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#076 _STORY INSPIRE: Decisions that transforman with JD Vance · INSPIRE STORY

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