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Nov. 15, 2024 - The Joe Rogan Experience
04:31:13
Joe Rogan Experience #2230 - Evan Hafer
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Main voices
e
evan hafer
02:22:40
j
joe rogan
01:56:58
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jamie vernon
01:40
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tucker carlson
00:47
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day.
Joe Rogan Podcast by night.
All day.
Come on, brother.
joe rogan
Good to see you again.
evan hafer
Good to see you.
joe rogan
So, this conversation was...
Well, anytime you want to come on, I'm always happy to talk to you.
But this conversation was birthed out of that crazy conversation we had in Elk Hunting Camp.
evan hafer
Which one?
joe rogan
Well, yeah.
We had quite a few of them.
Where you just...
You will open up my eyes to some of these.
First of all, I never understood the extent of the man fuckery in Afghanistan.
evan hafer
Oh.
joe rogan
When we were talking, remember we were hanging out in front of the trucks and you were telling me about mumbles?
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
There's a few conversations I've had with friends that for the rest of my life...
Now things are different.
That one conversation, that one hour conversation we had, like, okay, the world's different now.
evan hafer
You know, I always assume people have heard these stories from Afghanistan.
joe rogan
Cheers.
You gotta drink that.
evan hafer
You can't cheers with alcohol.
joe rogan
Buffalo Trace.
unidentified
Mmm.
evan hafer
So yeah, the amount of man-on-man buggery in Afghanistan is significant.
joe rogan
Did they warn you about it before you went over there?
unidentified
No.
evan hafer
No, I think there were so many different things about both Iraq and Afghanistan that the learning curve for all of us was so high.
Culturally, you don't think about a lot of those things.
You just don't.
You grow up in America.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
You assume everybody, every man is basically like an American male because that's at 26 or 27 years old.
You know that there are cultural differences for sure, but I'm telling you, I was in Kuwait for the first time early on, and I The Kuwaitis like to hold hands.
The dudes like to hold hands.
And that's not comfortable for guys.
joe rogan
Isn't that weird though?
Because we do shake hands.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know what I mean?
evan hafer
But you don't walk around holding another man's hand.
It's just not comfortable in any scenario.
joe rogan
But imagine trying to explain that to someone who didn't understand, like, what makes it gay.
Like, at what point in time does, like, holding onto a hand, does it get, you know, like, there's, like, a meter.
Like, you can kind of, like, hold onto a hot potato for a couple seconds, and then it'll burn your hand.
evan hafer
After a certain point...
You're walking around holding another man's hand, and you've never really done it, probably since you were a kid, maybe holding your dad's hand when you're like three or four years old.
And in Special Forces, they tell you, you know, you have to work with the cultural differences.
And they're just talking in general.
They're not specific because they don't know where you're going.
And you're going to have to work by, with, and through the host indigenous force.
So you have to accept some of the things, the cultural differences, and just go with the flow.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
So as a new Green Beret, you know, as, you know, SF guys, you're just walking around holding another man's hand.
You're so freaked out about it.
You're like, oh man, oh man.
Yeah.
What the fuck does this mean?
Like, you know, you're questioning all your reality, like, oh my god, you know, and then after a few years, you know, time and repetition and war or whatever, somebody goes to hold your hand, you're like, get the fuck away from me.
I'm not doing that, bro.
Come on, no.
unidentified
No, I'm not doing that.
joe rogan
So you gave up after a while?
evan hafer
Oh, yeah, there's a lot of things you give up, right?
You're...
You're taught in SF, drink the tea, eat the food, you know, do everything that they do.
Yeah, just completely assimilate.
And honestly, like, a lot of that is really good because it does teach you to be a lot more open as far as listening to what they're going through from their tribal plights.
Yeah.
What are they going through from a combat experience?
What do they need?
And you want to build rapport.
That's what you want to do.
But rep after rep in a war zone, you kind of get fatigued with that.
And then you're like, yeah, let's just get to the dirt here, man.
Who do we want to kill?
Let's get to that.
And got it.
You don't like that tribe.
We don't like that tribe.
We don't like this.
You don't like that.
unidentified
Cool.
evan hafer
Okay, so I'm not going to eat with you because every time I eat with you, I can't shit for like a normal shit for like a year.
So we're just going to not do any of that and bypass it.
joe rogan
You were telling me you literally didn't shit anything but diarrhea for, you said, more than a year?
evan hafer
Yeah, it was years, man.
I was living and working with the Afghans, and I went from Iraq, and I did the invasion with special forces from the south, and I did multiple rotations in Iraq, both with SF and then with the agency when I went over there.
And then when we shut down Iraq in 2009, I turned around and basically went to Afghanistan in 2009. So I went from Iraq to Afghanistan, and I went from Afghanistan, kind of finished up my CIA combat, I guess, experience, and then went back to the States to do a training thing.
But by the time I got to Afghanistan, I had lots of time in Iraq.
I had like four years on the ground.
Afghanistan was way different, but I was living and working with the Afghanis.
I was eating with them.
And your job is to not only train, assist, and advise, build rapport, but you're trying to figure it out.
So you need to be on the ground with them, living, eating, breathing, sleeping, like the whole thing.
And What we call the chow hall facilities aren't the cleanliest.
You're trying.
You're working with them.
You institute different things.
Soap and water is a good thing.
And it doesn't really matter.
You're still going to get sick based on the water.
Where is it coming from?
What type of well source?
There's lots of different variables, obviously.
But, dude, I didn't have a solid shit for two years.
And I just kind of got normalized to the point where, you know, you're...
It's such a gross thing to think about.
Man, you could not trust a fart, ever.
I got this great story.
So I came in off the gun trucks, and I'm tired.
I went into the embassy, and I had a meeting with somebody in Kabul.
And I had this like titanium mug that was like the size of a toilet bowl.
And I'm filling it up with coffee.
And I haven't slept for, I don't know, let's say 20 hours at a time.
I'm fucking dirty.
And I'm filling up this coffee toilet bowl basically because I'm getting ready to go into a briefing.
And I let out a fart.
And it wasn't a fart.
And the dude behind me was like, oh.
I didn't even turn around, dude.
I knew there was somebody waiting for me.
unidentified
And I shit my pants.
evan hafer
And I didn't even turn around.
Didn't even blink an eye.
Didn't even lift up the handle because it was just normalized.
And he goes, did you shit your pants?
And I was like, yeah.
And I just turned around and walked off.
It was like, it was the deputy ambassador or something.
It was like the ambassador, right?
And I was just like, whatever, dude.
I got shit to do.
I'm out of here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's to the point of which I had a permanent stain in my combat, my fatigues, right?
It was just so bad.
But I was like, you know what, man?
You got shit to do.
joe rogan
People adapt.
evan hafer
You don't sweat little things like that.
And honestly, you're just trying to get through any and all things.
And it's not like we're in trench warfare or anything like that.
It's just like, dude, I had shit to do.
I had people to train.
We were going out.
And I couldn't let that.
You can't pull over.
You can at times, but there are just times where you just can't.
So you just got to keep moving.
And it sucks.
It's like the less glamorous side.
I don't know if there's a lot of books out there telling all the cool stories about that.
joe rogan
So when did you find out about the buggery?
Was it something that you needed a lot of?
evan hafer
Yeah.
So it started in Kuwait.
I had an Arabic linguist, and he was a younger kid.
You know, he was blonde hair, blue eyes, a Mormon kid.
And he literally joined the army at 18. You know, two years later after going to the Defensive Language Institute in Monterey, California, you come out and you're speaking Arabic, basically.
And young kid, blonde hair, blue eyes, good Mormon kid comes out and he's with us.
And the Kuwaitis kept talking about how they wanted to take him camping.
And we're like...
Why do you want to take that dude camping?
What's so special about that guy?
And you're like, after a while, you realize that's not what they wanted to do.
They were talking about it in either a joking way or a serious way, but that's the first exposure.
joe rogan
Did it take you a while to figure that out?
evan hafer
Yeah.
Yeah, because you're so naive.
Like, dude, I'm like, I'm 26 years old.
Like, I don't fucking know.
I don't think this is a thing.
I grew up in Idaho.
Like, I know, yeah, it exists, but I'm so, you know, blithely, like, moving through the world, like, thinking everybody's an American male, right?
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
Like, you know, this is weird.
And then, you know, you go to Iraq, where I went, you know, I went to Iraq in multiple rotations over there.
And you start to assimilate with the Iraqis you're either working with or you're training with.
And then it kind of starts to fall apart where it's like, oh, this is somewhat normal for them.
Now, they don't talk about it.
And I'm not saying it's like everyone, by the way.
I'm saying like it's at least...
Relevant enough culturally where it's somewhat normalized and not talked about.
joe rogan
Is it similar in Kuwait as Afghanistan or do they vary?
Iraq is different?
evan hafer
Yeah, they're all a little bit different.
The Afghanis, we had to have, depending on Where we were in their barracks living situation like you had to put really hard restrictions like You know no, but fucking guys for the majority of this because This is a health issue.
We weren't like it's not like we were we were putting Bibles on their beds or something I just say hey, this is really unhealthy you guys are gonna spread a bunch of different diseases to one another and like we've got a mission to to accomplish here and And every SF guy, every guy that's been in Afghanistan knows what Man Love Thursday is, and it's kind of a thing that they do.
joe rogan
Is it just Thursday, or is it...
That's just a thing to say.
unidentified
It's just a thing, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
But it's just they fuck each other.
evan hafer
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they like it.
joe rogan
And so there's the kid with the blue eyes, and after a while you're like, hey...
They don't really want to camp with him.
They're trying to fuck this guy.
evan hafer
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
And then you start thinking, like, hey, how much of this is going on?
evan hafer
That's exactly right.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And then as you're exposed to, not more of it, because you don't really see it, you hear about it.
So as you build rapport, build confidence in your friendships, and people start to talk about...
It is fairly pervasive, and it's one of those things that you just kind of accept that that's happening from a good portion of the guys.
joe rogan
50%, 60%?
evan hafer
Well, we talked about kind of rewinding.
The more disturbing factor is it's...
Socially indoctrinated in the children, like the sexual exploitation of children.
So it starts early and then it moves into the adulthood.
Bacchabazi is a real thing, and it's dressing up.
boys to look like girls and they have some Afghanis when I say some I don't know how pervasive it is but it's very it's a big percentage and the adult male stuff that's like one sub-segment of their culture but it's the sexual exploitation of children that when you find that out that's when things really turn for you psychologically you're like This place is really
fucked.
And it's very pervasive.
It's very...
You know, if you go back and you read The Kite Runner...
When I read The Kite Runner when I was in Afghanistan, I realized that it's not only the story about this kid, but it's also the story of Afghanistan.
It's very...
those stories run parallel because children are sexually exploited regularly and it's mainly the boys from what I understand to the point of which I was driving out on this op I guess from Kabul to Jalalabad and when I first got to Afghanistan I used to see these truck drivers and I thought you know my dad was a truck driver and
It's really cool these truck drivers take their sons out with them on the road.
That's such a really cool cultural thing.
And my interpreter turned to me and was like, those aren't their kids, dude.
That's how fucking horrible it is.
joe rogan
It's so horrible that they're on display.
evan hafer
Yes.
joe rogan
They're on parade, even, you were saying.
The guys would parade around their harem?
evan hafer
Kandahar and different areas, they'll have parades and they're on display as to, this is my harem, and they're proud of it.
And that was one of the most disturbing things that we would talk about specifically between the departments, between Department of State, CIA, and the military.
When you're out with the guys from a tactical and combat role, you see them and you interact with the way they are from a tactical level.
Every day.
And you'd bring this up to management, and they would say, ah, that doesn't...
What do you mean?
That doesn't happen.
That doesn't happen.
Or they pretend it doesn't happen.
But if you were on the ground in Afghanistan during the times I was there, honestly, from, you know, 2001, we'll say, to the time that we pulled out, everybody uniformly would agree with what I'm saying.
If you spent some time in Afghanistan, you knew that was happening.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
evan hafer
And did you see these parades?
No, no.
But National Geographic, I believe, did an article on it several years ago.
Yeah.
Bacha Bazi.
I could be getting the pronunciation a little bit off.
But it turns for you...
Emotionally and psychologically, because you're like, okay, now I've got some hate.
Right.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
Makes your job a little bit easier.
joe rogan
Right.
Yeah.
evan hafer
Makes your job a little bit easier.
unidentified
Yeah.
evan hafer
It also makes it harder For you not to want to change the entire government system where you want to completely rewrite the entire DNA of the cultural infrastructure.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
Because it's sad and it's evil.
And it's all of these really horrible things.
So as much as you want to help the Afghans and their plight...
Yeah, there you go.
joe rogan
Inside the lives of girls dressed as boys in Afghanistan, the cultural practice of bacha posh?
evan hafer
Bacha posh, I think that's the flip, that's the reverse.
joe rogan
Encourages parents, dress their daughters as sons for a better future, but often it only makes life harder.
evan hafer
That's a different, so it's boys dressed as girls.
joe rogan
Oh, so that's the opposite?
evan hafer
That's the opposite, yeah.
joe rogan
Girls dress as boys.
So this is a different thing.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Why do they do that?
What's that about?
Girls dressed as boys.
evan hafer
Well, I think because, well, one, there's a very low education rate when I come back to Afghanis.
joe rogan
Oh, so they can get the kids educated if they pretend they're boys?
evan hafer
Women are really seen as, in Afghanistan, I'm generalizing, right?
I'm taking really big swaths of the Afghan culture, so I know this isn't every Afghan.
I've got lots of different Afghan friends, and I've hired a lot of Afghans.
This isn't everybody.
joe rogan
This is the dancing boys of Afghanistan?
Go back up again, show what's going on.
These guys are throwing money at this dancing boy.
Back that up, Jamie.
jamie vernon
Oh.
joe rogan
What the fuck, man.
evan hafer
Yes.
joe rogan
Those are like little boys, and they were dancing like strippers, and these guys are throwing dollars at them.
evan hafer
Yes.
joe rogan
Oh my god, this is so crazy.
evan hafer
And they're younger, so they go much younger.
This is the...
This is the thing that people didn't want to talk about in Afghanistan that we talked about regularly, which was these are very what we feel are distinctly wrong.
These are very wrong things.
Things from an American support, tactical and strategic intervention, like we should not encourage this whatsoever.
And it made it very difficult at times for us to trust with the State Department or somebody else was saying.
But I mean, this goes back to Iraq and honestly trust in policymakers and the State Department and their entire position, either politically, philosophically.
It's just fundamentally flawed.
joe rogan
Wow.
So when you're hearing about this, one of the things about child molesting is that if these kids are growing up in this culture where they're going to be an adult and they're going to do that to kids as well, which has probably happened to all these guys, right?
You're not going to fix that with all these people alive.
The culture gets to a point where it's so fucked It's like, how can you ever fix that?
How many generations would it take before the scars of all those people being abused wears off and normalizes and people can be normal again?
People can be like what we would consider a Western civilization, like London or New York.
unidentified
Just how?
evan hafer
What we feel is the morally appropriate cultural boundaries.
That's like how many generations would it take?
And there's lots of different things that you can talk about because the history of Afghanistan is, we'll say, post-80s and Soviet intervention.
And then, you know, with the Taliban pushback or the Mujahideen and like they've completely destroyed the education, the progress and evolution of Afghanistan.
I mean, they had decades of war.
Then you had basically a failed state with Taliban and extremist control.
I mean, as the Taliban moved in, fundamentally, it's an evil organization.
There's a soccer field in Kabul where the Taliban used to stone women to death because they weren't wearing their hijab.
The rule of a woman would be raped and she would be accused of infidelity on her husband and they would stone her or they would beat her with a stick and they turned the soccer field into a place where they could have public displays for execution.
It was completely insane.
When you think about it from where we're coming from and then where we're going and we're trying to nation build, which I have fundamental disagreement with that as well, but...
You eliminated the educated portion of your population.
You swung to a very extremist, fear-based religion, and then it was all based on the Quran as far as their education system.
So they completely separated the women away from being able to evolve.
They treated them as beasts of burden.
You had to be an Islamic extremist to be acceptable.
It was a completely hegemonic theoretical state or hegemony as far as like it's the theocracy ran everything and it was very extremist version of Islam.
And as we came in, and I wasn't there in 2001. I came there much later.
I came there in 2009, was my first real rotation there.
It had been seven years, but really, it was almost like going back in time.
It felt like you were going back in time like a thousand years.
joe rogan
That's one of the things we were talking about in camp, that when you hear about Socrates and all these ancient cultures, the Spartans, all these people that had boys, and you see what's going on in Afghanistan, you realize how old a culture Afghanistan is.
It's like one of the oldest civilizations in terms of the way they behave.
It's almost like they never caught up with the Western world.
I think it was...
Michael Shermer might have wrote a paper about this.
He wrote an article about how Islam's the only religion that didn't go through the Enlightenment.
And that it essentially maintains the same values and the same cultural values as when it was created.
So, you know, how old is Islam?
evan hafer
1600, I think it's like 500 years past Christianity, so we'll just call it 1500 years.
joe rogan
1500 years old, whatever it is.
That's how people behaved back then.
That's what it is.
And when you think about, like, Alexander the Great, Alexander the Great who was gay, right, who conquered much of Afghanistan and giant swaths of the world...
He probably like his army and his behavior and what he probably stained that area was like a type of behavior.
evan hafer
I think you're 100% right.
I think that you had portions of the world were culturally cut off from being able to evolve at the same rate as some of the other places within the Middle East.
And those tribes essentially haven't had the opportunity to evolve because they've been very isolated.
I mean, you look at Afghanistan, it's an extremely isolated area of the world.
And if you go back to the 70s, it was relatively progressive, somewhat secular.
And then the Soviet intervention, the collapse, the failed state led to the rise of the Taliban because they had eviscerated all of the intellectual and the economic class.
And in order to succeed or live there, you had to completely capitulate to the theocracy and the fascist state.
So you had to go back in time to live.
You had to grow a beard.
And when I say this, is it everybody is 100%?
No.
I'm saying, like, this is the way people live.
They lived under tyrannical rules that...
Provided zero opportunity for, you know, if you had girls, sorry, they're a piece of burden.
They treat goats and donkeys better than their girls, their children.
The homelessness of children in a war zone is so heartbreaking.
Like, it is...
It strips away at the goodness in your soul, watching desperation.
And when you see homeless children every day in these cities that are dirty, starving, and there's really not a lot you can do because you have a war to fight.
And you not only think about it from the homelessness position, you think about the exploitation position.
Like, these kids are so fucked.
They're homeless.
They don't have parents because maybe their fathers were either, you know, killed in the war.
Their mothers can't...
They can't afford to keep them.
And they continue to have more kids.
And especially if they've been raped, then there's a cycle of...
Not only exploitation and violence, but then it's also, it keeps them down economically.
So you have massive amounts of children that were homeless and exploited, and they're starving.
And it's, you know, from my perspective, when you live in that environment, and you can't think about it.
You have to shut that stuff out.
Because if you think about it, it's like opening the door of the submarine.
joe rogan
All the water's coming in.
evan hafer
All the water's coming in and it's going to fucking sink you.
So you have to build a...
For lack of a better term, man, you have to build a callus on your soul.
Because you can't function and meet and exceed your mission success criteria if you get steamrolled by depression on what you're seeing every day.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
evan hafer
Time and repetition, which is one of the big problems, I think, with the GWAC community, at least what we've had in the last 20 years.
I mean, there's lots of different compounding factors that I think contribute to the acceleration of veteran suicide, which I want to launch into some rant about the issues that I think we're all faced, but it's definitely something that I'm extremely passionate about.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm really hoping.
We've talked about this a bunch of times in this podcast, but I'm really hoping that something's going to change with RFK and about psychedelics and veterans.
I really, really am hoping that they open their eyes to this stuff.
evan hafer
Well...
I was talking to Marcus Capone and he runs Vets, which he's the guy, his organization is the organization that takes the guys to Mexico to do Ibogaine.
And Marcus is a retired SEAL. I was talking to him yesterday, actually.
And...
I'll go off on this, which is, you know, we as a subculture from the Global War on Terror community, the veterans, we're under an epidemic of suicide and depression.
And the VA has not been a help to us, especially the warfighters, like the guys that we have rogered up time and time and time again.
They've gone overseas, we've done the bidding for the country.
We've watched our friends get killed and fucking torn in half in very ultra-violent ways.
We've been exposed to overpressure and chemicals and all these other things.
And then we come back, and within the VA system, their answer is, here's your pills, here's your retirement, shut the fuck up.
And it's not working.
Marcus and I were talking about this yesterday.
He was on antidepressants for seven years.
Seven years, like, antidepressants and they weren't working.
And he, just by chance, his wife, I believe, said, this might work.
We need to go to Mexico and do Ibogaine.
This might work.
So here's a guy that went, did it one time, has never been on antidepressants since.
joe rogan
Did he have to get off him before he went there and did it?
evan hafer
No.
I don't know exactly what the protocol is as far as like you have to get off and then you have to get back down there.
I know that most of my friend group now, they've done it.
And...
They have an extremely high success rate.
Vets has done 1,000 former warfighters, and they have an extremely high success rate where they're eliminating pharmaceuticals.
So they'll go down, they'll do it one time, maybe they've done subsequent sessions, and they have this really high success rate.
And this is part of the- Better than anything.
Yes.
This is part of the issue.
Yeah.
We're under an epidemic of veteran suicide, like, more so than we ever have.
And the worst thing about this, too, is it's also affecting our family and our kids.
Like, our kids are four times higher to commit suicide than our peer set.
So it's not just the GWAT veteran community.
Now it's our families and our children.
You have something that has such a proven track record to help heal vets.
And we can't do it without breaking the law.
We have to leave the country?
It's insane.
So, you can send me to Iraq under false pretenses, and, you know, you can have Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all these, like, orchestra of fucking idiots can send us all to Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.
We can go fight the wars, come back, And now we have to break the law to go fix what's wrong with our heads or, you know, our emotions or not only our psychology, but, dude, we're broken.
Like, we've been beat up and kind of shoved in a closet and then we're sedated and told to shut the fuck up.
And, meanwhile, you know, Wolfowitz and Bremer and all these other guys, they get to walk around and provide, you know, public speeches about how fucking great they are because they're, you know, strategically important, whereas my peer set, we're under an epidemic of suicide, our kids are committing suicide, the VA's no help to us, and we have to go break the law.
True.
It's like you get to go flip a fucking coin and paint some paintings and you think that everything's okay?
joe rogan
And that one doesn't make any sense.
Out of all the ones, that's one that...
Mushrooms you can do recreationally.
No one's doing recreational Ibogaine.
I've never done it before.
Have you done it?
evan hafer
No.
joe rogan
I've never done it, but everybody that I've talked to, they said it is one of the most ruthlessly introspective journeys in your life.
It's not fun at all.
Dakota Meyer told me, he's like, I fucking hated it.
I couldn't believe someone made me do it.
After it was over, I was like, what the fuck am I doing?
It's not a fun time.
It's not a recreational drug.
It's not a drug of addiction.
It's not a drug of dying.
Let's find out what the LD50 rate is for Ibogaine.
It's probably bananas.
It's probably just like psilocybin.
Probably can't really overdose on it.
evan hafer
I don't know that.
joe rogan
Ibogaine might kill you.
It sounds really crazy potent.
evan hafer
My close friends have done either ayahuasca or ibogaine, neither of which they would say is a good time, all of which have said, all of which, 100%.
And they've come back and been not only fundamentally changed but better.
And these are, you know, my business partner, Jared Taylor, he's gone and done Ibogaine.
And then multiple other people that probably don't want me to talk about them on the podcast, guys that have been on 15, 20 different pharmaceuticals can literally scrape them off their dresser and, into a garbage can the day they get back.
joe rogan
Crazy.
evan hafer
And the fact that we aren't trying to evolve this section of the medicine, I know that Stanford did a study I'm not exactly familiar with all the data associated with it.
But the fact that we aren't leading the charge as a country to come up with dynamic, out-of-the-box solutions...
For the guys that have gone overseas and done the hard and courageous tasks for this country and they come back and they can't get help and we're not pushing the envelope?
That's a crime.
I mean, I've got lots of issues with Iraq at this point, right?
I mean, it's fundamentally...
I've told this to people.
Like, Iraq is with me every day, right?
Afghanistan was a part of my life, but Iraq fundamentally changed me for the rest of my life.
And I think about it every day.
It's not going away.
It'll never go away.
And...
joe rogan
What about Iraq that was much different than Afghanistan that changed you?
evan hafer
Well, it's the first war experience I had.
And...
For me, I was like hook, line, and sinker.
Regime change.
Move.
We've got to find weapons of mass destruction.
We've got to eliminate the threat.
We've got to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here.
joe rogan
Everybody thought it was real.
evan hafer
Hell yeah.
Yeah, I mean, there was nobody more motivated to go to war than me.
I mean, I'm sure there was, but you know what I'm saying.
joe rogan
You were in that group.
You were gung-ho.
evan hafer
Oh, 100%.
It's not only, hey, we're going to go to war, we're going to do something good for America.
These guys attacked the United States.
We're going to eliminate the terrorist threat.
unidentified
Yeah.
evan hafer
And, you know, war is such a strange and surreal circumstance because it changes you for good, it changes you for the bad, and I've looked at this a lot.
And I looked at life experience like a radio wave, almost like a band where you have highs, you have lows.
And most people, we'll call it 90 plus percent of the United States, their frequency only gets so high and only gets so low.
And it basically stays within, we'll say, a fairly small band within the center.
Combat, what happens is you go really high and you go really low and it forces you outside of social norms on a second to second basis.
And then you do that over and over and over again.
And so one person might get in a car wreck in their life and that goes really low.
So it's a really high adrenaline dump and it goes really low because they have an injury.
That's like one thing.
Well, going out in a combat zone multiple nights a week, sometimes you're doing multiple targets a night.
You might be getting the rough equivalent of an adrenaline car wreck.
The rough equivalent of a car wreck from an adrenaline dump and a high and a low.
You might be doing that three or four times a night.
unidentified
Whew.
evan hafer
And then you're doing that night after night, week after week, and it fundamentally changes you because you have to chop all of this down because if you get too ramped up and too chaotic, you're going to lose control and you won't be able to complete your mission criteria.
If you get too low...
You also won't be able to achieve your mission criteria.
Your survival instincts kick down, so it chops your ability to feel all the way down to a normal person's bandwidth because it's a survival mechanism.
This is just my own assessment.
So, from a combat experience perspective, the first time you feel it, and I'll tell you, the first time I was in an ambush, I was losing my shit.
I mean, anybody who tells you they're not fucking scared, they're either, like, fundamentally flawed, they're like Travis Pastrana, he doesn't have, like, a fear portion of his brain, or they're just lying.
Like, you're scared out of your fucking mind.
Like, going north, like, driving north into Iraq, you're looking into the deep, dark abyss of the unknown, and you're like, what the fuck?
Am I gonna be a coward?
You know, am I gonna live?
Am I gonna die?
I mean, our casualty...
Projected casualty rates was that we were going to lose most of our ODA. So you're stepping into a situation where you're going, okay, well, I know out of this six-shooter that I'm going to play Russian roulette with, there are four bullets in this.
unidentified
Oh, my God.
evan hafer
And you're driving north going, okay, let's fucking do it.
So you've already capitulated and given yourself up to die, which is, it's actually a very cathartic, and I think personally...
An experience that you can evolve from.
Because at that point, if you're dead, you can live uninhibited.
Like, everything I do from this point forward is this gravy on the steak, man.
I'm already dead.
I was driving north in Iraq, and I, like, through, like, the desert.
And my best friend and I are, like, driving north.
And you have, like, hours...
To stare off into the fucking sand, you know, you've got night vision goggles or whatever.
I had a whole fictionalized funeral for myself.
I just fucking, what else am I gonna do, right?
You're just like driving north, you know, and there's nothing going on, so I had a whole fictionalized funeral.
I buried myself.
And so I was already dead, or at least I felt like that.
And then we get in our first engagement, and the world starts cracking apart, and your mind can't keep up to what's actually happening.
