Aug. 6, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:07:07
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! | ||
| Hello, Evan. | ||
| Hey, Joe. | ||
| Great to see you, buddy. | ||
| Is that coffee? | ||
| It is coffee, but I just grabbed it because it was here. | ||
|
unidentified
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There we go. | |
| Cheers to booze. | ||
| Boosted coffee seems odd. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
| Oh, that's good. | ||
| God, it's great to see you, man. | ||
| Good to see you. | ||
| Still Austin. | ||
| Shout out to Still Austin. | ||
| God, that is good. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Good stuff. | ||
| Made here, I think. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe just the name. | ||
| I really have no idea. | ||
| So, I feel like you're... | ||
| It's good shit, though. | ||
| Like, whining and dining me. | ||
| I got cigars and whiskey. | ||
| This is gonna be a great episode. | ||
| I can't wait to see what happens after. | ||
| Well, when people were attacking you, I got butt hurt. | ||
| I was like, come on, Evan? | ||
| Get the fuck out of here. | ||
| I was like, I gotta have you in. | ||
| It was so weird to see cancel culture come from the right. | ||
| I was like, I didn't know it worked that way. | ||
| I didn't know you fucking idiots would do the same shit. | ||
| Like, what is going on? | ||
| It didn't even make sense. | ||
| It made no sense. | ||
| It was the weirdest dog pile I've ever watched. | ||
| You know, I've tried to figure it out, and I haven't really spent a ton of time on it. | ||
| Because, honestly, I've got better shit to do in my life than figure out what anonymous accounts and Twitter is saying what about me. | ||
| But I think there's just such a mistrust with mainstream media, and that's bred this hyper-divisive gaslighting on both sides. | ||
| And I think conservatives, at times, are also looking for the conspiracy inside the party, so they kind of spin themselves up a little bit. | ||
| But it was such a strange scenario for me to be in because I think I've been so open for seven years as like who we are, what we do. | ||
| I haven't really held anything back. | ||
| So I think it's a combination of things going on. | ||
| Like people are super pissed off. | ||
| Like the pandemic has been a complete shit show. | ||
| You got a mistrust in the government. | ||
| You got a mistrust in mainstream media. | ||
| And you're looking for the boogeyman. | ||
| And I mean... | ||
| It's crazy to see misinformation being put out about yourself. | ||
| Did it start with the New York Times article? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So the New York Times article was like, Black Rifle Coffee is the Starbucks of the Right. | ||
| Is that how they described it? | ||
| Can they be? | ||
| Oh, can they be the Starbucks of the Right. | ||
| And what was the negative part of that? | ||
| Did you read the article? | ||
| I did, only because I was really interested to see how they were going to represent the company. | ||
| And we didn't... | ||
| So to rewind, we knew this story was going down months before. | ||
| So I was down in Florida. | ||
| I was bass fishing with Johnny Morris, who owns Bass Pro Shops. | ||
| Must be nice. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's a great guy. | ||
| He's awesome. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| If he owns those spots. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He knows exactly where the great bass are, believe it or not. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| So we were bass fishing. | ||
| It was me, my business partner, Matt. | ||
| And we get a call. | ||
| Hey, the Times is doing an article on you guys. | ||
| Do you guys want to sit for the interview? | ||
| And we're like, fuck you. | ||
| No. | ||
| Right? | ||
| But then we started thinking about it. | ||
| And... | ||
| I kind of debated it internally for a while, and I looked at other articles they had done on guys like Dave Portnoy. | ||
| I think you had had one, or at least in the past. | ||
| And, you know, Don Jr., who is also a friend of mine. | ||
| I'm like, hey, man. | ||
| I think if they're going to do the story, I'll at least give them the opportunity to be objective and then really take a look at the company from the inside. | ||
| I had no illusions as to what type of position they might take or how they might misrepresent the company. | ||
| It was, at least I'll give them the opportunity. | ||
| So it's kind of a fool me once type scenario where it's like, hey man, fool me once, sure, not going to get the second time. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So we debated it. | ||
| I was like, I'll come or come on out and I'll take you to a veteran adaptive athlete shoot that we do. | ||
| And you can talk to 30 plus wounded veterans and Black Rifle Coffee employees and maybe you'll get a true feeling as to what this company does and what it means. | ||
| That never pulled through the article, which I thought was a little bit disappointing. | ||
| That wasn't in the article at all? | ||
| There was a quick blurb about it, and it was representing veterans. | ||
| They were talking about the shirt that he was wearing. | ||
| They were talking about somebody that lost their legs in combat. | ||
| Who gives a shit about what shirt they're wearing? | ||
| But what I... The justification was, I feel like I have an ethical responsibility to represent the veteran community and really use what I call earned media to shed light on what I think are the most important issues of the post-9-11 veteran community. | ||
| So... | ||
| I'm fine with advertising my brand and marketing my brand outside of that. | ||
| But if we have an opportunity with somebody like The Times to talk about what's happening in our peer group, like what's happening along the lines of the psychological and physical issues with all the veterans that we hire. | ||
| I have 220 plus veterans that work inside the company. | ||
| I felt it would be the ethically correct thing for me to do for the company and for the people there to tell their side of the story. | ||
| I didn't have any illusions as to whether or not they were going to paint the company in a certain light, but I did feel it was really important to do that. | ||
| I don't think that that pulled through. | ||
| There's a lot of things that didn't pull through in the article that I would have loved to have had in the article, but They didn't. | ||
| I'm not riding it, right? | ||
| That's the way the journalist views the world. | ||
| So I was surprised to see all the kickback from, I think, conservatives because now all of a sudden conservatives are reading and believing the New York Times. | ||
| So what was the Times take on the company? | ||
| Um, well, I think the first piece that I really wouldn't agree with is the tonality. | ||
| And I know that's a general term, but their perspective on it was that I'm just a lucky guy. | ||
| I got lucky and I met, you know, Matt Best and Matt Best was lucky in the fact that he was making, uh, viewed or watched viral videos and he and I just kind of linked up and we got lucky and And then it felt really exploitive in the first part. | ||
| Man, I'll tell you, it's not been lucky. | ||
| You know, I think luck is what you capitalize on after you put in a fuck ton of hard work. | ||
| Well, I've known you guys for years, and I knew you guys when the company wasn't nearly as big. | ||
| So I've seen the progress, and I've seen the work. | ||
| I've seen your factory. | ||
| I've gone to the place in Salt Lake where you showed me the fucking coffee roaster that you guys fabricated together and told me the story about it. | ||
| It's not luck. | ||
| Anybody who says it's luck doesn't know you or is willfully misrepresenting the truth in order to paint a narrative that they already had established before they started the article. | ||
| Bingo. | ||
| They already had a narrative. | ||
| They already had a narrative based on their readership and the way that they view the world that this is the way they wanted to view the company. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, what it doesn't tell you is, and I've kind of put this into light for a lot of people. | ||
| You know my past. | ||
| Like, I was a Green Beret. | ||
| I worked for the CIA for a number of years. | ||
| I've seven and a half years deployed into combat zones between Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| And starting this business and running this business for seven years is the single hardest thing I've ever done. | ||
| The first two years of the business, I had a thermoresp below my desk where I was only sleeping four, four and a half hours a night to the point where my doctor was like, dude, you're going to kill yourself. | ||
| If you don't start sleeping, you're going to die. | ||
| And you always hear this in our subculture, which is, you know, we'll sleep when you're dead, you know, toughen up, you know. | ||
| There's this drum beat through the community at all times, which is you just got to suck it up. | ||
| And I live and breathe that. | ||
| Just suck it up. | ||
| You know, do what it takes to complete the mission. | ||
| Maintain maniacal focus on your goals, your objectives, and you do not finish until it's mission complete. | ||
| That's the way I live my life. | ||
| I'm a very serious character when it comes to the majority of what I do. | ||
| The first few years of this business were so challenging because I was carrying a rifle in Afghanistan for a living. | ||
| That's how, you know, I put a roof over my head. | ||
| This is what I was doing for not only the best interest of, you know, my professional endeavors, but also the strategic interest of the United States. | ||
| So the first few years of this were brutal and When you distill it down to luck, it's disingenuous and it takes away all the hard work and the sacrifice that I had to make. | ||
| Did you explain this to the Times? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I talked a lot about... | ||
| I had sold everything I owned. | ||
| So probably year two, two and a half, I hadn't taken any money out of the company because I am a capitalist at the end of the day, but capital means you're... | ||
| Reinvesting the money that you make into the company to grow it. | ||
| And I think that's a clear differentiation, which is individual wealth and capital are two totally different things, but we can unpack that later. | ||
| But I sold everything. | ||
| So I had a couple different homes, every gun that I had, everything that was not bolted down. | ||
| Was out the door and sold. | ||
| I was running the company specifically on my personal credit cards, just trying to get this thing off the ground to the point where my wife didn't know why we were missing rent payments. | ||
| You know, I'm coming home looking at my, you know, my kids thinking there's not only no money in the bank, but we have $36,000 of credit card debt and there's nothing left to sell. | ||
| And I think that's the mentality that, one, you have to have in order to succeed, which is if you believe in yourself, you have to invest in yourself, and you've got to take risks, and you've got to push. | ||
| I knew that we were going to succeed. | ||
| I knew it was going to take time. | ||
| I knew it was going to be challenging, but... | ||
| Until you're there, it's a lot different when you're risking the lives, when I say the life and comfort of your family, than it is your life limb and your eyesight of the individual. | ||
| The amount of stress and anxiety that that takes over years of compounding interest of investing in yourself... | ||
| So that's where the article missed it. | ||
| And not only to be that economically challenged for those many years, I've always been able to give back to veteran nonprofits every year. | ||
| So I didn't take any money out of the company for two years, but I was able to give back over, I think over the first couple years, like $37,000, $38,000 back to veteran nonprofits. | ||
| Because that's my commitment. | ||
| And when I tell people that, I'm a capitalist that concentrates what I like to do with philanthropy back to my peer group. | ||
| I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand it and they don't get it. | ||
| And there's no way for people to get a small snapshot in time and to really kind of comprehend what we're doing on a daily basis and why we're doing it. | ||
| So, when the article comes out and you read their take on it, did you anticipate that there was going to be blowback? | ||
| No. | ||
| You thought, like, okay, it's just another hit piece. | ||
| Was it all negative? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| Was there anything positive in it? | ||
| No, I... I didn't even see it initially as a hit piece. | ||
| I didn't see it. | ||
| I just saw it as a list of factual, semi-factual, and non-factual information. | ||
| So they're trying to portray you in a certain light. | ||
| Which wasn't all that negative. | ||
| It really wasn't. | ||
| And it was as objective as he could be. | ||
| I truly think that it was as objective as that guy can be because that's the way he views the world. | ||
| It's not just that. | ||
| It's also editors. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Yeah, there's editors. | ||
| I have a good friend of mine who used to be a writer over there, and she was explaining to me what it's like to write there and what it's like when you turn a story in and how they change – she was explaining words that they changed and phrases that they changed and things that she was trying to depict that wouldn't let her. | ||
| Yeah, and I think the first cut that I ran through it, you know, read it. | ||
| I was like, oh, okay. | ||
| That's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I mean, I was fully expecting something just like, you know... | ||
| Totally misrepresenting the company and its values. | ||
| But I was like, oh, they actually got a few things right. | ||
| You know, I do have a lot of dedication to the veteran community. | ||
| You know, they're my family. | ||
| They're the people outside of my wife and my children, the company, the post-9-11 GWAT community. | ||
| That's my family. | ||
| I think some of that might have pulled through, but... | ||
| Obviously I live it, so it's something I feel every day of my life, so I don't expect that to be captured within three days. | ||
| I think it's misrepresentative to who I am. | ||
| So I found out about this because I follow all kinds of people on Twitter. | ||
| I follow right-wing, left-wing, I follow all kinds of people. | ||
| And I started seeing some weird shit from right-wing people That were saying Black Rifle Coffee is shitting on their fans and throwing their business away. | ||
| And I was like, what? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What is this and where is this coming from? | ||
| I was interested, but not enough to read the article. | ||
| I'm not that interested, but I was like, this is a very weird take. | ||
| And then you and I talked on the phone about it, and I was like, someone needs to just sit down with you. | ||
| Who better than me? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I appreciate it. | ||
| Honestly, I think most of my friends that either read the article or know me were like, this is complete bullshit. | ||
| What is this? | ||
| And how are people pulling this out of this article? | ||
| And I think the way that they tied in a couple of the last paragraphs, which was, they were, what I was referring to in the last paragraph specifically was the conversation that's being referenced is the writer and I are discussing racial hostility in America. | ||
| And last year, the company was recipient of an online attack from racist and anti-Semites. | ||
| And because of my last name, because my last name is Jewish, they were targeting us for... | ||
| A combination of reasons. | ||
| And I was referring to that specific or those two specific people, which was, I don't want racists or anti-Semites buying my coffee, which I thought was, like, nobody likes those people. | ||
| I don't even think they like themselves, to be honest with you, right? | ||
| Nobody likes them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which I didn't think was very controversial. | ||
| But what a lot of the bloggers picked up was that the portrayal that I was referring to my customers in that way, I was like, I wasn't. | ||
| I was directly referring to only racists and anti-Semites. | ||
| And specifically the ones that attacked you guys. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Yeah, specifically those. | ||
| This was after that kid, what is his name again? | ||
| The kid who was wearing the Black Rifle coffee shirt? | ||
| Yeah, Kyle Rittenhouse. | ||
| Kyle Rittenhouse, yeah. | ||
| When he was standing in the kitchen with Ricky Schroeder after he got released, he was wearing a Black Rifle coffee shirt. | ||
| Which is like, standard tactical bro outfit. | ||
| Black Rifle coffee shirt, you know, G-Shock watch, you know what I mean? | ||
| It's like, and he, you know, this is the kid that showed up at a rally with, what did he have, an AR? Yeah. | ||
| And I think, you know, that's been unpacked so many times. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's, you know, it's one of those things that people are debating across the internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week. | ||
| And what had happened was that NPR and a few other mainstream media sources had reported that we had somehow sponsored him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sponsored him. | |
| Right, right. | ||
| And I had to clear it because- Right. | ||
| Listen, we weren't sponsoring him, but I wasn't making or weighing in on whether or not he was legal or ethical in his actions. | ||
| I was just saying, hey, we didn't sponsor him because we had a lot of people that were flooding into the inboxes saying, you know, how dare you, and then the other side going right on. | ||
| And I was like... | ||
| One, I don't think it's ethically appropriate to profit from this event in any way. | ||
| I'm not weighing in and saying whether or not it was legal or justifiable. | ||
| I'm just saying I don't think that we need to profit from this event, and it's just factual that we were not sponsoring him. | ||
| That was it. | ||
| What a portion of the internet decided to say was we had somehow disavowed him by literally stating a fact, which was we hadn't sponsored him. | ||
| There's no coming back from some of this in the context of you can't explain yourself in 240 characters or less because nuance is ultimately dead. | ||
| People have already made a decision. | ||
| So by just coming out and saying this and trying to correct the record multiple times, you end up just digging in deeper on some of this. | ||
| Yeah, because no one is going to listen past the first take. | ||
| The first take is Black Rifle Coffee shits on their fans. | ||
| And then people start barking. | ||
| They're not looking into it. | ||
| The information that people get, the overwhelming amount of information that people get on a daily basis, almost like... | ||
| Stops them from looking into anything deep, right? | ||
| You you look you get the surface you get the headline Oh, and then next thing you know, it's That's that's the narrative. | ||
| That's the narrative and and then it's shared Yeah, and then it's not only shared distorted picked up by the you know, we'll call it mainstream Twitter influencers is fact There's nobody's Nobody's checking to look at whether or not that's actually what I said. | ||
| They're just sharing the material. | ||
| And then people are getting their news from memes, which is also a problem, right? | ||
| So if you're getting your news from memes, you have a fucking big problem. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's not a chance in hell I would do that. | ||
| And the other thing is, is I'm a conservative. | ||
| I'm not self-loathing. | ||
| I identify as that guy. | ||
| So I was purely stating within that entire conversation, it probably lasted 20 minutes, like, hey, there's no room for racists or anti-Semites in my customer base. | ||
| I'll pay them to leave if they exist. | ||
| That's what I said. | ||
| And I stand by those words today. | ||
| I don't like them. | ||
| There's no room for them. | ||
| There's no justifiable room for racists or anti-Semites specifically, I think. | ||
| And if you care about conservatism, if you care about it succeeding, you want to eliminate all the problematic ideas that are associated with it. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| That's one that's associated with it. | ||
| Racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, all those things are associated with it. | ||
| I should just tell people, when I went to visit you in Salt Lake years ago, You have a ton of folks you brought over from Afghanistan working at your factory when you saved their lives and brought them over to America when they were in trouble, when they were being chased down because they worked with US troops over there. | ||
| Well, yeah, and who you're talking about is Wali Taslim and the other guys that are working specifically in our print and our facility in Salt Lake. | ||
| Wali Taslim was an Afghan commando. | ||
| He joined the army right after, and when I say that, the Afghan army right after our invasion in, I believe it was like October and November 2001, like right after. | ||
| Right when the CIA and Special Forces invaded Afghanistan, Wali Taslim was one of the guys that joined up right away. | ||
| So he went from a 16-year-old kid to he was, by the time that he left, I believe that was 2014 or 15. So he had been directly involved in direct action missions across Afghanistan for over 11 years. | ||
| And he went from a private to a commander. | ||
| His story is incredible. | ||
| And so when we talk about where the times might have missed some incredible, enlightening stories, talk about the Afghan refugees that used to be commandos that fought for us for over a decade. | ||
| Wali Taslim has over 1,500 direct action missions. | ||
| The guy has breached more doors for the United States than most of the special operations guys that I know. | ||
| He not only did that, but he had to move about every six months for the last two years that he was in Afghanistan because he had been in multiple ambushes with his wife and family in his car. | ||
| He had to hide his identity. | ||
| He was running from the Taliban basically full-time. | ||
| Then he sought and received refugee status. | ||
| He came to the United States. | ||
| Back in 2016, we thought Wally had been killed. | ||
| So my business partner and I, we kept in contact with a lot of the Afghans, and we heard that he had been killed in an ambush. | ||
| One day, this guy pings us on Facebook and says, hey guys, it's Wally, I'm in Baltimore. | ||
| And we're like, whatever, are you serious? | ||
| Instantly, we're like, get on a plane, get to Salt Lake. | ||
| So we got him a house, we brought him and his family out here, gave him a job. | ||
| It's like, you have a job, get out of Baltimore. | ||
| What was happening in Baltimore is he was living in public housing. | ||
| And he was being discriminated against in public housing in Baltimore. | ||
| He was being called a terrorist. | ||
| His kids were being called a terrorist. | ||
| They were being picked on. | ||
| So we jumped on a plane. | ||
| We're like, get out. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| You're coming with us. | ||
| Not only that, but tell me where the other guys are. | ||
| Where are they? | ||
| He's like, I got a few guys in San Francisco. | ||
| I got a few guys here. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Offer them all jobs right now. | ||
| Like they're all coming here. | ||
| Uh, So it's extremely offensive for a combination of reasons, right? | ||
| Which is, I have no place for, in my company or even in my own life, for discriminatory behavior in that regard, right? | ||
| These are the guys that have been fighting to the left and to the right with us for over 20 years in these countries that we've been directly involved in clandestine and overt warfare. | ||
| They've risked their lives, their limbs, their eyesight, which means the same as mine. | ||
| And we owe them an incredible amount of gratitude. | ||
| And it would be directly misrepresented if I placated in any regard that type of behavior in the company, because it's not who we are. | ||
| And Wally is just one of a handful of guys that we continue to not only hire, but bring in and then We hired them an English tutor. | ||
| We're putting them through the process of becoming a U.S. citizen. | ||
