#464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism

28:33It's so big and it's so sophisticated. And it's so it's not just that there's, you know, there's this, there's the intelligence agencies, there's the weapons manufacturers, then there's the like people in the media who are either directly or indirectly just parroting, you know what I mean, all of their talking points. And so it's not just that you can kind of like, like you make money when there's a conflict, but you have this entire apparatus to like create the conflict and then create the public sentiment for that. And then and it's interesting, we're in an interesting place because we're kind of in this like new frontier of now where shows like this can happen and there's a lot of them and a lot of them are humongous like yours.

29:22But for so long, this just didn't exist. And it was just like, oh, like for so long, it was the case that like the New York Times and NBC and CBS and ABC and the Washington Post and the the Associated Press, I guess they could just move the nation. I mean, if they wanted to be like, hey, there is the idea that forget even like after 9 -11, the idea that in 1990, 1991 that there was any organic movement from the American people going, you know, we really got to see about the Saddam Hussein guy, you know, the dictator in Iraq is having a slant drilling dispute with the Emir of Kuwait. We really got to do something about that.

30:09Like that is not something that organically came from any that was not like a few soccer moms hanging out, you know, watching their kids game, being like, I really do think I think in a couple years we're going to have to send these boys over to Iraq to get like that's not they just from the top down were able to create this feeling that like, hey, there's a new Adolf Hitler on the rise over here in Iraq. We got to go see about this. There are these poor people in Kuwait. We have to do that. You know, like there's they were able to create this desire for war that was it's really incredible when you think about it because there's for I think for the most part in human history, you would have had to have some type of plausible threat, some type of plausible reality to convince people that we actually have to go to war in order to deal with this.

31:02Whereas like, you know, the United, the idea that in 1991, the United States of America would feel threatened by Iraq was just ridiculous and yet they were able to do it. Well, so to push back a little bit throughout human history, there was also a thing you look at the Roman Empire where just the culture of values are different where military conquest was seen as a good thing. So like, we just almost assume in the United States, and there were war has been framed in the defensive sense. Like where offensive war were not doing that anymore. You make a fair point. It's certainly true that throughout human history, there's been, there's been like overt, um, empire building and wars of conquest and things like that.

31:49But I guess I'm just saying at least even there, you would have some type of cell of like why we're going to go take these resources and why that will be good for us. Whereas the idea that they're like Kuwait just needed to be defended by the Americans seems so it seems so hard to convince anybody and yet they were able to do it. If you read like Neocon writing in the 90s, it's very interesting because they would they would tell the truth a lot more. And they were essentially, I think there was the Soviet Union had just collapsed. It was what what Charles Krain Hammer dubbed the unipolar moment.

32:30There was like a lot of there was excitement. There was a feeling of invincibility. And also the Neocon's weren't in power. And after 92 really, I mean they had a little they were in the George HW Bush administration. But after 92, they really weren't. So they're just writing at these think tanks and it just didn't seem as you know, like they weren't as guarded. There weren't like these accusations of hero war criminal or something like that. But what he said with Jonah Goldberg agreed with was that every I think the statement was every 10 years or so, America's got to find a puny little country and put them up against the wall just to let the rest of the world know that we mean business.

33:06And that was actually their mentality. I'm sure there's people that agree with that. I happen to disagree with that. But the the drums of war beating a little bit over Taiwan and China more than a little bit. Yeah. But there I can't even see a justification for just war.

33:23What is the military intervention? Well, I also think this and I've been saying this for a while, but I do think there is this like there's like this empire mentality that Americans have got to shake off. Like as if it's even a question of whether we should allow it or not. Like are we in a position to allow or not allow that? Why do we it's almost like if you were you know, like I don't I hope China doesn't invade Taiwan. I hope Taiwan remains as free as possible. I hope China becomes free. I root for freedom and prosperity for everyone. You know, but I also root for like everybody to have a healthy marriage.

34:02But if you were like if you were talking to me and you were like, hey the guy down the street is cheating on his wife. Like I don't think we can allow this. I'd immediately be like that's really not my place. And then on top of that, I also have no power. I have no authority over what they do in their marriage. Like I have to be concerned with my marriage. And the idea that like imagine if there were the political will to invade Mexico. Like if DC decided we're taking Mexico City. Like that's what that's going to be part of America now. And we're taking it by force. And then China was like, we're not sure if we can allow this.

34:42I think immediately most Americans would be like, allow like how the fuck do you think you're going to stop us from taking Mexico City? What are you going to do China? You're going to send your Navy ships over here to fight us off the coast of Mexico. Good luck with that. And at least from my understanding in almost all the war games that they've run, if we did militarily, even if it doesn't come to nuclear weapons being used in which case the whole world gets blown up. But even if we go to militarily try to stop China from invading Taiwan. And no one everyone agrees to not use nukes and we just fight a conventional war.

35:19We lose that war every time. I think what you said applies to a lot of the wars we've been involved in. But China and Taiwan is a little bit different because because of TSMC right because there's an economic dependence. If that was the concern, then the response would be we need some type of Manhattan project. And I'm not supporting a government project here. But there would be we need some type of Manhattan project to say we're going to make these things here. We can't and look, I was running that experiment before saying like what if we all pinky promise not to use nuclear weapons or something like that.

35:50But that's not the reality of the situation. The more reality, look even in in Ukraine, everybody, the biggest talks, the biggest pushers of this policy and Joe Biden and policy to fund Ukraine. No one suggesting we send in the 82nd Airborne, which is really the only thing that could repel the Russians right now and restore Ukrainian and the original sovereignty of the Ukrainian borders. But no one suggesting we send in the 82nd Airborne because we all know, well, we can't have a direct war with Russia. That's the end of the world. And same thing with China. So, you know, I'm not saying microchips or whatever are not important.

36:27But there's we can find other ways to bring the Taiwan is not magical. Like we can produce these things in other places. No. So you have the humility to say that you don't really know much about the situation. It sounds ridiculous to say, but there's something magical about not Taiwan, but the SMC. It's incredibly difficult to manage the supply chain and manufacture such a low cost that they are. And to add to that, China has been signaling about the one China policy. But you're absolutely right that you shouldn't be doing the Washington thing of beating the drums of war. It's like completely the counterproductive thing.

37:02There should you should actually try to find partnerships with China, build friendships and cooperation. India is doing a good job of this. Like build friendships. This is the 21st century conflict. This cold war thinking is going to be destructive to the economy, destructive to humanity, to the flourishing of the individual nations of the world. There's just nothing positive except making money for the military. Well, yeah. And it was totally destructive during the original cold war too. And almost led to nuclear war on a couple of different occasions. But look, I would just say, and I really, I'm not defender of the Chinese regime.

37:38I hate communism and fascism, whatever they are, some hybrid mix of the two. They're paying you aren't they? No, fuck them. I'm okay. By the way, I just get a lot of people speculate online, but I am not I'm not getting any of these checks, man. And I'd really like them to start coming at. But there's like even when it's like China, you say China's asserting the one China policy, but the one China policy is the policy of the United States of America and has been for 50 years now, right? So it's not I think what's happening there a lot of times is that essentially, even though officially the one China policy is the policy of the United States of America, all of these American politicians and, and you know, different figureheads across powerful centers in America are are saying that China doesn't have the right to go into Taiwan.

38:29And then China's in the position of being like, well, hey, wait a minute. No, that's not actually the policy. We maintain this one China policy, but we allow them to kind of do what they want to do. And you know, the the most obvious example of this was when Joe Biden actually said like, oh, we wouldn't allow that and we would militarily intervene if they went into China. And then and this is so bizarre. Then the White House, whoever that was, came out to correct the president of the United States and say, no, the policy of the White House is the one China policy, which look, I mean, again, I think the whole point of this is that the reason why whoever the hell was able to overrule Joe Biden and his administration, I don't know who that is.

39:16But the whole point is that if you say, and this is why there is some wisdom in America accepting the one China policy is that if you tell China that we recognize Taiwan's independence and that they're not a part of China, that might be the type of thing that would make China invade and say, no, we're not accepting that. And so at least right now, it's like kind of like, okay, here's look, this is the reality. It's something that you kind of run up against with the war in Ukraine a lot and with the situation in China and Taiwan is that there are, there are constraints placed on us by reality. It's not all just how would you like the world to be, how would you like it to work?

40:01Obviously, I think we would all like that bigger countries don't invade smaller countries and bigger countries don't bully smaller countries around. That is not the way of the world. We are a big country that is the biggest bully in the world. So we're in no position to let, but what we're kind of in the position is just like, you're like, hey, we'd sure love if you don't do that. You know, you can do it and you can get away with it, but we would sure love it if you don't. And so the goal would be to do everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen. When Vladimir Putin starts talking about like, hey, if you keep pushing the idea of Ukraine joining your military alliance, I'm going to invade that country.

40:39The goal there that or the move there would be to be like, okay, we'll stop talking about that. Is there something else that we can agree on? You know, like, is there, is there a way that we, you will promise you won't do anything to them? And, okay, and we'll promise we won't bring them in our military, like that's the goal. You don't just go, like, now fuck you were doing it anyway over and over and over again until they do the thing. I think we got to this discussion from the military industrial complex and military intervention in Rompol before that. If you feel like rewind a little bit, is there any amount according to you and according to various flavors of libertarianism?

41:15Is there any amount of military intervention that's justified? That's okay. Well, I would say, okay, so at least to me, in terms of like pure libertarian theory, or just in terms of like what I think is right, or wrong, like there is such things as a just war. The most obvious example of that would be, like, you're invaded by a military and fighting them off. So in that sense, also, like even if you want to isolate from everything else, from all of the awful US policy toward Russia, post -Soviet Union to all of the NATO expansion and color coded revolutions and all of these things, if you want to, you know, Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, I do think the Ukrainians have a right to fight and protect their land.

42:10Like, there's an aggressor there and you have a right to defend yourself. So certainly in that sense, I think the American Revolution was a just war. I think there are, you know, there can be just wars. In terms of pure libertarian theory, I think I would say that, look, you don't, you never have a right to kill innocent people. That's never morally okay. Now, there could be a scenario, just like this is true in life in general, right? Like, there's lots of things that you don't have the right to do, but you could come up with some scenario where you might be in a position where you have to do it because there were all of these extenuating circumstances, you know, like, you know, you could think of something where like, you remember the, the saw movies where they used to, you know, these crazy like horror scenarios, but it's like, okay, so there's a person, you know, an evil bad guy has buried a key inside this person and you have to kill that person in order to get the key in order to unlock these 20 people to let them out of a cage.

43:15Now, look, you still don't have a right to kill people. It's horrible and wrong and what you did there was still evil, but if you were taken to trial over it, you could probably explain to a judge in a jury, be like, I know, but the situation I was in was either these 20 people were going to die or this one person was going to die and under that situation, I chose to save the 20. So like, in other words, by perfect theory, no, you never have the right to kill innocent people. There could be a scenario where you were like, look, we had to take this military action and some innocent people did die and it's so tragic and awful that we had to do this, but we are certain that many more people would have died.

43:56Had we not done this? Now, in that case, I would look at that as like number one, it's much like killing the one person to save the 20. It's still wrong. It's still an immoral thing that you were forced into doing. It's not justified. I would say that the overwhelming onus should have to be on you to demonstrate that you absolutely needed to do that. That's how I feel about all these wars. I think that, let's just say, if you could make World War II, you could reduce it down to the simplest caricature of what World War II is and say there's no Joseph Stomp. We're not even partnering with him. There's a good guy in Russia who we were partnering with and the British Empire had never done anything wrong.

44:42They were just nothing but good guys. Of course, FDR was nothing but a good guy and Hitler was even worse than the real Hitler. You know what I mean? In order to stop them, we had to go on this bombing campaign and we only got Nazis. We only killed the bad guys and we were able to take out the Third Reich, but one eight -year -old girl died. You did this thing that stopped the whole world from falling into subjugation. I think almost everybody would agree, Jesus, man, you have to do that. You have to do that because the whole world is going to be subjugated. There's nothing but good guys here.

45:15The Nazis are so evil and there's one. I still would say that every single time World War II came up, we should all just be somber and we should all just think about that little eight -year -old girl who died and what a horrible thing it is that we had to do that. You know? And so when there are these campaigns where tens of millions of people are killed, the fact that anybody's ever spiking the football or this kind of like ra ra. We were the good ones. And then also when you added all those other complicated factors like that, this wasn't the scenario at all. But I do, so I guess essentially I'd say, no, you don't ever have a right to kill innocent people.

45:54It's never self -defense to be killing innocent people. I mean, sort of like some type of scenario where like, you know, if you're holding a baby and coming at me shooting and I shoot back at you and okay, I was acting in self -defense and it happened to kill a baby. But I'm talking about like what the scenarios where you're dropping bombs on cities, it's never justified and the overwhelming onus should be on you to demonstrate that you absolutely have to do it and that that should be the standard because there's so many other standards that I see thrown out that I just think are make no moral sense at all.

46:29You know, people will argue about like in Gaza, they'll argue about the civilian to combat and ratio. Like that to me doesn't really, that's not what counts. That's not the measure that's important. And also no one knows what the numbers are. They're all just kind of like pretend to. And then the other thing will be that people who say someone just recently argued with me about they'll say like, well, Hamas has to go. That's the starting point. Hamas has to go. And I'm like, no, I don't think you get to say that because the truth is that look, you can make an argument that Hamas has to go. Sure, you can make an argument that the Lecoudenics have to go.

47:07You can make an argument that Kim Jong -un has to go or that G has to go or that Putin has to go or that Zelensky has to go or certainly I would make an argument that Joe Biden had to go. But just because a government has to go, that doesn't mean you could just go kill all their people. Yeah, there should not be a starting point like the assumption, the axiom of the discussion now. The question is, is there no other option than doing it this way? It's like, okay, like October 7th happened. We can all agree this was like a horrific tragedy and an indefensible act of terrorism. Like, okay, is it guaranteed that another one of those is going to happen tomorrow?

47:45Or was this the biggest security failure in Israeli history? Okay, well, if it's the biggest security failure, let's just say not even going down the inside job rabbit hole or anything like that. But just saying, is a giant security failure? Okay, then put a bunch more men at that fence, first of all. And now you got to talk about how can you achieve your goal while inflicting the minimum amount of devastation on innocent people. Let's talk about it. Let's just you brought up October 7th. So what exactly do you think about the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel? Well, I mean, like what I just said, that it was horrible.

48:23And you know, it's always by the same logic that I'm giving you now, it's always it's always evil to target innocent civilians. I don't believe, you know, civilians can be held responsible for the crimes of their government. This was, by the way, the Osama bin Laden logic, which I think would also be the logic of like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or Barack Obama. But Osama bin Laden very explicitly said when he was asked like, well, are you just going to target like US military sites or are you targeting US civilians? It was in a review in the 90s before 9 -11. And he goes, no, civilians are fair game too, because you guys have regular elections, and you guys vote for your government.

49:06And therefore you're responsible for the crimes that they commit. Now, I think that's the logic of a fanatic like Osama bin Laden. And that's not the logic that any of us should follow. It doesn't make any sense. And it's not true that people are responsible for the crimes of their government. I think that that same argument is used quite a bit by people on the pro -Israeli side when they say like, oh, they they had an election in 2005 and Hamas won a plurality. Therefore 20 years later, they have no rights. I think that's insane. So, okay, so Hamas had no right to go after civilians. It's horrible.

49:45And you see, the teenagers being killed and the people, you see the images of people who were who are held hostage for all this time. So it's like your heart breaks for those people. It's truly tragic. I do think that it was in many ways in indictment of so many different things. You know, like October 7th happening was an indictment of the entire occupation slash siege of Gaza and the West Bank, you know, for that matter. It was, I think, should have probably forever destroyed the legacy of Benjamin Netanyahu, who is, you know, I mean, this isn't like George W. Bush, you know, was, I mean, he was on the job for almost a year when 9 -11 happened, but it was still kind of new, you know, like it was still kind of in his first year of being president.

50:47Benjamin Netanyahu was the longest serving Prime Minister in Israeli history and had explicitly been like, I'm the tough right -winger who's going to be tough on these Palestinians who's going to like move away from the idea of coming to a two -state solution because this is what we need to keep us safe. Like the justification is like, I'm going to be hard on these motherfuckers because that's because I know what it takes to keep us safe and that culminates in the worst massacre in Israeli history. And then, I mean, the other big one is that, I mean, and it's not like a, I wouldn't even say an open secret at this point.

51:25It's just out in the open. And he had this strategy of propping up Hamas for years. And so he had this strategy of propping up Hamas for a myriad of reasons. But a major part of it was that, look, man, as long as there's terrorists in power there, there's never going to be any pressure on us to give the Palestinians a state because, look, when you tell me I got in to go to you with them, he was allowing Qatar money to float insisting that Qatar money float to them. When the Qatar money dried up, sent the Masad in to insist that it gets back to him hundreds of millions of dollars brief cases in catch.