You'll hear the gunfire, and I felt the explosion.
I looked in the rear view mirror of the Humvee, which sounds crazy.
I looked in the rear view mirror.
And, um, I saw this, like, car-sized chunk of fire flying behind the vehicle.
Like, so distinctly remember this.
And I'm turning to my team leader, and I'm like, we gotta get the fuck out of here!
You know, I'm, like, losing it, right?
It's so stupid.
It's so stupid.
We gotta get the fuck out of here.
You know, like, losing it, dude.
I'm just fucking losing it.
And he's like, and he's cool, man.
He's, like, calm, cool.
He's on the radio, you know.
He's like, you know, vehicle one, you know, or vehicle three, this is vehicle one.
Vehicle three, this is vehicle one.
And we're checking to see...
If we have comms between us and the other vehicles, and I'm fucking losing it.
I'm like, get the fuck out of here!
You know, it's like, okay.
Because, I mean, you're used to watching movies or whatever, and it's the first time anything like this has ever happened.
unidentified
Right.
evan hafer
And, and at this point, you know, the full insurgency hasn't kicked off that we're hunting Feta Yeen.
These guys weren't the most sophisticated cats on the planet.
They weren't that good.
So, but we end up pushing through and then consolidating at the end of this.
And fundamentally, this changed my tactical experience in combat forever because my team leader, who I respect and love, he was killed two years later.
He's one of my best friends.
He was my best friend.
He turns to me and he goes, Hey man, if you don't have a solution to the problem, just shut the fuck up.
unidentified
laughter laughter That's great advice.
evan hafer
I know.
joe rogan
That's great advice across the board.
evan hafer
Yeah.
I was like, okay, roger that.
I was like, okay, fucking roger that, man.
And then it became a practice discipline when shit's going super sideways and bullets are flying.
I hate sounding like that.
I don't want to sound like that at all.
joe rogan
But that's what it is.
evan hafer
Dude, you keep your shit together.
And then I became...
By the time my last ambush in Iraq I was in...
I'll bookend this experience with ambushes.
I was in Mosul.
And I was in a little BMW trying to work my way.
And I was working...
You're trying to fly under the radar.
You're low-vez.
CIA at this point.
So we're trying to blend in.
We hit a checkpoint, and they light us up.
And so now I'm alone in a car with another guy and the CIA chief.
And the entire Iraqi army in Mosul, Iraq, is essentially pursuing us through the...
I mean, Mosul is the size of Los Angeles, and I started at the north end of Los Angeles, basically, and had to work my way to the southern end of Los Angeles being shot at.
Whew!
And, um, and I'm trying to sort through the problem, man.
Like, I got a fucking map sheet, and you don't know, I mean, this is, this is Mad Max and the fucking Thunderdome, and Mosul was one of the most fucked up cities in Iraq.
Like, it was, it looked like going back to Stalingrad in different sections of this place.
It was a complete shit show.
And I'm alone with my, you know, the guy I was with.
And I'm trying to navigate through the city and help the driver.
We're being pursued from literally north to south.
Yeah, being shot at.
And we're going, okay, right turn, right turn, right turn.
And, I mean, I have, like, the dragons are at...
The bumper.
They're gonna fuck it.
They're gonna pull me out of this car and chop my fucking head off.
Like they're gonna turn my car into Swiss cheese.
They're gonna fucking chop my head off.
I'm dead.
We're dead.
And I brought up Kiowas.
They were on station.
We had a really good relationship with these guys.
And I was like, hey, this is me.
I'm in a black BMW. And I'm moving from north to south.
And the helicopter came back and said, oh, I know who you are.
You got everybody following you.
Not all checkpoints are created equal, and for whatever reason, they decided they were going to kill us that day.
You don't have time.
You're not going to sit around and be like, why do you guys want to kill us?
Well, we're just good guys.
You're just going to keep moving.
I had to work my way all the way south.
Yeah.
To a bridge.
And I had like one last, one last fucking Hail Mary, man.
Like we had to get across, we had to get across a bridge into a place called Diamondback.
And I didn't have a QRF because they couldn't pin us down a quick reaction force.
And, um...
Like, the Kiowas, like, they saved our life, because they had the roads blocked off on the bridge, and I was basically smoking in it, like, 100 fucking kilometers an hour.
And the Kiowas came down and, like, literally dropped their fucking skids on the front of the car and panned around, like, we're gonna kill all you fuckers.
unidentified
Wow.
evan hafer
Yeah, and...
I looked over at one of the guys I looked over and like flipped them off and it was like you Dead you know and then Like like parting the seas like Moses or whatever they've moved the fucking cars and we we drove back in that was it so bookending my point of that conversation was I was losing my shit my first one right and I came back and I was talking to Kiowas and they were like,
bro, we didn't know how bad this was because it sounded like you were ordering a pizza.
But everything, everything in between was like...
Rep after rep after rep after rep was like, calm down, keep your shit together.
And one of my really close friends, this guy Jeff Kirkham, my first team sergeant, awesome fucking guy, one of the most tactically relevant people in my life.
He's like, psychology is more contagious than the flu.
So when you start losing your shit, it infects everybody else around you.
joe rogan
What a great quote.
Psychology is more infectious than the flu.
That is a great quote.
evan hafer
Yeah, man.
joe rogan
That's so real.
evan hafer
So real.
joe rogan
That's so real.
That's so real.
It was everything.
evan hafer
Everything.
joe rogan
Everything.
evan hafer
It controlled every piece of what I would do from that point forward.
Like, lose your shit in a gunfight, and then you infect everybody else around you.
joe rogan
Yes.
evan hafer
Rise to the occasion.
Be the calm in the chaos.
Become a, you know, even if you don't feel like it, even if you're, you're wigging out, man.
Of course.
Internally, You can barely keep your shit together, but what you do is you're like, okay, but I gotta project this, because if I infect everybody else with my chaos, I'm injecting more chaos into the equation, and we're all going to run the possibility of dying because of this, because of my actions.
joe rogan
I think that's why people gravitate towards inspirational figures.
It's because they're trying to get some of that psychology.
They're trying to get it worn off on them.
You know, great quotes and great feats and fascinating people.
You want to absorb some of that psychology.
That is such a great quote, though, because it's so true.
If you're around someone that's freaking out, you're trying to keep your shit together, it's so hard to keep your shit together.
evan hafer
You can't, but if you're around a bunch of dudes, they're surgeons and stoic, and there's no flexion, what I would say is like, in the time and repetition in the community, I mean, there's a default emotion that is acceptable.
It's, you know, anger.
Right?
So, anger, and when I say joy, it's like joy from gallows humor, typically, right?
But it's like, you have to, everybody becomes a stoic.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
Nothing can phase you.
And if you are a guy that is phased...
joe rogan
You're a liability.
evan hafer
You're a liability.
You're going to get chopped.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're infected.
evan hafer
Yeah, exactly.
So Iraq...
So going back to what I was talking about with Iraq...
I'm supercharged.
And my reality started to kind of crumble.
We were on the first ODAs and we did this joint op with the CIA to go meet this guy, Muqtada al-Sadr.
This is early on.
This is like March of the war.
And...
Mictado Satter became a prominent figure later on in the war.
He was relatively not known at all in the beginning of it.
And I was working with a CIA case officer at that point, not just me, it was like my entire team.
And McTaddle's like, he's a bad guy.
Like, he's just a real piece of shit.
And at that point, on the Jaffa was this town.
And we went out, did a meeting with him.
And we came back.
And all of us on the military, paramilitary side, were like, this guy needs to die.
Like, we need to actually go.
And he has a small armed force.
He's basically going to be the instrument of the Iranians.
And we're having this big debate in the team room.
And everybody that carried he gone, like we speak...
We speak animal kingdom.
We know when there's a threat.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
And then we had this case officer who was like a, you know, adjunct professor at fucking Georgetown.
Guy didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.
And we're like, this guy needs to die.
We need to go, like, get on him now.
And, um, case officer was like, no, he's going to work with us, you know.
And we're like...
joe rogan
They wanted him to be an asset.
evan hafer
Yeah.
Like, this guy is fucking stupid.
Like, this guy, he's a Shia, supposedly Shia cleric.
You know, if you know Iraq, you've got 60% of the country is Shia.
It's typically going to answer Iran.
You've got 15, 20% is up north.
It's the Kurds.
And then you've got the rest of the Sunni.
And we're like, this guy's not going to fucking work with us.
And this guy's a real piece of shit.
And he's already spinning up a militia.
He's going to be a problem.
No, no, no, no.
And we're like, okay, you're the big brain on Brad.
You're the PhD, man.
Sure.
So we acquiesce.
And years later, I don't know how many guys died before.
Going into...
Going back into Najaf trying to find this fucking guy.
I don't know how many.
I mean, it was a whole basically surge push or probably a division to try to go find this guy.
But we had the opportunity to kill him right there.
Like, literally, we could have...
Like, he had less than 40 guys on the compound.
We could have, like, gone out and got him right, like, that night.
And...
And then he became a problem.
And not only did he become a problem, it was like the decision makers were so poor at that point early in the war.
It started to really affect me in the sense of like I was still bought and sold.
But I started to really think these guys might not know what the fuck they're doing when...
It was like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and Brennan.
When they de-Bathified Iraq, so after we invaded, they did this thing called de-Bathification, which was basically they fired the military and everybody that was involved in the bath party.
And once again, we're in the team room, and we're watching CNN, and it's Rumsfeld talking about we're de-Bathifying Iraq, we're firing everybody.
And I'm not exaggerating.
Everybody in the team room was like, what the fuck?
You guys are going to create the insurgency.
It was on the ground, that moment, that second.
I wanted to throw a fucking brick through the TV. I was like, these guys are paint-by-numbers creating an insurgency.
They have no fucking clue what they're doing.
And that was that moment, which is fairly early.
Where I lost a lot of confidence in the decision makers.
But, okay, you know, the question is, why'd you keep going back?
Well, because you want to try to search for...
Meaning, and you're trying to find the actual purpose.
Like, what is the purpose?
Like, are there WMDs here?
Like, are there, you know, like, legit direct traces back to 9-11?
Are there things that we're doing that are going to directly affect and protect America?
And you're kind of searching for it.
Not kind of.
You are.
That's what you're doing.
Or at least that's what I was doing.
And by the time I left in 2009...
Uh, I just figured I was gonna die.
Like, I was like, fuck this place.
unidentified
Like, fuck, like, like, um, I lived Iraq, right?
evan hafer
And then I was like, well, I think time and repetition in thinking that you're dead for that long and then searching for not only some, some, what I would say is good in the war itself because there is good.
You have your buddies and You have the camaraderie.
You have the adrenaline.
But you also think you're gonna fucking die every day for years on end.
And that's not...
Fundamentally, it turns out it's probably not good for you psychologically, I guess.
And so I went to Afghanistan thinking, well...
And I went to train Afghanis for a force up there.
And when I went to train those guys, it was, hey, if I can train Afghanis to take on the war, maybe I can protect 18-year-old kids from getting their fucking legs blown off.
Maybe I can protect the 20-year-old kid from Nebraska from getting fucking RPG stuffed through their face.
And I was older, and I was also willing to die.
So the kids, when I say the kids, you know, 18, 20 years old, like, man, it's not...
It's not fun to watch those.
When I say that, that's an understatement.
It's so heartbreaking to watch a kid that's never been to fucking combat die.
It changes everything in your life.
Yeah, and so you go from, you know, Iraq to Afghanistan, you know, and I'm watching all this stuff unfold, and there's, like, there's, and I don't want to say it's all negative, because there's, you know, there were things that were very positive, but...
I'm so jaded by the time I get there that I'm like, well, if I can save some Americans, I'll save some Americans.
And, you know, if not, at least this will be an interesting experience.
And then, you know, there's a laundry list of other things we can talk about.
I don't want to get so fucking down, I guess.
joe rogan
It seems like it's impossible not to once you're going back on it.
How could you not?
And the overwhelming negative experiences, the overwhelming horrific experiences.
evan hafer
Well...
I think that's where I have this massive distrust in politicians.
And I think that's part of the reason.
They have squandered the courage of the American servicemen in these forever wars.
That we've entered in under lies.
So like, you know, Wolfowitz and W and Rumsfeld and...
joe rogan
Goldbell.
evan hafer
Yeah.
And...
Sorry, man.
I don't have any respect for those guys.
Not only do I not have any respect for those guys, I have a profound amount of hatred for their arrogance.
Because I'm in my 20s.
I'm not making excuses, but there's plenty of guys like me that were not only hook, land, and sinker, and I still would.
I'd still sign up for this country.
I think service is a remarkable courage and service back to our community is something we have to cherish.
Like we do.
But when you have an orchestra of idiots that are manipulating the courageous men and women of our country to go into these wars based on a neocon pipe dream, and there's no consequences, you know, you can pull out of Afghanistan and leave billions of dollars of equipment.
Who the fuck got fired?
But if I made a mistake, if me and my buddies made a mistake, we fucking...
We lost our lives.
We go to jail.
Like, we lost our clearances.
And I'm not trying to sound like a whiny bitch.
I'm just saying, like, no consequences for these guys.
Nothing.
You know, they get to go paint paintings and they think it's okay.
joe rogan
Imagine no consequences for lying about weapons of mass destruction.
And has there ever been a large-scale investigation as to what led them to either believe or to push the narrative that there was weapons of mass destruction?
evan hafer
Well, I think if you read, I mean, there's a lot, I think there's a lot of like, there's a lot of books out there, obviously, and whether or not you have to kind of sort through the actual documents and figure out like where these guys were at.
And I've spent a little bit of my life trying to understand from their perspective.
And I honestly think big part of it is the guys who are making the decisions.
Their hubris, their utopian belief that they were going to be able to rebuild Iraq like Houston.
You know?
Like, oh, it's an oil country, you know?
And, you know, they really believed that if they didn't rein in this rogue nation of Iraq...
That Iraq was going to eventually contribute to terrorism.
And you had guys that were so consumed with their intelligence when it flipped to not only hubris, but they didn't have wisdom.
They had intelligence.
Wolfowitz is a smart guy.
He's not an idiot.
The problem is he's not wise.
These guys weren't wise men.
There's a difference between having a high IQ and having the experience and repetition, seeing death and destruction, seeing people's lives fucking torn apart, and then understanding something from reading a book or thinking about it from an economics perspective.
And, you know, I think Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, They had this belief that they could do anything they wanted to validate this.
And they did.
They had to data mine information and pull and pluck from different analysts that agreed with them.
But most of the intel community didn't agree with them.
They're like, we had defeated the Iraqi army to the point when I say defeated it.
Like, if we go back to the 90s, we say Desert Storm was 91. And then from that point forward, you can basically say, you know, HW to Clinton administration, Clinton administration with the economic sanctions, and with the integrated bombing campaigns that they had led throughout the 90s.
We had essentially...
Stuffed that guy back into a hole where the only thing he could do is sell oil in the black market.
He had a fascist state where he and his family had complete control out of the country, but he wasn't going to be a threat from an international terrorism perspective.
That's just false.
It's not only false, but it is patently false.
And they had to mine the data to validate it.
They had to lie.
They had to sift through and find and pick and pull the pieces of information.
And they really thought this was going to be a fucking cakewalk.
They did.
joe rogan
Because of Desert Storm, you think?
evan hafer
They thought because of Desert Storm.
And they were listening to these assets like Chalabi and some of these former Iraqi exiles.
And they're listening to these guys.
By the way, we're also manipulated by the Iranians and paid for by...
Iranian intel guys, they're Iranian assets.
They're listening to these people and they were living in their own echo chambers, validating this idea that it was better for regime change, for the international, not only the international economy, but it was going to be a stable petroleum-based country where we could integrate democracy into And none of these guys were Erebus.
None of these guys actually understood the Middle East.
Not one.
They didn't have any combat experience.
They didn't really have any combat experience from the long-term, low-intensity conflict, guerrilla warfare perspective.
They were given not only the information, but most of the information they were given was saying, this is going to be much more complex than you think it's going to be.
And they denied...
Not only the opinions, but the information, and they went ahead with their fucking plans anyway.
Rumsfeld chopped, single-handedly dictated how many people were going to participate in the war.
Like, he was dictating how many divisions it was going to take, and he's like, actually, I think you could do it for half that.
Like, he was like trying to negotiate how many guys that Tommy Franks was going to use to invade Iraq.
Tommy Franks didn't have the balls to say actually I need two more divisions so a lot of this is just like fundamentally These are professional politicians and bureaucrats drinking their own piss like I was saying earlier You know like you can drink your own piss once or twice before your kidneys start to shut down and it'll fucking kill you right?
These guys are all sitting around In their echo chambers, talking to the same types of people, defining how they were going to send servicemen and women to Iraq, and they were wrong.
Not only were they wrong, but they were told otherwise by lots of different people to include...
I mean, Tony Blair had a lot of different issues with this.
Colin Powell essentially sold this and got the dominoes to fall on the entire thing.
Because they knew that Colin Powell was so respected that if he sat in front of the UN with Tenet, who was the director of the CIA, right behind him and held up this little thing of VX or whatever it was, that they could push it across the line from the international community.
I mean, these guys were crooked, man.
And not only were they crooked, they were so fundamentally wrong.
And there's no consequences.
joe rogan
Nothing.
evan hafer
Zero consequences.
joe rogan
They put Martha Stewart in jail.
evan hafer
Yeah.
Yeah, they go after Trump for fucking two years on, you know, Russia collusion.
It's like you spent seven trillion dollars in thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And you're saying you're going to put this guy through the ringer for two years because there might be some dossier that was paid for by the Clintons.
Like, who's the criminal?
And so for me, I get all wound up when it comes to this because rep after rep, year after year, My two closest friends in the world were literally one torn in half by a EFP, which was a direct Iranian manufactured shape charge You know my other friend was turned into fucking moon dust and I mean, these are my two closest friends in the world.
guys I grew up with in the army I spent every fucking day with and since then I've had obviously more friends but I mean those are the two closest friends in the earliest part of the war so So I'm so directly affected by this because it fundamentally changed who I was forever.
It gave me a profound amount of mistrust in my government.
You know, and the decision makers, I don't believe...
I actually don't believe what they're telling me anymore.
I have a lot of skepticism when it comes to the people that are pulling the handles in government.
And I have to go to my peer set, and what I tell people is, man, my currency is courage, right?
It's like, that's what I broker in.
So my friends that have gone through the GWAT, which I'm extremely happy...
For all these GWAC guys that are getting appointed to these positions, you've got Pete, you've got Tulsi, JD, they fundamentally know what war is, and when you have decision makers that have never been to war and their kids will never go to war...
Cheney's kids never went to war.
W's kids never went to war.
And none of these guys, by the way, they're all Vietnam era guys.
None of them went to fucking Vietnam.
joe rogan
So it's really easy.
unidentified
But nor did Trump.
joe rogan
Trump didn't either, right?
You got a bunch of deferments.
evan hafer
But I think the difference is, is that when somebody's saying, stop the endless wars.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
I am more than happy to go chips in on that narrative than I am to go, oh, we need to invest and put more time, money, energy into creating more chaos and destruction in the American service members lives or the lives of other people.
joe rogan
Did you ever see that speech with Mike Pence and Tucker Carlson?
evan hafer
No.
joe rogan
Tucker Carlson essentially ended Mike Pence's political career.
evan hafer
Really?
joe rogan
In one speech, yeah.
Because this was when Pence was running for president.
And Tucker was sitting there with him, and Pence was talking about getting helicopters and tanks and weapons to Ukraine.
And he was explaining how they were being incompetent because they weren't providing them with what they needed.
And Tucker went on this rant.
See if you can find it.
I bet you could find it under that.
Here it is.
Listen to this.
jamie vernon
This is the whole thing.
You should make sure of the Tucker part because it's four minutes long.
joe rogan
Let me hear what he says.
Just start right where your cursor is.
Click where your cursor is.
unidentified
We'll let somebody transfer some jets.
tucker carlson
I'm sorry, Mr. Vice President.
I know you're running for president.
You are distressed that the Ukrainians don't have enough American tanks.
Every city in the United States has become much worse over the past three years.
Drive around.
There's not one city that's gotten better in the United States.
And it's visible.
Our economy has degraded.
The suicide rate has jumped.
Public filth and disorder and crime have Exponentially increased, and yet your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can't find on a map, who've received tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars, don't have enough tanks.
I think it's a fair question to ask, like, where's the concern for the United States in that?
unidentified
Well, it's not my concern.
Tucker, I've heard that routine from you before, but that's not my concern.
I'm running for President of the United States because I think this country's in a lot of trouble.
I think Joe Biden has weakened America at home and abroad.
And as President of the United States, we're going to restore law and order in our cities, we're going to secure our border, we're going to get this economy moving again, and we're going to make sure that we have men and women on our courts at every level that will stand for the right to life and defend all the God-given liberties enshrined in our Constitution.
Anybody that says that we can't be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on earth.
We can do both.
And as President of the United States, we will secure our border, we will support our military, we will revive our economy and stand by our values, and we will also lead the world for freedom under my administration.
I promise you.
tucker carlson
Amen.
Vice President Mike Pence, thank you very much.
joe rogan
Just that.
That's not my concern.
That's not my concern.
What the fuck are you talking about?
How would you ever answer anything that way?
That is not my concern.
That's not your concern.
You don't think he just made a really good point?
That we're really confused as to, first of all, aren't we like a trillion dollars in debt?
evan hafer
How do we have- No, we're 35 and a half trillion dollars in debt.
Like, it's crazy.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
How do we have the money?
How do we have the money to send to Iraq, and we don't have the money to fix our cities?
And how can you say, that's not my concern?
What that is, is the opposite of what Trump is.
That is nonsense talk.
Not that he doesn't have nonsense talk, but that is not a person's real feelings.
That is just political speech.
That's just, we're gonna clean up our country, we're gonna preserve the right to life.
evan hafer
It's memorizing soundbites.
joe rogan
Exactly, exactly.
evan hafer
And that's the entire problem with Washington right there.
joe rogan
Yeah, exactly.
evan hafer
They memorize soundbites, they say one thing, they do the other thing.
Exactly, exactly.
Completely...
They've lost the trust of their constituents.
They've lost the trust of the American public.
And by the way, it's administration after administration.
It's politician after politician.
It shouldn't be a surprise if people don't like politicians.
I mean, look at that guy.
He's a fucking robot.
joe rogan
He's weird.
evan hafer
He's a weird dude.
joe rogan
He's weird.
You know, they kept trying to say JD's weird.
JD's not weird at all.
I meant that guy.
He's fucking cool.
He's normal.
Smart as shit.
I could hang with that guy.
He could be my friend.
He's not even a little weird.
evan hafer
No, that guy's weird.
joe rogan
I mean, I guess anybody who's that smart is weird.
You know?
People that go to Yale.
He's weird in that way.
Like, that's an odd dude.
You don't see a lot of those.
But normal.
That guy's...
evan hafer
Bizarre like his face doesn't move did you have Botox at 80 like what the fuck is going on like you're weird I think they have low IQs and they're pushing that thing to the red That's why they're actually so afraid to do anything because they're like I have they're like I'm really pushing this thing I've got like a hundy like a 105 but my parents were rich So I went to Yale if I break outside of my box actually people are gonna know that I'm a fucking retard so right Well,
joe rogan
I do also think that if you're that ambition, you have ambition at that level, and you're so driven to become the alpha that you want to be the president, the amount of work that's involved in that doesn't leave a whole lot of room for reading.
Doesn't leave a whole lot of room for watching documentaries and having important in-depth conversations with people, expanding your understanding of the world.
It's very narrow.
They're basically actors.
Most of these people exhibit a lot of the traits that I see in actors.
This desire to morph oneself, to please the people around you.
The saying the things that you think people want to hear because you want to get ahead.
It's all very similar.
They're actors.
And the fact that these actors can rise to a position where they can actually dictate what these military veterans do and don't do when they have no knowledge or experience in this.
The fact that that's a real thing is fucking crazy.
It's really crazy.
evan hafer
I mean, I think that's...
By the time I left...
I was so jaded and the motivating factor was...
unidentified
Oh, sorry.
evan hafer
I was like, no man will ever have control over my destiny again.
Like, I will not put a bit in my mouth for another man in the government that will not be making decisions for me.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't think we can recall a time in our history where we did trust the government.
Which is such a weird thing to say.
You know, I used to think it was the Obama administration.
But boy, Obama during this Kamala Harris administration, it changed my opinion of that guy.
evan hafer
Really?
Did you have a high opinion of him before?
joe rogan
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, I did just as an intelligent person, a statesman.
I felt like he's probably like caught up in the system.
It's very difficult to make real meaningful change.
You know, you think you're going to do something and then you get into office and you're like, oh God, what a fucking quagmire this place is.
But watching him just straight up lie about Trump, the thing that got me was that very fine people thing, the white supremacist thing.
They just kept trying to say that he was a racist.
Which is this thing that I think worked in like 2017. I think it worked back then.
I don't think it works anymore.
I don't think people believe it anymore.
I think that we've gotten numb to all this stuff.
evan hafer
It's the sky is falling thing, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
It's like, you cry wolf or whatever.
It's like, you guys can only call me a fascist so many times.
I mean, like the New York Times wrote that article a couple years ago, right?
Where I'm like, it was the front of the coffee cup where it's like, do you want Trump 2024?
Do you want low taxes?
Do you want this?
I'm like, I want all that.
Sounds good.
And you can only call me...
A fascist, racist, asshole.
I mean, to be fair, I can float into the asshole category relatively easy, but you can only call all of us that.
joe rogan
Only when prompted.
Yeah, it's...
You know what my fucking favorite things of this whole election cycle has been?
Yesterday.
When Biden and Trump sat down in the White House, Biden voted for Trump.
I guarantee it.
I fucking guarantee it.
I never saw that dude so happy in his fucking life.
He lost.
His party lost.
He was happy.
When Obama had to shake hands with Trump and do the whole transition thing, Obama looked like, Jesus Christ.
Look at Obama!
Look at his fucking smile, dude!
evan hafer
Trump's like, uh, whatever.
joe rogan
Look at his fucking smile, man.
That's like when your kid gets married.
evan hafer
That dude looks like a hairless cat.
unidentified
Look at him.
joe rogan
It's great!
First of all, what have they done to him?
What have they done to his face?
Go back to that other picture because it was more high res.
Look at his mug, man.
First of all, for sure he's got something going on with his forehead.
They Botox the shit out of his forehead.
They gave him a facelift for sure.
There's a bunch of different things they did, which very ill-advised, by the way, folks.
Look at Trump.
He looks like shit.
No one cares.
Everyone loves him.
You don't look better if you get your face pulled back like a lizard.
You just look more like a lizard.
Everybody thinks you're a lizard already.
But look at that smile!
That motherfucker's never been happier in his life.
In his life!
He's like, that bitch!
She went down!
You can't tell me he wasn't happy.
Like, when he put that MAGA hat on, you ever see that?
evan hafer
Oh yeah, yeah!
joe rogan
He put the MAGA hat on!
And he took it with him on the plane!
I guarantee you, I guarantee you, that motherfucker was happy.
He had a giant smile on his face.
He said, welcome back to him.
I thought it was Hitler!
I thought he was dangerous!
evan hafer
That's what they all said, right?
It's like, hey, he's a threat to democracy.
unidentified
I thought he was a Nazi!
evan hafer
And then all of a sudden, it's like, ah, hey...
We're going to have a smooth transition here.
joe rogan
This was the guy that you said was sharp as a tack.
He was going to be up until four months ago.
Four months ago, that guy was going to be running again.
And now here he is, smiling like a Cheshire cat.
How big was his smile?
evan hafer
That's a crazy smile.
He looks like he's wearing a mask.
joe rogan
He might be.
There was that one fake Biden.
Did you ever see the fake Biden?
evan hafer
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
The tall guy?
That guy was so much taller.
The guy was like 6'4".
He was a giant Biden.
It made no sense!
evan hafer
They're gonna smoke that one by us?
