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Joe Rogan Experience _2526 - JD Vance · NO FILTER

0:01
Speaker 1: Joan podcast check it out.
0:03
Speaker 2: But Joe Logan experience Train by Day Joe Rogan podcast
0:08
by Night all Day.
0:12
Speaker 1: So the last time we talked, last time I saw you,
0:15
we were at a cage fight at the White House.
0:18
Speaker 2: That's right, that's that's one of the craziest experiences of
0:23
my life. It must have been one of the craziest
0:25
experiences of your life.
0:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. It took me like two weeks afterwards to recover,
0:28
just to like, go, did that actually happen? That seems
0:33
it seems so insane.
0:34
Speaker 2: Okay, The most insane part of it, which I guess
0:37
was was before you got there. To me at least,
0:40
is you know, like you come into work every day
0:42
in the White House, right, you know, I have an
0:44
office in the West wing. There's the Oval office in
0:46
the West wing, and you look out the window and
0:49
as this like eight story complex was growing up, it
0:54
was it was just the most unbelievable thing. It's like
0:56
the south lawn of the White House, but you've got
0:58
the eighth Wonder of the world up around and every
1:02
day I'd look at it and be like it would
1:04
take me a couple of seconds and'd be like, what
1:05
the hell is going on, and I'd be like, oh, yeah,
1:07
it's UFC coming to a couple of weeks.
1:09
Speaker 1: The whole thing was surreal. First of all, it was
1:12
crazy that the weather just went around us, like there
1:17
was a real moment where the fights would have been
1:19
postponed until ten thirty pm start correct, and last minute
1:26
the storm just diverted.
1:28
Speaker 2: That's right. Well, and you know, this this this book
1:32
that I have that I guess we'll talk about a
1:34
little bit. But the book tour started the next day,
1:37
so I was flying in New York the next day
1:39
to talk about it, and all I could think about
1:41
is every time we got the update from white House Weather,
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oh it might not start until ten thirty, I was
1:45
seeing myself, Holy shit, that means I'm gonna go to
1:48
bed at like four am. I'm going to look like
1:50
a total crazy person trying to go talk about go
1:54
talk about this book. But yeah, it amazingly it did
1:57
work out. Honestly, it actually helped a little bit because,
1:59
as you know, it was hot as hell out there
2:01
and super humid, you know, mid June in in DC,
2:07
and I think the weather actually helped cool it down
2:09
a little bit because by about ten o'clock or so
2:13
I was not thinking it's hot as hell out here anymore.
2:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't too bad. But I talked to Justin
2:17
Gaetchee about it, and he said it was a problem
2:20
when he was fighting. He said the air was very thick,
2:23
like it was like right after the first round, it
2:25
was like, boy, like, this is rough. It is that hot,
2:28
humid air.
2:29
Speaker 2: And yeah, you know it's yeah, no, it's it's it's
2:32
fine walking around. It's it's I mean, it's okay walking around.
2:34
It still feels it is a swamp, right, that's why
2:36
people call it the swamp. So you know, that's obviously
2:39
June fourteenth.
2:39
Speaker 1: That's the president, not why they call it the swamp.
2:42
Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons why they call it the swamp.
2:45
They called it swamp because of my colleagues too, because
2:47
it's filled with mud and water and gunk.
2:49
Speaker 1: And shit and swamp monsters.
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Speaker 2: Oh man, So that's June fourteenth, So that's the present's birthday.
2:56
That's also was that was my twelfth wedding anniversary. Oh
3:00
had my wife. So that's that's the one thing. Like
3:02
if somebody runs in here, it's because my wife's going
3:04
into labor. Because she's like thirty nine weeks pregnant. But
3:08
I remember we go out to dinner like right before
3:12
the UFC fight and work of course, checking the weather
3:14
report to figure out what's going on. And you know,
3:16
my wife normally likes to come to the cool stuff
3:18
of being vice president. That was the one where she
3:21
was like, it's hot, I'm super pregnant, and I'm not
3:25
going to sit out there for six hours.
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Speaker 1: So yeah, I couldn't imagine. Also, it was just there
3:30
was so much chaos, and the potential for real chaos
3:34
was always there. First of all, you have the ellipse,
3:37
So the ellipse has what eighty five thousand people outside,
3:42
and for people that are watching at home, like we
3:44
could hear them like when the fights, when something would happen, and.
3:48
Speaker 2: Like kind of a delayed way. Yeah, yeah, you.
3:50
Speaker 1: Hear the cheers from the people that were near. So
3:53
it was like three thousand plus people tightly close to
3:56
the octagon and then you had eighty five thousand people yea,
4:01
yeah in the background. It was very eerie.
4:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually loved that, Like I loved the delay
4:07
reaction to where you know, somebody get a good punch
4:09
in or you know, you get a takedown and then
4:12
it was almost.
4:13
Speaker 1: Like the wave. Yeah, because there was.
4:14
Speaker 2: The initial center of it and then the people outside
4:17
of it.
4:18
Speaker 1: It was pretty sick.
4:18
Speaker 2: It was pretty sick. I think Dana said not once
4:22
in a lifetime or not once in a generation, and
4:24
once in a lifetime experience.
4:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's once ever. Yeah, I don't see
4:29
any other president. I mean, if you become president, you're
4:31
not going.
4:31
Speaker 2: To do that, right, I don't know, man, I wouldn't.
4:35
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do.
4:35
Speaker 2: It's actually very cool, it's very very cool.
4:38
Speaker 1: Get it over with, do it once. It was the
4:40
only time in the history of the sport where there's
4:42
been seven stoppages, steven seven knockouts, Like every single fight
4:47
was Oh I didn't realize that every single fight. Okay,
4:50
but the thing is like, we've had seven knockouts and
4:52
a card. I think this last weekend we had ten
4:55
ten stoppages. But that was different, Yeah, because it was
5:00
like fourteen fights, right, well, all fights. Every single fight
5:03
was a knockout.
5:04
Speaker 2: So the last fight, when did you realize that was over?
5:07
Speaker 1: With Connor? Yeah, when he fell down a second time,
5:11
I was like, oh, this is not good for the
5:13
first time, I thought he just slipped. It's hard to tell.
5:16
It's wild. It's in the moment. I thought he slipped.
5:19
And then when he got up and he threw a
5:21
kick again, I'm like, oh, I don't like how his
5:23
leg just gave out. That didn't seem like I'm still
5:26
hoping he's just slipping. Yeah, I'm hoping he's just freaking
5:30
out because he hasn't been the octagon in five years.
5:32
And then he started moving around and he grabbed his
5:35
knee and buckled, okay, and there was some conversation. Yeah,
5:39
there was some conversation going on between him and Max Holloway,
5:42
and I was like, you know, Max is saying he
5:44
can't fight, like something's wrong, and he say fight me.
5:48
He's like, get up, and so he lets him up
5:50
and then he's his knee buckles and then the referee
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stops to fight.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there. It's always so the very I think
5:57
it was the very last fight where the ref tried
6:01
to call it at the end of the third round,
6:03
and then because he was he was saying that there
6:06
was a concussion issue. I mean, I couldn't tell.
6:08
Speaker 1: What was this Elia Taporia fight? Justin Gatsche fighting the
6:11
Typerio justin you couldn't see, okay, he was saying, you
6:14
couldn't see, Well, something was wrong with his right eye.
6:17
Speaker 2: Well, and it looks like his whole face was puffed
6:19
up so he didn't see anything. But okay, So I
6:21
thought it was a concussion thing, but it was not
6:23
because of his vision.
6:24
Speaker 1: No, they never then. I mean, the concussion thing would
6:28
only be if someone had been battered. There's a lot
6:31
of times where fighters are fighting with concussions. Yeah, it
6:33
happens all the time. Yeah, you get dropped in the
6:35
first round, you probably have a concussion. Yeah, you get
6:38
back up, you keep fighting. You're fighting on instincts. There's
6:40
been many times where fighters wake up in like the
6:43
fourth round, sure, and they fought three rounds and they
6:46
don't remember it at all.
6:48
Speaker 2: Why, that's pretty crazy. Not the best way to make
6:51
a living, Not the best way to make a living.
6:54
Speaker 1: Man.
6:54
Speaker 2: Yeah. No. So we saw Gee Chee at the White
6:56
House a couple of weeks ago.
6:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that.
6:59
Speaker 2: I asked him, I was likes her, are you done fighting?
7:01
And he kind of hesitated a little bit, And then
7:03
I think it was his mom was in the Oval
7:04
office with her She's like.
7:05
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, but you know, if they offer him some
7:12
life changing money for one more fight after that performance,
7:15
I have a feeling he'll take it.
7:17
Speaker 2: Like what is what could he fetch for his next fight,
7:20
like fifty more?
7:21
Speaker 1: It's a good question, you know. I don't know what
7:24
his contract is. I don't know how it works. I
7:26
don't know what the most anyone's ever. I try not
7:28
to pay attention to that stuff. Yeah, because I'm not
7:31
on the business end of the sport.
7:33
Speaker 2: You can kill your perception a little bit.
7:35
Speaker 1: It can, and it's also it's I mean, I want
7:38
them to get paid the most amount possible. That's my perspective. Yeah,
7:42
but what I'm my job is just to analyze and
7:46
to see what's going on and to commentate and try
7:49
to give color and life to what's happening inside the octagon.
7:52
And I don't I try to dwell too much on
7:54
the money. I just want them to get paid a lot. Yeah,
7:57
I want them to be able to retire and never
7:59
have to do anything everg Sure, I don't know if
8:01
Justin could do that.
8:02
Speaker 2: What's crazy about it to me is just how much
8:05
the sport has replaced boxing, and like there's still obviously
8:09
boxing is still a big deal and the fighters still
8:12
get paid a lot of money. But like I remember
8:14
when I was I don't know, in high school, I
8:17
feel like people would get really excited about the big
8:20
heavy white Swait title. Now it's the UFC thing. So culturally,
8:25
it's like UFC has taken over boxing, and I don't
8:28
I mean, I don't know how or why that happened. Like,
8:31
I don't know if it's just good marketing or if
8:33
its just the fights are so much more real and
8:35
intense like, but it's it is a crazy shift that's
8:38
happened in twenty years.
8:39
Speaker 1: Well, I've had some I had some friends this past
8:41
weekend that managed fighters, my friend Josh Dubin and a
8:44
few other friends that actually manage boxers. Yeah, come to
8:47
the UFC and they were all like, oh my god,
8:49
this is so much better than a boxing promotion. Yeah,
8:52
because you all the fights are exciting. With boxing, most
8:55
people are just there for the main event, and a
8:57
lot of people don't even stroll in until fifteen minutes
9:00
before the main event. Sure, like all the famous people
9:03
that sit in the front row in the UFC, that
9:06
place is packed for you five six, seven, fights in yeah,
9:10
you know, and there's fourteen fights in the night and
9:13
all of them are amazing. It's like in the beginning,
9:16
it's usually like half full, depending on where you are.
9:19
If you're in a place like Salt Lake City, it's
9:21
pretty packed, like right away because they only get like
9:23
one event every year or so. But it's just a
9:27
more exciting sport. There's more ways to win, it's more dynamic,
9:30
more things happen, and there's more stars. There's so many
9:34
stars in the UFC.
9:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'd never seen a fight live before, Like
9:37
I've watched them on TV, but I'd never been there live.
9:39
So kind of crazy that it's literally in the south
9:41
lawn of the White House. But the thing that I
9:43
found completely shocking about it was like I would think
9:48
those those like arm bar takedowns are just done, like
9:52
that's it, you're over. But there were a couple of
9:55
times where somebody had another person's arm.
9:58
Speaker 1: Yeah that was Josh Hogen Derek Lewis, and.
10:03
Speaker 2: It's like, holy shit, yeah he has your arm broken off.
10:07
Speaker 1: He didn't he wasn't doing it right, okay, Josh Hokit
10:11
is a great wrestler, and he's an excellent fighter, but
10:14
he's not really a submission specialist. I mean, he did
10:17
get the arm bar, but he didn't do it right.
10:19
Speaker 2: Okay.
10:19
Speaker 1: He was basically like pulling on you have to elevate
10:22
your hips and you have to create space so that
10:25
the arm is bending back. This way, his arm is
10:28
essentially flat to his chest, which is not what you want.
10:31
What you want is a back arch like this where
10:34
you see like how it is right there. So what
10:37
he wants to do here, what he should do instead
10:39
of having his hips down his knees up, what you're
10:42
supposed to do is heavy leg, curls with the leg
10:44
and elevate the hips up and pull it way back
10:47
so we'd almost be bridging in it. He would be
10:50
on the top of his shoulders and bridging, and then
10:52
he would have broken his arm. The other option is
10:55
you pull it off to the side like this, Yeah,
10:58
and you put it to the side of your hip
11:00
and you can break it. Okay, but it's just bad technique.
11:04
Speaker 2: Yah, Okay.
11:04
Speaker 1: So watching its, yeah, yeah.
11:06
Speaker 2: Watching it, I didn't realize that. I just could not
11:09
believe that dude held out for like thirty seconds.
11:11
Speaker 1: Was that more shocking or when he said Michelle Obama
11:14
as a man. Which one was more.
11:16
Speaker 2: Shocking, Definitely the arm bar part. Man, I work in politics,
11:22
people say crazy stuff all the time.
11:24
Speaker 1: Well he says that every fight does. Yeah, yeah, he
11:28
said that the last time I interviewed him. Oh man,
11:31
Well he's like a pro wrestling character.
11:33
Speaker 2: Like. People lost their minds about it, I know, lost
11:36
their minds about it, to the point where again I
11:39
had the view either the next day or the day
11:42
after and to.
11:43
Speaker 1: Sort of promote this book that must be fun.
11:45
Speaker 2: It was crazy. It was harder than any anything I've
11:47
done in politics. But the to the point where all
11:51
of my comms people, the thing they were most worried
11:54
about was they're gonna ask you about Michelle Obama being
11:57
called a man. What are you going to say about it?
12:01
And I was like, what an amped up fighter told
12:04
a joke after a fight, said something after a fight,
12:07
and that's actually national news. I'm still surprised. I've been
12:10
to politics now for three four years. I'm still shocked
12:13
this shit that people get really fired up about.
12:15
Speaker 1: Well, I kind of understand it because it's at the
12:18
White House. First of all, A cage fight at the
12:21
White House is crazy already. I mean if he said
12:23
Michelle Obama's a man at the T Mobile Arena in Vegas, It's.
12:26
Speaker 2: Like it's a loss of a story.
12:28
Speaker 1: What he is is he's a very good fighter, first
12:30
of all, and but sometimes it's not enough to get attention.
12:35
And so what Josh has done is created this persona,
12:38
like this pro wrestling bad guy persona. When you talk
12:41
to him off stage, he's like very normal, very smart guy.
12:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
12:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just like he's decided, like, look, I want
12:47
to maximize the amount of eyeballs that see me, and
12:50
I'm gonna create this crazy person. He comes out to
12:52
the Hulk Hogan song, I'm a real you, sunglasses of
12:58
American Flag ban Dan, It's you know, he's he's.
13:02
Speaker 2: I mean, I love I love the present, I love
13:04
the presentation. But again, I like, not the.
13:07
Speaker 1: Best thing to say at the White House, Michelle Obama's
13:09
a man is not the best thing to say.
13:11
Speaker 2: Fair, But the reaction to it to me was still
13:14
totally disproportioned.
13:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, dude, people say stuff.
13:17
Speaker 2: All the time, and what I Okay, I work in
13:23
a business where obviously people make life decisions, life and
13:25
death decisions all the time, and I'm always a little
13:29
bit caught off guard by the culture that just overreacts
13:34
when clearly the thing that Josh is trying to get
13:37
is the overreaction in the first place, Right, So you
13:39
give him exactly what he wants, and like the worst
13:42
you could say is, oh, that was an offensive comment,
13:44
and you get on with the rest of your life,
13:46
Like that's the worst that you could say. The people
13:47
who really flip out about it and kind of lose
13:51
their minds, I just I don't understand that.
13:54
Speaker 1: Well. First of all, I think a lot of it
13:56
is there is an economy that is essentially based on
14:00
getting reactions correct, and there's a lot of people that
14:04
are just, for a lack of a better term, they're
14:07
they're not real. They're they're their reactions are performative. Like
14:13
a lot of what they're doing is just trying to
14:16
trying to comment on things and get clicks and likes
14:20
and views. And social media has ruined discourse in a
14:23
lot of ways because people people are not having like
14:27
real conversations about things. They're reacting to things on Instagram
14:31
and twitters, and you know, they're just they they look
14:35
at an opportunity like that, like, oh, I found a
14:38
gold nugget. Yeah, like this is gonna give me money,
14:41
or this is going to give me attention, It's going
14:43
to get Oh, I can't wait to have.
14:44
Speaker 2: A take on that. That's exactly right. So but okay,
14:47
So my response to that is so many things is like, oh,
14:51
he was being funny, he was being outrageous, and I
14:53
just move on with my life. What I find very
14:55
interesting is that people who say, you know, oh, that
14:58
was a joke, like when when hill Tony do you
15:00
remember he told like the Joker around the world in
15:02
Madison Square during the twenty twenty four election. I remember
15:05
getting into an argument with somebody about this, and maybe
15:09
not like in an interview, but I don't remember. It
15:12
could have been private too. Anyway, I'm like, he told
15:15
a joke, and the person's response is, well, it's not
15:18
a very funny joke. And my response to that is,
15:20
you know what happens when somebody tells me a joke
15:22
that's not funny, I don't laugh, and then I move
15:25
on with my life. This whole industry around outrage, especially
15:31
getting outraged around humor, I think is actually really hurting
15:35
the country.
15:36
Speaker 1: Well, in that case, first of all, I told Tony
15:39
a long time ago that joke was going to get
15:40
him stabbed. I really did. He even jokes around about
15:44
it on stage. He talks about me telling him that's
15:47
the one, dude, that's the one that's gonna get you stabbed.
15:51
Speaker 2: Any good joke, at least it's going to run you
15:53
some risk.
15:55
Speaker 1: A racial joke, and that joke being about Puerto Rico.
15:59
By the way, no one takes a joke better than
16:01
Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans are some of the best people
16:03
at telling jokes, like it is a culture of joking
16:08
and fucking around with each other and talking shit like
16:11
they're great at Yeah, so like.
16:13
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican guys in the Marine Corps man, that's absolutely true.
16:16
Speaker 1: They love him still. You know, like even after that.
16:18
Speaker 2: Joke, you you advised him not to tell that joke.
16:21
Speaker 1: Well, I was kind of half joking, you know, Tony.
16:24
That's what Tony does. You know what by I just said,
16:26
that's the one that's gonna get you stabbed. But I
16:28
mean that's what Tony does. Tony is like the Josh
16:32
Hokitt of comedy. Like he but very talented. You know,
16:36
he's a really good he's a roaster he's just like
16:38
roasting his specialty. But it's also like he's trying to
16:42
ruffle people's feathers. That's what he wants to do. He
16:45
wants to piss people off, like that's he likes being
16:48
a pro wrestling heel. He always he's a huge pro
16:51
wrestling fan.
16:51
Speaker 2: Well so well he so Tony. I like, I'm a
16:55
huge fan of his comedy. I've only met him a
16:57
couple of times. I don't know him particularly well, but
16:59
he's actually like, you know, more political, I would say
17:03
than most comedians. Do you think it's there?
17:05
Speaker 1: Okay, so very supportive of like Trump, Like he's on
17:11
the Republican teams.
17:12
Speaker 2: He's on the one.
17:14
Speaker 1: Because he's experienced so many looney left wing people in California. Yeah,
17:18
that's why he had to move.
17:19
Speaker 2: Well, somebody sent me a clip I think it was
17:21
Shane Gillis at a roast where the joke was they
17:26
were roasting Tony and they're like, Tony Hinchcliff is the
17:29
only dude who would be excited if Jade Fance was here.
17:35
And I was like, one, that's a very good joke,
17:38
and number two, I feel like I had made it
17:40
Like there have been a few moments where I feel
17:41
like I've made it.
17:42
Speaker 1: When your South Vice South the United States, I think
17:45
you made it.
17:46
Speaker 2: When South Park spooshed me, I felt it more than
17:49
when I got it scorn In as Vice President of the
17:50
United States.
17:51
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This offer is for new customers only. Yeah. Tony is
19:13
I mean that's his style, like like he loves like
19:16
being the heel hen get kick out of it. Yeah yeah,
19:19
oh yeah, he's one of the first people that moved
19:21
out here with me. Okay, yeah, I mean we've been
19:23
here for six years now. Yeah, and every time we
19:26
go back to California, we're like, we were right, Yeah,
19:29
we were right. It's falling apart, keeps going further and
19:32
further down the toylet.
19:33
Speaker 2: How do you how do you feel like Austin is going?
19:35
Because the criticism of Austin, call it five or six
19:38
years ago, is that all that like it's a cool town,
19:42
it's got its own unique culture, It's Texas, but it's
19:45
also its own thing, but that all of the blue
19:49
Staters moving in, We're going to like totally change the
19:52
politics and the culture of Austin. I actually don't think
19:55
that's happened.
19:56
Speaker 1: I think the Blue Staters that moved here and moved
19:58
here because they recognize that wherever they were living was
20:02
not tenable. It was falling apart. And all of these
20:05
places like New York and really California, like especially Los
20:10
Angeles and San Francisco, they're falling apart. And I have
20:15
a bunch of friends that are stuck there that can't move,
20:18
like maybe they have family there or maybe they have
20:21
a business there, and they fucking hate it. And then
20:24
I have a bunch of people that are trying to
20:26
move but they can't sell their house. Like it's nuts there, man,
20:29
I don't think people. First of all, you get gas
20:32
lit by Gavin Newsom. I mean, he's just gaslighting everybody
20:36
about how well you know, the gdp of was like
20:40
the fifth largest country in the world. That's what California is.
20:43
Speaker 2: It's like, dude, hey, bro, it was like that before
20:45
you were the government exactly. Also, how much does a
20:48
U haul cost if you're leaving California or how much
20:50
does it cost if you're going to California, Because that's
20:52
the real measure of whether a state's doing well.
20:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, the state has more people moving out than moving in,
20:58
and that has never had happened before. California's when I
21:02
moved there in nineteen ninety four. Until I left, it
21:05
was always every year traffic got worse every year, more
21:07
people moved there every year. And I loved it. I
21:11
loved it. I loved it. From the time I moved there,
21:14
I was like, this place is great. It's warm all
21:16
the time, the weather's fantastic, there's so much cool stuff
21:20
to do. The people are great. Yeah, and then politics
21:23
ruined it. That's right.
