This Past Weekend - Theo Von - E555 Dave Smith

Jan. 16, 2025 - This Past Weekend - Theo Von

03:11:45

E555 Dave Smith

Dave Smith is a stand-up comedian, podcaster and political commentator. He hosts his own show “Part of the Problem w/ Dave Smith” and is one third of the comedy podcast “Legion of Skanks” with Big Jay Oakerson and Luis J Gomez. Dave Smith joins Theo to talk about predictions for Trump’s second term, how governments control information to promote their agenda, and what a libertarian approach to solving America’s problems looks like. Dave Smith: https://www.instagram.com/theproblemdavesmith/ ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Moonpay: Head over to Moonpay.com/Theo to sign up. Vanta: Go to http://vanta.com/theo to simplify compliance and get $1,000 off. BlueCube: Head over to BlueCubeBaths.com and get $1,000 off when you mention Theo’s name. Valor Recovery: To learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at https://valorrecoverycoaching.com/ or email them at admin@valorrecoverycoaching.com ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: tpwproducer@gmail.com Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Cam https://www.instagram.com/cam__george/ Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	We have added a second show in Nashville, baby, on May 3rd.
	It's an early show, 4 p.m.
	at the Bridgestone Arena.
	And I can't even believe that.
	And thank you guys so much for all the love and support.
	And I'm honored to be performing here in Nashville.
	We also have tickets remaining for East Lansing, Michigan, Victoria, BC in the Canada, College Station, Texas, Gigam, Belton, Texas, Oxford, Mississippi, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Winnipeg in the Canada, and Calgary in the Canada.
	Get all your tickets at theova.com slash T-O-U-R.
	Today's guest is a comedian, a podcaster, and a social commentator.
	You know him from his show, Part of the Problem, and you also know him from Legion of Skanks with Big J and Luis J. Gomez.
	We get into a lot of topics in this one, one of them being the Israel and Palestine conflict, which we've been learning about on this show over the year.
	We recorded this on Monday, January 13th, which is why there was no talk of the ceasefire.
	Just wanted to make that note.
	I'm really grateful for his time and his insight.
	And today's guest is comedian Dave Smith.
	I love you.
	I love you.
	I mean, that's most of my goal each day is to just babysit myself a lot of it.
	Well, that's a good way to do it.
	Maybe have some other people help babysit you?
	Oh, I'd like to get to that point.
	You know, I think I would like to get to that point, get a spouse, or get a spouse or something.
	Yeah.
	Caretaker.
	Or even get into hospice, dude.
	I have some friends.
	But not dying, but just have hospice?
	But that's a new thing.
	A lot of guys.
	Yeah.
	See if you bring that up.
	If you bring young men going to live.
	My buddy Caleb Presley, you know who he is?
	He works at Barstool.
	Long hair.
	Yeah, I think so.
	He does the Sunday Conversation.
	Okay.
	He lives in a senior retirement home.
	How old is he?
	He got loopholed in, I think, 33, 34. That's getting an early start.
	Loves it.
	Tanning, listening to him argue, stuff like that.
	It's down in Florida.
	So it's a, yeah, he gets all of that three meals a day or like two and a half meals.
	I'm not sure what they're doing.
	I feel, is there a gym there?
	I feel like you'd feel really good about yourself in the gym.
	Like if you're just like, you know what I mean?
	Like, just like, yeah, I'm fucking wrecking these fools here.
	I'm the only one going hard.
	Some guys just fucking look at this chump.
	Some guy just zoned out.
	Some, I was like, I was Mr. Olympian.
	1938.
	Some dudes hopped up on ED pills.
	You know, that's got to be the scary thing, I think, when you get to a certain age is risking going for the erection because of the blood, just moving all the blood to one, you know.
	Oh, yeah.
	You're probably going to, you probably can't stand up.
	To that battlefront.
	Yeah.
	But that's like, there's got to be something.
	It's probably a real compliment to a chick if you're like, I'm risking it all.
	I'm risking it all just to try to fuck you right now.
	That's the ultimate, like nothing could be any better.
	My grandfather lived in a like a, like, I don't know what nursing home type deal for like a couple years before he died.
	He was really, the people who worked there, it was just such a funny dynamic.
	It was like all, it was like all black people from like the inner city and then like old Jews.
	And they, the, all the black people who work there are just rolling their eyes at these old people the whole time.
	My grandfather, every time I went to see him, he accused them of stealing from him.
	None of these people were ever stealing from him.
	None of them.
	It was just pure racism.
	Like it was just, and it was like things that like, he'd be like, they took the art off the wall.
	And I'd be like, there was no art on this wall.
	This is all in your mind.
	He's like, there's not now.
	He made me, he made me move a dresser.
	I was like 12. And he made me move this big dresser to check if there was change behind it.
	Oh, yeah.
	And then there was nothing.
	I was like, there's no change behind it.
	And he was like, they stole it.
	And I was like, wait, there was supposed to be change behind it?
	Like, you were keeping your change?
	That's the old dresser.
	That's the Jewish change behind the dresser trick, I think, isn't it?
	You're Jewish?
	You're not that good.
	I am.
	You are.
	And so are you Israeli too?
	Is that the same thing?
	No.
	No, no, no.
	Israel is the nation.
	I have nothing to do with that.
	Okay.
	But someone's Jewish.
	There just means that they have family that's from Israel originally?
	No, not even necessarily.
	It's just like you, it's, you know, Judaism, it's a weird thing because it's like a religion, but then it's also kind of a race, and then it's kind of a nationality with Israel.
	So basically, a bunch of Jews went and started their own country in Israel in the 40s.
	But these were Jews from Europe who went to, you know, now, according to the Bible or whatever, thousands of years ago, we were all from there.
	But the Jews from Europe went and started there, but lots of other Jews just didn't leave Europe or didn't leave America.
	And so they never had anything to do with Israel.
	Yeah.
	Oh, okay.
	But they still play on kind of like your, you know, come on, you got to support us because we're for you.
	We're, this is the Jewish state.
	This is what protects Jewish people.
	So a lot of Jews do feel sympathy to Israel, even the ones who don't have like any connection, even ones who have never been there.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	No, that's interesting.
	Yeah, because sometimes I wonder like, yeah, because I start hearing about like Jewish, then I hear Zionist and Zionist means Zionist means, I think technically speaking, Zionist means you believe that Jews should have a homeland in what is now called Israel.
	So that's more like the belief that Jews should have this country over there.
	And then now then there's like kind of a separation between that and someone could theoretically be a Zionist, but also be like, the way they're doing it over there is all wrong.
	Right.
	So you don't have to like support the government.
	But Zionist typically means that.
	But now it's just kind of become, it's become shorthand for someone who supports Israel.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So someone who supports the country Israel is Zionist.
	And what sometimes I see, black Zionists, is that just like, is that like Zionism just like with a backbeat or whatever?
	Like, what is it?
	Because you know what I'm talking about?
	Yes.
	Well, those guys.
	And they're like, we're the reals.
	And I'm like, I don't know what that is.
	That's a whole other thing.
	Those guys, I grew up in New York City and they would always be out like in Midtown Manhattan.
	And there was no, let me tell you something.
	And Theo, I mean, I've come up around some incredibly talented comedians.
	I've seen some of the best in the world.
	There is no better comedy show than being like 15 and just sitting there and watching these guys.
	They'd scream at people and then people would get furious back at them.
	I've watched like they, because their thing is that they're the real Jews.
	And then they get like little old Jewish men will start yelling at them.
	No, you're not the real Jew.
	I'm the real Jew.
	And we would just be like stone teenagers just watching.
	It's like, would the real slim savings please stand up, you know?
	Is that an okay Jewish joke to make or not?
	I mean, as far as I'm concerned, it was good.
	Just, yeah, sorry.
	That was pretty good.
	So they, I don't know what their whole claim is.
	I don't know, but they say they're the real Jews and the Jews are just pretending to be the Jews, but they're really the white devils or something.
	Yeah, because that's a new thing I've been seeing.
	I would see it and then sometimes I wouldn't see it.
	And now in different, when I'm in, sometimes I'm performing in different cities, you'll see a group of black Zionists and they're trying to get you in or something, you know, and I can't tell what it is.
	But yeah, and then you see, you hear a lot of different terms.
	So yeah, I was just curious about that.
	Dave Smith, thanks for joining, man.
	Absolutely.
	You are a comedian and a, I want to say like a politico.
	Is that fair to say, kind of?
	Or you're like somebody with a point of view.
	Yeah, definitely that.
	Yeah.
	I love, I'm obsessed with politics and I talk a lot of shit about it.
	So yeah, I guess whatever you want to call that.
	But yeah.
	And you're very funny, man.
	Well, thank you.
	And you are a libertarian, is that right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And this is awesome, man, because so much of my audience and me really is just like, I don't know what a lot of the terminology is, right?
	Like even asking you about Zionists, like you hear it, but you're like, what is it, right?
	What does libertarian mean?
	To me, it's basically just, it's the belief in like in self-ownership, in non-aggression, in private property.
	Basically, the idea of libertarianism is that like you own your body, you own your life, you ought to be free.
	So long as you're not impeding on the rights of other people, you ought to be able to do whatever you want to do.
	And so a belief in free market capitalism, peace, non-intervention, and just basically the idea of what most people think of Americanism as.
	That like, oh yeah, you have freedom of speech, you have the right to own a gun, you have the right to own some property, you have the right to live your life the way you see best.
	And do libertarians believe in government?
	Well, there's a range of different thoughts within libertarians.
	To the extent that libertarians believe in government, we believe the role of government is to protect people's liberty.
	Government shouldn't be doing anything more than that.
	Like if they're doing anything more than that, then they've become tyrannical.
	Which I think is true.
	I think is just objectively true.
	Like no matter what is if government's doing anything that is more than just protecting property or protecting people, then it's always at the expense of someone.
	Even if they're giving somebody something, they're taking it from someone else because they don't actually have anything themselves.
	Right.
	So like, what would an example of that be?
	I mean, anything.
	Like, even if you just took it down to like, if government is cutting a check to one person, well, how do they get that check?
	It's not like, you know what I mean?
	Like they didn't pool their money together.
	They took it from someone.
	They taxed one group of people to give it to another.
	Got it.
	So any service falls within that.
	Got it.
	Understood.
	Cool, man.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So that's good information.
	Thanks.
	Let's talk about some things that are happening right now.
	One of the biggest ones right now is TikTok and the sale of it, right?
	Like there's a big uproar right now.
	You see a lot of videos on TikTok about what to do if TikTok disappears, where to go.
	People are like, there's like safe rooms and shit.
	I'm like, I think people are probably, they'll figure it out, but maybe some people won't.
	What do you think is behind the TikTok ban?
	Do you think it's actually going to get banned?
	I'm very unsure about the second question.
	I really don't know.
	It'll be interesting.
	I don't use TikTok.
	And so I don't really have a connection to like the, but the people who love TikTok, I've seen this too.
	They're losing their minds.
	Like they're like, I think they are some type of addicted to it.
	What's behind it is really interesting.
	And I think that that's like, it's kind of a, it's a, it's a microcosm of like kind of what's going on in general.
	But TikTok very quietly to people who are not like on it and not using it, but it became like the main like news source for young people.
	Yeah.
	And like in a crazy way that for people our age, if you even think back to like when we were little kids, it's so like, it's hard to even imagine that it's real.
	It's like, oh, they now these young people are connected to information in a way that totally like goes around older people at all.
	They have nothing to do with it.
	You know what I mean?
	Like Nancy Pelosi is sitting there just furious.
	Like, what is this?
	No, they don't care about like, they don't even know the people on TV news, you know?
	And so, okay, when I say this, I'm not just like pulling this out of my ass.
	Like, there was like one, it might have been the head of the ADL, but it was someone real high up in the, in the ADL who said this.
	And what is ADL?
	Anti-Defamation League.
	And then there was a...
	So they are, it's like graffiti or whatever?
	Yeah, well, not exactly.
	They're not, the name doesn't exactly describe what they do, but they're one of these people.
	Yes, in fact, it was him.
	It was Greenblatt.
	CEO of Anti-Defamation League.
	They're a league that was started by Jewish people, and it was kind of, at least at the beginning, I think, was to be whatever, fighting anti-Semitism Or exposing this stuff.
	They've come to be an organization that will really try to go after and ruin anybody who's critical of Israel.
	Right.
	I said they had some issue with Elon.
	Now I remember maybe a year ago or eight months ago or something, there was something with him.
	Maybe that was ADL.
	Yeah, it's possible.
	But so they, one of the things that they were real upset about was that from October 7th, 23, up until now, TikTok has just been dominated by, you know, anti-Israel kind of critical of this war.
	That's where a lot of the young people are seeing all the images of like the Palestinian babies dying and stuff.
	The kids, like people like beat, begging for food and stuff like that.
	A lot of like the ICC, when they tried to condemn Netanyahu, that was loose on theirs.
	It was real information.
	Yes, yes, that's right.
	And if you remember, it was really interesting to me, but I don't know, what is it, like a year ago around now, Osama bin Laden's letter to America went viral on TikTok.
	It was so fascinating for me.
	Like I'm 41, and so I was 18 when 9-11 happened.
	Wow.
	You know, and then it's interesting to watch this whole new generation of 18-year-olds like discover this for the first time.
	It's like, oh yeah, there was a whole thing went down.
	And they're actually reading Osama bin Laden's own letter about why he did it.
	Now, of course, they're young lefties.
	So a lot of times, I mean, they were like, Osama was right.
	And, you know, I'm not saying they took like the best message from it, but it was interesting to watch them kind of like engaging.
	Yeah, it's like wearing that Shay Govara shirt, you know?
	Yeah.
	You're like, I don't know exactly what he was doing, but yeah, it seems cool.
	It seems like a vibe.
	But then also to hear from like a person who was labeled completely as horrible, right?
	As the enemy, like Osama bin Laden was, and to see some of their thoughts, right?
	Like to see how they believe that they came to be the enemy, right?
	Not taking a side in it, but just like, it's kind of fascinating that you weren't able to really get some of those in some places and some platforms, you might not be able to hear that view.
	Well, imagine, I mean, like, imagine it was just like a, like a personal thing.
	Like if I, if there was like, if I told you I was like in an argument with someone, like a mutual friend of ours, and I was like, yo, me and this guy just got in a huge fight.
	And you were like, what happened?
	And I was like, well, he's a monster.
	He's evil.
	He hates everything good.
	He's made of pure venom.
	And I think you might be like, okay, but like, what's really going on here?
	Because it's not a matter of taking sides to just be like, he probably has a side too.
	Right.
	He's a point of view.
	He probably has a point.
	And what the American people were told, I remember when I was 18, was they hate us for our freedom.
	And like, that was all you were allowed to think of al-Qaeda right after 9-11 was like, they did this because they hate freedom.
	They hate your mom.
	They hate everything about our life.
	They hate everything that's good.
	They hate that we have, you know, whatever, that we're Christian, whatever it is.
	And.
	Or do they have freedom of religion?
	They hate any of that.
	Like there was all these, it was like, but the only way you could get that information was through like the main network.
	Yeah, you had to listen to Dick Cheney have a conversation with some news lady on CNN or something like that.
	But what's interesting, I think, for a lot of these young people is when you read Osama bin Laden, you realize that, and I don't think the conclusion should be that he was right.
	Obviously, you're never right when you're killing civilians.
	Right.
	Note to Israel.
	But he had legitimate grievances.
	And a bunch of those grievances are things that they never wanted the American people to know about because then you might have a slightly different feeling about the war.
	I think the same thing is true with the war in Ukraine, too.
	It's like why they never want you to hear what Putin's issue actually is.
	Why did he invade this country?
	It's why they all flipped out when Tucker went and interviewed him.
	Because you're like, oh, shit, you get to hear his perspective now.
	And it's not that necessarily the correct position is to side with Putin.
	It's not.
	Or to side with Osama, it's not.
	But it's not wrong to recognize that like, okay, he's got a point about this.
	He's got a point about that.
	Osama, aside from being an Islamist, which we all know he was.
	And what does Islamist mean?
	Well, meaning like a fundamentalist, you know, not just a Muslim, but like a believer in like the most fundamentalist doctrine of Islam.
	So he was that.
	But then he's got all these grievances listed in his declaration of war against America, in his open letter to America.
	What were some of them?
	Can we bring them up, you think?
	Or is it too deep to go into?
	No, no.
	I mean, it's not even that complicated.
	I mean, the major ones were the number one was that we have military bases in their holy land in Saudi Arabia.
	They hate this.
	They find this to be like a total, and I'm no like expert on Islam, but from their perspective, this is blasphemy.
	Oh, I can imagine that.
	Say if I'm going to my church or my religious place, my place of worship.
	Oh, yeah.
	And there's a guy sitting over there.
	And a foreign military.
	Right.
	Foreign group loudly drinking out of a juice box or something and pouring a loud candy in his hand because he doesn't give a fuck.
	He doesn't even probably recognize that my religion even exists.
	He may not.
	He may, he may not.
	But either way.
	But still, that's going to make me fume.
	Oh, dude.
	But also, like, I mean, look, if we, even if just you looked at it from a not religious point of view, I mean, if there was like Chinese or Russian military bases in our country and we knew that like they're the real boss, you know what I mean?
	Like, it's not, let's get real.
	America is not like on par with the Saudi government.
	We're the world empire and they're our little satellite over there.
	That would make people infuriated.
	I mean, people over here, liberals over here got infuriated about Trump being connected to Russia and that wasn't even true.
	So like imagine it was true and there were Russian bases like all over the place.
	People would lose their minds.
	They would stand for it.
	That was the major one.
	But it's the military bases, it was us, us, our support for Israel and what they do to the Palestinians.
	He mentioned that?
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, this was a major, major part.
	Wow, I didn't know that.
	Yes.
	So they were furious about that because Israel is not too kind to their Palestinian neighbors.
	And so that was a big part of it.
	Yeah, it's heartbreaking over there.
	Oh, yeah.
	And this has been the worst thing that Israel's ever done to the Palestinians over the last year plus.
	But it's not like this is where it started.
	It was going on since.
