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Aug. 24, 2023 - The Joe Rogan Experience

03:25:29

Joe Rogan Experience #2025 - Dave Smith

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dave smith

02:27:34

joe rogan

50:42

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jamie vernon

02:05

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chuck schumer

00:19

kaitlan collins

00:50

rachel maddow

00:08

vivek ramaswamy

00:40

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
		The Joe Rogan Experience.
		Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		What's up, brother?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Good to see you, my friend.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Good to be back.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's crackalackin'.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, just having fun, dude.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Great time at Mothership last night.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was a good time.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That place is always a good time.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I can't wait to go back tonight.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Magical portal.
unidentified		Fun.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Fun.
		Great fucking crowds, dude.
		The crowds were amazing.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Just incredible.
		Every time I've been there, and I've been there a decent amount now, always great crowds.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It's a fun place.
		Build it and they will come.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, you sure did.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So we were on our way over here and I texted you that Purgosian thing.
		Wild.
		But not unexpected.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is he definitely dead?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I don't think it's definitely.
		I think this is what people are reporting.
		I mean, the plane just went down.
		And I wouldn't say definitely yet.
		But I think a lot of us did expect after he kind of flirted with a mutiny against Vladimir Putin and then they kind of came to an agreement and he leaves.
		You're like, I don't think that guy is very long to live.
		Vladimir Putin doesn't seem to me to be the type of guy you can try to overthrow and then go, my bad.
		I think we're cool.
unidentified		What do you think that was all about?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I really don't know.
		At first, they were spinning it like he was pissed off about the war, but that never really seemed to make sense to me.
		I think some type of power struggle, and he kind of went for it in a pretty major way, started destroying equipment and moving his forces toward Moscow, and then they reached some agreement, and they backed off.
		And now a plane went down.
		So we'll see.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We'll see.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, if I was him, I wouldn't be going anywhere by plane.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you would think, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You should take a bus, bro.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You should take a tank anywhere you go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You should be inside a safe riding on a bus.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		What was crazy is when it first went down, so many people in like the corporate press were like, this is it for Putin.
		He's done.
		Russia's collapsing because they're doing so bad in the war.
		And all of those narratives seem to be completely disproven.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, what's scary is what happens if Ukraine runs out of troops?
		That's what's terrifying.
		It's like, how many more soldiers do they have left?
		How many more people can they force to fight that war?
		Like, what is the truth in terms of what are their losses?
		Because what you hear from people that are the true believers in the leftist movement is that Ukraine is winning and that Russia is doomed.
		We must support Ukraine.
		And then what you hear from realists, particularly people that have been on the ground, they're like, it's a slaughter fest.
		It's horrific.
		And the ratio of Ukrainian dead to Russian dead is extremely imbalanced.
unidentified		Right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		In Russia's favor.
		Russia's killing a lot more than they're getting killed.
		It's hard to know exactly.
		It's always hard, like, in the fog of war to know exactly how many people are dying.
		It's usually not until after the fact, and they do the, like, excess mortality numbers, and then you kind of figure out, like, how many people actually died here.
		But it does seem...
		I think there's no question that Ukraine is doing better than Russia.
		would have been expected, like say in the year 2010, if you had said, okay, Russia is going to invade Ukraine, most people thought they would have folded in a couple of weeks and it would have been over.
		Ukraine has at least put up a fight to this point.
		And I think that that is because of the fact that number one, NATO was training the Ukrainian military for years, ever since 2014, ever since Yanukovych government was overthrown.
		And number two, that we've poured an unlimited amount of resources into the war effort.
		But then that kind of leads to the question of like, wait, so, but if Russia still wins at the end of this, which it looks like they're going to short of like U S intervention, direct intervention, then what did we accomplish here?
		Other than just getting way more people slaughtered and drawing the war out way longer to kind of sacrifice Ukraine in an effort to hurt Russia.
		And, And it's crazy that the same people who support this war supported claiming that they really care about the Ukrainians.
		But if you really cared about them, why would your move be to prolong the conflict and let more of them die?
		Seems so horrible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's very strange when the left is pro-war.
		Very, very strange.
		And it's almost like this...
		This shifting of the polls that sort of seems to have happened politically, where it doesn't matter what the actual facts of what you're supporting are, as long as what you're supporting is endorsed by the ideology.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that ideology is, this leftist ideology is that, you know, we have to have a Ukraine flag in your Twitter bio, you have to support, and regardless of, and you're not even looking at it, The objective data to try to figure out what happened here?
		How did this get started?
		I've never heard anyone other than you and a few other people online even discuss the 2014 coup.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It's interesting because the narratives kind of change.
		And one of the things that's interesting about the Maidan revolution is that, and I've played the last couple times we've been here, we've played clips of what people were saying at the time.
		And at the time, there were several people who were basically admitting what's going on.
		And they're like, yeah, we're stealing Ukraine away from Russia.
		Ha ha ha.
		Gideon Rose laughing with Stephen Colbert.
		There's Senator Chris Murphy.
		He was one of the guys who was very involved in it.
		And he went to Ukraine several times when the revolution was first starting.
		But he was kind of the young guy.
		Like it was him and John McCain and Victoria Newland and then Chris Murphy was kind of this younger senator.
		And he just said the quiet part out loud on a C-SPAN interview back then where he just went, he goes, oh yeah, it was American policy that overthrew Yanukovych.
		That was our policy that led to him.
		Without us, he wouldn't have been overthrown.
		And so like, but now, like they would admit it then.
		But now, when you talk about it, they're like, oh, no, no, no, that's not helpful to the narrative.
		So don't mention that we were involved in overthrowing a government that was more pro-Russian and putting in a government that was more pro-West.
		Because that complicates this thing.
		It reminds me of like, there were these pieces in the 90s.
		Where there was like mainstream media outlets covering the dynamic of Al Qaeda and terrorism in the Middle East.
		And they would just like bluntly just say like, oh, they hate us because of our military presence in the Middle East.
		That's his grievance with us.
		Just like, you know, that's the news.
		That's why Bin Laden hates us.
		No one was going, they hate us because we're free.
		Because that just hadn't been said yet, you know?
		And that wasn't until after 9-11.
		But then after 9-11, it was, they hate us for our freedom.
		And now if you were to make the point that they hate us for our foreign policy, It's like, well, where did you get that from?
		That's insane.
		It's like, but you all admitted that just only a few years ago.
		You were openly talking about it.
		And so it's kind of like that.
		That narrative doesn't help serve the war party.
		So now that has to be kind of like...
		In the dustbin of history.
		That never happened.
		The conflict started in 2022 when Vladimir Putin invaded.
		He was totally unprovoked.
		There was no other reason.
		It's just that he's a madman.
		He's bad guy.
		We're good guy.
		That's the tunnel vision you're always supposed to think of war through.
		And that's rarely, if ever, the case.
		It's always more complicated than that.
		And then as soon as you start saying things, believe me, from the last two...
		I've heard a lot of people, oh, you're spewing Russian propaganda, you're pro-Putin, because as soon as you start going, well, look.
		This guy had some legitimate grievances.
		We did a lot to provoke him.
		And that all of a sudden means you're like on their side.
		Because you're no longer, we're good guys, he's bad guys.
		I'm like, no, actually there's a lot of bad guys involved in this conflict.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you were detailing last night, it was really interesting, with Ahsan, you and I were sitting in the green room, and you were detailing the coup and then the connection between the Bidens.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like how this all happened with Hunter.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, so the company Burisma who hired Hunter Biden.
		So Joe Biden at the time when he was the vice president under Barack Obama, he was the point man on Ukraine.
		That was like one of his big tasks that he was given by Obama.
		And like Victoria Nuland was talking about how Joe Biden would get on the phone to give an attaboy to the protesters who ultimately overthrew Yanukovych.
		He was very intimately involved.
		And This company, Burisma, because Ukraine's a very corrupt country.
		They've always been, still are.
		This company was like very in bed with the Yanukovych government.
		And then Yanukovych's government's overthrown.
		And there's a new government that comes in.
		And so they were kind of freaking out, like, oh, we don't have the government that we're in bed with anymore.
		And so this was their move.
		To kind of, instead of bribing the new Ukrainian government, they just went right to the source and bribed, you know, decided, oh, here, we'll put the vice president's son on our board, give him a huge check, and then that kind of, like, protects us against...
		The threat, perhaps, of this new government cracking down on us, because they're not going to want to piss off who the real puppet master is, which is D.C., as always.
		Because we're the world empire.
		And that's the thing that's so crazy about the war in Ukraine, is hearing all of these people in the corporate press and the political class talk about how Vladimir Putin's an imperialist.
		And he's a war criminal.
		And you're like, you're just the biggest hypocrite in the history of the universe.
		To be someone who supports the American regime and say, Vladimir Putin, how dare you invade a sovereign country?
		How dare you violate international law?
		You're killing innocent people, you know?
		I mean, to anyone outside of, like, the American bubble, it's just so absurd on its face.
		You know, we just got done backing the Saudis in a war of genocide in Yemen for eight years.
		Now we're going to turn around and they're all humanitarians now for the poor people of Ukraine?
		It doesn't pass the basic smell test.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, and it's also ignoring the money.
		The money is the scariest thing.
		And then this is something that Trump was like really the first sitting president to discuss.
		And we talked about that Steve Hilton interview where he said there is a military industrial complex and these guys want to go to war.
		And to have a sitting president say that out loud like, you know, Hey, what am I going to do?
		He's just kind of putting it out there.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was amazing.
		What was crazy about it, too, was he was almost saying it the way I'd say it on your podcast.
		Like, just someone bitching about it who has no real power over it.
		You know, he's like, yeah, I don't want to go to war, but all these guys love war.
		So, war.
		And you're like, but you're the commander-in-chief, dude.
		Like, you're...
		Supposed to be able to say no.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it that you can't say no to everything?
		And you have to kind of navigate that field?
		Like, how does that work?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I think...
		So, my read on it is that I think they kind of boxed Donald Trump in.
		he would politically be able to do and I think that's a lot of what the Russia collusion nonsense was all about because like he was running on let's make a deal with Vladimir Putin let's be friends with Russia but once the media is saying oh you're a Russian spy right well now you can't really make a deal with Vladimir Putin Because then, look, proof!
		He was a Russian spy.
		So they kind of boxed him in.
		I think they manipulated him.
		And they lied to him about a lot of the stuff.
		I mean, there were articles written about how they had misled him about the number of troops still remaining in Syria.
		When he tried to...
		He wanted to end that war several different times.
		I think that they...
		It seemed like they really convinced him that Assad had been gassing his own people and that convinced Trump to bomb Syria a couple times.
		I don't know exactly what the conversations were like.
		I do know that if he really wanted to be the guy who was ending all of the wars and he wanted to be the guy who wasn't giving into the military industrial complex, It makes no sense for him to have people like Lindsey Graham in his ear.
		It made no sense for him to make Mike Pompeo his Secretary of State.
		It made no sense to have these guys like Mattis.
		He put the war party into all of these positions.
		And then he's like, man, they're undermining me at every turn.
		And you're like, well, yeah.
		You should have put better people in.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Before you get into office...
		And this is like, we were talking about this last night.
		If you could sit down with Trump, what would be one of the first things you would ask him?
		What I would ask is like, first of all, what did you think it was going to be like and what was it like?
		When you get into office, How much research do you need to do on each individual to find out where their ties are?
		And like, how do you know who to put in what position?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah, no, that's a really interesting question.
		And like, at what point do you realize, you know, like at what point did Trump figure out Like, oh, okay.
		These guys are kind of working against me.
		Like, my own deep state is kind of...
		My own intelligence agencies, who are supposed to work for me, are actually working to undermine me.
		Which they clearly are, and many have admitted at this point that they were.
		I'd be really interested to hear what he has to say.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's no better evidence than the, was it 51 intelligence officials that signed off on the fact that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I believe, including four former heads of the CIA. And there's really, it's really something, because there's no, like, demand for accountability for those people.
		Like, hey, explain yourself.
		You know, like, how did you sign off on this?
		Blatant election interference, you know?
		And that's, It's one of these things like, this is why when the Trump supporters who say that they stole the election, believe that the election machines were rigged or that there was ballot stuffing, it's like, even if they're not right about that,
		which I don't know, I mean, I've never seen compelling evidence that that is the case, but it's kind of like, I use the example of if you're cheating, On your wife, and then she's like, you're cheating on her, and then she's like, I know Friday when you were out, I know you were cheating on me, and you weren't that Friday cheating on her.
		Even though she's wrong, she's really right.
		She might be wrong about that specific day, but she knows you're...
		They know this whole thing is illegitimate.
		You stole it.
		And they really did.
		They really did.
		I mean, they suppressed the October bombshell that would have very likely tipped the election in Trump's favor.
		And tried to make it seem again that Russia was, you know, stealing our elections, which is another major factor in the whole Russia-Ukraine conflict.
		That...
		First of all, what an insane provocation of Russia it was for the last six years to have not just people in the corporate press, but like the former head of the CIA, you know, like on TV every day saying Russia attacked our democracy.
		They interfered in our election and then also claiming that they were in a partnership with Donald Trump to steal it from Hillary Clinton.
		And I heard senators and congressmen and every media pundit, people from the FBI, the CIA, constantly saying on TV that this was an act of war by Russia, that Russia – they would say it's worse than Pearl Harbor, what they did.
		And so if you're – from the Russian perspective, you're sitting there and you see the most war-hungry country in the world, the country that in the last 20 years has fought seven wars, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, destroyed nations.
		And they're out there saying, you just committed an act of war against us.
		I mean, like, that's quite an aggressive posture, particularly when they all knew it was bullshit.
		They all knew from the very beginning.
		And so you had all of that, and then they tried to do it again in 2020, claimed this was a Russian operation to, you know, interfere in the election.
		And meanwhile, all of it It's so crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so crazy that this is not a mainstream narrative and that the news ignores this.
		They also ignore During the debates when Joe Biden was saying that, you know, my son didn't make any money over there and I have nothing to do with my son's business.
		Like, it's all lies.
		It's all easily proven and there's nothing.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And of course, if Trump, you know, like the moderator doesn't push back during that debate and say, excuse me, Mr. Biden, that's just not true.
		Like we know there's no pushback on that.
		They just let him get away with it.
		And he gets to stand up there and say, hey, look, all of these intelligence officials, they tell them they're backing up my story that this laptop is Russian disinformation.
		And I don't know exactly what it is now.
		But I remember they had opinion polls on this after the Mueller investigation, and it's still an enormously high percentage of Democratic voters believe that Trump and Putin were involved in a conspiracy to steal the election.
		They still believe it to this day because they heard Trump-Russia collusion every day, nonstop.
		And that is a huge part of why they support this war in Ukraine, because they think we're fighting the country who overthrew our democracy and gave us Donald Trump for four years.
		It's all just complete bullshit, but they believe it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's crazy how prevalent it is because people are just headline readers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And the mainstream news is completely captured.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		To some degree, I'm sympathetic to people who get propagandized by this stuff because we do, in general in life, we outsource the overwhelming majority of knowledge to other people.
		My hot water heater broke down and I just hire a guy to replace it.
		I don't know anything about hot water heaters, but I just trust, I don't know.
		You know, I don't know.
		So I'll just, you do it and let me know.
		You know, we do this all the time with everything.
		And so most people have busy lives.
		They're working.
		They've got kids to take care of.
		They've got a family.
		If the guy in the suit on CNN says it, well, I'm kind of trusting him to be the expert here, and he knows.
		And the problem is that, like, the guy who fixed my water heater, I don't believe is a corrupt, lying piece of shit.
		But the people on CNN are.
		And that's the major problem here.
		It's like you can't trust them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And the culture in that building, in that CNN building, is all in support of that narrative.
		And you can't really buck that.
		Especially if you're a career person, you want to stay on the air, you want to keep things going.
		Just look what they did to Tucker Carlson, who was the number one guy on television.
		And whatever feathers he ruffled, whatever people he pissed off, I don't believe he's openly discussed it yet, because he's probably got some sort of a lawsuit going on.
		They removed him because he was a problem.
		The way he was discussing things was a problem.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's very interesting that if you – we've talked about this before when we played clips about CNN talking about you and stuff.
		But if you listen to CNN, the way they talk about you or the way they talk about Tucker Carlson, not that you guys are in different worlds, but the way they talk about you two guys is like you're these very controversial figures who say all of these things that are not approved of and these very polarizing figures.
		But then you're like, no, he's the number one guy in cable news and you're the number one guy in podcasting.
		Like you guys, how are you guys viewed as controversial?
		But like CNN is talking to an audience of like 200,000 people and letting you know, you know, people are very skeptical of these guys.
		I'm like, no, they're not.
		These are the most popular figures, and it's because people can at least smell that...
		You're not bullshitting them the way these guys are.
		And that was always one of the things that I really appreciated about Tucker, was that he would break with the Republican Party and have a completely different view from them.
		He would break with everyone else on the network, which is like, that's so unheard of today.
		In MSNBC, if you look down the whole lineup, at CNN, if you look down the whole lineup, you cannot point to one host who has a drastically different opinion on an issue that matters than the hour before them and the hour before them.
		But if you look at, like, You know, the daytime at Fox News where they were on the war in Ukraine versus where Tucker was, or where they were on lockdowns versus where Tucker was, is a night and day difference.
		And so, of course, they removed the one interesting guy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, he was kind of doing podcasting on TV. He had gotten to the point where his show was so huge That he could kind of get away with it.
		And he incrementally kept ramping it up.
		He's like, the CIA killed Kennedy.
		Jesus, bro.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he started really going for it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He was going for it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was great.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		People need to hear that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, the beautiful thing is now he's just going for it on Twitter.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, Elon's like, okay, go ahead.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And you can see it in him that even though he was going for it on Fox, you can see the freedom he has.
		Like on Twitter where he's like, okay, I'm not pulling any punches now.
		And I love that.
		It's beautiful.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's important.
		It really is.
		And people need to wake the fuck up.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, look, even with this Trump thing, man, it's like I was saying how so many people still believe the Russia collusion story, which was all made up, man, and you can go follow this whole thing.
		It was all made up, and they knew it.
		They knew what they were doing.
		There's that clip, by the way, before any of this stuff, this is before Donald Trump ever took office.
		Did you ever see the Chuck Schumer Six Ways to Sunday?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You were telling me about it last night.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You were saying we should watch it today.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		We should play this.
		Let me just preface it briefly to kind of set up what's so amazing about it.
		There are these occasional moments where even, like I said, the thing where Chris Murphy just happens to blurt out like, oh yeah, our policy's overthrown Yanukovych, right?
		There are these moments where kind of like these rare moments of honesty from the kind of leaders of the regime.
		Yeah.
		And this one comes because Rachel Maddow asks him an impromptu thing.
		And she says that.
		She leads that.
		And just so you know, Donald Trump has been elected, but he's a president-elect here.
		So it's after the election, but he's not president yet.
		So this was about him tweeting something here.
rachel maddow ▲ ● ▼		But he's taking these shots, this antagonism, this taunting to the intelligence community.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he's being really dumb to do this.
rachel maddow ▲ ● ▼		What do you think the intelligence community would do if they were moving into it?
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		I don't know, but from what I am told, they are very upset with how he has treated them and talked about them.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And what happened right before that is that Rachel Maddow goes, she goes, all right, I'm sorry to put you on the spot here, but Donald Trump just tweeted this thing about the intelligence community.
		Any thoughts on that?
		So it's not like he was prepared for this.
		The most powerful senator in America, his initial gut reaction was like, well, dude.
		You're taking on the intelligence.
		I mean, you want to go up against the CIA? You think you're going to win that fight?
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Like, they're going to get you.
		And this was already after they had already been, they were spying on his campaign.
		They had already kind of begun framing him for this whole Russia thing, which was always nonsense.
		Now, it started with...
		You know the Steele dossier and all that stuff and then they were spying on Carter Page who was like a pretty low-level advisor in Donald Trump's campaign and the allegation was that the Russians had offered him a huge stake in like one of their biggest energy companies if he could get Donald Trump to remove all of the sanctions That we had at the time on Russia,
		which on the face of it made no sense, because he's like a low-level advisor on the campaign.
		He's not even in the administration.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Was this based on intercepted emails?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		No, this was based off the Steele dossier, which was opposition research that Hillary Clinton had funded, where she hired this British spy to go, like, dig up dirt on Donald Trump.
		And they put together this whole dossier alleging that he was...
		You know, he had been in bed with Russia for years.
		He was compromised.
		It was that the prostitutes were peeing on him and all this like crazy shit.
		And they all knew it was unverified.
		They all knew it was like, and all of it, almost all of it ended up being disproven.
		But, so when they went to Carter...
		But just to understand, like, the idea of trying to bribe a low-level advisor on a campaign to then somehow take over the administration once he got...
		It'd be like on the level of if someone was like, we're going to bribe the door guy at the mothership to make sure that the Joe Rogan experience only talks about these subjects.
		I mean, even though there's a loose connection between you and the guy who works at the mother, the idea that he would ever then be able to come in and take over the show and control, it just made no sense.
		But we now know that the CIA told the FBI... That Carter Page was a good guy, that he was a CIA informant.
		So they told the FBI, they're like, no, no, no, he's not a spy.
		He's one of ours.
		So just lay off.
		And then the FBI lied about that on the FISA application.
		And this was the only guy who went down for the frame job, was this one FBI lawyer for misrepresenting what the CIA said.