52:02And he set in his own words that the reason for doing this was to keep to his words were prop up Hamas, bolster Hamas, to keep them in power so that the West Bank and the and the gods of world divided and that the international community as well as the liberal Jewish community in Israel wouldn't be able to put pressure on them to make a deal. But what are the options? So if he doesn't allow the money in, it also looks really bad for him. Because if he's not allowing the money in, that means he's not allowing the quote unquote aid in to help the Palestinians. Yeah, but like I mean, the dynamic here right is from 2007 to today.

52:46Israel's had a full blockade around the country. They won't let potatoes and they won't let sugar and they won't they and the justification is because they're dual use. You know, they can be used to make rockets as well as they can be used to feed starving children. So we can't let that in because it's dual use. But cash to Hamas. Does that not have dual usage? Like is there is there nothing else that they give? So yeah, it's like, yes, when you have a full blockade around the country, you take on certain responsibilities. And I think this is, you know, this is the essence of really the the whole struggle here, which is very tough.

53:32I think for the pro Israel side to grapple with. But the bottom line is that Israel has an occupied Palestine for like a few months after a war or even a couple of years after a war while they're figuring out what we're going to do with them. It's been over 60 years. We're talking about a one week long war or a day short of a week long war in 1967. Israel's had control of them ever since and much like in the same way that like if you kidnap someone and you lock them in your basement and you don't feed them, you murdered that person. So in other words, stated differently, you're not allowed to kidnap people and lock them in your basement.

54:12But once you do, you take on a responsibility to feed those people. You know what I mean? Like you can't, you're not allowed to keep someone and not feed them. That is a worse charge than just keeping them. And so yet, anyway, I guess my point is the solution to that if you go like, well, I'm a bad guy. If I fund Hamas, I'm a bad guy. If I don't let the aid in was to let the reputable international aid organizations bring aid in to the people of Gaza. Don't have, don't, don't pressure the Qataris to send in briefcases full of cash, allow internationally recognized, reputable human rights organizations who are lining up trying to do it, stop turning them away, let them in.

54:54And and this is just, it's so long past due. I mean, like it's, it's just, well, I'm not like defending Arab terrorism. It's a, I think it's really, it's a tragedy that the Arabs embraced terrorism. I don't think it's unique to them. And in fact, you know, I think it was the design as malicious who introduced terrorism to that part of the world. But there was also like, they're, look, terrorism persists because it works. And this is true with state terrorism and with non -state terrorism, you know, it's like, there, it terrorism has often worked for people. The, I think the thing like early, I think early Yasser Arafat, I know is very influenced by the Algerians who, you know, successfully kicked the French out at embracing terrorism.

55:46And it was almost like the major miscalculation of the, those Palestinian Arabs who did embrace terrorism was that this isn't the French. This isn't the French hanging out in some colony with their home country back home where maybe a few acts of violence could work enough to, you know, the, the liberal population back home is like, oh, I really don't like the response to that terrorism. We killed so many people. Forget it. This is too much of a headache. Let's get out of here. Design as settlers were there to stay. They weren't going anywhere. They weren't going back to Eastern Europe, you know what I mean?

56:21They weren't. They were just, and so it's a tragedy that this whole thing went the way it did. But you always, whenever you're talking about like a conflict like this, the person who has the, or the party who has the power is the one who needs to make concessions, you know, and the, it's just indefensible that the status quo of the Palestinian people having no rights, literally no rights, being ruled by a government that they do not get to vote for or against, no right to do commerce with the outside world, no freedom of travel, no freedom of movement, no basic property rights. You can be kicked out of your home at any time, no right to a fair trial, no right to a lawyer, no right to a jury of your peers.

57:06I mean, the fact that that has been the status quo since 1967 is just indefensible. And if the, and then in the context that that has been the status quo, I guess I'm just not, even though I'm against it, it's kind of like when you're just lecturing about the way in which they resist this, I think it's very tough to be on a strong moral footing, you know? Yeah, you have to, you have to really empathize with the decades of suffering. Yeah, in the region, I suppose my question was grounded in how can this really government, how can the world help the Palestinian people flourish? So you suggested allowing reputable aid organizations in, but you know, that's kind of almost patching, just helping humans who are suffering.

58:02But that's not how you have a nation flourish. You have to build up the infrastructure, you have to build up a culture of the education system, the, the, you know, democratic processes of electing and regular elections and so that they're the people are represented and you have to have foreign partnerships, friendships, normalization of relations with the Arab world, with Israel, you can travel back and forth, and lesson that chokehold, like the security chokehold, you know, that you could say is justified in a militaristic situation, but why is it a military situation? The question is they're like, where do we go from from here?

58:48If we, you know, we'll talk about Nanyahu some more. He is, he's very criticized inside Israel as well. Yeah, for sure. Maybe less so after October 7th, because you know, again, in the same way you can empathize with the Palestinian people, you can empathize with Israelis where October 7th touched just like it is for Americans with 9 .11, it touched some kind of primal thing of fear of like, oh yeah, and like the same thing I said before, like I could also very easily go if my, if one of my kids was like at that rave or something like that and just got gone down or kidnapped, but I could understand being like level the whole god down place and I'm sure I would feel that way if that was one of my kids, you know, so yeah, no, that's exactly right.

59:38I mean, there's lots of examples in the world of, you know, like France and Germany or right next to each other and Ireland and England or right next to each other and they're just totally living in harmony right now. Like there's just no, the thought of them going to war is like inconceivable right now. Not saying it could never happen in the future, but it seems, it seems pretty hard to imagine and that being the case would have been very hard to imagine for a very long time, you know, like there, I mean, there's some serious levels of brutality between those two societies and even more directly involved, you know, Egypt and Israel went to war four times in a couple decades, they went to war and then in the late 70s, they made a land for peace deal and then been to war since, you know, and like I do at least try to hold out that like that is pot, you know, it's not like Egypt is, you're not going to say they don't have an issue with radical Islam in Egypt, you know, what I mean, like that's not the answer.

1:00:40It's just that they made a land for peace deal and once there wasn't, you know, once that wasn't that was solved, it was kind of easier to avoid the war and I do like to think that there could be a solution to the the Israel Palestine question, but the it's going to have to it's going to have to involve Israel taking their boot off of the Palestinian's neck and I know that that's scary and I understand that there are like legitimate concerns about that. There's was a great Thomas Jefferson quote about slavery, which was we have the wolf by the tail and we can neither afford to hold on to him nor risk letting him go, which is like you could see where that would have been like a real concern of people like right toward the end of slavery or or you know, whatever in the early 1800s say the first half of the 19th century, we'd be like, okay, okay, okay, we recognize this is wrong now, but we've had these millions of people enslaved for all these years.

1:01:44If we let them go, they're going to fucking kill us. Now what are you saying? They're citizens now, meaning the second amendment applies to them, meaning that the guy who I enslaved now can get a gun. You know what? And so okay, there are the, but I think in hindsight, looking back at it, we would all just go, yeah, but you can and slave people. So like whatever risks come with the next phase of this, unfortunately, you know, like you're going to have to just deal with that and and move, you have to start with abolishing slavery. And it is good to also remember in the hopeful message you said, that any day you can make a deal.

1:02:23That's one of the frustrating things I had with the, I hosted a debate on Israel and I was like, it just felt hopeless. And a lot of people I talk to it feels hopeless, but like I have a lot of, I maybe naively see a lot of possibilities at the peace there. I see, for example, normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel and then Saudi Arabia taking some ownership over Gaza, something like that. Some interesting, where a big major player in that region takes ownership and steps as the middleman. Yeah, I like, I agree with you and you're 100 % right that and even before October 7th, I think many steps have been taken away from, you know, the peace process and the feeling of that.

1:03:04I mean, really, I think since the second in Tafada is when like the appetite for peace, I think in Israel was greatly diminished. But to your point, I mean, it's going to take really painful concessions on all sides in order to get there. And I think that the, the personally, I think, and I don't know if I say this for the, not necessarily like the Arab world, but at least the nation states, like their governments, I think are pretty much there. Like Saudi Arabia and UAE and Jordan and Egypt, like if the Israelis, they're almost like, look, these are American sock puppets, you know, for the most part, right?

1:03:54And so their thing is that like, okay, 100 % of my population is completely opposed to what Israel's doing in Palestine right now. And they just hate that Israel, that the nation was created at all, that all the Arabs were kicked out of what is, you know, very important land to them religiously. And so the governments there are like, look, we want to continue to have US tax dollars flooding in here. We'd love to make a deal with Israel, but like you got to stop doing this to the Palestinians. So my own people don't, you know, rise up against May. So I think as long as the Israelis were like, fine, we'll do a two -state solution or something like that.

1:04:33I think Saudi Arabia couldn't wait to broker. In fact, they proposed a two -state solution just a few years ago. I mean, they're, they would love to be a part of that normalize relations amongst the Palestinians, like, which again, I think this, I think this had been accepted multiple times, at least by their leadership. It's like, yeah, you're gonna have to accept that like you lost in 48. You're gonna have to accept that you lost in 47. You're gonna have to accept that the state of Israel does exist. And you're gonna have to accept that like the right of return is not going to literally mean that everybody can go back to where they were.

1:05:11And what Israel's gonna have to concede is that it was awfully fucked up that they kicked a lot of people out of their land. And that the whole, um, a land for people, for a people without land was never true. That was just a slogan that made that felt good to avoid what you guys actually did. And the fact that you, it was inexcusable that you guys occupied these people for 60 years. And that has to end immediately. I interviewed Douglas Murray recently. He just wrote a book on Israel and Hamas called on the macracies and death cults. He makes what I think is a strong pro -Israel case focusing on Hamas as an evil organization, you know, evil for its corrupt leadership, who's essentially stealing money from the Palestinian people and allocating the money that is there towards terrorist, militaristic operations versus like building up Gaza.

1:06:06Can you steal man the case for and then against this perspective? Sort of centering, we've been talking about the people about centering around Hamas, which is like this extremist religious organization. The perspective being like they need to be, as you mentioned before, eliminated before any progress can be made. Okay, so if I were, so it's steel man Douglas Murray's case. I would say, well, I guess the case is right. Look, Hamas is a fanatical death cult, essentially, which I do think is a fair description of them. There is no question that they have pursued, they have, they have pursued a path that was just devastating to their own people.

1:06:59And there's no question they have not spent the resources they have on their priority has not been uplifting their own people. Their priority has been, I think, essentially antagonizing Israel into this overreaction so that they can turn world opinion against Israel. I think they've been very effective at doing that. And again, I think the argument would come back to something like, and the people kind of voted for this in 2005. And the people sure do, we sure do see a lot of people cheering when Hamas is doing some pretty horrific stuff. And so, hey, you got that on one side, and you have a kind of a country that's much more similar to Western societies on the other.

1:07:43So we can just like linger on that steel man. What do you make of the celebrations in Gaza after October 7th? I think it's sickening and incredibly disturbing. I just, I guess the way I look at it, I always, and maybe there is a degree of like naivete to this, or perhaps it's just that I just don't want to allow myself to go down a certain path because I think it leads to such dark outcomes. But I just always, I always try to be kind of like against the government for the people, against the powerful sympathetic to the powerless. I think that look, it's sickening. You see big crowds cheering on people who have been, you know, with these people who have been in captivity for, I think, some of them for over a year and a half.

1:08:36I also thought when Nikki Haley and other Israeli politicians are signing the bombs before they're launched into Gaza, I found that sickening. I think there's all types, I think like mission accomplished banners and flying on jet. I mean, I think all of the, I think having Bob Hope specials at the end of the Persian Gulf war was sickening. I just think all of it is like horrific. I just, I look at it and I try to say to myself, okay, we had one nine eleven in this country and we all, like, collectively we lost our minds as a society, you know, we were ready to go bomb whoever the hell our politicians told us to bomb and we didn't care how many people it killed and we killed a lot more than, than a lot more than Israel or Hamas has killed doing it.

1:09:24And I try to, I try to think to myself, okay, imagine being trapped in what is it, you know, people who call it whatever they want to, I do think, Pat, you can, and at least got, we're right to call it a concentration camp. You're trapped in a five mile by 25 mile area where you cannot leave. You are stuck there. You don't have an airport because the Israelis bombed it. You don't have a seaport because they won't allow you. You have no access to trade with the outside world and you're not suffering through a nine eleven. You're suffering through a thousand nine elevens. Your whole life is, these people, the people in Gaza are their entire life has been being refugees, you know what I mean, they're entire, there's generations of people have been in this status now.

1:10:12And so, you know, with my society lost its mind after one nine eleven, I just have a tough time like judging the people who who came up in this environment. But there's no question it is, I mean, it's, you know, profoundly disturbing. But I wonder how much of the indoctrination has really made the software of their mind permanently anti -peace. Yeah. It's like extremified them. And that, you know, it doesn't justify anything, but it's more concerning for the prosperous peace. Well, I'd say I get your point. It's an interesting question that I don't know if any of us know exactly the answer to.

1:10:56But I would say that like, you know, even after was 80 years of the Soviet Union, you know, it's like, there were real debates back then about like the new communist man and whether the minds had been so warped of people that they would never even want, they would never even care about these things like liberty or national identity or independence. And then yet at the end, it was all still there. You know, it was, it was very repressed and it went underground and people weren't allowed to talk about it, but they all still had it. And in fact, I was just listening the other day to this Murray Rothbard speech from like the early 90s and he was talking about how there's something where there was like a like a camera crew interviewed like a Chinese family under like a real deal Chinese communism.

1:11:48I believe it was before Mao Zedong died. And they were like, they were just saying all these crazy shit to the camel. Like they were like, would you rather, you know, your your sons are like healthy and live good lives? Or would you rather they suffer but be loyal obedience to the state? And they were like, we would rather be obedient to the state and blah blah blah all these things. And the Murray Rothbard was saying he saw this interview and he he was talking to his friend. He was like, oh my god, this is horrible. Like it's hopeless. These people's minds have been warped. And then he was talking to his friend who's like a China expert who had been there a lot.

1:12:20And he was like, no, they're not. That's what they say when the cameras are around. As soon as the cameras go like there. So anyway, I'm just making the point there that like there there is like, look, even in the situation with Israel and Gaza, specifically Gaza, not even the West Bank. When you could look at it, when the peace talks were going on, support for Hamas plummeted. When the peace talks fell apart, support for Hamas went way back up. You know, every time there's an aggressive military campaign, support for Hamas goes back up. So I just think that like, I'm more hopeful than not that like, you could get to a place where like, but it requires like you have to like, if you do understand the Ron Paul point about blowback, the general Macrystal point about insurgent math, that you just realize that it's like you're like you're you're fighting in a way that produces more of the thing that you're fighting.

1:13:17And so the first step is to stop doing that. Like you're cure is making the patient more sick. So stop doing that. And then let's see if maybe we could heal. What about the case against the the the Douglas Murray case of the death cults and that a fundamental part of this process, Hamas needs to be eliminated. Well, I mean, first of all, I would just say that and I'm not I'm not saying this as a fan of democracy. I'm not like a big believer in democracy, I believe in liberty. And I think democracy is often not in line with liberty. The Chinese government paid you to say that as well. That was all I had to get out.

1:14:00I get to say that what I want the rest of the park. But there's that I had that no, I'm well, I don't well, no, I mean, my beef with the Chinese government would not be that they don't hold regular elections. My beef with them would be that they silence speech that they that they put people in camps and things like that, the surveillance, that stuff. I think look, when you call Israel a democracy, which I guess is right in the title of his book. And I, you know, full disclosure, I haven't read the book, but I have I have listened to some of his thoughts on this stuff. I think you run up against a real problem, which is that the creation of the state of Israel, even though he tried to walk away from those comments as Norm Finkelstein called out Benny Morris for writing in his book, 1948, which is a great book.

1:14:46His words were design as project always knew it was going to involve transfer. That was Benny Morris's words. Now when when Finkelstein was grilling him on this on your podcast, he kind of said like, yeah, but that doesn't mean nothing that cleansing that could be voluntary transfer that, you know what I mean? Like, but the point is the Zionist settlers and they all they spoke about this openly. They all knew they had a major problem, which is like, well, you can't create a Jewish state if it's like 50, 50, which is and in all of Israel, it was much less than 50, 50, 50, but even in like the the Israeli portion of the partition recommendation, it was very close to 50, 50.

1:15:24Now you can't really have a Jewish state with a 50, 50 voter base because now you're just kind of in a breeding war for the next generation and or you know, like who who turns out the vote any more than we could hope it would be the prospect right now of making America in official Republican state or an official Democrat state. Well, how are you going to do that, man? It's like 50, 50 between the two. And so I think what Benny Morris was saying was that they always knew some of these Arabs are going to have to get moved out of here so that we could have more of something, which ultimately where they got to like an 80, 20, which is pretty much what Israel's maintained the whole time.