It's like, dude, this guy's like, you know, 6'7", could be playing in the NBA. He was so much taller.
joe rogan
They showed Jill and him together.
Jill's like, what happened?
That's a different human being!
Totally.
It's so nuts, man.
It's so nuts.
All the different things that happened during this election are wilder than anything you've ever seen in a fucking movie.
evan hafer
I think it brought so many more people into politics, too.
The more people pay attention to what's going on with politicians, with the country, I don't think that's a bad thing.
unidentified
Right.
evan hafer
Because bureaucrats and politicians alike, they directly benefit from people not paying attention.
joe rogan
Yes.
evan hafer
And so they only want you to pay attention once a year when they're going to try to get everybody galvanized around a couple little stupid things and then get them out to the voting booth, but not too many.
We don't want a lot of complex thought out of the voters.
We don't really want them to think about too much.
Right.
We still got a national deficit that we gotta increase, and I gotta line the pockets of all my buddies, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin.
We don't want them to get in too far.
Don't start talking about the reserve, or don't start talking about any of that other stuff.
I think that's what it is.
joe rogan
Well, I think that's also why politicians are...
Some of them, at least, are terrified of podcasts.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because you do have to talk about them.
But that's what makes guys like JD and guys like Trump unique in that they will just sit and talk with anybody.
I mean, he sat with Theo Vaughn.
Theo talked to him about doing coke.
unidentified
That's awesome.
evan hafer
It was so funny.
joe rogan
Theo's amazing.
It was amazing.
Theo has an ability to be himself no matter who he's talking to.
And him talking to Trump about how he used to love to do coke.
unidentified
Yeah.
evan hafer
It's like...
unidentified
And Trump's just sitting there, which was super funny, by the way.
joe rogan
He's sitting there like this poor guy.
Like, you see Theo falling apart in front of you.
Like, Jesus Christ, I thought I was running for president here.
unidentified
I think I might have to help this young fella.
evan hafer
Who do I need to talk to about this?
joe rogan
But, like, you know, Kamala...
Didn't have the ability to do that or if she did nobody brought it out of her I was hoping I could I really was I was hoping I could have a conversation with her there's all this talk now that the reason why she didn't do it is because of Progressive people in her party the pushback right which might have some truth to it But for the record they offered me two very specific days And in different places in the country to travel and then go do it and do it for an hour.
I said I didn't want to do that.
And especially after Trump had done it.
Here, in three hours, I'm like, this is the only way to do it.
And Elon said it best.
He said, he goes, you can kind of bullshit someone for an hour.
He goes, hour two and hour three.
Like, that's when the real you comes out.
evan hafer
Yeah, you're gonna get...
unidentified
It's the real you!
evan hafer
You're gonna tear the layers off the onion, right?
joe rogan
100%.
100%.
evan hafer
It might make you cry.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
And the more you peel it, the more you might be like, oh, this person's fucking stupid as shit.
joe rogan
How much are you bullshitting the world, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
The quote about Trump or the narrative about Trump has always been that he's bullshitting everybody, that he's a con man.
He's definitely very persuasive.
You know, Scott Adams has wrote about this pretty much in depth about how well Trump practices the art of persuasion.
You know, the art of the deal.
He's great at making people his friend and making relationships, and if you're his enemy, fuck you, scorched earth.
You know, it's like this...
And there's fear of that.
You don't want to get on his bad side.
There's all this, like, there's this art of, like, how he negotiates and he's gone through this years and years and years of business.
evan hafer
But...
joe rogan
But that's him.
The guy's right there.
You could talk to him about everything and anything.
He's right there.
He's not protecting any of his ideas.
He called a girl he allegedly slept with Horseface when he was the president on Twitter.
evan hafer
It's so funny.
joe rogan
It's the wildest shit.
So you're getting what you get.
That's who the guy is.
I like him.
I've grown to like him.
I had a much more negative opinion of him back in the day because it was...
There's only so much you can pay attention to and do deep dives on before you lose your fucking mind.
And with him, I was always like, oh, that guy, they grab him by the pussy guy, it's probably not good for the country.
That seems crazy.
But as time went on, I was like, oh, you need a guy that is completely crazy to expose how corrupt the whole system is.
And how they all collude together and how they all say this.
There's all these montages of clips of news organizations saying the same narrative outright, over and over, verbatim, word by word.
They're getting fed this by someone, some entity.
Somehow or another, they're collaborating.
And they're all choosing this very specific narrative and they're running with it and they're trying to destroy people with it.
And I saw them do it with me.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
I saw them do it with me during the COVID thing.
And it was all motivated by the pharmaceutical drug companies and the profits.
And they were terrified that someone's going to come along and somehow or another put a notch in this little thing that they've created, which is a devious little thing that they've done, where they eliminated all sorts of other remedies.
They cut out all these generic drugs that possibly could have been used to help people.
They denied people the use of monoclonal antibodies.
They pushed the fucking shit out of this one thing so they could make money off of it.
And they did it in collusion with the media.
No one acted like a journalist.
No one looked at the excess deaths.
No one looked at the instances of myocarditis in young people.
No one looked at any of that.
There was no journalism.
It just showed everyone that the whole system is bought and paid for.
It's all corrupt.
You could find out who a person really is, is to listen to them talk for long periods of time.
It's the only truth serum we have left.
And even that's not 100% effective, but it's pretty good.
Your brain knows bullshit.
You ever met some guy?
And he's dating this girl that you know, and there's just something about the guy.
He's shaking my hand.
He's being nice to me.
And I'm like, I don't trust this motherfucker.
Something's gross about this guy.
And then you find out he's a piece of shit.
But it's always this thing.
You feel something.
If you talk to someone long enough, there's patterns in the way they talk, the way they think.
The way they consider things, whether or not they can admit that they're wrong, or whether or not they can tell you why they changed their mind.
How did they form their narratives?
Like, what bad paths were they on, and what personal correction did they make, and how long did it take before you got to a better place?
You learn about people when you hear them talk for long periods of time.
You can't fake personal growth.
You can't fake stuff you've learned.
You can't fake flaws that you're willing to expose to people so that they could perhaps see them in themselves.
You can't fake that.
And all those people like Mike Pence, he's got zero of that.
You can't sit that guy down and have a real conversation with him.
evan hafer
He's so afraid.
Honestly, I don't think he even knows who he is.
joe rogan
Probably doesn't.
evan hafer
Guys like that don't even know who they are.
joe rogan
Like an actor.
evan hafer
Yeah, yeah.
They're like actors.
My buddy Dave, we were talking yesterday.
You met him the other night.
I've known him for 20 years.
Great guy.
joe rogan
He was a lot of fun.
evan hafer
Dude, you know, we met in Kabul back in the day.
Dave and I, like, we go way back.
joe rogan
He's good friends with Bruce and with my friend Kevin.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Crazy.
evan hafer
Because he was a team guy, right?
So he's like former CLCIA guy.
And Dave and I were talking about this, and when you can just be authentically engaged with people, Where you can just be yourself.
And that's part of the issue with, I think, a lot of vets and why they connect really well with vets is because you can just authentically engage with people and say, this person knows I'm a little bit broken.
This person knows that I've probably done shit that I'm not super proud of.
And they know that I've got a dark sense of humor.
But I can like just kind of open, I can open my heart and just have a real conversation with somebody.
And that's the shit you chase.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
Where you can just be yourself and you can talk about stuff.
And you can like try to evolve the way you're thinking and feeling.
Right.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
And these artificial bullshit conversations that we have throughout our day with people we don't give a shit about or these like, you know, inauthentic, unreal, you know, veneer people.
It's like, I have no interest in having a conversation with a fake person.
That is stupid.
joe rogan
That is the best thing that I took out of moving to Texas, from moving to LA. I have way less of those conversations.
I have almost none of them here.
My conversations here are like with normal people.
They're normal.
So many people are infected by the rhythm of Hollywood, which is just about people trying to become successful.
And the way you become successful in Hollywood is you get chosen.
Because you have to go on auditions.
That's the primary, right?
The number one top of the food chain, well, I guess rock star.
Rockstar and movie star are number one and number two maybe interchangeable Maybe they're the same same if it's a ten like biggest stars in the world.
It's movie stars and rock stars and movie stars Everything you do is about your relationships with people, and whether or not people think you align with them politically, and whether or not you support the right causes, you wear the bow tie at the Oscars, you act proper, you do all the things that you're supposed to do.
And if you do all the things you're supposed to do, then you get into the club.
And if you don't do all the things you're gonna do, then they're not gonna use you.
They're gonna use Daniel Craig.
They're gonna use this guy.
They're gonna use that guy.
They're gonna use Dave Bautista.
They're gonna use The Rock.
There's so many guys that want these roles.
And there's only so many good roles.
Especially if you're gonna be a male movie star.
So no one can color outside the lines.
And Dennis Quaid is one of the rare few male movie stars.
Who just fucking completely gave up.
He's like, I support Trump.
I'm a Christian.
I sing gospel music.
Like, fuck you.
I quit.
And he did this Reagan movie.
It was a Reagan movie.
It's about a 1980s president.
They wouldn't let him advertise on certain social media networks because they said it was during the time of the election and it could affect the election.
What was it?
Was it Facebook?
That's insane.
Was it YouTube or Facebook?
One of the social media outlets kept him from advertising this movie, which is a great movie, about Reagan, where he plays Reagan.
He does a fucking amazing job.
It has nothing to do with today!
It's about a guy who's dead!
unidentified
He's dead.
evan hafer
He's been dead forever, right?
joe rogan
He was dead his last year in office.
He was at fucking full-on Alzheimer's.
evan hafer
That's the thing with this whole social media, you know, censorship, demonization, like the way that they've...
They honestly, and I want to say they, like, there's a big group, and you, I mean, you were talking about it the other night, even with your show, with the Trump show, and then it's not trending, you can't even find it.
The firearms community on YouTube deals with this all the time.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, all the time.
evan hafer
You know, the guys that have the huge YouTube channels from a firearms perspective, they're demonetized, they have to upload multiple times, they're in like a constant battle.
joe rogan
My good friend Collins, Coleon Noir, his fucking show, he can't get it to grow.
He can't get his Instagram to grow.
He's like completely stifled.
evan hafer
And they're keeping the lid on this.
unidentified
Yes.
evan hafer
I mean, like Brandon Herrera...
jamie vernon
After he was on the podcast, Facebook acknowledged the mistake and lifted the restrictions.
joe rogan
Yeah, you acknowledged it!
Look at this.
He expressed belief that Facebook labeled the content as an attempt to sway an election.
evan hafer
Yeah.
Like, the entire...
joe rogan
Thank you, Facebook.
jamie vernon
They said it was automated in their defense, but that's what they said.
joe rogan
It was just a mistake, Jamie.
jamie vernon
That's what they said.
joe rogan
Jamie, it was just a mistake.
evan hafer
The entire firearms community, and it's weird because we...
When I say we, we talk about it all the time.
Whether it's the biggest YouTube channels for the firearm space, they're constantly battling, trying to keep their channels up.
This is a constitutionally protected right.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
And because...
There's a difference in political opinion.
They can tip the scale.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
Which is completely insane to me.
And there's a lot of traffic.
I mean, you think about some of these really big channels that are out there.
These guys drive millions and millions of views.
joe rogan
Mm-hmm.
evan hafer
People obviously want to watch and they can't increase their reach or they get demonetized and they're constantly screwed with over and over and over again.
And that's the way that I think a lot of us have felt we've been living under the thumb of our social media oligarchs that are deciding whether or not our information is agreeable to their political opinion.
joe rogan
Did I ever tell you the time that I was having a conversation with a Facebook or YouTube executive?
And my wife had to grab my leg under the table and stop me.
evan hafer
Seriously?
joe rogan
In Hawaii.
Okay?
So I'm with a friend.
And my friend was an executive at Google.
Very nice person.
Great person.
No problems with them.
We're all having a good time.
We're sitting down drinking and talking.
And I got a couple in me.
unidentified
And...
joe rogan
This lady who's a bigwig at YouTube sits down across from me and we start talking.
And I said, when it comes...
So we get into this conversation.
It's a very friendly conversation.
Nothing problematic at all.
I don't think she even knows who I am.
And this is a long time ago.
So this is like...
2015?
14?
So my podcast is not that big.
It's not that big at all.
I can tell you exactly when it was.
When did Sam Harris and Douglas Murray have a conversation?
When did The Strange Death of Europe come out?
Tell me about that.
That's Douglas Murray's amazing book that has been proved now to be absolutely accurate in his assessment of what was going to happen to Europe with Muslim integration.
Essentially, the guy nailed it.
And him and Sam Harris.
Okay, so you have two public intellectuals who are having a conversation about cultures and about the What is different about these Islamic cultures and their desire to impose Sharia law, like at least in certain areas.
So they're having this conversation and it gets labeled as it gets flagged off this guy's account.
So I find out about this video because this guy has an account and I don't remember where he posted it, maybe Twitter, but he said, I got flagged on YouTube For having this in my playlist as something that I watch, like not even something he hosts on his channel.
So I asked the lady, I said, why would someone get flagged for a conversation?
She goes, it was hate speech.
Just like that.
Just like that.
It was hate speech.
I go, do you remember the conversation?
Because I watched the conversation.
I don't think it was hate speech at all.
It was definitely hate speech.
But it's between two public...
And then my wife just clamps down on my neck.
Because she sees I'm fucking...
I'm rabid.
Now I'm like, it's two public intellectuals having a conversation about a real thing that's happening in the world.
And there's no hate speech in that.
There's no slurs.
There's no degrading of people, a generalization of people.
There's no racism.
They're talking about real cultural differences and how they're going to affect Europe.
And this fucking lady just, it's hate speech.
The arrogance of the way she said it to me, and she was a big executive.
And then I was like, oh boy.
I was just boiling.
I was boiling.
And thank God my wife grabbed my leg.
She fucking...
She grabbed the shit out of my leg.
Because I was ready to go.
Because the lady was going to engage with me.
And I was like, okay, this is a podcast.
You're fucked.
You're fucked.
You're just lucky there's no cameras here.
What you're saying is absolutely crazy.
Like, who are you to make that distinction?
And do you have any idea how that affects us culturally when a person like yourself who lives in this fucking San Francisco, this whole bizarre tech cult bubble, that's what you live in.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
And you want to impose this crazy leftist perspective on everyone in the world to the point where you're not even allowing two world-renowned public intellectuals have a public discussion about this in front of an audience.
evan hafer
Dude, I would deal with that all the time where people, I would talk about I spent most of my adult life in the Middle East.
I was in Iraq.
I was in Jerusalem.
I was all around the Middle East and Africa.
And I would just say, I just don't agree with the way that Saudi Arabia runs, right?
I don't agree with the monarchy.
I don't agree with...
Islamic Sharia law.
I don't agree.
Oh, you're a fucking racist, and you're like, what?
No, man.
I just don't think that it's the best way to go about it, right?
joe rogan
There's a bunch of different ways people live.
evan hafer
It's like, no, I'm not a racist.
I've lived there.
I've been there.
I've spent a ton of time there.
I think this is better And these are the reasons why and people didn't even want to have a conversation with you.
Oh, you're racist.
joe rogan
But this is what's crazy.
You have to be able to have those conversations even if that person's wrong.
Like if someone wants to get on YouTube and tell the world why Sharia law is better, I think they should be able to do that.
Let them do it and let someone counter it and let them have debates.
And Sam Harris has had a bunch of debates like that.
You can watch them online.
They're amazing.
Let people figure out who they agree with.
And if you just shut down discourse and say that it's hate speech, and you're defining hate speech as no slurs, there's no, like, we gotta kill all these people, there's none of that.
There's no hate in this conversation.
You're saying hate speech is disagreeing with a narrative that all leftists must ascribe to, regardless of any objective assessment of the facts.
Sitting down and looking at it and go, you know, I don't think I agree with this aspect of it.
Like, I think that, like, telling women that they have to wear a hijab everywhere, you're not giving them the choice.
Not giving someone choice is just fundamentally bad for the race, for humans.
It's oppression.
evan hafer
Anything outside of a meritocracy in the context of being able to evolve a conversation based on the best idea wins.
And when you're chopping out 50% of your population and saying they're beasts of burden and where they belong is just essentially for- Basket of deplorables.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
Like, this is the problem that I have with this.
Yeah.
And any time that I've had this conversation around the Middle East, where, like, these are the things I don't like about it.
I mean, there's lots of different things.
It could be the, you know, the...
The Arab men will typically wear this very long, open-bottom garb, right?
It's typically referred to as a mandress.
I'm like, God, I hate that thing.
This thing's stupid.
Like, I've had to wear it, you know, and I fucking hate it.
joe rogan
Did you wear underwear?
Did you wear underwear in it?
evan hafer
Sometimes, yeah.
joe rogan
Did you shit your pants?
evan hafer
I've worn a hijab.
We were talking about it.
unidentified
Did you really?
evan hafer
Yeah, like...
I had, like, a tiny little, like, belt-fed machine gun that I'd have to wear, because I'm a small guy, right?
I'm a hundred and fucking sixty pounds, and so I would often be the woman, because I could, I could be the fucking, I got a feminine frame, man.
Yeah, I got, you know, birthing hips, of course, but, uh, You know, I could get a little saw, which is a squad automatic weapon, a little belt-fed machine gun, a couple frags underneath a hijab, and I could sit in the back seat.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
evan hafer
It's like, surprise, bitch!
I'm not a woman!
joe rogan
LAUGHTER Picturing you with a hijab and a belt-fed machine gun under your dress is fucking hilarious.
evan hafer
It's so much fun, man.
joe rogan
Did you have a thing where you could pop it up?
Like a Loki jacket?
evan hafer
Yeah, so you'd Velcro.
We had a whole department in the agency where they would...
Design costumes and shit for you.
I had this fake mustache.
I got a picture of it.
I'll fucking send it to you.
But I had this fake mustache and they would put tanner and fake mustache and sunglasses.
I'd drive around looking like Saddam half the time.
joe rogan
Like that fucking America World Police movie?
evan hafer
Oh, yeah.
Full on.
And it's so funny because you'd have...
No shit a person putting makeup on you before you like go out to do something.
You got a flake mustache and you know, or for me I'm like just give me a hijab.
I already know what I'm doing.
Just give me the fucking, put me in the lady thing.
joe rogan
I would be the fat girl.
evan hafer
Put me in the lady thing.
joe rogan
Are we allowed to wear makeup at all?
Are the Islamic women allowed to wear makeup under their hijab or no?
evan hafer
Yeah, yeah, they can depending on where they are.
joe rogan
Some parts they don't let them do it?
evan hafer
Some parts, yeah, depending on how extreme they are.
But if you went to Kuwait or something like that, they would flash it.
How wild is it?
It'd signify that they're like racy.
joe rogan
Ooh, sassy.
unidentified
Little hussy.
joe rogan
Look at these eyelashes.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh my god, I saw her nostrils.
evan hafer
I saw her ankles.
unidentified
This bitch is wild.
This bitch is wild.
joe rogan
Isn't it wild, though, that that religion, the absolute most suppressed religion, suppressive religion when it comes to women and gays, are the ones that the progressives are so vehemently defending?
That's the one they defend over all religions.
A leftist will accuse you readily and quickly of being Islamophobic.
It's a great thing to shut you down.
It's a great pejorative.
But no one ever accuses you of being anti-Christian.
No one.
It never comes up.
There's not even a word, right?
You can have Islamophobic.
Is there a Christianophobic?
I've never heard it.
What is a word, like a disparaging word for someone who is prejudiced against Christians?
Does it exist?
evan hafer
I don't know.
I mean...
joe rogan
It probably doesn't even...
It's like honky.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
You know, it's like a racist term for white people.
Cracker.
Doesn't work.
evan hafer
Like a Caucasian cis male.
I don't even know what that means.
jamie vernon
It says Christianophobia or whatever.
evan hafer
Christianophobia?
unidentified
See, that's...
joe rogan
I've never heard anyone utter that.
evan hafer
That's too much garbly gook.
You can't say it fast.
joe rogan
No, no, no.
evan hafer
Islamophobia is kind of fun.
joe rogan
Yeah, Islamophobia flows.
It sounds like you're intellectual.
unidentified
Well, this podcast is filled with Islamophobia, first of all.
joe rogan
Let's just discuss this.
This is really important.
We need to direct them to feminism.
evan hafer
But I think that's so funny because when I listen to academics, you know, I'll pull up a YouTube and I'll go down a rabbit hole on a certain thing and I'll listen to an academic and then half of them, I shouldn't say half of them, like a good portion of them, they're talking about things they've never actually experienced.
So, for me, I've lived in the Middle East.
I've lived in Jerusalem.
I've lived and interacted and been in these cultures and seen them in a very vivid way.
And when I say this, tactical and combat experience, specifically in these countries, it's very vivid.
And part of the problem with this differentiation, let's go back to it, but this differentiation between the decision makers and the people actually implementing the tactical execution on the ground is that there's a huge disconnect from the reality.
They don't have the wisdom To understand what it is.
And what I used to tell people is I was almost like a zookeeper.
Where...
I would usher, depending on the person, I would usher them through the fucking zoo so they could see what's going on, but they would see it from afar.
And I kept the lions from eating them.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
And there's this very clear differentiation between the people in charge, and most of them shouldn't have been in a combat zone, specifically in the agency.
They should not have been in a combat zone.
And when you unpack the agency and you look at...
You have paramilitary guys and they're more than qualified to be there.
And then you have like the cocktail circuit guys.
And they're just trying to get their combat tour so they can get promoted to another fucking spot.
But they actually have no business being there.
Meaning, they need guys like me to keep them alive.
joe rogan
Oh, so they're just getting in days for the ledger.
evan hafer
That's all they're doing.
There's a very famous, infamous case officer from Coast back in the day, and I was on the ground there.
Not in Coast, in Kabul at the time.
And she was being groomed to be the assistant director.
There's a great book on it called Double Agent, but I was on the ground when it happened.
And she had this asset that she was trying to get in, which is an agency asset that she was trying to get into a basin coast.
Once again, this person has no...
They should not be here.
They should be in Germany going to a cocktail party, like, pretending like they're really cool because they have high intellect, but they have no context to you.
Going down to the basis of reality, and these are, like, rules of the jungle.
Like, this power is the only language they speak.
Like, you can't...
Intellect your way out of this thing because a fucking bullet is a bullet a bat is a bat like it will win over your articulation every time if you want to win a debate and You just put an axe handle through somebody's fucking head.
That's how you win right that's like it doesn't matter it doesn't matter so like they bring in this asset and she's like oh you know this His asset is the guy.
He's going to give us the coordinates to Bin Laden.
We've been working with him for a long time.
He's an amazing guy.
It's his birthday.
He wants us to bring him a cake.
So she bypasses all the security systems, bringing in a guy from Pakistan.
So she gets him, because he's like, I don't want to go through any security.
I'm your trusted guy.
I don't want to go through any security.
So she tells security, stand down.
She doesn't tell anybody about it.
She brings this guy in through the gate, like blows him through.
Now the security guys, mind you, are like, what the fuck did you just do?
They're running down to this situation to try to get ahead of it.
He steps out and he looks like the Michelin tire man and fucking clacks off.
joe rogan
Oh God.
evan hafer
And three of my friends were killed in that suicide bomb.
She was killed, ultimately.
unidentified
And...
evan hafer
But that's a perfect example, and I mean, there's like multiple different examples of...
There's a different cadence mindset and capability associated with what I would say is the paramilitary guys versus the case officers, the spies.
They're just totally different guys.
And...
They tried to intermingle because of capabilities and more importantly promotions to try to get people like promoted, which is another reason why some significant things have to change over there.
And they got guys hurt.
joe rogan
So they just send people to you just to, you were supposed to protect these people?
evan hafer
Yeah.
So they could be collection officers on the ground.
I mean, like, time after time, example after example, I had this guy in this town called Lashkagar, around the middle of fucking nowhere.
And...
Before we go there, so let's rewind to Iraq.
I had a spy that we were working with, and they're called case officers in the agency.
And we go out to pick her up from the airfield, and we're bringing her to where she needs to go.
And we pick her up, and she gets in the car behind me, and she takes out her pistol.
She points it, and I'm in the passenger seat.
She's right behind me.
She takes out her clock.
She puts a magazine in it, racks the slide right behind my head.
Like, directly into the back of my head.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
evan hafer
And I turn around, and I'll tell you exactly what I said.
I'm like, what the fuck are you doing?
As I turn around, I'm like, give me that thing.
And I called her some very rude things, right?
So I'm like, what the fuck are you doing?
Don't take your pistol out.
I go, if both of us are dead, then think about it.
But I'm gonna keep this.
You just don't have it anymore.
So I gave her back.
I actually gave her back the empty pistol.
I was like, listen, if both of us are dead, feel free.
Take one of our guns.
Take both of our guns.
I don't give a shit because I'm dead.
But I get back in and the chief of base at the time pulls me in.
He's a fucking super good dude.
And he's like...
He calls me and he's like, hey man, I heard you had quite an exchange with somebody and, you know, we don't really appreciate, you know, this and, you know, I might have to send you home.
And I was like, did she tell you what she did?
He's like, no, I just thought she got in the car and you told her like, you know, you fucking dumb, whatever, and give me your gun.
I was like, no.
She racked her slide into the back of my head and he's like, oh God, get out of here.
I'll talk to her.
It's like, oh God, get out of here.
I'll talk to her.
Jesus Christ.
But it's like...
joe rogan
Do they even have to show competency in weapons use?
evan hafer
Yeah, but it's...
joe rogan
Do they go through the same sort of program?
evan hafer
Everybody thinks there's like this Jason Bourne type person.
You know, like spies are Jason Bourne or something like that.
It's just not fundamentally correct.
Like, any soft guy...
Any soft guy...
It is so much more proficient in firearms.
I taught a selection and vetting course for former soft guys that wanted to come into the agency.
And I taught it for a couple years.
And I was one of the main architects behind the selection criteria.
And...
And we would have to go out and train spies.
And I would shoot their qualification course with my left hand, like, on two hours of sleep, still half in the fucking bag.
Like, it's just so, like, ridiculously...
joe rogan
Ingrained.
evan hafer
Yeah, and more importantly, that's not their job, right?
They're collection people, and I'm defending them to a certain degree because they're very high IQ, their selection criteria in their course is very difficult.
joe rogan
They're not prepared for that.
evan hafer
No, they don't belong in those places.
Like, when you go into a combat zone and when it's a very complex, because there's different...
Different areas in combat zones, and some of them are more dangerous than others.
You can't have some of those people there.
It's too dangerous, man.
You've got to have collection people that are on the military side that can handle themselves unilaterally.
And you can't have your regular humdrum spy.
This isn't Jason Bourne.
They're not competent.
And more importantly, that's not their thing.
It's the thing of proficient artisans in combat collection in the art of war and that is a very subset niche profession of guys that are Extremely competent and very dangerous.
joe rogan
Why do we want to believe in a Jason Bourne?
unidentified
I think People love that narrative.
joe rogan
They love that narrative.
Some super spy 007 dude that can fuck everybody up.
evan hafer
It's fun, right?
It's like, oh, we noticed you're a really good boxer in your local gym and you went to Yale.
We're going to recruit you.
Like, get the fuck out of here.
That's so stupid.
joe rogan
He's a judo champion.
evan hafer
He's a judo champion.
unidentified
They'd always start the same way.
Oh man, we noticed you were hitting the bags and you're a political science major in Yale.
joe rogan
There's a guy with glasses and a hat on watching you run around the track.
I think we found our man.
evan hafer
If they only knew the bureaucratic steps that it took to get into it, where it's just so much paperwork and interviews, and it's like, who is this guy?
What has he done?
joe rogan
Well, what's wild to me is the spies that infiltrate terrorist organizations.
Like, there's people that are in the IDF that have infiltrated Hamas.
They live with them.
Lots.
They're in there.
evan hafer
Lots.
joe rogan
Isn't that crazy?
evan hafer
Yeah, it's so respectable.
joe rogan
That life?
That life is nuts, man.
