Mike Baker reveals Black Files, a Discovery Network show exposing the CIA’s hidden $15B+ budget embedded in the Pentagon to evade scrutiny, while critiquing journalism’s reliance on anonymous sources. He calls Trump’s Syria withdrawal reckless, warning it could trigger Turkey’s attack on Kurdish allies and revive ISIS, mirroring Iraq’s past mistakes, and dismisses partisan shutdowns as "World War I trench warfare." Huawei’s alleged backdoor access in NATO nations highlights China’s "information domination" strategy, while Baker questions UBI’s impact, citing $1.6T student debt and 80% of LA families trapped below poverty—undermining work ethic and success myths. Conspiracy skepticism clashes with Rogan’s doubts over JFK and Reagan shootings, yet Baker’s show promises deeper dives into unanswered questions. [Automatically generated summary]
Because obviously, you know, the Russians, the Chinese, whomever would like to know how much money is sent over to the agency so that they can get a sense of size, resources, capabilities, that sort of thing.
So that's where the show concept started.
What is that money spent on, both in the old days and now?
So it kind of spans historical operations and events and activities and special units, and it comes up to the present time and says, where is money being devoted?
Now, for new technology or new programs, new operations, new intelligence gathering efforts, whatever it might be.
So it's, you know, I think it's got a lot of promise.
You know, hopefully people tune in and find it interesting.
Yeah, well, and frankly, they should, and they have, and they will.
Not necessarily with the agency, but with other departments, and certainly within the military.
There's some information out there that's accessible.
There's some ability to get them to cooperate on.
On certain, again, declassified operations that just haven't come to light.
Look, a lot of shit's been declassified over the years that's just never been looked at or talked about.
You know, somebody maybe gets a wild hair up their ass and they say, I'm going to look into this program, and then they start, you know, peeling it back.
It's not that it's classified.
It's just nobody's ever bothered to dig into that information once it is declassified.
So, you know, it's...
It's going to be a lot of fun, a lot of travel, some great people working on the program, but apparently I have to keep it pretty much at that until the marketing department says, okay, here's what you can say.
So if they're making something like the B-52, if they're making a stealth bomber, if they're making some spaceship-looking thing, you're talking this insane amount of money in research and development and the budget of these things, and they have to keep all that under wraps.
U-2 program was developed, designed, built, maintained, flown by the CIA all those years ago, right?
Now, that was a massive effort and a lot of money.
And it was done under budget, and it was done on time, in part because I think, you know, things were a little bit easier back then, and we weren't all pissing on each other up on Capitol Hill.
But, yeah, so it's programs like that that I think will surprise people when they find out both Who was running it?
Who was responsible?
And to the degree possible, what did it cost us?
And who was involved?
And to what degree did it lead to something else that we're doing now?
I mean, you get these incredibly smart people, but it comes down to it's as simple as this.
Somebody gets an idea.
They're sitting around a table.
It's not unlike going out with your buddies and drinking and thinking, you know, somebody comes up with some dumbass idea, and the next thing you know, it turns into a TV show or something.
But it's not unlike that.
A lot of smart guys sitting around a table thinking, well, here's the problem.
How do we resolve it?
And the key is to do it creatively, right?
Because if you've got a bunch of engineers sitting around a table, you hope that they're not at all approaching it from the same point of view, right?
It's like with an operation.
If you've got a high-value target out there and you've got to figure out how to get access, get to them, you want ideas coming in from all directions.
You don't want to squelch creativity.
And Believe it or not, I mean, the intel community, the military, they've been enormously creative over the years in developing new technologies and developing operational ideas and methodologies.
So what we're trying to do is shed some light on that.
Well, I would imagine there's a certain amount of – I don't want to use the word fun – But that's really the right word.
Some of it's got to be fun to develop this stuff and to implement it and go out and get bad guys with it and to see your project come to fruition and actually have a positive effect on the world.
It's that simple because in operations anyway, you engage in something out there in some place around the world, wherever it may be, and you realize as you're walking away that there are not a lot of people doing this at this moment on the planet.
So the operational activity itself is enormously entertaining, as long as it goes right.
But it's also the build-up.
It's all that homework that gets you there.
It's like the takedown of Bin Laden.
We didn't just happen to get lucky and rock up on his doorstep in Abbottabad.
That was eight or nine years of...
Fucking hard work, right?
Heavy lifting, chasing down countless bad leads and doing enormous amounts of surveillance, street work, and tracking down assets and doing, I mean, just the hard, hard work that eventually allowed all those guys from the teams to land and do their job.
What's interesting to me, too, is that the guy who's writing the book about all this stuff and talking about, you know, the man who shot bin Laden, that guy's persona non grata in the community.
Like, you talk to the other SEALs, they're like, you don't do that.
You don't do that.
You don't write books about that.
You don't talk about that.
And you do it for a short-term gain.
You make some profit off of it, but you lose the brothership.
The reason why I think the horse got out of the barn on that whole issue of guys writing books or getting out there and talking about specific operations...
It's because senior commanders and senior people, people that came out of the top levels of government, started writing their memoirs, started revisiting history while it was their watch, and coming up with their explanations for history.
And I think all the guys below, you know, junior ranks and street-level operators, they looked at that and thought, well, what the fuck if they can do it?
Why not me?
Because you've got to set the tone from the top, and I think that's where it got all kind of sideways.
Plus, when you have someone who has a crazy story like Marcus Luttrell and it becomes an amazing movie, it also...
It does help the community, right?
Because it gets a bunch of people that are really interested in becoming a SEAL. It gets people to appreciate the unbelievable sacrifice and hard work that's involved.
Yeah, there's an upside to it, but I think it's a fine balance, right?
At what point do you go over that line?
So you're right in the sense that – we see that with whomever, the FBI or DEA. They got out there and put their thumbprint on some TV shows, right?
Because I think it – It expanded, in part, awareness of what they do.
I'm sure it helped their recruitment.
And so the SEALs are no different, but at the same time, You sign a piece of paper at the very beginning that says you're going to keep your yap shut.
And it's one thing to come out from whatever unit or whatever team or whatever organization and say, I'm going to write, I don't know, about my time in.
And it's not a look at sources and methods, not look at operations.
It's more of, you know, this is what happened during my time.
I'm not explaining it very well, but I think there's a way you can do that without screwing the pooch.
Well, there's upside to some of the stories, right?
I definitely think there's upside to Marcus Luttrell's story because it's just so incredible.
People should hear about it.
But I think that there's also...
It's important to maintain that honor.
It's important to maintain that bond of silence.
You guys, they're doing something that is probably one of the most dangerous and one of the most, in terms of special operations, one of the most significant in all of military in this country.
Well, it's that idea, team building, camaraderie, and however you do it.
But there was that sense that we do it and it's off the radar, and it's not talked about, and we take pride in that.
But again, I'll go back to the same thing.
Like Bob Gates.
You know, Bob Gates writes a book, you know, former director of the agency.
He's a brilliant guy, great guy.
But he writes a book and, you know, then you get somebody else.
Maybe Mike Morrell writes a book.
And so from, you know, inside the CIA, you got a lot of officers going, well, shit, maybe when I get out, I'll write a book, because what I'm doing is pretty damn interesting.
And anybody who reveals sources and methods, anybody who breaks their agreements in terms of the proper handling, which is a lifetime agreement of classified information, there's supposed to be consequences.
And sometimes there are, and sometimes if you're senior enough, maybe there's not.
But, yeah, you sign a piece of paper at the very beginning.
