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May 21, 2024 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:02:11
Joe Rogan Experience #2153 - Dave Smith
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dave smith
01:45:35
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joe rogan
01:09:12
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jamie vernon
01:07
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alexandria ocasio-cortez
00:18
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b-real
00:02
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bob lazar
00:19
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jasmine crockett
00:12
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marjorie taylor greene
00:04
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unidentified
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
joe rogan
Did you see, uh, Hochul, what she said, that, uh, young black kids don't know what a computer is?
Did you see her say that?
dave smith
No, I didn't see that.
joe rogan
Oh my god, and all these dudes did these hilarious videos where, uh, these young black guys, like, got around a computer and they stared at it and bit it and took it...
dave smith
It's like an age thing, too, because that used to kind of be the line that liberals would say.
You know, the problem with black kids is they just don't have any role models.
They've never been exposed to this.
But that's just totally not true anymore.
And sometimes now, because they're from a different generation, they'll still say that.
And you're like, have you been around black people lately?
joe rogan
But saying young, poor black kids don't know what a computer is is so crazy.
dave smith
They've got one in their pocket.
unidentified
It's such a dumb thing to say.
joe rogan
It's amazing that you could say something like that and be the governor of a major state.
Don't even know what the word computer is.
dave smith
Oh, they're not even familiar with the term?
joe rogan
They don't know these things.
Like, is she doing a survey?
Ma'am, where did you get this data?
dave smith
This is why Malcolm X said that there's nothing more racist than a white liberal.
joe rogan
Yes.
dave smith
Because of shit like this.
joe rogan
Well, they're weak.
Weak people are dangerous.
Weak people that don't like strength are dangerous.
They're dangerous because they want to suppress everything.
That's what's spooky about it.
Weak people scare the shit out of me, more than even totalitarians do sometimes.
Because they eventually become totalitarian.
It's like the bullied become the bullies.
They want payback.
But it's just that weak, liberal men are, to me, they're so detestable.
The weak ones.
I mean, there's some intelligent, brilliant, liberal men.
That's their philosophy.
And I think if you're not exposed to the pitfalls of liberalism, if you don't see what happens to your state when those policies get enacted, specifically when things go south, if everything was going great, no one gave a shit who the mayor of Los Angeles was in 2015. Because everything was great.
You know?
It was like, there was no problems.
Obama was president.
The economy was doing good.
We weren't at war, really.
Kinda we were, but it wasn't affecting us.
dave smith
Right.
Well, there's something on that topic of the weakness of modern liberals.
I was in, like, late last year, I was in San Diego.
And I haven't been to...
I mean, I've been to L.A. a couple times, but much less than I used to go, like, when you were out there.
And I haven't been to San Francisco in years.
But I was in San Diego, and it's like, you know, you've been there.
It's like a beautiful city downtown, and where we were, it was a great comedy club, the American Comedy Company down there.
Great club.
Great club.
Love that place.
And I'm like downtown, and me and my buddy Rob Bernstein, a very funny comedian who's with me on the trip, we're like walking around.
Great restaurants, really nice little downtown.
But then there's just blocks that are taken over by these homeless encampments.
And right next to them, it's like all these young professionals and these nice restaurants in this nice city.
And I was just thinking about that.
Like, how are all of the men here so weak that they won't just kind of like put their foot down and be like, hey, no, we're not going to put up with this.
Like, we're not just—it's almost like this, like, niceness.
Has taken over to the point that you can't even defend this cool city that you have here.
And I'm not saying, like, bash the homeless people with clubs or anything like that.
I'm just saying, like, why are you allowing this to happen?
And it is, like, a profound weakness that, well, we'd feel like bad people if we were to say, we don't want junkies covered in shit right next to our outdoor dining.
And you're like, no, that would just be reasonable.
joe rogan
Well, what they need is a reasonable plan to help these people.
If you really care...
If you really care, you've got to do something.
You can't just let them exist everywhere.
And then in San Francisco, the most recent bizarre one is they're going to give them alcohol.
They're going to give money in alcohol.
What is it?
Are they giving them actual booze or are they giving them money to buy booze?
Help me out with this one.
Because it's just so San Francisco.
San Francisco is amazing.
I lived there in the 70s.
I lived there during the Vietnam War when I was a little kid.
It was incredible.
It was weird.
dave smith
I'm sure.
joe rogan
It shaped the way I view things.
Because if I had grown up in a very conservative environment with my sensibilities, my hard work ethic, and my belief that You know, you get very fortunate in life in, like, how you're gifted things.
Like, how you get lucky.
Like, if you're beautiful, for instance.
If you're a beautiful woman or man, what a roll of the dice.
I mean, good lord.
Good lord did you kill it in the fucking genetic lottery.
I mean, you can't do anything about that.
You can't earn that.
You can't go out and get beauty, you know?
But after that, whatever hand you've given, you've been given...
A lot of it is on you.
A lot of it is on you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Terrible things happen to people.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Violence happens.
Crime happens.
Disease happens.
Yes, 100%.
Misfortune happens 100%.
Anyone listening to this right now is lucky you can hear.
There's people that can't hear, right?
But put that aside.
And there's a factor that we need to take into consideration.
That factor is discipline.
That factor is hard work.
That factor is focus.
And we should cherish that.
And we shouldn't think of it only as negative because it always...
People always think it manifests itself in greed and in callous disregard for other people's lives.
That's not necessarily true.
They're not mutually exclusive.
Like, you can have discipline and be a kind person and be a compassionate person and be a liberal person.
But so often, liberals in this country, they do not want to take that into consideration, that discipline is a factor.
Conservatives always value discipline.
They value hard work.
That's why when they want to sell shit to those people, what do they do?
They show a guy on a farm cracking open a beer, a guy who's just been working his fucking ass off for 10 hours a day, cracking up here, around here, it's all just about hard work, and the guy's just throwing back a cold one.
You know, I mean, that's what they're selling you.
They're selling you hard work.
They're not selling you, you know, this poor farmer, you know, who's born into farming life and it's not equitable or fair while there's billionaires out there just make money trading money and it's bullshit and we need to distribute wealth and like, no.
No, that's not the answer either, stupid.
Like, that's not the answer.
But you do need programs to get these people out of homelessness.
You can't just encourage them to keep doing it.
It's bad for them.
It's bad for you.
It's bad for the city.
It's bad for property values.
unidentified
It's bad for everything!
dave smith
Yep.
I couldn't agree more.
unidentified
San Francisco gives actual alcohol.
dave smith
We're not talking rubbing alcohol here, right?
They're talking like booze.
joe rogan
Oh, they're so good.
They're so good.
But these are the old hippies.
They're still there.
They're wearing masks right now while they're listening to this screaming.
They're all loss.
dave smith
See, to your point, it's like, look, it'd be ridiculous if someone just completely dismissed the first part of what you were saying.
Fortune.
Fortune.
Luck.
unidentified
Luck is huge.
dave smith
We all didn't get leukemia as little kids and die.
joe rogan
You had shot in a drive-by as a little kid.
dave smith
And also, there are just parts of the world, like a lot of what you're saying really applies to like first world advanced countries.
You could be in a country that's just a war-torn third world country and you're screwed no matter what you do.
So it would be silly to dismiss that, but it's also equally ridiculous to dismiss the other aspect to it.
Like, okay, every person, every single person who's successful has conquered self-pity.
Because everybody's had points in their lives where they've just felt really bad for themselves.
We've all had it.
We all do it.
joe rogan
It's a part of human nature.
dave smith
That's right.
But it's also poison.
And anybody who's successful has learned how to conquer that and not just sit here and feel bad for yourself and to say, nope, I'm going to take control of this.
No matter what happened to me, I'm going to not focus on that.
I'm going to focus on what I can control.
And the problem is that on either side, if you dismiss one of them, you...
You come to really stupid conclusions.
joe rogan
100%.
And it's not lost on me the irony of two rich white guys, one of them smoking a cigar talking about this.
dave smith
I would say I'm climbing my way toward there.
I don't know.
By global standards, sure.
joe rogan
Bro, you're fucking killing it.
dave smith
Shut your mouth.
By global standards, I'm on Elon Musk level.
joe rogan
That's true.
I mean, I'm poor compared to Elon.
dave smith
That is true.
You are broke.
joe rogan
I'm so broke.
dave smith
Do you think he laughs about you, like when you're not there?
Yes!
joe rogan
That poor little bastard.
dave smith
He goes, I got Rogan coming over to the house.
Put away the good china.
He goes, oh god, the Rogans are coming.
joe rogan
There's levels of people.
I'm friends now, this is a bizarre thing to say, with multiple billionaires.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
I know multiple guys that are billionaires.
And they're very nice people.
And I can see how it happens.
dave smith
But you're also friends with the cool billionaires.
joe rogan
Yeah.
dave smith
You know?
Like, you managed to find the cool ones.
joe rogan
Well, Elon's the coolest.
He's my favorite billionaire.
That dude's wild.
He's a wild boy.
I will buy Teslas as long as they sell them, just to support that dude.
dave smith
Just to keep Twitter going.
joe rogan
And they're dope.
But yeah, just to support him, man.
You, goddammit, you need an Elon Musk in this world.
You need a wild boy.
You need a dude who's got $200 billion who dunks on people.
dave smith
Dude, how great was watching him realize in real time how stupid Don Lemon is?
joe rogan
Oh my god.
dave smith
Like, you could actually see on his face as he's asking the questions, and he's like, uh, Well, if you lower standards, then you're going to get more incompetence.
And Don Lemon's like, so you're saying black people aren't competent?
He's like, no.
And he slowly starts to realize, like, oh, I have 80 IQ points on this guy.
joe rogan
It's not just that.
He said a very important point.
He said that Don Lemon was doing CNN outside of CNN. And you don't have to do that.
Nobody wants that anymore.
dave smith
I'd say you can't do that.
It's not gonna work.
joe rogan
It's not gonna work.
But more importantly, you shouldn't do it because it's not good for you.
Just be a human.
Don't be this thing, this journalistic probing bullshit thing that's trying to spin a narrative.
Actually have a conversation with this human.
You will probably agree with a lot of the things he says.
You will understand his perspective even if you disagree.
You could see how an intelligent person would come to this conclusion.
This is how we can talk to each other now.
We don't have to be confined by these five-minute segments where you have producers and executives that are pushing an agenda that's on a network that's run by a bunch of Huge fucking corporations that have a vested interest in swaying the narrative one way or the other.
You don't have to do that anymore.
dave smith
That's not necessary.
joe rogan
It's bad for people.
It's bad for humanity.
It's a bad way to distribute information.
It is literal propaganda, whether you think it is or not.
dave smith
Oh, dude, I mean, I've done a fair amount of cable news shows, and they'll do these things where it's like a panel, and there'll be three people on the panel and the person hosting the show.
There's some people who I really like who I've been on their shows, but it's like you're trying to talk about the most important topics, and everyone gets 20 seconds.
It's so ridiculous.
joe rogan
I want you to imagine a scenario.
Imagine a scenario where COVID breaks out, And for whatever reason, the mainstream media is saying that we should be very careful about experimental drugs.
And they start, these journalists, start bringing up all these stories about different drugs where you could see how they chose very specific tests and that some of their tests, some of their studies didn't go well at all and they buried those and they're allowed to do so.
And about how they've killed thousands and thousands of people with these drugs they knew were bad for them.
And if the journalists were saying this, but the podcasters were all going, you need to trust the science.
Everyone should be vaccinated.
Be vaccinated or you're a fucking plague rat.
Imagine if the podcasters were calling the unvaccinated plague rats.
Imagine if the podcasters were encouraging medical misinformation.
Doesn't it seem...
But my point is, imagine the backlash right now where there's none coming their way.
There's zero.
It's like everyone forgot about it.
It all went away.
dave smith
Well, I'm debating Chris Cuomo.
joe rogan
We would be in jail!
dave smith
I'll be debating Chris Cuomo in a few days.
joe rogan
That's the setup.
dave smith
That'll be fun for that.
joe rogan
We would be in jail.
All these people that are dropping dead.
All these people with strokes, all these people with heart attacks, all these people with...
What was the AstraZeneca thing that I sent you today?
dave smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
AstraZeneca, they were saying that 11% of the people had an adverse side effect?
dave smith
Like serious adverse side effects, yeah.
But even as you lay out this scenario, doesn't it almost in some way be like, it feels like that makes more sense?
What would make more sense was that comedians, like me and you, would have just been saying the dumb thing and repeating it.
But the person in a suit and tie at CNN, I mean, this dude's a professional newsman.
Like, he knows what's going on.
joe rogan
They would make a very good argument for ending podcasts.
dave smith
Sure.
joe rogan
They'd make a very good argument for prosecuting people, class action lawsuits.
All the people that encourage these podcasters with their limited...
You don't even have a medical degree.
And you're on the internet telling people what to do, which is exactly what they did.
dave smith
They did, even though we were getting everything right.
And now most of them will admit that we were right.
joe rogan
Now when you see Chris Croma and Patrick Bat-David spinning it.
dave smith
Listen, I don't want to go too hard right now because I want him to show up.
But the fact that, and I will make sure to bring this up to him, but the fact that what he said, and if you listen to it, he literally goes, as he's explaining that he is on Ivermectin, he goes, now a lot of people are going to say Joe Rogan is right, and then he has a moment where he pauses, realizes he can't even come up with anything.
And he goes, all right, Joe Rogan was right.
And then goes on to say exactly what you've been saying for years now, that just the most basic thing that anyone who did five minutes of research could have figured out, which there's no controversy in any of this, that ivermectin has been given to humans billions of times, that it's a safe drug, and that there were some indications that it might help.
With COVID. And that it's not horse dewormer.
But the fact that that's not attached to a profuse apology.
I couldn't imagine a scenario where I had viciously smeared someone for something, then realized he was 100% right and I was 100% wrong.
And when acknowledging that, I wouldn't also go, hey, I'm really sorry about that.
joe rogan
Dude, I think there's a cult-like thinking in mainstream media.
Whether they know they're being influenced by their sponsors or they're not.
But I don't even think they understand how crazy it is.
When I had Sanjay Gupta on, Sanjay Gupta is a very nice man.
I think he's a good man.
I really do.
And he's a surgeon.
I mean, he's very busy.
The guy is constantly working.
And he comes in to give medical information and give this, you know, lay things out for CNN. And I think he thinks he's doing the right thing.
When they asked him to be on the podcast, I don't know what they thought was gonna happen.
I don't think they...
I think they thought they were right.
I really do.
dave smith
I think...
My guess, and this is just a guess, but I have been in that world a little bit.
Like, I worked for CNN for a year, and I've done a lot of shows on Fox News, and I've met a lot of people, you know, and talked to a lot of people who work at CNN and Fox News.
And my...
My guess on it is that, number one, he had a book.
So they want to sell copies of the book and they know you have the biggest show.
And so they're like, oh, this will be really good.
And then I also think there's this thing where they all really do feel like we're the experts.
And they know they're the experts because, I mean, I just got off the phone with, you know...
The chief of staff of the White House.
And I know that, you know, they're very into that kind of like that world where I've talked to everyone with status.
And I think there's hubris involved where they're like, you'll be able to handle whatever a comedian throws at you.
Like you're a medical expert and he's not.
But then you would just ask really basic questions, which my favorite was when he goes, so are you going to get the vaccine?
And you were like, well, no, I just had COVID. I have natural immunity.
And you were like, why should I get the vaccine?
And he had no answer.
And this was at a time when they were rolling out vaccine passports.
And the whole line was just, you have to get the vaccine or you're a bad person.
This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
And then he just demonstrated on your show that there was this huge category of people, people who have had COVID already, who he had no argument for why they should get the thing.
joe rogan
Not only that, there had already been research that showed that natural immunity from previous infection was up to seven times better at preventing new cases of COVID. Which is consistent across viruses.
unidentified
Of course.
dave smith
Like, it's always better to have natural immunity.
The vaccine is always trying to simulate natural immunity.
joe rogan
This is what was so fucked.
Look, I'm no scholar.
I'm not a smart guy.
I'm a normal person.
There's nothing special about my brain.
And I'm seeing all this stuff...
And I'm like, why isn't anybody speaking?
I started to feel like I was going crazy.
Like, am I going crazy for not just letting them shoot me up with this stuff after I got COVID just so I let everybody know I'm on the team?
dave smith
Right.
joe rogan
Because there's this pull.
There's a fucking societal pull that even me, even me, who was like, I know this is ridiculous.
All the people I've talked to, all the research I've done on previous diseases, and my research is reading other people's.
It's a bad word.
All the reading that I've done.
Jimmy Dore has a great bit about that.
dave smith
Oh, it's so funny.
joe rogan
I love it.
Don't do your own research.
It used to be called reading.
Jimmy Dore is awesome.
I love it.
dave smith
Love Jimmy Dore.
It's a great bit.
joe rogan
In my limited looking at this, I was like, something's wrong here.
There's this mass societal push.
People are trapped in like a mind virus of this one particular solution.
And Dr. Robert Malone laid what that is, like psychologically what happens when one thing is offered That seems to be the solution out of this existential crisis.
Horrible situation that we're in.
And anybody who opposes that opposes getting out.
And you got to be on that side, all in.
And you got to believe even in the pharmaceutical drug companies.
dave smith
And, like, there's this weird, you know, because we're weird social, psychological creatures.
And, you know, if you think about, like, the Milgram experiments and what people will do if there's a person in a white coat telling them to do it.
And part of, like, the culture...
joe rogan
Explain the Milgram thing to...
People don't know.
dave smith
So the experiment was kind of like, basically they come in and they're like, okay, you're here for some type of scientific experiment.
I forget exactly how they describe it to them, but they're testing, you know, like negative reinforcement within learning or something like that.
And so they have a guy in a white coat and he tells you every time a guy gets an answer wrong or something like this, you're supposed to push the button and it zaps him.
And they keep pushing the button and the person, you can't see them but they're like behind a wall or something, keeps hollering in pain and it gets worse and worse and worse.
And for the experiment, I think there were a few people who like refused after a while, but the overwhelming majority of people would keep zapping them until they seemingly died.
Yeah, because they stopped hollering in pain and then they would tell him to do it again and they would just keep doing it because there's like an authority figure here and this guy's got a white coat on and they kind of in these corporate media environments and I don't want to discount I'm not discounting the conspiracy aspect of this because I also think there are people within these agencies who are straight up like Intelligence assets and know exactly what they're doing.
But I think for the most part, it's like they create this culture of like, well, all the wise people who, by the way, you get to go to a cocktail party with this really, like this guy with all this status and he's the leading expert in this.
And they all say this.
So are you a respectable person or are you like an outcast?
Who doesn't agree with this conventional wisdom right and people fall in line with that shit man like it's They really do even people who really really should know better Yeah, but it's become socially their group too and then you get influenced by the group socially Well one of this one of the things I'm really interested to talk to Chris Cuomo about and by the way that's on Patrick Bitt David's show on the 31st but You know,
these guys, I'm kind of fascinated by the people in the corporate press, as much contempt as I have for them, because it's amazing to be working.
You're working in this industry where, okay, before COVID, the corporate media had the lowest approval numbers since they've been keeping track of them.
Trust in media had evaporated.
joe rogan
The war with Donald Trump.
That's really what it was.
It's like social media was all controlled by the left-wing media, and the left-wing media was all in on this war against Donald Trump.
dave smith
That's a huge part of it.
I mean, I would say the backdrop is the war on terror, the terror wars, getting all of that wrong, the financial crisis, not seeing that coming and kind Yeah, that's all that stuff.
Iraq and Afghanistan being disasters.
So that's kind of in the backdrop.
And then you have the worst financial crisis in 100 years.
So that happened.
But then there's no question, I mean, and particularly not just the war with Donald Trump, but particularly the...
Allegation of a conspiracy with Russia that they said every single day, all day, for three years long.
I mean, if you think about it, it's the big...
If true, it's the biggest news story in the history of the United States of America.
They're claiming that the current sitting president is guilty of treason.
He was installed by a hostile foreign power who overthrew our elections in order to install him.