1:16:03Now Benny Morris could quarrel about whether that necessarily meant voluntary, but when it happened, it wasn't voluntary. Okay. So like when it actually happened in effect, it involved a massive amount, something somewhere between 700 and 800 ,000 Arabs being forcefully evicted out of this area. Now that's one thing. You know, a lot of nations are started on some things like that. I suppose if you just did that and then you were left with your 80, 20 split and you go, but we have elections from here on out. I guess you could claim it's a democracy still seems like kind of gaming the democratic system a little bit.

1:16:34You know what I mean? Like if I just if I just deported 80 % of Democrats and then say, look, Republicans win every election. You might be like, yeah, dude, but you didn't exactly get there democratically. You got there through force, but forget that. I'll let that one go and just say I'll call you a democracy if you just kept being a democracy like that moving forward. The real problem is the occupation that starts in 1967 because what look, when you've occupied an area since 1967, you can't even really call it an occupation anymore. It's an annexation. You know, you took these lands. You have control that you are what the definition of the government is.

1:17:14And you could call Hamas the government all you want to, but they're not the sovereigns. They're not the final decision makers. Israel's the final decision maker. Hamas does not meaningfully in any way decide the biggest questions about God's. I'm talking before this war, not even pre -October 7th. And so the problem Israel has in order to call themselves a democracy is that there's somewhere between five and six million people, less now because they've killed a lot of them, but there's somewhere between five and six million people who live under Israeli control who do not have voting rights. And I just by any other like reasonable, commonly held standard of democracy, we would not call that a democracy.

1:17:58I mean, like I'm not, again, I'm not even saying this to try to be inflammatory or try to pick on the Israelis. There's things about Israeli society I like. I don't hate the people there. I'm Jewish. I love Jewish people. It's not, but the fact is that's not a democracy. That's an apartheid state. Like I, and that's just, I'm not even trying to be inflammatory when I say this. It's just literally describing what's in front of you. If we in America right now said black people no longer get to vote and black people can only live in these few neighborhoods, we don't get to call ourselves a democracy anymore then.

1:18:31You know, and like I'm not even coming at this from a pro -democracy point of view, I'm just saying, like if your defense of them is like, well, we're a democracy, which seems to be the case so much, well, no, you're really not. You're really not as long as you got millions of people who have no say in their own government. Like then, then you're really not a democracy. And so, again, so you could frame it as democracy versus death cult was his language per Hamas. It's like, all right, you know, it's a little bit difficult to accuse another group of being a death cult when the group you are supporting has killed so many more people than them.

1:19:06Now, I'm not saying that's the only metric. Like there's other things that are factors too, but the fact is that like you have, I mean, I don't know to look over the numbers for the whole history of the conflict, but the amount killed by the Israelis on the Palestinian side versus the amount killed by the Palestinians is 20 to one in Israel's faith, you know, killing more people, maybe more than that. I don't exactly, you know, I have to look at the numbers, but Israel's called far, far, far more Palestinians than Palestinians have ever killed Israelis. And so it just, it rings a little hollow to me to just call them a death cult.

1:19:39Like, we're the democracy, even though none of, you know, there's millions of people who can't vote over, you know, who rules them, but they're the death cult. I mean, look, they kill people in a more primitive barbaric way, I guess you could say, you know, there's something a little bit cleaner about like, you know, when it's done by a government and it's collateral damage and it was done with sophisticated weaponry, you know, okay, still innocent people on the end of those bombs. Absolutely, but there is, I think a powerful ethical difference when you mentioned about the eight year old girl, right?

1:20:16If you're in your stated goals of the war is to do everything you can to avoid the death of that girl, versus saying, you know, we love death more than we love life. And Israelis, democracy are not our pro life for life. There's a little, I mean, okay, I don't, I don't want 100 % disagree with you, but I think if I would say like the degree to which that matters, you know, like at a murder trial, after somebody's been convicted and before sentencing, sometimes the judge will allow them to give a statement. And like, if their statement is like, I'm very sorry for what I did and I'm so sorry to the family and this or that or that, like that might be like life without parole rather than the death penalty.

1:21:02You know what I mean? Like, it might make that bit of difference in that. And if you get up there and you're like, hey, I'm happy for what I did screw the family below that, that might make a judge who was going to give you a life with that parole, give you the death penalty or something like it's like that type of margin around the edge. Let's say like you're a really bad guy and I want to kill you and you're at home with a bunch of women and children and I know there's women and children there. Like, I know for a fact that if I blow up this building, it's going to kill all those babies. But you know, what I would be charged with is murder in the first degree.

1:21:37And the fact that I went in there and said like, well, listen, hold on, it's a shame that I had to kill those babies. I really just wanted to kill that one guy. I wish the babies weren't there. And they'd be like, yeah, but you knew they were there. And you did it anyway, you get murder in the first degree. Maybe it would make some little difference tinkering around with the sentencing at the end of it, but it doesn't like in kind change what the crime is there. And so I just think at a certain point, when you're, if you're doing something like, you know, look, I'll say maybe with a little bit of an edge, you know, let's say Barack Obama wants to drone bomb, you know, this place to kill a terrorist and he thinks he can do it without killing any innocent civilians does it.

1:22:19And then it ends up killing some innocent civilians. That's one thing. But once you've done it over and over and over again and every single time it kills innocent civilians and then there's a wedding and you order a drone bomb strike on a wedding. Like, no, you murdered those people. That's murder in the first degree. Like I just don't. And so, yes, like, you know, like whether you say out loud, oh, it sure is a shame that we got to kill all these kids. When you're doing it over and over and you know the action you're taking is going to kill more kids. I just don't think it like it's, yeah, it's a little bit different, but really not that much.

1:22:55It's still pretty much. And then also when you mix in with that, the fact that like, you know, I mean, if you go, and I'm not taking an opinion on the word genocide, I don't even like to get into that conversation. I feel like it just derails it anyway. What is real is doing, whether you think it's a genocide or not, it's certainly not what most people envision when they hear the word genocide. But you know, if you look at South Africa's case that they promoted at the International Court of Justice, the whole thing is just quotes from Israeli leaders. And so, and I'm just saying, like, by the way, it's not like they're always saying, oh, it sure is a shame that we had to kill that eight year old girl.

1:23:29They're like half the time they say that when they're talking to the international community. And then the other half the time, they seem to basically be saying there's no such thing as an innocent eight year old girl. And so I just, I guess I just don't find that argument to be very compelling, especially when the thing has been going on for so long. There is some disagreement I have with you there. I think the thing you're implying is whenever they state it, it's not quite genuine to some degree not. It might be, it might be genuine by some people. I'm not saying it's necessarily not. I'm saying that when there's a lot of people who are saying the opposite, it doesn't seem like it's consistently genuine from the entire, you know, Israeli leadership class.

1:24:10And that even if it is genuine, when some people say it, that's that's kind of not enough to get away from the fact that it's, you know, when, when Tucker was on Pierce Morgan, he said the thing, he goes, you know, I don't like my tax dollars being used to intentionally kill children. And a lot of people really objected to that word intentionally. Because I think so many of the defenders of Israel fall behind this like, no, no, no, that's not intentional. We're just trying to kill Hamas. But again, like I said, we would never accept that standard in like a domestic murder case. It's like, no, like the thing is that if you know there are kids there and you know they're going to die, then that's intense.

1:24:50I think I agree with you fundamentally because wars hell and that's why I'm against war. But there is a difference. So like I think you're, we're like mixing in a lot of things. I think you're fundamentally against war. And that's why to you it really doesn't, doesn't matter. It is murder. It's just murder. And we shouldn't do murder. And there's a lot of democracies with colorful flags and that justify murder because they're trying very hard not to kill civilians. And then when you say you look at the reality of the Obama administration, the entirety of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, you're murdering civilians.

1:25:33Yes, you're trying to kill bad guys, but you're murdering civilians. That said on a ethical consideration on which kind of ideals, ideologies you can build a society after the war. One that even on the surface levels states that the value of every life of every civilian life is equal and high in value. That's a good society. That's the concern with extremist ideology that basically is very difficult to build a flourishing society on. But then I'll argument against that as the one you said, which is like, yeah, well Hamas is really supported now because of the war. But by the way, I don't disagree with the first part of your statement there.

1:26:23I just don't think it's in conflict with what I'm stating. It's like, look, I understand first of all that like there is a difference between the way you're going to say prosecute crime domestically within your own country and the way you can prosecute crime or what a war between two different countries, right? Like maybe it's not exactly the same. You don't have cops that you can just send in. You can't arrest somebody and put them on trial. It's not the same. So like, fine, you could say, but the point I'm making is more like, I'm just saying how we would think about these things in a domestic setting.

1:26:57We're talking about like morality here and morality by its very nature is something that rises above, you know, the rises above logistics. It rises above like nationalities or governments or borders or any of those things. Like what's right or wrong? Like if it's wrong to rape somebody in New Jersey, it's also wrong to rape somebody in Central Africa. Like it does. And so I'm just saying you're committing the same act that we would consider murder in the first degree here. And then just to go one step further, I think particularly like part of the reasons why people have different attitudes about the way two nations fight, like what we think of as war versus what we think as like say like a policing issue.

1:27:42Like we would never accept the idea that like, you know, if, if, if whatever, the same, the logic that's used in wars, used in World War II, even used in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially used in the war in Gaza. If, if, you know, if there was a bad guy, even a guy who had done something like October 7th, you know, at, which we have school shooters and things like that here, you know, if there was an active duty school shooter and he's in a school shooting people and we know he's already killed like blah blah blah blah. He's, hey, he's using him as human shields. No, it's not our fault. You see, listen, those deaths, those deaths, like while tragic, were the school shooters fault because he used all these people as human shields.

1:28:22We would never for a goddamn second. If those were our kids in there, we'd never accept that excuse. But what? Yeah, that guy was bad. You still had an obligation to do something else. That was never exact. Now that we may look at things differently in the context of a war, but also, by the way, I'm not sure I completely do, but typically speaking when people think of wars, they're thinking of this government versus this government, this military versus this military, that's not the situation here. You know, so like while Israel is saying, hey, they're using human shields, it's also like, and that is true, I think, to some degree, I think the Israelis overplay it a little bit, but there have been, I think, clear instances where Hamas is using human shields.

1:29:05But it's kind of a flip side of a different point. And like the other point is like, oh, why aren't they using their army or their air force or their navy? Oh, right, because they don't have any of those. Oh, that's right. So you're fighting a war against a people that don't have a government because you've denied them their right to have one. And so that's the thing where I do think if you've occupied the place since 1967, you almost now take on an obligation that you kind of have to almost conduct this as a police matter. You know, you're not allowed to just because now we are getting awfully close to the scenario that we just laid out.

1:29:46We're like, oh, there's a school shooter blow up the school. It's difficult to have a discussion about ethics when you're talking about war. It's really at the core of it. All war is immoral. Yeah. I mean, by its very definition, it's innocent people dying almost always, right? Like it's difficult to pick which is the just war. And even World War II because of the complexities that you mentioned is difficult. Yeah. It's a Stalin. Well, as my as my buddy Darryl Cooper demonstrated, I think we can have a reasonable civil discussion about these things without anybody blowing their lid. We can all just know, but like I mean, like there's so many.

1:30:26World War II is just it's the third rail like nothing else. I really World War II and the civil rights movement. I think are the like third rails of American politics that if you like if you have any type of view that is not the the approved authorized view of how these events went, you're in a lot of trouble. If you wanted to compare Hitler to Stalin's body count at that time, Stalin was already a genocidal maniac and Hitler had not gone genocidal yet. So there is a weird dynamic that now in hindsight, it looks a little bit better because you go, yeah, but he went so genocidal at the end there, you know, but like that's a weird decision at the time to ally with with Joseph Stalin when he had already done the worst things that Joseph Stalin had to or at least a lot of the worst things he had done.

1:31:20I guess there were a lot more in the war as well, but it's curious though you didn't mention Mao. Is that funding again? Because he did even worse than Stalin. So is that the second? I'm not sure that's officially known. Do we actually know that Mao killed anybody? I mean, all right, I'll come out. Stay here. I'm going to blow my funding. Bad guy that Mao say, don't do not care for him. I think the Chinese government officially says they have like an actual percentage that he was 70 % correct. Is that true? They actually broke it down to that 70 % but the 30 % was being the worst mass murderer in human history.

1:31:55That's such a communist thing to do. Yeah, we measured it. We measured it and perfectly scientifically figured it out. Since you mentioned Darryl Cooper, your friends with him, he told me about him and told me about the whole saga about where he got attacked after the talk interview. Yeah, yeah. So, well, Darryl, I was just a big fan. I'm still, I'm really just a big fan of him. We've we've chatted like a few times and I interviewed him on my podcast and I consider us friends. Marmermaid podcast is his show and it's just phenomenal. I found out about him from my guy is Scott Horton, who is a very close friend of mine and I think the best, the best person on war in the country.

1:32:45He's just a genius. He runs the Libertarian Institute and he's also been the editor at anti -war .com for many years now. So, he first told me about Darryl and that I, what I knew of Darryl was just that he did a podcast with Jaco and so they did their show together and I listened to a couple episodes of it and really enjoyed it. And then it was Scott who was like, dude, you gotta check out his podcast, Marmermaid. It's like the best history podcast. You got it and I ended up listening to his, the first thing I listened to of his was the fear and loathing in the new Jerusalem. He's done a few things on Twitter where he's kind of like shit posting and stuff like that.

1:33:24But when you listen to his work, like when he lays down like I'm going to put together this thing, I'm going to take years to put together like a long presentation on the history of this conflict or the history of this. He has like the utmost responsibility in the way that he tells the story and the way he presents it. I cannot understand how anyone would listen to his work and come away with the feeling that this guy is any type of like Jew -hater or Nazi apologist or anything like that. It's just not who he is. What Darryl said on Tucker's show was that he goes, you know, I'll say this to be provocative sometimes to kind of rib my buddy Jaco who's like Anglo -Saxon, so this kind of gets to him.

1:34:05And he goes, and I'm being a bit hyperbolic when I say this. But I'll sometimes say that Winston Churchill was the chief villain of World War Two. Now he didn't commit the most atrocities. He wasn't like the worst person there, but he was a guy who was hell -bent on kind of this thing becoming what it ultimately became. Whereas like this might have just been an invasion of Poland. This may not have been this whole cascade of like the worst thing that ever happened in human history. Now the retelling of that is always people go, he said Churchill was the chief villain of the war. But it's like, no, not exactly.

1:34:37Like he, you know what I mean, what he he's making a point. And I think he's he's putting out right now a long series on World War Two. He just put the prologue to it at which was excellent, by the way. And I really just have, you know, listen, if after it's out, maybe I'll come back and regret saying this, but I don't think I will. I really have like trust that Darrell will handle this like responsibly. And in fact, I think that he might be, and not because he's like involved it, like this is his angle or what he's attempting to do. I think just that he's going to tell the truth and the truth will take you where it takes you.

1:35:15I think he's actually going to probably serve a function of bringing a lot of those types kind of back to reality and bring them back to being like, like, if you think he's going to be excusing the atrocities of the Nazis in this thing, I just don't I don't think you're going to be happy with the end product if that's what you are coming into it for. Okay. One thing I want to say is I think calling Darrell Nazi, Nazi sympathizers just wrong. And it does a lot of damage. I think he's, he has a lot of value to his podcast. I think we're like, there's several things to sort of make very clear. I think as a really interesting guy, I'm sure I'll talk to him in the future.

1:35:52But I just want to lay on the table that I think what he's saying about Churchill is just dead wrong. I think legitimately that statement removing the trolling from it is the revisionist history statement that I think is wrong. The invasion of Soviet Union would have happened no matter what and possibly which I'm actually learning a lot more Stalin could have gone the other way as well. That that was going to be a global war no matter what Churchill, the role of Churchill will can debate. And I still don't think he was a main instigator of that expansion there. There's a lot of historical documentation of that.

1:36:29Well, look, that's a fair debate to have. And it'd be interesting to see you two kind of talk about that. We're not even debated, but just like have a conversation about that. I think the broader point you're making is a lot of, I mean, there's just a lot of trivialization of the world war two that happens in the West in the United States, especially in that used by Neocons by, oh yeah, by Warmongers to sort of, oh, I constantly, I mean, I've never, I don't think I've done a bunch of Israel Palestine debates. I don't think I've ever done one where World War Two wasn't invoked. And where that wasn't like, you know, well, I mean, look, Dresden Hiroshima, Nagasaki, you're going to tell me it's not okay.

1:37:10And immediately, just if you just look at it like that, like let's say the official narrative is 100 % true in World War Two. Let's even say every aspect of the official narrative is really true. Like the less in a World War Two is that we should have gone to war sooner, which is essentially right, like the the dominant mainstream narrative that Chamberlain is the failure. That was the problem, the appeasement. Churchill was the solution. If only Chamberlain had been Churchill, or if only we had gone to war with Germany and, you know, whatever in 1933, we would have just, they would have been better.