I mean, I don't want to oversimplify it, but it says you are being given the responsibility of handling extremely sensitive information, and information that, if released, can easily result in the loss of life.
I mean, it's as simple as that, essentially.
And your obligation is to shut your mouth and not talk about sources and methods and things that you know better not to talk about.
But I think that kind of the drip, drip, drip, right, of the books and the things that come out and the anonymous sources.
The New York Times can write an entire front page article based on nothing but anonymous sources nowadays.
It never used to happen.
Editors would sit there and go, you better get yourself some additional sources that we can discuss so people can put it in context.
I think the desire to get information out there quickly because every journalist is now playing beat the clock with everybody who's got a smartphone, right?
And who fancies themselves a blogger or- A journalist on Twitter or whatever.
So they're all doing this, and I think it's just this idea, right, that says...
It reminds me of a meeting.
I had a meeting with my company, Diligence, for all your information and security needs.
And it was with a major multinational corporation.
And I was meeting with their head of security and some other folks.
And they do a lot of work overseas in some very difficult places.
And the competition that they face in their sector is huge.
And so we went in there and we thought, this will be great.
There's a lot of things we can do for them in terms of gathering information, preventing them from making mistakes as they're going into a new market, all of these things.
And the bottom line was they said, they looked at me and they said, nah, you know what?
Competition is so fierce.
We're just going to go in.
If we make mistakes, we'll clean it up later.
And they were willing to do that.
It's like acceptable loss, credit card fraud loss, you know, for MasterCard or whomever.
They're willing to accept millions and millions and millions of dollars as an acceptable loss for the cost of doing business.
And so it's a little bit like that, I think, with journalism.
They're willing to just throw shit out there and, hey, if they have to make a retraction, fine.
Well, I think part of it again is, yeah, there's a laxness that's developed over the years, and I don't know why, right?
Because...
I mean, think about all the various security issues we face.
And look, we've been at war for, you know, 17 years, right?
Since 9-11.
And all these things that have been happening to us, you would think that we'd be pretty buttoned up.
But no, every administration has had its moment where it's let slip.
And whether it was the press secretary or whether it was somebody rushing to the podium or with somebody on Capitol Hill, I mean, they're famous for it up there, you know, congressmen and congresswomen or senators.
All in the rush to get in front of the camera to talk about something.
And then, you know, shit happens.
Things get out that they shouldn't.
So I think it all kind of contributes to this mentality that we started off talking about with the SEALs where, you know, why are we in this point where people are writing books and maybe getting outside?
The box.
And I think it's just because, yeah, it's this constant drip and lowering of standards, like you mentioned.
But as far as what the current mood inside the agency is, I mean, if you talk to some I don't find that.
I find that, frankly, they're just more focused on operational concerns and priorities and tasking than anything else.
Everybody's got a personal opinion, right?
But I do think that the agency has proven itself over the years at being better at pushing that down and understanding, and in part because it's a smaller organization, right, than most of them.
He's only gone after the FBI. He's gone after the FBI. He's done some things in terms of questioning CIA analysis and some of the advice and guidance that they've provided.
But again, you sort of look at it and go, hey, look, we're feeding this into the NSC, the National Security Council.
You guys, you know, that's an editorial process at that point.
You guys are going to have to make your decisions.
You know, people are going to say, I'm just saying this because I'm subjective and I'm providing top cover for the agency.
But for the most part, they just focus on getting shit done.
And we also have the benefit of being focused overseas.
So we're not, like the Bureau is, you know, it's a domestic organization, right?
So they, you know, they're drawn in.
The agency's got the advantage of, look, we're having to deal with crap over there and not here.
We've lost some servicemen up in northern Syria today as a result of a bombing up there.
ISIS is taking credit for it.
So there was a patrol.
We've got roughly 2,000 personnel in Syria.
And for the most part, what are they doing there?
Well, they're providing guidance training.
They're assisting with targeting.
And because the air power is incredibly important over there right now.
And so we are – our personnel are very much involved in selection of identification of targets for the air campaign.
And so we have these 2,000 troops there.
The president says he's going to withdraw.
And then some of the members of the administration start walking that dog back, right, and saying, well, it may not happen right away.
But yeah, there was just a routine patrol.
There's never really such thing as a routine patrol, but there's a patrol.
And it got hit.
The military is not releasing a lot of details because they haven't finished notifying next to Ken.
But numbers so far indicate possibly four servicemen lost.
And that's going to refocus, I think, Congress and hopefully the White House on what the hell's going on.
The problem I've got with it is, in terms of withdrawing, look, we could stay there forever and not accomplish the task, right?
If the task is to finally defeat whatever that means, radical Islam, jihadists, ISIS, That shit's never going to happen.
Not in our lifetimes.
We're not going to get rid of that mentality, that ideology, sort of what seems to be sometimes a bottomless well of recruits that they can draw on, their ability to morph into something else, as Al-Qaeda did, depending on how successful we are in a campaign against them.
They're like, again, it's like you step on roaches over here and they pop up over here.
So I think...
It's – the biggest problem I've got is that if we leave, we're not – It's not like we're engaged in firefights every day with ISIS over there, right?
We've left that to our allies.
And our allies in most part up there in the north of Syria are the Kurds.
And the Kurds have been our allies in one way or another in that part of the world for a long time now and have played a very important role.
And we have not been particularly honorable over the years in terms of how sometimes we deal with them.
If we walk out, if we leave, then Erdogan, you know, the head of Turkey, I guarantee you will be in there in short order to kill as many of them as possible because that's just what the Turkish authorities are going to do.
They honestly – they couldn't be happier with the announcement that we're going to leave because that opens the door for them to then go in there and from their perspective stamp out the Kurdish alliance that have been our allies.
We're the only thing.
Our presence, that small presence, not minimizing it, but 2,000 troops, has been what's prevented them from doing that.
So that's the number one issue I've got.
The other is I have no idea why any president or vice president or anybody in the government ever, not just this administration or any administration, ever thinks it's a good idea to say, we've defeated the enemy.
When we're talking about radical Islam.
We've seen it over and over again from previous administration, from the Bush administration.
So the goal of being over there is to assist our allies, but also to make sure that these radical factions don't become more powerful and then eventually affect us and attack us.
So we can keep an eye on what they're planning, what they're doing.
I mean, if you look at the reason we went into Afghanistan, right, if we go back all those years, holy shit.
And that was because the Taliban allowed al-Qaeda to establish a beachhead in there for training and for communications and for finance and for plotting and planning attacks outside of Afghanistan against us and our allies.
That's why we went in there, aside from just seeking revenge, obviously, was to route that out.
We then stayed.
Thinking somehow we were going to turn the tide of history and create some pseudo-federal democracy there.
So that didn't work.
But the reason now for being in Syria is, yes, we have done a very solid job of beating back ISIS, removing their territory, and degrading their ability to operate.
But we haven't stamped them out.
We haven't defeated them yet.
They're still there.
And so we've been providing the support, again, in the form of weapons, hardware, gear, resources, training, and most importantly, combat air operations, air assaults.
And that's been critically important.
If we leave, I have no doubt that ISIS will...
Find some way to rejuvenate.
Maybe not in its current form and maybe not in the same exact locations, but they'll morph because that's what they do.
They just find a way to adapt.
And we already know what's happened in the past.
When we left Iraq, we saw what happened with the rise of ISIS. So do I want to stay there forever?
Absolutely not.
But both sides can make a valid argument, one for staying, one for leaving.