| So we hire the attorneys that is required for that to walk them through the process. | ||
| They've got to test and evaluate. | ||
| It's something that we're really proud of. | ||
| And not only are we really proud of, it's a really rich and incredible story about how these guys have come to the United States and been successful within a veteran-owned and operated company That we were fighting together 10 years ago and now we're roasting coffee in the United States together now, which is fucking nuts, dude. | ||
| That kind of stuff makes me so happy and it fires me up that brown water can do that. | ||
| It's fucking incredible, man. | ||
| It is incredible. | ||
| And I think stories like that, the only way to tell a story like that is to just tell it. | ||
| I don't think someone writing it is ever going to capture all of the fascinating aspects of it, all of the inspirational aspects of it, the human aspects of it. | ||
| This is what I know about you guys. | ||
| So when I see... | ||
| First of all, we're friends. | ||
| But also, like, when I see someone misrepresenting a company that I think is one of the most noble companies that I've ever come across, that the amount of time that you guys spent trying to help first responders, military, police, I know what you guys do. | ||
| So when I see you misrepresented by conservatives, and I'm not even conservative, so I see that shit and I'm like, you fucking idiots. | ||
| Like, what are you doing? | ||
| You're doing the same thing that you accuse the people on the left of doing. | ||
| It's all nuts. | ||
| It's wild, man. | ||
| It is. | ||
| As I kind of evolve in the last seven years, and I've looked at especially the social media landscape and how hostile it's become... | ||
| It's a really toxic environment. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| It's like so incredible on one end and then it's like the Wild West for trolls on the other end, right? | ||
| They're like getting their gloves on and rolling out their keyboards and they're getting ready to hit it hard. | ||
| And I think most of this doesn't really impact me unless it's a customer that's emailing me, which, to be fair, we really haven't had a lot of the customers even directly email us directly associated with this. | ||
| Most of our customers are based on a direct interaction with our media that we put out on a regular basis, and they kind of know the company. | ||
| It is strange for a certain percentage of the conservatives to jump on a bandwagon like that and ultimately label me or the company as anti-American, which is nuts. | ||
| It's hilarious. | ||
| It's hilarious. | ||
| If it wasn't so ridiculous. | ||
| The only thing you can do is kind of laugh at it and go, dudes, are you kidding me? | ||
| But it shows you how easy someone can get smeared. | ||
| Even a company that has such an impeccable reputation as yours can get smeared online in this weird climate. | ||
| And part of me is like, well, what... | ||
| And I would like to think there's some grand conspiracy involved, right? | ||
| But I think it's more that... | ||
| The way people communicate on social media is so ineffective and shitty. | ||
| It's such a bad way to disseminate ideas. | ||
| It is. | ||
| It's not a bad way to get headlines out there, like, you know, bombs dropped on Syria. | ||
| Okay, that's, like, show some footage. | ||
| Okay, here it is. | ||
| But, like, even, like, video clips. | ||
| Have you paid attention to the... | ||
| There was a cop that was frisking a guy. | ||
| Pulled an empty baggie out of his pocket and threw it in the backseat of a car. | ||
| Just pulled the baggie out and chucked it in the car while he's frisking this guy. | ||
| And it's like, you just planted evidence in the car. | ||
| And then the cop explains it. | ||
| No, I didn't. | ||
| First of all, the baggie's empty. | ||
| Second of all, he had it in his pocket. | ||
| And you see his camera, the cop's camera, pull this baggie out of this guy's pocket and drop in the backseat of the car. | ||
| They took the clip. | ||
| Of the cop throwing the baggie in the car and the other guy saying, you just planted evidence. | ||
| And then all throughout the internet, like, look at this evidence of this cop planting this fucking baggie in this guy's car. | ||
| Oh my god, these cops are pieces of shit. | ||
| They were trying to set this guy up. | ||
| And everybody started attacking the police. | ||
| Everybody started attacking. | ||
| This is why people don't trust the police. | ||
| And I saw it just shared thousands of times. | ||
| And then the full video came out. | ||
| And in the full video, you actually see the police officer explain it. | ||
| You see exactly what happened. | ||
| And you're like, fuck, this is social media in a nutshell. | ||
| This is the madness of how people exchange information online. | ||
| It's a bad way to communicate. | ||
| It's a bad way to go back and forth. | ||
| It's not designed for human beings. | ||
| No. | ||
| It's like human beings trying to interface with something that's devoid of emotion and it's devoid of context, it's devoid of social cues and the normal interactions between two human beings. | ||
| Yeah, and I think, I was thinking about this the other day, that there's a lot of people that are, like, fear is a driving factor right now, right? | ||
| You have a lot of fear that's floating around in the United States internationally because of, I think, the way the media portrays a lot of different events. | ||
| You know, every year there's been some type of catastrophic thing that the media has been able to pick up and really escalate. | ||
| But then you have these devices, right, where people are seeking emotion. | ||
| They want a connection with people. | ||
| And they can't get it from this. | ||
| But when your default emotion is anger, because it's a really easy emotion to default to, You can't get a connection of love or, you know, a meaningful emotion out of it, but it's really easy to make a connection with somebody online and default to anger, kind of get explosive and connected. | ||
| I think there's a lot of people that are really just disconnected and they're searching for some type of human interaction and they're never going to get it from an electronic device. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| And so I don't blame that. | ||
| I think that right now we're in this really strange predicament as a country where people are feeling isolated and alone and they're connected to their electronic devices more than they ever have been. | ||
| But it's a toxic environment if you're trying to connect with people in a, when I say a negative way, and then band together and then enhance that emotion once again. | ||
| I know that's probably an oversimplification, but you're not going to be able to connect with a technology device. | ||
| It's just never going to happen. | ||
| No, in this past year and a half, unfortunately, because of the pandemic, there's much more distance between people in terms like people aren't getting together as well. | ||
| At least they weren't for a long time. | ||
| They're kind of doing it now. | ||
| But they were not getting together and talking. | ||
| People were sharing things through phones, and most of the communication was through text. | ||
| They're not even calling each other, right? | ||
| And then Zoom, like people are having Zoom meetings and shit. | ||
| So it's like the disconnect... | ||
| I was like thinking about it, like if there was a... | ||
| If you had an artificial intelligence that was trying to get human beings to abandon everything that makes you human, what better way than a virus that makes you scared of other people? | ||
| What better way than forcing people into their homes, making other people actually dangerous to be around? | ||
| An invisible thing. | ||
| It's not like even a person has a weapon on them, right? | ||
| It's an invisible thing that they might have, like a demon that leaps from their body and can kill your grandma. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So you're literally scared of people. | ||
| So you're putting masks on. | ||
| You can't see people's facial expressions. | ||
| People are wearing gloves. | ||
| They're hiding. | ||
| They're socially distancing. | ||
| You're keeping as far away from each other as you can. | ||
| It's almost like it was... | ||
| I know it wasn't, but it's almost like if you had... | ||
| A super intelligent robot that was like, we've got to figure out a way to get people to be at each other's necks even more. | ||
| This is the way to do it. | ||
| Make a disease that's invisible, that transmits through the air, and people have to stay away from each other, and there's no cure, and everybody's panicking. | ||
| And then spread a bunch of misinformation about how it spreads. | ||
| It spreads on surfaces, and it'll last up to two weeks. | ||
| And you spray everything down with Lysol, and everybody's in a panic. | ||
| And then, because people are scared, So many people – there's a giant percentage of our population out there that has never experienced any adversity. | ||
| They do not know how to handle stress. | ||
| They don't know how to handle being uncomfortable. | ||
| They don't know how to – so as soon as anything that comes their way that they can bark at, anything, they're in this state, this constant state of being perturbed. | ||
| And then anything that comes their way, well, fuck black rifle cars! | ||
|
unidentified
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Fuck Joe Rogan! | |
| Fuck this guy and fuck that guy! | ||
| And that's what everybody does. | ||
| And then people pile on. | ||
| People with also limited information. | ||
| They all chime in and then they, you know, you're writing it in a tweet. | ||
| You're using, you know, a fucking hundred characters. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you're barking at each other. | ||
| And you're pretending that this is normal communication. | ||
| It's like the worst way to communicate ever. | ||
| It's like the worst and the counterproductive way to communicate ever. | ||
| You can't explain things on Twitter. | ||
| You're not going to be able to pass a sophisticated philosophical message on Twitter. | ||
| You know what you're going to do? | ||
| You're going to hand the equivalent of an internet dick pic via words on Twitter. | ||
| You're not going to pass off and pontificate or opine about something so significant that's going to change society. | ||
| But I think there's a lot of people Every time they log into Twitter, they're like, you know what? | ||
| This is going to change the world. | ||
| This one's going to work. | ||
| I don't even have Twitter. | ||
| That's the fucked up thing. | ||
| I don't even think they believe that. | ||
| They don't. | ||
| I think they want people to like, put a like next to their comment. | ||
| I stopped using Twitter during the pandemic. | ||
| Yes, so did I. I occasionally will retweet something I find interesting. | ||
| I never post anything. | ||
| I rarely post anything. | ||
| One time I posted... | ||
| Over the whole pandemic, when Bill de Blasio, this fucking dipshit mayor of New York City, he made this video about bringing the arts back to New York City, that this is how we're going to revitalize the city. | ||
| This is a city that has been economically crippled by his policies, right? | ||
| Defund the police. | ||
| Crime is at an all-time high. | ||
| People are looting and smashing stores on Fifth Avenue. | ||
| He's like, let them do it. | ||
| Let them get it out of their system. | ||
| You're literally creating... | ||
| A total climate of lawlessness. | ||
| And then the way he's going to revitalize this city is he puts out this video about bringing back the arts. | ||
| I don't know if you've ever seen it. | ||
| No. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| And it's a video where it's like the most uncoordinated dancing. | ||
| With the worst music you've ever heard and he's standing there talking about we got to bring back the arts and it starts here We're gonna have street performances and these people are dancing and it's it's and I just wrote how the fuck is this real? | ||
| That's all I posted because it came across my face and I was like I gotta I just I'm gonna post this That was the only thing I posted other than like reposting interesting articles See if you can find it because it's so it's so dumb That's I think that's the great thing about... | ||
| Not the great thing about the pandemic. | ||
| Don't get me wrong. | ||
| I'm saying the one silver lining that we should all be taking from this is we get to see how fucking stupid politicians are. | ||
| This is like... | ||
| This has pulled the curtain back. | ||
| We get to see just how ridiculous they are. | ||
| And that's where... | ||
| I start to look and think about individual liberty. | ||
| And I start to think, why would you ever want to forfeit your freedom to one of these idiots that has control over what you or your family or your business does? | ||
| Because if we've learned anything in the last year and a half, is it... | ||
| These people can't be trusted with a squeezy bottle. | ||
| We can't trust them with the keys to the car. | ||
| I wouldn't give them a 98 Cutlass with 180,000 miles to watch. | ||
| Most of them are so fucking incompetent that I wouldn't trust them to wash a dish. | ||
| It amazes me when I look around and I'm like, why are you guys so interested? | ||
| You need to watch this. | ||
| Pull it back from the beginning. | ||
| Do it from the beginning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Give me some volume We need a recovery that brings back the life and the heart and the energy of this city And that everyone gets to be a part of And we're going to do that We're going to really bring back the heart and soul of New York City We need our arts and culture back And we need people to see it and feel it To participate in it Hell yeah. | |
| Look how bad this dancing is! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And they're wearing masks outside. | ||
| Month after month in 2021, as you see the city come back to life, culture will lead the way. | ||
| Open culture is another step towards a recovery for our city. | ||
| We're launching with 115 street locations in all five borders and it brings stages to our neighborhoods and culture to the heart of our neighbors and give artists, cultural institutions and creatives a place to showcase their talents as they recover from the pandemic. | ||
| Look how bad this is! | ||
| This is a Cullen Brothers movie. | ||
| This is not. | ||
| This is literally like right out of the Big Lebowski. | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| Like, this is straight out. | ||
| And this is the same guy that just passed this fucking law in New York City where you have to have a vaccine passport to go everywhere. | ||
| You have to have a vaccine to go to a restaurant, to a gym, to any place where people gather. | ||
| It is crazy. | ||
| And meanwhile, the biggest percentage of people that don't have vaccines or have been vaccinated are people of color. | ||
| So this guy, people of color and immigrants. | ||
| He's always supposed to be pro-people of color, pro-diversity, pro-immigration. | ||
| Those are the people that don't have vaccines, and now you're precluding them from going to gyms and restaurants. | ||
| And what about the people working in the restaurants? | ||
| What about all these... | ||
| It's fucking madness. | ||
| And then you have a bunch of people that are supporting it, like, yay, finally. | ||
| Meanwhile, you have science that's coming out. | ||
| There's legitimate articles. | ||
| Jamie, I'll send this to you now. | ||
| There's legitimate articles, because doctors have been sending me these things. | ||
| And, you know, this is neither pro nor con vaccine. | ||
| I'm not... | ||
| This is not a judgment statement. | ||
| But... | ||
| Imperfect vaccination can enhance the transmission of highly virulent pathogens. | ||
| So this is a scientific paper from 2015 that shows that Here's one important quote. | ||
| Vaccines that keep the host alive but still allow transmission can thus allow virulent strains to circulate in a population. | ||
| So... | ||
| Vaccines that don't kill the virus. | ||
| Vaccines that allow people, like this is one of the things we're finding out about what they're calling breakthrough cases. | ||
| So people who are vaccinated can still get COVID and they can still transmit COVID. This recently happened at the Comedy Store. | ||
| A vaccinated comedian gave COVID to like 12 different fucking people at the Comedy Store. | ||
| Some of them vaccinated, some of them not. | ||
| That situation where the vaccine just kind of protects you from serious damage, but protects you from really being badly hospitalized or death, but doesn't stop you from getting the virus, can possibly lead to more potent viruses. | ||
| So these people that are saying, oh, it's these unvaccinated people that are responsible for the variants. | ||
| Well, there's actually scientific papers that point to the very sort of environment that we're creating by having so many people vaccinated with a vaccine that doesn't kill off the virus. | ||
| It actually can lead to more potent viruses. | ||
| Try finding that story anywhere. | ||
| Other than doctors, I'm getting PhDs sending me these things. | ||
| Guys who won't speak about it publicly because they're worried about the blowback. | ||
| People who are physicians, people who are even epidemiologists, even people that deal with diseases and viruses. | ||
| They're concerned and they don't want to talk about it publicly because people call them anti-vaxxers. | ||
| It's really wild out there. | ||
| It's wild because they've somehow managed, and when I say they, meaning the political elite and then I think their established media representatives, have somehow managed to turn this into a political issue, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| That's dangerous. | ||
| It's dangerous for any politician to play in that game where they're using something as meaningful and quite possibly dangerous for the country as political posturing or virtue signaling, right? | ||
| And you see it all the time because you see these guys are wearing their masks for the camera, but then they take them off. | ||
| AOC just got busted doing that yesterday. | ||
| You see the video? | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| She had no mask on, hanging out with everybody, and then they go to take a picture. | ||
| She puts the mask on and then takes it off after the picture's done. | ||
| Yeah, or they can have parties, you know, what is it? | ||
| How about Obama? | ||
| Yeah, Obama's having that 700 guest party or whatever it is. | ||
| Or he's going to tone it down to 600. Yeah. | ||
| Because of the pandemic, it's going to make it a little lighter. | ||
| But you can't go to a gym in New York. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Unless you have a vaccination card. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Or you can't go out to eat. | ||
| We're going to shut down small businesses. | ||
| You can't go to a comedy club. | ||
| And I think it's rules for the and not for me scenario. | ||
| And people read right through that shit. | ||
| Some people. | ||
|
unidentified
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Some people are applauding it, which is fucking terrifying. | |
| I know smart people that are applauding it. | ||
| It's so strange. | ||
| And the problem with applauding vaccine passports... | ||
| This is part of the problem. | ||
| They are not going to give that power up. | ||
| No. | ||
| They're not going to. | ||
| They're going to find a reason to continue to use that. | ||
| If they can figure out a way to force you into carrying papers, into carrying something that lets you enter businesses or lets you do this or lets businesses open, as soon as you give politicians power, In any kind of power that didn't exist previously, historically, they don't relinquish that power. | ||
| They find new reasons to use it. | ||
| Well, I think that's the history of lawmaking and political power in the United States. | ||
| And I think that's why I tend to be bucketed in conservatives, because it means smaller government to me, right? | ||
| There's multiple reasons why people classify themselves as that. | ||
| But I look at things and I look at the preservation of individual liberty. | ||
| You know, how do I preserve more of my freedom because I feel like I'm a responsible adult and I feel like I'm going to raise responsible adults and I feel like I spend most of my time around responsible adults. | ||
| I don't—it's such a disconnect in individual philosophy when I find people that are actively looking for ways that they can forfeit their individual liberty and hand it over to somebody where they feel like they have a better interest in running their life than they do. | ||
| And I understand the balance between, you know, we have to have certain laws and regulations that protect people against, you know, overt dangers. | ||
| But I also understand your statement where I think politicians and I would say lawmakers and government bureaucrats have a really hard time relinquishing control once they have it because it feels good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It makes their job easier. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It makes their job easier. | ||
| They can just tell you to shut the fuck up, do what I say, and you have to. | ||
| You can't work anymore unless you do what I say. | ||
| That's essentially what a vaccine passport is. | ||
| You can't do what you want to do unless you do what I want you to do. | ||
| I mean, Don Lemon was talking about that openly on CNN. Don't have a vaccine? | ||
| Can't go to a supermarket. | ||
| Don't have a vaccine? | ||
| Can't go to work. | ||
| It's so strange that people want to say things like that. | ||
| That's the thing that blows me away. | ||
| Why do people want to... | ||
| Because they're dumb. | ||
| They're dumb. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're dumb. | |
| They don't understand history. | ||
| They don't understand human beings. | ||
| They don't understand human nature. | ||
| They don't understand the history of every single country that's ever existed other than the United States. | ||
| Up until 1776, every fucking country that has ever existed was run by dictators. | ||
| Right. | ||
| All of them. | ||
| This is the first one where you had elected officials. | ||
| This is the first experiment in self-government that actually worked, and it created the greatest superpower the world's ever known. | ||
| It created the greatest cultural machine, the greatest machine of art and creativity and innovation right fucking here. | ||
| And how did it do that? | ||
| It did it through freedom. | ||
| Because when you give people freedom, you let people do whatever the fuck they want to do, they actually find ways to succeed and grow and thrive. | ||
| But as soon as you put the boots to them, As soon as you tell them, you have to do this or you can't do that. | ||
| You have to listen to me. | ||
| Now you have a mini dictator. | ||
| You have one step away from a king. | ||
| You have one step closer. | ||
| You're moving one step closer to dictatorship. | ||
| That's what the fuck is happening. | ||
| That's what's going to happen with a vaccine passport. | ||
| That's what's going to happen if... | ||
| They close borders. | ||
| You can't enter New York City unless you have your papers. | ||
| You can't go to here unless you have that. | ||
| You can't get on a plane unless you do what I say. | ||
| And people say, whoa, it's all about protecting people from them. | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| It's not because we've shown this is a fact. | ||
| Just a couple of months ago, the idea of a breakthrough case was unheard of. | ||
| Nobody heard of anybody catching COVID that had a vaccine, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| That was the whole idea. | ||
| You get a vaccine, you have to worry about it. | ||
| Now we know, not only do you get it, but you can spread it. | ||
| And some people have died. | ||
| Apparently, it's a small number. | ||
| I don't know what the numbers are, but I know that most people who get vaccinated, when they do have the disease, they have a better time of it than the people who are unvaccinated. | ||
| But where are the people out there calling for people to get healthy? | ||
| Where are the people out there calling for people to lose weight? | ||
| 78% of the people in the ICU for COVID are obese. | ||
| 78%. | ||
| Where's that information being shared? | ||
| Where's someone who's a leader who gets on TV and says, ladies and gentlemen, we've got to decrease our body mass. | ||
