Dave Smith: Mossad, WWII Myths, FBI Cover-Ups, and Trump’s Critical Next Move in Iran

[MUSIC] So it does seem like in addition to everything, in first of all, Dave, thank you. >> Oh. >> So as always, we're late because we just said such a long breakfast, two and a half hour breakfast. >> [LAUGH] >> I hope this conversation could be as interesting as our breakfast just was. But in addition to everything else changing, you made such a smart point a minute ago about the means of convincing the public, the propaganda machine is completely broken. And so what does that mean? You're in the middle of a war, you're in the middle of a massive power shift globally. Like everything is changing, the economy, military strength, everything. And it's impossible to know who is telling the truth. Like who comes out more credible in this in the media? Like who are the people you listen to? What's that look like? >> Well, I think everybody who's being authentic, I think, is who's coming out ahead of this. It seems like if you look at the podcast numbers, it's the people who are being critical of the regime's policies. It's from my perspective, the people who are telling the truth. And so in the media world, I think there's been this, as you know, because you were in the old media world for so long. >> Only 35 years, not a big deal. >> There you go, look at that. >> Not that long. >> You put a little bit of time in that. >> I'm implicated, yes. >> I always thought, and I mean this, I used to watch you back on your MSNBC show. You were always one of the very few kind of authentic people. Even when you were wrong about stuff and things that you look back on, and you're like, "Oh, I've changed my mind about all that." But it's an incredibly phony world. News in general, there's something about it that's very, it's very welcome back to the Frickville Clock News. It's just like, what is that? That's not how you talk. >> Credibility doesn't derive from being right about everything. Credibility derives from being honest. >> Yes, yes. But so I think after the first 20 years or so, first 15 years of the 21st century, and at this point, what we're 26 years into the 21st century now, it's the government, every single crisis that's happened, and we've had quite a few, you know, at 9/11, and we had global war on terrorism. We had the huge financial crash in 2008. We had COVID. We had that. Okay, so on every single crisis, the government and the media just lied through their teeth to the American people and got exposed. Like it's not like anyone now thinks, like maybe Saddam really did have weapons of mass destruction. We all know. We all know if you get the vaccine. >> But that vaccine is safe. >> You can get COVID. Turns out you can get COVID even after having the vaccine, as everyone who got the vaccine also got COVID, or just about. And so it was like all these phonies and media lying us, on behalf of power, lying to us about these policies. And at the same time, as they were getting exposed for all of this, and I do think COVID did it almost more than anything, because the global war on terrorism was over there, but COVID was over here and affected everyone. Also, obviously, the, you know, covering for a clearly, um, senile president was a pretty easy one for everyone to see through. But so, while all that was happening, also the technology, you know, simultaneously, got to a point where, you know, you can do this for a reasonable amount of money. You know what I mean? Like it's not, in 1980, if you wanted to set up your own TV studio, you needed a corporation to get behind you, because who had the resources, whereas everyone now can open their computer. If you have a phone, you can record yourself and put it out there. So, the technology allowed for tremendous parity, and the lyingness into all of these disasters resulted in people really craving authenticity. And so, you know, it's just like the propaganda machine got broken. Now, to your point, the policies are still going on, and that just creates a very interesting new time. Like, there just, there never was, I cannot imagine, if, while George W. Bush was trying to, you know, uh, push the war in Iraq, let's say for all of 2002, they spent the full year building the case for what? Well, imagine every day, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity were calling out George W. Bush for his lies. Like, the people who George W. Bush voters trusted the most, were hearing their favorite newscaster calling it, telling the truth, doing news. Well, you can't even fathom what that would be. Well, that's what it's like now. Now, that's the situation. And I don't know what that means exactly, but I know that governments all around the world have invested heavily in propaganda campaigns for a reason, because they think that's really important. They think it's important that they don't just go in Vader-Ak, but that they convince you first that he's got nuclear weapons and he's in bed with the terrorists and they're, you know, whatever kind of he's a right-so, we don't want the warning to be in the form of a mushroom cloud from the bomb that doesn't exist. His terrorist friends, who he hates, who he's not friends with at all, but, um, but so now we're in this new world and it's very exciting as someone who's a part of it and it's an exciting moment to be alive, but it is certainly a dangerous one. You know, they say the most dangerous time for a woman to leave in a, the most dangerous time for an abused woman is when she tries to leave. Yeah. Right? Like, that's when he might kill you. And that's kind of how I feel about the government right now. Yeah. I think that's so, first of all, so well put and also so true because it can't actually last that much longer because the disparity in power is too great. So I think a lot of people who have podcasts, um, I've been in so many different kinds of media. It's hard to remember what this one's called. It's podcasting. It's the same, you know, sure. It's a kind of silly term that doesn't really make sense. It doesn't. We don't have iPods anymore. No, no, no, no. It's just if that one just stuck for whatever reason. It's so true, but people who have, you know, independent media feel like they have a lot of power. Well, I've got so much power. They have no power. They don't control the, the medium really, they don't control YouTube. Yeah. They don't have the FBI, they're disposal. They don't have nuclear weapons. So actually they are powerless and through a quirk of history because we're in a change moment, that's not obvious, but it has to be obvious. There's too much at stake, right? Yeah, there was a. Don't they have to be crushed? I think it was the CNN lady. She used to work for Vice, I believe, but the girl who was like known for interviewing like the alt-right figures. Oh yeah. She interviewed Tim Dylan last year, and it was right after Trump won his election and or shortly after. And she said, you know, something like, you guys are the real, the power center now, you know? She's like, yeah, you podcasters. You guys are the ones with power because I guess, well, okay, more people watch these shows than watch the traditional shows and Trump came and did a bunch of them and they won reelection and Kamala Harris was too scared for wisely. People say, that was a real mistake she should have done Rogan. No, it wasn't. It was a really good call. It was a really, really good call by her team to not do Rogan actually. It was like after 2016 when they were like, you know, Hillary Clinton's campaign is so stupid. She didn't visit Wisconsin more. And you're like, you really think they're that stupid? No, her numbers went down every time she went. Exactly. So they're like, stop going. They didn't like her. That's why she didn't go. Yeah, it was actually the her best chance was that. But anyway, but so the so you know, they say, oh, you guys, you know, since you guys got president Trump elected, you're the real power center now. And it's like pretty sure the CIA still has a little bit of power. I think there's still like a little bit hanging on in the Pentagon. I'm not quite sure. It's all in Theo Vaughn's house at this point. You know, um, no, I know. So that's the. So I can't continue. I mean, let's be totally honest. If you have whatever one forgets about tank man and Tiedemann square is like, probably got we don't even know what happened to him. You don't know his name. Probably crushed by the tank actually. Oh, certainly. Yes. Well, it's not laughing. I am laughing because just the delusion that people have. I've got a voice. It's like, no. Well, but that's the weird. It's very strange for both these things to be going on at the same time. That's why I said to you at breakfast, my, uh, analogy is the, you know, on the road runner cartoons when you run off the side of the cliff. Yeah. But you're still in air for a moment and then you look down and realize, oh, it's like we're there. Like, how can you keep doing this? So those people, I mean, and, and, you know, obviously from, from me personally, like it's kind of fascinating because I've been in this world, uh, and over the last, uh, two and a half years or so, I've done, I mean, like if you count like all the, you know, debates and, and it pierced Morgan debates or Oxford style debates on, like 35, 40 debates on, you know, just Israel or the warfare state or whatever it is, Ukraine, a lot of these things. And I've never, it, it's like the side broadly speaking, because there's a lot of differences amongst people who, who disagree with, say, the war and Iran, um, or a US support for Israel destroying Gaza. Um, but broadly speaking, it's not only like we've, won the debate. We've like just crushed the, you know, it's not just me. There's lots of people involved in this. You more so probably than anyone. But when you see like, you look at the polls, there was this one poll I saw, and that this is just one poll, but there's a lot that back this up, but that it was, um, before October 7th, they asked, who do you sympathize with more, the Israelis or the Palestinians? And it was plus 48 for the Israelis. It's now plus one for the Palestinians and in the US and to just think so basically a 50 point shift in a little over two years and Tucker I mean I don't know you've been you were doing this for longer than me. When does that ever happen? When does any issue ever swing by 50 points in two years? Like if you if I were to tell you in two years this country would be 95% pro life. You've been like whoa what happened in those two years well I mean the pro life was most a really one the argument you know what I mean like and so now that we've had for the first time ever a media environment where say Israel is not completely protected like what were the debates about supporting Israel on MSNBC or CNN they don't exist they never happen you're not allowed to have those days there there's not maybe like one kind of critical of Israel host will slip in here or there but if he says too much is getting fired pretty quickly and so so we essentially won the debate we it's not close it's not but it's not a question of yes in a very short period of time because there was actually a fair open media system now wherever you know it was really democratized in in a way and so you can't look at go does you know are your bigger than you've ever been before can his own is bigger than she's ever been before I know I'm bigger than I've ever been before Ben Shapiro is weaker and more of a laughing stock than ever before you know like it's just very out but then at the same time who won the policy game Mark Levin you know the president is tweeting go watch Mark Levin show today and his his base his voters are going I think I'll check out Tucker Carlson you know I think I'll and so so anyway there's just this very weird thing we're like we won the argument we had the national debate we and we won and yet we're at war with the ran on behalf of Israel and I think what you're getting at is like that does just feel totally unsustainable like there's either you got a clamp down on these guys like us or you got to reverse the policy and really hoping it's the latter. So the weather is warming which means grilling is here and you're probably already thinking about your first backyard barbecue of the year what should you put on the barbecue we recommend good ranchers we've been using good ranchers for a while in the differences obvious they partner with local American farmers and ranchers to deliver 100% American meat right to your door past your raised no antibiotics no added hormones an excellent quality and taste good ranchers also just launched their new custom boxes so instead of choosing a predetermined list of meat choices you can build your own box with the cuts that you want stakes for grilling chicken for weeknight dinner whatever you decide you start your plan you get to choose a free meat that included with every order at no additional cost plus with the code Tucker you get twenty five dollars off your first order that's free meat with every order and twenty five bucks off your first order use the code Tucker to get that good ranchers dot com American meat delivered so most people don't wake up in the morning and decide to feel horrible exhausted foggy disconnected from themselves but it does happen and it happens slowly you're working hard you're showing up in your energy disappears by mid day your focus is dull your weight won't move a lot of people are told that's just getting old that's what it is but that's not actually true for many men and women these are not personal fairs they are signals tied to your metabolism your hormones and nutrient in balances that go undetected for years you don't even know you're deficient and that's why we're happy to partner with join blocs company that was built for people who are done guessing and ready to figure out what exactly is going on and that starts with comprehensive lab work and a one-on-one consultation with a licensed clinician an actual human being explains what's happening inside you and builds a personalized plan which includes hormone optimization peptide therapy targeted supplements so don't settle go to join blocs dot com slash talker use the code tucker for fifty percent off your lab work and twenty percent off all supplements that's joy and blocs dot com slash tucker use the code tucker fifty percent off labs twenty percent off supplements join blocs get your edge back and it's excellent people don't like to be criticized for their mistakes and I know this from having a wife and children totally fine to be you know criticized for something you feel confident as the right thing but if you screw something up and someone says say say I told you want to shoot the person it's very hard for people to to deal with that and so if you have a war like this which is obviously you know there's one of those profound moments of my lifetime this is much more profound than nine eleven I think thankfully not as you know very relatively few Americans have died but you can see that this is the end of something I'm in the consequences are very serious in the middle of that to criticize the decision to start the process that led to this feels like you're going to be punished for that yeah and I feel that yes I know exactly what you mean and I you know I I almost like on some I don't know it's some way I feel like I like the political thing or the the wise calculation here would almost be to be like mr. president trump you did such a phenomenal job with this and it's such a success that we should just stop right now and declare victory or something like you know what I mean but I'm just no good at being a political operative I'm only good at telling the truth like it's all I it I only have one speed you know Ben Ben Shapiro called me out recently and called me a bunch of names and then said she said I know I can hear Dave right now saying debate me bro if you believe this why don't you debate me because no no I don't debate with him but he's kind of right in a way that that is my response of course I mean I only have one speed it's all I know how to do like come podcast with me like I don't know anything else so well because you're rooted in kind of the old America where you know there was a free market not just in the economy but like intellectually free market of ideas yeah we're supposed to have it at least yeah that the whole country is built on that yeah and so but so that Ben Shapiro and etc. you know that feel well he knows he knows the ideas can't hold up I mean he'll he'll debate a 19 year old gender confused kid because he knows he can win that debate you know it's not that that kids more serious than me you know that's not really the issue but the but anyway I guess so just that like I only have one speed I only know how to just tell you what I think is is really going on here and and I think you're right I think it's this is such a disaster because Donald Trump first of all it'd be very difficult at this point even if you want it to just stop the thing which I think he does at this point want to stop the thing I think he it seems to me like he believed this could be quick was an easy like Venezuela and were way past that at this point but he can't just stop now but obviously there's the Iranians and the Israelis are involved in this too and it doesn't it doesn't seem like either them want to stop right now so they're you got a big problem but also look this isn't Venezuela there's I don't know what the latest sent com numbers are it's not 13 dead Americans was the last I saw the 150 plus wounded number came out weeks ago I don't know what that's up to now are are bases and you know the in the region have been very badly damaged the damage to the global economy is so it's not Venezuela you know you can't just come out of this and then pretend something really great happened if he stops right now then it's like oh you just started a disaster for no reason on behalf of a foreign country like this is just awful and then there's a couple factors I've seen this play I know you've seen this over the years certainly during the global war on terrorism where there is I guess what you could call like the sunk cost fallacy of war which is the worst of all sunk cost fallacies you know but it's you go you go well those boys died for nothing if we don't finish the job and it's like oh man is that a bad trap to get into because the reality is that those boys died for nothing that's over and if you continue this more boys will die for nothing that's correct and so no one you know I'm Pierce Morgan had a panel once or a debate between Scott Horton who is the as you know you've had him on the show the most incredible foreign policy guy in the country like just unbelievable levels of brilliance and his books enough already fools errand which are about the global war on terrorism are the best books written on the subject his book provoked about the war in Ukraine as the best book written on the subject they're literally exhaustive I only know Scott Horton because of you and what improvement to my life yeah I mean he's the he is that he's been such an incredible resource like he's a good great friend of mine one of my closest friends but he's also just been he's like my mentor in the foreign policy stuff and he's just so great because he's like he's such a tool because he's got a photographic memory so like I can literally just call him at any point and you'll just be like is it's when I'm invaded Iraq in 1980 the in 1982 weren't they fighting here and then he'll just be like yeah they were fighting here and here in the niska has all their names and ever it's really incredible but so he was debating Wesley Clark on Pierce Morgan's show to talk about the new media world that we live in and how crazy it is now that Scott Horton gets to square off with the four star general and Wesley Clark who you know look I have my issues with him but he did give us that great mission about the seven countries in five years so I'll always kind of be grateful to him now he tries to walk that back but we all heard what you said but he goes at one point talking about I believe it was Gaza if I'm getting this correct. And he said this was while it was still you know in ten years. going on and he goes, but if we just leave now, then Hamas gets to say they won. And you're like, "Sir, general, that's your opinion on war, but that's a recipe to be in forever war always. We can't ever leave anywhere." So what happens is you get this thing where it's like, there's the sunk cost fallacy. We can't leave now because we have to win. And then Donald Trump is now, of course, he put his entire presidency on the line for this, which was really foolish. And so now he's just, he's got to get a win. Let me get a win. And then I can get out, you know? So let's do a big thing. But then you do a big thing and they respond