21:24
Speaker 2: So my wife's from South California, San Diego, and so
21:27
we spent a fair amount of time there, and I just,
21:29
I mean, I still feel a certain sense of like
21:33
heartbreak over La Oh, because every time I'm in la
21:36
you can see why this was like the quint essentially
21:40
American city. The architecture is beautiful, it's got its own
21:43
vibe going. Like you said, the weather is amazing. And
21:46
then you drive through skid Row and you're like, how
21:48
could any state or any city let this happen.
21:51
Speaker 1: Skid Row is now fifty five blocks. It was fifty blocks. Yeah,
21:57
just like a year or two ago.
21:58
Speaker 2: Okay, So my first experience with skid Row was so
22:04
Usha used to work at this like very fancy litigation
22:06
firm in southern California. Of course she was a second lady,
22:10
she was a corporate litigator. So there's a Christmas party
22:13
in downtown LA and you get these instructions from her firm,
22:18
and they're like, this really convoluted way of this is
22:20
how you have to get to this Christmas party. And
22:23
I'm like, why don't I have to follow these direct directions?
22:25
Why don't I just put it in Google Maps?
22:26
Speaker 1: Right?
22:27
Speaker 2: This is like five or six, seven years ago, So
22:29
we realize that the reason why they gave you these
22:32
convoluted directions was so that you could avoid skid Row
22:35
at night. And so you get to this party, you
22:39
drive through skid Row if you follow Google Maps's directions.
22:43
You get there and it's like this beautiful facility with
22:47
like fancy food and fancy wine, and then there are
22:50
armed guards outside of it and these gigantic walls. And
22:54
I realized when I was there, you know what this
22:55
reminds me of. This reminds me of going to the
22:58
US Embassy and poor Prince Haiti like super security crazy
23:05
wealth and privilege and status on the inside and squalor
23:09
and misery on the outside. Like it's the first time
23:11
I'd ever thought America, Like, this part of America is
23:16
actually more like a third world country than anything that
23:18
I thought we'd ever become.
23:19
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, Yeah, why is it that
23:23
large population centers like places like Los Angeles and New
23:27
York are almost always run by the Democrats? Yeah, Like
23:31
what is it about? First of all, what happened with
23:34
the last election in Los Angeles, just the primary? I
23:40
think it was crazy, So super suss. And here's why
23:43
it's supersius. Not just super sus. That Spencer Platt, Spencer Pratt,
23:48
who was in second place got overtaken by Nitia Rahman
23:52
in the mail in ballots, but that the mail in
23:55
ballots also passed a tax hike. People voted to pay
24:02
more taxes in a state where you have the highest
24:06
That's right. They're like, we don't pay in that that
24:11
is insane. That then when you have direct evidence they
24:15
were recruiting homeless people and they were getting homeless people
24:19
and giving them cigarettes and cash, there's evidence, yes, to
24:23
use their their address and mail in ballots.
24:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would have I would have beat the Californian
24:27
Joe who wakes up in the morning and says, you
24:29
know what, I'm gonna go and vote for higher taxes.
24:31
Speaker 1: I don't pay enough taxes. I feel like we can
24:34
fix this if I more taxes.
24:37
Speaker 2: The crazy thing about it, too, is it's that, okay,
24:41
So after the initial ballots all came in, it was
24:44
Karen Bass was number one, Spencer Pratt was right behind her,
24:47
and then number three whatever this one smithms, okay, So
24:52
you would expect the mail in ballots to be more
24:55
or less like the original ballots in terms of one too.
24:58
And I'm not saying Spencer Rocks win the mail in ballots,
25:01
but it just so happened that the third place person
25:04
in relative terms did a lot better than the first
25:07
and second place person portionately, such that the Republican was
25:12
actually kicked out of the race, so that there's not
25:14
actually a real election in California. That to me was
25:16
the crazy part. It's like you were designing the vote
25:20
share in order to kick Pratt out and put the
25:23
third person into second place. That to me is like
25:26
very very bizarre, because what is the theory of the
25:29
mail in vote that is somehow like so much more
25:34
pro nithia relative to Karen Bass.
25:36
Speaker 1: Makes makes no sense, makes no sense. Why would it be?
25:40
Why why would it be? I mean Karen Bass was
25:42
ahead by every metric.
25:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean, okay, so you asked a question,
25:46
why do all these blue states or why do all
25:49
these big cities, population centers end up becoming end up
25:53
becoming blue? And I think it's like a very complicated right,
25:57
So one thing, And you said this a few months ago,
26:00
and like when you said it, I was like kind
26:01
of annoyed by it, but then I like thoughts there's
26:04
like an element of truth to it, which is that
26:07
Republicans still fundamentally have a cool problem, right, There's something
26:11
more charismatic, more cool about the Democrats as opposed to
26:16
the right. And so you said something about there are
26:21
too many dorks or something on the right.
26:23
Speaker 1: There's a lot of darks, you know.
26:24
Speaker 2: Fair I'd say there's a lot of dorks whatever left too,
26:27
but it's a different thing, it's a different kind of dork.
26:29
But the point is that there's something you know, like, Okay,
26:33
if you're a pop star, you're a rock star, you're
26:36
an actor, you're in all these cultural centers, you're more
26:39
likely to be left than right, and so I think
26:41
that a lot of young people who are attracted to
26:43
these population centers, they sort of move along with the
26:45
prevailing culture. I think that's that's one thing that's going on.
26:49
I think a second thing that's going on is the
26:52
people who are sort of attracted to a certain kind
26:55
of right of center politics. They want the suburbs, they
26:59
want the single family home. They kind of want to
27:01
be left alone. They don't want sort of to be
27:02
able to hear what their neighbors are doing. So I
27:04
think a little bit of it's just cultural self segregation.
27:07
And that's meant that a lot of these population centers
27:11
have gone blue. But it's very complicated. I've thought about
27:13
this a lot, and I also just, man, I like,
27:17
I'm not one of these people who says we should
27:19
just abandon California to the Democrats, like let them deal
27:21
with their own problems. I think California is like a
27:25
quintessential part of the American dream. Like if you just
27:27
abandon California, you've like lost something very core to American culture.
27:33
And I just I don't want to give up on it.
27:36
Like I'm not saying we're gonna win California in my
27:37
lifetime necessarily. But I don't like the idea of giving
27:40
up on it.
27:41
Speaker 1: Well, it's not just giving up on I mean giving
27:44
up on it would be terrible. It's an awesome state.
27:46
The real problem is it's deeply corrupt. I mean deeply
27:51
deeply corrupt. And what they're trying to do is make
27:54
it impossible for the other side to win. Yeah, and
27:57
there should be laws against that. First of all, the
28:00
idea of mail in ballots for anybody other than people
28:03
who are invalids who can't live their homes, or military
28:08
or people that for some reason they're serving overseas yor
28:11
doing something overseas, it should not be legal, right, And
28:14
the fact that it became ubiquitous during COVID, which is
28:17
a giant problem.
28:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this raises one of my total segue here sidepoint.
28:21
But so if you remember in the aftermath of the
28:25
twenty twenty election, where there was all this like debate
28:27
about was the election stolen, was the tionnot stolen? All
28:29
the litigation that moved through. There was a case in
28:32
Pennsylvania that like didn't get very much attention. And I'm
28:36
going to butcher it a little bit, But basically it
28:38
was a guy in a rural area of Pennsylvania saying,
28:42
you're undercounting my vote because we didn't have the opportunity
28:45
to do the mail in ballots like they did in
28:47
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. And like, the argument was a kind
28:49
of disparate impact, right, the cities ginned up all the
28:53
mail in balloting and the ballot harvesting. You didn't do
28:56
that in the country, and that hurt sort of our representation.
29:00
They take this case to the Pennsylvania courts, and what's
29:02
crazy is the Pennsylvania courts basically say, you're making kind
29:06
of a good point here, like the ballot harvesting did
29:09
affect Republicans in a more negative way. It did mean
29:12
that certain people in the more rural parts of the
29:14
state were underrepresented it. But then the court conclusion was
29:18
this is not a problem the court can fix, Like
29:20
that's a political problem. Change your local elections leaders, change
29:25
your laws, Like that's not a remedy that the court
29:28
has to fix. And so everybody saw that case and
29:31
they're like, oh, the judge rules against Donald Trump, rules
29:34
against Republicans for saying that there was something illegitimate. But no,
29:37
actually the judge kind of said, there is something kind
29:40
of fishy here. We're just the wrong venue to fix it.
29:45
Speaker 1: Well, it's just very disheartening that you have to consider
29:50
the fact that it's really possible that the elections get stolen,
29:56
and the California one was a big one for me.
29:58
Speaker 2: And why not just have mail in or why not
30:02
just have voter ID?
30:03
Speaker 1: Yeah? You actually that's not only did they not have
30:05
voter idea? You can't show your idea. You're not allowed
30:08
to show your own.
30:09
Speaker 2: Impact, be like prosecuted if you try to force somebody
30:12
to show their eye.
30:13
Speaker 1: Just that seems like you want people to cheat exactly.
30:17
And is this from the same people that we're saying
30:19
you have to have an ID that shows you've been
30:21
vaccinated just four years ago to go.
30:23
Speaker 2: To restry shopping or to go to a restaurant. Yeah, no,
30:26
it's it's definitely. That's the part about it that I
30:30
think makes most people of my political persuasion skeptical of
30:35
what the Democrats are doing. Like, if you don't want
30:37
to cheat in the election, then just make everybody actually
30:40
show an ID. Another thing people don't realize is I
30:43
didn't realize it until a couple of years ago. The
30:45
voter ID solves a lot of the mail in ballot
30:47
problem because if you have to show an ID in
30:51
order to get a mail in ballot in order to actually,
30:53
you know, confirm that there's a real identification attached to
30:57
that vote, that solves a big chunk of the problem.
31:00
Speaker 1: Logical, Yes, like I don't, I'm not. Every country does it.
31:05
I'm not skeptical. I'm accusing them. I think they stole
31:08
the election. Yes, and I think it's common. And you
31:13
know this idea that elections can't be stolen. I always
31:16
say to people, Okay, do you think that the amount
31:20
of election fraud is zero percent? No one thinks that. Yeah,
31:25
no one thinks it's zero. There's always some over zealous
31:28
person that works somewhere that's doing something. There's always crazy
31:31
people that like blue. No matter who, we gotta win
31:34
or read no matter what, there's always people right and
31:38
left that are going to try to rig the election
31:40
because they think it's imperative our nat Like. Look, we
31:44
saw there was people like Oprah Winfrey was saying it
31:47
like if we don't win this election, you may never
31:49
vote again. Like what the fuck? Are you talking about,
31:52
Like why who's going to tolerate that left war? Right?
31:55
That's crazy? But that attitude allows people to usify cheating. Correct,
32:01
And I think they cheat, and I think they've been
32:04
doing it forever, and I don't think there's any other
32:06
reason why you would have no voter ID. And they
32:08
try to say, oh, it's racist to have voter ID,
32:12
Like what are you talking about? Do you think other
32:14
races are incapable of going to the d m V.
32:17
Speaker 2: That's insane, that's Racist's actually super racist. That's really the
32:23
implication of their argument is literally like blacks and Hispanics
32:26
cannot go to the d m V to get an ID.
32:27
By the way, if you look at the polling, black
32:29
Americans are as pro voter I D. Even though the
32:32
most Black Americans vote Democrat, they're still pro voter ID
32:35
as much as white Americans.
32:37
Speaker 1: Is most Americans are voterized the want ID except for operatives.
32:41
Speaker 2: So I'll offer on the Joe Rogan podcast this deal
32:45
is vice president of these United States that if Democrats
32:48
really don't think that there's any cheating, give us voter ID.
32:52
Speaker 1: I just don't know, and we'll stop talking about why
32:55
is that not a federal thing.
32:57
Speaker 2: We are trying to make it a federal thing. So
32:59
we are part right now trying to pass the Save
33:01
America Act. One of its main provisions is a requirement
33:04
that you do voter ID and we actually have I
33:07
think a majority of the Senate that would support it.
33:11
But this is just weird Senate procedural bullshit. There is
33:14
a sub segment of people who want voter ID but
33:19
won't blow up the filibuster in order to achieve it,
33:22
and so they're so married to these old world Senate
33:25
procedures that they're going to make it impossible for us
33:28
to pass Save America. Now, we're, for what it's worth,
33:30
trying to fix that and trying to address these like
33:33
weird procedural archaic things. It's insane though, Like if you
33:38
ever okay, I'm sure you hear people talk about the
33:40
filibuster all the time. Yeah, I don't want to go
33:41
too far down this rabbit hole. Here's what the filibuster is.
33:45
It is a pure Senate rule. It is a creation
33:49
of the Senate procedures, which basically says that anything that
33:53
has to do with the budget is a fifty vote threshold,
33:57
and anything that everything else non budgetary is a sixty
34:00
vote threshold. Now, as you can imagine, there's some gray
34:03
area on things that maybe your count as budget issues
34:06
and should be fifty, or are not budget issues and
34:09
count at sixty. So what we have tried to persuade
34:13
the Senate to do is to treat the voter id
34:17
as something that can fall within the fifty vote threshold.
34:21
And there is no law, there's no provision in the Constitution.
34:24
It is legitimately that there are senators who are so
34:27
attached to the idea that budget is fifty, non budget
34:31
is sixty, that they're quite literally willing to prevent voter
34:35
idea in America. God, it's nutsy.
34:39
Speaker 1: It's crazy. And it's also like the idea that somehow
34:46
or enough, like Kathy Holtchell had the craziest take on it.
34:49
Speaker 2: Did she often does?
34:50
Speaker 1: Did you see her take on it?
34:52
Speaker 2: I have not.
34:52
Speaker 1: She was talking about black people in inner cities not
34:55
even knowing what a computer is. Did you ever see that? No?
34:59
Speaker 2: I didn't see that.
35:00
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it was so crazy. And then this
35:02
one comedian, this black comedian, did this hilarious video where
35:07
he was like circling around a computer staring at it,
35:10
like touching it, like you didn't know what it was.
35:13
It's like, what are you talking about? Everyone has a
35:17
phone that's a computer.
35:18
Speaker 2: So many of these Democratic talking points presume that their
35:22
own voters are actual idiots. That's actually there's a big
35:26
difference between you know, Republicans. We sort of presume that
35:29
our voters are adults, and you don't see that with
35:32
a lot. I'm not saying every Democrat, of course, I
35:34
don't want to cast too broad of a brush here,
35:35
but it's it's like, you know, Gavin Newsom did this
35:38
speech a few months ago the president. I think it's
35:40
the funniest thing ever because he's like speaking to a
35:43
group of black leaders and black businessmen, but it's like
35:47
an audience that is ninety five percent black, and they're
35:50
asking him about his dyslexia and his struggle with education,
35:53
and he basically says, yeah, you know, I'm not very
35:56
smart like a lot of you.
35:57
Speaker 1: And it's like I'm like you, I'm like, well, there's
36:01
a ton of interviews where he's talking about all the
36:03
books he reads, like he's so.
36:05
Speaker 2: Full of shit. Yeah he's he's full of shit.
36:08
Speaker 1: But it's admirably full of shit, but it's it's I
36:11
admire the fucking the sheer tenacity that he has and
36:17
being full of shit.
36:19
Speaker 2: It's amazing, It really is amazing. But it speaks to
36:23
the incentives of there's kind of like, look, there's a
36:27
real populism that I'm very much a fan of because
36:29
I think you should be responsive to people, but there's
36:31
like a faux populism of the way that I'm going
36:34
to appeal to people is by assuming that they're idiots
36:37
and acting like they're idiots. And then but if you're
36:41
committed enough to that bit, eventually it kind of leaks
36:43
out what you're doing. And I think that's that was
36:46
sort of what Gavin did there, as he told on
36:48
himself a bit.
36:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it was just it's just he's bizarre.
36:53
Speaker 2: I will say, I I've only met Gavin. I think
36:56
I've only met him one time in my life, and
36:59
it was it's such a crazy experience. So the debate
37:04
between Biden and Trump during the twenty twenty four cycle,
37:08
and I'm there, I'm actually doing an interview for a
37:11
documentary when the debate starts, and there's this clip of me.
37:15
The debate starts, I'm in the middle of this interview,
37:17
there's a big screen behind me as I'm talking to
37:19
the camera which is here, and I kind of freeze
37:22
and I look back at the TV and I'm like,
37:25
oh my god, Like this is actually happening. Biden is imploding,
37:28
because if you remember, it was obvious from the get go.
37:31
So I go to the spin room afterwards, and that's
37:34
where you know, all these reporters and all the surrogates
37:37
of the candidates. This is before I was the VP nominee,
37:40
and I'm just like, you know, talking about how great
37:42
the president did, how bad President Biden did. Okay, I
37:45
see Gavin Newsom there and he literally looks like he's
37:47
seen a ghost. Like I've never seen a person who
37:51
as good of a bullshitter as he is who realized
37:55
there was no selling that performance. Like, but can you imagine,
37:57
like try to put yourself in the perspective of a
37:59
human being. I always try to, you know, be empathetic.
38:02
Where Joe Biden's just had that debate and you have
38:05
to go on CNN to talk about how great of
38:07
a job Joe Biden did.
38:09
Speaker 1: Well, my favorite is Joe Scarborough because Joe Scarborough, before
38:13
it was like, you know, I'm gonna say something and
38:16
f you if you can't take it. This is the
38:18
sharpest Biden we've ever seen. Have you ever seen that? I? Oh,
38:23
it's amazing. And then after the debate, he's like, we
38:25
got to get rid of him. He's got to go.
38:27
He's gotta go, hey, hey, hey, what did you say?
38:29
You just said a couple of months ago, this is
38:31
the best Biden ever.
38:32
Speaker 2: That's wild.
38:33
Speaker 1: Well, it's like, I wonder what was going on with that,
38:37
because like the debates were earlier than they've ever been before,
38:41
and it seemed to me it's like there was a
38:43
concerted effort to hide what was wrong with Everybody was bullshitting,
38:48
everybody was gaslining us. We all saw it. I remember
38:52
a friend of mine who's super progressive, super liberal, you
38:55
know what I talked about on a podcast. I'm like,
38:58
this is crazy. Even if he wins, he's not going
39:01
to be the guy that's the president. You're going to
39:03
have his cabinet that are running everything. Turned out I
39:05
was right, and they were saying, oh, don't you understand
39:08
that he has a stutter? And I said, where the
39:11
fuck was that stutter? In the nineteen nineties, Like that's crazy,
39:16
Like a stutter that only shows up when you're eighty,
39:18
That doesn't make any sense.
39:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like.
39:20
Speaker 1: This is a lie. You're lying. He's had two brain surgeries,
39:24
like where they have to take the top of your
39:26
head off. Literally they have to take like a cap.
39:31
Speaker 2: Wait, Biden had two brain surgeries. Oh yeah, how did
39:34
I know this?
39:34
Speaker 1: You didn't know this.
39:35
Speaker 2: I didn't know that he had two brain surgery.
39:37
Speaker 1: Two brain surgeries, Jamie, Please let us up. Make sure
39:40
that I'm right. I'm ninety nine percent sure I'm right.
39:43
But I know he had did well. It kept him alive.
39:49
It kept him alive. I mean he Biden has not
39:53
undergone recent brain surgery. He underwent two successful life saving
39:58
oh brain surgeries prepare to intracranial aneurysms in nineteen eighty eight.
40:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
40:05
Speaker 1: His medical professionals have stated that he made a full
40:08
recovery and suffered no lasting brain damage or cognitive impairment
40:12
from these procedures. Oh, it's from the Washington Post, so
40:15
you know it's accurate and definitely not bias at all.
40:17
And these medical professionals with those the same people that
40:20
said that the COVID vaccine is safe and effective. It's
40:24
it's we we live in a wonderful time for bullshit.
40:27
It's like because they'll bullshit, you're right to your face,
40:29
like we do. You have two brain surgeries, like major
40:32
brain surgeries because you have an aneurysms. I don't care
40:35
who you are. That's probably going to do some damage.
40:39
Aneurysms are.
40:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, people die from aneurysms all the time. That's the
40:46
crazy thing is I never even knew about that.
40:48
Speaker 1: How did you not know about that? That's nuts? I
40:49
knew about it. Well.
40:50
Speaker 2: It speaks to how constrained our media environment is that
40:54
even I had never.
40:54
Speaker 1: Heard right, it was not a part of the narrative.
40:57
It's certainly not from the Democrats. But yeah, he's it
41:01
was clearly. I just don't understand why they ran him
41:04
in the first place. The whole thing made no sense.
41:07
And then to have no primary and just stick Kammel
41:10
in there and then all of a sudden pretend that she's
41:12
the best thing ever and like this idea, like complete
41:16
flip of her being the least popular vice president ever,
41:19
always sticking her foot in her mouth, always saying crazy shit.
41:22
How dare we say, Merry Christmas. Remember that one. What
41:27
are you saying? Like joy is bad? Merry Christmas.
41:32
Speaker 2: Legitimately, when the campaign consultants told me, hey, we're gonna
41:36
hit this line because Kamal Harris came out in favor
41:39
of taxpayer funded sex changes for illegal aliens, and I
41:44
remember the myself, come on, you guys, like she didn't
41:47
really say that, it's taken out of context. And then
41:49
I go and look at it. I'm like, holy shit,
41:52
she actually said that, and she was she really was,
41:56
like the very worst version of what the Democrats were
42:00
producing in twenty twenty. The thing is it was they
42:03
were all doing it because that was the incentives of
42:05
the party. Like if you remember that debate where it
42:08
was do you want taxpayer funded Medicare for illegal aliens? Which,
42:13
like Medicare is the program to provide healthcare to the
42:16
elderly that people pay into for like you know, your
42:18
entire working life. You see your little Medicare tax statement,
42:22
And the idea that we were going to give taxpayer
42:25
funded healthcare to illegal aliens, it was just insane. It
42:28
was a ninety ten issue. But their party in twenty
42:32
twenty got kind of taken over by the radicals, and
42:35
I think, actually, maybe you're seeing a little bit of
42:37
that happening right now, where it seems like the radical organizations,
42:42
the nonprofits, the donors are pushing the party in a
42:46
direction that most of the voters haven't gone in. Like
42:48
you ask why Joe Biden was the nominee, and I'll
42:51
say something in defense of Joe Biden, so like, was
42:54
he the most effective politician know had he had two
42:57
brain surgeries, yes, and clearly had shown the negative signs
43:00
of aging. But he was kind of the only candidate
43:04
if you go back to twenty twenty, who could hold together,
43:07
like the reasonable middle class Black American and the Atlanta
43:12
suburbs with whatever is going on on the far left
43:16
of the Democrat Party. And I think this is sort
43:19
of the issue their party has. I mean, our like
43:20
to be candidate, Our party has its own coalition problems,
43:23
and it's always tough on a two party system to
43:25
hold everybody together. Like I think about this a lot.