		Basically, he...
		They said that he was approached by Russians and that he was approached by a group of Russians to see if he would turn and work for them.
		And the CIA were like, yes, he was.
		And he came right back to us and told us about it.
		And then when they were putting in the application for the FISA warrant, the FBI said he was approached by these Russians and the CIA confirmed it.
		So they said that the CIA confirmed that he was approached by these guys, but they left out the part that the CIA said, and he came right back to us and told us about it.
		So that one guy was the only guy who got charged.
		No jail time, but he did get charged.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Carter Page got charged?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		The FBI lawyer who lied on the application.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, interesting.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Carter Page, they had three FISA court warrants on him.
		They spied on him all up and down.
		Never been charged with anything, because he wasn't a spy.
		Look, Donald Trump, even now, with all these charges, he's never been charged with treason.
		He's never been charged with inciting an insurrection because they know they can't get him on those charges.
		So what they're getting him on is all these like novel legal theories.
		Well, it's not very clear that he violated the statute.
		But if we interpret it this way, we could make the argument for the first time ever that this was actually a violation of law.
		It's all like they're grasping at straws.
		And it's very clearly, like, they've weaponized the legal system against this guy.
		It's not a coincidence that all of these indictments are coming down right now.
		Like, why was the January 6th thing?
		Why would any of this be coming down right now?
		All those other people in January 6th, they got charged and arrested immediately.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We were talking about that Vivek interview, which is very interesting, where this woman on CNN, that same woman that did the town hall thing with Trump, What's her name?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Caitlin?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't remember.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I know who you're talking about.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She was trying to get him to discuss certain things in a way that would look preposterous.
		She was talking about 9-11.
		And like you said, the government lied to us about 9-11.
		Would you think the government was involved in 9-11?
		He's like, no.
		What I said was that the government lied to us about 9-11 because the Saudis were involved and they knew they were involved.
		And she kind of glossed over that and was saying something in the lines of, don't you think that you saying that the government lied to us about 9-11 supports baseless conspiracy theories, you know, like supports the idea that the government orchestrated, like that's the...
		When you want to put on the full tin foil hat with the fucking chin strap, you say the government organized and designed 9-11.
		There was bombs in the building.
		They knew it was all happening.
		They detonated Tower 7. Like, oh, you got to go full hat.
		And so she's trying to bring him into full conspiracy tinfoil hat.
		And he's going, no, that's not what I said.
		And he said something that's factual?
		And she just sort of like pretended it didn't get said?
		I mean, that's a real fucking issue.
		They lied about whether or not Saudi Arabia was involved.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It's one of the biggest scandals in the history of the United States of America.
		It was like the biggest terrorist attack on our soil, and the government lied about what had happened.
		And who was involved with that?
		And by the way, continued propping up that regime to this day, continued like funding and doing business with the same government that had high level people involved in the attack.
		And they knew it and suppressed that from the American people because it would have been, you know, if you put yourself back in that time.
		It would have been such an outrage if Americans had known.
		And in fact, one of the first things George W. Bush did immediately after 9-11, even when all the flights were grounded, was get high-level Saudis out of the country.
		Let's fly them out of the country.
		And this is all factual.
		Like, this happened.
		It's not disputed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Including members of bin Laden's family.
		The whole thing is so wild.
		And it doesn't get discussed.
		They keep going back to the company narrative.
		What's the ideological left narrative?
		The left narrative is anybody who questions 9-11 is a nutter.
		And you're a nutter and you're trying to run for president.
		And he does a very good job of she repeats the question, he repeats the answer.
		She repeats the question, he repeats the answer.
		And she's trying to catch him in this, and it's like, see if you can find that.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		So I'm looking it up, and what I'm seeing online is that the story has turned a little bit, that The Atlantic has posted audio from the interview.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Ah, he was asking for that audio.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it says they released it, and it says The Atlantic did not put any words in his mouth.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		I'm trying to find the audio so we could play it, but it's behind a page.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So he was saying that they put words in his mouth?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but then what I'm also seeing then in the Daily Beast article is that despite them releasing the audio, it says Ramaswamy's campaign somehow declared victory.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		So I guess they're saying he said it, but his team is also saying it's still been taken out of contact.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		But what are they claiming that he said?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		I'm trying to find the transcript, and I haven't gotten that far.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It's behind a paywall again.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But let's listen to his interview on CNN. Because the things that...
		It's interesting.
		We'll figure this out.
unidentified		This is...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why is it not giving you any volume?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's not the interview yet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's not?
unidentified		What's that?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It's just her talking.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, oh, I see.
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼		And I actually, and this is just lifting the curtain on how media works again.
unidentified		I asked that reporter to send the recording because it was on the record.
		He refused to do it.
		But we had a free-flowing conversation.
kaitlan collins ▲ ● ▼		After our interview, The Atlantic released the audio, more than four minutes of it, actually.
kaitlan collins ▲ ● ▼		And here is the part with that quote that was in question.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		What is the truth about January 6th?
unidentified		I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We can handle it.
unidentified		Whatever it is, we can handle it.
		Government agents.
		How many government agents were in the field?
		Right?
		You mean like entrapment?
		Yeah.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼		Why can the government not be transparent about something that we're using, terrorists, or the kind of tax-accused by terrorists, if we find that there are hundreds of our own in the ranks of the day that they were I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the twin towers.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Like, I think we want, maybe the answer is zero.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Probably a zero, for all I know, right?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero.
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼		But if we're doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9-11, we have a 9-11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to.
unidentified		No.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Vivek did nothing wrong.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		There's literally nothing wrong with what he said there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But that's like, we're doing this in comparison to January 6th.
		So we do want to know how many federal agents were involved in January 6th.
		And imagine if there was actually federal agents that were involved on the planes in 9-11.
		He didn't say there were.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		No, he specifically said zero.
		I'm sure it was zero.
		I'm sure it was zero.
		But we'd want to know.
		Right.
		But we'd want to know.
		And he's saying if you're claiming this was an act of terrorism, just like that was an act of terrorism, then okay.
		Let's have a commission.
		Let's have a report.
		Let's know how many federal agents there were.
		And so far...
		By the way, it's crazy they try to spin this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Does she keep going?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can I hear what her take on that is?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there's still another minute on this video.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Please play the rest of it.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I want to hear what she has to say about this.
unidentified		About...
kaitlan collins ▲ ● ▼		He was, in fact, quoted accurately.
		In an email to CNN after that audio was published, his spokesperson said, The audio clearly demonstrates that Vivek was taken badly out of context, and even this small snippet proves that.
		We continue to encourage The Atlantic to release more of the recording rather than their carefully selected snippet so that the full context and reality is exposed.
		I should note that spokesperson did not explain how he was supposedly taken out of context.
		The reality is that Vivek Ramaswamy is running to be president of the United States.
unidentified		He will be on that debate stage tomorrow night.
kaitlan collins ▲ ● ▼		And he says this is a central message to his campaign.
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼		This campaign is founded on the truth.
unidentified		The truth.
		We will not back down from the truth.
		We stand for the truth.
		I'm a patriot who speaks the truth.
		Well, the truth is, he did say it.
		The quote was accurate, and it is on tape.
		And yes, this is how the media works.
kaitlan collins ▲ ● ▼		You get quoted for things you say accurately.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but that is still out of context.
		It's clearly out of context.
		Otherwise, they would have released the entire recording.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		And it's this weird thing where they brag about how, like, but you know what?
		The Atlantic did release four minutes of audio.
		Well, why not just release the whole thing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, but this was after he had said they didn't release it because they hadn't.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So he's asking for the copy of it.
		They would not give it to him.
		And then they released this small snippet that is, again, taken out of context.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And it's not as if anywhere in there he says, I believe there were federal agents on January 6th.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, he said it's probably zero.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, on 9-11 he said it's probably zero, but he said he's asking the question about January 6th.
		But he never even said, I believe January 6th was an inside job.
		He said, like, it seems like entrapment.
		That's kind of what it seems like, and we have a right to ask these questions.
		Yeah, Vivek's a very sharp guy.
		I had him on my podcast.
		He's a very impressive guy.
		He's very smart.
		And look, he's just 100% right here.
		Look, Ray, the FBI director, was asked, and one of the other top-level Justice Department people were both asked when testifying before Congress whether there were any federal agents or assets involved in January 6th, and they both said no comment.
		They both said we cannot talk about ongoing investigations.
		So, the only time this was actually asked to high-level people, they didn't shoot us a no.
		They didn't say no, absolutely not.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let me take a...
		Let me steelman this.
		Would it be...
		If you were running the FBI and there was something like this march on the Capitol and a bunch of people were saying that the election was rigged and people were storming the Capitol or they're going to be on the lawn outside of the Capitol.
		Wouldn't you want to have federal agents out there?
		Wouldn't that be a smart thing to do?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because, like, what if they are organizing something that's highly illegal?
		What if there are some fucking real loons that are bringing explosives and dirty bombs?
		Who fucking knows, right?
		Just imagine the possibilities.
		Doesn't it seem like that is what they're supposed to do?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Sure, but you wouldn't have them out there screaming, we're gonna storm the Capitol!
		Storm the Capitol!
		So that's where the difference is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The question is, did that happen?
unidentified		Right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		So if there were just FBI agents embedded in some type of protest, To, you know, watch out for criminal activity, and then if there was some, like, arrest the person or whatever, that would be reasonable.
		But if they're in there to try to provoke criminal activity, that's a whole different story.
		And if the case was that they were sending the FBI in there because they were worried about violence and they wanted to, then you'd also wonder why was it that the Capitol Police didn't get the reinforcements that they had requested?
		And like, why is it that there were these other two like explosives that we've still never gotten the answer to?
		There's just a lot of stuff about January 6th that doesn't completely add up.
		And I think Vivek is 1000% right to like say we should be we should be demanding the answers to this.
		Yeah, that's all like that.
		I think that's a completely reasonable take.
		And, you know, CNN, they do this thing where as soon as you start like inquiring about these things, they try to smear you as like this is, you know, you're some type of conspiracy nut or something like that.
		And the funny thing about it is that, like, look, we all know that elites conspire, and, you know, intelligence agencies conspire, and they've carried out tons of operations throughout the years.
		We know that.
		So why is it so unreasonable to question What exactly are they doing right now?
		It's not nothing.
		You know what I mean?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's not just that.
		There's also been cases of clear entrapment that we're all aware of that they got away with.
		And one of the big ones is that 19-year-old kid who was talked into detonating a bomb that wasn't even a bomb.
		I believe it was by the FBI and I believe it was in Dallas.
		Is that where it was from?
		Do you remember that story?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I remember the story.
		Yeah, I don't remember the details of it.
		The story's nuts.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They took some young, sort of delusional guy, and they literally...
		Kind of conned him into blowing up this bomb.
		And it wasn't a bomb.
		They gave him a cell phone.
		Do this, and it's gonna do that, and it's gonna blow up.
		And he does that, and then they arrest him.
		But you told him to do it.
		You got him to do it.
		You talked him into doing it.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		There's been dozens of these since 9-11.
		These kind of entrapment things.
		And then the FBI brags about how they thwarted a terrorist attack.
		But, like, there was never a terrorist attack.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The governor of Michigan.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That one's bananas.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And it's really sad because like the thing with Whitmer, what they end up doing is kind of like luring in these really sad people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You know, like the guy's like a homeless guy who's a drunk who's living, you know, in an attic somewhere or something like that.
		And then they kind of get this guy to go along with it.
		And he like resists the first three times.
		And he's like, no, I don't want to do anything like that.
		No, this is crazy.
		And then they keep pushing him and pushing him.
		And they finally get this guy.
		So they created...
		The event to begin with.
		There was no threat that this was going to happen until you guys lured this really sad, in most cases not very bright, guys into doing this thing and then arrest them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The craziest thing is the numbers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wasn't it like there was 14 people and 12 of them were in...
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the whole thing was basically feds.
		And what was the purpose of it?
		The purpose of it was to kind of paint this picture of the anti-lockdowners as being this violent threat and so that this would then hurt Donald Trump in his election campaign.
		So it's not just like that they were just doing this.
		It's like they were doing this with a political, like, motivation.
		This is what's so, like, this is the thing that's so creepy and what so many people are waking up to.
		As part of the reason, look, man, this is the reason why that Richmond, North Richmond song blew up so big.
		Because so many people today, and it's kind of what's exciting about the current moment, it's also a little bit scary, but that so many people are just kind of waking up To how corrupt this whole thing is.
		And you're like, oh, it's all fake.
		Do you remember the one we just mentioned, Tucker Carlson said he had a source that had read all of the Kennedy files.
		This is when he said the CIA killed Kennedy.
		And then we asked him, point blank, was the CIA involved in the assassination of Jack Kennedy?
		And the guy's response was, he goes, yes, it's all fake.
		The country isn't what we thought it was.
		I remember just thinking that was like a powerful...
		Like, just to say, it's all fake.
		I think more and more people are waking up to that.
		Like, these people on CNN all day, you know, they act so like...
		They have this air of, like, moral superiority and concern about, well, listen, this could lead to dangerous conspiracy theories.
		This is dangerous for our democracy.
		What about these downtrodden people or whatever?
		And then meanwhile, you're like, but you guys have no interest In finding Epstein's client list?
		Really?
		Like, how are you not talking about that every day, man?
		Like, every day!
		Like, you're telling me we found out that there was a ring of, like, a child rape ring with the most powerful people all involved in it, and you're not just demanding every day that we get to the bottom of this?
		And in fact, we know that that one ABC reporter had the story suppressed.
		When she first broke the Epstein story, right?
		She was on a hot mic talking about it.
		So you're like, where do you get off?
		Acting like you're the...
		Yeah, this is how the media works.
		You get quoted, and then we quote you.
		And then we show you.
		That's how the media works.
		This air of superiority.
		You've been caught red-handed on so many different things.
		You lied us into every freaking war in the last 20 years.
		You suppressed the Epstein story.
		You bullshitted about the Hunter Biden story.
		You're all now even admitting it.
		Even they're admitting it now.
		Oh, yeah.
		Well, it turns out there is a whole real corrupt thing to be investigated here about the Bidens.
		But then they still turn around and have this, like, well, we're the news.
		And that's what happens.
		And then they're very concerned with, you know, you spreading misinformation or something.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The ivermectin thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The new, now the CDC, or the FDA rather, can't stop doctors from approving ivermectin for COVID. There's this giant wave of COVID right now that's happening, supposedly.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, according to Alex Jones, he has information.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You see that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		He said he talked to, like, high-level NSA guys.
		I'm sorry, TSA guys, who told him that, like, masks in airports are coming back and that there's going to be a big ramp up in COVID. And I was really hoping this would fall into the Alex Jones wasn't right category.
		I still am.
		But it was really weird that after he said that, for the next few days, everybody in the corporate press is talking about COVID again.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Not only that, there's a mask mandate that got passed at one college.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then Lionsgate, they instituted a mask mandate for other employees.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is wild.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I really, I have a hard time imagining that they would really try to ramp the COVID thing back up.
		Also, all of the science seems to indicate that this new strain is less deadly than even Omicron was.
		And so, like, what are we even talking about here?
		But they're trying to push another round of boosters.
		There was a Pfizer spokesman on CNN the other day.
		This is why you really need to get this latest booster.
		And they say, does this booster protect against the newest variant?
		And he said, it looks like it does.
		It looks like it does.
		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It looks like it does.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's what you've got for us now?
		Not even this, like...
		It's so funny how far it's fallen.
		It's not just like, if you take this vaccine, you won't get it, and you can't transmit it.
		Listen, it's 95% effective.
		It's totally safe and effective.
		It'll definitely...
		And now it's just like a...
		Looks good.
		Shoot another one, man.
		What are the effects of taking eight mRNA vaccines in two years?
		I don't know.
		Looks good.
		Take it.
		That's where they're at.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But there's enough people out there that are just headline readers that are going to listen to that, that haven't had these discussions, that don't know this information, that are just going to take it.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, but there are some things that are encouraging.
		You know, to me, it's very encouraging how much noise RFK has been making and that he's been like, even within the Democratic primary, he was polling at like 20% in several polls amongst Democratic voters.
		Like, okay, that's something.
		And if you look at the rate of the vaccination rate, It was the initial double jab and the Johnson& Johnson, like when they initially rolled it out, they got up to, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of like 75% of the adult population got it.
		And this was with a lot of coercion, you know, not just like people just got it.
		It's like a lot of people had their jobs threatened if they didn't get it and had pressure from family and stuff like that.
		And then if you look at the boost, the rate, the first booster, it was like half of that.
		And then the next round of boosters, it was, like, way lower than that.
		So most of the American people maybe did get the original double jab, but they have not been buying into this, like, booster regime of, like, I have to keep getting more and more.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, they all probably got COVID, too.
		And they probably got it pretty bad.
		You know, there's probably quite a few people, at least, that got it...
		I mean, that's the Cleveland Clinic statistics, which are really interesting.
		That's the study they did on the healthcare workers.
		It showed that the more jabs you got, the more likely you were to get COVID, which is so crazy.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, which is really scary.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		scary and there's there was a lot of there was a lot of scientific arguments that were made even before that that were like there's a real concern that this is the case yeah that in fact the the vaccine is essentially tricking your natural like your natural response including and Hotez yeah and that's one of the things he said while Trump was president
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is so fascinating that they can change their ideas about vaccines depending upon who's the president.
		Before Trump was president, when Trump was president, they were all saying, are you going to take it?
		I'm not going to take it.
		Biden was saying it.
unidentified		Who knows?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Who knows what's in there?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Kamala Harris was saying it.
		Fauci was saying it could take years.
		And he literally said specifically this, that, you know, actually, sometimes the vaccine can have a reverse effect.
		So it would take years of us studying this before we knew whether this helped or it could actually make it worse.
		They were all saying it.
		And then as soon as the vaccine, you know, as soon as Trump lost the election, as soon as that the vaccine rollout started again, it's just like the thing in Ukraine.
		You know, it's just like the thing with Al Qaeda.
		Well, that's that's gone.
		All that stuff we were admitting five minutes ago, you're a crazy person if you say that now, because now there's the new agenda.
		And this is how the propaganda goes from that.
		I will say, man, I think that if they're going to do this, if they're going to bring back mask mandates, if businesses are doing this, I... I think, like, the thing that happened with Budweiser, or with Bud Light, when they put that Dylan fella on the can, and, like, we need that times ten.
		Like, I completely support people's right to stop drinking Bud Light if they don't like what's on the can, you know?
		You don't have to have a cultural thing forced on you that you don't agree with.
		But, like, there's got to be some type of response where, like, if you're bringing back mask mandates, we're boycotting your business.
		Like, we're just not, we're not fucking with people who are going to try to force this all down our throat again.
		Because it's insane.
		And it's like, at a certain point, it's got to stop.
		Like, dude, first off, the cloth masks don't even work.
		And all the studies indicate that.
		It doesn't even slow the spread or anything.
		And...
		This is just insane.
		Like, if you're very sick and you're concerned about COVID, then all right, fine.
		You can, like, kind of isolate yourself.
		But let the rest of people, like, live a life and go back to all this insanity again.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's crazy because it's once people have accepted it and once it's a thing that happened, it can happen again.
		And it seems like they kind of want it to happen again.
		At least some people want it to happen again, regardless of what the information is about the effectiveness of masks, regardless of the very low fatality rate for this new strain.
		Regardless of that, they still want to go back to where we were.
		And they want to be able to say that they did the right thing, that they protected people.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's so weird how into it a lot of people got with the COVID thing.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Like, they got into being on lockdown.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They also got into enforcing other people's, you know, people's, like, when you have a bunch, like, one of the things in LA they were doing, they were turning people in for having parties.
		Remember that?
		They were like, snitches get stitches, but in LA, they get rewards!
		You get rewards.
		People were forcing other people to comply.
		It's really weird.
		It's weird how that happens.
		You get people that act like prison guards.
		You know, they're a little special because they can catch you doing the thing that you shouldn't be doing that everybody should be fighting back against.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, it's like, you know there were like the Milgram experiments where they get people to zap them until they think they're dead?
		Because the person in a white coat tells you to keep zapping them and they're screaming in pain and most of the people would just keep doing it even after it looked like they were dead.
		And that kind of gave this, like, image of, like, oh, so this is, like, kind of how authoritarianism works.
