#2021 - Mike Baker

26:17You're not saving jack shit. Yeah. I don't understand where that message is coming from or why there's not a nuanced perspective where people are taking into account all these other variables. Well, in part, again, um, it doesn't fit the narrative. It doesn't fit the narrative, but also there is this, this effort. Look, I mean, we, we talked, you know, there's, you remember the, what was that called? Internet research agency, right? It was, yeah. And so we do, the, the potential for influence on the elections, right, back in the day. Which wasn't that long ago. And the Chinese regime actually does it better than the Russians, right?

26:54They've got way more resources. They've got a much longer view. Um, frankly, they're more sophisticated, right? And so sometimes you look at things and you think, well, that doesn't make any sense. Why, you know, why are we, you know, acting in this way? And then you think, well, because you've got like a local or a grassroots community activist group, right? And they're not, they're not Chinese spies. They're not working, but they're, the Chinese regime identifies them and says, you know what, if we can influence them, it's just pure, you know, propaganda or a covert action campaign. If I can influence that activist group to go out and tell those, whomever, the city officials or the county commissioners or whatever, that this is bad, right?

27:41And this is, we, we need to stop this, right? We shouldn't be mining for lithium and Nevada or wherever. We shouldn't be pursuing, you know, logical steps to get, you know, control over the critical minerals supply chain issue, right? Um, why wouldn't you do that, right? It's, it's smart activity on the part of the Chinese regime and the Intel service there. So that part of it, to me, makes, makes sense. The problem we have is that there's a lack of awareness, right? Now there was a, again, this shows you I've been spending too much time reading on the ship, but I, I'm fascinated by this, this idea that we're trying to do two things that are completely opposed to each other.

28:26Stop fossil fuels and also keep critical minerals in the ground that we're going to need to pursue green energy. I did, that part is amazing, but I did actually write down, well, but that is part of the problem with green energy. Is it, it's not really green because you do have to mine. And when you do mine, there is consequences. There's consequences. And that's, but as, I mean, as you pointed out, I mean, look, we, we mine cleaner and safer than anybody else. And that's why there was a, I'm going to actually read a quote. This shows you. Look, see, I feel like I'm maturing. I've got more organized hair.

28:59I know, I know, look, this, see, I know there, there have been times when you've been staring at me thinking, what the fuck is he talking about? Are he, is he going, is he taking a nap? So they had a hearing in Arizona, not too long ago, about critical minerals, the issue of critical minerals, and the importance of them and the importance of speeding up the permitting process. If we want, again, if we want to pursue a green future, you got to do it. And this guy, Congressman, I know I've got to know, he goes our, Paul goes our from wherever Arizona said, and this is a quote, the anti -mining actions by the Biden administration, hurt America's economy, threaten our national security and push mineral production abroad, where environmental and labor standards pale in comparison with our own, right?

29:47And that's absolutely correct. And again, all you have to do is look at what goes on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It's, it's, it's insane, but I don't see that we're going to walk that back, right? Because there's just, there's too much pushback. And no matter what mineral you're talking about, I don't see that necessarily changing, unless you get maybe a change administration, and then you get the effort to deregulate, and then you speed up permitting. But at some point, we're going to be screwed. China, China recently put the brakes on exporting a couple of minerals that are critical to producing mineral systems and solar panels, and they've done it that in the past, right?

30:27And that should be a clear signal to us that we got to change our thought process on all of this. But I'm not confident that will happen. This episode is brought to you by Life Lock. Tax season is already stressful. You shouldn't have to worry about identity theft on top of everything else. And trust me, it's a big worry, especially since during tax season, your sensitive info does a lot of traveling to places you can't control. It goes through payroll, your accountant, or your tax consultant, and countless other data centers on its way to the IRS. Any of them can expose you to identity theft because they all have the info on your W2, just the ticket for criminals to steal your identity.

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32:48It's bold and sophisticated yet incredibly smooth finishing long and deep. It's authentically American representing uncompromising quality for the rugged, the powerful and the passionate. Tap the banner to learn more or visit buffalotracedistillery .com. That's buffalotracedistillery .com. Distilled, aged and bottled by Buffalo Tracedistillery, 90 proof, Franklin County, Kentucky, Buffalo Trace, American family -owned, independent and perfectly untamed. Anyway, yeah, I'm not confident either because it seems like that narrative is just in the American public. You know, the mining is bad, we need to go green, but they don't see the inconsistencies of taking those two positions at the same time.

33:40Same time. Well, the Republicans have never done a particularly good job messaging, and they need to get better at it. And I think there's a few bills passed around apparently that may help the situation, but for now, I guess, with China's kind of significant control over the minerals as it stands, we don't have any option other than to deal with them, right? And so, no wonder we sometimes don't push back. I guess that's where I was coming back around. You said, well, why don't we push back or how we, you know, we don't have that much leverage right now. So, I think that's part of the answer. Well, there's also, we need a push for nuclear.

34:27We're legitimate, new nuclear power plants in this country, which is, it's so hard for people to wrap their heads around because of three mile island and Fukushima, but that is the safest, cleanest electricity that we can generate in this country. Well, you would think that that would be a logical, it's not a big leap, right? But you're right, people are so emotive, right? And they stole, you can say three mile island and everybody knows, right? And most people can't retain a lot of information about historical facts, Chernobyl, Chernobyl, yeah, yeah. And so, and we've gotten better at safety systems and redundancies, right?

35:07So, absolutely, but, you know, let's say people talk about why we've got to expand nuclear energy. Well, you look at the deaths from nuclear. They're so small, just in comparison to the chronic illness that comes from coal. I mean, we watched this documentary on this one town. Was it, is it an Indian, Indiana, Jamie, that one town? Yeah. Where there's multiple coal plants near the area. And these people have like a fine dusting of particulate in their cars every day. So, they're breathing this air that has this coal particulate. And there's a host of chronic illnesses that are coming with this.

35:46So many people have respiratory conditions. Yeah, but, and we have been, we've been busy trying to shut down, you know, use of coal and, and, and fine, but you got to replace it with something that's, that's, that's pragmatic, right? And right now solar and wind isn't going to cut it, right? And we're going to see people exaggerate about the efficiency and efficacy of solar and wind. They really do love to sort of exaggerate how effective it is. And also, how much energy it takes to generate a windmill just to build one and maintain it. Right. And, and also what going green is going to mean to the grid system, right?

36:25And the demand for electricity. Right. All the cars. And yes. That was the thing in California. They said by 2035, we're not going to sell any internal combustion engines. Also, don't charge your car because it's hot out. Yeah. It's a fuck. Everybody stay home. Cal. Yeah. Oh, God. Is the test case for stupidity. Yeah. Well, you know, who knows? Maybe the current governor is going to, you know, throw his hat in the ring. I think it is. You think so? Yeah. I think, I mean, I'm a armchair conspiracy theorist. But if I had guests, I would say that all this stuff that's coming out slowly, but surely about Biden is on purpose.

37:03And they want, they want to get rid of them. I think he wants to run again. And I don't think the Democrats think that he can win. I think they're right. And I think they're going to slowly, but surely expose more of these, like, very clear pieces of evidence of corruption. Yeah. Yeah. The $20 million is fucking bananas. The fact that this isn't all over the New York Times and Washington Post and mainstream news, that they're not blaring it from the rooftops because you know, they would be if it was Trump. Oh, absolutely. Or really any, you know, any, it wouldn't matter Trump or, or whomever would be on the GOP side.

37:42No, look, I've got a, I've got a intelligence and investigations firm. You may have heard of them. I do. Yeah. Yeah. Portland Square Group for all your information and security needs and, um, you've changed the name a couple of times. I just don't want you to collect. Yeah. And, uh, but I've got investigators. Great people. That's, that's the most, been most rewarding thing about building a business is just the wonderful people that you eventually get to work with and they raise families and they stick with you. And, um, so I've got some investigators that I guess the point is they could have wrapped this puppy up, uh, some time ago, right?

38:19It's an asset tracing exercise is what they're engaged in. And, you know, maybe they'll, maybe they'll stay focused. Maybe they'll keep going. But when you've got an asset tracing exercise, you've got a, a myriad of, of single -purpose companies set up, you know, around the road. Um, first of all, when you look at a, at a case and you say we've got 20 plus single -purpose companies set up here for a pass through of funds, that's, yeah, what we would call a clue about money laundering, right? That's, that's why you do that, right? To hide beneficial ownership, um, to hide the flow of funds and transactions that are involved to, to obfuscate and make it difficult for the obvious because they, their feeling is, there's not most people will maybe dig once or twice, but then they'll get bored and they'll move on, right?

39:07Let's make this as complicated as possible. And so you start to see, there's always fraud indicators. You start to see certain things in an investigation. And the great thing about asset tracing also is that there are records, right? And that's what they're finding out now. So, and, and I'm glad because whether it's a, whether it's Biden, whether it's Trump, it wouldn't matter. If you've got an asshole who's in, in office and is engaged in pay for play, right? And there's no frankly that this president didn't know that he was being used as the dog and the dog and pony show, right? And so they've got these, these records available to them.

39:44And with the power of the government, their ability to subpoena and do all these things they can do, they will have the case figured out at some point. The problem with Washington is do they have the, you know, do they have the grit to stick with it, right? And then, then the next question is, does anything happen as a result? But it is in my mind, anyway, for what that's worth. There's no doubt. This is, this is money laundering. And it is, it's, it's pathetic. As you pointed out, that there's so little interest, right? From a completely incurious, well, not incurious, but just a completely partisan significant majority of the media.

40:22They don't, it's not that they don't care. It's that they do care. And they're taking every effort and they're now having to contort themselves into certain race because it's getting more and more difficult to provide top cover for the Biden administration. But they've been trying. And, you know, they're just, at some point, maybe the damn breaks and there's so much paper evidence that they can't ignore it anymore. But you would have thought that some enterprising young journalists who understand the importance of objectivity, whether it's a democratic republican, would have gotten off their ass and really pursued this story because it's a Pulitzer Prize winning story at the end of the day.

41:00But yeah, but the question is what kind of pushback do they get in pursuing that story? How dangerous is it for them to pursue that story? Because it seems like it would be fairly dangerous. I mean, talking about extraordinary amounts, amounts of money. And this is just what's been uncovered, right? Right. So we've only gone back to what, like 2000, what, 13 or 14 or something? Yeah, back to the VP days. Right. Yeah. So what about before that, like when did this start? Did this only start when he was VP? Did he get his son involved to give him some sort of a meaningful business? It seems like he was a bagman, right?

41:40And that's another part of this story that's fascinating. It's not like he was producing anything. It's not like Hunter Biden was producing something. He's producing some good videos. Yeah, but he's made some great photos. He seems like the kind of guy that you would expect to be involved in that kind of behavior. Yeah. I mean, he's a wild boy. And he's also the sort of guy that you would identify immediately. If you were on the Chinese side of things as an example, whatever, $8 million, whatever, he's the target. That's the guy. Look at that. That's your weekly next to width of greatest access possible to the second most powerful person theoretically in the country.

42:20That's a fantastic target. There's all sorts of weaknesses there that you can play off of. And for them, 20 million over a few years, that's a fucking minor drop in the buck. It's literally nothing. And that's a great payday for them. And look, there is no reason he was being placed on boards other than access to his father. I mean, even if somebody who's highly partisan on the Democrat side has got to at least be honest enough to admit that. So then the question becomes, all right, was the at the time price president and then after that, was he aware? Did he know that Hunter was out there doing all these things and using access?

43:09And at first, it was like, I had no idea. It wasn't talking. And then suddenly, it's like, well, I was on some phone calls, but it wasn't important. And now the media has got to spin that narrative. Well, I wasn't talking about anything of substance. Well, there's a new photo that just got released of him on a plane to Ukraine in 2015. Yeah. So I think this is, to my point, that I think they're slowly releasing this stuff because they plan on getting rid of them. Yeah. Well, if they do, then what happens to Kamala Harris? She's gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's no way you can't keep her. She's got the lowest approval rating of any vice president ever, including Dan Quill.

43:46Oh, God. There's a good filter. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was with these comics. He's to joke to that guy. I was a assassination insurance. Nobody wants to kill the president. Have that fucking guy take over. I forgot about that. But no, but you're right. And I think if, yeah, they can't, yeah, they can't move Kamala Harris out as long as Biden is the candidate, right? Because they wouldn't weather that optic. But if he has to step aside, then obviously it's a brand new ticket. It's a brand new day and they'll come up with something. So, you know, I, I guess the question is, do they firmly believe that Biden can't win again if it's Trump or whomever?

44:26The only way Biden's going to win again is never Trump. These never -Trump people. Yeah. There are people that will vote for a fucking box of hammers before they would vote for Trump. And that's a, that's a real segment of our population. I don't know what percentage is, but it's probably fairly high who are, they have enough trust in the Democratic establishment that they think that the Democrats would figure out a way to run the country better even with a puppet than they would with Donald Trump in office. Yeah. Well, and I think there's also the independence. Don't forget, you know, independence or sort of the moderates that, you know, previously had voted for Trump and then got tired of the chaos.

45:09And then in the last election said, no, I'm not going to do that again. I don't think they walk it back and say, yeah, actually give me, you know, because I don't, people again, very emotive. So, well, there's also the indictments. Now, what does your take on this Georgia thing? Because the Georgia thing is interesting because I was just watching this video today that was detailing what they were claiming was evidence of fraud in the Georgia election. And there's apparently some videos of people moving boxes around and doing some things that seem a little, least on the surface, suspicious without an adequate explanation.