I think the best argument for staying in certainly the short and midterm is to ensure that Erdogan doesn't slaughter a bunch of Kurds who have been working with us honorably.
Well, is it in our national security interest to stay in Syria, for example?
Look, there was this – there's so many levels to this thing, and I'm sure right now everybody's listening going, oh, for fuck's sake, he's not going to disappear down the rabbit hole.
But yes, I am.
For a while there, there was this idea, this ridiculous pie-in-the-sky thought that we were going to get the Russians out of Syria.
Never going to fucking happen.
The only port for their Black Sea fleet is in Syria.
They've been there for decades and decades, along with Iran.
It's not going to happen unless we want to go to war with Russia to kick them out of Syria.
That's not in our best interest.
So is it in our national security interest to keep troops there to fight and try to minimize Russian involvement in Syria?
I don't think so, because we're not going to shift them off that dime without going directly at them.
It's in their best interest to stay.
And every nation acts in its own best interest.
Are we going to shift Iran?
Are we going to keep Iran from forming too late for that?
They've already got a beachhead there that they're not going to give up.
And so You've got to set those issues aside and say, well, what the hell are we doing there?
Are we there simply because we have to finish the fight against ISIS? Well, you know, at some point you've got to say, you know, I guess.
I wouldn't say that we've defeated them, but I think we would say, yeah, we've degraded them sufficiently that we can now operate from elsewhere.
We can operate from forward bases in other locations where we're currently based.
Great.
But again, I keep coming back to the same thing, that we've worked with the Kurds.
Is this in our national security interest?
Well, no.
I guess it's not.
But there's something that tells me it's the right thing to do.
And maybe sometimes that's enough, that we should not let Erdogan have his way.
And also long term, wouldn't it be in our best interest to honor our commitment and make sure that we protect our allies so that in the future other allies would be more willing to cooperate with us because they understand that once we're committed, we're fully committed and we stay?
Like when they had the buildup in Iraq and it was highly criticized but then it was very effective.
Right.
enemy if they decided to ramp it up worldwide would that be a solution to any of this or is the opposite is it better to actually ramp up our defenses domestically and just stay the fuck away from all these people yeah Well, eventually, you can only do so much, I think, on the domestic front.
And then if they gain sufficient ability and strength, we've seen that from past attacks, I think then they'll come after you.
They'll come after us.
And that's just the way, I suppose.
That's going to work, but I don't disagree with the notion because it is hard-pressed.
Look, I wouldn't have stayed in Afghanistan, frankly.
I don't care whether they've increased their literacy rate by 2% or built another road or whatever.
It doesn't matter.
They don't know what the hell we're trying to sell them, right?
So I don't – I'm not against the notion of getting out, but this one's a tough one.
I guess that's what I'm saying is the Syria issue I'm real conflicted on because of the Kurds and what they've done on our behalf in the past and how they've suffered.
And knowing, going years and years back, you know, having dealt with that issue two and a half decades ago, a long time ago, with the Turks and the Kurds, knowing how vicious that could be.
And I don't trust Erdogan as far as I could throw him out a window.
So, you know, I think there's a problem there that we need to, we need to make sure we've talked through thoroughly before we just say, sure, let's get him out of there.
You know, what the hell?
You know, we shouldn't have him there.
We shouldn't be there.
But like everything else, it's complicated.
You would like to think that they're having conversations like this up on Capitol Hill between the parties, the Republicans and the Dems, but I don't think they are.
What concerns me is, especially a guy like Trump, if Trump is the guy who's decided we're going to pull out of Syria, how does he have enough time to carefully consider that as well as all the other things that are on his Yeah.
And when someone runs for president, say if someone's campaigning and they say, you know, I support a non-interventionalist foreign policy.
I'm going to get us out of these wars.
I'm going to get...
They're doing this based on a limited amount of information.
Like...
It's not like the CIA or the FBI or anybody briefs them as they're running for president.
Look, there's certain things that this administration is doing, foreign policy-wise, that I think are good and make sense.
There are other things that I think, you know, just leave you scratching your head.
But that's like every administration.
I guess my point is we've gotten away from that ability, right?
I have conversations.
I go out to dinner with folks on the hard left, and when you talk to them, They fully believe, fully believe that President Trump is a Russian puppet, a winning asset of Putin who is just doing Putin's bidding.
And they honestly, honestly believe that.
And nothing is going to shift them off that position.
When you have that sort of frame of reference, you don't have the ability to look at anything rationally and say, yeah, okay, I like this policy related to China.
It's about time we call them out and say that you obviously have not been a fair trading partner.
That's something that every administration has agreed to but has never done anything about.
So you would think that everybody would be able to say, hmm, makes sense.
Yeah, I like it.
Everybody should be able to say the immigration system here in the States is somewhat dysfunctional.
It needs fixing.
Everybody's talked about that.
And yet they can't do it because they've got this mindset that prevents them from having any sort of conversation, any sort of rational discussion that could lead to some compromise that could then advance the ball.
I don't know the exact numbers, but think about all the contractors.
Think about all the government contractors.
If I'm not mistaken, I don't think they're getting paid.
And the administration has admitted that, look, we initially underestimated the impact of a longer-term shutdown.
And so they understand that.
And the Democrats, you know, talk about it every minute, about how this is a terrible crisis.
And so you would think that if both sides feel that way, then get something done.
Look, the Democrats, they've approved in the past, recent past, many of these Democrats voted for fencing, barriers, whatever you want to call it.
But we're lost in semantics.
And because the president's so hated by this group, that...
They've seized on this term wall.
If he had started his campaign by saying, we need to improve our border security and find fixes to an immigration system that is both fair and secure and efficient, if he had gone with that, it's a wordy bumper sticker, but if he had gone with that, we'd have a different conversation right now.
Boy, I didn't even know the people that voted for him, the people that are like real MAGA supporters, I didn't even know they existed in the numbers that exist.
It's like he uncovered a rock, like he flipped a rock over and there was an ant colony of rubes in there.
There was some congressman recently that was talking about all the people that supported Trump, and he was talking about them all being losers and alcoholics and illiterate.
I'm like, man, you're talking about half the country.
It seems very critical, because if the Democrats win, and somehow or another he abandons his idea for a wall, abandons the billions of dollars that he's been asking for for this wall, that gives them momentum.
We kicked his ass with that wall, and we're going to kick his ass in 2020. That's exactly what they're thinking.
That is exactly what they're discussing in the war room when Nancy Pelosi keeps them all in lockstep, and she's done a good job so far of keeping the Dems in line.
And that's why they wanted her back in.
At least the old guard wanted her back in, because that's what she does well, aside from fundraising.
So, you know, I have a feeling that, look, he's asking for whatever, $5.7 billion.
In the scheme of things, that's a drop in the bucket.
And Schumer and Pelosi and a wide variety of other people, including the previous president, have all voted in the past for additional funding for border security, including fencing and barriers.
But they are not going to budge off of this.
So what the hell does that mean?
Does that mean he's being pushed into a corner where he has no option but to declare a national emergency and use funds elsewhere so that he can say, I finally got it done and looked at Dems and didn't do anything?
Whoever's perceived as the winner out of this ridiculous situation, yeah, they're going to beat that drum all the way to 2020. One of the things they've been saying, too, about the wall is that they want to keep drugs from coming in, illegal drugs.
But from this El Chapo trial, we're learning how the biggest drug dealer in Mexico got his drugs in.
And he's now claiming that the former president in Mexico, Pignaneto, was given $100 million at the outset of his term.
I think it was 2012 when he started as president.
