Latest / NO FILTER / Joe Rogan Experience _2526 JD Vance

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Joe Rogan Experience _2526 JD Vance · NO FILTER

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: by night, all day. So the last time we talked,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: last time I saw you, we were at a cage
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: fight at the White House.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's one of the craziest experiences of my life.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: It must have been one of the craziest experiences.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Of your life.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: It took me like two weeks afterwards to recover. Just
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: to like go, did that actually happen? That seems– it
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: seems so insane. OK.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: The most insane part of it, which I guess was
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: before you got there, to me at least, is like
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: you come into work every day in the White House, right?
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: I have an office in the West Wing. There's the
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Oval Office in the West Wing. And you look out
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: the window and as this like eight-story complex was growing up,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: it was– It was just the most unbelievable thing. It's
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: like the South Lawn of the White House, but you've
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: got the eighth wonder of the world being built up
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: around it. And every day I'd look at it and
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: be like– it would take me a couple seconds to
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: be like, what the hell is going on? And I'd
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: be like, oh, yeah, it's UFC. It's UFC coming in
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: a couple weeks.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: The whole thing was surreal. First of all, it was
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: crazy that the weather just went around us. Like there
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: was a real moment where the fights would have been
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: postponed until 10.30 p.m. to start.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: And last minute, the storm just diverted. That's right.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Well, and this book that I have that I guess
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about a little bit, but the book tour
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: started the next day. So I was flying to New
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: York the next day to talk about it. And all
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I could think about is every time we got the
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: update from White House weather, oh, it might not start
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: until 1030. I was thinking to myself, holy shit, that
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: means I'm going to go to bed at like 4 a.m.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: I'm going to look like a total crazy person when
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to. Go talk about this book. But, yeah,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: amazingly it did work out. Honestly, it actually helped a
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: little bit because, as you know, it was hot as
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: hell out there. And it was super humid, you know,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: mid-June in D.C. And I think the weather actually helped
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: cool it down a little bit because by about 10
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: o'clock or so, I was not thinking it's hot as
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: hell out here anymore.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't too bad. But I talked to Justin
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Gaethje about it and he said it was a problem
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: when he was fighting. He said the air was very thick.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Like right after the first round, he was like, boy,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: like this is rough. Because that hot, humid air and,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: No, it's– It's fine walking around. I mean it's OK
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: walking around. It still feels– it is a swamp, right?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: That's why people call it the swamp. So that's obviously
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: June 14th.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: That's the presence. That's not why they call it the swamp.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons why they call it the swamp.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: They call it the swamp because of my colleagues too.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Because it's filled with mud and water and gunk and shit.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: And swamp monsters.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, man. So that's June 14th. So that's the president's birthday.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: That's also– that was my 12th wedding anniversary.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: And my wife– so that's the one thing. Like if
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: somebody runs in here, it's because my wife is going
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: into labor because she's like 39 weeks pregnant. But I
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: remember we go out to dinner like right before the
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: UFC fight. And we're, of course, checking the weather report
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: to figure out what's going on. And my wife normally
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: likes to come to the cool stuff of being vice president.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: That was the one where she was like, it's hot,
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I'm super pregnant, and I'm not going to sit out
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: there for six hours.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I couldn't imagine. Also, it was just– there was
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: so much chaos and the potential for real chaos was
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: always there. First of all, you have the Ellipse. So
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the Ellipse has, what, 85,000 people outside?
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Right. That's right.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: And for people that are watching at home, like we
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: could hear them. Yes. Like when the fights– when something
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: would happen.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: In like kind of a delayed way, right?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You hear the cheers from the people
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: that were near. So it was like 3,000-plus people tightly
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: close to the octagon. And then you had 85,000 people
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: in the– Yeah. In the background. It was very eerie. Yeah.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I actually loved that.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Like I loved the delay reaction to where somebody would
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: get a good punch in or you get a takedown.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: And then it was almost like the wave because there
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: was the initial center of it and then the people
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: outside of it.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: It was pretty sick. It was pretty sick.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: It was very cool. I think Dana said not once
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: in a lifetime– or not once in a generation, a
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: once in a lifetime experience.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean it's once ever. I don't see any
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: other– I mean if you become president, you're not going.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: To do that, right?
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man. I didn't want to do it
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: in the first place.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: It's actually very cool. It's a very cool thing.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: It was very cool. Get it over with. Do it once.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: It was the only time in the history of the
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: sport where there's been seven stoppages, seven knockouts. Like every
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: single fight was a knockout.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't realize that.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, every single fight.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: The thing is like we've had seven knockouts and a card.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: I think this last weekend we had ten, ten stoppages.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: But that was different. Yeah. Because it was like 14 fights.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: That's right. This is all fights. Every single fight was
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: a knockout.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: So the last fight, when did you realize that was over?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: With Connor?
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Okay. When he fell down a second time, I was like, oh,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: this is not good. The first time I thought he
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: just slipped. It's hard to tell. It's wild. It's in
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: the moment. I thought he slipped. And then when he
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: got up and he threw a kick again, I'm like, oh,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I don't like how his leg just gave out. That
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: didn't seem like– I'm still hoping he's just slipping. I'm
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: hoping he's just freaking out because he hasn't been in
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the octagon in five years. And then he started moving
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: around and he grabbed his knee and buckled.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: And there was some conversation.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: I didn't notice that.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was some conversation going on between him and
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Max Holloway. And I was like, you know, Max is
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: saying he can't fight. Like something's wrong. And he's saying,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: fight me. He's like, get up. And so he lets
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: him up and then his knee buckles and then the
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: referee stops the fight. Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: It's always– so the very– I think it was the
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: very last fight where– The ref tried to call it
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: at the end of the third round and then– because
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: he was saying that there was a concussion issue. I
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: mean I couldn't tell what was going on.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: This is the Ilya Teporya fight? The Justin Gaethje fight
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: at the White House?
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: The Teporya-Justin Gaethje fight.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: No, he couldn't see. OK. He was saying he couldn't
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: see well because something was wrong with his right eye.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean it looks like his whole face was
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: puffed up so he couldn't see anything. But OK. So
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: I thought it was a concussion thing but it.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Was because of his vision. No, they never do that.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I mean– The concussion thing would only be if someone
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: had been battered. There's a lot of times where fighters
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: are fighting with concussions. It happens all the time. You
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: get dropped in the first round, you probably have a concussion.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: You get back up, you keep fighting, you're fighting on
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: these things. There's been many times where fighters wake up
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: in like the fourth round and they've fought three rounds
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and they don't remember it at all. Oh, my God.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: That's pretty crazy.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Not the best way to make a living.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Not the best way to make a living, man. Yeah,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: so we saw Gaethje at the White House a couple
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: of weeks ago.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: And I asked him, I was like, so are you
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: done fighting? And he kind of hesitated a little bit.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: And then I think it was his mom was in
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: the Oval Office with him.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: She's like, yes. Yeah, but, you know, if they offer
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: him some life-changing money for one more fight after that performance,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: 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
  Speaker 2: Like 50 more?
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: It's a good question. I don't know what his contract is.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know how it works. I don't know what
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the most anyone's ever– I try not to pay attention
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: to that stuff because I'm not on the business end
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: of the sport.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: It can kind of color your perception a little bit.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: It can. It's also– I mean I want them to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: get paid the most amount possible. That's my perspective. But
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: what I'm– my job is just to analyze and to
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: see what's going on and to commentate and try to
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: give color and life to what's happening inside the Octagon.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And I don't. I try not to dwell too much
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: on the money. I just want them to get paid
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: a lot. I want them to be able to retire
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: and never have to do anything ever again. Sure. I
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: don't know if Justin could do that.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: What's crazy about it to me is just how much
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: the sport has replaced boxing. And like there's still– obviously
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: boxing is still a big deal and fighters still get
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: paid a lot of money. But like I remember when
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: I was, I don't know, in high school, I feel
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: like people would get really excited about the big heavyweight
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: title bout. Now it's the UFC thing. So culturally it's
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: like UFC has taken over boxing. And I don't– I
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: mean I don't know how or why that happened. Like
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's just good marketing or if
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: just the fights are so much more real and intense.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: But it is a crazy shift that's happened in 20 years.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Well, I've had some friends this past weekend that manage fighters.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: My friend Josh Dubin and a few other friends that
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: actually manage boxers come to the UFC. And they were
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: all like, oh my god, this is so much better
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: than a boxing promotion.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Because all the fights are exciting. With boxing, most people
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: are just there for the main event. And a lot
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: of people don't even stroll in until like 15 minutes
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: before the main event.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Like all the famous people that sit in the front row.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: In the UFC, that place is packed, you know, five, six,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: seven fights in.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: And there's 14 fights in the night and all of
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: them are amazing. It's like in the beginning, it's usually
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: like half full. Depending on where you are. If you're
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: in a place like Salt Lake City, it's pretty packed
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: like right away because they only get like one event
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: every year or so. But it's just a more exciting sport.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: There's more ways to win. It's more dynamic. More things happen.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: And there's more stars. There's so many stars in the UFC.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: So I had never seen a fight live before. Like
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I watched them on TV, but I had never been
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: there live. So kind of crazy that it's literally in
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: the South Lawn of the White House. But the thing
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: that I found completely shocking about it was– I would
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: think those like arm bar takedowns are just done. Like
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: that's it. You're over. But there were a couple of
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: times where somebody had another person's arm.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was Josh Hogan. Derek Lewis. Bless you.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: And it's like, holy shit.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: You're going to have your arm broken off.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And yet he didn't. He wasn't doing it right. Okay.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Josh Hokut is a great wrestler.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And he's an excellent fighter. But he's not really a
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: submission specialist. I mean, he did get the arm bar,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: but he didn't do it right. Okay. He was basically
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: like pulling on– you have to elevate your hips and
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: you have to create space so that the arm is
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: bending back this way. Yeah. Because the arm is essentially
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: flat to his chest, which is not what you want.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: What you want is– A back arch like this. See
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: how it is right there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: he wants to do here, what he should do, instead
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: of having his hips down and his knees up, what
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to do is heavy leg curls with the
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: leg and elevate the hips up and pull it way back.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: So he'd almost be bridging. He would be on the
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: top of his shoulders and bridging, and then he would
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: have broken his arm. The other option is you pull
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: it off to the side like this. Yeah. And you
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: put it to the side of your hip. And you
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: can break it that way. But it's just bad technique.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: No offense, Josh.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Watching it, I didn't realize that. I just could not
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: believe that dude held out for like 30 seconds.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Was that more shocking or when he said Michelle Obama
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: is a man? Which one was more shocking?
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Definitely the arm bar part.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I work in politics.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: People say crazy stuff all the time.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Well, he says that every fight. Does he? Yeah, yeah.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: He said that the last time I interviewed him. Oh, man.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: He's like a pro wrestling character.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: People lost their minds about it.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Lost their minds about it. To the point where, again,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: I had the view either the next day or the
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: day after to sort of promote this book.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: That must be fun.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: It was crazy. It was harder than anything I've done
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: in politics. But to the point where all of my
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: comms people, the thing they were most worried about was
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: they're going to ask you about Michelle Obama being called
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: a man. What are you going to say about it?
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: And I was like, what, an amped up fighter told
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: a joke after a fight, said something after a fight,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: and that's actually national news? I'm still surprised. I've been
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: in politics now for three or four years. I'm still
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: shocked at the 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
  Speaker 1: White House, first of all. A cage fight at the
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: White House is crazy already. I mean, if he said
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Michelle Obama's a man at the T-Mobile Arena in Vegas,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: it's like, okay.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: It's less of a story.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: What he is is he's a very good fighter, first
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: of all. But sometimes it's not enough to get attention.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: And so what Josh has done is created this persona,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: like this pro wrestling bad guy persona. When you talk
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: to him offstage, he's like very normal, very smart guy. Yeah, yeah.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: It's just like he's decided, like, look, I want to
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: maximize the amount of eyeballs that see me. And I'm
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: going to create this crazy– he comes out to the
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Hulk Hogan song. I'm a real American.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: He has sunglasses on, an American flag, bandana. It's– he's–
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: I mean I love the– He's got a character.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: I love the presentation.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: But again, like– Not the best thing to say at
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the White House. Michelle Obama is a man. It's not
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: the best thing to say.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Fair, but the reaction to it to me was still
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: totally disproportionate.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Dude, people say stuff all the time and– What I– OK.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: I work in a business where obviously people make life
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: and death decisions all the time. And I'm always a
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: little bit caught off guard by the culture that just
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: overreacts when clearly the thing– what Josh is trying to
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: get is the overreaction in the first place.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: So you give him exactly what he wants and like
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: the worst you could say is, oh, that was an
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: offensive comment and you get on with the rest of
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: your life. Like that's the worst that you could say.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: The people who really flip out about it and kind
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: of lose 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
  Speaker 1: is there is an economy that is essentially based on
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: getting reactions.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people that are just, for
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: a lack of a better term, they're not real. Their
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: reactions are performative. Like a lot of what they're doing
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: is just trying to Trying to comment on things and
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: get clicks and likes and views and social media has
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: ruined discourse in a lot of ways because people– It has.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: People are not having like real conversations about things. They're
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: reacting to things on Instagram and Twitter. Yes. They're just–
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: they look at an opportunity like that like, oh, I
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: found a gold nugget. Like this is going to give
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: me money or this is going to give me attention.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: This is going to get– oh, I can't wait to
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: have a take on that.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Well, that's exactly right.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: But OK.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: So my response to that is so many things is like, oh,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: he was being funny. He was being outrageous and I
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: just move on with my life. What I find very
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: interesting is the people who say– Oh, that was a joke.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Like when Kill Tony– do you remember he told like
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: the joker around the world in Madison Square Garden during
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: the 2024 election? I remember getting into an argument with
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: somebody about this and maybe it had been like in
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: an interview but I don't remember. It could have been
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: private too. Anyway, I'm like he told a joke and
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: the person's response is, well, it's not a very funny joke.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: And my response to that is, you know what happens
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: when somebody tells me a joke that's not funny? I
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: don't laugh and then I move on with my life.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: This whole industry around outrage, especially getting outraged around humor,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: I think is actually really hurting the country.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Well, in that case, first of all, I told Tony
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: a long time ago that joke was going to get
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: him stabbed. I really did. He even jokes around about
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: it on stage. He talks about me telling him, that's
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the one, dude. That's the one that's going to get
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: you stabbed.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Any good joke at least is going to run you
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: some risk of getting you stabbed.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Well, certainly a racial joke. And that joke being about
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. By the way, no one takes a joke
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: better than Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans are some of the
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: best people at telling jokes. It is a culture of
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: joking and fucking around with each other and talking shit.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: They're great at it.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I served some Puerto Rican guys in the Marine Corps, man.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: That's absolutely true.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: They love him still. Yes. Even after that joke.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: You advised him not to tell that joke?
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Well, I was kind of half joking. That's what Tony does.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: I just said that's the one that's going to get
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: you stabbed. But, I mean, that's what Tony does. Tony
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: is like the Josh Hokut of comedy. But very talented.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: He's a really good roaster. He's so funny. Roasting is
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: his specialty. But it's also like he's trying to ruffle
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: people's feathers. That's what he wants to do. He wants
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: to piss people off. He likes being a pro wrestling heel.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: He's a huge pro wrestling fan.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Well, so Tony– I'm a huge fan of his comedy.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I've only met him a couple times. I don't know
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: him particularly well. But he's actually more political, I would say,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: than most comedians.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Do you think that's fair?
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Well, very supportive of Trump.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Like he's on the Republican team.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Yes. He's on the Republican team.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: 100%.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: It's because he's experienced so many loony left-wing people in California.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: And that's why he had to move.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Well, somebody sent me a clip. I think it was
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Shane Gillis at a roast where– The joke was they
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: were roasting Tony and they're like, Tony Hinchcliffe is the
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: only dude who would be excited if J.D. Vance was here.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: And I was like, one, that's a very good joke.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: And number two, I feel like I had made like
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: there have been a few moments where I feel like
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: I've made it.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: You're the vice president of the United States. I think
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: you made it.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: When South Park spoofed me, I felt it more than
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: when I got it sworn in as vice president.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Of the United States. That's hilarious. That's very funny. This
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog. Here's
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a
• 18:00
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• 18:05
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• 18:09
  Speaker 1: So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra-processed kibble still
• 18:14
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• 18:18
  Speaker 1: and trust me, I know. I buy one, the Farmer's Dog.
• 18:22
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• 18:23
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• 18:27
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• 18:33
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• 18:43
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• 18:48
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• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Just go to thefarmersdog.com slash rogan. This offer is for
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: new customers only. Yeah, Tony is, I mean, that's his style. Like,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: he loves, like, being the heel. He's in Austin, right?
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: He gets the kick out of it. Oh, yeah. He's
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: one of the first people that moved out here with me.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we've been here for six years now. Yeah.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: And every time we go back to California, we're like,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: we were right.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: We were right. It's falling apart. It keeps going further
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and further down the toilet.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: How do you feel like Austin is going? Because the
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: criticism of Austin, call it five or six years ago,
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: is that all– like it's a cool town. It's got
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: its own unique culture. It's Texas, but it's also its
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: own thing. But that all of the blue staters moving in.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: were going to like totally change the politics and the
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: culture of Austin. I actually don't think that's happened.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I think the blue staters that moved here moved here
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: because they recognized that wherever they were living was not tenable.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: It was falling apart. And all of these places like–
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: New York and really California, like especially Los Angeles and
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: San Francisco, they're falling apart. And I have a bunch
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: of friends that are stuck there that can't move. Like
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: maybe they have family there or maybe they have a
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: business there. Yep. And they fucking hate it. And then
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I have a bunch of people that are trying to move,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: but they can't sell their house. Like it's nuts there, man.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I don't think people– first of all, you get gaslit
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: by Gavin Newsom. I mean he's just gaslighting everybody about
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: how well– you know, the GDP of like the fifth
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: largest country in the world. That's what California is. It's like, dude, hey, bro,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: it was like that before you were the governor. Yeah, exactly.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Also, how much does a U-Haul cost if you're leaving California?
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: How much does it cost if you're going to California?
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Because that's 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
  Speaker 1: And that has never happened before. Correct. California, when I
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: moved there in 1994, until I left, It was always
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: every year traffic got worse. Every year more people moved there.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Every year. And I loved it. I loved it. I
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: loved it from the time I moved there. I was like,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: this place is great. It's warm all the time. The
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: weather's fantastic. There's so much cool stuff to do. The
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: people are great. And then politics ruined it. That's right.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: So my wife's from Southern California, San Diego. And so
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: we spent a fair amount of time there. And I just,
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, I still feel a certain sense of like,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: heartbreak over LA. Because every time I'm in LA, you
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: can see why this was like the quintessentially American city.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: The architecture is beautiful. It's got its own vibe going.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Like you said, the weather is amazing. And then you
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: drive through Skid Row and you're like, how could any
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: state or any city let this happen?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Skid Row is now 55 blocks. It was 50 blocks
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: just like a year or two ago. Okay.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: So my first experience with Skid Row was– so Usha
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: used to work at this like very fancy litigation firm
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: in Southern California. Before she was second lady, she was
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: a corporate litigator. So there's a Christmas party in downtown
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: LA and you get these instructions from her firm and
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: they're like this really convoluted way of this is how
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: you have to get to this Christmas party. And I'm
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: like– Why do I have to follow these directions? Why
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: don't I just put it in Google Maps, right? This
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: is like five or six, seven years ago. So we
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: realized that the reason why they gave you these convoluted
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: directions was so that you could avoid Skid Row at night.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: And so you get to this party. You drive through
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Skid Row if you follow Google Maps' directions. You get
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: there and it's like this beautiful facility with like fancy
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: food and fancy wine. And then there are armed guards
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: outside of it and these gigantic walls. And I realized
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: when I was there, you know what this reminds me of?