45:45Yeah. I think it's, I think they don't care whether they win or not. And I think they brought a fairly massive racketeering or Rico, you know, charge at the top of this sort of a criminal conspiracy. Yeah. But it involves like Trump plus 18 others. And I think they can't be stupid. So they probably understand that it falls apart in appeal, right? And I don't think that that's going to hold up, but I don't think they care because last night, I mean, again, this shows you how bizarre this is, they held a press conference, right? They rushed this thing through. First of all, here's an interesting fact.

46:22First of all, the indictment showed up on the county website in the afternoon before the grand jury had voted, right? And before they had come across with what the charges would be. And so all of a sudden, that comes across on the public domain. And I think it was, I think it was Reuters that snapped it and kind of ran with it as a story. But then it was taken down off the county's website, right? And they were asked about it later on. And they said, I was fictitious or some bullshit, right? So you wonder, okay, how did that get leaked? Because then those charges that showed up earlier in the day matched what ended up being voted on by the grand jury.

47:01So that's a legal to leak that sort of information, right? ahead of time. But also, how would they know? How would they know how the grand jury was going to decide at the end of the day what indictments to throw out there or to put out there in this charge? So that's something that probably should be looked at. But in today's world may not. But I think really, she was pushing last night at whatever 11, 30, 12 o 'clock at night, who holds a press conference at this point at that time of night. But she was saying she wants it out there and whether you know, to start this trial in six months. And so, you know, six months from now is whatever February.

47:43So right in the middle of all the caucuses and all the campaigning that goes on. And whether it's that one or whether it's the one from DC or it doesn't matter. They're creating a very lasting narrative that's going to go through the election season. And I think that's really what they want. And whether any of this actually holds, I don't think they give a rat's ass. You know, some people do. If this was happening in the other direction. Oh, and by the way, if Trump was in office and Biden was running against him, and this this evidence was available, this evidence of the all the corruption with his son.

48:21I mean, that's far clear. This is like real clear stuff. Well, but they always come back with it. Well, look, it was, you know, the Trump kids were working and doing business. And you know, they had a business, right? They were real estate developers. There's there's tangible activity there. Now, you know, that's that's part of the problem. That's how it gets muddied is is that people, you know, in the media or people who are supportive of an administration will say, yeah, but everybody does it. Everybody's engaged in pay for play. Everybody's engaged in influence peddling. And there's, you know, some truth in that, but not everybody's engaged in money laundering.

49:03Right. That might, you know, be worth some investigation. But again, I don't think that the point of this exercise on the part of the the various DAs. And that's another thing. Like the DA down in Georgia is, is that's an elected position that she's running for office again. And she's raising money off off of this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to get Trump, right? That seems a little odd too, right? I mean, I don't know. There's it's no surprise that people are losing confidence in in the government. Have you looked at any of the evidence of election manipulation? Some, but I'll be honest with you, I haven't disappeared fully down that rabbit hole yet.

49:52I don't, you know, I'm seems like I'm really suck in. Yeah. I think it would. And there's, you know, there's a lot of communities. At the times that I have looked, there's a lot of there's a lot of shit out there. And trying to, trying to decipher what is just crazy ass bullshit from what is legitimate and deserves investigation. Right. I'll be honest with you, I just like, I've run out at time. And I'm just like, I'm sorry, I got to go, you know, watch one of the kids games. So which by the way, one of my kids, the middle boy, Slugo is heading to Florida to go to boarding school at the end of the month.

50:32Yeah, it's going to go play basketball at IMG, which is an amazing academy, amazing, amazing place. Is that going to be hard for you? I haven't go to boarding school? Um, yeah, we couldn't wait to get him out of the house. No, he's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's all the, all the boys are fantastic, but he's very focused. He's very competitive. He's been, this is all he wants to do is and he's been down there before and they do a great job academically and sports wise. It's, it's very much a sports focused program. Does he want to play professionally? Yeah, I guess any kid that, you know, is, is serious about what they do at time.

51:11He's about three foot two. He's a white kid for my, oh, he's got a big future. He's, he's growing. He's making his way towards, you know, he's, he's just turned, just turned whatever 14 and he's making his way towards six foot and he'll get, he'll get as tall as he needs to be for a point guard, but he's a, he's a focused, he's a focused kid. People are doing all kinds of shit to their kids now. Yeah. They're juicing them up with human growth hormone to get them to grow. It's crazy. And they're, you know, they're reclassing them three or four times, right? Having a repeat, graze, he's, he's played some kids that are, you know, honestly, got it, you know, like they, they, they show up with a baby and they're, you know, and, well, it's a, it's a fucking business.

51:53I mean, if your, your kid can become a legit professional athlete. I mean, there is extraordinary amounts of money in that. Yeah. If the kids are good. Yeah. Yeah. You know, again, it's, you know, for us, you look at that and he's very realistic. He understands that, you know, and, and, but he loves the game. He's super into sort of the, the, you know, the intricacies of it, right? And he's, he's a selfless kid. He, you know, he's, he's all about, you know, getting the ball passed properly, getting the assist, right? He's not, he's not a, he's not a selfish player, but, but he's also realistic about the, the tiny, tiny statistics in terms of who gets to even play D3 or D2 ball, right?

52:33And then certainly going on to, to, to professional sports, but it teaches a lot of other things, right? And so, boarding school for the right kid can be a great experience, can be a terrible experience for the wrong kid, but for the right kid, it can be a great experience. And, you know, teaches them independence and, and discipline and motivation and, and the value of, of, of hard work and, and, you know, just not taking shit for granted, right? How often are you going to see him? Probably quite frequently because, you know, we, we, we, you know, he's, again, he's, he's, he's, young. So we'll be down there as often as possible.

53:11But at the same time, you want to let him run, right? You don't want to, you know, you've got to give him room. Right? We've never been those sort of parents for any of the kids where we sit on the sidelines and watch their practices. That drives me fucking crazy. You know, when you've got parents, you, or in every practice, you're sitting in their lawns, terror, just, you know, watch it. And you think, just let the kids do well or not? Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. So I think he's, he, he, again, he's very independent. I think, I think it'll be just fine. But, I forget how I jumped onto that boarding school here.

53:44Anyway, yeah. But it's, it was a bit of a, it was a struggle to get to the point where we thought, okay, let's do it. Right? The other two boys were like, nah, get him out of the house. It'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. Before I, the youngest one was like, do I get his room and all his stuff? But yeah. Anyway, and the oldest one was just out at the Naval Academy. There's, there's a fantastic place. God, it was out there for a visit and, and had a chance to play some lacrosse and, and, you know, whether he applies or not, again, it's the experience of seeing what's out there and what's possible. And, you know, if you leave all the doors open for the kids and you try to get them to understand the importance of not shutting doors by stupid behavior or poor academics or whatever it is, it's all you can do is apparent.

54:32And then at some point they run and they do their thing. But, you know, from our perspective, you just, you gotta keep every door open for the kids. So, they don't get there and think, oh, God, I should not have done that because now I can't go there or I can't do this. Right? So we'll see. But it was, that was a great experience. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. So how we went from electric meddling. No, we went from P. We hermit to election meddling to, to my kids. Yeah. I got, you know what? Because I've got my list. I'm gonna stick with my fucking list. Yeah. There was one other thing I wanted to mention about how fascinating the, the, the, our relationship with China is.

55:15And that is also since last time we met the Chinese, a Chinese company, pseudo independence, supposedly, but there's very few of those, right? They're all got some level of state sponsorship, more cooperation. They bought like 300 and some odd acres, right? In near Grand Forks. And there's a Grand Forks Air Force base, which is, you know, home to whatever the 319th Fighter Wing or Air Wing. And one of the things that the base does is it oversees in part the satellite systems that we run, right?

56:00Overseas So I'll be damned if this Chinese group didn't buy up hundreds of acres of land about 12 miles from, from this base. And they worked with the local officials, the local folks there, to say, we want to build a milling plant, a corn milling plant, right? The company was a food company. And it's gonna be great. It's gonna give you like 200 local jobs. Let's build it. And so the local officials were like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Well, it ran through the investment syphias, the investment operation that looks at foreign investment to make sure that it's above board and kosher.

56:36And syphias said, we don't have any opinion. It's not really our domain. We don't see anything wrong with this. So we can't cancel the potential purchase. And the Air Force had another thought and they said, screw it. That's, no, this is a threat to national security. You can't allow this to happen. You can't allow them to build this plant. And so I'll be damned in one of those rare moments of common sense. They shut it down. They said, you can't do this. And so, and then that become a bit of an issue. And then started to see in Congress. You started to see all these talk about, well, my God, the Chinese are buying up farmland all across America.

57:11And so it's Bill Gates, right? So it's Bill Gates, yeah, Bill Gates and the Chinese. Now, the largest, to be fair, the largest landowners in terms of foreign countries, Canada. So, Canada owns by far the most US farmland. But it was nice to see that there was some reaction, some common sense here. And they don't do that. And that's happening. It's increasing. So I think the bright spot here is that people are becoming more aware of the problem and that not every time is nefarious, not every time, you know, I'm not saying that, you know, it's not always going to be nefarious. But you should at least be smart enough to look and see.

57:50It's like when we talk about, you know, Chinese equipment being put on regional telecoms all over the world or the country. Yeah. Yeah. Little things like that we should probably pay attention to. I was watching this video where this guy was talking about, um, these Chinese devices like a rumbaugh. Like it was one of those type of deals. It was like one of those robots that runs around your house in vacuars. Yeah. Yeah. We got two of them. And he said that it connects to a Chinese server. And it says when the thing is loading up, it's connecting to this Chinese server and that it connects to your network.

58:23And this Chinese server has potentially has access to your network and could choose to shut your network off, siphon information, do anything it wants. It's like the internet of things, right? So these things are connected via your network and connected to all the devices that are on your network. So if your cell phones on it, Wi -Fi, whatever. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that's been going on for some time, right? I mean, it's been the capabilities, the ability to gather intelligence from seemingly innocuous things. You're your fridge that talks to you or whatever. Certainly, obviously, and you've talked about this a lot that, you know, the cell phones.

59:10And how hard you have to work to turn off applications that will do that. And most people just don't have the patience, right? You've got to really dig, right? If you want to prevent your, you know, 80 -inch TV in your home from being switched on remotely as a monitor what's going on your home, you've got to really dig through the layers on that TV to get to the point where you can switch that off, right? And I mean, you know, it's got the time nowadays, but it doesn't even work. Does it even overrides? And does it even work? Exactly. Robot vacuums can use by hackers to spy on conversations saying the poor researchers say, light our phone attack can take advantage of the device's built -in sensor to gather potentially sensitive data, NUS, computer scientist discovered to prevent misuse team advise owners not to connect the robot vacuums to the internet.

59:58Yeah. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Give you a spy on private conversations, university said on Monday, the method called light our phone repurposes the light our sensors that a robot vacuum cleaner normally uses for navigating around a home into laser -based microphone to eavesdrop on private conversations. Oh terrific. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty wild. And I've read something about the use of Wi -Fi to see things in a home and that there's the ability that Wi -Fi has to gather 3D images. Yeah. Which is fucking crazy. Yes. I mean, a couple of four scientists now use Wi -Fi see through people's walls. What the fuck?

1:00:45Carnegie Mellon University can map human bodies through walls using Wi -Fi signals. I think it's super creepy, but I've read that you can do that with ethernet cables. Ethernet cables. Yeah. They can at least use it to hear. You know, anything that emanates anything. I mean, there's the ability to, and it yeah, it just start to look like a Tom Clancy movie where remember they used to, in the old days, you see this movie they could like you just and they could identify the people moving through the building. That was all bullshit back in the day. I mean, that was imagined. Right. People were thinking like, wouldn't that be great?

1:01:19And it is great. Right. If you roll up on a target site now and you're wearing the old, you know, highly advanced super soldier, Google glasses, right. You're getting all that data fed into you. Right. And you're getting heat signatures and you're, you know, you know, I got four people on the other side of this structure. I mean, that's fantastic intelligence. Or you can, you know, again, you know, the battlefield has changed completely now. I mean, you know, the drone capability and be able to look down field and know what you've got. Yeah. To be able to reach out and touch a target without getting your guys in harm's way.

1:01:52I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's an amazing world. But it's also pretty, what's the word? I don't say frightening necessarily, but it's alarming, right. For just the average citizen in terms of, again, information that's being gathered on you. And I think most people just at this stage of the game, certainly I think maybe younger folks just don't care. Yeah, they're on Tiktok. Yeah. You know, I was talking to my friend, Cam Son, and I was like, you know, that thinks fucking siphoning date off because he's on TikTok. He's, I don't care. It's fun. I'm like, okay. Well, I guess, you know, he's just 24 year old kids got nothing to worry about.

1:02:30Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's why I stopped doing my TikTok dances, you know, because I used to post all of them. You were very good. I think you should back. I was doing the, whatever the flossy and the rumble, I don't even know what the dances are anymore. But anyway, today, today, this is looking me segue. Today is the two year anniversary of the Afghan withdrawal. And I was, I forget how I got started on that one, but I was, I was looking at total cost of what we spent so far in Ukraine. And not only is it a two year anniversary of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but other comparisons we've spent in Ukraine since whenever January 2022.