Worried you're going to be found out, and these guys knowing, Hamas knowing that a certain percentage of these people have to be Israelis?
That is so crazy that they do that.
evan hafer
When you have those guys, and we need those guys.
Like, I'm not...
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
evan hafer
Like, we need those guys.
joe rogan
Must be so exciting.
evan hafer
The non-official cover, the Knox.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
Like, that's...
I mean, there's so much respect.
joe rogan
Well, you were explaining that one guy that's a professor.
evan hafer
Yeah.
Tell me.
So, I mean, out of all the guys, like, I had such a unique...
Ride in history in times, right?
Where, you know, looking out the window, kind of just being a passenger in history and then being able to talk to some of these guys.
And I would sit down and I would always find like the older guy that's in the, you know, we have like dining halls where the agency has their own separate dining halls and bars and shit like that.
unidentified
Right.
evan hafer
And I sat down with a guy one day, and I was just like, hey, man, what's your story, you know?
And he was telling me he was an anthropology professor at the University of Washington, and he was finishing his PhD, and he was crossing the McKenzie Traverse in Canada, and he did it in era-appropriate clothing and a canoe and the whole fucking thing, right?
It's just completely insane.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
evan hafer
It's so insane.
And I was like, how'd you get in?
So he's making his way across.
He gets to a cabin.
He's starving.
He's going to die.
He's explaining this to me.
He's like, I'm going to die.
I break into this trapper cabin.
I find a bunch of old canned food.
I just engorge myself.
And now I have the screaming shits.
And I'm like wiping my ass with this National Geographic.
And I pull out this ad, and the agency used to have ads in National Geographic.
And he thought to himself, wow, that's really interesting.
I should apply.
So he applied...
When he got back.
joe rogan
Imagine this scenario!
You're fucking starving, then you're eating botulism-filled cans of beans with pork and shit, wiping your ass with the National Geographic.
I mean, it's a fucking scene in a movie.
evan hafer
It's insane.
joe rogan
That's a scene in a movie, right?
evan hafer
So, he goes back to the University of Washington, becomes a professor.
The agency, he goes through the entire process.
The agency recruits him.
He goes through training, but still he has to keep his double life going.
joe rogan
So he starts a life as a double life, in fact.
Becomes a professor while he's in the agency, correct Wow, so from the jump he's got a double life.
It's not like he gets recruited He's some Nobel Prize winner and they say we need you to be for America.
evan hafer
Yeah Wow in his first job.
I'll never forget him describing this to me because I Didn't know I didn't know any of this is so it's part history part just agency history and I He goes, my first job was I flew to Angola.
And I just had a suitcase full of money.
And they dropped me off in the middle of nowhere and they're like, go kill Cubans.
That was his job.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
Just a bag of money.
That was it.
One straight directive.
unidentified
Okay, and so in defense here, that's cool as shit.
evan hafer
It's pretty wild.
Yeah, it's wild.
joe rogan
They trust that guy.
evan hafer
Hey, here's a bag of money.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
Go kill some Cubans because you had...
You know, it's a proxy war, right, between South Africa and the Soviets and the Cuban by proxy.
They were both supporting the Communist Revolution in Angola.
So we were pushing back, from the state's perspective, we were pushing back against the Soviet intervention, which was driven from the Cubans.
So you had a huge Cuban intervention.
Which is something most people don't realize.
And I just thought it was fascinating because it was the first time I'd heard about it.
And here's this guy that his job was, here's a bag of money.
Go kill Cubans.
That's your job.
Pretty cool.
Well, he's a professor.
So he'd go back to, you know, whatever university and go, okay, kids, I know I've been out on a dig, you know, and I've been building, you know, atlatls in Australia trying to do this, but really he was in Angola hunting Cubans.
unidentified
Oh!
joe rogan
Holy shit.
evan hafer
That's pretty badass.
That's way better than Indiana Jones, as far as I'm concerned.
unidentified
That's pretty cool.
joe rogan
Writing on a chalkboard and shit.
Thinking about gunning dudes down.
Okay, and then plus the five.
Who here can answer this?
evan hafer
Nobody can know.
He never tells anybody.
joe rogan
Anybody.
evan hafer
No, and he's still...
joe rogan
So I guess with a guy like that, if you can find a guy who's willing to wear era-equivalent clothing, would you say an era-correct clothing, and make his way through a trek that was most likely going to kill people in the 1800s?
You know who did something like that?
He didn't do the whole thing, but Rinella, the way I met him, he had a show before Meat Eater.
It was called The Wild Within, and I got really addicted to it.
evan hafer
Seriously?
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Way before I ever went hunting, I used to love watching hunting shows.
I used to watch Ted Nugent's Spirit of the Wild.
My wife was always like, what the fuck are you watching?
But I was always obsessed with hunting shows and wilderness shows, people in the wilderness.
Because every time I'm in the woods, I feel like there's a vitamin.
I'm like, oh, I'm getting this vitamin.
So I wanted to experience more of that in my life, so I was watching it on TV. So there was this show called The Wild Within.
And what Rinella did was, I think he used error-correct weapons, too.
I think he used a musket, and he shot a bison, and he turned the bison into a boat.
He made a boat out of it and drifted down this river.
He did all these things that these pioneers did back in the day when they were making their way across the country.
evan hafer
That sounds awesome.
joe rogan
It was pretty dope.
That's how I got to meet him.
That's how I got him on my podcast.
Before Meat Eater was ever a show.
evan hafer
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
Yeah.
He was super dismissive of a podcast.
Now he's got one.
evan hafer
I feel like there's a lot.
joe rogan
He was like, what am I doing here?
I'm in this comedy club with this fucking dude who's smoking weed.
Like, this is ridiculous.
evan hafer
I feel like there's a lot of people that probably dismissed it.
They're like, oh, what the fuck is Joe doing?
joe rogan
But now he's got a great podcast of his own.
I love that guy to death.
evan hafer
No, he's awesome.
joe rogan
He's such a smart dude, too.
He knows so many things.
He's a fascinating guy to talk to because he's super well-read.
And he can talk to you about all kinds of shit that you would not expect from a guy who's a professional hunter.
evan hafer
No.
joe rogan
You know, he talks like a PhD.
But also like a hunter.
Very unusual dude and like one of the very best guys to explain hunting like I saw a debate that he had it was like a I think it was a book that he had released and he was doing one of those talks they do at bookstores and this guy was a vegan and the guy in the audience was a vegan the guy got upset with him and the Rinella handled it so perfectly they're just the way communicated with the guy and explaining his perspective and you have a different perspective and I'd love to have a conversation with you and Didn't do it with any bullshit.
unidentified
Ted Nugent's like, ah, you pussy, grow another vagina.
joe rogan
But Rinell is like the perfect answer to people that objectively, they look at it, they go, wait a minute, I do eat meat.
Like, I am a hypocrite.
I am hiring a supermarket hitman.
Like, why am I upset at this man who not only hunts his meat, but cooks it and writes cookbooks and cooks it on television.
And like, this is the same thing.
Like, what are we doing here?
This is so stupid.
And then you get the people that really believe that you shouldn't eat anything but plants, and my problem with that is I think plants are smart.
I think they just move real slow, and I think they have a way of interacting that is noticeable and measurable.
I think there's probably a consciousness to plants.
I think life eats life, and I think that's the only way it survives, and I think that's just the way it goes.
That is just the way it goes.
And you can choose to just eat plants, but I don't think you're going to be as healthy.
I think it's too hard.
I think people can kind of survive on vegan diets and do well on vegan diets.
There's athletes that are on vegan diets.
I don't think they hit peak performance and thrive.
I think that's all people who are consuming nutrient-dense meats.
Meats and fish and eggs those are the people that when you look at athletes the Predominant that the best athletes in every sport are all consuming protein.
They're all consuming animal protein There's so few that are vegans that that hit elite status and maintain a lot of them get injured when they switch to vegan, too There's just so much in there's collagen and b12 and fucking there's so many different aspects to different amino acids you You can have this ethical thing in your head, and I get that ethical thing.
Like, I don't want to see a thing suffer.
I think plants suffer, you just don't feel it.
I really do.
I think there's a communication with them that's probably similar but different to the way we feel about animals getting killed by other animals.
I think it's just a part of this whole process.
I mean, they've shown that you can take the recordings of beetles eating leaves and play recordings of beetles eating leaves near a tree, and the tree will experience distress to the point where it changes the profile, the flavor profile of the leaves.
It releases chemicals, these phytochemicals into the leaves that makes it disgusting for the bugs.
And they do it with giraffes, like when giraffes eat, I think it's acacia trees, when giraffes eat acacia trees, the trees downwind all become disgusting to the point where the giraffes will starve because they won't eat it.
They change their flavor profile to protect themselves.
They release some sort of chemical.
It makes them inedible.
evan hafer
Well, I think that's so interesting because you can see it with Paul Stamets has when the fungi is talking and communicating and the health benefits to fungi and different plants.
I think any time you have this edict where no meat, no plants, no...
I think that's just another version of religious extremism.
If you were just to say, what makes sense?
Morally, what am I going to have to coalesce from me?
I don't want to be a hypocrite, so I hunt.
That's the way it is.
We eat a ton of wild meat.
I'm not a hypocrite.
We eat meat.
I love fish.
I love fruits and vegetables.
But...
I think if you're making this determination where there's no meat, this is the only thing I'm going to eat, well, one, that's a lot of time, effort, and energy that you're spending specifically on your diet constraints that could be allocated to being a better dad.
joe rogan
Well, maybe they could do all those things, too.
evan hafer
Maybe.
I don't know.
joe rogan
I think...
Their philosophical point is a good one.
I think their ethics, the morals, their perspective is that I want to live a life with the least suffering possible.
I think that's noble.
I really do.
I think the problem is life eats life.
And I think that's the real problem.
And I think the problem is if you're buying just vegetables in the store, boy, you need to take a good look at monocrop agriculture because it's fucking bananas.
You know, there was a...
Taylor Sheridan in Yellowstone, there was a scene where Kevin Costner was talking to the hippie lady who's trying to, like, shut down ranches and shit.
I forget what her thing was.
But he was explaining how if you're on a vegan diet, you want to kill the most things, become a vegan.
unidentified
Become a vegan.
joe rogan
Because you don't understand.
Like, if one life is one life, okay?
If the life of a gopher and the life of an elk are the same thing, and why wouldn't they be, right?
evan hafer
Why wouldn't they be?
joe rogan
You have no idea how many things have to fucking die to make monocrop agriculture.
It's a bloodbath.
They kill everything.
They kill groundhogs, ground squirrels, you fucking name it.
Ground nesting birds, fawns, everything gets gobbled up by combines.
It's an enormous industrial operation.
It's not natural.
So now you're limited to organic plants, okay?
So if you're growing all of your own food and, you know, you're growing a lot of soybeans, a lot of different things, like if you grow hemp, if you're in a place where you can grow it legally, hemp is actually a really good source of protein.
It's actually got a really complete amino acid profile.
You can, you know, you can survive, you can do it that way, but if you're a regular vegan, if there's a person that, like, I get vegan pizza at the supermarket, shut the fuck up!
You're contributing to this mass slaughter of small animals.
You're just not aware of it.
evan hafer
Have you watched that Netflix docu-series on, it's basically vegan propaganda, I forget what its name- Is it The Game Changers?
joe rogan
That's the one?
Probably, yeah, yeah, yeah.
evan hafer
Did you watch that?
joe rogan
Yeah, I know the guy who did it.
I had them on.
evan hafer
Wow.
I thought it was fascinating, like from a wide variety of reasons, but more importantly, so I went and got some vegan cheese and he was like, tried it.
I was like, okay, it's not bad, but I mean, dude, it's a lime.
laundry list of ingredients associated with making this which seems pretty insane to me versus what's the ingredient on a good cheese?
joe rogan
Milk.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
It's so dumb.
evan hafer
This thing's like a dissertation of ingredients.
joe rogan
Bro, and it's so processed.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
That is literally what it is.
If you want to be, I've said that a million times, you want to be a vegetarian, eat Indian food.
They make delicious, delicious vegetarian food.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
You don't have to eat fucking vegan cheese.
Stop pretending.
It's gross.
Stop lying.
Stop eating tofuti or whatever the fuck that shit is.
Get out of here.
evan hafer
Get out of it.
joe rogan
Get the fuck out of here.
That's nonsense.
What are you eating?
And also, eat mollusks.
People should look into that.
Those things are so primitive.
They're way more primitive than plants.
We just have a problem with them moving.
That's all it is.
If people, like, they don't even have nerves.
They don't feel pain.
unidentified
Right, right.
joe rogan
They're fucking the simplest of organisms, yet their protein is like animal protein.
It's really good for you.
evan hafer
Do you eat oysters?
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
I eat the fuck out of oysters.
Never down then I hear about some dude dying.
unidentified
Snails?
joe rogan
Yeah, I eat escargot.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
But every now and then I hear about a dude dying from oysters.
evan hafer
So we're in Normandy.
This is super funny, funny story.
So I went out to the 80th anniversary for the Normandy invasion, took a bunch of dudes out there.
And my kids and I are out on this beach, and I'm taking my pocket knife out, and I'm just chopping the oysters off the rocks and eating oysters straight out of the ocean.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
evan hafer
And my girls are running away from me.
They're like, this is the grossest shit I've ever seen.
And then pretty soon they got into it, so then they're trying to find me the oysters to bring them back and show me where they are.
My wife was like...
You're going to fucking die.
You're going to poison yourself.
You're eating these right out of Normandy.
It's one of the beaches out there.
joe rogan
All the munitions are in the water.
evan hafer
I don't give a shit.
I'm eating them.
I quickly searched.
unidentified
Hey, are there any toxins?
evan hafer
After I've eaten like three.
unidentified
Are there any toxins in the oysters in Normandy?
evan hafer
Thank God.
It was like, you know, 99.9%.
unidentified
I'll live on the edge here.
Whew.
joe rogan
Yeah, when I lived in San Francisco, you could collect mussels.
There was like mussels that were on the rocks.
But then, I think I brought them home once, but then I found out that there's like a couple months out of the year that they're poison.
You get like red tide, right?
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
So I was like, I dodged a bullet, but I was like, what's that bullet?
Because you could just go find mussels and pluck them off of things.
evan hafer
Let me ask you this.
If you were to move back to California, okay, but to take Texas politics with you.
joe rogan
That's not really possible.
evan hafer
But if it were.
If it was?
I'm taking you on an imaginary journey.
joe rogan
Would I move?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
No.
evan hafer
No.
joe rogan
I like it here.
evan hafer
You like the weather.
joe rogan
I like everything.
I like the size of it.
I like the way people behave.
People are super friendly.
I like the scene here.
The restaurant scene's amazing.
The comedy scene's amazing.
Live music.
A bunch of cool people now.
So many of my friends moved here.
I love it here.
I just love the vibe.
I love that it's...
I love that we're not connected to the Hollywood machine.
There's a pull of deals and shows and things that you get roped into doing because you think about the money they'll pay you.
evan hafer
Right.
joe rogan
And then you wind up becoming one of those people.
You have to say what they say.
If you're not politically aligned with them, you're going to lose gigs.
You change your behavior.
I see it with so many comics.
They're really good comics coming up.
They're like, wow, this guy's gonna be good.
He's really good.
He's getting better all the time.
And then they get a fucking show.
They get a show and then they tone everything down and everything gets softer.
And everything, you know, you start seeing some, like, bullshit jokes in there, like, oh, you decided to cover this joke, cover this subject, just for, like, street cred, progressive street cred.
And, like, you see it happen.
You're like, ah, you got called into the rocks.
The sirens.
They call you into the rocks.
That's what it is, man.
They call you into the rocks.
You stop being you.
You stop being you because they dangle that carrot in front of your face.
And there's no carrot out here.
The carrot is just podcasts and other comics.
So that's way better.
There's no control.
There's no manipulation.
There's no someone's dangling this over you.
You have to agree with what I agree with.
No one cares at all about any of that stuff here.
evan hafer
It's freedom.
And we were talking about it the other...
I think it was today, right?
Where it was like, you know, another comic was like, oh, can you believe they're a Democrat?
I'm like, no, it's weird.
Or whatever, right?
You know?
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
But it's...
It's fine in the context of, I think, being a conservative, because I don't necessarily say, like, I'm a Republican.
I'm like, I just believe in less government.
Like, I don't like bureaucrats at all.
I have a high degree of skepticism on anything that they say, and I typically will question anything an elected official will say.
So, for me, I'm like, I don't care if the guy next to me is going to vote for, you know, whatever...
I care about, like, what are their ideas?
Why do they think a certain way?
What are they doing?
What kind of a human are they?
And what is the character of the individual?
Am I going to disagree with them?
Yeah, but who the fuck cares?
Like, it's kind of fun.
Like, it's kind of fun to disagree with people and debate them and have a different opinion versus being in an echo chamber where people all agree and they're all kind of lockstep in their belief system.
It's kind of fun to have some wingnut Talking about socialism half the time, you're like, what the fuck are you talking about?
You believe in that?
It's like some Orwellian nightmare, man.
joe rogan
And if you could have a conversation with someone where you're friendly with each other and completely disagree, it's a beautiful dance.
It's a fun dance to talk to people that have just completely different perspectives, but you're not rude to them.
You just ask them, well, why do you think that?
Did you ever consider this?
And you have conversations, like two normal people just having a conversation.
Okay, all right, so that's what you think.
Huh.
What was your childhood like?
Get into this.
What are we dealing with here?
Why do you have this perspective?
And you have to be able to talk to each other.
And there's a bunch of people that we hang out with that have totally different opinions on all kinds of things.
Like my friend Josh, who was here the other day, love him to death, he told me he voted for Jill Stein.
He said he voted for Jill Stein just like a protest vote.
evan hafer
Wow.
joe rogan
I think the two-party system is stupid.
I'm like, yeah.
Okay, right.
Yeah, I get it.
Look, I voted for two libertarian candidates in a row.
So I voted for Gary Johnson, and then I voted for Joe Jorgensen.
Why?
Because I was like, this whole thing's gross.
But that's like California.
I knew it was going to be blue anyway.
California's always blue.
It was like a legitimate protest vote.
And I guess he was in Florida, so that's a legitimate protest vote if you want to vote.
It's going to go red anyway, whether you like it or not.
evan hafer
It's going to go red.
joe rogan
Yeah, Florida goes red.
evan hafer
Hard.
joe rogan
When they saw Miami go red, they were like, oh boy.
Oh boy.
And one of the things that they were saying, the whole what goes red and what goes...
Like, if you look at the country, like, California is way more red now than it's ever been in the last four years.
evan hafer
I didn't know that.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was a big difference.
If you look at, there's a map of California, how it voted from 2020 to 2024, it's a giant swing.
It's like, the red's going like this.
See if you can find it, Jamie?
It's very interesting.
And that's not because people have been radicalized.
That's because the left has gone fucking cuckoo.
You guys have gone crazy and you're authoritarians.
You want everybody to behave and believe and think and talk the way you do or else.
Look at that.
Look at the difference.
evan hafer
Holy shit.
joe rogan
Holy shit, dude.
evan hafer
That is wild.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's most of California by landmass.
By far.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's probably 70% by landmass or 60%.
evan hafer
What is that blue up there on the east side?
Like, what is that close to?
Is that like Tahoe?
joe rogan
That's probably where they grow the weed, son.
evan hafer
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
What is that?
unidentified
What is that?
evan hafer
Where are you guys at?
You guys got to be like Tahoe.
joe rogan
What is that one?
evan hafer
Like, it's got to be like Truckee or something.
joe rogan
You gotta shut off that blocker.
These fuckers.
Here it goes.
Oh, these fuckers.
Oh, you have to get a signal.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Go to the other, just the image, just the image real quick.
evan hafer
See, I've thought about this because I always tell people, California is my favorite climate in the nation, period.
joe rogan
It's the best.
Yeah, that's it.
So, what's the one in the upper, well, it's not- The one that's blue?
Yeah, I guarantee you that's where they grow the weed.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
They want to keep everything nice and quiet up there.
Shut the fuck up.
Everybody shut the fuck up.
evan hafer
Hey man, we don't want these guys to criminalize weed again.
joe rogan
Where's Humble, Jamie?
Where's Humble?
jamie vernon
It's up north.
It's up here somewhere.
joe rogan
That's where they grow all the best weed.
That's where they have problems with the cartel, too.
Cartel grows weed up there, too.
evan hafer
The cartel grows weed in California?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah!
evan hafer
That's what I wanted to ask you, was about the cartel.
Do you think that they're really gonna...
jamie vernon
That one was Humboldt, the one you guys were asking.
joe rogan
It was Humboldt!
evan hafer
Oh, shit!
Okay, there we go.
You're right.
joe rogan
Yeah, they grow all the weeds, son.
evan hafer
Yep, there you go.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a dude named John Norris who's been on the podcast.
He wrote a book called Hidden Wars, and he was a game warden.
So he's just thinking he's going to go around checking fishing licenses and shit like that.
And then one day they find a creek that's been diverted, so they have to follow the creek.
They thought maybe a farmer had, like, dammed the creek somewhere and done something to get water illegally.
He goes up there and he finds these PVC pipes, and it reads this giant grow-up, and it's all cartel guys.
And so this guy's job changes from being a game warder, let me check your fishing line, to running a fucking tactical unit.
They had attack dogs.
They had attack dogs.
They had fucking shootouts with the cartel in the woods over weed.
Because here's what happened.
California made weed legal in the state, but made growing it a misdemeanor if you grow it illegally.
evan hafer
Okay.
joe rogan
So if you are a person who's doing it legally, you can grow it and you can sell it if you have a license.
You can open up a shop and you can sell it.
They tax the shit out of it.
It's great for everybody.
But the problem is you made growing it illegally a misdemeanor.
So then the cartel just starts growing it everywhere in the national forests because even if the guys get arrested, Nothing happens.
It's a misdemeanor, so it's nothing.
So they're using these crazy toxic poison pesticides, all this shit that's totally illegal to use on regular crops in America.
And 90% of the illegal weed that's being bought around the country is coming from them.
evan hafer
Holy shit, I didn't know that.
joe rogan
And they're doing it all in national forests, and they're doing most of it in California.
Dude, they find these grow-up.
My friend found one.
You know him, Cody.
evan hafer
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
unidentified
He found a fucking grow-up on Tohono Ranch.
Really?
joe rogan
Yes.
evan hafer
Oh my gosh, that's right.
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Yes, he found a cartel grow-up on Tohono Ranch.
Where this guy carried in pipes on his shoulder.
evan hafer
And diverted a stream.
unidentified
Deep into the woods.
joe rogan
Diverted a stream.
And then there was this whole field of weed that these guys had planted out there.
They were camping out there.
They had little religious symbols and shit they kept by their bed to protect them.
Like the Virgin Mary and shit.
evan hafer
What do you think?
I've heard this.
This is what I want to talk to you about because it pertains to the cartel.
It's like, what do you think about releasing SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force on the cartels?
What do you think that looks like?
joe rogan
Well, I think you've solved one problem.
evan hafer
Okay.
What's the problem?
joe rogan
You no longer have distribution, but you still have a demand.
evan hafer
You still have a demand.
joe rogan
Yeah.
The real problem is there's always going to be a demand.
The real problem, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that idea, by the way.
evan hafer
Okay.
joe rogan
I like that idea.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
But the problem with that idea is you're always going to have a demand.
And if you're going to have a demand, someone's going to fulfill that demand.
And who the fuck is that going to be?
How are they going to get the Coke in?
You're not going to just not have Coke.
So here's the question.
By having prohibition of alcohol in the United States, it's widely agreed that that led to the rise of the mafia.
evan hafer
Right.
joe rogan
Bootleggers, the mafia, criminal organizations that were organized crime that went on to do a bunch of other horrible things inside our country, and they were built up with money because alcohol was illegal.
The moment alcohol stopped being illegal, you still have these people with all this money now.
You fucked up.
Now they're organized gangsters, and now, you know, okay, alcohol's legal now, so they're just gonna sell it legally.
And they have millions and millions of dollars for a life of crime.
You've already done that with the cartel.
You've got to do something.
You've got to do something.
And you probably also should legalize drugs.
I don't think you should take drugs.
I think coke is probably terrible for almost everybody.
I think meth is probably terrible.
evan hafer
Do people still do cocaine?
Absolutely.
Really?
It's really a thing still?
joe rogan
I know people who do it.
The growing Chinese investment in illegal American weed.
Of course!
Why wouldn't they get in on it?
jamie vernon
Check out this number that it says here.
Of the 800 farms, the OBS in Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics has shut down.
In the last two years, 75% were linked to China.
joe rogan
Oh, my God!
China's are growing weed here!
They're growing weed here!
Oh, my God.
evan hafer
I was thinking about this from the thought exercise.
I know these units.
I'm intimately familiar with them.
unidentified
Uh-huh.
evan hafer
If we declare war on the cartel, these dudes are not going to understand what the fuck is going on.
joe rogan
No, of course not.
unidentified
God bless those guys.
evan hafer
You'll stop the distribution.
joe rogan
That's gonna be, yeah.
evan hafer
They are in for a world of, like, ultraviolence they've never actually felt before because, you know, obviously this is a very capable ultraviolence organization.
They have fucking no clue if we organize these Tier 1 units against them.
This is gonna be...
What I would be doing if I was down there, like, I know all those shoe boxes in my fucking, you know, my walls that I'm gonna have to collect up.
I'd be getting ready to retire right now.
unidentified
That's what I would be doing.
evan hafer
Because if Delta Force is hunting me, bro, I would be so terrified.
joe rogan
Is that a real thing that they've proposed doing?
evan hafer
Yes.
That is a real thing.
joe rogan
Who proposed that?
evan hafer
I'm almost positive either JD or Trump had said something with the new guy from ICE. Like, we're gonna mobilize tier one units against the cartel.
The only thing I thought was, like, retire.
If you guys got some money, man, I would, like, put that away.
You know, like, maybe move.
Jamaica, I don't know, go somewhere.
Yeah, buy a restaurant.
Like, try to go legit.
Because, dude, if those guys are hunting you, by the way, like, you're done.
You're fucking done.
joe rogan
And it's a weird thing that that's going on right at our border.
It's a weird thing.
Because it's so close to us, and it's so ultra-violent and dangerous, and it's just completely shaped the way the entire economy of the country works.
They have so much power and control, and it's a criminal organization that is entirely, almost entirely at least, funded by us.
By our desire.
Trump declares war on cartels.
President-elect said notorious crime syndicates and drug kingpins will never sleep soundly again once he launches his plans to tackle the issue.
evan hafer
I thought about this for a long time, where I'm like, if they turned loose Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 on cartels and pedophiles, we could just kind of, like, erase the problem in about two years.
It'd be gone.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
He wants to send troops to Mexico.
He said we make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations.
Oh, Jesus.
Bro, it is going to get wild come January 20th.
evan hafer
It's going to get wild, man.
joe rogan
It is going to get wild.
Very interesting.
But the thing is, people, inaction is action as well when it comes to this.
You're going to continue to prop them up.
They're going to get more and more power and more and more money.
And we've got to figure out why everybody wants Coke.
What the fuck is it?
evan hafer
You think it's coke?
joe rogan
I think that's the big one.
I'm pretty sure it's the big one.
I'm sure a lot of it is pills.
They have fake pills.
They sell street pills, different anti-anxiety medications, Molly.
There's a lot of stuff they sell that's also laced up with fentanyl.
Which is responsible for, you know, who knows how many tens of thousands of young people die.
evan hafer
It's like 200,000 people is what they're saying, is that fentanyl is responsible for that.
joe rogan
Crazy high.
Crazy high.
evan hafer
It's insane.
joe rogan
It's a horrific thing, and it's gotten to the point where people are scared to try any kind of drugs.
They're thinking fentanyl.
They found fentanyl in weed.
What?
Yes!
They've found fentanyl-laced weed.
Yeah.
People are dumb as shit, man.
You don't think they'll try putting fentanyl in weed?
People are dumb as shit.
They'll try all kinds of things.
People are retarded.
