J.D. Vance on Rogan

19 Jul 2026 · 1 h 20 min · 27 chapters

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In short

The hosts discuss J.D. Vance’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience and argue it was a political and credibility failure. They focus on Vance’s defense of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) related to Iran, his handling of the Israel/Iran war trajectory, and what they claim were misleading or fabricated claims during the interview.

Guests

J.D. Vance is the guest on the Rogan episode (Vice President of the United States; potential 2028 presidential candidate). The podcast hosts are Dave Smith and Rob Bernstein, who are not guests but commentators.

Guest background (Vance)

Served as U.S. Vice President; previously promoted his book and defended the MOU during a media tour.

Key claims (as argued by the hosts)

Vance “won’t take a position,” instead claiming it’s his job to “make it work,” which the hosts say reads as loyalty to the administration rather than truth-telling. They argue Vance misrepresented the MOU, downplayed or lied about war aims and concessions, and offered an implausible narrative about post-MOU events (oil flows, Iranian hardliners, ship shootings). They also claim Vance’s stance angered both anti-war Rogan listeners and pro-Israel figures.

Notable examples

Vance’s “not Monday morning quarterbacking” framing; claims about the MOU’s terms (Strait of Hormuz, sanctions relief timing, Lebanon ceasefire); and discussion of alleged strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure like desalination.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Discussion on Nashville and Comedy Shows

0:42 to 2:14

The hosts share their experiences performing in Nashville and upcoming shows.

“Listen, if someone's production is that good and a dude's wearing makeup, you're listening to propaganda.”

Lead-in to J.D. Vance's Appearance

2:14 to 2:38

The hosts prepare to discuss J.D. Vance's recent appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast.

“Go to PorchTour.com and then ComicDavidSmith.com.”

Analysis of J.D. Vance on Joe Rogan

2:38 to 5:21

A deep dive into J.D. Vance's appearance and the implications for his political future.

“We listened to like, I don't know, an hour and a half of it.”

Critique of Vance's Position and Messaging

5:21 to 8:31

The hosts critique Vance's political messaging and the challenges he faces.

“Vance has made a terrific tactical error, which is everyone in government.”

Discussion on Leadership and Authenticity

8:31 to 11:59

The hosts discuss the need for true leadership and authenticity in politics.

“He just doesn't have he doesn't have the courage in his convictions.”

Discussion on Leadership and Authenticity

12:04 to 13:05

The hosts discuss the need for true leadership and authenticity in politics.

“One of the things you need during summer is good, comfortable, go-anywhere clothing, stuff that's good for the summer.”

Deeper Analysis of Vance and Current Events

13:05 to 14:00

Continuing the critique of Vance and discussing current political narratives.

“That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash POTP for free shipping and 365-day returns.”

Analyzing the War Discussion

14:00 to 23:09

The hosts critique a politician's weak stance on war and governance.

“It is crazy that this is here, but it's excellent in my opinion.”

Analyzing the War Discussion

23:12 to 24:19

The hosts critique a politician's weak stance on war and governance.

“If you want to be your most radiant this summer, check out Prolon's five day fasting mimicking diet.”

Analyzing the War Discussion

24:24 to 24:37

The hosts critique a politician's weak stance on war and governance.

Show all 27 chapters

The Complexity of Iranian Politics

24:37 to 28:00

A deep dive into the Iranian political landscape and its implications.

“All right, let's get back into the show.”

Understanding the Memorandum of Understanding

28:00 to 29:28

Explore the details and implications of the MOU regarding Iran's nuclear program.

“And what the Iranians wanted, of course, was long-term economic and sanctions relief.”

Critique of Political Narratives

29:28 to 31:26

A discussion on the misrepresentation of political narratives surrounding the MOU.

“I've been around this game a long time, man, 20 fucking years.”

Analyzing Trump's Negotiation Tactics

31:26 to 34:34

Examine the strategies and personnel involved in Trump's approach to Iran.

“But Obama sent nuclear experts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran that took two years and ended up being a very reasonable deal, all things considered.”

Consequences of the MOU's Implementation

34:34 to 37:48

Discuss the fallout from the MOU and its impact on US-Iran relations.

“When Ben Shapiro said, hey, this is what's in the memorandum, he was right.”

Escalating Military Actions and Risks

37:48 to 42:00

Analyze the escalation of military actions and the risks involved in US-Iran tensions.

“It doesn't actually say they can charge a toll after the 60 days.”

The Escalating Global Conflict

42:00 to 45:30

Discussion on the potential for escalating conflicts in the Middle East and historical precedents.

“Gaza or any of this shit or Yemen or any of this shit.”

Misrepresentations in Political Narratives

45:30 to 51:19

Critique of J.D. Vance's narratives regarding U.S.-Iran relations and political coalitions.

“So this is the text from the Memorandum of Understanding.”

Misrepresentations in Political Narratives

51:20 to 51:54

Critique of J.D. Vance's narratives regarding U.S.-Iran relations and political coalitions.

“If he had just run on that, Kamala Harris wins every swing state and the popular vote, guaranteed, guaranteed.”

Coalition Dynamics in U.S. Politics

53:11 to 56:00

Examination of the dynamics within the political coalition supporting Donald Trump and its implications.

“So yeah, dude, sorry, you could sit here and say, that's a real nice story to go.”

Discussion on Iran's Behavior and U.S. Policy

56:00 to 59:56

Explore the challenges and vagueness in U.S. expectations for Iran's behavior changes.

“Go back to the, I just, this infuriates me.”

Public Opinion on Military Action

59:56 to 1:01:51

Analyze American public sentiment regarding military actions and open-ended wars.

“a deal, to change American public opinion, which, by the way, if you look at the public opinion, people love the idea of actually getting to a final resolution on this thing.”

Political Ideologies and Foreign Policy

1:01:51 to 1:08:36

Discuss the differing political perspectives on U.S. foreign policy and military strategy.

“I think with any big group of people, you have a diversity of opinions.”

Discussion on Podcast Archives

1:10:04 to 1:10:29

The hosts humorously discuss the volume of podcast episodes and their history.

“There's some from back in like 2012, I think, that have been lost forever.”

The Epstein Investigation Claims

1:10:32 to 1:14:21

A deep dive into the claims surrounding the Epstein investigation and political implications.

“His basic position on the Epstein storyline is there's certainly something here.”

Critique of Political Responses

1:14:24 to 1:18:45

An analysis of political figures' handling of Epstein-related claims and conspiracy theories.

“It might not be that he's implicated, but power structures that he doesn't want to actually be at odds with.”

Wrap Up and Future Episodes

1:18:47 to 1:19:49

The hosts conclude the episode and tease future content for members.

“This would do a lot to put at least a big portion of this to bed.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:06Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. We're in my hotel room. I'm Dave Smith. This is Rob Bernstein. I don't like that they can really see how much taller you are than I am. It's no, it's all an optical illusion, dude. It's all distance plus space. Why do we look so much better on your stupid computer camera than both of our nice studios? It's really ridiculous, dude. I've spent so much money putting my studio together in my house. I just, none of it looks good. I'm not happy with any of it. I have to redo completely the entire thing, but that's never been what we're about, Rob.

0:39This show is about the content. Okay. If you want fancy, you know, graphics and lighting that makes sense and a color scheme that looks not, you know, then you go somewhere else and when you need the hard hitting content, you come over here to part of the problem with Dave and Rob. We'll let you know what's up. Listen, if someone's production is that good and a dude's wearing makeup, you're listening to propaganda. Yeah, that is true. You've got to kind of pick. You never get both together. You never get good news without dude and makeup. You never follow a beautiful man. That's never supposed to be your leader.

1:15Why do you think Israel is so successful? You know who their original leader was? David Ben-Gurion. Was he handsome? No. Oh, do you remember David Ben-Gurion? You're saying he was doing it. David Ben-Gurion. He was like a little fat Jew with this white hair. But he was a maniac. But anyway, okay. That's neither here nor there. By the way, we are out in Nashville right now. Unbelievable. Goddamn, I love Nashville. Zany's Nashville. This is one of the best clubs out there. The show last night was so much fun. Sold out show. Amazing Nashville crowds. Thanks for everyone coming out. We got shows tonight and tomorrow too.