1:03:13So, you know, a little over a year, obviously, a year and a half. We've dropped about upwards north of $80 billion there, right? More than that in all the Aztecs. I don't think we actually know what the full number is. I don't think the State Department knows. I don't think the Pentagon actually knows. They certainly don't know necessarily what the money is going to. But we've dropped at $80 billion, say, let's call it that. From 2001 to 2020 in Afghanistan, we spent about $73, $74 billion. So think about that. Wow. Almost 20 years in Afghanistan, we spent about $73 billion. About a year and a half in Ukraine, we've spent $80 billion plus.

1:03:55I'm not saying it's, you know, that we shouldn't be doing it, that we should not be supporting the Ukrainian military. I'm just saying it's a fascinating fact as far as I'm concerned. It just shows the level of support. You know, Ukraine is at the top of our, obviously, we don't give that much money to anybody by far, right? And the last time that last time a European was country, it was at the top of the aid list was, you know, the Marshall plan, maybe the Truman administration. So it's pretty significant. But the Afghanistan thing, two years after the withdrawal, we've spent since then, since the withdrawal, we've spent, or the US government's allocated about $8 billion.

1:04:45Now, the interesting point there is, who's been in control there in Afghanistan since, you know, the withdrawal. It's a Taliban. So we have allocated $8 billion to various humanitarian groups, charities, into Afghanistan, and no real, no real controls over whether the vast majority of that money, or half of that money, or whatever is going to the Taliban. And you can, yeah, and you can guarantee that it's being siphoned off. How does that work? Well, I'm glad you asked that. It wasn't that long ago. There was a, because there is an inspector general. They call them the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, C -GAR.

1:05:37And he testified before Congress. I think much earlier this year, it might have been the January, February timeframe, about Afghanistan. And he said, I cannot sit here and tell the committee or the American taxpayer that we are not funding the Taliban through this money that is being allocated for Afghanistan. Whoa. Okay. There you go. Unfortunately, as I sit here today, I cannot assure this committee that the American taxpayer or the American taxpayer that we are not currently funding the Taliban. He continued, nor can I assure you that the Taliban are not diverting the money we are sending to the intended recipients, which are the poor Afghan people.

1:06:28Wow. Yeah. So think about that. 20 years in Afghanistan. We leave in a, you know, fucking mess of a withdrawal, right? Which never should have taken place the way it did. And we've still got, there's maybe a 150, 150, 55 ,000 special immigrant visa applicants trapped in Afghanistan waiting to get out. We don't, we have no idea how many of our former Afghan allies, right, whomever it may be, are still there trapped trying to get out. How many have been killed? How many have been, exactly? How many have been killed? And in the meantime, no, no, again, you know, the idea at the top level, you know, the theory, we want to help the Afghan people.

1:07:11We can't just abandon all those poor people. So we're going to use the money to give it to humanitarian groups and they're going to try to feed them and everything. And yet there's no control over this, this fucking thing. And, and so that's, that's a problem that again, should be talked about, but we don't, you know, we get lost in these, in these issues of the day that, that aren't, you know, really impactful, I guess, the other day, maybe they're impactful to people's, you know, individual lives I get, whatever, what they're all, but it is stunning that then the Inspector General come out and say, he can't get sufficient information from State Department and from USAID that's responsible, apart from allocating these funds.

1:07:56And in pure typical Washington DC bullshit, the reason is because the State Department says, well, you know, we withdrew from Afghanistan. So therefore, the, the Inspector General, you know, doesn't have the same job. We're not reconstructing Afghanistan anymore. So we don't have to respond to his request for information. So, which is, you know, it's just, it's like this bizarre, but we're going to continue to give money out. Meanwhile, the Taliban is just shitting all over the people, right? If you forget about women's rights anymore, they've shut down secondary schools, they've shut down, there's certainly no universities, they've done, they've, they've restricted them basically to, you know, women and girls to sitting at home.

1:08:41They, they, very restricted movement outside. They have to be fully covered, obviously. Recently, they just, they just shut down all beauty salons, right? Which was one of the few places women could work and only women could go into. Women can't go into parks, right? They can't, I, it's, it's, it's insane when you think about it that way and you think about, yeah, but we're giving them money. Again, not for a bad reason, right? I mean, we want to help the, the, the people that are suffering most. How does that money, but we have no control? Right. What, what happens to that money? Like, how does, how could that money possibly get to the Taliban?

1:09:18Like, what's going on? Well, it has to go through, it has to go through humanitarian groups, NGOs, charities. And at some point, the idea is it's either funds or, or goods, right? That have to be in the country, that have to get to the country to be dispersed. And the Taliban controls everything, right? Now, by the way, we also allocated a handful of billions of dollars to recapitalize the central bank there in Afghanistan. Well, that would seem to be, maybe I'm wrong, that would seem to be basically putting money directly into the hands of the Taliban. And so it's, it's a problem, you know, they're looking into it.

1:09:57But I mean, there's, there's so many weird, if you, if you spend too much time looking at the way the government sometimes operates and going, switching back to Ukraine and saying, okay, as an example, one of the things we're not doing is we're not fully sanctioning Russian oil because why? It's a political reason. We don't want the Russian oil taken off the market and driving gas prices up, which is bad for politics, right? So meanwhile, one of the few real, you know, significant sources of revenue for the Russians is oil. That allows them to keep going. So we're spending what, 80 billion dollars on Ukraine.

1:10:41At the same time, we're not doing everything we can to shut down the ability of the Russian government to make money by sanctioning the oil the way we should. And therefore, they continue marching on. It's, I don't know, I just find it all, you know, going back to that original thought, you know, it's like, we're going to stop fossil fuels, but we're also going to keep all the minerals on the ground. How about that? But the Russia thing seems to be the Russia Ukraine thing seems to be even crazier than the Afghanistan thing in terms of long term cost and in terms of not having any solution of how this could have for possibly end.

1:11:22Yeah, no, I, I, yeah, 100 percent agree with that. It's, we don't have we don't have a, whatever they want to call it, next at ramp up end game. There is talk about a peace settlement primarily from Zelensky, right? He's been, he's been making a real effort. He's been going out and trying to garner support from a variety of countries for his or for the Ukraine government's peace plan, which basically calls for return of all their lands, including Crimea, and obviously the exit of all Russian forces. And so he's out there talking and saying, this is what needs to happen. This, we need to gather international support for this peace plan if it's going to work, which is not incorrect, right?

1:12:04Meanwhile, you know, the Chinese are trying to, you know, play top dog in the world stage by proposing their own peace plan. You know, Saudis are making an effort. So, but there is no, there's no exit strategy really to speak of. But hasn't Zelensky openly stated that he wants Putin to step down? Well, yeah, I mean, he's expressed that desire, but you also think about they've declared him a war criminal. So what's what's Putin's, you know, what's Putin's motivation for stopping if he reaches a peace settlement and then is basically that's it. Okay, we're done. There's peace. We've given back all the land and I'm a war criminal.

1:12:47And now at some point if I step outside, the country I'll be arrested and by, I mean, that's that's that's a thought process. So I don't think unless Zelensky budget is a little bit, right? Which, you know, again, from a mode of standpoint, why should he, right? But unless he budgets to some degree, I don't see that they're going to get a settlement where the two sides agree because Putin, I don't, I don't, still, I've said this before, but I don't imagine the Russian government giving back Crimea, right? It's, right. It's you know, too important from their perspective, from a military perspective.

1:13:24And whether they take over Crimea, I was, wasn't that 14, 2014, I think. Maybe, maybe eight, maybe 2014. I don't know, it's it's ancient history now and nobody cared back then, right? Really, really, there was, there was some angry memos written, Obama talked about at the time and said, but nobody did anything, just like when the troops moved in the Eastern Ukraine, nobody really cared, nobody did anything, nobody was out there planting flags in their gardens and saying, we stand with Ukraine. And in fact, Ukraine was viewed as a highly corrupt place, you know, where, you know, a Ukrainian energy company would hire the son of the vice president.

1:14:05Yeah. Oh, but at the same time, you can't, you know, you can't, we can't allow Putin's adventureism, right, to stand. You've got to, so I do believe we, we have to support. And without our support, without our NATO allies support, and others, they wouldn't have been able to accomplish what they've done, right? And now, whether they can make the counteroffensive significant victory or not, story may as to be seen, because the Russians, you know, they used the opportunity during the lull to really dig in, right? They've created almost their own marginal line, although it's more effective than the old marginal line.

1:14:41So they, they've created that along their, their, their perimeter. And it's been a real tough slog, you know, the Ukrainian counteroffensive has gone much slower than people thought. And everybody was all very emotive. Oh, it's going to be a counteroffensive. They're going to sweep through, it's going to be done here soon. And I don't think people still have their heads around the fact that this is the, there's, there's no exit out there, right? Yeah. So what are we going to do? Are we going to continue to just allocate every, every couple of months and say, well, we're putting another $800 million in there.

1:15:11You know, we've already, you know, approved F -16s, Abrams tanks, Patriot missile system. I mean, high -mars, we're doing everything possible, intelligence support, satellite support. And again, rightly so, you know, Putin, you know, needs to be driven out of there if possible. But at the same time, they need a logical thought process about how you have a settlement if there's going to be one. And what are your feelings about NATO's encroaching on Russian territory, like getting closer and closer? Like the treaty at the, the end of the Soviet Union stated that, that NATO would not move any closer to Russia.

1:15:55But yet they have. And yet they affect, right? I mean, what Putin did, because he's, you know, I think he imagined, and he had bad intel, but he imagined that this, this incursion, this invasion was going to show the cracks in NATO, right? And had the opposite. He grew NATO. And so, look, he legitimately believes, you have to understand the motivations of whoever's on the other side of the table. And with Putin, he legitimately believed that, you know, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a terrible, terrible tragedy, right? And he's been trying to recreate in some fashion the whole thing. So he looks at that.

1:16:35And that's just further, that reinforces his mindset, which is in his mind, I don't think he's, you know, I don't think he's making this up in his mind, he believes, you know, this isn't a attack on the motherland. Now, it's bullshit. It's not. But that's how he pitches it. And that's how he tries to keep the population behind him by saying, this is, this is the West against us. And there's no argument for that. You don't think with NATO encroaching? Well, I think every country has got the right to, you know, take actions to protect their own national security. Right. Like if Russia started moving military bases into Mexico.

1:17:14Yeah. Which is kind of similar to what NATO has done. Oh, the Cuban Meso crisis. I mean, that was the same concept. There was no difference. Right. So yes. I mean, that's, and so we, you have to be pragmatic about the world that you live in. And you have to understand, and that requires good intelligence. You have to understand the plans and intentions and motivations of whoever, again, is on the other side of the table or whatever dictator or whatever leader you're dealing with. And I think that is it helpful in reaching a piece? So look, if all your goal is, and maybe we need, you know, maybe we need to say that, okay, is the US goal to drive Russia completely out and reclaim all the lands that they had taken since 2000.

1:18:05Right. Then fine, that's our stated goal. And we just keep doing everything possible to make that happen short of boots on the ground. But it would seem to me that our goals should also be, instead of that, maybe we find a way to end the war. Right. Typically you get into a war and you want to end it. Right. I mean, it's, you know, I wanted to go on for 20 years. So unless you are supplying weapons and making billions of dollars. Well, I want to keep growing that. There is that. And look, but look, there's, there's, you get two bites of the apple, right. You get to supply all the weaponry. And then you get the reconstruction.

1:18:48And I'll tell you right now, there is an undercurrent in Washington, D .C. amongst contractors that are just, they're, they're just super gleeful. Or not, that's the wrong word. But they're, they're enthusiastic, enthusiastic and anticipatory. I don't know. And I saw this back during the Iraq days, right. When we went in to reconstruct Iraq, right, which went on for several years, produced massive amounts of fraud, created all sorts of bullshit eight A companies, right. Everybody suddenly, everybody was looking for women owned or Native American owned or Eskimo owned companies that they could set up.

1:19:28So that would allow them to get those government contracts to go in and do some piece of reconstruction, whether they had experience to do it or not. And there was a, my God, the amount of energy it was involved in D .C. at the time of companies just shooting up out of nowhere, right. I remember people walking through the door. We had an office in D .C. for the business. And, and, and people walking through the door with, you know, looking for security, right. And saying, well, we're going to start this company. We're going to go out there and I was like, well, how much experience do you have?

1:19:57We don't have any, you know, they didn't care. So we're, I sense that same level of excitement in the idea of the Ukraine reconstruction, because that's going to be, I talk about the next single of, again, I, you got to support them, right. So maybe I'm using the wrong terminology. But the next black whole of cost of money spent will be on the reconstruction effort. And if we think that it's currently expensive, wait till that hits. All right. That's going to make this $80 billion so far. Look like nothing, I think. That's just my opinion. But so I, I don't know. There's no, you know, you keep talking, I keep talking in circles about this because I don't see any, any way out of it, right.

1:20:39It's, both sides are, are not going to budge, at least in the short term, midterm on what they want. Are you concerned at all about the possibilities of nukes? Now, I don't think so. I don't think, I don't, I mean, you know, Mavedev has thrown that out every now and then, right. He's kind of alluded to it. Nothing's off the table. But Putin's still a rational player, right. He may seem like he's irrational times or he's, you know, this was an incredibly stupid move. But I don't think he's off the rails. He understands that's not, that's, that can't be on the table as an option. So I'm not really worried about that.