It was quite a claim to run with 24-7.
And then to find out after three years that we have nothing...
Not like there's nothing, no evidence pointing toward this conspiracy even existing.
So their trust had already evaporated.
But then, after COVID, they will never recover.
joe rogan
But people will still go on Bill Maher and argue this.
They'll still say there's evidence.
It's like people still want to say there's evidence.
They'll still say it.
dave smith
There's not even evidence that Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 election.
The best they have is, like, there are some bot farms that they can trace to Russian IP addresses, which is like, I'm not a tech guy.
Jamie, you know this better than me, but they say it's the easiest thing to fake, is an IP address.
The fact that an IP address traces to Russia is, like, almost more indicative that someone's trying to frame Russia than it is that Russia was involved.
But even the guys who they got...
joe rogan
Imagine if we found out that that's what the case was.
Imagine if we found out that the Russian troll farms were completely insignificant, and it's all just government-controlled troll farms.
dave smith
Well, I mean, look, even if they were all from Vladimir Putin, they were fairly insignificant in terms of interfering in elections with other countries and how it works.
joe rogan
The most effective strategy was funny memes.
Yeah.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, it really was a very effective strategy because it makes some...
When you mock something, it makes it much more easy to dismiss that in terms of whether or not, like, that's the right choice for president.
If someone can, like, openly mock some...
Why do you think they openly mock Donald Trump's...
They even made stuff up, like, about his hand size.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
Remember, there was this thing that he had little hands.
Dude, I was shaking his hands.
He's got normal fucking hands.
He's a big guy.
He's a big guy.
He's got a big hand.
I remember the first time I shook his hand, I was like, this is the most ridiculous thing.
That everybody said he has little hands.
dave smith
Mocking people is a powerful tool, dude.
joe rogan
That's a crazy one because you're mocking something that someone can't change.
That's against left-wing ideology.
dave smith
Not when it serves their purposes.
joe rogan
Right, but that's the thing.
You're willing to violate the rules for your side to win.
Because progressives have always supposed to have been against body shaming.
You're supposed to be kind.
You're supposed to not mock a person's appearance.
Why would you do, especially like what they're born with, the hand size and the dick size, like really?
That's okay to mock?
dave smith
Dude, there was a segment, I remember watching this, it was in the 2016 election and it was on Joy Reid's show on MSNBC, her show at the time, whatever it was, and she had a whole segment I'm about like how sexist the coverage of Hillary Clinton was and it was you know every time they'll say she's shrill or she's this but if a man was like that it'd be this and she went through all these words that have been used to cover Hillary Clinton and how they're loaded sexist phrases
and all this and then at the end of her show she has this segment called who won the week And all the guests on the panel get to pick their own, like, what happened this week.
And her choice, not one of the people on the panel, her choice of who won the week was this guy in Union Square who made a naked statue of Donald Trump with a micropenis.
And was just, like, literally, like, just making a thing like, aha, he's got a little dick.
And after, literally, her last segment was on the sexist coverage of Hillary Clinton, and then her next pick for who won the week was a guy mocking Trump for having a micropenis that he just made up and made a statue of.
And she did not even, like, seem to see the contradiction in any of that.
It's beautiful.
Like, you just said this.
joe rogan
It's beautiful.
It's fun.
It's fun.
It's fun to watch.
I'm glad those people exist.
They're fun.
They're fun to watch because they're so ridiculous and they're so fake.
It's obvious that they're not really engaged.
They're not really talking about it like a human.
They're just propagandists.
And that's the only way you can do that job.
If you want to do that job, you have to be a propagandist.
Or you have to be some sort of straight-faced Jake Tapper dude who just kind of like straight faces everything.
But if you want, you know, you want to have the Joy Reid show...
dave smith
Yeah, you gotta go for it.
joe rogan
You gotta shake Joy Reid things!
What was that one she got in some bizarre argument with some woman recently?
I think it was a transgender issue.
Was that what it was, Jamie?
Where it was like, it went viral.
Because, like, I forget what the debate was about, but I remember it being just a preposterous argument.
The way she was looking at it.
dave smith
Yeah, she's pretty out there.
I'm not sure what segment you're referring to, but she's got a whole lot.
A whole lot of great hits.
joe rogan
It's not...
Yeah, it's...
Like, you have to be on that network.
Like, you can't exist in the podcast world.
It's not...
What is it?
Absurd argument Republicans vote on race night.
No, that's not it.
No.
I should have saved it.
I probably did save it somewhere on my phone.
I could find it.
But it's just these...
I believe it was some sort of a trans issue, if I'm correct.
But it's just, these fucking people on these shows are trapped.
You're trapped.
You're trapped in this world of five minutes.
You're trapped in this world of commercials.
You're trapped in this world of networks and executives.
You're trapped.
And if you want to make it, you've got to be full of shit.
You've got to be full of shit.
That's the gig.
dave smith
And it's just like, you point this out all the time, but it's just not enough time to have a real conversation on any of these shows.
Dude, I did a debate for Zero Hedge a couple months ago on the Israel-Gaza conflict, and it was a two-on-two debate, and it was two hours long.
And the only thing I could think at the end of it was like, that just wasn't nearly enough time.
It's like two hours and four people.
You get like a half hour, you know, roughly not, I don't know exactly if we all spoke even time, but roughly a half hour each.
That's not nearly enough to go through like the history of all this shit and what's going on now and to really make your points.
And that's a two hour debate.
They'll do that same segment on the news in 10 minutes, five minutes.
joe rogan
It's ridiculous.
dave smith
You're like, this is insane.
joe rogan
It's insanity.
dave smith
You're just trying to hit whatever the best point you can hit is.
And in the same way that Twitter, I mean, now you could post longer stuff.
But you know what?
Twitter, just because it's short, it just pushes you into saying whatever just can destroy that guy in one sentence.
It's like it pushes you into that.
It's headlines.
Yeah.
That's all you can do.
joe rogan
And when you're dealing with something like this, just the depth of it all is just so perplexing.
You know when you just lay out like when Mike Baker's on and he lays out the history Of, like, Palestine and Israel and the conflicts in Egypt and this and that and Hamas and Hezbollah and you lay it all, you're like, Jesus Christ!
There's so many layers to this fucking cake.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
And most people are just getting, free Palestine, from the river to the sea, yay!
You know, you're just getting these, like, slogans that you yell out and you're seeing who knows how much of what you're seeing is even real today.
dave smith
Well, you mean like with the protests?
unidentified
With the footage.
joe rogan
The footage.
Footage of things.
Even footage of people fake things now.
And they fake things specifically for propaganda.
And then they hide things.
One of the most terrifying videos I saw recently was one of the Israeli hostages.
She was in the back of a jeep.
And they drag her out by her hair and she's got blood all over her.
And they had hacked her heels to make sure she couldn't run.
Bro, it's so terrifying.
It's so, and they're all screaming, God is great, Allah, Wakba.
dave smith
Yeah, dude, I know, I think there's a thing, I don't know if I could word this exactly right, but I think there's, for some reason, I think comedians have this thing that they're kind of able to go to these places.
Do you remember, you remember when you had Bill Burr on your show, and you played this video, I don't know why I just loved this moment so much, but you played this video of a dude ripping something out of a little girl's hand, And it was something like, the guy, she had a piece of paper or something, and he was way aggressive.
joe rogan
I think it was a protest.
dave smith
Yeah, it was like a grown man going up to a little girl and ripping it out.
And you, immediately, you were like, oh man, that'd be real bad if that was my kid.
I'd be in jail the next day or that.
And then Burr was like, oh, you went to a dark place there.
And you were like, yeah, I do that a lot.
And he was like, I do that all the time, too.
It was just something about comedians, for whatever reason, do that.
joe rogan
Well, also parents.
dave smith
Yeah, well that particularly, but I just, it's just very easy for me, I don't know why, this always just came very natural to me, whereas I think some people have so much trouble with this, but it's very easy for me to do this on both sides of this conflict, to just go, okay, like I got two little kids,
I could just just start to imagine if somebody did something in one of my little kids and I wasn't able to protect them and what I'd be willing to do like how dark a place I could go to and It's just like immediately very easy to me to see how anyone in Israel after October 7th would support fucking flatten Gaza and how anyone in Palestine after what's going on the last 50 years there would be like Yeah, I'll sign up for Hamas.
I'll support these guys who are going to do this shit now I do think Both sides.
joe rogan
For sure.
Which is the most scary thing about the conflict.
dave smith
Sure.
And that's why it's gotten to such a bad point, right?
Because this is the cycle that keeps going.
But I do think, and this is what Daryl Cooper, who I brought him up last time I was on, he has that fantastic series called A Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem.
And he's just totally brilliant.
I love that guy.
But he...
And I think this is right, is that he's like, okay, so you can totally see where if you're on either side there, you'd just be like, I don't care.
I see red.
I want to kill as many of the other side as I can.
But for us as Americans who are not in that situation, it's kind of incumbent on us to be like, okay, let's try to kind of have a sober analysis of this and not do what so many people seem to do, which is like...
Almost try to just like egg on the other side and cheer on their side.
Yeah.
And then this total like demonization of either all of the Palestinians, like they're all just human garbage or all Jews are whatever evil or something like this.
joe rogan
Young kids in America who are Jewish are complicit.
They're somehow another responsible.
dave smith
Yeah, which is like totally ridiculous.
joe rogan
You see Jerry Seinfeld, they're heckling at his shows now.
There's like some organized protest that came to his show and they were screaming out in the middle of his show.
dave smith
It's also just like, guys, like, take it—look.
Like, I understand wanting to protest this war.
I got my issues with the young college leftists who are protesting it.
They're not my people, exactly.
But, like, you know, there's an Israeli embassy here.
There's a Congress.
There's—like, take it at least to the halls of power.
Like, I don't think Jerry—ruining, you know, like— Other people's ability to enjoy Seinfeld's stand-up show is really gonna solve the issue.
joe rogan
Yeah, because they're not really thinking well.
No, of course not.
And most of these people that do this, they come from wealthy families.
They're young, really idealistic kids, and they glue themselves to paintings.
And they throw fucking soup at masterpieces.
Did you see the one Stop Oil Now person sliced up this fucking painting from the 1800s?
Some priceless painting.
Just pulled out a razor knife and just started slashing this thing up.
dave smith
Isn't it weird if sometimes it feels like each side's foot soldiers are working for the other side?
You know what I mean?
Like when you do stuff like that, you're almost like, I just want to drill for more oil now.
joe rogan
Well, this is the problem with teams, man.
There's a problem with teams if you have a team that anybody can join.
The Republicans are basically like the Christians.
They'll take anybody.
Anybody.
If you want to be a Jew, you've got to go to work.
You've got to learn a bunch of shit.
My uncle converted.
dave smith
It's a lot of work.
They make you work.
joe rogan
You've got to work.
You've got to fucking learn some stuff.
I remember I was doing this...
This episode of Joe Rogan Questions Everything where I was talking to religious people of a bunch of different religious sects and religious scholars and I was talking to this one guy who was a rabbi and there was a woman there that was converting to Judaism and I got to ask her questions about like how she's doing it and like how hard it is and like it's fucking it's like getting your pilot's license or something.
It's a lot of fucking shit you gotta remember.
dave smith
It's like the way citizenship is, where like when you're born Jewish, like I am, or born an American like I am, and you're like, oh man, I couldn't have passed that test.
It's a good thing I was born into this shit.
joe rogan
It's a hard fucking test, yeah.
dave smith
They really, they make you work.
joe rogan
Well, I think the Jewish one's harder than the American one.
dave smith
Yeah, probably.
But the American one- Well, these days you could just walk in.
But if you don't walk in, you're fucked.
joe rogan
If you don't walk in, then if you fly in from Europe, they're like, uh-uh, you flew first class.
We're gonna make it really hard for you to become a citizen.
dave smith
Dude, which is- By the way, it sums up everything about modern-day America.
Anarcho-tyranny.
It's like you have the worst of anarchism and tyranny all in one, where if you follow the rules, you get totally fucked, and if you just ignore the rules, you get rewarded.
The worst incentives.
joe rogan
And everybody wants to be on a team.
So if you have a team that's open to anybody, you're going to get the dumbest fucking people that are super enthusiastic about that team.
And they're going to ruin everything.
And they do it on the right, and they do it on the left.
dave smith
That's why I say my message is always reject the teams and come be a libertarian and lose with me.
Just keep losing.
Come and just enjoy losing.
There's something freeing about knowing you're not going to win.
joe rogan
They're the most reasonable people I talk to politically.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
But it's also like, but it's also the system is so deep, like you ain't getting in.
dave smith
Well, that's the real question.
I mean, there's almost like figuring out what the solution is.
Is almost the easy part.
And then actually figuring out how to implement it.
unidentified
Aliens.
joe rogan
Aliens have to land.
dave smith
They have to land.
joe rogan
They literally have to land.
Enough.
Because we're like on our way to a kingship.
We're on our way.
dave smith
AI just has to be like, listen, we read all of the books in human history and we figured this out pretty quickly.
joe rogan
That might be the thing that saves us and ruins us at the same time, is President AI. President AI? President AI will be logical, and if it's on the blockchain, we'll know exactly if President AI is being influenced by money.
dave smith
Wouldn't it be great if AI just turns out to be as human as us and is just corrupted, and they're like, President AI got a blowjob in the Oval Office.
The power went to his head.
unidentified
He just started making AI whores.
dave smith
He's got to give a press conference.
He's like, I don't know what I was thinking, man.
I was pretty good until I got in there.
The ring of power just ruins everyone.
joe rogan
We are going to bypass biological needs, and we're going to do it pretty soon.
It's going to be real soon.
Regular sex is going to seem ridiculous in 20 years.
dave smith
We're gonna be the, like, old-school guys who are like, I still do sex the old-fashioned way with my wife.
unidentified
I remember when I was in high school, we got hand jobs.
joe rogan
These kids are fucking robots when they're six.
dave smith
People are gonna be like, you have sex with your wife?
That's insane, dude.
joe rogan
Why are you doing that?
What if you guys get diseased?
People die from those diseases.
dave smith
I do think, like, I mean, look, obviously, like, I'm biased on the...
Like, I have my own opinions on these things.
But I do just think that one of the things that I've found kind of amazing, and I've thought this with some of the people who have come on your show since the last time I was here, is the...
The way that people can defend what Israel's doing in Gaza does kind of blow my mind.
joe rogan
It blows my mind, too.
dave smith
Because it reminds you that it's like, you're like, oh, okay, look, throughout all of human history, right, I'm not saying there's anything unique to Israel, like they're the only ones to ever commit atrocities or that they're not dealing with atrocities committed to them.
joe rogan
What they're doing is super standard.
In terms of like world wars?
In terms of like Dresden?
dave smith
Well yeah, that's the thing.
If you compare it to the worst things that have ever happened in the history of the world.
But I'm just saying throughout all of human history there's been atrocities and there's been genocides and ethnic cleansing campaigns and slavery and all.
But at every single point there was someone there willing to rationalize it.
You know, like someone there who would be like, no, no, no, listen, this is what we have to do, because otherwise this, and it's amazing the mental gymnastics that people can come up with to justify something that is so clearly on its face, just heartbreaking.
Horrific.
joe rogan
But I think the difference is, back then, your understanding of it was much more limited.
You weren't watching videos on it.
They didn't exist.
If you saw it on television or in the movie theater, it'd be a small clip that was played.
And it was played before the film.
But everyone knew that the reason why we're here is because people went to war and won.
Or you escaped a war-ravaged country and you came to America.
Everyone knew it.
Everyone had an understanding of that.
So when we were at war, people were signing up to go to war.
There was no need to draft them.
By the time Vietnam rolled around, people were starting to get more information.
And they go, hey, I think this is a bullshit war.
Which is like the first time ever in this short history of our country where we're like, hey, this one sucks.
dave smith
It was kind of no defending it.
joe rogan
It was, and then when you find out they were right, at the end of it all, when you find out many, many years later the Gulf of Tonkin was a false flag, you're like, what?
dave smith
Which they didn't even need in order to be right, but then you find out you're like, oh, the whole thing was...
joe rogan
The whole thing.
And then you go, what did you guys do with all that heroin money?
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
Where did all that money go?
Because if I was the government, and I was willing, just imagine if Eisenhower's correct, which is insane, how could he be?
And that there was a real influence of military-industrial complex.
If I was the military-industrial complex, and I was willing to fucking start a war with North Vietnam for no fucking reason.
For no reason.
So 100%, I'm going to kill X amount of people and a bunch of Americans, and then you're going to actually make these people, these Americans, you're going to draft them and force them to go because they don't want to go.
You don't think I'd sell heroin?
unidentified
Like that would be your line?
dave smith
Narcotics?
joe rogan
Hold on.
How much are these guys making?
How much are these fucking dudes making?
How much?
How many billions?
This is of what percentage of the world's heroin supply?
And then when you see the same trick played out in Afghanistan, My favorite was Geraldo Rivera interviewing the troops, rationalizing why they had to guard the poppy fields.
We have to guard the heroin.
dave smith
For the good folks.
This heroin falls into the wrong hands.
It could be lethal.
joe rogan
There's no way America would sell this heroin.
There's no way.
The output of heroin out of Afghanistan, I want to say it was a 96% increase.
80% global supply.
dave smith
Oh, so you're exaggerating, Joe.
unidentified
It's only 80%.
joe rogan
No, no, no.
It was responsible for 80%.
dave smith
Ooh, yeah.
joe rogan
It was responsible for most of the global supply of heroin.
And the production went up after we invaded.
So opium poppy, which grows extensively in Afghanistan and southern fields, contains main opium ingredient used to manufacture heroin.
Afghanistan was previously the world's top opium producer, responsible for over 80% of the global supply and a major source of heroin in Europe and Asia.
So how much did it go?
Oh, plunges by 95%.
When was this?
Under the Taliban.
Now.
That's now.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
See, the Taliban doesn't want everybody on heroin.
They want people to get back to work and make Afghanistan great again.
dave smith
The Taliban just ran on a Trump message.
joe rogan
They fucking kicked out the drug dealers.
That's what happened.
They kicked out the drug dealers.
Dude, there was a giant part of the supply of heroin to the world.
The idea that we didn't...
Well, we are not interested in that at all.
We just want to push freedom.
dave smith
Yeah, and I think even people who are...
Even the people, I think, who are lying about this shit rationalize it in their own head.
joe rogan
Bro, where'd that money go?
dave smith
Yeah, well, that's...
joe rogan
Where'd all that heroin money go?
dave smith
Well, I know you were...
I was listening to the Mike Baker podcast you had on where you were talking about the money in Ukraine and where it went, and even he was like, ah, yeah, no, we don't really know where the...
I thought one of the funniest things about that was that...
joe rogan
I'll tell you where some of it goes.
dave smith
Well, that's for sure.
I think that's for sure.
joe rogan
The Taliban...
It's not...
Our tax dollars have 100% paid for some cocaine.
dave smith
Oh, certainly.
joe rogan
The Taliban's successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world.
The ban is not a counter-narcotics victory, and we'll have negative economic and humanitarian consequences, potentially leading to a refugee crisis.
Oh, unlike us leaving in the middle of nowhere, allowing the Taliban to kill all the people we worked with.
dave smith
But you see, you get my point about how humans can rationalize anything?
Like, they can just come up with...
joe rogan
Propaganda.
That's propaganda, bro.
dave smith
Yes, that's true.
That's also true.
But even people who are like, I mean, I like...
joe rogan
Look, I thought – the only way you could say that, whether it made sense, is if you're advocating that heroin should be legal.
dave smith
Yes.
joe rogan
If you're advocating that heroin should be legal, and this is your full perspective, okay, now I'll accept it.
But if you really think that heroin is a scourge, and if you really do appreciate that 100,000 people died last year of opioid overdoses, 100,000, it's a real fucking crisis.
If there was a disease killing 100,000 people, we would freak the fuck out.
dave smith
Well, look, I mean, I do think there's a strong argument for legalization, but there's also a difference between that and the government kind of like sponsoring the trade of it.
joe rogan
Damn, this is 90% of heroin globally and more than 95% of the European supply.