1:51So we're having fun. On Sunday, I'm porching, even if you're coming out to the Nashville shows, doing my whole comedy FBI entrapment scheme, it's killing. And then I've got Chickamauga or something like that. Sunday night, Lebanon, Chickamauga Wednesday, Atlanta Thursday, Friday, Sandpoint, Sunday, Seattle, Red Eye Home, and then back out next weekend for more porches. PorchTour.com. Hell yeah, dude. Go to PorchTour.com and then ComicDavidSmith.com. We got a bunch more gigs coming up. Rob is just living on the road. uh these days but good good for you stay busy i'm just trying to not eat lettuce and avoid the explosive diarrhea that's that's all any man can hope for really to be honest i might have it right now this episode might take a ton um let's uh all right look we want to talk about so jd vance went on joe rogan experience this uh you know it's funny because so in our last or you were not but the last episode I was talking about how JD Vance had like been all over this big media tour um you know defending the uh memorandum of understanding and promoting his book and uh and then we hadn't heard from him since the thing fell apart but then right you know right on cue he goes out and does a you know the biggest show in the world three hours yeah let me say this um because i want to go kind of go through the show it's a big deal you know this is the vice president and he's a potential candidate in 28 and i guess well i guess there's two thoughts i have like as i've been thinking about this so me and you listened yesterday together so we were out in uh um in in alabama and we drove to nashville from Huntsville, Alabama.

3:40So we drove a couple hours. We listened to like, I don't know, an hour and a half of it. And then I listened to the rest of it today. And the first thing, there were two major thoughts that I had on the episode. And then we could get into the specifics. Number one, dude, it's so great that this is the new media structure, man. I mean, I really can't overstate that. And this, I was really, god damn, I knew this. I was right about this. I believe it's it almost makes me feel justified in voting for Donald Trump. Almost. I still apologize for it. He's the worst. I'm wrong. Whatever. But if you remember, I said this at the time, one of the biggest reasons that I supported Donald Trump in 24 was for Rogan.

4:26And just in the sense that, like, I thought when Kamala Harris refused to do Rogan and then Donald Trump did it, I thought that being the story was going to destroy the corporate media. And it kind of did in a way like it really worked. And one of the things that's so amazing about the Joe Rogan experience now being like the biggest show and the center of all this is that, look, a guy like J.D. Vance, he he's got to go back on Joe Rogan. He's got to go back and do three hours and sit down. And I thought Joe handled it just right. You know, like, just let him talk. Let him make his case. And, okay, so then my number one takeaway is just, like, it's amazing where we are.

5:06Like, compared to 10 years ago, where the state of media is, is so much better than the media that sold us COVID and, you know, all these wars and all this shit. Don't get me wrong. Bad policies still persist, but they're not being sold. The people are against them. All right. I agree with everything you just said. J.D. Vance has made a terrific tactical error, which is everyone in government. You need a side hustle. Donald Trump knows how to grift off the markets, sell early access to his tweets, and he's insider trading. That's too sophisticated for J.D. Vance. But J.D. Vance, he can write a book while he's supposed to be in office.

5:39And then you got to use that platform so you can go out and promote the book. This is the wrong time to be promoting a book because now you've got to go on Joe Rogan and talk about the Iran War and be the face of trying to actually be the individual who's going to explain it. Well, he's taken his shot, man. Look, I mean, J.D. Vance is the vice president, and he wants to be president very clearly. And so he's got to try – well, he's got to try to find a way to carve out a lane that could possibly be a lane that he can now run in. And so the only the only thing that he's trying, the only thing he has is to almost sound like me, you know, to like half sound like, nah, dude, I'm with you.

6:20You know, I hear you guys who are saying that while still not taking that actual position because that makes him DOA in D.C. Now. So let me just say my second big takeaway from this whole thing is that this was an absolute disaster for J.D. Bounce. And, dude, I mean, again, these things aren't rocket science. Like, you want to figure this out? Go go thumb through the comment section. Go look through the comment section of Joe Rogan. It's not that, again, as Sam Harris, Sam Harris said when he did in that one clip, he said when he was describing my episode with with Douglas Murray. And he goes, Douglas Murray, Sam Harris goes, Douglas Murray just destroyed Dave Smith on every single point, every single point.

7:00He just absolutely done. He goes, I couldn't have done as good of a job. He did it better than everyone. He just absolutely destroyed him. He goes, and then I go look at the comments. And it's not that 90 % of the people think he lost. It's that 100 % of the people think he lost. This was his actual, and you're like, wow. No, again, I'm not saying that can't possibly be true. Like logically, it's not impossible. But you would think even as you make the statement, you'd be like, did he dominate? Anyway, nobody's buying it. That's just the thing. Nobody is buying what J.D. Vance is laying down. and for very obvious reasons.

7:36Well, he's in a tough spot because he's trying to pretend like he's against wars and that he's the voice within this administration for cutting a deal and not accelerating the war. The problem is you cannot criticize Donald Trump and you have to be 100 % loyal. And he already was a little bit of, he was kind of throwing a little bit of shade at Trump of I'm trying not to go in that direction and I'm trying to advocate, but I'm a team player and this is the job. So if that's the direction Trump's going in, I'm standing with him. What a weak message. I'm saying that's going to piss off Trump. And at the same time, if you wanted to actually win back the real, in my opinion, America first that Trump ran on, you have to leave this job and go.

8:22These people are out of their mind. We've been taken over by Israel. I've seen it firsthand. Here's the problem. I want nothing to do with this. Oh, he could win if he did that. Yeah. But he doesn't have the balls to do that. He just doesn't have he doesn't have the courage in his convictions. He doesn't actually. The problem is this has always been the problem with J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance really, really wants to be president. And that's actually his highest like value. Right. There's nothing actually higher than that. And so that means he's useless because that, you know, he doesn't actually have any convictions stronger than that.

8:53And so if you just want to be president, then, of course, he's never. But yes, you're exactly right. This is why this thing is a disaster. what like again this isn't even just my opinion i'll give you my opinion we're about to play some clips i will not hold back from telling you exactly how i feel about everything he's saying but i'm just saying politically forget like he's being a political actor here right and so what happened as a result of this is that the israel lobby is furious at him ben shapiro and Mark Levin, all the people who, all the Israeli spies, in effect, are out just trashing him for doing what?

9:30Because this is the impossible position they're in. He's just trying to meet in the middle. He's just trying to somehow, he knows he has to look at the Joe Rogan experience audience, this huge podcast audience who is just not where the administration is. They're totally against the war. And he's got to look at them. He's got no argument to make to them. So he's got to go, okay, look, I get your point, and I'm kind of with you, and between me and you, yeah, these Israelis really are kind of assholes, but, you know, also, everyone does this, and it's no big deal, and if we got to fight wars for them, then we do, and the war's not really for them.

10:03Anyway, essentially, what you did is you infuriated the entire Israel lobby, and you didn't impress us one inch. You know, that's all you're left with. We're sitting there and going, you're still defending the bullshit war you're gonna look me in my fucking eyes jd vance you you fucking liar like i i don't know how am i supposed to respond to a man looking i mean listen for me personally he's not just looking me in the eyes in the sense that like ball as the viewer he's the vice president we're talking to but i'm also watching him talk to my friend and fucking lie to him and lie to his fucking face oh really trump wanted the epstein files released oh he didn't fight that dude shut the fuck up shut up you liar donald trump didn't get his up yes because they had a veto proof majority he finally signed the bill he dragged bobar into the fucking uh into the situation room or was it the oval office and i called up uh margaret he was threatening people getting them to fight mike johnson he had mike johnson whipping everyone to vote against that like shut up you're fucking lying to me oh we would have fought this war even if it hadn't been from israel Dude, shut the fuck up.

11:16You're a liar. Like, so what? I don't know. At the end of the day, this is just a moment in history where people are looking for real leaders. We're looking for men who speak the truth. And J.D. Vance is just, to me, I just look at this, I go, this is a weak man. This is not a truth teller. This isn't someone who believes in anything. I don't know. It's just, and by the way, I also should mention, if I'm being completely fair, it's not that he's bad at this. He's pretty good at it. He's pretty good at going on a podcast and talking about things. He's a very bright guy. He's a bright guy with a high verbal IQ who is interested in ideas, but he just, at the end of the day, doesn't believe in anything except I want to be president.

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14:38It is crazy that this is here, but it's excellent in my opinion. So yeah, here, let's.

14:45JD Vance:I try to make it as successful as possible. And I've got friends, of course, I think, you know, you've expressed some skepticism of this. I've got a lot of friends, both in private and public who've expressed skepticism of this who say, well, this is terrible. We disagree with the decision, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not a public commentator. My approach to this is not to Monday morning quarterback a decision that was made three months ago my approach to it is to try to make it as successful as possible which is why i poured my heart and soul into these negotiations which is why i've tried to make that goal iran not having a nuclear weapon something that's not true both not just now but it's true in the long term and that's the way that i try to approach it so what is going on with you pause it pause it already seems i'm paused already holy fucking shit dude you want to be the president that's the weakest shit i've ever heard in my life What is, I mean, what a pathetic, it's Obama levels of, I remember when Obama, when there was all this pressure on Obama to prosecute.