1:37:43Okay, let's say all of that's true. It still doesn't follow from that that therefore in every situation, appeasement is wrong and aggression is good. It doesn't follow from that, that's the only lesson of history. And that now it's just okay to slaughter civilians. Like it's okay to go to total war against a civilian population because this one time it was necessary. Like it's, and the idea that Bobby Kennedy said this to me again, somebody who I really do love and admire in many ways. And I'm glad he's the health secretary. I remember him saying of this, it's invoking the Nazis, making a comparison between Hamas and the Nazis.

1:38:17Hey, like, dude, Hamas doesn't even control Gaza really. The Nazis had most of Europe at one point. This is just not an apples to apples conversation. This is not, you can't even compare the two in terms of what type of menace or threat they are to the world. I mean, like, sure, maybe if Hamas had a lot of power, they'd use it in a bad way. But like, that's true with like some homeless guy on the street too, but he doesn't have that power. So like, what are we talking about here? As of the way, I do think that the way the World War II narrative is weaponized has been, even if World War II itself was necessary in just the way that that's been weaponized over the years has led to just like countless catastrophes.

1:39:00And like, you know, it's always, it's not just like, you know, I mean, I guess it's just in some ways there might be something positive about the fact that everybody's always called Hitler. If they're bad, you know what I mean? But because we make Hitler the, you know, the face of what is evil, eternally or something, he really does play the role of the devil in our society in a strange way. But there is like, you know, Saddam was the next Hitler and good off he was the next Hitler and Bashar al -Assad was the next Hitler. Trump is Hitler, Hamas is Hitler except the problem is that totally different.

1:39:42Yeah. And the amount of power is really important. It can matter how much destructive power you have within you with the capabilities. But like every, every major superpower with nuclear weapons has the potential to be that destructive. It's just unproductive. And yet the only ones who ever have dropped them are us. Yeah. I was arguing with one guy on a podcast, what, and he said that he goes, you can't allow dictators to have nuclear weapons because they might use them. And I was like, but we are the only ones who ever used them. He goes, ah, come on. That's naive or something like, wait, what?

1:40:15Why shouldn't that be pointed out? And I don't know. I mean, I'd prefer Iran not get nuclear weapons. I'd, you know, I think we're pushing them to probably want to pursue that. And I also think there's been a lot of propaganda about the nuclear program in Iran. I know at least since the 90s, according to Netanyahu, they've been five years away. Yeah. I think there's a lot of warmongering going on about all parts of the world that Iran, especially. I do have a lot of friends in Iran from Iran. It's one of the most beautiful cultures in the world. Like this just super superpower of intellect and culture.

1:40:54And it's really sad at disappointing that the regime is basically suppressing that culture. Yeah. You have to always remember like there's parts of the world where the people are beautiful and we don't get to see it because of the suppression, the lack of freedom. Yeah. No, absolutely. So all that said, there does seem to be a lot of hatred of Jews on X. Yeah. How much of it do you think is actual hate of Jews and how much of it's just trolls and grifters and conspiracy nerds just, you know, cost playing as Nazis? It's really hard to tell. I mean, I don't know. I don't know how you even figure it out.

1:41:42And I think this is one of the problems with outrage culture. It's kind of one of the unintended consequences of it is that now you just have no way of knowing who's saying this just to get a rise out of you or who really sincerely means it or who's some version of both. Then there's also, it's like there's so many weird dynamics because there's no question like I see it all the time. I mean, I see a level of like Jew hatred on Twitter that I've never seen before in my own replies and other people's things like it's and that's interesting. Like first off, you're like, okay, what's going on here?

1:42:22Interesting sociological phenomena. Right. Yeah, yeah, concerning and troubling and all of that stuff. But then you also see people who will be asking like completely legitimate questions are making completely legitimate points that are called anti -Semitic. And then that I think does not help the dynamic at all because now you're almost like, oh, there's number one, you just kind of, you make the word meaningless, you take away the disincentive for anybody else to actually be a Jew hater. I mean, I think there's a lot going on. You know, one of the things is that for young white men in America today, they've lived through the years of real insane progressive wokeism.

1:43:06And so, you know, which is something like, I'm 42, it's just a different thing for me. Like I come from a different culture in a different time. That is just simply was not the case that when I was a teenager or when I was in my early 20s that the school, the faculty, the politicians, Hollywood, all of them embraced racialism. You know, they all said we're playing identity politics and it is okay to dice people up along these racial lines and have that first and foremost in your mind. You know, and there is this weird feeling over this last year. And now with Trump being reelected, that like we snapped our fingers and wokeism went away or something like that.

1:43:47But these guys still came up in this era. And there was it was always the case that like one of the the dangerous elements of playing this game was like, hey, you think you're going to play this and that like young straight white men aren't going to start playing this game too. Why the hell would they not like why would they just accept will just sit here while everybody else is allowed to have a racial identity and agree even about it. And yet will be the one group. Yeah, you could just stomp all over us. We're the bad guys. And that's part of the reason why I always opposed the woken sanity.

1:44:23I mean, first and foremost, just because I think it's wrong. I think it's wrong to like be shitty to people based on their racial group. And that includes white people too. But then also you're like, you don't see that this is going to result in something bad. So there's there's that. But I mean, I, you know, clearly and it was weird to me is that I guess it's because a lot of the people who are the most upset about the anti -Semitism also happen to be supporting Israel like there's a big correlation between that. But clearly, it's a huge factor in this. Like it's it's not a coincidence that all of this rose up while Israel is just conducting this brutal campaign with our weapons and money.

1:45:02And so I always think with these things, whether it's with Putin or with Al Qaeda or with whoever, and I'm not saying like the guy who posts like Jew Haiti stuff on Twitter is the same as them. I'm just saying in all of these situations, you always kind of got to separate like what are legitimate grievances? And what are like, okay, that's your wrong on that. And you shouldn't be doing that. You know, like, so it's it's pretty easy for me to like, if I listen to like the Putin interview with Tucker, I thought his whole 30 minute opening thing was like horrible and just like kind of stupid, especially when you're talking to Tucker Carlson, you know, this is like for an American audience.

1:45:39You know how much that does not resonate with Americans being like, we have a historic claim over another life. Our entire society is founded on we think that's bullshit. Like does the entire history of our stuff is like, no, it doesn't matter. Sorry. Like literally read the Declaration of Independence. It just refutes everything Vladimir Putin said in the first 30 minutes. Like our view of the world is that God wants us to be free. And we get to overthrow governments if they're infringing on our rights. Like that's so that was stupid. But then when he's talking about like, NATO enlargement and bringing Ukraine into the American military alliance, you're like, okay, he's got a legitimate point there.

1:46:16We would not allow one of our neighbors to be brought into China or Russia's military alliance. And so likewise, when it comes to those guys, I do think that like you almost look, it is, it is just true. It is the case that America has fought many wars over the last seven years with Israel playing a very influential role in us fighting those wars. And you know, these were this was like a scheme that was cooked up by the Neo conservatives and the Lecude Nixon Israel that we would go through this path. But there's been confirmed by four -star general Wesley Clark. He literally said it was a study paid for by the Israelis that we were going to topple seven countries in five years.

1:47:01And we didn't get there in five years, but we've been made attempts to topple all of those countries since then. You know what you see, Trump's bombing the Houthis because they're pissed off about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. And so they're trying to shut down their straits or whatever. And it's like, so we're just bombing another group on behalf of Israel. And if you really are concerned about the rise of Jew hatred, I would say like, look, it's much like, you know, sometimes people would argue where, you know, the thing I said in the beginning about the terrorists don't hate us for our freedom.

1:47:30They hate us because we're over there. And people would say, that's just what Osama bin Laden says. He just says he hates us for our military. But he really just hates us because he's an Islamist and we're free people or whatever. Maybe like, okay, well, even if that's what's in his heart, that sure is his recruiting stick, that sure is how he gets other people to blow themselves up. And so even if you want to say, which might very well be the case that some of these people just hate Jews. And it wouldn't matter if Israel was at war with Gaza or not. It's like, okay, but that sure is the recruiting stick, that sure is how they get other people to go look at what these Jews are doing in our foreign policy.

1:48:03So I would, I don't know, there's a lot going on. I do think, I think racialism of all different forms is stupid and wrong. It always just leads to sloppy thinking and bad results. It's always kind of ugly. And then weirdly, it also always ends up hurting the person. Like, it's not good for you. It's not good for your soul. So I don't like seeing that stuff. But then I also think, you know, like, I was saying before about there's like this hierarchy of outrages that you got to have in order to think and act. You have to kind of put these together. And you know, I just hear a little bit. It's something that I'm, you know, despite being described as a self -hating Jew, I am really not.

1:48:45I love Jewish people. I love Jewish culture. I've benefited a lot from it. It's, it's in many ways made me the person I am. And I think made, I think it's influenced some of the best parts of me. But there is like a whininess and a hysteria about this stuff that I think is just like not healthy. I think it's not good. I've told many Jewish friends and family this privately. But it's like the way I look at it is like, I'm an American. This has been a wonderful country to be Jewish. Jews are doing exceptionally well in this country. We are 2 % of the population or so. And we are thriving by any metric.

1:49:26And if mean stuff on Twitter is our great burden to bear, I don't think we should be talking about it like we're in the middle of Nazi Germany or something like that. So I do think people get hysterical about it. In a way that's completely not productive. But to me, I think, I think of the Jew -hating nerds and trolls on Twitter is just the other side of the woke. I try to get that. Yeah. It's almost like a response like you were saying. It's just that the the woke weren't censored. And the response to the woke was censored. And now that annex they're less censored or not censored, you just get to see it.

1:50:07And they're both annoying. I agree with that. They didn't really help the discussion. And Israel, they don't help the discussion on anything. In fact, I, one of the reasons I stay away from that discussion of Israel, which I think is nuanced and really complicated in the way that we've been discussing. In order to have an intellectual like exploration of ideas, you have to be able to misstep and try ideas for size. And if I'm going to be punished severely by these, I'm okay being criticized, but when there's like low brain takes that are just lying about me on mass, like you get a huge amount of engagement just because you're like thinking out loud and reading history and it's just annoying.

1:50:51And by the way, I'm really interested about World War II, probably in the way that Dan Carlin and Darryl Cooper are interested. Because it's such an interesting thing, stage on which human nature was explored in all his forms, the geopolitics of it, everybody on that stage was complicated. There's a lot of, also there's a lot of fascinating military taxes and strategy and military technology, plus the nuclear bomb, all of that. That's like a moment in human history. Listen, I love Jengus Khan, Roman Empire, Alexander the Great. Those are all interesting studies of human history of military tactics, of brutality, of human nature, all of that.

1:51:32That's why I want to be able to discuss that. It's fascinating. Like, that humans are able to do that kind of thing. What causes them to do it? What were the dynamics involved? The propaganda on all sides could have been avoided or not. You know, plus Stalin is part of this picture. Yeah. It's like, what the fuck? What, like you don't get characters, you don't get character after the nuclear bomb, you're not going to get characters like that. You're not going to get a global war of that kind. It might be a different one, maybe a cyber war or maybe a war in space, but we're not going to get this kind of war ever again.

1:52:07That was the last, the biggest and the last global war we're going to get. So I want to be able to like mouth off and explore and yeah, argue with Darryl Cooper -Baud Churchill and say stupid shit in the process. And Darryl says stupid shit in the process too. And like together come to the, so anyway, the, the trolls on the left and the righteous big everything worse. Yeah. Knowing. No, I agree with that. And I'm sure, like I'm, I'm sure I'm not without my own bias in this because I like, but from my own, like self -interested perspective, I'm not saying like this is the main reason to be annoyed with them or anything like that.

1:52:44But I, what I personally get is all types of like self -hating, Jew, Nazi apologists, all this literally just because I criticize the way Israel's conducting this war. So I think that's like insane. But then I also feel like, and I'm not, was I want to be clear at this claim this. I'm not saying this is the worst thing about people who are Jew haters on Twitter. But just from a personal perspective, I'm like, guys, you are not helping me, man. Like it's like, I'll get people in my comments. I think are trying to like catch my back who just don't know I'm Jewish. And then like I'll say something critical of Israel.

1:53:20And then someone will argue with me and they'll be like, Oh, look, a Jew came in here to defend Israel. And I'm like, dude, first of all, do you, you're like literally, you might as well be working for massage. You literally make the entire, you make the movement who's criticizing Israel. Look terrible, dude. Like you are literally the enemy that they would like to have. And so it's, there's a very weird dynamic in the Israel Palestine conflict where all of there's so many of the loons on both sides who almost seem like they're secretly working for the other side. Like if you, when you see the Palestinian protest and they're chanting death to America and all this stuff, you're like, what are you, what are you doing?

1:54:06Are you trying to make people more sympathetic to Israel? Because that's the, if Rabbi Shmouli was working for eight off Hitler or something like that, it would all make perfect sense. You were like, Oh, I get it. You sent this guy out to make everyone hate Jewish people. And then like it's just, there's just a very, and then with the, with the, the Jew hating post too, it's just, yeah, it's, it just feeds right into the, the opposition side of how to caricature. You know, it's like, Oh, so their game is those smear everybody who's a critic of Israel as being a Jew hater. So your answer is to just really be a Jew hater like, All right, I don't think that's helping.

1:54:47So maybe this is a good time to ask for your advice because these folks are the reason why I'm hesitant. So I've interviewed several world leaders recently. It's looking likely they'll interview Vladimir Putin and several other similar level major world leaders. I've previously interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu for an hour. One of the biggest regrets I have about that interview, is it was only an hour. I realized that, I mean, I learned a lot, but I think he's a really important historical figure. And I think it's impossible to have an effective conversation with him that's shorter than three hours.

1:55:31So it looks like he's interested in all to do round two with me for three or more hours. And I've personally, so this is a bit of a therapy session, but I've personally been leaning against doing it. And I hate that I'm leaning against doing it because the reason I'm leaning against doing it is because the very people you're talking about, because I just don't want them to on either side, pro is your pro, it doesn't really matter, but the chanting sheep of animal farm, juhading or otherwise, just make your life. They follow you around everywhere on online and make it difficult to think. I think whenever I come across these crowds, the woke left or the whatever you call the juhaders, the woke right, it's calm.

1:56:27They just decrease the quality of my thoughts for the rest of the day. I feel like, I feel like, it's like, Rogan talks about when he hears a bad comedian, he feels like nothing is funny anymore. This is what I feel like when I read their thoughts, it's like, I can't, I'm going to go read a book now because I need to like recover my brain. It's a dangerous kind of poison to let in your mind because then you're like, it's like, hey, I can't be thinking about you when I'm doing what I want to do. I can't be thinking about what your reaction to this is going to be. The way I always thought about it was like when I get like, hate online, which I'm always get.

1:57:09It's always just kind of like, I look at it like this. I got a great family and a great career, and I really love what I do. I make really good money at what I do, and I go, I do shows all the time. I get crowds of people who love what I do. I get a lot of people who listen to my podcasts, who love what I do. And it's like, so if I get all that and then the price that comes along with that, is there some people who are talk shit online? It's like, that's a very good price to pay for all of this. And I just kind of made a decision at a certain point that it's like, I'm just going to accept that that's the price of business here.

1:57:49That's what it costs. And then, okay, fine. And then sometimes I try to have fun with it or mock them or whatever to go back. But to me, now again, I can never tell you what to do because this is a very personal price that you have to pay. And it's a very weird psychological dynamic. I mean, it's just not, it's almost something like that. We were not evolved to deal with and is very artificial. And it's very, you know, like if you're, if there's a group of like thousands of people who hate your guts and are furious at you, we're almost like hardwired to be like, well, I'm going to be killed now.

1:58:25Like that's the next thing that happens. You're not, you're not supposed to get to know what just someone in Arkansas thinks about you right now. You know, but so that's a very personal like decision to make. But I kind of feel like guys like me and you have already made the decision that we're in the arena and we're going to deal with that, that price. And so I just, from my perspective, I'm like, yeah, but how could you turn down? Getting three hours with Netanyahu. Like that would just be so interesting. And I'm not even saying, you know, like, I hate the guy, but I'm not saying you should interview him like you hate the guy or I'm not saying you even have to like grill it.

1:59:06But just if you get three hours with somebody, something interesting is going to be revealed there. There'll be a benefit to that. It'll be interesting to just see him talk that way. There's also something about as we kind of saw with with Trump doing the podcasts and even with JD Vance doing some of the podcasts. There is something really interesting about this format, the long form podcast where it just gets people to let down their guard and reveal themselves a little bit more. Like it is it's not just the time factor. Like that's a big one. It's a huge, huge one. But it's like there's something about like, if me and you were just like, if you we were having this conversation right now, but in back of us was like a cable news, you know, background of red and blue and sparks and a ticker at the bottom of the show.