		Like, there's this authority figure, and then people just comply, and they just follow it, and they just follow orders.
		And, like, there's an element of that, obviously.
		I mean, they demonstrated that in the experiment.
		But then it's like, it's almost more like the Stanford prison experiments.
		That's really more the complete picture.
		That like, everyone gets into their little role.
		And they actually really enjoy it.
		And that's how authoritarian regimes actually, like, come to be.
		And continue themselves.
		Is that it's not just that like, oh, you know, like, um...
		You know, Hitler said we're supposed to hate the Jews, and I'm not gonna say no to him, so I guess we gotta hate the Jews.
		It's more like, those people get really into hating the Jews.
		Yes, those fucking Jews, they're the ones who did that.
		You know what I mean?
		It's kind of like, that's the real sick thing.
		When your neighbor, just little things, man.
		I remember in April of 2020, going to visit my mother, and being in her apartment building, and her, like, one of the neighbors, this kind of like busybody, Like, I'm bringing my kids to see their grandmother.
		And I'm not doing that because you're weird.
		Like, go away!
		Like, I mean, I didn't say it exactly like that.
		And I said, I think I just said something like, I go, yeah, you don't want to get too close to us.
		You know, like, social distance, right?
		Like, okay.
		But it's crazy.
		Like, people would get into that and, like, somehow you could be demonized for the crime of bringing little kids to see their grandmother.
		You know what I mean?
		Like, there's something really creepy about that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Visiting and without masks.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to wear a mask to my mom?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Also, you're going to have a conversation in the hallway and cite statistics about the effectiveness of masks.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
		Like, what are we going to do here?
		Like, I'm not persuading you.
		So it's just like, yeah, let's distance.
		Stay over there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just such a weird thing that people bought into.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there any compelling data that masks have an effect?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		They had a couple studies that seemed to indicate it, but then when they kind of broke it down, it's like, oh no, they really manipulated these studies and they left out all of these other areas that kind of showed that it didn't work.
		I don't remember right offhand, but there were major studies that indicated that the mask compliance rate And the spread of COVID had no correlation to each other.
		It really didn't matter.
		The outdoor cloth mask thing is just insane.
		You don't transmit COVID outside unless you're right on top of each other.
		And also, and I know it was...
		Who was it?
		I'm blinking on the...
		I'll remember in a second.
		But there was a major study that came out that also showed that there was no correlation in the lockdown, in areas that locked down versus areas that didn't lock down.
		It just did nothing.
		It had almost no effect whatsoever on the virus.
		Because it's an upper respiratory virus.
		It spreads.
		You kind of can't really stop that from happening.
		And the best thing to fight against it has always been, this has now been proven empirically, but would have been easy for anyone to figure out before, is natural immunity.
		That's the best protection you have, is if you can get COVID and get over it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they were trying to say that natural immunity was a myth.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is so wild.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So wild.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And it's clearly stronger than any immunity you get from the vaccine.
		The only debate is over how much stronger it is.
		And I've seen some, there was like one Israeli study that showed that it was 75 times more stronger than the vaccine.
		And then there was one that showed it was like 35 times more.
		But whatever the number is, it's clearly much better for you.
		And you just get to a point where like, what was it?
		It was like a 1% death rate, I think, on the original strand of COVID. And that 1% is obviously largely driven by old sick people.
		That's where most of the death is coming from.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what they did with nursing homes.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, and then they forced COVID-positive people in there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is fucking crazy.
		They forced those people to stay in nursing homes.
		And when they had COVID in nursing homes, it spread like wildfire.
		And all these people that were on death's door already wound up dying.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, dude.
		And it's like, it's crazy because it's only a few years later, but this is how this stuff happens.
		You know, even like we were just talking about how like, oh, that old thing that we used to admit, you're not allowed to admit that anymore.
		But it's almost like you give a pass for all of these things.
		Like, do you remember that like, oh yeah, they just made...
		Like, they made Cuomo the hero governor, and every day he's on TV, and what, he won a fucking Emmy, or whatever, for it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		People are saying they were Cuomo-sexual.
unidentified		Yes!
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And they just try, oh, he's so presidential, Donald Trump is leading, he's leading, then two seconds later, he's out.
		But they let his brother interview him every day on CNN. Like, that they wouldn't even pretend there's a journalistic integrity issue with having the brother Of the governor sit down and just congratulate him every night?
		While we're in the middle of the biggest crisis, that's what you do to hold power accountable?
		You let him sit down with his brother every day?
		I can't believe, even as corrupt as I know all the corporate press institutions are, I can't believe there wasn't someone there who goes, this is too much of the appearance of, like, we're not even pretending.
		Let's have someone else interview him.
		Let Don Lemon do the Andrew Cuomo stuff, you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think they thought it was cute that they would talk shit to each other.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, that was the fun thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was, like, palling around with my brother.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm sure it was great for ratings or whatever.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They thought he was going to be the president, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then, for whatever reason, they turned on him.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it's wild watching the Democrat establishment turn on that guy.
		Because in the beginning of the pandemic, he was...
		What do you think it was?
		Do you think it was the nursing home statistics?
		No.
		What is it that, like, where he became a liability?
		Because there's...
		There was a lot of people that were saying that guy could be the big guy to challenge Trump.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I don't think it was the nursing home thing.
		I don't think it was any of his track record on COVID. Newsom has a terrible track record on COVID, but they're not turning on him over that.
		I think it's like pissed off some powerful people behind the scenes some shit like that happened because it was a concerted effort like he was being propped up like the next guy and then they were like we're pulling the floor out from underneath this guy just like that.
		It was crazy during COVID how many of those things happened where like you know they'd go like with very little time in between they'd go from being like okay like you can't leave your house they were like demonizing kids who were on the beach You know, being like, look how reckless these kids are being.
		They're out on the beach with their friends.
		You know, MSNBC's like, this guy's not wearing a mask.
		You know, like demonizing anyone who went outside.
		And then it was like, well, if you're protesting for Black Lives Matter, that's totally cool.
		You guys can all do it.
		Huge groups.
		Go for it.
		No problem.
		And I was like, dude, but yesterday you told me to give up my life.
		And, like, put everything on...
		But now, if it's for this cause, it's okay.
		Or, like, the way they were...
		We were at 5 p.m.
		Everyone was applauding for the nurses.
		But now, if that nurse won't get vaccinated, fire her.
		You know, like, screw...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're like, whoa!
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Especially...
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		The hero just became, like...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Nurses that already had COVID and gotten over it.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so unscientific.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, all of those nurses...
		Had been working throughout the pandemic.
		So they had surely either gotten COVID or figured out how to protect themselves from getting COVID.
		You know what I mean?
		There was no argument that, like, they must get the vaccine.
unidentified		Right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		it.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It was a nutty time, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Very.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And it still is.
		It still is.
		I mean, this stuff with Trump, you know, he's tomorrow supposed to turn himself in Georgia.
		And I'm not sure exactly.
		I was reading about it yesterday.
		And it's not exactly clear, I guess, because the deal hasn't been made, but it was something like a $200,000 bond is what they were saying.
		And then it looks like he's going to have to actually go into the jail.
		So I think they're going to book him.
		I think that means mug shots, which is, I think, something that they're going for.
		I think they like the optics of that a lot.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Trump has already agreed to a $200,000 bond with certain conditions, including limits on social media posts.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's a really interesting one.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Limits on social media posts about the case.
		But if he violates it, judges may have limited enforcement options.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's interesting.
unidentified		Interesting.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		So this is one thing that's much different than any of the other indictments.
		This is the first time that a judge has said...
		And you know, they can do this crazy stuff that seems wildly unconstitutional and just...
		Very basic violation of liberty.
		It's insane to me.
		But they can have, like, these gag orders.
		You know, like Roger Stone, when he was first charged, was not allowed to speak about it.
		Like, you can't defend yourself publicly.
		You can't speak about the case.
		And they're allowed to do this.
		They go, we'll throw you in jail if you speak about it.
		It's kind of like this weird system where once they agree, they kind of have the right to keep you in jail until your trial, legally.
		And so, if they...
		I mean, if they release you, they can say, well, these are the conditions.
		And it can kind of be anything, you know?
		But the idea that you could say, well, okay, you can't defend yourself publicly.
		You know, you can't post on Truth Social or Twitter or whatever about this.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		If you believe in liberty at all, it's a weird thing because liberty is kind of predicated on the presumption of innocence.
		Like, if you don't have the presumption of innocence, then there's no such thing as freedom.
		I mean, you could say we have freedom, but if I accuse you of something, you're guilty.
		Then you don't have any freedom.
		Right.
		Supposedly, we're innocent until proven guilty.
		So Trump's innocent of these charges, and yet they can still tell you you're not allowed to post this.
		You're not allowed to say this.
		But what's particularly interesting in this case is that this just smells a lot like election interference, because from the political standpoint, if this is the biggest national story, Of a presidential race.
		And Joe Biden can say whatever he wants about it, or the Democrats can say whatever they want about it, but Trump isn't allowed to defend himself?
		Like, he's not allowed to comment on it at all?
		That seems like you're rigging the system.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It sounds like the conditions are more about intimidating witnesses and stuff like that.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's what they say.
		And I don't think we know all the details of this, but what the judge says was that you can't post anything that would be intimidating about this case.
		But where exactly do they draw those lines is a question.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Limited to posts on social media, reposts on social media.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A post made by another individual on social media.
		Go back to the top of that.
		Look how it's phrased here.
		As part of the conditions, Trump will be prohibited from doing anything a judge could interpret as an effort to intimidate co-defendants or witnesses, or otherwise obstruct the administration of justice.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You know, what it reminds me of is when when Mueller finally released that report where he basically said they had no evidence of any conspiracy with Russia.
		But then as like a to throw a bone to the establishment to not make them look as bad as it made them look.
		He said, well, well, here's 10 instances where he could have maybe obstructed justice.
		Like, he didn't, like, say he did, but he was like, here's the instances, and one of them was, and I shit you not, you can go read the report, one of the ten instances was that he kept referring to it as a witch hunt.
		So, like, the fact that he kept saying, this is bullshit, like, I'm not involved in a conspiracy with Russia, and everybody knows that, that was him potentially obstructing the investigation.
		So it's like, if I say, you murdered somebody, and you go, that's absolute bullshit, I didn't murder anybody, and you're like, you're right, you didn't, but you just obstructed justice.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Like, how insane is that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so crazy.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You're right.
		We did make that up about the murder thing.
		But when you said you didn't murder anybody, you know, they said firing Comey was one of them because he fired the FBI, the director of the FBI who was investigating him at the time.
		But then Comey said that he told Trump he wasn't investigating him.
		Maybe Trump figured that out, but he had told the president he wasn't investigating him, even though he was, and Trump fired him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why did Trump specifically fire him?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Comey was the FBI director.
		The first time they meet, and Comey was the FBI director under Obama, so he was still there.
		It's not like Trump appointed him.
		He was already the FBI director.
		The first time they meet, Comey presents him with the Steele dossier.
		And he goes, you know, just wanted to let you know we have all of this information and all the stuff, the P, you know, and all the being involved with Russia and all of this.
		And Trump's response to this, at least according to Bob Woodward, was, he goes, take everything you need.
		You have access to all my campaign files, everything.
		If there's any connection to Russia here, I want to know about it as much as you do.
		So investigate me, which he did not have to do, which right away should have really suggested that there was nothing to this.
		But I don't know exactly what the details of that meeting were.
		But to me, what it read like.
		You know, like what J. Edgar Hoover, who was the longtime head of the FBI, what he used to do was like, so JFK wins the presidency, Bobby Kennedy, RFK Jr.'s father, is the attorney general.
		He comes into a meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, and J. Edgar Hoover goes, hey, listen, just want to keep you up to date on some intelligence.
		I have these pictures of all of the chicks who your brother's sleeping with.
		So here you go.
		Here's just the intelligence, just so you know.
		I have all of the information about all the affairs he's having.
		And don't worry, I have backups.
		Anyway, so I don't know who you guys are thinking to tap for FBI director, but I'm thinking I do another term.
		You know what I mean?
		It's like that kind of deal.
		It's like a soft blackmail.
		And it seems like there was something like that with Comey presenting all of it.
		Like, here, look what I have.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Was this before the Steele dossier had been released publicly?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		And so I think he was kind of like, look, here's what I have.
		And kind of tried to alpha Donald Trump.
		And I think trying to do that to Donald Trump, Trump's knee-jerk reaction, he's like, you know what my catchphrase is, right?
		I'm like, you're fired.
		And I don't think he told that to his face there, but I think that was ultimately kind of like what got him to fire him.
		And then that, firing Comey, is what set off the whole thing.
		And like I said earlier, they had been already investigating him, knowing this was bullshit from the very beginning, since the campaign.
		And Andrew McCabe, who was the deputy FBI director...
		At the time.
		So, after they fired the FBI director, He said this on a 60 Minutes interview.
		He said that basically they all sat around, all the top people at the Justice Department, and they considered invoking the 25th Amendment, which is getting enough of the cabinet to declare that the president is unfit to serve, and removing him, and that that's what they wanted to do.
		And he said that they basically realized they couldn't get enough of the cabinet, like they couldn't get enough people to agree to that, and so they settled on Mueller.
		They settled on setting up a special investigator.
		And so that's how they got to the whole investigation.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How much money did they spend on this?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Tens of millions.
		I don't remember exactly how much, but it was a bit.
		It was a nice chunk.
		And the crazy thing about it, too, is that...
		So, Mueller investigates for over two years, through the midterm elections, and this is the time when all you heard on the news every single day was, Trump-Russia collusion, Trump-Russia collusion.
		Let's bring on this next guest who says that Donald Trump may have been a Russian spy since 1986. And all of these different things, you know, BuzzFeed publishes the Steele dossier, they're all citing it and they're all talking about it.
		And then, I don't know if you remember this, at the very end, it's like the last month, Buzzfeed had these two reporters who ran a story that said that they had been shown proof that Donald Trump instructed Cohen, his attorney, to lie before Congress.
		And this is a clear crime, and this is going to lead with indictments of Donald Trump.
		He's going to be walking away in handcuffs.
		The sitting president of the United States of America is about to be indicted.
		And Mueller's team put out a statement and they said, this is not true.
		We have not found that in our investigation.
		So they were willing at that point toward the very end.
		Yes, this was the Mueller report found that Trump did not direct Michael Cohen to lie.
		But more importantly than that is that they came out before the report was out and said, hey, listen, everyone's speculating about this.
		Kind of like control expectations because that's not going to happen.
		We didn't find any evidence of that.
		Yet they allowed for two plus years every pundit in the world to speculate about whether the sitting president of the United States had committed high treason.
		And he never came out and said, hey guys, that's not where our investigation is pointed at all.
		Like, cool it with that.
		He let everybody say that through the midterm elections and just through the first two-plus years of Trump's administration.
		Just let that hang over him, even though, clearly, he never had any evidence pointing in that direction at all, which is insane.
		It was like the biggest story in the history of the United States of America, if it was true, that the sitting president is actually a Russian agent.
		Like, there's nothing bigger than that ever.
		But the actual story...
		Is almost as big.
		Which is that the intelligence agencies framed the sitting president for treason.
		And they all got away with it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And this is the world we're living in right now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is the real red pill moment.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It's the Richmond north of Richmond.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		They all want total control.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		But that's kind of, I think on some instinctual level, that's why that song resonates so much with people.
		I remember you said once, I always thought this was the best way to put it.
		And I believe you were talking about Occupy Wall Street.
		Now, this was years ago when that was going on.
		And you compared them to white blood cells?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And you go, now, white blood cells maybe don't exactly understand what virus this is exactly.
		They don't know the science of it.
		But they know, like, corruption?
		Rush.
		It's just like this kind of thing on an instinctual level.
		And I think there was something to that, like, with Occupy Wall Street.
		Like, yeah, sure.
		If you went down there and you talked to the average kid there and asked him, like...
		About economics or something, he might give you some ridiculous answer.
		But they knew those big banks being bailed out was corrupt as shit, you know?
		And I think there's something about that.
		Like, people just know, they're like, this whole system is bullshit.
		And they're right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's bullshit.
		And it's gonna remain bullshit.
		That's what's crazy.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Until the Libertarians take over.
		Join the Libertarian Party.
		The Mises Caucus.
		We're going to get us there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But even if they got into power, what are they going to do about this vast intelligence community and the influence of special interests?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, look, it's almost like two separate things, okay?
		So it's like what needs to be done...
		Versus how you get it done.
		The how you get it done part is much more challenging.
		I'd say if you were bit by a venomous snake and whatever the antidote or something is at the top of a really steep hill, and you're like, okay, well the answer is we have to get that and inject it in you.
		But then the real problem becomes like, okay, but how the hell do we get up this hill?
		So, like, the answer is that all these agencies need to be abolished.
		The answer is that, like, you need a drastic reduction in the size and scope of government.
		You need to, like, abolish all of these three-letter organizations and just start over.
		Start over with the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
		That would be, like, that would be about as close to perfect as you could get.
		What you're dealing with is the most powerful entrenched interests in the history of the world.
		The American federal government is the biggest gravy train in the history of the world, the biggest organization in the history of the world, by every metric.
		How do you roll that back?
		That's a much more difficult question.
		And I think that...
		My guess on this is, like, the only plausible way to do this is that you need, like, a mass populist movement.
		And it can't be like, we got 45% of the country who's fed up with this government.
		It's got to be like, we got 85% of the country, and we're all together on all of this.
		And then you need elites.
		Like, you need the elites who will actually, like, put their power and influence and wealth behind this kind of, you know, type of movement to try to...
		Look, I mean, what really has to happen is that, and I think to some degree this is what happened with Elon Musk taking over Twitter, you know?
		It's that type of thing where you have a real elite, like a natural elite, too.
		Somebody who wasn't just, like, picked, didn't just win an election, but, like, built something insane, you know?
		Um...
		I think, at least it seems to me, I don't know Elon Musk at all, but it seems to me like he had a real belief that he's like, we're gonna destroy this country.
		Like, if we don't have kind of some type of free speech platform, this is gonna be our demise.
		And I think you need enough powerful people to realize that, like, you want to keep this thing together, man, because you're doing great.
		Like, this isn't good for you if this whole country falls apart.
		And we're dangerously, like, we're getting dangerously close to that point.
		And, look man, when it comes down to it, it's like, the reason why America is the most successful country that's ever existed is because it was the freest country.
		And that's the beautiful thing.
		Like, freedom is not only the most, like, moral A system, but it also leads to the most prosperity.
		It leads to the most harmony.
		It's what civilized behavior is, right?
		The essence of civilized behavior is essentially the non-aggression principle.
		The idea that you respect people and their property and you don't, you know what I mean?
		You're not allowed to just be a violent animal.
		You have to be non-violent and try to persuade people and trade with them.
		That's how civilization is built.
		And America was the best at that.
		You know, we were the best at that, at restraining government, having free markets and individual liberty.
		And we need to move back toward that, or we're going to die.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But the problem with that is that you're trying to move back toward that against people that have This desire for self-preservation and they have their own jobs and they have their position of power that they don't want to relinquish because what would they do now?
		What do they do now?
		You take everyone that's in all these intelligence agencies like you're no longer needed.
		But what about the people that are needed and what about the tasks that they do that are important?
		What about the legitimate eyes on terrorism?
		What about the legitimate You know, intelligence they're gathering about real dangers to the United States.
		What do you do about that?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, for the first part of it, you know, and, like, I don't have all the answers to this, but I know that, like, when the Soviet Union fell, there were people, I think to this day, but there were, like, people, like, communist, like, government officials who are, like, still collecting pensions.
		Like, they just kind of, like, paid them off.
		Almost like, listen, your services here are no longer needed.
		But, you know, that's, like...
		Don't revolt or anything.
		We're not going to kill you.
		We're not putting you on trial.
		But you're done.
		Take this money and go.
		I would be open to something like that for some people.
		I do think others should be criminally prosecuted.
		But I think that there certainly is a role for intelligence gathering.
		There certainly has to be a role for national defense.
		Now...
		I think in an ideal world, it would all be kind of like a voluntary private type system.
		But in practical terms, I think that, look, like, it's not as if before the CIA was created, that was just like, the president was just like, we have no intelligence, we're just flying completely blind, you know?
		And, like, what it was created to be was essentially like a newspaper for the president.
		Like, you're supposed to basically deliver, here's the news the president needs to know, like the real important news.
		And what it's become is like a paramilitary organization that starts wars and colored revolutions all around the world, lies the American people into conflict, spies on our political leaders and presidential campaigns and all of this stuff, and you're like, yeah, this just became something it wasn't ever supposed to be.
		It was never supposed to be this thing.
		And now you're really the guy's Who are in control.
		I think since Kennedy, that's kind of been true.
		That's really who's running the show here.
		And you can't go on with that.
		You know what I mean?
		That has to just be scrapped.
		By the way, if anyone from the CIA is listening, I'm no threat to ever actually do this.
		So we're totally cool.