15:44Because, you know, Obama had really leaned into a lot of that left-wing energy in 2008. And leaned into the fact that, like, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney erected this completely illegal torture program. Blatantly illegal. Illegal under our own laws. Illegal under the Geneva Convention, which has been ratified by Congress. I mean, this is shit, you go to jail for the rest of your life, you're not allowed to do this. So there was a lot of pressure for him to prosecute, you know, Bush and Cheney. And his defense was, he goes, now is the time to look forward, not backward. And, you know, it was always like, well, here's the thing about prosecuting crime.

16:19You have to look backward. Like, it's always a look backward. You don't look forward like that. What does that mean? I'm not going to Monday morning quarterback. So we're talking about a war of aggression. Where do you stand on this? and yes by the way this war is also illegal under our own law and under international law people should go to jail for this fucking shit and like dude thousands of people have been killed hundreds of billions of dollars have been blown monday morning quarterback where do you stand on this sir take a position well well i'm just my job here is just to come along and try to fix the thing at the end no that's actually not right if it's if it was a bad policy your job is to oppose it and to try to reverse it?

17:01He's transparently, although this sounds friendly and this sounds nice, he presents it as reasonable. What he's really saying is, hey, this is a really dirty and scummy job and I've chosen to have this job. And so the position is I support the president. And so if the president is going to do something illegal or bad for the country, I've chosen to do this job. And so I will get his back and I will represent him. That's not really what the job is. The job is supposed to be represent the American people. And if everyone's lying and stealing and cheating from us, then you actually be an honest person and you call that out.

17:34And by the way, that would be better for your political career if you actually did that. But he's just in the nicest possible way. He's telling you, hey, we're all thieves and scoundrels. And I've taken the job of being the second most important thief and scoundrel. So I will continue doing my position of a thief and a scoundrel. And what the president wants to do is this disastrous war on behalf of the Israelis. So I'm here to represent that that's a good idea. Yeah, it's just no. I mean, the idea that this is going to, again, who the fuck does this appeal to? It don't appeal. I mean, dude, if you come out of it, you come out of an interview and you got Ben Shapiro and Dave Smith hating your guts.

18:13You have bad performance. You know what I'm saying, dude? Like you just, there's no, every end of the spectrum is pissed off by this. Can I just tell you, your job kind of is to Monday morning quarterback it, because imagine if your team just lost a game, and now you're doing the press conference, you're the assistant coach, you're the defensive, whatever. Your job kind of is to be like, yeah, this play scheme didn't work, this play scheme didn't work, this didn't work. I don't even know. Monday morning quarterbacking is like the dumbest goddamn slogan. Do you know what NFL teams do on Monday?

18:44They watch tape of the game. They go over what happened on Sunday. That's the point of Monday. You get ready for the next game by going over what you did and trying to improve on it. Yeah, dude, you're the vice president. That's right. And the president of the United States of America launched a war of aggression, a war of choice. Then he lost the war. Then he pivoted to a blockade, a blockade, an economic war, and he lost that war. And now he's pivoting back to the war again. By the way, another major thing. I can't believe I didn't mention this in my big takeaways. of the episode. He's totally out of sync with the administration.

19:23He's still on last week's talking points, while this week the administration's back to the war. We're not mad at the Israelis anymore. We're mad at the Iranians for violating the agreement. He's still trying to sell the memorandum of understanding. The president announced the memorandum was dead. Quote, it's over, according to the president of the United States. So that was very bizarre too. But I just can't, I actually can't imagine that he goes, now listen, I'm not, it's not my job to take a position on the issue of war and peace. My job is just to try to make it work. Like, okay. Is that satisfactory to you, to anybody?

20:00If I, hey, I'm not going to take a position on lockdowns. My job is just to make them work. You know, I'm not going to take a position on vaccine mandates. My job is just to make them work. Why do you get to do this on war? Like, no, fuck you. The entire goddamn American public, and I'm sorry, I take this personally because I really care about this issue, and I've done more than my fair share to try to move public opinion in a certain way. But there is goddamn consensus, super majority consensus amongst the American people that the last thing we wanted was another stupid, unwinnable war. And that is a big part of what swept Donald Trump into sweeping all the swing states and winning the popular vote for the first time.

20:41so like no we all took a position on this you don't get to just say i know monday morning hey we launched a war for israel what are you gonna monday morning quarterback that the whole time yeah actually in fact i am in fact that's all i do it's not what happened here but it's conceptually funny to me that uh i think rogan sometimes does like record on monday to put it out in a tuesday type deal and it's funny if you're trying to get donald trump's back on something that donald trump could potentially completely reverse course by the time and everything you just said is no longer like you're like imagine if you're on there going like oh yeah the iranians are definitely getting a bomb we have to get rid of them the day before they announce the mou and then that comes out and you're just like oh yeah i was working with 24 hours ago donald trump look i do i gotta say man it's um that that is a very good point but i i will also say look it was um we called it the moment it happened in fact i remember doing a show about it, either the day or the day after that Kamala Harris went on The View.

21:42And we went, man, that's going to be a black eye on her campaign the whole time. The very simple question of what would you have done different than Joe Biden? And she goes, I can't think of anything. And you got this enormous, you got this very unpopular president. You got a really bad economy. You got the, you know, the inflation and the immigration, true crises that were going on. one of is still going on um and you sit there and just completely tires i'm like i'm not my own person i am not different in any way i do not represent change i represent the status quo that's devastating when people aren't happy with the status quo jd vance coming here and saying i'm not gonna monday morning quarterback this i'm not gonna take a position is in effect the same statement i do not i will not separate myself at all from the administration like okay but if you want to be the president that's a that's a albatross around your neck and it's funny for kamala harris the golden lie is right there and she just didn't pick it up which is um well there were a couple important issues to the american people that we didn't handle quickly enough such as the border but we've addressed it and now border crossings are down and we have the experience of the policy that we implemented so from day one i'm in a better place that's it just it wasn't quick enough.

23:00We have something, something you got to have some, also you should be prepared for that. And much like JD Vance, I mean, this is you go in the whole time knowing this is what you're preparing for. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Prolon. If you want to be your most radiant this summer, check out Prolon's five day fasting mimicking diet. It makes it easy to target fat loss, support lean muscle and reset your metabolism. So you look and feel your best all summer long In just five days, Prolon works at the cellular level to rejuvenate you from the inside out and help you hit your summer goals.

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24:43Like the president keeps saying that a deal has been reached, negotiations have been successful, and then it all falls apart and we start bombing them again. Yeah, so how long do we have here?

24:57JD Vance:Because this is a long conversation. So I've got to explain a couple of things in the background. Such an interrogator. You know what I mean? Dude, he's the best. yeah there is uh this isn't fox so uh you have more than 30 seconds you're gonna have to come up with a longer answer dude i mean i listen obviously i'm like the most biased human being in the world so you know i couldn't like if there was ever a trial or anything i guess i'd have to recuse myself because i fucking love joe to death and he the man changed my life and has helped me more than anybody else and he's just the fucking greatest but there's a reason he's been number one all this time man he is so good at what he does and that is and what he's able to do you know i thought this was like it's um it's truly uh genuinely a skill you know it's one of those things it looks easy people think being an interviewer and it's like but it's a real skill and it's a skill i do not have and maybe that's kind of why i admire it but like what joe's able to do and i think it comes from a lot of it's because he's very genuine he's a genuine good dude everyone who knows him would tell you this and so he has this real good faith that he is asking in good faith he's not he's not pretending to ask in good faith and so even like when the gadsad uh did i think that was the last one where we did an episode on the interview like he's able to get these guys on the record in a way that so because look what he's doing he's already got him going look i mean look he just in in the most not even kind of disrespectful way but he asks a really good question which is like look the cycle here is that donald trump keeps promising we have this amazing deal it falls to shit and then he comes back to bombing him and then jd's got to go how much time do we have but it's the joe rogan experience dude and joe gives it all the time in the fucking world and then jd vance has a real problem on his hands which is that you got all the time in the world to sell this man but how can you i was prepared for a 30 second soundbite that we move on from.

26:51Yeah, he wants to signal. He wants to signal that he's one of us. That's the whole thing. This is why Ben Shapiro and them are so furious because he's obviously going out of his way to signal that he's one of us, but he won't actually say he's one of us. He won't actually be one of us. He won't actually take the easy position. Stop doing this. Whatever. Here, let's keep on.