So when he was president-elect, he'd already won, but he was waiting to take the seat.
According to this Colombian trafficker who was working with Guzman, with Chapo, And Pignanetto reached out to him, possibly through his campaign manager or however the story goes.
And Chapo came back with a negotiated position that says $100 million, which was then, according to this, again, the guy's a Colombian trafficker, how legitimate is he?
Then the money was transferred to Pignanetto.
And You know, pionettos, people are saying that's ridiculous.
Look, we were the ones who tracked him down, you know, even though he escaped, you know, 48 times or whatever he escaped.
But there's always been this talk about how Chapo's arrests were orchestrated, right?
And that's so that the military, the police were involved somehow, that there was a coordinated effort.
You have to nowadays, I think, at least my theory is anyway, if you want to be a paid contributor for a network, it doesn't matter which network, you've got to stake out a position that involves some crazy.
You've got to be all in for President Trump, or you've got to be all out.
If you live in the center, that ain't happening.
Nobody wants to hear from anybody in the middle because that shit's not picking up the ratings at all.
That's the way it is with the government shutdown right now.
Pelosi's sitting over here in the mud.
President Trump's sitting over here in the mud, and nobody's giving any ground, and they're just occasionally taking a shot at each other or throwing a hand grenade, and nobody is making any movement.
So again, how do they stop this shutdown?
You can't if you're not talking.
If there's no effort, it's not going to happen.
So everybody's looking at this right now and thinking, Where does it go?
It's affecting the markets.
It makes us look like morons.
I mean, not that others aren't.
I mean, look at Britain, right, with the Brexit thing.
Look at France with the yellow vests.
Look at Germany's having its issues.
Everybody's having some problems, but we didn't need to add to the noise.
John Stossel had an interesting video that he put out where he's saying what this does actually highlight is that there's a lot of things that the government does that really should probably be privatized and we wouldn't have these issues.
I mean, it kind of made sense to me, but I don't know a lot.
No, I'm a small government person at the end of the day.
I think there's certain things that we need to rely on the government for, and one of them would be, of course, national security.
Terrific.
A collection of federal taxes.
Okay, fine.
They're going to do that regardless.
But otherwise, just stay out of my kitchen.
And that's why I've always been surprised.
The Republicans, the problem I got with them is you can't sit around and argue for small government and then try to tell people what to do with their bodies or who can get married and who can't get married.
But the Republicans have always stuck their nose in this, and you can't make that argument for wanting small government if you just want to step into people's bedrooms all the time.
And I think the only reason why they do it is because it gets people excited that they get to vote for them.
I think when they take these positions, it's not like these are really having an effect on their lives or it's some moral stand that they must take because God wants them to do it.
I think they do it because they think that it's going to shift the poll one way or another.
And it's going to get people excited about them possibly making some sort of a difference that they feel is going to significantly affect their position.
But do you ever get to the point, I mean, I don't know whether that's going to happen, but you would think that you've got the people on the hard right and the hard left.
They're not going to shift, right?
That's not going to happen.
You're not going to move those people.
So like everybody always talks about, decisions are made by that small group in the center.
So at what point did the group in the center finally put their hands up and go, you guys are all fucked up?
How about a third party that's legitimate?
Not a libertarian party because that hasn't been working out.
But something that creates a little bit of a different dynamic.
And we're never going to get term limits, so that's tilting the windmills.
But maybe we get that multi-party thing going that – again, okay, it's pie in the sky.
But remember when he took out a whole, he took a block of time, I believe it was a half an hour on national television, he bought the time to explain how you're getting fucked.
And explain taxes, and explain all these different things.
Again, I talk about there are certain things that the current administration is doing that I like.
One of them is the way that they're dealing with China right now.
And yes, the trade issue is buffeting the market somewhat and causing some instability.
But again, the previous administration, the Bush administration, Clinton administration, lots of former presidents, they all acknowledged that China privately was not a fair trading partner.
This administration is at least trying to call them out and calling them out on the cyber On their theft of intellectual property.
So anyway, Huawei, supposedly owned by the founder and however many employees.
You know, I think Huawei is, by the way, the number one telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world.
And they're the number two seller of smartphones, right?
They're a bigger seller of smartphones than Apple.
So it's Samsung, Huawei, Apple for this.
And so supposedly the company is owned by the founder and his daughter is the chief operating officer, chief financial officer, one of those.
She was arrested up in Canada and she was arrested at the request of the US. She's up there on bail right now waiting extradition hearing.
And the reason was because supposedly she lied about Huawei's dealings with Iran and they were busting sanctions by dealing and providing certain types of equipment to Iran.
Now, this past week, we've had a Huawei employee who's now been fired by Huawei in Poland arrested for espionage.
And along with him is a member of the Polish Intelligence Service, right, who retired and was now working for a French telecommunications company.
But was arrested also for espionage related to Huawei and related to this individual who up until just recently was working for Huawei.
Huawei claims innocence and says, well, we have no idea.
And the founder just came out and gave this big speech and said, I would never let the Chinese authorities tell me what to do.
And I would certainly never spy on anybody using Huawei's capabilities and technology.
And people are probably thinking, what the fuck are you talking about this for?
Huawei embeds their telecommunications equipment throughout the world, right?
So it's in our allies' military operations, which then are connected to ours, right, in terms of communications and transfer of intelligence and information.
They're everywhere.
And they chose Poland.
They've been in Poland for about 10 years.
Poland is a very important NATO ally.
So I'm taking a long time, I realize, to explain this.
But what I'm trying to say is nothing happens by happenstance, right?
The Chinese don't operate that way.
So the Chinese authorities some time ago, years ago, looked at it and went, yeah, this makes sense, right?
We've got Huawei, which, by the way, the founder is a former military People's Liberation Army engineer.
He...
They looked at this and they thought, Poland, that would be a good beachhead for us, right?
Because they're a key element of NATO. So let's go to Poland.
So they started burrowing into Poland, striking deals.
They're basically the most important foreign relationship now, corporation inside of Poland.
And they're fully embedded.
And they've had access to, at this point, to NATO communications and now the arrest of these two individuals.
And people will still, despite this and despite their past, despite their theft of information from everybody, from U.S. Steel to Alcoa to Lockheed Martin to DuPont, all the times that they've been stealing information, people will still go, well, I don't know.
I don't believe it.
It doesn't make any sense.
I don't see why the Chinese would act that way, and I don't see why we're being so harsh on them.
You know, this tariff thing is a bad idea.
My point being, you've got to call them out.
They're not going to necessarily change their behavior, but you've got to raise public awareness, make our allies understand, and that's what we're doing right now.
We're saying, you've got to put the brakes on this.
Build a firewall.
Use other companies' telecommunications equipment, right?
Because, you know, the fact that we're tied in with our allies, with Poland and with Canada and with us, You know, that gives them access to us.
So for someone on the outside, like myself, who's trying to look at this, and you say that Huawei is stealing stuff, like stealing stuff from U.S. Steel.
Well, they, I mean, The U.S. Steel, admittedly, that was a PLA. That was a People's Liberation Army third department operation against DuPont and also against U.S. Steel and others.
So that was a little bit different.
I conflated the two.
But Huawei, one of the things that they do is by having access and embedding their equipment in your communications infrastructure, that gives them the ability then to, in a simple way, to tap in.
Imagine we're trading information through NATO channels.
All they need is that one in.
It's like everything else.
It's like phishing.
It's just like when hackers, just an individual hacker sitting in somebody's basement.
He just needs that one avenue.
He needs to get one.
Just click on that email.