1:21:15I'm more worried about the long, slow slog that we find. Nobody ever anticipated we'd be in Afghanistan for 20 years. Right. And look at this. I mean, it's a, it's a perfect case study of you probably should have an end in mind, right. Otherwise, it just keeps going because in part, because it, you know, some people unfortunately do benefit from it. Some, you know, and major players out there who, who benefit from that sort of thing. And, you know, other people trying to do the right thing for sure, of course, but I, you would think that Afghanistan, you would have a, a perfect case study. But we didn't have a case study.

1:21:54We, we, sorry, I think that back we had a case study in what the Soviets did in Afghanistan. And we, we didn't learn shit from that, right. When we, when we went in, we ended up making the same mistakes, you know, make the same hubris. Look, there were years where we knew during that 20 years that there were immense weaknesses and corruption inside the government, the Afghan government and the military. We knew for years that the Afghan military was problematic. Right. And so this idea that we were surprised or shocked that they fell apart in, in a matter of hours basically, as the withdrawal was taking place, is, it's just bullshit.

1:22:41We just ignored it. We didn't want to hear it. We didn't want to tell the truth about it. And so, if we had been truthful, you know, we would have said, no, this isn't going to work, you know, and, and, you know, by the way, we never, you know, looked at that withdrawal was a disaster. We gave up background merubes. I don't know what the fuck are we doing. If we're going to withdraw and pull everybody out and get all our allies and, and contacts and people that supported us for those years out, we had the perfect resource to do that. And we didn't. They shut it down and then they, you know, they used homid cars as our airport.

1:23:11And that was it. Just from a simple security process. I mean, we do security assessments on large, you know, facilities. And it's not rocket science. Right. You see the same things over and over again in terms of, you know, how you protect your assets and how you protect your people and how you move things. That's a part of a logistical exercise. And they just fucking ignored it. And they ended up using this airport. People died as a result. Didn't have to. They should never have. And yet, you know, and then they come out with a bullshit assessment earlier this year. The White House does. And basically blames the Trump administration for, you know, cutting a deal with the Taliban with a timeline that had conditions which the Taliban never met.

1:23:55And which we didn't have to stick with, frankly. And yet, we, know, we thought politically the optic would be bad if we didn't. And so they decided to withdraw. And they did it in a, you know, disgustingly, you know, insecure fashion. And, you know, they blame that. They blame the Intel community. And yes, you know, we should, the way that we characterized the, the ability of the Afghan military and government to hold together was, was abysmal. Right. So that was its serious mistake. But the steps that were then taken in terms of leading up to that and the speed with which they tried to do it was, you know, that's on them.

1:24:39So anyway, that's a, that's a cheery little conversation. Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't sound fun. It doesn't sound like there's a good solution here. Well, no. And then so, so we got that. You know, I have no idea where with, with, with Ukraine, because it sure there's diplomatic efforts underway that we don't see that aren't on the radar. Right. So aside from Zalinsky, trying to garner support for his deal, you know, obviously we've got the US is doing other things. But the public wouldn't know it. And I think the government and the military government in particular, the White House needs to be better at explaining things.

1:25:24Right. What's going on? And why we're doing this? Right. Because you don't want a military in particular to dry up to the Ukrainian government. But, you know, if they don't do a better job of explaining why we're spending this money, people are going to get fed up or they're going to start questioning. Is this really something that we should be worried about? Right. And, you know, it's tough when you got problems at home. It's tough to get people to focus on something as large as, you know, you don't want the recreation of the Soviet Union because then that might encourage China and Taiwan. And then, you know, anyway.

1:25:58Yeah. Are you concerned about that? About Taiwan? Yeah. Yes. Is the answer. Because I think I think G looks at what's happening in Ukraine. And he probably thinks, all right, that's Russia. You know, small GDP equal to a European country, small European country. He looks at China and says, okay, is the West really going to, you know, go into a proxy war over Taiwan? And I think their calculation is probably no. So I think from their perspective, it's a matter of time. And they're probably calculating, can we do this in a slow, sort of, soft war way, you know, where we just seed the ground that eventually we have Taiwan, much like, you know, with Hong Kong, where we, you know, eventually we look and go, oh, Hong Kong, right?

1:26:51It used to be a bastion of democracy in that spot. Yeah. They put the squash on that. So, yeah, I think that's a real problem. And I think G views this as important to do during his time. Right? I don't think he's going to want to leave that on the table and not have that as part of his legacy. Right? So I think the timeline has been accelerated. And it may well be that the timeline is essentially how long does G view himself in power? So I think that's a problem. But, you know, do we honestly believe that we're going to put boots on the ground in Taiwan to fight the Chinese regime? I don't think so.

1:27:32So what does that mean? Do we just, it's a problem, you know, but, you know, I don't know that we're, I don't know that we're overly focused right now. We tend to do one thing at a time, you know, as a government. Right? Now the thing is Ukraine. What is the difference between the way that the Taiwan operates our government and the way China would operate it if he took over? Well, part of its access, right? And given Taiwan's importance in sort of in the tech sector, you know, their chip manufacturing and that would create potentially another real bind in the supply chain system, right? For future use, right?

1:28:21You have to think about down the road. If we got into a major conflict with China at some point, what are they going to do? What are they going to do? They're going to stop anything they can, right? That would help us, right? So their ability to restrict the importation of chips necessary for much of our economy now in terms of running. That's a, that's a sort of a key point. That's, that's more of a practical economic issue, right? Then you've got the issue of, well, look, it's a democracy, right? We're just going to let another democracy get rolled by the communist government. That sounds like an old 1960s Cold War theory, but yeah, the reality is our values and our, and what we think important say one thing, the realities of how that would play out say something else, right?

1:29:17So again, it's hard to marry those up. How far would we go down the road to protect Taiwan? And so maybe what that means is, you know, down the road, we need to be better at, you know, manufacturing on our own, we're going to bring things back, which is part of what's all that talk about on -shoring and bringing manufacturing back. That's part of it, underlying that as our concern over national security issues, should they get control of, you know, more commodities or whatever. Well, that was one of the more shocking things about the pandemic was when you realize how dependent we are on China for medicine, for chips, for so many different things that they produce, that we don't produce over here.

1:30:01And like, how did we allow that to happen? And did we just allow that to happen because there's higher profit margins? And we put the entire country risk because of that? I think it was, yeah, we got addicted to cheap stuff, right? Yeah. Both, you know, cheap cheap stuff and, and, you know, high -tech cheap stuff. So, this is going to be, well, that's a smart fellow there. And so I think that was part of it was, it just, at the time it made sense, right? And we didn't imagine at the time, look, we had, the opening of our relationship with China and it was going to be a new day, right? We went through that with the Cold War, right?

1:30:39And we finished the Cold War, the wall fell, and suddenly we're all like, oh, there's got to be a peace dividend here, right? We, we keep repeating the same mistakes. We came out of, of World War II as an example, I'm, this may not be the best example, but we came out of World War II at the time we had the Office of Strategic Services, which was the predecessor to the CIA. So World War II ends and like the next day, you know, Truman says, thanks very much, you know, now close the doors on the OSS, right? Sent Bill Donovan home, don't let the screen door hit your ass on the way out, and they shut it down because they imagined, that's it.

1:31:19Why do we possibly need this organization that's, you know, out there doing special operations and gathering intelligence and, you know, we want. And so they stopped it and then the Soviets went on the march and suddenly they were like, okay, fuck it, maybe we need it. So they started the CIA and that's the, that's the lesson that should have been learned from there, was you're always going to need an intel apparatus that helps support national security concerns. So there was that, then we had the opening of a relationship again with China and I think there was this imagining that some things were different, right?

1:31:53We're going to, we're going to grow and then that really, the entire interconnecting this of our economies just blew up at that point, it really expanded. And so, you know, we maybe didn't see exactly what their plans and intentions motivations were, you know, and we always mirror our values, right? So, you know, we imagine everybody's marching towards democracy and that's not how it works. So I think we, you know, that's, in part how we ended up in this situation. But now there, again, there's more effort and more understanding. I think to go ahead and, you know, onshore and be more concerned about the supply chain and you're right, the pandemic pointed that out, right?

1:32:36Pretty clearly. And, and I think maybe that helped accelerate the process, but it's going to take years. Look, it takes, it takes years just to do the simple things, right? I, we talked about the mining issue and critical minerals and the things that we need to lessen our dependence on China's control over critical minerals. You're talking about six, eight, nine, ten years, right? To get a mine open in the US, right? So, you know, you think down the road, we better, you know, I guess my point is we better accelerate our ability to do this, right? Just to be pragmatic. Maybe hopefully one day we're all holding hands and everybody's singing kumbaya on, you know, unicorns are flying on our ass, but I think it's probably not going to happen.

1:33:19So we just need to be a little more aware. Yeah, yeah. I sound, I sound very cynical. Well, with good reason, it seems like a good time to be a little bit cynical. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose. I mean, yeah, I remember my wife told me yesterday, when I was leaving, she says, try to be, try to be more positive, more optimistic. Yeah. She said, she said, where are you always sound like you're really negative and you're always, yeah, informed. Yeah. Yeah. That's the problem. Yeah, I think I've spent enough time. I've just been, I've been, I've gotten very cynical about the way that countries interact with each other and our ability to, to be realistic about that rather than just design strategies based on what we'd hope for or what we feel like would be good to happen.

1:34:16Right. So maybe that's, maybe that's part of it. What's your take on all this UAP disclosure? Oh shit. I'm shocked that you would ask that. Yeah. That was, that was a, that was a fascinating hearing. That was a fascinating hearing. Yeah. And was it shocking at all to you? No, no, I think, I mean, it was, it was, I loved listening and, but I can't say that anything came out of it, even with, with Dave, the grush testimony, I mean, kind of come out there before, but I think a couple of things. I think it's, it's, it's excellent that we're actually having these hearings and that there's a subcommittee and that they're actually looking at this issue, because I think the more transparency, the problem the government's had in the past is not being transparent enough.

1:35:13And so I think that was great. I think David Fraver, I've had a chance to sit with him in the past. And what was your impression? He's, I think he's very credible. I think he's very credible. I was talking with Jamie earlier. You don't get, you know, you don't get to that point, right? Yeah. You're not commanding officer on a carrier. There's on the limits at the time when he, even in 2004, you don't get to that point by being irrational or hallucinating up in the air or, just being whimsical. And the same with the other fellow Ryan Graves, the other pilot. He was flying hornets at a, at a Virginia Beach, about 10 years later when they were, he reported on some of these incidents.

1:35:53So that, to me, is, is very credible. And I have not seen anything from the Pentagon and from the government that as an example, explains Fraver's encounter. And also, I mean, look, he had a wingman. Her name was Alex Dietrich. She was a Lieutenant Commander at the time. She observed the same thing. And they have read our lock, right, down on the carrier. They knew what they were, they, they, they, they, there wasn't just one person looking up in the sky and saying, all right, see a light, you know, all right, see something, right? This was, say, a very legit sighting. And there's no, there's been no explanation as to what it is.

1:36:31So it is a legitimate UAP, unidentified, you know, anomalous, or anomaly, you know, phenomena. And so I think that's, that's one thing. I find David Fraver extremely credible. I've never met Ryan Graves, but again, given his experience and given the fact that, you know, they weren't, he wasn't the only person seeing this, right? Off of Virginia Beach back in 2014. And with Ryan Graves, when they upgraded their sensors, they upgraded the capabilities of these jets. That's when they started seeing all these things. And he said it was shocking. Yeah. But they were encountering them all the time. Yeah.

1:37:17And some of those, fine, you can, you know, whatever they may be, they're just, you know, you've got a, you know, a more sophisticated system on board. You're just seeing things out there that you wouldn't have picked up before. Okay. And so some of those things then become maybe sightings that then are explained, right? What is it? Is it a balloon? Is it a drone? What, whatever it may be. But, you know, when you, when you get an experienced pilot flying by and saying, hey, I saw something. It was a, you know, cube inside a sphere. Well, okay. Well, let's, let's at least log it, record it without any criticism or pushback, right?

1:37:59Have a way to investigate. And that's been their problem. And that's what they talked about during the hearing also again. They've talked about this before. But if you, if you stigmatize, you know, the pilots that are seeing these things, then yeah, of course, you're on to get it. And what did, what did Graves say? He said like 5 % get reported, right? So, and that's because nobody wants to, you know, get back on deck or land and say, yeah, I saw so. Yeah, I saw your AP or I saw your UFO back in the day. So you have to make the system more accessible, right, for the sightings. And then you have to have a way for national security purposes to investigate them.

1:38:40What do you think these things are? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think a, the, the logic of, of saying that we're doing this because if you have something out there that you observe that you can't identify propulsion or any sort of, you know, known to us systems, then yeah, that's a problem. So A, is it, is it a hostile element? Is there, first of all, is it, is it just something that you know, is showing up on the radar and it's a natural phenomenon? It's a, whatever parallax or whatever they call it, then fine. Or is it something from a, a foreign government that new technology being developed propulsion systems, material science, whatever it may be?