43:28
I think it's really tough on the Democrats because the
43:31
core of their party, like the most important voting block
43:34
in the Democratic Party is middle class Black Americans, socially
43:38
moderate to even socially conservative maybe a little bit more
43:41
economically populist on certain business and tax issues. You know,
43:45
they don't want to give tax breaks to major corporations.
43:47
They also don't want to trans the kids. That's the
43:50
base of their party. But then you've also got like
43:54
the crazy people, and you have to kind of hold
43:56
that together. I think the argument for Biden was he
44:00
was one of the only people could hold that together,
44:02
even though he was an awful politician in his own right,
44:04
even before he was like old.
44:06
Speaker 1: Well he was. He was Obama's vice president exactly, and
44:10
you know, he's established, he's a known name, and for
44:14
the people that were kind of casuals weren't really paying
44:16
attention to politics, he's a proven commodity, right.
44:19
Speaker 2: He doesn't read as a crazy person to the general electorate.
44:23
Even though you know.
44:24
Speaker 1: I got Harry Larks he tells me Tory, He's like, oh,
44:31
tell you about cord Pop, Like what oh fuck is
44:34
going on?
44:35
Speaker 2: The thing I couldn't get where Biden is is just
44:37
bad staff workman. The way that he ate ice cream.
44:41
I mean it's like, you know, we could bring some
44:44
of this stuff up, but it's like they would get
44:46
him eating ice cream in the most ridiculous, suggestive, way imaginable.
44:51
Speaker 1: I never even paid attention.
44:52
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's just such bad optics. Okay, So
44:54
there's there's a clip I want to say from the
44:56
twenty sixteen campaign where somebody is campaigning in Iowa and like,
45:03
use the Iowa State Fair is like one of the
45:05
main things you go to when when you're running for president,
45:07
and they give somebody a corn dog, and somebody eats
45:11
the corn dog and it becomes like a major news
45:14
cycle for a long time, and I will never forget.
45:17
In twenty twenty four, I'm sure we are. I know
45:21
you got a little fun sometimes though. But in twenty
45:24
twenty four, somebody is holding up a sign at the
45:26
Iowa State Fair and I think it may have been
45:28
the Vikes, one of the Vikes event Viake Ramaswami's events,
45:31
and the sign says, eat the corn dogs, you cowards.
45:36
The best political signs I've ever seen.
45:39
Speaker 1: That's funny. That's funny. Yeah, you'd have to be a
45:43
very manly man to be able to eat a confidently
45:45
confidently eat a corn dog.
45:47
Speaker 2: I don't know that I could do it, Joe.
45:49
Speaker 1: I eat them. They're good. Yeah, but it tastes good?
45:51
Speaker 2: Are you fot I love corn dogs.
45:52
Speaker 1: I've been forgraphed.
45:53
Speaker 2: You've been photographed eating a corn dog.
45:55
Speaker 1: I'm sure someone has one of the I mean.
45:59
Speaker 2: More life that I've led. I try to try to
46:02
eat my corn dogs. That's between that's between me and
46:05
my kitchen.
46:06
Speaker 1: I'm not scared to eat a corn dog. I just
46:08
think it's funny that people just they're so afraid of
46:10
being anything that looks like a dick. You can't bananas,
46:16
corn dogs.
46:16
Speaker 2: You're gonna be careful when you're politics. This isnts based
46:20
business here.
46:21
Speaker 1: What are those popsicles? The ones that yeah, yeah, yeah,
46:25
I get it. I mean, but it's just like, that's
46:27
how crazy we are that that that's what weird people out.
46:31
The way someone eats a hot dog.
46:32
Speaker 2: That's like, okay, well, that's that's where we are, man.
46:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the difference between you know, the crazies and
46:43
the real reasonable Democrats is so stark to me. I
46:48
did I. And it's also with the right, it's like
46:52
we're always the party is always defined by the worst
46:54
examples of the right that's you know, yeah, or or
46:58
of the left, you know, whatever it is, whether it's
47:00
a patriot Front or whether it's Antifa.
47:04
Speaker 2: Okay, so who do you think is the worst example
47:06
of our side? Like who do you read about on
47:09
our side and your reaction as holy shit, and don't
47:11
say jade fans is gonna be a very awkward interview.
47:15
I'm screwed with you.
47:16
Speaker 1: Well, the people that you know. One of the things
47:20
I had James Tallerico on the podcast, and one of
47:22
the things that I think he has a really good
47:24
point about, even though I know you're a Catholic and
47:27
you're very religious, putting the Ten Commandments in schools, I
47:32
don't think is the right way to do it. And
47:34
this is a guy tall Rico, who was in seminary
47:38
and is very Christian. He just thinks that even though
47:42
he believes in the Ten Commandments, if you're just only
47:46
representing the Christian faith in these schools, you're forcing your
47:51
religion into other people's lives, and that this is going
47:55
to push people away from Christianity rather than encourage them
48:00
to pursue it. Yeah.
48:02
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you'd ever want to force things
48:04
on people, and I do. I think one of the
48:07
core Christian contributions to Western civilization is the idea of
48:11
freedom of religion. It's actually very much a Christian idea
48:14
because you recognize the dignity of its individual and part
48:18
of recognizing that dignity is that each person has to
48:20
find their own pathway to God. You can't force this
48:22
on anybody. I don't think putting the Ten Commandments up
48:25
in school is like forcing things on any but it's
48:28
public schools.
48:29
Speaker 1: So I mean, if you're going to do that, why
48:31
not put Buddhist scripture, Why not put you know, Muslim's stuff.
48:38
You could you could you could make an argument why
48:40
you should have a bunch of different religious tenets in school.
48:43
Speaker 2: I think in the Supreme Court there actually are a
48:46
lot of different sort of historical, cultural legal documents that
48:49
are up there, and I want to say that Moses
48:51
coming down with a tablet is one of them, but
48:53
I think there actually are other cultural and maybe even
48:56
other religious elements of this. Like where you recognize is
49:00
that a big part of sort of the law giving
49:02
tradition in Western civilization is the is some of these
49:07
religious texts, not exclusively Christian religious texts, obviously some Jewish.
49:12
There's like an important contribution from the Muslim world in
49:14
this so I guess I don't think of it as exclusionary,
49:19
while also recognizing that, you know, America is a society.
49:23
Our founders were people who were very much influenced, even
49:26
if they weren't Christians. A lot of them, of course were,
49:28
but were very influenced by Christian culture and articulating American law.
49:33
So my argument would be, even if you're not a Christian, like,
49:37
does seeing the Ten Commandments? Let me put it slightly everyway,
49:43
does seeing the Ten Commandments force religion on a non
49:47
Christian child? I mean, my argument would be no. And
49:50
I'd illustrate this by saying, well, there are all of
49:53
these ways in which you actually could try to force.
49:56
Speaker 1: Religion on a child, right, Well, it's not the worst
49:58
way to force religion on a child, but to have
50:01
it and not represent any other religion. This is Texas,
50:03
by the way. So what he's talking about was that
50:06
there's these Christian nationalists, these these guys that are very
50:10
wealthy that are trying to fund Christian schools and trying
50:15
to defund public schools or any other kind of religious
50:19
school and what they want to do, and they pass
50:21
this to get the Ten Commandments in all public school classes,
50:25
and he's fundamentally opposed to that as a Christian because
50:28
he thinks it's going to force people to have this
50:32
in their class and it's going to push people away
50:34
from Christianity.
50:35
Speaker 2: I mean, I understand the argument. I just don't see
50:37
it that way. I mean, I guess if I if
50:40
I hear you, but if I'm a non religious student
50:43
and I'm sitting in there and I see the Ten
50:45
Commandments at the very least, I think I can appreciate it.
50:48
I mean, you know, OK, but.
50:51
Speaker 1: What if you're Hindu. What if you're a Muslim and
50:54
you know, and you are seeing that represented but not
50:58
your faith.
50:59
Speaker 2: Well, it's a public school, first of all, I think
51:02
that you you. I mean, I'm pretty sure Muslims. I'm
51:06
not hardly an expert on Islam, but I think all
51:09
of the Abrahamic faiths recognize the Ten Commandments as like
51:12
a significant thing. But I think if I was a
51:15
Hindu looking at the Ten Commandments, I mean, again, it's
51:17
hard for me to say this right from my perspective,
51:20
but I certainly went through an atheist phase in my youth.
51:23
And what I would see that as as a non
51:25
religious person or a different religion is I would say
51:28
this is like an important cultural element of the Western civilization,
51:34
which is the foundation of the classroom that I'm sitting in.
51:37
And this idea that the law comes in a sort
51:41
of above any man, even if you don't believe in
51:43
God yourself. I think that's like an important concept. I mean,
51:46
if you look at the Ten Commandments, probably eight of
51:49
them or something that I would hope that everybody would
51:51
agree with, even if they're not themselves religious. So I
51:54
guess here's my view on it. Like I would not
51:58
be offended if I sat in a classroom as a Christian,
52:01
or if my kids sat in a classroom is a
52:03
Christian and saw, you know, a religious text that wasn't
52:07
Christian on the wall, I would encourage them to see that. Now,
52:10
I'd encourage them to see that as a learning experience.
52:13
Speaker 1: What if it was from the Qur'an? What a bunch of.
52:18
Speaker 2: If it's like something crazy, But but no, I mean,
52:21
if if it's if it's something that is like culturally interesting,
52:26
I guess I don't. I don't have a problem with
52:28
my kid reading.
52:29
Speaker 1: The problem is it's mandated. Like if you have a
52:32
classroom and the teacher is Christian and the teacher wants
52:36
to have it in their classroom, maybe that's one thing.
52:39
But if you're mandating that you're going to have the
52:41
Ten Commandments in classrooms, that's a different thing, because now
52:45
you're you're pushing Christianity on kids. And this is Tallary
52:49
Gho's position, And as a Christian, he's saying, I think
52:52
this is going to push children away from Christianity.
52:56
Speaker 2: So again I understand what he's saying. I just I
52:59
think that part of living in a society where you
53:02
have different people with different perspectives, but you do have
53:04
I mean, Christianity is the majority religion of the United States.
53:08
It is the religion that was extraordinary influential to our founding,
53:12
to the constitutional principles. Again, freedom of religion is itself
53:16
not really a liberal concept. It was originally derived from
53:21
a Christian idea about free will and the dignity of
53:23
the person. I think part of that is that you
53:26
accept that you're going to have exposure to different things.
53:31
And if a state legislator in a majority Christian state
53:35
once it's not like they're putting the Ten Commandments in
53:38
front of these kids and saying you have to read
53:41
this and write it five hundred times a day. They're
53:44
exposing kids to something, and I'm comfortable with kids being
53:47
exposed to a lot of different things. I think that's
53:50
part of living in a society where there's a free
53:52
exchange of ideas. And what I worry about with Tallerico's
53:56
sort of perspective here is again I'm not saying that
54:00
I don't want kids to be exposed to anything that
54:03
is outside of the Christian candidate, like I actually want
54:06
my kids exposed to things. I write about this in
54:09
the book that I think it's important to have a
54:11
ground and enough faith that you can engage with a
54:13
lot of different ideas and still ultimately, you know, sort
54:16
of hold on to your Christian faith. But isn't part
54:20
of just living in a like pluralistic democracy that people
54:25
are going to be exposed to different things. And you know,
54:28
I would kind of put it on to Lerico in
54:30
a slightly different way that for a long time in
54:33
this country, they were actually Supreme Court rulings that said
54:37
that you cannot pray in a school, even a student
54:40
organization led by the students, or that you cannot put
54:44
the Ten Commandments up even a teacher who chose to
54:46
do it in their own classroom. And so I think
54:49
you're always kind of trying to strike this balance, you know,
54:52
given that we have the First Amendment in this country,
54:55
between allowing the practice of religious faith in public spaces
54:59
and stibly forcing religion on other people, I think you
55:03
have to strike that balance the right way. I guess.
55:05
I just say is that if the Ten Commandments being
55:08
in a classroom is the thing that you think is
55:11
forcing religion on somebody, was he equally offended when the
55:15
Ten Commandments were like quite literally prohibited from being listed.
55:19
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I don't know if he was
55:22
offended by that or if he was opposed to that,
55:24
But the idea of being exposed to it is one thing.
55:29
It being mandatory is another. And to mandate that in
55:32
classrooms is a different thing, because you are promoting, clearly
55:36
promoting Christianity. And his position is that promoting Christianity in
55:40
that way is going to have an opposite effect on children.
55:43
You're pushing it on them, and so you're not just
55:45
exposing it to them, you're pushing it on them. And
55:48
especially if you're pushing it on children who come from
55:50
a household that has a different faith.
55:52
Speaker 2: I guess I just think the balance in our country
55:53
the last thirty forty years has actually been much more
55:56
in the other direction, which is that we try to
55:57
completely remove religion from the public square. And I think
56:01
that poses its own problems, because you know, people practice
56:07
their faith in all kinds of ways.
56:08
Speaker 1: I think that that's the responsibility of churches and synagogues
56:12
and wherever that like, if you want and in the community,
56:15
if you want to promote religion, promote it that way.
56:17
But promoting in public schools should be just educational. And
56:21
if you're in a religious class and a class is
56:24
teaching about religion, that's a different story.
56:28
Speaker 2: Well, you're right, it's certainly the responsibility of churches and
56:31
synagogues and mosques and so forth. But I also think that,
56:35
you know, the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist
56:39
sort of said this that if your approach to religion
56:43
in public life, always and everywhere is to push it
56:47
out of the public square, then you're actually embracing a
56:50
religion of your own in the public square, which is secularism.
56:53
You're just taking one religion and replacing it with secularism.
56:56
And I guess what I'm saying is I'm kind of
56:58
comfortable with people of different faiths sharing the public square together.
57:01
But part of that is that if if I'm in
57:04
a ninety five percent Christian community and my local city
57:07
council wants to put up a Nativity display on you know,
57:10
Christmas Eve, I'm okay with that. And that was actually,
57:14
like for a long time in our country, actually prohibited.
57:17
And so what I think is that we got we
57:20
we sort of put ourselves in this frame in this
57:22
country where we said every public display of religion is
57:27
somehow illegitimate. But I mean, I don't know. I try
57:32
to live my faith in a way that's consistent across
57:35
different spheres of my life. You know, I don't preach
57:37
to people. I don't like walk into the White House
57:39
to tell my employees, you know, you need to be
57:41
you need to follow Jesus as your Lord and savior.
57:44
I just try to live my life in a way
57:46
that hopefully makes people a little curious about what, you know,
57:50
what motivates me and what inspires me. But I also
57:53
don't think that the expectations should be that we tell
57:55
religious people they're not allowed to be religious in the
57:57
public square because I think that's what we've done the
58:00
last thirty or forty years. I guess you know, we
58:03
can agree to disagree. I see the Texas thing as
58:06
an attempt to correct that.
58:07
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com and sign up to day Well. I think living
59:01
by example is probably the best promotion of any good
59:05
way to live your life, whether it's Christianity or any
59:08
other religion. I think that's definitely the way to do it.
59:10
But the point is that this is being promoted by
59:14
very wealthy people who are Christian nationalists, who want this
59:19
to be they want it to What is going on here,
59:23
jam You got Bible stories become required reading in Texas
59:26
public schools. Yeah? See, well now that's a you're taking
59:30
it to another level. So this is June twenty sixth,
59:33
this is very recently. That is that kind of thinking,
59:40
and that kind of mindset is what bothers me the
59:46
most about some Republicans.
59:48
Speaker 2: I see what you mean.
59:49
Speaker 1: And then there's people that, again, they live their life
59:55
in a very beautiful way and they follow the teachings
1:00:00
of Jesus Christ and they're very admirable, and I think
1:00:03
that's very attractive, and it makes people very curious about
1:00:06
that religion, and I think that brings people to Christ
1:00:09
and I think it brings people to religion. But then
1:00:11
there's people like did you read that report that came
1:00:17
from at the start of the Iran War where there
1:00:21
was a guy who was an officer, non commissioned officer
1:00:25
who was at a briefing and this guy came in
1:00:32
as explaining to them that they didn't need to be
1:00:35
afraid because this war was important because Trump had been
1:00:40
anointed by Jesus Christ to bring about his return, and
1:00:44
the way they were going to Jesus is going to
1:00:46
return is by bombing Iran.
1:00:50
Speaker 2: I did not see that report. Sounds pretty far out
1:00:52
there to me.
1:00:53
Speaker 1: This is the kind of right wing I see thinking.
1:00:57
So here it is military commander tells troops bombing Iran
1:00:59
is part of God's divine plan. So we started getting
1:01:03
calls the wee hours of Saturday morning from people saying
1:01:05
their commanders were just jubilant about this, trying to tell
1:01:08
people don't worry, it's all part of God's plan. They
1:01:13
promised a two hundred mile long river that is four
1:01:16
and a half feet deep, filled with nothing but the
1:01:18
blood that their weaponized version of Jesus will spill at
1:01:22
the Battle of Armageddon. Weinstein said, what was the one Uh?
1:01:27
There was a there was an article where the guy
1:01:28
was explaining the actual quotes that the one officer was
1:01:34
telling them. The one commander. Uh. Yeah, but it's not
1:01:39
that it was very specific. He was. It was very
1:01:42
specific what he said.
1:01:46
Speaker 2: I mean, for what it's worth, my attitude on this
1:01:48
stuff is. I mean, first of all, as a Christian,
1:01:51
you sort of believe that everything is part of God's plan,
1:01:54
even things that are ultimately very terrible. I mean, you
1:01:57
kind of have to hold up.
1:01:58
Speaker 1: Let me let me read the quote. He urged us
1:02:00
to tell our troops that this was all part of
1:02:02
God's divine plan, and he specifically referenced numerous citations out
1:02:07
of the Book of Revelations referring to armageddon and the
1:02:09
imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that President Trump
1:02:12
had been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire
1:02:15
in Iran to cause armageddon and mark his return to Earth. Okay,
1:02:20
if I'm in that meeting, hint the breaks.
1:02:26
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's where you need some of the psychedelics
1:02:28
we talked about at the last Joe Rogan.
1:02:30
Speaker 1: Jadvan's conversation, that would definitely help.
1:02:33
Speaker 2: I mean my response that, first of all, like, obviously,
1:02:37
do I endorse that. No, do I think that it's
1:02:40
important that people reigning in a little bit, because I'm
1:02:42
sure you're right, there were a lot of troops there,
1:02:43
probably a lot of Christian troops there who are like, uh,
1:02:45
I'm not sure this is exactly right, right, But the
1:02:49
important point is I think it's important as a Christian leader,
1:02:54
as Christian's period, one of the things we have to
1:02:56
do is just have humility in the face of God's plan.
1:02:59
There's a lot that we don't understand. There's a lot
1:03:01
that we don't get, and I think especially on matters
1:03:04
of war and peace, the approach that I try to
1:03:06
take is you try to make the best decisions that
1:03:09
you can. You hope that you're on God's side. You
1:03:12
don't assume that God has taken your side. That's a
1:03:15
that's a very famous Abraham Lincoln quote, and that's the
1:03:18
attitude that I take. So for that, what I you know,
1:03:20
what I would encourage that NCO to say is, you
1:03:22
know what, God is in control. We don't know what's
1:03:25
going to happen, but let's pray and try to do
1:03:28
as good of a job as we can trusting in God.
1:03:31
If I was speaking to a group of Christian troops,
1:03:34
that's what I would say.
1:03:35
Speaker 1: But you're speaking to a group of troops sure don't
1:03:37
know of their Christian Yeah yeah, I mean you're essentially
1:03:40
letting these people know that you believe that Trump was
1:03:44
anointed by Jesus to bomb Iran so that Jesus can
1:03:48
come back, just.
1:03:49
Speaker 2: Come back in a fire fire, Can I get the
1:03:52
fuck out of here?
1:03:53
Speaker 1: Yeah?
1:03:53
Speaker 2: No, look yes, And I uh, that is the first
1:03:58
that I have ever heard of this particular story.
1:04:01
Speaker 1: Have you not heard of this and Biden's two brain surgeries?
1:04:03
Speaker 2: Apparently I live in a bunker, man.
1:04:08
Speaker 1: How do you not know?
1:04:10
Speaker 2: Okay, here's the other thing I'll say is having heard
1:04:15
about this for the first time, just now to your
1:04:17
point about the media, I do think it's possible, let's
1:04:21
be honest, that whatever that dude said, maybe it was good,
1:04:27
maybe it was bad, has been misreported by the press.
1:04:30
So I always have a filter on this stuff, Like
1:04:32
I don't automatically assume.
1:04:34
Speaker 1: It's also possible that this is the other thing he said.
1:04:36
The commander supposedly had a big grin on his face
1:04:39
when he said all this, which made his message seem
1:04:41
even more crazy.
1:04:42
Speaker 2: And I think that's again, I don't think anybody should
1:04:46
have War is sometimes necessary, but it's never a good thing.
1:04:53
And I think that's like a fundamental Christian principle is
1:04:55
there are just wars. There are necessary wars, but war
1:04:58
is always something that you try.
1:04:59
Speaker 1: To right but saying that this is what's being referenced
1:05:03
in the Book of Revenue, I actually get.
1:05:05
Speaker 2: I think that is nuts. I also don't know that
1:05:08
that you know, I want to be confirmed, to confirmed
1:05:10
that this person actually said that before teeing off on it,
1:05:13
because what that sounds to me is like somebody butchering
1:05:17
or misrepresenting something that you know, somebody that I know
1:05:23
might have said.
1:05:23
Speaker 1: Quite possible, So I just you got to be also
1:05:26
quite possible that you've got a really looney guy who
1:05:30
is a Christian nationalist, who is a commander, and who
1:05:34
is in this position where he's actually excited because he
1:05:37
does think that this is a holy war and this
1:05:40
is going to bring back Jesus.
1:05:42
Speaker 2: Well, it's certainly possible. I mean, America's got three hundred
1:05:44
and thirty million people, and we've got a lot of
1:05:46
people believe in a lot of things. But I can
1:05:48
assure you that we don't encourage people to talk like that.
1:05:52
And again, all I can do is a Christian leader.
1:05:54
I'll look into that story, certainly, But all I can
1:05:56
do is a Christian leader is talk about how I
1:05:57
think about questions of war and peace, which is is
1:06:00
we try to do the right thing. We try to
1:06:03
figure out what it is that is consistent with Christ's
1:06:07
moral teaching, and we try to comport our foreign policy
1:06:12
with the cause of justice. And that's what we try
1:06:14
to do, recognizing it's always going to be imperfect. But
1:06:17
I don't think that we should ever have an attitude
1:06:19
towards war like this is a great thing. I'm gonna
1:06:22
grint and smile about that. All I'm saying is I'm
1:06:24
skeptical that anybody took that approach, because the media misrepresents everything.
1:06:28
Speaker 1: Do you think that this the way that you just
1:06:31
described it aligns with our campaign and Iran.