	Yeah, we had some guys come on and talk about israel and palestine just like the histories of both of them you know it was cool we had rabbi wolpe come on and we had um basim yousuf yousuf come on and just to give like um the two different kind of different sides and take us through some the different perspectives of history um but yeah so this was the message right here that uh that osama had written right yep so those were some of his big issues yes looks like it here i can't okay
	criticism of american military bases in the middle east condemnation of u.s support for israel accusation of u.s exploitation of the region and number number three so there what he what he was specifically talking about let's just say it so we well so what it says here is i'm not sure what we're reading but accusations of u.s exploitation of the region's natural resources and what he's talking about there is us insisting that um they keep oil artificially low uh the price of oil artificially low which is true i mean that you know even just when i
	remember a couple years ago when inflation was at its worst um by the biden administration just asked the saudis to lower the price of oil because you know then well that'll make prices cheaper here help face less political pressure of people being mad about gas being so expensive but when you really think about what that the ask is there the ask is hey make your people poorer so that our people can be richer and so this was a big beef they had too but by lowering the value of it basically yeah by saying it's worth less by
	selling it for less we get cheaper energy but your people get less money um so that was one of their major beefs and then the um at the time you got to remember because this was in the 90s or actually i'm not sure the letter to america might have been later but his declaration of war against america was like in 96 but so the big thing at the time was the um clinton's bombing campaign of iraq and his blockade of iraq so there's like it's debated how many people died from it the un estimated at one point that 500 000 children
	had died from starvation and malnutrition so that was enough so it's like he had all these grievances and a lot of them involved the u.s either directly or indirectly killing muslim kids yeah and you know i mean look i obviously you're he's wrong for doing terrorism but i think most of us could admit that like yeah if anyone you know if if any of us like children that we care about were being slaughtered we might be ready to do some violent stuff on behalf of that too
	i mean well depending on what perspective look up robin hood as a tale of a terrorist depending on what perspective you look at it through yeah no i mean look and and that's or or you know you know what i'm saying does that make any sense to you look at yeah yeah well i think the like i think according to the british empire our founding fathers were a bunch of terrorists probably right oh well when you look back to american history i mean what we did along to the native americans sure they had huge beef amongst each other but they were also blatantly lied to and taken advantage of countless times absolutely by other people that had come in you know by
	white settlers that had come in or um and by the spanish as well you know a lot of times that all gets put onto uh honkies or whatever but it was also darker honkies the spanish yeah just so you know we don't even consider them white okay so it was really your vikas with each other but um but so let's let's tie this back into the tick tock uh-huh okay so you're saying that it's because and this i believe that yeah one of the main reasons tick tock has been banned is or is there's a threat of the ban or the force of the sale
	is because they don't want it to be in the hands of a place where they can't have um the other side of the story come out whether it be about palestine or about anything no the cover story the reason they claimed at first that they were trying to ban it was because of china but it really wasn't until the war broke out in gaza that this pressure kind of started mounting but the china thing i mean i don't know you know i remember like tucker did a whole thing on this back when he still had the show on fox
	news and he was showing the thing where like i don't know have you ever seen like the way the algorithm on tick tock works in china compared to the way it works in america there's just more educational the number one trending video for 17 year olds in china is like a kid playing the violin or something and then ours is just some chick twerking you know like on a sports car or something like that and then they were like kind of saying like oh see it's china's poisoning our kids minds but i always thought i mean i don't know what the answer is but like isn't it possible that our kids are just poisoning our own minds
	yeah like their algorithm is just showing them this garbage and their algorithm is showing them this because like if i go if i just made a conscious effort to go on twitter every day and only look up like violin lessons i'm sure that's what the algorithm would start sending me after a while so i have i've always like been suspicious that it's like i think our culture is just messed up and that's we're our worst enemy at this yeah a lot of the same time because it's like we want certain things but we're not willing to um let go of any comforts or any or really battle some of our addictive
	natures you know um i think some of that's too is just a side effect of capitalism and a side effect of comfort over time and a side effect of like kind of deterioration of our society you know like even if you look at like i was reading this the other day about pornography like a lot of the the videos in pornography someone will be like dad's daughter dad's when you really think about the fact that that's how they're you know what i'm saying it's like there's somebody has a dark goal to tear down like the little things like
	family things that matter you know what i'm saying like so um you know i i was wondering i remember asking a friend about this like this was a while ago but it was 10 years ago or something like that but it was like when i started noticing that i was like what's up with all the porn categories of like family swap and this and that and a buddy of mine said this to me and i thought oh man that kind of makes sense but he was like oh you know what it is is he goes nowadays like families are so broken up and mishmashed and everyone's from divorces and
	everything that so many people grew up with like a stepmom and step siblings so you'd just be a kid and then all of a sudden you got like these new girls who aren't your mother and sister you know what i mean like living in your house and so like that's what led to that which i don't know if that theory is correct or not sounds like that dude kind of i was like yeah either he's a really sick person or you're on to something that guy sounds like he was building a like he was literally using you to build a case for for
	a future indictment he was going to face.
	But no, it's kind of.
	He came out with it really quickly, too.
	Like it was.
	It's like, we just signed this petition right in your day.
	I'm so glad you asked.
	I've been dying to talk to someone about this.
	But let me, I'm trying to tie this.
	What were we talking about in my mind?
	Well, TikTok and then- It's like we just keep creating this stuff, but, or just ridiculousness.
	And we get addicted to the ridiculousness, but also some of that's part of the freedom of just being in a place where you can make whatever you want.
	And you have that like freedom of creation kind of to an extent or freedom of your own creativity.
	Some places you can't even really be creative in because it's not allowed, but the expressions of certain creativities aren't.
	Yeah, I don't buy the Chinese.
	I don't know if I buy the Chinese thing or not because to me, it's like, aren't all these apps like all of them seem like they're foreign to me?
	Yeah.
	And what difference does it make?
	I mean, I just, you know, I know people were giving me shit because I said something about this on Pierce Morgan's show the other day, but, you know, they were trying to make it out like it was, it was, the topic was about how Mark Zuckerberg just announced that he's going to let people talk on Facebook again or whatever.
	And, you know, they, someone was arguing with me that like, well, the government, the U.S. government has to like have these conversations with Facebook because all of these foreign governments are trying to propagandize us.
	And I'm just like, I don't know after the last few years, how are you going to tell me that DC should get in charge because other people are trying to lie to us?
	Like all of the most blatant, most consequential lies have come from my own government.
	So like, I just don't get worked up over this like Iran is trying to propagandize.
	I agree.
	Okay, so like tell me, when was the last time Iran had like an effective propaganda campaign that actually, you know, like led to something in America?
	Okay, well, my own government had this country, like literally had people like cutting family members out of their lives because they didn't take a vaccine.
	Yeah, and the Russia gave us about these.
	Yeah, the Russia gave you literally sat here all you guys and literally told us that what, if true, would have been the biggest story in the history of the United States.
	Nothing true at all.
	But imagine if it were true.
	Like you were making the claim that the sitting president of the United States of America is involved in a conspiracy with a hostile foreign power.
	It was all bullshit.
	And all you guys still have your jobs.
	All the people who sold that are still the ones complaining on the news today that no one trusts them without even thinking about that.
	Yeah.
	And you could ask in a regular, I'm a pretty regular guy, I think, you know, like, and I don't mean that in like a braggy way.
	I just feel like I try to, you know, I try to be smarter sometimes.
	It's hard for me.
	And then I realized I just have to try my best at where I'm at.
	And I thought immediately Russia, I was like, they're running out of steam.
	They have an old dude.
	A lot of people go over there for perverted stuff.
	You know, it's like, I could certainly see a lot of our leaders passing through there.
	And you know what I'm saying?
	We'll do a few favors for Russia because they don't want some videos getting released.
	But I don't think that this old, you know, this hurt, they don't seem like they're on the cusp of like chain, like holding us at bay for something.
	You know, I just immediately they didn't pass the smell test to me.
	Well, also just that it's Donald Trump.
	I mean, like, say whatever you want about Donald Trump.
	He was a known commodity.
	He's like the most American thing.
	He's the most famous rich guy of all time.
	Like you're telling me he was a Russian spy?
	It just made, it made no sense.
	And then they had nothing.
	They had no evidence to support.
	Never, except they just beat you into it over and over again with the police.
	Oh, I just got a notification from MoonPay that Bitcoin is trading at near $100,000.
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	That's V-A-N-T-A.com slash theo for $1,000 off.
	And the thing, and that's where I think, that's really where I think the media started to go really lose its grip on people and on control.
	And so that's why I really worry a lot, like with this TikTok ban, I'm like, well, because if news is getting out there, right, about all types of things, it could be like there was also a lot of Barbara O'Neill.
	Did you see those clips on her?
	She's a medicine woman, an Australian medicine woman.
	But there was a lot of like natural remedy stuff that started to just be put out there.
	Like, I don't know if it was valid or not, but it was like you would see a ton of it.
	Like, like, so basically opposition to all these medicines, all these like prescriptions you need.
	Like, so I could see certainly how nobody, like, the powers that be, if they exist, don't want a lot of this type of information out there.
	Oh, yeah.
	And especially with Palestine, you know, I don't think, you know, I don't understand, you know, I don't understand what's going on over there.
	I mean, that Netanyahu guy.
	I mean, what he's doing to these people is like, it's the most inexcusable, just horrific thing in the world.
	And the fact that, you know, like I said this on Rogan's podcast and I, I got shit for it, but I stand by this.
	But it's just like, you know, it's just like throughout all of history, there's just all this horrible shit.
	It's just slavery and wars and genocides and ethnic cleansing campaigns and all this.
	And every single point in history, there was someone there who would justify it and be like, no, we have to.
	We have to.
	And we have reasons why it's okay to do this.
	And they bend over backward and twist themselves into pretzels to explain why they're the real victims and they really have to do this to these people because if they don't, then they do it to them.
	But it's all indefensible.
	You're like, you're just defending evil shit.
	And I feel the same way about Israel, man.
	Like, it's just to defend what they're doing to a group of people who are captive, who they've been occupying since 1967.
	You know, you've been occupying.
	They don't have a military.
	They don't have a government.
	They don't have an air force.
	They don't have it.
	They have no means of defending themselves.
	And you're just destroying the place.
	But you're not letting the news out.
	That's the thing, right?
	You're not letting people get a fair take of what could potentially be going on there, right?
	You're not letting it.
	You're doing everything you can to stop that, right?
	They always do.
	You know, the only thing that's different is that now it's actually a challenge for them to do that.
	But every war relies on lies and every war relies on totally dehumanizing the enemy.
	Because if you can't do that, you're in a lot of trouble.
	You know, if you leave just a little inch of humanity for those people, then immediately you're going to go, oh my God, what are we doing?
	Because if that was your like brother's kid or your nephew, your son, you'd lose your mind about someone doing that to them.
	Oh, well, I think it's like, I'm not an anti-Israel guy.
	I am a, but that guy seems, it just seem, he gives me this vibe that it's evil, right?
	And it's not something I am making in my head.
	It's something that starts inside of me.
	It's not like I'm, because I know it because I knew it when I went to Cuba when I was in college and I would see people that would come up to the windows and they weren't allowed to share what they, their, they had to whisper if they wanted to tell you something, right?
	Or when we went to the libraries there and they only had books that started at Fidel.
	Their history books started at fucking Fidel.
	So if you're a kid and you wanted to, you couldn't, you didn't exist.
	Your grandparents didn't even, whoever, your essence didn't exist, you know?
	So, and they had, I read a quote somewhere that the Yetan Yahoo guy that his father said that, oh, he didn't like Arabs, right?
	And he didn't like the essence of Arabs.
	And that to me was just like a thing.
	Like, that's the same type of shit it seemed like that Hitler would have said.
	Like, I don't like whatever the granule, the grain.
	I don't like the atom of this person.
	I don't know, man.
	Maybe, and, and I don't know.
	No, it's listen.
	I mean, it's, uh, there's, you know, my.
	It just makes me sick.
	And the biggest thing, it just breaks my heart.
	Like, and so I know when that kind of shit's happening, where my feel, it's like, that's where it comes from.
	It's like, you know, it just like, I don't know.
	I've always had a barometer for like the underdog, I think, you know, and maybe that's all, maybe some of it's that too, you know?
	I don't know everything.
	I don't know a ton of history, you know, but but yeah, some of that shit, it just fucking hurts me.
	Think about how many children have been killed.
	How many kids have been killed over there?
	Estimation.
	I mean, the estimates, I think, are, have been so far undercounted.
	I think a lot more people than we initially thought are dying.
	But it was, I think I saw the estimation, the estimate was that two-thirds of the dead were women and children.
	So I don't know what, you know, exactly the breakup between the women and children is.
	And I don't know if there are good numbers on that.
	But Gaza is 50% children.
	That's one of the major things that makes it such a humanitarian.
	Well, yeah, because it sounds like such a fun place to kids, Gaza.
	If you tell the kid, like, where are we going to go?
	You know what I'm saying?
	If you're like, we're going to go to Yemen or Gaza, they're going to go there.
	One of the parks at Disney World.
	Yeah, and I don't mean Epcot, Gunnard.
	It's back here.
	Conservative figures show that more than 6,000 women, 11,000 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last 12 months.
	I mean, it's way, this is way, way undercounted.
	It seems like it to me, yeah.
	For today, like as of right now, I think the estimates are right.
	Dude, here's the toughest part.
	A lot of my Jewish friends are heartbroken by this, man.
	And they'll come to me and, you know, and we'll be talking about it, you know, because, and they're just like, it's just sick that this is the guy who's representing us, you know, and that this is the choice.
	I don't understand why.
	Well, I guess if you live in Israel, then you feel like, well, these people are going to kill us.
	And so you don't have, you have to, you have no choice but to support your governor.
	I mean, I don't know if you have no choice, but there's definitely like there's this human impulse, and it's, this is always what's going on with all these wars on both sides.
	Are you going to get in trouble for talking about this, do you think?
	Yeah, probably.
	I don't know if, I don't know.
	But yeah, maybe.
	I can't really get in any more trouble.
	Have you been in a lot of trouble?
	Well, I've been talking about it so much for the last year, and I don't know what trouble even means anymore.
	I mean, I'm fine.
	So like some people seem mad at me on the internet, but I don't care.
	And so it's, I, it seems okay.
	But, you know, of course, like you, I could totally imagine that if you were, like, let's say one of your family members was killed by Hamas militants on October 7th.
	I could understand where you'd have the attitude.
	You'd be like, man, let's go fucking fuck this.
	Oh, yeah, Attorney William Wallace.
	You know, sure.
	But that also is the same thing that's going on with the Palestinians, right?
	And so a whole bunch of them, in fact, a lot more of them have seen their family members killed and stuff.
	And so they're ready to go, you know, like slaughter as many people as they can.
	In the same sense that like right after 9-11, Americans were like, hey, let's go blow some shit up.
	I mean, I don't know.
	You tell us who did this and let's go blow them up.
	And then like, even if it's not exactly the people who did it, you know, okay.
	I mean, when we fought the war in Afghanistan, even forget Iraq, that just had nothing to do with it.
	But in Afghanistan, it's like it wasn't Afghans who attacked us.
	It was it was some Arabs who were.
	Right.
	It was Saudis and Egyptians, right, who were hanging out in Afghanistan.
	And then with the special ops missions, we drove them all out and destroyed all their bases.
	And then it was like, okay, we got this Taliban here.
	Well, they're not exactly guilty of it, but well, something's got to be blown up.
	And so we're going to go fight those guys.
	But then the thing is that the thing with Osama bin Laden's letter is that you're like, oh, but that's kind of their motivation too.
	Like they're also a bunch of people going, hey, we just saw a bunch of our people get killed.
	We're going to come fuck some of you guys up.
	And so that's kind of the attitude everybody has.
	Yeah, well, that's the crazy thing.
	It's like you, and the toughest part is the people are the ones who have to go and shed the blood.
	The people are the ones who have to have the blood shed.
	Yep.
	Based on what their leaders, who they elect, and they would never elect them and tell them to do that, then choose to do.
	That's what, I'm just like, how does this?
	But then that's how things, that's just being alive, I guess, in human sometimes, as sad as that is, or that's just how humanity has gone for a long time and society has gone and war is gone.
	But yeah, you have to think how many Iraqi people who had nothing to do with 9-11, if they had nothing to do with it, were affected by our military presence over there and are just waiting in the wings to affect harm on New America.
	Well, I mean, this is why we had to deal with that insurgency over there that took us so many years to ultimately lose to.
	You know, there's people, people don't like when you invade their country and destroy their homes and kill their relatives and stuff like that.
	And yeah, imagine if you think about that, first of all, nobody in Iraq had anything to do with 9-11.
	I mean, there were some al-Qaeda members who came into Iraq to fight as part of the insurgency after we invaded.
	But like when we invaded, there was no one in Iraq who had anything to do with 9-11.
	And they must have been like, what the fuck?
	Well, imagine, particularly if you're like, Saddam Hussein was their problem, not ours.
	Like, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, but he wasn't our brutal dictator.
	They were the ones who had to live under Saddam Hussein.
	So now they're living under this brutal dictator, and then they got the most powerful military in the history of the world invading and just wrecking the country, all because, well, we could get into that, but largely because Netanyahu wanted us to do it.
	Did he really?
	Netanyahu is a huge, huge part of the war in Iraq.
	Why do we keep supporting him?
	There's an interesting dynamic.
	I mean, there's a lot of things going on.
	So part of it is that there's the, well, there were the neoconservatives who were really big in the George W. Bush years, and they were all of them fanatically pro-Israel.
	There's APEC and there's the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
	And there are these organizations in the country that will, it is their business to ruin your life if you're against Israel, particularly if you're in politics and you're against Israel.
	I mean, they just poured insane amounts of money.
	They lost, but they tried to get Thomas Massey primaried out of his Congress seat.
	He's the guy that doesn't want to have an AIPAC guy, right?
	Yeah, he's the only one who doesn't, according to him, the only one who doesn't have an APAC guy.
	So they do not like him.
	There's lots of other factors involved in this.
	There's also things like blackmail operations.
	There's like Epstein, stuff like that.
	And then there's also evangelical Christians in this country fanatically support Israel as well.
	So there's like a whole bunch of forces that Israel has a, let's say, a very outsized influence on U.S. policy.
	Is there something that I guess that, yeah, I guess I don't understand why we would support it while they're doing that murdering?
	Yeah.
	Well, and then even if you unless there's something I don't understand, like that's also the thing.
	It's like, do we, are they just our best friend from a long time and that's just what it is?
	And so it's like a, like, I just, I worry that I just also don't understand like the history of much as why there is so much support there.
	Well, it's been.
	But you have to have a support in the Middle East.
	You have to have like a friend in there.
	Well, that's been, that was the thinking for a long time.
	Right.
	You know, and that's, it's, um, and, and that if we had, you know, there was a big concern, a lot of people in the American security apparatus back in the day that the Soviet Union was going to take control of the Middle East.
	And if they really controlled that oil supply, then they would be too strong and we'd have a real problem on our hands.
	This is why Jimmy Carter, who just died, he in 1980 declared what's known as the Carter Doctrine, where he was like, listen, we are treating the Persian Gulf like it's America.
	Essentially saying to the USSR, they had already invaded Afghanistan.
	And it was like, if you invade Iran, we are going to fight.
	We're going to fight with the U.S. military because we won't let you have all of this.
	So that's always been a concern.
	And I do think that Israel being kind of like our buddy there felt like, okay, this will be a good way That we can control the region.
	But then, you know, this is, yeah, this was at his State of the Union in early 1980.
	Yeah, the Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union address on January 23rd, 1980, which stated the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf.
	So there's a ton of business interests over there, and there's a ton of like peacekeeping or what we believe is peacekeeping over there.
	By the way, it's interesting here, right?
	So this is, he's saying this in January of 1980.
	It was in 1979 was when the Ayatollahs had the revolution in Iran.
	So this is the government that's in Iran today, our mortal enemy.
	They had just come into power.
	So what Jimmy Carter's talking about doing here is defending Iran against the Soviet Union, like this country now that is the one that they all want war with.
	Back then he was like, but if, you know what I mean, if Gorbachev or whoever was Gorbachev in there yet by 80, yeah, I think so.
	They'd be like, if he goes and moves on Iran, then we're going to come to the defense militarily of Iran, which is just kind of weird to think about now.
	So this was saying that if the Soviets intervene, then we're going to come and defend Iran.
	Yeah, and they had just lured them into the war in Afghanistan, which was also their plan.
	And this guy, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who you see down there, he's the national security advisor.
	He had been the one who really pushed this policy of luring the Soviets into Afghanistan to give them their own Vietnam was the idea.
	And a lot of people credit that as one of the major factors that brought the Soviet Union down.
	And so that, so we had lured them into a war in Afghanistan, but then they got real concerned that like while they're here, they might also just go take Iran.
	So we better send them a message like, if you do that, you're going to have problems.
	Wow.
	So that was the idea was to keep them out of there.
	It just shows you how much we've had like once you become this thing that's this entity that's trying to control everything, how many it's hard to keep, you know, they say like it's hard to keep track of the lies or whatever.
	That's not really it, but it's hard to, it just seems like hard to manage.
	It's hard to be an air traffic controller for the world, you know, especially when the planes have different religions and ideas and histories and beliefs and, you know, hopes, you know, it's, that's.
	Oh, it's insane.
	I mean, the job.
	Yeah, I mean, imagine.
	It's just impossible.
	It's impossible.
	That's what I'm saying.
	It seems impossible.
	And especially at a time when our own country is struggling so much.
	And I don't know, yeah, I don't mean to be like mean to Israel.
	I just don't understand.
	You know, I love my Jewish friends.
	I don't understand that shit, though.
	I don't understand why they're doing that over there.
	And then I think it falls in the power of the wealthier person to figure it out.
	Well, that's right.
	That's exactly right.
	And it's that if you're coming from, if you're in a situation where you're, look, when it comes to Israel and Palestine, it's not, there's no parody between the two of them.
	It's not like, oh, these are two nation states around the same strength.
	Like Palestine isn't a nation state.
	They don't have a government.
	So there's a halfway house of people, of Arabs.
	Yes, exactly.
	And so there's when Israel has all the power, all the leverage, all the chips.
	And if you're in a situation where everybody's saying, hey, you guys have been like at war for so long and we want peace.
	Well, who's supposed to make the first concession when one side has all the chips?
	Obviously, you need that side.
	Don't push another bullying video at me unless that's going to be the first one that you fucking cite.
	Exactly.
	That's the thing.
	And that's the shit I don't understand sometimes.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I don't understand how we would have media that would be like so anti-bullying and then this fucking bullying is going on.
	And it's like, well, what kind of, who's believing you?
	You know, or what are we doing?
	I don't know.
	And also, I don't fucking know, dude.
	And I'm like nine days off of nicotine.