I know people that have mixed MAO inhibitors and mushrooms and acid all together.
Like, what are you doing?
Are you trying to go to space?
Like, what are you doing, man?
Jesus Christ, you're just experimenting in your brain.
evan hafer
What is an MAO inhibitor?
What did you just say?
joe rogan
An MAO inhibitor, monoamine oxidase inhibitor.
It's the ingredient in ayahuasca that makes DMT orally active.
Monoamine oxidase breaks down DMT in the gut.
That's why when you eat a salad, that's why you don't trip balls.
evan hafer
Got it, okay.
joe rogan
Because otherwise, some crazy number of plants have DMT in it.
How many plants have DMT in it?
I think it's like a thousand or something nutty like that.
evan hafer
When you think about the legalization of psilocybin.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
So Texas, and this is what I know about Texas because they're leading, I think, a lot of research specifically related to vets.
joe rogan
Apparently, the former governor Rick Scott is really into this.
evan hafer
Rick Perry.
joe rogan
Rick Perry, excuse me.
evan hafer
Rick Perry, because of his relationship with Marcus, Luttrell, and some of the other guys in the community, he has been leading the charge on this.
Do you think that from psilocybin being legal in the United States, do you think it would be an issue?
Do you think it would be an issue at all?
joe rogan
I don't know, because...
You're gonna get people trying it they wouldn't try it before.
You're gonna get people that use it irresponsibly, just like you get people that drink irresponsibly.
I think that's the situation that we find ourselves in if we're gonna give people personal freedom.
They're gonna make bad decisions.
You know, you can buy a Corvette, right?
You can go to the Chevrolet dealership, buy a Corvette right off the lot that goes zero to 60 in four seconds.
And you're flying around corners.
You could be a fucking maniac and kill people in a Corvette.
Or you could just enjoy it on the highway and be responsible and say, wow, what a great car.
This thing's awesome.
I love it.
And you don't cause any problems for anybody.
Both things are possible.
That's what's going to happen if we make drugs legal.
You're gonna have people try those drugs that probably shouldn't be trying those drugs.
You're gonna have people get addicted to those drugs that maybe wouldn't have gotten addicted if those drugs weren't available to them, especially if they weren't legal, if you could just buy it somewhere.
But if you don't rip the fucking Band-Aid off of this, like, infantilization of society and let people know that there are things out there that They're telling you you can't do, and the people who are telling you you can't do them haven't even experienced them.
And when it comes to things like psilocybin and psychedelics, if you haven't experienced them, you really shouldn't be talking about them.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
You can't possibly know.
You can't know.
And if you have experienced them, then you're probably going to agree with me.
You're probably going to agree that there's some serious benefits to it.
Fifty!
God, I thought it was a lot more than that.
At least 50. I had read something that was in the hundreds.
jamie vernon
I can't find a solid number.
I mean, it's in a lot of stuff, but...
joe rogan
So the point is, I know phalaris grass is really rich with DMT, and that's also the acacia tree.
When they connected, there's a university in Jerusalem that connected this idea of Moses and the burning bush to a DMT tree.
evan hafer
Oh, right.
joe rogan
Because the acacia tree is rich in DMT. The idea of burning it.
You see God and God gives you this message and tells you what to do and what the rules of behavior are.
I think anybody telling you that these things should get you locked up has clearly never experienced them.
evan hafer
They never have.
I spent all of my life with a top secret security clearance.
Most of my life.
From my 20s to my 40s.
And my personal experience with them, this is before we went public, but...
My personal experience with them was my problems were rep after rep, cycle after cycle of combat after relatively high stress scenario after scenario after scenario.
And I was having a really, really hard time Trying to directly connect with love.
I actually could not connect with that experience.
It was really difficult.
And my wife and I, we were going through this ongoing debate and dialogue with it.
And she's like, you need to try it.
And we tried it.
It fast-forward probably 20 years of talk therapy for me personally.
And it gave me this direct connection with this feeling that I hadn't felt for years.
And this is the feeling, and this is my point with vets, and especially from the combat vets.
The guys have got rep after rep after rep with overpressure and explosions and a lot of violence.
Is that they lose context with this really important feeling that you have to have, which is you have to have direct love for your family, for your spouse, for yourself.
And if you've killed that...
By all of the things that you've done, you've built a scaffolding, this artificial scaffolding on top of this, it creates a callus, and you've got to be able to break through that.
From a psychological perspective, an emotional perspective, it accelerates that back, and you can kind of reset.
You really can.
I can't imagine...
I was thinking about this, my dad's like 80 years old, right?
I'm like, man, he's got lung cancer now, and I'm like, gosh, if he could coalesce around...
Killing ego and past and try to understand himself from a different more introspective way this would take decades maybe of talk therapy or A session where you could really accelerate your growth as an individual.
I think that's for GWAT vets and for vets in general.
I think that's what they're missing.
This key component is being able to retouch with their emotional strength and be able to balance these things out where you can evolve and live your life.
You've said it before.
I don't know if you said it on a show, but do you think Society would benefit from it?
joe rogan
I think a lot of people would benefit from it.
But I think a lot of people wouldn't.
I don't think people with real psychological disorders should be doing it.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
You know, I think people that are really fucked up and having a hard time with schizophrenics, people, you know, I don't know.
I think it's probably dangerous for you.
I think it's probably a bit of a stress test for your psyche.
You know, you hear about these stories like the guy from Pink Floyd that dropped acid and freaked out and never came back.
There's those stories.
Like we hear those stories of guys who just go out there and kind of you lose them.
I've kind of seen it with some people.
I've seen one kid who was just smoking a ton of weed and just lost his mind and became schizophrenic.
And you don't know.
Did he have a tendency towards schizophrenia already?
Did he fall prey?
Was it just his unique biochemistry and how he interacted with weed?
Was it just inveterate weed?
I mean, he was every day smoking weed constantly.
What is it?
What caused him to crack?
You know?
I don't know.
I don't know.
But I don't have that problem.
And I think it's very beneficial.
And I don't like when people tell me that because someone has a problem with something that I shouldn't do it.
I don't agree with that.
I think you should be allowed to take chances as a person.
I think if you want to do BMX jumps and fucking do flips on your bike, you should be allowed to do it.
You want to do jujitsu and have grown men try to kill you?
Go ahead.
Go do it.
Do whatever the fuck you want to do.
I don't think anybody should be able to tell you what you can and can't do.
But why does that change?
When you talk about substances that someone puts in their body.
Well, because those people could do those and then they could commit crimes, but those are already crimes.
Like, you already go to jail for those crimes.
So if you do something violent because you're on a drug, you're going to jail because you did something violent.
There's a crime, you committed that crime, you go to jail.
So we already have laws that address all the problems, and you're assuming that more problems would occur.
We don't know that.
We don't know that more people won't chill the fuck out and won't have a dramatic decrease in violence across the country.
Imagine that.
Imagine you have a few people that lose their fucking mind but you have a dramatic increase in consciousness through the entire country where people develop like a mushroom culture and people start like micro dosing all the time and people get way more comfortable with talking to each other way more creative way more like community oriented and love oriented That's not a bad thing.
That's a real possibility with something that exists right now.
There's a happy pill.
It's out there, and it's illegal.
And God made it.
God made it.
And it's probably the source of most religious experiences.
There's probably some sort of a connection to a lot of those religious experiences and what was probably some sort of a psychedelic adventure that they went on.
And who's to say that that's not even how you talk to God in the first place?
We don't know because it's been held back from us.
It's been kept from us like we're a bunch of babies.
It's something that human beings have used for thousands and thousands of years.
The Greeks used psychedelics to start democracy, and yet here we are in the greatest democracy the world's ever known in 2024 with full access to the internet, all the data that's available, all the anecdotal stories, and it'll get you locked in a fucking cage.
That's nuts.
That's really crazy.
evan hafer
It's completely insane.
joe rogan
That doesn't make no sense.
I've tried to look at it from all different ways.
I do agree with you when people say, if you make cocaine legal, people are going to die.
Unfortunately, I agree with you.
But if you don't make cocaine legal, people are also going to die.
I don't know which one is more.
And I don't know if it was just real cocaine versus cocaine mixed with a bunch of other horrible shit, if the real cocaine wouldn't kill as many people.
I don't know how many people are dying just of cocaine and how many people are dying of fentanyl-laced cocaine.
I bet it's way more fentanyl-laced cocaine.
So if you have just pure cocaine and the same amount of users, you're going to get way less deaths.
So that's a net positive.
Then you take taxes from that sale of that legal cocaine and you use it to sell rehabilitation centers where you give them Ibogaine.
Give people the ability to break addictions.
It's possible.
People do it.
They go to Mexico, kick opioids.
People do it all the time.
My friend Ed Clay did it.
That's how he got into it.
He started his own clinic because he went down there because he had a pill problem.
You get an injury.
You're doing jujitsu.
You're always fucking hurt.
These guys get a disc problem and their arms all fucked up.
They take a little pill.
You feel better.
But then you need three pills.
Then you need four.
Now you're fucked.
And now there's nothing to help you other than Ibogaine.
And that's illegal.
So you make that legal too.
So with those two together, who knows?
You might have way less deaths.
And then you would have taxes that you could take from that stuff and use for all sorts of things.
It would be horrible for taxes from cocaine sales to fix the schools.
But what if that's what did it?
What if that's what did it?
And what if the exact same amount of people buying cocaine are still buying cocaine?
What if that is the fix?
And what if...
Responsible use of drugs.
All kinds of drugs.
Sure, don't drive a car when you're coked up.
Don't take heroin and fly your plane.
No.
Responsible use.
Just like responsible use of alcohol.
Why is that so crazy for us?
Why is that so alien?
Because we've been turned into babies.
We've been turned into babies where you're allowed to take pharmaceutical drugs that make you high as fuck.
Whether it's high as fuck on Adderall or high as fuck on opioid, that's fine, but you can't go out and get yourself some mushrooms.
That's just crazy.
And for these people that are the ones in charge that are making all the money from these decisions to keep up with this insanity in the internet in 2024, in this tide of change, I feel the same way about them as you feel about those poor cartel members.
unidentified
Like, you probably should be doing something else.
joe rogan
What is this?
What weed and fentanyl?
Short answer is they're false.
There's no solid evidence that marijuana is being laced with fentanyl.
Here's some of the reasons why.
Didn't someone get caught with it, though?
jamie vernon
At the bottom it says that there's been a few publicly stated media stories that have said that's what the case was.
joe rogan
I think we were talking about one.
They said there was weed that was laced with fentanyl that someone got arrested for.
jamie vernon
This is lab test claims that they were errors, and then the corrections don't make the headlines.
joe rogan
How do you get an error?
How much fentanyl is out there that is an error?
Oh, it was just contamination.
It wasn't the weed that had fentanyl.
Fentanyl is all over the place.
jamie vernon
It could have just been a field test.
They could have just been like, does this have fentanyl on it?
They rub the weed and the weed comes back like, yep, someone touched fentanyl and they touched the weed and now you've got fentanyl-laced weed.
Wow!
joe rogan
That actually does make sense, right?
Because if you think it's some cracked out dude working in the weed fields for the cartel, he's probably going to be doing fentanyl.
evan hafer
Yeah, he's going to be doing fentanyl.
He's going to be all on everything, basically.
So he's going to pop positive on everything.
joe rogan
He's on a tent in the fucking woods with a little Virgin Mary statue.
For real!
evan hafer
I know!
They get candles.
joe rogan
Bro, having shootouts with the fucking cops.
It's so crazy that that's going on and that there's hundreds of them and that the Chinese are running them.
evan hafer
This is the most insane part where it's like everybody knows what's going on.
unidentified
How crazy is that?
evan hafer
All these chemicals are coming from China.
They're being offloaded in Mexico and South America.
They're being produced and then they're pushed across the border.
Everybody knows.
joe rogan
Do you ever talk to Mike Baker about any of this stuff?
evan hafer
No, I've never actually talked to Mike Baker.
joe rogan
Do you know him?
You've never met him?
evan hafer
No, I've never met him.
joe rogan
Oh my God, I've got to bring you two guys together.
I love that dude.
But one of the things he was telling me was about the Chinese cell phone towers, like cheaper.
evan hafer
Right.
joe rogan
They're like, you just buy ours.
They're not going to listen to you.
And they put them all around military bases.
evan hafer
We promise we're not going to listen to you.
Hey guys, the Chinese said they're not going to listen to us.
I mean, that's good enough for me.
joe rogan
They're around this nuclear weapons facility.
evan hafer
Of course.
joe rogan
They're all over the place.
And then they buy land.
Like, Dr. Phil was highlighting that.
They buy land right next to military bases.
Like...
How fucking silly are we?
We're so silly.
Someone's moving our chess pieces around like, oh, this isn't happening.
unidentified
This isn't even happening.
evan hafer
People don't think like that.
joe rogan
There's no way they'd be buying up all the weed.
There's no way they'd be buying up all the farmland right next to the military.
evan hafer
There's no way they would be exporting chemicals so they could manufacture fentanyl to come in and basically eviscerate 200,000 fucking people.
There's no way they would do that.
unidentified
There's no way.
joe rogan
That's crazy to even think.
Meanwhile, the only way you can get those chemicals is from China.
The only way you can get them is from China.
They send them to Mexico.
They cook it up.
They send it our way.
evan hafer
But no, there's no way the Chinese are thinking that maliciously.
joe rogan
There's no way.
There's no way.
Well, aren't they still mad at us for the opium wars?
evan hafer
I think the Chinese are not necessarily mad at us.
They're just thinking about themselves from a hundred-year vision, and they're saying, okay, where do we...
Where and how do we ascend to being able to take America's place as the international superpower?
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
So, I don't know if they necessarily have an opinion-based axe to grind.
It's more about how do we put the pieces together to take the pole position away from the United States.
joe rogan
I'm sure that's their primary goal, but I do remember reading something where they were talking about, was it British?
There were people that introduced opium to the Chinese, like on purpose.
It was like a campaign.
The first opium war.
1800s.
Okay.
Britain, the war was triggered by China's efforts to enforce its ban on opium.
The British responded by sending a naval expedition to force China to pay reparations and allow the opium trade.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So the British wanted to keep that fucking dope flowing.
Isn't that wild?
They went to war to keep the dope flowing.
This is what people have to recognize about Afghanistan, too.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
This is something that it sounds so conspiracy theory that no one even wants to touch it, but the troops had to guard the poppy fields.
Afghanistan heroin went way up when we went in there.
Went way, way up.
Their production went way up.
They were supplying at one point in time.
What was the number, Jamie?
evan hafer
70%.
joe rogan
Was that what it was?
70% of the world's heroin was coming out of a place that we had occupied.
evan hafer
Well, and the other issue is that The Taliban was using the opium essentially to fund their growth in their militia.
So the DEA was out there.
So you had the DEA out in Afghanistan doing direct action ops.
And you had soft guys that were going out, walking through poppy fields and marijuana fields and all these other things.
Then you'd pass it off to the DEA. 90%.
Oh, 95, yeah.
joe rogan
In 2021, 90%.
evan hafer
90%.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
evan hafer
You destabilize the entire country.
You deter everyone from actually focusing on the opium.
You focus on terrorism in the Taliban.
And then you allow it to flourish.
And...
The dirty secret nobody wants to talk about from that perspective is that we as a country have dealt with a lot of shady opium dealers, like drug lords that were essentially exporting opium.
And if they weren't part of the Taliban and or if they were anti-Taliban, you'd do business with them.
It's the same story.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
What's your triage of priorities?
So, you know, how, hey, we need to get, you know, we need to fund our army in South America, so hey, how do we do that?
Let's import some coca.
You know, let's invent a market because we got to push back against the commies in Nicaragua.
It's the same story.
Do you know what?
joe rogan
I've had Freeway Ricky Ross on like three times.
I had him on recently.
Oh, seriously?
I had him on recently.
Yeah.
And he was the guy.
He was the guy who was making millions, millions and millions and millions of dollars.
He couldn't read.
He was making millions of dollars selling coke for the fucking government.
Myanmar overtakes Afghanistan and the world's top opium producer.
Violent political turmoil in Myanmar in years since 2021 coup has contributed to a production increase.
Wow, so they took over.
jamie vernon
That quick?
joe rogan
What's that?
jamie vernon
Check this out.
Meth is cheaper than beer there.
unidentified
Whoa.
jamie vernon
There's a lot of drugs going on there.
joe rogan
Whoa.
25 cents each?
That's all?
Imagine for a quarter, you could do meth?
evan hafer
The golden triangle.
joe rogan
Imagine doing that quarter meth.
evan hafer
For a quarter.
joe rogan
What kind of judgment do you have?
You pop that 25-cent meth and fucking chug it down with a Budweiser.
What are you doing, man?
What kind of life are you living?
jamie vernon
This guy said he took 10 pills his first time.
evan hafer
10 pills?
joe rogan
How did it work out?
jamie vernon
I took 10 pills and I was totally lost.
Didn't recognize my family.
Didn't recognize my children.
joe rogan
Son.
Couldn't sleep at all.
I didn't drink.
I didn't eat.
I felt powerful.
The last one's so perfect.
evan hafer
I felt powerful.
joe rogan
Yeah, look.
I don't think that should be legal, but...
Well, here.
I don't think you should do it, but I think it should be legal.
I think if it's not legal, the cartel sells it.
You just have to figure out what to do with the money that you're going to make from it.
Because that's devil money.
You're selling meth money.
That's devil money.
You're ruining people's lives.
There's going to be a bunch of slippery people that are kind of hanging on but doing their best.
And you're going to meth them down the road to oblivion.
That's true.
But that's not going to happen to me.
I'm not going to get methed out.
I'm not going to try it.
I haven't even tried Adderall.
I'm scared of it.
So some people are going to figure it out, just like most things in life.
Just like drinking, just like driving, just like doing jujitsu, just like riding a BMX bike.
Some people are going to get hurt.
So we have to decide what's more valuable to you, nerfing the whole fucking world or people figuring out what's best for everybody.
And the only way to do that is to give people freedom.
That's it.
It's the only way that works.
We figure out what works, what doesn't work by successes and failures, and we all adjust along the way.
But you've got to give people freedom.
Freedom and information.
Those are two very important things.
When you're suppressing either one of them, you can't be the good guy.
unidentified
No, no, no.
evan hafer
You're not the good bot.
You're not the good guy.
Freedom has to be sacred across the board, which freedom comes with accountability, which means responsibility.
And that's the problem is that when freedom, I think when you can distill it down and you can create control, then you can create profit.
So power, control, and profit, those things like they directly have this confluence where people in power obviously manipulate that and they'll restrict our freedom.
joe rogan
Yes, especially if they can make more money.
evan hafer
100%.
joe rogan
Have more control, have more power.
evan hafer
And if COVID taught us anything, it taught us that we can't forfeit freedom to low IQ power hungry bureaucrats that want to affect our life because they're stupid.
So why would we ever...
Give away our freedom to a bunch of stupid bureaucrats.
joe rogan
Exactly.
evan hafer
That, to me, is the fundamental difference between the entire election process.
It's like, how do I maintain or increase my individual accountability, which comes with freedom, right?
And how, if we want to capitulate that, that's the other side.
I think that's a referendum on freedom.
Yes.
I don't want to oversimplify it, but that's kind of where I think it is.
joe rogan
It's where it is.
You're not oversimplifying it.
If you don't have that, you don't have any of these things.
evan hafer
No.
joe rogan
You don't have any growth.
You don't.
You're going to have people that are in power that stifle discourse.
They're going to stifle debate.
They're going to stifle it because they only want their side to be heard.
It's that lady at the table telling me that Sam Harris and Douglas Murray was hate speech.
It's those people.
You're going to have those people dictating what you can and can't talk about based on their own morals.
And you don't even know how they think about things.
You don't even know them.
They don't do podcasts.
They're not hanging out with you at the bar.
You're not going to dinner with them.
You don't fucking know them.
So you don't know if they're making good judgment calls.
You don't know if their assessment of something is something you agree with or if it's even rational.
You don't know.
These weird strikes you get on your account.
You get this fear-based letter that comes to you.
If you do this again, you're fucked.
You're like, oh no!
Now what do I do?
Well, I better self-censor and go along with the machine and stop misgendering people and stop doing this and stop doing that and stop saying this.
And then you're fucked.
And then you're fucked.
And then you might as well be living in any other country that's controlled by a dictator.
It's just a dictator by a different name.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
That's all it is.
It's fascism, but it's not right-wing fascism.
It's left-wing fascism.
It's adherence to the state.
They want you to go along with the mandate.
The way they talk about things is the way you have to talk about things.
And to think, if anything, this election was a giant fuck you to all that.
Where everyone was like, fuck, you guys are fucking crazy.
We see where this is going.
You're going right off a cliff and you're running.
And if anything that showed you about that, the Harris budget, which has spent a billion dollars, 580 million of it or something like that was for staff?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
580 million?
And there's all this money that went to all these outreach groups, and celebrities, and what the fuck is this?
And then there are $20 million in debt at the end of it, and you want to manage the economy?
This sounds crazy.
This is a...
What did you do?
Like, what happened here?
Who went crazy with the checkbook?
Who went hog wild?
Who went hog wild?
evan hafer
Nobody in the administration has ever been in business, right?
I mean, like...
Nobody.
joe rogan
Find out what the numbers were to staff.
Because I want to be accurate about that, but I think I am.
I think it was 580 million.
And I was watching this on Fox News and they don't lie.
evan hafer
No, they don't.
They never lie.
joe rogan
They had a giant lawsuit, right?
The Dominion lawsuit?
Yeah, that was a big one.
They got hit.
evan hafer
I had to piss.
joe rogan
Alright, let's take a little break here, ladies and gentlemen.
unidentified
We'll be right back.
joe rogan
Yeah, they said it on Fox News, Jamie, so it has to be true.
evan hafer
It has to be true.
joe rogan
Way better.
unidentified
Oh!
jamie vernon
Fuck.
joe rogan
No, better than Fox News.
Patrick Bet-David.
jamie vernon
I know, I know.
I'm telling you, I see the tweets that say that, but Fox News' website says the campaign spent $56 million on payroll and payroll taxes.
joe rogan
So what's that other money?
But wasn't there all the money that they had spent on activism?
jamie vernon
Yes, yes, yes.
joe rogan
Didn't they count that in staff?
jamie vernon
No, I don't know.
This all comes from Twitter.
I don't know where they get the number from.
joe rogan
Well, if it comes from Twitter, Jamie, it's real.
jamie vernon
I'm just telling you.
joe rogan
Stop being a fucking party pooper.
jamie vernon
There are people asking for their sources.
joe rogan
Scroll up and let me see what this says.
But no, I'm sorry.
I'll scroll down a little.
I just want to see what all it says.
So it says Kamala raised $1.003 billion.
She spent $1.37 billion.
She spent $582.53 million on staff.
jamie vernon
That doesn't add up, because I saw she spent $680 million on ads, so those two numbers, you know, there's no money left over for everything else.
joe rogan
Right.
jamie vernon
So one of the two isn't correct.
joe rogan
How much did she spend on ads?
jamie vernon
$680 million or something.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
evan hafer
That's like the...
joe rogan
She could have done my podcast for free.
evan hafer
Dude, that is like the...
It's not even a secret.
When it's campaign time and you have all these ads, these ad guys that are out there, they're buying up all the ads.
And it's a wash in money.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
Hundreds of millions of dollars, and they're just pipelining campaign donations into ads, and it's like loading up their money guns and just shooting it into space.
That's what they're doing.
joe rogan
That is what it's like, right?
unidentified
I know.
joe rogan
And they've been telling people that this is effective, and so they have this business going.
evan hafer
It's just complete absurdity.
Don't get me wrong.
I actually...
Politics is so fun for me because I think it's really interesting and it's like...
I can't get into football or anything else because I like the data associated with things.
If I got into football, I'd be like one of those fantasy football dorks and I can't get into it.
So politics is one of those things where I'm like, I follow it, I love it, it's interesting.
Just trying to understand the strategy behind it.
joe rogan
I've changed my opinion of it a little bit since the election.
I don't think the control, the grip of the control of the country is as strong as I thought it was.
I thought this concept...
So everyone has a concept of they.
They don't want you to know things.
They're controlling things.
I have a feeling that in times of crisis, like what we find ourselves currently in, it's like when the lights come on and roaches scatter.
That's what I have a feeling.
I have a feeling there's no way that they can trust each other.
And that they all know that a certain percentage of people are going down for corruption.
There's a certain percentage of people that did some dirty shit.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
There's some connections with organizations and corporations and some emails.
Save your emails.
It's one of the things that R.F.K. said.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Preserve your records and pack your bags.
evan hafer
Dude.
unidentified
So epic!
joe rogan
Yeah, that's epic.
Preserve your records, because we know you're all a bunch of liars.
Yes.
We've caught you already on emails lying about stuff.
So this is, you've all perjured yourselves.
Like Fauci perjured himself.
evan hafer
Yes.
joe rogan
There's no difference.
Just the definition of gain-of-function.
Like, shut the fuck up.
You don't change the definition and make it ultra-super-nuanced so that it fits in your little excuse box of why you didn't fund gain-of-function research.
The fuck you didn't!
That's what you did.
That's what it is.
And when Rand Paul was confronting him with it, that was like one of the craziest moments.
unidentified
You, sir, do not know what you are talking about.
joe rogan
It's like an evil villain.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
An evil villain that just lied to everybody and got away with it.
And no repercussions.
evan hafer
Well, I think that's like the story over and over for these guys that are empowered.
There's no repercussions.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
There's no accountability.
I oftentimes think of Dick Cheney as a guy sitting back in like a high back leather chair in a big black tile office that's completely shiny with a white cat on his lap, like just petting it.
That's the way I think about that fucking guy.
Like, fuck that guy.
Like, how these guys...
To keep flashing back to this, but it forever fucking changed me, right?
Where I'm like...
These guys fucked up so many people's lives.
Like, countless.
Countless lives.
And the fact that they still think they have public trust with zero accountability?
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
Man...
joe rogan
How wild was it when Dick Cheney was endorsing Obama, or excuse me, was endorsing Kamala?
evan hafer
Of course he was.
joe rogan
And everybody was like, yeah, look at that, right-wing people.
evan hafer
Yeah.
Like, you might as well have painted, if you would have been a NASCAR driver, he would have had a Lockheed Martin fucking jersey on right then, at that point.
joe rogan
Or Satan.
evan hafer
Yeah, yeah, Satan and Lockheed Martin, they're fucking working together.
joe rogan
Sponsored by Satan.
unidentified
He's got patches on his uniform, like that Chappelle.
You remember that fucking Chappelle skit where it's like politicians?
Yeah, yeah.
evan hafer
They were like, NASCAR drivers?
unidentified
Yeah.
How do you like that match?
joe rogan
Satan would be amazing.
Just all caps on the back, Satan.
The liberals would still find a way.
It's like Satanism in the classical sense.
It was just like a rejection of the norm.
evan hafer
I mean, think about it.
He's a fallen angel.
You know, I mean, think about how bad that is.
We have to think about it.
joe rogan
Yeah, Dick Cheney's basically a fallen angel.
evan hafer
Have you seen those Babylon B skits where it's like Satan talking to the Democrats about like, dude, you guys fucked this up.
You guys jumped a shark on this.
What are you doing?
It's so good.
joe rogan
Did you see the Babylon Bees one recently where they're talking about criticizing Trump's new appointments in comparison to Biden's appointments?
Have you seen it?
evan hafer
No.
joe rogan
It's just images.
evan hafer
I can fucking see it.
joe rogan
So you can find Jamie on their Instagram.
evan hafer
It's that one dude.
joe rogan
It's the bald dude with the dress.
It's the other dude who's the first female admiral.
It's the first female admiral.
Imagine if you're a woman and you're trying to become an admiral.
This motherfucker just jumps the line.
evan hafer
He's like, okay, yeah, cool.
joe rogan
Have you seen it?
evan hafer
That whole thing with like the, it's like the Avengers United.
joe rogan
Here it is.
Biden administration declares Trump cabinet picks unqualified.