27:17JD Vance:Appreciate. People fully appreciate what's going on here. So number one, it's a bit of a simplification, but you have two elements within the Iranian system. You have – and you sometimes hear hawkish Americans say this, that they're all crazy people. They want to bring about the 12th Imam and the apocalypse and all that stuff. There are people in Iran who believe that. They're also pragmatists. You've got the crazy people. You've got the pragmatists. OK. So when we struck this MOU and really what the MOU says, and it was misrepresented more than almost anything that I've ever worked on in public life.

27:49JD Vance:What it says is Iran is going to open the Strait of Hormuz, the violence is going to stop, and then we're going to negotiate to see if we can come to a broader deal on the long-term nuclear issue. That's what we wanted. And what the Iranians wanted, of course, was long-term economic and sanctions relief. Now, here's the – Go ahead. That's not what – I'm just so angry. I don't know. I'm curious. I just can't stand being lied to. I'm sorry. Go ahead, bro. Go ahead. The MOU, firstly, he's kind of pretending like the sanctions relief was coming later. That was from day one. There was also the fact that Iran was going to control the straits with seemingly the ability to feed down the line, but as a courtesy gesture, not imposing fees up front.

28:35And the fees were going to be protection or whatever, environmental, so that it wouldn't seem like they were just tolling the straits. But that seemed to be that it was conceded that Iran was going to be in control of the Straits. There was also clearly money going to them at the beginning, which included the U.S. money that we've taken from them, given back, which is exactly what they considered, criticized Obama for. And then 300 billion investment, which was not going to come from us, but obviously was going to get filled. But that we were guaranteeing and that we were facilitating. So whatever.

29:08Who cares who it comes from? the lebanon ceasefire which was actually the first uh i believe it was the first line of the mou um and and then unlike the obama deal it was all right we're going to give you all this up front and concede that we lost and then we will get to the uh negotiations about nuclear later on uh because that's how weak of a position we were in that donald trump had to change from nuclear has to be worked out with all of this all exactly literally all all exactly right exactly right but i think more yeah let me just say like even more meta than that but you're you're 100 right on all the the points um when jd van says that like he goes oh dude there was so much misinformation about this memorandum of understanding well no like we goes listen i probably never what does he say i've never seen something more misrepresented that i've worked on than this.

Read the full transcript

30:03That is just a fucking lie. Like he's just lying. It's not true. I'm sorry, dude. I've been around this game a long time, man, 20 fucking years. And I could, I could describe my relationship with politics and as nothing other than an obsession, probably an unhealthy one for the last 20 years that I've just been obsessed with all this shit. Memorandum of understanding was very accurately reported dude they sat there you guys you guys because you were fucking humiliated by it intentionally didn't release it until like what was it like 24 to 48 hours before the thing was was to be signed after it had been like virtually signed but before the official signing ceremony or whatever they didn't want to release it because they it looked so bad for them because Yes, yes, yes.

30:54It did say that, oh, in the next 60 days, we'll have broad nuclear negotiations with no specifics. Yes, that's right. They left 60 days for what took two years to negotiate the JCPOA. By the way, this has been heavily reported all over the place. And this is something that is a really big deal to the Iranians that Obama, however you feel about Obama, I personally think the man's a monster who should probably be publicly executed after a trial where he's convicted for war crimes. But Obama sent nuclear experts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran that took two years and ended up being a very reasonable deal, all things considered.

31:37Donald Trump, on the other hand, sent a couple of Zionist real estate agents, dude. Like, I don't know what else to say. It's insane. He sent Bibi Netanyahu's close family friends to go fucking negotiate. The guy who does real estate deals, he doesn't know a thing about fucking nuclear weapons. Okay, anyway, the Memorandum of Understanding, you guys wouldn't release it. It then got leaked, and I'm sorry, Rob, objectively speaking, what got leaked was about 99 % accurate. it was almost exactly what ended up being in the memorandum of understanding. By the way, the biggest things that were being leaked, and they were like, dude, don't believe any of this, all ended up being in there.

32:23Every last one of them. There was not one major thing that was in the leaks that did end up being in the memorandum. It was little details that were a little bit off in a couple of the leaks. But the big things were all accurate. It was pretty accurately represented. All of the war aims, all of the original war aims were like when you say they admitted defeat. OK, technically, they didn't actually say we lost. But all the war aims that originally were zero enrichment of uranium, no ballistic missile, no zero ballistic missile program, no funding terrorist proxies, recovering the enriched uranium.

33:04We gave up on all of that. It was just about opening the strait. And as you said, not only and look, here's the proof of it. Right. Because obviously we're giving up on on the the funding terrorist proxies. If the first line of the memorandum is that we got to stop attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon. Right. So we gave up on that. And then why do you think over that week, Donald Trump admitted in his own out of his own mouth? He said, it doesn't really matter if we get the nuclear dust. He goes, guys, we can't say 0 % in Richmond. They're allowed to have a nuclear energy program. Everyone's got nuclear energy.

33:41Our stock market's going to collapse. We got no choice. He said, they got to have some missiles. Everyone's got missiles. Saudi Arabia's got some. He walked away from all of it. So I am sorry. But for you to sit here and go, oh, everyone misrepresented the memorandum. Dude, misrepresented? Donald Trump said, we get everything we want. He said, we're going to recover the dust. He said, the regime's going to be overthrown. He said, the straits going to naturally open up. Come on. He might as well have said, we'll be greeted as liberators and the thing will be paid for in oil. He said, WMDs, right?

34:15He said, they're making nuclear weapons. Your president, who J.D. Vance is defending, said that if he didn't launch the 12-day war, they were going to be a couple months away from having a deliverable nuke that they would use that they would have nuked israel you want to defend that jd vance no you fucking don't could you imagine could you just imagine a one-on-one where jd vance had to defend that against me and or i'm sorry to make it about me against anybody but like i just i'm a narcissist so against me okay but i'm just saying he can't he knows this is all bullshit so sit here and tell me they misrepresented the mou when honestly look dude i'll tell you who loves dunking on ben shapiro more than me.

34:56Is there anyone out there who does? Ben Shapiro got it right, kind of. When Ben Shapiro said, hey, this is what's in the memorandum, he was right. That's what ended up being in there. Mark Levin and all of them, look, they were wrong to oppose it. But at the same time, they were going based off everything Donald Trump had told him the week before. So really, Trump's the biggest liar of them all. And the MOU fell apart because we did not on our side of it. Firstly, I don't think there ever really was that ceasefire in Lebanon, which was the condition to start out. Oh, and Israel started bombing the shit out of them right away.

35:33And then you had, you're not allowed to make, Iran and America can't make threats towards each other. Donald Trump instantly started making threats. I don't think we actually sent them any of their money up front. And then the biggest one was that Iran controls the straits, and then Donald Trump was telling boats, just go through, it's open now. and then iran was telling people hey you guys have to coordinate with us uh and then ships did not well the thing well part of the issue that's right that's right and look part of the issue here is that because the memorandum of understanding was um agreed to in a panic in a panicked way and and this is essentially what's happened i mean look we we cover this for people who have if you watch the show we've really broken this down quite a bit but the first time donald trump caved if you guys can remember right they fought the month it was a kinetic war for about a month then at the end of the month donald trump started panicking this is when he's tweeting a la akbar i'm going to blow up your entire civilization all this shit then he pivots off that and says i've agreed to the 10 point plan right if this was the first time he's desperate so he goes i agree to the template which by the way the 10 point plan was even more than the memorandum of understanding uh so he says that then the whole base the the israel lobby starts freaking out because he says he's agreed to their 10-point plan he goes no not that 10-point completely different 10-point this is such bullshit there was no other i agree that there should be a 10-point plan he's then he made this claim this ridiculous claim that or it wasn't him it was levitt his press secretary said no no no they sent us that 10-point plan we threw that 10-point plan in the garbage then they sent us this new 10-point plan.

37:12Nobody before or since has ever seen the new one. They completely made it up. The Iranian foreign minister went on television. He goes, there is no other 10-point plan. They're just lying. They made this up. It's never been a thing. What they did is they signaled to the Iranians, we're completely capitulating, because that went, them go, okay, deal. So they tried to do it again with the MOU. They tried to keep it vague, get them to agree, and then we'll implement it in a way. And the Iranians called, they went, no, we're not doing that dude either you surrender or you don't we're gonna keep doing this now i wish they hadn't because i want this war to end but here's the thing right should have negotiated more clear language then that's the whole thing this is what diplomacy is about you know the mou essentially says that okay look rob you've read the thing it says for 60 days iran can't charge at all after those 60 days it's a rain iran and oman they got to figure out the strait of humos right um So theoretically, if it says they can't charge a toll for 60 days, then after that, then Oman figured out.