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: This reminds me of going to the US embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Like super security, crazy wealth and privilege and status on
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: the inside and squalor and misery on the outside. Like
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: it's the first time I'd ever thought America– like this
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: part of America is actually more like a third world
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: country than anything that I thought we'd ever become.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. Yeah. Why– Is it that
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: large population centers like places like Los Angeles and New
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: York are almost always run by the Democrats? Yeah. Like
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: what is it about– first of all, what happened with
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the last election in Los Angeles, just the primary, I
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: think was so super sus. Yes, it is. And here's
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: why it's super sus. Not just super sus that Spencer Pratt,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: who was in second place– got overtaken by Nithya Raman
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: in the mail-in ballots, but that the mail-in ballots also
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: passed a tax hike. The people voted to pay more
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: taxes in a state where.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: You have the highest taxes.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: That's right. They're like, we don't pay enough.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: That is insane. And then when you have direct evidence
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: that they were recruiting homeless people.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: And they were getting homeless people and giving them cigarettes
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and cash. There's evidence of this. To use their address
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: and mail-in ballots. Yeah.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't be the Californian Joe who wakes up in
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: the morning and says, you know what? I'm going to
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: go and vote for higher taxes.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: I don't pay enough. I don't pay enough taxes. I
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: feel like we can fix this if I just pay.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: 5% more taxes. The crazy thing about it too is–
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: It's that– OK. So after the initial ballots all came in,
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: it was Karen Bass was number one. Spencer Pratt was
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: right behind her. And then number three, whatever this woman's
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: name is.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Nithya Raman.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Nithya Raman. OK. So you would expect the mail-in ballots
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: to be more or less like the original ballots in
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: terms of one, two, and three. I'm not saying Spencer
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Pratt is going to win the mail-in ballots. But it
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: just so happened that the third-place person in relative terms
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: did a lot better. Then the first and second place.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Person– Disproportionately better.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Such that the Republican was actually kicked out of the
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: race so that there's not actually a real election in California.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: That to me was the crazy part. It's like you
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: were designing the vote share in order to kick Pratt
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: out and put the third person into second place. That
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: to me is like very, very bizarre because what is
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: the theory of the mail-in vote that is somehow like
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: so much more– pro-Nithya relative to Karen Bass.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Makes no sense.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Makes no sense.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Makes no sense. Why would it be? Why would it be?
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, Karen Bass was ahead by every metric.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But I mean, OK, so you ask the question,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: why do all these blue states or why do all
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: these big cities, population centers end up becoming blue? And
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: I think it's like a very complicated, right? So one thing,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: and you said this a few months ago, and Like
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: when you said it, I was like kind of annoyed
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: by it. But then I like thought there's like an
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: element of truth to it, which is that Republicans still
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: fundamentally have a cool problem, right? There's something more charismatic,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: more cool about the Democrats as opposed to the right.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Does it?
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: And so you said something about there are too many
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: dorks or something on the right.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of dorks. Fair.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: I'd say there's a lot of dorks on the left.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of dorks on the left too. It's
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: a different kind of dork.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: It's a different kind of dork. But the point is–
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: That there's something– like, OK, if you're a pop star,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: you're a rock star, you're an actor, you're in all
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: these cultural centers, you're more likely to be left than right.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: And so I think that a lot of young people
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: who are attracted to these population centers, they sort of
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: move along with the prevailing culture. I think that's one
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: thing that's going on. I think a second thing that's
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: going on is the people who are sort of attracted
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: to a certain kind of right of center politics, they
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: want– the suburbs. They want the single family home. They
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: kind of want to be left alone. They don't want
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: sort of to be able to hear what their neighbors
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: are doing. So I think a little bit of it's
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: just cultural self-segregation. And that's meant that a lot of
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: these population centers have gone blue. But it's very complicated.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: I've thought about this a lot. And I also just– man,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: I like– I'm not one of these people who says
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: we should just abandon California to the democrats, like let
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: them deal with their own problems. I think California is
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: like a quintessential part of the American dream. Like if
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: you just abandoned California, you've like lost something very core
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: to American culture. And I just– I don't want to
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: give up on it. Like I'm not saying we're going
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: to win California in my lifetime necessarily, but I don't
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: like the idea of giving up on it.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Well, it's not just giving up on it. I mean
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: giving up on it would be terrible. It's an awesome state.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: The real problem is it's deeply corrupt. I mean deeply,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: deeply corrupt. And what they're trying to do is make
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: it impossible for the other side to win. And there
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: should be laws against that. First of all, the idea
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: of mail-in ballots for anybody other than people who are infalids,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: who can't live their homes, or military, or people that
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: for some reason they're serving overseas, they're doing something overseas,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: it should not be legal. And the fact that it
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: became ubiquitous during COVID is a giant problem. Yeah.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: So this raises one of my total segue here, side point,
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: but So if you remember in the aftermath of the
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: 2020 election where there was all this like debate about
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: was the election stolen, was the election not stolen, all
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: the litigation that moved through, there was a case in
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: Pennsylvania that like didn't get very much attention. And I'm
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: going to butcher it a little bit, but basically it
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: was a guy in a rural area of Pennsylvania saying,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: you're undercounting my vote because we didn't have the opportunity
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: to do the mail-in ballots like they did in Philadelphia
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: and Pittsburgh. And like the argument was a kind of,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: disparate impact, right? The cities ginned up all the mail-in
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: balloting and the ballot harvesting. You didn't do that in
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: the country and that hurt sort of our representation. So
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: they take this case to the Pennsylvania courts and what's
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: crazy is the Pennsylvania courts basically say, you're making kind
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: of a good point here. Like the ballot harvesting did
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: affect Republicans in a more negative way. it did mean
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: that certain people in the more rural parts of the
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: state were underrepresented. But then the court conclusion was, this
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: is not a problem the court can fix. Like, that's
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: a political problem. Change your, you know, local elections leaders,
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: change your laws. Like, that's not a remedy that the
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: court has to fix. And so everybody saw that case
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: and they're like, oh, the judge rules against Donald Trump,
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: rules against Republicans for saying that there was something illegitimate.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: But no, actually, the judge kind of said, they're is
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: something kind of fishy here. We're just the wrong venue
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: to fix it.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Well, it's just very disheartening that you have to consider
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: the fact that it's really possible that the elections get stolen.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: And the California one was a big one for me.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: And why not just have mail-in– or why not just
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: have voter ID?
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that's insane. Not only do they not have
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: voter ID, you can't show your ID. You're not allowed
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: to show your ID.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: You can in fact be like prosecuted if you try
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: to force somebody to show their ID.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Which is– that seems like you want people to cheat. Exactly.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: And this is from the same people that were saying
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: you have to have an ID that shows you've been
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: vaccinated just four years ago.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: To go to a restaurant. To go to a restaurant.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: No, it's definitely– That's the part about it that I
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: think makes most people of my political persuasion skeptical of
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: what the Democrats are doing. Like if you don't want
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: to cheat in the election, then just make everybody actually
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: show an ID. The other thing people don't realize is–
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize this until a couple of years ago.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: The voter ID solves a lot of the mail-in ballot
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: problem because if you have to show an ID in
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: order to get a mail-in ballot, in order to actually
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: confirm that there's a real identification attached to that vote.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: That solves a big chunk of the problem too.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: This is just logical.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Like I don't– I'm not skeptical.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Every country does it.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not skeptical. I'm accusing them. I think they stole
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the election. Yes. And I think it's common. And this
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: idea that elections can't be stolen, I always say to people, OK,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: do you think that the amount of election fraud is 0%?
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: No one thinks that. Yeah. No one thinks it's zero. Exactly.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: There's always some overzealous person that works somewhere that's doing something.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: There's always crazy people that are like blue no matter who.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: We got to win or red no matter what. There's
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: always people right and left that are going to try
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: to rig the election because they think it's imperative. Like, look,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: we saw there was people like Oprah Winfrey was saying
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: it like. If we don't win this election, you may
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: never vote again. Like what the fuck are you talking about?
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Like why? Who's going to tolerate that? Left or right?
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: That's right. But that attitude allows people to justify cheating.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: And I think they cheat. And I think they've been
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: doing it forever and I don't think there's any other
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: reason why you would have no voter ID. And they
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: try to say, oh, it's racist to have voter ID.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Like what are you talking about? Do you think other
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: races are incapable of going to the DMV?
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: That's insane. That's racist. It's actually super racist.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: That's really racist.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: The implication of their argument is literally like blacks and
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Hispanics cannot go to the DMV to get an ID.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: By the way, if you look at the polling– Black
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Americans are as pro-voter ID– even though most black Americans
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: vote Democrat, they're still pro-voter ID as much as white
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Americans is.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Most Americans are voter– they want voter ID except for operatives.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: So I'll offer on the Joe Rogan podcast this deal
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: as vice president of these United States, that if Democrats
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: really don't think that there's any cheating, give us voter ID.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: I just don't know how it's not– Give us voter
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: ID and we'll stop talking so much about elections.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Why is that not a federal thing?
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: We are trying to make it a federal thing. So–
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: We are right now trying to pass the Save America Act.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: One of its main provisions is a requirement that you
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: do voter ID. And we actually have, I think, a
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: majority of the Senate that would support it. But this
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: is just weird Senate procedural bullshit. There is a subsegment
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: of people who want voter ID but won't blow up
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: the filibuster in order to achieve it. And so they're
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: so married to these old world Senate procedures that They're
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: going to make it impossible for us to pass Save America. Now,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: we are– for what it's worth, trying to fix that
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: and trying to address these like weird procedural archaic things,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: it's insane though. Like have you ever– OK. I'm sure
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: you hear people talk about the filibuster all the time.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Here's what the filibuster is. It is a pure senate rule.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: It is a creation of the senate procedures, which basically
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: says that anything that has to do with the budget
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: is a 50-vote threshold. And anything that everything else non-budgetary
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: is a 60 vote threshold. Now, as you can imagine,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: there's some gray area on things that maybe count as
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: budget issues and should be 50 or are not budget
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: issues and count at 60. So what we have tried
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: to persuade the Senate to do is to treat the
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: voter ID as something that can fall within the 50
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: vote threshold. And there is no law. There's no provision
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: in the Constitution that It is legitimately that there are
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: senators who are so attached to the idea that budget
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: is 50, non-budget is 60, that they're quite literally willing
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: to prevent voter ID in America.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: God. It's nuts, dude. It's so crazy. And it's also
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: like the idea that somehow or another– like Kathy Hochul
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: had the craziest take on it.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: She often does.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Did you see her take on it? I have not.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: She was talking about black people in inner cities not
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: even knowing what a computer is. Did you ever see that?
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: No, I didn't see that.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. It was so crazy. And then this
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: one comedian, this black comedian, did this hilarious video where
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: he was like circling around a computer, staring at it,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: like touching it like he didn't know what it was.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: It's just like, what are you talking about? Everyone has
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: a phone. That's a computer.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: So many of these democratic talking points. presume that their
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: own voters are actual elites. That's actually– there's a big
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: difference between– Republicans, we sort of presume that our voters
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: are adults and you don't see that with– I'm not
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: saying every democrat, of course. I don't want to cast
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: too broad of a brush here. But it's like Gavin
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Newsom did this speech a few months ago. The president,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: I think it's the funniest thing ever because he's like
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: speaking to a group of black leaders and black businessmen.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: But it's like an audience that is 95 percent black.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: And they're asking him about his dyslexia and his struggle
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: with education. And he basically says, yeah, you know, I'm
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: not very smart like a lot of you. I'm like you.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I can't even read. Meanwhile, there's a ton of interviews
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: where he's talking about all the books he reads. Like
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: he's so full of shit.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: He's full of shit but it's.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Admirably full of shit. I admire the fucking– the sheer
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: tenacity that he has in being full of shit.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Because it's amazing.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: It really is amazing. But it speaks to the incentives
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: of– there's kind of like– Look, there's a real populism
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: that I'm very much a fan of because I think
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: you should be responsive to people. But there's like a
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: faux populism of the way that I'm going to appeal
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: to people is by assuming that they're idiots and acting
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: like they're idiots.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: And then– but if you're committed enough to that bit,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: eventually it kind of leaks out what you're doing. And
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: I think that was sort of what Gavin did there
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: is he told on himself a bit. Yeah.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Well, it was just– It's just– he's bizarre.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: I will say.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: He's a bizarre guy.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: So I've only met Gavin– I think I've only met
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: him one time in my life and it was– it's
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: such a crazy experience. So the debate between Biden and
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Trump during the 2024 cycle and I'm there. I'm actually
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: doing an interview for a documentary when the debate starts
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: and there's this clip of me. The debate starts. I'm
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: in the middle of this interview. There's a big screen
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: behind me as I'm talking to the camera, which is here.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: And I kind of freeze and I look back at
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: the TV and I'm like, oh my god. Like this
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: is actually happening. Biden is imploding because if you remember,
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: it was obvious from the get-go. So I go to
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: the spin room afterwards and that's where all these reporters
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: and all the surrogates of the candidates– this is before
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: I was the VP nominee and I'm just like talking
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: about how great the president did, how bad President Biden did. OK?
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: I see Gavin Newsom there. And he literally looks like
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: he's seen a ghost. Like I've never seen a person who,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: as good of a bullshitter as he is, who realized
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: there was no selling that performance. But can you imagine–
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: like try to put yourself in the perspective of a
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: human being. I always try to be empathetic where Joe
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Biden has just had that debate and you have to
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: go on CNN to talk about how great of a
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: job Joe Biden did.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Well, my favorite is Joe Scarborough because Joe Scarborough before
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: it was like– You know, I'm going to say something
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: and F you if you can't take it. This is
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: the sharpest Biden we've ever seen. Have you ever seen that? No,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: I haven't. Oh, it's amazing. And then after the debate,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: he's like, we got to get rid of him. He's
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: got to go. He's got to go, hey, hey, hey,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: what did you say? You just said a couple of
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: months ago, this is 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
  Speaker 1: Because like the debates were earlier than they've ever been before.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: And it seemed to me it's like there was a
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: concerted effort to hide what was wrong with him.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: 100 percent.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: 100 percent. Everybody was bullshitting. Everybody was gaslighting us.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: We all saw it. I remember a friend of mine
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: who's super progressive, super liberal. I talked about it on
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: a podcast. I'm like, this is crazy. Even if he wins,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: he's not going to be the guy that's the president.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: You're going to have his cabinet that are running everything.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Turned out I was right. And they were saying, oh,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: don't you understand that he has a stutter? And I said,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: where the fuck was that stutter in the 1990s? Like
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: that's crazy. Like a stutter that only shows up when
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: you're 80? That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, yeah. Like
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: this is a lie. You're lying. He's had two brain
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: surgeries like where they have to take the top of
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: your head off. Literally, they have to take like a cap.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: Wait, Biden had two brain surgeries?
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: How did I not know this?
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: You didn't know this?
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that he had two brain surgeries.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: He had two brain surgeries. Jimmy, please look this up.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Make sure that I'm right. I'm 99% sure I'm right.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: But I know he had.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: One that was like a widow. Did he get a
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: refund afterwards?
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Well, it kept him alive. It kept him alive. I mean,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Biden has not undergone recent brain surgery. He underwent two
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: successful life-saving brain surgeries to repair two intracranial aneurysms in 1988.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: I did not know this. Yeah.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: That's pretty crazy.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Medical professionals have stated that he made a full recovery
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: and suffered no lasting brain damage or cognitive impairment from
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: these procedures. Oh, it's from the Washington Post, so you
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: know it's accurate and definitely not biased at all. And
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: these medical professionals, were those the same people that said
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: that the COVID vaccine is safe and effective? That's right.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: We live in a wonderful time for bullshit. We do.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Because they just bullshit you right to your face. We do.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: They had two brain surgeries, like major brain surgeries because
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: he was having aneurysms. I don't care who you are.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: That's probably going to do some damage.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: It's going to leave some– Aneurysms are.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: A real problem. That's a real thing. Your brain is bleeding.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: People die from aneurysms all the time. The crazy thing
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: is I never even knew about that.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: How did you not know about that? That's nuts. I
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: knew about it.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: Well, it speaks to how constrained our media environment is
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: that even I had never heard of it. Right.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: It was not a part of the narrative. It's certainly
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: not from the Democrats. But yeah, he's– it was clearly–
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: I just don't understand why they ran him in the
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: first place. The whole thing made no sense. And then
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: to have no primary and just stick Kamala in there
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden pretend that she's the
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: best thing ever. And like this idea, like complete flip
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: of her being the least popular vice president ever, always
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: sticking her foot in her mouth, always saying crazy shit.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: How dare we say Merry Christmas? Remember that one? What
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: the fuck is– what are you saying? Like joy is bad?
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Merry Christmas is bad?
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Legitimately– When the campaign consultants told me, hey, we're going
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: to hit this line because Kamala Harris came out in
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: favor of taxpayer-funded sex changes for illegal aliens. And I
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: remember thinking to myself, come on, you guys. Like she
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: didn't really say that. It's taken out of context. And
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: then I go and look at it. I'm like, holy shit.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: She actually said that. And she was– she really was
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: like the very worst version of what the Democrats were
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: producing in 2020. The thing is it was– they were
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: all doing it because that was the incentives of the party.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Like if you remember that debate where it was do
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: you want taxpayer-funded Medicare for illegal aliens, which like Medicare
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: is the program to provide healthcare to the elderly that
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: people pay into for like your entire working life. You
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: see your little Medicare tax statement. And the idea that
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: we were going to give taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens,
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: it was just insane. It was a 90-10 issue. But–
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Their party in 2020 got kind of taken over by
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: the radicals. And I think actually maybe you're seeing a
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: little bit of that happening right now where it seems
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: like the radical organizations, the nonprofits, the donors are pushing
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: the party in a direction that most of the voters
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: haven't gone in. Like you asked why Joe Biden was
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: the nominee and I'll say something in defense of Joe Biden.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: So like was he the most effective politician?
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: No.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Had he had two brain surgeries, yes, and clearly had
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: shown the negative signs of aging. But he was kind
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: of the only candidate, if you go back to 2020,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: who could hold together like the reasonable middle class black
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: American in the Atlanta suburbs with whatever is going on
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: on the far left of the Democrat Party. And I
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: think this is sort of the issue their party has.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, like to be candid, our party has its
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: own coalition problems and it's It's always tough in a
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: two-party system to hold everybody together. Like I think about
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: this a lot. I think it's really tough on the
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: Democrats because the core of their party, like the most
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: important voting bloc in the Democratic Party is middle-class black Americans,
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: socially moderate to even socially conservative, maybe a little bit
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: more economically populist on certain business and tax issues. They
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: don't want to give tax breaks to major corporations. They
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: also don't want to trans the kids. That's the base
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: of their party. But then you've also got like the
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: crazy people and you have to kind of hold that together.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: I think the argument for Biden was he was one
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: of the only people who could hold that together even
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: though he was an awful politician in his own right,
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: even before he was like old.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Well, it's because he was Obama's vice president. Exactly. And
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: he's established. He's a known name. And for the people
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: that were kind of casuals who weren't really paying attention
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: to politics, he's a proven commodity. That's right.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: He doesn't read as a crazy person to the general electorate.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Even though– I.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Got hairy legs. He would tell stories like, oh, I'll
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: tell you about cord pop. Like what? What the fuck
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: is going on?