with a big thing. And then you go, "Shoot." Now we got to respond to that. And this is the escalation trap, right? Like that. And this was what people like me and you have been talking about for years. And all the war hawks in the country really enjoyed mocking me and you for the last seven months, or whatever it's been from between the 12-day war and this latest war in Iran going, "Oh, you guys were acting like this was going to be a disaster and look, it wasn't a disaster." Okay, we're back in it now and it's a disaster. And precisely zero of those people are going, oh, I guess I was wrong about that. No, no, they'll be clamoring for you to be arrested and imprisoned. Of course, right. Because your existence is a mark of shame because you remember. Anyone who remembers has to be taken off the board. I'm just interested, not, I never think about, you know, those people, the Markov, I say prayer for Markov in every day because it's my religion I'm supposed to. But he's not, I mean, Markov is an idiot. He's not pulling any strings. He's a tool of larger forces. What I'm fascinated by are the assumptions that ordinary, non-Marclive, and Americans have about the United States, the nature of power, history that allowed us to make the greatest mistake of my lifetime, which is this war. And a lot of this has to do with the Second World War. Yeah, oh yeah. So we're reading the wrong lessons into that and I just want to say, for the hundredth time, I'm the opposite of prononcy. I'm against authoritarianism in all its forms. But why is it that we look at the Second World War and then make a bunch of false assumptions that get us into engagements like this that hurt us? Well, what are the myths? Well, I think the way, the way I look at it, right? And this is, you know, I've defended Darrell Cooper quite, publicly, quite often for what he said on your show, which really, it was, by the way, it's so revealing and totally proves his point, the response to that. Because there's just no reason why that should have been such a huge thing, you know, but like the thing is that, I mean, Darrell Cooper did Hitler kill a lot of Jews. Yeah, he did. He did like hours of podcasts on it. Yes, of course Hitler killed a lot of Jews. I mean, what? That's not even a- He just, he just put out episode two of his new series on World War II, which I have not, I heard the first one. I've not gotten a chance to listen to the second one yet. The first one's so good. They're all so good. Not really about that. I don't think any sane person I've never heard anybody in my life say Hitler didn't kill a ton of Jews or hit, or like love that you don't hate the Jews killed just in the Jews. That's bad. Everyone agrees with that. It's not really the Holocaust that they're mad about. That's not, well, look, I mean, the threat, right? So most people don't wake up in the morning and decide to feel horrible, exhausted, foggy, disconnected from themselves, but it does happen and it happens slowly. You're working hard, you're showing up and your energy disappears by midday, your focus is dull, your weight won't move, a lot of people are told that's just getting old. That's what it is, but that's not actually true. For many men and women, these are not personal affairs. They are signals tied to your metabolism, your hormones and nutrient in balances that go undetected for years. You don't even know you're deficient. And that's why we're happy to partner with Joian Blokes, a company that was built for people who were done guessing and ready to figure out what exactly is going on. And that starts with comprehensive lab work and a one-on-one consultation with a licensed clinician. An actual human being explains what's happening inside you and builds a personalized plan, which includes hormone optimization, peptide therapy, targeted supplements. So don't settle, go to joianblokes.com/tucker, use the code Tucker for 50% off your lab work and 20% off all supplements. That's joianblokes.com/tucker, use the code Tucker, 50% off labs, 20% off supplements. Join Blokes. Get your edge back. So World War II was objectively speaking the worst thing that's ever happened in the world. Yes. Right. It's the biggest bloodbath in human history. Exactly. And destroyed Europe and go. It's just so it's so horrible you think about that humanity reached such a height in the 19th century. The 19th century, there's two things that happened that could not have been predicted. You would have seemed insane if you had predicted it beforehand. Probably the two greatest achievements in human history are that well, there's the industrial revolution. And for the first time ever, there's economic growth. If you look at economic growth on a chart, it basically doesn't exist until the industrial revolution. There's a different portion of it. Yes. So for the first time ever, human beings escaped like the backbrushing, backbreaking poverty of nature. Or they escaped zero-sum economics. Yes. There were right zero-sum economics, but just where people got rich by looting. Now you can get rich by creating things that didn't exist. And we could raise the standard of living in a meaningful way in very basic ways. And also there was the abolition of slavery, which just would have seemed like that was the way of the world for all of human history. And I'm saying the abolition of slavery in the West, obviously, there are other parts of the world that still had it. And the industrial revolution was in the West also. But these amazing things happen. And then in the 20th century, we take that industrial capacity to go to total war with each other. And in the case of the first world war, just over nonsense, I mean, over a political assassination. It's not even coming out. Yeah, it's not like somehow this thing spins into this catastrophe. But so after World War II, that's even bloodier than World War I, which was supposed to be the war to end all wars. And it wasn't. It was the war to create the conditions for the worst war in human history. And of course, as you've talked about and gotten a lot of heat for, civilians were targeted on all sides. Now, of course, we didn't go genocidal in the way that Adolf Hitler went. But we targeted cities when we knew the military was out, targeting women and children, dropping nuclear bombs on cities. And also the kind of the military industrial complex, the national security apparatus, were truly created in the aftermath of World War II. Like there were intelligence, but the CIA is created. And the form of government that we actually live under was kind of erected during an after World War II. And so you've got the most profoundly awful thing that's ever happened. And this new government plus a new government in Israel a couple years later that are created. And so when you have something like that, you really got to tell yourself a damn good story about why that is justified. And that's not when you say this, sometimes people go, oh, sorry, you saying the Holocaust didn't really happen. It's like, no, they don't. It really happened. It really happened. The point is that yes, the point is that the Holocaust happened in a context of 60 million people dying. It's just so funny. It's all reduced to the, okay, just to be totally clear, not denying the Holocaust. Okay. It's not about that. The thing, the immediate post-war changes that you just listed, the deindustrialization of the west, the partition of India, the creation of the national security state, if I could say, an authoritarian national security state in the West, delivering half of Europe to the Soviets. The partition of Germany. These are all the genocide of German civilians, after genocide of German civilians after the war. Mass, mass ethnic cleansing, mass, mass rapes and murders, all types of horrible stuff. So none of it's not a defensive Hitler, whom I oppose to say all those are bad. It's just kind of interesting that this war, which is supposedly so great, gave birth to things that are subjectively the worst things. Yeah. And what is that? Well, look, I mean, it's a disaster of government, total power. And they're, but look, even like if you say like, if you're talking about the Revolutionary War, like let's just say like back in the 1980s or something like it's a school teacher's teaching kids about the Revolutionary War, they don't go like, well, you know, the king of England was taxing a little bit more than he should. And then the framers kind of had these wild conspiracy theories about what he was going to come do. None of that was really true. And anyway, they got into the, you know, they tell you, George Washington never told a lie. And when he chopped down the apple tree, he said to his paw, I can't lie to you because like human beings just need this narrative. Of course. And so what ended up happening was that the very, when you challenge World War II orthodoxies, you're challenging what Darrell calls the load bearing myths, you know, the load bearing pillars of the existence of the most powerful forces in the world. And you know, you know, look, it's very clear. Like again, the reaction to Darrell is the proof of the claim. Like what is this? If somebody were to say, you know, this is how you find out what the national religion really is. You know, I could sit here and trash Thomas Jefferson for - Rapin is slaves. - Doesn't matter what you say. - Doesn't matter. This isn't gonna generate any outrage at all. You know, in fact, it might generate some applause from different quarters. And so, but you talk about this and it's very, very different. And then as you've seen, as we've all seen, it's used to justify every subsequent war. I mean, like everybody is Hitler-- - To justify authoritarianism. - Yeah, that's right. Everybody is Adolf Hitler. I've lived through the-- Saddam Hussein was Adolf Hitler, Noriega was Adolf Hitler, Bishar Alassad is Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin's Adolf Hitler, you're Adolf Hitler, Nick Fuentes is Adolf Hitler. Every time they want to smear someone, that's the smear they go with Donald Trump got the same treatment. And anytime you oppose a war, well, you're Neville Chamberlain. If I think like, hey, we should just put in writing that we'll never bring Ukraine into NATO, 'cause man, this is causing all these problems. Okay, Neville Chamberlain, you would have just given Czechoslovakia. It's like, dude, that's not the only lesson in history. The only lesson in history is not always go with aggression, never go with de-escalation. But so, that's kind of what this has been turned into. And I do think-- - But I would just say big picture, if it was such a victory, why are all the winners falling apart less than a hundred years later? - Yeah, that's a fair point. - I don't, again, shut up your pro-h Hitler for the fifth time, not pro-h Hitler in any sense. - Well, what's the answer to that question? - Well, there's a brilliant philosopher named Rosie Perez, and in the film "White Men Can't Jump," she said, "Sometimes when you win, you really lose." - And it is such a simple, but very, very true statement. And there is something about, well, isn't it kind of interesting that the United States of America started as the experiment in restrained government, right? Like there had really never been a government that was created that was so restrained. And the whole idea of it was like, we're gonna take the power of a king, and then we're gonna scatter that amongst three different branches in the federal government. And the federal government really only oversees all these state governments that have their own autonomy. And we are these United States of America. And even as we became more centralized, obviously the articles of Confederation got overthrown and the Constitution gets put in. And then, you know, but even say like, if you look after this from the end of the Civil War, this was always the best stuff about like Milton Friedman books and stuff. But in this part, I really think those Chicago guys got it right, that if you look from the end of the Civil War, so like 19, excuse me, 1865 to around say 1910, okay? In this period of time, try to imagine that this was our government, okay? The US government, the federal government spent like, maybe like one and a half or two percent of the national income, a tiny amount of spread, there was no mass federal regulation or anything like that. There was no central bank, there was no income tax. There was try to imagine, like this was truly, in the closest to a real experiment in free market capitalism that humanity had ever seen. And the result of that was the biggest economic expansion in human history, the greatest raising of the lot and life of the average person. You know, like where the average person could actually have a pretty nice life and you could work at the factory and your wife didn't have to work and you owned a house and you sent your kids to college and you drove a couple cars, you played poker on the weekends with your buddy. Like, you had a good life. And if you look at the United States of America today, it is the most powerful government in the history of the world. Like somehow this thing that started as an experiment in the smallest government became the biggest government that the world's ever known. And so there's almost something where, what happens is these free markets create so much prosperity that there's so much more of a tax base. And now the political class contacts you more and more and more and you're still living a pretty good life even though they're getting fat off of you. And so similarly, sometimes something like after World War II, you see this with America and then you really see it after the collapse of the Soviet Union where it's like, because you win, you get so much power. But as Lord Atkin said, that power tends to corrupt. And so you get all this power, but then it totally corrupts your own soul. And I think that's kind of the story of America. - I think that's, and I think it's the story of our lives. I mean, the number of men I know who've gotten what they wanted what they worked for, the job, the exit, you know, the sale of whatever they built, all of a sudden they win and then they fall apart. I've seen that so much. I felt it in my own life, by the way. For sure, you know, easy success is not good for you at all. Struggle is good for you. And so I wonder if the United States was hollowed out by its own victory, this loss. And unfortunately, I think we can say already, it's hard to imagine getting out of this without being diminished. - Yeah, I mean, what is a victory here? I mean, you know, it's also a terrible situation where victory might, victory might be the worst case scenario. I mean, like, you know, like victory, like if the whole goal is to topple the regime, you're like, okay, but every other time we've toppled the regime in this neck of the woods, it's led to migrant crises and death and terrorism and-- - You can't topple the regime in the Persian Gulf because the world's energy supply needs to move through it. You have to extract it, refine it, make it into petrochemicals, do it every, fertilize it every one, in the Persian Gulf, then you have to get it out of the Persian Gulf. So that means you have to have a controlling authority. You have to have strong governments there or else some rebel group, Houthis with drones will shut the whole thing down. You have to have. You can't have chaos in Iran. - Yeah, they call it the Persian Gulf for a reason. - Exactly. You do you call it the Arabian Gulf, the other half is Persian. It doesn't mean chaos in the Persian Gulf means no energy or fertilizer from the Persian Gulf period. So you're gonna piracy there. So I just-- So the option to that is keeping an Iranian regime in place and that means that Iran is more powerful than it was when the war started. - Right. - This is all so obvious. Unless you nuke them, which is, I think, an option. And then you set off a chain reaction that is the worst thing imaginable. - Inflation makes credit card statements, particularly scary. You work 40, 50 hours a week just to buy groceries and gas things you used to be able to afford without thinking that much about it. Then the bank's charge you 20% interest. 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If it is a loss, maybe that is not all bad for the US. - Well, there is, I think sometimes things need to get really bad before they get better. Things need to get bad so that people wake up even more. There's no question people have woken up a lot, but maybe people just need to get angrier. And I don't know. I don't know what-- - I'm trying to see this in the fullness of history and it's planned, but I just, 'cause it feels like such a disaster it's affecting my sleep. I love America, I have kids, I don't want this to happen. I'm not in control, obviously. So, but I do think that like you're often surprised by the downstream results of things. I think people who return from Normandy would be shocked by the condition of the United States and Great Britain 80 years later. They are shocked. You never see them interviewed. Some 100 year old guys, like we died for this? - Yeah, no, it's, and it's totally, I mean, like, talk about just disgracing their sacrifice. - Oh, it's the greatest disgrace. - Yeah. - Our self-abacement is an insult to their sacrifice on our behalf. But I wonder if the opposite isn't also true that maybe in your defeat there are things that, I mean, I know this is true for me. Every time I've gotten sick or gotten fired, like I just, I understand the world better and I become more joyful and stronger. Do you feel that? - Yeah, no, I know for sure. I mean, many times in my life and yeah, you'll learn a lot more from your losses in my effect or-- - Yeah, your defeat are actually your victories in respect. And, but, you know, the problem is just this is, man, we're just playing with fire with this thing because it's so dangerous. You know, it's, what worries you most? - Well, I guess, I'd say number one, I, what we're doing are those people over there. I mean, I think it's just like horrible. And I don't say this as like, I'm not trying to like virtue signal that I care so much more than other people. But like when your government takes your money and just starts slaughtering people, and poor countries compare to us, you know? It's just so profound. - What you do to others will be done to you. - Yeah, there's a physics principle. You can't get away from that. So that's just true. - Well, imagine, imagine like, there was a guy who was like a convicted pedophile and he had molested a bunch of like a raki children or a bunch of Iranian children. And then you were like, "Well, I'm gonna have him babysit my kids." He only does it over there. He only, you know what I mean? You're like, "What?" No, dude, he's hurt children. You can't let him anywhere near your children. Okay, well, these same monsters and government are the ones who are ruling over me and my family and my country. - That's not the right. - And the idea that you just go kill like, you know, I said this on Rogan's show the other day about the school that we had, right, killed like 165 or 170 little girls and then people, you know, give me a shot. Those numbers haven't been verified. That's just the claim of the Iranian government because well, our government's not denying it. And in fact, they did an investigation and concluded it was almost certainly us. It was a Tomahawk missile. What's the question here? We know where this came from. The only question left is like, who gave it that coordinates or did it miss or was that intention whatever? But like kill a whole bunch of eight year old girls. I mean, Jesus man, is there anything more evil you could do than that? So just on a basic human level, you know, there's like this horrible-- - And who would do that? I think it was clearly accidental. But I also think having done a lot of accidental things, it's essential to apologize for it. And anyone who doesn't apologize for it's a dangerous person. - Well, also even-- - If you do that to them, you'll do it to my kids. - Yeah, and it also, it stretches the definition of accidental a little bit because even if very specifically, like we were trying to hit this building, but instead we hit this building. And this is a point I've been making largely through the Israel's destruction of Gaza, which was not that at all. They were just leveling in the place. But you go, look man, like you start dropping bombs on people, you start blowing things up. And you know innocent people are gonna end up dying in that. So in that sense, it is intentional. And maybe you didn't mean to hit that exact, you know, target or kill that many people. But like if I'm just saying, if you, you know, if you blew up a building, you know, that you suspected somebody else was in, but then it turned out that there were a bunch of little kids there. It's still a