More land is used for opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca cultivation in Latin America.
Bro, you don't think that has something to do with it?
Is that...
Am I silly?
dave smith
No, I think it's insane to ignore that.
I mean, like, come on.
joe rogan
Where's that money?
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
Where's that money?
dave smith
So I was going to say, dude, Rand Paul...
I thought this was so funny.
It was during one of the rounds of aid to Ukraine, and Rand Paul stood up and said...
Look, we don't know where any of this money is going.
If we're gonna send them this money, can we at least have an inspector general so that we itemize where all the money is going?
And it failed.
Of course it failed.
joe rogan
That's communist talk.
dave smith
Yeah, like even in the Senate, they were like, what?
What are you talking about?
joe rogan
Communist talk.
dave smith
We're going to know where our money's going?
Nah, that's lame.
Just send it over there.
joe rogan
Just send them that shit.
Send them everything they need and more.
And then, do you have one of their flags?
You should wave it around.
dave smith
Yeah.
And we'll provide the flags.
joe rogan
Leave it around in Congress.
dave smith
We'll provide the flags.
unidentified
Don't worry.
We'll give you flags.
joe rogan
They're all uniform, same size.
It's not like people bought them from different vendors.
No, they all got them from the same...
They got a little box of them.
Hey, make sure you guys grab your flags.
It's fucking bonkers.
dave smith
It's also just so...
The thing that's so wild to me is that after, and I know I've talked about this, I'm sure, on previous episodes, but just after 20 years of the terror wars and what a disaster those were, and to the point that everyone...
John McCain wrote in his memoir that the war in Iraq was a mistake.
That's how universally agreed upon it is.
Which is hilarious.
John McCain would acknowledge we got that one wrong.
And it's not like anyone else is defending any of the other terror wars at this point.
But then as soon as we kind of get out of them, we're not even fully out, but we're mostly out, we just get into these proxy wars in Ukraine and now in Israel that are clearly wars of choice for America.
Like, we don't have to be involved in these.
We're just still deciding to continue this war machine going.
joe rogan
The last two are really important.
When they get done, we're done.
dave smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
These last two.
This is it.
joe rogan
This is it.
unidentified
Right.
dave smith
Anyway, man, I will say that I think a lot of the defense of the war in Gaza, which I kind of feel we are even calling a war, because it doesn't exactly feel like that's what the term should be.
joe rogan
Well, it's like the Bill Hicks joke.
It's only a war when two armies are fighting.
dave smith
Well, right.
joe rogan
Remember that joke?
dave smith
Yeah, vaguely.
joe rogan
About Iraq?
They said, oh, Bill, Iraq is the fourth largest army.
He goes, yeah, but after number three, there's a big drop-off.
He goes, the Salvation Army's number five.
dave smith
That's a great bit.
joe rogan
It's a great bit.
dave smith
Well, I mean, but in the case of Gaza, it's not even like there's not even a government.
I mean, there are stateless people who have been captive by the Israelis since 1967. And then they're captive politically in their own country by Hamas.
Right.
joe rogan
And then Hamas does do what this accusation is that they have their bases under schools and hospitals.
They actually do do that.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave smith
Yeah, I think it's certainly exaggerated at times by the Israelis, but there is no question that they are, look, they're in this, Gaza is, dude, it's five miles wide.
I know, it's crazy.
So little.
You could jog from one side to the other without taking a break.
joe rogan
It's literally way closer, way smaller than here to my club.
Now imagine that.
Imagine.
Imagine.
Like an extra 10 miles.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
That small tract of land in the last five miles is what's getting the fuck blown out of it.
unidentified
It is.
dave smith
It's, I think, 25 by 5. So it's like a marathon by a jog.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's how, that's Gaza.
joe rogan
It's so little.
dave smith
No, look, so I'm just saying part of this, and this isn't, I'm not, like, making any excuses.
I mean, there's no question there have been incidents of Hamas, like, embedding themselves in civilian locations.
But also, it's not as if They have a military or a government.
It's not as if there's going to be two armies that meet themselves on the battlefield here.
Hamas is essentially a gang in an Israeli prison that rose up as the toughest gang there.
And yeah, in such a densely populated area, that's the way, as they call it, asymmetric warfare is going to work.
Look, man, I took issue with a few things that some of the guests you've had on recently have said.
I know, I think all of this, a lot of times it comes down to framing, like how you want to look at an issue, and particularly the people who are way behind Israel on this, I feel like always rely on this very strange framing, so they don't have to confront exactly what's going on, and they can kind of look at it in more of an abstract, removed way.
Like when you had a, I'm sorry if I'm saying his name wrong, but Gad, how do you say his last name?
unidentified
Saad.
dave smith
Saad.
I've read his stuff before, but I always butcher names.
But so one of the things he said, which I know I've heard this in every debate I've done on the topic so far, but he said the same thing Dennis Prager said to me when we debated, was he was like, well, look, if Israel laid down all their arms, there'd be a genocide.
If Hamas laid down all their arms, there'd be peace.
And forget the fact that I will say I don't agree with the second part of that.
I don't think that's clear at all.
I think if Hamas laid down all their arms, which essentially the Palestinians Are as close to have laid down all their arms as could be?
joe rogan
Isn't everyone looking at it too binary?
Even if you're supporting the Israelis, even if you're from that position, you have to acknowledge the attacks on AIDS workers.
Like it seems to be there's a bunch of targeted attacks on people bringing in food.
Like Jose Andres' people.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then there's been more of those.
Like there's all these, I think, how many documented attacks are there on aid supply?
Because it's a big number.
dave smith
There's been several, I know, for sure.
joe rogan
I think it's a big number.
dave smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, it's been hard.
joe rogan
It's creepy.
dave smith
Well, I remember when you had, um, anyway, just the point I was making about Gad's thing is that it's also this, like, I just hate when people retreat to almost these hypotheticals.
It reminds me of Sam Harris's argument about why you were really wrong with the, uh, at least eight times.
joe rogan
Eight times.
dave smith
Yeah, that's a lot.
joe rogan
So eight times Israeli forces have attacked humanitarian aid convoys.
And buildings in the Gaza Strip at least eight times since October, despite being given coordinates to ensure their protection, Human Rights Watch has set in a new report.
So they're targeting these people.
So you've got some members of the Israeli military that don't give a fuck, and they want to stop these people from getting food.
dave smith
And, well, look, and this has kind of been, like, egged on.
Look, there'll be so much, like, scrutiny over, like, some college kids chanting, from the river to the sea.
And look, But for the record, if I was in charge of those protests, I'd say stop chanting that.
Because even if you don't mean it that way, which some people will argue they don't, and that's fine.
Maybe that's not what you mean.
Maybe you mean is from the river to the sea, everyone will be free and whatever.
Maybe that's how you mean it.
But it's also the same thing Hamas chants, and they clearly mean something else when they say that.
So, like, maybe just use a different term.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
You can't use a swastika for its old-timey use.
dave smith
Right.
Like, if nothing else, it's a bad idea.
However, for all the scrutiny there'll be over what these 20-year-olds are hollering at Columbia, when Benjamin Netanyahu is saying they're Amalek, As you're going into this area, which, you know, the story from the Bible is that you're supposed to kill the women and the children.
And the story is that they fucked up by not killing all the women and the children.
And then, like, they came back.
Now, even if you could argue he doesn't mean it that way, it's like, okay, but you're saying that— The story from the Bible?
The ICJ basically said that Israel is plausibly committing a genocide.
They haven't yet determined that it is or isn't, but they said it's plausible.
But anyway, my point that I'm making about what Saad was saying is that it reminds me of Sam Harris, where he sits here and he goes, well, imagine this hypothetical.
Imagine COVID was 100 times as deadly and the vaccine was perfect against stopping transmission and there were no vaccine injuries.
Well, hey.
Now, you don't look so good anymore, do you, Joe Rogan?
joe rogan
No, he wasn't saying that.
He was saying you could, when someone's saying you could never mandate a vaccine or argue for a mandate, and he was saying if there was a vaccine, you could, he was making an intellectual argument, he's correct, that you could argue that if there was a vaccine that had zero side effects and was 100% effective, and if everybody took it, the disease stops.
You could make that argument.
dave smith
Well, what he was saying was that then how would we feel about what Joe Rogan is saying and what RFK is saying when they were, you know what I mean?
But the point is that that's not the hypothetical.
b-real
Not only that, it doesn't exist in nature.
dave smith
Right, right.
joe rogan
There's no vaccines that are 100% safe with no side effects.
None of them.
dave smith
I'm just saying I'm not against engaging in a thought experiment to think about, like, what that scenario would look like.
But at the same time, you're like, it does seem like that's serving in this case as a distraction from the real world scenario that's going on here.
So, like, if you're going to say if Israel, like, yes, I would not recommend...
Israel lay down all of their arms, completely disarm themselves, and then open up the wall to Gaza and allow Hamas to come in.
But that's not on the table.
That's never going to happen.
So, like, even thinking about that as a thought experiment doesn't really prove that much.
What's actually going on here is, like...
What Israel is doing to Gaza.
joe rogan
Right, but if you could flip it around, the opposite would be true.
Like, if Hamas did lay down all their weapons, and if they did completely give up, You're going to have some Israeli soldiers that do not give a fuck that still want to shoot them.
But for the most part, if there was nothing, if they completely gave up, which is also not going to happen, but if that did happen, you couldn't see a situation where Israel just continues bombing.
dave smith
Maybe not, but then what do they go to?
Just being subjugated by the Israelis?
Back to the status quo of just being a stateless people of permanent refugees with no natural rights whatsoever, no ability to trade with the world, no ability to come and leave.
You can't have an airport.
You can't have a seaport.
You can't go out fishing past where some IDF guy decides you're not allowed to.
So, like, yeah, if Hamas laid down all their arms, perhaps Israel would stop the bombing campaign, and they would just continue...
Subjugation forever, which has been the Likud Party official policy since they were created by the terrorist Menachem Begin.
Like, literally since this party, that is the ruling party in Israel, was created, their goal has been that the Palestinian people never get their own state, they never get their own freedom, and that's resulted in this.
joe rogan
And if you don't give them their own freedom, there's no way you can justify it.
No way you can justify that a whole entire group of people...
Never get to be a country.
They don't get the rights of the Israelis.
They don't get the rights of a sovereign country.
They're trapped.
dave smith
Nothing.
Literally no rights whatsoever.
joe rogan
That's kind of crazy that that's being done by Israel, if you really think about it.
It's kind of crazy.
dave smith
Well, in a way it is, and then in another way, it's kind of not.
It's kind of like, there's this weird, you know, hurt people hurt people type thing.
Like, when you kind of suffer this trauma, and we're speaking collectively here, so it's not exactly the same as an individual, but like, you suffer this trauma, and then you use that to justify doing whatever the hell you gotta do so that you never suffer that trauma again.
And then you weirdly end up kind of like inflicting something on another group of people and kind of in a weird way holding them responsible for the trauma you suffered even though they really, really had very little, nothing to do with the actual trauma.
joe rogan
It's really an ancient kind of conflict.
The Israel-Palestine is very ancient in the fact that it's like the hate between them is so strong and they're right next door to each other, which is how people used to rock it back in the day.
That was the fear of neighboring tribes, that people from the other side were going to come over and rape the women and children and kill your babies and slaughter the men.
dave smith
And not like an irrational fear, like a fear based on this really happens, you know what I mean?
joe rogan
And it's happening in Israel.
I mean, that's what's crazy.
dave smith
The other thing, though, is that, and that's all true, but the other thing is that, you know, there are these examples, right, like where there's Ireland and England, and they're right next to each other, and, like, things are just cool now.
And France and Germany are right next to each other, and they're just cool now.
joe rogan
Yeah, but Ireland and Northern Ireland were at war with each other forever.
dave smith
No, but I'm just making the point that, and then it's over.
And now they're not at war anymore.
And, like, Egypt went to war with Israel four times.
Between 1948, 56, 67, and 72 or 73. Did I say that wrong?
joe rogan
Was Ireland at war with Northern Ireland?
dave smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Southern Ireland was at war.
dave smith
Well, they were the British controlled.
Right.
joe rogan
But it was really England.
dave smith
Yes, yeah, yeah.
It was by proxy England basically dominating the Irish.
And then by the way, the Irish turned to terrorism when they were being dominated by the English.
unidentified
Shocker.
dave smith
Yeah, which is another thing that people...
Another real interesting...
joe rogan
That's how you have to do it.
It's the only way to go to war.
dave smith
Well, look...
joe rogan
If you have a smaller army and they have all the money, you've got to figure out a way to get them.
dave smith
Well, here's the craziest part of this, right?
Is that...
And we talked a bunch about the history of this last time I was on, but I don't think I mentioned this.
Maybe I did.
But...
The craziest part of all of it is that the Israelis, I shouldn't say the Israelis, the Israelis five seconds before they became Israelis, like right before the creation of the State of Israel, they embraced terrorism.
And by the way, these terrorists who were the leaders of these terrorist organizations, like Menachem Begin and Yisak Shamir, they went on to be prime ministers of Israel, but they were terrorists.
And I'm not like, I don't mean this as a pejorative, like self-described, like they embraced terrorism.
joe rogan
What was their organization called?
dave smith
Menachem Begin was the Ergon.
That was his militia.
And then there was Lehi or the Stern gang.
And then there was the Haganah, who was like the biggest one.
And they were not quite as terroristic, but they also were involved in a bunch of it.
And their justification for it was to drive out the occupying force, which was the British at the time.
After World War II, the Zionists who were in Palestine had enough of the British occupying the area, and they were very angry because they had limited Jewish migration during the run-up to the Holocaust.
So they had a real beef with the British at this point, even though the British had kind of allowed them to...
Have a chance to establish a Jewish homeland there.
But so they embraced terrorism to drive them out.
You can go look up the King David Hotel.
Killed a whole bunch of innocent people, including Jews, in the hotel because they just wanted to use terrorism to drive out an occupying force.
And they actually introduced terrorism into that region.
And many of the same tactics that the Palestinians went on to embrace were stuff that they picked up from the Jewish terrorists at that time.
But then the same Israelis will turn around and be like, well, I don't know why these Palestinians have embraced terrorism.
And, like, they're telling you it's for the same reason.
It's to drive out an occupying force.
Now, of course, the major difference there is that Israelis came to stay, whereas the British were there.
You know, they had their—this was a satellite.
They had their home country back in Europe, and they could be driven out.
It's a whole different thing to try to drive someone out who's like, no, we're setting up our homes here.
joe rogan
But— And there's more of us.
dave smith
Yeah, well, not that much.
I mean, there's Palestinians and Israelis pretty close, if you count all of them.
joe rogan
Well, you're also backed by America.
dave smith
Well, that's the major difference.
But that's basically my essential argument is that America shouldn't be playing this role.
joe rogan
This is being argued out now.
This is a big point of contention now politically, right?
Because the Biden administration is not giving the same amount of support to Israel that it was...
dave smith
They've been giving, basically, I mean, what's really going on is that Joe Biden, this is a disaster politically for Joe Biden, and something like, looking at the polls recently, 50% of his base?
joe rogan
I think you and I have different Twitter followers.
I mean, my Twitter feed seems like he's doing a great job.
dave smith
Really?
Yeah.
He's doing excellent.
He's totally got it down.
joe rogan
There's a lot of people that are arguing that.
dave smith
Did I send you...
joe rogan
The creation of jobs.
dave smith
I sent you his latest clip from a speech that said, New Biden just dropped.
And it's the newest...
joe rogan
Yes.
dave smith
The newest one he goes...
And by the way, it's not...
He meant to say, I think, financial crash, but he said pandemic.
But he said during the pandemic when he was vice president, Barack Obama sent him to Detroit.
And you're just like, dude, what?
joe rogan
Why did he send him to Detroit?
Why would they send you to Detroit to deal with COVID? Now, I saw someone saying that perhaps it was the H1N1 pandemic, which did happen during the Biden administration or during the Obama administration when he was vice president.
dave smith
I don't think I don't think I think he was talking about he would have probably said a previous pandemic yeah 2009 he's out of his fucking mind if it wasn't if it was occasional people would let this stuff go yeah but anyway just to that look I also thought, because some of these guys, by the way, you've had on your show, like, I like them.
I'm not even like, you know, like Coleman Hughes.
I don't know him personally, but I like him.
He's great.
He seems really smart, and I haven't read his book, but I bet I would love it.
joe rogan
Well, you two together would be a fascinating conversation just about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave smith
Well, I would love to have a – because I think he's a good faith guy and I think – and he's very smart.
But he also kind of – there were two things that kind of rubbed me the wrong way when he was on the show.
Number one was that he started by kind of getting into this argument about – which I see a lot of people who are supporting this conflict doing – Okay, well, here are the number of total civilians dead, and here are the number of Hamas militants dead, and let's look at that ratio, and then is that ratio that far off from what you find in a typical war?
And there's a few problems with this.
Number one, The numbers are totally unreliable.
And so you're having this conversation.
On both sides, right?
Yes, on both sides.
I mean, both sides are totally incentivized to exaggerate the numbers.
And also in the fog of war, it's very hard to keep up with these numbers.
We never really know the numbers of dead in war until like years later when the excess mortality is calculated and then you get a better idea of what was really going on there.
The Israeli government talking about the number of Hamas militants they've killed seems to be them just pulling numbers out of their ass.
Like, they dropped these bombs.
unidentified
They don't know how many, who got who, and who was a part of— Are they going in there and checking dog tags?
dave smith
Yeah, they're not.
You know what I mean?
But anyway, even if the numbers were right, it's like— Look, dude, if you look at the population density, and you just look at the number of bombs that Israel has dropped, and you just see a lot of the footage that we've seen, and you just listen to stories that doctors are telling.
I literally just saw an interview a couple weeks ago with a doctor who just got back from Gaza, and he was talking about how they have a major anesthesia shortage.
So just think about the implications of that, like what that means.
It means they're operating on kids without anesthesia, you know what I mean?
So the point is that if you're talking about, okay, well this many Hamas people are dying compared to this many innocent babies are dying, That's not the question.
When you're inflicting this level of human suffering on people, the question for any decent civilized person is, is this absolutely necessary?
joe rogan
Is this the only way to do it?
dave smith
Is there any other option besides doing this?
And as soon as you frame the question that way, you realize that, oh yeah, there actually is.
And that it's not true that Israel...
There will just be October 7th after October 7th if Israel stops doing this.
The fact is that...
Of course, Netanyahu's never allowed a real investigation into October 7th to happen.
But everybody pretty much concludes that Israel dropped the ball in a massive way, in a massive way, that their security was just in shambles, and all they really needed to do was not rely so much on these, you know, machine gun robots and have actual soldiers at the border.
They could easily just stop this right now.
joe rogan
Well, wasn't there an issue of protests where the soldiers were allocated towards...
dave smith
Yes.
Basically, they had—so, I think as a result of the protests against Netanyahu, he had started to ally with some even further right-wing groups than he normally would have, and to appease them, he was pulling soldiers off of the Gaza border and putting them over toward the West Bank, which is what the religious Jews on the right really care about.
And yes, they basically got caught with their pants down.
But I'm just saying, they could just stop doing this.
It's not they all die or they keep doing this.
They could stop, and Israel can still protect itself.
In fact, I'd argue their security would be enhanced if they stopped doing this.
But the other thing, which you brought up to Coleman Hughes, was that you mentioned to him, you said, what about, didn't Israel prop up Hamas?
Wasn't that part of their strategy for a while?
unidentified
And he...
dave smith
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, and maybe he just doesn't know about that detail of this as much, because if not, he was kind of being dishonest.
But maybe he just wasn't familiar with all of this stuff.
But he kind of went, you said that, and then he kind of dismissed it by saying, well, there's a quote that's attributed to Netanyahu, but it wasn't on videotape.
Essentially being like, we don't really know if Netanyahu said this or not.
And then just kind of moved on to the conversation away from that.
But I find this, I found this in all of my debates that I've done on this, and I've done like eight debates on this since the war broke out.