1:59:55And then you just start interview is someone it's just a different thing. Whereas this you just kind of like fall into conversation mode. And I'd be interested to see him fall into that Putin too. Like I just think that it's great. First of all, thank you for the encouragement. But to push back on the complexity of a little bit, I think everything you said about your life is also true about my life except family. I want to have a family you some of a bitch you bragging on the podcast side. I can have a lot of incredible conversations. Some of my favorites just talking to programmers or video game designers or or to you about Netanyahu versus talking to a world leader is a very specific thing.

2:00:40And people don't understand that for example, you and I can mouth off. We can be super supportive of Netanyahu is super critical in a way that you can't do in front of the guy. You can't stream. You have there's a if you want to reveal something about that person. There's a different skill involved there in order to reveal how they think who they are as a human being. You have to just like we said with Darryl Cooper, you have to humanize the person to a degree in order to let their mind flourish in front of you in order for them to break, to let down the berries that they've put up and Benjamin Netanyahu has put up a lot of barriers.

2:01:18Internally in Israel, he gets attacked insanely. There's a game of thrones constantly going on and this guy has maintained power for a very long time. So it's very good at putting up those barriers. Plus, globally gets attacked a lot. So the task there is difficult. And so each one is a puzzle. And you have to make a decision. Do you want to take this on as a project which might become a lifelong project because of the consequences? And you don't need to. There's a calculation there. I'm not saying it's not so self evident that there is a correct and incorrect answer. And I do think that we've probably all had things like certain type of ventures in life where you're like, all right, no, I don't want to do that.

2:02:03But then you have to have a moment and be like, well, why is it you don't want it? Oh, is it just because it's going to be a lot of work? Is it just because you're scared of it? Is it just because this? And those typically are not good reasons to not do something like to, you know what I mean? And then now there might be, there is a reasonable, I think, point that you made in there where it's like when it is a different game to interview a world leader. That is a very different thing. Like talking to some comedian about his thoughts on all this stuff is a very different thing than talking to a world leader, and especially one who's conducting a brutal war as you're talking to them, you know, like that's a, and I don't know exactly what the way to navigate that is.

2:02:39I agree with you. It's not just to be like hostile and be like, I've got you here for three hours. I'm going to grill the shit. It's like, yeah, probably not the best way to do it. There's probably to like have a conversation to talk to the guy, probably try to get some important questions in, but also give him a chance to breathe and be a person. I just, from my perspective, but again, it's a very personal thing. For me, I just do think that I like I'm going, I hope you do it because I'd love to see that podcast. Well, see, this is why it's part of the reason I asked you is because I get a Dave Smith endorsement on the, on, on, there you go.

2:03:15So that when this completely ruined the exact at least there's another guy who thought there's a chance there might be a good idea because I don't know. I see that's the cool thing about the things we do. You've been through a lot of battles. You, you walked into a lot of tough debates and it's like, you don't know this could be the conversation that like ends you. I know. I, well, I'll say that's, I think that's one of the things that I love about doing debates. And there is something about that where I, I do kind of feel this like I'm a little bit of like an adrenaline junkie. I mean, not like really, you know, I don't like skydive or do stuff like that.

2:03:53But like doing stand up is kind of like, you know, there's always something about that that's like you're risking a lot by doing it. You're like, you feel alive, you know, like not and not like the way you do when you first start, but there is something about that. And there's something about, well, first of all, I just kind of, I feel there's kind of two things like number one, I feel like I'm obligated. And I wouldn't say this for you, but I think this is true for me. I think I'm obligated to do like at least several debates a year. And I think that, I think that if I'm going to go on shows like your show and Rogan show and Tucker show and, you know, Candace or whoever else, you know, Patrick Bet David and Tim Pool, I go on these big shows for long form things.

2:04:34And I'm sitting there and I'm being like, okay, it's like this. Like, and this is, and I think it's like this. And then if I'm going to do that, I kind of have an obligation to like test myself against someone being like, no, it's not like that. And then, you know, like showing that I think I can stand up to these, these kind of challenges. So I think it feel like I'm kind of obligated. But then I do like, there is a feeling to it where you're like, hey, man, like this is not, my career is not a joke. Like I got little kids. This is how I support them, you know, and like I am kind of taking my career in my hands every time I go do one of these debates.

2:05:09Like if I just get smoked and this guy just totally beats me up, it's like, I don't know, I don't know how are you, how's anyone going to look at me again after that? You'd be like, oh, you acted like you had such a good point. And then this guy just totally destroyed your point. So but that then kind of motivates me to be like, okay, I got to really be on point. I got to really make sure I've done my homework. I got to make sure my arguments really tight. I got to think about this thing from all ends. And then on the other level, it's like, if someone can do that to me, then kind of that's the way the movie is supposed to end.

2:05:43You know, like if you, if I, if there is some hole in my argument that I'm just not thinking of and then someone else can point it out to me and I got no response to it, then I kind of deserve to be humiliated publicly for that. So all right. I don't know. That's kind of exciting in a way. Because the movie ends at some point. Well, that's true. Unless you and your genius friends can figure out how to, you know, give us eternal life or something. I don't think I want to live. I don't think I want to live forever. I think I think flirting with that idea too much is dangerous. This kind of transhumanism kind of idea.

2:06:18Yeah. It's not a good way of thinking. Of course, I do want to heal diseases and extend human life, especially high quality of human life. But yeah, if we could live, if we could be in like much better shape and much healthier and like extend life by a few decades, I think that would be great. But I agree with you. I think there's supposed to be an expiration date on it. I think we're supposed to, we're supposed to, there's something about like a scarcity being a necessary component in a lot of different feel. You know what I mean? Where it's like, the life itself, having a finite amount of time on it, I think makes it more precious.

2:07:02Yeah. At the individual level and then at the societal level, it just does seem like death is the way you get new ideas. It's like people kind of solidify their ideas and are unwilling to change their mind and the only way you get new ideas. Yeah. It's like right the next generation has to take them over. Yeah. You have to keep churning. All right. Speaking of the trolls and Israel, I got to ask you about this. Let's talk about Jeffery Epstein. I recently got attacked because of conversation, a couple conversations I had with Tim Dylan three and four years ago. I love Tim Dylan. He's hilarious.

2:07:38I love Tim too. I've known Tim for many years. Love that guy. Yeah. So we, I bring up Jeffery Epstein often because there's a, it's a fascinating study of evil to me, whichever angle you take on it. And I think they're partially to talk shit, but I showed some skepticism that he's connected to Mossad. So to me, there's three, and I've evolved on that since then. By the way, I'm not actually sure it's Mossad. It could be any intelligence agency. It could be CIA, but I was wondering if you could educate me. I did a little research on this last night. I looked into it a little more. And then I saw that you said he's definitely Mossad.

2:08:20Well, I don't know if I didn't say he was definitely Mossad. I don't know my exact, I mean, I made one kind of joky post. As is the case with almost any intelligence operation. It, look, I don't want to like poo poo anybody's hopes here because I guess like the JFK files just got released and supposedly the rest of the Epstein files are coming out. And there's a lot of, there's a major yearning right now to get to the end of the movie where we find out everything that happened, you know, and that I think it's great that people have that desire and I hope more and more does come out. I think the truth is that with any intelligence operations, we're probably never going to know all of the details of exactly what happened.

2:09:06The funny thing about intelligence agencies and I've been a regular accused of being CIA, FSB, or Mossad, depending on the group that's attacking me. But I think it's a fascinating topic and it's very difficult to know somebody's intelligence. But if you have any nuance or want to discuss the nuances, then the common is going to be that guy for sure. So I'm right. If we're talking about Mossad or so on. But yeah, that's one of the things I didn't know and I saw the, what is it Alex Acosta said that, basically you can mention that Epstein's intelligence, that to me is like, okay, that's the piece of evidence.

2:09:44That's a really valuable piece of evidence that he's intelligence. And that was very not just intelligence from Mossad. Because that, before that, I thought it might be CIA because that's what I kind of heard. And it's a great possible that he was working with elements of both. I mean, as I think is often the case, I also think that something that people get a little bit wrong. Like when they think like, okay, this guy was CIA or this guy was Mossad. And then there's also, I think there's the possibility that there are rogue elements within those organizations. Like this is not necessarily coming from the director or what you know, I don't know.

2:10:17But you look at the guy, the way his career trajectory tracks is like completely unexplainable outside of being connected to intelligence. Like, it's not just like the one or two people saying that he's intelligence. It's like the idea that you're just like, you have no experience and you're a teacher at Dalton. You're just like this incredibly elite New York City private school. And then all of a sudden you're at Bayer Sterns and like within two years, you've like made partner and you make your worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And nobody knows where you made your money for this. Just doesn't happen.

2:10:52And then you're just in, you're just inserted into this world with all of the most like highest level political leaders and cultural figures and stuff. But the thing that's amazing about the Jeffrey Epstein story is that it's like the level of evil and the level of corruption that it exposes no matter what the answer is, like no matter what the answer is, it's you're gonna, you're gonna tell me that there was a pedophile ring in our country that involved. I mean, listen, dude, if you had said this shit before it came out, this would have been the wildest conspiracy theory. But a pedophile ring that involves the most powerful people in the United States of America and in the world to some degree, touching the royal family, the Clintons, like all these people.

2:11:41And that this was known and covered up and then allowed to continue. I mean, like, there's a black male operation that relies on raping American children. And like, if this is, you know, whether it's CIA or Masad doesn't make one less, you know, it's equally horrible. But then there's like these elements where like, you're like, okay, so when it, when he first got arrested and then he was given a slap on the risk, slap on the wrist and then the prosecutor says, well, I was told by the intelligence community that he's intelligence and to go easy on him. It's like, okay, okay. And you didn't resign and discuss that day.

2:12:27You know what I mean? I don't think that's too much to ask for. You know what? There was the ABC reporter who said that she had the whole story. She's on the hot mic saying she had the whole story and then the network told her to squash it. It's like, and you stayed working there? Like that's, I'm sorry. I'm not asking for, I'm not saying like, we're all imperfect and none of us are heroes. But like, you're in a news network and you uncovered a child raping ring that implicated the most powerful people in our society and your news network told you we will not run this story because of our relationship with the royal family.

2:13:01And you did not resign in disgust that day and take this story to every single independent independent, you know, outlet that would maybe publish it. I'm sorry. It's like the thing, it's so damning to the entire apparatus that we did not see at the very least see mass resignations of this. Forget even like at the very least expect that it would have been prosecuted and shut down. And then, you know, still to this day, you know, even it's like, I think Tucker Carlson just said this recently. But like, and I guess it's a little bit of a weird area when you're filming people raping children. But what are the tapes?

2:13:41Why is everyone talking about the flight logs and the files? Where are the tapes? This guy was clearly taping people to blackmail them. Where there is is I don't know what the legal process of this is, but like, because I think technically it's child porn. So like, yeah, okay, you can't just like distribute it out and let everybody watch it. But isn't there a way that like somebody has to sit down and watch it and see who is implicated in this and see who it would like. I just don't and there seems to be there's even, I think there's a lot of larping with this administration going on right now on this topic.

2:14:12But does anybody really expect that we're actually going to get to the bottom of this? Because I don't. And that in itself just tells you what a sham this whole goddamn system is. One of the things that's so amazing about the Jeffrey Epstein story right, so I mean, you have all of that. And then of course, the end of it, which is just like, wait a minute, wait, what? Hold that he's in like the most secure like prison. And then he gets the cameras go out and the correctional officers don't fill out the log. And he's found dead. I mean, it's the like, it's just, but when you look at it in totality, there's just like no getting around the the huge indictment it is of this entire like everything.

2:14:51And I mean, even the fact that even the Trump administration when Pam Bondy goes, we're going to release all of this information. We've only redacted what needs to be redacted for national security. Like why does anything need to be redacted for national security? Like, I'm sorry, you're telling me there's a pedophile ring. And we can't tell you everything about it for national security. Why would that be related to national security? I mean, there's just, it's like, and I do think there's something and it's very interesting because, you know, like we talked briefly, was that on air before we were talking about Sam Harris kind of like criticised me a little bit for not having the credentials to talk about some of this stuff, which you know, like I even said, okay, he's got a point.

2:15:31But it's like one of the things that like guys like Sam Harris will talk about a lot is that like, look, we need trust in institutions. And this is his big thing where he goes, you know, these people like Joe Rogan and Dave Smith are just tearing down the institutions. And while I recognize that's an issue, I also think we need trust in these institutions. It's like Sam Harris. Well, it's like, yeah, but what yeah, well, if you talk in that tone, then it means you're not being emotional and you're only being logical and rational, which is like, I actually don't think is appropriate when you're talking about a child rapist ring.

2:16:00But whatever, that's my take on it. But it's like, okay, so we're, we are these institutions. I'm supposed to trust, man. You're telling me there's a pedophile ring that is at least in some degree associated with national security. Like what? And how could you possibly have this story? Like if you did care about the trust in institutions, then you should be even louder than me talking about like, you got to tell the truth on this story. Otherwise, we'll never have trust in these institutions. I'm the same, actually, I believe in institutions. Like I, I think they have out. So this is where you and I probably disagree on the libertarian side.

2:16:35I think it's, I think institutions, if they're run efficiently, can, right? Who's the utopian now? That's right. I mean, there's the utopian notion to for sure. But because it's very possible that bureaucracies always destroy the productivity and the effectiveness of institutions as possible. It's a Lord Act can kind of power corrupt. Yes, type of deal. And it's, you're absolutely right. If you believe in institutions, you should be, you should want to release everything about Epstein. You should want to be transparent as much as possible. Yeah, I, but the one thing I'm, and it is very suspicious.

2:17:09So I'm more and more becoming convinced that there's some intelligence agency connected to it. But I also want to like, setting that aside, just comment on one thing where, again, it's super entertaining, but people say about me that I came out of nowhere. And that's proof that I'm intelligence. So first of all, there is a track record of where I came from. Quarant quote. There's just people are too lazy. And there is something sexy about like just saying, fucking, massage. Oh, he's denying it. Fucking massage. Yeah. By the way, the massage thing is a new thing. It used to be FSB and CAA. Why don't I want to say about that?

2:17:51Oh, yeah, I've been gradually growing in popularity over the past 10 years. I've been doing interviews, lectures, podcasts, and they've been just, it's actually very gradual. And I don't know what that's the difference. There's something I know I've experienced this too, right? Like there's such a difference in perspective because like if somebody, like if somebody just found me, and they just found out who I am, I go, this guy's brand new. Yeah, but like all these shows, but you're like, yeah, well, I don't know, dude, not from my perspective, I'm not brand new. Like, dude, I've been doing, I've been doing stand -up comedy for 19 years.

2:18:28And I've been podcasting for like 15 years. And you're like, and then when it like starts taking off, everybody's like, oh, this guy just came out of nowhere. You're like, I mean, all right, I wish, I wish I had been aware that it was all this quick, but look a lot of this stuff with so much of this too. It's just laziness and people searching for confirmation bias and people searching for a simpler story because that's easier. So if you're, if they believe that Epstein was Mossad, and there's a clip of you where you're like, I don't know about that, then they go, see, he's Mossad too. And now that fits perfectly into my little story.

2:19:03I don't know the truth is that there, it's quite possible that people just aren't convinced. However, given enough time, Tim Dillon is always right about everything. So you got that, eventually you'll have to admit that he got it right. And you know, not to say the cliche cheesy thing, but it is true that the comedian sometimes say, say the obvious thing that people are a little resistant to say then as I'm being, being true. Now we just landed some more credibility to Tim Dillon's insanity. Great. Now I do want to comment on the, there's the other aspect of me that came out of nowhere fine, but I do get to talk to world leaders, which I have to really admit, I don't know.

2:19:51You basically gain a reputation, you could talk to a lot of scientists early on, you gain a reputation like this is, this is an interesting person to talk to, and that travels. And then over time, you just, you get fans, and world leaders are humans too, like they listen to the stuff. And sometimes it's their family that listen to them. Yeah, oftentimes right, like their kids, it seems to be a big one. And so that's just how it happens. And so you sent an email, hey, you want to talk, and then their team or them directly in several cases, they just respond, yeah. And that's it. It's as simple as that.

2:20:31And they're like, they're, they're human beings. And I think a lot of them as human beings are exhausted by journalists, but shady journalists, I should say, and it's hard for them to know, which is the good journalist, by good, there's the cynical view that they want, they want somebody who's just going to spot propaganda that aligned with a propaganda. No, they just want a good faith person in front of them. Now, like, and I should also say that there's no single world leader has told me which questions to ask. There's no, there's this meme about my conversation with Modi that's scripted. Nope, there was zero oversight.

2:21:10I have full control. Well, it's also like there's, I mean, obviously one of the major dynamics, which is just like one of the most interesting kind of themes in the world, I think right now, but it's particularly true in America is that like the corporate media is just shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. And this, whatever this is, which is so weird that we still all call them podcasts, because that's just not the right name for them at all. And none of us have had an iPod in quite a long time. And like, I don't, it's just such a like the first thing person came up with it. It's a cast on an iPod.