pretty profound crime. But then of course, on top of that, I really worry about getting trapped into a broader war, a wider war. There is not, and I don't, I'm not saying that I think this is gonna be like Iraq or Afghanistan. I think already this is very different than Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq and Afghanistan did not have the ability to do what Iran is doing right now for one. Number two, I just don't, I don't think it's gonna be that. I don't think, I think it would be more the Libya or Syria model than the Iraq or Afghanistan model, which did require a small amount of ground forces. So we used head chopping bin Ladenites in both of those cases and put the bin Ladenites in power in Syria. But just to be clear, our country would not survive another Iraq or Afghanistan. There's no United States of America coming out of that. We don't have a 20 year catastrophic ground invasion in us. Like it will, it will bank up the country, it will destroy the country culturally. So like, so that's a very scary thing. We don't have, you know, in, or the launch of the global war and terrorism, we were coming out of the 1990s. This was a different country in the 1990s, you know? And anyone who was alive then knows this. - Different people lived here. - Yes, yes, different people, different culture, different economic realities, different military realities. Now then the other thing that I really, really worry about with all of this is that we've never really had, we've never dealt with a full like Shiite Jihad war against the West. You know, our beef was always with the Sunni radicals. Those were the terrorists we had to worry about, the Al Qaeda and ISIS and stuff like that. And that was quite a big problem. You know, we had a, a lot of terrorist attacks in America and in Europe, particularly ISIS inspired attacks. Al Qaeda as well. And, you know, so I've kind of called out some of these, some of these people, I'll do it again here because they're like some of the biggest frauds in the country. These like pretend intellectuals like Sam Harris and Gad Sad and guys like this who have spent a career demonizing Muslims. Their entire career has been talking about what irrational, violent people Muslims are, how awful the religion is. And, you know, and look, there's been some points that I agree with them on, you know? If someone, you know, writes a cartoon about Muhammad, you don't have the right to kill them. Sorry. You want to be in the West. These are our rules here. We value free speech and I can make a cartoon about whatever the hell I want to make a cartoon about. Okay, but if you spent your whole career arguing how violent and irrational the Muslims are, what is killing an Ayatollah mean? You know, that's not just a political figure. You murder an Ayatollah and his entire family and we've already had a couple terrorists attacks over here that at least seem like there was the shooting in Austin, Texas that came like the day after we launched the war and the guy was wearing like an Allah Akbar, Tisham, assuming that might be related. And so, you know, then you have this real issue of like, there's unfortunately in the old like controlled American media and all the, you know, all the people like Mark Leven and all these guys when they talk to their audience, whatever audience they got left and they always love to talk about how Iran chants death to America, you know, which they do. And I'd like it if they stopped doing that. It's not the nicest chant. But none of them ever even try to say, to even approach the question of why? Why do they chant death to America? Why do they hate us so much? And this was always for freedom. Yes, right. So the older you get, you realize how fast everything can change. One day everything is fine. It's great. And the next day things are not great at all. That's just the nature of it. But if you're realistic about that, you have to think about your family, something happened to you, what would happen to them. The problem is getting life insurance is not only kind of depressing. It's a huge hassle. Medical exams, paperwork, waiting weeks for approval. A lot of people just don't want to deal with it so they don't deal with it. And it's not the right answer at all. You have an obligation to think through what would happen if you're not here. And so we're partnering with ethos. Ethos makes getting life insurance super quick and very easy. It's 100% online. You get a quote in seconds, you apply in minutes and same-day coverage. There's no medical exam. 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That's what Americans considered that time. The time of peace. Iraqis did not consider that a time of peace. Hundreds of thousands of them were getting killed due to the blockade. Clinton's bombing campaign. It wasn't peace in Serbia. It wasn't like, but to us, it was like, "Oh, not as hard as little wars." They didn't really mean anything. But it wasn't, now all you gotta do is ask that question. And I'm sure it's almost like implicit in the mark of in world that, "Well, why do they hate us?" Well, I don't know, because they're crazy, dark and dark people, and they hate us. There are Islamofacists. I don't know. That's what they do. They hate. But if you ask Iranians, and not the ones who are paid by Assad to promote wars, but they'll tell you very quickly why they hate us. And the whole beef rate goes back to 1953. We overthrew their government. We installed a dictator who they did not like very much, who was not very kind to his political opponents to put it mildly. And then the other big thing that they point out all the time is in 1980, Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq. Now, a lot of people from my generation remember this, because this is actually what the Neocons would, they would often like vaguely cite this when they were trying to push the war against Iraq. They're like, he used chemical weapons against civilians. Like, yeah, what they leave out is that they were backing him when he did that. They facilitated the sale of those chemical weapons to him. And they backed and gave the green light for Saddam Hussein to invade the country. And so, you know, Iranians remember that. Like they remember that. There was, I think, 500 or 600,000 Iranians died in that war. Like they remember this very well. By the way, another lesson from that war is they never surrendered. Even after taking losses like that, these Shiites are not playing around when it comes to matters like that. They fought and fought and fought. And so anyway, I say all that just to say that it's like, these things do inspire hatred. And they inspire hatred for generations. When generations-- When the emotion effect is real? Yeah, it turns out. In 2002, a letter emerged written by a sum of bin Laden, of course, was then still alive. That he had written right after 9/11 in Kandahar before he fled to Toribura. And it came out a year later in the walls. and I worked at CNN at the time and I read it on the air to answer that question, what is this about? Why did you do this? And the letter which briefly became famous before it was pulled off the internet said, you know, I'm mad that you have troops in Saudi where Mecca Medina are, and I'm mad about your sport for Israel, and that's why I did this. I wasn't trying to justify 9/11. It can't be justified, in my opinion. That's right. But I think it's important to know why things happen because you want them to happen again. Well, a group of rabbis got together and called me an anti-Semite, which I wasn't then and I'm not now, and tried to get me fired from my job. I'll never forget that. And CNN called me the way you're called me. You know, "Where are they all mad at you?" And I'm like, I wasn't attacking anybody. Of course, I just think it's more than Americans don't know. I think they've been prevented from knowing. That's right. That actions have reactions. Well, that's why the term blowback that was coined by the CIA and what they described it as was, it's not just like we do a thing and then there's a reaction to it. It's that we do a covert thing. And then there's a reaction to it. And then the American people have no idea what this is even in response to. It's just like, whoa, at a nowhere, these guys attacked us. And when that-- But we're going to need a police state to protect ourselves from the blowback of this war. That's a real concern. That's a problem. Yeah, that's a real concern. We're so vulnerable. I mean, this country's wide open. And all of our energy infrastructure are food, our water, all of it's unguarded. And the only way to protect ourselves from the inevitable blowback is shea terrorism that we're going to get. Of course, if you're killing the Raiatola, is going to be to turn this into a surveillance state, even more than it is. Yeah, and of course, also on top of that coming off of the Biden years where we don't even know who's here. We have no-- I mean, it's just the mix of these policies, like the mix of having forever wars and open borders has just got to be the most welfare state. And a drug war on top of that, too. And a drug war so that drugs are illegal. There's a black market. The gangs want to smuggle the drugs. And every single policy on top of it just makes this situation so much worse. But when that-- Osama bin Laden's letter to America went viral on TikTok before it was-- Many, many, many years later. Yeah, oh yeah, am I just bordered-- Did you just bring it to the country? Yes, to be clear, this is written in 2002. It was like a couple years ago when it went super viral on TikTok. And all the young leftists were like Sharonet. And they were going like, oh my god, look at this. Turns out now, of course, they're leftists. So they always think too collectively, right? And so I saw a bunch of people going, turns out he was right or he was the good guy. And you're like, no, no, no. That is not the takeaway from this. Like, you know, there was that one time the guy, Hassan Piker, who's like a lefty, like a streamer. And he had said that America deserved 9/11. And that was like what got him in a lot of trouble for it. And it's like, but no, stop speaking like a leftist. We're not collectively, we're individuals. And the individuals who had nothing to do with these policies did not have it coming. Having breakfast to windows in the world and get killed. Yeah, you don't do the whole, but now what Osama Ben Laden said, I don't think this was in the letter to America. I think it was in, it might have been, it was either that or in his declaration of war. He had two declarations of war against America also. But what he said is that civilians are fair game. Because you vote for, you know, you vote the Bill Clinton's in the George Bush's. Bush is in, who slaughter all of our children. And so you're fair game. Now that's the logic of Osama Ben Laden, the psychopathic, you know, terrorist. And that's, and the whole point of why we're against all this shit is because we reject that. We don't agree with that. That's not, and you know who else use that same logic? Every goddamn Zionist who said they elected Hamas in Gaza. By the way, they don't even have regular elections in Gaza. They had one election 20 years ago where Hamas won with pluralities. But that was enough for them to say to kill their kids in the conscience. And so, so no, the whole point is that no, it doesn't, you don't have the right to take vengeance on innocent people. That is the standard of civilization. I have said that, you know, pretty consistently for the past couple of years. And I thought that was like just a baseline understanding that everyone in America knew and believed. I thought that was the whole point of America. That's what civilization is. You can't punish the innocent. And that turns out to be incredibly anti-Semitic. I didn't know that. But I've never up until recently, all the Jews I knew were 100% on board with that. I mean, I can just like hear a rabbi going, you can't kill the innocent. Amen. Brother. Except in this one. But now it's like all of a sudden these, you know, I don't know. I don't think it's about any specific group. In fact, by definition, it's not. It's a human standard. Yeah. To which we should all be held and do our best to hold others. You can't kill the innocent. Yeah. And also, it's not, you know, it's not about one specific group because. Well, by definition, it's not about one specific group. So, also, it's not. It's also just not, you know, when this is the problem where when people try to make it about the Jews. And it's so weird, the dynamic, because you, I watch you, you literally bend over backward to say that it's not about the Jews as much as possible. Because it's the point not. To the point and as someone who's like a Jewish fan of yours, I find myself going like, you could stop making that. Like you've said it enough, you know what I mean? But you do every opportunity you got. It's not because I'm afraid of Jews at all. No, you're afraid of anybody. It's because I think it's the standard that we have to uphold. Well, also everyone is insisting that that's what you're really saying. And so you want to go, no, I'm not saying that. That's why I've been defending Muslims. It's not because I'm Muslim or taking money from Qatar too late now. We were at the economy. But it's because I think these are human rights bestowed by God. And they abide it every person because they're inherent in every person because every person is created in the image of God. That's the point I'm trying to make. And I completely agree with you. I also think it's just frankly inaccurate. I mean, it's not, look, I know I saw one poll today that said 60% of American Jews support the war in Iran, which hey, that's a lot higher than the general population. But that means 40% of them don't. And so like that's a huge, huge percentage of them. I think a third of Jews in New York voted for this mom Donnie guy. Now I'm annoyed with them for other reasons because he's a crazy socialist. But they're clearly not on board with the Israel lobby's plan here. And then of course as you've done a better job of exposing than anyone I've ever seen. There is a lot of like Ted Cruz's and Mike Cuckabee is out there who as you I think correctly pointed out are different animals, right? Like Ted Cruz is a cynical lying politician. Mike Cuckabee is like a true believer of sorts. I'm not sure which is worse. They're both pretty rough and both totally humiliated themselves when they when you interviewed them. But there's also like the point is that the Israel lobby encompasses a lot of non Jews. And then there's a lot of Jews. There's the Max Blumenthal's and Norman Finkelstein's and Glenn Greenwald's. So it's just to just say it's like this group. Now you're missing the point entirely. Well, I would say that the advocates for the war are primarily responsible for that. And speaking of blowback, speaking of blowback, I mean it's hardly my job to like defend Jewish Americans. But I want to defend all Americans. And I definitely want to defend the principle that we should be judged on our own terms, not by people who look like us or were related to. Like I think that's the most important thing. But I mean I do think you often are anti-Semitism is on the rise. I agree with that. Yeah. And I wish it wasn't true. But that is absolutely real. And I know that I'm blamed for it. Okay. But I think I think you're I think you're one of the I'm really against people. Well, people will mock me for saying this, but I genuinely think it's true. I think you are one of the leading fighters against anti-Semitism in the country. And I think I think I do what I can to be that as well. I think if you really want to see a decrease in Jew hatred, then I think maybe it would be good to have Jewish people saying, "Hey, I am totally against this. I am not for this." But also it is an I'm not defending collectivism of any stripe. But it is very predictable and it is just human nature. You know, if you have. That's why it's so scary. Yes. Because it is human nature. That's exactly right. If you if they're let's say you just have a neighborhood. Okay, there's like a neighborhood. All things being equal or whatever. And a bunch of black teenagers or black young men are going around and mugging and beating up people. Do you think anti-black racism is going to go up, go down or stay the same? Prime cost is racist. This is right. Is that for you? Shut up. Yeah, but now is it fair to the black guy who didn't mug or beat up anyone that there's race? No, it's not fair to him. It's also a predictable and frankly at times an understandable response from someone who was the victim of getting mugged and beat up. And so if you're a black person who is like in the public eye, it might be reasonable at that point to go, "Hey, guys, we gotta stop mugging people and beating them up. Otherwise, they're going to hate us." And the way I always looked at it, this always just came very natural to me. was so obvious. I'm Jewish. I love Jewish people. I love Jewish culture. It's who I am. It's a big part of me. And I think some of the best things about me I got from Jewish culture, a valuing intellectual curiosity and family and hard work and a lot of things that really define who I am are very much a part of Jewish culture. It's useful to go along with whatever happens today. For sure. Also just whining about things, complaining, fetching. This is all part of me. This is what I do for a living. It turned it into a pretty nice career. But that being said, I just look at it. I go, "Okay, so we're all the stories I've heard from my family in our history are how we were brutally oppressed here and killed here and kicked out of here and relocated here and then we came to America." Now I have grown up in the United States of America. This is where my kids live. It's where they are going to grow up. As you say all the time, that's the only thing that matters to me is that my kids have the best life I can give them. Literally the only thing that matters to me. Everything is a very distant second from that. And I go, "Okay, so we're 2% of the population in America. We are by all objective standards thriving. We're doing great. Because we're not in a pressed minority in America. We're doing better than the average American is doing substantially." I've never once -- I mean, I don't know. I've had people on Twitter say things to me or something like that. But there's never once been an obstacle put in my way because I was Jewish. I never couldn't go to this school or couldn't get this job or couldn't do anything like that. I've had a really great life here. In fact, probably the most anti-Semitism I've ever dealt with is from the pro-Israel people who call me like a capo every day because I don't support another reckless war. So capos with the Jewish and Jewish collaborators with the Nazis say. Yeah, right. So it was a really nasty thing to call somebody. But whatever, that's the game we're in. So my perspective is like, "Okay, so you're telling me the whole world treated us like crap. We've come here to America where we've been just very successful and treated very well." My default position is to love the country for that. Like, "Oh, well, then we should be really grateful to this country. That should be the attitude, not going around lecturing people about whether they've been to the museum about our suffering from decades ago." Like, "What is that?" It just seems like such -- and look, again, I'm not a lot of the critics of Israel are left-wingers. I'm not coming at this from a left-wing perspective. I'm a crotchety old right-winger. Like, I don't agree with that. I'm sitting here and saying, "If we, if any self-respecting conservative or self-respecting right-winger saw any other minority group complaining about their mistreatment in another continent, in another country, in another century, you'd go, "Hey, shut up. Get over it. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." That's like what I'm saying. And then, by the way, with Jews, like, "Oh, you already did. You pulled yourself up by your bootstraps." So like, what are we even talking about here? And I don't think -- I don't think, like, obsessing over past trauma is always the correct answer. And certainly not insisting that everybody else suffer over or obsess over your past trauma. So I just always -- it was always very natural to me that, like, I'm on team America. I'm rooting for this country to succeed. I'm the country that fought the Nazis, by the way, lost a lot of Americans fighting the Nazis. Why are you lecturing me about the Nazis? Yeah. My country fought them. And to almost anybody -- like, anybody at Fox News. Not again, maybe I talk about, like, Mark Levin and Fox News and these guys, like, too much. Like, they really are irrelevant. But I guess it's just that I'm stuck in the -- you know, I'm the age I am. And so, to me, it's still like, "Hey, this is Fox News." But any one of them would completely agree with me on this if we were talking about any other group of people. You know, if we were talking about any other group of people talking about victimhood or any of that -- you know, if they were -- if there was some black guy talking about how racist this country is because of slavery, they would have made your exact point. They'd go, "We fought a war to end slavery. Hundreds of thousands of us died." But, you know what I mean? Like, they would -- Right away. So back off. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, no. I couldn't agree more. And underneath all of this, and the reason that I really do worry that the country is going to become, like, openly tribal -- and that leads to violence every time -- is that a lot of the same people who are upset about the rise in anti-Semitism, which, again, I think is real. I mean, I can tell it's real. And I don't like it either. Are the ones who abetted all the anti-white hate for so long, which is still not being addressed. The Trump administration sued Harvard over its anti-Jewish discrimination, which is like -- What? It's deranged. What a slap in the face to white people now. Well, at some believe in people. And, of course, the anti-white hate is still totally embedded at every level of our government and in business and most famously in schools. So that's like an attempt to hurt people on the basis of their race, and no one has said anything about it. And my point is, these are either universal principles. They apply to every human being, in doubt with human rights by the creator, or they're just preferences. It's just your tribe against mine. And then I'm allowed to fight your tribe for the benefit of my tribe. Like, it just evolves into a Rwanda. So, like, I think we could defuse a lot of this if, like, the head of the ADL would be like, "I'm every bit as opposed to anti-white hate as I am to anti-Jewish hate." We could all just agree that it's all wrong, then we decelerate. But until then, how can I take you seriously? Yeah. And I think along with that is we just, we have to stop fighting wars on behalf of Israel and we have to have a subtype of separation. I mean, I'm not saying that, like, I'm not saying we should be enemies with Israel or that we should go to war with Israel or anything like that. But the, it just the relationship, the special relationship between the US and Israel is so freaking weird. And now in this new media environment, it's been exposed. I don't think you can put that toothpaste back in the tube. No, you can't. It is something that I think a lot of people were kind of happy to look the other way about for years. I was. Yeah. You came on my show. You came to Maine a couple of years ago to do something on Ukraine and Greenwald too. I love it. I've known a long time. In both of you, like, had a moment where you're like, yeah, Israel's proud. I'm like, I agree. But like, I don't want to, you know, there's, I just want to pretend this isn't happening. It's not worth it. I don't want to be denounced by a bot or whatever. I just don't want to have the fight. Well, you let me or Grinne go and greenwald with your door and that will not happen. I was, yes, I get it. No, I get it. I was part of that. Like, it's, it's just not worth it. Well, look, even the, in my opinion, the greatest living American hero, Ron Paul used to even he would kind of like try to say it in a gentle way. Like he would go, well, let's let them fight their own fights and we'll just kind of be over here being non interventionist because of course on one hand, it's like, there's a lot of things. First of all, in I don't know if people who are listening to this show can appreciate this, but you know this much better than I do. But there was a time, you know, Donald Trump will kind of say this out loud. He'll say that, you know, APEC used to totally control Congress. And now they don't control them anymore. Like he'll just say it, which is so wild. They give me hundreds of millions of dollars and I do whatever they want. I'm like, all right, dude, you're just saying that out loud. I thought that was like an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Not just something the president says. In the kinesis. Yeah. Oh my god. But the thing is, right? In the old order, before there were podcasts like this. And look, if you think about like I used to always point to the example, because I thought it was so interesting about where the technology where social media was is when Bill O'Reilly was the number one show at Fox News, the number one show in cable news. And at the 8 PM hour, you were also the number one show at Fox News, the number one show in cable news at the 8 PM hour. When they fired Bill O'Reilly, Bill O'Reilly went from being like one of the biggest voices in the national conversation to being like relegated over to the sidelines, who's like, you know, he still has a show somewhere, but he's not like really moving a needle at all. You got bigger than you were there. And part of that was who you were, who your audience was. It was a big part, a big part of it. That you had another platform to go to. I would be fly fishing full time and warrant for the technology. So maybe in that, maybe the technology ruins your life. You could have just gone ahead of happy life. It's that they pulled you back in. But I don't know that people appreciate how much in the old order, in the old days when Bill getting fired took you out of the conversation with Bill O'Reilly days or whatever before that. Getting the Israel lobby on your back would ruin you. It would absolutely ruin you. One thing you couldn't do. And it didn't matter who you were. Absolutely sleep with the makeup artist. Yep. You could not fight with the ADL. That's right. I mean, that was just it. That was just it. I mean, and there's so much, you know, I mean, whether it's the ADL of Southern poverty law center or APEC or, you know, whatever idea the American Enterprise Institute or National Review or the, I mean, the Israel lobbyist like this huge, powerful thing. And back then, I mean, it didn't matter if you were Pat Buchanan. You're like, dude, I'm Pat Buchanan. I've been in four white houses. I won the New Anter primary. I've been in four different presidential three or four different presidential administrations. A New York Times bestseller, a fixture in America. I mean, he owes to crossfire - Oh yeah. - That's fire first time. You know, it doesn't matter. They could take you out. They could take Ron Paul, they could take all that. And so there was for many years, almost I feel like a leftover residue of like, you just don't want this fight because man is this going to get ugly and you're going to be smeared as every vicious name in the book. But at a certain point it was like, oh, well, you know, you kind of can talk about these things now. And in fact, the people who do talk about them are being rewarded by their viewers because it's refreshing that someone's talking about the thing you weren't allowed to talk about. But now that that has been exposed and the toothpaste can't be put back in the tube, it's just too much. You cannot have it. I know you talk about this a lot. You look at examples like, and these examples are countless. You look at Ted Cruz saying to your face, as he said at other places, that the reason he ran for Senate was to be Israel's number one defender. You got Tammy Bruce saying America's the second best country to Israel, kind of tongue and cheek, still a really weird thing for an official, from the administration to say. You got Donald Trump saying that Sheldon and now Mariam Adelson give him hundreds of millions of dollars and all they want, they come in every day asking for stuff on behalf of a foreign country and he gives it to him. Which they love more than America. Well, Sheldon was on tape. Have you seen this? Yes. The greatest regret in life is that he wore the US military uniform rather than the IDF uniform. Now, I'm sorry, that is intolerable from any just same perspective. This is nothing to do with hating Jews or even hating any other country. If people were talking like this about Norway, we'd be like, "Yo, what are you doing? This isn't Norway. This is America." I agree. And like, there's moved to Norway. Yeah, like fine. Go ahead. And then to have people like Mike Huckabee saying that God promised Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to Netanyahu, like, I'm sorry, but there's just no, this is simply not how public policy maker, I guess it's not a policy maker, but a politician, an ambassador to this country, you can't be talking this way. This is insane. We don't let anybody just dictate their policy off. God told me to do this and then a very weird God told me something on behalf of a foreign country. So I think we're at a point where if, and this is kind of my rejoinder to a lot of those, you know, people who call me a new anti-Semite. I guess I'm a self-hating Jew and you're an anti-Semite because listen, man, there is a rise of Jew hatred. And if you really do care about that, the only way to combat that is that we got to end this, you know, like the same way we needed a separation of church and state so we don't fight religious wars anymore. We need a separation of the Israel lobby and the United States of America. I think it's tough. I think it's tough. As a non-Israel hater, I don't hate anyone, I'm not going to allow myself to hate anyone period. But just being as honest as I can be, you know, we're very meshed, like more than people understand. The representatives, official and non-official of the Israeli government throughout the US government at every single level, state and federal, okay? There's that in our institutions. That would include dependent on CIA or biggest, most important. And then there's the question of like, what does that mean for Israel? Like do they just allow the United States to be like, you know, you're just like whatever France now or Spain, we're going to treat you like, you know, an ally, but not a sibling. I think that we get punished for that. People are afraid of Israel. That's the difference between Israel and Spain. Everyone loves Spain. It's great. The Spanish. We can have bases there, but missiles there. It's all great. But no one thinks if you pull back aid from Spain, they're going to hurt you. But everyone is afraid of being physically hurt by Israel. Maybe they're overstating. Maybe they're all anti-Semitic and paranoid. I don't know. I can just tell you, from living in DC, there is a fear of them. Real fear. Yeah. And anyone who says this is not just freaking lying. No, it's like saying there's a fear of the intelligence agencies. Like, that's the fact. It's a fact. I think we're pretty out in the open about that now. Yeah. Well, that's right. That's right. And it's, you know, so if that's the case that it's almost like our leaders are just too afraid to do something about this. Well, of course they're afraid. And I don't know the genesis of that fear. Like maybe, again, maybe they're all just reading the protocols, the elders' sign, and maybe they're all anti-Semites and they're overstating the influence of nature or whatever. I mean, that's totally. People do make crazy calculations. Maybe there really is a physical threat. But it's not arguable that U.S. policymakers at every level are afraid. This is not all voluntary at all. Yeah. Well, there's something about like the. You know, I like Megan Kelly. I think she was the one who said this. I don't know if she coined the term, but she was the first one I heard, say it. But she. I think it was with you, where she said the Israel firsters. And that was how she described it. I was like, "Oh, that's a good. That's a really good term." For them, because the thing is that John Meersheimer and Stephen Walt, they call it the Israel lobby. But then when you say that, a lot of people just think you're talking about APEC. But they're not just talking about APEC. They're talking about this whole different. All these different organizations and individuals. That is foundation. Yeah, yeah. Washington Post. Washington Institute for Near East Policy and all of these organizations and then all these individuals who clearly are here to. That is their number one issue. And the thing I almost resent most about them is like, it's like just admit that. Just admit that this is what you care about more than anything else. Barry Weiss. Clearly you do, right? Like this is so. I agree. Because then in effect, you are like a foreign spy. You're kind of like an agent for a different government. And the point is that, you know, because people will try to argue the technicalities of this. But the point is that all of the whole global war on terrorism was all a bunch of Israel firsters who pushed the administration into that at every level. You know, this is by the way, you'll like this just because some people don't get this. But you'll. So David Worms are who worked for Dick Jani and was the author of the Clean Break memo. So I talk about this all the time, a lot of different podcasts on yours on Rogan's. I brought up the Clean Break and how. That's what this whole real strategy is. It's what the Clean Break morphed into. It was essentially. And you could look at this. David Worms are in Richard Pearl and Douglas Fife wrote the Clean Break memo to Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. His first became Prime Minister for his first term. And he had written a book, which is worth reading, called Fighting Terrorism. Very easy read, by the way. It's a little book that Benjamin Netanyahu had written the year before. And essentially, the break was from Oslo. It was from the peace process. The break was from Yitzhak Rabin, who had now been murdered by a Benjamin Netanyahu fan. After Benjamin Netanyahu really pushed. I mean, that's a whole other cataworms, by the way. But I know, like, Yitzhak Rabin's wife, I believe, still blames Benjamin Netanyahu. For many of his men, he is real due. And now there's a lobbying campaign to get the murderer out of prison. Who killed him? Well, they. So, I mean, they were. He was given anti-Rabin marches and they were holding coffins before he died. Like, they were like implying like someone should kill this guy. Because he had said, not that he was really ever going to do this, but he had said, "We got to find a two-state solution. We got to give the Palestinians their own state and we'll start working toward that." Now, the Clean Break was the neoconservatives' brilliant idea. The Israel firsters here that, well, no, no, no, see, you got this all wrong. You think you need to make peace with the Palestinians because that's the only way that you'll have. You'll normalize relations with the broader Arab world. But no, no, no, no. We just got to go top all over the broader Arab world and overthrow all those governments. And then you never have to make peace with the Palestinians, okay? So it's essentially a blueprint for greater Israel. And this was their whole strategy. Pre-Nion, let that. And for regional hegemony. Now. It's not just about control with the West Bank. It's about controlling the Middle East. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And then, because we live in this crazy world we live in now, David Worms are, did a podcast where he responded to me. Now, from my perspective, I'm little old me, some stand-up comedian who just talks about all this stuff. And this is David Worms. This is the guy who's the author of the Clean Break memo. But to the new internet world, he has like 300 followers on Twitter. Nobody saw this. Nobody knows about it. But so David Worms and he's there to debunk my interpretation of the Clean Break memo. This is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. And so the host brings them on to be like, oh, the Steve Smith guy's out here saying that all these wars were about Israel and blah, blah, blah. And this is ridiculous, right? So why don't you just tell that this is all not true? And his response was he just goes into like a monologue about how Israel is the cradle of civilization and that all of Western civilization is downstream from Israel and that we always must protect. So anyway, in the attempt to prove me wrong, he just totally exposes that like, yeah, this is the mentality that all of these guys have. So if Mike Huckabee supports a war for Israel in his mind, that's not selling out your country for another country. This is God's plan. So they're all so it's like the fish doesn't know he's in water. Like they don't even realize they're the Israel lobby. They go, what are you talking about? So this is what Jeff Sacks said to me. Jeff Sacks who's often attacked. Jeff Sacks is really smart and I think very smart. Very smart. And we don't agree on everything, but like he's an honest guy. Like he just says, so I say to him, you've been watching this all these years. What do you think this is about? Why does this tiny country have so much control over our giant continent-sized country? And he said, well, you know, a lot of contributions, there are threats or questions with the Kennedy assassination, like they're willing to use force and assassinate. and what they want. He goes, "But I don't think that explains it. I don't think either one of those bribery or threats, "a character stick, I don't think that actually "is the whole picture. "There's a spell of some kind. "There's like a supernatural quality to this. "Good people, like I don't think Mike Huckabee "is like in favor of genocide. "I just don't think that. "Pretty nice guy, very nice guy actually. "But he believes with this fervor "that suggests that he's not thinking clearly. "Like there's another quality here. "And do you just don't talk about? "Yeah, no, 100%. "And I think Jeff's ex is a pretty secular guy, by the way. "I don't know, but Jeff's not a religious extremist. "That I can say that. "I can say that. "Right, okay. "But everyone recognizes, "I'm like, I told you last, "there's no such thing as atheist. "They think there are atheists, but no one really is." "No, you weren't atheist. "No, but I wasn't, but I thought I was. "But you never really are. "It's not like you can't-- "You were." "Well, because I would just say, "I don't really believe in any of that. "I don't think that that's real." But of course, as I told you the story last time I was here, then when my daughter is born and I'm worried about her life, I immediately find-- and it's like, I always knew. That was always in there on some level. So I remember one time here in this debate, and I wish I could remember who it was, but it was like a theast, atheist debate. And it might have been Christopher Hitchens or something. Maybe not. But it was one of those, does God exist, debates. And so the guy arguing that God does exist and said something about how there are spiritual forces in the world and blah, blah, blah, blah. Or there are evil spirits, he said. There are evil spirits. And then the atheist guy goes, he goes, look, we all know that there is depression and there's this and there's this. We all know that there's dark forces in the world, but you don't need a supernatural explanation. I'm like, did you just say dark forces? (laughing) Dark forces? I mean, what are you saying the same thing? In different language, man. Like it's just like, there's actually no gap here between it anyway. But so, do I, I do think there's a spiritual component to all of this for sure. I feel that way because I don't want to be the kind of person who imputes the worst motives to my opponents, okay? But I am because most people are like, why is this person doing something that's insane? Doesn't make sense, it's irrational, getting paid. Like that's always the first explanation that people come to and I have myself thought that. But then if you know someone really well, I don't, I'm not intimate with Huckabee, but I've known him for so many, 30 years more than. It's like, I don't think Huckabee, he's into money, I get it, but I don't think he's like, totally motivated by greed, I just don't believe that. - No, I think there's, well look, I think he's evil, but he's defending evil, so what is that? - I think a few things can be true at the same time, right? So it could, it can be that you're under a spell, that there's a spiritual aspect to it. And then it can also be that there's soft incentives for you to continue being under that spell, right? And so the history of Jewish influence, Israeli influence, I mean, look, obviously, much of this goes back to the fact that Jews dominated finance for many years. And part of this was because Christians weren't allowed to lend money to read it, right? But there is, now there is a form obviously of like, abusive userry, right? There are loan sharks out there. Some of them are even credit card companies. They charge you