That gives me the pathway in.
So when Huawei is able to embed their technology, Into, you know, Polish communications and we're now connected because of our NATO alliance.
That gives them access to us, to France, to Germany, whomever.
It's not as if it just happened.
It's not as if Huawei, from a business perspective, said, you know, I bet we could sell some of our equipment in Poland.
Wouldn't that be good?
The guy who was arrested, the Huawei person who was arrested, was responsible for the provision of telecommunications equipment to government facilities.
That was his job.
And the guy, the Polish guy, one of his last jobs with the intel service was communications.
So I guess what I'm saying is none of this shit happens in a bubble, and it's all very well mapped out.
The Chinese have a very long view on things, and they are very good at developing operations like this, and so they've been very successful.
So we'll see.
But it's – I'm glad that the current administration at least is calling them out.
I don't believe it's necessarily going to change their behavior.
We'll probably get some sort of deal where they'll claim to – look, just a couple of years ago, they agreed with President Obama to stop their cyber shenanigans and they didn't.
So they just changed the way that they did it.
You know, that's the world we live in, but I think it is important to make a stand, right?
Yeah, some of the tech people are saying that they think it's preposterous when they were talking about the ban on Android phones.
Some of the tech people say that doesn't make any sense, but what you're saying is it goes far beyond the actual phones itself, and it's really the mission of the actual company itself.
You have to go a long ways to come up with that sort of naive viewpoint that says that A Chinese company is going to put its foot down and tell President Xi, absolutely not.
We will not do anything to harm another nation's company.
Horseshit.
They've spent generations now, decades, jump-starting their industry and moving up the food chain on the global economy by hoovering up everything possible out there.
So if someone like a tech wizard got a hold of one of their routers...
Have they been able to detect something in there that doesn't belong or some sort of a backdoor or some sort of a way that they could tap in?
It's like if you were, you know, you were Apple and you were sending, you know, data to Raytheon or whatever and you're going back and forth, they could tap in through that?
Has it been proven that there's a device like that?
Yeah, a former NSA director, McConnell, back in...
2015, I think early 2015, came out and NSA came out with an official statement and it said every major US corporation of any consequence has been attacked and exploited by Chinese and we have never ever not found Chinese malware within their systems.
That was able to impact, you know, physical equipment.
It took control of those systems because, in part, whoever perpetrated it had much better understanding of that gear, right?
Or had access to that gear.
And that's an important part of this.
And it's happened several times since then.
And I'm not disclosing anything because it's been written about.
I'm sure it'll be a movie at some point.
But that's a concern.
I'm far more worried about a company like Huawei with its integration into our allies.
I'm about telecommunications systems than I am about sort of the individual sale of phones and, you know, what that means.
Look, you know, Amazon and all the others are gathering more data on the average American than, you know, U.S. government or anybody else's government is doing at this point.
Let me ask you this because this is something that just came up and we were trying to figure out if it's nonsense or not.
My friend Adam was here the other day and we were talking about Toyota trucks and he didn't Google Toyota trucks just discussing it and he said since then his mentions have been filled with these little advertisements for Toyota trucks.
It's a carryover from the old days of, you know, optical readers and how, you know, we all thought it was incredible that you could take a piece of paper, put it into a system, and it would, like, take that information that was on that piece of paper, and now it was on a database that you could access and manipulate.
And so, you know, voice recognition is no different in the sense that...
If, for example, if I had this switched on and it happens to people, I'm sure all the time walking around their house, they'll say something and all of a sudden Alexa will come on and go, oh, I couldn't find a result for that, but do you want to listen to Ella Fitzgerald or whatever?
It's always on.
It's always listening.
And you can do that with anything.
Like this TV right here.
If you wanted to, if I knew that TV was going to go into the office of the Deputy Foreign Minister of a country hostile to our interests, I could turn that thing into a receiver, obviously, right?
And if I could get my hands on that before delivery, that's a wonderful thing.
Now I've got this in there, and it's like the old days when you would have to go in on an entry operation and use silent drills and put a device in the wall.
Now, you know, we've delivered a TV. Now I get a video, too.
So, a regular phone that you get, if you just buy an iPhone and you have Siri turned on so you can say, hey, Siri, and it turns on, that phone is always listening to you.
But, like, it would kind of be scandalous if we found out that Apple is listening to everything that you say, and then they're sending them information to these companies, and then they're trying to sell you whatever you were bringing up.
There's an ability for that billboard to sense – and again, I go overboard if I start talking technical and someone will call me out and say, well, it's not exactly how it works.
But in simplistic terms, yeah, it's an ability to monitor pedestrian traffic to understand people's interests and to further refine so that they can sell a shit better.
Look, I mean, you can tracking now, understanding where people are, right?
As an example, You know, it used to be putting a beacon, right?
Investigations, you know, you put a beacon on a car, right?
And it was a little clumsy, but it got better and better as you go along.
You know, now it's pretty remarkable.
But you can also, think about the electronics that exist in a current vehicle, in a new vehicle.
You can, every one of those has a unique signature.
So whether it's the tire pressure indicators, you know how you get in your car and it says your left front tire is low?
Well, that's a particular signal.
If I know that signal for that car, I'll bet I can find that car.
And it's the same with all the other electronics that exist within a vehicle or just in the shit that we carry around.
They've all got some kind of signature.
But again, I think most people are willing to give up a surprising amount of privacy for whatever reason, maybe because they're getting accustomed to it and they're not shocked by shit anymore.
It was the National Security Advisor on CNN last night.
He was talking about Bill Barr, his...
The access to information he would already have.
And also be gaining, I guess, by becoming the Attorney General.
They were discussing whether he will share all the information coming out.
They wanted him to commit to doing that.
He was just sort of saying, "I can't commit because I don't know what's in there yet." And they were just sort of like giving both their sides of like what he could know, what he would know, what he will know.
was sort of saying and he sort of cut himself off of sharing about how much information this guy might have access to it sort of it seemed like it mm-hmm he was the former national security adviser I believe yeah that was so one of the things that everybody was scared of was that the NSA was building some gigantic place somewhere outside of Salt Lake where they would store every single phone call that you ever made in every single email Yeah.
I mean, technology now is – I mean, I remember the old days of operations, right?
I mean, if we wanted to – we're overseas.
It's compounded incredibly.
It's really difficult to do observation posts and listening posts and everything overseas, right, because it's not your turf.
And so you've got to come up with an airtight plan, but it was the same way.
You still had to get physical access, right?
The phone lines, you had to clip off, and then you had to figure out where am I putting the gear, where am I going to put the batteries, how am I going to store this shit, and then you've got to listen to it, right?
And what happens is it starts collecting like this, you start getting mountains of tapes, right?
And you're not getting it real-time, which is a problem.
But nowadays, no, it's entirely different.
But I think if we look at today's concerns, if we look at what are people worried about, what should they be worried about?
I know that privacy always comes up.
People always talk about it.
But I guess I keep going back to my same point, which was I – I don't see people with pitchforks and the torches going down to complain to Jeff Bezos that Amazon's collecting massive amounts of data or T-Mobile and Sprint and all these are mapping our locations as we move around.
I just don't see it.
I mean that probably raised nobody's interest for the most part, that article that you just pulled up.
And I guess in part it's because, again, we've become kind of used to it, become accustomed to it.
So fine.
What should we be worried about?
Well, I tell you what we should be worried about mostly is state-sponsored activity by countries whose interests almost never align with ours.
Now, it would include China.
It certainly includes Russia.
It includes Iran.