1:06:34
Speaker 2: Well, I think that the goal is certainly good, which
1:06:38
is to prevent a ran from getting a nuclear weapon,
1:06:41
and I think that there are obviously a lot of
1:06:45
questions about how best to achieve that. There's both a
1:06:48
short term and a long term piece of it. I
1:06:50
think the short term piece of it is effectively what's
1:06:52
already been done, which is you destroy the nuclear sites,
1:06:55
and you destroy and eliminate the ability to rebuild the
1:06:58
nuclear sites. I think there's a longer term thing, which
1:07:01
is where like a lot of the debate is focused
1:07:03
on right now, which is that building a nuclear program
1:07:06
is hard, but it's not impossible, and it's expensive, but
1:07:10
it's actually not even that expensive if you look at
1:07:12
I mean, you could go on YouTube right now and
1:07:14
find out how to build an atomic momb. So part
1:07:17
of our Iran policy, and this is where I get
1:07:18
frustrated with the people who say you should never negotiate
1:07:21
with Iran. Part of our Iran policy is like solving
1:07:26
the long term problem that if we could create the
1:07:29
sort of circumstance where Iran would commit not just to
1:07:32
not have a nuclear weapon right now, but over the
1:07:35
long term to not try to rebuild that capacity. Like, yeah,
1:07:38
I think that that is a good and valuable thing.
1:07:43
Speaker 1: If it was your call, would you have done exactly
1:07:44
the same thing.
1:07:46
Speaker 2: Well, one of the presidents said publicly that JD was
1:07:51
less enthusiastic about it. I think was the exact phrase
1:07:53
that he used. I mean, my attitude towards this man,
1:07:56
as you know, is the vice president. I'm not a
1:07:59
public commentator. Like my job is to give the best
1:08:02
advice I can to the present of the United States.
1:08:04
I think he's said a little bit about what that
1:08:06
advice was. But once the president makes a decision, so
1:08:11
long as I think that it's you know, legal and
1:08:13
ethical and all that stuff, and I certainly think whether
1:08:15
you agree or disagree with it, what we've done has
1:08:17
been legal. My attitude towards it is I try to
1:08:21
make it as successful as possible. And I've got friends,
1:08:24
of course, I think, you know, you've expressed some skepticism
1:08:27
of this. I've got a lot of friends, both in
1:08:29
private and public, who've expressed skepticism of this, who say, well,
1:08:32
this is terrible, we disagree with the decision, et cetera,
1:08:34
et cetera. I'm not a public commentator. My approach to
1:08:38
this is not to Monday morning quarterback a decision that
1:08:42
was made three months ago. My approach to it is
1:08:43
to try to make it as successful as possible, which
1:08:46
is why I poured my heart and soul into these negotiations,
1:08:48
which is why I've tried to make that goal a
1:08:51
ran not having a nuclear weapons something that's not true,
1:08:54
both not just now, but it's true in the long term.
1:08:57
And that's the way that I try to approach it.
1:09:00
Speaker 1: What going on with Iran, where it seems like the
1:09:03
President keeps saying that a deal has been reached, negotiations
1:09:08
have been successful and then it all falls apart and
1:09:12
we start bombing the again.
1:09:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, so how long do we have here, because it's
1:09:16
as much time as so I have to explain a
1:09:20
couple of things in the background, so you sort of
1:09:22
fully appreciate people fully appreciate what's going on here. So
1:09:26
so number one, it's a bit of a simplification, but
1:09:28
you have two elements within the Iranian system. You have
1:09:32
and you sometimes hear hawkish Americans say this that they're
1:09:35
all crazy people they want to bring about you know,
1:09:37
the twelthy mom and the apocalypse and all that stuff.
1:09:40
There are people in Iran who believe that they're also pragmatists.
1:09:43
You've got the crazy people, You've got the pragmatists. Okay,
1:09:46
So when we struck this MoU, and really what the
1:09:49
MoU says, and I've it was misrepresented more than almost
1:09:52
anything that I've ever worked on in public life. What
1:09:55
it says is Iran is going to open the straight
1:09:57
up horn moves, the violence is going to stop up,
1:10:00
and then we're going to negotiate to see if we
1:10:02
can come to a broader deal on the long term
1:10:05
nuclear issue. That's what we wanted and what the Iranians wanted,
1:10:08
of course, was long term economic consanctions relief. Now here's
1:10:13
the problem with where we are right now. And I
1:10:16
guess my summary view Joe is that I, of course
1:10:20
can't predict the future. I don't know exactly where this
1:10:22
is going to go, but I think fundamentally we are
1:10:24
on the right trajectory. It's just going to be really
1:10:27
messy and there's going to be a lot of stops
1:10:29
and starts. So what happens the first week after we'd
1:10:32
signed the MoU, we get twenty million barrels a day
1:10:35
of oil out of the strait of horror moves. That's
1:10:36
what it was before the war. The price of oil
1:10:39
comes way down, and there are elements the hardliners in
1:10:42
the Iranian system kind of freak out a little bit.
1:10:45
They're like, oh shit, did we just give away our
1:10:47
major leverage point. Screw nuclear weapons. We just gave away
1:10:50
this sow in this MoU. And so there was this
1:10:53
kind of freak out in their system. So they shot
1:10:55
at a couple ships. We responded, I think that's entirely appropriate.
1:10:59
Of course, if they're going to shoot at ships, we
1:11:01
are going to shoot at the people who are shooting
1:11:03
at the ships, or we're going to destroy the facilities
1:11:05
that they're using to shoot at ships. So that happens, okay,
1:11:08
and then the Ranians like, oh, no, no, fine, you're right,
1:11:11
we shouldn't have been shooting at ships. So then they
1:11:13
come back to the table and there's a few more
1:11:14
days of negotiation, and then the phase that they're in
1:11:17
right now is the hardliners have really really reacted strongly
1:11:22
to all the oil that's coming out of the straight
1:11:24
of Hord moves and they've basically said, we're going to
1:11:26
try to shut this thing down. We're scared about losing
1:11:29
our leverage. Now the pragmatists in their system are saying,
1:11:32
this was a mistake, let's keep on talking. And again,
1:11:35
do I know how this is ultimately going to shake out?
1:11:37
Of course I don't. But what we're doing is a
1:11:40
delicate diplomatic dance where we're using economic leverage points, we're
1:11:45
using carrots and sticks, we're trying to talk to the pragmatists,
1:11:49
and then of course when they commit acts of violence,
1:11:50
we're responding to it. And all those things are happening
1:11:53
simultaneously to get us on a better trajectory. Now that said, yes, right,
1:11:58
now they're shooting right now. Now, last night they shot
1:12:01
at some ships. But with all that said, is their
1:12:05
nuclear program still destroyed?
1:12:07
Speaker 1: Yes?
1:12:08
Speaker 2: Are the Straits not necessarily fully pre war traffic. But
1:12:12
are we getting enough oil and gas out of the
1:12:14
Strait of Horror moves to prevent a worldwide energy crisis?
1:12:17
Speaker 1: Yes?
1:12:18
Speaker 2: And all of these things are happening in the context
1:12:20
of the broader negotiation over the nuclear program. You never
1:12:24
know where this is ultimately going to end up, but
1:12:27
that's where we are. And then can I just say
1:12:29
one other thing about this, because there are people, you know,
1:12:32
you see Mike Penns who's sort of a super hawk,
1:12:35
my predecessor, who say this. There are people you know
1:12:40
who are super hawkish in the American system who have
1:12:42
attacked the deal and frankly, in some ways have tried
1:12:45
to derail the deal. And what I always say to
1:12:48
those people is, what is your proposal? What is your
1:12:52
actual argument? So just take the Straight of Horn moves
1:12:55
like the narrowest But in some ways the most important
1:12:57
part of this back and forth right now, Straight of
1:12:59
Hormon is a narrow waterway. To the extent you shut
1:13:02
it down, you shut down twenty five percent of the
1:13:04
world's energy supply. Okay, Joe, you could take one hundred
1:13:08
thousand dollars and go buy a bunch of drones on
1:13:11
the black market and post yourself on an island and
1:13:15
the straight of Horn moves are near it, and you
1:13:17
could fire drones of those ships. Okay, Now, what does
1:13:20
that mean? Some oil and gas is still going to
1:13:23
get out because some ships and some ship captains going
1:13:26
to say screw you. Now, the United States can help that, right,
1:13:29
We can shoot down some of those drones, We can
1:13:30
shoot down some of those missiles, and so we can
1:13:33
facilitate the flow of traffic. But the people who are
1:13:36
like you cannot negotiate with the Uranians. The reason why
1:13:39
that's fundamentally idiotic is because so long as you have
1:13:44
some person who's willing to fire off a few cheap drones,
1:13:47
you're gonna have some ship captains who say, no, no, no,
1:13:50
we're not willing.
1:13:51
Speaker 1: To do this.
1:13:52
Speaker 2: So we got to kind of use all tools at
1:13:54
our disposal. The military is one tool, but diplomacy is
1:13:57
another tool. And I'm very frustrated by the Americans, and
1:14:01
frankly by people in other countries who are like you
1:14:03
cannot negotiate with the Iranians. Well, then what is your
1:14:07
proposal to get people to stop shooting at ships in
1:14:10
the straight of horn Moves. You can bomb them, you
1:14:12
can take away their radar, you can take away some
1:14:14
of their drones and some of their missiles. But it's
1:14:17
just too easy to fire at ships in the straits.
1:14:20
So you've got to actually be willing to talk and
1:14:22
to try to figure out the problem.
1:14:24
Speaker 1: What is their proposal? The people that think you shouldn't
1:14:26
negotiate with iron.
1:14:27
Speaker 2: I think that their proposal is to bomb and bomb
1:14:30
and bomb. And the honest view Joe is that they
1:14:34
do not actually have a solution. If you actually ask
1:14:38
them what do you want us to do? What is
1:14:40
the goal that you're trying to achieve? They'll say things like, well,
1:14:44
just bomb them to oblivion. Okay, we can do that.
1:14:48
We can drop a lot of bombs, but what does
1:14:50
that accomplish if there's still a crazy person who's still
1:14:52
unwilling to shoot a few drones of the Strait of
1:14:54
Horn Moves. What the President has done, I think, very
1:14:57
very capably, is said we're going to use millik tarry
1:15:00
force in this situation. When it's connected to something we're
1:15:03
trying to achieve. So if you shoot at ships, we're
1:15:06
going to shoot at the facilities at which you used
1:15:09
to shoot at the ships. But we're not just going
1:15:12
to do something open ended indefinitely. We're not just going
1:15:14
to bomb and bomb and bomb. We're going to try
1:15:16
to use our military force as one of the many
1:15:18
tools that we have to solve the problem. And obviously,
1:15:21
like I'm biased, but I think that's exactly the right approach.
1:15:24
I actually you have to read between the lines a
1:15:27
little bit, because if you look at what Mike Pence
1:15:29
or some of the conservative hawks, like people who voted
1:15:32
for US but have been very critical of me, very
1:15:33
critical of the administration, if you actually look at what
1:15:38
they're proposing, they just want the military campaign to go
1:15:41
on forever, and they can actually identify what it is
1:15:44
that they're trying to accomplish. None of them can identify
1:15:47
what it is they're trying to accomplish. And I read
1:15:49
two things between the lines. I think some of them
1:15:52
want us to accomplish a complete change in the government
1:15:57
of Iran, to topple the clerics, and to replace that
1:16:00
those clerics with somebody who's much friendlier but like, look,
1:16:04
what is our experience with doing that.
1:16:06
Speaker 1: It's not good.
1:16:07
Speaker 2: It's not good, right, and so like, if the Iranian
1:16:10
people want to rise up and change their government, that's
1:16:13
up to them. But we're not going to send one
1:16:15
hundred and fifty thousand ground troops in order to accomplish
1:16:18
a change in a regime unless the people on the
1:16:22
ground themselves want to accomplish that outcome. Now, we're not
1:16:26
going to send the troops in regardless. But like to
1:16:29
propose sending in the troops, you're basically saying that the
1:16:33
US military should do the job for the Iranian people.
1:16:38
We're not in that business anymore. We're just not. And
1:16:41
then I think a second outcome that people are whether
1:16:44
they're aware of it or not, is what I call
1:16:46
the Libya outcome. So, if you look at the end
1:16:49
result of our Libya policy after Gaddafi was killed by
1:16:52
the Obama administration, by the way, again a very stupid decision,
1:16:57
what happened. Libya basically turned into a failed state. You
1:17:00
had a refugee crisis, you had people pouring into Europe,
1:17:03
pouring into other parts of Asia, other parts of Africa.
1:17:06
You had a lot of violence, a lot of terrorism
1:17:08
come from that. I do think that there are people
1:17:11
who would like that to be the outcome in Iran.
1:17:13
But then I say, again, what is in our interest?
1:17:16
How is it in the United States's interest to have
1:17:18
ninety four million desperate people flooding into Europe, flooding into
1:17:22
the United States to have, you know, sort of the
1:17:26
terrorist infrastructure that can get established when you fan terrorists
1:17:30
all over the world. We've run this experiment before, and
1:17:33
so our policy right now, what we're trying to accomplish
1:17:37
is get the straits open, ensure the free flow of
1:17:40
oil and gas. Obviously, want to keep the Iranians from
1:17:43
having a nuclear weapons program, and using the tools of
1:17:47
diplomacy and military power to accomplish that.
1:17:50
Speaker 1: And Libya failing and the collapse of Libya is a
1:17:55
lot of what's fueled the migrant crisis in Europe as.
1:17:59
Speaker 2: Well, exactly that in Syria, another failed state that was
1:18:03
created by bad Middle Eastern policy. So there is precedent
1:18:06
for the United States doing this. Every time that it
1:18:09
has happened, it's caused a refugee crisis, it's caused a
1:18:12
spike in terrorism, and it's also not incidentally to the
1:18:14
moral considerations it's led to a lot of innocent civilian deaths.
1:18:18
Speaker 1: Now, what was the talk about. I think the number
1:18:22
was like three hundred billion dollars in concessions to Iran
1:18:26
to rebuild.
1:18:27
Speaker 2: And yeah, so this is another just bullshit argument that
1:18:31
the critics made against the deal. And again, like I
1:18:35
just to back up a little bit. This is my
1:18:36
own little hobby horse. But the coalition that Donald Trump
1:18:41
piloted to the twenty twenty four election campaign, it was
1:18:45
a landslide. We won seven states. It was historic. Nobody,
1:18:48
certainly no Republican had actually led a coalition like that,
1:18:52
at least since the days of Ronald Reagan. So like
1:18:55
literally before I was alive. Okay, so Donald Trump wins
1:19:00
this great coalition, and look, it's got man, it's got hawks,
1:19:03
and it's got people who hate foreign wars. Okay, it's
1:19:07
got people like you and people like Tucker. It's also
1:19:10
got people like Mark Levin and others. Okay, I just
1:19:13
accept that as a reality. That's part of the coalition.
1:19:16
I don't say that anybody is welcome or unwelcome. I
1:19:18
say that if you're willing to sort of help us,
1:19:20
you're gonna get a lot what you want, You don't
1:19:22
get everything that you want. What has really annoyed me
1:19:26
about the hawkish side of this thing is they attack
1:19:32
any effort to negotiate, They attack the president, they attack
1:19:36
me personally. Donald Trump is betraying me. Wait a second,
1:19:40
if you if you want to have like a hawkish
1:19:42
policy towards Iran, the idea that Donald Trump has betrayed
1:19:46
you because he's also trying to negotiate to get a
1:19:49
good outcome for the American people is crazy. And so
1:19:52
you've seen a lot of these people completely flip on him.
1:19:56
And that brings me to the three or three hundred
1:19:58
billion dollar point. What we did with with the MoU
1:20:02
is we actually work not just with the Iranians, but
1:20:05
with the golf Arab states.
1:20:06
Speaker 1: What is the term MoU What.
1:20:08
Speaker 2: Is memorandum of understanding. It's the basic it's the basic
1:20:11
structure that we set up for the negotiation. So what
1:20:15
happened here is okay. So people sort of think of
1:20:17
of the Middle East as like Iran versus Israel. I
1:20:20
think a lot of people do. There's also a massive
1:20:23
number of golf golf states that are really important good
1:20:27
allies to the United States. You know, they and Israel
1:20:29
don't always see eye to eye, but we're obviously very
1:20:31
close to both Israel and to the Golf States. And
1:20:34
the Golf States actually came to us and said, you
1:20:37
know what, if the Iranians are willing, really willing to
1:20:41
change their behavior, we'd like to invest in rebuilding their country. Now,
1:20:47
whether they change their behavior is something that's going to
1:20:49
be determined over the long term, right, we want to
1:20:51
see real changes. We want to see them to stop
1:20:53
funding terrorist organizations. And also, of course none of that
1:20:57
money comes from the United States. But if Iran's biggest
1:21:00
enemies in the region are saying, we'd like to invest
1:21:05
if they've changed their behavior, would the United States let
1:21:08
us when we release the sanctions that would make it
1:21:10
possible for the UAE and Saudi Arabia and other countries
1:21:13
to invest in Iran. Our attitude was, well, isn't that
1:21:16
a victory for us? If Iran's biggest enemies see that
1:21:19
they have changed themselves so much that they're willing to
1:21:23
invest in the Iranian economy, isn't that like the definition
1:21:26
of a win win? And then you had all these
1:21:28
people saying no, no, no, no, no, you can't give them
1:21:30
three hundred billion dollars. It's like, we're not talking about
1:21:33
giving them three hundred billion dollars. We're talking about letting
1:21:35
other countries invest in Iran. If Iran has changed the
1:21:39
way that it treats the Golfareb countries, it's fundamentally between them,
1:21:43
meaning the Iranians and the golf Arab countries. So there's
1:21:46
this line in the MoU that basically says that if
1:21:49
Iran meets all of its obligations, then we will permit
1:21:52
other countries to invest in Iran. That's it, and that
1:21:56
like again, the Hawks attacked us and misrepresented this and
1:22:02
lied about it and said that Trump administration is going
1:22:05
to give the Iranians three hundred million dollars, and it's
1:22:07
totally fake. It's completely made up, and it was done
1:22:11
purely in order to politically tank the negotiation. So there's
1:22:16
been this interesting dynamic here where as we've been trying
1:22:20
to negotiate, there have been these extraordinarily well funded efforts
1:22:25
to tank the negotiation, to prevent us from reaching a deal,
1:22:28
to change American public opinion, which, by the way, if
1:22:31
you look at the public opinion, people love the idea
1:22:34
of actually getting to a final resolution on this thing.
1:22:38
Americans do not. They're not game for long term, open
1:22:43
ended regime change wars in the Middle East. They're okay
1:22:47
with US using the military to accomplish discrete objectives, They're
1:22:51
not okay with open ended obligations.
1:22:54
Speaker 1: What do you think the motivation of the Hawks, says
1:22:56
do you think this is influenced by defense contractors or
1:23:02
the influence what is? What's the reason why they're so
1:23:06
keen on continuing to bomb.
1:23:08
Speaker 2: I think with any big group of people you have,
1:23:11
you know, you have a diversity of opinions, so so sure,
1:23:14
I'm sure that you know you have people who are
1:23:17
influenced by defense contractors. You know, there's a lot of
1:23:20
talk about how how much is the Israeli government influencing
1:23:24
American politics? And there are certainly certain people within the
1:23:27
Israeli government who hate the deal, and we see exact evidence.
1:23:31
There was a Time story that came out yesterday that
1:23:35
basically there are certain influencers in America who are being
1:23:40
paid in order to attack the deal. I think some
1:23:43
of it it's just pure political ideology, right. It's foreign
1:23:46
policy perspectives that is that are much different from mine.
1:23:50
They think that America should just that we can. Basically,
1:23:54
you can wave a magic wand with a military and
1:23:56
accomplish whatever you want. And you know, it's it's not
1:23:59
that simple. You actually have to have a very clear objective.
1:24:02
Military power can accomplish a clear objective, but you've got
1:24:06
to have that clear objective. You can't just say we're
1:24:08
going to bomb until something good happens. That never works.
1:24:11
The United States has tried that before, So I think
1:24:14
it's a combination of things. But I definitely think you
1:24:17
have seen this very discreete extremely well funded campaign to
1:24:23
try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal.
1:24:27
And you know there was again there's this time article
1:24:29
that came out yesterday. A friend send it to me.
1:24:32
It's like worth reading because it lists a bunch of
1:24:35
people who have quite literally been paid by a former
1:24:40
Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements
1:24:45
within the Israeli government, and those people are attacking me
1:24:49
viciously for quite literally trying to accomplish the negotiation objective
1:24:53
that the President's set for the country.
1:24:55
Speaker 1: So what is their position like, are they're attacking you? How?
1:24:58
Speaker 2: Oh, it's it's social media posts. It's either they're leaking
1:25:02
to reporters. They're attacking me obsessively saying that we should
1:25:06
not be negotiating with Iran, we should just keep the
1:25:09
military campaign going indefinitely, and that is their explicit position,
1:25:14
and coming after me saying that, you know, people have
1:25:16
come out for me and say that I'm influenced by Qatar,
1:25:19
that I'm influenced by foreign governments, that you know, I
1:25:22
take my marching orders from Tucker Carlson, and there's just
1:25:25
so much bullshit out there when what I'm actually trying
1:25:28
to do is accomplish what the President of the United
1:25:31
States told me to accomplish, which is a settlement of
1:25:34
this that accomplishes our objectives. Iran doesn't have nuclear weapon,
1:25:39
we have the free flow of oil and gas, And
1:25:41
like I should be clear, you know, like I don't
1:25:46
actually mind. I don't mind.
1:25:50
Speaker 1: That the.
1:25:53
Speaker 2: You know, let's say certain elements of the Israeli government
1:25:56
want to criticize the deal or have disagreements about the deal.
1:26:00
I don't even mind an effort to try to influence.
1:26:04
You know, foreign governments try to influence the United States
1:26:06
all the time. You know, Israel does it, Other countries
1:26:08
do it. It's just sort of the nature of the beast.
1:26:12
What bothers me is actually when Americans allow, meaning American leadership,
1:26:19
allows that influence to affect their judgment and to affect
1:26:24
what they are advocating for. That's what really bothers me.
1:26:27
People are always going to try to influence the United
1:26:29
States of America, whether they're allies of ours or whether
1:26:31
they are enemies of ours. But again, when I open
1:26:35
up the pages of Time Magazine and I see that
1:26:38
there's a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank
1:26:42
the very deal that I was pursuing. And oh, by
1:26:45
the way, many of the people who were receiving that
1:26:47
money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways.
1:26:51
Speaker 1: You know.
1:26:51
Speaker 2: My response to that is, well, go to hell. I'm
1:26:53
gonna do what I have to do for the American people.