38:12It doesn't actually say they can charge a toll after the 60 days. But hey, if you say specifically you can't for these 60 days and then you don't specifically say after those days, there's a clear implication that they can't. So what are we even going off here? There's an implication in the deal that this strait is going to be controlled by the Iranians going forward. And the implication is there because how the fuck do we stop them? We can't. OK, that being said. Iran took that to mean that, okay, we won't charge a toll for these 60 days and we'll facilitate some ships going through, but they have to coordinate with us and they have to go through the lanes that we designed them to.

38:48And there's logistics because we got water mines out there. We got to tell them where they can go and where they can't go. The Americans took that as the strait is completely open for the next 60 days with absolutely no regulation. Now that's not spelled out in the agreement. So it's what you essentially have is like the Iranian interpretation of this versus the American interpretation. I don't know. Is it technically, listen, it was technically a violation of the MOU for Donald Trump to start threatening them. It says in the MOU that he can't threaten them anymore. So he already violated that.

39:18Was it a violation to coordinate with Oman to try to get these ships to go through that, you know, the lane that's closer to Oman? The Iranians say it was. I don't know. But either way, you should have negotiated clearer language then. Natalie, if you could just pull up the agreement, I think there's a line in there that Iran and Oman have full control over the Straits or full say or something like that. Maybe we could just reference it. But while you're looking that up, I mean, as we pivot back to war, I was dealing with the rental car this morning. I just saw the headline. I wasn't able to totally dig in.

39:50But I think we blew up a desalination plan in Iran that services like 10 ,000 people. Yeah. No, it means yes. The amplification now of the war environment that we're in that we're targeting civilian infrastructure. Yeah, there's a whole bunch. There's like several towns. I was reading about this this morning that they're drinking water came from these desalination. But and this is the first time we've hit one. And Iran has been threatening to hit. at least the big talking point is that iran uh there's neighboring countries that rely on the desalination plants far more than iran and that's been one of the big risks of uh if iran chooses to take out desalination infrastructure for example in saudi arabia which thus far they haven't done but this is like a i mean that's a significant risk on the table now america just did that unbelievable dude when i was um i was on a debate with uh um on pierce morgan with uh Will Chamberlain guy.

40:42He was this was the same debate that he told me. This is about two and a half months ago now that he told me he'd be shocked if the Iranian regime hadn't fallen in a month. And I told him I literally said this is on Pierce Morgan. You can go back and watch this is two and a half months ago or something like that. And I go in a month when this regime is still standing, you will move the goalpost to something else and keep supporting this war. And I go, this is how forever wars happen now i'm not saying but okay in the same debate he goes at one point he goes dude um it doesn't matter if we're you know we're a net oil exporter it doesn't matter it doesn't hurt us any if 20 of the world's oil is held up that's just good for us makes our oil more expensive i go dude you really have like the arrogance to just go yeah dude choke off 20 of the global oil supply and you that just won't affect us at all i go dude i want everybody who's got a 401k or has a retirement account of anything, go start looking down the list, all the companies you own, see how many of them are based in other countries.

41:45Are you fucking crazy? You know how intertwined the global economy is? You think you could just start? Okay. That's just what we've done so far, but just the arrogance of these people, dude, did you not watch, you didn't watch Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya or Syria or Ukraine or Gaza or any of this shit or Yemen or any of this shit. You just, the idea that this can't spiral into a catastrophe. I watched the vice president of the United States of America, same person who held J.D. Vance's job. I watched him go on Meet the Press. Young people probably don't know what I'm talking about. Meet the Press was, think of the Joe Rogan experience of its time.

42:22Big show. And he went on and he said, and I quote, that the war in Iraq will be weeks, not months. that was what dick cheney said about the war in iraq and a million people died man it spun into a catastrophe and yeah dude right now right a desalination plan just got hit who knows if the iranians respond back and hit one and the fact that the the the lack of a healthy fear of like the seventh you know theater in the global war on terrorism going exactly like the previous six went The lack of fear of that is just astounding. Astounding. Here, let's keep playing more Gaty Bounce. This is getting me too angry.

43:04I threw enough of it.

43:07JD Vance:The problem with where we are right now. And I guess my summary view, Joe, is that I, of course, can't predict the future. I don't know exactly where this is going to go. But I think fundamentally we are on the right trajectory. It's just going to be really messy. And there's going to be a lot of stops and starts. So what happens? The first week after we signed the MOU, we get 20 million barrels a day of oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. That's what it was before the war. The price of oil comes way down. And there are elements, the hardliners in the Iranian system kind of freak out a little bit.

43:39JD Vance:They're like, oh, shit, did we just give away our major leverage points? Screw nuclear weapons. We just gave away the so in this MOU. And so there was this kind of freak out in their system. So they shot at a couple ships. We responded. I think that's entirely appropriate, of course. If they're going to shoot at ships, we are going to shoot at the people who are shooting at the ships or we're going to destroy the facilities that they're using to shoot at ships. So that happens. OK. And then the Iranians are like, oh, no, no, fine. You're right. We shouldn't have been shooting at ships. So they come back to the table and there's a few more days of negotiation.

44:10JD Vance:And then the phase they're in right now is the hardliners have really, really reacted strongly. You can just pause here and we can just go to the next clip. I don't know if it is it sufficient for me to just say all of that is made up. Literally none of that happened. Just J.D. Vance telling a story like you're just sometimes sometimes I'll like tell my kids a bedtime story and you just make up a story. They like that. It's kind of like that. It's kind of like when I just tell my kids a story. This is what this is not the the Iranian hardliner started freaking out that they had given away the straight.

44:45No, they didn't. They didn't give away the strait. In fact, you codified their control of the strait in perpetuity in the Memorandum of Understanding. That wasn't the issue. Now, there were hardliners in Iran who didn't think they should be negotiating with the Americans at all. They've been very emboldened. And that's why they're shooting at ships going through, right? Like they're not, this just isn't true. So the Iranians, again, I've been covering this the entire time. Say what you want to. The Iranian government has been clear and consistent, man, however you feel about them. And this is not what they're saying.

45:17This is what J.D. Vance is making up. This isn't what happened. OK, let's go. Let's go to the next to the next clip. Let's try to get through some more of this if we can. Before we do, just the actual quote is more in line. OK, I'm sorry. So this is the text from the Memorandum of Understanding. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultan of Oman to define the future administration and maritime service in the Strait of Hormuz in discussions with other Persian Gulf literal states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.

45:58Yeah, that's like I said, very vague, very vague language. They'll communicate and figure something out in making sure, you know, whatever. Anyway, let's go to the next clip.

46:11Billion dollars in concessions to Iran to rebuild.

46:15JD Vance:Yeah, so this is another just bullshit argument that the critics made against the deal. And again, like I – just to back up a little bit, this is my own little hobby horse. But look, we – the coalition that Donald Trump piloted to the 2024 election campaign, it was a landslide. We won seven states. It was historic. Nobody, certainly no Republican had actually led a coalition like that, at least since the days of Ronald Reagan. So like literally before I was alive. OK, so Donald Trump wins this great coalition. And look, it's got man, it's got hawks and it's got people who hate foreign wars. OK, it's got people like you and people like Tucker.

46:57JD Vance:It's also got people like Mark Levin and others. OK, I just accept that as a reality. That's part of the coalition. I don't say that anybody is welcome or unwelcome. I say that if you're willing to sort of help us, you're going to get a lot what you want. You don't get everything that you want. What has really annoyed me about - All right, let's pause it right here. Let's just pause it right there because man, the framing of this just drives me fucking crazy. You know, it's like, even as he says it, he goes, look, in this coalition that got Donald Trump, the popular vote for the first time, really unthinkable.

47:30You know, every swing state and the popular vote. We had people like Joe Rogan, people like Tucker Carlson. We also had people like Mark Levin. Ah, yes, the three major power players in the Trump coalition. You know, just the most popular influential guys. You got Joe Rogan, biggest podcast in the world for most of the last decade. You got Tucker Carlson, the biggest right wing news commentator, biggest show in cable news, and then got even bigger after he got fired and goes to the Internet. Oh, yeah. And Mark Levin. who gets consistently ratioed by Liam McCollum on Twitter. That was not a shot at Liam.

48:09Love Liam McCollum. I'm just saying, like, what world are you talking about here? Like, this is, yes, okay, again, it's not just like, hey, this was a coalition that had some anti-war people and some pro-war people. Yes, you had the Israel lobby, and then you had the American people. This war is, 80 % of people oppose this war. This is not a, hey, we had some people on this side and some people on this side. No, you only won that coalition. Listen, dude, Lindsey Graham, God rest his soul. He's looking up at all of us right now. Lindsey Graham ran for president. He did not get 1%. Nikki Haley ran for president.