like 30% interest or 29.9, whatever they're allowed to do on, which is like a crazy interest rate. And they kind of prey on desperate people. Now they are not necessarily like even the loan shark or the credit card companies. They're just kind of benefiting off your desperation 'cause it's not like if the credit card company wasn't there, it's not like, oh, now everything's okay. The reason they're putting necessities on the credit card to begin with is because other conditions have led them to this desperate place. Totally. But the problem, so then you had for much of Christendom, it's completely bound to lend money at any interest, which is that, I do not think is abusive to have any interest rate on your money because that's actually a very necessary part of an economy. There are people who have a very good idea but don't have any capital. And then there's people sitting with capital and they go, well, look, I can't just give this to you because if you lose it, then I just lose my money. And if you pay me back, all I've gotten is that I get my money later rather than having - I'll say if you have my money, then I can't use it. - Right, right, exactly. I want to build it. So there's a cost to me to lending you my money. - However, if I go, hey, I'll lend this to you but you pay me back a little bit of interest. This actually is really facilitates economic growth because, you know, or just good businesses being created because like, oh yeah, the guy with a good idea but with no capital now can do, so anyway, so Jewish bankers ended up kind of filling this void and then you had very powerful Jewish groups who were very, very wealthy in banking and yada yada, a lot of things later banking got very, very corrupt. But again, it's important to keep in mind, this wasn't most Jews, most Jews were living in poverty. This was, but like, the Balfour Declaration is written to the Rothschilds, right? Like, it's not the creation of Israel was at least part, they had international finance backing them. And so that's also true in America, that much of the largest banking institutions had some Jewish influence. It's also the case that after the creation of the state of Israel, you have the Masad, right? Or you have Israeli intelligence. And now Jews are smart, and I like that much smarter than everybody else, but they're a pretty smart group. And then the Masad had an advantage over every other intelligence organization that would really be a dream for any intelligence organization. But the Masad had a diaspora of people all spread out in the world that were Jewish, right? And also there was this wide cultural belief amongst Jews that the Holocaust is what gave birth to the state of Israel and that the state of Israel is the guarantor of another Holocaust not happening. And so you could very, like, imagine the CIA had that. Imagine you just had little Americans in every single country, little groups of Americans, maybe not every single country, but you had pockets of them in lots of different places, and they really passionately believed that the existence of the United States of America was the most important thing in the world. What an advantage for them. Go around, hey, find any American somewhere. You want to serve your country? You want to do that? And so I think between finance, between the Masad, and then when the Neo-Conservatives, who really were not old money when they first came into it, right, like if you know the first generation of Neo-Conservatives, they were having their debates at City College, not at Harvard. Literally, yes. Yes, these were middle class guys. A working class, right? They weren't the Rockefeller guys or the Morgan guys. They weren't council-unfarm relations, but what they did was they went and they made their relationships with the military industrial complex themselves. And a lot of this was, you know, the problem is that you create this empire, you create this military industrial complex, this big government scheme, and then it's right for someone to take it over. And if you go look at like every last one of those Bill Crystal think tanks, Bill Crystal needs to have 16 think tanks. He doesn't have a thought in his head, but he's got all of the literally-- - They need a right in New York, I'm just calling it. - Like his dad was smart for all his problems. - Bill Crystal is not smart. - Bill Crystal is never smart. He was revered as the smart guy. - Never, never saw anything smart. - Dang Quill's brain. - Yeah, literally. But every last one of those think tanks is funded by Lockheed Martin or Ray Theon or whatever. So it's like the thing is that a lot of times in government, there's, it's a very different thing to be like swim with the current than to swim against the current. You know, there's no such thing as the Fabian Libertarian. You know, you have, you might have some hardcore communists and then you have like an AOC who's like, I want incrementally more government. You can't get incrementally less government because there's no, that's asking the government to have less power. Now, if you're the Neo Conservatives and you come around with like, hey, I've got a plan to fight forever wars. You know, I've got a plan to go topple all of these different countries. You're gonna get some money from weapons companies. And so anyway, just saying, how's this different spiritual-- - This is different fascism. - I thought that's what fascism, I mean, leaving aside the anti-Semitic component of the Nazis, which was a big component, but the idea of fascism that the state merges with the industrial powers. - Yeah, this is what it is. And also just swap out the Jew hatred and make it Muslim hatred or make it German hatred or Russian hatred or whatever it is. You know, they always pick another thing to do. - They can't take it to some ethnic hatred. So yeah, it's not, but that's exactly right. Fascism won. Man, it's so ironic, sometimes when you really lose, they could say on paper, and I'm sure there's some historian, professor, who would say, no, like capitalism and communism, one, the second world war and fascism was defeated, except what arose out of it was the fascist model for everybody, essentially, right? Which is, and again, fascism is kind of ill-defined, but-- - Kind of ill-defined. - Yeah, well, but broadly speaking, I mean, what are we talking about? The FDR and the entire progressive movement, the original progressive movement, this is what they were advocating for, right? It's like we got to get away from laissez-faire free markets. We're not going total communist, but we need a strong, powerful state, powerful enough to regulate the economy and the country. And then also fight wars abroad. I mean-- - Without majority support. - Yeah, I just don't really see what, and we can cling to this idea of democracy, which is always really an illusion. It's never-- really true. It doesn't really, in fact, there was a study done, I want to say this was at Princeton from around, but correctly, this was like 15, 20 years ago, but they did a study where they said they just concluded that we're in oligarchy, not a democracy, and they literally just went through it empirically and were like, the American people's feeling has no impact on hiring lights. You could say we have elections, and if you really don't like George W. Bush, you can vote for Barack Obama instead of John McCain, but what'd you vote for him for? Because he said he'd close Guantanamo Bay and then the wars. Guantanamo Bay is still open today, and we're on the seventh war of Wesley Clark, seven wars in five countries. None of that stopped. What did we get during Obama? We got a massive escalation in Afghanistan. We got wars in Libya, in Syria, in Yemen, drone bombing campaigns in Pakistan, continued the war in Iraq, ended the war in Iraq, then reinvaded Iraq when his pet ISIS left over from the war in Syria. So I think you're describing the upside of all of this. Again, I haven't slept eight hours in a month. I'm so distressed. I'm in no sense for this. I read against it, obviously. But it's happening, and this is the end of the empire as we knew it. Hopefully it'll shrink back into something manageable that serves our interests. But who knows what will happen, but we're definitely not going back to where we were a month ago. We know that. So what are the upsides? Well, one upside is you might wind up at some point with presidents who want to run the United States. No president wants to run the United States because why would you want to run the US when you can run the world? By the way, you don't know the people you manage when you run the world. They don't come to your office and complain about your treatment of them. It's like there's no cost. It's all upside. You're just you're the king of the world. I don't think future presidents will have that option. And so maybe we'll get people are like, you know, LaGuardia airport smells. The Miami airport is like an atrocity. Maybe we should fix that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that would cause like a reorientation back to what matters, which is our country. Yeah, quite possibly. And that's the yeah, that's really the best case scenario. And you know, like I try to, well, I look at you're right models like, you know, when the Soviet Union collapsed, right, there's for I remember there was a so Murray Rothbard talks about this in a speech once Murray Rothbard for people who don't know is in my opinion, like the most brilliant political theorist of the 20th century is a genius. And he was a, you know, of course, he ended up supporting Pat Buchan in in 1912. He was an economist and historian and a philosopher. And so he was talking about, I guess this was like the speech he gave shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And he was talking about how he had seen like a video of a Chinese family under Chinese communism at the time. I guess maybe this was back. He was talking about from like before Mao Zai Tong died. And he said that the, you know, the interviewer asked him questions. They were just talking about how much they loved the regime and how he said, would you rather your kids had a, it was something like would you rather your kids had a prosperous life or were loyal servants of the regime and had a very difficult life. And he says, loyal servants of the regime and a very difficult life, no problem. And so Murray Rothbard said he watched this and he was like, my God, I mean, this is just so horrible. Like they've actually done it. They've created the communist man and destroyed the human soul. And then he's talking to his buddy who's another genius who went to China a lot and was like a China expert. And he goes, no, that's what they say when the cameras are there. That's all that is. That doesn't believe that. They just know this is on tape. You can't say anything else. And so that's what you say. And then they go about their day, not really caring what the regime says. And so like when the Soviet Union collapsed from all that like I've read about it, like that was essentially the state of the Soviet Union was like no one believed the government anymore. They just all knew they were liars. That's right. They all knew this was bullshit. And they were really actually, we're in the brazina Vera here. That right. And so now, of course, the war hawks and the neo-conservatives, they always viewed us lowering the Soviets into Afghanistan and getting them bogged down there, fighting the Mujahaddin and Afghanistan, including the foreign Arab Mujahaddin and Osama bin Laden who we were supporting. But they always viewed this as a great success because it brought down the Soviet Union. And I'm, I don't know enough about what factor led to watch. I mean, communism is not an effective economic system. But I'm sure the war did hurt them a lot. I know how costly wars can be and how much they can degrade our country. I know wars in Afghanistan can degrade your country. So I'm sure that was part of that. But my point is that it wasn't like America went in and toppled the USSR, right? Like they collapsed on their own, partly as a result of fighting foreign wars and partly as a result of, you know, just government lying and terrible economic policies. But at a certain point, like the soldiers just weren't willing to fire. You know, like there were attempted countercoose. Yes. There were attempted coups in the past where they did fire. And they were like, no, you're not leaving the Soviet Union. But by this point in 89 or whatever it was as the people started rising up, they were like, we're just not, we're not doing this anymore. They themselves don't believe it anymore. The government. And so I guess it's a long way to get to what I'm saying. But like at a certain point, we might just, we might hit a point where like the people just aren't believing this anymore. The law enforcement, whether military or police just aren't going to crack down on the American people in that way. And that would maybe lead to a rise of a real president who actually ran the country. And I don't know. I think if I'm not mistaken, I believe in when there was like German reunification, they didn't, from what I understand, I don't think they didn't really punish like the people in the communist government. They kept them on their pensions. They went kind of, and I feel like we almost need something like that. I know Curtis Jarbins talked about this a bit. But something where it's like, look, man, I think there are some people at the absolute top who need to be criminally prosecuted. But like, we got to find a transition from here to there. Like if we're, if we're buy enough bureaucrats, that would be cheaper than continuing this system. Like there's almost something where if a president could come up and say, like, hey, all you guys working in the intelligence agencies who were working to undermine presidents, you all have amnesty. But you got to pack up and go home right now. Like that's it. In a weird way, we need, as you said, we need an actual president who's actually running the country. And who can restore peace here? I mean, I think older Americans believe their country is more united and cohesive than it really is. You've got an entire generation of people who weren't born here, whose parents weren't born here, who came here on the promise that can't be fulfilled, which is that, you know, of a better life economically. And I think it's going to be tough to make good on that promise, honestly. And so what do you do with that? What do you do with dashed expectations at scale? Millions of people who kind of thought they were getting something and didn't get it. A country where half of all households get a government check, half of all households. And the average age of the first time homeowner is 40. Yeah. Exactly. So you've got a lot of issues here. And all of our attention is there. In the Persian Gulf or China or Venezuela or wherever. But once you readjust and start thinking about how does this country deal with dashed expectations and remain coherent? How does it prevent the rise of like a truly dangerous demagogue? Yeah. Yeah. Well, also it's not like the two. It's not just that we're focused over there. And so we're not taking care of what's going on here. It's the focus over there is destroying over here. 100% as it always does. Okay. So the angriest I've ever been at you was when you said that you said Lindsey Graham's views are war everywhere and Austrian economics at home. And I was like, no, no, no, you're right. You're right. No, but look, I mean, because and it's not just, I don't care about just like the term, but it's the idea is that essentially what's going on. Monopoly capital is yes. Yes. But the opposite of Austrian economics, big government, central banking, record, you know, record high government spending every single year. And so what happens essentially is, and this is what also I'm so furious at this administration over over this stuff. And, you know, I don't know it's you're in more of a, you're in a tougher position than I am where you were the guy in Trump's ear trying to convince him not to do this or one of the guys who got to meet with him and convince him not to do this. I think the only one. Yeah. So well, the last one is no longer with us. So, you know, there's that. And yeah, yeah. So, um, but you know, so the thing is like me, I like, I'm no good at being a political strategist. Like I said, I'm just good at being a part of a trash of rage that was so intense. I lost, yeah, I lost my vision. Yeah. No, I understand. It all, well, it's worth it. There's some things worth seeing that angry over. But so, you know, I kind of go, I don't know political strategy stuff, but I go, I think you should just like, you know, try your best to stay be enabled to at least he has one person who's telling them to do this. But the thing is that I'm just not capable of doing that. And I'm not close to the administration. So I'm just like red behind the eyes, furious. But one of the big things I'm furious about is that they're, they're handing this country right back over to the Democrats who really are every bit the threat that we were making them out to be over the last decade. And they're race, and they're going to come in more authoritarian and more angry because they are furious that we disobeyed them and put Donald Trump back in the White House. There's all to and like all their planning. Look, we saw what they did through COVID. We saw what they did with tech censorship. And I don't want to find out what a central bank digital currency looks like and what carbon, you know, social credit scores look like. is that what look at you watch the Democrats as they're winning now, right? Like you could look at the races when mom, mom Donnie won in New York, when the new governor won in New Jersey, the new governor in Virginia, there had been a couple races in Texas where they were like outperforming what they should be performing in Texas. Every last one of them is running on what they now call unaffordability. It's like they just made up a new term because they and literally none of them, I don't, I really don't think if I had one of them sitting where you're sitting right here and I was grilling them and I could go, what is unaffordability? I don't think one of them has an answer. I don't even think they know the term currency debasement. I don't even think they know exactly what it is. No respect for human rights at all. Oh no. So here in Virginia, which was conservative or normal 20 minutes ago, they bring in some guy literally born in India from another country to lead the effort to confiscate people's guns and no more self-defense in the state that just happened. I mean, it was like not long ago, I mean, a year ago they had a Republican governor so it's an evenly not much of one, but it's still an evenly divided state. The second they take power, you can't defend yourself. Right. Well, but look, just to humiliate you, bring some guy from another country to lecture you about your country, your family was born. You don't have the right to have a gun. Yep. No, that's such an outrage. Oh. I mean, it's just like unbelievable. But look, but the thing is that it's going to happen. Running on affordability is winning for them obviously because that is the issue right now. They don't understand that unaffordability means price inflation. It means you've debased your currency, right? And so this is so the thing is now we're handing them this thing to run on. Well, Donald Trump is talking about, you know, working with the Ayatola about the Strait of Hormusa, whatever, your local Democrat is going, hey, why are your grocery prices so high? But by the way, all the price inflation from the Joe Biden, you know the way this stuff works, it's cumulative. So Donald Trump, we live in an inflationary economy because of the central bank. It doesn't matter what they will. The inflation means it inflates. Yes. The money supply. Right. Because they will, no matter what, print enough money so that we don't fall into a deflationary economy. That's, they're going to do that. And they had, they're just, they're not even printing the money. They're just typing into a computer these days. So they can get ahead of it. And so Donald Trump might brag that the CPI is only at 2% and not at 9% where Joe Biden was. But for every regular American, we lived through all of those price increases. And now it's just 2% more expensive than it was under Joe Biden. So you haven't been helped any. The prices aren't going down. They're just going up at a slower rate. It's like, I think it was Michael Malis who had the phrase where he goes, when they go, they go, we cut inflation in half and they go, it's literally on the level of, if you knew somebody who gained 100 pounds in a year and then the next year they gained 50 pounds and they go, I'm getting thinner. And you're like, no, you are not. You