		Totally cool.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I bet there's certain people in the CIA that agree with you.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I wouldn't be surprised.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure there's people that are very uncomfortable with the way things go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		People that are real patriots that got into that job because they genuinely want to protect American interests and American people.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure there are.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		There are always lots of people like that, almost in any organization.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it is absolute power, corrupts absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just this principle that's always existed.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, and this is the essence of why Washington, D.C. being so powerful is such a problem.
		It's like when you have this kind of concentrated power in D.C., power corrupts.
		An absolute power corrupts absolutely.
		It's the old Lord Atkins saying, which really does apply.
		And this is essentially why I'm a libertarian and not a leftist.
		Is that it's...
		Because I don't even...
		On some pure levels, I think I have some of the same kind of...
		Like, I was a left-leaning kid before I got obsessed with Ron Paul and all this stuff.
		But, like, I care about helping poor people and I don't think you should be a bigot.
		You know what I mean?
		Like, I have, like, those kind of leftist impulses.
		But it's just, like...
		I feel like most of, like, progressives and leftists, they want to have a very powerful government that does those things.
		And my realization is that you can never have this very powerful government without all the corruption that comes along with it.
		Like, you kind of essentially want power to not corrupt.
		But it's going to.
		It's just inevitable.
		And, you know, when you have...
		I mean, I don't know even the exact numbers right now.
		I think during COVID, I think we topped off at $7 trillion in total federal spending.
		You have an organization that spends $7 trillion It's like, that is so much power that, of course, everybody's gonna be fighting for who gets to wield that power.
		It's like the Lord of the Rings thing.
		The only answer here is to throw it away.
		It's not that the good guy gets it.
		That's not the answer.
		And I think that's kind of the essence of leftism.
		What if the good guy could get it, and then we use that power to just give everybody healthcare and stuff, you know?
		And you're like, hmm.
		I am.
		It's a nice idea, but let me put that ring on you.
		And I'm not claiming I could wear that ring either.
		I'd become evil too.
		You know, that's even like the most, the nicest, you know, like well-meaning democratic socialist type people who some of them I like personally, you know, like I like Ben Burgess.
		I think he's a good dude.
		But I wouldn't trust him with that much power.
		You know what I mean?
		Like I don't, there's not one of them who I think would actually be able to wield it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Not only that, you're going to have people in your ear, and you're going to have people that supported your campaign, and there's going to have people that you've aligned with, and you've made certain deals with.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And it's like, look, and there's evil people out there in the world, and they're going to be attracted to that level of power.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's legitimately people out there in the world that will make decisions that will make them money and get people killed, and they sleep like a baby.
		That's hard for people to accept if you don't do that.
		If that's not your life, it's hard for people to accept.
		But that's true.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there are predators amongst us.
		And when you're not a predator, it is...
		We all do this thing where we project ourselves onto others.
		And I think that's the essence of how you have empathy.
		You know, like you put yourself in their shoes and think like, oh, well, I wouldn't want that to happen to me, so I won't do that to someone else.
		But the flaw in that is that, yeah, it's very hard For many of us to actually put ourselves in the position of some, you know, like to think that like, oh, there's someone else who's kind of like me in some ways, but will also like kill children and not lose a wink of sleep over it.
unidentified		Right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And somehow another feel like it's okay to do.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is very bizarre, like, very bizarre.
		Very bizarre that that's a human characteristic, especially if you're not physically experiencing the death and destruction.
		You're doing it, everything's remote.
		And even though you know there's like a tally, and you know that there's...
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Do you ever, did I ever mention, I probably have, one of the times I've been on, but that Madeleine Albright quote, when she was interviewed on 60 Minutes, and there was this UN report, this was during the Clinton years, and there was a UN report that said that the,
		because at the time, like the first Persian Gulf War was over, but Bill Clinton had this like massive sanction regime against Iraq, and they had a total blockade around the country, and massive bombing campaigns, and this is one of the things Osama bin Laden Bin Laden cited in his declaration of war against the U.S., one of his list of grievances.
		And so the U.N. report said that they believe 500,000...
		Oh, yeah.
		It's pretty short.
		You can just play it.
unidentified		In Hiroshima.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, hold on.
unidentified		Play it.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Bring it back a little because I missed her question.
unidentified		We have heard that a half a million children have died.
		I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima.
		And, you know, is the price worth it?
		I think this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It's just like...
		A crazy thing to just say.
		She goes, 500,000 kids have died.
		Is the price worth it?
		And you go, yeah, we think so.
		But I mean, she did preface it, but it's a tough choice.
		But yeah.
		Yeah, we do.
		And this was always kind of like my thing.
		And this is what Ron Paul...
		I first got introduced to Ron Paul.
		It was that moment with Giuliani in 2007 when they were having that debate.
		And...
		His basic argument was just like, look, if we're at war with these terrorists, then we need to at least understand what's going on here.
		And put yourself in their shoes.
		Imagine someone was talking like this about your kids.
		You know what I mean?
		We've decided that price is worth it.
		I think my response to that might be like, well, I've decided this price is worth it now.
		And again, it's just like the thing with Vladimir Putin.
		It doesn't mean, obviously, that doesn't mean 9-11 was okay.
		That doesn't mean terrorism is okay.
		It's okay that they killed innocent people.
		It's just like, if you want to understand what's going on here, you have to be able to put yourself In the perspective, ask yourself the question, how would we feel if this was done to us?
		That was my central point with all of the stuff with the war in Ukraine.
		So I just go like, okay, you're saying Vladimir Putin wasn't provoked, but what if...
		What if the Warsaw Pact never dissolved?
		The USSR was still going.
		And then they moved their military alliance all the way up through Britain and then into Canada.
		And then they went over and backed a violent coup who overthrew the pro-US government in Canada and put in a pro-Russian government.
		And then we're talking about expanding the military alliance more.
		And they started putting weapons in Canada.
		You know what I mean?
		They'd be like, what would we think about that?
		We'd probably be like, whoa, this is an act of aggression.
		This is at least a provocation.
		You know, it's like that...
		That always...
		I was always very attracted to Ron Paul's message because of that.
		Because it's like, this just seems like a very basic thing to understand.
		If you're gonna understand what's going on.
		That it's not all...
		You can't only look at things from the perspective of your country.
		You have to look at things from the perspective of people outside.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the real problem with getting your news from television.
		Because these are very nuanced subjects that require a lot of information to really get a full...
		Picture of what exactly caused this conflict to jump off in the first place and Most people aren't getting that.
		It's just it's a failure of mainstream news.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		But what's cool is like, you know, we are living in this kind of through this revolution of all of that stuff where I genuinely don't know how much longer the corporate press will even be around if it keeps going in this direction.
		I mean, it is really wild.
		And it's been very interesting to see both RFK Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy like on podcasts all over the place.
		Like I had both of them on my podcast.
		You had RFK on here, like blew up the Internet.
		It's just interesting that now they're kind of recognizing, oh, well, there's this whole other way that people are getting information.
		And I just I don't know how anyone could argue that just objectively it's so much if the goal is to, like, tell people your ideas and to educate people about what's going on.
		It's so much better to have, like, a hours long discussion than to go do a seven minute segment on CNN.
		It's kind of ridiculous to ever think you could talk about any, like, complex idea that way.
		And there's lots of shows like this.
		I was watching the other day.
		I watched Crystal and Sagar.
		What's their show?
		It's Breaking Points now, right?
		Or was that the old one?
		No, it's Breaking Points.
		They had Chris Matthews on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I saw that.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You did see it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let me take a pee break and we'll come back and talk about that because it was pretty wild.
unidentified		Sure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And we're back.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So, Chris Matthews.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		On Breaking Points.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		A while to watch.
		First off, I don't know.
		He seemed like he was drunk.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He seemed tired.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Maybe tired.
		I don't know.
		But he's also got that old Irish thing about him.
		I don't know.
		But it was pretty interesting to watch the back and forth and how defensive he got.
		At points where Crystal was kind of asking questions that, many of which I thought were very fair questions.
		I mean, I thought part of what she was saying was insane, where she was bragging about how great the government did during COVID and all that stuff, and I completely disagree with her on that.
		But she was asking, like, very fair questions.
		And the one that was the most interesting to me was to get a guy like Chris Matthews, who was really one of the staples of cable news, throughout this whole kind of You know, the last, whatever, 15, 20 years, maybe even more than that.
		And to ask him, like, look, you clearly are like a big critic of the populist movements that have arose.
		Like, he was a big critic of Bernie Sanders, a big critic of Donald Trump, you know?
		And he's like, but do you see...
		Any failures on your part that led to this?
		Like, do you get why people are so upset with the establishment Democrats and Republicans?
		And he seemed to have, like, no answer to it.
		And that's just – it's one of those things where, like, I think so many people in that game in the corporate press world, it's like – Whatever they'd be criticizing you or someone like that, and you're like, but do you guys ever just sit and ask yourselves, well, why is it that the people abandoned you?
		And went over to this other, you know, like, in this completely other direction.
		Wouldn't you at some point, I remember Tucker Carlson said this once, I think it was in his book, Ship of Fools, but he was like, like, if your wife leaves you for, like, a guy, you know what I mean?
		Like, your wife leaves you for some guy, like, at first, yeah, you're like, oh, screw her, you know, or whatever.
		But, like, at some point, you might, like, reflect on that and go, like, well, what happened there?
		Like, what did I do?
		That, you know, like she wanted to leave.
		Like, you know what I mean?
		And like, there seems like there's none of that with them.
		And it's fairly easy to figure out, which is like what we've been talking about.
		It's like, oh yeah, the system was so incredibly corrupt.
		And it was screwing over regular people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you're someone whose business is mainstream news right now, especially like cable news, You've got to be concerned with the limitations of your platform.
		Because one of the things with people having access to instantaneous video now, whether it's YouTube or Rumble or whatever it is, is like you can instantly get things on your phone.
		There's no need to be sitting through all these commercials.
		There's no need to be tuning in at a specific time.
		There's no need to have something like, unless you have TiVo or whatever it is, a DVR, you can't pause it and rewind it.
		You can't stop it to go take a piss?
		Like, what?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's like, why do it that way?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		There's just a superior way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What world are you guys living in?
		You're living in a bizarro world where you're using 1990s ideology when it comes to, like, how you broadcast things.
		And you're interrupting things every five minutes.
		It's impossible to have an in-depth discussion where people aren't under tremendous pressure.
		And also, you're having a lot of these discussions.
		You're not even there with them physically.
		You're in remote locations, and there's several people talking over each other.
		And everyone's just trying to get a big sound bite.
		And then you cut to commercial.
		And like, what did you do?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And you're just not...
		And in that environment, everything's very shallow and very kind of like on the surface.
		And so, you know, it's like, well, what led to the rise of Donald Trump as a political figure?
		And it's like, uh, racism and Russia or whatever.
		And you're like, yeah, but that's not, come on, man.
		Like, that's not really getting at what happened here.
		Like, why is it that this guy's anti-establishment message was so popular?
		It resonated so much with tens of millions of Americans.
		I think you can – if you just look at just the 21st century alone and you look at kind of like the elites that are in charge of society.
		Every society is going to have elites.
		That's just the way things work.
		You may not like that but that's just the way things work.
		Every sector has elites, everything.
		That's how human beings are.
		But what have the elites given the American people in the 21st century?
		It's like, okay, well, we got 9-11.
		We got two 20-year catastrophe wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
		We got that all culminated in the worst financial crisis in 100 years in 2008. In response to that...
		So the Federal Reserve...
		Another organization that should be abolished.
		But they do a good job of keeping data.
		According to the Federal Reserve, it was like between 2007 and 2010, the average American lost 40% of their net worth.
		Like 40% of their net worth evaporated.
		And if you can just like imagine Imagine what it's like if you got two kids and you're making like 70 grand a year.
		Something like that.
		Just kind of like the average person.
		You lose 40% of your net worth.
		You're like...
		I mean...
		It's terrifying.
		You know what I mean?
		And then the response to that from Barack Obama when he got in was what they called the Obama recovery.
		But the Obama recovery was basically created by lowering interest rates to zero and jacking up government spending to the highest levels it had ever been.
		And so they have a recovery on paper.
		But who really benefits from an environment where you have crazy high government spending and 0% interest rates are – well, the 0% interest rates benefit the Wall Street speculators because now everyone's got to speculate in order to make any money on their money.
		You can't just save your money because you're making nothing.
		So you have to kind of gamble it in the Wall Street casino.
		So Wall Street gets filthy rich off this.
		And then the high government spending, it's like everyone connected to D.C. Made a ton of money.
		So it was great for them.
		But for the Rust Belt, it wasn't great.
		That's why so many of those same areas that voted for Obama went for Trump.
		Because he was talking about bringing their jobs back.
		You know what I mean?
		And it's like, you put yourself in the perspective of these people who like, I don't know, like...
		Like his son died in Iraq.
		You know what I mean?
		Or maybe one of his kids came back a mess from this war that they now admit we never should have fought to begin with.
		It was all bullshit.
		You know what I mean?
		You lost your job in 08 and now you have some crappier job than you've ever had before.
		You know what I mean?
		Maybe you got another kid who's like addicted to opioids or something like that because there's a whole epidemic of that going on.
		And like then this guy came in and told you he cares about you.
		He's going to win for you.
		He's a big billionaire motherfucker.
		He said, I'm going to win.
		Bring your jobs back.
		It's not such a mystery why they went for that guy and why they rejected the entire corporate media who had been basically lying to them for the last 20 years.
		It was almost like Crystal was asking Chris Matthews, do you have...
		Can you think about this at all?
		And he was just completely shut off to even entertaining.
		What failures of the establishment might have led to this new populist moment that we live in today?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, they had a big moment where she was talking about taxing the rich.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think she was wrong about all that stuff.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, she was talking about how, you know, during the pandemic, certain acts were passed that essentially eliminated childhood famine, right?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, she was making some point about the child tax credit or something like that.
		The problem with all that, and I think Crystal Ball and a lot of the left-wingers are just out to lunch on this stuff, is that, like, listen, during COVID, 2020 and 2021 were, like, the absolute worst years of It's not like the government did something that really made everything wonderful.
		It was terrible.
		And in the midst of that, what the government really did in its response was give crumbs to people while giving trillions to, like, big corporations and big banks.
		Objectively, that's what happened.
		The trillions and trillions of dollars that they spent that year, the vast majority of it went to big business.
		So, this idea that, like, and of course, you know, she can talk about the spending and how, like, okay, you can say the spending, well, it helped for the people who got the money, and it's like, yes, and then they had to feel the inflation from all of that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But the childhood tax credit, right?
		What was the benefit of that?
		There is some tangible benefit of that.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I 100% agree.
		Listen, to any extent that you're giving out tax credits, I'm all for that.
		So yeah, people with kids have less money to pay in taxes.
		I think that's great.
		I think the COVID response, if anything, should have been to, I'd say, abolish the income tax.
		You know?
		There you go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If people can't work.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, listen, I mean, that doesn't solve the problem that people can't work.
		But for working people, that would give them enormous relief.
		And then, you know, of course, all these other things is like, it's a result of the lockdowns that now you've kicked all of these people out of work.
		So now the argument is like, well, we have to give them something.
		But the real answer there is that we never needed to do the lockdowns to begin with.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The real problem is that it really reinforces the tinfoil hat brigade because then you say they're trying to weaken America and they're doing this on purpose.
		The lockdowns were on purpose.
		The reason why they're doing this is not political.
		It's not for optics.
		It's they're trying to destroy the country by destroying the middle class and destroying small businesses, destroying restaurants.
		And then he's just like...
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but maybe, I mean, I don't blame, I blame them for making it look like that's what they're trying to do.
unidentified		Right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It's like, you're making it seem like this is a big conspiracy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		So maybe stop doing that.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And then, like, it won't, there won't be so much traction for conspiracy theorists, which I will admit, sometimes get pretty nutty, and you're like, yeah, I don't think you can really prove any of that.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		But I understand why when the government is so corrupt and they lie so much and they screw over average Americans so much It leads to an environment where conspiracies spread.
		And then the other thing is that there are a lot of really legitimate conspiracies that really are conspiracies.
		I mean, it's pretty clear that there was...
		I mean, we have the emails.
		Like, Fauci conspired to kill the lab leak story.
		Like, they conspired to kill the Hunter Biden story.
		These are conspiracies.
		And so, you know, again, it's like my, you know, analogy of like, it's like if I heard Sam Harris said recently on a podcast that he said something, he goes, and he was being critical of you and RFK, I think, and Brett Weinstein.
		And he said, he goes, well, these guys are over here talking about how bad the mRNA vaccine is, how bad COVID restrictions are, but I'm trying to sail where I understand that we're losing trust in these institutions, but we also need institutions that we can trust.
		And my thing is almost it's like the analogy of the if you're cheating on your wife and your wife catches you cheating on her and then you go, you know, your response is like, you know, the real problem here is that there's not trust in this marriage and we need a marriage with trust.
		And it's like, yeah, yeah.
unidentified		No, the real problem is that you lied.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's why there's no trust.
		I'm fine with the theoretical argument that we need institutions we can trust.
		Yeah, that'd be great.
		That'd be great if during a pandemic there were a bunch of medical experts who could get us accurate information, be honest, and spread that information around.
		Sure.
		But the problem isn't that we just don't trust them.
		The problem is that they're lying, and we caught them red-handed.
		And then that led to a bunch of people going like, well, how long have they been lying?
		You know, if they're lying about this, when were they honest?
		And then the more you look into it, you're like, oh shit, they were always lying.
		They've been lying for a really long time.
		And so to turn around and then blame that on, you know, the problem here is just that we don't have trust.
		Like, no, that's actually a solution.
		That's a step in the right direction if you don't trust these motherfuckers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		COVID cracked a lot of people.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it sure did.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It really did.
		It exposed people.
		It's very unfortunate.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Trump did a lot, too, and then COVID really took it to the next level.
		But it's interesting.
		You learn a lot about who people really are, how things really work.
		It's like a stress test, kind of.
		I have a bit about this.
		In my new special, by the way, which was just released yesterday on YouTube.
		Go check it out.
		Please.
		Yay.
		But it's like COVID was like a stress test, you know?
		Like you throw a crisis at something and you see how strong it really is.
		What's the constitution here?
		And it exposed a lot.
		We go, ooh, we had some weaknesses.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Exposed a lot in people that they don't want to admit it exposed them because they keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into these holes trying to find ways that they were right.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you see a lot of that online.
		You see a lot of that on Twitter.
		There's so many people that are just trying to reinforce with their previous statements regardless of whether or not they're easily disproven now at this point.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And the crazy thing is when you encounter people who are still hanging on to the arguments that the regime itself has already abandoned.
		You know what I mean?
		Like, they're not even making that argument anymore.
		Like, Fauci's not even saying this.
		And then people will say these things.
		You know, I see people still, it's only a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
		They still say that?
		Like, just regular people.
		Like, online.
		Like, Fauci ain't saying that anymore.
		Even he knows, like, we've abandoned that talking point.
		But then people, you hear it enough and they believe it.
		And that's one of the things with all this stuff, it's part of how propaganda works, I guess like the big lie type deal, that if you just repeat something often enough, it does stick with a lot of people.
		There's a certain percentage who it's just like, yeah, but I heard that a lot, so there must be something to it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it's a disturbing amount of smart people.
		Smart people that are just unwilling to go outside the boundaries of the ideology.
		There's a thing that you're supposed to say, and they say it so you don't get attacked, and everybody's like, yeah, thanks for saying that.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and then there's also a weird reaction.
		It's like people get into binary thinking a lot.
		They want to put everything into a neat box.
		I remember I tweeted something about Sam Harris when he had that clip, And just the amount of responses I get, people who are agreeing with me, but they'll say things like, they're like, this guy is such an idiot.
		And you're like, no.
		No, no, no.
		He's not.
		That's kind of the whole interesting thing here.
		It's like, no, he's not dumb.
		Right.
		He's a really brilliant neuroscientist or whatever, neurologist, whatever he is.
		He ain't dumb, you know what I mean?
		And that's kind of more fascinating, actually.
		It is more fascinating.
		Wrong and stupid are not synonymous.
unidentified		Right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		They're two very different things.
		And it's interesting, Michael Malice has that line where he goes, it's much easier to train a smart dog.
		And so the idea is almost like, sometimes even being very intelligent Makes you more susceptible to propaganda.
		Like it's easier to kind of like train the intelligent.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think the real problem is ego.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The people don't ever want to admit they were wrong.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's a big part of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We were talking about this last night about the importance of not being married to your ideas.
		Your ideas are not you.
		They're just ideas.
		And that you have to recognize when you're holding on to ideas because you have made this connection that you have said this thing and this thing is a part of you.
		And if you say that this thing is incorrect, then you failed.
		And you're wrong and you're not as good as you were.
		So you try to find a way where you were good.
		And you try to find a way where you can kind of manipulate language and maybe even...
		Maybe even fucking change the information.
		Like, let's imagine if the information was different.
		Let's imagine if 10% of the people died.
		Yeah, but they didn't.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, like if your argument is reduced to like, okay, you made this point and you were right and I made this point and I was wrong.
		But imagine a situation where your point was wrong and my point was right.
		How about now?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, let's not imagine that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's look at what actually happened and you should be apologizing.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's like we could play your imagination game in a few minutes, but first let's just talk about what really happened and who was right and who was wrong.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And how are you discounting this 40% increase in all-cause mortality?