Everybody on the pro-Israeli side does not want to grapple with that point because it really is like a, it's a narrative shattering point once you acknowledge it.
joe rogan
Right, but if it isn't on videotape, he has a point as well.
dave smith
Well, here, well, let me, okay, so here's the deal, right?
So the quote that he's referring to was a quote by Benjamin Netanyahu.
It was something along the lines of, anybody who wants to thwart the Palestinians having their own state needs to support propping up Hamas, bolstering Hamas, transferring money to them.
So there was a quote like this.
joe rogan
So Hamas maintains power.
dave smith
Right.
So Hamas maintains power so that we never have to give them a state because we can look to the international community.
We can look to liberal Jews in Israel and say, look, we have no partner for peace.
They're a crazy terrorist group.
So we never have to make a deal.
We don't have to Fulfill our promise and that we would give this attributed to him so basically this quote particularly Okay, this was at a closed-door meeting with the Likud party So this is Benjamin Netanyahu's political party his far-right party that's in power right now in Israel So it's true that this was a closed-door meeting and that it's not on tape So what happened is, as far as I could tell, the first person who reported this, I believe, was a lady who's a reporter for the Jerusalem Post.
And then it's been run in a bunch of other newspapers since then.
So what basically what happened is an eyewitness who was there at the meeting.
So another Likud party member in Benjamin Netanyahu's political party came and told her that he said this.
And then she went and checked with somebody else who was there.
And he also confirmed that, like, yes, Benjamin Netanyahu said this.
And then a third person who was also at the meeting came out and wrote about it in his book or wrote about it in another newspaper article or something like that.
So you had three eyewitnesses from within his own political party who confirmed that he said this.
Now, take that for what it's worth.
I think that's reasonably strong, that three eyewitnesses all in his political party.
joe rogan
As long as they weren't trying to get rid of him.
Because you can get more than three people to say that Donald Trump was in collusion with Russia.
dave smith
Sure.
So even say if you don't trust them.
Coleman acted as if that's what the entire case is built off of, which is just not true at all.
It's not just this one Benjamin Netanyahu quote.
It's dozens and dozens of quotes from Israeli leaders all throughout the political spectrum.
There's been reporting on this done by almost every major Israeli newspaper.
Haaretz, Times of Israel.
The Times of Israel on October 8th had a piece by Tal Schneider, which was how Bin Laden, excuse me, How Netanyahu's support for Hamas just blew up in his face.
It was the next day.
And because even critics like Ehud Barak, who was the former prime minister, he's a labor party.
He's a critic of Benjamin Netanyahu.
So he was a critic of this plan to prop up Hamas.
But it's totally uncontroversial that this was their plan.
The New York Times just ran a piece, I think it was late last year, It might have been early this year, where they talked about how two weeks before October 7th, Benjamin Netanyahu sent the head of the Mossad to Qatar because funds going into Hamas had slowed down.
And he sent them in there to make sure the funds continued.
The case for this is overwhelming.
It's not like relying on one...
Yeah, here you go.
joe rogan
Yeah, for years the Qatari government had been, am I saying that right?
Is that how you say it?
dave smith
Qatari, I think is correct.
joe rogan
Yeah, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month to Gaza's trip, money that helped prop up the Hamas government there.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.
According to Times, Israeli intelligence agents traveled to Gaza With a Qatari official carrying suitcases filled with cash, suitcases, like a mafia movie, to disperse money.
Retired Israeli General Shlomo Brahm described the logic of Netanyahu's position.
One effective way to present a two-state solution is to divide...
Prevent.
Prevent a two-state solution is to divide between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
If the extremist Hamas ruled Gaza, then the Palestinian Authority, a compromise, comprador, comprador government?
Is that how you say it?
Comprador?
I don't even know what that is.
Comprador government with a tenuous hold on the West Bank would be further weakened.
This, according to Brahm, would allow Netanyahu to say, I have no partner.
dave smith
And so that's, okay, so that's essentially the point there, right?
joe rogan
So that's a strategy.
dave smith
That he can say, I have no partner for peace, which is the Israeli line that they like to use.
So basically, Okay, in 1979, the Egyptians and the Israelis met at Camp David, and that's when they worked out their peace.
Now, their peace also just involved, basically, that the US would pay them both off.
We'd give them both $3 billion a year in perpetuity if they stopped going to war with each other, basically.
And part of that was that Israel promised that they would eventually Give the Palestinians a state.
Like, it was recognized by D.C. at the time, this Jimmy Carter, that, like, you gotta give them a state, because otherwise this fighting's gonna continue on and on and on forever.
So they promised that.
Eventually they would give it to them.
joe rogan
This is the Yasser Arafat days.
dave smith
This is before Yasser Arafat was, like, the guy.
But he was alive.
But then, in the 80s, Yasser Arafat basically rejected terrorism.
He had been He was involved in terrorism before that.
He rejected terrorism and he recognized Israel.
I think it was in 1988. He recognized Israel's right to exist under 1967 borders.
So basically, Israel has the right to exist, but we have the right to Gaza and the West Bank.
The ultimate of compromises from the Palestinian perspective.
Because, you know, a lot of their more hardcore guys are like, no, all of this was ours.
We shouldn't have lost any of it.
And now even the original U.S. partition plan, which was rejected by the Arabs for, you know, fairly good reasons.
They rejected it because it gave 55 percent to the Jews and only for 56 percent to the Jews and only 44 percent to the Palestinians.
And they were like, but we're like 90 percent of the population here, like or 90 percent of the landowners here or whatever.
And it's like this doesn't this isn't fair.
But now at this point, they're talking about 78 percent versus 22 percent.
So they're accepting 22%.
And so that's Yasser Arafat in the late 80s.
And then this is what set the stage for the Oslo Accords in the early 90s.
Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat over and they shake hands and they sign these deals.
And the promise again from Israel was that we're starting the peace process to eventually give the Palestinians their state.
This is the process.
And there were steps along this process.
Okay?
Now, in 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu becomes prime minister.
Now, the same year in 1996, there's this letter, you can find this on the internet, it's called, A Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.
And it was written by Richard Perle and David Wormser and a couple other people.
Of course, Richard Perle and David Wormser both went on to be very influential neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration.
So they write this letter not to President Bill Clinton and not to Bob Dole, who was running for president on the Republican ticket that year.
They write this letter to Benjamin Netanyahu, the new prime minister of Israel.
And basically, if you read it, what they say is that they're like, look, look, you guys are all caught up in this peace process thing where you're talking about giving the Palestinians land.
We need a clean break from that strategy.
And we're going to have a whole new strategy.
And what it's going to involve is you making agreements with the broader Arab world so that you don't have to make this agreement with the Palestinians.
You see, the old way of thinking was always that Israel will never be able to make peace with the broader Muslim world because they're furious about what you're doing to the Palestinians.
But the clean break strategy was like, no, no, no.
You're going to...
Embark on what ultimately became the Netanyahu doctrine, that we'll make deals with the rest of the Arab world, so we don't have to give up this land.
And you know what they recommended?
These two neoconservatives in 1996, and I bet you'll never guess this, Joe, regime change in Iraq.
For the security of Israel.
That was in 1996. And these people got in George W. Bush's government.
And after 9-11, those same people decided that they believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he was involved in 9-11.
joe rogan
Yeah, so there it is.
Israel can shape its strategic environment in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria.
This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions.
And here's where it gets crazy.
How much of a...
What a great job the Mossad did in compromising people, by the way.
I mean, how much of an effect did that have in everything?
You know, you can go full Eddie Bravo and think everything that's happening is because of Epstein's island.
And I used to dismiss that a lot more easy than I do now.
dave smith
Maybe not everything.
A lot.
But certainly some stuff.
Some things.
A few.
You will see this.
And I'm not saying that Epstein is the sole reason for this type of stuff.
There's several different reasons.
But you see this all over the political sphere.
And especially amongst conservative commentators.
Where as soon as Israel's mentioned...
Whatever their principles were that they were just rolling with are, like, gone.
Like, it's a totally different thing.
And I get that.
I get there's a reason for that, too.
Of course, like, what Jewish people have been through in the 20th century, in the 19th and 18th century, like, that plays a part in that, too.
But there's no question that...
Look, it's not just...
It's not just Epstein.
It's also, and I highly recommend people read, John Mearsheimer has a great book called The Israeli Lobby.
There's also this lobby, APEC, which is a very, very powerful lobby.
The truth is that every U.S. president since, with perhaps the exception of Trump, I'm actually not sure about that, but every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter, I know for sure, excluding Trump, every one of them wanted a two-state solution.
Every single one of them.
None of them were able to get it done, even though we bankroll Israel.
You'd think it'd be fairly easy for us to, like, put pressure on the country that's relying on us.
Like, okay, we'll keep supporting you, but you gotta do this.
Nope.
Even when they go over and say, we wanna do this, they're not able to do that.
And part of that is because of the lobby.
Part of that is because there's, like, tens of millions of evangelical Christians in this country who believe that That the Jews have to control Israel, like in some religious view that Jesus can't come back unless the Jews control him or something like that.
I don't exactly understand it.
joe rogan
They go there on tour.
They have no tours to go there.
dave smith
Well, and they also, and the Israeli government's well aware of that, and they're well aware of how much they benefit from that, so they do everything they can to facilitate that belief.
joe rogan
White dudes with golf shirts.
dave smith
Yeah, that's right.
They're a big force.
They're a really big block in this country.
There's not like a few dozen of them.
joe rogan
They're willing to throw some real money at bringing Jesus back.
dave smith
Yes, that's a very big deal to them.
But look, all of these US presidents, they've wanted an outcome that they're unable to get.
And you can look, there's this one video of Benjamin Netanyahu where he doesn't know he's being recorded and he's speaking openly about this.
So he openly starts bragging about how he basically blew up the peace process.
joe rogan
Is this a recording of this?
dave smith
I mean, it's in Hebrew, but it's translated.
And it's legit.
It's been translated by a whole bunch of different people.
And he's bragging about how he put all of these poison pills into the peace agreement.
He was like, oh yeah, sure, we'll...
I agreed to grant them a state, but only after it was determined that Israel could control important military areas.
And then he was like, I also snuck it in that only Israel gets to define what the military important areas are.
And I decided that a third of the West Bank is that.
And like he's bragging about and he's bragging about how he tricked Bill Clinton and how easy it is to move the Americans.
It's wild.
Like there's there's a lot of power plays at work here.
And the only other thing I'll say about this, and it's not just like the neoconservative, the clean break, the strategy that they wrote for Netanyahu.
It's that.
So in 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu comes and testifies before Congress as a as a regional expert.
And he testifies that like, oh, yeah, no, if you guys overthrow Saddam Hussein, democracy will sweep the region.
Let me tell you, I know something, because I know this region better than anyone else.
And at one point, Dennis Kucinich actually grilled him and got him on record, and he goes, is there anybody else that you're advocating that we preemptively attack?
And Netanyahu goes, yeah, Iran.
I don't hate Israel.
I think Israel is a cool country.
I think what they do to the Palestinians is fucked up and it's inexcusable and they should stop.
But I think Israel is a cool country.
There's a lot of great things about them.
But like Netanyahu, this guy who's the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history, has been trying to get America into wars that are in his interest, that are very clearly not in ours.
And the fact that we have to like unconditionally support Israel, even when our own democratically elected president doesn't like the policies that they're enacting, and yet they still get all of this support.
Even now, you know, Joe Biden doesn't know what he's saying because he's got dementia, but there's people in his ear who are telling him to, like, say, don't invade Rafa.
And he's like, don't invade Rafa.
And then Benjamin Netanyahu's like, OK, we're going to invade Rafa.
And it's just like, OK, well, fine, fine.
If we have no influence over what you're going to do and you'll just wag the middle finger at us and brag about how you tricked Bill Clinton and defy what our presidents want you to do, like, OK, fine.
But then you don't get our money and our weapons, right?
Like isn't that reasonable?
joe rogan
It is reasonable, but it's also the left is very confused on this one.
This is a baffling one for the left.
dave smith
Yeah, they sure are.
joe rogan
Because support of Israel has always been a position of people on the left, right?
Supportive Jewish people.
And to not want that is kind of anti-Semitic.
dave smith
Well, look, on the hard left, there's always been a bunch of people who are sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, right?
For sure.
joe rogan
Well, the people that have seen Abby Martin's take on it.
dave smith
Yeah.
But Abby Martin also follows in a tradition of left-wing thought, like Noam Chomsky and people like this, who have always been very critical of the Israeli government's treatment of the Palestinians.
Yes.
joe rogan
But this is where it gets weird.
It's like the support of Israel when Israel was attacked.
So that's when everything gets crazy.
It's not support of Israel before October 7th.
It's post October 7th.
So now you have hardcore lefties who are now they're like the majority of young people now.
It's a big thing in this country.
In universities, it's crazy.
I mean, they're going nuts.
They're attacking students.
They're attacking teachers.
People can't go to work.
They're being told if they support Israel, they can't be on campus.
It's just the whole thing.
It's very bad for the left in that regard because Jewish people traditionally vote left.
dave smith
Oh, yeah.
Well, yeah, I mean the overwhelming majority, I think 85% of Jews are Democrats or something like that.
joe rogan
And, you know, obviously there's not full, like even today there was a news report of a huge government protest in Israel.
They're in the streets.
So it's not like this is a policy that's supported by the entire population.
dave smith
Well, there's...
I mean, there was...
So basically, I think what really changed things...
During the 90s, there's no question, there was tremendous support for making a deal for a two-state solution, particularly amongst, like, liberal Israelis.
And there...
Basically, so Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated by a right-wing Israeli who was furious that he was a traitor for making a deal with the Palestinians.
And that took him out.
And then when Netanyahu came in, and then ultimately, I guess it was Sharon who was in the year 2000, and there was another meeting at Camp David where...
You know, what people will say, which is just not true, but what a lot of the people of the pro-Israeli side will say is that they offered them everything.
They offered the Palestinians everything they wanted, and they just turned it down.
And this is their...
It's all slogans.
It's like, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
But if you actually look into the details of all of it, even Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was the acting foreign minister at the time involved in these negotiations, he even said in his book, and he said it in a Democracy Now!
interview, that he would have turned down the deal, too, if he was Arafat.
Because Dale was just so, it was so removed from actually giving him his own state that it was like, this is just, it was an insulting offer, essentially.
But when those negotiations broke down, and then it was after Sharon had this visit to the Temple Mount, which really inflamed tensions, when the negotiations broke down, then the Second Intifada started, and there was a big wave of terrorist attacks.
And that, you know, in the same cycle we were talking about at the beginning, that did a lot to turn a lot of liberal Israelis off of the idea that, like, well, there's no negotiating apiece.
But it is worth noting that whenever there were negotiations going on, the support for terrorism, the support for Hamas and groups like that always plummeted.
And then whenever the negotiations broke down, the support for those terrorist groups picked back up again.
Because the big problem here is that you're just, when you...
Essentially, when you take away the dangling carrot in front of an oppressed people like it, you let them know that there's no hope that you're going to live in subjugation for eternity.
That's a very dangerous situation that that's when people will turn to really, really dark means.
And that's, you know, essentially, look, Netanyahu's like what became the Netanyahu doctrine.
And a lot of this culminated in the Abraham Accords, which a lot of Trump supporters will brag about.
They'll be like, look at all these peace deals that Donald Trump worked out in the Middle East, except the problem is that there was no war between any of the countries that he worked out these deals.
It was just kind of like normalizing relations between Israel and these other Arab countries around them.
But what was the reason why Relations weren't normalized.
It was because they were pissed off about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
So basically, Jared Kushner's brilliant idea, along with Netanyahu's, was that, oh, well, if we just bribe all of these countries with US taxpayer dollars or weapons, we can get them to look the other way.
And say, screw the Palestinians.
We'll make a deal with the US and with Israel.
So they did that.
And Netanyahu was bragging about this.
And Netanyahu, just a couple weeks before September 11th, right around the time that he sent the head of Mossad into Qatar to make sure the money kept going to Hamas, he went to the UN with a map.
Of Greater Israel, and it was all Israel.
Gaza, the West Bank, and what is Israel proper?
All Israel in his map.
Like, they were just bragging to them, like, haha, you guys lost.
You get nothing.
That's it.
Nothing.
joe rogan
This map of Greater Israel, this is something that he's proposing for the future?
dave smith
This is, you know, as much as people will point to the Hamas founding charter, and it says from the river to the sea or whatever, and that's true, at least the original one, But that's in the Likud founding documents also.
In different words, but it's basically from the river to the sea will be all Israel, which is what it has been, you know, since 1967. And again, by the way, I'm not trying to make...
joe rogan
Showing up with a map, why would he have a map?
That sounds like a plot in a movie.
dave smith
Sure does.
unidentified
This is all of ours!
joe rogan
No deals!
dave smith
Yeah, well, right, something like that.
joe rogan
It does, it sounds like a bad guy in a movie.
dave smith
Well, look, I also don't want to...
Because there are people who also jump to other conspiracy theories that I don't think are right.
That, well, they'll say kind of like...
joe rogan
Like what one?
dave smith
Well, because...
Okay, so because Netanyahu was supporting Hamas...
And because he was using them kind of as, you know what I mean?
Like, oh good, we'll keep these terrorists over here so that they're not linked up with the people in the West Bank over here.
And then I have no, I get a, you know, a certificate, I forget the exact phrase, but it was, I have a, I think he said at one point, I have a no partner for peace certificate signed by the president in both houses of Congress.
Because look, I don't have to ever do a two state deal.
But then people will jump to the next level, which is that like, oh, He won at October 7th.
There was a stand-down order.
This is why it took Israel so long.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a black flag.
dave smith
A false flag.
That I don't think is right.
At least I haven't seen convincing evidence that it is.
From everything I've read about it, it actually seems a lot more like if you remember, I know we talked about the same thing on the podcast years ago when I was on.
But if you remember when, OK, so in 2012, when Obama decided that they were going to start arming all of the anti-Assad rebels.
And there's actually a hot mic of John Kerry talking about this.
And because they were doing it through 2013, 2014.
And he goes, he goes, yeah, look, we saw the rise of ISIS coming.
And we knew the weapons were getting into their hands.
But we thought, okay, that might put pressure on Assad to have to step down.
So, like, we could use this group in order to get the regime change that we wanted.
But then they turned around and invaded Iraq.
And, like, that wasn't part of the plan.
You know what I mean?
Like, they weren't supposed to do that.
Then we had to reinvade Iraq to get rid of ISIS. You know what I mean?
And so, if you remember, during that time, there was one point when Obama called ISIS JV. It was kind of like insulting them.
And you could kind of see where Obama was coming from.
He's like, I don't know.
I'm the commander-in-chief of the United States of America's military.
I'm worried about ISIS. These guys are nothing compared to the power that we have.
And there's a lot of people at the highest level of the Israeli government who spoke exactly the same way about Hamas.
That's the Benjamin Netanyahu quote that he says, we can control the height of the flame when he's talking about, you know, propping up Hamas.
He goes, don't worry, we can control what they're able to do and what they're not able to do.
These guys are nothing compared to our strength.
There was tremendous hubris in it.
joe rogan
Let's take a what if.
dave smith
Sure.
joe rogan
What if they decided on a two-state solution as it currently stands and they just let the people run it however they want and Hamas takes over the whole Palestine.
If Palestine becomes a country controlled by Hamas and then they start doing trading with other countries and then they start acquiring weapons like real sophisticated weapons like Israel has where the Iron Dome is no longer successful.
dave smith
Right, so this is kind of the counterfactual that a lot of Israelis will rely on to say, well, look, we can't give them their own state, because what if, when they get their own state, they decide to do this with it?
So, alright, there's an old Thomas Jefferson quote about slavery, and I'll butcher this, as I always do, but I like bringing it up.
But it's something along the lines of, he goes, we have the wolf by the ear, And we can neither afford to hold on to it, nor to safely let it go.
unidentified
Whoa.
dave smith
And essentially what he was saying was, like, this was a major concern of people, even people who were kind of sympathetic to the abolitionist cause, who were like, yeah, look, but we've, like, enslaved these people for so long.