1:39:32And they are working on these things all the time, right? Hypersonics is the perfect example, right? The Chinese and, and the Russians are, frankly, still ahead of us in hypersonic capabilities, right? Because they've invested longer and more effort into developing hypersonic systems. So you have to figure out, is it a hostile foreign government doing this? And then the other part is, all right, well, is it non, whatever Dave Greshad is, non -human or is it a, is it a, you know, legitimately from, not from, from Earth, that can't be taken off the table, right? I mean, look, it's, um, we, you know, we've said this for, I'm not smart enough to know what I don't know, right?

1:40:14I don't mean, well, maybe I am, but we've explored such a tiny, tiny part of space, right? That it would be ridiculous for us to think that we don't, you know, that we can write it off, right? That it's not there, right? No idea, right? But I do know that you can't discount anything because, again, going back to the reason why you do it, it's in our national security interest to figure out what the hell it might be. And at some point, if you end up, if you start with, like, right now, the, the new office, the new office is whatever it's called, typical government, the all -domain, uh, anomaly resolution office, right?

1:40:55Yeah. That's what they came up with. Or the Pentagon, yeah. So this guy, uh, or this person, uh, Dr. Kepakter, you know, runs it, I think, he's the director. Um, they've said they've got what upwards of 800 cases that they're investigating. So, she's, yeah, and they're, and it's growing. I mean, you know, some reports say it's growing by, like, 100, 150 cases a month, right? In terms of sightings, they then get logged in, and now they've got to investigate. Well, that's a smart thing, right? They do that. And maybe you take off 90 % of them, or even more, but you end up with this short list of things, perhaps like the TickTack in 2004 with David Fraver, where you just don't have an explanation.

1:41:34Okay, fine. Then, then, then, you know, be, but be more, be more transparent about it, right? And Ryan Graves said something interesting during the hearings. And he said that if, if, uh, if the general public, or if Congress had, could see the sensor, uh, and video data that he's seen, then it would change the national conversation. Right? That's a really interesting statement from, uh, uh, experienced, former pilot, right? From that F -18, uh, so that deserves more scrutiny, right? And that also means, well, maybe the government should release a few more, you know, videos that they may have. Maybe they should release some of the, because they haven't released radar data.

1:42:25They haven't really been open about that. And so the, you know, there's still information or data points on the TickTack, for instance, that hasn't been released, as considered still classified. Well, you know what, what the fuck? You know, tell us why not. I mean, what is it? I mean, if you, if you honestly haven't figured out whether it's, um, foreign technology or not, then maybe you should put it out there and maybe the commercial sector will help you in that investigation, right? Because what would be the motivation to not be transparent about it? And, and is there any possibility that any of this stuff is ours, like the TickTack?

1:43:01Um, is it possible that there's some black ops well thing going on where they've developed some advanced system of propulsion that is completely independent from, you know, burning fossil fuels and shooting them out the back to propel something to go forward? Yeah. Yeah. Um, yes, is the answer. I think there is that possibility. Um, and one thing that Dave Grush said, look, I don't know, I don't know about his, his comments about, because he was speaking from, look, I haven't seen any of this, you know, I've gotten it from interviewing, you know, dozens of witnesses. This is, you know, what I know, this is what I believe now.

1:43:40But one thing that he did say was that he believes, uh, and he's seen, he says, um, evidence that, um, the government is misappropriating funds, right? Um, in order to prevent government oversight of certain programs. Right? Now, is that true? I don't know, but is it a practice that has occurred in the past where they will bury a program, right? Inside another budget. And the answer is yes, that they've done that, you know, repeatedly for secrecy reasons, right? And as a matter of fact, that was the premise for America's favorite show, Black Files to classified. Well, here's America's favorite show.

1:44:23It is America's, yes. Um, and I think it was the host of it. I was, I was. As America's TV sweetheart for a while. Um, and so the premise of that show was follow the money, right? Right. And, and, and it, it's a great premise, right? I mean, look, because at some point, just like with the Biden administration, you know, situation and they're looking at their bank records, there will be a trail somewhere that money has to eventually show up somewhere. And usually it's a line item that's not easily explained. Usually it's some mundane terms, whatever it might be. So graves is absolutely correct in the sense that that's something worth looking at, right?

1:45:02And if there are programs like that, then the reason is, okay, we're keeping it secret because we don't want the Chinese regime to know or we don't want the Russians to know. And, and so, you know, again, I haven't come from where I come from. I get it, sources and methods. There are reasons for secrets at times. But if that's not the case, then I see no reason not to be more open and transparent about some of the other information that they may have and the sightings they have. You know, I know graves was talking about they've got biologics and, you know, those things. Um, did graves say that?

1:45:38I know that. Oh, not graves. No, no, grush said that. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, not, yeah, that was not a question. It grush said there's frozen bodies. Yeah. Yeah. And that there's a crash retrieval program crash retrieval. That was a big one that caused a big stir and been running for decades, he said. I think I think he said that uh, he said that the government in his in his opinion based on his interviews as he was working, I think with the national reconnaissance office and he was tasked with going around and, you know, identifying the programs or related to UAPs, he said that the US government was likely aware of non -human activities since like the 1930s.

1:46:21Now, what I would say is based on my years of experience with the government, um, it's, it's really hard for them to keep a secret, right? And that's a monumental secret. And at some point, you know, it's human activity and human nature. Someone's going to open up their pie hole. Listen to what Bob was art did. Yeah. Yeah. And now when you pay attention to some of the video footage that has been released about these unidentified objects and when you listen to what Bob was our said about how these things operate, it mimics that. Not only that, like the way he described the propulsion method. Whoa.

1:47:07That's a good save. Yeah. Thank you very much. I set the whole studio on fire. Um, it mimics what he said. He also talked about, you know, that there was some possibility. There was this, this crash retrieval program is what he was working on, but he said there was some talk about biological entities. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, there's mixed, mixed feelings about how how reliable Bob's are, you know, is was. I mean, sorry. Yeah. So, um, but and it's not a new assertion. Right. I mean, there's been talk about this before. So that's my point about secrecy. Yeah. And, and, and I think, but if that's, I guess, yeah, my point on that is, um, um, not only that they people can't keep their pilot show, but there would have been more detailed information.

1:48:05There's something would have come out that again, that's, that's my own feeling. I just have a hard time believing the government is that good at keeping a secret, right? Sometimes it just seems like they can't organize panic in a doom submarine. So I think that that's, from my perspective, that's a question mark, right? Could they keep this secret that they've got frozen bodies of aliens sitting somewhere? Wouldn't you imagine, though, that if there was something like that, that the level of attention to detail to protect secrecy would be significantly ramped up. This wouldn't be something as simple as developing a new fighter jet where, you know, you have these, you know, you essentially have these corporations that are, that design these vehicles for the US government.

1:48:53You have defense contractors. And one of the assertions was that these are the people that have access to these things because they're trying to back engineer it. And if you were going to back engineer it, you would do so under the guise of someone who makes those things. It's not like the government themselves are the, the engineers and the people that are involved. It's people that work for the government and often defense contractors. Well, yeah, contractors, government entities, agencies, I mean, look, you know, the, I mean, the CIA was responsible for locating the ground of where Area 51 sits, right, all those years ago.

1:49:32So they would have a role to play. You're right. The commercial world would have a role to play the subcont, or the defense contractors. Others, I'm sure. I mean, so the, it becomes a growing circle of people who would be involved in, in an effort like that. But it'd be a fun secret to keep. It'd be a hell of a secret to keep. But it would be a fun one. Yeah. If you're working on something like that. Oh, could you, yeah, boy, could I tell you some shit? You go home, you know, you can say, what'd you do, today, dad? And you like, I touched metal that's from another planet. I dissected an alien.

1:50:05They probably deep -printed model design to house three -foot tall creatures from another galaxy. But it's, but I think there's, look, we do also tend to imagine, look, we can only, like when we look at, or when, when, when, when, it was interesting, forever looks at the Tick -Tack, right? They, in the, you know, in D -Trigger, they're looking at this and, and they're trying to interpret it based on what we know right now, right? So our technological limitations, right, kind of define how we imagine things could go, right? But, you know, we only know physics in the way that we know, right? So that, so it is interesting to, to think about how we put it, which is how we ended up with little green men, right?

1:50:49Well, if they're alien, they might, they probably look like us sort of, but let's make them a little different, you know, let's make them three -foot tall. But who knows what the hell it looks like out there, right? And it's just, but I guess, you know, again, we've explored so little of space, right? I mean, we still don't know what's, you know, in, in all the oceans, right? We're still surprised when we find something in the oceans. Well, that's what's fascinating also about these stories that, there seems to be these, uh, vehicles that can travel into the water as well. Yeah. And this is, this has been documented by video as well.

1:51:23Yeah. And that's what, I mean, that's what they first noticed, right? I mean, with, with the Tick -Tack was they noticed the disturbance in the water, right? And what it was roiling. And they said the weather was perfect, right? There was no, there were no white caps. There was nothing. There was just this one area of disturbance. And that was the first thing they noticed. And then they saw the, the whatever it was. But again, I go back to like, okay, I'm, I'm buying what forever's selling, right? It's just that you, then we don't have what's at the end of that dotted line. We don't know what it is, but I'm glad that we're, we're exploring it in a more serious way now.

1:52:01I'm glad that the, the Pentagon to at least, and it, and maybe it happens incrementally, right? But at least they've come out now, you know, they said, okay, we have a tip or the, whatever was the advanced aeronautical threat identification program, which supposedly shut down in 2012 or so or to, yeah, 2012, I think it was. Of course, they didn't shut it down, right? They just put it into a different program. Um, and because the threat was still there, right? They still concerned over, okay, what is flying over particularly sensitive facilities? Right? There was that, um, it was that, uh, swarming, right?

1:52:34Are they the, the, the, the swarm that went around the, uh, the, uh, what USS Omaha, right? The ones look like pyramids. Yeah, yeah. And so there were like nine of them. Yeah. Or I think at a maximum, there were nine of them. And, um, you know, they still haven't figured out what, what the hell that is. But did those things exhibit in any sort of capabilities that are beyond our imagination? Um, I don't think they operated in insane movement. Not necessarily, um, they disappeared in a way that couldn't be explained, right? And a couple of them appeared to just go into the water, uh, to your point about, you know, spend those incidents.

1:53:10So, um, you know, and they did have, they did have radar imagery on these, on these items, but, you know, and, and I think, um, so anyway, I, what they might be, you know, again, it's, it's nothing was solved as a result of the hearing, right? Obviously. And I think people were excited and they're always excited when there's going to be something like this in the previous hearing, and, you know, the, this, this world, this UAP world starts talking in the, but, you know, every hearing ends up the same way in the sense because we don't get a resolution, which then leads to more suspicion that the government's hiding something, which has always been the case, right?

1:53:51For decades now, that's, that's where it tends to end up. Well, the government's hiding something. They're just not telling us. There is the possibility that they just don't fucking know, right? And rather than holding on to evidence and trying to keep it a secret, which again, you know, it's, it's, it's tough. But do you think that if it's hours, like say the Tick -Tack is hours, is it possible that the government could create some advanced propulsion system and do so in complete secrecy as well? Well, that's what that's, uh, 19 years ago. Yes. And, you know, 19 years, we hold on to, you know, that sort of capability and technology and and for whatever reason, don't deploy it.

1:54:35Right. Yeah, look, I mean, yeah. Yeah, as, as in the side, the CIA, we've got a, there's a, it used to be called science and technology, right? It's where they create all the gear, all the amazing things. Science and technology, directorate at the agency over the years has, has developed incredible things, right? Responsible for the U2, responsible for satellite capabilities, uh, battery technology, right? All the things that they've done over the years, uh, and oftentimes they'd create just sort of gadgetry, right? And I don't want to simplify it and minimize it, but it's important stuff, but, you know, for lack of a better word.

1:55:11And oftentimes there was a concern. We don't want to release this. We don't want to put it out in the field to be used because we don't want it to fall into, you know, into the wrong hands, right? And then they realize that we've got this capability, right? So it's much like we talked about before, if you get a target in your site, maybe you want to watch that target for a period of time to understand what it's capable of doing, what it's doing. You don't want to just let out, you know, okay, we're going to, so yeah, is it possible we developed a new propulsion system? And, you know, we're just playing a game where we're saying, okay, we're still working on hypersonic, you know, when air breathing engines and we're trying to see what we can do here and, and, you know, and meanwhile we've got this in our back pocket, right?

1:55:49Waiting for some day. Yeah, it's a possibility. In my mind, I think, hey, if that's the case, good on them for being smart enough to, to be that clever and also to be able to keep a secret. Is that more plausible than it coming from another planet in your opinion? Or another dimension or whatever the explanation is? Um, you know what, that's a great question. You should have your own podcast. The, um, yeah, you know, is it more plausible? Um, but I mean, you know, what I'm saying is that it's so revolutionary. Yeah. If they do have this thing that is the ability to go from 50 ,000 feet above sea level to 50 feet in a second, something that defies our current understanding of, at least assuming there's a biological entity inside that thing.

1:56:42Let's assume there is. Yeah. You know, one of the, the examinations of the video footage that they got from the jets, they said the way that thing took off any biological being would be turned into a jello. Yeah. Which is, yeah, you would be pink mist. Yeah. It's not the city force. It's not the speed. It's the, it's the acceleration of the stopping that kills you. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, yeah, I would assume it's unmanned if that's the case. Well, there's no windows and that thing. It was completely. So I guess the answer to your question is, um, I don't know. It seems a long time. Is it more plausible than being from outside this world?