| We've got to decrease our fat. | ||
| We've got to make sure that people aren't overweight. | ||
| We've got to make sure that people are healthy. | ||
| Walk around your block. | ||
| You don't have to do something complicated. | ||
| Start drinking more water. | ||
| Stop eating sugar. | ||
| Start taking vitamins. | ||
| You can increase the strength of your immune system. | ||
| We can fight things off better. | ||
| We can be a healthier civilization. | ||
| Better for everybody, right? | ||
| You don't hear a peep. | ||
| All you hear is, take this vaccine that doesn't even prevent you from getting the disease, or you can't go to the sauna or wherever the fuck you want to go. | ||
| You can't go to the Broadway show. | ||
| It's madness. | ||
| It's madness. | ||
| It really is madness. | ||
| It's more of a treatment than it is a vaccine, really, if you look at it. | ||
| Because you're saying you need a booster now every six months. | ||
| Look, if you get vaccinated for polio, you get vaccinated for the measles, you don't have to worry about it anymore. | ||
| You're good. | ||
| This is not that. | ||
| This is a totally different kind of thing. | ||
| And it's a completely new kind of vaccine. | ||
| The idea that people shouldn't be skeptical or nervous about that is kind of hilarious. | ||
| It's kind of hilarious that people won't try on skepticism in general. | ||
| They need to be more skeptical. | ||
| They need to push people in authority and power and hold them accountable for their words and their actions. | ||
| And there's this reluctancy, I think, across the board to question power either on both sides, right? | ||
| So it's like blue likes to question red, red likes to question blue. | ||
| But now you'll follow lockstep in party line if one is saying something or the other. | ||
| That's a fucking problem. | ||
| To your point, I was reading the history of the Nez Perce Indian tribe. | ||
| I've read a few books on this just recently. | ||
| I'm from Northern Idaho where the Nez Perce Indian tribe. | ||
| Ferocious people. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Like amazing warriors. | ||
| Chief Joseph was an incredible leader. | ||
| Incredible history. | ||
| But it struck me, there's one chapter in the books that I was reading about how the U.S. cavalry, they were putting the Native Americans on reservations for their protection. | ||
| And I'm not trying to equate this in direct correlation, but this was part of the narrative. | ||
| Because they were saying, we want to put you guys on reservations to protect you from the settlers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And from retaliation. | ||
| So we want to put you guys on this 400 square reservation, 400 mile square reservation for your protection. | ||
| And they're like, dude, we want to be free. | ||
| I don't know what you're talking about. | ||
| And they go in and they trace the over a thousand miles that Chief Joseph led his tribe through Idaho and Montana and then up close to the Canadian border. | ||
| But I couldn't help but think about there's one sliver of history in the late 1800s, which in 1873, I believe it was, which was also connected to the son of Meriwether Lewis was also part of the Nez Percian tribe because he had a son there. | ||
| But I thought about how us, not us as a country, how we need to be pushed to ask more questions and we deserve more answers. | ||
| We have to hold skepticism, I think, in a very high regard and we can't beat it down. | ||
| I think anytime that you question authority, it's a good thing, especially as a society, because it also says that you have a healthy society. | ||
| If you have this complex narrative moving up from underneath, I think, the groundswell of information from people, you can have these complex discussions, but you also have to have very good answers to what's going on. | ||
| I think you've got conflicting information that's being politicized and it's being gaslit by both sides of the media, which I don't blame people for being pissed off and confused because Man, I'm confused. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, this is confusing as shit. | ||
| The CDC releases something, the president will say something else, some random governor somewhere that I've never heard of will say something else, and you're like, what the hell is going on? | ||
| What is going on? | ||
| Yeah, that's why I listen to Crystal and Sagar, because they typically know what the- Well, they typically know what's going on, and they're a great example because that show Breaking Points, you got Sagar, who's on the right, and Crystal, who's on the left, but they're good friends, they get along well, and they're both super honest and objective, rational and intelligent, and they can discuss all the finer points of these issues, honestly, openly, and it's why they're thriving. | ||
| It's why CNN, like some of their shows, they get 100,000 views in the key demographic. | ||
| Less than 100,000 even. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Since Trump is out of office and they don't have a boogeyman, their boogeyman is unvaccinated people. | ||
| That's what they're doing. | ||
| Their boogeyman is different things they can attack. | ||
| Well, did you hear Brennan, the former, I think he's a former head of the clandestine service, National Security Agency. | ||
| He was on CNN, and this is a horrible reference because I'm messing it up, but he came out and he said, these are. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The people that are pro-2A and libertarians and anti-vaxxers and all these other people have banded together. | ||
| And he was labeling literally people that are exercising their constitutional rights in a legitimate political party in the United States as an extremist. | ||
| He said it. | ||
| uh cnbc in a morning show so it was the quiet part out loud where some of these people actually think this way where you can have a your constitutional rights to own a firearm but there's a portion of the united states that sees you as some crazy person like a radical or if you belong to if you're a libertarian they see you as a radical because they're like oh we want less government | ||
| well of course bureaucrats will hate that idea right and If you're trying to fight against bureaucracy, they're going to be like, dude, we want more. | ||
| We want more of your tax dollars. | ||
| We want more of the responsibility for you, your business, your family, and your community. | ||
| We want more of that because you can trust us. | ||
| That's basically the narrative that I find across the board to a lot of people that are professional politicians and professional bureaucrats. | ||
| I think they're teaming up. | ||
| And then now you have media as well. | ||
| And to your point, You've got these dying outlets because there isn't the big bad guy anymore to drive ratings. | ||
| So now they have to invent and sensationalize a bunch of horseshit in order to try to get eyeballs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's even progressing in a worse, if that's a way to describe that, it's progressing in an even more negative way for people to monetize, which is a different conversation, but that's their entire monetization strategy. | ||
| I have a thought, and I think that news should be free. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think not only should it be free, I think it should be subsidized. | ||
| By the people so that the salaries of all the people that are working in these news organizations, there's no incentive whatsoever to sensationalize stories and that there should almost be like some sort of overview. | ||
| But then how would you do that? | ||
| Like how would you use some citizens overview where they make sure that people don't sensationalize things in order to get people hyped up so they click on you know if it bleeds it leads has always been the thing with the news but if they could figure out a way to distribute the news completely objectively with no commercials with no no financial incentive just give people information let them know what the fuck there's a real problem when information in terms of like what's going on in the world is It can be distorted and it could be magnified | ||
| or it could be obfuscated. | ||
| They could figure out a way to paint it in a way or to portray it in a way that's going to get more people to pay attention to it. | ||
| And if they can get more people to pay attention to it, then they profit more. | ||
| That's what they did with Trump. | ||
| And these fucking dummies got Trump elected. | ||
| That's what's crazy. | ||
| Every time he would say crazy shit, they would put him, can you believe this man thinks he's going to be president? | ||
| And then people are like, ah, I like his style. | ||
| There's so many people out there that loved when he would say shit, you know, like... | ||
| Horse face, sir. | ||
| Yeah, oh my god, but that was when he was president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| When he was president, he called a lady he had sex with horse face. | ||
| Like, oh my god. | ||
| He's a wild dude. | ||
| It's a wild, he's wild. | ||
| Yeah, he's a wild guy. | ||
| He's wild. | ||
| Well, he's a billionaire. | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| It's like you can't control him the way you can control normal politicians, and that's one of the things that frustrated them. | ||
| Also, it's like the way he communicates. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's not good because it does cause conflict. | ||
| It's not a uniting voice, right? | ||
| No. | ||
| He's always going to have massive support of his base because he's kind of got them all frothy at the mouth. | ||
| They're on the team. | ||
| Everyone's like, we fucking need you. | ||
| And that's one of the arguments for the January 6th invasion of the Capitol. | ||
| Like, that whole thing, because he was like, you need to make a strong statement and go up there and show these people. | ||
| A lot of people are like, well, you know you have these people eating out of the palm of your hands, and you kind of ask them to go do something wild. | ||
| And then it happened. | ||
| And then people are like, well, this is one of the reasons why you can't have a guy talking like that. | ||
| He wants to be a leader. | ||
| Yeah, I think leadership comes with a profound amount of responsibility. | ||
| And I also think that you can't take responsibility for everyone's actions, right? | ||
| So it's one of those things where there has to be a clear delineation between what's reasonable and what's a realistic expectation, which is... | ||
| No reasonable law-abiding citizen thinks it's okay to penetrate a federal building, for instance. | ||
| And that's happened both on the left and the right. | ||
| Where's it happened on the left? | ||
| Well, I think in Portland is where they're trying to burn the building down. | ||
| That's barely America. | ||
| Barely, yeah. | ||
| Portland is like some crazy socialist fucking island. | ||
| It's like the Soviet Republic of Oregon. | ||
|
unidentified
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They're trying to fuck that city up so bad. | |
| But that's the thing, I think, when you also see this, because people saw this lawlessness happening throughout the entire year, and I also think that the media directly contributes to... | ||
| Gaslighting and then pulling people up in this context of spinning them up on both sides. | ||
| So now they're really pissed off. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| Or diminishing the seriousness of these acts. | ||
| They are. | ||
| There was a photo on CNN where they were talking about mostly peaceful protests. | ||
| Mostly peaceful. | ||
| And behind them is a burning building. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| There's nothing peaceful about fire. | ||
| There's nothing peaceful. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Unless it's a campfire. | ||
| And that's the other issue that I think directly contributed to it, which is people saw nothing happening for a year. | ||
| So then there's an expectation that this is okay, or there's somehow this is permissible, which I think every logical person, and well, we had that conversation about logic. | ||
| Is that that's not okay. | ||
| It's not okay to burn down buildings. | ||
| It's not okay to go in and intimidate people in federal facilities. | ||
| It's not okay to spit and cuss at the police for something. | ||
| It's just not okay. | ||
| I have zero issue with people and their right to protest peacefully. | ||
| Zero. | ||
| I think it's awesome. | ||
| I love seeing it. | ||
| Part of being American. | ||
| Yeah, that's like exercise your constitutional rights. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| So when I see it, regardless of where it's at, I'm like, that's cool. | ||
| But when you take the step to start throwing Molotov cocktails or penetrating federal buildings, you lost me, bro. | ||
| Yeah, you lost me. | ||
| You lost me. | ||
| Yeah, and the people that think that you need violence in order to get your point across, You don't even know what the fuck violence is. | ||
| You think violence is hitting someone in the head with a skateboard? | ||
| That's not violence, you fucking dummy. | ||
| Real violence is coming your way. | ||
| If you really think you're going to take over the government with skateboards, bonking people over the head and throwing Molotov cocktails, and I've said this before and I'll say it again, it's one of the things that's happening in this country that these people don't understand what they're doing. | ||
| They think they're going to cause some sort of Chaos to the point where they're going to overthrow the government. | ||
| They're going to overthrow this country and burn it to the ground. | ||
| This is a narrative that gets expressed over and over again by the more radical people amongst us, that the United States is unfixable and we need to burn it to the ground and start from scratch. | ||
| Boy, it's fucking crazy. | ||
| It's fucking crazy, and it's a really... | ||
| Irresponsible. | ||
| It's irresponsible. | ||
| It's irresponsible of people that continue to propagate that narrative, too, because I've definitely seen it in different YouTube forums or channels or whatever it might be. | ||
| It's irresponsible. | ||
| It's irrational. | ||
| And from both sides, when you think about how far this country has come... | ||
| And, you know, if I go on my pro-America rant here for a second, which is we built something so incredible that we should be so proud of everything that we've done in the last couple hundred years and that we're continuing to evolve the system and make the country better. | ||
| But when I look at the country, I'm like, this place is fucking incredible. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's a little bit insane. | ||
| It's a little bit wild and a little bit extreme. | ||
| And you've got mountains and deserts. | ||
| And you've got cowboys in Texas and dudes toting guns out in the middle of the West. | ||
| And you've got big skyscrapers and jazz and rock and roll. | ||
|
unidentified
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This place is... | |
| Fucking rad. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| It's awesome and I've spent the majority of my adult life outside of this country by the way like in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and It's nothing against those countries, but I love this one. | ||
| It's so fucking beautiful and amazing that we should be like high-fiving each other going guys This is free. | ||
| We've done a pretty good job. | ||
| I'm not saying it's not perfect, right? | ||
| But just the fact that we can go out and protest and say a bunch of crazy ass shit together and people don't like stuff us in a closet in the middle of nowhere for just expressing our ideas. | ||
| That's an incredible evolution of any country to be able to do that. | ||
| Now, when you look at 50 states varying in the way that they look at their population and the way that we've got different cities in these different states, they've got different laws, they've got all these combined United States that are so fucking weird that... | ||
| We should be so happy and appreciative of where we live. | ||
| And that's where I am because I think of this place every day where I'm so fortunate. | ||
| I'm so proud to live here. | ||
| And I don't look at it as a negative in any regard. | ||
| And I think there's a section of our country that looks at it, that narrative of the flag, right? | ||
| And you've heard this, where the flag is seen as negative by a certain portion of the United States. | ||
| And I'm like, that flag is something that we should all be really fucking proud of, man. | ||
| We've been able to evolve our circumstance as a nation and build this big, crazy, beautiful place that's so fucking cool that... | ||
| We should be celebrating that flag on a regular basis. | ||
| We should be celebrating the people that serve our country on a regular basis. | ||
| So it wears me out with this narrative, and I get really pissed off and a little bit angry when I hear people trashing, especially United States citizens, when they start trashing the United States. | ||
| But as I just said earlier, we should be skeptical and question power, but we should also be really fucking proud of where we're at as a country. | ||
| I think we should be celebrating it. | ||
| The reason why they can say the things they're saying about the United States being this horrible institution that needs to be burned to the ground is one of the very beautiful things about the United States. | ||
| That you have the freedom to do that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You have the freedom to express opinions. | ||
| And do you know how many people are contrarians? | ||
| Do you know how many people that are never happy? | ||
| How many people, every time something is awesome, they want to shit on it? | ||
| That's just how people are. | ||
| There's a lot of people that see things that are amazing. | ||
| And they're like, fuck Jimi Hendrix. | ||
| And you're like, what? | ||
| What did you just say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| There's people who will say, Jimi Hendrix sucks, and you just go, okay, you have the freedom to do that because we live in this amazing place. | ||
| That's like my line in the sand, is Jimi Hendrix. | ||
| It's like, what are you saying? | ||
| What are you saying? | ||
|
unidentified
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It's like, fuck the Grand Canyon. | |
| That place looks stupid. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's a big hole in the ground. | |
| But there are people who have actually had a bit about that. | ||
| Did you really? | ||
| Yeah, I had a bit about it. | ||
| People go, you gotta see the Grand Canyon, it's a must-see. | ||
| And I would go, look up. | ||
| I'd go, you're looking at a ditch. | ||
| Like, literally, we are flying through the universe. | ||
| It's an infinite number of stars. | ||
| They're above our heads. | ||
| There's giant fireballs with planets circling around them. | ||
| There's more stars than there are grains of sand. | ||
| And you're staring at a ditch. | ||
| I'm like, you can see the bottom. | ||
| I'm like, why is it even interesting? | ||
| A bit about the Grand Canyon, about people saying that you have to see it. | ||
| But it was just a joke. | ||
| Obviously, the Grand Canyon's awesome. | ||
| But the idea is that there's always going to be... | ||
| No one is going to universally love everything. | ||
| There's always going to be people that... | ||
| Find things that everybody loves or that a giant percentage of people love and they think it sucks. | ||
| And that's their prerogative. | ||
| It's one of the beautiful things about this country is that you have the freedom to express yourself. | ||
| And there's a lot of people that think things suck and then as they get older they realize why they thought those things suck and they change their opinion. | ||
| They change their point of view. | ||
| They change their perspective. | ||
| The ability to evolve your opinions is one of the beautiful things about a free country. | ||
| The ability to express yourself, even if what you're saying is preposterous. | ||
| The problem is when people want to organize and use violence to overthrow a thing that they see as opposite of what their beliefs are. | ||
| And that's one of the problems you're seeing today in this world, where people think that you can use violence to overthrow things. | ||
| And again, it's mostly people, like if you look at these Antifa protests, it's people that have no business No. | ||
| Talking about violence. | ||
| You don't even know what violence is. | ||
| And my take on it has always been, like, there's millions of veterans in this country. | ||
| And if you really get to a point where you start calling for a civil war, and you think that you're going to fucking overthrow this country, the veterans are going to come out, and you're going to have a real fucking problem. | ||
|
unidentified
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Dude. | |
| And it's going to be quick. | ||
| Quick and ugly and horrific. | ||
| Well, I... Man, you know, how do I step into this one? | ||
| This one would be funny. | ||
| But I was thinking about this over the last couple months with these guys, especially the Antifa characters, right? | ||
| Where they're like, okay, we're really tough. | ||
| And you're like, dude... | ||
| If you want to know what tough is, you guys are headed on a one-way road to being classified as a terrorist organization. | ||
| Once you do that, you're going to meet tough. | ||
| You're going to meet at about 2 o'clock in the morning in a flashlight while you're in your parents' basement with a muzzle at the end of it. | ||
| You're going to pee your pants. | ||
| You're going to meet a person that is actually really tough. | ||
| They've been trained for decades to do things that are very hazardous. | ||
| And I just kind of laugh at the narrative because I think about my buddies and I over the last like couple decades and And I think about how we were just kind of like bumbling idiots at times, but I knew some bad motherfuckers. | ||
| Like, straight up some of the hardest dudes you'll ever meet. | ||
| And you've had a couple of them on the show, like Dakota Meyer and Marcus Littrell and these guys, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jocko. | |
| Jocko. | ||
| Like, bad mofos. | ||
| And I was talking to somebody, it was like my previous profession was I was like, if anybody were to step into my life, just get a snapshot, like if we were to switch brains or bodies for like five minutes, just a normal day at the office for me, they would go into fucking cardiac arrest. | ||
| They'd be like, a normal day at the office is me going through Mosul, Iraq, which is basically like Mad Max, wearing a burqa in the backseat of a thin-skinned vehicle with a belt-fed machine gun trying to hide from ISIS so I don't get my head cut off with a couple other guys as we're trying to sneak around and look for ISIS. We're just playing cat and mouse. | ||
| And I'm like, dude, at any point in time, my job was looking like an Arabic woman in the back of an old Corolla with a belt-fed machine gun with a bunch of people that wanted to kill me every second of every day. | ||
| And then you got a bunch of dudes that are like, oh my god, we're so tough. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, man, you couldn't handle five seconds in my life on a normal day where my beats per minute weren't going above 56. And what's amazing is it's because of people like you that people like that get to express themselves in these ridiculous ways. | |
| They don't understand that you have given them the freedom because of your dedication and sacrifice. | ||
| You've given them the freedom to exist in this land and be ridiculous. | ||
| And I love it. | ||
| I do, man. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| It's part of the gig. | ||
| It's part of the gig. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| Like, freedom's like a big buffet, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You don't have to take everything. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But it's all there. | |
| You don't have to eat the tomatoes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like, ah, I'm gonna pass on that. | ||
| That doesn't look too cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That cheese looks old. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But you don't have to take it all. | ||