Oh, God.
evan hafer
Yeah.
Like, if you just look at that thing, and then you look at, like, when I say things, right, it's just, like, you look at this thing, and then you do a direct comparison.
Like, okay.
joe rogan
You know who scares the fuck out of me?
evan hafer
Who?
joe rogan
That new borders are.
evan hafer
Oh, dude, he's a bad motherfucker.
joe rogan
He scares me.
He scares me.
I imagine myself with a backpack sneaking across the Rio Grande, and that fucking guy's there.
evan hafer
No.
Yeah.
Like, what did he say?
He was like, ah.
joe rogan
About families?
Is there any way to not separate families?
Yes.
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
He'd deport them together.
unidentified
Deport them all.
evan hafer
You know what it reminded me of?
You remember that?
joe rogan
It's just like, he said, I was like, whoa.
This is getting dark.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
See, I'm like a bleeding heart.
Like, I want people from another country that are poor to make their way here and make a better life.
I want that.
I just want to be scanned.
I want to know who the fuck is coming over.
I want to make sure they're not cartel members.
I want to make sure they're not terrorists.
But I'm all for people that want a better life, because I would do it.
I'd be a complete, total hypocrite if I said I lived in Guatemala in some village, and there's no power, and I found out that I could walk to America, and if I did it, it'd take three days, and then I could get a job in the fields, and then I'd make way more money, and I could send money home, and everybody could have clean water.
I'd fucking do it.
You would do it.
We'd all do it.
evan hafer
We'd all do it.
joe rogan
Part of me is like, man, I don't want to send anybody back.
But the other part of me is like...
What about terrorists?
Like, what about checking for cartel members?
What about the fentanyl that's coming through?
Like, you can't have an open border.
evan hafer
I believe in it, like, I believe in a meritocracy, right?
It's like, may the best idea prevail, may the hardest workers prevail.
The problem is, is when we export all of our manufacturing to China, when we have, like, South America, we have a border crisis.
Mm-hmm.
Obviously, I'm a coffee guy, so I think about coffee all the time, and I think about Nicaragua, El Salvador, like all of the South American, Central American countries that grow coffee.
And I talk to the farmers, and all we have to pay them is 5 or 10 cents more a pound, depending on the coffee.
And most of the time, when I'm talking about coffees, I'm like, yeah, no problem, 10 cents more, who cares?
What that allows them to do is build schools, pay a livable wage, all the things that they need to do to be successful in Guatemala, Nicaragua, wherever we're talking about.
So I think about this, like, okay, so we're exporting these manufacturing jobs to China.
And if we're just concentrating on economic policies in this hemisphere, where from a national security perspective...
If we're exporting jobs to South America, we're creating economic opportunity and mobility in South America and Central America.
We're creating jobs, economic stability, generational wealth, and we're also solving one of the issues that we're having, which is a border crisis.
It just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me to say, hey, we want to export, and I know this started with the Nixon administration, and you have essentially slave labor, which I'm 110% against, which I don't think in any way, shape, or form we should support economically.
So if we're to export and look at this from a manufacturing and industry perspective, from this hemisphere, how do we...
Align ourselves around strategic stability.
How do we protect against our border crisis?
How do we still import?
Because I mean, I know Americans love their cheap goods.
Like they love their shit.
You know what I mean?
They still want to have this decreased labor cost.
I think investing in South and Central America is just not a bad thing.
If we're not going to invest in America because of the cost, then we have to invest in this hemisphere.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Well, it makes sense that if you want to make the world a better place and you want less people trying to sneak into our country, one of the best ways is to make their country better.
evan hafer
Right.
joe rogan
But we've got to do it ethically.
The crazy thing, and we've beaten this horse a thousand times, is that everybody has a phone and everybody's phone is made by slaves.
evan hafer
Right.
joe rogan
And if it's not made by slaves, the cobalt that's in it, there's a real high chance that it came from someone with a fucking stick poking it into the ground and digging it out for you.
evan hafer
Right.
joe rogan
And that's everybody.
We have to take a hard look at all this stuff.
We should be making our phones in America.
We should be making our phones in America with American minerals.
They're a source for people that get paid a fair labor wage.
They get health benefits.
There's OSHA. People check on things.
Make sure that regulations are in place.
Make sure that people get...
Make sure that they're making enough money to make a living, to live, a livable wage.
You have to do that in America if you want to do it legally.
The only reason to do it somewhere else is so that you can do something legal Because it's legal there, but it's not legal where you live.
It shouldn't be legal to have people working in another country for you for fucking 15 cents an hour.
It's just, it's too crazy.
It's too crazy that you just, you cross this dirt path, and now you're allowed to be a piece of shit?
Like, it seems crazy.
But if you're doing it the right way, and you're paying people well, and you're allowing people to, like, thrive in a place where there was nothing before, yeah.
You can give people a pathway to do a lot of different things.
Economic success opens up a lot of fucking doors, especially with education, especially with safety, with schools, with better communities.
People have money.
There's not so much tension.
Yeah, it's good.
It's good to have a thriving industry.
It's good to have a thriving economy.
It's good for everybody.
It's just not good for everybody, everybody.
There's always going to be people that suffer in every kind of economy, in every kind of situation in the world.
There's going to be people that suffer.
And like we were talking about on the way here, some of it's just luck.
There's a lot of luck.
evan hafer
There's a lot of luck.
joe rogan
Luck's a real thing, good and bad.
That's one of the most important things about having some success in this life, you know, is having the humility to understand that you just got lucky as fuck.
You're lucky as fuck if you're alive!
Especially you!
Right?
You're lucky as fuck if you're alive!
evan hafer
You know how lucky I am?
It's like tenfold order.
I got all my fingers and toes.
It's so incredible.
joe rogan
Great family, incredible business.
evan hafer
I think...
joe rogan
Good friend of mine.
evan hafer
God, man!
It's so incredible when you think about the birthplace lottery of hitting the jackpot.
Like, holy shit, we won.
joe rogan
I think in this time, too.
I think we're so lucky in this time.
I think I'm particularly lucky because I grew up before the internet was at all.
Like, how old are you?
47. So I'm 10 years older than you.
So when I was...
Like, no, I think I was 27 when the internet became like a normal thing to have in your house.
And you had a dial-up.
And you turn on America Got Mail, or you got mail.
You've got mail on AOL. So from that point on, the fucking world changed so wildly and so quickly that we weren't even really noticing it while it was changing.
And now here we are.
Here we are in 2024 where it seems like the most chaotic, the most weird.
Trump just won again.
Somehow or another I helped him.
unidentified
Like, all this fucking crazy!
joe rogan
Like, this is the wildest timeline ever.
evan hafer
This is the most, we're talking about, this is the most optimistic.
I've been in our country.
This is the most optimistic I've been in my adult life.
joe rogan
Yeah, the moment that he won like that in a landslide, I was like, maybe they don't have such a grasp.
And maybe this will open up the door to making things more rational and balanced.
And we could stop a lot of this fucking awful corruption.
That's just intertwined, like the mycelium that's under the soil.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
The corruption is just intertwined, and a lot of it's legal corruption.
evan hafer
Dude, it's insane.
When you think about, obviously, I'm super interested in the military-industrial complex, but when you think about, we had, we'll say, 50, 60 military-industrial contractors at the start of 9-11, and then now we're down to five.
And we think of $860 billion of annual data associated with the defense budget, which has gone up since our height in the world on terror, or the war on terror.
And we have five big companies that are basically taking 50% of that 860, and then 50% of that is profit.
And how is it happening?
When you think of this triangular effect between the military-industrial complex and, okay, you have the revolving door between the Pentagon, so every star that comes out of the Pentagon goes back into the military-industrial complex with X amount of years of disassociation, blah, blah, blah, it's okay.
Then you go back to the military industrial complex.
So you go into like Lockheed, Raytheon, one of the top five.
Then you have congressmen and senators that are making decisions specifically related to the budget in the military, the defense budget.
They're lobbying to increase defense spending.
But then they also have factories that are related to like the F-35 or some big military contract where they're making 40, 30, 40, 50 percent in profit.
So they're the guys that are lobbying to increase the defense budget.
Their campaigns are being paid for by the military industrial complex.
They're directly increasing the military budget.
It's a self-licking ice cream cone.
It's insane.
It's completely insane.
And the fact that we don't have any strict firewalls and separation from an And I'm not against people creating jobs in their state.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying the fact that there are not strict firewalls between the fact that you're going to directly profit and or your campaigns are paid for by the people that you will lobby to go in and increase the taxpayer's liability.
I was thinking about this the other day.
I was like, if the taxpayer had an itemized...
Look at where their taxes go.
It just came out annually or once a month or whatever it is.
And they looked at what they were paying for.
I'm pretty sure they might have a more vested interest into how much they're paying, what they're paying for and saying, you know what, maybe we shouldn't be asleep at the wheel.
Maybe we should probably pay a little bit more attention to this.
joe rogan
Isn't that amazing that you don't get an itemized list, but you're required to give an extraordinary percentage of your money to the government?
Like, what is the tax bracket of someone who makes a million dollars a year?
What is that?
evan hafer
40%.
joe rogan
40%?
evan hafer
43% probably.
joe rogan
Okay, let's imagine you're paying 40% in income taxes.
Then if you live in California, you pay another 14.4, I think it is, something like that.
And then I think it's another 1% if you live in the city of Los Angeles.
So now you're down to 30, what, 34%?
What do you get there?
Somewhere in the high 30s.
So then you have sales tax on everything you buy.
You have property tax.
You have insurance.
You have whatever your house costs.
You don't have a lot of money left over.
And the government doesn't even have to tell you what they're spending it on.
Like, you probably get less than they do, if you really think about it.
If they get 40% in it, let's just say you don't have tax shelters and all that good stuff.
But if you pay 40% in income taxes and then after all the shit, like after all property tax and state tax and this tax and sales tax, how much did you get?
What did you get?
How much money did you actually get?
I bet the government got more than you got, bitch.
evan hafer
70% of your time at work is working for the Fed.
joe rogan
That is so bananas that you don't even get an itemized list of what they spend it on.
evan hafer
I have to file my audited financials, right?
I think about this all the time.
I have to.
It's a requirement.
I have to pass them.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
The Pentagon hasn't passed an audit in decades.
They have like 60%, we'll just say 50% of the Pentagon's expenses.
They're like, I don't know.
I don't know where it went.
unidentified
Sorry.
evan hafer
Shit out of looks, taxpayers.
So how is it?
It's this rules for thee, not for me.
joe rogan
Don't they always miss their audits?
evan hafer
Yes.
joe rogan
How many times have they missed their audits?
unidentified
It's insane.
joe rogan
The Pentagon?
evan hafer
Yeah, the Pentagon.
joe rogan
How many times...
I think it's crazy numbers, too.
Like, whoopsies.
unidentified
Oops.
evan hafer
I just forgot about that $300 billion.
jamie vernon
Oracle in 2021 says they've never passed an audit.
evan hafer
Yeah, there we go.
There we go.
There we go.
So it's rules for thee, not for me.
They've never passed an audit.
joe rogan
There's never?
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Come on, never?
evan hafer
Never.
joe rogan
Pentagon's accounting records are so convoluted that billions of dollars cannot be accounted for, charges a new government report.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
That is so crazy.
Never?
evan hafer
Yeah.
unidentified
And you'll go to jail if you don't pay these.
evan hafer
You'll go to jail if you're not paying your taxes.
joe rogan
That is so funny.
That's so funny.
Despite having trillions of dollars in assets and receiving hundreds of billions in federal dollars annually, the department has never detailed its assets and liabilities in a given year.
For the past three financial years, the Defense Department's audit has resulted in a Opinion, meaning the auditor didn't get enough accounting records to form an assessment.
Like, sorry, we don't have any paperwork.
Where'd the money go?
I forgot.
Gotta go.
evan hafer
I'm just a military guy.
joe rogan
We are just trying to keep America safe.
Yeah.
evan hafer
That's what it is, man.
joe rogan
What if all of it's going to UFOs?
unidentified
Huh?
joe rogan
What if all of it's going to UFOs?
What if all of it's going to some propulsion research thing that they're doing?
They've got UFOs.
They're just not telling us.
What are they spending it on?
How much of it is getting greased into the side pockets of people?
evan hafer
But even then, from a transparency perspective, does it not shake out for us?
Because if we're saying, hey, we're going to spend, I don't know, let's just call it $100 billion on black fund experimental technology to maintain our strategic hegemony.
Yeah.
Do you think that we would all be like, no?
I mean, it's better than not passing a fucking audit where you're like, I don't know where it goes, man.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'd rather you tell me that you can't tell me than tell me you don't know.
evan hafer
Right.
joe rogan
Tell me you can't tell me.
evan hafer
Tell me you can't tell me.
joe rogan
Despite costing more than $1.7 trillion in its estimated life cycle, attempts to audit the program have run into major hurdles.
Oh, the F-35.
So this is just the F-35?
evan hafer
The F-35 is just...
jamie vernon
I could hide some propulsion money.
joe rogan
It could.
unidentified
It has to be.
joe rogan
$1.7 trillion, it probably...
I'm sure.
Look, if Area 51 exists, and now we know it does for sure, it was a real base.
They said it wasn't a base forever, and then during the Obama administration, they had to expand the boundaries because surveillance equipment and binoculars and telescopes were getting better and more sophisticated, and they were filming things that were flying around that shouldn't have been filming.
So they expanded the boundaries.
They had to say that Area 51 existed.
Right, right.
What was that?
Where'd you get the money?
What'd you do?
What are you doing down there?
Why do people say you have UFOs?
What the fuck are you doing?
Why do you have a base in the middle of fucking nowhere that's built into the side of a mountain?
Why are you guys acting like this is an Avengers movie?
What are you doing out here?
evan hafer
Once again, it goes back to just transparency.
joe rogan
Yeah, or you can't tell me because you think I'm a fucking baby.
Like the same reason why you think I can't have mushrooms.
evan hafer
The same reason why we can't have full disclosure of the JFK assassination, right?
There's 4,000 documents.
Have we talked about the JFK assassination on this thing yet?
joe rogan
I think we have.
evan hafer
Have we, like, gone down the rabbit hole?
joe rogan
I went down the rabbit hole with multiple people, including Oliver Stone.
evan hafer
Have you heard my theory?
joe rogan
No.
Maybe not.
I don't know.
What's your theory?
evan hafer
So my theory is, like, it all goes back to the Bay of Pigs.
It's all Bay of Pigs.
It's all Cuba.
It's all Bay of Pigs.
And so I'm looking at it from a paramilitary CIA perspective and thinking about it from Alan Dulles, which obviously, like, he's in charge of the Warren Commission after Kennedy fired him.
So I'm giving everybody a kind of a summary explanation.
unidentified
Dulles Airport?
evan hafer
Yeah, Dulles Airport, which is the Dulles brothers, the single most two powerful fucking people in Washington, even during the Truman administration.
But either way.
So...
What happened, I think, was...
So, Operation Zapata, which is also George H.W. Bush's first oil company that he supposedly left fucking Connecticut and went out after his Yale tenure after World War II, and was like, I'm gonna be an oil guy and start fucking Zapata oil.
Yeah, of course, right?
Even though it's dad's best friend with Alan Dulles.
Sure.
Anyway, so...
unidentified
So...
evan hafer
Operation Zapata, which it turns into the Bay of Pigs, and Kennedy gets read in on this.
He says, yes, let's go.
And then when it comes down to the day, like, I mean, you've built 1,400, let's say, you know, 1,200, 1,300-man force that's a CIA former Cuban exile army.
You've built it, and Alan Dulles has been the main architect behind this.
You've got all these guys, so let's even go back.
These are all OSS World War II guys that...
Let's create a clear delineation between what they're doing and what they think the president is doing.
The president's like, yeah, yeah, he's elected.
Fuck that guy.
We're the agency.
That's the way Alan Dulles actually ran things.
Half the time, he wouldn't even brief the president on what he was doing.
So he puts together this thing, clears it through Eisenhower.
Eisenhower says, yes, let's go take those fucking Cuban commies out.
They put together a 1100 man force.
They've been training on this.
They've got secret bases in Guatemala.
They've got all these paramilitary CIA guys.
They're ready to take the beach.
They're expecting air support because without air support, that changes the entire tactical equation.
Like, if you don't have air support, there's a lot of things you just don't fucking do.
Period.
So, the morning of, Kennedy denies air support for the Bay of Pigs.
So, the morning of.
So these dudes are taking the beach.
These are hardcore, like, CIA-trained paramilitary guys, Cuban exiles, and World War II hardcore regime change combat veteran.
Like, these are the hardest motherfuckers on the planet that we have.
He pulls air support.
He left 1,100 guys on the beach to die, basically.
These guys all get rolled up, so they lost about 60 guys.
2406 is the name of the brigade.
60 guys died.
A thousand plus got put in Cuban prisons.
Now you got an axe grind.
You just pissed off the entire CIA paramilitary organization.
I don't know if I'm the president.
I don't know how I don't end up with a moonroof, to be honest with you.
Like, I just pissed off the guys that are actually in charge of, like, assassination, paramilitary, all of the dirty deeds around the planet.
I fire Alan Dulles for this catastrophe of the Bay of Pigs.
I've got a thousand plus guys that are in prison in Cuba.
I've got the entire former OSS, hardcore anti-communist, anti-Castro organization of the CIA pissed off.
If you don't think they're not going to tee a guy up like some pro, you know, commie Oswald guy in a, you know, in a multi-story building in Dallas, if you don't think you're going to end up with a hole in your head, you're crazy, to be honest with you.
That's the way I'm looking at this.
So they end up getting these guys out, but man, he pissed off a lot.
A super capable guy means opportunity intent.
Means, opportunity, intent.
Which is now, you left me and my buddies on a beach in Cuba.
Bro, you are not gonna get out of here unscathed.
I'm just...
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
That's my theory.
joe rogan
I think that, along with all the other stuff, means there was probably...
A bunch of people that did not want him around.
evan hafer
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
He wanted to get rid of the CIA. He had his eyes on the Federal Reserve.
There was a lot of crazy talk about secret societies.
You've seen that speech about secret societies.
evan hafer
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And he was a real threat.
And as soon as you can get those killers to want him out, too, well, now you've got a problem solved.
evan hafer
Well, you had a bunch of guys that thought he was soft on Russia.
They had a bunch of dirt on him because he was banging a bunch of chicks.
All of which, okay, maybe it's true, maybe it's false.
I don't fucking know.
But I think it's fairly validated at this point.
joe rogan
I think it's pretty true.
evan hafer
And you have a collection of people that are thinking this is a zero-sum game.
This is a Cold War.
If you're weak on Russia and you think that the guy's going to bend his, you know, he's going to bend a knee to the bear, you've got a lot of, you've got this confluence of interests where...
It's inevitable.
joe rogan
And he was also not universally loved.
We think of him as being universally loved because he's dead.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
But when he was alive, like, there was a lot of people that were not fans of his in the red states.
Probably, particularly, Dallas.
evan hafer
Dallas.
joe rogan
He was driving through Dallas.
evan hafer
He had LBJ that's from...
joe rogan
What's amazing about it, really, is how sloppy the whole...
evan hafer
Sloppy as shit!
joe rogan
The whole thing.
From autopsy to...
The fucking magic bullet laying on the gurney to having to come up with the magic bullet theory because of the ricochet in the underpass.
The whole thing is so clunky.
It's such a shitty explanation.
You couldn't kill one extra guy and say there was another guy over here?
We killed him too?
Yeah.
This is such a shit job, you guys.
You don't have one other idiot that you can get out there?
One other idiot, give him a bad rifle and just fucking shoot him?
evan hafer
But they don't have any...
They don't have...
The context of what we have, which is social media.
joe rogan
Right.
tucker carlson
Of course.
evan hafer
You know, I mean, when did the Zapruder film...
joe rogan
It was like 12 years later.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
And it was on the Geraldo Rivera show.
Which is completely insane.
Dick Gregory, who is a stand-up comedian, brought it on the Geraldo Rivera show.
evan hafer
Are you serious?
joe rogan
I didn't know that.
unidentified
100%.
joe rogan
Dick Gregory, who is a stand-up, he's a lot more than that, too.
He's an activist, but like a real one.
You know, not in any way some sort of a social value grifter, which I think a lot of people gravitate towards activism because it gives them a chance to be really shitty because they're right.
He was a brilliant guy.
But it was also a guy who, like, was a truth seeker back when it was really hard to get to the truth.
This guy had to acquire a copy of the Zapruder film when In Time Life got a hold of it, apparently, like, right after the assassination.
And they just kept it.
evan hafer
They just kept it.
joe rogan
They just kept it.
And when you watch it, you realize why they kept it.
Because you see his head go back and to the left.
And it looks like he does get shot in the neck from the front.
He holds his fucking neck like this.
He doesn't hold the back of it.
evan hafer
No, no.
joe rogan
He holds his neck like this.
That's impact.
That's where it hit him.
And then his fucking head goes back and to the left.
And we're supposed to think that this fucking guy did all this from the school depository.
Maybe he did take a shot or two from the school book depository.
I don't think he was innocent.
I'm not of the camp like it's a binary thing.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy and the CIA killed him or Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
That's a stupid way to think.
I think for sure they used him.
They probably gave him a rifle.
He might have been in that window.
He might have just been in the building.
He might have been in the area.
Who knows?
I think he probably did shoot that cop.
Like, when they were chasing after him, it seems like he did kill that cop.
I think he was an asset.
But I also think there was a bunch of people shooting at the president.
And if you look at that area, you've been to Dealey, you've been there, right?
evan hafer
Oh, yeah, yeah.
unidentified
Yeah, it's a weird, it's a weird shoot to track down, right?
joe rogan
It feels weird.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
It's like, oh shit, it's a lot smaller than I thought it was.
evan hafer
It's tiny.
joe rogan
It's really little.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, when people say he couldn't have made those shots, like, shut the fuck up.
evan hafer
He's right there.
He's, like, right up, like, literally you look up and the building's right there.
joe rogan
And he had a scope.
At least he had a scope.
That's what's crazy about the kid that tried to kill the president, tried to kill Trump.
He didn't even, he had iron sights.
evan hafer
Which is insane.
joe rogan
But it's not if you just go in center mass, but this dude's doing it for a headshot, 140 yards.
And he's probably never shot anybody before.
He's a 20-year-old kid that they just somehow or another Operation MKUltra mindfucked him into shooting at him, or he's on some crazy medication, or China, or who knows?
Who knows what they did?
It's a chip in his head.
unidentified
Who knows?
joe rogan
Who knows what the fuck happened?
But...
unidentified
And then some mobster.
evan hafer
Some happenstance mobster is so passionate about Kennedy.
He's like, I'm gonna kill...
joe rogan
I'm gonna shoot Lee Harvey.
And people are letting him in with the pistol.
Bang!
It's so dumb.
evan hafer
Dude, it's...
joe rogan
Then you know what happens to him, right?
evan hafer
Yeah, he dies of cancer.
Like hardcore.
joe rogan
Before that, before that.
evan hafer
No, huh?
joe rogan
Jolly West visits him in jail, and he goes crazy.
Jolly West, who was the head of MKUltra.
evan hafer
Oh, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Jolly West was the guy who got Charles Manson the acid, allegedly.
From the book Chaos, he goes into it.
Jolly West went to visit Lee Harvey Oswald, or excuse me, Jack Ruby.
Jack Ruby's on the ground underneath his bunk, crying in the fetal position that they're murdering the Jews with fire, and he's tripping balls.
This guy dosed him up with acid, blew his fucking brains out, and then they probably injected him with cancer.
evan hafer
100%.
joe rogan
See you later, fuckface.
evan hafer
I think you have this...
Outside, so, if we want to go all the way back and you want to just know my, like, two cents on this?
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
evan hafer
Okay, so Dulles knows that eventually the president is going to, like, they're going to snuff him out, they're going to fire him.
Dulles decides that he's going to have this whole separate CIA that's CIA guys, but they're all really very trusted in internal, external guys.
And I think those guys are essentially his guys.
And they get hung out to dry in the Bay of Pigs.
They're not attributable to the CIA other than loose affiliated documents.
I think Dulles gets fired and they're like, okay, let's go.
Alan Dulles didn't want to be answering to the president because he didn't answer to the people.
He was answering to a bigger call in his mind.
He's answering to, this is an eminent threat.
The big communist bear is going to come and eat our lunch.
So he's answering to the greater good, which is a reason for, like, the backdrop of the Cold War is a reason for a lot of this nefarious activity.
Like, Angleton, like, all these directors...
Everybody looks at these guys as like really nefarious characters, but you have to paint everything in the backdrop of the Cold War.
Like, we're doing all this stuff to save America, right?
And I'm not validating them.
joe rogan
We have to understand that perspective.
evan hafer
Yes.
joe rogan
Because that was a big thing even when I was in high school.
evan hafer
This is the Cold War.
They're going to fucking kill us all.
joe rogan
They're going to nuke us.
evan hafer
They're going to nuke us.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
So we will do...
It's very MacLevelian.
The means justify the ends.
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
Anything and everything to save the nation at any point in time.
So you have guys that are baptized in extreme patriotism and their belief is that they are doing things for the best of the nation.
And that if they have an elected official, they can't be trusted.
They can't be trusted.
And these are guys that are...
I went out to Omaha for the 80th.
These are...
It's so interesting for me to think back on this because these are guys that are World War II vets that, like, they saw everybody die.
You know, I mean, the Soviets lost tens of millions of guys in World War II. They were defeating fascism, which is, you know, they were defeating the Nazi Party, you know, the Japanese Army, and they've seen thousands of men die.
And they're serious guys.
They're not lighthearted.
They're not full of love.
These are guys that are baptized in ultraviolence to the point of which this is a zero-sum game and we have everything to lose and nothing to gain by being nice.
And nobody will get in our way to being able to maintain the sovereignty of the nation.
Once again, I'm not justifying it.
I can just get into the mind of them because if I'm jumping into Nazi-occupied France in, you know, 1940X, because a lot of the OSS teams went in there, and I'm watching my friends get fucking mowed down by Nazi machine guns,
and I'm killing Nazis, and I'm moving my way to overthrow Hitler and now I feel like Stalin is the next thing that I have to defeat but the American public just doesn't understand Like, I'm 1945, man.
I have been quite literally baptized in blood, and I'm not going to let it happen.
Now, you think about a high-intellect, type-A-driven, ultra-violent guy that may be semi-coherent based on their copious consumption of alcohol.
joe rogan
Probably, right?
evan hafer
Yeah.
Okay, well, old, you know...
Right.
They're fucking serious guys and they think that we're going to die in a nuclear holocaust.
Right.
And everything, the means justifies it.
It's a very MacLevelian.
I don't necessarily, once again, I'm not trying to say that like every evil deed is justified.
I'm just saying like, I've seen the beaches of Normandy.
I understand greater than a lot of people with combat and the direct psychological and emotional effects, what it'll do to people.
And I can kind of see myself going like, hey man, if I'm a 26-year-old guy that just went and fought the Nazis and I think that the big bad bear is coming after me, man...
You're a pretty serious character.
joe rogan
That feeling of the big bad bear coming after us got lifted with the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the fall of the Soviet Union.
All that stuff went away.
The fear.
When I was a kid, that fear was everywhere.
You know, I've talked to so many people that are like my age or around my age that remember being a child and being worried about a war with nuclear bombs with Russia.
It was constant.
It was in the air.
When Khrushchev banged his shoe on the table and said, we will bury you.
I watched that video on YouTube just like a month ago, and it's still scary.
The two fucking banging his shoe.
And when he said, we will bury you?
Was that a direct quote or was that propaganda?
That one feels fishy.
I bet that's one where it's like a little bit more slippery than we will bury you.
Because you know what I mean?
evan hafer
That was a direct response to when we agreed, we have this mutual agreement between the Soviets and Khrushchev wasn't Khrushchev wasn't actually a Stalinist.
He was making very big reforms in the Soviet Union.
And so he felt betrayed by the U-2 spy missions that were taking place after they shot down the U-2 spy plane in Russia.