		Or whatever the fuck it is.
		What is it now?
		You know, it depends upon the statistics that you read, but it's like they're getting that from insurance companies, right?
		Where they're trying to make an assessment of, like, what's going on.
		And there's a lot of people that are very nervous about this.
		Because what is the increase in all-cause mortality right now?
		I think it's like, you know, 1859 or whatever the fuck it is.
		There's some very bizarre increase.
		And I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson trying to say, well, a lot of people were drinking during the pandemic.
		Like...
		Really?
		Was there another thing that happened too?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That may be really crazy.
		Do you imagine if so many people started drinking, there was a 40% increase in all-cause mortality?
		Wouldn't there be shows about alcoholism?
		Ladies and gentlemen, look at what's happening to our country.
		Imagine there was no pandemic, there's no vaccinations.
		Imagine all of a sudden a 40% increase in all-cause mortality.
		And then you just kind of casually say, well, I guess a lot more people are drinking now.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And you're just not...
		And you're telling me...
		And look, by the way, I'm not even, like, ruling out the fact that, okay, I think alcohol consumption maybe went up during the lockdowns, and that could be a contributing factor to this.
		But you're telling me the starting point has to be we rule out this brand new, like, medical intervention?
		Like, you can't look at that?
		You're telling me that's...
		The starting point is that can't be part of the conversation?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're trying Trying to ignore this thing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Imagine if these were just variables in an equation that you were tasked with solving.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why would you ignore this very significant variation?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And then the truth is, like, whatever The rate of vaccine injury is.
		Whatever that number is.
		Maybe it's not that high.
		It's something.
		It is clearly something.
		With all drugs.
		Clearly, there have been a large number of people who have been injured by the vaccine.
		And then when you look at that and you go, look, and you guys, your position, the entire establishment position was everyone should get it.
		Everyone should get it.
		When there were clearly cases where you really don't have an argument, you know, like a healthy young person who's already had COVID.
		There's just no argument that they should take on whatever that risk is for something that won't even prevent them from getting COVID.
		Again, right?
		There's no argument for that.
		But you enforce that on them.
		I knew this kid who was in grad school.
		And he got double vaccinated because they were going to kick him out of school if he didn't.
		And then he got COVID. And then a month later, they insisted he get a booster.
		There is no expert on the planet who can give me a compelling scientific reason why that made any sense at all.
		Why you were doing anything other than to this 26-year-old kid making him take on serious risk.
		Nothing bad.
		And you insisted on this.
		So now, it's just crazy that you can't even acknowledge that.
		Like, yeah, we did give people, in many cases, very bad medical advice that had the potential to lead to them being injured.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And in many cases did.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And no accountability.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And even, I mean, it was one of the craziest moments of the entire pandemic was when you had Gupta, Dr. Gupta from CNN on here.
		And then he goes, so are you going to get vaccinated?
		And you went, no, just had COVID. Why would I get it?
		And he really had no answer.
		And this was during the vaccine passport time when they were trying to force everyone to get it.
		And yet here was the CNN doctor and had no response other to you that, you know, yeah, you got pretty good immunity.
		Maybe get some more with the vaccine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know, not only that, it was just like he had to admit that the immunity that was imparted by overcoming an infection is better.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you didn't get COVID. I got COVID. I recovered.
		I'm in a better position than you now.
		And you're telling me to do what you did?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And that the policy of the vaccine passports is that he can enter a restaurant that you're not allowed to enter now.
		When we all agree that you're in a better position than him.
		How does that make any sense?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because I didn't comply and I'm a bad boy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's what it is.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's basically it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's literally what it is.
		You should be a good guy and join our team.
		And I had smart people that I respect tell me I should get vaccinated after I got over COVID. I'm like, are you not paying attention to any of this?
		Why are you giving me that advice?
		First of all, Imagine if someone got something, and they got sick, and they got over it, and then saying, you can't do it that way.
		You should do it another way.
		And you have to do it our way.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And you got over it very quickly, too.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Very quickly.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It's not like you were hospitalized or something like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Dude, I did ten rounds on the bag six days after I was infected.
		Ten rounds.
		Just to see what it felt like.
		Felt great.
		Felt like zero impact.
		I felt like shit for a day.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I think we mentioned this before when I was on, but it was one of the episodes that I was on, which back in the height of it, I don't know, like three times ago that I was out here, was the one that went to Fauci, responded to you.
		And the thing that they found appalling was that your advice to young people was to be really healthy.
		You were like, listen, get yourself in really good shape.
		Exercise a lot.
		Eat well.
		Get a lot of sunlight if you can.
		If you can't, take vitamin D. You know what I mean?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They were upset that I was saying, if you're a young person, you're like 21 years old or whatever, don't do it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't think you need to do it.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I would tell them.
		I wouldn't advise you to get the vaccine.
		I'd tell you just be really healthy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But that was at the time when we actually knew the statistics of how it affected young people.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And at the same time...
		Fauci was going door to door.
		And what he was telling people was, you got to take this vaccine.
		And when they'd give him pushback and say, yeah, but I heard you can still get COVID even after you take the vaccine.
		And he'd say, in the unlikely event that you get it, it's going to be so mild you won't even know you were sick.
		Just lying to them.
		And that's not like, oh, he got it wrong.
		There was no scientific evidence to, like, argue that.
		They never even tested it on transmission.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Not only that, when you go over the trials that they did when they first were investigating the efficacy of this drug, one of the people in the COVID group that got the vaccine died of COVID. So they knew that.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Two people in the placebo group died of COVID.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's 100%?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's how they came up with the fact.
unidentified		100% effective.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It sounds so crazy, and I didn't believe it when RFK Jr. was saying it.
		I didn't believe that that was accurate.
		But then he actually sent me the real paperwork.
		And you read it, and you go, wow.
		That's really what it was.
		There was two people that died in the placebo group, one person died in the vaccinated group, and two is 100% more than one.
		So that's how it's 100% effective in stopping death.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		So this guy, Tom Woods, I don't know if you've ever heard of Tom Woods before.
		He's a brilliant historian.
		He does a podcast called The Tom Woods Show.
		Great guy.
		Good friend of mine.
		And he was like one of the loudest anti-lockdown voices back when the lockdown started.
		And did a great job of putting together all the data and all the arguments on how this isn't actually working and it's like an insane policy.
		And then was solid on the vaccine and all that all the way through.
		He told this story.
		It was in like his newsletter that he writes, which was very interesting to me.
		Kind of like demonstrated the whole, like where trust in institutions is.
		So he was at, I don't know, I think he's in his 50s.
		So he was at a doctor's appointment, he said.
		And his doctor was like, oh, you know, because your age or whatever, you can get the shingles vaccine now.
		So I'd recommend you get it.
		It's 87% effective against shingles.
		And he was basically saying, any time before the last three years, I would have just gone, okay.
		You know?
		I trust my doctor.
		Okay, sure.
		I don't want to get shingles, so I better take this vaccine.
		But now, he goes, I'm forced to go, well, how did you come up with this number?
		Is it like the ridiculous way you came up with the COVID vaccine number?
		So like, no, I'm not going to take that, because now I have to go and actually look into this.
		And that's kind of, I think, where a lot of people are.
		Like, that's where I am.
		That I would have always assumed...
		I don't know if my doctor's telling me this.
		He's done his research.
		He wouldn't just be telling me this without having looked into it.
		He knows better than me about this field.
		Now, I never trusted the CDC. You know what I mean?
		I always knew government entities were corrupt.
		But I figured my local doctor...
		Would kind of like not just recommend something to me.
		And that was a big thing that COVID exposed.
		That, oh, even that guy.
		Well, and I got in arguments with my kid's pediatrician over this.
		I had clearly done more research than he had.
		Like I knew shit that he didn't know.
		And he's recommending this to my kids, you know, which was insane.
		But that's where like a lot of people are at now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're financially incentivized, and that's where it got spooky.
		They financially incentivized people to mark deaths as COVID deaths.
		They financially incentivized initially people getting them put on ventilators.
		There was a lot of financial incentives that went into this.
		And I also wasn't aware, you know, embarrassingly so, that most hospitals are just private businesses.
		I never thought of it that way.
		I thought a hospital has got to be something that's set up entirely to make people better.
		And that's all they care about.
		They're not trying to make money.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And it's even worse than just like private businesses because they're private businesses in this heavily corrupted, regulated field.
		So even like down to like certification of need legislation where you kind of have to get approved by other hospitals in order to open a hospital.
		So they like kind of keep their competition out.
		And then they try to make as much money as they can.
unidentified		Really?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's all very corrupt and very weird.
		You know how it is with these crazy- They have territories.
		Yeah, it's like mafia shit almost.
		Like, yeah, you think you're opening up a hospital here, boy?
		I don't think so.
		There's all this shit that just makes the whole thing very corrupt.
		And of course, the whole insurance system is very corrupt, where it's this very phony- Market of prices where you're never seeing anything and these prices are marked up super high.
		So the doctors in the hospitals can make money and the insurance companies get reimbursed, but then they charge you it in your premiums.
		So you're totally removed from what the costs of things actually are.
		Very, very corrupt field.
		And it's insane because it's like, yeah, you're helping sick people.
		Isn't this like why you went into medicine?
		It's like to...
		To help people?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It all gets corrupted by money.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and power.
		Money and power.
		You know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But the money thing is so spooky.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Financial incentives to get people to take medication that they might not really need and probably shouldn't take.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, goddamn, I mean, if nothing else, I really think it's great that RFK is at least, like, getting a conversation started on a lot of this stuff, because it seems like almost nobody else was going to bring up this stuff.
		You know, one of the things that I thought was really interesting about the...
		When you had him on the podcast and that created a huge storm and then there was the thing with the Hotez guy refusing to come on and debate him when you offered it.
		The pot was up to like $2 million or something like that.
		And it's like...
		establishment who have been wrong about just about everything throughout this pandemic.
		I mean, there were, I don't know if you saw any of the compilation videos that were made of that hotel guy going around, just like at every phase, getting everything wrong throughout this, but then still has the nerve to be like, this guy's spreading misinformation and it's dangerous and all this, refusing to come have a conversation with him.
		But you're like, okay, so, um, so here's RFK Jr.
		And he's going, look, America has the highest rate of chronic illness in the world.
		Autism spikes through the roof in the last few decades.
		And his argument to me sounds that this isn't just that we started diagnosing autism.
		Like, because 50% of autistic kids never develop language.
		We would have known this.
		Like, we may not have called it the right thing, but we would have noticed people who don't develop language, you know?
		And so he's going, so we have the highest rate of chronic illness in the world.
		We have autism shooting through the charts.
		And he's going, look, here are some potential culprits for that.
		And so, okay, if you think that's all crazy, like, okay, but what is it?
		What is going on here?
		Because in the American political conversation, this never comes up.
		Nobody's ever bringing this up.
		I cannot think of a presidential candidate who's ever mentioned once that this is a thing.
		That never comes up on CNN. That no one wants to talk about it.
		So at least he's talking about it.
		By the way, I haven't really ever been talking about that.
		I don't know what the answer to any of it is.
		But someone should be bringing that up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I never even thought it was a possibility until the pandemic, until I read his book.
		When I read The Real Anthony Fauci, I was like, wait, what did they do?
		What did they do during the AIDS crisis?
		Because that's what's important, that it's not just about what's happening right now.
		It's about what they did when they pushed AZT through.
		It's about what they did when they were injecting these foster kids With these experimental drugs and they died.
		All that stuff is true.
		And it's fucking terrifying.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And this is why Hotez won't come on.
		This is why he won't come on with RFK. Because he knows that this guy can go chapter and verse.
		You can kind of push him on defending his claims, but then he gets to push you on all this stuff.
		And I don't even know if Hotels was directly related to that, but I know he's in bed with that whole establishment.
		He got funding from all the same groups and stuff.
		It's like, okay, so this is who you're working with?
		These are the talking points that you're parroting?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And it's just, it's all...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The guy doesn't take vitamins, doesn't exercise, eats junk food, and he posts pictures of him getting the RSV vaccine.
		It's like, okay, buddy.
		That's the way to do it.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		He got the RSV vaccine?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Posted a photo on Twitter.
		By the way, he has it limited now.
		The only people he follows can respond.
		So it's just like he's got this little echo chamber he's got going on in his tweets now.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Post me inviting him to have a debate with RFK. Dude, the thing that drove me crazy about that was that then he turned it around and started playing the victim and going, you know, like Joe Rogan's led this harassment campaign against me and all these people on Twitter all day are like, you know, like I'm being demonized by this whole group.
		And you sit there and you go like, yeah, you know, as an unvaccinated person, I have no idea what that's like.
		I have no idea what it's like for you to like, you know what I'm saying?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But not only that, it's bullshit because he said I had neo-fascist leanings.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He'd been on the podcast twice.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And I've fucking chatted with the guy.
		Like, he knows I'm not a fucking fascist.
		Like, what are you saying?
		You don't believe that.
		You're saying something you don't really believe.
		And you did it without, like, mentioning me.
		You know, like, with the at mention.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So somebody had to send it to me.
		And I was like, this motherfucker...
		Like neo-fascist leanings?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You're telling me that the guy who is pushing forced vaccinations on behalf of giant private pharmaceutical companies is calling you a neo-fascist?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Do you have any idea what these terms even mean and who's being the fascist here and who's not?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's why I did it.
		And even then, I didn't insult him.
		I'm very careful about that.
		I don't like to engage in that kind of shit online.
		I don't think it's healthy for anybody.
		Even if I have bad feelings towards a person, I'm not going to insult them like that.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And there were easy shots to go after with the guy.
		But it's good you didn't.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I didn't insult him when he was on my podcast.
		He was telling me about his fucking diet.
		I didn't insult him.
		It's like, especially when, I mean, the contrast between me and him physically, like someone who really does take care of themselves and then being lectured by someone who doesn't, that the only way around that is vaccines.
		There's only one way.
		There's this one solution to this problem, this very complex problem called the human immune system.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		80% of the people hospitalized for COVID were obese.
		Something like that.
		Something crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Comorbidities of the people that died.
		Some large number.
		More than 70% had 4 plus comorbidities.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		If I remember correctly, it was like Something like 50% had four comorbidities or more and then like 95% had at least one.
		You know what I mean?
		It was basically like almost all the COVID deaths were very sick people.
		And so like you would think, yeah, maybe that should at least be part of the conversation.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And by the way, for people that like to cherry-pick shit here, no one is saying COVID was nothing.
		No one.
		People say, oh, you're saying the COVID was nothing and the vaccines were bad.
		Nope.
		Not saying that.
		Never said that.
		What I'm saying is it's really bad for people that are sick already.
		For sure.
		People that have weak immune systems, it was really bad.
		But don't pretend that everyone's the same.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		So I would say that COVID, if you were...
		COVID was a nasty virus.
		And if you were very old and or very sick, you really did not want to get this thing, especially the early strains of it.
		You really did not want to get this thing.
		And I think that there is an argument that early on, if you were very old and very sick and had never had COVID, that maybe it did make sense for you to get the vaccine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think it did make sense for a lot of people who offered some level of protection initially.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But there was other things they could have done as well.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Sure, but just because it makes sense for that one group, you cannot extrapolate from that now that it makes sense for every group.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And the ones that are the most obvious would be like, if you're like a young, healthy person who's already had COVID. Because in that case, no, it just doesn't make sense for you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Not only that, these same people that are pro-vaccine, anti-doing anything else, where is your outrage about this lab leak?
		Where is your outrage about the source of this thing?
		Why are you upset at the people that are getting sick or the people that choose not to do some sort of experimental medical intervention and choose to try to survive it just with natural immunity and do so?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Where is your outrage about the source of this thing, which is the whole reason it happened in the first place, why people were forced to make these choices to take this experimental vaccine?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The whole thing was about this one virus that got released that clearly seems to have some connection to gain-of-function research that was funded by Fauci.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And funded by the NIH. At the very least, the lab was clearly funded by subsidiaries of the NIH. But that's just factually true.
		The lab was funded by subsidiaries of the NIH. And it looks overwhelmingly like that's where...
		The virus originated from.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It also looks like they tried to cover it up for a very specific reason.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And they clearly tried to cover it up.
		And Fauci clearly had his guys writing papers about how it couldn't be from the lab that they've all had to kind of retract now because it wasn't actually a scientific argument.
		They just wanted to dead this story.
		And that Fauci was the guy who signed off On the exception.
		That Obama had basically banned gain-of-function research and that Dr. Fauci himself was the one who signed off for the first SARS thing for this being an emergency use.
		And so he had to.
		So a lot of blame falls at his feet.
		And then you go like, oh...
		This kind of explains in a different way why this guy was so willing to be out there saying, nope, this is the only solution, this is the only thing to focus on, this is what we have to do.
		It's like, oh yeah, because you actually have a lot of culpability in this whole thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It's creepy.
		It just sucks.
		It sucks to be a fucking human being right now having to navigate all this shit.
		Like, what are these people that aren't you or me and not most people?
		What the fuck are they doing?
		What the fuck are they doing?
		Every single realm of this conversation.
		What the fuck are they doing?
		Not one group, not one person is doing something that you go, oh, I like that.
		This is a good step in the right direction.
		This is the right way to do it.
		They had to fucking be forced out of the lockdowns.
		It had to be a situation where they realized, Look, you can't sustain this forever.
		We have to go back.
		People kicking and screaming.
		Well, meanwhile, in some places like Florida and Texas, they never did anything.
		They stopped.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		They stopped very quickly.
unidentified		Very quickly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A few weeks of, okay, lockdown, and okay, what's really going on?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's look at the actual data.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Sweden, who didn't do lockdowns, had the lowest excess mortality in all of Europe.
		You know?
		I mean, there's just, like, clearly that didn't work.
		And, yeah, dude, there's a thing right now, again, I'll mention again, I think this is something that that kind of Richmond, North of Richmond, like, I think this is why that song caught so much fire, is, like, there's a really large group.
		I don't know if we're a majority.
		I think we are a majority of the country.
		But a large enough group that you're talking about like at least like a hundred million like people in this country who like just don't want to do this.
		And I mean that in a lot of different We don't want to keep fighting wars everywhere around the world.
		We're over that.
		Why are we always looking for another war to fight?
		Can we have five years with no war?
		Is that too much to ask?
		Literally, can we just put a few years together where we're not involved in a mass murder campaign somewhere?
		We don't want to go back to COVID restrictions.
		We don't want to live that way.
		We want to raise our kids and do what we do and enjoy our lives.
		We don't want to, like, indoctrinate children with this insane gender ideology.
		You know what I mean?
		Like, we don't want that.
		And there's a large percentage of us, and yet it's being forced, you know, like, we're being forced to live in this world.
		And for the most part, I think it's like most of the people in this group just kind of want their freedom.
		We're like, you know, like, I don't care so much what other people, like, if you want to go live a different way, that's fine.
		If you guys want to all go do lockdown somewhere, fine.
		They're just like, don't force us into this.
		And at least what I think is the positive out of that is that, like, There are a lot of people who are really serious about it.
		And I think there was something really positive about the Bud Light boycott thing and the Target boycott thing, where it's like, we have to have some mechanism by which we can actually, like...
		Give a black eye to one of these powerful organizations who are trying to force something onto you that you don't want.
		You know what I mean?
		And it seems like, oh, that actually maybe kind of worked a little bit.
		Maybe they will back off with that.
		You know what I mean?
		At least in those areas.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that's what people were trying to do that elected Trump.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think that's what they were trying to do.
		They were trying to say, like, this is different.
		I don't like what you guys do.
		This is different.
		This guy's outside of it.
		He knows how it runs.
		Yeah, maybe he's got his own problems, but at least he's different.
		He's different than this thing that you're gonna keep doing forever and ever and ever.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And man, does he piss you off.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And he pisses off the people who you're furious at.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And he goes, this is a big black eye for you.
		This is really like, oh man, the guy who you look so stupid now.
		Because you told everyone he couldn't possibly win.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We had this end of the world podcast in 2016 at the Comedy Store, a live podcast during the election.
		And then afterwards, it was a lot of fun.
		But afterwards, we were all in the back bar watching Jake Tapper have to sort of like solemnly declare that Donald Trump looks like he's going to be the president of the United States.
		And it's very clear that they're upset with this, which is interesting because isn't the news supposed to be the news?
		This is who's winning.
		This is how.
		He won.
		Looks like he won Iowa.
		He won this.
		He won that.
		Look, he's the new president.
		Okay, so now we have the new president.
		Is it Donald Trump?
		Let's see what happens.
		It wasn't that.
		It was just like this solemn moment where these people had to eat crow.
		It was like, ugh.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		There was a lot to that.