| And some people, they feel disenfranchised and they want to go right to the old cheese. | ||
|
unidentified
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Because they're like, the fucking old cheese is just like me. | |
| I want blue hair and old cheese and shitty music and I'm wearing Doc Markins and I want to fucking burn it all down. | ||
| I mean, that is what it is when people are rebel. | ||
| It's like they don't feel like they're accepted in any other way, you know? | ||
| I mean, that's a lot of what's going on today, is there's a lot of people that are disenfranchised, they don't feel accepted by the modern mainstream world, and so they're filled with pain, and they're filled with heartache, and they're hurting, and they want to burn it all down because they think that's the solution. | ||
| Well, I think a lot of it is just because they're not living up to their full potential, right? | ||
| When you're pushing the machine, and I like to tell people this, it's like, I'm pushing my machine at 150%. | ||
| I can't get any more out of this brain or this body. | ||
| I'm redlining basically 24 hours a day. | ||
| Because I've got to get it all. | ||
| I'm going to wring this sponge on this fucking thing and I'm going to get every ounce out of it. | ||
| And I think a lot of people, they're trying to stay in the confines of safety. | ||
| And they're really trying to just play it safe and not push it to the fucking max. | ||
| They want to be body positive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Plus size models. | ||
| Yeah, plus size. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Look, you know, if it was easy to just be enormous and obese and everybody would love you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, that's what's going on now. | ||
| You could just literally put in no effort whatsoever to take care of your machine and people would go, you go, boy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You go. | ||
| Hey, way to be lazy. | ||
| Way to get everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're born into literally the life lottery in this country. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And way to get everything out of it by being a lazy piece of shit. | ||
| Like, you go. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hit it. | ||
| I was talking to one of my buddies and he was telling me, he was like, well, you know, he was asking me, I was telling him, is it going on your show? | ||
| He was like, well, what are you guys going to talk about? | ||
| I'm like, I don't fucking know. | ||
| Like, we're going to talk, just talk shit, basically. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I was talking to him about this story about how I was like, man, maybe I'll tell him this story about how he took fan boats out in the middle of the jungle in the Philippines trying to get into a gunfight. | ||
| Tell me that story. | ||
| Oh, so here's a great story, now that I did the tee-up for it. | ||
| So, I've been working in Afghanistan and Iraq for several years, and I'm pretty comfortable with just trying to pick a gunfight. | ||
| Like, I'm okay with it. | ||
| Like, I'll go out and pick a gunfight. | ||
| Fuck them. | ||
| I'm gonna go, like, wreck some people. | ||
| Like, I don't give a shit. | ||
| At that point in my life, I really didn't give a shit. | ||
| Didn't have any kids. | ||
| I was single. | ||
| Like, let's just go out and try to pick a gunfight. | ||
| So, I went out and looked at the maps as to all the ambushes the Filipino army had been in, in this specific area of the Philippines. | ||
| And I was like, oh, okay, let's go do medical capabilities, which is where we go out and we bring in people from the tribe and we... | ||
| Assess them for medical conditions. | ||
| But really all I was doing is just like taking these fan boats up this river into the middle of nowhere and then performing a big show of force on every one of these ambush sites trying to pick fights with the Filipino terrorist cells that are at the Abu Sayyaf. | ||
| And at the same time, in the evenings when we'd come back, We're good to go. | ||
| One of the coolest trips I've ever done in the Army because we're completely unrestricted. | ||
| All we were doing is trying to get in a gunfight. | ||
| We never did. | ||
| But when I think about how fucking cool that was that the American taxpayer paid for me to go to the Philippines to try to get in a gunfight with a bunch of terrorists while I was singing karaoke till like 3 o'clock in the fucking morning, taking fan boats into the middle of nowhere, I'm like... | ||
| You guys are awesome. | ||
| And I can't thank everybody enough for that because not only as you said it, you're like, hey, thank you for doing that. | ||
| Dude, it was so much fun. | ||
| Like the years that I was doing it, I always try to tell people, I'm like, I should be thanking you because I had so much fucking fun throughout those years doing incredible things. | ||
| That people would say were a little bit dangerous and- A little bit? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, a little bit dangerous. | ||
| A little bit? | ||
| A lot dangerous, depending on the circumstance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Really fucking dangerous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I had a blast, man. | ||
| But it takes a special type of person to enjoy that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| There's a lot of different people in this world. | ||
| There's people in this world that should be tattoo artists. | ||
| There's people in this world that should make balloon animals. | ||
| And there's people in this world who should take fan boats and look for gunfights. | ||
| That was me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you need everybody. | ||
| You need them all. | ||
| We need all of them. | ||
| We need guitarists. | ||
| We need painters. | ||
| We need construction workers and carpenters. | ||
| We need surgeons. | ||
| We need everybody. | ||
| It's a beautiful machine. | ||
| It requires all sorts of things. | ||
| It requires all sorts of different personalities and different, but the fact that we have the freedom for you to choose what you want to do, like you're not being drafted, you enlisted. | ||
| You had the choice to do this, you sought out adventure, you sought out your life's purpose, whatever calling you had to join the military, and the fact that we live in this amazing experiment in self-government, That you have the freedom to do that. | ||
| We have to protect those freedoms at all costs, whether you agree with them or not, whether you agree with people's choices or not. | ||
| You have to protect their ability to make those choices because it is the foundation that this country was founded on. | ||
| Freedom. | ||
| That concept, this idea of freedom, there's so many people that think it's frivolous, it's not important, it's not... | ||
| It's not the main thing that we should be focused on, but it is the thing, it's the literal structure that allows this country to be so fucking amazing, is that you can choose what you want to do. | ||
| You can find the thing that everyone's different. | ||
| You're different than me, I'm different than Jamie, we're all different. | ||
| There's people next door that are totally different than us. | ||
| Find your thing, and this country allows people to find their thing. | ||
| But you gotta allow everybody to find their thing, as long as they're not fucking with your thing. | ||
| As long as someone's not interfering in a malicious way with other people's happiness and ability to live a purposeful life. | ||
| That is what we should be concentrating on. | ||
| Giving people as much freedom as they can to discuss things, to participate, to choose their path in life. | ||
| And as soon as you see something, anything that comes along and inhibits your freedom, you should be very, very wary and very cautious of that thing. | ||
| You should be very suspicious. | ||
| Because anything that comes along that can inhibit your freedom is in, by definition, it's anti-American. | ||
| So, I got a question for you then. | ||
| Because of this, do you think that Your political or individual ideology, do you think that you fit into a political party in America today? | ||
| Definitely not. | ||
| No, I am such a fucking homeless person when it comes to politics. | ||
| I am liberal in every social way. | ||
| First of all, when I was a kid, My parents were hippies. | ||
| We were on welfare. | ||
| We had food stamps. | ||
| That was what kept my family alive when I was a small boy. | ||
| I remember it very clearly. | ||
| I remember going to the supermarket and my parents buying food stamps. | ||
| I remember being embarrassed that we drank powdered milk. | ||
| I remember being on welfare. | ||
| But they got out of that. | ||
| They worked their way out of that situation. | ||
| They used government assistance in the best possible way and went on to live a fulfilled and happy and successful life. | ||
| I saw it happen. | ||
| So because of that, I have a dedication to social programs. | ||
| I have a dedication to this idea that All social programs like welfare and food stamps, it's not all bad. | ||
| And people think it enables people to be lazy. | ||
| It's not always the case. | ||
| I think sometimes people get in a bad situation, and as a community, It's good to have a safety net. | ||
| It's good to think of ourselves as neighbors. | ||
| It's good to think of ourselves as a country as a community. | ||
| And you contributed that. | ||
| I happily pay my taxes. | ||
| I have no problem with it. | ||
| I'd be happy to pay more if I thought the government was competent and it was going to make for a better life for people. | ||
| If it was going to make for less homelessness, less joblessness, less... | ||
| People that are fucked with medical bills, less people that are in debt because of student loans. | ||
| If I thought that that was the case, I'd be happy to pay more. | ||
| So, I'm very liberal in that way. | ||
| I'm very liberal in terms of civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, all those core issues that make a person a progressive. | ||
| I'm very much in line with that. | ||
| I also have a lot of guns. | ||
| I'm also a hunter. | ||
| I'm very pro-Second Amendment. | ||
| I'm also very pro-military, very pro-police, very pro-first responders, fire department. | ||
| I think you need discipline. | ||
| You need authority. | ||
| I've been a disciplined person my whole life. | ||
| I've been around people that are either military people or police officers because of my martial arts experience my whole fucking life. | ||
| I have a deep respect for them. | ||
| You never hear me talking shit about the police or the military. | ||
| It's not my thing. | ||
| So I'm in this weird... | ||
| Because that puts me in conservative land. | ||
| I'm very conservative in that regard. | ||
| I'm very conservative in that I believe in discipline. | ||
| And I believe that if you give people a way out of things, and you let them weasel their way through things and find excuses and find scapegoats and reasons why they're not successful and reasons why things are fucked up, they'll do it. | ||
| They'll do it because it's human nature. | ||
| It's human nature for people to seek comfort and to seek escape and to seek excuses. | ||
| It's a human nature thing. | ||
| So in that regard, I'm very, very right-wing. | ||
| I'm very discipline-oriented. | ||
| I believe... | ||
| I believe that there's a lot of luck involved in life. | ||
| And there's a lot of... | ||
| We're very fortunate. | ||
| Look, I'm very fortunate just to have been born in America. | ||
| I'm very fortunate to have had adversity as a young person. | ||
| So I recognize and I appreciate success as a man. | ||
| So I'm politically homeless. | ||
| So I'm in this weird both-way world where I see people that are trying to enact programs to absolve people of student loan debt, and I'm like, fuck yeah, I'm in. | ||
| I see programs where people are trying to fix inner cities and provide community support and provide ways that you enact programs that help people get out of bad situations, and I'm all in on those, too. | ||
| Do you think that there's a lot of people right now that feel like they're politically homeless? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I think there's more people in the center than there are even on both sides now. | ||
| Because I think one of the things that happened during the Trump administration and during the pandemic, that a lot of people did not feel like they belong on one side or the other. | ||
| But they're in communities where you have to support one side or the other, or you don't feel like you have a tribe. | ||
| And everybody wants to be a part of a tribe. | ||
| And it takes real courage to stand out away from your tribe and say, I don't agree with that. | ||
| I agree with this. | ||
| Because then people will attack you. | ||
| I don't think you should be forced to do this. | ||
| And I don't think you should tell a person they have to do that. | ||
| I don't think you should be spending money on this or that. | ||
| Or how come we're ignoring the corporate involvement on this side, but we're not ignoring it on our side? | ||
| I think that partisanship and tribal shit that we're experiencing right now is one of the worst aspects of this country. | ||
| And the fact that we have these two parties, and it's only two, it's so crazy. | ||
| Both elections, the past two elections, I voted independent. | ||
| I voted for Gary Johnson and I voted for Joe Jorgensen for the latest one. | ||
| I just think, I'm homeless. | ||
| Well, I think a lot of people feel that way. | ||
| I vote on a combination of issues every time, the important issues to me specifically. | ||
| But I feel disenfranchised from the system, and I think a lot of people do. | ||
| I think they feel like the system has let them down. | ||
| Like, two choices? | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| This is fucking America, man. | ||
| We have 50 different... | ||
| Versions of soda water and we can't come up with yeah, you know more than two parties I think we run each different state yeah, and I think When we look at that the two-party system Like one of the things that continues to break my brain is How do we dig our way out of this two-party system? | ||
| From your perspective have you thought about this? | ||
| Yeah, like how do you dig your way out? | ||
| The fuckers got it on lock locked up. | ||
| They got it locked up I mean, they really do. | ||
| I mean, one of the things they did when Ross Perot came along, the Commission for Presidential Debates, they decided you have to have a larger percentage of the vote in order to participate in the debates. | ||
| And even then, they've still figured out a way how to lock people out. | ||
| Like, they locked Tulsi Gabbard out of the debates. | ||
| That shit pissed me off. | ||
| It should piss everybody off. | ||
| It made me so fucking angry. | ||
| People that are Democrats that want a strong woman who's a woman of color, who's a veteran, who's a congresswoman for eight years. | ||
| She has everything. | ||
| Deployed twice overseas, worked in a medical unit. | ||
| Everything about her is positive. | ||
| She's a fucking leader to the bone. | ||
| She's your girl. | ||
| That's your girl. | ||
| You guys want a powerful, strong female leader? | ||
| Who really does walk the walk and talks it? | ||
| Tulsi Gabbard's your girl. | ||
| She's right there. | ||
| She's right there. | ||
| And they didn't want nothing to do with her. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| They locked her out. | ||
| Yeah, that was one of the things that conservatives burnt me down about. | ||
| Because, you know, I'm an open book. | ||
| I'm open Komodo most of the time. | ||
| Like, yeah, I contributed to her campaign. | ||
| You know why? | ||
| Because she was one of, if the only Democrat holding Hillary Clinton accountable for her actions. | ||
| She was fucking taking her to task on a regular. | ||
| And if you don't think I want to put another coin in that jukebox, you're fucking crazy. | ||
| Like, I loved it. | ||
| Every second of it. | ||
| When Hillary came out and said, you're a Russian asset, I was like, are you fucking kidding me? | ||
| Isn't that crazy? | ||
| It's crazy! | ||
| Not only is it... | ||
| A veteran. | ||
| A veteran. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So the former Secretary of State... | ||
| The former first lady, the former presidential candidate, the person that wields probably the single most influential female politician in America, came out and called a military officer a Russian asset. | ||
| Every person in America should have been like, let's put some money in that jukebox and hear another song. | ||
| Yeah, everybody who supported her should have hit the brakes. | ||
| Fuck yes. | ||
| They should have been like, what did you say? | ||
| What did you do? | ||
| And if your heart doesn't go out to a person like that, especially a veteran, right? | ||
| Like, I try to... | ||
| When I see veterans going out and doing some fucking incredible things, man, all I can do is just go, how do I double down support? | ||
| That's what I want. | ||
| I want to see veterans holding politicians specifically accountable for their actions. | ||
| Man, I love that. | ||
| There's nothing more than... | ||
| Especially somebody like that in the DNC that's holding the most powerful female politician accountable. | ||
| Dude, that was so impressive. | ||
| And we talked, you know, I do consider her a friend and I respect her a lot. | ||
| We talked over that period of time and... | ||
| I can't believe that the American public didn't recoil in that action. | ||
| Like, it was astounding to me that they would let that happen from a person of power. | ||
| The thing is, there was no blowback in the media. | ||
| So people who are just programmed to think that only things that are in the media are important, they just let it slide. | ||
| And there wasn't even any blowback on Fox News because they didn't want to support someone on the left. | ||
| It wasn't even anybody on the right that said, hey, what the fuck is this? | ||
| And I think they made a mistake there. | ||
| They made a mistake there, and I think, you know, just as an American, there should be certain rules and certain lines you don't cross. | ||
| When you want to call a person who's, by the way, active duty, right? | ||
| She still deploys. | ||
| She fucking... | ||
| She FaceTimed me with some soldiers just a few days ago. | ||
| It was like a week ago. | ||
| We were talking on the phone. | ||
| She's still active and she Is impeccable. | ||
| I mean, they couldn't find anything about her. | ||
| They tried. | ||
| They tried, man. | ||
| They tried to dig up. | ||
| And so what do they do? | ||
| They try to smear her name by saying a Russian asset. | ||
| Look, if you think that Russia would rather have her in place than Hillary Clinton or all these other fucking lifelong politicians, that's a hilarious notion. | ||
| Hilarious. | ||
| It's hilarious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, and she was one of the only people, because I've been asked this question a lot, right? | ||
| She was one of the only Democrats to vote down a piece of legislation that was going to require the VA to hand over medical records from veterans when you're doing a background check for firearms. | ||
| I was like, that is a huge mistake. | ||
| Because a lot of people that I know have anxiety issues and We're good to go. | ||
| She voted that down. | ||
| And there's so many different things that make her a good leader and a good representative, specifically for Hawaii or for the veteran community, that even though I don't agree with everything she has politically, I don't agree with Dan Crenshaw 100% of the time either. that even though I don't agree with everything she has But I do consider him a friend. | ||
| I respect his opinion, but I don't have to agree uniformly with every one of these people. | ||
| As do I. I agree the same way. | ||
| I agree wholeheartedly across the board with everything you just said. | ||
| It's like having a complex discussion and a debate And then being able to disagree with people politically, and also respect them, and also befriend them, that's America. | ||
| It is America, yeah. | ||
| The idea that there's two sides, and there's a blue side and a red side, and the red side is enemies with the blue side, and the blue side's enemies with the red side. | ||
| No. | ||
| The red and the blue is part of the fucking flag. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's right there. | ||
| It's all together. | ||
| It's all together. | ||
| It's literally all together. | ||
| It's supposed to be together. | ||
| You work things out. | ||
| I have friends that are conservative. | ||
| I have friends that are liberal. | ||
| We're supposed to be able to communicate about things without thinking of the other side as being evil. | ||
| And that's the crazy thing about the purity tests that each side wants to put people through. | ||
| And then you have this chunk in the middle, which, you know, I consider myself, you know, right of center most of the time on most issues, you know, depending on the issue. | ||
| Uh... | ||
| But you have this purity test that the extremes always want to put everybody through. | ||
| And it's crazy to me. | ||
| It's a fictional narrative where people will agree in total with everything the far left or the far right will do. | ||
| And then to a certain degree, I think you have those extremes holding the center hostage in America because they're loud, right? | ||
| They're kind of loud and a little bit obnoxious and everybody's like, oh man, that's like that weirdo that comes to your Thanksgiving party. | ||
| You're like, dude, I don't really like that guy, but I mean, he's there. | ||
| I guess I got to tolerate him for a while. | ||
| Which is probably a bad analogy, but the center in the broad percentage of Americans, we just love the country. | ||
| We respect our families. | ||
| We go to work. | ||
| We can politely disagree. | ||
| And we can have a complex discussion about issues, and hopefully two or multiple parties will come away with a greater understanding of the way that this person thinks, and maybe respect or politely disagree or not respect that person's opinion. | ||
| But I think that's what makes this country so incredible. | ||
| In my neighborhood, for instance, my neighbors are very liberal. | ||
| And all of our kids play together. | ||
| We were having this Halloween party. | ||
| And we were talking, right? | ||
| We were talking about guns and politics and a bunch of other shit, which is never a good discussion depending on how this is going. | ||
| But I was like, yeah, man, I'm putting in a generator in the house and putting in some solar panels. | ||
| Because I want to make sure that if something happens, my family still has power. | ||
| So I have redundancy. | ||
| Because some would call you a prepper, but I'm just a guy that likes redundancy. | ||
| And my neighbors were like, yeah, that's a good idea. | ||
| That's a really good idea. | ||
| Where'd you get that generator? | ||
| Like, who's the solar panel company that you're working with? | ||
| And then we started talking about firearms. | ||
| Well, they're very liberal, and they were talking about firearms, and like, hey, so things are kind of sketchy, you know? | ||
| Like, things are kind of sketchy. | ||
| What kind of firearms do you guys, like, own or whatever? | ||
| I'm like, hey, man, are you looking for one? | ||
| Like, oh, no, no. | ||
| I'm just wondering out of, you know, curiosity. | ||
| I was like, yeah, but, you know, if you go and get some training and, you know, you can legally own and possess firearms, like, I think it's a great thing. | ||
| They're like, yeah, I actually agree with that. | ||
| You know, it took me about two seconds to... | ||
| Of inarticulate debate to be like, yeah, I think a firearm's a good idea. | ||
| They're just like, that's a really good idea. | ||
| Don't you think that changed during the pandemic? | ||
| That's one of the things that really accelerated it. | ||
| Yeah, the lines outside the gun stores in LA were hilarious. | ||
| I'd be driving by going, you're a little late! | ||
| You guys should have been here years ago. | ||
| I got a pallet of ammo. | ||
| One of my best investments I've ever made. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I have had more than one person ask to borrow a gun. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Guys who I was friends with in LA. And I've had other friends that they said the same thing happened to them. | ||
| Liberal friends were asking to borrow guns from them. | ||