are getting fatter, sir. Like the goal is not to slow down how much weight you put on. But it really does just come down to this, right? Is that we have a government that we cannot afford. We cannot even come close to affording the size of government we have because it's the biggest government in human history. It's the biggest organization in human history as you often point out. And that organization is parasitical in nature. It gets its money from taking that money, from expropriating that money from the American people. But you can't tax them enough and you can't borrow enough. And so we have to print the money. And so we have to print the money because we can't afford the size of government. And so then that makes the price of everything go up and up and up. And so essentially the point I'm getting at and this is why I just, I just point out that to say it's Austrian economics gets because the what guys like Mimdani can come in and do now is say, hey, look, everything's so unaffordable. And you know what the answer to that is a government program or government, more government, more government, more free buses and government supermarkets. And on the surface that kind of probably sounds reasonable to some people. But the thing is that we're here because government is too big. That's what's got us to this place. And so like, I think it's important to just like point that out to people that it's like, no, this is the thing is that we cannot afford. Here's the real hard honest truth that Americans don't want to hear or at least maybe the first part they want to hear. People are okay with me saying this. We can't afford the world empire. We can't afford it. We don't have the money for it. We're pretending we have it. We're just devaluing our currency. And therefore, by the way, destroying young people's lives. Now there's days I know a bunch of young people like in my family and friends who are literally like good people go to work every day, make 70K a year. And they're like, how am I going to settle down and start a family? No, dude. And like the average house around me is going for 800 grand. It makes 70 grand a year. That math simply does not work. And this is not, I'm not saying the bum on welfare. I'm saying like the young man who's getting up and going to work every day. And we can't, so we cannot afford this empire. The other thing is, which no one, including Republicans, ever wants to say, we also can't afford the entitlement programs. And they're insane. They're the most indefensible thing in the world. I mean, leaving aside Medicaid for a second, but Social Security and Medicare are from a different time from a different country that are totally indefensible. They were indefensible then, but they're really indefensible now. Now. Yeah, you're telling me you have a wealth transfer program from a poorer group to a richer group. I'm sorry, the seniors aren't the ones who need the help right now. It's the young people. And I think that I would love if some politician, I think Ron Paul is the only one I've ever seen. I'm sure Massey would agree with me if I said this to him. But I wish somebody would just run on that. I'm like, yeah, they used to say that's the third rail of politics. Like why? Because boomers just need to get everything. Everything has to be rigged in favor of them. I mean, I'm sorry, like the thing is you kind of have these abstract political debates sometimes, which I'm a nerd for this stuff. I really like them. But so you'd have like a, you know, you'd have like a Keynesian, DeBata Chicago school guy, or you'd have a socialist debata, a free market guy. And like the free market guy would argue that, you know, there's a better allocation of resources in a free market. And then the socialist would argue that some people fall behind. And so you need redistributive policies to take from the wealthy to give to the people that have fallen behind. But who argues that you should have a redistributive policy from the poor to the rich? That's the whole United States of America. That's all of central banking. That's all of government spending. All it is is they take money from the working people and they give it to millionaires. Go look at any of the suburbs of Washington, DC. None of them make anything. They're all in three million dollars houses because government spending is north of $7 trillion. Of course. Well, that unfortunately is getting the point where that kind of is our economy. Yeah. So you'd really need to reorder things on the beginning with the foundations. Yeah. Well, but two good things are happening. One, the empire is by necessity shrinking. And so that's a cost savings. And that's a reorientation back where the attention belongs, which is here. And two, you have the baby boom going away, which is 1946, 1964. So people born in the middle of 1956 or now 70. Yeah. So there'll be 80 and 10 years. So you, that generation, clearly I think everyone agrees, not everyone in it, but as a generation destroyed the country. Oh, yeah. Just the worst. And as no other country. With some notable exceptions, my mom included, she's cool, but the rest of them. Oh, many, many notable. I know million baby boomers that I've not a million, but I've met baby boomers I like. Well, I just couldn't, I mean, the thing about it. Not that many of them. Jeff Diced is a really, really brilliant guy. He ran the Mises Institute for years. He's over at monetary metals now, but he's a really, really brilliant guy. He had this speech one time where he was talking about the boomers and like the evolution of the generation and what they believed at the time. And it's so it is just the most self-absorbed, selfish generation ever. I mean, they literally, their slogan was don't trust anyone over 30 until they turned 30. Exactly. And then he does, like Jeff Diced, like went through the whole thing. I don't remember all of it, but then by the end they were the ones pushing COVID. Like they started out as the don't trust anyone over 30 and then they said shut down the schools so that I don't get sick. Like take from my grandchildren's generation so that I'm protected. And yeah, I mean, these are dumbest too. I mean, the thing about their narcissism is the core sin. Like that's their main problem is they're all about themselves. The thing you notice about people are all about themselves is how unwise and badly informed they are because they don't pay attention to other people. Therefore they never learn. Therefore, and I've noticed since I was a child, because these were my teachers, the baby boom, they'll fall for anything. They're the most easily manipulated people who've ever lived in this country. They are the most dominated by their herd instinct. All the kids are wearing masks. All the kids are taking the shots. All the kids are going into fines. Whatever all the other people are doing, they will do. They're the Mickey Mouse Club generation. They are truly without creative impulse. They're just not impressive. In addition to being super annoying, one of the least attractive generations, there's a lot about them that we can at least attach to their own children. You've got two houses, but your kids have no house. How does that work? Oh yeah, the generation of no fault divorce, the generation of, I got to be me. I got to pursue my own happiness when you got little kids. But you is not that interesting. But the more you think about you, the dumber you get. That's just what I just always noticed. That's one of the most profound ironies in life, this counterintuitive thing, where if you're only concerned with yourself, yourself is going to suffer for that. - It's really true. And you watch this all the time with people. - Exactly. - With people who really have, like really bad depression and are just miserable and they're constantly talking about their mood today. It's like, "Hey, step number one. "Stop thinking about your mood. "Your mood is not that important. "Here's step number one. "Start thinking about other people. "How about this? "Try doing something productive "for someone else other than yourself. "And don't think about your mood once "while you're doing it." Now, I'll tell you, I've been on this earth for about 43 years and I haven't learned that much. I've got a few things. I've never been anywhere near as happy since I got married and had kids. Like once my life became about a family and not just about me, you know what I mean? And I think I was in this generation that was-- - Did you expect that? - No, man, I mean, I don't know. I always thought before I met my wife, it was always to me like everything in my mind was like professional success. You know, like that was what I wanted to be a successful comedian and I wanted to talk about politics and all of this stuff and I always wanted that. And you know, it's weird now because I've kind of like I've kind of gotten everything. I really wanted in all those years and it's nice. Don't get me wrong. I really love my career. I love what I do. I love this. I love doing shows with you and it's great. But like it's so unimportant compared to-- - Family. - I mean, you know, like it's just not even-- It's not the older you get, the more you realize. It's like that's all that really matters. All that really matters are your wife, your children, the close friends that you have around you, like the good people in your life. Connections to other people, connection to God, that's all that really matters in life. All the rest of it is kind of just part of the journey and part of the thing. But-- - Hey, do your best. - No, I know you're probably not gonna move the ball that far. - Yeah, well, you know, I read this, there was this really great book by, I believe the author's name, I don't know if I've ever actually heard it pronounced, I've just read it, but it's like a twin gay or twin gay? - Yeah, I see. - Or something, right? Now I don't know about her. I think she was on Bill Marshow recently and she said one thing that I thought was really stupid and I turned it off because I was like, I really liked her book. I just don't wanna know. You know how you feel? You're like, I don't wanna, don't, but she wrote this book called, I think it was called The Me Generation, "The Generation Me," something like that. It was really great. I thought it was a really, really good book and it was kind of about my generation who was raised by the boomers. And, you know, the way I was raised, and again, I'm not, I had a really great mother, she was really great and instilled a lot of really good things in me. This was bigger than her. This was just the culture. But we were raised and I didn't think it was so unique at the time, but I was really kind of a child of the, you know, a child of the unipolar moment, I guess, you could say, and then teenager, young adult. - Post-Burlin wall. - Yeah, well, I mean, I was, I remember watching it. Watching the Berlin wall come down, I was at my grandfather's house and my grandfather, as I told you before, was from Germany. And I just, my only memory of it was, I was a little, I was born in '83, so I guess I would have been six years old when this happened, so I'm a little kid. And I just remember, I was being a little kid and probably being loud in the living room or something or walking in front of the TV and I remember he snapped at me and went, shh, and I just remember being like, - How old was your grandfather when he left Germany? - He would have been, I wanna say like 15 maybe. - Oh wow, so old enough to remember. - Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, old enough to remember some really vicious things. He got out in 1938. But so anyway, he, so, sorry, just remember like, oh, this is really serious to grandpa, what's happening? And it was the Berlin wall being coming down. - Yeah, it was a big deal to him. I'm not sure he liked it that much. I think he was a little concerned about German, or even if it case, you know, as you could imagine. But, it turned out to be a good thing. But anyway, so, you know, I was, I kinda grew up in that time in the 80s and the 90s. And there was, we didn't have things that I think almost every other generation had. Like we weren't raised with like, God, chivalry, nation, country. You know, there wasn't this, it was like, you go to school and you know, get your homework done so no one's mad at you and then you can go play basketball outside. Or there's a new video game at it was, let's hang out with our friends and have fun. There wasn't like this purpose, you know, like put into your life which most people have in most of human history. Even if it's just culture. - Yeah, culture, religious views, you know, like, you know, it's important things. And I think there were a lot of people in my generation were like that. That it was almost like, again, like we said before, you can't take God out of the equation because something else just becomes God. And in a weird, like, I know I've heard you say this before too, but it's so true. It's like the desire to worship is so hard-wired into the DNA of the human soul that you just can't, you can say you're an atheist if you want to, but then like, I'll find out what your religion is pretty quickly. And oftentimes it just becomes yourself. You know, when you don't have other things, it becomes like, well, let me have fun. Let me go get this, but that is, like I said, 43 years, I haven't learned much in life. One thing I have learned for certain is that if your highest goal in life is your own pleasure, you will be a miserable, miserable human being. - Yeah, well, I've learned that too. So as you look around at 43, among people you know, who are your age group in the same world you grew up in, how many are thinking about the existence of God right now? - I think a lot more than ever were as in this case. - Do you ever know who are your religious people growing up? - Yeah, I mean, I knew some, but it was very few in far between. Like that were really like religious or talked about it or what, you know, like I knew, you know, even like, I went to like Hebrew school, but I went for like a year to, like my mom wanted me to be Bar Mitzvah, but it wasn't really like a deep religious conviction. It was more like, yeah, this is what our people have always done. - This is what we do, yeah. - You know, and like, I got a respect to your father and your father's father and your father's father, you know, like, I can kind of understand that. And so I went, but it was like a reformed, you know, temple where I went there. And I remember even the rabbi, like, you know, like some of the kids would be like, well, do you believe in God? He was like, yeah, you know, everything that's good is God and everything, you know, like, it was just total like, like Jewish, you know, like essentially atheism. - I grew up around so many people like that. - Yeah, so it was just, you know, there was, there was just a lot of that. And I don't, you know, I certainly think that one of the things I really focus on as a father, and I have little kids, so but I will focus on this more over the years is like instilling the idea of purpose and instilling the idea of like, God, and not just God, but like what that represents, that like, hey, you're, you know, you're here. We're all here in this life together. This life is a little bit of a mystery. We don't know everything about that. - Exactly, right. - But we do know that like we, other people exist too, as we exist, and human beings can be, we have this amazing capacity to be demonic or angelic. You know, like you can really, one person, you know, there's little moments in life where, you know, whatever it is, like you're at the post office and it's 501, and you had to get this letter out today or you're getting fired, and you're like, you know, my life is ruined. If you're talking to some person on the other end, can you please just take this one pack, you know, I'm just coming up with a scenario. And that person could go, all right, come here, give me the package, and you're like, yo, you just saved my life. Like, you have no idea what you just did for it. And like, you can do that for other people. You can try your best to throughout your day and your career and your life. Be like, yo, let me help this guy and be that person. Or, you know, you can be what Benjamin Netanyahu is to the Palestinians, you know, like just a monster. The guy who just like ruined their family's life. And so, if we're kind of given this world, and we don't have all of the answers to it, but we kind of know that we have like, inability to be either one of those things, hey, really focus on being the angel for people, really focus on trying to help others. And I think that makes you a much happier person the more you focus on that. - Agreed with that completely. And do you find that people you knew in the secular world growing up or reaching some more conclusions? - Yeah, I think I know several people like that. And I do, I think that, you know, he had an amazing meteoric rise and a really tragic fall. But I think this is why Jordan Peterson was such a phenomenon for years. That it was like, you know, going around and telling young men that you should search out purpose and search out God in life. It's amazing how powerful that is. - I love that. - Yeah, me too. - He takes a lot of abuse and, you know, he's against me or whatever. I don't even, I could care less. But I will always appreciate that about Jordan Peterson. - Yeah, me too. He did that. - Yeah, you know, I like, in a way, he was a guy who I always really wanted to talk to and never did. He was, you know, obviously, I mean, joining the daily wire and going on that side was just a really, really tragic mistake. And I think he threw away all of the credibility that he had with the younger generation when he really could have used his voice, you know. - Yes, I totally agree with that. - He was never much as a political actor. He was always something else, you know. - No, he's a Canadian psychologist. - Yeah, like this wasn't, you know, - Sit that part out. - He missed the mark on a lot of his political points, but I mean, you know, when you're on record Tellin' Benjamin Netanyahu to give them hell. That's really hard to come back from. But he came on, you know, he came on Joe Rogan's show, the episode after I debated Douglas Murray. I believe it was the next one was Jordan Peterson. And I remember watching it and I did feel like, I was like, "Oh, I'm gonna die." like, oh man, I think he's gonna like say, you know what I mean? Like I think he's gonna say something nasty about me because he's Ben Shapiro and Yahoo's guy now and they just had this big debate. And he didn't, he kinda said, oh, I thought he didn't name me. He mentioned Douglas and Joe and he said, I thought everyone involved did a good job. - Good for him. - So I was like, okay, that was nice to me in a way that I was like, oh, he had, you know, from someone at the daily wire, that's about as good as I can expect. - He was a pretty charitable guy. I mean, I thought he had flaws, but I was never, you know, I always said charitable and still do have charitable feelings toward him. Douglas Murray, however, that's a different one. - What happened to Douglas? Is he still living in this country? - No, he's doing great. I think he got a gig writing speeches for the Israeli government. - Oh, we do. - From where has that heard, yeah, he did. - Can I just, I don't know if I've said this on your show before? I don't think so. Because I think last time we spoke was right after that debate or last time we spoke on the podcast, not spoke in life. But last time we were doing the show was right after that debate, but before this came out and it was Ryan Grimm and the guys over at Dropsite who published this. But so if you remember the famous, you've never been argument. Well, I got, I'm sorry. I should not call that an argument. It's not an argument. - Didn't write it to the level. - But what he said, what he was trying to say, which was really kind of silly, but he was like, you know, he goes, well, he said, I have the journalistic courtesy of visiting a place before I talk about that place. He was lecturing me about journalistic ethics. (laughing) Now, I'm not a journalist talker. I understand up comedian. You've been a journalist for many years, so maybe you can fill me in on this. I'm not an expert in journalistic ethics. What are the ethics of covering a country and not disclosing that you work for the government? (laughing) Is that up there? - I would have to consult like a professor of ethics, like Sam Bakeman-Freed's parents. - Yes, I think that's what he was talking about. - So we have a whole infrastructure designed to answer complex questions like that, Dave. But I have the courtesy of not advocating for wars that I'm not willing to fight in myself. That's my professional courtesy. - That is a much better standard. - Well, who spends, I mean, what type of person, and look, I, you know. - But he got away, didn't he? I mean, Douglas Murray was like, I took him seriously, by the way, I knew him well. And I thought he had, you know, there were things about him that I felt sorry for him because of them. But in general, it's smart. And I never had a problem with them at all. Had a couple of fun dinners with him. That debate, which you were proclaimed the loser of, by a lot of people, I think that just destroyed his life. - Yeah, well, again, it was like no one except the people who already had made up their mind that Israel is the greatest country ever. No one except them thought that he won the debate. A few of them seemed to celebrate that. The comment section under the video was just torching him, like every regular person went, oh, he just destroyed himself. And then I will say a lot of people, including some prominent people who you listen or know, including Charlie Kirk, by the way, texted me after that debate. And we're like, yo, dude, he just destroyed his credibility. Or like, you, like, that was crazy that he came at you like that. I had people, you know, this is whatever, I won't name all of them, 'cause I don't wanna give out private information. Maybe I shouldn't have. I mentioned that about Charlie Kirk because Candace Munsbach had called on me to like, to release whatever private communications I have that might be relevant. And I thought one of the things was relevant was that he said after the debate that he largely agreed with me. After the dog was married today, which was-- - Well, he certainly did, I talked to him. - He was talking to me. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So I did think that was relevant until like where his mind state was. But other people like, I think a lot of people kind of expected him to be like, they were like, okay, Dave, you've been blowing through these debates, but this is the best guy on the other side. So he's gonna come really give it a chance. - In a pretty recent accent. - So there's no chance that-- - Well, that's not it. - You know, someone from Brooklyn was gonna beat it. - Well, yeah, I guess that's the first advantage that he had. But, you know, there's a weird thing where, again, kind of back to what I was saying before. You see this thing where, so after that debate happens, I have this huge, like, groundswell of support from people. Then Donald Trump tweets out, you gotta go get Douglas Murray's new book, like two days after the debate or something like that. And it just, I thought there was an interesting parallel between that. And when Donald Trump just tweeted the other day about, not the one to watch the show, but he treated last week about how wonderful Mark Levin is and how everyone arguing with him is awful or something like that. And if you look on Twitter, not saying Twitter is everything, but it's one little glimpse into things. I mean, Mark Levin gets ratioed by random people. Like, not even like you or Megan Kelly or someone like that. I'm saying like, some random guy will just call Mark Levin an idiot and way more people like his tweet than like Mark Levin's tweet. He's out there, he's feuding it with Megan Kelly and he's calling you and me every name in the book. And then the entire audience is just going with us and then Trump comes out and says, we're all in a picture. - So I saw that when Trump tweeted that about, you read Douglas Murray's dumb books. And I kind of willfully ignored it because I was so focused, well, 'cause I like Trump, but also because I was so focused on the Iran thing and just have to prevent a war with Iran. - That's more important. - Well, I don't know though. I mean, that was foreshadowing that actually, there was a lot of, why would the President of the United States be promoting Douglas Murray who, you know, he's not even American and he's like totally discredited. Why would the President be promoting him? - Well, I mean, doing Mark Levin is much worse. I mean, look, Douglas Murray, I do think he was ridiculous and he kind of made an ass out of himself in that debate. But Mark Levin has gone to a level of retardation that I've never seen out of, you know, like, I listen, I was never to, I was somewhat impressed by the first generation of Neocons. You know, I think-- - I worked for them. - Yeah, well, I know that. - I was one. - But I think, well, sorry. - I mean, like Leo Strauss and Irving Crystal and those guys, right? And, but then I always thought, like, I always kind of went, you know, if you remember the Fox News, he wasn't really on your show a lot, but if you remember the reverence people used to have for Charles Kraut, Hammer. Like, they would all talk about it. Like, to his face, they'd be like, "To a genius is here." And then I'd be like, I've never heard him say anything interesting ever I just don't agree more. - I don't know what, but all of those, so I was always like-- - One thing I'll say about Charles, so I knew really well, he's a very nice man. And he was a nice man because he had had to reckon with, you know, being paralyzed from the chest down from medical school. And so he just had a perspective on life. I spent hours talking to him and I knew his wife and I really liked him as a man, but his views were, you know, impossible to defend if you cared about the United States. - Yeah, that right. But anyway, I guess with all of them, I was never particularly intellectually impressed with any of them. - No, I agree. - If you wanna see, by the way, if you wanna see, if you've never watched, man, Scott Horton debating Bill Crystal at the 704. - Well, that's unfair. - It was, you really exposed just how much Bill Crystal has nothing. No knowledge, no argument, nothing. He literally, I've never seen it happen before, he threw in the towel in the debate, essentially. He literally, at one point, Scott makes some argument, there was like a back and forth section and Scott makes some argument and he goes, well, we just have fundamentally different world views. And you're like, yeah, that's why you're debating. - But you have to make an argument. And then he-- - Bill will never explain what his world views. - And then in his closing, there were still like three minutes on the clock. And he just stopped. Anyway, I say all of this to say-- - He doesn't care, though, because it doesn't matter. - I've seen some dumb arguments from Neocons over the years. I have never seen anyone go full blown Mark Levin, the way he goes. It is that he's literally just a ranting old man yelling insults unattached to any argument at all. His whole show is just like, yeah, that's a little punk. Once I come and talk to me, you little fascist, it's like, what is this, dude? And so there is something about Donald Trump promoting that. That's like several levels worse than promoting Douglas. - No, but it's, so then you have to ask, well, what actually is it? It's not designed to win people over. It's designed to increase hatred, anti-semitism, by the way. - Absolutely. I mean, if you were, if you were, you know, whoever Mark thinks he's working for the Israelis, I guess you would look at this, you'd say, this is not helping us, don't do this. - Yes. - You know, get some articulate, decent, hot woman on there to make the case. Or whatever, you do a marketing thing. This is anti-marketing. This is designed to repel people. So why would you want that? I don't know the answer, but it's clearly true. Second, his relationship with the president is bizarre. You think Trump likes that? There was a moment at some anti-stop anti-semitism event of some kind or Hanukkah celebration, some Jewish-themed White House event where Trump was there with Mark Levin, and Levin comes over and puts his arm around the president's neck and pulls him in. Now, I know Trump well. I mean, I wouldn't like that. And I'm not even the president or a germafob. - Yeah. - What is that? And under normal circumstances, Trump would never put up with that. You're just doing them. - Oh, I thought so. - Dominance move over the president. - And over Donald Trump, are you just kidding? - Not just the president, but Donald Trump, the most dominant alpha male guy. - That's a dominant-- - Does that to other people? - Exactly. But even Trump, who is very much about dominance, obviously, most powerful men are, he would Trump would never throw his arm around someone and give him a headlock like they do. - No, no, no. I help pull you in while he shakes your hands. - A hundred percent. - Or a whole new thing. What did he do to one of the G7 meetings or whatever, where he cuts in front of some other world? - Totally. - But like there are, by the way, this is another thing that I am hoping-- - That's breaking the rules, dude. - But I'm oblivious to this thing, but this is as you said, powerful men are like this. - Yes, there are. - Where there's like alpha moves, like taking your thing and just make, you know, like whatever, like if you have a little thing of peanuts here that you're eating and I just reach in and tail, you know what I mean? Like, but to do that to Donald Trump, I understand, I'm not trying to make too much of a little thing. - That's not a little thing. - But that was, there was something symbolic and then proclaims him the first Jewish president. You got a theory strange. - Very strange. - That Trump, he never said this to me, but just knowing him, you got to think, he's filled with rage. Someone doing that to him. - Well, look, but he puts up with it anyway, so, but why would you do that to him? So if you want to exert influence over someone who's powerful, like there's a way to do it, but the last way to do it is to be like, I'm in charge here, just so you know, I'm more powerful than the president. That's what Levin is saying and Trump is putting up with it. This is either, it's a former Saddamasicism, but it also reveals like the true architecture of power in a way that's like what? - Yeah, well, I think what is that? - Well, here, I'll say this and I'm just to preface this, I'm not saying anything other than what I'm saying. I'm not implying something that I don't know any more than this and maybe you know more than I do, but I will say, you know, people used to say when Donald Trump was first rising to political career in 2016 when he was running when he was first president, I remember liberals used to always say that he's dog-wistling bigotry. And you know, we always thought this was so always like, a dog-wistle, it's like a thing where you kind of, first of all, it's kind of weird because you're like, well, then wouldn't you not hear it? If it's a dog-wistle, 'cause wouldn't only the bigotry, it isn't that the idea. Also, that seems like a very convenient way of saying, even though there's nothing I can actually point to that you said, he's always raised it. But what I always thought was that what Donald Trump did was he would very often stoke or give a wink in a nod to conspiracies. That he was, look, he went out there about Obama's birth certificate. He obviously called out the whole rush-a-gate thing, which was a legit conspiracy to unseat the sitting president. - No, it was a cue thing. - The cue thing. He'd float at the, obviously the election being stolen, but all the witch on end, of course, now with Epstein, when it's not really a good, well, it is a conspiracy, but it's a legitimate one, but he's saying, oh, there's a democratic hoax. He is very quick to any time it will help him look good to be like, it's a conspiracy against me. Never once with Butler. Never once. And it's kind of crazy, man. Like, we don't, we have like no information, they haven't even attempted to give us a national story that puts a little bow on top of like who this guy was or what happened, how there was such a security failure that could allow a sniper 130 yards away to get a clean shot at the, a former president and current candidates head, what, just kind of, no internet history, can't get into his phones. Oh, he wanted to kill anyone, he could, that's all, nothing to see here. And it's just a little bizarre to me that you would think, like all other things making sense, you would just think you would hear Donald Trump going, they tried to kill me, they tried to do this, they tried to, but I mean, days afterward, he just thanked the secret service for what a great job they did. And I don't know what any of that means. I know a lot about it. And I'll just say this, which we said publicly is I, you know, I got a call from somebody who said, I've got a lot of material from the gunman, and not disputing him's the gunman, by the way, seems like the gunman. Question is like, was he working in concert with anyone else? Were there other people involved? This is the same with the Charlie Kirk. It's not a question of, you know, I don't know anything, but the question is, never just did the guy pull the trigger. Of course, yeah. I just proved that with the videotape that we don't have from the Charlie Kirk assassination for some reason, but whatever. The point is, that's only one part of the story. The question was, were there other people involved? And in the case of Butler, I got this corpus of information from a guy almost off the street. We showed that it was real. And it was always skeptical of this stuff, very skeptical. But it turns out this was actually from Thomas Crookes' YouTube account. And the FBI claimed that this didn't exist. Well, of course they knew it existed. So then the question becomes, well, why are they since the man is dead in this sole shooter crime? There's a lone gunman and the lone gunman's gone. Why would we hold back anything? Any evidence we have, but they did. And that would include video surveillance of the shooting range where he trained to shoot a pretty good shot over 100 yards, the 2, 2, 3. I shoot a two to three. That's like, everyone's all these seals. I was like, oh, there's nothing. Like for a non-sign. Right, right. It's a decent shot. So there's videotape from the shooting range to detrain alone who was with him. Never been released. And the investigation was shut down. Shut down. So what does that mean? I don't know. But I mean, what is going on? Yeah. And I got to say-- Why can't we know? Well, hearing the heroic former director of counterterrorism come on your show and kind of say the same thing. It does just have a lot more weight to it when the guy was literally the director of counterterrorism and going like, hey, what's going on here? We have not gotten answers over these things. And he tied those facts. Those are facts. He stated facts. By the way, when he-- now we've just heard the FBI's not actually investigating him. That was all fake. He retained his security clearance until the morning he left. So if he was under investigation for a reason or something, he wouldn't have held his clearance. Right. That's the highest level intelligence, which he retained until the day he-- the moment he resigned. So OK, that was all lie. But he said point blank, one of the most informed people in the United States with clearance is higher, I think, even than Mark Levin's. There is a connection between Trump's decision to go to war in Iran and these not fully explained acts of violence. He said that. So OK, before we denounce him is crazy-- which maybe he is. I don't know. It doesn't seem to be, but I hold up at any possibility. What is he talking about? And there has not only been zero interest from the people in charge of ginning up interest like the internet, the influencers. There has been calculated discouragement and attacks on anyone who persists in asking the question. Yeah, well, and I haven't gotten involved because I know everybody, and it's so emotional to me. But at a certain point, I'm going to-- whatever. I feel like I've got a pretty close vantage on all this stuff. And I'm getting a little sick of it because every American has a right to justice, not just for himself, but for any other American citizen. Our whole system rests on the idea that there will be justice affected by the US government. And we have a right to know. You have no right to keep that for me. I'm looking around, you're keeping that for me. You can't browbeat me into it by screaming Candace Owens again and again and again. Yeah, that's right. And look like-- Sickness. I've tried. It's outrageous. No, absolutely. And listen, I'll say just personally, and I knew Charlie, and not super well. We weren't close friends, but I'd done a show a few times. And we texted a few times. He had me at that last-- let me do the debate there. And we hung out for a little bit while we were there. And I wasn't as close with him as you were, but it's even just like being friends with someone like that. It's first of all, it's very jarring to see that happen. And then he's got a wife and little kids, really tragic, horrible situation. And my incentives on all of this is like, I just don't want to believe that this was anything more than one crazy guy with a transfer boyfriend or whatever like that. That actually is much more comforting to me than it's some conspiracy. Half a Twitter seemed to think I was the one who got him killed or something like that or me and you and Megan or something. I very much so vehemently want to believe. Yes, right? So we don't want that. I will say-- and I have done deep dives and watched all of Candaceous shows on this or something. But there's little pieces of information just like-- it's been confirmed by a few different people that he was texting them. They're going to kill me. Hey, man, that's got to be totally exhausted, didn't investigate it. I mean, what is this here? This is a pretty big deal. You really got to get to the bottom of stuff like that. And look, as you're sitting here, and it's almost like sometimes people will call-- you know, they'll call you out for being a conspiracy theorist or something or they say just asking questions. No, it's worse than being a conspiracy theorist is having no curiosity about questions that have not been answered. Well, also, there's just-- And I'm not a conspiracy theorist. And I believe in curiosity and skepticism. I've encouraged that in a lot of people-- some have been very resistant to be curious or skeptical. And there are two sides to this. There's not simply the people who are coming up with the conspiracy theories. Some of them obviously fantastical and wrong, I would think. There's also the government side, which is telling you shut up, we have this solved. And I think we should apply the same skepticism to their claims as well. There's no reason that the FBI should get an automatic-- on the basis of what? Well, also-- So what track record? --of always telling the truth to people, like, what are you even talking about? Well, that's a-- And how dare you threaten me and call me names? I mean, I'm not getting paid for this. I've stated that I'm just getting too mad at watching this. even before the ebbs file got released back when the pedestrian emails were released in the original Pizzagate theory was was born and you know if you look through some of those pedestrian emails look they're clearly talking in code now what is the code I mean people are speculating that it was about children now I have absolutely no reason to believe that but they're not planning pizza parties you know what I mean like they're speaking in code that's a substance urologist who's just prescribed him erectile dysfunction drugs says take the pills and then meet me for pizza and grape soda I that's in the Epstein files maybe they're maybe there's nothing to a sex maybe they're actually you get wicked hungry after you take a boner pill I don't know but the fact that nobody cares to find out or even interview the urologist just bring him and say hey what is this that's right and I felt the same way that's great so that what do you even talk you there's no white person America drinks grapes so to stop I've been had grapes I've maybe had grapes so when I was a child I'm not against I'm not just like talk to the urologist no well right exactly so it's the thing about it is right like even with the original Pizzagate thing the position of like the corporate media was to sit there and go you're an idiot if you think this code is about oh you're a conspiracy theorist if you think instead of putting a microphone in front of John Podesta and going hey you're clearly speaking in code here people are assuming that that code is for raping children so clear this up because it can't be any worse than what people are speculating so what is it sir and no one ever even thinks to do that in this and all the hostility is aimed at people who are asking the questions and that that's a tell right there yes people here you have gunshots ringing out in my country people getting killed or an attempted murder couple of attempted murders there will be more unfortunately and anyone who's interested in like finding out or doesn't automatically trust the