2:21:49It's a podcast. And we all still use that term, even though it's, but whatever these, these shows on the internet have the audience. And so that's a big factor, just that it's like, oh, this is where you can go to the audience. And then I would say, and I don't know exactly like I have no idea, I should say the motivations inside any individuals heads, but I would say like in the case of Vladimir Putin, he is completely blacked out in American media. And to the point that even RT has been blocked out, they would, they never play any of his speeches. They never allow you to hear like, look, this is what this guy's perspective is.

2:22:23It's a, it's very interesting in the same way that they kind of all flipped out when Osabah bin Laden's letter to America went viral on on TikTok. And you know, then all the talks of banning TikTok, increased and stuff. So for him, say like when he did the Tucker interview or if he doesn't interview with you, well, that's a way for him to do an end around and allow his perspective to be hurt, which I personally think is like, obviously a good thing. Like if you're going to go in a war and we're kind of in a war with Russia right now, you should know what is the other guy's perspective is, not that you should take it as gospel.

2:22:57But and then from Netanyahu's perspective, I would imagine, you know, they, Israel has a lot of control in a lot of different areas. But they have been losing the internet battle very, very badly. And it's a major problem for Israel. I mean, I don't know. I still think, I think, you know, very strange way everybody seems to be underestimating how grave the implications of all of this are. But Israel, the view of Israel from the world is never going to be the same what it was before the entire and the generational divide on it is so stark like everybody, you know, 40 and under who very quickly, you know, the time goes by quickly pretty soon.

2:23:41That's, you know, the 40 and over crowd gets aged out pretty quickly. And this is just go it's never going to be the perception of Israel that my parents generation had ever again because of this war. And you know, I'm sure to some degree at least Netanyahu is like feels like he has to try to get his perspective into that internet conversation area. And so I think a lot of different people, you know, obviously, Donald Trump's it's in a way it's kind of shocking. And I guess kind of Bobby Kennedy when he was running for president Vavikram Aswami, when he was running for president, they kind of were doing some of it even before Donald Trump was.

2:24:20But it is kind of crazy in a way that it took this long for politicians to figure out that it's like, Oh, well, I guess we got to go where the audience is. That's the point of doing shows. Right. I mean, like, would you rather do a show, you know, like with a million people or with 10 million people, it's like, well, okay, you guys do CNN all the time. Why wouldn't you do Joe Rogan's podcast? It's just a bigger audience. And those people get to vote too. You reminded me with Netanyahu that one of the goals I have with the podcast is to have the kind of conversation that a historian would find useful 20 years from now, which is tough to do because you're going to get punished for it.

2:25:04Because it's most that want to reveal as much information as possible without the signaling without the you just want to know who was this person. Yeah, no, I think I think that's exactly right. And I think this was kind of what Darryl was saying. I think that the part of the the awful thing of always using World War II as the next example for the next war is that it's almost like you're never, this is, you know, they hate us for our freedom or Vladimir Putin's just mad and he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union. It's like, you, they always insist that we can never treat our enemies as people and be like, this is a real person with real grievances.

2:25:41And even they might be a fanatic also. Like I'm not saying they're not. But it's just like that there are these like human qualities to it. And it's always like, you know, whatever, even when they were going before they did the Obama and Hillary Clinton did the regime change war in Libya, it was like, all this propaganda. He's buying up Viagra to rape all the women and he's going to go genus. This guy would have been in power for decades. You know what I mean? Like, and I'd done that. And there's just like, oh, it's like the way you're supposed to think about war is almost like these people have been possessed by pure evil.

2:26:16They are monsters. And there's no talking to them. There's no dealing with them. It's just simply this. But like a good example, just this recent conflict with the Houthis where you have the Houthis in Yemen, which Saudi Arabia invaded in 2015 with the full backing of the United States of America. The Houthis maintained power for eight years through that. They maintained power until the Saudis finally gave up. And it was literally like the Saudis were just killing hundreds of thousands of people. And then the Houthis would like get like a drone off at one of the royal refineries or something like that.

2:26:49Eventually, they were just doing enough damage that it was like, ah, shit. All right. This isn't worth it anymore. And so they end it. And so anyway, you have this, you're like, okay, so if they did, if they went through a total war for eight years, what you think Trump sent in a few Tomahawk missiles over there is going to stop them from doing this. Okay. But then they didn't do anything. And there's according to all reporting on it, they didn't do anything during the ceasefire. It was only once the ceasefire broke down that they went back to attacking ships again that were coming through. So you just see this thing where you're like, it's not saying right or wrong or who's good or bad.

2:27:24It's like, look, sometimes there's a diplomatic solution. And there's not a military solution. And like in this case, you're like, it just shows you, okay, if there was a ceasefire here, these guys will chill out. What do you want to do? Again, do you want to go to total war with it? Because like, okay, we could overthrow the Houthis. We, if the US invades Yemen, like that's kind of what it would take. Is like, does anyone here really have the appetite for another catastrophic war in the Middle East against the poorest country in the Middle East? You know, or we could pursue this diplomatic route, which seemed at least, I mean, I'm just saying based on the evidence that they weren't attacking ships during the ceasefire seems like there could be a diplomatic solution here.

2:28:02And so there's just like a lot, and the problem is when you don't like, if you make everybody monsters and they're not human beings, well, you can't do diplomacy with monsters. You can't make it, you can't negotiate with monsters, but you can with humans. And like, you know, I'm sure there are, you know, like to our earlier discussion, like, maybe there are times where you're not, you shouldn't negotiate or you can't negotiate with humans. But it's better if you can. And we could use a lot more of that thinking. Can we take that idea and move to the war in Ukraine? Sure. What do you think is the path for peace there?

2:28:39Well, I think what Trump is pursuing is like infinitely preferable to what Biden was doing. You know, what puts Donald Trump, and I don't think everything he's done has been perfect, and I really did not like that mineral deal that he was floating out for a while there. And I think maybe that might be the best thing that came out of that oval office thing is that maybe that, you know, Donald Trump was going to be very tough to do business like this. And it's like, yeah, we shouldn't be doing this business deal anyway. But and by the way, I don't think we should do it on a few, number one, principally, I think it is kind of like bullying the Ukraine out of resources.

2:29:17And I don't know from what I understand, I don't even have that many like fine minerals, but whatever. But it's also like, well, look, if he was selling it to the Lensky is that's kind of a security guarantee, you know, because like, hey, if Warren business, then if Putin messes with you, he's messing with us. But for my perspective, like, that's the whole point is you don't want to get into the business of giving out security guarantees. I mean, this is a real, this is why George Washington was against entangling alliances. Like you give out war guarantees to too many places, you might have to fight a lot more wars than you otherwise would have fought.

2:29:48And also like, there's simply, we're in this weird position where America postures like they're so tough, but really when it comes down to it, we're not going to war in Ukraine. There's no political will here. Like I'm sorry, I had tried to convince the American people we should send our boys to get like, I understand you're from the region, but like for you or you have roots from there, but like to the average American, the idea of going to war over whether Luhansk is ruled by Kiev or Moscow is just, they don't even know what Luhansk is. And if they met someone from there, would probably just assume they were Russian, you know what I mean?

2:30:21Like they're, and they might be, but whatever. I think the first step to a path to peace is that you have to want to get a path to peace. So I think Trump's doing a good job in that. Do you think all three sides want peace from what you understand? Obviously, Trump legitimately fully with an urgency once peace. I think for sure, Trump wants peace. I also think Putin wants to wrap the conflict up. And I think that Putin has, Putin has been willing to deal. They're the entire lead up to the war and pretty much throughout the war. And there's been a lot of solid reporting on this. And I mean, the sources on it are pretty impeccable.

2:30:57The head of NATO, Stoltenberg, I always mess up his name, but he literally said that in late 2021 that Vladimir Putin actually sent a draft agreement to NATO, and that his condition for not invading is like, I will not invade, but you have to put it in writing. Like he sent a draft treaty to them. You have to put in writing that Ukraine will not join NATO. And then Stoltenberg bragged about how he said, no, because we won't let Vladimir Putin dictate to us whether we can expand NATO or not. And then he was bragging, he was like, and look what he got, more NATO expansion, Finland and this and that.

2:31:37So look at that. It didn't even seem to notice like that wait a minute, you're admitting that you could have just promised not to bring Ukraine into NATO and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Seems like it would have been a much better deal. It's going to be a much better deal than what Ukraine will ultimately end up getting. So I do think, also the Joe Biden's CIA director, it was a CIA director's whole four years, William Burns, when he was ambassador to Russia, he wrote the Nhat means Nhat, and in the memo, and again, this was dumped by Julian Assange. This wasn't for the public. This was just him writing to Condoleezza Rice to tell the Secretary of State his assessment.

2:32:15And he said that his exact words were, a decision Russia does not want to have to make. And this was the decision about whether to invade Ukraine or not. And he was like, they say, if you keep pushing for Ukrainian entry in NATO, this could lead to a civil war and even worse. And in that situation, Russia would have to decide whether or not to intervene a decision Russia does not want to have to make. So essentially, it's like, I think it's pretty clear from all sides that Putin didn't want it to come to this. And look, I mean, even after the coup in 2014, he took Crimea, but he didn't invade the country.

2:32:51He may have sent special forces in, but I mean, not the full scale 2022 invasion. And even the civil war going all that, you know, he did, it seemed like he, I'm not defending the decision. I'm just saying it seemed like he reluctantly, you know, what was it in 2014 or 15 when they had the plebiscites in Crimea and in the Donbass region. And they voted to be independent. He didn't take them then. I mean, he could have used that as a pretense for like, hey, they voted to be with us. And he didn't, I think he wants to end the war. Zelensky from everything he said publicly seems like he still feels like, I mean, I'm just taking him out his word here that it's like, well, no, look, like we could end the war, but we got to end the war.

2:33:40It seems like he's moved from his position being like, no, we have to reclaim, reclaim all of our territory. To now his position is kind of like, all right, maybe we don't reclaim all of it, but we got to be given some type of security guarantee in the future. I think the problem with that is just again, like, I don't mean to be cruel about this because like it sucks that there's little countries that are next to big countries that kind of get bullied around about them, but there also is a bit of an entitlement to demanding a security guarantee. Like what exactly do you mean from America? What, that will go to war if you're invaded?

2:34:16Why are, why do we owe that to anybody? Like that's crazy. I'm sorry. You can just sign up to say that will go to war if anybody invades anybody. I mean, I hope nobody invades anybody, but that I don't want us to get dragged into that. That's a recipe for always being at war, you know, and I don't think that's right for our country. So essentially, I think Trump and Putin want peace. And if that's the case, I think we'll ultimately get to an end of this war. So there's a lot of stuff to say here. Let's think you start at the beginning of the foundation of this. I think the thing that we left unsaid, this important to say is that Putin invaded Ukraine in February 24, 2022.

2:35:00And I think he is, at least from my perspective, the person who started the war. You could talk about NATO expansion. You could talk about any other thing that led to it. You could start at the collapse of the Soviet Union. You can go all the way back as he did 1000 years. The reality is, and this goes to our deep discussion about the morality of war. No matter the reasons, the guy that like pulls the trigger first, non -exidently, and keeps pulling the trigger, that's the guy who's a fault. Oh, I agree. I'll say one standard, like one standard for everybody. The standard that I laid out before is the same one I said, it's like, did you absolutely have to do that?

2:35:45You know, once you start killing people by the hundreds of thousands, it's like, was there any other option? Are you telling me like you absolutely had to do this? And I don't think that's right. My friend Scott Horton, who I was talking to you about, who's just totally brilliant guy, even in his book, there's a whole chapter of all the other options of what Vladimir Putin could do. So you're absolutely right. And there's a weird thing where like people say, like if you say that the West provoked this conflict, that is a very different thing than saying that this conflict is that this invasion was justified.

2:36:18And in the same way that like, you know, if you, if you were at a bar and someone goes and spits in another guy's face, and then he pulls out a gun and murders him right there, like he's not justified in doing that. That is not okay. You don't get to murder someone because they spit in your face. Also, if you were talking about like, why did he murder that guy? I'd be like, Oh, cozy walked up in spitting his face. That's why it happened. And that, that is essentially my contention about this war. And it is, I think it's just crystal clear that that's why it happened. Listen, it may be right or it may be wrong.

2:36:52But if China or Russia ever like backed a street put to overthrow the democratically elected government in Mexico and then install approach Chinese or a pro Russian government and then started pumping arms into that conflict and then kept floating out the idea that they were going to bring them into their military alliance. DC would simply not allow that. You cannot do that. Any more than the Soviet Union could put nukes in Cuba. Like, sorry. That should be said that that's really cold war, 20th century, in your con thinking, right? It is the way the world works. But like that's, I don't think you're going to know conservatives.

2:37:34Listen, whether you're talking about the neoconservatives or going way before the near any other group that has ever had control of US foreign policy going back to the cold warriors, the Truman administration, the Eisenhower administration, I think you could take this back to Thomas Jefferson. If this happened in 1801, there is simply no way that they would allow a foreign great power to come bring our neighbor overthrow their government and then bring our neighbor into their military alliance. I think there's no great power that would ever tolerate that. First of all, we're in a post -Nuclear world, right?

2:38:14So, meaning post, there's nuclear weapons. So the threat of somebody being on your border is just not the same kind of threat when you're in nuclear power, which is why you could Finland. No, I think in some ways it's more of a threat in some ways. Putin is not upset about Finland joining NATO nearly as much. I'm just saying to Vladimir Putin in his own words, what his issue always was was the military hardware that comes along with NATO membership. So it's not just that you get into NATO, but then you get all that military hardware there. And he made a huge deal about the dual use rocket launchers in Poland, which George W.

2:38:52Bush put there after 9 -11. So I think all of those things are factors. I think Ukraine, the Crimea being their only year long warm water poured. I think there's like several elements to it, but I do think a huge part of it is that there also the country has been invaded through Ukraine multiple times. And so there's just, yeah, it's he, I think very reasonably within the grading on a curve of how reasonable governments are. He saw that as a security threat. But I should make very clear because the way that comes across the full responsibility of the invasion of Ukraine lays at the hands of Vladimir Putin.

2:39:33Sure. I completely agree with that. Vladimir Putin is Vladimir Putin launched a war where again, I don't know exactly what the numbers are. I've read a whole bunch estimates some that contradict each other, but the consensus seems to be it's at least in the hundreds of thousands, possibly well north of a million. If you're talking about the casualties on both sides, and Vladimir Putin launched a war that led to that. And he's responsible for that. That being said, you can also point out that the, you know, really what we're talking about here is the George H. W. Bush administration, the Clintons, Bush again, Obama, and then Trump.

2:40:13And the people who were in charge of the foreign policy in that in those administrations, the same ones who gave us Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, they were also in charge of our European foreign policy. And they had the most reckless far, the most reckless policy of all was their NATO policy. That they, they drove up to this conflict with Russia with nothing but off ramp after, off ramp after, off ramp and consciously decided that we're not going to take any of those. We're going to drive it all the way up to this point. And Thomas Friedman for the New York Times interviewed George Kenan in 1998.

2:40:49And this is George Kenan was the like the cold warrior. He was, he's, he's credited as founding the containment strategy in the cold war. And he was talking about the first round of NATO expansion, which he and many other foreign policy graybeards opposed. And he was talking and he was like, this is the worst thing we could possibly do after the fall of the Soviet Union to now say that we had this alliance in NATO that was an anti -Russian military alliance. And now that the Soviet Union isn't there anymore and it's Boris Yeltsin's Russia, that now we're going to expand NATO because of that. And he literally said in 1998, he goes, the people advocating that we expand NATO are going to continue advocating it and advocating it and then there will be a Russian reaction.

2:41:38And then they'll say, see, that's why we were right to expand NATO. But they'll get this completely wrong. When do you think a deal is reached? I really have no idea what the timeline is going to look like. I'm hoping sooner rather than later. I think like, I think Donald Trump would love nothing more than to have some type of like big spectacle of ending this war, some type of big press conference or some type of, you know what I mean? And so I'm sure, like if I, my guess would be that's where Trump's mind is, is how to do this in the best way that sells him the best. And, you know, but I think that already we're in a position where Donald Trump has put a lot of political capital chips into the middle of the table that I can end this war, you know, and he's going to look very, very bad if he can't.

2:42:32So he's very highly incentivized to get this thing done as quick as possible. And so hopefully that can, that can happen soon. It would be great if it could happen in the next month. Yeah, people on both sides outside of Donald Trump are telling me that it's a process. Yeah. There's kind of implications going to, it's going to take a while, which I really hate. I really love, love Donald Trump's urgency. Well, it's also terrible. There's something really awful, like, you know, look, when innocent people dying in war at any time is terrible, but there is something profoundly awful. And I'm old enough now that I've seen this a few times happen, or I've lived through it a few times.