| I have a text ring on my phone, which is like one of the most fucking funny text rings you'll ever, ever read. | ||
| I'll pull it up if I can later. | ||
| So it's one of my friends that's holding me to task over ARs. | ||
| He's like, this is an unnecessary purchase. | ||
| I can't believe it's in our society, blah, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| I'm like, hey, man, it's our right to bear arms. | ||
| This is a semi-auto. | ||
| I kind of explained what the use is and why I think that it's a justifiable purchase. | ||
| And then he's like, basically, fuck you, which was the next text. | ||
| Three months later, as the pandemic's kicking off, he's like, hey, man, I just want to apologize for what I said about those guns earlier. | ||
| Which ones would you recommend... | ||
| I was like, hey, dude, I can recommend all kinds of them. | ||
| I've had these conversations with people where they're like, well, that's okay, but that's not okay. | ||
| Well, it's good to have... | ||
| If you have a pistol in your house to protect yourself, that's fine, but not an AR, right? | ||
| They'll look for common ground. | ||
| Can we agree on that? | ||
| I'm like, what is the difference? | ||
| What do you think is the difference? | ||
| One of them is better at killing people that want to kill you? | ||
| Why do you think an AR is bad? | ||
| Because you have more chances to stay alive? | ||
| Because you have a larger round? | ||
| Or a larger amount of bullets you can shoot? | ||
| What is it about it that bothers you? | ||
| That it looks like a military weapon? | ||
| Is it the looks? | ||
| What is it about an AR? Is it just the fact that it's semi-automatic? | ||
| What's the thing that drives you crazy? | ||
| And it's a political thing. | ||
| It's like ARs have been demonized in the news to the point where people look at a magazine that has X amount of bullets and they go, why do you need so many bullets? | ||
| Well, you don't until you do. | ||
| And if you do... | ||
| Then you're happy that you have a large magazine. | ||
| This is not that complicated. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| You're not going to use it unless you need to use it. | ||
| And if you need to use it, wouldn't you want something that's the most effective tool for the job? | ||
| If you have 30 fucking people trying to break into your house and you only have six bullets because you have a revolver, that's not good. | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm not saying you're ever going to have 30 people trying to break into your house. | ||
| Dude. | ||
| But if you do... | ||
| Do you need 900 horsepower? | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| But I like it. | ||
| When you need it, it comes in handy and it's also fun. | ||
| It's freedom, right? | ||
| People ask me that all the time. | ||
| Like, why do you like, you know, well, it's Black Rifle Coffee Company, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why do you like ARs? | ||
| I'm like, well, one, it was a tool in my profession for a long period of time. | ||
| Two, it's my recreation. | ||
| It's my protection. | ||
| It's a combination of things that I love about that rifle. | ||
| It's nostalgic. | ||
| It's directly connected to my DNA because I carried it. | ||
| It was attached to me for over a decade. | ||
| Keeping you alive. | ||
| Keeping me alive. | ||
| It's life-saving equipment. | ||
| The name is an homage to the thing that kept me alive. | ||
| It was literally the wall between life or death. | ||
| And now, it truly is one of those things that I find this connection not only to my past and what I've done in my past, but it's also a hobby. | ||
| I mean, I have a range. | ||
| Right here in San Antonio, I've got a 100-yard range, and I've got a mile. | ||
| I can shoot out to a mile out there. | ||
| So, I love shooting. | ||
| Like, I've been telling a lot of people that I'm a projectile enthusiast because I shoot anything. | ||
| Like, I don't care if it's skee-ball, rifle, pistol, bow. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| Like, I just love hitting targets with projectiles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's fun. | |
| It's fucking amazing. | ||
| It's really fun. | ||
| Yeah, it's super fun. | ||
| And to say that is, like, controversial. | ||
| I know! | ||
| That's where... | ||
| That's the debate as to like even for me to say certain things like I love America and I love guns They're like, oh You're one of those guys. | ||
| I'm like, oh you mean I'm just I'm in love with freedom and I'm in love with like Doing the things that are completely legal and oh by the way I think you should be really proud of where you were born in your city your state and your country I think it's pretty amazing I So the box magazines and round capacity, we've kind of gone down the rabbit hole on these things multiple times. | ||
| I'm like, why do you want to restrict what people are doing with no justifiable data that can tell me why I should not be able to have this? | ||
| Well, I think for a long time, people thought it was a preposterous conversation to say that a well-armed militia, like the right to keep and bear arms, a well-armed militia, like, wait a minute, you're going to overthrow the government? | ||
| You really think you're going to overthrow the government? | ||
| Like, people thought that was really preposterous. | ||
| But I think there's a lot of people that paid attention to what's going on right now in Hong Kong. | ||
| And they realized, like, oh my god, Hong Kong was just taken over. | ||
| Essentially taken over by China in this really crazy open way. | ||
| And we saw these massive protests. | ||
| There's a meme that I have on my phone. | ||
| Here, I'll send it to you, Jamie. | ||
| It says, be the America that Hong Kong likes to think you are. | ||
| Let me see if I can find it. | ||
| I got it in here. | ||
| But it's these guys in Hong Kong waving the American flag, hoping that America is going to step in and do something to stop them from taking over. | ||
| Here. | ||
| Oh, it's from my friend Lando. | ||
| Here. | ||
| I'll text this to you, Jamie. | ||
| Unfortunately, it's a screenshot. | ||
| But it's good. | ||
| Because it's Groovy Lando. | ||
| Lando Venato fights with the UFC. Had it on his Instagram and I screenshotted it. | ||
| It's these guys protesting in Hong Kong because China is taking over the country and they're enforcing the same sort of draconian laws that they have in the rest of China on Hong Kong, which until the 1990s was a British colony. | ||
| Be the America Hong Kong thinks you are. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| That's incredible. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| But they don't have the right to keep and bear arms. | ||
| There's hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, in the streets protesting China's taking over. | ||
| What if they all had guns? | ||
| Wouldn't that change? | ||
| And people go, well, that's not here. | ||
| That's not us. | ||
| Well, it's not here. | ||
| It's not us now. | ||
| But the thing about every single civilization that's ever existed, all empires fall. | ||
| And if we're in the process of this empire collapsing, and I'm not sure if we are or aren't, but I don't think anybody really recognized that Rome was falling before it fell. | ||
| I don't think anybody, any of the ancient civilizations that are no longer in power. | ||
| I think the sign was, I think you might even addressed it, was like Romans started concentrating on their genitalia and that was like one of the signs. | ||
| It was like you guys are fixated on arbitrary items versus like fixing the state. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They started getting a little too free. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Okay. | ||
| They got wacky. | ||
| They got wacky. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I think you're right. | ||
| I think, well, an example, and I don't know if this is a great example, is, you know, in Afghanistan, we're pulling out of Afghanistan, obviously, after 20 years, which I completely and wholeheartedly agree with, by the way. | ||
| Is, you know, the average education level in Afghanistan, the Taliban fighter that we were fighting, I think was the equivalent of like second grade education, right? | ||
| And the average weapon system was an AK-47. | ||
| And so when you have the narrative out there that is like, okay, well, why is an armed society a good society? | ||
| And the government should actually be... | ||
| It shouldn't be in fear of its people, but it should respect the people. | ||
| It should respect the power of the individual. | ||
| And not that there would be any form of armed, you know, revolution in any circumstance. | ||
| I'm definitely not saying that. | ||
| I'm saying an armed society is one that can protect itself from government overreach. | ||
| Because politicians and the political establishment, they understand the dynamic of power. | ||
| And that's one of the things that I continue to come back to is like this sanctuary of our ideology of freedom, which is this is part of the American fabric, which is power to the individual and freedom to the person. | ||
| When bureaucrats and politicians want to infringe on that, we should all be very skeptical. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Power grab yeah from the city the state or the nation not only that it changes what they're supposed to be doing They're supposed to be public servants correct in this country. | |
| We don't want dictators and We don't want someone who passes some sweeping law that changes the way you're allowed to do business or the way you're allowed to act. | ||
| And that's what we found during the pandemic. | ||
| People passing these laws, making these new rules in order to protect us and keep us safe. | ||
| And it changed the relationship. | ||
| They were no longer public servants. | ||
| They were autocrats. | ||
| They were telling people what they can and can't do. | ||
| And oftentimes, they weren't following their own rules. | ||
| We saw that with Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| We saw that with Gavin Newsom. | ||
| We saw that with many of these people. | ||
| They were telling us what to do and then doing the opposite, and they kept getting busted for it. | ||
| And that's that division, right? | ||
| And it's when we have that division or the divide, I think it's that's where I kind of see this conversation, at least. | ||
| I'm always trying to ask you guys, like, you know, I've asked Jocko, I think, and you specifically. | ||
| I'm like, where is it that we can come to try to have this third party discussion? | ||
| And I'm not trying to start a third party whatsoever. | ||
| I'm just saying in your mind with a two party system, how do you even begin to, like, break the mold and establish a third or a fourth party? | ||
| You need a really powerful person who can lead the center. | ||
| You need a really powerful, charismatic person whose character and judgment are impeccable. | ||
| And that person has to want to do that job. | ||
| Is there that person? | ||
| I don't know who that person is. | ||
| You don't? | ||
| I do not know. | ||
| Even like somebody, you just like pull somebody out of your hat. | ||
| I wouldn't know. | ||
| Really? | ||
| They would have to want to do that job. | ||
| It's not just would they be able to do that job. | ||
| They have to want to dedicate themselves to that kind of abuse, that kind of scrutiny, that kind of microscope on their life, and distortion of all aspects of their life. | ||
| I mean, think about what the New York Times did to distort just a fucking coffee coffee. | ||
| You know, right? | ||
| A coffee company that is a right-wing, military supportive, first responder supportive coffee company, and they distort that. | ||
| What are they going to do if you try to take over the government? | ||
| What are they going to do if you try to run for president? | ||
| You need a person who has... | ||
| Like an impeccable background and a person who knows how to communicate and a person who's charismatic, where people can resonate with that person. | ||
| They say, this guy, this woman, this person, this person represents how I feel. | ||
| For my money, it's Tulsi Gabbard. | ||
| I know she's left-wing, but she's so appealing to so many on the right. | ||
| She could do it. | ||
| The system is so rigged in terms of the debates and in terms of the coverage that you would get from mainstream media. | ||
| One of the more interesting things, though, is that mainstream media is no longer mainstream. | ||
| No. | ||
| The podcasts have so much more reach than mainstream media, which is fucking crazy. | ||
| And it's one of the reasons why they're so angry about it. | ||
| Like when you see CNN starts talking shit about podcasts and getting mad about YouTube shows that have more viewers than their shows. | ||
| Because your shows suck. | ||
| You guys are not charismatic. | ||
| You're not interesting. | ||
| Your point of view is not nuanced. | ||
| I don't believe you. | ||
| I don't think you have good character. | ||
| I don't think you're a well-intentioned, reasonable person. | ||
| And that's why your show sucks. | ||
| And that's one of the good things about the climate that we live in, is that you no longer really need the mainstream media. | ||
| When the New York Times goes after coffee companies, You know what I'm saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, this is where we're at. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This is the world we're living in. | ||
| They're distorting reality to support their own clan. | ||
| And it's fucked. | ||
| Well, it's fucked. | ||
| They've gone after you too, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I mean, how many people have gone after you because you're show size? | ||
| A lot. | ||
| Like, and what is it that you talk about that's so fucking scary to people? | ||
| Well, I have opinions, and sometimes I'm wrong, you know? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Sometimes my opinions, I'm thinking them up as I'm saying it, and I haven't really even put so much thought into it, and they think that's irresponsible. | ||
| And there's an argument for that, but that's what I do. | ||
| I talk shit. | ||
| I'm a shit talker. | ||
| I'm drunk half the time. | ||
| But I'm not going to stop doing that. | ||
| This is what I do. | ||
| And they go after you because that's their job. | ||
| Their job is to write stories that are going to get a lot of views. | ||
| So if the New York Times has gone after me, or any other people have gone after me, Well, they're putting a billboard on the car crash, right? | ||
| That's what they want to do. | ||
| They're exploiting tragedy. | ||
| They're tragedy merchants. | ||
| There's a lot of that. | ||
| And that's one thing I refuse to do, right? | ||
| I'm not going to participate in the tragedy merchant business. | ||
| Even the negative dialogue, right? | ||
| It's like I broker in entertain, inform, and inspire, right? | ||
| Because I think I have an ethical responsibility to... | ||
| The veterans at Black Rifle and the veteran community to not participate in negative dialogue. | ||
| The problem is that there's a disconnect from this small gray thing that is bouncing around in my head and this fucking open hole that makes noises. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I love to talk shit. | ||
| Yeah, it's fun. | ||
| Yeah, and I'm hypocritical. | ||
| I'm a human. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Everything is a contradiction. | ||
| No one will survive the purity test of not having a contradiction or a hypocritical view because that's actually being human. | ||
| If you don't, you're not living the human experience. | ||
| You're not identifying this is fucking complex. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I think Obama said that recently, and he was trying to calm people down. | ||
| It was a very interesting conversation that he was having. | ||
| I forget who he was having it with, but he was like, listen, life is messy. | ||
| Humans are messy. | ||
| It's not this clean, simple thing that you would like to put everything in this box, so this is good and this is bad. | ||
| That's not what humans are and that's not what life is like. | ||
| You're not recognizing nuance. | ||
| No. | ||
| People are nuanced. | ||
| I was accused of using that when I used that word a while ago. | ||
| That's a progressive term. | ||
| Which term? | ||
| Nuance. | ||
| Nuance is a progressive term? | ||
| No, it's just some douche shit. | ||
| It's just some, like, idiot online or whatever. | ||
| It's like, that's a progressive term. | ||
| So now you guys are limiting my speech. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, like, one thing that I've kind of gone through, you know, like, around and around in the last, like, seven years is, like, one thing is, like, man, I'm not going to be intimidated or bullied by some weird group of people on the internet. | ||
| I don't give a fuck. | ||
| Like... | ||
| I'm having such a great time, like on this ride, because we have such a finite existence here, that there's no way I'm gonna let a group of negative people pull me into the muck and the mire of their negative existence. | ||
| It's like, one of my friends sent me a text, he's like, ah, if you wrestle with pigs, you're gonna get dirty. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, exactly. | ||
| I'm not gonna do it, because I'm trying to have, for a combination of reasons, right, which is I have an ethical responsibility to my peer group of the people that have sacrificed their lives for this country. | ||
| And for me, specifically, to go out and fucking push it. | ||
| Like, I get up every morning and I'm like, hell yeah, dude. | ||
| I'm alive and I'm gonna get every fucking second out of this day And I'm thinking about guys that I served with that don't have the opportunity right now to see their kids. | ||
| I get to see my kids. | ||
| I get to see my four-year-old, my seven-year-old. | ||
| Every morning I get to play with them and it makes me a better dad. | ||
| Because they're a constant reminder that they're not there to see their kids. | ||
| And it's a constant reminder for me to go out and be a good CEO or boss of the 500 plus people that work at Black Rifle and to care for people. | ||
| To be a good human and to be Responsible for my emotions. | ||
| Because the other thing that I like to tell people is that psychology is more infectious than COVID. You spread negative shit, it's gonna spread everywhere. | ||
| But if you're positive and you're motivated and you're plugged in, you're connected and you're having an experience with people that's positive, you're gonna spread that. | ||
| And I owe it to the entire peer group of post 9-11 and all the veterans out there to just fucking push every day to be as positive as I can to plug in and be connected and have real experiences and to make a positive impact in people's lives versus contributing to negative horseshit that's just like arbitrary and spinning out of control on these like random platforms. | ||
| And kudos to you, because I've been listening to your show for I don't know how long. | ||
| And I fucking love it. | ||
| You have done so much for so many veterans. | ||
| Their mental health, giving them a person to listen to that is giving them a broader perspective on life. | ||
| And I'm not trying to placate to the crowd. | ||
| I'm saying, dude, you have helped a fuck ton of guys that I know. | ||
| Like, so many guys that I know are like, man, I went down and did ayahuasca because Joe was talking about it on one of the shows and I am 100% recovered. | ||
| I no longer have to climb into a bottle to go to sleep. | ||
| I no longer have these visions and nightmares. | ||
| So what you're doing with your platform and the interconnectiveness specifically related to, you know, my peer group, like, man, you're spreading positivity. | ||
| You're doing incredible things. | ||
| So for me, I'm replicating part of that. | ||
| I'm saying, you know what, I can do incredible positive things and I can be a direct impact on the people that have been physically and mentally altered by these wars. | ||
| So when I roll out of bed, I'm like, okay, well, I'm not checking in on every JRE, but, you know, there's a few, right? | ||
| I'm just trying to fucking plug in and be positive. | ||
| And I think you're leading by example. | ||
| Does that connect with you that you're a leader on a whole different level? | ||
| Does that connect with you? | ||
| I think if I think about it too much, then it'll fuck with my head. | ||
| So I just do what I do. | ||
| But I think to speak to what you were saying earlier about interacting in a negative way with people and getting dragged into the pig slop, the thing about it is that you're not helping those people either. | ||
| Those people that are negatively attacking you and negatively reacting and They need love too, man. | ||
| They all need attention and a lot of those people are good people. | ||
| A lot of those people who say bad things are good people. | ||
| They're just fucking lost. | ||
| They're lost and they're bitter and they're angry and they're jealous and they're sad and they don't know what the fuck to do with their life and so they say negative shit because negative shit gets people to react. | ||
| Negative shit gets a response and negative shit is a form of currency in this country in this weird climate. | ||
| And I think if you engage in it and feed it, you just spread it. | ||
| It's not helping them. | ||
| It's certainly not helping you. | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| Are you going to get them? | ||
| Are you going to make some 16-year-old kid feel bad? | ||
| Hey, you fucking loser. | ||
| I'm a winner, you fucker. | ||
| I own Black Rifle Coffee. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Sleeping in your mom's basement, you little piece of shit? | ||
| You're like, yeah, got him! | ||
| Got that guy today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Got him. | |
| It's a waste of time. | ||
| Waste of time. | ||
| It's a waste for you. | ||
| It's a waste for him. | ||
| You're just making enemies. | ||
| You're not making friends. | ||
| And people that say things like, I've said some stupid shit. | ||
| If I had a Twitter account when I was 15 and someone could go back and pull it up, oh my God, I'd have some explaining to do. | ||
| Dude, if I had a Twitter account three years ago, I'd have some fucking explaining to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| I'm an idiot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| That's the human experience. | ||
| Yes, that's the human experience. | ||
| It's growth, and to deny people growth, and that's one of the things that people love to do. | ||
| They're like, archaeologists for bad ideas. | ||
| They want to dig up, look what you said in 94. Look at that meme you made. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, they want to find these- Yeah, shit was funny. | |
| They want to dig up old dumb shit that you thought of. | ||
| Like, yeah, I don't think like that anymore. | ||
| I don't say those things anymore. | ||
| I believe that life is about learning and it's a long, grueling process where if you do it right, you make mistakes and you grow. | ||
| I've made a lot of mistakes. | ||
| But that's also why I'm so successful is because I've taken a lot of fucking chances. | ||
| And because of those chances, I've put myself out there, and I've taken a lot of lumps, but I've also succeeded in a lot of ways because of that, because I'm willing to take it. | ||
| I'm willing to take the chances, and I'm willing to put myself out there. | ||
| And that's the secret to this show, is that The people that listen, I think, no, I'm not a bad person, even though I make mistakes. | ||
| I try to be a really good person. | ||
| I work hard at it. | ||
| It's like a big focus of my life is to be nice and to be a good person and do the best that I can do at everything I'm doing. | ||
| Man, I follow the four agreements. | ||
| You ever read that Don Miguel Ruiz book? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-mm. | |
| It's an interesting book. | ||
| It's fascinating. | ||
| I mean, I don't follow like a religion, but it's a fascinating guidebook on how to live a healthier life. | ||
| And he has four agreements. | ||
| And one of them is be impeccable with your word. | ||
| I try to... | ||
| And I'm not always... | ||
| I'm good at this. | ||
| I fuck this up sometimes. | ||
| But when I do fuck it up, I'm very aware of it and it makes me feel like shit. | ||
