know. You got zero supported genocides on your track record, though. So that's good. Yeah. that's true that's a good point thanks so much day for stopping by dude dude absolutely anytime man I appreciate it man so much

Starting point is 03:09:07 great to start the year off with you yeah I'm hopeful that 2026 will bring in good things I will say this a lot of my life I've thought man our our time on earth has been a little it's been exciting and fun but it's been a little

Starting point is 03:09:21 boring as a society like as a time period in America it's been like it's kind of a comfortable time and man it's just in a couple couple years. That's changed a lot. It's gotten real interesting. But yeah, I'm excited. I like being alive during these times. I'm excited to see where everything goes. And I kind of like, I love like the relationship we get to have like with our audience. Like we kind of all go through this together and we're kind of all like, yeah, did you see that? That was crazy. Oh, it's crazy. I enjoy it. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:09:46 I mean, whenever Charlie Kirk got shot, I was texting people and like other podcasts and stuff, like stay alive, dude, you know? Or like, if I have a tough question, I can call you and ask you about it. I'm like fucking bothering this father out there in fucking Jersey. You're never bothering me. dude i love talking to you um but yeah man thanks so much i'm curious to what uh canis has for dinner for us oh i can't wait yeah all right thanks so much dave oh you're the man dude all right peace buddy now i'm just floating on the breeze and i feel i'm falling like these leaves i must be cornerstone oh but when i reach that ground i'll share this piece of mind i found i can feel it that it's going to take.

This Past Weekend - #632 - Dave Smith

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