		I mean, look, part of the thing is just that Trump was determined.
		It was determined by the powers that be, you know, the corporate media, the deep state, all of the establishment, that he was unacceptable.
		And that's not new to Donald Trump.
		There were a lot of candidates who have been determined to be unacceptable.
		Ron Paul was unacceptable.
		Bernie Sanders was unacceptable.
		Tulsi Gabbard was unacceptable.
		And you saw, like, the machine be weaponized against all of them to keep them out.
		But Trump beat the machine.
		The difference is Trump won.
		I mean, there's other differences, but the guy who they determined was not acceptable ended up winning.
		And part of what was so powerful about that Is that it kind of destroyed the illusion of inevitability that I think progressives rely on.
		Progressives will very confidently tell you that you're on the wrong side of history.
		You know?
		Which is like a really interesting thing to say if you think about it.
		Like you're on the wrong side of history.
		Meaning like it's a guarantee that history is moving in my direction and I'm telling you how you will be judged in the future based off how you feel right now.
		And they kind of have good reason to feel that way because they have been kind of moving in the direction that they want to move in.
		But it was just like...
		We just had the first black president, and now we will have the first female president, and of course this throwback, bigot, male chauvinist Donald Trump could never possibly win.
		This is what's going to happen in history now, is Hillary Clinton is the next president.
		And that's not happening.
unidentified		How are they going to stop him from winning again?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're trying.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah, that's what all these indictments are right now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But the problem is it has the opposite effect on his base.
		It doesn't make people reluctant.
		It makes people more convinced that there's a conspiracy against him.
		It makes people more convinced that there's corruption that's fighting against him.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I think, personally, that Trump was at his most vulnerable within the Republican primary at the very beginning.
		I thought he, for the first time to me, he seemed like he was very out of step with his own base.
		He's sitting there still bragging about Operation Warp Speed, And how he saved hundreds of millions of lives by developing the vaccine.
		He was getting booed a few times in his own speeches.
		He just seemed kind of out of touch.
		And it seemed like, you know, it seemed like the energy of his campaign wasn't 2016, which was make America great again.
		This was like my vengeance tour.
		They screwed me.
		I lost, but I really won.
		I'm going to come back and win again.
		And it seemed to me like that wasn't really connecting.
		And then, you know, this was before DeSantis got in the race, but it was heavily speculated that he would be getting in the race.
		And, you know, he was like this guy who has a very good record on COVID, at least compared to all the other governors, just about all the other governors.
		And there just seemed to me like there was an opening there.
		There was like a vulnerability.
		And then they raided his house in Mar-a-Lago.
		And I felt like that guaranteed Trump front run.
		Like, that guaranteed it for him.
		Because as soon as they did that, it was like, oh, now it's like it's shifted right back to this, like, look what they're doing to your guy.
		They want to not give you the chance to vote for this guy.
		They're going to weaponize the justice system against this guy because you like him.
		And they're doing it to him because they want to do it to you.
		It kind of gave him, like, all this energy back.
		And so there's a real dynamic to that, where his numbers go up every time a new indictment comes out.
		People aren't buying into it because it's just so obvious that it's politicized.
		There's an interesting thing about the law.
		People have this conception of what the law is, and then there's the reality of it.
		People have this conception of there's a rule written down on a piece of paper, and that's the rule.
		If you break that rule, you broke the law.
		If you don't break that rule, you didn't break the law.
		But that's not really how it works.
		In the same way, down to the lowest level, if you get pulled over by a cop, there's times where he could give you a ticket or he could let you off with a warning.
		And sometimes it's just how that guy feels.
		Maybe he knew you.
		Maybe sometimes he goes, oh shit, Joe Rogan, I'll let you off with a warning.
		You know what I mean?
		There could be so many different factors.
		Just for example, James Clapper.
		You know, he was the director of national intelligence as basically the head of the shadow government.
		That's the highest position in the deep state.
		The CIA answers to you.
		You know, you oversee the CIA and the NSA and the FBI and all this stuff.
		And he lied to Congress very blatantly.
		Like, no question about it.
		He was asked point blank, is the NSA involved in any bulk data collection on American citizens?
		He said, no.
		We're not doing that.
		Then Ed Snowden came out and exposed that he clearly was.
		And he was the DNI. Like, he knew this.
		Okay?
		He lied to Congress.
		Why isn't he arrested for it?
		Because there's no political will to arrest that guy.
		He's of the deep state.
		He's one of the top guys.
		He's not getting arrested.
		Now, Michael Cohen lied to Congress.
		He got a month wrong when he was talking about a deal that he was working on for Trump.
		He said it happened in June, but it was really in January or something like that.
		He got charged with that and because they wanted to put pressure on him to get him to flip on Donald Trump, which he did.
		So that's – it's not like – there are crimes that are committed all the time.
		There's just no political will.
		There's no desire to arrest that person.
		And I think the thing that's wild about this with Trump is that if you think of all the crimes that presidents have committed, the idea that this is what one of them is actually going to go down for is insane.
	Like, Bush instituted torture.
	You know what I mean?
	Obama murdered American citizens without charges.
	These guys lied us into wars.
	By the way, every war is illegal.
	The supreme law of the land is the Constitution, and it says only Congress can declare war.
	The last declared war was World War II. Every war since then has been an illegal war.
	Anyone could be arrested for this at any time.
	The legal defense is that they're military actions, not wars.
	So you know that thing in Vietnam?
	It probably smelled like a war to you, but no, not a war.
	Korea wasn't a war.
	Iraq wasn't a war.
	Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen.
	None of those were wars, you know?
	If there was any political will, any one of these presidents could be arrested for any number of crimes.
	And yet they're not.
	But yet Trump didn't give back the classified information quickly enough even after they asked him, oh, he's got to be indicted for that.
	Even though other presidents have done pretty much the same thing, now he's got to be indicted for that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The Georgia thing is interesting because he was going to have a press conference where he was going to reveal all of the information that proves that he was telling the truth about the Georgia election being rigged.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He didn't have the press conference.
unidentified		Yes.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is a thing that I got to say is a kind of knock on Trump here that, you know, this is a thing his lawyers, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who just turned himself into custody today...
		But they would always say this after 2020. We have proof that millions of votes were stolen from Donald Trump and will be releasing this soon, and then it just never kind of comes.
		So I don't know what he thinks he's going to tell us about that.
		The issue with the thing in Georgia, where I will grant there's like a little bit of a gray area.
		And I think that, look, there is a gray area there.
		It's kind of like when they impeached Trump over Ukraine.
		There was like a little bit of a gray area of like what exactly he did.
		It's just that when you look at things of all the crimes that presidents commit, the idea that you go after a president for this, it's so petty compared to these greater crimes.
		But like...
		He called the Secretary of State in Georgia and was kind of like, I need you to find me these votes.
		But he was saying, he was like, look, there's been fraud.
		I know there's been fraud.
		You got to go look for it.
		And the guy's like, I don't see any evidence that there's fraud here.
		And he's like, find it.
		I know there's fraud.
		He was putting pressure on the guy to go look.
		But it's not as if he was telling the guy, I need you to commit fraud.
		He wasn't telling him, I want you to flip votes or I want you to manipulate something.
		He's like, I want you to go find where the fraud is.
		So you'd almost have to prove that he didn't really believe that.
unidentified		Right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Because if there was really fraud, he has every right to tell the guy to go find it.
		So now they're arguing that he didn't.
		And in the indictment, they argue that he knew it and he knew that there was no fraud but was still trying to get the guy to go find it.
		The case that they're using to argue that is that he had advisors around him who told him that the election was legit.
		The problem with that is that that doesn't prove at all that Trump believed those guys just because they told him that.
		If there's one thing I'm fairly confident in, I believe Donald Trump believes he won the election in 2020.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		My position has always been we all have to agree that election fraud is not 0%.
		It's not zero.
		And everyone agrees to that.
		Do you think there's any election fraud at all?
		Yeah, probably.
		At some level, there's probably some campaign workers that have a vested interest in One party or another, like a lot of these people that are working in these election offices are very biased, right?
		They're very politically active and they're probably not agnostic in their political beliefs.
		They're probably pretty steadfast in that this is, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, that this is the guy that I want and if there is a way Where you know you're getting some votes from a particular county that might be blue or a particular county that might be red.
		And you can fuck around.
		And you're some person who really believes you're on the right side of history.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, especially with, like, how white-hot politics are now at the moment.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Where people who, you know, hate Donald Trump hate him so much.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Look at this.
		A sampling of recent election fraud cases from across the United States.
		The Heritage Foundation's election fraud database presents a sampling of recent proven instances of election fraud from across the country.
		Each and every one of these cases in this database represents an instance in which a public official, usually a prosecutor, thought it serious enough to act upon it.
		And each and every one ended in finding that the individual had engaged in wrongdoing in connection with an election, hoping to affect its outcome, or that the results of an election were sufficiently in question and had to be overturned.
		So look at this.
		So, it says here, There's 1,438 proven instances of voter fraud, 1,240 criminal convictions, 48 civil penalties, 108 diversion program, judicial finding, official finding.
		Okay, so it's showing that there's at least it's not zero.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Right, and that, you could argue, in a country as big as ours, wouldn't even be that bad if that's all there was.
		But those are just the proven cases.
		So then you're left to wonder how many go unproven.
		And we don't know exactly what that answer is, but my thing is more like, I think if you zoom out and you just say, okay, what was the year that was 2020?
		Well, okay, coming into 2020, Donald Trump is the president.
		He's presiding over what is...
		He would describe as a white-hot economy where there was very low unemployment.
		There were certain tangible things he could point to and say, look, this has really worked out for the economy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can I pause you right there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that because of the policies of the Obama administration about they were coming to fruition or is it because of direct changes that he made?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		So I would say a mix of both.
		But I would argue that it was kind of a bubble economy still, and that it was still propped up off very low interest rates and very high government spending, and that you can make things look good on charts when things are like that.
		But I would argue that he hadn't really fixed the major underlying problems in the economy.
		But he did...
		Have some pretty significant deregulation in the energy sector.
		He did pass some very significant corporate tax cuts, and I think those things were very good for business.
		So, kind of a mix of both.
		But you have, that's the starting point of 2020. Donald Trump bragging, you know, he'd brag about the lowest African-American unemployment, the lowest Latino unemployment, and how great the economy was, and how he's doing all these great things.
		He was poised to have an excellent shot at being re-elected.
		And then you have The economy destroyed by government imposition.
		Even if you think the lockdowns were the right things to do, the fact is that state governors decided we're tanking our economy, like we're closing down our economy.
		And then you had a summer full of the biggest riots of my lifetime, which were sponsored not only Financially, where you had big, powerful groups paying bail for rioters to get out of jail, but also just backed, completely backed by the entire corporate press.
		You know, this is the voice of the unheard, fiery but mostly peaceful, just making every excuse for these rioters going on in almost every major city across the country.
		During this whole time, anybody who wanted to speak out against this was often censored for doing so.
		If you wanted to speak out against the lockdowns or against Black Lives Matter or any of this stuff, you might lose social media.
		You might lose your job.
		A bigger censorship campaign than we've really ever had before.
		This is all going on that year.
		And then they announce that we are overhauling the way we do elections.
		And for the first time, we're letting everyone vote by mail.
		Not just the absentee ballots for like military personnel, but everyone can just vote by mail now.
		A way that we were never okay with doing it before because we would have been very concerned about fraud.
		But now we're all going to do that.
		So in this like revolutionary year, we're overhauling how we do everything.
		And then you have the thing with the Hunter Biden laptop story being censored.
		And then the result is that Joe Biden wins the election.
		Given all of those factors, there's just no conceivable way that an overwhelming majority of Trump voters weren't going to feel like this thing was stolen.
unidentified		Right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Just look at all the, like, fundamentals of what happened that year.
		And even if you really, really don't like Donald Trump, how could you look at all those fundamentals and not go, okay, I see where.
		I see where, with all of that, that was fertile soil for belief that this thing was stolen from them.
		You know?
		It was a pretty crazy thing.
		And the problem, and the thing, and I think we're past the point of no return on this, for better or for worse, is that even if you think Donald Trump committed all of these crimes, and that it's right for them to bring down all these indictments, at least acknowledge that this is...
		It's kind of over for the right half of America to ever believe in this process again.
		Because the way they're going to look at this is like, oh look, you wouldn't give them a fair shot again.
		Once again, you wouldn't just let him have a fair shot.
		You wouldn't just let the American people vote.
		If you believed in democracy, if you believe in this country, if you believe in trying to unite us in any way, wouldn't it be so obvious at this point?
		It's not as if every one of the charges Donald Trump is being faced with is like some novel legal theory where they're twisting a statute to try to make him guilty of this crime.
		It's a very gray area at best.
		Wouldn't you just go, look, we're going to have a national referendum on this in November?
		Let the American people decide.
		You know what I mean?
		Which side are they on of this?
		And then we could give this democracy thing a shot and see who wins.
		But if you do it like this, then basically the entire right half of America now doesn't believe this game is real anymore.
		They don't really believe they're in a democracy where they get to pick who they want to vote for.
		Because they're like, no, we picked this guy and you screwed him out of it.
		Now, by the way, I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
		Maybe it's better that they don't believe in this system anymore.
		Because the system is bullshit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Richmond, north of Richmond.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I want total control.
unidentified		It's a great song.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a great song.
		It's just bizarre that this conversation doesn't happen more often.
		This kind of...
		Like, open laying out of the basic facts of what happened.
		Because it's all just narratives.
		It's all just left-wing talking points and right-wing talking points and just so much confusion.
		So much noise.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and it's weird because everyone does get so dug in.
		I do think one of the advantages I have, at least I think personally, of thinking about all these things is that I'm not on a team.
		I'm not a Democrat or a Republican.
		My basic view is that all these politicians are criminals.
		At least I try my best to be like, let me understand what's happening here.
		I'm more or less, I'm on the side of the American people and against the American political class.
		You know, like, that's kind of my bias, if anything.
		But it's just people get so dug in that they're just going to jump to their points that'll shape their narrative.
		The truth is that, look, what happened, like, January 6th, say...
		Look, what's easy to put in the rearview mirror that everybody's kind of forgetting about is that they were boarding up Washington, D.C., and not out of concern of Biden winning.
		You know?
		Like, they were boarding up all the stores in downtown Washington, D.C. because they were scared of Trump winning.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, they were scared people were gonna riot.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And they would've.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		They would have.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, people were celebrating in the streets in New York City that were ready to riot.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		You know, and like, so the thing is that, okay, January 6th happened when Biden won, but a whole bunch of rioting and stuff would've happened if Trump had won.
		The truth is that the country was just at a point that no matter what happened there, It was gonna be somewhat ugly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If Trump wins in 2024, the way I would legitimately think, if you looked at how it went down, it's almost better for us as the American people to see All the steps that they did to interfere with the public narrative of who he is and the election.
		Whether it's the Hunter Biden laptop thing or the Russia collusion thing, it's almost better for us to see that naked and then also see Them push Biden through.
		Biden get in and see what a disaster it is.
		I think it's better to see.
		If I was in Trump's camp, I would say, look, this is, other than the indictments and all this, all the crazy, it's actually better this way.
		Because now people have a real understanding that at least some of the things that he was saying are accurate.
		The witch hunt thing, accurate.
		The Russia collusion bullshit.
		It's accurate.
		And no one is admitting that.
		And people see it, and they know it, and it scares the shit out of them.
		It scares the shit out of them that they just want to continue doing this to us.
		And if they did it with the Hunter Biden laptop thing, what else are they doing it about?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It's also, and I think for people like us, I think it's...
		It's hard to exactly understand because you're also talking about the Donald Trump supporters are, generally speaking, not our demographic exactly.
		Like, they're a different type of people, you know?
		Like, we're not, like, lifelong Republicans, conservative.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You and I are not, but although we do get labeled right-wing for whatever bizarre reason.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's all just stupid, you know what I mean?
		Like, that's ridiculous.
		But, like, they say, like, the...
		The Tea Party-type people or the conservative Republican-type people are different.
		Like, I'm like a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, New York, raised by a single mom.
		I'm just culturally a different thing than most of them are.
		And you were raised by hippies in California, right?
		It's a different thing.
		And then went to Boston.
		It's just culturally different.
		But these people, the ones who went to the Tea Party, these conservative Republicans, these were the people who carried around pocket constitutions with them.
		You know what I mean?
		They really believed in the system.
		In a much different way than people who have more of a liberal background ever did.
		These were people who believed in country, God, law and order.
		You know what I mean?
		And for them, I think it's a whole different thing to see that these institutions were poisoned against their guy.
		And that they're all corrupt.
		It's truly like, whoa.
		This is like a devastating thing.
		I think it's disillusioning in a very powerful way that's tough for a lot of us to understand.
		When they see that, you're like, you're telling me the FBI was framing the president?
		Because they loved the FBI. They were the biggest offenders of the FBI. These were the guys who would stand in line with them.
		As recently as when George W. Bush was president.
		Not like that long ago.
		And so I think a lot of this was...
		It was very revealing for them.
		So I remember, it always made me laugh, but it was like Sean Hannity said at some point during the Russiagate thing, he goes, for the first time in American history, the FBI has been politicized.
		But that summed up almost the conservative view of it.
		You know what I mean?
		That it's like, but this is it.
		You're like, yeah, actually.
		The entire history of it has been this.
		But, okay, at least you're waking up now to the fact that this wasn't just like, oh, no, these are the good guys.
		It's not that simple.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Isn't it wild, too, that Hoover was just such a freak?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He was a freak, cross-dressing fucking psychopath.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Had all the dirt on everybody and didn't want him to have the dirt on him.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because he was dirty.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And had a lot of dirt.
		But that's like, it's like when you're, and also you gotta picture this like being in like, you know, like the 1930s or 40s or 50s or whatever, you know, in his whole reign.
		Like cross-dressing back then.
		It was a lot worse than what cross-dressing got.
		Like, that's real dirt, you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so if you're doing that— Cross-dressing now will get you in the Biden administration.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh, great.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You've got a guaranteed promotion.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, that's that Sam Britton psycho.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		But back then it was like—so you know right away he was like, I need a lot of dirt on everyone else.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Because if anyone finds out about this...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Also, there had to be, like, some guilt aspect of it that made doing dirty things even more exciting.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because you know that you're, like, supposedly exposing that in other people, but you're guilty of it yourself, and you're out there wearing women's shoes.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And also just, like, you know, spying on civil rights leaders.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And encouraging them to commit suicide.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The letter that they sent to Martin Luther King...
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And they sent his wife an audio tape, right?
		I think they sent him an audio tape of him having an affair or something.
		They did some crazy shit.
		Crazy shit.
		And it's interesting, too, because it kind of represents the whole transformation.
		In the 20th century, there's this real transformation of what the United States of America's federal government is.
		And J. Edgar Hoover was there for a really interesting part of that with the FBI, where they start off as just this, like, basically there was no constitutional authority for a federal police.
		So they kind of start off as, like, they're, like, basically have, like, a pad of paper and a pen.
		Like, you can go around and ask questions.
		They didn't have guns.
		They didn't have arresting power.
		They had, like, nothing.
		And then by the end of his term, it's the fucking FBI. You know what I mean?
		Like, what we know today.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		But that's kind of like the story of America.
		It's a really fascinating story where we start as the smallest, most restrained government in the history of the world.
		No other experiment like it.
		The whole Constitution is basically telling the government what it can't do.
		You know?
		And then, like, dividing these powers.
		And then we have the Bill of Rights, which is, like, all basically, you know, Congress can't do this.
		Government can't do this.
		You can't do this.
		You can't do...
		Like, this is the whole thing.
		It's basically telling the government what it can't do.
		And so we have this experiment in limited government.
		And if you look at, like, the period between the end of the Civil War and, like, 19...
		Let's say 1865 to 1912. You have this period where it's probably the largest experiment in a free market capitalism in human history.
		The federal spending was nothing.
		It was like 2% of the national income.
		You had no income tax.
		You had no central bank.
		No federal regulation.
		It's just, like, very free market conditions.
		And it builds up, like, the richest, most powerful government in the history of the world.
		And it's so rich and powerful compared to every other country that then they can kind of get away with, like, all right, well, now we go to the progressive era.
		Like, let's have an income tax.
		And the way the income tax was sold in 1913, 1914, 1914, I believe, was they go, well, listen, this is only going to apply to, like, the richest people, and it'll only be, like, 1% or 2% of their income.
		We'll just take a little bit from them and help the little guys out.
		That's how it starts.
		It grows and grows and grows.
		And then you have the Federal Reserve.
		It grows and grows and grows.
		And then you get into World War I. And now you have the security apparatus grow and grow.
		And then there's World War II. And there's the Depression in between World War I and World War II. And what does that mean?
		Well, that means we need a new deal.
		We need more government.
		We need more regulation.
		Then you get into World War II. We create the CIA. All of a sudden, you have this deep state forming.
		Drop two nukes on Japan.
		Now, we're the bad motherfuckers.
		We run the world.
		You know what I mean?
		And then just more and more and more.
		You come back home, it's like in the 60s, they have the real rise of the great society, the welfare state.
		And just all this shit that started as the smallest government ever.
		Just balloons and balloons and balloons.
		And now you have it, and it's the biggest government in the history of the world.
		And that's like where we're at now.