| I try to always say what I mean and I always try to mean what I say. | ||
| The other one is don't take things personally. | ||
| And that's how I feel about people that talk shit about me or people that write bad articles about me. | ||
| I'm still me. | ||
| I'm exactly the same person. | ||
| You can try to distort me. | ||
| You can try to paint me in some weird way. | ||
| You can try to change What I'm saying or look at it in the most uncharitable way, but it's not going to change who I am. | ||
| This is who I am. | ||
| So I don't take it personally. | ||
| Don't make assumptions. | ||
| Don't make assumptions. | ||
| Don't assume things. | ||
| It's not beneficial. | ||
| It doesn't help. | ||
| And then always do your best. | ||
| That's the one before I even read the book I already had locked in. | ||
| I always try to do my best in everything I do. | ||
| I'm not always successful at it. | ||
| I'm not always good at it, but whatever I'm trying to do at that moment in my life, I'm trying to do my best with everything, whether it's martial arts or being a dad or doing a podcast or doing stand-up. | ||
| I am always trying to do my best. | ||
| And I feel like if you can follow those principles and just use those as a guide and always try to improve upon the way that you interface with life, the way you interface with other people, the way you express yourself out in the world, you'll be on the right road. | ||
| You'll be on the right road and you'll be on the right path. | ||
| And I think that I mean, I guess if I had to sit and think about it, because I don't. | ||
| I really don't think about why this fucking show is successful. | ||
| I just keep showing up. | ||
| I really don't. | ||
| I'm not exactly sure. | ||
| But I think if I thought about it too much, I would fuck it up. | ||
| And I think that happens to a lot of people that get really successful. | ||
| One of the things you see about people that get really famous is they go crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I worry about that. | ||
| The pressure. | ||
| I worry about that for you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I'm like, dude, what kind of pressure are you under? | ||
| Meanwhile, I'm fine. | ||
| Yeah, you look great. | ||
| I've never felt better. | ||
| I am uniquely qualified. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're fucking hilarious. | |
| I'm uniquely qualified to deal with that kind of pressure. | ||
| Because I put so much pressure on myself. | ||
| Like, any external pressure that people put on me, I'm like, that's hilarious. | ||
| Like, if you only knew the self-hate that I have for my own actions. | ||
| I'm the same way. | ||
| I'm the same way. | ||
| It helps. | ||
| If you already knew, I'm my biggest critic. | ||
| I don't give a shit. | ||
| And for me, one, I love those four pieces that you just put out. | ||
| Those are fucking incredible. | ||
| It's a book. | ||
| It's a great book. | ||
| And it's a great audio book, too. | ||
| It's narrated by Peter Coyote, the actor. | ||
| It's called The Four Agreements. | ||
| Don Miguel Ruiz. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| It's a really, really well-written book. | ||
| It's weird because I always think about that when I text you, you text me back. | ||
| I'm like, this motherfucker's got the most popular podcast in the world. | ||
| Why is he texting me right back? | ||
| It's crazy, I know. | ||
| You're my friend. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're my friend. | |
| That's why I reached out to you when people were talking shit about you. | ||
| I'm like, I can't let that happen. | ||
| I'm like, I have to have you on. | ||
| I want people to see the you that I know, the you that I knew when you were just starting your company out, when the company wasn't gigantic. | ||
| Yeah, and it's crazy because... | ||
| The people that we know together, even the guys that we're connected with, whether it's Cam or John or all these dudes, they know me. | ||
| And the guys that I know are always like, dude, what the fuck? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| I don't let it bother me, dude. | ||
| I really don't. | ||
| When I say I don't let it bother me, it's like I just tune it out and I focus on what's really important. | ||
| What's really important in life is... | ||
| What I go to work for every day and when I focus on what's important and what's the most meaningful and impactful thing that I do, it starts with my family. | ||
| It starts with my family. | ||
| It's concentric rings of importance. | ||
| It's priorities. | ||
| I got to be plugged in. | ||
| I got to be good dad. | ||
| I got to love my kids. | ||
| I got to make sure that I'm present and I'm connected with my children. | ||
| You know, I grew up in a home where my father was a logger. | ||
| He was up before daylight. | ||
| He was back after sunset. | ||
| And, you know, I missed him as a kid. | ||
| I missed him because he's working all day. | ||
| I grew up below the poverty line. | ||
| And I grew up below the poverty line in the middle of remote northern Idaho. | ||
| I love my dad. | ||
| He's an amazing human. | ||
| But I also know I have to be present and connected with my children. | ||
| I have to be. | ||
| And then I have to go in and I have to be, well, first I have to be present and connected with my wife. | ||
| I have to be present and connected inside my company. | ||
| You know, those people depend on me directly impacting their lives in a positive way. | ||
| And I have to be present and connected when the product comes out. | ||
| I have to be present and connected on all those things that actually make the whole fucking machine work. | ||
| But I think the most thing that I'm quite literally focused on in trying to make an impact, like my legacy is not something that I'm thinking about on a regular basis. | ||
| You know, you get like really heady, sophisticated executives that are like, oh, my legacy is this. | ||
| I had this question today by Jared. | ||
| He was right there talking to me about it. | ||
| He's like, what do you want to do? | ||
| And I was like, The thing that I'm most focused on is the guys that have been physically impacted by the wars. | ||
| The guys, because those guys motivate me. | ||
| I think about them every day. | ||
| I think about one of my best friends. | ||
| His name is Clint Triall. | ||
| He's a bilateral amputee. | ||
| And he's been physically altered by the wars. | ||
| And every day his life is much different than mine. | ||
| And there are a thousand of him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
More. | |
| More. | ||
| Like thousands of him. | ||
| And if I'm not out there spreading positivity, if I'm not out there directly connecting, and not only connected in, but emotionally connected in an authentic way, I'm not doing my best. | ||
| And I'm not serving my community and being a direct impact In how we can encourage and make each other better. | ||
| Clint is my example in this, but... | ||
| You know, that guy during COVID was having a hard time, and I think we brought it up on the other show. | ||
| He was having a hard time getting VA appointments and things like that for his legs. | ||
| And I know what I can do. | ||
| I can... | ||
| Go out and I can raise money and I can create capital so I can go out and directly impact because I can take that profit and I can turn it into something good. | ||
| That's why I call myself a capitalistic philanthropist. | ||
| And I can go out and I can buy, you know, ATV wheelchairs. | ||
| I can sponsor different events where these guys can come out and shoot, you know, 3D foam targets and we can have a social event. | ||
| But those guys fire me up and they connect me into my peer group every day where I know I can have a direct impact. | ||
| What does bilateral amputate mean? | ||
| A person that has lost both their legs. | ||
| So above or below the knee. | ||
| So Clint, for instance, has above, one above, and one below. | ||
| And he was in a clandestine unit. | ||
| He's one of the best people that I know. | ||
| Like one of the best humans that I know. | ||
| And... | ||
| That has nothing to do with this injury, but I know that there are thousands of people right now that have mobility issues that I can help. | ||
| Because I sell brown water, caffeinated brown water that is interconnected to turn what I do every day into something that I'm extremely passionate about, which is I can make a direct impact into every one of those service members' lives by not only being a positive psychological influence, by being a leader in the community, and then, two, turning my profit into something that is incredibly impactful into their lives. | ||
| I have no lack of motivation ever because I have an ethical responsibility to the peer group that I served with for the last 20 years that When I get up and I try to make a stupid video on the internet and roast coffee, I know that I'm going to turn a percentage of that profit into something that is going to be directly impactful into their lives. | ||
| And that's what fires me up and motivates me. | ||
| I'm not trying to create a sarcophagus of gold for myself. | ||
| I can't take this shit with me. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| I don't care about any of it. | ||
| You know what I care about? | ||
| I care about putting on an adaptive athlete total archery challenge with a bunch of guys and getting my friends together and seeing them interact socially and high-fiving and talking shit. | ||
| You know, while shooting a piece of, you know, foam that looks like a deer in the middle of nowhere. | ||
| Dude, that stuff is so incredible. | ||
| It's more important than any gold that will ever yield out of this lifetime. | ||
| Because this is the stuff that's like, for me at least, this is the stuff that life is made of, right? | ||
| It's like having a conversation. | ||
| It's having a social connection with people. | ||
| It's impacting their lives in a very positive way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's why it's so important to me, I guess, like, When I talk about the company, I'm like, dude, what people get wrong is they just don't get it. | ||
| What they don't get it is, this isn't about me. | ||
| This isn't about money. | ||
| It's not about growth or projecting out financial performance. | ||
| I don't even like finance guys. | ||
| You know what I like? | ||
| I like being able to hire guys to go to the Paralympics. | ||
| I like to be able to hire fucking hundreds of veterans and put them to work doing impactful, creative, amazing things. | ||
| That's what fires me up. | ||
| Not only fires me up, but it motivates me and pisses me off all at the same time. | ||
| It's like, hey, we shouldn't be invading other countries and doing long, drawn-out military occupational wars. | ||
| I'll pause myself there because I'm getting fucking carried away. | ||
| I'm a little bit crazy. | ||
| No, what you're saying is exactly what the New York Times should have wrote down. | ||
| You guys fucked up. | ||
| You missed the story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You missed the whole story. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| The real story is interesting. | ||
| The problem with the New York Times is the problem with almost all publications today. | ||
| They're very partisan. | ||
| They have a narrative. | ||
| They start off with that narrative, and then they try to justify and confirm that narrative in their story. | ||
| And life is way more interesting than that. | ||
| It's way more interesting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And in trying to stick things into these very confined boxes. | ||
| You limit your own potential as media. | ||
| You limit your own potential in how you interface with the people that read your newspaper or whatever you're doing, whether it's a podcast or a book you wrote, you're limiting it. | ||
| You're limiting it because you're not being honest. | ||
| You're not being real. | ||
| You're just trying to force things into some narrow perspective. | ||
| That's a problem with the New York Times. | ||
| It's a problem with the Washington Post. | ||
| It's a problem with a lot of publications today. | ||
| They have this idea of expectation, much like I was saying, like if I thought too much about how many people are listening to this show, if I changed who I am because I was worried about the impact or the fame or the... | ||
| It's hard. | ||
| It's hard to not do that. | ||
| Most people give in to that. | ||
| But that's what all those institutions have done. | ||
| They've all given in to their audience. | ||
| They've all given in to the expectations. | ||
| They've all given in to these very, very tribal perspectives. | ||
| And everything is either with them or against them. | ||
| Everything is either good or bad, problematic or enlightening and encouraging. | ||
| And that's not real. | ||
| It's not real. | ||
| There's a lot of people that have direct opposite perspectives than you do on all sorts of things. | ||
| And they're good people. | ||
| There's a broad range of human beings in this world. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And if you try to stick them in boxes, you fuck them up. | ||
| You fuck up their message. | ||
| And also, even the way you interact with them fucks it up. | ||
| You know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's the gulag, man. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Let's just... | ||
| There's an interview recently with the New York Times with Jason Momoa. | ||
| And they asked him about a scene in Game of Thrones where... | ||
| What is it? | ||
| The Mother of Dragons is his wife. | ||
| He has a scene with her. | ||
| He forces himself on her. | ||
| He rapes her. | ||
| And they asked him about that scene and would he feel differently about it today? | ||
| And he's like... | ||
| You know, he's taken aback by it. | ||
| And he said, like, listen, the guy is Genghis Khan. | ||
| The guy's a murderer. | ||
| He played Khal Drago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| This fucking ruthless murderer. | ||
| And you're talking about a horrible thing that this horrible person did. | ||
| He's an actor. | ||
| It's a fictional character. | ||
| And so then he starts giving the guy, like, terse, like, one word answers. | ||
| And then he just goes back and goes, hey, man, I just, I don't like that question. | ||
| I don't like how you phrased that. | ||
| I don't like what you said. | ||
| He goes, it's fucking icky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And that's the way he said it. | ||
| And he ended the conversation short. | ||
| And good for him. | ||
| Good for him for saying that. | ||
| But they're just... | ||
| Do you think they really felt that? | ||
| That that needed to be talked about? | ||
| No. | ||
| It's like you're talking to a guy as an actor. | ||
| Who's playing good people and bad. | ||
| He also plays Aquaman. | ||
| You want to talk to him about being a superhero? | ||
| He's a person who portrays him. | ||
| If you want to have a good film, you have to have good guys and bad guys. | ||
| And bad guys sometimes do horrible things. | ||
| And we have a really complex fantasy series like Game of Thrones. | ||
| And you have this guy who is arguably one of the greatest warriors in any television series of all time. | ||
| That kind of question is fucked, because you're conflating that guy's personal morals and ethics, the ethics of society in 2021, United States of America, during the Me Too movement, with a fucking barbarian in a world that doesn't even exist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's crazy. | |
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| But that's what they do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they feel like they have to. | ||
| And they feel like if they don't do that, they'll get called out by the progressives and all these people. | ||
| They're going to get called out. | ||
| And so they think about that when they're saying these things. | ||
| They think about this when they're writing these things. | ||
| They think about these things when they're having these interviews. | ||
| And there's a way... | ||
| It's probably a way to have that conversation. | ||
| It's probably a way to say, um, you have to play sometimes these horrible people, like, call Dragos. | ||
| Like, what does it feel like to play this barbarian? | ||
| Like, does it freak you out to play this guy? | ||
| Like, there's a way to say that without being patronizing and condescending and being a shitty human being. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There's a way to say that. | ||
| There's a way. | ||
| And maybe that guy fucked up who wrote the story, or woman, I don't know who fucked up. | ||
| I don't know if it was a man or a woman who did that interview, but I thought it was fascinating the way he responded. | ||
| That he just said, hey man, that fucking question sucked. | ||
| It's icky. | ||
| He said it was icky. | ||
| That's an incredible way to respond. | ||
| It's like asking Harvey Keitel why he played Bad Lieutenant. | ||
| Right, exactly. | ||
| Like, what's it like to play Dirty Cop? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like, fuck off. | |
| What are you saying? | ||
| It's a fictional character, dummy. | ||
| Yeah, not only that, it's like an evil person. | ||
| You have to play them evil. | ||
| I mean, are you asking, does it feel uncomfortable? | ||
| Yeah, of course it does. | ||
| That's why it's good. | ||
| Yeah, the reason why that movie's good is because you're watching that guy jerk off in front of those two girls while he's pulled them over, and you're like, what the fuck is this? | ||
| I showed that to one of my cop friends the other day. | ||
| I was like, hey man, so is Bad Lieutenant kind of like your script or what? | ||
| He's like, what are you talking about? | ||
| Like, you've never seen The Bad Lieutenant. | ||
| Are you fucking crazy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh my God. | |
| Like, how have you not seen that movie? | ||
| I'm so glad that when you said Harvey Keitel, we both said Bad Lieutenant. | ||
| Yeah, fuck, that's an amazing movie. | ||
| Amazing movie and a super... | ||
| Fucked up guy. | ||
| Super fucked up guy. | ||
| And by the way, there's probably a lot of cops that are like that out there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, statistically, it's not even a question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You know that there are some bad cops, obviously. | ||
| We know that. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So, even that whole narrative of, like, well, we support law enforcement. | ||
| Yeah, I support ethical law enforcement. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, the majority of them are good guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| There's millions of interactions with cops and civilians every fucking day. | ||
| And most of them are good. | ||
| Most of them are good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When you see a film, when you see someone filming with their cell phone, someone doing something horrific, that's the aberration. | ||
| It happens way too often, absolutely. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I'm not excusing bad cops. | ||
| No. | ||
| But that's not representative of most cops. | ||
| That's why I support law enforcement. | ||
| Also, because you fucking need them. | ||
| Yes, you do. | ||
| You fucking need them. | ||
| It's funny, my friend John Joseph, he's a lead singer of the Cro-Mags. | ||
| I'll send you this, Jamie, too, because it's kind of hilarious. | ||
| He sent me this text message today of this girl who got her bike stolen. | ||
| That's not what's funny. | ||
| What's funny is, on the bike, it says, defund the police. | ||
| So it says, missing bike. | ||
| Here, hold on a second. | ||
| I'll send it to you, Jamie. | ||
| It says defund the police while it says missing bike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like, come on, man. | |
| I forget who I was listening to this, but this is a bit about white woman's bike. | ||
| Have you ever heard this? | ||
| No. | ||
| Dude, it's hilarious. | ||
| Did you get it? | ||
| Did you get the image? | ||
| Look at this image. | ||
| I love this image. | ||
| Missing bike. | ||
| It was taken. | ||
| But look at the fucking sign in the front. | ||
| Defund the police. | ||
| It's an exercise in irony. | ||
| Your bike was stolen. | ||
| I don't know if that's a guy or a girl. | ||
| I think it's a girl. | ||
| Or it's a very feminine man. | ||
| So here's a super serious question. | ||
| Super serious question. | ||
| Top three comedians outside of you. | ||
| Dave Chappelle. | ||
| Dave Chappelle's probably number one, if not number one of all time. | ||
| He's one of the all-time greats for sure. | ||
| Louis C.K., Bill Burr, That's three. | ||
| I'd say Joey Diaz, but he's inactive right now. | ||
| Joey Diaz is the funniest guy I've ever seen. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, of all time. | ||
| I don't think he's the greatest joke writer of all time. | ||
| He doesn't have the greatest specials that people can watch. | ||
| But in terms of people that I've witnessed that have hit RPMs that I didn't think were possible... | ||
| Like, so funny that, like, comedians would sit in the back of the room and watch him and watch him perform and be falling down the ground, pounding on the floor laughing. | ||
| Joey Diaz is the goat. | ||
| He's the greatest of all time. | ||
| But you have to judge someone on their body of work. | ||
| If you judge someone on their body of work, it's like, of all time, all time, I go with Richard Pryor. | ||
| I think Richard Pryor all time, all time is the greatest. | ||
| Because his body of work is incredible. | ||
| And also, it stands up today. | ||
| Even if you listen to his shit from the 1970s, it's still hilarious. | ||
| It's still really good, which is hard because comedy moves on, man. | ||
| Comedy passes, you know, it's like the world changes, the culture, the climate changes, and comedy moves on. | ||
| But Richard Pryor is still great. | ||
| And he was also like the first truly honest comedian. | ||
| Like honest about his own flaws and his life and just... | ||
| And figured out a way to do it in a way that was just fucking brilliantly hilarious that changed People's perceptions of things and then number two is Sam Kinison and it was only for a short period of time Sam Kinison is like He was the greatest for like two years, right? | ||
| And then he just did too much coke and fucked too many strippers and it's just didn't write anymore he just went crazy because Sam Kinison had a heavy-duty brain injury. | ||
| He was hit by a car when he was like a little kid, and his brother Bill wrote a book called Brother Sam, and it's all about Sam and his life and growing up with him, and he documents this moment where Sam got hit by a car and had a serious brain injury and then was a wild motherfucker afterwards, like uncontainable, crazy. | ||
| And that's the guy that became Sam McKinston. | ||
| So literally, one of the greatest comedians of all time was because of a brain injury. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| Roseanne Barr, same thing. | ||
| Hit by a car when she was 15. One of the greatest, if not the greatest female comedian of all time, one of the top 10 greatest all-time comedians was Roseanne Barr, for sure. | ||
| And then... | ||
| Keep going down the line is probably Bill Hicks because Bill Hicks changed the way people looked at comedy. | ||
| He introduced complex concepts like psychedelic states and government propaganda and war and all sorts of other things to the conversation of comedy that hadn't existed before. | ||
| But the guys that are alive now, the guys that I like to go see, is Chappelle, Bill Burr, Louis C.K., Chris Rock when he was active. | ||
| I guess he's active again now. | ||
| This is a good time for comedy. | ||
| Is Louis C.K. back? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, he's back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's back. | |
| Yeah, he's back. | ||
| He's touring. | ||
| He just released a thing, I think, two days ago. | ||
| He put some newsletter out, all the places that he's touring. | ||
| That guy's a genius. | ||
| He's a brilliant guy. | ||
| He's just a guy who likes to jerk off in front of people. | ||
| He's fucking amazing. | ||
| He's not perfect. | ||
| Nobody is. | ||
| No. | ||
| He hit the Me Too thing at the beginning, too. | ||
| He took the first slap of the wave. | ||
| And if it happened today, if he got busted today, like if people came out today and said, Louis C.K. jerked off in front of me, he'd have been like, You know, in comparison, like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and all these real monsters. | ||