The shit that they're doing.
China has a policy.
Information domination, right?
Which means they've determined that the next war, the next modern large-scale war is going to be won by whoever has control over information.
So where are they putting all their resources?
China knows that they're not going to build a military that's going to be able to reach around the globe.
For the most part, although they're, you know, they're beefing up their resources.
What are they doing?
It's cyber and it's space, right?
So I know a lot of people were kicking the president in the ass and laughing about the Space Force because it is funny, right?
But the uniforms would be amazing.
But they talk about this.
But China honestly believes, and it's putting their resources into cyber and to space.
What does that mean?
Well, their anti-satellite technology that they've been developing and working on and continue to work on, the whole point of that is to take control of communications and surveillance abilities, whether it's ours or our allies, in the event of something major that happens.
And we're all suddenly walking around with compasses and maps, you know, trying to shoot an azimuth and figure out where the hell, you know, the target is.
There's no treaty that says you can't develop anti-satellite technology.
There's the START treaties, there's the nuclear conventions that we have with Russia, which is a whole other interesting topic because we're right now arguing with the Russians over the latest nuke It's coming up for renewal sometime soon, a year or two years from now.
And the Russians have been cheating on a previous agreement, and so now they're trying to say we're cheating on the new one.
That's an interesting thing to be watching, but the point being is that there's conventions that try to control the numbers for warheads or for delivery mechanisms, missiles or submarines, whatever, bombers.
Not for this new world, cyberspace.
The Pentagon's still trying to figure out what war means in cyberspace.
How do you respond?
What's the threshold?
And then what's an appropriate response?
And so maybe we'll get there.
Maybe we'll start having these discussions and create treaties that will allow that.
But right now, from China's perspective, again, not to beat on China, but I'm much more concerned about China for our national security They're a much bigger concern than Russia is.
Russia's punching above its weight.
And Putin's a dick, no doubt about it, right?
And they're doing what they always do, which is meddle in democracy.
That's been their methodology ever since they've been around.
But that's small potatoes.
They've got the GDP of a small European country.
And when the oil prices are in the toilet, they really are sucking wind.
So, yeah, we got to be concerned with Russia and understand that their interests are never aligned with ours, you know, for the most part, maybe.
We tried to imagine they were with Syria and ISIS and everything, but Russia's only interest there was maintaining their leverage and increasing it and not losing their military foothold there.
That was their primary interest.
We mirror our values and we mirror our interests on other countries, and so we imagined that somehow we're all in this fight against ISIS together.
Eh, horseshit.
You know, so...
So yeah, China's a much bigger issue, and we should be focused on that.
And to some degree, this administration is.
So that's where I say, look, you can't just keep complaining and bitching and moaning because you don't like President Trump.
There's certain things that are going on that you should be willing to say, okay, that makes sense.
Maybe I don't like the messenger, but that part of it makes sense.
But I suspect that what happened was he came into it focused on the trade imbalance.
And as he was sitting there and talking about the trade imbalance, More of the conversation from the National Security Council and from the agency and others in terms of saying, well, yeah, this is part of the reason why, and this is the long-term effects of their theft of intellectual property.
This is why, in part, they've been successful in these areas.
So I think there was probably more and more discussion talking about their economic espionage and theft of IP, and that became then an issue for him.
But I think initially, and still to this day, I think the big issue is just he wants to try to create a win in terms of the trade imbalance.
Russia seems to us here domestically, speaking for myself, when I think about it and I think about the narrative that's been sort of delivered to us, is that Russia is this military danger.
We're worried about Putin taking over other countries.
We're worried about Putin's power, the way he kills dissidents, the way he kills political opponents and journalists.
We think about China, and even with the Huawei arrests, we're like, no one seems to be concerned.
And also, I mean, look, he's been very clear about, you know, wanting to try to rebuild the Soviet Union.
So whether it's Crimea and the annexation of that, or whether taking over eastern Ukraine...
You know, or maintaining a position in Georgia, whatever it is, you know, certainly, you know, his attacks or the FSB's attacks overseas against, you know, dissidents and others.
Yeah, he's just more in your face.
He's like Tony Soprano, right?
And so you can look at that.
China's always been, you know, sort of this thing, right?
And look, China's fantastic.
The history is amazing.
You know, the places are incredible.
I think it's, you know, we should be trading with China.
We should be doing a huge amount of business with China.
We should, you know, clear the decks and try to the degree we can level the playing field.
But we should also be pragmatic and realize what they do.
You know, in terms of their theft of IP. And so, you know, because that, again, that probably won't change.
But yeah, we absolutely should be dealing with China all the time.
But I think that they've always kind of been viewed more in more of a sophisticated fashion, maybe, because Putin is just sort of in your face.
And he's good at it.
He's very successful.
He's a smart son of a bitch.
But he's – I think he's pretty easy to read, right?
He's thuggish and he longs for those days of the Soviet Union.
So we should understand that everything he does is because of that.
It's because he would love to rebuild the Soviet Union.
And so we shouldn't be surprised by any sort of aggressive move that he makes against his neighbors, and we should always push back.
And to be fair, this administration, not to beat their drum, but the actions they've taken against Russia, despite the fact that you've got people calling him a puppet of Putin, are more significant than the previous administration took.
The sanctions against key individuals and companies within Russia, as an example, those are the toughest sanctions that have been placed on Russia ever.
The provision of weapons and assistance to the Ukrainians, right?
That was something the previous administration said, no, not going to do that, because we don't want any blowback.
That's a good thing, right?
That should be done.
Pushing back against them on the 2011 nuked deal, right?
Or sorry, on the previous, on the START deal, prior to the 2011 deal, and calling them out and saying, look, you're cheating on this, and you've got to be held accountable.
I mean, there's certain things there that make sense.
And that don't add up.
If you talk to somebody who says, well, he's an absolute puppet, and you say, well, okay, he's a puppet, so why is he doing certain things that seem counter to Russian interests?
And they'll say, well, because he's smart, and he's like, he doesn't want to get caught out.
See, he's playing a long game here.
And I'm thinking, okay, maybe, maybe, who knows?
But I haven't strapped on my tinfoil hat yet to get to that point.
And so, you know, who knows where they're going to go with that, but, you know, could they have...
This idea that they've got compromising information on them.
Here's what I think, is that if Mueller has figured this out, right, and he's been quiet about it, and then they...
Then the most remarkable thing about this investigation will be that nobody leaked.
Because you can't keep a secret in Washington.
And so the fact that for two years now, we don't have that bullet that they think they're going to come up with at some point, my inclination is to think that Mueller's going to finish this investigation.
Issue some findings and nobody's going to be happy, right?
Because there won't be a bullet.
And so the left won't be happy.
The right won't be happy because he'll still be pointing out the fact that there was, you know, a lot of, you know, stupid moves on the campaign's part and that there was inappropriate activity by, you know, people like Manafort and others.
But do I think there's going to be some smoking gun?
I don't.
I don't think so.
Because – and my reason for saying that is because I've never known Washington not be able to keep – or to be able to keep a secret.
And much like, you know, our willingness to give up privacy because we keep...
We're hearing about another hack or another leak or we know that Amazon's doing this or that.
I think it's that constant drumbeat and that mudsling.
And I think the Dems haven't done themselves any favors or the resistance movement or whatever we want to call it because I think people are just immune to it.
And it's hardened Trump's base to think, you know, he's under attack every minute.
I just wonder if she has so many people that owe her favors and she's so deeply entrenched in the world that she could somehow or another muster up enough support to give it one more shot.