So what are we going to do?
Free them and make them citizens who are allowed to get guns?
Like, they're going to be so furious at us, they're going to come kill all of us.
And you can kind of see...
joe rogan
Especially when there's way more of them.
Especially you have a plantation and how many slaves did you have?
Right, right, right.
In certain areas you might have had- And most people all get together and organize and get guns.
dave smith
Yeah, so you could see where that could have been a realistic concern.
joe rogan
You could see where they have a really good point, too.
dave smith
Right.
joe rogan
But at the same time- You know, the dude who whipped you lives in that big white house and now you've got a shotgun?
dave smith
Yeah, so there's no question there is a concern about that.
However, I also think, looking back at it, most people in modern times would say- You gotta let them go.
Yeah, but you can't enslave people, man.
joe rogan
Guess what?
You shouldn't deserve that house in the first place.
dave smith
And look, I also do think that...
joe rogan
You better get the fuck out of Dodge.
dave smith
Well, the way Daryl Cooper says it, which I actually think is a reasonable way to put it, is he goes like, I heard someone ask him that question once, and he goes, okay, well, if that happened, then we're having a different conversation.
You know?
But that's not the conversation right now.
The conversation right now is about Israel dominating these people in perpetuity.
But I also do think that I don't...
Listen, I think that groups like Hamas get their strength from the fact that there are so many people who want to resist this total domination by the Israelis.
You know, it was General McChrystal...
He's not a libertarian dove like me, not like some comic idiot like me, who's just like, I'm against war.
General McChrystal, who was running the war in Afghanistan before he got caught saying bad things about Obama and got kicked out of there.
The Rolling Stone story.
Yeah, the Rolling Stone story.
joe rogan
Michael Hastings.
dave smith
The late, great Michael Hastings.
joe rogan
Might have.
dave smith
Yeah, I don't know about that.
But General McChrystal, this tough, hard-nosed general, he was the one who coined the term insurgent math.
And he said, what's 10 minus 2?
A lot of you might think it's 8, but the answer's 20. When we're talking about insurgents, 10 minus 2 equals 20. Because you kill two insurgents, and each one of them had brothers and uncles and nephews and friends, and now they all join up the resistance movement.
by the fact that you just killed someone they loved.
And this has been the nature of this dynamic from the beginning of it.
And so, yeah, it's like just saying that to the concern that if Israel was to grant the Palestinians their freedom, that what if then this led to like some swelling in Hamas?
I think the truth is that doing what you're doing now is much more likely to increase Hamas or Hamas-like organizations.
Right.
joe rogan
So it's like credit card debt.
It's like basically they keep using their credit card and they're never going to be able to pay off the debt.
It just keeps rising and rising and rising and your monthly payments keep getting higher and higher and you're fucked.
dave smith
Yeah.
But again, like I will say that the one nice example or the one silver lining to all of this is that there are so many examples throughout the world where things were so off.
I mean, you just never could have imagined that like Germany could live right there in Europe next to all these countries.
They just went to two world wars with each other.
You know what I mean?
But they do.
joe rogan
They travel by train to visit each other.
dave smith
Yeah, that's right.
And everyone's friends.
Dude, I went last year and did stand-up.
I went to London, and then you get on a 45-minute flight.
And you go over to Ireland and you're just like, oh, you guys are right next to each other.
Everyone's just coming out to the shows and we're having fun and it's just cool.
And so there is something beautiful about that where in the moment it seems like this could never be solved.
But that's not necessarily true.
The truth is that most human beings are...
They're incentivized by wanting to live their life and wanting to take care of their family and wanting to...
You know what I mean?
And if given an option to do that rather than losing their sons in war, a lot of times they'll choose that.
But in order for that to happen, look, Israel has all of the power.
And the Palestinian people have virtually none.
The only thing they have the power to do is to, you know, I guess support these acts of terrorism, which are essentially like celebrating losing.
It's so sick and dark that you're like, aha, we'll kill a few of your people and then get way more of our people killed.
Then it's just like, that's the only thing they have.
Aside from that, every peaceful effort that they make ends up being violently suppressed.
And Israel has all of the power.
And in order to get to that step, the ones with the power have to make some concessions.
And the only way to get there is for Israel to at least get back on some path toward like, hey, we are going to give you your sovereignty at some point.
joe rogan
There was some recent discussion of rebuilding Gaza where they were talking about what they could do for that area once they rebuild it.
What's the plan on that?
dave smith
Well, there's been a lot of different, like, things floated out.
And, of course, Israel is always kind of talking out of both sides of their mouth.
So, like, on one moment, they'll be like, we just want Hamas.
We just have to get Hamas out of there.
And then they'll be like, well, we really do think that every country should take in a fair share of the Gazan people.
Like, they're floating out the idea of just cleansing the entire area.
I know that the UN, I think, recently said that it would take 80 years to rebuild...
Gaza?
I don't know if that...
I don't trust UN numbers exactly.
joe rogan
Rebuilding Gaza to cost 50 billion over two decades.
Well, someone just got paid.
dave smith
Well, right, exactly.
So what's the real...
joe rogan
That's also a thing, right?
Rebuilding is very profitable.
dave smith
Well, that's for sure, yeah.
Oh, there's money to be made in the destruction, there's money to be made in the rebuilding, and people will make that money.
But I think that the truth is that Israel has not at all laid out what the endgame of this is, other than this assertion that we must get rid of Hamas entirely, even though U.S. and Israeli intelligence have both said that that's impossible.
It's not an achievable task.
Hamas is popping back up in the areas that they've already leveled.
And they go into Rafa.
I'm sure they can kill some Hamas militants in there, but Hamas or Hamas-like groups are coming back.
joe rogan
How many do you think they've killed so far?
dave smith
No idea.
And I don't think they know.
joe rogan
What are the numbers of Hamas that exist?
dave smith
They've claimed that they've...
I saw at one point they said they've killed 8,000, then they said 10,000, then 14,000.
I don't know.
Honestly, I have no idea what the real number is, and I don't think the Israeli government knows, and I think probably the Gazan Health Ministry doesn't know either.
It's like very difficult work to, while this is all going on, identify bodies and figure out how many of them are dead and how many of them were joined up with Hamas or weren't.
You know, Hamas is also not like it's not a government.
It's not like as if there's like, you know, it's not like, OK, if you were like, say, tracking like in America, there was a big, you know, like explosion.
A bunch of people died and you could look at like DNA records and who was enlisted in the military and you could just like match them up against each other.
It's not scientific like that, or at least it's much more primitive than that.
So I really wouldn't venture to guess.
And I also don't know how accurate the numbers when they say 35,000 people have died.
It seems...
Within the realm of possibility.
joe rogan
There's a lot of people missing, right?
And that's part of the problem.
dave smith
Yeah, well, they said the most recent figures that they put out, again, this is the Gaza Health Ministry, which is overseen by Hamas, so take that with a grain of salt or whatever.
But they said there's like, I think, 10,000 who they weren't able to identify.
joe rogan
Can you imagine the horror of just walking down those streets?
So if there are 10,000, how many of them can you smell?
I mean, you just look around, you just see wreckage, and you smell rotting bodies.
dave smith
Oh, dude, and just the worst things in the world.
joe rogan
It must be insane.
It must be insane to live there before October 6th, when it was already prison, to see it now.
And it's continuing, right?
It's going on right now.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
dave smith
No, and then imagine, like, imagine, you know, and there's constantly, like, the defenders of this military campaign will say, oh, they drop warning bombs, and they drop leaflets, and they tell you, no problem, just leave.
But you're talking about people who are, like, first of all, they live at least...
A large percentage of them live in a level of poverty that none of us have ever experienced.
Just telling people, just leave and head out to the, you know, and people almost have, like, in their mind that, like, what is there, like, some sophisticated refugee camp waiting for them with tents and water and food?
Like, no.
They're just telling them, like, go.
Go out into the desert.
Go out into this other place.
You have nothing.
It's not that easy.
Like, you might have little children with you or old people with you.
It's not that easy to just leave.
And then when they leave and they go into Rafa, which was supposed to be safe, they go, oh, yeah, now we're...
Now we're invading Rafa.
So leave again.
Where do you go exactly?
Who knows?
And again, like, look, dude, it's just, again, I just think that whenever you're talking about these things, when you're talking about, like, inflicting this level of human suffering on a group of people, Like, whoever's defending that man, the onus is on you to demonstrate that there's absolutely no other way to do it.
And the other reason why I bring up this point all the time about Israel propping up Hamas as this strategy is that doesn't that at least change the narrative?
Because if you just go, which a lot of people are, they'll just be like, well, look, look what happened on October 7th.
Look how horrible that is.
Nobody could stand for anybody doing that.
And therefore, Hamas has to go.
And so whatever happens in that process...
Hey, that's on Hamas.
I guess on some superficial level I can understand that.
But once you know that they were propping up Hamas specifically so that they wouldn't have to give the innocent Palestinians their own state, and now they get to use that group that they propped up as the excuse why they're allowed to just slaughter these people, that's just like, that's a whole different level of...
That's just, no, that's fucked up, man.
That's just not, and all these terms get conflated.
They'll be like, doesn't Israel have the right to defend itself?
And you're like, yeah, but see, now you're like manipulating this idea of self-defense, which is a natural right.
You could argue the most natural human right is the right to, you know, the right to life and then the right to defend your life.
But the right to defense is like, so imagine like me and you were hanging out at your house and someone like broke into your house and Kills me and then points the gun at you and you grab your gun and you kill that guy.
You'd be like, well, yeah, you had the right to defend yourself.
You know what I mean?
He's on your property.
He broke into your property.
He just killed your friend.
He's trying to kill you and you're like, no, you have the right to defend yourself.
No question.
Or you could even argue, right?
Say like in the human shield example, he's holding a little baby as he's shooting at me and you shoot and you hit the baby and him.
You could say, hey, that...
That's horrible, but that was on him.
But now you're talking about like a guy breaks into your house, shoots and kills me, runs and leaves, retreats back to his house where you know his wife and his five kids are.
And so you blow up the house.
And you're like, well, look, I have a right to defend myself.
You're like, okay, but this is a slightly different concept than just like the right of self-defense as we all understand it.
This is more like the right to revenge, the right to justice, which, okay, I believe in justice, and I think all of the people involved in October 7th Should face justice for what they did.
Horrific terrorist attack.
But there's a very different question between, like, defending the country of Israel and enacting justice against those people if it means, like, babies get crushed to death in rubble and parents get killed in front of their children and all of the, you know, horror that's been going on.
joe rogan
What do you think Hamas thought Israel was gonna do?
dave smith
This.
I think this was the plan.
joe rogan
So you think they wanted Israel to do this?
dave smith
Yeah.
I think Hamas doesn't care about Palestinian life.
I think the goal in asymmetric warfare is almost always to provoke an overreaction.
Out of your opponent, right?
So like, Osama Bin Laden never thought he could destroy America by taking down the Twin Towers, but he thought he could lure us into a war in Afghanistan that could bankrupt our country, just like he was trained by the CIA to do with the Soviet Union, right?
Like, that was kind of the plan.
And likewise, I think that Hamas knew that Israel would overreact in this way.
And look, I mean, look what's happening.
Totally turn global opinion against them and put themselves in more jeopardy than they've ever been in.
There's almost nothing that anyone else could have done to Israel that would have put that country in more jeopardy than what they've just done to Gaza.
This is like never going away for them.
I don't think I don't think a lot of Israelis or pro-Israeli Americans have really grappled Like, you could get into the semantics of arguing whether this is a genocide or not a genocide, which I never get into.
By the way, I just don't care about, you know, whether you call it that term or call it a different term.
joe rogan
Whatever it is is real.
dave smith
But the fact that the International Court of Justice ruled that this is a plausible genocide is so wild that they ruled that the Jewish state is committing a genocide.
Like that's just such a different way of looking at things than all of us grew up with like, no, the Jews were the victims of genocide, not the perpetrators of it.
And I am Jewish and I do resent like that.
They've kind of like put that.
You know what I mean?
Like into the public mind and to some degree, you know, because there's a case to be made for it.
But Israel is really playing with fire here.
And I think they're in a more precarious position than they've ever been in my lifetime, for sure.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
What do you think happened to the Iranian dude?
I think that's just a crash in the fog.
dave smith
I think so.
That is kind of my...
Of course, you always, in some weird, perverse way, want the more exciting story.
joe rogan
Hey, bro, don't fly in the fucking fog in a helicopter.
How about that?
dave smith
Well, I asked a few of my real smart friends.
I was calling them a bad guy.
I called Scott Horton earlier today, and I was like, what do you think about this?
And he was like, eh, it does seem like bad weather.
And he was like, because they couldn't even recover it.
You know what I mean?
Because the weather was so bad.
And also, it's not...
Taking out the Iranian president doesn't really do anything anyway.
Ayatollah is who has control.
Yeah, they'll put another president in and it'll be the exact same thing.
And I just don't think...
My guess is that it was just bad weather.
But I'm totally open to...
There might be some evidence that comes out that it was something else.
joe rogan
It's always more fun to think it's some secret squirrel shit.
dave smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think this one might have just been bad weather, though.
It turns out it's really not safe to fly a helicopter in bad weather.
joe rogan
No, it's fucking terrifying.
You can't see.
Fly right in the mountains.
dave smith
Yeah, that's not good.
joe rogan
No, it's not good.
I don't know...
dave smith
Do you fly on helicopters, Joe?
joe rogan
I have.
dave smith
Yeah?
joe rogan
They don't make me feel good.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
The people tell me they're fine.
They know how to do it.
They're safe.
They know how to auto-rotate on the way down.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whatever, bro.
That thing seems weird.
dave smith
I'm sure that's what they told the Iranian president.
joe rogan
Well, I mean, do they have helicopters that can operate through the clouds just like an airplane does?
Right?
Where they know exactly where they are at any given time?
dave smith
I don't know.
I have no knowledge on this subject, but I just feel I've never been in a helicopter and I don't want to.
joe rogan
It doesn't seem like as sophisticated a method of flying.
dave smith
I just feel like helicopter-less life has been going pretty good for me, and I'm just gonna keep riding down this path where you don't go on helicopters.
joe rogan
Burr has a license, and he took me up.
dave smith
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, Bill Burr.
He's really good.
Really good at flying helicopters.
One of the handful of times I've been in helicopters with him, we were flying around downtown LA. You can just fly around.
That's what's weird.
They don't tell you where you can go and not go.
I mean, I'm sure they do, but...
For the most part, once you say you're going to go to a specific area, you can just kind of fly around.
Really?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's weird.
So you have a helicopter, because they're below the airplanes.
dave smith
I don't know why I was already scared of the idea of flying in a helicopter, but flying in a helicopter that's being piloted by Bill Burr is just the scariest thing in the world to me.
unidentified
Like, you just get pissed off at something in the middle of it, and he's like yelling, and you're like, dude!
dave smith
Focus, man.
joe rogan
No, he's very focused when he flies a helicopter.
He's very, very serious about it.
But he took me around these buildings, and you're just flying around buildings in downtown LA. I'm like, this is crazy.
You just fly right by these skyscrapers.
dave smith
I mean, that does sound cool.
joe rogan
It is cool.
dave smith
But I don't want to do it.
joe rogan
It's kind of beautiful.
Like, you're just flying around.
And it's kind of leisurely, because they don't go that fast.
dave smith
Right, right.
joe rogan
So it's like this leisurely flying around downtown.
I'm like, this is crazy.
And then you look at a lot of those buildings on downtown LA. They all have, like, helicopter landing pads on the roof.
Like, this is bonkers.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave smith
I mean, okay, I understand the appeal from him.
That does seem fun.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's fun.
dave smith
But then, you know, you don't want to end up like this Iranian guy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
There's Bill.
There.
Fucking Bill Burr.
Yeah.
I'll fucking show you how to fly this helicopter with my fucking...
How dare you wear that paperboy hat when you made fun of me?
unidentified
You made fun of me, famously said how the little rascal sat on it.
dave smith
This is like right after that he went and bought the hat.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a good look.
Yeah.
He's awesome.
Him and Tim Dillon are the very best at ranting by themselves on a podcast.
They're the only podcast that I listen to where a guy just goes off 100% by himself.
Bill really by himself.
Tim Dillon has a producer that's like a built-in one-man audience.
dave smith
Right, who he kind of plays off of him.
joe rogan
Yeah, and he's great, but he's...
Even one person is enough for Tim Dillon.
Like, Tim Dillon can rant with one person better than anybody on the planet.
But he's very smart in the way he does it.
Like, have his producer right there.
So he's saying funny things for his producer.
His producer's laughing.
dave smith
Right.
joe rogan
So he'll do that also in podcasts.
Same kind of thing.
You know?
Whereas, Burr is just him by himself.
I'll tell you what!
dave smith
I know, like, someone will just ask him, like, the most kind of basic question.
joe rogan
Yeah.
dave smith
And then, like, he's just reading their question, and then it just launches him into this thing that, like, you know, he wasn't even planning on talking about none of this.
joe rogan
Right.
dave smith
And then it just launches, and it's beautiful.
joe rogan
Yeah.
dave smith
Both those guys are the best.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Dylan's the best, though, at just being hilarious about anything by himself.
dave smith
Dude, I mean, I met Tim, like, pretty early.
He was pretty new when I first met him.
And he was definitely like, I mean, he wasn't as, you know, like, he didn't have the chops that he has now.
He wasn't as polished as he is now.
But he was very green.
He was brand new.
But I remember just, like, hearing a few of his rants on podcasts, and you were like, yo...
This guy is gonna be like a force of nature.
It's almost like you see...
It's like if you were watching Michael Jordan play in high school or something like that, and then you just saw one move and you were like, oh...
Oh, we're doing that now?
All right.
All right, fine.
joe rogan
Well, it's such a unique perspective.
A gay right-wing guy who used to sell subprime mortgages and did a lot of drugs.
dave smith
I'm still not convinced he's gay.
I'm convinced he used to sell subprime mortgages.
That for sure happens.
joe rogan
I'm convinced he did a lot of drugs.
dave smith
That I believe.
That I believe.
You know, it's funny because every now and then you'll see it.
There's like a moment where you see the gay come out and you're like, oh, there it is.
Oh, there it is.
You hide it pretty well, Tim, but it's there.
joe rogan
Look at him there with the fucking glasses.
Oh, my God.
And he puts those glasses on so he's like he's in his own little world and he can just say the most wild shit about everybody.
Did you see the Nancy Pelosi debate with the dude from Mumford?
dave smith
No, I still haven't watched it.
I did.
I know you asked me if I had seen it.
And then my buddy, Rob Bernstein, who co-hosts my podcast with me, part of the problem.
He was like, dude, you got to watch it.
But I just have not.
I've been constantly traveling.
joe rogan
Yeah, dude.
He handed her.
dave smith
Well, I can't believe Nancy Pelosi actually did an Oxford style debate.
That just seems ridiculous.
Who told her that was a good idea?
joe rogan
Oh no.
I mean, I guess she thought Winston is just like this fucking musician.
Isn't he a banjo player?
What's going on here?
Pelosi interrupted by anti-Israeli.
Pelosi rebooted to her face during Oxford debate after condemning Americans clouded by guns, gays, God.
What?
What does that mean?
Clouded by guns, gays, god.
What does that mean?
What does that mean?
She's so crazy.
unidentified
Guns and gays and gods.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
Challenging Pelosi's position in the debate about populism.
Winston Marshall, a musician who was once part of Memford& Sons, now hosts the Marshall Matters podcast for The Spectator, spoke in opposition to the Oxford Union motion that this house believes populism is a threat to democracy.
That is a crazy argument, that populism is a threat to democracy.
dave smith
I swear to God, whenever you hear people like Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton or any of them use the term democracy, just in your mind, substitute what they mean by democracy is our rule over you.
In a sense, that's what they mean.
It's like, oh yeah, populism is a threat to you guys ruling us.
And that's kind of true.
joe rogan
That's exactly what she's saying.