And because we lied...
He was like, bang, bang, bang!
And I'm fairly certain that's what that whole thing was about because I think Khrushchev was a man of honor.
Oh, I see.
And these fucking guys are lying to me.
joe rogan
Oh.
evan hafer
And, I mean, Stalin was a shitbag.
Of course.
But Khrushchev was, like, making significant reforms within the country.
He was broadly condemned by a lot of the old...
The Stalinists as...
joe rogan
Here it is.
jamie vernon
I don't see him banging a shoe in the video.
unidentified
He's banging his hand.
evan hafer
Oh, he's banging his fist, yeah.
joe rogan
I thought he banged a shoe.
unidentified
The video says, did he bang a shoe?
I don't know what he's saying.
Whoa.
joe rogan
That's a scary language when they're yelling it.
evan hafer
I know.
Put that under a couple pints of vodka.
joe rogan
Someone was saying this, but it's so true.
There's nothing scarier than Russian Muslims.
Like the fighters?
Russian Muslims are the fucking scariest fighters, dude.
I think if there's like one group that I would categorize, like what's the scariest?
It might be Russian Muslims.
jamie vernon
This is from the CIA's website.
joe rogan
We will bury you.
Threat widely attributed to Khrushchev in Western press was reported to have been made at a send-off reception to Poland's Gamuka in Moscow, November 1956. According to Time Magazine, Khrushchev was overheard to say at the final reception, For the Polish leader, if you don't like us, don't accept our invitations and don't invite us to come to see you.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side.
We will bury you.
So he said that to Poland.
But wasn't that in a police song or a sting song?
The Russians love their children too?
Wasn't that?
evan hafer
Scorpions?
joe rogan
No, no, no, no, no, no.
I think it was a sting song.
evan hafer
Really?
jamie vernon
Sting song called The Russians.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
Oh, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was saying, Khrushchev said he will bury you.
So it was probably some fake news, just like how they said about Trump saying very fine people on both sides.
evan hafer
It's always been fascinating to me because I think about the Russians and how many tens of millions of people they lost in World War II. Yeah.
And I think about...
Very empathetically how they got fucked.
They really did.
You know, I think...
And I'm not saying we did anything bad.
I'm just saying, like, what we did was we delayed the invasion of Normandy and we felt like...
A lot of people think this was that we were trying to soften up the Soviet Union because we felt that they were a follow-on threat in World War II. But...
We delayed the invasion intentionally, essentially, to let a lot of Russians, millions of Russians, essentially die on the Eastern Front.
And...
When you really think about it, when, you know, from, you know, those men, from my context in, you know, combat, from how I think about combat, how I think about death, like, those guys had a significant axe to grind, because they're like, we need fucking help.
We need you to open up the Western front.
I'm not validating Stalin, because once again, I think he's a complete piece of shit.
joe rogan
I know what you're saying.
evan hafer
But, yeah, as a Russian population, knowing that we delayed opening up the Western Front to go and take over, essentially, Hitler, Nazi Europe, because at that point, obviously, it wasn't just one person.
Yeah, we have a significant amount of mistrust with you guys because we lost, you know, 20 million people plus the civilian population.
I mean, some estimates of 30 million fucking people.
And you guys opened up Normandy, came through, and then you're telling everybody that you won.
You're the reason you won World War II and you're not even giving us any validated credit.
They had invaded Japan before we...
We dropped the bomb and the Japanese were just as terrified of the Russians as they were the Americans.
However, I can see from the Russian perspective going, man, we sacrificed millions of people to defeat the Nazis.
And you guys are basically giving us no credit.
So I think back and I'm like, man, 1945, like where these guys were at because they're all about my same age.
We went to combat roughly the same age.
And there were a lot of people that were debating all of these issues back then.
1945, 1946, they were talking about not only Stalin, but Patton was talking about like we need to just keep going.
unidentified
Right?
evan hafer
Patton was talking about, like, we need to keep going.
We need to defeat Soviet Russia.
And Eisenhower was like, actually, no, you're crazy.
Fuck, dude.
unidentified
Fuck.
evan hafer
I think that's what he said.
You know, I think that's what he's like, hey, fuck, dude.
Like, what are you talking about, Patton?
You're crazy, man.
joe rogan
Basically, that's what he said when he addressed the nation.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Right?
And that was right after that.
evan hafer
So I keep thinking about myself and, like, those guys, I think about myself a lot of times, too, where, you know, 20-plus years after the fact, like, this is 1968. Yeah.
This is 1968, man, from our war.
So, from 1945 to 1968, give or take, you think about all these GWAC guys that are being appointed.
It's kind of a cool revolution, but 68 was a very important year in American history.
I think 24 was a really important year in American history.
joe rogan
Yeah.
24 is a big one.
The one we're in right now is a big one.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
I think when people look back at history with these great moments of change, I mean, think about how, you know, people look back at the Reagan administration, like when Reagan got elected.
What a landslide.
Like, they look back at those days.
Like, we look back at, like, these historical moments.
But I think this one is crazier than any of them.
This guy gets kicked out.
They try to put him in jail multiple times.
He gets shot at.
He says, fight, fight, fight.
And then he wins.
He wins in a landslide when they were all saying that it was a close race.
And the whole thing is just wild to watch.
It's like, this is nuts.
Like, this show's nuts.
If you're watching this show on TV, like, these writers are fucking amazing!
Whatever they're doing, keep doing this.
This show's crazy.
There's twists and turns.
You got your crazy billionaire character who doesn't even seem real.
Doesn't even seem real.
This guy's making rockets and electric cars.
There's no way.
He buys Twitter because he wants to save free speech.
What?
unidentified
It's insane.
joe rogan
And the people that used to love him now hate him.
The people that are driving their Teslas around, like, God damn it.
They're angry, but they still have a lease.
You know?
You still have your Tesla.
You hate Elon.
You hate X. And Don Lemon said, I'm leaving X. There's no good discussions to be had here.
evan hafer
Yeah, it's fucking boo-hoo.
joe rogan
Oh, you don't like criticism.
You don't like criticism.
If you want to get into this game, okay?
You want to get into the online game?
The online game's different.
And in the online game, you get judged by who you fucking actually are, dude.
It's not about your producers and your teleprompter.
Shut up.
You're on your own.
If people think you're stupid, you're going to hear it.
And it might be because you're stupid.
It might be.
Look, people say a lot of people are stupid that are not stupid.
I've seen people say brilliant people.
I've seen people say Elon Musk is stupid.
I have seen that.
evan hafer
Yeah, I've seen that.
joe rogan
I've seen.
You're going to get it no matter what.
You're going to get it.
Everyone's going to get it.
But if everybody's saying you're stupid...
Maybe.
You might be stupid!
You might be stupid, and you might have been protected from that stupid by these network shows.
If you want to exist online, and you don't like criticism on Twitter, or you think there's disinformation on Twitter, community notes on Twitter is the greatest fucking thing that's ever been created.
Because people get to look through the community notes and find out, oh, that is bullshit, and here's why it's bullshit.
Or, oh, that actually is true.
Even though it sounds crazy and people are protesting, it's actually true.
That's fun.
That's good.
We learned something.
If you can't handle that, well, you can go wherever.
Where do you go now?
Where do you go?
Where do you go?
Threads?
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
Nobody goes to Threads.
But they were for a while.
unidentified
What are you crazy?
Seriously?
joe rogan
They were for a while.
Yeah.
It's not going to work, I don't think.
unidentified
No.
evan hafer
Have you ever had, I don't know, have you ever had Zuckerberg on?
joe rogan
Yeah, I like Zuckerberg a lot.
evan hafer
Yeah?
joe rogan
Yeah, I like him a lot.
I think he's a weird guy, but you have to be a weird guy if you're a super genius, 100 billionaire who's into jujitsu.
He's a weird guy, but he's cool.
I like him.
I've had fun with him.
Yeah, we played a fencing game together with virtual goggles.
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We both put on...
He fences, so we both put on virtual goggles.
evan hafer
You got online when he was in Hawaii or San Francisco?
joe rogan
No, we did it in the same room.
evan hafer
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
It was fun.
The new Oculus is fucking cool, and you've got to wonder where that's going to be, because...
When I first tried the very first Oculus, it was kind of cool, but kind of crude in a way.
And with each new version of it, it's much smaller now.
It used to be we had a cable, and the cable was attached to the ceiling on a wire so that you can move back and forth with all these wires connected to you when you have the Oculus.
So you had to be plugged into the computer, actually.
But now you're not.
Now it's just on your head.
And now, it's fucking resolution.
It's pretty goddamn good.
And it's weird.
Like, you do things like you can go to a comedy club, and you sit in the audience, and there's all these other people in there, and there's a comedian on stage.
It's fucking strange.
There's all these little online games you can play with other people, 3D shooters and shit, and you get goggles on, you feel like you're in the game.
It's real weird.
And most people are kind of freaked out by it.
So I don't think it's...
Like, they went with that whole meta thing.
They thought everybody was going to dive into the metaverse.
But I think...
There's this uncanny valley between you put the goggles on and you're in the world and you feel uneasy.
This is weird.
This feels weird.
VR feels strange.
A lot of people make them dizzy.
They want to take it off.
evan hafer
Yeah, my wife is like that.
joe rogan
Yeah, mine is too.
But I think they're going to get to a point where it's not going to feel weird.
There's some commercial applications.
There's a company called Sandbox, and they have this fucking amazing game called Deadwood Mansion.
And in Deadwood Mansion, you go into this warehouse space.
They have one in Austin.
They have one in Woodland Hills, where we used to go.
It was right down the street from the studio.
You put goggles on, and all of a sudden, you're in a mansion.
You got a shotgun, and zombies are running at you from everywhere.
And you're, boom, you're blowing their heads up.
evan hafer
Seriously?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
It's fucking amazing.
Dude, no one in my family wants to play it anymore.
evan hafer
Why is it too intense?
joe rogan
I get very intense.
evan hafer
Oh, fuck yeah.
joe rogan
Very intense when I'm killing zombies.
They don't like it.
They don't think it's gross.
I'm like, come on, let's kill zombies.
Like for Father's Day, I made them come kill zombies with me.
I fucking love it.
evan hafer
That was your Father's Day present?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
evan hafer
You told your parents, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Go kill zombies.
Daddy wants to kill zombies with everybody.
unidentified
That's fucking awesome.
joe rogan
It's fun.
You got a shotgun, and they're running at you, and you're blasting their heads off, and you get attacked from behind.
That's fucking awesome.
And you have a haptic feedback vest, and you see red when they're attacking you.
You see splatters of red in front of your face when they're attacking you, and you're shooting them in the face.
evan hafer
Everybody wants to do that, dude.
Oh, it's so fun!
I mean, if we were like, oh, we're in a zombie apocalypse, how many dudes do you know, they're like, oh my god, awesome.
unidentified
Awesome.
joe rogan
This is gonna be fun.
They're so slow.
evan hafer
They're so slow.
joe rogan
But these ones are pretty fast.
The ones in this, some of them run at you.
They run at you.
unidentified
Oh.
Yeah.
evan hafer
It makes it more fun.
joe rogan
Remember that movie, 28 Days Later, where the zombies were running?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
That's the scariest zombie movie.
Yeah.
Running zombies, that's the real zombie.
The Walking Dead zombies, get the fuck out of here, bitch.
You ain't getting me.
evan hafer
So disappointing.
The first five seasons were great.
joe rogan
How are they not all dead?
How are not all the zombies dead?
They all walk a half a mile an hour.
evan hafer
It's just more and more zombies.
joe rogan
How's that possible?
Kill them all.
It's so easy to kill them.
evan hafer
I can't get enough zombie movies.
I love them.
joe rogan
I love them.
evan hafer
I love the post-apocalypse.
joe rogan
You know what I don't like?
Daryl using field tips.
evan hafer
So stupid.
joe rogan
Why is he using field tips on his crossbow?
That drives me crazy.
That drives me crazy.
evan hafer
And he's like pulling them out, loading them back up, and you're like, dude, come on, man.
joe rogan
You're making me angry.
You don't lose any fletchings?
You don't get any pass-throughs?
unidentified
No.
evan hafer
No pass-throughs.
It's all just like sticking in their heads.
Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
joe rogan
What the fuck are you talking about?
This is the dumbest weapon ever.
evan hafer
Yeah, Daryl...
joe rogan
That fucking field tip's gotta go, son.
You don't have any broadheads?
evan hafer
You gotta put, like, a solid, like, tri-blade or something on there.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, get some good...
evan hafer
Like, get a really good...
joe rogan
A muzzy trocar.
tucker carlson
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's what you want.
evan hafer
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
Yeah, like a Montec.
One of those Montec carbon steels.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Send it.
evan hafer
What was that one...
The hide?
unidentified
What was it?
joe rogan
Yeah, the hide.
evan hafer
God, dude.
joe rogan
Yeah, man.
That did a lot of damage.
I'm very impressed with that one.
Because that one, I got the 125 grain one, which has the steel ferrule.
And it's got a two-inch cut with the mechanical blade and a three-quarter inch cut with the fixed.
So it doesn't make a big hole opening going in.
So two and three quarters?
This is all technical talk, ladies and gentlemen.
Yeah, two and three quarters.
It's a broadhead for archery.
When it goes in, that's when the blades open.
So the Rage, which I used to use, the T2 now, the Dudley version, that opens up on the way in.
So it leaves a big hole all the way in.
But this one opens up inside.
So really, you're penetrating with the fixed head, and then once you're passing in, the pressure is what makes the other two blades go.
So it really makes a pretty small entry hole.
But the exit hole is a crime scene.
The exit hole was a crime scene, because you're going out with Two and three quarter inches.
It's just instant death for the animal.
It's like super ethical.
I think when it comes to like the amount of damage they can do, those mechanical, they put animals down so quick.
So quick.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
There's something to be said for that giant cut that they make inside.
It's just so different.
Like Cam's, he's using a catapult.
It's basically a catapult.
evan hafer
Yes.
joe rogan
That four blade carnivore thing.
evan hafer
That's insane.
But Cam changed my life.
He really did.
He was like, create a really big hole.
He goes, I don't care what you do, just create a giant hole.
And that's because you're going to put the arrow in the right spot.
If you create a giant hole, then you're going to have a great blood trail, and you're going to find your animal.
He rewrote my entire hunt sequence this year.
joe rogan
Because before that, you were penetration.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Right.
Which is another way of looking at it, right?
If you're thinking about a cut, a cut that goes through the entire body is a very long cut and is always lethal if you get them in the vitals.
evan hafer
Yep.
joe rogan
But you don't get a blood trail and they don't die as quick.
evan hafer
No.
joe rogan
The dying is quick thing is the one in Tejon last year, that bull died in like less than 10 seconds.
How many seconds was it?
evan hafer
Seven, if that.
Maybe five.
joe rogan
It ran up to the top of the hill and just fell down.
evan hafer
It was so quick.
I've never seen anything die that fast.
joe rogan
And that's those big mechanicals.
evan hafer
And I'm not saying that because you're Joe.
You're just the dude on the side of the mountain that was shooting that I was watching.
It fucking died faster than...
Anything I've seen even shot with a rifle in the chest cavity, right?
So clearly differentiating between a headshot and a chest cavity.
I've never seen anything die that fast from an animal.
It was dead instantly.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think there's something to be said for those giant holes because it's just, especially if you have a strong bow.
So if you have a bow that has a lot of kinetic energy and a lot of speed and you're shooting a heavy arrow and it's hitting that rib cage, like...
There's something for that big cut.
It just stops them dead.
evan hafer
Are you at 80?
joe rogan
84. 80 or 84?
Yeah.
unidentified
The new bow's 84. Oh, the new Hoyt is so smooth.
joe rogan
Oh, it's so smooth.
evan hafer
So they just came out yesterday.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
I gotta go find the new one.
joe rogan
I felt so special.
I had one for a couple months and I had to blur it out when I took pictures.
unidentified
I know.
evan hafer
I felt like such a chump.
I was out there day on.
I just got the old one.
It's not a big deal, man.
joe rogan
Well, I used to think that when I saw Cam shoot his, I'm like, how can it be better?
These are so good.
How can they be better?
And then you shoot the new one, and you're like, goddammit, it's better.
It's super accurate.
Like, so dead in the hand.
Like, the way the shot breaks.
It's just like, they keep making it smoother, smoother draw cycle.
It's faster.
evan hafer
So, you're doing 84. Yeah.
What are you Garmin?
What's your feet per second on it?
joe rogan
Oh, it's 293 or 294. So what are you shooting, 450?
evan hafer
475. 475?
joe rogan
Yeah, I bumped it up because I went to those 125 grain heads, but my bow went from 80 pounds to 84 with the new one, and then it kind of made up a difference.
So the 25 grains, it was basically the same kind of speed as with the last one, which I had a 450 grain arrow.
So there's like a, I think there's probably like a number you shouldn't go below.
I don't know what that number is.
You know, like grains.
Like some people, they'll hunt elk with like a 300 grain arrow and a lot of people are like, don't do that.
Don't do that.
You can get away with it because they're like, well, my daughter shot an elk and it was a pass through and she's got a 50 pound boat.
Okay, she got lucky.
She got lucky.
You need some force to get in there.
evan hafer
Like if you're shooting 500 on an 84-pound, 85-pound bow, so let's say you're doing, even if you're doing 270, that's still massive penetration.
joe rogan
Massive kinetic energy, especially if you have carbon arrows.
I love those carbon arrows with the victories with the slick outside because you pull them out of target so much easier.
evan hafer
Who's making those?
joe rogan
The VAPs.
The, uh, what are they called?
The TKOs?
evan hafer
Yeah, I love those things.
joe rogan
RIP TKOs, that's it.
evan hafer
Yeah, RIP TKOs.
unidentified
Yeah.
evan hafer
Those are great.
joe rogan
Their coating that they have on it is, like, it's so easy to pull out.
evan hafer
They got, like, a Teslon or some shit on them?
joe rogan
Yeah, but you gotta think that's, that aids in penetration, too.
It has to, right?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
I mean, isn't that why guys like the thin diameter?
Like, Cam shoots those, I don't know if he's doing it now, but he was for a long time.
He was shooting those 4mm arrows.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Those real skinny ones, but...
evan hafer
The 4mm...
joe rogan
I like lighted Nox, and the 4mm with the lighted Nox make me nervous.
Why?
Because Nox break sometimes.
And they're more vulnerable because they've got that little light inside of them instead of being a big, solid piece of plastic.
evan hafer
Right.
joe rogan
You know?
Like, I always change them before hunts.
I always put fresh ones on.
I never trust ones that have been sitting around.
Never trust ones that have shot already.
I'll shoot them a bunch of times for practice, but they break sometimes.
And especially, I'm not paying attention, so I might be accidentally touching arrows.
evan hafer
I do the same thing.
I have fresh arrows for hunting, but they're the exact same setup for practice.
So that's why I like the sever or something like that, because the severs, you can pin them, and then I can just shoot the shit out of those and then just not use the pin.
joe rogan
Yeah.
No, that's huge.
evan hafer
That's why I like them, because I can shoot the same exact weight and dimensions, and I know the flight characteristics are going to be the exact same, versus...
Sometimes when you get those...
joe rogan
Practice heads?
evan hafer
Yeah, they're different.
They actually have different flight characteristics, because the way that they're put together is not exactly the same, and I believe in the fact that it's like, hey, man, if you got to...
A slight fin on the front, and it's a different fin on the back, even though it's only an inch, you still have to be 100% consistent to maintain the same flight characteristics.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's why when guides get real nerdy about what helix, like what kind of helical you have on the veins, and what kind of twist you put in your veins, and you have to have a single bevel blade that twists for the broadhead in the exact same direction.
Don't get a right twist with left veins, then you'll get all fucked up.
But their idea is that you're trying to get the broadhead to spin through the animal.
That's the whole idea behind the single bevel.
evan hafer
Do you think that's true, though?
joe rogan
There's something to it, yeah.
There's something to single bevels because of the cut, the way the edge is cut.
So, for people listening, single bevel means the edge angles in on one side.
Double bevel means it comes together as a point.
Right?
So think of a blade, but a blade with only one side that you can, you know, you see like where the steel is ground down to the edge.
The other side doesn't have that.
So the idea is that that creates this angle and that when you're spinning, your arrow is spinning because the helicals of your vein, it goes into the animal's body cavity and the bevel in the broadhead accentuates that spin.
And it continues that spin through the body causing like a whirlwind of trauma Inside the animal and that it, you know, it almost affects, acts as multiple blades because it's kind of spinning around.
It's not just cutting a straight line, it's twisting.
But the question is like how much twist and is it more effective to have like a four blade thing, like a tooth of the arrow, like one that you could, you know, those are...
evan hafer
I don't think it's true.
joe rogan
You don't think the spin, the bevel spin?
evan hafer
No, I don't think it does.
joe rogan
I think it does a little, because there's a guy named Lusk Archery, and he does these tests on these things, and he actually shoots them into ballistic gel, and you can see them spin.
So some of them do spin.
But the whole...
evan hafer
I think it's too complex, though, once you...
Because...
Once you have a ribcage, and let's just say even the consistency of the ribcage.
So we'll just say a perpendicular shop from the ribcage at 40 yards.
So we'll just keep all the variables basically the same.
Even then, there's no nicking of the rib.
There's no variation of the actual animal skin.
There's no slight quartering away, start quartering towards.
So ballistic jail, I think...
There leaves a lot of questions for me.
So even though it's twisting in the ballistic gel, because it's consistent.
You're shooting it directly perpendicular into a very consistent format, and you're getting a consistent result.
You're not going to get a consistent result.
I just don't believe you're going to get a consistent result through a ribcage.
joe rogan
Well, that's the reason why a lot of people like mechanicals.
It's one of the things that they say is that the cut is so large when you get into the body cavity that you take out all the other variables.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's going to do so much more trauma than something that's just a slit blade that, let's say you do hit that rib cage and it does slice and only hit one lung because it deflected off of it and it doesn't spin at all and now you lost the animal.
Right.
Whereas you get a mechanical, it goes in there, it creates this massive fucking hole.
It does all this trauma, going through two and three quarter inches of trauma going to the animal.
The odds of that animal surviving are gone.
If you get them in the body cavity, they're gone.
And I've seen people hit people with really good shots with small broadheads and not do much damage to the point where the animal runs off, they have a hard time blood trailing it.
Even if the animal dies 30 minutes, 60 minutes later, you might have a hard time finding it, especially if you bumped it.
evan hafer
100%.
I've had that exact experience, like, multiple times.
joe rogan
With those little broadheads?
evan hafer
Yeah, man.
unidentified
Yeah.
evan hafer
Cam, like I said, he changed the entire...
joe rogan
The way he thought about it.
Yeah.
evan hafer
Because he's, like, created a big hole.
joe rogan
Well, he changed his thought about it, too.
He was always a fixed blade guy.
Always.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then, who told him to do that?
Oh, Wayne did, from The Bow Rack.
evan hafer
Oh, really?
joe rogan
Yeah, Wayne said, you gotta try these carnivores.
So just trust me, just try them.
He's like, these things are crazy.
It opens up these four-blade catapults.
evan hafer
It looks like one of those turkey broadheads.
unidentified
That's what it looks like.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
And because of the design, it's just like the hides.
It opens up from the front.
So once it's inside, then it's doing all its damage.
So you don't have to worry about it getting destroyed going in through ribcages and stuff as much as you do with other things.
Because it's really just going to get a little hole going in, and then once it's in, then it's opening.
It's kind of a perfect idea.
The only thing that people don't like, like Dudley doesn't like, it doesn't leave a big hole in the outside.
I talked to Dudley about it.
He's like, I want extreme trauma.
I just want extreme.
I want one big, giant cut with all that energy.
Think of it like sticking a samurai sword through the animal's body.
And, you know, obviously he's one of the best bow hunters on Earth, too.
So there's a bunch of different philosophies on it, but I think the idea of the mechanical blade is legit.
And I like the hybrid idea the best, because then you always have a fixed blade, no matter what.
evan hafer
I like the hybrid.
Obviously, this year was great because I like the hybrid a lot more than going either pure mechanical or pure fixed.
joe rogan
Yeah, you feel like you got a little insurance policy.
evan hafer
Yeah.
It's like the best of both worlds.
You're like, okay, cool.
Let's keep consistent with this.
Everybody I talk to, they have...
Throughout the past several years, they have all different opinions.
Broadheads are like assholes.
Everybody has a fucking different opinion.
John has his opinion.
Cam has his opinion.
Everybody has their opinion.
My buddy Dan, Elkshape.
Did you ever watch that?
joe rogan
Sure.
He's got his opinions too.
evan hafer
He's got his opinion.
All these guys have opinions.
joe rogan
They're all successful too.
That's the crazy thing.
You're trying to sort it out.
Who's right?
evan hafer
And so I'm just trying to create the data and put it down into...
What works for me, and I don't have any sponsorships, which allows me to be fairly empirical in the way that I'm actually selecting the criteria.
But I also don't have the reps these guys do either, so you have to kind of rely on their data and then collect all of it and then kind of put it in one case, if that makes sense.
joe rogan
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm always fucking around with things.
That's one of the cool things about archery is all the tinkering.
You know, there's like so many different things you could try.
Like this year is the first time I tried a 15-inch front bar.
You know, I went to a 15-inch front bar with a 12-inch back bar.
Ooh, I like it so much better.
evan hafer
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, because I was using that Quivelizer, and the problem is with wind, it's a sail.
That sail just pushes your pin around too much.
evan hafer
Bro, I love that guy, though.
joe rogan
Oh yeah.
evan hafer
I love that guy.
joe rogan
Look, the Equivalizer, I've used it for years.
It's a great invention.
But I find that with wind in particular, the balance that I would get from that Equivalizer, I can get from the, I'm using a cutter stabilizer with a 15 inch front bar and a 12 inch back bar.
evan hafer
Right.
joe rogan
And it's perfect.
It holds so good.
It holds so nice.
It feels so dead on.
And this year I went with a 10 degree downward angle of the front bar.
evan hafer
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.
Why did you go with it down versus what matters whether or not it's perpendicular to the ground?
unidentified
I know.
joe rogan
It doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't make any sense.
But I was talking to these archers who do it.
And Levi Morgan does it.
His goes at a downward angle too.
And I was talking to this archer and he said it actually, for some reason, it helps you hold better.
It locks in better.
evan hafer
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, the slight downward thing with when you're pulling back, there's something about the slight downward angle of it that it lets you hold better with the same amount of weight.
evan hafer
Right.
joe rogan
Because it's going in a different direction than just straightforward.
It doesn't totally make sense, but I really believe in it.
Like when I started doing it, I was like, ooh, there's a little different feel to this.
I love that.
I love all the tinkering.
I love the tinkering.
evan hafer
That's my favorite thing.
joe rogan
It's so much fun because there's all these different ways to do it.
There's all these different releases.
There's all these different styles of releases.
There's so many different things you can fuck with.
You could just go down a rabbit hole after rabbit hole.
You know?
evan hafer
That's what I did.
You and I, I would say like 90% of their texts are around releases.
joe rogan
What release release?
evan hafer
Yeah, like what release am I doing?
And I went, I think I bought 20 releases this year, like over the course of 23, 24 after, you know, the hunting season.
Mm-hmm.
And it's fun.
It's just pure fun.
Because, okay, dude, I know.
I got it.
It's like $250.
Sure, you buy a release.
And I fuck with it for a couple weeks.
I get the pros and cons about it.
And then I pass it over to the guy that runs my little bow shop there, Black Rifle, Isaac.
I pass it off to him like, sell it on eBay.
I don't give a fuck about this thing.
And...
joe rogan
I got a box of them.
I got a box of different releases.
I've tried everything from four finger releases to two finger releases.
What I really like is that one with the clicker, that onyx with the clicker.
It's got this little click and then...
I feel like I can shoot that as good as I can shoot a hinge.
So you get the best of both worlds.
You get the ability to make it go off if you have to.
If there's some weird situation where you have literally a split second to make a very close shot, you can get away with that.