2:43:12I've read about it happening earlier, but it's like once you've kind of already decided the war's over, and people still die, you know what I mean? There's something almost like sad or about that, because it's always like, come on, you already know, you know, like when there'd be like a big, you know, there'd be like a bombing campaign in Afghanistan. Like when we all already knew, we were a few months away from ending the war. You're like, you got to kill more people like on the way out. We already know we're leaving. We already know that because there's something at least in the beginning, they could kind of hide behind this justification, or they could be like, listen, we're going to overthrow the Taliban, and we're going to install our new government.

2:43:47They're going to be a democracy. It's going really good. We have to do this in order to do this bigger project. But then by the end, you're like, we're not even pretending anymore that we're doing anything more positive. It's just someone dying and a senseless thing we never should have been in. Well, in the spirit of that, that's why I travel to Moscow. I'm going to travel to Moscow again in the near future to likely interview Vladimir Putin. And hopefully travel back to Ukraine, which I did to talk again with the Vladimir Zelensky, or with whoever the future president is. You'll be the only guy who's interviewed both of them, I think, during this war, right?

2:44:24And I have to say, the border crossing is getting increasingly more intense. I went to Canada last week and I didn't care for that, so I'm sure. Primarily, it's the nation's war, as it was in Ukraine. It's fucking, it's dangerous to do both. It's also like, I think something that's a little bit foreign, no pun intended, to America, is, we've fought in a lot of wars over the last, say, 25 years, 50 years, whatever, but all of them, including, in a way, the world wars even in the 20th century, but it's been since 1812 that we fought one on our shores. And none of the other ones, I mean, I guess Pearl Harbor, but even Pearl Harbor, that was a one -off, and it was only kind, it was America technically, but it wasn't mainland America.

2:45:21And so we're fighting wars like halfway across the world. This is a very different thing for two neighboring countries to fight. And even though most of the fighting's been done on the Ukrainian side, not all of it, like, there are, I think there still are areas in Russia, like inside Russia's borders where there's action. And so it's just like, there's something so much more real about that. That's not just the wars we're used to, are we send a military that is 100 ,000 times more sophisticated than anything it'll be meeting on the ground over to a third world country to go do that. Now, as we've found out over the years, there's still a lot of challenges to that.

2:46:00Even when your side has night vision goggles and the other one doesn't, and your side can call in airstrikes and the other one can't, and your side has all this sophisticated training and the other side's practicing on monkey bars, still very hard to occupy a people and dominate them and defeat an insurgency. But that's very different than like two nation states on right next to each other on the border. Like, there's just a real feeling of like survival in that moment. And I do think that probably, I don't understand this as well as you do. And probably you don't even understand it as well as maybe like an older generation of Russians and Ukrainians would.

2:46:38But like, there's also something about like both Russia and Ukraine in their own ways got so absolutely fucked over in the 20th century multiple times in a way that Americans just, it is just too far into us to even understand anything like that. Like millions of people starving to death being invaded the entire nation collapse. And the Russian government collapsed twice in 100 years, right? That's pretty like, that's traumatic. And we just simply have never been through anything like that. And so, when you have that kind of like trauma as a society and then there's a war on your border, I'm sure there's a whole lot of different kind of feelings that we just can't relate to.

2:47:24Plus a history in both nations of super sophisticated and expansive intelligence agencies. Right, right. Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah. You host a podcast called Part of the Problem. Yes. What have you learned to that whole process of interviewing some interesting people? And are there topics you cover that make you sweat still to this day? It feels like going into the fire. What I, what I've learned just from the podcast is that there is, there's something, there's an interesting relationship that you build with your audience. And I travel a lot and I do shows a lot. So I meet people who listen to the show.

2:48:10And I know, like I've had this experience before, I kind of have this experience with you, where like me, me and you met once, I think, before today. Me and you actually met on a very interesting night. I don't know if you remember this, but we were at, before the comedy mother ship was built, you came by a Joe Rogan and friends show at the Vulture. Yeah. And it was that it was while Joe was going through the ship storm of cancel culture. And he was on the phone with Dana White and stuff and the back. It was a wild night. It's been at the same time, right? Like even though we just kind of met that one time, then we talked on the phone and now we're doing the show.

2:48:49I kind of, I know you already. Yeah. Like I already know you. And it's not just that we have friends of friends, but I've just like seen so much of your stuff that it's like, I know who you are. And then, and then it's weird because people come up to you and they're like that. It's like they know you. And I've had this experience. I had this experience with Joe. Like I knew him before I knew him. And so that was kind of like one of the things that I really learned from doing the podcast over the years was like, how much that's actually a relationship. Like you actually have a relationship with your listeners and almost like in the same way, in the same way that like, you know, you can't lie to people like in your life.

2:49:22You also can't lie to your like they're a relationship too. Like you can't lie to your audience. And that I think that there's like there's often almost like kind of shortcuts that are presented before you, but there is a payoff to not taking the shortcuts and to like kind of doing it the way you want to do it. What do you think is the number of hours it takes to form a relationship? Because I absolutely agree with you. First of all, I should say I'm a huge podcast fan. I've listened to you as a guest and you're on show a lot. So yeah, there's I think with you, I've already crossed the threshold of hours where like I feel like we're friends.

2:50:01Yeah. One way. And I guess because you listen to me is the other way, which are like separate parallel. It's very weird. It's very strange in a way. It's very interesting. And it's also there's something there, which is cut more your area of expertise than mine. But there's something there where like technology is playing this wild role. Like we could have two a two way friendship without actually having to meet each other all facilitated by the machines that we built. It's very trippy. I think it's probably like, I'll say it's like 50 hours, maybe 20 to 50 hour ranges when you're like, okay, it's kind of interesting in a way, right?

2:50:34Because like the the thing before like the Joe Rogan experience and what was like kind of the thing that made comedians big, the things before that used to be like Letterman and Leno and Conan like comedians would get like a seven minute set on there. And even if you do great, like if you're just like you killed and someone watching is like, I love that comedian. That comedian's amazing. First of all, unless they were like on social media and then went and like, shoot you got there was no, there was no way to connect. It just be like, love that guy. Anyway, back to my life. And then maybe you'll remember him and maybe when he's coming to town, you'd see, oh, that same guy I saw on Conan is going to be at the local comedy club or something, maybe, but but then like Rogan became the main thing.

2:51:24And now they didn't just see you do seven minutes of stand up. They sat and listened to you for three hours. So even let's just say even off that one off the one three hour podcast, you come away knowing a lot more about that person. It's not like just a little taste. You know a lot about it. But there is I probably would put the threshold at at 40 to 50 hour. Like if you've consumed 40 to 50 hours of somebody, especially when they're doing what we do on these shows where you're just, you're speaking very, you're speaking in a very unguarded manner. Even though like this is your show and you asked like a lot of questions, you don't know exactly where this is going to go.

2:52:08You know, you're then then you're seeing what I say and then going, huh, okay, well, let me ask something based off that. Let me make a point based off that. We're both kind of like unguarded. And when you consume somebody like that for like 40, 50 hours, you do see into their soul. I think there's almost no way there's no way to avoid that. And also I would say if they're not letting you see into your their soul, you'll notice that. And you know that about them. This is a guarded person. This was ultimately Kamala Harris's issue, right? And this is why she was probably, you know, correct not to do Rogan.

2:52:41Even though everyone looks back at that and says like, no, no, no, this is this was the big disaster of her campaign. It's like, I don't know, you know, she was so guarded in every single interview that she ever did. She was always constantly not trying to let you see who she really was. And if she was going to try that on Rogan, that would have that would have been so apparent to everybody involved. So you've had a lot of intense conversations on Jerry. What do you appreciate most about Joe as a human being is a conversation partner? I can't overstate how how much I love Joe and how much I admire him.

2:53:21Not as much as Ron Paul. Just let's be clear. There's like a hierarchy here. It's raw. He's he's close. They're both like they're both like, you know, there's like very few. That means a lot. Well, there's Ron like Ron Paul and Joe Rogan. I'd like our view. Those are like my generals. Yeah. Like an almost old German. Those are my those are my guys. Like if if Joe Rogan pointed to some guys that you got to go fight that guy right now, be like, all right, I got to go fight that guy or what, you know, Ron Paul too. I just think it's both very personally for me, you know, like Ron Paul like introducing me to like a set of ideas that like changed my life and and just enormously grateful for that.

2:54:02Joe Rogan was like, I was a huge Joe Rogan fan before the Joe Rogan experience. Like I'm an old school Joe Rogan head. I used to go on Joe Rogan dot net before when websites used to end before Jerry before like whatever. Before everything. I remember I mean, I was a fan of his before he confronted Carlos Mincea and the day he confronted Carlos Mincea, I watched the video on his website was like, oh, shit, Joe Rogan called him out. This is the craziest thing ever. And then and then what I was a fan that like when he started the podcast, I remember going, this is going to be big because he's going to be so good at this because he's got so much interesting shit to say.

2:54:39And I didn't realize it was going to be quite what it became, but I did think like, oh, this is going to be an awesome thing. And then so there's like that. So like I always really admired him. And I was always a huge fan of his. And then he literally not only did he like change my life, but he changed like a whole of my friends' lives. Like it's like a very weird situation. Like he's like the he's the Santa Claus of my world. Like he's literally just and and there was something like, I don't know man, he's just he's just a very like genuine person. And he's really loves. I think he really um derives a lot of pleasure out of the fact that he gets to help the people who he sees as like the good guys like the guys worth helping.

2:55:27And I just think that's like such an unbelievable thing. You know, I at the first time Rogan had me on his podcast was I believe in 2016. And I had like, I might have had like 5 ,000 followers or something like that. Like I was really completely unknown. And like it was like, I did nothing for it. It was just the fact that he heard me on Ari's show. And he was like, oh, I like what this guy's got to say. I think this is cool. Like let's talk about it. And um, yeah, I mean, he's just like, you know, like I again, he's just been such a great guy to me. And and and every little angle like everything, you know, you open from he takes care of you better than anybody else does.

2:56:08You'd work his club. His club pays better than anybody else does. He's you know, like just everything is always like it. He's always great to the people who are around him. And you know, again, like this is it's it's just hard to over like, you know, again, I have a wife of two little kids. Like he's put me in a situation where I can like provide a great life for that. And like don't give me a I mean, you know, like I did something with the opportunity. It's not like he just gave me, you know, like it's like he gave me the opportunity and I did something with that. But still, I mean, he didn't have to give me that opportunity.

2:56:41And I will always I will go to my grave being enormously grateful for his friendship and his, um, his, you know, the platform that he's given me. And also just he is like, and I try not to abuse this, but there's been like a few points like over the years where I was like, I really needed vice on this. And I've gone to him and he's been like the absolute best at literally every single time. I've followed it a few times, a few times I didn't follow his advice and I really regret not following his advice, but he was the absolute best like guy to be like, all right, let's talk about this. Um, which and last thing I'll say is I was freaking crazy.

2:57:19Is that because I he's like, you know, got more shit going on than anybody else in the world. And it's still very interested to take time out to like discuss some thing that I'm asking him about, which is a really, really great quality. Yeah, always takes a phone call. Hey, I, you're right about the advice. He's, uh, his advice is spot on and it's, um, it's often the ones for me personally, uh, what's needed is like, he's been through so many fires. Yeah, that he's really good at like making you feel like don't fucking worry about it. Just, yeah, just like move on. It's the don't read the comments thing, but generally.

2:57:55Yeah, that's right. Yeah, just like fuck it. And there's, he has a whole that whole vibe, which kind of looks effortless, but I think when you look at it seriously, especially in contrast with journalists, there's a fearlessness there. 100 % like, yeah, that not giving a fuck. I mean, he says it's like fuck because of fucking money or any of that. I don't think so. I think it's more than that. I mean, I'm sure that's a component of it, but there's people who have that who still don't have this fearlessness. Yeah, most people who have money. Yeah, a lot of money are actually become more scared.

2:58:31Yeah, because they like the comfort of just like normal life. Because when you're taking risks, you're going to pay for it, even if you have money, not just financially, just like, it's going to, it's going to hurt. It's going to disturb your life. It's going to create turbulence. Yeah, the guy is fearless and follows just his genuine curiosity. It's like an inspiration to me friendship, society, just inspiration of how great of a conversational see us and not, he would generally didn't give a fuck. It's like he talks to any of the presidential candidates or not if he, he'll just talk to friends.

2:59:08Just because he wants to and there's no like click baitiness to it. There's no like giving a shit above use or like during the COVID stuff, man. I mean, he was like interviewing Dr. McCullough and who's the other one, Malone, Dr. Malone, and I had Bobby Kennedy, all these people, like at this time when it was like, so and he's had it with me before too, like talking about Ukraine and Israel, like at the times when it's really white hot, you know what I mean? And like there's this huge penalty on not going along with the regime's talking points. And he's like, like it's really hard to overstate it.

2:59:44I mean, there was, there used to be nothing like this. It used to be that if CNN and Fox News agreed, well, then that was it. That was the line now. And now we got the biggest show in the country will actually allow the other perspective on and allow people to like challenge the regime. I think it's been historic. I think also there are shows, there are people that just are constantly conspiracy theorists, which is fine also. But I sometimes feel that those laggenuiness, they kind of put themselves in a bin or everything, like you question everything to a point where like, I don't know, I feel like you're not getting closer to the truth when you question everything.

3:00:24There is something that some people in the conspiracy world do, which is like they speak about something with certainty when they're really not certain about it. And it's like, it's fine to like ask questions and it's fine to speculate about things. But you also have to like, you just, it's true in general. And like, you got to be really careful about like presuming your conclusion and then working backward from there. And then sometimes when you have one, like, it's just, it's a matter of being sloppy versus not being sloppy. And like sometimes people, like I remember for a long time back in the day in the in the 9 -11 truth movement, there was this one of the huge smoking guns that they would point to was that in the 90s, there was this one document, I'm blanking on the title of it, but it was from P -NAC, the project for a new American century.

3:01:12And this was the thing tank or one of the thing tanks of the neo -conservatives. Like all the big neo -conservatives were involved in P -NAC from Dick Cheney to Rumsfeld, Richard Pearl, David Worms, are all the big neo -cons. And there was this one document where they basically, they were like, their project for the new American century was how we're going to have agemony for another hundred years now that we won the 20th century, how are we going to win the 21st century. And they were like, okay, well, here's what we want to do. We want to start multiple wars in the Middle East. And we want to like go like all the plans that they had NATO expansion in Europe was a big part of it too.

3:01:44And then there was one line where they said, it's going to be tough to work up popular support for these multiple wars we want to fight in the Middle East, short of another Pearl Harbor style event. And the 9 -11 truthers would point to this and go see clearly they did it. They did 9 -11, they even say in their own words here that they want another Pearl Harbor events so they could do this and it's like, well, look, that doesn't actually prove anything. I mean, it's it might just be the case that they were like, oh, we wouldn't get this without a pearl and then when 9 -11 happened, they went, hey, we got our Pearl Harbor style event.

3:02:23And you know, and even if you like that story of 9 -11 was an inside job, you know, because it's kind of sexy and exciting and like, oh my god, what a crazy world we're living in if that's true. And I'm not even saying it's not true. I'm just saying if you're not sloppy and you're scrupulous, you go, that's not really evidence. It's it sounds like evidence. It's evidencey, you know, but it's not actually a piece of evidence because that doesn't in any way demonstrate that they actually were in on the thing. And there's just a lot of things like that. There's a lot of things I even see like, because it's a very popular conspiracy theory online now that that Israel did 9 -11.

3:02:57And I'm like, I'm open, you know, what do you got? What's the evidence? And they'll be like, well, did you see that Larry Silverstein took out a huge insurance policy on the World Trade Center? How did he know? And you're like, how did he know that the number one terrorist target in the world might need a big insurance policy on it? You realize that the same guy is attempted to knock those towers down in 1993, right? As if there's just little things like that where like, if you're being sloppy and you already really want this conclusion, I see where you could see these things as evidence. But if you're just being a little, if you're critically thinking about them, it's actually, it's not as strong a case as you think it is.

3:03:32And I like to, again, I'll speculate every now and think, you know, I'm things, but I like to take on something where I feel like I can prove this case. Like I really have enough evidence that I think I can prove this. I think I can prove that the Neocons didn't invade Iraq because they were worried about weapons of mass destruction. And they actually had this agenda for at least a decade before the war broke out. You know, like, there's there's strong tangible evidence for that. It's just some sometimes the, the constant conspiracy guys, not always, but sometimes they just get sloppy when it comes to actually analyzing how strong the case is.

3:04:07I mean, there's several psychological effects. I think there's a certain drug to the dogmatic certainty that you were mentioning. It, you know, it really annoys me that there's something about human psychology because I usually, when I say stuff, I usually show doubt and show the humility that I might not have the right answer. And I sometimes look at multiple perspectives. And that's seen as weakness and lack of intelligence often. It just sounds like when I even like listen back to people that do that kind of thing, that certainty sounds like intelligence to people. Like if you say something with a lot of certainty, it sounds like this, this is smart motherfucker.