1:26:55
I represent Americans first, and that's the way that I've
1:26:59
tried to do this job. And I you know, Joe,
1:27:02
the crazy thing is, I'm like, people realize this, I'm
1:27:07
actually in this. You know, there's this massive pro Israel
1:27:11
anti Israel debate in the United States of America. I'm
1:27:15
like the reasonable moderate, and I think that's what so
1:27:18
many people don't realize is you know, I've been accused
1:27:22
of being an anti Semite. I've been accused been accused
1:27:25
of for what reason, quite literally for I've been accused
1:27:29
of trying to I guess some people say that I've
1:27:32
insulted the Jewish religion, which is insane, Like I like,
1:27:36
I have a ton of respect for the Jewish religion.
1:27:38
I mean, if you specifically did you say, I don't know.
1:27:42
I've never heard of a good compelling argument for why
1:27:44
I'm an anti Semite, even though I've been accused of
1:27:47
being an anti Semite by many people. But it's what
1:27:51
always what I say to these guys is look at
1:27:55
public opinion. Look at the way young Republicans versus publicans
1:28:00
over the age of sixty five approach this issue. Like
1:28:05
right now, Israel is losing the public opinion battle in
1:28:09
the United States of America. It is a simple and
1:28:11
obvious fact. Donald Trump has said that publicly. It's a
1:28:15
simple and do you think that is well? We finished
1:28:18
this point, Okay. My attitude is towards this is Israel
1:28:23
is an ally like France or like the United Kingdom.
1:28:26
We're gonna have disagreements with them, We're gonna have agreements
1:28:29
with them. There are areas where we're going to have
1:28:31
similar interests and areas where our interests are going to diverge.
1:28:34
So my approach to this is to say, you know what,
1:28:36
when we're partnered, great, let's work together, and we're not,
1:28:40
let's just be honest about it. And I for that,
1:28:43
people attack me for being an anti Semite or anti Israel,
1:28:47
and they don't see the writing on the wall that
1:28:50
I'm actually just the guy advocating for a normal relationship
1:28:54
with a normal country that's based around shared interest as
1:28:58
opposed to based around something else. So why is Israel?
1:29:06
Why is Israel losing American public opinion?
1:29:09
Speaker 1: Well, the narrative is that Israel has a very disproportionate
1:29:13
effect on American politics.
1:29:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see that narrative. I mean I actually think
1:29:18
that they Look do they try to influence American politics? Yes,
1:29:24
But like I said earlier, a lot of other countries.
1:29:26
Speaker 1: Do, I think to the extent that Israel does.
1:29:29
Speaker 2: Because some are better at it than others. I think
1:29:30
the Israels are definitely more effective at it than most,
1:29:32
but I wouldn't say that they're the only effective country
1:29:35
by any means that tries to influence American politics. I
1:29:38
just think you have to be self aware about it.
1:29:40
I mean, why wouldn't you. It's a country of nine
1:29:42
million people. We have three hundred and thirty million people,
1:29:44
and so of course they're going to try to persuade Americans.
1:29:49
They're going to try to move Americans in one direction
1:29:51
or another. I think that's just the nature of the beast.
1:29:53
Speaker 1: But it's more than that. The concern is that they're
1:29:56
spying on American politicians, that they're there's concerns about funding,
1:30:03
there's concerns about influence. There's concerns about whether or not
1:30:07
politicians are whether they're aligned with Israel, or whether they're
1:30:11
aligned with the United States.
1:30:13
Speaker 2: First, well, there's certainly, like I definitely get those concerns.
1:30:18
But my sense is that the way that all foreign
1:30:21
influence works in the United States is people try to
1:30:25
manipulate American public opinion, and then from manipulating a public opinion,
1:30:29
they try to get the outcomes that they want. And
1:30:31
this thing is a very good example of this. So
1:30:35
you know, like we know, I'm telling you beyond a
1:30:38
reasonable doubt. We know that the negotiation strategy that the
1:30:43
President has asked us to pursue and again with limitations,
1:30:47
like when the Iranians hit ships, the President has been
1:30:49
willing to knock the hell out of the Iranians in response.
1:30:52
This is not just a negotiation. It's negotiation, it's military
1:30:55
to all these things. But I know, beyond a shadow
1:30:58
of a doubt that there have been people within the
1:31:00
Israeli government who are trying to like actually shift us
1:31:06
away from that policy because they want to continue the
1:31:09
military campaign. And by the way, like there are people
1:31:11
within their government that I love, I have good relationships with,
1:31:14
I hope, and I don't think that they're part of this.
1:31:17
I mean, you know, the ambassador of Israel to the
1:31:20
United States I think is actually really good guy. Obviously
1:31:23
he cares about Israel first. I care about America first.
1:31:26
But there are some people within their system, we know,
1:31:29
beyond a shadow of a doubt, who are manipulating and
1:31:33
trying to change American public opinion to keep the war
1:31:37
going on indefinitely, again, not towards any objective, but just indefinitely.
1:31:42
So like, does it happen, Yes, But I guess what
1:31:45
I would say to the Americans who sort of see
1:31:48
this and are frustrated by it. My attitude would be
1:31:50
you should be frustrated at American leaders, who are you know,
1:31:55
persuaded by this, affected by this? Countries are going to do?
1:31:59
What country do? I really don't. It doesn't bother me
1:32:01
that Katar tries to influence the United States of America
1:32:04
and they do. I like a lot of the Guitaris,
1:32:05
just like I like a lot of the Israelis. Doesn't
1:32:08
bother me in Israel tries to do this. It frankly
1:32:10
doesn't even bother me that Russia or some of the
1:32:11
other countries do it. It's just the nature of being
1:32:16
a political leader in twenty twenty six. What does bother
1:32:19
me is when those operations, those influence campaigns actually affect
1:32:26
American political judgment, because they shouldn't, because we should be
1:32:29
thinking what is in the best interest of the United
1:32:31
States of America.
1:32:32
Speaker 1: Do you think that Israel is affecting American political judgment?
1:32:41
Speaker 2: I mean, I certainly think that there are a lot
1:32:48
of talking points, and there are a lot of arguments
1:32:52
that make their way into American political discourse. I think
1:32:56
there are a lot of social media campaigns that definitely
1:32:59
influence luence Americans and affect Americans. Do I think that
1:33:03
it's been dispositive on any particular issue. Like I think
1:33:07
that's a much more difficult question.
1:33:08
Speaker 1: Do you think that we would have started this war
1:33:11
in Iran without the influence of Israel?
1:33:14
Speaker 2: I think the president completely separate from any influence from Israel,
1:33:19
believes very strongly and again I agree with this that
1:33:23
a Ran should not have a nuclear weapon, right way
1:33:25
to do things?
1:33:26
Speaker 1: Bomb them in June, right, that was the initial attack, right.
1:33:30
Speaker 2: June of last year, Minihammar, Yeah, right.
1:33:33
Speaker 1: Do you think he would have continued with the most
1:33:37
recent campaign if it wasn't for the influence of Israel? Yes,
1:33:41
I really I do.
1:33:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I mean I think again, and I see this,
1:33:48
and I see it even from people that are in
1:33:50
our coalition. And this would be my flip side to
1:33:53
the hawks who have been attacking me or the president
1:33:55
mercilessly of a negotiation. I would sort of turn this
1:33:58
back on some The doves are some of the realists
1:34:01
who have been attacking the president of United States.
1:34:03
Speaker 1: The doves, those are the piece people.
1:34:07
Speaker 2: Doves. You never heard that phrase. I've heard hawks.
1:34:10
Speaker 1: I've heard hawks. I don't think I've ever.
1:34:12
Speaker 2: Heard doves hawks and pigeons hawks. And I don't know,
1:34:16
do is good? Right? So what what I I think
1:34:20
a lot of people I've heard this argument is, is
1:34:23
this idea that Donald Trump, you know, was sort of
1:34:27
I've even heard people say he was blackmailed into this.
1:34:32
That's not true, dude, It's just it's just not true.
1:34:34
I've seen the decision making up close. Again, whether you
1:34:37
agree or disagree with our negotiation, or whether you agree
1:34:40
or disagree with the decision to launch the campaign epic
1:34:43
fury to begin with. The idea that Donald Trump is
1:34:47
being like back blackmailed is crazy to me because again,
1:34:53
I see the way that he makes decisions. I see
1:34:55
the way that he processes this stuff, like the idea
1:34:58
that he picks up the phone with anybody and says, hey,
1:35:00
like I'm going to take orders from you. No, that's
1:35:02
just not how Donald Trump operates.
1:35:03
Speaker 1: Can you understand though, why people would come to that conclusion,
1:35:08
especially because the of the Epstein files. What do you mean, Well,
1:35:13
the Epstein files were supposed to be released, were and
1:35:16
there was a tremendous amount of resistance to those files
1:35:19
being released, and that discerned a lot of people because
1:35:23
if you're talking about very wealthy, powerful people, that were
1:35:26
engaged in crimes.
1:35:27
Speaker 2: I see, I see. You're basically saying, like there's a
1:35:30
the fear is that whatever's in the Epstein files was
1:35:34
used to blackmail like the administration into doing the I
1:35:37
Ran thing.
1:35:38
Speaker 1: Or at the very least the people that were involved
1:35:42
in the Epstein files that didn't want them coming out
1:35:45
had undue influence.
1:35:48
Speaker 2: Well again, like say this with all candor, like we
1:35:53
absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files, like
1:35:56
we just did. But do I think the reason we
1:35:59
screwed up the comms is because we were trying to
1:36:01
hide something. No, I think the reason we screwed up
1:36:04
the comms of the Epstein files is one you know,
1:36:07
Pam said, Pam BONDI said, the client list is on
1:36:10
my desk.
1:36:11
Speaker 1: Right. Well, they had binders, there were front.
1:36:16
Speaker 2: But those binders were largely documents that had already been released, right,
1:36:20
So here's let me try, Well, what was let me try.
1:36:22
Speaker 1: The purpose of that performative display of the Epstein files.
1:36:27
And she was saying, there's tens of thousands of hours
1:36:30
of film.
1:36:32
Speaker 2: I don't know what the purpose of it was, but
1:36:34
I know that the effect of it was to make
1:36:37
people mistrust the entire effort, and I think what I
1:36:40
think was happening. Look, I know Pam, I like Pam.
1:36:42
I don't think there was anything malicious going on. I
1:36:45
think Pam was trying to respond to the political moment.
1:36:48
I think she overstated what we had and what we
1:36:50
didn't have. And I think that she, you know, got
1:36:54
roasted for it publicly by a lot of people, including me.
1:36:56
Like you know, you and I have talked about this
1:36:59
a lot. I'm like one of the og Epstein conspiracy theorists.
1:37:02
I've probably gone down every single rabbit hole. We could
1:37:05
go down most of them today. Look, the original sin
1:37:10
of the Epstein investigation, and obviously I'm biased here, but
1:37:15
it was not what Donald Trump and the administration did
1:37:18
in twenty twenty five. It was you have to go
1:37:20
back to two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
1:37:22
the original alex Acosta investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, where he
1:37:27
basically dropped the federal charges. I think Epstein ended up
1:37:30
getting prosecuted on some sort of local thing. But the
1:37:34
original warrant. You to the original warrant back in two
1:37:37
thousand and eight, what was he looking for? What was
1:37:39
he allowed to look for what were they collecting. It
1:37:42
was not looking at a broader conspiracy. So that happens. Okay,
1:37:48
Epstein gets pinched. I think he goes to prisoner. Maybe
1:37:50
this is when he was on house arrest. But like
1:37:54
anything that existed from the eighties and nineties up to
1:37:58
two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, anything that
1:38:01
existed that we didn't get back then was disappeared.
1:38:05
Speaker 1: Right.
1:38:05
Speaker 2: So like when people say, has what you've seen on
1:38:08
the inside make you think that the you know that
1:38:10
Epstein never blackmailed people, or that Epstein never engage in
1:38:14
brought our sex trafficking. No, absolutely not. What I have seen,
1:38:18
and I've looked at most of the files, is that
1:38:21
they're just wasn't dispositive evidence. And if that dispositive evidence
1:38:27
ever existed, it was probably destroyed after two thousand and six,
1:38:29
two thousand and seven. Now, like again in our defense, yes,
1:38:33
was there some you know, bitching and moaning, and was
1:38:36
there some back and forth, Yes, but we eventually collected
1:38:41
six million documents as part of the effort the president.
1:38:46
People say the president was forced into releasing the documents.
1:38:50
Like again, the idea that Donald Trump could not have
1:38:53
killed that legislation, especially with the United States Senate, is
1:38:56
a joke. He absolutely could have killed it.
1:38:58
Speaker 1: What did he do?
1:38:59
Speaker 2: He actually said, noe, We're going to release these files.
1:39:02
He thought, you know, he was annoyed by the story.
1:39:04
He was annoyed by the Democrats accusing him of doing
1:39:06
things bad. By the way, like, do I think there
1:39:10
is any I've never seen a single piece of credible
1:39:13
evidence that the president the United States engaged in wrongdoing
1:39:16
with minors. Ever, so, like when the president says the hoax,
1:39:20
that's what he's talking about. Is this democratic idea that
1:39:23
he somehow was a was a pedophile. It's absurd, There's
1:39:27
no evidence for it. Now, the Epstein, the Epstein you know,
1:39:32
law gets signed. We find six million documents, we find
1:39:36
out three million of them are actually responsive. Has something
1:39:39
to do with the Epstein estate. We release all of them,
1:39:41
with the exception of a few things that are like,
1:39:44
you know, the courts have said that we have to
1:39:45
redact certain things, we can't release certain files. But like
1:39:50
we did release all these files. Did it take longer
1:39:53
than it should have taken, Yes, but we did release
1:39:56
these files. And again the problem here is not like
1:40:03
anything that's in the files or not in the files.
1:40:05
The problem is, if you go back to the original investigation,
1:40:08
it was designed in a way that was way too narrow.
1:40:12
If there was a broader conspiracy, and you know, my
1:40:15
view is that there probably was. The evidence that existed
1:40:19
in two thousand and seven that was the opportunity to get.
1:40:22
Speaker 1: So when you say there probably was a broader conspiracy,
1:40:25
what exactly you're saying.
1:40:26
Speaker 2: I think there are a few different options. I mean, look, man,
1:40:28
I like you could you know, I could literally do
1:40:30
two episodes about this. I have gone on down to
1:40:32
every rabbit hole. There's this funny New York Times story
1:40:35
that's somewhat true, somewhat false, but where Susie Wiles, the
1:40:38
White House Chief of Staff, says, well, we know JD's
1:40:41
a conspiracy theorist on this, Like I am, actually I've
1:40:43
I've gone down every rabbit hole here. Look, so there's
1:40:48
the theory that whether it was American intel or foreign
1:40:51
intel that Epstein was sort of using, Epstein was using
1:40:57
sort of the sex ring to blackmail and powerful people.
1:41:01
There's that piece of it. You know. I think there's
1:41:05
a separate conspiracy that hasn't gotten covered as much, which
1:41:08
is that Epstein actually, okay, if you go back to
1:41:13
the original Epstein guy was Les Wexner, Okay, who Columbus,
1:41:18
Ohio was the wealthiest person in Ohio maybe still is
1:41:21
the wealthiest person in the state of Ohio. The thing
1:41:23
that everybody in Columbus I lived there for a time
1:41:27
knew about the Westerner Epstein relationship is that Epstein was
1:41:33
his tax guy. That Epstein was like the genius at
1:41:37
identifying weird tax strategies that would allow you to not
1:41:42
have to pay taxes. But if you were being a
1:41:44
little skeptical, would also say that it would allow Epstein
1:41:47
to either blackmail people or to have a separate nexus
1:41:50
of influence and control on rich and powerful people. And
1:41:53
so I think there's an underreported, under explored story of
1:41:59
was Epstein mean like doing a lot of tax stuff
1:42:03
that was not on the up and up, and is
1:42:04
that one way in which he gained blackmails? And it's
1:42:07
not opposite of the sexual blackmail story, but in some
1:42:10
ways it's it's uh, you know, you could imagine both
1:42:13
things being true. I also just think there's an element
1:42:18
of he was a scumbag, He was a very sick person.
1:42:22
He built relationships with a lot of other rich and
1:42:25
powerful people who just didn't have any real moral judgment
1:42:29
about the fact that guy was obviously a scumbag. And again,
1:42:31
to go back to defending Donald Trump. I know people
1:42:33
don't want to hear this these days, but who was
1:42:35
the guy people say Donald Trump's blackmailed by Jeffrey Epstein?
1:42:40
Who was the guy who narked on Epstein to the
1:42:43
Palm Beach police. That's in the Epstein files.
1:42:46
Speaker 1: It was Donald Trump. It's just it's obvious that Epstein
1:42:52
was sick.
1:42:53
Speaker 2: Yes, But if people want to say we mishandled the
1:42:55
Epstein release, guilty, we did missand especially the communications.
1:43:00
Speaker 1: What do you think should have been done?
1:43:01
Speaker 2: I think that we should have just dropped everything at
1:43:03
the very beginning, and like, obviously it takes a little
1:43:06
time to review the stuff, to find the stuff, to
1:43:08
redact things where you have victims and so forth, But
1:43:10
we should have just done it as quickly as possible.
1:43:12
Speaker 1: But some of the stuff that was redacted, some of
1:43:14
the names that were redacted and weren't victims.
1:43:17
Speaker 2: So yeah, I've looked into this, and my understanding of
1:43:23
this having looked at a lot of this, but not
1:43:25
all of it is that it is sometimes hard to
1:43:29
draw a distinction between victim and co conspirator. And like,
1:43:33
let me highlight this in a very sort of obvious way. Rocanna,
1:43:37
who's been one of the most one of the loudest
1:43:39
voices on the Epstein file, Well, he became very loud
1:43:42
on the Epstein files the minute Donald Trump became president,
1:43:44
didn't seem to care about it. During the Biden administration,
1:43:47
he actually brought one of the Epstein victims i think,
1:43:50
to the State of the Union last year, or maybe
1:43:52
it was the year before last. Well, like that victim,
1:43:56
and I'm not accusing, I'm not saying she wasn't a victim.
1:43:59
I don't know anything about her particular case. She was
1:44:02
also listed as a co conspirator in some of these documents. Right,
1:44:05
So there's an idea that some of the people who
1:44:07
were engaged in the sex trafficking were also you know, facilitating.
1:44:11
Speaker 1: It as well, so they were incentivized to get more girls.
1:44:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yes, that's right. But the idea is that
1:44:17
it's it's hard to sort of it's sometimes a little
1:44:20
bit of a gray area between you know, some of
1:44:22
the people who were alleged victims were also alleged co conspirators,
1:44:26
and so what DJ tried to do was kind of
1:44:29
make that judgment as best they could and release as
1:44:32
much as possible.
1:44:33
Speaker 1: But it's clear that he was trying to get in
1:44:36
contact with people that he felt were influential. It was
1:44:40
clear that he was trying to get people to get
1:44:44
together on the island and meet at parties. So there
1:44:48
was something he was doing where he was trying to
1:44:51
either influence people or compromise people.
1:44:54
Speaker 2: Correct.
1:44:55
Speaker 1: So it's not there's some sort of an operation that
1:44:59
was there.
1:45:00
Speaker 2: Is a story there, and you know, I will go
1:45:04
to my deathbed believing there's a story there, but I
1:45:06
can't prove it. And I promise you there's not some
1:45:09
document that at least I'm hiding that allows us to
1:45:12
prove exactly what was going on.
1:45:14
Speaker 1: He was also trying to get scientists, and this is
1:45:18
one of the reasons he got that. Okay, so in
1:45:22
New Mexico, so.
1:45:23
Speaker 2: A friend of mine has this element. Sorry, I should
1:45:26
step back. Conspiracy theories. One of the ways you discredit
1:45:29
conspiracy theory. I thought about this a lot, is to
1:45:32
try to hide it. Another way you discredit conspiracy theory
1:45:35
is by flooding the zone. So one of the things
1:45:37
I've tried to do when I look at it all
1:45:39
this stuff is to try to understand sort of where
1:45:41
it fits in, and you know, try to separate the
1:45:45
real from the fake. But one really interesting element of
1:45:48
the whole Jeffrey Epstein saga. Okay, so he dies in
1:45:51
twenty nineteen, right, this is at the very end of
1:45:54
the first Trump administration. His death coincides very very closely.
1:46:02
This is not my observation, this is a friend, but
1:46:03
I don't want to reveal confidences here where it coincides
1:46:07
very closely with the end of what you might call
1:46:10
the era of censorship in academia. So back in twenty
1:46:14
nineteen twenty twenty, we reached sort of peak academic censorship,
1:46:20
where people wouldn't publish a medical study because it might
1:46:23
have sort of disparate impact racial undertones, or people were
1:46:27
getting fired from academia for not doing land acknowledgment stuff
1:46:30
like that. Okay, I'm not saying that stuff has completely
1:46:33
gone away. But Epstein, we know was funding a ton
1:46:36
of scientists. By the way, where did his money come from?
1:46:39
He was funding a ton of scientists. But like when
1:46:42
he died. It's almost like the era of censorship started
1:46:47
to break because he wasn't just he was also planned
1:46:49
to do a lot of in academy, but also you know,
1:46:51
he's plugged into the social media companies, Like this is
1:46:53
a dude who knew everybody. He knew everybody. So look,
1:46:59
so why.
1:46:59
Speaker 1: Don't they come from.
1:47:01
Speaker 2: Well from given. Part of it is suspect tax advice
1:47:07
and setting up tax schemes for a lot of very
1:47:10
very rich people.
1:47:11
Speaker 1: Right, but why was to influence academia and what was
1:47:18
the purpose?
1:47:19
Speaker 2: I don't know the answer to that question. I mean
1:47:21
I have theories. There's there's of course.
1:47:24
Speaker 1: The well most people think he was Masad.
1:47:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, Masad, or Cia or some other deep state, whether
1:47:30
in America or Israel or another country or both. You know,
1:47:35
look was he He clearly had connections to the upper
1:47:40
the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections
1:47:43
to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence. In fact, one
1:47:46
of the interesting stories, one of the interesting things the
1:47:48
Epstein Saga reveals about, and I try to make this
1:47:51
point is one of the reason why I'm always careful
1:47:54
and I say, there are some elements within the Israeli
1:47:57
government who don't like our peace process, because there are
1:48:00
a lot of elements within the Israeli government that actually
1:48:02
do like our peast process. They recognize that this indefinite
1:48:06
campaign is not good for them either. And the Epstein
1:48:09
thing is interesting because, as much as I know, you know,
1:48:13
Prime Minister nat Yaho not a particularly popular person in
1:48:17
the United States of America right now, Epstein seemed to
1:48:21
be connected to the elements of the Israeli deep state
1:48:24
that were left of center. Like I've always found that fascinating.
1:48:28
It wasn't like he was super connected to the right
1:48:32
of center of Israeli politics America. He was connected across
1:48:36
the board. Like he had Republican friends, he had Democratic friends.