		Went from this experiment in tiny government to this experiment in the biggest, most powerful government in human history.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And some people think the solution to our problems is to expand it.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		All right.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		This is wild.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		This is so wild.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's wild.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		I'm looking up the J. Edgar Hoover cross-dressing thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it fake?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It might be fake.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That makes sense.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Nah, dude, they put it in the movie.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They put it in the movie, so it must be real.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		The story came from one person who said she saw him somewhere.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wasn't there photos?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Nah, there's no photos.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Is that true?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Was that all?
unidentified		Oh, man.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It might be made up.
		It says this lady was trying to sell the story to Esquire for a while, and then someone printed it in a biography about him in 1972. How did they put it in the movie?
		There's a lot of rumors about his...
		A relationship, I'll say, with an aide of his.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, he was always single, right?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		They don't know what was going on with it.
		So he's a very private person.
		This is just like what happens with myth and gossip.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, here it is.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		I don't want to talk shit about him and got it printed and now all of a sudden it's everybody else.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, whatever.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		He spied on MLK and now we're all going to call him a cross-dresser.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Cross-dressing psychopath.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is more fun if he's a cross-dresser.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It says he went to a restaurant with his friend in a skirt.
		The other guy was in a dress.
		The hostess wouldn't let him in.
		It almost sounds like that doesn't sound believable to me.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't buy he went to a restaurant like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That seems sus.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		They said he saw him at a private party at the New York Plaza Hotel.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It was a big orgy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How many of those are real?
		So we know Epstein's Island's real.
		And I used to think that was fucking insanity.
		Alex Jones was telling me about that over a decade ago.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's nuts.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They compromise people on this island.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They get them, go there.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		These are hot girls.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They look hot, but they're 16. He's telling me this whole thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I was like, what?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		The thing about Alex Jones is that he'd always have this method of, like, he throws a lot of shit at the wall.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're turning the frogs gay.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but then that one turned out to be right, too.
		Or more or less kind of right, you know?
		Maybe trans, whatever the frogs are.
		It's doing something to them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Changing their sex.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		But, like, he...
		And by the way, the thing is that there's too many people who are like, Alex Jones was right.
		And there are a lot of things he was right about.
		But there's also a ton of things he was wrong about.
		That he's just saying with certainty...
		Like, and I have the information.
		I have all this and this.
		And he's like, just none of this is true.
		I remember right after 9-11, he was going into this thing about how we're going to get in a nuclear war because Iran already has the nukes and they're going to use them.
		And he had this whole thing about how, like, he goes, Iran has nuclear weapons.
		I have the documents to prove this.
		We've got the sources off the record.
		And just none of that was right, you know?
		But then there's, like, the thing that he's right about.
		Like, being right about the Epstein Island thing is so fucking crazy, dude.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So wild.
		So wild.
		He was also right about Bohemian Grove.
		People forget about that.
		He was in Bohemian Grove in the 90s when they filmed all that.
		You watch that ceremony and you're like, What are you doing?
		You guys are dressing up like druids?
		And you're burning an effigy in front of an owl god?
		And you're speaking on loudspeakers about this owl god, Moloch?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		This is really what they do.
		This is what they do.
		That's real.
		I'm not saying that we're living in this...
		Like this biblical world where there is like...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'll say it!
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not saying that there is a God and a Satan.
		I'm not saying there's not.
		I mean, I believe in God.
		But I... I'm saying they believe they're living in this world and they believe they're like on Team Satan or something like that.
		Because they do.
		It is very bizarre.
		I know these are the type of things that you're not allowed to bring up because, oh, now you're a nutty conspiracy theorist.
		But we have proof of this happening.
		It's not.
		Bohemian Grove isn't just like we have actual video footage of it.
		We don't know everyone who's there.
		We know Nixon was there.
		And we know he said it was the faggotiest thing he's ever seen in his life and he wanted to wash his hands.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		He didn't want to shake people's hands there.
		This is all real, and it does look like...
		When we played that clip before of Madeline Albright...
		Being like, yeah, 500,000 dead children, that's worth it.
		I think the price is worth it.
		It does kind of like – you start to kind of ask these questions where you're like, okay, so there are these people who are comfortable making decisions that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.
		And we know in many cases they're making these decisions based off profit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that satanic?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		So who is that person?
		Who the fuck is that person?
		Is it like they just do that at work and then they clock out and they're just like us?
		Or are they clocking out and doing some weird ritual at the Bohemian Grove?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know what I mean?
		And when Marc Andreessen was on, he brought up this.
		He was the one who brought up the Satanist who was also the rocket scientist, right?
		At Los Alamos labs?
		Was that him that brought that up?
		No.
		No, it wasn't.
		You know who it was?
		It was the opposite of Marc Andreessen.
		It was Python Cowboy.
		Right?
		Python Cowboy, the guy who, that's who it was.
		Andreessen brought up the nuclear tests about how the videos are weird of the nuclear tests.
		Like there's a truck behind this building and then all of a sudden the truck disappears.
		It's very weird.
		Or the truck appears.
		I forget which one.
		And also, how are they filming this?
		And there's all these conspiracies.
		He wasn't saying it was real, but he's like, the conspiracies are that this was all rigged, that it was fake.
		But there was a guy who was...
		They were doing this thing where they were moving pythons from this place in Florida.
		And they got to this place, and he took all this video footage of this elaborate satanic ritual setup that they had down there, where they had things written on the wall in Latin, and they had a girl's bloody dress, and they had a chair that was covered in something red.
		They were trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, and he wound up getting out of there.
		But then He found out that the history of that lab itself, that the guy who founded that lab, was an open Satanist.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		Jack Parsons.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jack Parsons.
		Pull up those articles about him, because we were playing it during the show.
		It's like, what?
		So this guy was involved in this nuclear weapons lab, and he's also an open Satanist?
		Like, what?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that is fucking really strange.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, wear the fucking outfits and go to these things?
		And this was in, like, the 19...
		Was it the 50s?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And it does make you wonder to some degree, you're like, are you, like...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Here it is.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Like, is there really a Satan and are you really a part of his thing?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Or is this just some weird game you're playing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, like, look how these fucking people would dress, man.
		Look how insane this is.
		Go to that article...
		So the article is so bizarre.
		Sex, rocket scientists, and Satanism meet NASA's real hidden figures.
		Satanism!
		Satanism!
		I mean, what?
		And this guy was a part of their program, and he was fucking openly in the Church of Satan.
		Like, look how they would dress.
		It was like walking into a Fellini movie.
		Like, what the fuck?
unidentified		What the fuck, man?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Look at all these people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		These are the people that were responsible for this?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		That's Aleister Crowley.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, even, like, um...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How insane are these fucking people?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		With the Epstein thing, I mean, I guess it's not exactly this, but you remember the, like, the pictures, the paintings that they found from him?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		There's one with George W. Bush where he's, like, a little kid and he's playing with the blocks that are in the towers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And then there's, like, the, what is it, Bill Clinton in a dress or something like that?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Like, it's not exactly Satan-ish shit, but it's still just kind of this weird, like...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, the Clinton thing, to me, was clear.
		You have the president in a fucking dress.
		And we've talked about this.
		There's a little fucking screenshot of me talking about it with Duncan.
		We're like, that is, to me, I got you.
		That's, I got you, bitch.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And the George W. Bush one seems to be kind of like a different but a similar, like, this idiot has no idea what the fuck's going on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's got a doofus-looking look on his face.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		But it's the planes in two towers, right?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that seems to be like a 9-11 reference, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And if you were a guy who is supposedly, the conspiracy is that he was part of the intelligence agency, that he was something, Mossad or something.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Either Mossad or CIA or a combination of those two.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you're that guy, you probably get a real thrill out of having all this dirt on these incredibly important people and then have pictures of them looking stupid in your house.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, you wonder, like...
		I don't know.
		There's just kind of room to speculate about it, but you wonder if there's not...
		There's probably a benefit to having very powerful people who have...
		You have dirt on them, right?
		So if you, let's say you take something like pedophilia, and that is a thing that, I don't know, maybe 99% of people want you dead.
		If you are that.
		You know what I mean?
		Like, it's like the thing that even in prison, like, you will get, like, murdered for being that.
		Even amongst other violent criminals, there's this code that you don't do that.
		And most people who are not violent criminals really, you know what I mean?
		Like, so if you are, let's say, a pedophile, And you know that about someone.
		You own them now.
		And that's kind of what the Jeffrey Epstein thing seems to be like.
		Not even that they were pedophiles.
		I think in some cases they're tricked into it.
		You know, you get like 16-year-olds, you dial them up so they look like they're in their 20s.
		You bring the guy to party with them.
		The next day you're like, oh, she was 16, I have it on tape, and you're going to be voting yes on the legislation next week type deal.
		But you could see where, let's say you were a very powerful interest behind the scenes, you could see where if there were people who say were pedophiles or who like cheated on their wives or just you had dirt on them, where you'd be interested in promoting that person because now you can control them much more easily, right?
unidentified		Mm-hmm.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And so you could see where it would maybe come to be that they would kind of like these really sick, fucked up people in these positions of power because then they're that much easier to control.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		100%.
		That makes sense.
		It makes sense.
		You got dirt on them?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Makes sense.
		But there does seem to be like, I mean, this was so weird.
		I forget who tweeted this.
		I apologize, man, because I should give you credit because this is such a good tweet.
		But someone said, someone tweeted that Pizzagate aged better than Russiagate, which is just like the best.
		Like, it's just so funny when you think about it like that, that there was this wild conspiracy theory in 2016 that when the Podesta emails got dumped.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I love this one.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh, was that Malice?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if he's the first one to tweet it.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's probably him.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I bet it's him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That sounds like something Malice would say.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Malice is the goddamn man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But look how nutty this is.
		Ex-network investigative journalist pleads guilty to child sex abuse material charges.
		So this is a guy that was an investigative journalist at ABC News who investigated and dismissed Pizzagate.
		And meanwhile, he was guilty of child sexual abuse material charges.
		So he had child porn.
		Now here's the question.
		Has there ever been a case where someone has purposely put child porn on someone's computer to bust them?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure there has.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I would imagine that that's something they can do.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's terrifying.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wasn't there a woman who accused the FBI of threatening to put child porn on someone's computer?
		Wasn't there a recent case of that?
		That is so terrifying.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's really terrifying.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		First of all, that someone would be in possession of child porn and then put it on your ship.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		On your computer, and then you're just there, and you're like, yo, no, this is not my...
unidentified		And you have to explain it away.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you're in the position of being like, I swear, it's on my computer, but I don't know how I got there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Especially if you're someone who is investigating child porn.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm not saying that's the case.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He very well might be guilty of it.
		And there are people that are guilty of it, man.
		It's a fucking heinous thing that does exist.
		As much as you and I as regular people, especially as parents, we don't want to ever admit there's someone out there that literally wants to fuck a baby and wants to film people fucking babies and have guys jack off to it.
		It's like, why?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's some dark shit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's the only thing that you can possess that's illegal that you could find online, right?
		Like, you could have murder videos.
		Like, every fucking day I open up Instagram, I'm seeing someone get shot.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you see a lot of murder videos on Instagram.
		And I don't know how they do that and how they fucking get away with doing that.
		Because it seems to be in violation of the terms of agreements of Instagram.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Terms and services, it seems like you're not supposed to have murder videos.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't think you do murder.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But goddamn, I've seen a lot of them.
		And if I download these videos and put them on my hard drive and someone arrests me and they search my hard drive, say, oh, well, you have videos of people murdered.
		That's fine.
		Even though it's a crime.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It's nothing, officer.
		I just masturbate to it.
		No problem, sir.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're free to go.
		Shotguns to the face.
		That's how I get off.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they'd be like, no problem with that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But if you are in possession, even if you haven't done anything physically to these kids.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		This is Twitter's policy on death videos, and it clearly is breaking all of those.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Images or videos depict the murder of an unidentifiable individual.
		What if they have a bag over their head and you shoot them?
		Images or videos where a reasonably identifiable person is clearly deceased.
		Excessively gruesome media that depicts death of an identifiable person.
		Images or videos of an identifiable deceased person shared for sadistic purposes.
		That's interesting.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's vague.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, including media accompanied by content that laughs at or otherwise mocks the deceased and takes pleasure in the suffering of the deceased.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's so bizarre.
		That just seems like such a...
		Why don't you just say, like, no murder videos?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		The loophole could be newsworthy events.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, newsworthy events.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Okay, fine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, like the death of George Floyd.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a newsworthy event of murder.
unidentified		Okay, fine.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Fair enough.
		But they're like, why is it like, well, they're kind of almost implicitly saying, like, they're like, I mean, if you can't identify them, you know, if you can't identify them and you're not laughing at them, have at it.
		I'd understand that, though.
		I mean, I think there are deaths like Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi or things like that that you should be allowed to see.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The Gaddafi was wild.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It is something.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It was one of the wilds.
		When you see the look on his face, that guy shoves that knife up his ass.
		They're like, whoa.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I think there's something about that, too.
		The craziest thing about the Gaddafi thing, and I mean, that's the craziest thing, but he had totally waved the white flag to America, abandoned his nuclear program, gave up all his chemical weapons.
		Right after 9-11, he was like, look, I'll help you in any way I can.
		Like, I don't want this, and I know America's coming to kick some ass around here.
		And he did all that, and then...
		They still went in and did that to him.
		So it was a message to, like, everybody else who we oppose around the world that, like, yo, you cannot – you can't trust America.
		You can't work out a deal with America.
		And all – you know, when Joe Biden says things like – you know, like he's said several times that, you know, we want regime change in Russia, it's like that's what regime change looks like.
		So that's what Vladimir Putin's thinking when he says that.
		It's like, that's what you'd like.
		And then, by the way, according to Bill Perry, who was Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, he says that Vladimir Putin believes that the U.S. has a program to attempt to assassinate him, that we're actively trying to kill him.
		And I don't know if that's true or not.
		But he said that's what Putin believes.
		I wouldn't be surprised if that were true.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Doesn't sound like it's outside the realm of possibility.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Seems like they tried it with Castro how many times?
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Many.
		Many times.
		And with Saddam Hussein and with a lot of others.
		It's kind of our MO. And so, like, you gotta, like, almost see, like, that's what their concern is.
		Is, like, that they could end up like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Like, and what would you do to avoid ending up anally raped with a knife to death?
		A lot.
		You know, like whatever you could.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're really backing someone into a corner.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Especially a superpower with nuclear weapons.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Especially if they can prove that you're actually involved in all this shit that he's saying you're involved with.
unidentified		Ooh.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
		Yep.
		Not good.
		Not good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's so gross.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so scary.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, that's the one thing I'll say.
		The thing Trump said, and I remember you were talking about this with Duncan, too, but when Trump said, I want the dying to stop, you know what I mean?
		Somehow that's controversial.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you want Ukraine to win this war?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, like, what?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And I was like, what does it even mean?
		It's like, what are you...
		You know, and then there'll be people who are, like, arguing, like, well, we can't...
		The war can't stop until all of the territory is restored because we can never, like, reward the aggressor in this conflict.
		And you're like, dude, like, so people gotta keep dying because you have a point to make?
		About Crimea being ruled by Kiev rather than Moscow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's also people that were like applauding that Progrosian was closing in on Moscow.
unidentified		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that he's better?
		Do you know what he does?
		Do you know what he was the head of?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, like, I mean, the idea that, let's say after all of this, let's say Russia, like, what seems to be the best case scenario that the establishment is claiming, so let's say Russia is utterly humiliated in Ukraine, there's a devastating victory for Ukraine, Ukraine takes back all of the territory, all of it, they get Crimea back, you know, they get the entire territory back, and then Vladimir Putin is overthrown.
		Do you think that in this most humiliating of moments for Russia and knowing the political realities in Russia, what would you say is more likely that will rise up in Vladimir Putin's place?
		Will it be a Jeffersonian Republican liberal who now says we're going to institute a bill of rights, you know, or something like that?
		Or do you think it's more likely going to be probably someone substantially to the right of Vladimir Putin who will be even more of an authoritarian?
		You know, it's kind of obvious which one is more likely.
		And that never seems to be anything we think about when it comes to war.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Unless they believe they could do what they did in Ukraine.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, what?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		To overthrow the government and put a government in that's more friendly to them?
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I mean, they've tried to do this before.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was the other thing that you were talking about, that recording, where they were openly discussing the various individuals.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Was it the John Kerry one?
		Or the one with ISIS in Syria?
		Or the one in Ukraine?
		With the Victoria Nuland?
		Yeah, the Victoria Nuland phone call.
		Where she's talking about...
		The phone call starts with Victoria Nuland and Jeffrey Pyatt.
		And it was leaked.
		Presumably by the Russians.
		We don't really know.
		In early 2014. And it's right around...
		I think it was leaked like...
		It was right around when Yanukovych fled and the new government took over and was immediately recognized by the U.S. And it starts with her and Jeffrey Pyatt, who's an ambassador.
		And they're like, we're in play.
		Okay, like it's happening.
		And then they're all like, she's talking about who should be in the new government and who should be out of the new government.
		And then they're talking about how we're going to make this thing stick.
		Oh, this guy doesn't have the experience.
		Yats has to be in.
		Klitschko has to be out.
		Like going through all the people and all the players who should be in the new government and who shouldn't.
		And then she says that Joe Biden's going to call them to give him an attaboy, to congratulate him for doing it.
		And look, there are people who argue, and I've heard this argument, I don't think there's really any evidence for it, but people argue that she wasn't talking about overthrowing Yanukovych, she was talking about making a deal with Yanukovych.
		But I'll just say this.
		One of the top neocons was over-meddling in this country, and all the people who she wanted in government got in, and all the people who she wanted out of government got out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a coincidence.
		So it works.
		You can't draw conclusions.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		By the way, Robert Kagan, she's his wife, Victoria Nuland, and he was the guy who, I believe he was the founder of the Project for a New American Century.
		He was at least one of the signatures of it.
		But he was like head neocon guy.
		And this is his wife.
		And their whole project since the 90s was to remake the Middle East, fight multiple wars, overthrow Saddam Hussein.
		Also, they want a regime changing around.
		They haven't gotten that one yet.
		And they wanted to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine.
		That was their whole mission.
		And so his wife just happens to be over there.
		She's handing out water and food to the protesters.
		She's in the crowd, giving out food and cookies to the protesters.
		John McCain's going over there, speaking with neo-Nazi groups and shit, telling them, your fight's our fight, the Russians are going to lose, you know, all this shit.
		And it was all part of a big plan, which these neocons have said forever, that their vision was always that, like essentially what Gideon Rose said, that you steal Robin away from Batman, that with Ukraine, Russia is a European power, But without Ukraine, they're an isolated, you know, like an isolated nation.
		And Vladimir Putin was always pretty damn clear that Ukraine was his red line.
		Our own CIA director, I read the memo last time we were here, the nyet means nyet memo.