We're getting to that point where we end up with a female president, and hey, good for us, right?
I got no problems.
I think it would actually – I think it would turn the ship in a nice direction, right, as long as the policies are good.
I don't care who it is, as long as we're not veering off into – You know, sort of socialist policy land and thinking somehow we're all going to end up with universal basic income.
Andrew Yang wants to describe universal basic income and what the benefits would be.
The reason being that they're worried that automation is going to kill a gigantic percentage of jobs in...
In manufacturing, fast food, medical field, trucks, all these different things that universal basic income might actually be something that we need at a certain point in time because so many jobs will go away and go away so rapidly.
What I thought was maybe, but maybe if the motivation is not just to survive, but the motivation to succeed and do well, it would get people to do what they actually want to do for a living or chase down what they actually want to do and get them motivated to have a better life, not just motivated to live.
Yeah, but the part that worries me is this issue of motivation and ensuring that then, you know, everybody's willing to un-ask the SOFA and do something productive, right?
And it's not just, we can't be like a nation of People following their passion because their passion is completely unproductive.
Next thing you know, X amount of time later, this guy drives his car 150 miles an hour into a tree, it blows up, the engine goes flying, the whole deal.
The conspiracy theory was that there was a way, because he had a brand new Mercedes, there was a way that they could take over The controls of your vehicle, the acceleration, the braking, the steering, and they could do all this remotely.
If they put something in your car, like we were talking about, if you could get a hold of this television, you could turn that television into a receiver.
Do you think that it's possible that someone could have gotten a hold of his car and made him suicide himself?
And I mean think about – people should think about it.
Think about the OnStar or think about the ability for your car to send data to the vehicle manufacturer, right, to tell them what's going on with your vehicle.
So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor.
Whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post.
Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in a better and more responsible hands.
He wants her to get it.
He wants Bezos to not have the Washington Post, which is highly critical of the president, while the Inquirer has been known to kill stories critical of the president.
It's the Taco Bell Arena, which is the best venue in the city.
It's a big venue.
And there was lines just blocks and blocks and blocks before they opened the doors, and even after they opened doors because there were so many people.
I think we talked about that before the show started.
Wall Street Journal wrote an article saying, it is some time ago, a couple of months ago or whenever, saying it's the fastest growing city in the country.
Maybe that's an argument against it also, which is that I don't think it's going to unlock a whole treasure trove of innovators.
If suddenly you give people money and say, okay, you don't have to go pour coffee or flip burgers or clean up that road or whatever you're going to do for a living.
You can follow your passion.
I don't think we're going to find some exponential increase in the number of people inventing the wheel.
I just think that it's just going to be a lot more people farting under the blankets or something.
You might be right, but the only good that I think could come out of it is that less people are in abject poverty and less people are desperate, so it might reduce crime.
You might have lazy people, but you might also have less people that are inclined to steal things or do something that's illegal because their basic needs are taken care of.
So I meant to look into it and do more research to see whether the article is actually correct or not, but hey, it was in the newspaper, so it must be true, right?
So your point about the basic universal income, I take that point.
I see what that, you know, if it was possible to pay for it, and again, My concern would be people that didn't appreciate it and people that felt entitled.
So that's part of it is also I'm fairly steeped in the idea that, you know, we're living in a very unique country, right?
And I do worry sometimes that people don't...
You know, even family, and I've got some friends and others who are just constantly pissing and moaning about this place.
And I'm thinking, I spent almost all my life over in shitholes around the world.
And there is no other place I would rather be as a country.
And I know that's jingoistic or whatever, but honest to God, I still believe.
And if you go someplace and you talk to somebody in some fifth world...
They will also, my experience has been anyway, maybe you're listening and your experience is different, but that's the way it works, is that they'll think, if I go to America, if I can get to America and I work hard, I can be successful.
And that, I think, is still true.
And that's what I worry about with entitlements and things that may kill that belief.
And you're right, income inequality.
You're right, you work harder, It doesn't always happen, but life's not supposed to be fair.
Maybe it's supposed to be fair, but it's not fair.
I think that the real concern is that people don't appreciate already how great they have and what incredible opportunity they have.
And if we give them more benefits with less effort, then you're going to develop more of this attitude that we find disturbing, which is people that don't have an appreciation for literally the greatest experiment in self-government the world has ever known.
There's an interesting study about college and graduation rates from college for disadvantaged folks.
And that was, again, why they made it easier for tuition assistance.
So the idea was we want to expand the college ability for everybody, which is a great idea.
But what they found was they expanded the college opportunity for everybody.
But over the past decade, decade and a half, fewer people from the lower income categories have been graduating, right?
So what you've done is you said, come on in.
It's like special operators, right?
If you lower the bar, right?
And this is where I'm going to get in trouble probably.
I'll talk about the Marines and, you know, allowing women into combat elements.
I know, oh my god!
Well, what do they do?
You lower the bar.
You make it, okay, well, not enough of them could get through the course, so I'm going to change the regulations, right?
And so if you change the regulations, what they found with the college was if you increase that pool of people going, it doesn't mean that they're going to be successful, right?
And now what you've done is you've kind of saddled them with some college debt, and they didn't graduate.
So they're still earning what a high school graduate earns, and the system doesn't work.
And so I think sometimes just the idea of throwing money at the problem, it's not helpful if we don't think it through and then assess the results.
And I think it's good to give people the opportunity to succeed and to advance themselves.
But if you really want to address it as a systemic problem, you've got to get to the root of it, which is these unbelievably horrible neighborhoods and these toxic environments that these kids are growing up and being abused and being scared and bullied and terrible piss-poor education, you know, first through...
All the way up to high school.
That's, I mean, that's really where you have to address it.
I mean, addressing it just at the college level and giving them the opportunity to get into college and making it easier for them, it doesn't negate the terrible foundation that's been laid by their life.
Yeah, and I think that's, we had this idea that college should be for everybody, right?
And that's okay, that's great, and I think that's where the, you know, people like Cortez and Bernie Sanders and others, with their idea of free tuition, They're thinking, okay, well, look at Europe.
Some countries in Europe have free tuition, and hey, it's relatively prosperous, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But at the same time, I think we don't We don't assess the cost and the overall efficiency of an idea sometimes.
And so we just assume, you know, open it up, let everybody go, and somehow this is going to work, right, to our advantage.
And the honest-to-God answer is no.
You know, I think somebody is better off sometimes, you know, going to, you know, becoming a plumber.
But I see your points and I know what you're saying.
I think that one thing that disturbs the shit out of me is student loans.
I mean, one of the worst ways to prepare a kid for the future is to saddle them down with a quarter million dollars worth of debt by the time they graduate from college.
Some of it, you know, the older students are the ones who are willing to take out this loan, and then suddenly they're using the money for something else.
Okay.
Okay, fine.
There's individual responsibility.
But, no, I agree with you.
The student loan debt is a major issue.
We occasionally, Capitol Hill talks about it, but not really.
I told my daughter, who's a fantastic person, I said, you know, the biggest gift you're getting...
is getting out of college without any any debt yeah that's you know so you know dad's not gonna buy you your own wagoneer you know you gotta get your own wagoneer yeah your tuition and that's that's that's it that's the best i can tell that's a gigantic head start for kids yeah not i mean it sounds so fucked up but it's true to not be in debt is gigantic look they're giving kids credit cards and their frontal lobes aren't even developed yet they're doing all kinds of wacky they're like well i'll figure it out You ain't figuring out shit.