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: The thing I couldn't get over Biden is just bad
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: staff work, man. The way that he ate ice cream.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: I mean– It's like– we could bring some of this
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: stuff up, but it's like they would get him eating
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: ice cream in the most ridiculous, suggestive way imaginable.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I never even paid attention to that.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, my god.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I never saw the ice cream.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: It's just such bad optics.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: So there's a clip I want to say from the
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: 2016 campaign where somebody is campaigning in Iowa. It's the
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Iowa State Fair. It's like one of the main things
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: you go to when you're running for president and they
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: give somebody a corn dog. And somebody eats the corn dog.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: And it becomes like a major news cycle for a
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: long time. And I will never forget in 2024– This
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: is how.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Immature we are.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: I know. You got to have a little fun sometimes though.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: But in 2024, somebody is holding up a sign at
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: the Iowa State Fair. I think it may have been
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: Vivek's– one of Vivek's events, Vivek Ramaswamy's events. And the
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: sign says, eat the corn dog, you coward. It's one
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: of the best political signs I've ever seen.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: That's funny. That's funny. Yeah, you'd have to be a
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: very manly man to be able to confidently eat a
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: 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– They taste good.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: I love corn dogs.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: I've been photographed.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: You've been photographed eating a corn dog?
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: I'm sure someone has. I've eaten corn dogs.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: The odds are– Much worse in life than I've led.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: I try to eat my corn dogs. That's between me
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: and my kitchen.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not scared to eat a corn dog. I just
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: think it's funny that people just– they're so afraid of
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: being– Anything that looks like a dick, you can't. Bananas,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: corn dogs.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: You got to be careful in your politics. This is
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: an optics-based business here.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: What are those popsicles, the ones that– Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: I get it. I mean, but it's just like that's
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: how crazy we are. That's what weirds people out, the
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: way someone eats a hot dog.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: Like, okay. Well, that's where we are, man.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: It's– the difference between the crazies and the real reasonable
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: democrats is so stark to me. And it's also with
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: the right– it's like we're always– the parties are always
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: defined by the worst examples of the right. That's right.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Or of the left. Whatever it is, whether it's Patriot
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Front or whether it's Antifa. OK.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: So who do you think is the worst example of
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: our side? Like who do you read about on our
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: side and your reaction is, holy shit? And don't say J.D.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: Vance is going to be a very awkward interview.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: I'm screwed with you. Well, the people that– one of
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the things– I had James Tallarico on the podcast and
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I think he has a
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: really good point about even though I know you're Catholic
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: and you're very religious. Putting the Ten Commandments in schools
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think is the right way to do it.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: And this is a guy– Tallarico, who was in seminary
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: and is very Christian, he just thinks that even though
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: he believes in the Ten Commandments, if you're just only
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: representing the Christian faith in these schools, you're forcing your
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: religion into other people's lives and that this is going
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: to push people away from Christianity rather than encourage them
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: to pursue it.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean... I think you never want to force
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: things on people and I do– I think one of
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: the core Christian contributions to Western civilization is the idea
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: of freedom of religion. It's actually very much a Christian
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: idea because you recognize the dignity of each individual and
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: part of recognizing that dignity is that each person has
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: to find their own pathway to God. You can't force
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: this on anybody. I don't think putting the Ten Commandments
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: up in school is like forcing things on anybody.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: But it's public schools. So I mean if you're going
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: to do that, why not put– Buddhist scripture? Why not put,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: you know, Muslim stuff? You could make an argument why
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: you should have a bunch of different religious tenets in schools.
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: I think in the Supreme Court, there actually are a
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: lot of different sort of historical cultural legal documents that
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: are up there. And I want to say that Moses
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: coming down with a tablet is one of them. But
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: I think there actually are other cultural, maybe even other
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: religious elements of this. Like, where you recognize that a
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: big part of sort of the law-giving tradition in Western
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: civilization is the– is some of these religious texts, not
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: exclusively Christian religious texts. Obviously some Jewish. There's like an
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: important contribution from the Muslim world in this. So I
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: don't– I guess I don't think of it as exclusionary
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: while also recognizing that America is a society. Our founders
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: were people who were very much influenced. Even if they
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: weren't Christians, a lot of them of course were, but
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: were very influenced by Christian culture and articulating American law.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: So my argument would be even if you're not a Christian,
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: like does seeing the Ten Commandments– Let me put it
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: a slightly different way. Does seeing the Ten Commandments force
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: religion on a non-Christian child? I mean my argument would
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: be no, and I'd illustrate this by saying, well, there
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: are all of these ways in which you actually could
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: try to force religion on a child, right?
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: Well, it's not the worst way to force religion on
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: a child, but to have it and not represent any
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: other– this is Texas by the way.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: So what he's talking about was that there's these– Christian nationalists,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: these guys that are very wealthy, that are trying to
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: fund Christian schools and trying to defund public schools or
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: any other kind of religious school. And what they want
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: to do, and they passed this, to get the Ten
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: Commandments in all public school classes. And he's fundamentally opposed
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: to that as a Christian because he thinks it's going
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: to force people To have this in their class and
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: it's going to push people away from Christianity.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: I mean I understand the argument. I just don't see
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: it that way. I mean I guess if– I kind
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: of agree with you. I hear you. But if I'm
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: a non-religious student and I'm sitting in there and I
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: see the Ten Commandments, at the very least, I think
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: I can appreciate it. I mean I– OK.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: But what if you're a Hindu? What if you're a Hindu?
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: What if you're a Muslim and you are seeing that
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: represented but not your faith? Well, it's a public school.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: First of all, I think that you– I mean I'm
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: pretty sure Muslims– I'm not hardly an expert on Islam.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: But I think all of the Abrahamic faiths recognize the
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Ten Commandments as like a significant thing. But I think
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: if I was a Hindu looking at the Ten Commandments–
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: I mean again, it's hard for me to say this, right,
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: from my perspective. But I certainly went through an atheist
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: phase in my youth. And what I would see that as,
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: as a non-religious person or a different religion is I
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: would say– This is like an important cultural element of
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: the Western civilization, which is the foundation of the classroom
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: that I'm sitting in. And this idea that the law
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: comes and is sort of above any man, even if
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: you don't believe in God yourself, I think that's like
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: an important concept. I mean, if you look at the
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: Ten Commandments, probably eight of them are something that I
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: would hope that everybody would agree with, even if they're
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: not themselves religious. So I guess here's my view on it.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: I would not be offended if I sat in a
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: classroom as a Christian or if my kids sat in
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: a classroom as a Christian and saw a religious text
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: that wasn't Christian on the wall. I would encourage them
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: to see that. No, I'd encourage them to see that
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: as a learning experience, try to understand things.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: What if it was from the Koran? What if it
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: was a bunch of statements from the Koran?
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: I guess I don't have a problem with my kid
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: reading something.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: The problem is it's mandated. Like if you have a
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: classroom and the teacher is Christian and the teacher wants
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: to have it in their classroom, maybe that's one thing.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: But if you're mandating that you're going to have the
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Ten Commandments in classrooms, that's a different thing because now
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: you're pushing Christianity on kids. And this is Tallarico's position.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: And as a Christian, he's saying, I think this is
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: going to push children away from Christianity.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: So again, I understand what he's saying. I just– I
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: think that part of living in a society where you
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: have different people with different perspectives, but you do have–
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: I mean Christianity is the majority religion of the United States.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: It is the religion that was extraordinary influential to our founding,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: to the constitutional principles. Again, freedom of religion is itself
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: not really a liberal concept. It was originally derived from
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: a Christian idea about free will and the dignity of
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: the person. I think part of that is that you
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: accept that you're going to have exposure to different things.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: And if a state legislator in a majority Christian state
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: wants– it's not like they're putting the Ten Commandments in
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: front of these kids and saying you have to read
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: this and write it 500 times a day. They're exposing
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: kids to something and I'm comfortable with kids being exposed
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: to a lot of different things. I think that's part
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: of living in a society where there's a free exchange
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: of ideas. And what I worry about with Telerico's sort
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: of perspective here is, again, I'm not saying that I
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: don't want kids to be exposed to anything that is
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: outside of the Christian canon. I actually want my kids
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: exposed to things. I write about this in the book
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: that I think it's important to have a grounded enough
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: faith that you can engage with a lot of different
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: ideas and still ultimately sort of hold on to your
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Christian faith. But isn't part of just living in a
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: like pluralistic democracy, that people are going to be exposed
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: to different things. And I would kind of put it
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: on Telerico in a slightly different way, that for a
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: long time in this country, there were actually Supreme Court
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: rulings that said that you cannot pray in a school,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: even a student organization led by the students, or that
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: you cannot put the Ten Commandments up, even a teacher
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: who chose to do it in their own classroom. And
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: so I think you're always kind of trying to strike
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: this balance between Given that we have the First Amendment
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: in this country, between allowing the practice of religious faith
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: in public spaces and possibly forcing religion on other people,
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: I think you have to strike that balance the right way.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: I guess I just say is that if the Ten
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: Commandments being in a classroom is the thing that you
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: think is forcing religion on somebody, was he equally offended
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: when the Ten Commandments were like quite literally prohibited from
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: being listed?
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if he was offended
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: by that or if he was opposed to that. But
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: the idea of being exposed to it is one thing.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: It being mandatory is another. And to mandate that in
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: classrooms is a different thing because you're promoting– clearly promoting Christianity.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: And his position is that promoting Christianity in that way
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: is going to have an opposite effect on children. You're
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: pushing it on them. who come from a household that
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: has a different faith.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: I guess I just think the balance in our country
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: the last 30, 40 years has actually been much more
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: in the other direction, which is that we try to
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: completely remove religion from the public square. And I think
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: that poses its own problems. Because people practice their faith
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: in all kinds of ways.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: But don't you think that that's the responsibility of churches
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: and synagogues and wherever– like if you want– and in
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: the community. If you want to promote religion, promote it
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: that way. But promoting in public schools should be just educational.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: And if you're in a religious class and a class
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: is teaching about religion, that's a different story. Well, you're right.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: It's certainly the responsibility of churches and synagogues and mosques
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: and so forth. But I also think that the late
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist sort of said this,
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: that if your approach to religion and public life always
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: and everywhere is to push it out of the public square,
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: then you're actually embracing a religion of your own in
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: the public square, which is secularism. You're just taking one
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: religion and replacing it with secularism. And I guess what
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: I'm saying is I'm kind of comfortable with people of
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: different faiths sharing the public square together. But part of
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: that is– That if I'm in a 95 percent Christian
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: community and my local city council wants to put up
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: a nativity display on Christmas Eve, I'm OK with that.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: And that was actually like for a long time in
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: our country actually prohibited. And so what I think is
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: that we got– we sort of put ourselves in this
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: frame in this country where we said every public display
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: of religion is somehow illegitimate. But I mean– I don't know.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: I try to live my faith in a way that's
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: consistent across different spheres of my life. You know, I
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: don't preach to people. I don't like walk into the
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: White House, tell my employees, you know, you need to
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: be you need to follow Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: I just try to live my life in a way
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: that hopefully makes people a little curious about what, you know,
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: what motivates me and what inspires me. But I also
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: don't think that the expectation should be that we tell
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: religious people they're not allowed to be religious in the
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: public square, because I think that's what we've done over
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: the last 30 or 40 years. I guess we can
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: agree to disagree. I see the Texas thing as an
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: attempt to correct that.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Fox Nation. Real
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• 58:59
  Speaker 1: and sign up today. Well, I think living by example
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: is probably the best promotion of any good way to
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: live your life, whether it's Christianity or any other religion.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: I think that's definitely the way to do it. But
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: the point is that this is being promoted by very
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: wealthy people who are Christian nationalists who want this to
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: be– they want it to– what is going on here, Jamie?
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: We got Bible stories become required reading in Texas public schools. Yeah. See? Well,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: now you're taking it to another level. So this is
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: June 26th. This is very recently. That is– that kind
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: of thinking and that kind of mindset is what bothers
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: me the 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
  Speaker 1: in a very beautiful way and they follow the teachings
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: of Jesus Christ and they're very admirable. And I think
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: that's very attractive and it makes people very curious about
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: that religion. I think that brings people to Christ and
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: I think it brings people to religion. But then there's
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: people like– did you read that report that came from
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: at the start of the Iran war? where there was
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: a guy who was an officer, a non-commissioned officer, who
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: was at a briefing. And this guy came in and
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: was explaining to them that they didn't need to be
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: afraid because this war was important because Trump had been
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: anointed by Jesus Christ to bring about his return. And
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: the way they were going to– Jesus is going to
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: return is by bombing Iran.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: I did not see that report. This sounds pretty far
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: out there to me.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: This is the kind of right wing. I see thinking.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: So here it is. Military commander tells troops bombing Iran
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: is part of God's divine plan. So we started getting
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: calls the wee hours of Saturday morning from people saying
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: their commanders were just jubilant about this, trying to tell people,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: don't worry, it's all part of God's plan. Um, They
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: promised a 200-mile-long river that is four and a half
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: feet deep, filled with nothing but the blood that their
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: weaponized version of Jesus will spill at the Battle of Armageddon,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Weinstein said. There was an article where the guy was
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: explaining the actual quotes that the one officer was telling him,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: the one commander. Yeah, but it's not that. It was
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: very specific. It was very specific what he said.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, for what it's worth, my attitude on this
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: stuff is, I mean, first of all, as a Christian,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: you sort of believe that everything is part of God's plan,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: even things that are ultimately very terrible. I mean, you
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: kind of have to make a combination.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Let me read the quote. He urged us to tell
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: our troops that this was all part of God's divine plan,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the book
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: of Revelations referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. He said that President Trump had been anointed
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: cause Armageddon and mark his return to earth. If I'm
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: in that meeting, I'm like, hit the brakes. Hit the brakes.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: That's where you need some of the psychedelics we talked
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: about at the last Joe Rogan, J.D. Vance conversation.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: That would definitely help.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, my response, first of all, like, obviously, do
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: I endorse that?
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Do I think that it's important that people rein it
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: in a little bit? Because I'm sure you're right. There
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: were a lot of troops there, probably a lot of
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: Christian troops there were like, I'm not sure this is
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: exactly right. Right.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: But.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: The important point is I think it's important as a
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Christian leader, as Christians, period. One of the things we
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: have to do is just have humility in the face
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: of God's plan. There's a lot that we don't understand.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: There's a lot that we don't get. And I think
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: especially on matters of war and peace, the approach that
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: I try to take is you try to make the
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: best decisions that you can. You hope that you're on
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: God's side. You don't assume that God has taken your side.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: That's a very famous Abraham Lincoln quote. And that's the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: attitude that I take. So for that, what I would
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: encourage that NCO to say is, you know what? God
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: is in control. We don't know what's going to happen.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: But let's pray and try to do as good of
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: a job as we can, trusting in God. If I
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: was speaking to a group of Christian troops, that's what
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: I would say.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: But you're speaking to a group of troops who don't
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: know if they're Christian. I mean, you're essentially letting these
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: people know that you believe that Trump was anointed by
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Jesus to bomb Iran. So that Jesus can come back
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: to earth.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: So that Jesus can come back in a fire of Armageddon.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: If I was there, I'd be like, can I get
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: the fuck out of here?
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: No, I hear you, man. I hear you.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Look, yes.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: And that is the first that I have ever heard
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: of this particular story.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: How have you not heard of this and Biden's two
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: brain surgeries?
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: Apparently, I live in a bunker, man. How do you
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: not know about these things?
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: Okay. Here's the other thing I'll say is having heard
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: about this for the first time just now. To your
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: point about the media, I do think it's possible, let's
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: be honest, that whatever that dude said, maybe it was good,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: maybe it was bad, has been misreported by the press.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: It's possible. So I always have a filter on this stuff.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: Like I don't automatically assume.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: It's also possible that– this is the other thing. He
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: said the commander supposedly had a big grin on his
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: face when he said all this, which made his message
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: seem even more crazy.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: And I think that's– again, I don't think anybody should
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: have– War is sometimes necessary, but it's never a good thing.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: And I think that's like a fundamental Christian principle is
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: there are just wars. There are necessary wars, but war
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: is always something that you try to avoid.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Right. But saying that this is what's being referenced in
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: the book of Revelation. Yeah, dude.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: I think that is nuts. I also don't know that
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: that– I want to be– I want to confirm that
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: this person actually said that before teeing off on it
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: because what that sounds to me is like somebody butchering–
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: or misrepresenting something that, you know, somebody that I know
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: might have said.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: Quite possible. Quite possible. You've got to be skeptical about this.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: Also quite possible that you've got a really loony guy
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: who is a Christian nationalist, who is a commander, and
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: who is in this position where he's actually excited because
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: he does think that this is a holy war and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: this is going to bring back Jesus.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: Well, it's certainly possible. I mean, America's got 330 million
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: people and we've got a lot of people who believe
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: in a lot of things, but I can assure you
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: that we don't encourage people to talk like that. And again,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: all I can do as a Christian leader, I'll look
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: into that story certainly, but all I can do as
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: a Christian leader is talk about how I think about
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: questions of war and peace, which is we try to
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: do the right thing. We try to figure out what
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: it is that is consistent with Christ's moral teaching. And
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: we try to comport our foreign policy with the cause
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: of justice. And that's what we try to do, recognizing
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: it's always going to be imperfect and But I don't
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: think that we should ever have an attitude towards war
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: like this is a great thing. I'm going to grin
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: and smile about that. All I'm saying is I'm skeptical
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: 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
  Speaker 1: described it aligns with our campaign in Iran?
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that the goal is certainly good, which
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: I think that there are obviously– a lot of questions
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: about how best to achieve that. There's both a short
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: term and a long term piece of it. I think
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: the short term piece of it is effectively what's already
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: been done, which is you destroy the nuclear sites and
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: you destroy and eliminate the ability to rebuild the nuclear sites.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: I think there's a longer term thing, which is where
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: like a lot of the debate is focused on right now,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: which is that building a nuclear program is hard, but
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: it's not impossible. And it's expensive but it's actually not
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: even that expensive if you look– I mean you could
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: go on YouTube right now and find out how to
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: build an atomic bomb. So part of our Iran policy–
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: and this is where I get frustrated with the people
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: who say you should never negotiate with Iran. Part of
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: our Iran policy is like solving the long-term problem, that
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: if we could create the sort of circumstance where Iran
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: would commit not just to not have a nuclear weapon
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: right now but over the long term to not try
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: to rebuild that capacity … Like, yeah, I think that
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: 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
  Speaker 1: the same thing?
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: Well, what did the president said publicly that J.D. was
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: less enthusiastic about it? I think it was the exact
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: phrase that he used. I mean, my attitude towards this man,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: as you know, is the vice president. I'm not a
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: public commentator. Like my job is to give the best
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: advice I can to the president of the United States.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: I think he's said a little bit about what that
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: advice was. But once the president makes a decision, so
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: long as I think that it's legal and ethical and
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: all that stuff, and I certainly think whether you agree
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: or disagree with it, what we've done has been legal.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: My attitude towards it is I try to make it
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: as successful as possible. And I've got friends, of course.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: I think you've expressed some skepticism of this. I've got
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: a lot of friends both in private and public who
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: have expressed skepticism of this who say, well, this is terrible.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: We disagree with the decision, et cetera, et cetera. I'm
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: not a public commentator. My approach to this is not
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: to Monday morning quarterback a decision that was made three
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: months ago. My approach to it is to try to
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: make it as successful as possible, which is why I
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: poured my heart and soul into these negotiations, which is
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: why I've tried to make that goal, Iran not having
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: a nuclear weapon, something that's not true both– not just
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: now but it's true in the long term and that's
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: the way that I try to approach it.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: So what is going on with Iran where it seems
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: like the president keeps saying that a deal has been reached,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: negotiations have been successful and then it all falls apart
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: and we start bombing them again? Yeah.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: So how long do we have here?