1:57:22Um, yeah, it's a good question because I don't want to deny the fact that I mean, I think it's incredible hubris to say we don't that there's nothing else out there. Of course. And so I don't want to, I don't want to lock myself into that corner of the room. Um, but at the same time, um, that would represent a massive leap in material science as, as at least were aware of it. Right. And, uh, oh, look, I have a call. Um, and, um, it's, oh, it's Paul Rubin's calling me from beyond. So, uh, too soon. Um, yeah, it's a great, it's a great question. I don't know. I mean, it's, it, it speaks to again, one of my points that I owe it because I'm so cynical.

1:58:07I just have a hard time believing that the US government could keep secrets like that for that period of time, right? I just, I don't have a really hard time believing that. Yeah. Right. So, so what, what would have to take place in order for the government to be developed something, developing something that's so superior to what we understand in terms of what's possible with propulsion systems? Like, how would they fund that? How would they hide that? How would they get the scientists involved and the engineers? What would they have to do in order to develop something like this? Well, it would be, it would be similar.

1:58:48I mean, there's nothing new one of the, when it comes to a program, right? So, and inside the government of the military, you know, you develop a program, you come up with an idea, okay, this is what we want to do. Right. I think this is possible or we're going to work to make this happen. And it hasn't been some discussion of magnetic propulsion systems. Yes. Yeah. And gravity propulsion systems, something that defies what we understand is possible today. Way back in the 60s, they were talking about this. Yeah. And theoretically, and more recently too. I mean, this been some, some, you know, although theoretically they looked at it in the recent past and said, it's not worth pursuing.

1:59:27But to your question, the program concept would be the same. You have that and then you say, okay, now we got to allocate a budget to it, right? We got to do that. Obviously, it's so sensitive. It has to be enormous budget. It has to be enormous budget. Look at me, but the known US defense budget now roughly is 800 billion a year or so a little over. Probably give or take. So you should siphon some of that off to some, yeah. You would, you would put it as a line item in some other innocuous program. And then that again, that has happened when we're talking about developing something as, you know, sort of not say pedestrian, but it's straightforward.

2:00:10It's like surveillance aircraft, right? Then we would, you put that money somewhere else, you develop the program, you get the team that's going to be working on it, whether it's at skunk works or somewhere, right? And, but you sometimes have to turn to the same usual suspects, right? Which is why I bring up skunk works, right? And you have to do these, you know, because there's, you know, at the end of the day, there's not that many material scientists with that, you know, capability, a level of intelligence and experience. And so then you go from there and you, you know, you work like hell to keep it secret, which again, that if they've done that, you know, I consider that a, that'd be a great win because right now we're still trying to play a little bit of catchup on hypersonic.

2:00:58And that's the next theater, right? I mean, aside from, you know, cyber warfare and warfare and space, you know, and space has already been weaponized, hypersonics is it, right? And so, you know, we're already seeing deployment of hypersonic, I don't know to be fair, okay, you know, ballistic missiles, you know, you know, that it's all, you know, the difference between a hypersonic and a ballistic missile is a maneuverability, right? Which creates at the speed, it creates this, this, you keep shortening the gap for response time, right? So if you fire an ICBM, you know, what the trajectory is, you know, hypersonic, you know, glide vehicle, you don't know, right?

2:01:40It comes at you so fast and it comes from different directions and you can't predict. So it defeats air defense systems, which is why it's so important. But we're still playing catchup there. So, is this what we're saying publicly that we're playing catchup and is it possible that we aren't playing catchup? It's possible, sure. Again, I would hope so. That'd be great if that's the case, but would it be possible that they would keep that a secret? Sure. I mean, if I was, you know, if I was in charge of that program, yeah, I would say why would we give up our capabilities? Right. So yes, to go back to the original, if they develop this, alternative propulsion system, and they, and the kind of part of this is the material science, right?

2:02:22Because you're punching through the air, you know, it's such a speed that it's changing everything, right? It's changing the dynamics of flight. It's a, and, and, and it's, it is a massive hurdle to overcome. And, but that's what everybody's working on. So, you know, where they capable of working on this and they developed something like that, or were testing it back 19 years ago, when Fravers saw whatever you saw, yeah, it's a great sort of theoretical exercise to think about that. Um, and because, you know, the reason why I say this is, I don't know why I have these instincts, but because you know, I'm a UFO nut, right?

2:02:59I clearly not heard that nobody says that they should. I'm full. I'm on board. Yeah, but I feel like it's bullshit. I don't feel like it's real. And I don't know why I feel like it's fake. I wonder what's what do you mean by that? What's the, the grush stuff, all the disclosure stuff, all the biological entities, the recovered vehicles, the recovery program, the back engineering program, there's something about it to me that just seems like bullshit. And I don't know why I have this overwhelming instinct that's bullshit. So, do you think rush is like part of the, I don't think he's, I think he's probably what they would call a useful idiot.

2:03:42I mean, this is a, a guess. I mean, I'm not discouraging him in any way. And I'm, if he's telling the truth, I'm very happy that he came forward. I think what he does, very courageous. But I'm saying that if I wanted to release some bullshit and I wanted to put out a fake narrative to obscure something that we're working on, that's how I would do it. I would get some information to a guy and encourage him to leak it and then encourage him to have these hearings and talk about all this stuff and put all this weirdness out there where it kind of confuses the narrative like what is real and what's not real.

2:04:22I just something about it to me and this is again, but here's part of my feeling on it too. If disclosure was real, if they are, if they, we really are visited and we have been being visited since the beginning of time, wouldn't that, maybe my feeling is that that would seem so alien that that would seem fake anyway. Because I always felt like if there was a moment of disclosure, if there was a moment where, you know, the president got on television and gave a press conference and said we are not alone. And we know this for a fact now and this is what we, and this is our concern, this is what we in terms of whether or not they're malevolent.

2:05:05I feel like that by itself would be so alien, even if it was true that it would seem fake. And so that's my conflict. My conflict is, I'm wondering does it seem like bullshit to me because if it is real, it would be so bizarre that it would necessarily seem like bullshit? Or is it just too tidy for me? Does it just not seem right? Because it just doesn't. It just doesn't seem right. And this is again, I'm not calling anyone a liar. It just seems like bullshit and I don't know why. Yeah, I think part of it is we're kind of conditioned to assume that the government hides information from us, right?

2:05:49Oftentimes not for any necessary national security reasons. And just because it's such a large operation and they just, it can sometimes seem very whimsical or capricious why they don't, you know, provide some level of disclosure on about things. But I think with, with Grush, I think, here's my take on it. I think he believes what he's saying, right? I think he has gone out there. I think I'm legit. Look, he was a whatever 14 year veteran of military and the national reconnaissance office. And I think he went out and he talked to enough people. And he, he believes it. I don't think he's out there like spinning a yarn and is worried that now he's gotten over his skis and he's said, too many things now.

2:06:49But I don't, I don't know. I don't, I don't feel like it's tidy. And maybe the difference between us is I spent a lot of time with the government. And the government is, sometimes can be really, really dysfunctional. And I just, it goes back to keeping a secret. The idea that they could have this, this, what essentially is a covert action campaign, you know, to spread this information about what they actually know, right? When the easier thing to do is just to have the program, you know, if, if, again, if it's, it's the US government's, you know, development of technology, right? And we're doing this to have the program and just keep your app shut about it.

2:07:41Not go for disinformation, can't we? Not try to muddy the waters by doing this because in a sense, you're just creating more conversation around it. You're creating, you know, now there's a little bit of a, you know, movement within Congress to say, we have to do this. Now we have to, so they're going to look perhaps for a misappropriation of funds, right? Because they're not going to pursue like the UAP issue necessarily, right? But, but they might be interested in pursuing a misappropriation of funds. So if you're running a program, if it didn't, again, going back to the idea that it's a US government thing, if you're running a program, that's the last thing you want to do is because you're, you're doing this program to avoid government oversight, you're not going to create, you know, this alternative narrative that, you know, could generate the sort of publicity or the conversation, particularly up on Capitol Hill, that causes them to then start looking and saying, well, where is money being spent?

2:08:26Right. Right. Because there is a trail there and that could cause a problem. So yeah. What, so what are your instincts? When you look at it, if I'm, I'm, I'm looking at, I'm saying something's wrong. It seems like bullshit. What, what are your instincts? Yeah, I think I would like to, you know, I don't think we're going to get there. My instinct is to say, how do we solve the, how do we solve this or how do we, how do we come to some sort of logical resolution? As opposed to saying, what is it right off the bat? My instinct is to say, all right, if the all domain anomalous or anomaly resolution office has 800 cases, then tell us what those 800 cases are.

2:09:11Let's work our way through them or have a little bit more transparency about working through those cases. Again, you'll probably whittle them down, right? To, I mean, we were doing black falls and we were going around talking to people about, you know, various sightings and things. You basically just cross and things off. Okay, that was this, that was this, this, this, you know, you find some pretty mundane answers, you know, but you whittle it down that maybe one or two things that you can't explain and then you can investigate those and say, okay, all right, let's stick further on these. But right now it's just like all over the map and they've got so many cases and they just got to lump it all together.

2:09:43Are they doing that to opt to skate and create, you know, this, this, this situation where it does seem like bullshit and, and again, I don't know, but I think I'm not willing to shut the door on saying that, that those handful of those few sightings that where we do have technical data, we get video, we got, you know, radar lock, we got, we got gun camera footage, whatever it may be, that can't be explained. I'm not willing to close the door and saying, well, it's, you know, you know, is, because who knows, maybe China's doing the same thing, you know, oh, we're leading the hypersonic race right now.

2:10:21Great, but they've got another program, you know, and they're responsible for the tick deck, right? So we have to pursue it. And if that leads us to the doorstep that says, oh, that's a US government program and they've developed the technology. Okay, you know, fine, but, you know, I realized that, you know, I just, I'm not willing to close the door and say it could be something else, could be the otherworldly, right? Because I just, they could be, I just, there is no, that problem with the infinite nature of space, which seems to actually be getting bigger. Yeah, there was a good way of putting it that, that, that, my wife who's a hell of a lot smarter than I am, tried to explain it to me.

2:10:59I can't, I don't like this. And, but she had heard of, she had heard a program at one point where the person explained it like, okay, imagine how vast the ocean is, right? And, you know, how you, we've explored the ocean, but then you look at space and how immense it is, right? Compared to the ocean, right? The amount that we've explored in space, right, is equivalent to like a wine glass full of ocean water, right? So you take a wine glass full of ocean water, you look at it and you go, it's nothing there, right? You know, there's all those life forms, there's all that, all those fish in the sea.

2:11:35It's kind of like, and then, you know, you think about space and you think about what we know and what we don't know and how we imagine like our limited capacity to imagine what life outside of Earth could look like. Right. So it's, yeah. But when you hear talk of like crashed retrieval programs, yeah, that keeps taking me back and just, you know, to this, this whole idea of, if there was a crash retrieval and reverse engineering program, like David Gresh talked about and had been in existence for decades, somebody would have fucking opened their app and talked about it. I think I think other than Bob Lizar, and they would have had some better specifics, right?

2:12:21I mean, that's always the thing that's, it's where it falls down. Well, I haven't seen it, but I talked to somebody who knows that it exists, right? And I think maybe it's because we're human, we're programmed to actually want physical evidence, right? We want to actually see it before we believe it. But, you know, that really hasn't happened yet. What's one of the things that's fascinating is the narrative has shifted so wildly from it's completely preposterous to credible people like David Fraver and Ryan Graves and all these different people that are talking about multiple sightings, things that completely defy our understanding of what a vehicle is capable of doing, hovering completely motionless and 120 knot winds.

2:13:01All the whole, you know, whatever that thing is, the, the cube inside its fear that they keep seeing over and over again. Right. Almost hit one of the aircraft. Yeah. Yeah. And the fuck is that? Yeah. And then they land. So I think, you know, one of the good developments out of all of this and one of the things that may eventually lead the transparency, right? Because it will, it will provide an avenue for these sightings, whether it's commercial or military pilots as an example, to report it, right? And to be more, and, and for the government to take it perhaps, you know, again, depends on what it's a big conspiracy or not to, to investigate in a, in a more logical manner and in a more detailed manner.

2:13:39So I think just again, the sheer act that we're talking about it, which then takes me back to the idea that, you know, if you're running a secret program, you don't want people talking about it. So you're not going to muddy the waters with a false narrative if you don't have to. Right. You know, if your concern is that someone's getting close to the truth and you got to do, okay, then maybe so. But, um, you know, do you think it's also possible that there are patriots that do think that the American public deserves to know about this information and they have been sitting on it for a long time?

2:14:12Um, the people that David Grush and all these various people that are coming out and more apparently are wanting to come out. Yeah. Well, interesting thing with Grush is, look, he's, he said so during the hearing, right? He said, I can't talk about that. I could talk about it in the skiff, right? In a sensitive, uh, secure environment. All right. Well, if I'm, you know, one of the people on that subcommittee, I'm going to say, you know what? It's my staff schedule, uh, you know, a skiff meeting with Grush. Get him in here. And let's, you know, have him talk in the classified chat. Right. Um, so that would be the next logical step in all of this.