	So.
	Oh, are you really?
	Yeah.
	You gave up nicotine.
	Yeah.
	Good for you, dude.
	I mean, I guess.
	Well, were you like smoking or vaping or just doing the pouches?
	Oh, I would do, I was smoked.
	I was vaping.
	Okay.
	I was vaping.
	It's sad to say it as an adult too, like slipping off, just slurping on something.
	I know.
	I vape all the time.
	I'm totally embarrassed by it.
	I wish I was a man and I just smoked, but I don't know.
	Yeah, but if you go on your porch now and light a pipe, somebody will shoot you with a fucking musket.
	And no one will feel bad for you.
	Everyone will side with that guy.
	They'll be like, they'll be like, free the slaves.
	And they'll just fucking pull right up and fucking pop one in you.
	But so do you believe that the TikTok ban, what do you really believe?
	Or do you think we're still figuring it out?
	Do you think that our elected officials will let it stay around?
	Trump seems like he's wishy-washy on an issue.
	He does.
	Yes.
	He seems like he's not exactly clear what.
	And it's weird because the talk was initially the talk was like that it was a China thing.
	And Trump always tried to be the most hawkish on China.
	But even he does seem like he's not, doesn't really seem like he's got strong convictions about getting rid of it.
	My guess is that TikTok survives.
	I don't know if I'm right or wrong about that.
	Frank McCourt and someone else is going to be buying TikTok, they say.
	So I think the thing is that if they sell, then they escape the legislation because basically it was saying it's because it's owned, their parent company is owned by the CCP or whatever.
	So, you know, I have a feeling.
	I think that there's been, there was a real move to really censor the internet over the last few years.
	It seems to me like it's failed and that they've accepted they're not going to be able to do it.
	As the deadline for a potential TikTok ban in the U.S. approaches billionaire and former Los Angeles Dodgers owner, oh, hell yeah.
	Frank McCourt's Project Liberty confirmed making a formal offer to ByteDance, the platform's Chinese parent company to buy the social media giants American assets.
	And he was going to do it in conjunction with one of the guys from Sharks.
	Good evening.
	Sharks, whatever that show is.
	Shark Dance or whatever.
	Shark Boy.
	No, there's a woman.
	Shark Tank?
	Shark Tank.
	There you go.
	Shark Tank.
	Who was it?
	Danny or something from Shark Tank?
	Oh, one of them billionaires was going to throw in.
	Kevin O'Leary.
	So him and Kevin O'Leary, I believe, don't quote me on that, was supposed to be the videos are short on TikTok, right?
	Isn't that the idea?
	Some of them now can be longer.
	Some of them can be, I think 90 seconds is the length on Instagram.
	TikTok can be a couple minutes now.
	He's a weird thing how the internet has kind of like very organically grown into almost, it's almost like long form or seven seconds.
	Yeah.
	Like there's no, there's no like middle ground anymore.
	It's always like, okay, we want to hear a four-hour conversation or give me six seconds of whatever you got and then we'll do a hundred thousand of those.
	It is kind of true, huh?
	TikTok videos can range from three seconds to 60 minutes long, depending on how you film or upload the video.
	But this also could have been from ChatGPT.
	I don't know where, from AI, this fact.
	And so who knows if they're harboring that from years ago and today.
	Videos or images and TikTok stories can go up to 15 seconds long, but they disappear after 24 hours if you put in the story.
	So the way I look at it is kind of like, it's like if you had like, say like a buddy of yours or something was in like just an awful relationship, you know, like just like the chick he's with is like the worst.
	Oh, it's like you hate her and she's shitty to him and she treats, she's so mean to him.
	She cheats on him.
	She's just the worst.
	And then like if he breaks up with her and he's like, I'm just dating.
	I'm dating a bunch.
	And you're like, great.
	Thank God.
	You're like back out there.
	Go find someone else.
	That chick was a nightmare, you know?
	And they'd be like, well, I'm meeting some nice girls, but I'm meeting some real awful girls too.
	It's like, ah, okay, well, whatever.
	Just get out there.
	And that's kind of how I feel about, like, I'm just happy that the young generation isn't consuming the corporate media.
	And like, I'm sure on TikTok, they get some bad stuff and then they get some good stuff, but at least you're out there like shopping around and you're not just listening to like CNN tell you that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and we need to go fight this war with them or just listening to MSNBC tell you that Trump's a Russian spy or whatever.
	It's like, all right, yeah, get out there, mingle a little bit, see what kind of crazy person's on TikTok.
	I don't know.
	One of them might be like, oh, it's, you know, one of them's like, it's the Jews.
	And then someone else is like, you know, whatever.
	The gays or whatever.
	Okay, maybe some of them are wrong, but at least you got a shot of meeting someone who might have something interesting to say to you.
	Yeah, that's interesting, man.
	That's certainly, yeah.
	Yeah, I think, yeah, at least you're kind of out there meeting people.
	There's death, there's everything.
	There's like people shooting each other.
	There's Mexican stuff.
	There's dancing.
	There's, you know, bacchanal ya.
	There's people getting their nails done.
	Sometimes you pop into a live.
	You don't even know what's going on.
	You're just in some kid's live and he's eating a burger.
	There's some kid eating, look at this fucking burger.
	There's some kid like in a broth who lives like the under a brothel or something in Scotland.
	And somebody gave him a big burger and he just made this video.
	He's like, look at this burger.
	And it's like eight parties, eight parties stocked up, boys.
	And it fucking went crazy, right?
	And that kid could be the next governor of Glasgow, right?
	But it's like, that's the thing.
	I think, because people also can maybe over time, maybe they get to know you.
	I don't know what it is.
	But yeah, I think it's fascinating, man.
	And TikTok, it does pull more of my information.
	And that's the only thing.
	I just want it to be fair.
	That's my thing.
	I just want it to be fair.
	Don't say that this truth can't come out if this truth can't come out.
	Like just make it fair.
	You know what I'm saying?
	If America isn't a country that's American and it's a country that's owned by other countries, tell me that.
	If that's the case, but just let me live fair.
	Let me live through the truth.
	Look, 100%, I completely agree.
	And then also, it's just like, I think, like I was saying before, I don't trust any of you motherfuckers to be the arbiter of what is true and what isn't true.
	So forget anyone having this control over getting to decide what's misinformation or what's disinformation because it's the old, it's like the old Lord Atkin quote about like Atkins' diet?
	He's the original.
	No, it was before that.
	He didn't figure that out.
	Man, am I messing up?
	Atkin, I believe.
	He's the one who said the quote about power, corrupt.
	Power tends to corrupt.
	Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
	But it's like, as soon as you have the power to determine what the truth is, then you're corrupted already.
	Just by like having that power.
	And I never liked fucking rich people anyway, bro.
	Facts, dude.
	I fucking hated them.
	I didn't hate them, but I didn't fucking like them.
	Yeah.
	You know?
	I don't, yeah, I don't know.
	And maybe, yeah, and I have money now, and that's true, but I'll never fucking really have money, motherfucker.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Not like deep inside of me.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Like that part of me will never have any fucking money, bro.
	Now, you need three more generations of Vaughns before you're like a real rich prick who just thinks they're better like an old money.
	Oh, deep inside, dog.
	I'm a real fucking wigga, son.
	You feel me?
	What else?
	Oh, but Kevin O'Leary, I think I wanted to get that right.
	It was $250 million they offered to investor and shark tank star Kevin O'Leary is willing to pay up to $20 billion for TikTok, calling it a legacy opportunity.
	I think that that is a steal.
	Well, Elon bought Twitter for $44 billion, I think, right?
	But he's getting his use out of it.
	I mean, he doesn't see it.
	He doesn't seem to be enjoying himself on there.
	Is he addicted to Twitter, do you think?
	He tweets a lot.
	How many tweets does he have right now?
	Let's see how many tweets he has.
	And he tweets more than we think, I think, Dave.
	It's constant.
	I've clicked on his thing before and been like, Jesus.
	How do we see how many?
	It used to show you right up at the top.
	66.5,000 posts right up there.
	Right under his name at the top.
	Wait, so hold on.
	66.5 thousand posts.
	I want to like...
	I thought that's what it said.
	66.5,000.
	Do you see how many I have?
	I'm curious.
	how many tweets have I ever sent?
	Like, I want to compare this to...
	I mean, I use it pretty often.
	Yeah.
	22,000.
	All right.
	I'm falling behind.
	But I've spent too much time on Twitter.
	2012, it says there.
	How long have you been on?
	Well, it says January 2012.
	So I guess that's...
	Well, I guess he was on before, but when did he start really getting in?
	I think a lot of his have come recently, you know?
	yeah, he's real, and it'll be like late at night, too, and there'll be like just like a bunch of them all hours.
	Some of it's in like a Barbados accent, too.
	He does, he seems like he's enjoying kind of bureaucracy, doge coin, doge, doge, vivec, viveg, bus.
	Yeah, his shit gets very kind of archipelagian sometimes or something or barbadian, yeah.
	You all know I like to keep things cool, even in the winter, and nothing's cooler than a blue cube cold plunge.
	I'm fortunate enough to have one at home, and let me tell you, it's like baptizing your soul, baby, get in that little crispy bucket, baby.
	It gets rid of them demons we all have and makes you feel great for seven or eight hours afterwards.
	It's good.
	My buddy Thomas Schiffer, the genius behind Blue Cube, and I go way back, and he just launched a pre-sale for their new stand-up cold plunges.
	Wow.
	These things are the Cadillacs of cold plunge therapy.
	American-made, full-immersion, weatherproof frames, and built like a Sherman tank.
	I'll say this, they are built well.
	And because you're listening to me, you can get a sweet discount when you mention my name.
	That's right.
	Just tell them Theo sent you and they'll knock a good bit off the price.
	So if you're ready to boost your metabolism, eliminate inflation and blast away your anxiety, give them a call.
	Head over to their website, bluecubebaths.com, and dive into the details.
	Opt in on their website or give them a call.
	I am grateful for the one that I have, and I feel honestly thankful to be able to have one.
	I know they're not in everybody's price range, and that's understandable.
	But at the same time, I want to support my friend and his amazing company.
	Yeah, what's censorship?
	What do you think censorship looks like like right now?
	Do you think it's changing?
	It seems to me it's definitely changing.
	I mean, really drastically.
	And it's not gone.
	Like, there are still people who are getting censored.
	And there are still, there was a thing like a couple weeks ago where I guess a group of people who, let's say, the people who liberals would call anti-Semitic.
	And I think, you know, like people who talk a lot about the Jews, whatever the, I'm not like trying to add my own value judgment into this, but whatever you think you would call it.
	A lot of them lost their blue check marks and like stuff like that.
	What they were accusing people of doing anti-Semitic?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So there is there have been like there are, but I mean, to compare it to like, I mean, during like 2020, 2021, 2022, I mean, you couldn't, if you said anything about like the vaccine or whatever, I mean, you know, I know you felt it with, you know, you had the thing when Dana White was on.
	You were talking about sponsors giving you a hard time and stuff.
	There was a total, not just on social media, but in general, there was a total like feeling that like you weren't even allowed to say anything that went against the regime.
	Like the regime is this.
	That's a great point.
	And if you are against what they're doing right now, and I mean, I, you know, there's always pressure.
	Like there's always like you'll get called names or something if you do that.
	But for a while there, it was straight up like you would lose your, your accounts.
	And for a lot of people, like for me, that was a scary prospect for a long time because it was kind of like we had, at least in the comedy world that I'm in and in the political shit talking world that I'm in, it's, I'd kind of long ago accepted like, okay, I'm not going to get like a corporate job.
	Like no big corporation is going to hire me at this point, which is fine.
	But then you're like, oh, there's this internet thing.
	So you can have your show on the internet.
	You can have your own fans.
	But then when you have your own voice.
	Yeah, but then you're like, oh, they might come and take that away.
	It's not just that you can't get Saturday Live or something on Comedy Central or something like that, but it's like, oh, they could come and like, you know, if you, you could have your podcast, but if you can't have, if you can't be on iTunes or YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or whatever, you're kind of screwed in this world.
	And so I am very happy that at least now it at least kind of feels like the dominant culture seems to more be like, no, we should be able to say what we want to say right now.
	I think that's a very positive change.
	You think you're going to take me down for talking about Yetan Yahoo?
	No, I think you're going to be okay on this one.
	But I don't know.
	I mean, you know, I would hate to say that.
	And then like next week, you just show up at my house and you're just like, hey, man, can I crash for a while?
	Because you ruined me.
	So that's, I'll be like, all right.
	But you can be anti-yetanyahoo and not, and that's, you can, I can have that belief if I want, right?
	If I don't like his practices.
	Of course.
	And it's, oh, it's so ridiculous, the idea of like, in the same way, if you were like, well, I don't like Joe Biden very much.
	And you'd be like, so does that mean you hate Americans?
	You'd be like, what?
	No, I just don't like this guy.
	And you could hate the whole government and not hate the people.
	And then, and it's only with Israel, and they intentionally do this, where they conflate this thing, where it's like, oh, if I have the, if I, like, if I was like, if I came and told you like, you know, the government of France just did this thing, I think it's terrible what they did.
	And there's lots of terrible things that the government of France has done.
	So I could pick some, but like, whatever.
	That doesn't mean I'm not going to cheer for Cyril Gawn when he fights.
	Yeah, you know?
	And you were like, you're an anti-Frankite.
	You hate all the French people.
	You'd be like, that doesn't even make sense as a response to, I have a problem with the government, you know?
	But they try to, they, they use that, you know, with Israel, where it's like, oh, if you criticize them, you hate Jewish people.
	That's stupid.
	It started becoming the boy that cried wolf because they would say that for everything.
	Yeah.
	And then it would be like, well, what do you, you're not even, you're doing this.
	Yeah.
	You're saying this.
	This isn't true, right?
	Yeah.
	And it's not even clear sometimes, like, what do you even mean by that?
	Like, what are you even accusing?
	And also, I do think just like the whole wokeism stuff has been so rejected, especially recently, that you're like, people are kind of sick of just like, like, accusations of bigotry aren't actually a response to someone, you know?
	Yeah.
	If you're like, if, if I say, I think what Israel's doing is wrong and your response is, well, you're a bigot, it's like, no, your response should be, oh, I don't think what they're doing is Wrong and here's why.
	And then we could actually talk about it.
	But just to call someone like, oh, you're a Jew hater, you're racist, you're homophobic, it's just played out and tired.
	Yeah.
	Let's talk about Zuckerberg a little bit because he just had that kind of about face sort of on and Facebook.
	They just had that kind of about face on Rogan where he was talking about, where's that clip?
	That clip, yeah, right here, where he kind of says the Biden administration would call meta to scream and curse at them to censor true information on their platforms.
	This is what Zuckerberg said.
	Right.
	What did he say?
	Play it real quick, a little bit of it.
	These people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse.
	And it's like these documents are, it's all kind of out there.
	Did you record any of those phone calls?
	I don't, no, I don't think you, I don't think we were.
	But I think there are emails.
	The emails are published.
	It's all kind of out there.
	And they're like...
	That's good.
	That's what I do.
	They want us to take down this meme of Leonard.
	What do you think about this?
	To me, I just don't know if I buy it.
	Because Facebook didn't do the best job of, you know, they had issues over the years with the Hunter Biden thing, right?
	With Russia stuff, where they wouldn't let people say this is bullshit.
	Like, they really chose to decide what was misinformation.
	So it just seems weird that suddenly people are calling and screaming.
	I love like the simple facts.
	And you're like, is this like, it seemed like now you're trying to seem like that wasn't happening the whole time and you weren't listening to it before type of vibe.
	Yeah, it's a very like convenient retelling of history.
	Yes.
	For Zuckerberg to go, so the government was saying we have to censor these things that are true.
	And we were like, no, we're not going to do that.
	Okay.
	What really happened is the government said you're going to censor these things that are true.
	And he said, yes, sir, and did it for eight fucking years.
	Okay.
	And then at the end of these eight years, when Trump wins a dominant victory and now the guy who you kicked off of Facebook is now president again and now the whole culture's turned against you and he's threatening to like, you know, like look into you.
	And there's a lot of like pretty quasi-illegal stuff that was done.
	So now you said, okay, we're not going to do this again.
	While Joe Biden is literally on his hands and knees pooping his pants on the way out with terrible numbers and Donald Trump's coming in popular again.
	So, okay, yes.
	So for him to spin that as the government said we should do this thing and we said, no, that's ridiculous.
	Okay, that's not exactly what happened.
	It seemed like he's just back here trying to slurp back onto humanity.
	Now, if you that's a slurp job.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Now, there's, and this is why Joe, you know, remains like the biggest show is because he just gets these moments.
	But if you, the last time he was on Rogan's podcast was one of the most interesting admissions, and it was before he had done this 180 and turned around.
	But when Joe asked him about the Hunter Biden thing, and he goes, so like the story with the Hunter Biden laptop, how did you guys handle that?
	And Zuckerberg said the FBI came to us and told us there's about to be a big Russian dump.
	So they must have known that this laptop was about to come out.
	And they went to Facebook, told them preemptively, it's Russian disinformation.
	And that's why they censored the whole thing.
	And that is like, that admission is like blatant election interference by the FBI against the sitting president, which makes it that even that much worse.
	Because like in some, on some level, like if the FBI or the CIA or someone like that was like interfering in an election, you'd already be like, okay, that's crazy illegal, unethical, you know, unconstitutional.
	Like we don't have a democracy if we have three-letter agencies interfering in elections.
	However, you'd assume at least they were doing it on the side of the president who they work for, not against the president who they work for.
	Now we're in a level of like treason.
	Like you're working against the commander in chief who you're supposed to say sir, yes, sir, to and follow his rules.
	You know, I mean, okay, you, if you're at the FBI, you're under the Justice Department, but still, like, the president is that.
	So this was in Trump was in office.
	Yeah, this is the one I'm referring to.
	Yes, this one.
	This is when, or I don't know when the podcast was, but he's talking about the Hunter Biden story, which was October of 2020.
	So right before the election when Trump is still in office.
	Okay, let's play a little bit of that.
	How do you guys handle things when they're a big news item that's controversial?
	Like there was a lot of attention on Twitter during the election because of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
	The Neo-Shadows too.
	Yeah, so you guys censored that as well?
	So we took a different path than Twitter.
	I mean, basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was like, hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert.
	We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election.
	We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump of that's similar to that.
	So just be vigilant.
	So our protocol is different from Twitter's.
	What Twitter did is they said you can't share this at all.
	We didn't do that.
	What we do is we have if something is reported to us as potentially misinformation, important misinformation, we also do this third-party fact-checking program because we don't want to be deciding what's true and false.
	And for the, I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being determined whether it was false, the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it.
	So you could still share it.
	You could still consume it.
	So when you say the distribution is decreased, how does that work?
	So saying that they had some effect on it, though.
	Yeah, well, he goes on to say that it was a meaningful impact that turning down the signal had on it.
	But what's interesting is that he blatantly says that it was the FBI who came to them and told them that this very true story, which was a real scandal that was an October surprise, that very clearly could have moved the needle in the election.
	They suppressed that for one reason only.
	And that's because they wanted Biden to win and not Trump to win.
	And Zuckerberg played a big role in that.
	Not as big, I guess, as Twitter at the old.
	Oh, yeah, Dorsey admitted it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And look, I do think to some degree, these guys are under duress from the government.
	I mean, they're threatened and all types of pressure is put on them to go along with the censorship stuff.
	And to be, you're basically become communication in the universe.
	Like you are like if everybody had to talk in like a hallway, you're the hallway, you know, you are.
	Yeah.
	Well, and if you think about like even just the, you know, if you think about the, how much government cares about controlling the narrative, you know, one of the things that's really interesting from the more recent clip that the one we played first here, you know, he says that they were really upset about a meme.
	Oh, yeah.
	Leonardo DiCrippo.
	Leonardo DiCaprio meme.
	Like they were really upset about that.
	Oh, dude.
	Which literally said, isn't that fascinating in a way that they are so threatened by like you making a joke about their bullshit?
	But if you like zoom out, right, and think about it, it's like governments always insist on controlling, monopolizing information.
	You know, controlling the narrative is the most important thing to them.
	That's more important than controlling the money or the banks or the laws or anything.
	It's like controlling the narrative, controlling how people think, what the kind of like the range, the Overton window of allowable opinion or what, you know, and that's, and you see it all the time.
	You see they spaz out when people are just outside of the realm of allowable opinion.