48:48She did not get 1%. Jeb Bush ran for president. Marco Rubio ran for president. Ted Cruz ran for president. All of these people ran. All of them lost in historic fashion. The Israel lobby loved every last one of them. Mark Levin loved every last one of them. He'll still have every one of them on his show anytime they want to come on. Where was the coalition? No, you won because you got us and you promised no new wars. That's why you fucking won. That's why you got Joe Rogan to support you. That's why you got Theo Vaughn and Tucker Carlson and, you know, Andrew Schultz and all the fucking cool kids.

49:22You carried all of them because you promised no new wars. Don't turn around and go, oh, you get some of what you want. Listen, you're all going to get some of what you want. None of you are going to get all of what you want. We get none of what we want. What do we get? What have I gotten? I've gotten zero, dude, nothing from this administration. And so, and by the way, him sitting here going, I'm not going to say anyone's not welcome. Motherfucker, we excused ourselves. We are not interested. I don't care if you say I'm not welcome. Donald Trump already said, fuck Tucker Carlson, fuck Megyn Kelly, fuck Alex Jones, fuck Candace Owens.

49:59We are the party of Mark Levin. So have fun, J.D. Vance. That's the guy you're defending. You're going down, brother. You're not going to be the nominee. You're going to J.D. Vance's presidential campaign is going to be a fucking embarrassment, dude. And listen, the people that want him to get us involved in foreign wars shouldn't have been welcome. And not only did we not get what we want, we got the one thing that we were so opposed to, we would have sat out the election or maybe voted for Kalaamil. If Donald Trump ran on, I am going to war with Iran. It's the most important thing in this country.

50:32They cannot have a nuclear bomb. Israel is our number one partner. And this will be a horrible plan. And unless we take care of this now. And if he made that his number one issue, which, by the way, what did he do within his first six months or first year? that's like the first thing he hopped onto um other than you know blowing up his uh deportation policy no and look there's no reason there's no reason why we would have opposed it and there's no reason why you shouldn't have run on this i mean guys after all we've been at war for 47 years he's been completely consistent on this if donald trump had just run in 2024 on look i'm launching a war immediately against iran because if i don't they're going to have a nuclear weapon and then they'll nuke Israel.

51:11So that's the new thing here. We're continuing the global war on terrorism, and we're going for the neocons final prize. We're going for the seventh country in the list of seven. If he had just run on that, Kamala Harris wins every swing state and the popular vote, guaranteed, guaranteed. All she would have had to say is, I won't do that. And she wins. And you know what? If they had been clear on that, and hear me right now when I say this, if Donald Trump had just said, told the truth, he's going to do this. And Kamala Harris had just said, I won't do that. We would have voted for Kamala Harris.

51:44We would have been right to do it. If that was the choice, if we knew going in, we don't get a war with her and we do with him, we probably would have voted for her. Certainly she would have won. There's no way. There's no way he has any of this. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Body Brain Coffee. I love Body Brain Coffee. As I've been telling you, I've been drinking the stuff for months now. I feel great. I have a cup every single day. For those of you guys who don't know, Body Brain Coffee was the creation of the great Louis J. Gomez, hilarious comedian, dear friend of mine, the reason why I'm a podcaster, always encouraged me to start this show.

52:18And he made this great, delicious coffee that naturally boosts your testosterone. I've been drinking it for months now. I feel great. They have the creamer. The Body Brain Creamer is finally here as well. It was specifically designed to stack perfectly with Body Brain Coffee. It's not some sugary, gross creamer you get at the grocery store. It's packed with It's MCT oil for clean energy, collagen peptides, cordyceps mushrooms for endurance and stamina. Basically, it's just all good stuff in there that makes you feel great. You put one thing of that in the coffee once a day. It's delicious. It naturally boosts your testosterone and you feel better.

52:53So make sure you go get yourself some. Bodybraincoffee.com, that is the website. Dave20 is the promo code that will get you 20 % off your entire order. So bodybraincoffee.com, promo code Dave20 for 20 % off your entire order. All right, let's get back on the show. So yeah, dude, sorry, you could sit here and say, that's a real nice story to go. Yeah, look, sometimes you're gonna get what you want. And then sometimes we're gonna launch a war on behalf of Israel for Mark Levin. Yeah, all right. Well, that's a deal breaker for some of us. To be clear, I could not have brought myself to vote. Yeah, I probably couldn't have been.

53:28You know, even as I swear to God, even as I'm saying that, I'm sitting back, okay, probably couldn't have done that. No, but she would have won. She would have won, no question. And we certainly would have stayed home in protest. I probably, after the border stuff and the woke shit and the COVID shit, yeah, I probably couldn't have voted for a Democrat. Okay, let's play a little bit more because we're going to get caught running out of time here. We got to jump to the Israel influence, and then we still got Epstein left. Oh, from J.D. Bounds? Yeah. Well, what do you want to do? You want to continue it on the members only?

54:01Well, let's just see what we cover. Let's play a little more. Let's go to the Israel lobby thing. And maybe we could just give our roundup of the Epstein conversation. Maybe we'll just keep this. We'll extend this one a little bit and cut short the other one or something. All right. Let's keep let's keep time.

54:16JD Vance:Is they attack any effort to negotiate? They attack the president. They attack me personally. Donald Trump is betraying me. Wait a second. If you want to have like a hawkish policy towards Iran, the idea that Donald Trump has betrayed you because he's also trying to negotiate to get a good outcome for the American people is crazy. And so you've seen a lot of these people completely flip on him. And that brings me to the$300 billion point. What we did with the MOU is we actually worked out just with the Iranians but with the Gulf Arab states. What is the term MOU? what does it sorry memorandum of understanding it's the basic it's the basic structure that we set up for the negotiation so what what happened here is okay so people sort of think of of the middle east as like iran versus israel i think a lot of people do there's also a massive number of gulf states that are really important good allies to the united states okay you know they and israel don't always see eye to eye but we're obviously very close to both israel and to the Gulf states yeah the Gulf states actually came to us I'm sorry I don't mean to be a dick he just balls it for a second I don't mean to be a dick but is this his Kamala Harris Russia is a big country and Ukraine is a small country moment when you're telling me it's not just Israel and Iran there's a bunch of other countries in there in the middle of all that sound what do you got Arabs um I don't know I just what what why did we just take this to kindergarten for a second what are you even talking about?

55:48And by the way, all of this is what? To just dodge around the point. Yes, there is. Read the Memorandum of Understanding. It guarantees a$300 billion fund. And yes, it's to be paid by the other golf app, by our sock puppets rather than from us. Okay. I'm sorry. Go back to the, I just, this infuriates me. Here, go back to the show.

56:12JD Vance:Iranians are willing, really willing to change their behavior. We'd like to invest in rebuilding their country. Now, whether they change their behavior is something that's going to be determined over the long term. We want to see real changes. We want to see them to stop funding terrorist organizations. Yeah, let's pause it here. And then, okay, hold on. Yeah, get rid of this. Let's go to the next timestamp. But let me just say about this one here. I mean, it's like, no, dude, it's not we're giving them money. I mean, yeah, we've talked to other countries about investing in rebuilding their economy if they change their behavior.

56:49Like, OK. By the way, investing in their economy is that means give them money. That's the same thing. That's that. I'm not giving you one hundred thousand dollars. I'm investing$100 ,000 into your economy. Okay, that's a really important distinction. But so then this is the interesting little game that they play here. They go, they get the money if they change their behavior. Well, Rob, the thing about this statement change their behavior is that that's fucking vague. What does change their behavior mean? And again, when we get down to the details, during the memorandum of understanding before it became over and fell apart and we're back to war, again, as I said, Donald Trump walked away from zero enrichment, he walked away from ballistic missiles, and he walked away from funding Hezbollah.

57:48So what has changed the behavior made? Don't develop nuclear weapons? They've been doing that for 47 years. Like, what is it? What say that they won't develop nuclear weapons? They've been doing that for at least the last 20 years. So what do you mean? Change their behavior. None of that is ever laid out. The standard for what their behavior has to be, the reason we went to war, the fucking reason we went to war in the 12-day war and in this war was that the standard was that they had to have zero enriched uranium, zero ballistic missiles, and zero support for Hesla. They're not changing their behavior on any of that, and Donald Trump conceded they don't have to.