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: We have as much time as we need.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: So I have to explain a couple of things in
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: the background so you sort of fully appreciate– people fully
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: appreciate what's going on here. So number one, it's a
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: bit of a simplification but you have two elements within
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: the Iranian system. You have– and you sometimes hear hawkish
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: Americans say this, that they're all crazy people. They want
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: to bring about the 12th imam and the apocalypse and
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: all that stuff. There are people in Iran who believe that.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: They're also pragmatists. You've got the crazy people. You've got
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: the pragmatists, OK? So when we struck this MOU and
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: really what the MOU says, and it was misrepresented more
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: than almost anything that I've ever worked on in public life.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: What it says is Iran is going to open the
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: Strait of Hormuz. The violence is going to stop. And
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: then we're going to negotiate to see if we can
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: come to a broader deal on the long-term nuclear issue.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: That's what we wanted. And what the Iranians wanted, of course,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: was long-term economic and sanctions relief. Now, here's the problem
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: with where we are right now. And I guess my
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: summary view, Joe, is that I, of course, can't predict
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: the future. I don't know exactly where this is going
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: to go. But I think fundamentally we are on the
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: right trajectory. It's just going to be really messy and
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: there's going to be a lot of stops and starts.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: So what happens? The first week after we sign the MOU,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: we get 20 million barrels a day of oil out
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: of the Strait of Hormuz. That's what it was before
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: the war. The price of oil comes way down. And
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: there are elements, the hardliners in the Iranian system kind
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: of freak out a little bit. They're like, oh, shit.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: Did we just give away our major leverage point? Screw
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: nuclear weapons. We just gave away the so in this MOU.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: And so there was this kind of freak out in
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: their system. So they shot at a couple ships. We responded.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: I think that's entirely appropriate, of course. If they're going
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: to shoot at ships, we are going to shoot at
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: the people who are shooting at the ships or we're
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: going to destroy the facilities that they're using to shoot
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: at ships. So that happens. OK. And then the Iranians
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: are like, oh, no, no, fine.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: You're right.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: We shouldn't have been shooting at ships. So then they
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: come back to the table. And there's a few more
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: days of negotiation. And then the phase they're in right
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: now is the hardliners have really, really reacted strongly to
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: all the oil that's coming out of the Strait of Hormuz.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: And they basically said, we're going to try to shut
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: this thing down. We're scared about losing our leverage. Now,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: the pragmatists in their system are saying this was a mistake.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: Let's keep on talking. And again, do I know how
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: this is ultimately going to shake out? Of course I don't.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: But what we're doing is a delicate diplomatic dance where
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: we're using economic leverage points. We're using carrots and sticks.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: We're trying to talk to the pragmatists. And then, of course,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: when they commit acts of violence, we're responding to it.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: And all those things are happening simultaneously to get us
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: on a better trajectory. Now, that said, yes, right now
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: there's shooting right now. Last night they shot at some ships.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: But with all that said, is their nuclear program still destroyed?
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: Are the straits not necessarily fully pre-war trafficked? But are
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: we getting enough oil and gas out of the Strait
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: of Hormuz to prevent a worldwide energy crisis? Yes. And
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: all of these things are happening in the context of
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: the broader negotiation over the nuclear program. You never know
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: where this is ultimately going to end up, but that's
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: where we are. And then can I just say one
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: other thing about this? Because there are people– you see
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: Mike Pence, who's sort of a super hawk, my predecessor,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: who say this. There are people– who are super hawkish
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: in the American system, who have attacked the deal, and frankly,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: in some ways, have tried to derail the deal. And
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: what I always say to those people is, what is
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: your proposal? What is your actual argument? So just take
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: the Strait of Hormuz, like the narrowest, but in some ways,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: the most important part of this back and forth right now.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway. To the extent
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: you shut it down, you shut down 25% of the
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: world's energy supply, okay?
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: Joe, you.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: could take $ 100, 000 and go buy a bunch of drones
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: on the black market and post yourself on an island
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: in the Strait of Hormuz or near it, and you
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: could fire drones at those ships, okay? Now, what does
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: that mean? Some oil and gas is still going to
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: get out because some ships and some ship captains are
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: going to say, screw you. Now, the United States can
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: help that, right? We can shoot down some of those drones,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: we can shoot down some of those missiles, and so
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: we can facilitate the flow of traffic. But The people
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: who are like, you cannot negotiate with the Iranians, the
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: reason why that's fundamentally idiotic is because so long as
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: you have some person who's willing to fire off a
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: few cheap drones, you're going to have some ship captains
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: who say, no, no, no, we're not willing to do this.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: So we got to kind of use all tools at
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: our disposal. The military is one tool, but diplomacy is
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: another tool. And I'm very frustrated by the Americans and
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: frankly by people in other countries who are like, you
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: cannot negotiate. Well, then what is your proposal to get
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: people to stop shooting at ships in the Strait of Hormuz?
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: You can bomb them. You can take away their radar.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: You can take away some of their drones and some
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: of their missiles. But it's just too easy to fire
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: at ships in the straits. So you've got to actually
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: be willing to talk and to try to figure out
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: the problem.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: What is their proposal, the people who think you shouldn't
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: negotiate with Iran?
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: I think that their proposal is to bomb and bomb
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: and bomb. And the honest view– Joe, is that they
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: do not actually have a solution. If you actually ask them,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: what do you want us to do? What is the
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: goal that you're trying to achieve? You know, they'll say
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: things like, we'll just bomb them to oblivion. OK, we
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: can do that. We can drop a lot of bombs.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: But what does that accomplish if there's still a crazy
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: person who's still unwilling to shoot a few drones at
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: the Strait of Hormuz? What the president has done, I think, very,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: very capably has said, we're going to use military force
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: in this situation and when it's connected to something we're
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: trying to achieve. So if you shoot at ships, we're
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: going to shoot at the facilities at which you used
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: to shoot at the ships. But we're not just going
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: to do something open-ended indefinitely. We're not just going to
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: bomb and bomb and bomb. We're going to try to
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: use our military force as one of the many tools
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: that we have to solve the problem. And obviously, like
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: I'm biased, but I think that's exactly the right approach.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: I actually, you have to read between the lines a
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: little bit, because if you look at what Mike Pence
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: or some of the conservative hawks, like people who voted
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: for us but have been very critical of me, very
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: critical of the administration, if you actually look at what
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: they're proposing, they just want the military campaign to go
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: on forever and they can't actually identify what it is
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: that they're trying to accomplish. None of them can identify
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: what it is they're trying to accomplish. And I read
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: two things between the lines. I think some of them
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: want us to accomplish a complete change in government of Iran,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: to topple the clerics and to replace those clerics with
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: somebody who's much friendlier. But look, what is our experience
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: with doing that?
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: It's awful. It's not good, right?
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: And so if the Iranian people want to rise up
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: and change their government, that's up to them. But we're
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: not going to send 150,000 ground troops in order to
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: accomplish a change in a regime unless the people on
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: the ground themselves want to accomplish that outcome. Now, we're
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: not going to send the troops in regardless. But like
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: to propose sending in the troops, you're basically saying that
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: the US military should do the job for the Iranian people.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: We're not in that business anymore. We're just not. And
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: then I think a second outcome that people are– whether
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: they're aware of it or not is what I call
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: the Libya outcome. So if you look at the end
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: result of our Libya policy after Gaddafi was killed by
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: the Obama administration by the way. again, a very stupid decision.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: What happened? Libya basically turned into a failed state. You
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: had a refugee crisis. You had people pouring into Europe,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: pouring into other parts of Asia, other parts of Africa.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: You had a lot of violence, a lot of terrorism
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: come from that. I do think that there are people
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: who would like that to be the outcome in Iran.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: But then I say, again, what is in our interest?
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: How is it in the United States' interest to have
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: 94 million desperate people flooding into Europe, flooding into the
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: United States, to have you know, sort of the terrorist
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: infrastructure that can get established when you fan terrorists all
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: over the world. We've run this experiment before. And so
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: our policy right now, what we're trying to accomplish is
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: get the straits open, ensure the free flow of oil
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: and gas. Obviously, we want to keep the Iranians from
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: having a nuclear weapons program and using the tools of
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: 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
  Speaker 1: lot of what's fueled the migrant crisis in Europe as well, correct?
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That and Syria, another failed state that was created
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: by bad Middle Eastern policy. So there is precedent for
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: the United States doing this. Every time that it's happened,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: it's caused a refugee crisis. It's caused a spike in terrorism.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: And it's also, not incidentally, to the moral considerations, it's
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: 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
  Speaker 1: was like $ 300 billion in concessions to Iran to rebuild. Yeah.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: So this is another just bullshit argument that the critics
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: made against the deal. And again, like I– just to
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: back up a little bit, this is my own little
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: hobby horse. But look, we– the coalition that Donald Trump
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: piloted to the 2024 election campaign, it was a landslide.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: We won seven states. It was historic. Nobody– certainly no
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: Republican had actually led a coalition like that at least
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: since the days of Ronald Reagan. So like literally before
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: I was alive. OK. So Donald Trump wins this great
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: coalition and look, it's got– man, it's got hawks and
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: it's got people who hate foreign wars.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: OK. OK.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: It's got people like you and people like Tucker. It's
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: also got people like Mark Levin and others, OK? I
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: just accept that as a reality. That's part of the coalition.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: I don't say that anybody is welcome or unwelcome. I
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: say that if you're willing to sort of help us,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: you're going to get a lot what you want. You
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: don't get everything that you want. What has really annoyed
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: me about the hawkish side of this thing is they
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: attack any effort to negotiate. They attack the president. They
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: attack me personally. Donald Trump is betraying me. Wait a second.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: If you want to have like a hawkish policy towards Iran,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: the idea that Donald Trump has betrayed you because he's
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: also trying to negotiate to get a good outcome for
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: the American people is crazy. And so you've seen a
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: lot of these people completely flip on him. And that
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: brings me to the $ 300 billion point. What we did
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: with the MOU is we actually worked not just– with
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: the Iranians, but with the Gulf Arab states.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: What is the term MOU? What does it stand for?
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: Memorandum of Understanding. It's the basic structure that we set
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: up for the negotiation. So what happened here is– OK.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: So people sort of think of the Middle East as
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: like Iran versus Israel. I think a lot of people do.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: There's also a massive number of Gulf states that are
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: really important, good allies to the United States. They in
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: Israel don't always see eye to eye, but we're obviously
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: very close to both Israel and to the Gulf states.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: And the Gulf states actually came to us and said,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: you know what? If the Iranians are willing, really willing
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: to change their behavior, we'd like to invest in rebuilding
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: their country. Now, whether they change their behavior is something
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: that's going to be determined over the long term. We
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: want to see real changes. We want to see them
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: to stop funding terrorist organizations. And also, of course, none
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: of that money comes from the United States. But if
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: Iran's biggest enemies in the region are saying we'd like
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: to invest if they've changed their behavior, would the United
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: States let us? Would we release the sanctions that would
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: make it possible for the UAE and Saudi Arabia and
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: other countries to invest in Iran? Our attitude was, well,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: isn't that a victory for us? If Iran's biggest enemies
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: see that they have changed themselves so much that they're
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: willing to invest in the Iranian economy, isn't that like
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: the definition of a win-win? And then you had all
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: these people saying, no, no, no, no, no. You can't
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: give them $ 300 billion. It's like, we're not talking about
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: giving them $ 300 billion. We're talking about letting other countries
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: invest in Iran. If Iran has changed the way that
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: it treats the Gulf Arab countries, it's fundamentally between them,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: meaning the Iranians and the Gulf Arab countries. So there's
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: this line in the MOU that basically says that if
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: Iran meets all of its obligations, then we will permit
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: other countries to invest in Iran. That's it. And that like, again,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: The hawks attacked us and misrepresented this and lied about
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: it and said the Trump administration is going to give
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: the Iranians $ 300 billion. And it's totally fake. It's completely
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: made up. And it was done purely in order to
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: politically tank the negotiation. So there's been this interesting dynamic
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: here where as we've been trying to negotiate, there have
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: been these extraordinarily well-funded efforts to to tank the negotiation,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: to prevent us from reaching a deal, to change American
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: public opinion, which by the way, if you look at
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: the public opinion, people love the idea of actually getting
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: to a final resolution on this thing. Americans do not–
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: they're not game for long-term open-ended regime change wars in
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: the Middle East. They're OK with us using the military
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: to accomplish discrete objectives. They're not OK with open-ended obligations.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: What do you think the motivation of the Hawks is?
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: Do you think this is– are they influenced by defense contractors?
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: Are they– what's the reason why they're so keen on
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: continuing to bomb?
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: I think with any big group of people, you have
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: a diversity of opinions. So sure, I'm sure that you
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: have people who are– influenced by defense contractors. There's a
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: lot of talk about how much is the Israeli government
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: influencing American politics. And there are certainly certain people within
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: the Israeli government who hate the deal. And we see
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: exact evidence. There was a Times story that came out
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: yesterday that basically there are certain influencers in America who
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: are being paid in order to attack the deal. I
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: think some of it, it's just pure political ideology, right?
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: It's foreign policy perspectives that are much different from mine.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: They think that America should just– that we can basically–
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: you can wave a magic wand with the military and
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: accomplish whatever you want. And it's not that simple. You
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: actually have to have a very clear objective. Military power
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: can accomplish a clear objective, but you've got to have
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: that clear objective. You can't just say, We're going to
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: bomb until something good happens. That never works. The United
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: States has tried that before. So I think it's a
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: combination of things. But I definitely think you have seen
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: this very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign to try to derail
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: the negotiation and try to derail the deal. And there
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: was– again, there's this Time article that came out yesterday.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: A friend sent it to me. It's like worth reading
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: because it lists a bunch of people who have quite
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: literally been paid– by a former Trump campaign person who
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: was himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: And those people are attacking me viciously for quite literally
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: trying to accomplish the negotiation objective that the president set
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: for the country.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: So– What is their position? Like are they attacking you? How?
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's social media posts. It's– they're leaking to reporters.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: They're attacking me obsessively saying that we should not be
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: negotiating with Iran or We should just keep the military
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: campaign going indefinitely, and that is their explicit position. And
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: coming after me saying that– people have come after me
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: and said that I'm influenced by Qatar, that I'm influenced
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: by foreign governments, that I take my marching orders from
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson. There's just so much bullshit out there when
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: what I'm actually trying to do is accomplish what the
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: president of the United States told me to accomplish, which
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: is a settlement of this that accomplishes our objectives. Iran
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: doesn't have a nuclear weapon. We have the free flow
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: of oil and gas. And like I should be clear,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: like I don't actually mind– I don't mind that the–
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: let's say certain elements of the Israeli government want to
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: criticize the deal or have disagreements about the deal. I
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: don't even mind an effort to try to influence– foreign
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: governments try to influence the United States all the time.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: Israel does it. Other countries do it. It's just sort
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: of the nature of the beast. What bothers me is
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: actually when Americans allow– meaning American leadership allows that influence
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: to affect their judgment and to affect what they are
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: advocating for. That's what really bothers me. People are always
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: going to try to influence the United States of America
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: whether they're allies of ours or whether they're enemies of ours.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: But again, when I open up the pages of Time
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: magazine– And I see that there's a literal foreign influence
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: was pursuing. And oh, by the way, many of the
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: in completely dishonest ways. My response to that is, well,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: go to hell. I'm going to do what I have
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: to do for the American people. I represent Americans first,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: and that's the way that I've tried to do this job.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: And Joe, the crazy thing is I'm like– people don't
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: realize this. I'm actually in this– there's this massive pro-Israel,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: anti-Israel debate in the United States of America. I'm like
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: the reasonable moderate. And I think that's what so many
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: people don't realize is I've been accused of being an anti-Semite.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: I've been accused of– For what reason? Quite literally for–
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: I've been accused of trying to– I guess some people
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: say that I've insulted the Jewish religion, which is insane.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: Like I– Like I have a ton of respect for
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: the Jewish religion.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: I mean if you talk about– What specifically did you say?
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I've never heard a good compelling argument
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: for why I'm an anti-Semite even though I've been accused
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: of being an anti-Semite by many people. But it's– what
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: always– what I say to these guys is look at
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: public opinion. Look at the way young republicans versus republicans
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: over the age of 65 approach this issue. Like right
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: now– Israel is losing the public opinion battle in the
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: United States of America. It is a simple and obvious fact.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump has said that publicly. It's a simple and
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: obvious fact.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: Why do you think that is?
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: Well, let me finish this point.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: OK, go ahead.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: OK, my attitude is towards this is Israel is an
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: ally like France or like the United Kingdom. We're going
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: to have disagreements with them. We're going to have agreements
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: with them. There are areas where we're going to have
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: similar interests and areas where our interests are going to diverge.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: So my approach to this is to say.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: When we're partnered, great, let's work together. And we're not.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: Let's just be honest about it. And I– for that,
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: people attack me for being an anti-Semite or anti-Israel and
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: they don't see the writing on the wall that I'm
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: actually just the guy advocating for a normal relationship with
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: a normal country that's based around shared interest as opposed
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: to based around– something else. So why is Israel losing
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: American public opinion?
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: Well, the narrative is that Israel has a very disproportionate
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: effect on American politics. Yeah, I see that.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: I see that narrative. I mean I actually think that
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: they– look, do they try to influence American politics?
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: But like I said earlier, a lot of other countries do.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: To the extent that Israel does though?
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: I think some are better at it than others. I
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: think the Israels are definitely more effective at it than most.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: But I wouldn't say that they're the only effective country
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: by any means that tries to influence American politics. I
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: just think you have to be self-aware about it. I
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: mean why wouldn't you? It's a country of 9 million people.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: We have 330 million people. And so of course they're
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: going to try to persuade Americans. They're going to try
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: to move Americans in one direction or another. I think
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: 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
  Speaker 1: spying on American politicians, that there's concerns about funding, there's
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: concerns about influence, there's concerns about whether or not politicians are,
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: whether they're aligned with Israel or whether they're aligned with
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: the United States first.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: Well, there's certainly, like, I definitely get those concerns, but
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: my sense is that the way that all foreign influence
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: works in the United States is people try to manipulate
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: American public opinion and then from manipulating a public opinion,
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: they try to get the outcomes that they want. I
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: mean this thing is a very good example of this.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: So like we know– I'm telling you beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: We know that the negotiation strategy that the president has
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: asked us to pursue And again, with limitations, like when
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: the Iranians hit ships, the president has been willing to
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: knock the hell out of the Iranians in response. This
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: is not just a negotiation. It's negotiation. It's military. It's
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: all these things. But I know beyond a shadow of
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: a doubt that there have been people within the Israeli
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: government who are trying to like actually shift us away
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: from that policy because they want to continue the military campaign.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: And by the way, like there are people within their
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: government that I love. I have good relationships with. I
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: hope and I don't think that they're part of this.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: I mean the ambassador of Israel to the United States
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: I think is actually a really good guy. Obviously he
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: cares about Israel first. I care about America first. But
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: there are some people within their system we know beyond
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: a shadow of a doubt who are manipulating and trying
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: to change American public opinion to keep the war going
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: on indefinitely. Again, not towards any objective but just indefinitely.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: So like does it happen?