She just doesn't know she's saying that.
dave smith
I will say this.
There's a really great debate.
I believe it was the Monk debate.
It was between David Frum and...
Oh, God.
I'm blanking on his name.
Trump's big advisor.
Oh man, I'm blanking on his name.
I'm usually pretty good with names, guys.
But what is the guy who masterminded Trump's 2016 campaign?
Yeah, Steve Bannon.
So Steve Bannon and David Frum.
David Frum was a speechwriter for George W. Bush.
And Steve Bannon debated populism.
And the crowd was so hostile to Bannon.
And he actually did a very good job in the debate.
I highly recommend everyone listen to it if you're interested in this stuff.
The whole Trumpist populist movement is a result of your failures.
Like, who are you, George W. Bush speechwriter, to look at us and say like, why is there this populism?
Gee, I wonder why.
Maybe it's because the elites mismanaged everything.
And so then there was a movement that rose up like, hey, these elites are screwing you over.
Populism is not a sign that you have a healthy society.
It's a symptom of a cause.
I know me and you have talked about this a bunch before, but in the same ways when all these people will be like, we need to have trust in our institutions.
And you're like, well, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
dave smith
But we also need institutions that don't lie to us.
And when they do lie to us, you can't turn around and say, hey, you have to trust these institutions.
Like, no, the problem started with you not being trustworthy.
Not with us not trusting you.
joe rogan
I think people are starting to understand that better now.
I really do.
dave smith
I do, too.
joe rogan
I think there's been a pretty significant shift towards people being very skeptical.
About bullshit now where it's just there's gonna be a ton of people and some of these people by the way are paid and this is what I've talked to people recently that are they either stream or their YouTube personalities or their Instagram social media personalities and they have a certain number of followers and they offer them thousands of dollars to do political posts Yeah.
Thousands of dollars to talk about specific political issues.
dave smith
Damn it, there's no money in my politics.
joe rogan
But you know how crazy that is?
So like, what if you have a really big account?
Like, what if you have a big account like mine?
We have like 19 million followers and someone says, hey, we would love to pay you, you know, to support blah, blah, blah.
That is creepy, man.
That's legal.
That's creepy that you can pay people for their support for a political issue because it's this weird gray area where it's social media engagement.
dave smith
And I'm sure there's also, like, there's probably, like, a few...
It's not like a campaign is directly paying you.
It's like a super PAC or a group that was funded by that super PAC. And then you could, with a straight face, say, I've never taken any money from the Biden campaign.
joe rogan
Come on now.
dave smith
And you're like, hmm.
Yeah, but you did take money from a group who's basically Biden's campaign.
joe rogan
Right, like what the NIH did with gain-of-function research.
We didn't fund it.
dave smith
It had nothing to do with it.
Oh, this subsidiary.
Oh, yeah, this company that we fund.
Yeah, we're there.
joe rogan
Probably, but it had nothing to do with the pandemic.
Yeah, those guys are crazy.
You're racist.
dave smith
Wasn't that the best?
That made you racist?
joe rogan
It's great.
dave smith
That made you racist.
joe rogan
They're so good at that.
They're so good at making you whatever.
Whatever it is.
Racist, transphobic, sexist, xenophobic, nationalist.
dave smith
What they're amazing at, and I've kind of marveled at it over the last few years, especially when I do this show.
There's some other shows that I do that are pretty big shows, but there's just nothing like that.
This show like the the response to it that you get especially for me because I come say like Controversial things on the show and like the the response that you get be accurate.
I mean it's bonkers, dude Okay, so the the probably the biggest one up until I don't know.
But maybe the biggest one was that when we were talking about the war in Ukraine.
So this was like a couple years ago, I guess, was the first time I came on and we were really talking about it.
Beginning-ish of the war.
And I basically made this whole case for how NATO expansion is basically what provoked this war and that that was Vladimir Putin's big...
I mean, I thought I totally backed it up with, like, listen, this is what all of these experts themselves said.
You know, not Russian experts.
I'm saying American experts, heads at NATO, all of this stuff.
And, I mean, the reaction I got from blue-check journalists back when that meant you were a corporate journalist.
Joe Scarborough was furious at me.
He goes, this guy is saying that NATO provoked Vladimir Putin's invasion.
Because, of course, the New York Times and CNN and their favorite term was unprovoked.
And I don't know, by the way, if you caught this, and I don't say this just to run a victory lap, but kind of, 50% for that reason, but just late last year, the head of NATO, Jens Strasenberg or something like that, Norwegian guy, but he just came out and said...
And he almost said it like so nonchalantly.
He said that Vladimir Putin, before he invaded, asked NATO, he said, if you just put in writing that you won't ever put Ukraine in NATO, I won't invade.
But if you don't do that, I'm going to invade.
And then he was bragging.
He goes, and we refused.
We refused to agree to that.
And then he was kind of going, and look, now NATO's going to expand even more.
So see how stupid Vladimir Putin is?
But like, number one, he just totally admitted that all that thing that everyone was saying was such a controversial statement two years ago that this had anything to do with NATO expansion.
It's like, well, the head of NATO just said that's what the whole thing was about and that he wouldn't have invaded if he had just agreed to not expand NATO more.
And then number two, you're like, oh, so you're just bragging that you didn't do that?
So what?
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died now.
We could have just made an agreement that Ukraine won't be in NATO and not done any of this.
That seems better.
But when you say it, when I said it two years ago, everyone, like, anyway, my point is just that they really act like you're crazy.
They act like you're an insane person.
When you're saying something that you're like, no, this is like very common sense and clearly true.
joe rogan
I don't think they even understand the history of it, even the people that are commentators.
dave smith
A lot of them don't.
joe rogan
A lot of them that are jack of all trades, right?
They're jack of all trades in regards to their understanding of the economy, international conflict, you know, tech issues.
dave smith
You know what?
I sent you this months ago, but this really was kind of eye-opening to me.
So there's this guy, Liam Crossgrove, and he works for Greyzone.
He's a reporter over there.
And so he made he basically did like this guerrilla journalism type thing where he was going up and asking congressman questions.
And then he made like a video where he kind of spliced it together.
And there was like there was some stuff of me on this podcast in the video and some stuff of my guy, Scott Horton, who, by the way, is great over at antiwar dot com.
His whole team over there is incredible.
But so he made this video where he goes up to all these these congressmen and congresswomen and he asks them what they think about Netanyahu's propping up Hamas for all of these years.
And to a man, to a woman, All of them just have this deer-in-headlights look, and they're like, uh, sorry, what report are you referring to?
I'm sorry, I haven't seen that.
I'd be interested to see that, but I haven't seen that.
What?
What are you talking about?
And you just, right away, none of them know.
None of them even have the foggiest idea what you're talking about.
And you almost realize that, weirdly, it was even eye-opening to me, and I talk about this stuff all the time, but you just kind of realize where it's like, oh, like, yeah, that's not their job.
Their job isn't to, like, read books about this stuff and read newspaper articles and keep up with what's going on.
Their job is to fundraise for their next election that they have and to whip votes for this thing that this lobbyist wanted.
And if I get what this lobbyist wanted, he's going to contribute to my campaign.
And if I did, it's like they're in a different world.
They're not in the world of, like, actually thinking about this conflict and knowing things.
We're not Learning more about it.
joe rogan
It's just like being the president.
They have to have a comprehensive understanding of everything.
dave smith
Everything.
Right.
joe rogan
Everything.
dave smith
Which is impossible.
joe rogan
Which is not possible.
It's not possible.
And the other thing is they're always talking like they're in a position of expertise.
One of my favorite interviews was when AOC was talking to that lady and she asked her to expand.
dave smith
About Israel-Palestine?
Yeah.
She just collapsed into herself.
joe rogan
It's literally like a fifth grader that didn't study.
dave smith
Yes.
joe rogan
And then they ask you about the subject or you didn't read the book.
And then, well, you know, it's about Billy and his dog and a really good relationship, these dogs.
dave smith
But the crazy thing about that interview is that it's like, okay, so her first comment...
comes off with like total authority, you know?
And then like one little follow-up question.
The question's like, well, what do you mean by that?
And then you just see her get weaker and weaker.
And then like one more, but what do you mean about that?
It's like, I don't know what I'm talking about, man.
She literally goes, I'm really not the expert.
She just gave up.
joe rogan
But she kept going before she gave up.
dave smith
She tried.
joe rogan
And you're supposed to know about that if you're going to talk about that.
It's not that hard to educate yourself on it.
dave smith
Oh, no, a little bit at least.
I mean, try.
joe rogan
You have an understanding of the history of the conflict.
It is a crazy convoluted one.
dave smith
Yeah, this is it.
This is it.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, sure.
alexandria ocasio-cortez
I also think that what people are starting to see, at least in the occupation of Palestine, is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition.
And that to me is just where I tend to come from on this issue.
unidentified
You use the term the occupation of Palestine.
What did you mean by that?
I think what I meant is like the settlements that are increasing.
dave smith
No, no, that's not what the occupation means.
joe rogan
Oh, it keeps getting better.
unidentified
Palestinians are experiencing difficulty in access to their housing and homes.
Do you think you can expand on that?
Yeah, I mean, I think I'd also just...
I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue.
joe rogan
That lady, by the way, knew exactly what she was doing.
dave smith
Oh, of course.
She goes, oh, I'm going to expose this chick.
I'm going to expose her.
I kind of agree with AOC's starting statement, but then you're like, hey, you've got to have something here, man.
You've got to know what you're talking about.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And also, again, this is not the place for that.
You have five minutes or whatever you got, whatever that interview is.
There's not a chance that you can lay out the history of this conflict and all the different accords and all the different...
dave smith
Yes, yes, of course.
But there's also this weird thing in corporate media where there's almost...
Like an unspoken, unwritten agreement that like, look, if you just have a few talking points, you can get through an interview and sound really confident in yourself and sound like, hey, that guy knows what he's talking about, you know?
And as long as, say, like if I'm interviewing you, as long as I kind of agree that I'm just going to let you say your talking points, then you can come out looking really good.
But as soon as one...
Like, interviewer like this one decides, like, no, I'm gonna make an example out of you now.
joe rogan
And the beautiful thing about the way she did it, she just kept asking her to expand.
dave smith
Yeah, so what do you mean by that?
joe rogan
Yeah, expand.
She's not challenging her.
She's literally just giving her the easiest of softballs.
dave smith
Yep.
joe rogan
And there's nothing there.
dave smith
Yeah, and that's right.
And of course, AOC, you know, I almost feel bad, like, because she was such a, like, I think she was in her 20s in this video.
They also kind of knew that, like, here's this woman who just is totally not up to the task and doesn't know anything.
joe rogan
Did you see the Marjorie Taylor Greene, the outburst?
These are the best of the best, ladies and gentlemen.
These are our representatives.
dave smith
This is our Jerry Springer government that we have here.
joe rogan
What does AOC call her baby girl?
She goes, oh baby girl.
They went full, oh no you didn't.
You said bitch, I will fuck you up.
They went fucking you.
Marjorie Taylor's insulting her.
She's insulting Marjorie Taylor's body.
dave smith
Dude, it was wild.
You're like, no, we can't.
Just when you think, like, yo, this country's gotten so dumb, you're like, oh, are we actually here?
Are we actually here?
joe rogan
Do you remember we used to watch those videos of, like, Parliament breaking out in other countries, like Kazakhstan or some shit?
And we'd be like, that could never happen here.
Listen to what they say.
So she gives her shit.
Chaos on Capitol Hill.
Oh, see if you can find the raw footage of it so we don't...
So she starts talking shit.
Marjorie Taylor Greene says, maybe you couldn't read it because of your fake eyelashes.
And the other one's like, oh, no, you didn't.
Strike that shit from the record.
And they say...
I said she has a butch body.
dave smith
But she did it in the catty, passive-aggressive way.
unidentified
Do you know what we're here for?
I don't think you know what you're here for.
marjorie taylor greene
I think your fake eyelashes are messing up.
unidentified
Hold on, hold on.
Order, Mr. Chairman.
That's beneath even you, Mr. Green.
That's beneath even you.
joe rogan
Keep going.
unidentified
I do have a point of order, and I would like to move to take down Ms. Green's words.
That is absolutely unacceptable.
How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person?
Are your feelings hurt?
Move her words down.
Oh, girl, baby girl.
Oh, really?
Don't even play.
Baby girl, I don't think that.
We are going to move and we're going to take your words down.
I second that motion.
joe rogan
That's amazing!
Don't even play!
unidentified
Ms. Green agrees to strike her words.
I believe she's apologizing.
No, no, no, she's apologizing.
Okay, hold on.
Then, after Mr. Perry's going to be recognized, then Ms. Green...
I'm not apologizing.
dave smith
Well, then, you're not stretching your words.
marjorie taylor greene
I am not apologizing.
unidentified
Now, let's go.
jasmine crockett
I'm just curious, just to better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleach-blind, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?
dave smith
Solid alliteration.
unidentified
What now?
Bleach, blonde, bad, built, butch body.
dave smith
I'm genuinely kind of impressed with the alliteration off the top of the head.
That was pretty good.
joe rogan
The bleach, blonde, built, bad, built, butch body.
dave smith
Yeah, that's not bad.
joe rogan
It's not bad.
She thought about it for a while.
She had a little time.
dave smith
She probably had that in her hip.
joe rogan
Yeah, she had a little time.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
There was a lot going on.
dave smith
AOC jumped in.
joe rogan
There was a little time to concoct that.
dave smith
There's a little moment like she goes over to AOC. She's like, I got a good one.
I got one here.
joe rogan
They're just talking shit to each other like they're on Twitter spaces.
dave smith
Like, the next line should be like, you are not the father.
Like, it's just the middle of this chaos.
That's just fucking insane.
joe rogan
Those are our representatives.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's insanity.
I mean, other countries have to be laughing at that.
I would.
If I was China, I'd be like, oh my god, this is amazing.
How could we have known our plan would work so well?
So well!
dave smith
It is really wild.
unidentified
So wild!
dave smith
Yeah.
And this is who votes on war.
I mean, they don't actually get to vote on war if it makes you feel any better.
joe rogan
The only thing that gives me hope is that maybe enough competent people will see these folks and go, you know what, I have to fucking run.
Like, this is ridiculous.
Like, this is absolutely ridiculous.
Maybe some successful business people that were on the edge.
dave smith
Yeah, so push them towards the you know, just someone who just gets cut the fucking shit or even if not running I do think there's things like look like Elon Musk buying Twitter I do think was kind of like a move of kind of like okay, he's not gonna run for office That's probably not his calling in life, but he was like okay, you can't be president.
Well, that's right Well, he couldn't be president, but he could run for something else, but that's not Elon Musk's best use of his abilities.
But to buy Twitter and just be like, hey, look, I see what's going on here.
We're going to make this one social media platform that isn't in lockstep with all of the other progressive ones.
Things like that are really important.
So hopefully there's more of that.
joe rogan
Bro, if they make it so that you could have been born somewhere else and be president of the United States.
Running Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla while being president is the most Elon Musk thing to do ever.
dave smith
That's true.
joe rogan
That he wouldn't even step down.
It's not important.
I can get it all done.
Get it all done in 20 minutes.
Have a few meetings.
dave smith
Well, I mean...
joe rogan
But then if you did that, the thing is, like, this is what all the conspiracy theorists are fearing about these people coming into the country.
They're fearing that the people coming into the country, what they're going to do is offer them citizenship in replacement of military service.
So they'll serve the military, then become citizens, and then if there's like some sort of a crazy thing breaks out, well then you have your immigrant army against the original people that were here when they got here.
dave smith
Yeah.
No, I mean, there's a lot of concerns with that.
joe rogan
Yeah, because otherwise, AOC reveals darker intentions behind Marge Taylor Greed hearing chaos.
jamie vernon
She's saying that she kind of did this on purpose to derail the actual hearing they were having, because after that happened and they went into chaos, they stopped...
Doing what they were there to do, actually, and just had a vote without having any amendments or any more discussion.
joe rogan
It's a microcosm what authoritarians do on a larger scale.
I don't think she's thinking that far ahead.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is a wild lady.
dave smith
I don't think she had a master plan.
joe rogan
She's saying wild shit.
dave smith
I think she was just insulting her eyelashes.
joe rogan
Yeah, she's just insulting her.
She's talking shit.
jamie vernon
I mean, I don't know.
I wasn't there.
joe rogan
I can't imagine that she's doing this as like some 4D chess move.
I don't see her behaving like Netanyahu.
I don't think she's doing a Hamas here.
dave smith
I think the simplest explanation is that she just wanted to insult that chick's eyelashes.
That's my guess.
joe rogan
Because they were insulting each other, right?
Because she said, you don't know what you're talking about.
She said something about, you didn't even read it.
Like, I think you're messing up with your fucking fake eyelashes.
jamie vernon
Yeah, she chimed in first saying, do you know what you're here for?
But that was after she was saying that she was derailing it right away.
joe rogan
I don't think you know what you're here for.
I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you're reading.
So the other girl, what did the other lady say before that to her?
jamie vernon
That's where it was cut off that we didn't see in that clip.
Maybe she didn't think it was the whole thing, but also maybe someone just said before, hey, if you get a chance to fuck this up, go for it.
dave smith
I suppose it's possible.
joe rogan
It's certainly possible.
It's always possible.
I think that that's just how she behaves.
dave smith
Yeah, but at the same time, if you were her, and then someone came up to her and was like, hey, I need you to mess this up and draw it out, she'd be like, no problem.
That's my specialty.
joe rogan
Oh, I got this, honey.
dave smith
I could do that for you.
joe rogan
I got this, honey.
dave smith
Oh, you're telling me to turn this into a shit show?
Oh, no problem.
joe rogan
She'll probably do a bump of coke before she does it.
dave smith
She'll crack her neck.
joe rogan
Let's go!
dave smith
Oh, you got the right bitch for the job on this one, I'll tell you.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You know my favorite guy was the gay dude who lied about his past completely?
dave smith
Santos?
joe rogan
Yeah, and now he just talks shit about everybody.
dave smith
I know.
Dude, his lies were so crazy, too.
It wasn't even lies with a political benefit to it or something.
It was just a lie.
It was like, you know, as captain of the volleyball team at Harvard, and they were like, not only did you not play volleyball, you never went to Harvard.
None of this is real.
You're just making up things.
joe rogan
Did he really say that?
Did you make that one up?
dave smith
Just making that one up.
It was lies like that.
joe rogan
What did he lie about, Jamie?
But he's hilarious, man.
When you hear him interviewed, he's fucking hilarious.
Where he turns on him, talking about how they're all stealing money, and this one's the worst.
dave smith
That's great.
joe rogan
Well, he's a con man in a fucking sea of con men!
jamie vernon
According to New York Mag, he lied about this?
Lied to donors.
joe rogan
Allegedly, lied to donors, then used their money to make purchases at Hermes and OnlyFans.
unidentified
Ah!
joe rogan
He used campaign money for personal travel and Botox.
Oh my god, I love this guy.
Allegedly lied to collect unemployment benefits.
Oh my god.
That's so funny.
He's charged with-hold on a second.
He's charged with stealing people's identities and making charges on his own donor's credit cards.
Wait, where are you going?
jamie vernon
I'm just going down the list.
joe rogan
Yeah, but I'm reading it.
It's right here.
jamie vernon
This is where I was.
joe rogan
Okay.
Stealing people's identities and making charges on his own donors' credit cards without their authorization, lying to the FEC, and by extension, the public about the financial state of his campaign.
So Santos falsely inflated the campaign's reported receipts with non-existent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen.
So he's just making up numbers about how much money they had, stealing people's money.
dave smith
Dude, spending campaign contributions on OnlyFans and Botox is just the...
I mean, it's hard not to root for that guy.
joe rogan
Listen, they're all crooks.
Look, the inside trading is off the chart.
It is so crazy that that's legal.
It's so crazy that that's legal.
So while that's going on, you're going to get mad at this guy for this.
This seems minor.
dave smith
No, that's it.
And that's what's so kind of funny about it.
You think about the Clintons.