government which were supposed to be skeptical of that person is the villain yeah that's right and and you know in a similar thing there I don't know I maybe I'm in a struggle to like word this the right way but there's certain things that in a vacuum might be true but aren't true in all circumstances so in other words like if you typically speaking you'd go hey before you want to start you know believing something you got to see strong evidence for it or something like that or you can't just start theorizing and speculating about things without like some indication or something pointing you in that direction but then like if me and you both just wake up together and we we're blacked out for the last 10 hours and we're chained up in a prison somewhere or something like that and you start going like we got to start speculating about how the hell we got here because this is so crazy you know what I mean and then I'd be like hey my neighbor said something this morning to me about how like I bet it's gonna be a rough day you know and I'm like we got to think maybe my neighbor had something to do with this now then some some skeptic could come along and go your neighbor saying it's gonna be a bad day doesn't act isn't actually evidence and you're like okay but we're here like we got and so in a sense there's like okay yes you could you can be skeptical and it's good to be skeptical of some of these claims but at the same time we're sitting here watching it's so crazy to watch right but the never trumpers are now the biggest hardcore Trump supporters as they're destroying the coalition that they were afraid of right. - It's destroying Trump himself. - Right and so you've watched this happen and that does lead you to go how exactly did they pull this off how is it that people like you know so I you know look I'm I'm a little bit more hot headed than you at times and maybe this is because you know I'm a little I'm a decade younger than you and I still drink big glasses of whiskey and I still and I'm just furious about a lot of things and I'm maybe I should you know let some of that go but you know like I'm still furious at Ben Shapiro and the only reason I hate Ben Shapiro's guts is because he called Ron Paul a Jew hater back in the day when it was totally ridiculous you read some of these tweets recently I think Ron Paul is up there talking about how it's not wise to fight multiple wars this is what brings down nation and Ben Shapiro goes but you just want to strangle a Jew you know like fuck you dude dare you speak to a man so much better than you that way than anyway but so I was furious over the 12-day war last summer and I I went on breaking points great show with Crystal and and Sagar who I love very much great so literally a love Sagar to death he's just great someone really happy to call a friend and he so I went on the show right after it and I called for Trump's impeachment I said he should be impeached and removed for this he's launched a war of aggression it's illegal it's for a foreign country it's what he promised not to do he was very angry I still stand by that but I was angry and then of course all of them all the guys you know Josh hammer and Ben Shapiro and Mark Levent they all just start talking shit about me look this guy doesn't support Trump oh he voted for Trump last time but he's calling for his impeachment now as if I don't remember where all you guys were in 2006 when national review was running their never Trump edition and Ben Shapiro promised for for deeply held principle reasons he could never support Donald Trump and Mark Levent was never to all these guys were never Trump now that he's become a war hawk what he explicitly ran against being in every election now that he's become that they all love him to death and they're just like so anyway my point is sorry sometimes you see facts like that and you go that's worth speculating about I do have some questions I'd like to ask on how exactly these guys were able to infiltrate this movement destroy it from within and you know set our country on this trajectory toward another catastrophic war there's there's a lot that went into that I couldn't agree more I guess the only last thing I would say about it is you started by saying the legacy media covered for the crimes of their masters the ruling class okay got it I mean that's what they exist to do that's what we have NBC news that's why yes yes yes no I totally that's why Foxes here but to see people in independent media doing that and I understand it's very easy to get sidetracked like you're mad at one person and so anyone who is asking similar questions to that person like must be on that side of the but like try to retain independence in your head like don't get sidetracked certain questions have to be answered no matter who's asking them right yeah one of the questions I still can't answer is why is it that all the neocons are the ones leading the screaming in any one of us questions about Charlie Kirk's death when Charlie Kirk was an enemy of the neocons like open enemy of the neocons invited you to TPUSA like you don't invite it and he didn't it's not because the kids at TPU say like oh I grew up loving Dave Smith yeah well that's I said that I've said this on other shows too but I said this to you that it's like there was something about inviting you know inviting you or Megan Kelly yeah we're on Fox News is fine yeah huge famous yeah I'm right right not just like someone on Fox News like two of the big there's no reason to invite you to a turning point event unless he wants the kids in the audience to hear your views yeah which he did because he subsequently agreed with them and I would know because I talked about this a lot like a lot a lot over years so for the neocons whom he at best didn't trust and mostly really didn't like I never talk about what I think Charlie thought because it feels so weird yeah yeah but I just have to say this they're the ones leading the charge and shut up don't ask any questions like you tell me what this is well that's and I'm not gonna take orders from them who are these people anyway this is the same reason why this is the reason why I I read that text message that he he sent me and it was because well part of it was because Candace asked and I'm friends with Candace and she was very she lost someone she was very close to but part of it was that you know because it's a weird thing to do it's a weird thing to share private text messages to anyone especially someone who just died and I got some pushback for that and I understand why people like I get their point maybe I shouldn't have done that I'm not sure but you know it was the thing we're like Netanyahu immediately is trying to hijack his legacy Josh Hammer and all these guys are immediately tried to hijack his life and so it's kind of like selling their books right right literally dude I was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life Josh Hammer did three interviews immediately after the only reason anyone's interviewing him is because he was friends with Charlie Carker he was close around his circle or whatever and every single time he mentioned how much Charlie loved his book like Jesus dude I mean I just could never imagine getting a little strong everybody you know the last Charlie's friends with Josh Hammer well he he had him in his circles or whatever his handler or whatever it was but you know I remember you know right before Charlie died he called me and he said man I just wish everyone would listen to your podcast it's like this is so crazy of a thing to say but the reason I I released that is because I'm like look I don't know exactly where Charlie was on his evolution on this topic obviously he had at one point been a die hard pro-Israel guy but a lot of people were that and then kind of woke up over the last couple years but I know that he texted me after my debate with Douglas Murray that he said he thought I did a great job and he really did he said something like I read it verbatim on my show but he said something like I believe it or not I really didn't disagree with almost anything he said yeah and I'm just saying Ben Shapiro wasn't sending me that text no so for people to try to pretend there was no daylight between the two of them it's just not true There was hostility. Right. Big time. And not just with, you know, those guys, hostility. I mean, I don't want to overstate it. I'm not saying he hated them as people, but I mean, he did not agree at all. Right. And certainly didn't agree with war with Iran at all. At all. And with also, honestly, some of the Christian Zionist leaders, I mean, Charles, very, he loved Israel as a country for sure. And I think he had a complicated theology, which I did not fully understand and still don't fully understand. But the idea that you would put another country before your own, like he just rejected that flat out. And some of those, some of the Christian Zionist leaders were very aggressive and shark-like and very money-oriented and pushy. And he started talking about that openly. We talked about it with me a lot. Yeah. Well, he talked about it on Megan Kelly's show. I mean, talked about the reaction he got from the evangelical leaders. From, well, maybe not from the evangelical leaders. It wasn't. It was a mixture. Yeah, I was probably a mix of love. You know, Jewish Zionists like, like the guys you mentioned, but also the people he grew up with who are evangelical leaders. And he was upset with them. I mean, I talked to him about it at length. I could name names with who he was upset. I'm not going to, but because he's gone. But yeah, that's just real. And I don't know. I don't even like talking about this, but I'm just offended by where this is going. And the bottom line is every American has an interest in every murder getting solved. And not just getting solved, but fully solved. Yeah. And if you have a government agency that's shutting down a legitimate line of inquiry, at very least you have to answer the question of why you're doing that. And they, and Joe Kent has said in public multiple times, including to me, the FBI shut down any effort to look into international connections here within days of the killing. So someone should ask the FBI like, why'd you do that? And no one seems willing to ask. And look, we also know what we know about this FBI, who I just could not be more disgusted with. And you know, I know you saw when everyone's afraid of them. Well, what Dan Bungino was talking all types of shit to me on Twitter or whatever, but it's like, look, man, you just, you, you know, there was a thing where people were saying they were trying to go Dan Bungino into debating me because he was talking shit about me. You know, as I was, I think I responded in kind, but the thing is like he can't. Dan Bungino, not only can he not come debate me, Dan Bungino can't ever do a difficult interview ever again for the rest of his life because he's ended in one question. I literally one question ends it. I just go, hey, okay, so you looked the American people in the eyes and you swore that you had seen the proof that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. Well, it's been declassified by an act of Congress now. So go ahead and tell us what you say. What's the proof? It's all declassified now. What it doesn't, it doesn't, what are the, the few exceptions in the rule if it's national security or if it harms the victims or something like that? How would it possibly be any of those for you to just tell me what you saw that made you comfortable enough to go out there and swear that you had seen proof that he killed himself. Cash Patel, Dan Bungino, any, but these guys specifically, and this is one of the big things I think that really is what I interject. No, no, not anyone particular, but you know, we say we know things, but I would always have the caveat to the extent you can know things like I've thought I've known many things, I've turned out to be wrong, you know, so I could be wrong, but this is sincere. I believe I can say with certainty that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered. So I so I mean, but of course I'm always open to countervailing evidence. Always. I see that. You could see that. I see that. I see that. I see that. My capacity for being wrong, but I can see if you could x ray my heart, you would find that I believe with total certainty he was murdered and the people in the US government knew that he was murdered. So I don't want that to be true, but I believe it is true. So like it's going to take a lot. You're going to have to show me that that's false. Well, the, the reason why I have so much contempt for Dan Bungino and Cash Patel, particularly and Pam Bondy too, but more so than the other two is that these guys went around and really Dan Bungino, I mean, Cash did many podcasts and stuff, but Dan Bungino got rich doing his show and a really big show and he flamed that Epstein stuff for so long was like, don't let go of this one. This is a huge scandal. We're going to get in there and expose it. And I got to say every bit as much as the war and around, maybe not quite as much as this most recent one, but the covering up the Epstein scandal did so much to damage this administration totally because it went to something very fundamental. The fundamental promise of Donald Trump and the reason why Donald Trump, I believe the main reason that he rode to political success and won the presidency twice was that, was that he said he was going to drain the swamp. drain the swamp was an incredibly effective campaign slogan. It was essentially saying, look man, on some level almost all Americans know this. This city in DC is filled with corruption and the people in political power have committed profound crimes against the American people and none of them have been held accountable for it and we're going to hold them accountable for this. And for this justice department now to go in and put up zero deep state arrests. I mean, dude, if you just think about the fact that the intelligence agencies framed the sitting president for treason for four years. I mean, in obvious deep state coup to overthrow an attempted deep state coup to attempt to overthrow a democratically elected president. Like it is, it was an outrage that they did it to him on the campaign, but it is a little bit different when he's a presidential candidate than when he is the commander in chief, the president of the United States of America. They framed him for being a Russian spy. Donald Trump is a lot of things. He is not a Russian spy. Okay. There has never been one. It was the most ridiculous thing ever. It was all complete phony evidence and they knew it. They knowingly went forward with that. And Andrew McCabe admitted on 60 minutes that he said their plan was to invoke the 25th amendment, but they realized they couldn't get enough people to go along with that. And so they settled for Robert Mueller. They settled for a special investigation that would tie him down and not let him get his America first agenda throw. So there's that. There's COVID. There's, you know what I'm saying? There's the Epstein stuff. There's all types of crime. I mean, COVID, you think about it. They freaking locked down the country and didn't disclose that they made it. They made the germ themselves. Fauci was like the hero of the response for like a year and a half before they finally came out that it was him who made it. I mean, just and they have just at every turn protected power. And again, like with the Epstein thing, man, like you don't have to, you only have to know, like, I don't know. You just know like, even if you know like five or six things about it, you're like, okay, this is some type of huge conspiracy. You know, like I don't know exactly what it is. And by the way, the files being released did shake up my interpretation of the whole thing. I tweeted this once, but I kind of, I mean, it's saying it tongue in cheek, but I kind of meant it sincerely. And I used to speculate that Jeffrey Epstein worked for Mossad. And after the files came out, it's looking a lot more like the Mossad worked for Jeffrey Epstein. Exactly. I mean, I did not think he was the Rothschilds guy. I didn't realize that. You know, and so like this thing is a gigantic conspiracy. It's an interesting, limited look into how power really works. And you know what I mean? Like what's really going on? It's like looking through a stained glass window. You don't get a clear picture, but you see the shapes and you realize this is not what I thought it was. I actually came away from reading a lot of the Epstein stuff with the view of Israel that was diminished. I thought Israel had less power. Of course, he was working with Mossad. I said that and got called a Jewator, whatever was just true. So we're also working with CIA and intelligence services around the world, but what he really was doing was acting as an employee of others as a kind of communications hub. So between the biggest stakeholders in the West. And so what you really saw was the governments aren't in charge. There's no meaningful nation state with full sovereignty. Like that's just not a thing. There's a superstructure of who's outlines I can't fully see or even partly see, but it's clearly there. And it's not all being run from the Levant by Netanyahu. He's probably got IQ of 110. He's not a genius. So like, do you know what I mean? Yes. Yes. Israel is just like a place to hide out if you've been accused of a crime, get a passport, do some money laundering, whatever. It's a lot of things, but Israel is not running the world. Yeah. No, there's something that you're absolutely right. There is power structures that we do not fully know about that are way more important as a senator. Of course, if we bought the biggest lie of all, which is a competition between nation states and you know what I mean? Yeah. That's right. I got its own interests, but so does Singapore, China, and India. And it's like, yeah, to some extent, but that's not as soon as you have the free flow of capital, a globalized economy, then you have a globalized government. It's just a fact. And by government, I mean, a governing body, which may be informal or have blurry edges, but it's still totally real. It's way more real than countries. Yeah. How are countries like that's like almost a medieval view? Well, even but countries with kings and armies. It's like so dumb. Yeah, no, that's right. And maybe it was, you know, it's like, it probably wasn't even true in medieval times. - Right. - It wasn't, but like after 1848, like after you had like, the creation of like real, the resemblance or maybe the fiction of nation states, I mean, I think it's more complicated than I'm making it sound, but. - Yeah. - It's clearly not as simple as everyone else assumes. - Yeah, well I know countries actually in their own interests. - It's one. - There's this really great book written by Murray Rothbard, who I mentioned earlier, called The Progressive Era. And it's about, you know, the, it's about, I think that it goes from, might like Theodore Roosevelt for Woodrow Wilson FDR. And one of the things that they talk about is that there was, and this really is true, is that there were like, there were real people who really like meant well, and were kind of in my opinion got it wrong, but you know, the kind of moderate socialist types or the progressives who were like, "Hey, we're such a wealthy country. We should have more of a managed economy so that we can make sure it's working for everybody." But really what ends up happening in The Progressive Era is then all the, you know, all the titans of industry, all the Robert Barons, as they call it, they all got on board with it. And they went, "Oh yeah, yeah, totally. "We should have a managed economy." Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We'll be doing the managing. You know, it was all, it was like all the money interests that they supposedly wanted to reign in, were the guys who ended up getting control of the government anyway. And so that's, this is how it works. It's how it works. It works matter as sponsored by Microsoft. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's the same. The gay pride parade has like a bank of America float coming through it. And you're like, I mean, I know there is some leftist out there who really believes in the gay pride parade, but like something bigger is going on than what your parents do. They know really it's liberation, just trust me. This is gonna be liberation. (laughs) It's too ridiculous, man. (laughs) No. Oh, well, good, thank you for everything you're doing. Oh, I'm sorry if that got, I never get emotional, but I'm sorry to start yelling at you, but that's just, I enjoy it. It's literally nothing makes me happier than to be held that in agreement. You got me, you are not. Dave Smith, you're the best. Thank you. Thank you, sir.