	And even if you think about like the way, think about the way our government's set up, we're like, okay, the government, there's like a group of, you know, services that the government has a monopoly on.
	And they had a monopoly on the schools, the post office, you know, it's like wherever the information is coming from, the media, the universities, you know, these are always the things that governments get involved.
	And then all of a sudden there's a revolution.
	And now the, you know, the public square is Facebook and Twitter and these social media.
	So now these people are in control for the first time of this.
	So of course, and what really happened was after Donald Trump won in 2016, they really started cracking down on them.
	Yeah, because the guy who wasn't supposed to win won, and he did it by utilizing social media and going around the corporate media and going around the political machine just to talk right to voters.
	That really shook them up.
	And so, yeah, they hauled Zuckerberg and Dorsey and all of them before Congress.
	They threatened the shit out of them.
	I'm sure he's right that they were on the phone cursing and screaming at him and putting all types of pressure.
	So fine.
	If Zuckerberg, I would be much more sympathetic if Zuckerberg had come out on Rogan's podcast this time and been like, listen, I just, I've, under the weight of this pressure, I gave in.
	Right.
	And I became like a tool for the regime to censor people, but I don't want to do that anymore.
	And so now I'm committing to this.
	I'd be like, yes, he's a hero.
	But the way he kind of like yada yadas over like, anyway, the government wanted us to do this stuff.
	I was like, nah, man, I'm not going to do that.
	I'm cool, right, Rogan?
	You're like, eh.
	Not exactly.
	It almost seems sometimes the way he, he almost seems like a doll.
	Does he a little bit when you're, and I don't mean it in a bad way.
	I just mean it in an interesting way.
	I'm fascinated by the guy.
	I mean, I can't imagine what his life is like or what he's like as a person or what it's like to talk with him.
	I would love to have that opportunity.
	But I am, yeah, I'm just so curious as to like the pressure if he feels it.
	You know, they had that one moment where like they had all those families that had, people had been solicited or whatever.
	Young people had been caught by traffickers or like approached by traffickers or solicitation, sexual.
	Can you bring that up?
	It was Zuckerberg before Congress.
	Watch the moment that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the families of victims during a hearing on online child safety.
	That's what it was.
	...television.
	Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed by your...
	Look at those vultures.
	...showing the pictures.
	Would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people?
	I'm sorry that you think that you've all been through the things that your families have suffered.
	And this is why we invested so much and are going to continue doing these streaming efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have to suffer.
	Wow.
	Okay, that's good.
	I think it just seems like a robot doing it.
	That wasn't great.
	That wasn't a great moat.
	That's why I wonder, does he feel?
	It seems to me like he doesn't have a lot of feel in him.
	Yeah, listen, that's yeah, to apologize.
	I don't even exactly understand what they were like.
	They're like, parents of kids who got trafficked or something like that.
	And I'll have to look into that.
	Yeah.
	But that also shouldn't be done.
	Like an apology like that shouldn't be done with reporters flashing all this.
	I also cannot stand.
	I'm sorry, but I just hate the grand standing of politicians in Congress.
	Like I think Zuckerberg's like response to that should have been like, you preside over the biggest war machine in the history of the world.
	So if you want to talk about apologizing to innocent people who have got, you got your work cut out for you, you focus on your apologies, but I would love to invite like any of these parents, if they want to sit down in a private room after that, we can have a long conversation about this.
	I agree.
	And then like give a real moment or like, you know, you can't, someone like loses their kid or their kids raped or tortured or something.
	It can't just be like a, I'm sorry that happened and we are working hard to make sure it doesn't happen in the future.
	You want to sit down and be like, hey, tell me your story.
	Don't even hear from me.
	Let me hear from you.
	You tell me your story and then I'll try to like empathize with what you've gone through.
	But yeah, that's a great point.
	They shouldn't have put him on the spot to do it right there because that wasn't really helpful.
	Because they're not looking for a sincere apology.
	They're looking for a political stunt to be like, I got Zuckerberg to admit that he was wrong.
	And the families always get wheeled out for that kind of stuff.
	And I also don't like that the air is always like, it's always a question of what you should be censoring.
	And like, listen, I'm sure we would probably agree, right?
	Like, if there are people trying to traffic kids or something like that, like, yes, okay, you'd want to kick those accounts off or report them to the police or whatever.
	But it's always Congress like talking about how dangerous the freedom that people have is on your site.
	Oh, it's so dangerous that people can communicate and people, you got to clamp down on this.
	Right.
	And it's like, personally, I'm much, what is it?
	The old, I think it's a Thomas Jefferson quote, or maybe I'm getting that wrong.
	Actually, it's not Jefferson, but whatever the quote was like, it might have been Hamilton, but it was like, I'd rather deal with the inconveniences of too much liberty than those associated with too little of it.
	You know, it's like, I'd rather, it's always like, they're always warning you about the problems of too much freedom.
	Oh, everyone can communicate.
	That means people are going to come get your kids.
	I'm like, I'm sure that is, there is that concern.
	And like, you know, I got little kids.
	I'm, I'm concerned about that stuff.
	But I also kind of feel like, okay, I'll handle making sure my kids don't, you know what I mean, get, you know, taken advantage of on the internet.
	And how about the government get the hell out of the way so we can tell the truth?
	Yeah.
	It was Thomas Jefferson.
	See, I should be sure of myself.
	I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much, attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Why not err on that side of it?
	Yeah, Facebook has had issues.
	I mean, remember when they had, there was a thing where they had, there was like these Kenyans or something.
	See if you can look that up.
	They were looking up information.
	They were using people in Africa to look up that they were the fact checkers or whatever.
	And I think there was a lawsuit.
	Facebook content moderators in Kenya call the work torture.
	Their lawsuit may ripple worldwide.
	I'm not even sure what happened with this.
	When was this?
	Oh, it's 2023.
	Okay.
	On the verge of tears, Nathan Nkunzimi Zimana Nkunzimana recalled.
	Oh, thank you.
	Yeah.
	On the verge of tears, Nathan Nkunzimana recalled watching a video of a child being molested and another of a woman being killed eight hours a day.
	His job is a content moderator for a Facebook contract that required him to look at horrors so the world wouldn't have to.
	Now, is among nearly 200 former employees in Kenya who are suing Facebook.
	It's so wild.
	Let me see.
	The group was employed at the social media giants outsourced hub for content moderation in Kenya's capital of Nairobi, where workers screen posts, videos, messages, and other content from users across Africa, removing any illegal or harmful material that breaches its community standards and terms of service.
	Can you even imagine having to moderate the stuff in Africa?
	Someone's job is actually to watch a child being molested and then be like, nope, that video can't go up on Facebook?
	This is bad.
	The moderators from several, and that was, I shouldn't have, that wasn't a fun time to joke.
	I'm sorry.
	That wasn't funny.
	And I love Kenya.
	I've been to Mombasa.
	I love Puerto Rico.
	Puerto Rico.
	I love it.
	I've been there.
	Oh, no.
	Do not touch that girl.
	You're okay so far.
	You're okay so far.
	Nope.
	You are banned.
	The moderators from several African countries are seeking 1.6 billion compensation fund.
	Oh, that's a lot of money.
	After alleging poor working conditions, including insufficient mental health support and low pay.
	Wow.
	I wonder what happened to that lawsuit.
	If you find out that something happened, let me know.
	But they've had issues over there.
	And I'll say this.
	Well, that's not really it.
	But I can't imagine having to be actual person doing that work.
	But that's what it comes down to.
	You're basically having to moderate the entire world of communication.
	You've taken on that responsibility.
	Well, and I know that, you know, it was, I think, when the, I think it was the Egyptian revolution, which, you know, didn't last that long.
	But they, what they, when they, a real, I believe, and forgive me because I haven't like, I'm not the expert on this at all.
	I haven't read that much about it.
	But like when they overthrew Mubarak, I think that was like a real genuine revolution where like the people really did agree, like we want this dictator gone.
	But I remember that they were, this was, what year was Mubarak overthrown?
	I want to say it was like 2010.
	2010?
	That was in Kenya?
	No, this is in Egypt.
	But I do remember that that was one of the things that people were making a big deal of was that there were these giant protests that ultimately ended up bringing down the government.
	And it was all organized on social media.
	You know, everybody's like, oh, we'll meet up here.
	The protest starts here.
	And then it was like almost like the first time that they were like, whoa, there's real power in these things.
	And, you know, if you could 2011.
	So like.
	Oh, the power of social media events.
	Yeah.
	That's just like, yo, I mean, you're going to get, if you could overthrow governments with these things, you're going to get, you know, you're going to get a lot of attention from governments who are going to be very concerned about what's going on on these sites.
	Yeah.
	Well, it's just interesting.
	At what point do you think that there could be a revolution in America?
	Because if it, if, if, if people don't trust the FBI now, they don't trust the CIA now, you're not sure that your FBI isn't out to get your own.
	It's like, who, what is even like.
	It's well, right.
	And then on top of that, like you had, say, someone like Donald Trump.
	Look, the first time Donald Trump ran, right?
	All of the political class, all of the media, all of Hollywood, they all said, this guy is unacceptable.
	You cannot support this guy.
	He still won, but he also won on like a razor-thin margin, lost the popular vote, and just happened to win the right swing states against Hillary.
	So there was like a little bit of a caveat.
	But then after January 6th, with how much they pumped into like, this is the worst thing ever.
	And look at this horrible guy.
	You could never support him.
	Then they go after him with the legal cases.
	Then he almost gets his brains blown out on national television.
	And then after all of that, all the years of he's a Nazi, democracy's over, he's Hitler, the American people go, well, we like him even more now.
	Like, that's just so crazy.
	It's so crazy that there's just trust in every American institution has evaporated.
	They have nothing.
	I mean, it's unbelievable that the most famous Hollywood celebrities can't move the needle at all.
	The entire fact, it's an anti-man.
	If they get the second one of them is involved, I'm fucking out.
	Well, that's right.
	It almost like, well, that is.
	And I mean, look, even me, I will admit I'm guilty of it too, that I, I, right away, you know, you see another celebrity, they'll be endorsing Kamala Harris tonight.
	And I'm like, what did you do at the Diddy party?
	What do they got on you?
	You know, what do you, like, it's just, there's so much mistrust of the whole thing.
	And it's, you know, the, the thing about it is, is a lot of us, like I said this in our conversation already today at one point.
	I don't even remember if it was about Russia Gate or COVID or what, but I said, all those people still have their jobs or whatever.
	You know, if you, if you look at the New York Times or you look at CNN or all these places, they still got people there who sold us the war in Iraq and they still have their jobs.
	You know, like they didn't get fired.
	These people make great money.
	They're still and nothing, but it's like it's something almost like spiritual.
	There's always a price.
	Even if you think there was no consequence, oh, there is a consequence.
	And so like, you just think for so many years, they lied us into wars, into financial recessions.
	They lied about everything about COVID.
	They lied about Russia Gate.
	They lied about all this shit.
	They lied about Joe Biden not being senile.
	They lied about Kamala Harris not being retarded.
	They lied about everything they could think of.
	And there is a price for that.
	And the price is that no one believes you anymore.
	Yeah, not even people that believed you believe you.
	That's what's crazy is watching people that were like devout believers come on over and be like, I just don't believe these people.
	And there's so many people like that.
	So like, could there be a revolution?
	I mean, you know, there's the American government is still so powerful.
	It's not like they're getting overthrown anytime soon.
	And we're not saying that government.
	No, if the government is listening, I highly recommend everybody follow the law.
	But there is there's been a revolution in communication already.
	There's been a revolution in the media.
	I mean, they all, this happened a while ago, but after this election, they all kind of admit it.
	They all kind of admit that like, look, like Donald Trump did like your show and Schultz.
	Oh, that blew my mind.
	And this was a huge factor for him, you know, and this was, and I, I will say, I think particularly yours was, I mean, obviously Rogan's was humongous, but particularly the interview with you saw like a much different side of Donald Trump than I had ever seen before.
	And that's crazy.
	It's crazy that there's been this revolution.
	That's crazy.
	You know, there hasn't been, there's not a lot of people where I'm from who even get to ask questions a lot.
	No, I think, I don't think.
	There's not a lot of people where I'm from who ever even getting to raise their hand in front of a president and ask a question about something that means something to them.
	You know, a lot of times, yeah, you just get pigeonholed into being some type of way.
	And so then as a person, as part of even just a group, you start to feel like, well, I don't even fucking exist.
	You know what I'm saying?
	And I think that's part of how I always felt my whole life.
	I don't even, nobody, nobody gives a fuck about a poor off-white kid.
	You know what I'm saying?
	That's the last fucking group.
	And so, yeah, I think, I don't know.
	I don't know what I'm saying, man.
	I think it's a really great point.
	I mean, if you think about it, like at least my whole life, right?
	Well, finally, we made our own voices because you don't even see that I am a voice.
	You don't even think I have a fucking voice.
	And so finally, you don't think, and you also, you don't think I'll work hard enough to fucking put my voice out there.
	They called it flyover country.
	Yeah.
	That's what they call it, fly over country.
	And what is flyover country?
	Everything except New York and LA.
	I know.
	Right?
	The whole rest of this annoying country that you got to fly over on your way from New York to LA.
	If you think about like when we grew up, me and you grew up in the era of the TV.
	There wasn't, we didn't watch shit on YouTube and stuff.
	You know, this didn't exist.
	We watched what was on TV.
	And TV was made in New York and L.A. That's where it was made.
	And every show, whether it was Seinfeld or Friends or whatever, it was all these shows were about living in a city on the coast and they were about people who lived there.
	And then just think about how bizarre that is.
	You have this giant country that occupies the middle part of North America called the United States of America.
	It's this huge country and you only have representation from these two coastal cities.
	And this has now been totally blown open where it's like, yeah, I think for the first time, people in the middle of the country, in the south of the country, can actually have a voice.
	And why shouldn't they?
	When there's tens of millions of people who like fall into those categories.
	Yeah.
	Look, it's crazy to me.
	Being in stand-up comedy, it's been a total revolution since when I started.
	Like the path for how you become successful is so different.
	Podcasts weren't a thing when I first started.
	And so having a revolution in government, that still seems like we're not there, but there has been a huge cultural revolution over the last 15 years.
	In communication or in what is it called?
	Yeah, I think in media, in entertainment, in comedy.
	So Trump has his new cabinet picks, right?
	Has he picked all of them yet or not?
	Yeah, I think he's picked all.
	I mean, there might be some more smaller positions that he still gets to pick, like judges and stuff like that.
	But I think he's picked his cabinet.
	What do you feel?
	Like, who are some of your favorites?
	Who are some you're kind of on the fence about?
	Doug Collins got fucking picked?
	The coach?
	The basketball coach?
	Remember he was with the Wizards, dude?
	Wait, are you talking about Jordan's coach, Doug Collins, or is this someone else?
	No, that's a different Doug Collins.
	Oh, damn.
	Who's that guy?
	Doug Collins got the Bulls right there, and then Phil Jackson came in and took all the glory.
	I remember that, dude.
	That's a great point.
	That's never really talked about, is it?
	But what about some of his cabinet picks?
	Who do you like?
	Where are you at with some of that?
	I love, okay, well, the best ones to me by far were Bobby Kennedy for Health Department was just amazing.
	I think that's really going to Shake things up.
	Is he one of the first doctors that's never been in charge of the health department?
	That's a good question.
	I don't know.
	No, I think, no, I think the guy who's the head of it now was a lawyer, too.
	So I'm not sure.
	But he is the first real outsider and real critic of the American health state.
	And so that's really interesting.
	He also put, which I'm sure has a lot to do with Bobby being at HHS, but he put Jay Bhattacharya as the new head of the DraftKings?
	Jay Bhattacharya?
	Yeah, he sounds like a bookie.
	Oh, dude.
	Yeah.
	Well, he's got a, I think he's Indian.
	I don't know.
	Oh, Bhattacharya's Indian?
	I might be wrong about that.
	If I'm wrong, I apologize.
	But he was one of the signators on the Great Barrington Declaration.
	He was amazing during COVID.
	He's like a brilliant, you know, he's got a degree, I think, in economics and in science.
	Jay Bhattachari, bring him up.
	He sounds like he's from Madras, New Jersey, dude.
	Bring him up, Jay Bhattachari.
	Let's get a little gander at him.
	I just want to get a peek at him.
	I haven't seen his face before.
	Bhattachari.
	Oh, yeah.
	I like this guy, huh?
	He was phenomenal during COVID.
	Really?
	Like a goddamn hero, just calling out all the bullshit.
	I would love to hear you, him.
	Dude, that would be great.
	A super, super smart scientist who's like really understood why lockdowns were terrible and why the vaccine mandates were insane and all of that stuff.
	So she got Fauci's old job.
	Really?
	Which is going to be real interesting.
	Yeah, head of the NIH.
	Heck yeah, that's cool.
	Now, all these guys got to be confirmed by the Senate still.
	So that's not done.
	But the other great pick was Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence.
	Macari, do you know who that is?
	Marty?
	I'm not sure.
	Marty McCarry, can you look him up?
	Marty McCarry for FDA Commissioner.
	Oh, yeah.
	I don't know.
	I don't know enough about this guy.
	He has a great book called The Price We Pay.
	Bring up one of his books.
	I want to talk with this guy.
	It's about the insurance, the whole scam, what broke American healthcare.
	There's another great book he has, too.
	Dude, one of his books, he has this thing where they were going to black churches.
	Okay.
	He's a surgeon.
	Let me see.
	Martin Andel McCarthy is a British American surgeon, professor, author, and medical commentator.
	Where they were going to, they were convincing, giving people scans at their churches, showing them that they needed like their blood vessels dilated or shunts put in their legs.
	And it was just, and doctors were making a ton of money through Medicaid.
	It was just this big scam.
	And a lot of the doctors were funding the groups that would go, and they would do it at black churches and black religious get-togethers.
	And they have tables set up, and they were just using these people, basically sending them through as just like a fucking, as a varicose vein mill.
	Wow.
	Unreachable.
	And just making tons of money, I'm sure.
	Yeah, but he talks about that.
	He talks about a lot of neat stuff.
	Oh, that's another one.
	Blind spots.
	When medicine, that's what I've been reading.
	When medicine goes wrong.
	That's one that I've been reading.
	But he seems like an interesting guy, but he got put in.
	That's one I'm excited about.
	Gabbard, you said.
	Who else is in there?
	Cash Patel, who took over the FBI.
	Really?
	FBI director, he was a huge critic of Russia Gate and a lot of the crazy stuff that a lot of the election interference that the FBI has been doing.
	Again, we're going to see how there were reports out.
	I'm not sure if this is true or not, but that Tulsi Gabbard was saying she's changed her mind on government surveillance and now she's okay with the intelligence agencies spying on us.
	You know, DC has a way of poisoning people.
	But how does that happen?
	But also, I'm not throwing her under the bus or nothing like that.
	I think maybe she's saying what she needs to say to get confirmed and then she'll do some really great stuff once.
	Could that be something that happens?
	Quite possibly.
	It's hard to say.
	But it is like there's all types of pressure.
	And then there's probably pressures that I don't know about at all that when you're actually on the inside, there's probably all types of threats and things like that that you got to deal with.
	So I think these picks were all very, very good.
	He had a bunch of really bad picks that I did not like.
	Let me see.
	Phyllis Finnish system, though.
	Gabbard 43 was born in the U.S. territory of American Samoa, raised in Hawaii and spent a year of her childhood in the Philippines.
	Yeah, she's definitely, I love the way that she talks.
	You know, I loved how just her own, she always seems to have her very own voice.
	But when you get in, like, who compromised?
	What did they use to compromise?
	You think?
	That's what I always wonder.
	I mean, I think, I don't know.
	You just, do you think they just say you're going to have to do what we want or we're going to kill you?
	You think that's what it is?
	It's possible.
	I mean, I wouldn't put it past some of these people.
	There are a lot of killers in our government, you know?
	I also think that sometimes it's just the way the machine works.
	And it's like, well, you're never going to be able to do anything unless you do this or unless you do that.