1:48:39
He had much deeper connections to the Israeli left of
1:48:43
center than right of center. I don't know what that means.
1:48:45
Speaker 1: I'm hanging out with Steve Bannon en Noam Chomsky exactly.
1:48:49
Speaker 2: He had Again in America, he had friends across the
1:48:53
political spectrum in a way he didn't necessarily have in Israel.
1:48:57
Speaker 1: I had one of my guests try to get made
1:48:58
to made them really yeah when twenty seventeen, See, that's.
1:49:04
Speaker 2: Crazy to me because that point he'd already gone down
1:49:06
for at least one like sex abuse thing.
1:49:08
Speaker 1: That was my possession. I'll show you the emails. Okay,
1:49:11
it's kind they're kind of funny, which actually read them
1:49:13
on stage. You want to say, Okay, fine, if people
1:49:15
can find it, yeah, I don't want to have the
1:49:17
guys already ruined.
1:49:19
Speaker 2: Sure, but it's I.
1:49:21
Speaker 1: Googled it and I'm like, what the fuck are you
1:49:25
talking about?
1:49:27
Speaker 2: See, but this goes back to my original But this
1:49:29
is part of what he was doing, right.
1:49:31
Speaker 1: He wanted to get influential people.
1:49:33
Speaker 2: But you go back to the original two thousand and
1:49:36
seven warrant on Jeffrey Epstein. All of the really crazy
1:49:40
shit happened from the nineties to two thousand and seven.
1:49:44
That's when he was at the peak of his power.
1:49:47
That's when he hadn't yet gone down on a sex
1:49:49
abuse scandal. Like I mean, to your point, right, even
1:49:53
if you have some scumbags who were willing to introduce
1:49:54
him to Joe Rogan in twenty seventeen, there are a
1:49:57
lot of Joe Rogan's, or at least some who are
1:49:59
going to say, wait a second, I'm gonna google this guy.
1:50:01
Speaker 1: But a lot.
1:50:03
Speaker 2: Did a lot that was really crazy. A lot didn't,
1:50:06
but some did. And my point is that would limit
1:50:08
his influence. But if you go back to like the
1:50:11
nineteen nineties, the early two thousands, that is the stuff
1:50:16
I think that is like the black hole of the
1:50:18
Epstein saga. We don't have nearly enough from that era, and.
1:50:22
Speaker 1: Because we had, it was destroyed.
1:50:25
Speaker 2: I think we had a prosecution that explicitly was so
1:50:28
narrow that whatever existed would not have even been caught up.
1:50:34
Speaker 1: Right, So they were specifically going after him for underage sex,
1:50:38
and they did the picture of the operation.
1:50:42
Speaker 2: They didn't even try to They didn't even try to.
1:50:45
Speaker 1: Well, that was one of the things about the prosecutor
1:50:47
was told that he was above their pay grade. I mean,
1:50:50
it was one of the things that.
1:50:51
Speaker 2: We said he was like CIA or something.
1:50:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, he said, I was told he was intelligence.
1:50:55
Speaker 2: And yes, I've asked where they're like or their doc
1:51:00
immens connecting Jeffrey Epstein directly to our intelligence agencies or
1:51:03
anybody else's And the answer is no. But if that
1:51:06
shit existed, it wouldn't exist. In twenty twenty.
1:51:08
Speaker 1: Six, what is it like being the vice president? Like?
1:51:11
How much access do you have? To information because so.
1:51:15
Speaker 2: I'll give you another conspiracy. So I have like effectively unlimited.
1:51:19
Speaker 1: Access to information, unlimited.
1:51:21
Speaker 2: But I think that the one of the things that
1:51:25
I've learned about the job is it's you're doing so
1:51:29
much on the day to day, Like you're calling Senators
1:51:32
and trying to get them to pass a piece of legislation.
1:51:34
You're meeting with staff about what should go in the
1:51:36
housing bill. You're negotiating with the Iranians or the Cutteries
1:51:38
or the Israelis about something that's going on in the
1:51:40
Middle East, and a lot of it like the UFO thing,
1:51:46
Like I've said that I'm gonna like I'm going to
1:51:48
look into the UFO thing, and I've been saying that
1:51:51
for a year and a half and I haven't done
1:51:53
it yet because I haven't had the time. And so
1:51:56
some of this is like you just have to have
1:51:59
the time to actually punched through the walls and to
1:52:02
like go to the gatekeepers and say you have to
1:52:03
open up that gate because I'm the vice president, and
1:52:06
some of it is just hard to actually get to
1:52:08
because I don't have the time to sort of focus
1:52:10
on that one issue for any particular period of time.
1:52:13
So The answer is, you have unlimited access to information.
1:52:16
The constraint is not people tell me no. The constraint
1:52:20
is you're just so busy doing other shit.
1:52:25
Speaker 1: The UFO thing, I think would be something that I
1:52:28
would want to pursue, Yes, I mean just for my
1:52:31
own personal information. I would want to know what is
1:52:34
going on. Correct. So the question is are these special
1:52:38
access programs that are above top secret and that this
1:52:43
is our own stuff? Or is this something that's far
1:52:48
more bizarre and something that is interdimensional from another planet whatever?
1:52:54
Fill in the black.
1:52:55
Speaker 2: Gay is it foreign? And if it's foreign, is it
1:52:58
six thousand miles away or like six years away?
1:53:00
Speaker 1: Right? Yes? Right?
1:53:02
Speaker 2: And that is that is I will answer that question eventually. Really, yes,
1:53:08
I'll get to the bottom of it.
1:53:10
Speaker 1: How how are you going to have the time to
1:53:11
do that? Like? And what will.
1:53:12
Speaker 2: Would be Eventually I'll have like a few weeks where
1:53:15
I could just sit down and worry about that problem.
1:53:17
Speaker 1: You said something that thought, here's.
1:53:19
Speaker 2: An interesting thing though, I will say that is one
1:53:24
of those conspiracy theories that there are a lot of
1:53:30
people in our government who are interested in this, meaning
1:53:32
our current political leadership who are interested in this question
1:53:35
and it has like nothing has really happened yet, which
1:53:43
makes me a little bit less interested in it because
1:53:45
there are a lot of people with access to those
1:53:46
files and access to that information, and nothing has changed
1:53:49
since Biden left office, which which makes me think other
1:53:52
people have looked into it and they just haven't necessarily
1:53:55
found something. But anyway, I eventually, I promise you, I
1:53:59
am gonna like down and spend a couple of weeks
1:54:01
trying to figure out what's in these files. Actually haven't
1:54:05
done yet.
1:54:06
Speaker 1: You said something that I thought was very odd. Okay,
1:54:09
you said that you thought that there were Demonsky, Okay, I.
1:54:16
Speaker 2: Did say that.
1:54:17
Speaker 1: What did you mean by that?
1:54:19
Speaker 2: Well, I, first of all, they're not just in Christianity,
1:54:25
but in a number of world religions. There are a
1:54:29
number of like, you know, mystical things that happened, extra dimensional,
1:54:36
extra like. I'm not one of these people who's like
1:54:40
a hyper rationalist, like I think that there are things
1:54:43
happening in the world that we're not always seeing. I
1:54:46
you know, I believe in God. I think that there
1:54:47
is a kind of what's what's the word I'm looking for,
1:54:50
not extra real, supernatural, supernatural. There are supernatural things that
1:54:54
are happening. Okay, so if you look historically at you know,
1:55:02
things that are similar to the alien phenomenon, where oh,
1:55:08
some like strange being it kind of looks like a
1:55:11
human being but doesn't look like it's not human, and
1:55:14
it shows a particular interest in human beings, and then
1:55:18
it takes the human beings and you know, like does
1:55:22
weird experiments on them. I think my argument is that's
1:55:25
either bullshit, right, You're either talking to a crazy person,
1:55:27
which I don't like. I'm not saying just because I
1:55:29
believe in the supernatural, doesn't believe me, and I believe
1:55:32
in everything supernatural. But if we're talking about an extra
1:55:37
terrestrial being that is human like but not human, that
1:55:43
contains effectively infinite powers, and it's torturing human beings, you
1:55:48
can call it an alien if you want. But I
1:55:50
think there's a lot of historical precedent to call out
1:55:52
a demon.
1:55:53
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of these stories. Look in these accounts,
1:55:59
we have one right now, the demonic Coster. Yeah, that's
1:56:02
the Mothership logo. A lot of these accounts are not
1:56:08
of beings being or people being tortured. They're people that
1:56:13
are being exposed to information like the Travis Walton stories
1:56:18
a very famous case.
1:56:20
Speaker 2: Nineteen read about it on the way back though.
1:56:22
Speaker 1: This guy right here, I got a Travis. He's one
1:56:25
of the most famous UFO abduction stories. There was a
1:56:30
movie with D. B. Cooper in the UH.
1:56:34
Speaker 2: And like, what is the information that they gave Travis
1:56:36
Walten was D B.
1:56:37
Speaker 1: Cooper? The that was the T. B. Sweeney.
1:56:40
Speaker 2: D B.
1:56:40
Speaker 1: Cooper was the guy who stole the money and jumped
1:56:42
out of the plane firing the sky.
1:56:45
Speaker 2: There's a movie, of course, I remember this movie. I
1:56:47
don't think I ever saw it.
1:56:48
Speaker 1: Though, nineteen ninety three. Good movie, but sensational. And Travis
1:56:53
Walton says, they made a bunch of shit up and
1:56:56
that's not what happened. But the story was that he
1:56:59
was a logger in Arizona and he was leaving a job.
1:57:05
They were all together in a truck and these loggers
1:57:08
saw this thing, this light land in this forest, and
1:57:14
they went to go investigate. He jumps out of the
1:57:17
truck and he gets close to it and he's hit
1:57:20
by some beam of light and knocked to the ground.
1:57:23
They take off and then they realized, like, we've got
1:57:26
to go back. We don't know what's going on. They
1:57:28
turned around, they go back to get him. They freaked
1:57:31
out and panicked. They go back to get him. He's gone.
1:57:34
The police interview them. They think that they killed him.
1:57:38
They they you know, there's an investigation. Five days later,
1:57:42
he shows up wearing the same clothes, and he has
1:57:46
this crazy story and he had been in this spaceship
1:57:51
for five days, is what he said, and that they
1:57:54
had fixed him, they healed him, and then they had
1:57:57
communicated with him telepathically, and he had had this but
1:58:01
very bizarre encounter with these these beings that aren't from here,
1:58:07
or if they are from here, they're very different than us.
1:58:10
Speaker 2: Okay, so I guess my response to that would be
1:58:14
extra powerful beings in this case communicating telepathically helping people.
1:58:19
Sounds like an angel. So I guess here's let me
1:58:24
make the like the Steelman version of my recommend it's that, Okay,
1:58:31
my dog, there's no real difference between me and God.
1:58:36
To my dog, I can literally walk into a room
1:58:38
and turn the light on. I can make food appear instantaneously.
1:58:42
I can transport myself across time and space very very rapidly.
1:58:46
If you're a human being with intelligence but not supernatural intelligence.
1:58:51
I guess my point is, again, this could all be bullshit,
1:58:54
This could all be fake. That's a possibility. But if
1:58:57
it's real, is there really a meaning difference between an
1:59:01
angel or a demon and a space alien with super technology?
1:59:07
Just to our perception, they would largely just look like
1:59:11
the same thing.
1:59:11
Speaker 1: I think we're capable of nuance, and we're capable of
1:59:14
understanding that human beings are far more complex and evolved
1:59:18
than chimpanzees, And we could imagine a world where if
1:59:23
we don't blow ourselves up, and there's not a nuclear
1:59:27
bomb and there's not a we don't get hit by
1:59:29
an asteroid, if we live another million years, that we
1:59:33
would have technology that's indistinguishable from magic a.
1:59:37
Speaker 2: Right, exactly, That's right.
1:59:39
Speaker 1: That doesn't I mean we could share demons. It just
1:59:42
means they're hyper evolved advanced civilizations from somewhere else.
1:59:48
Speaker 2: And what I'm saying is the perception of those beings
1:59:52
to a more simple intelligence. Sure, there's not a meaningful
1:59:58
there's not a meaningful difference. So you're you're asking, you're
2:00:01
like talking about what it is that these things actually are.
2:00:05
And I guess what I'm talking about is how would
2:00:08
a human being with my level of intelligence or your
2:00:10
level of intelligence in twenty twenty six understand what's going on, right.
2:00:13
Speaker 1: But from a biblical perspective, there's a very big difference
2:00:16
between a demon and a hyper intelligent being from somewhere else.
2:00:25
Speaker 2: I mean, a demon or a hyper intelligent.
2:00:29
Speaker 1: If demons are real, if there really are dark forces
2:00:33
in the universe, and they're disembodied dark forces, these things
2:00:38
that exist, these yes, and then there's also powerful light
2:00:42
forces in the universe that they don't have to be
2:00:45
mutually exclusive to the concept of hyper intelligent other species
2:00:51
when you're looking at an insanely vast universe.
2:00:54
Speaker 2: I don't think they have to be. But I think
2:00:57
that it is interesting to me that for most of
2:01:02
human history we would have understood supernatural, hyper powerful, hyper
2:01:10
knowledgeable things as sort of celestial or I would.
2:01:16
Speaker 1: Have thought of a cell phone as being sorcery. I mean,
2:01:19
it doesn't That doesn't mean it is sorcery. Maybe it's not,
2:01:24
it's just technology. I just that argument doesn't make any
2:01:29
sense to me. Well, and this is not discounting the
2:01:34
possibility of demons or discounting the possibility of angels.
2:01:38
Speaker 2: Well, I guess I understand your point. Conceptually, I don't
2:01:43
actually disagree with it, So I don't think we're saying
2:01:44
something different that you know, metaphysically, there could be two
2:01:49
separate things going on. There could be celestial there could
2:01:52
be extra earth outside of Earth space aliens, and there
2:01:57
could also be angels and demons could be too totally
2:01:59
separate things. One could be true and not the other.
2:02:02
That's I totally concede and agree with that point. I
2:02:06
guess what I'm saying is it's a distinction that is
2:02:12
conceptually interesting to me. But if a space alien with
2:02:17
like superhuman technology comes to the Earth and has malicious intent,
2:02:23
I don't know how I'm supposed to tell the difference
2:02:24
between that and demon.
2:02:25
Speaker 1: If they have malicious intent. But I mean, isn't that
2:02:28
also the case with visiting people? Right? Like? You could
2:02:32
have a country and you get visited by the Peace
2:02:35
Corps or you get visited by pirates. Yeah, you know,
2:02:39
and are the pirates demons as the Peace Corps angels? No?
2:02:44
Speaker 2: But I think we're talking about something much different.
2:02:46
Speaker 1: Are we talking about something different or are we talking about
2:02:49
a hyper advanced version of that.
2:02:51
Speaker 2: We're talking about? I mean, as I understand that we're
2:02:55
talking about things that exist outside the United States, sorry,
2:02:59
outside of the Earth, okay, and two different types of
2:03:02
beings that could exist outside of it. I mean, okay, maybe.
2:03:05
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people you know who thinks that
2:03:08
they're they're here.
2:03:08
Speaker 2: Is Atlantis or there's something else, well.
2:03:10
Speaker 1: That they're there somehow or another. They are survivors of
2:03:14
a long gone civilization that live under the ocean. Yeah,
2:03:18
it's just as kooky here.
2:03:20
Speaker 2: Here's what I would put it, is like there's also
2:03:22
a difference between a demon and a ghost. Right, these
2:03:24
things are two very different conceptual things. But if I'm
2:03:28
a human being and I meet a malicious ghost, maybe
2:03:30
I think it's a demon. And maybe all I'm saying
2:03:33
is maybe there's some there's some point at which the
2:03:39
conceptually interesting this is such a weird conversation, at which
2:03:42
point the conceptually interesting discussion of what it is is
2:03:47
separate from how it appears to me and how I'm
2:03:52
going to understand it as a human being in my
2:03:54
particular social and cultural context in twenty twenty six. But
2:03:57
if you're looking for me to concede the point that
2:03:59
there is something different or could be something different, between
2:04:02
an angel, a demon, a space alien, a supernatural, but
2:04:07
non any of those other things beings. Yes, I can
2:04:10
see that.
2:04:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, the question is what does what do these special
2:04:17
access programs like what is the information that's available like
2:04:23
Rush and a lot of these other people that there
2:04:26
have been crash retrieval programs.
2:04:28
Speaker 2: And so I've talked today before. I think I called
2:04:31
him actually after it was on your podcast. So there's
2:04:38
like the crash retrieval stuff of whether that's that's real
2:04:41
or not, whereas it et cetera. There's the videos, right
2:04:44
there are all of these videos, some of which have
2:04:46
been released and declassified that seem to me show some
2:04:48
pretty weird stuff. And then there might be other pieces
2:04:52
of evidence as well. I'm not saying there is or is,
2:04:54
and I just don't know. I try to keep an
2:04:55
open mind about this stuff. All I'm saying is I'm
2:04:58
fascinated by it. I don't have like some secret sauce,
2:05:01
at least not yet that tells me what's true and
2:05:04
what's false. I'm just saying this is something that I'm
2:05:07
interested in, but it doesn't it's because it's it's like
2:05:12
anything in life, where do I have to figure this
2:05:16
out this week. No, So I'm going to do the
2:05:19
things that I have to, like negotiate with the Iranians
2:05:21
and try to get this bill passed.
2:05:23
Speaker 1: So let's imagine a world where the Iranian negotiations go swimmingly,
2:05:29
everything's done, all these Gulf Arab states decide, Hey, let's
2:05:35
invest money and Iran let's change hearts and minds. Who okay,
2:05:41
avoided a gigantic apocalyptic scenario? What could be done? Like
2:05:48
if we have information, well, who has this information? And
2:05:52
why are they holding onto this information? And what do
2:05:55
you know? The how put off story? So how put off?
2:05:58
We used to work for NASA said that he was
2:06:01
brought in during the Bush administration where they were going
2:06:06
they were proposing disclosure, and they were saying, this is
2:06:12
what they were saying. They're saying, we have biological remains
2:06:16
and we have physical crafts. We're proposing disclosure. And they
2:06:21
brought in a bunch of a bunch of thought leaders,
2:06:25
different disciplines, different schools thought, and they said, I want
2:06:30
you to compile a list of pros and cons and
2:06:33
put a numerical value on how is this going to
2:06:37
affect society? How's this going to affect religion, how's this
2:06:40
going to affect government, how's this going to affect economy?
2:06:42
All these different things, And when they compiled this list,
2:06:47
every one of them had more in the con than
2:06:51
in the pro and they decided against disclosure because of that. Now,
2:06:56
if that's the case, what are we talking about, Like,
2:07:00
who has this information? And what is this information? I mean,
2:07:04
if that wasn't just a thought experiment, if they weren't
2:07:07
really just fucking with these people, which I don't understand
2:07:10
why they would do that, but let's assume what is
2:07:14
known and why would they prevent that information from getting out?
2:07:19
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's a big if.
2:07:23
Speaker 1: Have you seen the movie The Age of Disclosure? I'm
2:07:25
not okay. Well, a lot of people, including intelligence officers,
2:07:30
different people in the government, are in this documentary and
2:07:35
one of the things that they're saying is part of
2:07:37
the problem with all this is if they have had
2:07:40
these programs going on for so long, that means they've
2:07:42
been misappropriating funds and they've been lying to Congress. So
2:07:46
all these people that were involved in the program, solul
2:07:50
Alezondo and all these other people have said, look, what
2:07:53
we're going to need is mass amnesty for people that
2:07:56
are involved in this. It's the only way you're ever
2:07:58
really going to get to the bottom of it. So
2:08:01
from with that is, if you've got unlimited money and
2:08:05
you've got misappropriation of funds and lying to Congress, I
2:08:09
garon t some of that money has gone to places
2:08:13
and shit like it does.
2:08:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, like it's always very hard to engage in
2:08:20
these like super generic super general I should say hypotheticals,
2:08:25
because you know, like, yeah, if if look, we've got
2:08:29
remains of space aliens and we're hiding them, then there
2:08:33
are a million other sort of there are a million
2:08:36
possibilities for that. What would explain it, how it would
2:08:39
have happened. I am skeptical that's true. And the reason
2:08:42
I'm skeptical that it's true that we have the physical
2:08:45
remains is not because I don't think that's something that
2:08:48
like is physically possible or that the government, like the
2:08:51
government's willing to do and able to do a lot
2:08:53
of a lot of crazy stuff in our history and
2:08:55
the history of all governments. I am skeptical of the competence.
2:09:00
She made this point to Dave when we talked. I
2:09:02
think he's a very interesting guy, so I don't mean
2:09:05
to insult him or sad disagree with him about everything.
2:09:07
But I made this point to Dave.
2:09:10
Speaker 1: When we talked.
2:09:10
Speaker 2: It's like, if we have literal space alien remains in
2:09:15
the custody of the United States government, there is no
2:09:17
way that that wouldn't get that wouldn't leak out in
2:09:20
some way.
2:09:21
Speaker 1: Well, it has leaked out anecdotally.
2:09:23
Speaker 2: Well that's I guess that's the counter argument.
2:09:25
Speaker 1: But I think you know history.
2:09:27
Speaker 2: But the next no, I want to hear that. But
2:09:29
like with cell phones in every way that we have,
2:09:32
like it's plaus you could hide that in an era
2:09:35
where you have to have a giant camera the size
2:09:37
of these antlers in order to take a photo of something.
2:09:41
But dude, I can take you know, like you have
2:09:42
cameras now that are like literally this tiny. That's the
2:09:46
part that I'm skeptical of that we're hiding them.
2:09:50
Speaker 1: Let me push back, because you know that if you
2:09:54
have any sort of top secret, like if you go
2:09:57
into a skiff, like, there's no way you're bringing cameras
2:10:01
in there. Okay, you're you're Look when I came here
2:10:05
to this podcast studio, they had a dog and it's studio.
2:10:10
My trunk yeah, Okay, I'm gonna blow up my own studio. Yeah.
2:10:14
Speaker 2: But okay, so you know what I'm saying. But the okay,
2:10:16
the counter argument though, is they check that stuff on you.
2:10:18
They don't check that stuff on everybody anybody here. They
2:10:20
did everybody here. Yeah, but all you play you need
2:10:24
is one official with like the highest security clearance. Now, okay,
2:10:29
you're right, certain devices like give iminate signals that they
2:10:32
can pick upond Bluetooth and all that shit.
2:10:34
Speaker 1: But like, but to have access to go into a
2:10:37
room where they have these things and know they did
2:10:40
have these things, I guarantee you they're gonna make sure
2:10:45
no one's got anything They could easily scan you to
2:10:48
make sure that you don't have any kind of electronics,
2:10:50
any kind of camera, any kind of recording device. That's
2:10:53
not hard. I mean, especially if you've got something squirreled
2:10:57
away an area fifty.