| Like real scumbags. | ||
| Real monsters. | ||
| Not like, hey, do you mind if I jerk off? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, well, he was fucked up. | ||
| He's kinky and weird and not good. | ||
| But that's humans! | ||
| Yeah, but it's humans. | ||
| And it's also one of the reasons why he's so funny. | ||
| It's like this sort of self-loathing, self-deprecating perspective on things. | ||
| He's a complex human being. | ||
| I love these guys. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm like a novice comedy comedian follower. | ||
| I've been like this forever because that's part of the reason why we make the dumb shit that we do because all of us, we like to think that we're funny. | ||
| We're silly. | ||
| Yeah, we're silly. | ||
| We're stupid. | ||
| And it's funny because I used to watch like The British Office back in the day because I used to only get- Yeah, Ricky Gervais. | ||
| Yeah, Ricky Gervais. | ||
| Like the guy's fucking- Brilliant. | ||
| Brilliant. | ||
| Super fucking smart guy too. | ||
| Super smart guy. | ||
| Well, I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, for instance, right? | ||
| Because I love the dry, just dry, dry, dry humor. | ||
| And there's no reason for me to ever interact with Larry David. | ||
| I'm just saying, I think the guy writes incredible shit. | ||
| Brilliant. | ||
| Yeah, he's brilliant. | ||
| And when I watch, you know, their form of comedy, like, Bill Burr is fucking incredible. | ||
| Like, that guy... | ||
| He's so prolific, too. | ||
| He's incredible. | ||
| Like, what he says and how he says it off the cuff is so... | ||
| One, it's, like, so blue-collar. | ||
| It's so real. | ||
| It's so... | ||
| And when I say blue-collar, like, I'm identifying with him in the sense of, like, I feel like a blue-collar guy. | ||
| And, um... | ||
| It speaks to my DNA for whatever reason. | ||
| It's the same with you. | ||
| Any show that I've been to with you is super fucking... | ||
| It's hilarious. | ||
| It's bent over, funny, awesome. | ||
| I'm always trying to get the perspective of who is the great? | ||
| Who are the greats in your mind? | ||
| It's like music, right? | ||
| It's like there's the undeniables. | ||
| There's the Led Zeppelins and the Hendrix. | ||
| There's people that are undeniable. | ||
| What about Mitch Hedberg? | ||
| Oh, he's genius. | ||
| He's amazing. | ||
| Mitch is amazing because you could play him for your grandmother. | ||
| And his stuff was so funny and it was clean. | ||
| It's like he just happened to... | ||
| There's a few guys like that, like Brian Regan is a guy like that right now. | ||
| Jim Gaffigan, Squeaky Clean, Genius, Hilarious. | ||
| Yeah, there's all kinds of comedy, just like there's all kinds of music. | ||
| And, you know, I've always loved the wild shit. | ||
| I always love people that say things like, what the fuck? | ||
| Did he just say that? | ||
| Like, that's part of the fun for me. | ||
| Part of the fun for me is the, I can't believe this motherfucker just said that. | ||
| That's part of the fun for me. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But it doesn't mean that that's all I love. | ||
| But if I have a choice between, like, going to see, without naming names, going to see, and I still love to see comedy. | ||
| I'll go to see the wild men. | ||
| I'm a wild person. | ||
| I like wild things, you know? | ||
| I like wild shit. | ||
| I've always liked wild shit. | ||
| I like things where there's like a real danger to what this person said. | ||
| There's real danger. | ||
| People are going to get real upset. | ||
| I love when people get up and yell and leave. | ||
| You fucking asshole, that's not funny. | ||
| Like, ah! | ||
| You're in the wrong place, you know? | ||
| What about... | ||
| What about Seinfeld? | ||
| Seinfeld's brilliant. | ||
| He's a brilliant comedian. | ||
| He's a genius joke writer and an amazing performer, but it's a very narrow lane that he operates in. | ||
| What is this? | ||
| Who said that guy could do this? | ||
| It's a sign of the era in which he evolved and came up in, and he developed this style for The Tonight Show and David Letterman and these specials where he could do. | ||
| And as a stand-up comedian, he's very, very respected. | ||
| I mean, people love him. | ||
| I mean, very few stand-up comedians have a negative thing to say about Jerry Seinfeld. | ||
| As a performer and as also a guy who's worth like a fucking billion dollars, he still hits the clubs on a regular basis. | ||
| Does he really? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I saw Gotham had a clip on their Instagram page real recently where he dropped in. | ||
| He just popped in out of nowhere, wasn't even supposed to be there, just showed up, Jerry Seinfeld with a blazer on, telling jokes, trying out new material. | ||
| Okay, you got to explain this to me, which is, so a well-known comedian, can you just drop in and bump people and get on? | ||
| You can. | ||
| But it's very controversial. | ||
| Some comics, for a long time, thought that it was part of their right of being successful to be able to just show up and go on at any time they want. | ||
| I have never done that. | ||
| I don't do that. | ||
| If I'm gonna go on, I call in advance, I tell them I'm available Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever it is. | ||
| Like, my time at the Comedy Store, I would never do that. | ||
| I never just showed up and bumped people. | ||
| I never liked it when it happened to me. | ||
| It happened a lot. | ||
| And it was like a thing where like, hey man, Dice Clay's here. | ||
| And you just step back and let Dice Clay go up and he did whatever he wanted to do. | ||
| And then you would go up afterwards. | ||
| It was part of being, they earned that in a lot of people's eyes. | ||
| But you can call. | ||
| And a lot of my friends who are comics would get really furious at that, and it drove them nuts. | ||
| And they'd be like, why don't you just fucking call? | ||
| Because, you know, maybe they'd have a dinner date. | ||
| Like, maybe they're supposed to go out with their girlfriend at 9 o'clock, and their spot's at 8. And then all of a sudden, this guy shows up. | ||
| And he wants to do 40 minutes in front of you. | ||
| And you're like, ah, fuck. | ||
| And then your reservations are all screwed up, or whatever plans you had. | ||
| Or, you know, maybe you had people that came to see you, and they could only stay for a certain amount of time, and then, you know, they thought they were gonna go see your 15-minute set at the Comedy Store, but instead, some famous person came and bumped you. | ||
| So it's controversial. | ||
| But it's also exciting. | ||
| Like, if I'm sitting there, and it's fucking Tuesday night, and I see what the lineup is, because you can see the lineup, and then all of a sudden, Dave Chappelle shows up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, shit. | |
| Like, if you're a comedy fan, You're excited! | ||
| So I could see the perspective of the audience as well. | ||
| And you've got to kind of eat it if you're one of those comics that is there and you thought you were going to get to go up, but then Chappelle just showed up, you know? | ||
| But, you know, guys like Seinfeld, if he's going to show up, he's going to show up and just do 15 minutes, like legitimately. | ||
| He's a real pro. | ||
| He's a real pro. | ||
| But some guys will show up and they'll just fucking do an hour. | ||
| They'll just fuck the whole show up. | ||
| And comedy clubs will indulge it because it's amazing to have a guy show up That really wasn't supposed to be there, but is a superstar that sells out, you know, Dave Chappelle sells out arenas, you know? | ||
| And if he just shows up and just wants to do 15 minutes or an hour, whatever the fuck he wants to do, you're gonna let him do it. | ||
| I don't do it. | ||
| I make phone calls. | ||
| You know, I just... | ||
| I do it in advance. | ||
| Every time, like, if I'm working in Austin, I call, you know, I call up in advance. | ||
| Or if I'm gonna do a show, like my friend Brian Redband's show, like on Thursday nights at the Vulcan, like, I'll text him. | ||
| Like, he knows I'm coming, you know? | ||
| And if I do show up, the only way I'm going up is if, like, he's asking me to go up, and he'll tell me when I can go up. | ||
| Like, go up here. | ||
| I'll go up then, or I'll go close the show, or whatever it is. | ||
| It's just like... | ||
| There's a certain amount of respect you have to have for other performers, I think. | ||
| When you go, are you doing a full hour? | ||
| It depends. | ||
| If I'm closing, yeah. | ||
| Or if we schedule it in advance, I know I'm going to do a half hour or whatever. | ||
| I'll know. | ||
| I'll know when I'm going to do it. | ||
| Who do you spend the most time with? | ||
| Who's your... | ||
| And I'm not asking you to divulge your friends, but I'm like... | ||
| So when you spend time with your friends in the comedy circuit, are you... | ||
| Is it Dave or is it Bill or who do you like... | ||
| Well, when I was at the store, I would hang around with Bill a lot, but obviously Bill's in L.A. now. | ||
| I'm out here. | ||
| And Dave and I do a lot of gigs together. | ||
| We just did two nights at the MGM. We did two nights in the arena, the Grand Garden Arena, like two weeks ago. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so I love that. | ||
| Dave and I have a bunch of shows coming up too. | ||
| We're doing New Orleans. | ||
| We're doing Nashville. | ||
| We've got some other shows that we're thinking about booking too, but I don't know what the fuck is going to happen with all these variants. | ||
| The variants! | ||
| But what happens on a Joe Rogan show? | ||
| Friday night with nothing to do. | ||
| Who do you hang out with? | ||
| Oh, if it's Friday night and I don't have a show? | ||
| Or Wednesday or Thursday? | ||
| You just hang out with your family? | ||
| I hang out at home, yeah. | ||
| You have to have balance, man. | ||
| I hang out with my kids. | ||
| Occasionally, I go to dinner with some friends and have a good time or play pool or something like that. | ||
| You have to have family time, man. | ||
| It's very important. | ||
| Like you were saying about your kids and thinking about your dad. | ||
| I don't know my dad. | ||
| And when I was leaving today to come here, I had this moment where I cooked my kids breakfast. | ||
| And we're sitting around eating. | ||
| We're laughing and joking around. | ||
| And we're just being silly. | ||
| And then I said I had to go to work. | ||
| I said I love you. | ||
| And then they both hugged me at the same time. | ||
| So it's like this love sandwich. | ||
| And I'm kissing them. | ||
| And I was like, how did I get so lucky to have these amazing daughters? | ||
| And it's just like this amazing love fest where they're smiling and they're so happy and I'm so happy and it's just pure love and affection and it's just... | ||
| That's so important. | ||
| You can't just do comedy. | ||
| You gotta have balance. | ||
| You gotta have all these things. | ||
| You have to spend time with friends and loved ones and you gotta spend time alone too, man. | ||
| You gotta be alone. | ||
| You gotta think. | ||
| Do your kids think it's weird when people recognize you? | ||
| Have they caught on to this whole thing? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| My 11-year-old fucking hates it. | ||
| Seriously? | ||
| Yeah, she grabs me and she'll pull me away from people. | ||
| If people want to take pictures, she's rude. | ||
| She doesn't like it at all. | ||
| She's super confident. | ||
| It's very funny. | ||
| Part of it, they think it's strange because their other friends don't have this. | ||
| When they were real little, they didn't get it. | ||
| I remember when my 13-year-old, when she was like five, someone would say something to me on the street. | ||
| She's like, did you know him? | ||
| I go, no, I don't know him. | ||
| She's like, well, how does he know you? | ||
| I go, well, that's a complicated question. | ||
| You know, I go, I do things that are very public. | ||
| Like I do comedy and I do the UFC commentary and it's very public. | ||
| And so because of that, people know me. | ||
| And like you see the little wheels spinning and it took years for her to kind of figure it out. | ||
| And now it's weird because she's 13 and her friends in school are fans of the podcast. | ||
| And that's weird. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| And so boys especially, like, your dad's Joe Rogan? | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| And it's real weird. | ||
| And she's like, get over it, he's a loser. | ||
| But she laughs and she's got a good sense of humor about stuff. | ||
| She's pretty funny. | ||
| But I think, you know, probably they love it. | ||
| They probably like the fact that I'm, you know, I'm not a failure. | ||
| But it's also, I'm their dad. | ||
| At the end of the day, like, it doesn't change anything, my relationship to them. | ||
| It's just my relationship with the outside world is odd. | ||
| But to them, I'm trying to, as much as I can, I'm locked in with them. | ||
| I'm their dad. | ||
| Yeah, you're switched on. | ||
| Yeah, you have to be. | ||
| I remember not having a father, man. | ||
| I remember that feeling. | ||
| It's a fucking awful feeling. | ||
| I remember moments being a young person of longing or good times or bad times. | ||
| You remember those. | ||
| And I try to really remind myself. | ||
| Gotta have a good time. | ||
| Gotta have a good time with these kids. | ||
| I remember that too. | ||
| My dad was always gone. | ||
| Always gone. | ||
| And I love him. | ||
| He's amazing. | ||
| He's an amazing human. | ||
| But I remember that longing as a kid. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I directly plug into my children because of that. | ||
| And nothing else exists. | ||
| Isn't that interesting? | ||
| Like, children of alcoholics oftentimes will never touch drinks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're just like, I don't want to have nothing to do with that. | ||
| I know what the fuck that did to my family. | ||
| I know what it did to my life. | ||
| And sometimes when you didn't have a good childhood, it'll motivate you to be a good dad, you know? | ||
| It's like, bad feelings can have all sorts of different responses in a person. | ||
| You can respond very differently. | ||
| And you could choose, you could decide that this is the reason why you're fucked up and you're never gonna, you know... | ||
| So it's not even my fault. | ||
| I got fucked over by life. | ||
| Or you can say, I'm going to be the difference. | ||
| I'm going to break this chain. | ||
| I'm going to recognize that this is what was done to me. | ||
| And that is going to actually help me to be a better person. | ||
| I think I've always been like that. | ||
| I think I've always been like, oh, I'm going to highlight the negatives. | ||
| That's part of the whole thing I think we were discussing. | ||
| I'm going to highlight these negatives. | ||
| This shit that I don't like, and I'm going to flip it around. | ||
| I'm going to do 180 and go, hey, you know what? | ||
| I can do better. | ||
| My dad, like I said, he's a great guy. | ||
| I love the guy. | ||
| My mom's a very, very, very wonderful person. | ||
| They did the best they could. | ||
| But at the end of the day, I can do better. | ||
| And I think when you recognize that you can do better, you can say, these are all the things that I might have been, I think, short. | ||
| And now I'm going to extend that. | ||
| And the other piece is, I think, you know, going back to even Iraq and Afghanistan, which I hate to keep connecting that, but I never miss a hug. | ||
| I can never miss a hug. | ||
| And it's a constant reminder for me every day. | ||
| Every day in my life, I know that there are guys out there that don't get to hug their children. | ||
| So every time I hug my children, it is directly connected to my DNA, which is I have to hug them more. | ||
| I have to give them more because there's a portion of my peer group that don't have that. | ||
| They don't have that connection. | ||
| So I never miss a hug. | ||
| I never miss a kiss. | ||
| I never miss a bedtime story. | ||
| I don't miss shit when it comes to that. | ||
| Because I think it's my ethical obligation and my emotional obligation to my kids. | ||
| And not only that, but for the guys that don't have that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the thing about having experienced loss, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's very, in the weirdest, most fucked up way, is bad experiences and loss and heartache and tragedy. | ||
| It really is the thing that makes you appreciate the good things in life so much more. | ||
| Yeah, and now it's just the way we live life, right? | ||
| So I've shifted my DNA and my mentality to the point where I'm very appreciative. | ||
| I'm so appreciative of everything that I have, all the people involved in my life. | ||
| I never take it for granted. | ||
| That's one of the main focuses and priorities in my life, which is never take it for granted. | ||
| Never take your friends for granted. | ||
| Never take your family. | ||
| Never take your business. | ||
| All of these things have to be adjusted in priority. | ||
| And that's why it makes it easy for me to just say, I don't give a shit about what's going on online. | ||
| I don't even have Twitter on my phone. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| Yeah, that's a healthy perspective. | ||
| And the perspective of a person that's constantly checking up to see what other people who they don't even know, what their opinions of them are. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You're going to fuck yourself up, man. | ||
| And I know I have a lot of friends who do that all day long. | ||
| Seriously? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Comedians? | ||
| Yeah, especially comedians that are on the way up. | ||
| They haven't quite made it to the point where they're financially free, where they're trying to get gigs or they're trying to get television shows. | ||
| Who's on the way up that you love? | ||
| Oh man, there's so many. | ||
| There's so many. | ||
| This is a great crop of comedians. | ||
| This time right now is really fucking cool because there's so many funny people. | ||
| There's a girl that I'm going on the road with this weekend. | ||
| Her name is Laura Bites. | ||
| She's fucking hilarious. | ||
| Laura is really funny and works really hard. | ||
| She's awesome. | ||
| She's going to be a superstar for sure. | ||
| Laura Bites. | ||
| Yeah, Lara, L-A-R-A. She's doing Wisconsin and Iowa with me. | ||
| We're doing two arenas this weekend. | ||
| And I don't think she's ever done a crowd like that before either. | ||
| It's going to be wild to see her get in front of, like, arenas are daunting. | ||
| You get on stage in front of that many people and you're like, whoa. | ||
| How many people? | ||
| It's in the neighborhood of 12,000, both shows in that neighborhood. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's bananas. | ||
| That's bananas. | ||
| That's not even the big ones. | ||
| Dave and I did 25,000 in Tacoma. | ||
| Tacoma, Washington, you did 25,000. | ||
| We did the Tacoma Dome. | ||
| Yeah, that was crazy. | ||
| And that's in the round. | ||
| So you step out into the round and there's 25,000 people around you. | ||
| The sound is insane. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And you have to, I think I did that one with Ian Edwards, too. | ||
| You have to, the experience of it is so overwhelming. | ||
| The volume of the people, the cheers and everything, it's so overwhelming. | ||
| It's like, it's hard to take in. | ||
| Like, it seems like a dream. | ||
| Like, it was real funny, like, right before Dave went on stage, you know, he looked at me, and we're looking at each other, and the audience is screaming, and he goes, Not a lot of motherfuckers who get to do this. | ||
| And it was like, yeah, it just seems like a dream. | ||
| It doesn't seem real. | ||
| Because it's like just the sheer magnitude of it all. | ||
| Like I said, we did Vegas a couple of weeks ago. | ||
| That was the same sort of thing, like walking out on stage at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in front of 14,000 people. | ||
| And it's just, it's wild. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| It just doesn't seem real. | ||
| And I guess you could get overwhelmed by it, or you could just kind of take it in with a smile. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you got to take it in with a smile. | ||
| You just got to be yourself and just, you know, one is the same as a million. | ||
| Just go out there and do it. | ||
| Just go out and do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which is more difficult if you're filming a special, so you know that you're on camera, it's going to be released on Netflix or whatever it is. | ||
| Is it the same? | ||
| No, filming especially, you're aware that you're filming it. | ||
| It's hard. | ||
| And so one of the ways I've found to mitigate that is to do more shows. | ||
| So I used to do two shows. | ||
| Sometimes guys do one show and it's not good. | ||
| It's not good to do one show because you're too aware that it's a show that you're filming. | ||
| So you're tense. | ||
| Like a good example is Hicks, Bill Hicks' Revelations, which is great material. | ||
| And I've seen that material live and I've seen it in different circumstances. | ||
| He was much looser. | ||
| When it was just a comedy club and he could be free. | ||
| He had done like five shows that week. | ||
| He was loose. | ||
| He filmed this one show in a theater for HBO in England. | ||
| It's not his best work. | ||
| It's great material, but there's tension and it doesn't feel loose. | ||
| I like to do four shows. | ||
| I do two shows Friday, two shows Saturday. | ||
| And so that way it's like a regular weekend. | ||
| So when I get on stage, I know if I fuck this show up, I got three other barrels in the chamber. | ||
| So I'm good. | ||
| So when I walk out there, I could be loose. | ||
| Like, the last special I did was in Boston. | ||
| That was Strange Times for Netflix, and I did four shows. | ||
| But really, I only used the first show. | ||
| The first show, Friday Night, was the most... | ||
| That was it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There was only, like, one or two bits that I forgot to do that I edited in that I was... | ||
| Or maybe even one or two taglines. | ||
| There was definitely one extra bit that I forgot to do that we edited in that was from first show Saturday night, but most of the special was the first show because I was so loose because I knew I had all these opportunities to do it, so I didn't feel tense. | ||
| So that's the key. | ||
| And it costs extra money to do it that way, but if you can afford it, I think that's the way to do it because you just want to make A show where people come to see it, make it feel as normal as any other show that you do. | ||
| And that's hard to do. | ||
| It's hard to be in the moment when you know there's a camera on you. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, when you're focused on each and every... | ||
| Because when you're rehearsing, are you rehearsing through shows? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Are you rehearsing individually? | ||
| No, it's always through shows. | ||
| It's always through shows. | ||
| Always shows. | ||
| You don't really rehearse... | ||
| Outside of shows one thing I do do is I listen to recordings and I write so write out bits even though I've done the bits a hundred times I'll write them out just so they're just like Cemented into my DNA. They're just locked in Do you record yourself doing them to yourself? | ||
| I record all my sets. | ||
| You record all your sets? | ||
| Every set I do, I have on my phone. | ||
| If I go through my voice recordings, these are all my sets over the last few months. | ||
| So I record all of them. | ||
| That way, if there's a new line, because a lot of times I'm in the middle of something and I have a new line, and out of nowhere it comes out, and that line becomes a whole new bit. | ||
| So are you going back through and you're listening to every one of your bits from start to finish? | ||
| No, not always. | ||
| Just to get that specific thing. | ||
| Sometimes I'll do a show and I'm like, that was fun. | ||
| That was a good show. | ||
| But nothing happened that I need to review. | ||
| But every now and then, like maybe every third show, some whole... | ||