	You know, it was real interesting the way that Obama got rolled when he first came in and he had a lot of these plans like we were going to end these wars and we're going to do all these things and we're going to and he just immediately ran up against the machine and it was like you have no idea how to actually control this thing and i got to say i think that happened a lot to trump too when he first came in and trump had a lot of plans and i think that i think donald trump looked at it like hey i've been the ceo of this big company i've
	been the boss before i'll go be the boss again but it's like that's not how this one works this is a whole different thing it's not like when you're really the boss and you dictate orders and everyone follows them and he you know donald trump he ran in 2016 on what was such a great idea at the time was and he used to say this on the campaign all the time in 2016 because back then the war in syria was still going well it was like raging and he would go why are we even in syria i don't care about overthrowing bashar al-assad
	he goes russia said they're only in syria to kill isis i was like okay well we want to kill ISIS too we're against the terrorists he goes so why don't we stop trying to overthrow regimes in the Middle East work with Russia to take out all the terrorists and then we could just leave the Middle East and then we could all be friends we could be friends with Russia and he openly ran on that I was Like, yeah, that's a great idea.
	Except then you get in there, and the media is saying you're a Russian spy every single day, all day long.
	So, now, how are you going to make a deal with Russia?
	Right.
	When everyone's saying you're a Russian spy, oh, they tricked you then because if you make a deal with Russia, that'll just be proof that you're a Russian spy.
	And so, then Donald Trump went, No, I'll be hawkish toward Russia.
	And so he went out of his way to prove what a Russian spy he wasn't, which is like, oh, so they got you.
	So you couldn't do what you wanted to do.
	And instead, you got to do this.
	But this time they may not have the value of the media.
	Well, they don't.
	They for sure don't.
	I mean, I think, I think, and unless they come and kill all the podcasters and stuff, do you think that they could do that?
	Have you ever worried about your own safety?
	No, I don't know.
	I've always, I've always felt like I fly at a nice, you know, I'm far enough from the sun that I'm okay.
	Same.
	I don't know what I'm even doing.
	Well, right.
	So I'm not.
	And also, I just, I do think like there's too many of us and there's too, I think like the toothpaste is out of the tube on this.
	And I don't think, I think even they've finally realized that like even if, you know, it's funny when they were coming after Rogan a couple of years ago, when there was that major push and the artists were, you know, Neil Young was saying, I'll take my music off Spotify or whatever.
	I remember talking about it then.
	And you're like, so what do you, what do you guys even think happens?
	Like, let's say, let's say hypothetically, you could take Joe Rogan out, right?
	What do you think?
	His audience goes back to CNN?
	You think everyone who was listening to that is going to go, okay, I guess we plug back into the Matrix now.
	They're just going to find somebody out.
	They're going to find someone else, probably more radical.
	You know what I mean?
	Probably not, not less.
	And so I think they even kind of know they can't really, you know, stuff.
	But I do think, I think the two things that make it, that make the dynamic very different this time for Trump.
	Well, like you said, it's that the corporate media has been destroyed.
	But the two things that really destroyed them since the first Trump presidency to this one is RussiaGate and COVID.
	They just, they were such big stories and they got them so wrong.
	And everyone kind of knows it now.
	Like nobody, you know, nobody believes in RussiaGate anymore.
	Nobody is sitting on, no one on television is going, a Russian spy is about to retake the White House.
	None of them are saying that.
	None of them are saying, hey, we were wrong about all of that.
	But if they weren't wrong, why wouldn't they still be freaked out about it?
	I'm just amazed that none of them ever come on and said, hey, you know what?
	I want to apologize for wasting your fucking time.
	That's what I want to do.
	I want to apologize that we didn't care enough to even really look into things truly and that we wasted your time.
	That would be like a real thing to do.
	Right.
	Like I just, yeah, it's like, that's why sometimes you're like, are the people running this thing?
	Do they have any human feelings?
	Because that's where I don't see a lot.
	It's like you would think if you really cared about your customer base at all, right?
	You would go and say, hey, I'm sorry, I got this wrong.
	This was wrong.
	Or we didn't know it was wrong, but we didn't even try to do our best practices.
	We got caught up.
	Something.
	Listen, man, I mean, they hate, they fucking hate this country and they hate the people of the country.
	And I don't like just say that to be like, to make a sensational claim, but it's like, if you, if, if my kids are, were hungry and I was feeding other kids, like, what conclusion could you draw from that other than like, you don't love your children?
	You hate your own children.
	Because that's like your number one responsibility.
	What do you mean you're feeding other kids while your kids are going hungry?
	It's just too evil to even wrap your head around.
	And that's literally what our government does.
	Yeah, especially right now.
	That's what they do is they feed other countries that don't need it.
	By the way, you know, not just the ones who maybe do, but ones who don't, while our people are here like starving.
	I mean, I'm not trying to like overstate it.
	Like there's mass starvation.
	But I should say surviving a hurricane or fires or whatever.
	No, I agree.
	I was thinking today was like, hey, well, Ukraine, Zelensky, can you give us back some of our money so we can pay our teachers better, so we can feed people who are starving in our own country, so we can get homeless people off the streets, so we can help cure some of our mental health, so we can help repair some of this fire damage for people that were uninsured, or help the displaced people that are over here.
	You know, just countless things.
	I mean, I could go on and on, but it's like, yeah, it just feels like we're just being money laundered a lot of times.
	Well, even just, and to like, like, and I know those people have problems, but it's like, you know, the perfect example for me was that Karen Bass lady from with the LA Fires, right?
	I never heard of her before, and she seems like a nice woman.
	I bet she's a great woman.
	But she was in Ghana, unless she was on vacation.
	She was in Ghana, Africa while this was happening.
	And if she was on vacation, then she should be able to do whatever she wants, and she should be able to do whatever she wants anyway.
	Just in Los Angeles mayor freezes up.
	This is exactly how people should be treated.
	Do you owe citizens for being absent while their homes are burning?
	Do you regret cutting the fire department budget?
	Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this is unfolding back home?
	But can you look up what's she in Ghana on vacation?
	That's what I need help on.
	But she's in Ghana.
	But it's like, why are you even in Ghana?
	Like, you're the mayor of a town.
	And they knew that like big windstorms were coming and they knew that like this is a danger, you know, with wildfires and stuff.
	So it's just, you would expect you'd be around there.
	But it is, you know.
	It's hard to point fingers at this point, though.
	Like, it's like, obviously things were bad.
	They had their reservoir that was dead empty that was like took countless millions of dollars and held millions of gallons of water.
	Just a lot of bet.
	Just, you know, I don't know.
	It's heartbreaking.
	What's happening up there is heartbreaking.
	But that's the weird part.
	It's like, why is she even you have people we have how much do the people have to suffer or be struggling in our own country for our own country to be like here?
	And how are we electing these people that aren't saying here, America, we're going to help you first?
	Yeah, it's unbelievable.
	It's totally outrageous, man.
	How is that happening?
	I just don't understand how it's happening.
	Well, I mean, I do think perhaps it's kind of like what you said earlier.
	Like part of this is that we have just like acquired such a level of wealth and power as a country that it's almost like, you know, the politicians who now control the tax base of the American people, they feel like gods where they're like, we can do all of this stuff.
	I mean, I remember when, and I think this was sincere.
	I think Joe Biden actually heard and understood this question and had a moment of being lucid.
	But it was when the war in Gaza first broke out and some reporter asked him and was like, they were like, well, you know, you're all in on this war in Ukraine.
	You've already given them hundreds of billions of dollars, and now you're saying you're going to support Israel.
	Like, are you sure America can take on another war that we have to foot the bill for now?
	And he goes, this is the United States of America.
	Of course we can do it.
	Who said that, Ricky?
	You're Joe?
	Joe Biden.
	Joe Biden.
	Yes.
	And I'm sure in some way Joe Biden like believes that.
	You know, like Joe Biden is a child of the unipolar moment after the Soviet Union collapsed and America is dominant.
	We could do anything.
	This is America.
	We could do whatever we want to.
	It's like, you just haven't updated this script because it's 30 years later now.
	And no, we can't just do whatever you want to.
	And, you know, we just found out through this, you know, it's like, okay, yeah, we could do whatever we want to, but we can't tax people enough to raise the money and we can't borrow enough to get it.
	So we have to print the money.
	And then we deal with this price inflation we've been dealing with for the last few years.
	It just like destroys working class people.
	And it's like, yeah, I guess if you don't care about that, we can do it.
	But if you do care about that, then actually, no, we can't.
	We don't have limitless funds.
	And I'll just say this, right?
	Look, you think about the United States of America, the federal government, it's the biggest, most powerful government in the history of the world by far, by any metric.
	And yet, as we're doing everything, as we're backing the war in Israel, as we're backing Israel's war, we're backing Ukraine in this war, we're overthrowing regimes all around the world.
	We're talking about what the, they have a summit where they talk about what the temperature is going to be in 100 years.
	The government's trying to manage everything.
	And yet, the most basic functions of government have all gone to shit.
	We can't win our wars.
	We can't balance our budgets.
	We can't protect our borders.
	Post office sucks, dude.
	I was in the post office like three weeks ago, right?
	There's no, there's a home, I want to say, I don't want to say homeless, but pretty homeless guy in there, right?
	Yelling faggot over and over again, right?
	Just yelling it into the fucking distance or whatever.
	And dude, I'm second in line, right?
	So I'm like, ugh, you know, but nobody even came to help him.
	We're in there for seven minutes.
	I just walked out.
	I'm like, you know, that's the thing.
	But that's the U.S. postal system in a nutshell.
	And California is a little microcosm of this, right?
	It's the biggest state government, has the biggest budget of any state government.
	And they're trying to turn our whole country in.
	They're trying to do everything.
	They're trying to say, oh, we're going to have electric cars and we're going to have a new power grid and we're going to have all of this.
	Meanwhile, the most basic service, like make sure your fire department has enough water in the area that is known for wildfires spreading.
	Like the most basic thing you fail miserably at.
	And then you're going to talk about all these pie in the sky visions of how you're going to run the world and do all this shit.
	And it's like, no, you're not good.
	You're not good at this.
	You're not doing anything right.
	And there is something interesting about that where it's like, when you try to take on way too much, you end up failing at the most basic responsibility that you have.
	Yeah.
	Oh, always.
	Yeah, man.
	It's wild.
	And also when you push, when you position yourself as this, we will handle it all, you don't let other societies and cultures kind of create their own narrative and wherewithal for themselves, you know?
	Yeah.
	In a weird way, you know?
	Oh, I think that's absolutely right.
	Yeah.
	Oh, I think that's true.
	That's true like internally in America and throughout the world.
	But even like you see, like you see like in America, like the rise of the welfare state, like when it was really in the 60s and 70s when welfare became huge.
	And then churches get diminished.
	You know, it's like, oh, because that used to be what people would do if they needed help is they'd go to the local church and kind of ask them to help.
	So it's like, oh, as you try to take care of everything, you end up killing and boxing out this other more organic thing where the people themselves would actually figure out like who in the community needs help.
	You know what I mean?
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	Thank you.
	I saw a lot of people got fucked up out there and LA.
	I saw Whitney's video.
	I felt awful.
	Yeah, Whitney's had a lot of videos.
	Yeah, she has.
	Well, I bet the one where she was crying and stuff was.
	Oh, I didn't see that one.
	Oh, maybe I did.
	I'm sorry if I did.
	I've watched a couple of hers.
	I wake up at about 5.15 and watch TikTok for like 40 minutes every night.
	Get it while you can.
	I know.
	I'm not doing that good.
	Here's one thing.
	Yeah, play that Mel Gibson right there.
	I just love the way he communicates.
	I have three friends.
	I'll tell you a good story.
	I have three friends.
	All three of them had stage four cancer.
	All three of them don't have cancer right now at all.
	And they had some serious stuff going on.
	And what did they take?
	Jesus.
	They took some what you've heard they've taken.
	Ivermectin.
	Fembenda.
	Fembendazole.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I'm hearing that a lot.
	They drank hydrochloride something or other.
	There's studies on that now where people have proven that...
	Yeah, methylene blue, which was a fabric dye.
	Okay, stop.
	Now we're getting into breaking bad territory.
	That's the wild part of that, you know?
	Yeah, look, man, I mean, my default on this is to go, I probably think that's not true.
	Like, I don't know, but I also do, I don't know a lot about like medicine and the health stuff, but I will say my eyes were definitely opened over COVID to like how corrupt the whole thing is.
	And so it is almost like now when people say stuff like that, I'm a lot more be like, all right, I'm listening.
	Yeah.
	Like maybe 12 ounces.
	Give me 12 ounces of methylene blue.
	You know what I mean?
	I'll try it.
	I don't know.
	I mean, like if I had stage four cancer and like they were like, there's nothing we can do, I'd be like, hey, Joe, can you get me Mel Gibson's number?
	I want to talk to him and his buddies about what they did.
	I don't know.
	Why not?
	Oh, yeah.
	I would be drinking fucking pool water or whatever happened, you know, whatever it needed.
	What was one thing else that happened the other day?
	Yeah, we're supposed to start shooting a movie.
	Me and David Spade wrote a movie and we're supposed to start shooting it last week in LA, but the fires, so now it's just up in the air.
	It's been like kind of bizarre, you know?
	But the weirdest thing about LA that I'm hearing is like I'll get a text from a friend or talk to a friend who's crying, you know, their home is burnt down.
	Then I'll get a call from a friend who's like, hey, man, do you want me to go over by your place and move your car to my apartment or whatever?
	Because in case the fire switch wind.
	And I'm like, I think I'm okay right now.
	And I was like, what do you have to?
	He's like, I'm going to a couple auditions today, you know?
	And so it's just such a crazy.
	There's still normal shit happening in the middle of all of this.
	Yeah.
	It's interesting.
	And that guy lives right, I mean, he's going along the 405, like right where the border of like where the next evacuation.
	It's just, it's amazing.
	I remember when I lived there during some of the last fires, you'd be driving the 405 and there would just be fire on both sides.
	And it almost feels like it's like that, what's that place in Florida with the adventure park or whatever?
	Six flags.
	It almost has us, because you can't believe that it's real.
	I know you can't.
	And you're in Hollywood where shit is, a lot of things are made and manufactured and created.
	So you're like, well, of course this isn't real.
	Well, it's one of the things about cities that are real strange, like these modern cities where there's millions of people.
	And I saw this a lot during COVID, particularly in New York and LA, where it's like, it's almost like there's nothing that people won't just adjust to because they're kind of trapped there.
	You can't really get out.
	You can't, you know, and so it's almost like, all right, well, they're doing this now.
	All right.
	I guess we got to live that, you know, in New York.
	It's just like, all right, there's homeless people all over the subways.
	That guy's jerking off.
	I guess I got to just like walk around to him and get to my work because I got it.
	What else am I going to do?
	Got to bring my cumbrella with me.
	Yeah, this is the kind of stuff it was.
	This is very intense.
	This must have been 2017 from Andrew Mutts.
	Wow, that's a wild picture.
	But, bro, this same highway, same spot, Skirball Drive.
	Keep playing that for a minute?
	I mean, that's insane.
	Like, how should you be able to drive this close?
	It's just...
	People live there.
	There's people.
	Yeah, like someone right now in that car, like someone's wife calls their cell and they're just like, would you mind stopping at the store on your way home?
	Like we're out of milk or whatever.
	And they go, okay, fine, I'll stop by there.
	And then just look out their window and they're like, oh, God's angry.
	All right.
	Yeah, gosh.
	Hey, Siri, play Spotify.
	Play Firework by Katie Perry.
	You know what I'm saying?
	There's somebody picking up a song and then realizing, oh, maybe not right now.
	Or some guy smoking.
	He's like, oh, it's already fucked anyway.
	It's like, what?
	Is this really going to be the problem?
	It's just people are still going to be people.
	What else was something else that I wanted to talk to you about?
	Oh, some of Trump's picks that you're not excited about.
	Marco Rubio at the State Department.
	I hate.
	And what does the State Department do?
	Well, I mean, it's a pretty big responsibility.
	I mean, the State Department basically interacts with the rest of the world on behalf of the United States of America.
	And in recent years, I mean, the State Department is involved in a lot of war making, even as much as the Defense Department is.
	And I mean, two examples I could think of right off the top of my head were the war in Libya, overthrowing Gaddafi, was enormously led by the State Department under Hillary Clinton.
	And in 2014, backing the Madan revolution that overthrew Yanukovych in Ukraine was mostly done by the State Department.
	And so Marco Rubio is like a real neocon war hawk and has been for many years.
	What does neocon mean?
	Well, neocon at this point has kind of, like, I'm using it in kind of the informal sense.
	It's basically just come to mean like the war hawks who push for war after war.
	Oh, they want war.
	Always more regime change wars, always the next target, always the next thing.
	The neoconservative, like the self-identifier, Marco Rubio is not a self-described neoconservative.
	The people who actually called themselves neoconservatives was actually like a small group of people.
	This is the Wikipedia probably has some good information on it here.
	But these were guys who really, they really took power under George W. Bush.
	A lot of them were in Reagan's government and in George H.W. Bush's government, but they really took over when George W. Bush was in power.
	But yes, Dick Cheney, Richard Pearl, Douglas Feype, all these guys, Paul Wolfowitz, do we think that they make money off of war?
	Well, it's a fact that a lot of them work at think tanks that are funded by weapons companies it's a fact that Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton I mean like these things are true so they are connected to interests that make lots of money off the wars but so they're a lot of them basically were they were not all but a lot of them were Jewish and a lot of they were leftists who came over and kind of became conservatives in the second half of the
	20th century and they were so they in the 90s there were these uh there was one major think tank that was called the project for a new american century um and they basically wrote out all their plans of like what they wanted to do back in the 90s and and the major thing was that they wanted the project for a new american century the idea of it was that right so this it was a neoconservative think tank in dc and a lot of these same people i mean uh robert kagan and
	william crystal were were the the guys who founded it but if you look through the name of signatures you'll see dick cheney donald rumsfeld paul wolfowitz uh you know um richard pearl a lot of these guys now they basically they this was if you could imagine in the 90s this is right after the soviet union collapses this is where what charles krautenhaumer who's another neoconservative who's dead now he called the unipolar moment and what that meant was that it's like hey for the first time in the world and
	for the first time in the history of the world there is one global superpower that is more powerful than any other country that's ever existed now that the soviet union's gone it's ours so what do you want to do now there was this big divide amongst conservatives a lot of conservatives uh what are called the paleoconservatives it was like pat buchanan and guys like that they were like well now that the cold war is over we can come home we were fighting this war because it was the cold war because it was the soviet union but now that the soviet union's gone we can disband nato going home listen to some don
	mclain yeah that's right bring bring close all the bases bring everyone home we could go back to being a normal country was the idea we don't have to rule the world we were never supposed to rule the world in pat buchanan's idea they were only doing this because the soviet union existed but then there were these neoconservatives and they went no no no no no now that we control the world we have to come up with a project for the new american century we want another century the 20th century was dominated by america and we want to make sure the 21st century is dominated by
	america and this is by i'm not exaggerating you can go read these papers you can go google project for a new american century and you can find all this stuff and they said their plan was they were like look a statement of principles they released on june 3rd 1997.
	yeah there's if you go to the calls for regime change in iraq they might have a good link there that would be like uh the document i'm just blanking on the the name of some of the documents that they put out but they basically said no one can mess with us and so what we need to do right now is we need to have multiple wars in the middle east we need to have regime changes and get rid of all of the old allies of the soviet union put in our people who we like specifically advocating regime changes through a determined effort to remove saddam
	hussein from power in iraq the letter suggested that any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove hussein even if no evidence linked iraq to the september 11th attacks well listen you got to understand a lot of this stuff was written this this is in the 90s this is before the september 11th attacks that they were talking about getting rid of saddam hussein they actually say there's one paper and this is what the uh the 9-11 truthers they would love to hang on to this so they say they did 9-11 because they wanted this to
	happen well there's one thing it was in the 90s i can't remember what year it was but i you could find this but they say basically they go through this whole thing of how we really want to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq and then we want to fight multiple wars in the Middle East and have multiple regime changes and they actually said in the paper they go but it would be very challenging to get enough popular support to do something like this short of another Pearl Harbor style attack so they literally say we really kind of need an attack
	on America in order to work up enough support to go fight these wars now that isn't that isn't proof that they did 9-11 but it does certainly indicate that they know the recipe well at the very least when 9-11 happened they went yes now we got our time so this is one of the the worst you know like the worst thing that that ended up happening was that when 9-11 happens George W. Bush is president and all these motherfuckers are in power so
	they got their opportunity and right away after 9-11 and we know this because the four-star general Wesley Clark himself said that he he was out of power at the time but he went to the Pentagon and he said that he saw plans late 2001 already drawn up for the invasion of Iraq so like as soon as 9-11 happened they were like okay we're going to use this to go overthrow Saddam Hussein now all right if I could pull it back a few so a few years before 9-11 in 1997 and
	in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly unless there were some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor yeah so that's I mean this was their words and that's all the PNAC or whatever yes this is this is PNAC the project for a new American century okay now is that a lot of these same people involved here but there was a letter okay there was a letter written dark artists huh yeah so check this one out in 1996 so just four years before this report
	there's a letter that was written by Richard Pearl and it was not Douglas Spife it was Richard Pearl and Wormser and David Wormser was the other guy who wrote it and so two of these neoconservatives and they wrote this letter the letter is called a clean break a new strategy for securing the realm and it's written to uh benjamin netanyahu who in 1996 was the first year that he became prime minister okay and in this basically what this
	was all about is that they were the neoconservatives were saying hey here's the new strategy okay and the new strategy is in the early 90s you had had these oslo accords which were the um what was known as process the piece and that was like the oslo accord it was to try to get um that was supposed to help with uh palestine right yes so bill clinton is famously was a big deal when when i was a kid was bill clinton had uh yasser arafat and yitzhak rabin the leader of the plo and
	the the uh prime minister of Israel, here together to work out, we're finally, we're going to do a two-state solution and we're going to make this deal.