2:10:59
Speaker 2: In the next two and a half years, we're going
2:11:00
to run this experiment because I got two and a
2:11:01
half more years as VP, and I swear to you,
2:11:05
if there are little green men like body remains, well,
2:11:08
I'm not going to I'm not gonna text to you.
2:11:11
I'm gonna try to smuggle a camera and get a
2:11:13
photo of these things.
2:11:14
Speaker 1: Well, how would you, the vice president of the United
2:11:16
States of America, have to have a camera smuggled in
2:11:20
to do that?
2:11:21
Speaker 2: Well, maybe I wouldn't, but again, I've seen you think
2:11:23
that you have authority.
2:11:25
Speaker 1: It's like, look, let's imagine you find out that right
2:11:27
Powderson Air Force Base, they have a secure facility somewhere.
2:11:32
Maybe it's not there, maybe it's yeah, maybe they've kept
2:11:35
it under wraps. Maybe it's in the mountain somewhere. And
2:11:37
you find out that this thing exists. Do you think
2:11:41
it's as simple as you could just go out and
2:11:43
tell everybody, or do you think that you get briefed
2:11:46
on the implications of what would happen if you disclosed
2:11:49
all this information.
2:11:50
Speaker 2: I would definitely get briefed on the implications.
2:11:52
Speaker 1: And they would probably tell you, Hey, you have to
2:11:55
bullshit people.
2:11:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, but dude, I'm not bullshit. Well look, I have
2:12:01
I have many skills as a politician in some vices,
2:12:04
but like one of them is I'm just not a
2:12:05
good liar.
2:12:06
Speaker 1: Well, then they're not going to show it to you.
2:12:08
You just fucked up. You just fucked up. On this
2:12:10
podcast by saying that ladies on the view, that's that's
2:12:18
that's right, the intellectual vie.
2:12:21
Speaker 2: They show it to the lazy of the view. It
2:12:22
will be said two hours two hours later.
2:12:24
Speaker 1: Anyway, I am give this, show it to them, just
2:12:27
so that no one will believe it.
2:12:28
Speaker 2: I do want to look into this stuff. I'm just
2:12:29
telling you I have not yet seen the evidence that
2:12:33
we have certainly extraterrestrial remains, but there's a lot of
2:12:37
stuff before extrastrial remains. It's also interesting, like the flight patterns,
2:12:41
and some of these videos are super weird.
2:12:44
Speaker 1: Well, the Commander David Fevor stuff is bananas. It goes
2:12:47
from fifty thousand feet above sea level to sea level
2:12:49
and look a scond to what.
2:12:51
Speaker 2: People say, right like, because one of the arguments I've heard,
2:12:55
for example, is you know, could this just be a
2:12:57
visual oar on the camera or something like that. Okay,
2:12:59
that that's sounds to me plausible. I'm not an expert
2:13:01
in cameras. But then what the pilots their reaction to it.
2:13:06
It's not like they're looking at a visual or on
2:13:08
a camera. It's like they're looking at something else that's
2:13:10
really really weird and difficult to explain given what they
2:13:13
know about you know, physics and aeronautical engineering, et cetera.
2:13:17
So anyway, I am fascinated by this, but I just
2:13:19
don't want to tell people like, oh, I've uncovered the
2:13:22
truth or I haven't because I haven't looked at it yet.
2:13:24
Speaker 1: Right, well, I would if I was you. That would
2:13:27
be the first thing I did a storm right in there.
2:13:29
Speaker 2: Let's talk about tax policy.
2:13:32
Speaker 1: Is that you want to talk about?
2:13:33
Speaker 2: No, we can talk about tax boics way more interesting.
2:13:37
Speaker 1: I would want to know. I mean, I think the
2:13:39
world wants to know. I think it would fundamentally change
2:13:41
our understanding of what it means to be a living organ.
2:13:44
Speaker 2: Well, okay, what do you think? Like, what is your
2:13:46
at You've you know more about this.
2:13:48
Speaker 1: Than I do. I don't think alone, but okay, i're alone.
2:13:53
I just don't understand what it is.
2:13:55
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know if it's you don't have like
2:13:57
a strong view about what it is.
2:13:59
Speaker 1: You're just I don't have any injury. I don't have
2:14:01
any data, right, so I don't have any proof. So
2:14:06
I believe Commander David Fraver. I believe Ryan Graves. He
2:14:10
was a fighter pilot that said that when they upgraded
2:14:13
their their equipment on these fighter jets in twenty fourteen,
2:14:17
all of a sudden they started seeing these things that
2:14:20
were staying completely motionless at one hundred and twenty nine
2:14:23
wins and there were a cube inside of a sphere,
2:14:28
a black cube inside of some sort of Yeah, well.
2:14:31
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is a I know you've talked to
2:14:33
Eric Weinstein, yes, and you know I haven't talked about
2:14:36
this lately. But one of the things that Eric sort
2:14:40
of kind of persuaded.
2:14:42
Speaker 1: Me of a couple of years ago was it's Weinstein.
2:14:45
They get very sensitive party.
2:14:47
Speaker 2: Okay, oh got it, Eric Weinstein, good thought. Speaking of pedophiles,
2:14:52
I was a pedophile.
2:14:54
Speaker 1: He was.
2:14:55
Speaker 2: He had many sins, but not that one.
2:14:56
Speaker 1: Cannis own says he's innocent, oh sing okay or not
2:15:00
not guilty of everything that they said he was, so okay.
2:15:04
Speaker 2: Eric Weinstein, this probably three or four years ago, persuades
2:15:08
me of this. Actually not. It's an interesting theory. His
2:15:12
argument is in the same way that I would say,
2:15:16
what's the difference between an extraterrestrial and an angel or
2:15:20
a demon depending on its intentions from the perspective of
2:15:23
a human. In twenty twenty six. His argument would be,
2:15:26
what's the difference between a space alien and a human being?
2:15:30
But just a human being with super advanced technology, right,
2:15:33
And so I don't know if this is still his view,
2:15:35
but he kind of was. He was like, let's say
2:15:39
you had human beings who just were super scientifically advanced.
2:15:45
Like what we know of the laws of physics as
2:15:47
I understand it is that light speed is sort of
2:15:50
the upper limit of what one of our spaceships could travel.
2:15:53
You can't go any faster than the speed of light. Well,
2:15:55
that's a problem because everything else that could support of
2:15:58
extraterrestrial life is much is many, many, many many light
2:16:02
years away. Okay, So his argument to me again back
2:16:06
in the day, was if you figured out a new
2:16:09
physics and the same way that you had an understanding
2:16:12
shift from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics, if you have
2:16:15
a new understanding of physics that allows you to travel
2:16:18
much faster than the speed of light, you could just
2:16:21
have human beings either from a different planet or maybe
2:16:24
they went to Mars and started their own civilization, and
2:16:26
then that got old and they at this point there
2:16:29
are many millions of light years away, but they can
2:16:32
move through space and time in a way that is
2:16:34
quite literally like divine from our perspective, or space aliens,
2:16:39
but they're just human beings.
2:16:41
Speaker 1: It could be human beings from the future.
2:16:44
Speaker 2: If time travel is possible.
2:16:46
Speaker 1: But also it also we know that life exists on Earth.
2:16:50
So if life exists on Earth, Earth is a planet,
2:16:54
there are hundreds of billions of stars that have hundreds
2:16:59
of billions of planets. We have no idea how many
2:17:03
planets there are in the known universe that could potentially
2:17:06
support life. And if these things live on these planets,
2:17:11
and they live far longer than we have, Like if
2:17:14
you showed a nuclear bomb to someone from one hundred
2:17:19
years ago, they would say, that's the craziest fucking thing
2:17:21
I've ever seen in my life. You show them a reactor,
2:17:24
show them a television.
2:17:27
Speaker 2: It's like my dog with a light switch, right, just
2:17:29
be able.
2:17:30
Speaker 1: To FaceTime someone in New Zealand. How what is that?
2:17:33
What are you doing now? Advance that forward one million years?
2:17:37
Then you know, instead of using propulsion, you are instead
2:17:43
manipulating space time.
2:17:44
Speaker 2: So that's exactly right. And one of the things I've
2:17:48
talked with Elon about this, and Elon is obviously a
2:17:50
super smart dude, but I've never heard like a super
2:17:53
satisfying answer to this. One of the things that worries me, Like,
2:17:57
I want humans to be a multiplanetary species. I want
2:18:01
us to go to Mars instead of a colony, and
2:18:03
you know, like that's sort of I love humanity, I
2:18:06
want to continue. And the problem with with space travel
2:18:13
that I've again not heard a satisfying factory solution to
2:18:16
is you know, when we're outside of the Earth's gravity,
2:18:20
our genes, like our actual DNA seems to not function
2:18:25
as well when it's not on Earth style gravity, which
2:18:29
makes sense, right, We developed in these conditions with this gravity.
2:18:34
So whenever you have somebody who goes to the National
2:18:36
Space Station for like three months or six months and
2:18:38
they come back and they are totally jacked up because
2:18:41
like literally the cells in their body are starting to
2:18:44
like discombobulate in response to a low gravity environment, I
2:18:48
don't like we have to figure out a solution to
2:18:50
that problem. That to me is sort of the most
2:18:53
interesting part of space travel of going to Mars. Setting
2:18:56
up a colony on another planet is set up a
2:19:00
colony on Mars, but in what it takes you like
2:19:03
two years to get there, in two years to get
2:19:05
back or something like that. But in that time you've
2:19:08
gone from a functioning adult healthy to like you dead
2:19:12
if you're in space for four years. That that part
2:19:16
of space travel is very fascinating to me. And I
2:19:18
don't know that I've heard any satisfactory solution to it.
2:19:21
Speaker 1: I don't think conventionally there is a satisfactory solution. But
2:19:25
if you're talking about manipulating space time and not traditional propulsion.
2:19:29
Speaker 2: You probably can figure that out.
2:19:30
Speaker 1: You could manipulate you could essentially contain this environment and
2:19:34
exactly the same way it is and travel to somewhere
2:19:37
else with that environment. So this is the idea of
2:19:40
them living under the surface of the ocean ice How
2:19:44
can they live in the depths of the ocean, Well,
2:19:46
because they have a completely contained environment. Sure, sure, I mean,
2:19:51
who knows, Maybe just nonsense.
2:19:54
Speaker 2: Maybe they figured out how I can eat like steak
2:19:57
and Greater's ice cream and have the blood profile of
2:20:00
eating you know, chicken and well.
2:20:02
Speaker 1: I don't think chicken and sell is a way to go.
2:20:04
I know you don't. I'm a mistake guy. I think
2:20:07
I just eat a little bit of ice cream every
2:20:08
now and then, by the way, ice cream is one
2:20:10
of the very best desserts for you because it contains
2:20:13
fast fat protein. Right, that's right. It's a little bit
2:20:17
of sugar, but it's all it's a moderation.
2:20:20
Speaker 2: Thing, that's right.
2:20:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, anybody really want to eat ice cream? As
2:20:24
a communist, there's nothing wrong with ice cream? Ice cream?
2:20:27
Speaker 2: Speaking of communists, the democratic socialism, Yeah, that's actually what
2:20:30
they do at their events is they throw the ice
2:20:32
cream into the Boston Harbor instead of the Yeah.
2:20:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, those fucking people scare me. I'm really conciderned that
2:20:40
people think that's a good idea and that they think
2:20:44
that socialism just hasn't been done correctly. That drives me
2:20:49
nuts because I think a lot of like really well intentioned,
2:20:53
really kind and empathetic young people think that that's the
2:20:56
way to go, and I do not think they underst
2:21:00
stand the dangers of this ideology because it always leads
2:21:05
to one thing. It leads to a very powerful military
2:21:10
government that controls the population period, end of discussion, And
2:21:15
if you play it out, is literally the only way
2:21:18
that can get people to give up their money. Yes,
2:21:20
it's the only way they can get them to give
2:21:21
up their property. And when you're hearing like Momdanie talk
2:21:25
about freezing rents and taking bad landlords and then confiscating
2:21:31
their property, you like, do you? This is step one
2:21:35
of what's happened in every communist dictatorship throughout history. This
2:21:40
is what happened in North Korea. Give the government the
2:21:43
land and we'll make sure that no one ever has
2:21:45
to worry about food. What a great idea. Look how
2:21:48
it turned out.
2:21:49
Speaker 2: So I don't know who said this, but the whole
2:21:53
argument of communism is that you seize the means of production.
2:21:56
But because the means of production, the most powerful means
2:21:59
of production is the human mind, you ultimately have to
2:22:01
get intotalitarianism. You have to have control of that most
2:22:05
fundamental element of the human person.
2:22:08
Speaker 1: You also take away motivation. And there's a thing that
2:22:11
people here don't like, which is extreme wealth. But you
2:22:14
have to understand that if it wasn't for the motivation
2:22:18
of extreme wealth, you would not have an iPhone. So
2:22:21
here's we have these things.
2:22:22
Speaker 2: Okay, So here's here's let me give you my uh my,
2:22:25
my Christian answer to this, and it's a good plug
2:22:27
for my my new book Communion, Finding my way back
2:22:30
to Face.
2:22:33
Speaker 1: Communion, which is all about aliens.
2:22:35
Speaker 2: Okay, did you know that no coincidence?
2:22:38
Speaker 1: Pull up the pull.
2:22:43
Speaker 2: I want all your listeners to buy.
2:22:45
Speaker 1: The problem is that you didn't know about this book.
2:22:47
I would have told you to come up with a
2:22:49
different title.
2:22:50
Speaker 2: Seriously, there we go, Okay, so we want that is
2:22:54
wild and.
2:22:54
Speaker 1: Then there's my first Communion is Okay, that's like a
2:22:57
kid's book.
2:22:58
Speaker 2: But yeah, we want to be people to buy the
2:22:59
second one, the one that says JD vance on it.
2:23:01
But yeh okay. So this is one of the things
2:23:04
I talk about in the book is like there's a
2:23:06
there is a Christian idea of political economy that's actually
2:23:09
been lost in American politics, where it's it's like we
2:23:13
think of it as libertarianism, the hardcore free market versus
2:23:18
socialism or communism, and there actually is a third way
2:23:24
that has existed in pretty much all Christian economic thinking
2:23:27
going back two thousand years ago, which is that yeah,
2:23:30
extreme wealth inequality does create problems, but you still got
2:23:35
to have private property, you still have to have a
2:23:37
state that protects private property rights. And there's a way
2:23:39
to balance these things that I think we've sort of
2:23:41
lost in our country a little bit, and when I like, okay,
2:23:47
let me play Devil's advocate with with the DSA, because
2:23:49
I think that their ideas are crazy, and I think
2:23:51
that you're right, they will lead to a very totalitarian place.
2:23:54
I'm not defending a single thing that they say, particularly
2:23:56
their hatred of ice cream. What I am what I
2:24:00
am saying is and maybe this is just sort of
2:24:04
the way my mind works. I tend to be a
2:24:05
little bit more empathetic. Why are young people attracted to
2:24:09
socialism in twenty first century America? One of the best
2:24:13
interviews that Charlie Kirk ever gave it was right before
2:24:16
he died. It was an episode that he did with
2:24:18
Tucker Carlson where he talked about the fact that if
2:24:21
you don't give young people a stake, if you don't
2:24:23
give them ownership, if you don't give them a sense
2:24:26
of the American dream and of possibility in the future,
2:24:28
they're going to become socialists. Like if you have a
2:24:31
zero sum environment for a twenty five year old in
2:24:34
this country, they're going to start to say, the only
2:24:36
way for me to get anything is to take away
2:24:38
from somebody else. So we have to get away from
2:24:40
like the zero sum thinking. I think that's like the
2:24:42
root cause of this. But I also think that, look,
2:24:46
we've ran an experiment in the United States of America,
2:24:48
and you know, I think that we have undone that
2:24:52
experiment taken a different direction of the Trump administration, where
2:24:56
ship all the factories overseas and let low wage fourn
2:25:00
make our stuff. That was a bad deal for American workers. Again,
2:25:04
it takes a long time to reverse that trend, but
2:25:06
I think it's one of the best parts of Trump
2:25:08
administration policy is you do see that trend starting to
2:25:11
reverse this idea that nobody should own anything, we should
2:25:14
all become renters, whereas what we're trying to do is
2:25:17
lower registrates. You actually have seen housing costs stabilized in
2:25:21
the country of the last year and a half. Frankly
2:25:23
because of immigration. We had way too many people going
2:25:26
after way too many homes you close the border. This
2:25:29
is one of the reasons why rents and housing costs
2:25:31
have stabilized a little bit. So I think that unless
2:25:35
you go down that pathway of allowing young Americans to
2:25:40
own something, socialism is the inevitable outcome. Do I think
2:25:43
that's good? No, But I really do worry. And I
2:25:46
see this frankly more in my own party than I do.
2:25:48
On the other side. There is this revulsion to socialism
2:25:52
that's totally justified without enough thinking about how did we
2:25:56
get here in the first place. And man, if we
2:25:59
don't fix that, and I would say, if we don't
2:26:01
get back to a more Christian sort of understanding of economics,
2:26:06
socialism is the alternative like that, that is where this goes. Well,
2:26:11
if people don't own anything exactly, and in some ways, Joe,
2:26:14
the game is rigged. Yes, I mean, if you look
2:26:18
at I mean again, I just I think so much
2:26:22
of housing because you know, this happened. I think it
2:26:26
was during the presidential campaign. Maybe it was right before,
2:26:29
but I was I was talking to some family members
2:26:31
over Thanksgiving, and you know, just a sort of a
2:26:37
younger friend of my wife's there were like five or
2:26:40
six years behind us. They were just about to get married,
2:26:43
and this young woman, successful engineer makes a higher salary
2:26:48
than most Americans. She just sort of like tossed out
2:26:50
there that you know, when her parents' generation was coming up,
2:26:55
it was like possible to own a house and to
2:26:58
raise a family and not be worried that much of things.
2:27:01
And my thought was, Okay, you're an engineer. You make
2:27:04
way more money than seventy five percent of people your age,
2:27:06
maybe ninety percent of people your age, and you think
2:27:09
that it is like this ridiculous, unachievable objective to have
2:27:13
literally what your parents had, which is a decent job,
2:27:16
a nice house in a safe place, like at that
2:27:20
literally that same dinner. Like another guy, another friend of
2:27:23
my wife's, was talking about this and he, you know
2:27:26
South Indian family grew up, you know, his parents immigrated,
2:27:30
he was born and raised in San Diego, and he
2:27:32
was like, you know, when I was growing up in
2:27:33
Ocean Side, this is like a suburb of San Diego
2:27:36
where there are a lot of Marines live in Ocean Side.
2:27:38
It's close to Camp Pendleton. So when I was grown up,
2:27:42
all of my like the kids that I played with,
2:27:45
that I rode boat bikes with, that I was you know,
2:27:46
playing street hockey with and football with. All of those
2:27:49
kids were the sons of enlisted Marines in Ocean Side, California.
2:27:54
And then we went and looked at like Oceanside, California
2:27:58
rents again, this is a couple of years ago, rents
2:28:00
and housing prices, Like every house was north of a
2:28:03
million dollars on the street. This guy grew up in
2:28:05
and listen Marine. Frankly, most Marine officers could not afford
2:28:08
to buy a million dollar house. So, like, does the
2:28:11
socialism thing scare me? Yes? Is it the wrong solution?
2:28:14
Speaker 1: Yes?
2:28:14
Speaker 2: But one thing I try to persuade my fellow Republicans
2:28:17
of is socialism is the alternative if we don't have
2:28:22
a pathway to give people a sense that the system
2:28:24
is not rigged and that the American dream is attainable.
2:28:28
That's like our job. That's what we have to do.
2:28:30
I'm not saying Rome was built in a day. It's
2:28:32
not going to be easy to undo some of these
2:28:34
economic trends. But man, we ran the experiment. We ran
2:28:38
the experiment of offshoring all of our industrial jobs, of
2:28:43
becoming a services and finance economy and allowing Wall Street
2:28:47
to come in and buy every asset of modern life
2:28:50
and turn it into an investible. You know, line goes
2:28:54
up asset And what is that done? It's created a
2:28:57
generation of kids who kind of are attract to socialism.
2:29:01
You have to fix that problem.
2:29:02
Speaker 1: Well, kids that do feel And you're correct, and I
2:29:06
agree with you. The system is rigged. Kids feel like
2:29:10
there are no options other than to burn it down,
2:29:13
and that's the problem. And because they feel very frustrated.
2:29:16
Speaker 2: And this is part of our job is to provide
2:29:18
an option that isn't burn it down, but is not
2:29:21
just doing the same things that we've done for the past.
2:29:22
Speaker 1: They're also terrified about the future because of AI, because
2:29:26
they feel like jobs are going to be taken away
2:29:28
and there will be no place for people that have
2:29:32
education in very specific avenues, like very specific jobs are
2:29:38
going to just be irrelevant. They're going to be completely
2:29:41
wiped out by AI.
2:29:43
Speaker 2: There is a huge fear of over this. So I
2:29:45
let me kind of give my own my own spin
2:29:47
on this. I was talking to a CEO not of
2:29:50
an AI company, but of a tech company, and he's
2:29:53
one of the few CIO CEOs that's sort of right
2:29:55
of center, and I was like, well, you know, what
2:29:58
do you think do you think AI is going to
2:29:59
come take all the jobs? And his basic take was,
2:30:03
the real historical analogy is the Industrial Revolution. And you know,
2:30:08
did it the Industrial Revolution displace or change a lot
2:30:11
of jobs? Yes, it also created a lot of jobs
2:30:14
that didn't exist before. So he was like, my concern
2:30:16
here is not that fifty percent of Americans are going
2:30:20
to be unable to find a job. There will be
2:30:23
some displacement, some sort of churn in the labor market,
2:30:26
but that's not the main issue, he said. The main
2:30:27
issue if you go back to the industrial Revolution, is
2:30:30
that there was a lot of demand for workers, but
2:30:32
the inequality in the country got completely out of whack,
2:30:37
like this is the era of the robber barons. And
2:30:39
then the robber barons in both the Europe and the
2:30:41
United States led to fascism, it led to communism again
2:30:44
to this point about giving people an option. If you
2:30:47
don't give them a good option, then it leads to
2:30:49
fascism and communism. Now there's this fascinating and cyclical written
2:30:54
by Popoleio the thirteenth. I'll send it to you. It's
2:30:56
one of the best things that I think has ever
2:30:58
been written by a Christian leader, where it's written in
2:31:01
the late nineteenth century, and the basic argument of it
2:31:04
is that in the age of industrial churn, there has
2:31:08
to be a middle way between six year olds working
2:31:12
on the factory floor and socialism, and part of that
2:31:16
solution is to give workers a sort of say, in
2:31:20
what's going on, give normal people some power in this,
2:31:24
in this, in this system. And I think that's the
2:31:27
thing we have to figure out with AI. I won't
2:31:28
say that I have all the solutions, because I haven't,
2:31:30
but I think the fundamental question is, how do you
2:31:33
ensure that normal people have some control over this, control
2:31:38
over what's their kids are seeing, control over, you know,
2:31:43
the the economic forces that are being unleashed by AI,
2:31:46
some certainty that they're not going to wake up in
2:31:48
a world where they can't buy a home but some
2:31:50
other guy owns thirty five mansions, right. That That, to
2:31:53
me is the fundamental challenge of AI is it's going
2:31:57
to unleash a lot of wealth creation. But if that
2:32:00
wealth creation all goes to some some segment of people,
2:32:02
you're gonna have communism. Like that is that is the
2:32:05
choice before us. Is a lot of wealth being created,
2:32:08
that's good, by the way, I like. I like wealth
2:32:10
being created, but if if you don't ensure that there's
2:32:13
some broader prosperity from that wealth creation, Like we have
2:32:17
run this experiment before and it leads to communism.