		Our own CIA director wrote back to Condoleezza Rice when she was Secretary of State and told her and said, this is his red line.
		Don't fuck with Ukraine.
		He's like, we have our only warm water port here, we have strategic interests here, and we cannot have your military alliance on our border in this border.
		And this is the brightest of all red lines.
		And the CIA director, when he was the ambassador to Russia, he said, this is the brightest of all red lines, not just for Vladimir Putin, but for the entire Russian political establishment.
		Even his sharpest liberal critics agree with him on this, that Ukraine is the red line.
		And then two months after that, they announced Ukraine's coming into NATO. And then just more intervention in Ukraine all the way through.
		And eventually he went, okay, you crossed it.
		Now I'm fucking, now I'm breaking it.
		There's a funny thing because in the video where you say Gideon Rose goes, when you remember the part where he says, oh, we want to distract him with the Olympics.
		Here's, here's a shiny medal and we'll just take a country away from you and that whole thing.
		And at one point, Stephen Colbert goes, well, what could Vladimir Putin do?
		Like, could he intervene?
		And Gideon Rose goes, yes, yes.
		And I think he says something like, he could throw over the chessboard.
		You know?
		Like, he could...
		And he did, eventually.
		You know?
		They fucking pushed him and pushed him, and eventually he did.
		And now we're here.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I wonder what their ultimate plan is.
		How do they think this is going to play?
		Behind closed doors when all the fucking walls are checked for bugs, what do they say?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		My guess would be that I think the attitude is what Zbigniew Brzezinski said the strategy was in Afghanistan in 1979. That it was, when we were trying to lure the Soviet Union into fighting the war in Afghanistan, that what he said it was to give them their own Vietnam.
		Like we basically saw what Vietnam did to us.
		Let's give them one of those.
		Let's lure them into a fucking quagmire that breaks their back.
		And from their point of view, they were successful in that, that that's what defeated the Soviet Union, was their war in Afghanistan.
		And now, after getting out of our own 20-year war in Afghanistan, you know, and seeing what that's done to our country, I think, this is what I think, I think they were attempting to lure Vladimir Putin into this war.
		I think that's why they kept crossing his red lines every single time.
		I think they wanted to provoke him into doing this because they want to break Russia.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Game of Thrones.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		It's some wild shit, dude.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's wild shit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How do you have time to research all this stuff?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Um, well...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And just have all this information available in instant recall.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I don't know.
		I just, you know, I was very lucky from the time.
		I got obsessed with politics in 2007 when I found Ron Paul.
		And at the time, I didn't really have any...
		My whole life was just stand-up comedy and being obsessed with this shit.
		So that was all, like, that's all I did.
		And now...
		And I fell down the rabbit hole.
		I found a lot of really great people.
		So I think I'm very lucky that I found the right people, starting with Ron Paul, who I think is the greatest living American hero, the Thomas Jefferson of our time.
		But then I found all these great people.
		I found Peter Schiff and Tom Woods, Scott Horton, the best anti-war voice in the country, all the guys at antiwar.com.
		So I read them all the time.
		And I just kind of kept finding all these really great voices.
		The whole Mises Institute, M-I-S-E-S.org.
		And so I got obsessed with that for a long time.
		And then it's just like, I don't know, it's just like my calling to follow this shit.
		I'm so passionate about following it and knowing what's going on.
		And I do my podcast three days a week, and I'm always talking about whatever the latest thing is.
		So I'm always kind of on top of it, and I have good sources.
		And yeah.
		So I remember, by the way, I'll say this quickly, you really inspired me.
		I remember when I was first starting, so I started comedy in 2005, 2006, something like that, and then in 2007, 2008, I fell into this rabbit hole.
		And then I just started being obsessed with reading about Austrian economics and military history and all this shit.
		And I remember I was really self-conscious about it.
		I was like, this makes no sense.
		Like, what am I doing?
		I'm, like, pursuing stand-up comedy, and then I'm spending every night until four in the morning just, like, obsessively reading about this shit that has nothing to do with my comedy career.
		You know what I mean?
		And I remember just, like, being like a...
		What am I doing?
		Like, I'm wait...
		I'm not...
		I'm, like, failing at comedy.
		I'm not doing very good.
		I'm broke, and, like, I'm working on this thing that isn't clearly going...
		It doesn't, like, really make sense.
		And I was, like...
		And I was a...
		I was a big fan of yours already because I was, you know, a huge UFC fan already.
		And then, you know, just like from the comedy scene, like I knew you from ONA shows and stuff like that.
		And I remember first watching Talking Monkeys in Space.
		Which is still one of my favorite comedy specials ever.
		And I think that, what was it, 2009, 2008?
		Something like that.
		So that was like, seeing that was the first time that I was like, because I kind of wanted to take some of these ideas into stand-up.
		But I thought they were like, I was like, I don't know.
		I don't want to get like preachy with it or anything like that.
		But then I saw you in that special and you had like these long, very deep It's about, you know, like the fucking pyramids and what man was like 10,000 years ago, but it was still all punched up in stand-up comedy.
		Like, you weren't just preaching, you were like...
		And I was like, oh yeah, I think that's fucking...
		I think I could do that.
		You know what I mean?
		Like, talk about the shit I want to talk about and still keep it funny.
		And then, um...
		I remember thinking about it, and I was like, you know, even though it makes no sense on paper that I'm just the dude who's really into fucking the history of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and then we're going to go do stand-up comedy shows, even though that makes no sense, I was like, yeah, but your career on paper made no sense.
		But it's just who you are.
		If you had ever said to someone 20 years ago, or you were like, okay, I got it all figured out.
		You had some agent who's like, all right, well, if you want to be a stand-up comedian, you got to be an actor, or you got to write, or you got to do this and do these auditions, and you're like, well, I'm just going to commentate on cage fights.
		And then I'm going to do an internet radio show.
		But I'll be like really big in like the fitness community and the hallucinogenic community.
		Like they're all really going to like me.
		Like the psychedelics.
		It all kind of sounds like, wait, what?
	But the answer is like, that's just who you are.
	So it made sense to just be you and do your thing.
	I don't know.
	That's kind of like what I've...
	At a certain point, kind of like seeing your example, I was like, yeah, I'm just going to do this because this is me, and this is really what I'm interested in.
	So, like, I don't know.
	I like doing stand-up comedy, and I like talking shit about all this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You can't fault the agents for not having a vision.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Sure, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Especially if it's something that didn't exist before.
		But they just don't get the new realm that we exist in.
		For people, they're craving authenticity.
		And you are authentically interested in these things.
		There's a lot of people that are out there talking about politics.
		They just view that as a means to get on the air.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You can smell a grifter.
		You can sniff them out.
		And that term gets thrown around a lot sometimes unfairly.
		But I'm just saying you can sniff when people are like, oh, no, he really believes what he's saying.
		And then you're like, oh, this guy knows.
		He can play to this audience.
		I can play to the, you know, like, which, you know, I don't have that skill set.
		I'd probably make a lot more money if I did.
		Just pick a team?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It would fuck you up.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It fucks all of them up.
		I wouldn't be able to do it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It clouds their reasoning, and you always look at everything through a filter of bullshit.
		You know, there's certain people that just, you know what they're doing.
		You know they're grifting.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And they're prone to be exposed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Because when you're bullshitting people, you can be exposed for that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, especially it's like...
		But it's so tempting, you know?
		So tempting for people.
		Makes sense.
		Like, if they think that this is the...
		They lick their finger and this is where the wind's blowing.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, you see it in, and by the way, I'm not thinking of anyone specific here, so I don't think I'm trashing it, but you know there's these people that go from, they're like, well, I used to be on the right, and now I'm on the left, or I used to be on the left, and now I'm on the right, and you almost realize that, I'm not even saying that necessarily they're doing that for these reasons, but you realize that, let's say you're like, It's so valuable to the other side if you're the person who's switched.
		Oh, yeah, you're a traitor.
		But I'm saying it's like, oh, look, even this left guy sees how crazy the left is, so now he's over here.
		So if you're, like, let's say, like, in the top 80 political commentators on the left, but then you make the switch, you move up to, like, the top 10 on the right.
		So you just immediately know, you're like, oh, this is a huge jump if I do this.
		And, you know, one of the things that is tough is...
		You have to, like, there are perverse incentives in this game.
		And you've got to always kind of be conscious of that.
		I don't want to just be telling my audience what they want to hear.
		You know what I mean?
		Sometimes I've got to say something that might even piss off my audience.
		You know what I mean?
		You've got to be really aware of that.
		Because incentives can fuck with you even if you're not really thinking about it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Audience capture.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just don't listen to them.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		That's probably the best thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the best way.
		Yeah.
		I mean, you have an internal compass.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		Yeah, yeah.
		For sure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We all do.
		Yeah.
		And you're going to make mistakes.
		We're all going to make mistakes.
		But as long as you're following that internal compass, I think people will understand.
		They'll get it.
		They'll know what you're doing.
		And the fact that you are authentic, and that's what's so interesting about it, is because you really are deeply, deeply invested in this stuff.
		It's not like a thing that you've kind of like, oh, I want to have this debate about this, so I'm going to look at it.
		Oh, this is what I've learned.
		You've got this stuff internalized.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Sometimes I'll talk to people, and people say sometimes, dude, I don't know how you read all about and focus on all this political stuff, dude.
		It'll just drive me crazy.
		I just don't pay attention at all.
		And I have no argument to that.
		Like, no response.
		Like, hey, yeah, I completely get that if you just don't.
		It's just to me, I find it all so interesting.
		And I just like, I don't know, dude.
		I just like, I want to know.
		And I understand.
		What frustrates me is that there's a limit.
		I know I'll never know all of it.
		You know what I mean?
		Like, that's frustrating to me.
		Because don't you just want to know?
		Don't you really want to know everything about how Kennedy got killed?
		And what really happened with Nixon?
		I mean, I know, I guess it's kind of the official story, but it's definitely more than the official story.
		It's like, what really happened?
		Why'd you guys really decide we're gonna fucking get this guy out?
		You know what I mean?
		And all the shit, even the stuff you were talking about with Trump, of like, that'd be the most interesting thing to ask him.
		What's really happened?
		You know, like, what was this like?
		Tell me about this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Imagine what it's like just getting in there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And also when you're not supposed to get in there, and you realize they're all conspiring against you.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And even you didn't think you would, and now you're like, oh, shit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, boy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think he did think he was going to win.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, maybe he did.
unidentified		He did.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		No one else around him, I don't think, did.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Maybe one or two people.
		I don't think Melania thought.
		I thought she was like, sure, I'll come do this campaign thing, and then I'll go back to being a socialite in New York City.
		And then she was like, oh, what?
		Oh, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I was reading this story.
		I didn't read the story.
		I read the headline.
		And it was about Melania's reaction to Trump getting indicted.
		And it was like, her reaction seems to be, sucks to be you.
		You don't even have an interview with her.
		This is just like a narrative that you just want to promote.
		I mean, maybe you're just doing it for clickbait.
		Maybe you're just a journalist who just thinks this is a good fucking angle to take.
		What are they going to do, deny it?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Maybe that's even right, but what a weird thing to even pretend to write about.
		Can you imagine anyone writing a story about How your wife feels about something you did?
		You'd be like, you don't have any idea how my wife feels about this?
		Like, how would you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Especially criminal indictments?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that her take is sucks to be you?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Like, really?
		They do have a kid together who's, like, not that old, right?
		Like, is a teenager or something like that?
		Like, I don't know.
		It seems like it'd be a weird attitude to have.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Are you sure that's...
		The take?
		How can you just openly say that?
		Did you get a source?
		You hear rumors?
		What are you saying?
		What are you saying?
		Do you know for sure that's how she feels?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And even if you had a source on that, how could you ever write that article?
		If you had some source like, what is it, a chick who's a friend of hers says this?
		How reliable is that ever?
unidentified		Ever.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		How reliable ever is someone's girlfriend going, this is how she feels about her husband?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Also, maybe she did say it for funsies.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Who knows?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Who knows?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Sucks to be you.
unidentified		Maybe she thinks so.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'll just go fucking shop.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, she's...
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I mean, my guess is she doesn't want to be back in the White House again.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, it doesn't seem like she enjoyed it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She's without a doubt the hottest first lady of all time.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Wasn't Kennedy's...
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Kennedy's wife was a good-looking chick, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She was a very beautiful woman, but this lady's hot.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
unidentified		She's hot.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		But I think Kennedy's...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Professionally.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		But she...
		How old were the Kennedys when they were...
		I think they were much...
		I don't know.
		How old is she?
		She's a lot younger than Trump.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She's younger than Trump.
		She's probably in her 40s.
		When Kennedy was in office, he was in his 40s, right?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, maybe.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I guess that's probably not right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that interesting that we think about that as so young now?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		She was 34 when he died.
		She was 34, okay.
		Wow.
		Yeah, she was young.
unidentified		She was young.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And how old was he?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I'm guessing early 40s.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		46?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I'm going like 42. Yeah.
		How old was he when he died?
		Had to be at least 35 or 37. Yeah, you had to be 35 or 37?
		Well, he had to be 35 when you got in and he died in 62 or 63. I can't do the math on my head.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		It's 1917 to 63, it's 46?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		46. 46. You nailed it, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So Vivek is 37, which is very young.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		He's right up against the...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the boundary.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is an interesting boundary.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, especially now, where you go, there's something weirder about, like, I'm 40. Now I'm like, I don't want a president younger than me.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		I don't want a president who I'm like, listen, young man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But he's so brilliant.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		He's a very impressive guy.
		I think there's, um, there's...
		There's a really weird dynamic that I do not completely understand, but there's something about the boomer class of politicians who never passed the torch.
		When I was a kid, we had these politicians like, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.
		It's all the same people.
		Joe Biden.
		All these guys were in.
		And it's like they never wanted to give up power.
		Have you seen Dianne Feinstein?
		I mean, it's like, yo, lady, give it up, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The thing is, her staff doesn't want her to give it up because then they're all out of jobs.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So there's how many people working in that organization?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Several, but still the fact that none of them ever seem to be willing to pass the torch, it's a very...
		Yeah, I mean look at that.
		Isn't that insane?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so you get into the from 1980 it takes a dip and then it goes skyrocketing.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that is really something.
		Yeah, and so and you know even like with the Presidencies, you know, it's like I guess Barack Obama is the exception where he kind of got past the torch although he had to wrestle it away and It wasn't like they were just lining up for him.
		He had to kind of steal it away from Hillary Clinton.
		But then even think that Hillary Clinton was running for president in 2016 when your husband was running in 1992. It's 30 years later.
		What are you doing running still?
		There's just something about it, and I do think there's a big problem with it.
		I think there's this boomer mentality about America, and especially because these politicians are so insulated, and they live in such a bubble.
		You know what I mean?
		They're not living like regular people.
		They're living these crazy lives.
		And it's almost like they still have this—I think they still suffer from not having adjusted to where America actually is today versus where they have it in their kind of post-World War II mind, where they're kind of like, yeah, listen, we said Vladimir Putin can't invade, and that's that.
		We'll go show him.
		He can't do that.
		And you're like, oh, okay.
		Well, he did.
		And it's still not working.
		And guess what?
		You're not so clearly this powerful country.
		You're a country that's 30 trillion plus in debt.
		And actually, you have a lot of signs of societal decay.
		I do think we'd be better off with a younger generation having some influence in this.
		Jesus.
		I like a lot of things about Vake.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I like a lot of things about RFK. But he doesn't have a chance to beat Trump, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think he has a chance to be the vice president?
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think for sure.
		I think for sure he has a chance at that or some other big...
		I'd kind of rather see him get some other more substantive position in Trump's cabinet rather than just vice president.
		I'd rather him be the head of...
		Really unwind something in the deep state or something.
		I don't know what position exactly would be right for him.
		But I think he's definitely got a shot at being...
		He has not been attacking Donald Trump.
		Donald Trump has not been attacking him.
		He's kind of defending Donald Trump.
		And Trump's been nothing but complimentary toward him.
		He's in an interesting position where I have a very tough time seeing how Donald Trump is allowed to be back in.
		It seems to me like they'll do whatever they have to do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But how far can they go?
		That's the question.
		While still maintaining what is, in most people's eyes, a democracy.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Well, they seem to not be that concerned about maintaining that.
		I mean, the furthest they can go is a limo ride in Dallas.
		And, you know, short of that, they can, you know, perhaps they can get a jury to convict, and he's looking at 20 years, and the deal is either you go to jail for 20 years or you agree to not run for president or something like that.
		I mean, I don't know exactly how they can do it, but...
		Vivek is in this interesting position where DeSantis, his campaign is really tanked and not turned into what anyone thought it might turn into.
		And so now he's just kind of sitting there in the background while Trump is dealing with all these indictments in the system being turned against him.
		And Trump is wrecking DeSantis.
		He's not taking any blows, but he's just kind of there, you know?
		I think it's still a long shot for him to win.
		I don't know exactly how that would happen.
		But it's interesting.
		He's run a really good campaign so far.
		He's got a lot of good stuff to say.
		I mean, he said the other day, they asked him who should be the Fed chairman, and he said, maybe Ron Paul or Rand Paul, someone from that family.
		And, you know, I'm like, watching, I'm like, are you just talking to me right now, dude?
		Are you just trying to get me to vote for you?
		Who else is this appealing to?
		Because I'm way on board.
		So I like that a lot.
		I love that he's great on the Ukraine war.
		I love that RFK Jr. is great on that.
		Great on that.
		RFK Jr. I think is a lot better on China.
		I think Vivek's a little bit too hawkish on China.
		I don't like that stuff he was talking about with drone bombing Mexican cartels and all that shit.
		I just like...
		Is that what you're saying?
		Five years with no war.
		Enough of that.
		But in general, I think he is more on the anti-war side.
		He's also just really smart, and he's younger, and he seems to really believe in reducing the size of the deep state, and reducing the size of the administrative state, and that's like...
		That's really nice because we could really use that.
		He seems to believe he has a plan for how he can get it done.
		He got very specific with me when he was on my show about what statutes he would use to fire people in these bureaucrat positions and how the president has the legal authority to do all of it.
		I don't know.
		If that would actually work or not, but at least he's got a plan.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He sounds like a president.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, he's just a very impressive guy.
		He built like a gigantic company.
		He's only 37 years old.
		I think he's worth a ton of money, which somehow people think is a negative thing, but I just think it's very impressive.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's very impressive in every realm.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Every aspect of what he says and even how he defends criticism.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, this is one of the things that I think is also just really attractive to me about Robert Kennedy Jr. and about Vivek.
		Obviously, they have some different views on different things, but when you talk to RFK Jr. about a topic, you get this impression that he's read a book about it.
		Oftentimes you get the impression he's read several books about it.
		And you get that impression with Vivek also.
		When you talk to Joe Biden, you're not—not that I've actually had a conversation with him, but when you hear him talk, you're not convinced that he even knows what he's talking about.
		And when you hear Donald Trump talk about something, it always kind of seems like he saw a show about it.
		You know what I mean?
		Like, it just seems like he watched something, he sized up what his view was, and then he kind of made it.
		But I just...
		I don't think it's too much to expect that, like, the President of the United States of America ought to be, like, a somewhat deep thinker.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You know?
		It would be nice.
		Like, that seems reasonable.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		And that, you know...
		I mean, okay, you could say that about Obama.
		Obama seemed like he had red stuff, you know?
		Aside from him, there's...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Clinton.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, Clinton.
		Very smart, very smart guy.
		But I just, it would like, after, you know, kind of where we've been going lately, it would kind of be nice to see someone, like, who's smart and a thinker.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It would be.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Dave Smith, you're the fucking man.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		You're the man, Joe Rogan.
unidentified		Appreciate you very much.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Always good to talk to you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Tell everybody your podcast, how to get ahold of you, social media, all that jazz.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		At Comic Dave Smith on Twitter.
		YouTube.com slash at Comic Dave.
		Excuse me.
		YouTube.com slash at part of the problem is my YouTube channel.
		That's where my comedy special is up.
		It's part of a series.
		For Gas Digital, they're launching a whole bunch of these half-hour comedy specials.
		Louis J. Gomez is doing one.
		Colm Terrell, who is fucking hilarious, I think is going to be one of the next huge, great comics.
		Fucking hilarious.
		Jordan Jensen, another one of the up-and-coming great, really, really funny chick.
		And Kurt Metzger and Rich Voss all have specials coming out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Beautiful.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		All on their own YouTube channels and stuff.
		So it's a part of that series.
		That's real cool.
		My podcast is called Part of the Problem.
		And of course, I am a degenerate shithead on the Legion of Skanks a couple times a week as well.
unidentified		Beautiful.
dave smith ▲ ● ▼		Thanks so much, dude.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		My pleasure, brother.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's go have fun.
unidentified		All right.

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