You never figured out things up till now, and the idea that you're going to get magically smarter over the next six months while you owe all this money is crazy.
So you look at that and you think, okay, no wonder it's a popular idea of saying you've got to write down student loans, you've got to get free tuition going on, and do all these things.
And again, can the country pay for it?
I don't think so.
Should we be talking about it?
Absolutely.
Should we be looking for other alternatives and other options?
Yeah, but I think it's...
We're not even willing to address the issue of Social Security and Medicare and trying to deal with entitlements as they currently exist, which we know are going to bankrupt us at some point.
We know that.
It's not a mystery.
And we can't deal with that.
So how are we going to deal with these other issues?
But anyway, very smart guy, very smart economist who was talking about this and saying, this is what we expect of a president.
Think about all these things.
The president has to be – Cognizate of and supposedly capable of digesting a lot of information and making decisions on a varied number of things.
And obviously, yeah, you delegate.
Fine.
But it is an interesting system.
And it is interesting how, you know, I mean, right now, there's a lot of people that don't have faith in the current president to make, you know, some of your basic decisions.
Previous administration, there were a lot of people that was convinced he could, you know, I mean, he was capable of all of it.
So I don't think the job itself is too big.
I just think that the way that we go through the selection process has slowly over a period of time gone downhill and has kind of resulted in what we're doing right now.
Part of it's the bullshit primary process.
You know, and the way that we do the initial selection, there's a lot of things, I suppose.
I thought I was just going to go up and shake his hand and say, you know, hey, Mr. President, you know, good to see you.
Because I always liked the guy, right?
And okay, aside from his obvious issue and the problem he had, in terms of his ability to govern and the fact that he's a smart son of a bitch, and I just found him capable of the job, right?
Just like I did with President Bush, and there were good aspects of President Obama.
I don't have a dog in the hunt, right?
I mean, I'd rather...
See the results in the person.
But anyway, talking to President Clinton, we started talking, and he immediately went to an old agency operation, an old thing that had happened during his time when he was president, to talk about it.
And you could tell that he, I mean, he had retained a tremendous amount of information, right?
And we were talking, and we ended up talking for 15 minutes or so, just kind of about this particular incident, and he was kind of curious, and he wanted to, you know, he wanted to recount kind of some of the thought process that they were, you know, going through, and I found it really interesting in the sense that that was a...
It was a surprisingly deep conversation, right?
And he's curious.
And I always thought that was the most important quality for anybody who gets in that job, is they have to be curious, right?
They have to be inquisitive.
On the scale of presidents, where does the current president exist in the curiosity scale?
I don't know, but I think that's probably not his strong suit.
So maybe that's one of the reasons why he's not aging is because he's not asking that fourth or fifth question that leads you to the point where you go, oh, that's a pretty fucked up situation.
Now we've got to worry about that one.
So maybe it is water off the back and he's figured out a way to deal with stress.
Well, I think it's the regulations that they've done that they haven't really touted in terms of deregulating some of the things.
I mean, because, look, the previous administration, you know, a lot of good points, but some bad points.
One of the bad points was sort of the hamstring of industry through overregulation on everything, right?
And so lifting some of that, you know, there's this – you can argue whether – You know, you want bigger government or less government, but you can't argue with the fact that it did unleash, you know, industry and business more than the previous administration.
So that's a good thing.
But, you know, look at all the other concerns.
I mean, now we're talking about, you know, a global slowdown, right?
Because, you know, China's numbers are looking soft.
Germany's looking soft.
What does that mean?
Everybody's worried about Brexit.
So there's a lot of things for people to be focused on, you know.
And I worry sometimes that all we do here in the States is kind of like chase the next shiny ball of tinfoil because we're all a bunch of raccoons.
We have such a short attention span for everything.
Of all the sort of incidents – I don't mean to minimize it by calling it an incident – but of all those situations, the Kennedy assassination and Martin Luther King's assassination, those are the two that I understand more than anything else why they've lingered and why people don't believe the shit that they've seen and why they have concerns about it.
Martin Luther King more than Kennedy, I believe that – There was something there that we still don't understand in terms of who else was responsible and who organized that and who assisted in that.
I just think of those two, that's the one I've got bigger questions on.
The Kennedy assassination, I think that Oswald pulled the trigger.
I think in his mind the reason he was doing it was for the greater good of communism and to boost his image with the Soviets and with the Cuban regime.
Do I think that he had assistance?
I don't think so, but I could be swayed from that with better evidence than I've seen.
But I understand why people are so dug in on it, right?
Because, I mean, look, it was a massive event, right?
It was a massive event.
But Oswald had sufficient training.
You did not have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.
It was a different era, and we don't understand it in today's terms.
But when you get right in that position and look out that window and look at the shot that was taken and what was involved in that, I was not a...
You've shot...
This sounds terrible, but anybody who's hunted has taken a more difficult shot than that.
So that part of it and his motivation...
And his past ties to the Soviets, do I think the Soviets were pulling the trigger on it?
Do I think the mafia were pulling the trigger?
I haven't seen anything that convinces me that that was the case.
I think that Oswald felt like he was doing it for them or he was going to prove himself in that regard.
But again, I understand why people have dug in.
The MLK one, Martin Luther King, I just – I think that – I don't think he acted alone.
I think that – look, he was a loser, a two-bit criminal who was constantly getting picked up for the shit that he was doing and ending up in jail.
He was a mess.
There was nothing clever about him.
And then leading up to the assassination – He cleaned up his act.
Suddenly he went from looking like a two-bit criminal to a college professor basically and he had cash.
He was able to purchase a vehicle and he kind of went off the grid for a while.
He went on his drive and sort of stayed off the grid and he behaved in a way that he hadn't up until months before this thing took place and then he ended up in Europe.
And I just – something tells me that he had assistance in some fashion.
I don't know who, right, or whatever, but I just – that's the one that more than any others that I've looked at makes me step back and go, no, we don't know the whole story here.
The Kennedy thing, I – Again, maybe there's something out there that we just haven't turned over.
It's always a possibility.
But yeah, MLK, I think that's the one that's most disturbing.
If all you do when you're looking at this is to look at Ray's behavior in that year leading up to the assassination, So that's the interesting – for me, that's the most interesting part.
I mean you put it in context with everything he did up until that point, which is he was basically, again, just a two-bit criminal who couldn't stay out of jail.
And then you get this.
And you get this change in behavior and this change in appearance and this sudden ability to be something that he wasn't up until that point.
No, just, you know, again, just a penny any criminal, basically.
And there was plenty of information.
It wasn't like he couldn't have gathered.
If you say, well, no, he acted on his own.
Well, okay.
Yeah.
Was there information?
Yes.
Leading right up to the day before, there was talk about, you know, there were news reports showing King at the Lorraine Motel and, you know, coming in and out of the room, you know, that he was staying in.
And so...
It wasn't as if you couldn't gather that information on your own, but it was – again, it was that behavior leading up to it.
And I'm not a conspiracy guy at all, right?
I've seen too much shit to think that every conspiracy is holding water.
But this one was disturbing in that regard, for what that's worth.
Again, there's elements of it that you look at, but...
Collectively, just, you know.
And again, maybe there's something else out there.
Maybe there is.
And we just haven't uncovered it.
Or maybe this will, you know, prompt, you know, some additional information.
Who knows?
But, yeah.
Anyway, it's fascinating shit.
But I do get it because it was such a seminal moment, right?
And nobody wants to think that something that bad, that horrific, and that something that could sort of shatter the country in that fashion could be done by one guy like Lee Harvey Oswald.