	They brought them together, shook hands.
	I mean, after years and years, you know, decades of bloody fighting, this was like, it seemed like an amazing step forward.
	And Israel committed to what they call a peace process.
	So eventually, essentially, they committed that they're like, you know, this land that we know is not ours that we've been occupying since 1967.
	We do have to give this back to you.
	Like, we have to give this to you.
	And we have to have a two-state solution of some sense.
	We will do that, but there has to be a process that we go through.
	So, you know, better than nothing at least, right?
	So this is what started.
	Now, then Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli, by a Netanyahu supporter, assassinated him for betraying his own country and stalking.
	But Israel was still on the hook for promising to eventually give the Palestinians their own state.
	And the Clean Break memo, and it's a little bit coded, but it's basically like, listen, we got to get away from that.
	We got to get away from this peace process.
	And the idea of like giving the Palestinians their land, this threatens Israel's stability.
	Now, for years, okay.
	I could see them thinking that, though, for sure.
	Now, for many years, the thinking, which culminated in the Oslo Accords, right?
	The reason why there was this peace process is that the thinking, the Yitzhak Rabin thinking was that, listen, you have the Arab world who hates Israel's guts over their treatment of the Palestinian people.
	And so you have to make peace with the Palestinians so that you can be friendly with the surrounding Arab world so that they don't all hate you and you can coexist and you can be prosperous, right?
	Now, the clean break is essentially a break from that line of thinking.
	And they go, no, no, no, no.
	You don't need to make peace with the Palestinians so that you can then make peace with the broader Arab world.
	What you need to do is overthrow the regimes in the broader Arab world that are pissed off at you.
	And that way you won't have to ever make peace with the Palestinians.
	You'll never have to give them land if we could just overthrow Saddam Hussein and then overthrow the Mullahs in Iran and then overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
	And so they lay out this strategy.
	And this is the clean break.
	The clean break, excuse me.
	And these are our top neoconservatives who end up in the George W. Bush administration explicitly saying that the reason they want to overthrow Saddam Hussein is because he's a problem for Israel.
	And when years, a few years later, when four-star general Wesley Clark, who, by the way, recently in a debate with my friend Scott Horton, admitted that these plans went all the way back to 96 and not just 2001, which he had said before.
	But this was the famous, I don't know if you've ever seen it before, but the seven countries in five years.
	So this is Wesley Clark.
	You pull up this video if you want to.
	It's pretty interesting and has a lot.
	Are we really down a rabbit hole right now?
	We are.
	Well, this is when you told, this is when Rogan told you, if you want to talk about Syria, I'll take you down a rabbit hole.
	So here's the rabbit hole.
	About 10 days after 9-11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz.
	I went downstairs.
	So he's talking about the guys from Peanut.
	I'm going to go to the United States staff who used to work for me.
	And one of the generals called me and he said, sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second.
	I said, well, you're too busy.
	He said, no, no.
	He says, we've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq.
	This was on or about the 20th of September.
	I said, we're going to war with Iraq.
	Why?
	He said, I don't know.
	He said, I guess they don't know what else to do.
	So I said, well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?
	He said, no, no.
	He says, there's nothing new that way.
	They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.
	He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments.
	And he said, I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.
	So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan.
	I said, are we still going to war with Iraq?
	And he said, oh, it's worse than that.
	He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper, and he said, I just got this down from upstairs, meeting the Secretary of Defense's office today.
	And he said, this is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.
	I said, is it classified?
	He said, yes, sir.
	I said, well, don't show it to me.
	And I saw him a year or so ago and I said, you remember that?
	He said, sir, I didn't show you that memo.
	I didn't show it to you.
	I'm sorry.
	What did you say his name was?
	I'm not going to give you his name.
	That's essentially the part.
	But so there's, so this is.
	And is he joking around, you think, or he's being serious?
	Oh, he's being serious.
	He was just asked about it recently, and he was like, oh, yeah, no, this happened.
	And he actually said in this more recent, he had a one-on-one debate against Scott Horton.
	And when Scott brought this up, he goes, you know, it actually went back further than that.
	I had seen those plans back in 96. It was the neoconservatives, right?
	And so the neoconservatives, the ones who were in charge of the W. Bush administration, or were at very high posts in that administration, this was their plan.
	And as they had mentioned in the clean break, explicitly for Israel.
	Like it was to change the dynamic so that Israel, we would take out all of their enemies and put them in a situation where they never had to come through on the peace process.
	And so that's why, or at least a huge part of the reason why we fought a war in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, in why we've backed Israel through all of these proxy wars.
	It's All about that.
	And it's this is what, even more so than their treatment of the Palestinians.
	This is the thing that I'm that I'm furious at Israel about.
	It's like, what is with this like pressure of like lying my country's people into war after war after war that does nothing but create disasters for us?
	Well, we're always looked at then as certainly, I think, as the you start to get looked at as the bad guy, if that's true.
	You know, you start to get looked at as the bad guy if you invite me to come help you, you know, or if I have the bullets, you know, and you have me come along and fire the gun, even if you give me the orders or whatever, I'm still a murderer, you know, still complicit.
	A clean break, a new strategy for securing the realm is a policy document prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Pearl for Benjamin Netanyahu, then prime minister of Israel.
	Key points, abandoning the Oslo Accords and the concept of a land for peace, reestablishing the principle of preemption rather than retaliation.
	So just to be clear, because again, they're saying these in kind of like, and this is how they talk about it, right?
	So it's all coded a little bit, but abandoning Aslo means the peace process.
	The concept of land for peace, meaning like this concept that the Palestinians deserve their land.
	Get rid of that weird concept.
	And then number two, think about how creepy that is.
	Reestablishing the principle of preemptive rather than retaliation.
	So in other words, we don't wait for you to attack us.
	We just start attacking you right away because we know you're going to.
	So essentially giving up on the idea of a just war, like giving up on the idea of like, oh, we were attacked and therefore we go to war.
	And instead, we'll just keep attacking you because we've decided you're going to attack us in the future.
	But now part of you say if this is all true, right?
	You almost have to give Israel credit as well because they're fucking gangsters.
	That's another thing.
	It's like sometimes people are like, you know, you hear people say stuff about, you know, why we're fun Israel and this and that.
	And why, you know, but then you're also like, well, if like they probably, like, they did it.
	They, if we're still playing by all these old rules of like, you know, like Game of Thrones style shit and fucking, it's a dog eat dog world and occupying land and all that kind of stuff.
	If you're still playing risk, right?
	Yes.
	But you're convincing everybody that we're not playing that way anymore, but you're still playing that way, it's fucking really gangster.
	If might makes right and the only thing that matters are the laws of conquest and who's winning is winning, then okay, sure.
	You got to give it to them that like, hey, you've done it.
	But okay, if that's your feeling, then fine.
	But then you don't get to cry these tears about, oh, October 7th was so horrible and they did this to us because, hey, you're just playing the game of might makes right.
	And whoever can kill the other side can kill the other side.
	And then also, okay, even if you're playing by those rules, I'll respect gangster.
	Like I respect gangsters, sure.
	Yeah, I just want to know what the rules are.
	Right.
	But then at the same time, you also got to understand that we live in a new world now.
	And like we were, all the stuff we were talking about before, like people can talk about this stuff now and people can communicate.
	And I'm sorry, but if that's the case, then what I'm rooting for is what's best for my country.
	And none of these wars made my country better.
	You know, in fact, they made it much, much worse.
	You know, all we got to show for the war in Iraq is thousands of our bravest young boys dead, tens of thousands of them killing themselves in the wake of it, tens of thousands more injured and horribly just a shell of themselves.
	And unsure of what they're true.
	I think, and I don't know if people would want to admit this or talk about it, and it may be anti-American for me to say it, but I think the definition right now of being American is frayed in some ways.
	But what they were fighting, I mean, the truth of lay probably closing your eyes at night and be like, well, what was I fighting for?
	And maybe that's messed up.
	Is that messed up of me to say that?
	No, I'm just speculating.
	I don't know.
	No, I don't think so.
	I've heard a lot of combat vets say the same thing.
	Yeah.
	So I don't think that's messed up at all.
	Yeah, what was that?
	I think that's right at the core of why they had, you know, there were wars, you know, like World War II was much more bloody and vicious than any of the fighting in the terror wars.
	And we didn't have suicide rates the way we do now.
	And I do think a huge part of that is because like those guys felt like, hey, we were liberating Europe.
	Like there was, they didn't come back and feel like, oh, what the fuck did I even do that for?
	You know, and a lot of these guys, they come back and they're like, oh, I was straight up lied to.
	Like I was lied.
	Oh, I was just a pawn in your, then some rich guy's game.
	And that included me like doing all types of shit to people that is very hard for any civilized person to do.
	Oh, your conscience can't.
	It's a, it's a teeter-totter.
	Well, you immediately, you know, you put yourself in a crazy situation.
	So like, look, if I'm going to, if I'm going to break into your house with a gun, like once I've already made that decision that I'm going to break into your house with a gun, whatever justified me to getting to that point, there's now, there's a whole different dynamic where now like, okay, I could say, hey, I'm just trying to break into your house with a gun.
	I'm going to be the good guy here.
	But if I break into your house with a gun and you run up at me with a gun, I got to shoot at you now.
	And then once that's over, and I'm back home, you go like, I mean, from this guy's perspective, I broke into his house.
	Who was really the aggressor here?
	I mean, sure, I shot him because he raised his gun at me, but really, I was the one who went.
	And so this is what it's like for an invading arm.
	And also, it's not.
	And what were we even doing there?
	And when you find out that a lot of the people were Saudi Arabian or something and we didn't even deal with, it's like, what was going on?
	Oh, I can't even imagine.
	And it's also like there's something to be said for the, you know, even if you, like, if you fought a guy, let's say like, you know, back in your drinking days or something like that, you got into a bar fight or something like that.
	And you fight a guy who's around your size, you know, and you go and you end up like winning the fight even.
	It's like, there's still something different about that than if you just went and beat up a dude who was like a third of your size.
	You know, like at least when we fought in World War II, the Nazis were very powerful.
	It was early in the war, it wasn't clear exactly who was going to win.
	But Iraq, you know, for the U.S. military to go fight, It's like, come on, dude, this is a joke.
	We took down their government in a matter of weeks.
	Remember, they had those videos of them training on like jungle gems and stuff?
	Remember those videos?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Well, I think that was like Al-Qaeda or something like that.
	But yeah, it's still like, yeah, yeah, that was the monkey bars or whatever.
	It's all just so ridiculous.
	There's no way you're going to go fuck those people up and not be left with a little bit of a feeling like, what did I just do?
	Yeah.
	We beat up a weak entity.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Damn.
	Who are some Trump picks, some other cabinet picks you're not sure about, you feel like?
	I know, I'm blanking on his name.
	I know his national security advisor I really didn't like, and I heard some statements from him that I didn't like.
	You know, Pete Hagseth was an interesting one.
	I don't really know enough.
	He's from Montana?
	Is it that guy?
	Is he from Montana?
	I'm not sure.
	I know he was a Fox News guy for a long time.
	I've met him a couple of times.
	Former Georgia congressman is up first.
	Let me see.
	What do you know about Pete Keseth?
	Trump's Hagseth 44 has developed a close rapport with Trump, a military veteran and popular conservative media personality with a large following of his own.
	Yo, he hosted like the Fox mourning show for years.
	Oh, I think I remember who he is now.
	Hmm.
	America's white sons and daughters are walking away and who can blame them.
	Well, I think he's talking about the military.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	No, he was, so I met him back in, I want to say like 2016 or something like that.
	And he was like, I think he had pretty standard like Republican, you know, politics.
	I think he, he's, from what I've heard, he's kind of changed a bit over the years and has been, become much more skeptical about a lot of the wars.
	I do remember, this is one moment I always thought was really interesting that I saw him on one show on Fox News.
	And this was such a not Fox News type thing for him to talk about.
	But he brought up and went into pretty graphic detail the epidemic of warlords raping little boys in Afghanistan.
	And this was a major thing that a lot of the guys who served in Afghanistan talk about.
	But so when we were against the Taliban, we were trying to overthrow the Taliban.
	And a lot has been made in America, and rightfully so, about how the Taliban are really brutal on women's rights.
	They don't let girls go to school.
	They don't let women have any type of freedom.
	However, on the other side were these tribal warlords who we were propping up.
	And it is true that they would let the little girls go to school, but they would also rape the little boys.
	There's like an epidemic of it.
	And so the dynamic was that our soldiers over there weren't allowed to say anything about that because they'd be like, well, listen, this is their customs and their way of life.
	And so they would talk about how they could hear the screams from the little boys like in their rooms and stuff.
	And so he talked about it on Fox News, which just kind of gave me the impression that I was like, oh, maybe this guy is willing to kind of like tell the truth in a thing where it's a little uncomfortable in an audience that isn't typically used to hearing that.
	So we'll see.
	I don't know, though.
	He used to really support the wars.
	I'm not sure where he is now.
	Interesting.
	Wow.
	There's a lot going on, huh?
	Do you think that Trump's that things are going to be different this time?
	Do you really think that, say there is this deep state, right?
	Do you think we can really get away from it?
	Or is it just a lost cause?
	And sometimes it's like, I almost just wish they, my thing is, I just wish they would, I just want to know.
	I don't like, I don't like not knowing.
	Just tell me.
	I'll do whatever.
	I'll do the game.
	You know what I'm saying?
	But tell me what the game is.
	Tell me what the rules are.
	I understand that impulse.
	I think the best part of Trump winning is that it's been the cultural effect of all of it, I think, has been amazing.
	Like, I really think everything like from November to now has just been great.
	It's been great.
	There's been this big reset that we needed in America.
	It's like the corporate media is crumbling.
	Wokeism is receding.
	Like the insane kind of political correctness of the last few years seems to be like largely defeated.
	I think all of that is great.
	I don't think the deep state is going anywhere in the next few years.
	But I don't like in terms, I'm very optimistic long term.
	I think that, you know, it's easy to say like, we're never going to beat this thing.
	And it's always going to be this way.
	They have so much power.
	We have so little.
	But the truth is like, you know, communism fell.
	Slavery was abolished.
	America declared independence from the British monarchy.
	You know, these things all would have seemed impossible.
	And you could have easily said, oh, this is just going to be here forever.
	It's just the way of the world.
	But it wasn't.
	Those things are gone now.
	And I think there's no reason why America can't have like a great kind of a great reformation, a great return to the best things about America, a huge increase in liberty and decrease in awful state corruption.
	Like I don't see any reason why that can't happen, especially when they don't have the propaganda machine anymore.
	Yeah.
	And I think, you know, I've always thought like the sand, like it all gets remembered, right?
	Like I think sometimes it's like, are we just, is America still suffering from like what it did to the Native Americans here?
	You know, and I know that's kind of wild, but they had like the, there was a line that they put, I think it was around the Mississippi called the something frontier, general frontier or something, where they're like, we'll promise, it was like just a deal that they'd made with the Native Americans.
	We promise we will never cross here.
	This is your land.
	It will always be your land.
	And then within 30 years, it was like, you know, and it's like, I just feel like the ground remembers.
	It's like, sometimes it's like you're just, you can't completely escape sin, I don't think, you know, or wrong.
	I don't think you can completely escape, but you can feel like you can.
	And you might in your generation, in your life.
	But what you're going to leave is something that's not, it's, in the end, it all has to be even.
	And so I just feel like, you know, like the ground just keeps the score.
	Yeah, there was something, was it to you?
	I can't remember, but there was something Jordan Peterson said about that, that is like how you can't get away with lying, how you can't like twist the fabric of reality and it not snap back at you.
	And there is something to that.
	I don't know if it's exactly perfect, but like there is something to like where no matter what, you know, it's like, it's true, like in a relationship.
	Like, you know, if you think, like, oh, maybe you're like, oh, I could get away with treating my wife shitty, and maybe you even can because she'll take it for a while.
	But like, ultimately, there's going to be a price to pay for that.
	You kind of can't get away with it.
	It's going to be a dateline episode.
	Yeah.
	And people are going to side with her.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Like, it's all going to cut.
	You can't.
	Well, it's the same way you could stay up.
	You could stay up for three days in a row and not sleep.
	But then like on that fourth day, you're going to just fall out and be in deep sleep.
	Cause like you owe REM sleep.
	Right.
	You owe it.
	Like you, sorry, we got to, the universe has a receipt for you of REM sleep that you owe for the last few days.
	There's something about how like, you know, it's like, okay, I could like, I could go on my treadmill right now and like go run for 20 minutes and that will suck.
	I hate those 20 minutes when I go run on my treadmill.
	Or I could eat a big piece of cheesecake and just love the next 20 minutes and feel so good, but there's going to be a price to pay for that.
	You know what I mean?
	Like I'm going to feel better about myself.
	I'm going to be in better health if I do the running.
	There's just this weird thing with the universe where it's like, you kind of can't cheat the system.
	And if you try to cheat the system, there's always a price associated with it.
	And now you owe that price.
	It may come later in life.
	It may whatever, you know, like if I, if, if I want to like, whatever it is, if I want to be really shitty to my wife now, it's like, maybe I think that gets me some advantage in the short term.
	But then when my son's older and he remembers that and he hates me, it's like, oh, okay, there's the price for me not being good to his mom.
	So you always like, in life in general, you're always better off if you err on the side of like doing the right thing so that you don't owe these prices later in life.
	I see it all the time.
	You see it with like old men who were like shitty drunk dads and now they're alone and they're old alcoholics.
	And you're like, oh man, the ultimate loser here is you.
	Like you got like a grandkid you never met, you know, and you got, it's like this, you can't cheat this game.
	So you're better off just doing the right thing and not accruing all these debts.
	Yeah.
	What do you think about Elon and Vivek?
	Do you think that that is a, is that really something that's going to have an effect on things?
	Who do they have to answer to because they're not an actual government entity?
	Is that correct?
	Yeah.
	So it's ridiculous, but it's also really interesting.
	And yeah, Donald Trump just gave them a made-up department that they're in charge of.
	So they're not technically a government department.
	Department of Government department, but it's not a real government department.
	Department of Government Efficiency Does.
	So it's not real.
	But this, I've been saying this for a while.
	I feel like we've entered this kind of like privatized communism, I call it, where, and you could call the, and this wouldn't maybe be considered communism, but it's privatized democracy, right?
	It's like we have like, we don't have the post office anymore.
	We have Amazon.
	We have email.
	You know, it's like it's all been privatized, right?
	We don't really realize it.
	There's still, everybody's like, the government sucks.
	It's like, yeah, but the government's a company now.
	It's some other company that's doing the shit that the government used to do.
	Well, right.
	So instead of the game, because what it is, is that in most people's minds, they have kind of roughly at least the idea of like capitalism versus socialism.
	And I understand, I'm speaking like with a broad brush here, but like they're like, okay, so like on one hand, you have like the government isn't involved and it's all like competition in private companies.
	And then on the other hand, you have like the government's much more involved and the government takes over these services.
	But really what we have isn't either of those.
	What we have is gigantic multinational corporations that long ago bought off the government.
	So you have this huge government that's involved, but it's just working for these private interests.
	Right.
	It's just wrapping paper.
	Exactly.
	So like, I think that's, I think that's exactly the correct way to look at it.
	But the belief is that we still have this thing of freedom and you still do kind of have democracy in some ways, right?
	You could still run for an office.
	You could still vote for someone.