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: But I guess what I would say to the Americans
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: who sort of see this and are frustrated by it,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: my attitude would be you should be frustrated at American
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: leaders who are persuaded by this, affected by this. Countries
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: are going to do what countries do. I really don't–
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: it doesn't bother me that Qatar tries to influence the
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: United States of America and they do. I like a
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: lot of the Qataris just like I like a lot
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: of the Israelis. It doesn't bother me that Israel tries
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: to do this. It frankly doesn't even bother me that
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: Russia or some of these other countries do it. It's
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: just the nature– of being a political leader in 2026.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: What does bother me is when those operations, those influence
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: campaigns actually affect American political judgment because they shouldn't, because
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: we should be thinking what is in the best interest
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: of the United States of America.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: Do you think that Israel is affecting American political judgment?
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: I mean– I certainly think that there are a lot
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: of talking points and there are a lot of arguments
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: that make their way into American political discourse. I think
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: there are a lot of social media campaigns that definitely
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: influence Americans and affect Americans. Do I think that it's
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: been dispositive on any particular issue? I think that's a
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: much more difficult question.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: Do you think that we would have started this war
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: 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
  Speaker 2: believes very strongly– and again, I agree with this– that
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: Iran should not have a nuclear weapon.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: Right, but after we bombed them in June– Right, that
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: was the initial attack, right?
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: June of last year.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Midnight Hammer, yeah. Right. Do you think he would
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: have continued with the most recent campaign if it wasn't
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: for the influence of Israel? Yes, I do. Really? I do, yeah.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: Look, I mean, I think– Again, and I see this
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: and I see it even from people that are in
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: our coalition and this would be my flip side to
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: the hawks who have been attacking me or the president
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: mercilessly over negotiation. I would sort of turn this back
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 2: on some of the doves or some of the realists
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: who have been attacking the president of the United States.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: The doves? Those are the peace people?
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: Peace people.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: That's what you call them, the doves? Hawks and doves.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: You've never heard that phrase?
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: No. I've heard hawks. I've heard hawks. I don't think
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: I've ever heard doves.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: Hawks and pigeons. Hawks and– I don't know.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: I think it's more doves.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: Doves is good, right? So what I think a lot
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: of people– I've heard this argument is this idea that
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump was sort of– I've even heard people say
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: he was blackmailed into this.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. A lot of people think that.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: That's not true, dude.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: No?
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: It's just not true. I've seen the decision-making up close. Again,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: whether you agree or disagree with our negotiation– Or whether
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: you agree or disagree with the decision to launch the
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: campaign Epic Fury to begin with. The idea that Donald
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: Trump is being like blackmailed is crazy to me. Because again,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: I see the way that he makes decisions. I see
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: the way that he processes this stuff. Like the idea
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: that he picks up the phone with anybody and says, hey,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: like I'm going to take orders from you. No, that's
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: 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
  Speaker 1: especially because of the Epstein files? What do you mean? Well,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: the Epstein files were supposed to be released, and there
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: was a tremendous amount of resistance to those files being released.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: That concerned a lot of people because if you're talking
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: about very wealthy, powerful people that were engaged in crimes–
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: I see.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: So you're basically saying like there's a– the fear is
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: that whatever is in the Epstein files was used to
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: blackmail– like the administration into doing the Iran thing.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: Or at the very least, the people that were involved
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: in the Epstein files that didn't want them coming out
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: had undue influence.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: Well, again, like say this with all candor, like we
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files like
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: we just did. But do I think the reason we
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: screwed up the comms is because we were trying to
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: hide something?
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: I think the reason we screwed up the comms of
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: the Epstein files is one, you know, Pam said– Pam
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: Bondi said the client list is on my desk, right?
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: Well, see, they had binders. They were standing in front.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: But those binders were largely documents that had already been released, right?
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: So here's– let me try to defend.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: So what was the purpose of that performative display of
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: the Epstein files? And she was saying there's tens of
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: thousands of hours of film.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the purpose of it was, but
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: I know that the effect of it was to make
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: people mistrust the entire effort. And what I think was
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: happening– look, I know Pam.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: I like Pam.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: I don't think there's anything malicious going on. I think
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: Pam was trying to respond to the political moment. I
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: think she overstated what we had and what we didn't have.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: And I think that she got roasted for it publicly
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: by a lot of people, including me. Like you know–
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: you and I have talked about this a lot. I'm
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: like one of the OG Epstein conspiracy theorists. I've probably
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: gone down every single rabbit hole. We could go down
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: most of them today. Look, the original sin of the
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: Epstein investigation– and obviously I'm biased here. But it was
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: not what Donald Trump and the administration did in 2025.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: It was– you have to go back to.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: 2007, 2008.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: The original Alex Acosta investigation of Jeffrey Epstein where– He
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: basically dropped the federal charges. I think Epstein ended up
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: getting prosecuted on some sort of local thing. But the
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: original warrant, the original warrant back in 2008, what was
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: he looking for? What was he allowed to look for?
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: What were they collecting? It was not looking at a
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: broader conspiracy. So that happens, OK? Epstein gets pinched. I
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: think he goes to prison or maybe this is when
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: he was on house arrest. But like anything that existed–
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: From the 80s and 90s up to 2006, 2007, anything
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: that existed that we didn't get back then was disappeared, right?
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: So like when people say, has what you've seen on
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: the inside make you think that Epstein never blackmailed people
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: or that Epstein never engaged in broader sex trafficking? No,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 2: absolutely not. What I have seen and I've looked at
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: most of the files is that there just wasn't dispositive
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: evidence there. And if that dispositive evidence ever existed, it
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: was probably destroyed after 2006, 2007. Now, again, in our defense, yes,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: was there some bitching and moaning and was there some
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: back and forth? Yes. But we eventually collected six million
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: documents as part of the effort. The president– people say
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: the president was forced into releasing the documents. Like again,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: the idea that Donald Trump could not have killed that legislation,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: especially with the United States Senate, is a joke. He
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: absolutely could have killed it.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: What did he do?
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: He actually said, no, we're going to release these files.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: He thought– he was annoyed by the story. He was
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: annoyed by the Democrats accusing him of doing things bad.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: By the way, like do I think there is any–
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: I've never seen a single piece of credible evidence that
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: the president of the United States engaged in wrongdoing with
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: minors ever. So like when the president says the hoax,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: that's what he's talking about is this democratic idea that
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: he somehow was a pedophile. It's absurd. There's no evidence
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: for it. Now, the Epstein law gets signed. We find
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: six million documents. We find out three million of them
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: are actually responsive, have something to do with the Epstein estate.
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: We release all of them with the exception of a
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: few things that are like The courts have said that
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 2: we have to redact certain things or we can't release
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: certain files. But like we did release all these files.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: Did it take longer than it should have taken? Yes.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: But we did release these files. And again, the problem
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: here is not like anything that's in the files or
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: not in the files. The problem is if you go
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: back to the original investigation, it was designed in a
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: way that was way too narrow. If there was a
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: broader conspiracy– and you know my view is that there
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: probably was. The evidence that existed in 2007, that was
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: the opportunity to get it.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: So when you say there probably was a broader conspiracy,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: what exactly are you saying?
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: I think there are a few different options. I mean look, man.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: Like you and I could literally do two episodes about this.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: I have gone on down to every rabbit hole. There's
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: this funny New York Times story. That's somewhat true, somewhat false.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: But where Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, says, well,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: we know J.D. is a conspiracy theorist on this. Like
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: I am actually. I've gone down every rabbit hole here. Look,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: so there's the theory that whether it was American intel
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: or foreign intel that Epstein was sort of using– Epstein
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: was using sort of the sex ring to blackmail rich
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: and powerful people. There's that piece of it. I think
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: there's a separate conspiracy that hasn't gotten covered as much,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: which is that Epstein actually– OK. If you go back
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: to the original Epstein guy, it was Les Wexner, OK,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: who– Columbus, Ohio was the wealthiest person in Ohio, maybe
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: still is the wealthiest person in the state of Ohio.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: The thing that everybody in Columbus– I lived there for
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: a time– knew about the Wexner-Epstein relationship is that Epstein–
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: was his tax guy, that Epstein was like the genius
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: at identifying weird tax strategies that would allow you to
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: not have to pay taxes. But if you were being
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: a little skeptical, would also say that it would allow
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: Epstein to either blackmail people or to have a separate
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 2: nexus of influence and control on rich and powerful people.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: And so I think there's an underreported, underexplored story of
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: was Epstein like doing a lot of tax stuff that
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: was not on the up and up and is that
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: one way in which he gained blackmail. It's not opposite
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: of the sexual blackmail story, but in some ways it's–
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: you could imagine both things being true. I also just
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: think there's an element of he was a scumbag. He
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: was a very sick person. He built relationships with a
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: lot of other rich and powerful people who just didn't
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: have any real moral judgment about about the fact the
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: guy was obviously a scumbag. And again, to go back
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: to defending Donald Trump, I know people don't want to
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: hear this these days, but who was the guy? People
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: say Donald Trump was blackmailed by Jeffrey Epstein. Who was
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: the guy who narked on Epstein to the Palm Beach police?
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: That's in the Epstein files. It was Donald Trump.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: He also kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago in 2005. He
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago. It's obvious that Epstein was
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: a sick man.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, but if people want to say we mishandled the
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: Epstein release– guilty. We did, especially the communications of it.
• 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
  Speaker 2: the very beginning. And like, obviously, it takes a little
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: time to review the stuff, to find the stuff, to
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: redact things where you have victims and so forth. But
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: 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
  Speaker 1: the names that were redacted weren't victims.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I've looked into this. And my understanding of this,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: having looked at a lot of this, but not all
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: of it, is that It is sometimes hard to draw
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: a distinction between victim and co-conspirator. And like let me
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: highlight this in a very sort of obvious way. Ro Khanna,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: who has been one of the most– one of the
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: loudest voices on the Epstein file– well, he became very
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: loud on the Epstein files the minute Donald Trump became president,
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: didn't seem to care about it during the Biden administration.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: He actually brought one of the Epstein victims I think
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: to the State of the Union last year or maybe
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: it was the year before last. Well, like that victim–
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: And I'm not accusing– I'm not saying she wasn't a victim.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know anything about her particular case. She was
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: also listed as a co-conspirator in some of these documents, right?
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: So there's an idea that some of the people who
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: were engaged in the sex trafficking were also facilitating it
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: So they were incentivized to get more girls.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but what I– but yes, that's right. But the
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: idea is that it's hard to sort of– it's sometimes
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: a little bit of a gray area between some of
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: the people who were alleged victims were also alleged co-conspirators.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: And so what DOJ tried to do was kind of
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: make that judgment as best they could and release.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: As much as possible. But it's clear that he was
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: trying to get in contact with people that he felt
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: were influential. It was clear that he was trying to
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: get people to get together on the island and meet
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: at parties. So there was something he was doing where
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: he was trying to either influence people or compromise people. Correct.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: So it's not– there's some sort of an operation that
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: was going on.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: There is a story there, and I will go to
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: my deathbed believing there's a story there, but I can't
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: prove it. And I promise you there's not some document
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: that– at least I'm hiding– that allows us to prove
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 2: exactly what was going on and how.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: He was also trying to get scientists, and this is
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons supposedly why he got that ranch
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: in New Mexico.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: So a friend of mine has this element– Sorry. I
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: should step back. Conspiracy theories, one of the ways you
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: discredit a conspiracy theory– I thought about this a lot–
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: is try to hide it. Another way you discredit a
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theory is by flooding the zone. So one of
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: the things I've tried to do when looking at all
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: this stuff is to try to understand sort of where
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 2: it fits in and try to separate the real from
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: the fake. But one really interesting element of the whole
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein saga. OK, so he dies in 2019. Right.
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 2: This is at the very end of the first Trump administration.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: His death coincides very, very closely. This is not my observation.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: This is a friend, but I don't want to reveal
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: confidences here. It coincides very closely with the end of
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: what you might call the era of censorship in academia.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: So back in 2019, 2020. We reached sort of peak
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: academic censorship where people wouldn't publish a medical study because
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: it might have sort of disparate impact, racial undertones, or
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: people were getting fired from academia for not doing land acknowledgement,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 2: stuff like that.
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying that stuff has completely gone away, but Epstein,
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: we know was funding a ton of scientists, by the way,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: where did his money come from? He was funding a
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: ton of scientists, but like when he died. It's almost
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: like the era of censorship started to break because he
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: wasn't just– he was also plugged into a lot of–
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: in academia, but also he's plugged into the social media companies.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: Like this is a dude who knew everybody. He knew everybody.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: So look, I don't know.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: So where did his money come from?
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: Well, from given– part of it is suspect tax advice
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: and setting up tax schemes for a lot of very,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: very rich people.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: Right, but why was he motivated to influence academia and
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: what was the purpose?
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know the answer to that question. I mean
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: I have theories. There's of course.
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: The– Well, most people think he was Mossad.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Mossad or CIA or some other deep state, whether
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: in America or Israel or another country.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: Or both. Or both.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: Look, was he– he clearly had connections to– the highest
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: highest levels of Israeli intelligence. In fact, one of the
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: interesting things the Epstein saga reveals about– and I try
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: to make this point. One of the reasons why I'm
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 2: always careful and I say there are some elements within
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: the Israeli government who don't like our peace process because
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 2: there are a lot of elements within the Israeli government
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: that actually do like our peace process. They recognize that
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: this indefinite campaign is not good for them either. And
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: the Epstein thing is interesting because as much as I
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: know Prime Minister Netanyahu, not a particularly popular person in
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: the United States of America right now. Epstein seemed to
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: be connected to the elements of the Israeli deep state
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: that were left of center. Like I've always found that fascinating.
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: It wasn't like he was super connected to the right
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: of center of Israeli politics. America, he was connected across
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: the board. Like he had Republican friends. He had Democratic friends.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: He had much deeper connections to the Israeli left of
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: center than right of center. I don't know what that means.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: He was hanging out with Steve Bannon and Noam Chomsky. Exactly.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: He had– again, in America, he had friends across the
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: 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 me
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: to meet him. Really? Yeah. When? 2017.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: See, that's crazy to me because at that point he
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: had already gone down for at least one like sex
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: abuse thing.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: That was my position. Yeah. I'll show you the emails.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: They're kind of funny. Which guest? I actually read them
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: on stage.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: You want to say, okay, fine.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: People can find it. Yeah. I don't want to have
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: the guys already ruined.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: But I Googled it and I'm like, what the fuck
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: are you talking about?
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: See, but this goes back to my original point.
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: But this 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 2007 warrant on
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein. All of the really crazy shit happened from
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: the 90s to 2007. That's when he was at the
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: peak of his power. That's when he hadn't yet gone
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 2: down in a sex abuse scandal. It's your point, right?
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: Even if you have some scumbags who are willing to
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: introduce him to Joe Rogan in 2017, there are a
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: lot of Joe Rogans or at least some who are
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 2: going to say, wait a second. I'm going to Google
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: this guy and find out that he's a predator.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: A lot didn't. A lot didn't. And that was really crazy.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: A lot didn't, but some did. And my point is
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 2: that would limit his influence. But if you go back
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: to like the 1990s, the early 2000s, that is the stuff.
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 2: I think that is like the black hole of the
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: Epstein saga. We don't have nearly enough from that era.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 2: Because you think it was destroyed. I think we had
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: a prosecution that explicitly was so narrow– that whatever existed
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: 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
  Speaker 1: And they didn't look at the full 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
  Speaker 1: was told that he was above their pay grade. I mean,
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: it was one of the things that he said.
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: He 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 whether like, Were there documents connecting
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein directly to our intelligence agencies or anybody else's?
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: And the answer is no. But if that shit existed,
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: it wouldn't exist in 2026.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: What is it like being the vice president? Like how
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: much access do you have to information?
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: So I'll give you another conspiracy. So I have like
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: effectively unlimited access to information.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: Unlimited.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: But I think that the– one of the things that
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: I have learned about the job– is you're doing so
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: much on the day-to-day. Like you're calling senators and trying
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: to get them to pass a piece of legislation. You're
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: meeting with staff about what should go in the housing bill.
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: You're negotiating with the Iranians or the Qataris or the
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 2: Israelis about something that's going on in the Middle East.
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: And a lot of it, like the UFO thing, like
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: I've said that I'm going to look into the UFO thing.
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: And I've been saying that for a year and a half,
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: and I haven't done it yet because I haven't had
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: the time. And so- Some of this is like you
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: just have to have the time to actually punch through
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: the walls and to like go to the gatekeepers and
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: say you have to open up that gate because I'm
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: the vice president. And some of it is just hard
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: to actually get to because I don't have the time
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: to sort of focus on that one issue for any
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 2: particular period of time. So the answer is you have
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: unlimited access to information. The constraint is not people tell
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: me no. The constraint is you're just so busy doing
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: other shit.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: The UFO thing I think would be something that I
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: would want to pursue. Yes. I mean just for my
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: own personal information, I would want to know what is
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: going on.
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: So the question is are these special access programs that
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: are above top secret and that this is our own
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: stuff or is this something that's far more bizarre? And
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: something that is interdimensional from another planet, whatever, fill in
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: the blank.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: Is it foreign?
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 2: And if it's foreign, is it 6,000 miles away or
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: like 6,000 light years away?
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: And that is– I will answer that question eventually.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: Really? Yes.
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: I'll get to the bottom of it.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: How are you going to have the time to do that?
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: What would that entail? Eventually I'll have like a few
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: weeks where I can just sit down and worry about
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: that problem.
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: You said something that I thought was very bizarre.
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 2: Here's the interesting thing though. I will say that is
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: one of those conspiracy theories that– there are a lot
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: of people in our government who are interested in this,
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: meaning our current political leadership who are interested in this question.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: It hasn't– like nothing has really happened yet, which makes
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: me a little bit less interested in it because there
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: are a lot of people with access to those files
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: and access to that information and nothing has changed since
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: Biden left office, which makes me think other people have
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: looked into it and they just haven't necessarily found something.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: But anyway, I eventually– I promise you I am going
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: to like sit down and spend a couple of weeks
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out what's in these files. Actually, I
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: haven't done it yet.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: You said something that I thought was very odd. OK.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: You said that you thought that they were demons. OK.
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: I did say that. What did you mean by that?
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I– first of all, not just in Christianity but
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: in a number of world religions, there are a number
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: of like mystical things that happened, extra-dimensional– Extra– like I'm
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: not one of these people who's like a hyper-rationalist. Like
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: I think that there are things happening in the world
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: that we're not always seeing. I believe in God. I
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: think that there is a kind of– what's the word
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: I'm looking for? Not extra real.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: Supernatural.
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: Supernatural. There are supernatural things that are happening.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 2: So if you look historically at things that are similar
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: to the alien phenomenon, where, oh, some like strange being,
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 2: it kind of looks like a human being, but doesn't
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: look like, but it's not human. And it shows a
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: particular interest in human beings. And then it takes the
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: human beings and, you know, like does weird experiments on them.
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: I think my argument is that's either bullshit, right? You're
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 2: either talking to a crazy person, which I don't like,
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying just because I believe in the supernatural
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: doesn't believe, mean I believe in everything supernatural. But if
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: we're talking about an extraterrestrial being that is human-like but
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 2: not human, that contains effectively infinite powers and is torturing
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: human beings. You can call it an alien if you want,
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 2: but I think there's a lot of historical precedent to
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: call that a demon.
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: Well, a lot of these stories and these accounts– We
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: have one right here.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 2: Demonic alien.
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the mothership logo. A lot of these accounts–
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: are not of people being tortured. They're people that are
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: being exposed to information, like the Travis Walton stories, a
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: very famous case from the 1970s. I don't know this one.
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: I'm going to read about it on the way back, though.
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: It's this guy right here. I got a Travis Walton bobblehead.
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: He's one of the most famous UFO abduction stories. Okay.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: There's a movie with D.B. Cooper in the.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: And like what is the information that they gave Travis Walton?