58:29So what the fuck are you talking about? What do they have to do? Notice how none of them ever spell that out. And so like, you know, J.D. Vance can attack the Hawks. And what's his line that he's got here, Rob? He says, wait, you want to be hawkish on Iran and you're mad at Donald Trump? The most hawkish president on Iran? Okay, you know what? That's a little bit of an argument, I guess, for him and Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin to have. Like, hey, I gave you a war on behalf of Israel. I'm not giving you a regime change on behalf of Israel. Is that enough for you? That sounds like a great conversation for you and Jeb Bush and Ben Shapiro to go have with each other.

59:08But leave us the fuck out of it. You know what I mean? Like, okay, yeah, you're right. If you're hawkish on Iran, maybe Donald Trump's the best you could get. But if you're over here on Team America and you think the last thing we needed was another stupid, unwinnable war that's going to cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and get thousands of people slaughtered in the best case scenario, we're already there. Let's see how much worse this could get. That's enough for us to be off the team. So you're right. People who are hawkish against Iran should still support Donald Trump. He's the best you got, Israel.

59:40But we here are Americans. All right. So let's. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Let's move to the next timestamp, Natalie, whatever the next one was after that. Thank you. Sorry, I didn't see that note.

59:54JD Vance:Extraordinarily well-funded efforts to tank the negotiation, to prevent us from reaching a deal, to change American public opinion, which, by the way, if you look at the public opinion, people love the idea of actually getting to a final resolution on this thing. Americans do not – they're not game for long-term open-ended regime change wars in the Middle East. They're okay with us using the military to accomplish discrete objectives. They're not okay with open-ended obligations. What do you think the motivation of the – Shut the fuck up. Dude, what are you – like this is the most pathetic propaganda ever, A.K.A.

1:00:36you launched the most unpopular war in American history. You know, what I'm taking away, Rob, from 80 % of the American people opposing this war from the start is that they're OK with military action, but they just don't want an open ended war. Dude, if polls have ever told us anything, they tell us that the American people are against this war. This is the most insane thing ever. Like your takeaway from that being like, you know, hey, what do the polls say? 80 % of people oppose this strongly. You go, so my takeaway from that is that they want a little. Is that what you're telling me? They want a little bit of it, just not like the whole thing.

1:01:15No. You know, the American people are actually okay with us making this deal. Yeah, because they hate the fucking war. So they're okay with it ending. Like, what does this mean? No American is thrilled with the MOU. It's just they hate this. Like, stop. Anything's better than this. Pathetic. All right, let's keep playing.

1:01:35JD Vance:They're not okay with open-ended obligations. What do you think the motivation of the Hawks is? Do you think this is, are they influenced by defense contractors? Are they influenced, what's the reason why they're so keen on continuing to bomb? I think with any big group of people, you have a diversity of opinions. So sure, I'm sure that you have people who are influenced by defense contractors. There's a lot of talk about how much is the Israeli government influencing American politics. And there are certainly certain people within the Israeli government who hate the deal. We see exact evidence.

1:02:16JD Vance:There was a time story that came out yesterday that basically there are certain influencers in America who are being paid in order to attack the deal. I think some of it, it's just pure political ideology, right? It's foreign policy perspectives that are much different from mine. They think that America should just, that we can basically, you can wave a magic wand with the military and accomplish whatever you want. And, you know, it's not that simple. You actually have to have a very clear objective. Military power can accomplish a clear objective, but you've got to have that clear objective. You can't just say we're going to bomb until something good happens.

1:02:55JD Vance:That never works. The United States has tried that before. So I think it's a combination of things. But I definitely think. Pause it there.

1:03:05I mean, it's exactly what Donald Trump is doing. It's exactly what he's doing. We literally said this. I think this is what you said in the car. I think you screamed this as we were listening to this car. You go, that's what he's doing. Well, the military, you can't just wave a magic wand with the military and make anything happen. What, like taking out the Iranian regime and having the people rise up and having a democratic government? You mean like literally the stated goal of this war when your president launched it? Yeah. No, that's a good point. That's what he's doing right now, bombing and hoping something just changes.

1:03:37That's literally the strategy right now. and they have yet to come forward and go hey well we're doing troops on the ground or we're actually taking karg island and here's those it's just hey let's bomb and uh hope some sort of a pathway to victory opens up that's literally been the strategy for the last three months we just restarted that strategy i know you just look man and i mean part of the reason why this thing is such a disaster uh for jd vance is just obviously like on its face if you i don't know man it's like trying to it's you're trying to carry the pro-life vote while supporting an abortion clinic or something you know like it's even his own logic here when you think about it he is sitting here because he's trying again as i said before he's trying to signal that he's one of us it's why it's pissing them off so much but he's in his own words here he's telling you that like fucking the israel lobby is trying to undermine our peace deal that they're trying to goad us into war, and then they're trying to keep us in this war.

1:04:37And it's quite literally what Israel does. It's why we say they drag us into war. It's literally the way you watch it happen. It's not just like they push us into war. It's a continuous drag. And he's describing it. He's describing the people who would undermine a peace deal that's in the interest of the American people. And then out of the other side of his mouth, he's also going to say to those people, and you should support Trump because we've done so much for you. Well, why the fuck should we do so much for people like that? The other side of this, though, that is fascinating is that the Israeli propaganda is supposed to be our number one partner in the region and anyone who even flirts with, hey, do they have an outsized controller anti-Semites?

1:05:17And now you've got the vice president who is presenting himself as, hey, I'm kind of the moderate. I'm not totally against war. And I've got Trump's back. But yeah, even though they're not more of a problem than other people i acknowledge that there is influence here and like that's a it is a like an interesting crack in the arm it is well why the shapiro's and the other you're not even allowed to have that well you know i gotta say in some way it reminds me of the dynamic with charlie kirk um and this was you know charlie kirk was in this impossible situation you know and i saw it you know i had found i shared this on twitter uh the other day but i played it for you i found the thing where charlie kirk was talking about the debate with me and and it was on a call so it's on a call with like a turning point member chapter organizer and some girl and she asks his thoughts about the debate between me and josh hammer so this is probably i mean it's got to be you know short shortly before he died a couple months before he got killed and whatever he was just talking about the dynamic we talked about it a lot on the show where he goes, look, dude, like Dave won over the audience and he had home court advantage.

1:06:25But like 10 years ago, this would have been the most hostile environment. And that shows you how much the thing's changing. But anyway, so from Charlie Kirk's position, right, you got Turning Point USA and it's basically made up of grassroots, like your members, which are young people, young activists and your donors, which are billionaires, you know, and man, the young activists hate Israel's guts. The donors love Israel with religious fervor, man that's a rock and a hard place and so what he tried to do was go well how about i host the debate so i'll be the guy here at turning point we're having this debate happen we'll have dave smith versus josh hammer in the clash but that was way too far that made the donors were like fuck you you're basically me like you're a nazi now for having and he talked about this a lot to the end of his life and of course a lot of people speculate about whether this had something to do with his death um which i certainly don't know you know if that if it does but there's no question and you can watch the last megan kelly interview that he was going through this dynamic and in a way jd vance and jd vance explicitly says on the interview and this is one of the interesting things he says look i'm the moderate here i'm trying to be the moderate i'm going look there's people who hate israel's fucking guts and then there's the people who want to fight every war on their behalf i'm going hey look we'll fight some of your wars we'll do some of it The thing is that no one, and I just mean in this political moment that we live in, no one's looking for a moderate on this issue.

1:07:50You can't do it. You got to pick a side. And it's just, listen, dude, in fucking 1968, was somebody going to walk out in 1968 and go, look, man, there are some people who want to continue carpet bombing Vietnam. And there are some people who think this whole thing has been a disaster. But I'm going to say, like, let's just do a little bit of carpet bombing. You know, let's like let's let's not extend the draft. Let's keep the draft. Get out of here. That is not the moment we're living in. No one in 1963 was rising up and saying I'm neutral on the Civil Rights Act. Some things about it are good.

1:08:26Some things about it are bad. You know, like it's just that is not the moment we're living in right now. We are sick and tired of this goddamn corrupt regime in D.C. fighting endless wars on behalf of a foreign country. We are against that. We oppose this senseless bloodshed and this senseless bankrupting of our country. We're against that. If you're not willing to say that, then fuck you. You're not our guy. And, you know, we always had a lot of problems with Donald Trump. But he said that, you know, he said we're not fighting any more of these wars. That's why he won this big coalition. And you're not you're not prepared to say that.

1:09:06We're not prepared to even consider supporting you. And then, all right, I say we comment on the Epstein thing, and then we go to the paywall stuff, which will be on Donald Trump's supposed election interference from China. That's right. Which, by the way, for anyone who has not subscribed to the show, I think, I did this math before, I don't quite, I think it's 60 cents an episode. You never have to hear an ad read ever. You get the episodes earlier, and you get an entire free extra episode. Or, you know, you get an extra bonus episode. You're getting four episodes a week, never have to hear a single ad, and you can support the show directly and get the content earlier and not exist on any of these platforms where you never know when the censorship's coming.