3:04:55And I hate that about myself and about human psyche that that seems to be the case because then like the, the dumb dogmatists are going to be like the ones that are driving agenda. It is true. I've noticed that for a long time though. It's almost like in a weird way, it's kind of like a prerequisite for leadership in a way. You kind of have to be certain about things. But then there's a real problem with that, which is that a lot of times you're just bullshitting or you're just, or you're, or you're not right. You're not correct to be this certain about this. It's at least debatable. And you know, so you always try.

3:05:32And then the thing like I feel like at least for me is, which I try to do, I'm sure I fail at this a ton. But you try to at least go like, you got to almost, you got to work on training your brain and you have to be conscious about it. And so you have to go like, hey, if there's something here that is confirming my bias that I get that, you know, you start getting that little sense of pleasure of like, oh great, here's another point that proves the thing I want to be true. Then you have to like beat 10 times as, you know, like, you know, a skeptical about this. You have to really examine this one and be like, okay, am I sure that this want, you know, because sometimes you'll hear people even throw out things where it's like, oh, I know you liked that because it was helping your case.

3:06:19But come on, think about this. This doesn't even make sense. It's like, okay, I want to make this argument. And then everything that would support that just gets sucked in like a, like a force of gravity or something. And you're like, you have a half of these are bad data points. Mm -hmm. I mean, like for me, there's something definitely about my brain that is attracted to conspiracy theories. So I'm very well aware that that gravitational pull is there? Well, it's, if nothing else, it's a crazy story. Yeah, it's like a movie. So it's like, oh, that's crazy. Yeah, every fucking episode. Yeah, you don't need to work on Epstein.

3:06:51I don't understand. I don't, that's one of the big mysteries of like our modern era is like, how the fuck did this guy get an island? This pedophile and got like smart, smart, I think really smart people. It's like hang out with them. Yeah. And what the fuck? And has anybody, I mean, obviously, just Lane, however you say, Elaine Maxwell, okay, she went, she went to jail. It's like, is anybody else? Has anybody, has anybody anywhere been forced to resign? I mean, like just even like, say like, I don't know, like at the FBI or something, just for not like, catching the thing soon or like, even if you weren't in on it, it's like no, there's a real problem with the American system and it's that.

3:07:44That like, that I think this just went on for too long before like the American people just wouldn't put up with it anymore. And this is why trust in every institution and the corporate media and the Congress and all of it is evaporated, is that it's like, we see just saying of all the people who sold the war in Iraq, no one so much is like, got kicked out of polite society. You know, like I'm not even saying like, oh, they went to jail for war crimes for life, but was just like, yeah, you can't, we're not looking to you for advice on the next war. Thanks. Go home. Like none of that. And it's like all these like crazy things, nobody goes down for it.

3:08:19I mean, like they freaking, they lied us into war after a war. They've bankrupted the country, damn near destroyed the dollar. They locked down the country on the basis of pseudoscience, then then lied through their teeth about what this vaccine would do as they were forcing it on people and like, no one loses their job. No one even gets in trouble over any of this. And look, in any, in any area of life, a business or a relationship or whatever, you can't, you cannot screw up that catastrophically and face no repercussions for it and think that your business or a relationship isn't going to fail as a result of that.

3:09:01I think ultimately, there's been a lot of wake up calls and I think we're going to build a better society from it, the like better institution. I believe I hope you're right. My, you know, more transparency, more like authenticity. I think also the Democratic Party has learned the lesson of like, you have to have candidates that do, I don't give a shit about podcasts, but do podcasts like things, meaning reveal themselves as human beings. I think it's one of the best things that happened in this last election. And I'm not saying, like, I did think they were great, but I'm not saying that like any of the Trump podcasts were perfect or like, maybe there'd be a better way that they could be done, but I will say that, I always, I used to say this for a while, like, as of, you know, like the last few years, but I'd be like, so it's like, so I'm, I'm me, you know, and for me to do what I do, it's kind of expected that I'll probably like, I don't know, I get like at least like maybe 15, 10 to 15 times a year, I'll come do a show like this, like a long form show on a big platform where I'm going to, you know, like my ideas will be poked and prodded and tested and they'll be pushback questions and they'll be there.

3:10:19Sometimes they're more, you know, adversarial, sometimes they're more friendly, but like, you're gonna, and then yet our standard for who is the commander in chief was like, you show up to these debates that are like 90 minutes long with these really, really stupid questions and you give a 90 second answer to it or, and at least for the first time now, it does seem like, oh, the standard is kind of, you're going to have to do a long form show where people, you really have to have, you know, and that, that I think is long term, a real positive development, you know, like you, you just kind of know going forward, the Democrats, right, which I think is kind of what you were saying, right, you can't run a Kamala Harris if she can't do a long form interview.

3:11:01You got to run somebody who's able to sit down and express themselves and have real genuine thoughts or at least try to convince people, they have real genuine thoughts, at least, you know, and it's very different in a way than, you know, I look back at some like the most talented politicians of my lifetime, which I'd have to say the two were, were Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, just like, the most talented traditional politicians, Trump's like the anti -politician, but like, they were like the traditional and just unbelievably, but they never had to do that. It was just a different time. Bill Clinton had to walk up and like, you know, be like, oh, it's a beautiful baby, I have here, they go back and then play the sax and then have a couple good answers to a small cut.

3:11:38I'm from a little town called Hope, you know, like that, that's not the game anymore. Now the game is like, can you sit down and actually, you know, have some ideas in a long form? And I think that's so much better, because it's so much more revealing of, you know, kind of like what we were saying before, you reveal a little bit, that's not 50 hours, but in those, in those three hours, you reveal a little bit of your soul. Yeah, and I think that process makes you actually a better person. I ultimately think that Barack Obama is a fascinating human being, and there was a choice made early on to be more, to do like less interviews, be more behind the wall, I think, and that that's a disservice, because I think it's a skill to be an authentic person, like they you build.

3:12:19Yeah. Like to be able to allow yourself to be yourself. Like it's very possible that Kamala Harris is a fascinating person. Yeah, we just never got in the meter. And I don't know if she has gotten to meet her, but you know, it's a practice thing to like reveal yourself as a tricky thing. I think it's just good for the candidate. I think she, well, I think she what she did, you know, I'm a critic. I don't think she's a good candidate, but what she does pretty freaking incredible, meaning like, to raise that much money, in that short amount of time. I think it was a terrible thing for the Democratic party to do.

3:12:58I think she's a terrible candidate, but still with the tools you got, she like used TikTok, used whatever. I'll say the fact that she came as close as she did to being president is pretty goddamn insane, if you ask me. But yeah, the Democrats are a mess. They're a mess like I've never seen a political party before, but that in itself is, I think, a very good thing, and what comes from here is there's a lot of possibilities now. And you know, there's never been, like, I don't know who the person is. I don't see anyone out there that I could think of that would fill this role. But there's never been a more ripe time for someone to Donald Trump, the Democratic party now.

3:13:40You know, like somebody to what Donald Trump did, people tend to forget this because now like it's also because the accusation from the Democrats is that, you know, the Republican parties are all a bunch of Trump cultists or something like that. But like, I'm old enough to remember 2016. And what actually happened was that Donald Trump came in and just really resonated with the voters and the establishment of the Republican party hated it. They were openly talking about changing the rules at the Republican National Convention to deny him the nomination in 2016. What they were saying is that they were going to raise the number of delegates required so high that nobody could hit it and then say, hey, since nobody hit it, we select Mitt Romney again.

3:14:28And we're going to run Mitt Romney again. Like, they were openly openly conspiring to steal the thing from him. And eventually he just had so much support on the ground that they couldn't do it. Right now, someone could totally do that to the Democrats. But the thing is it would have to be somebody outside of the three -letter agency control, because that's what everyone's rejecting right now. But if you were to actually sit there and go like, and even policies I don't necessarily agree with, but there are a lot of policies that if it was actually like a pro -labor working class party, you could, you know, Bernie Sanders showed you a little bit of what's possible.

3:15:01And this was from like an 80 -year -old socialist who didn't really have the balls to go through with it at the end of the day. You know, like if somebody younger and a little bit more with the current zeitgeist were able to do that, that could happen. I mean, I would generally think that AOC can develop into that candidate. She might not be there yet, but I think she can develop into that. It could be out there. It could be. I don't know. I don't see AOC being the one to do it, but I could be wrong about that. She's got some qualities, unlike almost all the other ones you could think of. I just, you know, I don't see, I don't see anyone right now who I think could be that person, but I never would have, I mean, if you had asked me in 2014, and who's going to come take over the Republican, I never would have guessed Donald Trump was going to come do what he did.

3:15:50So it might be the person we're seeing who we're not even thinking of, or it might just be some unknown. You know, same with Obama was an unknown.

3:16:00I mean, powerful people behind his presidential run. It's not like he was a true, just like grassroots guy, but he wasn't anyone we would have been necessarily think. I mean, he gave that big speech at the 2004 DNC, but that was it. That was the thing he was known for. He gave one great speech at the thing, besides that he was a state senator and then a junior senator. No, it's thinking he was going to be the next president. You could be like a John Stewart type character. Of course, I don't think he would ever, I honestly don't think a comedian will ever run, but I never thought Trump would ever run.

3:16:27There is there is something about John Stewart that is, um, he's an honest, I disagree with him on a lot of stuff too, but he is an authentic person. And there's something about that that gives you a huge advantage, particularly in our current political climate. People are so sick of the phoneiness. That's like it's and it's and they're right to be because you could only, you know, so you can lie to some of the people some of the time. Like this, you can only lie so much before eventually nobody wants to hear you and that phony voice telling the same phony lies anymore. And at least John Stewart is, I will say, I think he's, I think John Stewart is telling the truth the way he sees it.

3:17:10Like I don't think he's necessarily right about a lot of things. He is right about a lot of things, but I think he's wrong about a lot of other things, but he's, I just get the impression that he believes what he's saying. And there's something powerful about that, especially when he's surrounded by people that disagree with him. He's the low. That takes a certain kind of courage. Yeah. And be funny doing it, but he's not going to run. No, I don't think so. This is annoying. Nobody like, you have to be fucking crazy to run. That is one of the real problems, you know, and then like people like a tacked Donald Trump for being on like a narcissist.

3:17:46Yeah, I have to be. But who the hell else is going to ever do this? Yeah. All right. What gives you hope about this whole thing we got going on? America and human civilization. Okay. So this is not mine, but this is a gene Epstein who's like a is a really brilliant economist and a great guy. And he told me this once. And I just always loved it. And he, it's a, I call it Epstein's Epstein's case. Not that. It's a different Epstein gene Epstein. No relation. I want to be clear on that. Okay. This is genes. Let's call it genes case for radical optimism. And the way he put it was he goes, he goes, so imagine you were sitting around in 1845.

3:18:37And like you're at the height of, you know, the slavery and you were like, Hey, in 20 years, slavery is going to be abolished across the west. And like if you told it to someone, they'd be like, do slavery has existed for all of human history? Slavery is a look around. It's not going anywhere. You'd have to be out of your mind to think we're 20 years away from abolishing slavery. And yet we were. I mean, it's just like the greatest thing in the history of the world and not and unfortunately America had to fight a bloody civil war to get there. But many other countries didn't and they just walked away from what had been the status quo forever.

3:19:19You know, and just stop doing it. And now look, you can argue there's slavery by other names and things like that. And like, you know, to some degree, paying an income taxes, some degree of slavery. But there is not chattel slavery in the way that they're used to be. And that is like an incredible advance for humanity. And then the other example he would give is he goes, uh, he was talking about how at the beginning of the Reagan administration, like in 1981, that the Neocons, because when he was trying to have a taunt with Russia, the Neocons were in the press being like, he just guaranteed another hundred years of Soviet dominance, you know, and if someone had just been to you like, hey, listen, calm down.

3:20:01In 10 years, there won't be a Soviet Union. It's just been like, what do you like? Okay, nice idea, but you're out of your fucking mind. And yet that was true too. And so there is even when, you know, and you can see some dynamics, even in our politics today, where like, you know, three years ago, I was really concerned about whether they'd shut the whole thing down. Uh, us, I mean, you know, like when it was during the COVID times and during times where it was like everyone I knew was just getting strikes on all their channels. And if you just even wanted to like talk about how like there are people being vaccine injured, you'd like lose your YouTube channel, get people getting kicked off Twitter left and right.

3:20:41And I just saw it and I was like, dude, the, the grasp is just getting tighter and tighter and tighter. The regime is not going to allow these alternative voices, you know, in here. And they're just getting too big and they're going to shut this whole thing down. And I'm going to have to figure out what I'm going to do after that. And I was totally wrong. It just the trend totally went in the other direction. And things are now at a point where it's like, I couldn't even imagine it. I never would have envisioned Elon Musk was going to get $44 billion together and buy Twitter and then he was, you know, it's like, and so I just think that if you kind of like zoom out, I think that the regime has lost their monopoly on propaganda.

3:21:20And this opens up enormous possibilities for what, you know, I remember so vividly 2002. And 2002, you know, 9 -11 happened in late 2001, we invaded Iraq in 2003. But all of 2002 was a massive propaganda campaign, just constantly laying down the blueprints for this war that we knew was George W. Bush was about to launch. And it was, you know, they have weapons of mass destruction. They were in on 9 -11. Their friends with Al Qaeda, they're going to hand this weapon that they don't have off to the terrorists. They're not friends with. And then they're going to nuke Kansas. And every right -winger, by the way, this is also, sorry for rambling a little here, but this is also one of the reasons why when the Jew haters will say things like, they'll be like, oh, look, all of the Jews support Israel or 70 % of the Jews vote this way or 70 % of the Jews support this way.

3:22:11It's like, listen, I don't like blaming or even when the Palestine haters will say 70 % of God's and support Hamas or whatever. It's like, okay, look, I remember a time in this country. I know I'm going back 20 years, but every right -winger in this country was completely convinced that we have to go invade Iraq because he has weapons of mass destruction and you're some type of leftist homo if you don't agree with that. That was the entire culture in this country. And it was the one thing that the New York Times and Bill O 'Reilly and CNN and the Washington Post all agreed on. They were all on board selling this war.

3:22:44You could not do that today. They could not get away with that today because if they did, how do you control this entire problem? You tell me, how do you control Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson? How do you get these guys to go? They're not going to go along with it. And in fact, they're almost definitely going to have people on their show who are just tearing it apart. And so I just look at that and I go like, you know, I mean, we're in a place now where we have this world of possibilities that would have seemed impossible just so recently. And so just thinking like all of that rambling stew, whatever all that was, that leaves me feeling very, very hopeful for the future.

3:23:25Yeah, there's a lot of social and political progress in that rambling stew over the over the decades in the centuries. For me, I probably some of the technological progress is really exciting. Me personally, it just fills me with hope whenever I see the the rockets go up to clarify not the ones going into guys or the ones going into outer space. So I assume you had to clarify the Epstein thing, the Epstein rule, exactly which rockets SpaceX and Blue Origin rockets taking humans out to space. And yeah, for us to be among the stars, like it makes me feel like we're going to make it because the bleaker times throughout human history, you think I mean, there's just a sense you're right in doing COVID.

3:24:14There's a sense of like, for many reasons, maybe just a simple psychological human reason, it felt like bleak like fuck. I don't think we as a civilization are right. If we can't handle this pandemic from a policy perspective, from a human perspective, like the economic perspective, like this is like pandemic light. There's going to be other bigger troubles coming our way. And then now you have this kind of again, the rockets are going up. It's like we, you know, first of all, we'll colonize space and other planets and we like, we're in an inventive motherfucker, we'll figure it out. Yeah. And then certainly, you know, like for me, just personally, because this is like really touched my life.

3:25:00But you know, the innovations in medical technology are just done. And you know, my son had a congenital heart defect at open heart surgery when he was three days old. And I mean, it's like something that 20 years ago, I would have lost my child, you know, and he's fine. Just absolutely fine. Because it's just amazing what these surgeons and cardiologists and, you know, neonatologists and all of them, what they do now is like goddamn magic. And so there was always something about that that would, it was almost like that, and calculated me against ever having a sense of like, well, I wish it was a previous time.

3:25:41Because like, now, sorry, in a previous time, I lose my kid. So I don't get whatever other challenges there are out here. Like I'll take that trade off where this baby survives and gets a shot at having a life. And there is a lot of that stuff is just kind of easy to take for granted. And it's like, you know, when it touches your life, it's you don't take it for granted as much. But it's just like, now it really is, there are miracles going on all over the place now that like everybody in human history did not have access to. All right, brother. It's great to finally meet a friend and have a conversation.

3:26:12Yeah, I really enjoyed this. And I can't wait to talk to you again, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Dave Smith to support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you some words from Ron Paul. Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government, but it's wrong. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

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