Or you could shoot at a long distance target and feel just as comfortable as you do with a hinge.
You know, because there's something about having that little click and that Onyx clicker.
Like once you feel that little click, you know it's about to go off and you just pull through it.
evan hafer
It's so funny.
I'm the exact opposite.
I hate that fucking click.
unidentified
Like when I'm on the click, I'm like, click!
evan hafer
I just want it to go off.
I just want it to go off.
joe rogan
It does fuck with your head.
But one thing it does is it puts all your concentration in the shot process instead of like hammering the trigger.
You hear that click, you know, it's right there.
You just pull through it.
And it's such a delicate little click that once you get it in your head and you shoot with it a bunch of times, you like welcome it.
Like, there we are.
Click.
unidentified
Come on!
evan hafer
Oh, okay.
So you're like, come on!
Looking forward to it.
joe rogan
Yeah, and then the click is like, settle in.
We're right there.
unidentified
Blah!
joe rogan
And it's like that one extra step that gives you this one extra little piece of concentration.
Joel Turner talks about it in that whole Shot IQ process, and he developed it.
He developed the Onyx clicker.
evan hafer
Oh, he developed that?
joe rogan
He developed it, yes.
evan hafer
Oh, shit, okay.
unidentified
Cool.
joe rogan
So that one little thing, that one little click, which separates it from a regular trigger, and then blah-bow!
And then you get all your thought process into the shot process.
And just making sure you do a good shot.
evan hafer
Huh.
unidentified
Okay.
evan hafer
Alright, I've used it.
joe rogan
It's a thing you gotta get used to like everything else.
But then you talk to Cam Haynes, he just fucking hammers that trigger.
evan hafer
I know.
joe rogan
He shoots everything.
So it's like, some people can't do it that way.
It's weird.
Everybody's got a different way they like to do it.
evan hafer
It pisses me off so bad because I see some of my buddies...
Do you know who Chris Jensen is, the country music singer?
He and I have hunted together a few times in Colorado.
He just hammers the trigger.
It's the craziest thing you've ever seen in your life.
He's just like, pow!
joe rogan
That's kind of how Cam does it.
He does that.
Touches off the trigger.
evan hafer
I look at him every time.
I'm like...
Oh my god, man.
How are you hitting the target?
He's like, just center mass, just over and over again.
joe rogan
I think it's a mindfuck that a lot of people put their head into that you're going to get target panic and that you can't control your emotions during the shot process to the point where you could command trigger.
But that doesn't make any sense to me.
It doesn't make any sense from, like, I can understand the psychological aspect of target panic, but I have a feeling that it comes from two different things.
It comes from buck fever, which is like you're freaking out, you never shot a buck this big before, oh my god, he's right there, and you're like, ah!
evan hafer
And you freak out.
joe rogan
That's normal.
But that's an experience thing, and you have to learn what that is, and if you do it a bunch of times, then you get to the point where, like, oh, I know how to control myself.
I know what this is.
And the more often you do it, like, if you can go on a couple of pig hunts and then go on an elk hunt, You're way more in the groove.
You're like right there.
You know what to do.
You know how to do it.
And you could touch the trigger off 100%.
Cam does it every goddamn time.
I think it comes from the target archery community.
Because I think those guys are staring at these fucking little tiny X's from 20 yards and they got to shoot 30 of them in a row.
And I think you get mind fucked.
And that's why those guys have hinges and all these crazy and 40-inch fucking stabilizers and V's that come out the back.
And it's all about not moving.
unidentified
Plop!
joe rogan
Plop!
But that's not bow hunting.
And we were talking about this, that I think the difference between bow hunting and target archery is like the difference between doing free throws and playing basketball.
evan hafer
Right, right.
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Free throws.
Nobody's fucking with you.
You're on the line.
You can measure it.
You can sit there and you can throw it.
evan hafer
Different sport.
joe rogan
Basketball, you're running around!
evan hafer
Different sport, same sub-skill set.
joe rogan
Right, that's hunting.
Hunting is basketball.
Target archery is free throws.
That's what I think.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's what I think.
And I think you can't tell a guy like Cam Haynes is doing it the wrong way.
If the best guy does it that way, you have to go, okay, why do we think you can't do it that way?
Well, it's psychological.
It's all psychological.
It's all panic.
It's all not being able to control your nerves.
If you can shoot perfectly that way at a target, you should be able to shoot perfectly at an animal.
You should be able to.
The animal isn't like some fucking invulnerable thing that you have to do it a certain way or the frequency is not correct.
No, it's an animal.
It's just like a target.
evan hafer
The army marksmanship team is not Delta Force.
joe rogan
Right, right, right.
evan hafer
Very different.
Very good shooters.
Army marksmanship team, probably extremely proficient shooters, maybe even better so than Delta.
However, it's a different scenario-based activity.
Completely different.
joe rogan
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, just because you shoot accurate at a stationary target doesn't mean you understand how to...
The freakout.
evan hafer
When you have a horse coming in with swords on its head...
joe rogan
The freakout!
evan hafer
It's a fucking different thing, man!
joe rogan
It's screaming!
evan hafer
It's like, ah!
I'm super horny!
I'm gonna fuck you!
unidentified
I'm gonna kill you!
evan hafer
I don't know!
And you're like...
joe rogan
Could you imagine if you came over from Europe and there was no elk over there?
And you were camping in the woods.
You were one of those first guys in your stupid fucking burlap tent.
And you hear...
You'd be like, demons!
unidentified
This fucking...
evan hafer
You don't know.
You're like, is this thing gonna...
joe rogan
Right.
evan hafer
Is it gonna run me through?
Am I gonna die?
joe rogan
It sounds like it's 100% gonna kill you.
evan hafer
I would be more scared of that than a bear.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
It has giant swords on its head.
joe rogan
Well, if it runs straight at you and just impales you...
evan hafer
I had one come in this year.
joe rogan
I'd be more scared of a bear, though.
I feel like I'd grab an antler.
evan hafer
If I hadn't seen any one of these before, and something comes in and it's got giant pointy things on its head, and I'm trying to be completely blank slate, and I've got this other fuzzy thing that I can't really see its claws and teeth, I'd be like, my god, I'm way more afraid of this thing with swords on its head.
joe rogan
Depends on the size of the bear.
Depends on what kind of bear we're talking about.
evan hafer
Yeah.
Like, if it's a little black bear, I don't give a shit about those things.
unidentified
Black bears are weird.
evan hafer
I don't care.
I don't care about those things at all.
Like, it's so...
They're kind of obnoxious.
joe rogan
Do you see that one that got shot in New Jersey that's 880 pounds?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
770 pounds dressed?
evan hafer
It's fucking crazy.
joe rogan
In New Jersey.
evan hafer
Dude.
joe rogan
In New Jersey.
unidentified
That's a bust.
evan hafer
In the East Coast.
How is that possible?
joe rogan
They have the most.
They have the most black bears per capita in the whole country.
We've played a hundred times the video of the bears wrestling in the middle of a neighborhood in Far Rockaway.
Big fucking black bears.
Just going to war in the middle of the street.
evan hafer
I had a- I grew up in this middle of the, like, logging community out in the middle of nowhere.
And there was this dude that used to keep- Wee I Pied Ho, it's out in the middle of nowhere, dude.
It's like, so Hill Jack.
But it's awesome.
And my grandfather, everybody, they're all hardcore loggers.
But I'm not exaggerating.
We had a guy just outside of town that had a pet bear, a pet black bear.
joe rogan
How old was it?
evan hafer
I mean, it's a full-grown fucking black bear, dude.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
evan hafer
And he would just...
This is the sad part.
He had defanged it because it would slobber on people.
joe rogan
Oh, God.
evan hafer
But he had a full-on black bear that would suck on his arm, basically.
Oh, Jesus.
joe rogan
He fanged a couple people accidentally?
evan hafer
He what?
joe rogan
He fanged a couple of people accidentally?
Playing with them?
evan hafer
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh God, so he made them gummy.
evan hafer
Yeah, gummy.
joe rogan
What did he feed it?
evan hafer
Who the fuck knows, man?
joe rogan
Donuts.
evan hafer
Like, when I see this, these are loggers.
unidentified
Yeah, these are- How long did he have this bear?
evan hafer
Probably 10 years, I would imagine, man.
I tend to turn down the volume on my redneck upbringing.
joe rogan
But hold on, how did he keep this thing in his yard?
Or did it just run loose?
evan hafer
We would drive by it on our way to another town, and he had a fucking bear in his front yard in a cage.
It was insane, dude.
joe rogan
Oh, in a cage?
Oh no.
I thought it was just running around.
evan hafer
No, no.
joe rogan
Oh, he kept it in a cage?
evan hafer
Big cage.
Just imagine.
joe rogan
He never let it out?
evan hafer
No, he let it out all the time.
He's like fucking walking around.
The guy was a complete insane person.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
evan hafer
And my uncle, my great uncle, he's like 80 years old, complete crazy person too, taught himself how to fly back in the day.
He came back from World War II. He was a Navy ship guy.
Taught himself how to fly.
He would fly around this Piper Super Cub, and back in the day, you get a bounty for cougar tails.
So he had a walker hound, and he would put him in the front seat of his Piper Super Cub, and he would fly around looking for tracks, land his plane in the middle of fucking nowhere, kick his dog out.
So he'd tell me these stories, and I mean, I hunted with this guy forever.
joe rogan
And the dog would find the bear?
evan hafer
Yeah.
We punch him out on the bear or the cougar or whatever it was.
joe rogan
Tree it.
evan hafer
Tree it.
Shoot it with a.22 Hornet because his whole thing was you let them bleed out in their lungs and then they fall out of the tree.
You don't want to shoot them with too big of a caliber because it knocks them out of the tree and they run around.
If you shoot them with small caliber and it penetrates both lungs, their lungs fill up, they drown, and they fall out.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
evan hafer
This is what, like, my Cecil Ball was my uncle back in the...
joe rogan
Did he have a backup gun?
evan hafer
Oh, yeah.
This guy was completely insane.
He had, like, when I was hunting with him...
joe rogan
Because I wouldn't be comfortable with a Cougar and a.22.
evan hafer
Dude!
This guy was 80 years old when I was hunting cougars with him back in, like, the Panhandle, Idaho.
And he would tell me stories, and I would only go hunting with him to listen to the stories, because they were the best fucking stories on the planet.
He crashed his plane.
He got fired from the sawmill.
He was buzzing the tower, buzzing the tower, crashed his fucking plane into his boss's office, and was like, Fuck you!
I'm out of here!
He was a complete insane person.
And he was telling me this other story, and these are like the summarized version, the cliff notes of it.
But dude, he would bay cougars in the middle of the mountains by himself.
He'd fly his plane, land in the middle of the snow, find a spot for him, bay cougars, and he had this cougar up in this log jam above a creek.
And he was telling me this cougar tucked himself underneath the logs above the creek.
And there's snow on top of the logs.
There's logs.
And then he was like crawling in underneath in the middle of the mountains with like a 357 snub nose.
unidentified
He climbed into the cougar tent?
evan hafer
Yes, because he's like, this cougar is eating my dogs.
And he's like reaching around.
My uncle, who had like three strokes by the time that I was talking to him...
He's like, and he'd stutter a little bit.
He's driving like 80 miles an hour around like crazy logging roads in the middle of nowhere.
I'm white knuckling his Toyota Tacoma with cougar hounds in the back of the Toyota going, oh my god, I'm gonna fucking die any moment.
unidentified
And he's like, yeah, and I got my...
evan hafer
He had a slight stutter.
Pull out his snub-nose 357 like a gangster and reach underneath the logs and start pulling the trigger once he found the right fur between the cougar and his dogs.
joe rogan
Oh my god!
evan hafer
This dude was completely insane when it came to doing things.
This is my uncle.
This is like the guy that I'm like hanging out with.
joe rogan
He reached into the logs and felt his way to the cat?
evan hafer
Yes.
With a snub nose, whatever, you know, 357. Oh my god.
To kill the cougar because he was pulling up his dogs and eating his dogs.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
evan hafer
Like when you talk about where I grew up and like the guys I grew up with, because I, you know, I'm a Green Beret, you know?
It's like, oh, you fucking pussy.
unidentified
Yeah.
evan hafer
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you're not like walking around in the woods with a saw on your back, you know?
And I'm like, yeah, just jumping on planes, I guess, you know?
joe rogan
That's hilarious.
They look down on it like that's an easy job.
evan hafer
You're not a fucking lumberjack like us.
You're not a fucking lumberjack.
You're kind of a pussy.
joe rogan
That's so crazy.
evan hafer
I'd go home, my dad would make fun of me.
joe rogan
Isn't it interesting that there's like...
Levels of discipline and hard work in the world.
If you want to be a logger, there's no easy logger job.
They don't exist.
That is a hard fucking job.
Those are hard men.
evan hafer
Yes.
joe rogan
You want to be a logger and you're going to do it for 30 years?
You're going to chop and carry trees for 30 fucking years?
You're going to be living in the woods chopping and carrying trees for 30 fucking years?
evan hafer
Falling trees, wrapping big cables around them, and they'd be like, oh, you carried a backpack through the woods?
And that's pretty cool.
joe rogan
I mean, you think about the different groups of people that live these extreme lives, and how many people are at the coffee shop with blue hair that are totally oblivious.
And they think hard work is like, you know, I'm dealing with my trauma, and I'm going to Starbucks today to protest.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
It is a guy with a log on his back, and he's 75 years old.
And he can't wait to get off work so he can kill cougars with a pistol.
evan hafer
With a fucking.357.
joe rogan
And we all exist on the same landmass.
unidentified
Yeah.
evan hafer
Some dude that looks like he's like building bikes in the 1800s with the fucking curly coat mustache.
It's like waxed up and you've got another guy that's like 80 years old that's had three strokes.
It's driving around in the mountains.
It's running up a mountain at a six minute mile chasing his dogs to go kill a cougar.
Nah, not the same person.
Not the same order of priorities, you know what I mean?
joe rogan
Well, there's probably a lot of those guys back in the day.
I bet that was a common type of human in like 1820. Yeah.
But you ran it all...
That was like how you had to stay alive.
You know, you lived to be about 40. Then you had a stroke.
Everybody died.
Nobody got any vitamins.
Eating fucking cornmeal and gruel and trying to eat squirrels.
unidentified
You just fucking...
joe rogan
You're barely getting by.
evan hafer
You're eating a bear.
That's how fucking nasty...
joe rogan
They preferred bears.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's what's crazy.
Apparently, they thought it tasted like beef.
They cooked a lot of bears.
evan hafer
God.
joe rogan
Some of them are gross.
The grizzlies apparently are super gross.
Cam just released a new video, Redemption, a grizzly bear hunt.
evan hafer
Yeah, yeah, I saw it.
joe rogan
And it's good.
Great video.
But he ate the bear.
I was like, how did it taste?
He's like, it was okay.
And then I talked to James.
He's like, it was fucking horrible.
It's horrible.
It tastes disgusting.
But black bear doesn't taste that bad if you get it from a good spot.
Apparently, like Ranella says, the blueberries, bears that have been eating blueberries are the best tasting meat ever.
evan hafer
But I think that's also relative to bear meat.
So they're saying...
joe rogan
No, he says it's like a great tasting meat, period.
evan hafer
I don't believe it.
I don't believe him.
joe rogan
You don't think if it was, like, flavored with, like, all they ate was blueberries?
I think the problem is they eat so much rotten shit.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
And that affects the way they taste.
But I think if they're eating only blueberries, like, did you ever see his video?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
With the blueberry fat?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
It's like purple fat.
It's crazy.
He said that's delicious.
He said it's so delicious.
I believe him.
evan hafer
I love Steve.
joe rogan
You think he's a fucking liar.
evan hafer
I love Steve.
He's awesome.
He's so much fun to hunt with, but I just firmly disagree with him on this where I'm like, bro, no.
joe rogan
What is the best tasting game animal for you?
unidentified
Moose.
Moose.
joe rogan
Interesting.
evan hafer
100%.
That's a good one.
For me, for my kids, moose is the only game animal my kids are like, yeah!
joe rogan
Really?
evan hafer
Yeah.
unidentified
Interesting.
evan hafer
They are 100% chips in.
They look forward to it.
Not only do they look forward to it, they request it.
It's the only game meat.
joe rogan
That's interesting.
That's very interesting.
evan hafer
Like, I can eat elk, but I'm the only one at the table eating elk.
joe rogan
Interesting.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
I only shot one moose ever, and I ate it, and I remember it was good.
But that was with Ben O'Brien, like, ten years ago.
But I haven't had a lot of experience with it.
For me, it's axis deer and elk are the two best ones.
Elk first, axis deer second.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Do you like axis?
evan hafer
I love axis.
joe rogan
It's crazy what it tastes like, right?
It doesn't taste like a deer.
evan hafer
No, it's beef.
joe rogan
Like, this is a totally different kind of animal.
evan hafer
It's not even beef.
It's like a clean...
joe rogan
It's almost sweet.
evan hafer
Yeah.
It's a clean beef.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's an interesting flavor.
And the fact that, you know, they have so many of them in Hawaii.
Like that Maui Nui Venison Company, for people who want to buy wild game, you can get actual wild game from Maui Nui Venison.
They'll ship you Axis Tier.
Frozen, they have meat sticks.
It's fucking great.
I'm not affiliated with them.
I know the owners, but I don't have anything to do with them.
But it's a great company.
And they're doing something that you actually have to do.
There's no natural predators on Maui.
So they have to shoot these Axis Tier.
They're fucking everywhere.
evan hafer
They're rodents, basically.
joe rogan
And they're a delicious rodent.
It's a crazy animal to hunt, too, because they grew up with tigers.
So they evolved with tigers, and they moved so fucking fast.
They're the fastest animal I've ever hunted.
evan hafer
I shot a doe at 30 yards bedded, and she dodged the arrow.
It doesn't even make sense.
joe rogan
They move so fast.
evan hafer
It doesn't even make sense.
I started shooting them longer distance away because the arrow's quiet and they can't hear the string slap.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
So they can't hear the bow.
So I started just shooting them a little bit further away.
unidentified
They still hear that.
joe rogan
And that's the only way.
We stopped hunting them in the day.
Because in the morning there's no wind.
We started hunting them only in the afternoon because there's more wind and the wind at least covers a little bit of it.
But Dudley got video of me shooting this saxist deer at 80 yards and it's a perfect shot.
Perfect.
It's going right to the vitals at 80 yards.
Perfect break.
And then 10 yards.
The arrow's 10 yards from him.
He goes and he's gone.
Within 10 yards.
He was gone.
He was nowhere near where the arrow hit.
evan hafer
What?
unidentified
10 yards?
joe rogan
He moved out of the way.
He heard the arrow coming and he moved out of the way.
10 yards from him.
There's a video of it.
Slow-mo video.
Because it's a lighted knock.
You see a perfect line headed straight for his vitals and then gone.
Gone.
evan hafer
Not even close.
joe rogan
Like a bullet.
I missed him by like a whole quarter.
He was gone.
He just ran away.
They hear things, they think a tiger's coming.
They just go.
They just go.
It just makes you feel so slow.
When you watch how they move, people suck.
We're so fucking clumsy and soft and we're so vulnerable.
My back hurts.
evan hafer
Ow.
My arrow that's moving 300 feet per second.
joe rogan
It has no chance.
evan hafer
No chance.
joe rogan
No chance.
Especially if they see the bow go off or they hear the bow go off.
They're gone.
And they're delicious.
And they're everywhere in Texas, too.
That's the wild thing about Texas.
You could just bring whatever you want in.
You want zebras?
You can bring zebras.
You had zebras?
evan hafer
I know I did.
joe rogan
You can have fucking zebras.
My wife saw a zebra one day when she was driving the kids to school.
evan hafer
I know.
joe rogan
I saw a zebra.
I think I saw a zebra.
I said, you probably did.
Some asshole probably has a zebra.
The zebra got out.
evan hafer
My kids would be driving around like, let's go look at the zebras.
Okay, let's go look at the zebras.
joe rogan
You could have zebras in Texas.
But I love it.
I love it that you can go to, like, when we went to that place down in South Texas, that ranch that my friend owns.
When we went down there, like, there's African animals here.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
These crazy black bucks and all these different animals are not from anywhere near here, and there's thousands of them!
Like, this is nuts!
evan hafer
Well, you shot that, um...
joe rogan
Neil guy.
evan hafer
Yes.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
Yeah, but everybody says that's, like, the best meat ever.
So put it on the scale associated with everything else.
joe rogan
I like elk.
It's really good.
It's all really good.
All wild game from a healthy animal is delicious, I find.
At least undulates.
They're all delicious.
I've never found one that I didn't like.
But I still think elk is the best.
I like the flavor.
Also, I like elk hunting so much, it means more to me when I'm eating a piece of elk.
I think I'm just biased.
I think if there's anything, I just like eating them.
I like eating them.
And I also think, it's going to sound crazy, but I think you get their spirit.
I think there's something about these super potent wild animals that you kill with an arrow, and then you're eating it.
You get the spirit of that experience, the spirit of that animal.
I think it empowers you in some very strange physiological way.
I really do.
I think they're so vitamin rich.
They're such athletes.
The way they run up a mountain.
You're getting these nutrients from that animal that I don't think is like any other animal.
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
Because they're so much stronger than all those other animals.
They just run.
They have 900 pounds.
They run right up the top of a mountainside like it's nothing.
You're like, this is crazy.
You watch them when they get winded and they fucking run over the top of a hill that takes you 40 minutes to crawl up.
They just run up it.
When you eat that thing, you're like...
You just feel it.
You feel it and your body feels it.
You get like a little boost.
evan hafer
Yeah, it's electric.
Yeah.
I feel the same way.
joe rogan
I've given it to people that don't even hunt.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
And they go, dude, I feel so good after I ate this.
I go, yeah, there's something to that.
It's superfood.
evan hafer
It is a superfood.
My neighbors, when I gave them elk or whatever it is, they're like, dude, this is amazing.
Yeah, this is what it feels like to be a hunter.
This is what it feels like to go out, kill something, process it, put in a package, and it's special.
It's meaningful.
It's the whole celebration, and I hate to say it like that, but it is.
It's like, this is...
You said it earlier, and actually I wanted to...
What'd you call it?
Like an assassin for your food or something like that?
joe rogan
Yeah, a supermarket assassin.
evan hafer
Yeah, a supermarket assassin.
This is the difference, is over here, you think this is...
One, it tastes different.
Two, there's a definitive meaning you're associating with it.
So there's no way that you can tell me that there's not a psychological nutrient connection between those two where it makes something more meaningful and beneficial specifically for you.
There's just no way you can tell me that it's not better.
joe rogan
Right, like a good meal with people you love, I feel like almost gives you extra nutrients.
Almost like there's an extra good feeling about it.
That's why people like eating together.
You know?
Eating good food that people care about.
Having fun.
The whole experience is better for your overall being.
evan hafer
It's the difference between jacking off in a porta potty and eating a meal with your fucking family, right?
It's like...
There's like a huge difference.
Like one is like gross and a little bit shameful and disgusting.
joe rogan
One's a jack-to-the-box cheeseburger.
The other is an elk that you cooked on your own grill.
evan hafer
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a big difference, man.
Yeah, I'm glad I found it.
I'll tell you that.
It's also, it's so hard to do.
You know, we both had our trials and tribulations elk bow hunting, and it's so difficult to do that the people that do it well, the people that are successful, you know how hard it is to do.
You're like, God damn, you pulled it off.
Hunting elk with a bow in the wild is a real thing.
Even the places we go are better.
They have more elk and stuff.
It's always hard, folks.
It's hard.
unidentified
It's always.
joe rogan
The problem with the public land thing is the public.
This fucking...
I have so many friends that have terrible stories about guys winding elk on purpose, blowing elk out.
They're all competing against the same packs of elk or the same groups of hunters are competing against the same elk groups.
It's crazy.
These herds of animals are getting winded on two and three sides because people are moving in trying to get them.
Right.
The ideal situation would be that...
I think the ideal situation would be...
You know they're trying to do that American...
What is it called?
The American Serengeti Project?
They're trying to rewild a whole section of the country.
They're buying up land and they want to bring back buffalo and bring back all these animals.
If everybody, at one time in their life, Could have some sort of a hunt where someone shows them how to do it, someone takes them out, they get an animal and they cook and eat that animal.
If you're a meat eater, I think at one time in your life you should try to do that.
I think that may be the solution for people to understand what it's all about.
Just one time in your life.
Or even go with someone when they're doing it.
One time.
Just know what that's like.
It ignites a little part of your DNA that you didn't even know was in there.
There's like a little part of us that for tens of thousands of years, the only way we survived is hunting.
evan hafer
Yeah.
joe rogan
Thousands and thousands and thousands of years just baked into our DNA. And when you're in there and you're in those woods and you got that rangefinder and that elk is 52 yards away and you see him walking through the bushes and you know you got a window.
And there's like a part of your DNA that just goes, yeah, this is what we're doing.
This is what we're doing now.
Lock in.
Lock in.
Get the animal.
Bring it back.
There's like some crazy, like ancient primal code.
And I tell people it's the same thing when you catch a fish.
When you catch a fish, it's like, oh, oh, oh.
This excitement that you catch a fish, that's built into your code because now you're going to live.
You're going to live.
You got food for your family.
It's in there, a human reward system.
And that's how we're supposed to get food.
We're supposed to appreciate the food because it's hard to get.
That's what it's supposed to be.
unidentified
It's not supposed to be going to the supermarket and look, the ground beef is $5 a pound and fucking...
joe rogan
You never chase anything.
You never go kill anything.
You're just sitting there eating your fucking bowl of pasta, watching TV. It's so easy.
evan hafer
It's so easy, right?
It's not supposed to be that easy.
joe rogan
It's not supposed to be that easy to live.
If it is, you're going to get anxiety.
You're not designed for that.
You're designed for trauma and testing.
You're designed for struggle.
You're designed to overcome things.
And if you're not ever overcoming anything, you're filled with anxiety.
evan hafer
Yeah.
I don't deserve this.
jamie vernon
Yeah.
evan hafer
How do I deserve this majestic fucking animal that I just consumed?
joe rogan
I didn't earn it.
evan hafer
No.
joe rogan
I just paid for it.
Which is weird.
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
Doing some weird job and then you get these hitmen out there whacking cows.
evan hafer
Supermarket hitmen.
That's like the best.
That is one of the best quotes I've got.
It is.
joe rogan
I mean, there's nothing grosser in this country than factory farming.
It's the grossest thing ever.
They have laws where you're not even allowed to film it because it's so gross.
evan hafer
No, it's disgusting.
joe rogan
Ag-gag laws.
Where you go to jail if you filmed horrific acts.
evan hafer
Which is completely insane when you think about it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
evan hafer
When you think about how easy it is to go get your food and people knew, especially meat eaters.
I've never quite understood meat eaters that are anti-hunting.
That makes no sense to me, by the way.
unidentified
Makes no sense.
evan hafer
Like zero sense.
How can you think that this is a better way where you're caging an animal, filling it full of hormones and supplemental nutrition and corn and all these things, and then you're putting a bolt through its head?
joe rogan
But I'm not there, Evan.
I'm at Starbucks protesting.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
evan hafer
I'm not there.
joe rogan
I don't know how this McGriddle got in my hand, but now I'm putting it in my mouth.
evan hafer
Just because I want to actually feel the significance of this event in the context of, like, I don't have any bloodlust.
I just don't want to be a hypocrite.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
It's also one of those things that, like, if you haven't experienced it, you really don't understand it.
And when you're trying to explain it to people, they're looking at it from, like, the cartoon Disney version of Hunters and the movie version of Hunters where they're all cocksuckers.
Dude, we should wrap this up because we've got to go meet Cam for dinner.
It's almost 6 o'clock.
evan hafer
Shit, dude.
joe rogan
How many hours do we do?
Almost five hours.
unidentified
Holy shit.
joe rogan
Like that.
evan hafer
All right.
Thanks, man.
joe rogan
Appreciate you, brother.
evan hafer
See you, brother.
unidentified
All right.
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