2:14:47Have you done that yet? I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, when he said, I could talk to you about it in a skiff, have people taken him up on that? Well, I, you know, you have to ask him, I wouldn't, and they wouldn't tell any questions. And they wouldn't tell them in there. They're in lies part of the problem because if he sits there and, but if he sits in the skiff and continues to kind of say, well, like, you know, okay, I don't, you guys aren't clear to hear this and I can't tell. All right. Then you got to start questioning, you know, what he's actually got to what he, what he knows for sure, right?

2:15:18And then just having this, this, you know, witness interviews and sort of secondhand information. But I am, I'm much more, I guess the point is I'm much more interested in the direct sightings than, uh, witness interviews, right? Right. And the thing about him is he's not really a witness. Right. He hasn't had any personal encounters with anything. Right. He hasn't had personal encounter with a craft. He hasn't seen a retrieved craft. He hasn't seen the biological entities. These are all just programs that he's been made aware of that he felt like people needed to know about. Yeah. And that's the narrative.

2:15:50And I, and I, again, not to disparage anybody, right? I mean, he's, you know, if in fact, you know, somebody leaked his medical records, which it looks like, you know, did happen, right? Then that's, that, you know, that's, that's pretty bullshit, right? Somebody needs to figure out what the hell is happening. The information from Grush, who said he was unable to discuss specifics on what he told the Pentagon's watchdog arm lawmakers want to sit down with the former official and the sensitive compartmental information facility, a skiff, to get additional information from him. The group has been blocked, however, by officials that have informed them that Grush doesn't currently have security clearance to discuss the issues in a skiff, according to the Birchette.

2:16:33We think that we'll get there eventually. It's just frustrating. I'm ready to go and the American public are ready to go. He said, Luna argued that the skiff with Grush could help lawmakers better understand the type of legislation they need to write. Regarding UAPs, she said she supports legislation that would declassify information on the phenomenon. So there seems to be some issue of secrecy and what, what's possible to discuss or what's legal to discuss. Well, but yeah, like the government casts a very wide net when you're talking about classified information, right? The government has overclassified information for decades and decades, right?

2:17:09And you've got secret, top secret, you know, code word, you know, and they tend to just hoover everything up and classify it, right? And then it takes fucking forever, right? To go through that process of declassification. And because nobody wants to put their neck out at that point, so yeah, let's declassify this, right? What's in that pot? So, but the question is great, you know, you're saying, you know, you can talk about it in a skiff, well, damn it, then that's the next, that's what the subcommittee should be doing. That's their job, right? If they're curious, right? And if they're sincere about trying to get to the bottom of this, and that's theoretically their job, then they should, because again, going back to the main thing, and people can say, well, why are you wasting your time on this?

2:17:53But you can always circle back to the top line, which is it's for national security purposes, we want to know what the hell's going on. Right. And, and, you know, if so, yeah, we'll see. I guess that's the, that's the question that should be thrown at, at Grusher, should be thrown at the subcommittee members. I'm also shocked at how few people care. I feel like people are so overloaded with information today, because of social media and because of the news cycle, you're just, people are so overloaded with information that this barely registered on people other than UFO nuts. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was a, there was a surprising amount, I thought, anyway, of sort of mainstream media coverage.

2:18:32It wasn't particularly deep, right? It just kind of covered, okay, I was hearing, and I think they did it because I like it's UFOs or UAPs, right? And so, you know, they knew they'd get some clicks on it if they were putting it online or whatever, and they didn't pursue it, you know, like it's been any, I haven't seen any stories that talked about the follow up with Grush. There were a couple of stories talking about the, you know, the fact that perhaps his medical records were leaked, you know, as a result. And the medical records showed what that he had some sort of a psychiatric condition. Did he have an event or something like that?

2:19:05PTSD, I think you know, some suicidal depression issues. Standing stuff with military veterans. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He had done his time in Afghanistan. Yeah. And so, that doesn't, yeah, it means nothing, except for the fact that it shouldn't be out there, right? That's, records should be damn well private. Well, not only that, isn't that what we want? The lunch is shut your little ding or off there, fellas. Is that, is that me going to you?

2:19:33Yeah, but thank you for my idea, isn't that what you want from, I mean, that's the whole purpose of providing these services for veterans that when they do have suicidal suicidal suicidal thoughts and they are struggling with PTSD, they get help. I mean, the idea that they're shaming him and saying that his report is not credible because of this seems ridiculous. Yeah. It's totally bullshit. Yeah. And he said he's come out since he said, look, I did seek help. I'm in a better place. And he was happy that people were talking about. They should be talking about. Look, we lose a shocking number of veterans to suicide.

2:20:12Yeah. Right? And it's disgusting that we don't, you know, that the government doesn't work harder at this, right? And spend more effort. You know, I know a couple of people who do amazingly good work at the VA in terms of counselors, right?

2:20:28They're not incredible what they do. But overall, as a government, our assistance, right, to veterans. I mean, look at the number of homeless situational aid. It's pathetic. And so when he talks about it, it's good that he's talking about it, right? I think that that transparency helps. And he clearly views it that way too. And he said, look, I don't have any problem with discussing it, but we should be concerned by the fact that, you know, somehow his medical records were put out there. And then, you know, some people will look at that and go, well, is that the government's effort to discredit them?

2:21:05Or is that somebody's effort to discredit them? I don't know why anybody else would, why would you do that? Or would you put them out there? So, you know, I feel for the guy, in that sense, I just can't evaluate or assess the veracity of what he's saying. Right. So particularly the sort of the biologics thing that we're holding on to dead aliens. I'm not sure about that part. Yeah, that's the old story, the old legend about Nixon. And Nixon and Jackie Gleason, do you know that story? No, you don't know that story? No, I'm glad you were able to bring Nixon into this conversation. Yeah, Nixon apparently was drinking buddies with Jackie Gleason.

2:21:42And they were tying one on.

2:21:51And they had a base. And the legend goes that they showed him, this retrieved UFO and they showed him alien bodies. And the legend also goes that Jackie Gleason became a UFO nut after that. And one of the things that points to that is he actually had a home built in New York State that was in the shape of a UFO. And there's a, I mean, you could see the home. Yeah, it's like a circular flying disc looking home that he had built in New York State. It's supposedly he had it built. That's, this is the house. Supposedly he had this thing built because it, you know, it was a representation of what he had seen.

2:22:35Good God. Yeah, pretty wild shit. And that, and someone said, well, yeah, it's West Chester County. So someone paid 12 million for it. Yeah, I wish it was for sale. Oh, God. I don't want to live there. But well, it's listed. Is it that little thing? No, I'm not. It's listed for 12 million dollars. CIA snatched it up. Oh, yeah. And we had to get that out of control. We got to shut this up right now. Yeah, no, it's a great legend. I don't know if it's true. There's been some disputed whether or not it's true. Because what the source was his ex -wife. Is that what it was? Is that what it was, Jim?

2:23:09Yeah, and they looked up. I just looked us up to their day. They looked up that that source and it was like from an interview that was in a magazine and Esquire maybe. Esquire can't be found anywhere. But that's possible today. The disappearing Esquire. John got an Esquire from 1970, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I had no idea. Did you ever see that? It was not that long of the Elvis and Nixon movie? No, I guess it was. I forget what it was called. I might have just been called Nixon and Elvis or something. But it was a great movie. It's a great watch. It's worth watching. It was only it was a short relative short movie.

2:23:47It wasn't a documentary. It was a movie. And it was it was fantastic. I can't I can't remember the name of it. We have that photo of Elvis. Look at that. Okay. That's it. Yeah. It's Kevin Spacy. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be like all the time. She better go and watch Kevin Spacy back before he got you know. Come on, man. Yeah. It was the dude who played Elvis. It looks like Johnny Knoxville. I don't know. The actors name off top my head. I don't know. Is it Michael Shannon? He said it. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Now it was it's well -winked. It's not quite handsome enough to play Elvis. I didn't realize that Colin Hanks was not Johnny Knoxville.

2:24:29Yeah. So that's a crap movie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was lacking and a casting budget. You should you should watch it. Yeah. It was mine. It had its moments. It was actually very funny. It was crazy as Nixon. Yeah. More. That guy disappeared off the map. Didn't he? Kevin Spacy? He was just exonerated. Yeah. Like some of those charges. But it seems like there was a lot of dick grabbing going on. A lot of dick grabbing. But it was he was also right in the fire. Like he was at that that perfect moment of the storm. Right. Remember that? The whole me, too thing. He does have a reputation for Dick Brown.

2:25:00Yeah, well, I know about that, but he played a good Nixon. He was a damn fine Nixon. Well, he played a good president too. Yeah. That fucking... Oh, yeah. The Netflix show. What was it called? House of cards. House of cards. Fucking great show. That was good. He played such a good creep. Oh my goodness. Although they kind of jumped the shark when he started like, they started, there was a three somewhere this Secret Service officer. Yeah. No way. They went to that far. Yeah. And then it's time to switch and find a new series to watch. But, yeah, anyway. Hey, do you mind if I, if I do promote something?

2:25:38Sure. promote something. We've been doing this for a while. I have agreed to take over a podcast. Really not. Take over a podcast. And here it is. Here it is. This is your podcast. It's coming up September 5th. Now this is something that someone else started and you're taking over. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see if we can make this play. What if you had your own spy? Would you use them to keep tabs on the most important events happening around the world? Update you on exactly what you needed to know each morning so you could be smarter, more prepared, ahead of the curve. Meet CIA veteran Mike Baker. Every day he'll be your personal intelligence officer, delivering insights and analysis once reserved for the president of the United States.

2:26:23The president's daily brief with Mike Baker. Get briefed. Stay ahead. Your briefings begin on September 5th. Who's that? Who put this together? First TV. So it's available on all podcast platforms, including Spotify. Is it video as well? No, it's just going to be an audio. Okay, we may go to video at some point. But it's 20 minutes a day. It starts on the 5th of September. Every morning at 6am, about 20 minutes, and all we're going to do, the reason I love this project is because, like with the president's daily brief, right, it drops in the overall office every morning. It's very, as his name implies, it's very brief.

2:27:03Covers the top issues around the globe and provides a bit of context and then that's it. And that's all the president gets, right? Just every morning to kind of get that, okay, here are the things going on that need to pay attention to. So that Trump wouldn't read unless his name was in it. Yeah. So they would inject his name and stuff. He's going to put this in here. Yeah, basically. Yeah, you always get these different, you know, takes from the president, from every administration as to how they receive these things. But the idea is, yeah, 6am, every morning, September 5th, president's daily brief, all podcast platforms, including Spotify.

2:27:38And the idea is we're just going to cover the top stories or concerns of the day, provide a little analysis of context. I'm not going to tell people how to think about it, right? There's enough folks out there, all of the pundits doing that. And then wrap it up, get on and then it allows people, but every day, so I'm really excited about it. It starts out, it'll be an audio cast, you know, it's where it'll go from there. But it took a brief hiatus, went off the air back in I think in February and I agreed to start hosting it. So that's great. It should be fun. I mean, again, it's informative. It's not a opinion driven.

2:28:14Have you spoken to any presidents? I have. Yes. Bill Clinton's. Bill Clinton. I will say this. I was at an event, I figure where it was. It wasn't here. It wasn't an Austin. It might have been in Little Rock. It was a large gathering and it was a dinner. And at the end of it, and also George Bush was there too, had a brief chance to talk with him, but with Bill Clinton, the striking thing was he came through the room and I was just standing there talking to my wife and a couple others and he came up and he stood there and he looked at me and he started talking to me about something that we had done when I was with the agency and he was president and operation that we had done.

2:29:05And I don't think he knew I was going to be there or anything, but he stood there and started talking about this operation and in real detail, I mean, those sorts of methods are things, but the recall was surprising and he was adding context about why they made some decisions from the White House that they did about what we were doing. And he kind of stood there and he had his hands on my arm and he was just really focused on talking to the point where the secret service at a certain point were kind of like, you know, getting antsy and saying, can we move on? Can we leave? But he kept talking and I always thought that Clinton was, hey, smart, right?

2:29:46And politics aside, right? It's a smart guy, but he had this ability to zero in on people, right? And the thing that he had as a politician was not only could he make you feel like you were the only person in the room, but he had this recall, the ability to talk about things and detail that, you know, left you realizing, okay, he was a smart dude, he was, you know, he was a bit of a wanderer, right? And he had his own issues, but - Well, that's the case with a lot of smart dudes. Yeah. There's a motivation for their success and a lot of times it's women. Yeah. Power and women. Right. I mean, that has traditionally been the motivation of leaders.

2:30:22Yeah. Burlesconi. Oh, sorry. Okay, maybe that's a different one. Bunga, bunga. But, yeah, so that was a striking conversation that I thought, and I've actually got a photo of that was someone snapped a photo. He was talking and he was just kind of really folks and I was like, what the hell are we talking about this for? But I realized he was basically kind of bringing it back around to why they did something from the White House. And you wanted to discuss it with you? Yeah, and that's - Okay. That's, you know, that was - Is that - That was after he was out of office? Yes. Yeah, I don't know, office.

2:30:55Yeah. And - I would love to talk to a president about what that experience, I mean, this, my main, if I had a question for Trump, that's one of the big ones. Like, what is it like when you get in there? Like, what is it - what's the difference between perception and reality? What is the difference between your ideas of what - what it's like when you get into the oval office? What it's like when you get debriefed? Yeah. Because pretty much every politician has these plans. They all have these things that they say they're going to do. And then they get into office and very little of it happens. Yeah.