1:09:48That's right. That's right. Oh, YouTube's been messing with us. That's why we've been putting the episodes on Twitter lately. So literally, if you can, partoftheproblem.com, subscribe there. You get the bonus episodes, like Rob said, everything ad-free. And you get our entire archive, every episode of the show that's ever been recorded, at least the ones that we still have. There's some from back in like 2012, I think, that have been lost forever. I gotta be honest, if you listen to four episodes of Us a week and then you're going down the archive, you're psychotic. Yeah, you are. This is way more.

1:10:13It's too much. You don't need this, Matt. You don't need these thoughts that are in my head running around in your head. Okay, so do you want, all right, so let's just jump into the next clip, which was like 1.30, I think Rob said. It was around an hour, 30 minutes in. Play a little bit of, and then, yeah, we cover, I think this is the Epstein stuff. Because he also lies, like, just fucking lies about that shit. His basic position on the Epstein storyline is there's certainly something here. You have relationships with certain individuals in our intelligence and a certain wing of Israeli intelligence.

1:10:41But they dropped the ball when they didn't investigate it when he was first prosecuted in Florida. And then the Donald Trump administration did everything that it could to actually release these files. Yeah, everything from Pam Bondi was just a whoopsie. And she kind of oversold what she had. And it's like, look, first of all, the Pam Bondi thing. you mean she directly lied i mean she claimed that she had videotapes of ebstein raping children she said there were videotapes some of it was child porn and some of it was him with kids like this is what she claimed the attorney general claimed this um i don't even know if we could get into all the statements that cash patel and dan bongino made uh dan bongino of course said that he had it on good authority that he worked for middle east intelligence middle east intelligence the epstein a saudi if ever i've seen one uh so he's you know there's um whatever there's but the idea the most important the most consequential lie that he told to joe what is the idea that donald trump was trying to get this done and well i'll also say that to me there's an even bigger lie, which is he tries to frame the story as the ball was already dropped, so he can't unwind this.

1:11:55I just don't believe that to be true. If you guys were actually interested in this, you could hit every single understaffer with the Mann Act and get them to telltale. And there's so many leads and ways to investigate this. You guys are not interested. And to prove that you're not interested, you try and claim we put out all the files. No, you didn't. It's 3 million, I think, of the 6 million. And then one of the biggest lies he tells is, well, the reason why we were redacting so much is sometimes it's hard to tell the victims from the actual co-conspirators and it's like dude every time that you redacted some old some wealthy old dude you're telling me epstein was raping dudes too yeah les wexner we were concerned he was a victim we were concerned that's why he was redacted so much there's a lot of it's an honest mistake 16 year old girl 80 year old jew very hard to tell the difference but his egg-shaped penis in anything that's the intelligence i got dude i mean there's Look, it's such an absurd lie on its face.

1:12:47OK, like we said this at the beginning of the episode, right, that Donald Trump was calling people in and threatening them and all that shit. But look, the law from Congress was to compel the Justice Department to declassify information that the president can do on a whim. So if the president wanted to do it, there was no point in the legislation existing. The whole point of the legislation was to force the executive branch to declassify this information, which they did not do. They are still to this day in violation of the law blatantly. The bill that Massey and Ro Khanna got passed says that you can only declassify.

1:13:27What is it? It's to protect the victims' identities and national security. There's three million documents they haven't released yet. And it's in violation of the law, clearly. They're so no. And by the way, they could if they wanted to. Donald Trump. This is the Epstein bill only applies to the Justice Department. These are all Justice Department files. So that would be that's everything the attorney general has reigned over, including the FBI. So it's the whole Justice Department and the FBI, those files. But there's CIA files, NSA files, all of this. They've made no effort to try to go get those.

1:14:00And they could. The president could just insist that they're all – he can declassify anything he wants with a stroke of a pet. So he could do all of this. He's doing none of it. This is – he clearly pivoted and tried to cover the whole thing up, and it's very obviously because he's implicated in something. And it's not clear exactly what that is. I'm not like implying it's pedophilia or something like that. But clearly he's implicated in something. It might be maybe the death, maybe the death of Jeffrey Epstein that happened on his watch. It might not be that he's implicated, but power structures that he doesn't want to actually be at odds with.

1:14:32Well, it seems like it's happening, if you ask me. Old claim. All right. Maybe we can play a little bit for flavor. OK, yes. Go ahead. Shit.

1:14:44JD Vance:American politics. I just think you have to be self-aware about it. I mean, why wouldn't you? It's a country of 9 million people. We have 330 million people. I think this is still the Israel influence. Sorry, what timestamp were you at here, Natalie? I apologize. We may not have given her the right one. This is at one hour, 29 minutes. Here, keep playing for a little bit. I think this might be where he leads into the Epstein thing. Of course, they're going to try to persuade Americans. They're going to try to move Americans in one direction or another. I think that's just the nature of the beast.

1:15:14JD Vance:But it's more than that. The concern is that they're spying on American politicians, that there's concerns about funding. There's concerns about influence. There's concerns about whether or not politicians are – whether they're aligned with Israel or whether they're aligned with the United States first. Well, there's certainly, like, I definitely get those concerns. But my sense is that the way that all foreign influence works in the United States is people try to manipulate American public opinion. And then from manipulating a public opinion, they try to get the outcomes that they want. I mean, this thing is a very good example of this.

1:15:55JD Vance:So, you know, we know. Yeah, you know, you can just pause. We can wrap up by just kind of discussing the rest of it. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's, he's, again, trying to position himself still as signaling that he's one of us. I'm kind of with you. I believe in the Epstein conspiracy, but then defending the administration that blatantly tried to cover it up. And I don't know. And look, I mean, again, I think there's been maybe this I'll say this in conclusion. There's been three episodes of the Joe Rogan experience that where there has been. And again, I know I've made this point before, but I do think it's worth noting that there's something that is a marked asymmetry between, broadly speaking, us and the other side.

1:16:45is something that and i think this is something that people notice i think it's part of the reason why we've kind of been winning this bigger argument but like if you think about how many people freaked out when well first of all myself obviously a lot of people don't like that joe has had me on so many times over the years there's been a lot written about that hit pieces and stuff uh when he had uh daryl cooper on people flipped out about ian carroll he had on people flipped at about that obviously he had gotten a lot of shit over the years for having alex jones on and other guests that were were controversial notice we don't flip we don't flip out when he has the guy said like i love this there's been three episodes of the joe rogan experience since donald trump's been elected that i thought were just invaluable um and it was the cash patel episode the gad sad episode and this one with jd vance all of them rogan has been incredibly fair to the guests he's been his normal you know um just kind of friendly kind self and just allowed them the opportunity to make their case and dude the reaction from the audience is like universal again but again to be clear one of those episodes was cash patel and cash patel came on and told Joe Rogan and told all his listeners that he knows for a fact that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.

1:18:11Dan Bongino has said the same thing. Your administration had these people who, like, made a lot of money, worked up a lot of people, got a lot of support by engaging in these conspiracies, and then they turned around and promised, said, take my word, I know for a fact he's killed himself. Not a shred of evidence has been shown for this. Why don't we get to see it? If you're like, why can't this be the most obvious challenge to J.D. Vance, Cash Patel, Dan Bongino? Just tell me, what did you see? What did you see that made you so confident that you could come out and guarantee that he had killed himself?

1:18:50This would do a lot to put at least a big portion of this to bed. You guys said this was the thing. Dan Bongino told me he worked for Mossad. Okay, he said Middle Eastern intelligence, but he said he worked for Middle Eastern intelligence. Now you're telling me he killed himself. Show me the evidence. And Donald Trump loves getting the Epstein story out as much as anyone, which is why Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey are still, you know, big parts of the Republican contingency. Yeah, that's so interesting. He wanted to get this stuff out. And his two, two of MAGA's favorite congressmen, one of them got their family threatened and the other had the Israel lobby for$30 million to unseat them.

1:19:31Hmm. That's interesting. Just for going along with the administration. That's what they get. All right. We're going to wrap up here. We're going to go record a members-only episode. For those of you guys who are members, jump on over and enjoy. All right. Thank you, guys. See you guys at Zany's tonight. Comic Dave Smith, PorchTour.com. Catch you next time. Peace.

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Dave Smith brings you the latest in politics! On this episode of Part Of The Problem, Dave and Robbie "the Fire" Bernstein discuss J.D. Vance's appearance on Rogan, his performance, specific times he was dishonest about the negotiations with Iran and the Epstein files, and more.


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