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: Was D.B. Cooper the– that was the– D.B. Sweeney.
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: D.B. Sweeney. D.B.
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: Cooper was the guy who stole the money and jumped
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: out of the plane. Fire in the Sky. There's a
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: movie from– Oh.
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: Of course. Yeah, I remember this movie.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: I don't think I ever saw it though.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: 1993.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: Good movie but sensational and Travis Walton says they made
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: a bunch of shit up and that's not what happened.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: But the story was that he was a logger in
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: Arizona– And he was leaving a job. They were all
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: together in a truck. And these loggers saw this thing,
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: this light, land in this forest. And they went to
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: go investigate. He jumps out of the truck. And he
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: gets close to it. And he's hit by some beam
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: of light and knocked to the ground. They take off.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: And then they realize, like, we've got to go back.
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: We don't know what's going on. They turn around. They
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: go back to get him. They're freaked out and panicked.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: They go back to get him. He's gone. The police
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: interview them. They think that they killed him. They, you know,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: there's an investigation. Five days later, he shows up wearing
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: the same clothes. And he has this crazy story. And
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: he had been in the spaceship for five days is
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: what he said. And that they had fixed him. They
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: healed him. And then they had communicated with him telepathically.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: And he had had this very bizarre encounter with these
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: beings that aren't from here. Or if they are from here,
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: they're very different than us.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: Okay. So I guess my response to that would be
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: extra powerful beings, in this case, communicating telepathically, helping people.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: Sounds like an angel. So I guess my... Let me
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: make the steel man version of my argument.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: It's that... Okay.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 2: My dog, there's no real difference between me and God
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: to my dog. I can literally walk into a room
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: and turn the light on. I can make food appear instantaneously.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: I can transport myself across time and space very, very rapidly.
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 2: If you're a human being with intelligence but not supernatural intelligence,
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 2: I guess my point is, again, this could all be bullshit.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: This could all be fake. That's a possibility. But if
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: it's real– Is there really a meaningful difference between an
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: angel or a demon and a space alien with super technology?
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 2: Just to our perception, they would largely just look like
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: the same thing.
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: I think we're capable of nuance. We're capable of understanding
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: that human beings are far more complex and evolved than chimpanzees.
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: And we could imagine a world– Where if we don't
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: blow ourselves up and there's not a nuclear bomb and
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: there's not a– we don't get hit by an asteroid.
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: If we live another million years, that we would have
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: technology that's indistinguishable from magic, right? Exactly.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what I'm saying. And then we could show
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: up on another planet.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: It just 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
  Speaker 2: to a more simple intelligence, there's not a meaningful– there's
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: not a meaningful difference. So you're asking– you're like talking
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: about what it is that these things actually are and
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: I guess what I'm talking about is how would a
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: human being with my level of intelligence or your level
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: of intelligence in 2026 understand what's going on?
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: Right. But from a biblical perspective, there's a very big
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: difference between a demon and A hyper-intelligent being from somewhere else.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: I mean a demon or a hyper-intelligent malicious.
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: Well, if demons are real, if there really are dark
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: forces in the universe and they're disembodied dark forces, these
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: things that exist. Yes. And then there's also powerful light
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: forces in the universe. They don't have to be– Mutually
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: exclusive to the concept of hyper-intelligent other species when you're
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: 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
  Speaker 2: that it is interesting to me that for most of
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 2: human history, we would have understood supernatural, hyper-powerful, hyper-knowledgeable things
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: as sort of celestial or.
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: … We would have thought of a cell phone as
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: being sorcery. I mean it doesn't– that doesn't mean it's sorcery.
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just technology. I just– that
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: argument doesn't make any sense to me. Well– And this
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: is not discounting the possibility of demons or discounting the
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: possibility of angels.
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess I understand your point conceptually. I don't
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 2: actually disagree with this. I don't think we're saying something different.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: That metaphysically there could be two separate things going on.
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: There could be celestial– there could be extra earth– outside
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: of earth space aliens and there could also be angels
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 2: and demons. There could be two totally separate things. One
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: could be true and not the other. That's– I totally
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 2: concede and agree with that point. I guess what I'm
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: saying is it's a distinction that is conceptually interesting to me.
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: But if a space alien with like superhuman technology comes
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: to the earth and has malicious intent, I don't know
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: how I'm supposed to tell the difference between that and
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: a demon.
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: If they have malicious intent. But I mean isn't that
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: also the case with visiting people, right? Like you could
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: have a country and you get visited by the Peace
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: Corps or you get visited by pirates.
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: And are the pirates demons as the Peace Corps angels?
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 2: No, but I think we're talking about something much different.
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: Are we? Are we talking about something different or are
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: we talking about a hyper-advanced version of that?
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 2: We're talking about– I mean as I understand it, we're
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: talking about things that exist outside the United States. Sorry,
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: outside of the earth, OK? Perhaps. And two different types
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 2: of beings that could exist outside. I mean, OK, maybe–
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of people.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: Tim Burchette thinks that they're here.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 2: There's Atlantis or there's something else like that.
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: Well, they're– Somehow or another, they're survivors of a long-gone
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: civilization that live under the ocean. Yeah. It's just as
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: kooky as living in space.
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 2: Here's the way I would put it. It's like there's
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 2: also a difference between a demon and a ghost, right?
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 2: These things are two very different conceptual things.
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 2: But if I'm a human being and I meet a
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 2: malicious ghost, maybe I think it's a demon and maybe
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 2: all I'm saying is maybe there's some– There's some point
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: at which the conceptually interesting– this is such a weird
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 2: conversation– at which point the conceptually interesting discussion of what
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: it is is separate from how it appears to me
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: and how I'm going to understand it as a human
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 2: being in my particular social and cultural context in 2026.
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: But if you're looking for me to concede the point
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 2: that there is something different or could be something different
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 2: between an angel, a demon, a space alien, a supernatural–
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 2: but non any of those other things beings. Yes, I
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 2: can see that.
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The question is what does, what do these special
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: access programs, like what is the information that's available? Like how,
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: according to David Rush and a lot of these other
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: people that there have been crash retrieval programs. Okay.
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 2: And I've, I've, so I've talked to Dave before. I
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 2: think I called him actually after he was on your podcast. Um, so, um,
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 2: There's like the crash retrieval stuff of whether that's real
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 2: or not, where is it, et cetera. There's the videos, right?
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: There are all of these videos, some of which have
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 2: been released and declassified that seem to me show some
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: pretty weird stuff. And then there might be other pieces
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 2: of evidence as well. I'm not saying there is or isn't.
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 2: I just don't know. I try to keep an open
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: mind about this stuff. All I'm saying is I'm fascinated
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 2: by it. I don't have like some secret sauce, at
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 2: least not yet, that tells me what's true and what's false.
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 2: I'm just saying this is something that I'm interested in.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't– because it's like anything in life where
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: do I have to figure this out this week?
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: No.
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to do the things that I have
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: to like negotiate with the Iranians and try to get
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: this bill passed.
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: So let's imagine a world where the Iranian negotiations go swimmingly.
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: Everything is done. God willing. Let's change hearts and minds. Okay.
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: Avoided a gigantic apocalyptic scenario. What could be done? Like
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: if we have information, who has this information and why
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: are they holding on to this information? Do you know
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: the Hal Puthoff story? So Hal Puthoff, who used to
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: work for NASA, said that he was brought in during
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: the Bush administration where they were going– They were proposing
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: disclosure and they were saying– this is what they were saying.
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: They were saying we have biological remains and we have
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: physical crafts. We're proposing disclosure and they brought in a
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: bunch of thought leaders, different disciplines, different schools of thought.
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: And they said, I want you to compile a list
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: of pros and cons and put a numerical value in.
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: on what– how this is going to affect society. How
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: is this going to affect religion? How is this going
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: to affect government? How is this going to affect economy?
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: All these different things. And when they compiled this list,
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: every one of them had more in the con than
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: in the pro and they decided against disclosure because of that. Now,
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: if that's the case, what are we talking about? Like
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: who has this information and what is this information? I
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: mean if that wasn't just a thought experiment, if they
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: weren't really just fucking with these people, which I don't
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: understand why they would do that. But let's assume they–
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: what is known and why would they prevent that information
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: from getting out?
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a big if.
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: Have you seen the movie The Age of Disclosure? I
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: have not.
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 2: OK.
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: Well, a lot of people, including intelligence officers, different people
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: in the government. or in this documentary. And one of
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: the things that they're saying is part of the problem
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: with all this is if they have had these programs
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: going on for so long, that means they've been misappropriating
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: funds and they've been lying to Congress. So all these
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: people that were involved in these programs. I've heard this argument. Yeah,
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: I've heard this argument. Yeah. So Lou Elizondo and all
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: these other people have said, look, what we're going to
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: need is mass amnesty for people that are involved in this.
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 1: It's the only way you're ever really going to get
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: to the bottom of it. So what that is, if
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: you've got unlimited money and you've got misappropriation of funds
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: and lying to Congress, I guarantee some of that money
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: has gone to places it shouldn't have gone.
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent.
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: Like it always does. Yeah.
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 2: So like. it's always very hard to engage in these
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: like super generic, super general, I should say hypotheticals because,
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 2: you know, like, yeah, if, if look, we've got remains
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 2: of space aliens and we're hiding them, then there are
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 2: a million other sort of, there are a million possibilities
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: for that. What would explain it, how it would have happened.
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 2: I am skeptical.
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 2: And the reason I'm skeptical that it's true that we
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: have the physical remains is It's not because I don't
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 2: think that's something that like is physically possible or that
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: the government– like the government is willing to do and
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: able to do a lot of crazy stuff in our
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 2: history and the history of all governments. I am skeptical
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 2: of the competence. I actually made this point to Dave
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: when we talked. I think he's a very interesting guy.
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: So I don't mean to insult him or say I
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 2: disagree with him about everything. But I made this point
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 2: to Dave when we talked. It's like if we have
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 2: literal– space alien remains in the custody of the United
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 2: States government, there is no way that that wouldn't leak
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 2: out in some way.
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: Well, it has leaked out anecdotally.
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess that's the counterargument.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: Do you know the Nixon story? The Nixon-Jackie Gleason story?
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 2: No, I want to hear that. But like with cell
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 2: phones and every way that we have– like it's plausible
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 2: to me you could hide that in an era where
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 2: you have to have a giant camera the size of
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 2: these antlers in order to take a photo of something. But, dude,
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 2: I can take– like you have cameras now that are
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 2: like literally this tiny. That's the part that I'm skeptical
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 2: of that we're hiding that.
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: Let me push back against that because you know that
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: if you have any sort of top secret– like if
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: you go into a skiff, like there's no way you're
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: bringing cameras in there. You're– look, when I came here–
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: To this podcast studio. They had a dog check my trunk.
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 2: And it's your studio?
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: They had to pop my trunk. Yeah. OK. Like I'm
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: going to blow up my own studio.
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but OK.
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying?
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 2: OK. The counterargument though is they check that stuff on you.
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 2: They don't check that stuff on everybody.
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 1: Everybody here they did.
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: Everybody here.
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 2: All you need is one official with like the highest
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 2: security clearance.
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: OK. You're right.
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 2: Certain devices like emanate signals that they can pick up
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 2: on Bluetooth and all that shit.
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: But to have access to go into a room where
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: they have these things, if they did have these things,
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: I guarantee you they're going to make sure no one's
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: got anything. They could easily scan you to make sure
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: that you don't have any kind of electronics, any kind
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: of camera, any kind of recording device. That's not hard.
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: I mean– Especially if you've got something squirreled away at
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: Area 51.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: In the next two and a half years, we're going
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 2: to run this experiment because I've got two and a
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 2: half more years as VP. And I swear to you,
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: if there are little green men, like body remains— Text me, please. Well,
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to text you. I'm going to try
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 2: to smuggle a camera in and get a photo of
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: these things.
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: Well, how would you, the vice president of the United
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: States of America, have to have a camera smuggled in
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: to do that?
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe I wouldn't. But again, I've seen— Do you
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 2: think that you.
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: Have the kind of authority? Let's imagine you find out
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: that at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, they have some— secure
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: facility somewhere. Maybe it's not there. Maybe they've kept it
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: under wraps. Maybe it's in the mountains somewhere. And you
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: find out that this thing exists. Do you think it's
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: as simple as you could just go out and tell everybody?
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: Or do you think that you get briefed on the
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: implications of what would happen if you disclosed all this information?
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 2: Well, I would definitely get briefed on the implications of
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 2: what would happen if I disclosed this information.
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: And they would probably tell you, hey, you have to
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: bullshit people.
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but dude, I'm not.
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: You're not going to bullshit people?
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 2: Well, look, I have many skills as a politician and
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 2: some vices, but like one of them is I'm just
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 2: not a good liar.
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: Well, then they're not going to show it to you.
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: You just fucked up. You just fucked up on this
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: podcast by saying that.
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 2: Don't show it to the ladies on The View.
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: That's right. The intellectual leaders of our world. Trust me.
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 2: They show it to the ladies at The View. It
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 2: will be said two hours later.
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I am like– Maybe they show it to them
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: just 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
  Speaker 2: telling you. I have not yet seen the evidence that
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 2: we have certainly extraterrestrial remains. But there's a lot of
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 2: stuff before extraterrestrial remains that's also interesting. Like the flight
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 2: patterns in some of these videos are super weird.
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: Well, the Commander David Fravor stuff is bananas. It goes
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: from 50,000 feet above sea level to sea level in
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: like a second.
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 2: To what people say, right? Yeah. Because one of the
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 2: arguments I've heard, for example, is could this just be
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 2: a visual lure on the camera or something like that? OK,
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 2: that sounds to me plausible. I'm not an expert in cameras.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 2: But then what the pilots, their reaction to it, it's
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 2: not like they're looking at a visual lure on a camera.
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 2: It's like they're looking at something else that's really, really
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 2: weird and difficult to explain given what they know about
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 2: physics and aeronautical engineering, et cetera. So anyway, I am
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 2: fascinated by this. But I just don't want to tell
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 2: people like, oh, I've uncovered the truth or I haven't
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 2: because I haven't looked at it yet. Right.
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: Well, I would– if I was you, that would be
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: the first thing I did. I'd storm right in there
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: and go, what do you got?
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about tax policy.
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: Is that what you want to talk about?
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 2: No.
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: We could talk about tax policy.
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 2: This is way more interesting.
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: I would want to know. I mean I think the
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: world wants to know. I think it would fundamentally change
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: our understanding of what it means to be a living organism.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 2: OK. What do you think? Like what is your– you
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 2: know more about this than I do.
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: I don't think we're alone. But OK. I don't think
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: we're alone. I just don't understand what it is. OK.
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know if.
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 2: It's– So you don't have like a strong view about
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 2: what it is.
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: You're just generally curious. I don't have any data, right?
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: So I don't have any proof. So I believe Commander
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: David Fravor. I believe Ryan Graves. He was a fighter
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: pilot that said that when they upgraded their equipment on
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: these fighter jets in 2014– All of a sudden they
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: started seeing these things that were staying completely motionless at
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: 120 knot winds and they were a cube inside of
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: a sphere, a black cube inside of some sort of
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: a– Well, OK.
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 2: So this is– I know you've talked to Eric Weinstein.
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 2: And I haven't talked to you about this lately. But
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 2: one of the things that Eric sort of kind of
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 2: persuaded me of a couple of years ago.
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: Was … It's Weinstein. They get very sensitive because of Harvey.
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 2: OK.
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: Sorry. Weinstein.
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 2: Eric Weinstein.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: Good thought.
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 2: Speaking of pedophiles, I guess Harvey.
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: Wasn't a pedophile.
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 2: He had many sins but not that one.
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: Candace Owens says he's innocent. Which thing? Okay. Or not
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: guilty of everything that they said he was.
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 2: So, okay. Eric Weinstein, this is probably three, four years ago,
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 2: persuades me of this actually. It's an interesting theory. His
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 2: argument is– In the same way that I would say
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 2: what's the difference between an extraterrestrial and an angel or
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 2: a demon depending on its intentions from the perspective of
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 2: a human in 2026? His argument would be what's the
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 2: difference between a space alien and a human being but
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 2: just a human being with super advanced technology, right? And
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 2: so I don't know if this is still his view
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 2: but he kind of was– he was like let's say
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 2: you had human beings who– Just were super scientifically advanced.
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 2: Like what we know of the laws of physics as
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 2: I understand it is that light speed is sort of
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 2: the upper limit of what one of our spaceships could travel.
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 2: You can't go any faster than the speed of light. Well,
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 2: that's a problem because everything else that could support of
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 2: extraterrestrial life is much– is many, many, many, many light
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 2: years away.
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 2: So his argument to me again back in the day
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 2: was– If you figured out a new physics in the
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 2: same way that you had an understanding shift from Newtonian
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 2: physics to Einsteinian physics, if you have a new understanding
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 2: of physics that allows you to travel much faster than
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 2: the speed of light, you could just have human beings
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 2: either from a different planet or maybe they went to
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 2: Mars and started their own civilization and then that got
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 2: old and they– at this point, there are many millions
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 2: of light years away. But they can move through space
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 2: and time in a way that is quite literally like
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 2: divine from our perspective. or space aliens, but they're just
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 2: 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 it also, we know that life exists on Earth.
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: So if life exists on Earth, Earth is a planet.
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: There are hundreds of billions of stars that have hundreds
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: of billions of planets. We have no idea how many
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: planets there are in the known universe that could potentially
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: support life. And if these things live on these planets
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: and they live far longer than we have, like if
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: you showed a nuclear bomb to someone from 100 years ago,
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: they would say that's the craziest fucking thing I've ever
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 1: seen in my life. Show them a reactor. Show them
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: a cell phone. Absolutely. Show them that television.
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 2: It's like my dog with a light switch, right?
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: Just be able to FaceTime someone in New Zealand. What
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: is that? What are you doing? That's right. Now advance
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: that forward one million years. That's right. And then instead
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: of using propulsion, you are instead manipulating space-time.
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 2: So that's exactly right. And one of the things– I've
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 2: talked with Elon about this. and Elon is obviously a
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 2: super smart dude. But I've never heard like a super
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 2: satisfying answer to this. One of the things that worries me,
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 2: like I want humans to be a multi-planetary species. I
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 2: want us to go to Mars and set up a
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 2: colony and like that's sort of– I love humanity. I
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 2: want it to continue. The problem with space travel that
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 2: I have, again, not heard a satisfactory solution to is
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 2: when we're outside of the Earth's gravity, our genes, like
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 2: our actual DNA, seems to not function as well when
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 2: it's not on Earth-style gravity, which makes sense, right? We
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 2: developed in these conditions with this gravity. So whenever you
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 2: have somebody who goes to the International Space Station for
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 2: like three months or six months and they come back
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 2: and they are totally jacked up because like literally the
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 2: cells in their body are starting to like discombobulate in
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 2: response to a low-gravity environment. I don't– like we have
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 2: to figure out a solution to that problem. That to
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 2: me is sort of the most interesting part of space travel,
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 2: of going to Mars, of setting up a colony on
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 2: another planet is if you set up a colony on
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 2: Mars but– And what it takes you like two years
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 2: to get there and two years to get back or
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 2: something like that.
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 2: But in that time, you've gone from a functioning adult,
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 2: healthy to like dead. Right. If you're in space for
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 2: four years, that part of space travel is very fascinating
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 2: to me. And I don't know that I've heard any
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 2: satisfactory solution to it yet.
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: I don't think conventionally there is a satisfactory solution. Yeah.