	But it certainly feels, things feel more manufactured.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Like even like, that's why I think very, the uber wealthy, they don't care that much about the police and shit because they have their own security.
	They have, they're not fucking worried about that.
	Well, that's the crazy thing.
	And it has really, it's been one of the things that I think turned Americans against Hollywood.
	But there's something about like kind of the like elite progressive, you know, like the people who lecture everybody else about guns and support gun control, but they have armed security.
	The people who are offended that Donald Trump talks about building a wall, but they live in a gated community.
	The people who, you know, go.
	Talk about climate change, but then take private planes everywhere.
	Dude, you could go endless, endless examples of this.
	They talk about you, if you're upset about what they're teaching in your local public school, they say you're a bad person.
	Meanwhile, their kids go to private school.
	They don't have to deal with what's going on.
	You know what I mean?
	It's like at every, they're totally insulated from the effects of the policies that they support.
	And so, you know, anyway, to go back to the Doge thing, what I think, so I had dinner with Vivek like a couple months ago.
	People say he's a neat man.
	I've never met him.
	I like him a lot.
	I've gotten to know him pretty good over time.
	Is he Bangladeshi or Indian guy?
	He's Indian, but he's American.
	He was born here.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But he's, first of all, he's brilliant.
	He's very, very successful.
	And I will say, you know, I won't divulge too much stuff that we said in private, but he is really big on this Doge thing.
	And he's like, listen, man, me and Elon got some tricks up our sleeves and we're going to be very effective with this.
	Essentially, what they're going to do is make policy recommendations.
	And their recommendations already are going to be massive cuts in government spending, which is, I think, the absolute correct answer.
	And so I'm at least excited to see that like that's being interjected into the public.
	And him and Elon are both, I mean, these are brilliant guys.
	So maybe they could really come up with something here.
	I agree.
	Well, it's just amazing how our country keeps going more and more in debt.
	In the end, we're going to have a loan to some other country and that country is just going to be like, now you belong to us.
	Right.
	Or the whole thing has to like crash and then we're setting ourselves up for failure.
	And even just now, right?
	Yeah, and I don't want to sound too gloom and doom too.
	No, but even just now, it's like forgetting, like, the debt is a major problem, and we're going off like the fiscal cliff, and we're not going to be able to keep this up.
	But even just right now, the reason we're racking up so much debt is because the government spends so much money every year.
	And this is that is the corruption.
	It's not like a symptom of the corruption.
	It's like you got an organization in Washington, D.C. that by force extracts $6 trillion of wealth away from the American people every year and then give it out to their connected friends.
	It's like the most like.
	It's fucking, it's laundering.
	Yeah, it's the most criminal shit in the world you could imagine.
	The only reason why we don't think of it as criminal is because it's so big and successful.
	But if anyone did it on a small level, you'd be like, oh, I know what that is.
	That's a gang.
	That's a crime.
	And like I said before, the other big thing is that in order to have such a big government, what you need is, because you can never tax people enough to pay for all this shit.
	And they can't even borrow enough money to pay for all of it.
	So they have to just constantly be printing money.
	And that sends us into living in an inflationary world where everything is constantly getting more expensive and the value of your dollar is constantly going down.
	And again, this is, if you're rich, it's fine.
	If you own stuff, you can kind of protect yourself from it because the value of your assets goes up too.
	But for middle class and working class and people on a fixed income, this just destroys them.
	Absolutely destroys them.
	I mean, look, the price inflation over the last few years has just like, I don't even know.
	You know, the Federal Reserve keeps numbers on this stuff, but I don't know if they've done it over the recent wave of price inflation, but how many marriages get destroyed by this?
	You know, like people commit suicide over stuff like this.
	I mean, they don't care.
	And they don't think about that.
	It's the same way they didn't think whenever they don't care.
	They don't, it's the same way they didn't care that every AA room and meeting was going to shut down when they when they started COVID, you know, or whenever COVID started.
	It's the same way that they didn't care about the pill epidemic that's taken hundreds of thousands, 600,000 lives.
	And not only not to mention the ripple effect of those deaths that have broken the hearts of mothers and children and wives and husbands.
	They don't care.
	That's what it feels like anymore.
	It feels like they don't fucking care.
	So what can I do now?
	But then also, I also have to remember that throughout history, people have lived in this exact same space, feeling like their government did not care about them.
	And worse.
	I mean, and much.
	And much worse.
	You're right.
	So that's why I think other countries are like, well, this is, hey, welcome.
	Yeah.
	You know, welcome to what it's really like, you know, to exist.
	Yeah, okay, fine.
	But like, at the same time, that doesn't mean that.
	But we should have better.
	Yes, that's right.
	Look, I mean, so there's lessons to take from all of that stuff, right?
	Like there are people in the 20th century, we had two world wars, you know?
	Like, tens of millions of people just got caught up in this for no fault of their own at all.
	And I'm not even talking about just like the standard textbook history.
	Like there were people who just happened to be Germans.
	You know what I mean?
	They weren't, they didn't necessarily even support the Nazis or anything like that.
	There were ethnic Germans.
	Daryl Cooper just put out the prologue for his new World War II series.
	And the first one, it's so good.
	But all talking about like, and this is like a forgotten chapter of history, but after World War II, ethnic Germans, not even living in Germany, weren't even living under the Third Reich, just in Eastern Europe, just got totally like slaughtered by the millions, raped and beaten and ethnically cleansed.
	Like there were so, and this is obvious.
	I only lead with that because it's like the one that people don't know as much about.
	But like, obviously there were Jews who just happened to live in Germany or in Eastern Europe.
	There were Russians and Poles and just all types of people who just got destroyed.
	So no, okay, people have had it much worse.
	But at the same time, I do think it's your point being, you know, especially when you see like the corporate media and you see the way they freak out over January 6th, the way they freak out over, you know, whatever it would be, the latest thing Donald Trump says.
	And then you sit there and you go, yeah, you know, 100,000 people die of overdoses in this country every year.
	And by the way, calling them overdoses is not entirely accurate.
	Poisoning is a good term.
	Yeah, poisoning is more.
	I mean, when you're talking about the fentanyl thing, I mean, at least for me, when my whole life, when I thought of what the word overdose meant, what overdose meant to me was essentially like you become such a drug addict that you build up such a tolerance that you got to take so much drugs in order to get high that eventually you have to take so much that it kills you before you even get to like feel good.
	But that's not the same thing as someone thinking they're taking a Percocet and it actually has fentanyl in it and then they just kill themselves.
	That's not exactly an overdose.
	That's poisonous.
	Yeah, you got poisoned.
	And that company didn't even face any remote.
	They're still allowed to come into America.
	I know, and this isn't even something that comes up.
	People care, but they can't do anything.
	Right.
	Well, what I just say is like, it's just like, say like, okay, I understand that like some people broke some windows of the Capitol building on January 6th.
	And I understand that AOC was real scared for 20 minutes or whatever.
	Okay.
	But like that, the amount of coverage and outrage that that gets compared to 100,000 of your fellow Americans being poisoned to death every year.
	And it's not like it's a one-to-one.
	It's a 100 to zero.
	Like this just doesn't even come up.
	It's not even like a until Hollywood is like, oh, we'll make a series about it.
	So we'll make, now we'll make money off of it.
	Well, I'll say this, dude.
	And this is like, I'm mildly embarrassed to admit this, but as somebody who's like obsessed with this shit and talks about politics all the time, it wasn't until Bobby Kennedy ran for president and he goes, you know, America leads the world in chronic illness.
	And I remember being like, is that right?
	Do we lead the world?
	Like, I didn't even know that we led the world in chronic illness.
	And there's like, just, it took Bobby Kennedy.
	Why has no one else who's run for president ever brought this up?
	How is this not a thing that we all talk about all the time?
	Well, Bernie Sanders talks about a good bit of a lot.
	Well, he talks about, Bernie Sanders talks about the health insurance stuff.
	He talks about the Medicare for all stuff.
	But I never really heard anyone talking about what Bobby's talking about in terms of like, why are we so sick?
	Like, forget whether you think we need universal health care or private health care or whatever, like whatever health insurance you're talking about.
	I'm saying like, why do, why are we so sick as a people to begin with?
	And that's more about like what we're eating, what we're consuming.
	But okay, then say if there's these forces and they see like, okay, we can poison them this much and we can make the money here and this.
	But why, what do they get out of all of it?
	Or do you think there's just such a level of wealth and control that after generation and generation, you just start to see it as a game almost?
	Like that's that's the part I can't understand because I couldn't understand like at a certain point you start to do well and then you want to help other people like whether it's like build a facility for drug people or whatever it is, right?
	Like get clean water, like do something pot.
	Like I can't understand getting to the part where you start to see people just as nothing more than some than basically ghosts to launder your money through.
	Well, I do think that when you get, well, obviously like so much.
	So it's control.
	A lot of it must be controlled.
	A lot of it's control.
	So much of it is business.
	You know what I mean?
	Like so much of it is just like, oh, there are these companies that make tons of money off this shit.
	But I do think that there's like a mentality that gets developed when you get to a certain level of power where like, you know, the same thing like with, you know, like if there's companies, like if there's a little mom and pop store, they kind of know everyone in the area and they kind of care a little bit more.
	They're more connected to the community.
	When you're talking about like a giant corporation, you're just kind of like a cog and a machine to them.
	But when you get to like the top, top level of power, and I think they've been pretty explicit about this.
	I mean, Henry Kissinger pretty much like admitted this in his own words, that people are pawns on a chessboard.
	And that's the way they look at it.
	It's not, they don't believe that they are like they're almost above what me and you would consider morality.
	You know what I mean?
	It's like they're, they're at this super high level where it's like, listen, we're do, we're moving these pawns over here so that the Soviet Union collapses.
	And oh yeah, it sure does suck if you happen to be a Vietnamese person, but we're at war with the Soviet Union.
	And so you're just pawns on a chessboard.
	And that's what they're doing with Ukraine right now.
	What they're doing with Ukraine right now is just using them as cannon fodder to hurt Russia.
	And they pose as the ones who care about Ukrainians so much, but really they just led them down, as John Mearsheimer said, the primrose path.
	They went, go ahead, fight this big bully who could totally fuck you up.
	Go ahead, fight him.
	We got your back.
	To Ukraine?
	Yeah, to Ukraine.
	And by we got your back, not like the military is going to come in and actually like back you up, but we'll just give you weapons so you can keep going out there and dying.
	But it'll hurt the Russians also.
	And that's the goal.
	And you're like, it's a real sickness if you start looking at human beings that way.
	Yo, what did Kissinger say?
	Bring that back up.
	He said, military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.
	Is that real?
	Oof, geez.
	I knew he had some quotes about that, but that one even surprised me.
	I was like, oh, geez.
	Where was he from?
	Kissinger.
	Oh, where was he originally from?
	Eastern Europe?
	That's a good question.
	Henry Kissinger.
	Bring him up.
	Get to there.
	As regards the Secretary of State under Richard Nixon.
	Scroll up.
	Born in Germany.
	Okay.
	Born in Germany.
	A Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution.
	Maybe that's what made him believe that, huh?
	That probably was what led to his belief, huh?
	No, I mean, I'm sure that had a profound influence on who he was.
	Yeah.
	Man, it's heartbreaking.
	Attended Harvard University, very smart guy.
	Yeah.
	Oh, he was a genius.
	Super, super genius.
	But look, I mean, I think a lot of that, even, you know, when you talk about the Nazi connection for his views, but a lot of that is true with the Israel stuff too.
	That it's like, you know, a lot of this, it's like people who like went through a lot of the shit that they went through got it in their minds that like you do whatever you have to do to make sure you're the one in power to survive.
	Oh, I get it.
	Look, that's what I'm saying.
	The sand remembered, you know, or the, it all remember, there's, you can't, it's all remembered.
	The big brain of time, it holds it all, you know, whatever it is, the soul of time, it holds it all.
	Yeah.
	And it's interesting.
	It's fascinating.
	It's painful.
	It's, it's life, you know, it's death.
	It's all of it.
	It's like, I think it's just like, I don't know.
	Some of it makes you fucking sad, you know, and some of it like, yeah, maybe it's easy for me to just sit here and say things from my home that has heat in it, you know, I don't know.
	I don't.
	But that's life, right?
	Is that there's like life is that there's like constantly tragedy all around us, but then there's beauty all around us also.
	Yeah.
	And then if you can kind of like reconcile yourself with the tragedy and accept that, you can really enjoy the beauty in life.
	And that's, you know, that's the best we could try to do.
	But yes, you're right.
	We speak from a position, as the lefties would say, from a position of privilege.
	And we're able to, but at the same point, like my thing is kind of like, if you are in that position and we're fortunate enough to like be in a heated studio and in a comfortable environment or whatever, then like, okay, so then we should try our best to kind of rise up above, like what I was saying before, where like, hey, if you're an Israeli Jew and one of your family members were killed on October 7th, of course you're going to be like, go get those guys.
	And if you're a Palestinian who saw one of your kids get killed by an IDF, you know, mission, of course, you're going to be like, let's go get those guys.
	But from our position of not being in either of those positions, we should at least be able to go like, okay, let's try to calm things down.
	Let's try to like push for peace.
	Let's try to go like, we understand how both of you could feel that way, but understand where the other one feels the same way you do.
	So like, at least sometimes there's an advantage to be like on a perch in a little bit of a better situation where you can kind of see things and go, okay, let me at least call balls and strikes on this and not just kind of flame more conflict, which is what people on the ground are doing.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I think I've always just like, I don't know, I think I just, if I feel like something's the underdog, then I'll err.
	I'd rather err on that side.
	Yeah.
	For me, it's like somebody's like, oh, you got mad.
	Some of you get mad.
	You fucked up.
	You chose the underdog.
	All right.
	My bad.
	You know, I just, that's like, I just think that's how I feel.
	How do we know, like, Dave, tell me this.
	Is there any country where if you live in the country, you have to like commit to that country, well, in what sense?
	Like, what do you think?
	Because America just starts to seem like this place where everybody can just commit for their other country if they want to.
	Yeah, well, I think that's one of the things that has been a big catalyst for Donald Trump rise of the whole America first thing, like this idea that, hey, like, we should be for our country.
	I think that there was particularly after World War II, which is really when you had the rise of like the current world order.
	I mean, obviously the Soviet Unions were part of it and then they fell, but the kind of American dominance started really after World War II.
	I mean, we won and we dropped the nukes.
	And the situation was that all of the industrialized world had been destroyed except for us.
	The war touched everyone, basically, every power except us.
	And we lost some men there, but we still came out with the homeland.
	With a big head start.
	Yes.
	We got in late and we developed the nukes.
	And so just it all, and we used nukes.
	And so it was like, oh, they have this new weapon that nobody else has.
	And so after that, the way too.
	Horrific.
	Oh, just like, I mean, totally inexcusable and disgusting.
	Which almost makes you wonder, do we have our just our judgment day coming?
	You know?
	Not us.
	We didn't do it.
	Well, you would hope.
	You would hope that the universe can pick out who was involved, at least to some degree and who wasn't.
	But in some ways, you know, there's this great old John Quincy Adams quote, which I'll probably butcher, but maybe you'll pull up so I get it.
	But it's like it was something like, if we go around the world looking for monsters to destroy, we will become the dicatress of the world, but we will lose our own soul.
	And that was, which is pretty profound that he said this back in the early 1800s, I believe.
	What does the dicatress mean?
	Like dictator.
	Like the female version of dictator.
	So like we'll rule, we'll rule the world, but you'll lose your own soul or something like that.
	I might be butchering this quote, but that's essentially the gist of it.
	The point was that you're like, oh, you go dominate the world, but you lose your own soul.
	Like you lose, you know, you're, you kind of, you take over everything else, but you lose the essence of who you are.
	Well, it's the same thing as like being like, I think like somebody like Jim Carrey or some type of a celebrity.
	You put so much of you out there that you are all over, but you don't know who you are anymore.
	Right.
	And there's a weird like, you know, like, there's a weird equation to that.
	But after World War II, America kind of took on the mantle of being like, okay, well, we're going to rebuild Europe.
	And there were arguments for why we should.
	We're going to be the defense of Europe.
	We formed NATO so that we could protect Western Europe because they weren't in a position to do it for themselves.
	And it just, it's almost like we became then the country that was always in the business of welfare for other countries.
	And I think what happened with Donald Trump, where a lot of people were, is that particularly after the years of the terror wars that were such disasters, is that people started to kind of reassess that and be like, well, look, we're not in a situation right now where Europe is destroyed.
	And you know what I mean?
	Like we're the only ones unscathed by this war.
	Europe is rich.
	They're fine.
	A lot of these other countries are like in, they're stable.
	And we're $36 trillion in debt.
	Our dollar is getting weaker.
	Our culture is like totally pitted against each other.
	Things feel like they're kind of falling apart here.
	And so it's just, it's a different proposition to go like, hey, you know, my family is taken care of and doing really good.
	And I'm going to help out this other family who's like friends of ours.
	That's a totally different proposition than like when my family's falling apart and are broke and hungry helping out somebody else.
	Like that's like, that's just a different thing.
	And so I do think like there should, it's healthy and normal and natural that there should be a movement in America that's concerned with America.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, you have people too who's who lost their grandfathers, who lost their siblings, who lost their great-grandfathers to helping liberate other groups and helping around the world, helping be those military presence around the world, you know, and who served.
	And they thought that that meant something, you know?
	That there was some value, that it meant something, that the American flag hadn't just been pitted by, hadn't just been divided as if it was a conservative emblem.
	That's crazy to think that somebody got fucking half of America to think that the American flag stands for like rednecks or something.
	Think about that shit.
	People don't want to think about that.
	People don't want to think that, oh, that's true.
	There's a little part of me that caught, that took that bait.
	You know what I'm saying?
	And wondering who has put the bait in front of you.
	And then see the hook, man.
	There's a fucking hook.
	Yeah, but like if loving America is right wing and free speech is right wing and working out is right wing.
	So shouldn't we all be right wing then?
	Like what are we even talking about now?
	And then I think that that's all changed.
	It's like you have Democrats that are Republicans now.
	You have people that don't know.
	You have a ton of people that want to be libertarians that don't know what it is.
	And so that's one of the reasons why I think we wanted to learn from you what it is.
	What does a libertarian idea of health care look like?
	What does that look like?
	Well, look, I mean, the libertarian idea with all of this stuff is to like actually get the government out of the way and let there be a real market.
	I mean, so much of the problem in healthcare in general is that it's just, it's not a real market like any other market.
	The prices, good luck even finding what the prices are.
	It's the only business you could walk into where no one in the room knows what the price is.
	And it's not, and because like, you know, I remember there was one time that my, it was like years ago.
	It was, I think before we got married, but me, my wife was like, she had a month where she had a lapse in her insurance.
	And so she had like one month without insurance before she got on mine or something.
	And then, and she had blood work done the month that she didn't have insurance.
	So we get some bill, you know, like blood work or whatever.
	Oh, like, okay, yeah, like taking her blood.
	And so we get a bill for like 1400 bucks.
	And my wife calls them and she's like, oh, yeah, I think what happened was she, she went to the doctor when she still had the insurance, but then they sent it to the lab after her insurance expired before the new one kicked in.
	So she's stuck with this bill or whatever.
	And she goes, she goes, oh, so this like fell like in my lap.
	So like I don't have insurance.
	And they go, oh, you're uninsured.
	And she was like, yeah.
	And they go, oh, we'll knock 70% off.
	Wow.
	Just like that.
	Now, party, I remember in the moment being kind of like, this is many years ago, and I was, I'm doing better now than I was then.
	But at the time, I was like, oh, sweet.
	We just knocked 70% off.
	But then, as soon as I'm like, sweet, I'm like, wait a minute.
	That's all.
	The prices are inflated by 70% for everybody else who has insurance.
	It's like this constant.
	And it's all because of these crazy over-regulation, over-government involvement.
	It's just literally things work better when you have a free market and there's real competition.
	So that's the libertarian answer to almost everything is like deregulate it.
	Let there be real competition.
	Let it be privatized.
	But if these private companies fail, let them go out of business.
	Don't come in and bail them out.
	Let them actually have to compete for who can provide a better service to their customers.
	That's when we get good things.
	Yeah, there's another part in that book where Marty McCari, that doctor who's just who got is going to be appointed by Trump, he talked about how, yeah, there was a guy whose father had like a stroke and they kept him in the hospital and they could do a procedure and they're like, it's like $150,000.
	And the guy's like, what the fuck?
	We can't do that.