2:32:20
Speaker 1: Right, So if the system is fucked, how do we
2:32:22
unfuck it? So you have a magic wand.
2:32:26
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I this is what I'm saying. I'm
2:32:29
being honest with you that I don't have a magic
2:32:31
wand I think there are a few things that that
2:32:33
that we should sort of take from this, I think. Okay,
2:32:36
the first is that we should give workers a real
2:32:42
say at the bargaining table. Okay, So what really worries
2:32:47
me about AI is the is the fact that private
2:32:49
sector unions have largely disappeared from the United States of America.
2:32:54
There are a couple of exceptions, but if you go
2:32:55
back to like why do the United States in Britain
2:32:58
whether the Industrial Revolution better than literally every other Western country,
2:33:03
I think you can make a good argument strong religious institutions.
2:33:06
Right now we have very weak religious institutions. Number two,
2:33:08
I think you could say strong worker participation institutions and
2:33:12
not just private sector labor unions. That was a big
2:33:15
piece of it. But people don't realize that, you know, Hollywood,
2:33:20
major studios would actually work with community groups and churches
2:33:26
to sort of help like develop content. Now this wasn't organic,
2:33:31
this was a natural cooperation. This wasn't mandated by some law.
2:33:34
But where they'd go and say, help us produce content
2:33:37
that actually speaks to your membership, that speaks to your community.
2:33:42
And there was this sense of participation in American society
2:33:45
that I think we've lost, and that's the thing that
2:33:48
I think that we have to rebuild a little bit.
2:33:49
It's interesting that the Trump administration, the President personally certainly me,
2:33:53
have been accused of being too pro labor for Republicans.
2:33:58
But one of the reason why I'm pro labor as
2:34:00
a Republican is because, and I'm not saying unions are perfect,
2:34:04
some of them have very serious problems. Like I'm open
2:34:07
eyed about this, Like the alternative may very well be
2:34:10
communism in the United States of America. Not next year,
2:34:13
but down the road. You've got to give people a
2:34:16
seat at the table. And I think that's that's one
2:34:18
answer to the question. I think a second answer to
2:34:22
the question is competition. So if you go back again
2:34:25
to what worked and what was broken about the Industrial Revolution,
2:34:29
hyper monopolist style companies that had way too much power.
2:34:36
I mean Teddy Roosevelt famously talked about how, you know,
2:34:40
some of the steel trusts were more powerful than the
2:34:42
United States government, so you could vote, your vote didn't
2:34:46
matter as much because the corporations were more powerful than
2:34:49
the government. I think raining that in making sure that, Like,
2:34:52
how do you what's the most obvious way to give
2:34:54
normal people participation? It's democracy. But if a single corporation
2:35:00
has monopolized an entire space, then you don't have a
2:35:04
real democracy unless you reign in the power of that company.
2:35:08
And I think that that is another big risk with AI.
2:35:11
It's that we have a hyper monopolist who dominates the
2:35:14
space and then influences the government, influences a nonprofit sector,
2:35:19
and then real people are effectively cut out of the bargain.
2:35:22
So again, I'm not going to pretend sitting here that
2:35:24
I have all the solutions. I think about this more
2:35:26
than almost anything else right now, But it's the solution
2:35:31
has to be giving normal people actual authority over their
2:35:36
own lives.
2:35:36
Speaker 1: But how can the government get involved in those steps?
2:35:39
Like what could be done on a federal level to
2:35:42
implement that?
2:35:44
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think one of the things, and
2:35:47
we've looked at legislation along these lines. We haven't yet
2:35:50
pushed anything. But you know, one problem with the twenty
2:35:53
with with like the private sector labor union. One reason
2:35:56
why your Democrats will say your private unions are at
2:36:00
super low participation rates because the government has you know,
2:36:03
been anti union. There's like some elements of truth to that,
2:36:06
but the reality is that a lot of workers don't
2:36:09
see the utility in joining a union because it's like,
2:36:12
in a lot of ways, it's the twentieth century institution
2:36:15
when you need a twenty first century institution. So I
2:36:17
think updating the modern union to be to make more
2:36:21
sense in the twenty first century. I think that's that's
2:36:24
a part of the story, you know, I think antitrust,
2:36:29
how would you do that? Well, a friend of mine,
2:36:30
his name is Rang Cass, actually very fascinating guy, sort
2:36:33
of a right of center economic thinker. You know. His
2:36:36
idea is that twentieth century labor law presupposes a sort
2:36:40
of zero sum conflict between the company and the union,
2:36:44
and that where you've seen unions actually thrive certain places
2:36:47
in Europe, it's a little bit more cooperative and the
2:36:52
unions actually have a little bit more power themselves where
2:36:55
they can negotiate with the corporation with a little bit
2:36:58
more breadth than a little bit more freedom, whereas in
2:37:01
the United States we sort of set a floor, make
2:37:04
we create a very small number of things the union
2:37:06
can actually negotiate over, and so a lot of people say, well,
2:37:09
why would I join a union, why would I participate
2:37:11
in it? So basically making the union a little bit
2:37:13
more cooperative, which requires changing the legal form of it.
2:37:17
I think that's interesting. I think anti trust is a
2:37:19
huge piece of the story. Now it's a little early
2:37:21
with AI because we don't yet know which companies are dominant.
2:37:24
But I think one of the big mistakes man we
2:37:26
made in the early two thousands is we should have
2:37:29
gone after the big tech companies with anti trust. Like
2:37:32
there is like a trust busting mechanism that exists in
2:37:35
the US government. We just didn't use it. We're gonna
2:37:38
have to be willing to use it in the twenty
2:37:39
first century.
2:37:41
Speaker 1: And when it comes to unions, what like, what is
2:37:47
wrong with the current structure in terms of what power
2:37:53
the unions have to negotiate for labor?
2:37:56
Speaker 2: So let me look. So there's a concrete example that
2:37:59
ORN uses all the time. So in some European countries,
2:38:03
you have a minimum wage. Right in some European countries,
2:38:07
the union can can actually cut a deal with the
2:38:10
employer to where you pay a brand new employee less
2:38:16
than the minimum wage. Then you pay a more senior
2:38:19
person higher than in the minimum wage. But in order
2:38:22
to pay the junior employee less than the minimum wage,
2:38:25
you have to provide them job training and better benefits
2:38:27
and so forth. And so the idea is you turn
2:38:30
the employee for the first couple of years, you turn
2:38:32
the company almost into an educational institution. But in order
2:38:36
to do that, the union has to have flexibility. That
2:38:39
kind of arrangement is effectively illegal in the United States
2:38:42
of America. So it's that you create the ability for
2:38:45
the union to be more flexible and how it negotiates.
2:38:48
You don't set all the terms for it. You allow
2:38:51
the union to figure out what's in the best interest
2:38:52
of its membership.
2:38:53
Speaker 1: But people are opposed, like initially knee jerk reaction to
2:38:57
lowering wages. In lowering minimum wage, I mean, most people feel,
2:39:02
and I agree, that minimum wage is almost impossible to
2:39:05
live off.
2:39:06
Speaker 2: Of, especially with one hundred percent.
2:39:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
2:39:09
Speaker 2: But what these unions are not asking for, I mean,
2:39:12
you have to kind of trust the labor representation of
2:39:15
the people to sort of make the right arrangement for them.
2:39:19
And so it's not hey, let's create a minimum wage
2:39:23
or a wage floor that's lower than the minimum wage.
2:39:27
It's what about taking for the first year of a
2:39:30
person coming into the labor market where you know they
2:39:32
work on an internship for zero dollars right at a company.
2:39:37
Why don't we allow our workers to work effectively in internship,
2:39:41
get the training they need, get the benefits that they need,
2:39:43
and then join the workforce full time at a much
2:39:46
higher wage. The idea is that you trust the union
2:39:50
to come up with the starter or the labor organization,
2:39:52
whatever you want to call it, is you actually give
2:39:55
the union the ability to sort of negotiate over this
2:39:57
stuff on behalf of its members. Don't assume the way
2:40:01
the United States we do it is we basically take
2:40:05
all that authority away from the union itself and we
2:40:08
try to settle this stuff at the level of the government.
2:40:11
But again, where unions have been more successful, where they
2:40:15
actually have higher membership and participation rates, what you see
2:40:19
is the the these organizations actually have much greater flexibility,
2:40:25
and that ends up meaning that more people want to join.
2:40:28
That means these organizations have more power, and then that
2:40:31
means they can figure out the arrangement that works best
2:40:33
for their membership, So you kind of have to trust people.
2:40:36
You have to trust that people are willing to do
2:40:37
this thing for their own for their own benefit. And
2:40:44
you know, so long as they've got the right authority
2:40:46
and so long as they've got the right tools you give,
2:40:48
you can trust people to do what's in their best
2:40:50
interests in these organizations, to do what's in the best
2:40:52
interests of their membership.
2:40:54
Speaker 1: Well, the problem that people would have with that is
2:40:56
that corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders, so they
2:40:59
always want to make the most money possible, and they
2:41:01
have to make more money next quarter than they made
2:41:03
this quarter, and one of the ways they do that
2:41:06
is by paying people less.
2:41:08
Speaker 2: But that's why I think that you have to give
2:41:09
workers some some seat at the bargaining table. There's a
2:41:13
theory of like economics that dominated in the late twentieth
2:41:16
century America, which is that basically that you know, the
2:41:21
labor market was entirely efficient, and maybe the corporation didn't
2:41:25
want to pay their workers more money, but they would
2:41:27
be forced to pay their workers more money purely because
2:41:30
if they didn't do that, then they wouldn't be able
2:41:31
to get enough workers. Now, I do think that there's
2:41:34
an argument for like, there are all of these ways
2:41:36
why we should give workers more bargaining power one of them,
2:41:39
and we've spent a lot of time talking about labor organizations,
2:41:41
and that's important.
2:41:43
Speaker 1: Man.
2:41:43
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why I'm such an immigration hawk
2:41:45
is because it is really important not to flood the
2:41:48
country with low wage immigrants. Because if you give a
2:41:51
corporation a choice between a low wage immigrant and a
2:41:55
native worker, who's going to require, by the way, a
2:41:57
native worker of any race, they're going to be forced
2:42:00
to pay the native worker more if there's not a
2:42:03
pool of low wage workers to go to. And this
2:42:05
is like a consistent finding in the economics literature, but
2:42:09
also just common sense that when you flood the country
2:42:12
with low wage immigrants. This is why I think the
2:42:14
DSA types are a little full of shit when they
2:42:17
talk about helping normal people. If you want to help
2:42:20
a normal person, don't provide a corporation nine low wage
2:42:25
migrants to compete against them when they're bargaining for wages.
2:42:29
You actually give workers more power when you have a
2:42:32
more restricted immigration policy.
2:42:34
Speaker 1: Well that's the that's that's where the real con is, right,
2:42:39
because a lot of yeah, you've told me that you
2:42:42
had a conversation with someone who was at the head
2:42:45
of some corporation that was upset that they were trying
2:42:48
to shut down illegal immigration because he said, it's.
2:42:50
Speaker 2: A hotel chain.
2:42:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:42:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he said, basically, I want to be able
2:42:53
to pay my workers less money, and it's very hard
2:42:56
because the native workers expect higher wages. It's crazy now.
2:43:00
I mean, there's this story from a few years ago
2:43:04
was the New York Times. It was like unintentionally hilarious,
2:43:08
and it's talking about a you know, why Apple would
2:43:13
choose to manufacture in Asia over the United States of America,
2:43:17
And it's talking about how, you know, the American workers,
2:43:21
and it's almost kind of judgy towards the American workers.
2:43:23
It's like, well, you know, the American workers want to
2:43:26
go home and see their kids and have dinner with
2:43:28
their kids. And it's like, by the way, you go
2:43:31
to the Fox confactory and Apple and China, the Fox
2:43:34
confactory that develops products for Apple and China, and what
2:43:37
do you see. You literally see suicide nets around the
2:43:40
top of the building. Because yeah, the workers work seventy
2:43:43
two hours a week and they sleep in little apartments
2:43:47
for to a bedroom. But they also are so miserable
2:43:51
you have to take steps to prevent them from killing themselves. So,
2:43:55
you know, what I want out of American life is
2:43:58
a little bit more dignity, a little bit more oh
2:44:01
you know. Yeah, I can afford to feed my family.
2:44:03
I can also go home and actually watch my kids
2:44:05
baseball game, and that balance. I think if you're looking
2:44:09
at it from a pure profit motive, you know, maybe
2:44:12
the corporation isn't going to think like that, which is
2:44:14
why you have to give the people real power to
2:44:17
push back and advocate for their own interests.
2:44:19
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people in this country, if
2:44:22
they had to choose, especially people that have money, if
2:44:25
they had to choose between a phone that was manufactured
2:44:29
in America where people were paid a very good wage
2:44:31
and had benefits, and you have an iPhone that has
2:44:34
a little American flag on the back and you have
2:44:37
one that doesn't, I think a lot of people would
2:44:39
buy the one with the American flag on the back
2:44:41
because just they would feel better about their purchase. They'd
2:44:45
feel I feel weird when I'm holding a phone and
2:44:48
I know that someone was working in some factory in
2:44:51
some foreign country, working fifteen hours a day, right, and
2:44:54
being paid nothing.
2:44:55
Speaker 2: That's right. I think that's true of our food by
2:44:57
the way, too. Yeah, they'd much rather it be made locally.
2:45:01
They're willing to pay a little bit more so long
2:45:03
as it's healthier and it's made locally. There are obviously
2:45:06
your exceptions to every rule, but I do again, I
2:45:10
think that we have run the experiment where we just
2:45:14
try to do everything with low wage foreigners, whether they're
2:45:19
in the United States via illegal immigration or whether they're
2:45:22
outside the United States via off soaring and outsourcing. And
2:45:26
what it has led to is I think a society
2:45:30
where socialism is a bit on the rise. And one
2:45:32
of our jobs in the administration I think about this
2:45:34
all the time is how do you make things. I'm
2:45:38
not saying we're perfect, and I'm not saying there is
2:45:39
a lot of work to do, because there is. Like
2:45:41
we were left in quite a hole by forty years
2:45:43
of bad policy. People wways talk about the Biden administration inflation. Yeah,
2:45:47
the Biden administration inflation was terrible, got up to nine percent.
2:45:50
By the way, I think today's CPI report is you
2:45:52
had deflation in the United States. We actually had prices
2:45:55
coming down, which is good because the Iran war. Gas
2:45:58
prices came down, like prices.
2:46:02
Speaker 1: Have come down now because of the Iran War.
2:46:05
Speaker 2: Compared to where they were a month ago. Right, so
2:46:08
they're not down from the beginning of the war, but
2:46:09
they're down from where they were a month ago. So
2:46:11
you had a good CPI report that a consumer price
2:46:14
inflation report today. My point is, yes, I don't ever
2:46:19
get to the nine percent inflation of the Biden administration. Yes,
2:46:22
the Trump administration has had a much better record inflation
2:46:25
than the Biden administration. Nothing close to nine percent, even
2:46:28
in our worst month. But some of this stuff is
2:46:30
actually much longer term. This is forty years of failed
2:46:34
bipartisan leadership which is created really a kind of shell
2:46:39
corporation out of the United States of America. We don't
2:46:41
make enough of our own stuff, we don't have enough
2:46:44
self reliance, our workers don't have enough bargaining power. That
2:46:48
has led in a lot of ways, I think to
2:46:50
this kind of socialism fervor, and we have to keep
2:46:54
fixing these problems. Again, I think that we're going in
2:46:56
the right direction. Maybe people disagree, but it's going to
2:46:59
take years to fix this problem. And if we don't
2:47:02
we're going to end up with a socialist president in
2:47:04
this country.
2:47:06
Speaker 1: I think it's also a narrative change. And then the
2:47:10
narrative is stopping immigration is cruelty and your racist or xenophobic,
2:47:17
and that we should just instead give these people citizenship.
2:47:21
And it's not a coincidence that. I mean, like, what
2:47:25
we dealt with over the last four years was insane
2:47:29
where they just opened the border and not just encouraged
2:47:33
people to come across, but facilitated it, helped them, got
2:47:36
them on Medicaid, got them on Social Security, got people
2:47:39
they told people, do you have a bad back? Okay,
2:47:43
well your permanent disability, and you get free money, put
2:47:47
them in a hotel, give them a phone, like that's crazy,
2:47:50
and then move them to blue states. And then you
2:47:53
realize that that has a direct impact on congressional seats
2:47:58
because of the census, which is also nuts account citizens.
2:48:01
Speaker 2: It should only count citizens, but it doesn't, and that
2:48:04
actually steals congressional representation away from areas that have lower
2:48:08
illegal immigration, right, which is its own its own problem.
2:48:11
So yeah, it's it's the thing that I don't understand
2:48:16
about the democratic socialist of American Obviously, I disagree with
2:48:19
a lot of their ideas. But like if you go
2:48:21
back to Cesar Chavez, one of the original like founding
2:48:25
fathers of the American workers' rights movement, Okay, he was
2:48:30
a hardcore restrictionist on immigration because he thought that the
2:48:34
bosses would bring in low wage immigrants to compete against
2:48:38
his workers and that would drive down their wages. And
2:48:41
yet the DSA, which says they care about the wages
2:48:44
of workers, is quite literally like an open borders organization.
2:48:49
So I tend to think that it's it's allbs that
2:48:52
they are actually pursuing a set of policies that are
2:48:56
good for that are they are, like the corporations care
2:49:01
way more about open borders than they do about any
2:49:05
other policy the DSA cares about. So while these people
2:49:08
say that they're trying to fight for workers and they're
2:49:10
trying to fight for the working man, the actual end
2:49:13
result of DSA policy is to flood the country with
2:49:17
low wage immigrants, which will destroy the middle class of
2:49:19
this country. In fact, we have run this experiment for
2:49:21
decades now, and we have a much weaker middle class
2:49:24
than we did before it started.
2:49:26
Speaker 1: And I think this is a part of the problem
2:49:29
that this country has that there's this narrative Republicans are
2:49:34
cruel and they're anti worker, and that they're anti lower
2:49:38
class people or lower middle class people. Yep, it's a
2:49:41
bit that narrative has to someone has to do a
2:49:43
better job of messaging.
2:49:45
Speaker 2: I'm trying to, man, I'm trying to, but you know,
2:49:47
it's one of those things that it took a long
2:49:49
while for it to set in. It's going to take
2:49:50
a long while to get out of it. But what
2:49:52
I just I try to remind people is that anybody
2:49:55
who actually cares about the safety of your community is
2:49:59
going to care about not empowering police brutality, but empowering
2:50:03
the good cops to do what they need to do.
2:50:05
Anybody who cares about law and order is going to
2:50:07
want to throw violent criminals in jail, not close down
2:50:10
the prison. Anybody who cares about your wages and your
2:50:13
safety is going to want to control the border. So
2:50:17
I just all I can think to do is to
2:50:19
remind people that I'm not saying Republicans are perfect. And
2:50:24
you know, I have disagreements of course within my own
2:50:26
party all the time, but fundamentally our party is right
2:50:31
now pursuing a much better set of policies when it
2:50:35
comes to safety or your home, your wages, your ability
2:50:39
to keep more of your money. I just got to
2:50:41
keep preaching that message. And you know, the chips fall
2:50:44
where they may.
2:50:45
Speaker 1: And if you just look at the result of what
2:50:47
you see in these cities where they don't enforce crime,
2:50:50
where they don't enforce immigration laws, they provide sanctuary states,
2:50:57
you see disasters over and over and over again. Yeah,
2:51:01
I mean, and I don't understand exactly why people who
2:51:06
are voting for these things can't see that. They can't
2:51:10
see that the results have been catastrophic. Year after year,
2:51:14
they keep getting worse. Yeah, and the idea of voting
2:51:17
a new, better person to do the same thing is
2:51:20
just crazy.
2:51:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's totally crazy to me too. I think part
2:51:25
of it is we haven't done a good enough job
2:51:27
of actually going to some of these places. Part of
2:51:30
it is that it is shifting, and sometimes these shifts
2:51:32
just take a long time. If you look, the Republican
2:51:34
Party under Trump's leadership is way more working class, way
2:51:38
more middle class than the Republican Party of twenty years ago.
2:51:41
So these things are starting to shift. But the public
2:51:43
safety thing is very interesting to me because like one
2:51:47
of the promises of America is that every man, woman,
2:51:52
and child, rich or poor, black or white, deserves public safety.
2:51:57
Like every rich person ever has had public safety. Every
2:52:01
rich person ever has been able to afford some security
2:52:04
guard to make sure that somebody who comes and tries
2:52:06
to steal their stuff or kidnap their kids, they're protected
2:52:08
against that. What America did is we democratize public safety.
2:52:14
Every person gets to keep their property, every person gets
2:52:17
to not be stolen from, every person gets to walk
2:52:20
down their neighborhood at night without being being mugged. And
2:52:23
obviously we have imperfectly applied that. But what the left
2:52:27
has done over the last few years, why I think
2:52:31
the crime thing is it's not just a sort of
2:52:34
public safety thing, it's also a class thing. Is they
2:52:37
have made working people less safe. Like if you look
2:52:42
at my neighborhood, the neighborhood that my working class grandparents
2:52:45
raised me in, it became less safe over time, and
2:52:51
really working class neighborhoods had much higher rates of violence,
2:52:56
much higher rates of carjackings and so forth. That happened
2:53:00
ring Biden's administration. That's not a coincidence, No, uh, anything
2:53:06
else go by, go by, go by, Communion Joe, and
2:53:11
we can we can talk about religion and faith in
2:53:13
the Commandments next time. But thanks for having me, man.
2:53:16
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here. Appreciate it all, right, Strap it
2:53:18
Speaker 2: Up, buddy, great