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: 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 in
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: exactly the same way it is … Yeah. … and
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: travel to somewhere else with that environment. So this is
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: the idea of them living under the surface of the ocean.
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: I see. I see.
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 1: How can they live in the depths of the ocean? Well,
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: because they have a completely contained environment.
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 2: Sure. Sure.
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: I mean who knows? Yeah. It's all just ….
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 2: Maybe they figured out how I can eat like steak
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 2: and Grater's ice cream and have the blood profile of
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 2: eating chicken and salad.
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't think chicken and salad is the way
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: to go.
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 2: I know you don't.
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: I'm a steak guy. I think– So am I. Just
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: eat a little bit of ice cream every now and then.
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: By the way, ice cream is one of the very
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: best desserts for you because it contains fat.
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 2: Because it's got a lot of fat and protein. Yeah.
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. A little bit of sugar, but
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 1: it's all– it's a moderation thing. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: Anybody who doesn't want to eat ice cream is a communist.
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with ice cream. Speaking of communists.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 2: The Democratic Socialists of America. That's actually what they do
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 2: at their events is they throw the ice cream into
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 2: the Boston Harbor.
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Those fucking people scare me. I'm really concerned that
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: people think that's a good idea and that they think
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: that socialism just hasn't been done correctly. That drives me
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: nuts because I think a lot of really well-intentioned, really
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: kind and empathetic young people think that that's the way
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 1: to go. And I do not think they understand the
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: dangers of this ideology because it always leads to one thing.
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: It leads to a very powerful military government. That controls
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: the population.
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 2: Period.
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 1: End of discussion. And if you play it out, it
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: is literally the only way that can get people to
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: give up their money. Yes. It's the only way they
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 1: can get them to give up their property. And when
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: you're hearing like Mamdani talk about freezing rents and taking
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: bad landlords and then confiscating their property, you're like …
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: This is step one of what's happened in every communist
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: dictatorship throughout history. This is what happened in North Korea.
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: Give the government the land and we'll make sure that
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: no one ever has to worry about food. What a
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: great idea. Look how it turned out.
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 2: So I don't know who said this, but. The whole
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 2: argument of communism is that you seize the means of production.
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 2: But because the means of production, the most powerful means
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 2: of production is the human mind, you ultimately have to
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 2: get into totalitarianism.
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: You have to have.
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 2: Control of that most fundamental element of the human person.
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: You also take away motivation. Correct. And there's a thing
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: that people don't like, which is extreme wealth. But you
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: have to understand that if it wasn't for the motivation
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: of extreme wealth, you would not have an iPhone. You
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have these things.
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 2: Okay. So here's– let me give you my Christian answer
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 2: to this, and it's a good plug for my new book, Communion.
• 2:22:30
  Speaker 2: Finding My Way Back to Faith.
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: Not to be confused with Whitley Stryber's book, Communion, which
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: is all about aliens.
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: Did you know that?
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 2: No. Interesting coincidence, Joe.
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: Pull up the cover of Communion. Pull up the cover
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: of the Good Communion.
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 2: I want all your listeners to buy.
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: The problem is you didn't know about this book. I
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: did not. I would have told you to come up
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: with a different title. Seriously, I should have told you.
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 2: That's Woody Striebel's book.
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, there we go. OK.
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 2: So we want– that is wild.
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: And then there's another one, My First Communion. OK.
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 2: That's like a kid's book. But yeah, we want people
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 2: to buy the second one, the one that says J.D.
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: Vance on it. OK.
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 2: So this is– one of the things I talk about
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 2: in the book is like there is a Christian idea
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 2: of political economy that's actually been lost in American politics
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 2: where it's like we think of it as libertarianism, the
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 2: hardcore free market. versus socialism or communism. And there actually
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 2: is a third way that has existed in pretty much
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 2: all Christian economic thinking going back 2000 years ago, which
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 2: is that, yeah, extreme wealth inequality does create problems, but
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 2: you still got to have private property. You still have
• 2:23:36
  Speaker 2: to have a state that protects private property rights. And
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 2: there's a way to balance these things that I think
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 2: we've sort of lost in our country a little bit.
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 2: And when I– like, OK, let me play devil's advocate
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 2: with the DSA because I think that their ideas are
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 2: crazy and I think that you're right. They will lead
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 2: to a very totalitarian place. I'm not defending a single
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 2: thing that they say, particularly their hatred of ice cream.
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 2: What I am saying is– and maybe this is just
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 2: sort of the way my mind works. I tend to
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 2: be a little bit more empathetic. Why are young people
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 2: attracted to socialism in 21st century America? One of the
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 2: best interviews that Charlie Kirk ever gave, it was right
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 2: before he died. It was an episode that he did
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 2: with Tucker Carlson where he talked about the fact that
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 2: if you don't give young people a stake, if you
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 2: don't give them ownership, if you don't give them a
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 2: sense of the American dream and of possibility in the future,
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 2: they're going to become socialists. Like if you have a
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 2: zero-sum environment for a 25-year-old in this country, they're going
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 2: to start to say the only way for me to
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 2: get anything is to take away from somebody else. So
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 2: we have to get away from like the zero-sum thinking.
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 2: I think that's like the root cause of this. But
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 2: I also think that, look, we've ran an experiment in
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 2: the United States of America. I think that we have
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 2: undone that experiment, taken a different direction of the Trump
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 2: administration where ship all the factories overseas and let low-wage
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 2: foreigners make our stuff. That was a bad deal for
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 2: American workers. Again, it takes a long time to reverse
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 2: that trend. But I think it's one of the best
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 2: parts of Trump administration policy is you do see that
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 2: trend starting to reverse. This idea that nobody should own anything.
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 2: We should all become renters. Whereas what we're trying to
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 2: do is lower interest rates. You actually have seen housing
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 2: costs stabilize in the country over the last year and
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 2: a half, frankly, because of immigration. We had way too
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 2: many people going after way too many homes. You close
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 2: the border. This is one of the reasons why rents
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 2: and housing costs have stabilized a little bit. So I
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 2: think that unless you go down that pathway of allowing
• 2:25:39
  Speaker 2: young Americans to own something, socialism is the inevitable outcome.
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 2: Do I think that's good?
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 1: No.
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 2: But I really do worry, and I see this, frankly,
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 2: more in my own party than I do on the
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 2: other side. There is this revulsion to socialism that's totally
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 2: justified without enough thinking about how did we get here
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 2: in the first place. And, man, if we don't fix
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 2: that– and I would say if we don't get back
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 2: to a more Christian– sort of understanding of economics, socialism
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 2: is the alternative. Like that is where this goes. If
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 2: people don't own anything. Well, people think the game is rigged.
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 2: And in some ways, Joe, the game is rigged.
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 2: I mean if you look at– I mean again, I
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 2: just– I think so much of housing because this happened–
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 2: I think it was during the presidential campaign. Maybe it
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 2: was right before. But I was talking to some family
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 2: members over Thanksgiving– And just sort of a younger friend
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 2: of my wife's. They were like five or six years
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 2: behind us. They were just about to get married. And
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 2: this young woman, successful engineer, makes a higher salary than
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 2: most Americans. She just sort of like tossed out there
• 2:26:51
  Speaker 2: that when her parents' generation was coming up, it was
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 2: like possible to own a house and to raise a
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 2: family and not be worried that much about things. And–
• 2:27:01
  Speaker 2: My thought was, OK, you're an engineer. You make way
• 2:27:04
  Speaker 2: more money than 75 percent of people your age, maybe
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 2: 90 percent of people your age. And you think that
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 2: it is like this ridiculous, unachievable objective to have literally
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 2: what your parents had, which is a decent job, a
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 2: nice house and a safe place. Like at that– literally
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 2: that same dinner, like another guy, another friend of my
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 2: wife's was talking about this. And he– South Indian family,
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 2: grew up. His parents immigrated. He was born and raised
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 2: in San Diego, and he was like– when I was
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 2: growing up in Oceanside, this is like a suburb of
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 2: San Diego where there are a lot of marines live
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 2: in Oceanside. It's close to Camp Pendleton. So when I
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 2: was growing up, all of my– like the kids that
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 2: I played with, that I rode bikes with, that I
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 2: was playing street hockey with and football with, all of
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 2: those kids were the sons of enlisted Marines in Oceanside, California.
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 2: And then we went and looked at like Oceanside, California rents. Again,
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 2: this is a couple years ago. rents and housing prices,
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 2: like every house was north of a million dollars on
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 2: the street this guy grew up in. And listen, Marine, frankly,
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 2: most Marine officers could not afford to buy a million
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 2: dollar house. So like, does the socialism thing scare me? Yes.
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 2: Is it the wrong solution? Yes. But one thing I
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 2: try to persuade my fellow Republicans of is socialism is
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 2: the alternative if we don't have a pathway to give
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 2: people a sense that the system is not rigged and
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 2: that the American dream is attainable. That's like our job.
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 2: That's what we have to do. I'm not saying Rome
• 2:28:31
  Speaker 2: was built in a day. It's not going to be
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 2: easy to undo some of these economic trends. But man,
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 2: we ran the experiment. We ran the experiment of offshoring
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 2: all of our industrial jobs, of becoming a services and
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 2: finance economy and allowing Wall Street to come in and
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 2: buy every asset of modern life and turn it into
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 2: an investable line-goes-up asset. And what has that done? It's
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 2: created a generation of kids who kind of are attracted
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 2: to socialism. You have to fix that problem.
• 2:29:02
  Speaker 1: Well, kids that do feel– and you're correct and I
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: agree with you. The system is rigged. Kids feel like
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: there are no options other than to burn it down. Yes.
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 1: And that's the problem because they feel very frustrated.
• 2:29:16
  Speaker 2: And this is part of our job is to provide
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 2: an option that isn't burn it down but is not
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 2: just doing the same things that we've done for the
• 2:29:22
  Speaker 2: past 40 years.
• 2:29:22
  Speaker 1: They're also terrified about the future because of AI. Because
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 1: they feel like jobs are going to be taken away
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: and there will be no place for people that have
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: education in very specific avenues. Like very specific jobs are
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 1: going to just be irrelevant. Yeah. They're going to be
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 1: completely wiped out by AI.
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 2: There is a huge fear over this. So let me
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 2: kind of give my own spin on this.
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 2: I was talking to a CEO, not of an AI company,
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 2: but of a tech company. And he's one of the
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 2: few CEOs that's sort of right of center. And I
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 2: was like, well, what do you think? Do you think
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 2: AI is going to come and take all the jobs?
• 2:30:00
  Speaker 2: And his basic take was the real historical analogy is
• 2:30:04
  Speaker 2: the Industrial Revolution. And did the Industrial Revolution displace or
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 2: change a lot of jobs? Yes. It also created a
• 2:30:13
  Speaker 2: lot of jobs that didn't exist before. So he was like,
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 2: my concern here is not– that 50% of Americans are
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 2: going to be unable to find a job. There will
• 2:30:23
  Speaker 2: be some displacement, some sort of churn in the labor market,
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 2: but that's not the main issue. He said the main issue,
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 2: if you go back to the Industrial Revolution, is that
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 2: there was a lot of demand for workers, but the
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 2: inequality in the country got completely out of whack. Like
• 2:30:37
  Speaker 2: this is the era of the robber barons. And then
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 2: the robber barons in both Europe and the United States
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 2: led to fascism. It led to communism. Again, to this
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 2: point about giving people an option, if you don't give
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 2: them a good option, Then it leads to fascism and communism. Now,
• 2:30:51
  Speaker 2: there's this fascinating encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII. I'll
• 2:30:55
  Speaker 2: send it to you. It's one of the best things
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 2: that I think has ever been written by a Christian
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 2: leader where it's written in the late 19th century. And
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 2: the basic argument of it is that in the age
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 2: of industrial churn, there has to be a middle way
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 2: between six-year-olds working on the factory floor and socialism. And
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 2: part of that solution is to give workers a sort
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 2: of say in what's going on, give normal people some
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 2: power in this system. And I think that's the thing
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 2: we have to figure out with AI. I won't say
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 2: that I have all the solutions because I haven't, but
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 2: I think the fundamental question is how do you ensure
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 2: that normal people have some control over this, control over
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 2: what their kids are seeing, control over– You know, the
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 2: economic forces that are being unleashed by AI, some certainty
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 2: that they're not going to wake up in a world
• 2:31:49
  Speaker 2: where they can't buy a home, but some other guy
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 2: owns 35 mansions, right? That to me is the fundamental
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 2: challenge of AI is it's going to unleash a lot
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 2: of wealth creation. But if that wealth creation all goes
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 2: to some segment of people, you're going to have communism.
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 2: Like that is the choice before us is a lot
• 2:32:07
  Speaker 2: of wealth being created. That's good, by the way. I
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 2: like wealth being created. But if you don't ensure that
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 2: there's some broader prosperity from that wealth creation, like we
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 2: have 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
  Speaker 1: unfuck it? So– You have a magic wand.
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 2: I mean look. This is what I'm saying. I'm being
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 2: honest with you that I don't have a magic wand.
• 2:32:31
  Speaker 2: I think there are a few things that we should
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 2: sort of take from this. I think– OK. The first
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 2: is that– We should give workers a real say at
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 2: the bargaining table.
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 2:32:44
  Speaker 2: So what really worries me about AI is the fact
• 2:32:49
  Speaker 2: that private sector unions have largely disappeared from the United
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 2: States of America. There are a couple of exceptions. But
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 2: if you go back to– like why do the United
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 2: States and Britain weather the industrial revolution better than literally
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 2: every other Western country? I think you could make a
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 2: good argument. Strong religious institutions. Right now we have very
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 2: weak religious institutions. Number two, I think you could say
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 2: strong worker participation institutions and not just private sector labor unions.
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 2: That was a big piece of it. But people don't
• 2:33:16
  Speaker 2: realize that Hollywood major studios would actually work with community
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 2: groups and churches to sort of help like develop content. Now,
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 2: this was organic. This was a natural cooperation. This wasn't
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 2: mandated by some law. But where they'd go and say,
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 2: help us produce content. that actually speaks to your membership,
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 2: that speaks to your community. And there was this sense
• 2:33:43
  Speaker 2: of participation in American society that I think we've lost.
• 2:33:47
  Speaker 2: And that's the thing that I think that we have
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 2: to rebuild a little bit. It's interesting that the Trump administration,
• 2:33:52
  Speaker 2: the president personally, certainly me, have been accused of being
• 2:33:55
  Speaker 2: too pro-labor for Republicans. But one of the reasons why
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 2: I'm pro-labor as a Republican is because, and I'm not
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 2: saying unions are perfect. Some of them have very serious problems.
• 2:34:06
  Speaker 2: Like I'm open-eyed about this, like the alternative may very
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 2: well be communism in the United States of America. Not
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 2: next year, but down the road, you've got to give
• 2:34:16
  Speaker 2: people a seat at the table. And I think that's
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 2: one answer to the question. I think a second answer
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 2: to the question is competition. So if you go back
• 2:34:25
  Speaker 2: again to what worked and what was broken about the
• 2:34:27
  Speaker 2: industrial revolution, hyper monopolist style companies that had way too
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 2: much power I mean Teddy Roosevelt famously talked about how
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 2: some of the steel trusts were more powerful than the
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 2: United States government. So you could vote. Your vote didn't
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 2: matter as much because the corporations were more powerful than
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 2: the government. I think reining that in, making sure that
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 2: like– what's the most obvious way to give normal people participation?
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 2: It's democracy. But if a single corporation has monopolized an
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 2: entire space, then you don't have a real democracy– unless
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 2: you reign in the power of that company. And I
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 2: think that is another big risk with AI. It's that
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 2: we have a hyper-monopolist who dominates the space and then
• 2:35:16
  Speaker 2: influences the government, influences the nonprofit sector, and then real
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 2: people are effectively cut out of the bargain. So again,
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to pretend sitting here that I have
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 2: all the solutions. I think about this more than almost
• 2:35:27
  Speaker 2: anything else right now. But the solution has to be
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 2: giving normal people actual authority over their own lives.
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 1: But how can the government get involved in those steps?
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: Like what could be done on a federal level to
• 2:35:42
  Speaker 1: implement that?
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the things– and we've looked
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 2: at legislation along these lines. We haven't yet pushed anything.
• 2:35:50
  Speaker 2: But one problem with the 20– with like the private
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 2: sector labor union, one reason why– Democrats will say private
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 2: unions are at super low participation rates because the government
• 2:36:02
  Speaker 2: is been anti-union. There's like some element of truth to that.
• 2:36:06
  Speaker 2: But the reality is that a lot of workers don't
• 2:36:09
  Speaker 2: see the utility in joining a union because it's like–
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, it's a 20th century institution
• 2:36:15
  Speaker 2: when you need a 21st century institution. So I think
• 2:36:17
  Speaker 2: updating the modern union to be– to make more sense
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 2: in the 21st century, I think that's a part of
• 2:36:24
  Speaker 2: the story. Yeah. I think antitrust.
• 2:36:29
  Speaker 1: How would you do that?
• 2:36:29
  Speaker 2: Well, a friend of mine, his name is Oren Kass actually,
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 2: very fascinating guy, sort of a right-of-center economic thinker. His
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 2: idea is that 20th century labor law presupposes a sort
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 2: of zero-sum conflict between the company and the union and
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 2: that where you've seen unions actually thrive, certain places in Europe,
• 2:36:48
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit more cooperative. And the unions actually
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 2: have a little bit more power themselves and Where they
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 2: can negotiate with the corporation with a little bit more
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 2: breadth and a little bit more freedom. Whereas in the
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 2: United States, we sort of set a floor. We create
• 2:37:04
  Speaker 2: a very small number of things the union can actually
• 2:37:07
  Speaker 2: negotiate over. And so a lot of people say, well,
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 2: why would I join a union? Why would I participate
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 2: in it? So basically making the union a little bit
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 2: more cooperative, which requires changing the legal form of it.
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 2: I think that's interesting. I think antitrust is a huge
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 2: piece of the story.
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 1: Now, it's a.
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 2: Little early with AI because we don't yet know which
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 2: companies are dominant. But I think one of the big
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 2: mistakes man, we made in the early 2000s is we
• 2:37:28
  Speaker 2: should have gone after the big tech companies with antitrust.
• 2:37:31
  Speaker 2: Like there is like a trust-busting mechanism that exists in
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 2: the US government. We just didn't use it. We're going
• 2:37:38
  Speaker 2: to have to be willing to use it in the
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 2: 21st century.
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: And when it comes to unions, what is wrong with
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 1: the current structure? In terms of what power the unions
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 1: have to negotiate for labor?
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 2: So this is a concrete example that Oren uses all
• 2:38:00
  Speaker 2: the time. So in some European countries, you have a
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 2: minimum wage, right? In some European countries, the union can
• 2:38:09
  Speaker 2: actually cut a deal with the employer to where you
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 2: pay a brand new employee less than the minimum wage.
• 2:38:17
  Speaker 2: Then you pay a more senior person. person higher than
• 2:38:20
  Speaker 2: the minimum wage. But in order to pay the junior
• 2:38:23
  Speaker 2: employee less than the minimum wage, you have to provide
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 2: them job training and better benefits and so forth. And
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 2: so the idea is you turn the– for the first
• 2:38:31
  Speaker 2: couple of years, you turn the company almost into an
• 2:38:34
  Speaker 2: educational institution. But in order to do that, the union
• 2:38:38
  Speaker 2: has to have flexibility. That kind of arrangement is effectively
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 2: illegal in the United States of America. So it's that
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 2: you create the ability for the union to be more
• 2:38:46
  Speaker 2: flexible in how it negotiates and You don't set all
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 2: the terms for it. You allow the union to figure
• 2:38:51
  Speaker 2: out what's in the best interest of its membership.