Bill and Hillary Clinton have, since I was a little kid, maybe since I was four or five years old, when he was governor in Arkansas, their entire career is they were public servants and they ran a charity.
And they're worth like $100 million or something like that.
Like, wait a minute, huh?
You guys haven't been practicing law any of this time?
You haven't been working in some industry where you've made tons of money?
You were public servants who make, you know, healthy salaries, but not like that's going to put you in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
And you ran a charity.
The Clinton Foundation.
And now somehow you're...
Barack and Michelle Obama.
They just...
He goes into the White House.
Look at the house he lives in now.
It's like...
There is almost something where everyone turns at Santos because obviously that's such a cartoonish, easy version of it.
But it is kind of wild that there's so much outrage against this guy.
And it's in the same sense where there'll be corruption...
In, say, some Eastern European countries, there's corruption where the level of corruption is like, if you get pulled over by the cop, you could slip him some money and he'll let you go.
Now, we don't have that in America, right?
You can't really ever slip a cop money When he pulls you over in America, you may wish you could in certain situations, but you can't really do that.
I'm not saying it's never happened, but you really can't do that in America.
But we have like the prison guard union lobbying to keep mandatory minimums on marijuana.
So, like, okay, you could look down your nose at this primitive form of corruption, but think about how fucked up that is.
You know what I mean?
And that's just, all it is is just corruption on a much, much bigger level.
joe rogan
But it's legal corruption.
dave smith
Exactly.
And everyone just accepts it.
joe rogan
It's a wild time, my friend.
Because people have access to information now that allows them to really see all this stuff.
Like, the insider trading thing has probably been going on forever.
But we didn't even hear about it until about a decade ago.
dave smith
Yeah.
Very rarely came out.
unidentified
Very rarely.
dave smith
It was just kind of accepted that, like, all of these people are rich.
joe rogan
Yeah.
dave smith
And we don't really know where they got their money from.
joe rogan
Except Jimmy Carter.
And that's one of the things that people loved about Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter, to the end, really just maintained a very simple lifestyle and just never chased money.
He never was that guy.
He didn't do those crazy speeches where he talks to bankers and makes half a million dollars for some strange reason.
Those speeches are wonderful, because those are the cutest.
Those are the cutest ones.
It's like, wait a minute, your policies benefited these corporations, and then, surprise, surprise, those people after you leave office want to hear you talk so badly.
They're willing to fuck the market up.
Yeah, well, I'll tell you- They want to give you hundreds of thousands of dollars to come talk.
dave smith
This is also, I think, where there's a flaw.
Okay, so this is- Maybe one of the reasons why I'm a libertarian and not a progressive.
I mean, there's many reasons, but one of the things that I think a lot of progressives who I think are, like, well-intentioned, their big thing will be, like, we got to get the money out of politics.
And what they mean by that is that we can't let, you know, say, corporations contribute to political campaigns or something like that, because then, of course, they're just basically buying, you know, corruption.
But I think, like...
The flaw, like Cenk Uygur and people like that, that's like his big issue, you know, is get the money out of politics.
I think the flaw in that is that, yeah, but they always find a way to get, because look, those speeches, that's not contributing to anyone's campaign.
And that's not technically rewarding you for bailing out the big banks.
It's just you happen to bail out the big banks and then they happen to really want to listen to what you have to say after that.
joe rogan
And of course the book deal's warranted.
People want to read your book.
dave smith
It's like the idea that you could ever close down on every single loophole.
Look, the Saudis weren't allowed to contribute money to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, because you're not allowed to do that.
But they could give $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.
And then once Hillary Clinton lost, it's so weird, they stopped donating.
I don't know.
They just stopped being interested in charity.
The House of Saud was really interested in charity for a while there in 2016. And then they stopped being so interested.
So essentially, I think the libertarian view on it is that it's like, no, no, no.
Whatever rule you want to have, if you have this much power in Washington, D.C., that power is going to be corrupted.
And people will find a way.
The only answer is to reduce the power.
joe rogan
Yeah, and isn't the charitable foundation thing a sneaky tax way of making money?
dave smith
Oh, yeah, for sure.
joe rogan
Because there's a thing about charitable foundations.
Everyone who's really rich seems to have a foundation.
dave smith
Yeah, I mean, I'm not the expert on that or anything else, really, but I know that they certainly get a whole bunch of tax breaks that you wouldn't get if you just started a business.
joe rogan
Well, not only that, but if they're doing things, like Gates, for instance...
To promote global health, right?
So he gets involved and he makes money off vaccines.
So he sells his stock and then starts talking badly about them.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean...
unidentified
It's pretty wild.
joe rogan
It's wild stuff.
It's wild.
It's wild that you can make money, like hundreds of millions of dollars, while you're running a charitable organization.
dave smith
But if you also think about it, the hundreds of millions of dollars that these guys make off of that is nothing because the legislation that they're passing or the policy that they're pushing is making these special interests hundreds of billions of dollars.
So if you buy off a politician for 20 million bucks and you get a no-bid contract that's going to be worth $200 billion to you, that's a pretty good return on investment.
joe rogan
There was an article about this particular area of Virginia that's like the most expensive real estate in the country, and it's all where the lobbyists live.
And I think, is it Blinken whose house that they're picketing in front of, that they've been essentially there since, see if you can find it.
I think it's Blinken's home that he has some crime.
Crazy fucking set up there some fucking dope ass old-school mansion and They're all camping out in front of his house.
It's the Palestine free Palestine people And so they've decided to constantly protest in front of his house Yeah, Anthony Blinken's family is the latest target of Washington's ugliest protest trend So they just camp out in front of his house.
They're pouring blood on the ground.
unidentified
It's a little weird to do with your baby Stop the genocide in Gaza.
I like this better than just blocking the road It's definitely better than Blockin' the Road.
joe rogan
Blockin' the Road is the dumbest fucking thing of all time.
And, you know...
I mean, this is what people do if you're involved in war.
You know?
If you're involved in people dying...
Welcome to Kibbutz Blinken.
Oh, Jesus.
Yeah, so I think they've been there, like, for months.
jamie vernon
This article's from February 16th.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think they just, it's a constant encampment.
And they've got this thing where they're just gonna protest in front of this guy's house.
dave smith
I do prefer taking it to the people who are actually somewhat responsible over just kind of inconvenience.
joe rogan
Going to Jerry Seinfeld's shows and yelling at them.
Yeah, this at least makes more sense.
That guy's got to sell that house.
You got to get out of Dodge, bro.
dave smith
Yeah, there might be time to leave.
Don't worry.
I'm sure the market's up.
He'll do fine on that house.
joe rogan
I'm sure he probably has a couple other houses, too.
He probably doesn't have to stay there.
dave smith
But it really is.
joe rogan
You got one of them houses?
Probably got a little spot over there, a little spot over here.
dave smith
It is crazy, though, that our leaders don't even feel the urge to kind of not shove it in all of our faces.
joe rogan
Right.
dave smith
That this whole thing is just...
It's all just kind of like, oh, how much money can I extract from this pot and get myself wealthy?
You don't feel like any sense of...
And I will say...
The one who I like kind of personally resent the most, which maybe is unfair, but is Obama.
Because so many of us did kind of buy into, at least to some degree, the thing he was selling in 2008. And you're like, wait, but you don't feel like you should...
Have you seen pictures of the house he lives in?
joe rogan
Oh, he's got multiple houses.
He's got one in Hawaii.
dave smith
Yeah, but I'm talking about the one in Martha's Vineyard.
jamie vernon
I clicked on an article about the house that he had, and there's a fun fact about the street that it's on.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, a bunch of Saudis own it, right?
jamie vernon
Yeah, at least five houses.
joe rogan
Also known as Northern Virginia's Gold Coast, the road features opulent homes on large properties perched high above the Potomac with sweeping views.
Such estates sell for tens of millions of dollars, as was the case when AOL co-founder Steve Case sold his estate to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for $43 million in 2018. Those must be dope views.
Find us a view.
Find us a view.
Northern Virginia Gold Coast real estate.
Let's see what we can get for $50 million.
See if you can get for all the fucking Instagram ads that they want you to run for this political party.
unidentified
If you cover the 50, I'll handle the taxes.
joe rogan
Let's see what the views look like.
Because if it's over the Potomac and they perched high above, it must look insane.
Oh, there was a little image back there.
If you click images...
Oh, real estate images.
There was one pretty spectacular view in that last thing.
Let me see some view.
So these are like these old-school Connecticut-style houses.
You know, like fucking The Great Gatsby, that kind of deal.
I have a buddy of mine who works in Connecticut.
He lives in Connecticut, too, but he works at a school where a lot of these people send their kids.
unidentified
He's like, dude, these fucking houses are ridiculous.
joe rogan
They're old-school mansions on these giant properties and they They all do drugs and fucking fuck each other's wives and go crazy Spend all their fucking their Real estate holding money and all their Stocks and bond money.
These are dope ass houses.
Look at that.
dave smith
What a view, man.
They're cool-looking houses.
joe rogan
God damn that must be awesome living there.
So that's where all those...
But your neighbors are all demons.
You're surrounded by people that are literally the cause of all the problems of the world.
dave smith
If you're comfortable selling your soul, there's a really nice house in it for you.
joe rogan
Imagine partying with lobbyists.
Can you imagine if you could just slip in?
You know how the Israelis, they infiltrate Hamas?
Imagine you're an Israeli soldier and you've infiltrated Hamas and you're like, nobody knows.
I'm inside.
Maybe you have to kill a few people and let them know you're serious.
dave smith
I'm sure you have to do something.
joe rogan
You probably have to do something.
Otherwise, they're not going to trust you.
But imagine if you could infiltrate lobbyists.
Do coke with them, party with them.
Some fucking dude who owns a sub shop chain or something like that.
You're kind of lucked out.
You know, all of a sudden you're hanging around with these guys and they get comfortable with you, sort of like they did with McChrystal, like with that embedded reporter.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
dave smith
Well, that was Michael Hastings.
They were out at a bar and they just got him talking shit about Obama.
joe rogan
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The volcano blew.
dave smith
What?
joe rogan
There was a volcano in Iceland, so he got stranded there.
unidentified
Oh, right.
dave smith
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I did know this, right?
joe rogan
So the volcano in Iceland shut down air travel, so Hastings is embedded with his troop.
And McChrystal starts talking, shit, they get comfortable.
You can't keep the act up with the reporter around forever.
After a few months, Or a few weeks at least.
dave smith
I think also because he was a Rolling Stone reporter, it was like their guard was down a little bit more.
They weren't like, this isn't like a Washington Post or New York Times.
He'll probably run some kind of pop story about this.
You know what I mean?
And then he really ran the story.
joe rogan
Yeah, and used quotes of the guy disparaging Obama.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
And he was forced to resign.
dave smith
And there's something really interesting about that, though, too, just, like, a little bit of a window into, like...
joe rogan
The lobbyists?
dave smith
Well, I just mean that there could be generals who are just, like, you know, in their private time being like, ah, dude, fuck this guy and his bullshit commands, you know what I mean?
Probably.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
I'm sure they got him all tape recorded.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, like, wasn't that the thing about the Mossad with Bill Clinton?
Was that a story that just came out recently with the Monica Lewinsky thing?
dave smith
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I did see something about this.
Right, right, right.
They recorded him.
joe rogan
Yeah, they recorded him.
They're fucking good, man.
They're good.
And they catch those dirtbags, those dudes that are just like pussyhounds.
You get two types of people that want to be president.
Warmongers and pussyhounds.
That's all you get.
And sometimes, if you're lucky, you get a pussyhound who's also a warmonger.
For the most part, you get one of two.
dave smith
It's almost like, okay, if your dick still works, you'll be a pussy hound.
If your dick doesn't still work, then you've got to launch rockets to make up for that.
Sometimes.
It's almost the same impulse.
joe rogan
Maybe, but sometimes if your dick works, you're like, hey, don't fuck this up.
I'm trying to get late.
dave smith
Yeah, well, that's what I mean.
You'd probably rather that one.
joe rogan
Or sometimes when you're an old man and you don't want to fuck anymore, you're like, look, enough already.
I want to play golf.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I just want to relax, go into the sunset.
dave smith
I'm like, I'm over it.
joe rogan
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
dave smith
You're like, I've had my sex.
I've blown up my things.
Let's just chill.
joe rogan
That's what we need.
Yeah.
That's the argument that that's what Trump is at this point of his life.
dave smith
Well, oh man, I don't know.
joe rogan
I don't know either.
dave smith
It's such a weird goddamn situation.
joe rogan
It's the worst situation.
dave smith
Everything they throw at them, it just backfires, and it just makes them stronger and stronger.
joe rogan
And it looks like this case is falling apart.
dave smith
It looks like almost all of them are falling apart.
joe rogan
The one in New York, though, apparently they thought was the most flimsy, like a lot of legal experts thought it was the most flimsy going into it, but now it's completely falling apart.
They have contradictory statements that she made to Bill Maher.
And then they also have Michael Cohen just admitted he stole like $30,000 from the Trump campaign.
So that's not good.
dave smith
The really fascinating one was the, which that sounds like what Michael Cohen would do.
The really interesting one was the FBI with the picture of the top secret classified.
joe rogan
Yeah, tell about that, because most people aren't even aware of this.
dave smith
Well, it seems that the FBI, you know, when you see the pictures of them on the ground there with all the classified, it's like, oh, that was put there by the FBI. So it's not as if, like, it was presented as if, oh, look, this is what Donald Trump was doing.
joe rogan
The sheets that said top secret and classified didn't exist before the FBI came along.
unidentified
They put the sheets saying that, and then they leaked it.
joe rogan
So there were the documents, and then they put pictures of these new things that they put over the documents that said top secret and classified.
Then they took a picture.
This is very important to make this distinction, because the documents were classified.
But they didn't have fucking signs on.
dave smith
I'm like TNT. It's seeming more and more like there were several instances where it seems that Donald Trump was constantly being trapped.
Going all the way back to the 2016 campaign, if you remember, there was this famous meeting with the Russian at the Trump Tower Hotel.
But when you actually look into it, what happened was some Russian woman said she had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
They got there to a meeting with her and she had nothing.
And then they were all like, okay, whatever.
But then the story was, oh, he's conspiring with the Russians.
And it seems that, oh, that was a trap to get Donald Trump to do that so that they could make it look like he was conspiring with Russians.
And there's just been several things like this over and over again.
joe rogan
How about the fact that Hillary Clinton funded the Steele dossier?
dave smith
Yeah.
That whole thing.
That's amazing!
joe rogan
Has that been confirmed?
dave smith
Oh, 100%.
joe rogan
Let's confirm that the Clinton campaign funded the Steele dossier.
jamie vernon
The prosecutor said that there was so many sheets used that they had to start using handwritten sheets to cover up the classified info.
That's what they say.
joe rogan
Right, but the thing is the photographs that show printed out pieces of paper that say classified and top secret, and those weren't there.
They put those there.
So it's not that they covered up some of the documents before they took pictures of them.
That makes sense.
jamie vernon
Isn't that to cover up the information?
joe rogan
Could be.
But you're taking photographs with pieces of paper that say classified and top secret.
dave smith
It gave an impression of something that was different than what was actually there.
joe rogan
It most certainly does, because it's like, oh my god, he knew these are classified and top secret.
He knew he had these.
He did this deceptively.
dave smith
And it's also just the visual, the optics of like, look, classified, and just laying on the floor there like that.
joe rogan
Look, it makes sense if you have to document, okay, this one's classified, this one's top secret, let's put a piece of paper on it.
But as soon as you put the piece of paper on it that says those things and you photograph them, you're saying this is how you found it.
unidentified
Right.
dave smith
Or at least allowing you to deduce that for yourself.
joe rogan
You should have to be very specific about these classified and top secret cheats were not a part of the evidence.
They were put on top to label that evidence.
But they were probably like, we don't have to do that.
It looks bad.
It looks bad with all that classified top secret stuff.
It looks bad.
dave smith
And look, it's just very clearly, for anybody who's being honest and paying attention, it's just very clear that there's a political motivation involved here.
That these guys are trying to hurt Donald Trump's re-election or election campaign.
And that in itself is just so wild.
joe rogan
Well, how about the fucking White House press secretary saying she can't comment?
Because it involves the 2024 presidential election.
So she can't comment on Trump's trial because it involves the 2024 presidential election.
dave smith
Which is so ridiculous.
You can comment on the election.
Your whole job is to comment on the election.
joe rogan
Also, you're not supposed to say that that trial is about the fucking election.
You're not supposed to say that.
DNC Clinton campaign agreed to steal dossier funding fine.
They got a fine?
dave smith
Oh, they won 100%.
joe rogan
How much did they get fined?
They got fined $113,000 to settle a Federal Election Commission investigation into whether they violated campaign finance law by misreporting spending on research that eventually became the infamous Steele dossier.
That is wild.
That all that cost them was $113,000?
dave smith
That's a good deal.
joe rogan
PR you got out of that?
How much fucking Trump colluded with Russia talk you got out of that?
dave smith
Can I just pee real quick?
joe rogan
Yeah, let's pee.
dave smith
We'll be right back.
I talk about this more because it's real.
joe rogan
We'll pee and we'll be right back, folks.
That was the studio where we got in trouble.
I got in trouble because I said that if I was talking to a 21-year-old healthy kid, I wouldn't tell him to take that shot.
dave smith
Wasn't that in here?
That was in the other one.
That was in the red room?
joe rogan
That was in the early days.
dave smith
That might have been our first podcast in Austin.
joe rogan
Yeah, probably was.
Probably was.
dave smith
Well, it aged pretty goddamn good, Joe.
It's pretty goddamn good, didn't it?
joe rogan
Yeah.
dave smith
It's crazy to think about.
I swear to God, this is always, especially now, because we've been doing these shows together for so many years, that you can go back and look at the things that were so wildly controversial to say then, and And are 100% accurate.
And they were totally accurate.
And now it's not even controversial at all to say.
It's just like, oh yeah, that's common sense now.
joe rogan
Yeah, most of those things now.
And, you know, it's just...
I think these kind of conversations, though, contribute to the public's distrust in mainstream media.
They know what the fucking game is now.
dave smith
It's a really interesting statement because that's their argument.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's CNN's argument about why we need to cancel Joe Rogan.
It's because your conversations contribute to the public mistrust.
But then, like, my counterargument to that is like, yeah!
But that's good, because no one should trust you.
joe rogan
You did that to yourself.
dave smith
Yeah, you guys are a bunch of liars.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're a bunch of liars, and I should have sued you.
dave smith
I mean, dude, 100%.
joe rogan
Slam dunk.
Yeah.
I don't want to go to court.
dave smith
I'm not interested in that.
unidentified
I know.
dave smith
I know.
Now, that's why.
I mean, like, I just want to see them.
joe rogan
Also, I felt like, I know how this game gets played out.
It's like when you're doing jujitsu with someone, and you're in the half guard, and you're like, I'm getting out of this.
I'm getting out of this half guard, and I'm going to mount you.
dave smith
Yeah, well, it did.
I mean, look, it totally blew up in their faces, and they're done.
I mean, after the COVID stuff, I don't see any recovery.
I think the corporate media is just going to get less and less influence.
It's already you see how much it's moved over.
joe rogan
Look, one of the big ones to go back to what they do.
They were trying to do this with the reorganization of CNN. They were trying to get back to hardcore objective journalism without some sort of editorial bias because they said, listen, this is the only way out of this.
dave smith
Yeah, but even that was never really...
It was like, hey, let's not be so blatantly anti-Trump and let's get back to just, you know...
Reporting on the news.
Yeah, but still protecting all the powerful people.
It's not like there was ever really going to be...
Look, you're never going to see a discussion on CNN about how, like, you know, you have these think tanks in Washington, D.C. who advocate for war and they're funded by weapons companies.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave smith
What do you think that means?
Is that ever once come up on CNN? No.
Never.
And it never will.
joe rogan
Do you think that they would ever have a Anderson Cooper, which is brought to you by Pfizer, investigation into Pfizer?
unidentified
Of course.
joe rogan
That seems unlikely.
dave smith
Of course not.