| A whole new subject will come up or a whole new interaction will come up, a new pathway to a bit, a new direction, and so I'll listen to that and that's one of the ways that it becomes new material. | ||
| Did you learn that on your own? | ||
| Is that self-taught? | ||
| No, I was taught that by a guy named Mike Donovan. | ||
| There was a stand-up comedian in Boston who was a big-time local comic who was a really good guy who was really good at, like, talking to open micers. | ||
| And this is back in the day where he would bring a fucking tape recorder on stage, a cassette recorder, and record all of his shows. | ||
| And I was like, you record all your shows? | ||
| And he's like, yeah, you never know. | ||
| He goes, one day you might say something, and if you don't record it, you're never going to remember it. | ||
| And that could be, like, a way better way to do your bit, or a new way to do your bit, or you might just have an idea out of nowhere that pops into your head, and you say it, and you're in the moment when you're on stage. | ||
| A lot of times you forget what you said. | ||
| And then you'll go back and listen, and you're like, holy shit! | ||
| Like, out of nowhere, out of the gods, the muse, just bestowed upon you a new idea. | ||
| Most disciplined comic you've ever met? | ||
| All the great ones are disciplined. | ||
| Right. | ||
| All of them. | ||
| All of them work hard. | ||
| All of them are constantly doing sets. | ||
| It's like it's discipline, but it's also passion. | ||
| It's like it's easy to be disciplined if you love what you do, right? | ||
| It's like Mike Tyson said this once. | ||
| He goes, real discipline is doing the thing you hate, but doing it like you love it. | ||
| The problem is comedy you love all the time. | ||
| So it's easy to do it like you love it because you do love it. | ||
| Discipline is like running miles with a fucking weight vest on. | ||
| Nobody loves doing that. | ||
| That's real discipline. | ||
| Discipline is getting up for that 6 a.m. | ||
| yoga class. | ||
| That's discipline. | ||
| The discipline involved in comedy is just a focus and just dedication and constantly doing it. | ||
| But every time you do it, if you're doing it right and the audience has a great time, you get this positive feedback and you feel amazing. | ||
| That's the craziest thing. | ||
| Like... | ||
| I was talking to a friend of mine once about this. | ||
| I was like, imagine how crazy it is to live your whole life and never kill. | ||
| Like, you never get on stage and kill. | ||
| Like, you don't know what that feels like? | ||
| Like, so many people, they live their whole life. | ||
| They never crush. | ||
| They never walk on stage and do an hour and have the whole audience just cry and laughing. | ||
| And, thank you, good night. | ||
| They never feel that. | ||
| And if you're a comic and you do get to feel that, it's your duty to continue. | ||
| It's your duty to figure out how to maximize that. | ||
| You have hit this rare air that so few humans ever get to experience. | ||
| If you thought about how many people alive today are professional comedians, it might be 500. 500. Yeah. | ||
| In this country, it might be 500. Legitimate, professional comedians that tour and people want to come out to see them. | ||
| I mean, there's more trying it. | ||
| There's more that get paid every now and then. | ||
| It's probably a couple thousand. | ||
| But like real comics that can headline at a comedy club, it's 500. Okay, how many can sell out a theater? | ||
| Less than 100. How many can do an arena? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Less than 20. Less than 20? | |
| Less than 20. Yeah, less than 20. Out of 330 million people in this country, there's less than 20 people that could sell out an arena. | ||
| That seems crazy to me because I think when I look at comedians, there's probably, well, I mean, I guess there's probably 20 that are still active that I'm thinking about that I'm like, yeah, yeah, I would go and see them for sure. | ||
| Guys that can sell an arena, you've got like Sebastian, Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle. | ||
| It gets sketchy. | ||
| It gets sketchy. | ||
| You start just feeling like, who else can do an arena? | ||
| How many guys? | ||
| Who else wants to? | ||
| Well, they all want to. | ||
| Everybody wants to do these big places. | ||
| It's a wild feeling, man. | ||
| When you show up and there's a traffic jam and you realize, oh my god, there's a traffic jam to get to see my show. | ||
| I guess what I'm referring to is who has made the transition to more movie star or... | ||
| Kevin Hart. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's the biggest. | ||
| Kevin Hart can do 50,000 people. | ||
| Oh, fuck. | ||
| Are you kidding me? | ||
| Yeah, he did a show in Philadelphia where he filmed his Netflix special. | ||
| It was like somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 people in the crowd. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| Dude, I had no idea. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's wild. | |
| Have you ever seen the video of it? | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Like I saw that Netflix special that he did. | ||
| Well, he's done a few, but there's one real recently when they did a scan of the crowd where you see him on stage and you see the whole crowd. | ||
| You're like, look at this. | ||
| That right there. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| That's fucking nuts. | ||
| The first time I met you was actually in Boise, Idaho. | ||
| Oh, yeah, that's right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that was an arena. | ||
| That was an arena. | ||
| Yeah, that was a big-ass place. | ||
| Yeah, because... | ||
| The size of that fucking place, man. | ||
| Look at all the levels. | ||
| Dude, that is fucking nuts. | ||
| That's fucking nuts. | ||
| And he murdered in front of all those people. | ||
| He murdered. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That guy is so incredibly talented. | ||
| Well, he's so ambitious and so disciplined, too. | ||
| You want to talk about the most disciplined comic? | ||
| That's him. | ||
| He's right up there. | ||
| Really? | ||
| The most disciplined of all time. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| But he does everything. | ||
| He's got multiple businesses he runs simultaneously. | ||
| He's constantly involved in different projects and doing voiceover work and doing films and doing stand-up. | ||
| He does everything. | ||
| He's a legit, multi-dimensional entrepreneur. | ||
| How many guys like that exist? | ||
| There's one. | ||
| One Kevin Hart. | ||
| There's one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's one Kevin Hart. | |
| Yeah, I don't think anybody else can sell that many tickets. | ||
| Maybe Chappelle could. | ||
| It's hard to say. | ||
| Like, Dave and I have talked about doing, like, a football arena. | ||
| We've talked about it. | ||
| We were laughing around about it. | ||
| Like, when we did one of these big, crazy shows and it sold out in eight minutes, and we were like... | ||
| How many fucking people can we do? | ||
| And we were laughing. | ||
| And I said, dude... | ||
| Because this was in the middle of the pandemic, too. | ||
| I go, let's go to Miami, where everyone's wide open, and let's do a fucking giant football arena. | ||
| You guys could... | ||
| There's no doubt. | ||
| Him and I together could sell a lot of tickets. | ||
| That would be a lot of fun. | ||
| That would be incredible. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That'd be fun. | ||
| If you guys went to Miami... | ||
| You guys could do it here, too, right? | ||
| Yeah, we could probably do it in Texas. | ||
| Well, we did a lot of shows in Texas. | ||
| He and I did Stubbs when everything was completely shut down and we COVID tested the entire audience. | ||
| So we would COVID test like seven, eight hundred people. | ||
| You know, they'd get there at like six o'clock for an eight o'clock show and fucking test the shit out of everybody. | ||
| And this is when everything was like completely locked down. | ||
| And we were doing these outside shows at the Stubbs Amphitheater. | ||
| And it just, it felt really special because it was in the middle of everything being completely shut down and we did it safe. | ||
| We COVID tested all the comics. | ||
| We COVID tested the entire audience. | ||
| And then everybody was outside, which was safe. | ||
| And it was pretty fun. | ||
| It was really fun. | ||
| Really exciting. | ||
| But we had done arenas before that. | ||
| So that was a thing that we were doing just in the middle of the pandemic, just to be active again. | ||
| I wasn't going to do any stand-up until it was over. | ||
| I was like, I'm going to ride this out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Seriously? | |
| Yeah, I did one weekend in Houston. | ||
| In July, and I was like, it's too sketchy. | ||
| The problem was, Houston was open and everybody was fine with it, but I was like, I don't want to get anybody sick. | ||
| That was my thought. | ||
| I was like, I don't want to... | ||
| I'm not worried about me, but I was worried about giving it to other people. | ||
| So I was like, okay... | ||
| I'm just gonna lay off until this is over. | ||
| But then Dave contacted me and is like, hey, let's do some shows. | ||
| Let's do some shows. | ||
| And I was like, well, it is outside. | ||
| Yeah, okay, as long as we test everybody. | ||
| And so I was in. | ||
| And then once I started doing it again, I was like, okay, I'm in. | ||
| I'm back. | ||
| So how... | ||
| How did you and Dave hook up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How did you connect? | |
| We've been friends for... | ||
| I met Dave when he was 19. Seriously? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I think I was 24 and he was 19 or somewhere in that range. | ||
| Where? | ||
| In New York City. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then we knew each other from back then, and we knew each other from the clubs, and then I was on episode one of Chappelle's show accidentally. | ||
| That was an accidental moment. | ||
| I was walking down the street in New York, and I see Dave with a fake mustache on, holding up a box of ribbons. | ||
| And I was like, what are you doing, man? | ||
| And he goes, oh, hey, Joe! | ||
| You want to be on my show? | ||
| And I go, I only have like an hour. | ||
| And Bobcat Galtwaite was actually the director. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| And I was like, what's up, dude? | ||
| I said hi to Bobcat. | ||
| I'm like, what are you guys doing? | ||
| And he's like, we're doing this thing. | ||
| You want to just do this thing with us? | ||
| So Dave was, with his crazy fake mustache, was handing out ribbons for the best New York boobs. | ||
| You got the best New York boobs! | ||
| I remember that. | ||
| It was just this really ridiculous moment. | ||
| And that was... | ||
| God, I guess it was like 2001 or something like that. | ||
| Whatever year the Chappelle Show came out on. | ||
| You know, so I've known him forever. | ||
| Yeah, I've known him from the Comedy Store. | ||
| He's an amazing person. | ||
| He's an amazing guy in that he's like a super kind person. | ||
| He's really, like, genuinely kind. | ||
| He's nice to everybody. | ||
| I mean, he's a genius and he's eccentric and all that stuff, but he's a genuinely kind person. | ||
| Well, the crazy thing is, is that... | ||
| And whether or not he knows it or not, right? | ||
| Which is, the Chappelle show was shared and watched so many times. | ||
| Like, we wore those DVDs out. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Downrange. | ||
| Greatest sketch show of all time, and it only lasted two seasons. | ||
| Greatest sketch show of all times. | ||
| Of all times. | ||
| Of all time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Everybody that I knew in Special Forces, the entire Special Operations community, they knew every fucking line of every episode. | ||
| You want to know quotable material in the Special Operations community? | ||
| It's The Chappelle Show. | ||
| Hands down, that shit... | ||
| Was the single most shared comedy ever in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| It's iconic. | ||
| Purely. | ||
| It was iconic. | ||
| You know, it was a real problem for him after a while because he would go do stand-up and people would yell out, I'm Rick James, bitch! | ||
| They would just want to yell it out. | ||
| People just wanted to yell it out. | ||
| It was almost like a storm that had to pass. | ||
| Fuck your couch. | ||
| You know how many times that has been quoted to me? | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm rich, bitch! | ||
| Yeah, there were so many different lines from those series. | ||
| Yeah, it was incredible. | ||
| Yeah, that guy, he came to El Paso a few years ago, and it was right after the Chappelle show, and so he was just kind of doing some small... | ||
| Really, really small venues. | ||
| And he linked up with Matt and Jared, and there's only like 100 people in the audience. | ||
| And like, he linked up with my business partner Matt and Jared, and they like hung out all fucking night. | ||
| They just hung out with them all night. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Yeah, it was like three dudes, vets, and he was just like super cool, so nice and genuine, and everybody was like, dude, this guy's like the coolest guy in the world. | ||
| And he's... | ||
| The Chappelle Show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How is this even possible that this happens, that I can hang out with this guy and he's cool? | ||
| I know. | ||
| But that's how he is. | ||
| That's just who he is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| That's legitimately who he is, you know? | ||
| He just happens to be really fucking famous. | ||
| He just happens to be famous. | ||
| The guy I want to meet is... | ||
| Well, I mean, besides you, obviously, is... | ||
| Well, I've already met you. | ||
| Yeah, we're friends. | ||
| Is Bill Burr. | ||
| Oh, I can introduce you. | ||
| Yeah, that guy... | ||
| Next time Bill comes to Austin, or any time where you're around, I'll set it up. | ||
| I'm always around. | ||
| He's an easy guy to get along with, too. | ||
| Is he really? | ||
| He's fun. | ||
| He'll talk shit to you, too. | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Caffeinate Mars? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Some stupid shirt on me. | ||
| He'll just start talking shit. | ||
| He's a fun guy to be around. | ||
| His fucking talk shows, when he's on and he just goes off on some shit. | ||
| Oh yeah, on some late night talk show. | ||
| He flips them on their head. | ||
| Oh, he dumps them and slams them down. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| When you look at what he does to them, and they're so... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Do you ever watch those at all? | ||
| Talk shows? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No. | ||
| No, they're stupid. | ||
| Well, you know what it is? | ||
| It's like, it's an antiquated form of expression. | ||
| It's not a good way to get ideas out. | ||
| You have seven minutes or whatever it is in between commercials. | ||
| The guy who's the host doesn't get to pick who's on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| So it's not like they're really interested in whatever fucking album this guy has or whatever television show this guy has. | ||
| Usually they don't even give a fuck. | ||
| So they're not really geared in or connected to what the subject matter is. | ||
| It's just not a good way to do it. | ||
| I went back and watched a bunch of Carson shows. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was like... | ||
| Totally different. | ||
| It's a weird world. | ||
| It's a weird world. | ||
| Yeah, well here's the thing about Carson and This is the thing that you could apply even to like in a broad sense to our parents and our parents parents People haven't been around that long, right? | ||
| You know we like to think that people been around for so long this is great history and there is there's like thousands of years of history and And that seems like a long time. | ||
| But when you go from our parents to... | ||
| My grandparents came over on a boat. | ||
| They all came over from Italy and my father's side, my grandfather and my father's side came over from Ireland. | ||
| I'm three-quarters Italian. | ||
| So most of the people came over from Europe at a time where the Great Depression was going on and nobody knew what the fuck was over here. | ||
| They weren't watching YouTube videos. | ||
| They're savages. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They just got on a boat and made their way across the fucking ocean, across the Atlantic. | ||
| They land on the East Coast, and they set up shop and move into these Italian neighborhoods and Irish neighborhoods and a bunch of criminals, a bunch of barbarians. | ||
| They're wild people, just wild people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they were very tame in comparison to their grandparents, who literally rode around on horses. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Their parents rode around in a time where there was no fucking cars. | ||
| They were on horses. | ||
| Before them, there was people that tried to make their way across the fucking country, and they were killed by Native Americans. | ||
| Or they killed the Native Americans, or they gave them smallpox. | ||
| And what happened before that? | ||
| They were living under the rule of the King of England. | ||
| Before that, they were running from barbarians. | ||
| Before that, Genghis Khan was running shit. | ||
| Before that, they didn't have gunpowder. | ||
| It's a short period of time where human beings have been around. | ||
| So when it comes to mass media, if you go to the Johnny Carson show or the Jack Parr show or something like that and you try to watch those things, you have a time machine. | ||
| And you're literally looking back into an encapsulated moment in the history of the human race that wasn't that long ago but was so different. | ||
| So different than the way we live today. | ||
| Bell bottoms and they're all smoking cigarettes. | ||
| Yes, the cigarettes is like the most shocking thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Crazy. | |
| These dudes are smoking, chain-smoking out here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's shocking. | ||
| And that's what killed Johnny Carson. | ||
| Yeah, at the end of the day. | ||
| He had a good life, though. | ||
| He lived till he was like 80 years old. | ||
| He was playing golf in like... | ||
| I don't know if it was so good. | ||
| He gave all his money away to chicks. | ||
| That was the Eddie Murphy bit. | ||
| Eddie Murphy had a bit about Johnny Carson losing all his money in divorces. | ||
| I don't know how good it was. | ||
| Well, I mean, eventually that's what's going to happen to me. | ||
| I have a wife and two daughters, man. | ||
| I think it's a public thing, though, and it happens publicly. | ||
| Like a guy like Carson loses hundreds of millions of dollars in divorces. | ||
| Don't you think it's weird? | ||
| Don't you think it's weird that people are always shocked by human experience? | ||
| Like, when I say that, it's like, oh my god, you mean adults like to fuck each other? | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| It is. | ||
| It's funny because it's private. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because it's all behind closed doors. | ||
| You shut the door and lock it. | ||
| What's going on in that house? | ||
| Are they fucking? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Are they doing what I do? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's this preoccupation with, like, things that are inherently human. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's like, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You guys are fucking. | ||
| I always find that out interesting in the context of people that I know are like, can you believe so-and-so is fucking so-and-so? | ||
| I'm like, yeah. | ||
| They're people with genitalia. | ||
| So one fits in the other. | ||
| It's like a plug-in. | ||
| That's the way it fucking works. | ||
| Yeah, I can totally believe that. | ||
| It seems so normal. | ||
| It seems so normal. | ||
| It would be weird if you're like, can you believe that guy fucked that TV? I'd be like, oh my god, yeah, I'm super shocked. | ||
| That's weird. | ||
| Don't fuck a TV. That's why it's weird when a president gets busted. | ||
| Andrew Cuomo is now busted for sexual harassment. | ||
| They should be shipping prostitutes out to these guys. | ||
| Keep them calm. | ||
| Jesus Christ, he's groping state troopers. | ||
| Like, help him. | ||
| He's trying to run this state. | ||
| Somebody go over there and suck that guy's dick. | ||
| He's trying to balance the budget. | ||
| We used to always talk about that. | ||
| I probably shouldn't even talk about this. | ||
| We always talk about this. | ||
| I was like, hey man, can't we like, if we're going to invade a country, like wouldn't it be cool if we just had the entire, an entire section dedicated to servicing our needs? | ||
| Wouldn't that be great? | ||
| Because then we would be like less hostile just in general, you know? | ||
| But it was super fucked up. | ||
| Robots. | ||
| Robots? | ||
| Like AI fuck dolls. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's what's scary to me. | ||
| AI fuck dolls? | ||
| Yeah, that one day we're going to have artificial human beings that will do anything you want, so you're not even going to have to be nice. | ||
| One of the things about men and women is that we have to be nice to each other. | ||
| If the women are mean, you don't want to be around them. | ||
| If the men are assholes, the women don't want to be around us. | ||
| We have to figure out how to be nice to each other so we like to be around each other so that we could enjoy each other's company and eventually enjoy each other's pleasure. | ||
| But if you don't have to, If you just have, like, some fucking robot that looks hot as shit, and you go over your, you know, your friend's house, and he's got some robot wearing lingerie that's, like, mopping up his floors. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, you can do whatever you want. | ||
| You can walk by and spit on her, and she's like, thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're so nice. | ||
| Not good. | ||
| No. | ||
| Not good for the human race. | ||
| I don't think it is. | ||
| No. | ||
| I don't think it's good at all for the human race. | ||
| It's what balances us. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's what puts us in competition with one another. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Ultimately forces us to be better in some ways. | ||
| And the balancing act between the yin and the yang, the male and the female, the feminine and the masculine. | ||
| That trying to figure each other out and balancing each other out is ultimately what elevates the human race. | ||
| It's a constant evolution based on wanting to fuck each other. | ||
| Is that what you're telling me? | ||
| That's part of it, but also wanting each other to like each other. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then growing closer to each other by being nice to each other and recognizing that there's deep pleasure and satisfaction and love in having someone that really likes to be around you, and you really like to be around them, and you actually give each other love and companionship, and when you see each other, you want to hug each other. | ||
| It's a beautiful thing, and some people never get that, man. | ||
| They never get it. | ||
| They never get that their whole life. | ||
| From the cradle to the grave, they live their whole life without anybody really loving them and really wanting to fuck them and touch them and be around them. | ||
| They never experience that. | ||
| They're angry. | ||
| Those people are called internet trolls. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Politicians. | |
| Dude, we've done like three hours and 15 minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Seriously? | |
| Yeah, it's already 4.30. | ||
| I love this, man. | ||
| I love this too. | ||
| Hey, I'm glad you came in. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| I'm glad we talked. | ||
| I'm glad we got a chance. | ||
| And people that have an idea of you, now I think they have a better one. | ||
| Yeah, they know that I'm a fucking idiot. | ||
| Me too. | ||
| Good night, everybody. |
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