2:31:31Like, why is that and what is it like? I think they're fighting against the machine, first of all. And, you know, maybe they show up and they imagine, I mean, that, you know, they're going to accomplish whatever it is going to be that they're going to accomplish. But then I think the reality is Washington DC set in. And, I think that it's tougher now than it used to be. I mean, I think you - you - not to romanticize the past, but I think it used to be easier to get people into a room from, you know, both sides of the aisle and hammer out, you know, a platform or an idea or a bill or whatever it may be.

2:32:08And I think that's much more difficult now for people to do because it's so damn partisan. But, yeah, it is - it's - it's a - you know, we have the good and fortunate being in the White House a few times. And it's - I can't imagine that it's not this overwhelming feeling when you go - if you're just elected, right, and you walk into the Oval Office, this overwhelming feeling of - of responsibility, you know, and even for somebody like Trump, you know, who probably, you know, I mean, you know, he'd probably sat down and thought, of course I'm here, you know, and why wouldn't I be here? But - And then you're, you know, your - your - your number one job is essentially to take a lot of shit that's happening, distill it down to, you know, its key points and delegate, right?

2:32:57Because there is such a machine around you, right, that - that tries to plan every moment of your day, I think. And it is, you know, it's not unlike being a CEO of a Fortune 50 company, you know, where you've got a lot of plates spinning and you can't focus on all of them. So which is part of the, you know, look at me, part of the President's daily brief, the purpose of that that goes into the Oval Office is to try to keep a focus on sort of the national security issues that are at the top of the hip parade in very short order, right? Because no matter how interested the President is and look - Bush as an example used to go through those things with a fine -toothed column and ask question after question after question, right?

2:33:42Clearly that - I don't think that was Trump style. I don't know what Biden does, right, in terms of that. But, you know, every President is a little bit different in how they receive information and process it and then prioritize it in their mind what's important. But behind you is a machine that regardless of what you're thinking is prioritizing concerns of the day, national security issues and military concerns and the economy and all the rest of it. And so at the end of the day, maybe we put too much - we imagine the President's got more ability, right, to do things or to change things or to shape things than they actually do.

2:34:25So not - and again, not in any way to minimize the importance of the stress of that job. Right. But - Well, the stress of the job is unprecedented. Yeah. You watch the way to age the people. Except him. Except Trump. That motherfucker just - Like a dunk to water. So what do you think - Is he - is he getting the nomination? Is he going to be the guy? Yeah, I think he is. Yeah. Yeah. I was wrong before when we talked about this a while back. I think it's top of him. Yeah. I think the people that want Trump in office, they view the hypocrisy of this administration, the corruption, the open borders, the economy collapsing, the open checkbook to Ukraine.

2:35:07They view all this shit. They view all the clamping down and internal combustion engines, the green shit, what they think that is going to kill the economy and centralize money into a few very powerful hands. Yeah. They - they don't buy it at all, and they think that he's their only solution. Does anybody - From the GOP side, any of the candidates have a chance to take the nomination instead of Trump? I don't think so. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I don't see - I don't see - Unless something horrible happens to him. That Vivek guy is very interesting. Yeah. He's very interesting. He's very rational and very smart.

2:35:47He does seem to talk directly about the issues. Yeah. Unlike some of the folks who are speaking more aspirational and talking about you know, direction of the country, he does seem to focus more on these are the things we need to do specifically. He's also clearly very, very intelligent. Like superior intelligence. Like when you hear him discuss nuanced issues, he's also has very good emotional intelligence, because they've seen him not just challenged but disparaged on radio shows and podcasts, and he handles things very, very well. And that discussion with him was what got Don Lemon removed from CNN, because Don Lemon and him went at it.

2:36:23I think he's a - But he's very young too. Like would people want a 37 year old guy running the entire country? Even if it's a truly exceptional mind, and truly exceptional person, which I think he is. Well this may be this may be the cycle, right? Meaning this sort of this Biden, I mean if Biden ends up, do you think that's the second part of the question? Do you think Biden's going to be the guy? I don't think so. Yeah. I think it's probably going to be fucking Mr. California. Really? Yeah, I think it's probably going to be Gavin Newsom. I think they're probably going to try to whitewash all the failures of California and all the disastrous policies and just view him as the most presidential of the leftist progressive candidates.

2:37:07And keep Kamala Harris as the VP? No way. Not a chance in hell. I think she steps down. I think if I had a guess, something comes up. Yeah. Yeah. She doesn't want to do it anymore. He has a better choice. They find her another position. You know, she decides that she would better serve somewhere else, something, something. I just don't imagine that they wouldn't see her as a massive liability. Yeah. Oh, I think they do. I mean, I think that this, but she, as long as Biden is the candidate, she's the VP on the ticket. And last something horrible happens with her. Some sort of scandal or some sort of thing.

2:37:45Or you know, look, they removed Andrew Cuomo when just a couple of months before he was the darling of the Democratic party. Yeah. And they just decided that he was too much of a liability. And so they, they went after him. Yeah, but I'm not sure how, I don't know that the party's got what it takes to come out without an incident, right? Without something, and you know, you hate to say anything about anybody's health, but you know, without something on a health perspective happening with Biden. Well, the health perspective has already happened. Yeah. Yeah. It's super clear at this point. I mean, people are giving me shit about saying it in 2020.

2:38:19It's super clear. That he's got like real mental problems. Like whatever they are, whether it's dementia, it was just pure old age, whatever it is. Like there's, he's got, I mean, when he closes his eyes, that's when everybody goes, no panic. He's like, no, I know, but look at what we've got. We've got, we've got him doing that. Right. And then he whispers to the party with his presentation and always trying to crisis when he whispers. Yeah, vaccinated. It's by nomics. It's working. Yeah. And then he goes, okay, stop doing that. It's, well, he's just a goof. He's always been a goofy guy. But, but you've got that, you got Mitch McConnell, you know, kind of fading out, you know, falling apart, almost having a mini stroke, or during his speech, the lockup, front of the press and then we're so old.

2:39:02Yeah. I just mean, fine stainless, still there. Yeah. Fine stainless still there. She's handed over control. She's, you know, like said, my daughter has control of my, you know, business and everything and conservatorship or whatever. But I'm staying here until 2025. It's not. Yeah. It's not so. And yeah, it's just such a fucking strange time. It's so strange. And so, so maybe somebody like Vivek says, I'm going to sit this one out. I mean, that, that would be the, to me, that would be the smart thing. If you've got aspirations and you've got the ability, but you're young, you think maybe I'll just let the whole system reboot right now because this Biden Trump thing is just so, well, Trump could choose him as a VP.

2:39:40And I think he would be a formidable VP. If Trump runs with him as a VP, I think that's a massive asset. I really do. Yeah. I think because that guy, you could see him in four years being the president. He's so rational and intelligent. Well, let's, to him talk, I'm like, that's what I want from a president. I want a level -headed, super intelligent, rational person who has had a massive amount of success in the real world who decides to enter into politics because he thinks that he can serve in a meaningful way. And he thinks that he can part change in a meaningful way. At least that's what I'm getting from him in my most rose colored glasses view of the world.

2:40:20But does that, I don't know if that's what the voters want, right? Because he would balance out what people don't like about Trump with this bombastic personality. But also, you've got to give credit to the guy because that bombastic personality really did expose the deep state. It really did expose all this corruption. And the fucking Russia collusion, the fact that the media was completely on board with that, that there's been no apologies, this is all bullshit. There's so much of that that he exposed because of the fact that he fights tooth -clon nail. The fact that he won't back down, and then he gets into any, you know, literally goes after the intelligence community, which is, you know, obviously from your perspective, is a terrible idea.

2:41:04Well, no, it's not a terrible idea if you're going after, for, you know, for certain individuals politicizing. Because that can never happen. That's a death knell for any intelligence organization, as far as I'm concerned, or a federal law enforcement organization, like the Bureau. So you should always be on the lookout for that. I have no problems with that at all. But, you know, my point is always with, with at least with the organization that I know, it's not the body of the organization, right? You get individuals who are becoming enamored of their access, or, you know, their power, the closeness to the policies where they let their personal agenda take over.

2:41:46That's a real danger. And you can never let that happen. That's what I think people need to understand when they talk disparagingly about the intelligence community. And that, my opinion, my personal opinion, is as most these people are patriots, and that there are people that get into positions of power in every single organization, no matter what it is, where they abuse that power. And those people become corrupt. Yeah. And this has happened in every business. I'm sure every branch of government, I'm sure it happens everywhere. But does that mean that the intelligence communities are unnecessary?

2:42:21No, you don't. Yeah, that would be like saying, okay, you know, the CEO of a company has got a certain political agenda. And so, like with BlackRock, you know, I mean, they maybe, you know, the head of it is like enamored with, you know, whatever it was, equity and inclusion. I can't even remember that. Yeah, and governance. And so the whole organization is bad, right? Well, okay, probably not everybody there thinks that way, right? But, you know, all it takes is as a handful, at the top level on the seventh floor, wherever the organization is. And that's a problem. So, you defeat that in part by having a very proactive, curious, you know, government, right?

2:43:03With the proper committees and the Intel, committees that are up on Capitol Hill as an example, that ask all those important questions, and that demand answers, and that aren't so hyper partisan, that they refuse to, you know, pursue the obvious, right? And, you know, look, the lack of self -awareness is shocking. When you get people like Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin, you know, saying things like, well, this, this, look at the Biden finances is, you know, it's bullshit, it's purely political. And Raskin and Schiff and others spent years, right? Getting in front of the cameras and just spewing bullshit about the Russian collusion story.

2:43:42And yet the fact that they don't see it because they're so partisan and they don't understand, like, the important thing here is, it doesn't matter we're a Republican Democrat, you know, everybody should be subject to the same concerns and behavior and scrutiny, right? But, you know, it's not going to happen. I don't know how you walk it back. I don't know how we get back to some level of normal, right? And I don't think we're going to see that during the course of this election cycle, right? This is going to be a, this is going to be a shit show. Yeah. So it's going to be a shit show, especially with the indictments.

2:44:15Yeah. Oh, yeah. And, and I don't think there's any more coming down the pike. So I think these four are it. But, you know, that DC indictment is, that's definitely a political document, right? The, I'm going to have a chance to go through the, the Georgia indictment in full. But, the race that they all have, right? And trying to get these things out there in the time frame that they are, you know, would seem to indicate that they've got a political motivation here. Make this last through the election cycle, you know, screw over to the degree they can, what they view as the top challenger. And, and let it go.

2:44:51And they don't seem to care about the public's perception of how that looks. Right. And that's a dangerous precedent to set, because if that happens, what's to stop some authoritarian Republican from utilizing the same methods to go after people in your group? Right. Once the precedent's been set. Yeah. No, there's, there's nothing. And that's, you know, and then you get, you get into banana, you know, Republic Territory. So, yeah. But again, I think, you know, yeah, I would be hard pressed to imagine Biden's going to end up going all the way through the whole process, you know, securing all the delegates, you know, running, winning.

2:45:26I just, I don't think they want him to. I really don't think they want him to. But they've got, another option is Michelle Obama that keeps getting banded about. Not sure if she even wants to have anything to do with that. You know, she's in one of those positions, right? It's like Oprah Winfrey. People say, well, Oprah Winfrey should run. Well, the fuck she should. Yeah, I mean, well, I know, but what I mean is when they say that, you think, well, she's kind of, she enjoys this position of being loved by lots of people. And why would, and so Michelle Obama, she's in sort of that sweet spot, right?

2:45:54Everyone's, oh my god, it's Michelle Obama. As soon as you put yourself in that, that arena, right? And it hate comes out. Yeah, shit comes out your fast. And you don't need it. No, I mean, they made enough money. Yeah. How are they all doing that? How would, how would all these people make in this money? Crazy, Mike. It's crazy. I don't know. I don't get it either. It seems weird on a $400 ,000 year salary. Yeah, or in your worth hundreds of millions. Oh, you look at the senators. Yeah. How's that working? And so, how's that crazy? Because the fucking, just the insider trading. That was that still legal.

2:46:27Well, and what is a Senator's salary is in like the, I think the low 200 ,000s or something like that. Maybe I forget. But yeah, my experience has been, you don't become a multi -millionaire, you know, doing that. Unless you've got, you're really savvy. Shenanigans. Pick and stocks, right? I'm sending a committee and I hear somebody talk about a new program that's going to be developed to develop a new type of propulsion system. Right. Yeah. That's right. That's how it goes. That's right. That's how it goes. Yeah, hey, I want you to have this, man. This is, this is the easiest, simplest lighter you'll ever find.

2:47:02It's a Zippo. Thank you. And, uh, it's a CIA lighter. It's a CIA lighter. I could bring this around my paranoid friends. I'd already think that I'm a CIA operator. And it's not a transmitter in that. I don't want you to fit any problem. It's talking. I'll fucking bury it in the ground. Yeah, there's no transmitter in that light. Right. Thank you very much. I appreciate you. Let's do it again in a few months and hopefully the world's not glowing. I hope so, man. And tell us more about your podcast and I'm sure it's going great. Oh, yeah. President Staley Brief September 5th starts on all podcast platforms, including Spotify and support.

2:47:35Good luck with that. Thank you. Appreciate you very much. Thank you, Joe. Bye, everybody.