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 1: But people are opposed to like initially knee-jerk reaction to
• 2:38:57
  Speaker 1: lowering wages and lowering minimum wage. I mean most people feel,
• 2:39:02
  Speaker 1: and I agree, that minimum wage is almost impossible to
• 2:39:05
  Speaker 1: live off of.
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 2: It is, 100 percent. Yeah, it is. But what these
• 2:39:11
  Speaker 2: unions are not asking for, I mean you have to
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 2: kind of trust the labor representation of the people here.
• 2:39:16
  Speaker 2: to sort of make the right arrangement for them. And
• 2:39:19
  Speaker 2: so it's not, hey, let's create a minimum wage or
• 2:39:24
  Speaker 2: a wage floor that's lower than the minimum wage. It's
• 2:39:28
  Speaker 2: what about taking for the first year of a person
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 2: coming into the labor market where, you know, they work
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 2: an internship for zero dollars, right, at a company. Why
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 2: don't we allow our workers to work effectively an internship,
• 2:39:41
  Speaker 2: get the training they need, get the benefits that they need,
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 2: and then join the workforce full-time at a much higher wage.
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 2: The idea is that you trust the union to come
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 2: up with this stuff or the labor organization, whatever you
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 2: want to call it, is you actually give the union
• 2:39:56
  Speaker 2: the ability to sort of negotiate over this stuff on
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 2: behalf of its members. You don't assume– the way the
• 2:40:01
  Speaker 2: United States, we do it is we basically take all
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 2: that authority away from the union itself and we try
• 2:40:09
  Speaker 2: to settle this stuff at the level of the government.
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 2: But Again, where unions have been more successful, where they
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 2: actually have higher membership and participation rates, what you see
• 2:40:19
  Speaker 2: is these organizations actually have much greater flexibility. And that
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 2: ends up meaning that more people want to join. That
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 2: means these organizations have more power. And then that means
• 2:40:31
  Speaker 2: they can figure out the arrangement that works best for
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 2: their membership. So you kind of have to trust people.
• 2:40:36
  Speaker 2: You have to trust that people are willing to do
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 2: this thing for their own benefit. And so long as
• 2:40:44
  Speaker 2: they've got the right authority and so long as they've
• 2:40:46
  Speaker 2: got the right tools, you give– you can trust people
• 2:40:49
  Speaker 2: to do what's in their best interest in these organizations
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 2: to do what's in the best interest of their membership.
• 2:40:53
  Speaker 1: Well, the problem that people would have with that is
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 1: that corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders. And they
• 2:40:59
  Speaker 1: always want to make the most money possible. And they
• 2:41:01
  Speaker 1: have to make more money next quarter than they made
• 2:41:03
  Speaker 1: this quarter. And one of the ways they do that
• 2:41:05
  Speaker 1: is by paying people less.
• 2:41:08
  Speaker 2: But that's why I think that you have to give
• 2:41:09
  Speaker 2: workers some seat at the bargaining table. There was a
• 2:41:13
  Speaker 2: theory of like economics that dominated in the late 20th
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 2: century America, which is that basically that the labor market
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 2: was entirely efficient and maybe the corporation didn't want to
• 2:41:25
  Speaker 2: pay their workers more money, but they would be forced
• 2:41:27
  Speaker 2: to pay their workers more money purely because if they
• 2:41:30
  Speaker 2: didn't do that, then they wouldn't be able to get
• 2:41:31
  Speaker 2: enough workers. Now, I do think that there's an argument
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 2: for– like there are all of these ways why we
• 2:41:36
  Speaker 2: should give workers more bargaining power. One of them– and
• 2:41:39
  Speaker 2: we've spent a lot of time talking about labor organizations
• 2:41:41
  Speaker 2: and that's important. And one of the reasons why I'm
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 2: such an immigration hawk is because it is really important
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 2: not to flood the country with low-wage immigrants. Because if
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 2: you give a corporation a choice between a low-wage immigrant
• 2:41:54
  Speaker 2: and a native worker who's going to require– by the way,
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 2: a native worker of any race, they're going to be
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 2: forced to pay the native worker more if there's not
• 2:42:03
  Speaker 2: a pool of low-wage workers to go to. And this
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 2: is like a consistent finding here. in the economics literature
• 2:42:09
  Speaker 2: but also just common sense, that when you flood the
• 2:42:12
  Speaker 2: country with low-wage immigrants– this is why I think the
• 2:42:14
  Speaker 2: DSA types are a little full of shit when they
• 2:42:17
  Speaker 2: talk about helping normal people. If you want to help
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 2: a normal person, don't provide a corporation nine low-wage migrants
• 2:42:26
  Speaker 2: to compete against them when they're bargaining for wages. You
• 2:42:29
  Speaker 2: actually give workers more power when you have a more
• 2:42:32
  Speaker 2: restricted immigration policy.
• 2:42:34
  Speaker 1: Well, this is– that's the– That's where the real con is, right?
• 2:42:39
  Speaker 1: Because a lot of– Yeah. You've told me that you
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: had a conversation with someone who was the head of
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 1: some corporation that was upset that they were trying to
• 2:42:48
  Speaker 1: shut down illegal immigration because he said it's important.
• 2:42:50
  Speaker 2: Head of 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
  Speaker 2: to pay my workers less money and it's very hard
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 2: because the native workers expect higher wages. It's crazy. I
• 2:43:00
  Speaker 2: mean there's this story from a few years ago. It
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 2: was the New York Times. It was like unintentionally hilarious
• 2:43:08
  Speaker 2: and it's talking about a– why Apple would choose to
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 2: manufacture in Asia over the United States of America. And
• 2:43:18
  Speaker 2: it's talking about how the American workers– it's almost kind
• 2:43:22
  Speaker 2: of judgy towards the American workers. It's like, well, the
• 2:43:25
  Speaker 2: American workers want to go home and see their kids
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 2: and have dinner with their kids. And it's like– by
• 2:43:30
  Speaker 2: the way, you go to the Foxconn factory in Apple– China,
• 2:43:34
  Speaker 2: the Foxconn factory that develops products for Apple in China.
• 2:43:37
  Speaker 1: And what do you see?
• 2:43:38
  Speaker 2: You literally see suicide nets around the top of the
• 2:43:40
  Speaker 2: building because yeah, the workers work 72 hours a week
• 2:43:44
  Speaker 2: and they sleep in little apartments four to a bedroom,
• 2:43:49
  Speaker 2: but they also are so miserable. You have to take
• 2:43:52
  Speaker 2: steps to prevent them from killing themselves. So, you know,
• 2:43:56
  Speaker 2: What I want out of American life is a little
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 2: bit more dignity, a little bit more, oh, you know, yeah,
• 2:44:02
  Speaker 2: I can afford to feed my family. I can also
• 2:44:04
  Speaker 2: go home and actually watch my kids' baseball game. And
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 2: that balance, I think, if you're looking at it from
• 2:44:09
  Speaker 2: a pure profit motive, you know, maybe the corporation isn't
• 2:44:13
  Speaker 2: going to think like that, which is why you have
• 2:44:15
  Speaker 2: to give the people real power to push back and
• 2:44:18
  Speaker 2: advocate for their own interests.
• 2:44:19
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people in this country, if
• 2:44:22
  Speaker 1: they had to choose, especially people that have money, If
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 1: they had to choose between a phone that was manufactured
• 2:44:29
  Speaker 1: in America where people were paid a very good wage
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 1: and had benefits and you have an iPhone that has
• 2:44:34
  Speaker 1: a little American flag on the back and you have
• 2:44:37
  Speaker 1: one that doesn't, I think a lot of people would
• 2:44:39
  Speaker 1: buy the one with the American flag on the back
• 2:44:41
  Speaker 1: because they would feel better about their purchase. I feel
• 2:44:46
  Speaker 1: weird when I'm holding a phone and I know that
• 2:44:49
  Speaker 1: someone was working in some factory in some foreign country.
• 2:44:52
  Speaker 1: Working 15 hours a day and being paid nothing.
• 2:44:55
  Speaker 2: That's right. I think that's true of our food, by
• 2:44:57
  Speaker 2: the way, too.
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 2: They'd much rather it be made locally. They're willing to
• 2:45:02
  Speaker 2: pay a little bit more so long as it's healthier
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 2: and it's made locally. There obviously are exceptions to every rule.
• 2:45:08
  Speaker 2: But I do– again, I think that we have run
• 2:45:11
  Speaker 2: the experiment where we just try to do everything with
• 2:45:17
  Speaker 2: low-wage foreigners, whether they're in the United States via illegal
• 2:45:20
  Speaker 2: immigration– or whether they're outside the United States via offshoring
• 2:45:25
  Speaker 2: and outsourcing. And what it has led to is, I think,
• 2:45:29
  Speaker 2: a society where socialism is a bit on the rise.
• 2:45:31
  Speaker 2: And one of our jobs in the administration, I think
• 2:45:34
  Speaker 2: about this all the time, is how do you make
• 2:45:37
  Speaker 2: things– I'm not saying we're perfect and I'm not saying
• 2:45:39
  Speaker 2: there isn't a lot of work to do because there is.
• 2:45:41
  Speaker 2: Like we were left in quite a hole by 40
• 2:45:43
  Speaker 2: years of bad policy. People always talk about the Biden
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 2: administration inflation. Yeah, the Biden administration inflation was terrible. It
• 2:45:49
  Speaker 2: got up to 9%. By the way, I think today's
• 2:45:51
  Speaker 2: CPI report is you had deflation in the United States.
• 2:45:54
  Speaker 2: We actually had prices coming down, which is good because
• 2:45:57
  Speaker 2: the Iran war gas prices came down.
• 2:45:59
  Speaker 1: But like– Gas prices have come down now because of
• 2:46:03
  Speaker 1: the Iran war? No, no, no.
• 2:46:05
  Speaker 2: Compared to where they were a month ago.
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 2: So they're not down from the beginning of the war,
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 2: but they're down from where they were a month ago.
• 2:46:11
  Speaker 2: So you had a good CPI report, a consumer price
• 2:46:14
  Speaker 2: inflation report today. But my point is– Yes, I don't
• 2:46:19
  Speaker 2: ever get to the 9 percent inflation, the Biden administration. Yes,
• 2:46:22
  Speaker 2: the Trump administration has had a much better record on
• 2:46:24
  Speaker 2: inflation than the Biden administration. Nothing close to 9 percent,
• 2:46:28
  Speaker 2: even in our worst month. But some of this stuff
• 2:46:30
  Speaker 2: is actually much longer term. This is 40 years of
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 2: failed bipartisan leadership, which has created really a kind of
• 2:46:38
  Speaker 2: shell corporation out of the United States of America. We
• 2:46:41
  Speaker 2: don't make enough of our own stuff. We don't have
• 2:46:43
  Speaker 2: enough self-reliance. Our workers don't have enough bargaining power. That
• 2:46:48
  Speaker 2: has led in a lot of ways I think to
• 2:46:50
  Speaker 2: this kind of socialism fervor and we have to keep
• 2:46:54
  Speaker 2: fixing these problems. Again, I think that we're going in
• 2:46:56
  Speaker 2: the right direction. Maybe people disagree. But it's going to
• 2:46:59
  Speaker 2: take years to fix this problem and if we don't,
• 2:47:02
  Speaker 2: we are going to end up with a socialist president
• 2:47:04
  Speaker 2: in this country.
• 2:47:06
  Speaker 1: I think it's also a narrative change and the narrative
• 2:47:10
  Speaker 1: is stopping immigration is cruelty and you're racist or xenophobic.
• 2:47:17
  Speaker 1: and that we should just instead give these people citizenship.
• 2:47:21
  Speaker 1: And it's not a coincidence that– like what we dealt
• 2:47:26
  Speaker 1: with over the last four years was insane where they
• 2:47:30
  Speaker 1: just opened the border and not just encouraged people to
• 2:47:33
  Speaker 1: come across but facilitated it, helped them, got them on Medicaid,
• 2:47:37
  Speaker 1: got them on Social Security. Got people– told people, do
• 2:47:42
  Speaker 1: you have a bad back? OK. Well, you're permanent disability
• 2:47:45
  Speaker 1: and you get free money. Put them in a hotel.
• 2:47:47
  Speaker 1: Give them a phone. Like that's crazy. And then move
• 2:47:51
  Speaker 1: them to blue states. And then you realize that that
• 2:47:54
  Speaker 1: has a direct impact on congressional seats because of the census,
• 2:47:59
  Speaker 1: which is also nuts. The census should count citizens.
• 2:48:01
  Speaker 2: It should only count citizens, but it doesn't. And that
• 2:48:04
  Speaker 2: actually steals– congressional representation away from areas that have lower
• 2:48:08
  Speaker 2: illegal immigration, which is its own problem. So yeah, it's–
• 2:48:14
  Speaker 2: the thing that I don't understand about the democratic socialists
• 2:48:18
  Speaker 2: of America– obviously I disagree with a lot of their ideas.
• 2:48:20
  Speaker 2: But if you go back to Cesar Chavez, one of
• 2:48:23
  Speaker 2: the original like founding fathers of the American workers' rights movement, OK?
• 2:48:29
  Speaker 2: He was a hardcore restrictionist on immigration and Because he
• 2:48:33
  Speaker 2: thought that the bosses would bring in low-wage immigrants to
• 2:48:36
  Speaker 2: compete against his workers and that would drive down their wages.
• 2:48:41
  Speaker 2: And yet the DSA, which says they care about the
• 2:48:43
  Speaker 2: wages of workers, is quite literally like an open borders organization.
• 2:48:48
  Speaker 2: So I tend to think that it's all BS, that
• 2:48:52
  Speaker 2: they are actually pursuing a set of policies that are
• 2:48:55
  Speaker 2: good for– like corporations care way more about open borders
• 2:49:04
  Speaker 2: than they do about any other policy the DSA cares about.
• 2:49:07
  Speaker 2: So while these people say that they're trying to fight
• 2:49:09
  Speaker 2: for workers and they're trying to fight for the working man,
• 2:49:11
  Speaker 2: the actual end result of DSA policy is to flood
• 2:49:16
  Speaker 2: the country with low-wage immigrants, which will destroy the middle
• 2:49:19
  Speaker 2: class in this country. In fact, we have run this
• 2:49:21
  Speaker 2: experiment for decades now, and we have a much weaker
• 2:49:24
  Speaker 2: middle class than we did before it started.
• 2:49:26
  Speaker 1: And I think this is a part of the problem
• 2:49:29
  Speaker 1: that this country has, that there's this narrative that Republicans
• 2:49:33
  Speaker 1: are cruel and they're anti-worker and that they're anti-lower class
• 2:49:38
  Speaker 1: people or lower middle class people. That narrative has to–
• 2:49:43
  Speaker 1: someone has to do a better job of messaging.
• 2:49:44
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to, man. I'm trying to. But it's one
• 2:49:47
  Speaker 2: of those things that it took a long while for
• 2:49:49
  Speaker 2: it to set in. It's going to take a long
• 2:49:50
  Speaker 2: while to get out of it. But what I just–
• 2:49:52
  Speaker 2: I try to remind people is that anybody who actually
• 2:49:56
  Speaker 2: cares about the safety of your community is going to
• 2:49:59
  Speaker 2: care about not empowering police brutality. but empowering the good
• 2:50:03
  Speaker 2: cops to do what they need to do. Anybody who
• 2:50:06
  Speaker 2: cares about law and order is going to want to
• 2:50:07
  Speaker 2: throw violent criminals in jail, not close down the prison.
• 2:50:10
  Speaker 2: Anybody who cares about your wages and your safety is
• 2:50:14
  Speaker 2: going to want to control the border. So I just–
• 2:50:17
  Speaker 2: all I can think to do is to remind people
• 2:50:21
  Speaker 2: that I'm not saying Republicans are perfect and I have
• 2:50:24
  Speaker 2: disagreements of course within my own party all the time.
• 2:50:27
  Speaker 2: But fundamentally, our party– is right now pursuing a much
• 2:50:33
  Speaker 2: better set of policies when it comes to safety of
• 2:50:36
  Speaker 2: your home, your wages, your ability to keep more of
• 2:50:39
  Speaker 2: your money. I just got to keep preaching that message
• 2:50:43
  Speaker 2: and the chips fall where they may.
• 2:50:45
  Speaker 1: And if you just look at the result of what
• 2:50:47
  Speaker 1: you see in these cities where they don't enforce crime,
• 2:50:50
  Speaker 1: where they don't enforce immigration laws, they provide sanctuary states,
• 2:50:57
  Speaker 1: you see disasters happening. over and over and over again.
• 2:51:01
  Speaker 1: And I don't understand why people who are voting for
• 2:51:07
  Speaker 1: these things can't see that. They can't see that the
• 2:51:11
  Speaker 1: results have been catastrophic year after year. They keep getting worse.
• 2:51:16
  Speaker 1: And the idea of voting a new, better person to
• 2:51:18
  Speaker 1: do the same thing is just crazy.
• 2:51:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's totally crazy to me too. I think part
• 2:51:25
  Speaker 2: of it is We haven't done a good enough job
• 2:51:27
  Speaker 2: of actually going to some of these places. Part of
• 2:51:30
  Speaker 2: it is that it is shifting and sometimes these shifts
• 2:51:32
  Speaker 2: just take a long time. If you look, the Republican
• 2:51:34
  Speaker 2: Party under Trump's leadership is way more working class, way
• 2:51:38
  Speaker 2: more middle class than the Republican Party of 20 years ago.
• 2:51:41
  Speaker 2: So these things are starting to shift. But the public
• 2:51:43
  Speaker 2: safety thing is very interesting to me because like one
• 2:51:47
  Speaker 2: of the promises of America is that every man, woman
• 2:51:52
  Speaker 2: and child, rich or poor, black or white deserves public safety.
• 2:51:56
  Speaker 2: Like every rich person ever has had public safety. Every
• 2:52:01
  Speaker 2: rich person ever has been able to afford some security
• 2:52:04
  Speaker 2: guard to make sure that somebody comes and tries to
• 2:52:06
  Speaker 2: steal their stuff or kidnap their kids. They're protected against that.
• 2:52:09
  Speaker 2: What America did is we democratized public safety. Every person
• 2:52:15
  Speaker 2: gets to keep their property. Every person gets to not
• 2:52:18
  Speaker 2: be stolen from. Every person gets to walk down their
• 2:52:20
  Speaker 2: neighborhood at night without being mugged. And obviously we have
• 2:52:24
  Speaker 2: imperfectly applied that. But What the left has done over
• 2:52:29
  Speaker 2: the last few years, why I think the crime thing
• 2:52:32
  Speaker 2: is it's not just a sort of public safety thing.
• 2:52:34
  Speaker 2: It's also a class thing is they have made working
• 2:52:39
  Speaker 2: people less safe. Like if you look at my neighborhood,
• 2:52:43
  Speaker 2: the neighborhood that my working class grandparents raised me in,
• 2:52:47
  Speaker 2: it became less safe over time and really working class
• 2:52:53
  Speaker 2: neighborhoods had much higher rates of violence. much higher rates
• 2:52:56
  Speaker 2: of carjackings and so forth. That happened during Biden's administration.
• 2:53:02
  Speaker 2: That's not a coincidence.
• 2:53:03
  Speaker 1: No. Anything else?
• 2:53:09
  Speaker 2: Go by communion, Joe, and we can talk about religion
• 2:53:13
  Speaker 2: and faith and the Ten Commandments next time. But thanks
• 2:53:15
  Speaker 2: for having me, man.
• 2:53:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. All right. Wrap it up. Bye, everybody. Great.