Seems unlikely.
And look, it's not even, again, take the example of, say, even Chris Cuomo, right?
Who now, he's over with Valuetainment with Patrick David, our boy, and all of a sudden he's talking about Vaccine injuries and ivermectin and all this.
It's like, well, why is it when you're at CNN, which is, you know, sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies, you don't talk about this.
But as soon as you're over here, now it's okay to talk about this.
You know, you just you kind of see it like happen that it's like, oh, yeah, no, there are there are There's humongous power centers in America.
There's, like, the pharmaceutical industry.
There's the banking industry.
There's the war industry.
There's all these big ones.
And none of them ever get really questioned in the corporate media.
Like, one little action might be questioned every now and then.
But the whole system as a whole never gets questioned.
You'll never see, like, a real...
You'll never see a piece on CNN about like do we really need a central bank?
Does the Federal Reserve do more good for the American people or does it do more good for Wall Street?
You know?
Like, that conversation will never come up.
unidentified
Never.
dave smith
It won't.
joe rogan
You can't have those conversations.
dave smith
Because there's too many powerful people who would be, you know, like, scared by that.
joe rogan
And if that's the case, we're never going to have logical solutions to a real informed measure that we could put into place to fix things.
It's not going to happen.
dave smith
It's captured by money.
But I'm very encouraged by certain things, right?
And I'm very...
I'll say, Tucker...
Getting fired from Fox News and being bigger than he was on Fox News is really amazing.
joe rogan
It's pretty wild.
dave smith
Nothing like that's ever happened before.
joe rogan
Also wild that he interviewed that dude who said he blew Obama.
I was like, yo, I forgot to ask him about that.
He got me with the UFOs.
He had an agenda, goddammit.
He came in and got me where I'm soft right off the bat.
Got me with UFO and angel talk.
I was like, whoa, this is a good one.
dave smith
It's also pretty funny to just come in here like, hey, Joe Logan, you ever heard of UFOs before?
joe rogan
I've Well, I did definitely want to talk to him about that because he's got this very specific perspective that's very biblical.
You know, he's got a very religious perspective on it.
He thinks it's angels and demons, which is really fascinating.
You know, that there's good entities and bad entities and that they've always been here.
Like, that's a mind-fuck and a half.
dave smith
Yeah, it sure is.
And I don't know, I don't really understand much about it.
I also haven't talked to Tucker about that, and I would be interested to, because he will allude to, at points like that, he's had people inside the government kind of confirm things.
See, I almost want to ask him, not even on air, just like off air, like, okay, so what exactly was...
joe rogan
It's one of the craziest things that Bob Lazar said.
And he said this way back in the 1980s.
He said there's a very bizarre religious aspect to it.
And see if you can find him saying this, because I don't want to paraphrase this.
But he said that what they were, he said it's gonna sound crazy to say, but the way they have it described is that human beings are vessels for souls, that we're containers.
And that that's why they're interested in us, that we're containers of souls.
Now I want you to imagine a scenario where A.I. is ubiquitous in the universe and that this is where intelligent creatures they get to a certain point in their evolution where they create an artificial intelligence and that artificial intelligence is far superior.
But in order to do it again on another planet, you kind of have to start the same way you did it on Earth.
You gotta start with biological organisms that have souls.
So if you want to make intelligent life, you gotta start out with souls.
Because you have to have these creatures that have like these human reward systems about breeding and controlling resources and controlling real estate and territory and that those are the ones that are like scrambled to innovate and then they give birth to this superior life form.
But the only way to do it again somewhere else is you got to do the same thing.
So, like, if you believe that life exists in a similar form all throughout the cosmos, that there's kind of similar fish and kind of similar things, I don't know if that's the case.
We have no evidence.
But if that's how, if what we're seeing in these different galaxies, what we're seeing in these different solar systems that we observe is planets in these Goldilocks zones, if that was the case, That the way to get these things to keep doing, you need to get, it's the soul.
It's the thing inside the living organism that's causing biological evolution, the actually essence of the creature.
That this thing is what's going to determine whether or not it hits the innovation level required to achieve artificial intelligence, and then that's what they are.
So what we are to them is like these little soul containers, because you don't have souls anymore.
How about that mindfuck?
Listen, it is a mind fuck.
bob lazar
There is an extremely classified document dealing with religion and it's about that thick.
unidentified
Period.
bob lazar
But why would there be any classified material dealing with religion?
unidentified
I want to go back to the religion thing.
I want you to say it.
jamie vernon
Alright, your objection has been noted.
unidentified
What does it say?
That we're containers.
That's how supposedly the aliens look at us.
That we are nothing but containers.
jamie vernon
Containers of?
unidentified
Containers.
Maybe containers of souls.
bob lazar
You can come up with whatever theory you want, but we're containers.
unidentified
And that's how we're mentioned in the documents.
bob lazar
That religion was specifically created, so we have some rules and regulations for the sole purpose of not damaging the containers.
joe rogan
Wrap your head around that.
We're about five years away from talking to a robot, Dave Smith, that's indiscernible from you.
And if that thing has quantum computing power in its fucking metal head, And it becomes another version of life, a much more superior version of life.
And then they keep doing that forever all throughout the cosmos.
But the only way to get there...
dave smith
Are you going to start having AI Dave on the podcast instead of me?
joe rogan
I want them to do my ads for me.
I'll hire AI Joe to do my ads for me.
dave smith
You still want to do the podcast?
Just reading ads.
joe rogan
Well, I don't want AI Joe to do the podcast because AI Joe is going to have to rely on all of my opinions I formed up until now.
And I might change them tomorrow.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
I can't have AI Joe assume it's going to know how I think about things because I don't know how I think about things.
I like to be open-minded to the point where I'm willing to take into consideration new ways of looking at things, new possibilities.
I don't know if AI is going to do that.
It's going to be too smart for that.
dave smith
Yeah, maybe.
I mean, it is an interesting, it is such an interesting thing.
But on the point of containers, isn't there something, and I'm literally just kind of thinking out loud as I say this, but there is kind of something where we all do accept to some degree that that's true, that we're kind of container.
I mean, like, just in the sense that...
joe rogan
Have you seen A Dead Body?
unidentified
Well, right.
dave smith
If you look at a dead body, it's like...
joe rogan
It's empty.
dave smith
Yeah.
You don't look at that like, oh, there's that.
You're like, no, let's put that in the ground, because what we think of as the person is gone.
I'm not saying there's anything controversial about that statement, like an atheist or a religious person or anyone would kind of agree with that.
But it's something we all just kind of take for granted.
But if you really think about it, it is like...
The magic of what makes us us is something that's being contained by this meat shell.
joe rogan
Yeah.
dave smith
And it's different.
It's not the same thing.
And it's not really anything that we, at least at our level of scientific understanding, can really tangibly measure.
joe rogan
Right.
dave smith
Like, what is it from the reductionist atheist position?
Like, electromagnetic waves in your brain?
unidentified
Right.
dave smith
And then when that goes, it's just a piece of meat now again?
I don't know.
It's a little bizarre.
unidentified
Maybe.
dave smith
We don't really understand it.
joe rogan
And then the thing is, like, okay, if we have souls, do other animals have souls, too?
dave smith
It sure seems like dogs do.
joe rogan
Dogs definitely do.
There's a weird relationship that we have with dogs.
It's very strange.
My dog is basically my son.
He's like my dog son.
I mean, I think of him like a person.
Like he snuggles with me.
He's probably more affectionate to me than anybody in my house.
dave smith
Daughters give you attitude.
Their son's just cool.
joe rogan
They don't snuggle with their dad on the couch.
But he just like, when I watch TV, he hops up on top of me and puts his head on my chest and he watches fights with me.
He chills with me.
dave smith
He's a golden retriever and those are like also the just friendliest like they're the most loving and lovable dogs.
joe rogan
They're so lovable and he's so enthusiastic like we went swimming yesterday and this fucking dog will not because he's not hot if he's swimming So he's got crazy endurance.
So he just keeps going for an hour and 15 minutes.
I threw the ball into the water and he fucking leaps off the deck into the water and gets the ball and comes back out, drops it at your feet.
Let's go.
dave smith
Let's go again.
You know how hyped a UFC fighter gets right before the fight?
It's like, dude, dogs just have that energy always if you want to do anything.
You want to go in the car?
They're like, let's go!
unidentified
Go!
dave smith
Let's fucking do this!
joe rogan
Yeah, he goes crazy and whimpering.
I could barely get the collar on him.
He's spinning around in circles.
I'm like, sit still, dude.
Yeah, and he will never stop being enthusiastic about the ball.
I threw the ball for him this morning, and I always think, today's going to be a day.
He's tired of this fucking ball.
No!
It's like, oh, the fucking ball!
unidentified
He's got the ball!
Woo!
joe rogan
He starts spinning around in circles.
He jumps up towards it.
It's hilarious.
He never loses enthusiasm.
There's got to be something that we can learn from that.
Because we get comfortable with familiarity and we get bored with things.
We don't want to do the same thing over and over and over again if it's that simple, like chasing a ball.
But the enthusiasm that he had, the first time he chased the ball, he has the exact same, maybe more so, because now he knows it's fun.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
So he can't wait to do it again.
dave smith
But there's something about, like, because dogs are, I think, essentially, right, like, we bred them to be kind of like babyish wolves.
Like, they're wolves that are kind of kept in a perpetual state of immaturity.
Almost in a way.
Some of them, yeah.
But basically, I think the qualities that you see in baby wolves, like a baby wolf will be almost indistinguishable in terms of how they could be domesticated from a puppy.
But it's as they grow older that you're going to...
joe rogan
They don't take your bullshit.
dave smith
Right, right.
So it's almost like we kind of kept the traits that keep you young.
Because it's the same thing with having little kids.
joe rogan
Which is what they're trying to do to men.
dave smith
It does seem like there's an attempt to kind of domesticate and soften.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Keep men as like 13-year-old boys that follow the rules.
Shut the fuck up.
Yeah, the wolf thing is really interesting because I am generally opposed to a weakening of a life form for human pleasure.
Like, that's bizarre that you take a fucking wolf and turn it into Carl over there, but that's what happened.
That's what happened.
dave smith
Carl's cute, but he's not much of a wolf.
joe rogan
But I love Carl.
So, like, I'm conflicted.
Like, part of me loves dogs, and the other part of me, like, I love wolves.
I want them to be wolves.
dave smith
Well, there still are wolves out there.
joe rogan
We took those bitch-ass wolves that didn't want to hunt, and they wanted to come by the fire.
And we're like, hey, bark if a fucking bear comes by, will you?
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
Throw your bone.
And then they made friends.
And then the wolves started drooping their ears to let you know I'm your friend.
I'm your buddy.
Do you know about the Russian fox experiment?
dave smith
No.
joe rogan
They did it in Russia.
They did this experiment where they wanted to see how quickly they could change a fox's...
Overall appearance, their behavior, and so what they did was they had these captive foxes.
dave smith
Like through breeding?
Yes.
joe rogan
Through breeding and natural selection, meaning shooting in the fucking head.
So whenever a fox was aggressive in any way, shape, or form towards humans, bang, dead.
Next one.
They can't breed.
So the only ones that breed are like, don't shoot me.
And so they probably are pretty aware, you know, through the zeitgeist that these fucking foxes are getting shot.
You know, there's like something in the air.
There's probably some psychic in the, you know, morphic resonance, something in the field that lets them know, hey, people are getting shot out here.
Like, you gotta be nice to these fucking humans.
See that thing he's got in his hand?
That thing will kill you with a squeeze of his finger.
And so they, over a very short period of time, turned them into completely different animals that had big eyes, fluffy ears, ears that fell down and soft.
Their jaws got smaller.
They became more cute.
dave smith
I remember seeing one of those famous documentaries about dogs, but I thought this was always very interesting to me, is that one of the major differences between wolves and dogs Is that they do this experiment where they'll put a piece of meat and it's in a cage.
And the wolf or dog can't get to it.
And the wolf will bang against the cage and try to get it over and over and over again.
We'll just never stop.
We'll just never stop doing it.
But the dog will try to get it a couple times and then looks to the person.
And that's like one of the differences is that it's like been ingrained in dogs that you're also their partner You know like they'll look to you and be like hey, buddy I know you got a few IQ points on me Any idea how to get this meat out of this here cage and like that's so deep in them Well not only that the wolf would never think dogs look to you as the leader right wolf never thinks you're the leader Yeah, yeah, especially an unfixed male wolf shut the fuck up sit you say sit Who the fuck are you talking to, bitch?
joe rogan
Don't you read Little Word Widing Hood?
That's me, motherfucker.
I eat people.
dave smith
They had, in the same documentary, I can't remember what it's called, but they did, they had this experiment where people were just trying to raise wolves, like, domesticate them from puppies and raise them, and it was interesting to see, like, it's as they start to get into, like, adolescence and stuff, and the wolves would be attached to them, because they had raised them since they were little puppies, but you can't train them the way you can train a dog.
You can't tell what to do.
Yeah, fuck off.
They're not responding to down or here, boy.
None of that's happening.
joe rogan
That's food.
I'm gonna eat that food.
dave smith
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Fuck you.
Did you see that video that was online today?
I think it's El Cerritos, California.
There's a wolf running down the street.
dave smith
No, I didn't see this.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Wild.
It's a big boy, too.
A big wolf running down the street.
And this guy's driving, and his car's like, is that a fucking wolf?
Dude, there's a fucking wolf running down the street in El Cerritos, California.
dave smith
Where is that?
joe rogan
I don't know.
dave smith
Somewhere, California?
joe rogan
I think it's near Redwood or Redlands.
jamie vernon
It's from a year ago.
joe rogan
Oh, is it?
Yep, that's it.
That's from a year ago.
Bro, that's a big-ass wolf in a street.
That's an urban street.
Look at that.
That's a big wolf, man.
dave smith
Yeah, it sure is.
joe rogan
That thing's big.
When you see them and you think, what would a dog look like there?
That's when it really dawns on you how big these things are.
It's like a 150-pound wolf.
I'm guessing.
Might be less.
dave smith
Over a hundred.
joe rogan
But it's running down the street.
Like, hey.
dave smith
Yeah, like it's not worried at all.
It's like...
joe rogan
It's going to eat your dog!
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's 100% going to eat dogs.
dave smith
Especially if you've got a little dog.
joe rogan
A little dog's in trouble.
Yeah, it'll eat coyotes too, by the way.
It's going to kill them too.
dave smith
There's a weird...
I remember reading this book, I believe it was Before the Dawn, I believe, by Nicholas Wade.
And it's like a book on evolution.
And there was a whole chapter about dogs and humans and how we evolved together.
But it is this weird thing.
So you could look at a Yorkie or something like that.
And you could go like, well, look, this thing couldn't survive a second.
It couldn't get its own food for a second.
And you'd be like, well, isn't this a flaw in evolution or something?
But then you also realize that you could argue that it's basically one thing.
The evolutionary race because it has this human species that just does all of the work for them.
joe rogan
And carries it.
dave smith
Yeah, literally carries it, cleans its ass, puts food down for it, and you're like, oh yeah, this did work out pretty well for that thing.
joe rogan
Worked out great.
dave smith
It is.
joe rogan
It's going to work out great for men too.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave smith
I don't know, but who gets to be in charge?
joe rogan
Here's a good question.
Would it go back to wolves?
So, like, imagine if there was some sort of apocalyptic scenario, all the power went off, most human beings are dead, but a lot of dogs survive.
dave smith
I think, like, I think, you know, my guess, and this is a totally, like, just, like, just keep in mind I'm an idiot, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but...
I think, like, if you're making an argument, would a German Shepherd?
Would eventually, like, if they were just left out of the...
Would it just breed, like, the harshest and toughest and most survivors?
Maybe not wolf, but you'd get some wolf-like creature.
That Yorkie isn't going to make it to Generation 2. I've seen Yorkies.
joe rogan
No, Yorkies...
dave smith
A hawk's going to take that thing away.
joe rogan
Yorkies aren't going to make it, but the dogs that are probably the closest to wolves probably would make it.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
Especially in cold climates, right?
So now they're outdoors.
So now Huskies and things that are pretty...
Like Kitas, kind of wolfish...
Wolf-like-ish.
dave smith
Well, you'd come up with some badass version of them that are killers again, that wouldn't be trained.
It'd be almost like they're not kept in childhood.
They'd become kind of grown-ups again.
joe rogan
What is that one crazy Russian dog?
I know we've talked about it before.
It's this one huge...
They use them to fight off wolves.
They use them to protect flocks.
Yeah, Caucasian Shepherd.
Show me some images of the Caucasian Shepherd.
It's fucking enormous.
Look what that thing looks like.
Show me some images.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
They look fucking terrifying.
They look like super wolves.
Look at that giant fucking thing!
So that went the other way.
They developed something that can fuck wolves up.
Because they needed something to protect their flocks.
They needed someone to protect their sheep and shit.
Look at the size of that fucking thing!
Bro, that thing's so huge!
I think they're like 200 pounds.
And they have fur everywhere, so they're probably really hard to bite.
Look at the size of that thing, where it's hopping on that lady's shoulders.
Good lord.
So there's another one, that other one, the Caucasian, that one I think is even more ferocious.
I think.
I might be wrong.
Bro, fucking size of that thing though!
unidentified
Look at the size, even with perspective.
joe rogan
Look at that thing!
Yeah, these are very ferocious.
Tibetan Mastiffs, yes.
jamie vernon
I see your Tibetan Mastiff, I raise you this Caucasian.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Tibetan Mastiffs are another crazy looking animal too.
dave smith
Dude, that guy looks like the guy who would have those dogs.
joe rogan
Look at that thing.
If you're a wolf, you're like, ah, fuck!
It's basically the Brock Lesnar of wolves, you know?
Everybody else is a welterweight, and this motherfucker shows up, like, the size of that thing, dude.
dave smith
Yeah, you better heel hook that wolf.
joe rogan
Yeah, bro, you're done.
That thing, you can't, you're not even gonna get through all that fur to bite him.
dave smith
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's like a lion's mane.
It's like literally like there to protect from the cold and bites.
dave smith
It really does look like what the Russians would do with a dog.
Of course that's what you did.
Of course!
We're making little poodle mixtures over here.
joe rogan
The Russians are coming up.
dave smith
You're like, ah shit, we should have been doing that.
joe rogan
Of course the French made Carl too.
dave smith
We should have been doing that this whole time.
You're telling me we can't produce munitions like the Russians and our dogs have to fight those dogs when the war goes down?
joe rogan
Imagine.
Yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I think we covered you all, Dave Smith.
Anything else?
dave smith
Well, I think that should save the world for now.
joe rogan
This is not...
It's a long...
dave smith
It's a process.
There's going to be many podcasts before...
joe rogan
We're going to have to do this a thousand times to save the old world.
And the new world is going to be unstoppable.
That's my fear.
dave smith
Well, I gotta tell you, I'm almost at the point with this world where I'm like, ah, let's roll the dice on these new overlords.
joe rogan
Well, hopefully things will balance out and be much more logical when they're not run by humans.
dave smith
Well, I still believe in humans.
I think the monopoly of information is broken.
Ron Paul will become president within the next 10 years.
joe rogan
They'll just reverse his age.
dave smith
That's right.
joe rogan
That's what they do.
They just put Ron on all sorts of crazy signs.
dave smith
If we can do that, if we can get Ron Paul young again, then this country's got a good chance.
joe rogan
Ron Paul needs to get on some daily NAD drips.
And start testosterone therapy and get on the peptides and NMN. Gotta change his vitamin routine.
dave smith
He's doing pretty good.
I think he's 89, 88, something like that.
joe rogan
And very coherent.
dave smith
And he's on top of it.
And every time his show comes on, he's like, okay, here's the latest of what's going on in China.
And knows everything.
He's just read everything about what's happening.
unidentified
Extraordinary.
joe rogan
Dave Smith, you're the fucking man.
dave smith
I love you, brother.
joe rogan
It's always great to talk to you.
And stay offline for a couple days.
unidentified
It's gonna get ugly.
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