	And they just, they kept kind of like holding him off.
	And eventually they're like, yeah, it's $15,000.
	Yeah.
	Like, yeah, it's just insane.
	Every couple of days, they would just call him back, like, we'll do it now.
	We'll do it now.
	And he was visiting America from another country and he decided just to go back to his own country and have it done there.
	But he was just shocked at how just the price went down because they were going to possibly lose the patient, right?
	Which is the way that businesses should be.
	The potentially you could lose the customer.
	What about the Federal Reserve?
	What is it?
	And is it fucking us?
	Oh, yeah, totally.
	Oh, it's the worst thing.
	I've heard about this.
	Ben asked.
	It's the worst thing about our government is.
	Because I noticed this.
	If I make money and I pay taxes on it, right?
	And then if I use that money to pay somebody for something, they have to pay taxes on it.
	If I die, I get taxed like 30, 40% on the money that I'd already paid taxes on.
	Oh, yeah.
	And then you like, I mean, it's insane.
	And then when you, if you think about how much money is actually taxed, I mean, like, it's not just like that you pay taxes on, but then if you go and buy something from someone else, then they got to pay taxes on the money that you already paid taxes on.
	It's just, it's nutty.
	But the Federal Reserve is the central bank.
	So it's all kind of confusing because they call it like the Federal Reserve.
	And so you kind of get this impression that it like, well, it's part of the federal government where they keep reserves of some money or something like that.
	But that's not what it is at all.
	It's technically not even a part of the government.
	It is, it's the worst of the government and the worst of not the government, right?
	So it was created by an act of Congress in 1913.
	It's the treasurer, the head of the Federal Reserve is appointed by the president.
	So it's, in that sense, very much a part of the government.
	However, it gets to maintain its status as a private independent company.
	They print the money and then lend it to us.
	So they charge us for using dollars at all.
	They make money off the fact that we use our own currency, that they're just given the right to print out of thin air.
	So they're about print out of thin air.
	I mean, most of it's done on computers these days.
	But so what they do is it was created by a bunch of powerful bankers.
	There's a great book on this called The Creature from Jekyll Island that really goes through the whole history of it.
	Let's order that book.
	The Creature from Jekyll Island.
	Oh, it's a good one by G. Edward Griffin.
	We'll have to order it right now, but let's go back to that Federal Reserve.
	It's a great book.
	I highly recommend everyone read it.
	Also, Ron Paul and the Fed is another great book on the Federal Reserve also.
	But so they are, so essentially they print the money and then lend it out.
	Now, they lend it out to what are called their member banks, meaning all the big banks.
	So JPMorgan, Chase, Schwab, Bank of America, all these.
	So they lend it out to them.
	And then those banks lend money to the rest of us at a much higher interest rate than they got it for.
	So all of the banks now are in the business essentially of getting free money.
	They just get the money at low interest and lend it out to us at higher interest.
	So they all get rich off of this.
	It allows the government to spend as much money as they want to because they can print as much money as they want to while it destroys the currency of the rest of us.
	And the worst thing about the Federal Reserve from my perspective is that it lets the government get away with just really evil things that they would never be able to get away with if they couldn't print all the money.
	So, you know, you could do lockdowns and then just hand out checks because you can print the money.
	But if you couldn't hand out the checks, you probably wouldn't be able to get away with lockdowns.
	You could fight a war in Afghanistan for 20 years.
	Now, if you had to tax people for that war, if you had to say, okay, listen, we want to fight a war in Afghanistan.
	So every quarter, we're going to come to you for another, you know, 10% of your income, there'd be massive pressure from people to end the war.
	But since they just print the money, they're able to keep it going for 20 years.
	Wow.
	And it also does a lot to like distort markets and just mess everything up because they pump money into markets where there's no real demand for there to be growth there.
	It's a huge scheme.
	It's privately owned.
	We don't even have real information on it.
	There's never been a full audit of the Federal Reserve.
	Ron Paul was the only one in Congress who was really pushing for an audit.
	In fact, I think Thomas Massey also was, but never got it done.
	The federal government sets the salaries of the board's seven members, seven of the board's seven governors, and it receives all the system's annual profits after dividends on member banks' capital investments are paid.
	The Federal Reserve earned a net income of $100.2 billion in 2015 and transferred $97.7 billion to the U.S. Treasury.
	So they make some money in there.
	They made $5 billion.
	Yeah, but the thing is that their books have never been opened and audited, so we don't really know exactly what's going on.
	Are we based on gold or not?
	No, we haven't been on gold for many years.
	It was a 1973 or 71, was it?
	Nixon suspended the gold standard, and we've never been back on it since then.
	71. Sorry.
	I should have had that one.
	Why did they suspend the gold standard?
	Well, so basically...
	So our currency was actually backed by an actual gold.
	The idea was that for every dollar you printed, you had to put away a certain amount of gold.
	So, okay, so what I was talking about before, after World War II, Europe is destroyed, America is still left stable.
	This is when America created what was known as the Bretton Wood Agreement.
	So essentially, America was like the dominant power in the world.
	We had the huge portion of the world's gold at this point.
	And so the deal that we came up with was essentially that other countries would peg their currency to the dollar and we would peg the dollar to gold.
	So you were kind of on a dollar standard.
	You were kind of on a gold standard if you went on a dollar standard.
	Got it.
	And we set the price at $35 an ounce.
	So for every $35 we printed, we had to put away an ounce of gold.
	Into Fort Knox?
	Yeah, I think that's where it was supposed to be caught.
	Also, has not been audited, but I think that's where it was supposed to be.
	That bitch is empty, I'm sure, dude.
	It's, I think, long gone.
	But so, okay, so then you have, so this starts in the late 40s, I'm saying Bretton Woods started.
	I want to say 40s.
	Yeah, the gold standard was largely abandoned during the Great Depression before being reinstated in a limited form.
	So we had gotten off of it and then gotten back onto it.
	But so what happened is when we're on the Bretton Woods standard, we go onto it in the late 40s.
	So through the 50s and into the 60s.
	Okay.
	Oh, is it early?
	It was before the war ended, is that right?
	Okay.
	And that standard was that for every ounce of gold, we had so much money.
	That's right.
	$35.
	Yes.
	And then other countries had pinned their, or using the dollar.
	To the dollar.
	So they're holding dollars.
	Right.
	But the dollars are redeemable in gold.
	Like, that's the idea that you could trade them in for gold anytime you wanted to do it.
	So it's all real.
	There was a checks and balances systems.
	Right.
	Except that we started cheating.
	And we started cheating really blatantly.
	And so in the 1960s, if you could think about it, right, America is doing a lot.
	In the 1960s, we have the Great Society.
	We created Medicare and Medicaid.
	We put a man on the moon.
	We fought the war in Vietnam.
	America is just spending a ton of money.
	And so what happened is that a lot of people were holding dollars.
	Right.
	And they're holding dollars that they're promised are good, are convertible to gold.
	And I believe it was mostly led by France, but I think England was involved in this too.
	But they essentially called America's bluff.
	And they went, you know, you guys are spending a whole lot of money.
	I'm thinking we'll take our gold.
	Like, we got all these dollars.
	We'd like to convert them into gold.
	So they called America's bluff.
	And Richard Nixon was like, nah.
	And so the way he spun it, it was just a giant default.
	Slick Rick.
	It was just a huge default to the world.
	Like, we're just not, no.
	But the way he spun it, which is actually pretty laughable if you, it was, he was like, you know, the French are trying to destabilize the dollar and we will not let this attack stand.
	So I have to temporarily, those are his words, temporarily suspend the convertibility from dollars into gold.
	So he basically told them, go fuck yourself.
	You know, we don't have gold, but we do have a much bigger military than you.
	So you will take this, you know?
	And then, you know, throughout the years, I mean, America just came to continue to dominate the world.
	So there was no real option for France to do nothing.
	But ever since then, we have not been on a gold standard or any standard whatsoever.
	They can print as much money as they want to with no limit.
	It says the Nixon shock was the effect of a series of economic measures, including wage and price freezes, surcharges on imports, and the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold.
	Although Nixon's actions did not formally abolish the existing Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange, the suspension of one of its key components effectively rendered the Bretton Woods system inoperative.
	Wow.
	And what happened to all the gold in Fort Knox then?
	Your guess is as good as mine.
	Can we look that up?
	What happened to all the gold after the Bretton Woods system?
	I don't know what it is.
	I mean, I think they would say they still have it.
	But again, it's like, much like the Federal Reserve.
	I believe, I don't think Fort Knox has been audited in all of this time.
	Wow.
	So I don't think we really know, you know?
	We got to get in that bitch.
	I'm going to ask Trump if I get to see him.
	Vance would give us an honest answer, I think.
	Are you going to the inauguration?
	I think I'm going to go because, well, first of all, I got excited to go.
	I got invited to go and then I never will get to go again.
	Are you going?
	Yeah.
	Just because I got invited and it's just kind of like, how could you not go?
	I mean, it's just, it's like, it's American history.
	And it's also, this was such a big election, too.
	It feels like such a seismic shift.
	And I got invited and I'm just like, come on.
	I mean, I don't know.
	I can't not.
	I'm too much of a history nerd to not be like that.
	Yeah.
	And I love that you always seem to have like this open-ended, like you're not really, you're not attaching.
	You don't, it feels like you don't really attach yourself to, you don't get overly attached.
	Well, I try to be, I try to be attached to principles, you know, and not be attached to politicians.
	So, you know, it's like I supported Trump in this last election just because I thought Kamala Harris was, I thought she was such an insult to all of us.
	You know, like it was like, come on, you can't actually do this.
	And to not have a primary and then just hand select her and then all the lying about Biden, all the going around with the lying about Biden was crazy.
	I just couldn't stand that.
	So I supported Trump.
	But as soon as Trump starts doing something I think is wrong, I'll be the first one to be like, yeah, dude, this is, he's fucked up.
	I think that's the way everyone should be.
	I think people are way, way, way.
	I hate, I'm also glad for that, that election season's over.
	I hate when people get so like dug in where it's like, you're not even really being a person.
	You're not even really having a conversation anymore.
	You're kind of getting into this.
	Like, once you pick a side and you're like, I've decided my side is the good side.
	They're the evil side.
	Now you're in a like ends justify the means conversation.
	Now you're trying to make the world fit that.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And it's also just a thing where it's like, you would see this all the time.
	Yeah.
	Especially during the election.
	I mean, I remember being on a couple of these shows that I do where I think I said to Piers Morgan at one point, like I was just like, I was like, maybe everyone will be willing to have a conversation in a couple weeks once this election's over.
	But right now, everyone's just in their dumb like, because you get to a point where you're like, I got to just win.
	My side has to win.
	And it doesn't matter about like telling the truth.
	It doesn't matter about actually Grappling with what the other person said.
	So I try my best to stay away from that.
	I think it's not good for you.
	Yeah, I think, you know, I think that's really how I am.
	I'm not like, I'm not the, I was never the biggest Republican or the biggest Democrat.
	I feel like I was always, I mean, I guess I voted Democrat, had voted Democrat most of my life, you know, but I want there to be more parties than there are.
	You know, I want, I just want things to be real or I just want to know what's really going on.
	I just don't like being like taken advantage of.
	That's the thing I don't like.
	And so, yeah, I think that's my biggest curiosity, you know, usually is trying to think, trying to get things to be fair.
	And yeah, just to have a voice if I'm right or wrong.
	You know, I tried.
	You know, I tried to speak up for what I felt like was, seemed like tried to be the best, you know, or whatever I thought was the best.
	But then sometimes you're also so deceived.
	You don't know.
	And that's one thing that's kind of fascinating about life.
	And that's one thing that I think does get me up these days.
	It's like, what a tricky fucking little game of thrones we're in, right?
	And everybody should feel that way.
	And you get up and you see where are they tricking you?
	Who's tricking me?
	Who's fucking me?
	Who am I fucking?
	You know what I'm saying?
	And it's crazy.
	And it's one of these weird things, right?
	Because it's like someone will, you know, it's like someone online who you don't even know.
	You could see a video and someone's saying something really compelling and you're like, oh, that's interesting.
	And then you're like, oh, yeah, but people are liars.
	So like this guy might be lying to me or the guy he's talking to about might be lying to me.
	And, you know, there are things like this.
	It's like, you know, there's, you know, part of the thing when the people on CNN or whatever, they'll be like, there's misinformation on the internet.
	Like, they are right.
	There isn't misinformation on the internet.
	Did you see the thing with the Hollywood sign on fire?
	Was burning.
	It was going super viral.
	Like everyone thought.
	I mean, the Hollywood sign now is just a doctored, you know, AI image or whatever.
	Yeah.
	I heard it burned up.
	There are people who will lie to you, but then at the same time, the person on CNN who's like, oh, all these guys are lying to you.
	You're like, yeah, but you're lying to me too, man.
	So that's the weird thing navigating this world.
	There's just like all this information and so much of it's bullshit.
	It's a dirty fucking Halloween.
	And your life is at stake.
	And that's what does put some, that's what fucking puts something on the line, you know?
	Yeah.
	And that is something that's kind of inspiring, man.
	Yeah.
	And yeah.
	And if you don't speak up and you don't try to say, like, yeah, it's just like, that's what you got to do, man.
	Use your fucking voice.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Use your voice.
	Is there anything that you would like to talk about, Dave?
	You have a tour coming up or anything like that?
	Oh, I'll be on, I'm on the road like all year.
	Comicdave Smith.com.
	Yeah, I've got a bunch of ticket links and dates that are up there already, and there should be more on the website in the next week or so.
	Why are you going to Bozeman?
	Oh, yeah, the first time ever.
	I've never been to Montana before.
	Oh, beautiful day.
	I'm really excited to go out there in a few days.
	And then Louisville, Fort Wayne, Key West.
	Ooh, wow.
	That should be fun.
	Maybe Nick Schwartzon will be down there at the bar.
	He spent a year in Key West during COVID at the fucking cat, dude.
	He went.
	This is alleged.
	And I love Nick.
	And he came here and told the story.
	I think he spent a million dollars at a hotel there.
	Just staying in a hotel every night, basically.
	Yeah, I guess if you do that for a year, you could rack up a lot of money.
	Down in the Florida.
	I went to Key West for supposed to be 10 days.
	Yeah, and I was there a year and a half.
	I heard that you ran up a bill at the hotel there that was like astronomical.
	It was insane.
	I stayed at a resort on the beach for a year and a half.
	And it cost, I heard a million dollars.
	I don't think it was a million, but it was a lot of money.
	If you tipped, did you tip?
	I always tip.
	What do you think it was?
	When you say a lot of money, how much was it?
	I mean, it was definitely probably half a mil for sure.
	I feel like it was more than half a million.
	It might have been.
	I kind of don't want to know.
	Yep, see?
	And that's our Federal Reserve right there.
	Well, that is.
	It's true.
	And that's how our Federal Reserve operates.
	I went for $50,000 on my grandpa's dollar, but there you go.
	Yeah, you can't stay at a resort for a year and a half, man.
	That's going to be a really big bill.
	But then also, man, it's so like, like, that's nice.
	He's like, you know what?
	Fuck it.
	The world might be ending.
	I might have like lung aids or whatever the kid, you know, whatever they were calling COVID.
	And I'm going to go sit.
	I'm going to have a margarita and listen to some Jimmy Buffett.
	I definitely know people who did worse during the pandemic than that.
	So that's not bad.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, Montana's great.
	There's a great place to eat there.
	Can you look up the farm in Bozeman, Montana?
	I think that's what it's called.
	Oh, while I'm plugging things, I should mention this one to make my friends happy.
	But we are, and dude, man, you got to come.
	But we're doing a Skank Fest in New Orleans.
	No way.
	Wait, during the Super Bowl?
	Huh?
	When is it?
	I believe it's in November.
	But it is, if you haven't been to Skank Fest, it's the best comedy festival in the world.
	And we've done it in Vegas for the last few years, but we're moving it to New Orleans this year.
	Very excited for that.
	I've never done comedy in New Orleans before.
	Yeah, New Orleans is a one-of-a-time contact place to do comedy.
	Oh, there's the crew right there.
	Attel, Dylan, Bobby Kelly.
	Who all is in there?
	Is that Bert in the back?
	Mark?
	Yeah, that is Bert, Mark.
	Louis J. Look at him.
	Lewis J with eyeliner on?
	I know.
	God, that's hot.
	There's Christine, right?
	No, no, what is it?
	Her, Christine.
	Christine and Rebecca.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Christine and Rebecca.
	They like run the whole festival.
	They do a phenomenal job.
	Yeah, Christine.
	Shout out to Christine and Rebecca.
	Rebecca owns the Creek in the Cave in Austin.
	Oh, it's a great comedy.
	Oh, I've seen her before.
	I was just there two days ago, yesterday.
	That's a fun room.
	Oh, yeah.
	It is great, man.
	Austin's, man, Austin, dude, it's really, I'm like, man, you can do so much stand-up there.
	It's like the new Hollywood.
	Like the new comedy, it really feels.
	This is the time I really felt it.
	Every time I go there, dude, it's just like, I felt, and even before Rogan opened the mothership, obviously like more so now, but even before then, it was just kind of like, oh, there's like an energy here.
	It's like fun to do spots and hang out.
	And there's like, I feel like in New York, like even, which is where I'm from, where I started, even when I go back there, like, I don't, I like feel like I don't know anyone anymore.
	But like in Austin, be like, oh, all my friends are hanging out.
	You know what I mean?
	Like it's, it reminds me of What it used to be like in New York when it always every night would be all my friends are hanging out.
	Now you get there, I'm like, I don't know who half of these people are.
	Yeah.
	It's just, I guess that's part of just getting old.
	Part of that's getting older, too.
	Yeah, it is.
	Did I, I knew since you said you're Jewish, did I offend you with anything I said?
	No.
	Okay.
	No, of course not.
	Okay, man.
	Thank you.
	No, I was waiting for you to go further.
	Further about what?
	You disappointed me.
	I did?
	I'm just kidding.
	Oh, you didn't really tear into the Jews.
	No, no, no.
	No, you didn't offend me at all.
	Okay.
	I think you made perfect sense.
	Yeah.
	Some stuff is hard to talk about.
	I think I'm trying to do a better job this year of being brave about trying to talk about some things, even if it feels kind of scary.
	Sometimes I have a tough time like saying, hey, slow this down so I can make sure I know what I'm thinking too.
	Learning it, being in conversations has been, it's harder than you think.
	I know it's a good thing.
	It's a skill set.
	It's a real skill set.
	And there's a difference also between just like, there's like just like doing your own thing, like just ranting is a whole different skill set than like talking to somebody.
	You know what I mean?
	And I do think that like, I think there's nothing wrong with like being like, hey, all right, hold on.
	Let me think about that for a little bit.
	In fact, I think not nearly enough people do that in conversations.
	Be like, huh, you just said something.
	Let me like actually think about that for a second.
	Yeah.
	Rather than just give you like my first, the first thought that comes to my mind.
	Let me actually give you like what my genuine thought is.
	Yeah, I'm going to try to focus on that a little bit more or unfocus on it a little bit to just leave a little bit more room for things.
	What was one other thing I was going to say?
	Yeah, man, I just, I love the way you're able to think and share.
	And it feels very, you always feel to me like you are being genuine to what you believe.
	And that's something that I just, I think it's important, you know, because I think that people can know that that's true whether you're right or wrong about stuff.
	You feel like, well, this is how I feel, you know, and this is what I think.
	And yeah, I just appreciate it.
	I feel like we're in a special time where people are trying to figure stuff out.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	And I do, that's always what I admire in other people.
	So that's kind of like what I always try to do.
	Like I, I'm sure I'm wrong about a lot of stuff, but I'm not lying about anything.
	And I'm not, like, I believe everything I'm saying.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I'm trying.
	Yeah.
	I'm trying my, yeah.
	And a lot of it's learning and it's just interesting, man.
	We're lucky to be able to be alive and think out loud and grateful to anybody that listened.
	And you got Skank Fest in New Orleans later this year.
	You have comicdave Smith.com.
	ComicDaveSmith.com.
	And then that's my, on Twitter, that's my handle too, Comic Dave Smith.
	Yep.
	And Dave, thank you so much, man.
	And best of luck this year with comedy and everything, man.
	And I might see you at the inauguration, bro.
	Hell yeah, dude.
	All right, man.
	Have a good one, brother.
	Thanks for having me.
	Now, I'm just floating on the breeze.
	And I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
	I must be cornerstone.
	Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.
	I can feel it in my bones.

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