Dave Smith vs. TRIGGERnometry 2

The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables, it's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live U.S.-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. Two, we sound the alarm at points of entry. Three, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at SimpliSafe.com slash Spotify. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit SimpliSafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Observe the North American dad. 50s, great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana. An offer appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, Dang, that's a good offer. The highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle. No one called him boss. He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. Dude, that is a disgusting piece of s**t human being. Donald Trump launched a war of choice. Everyone knows it's a lie. No one believes it's true. It's driven costs up. It's hurt the economy. It's hurt our chances to win the midterms. Everybody's been waiting for it. Let's talk about Churchill. I have the utmost respect for functioning alcoholics. Okay, so what is it you want to argue about? He single-handedly kept Britain in the war long enough to win the war against the greatest evil of the 20th century. The reason you have to undermine the World War II narrative, it's the one counterexample to the overall worldview that you have, which is war is always bad, right? No, I don't think. My worldview isn't that war is always bad. The front is obviously where you want to be in the human centipede. Well, I'm glad we've worked that one out. You're not going to give me any pushback on that? You're just going to let me come on your show and dominate the human centipede portion. I feel like it's an air of expertise of yours that I'm not qualified to challenge. This episode is sponsored by our friends at Hillsdale College. Right after this episode, go check out the incredible online courses, which are absolutely free at hillsdale.edu. Dave Smith, welcome back to Trigonometry. Thank you guys so much for having me. Oh, it's great to have you, man. Listen, we thought the last conversation we had from completely different perspectives was really special, actually. And that's, you know, sure, we'll take some credit, but I thought there was credit to your approach. Well, I appreciate that. I literally was just saying to you guys, I feel the same way. It was one of, that show that we did last year stood out to me as one of my favorites of the year. And just because we did disagree, but it was really good faith, I thought. And I thought there was a little bit of a thing going into it where none of us were exactly sure. Like, we kind of thought it would go this way, but we weren't exactly sure. And I don't know, it's really, I really do value it. You know, obviously when we make these things, we put them out. It's kind of not up to us what that was anymore. Like, everyone's got an opinion on it, and that's fine. But I think to all three of us, we were like, yo, that was cool. That was cool that we were able to do it in the way we did. I saw, you know, it's so funny after it, man, because you have the reaction that kind of we all had, and then you see the way other people take it. First, I saw people, you know, you never try to, obviously, you guys might do a show where there's a million views on it, and there's 5,000 comments. The comments don't reflect the majority of what the people who watched it think necessarily. They reflect kind of the loudest. But I saw people being like, how could you guys be friendly? With Dave, you know? And then I saw my supporters being like, Dave destroyed those guys. And you have people being like, they destroyed Dave. And you're like, guys, just to be clear, none of the three of us think any of this happened. Like, literally, none of the three of us think anyone got destroyed. Nobody really thinks that, like, it was, and also, I don't know, I guess it's just, it was kind of crazy to me to see people be angry at you for just being cordial with me, which, at least from what I know your show, kind of been your calling card the entire time. Like, that's what you do. That is what we do. But a lot of people, most people, I would say, just want their opinion reflected back at them. And that will be true of your audience as well. It's just everyone. But actually, the thing that we always try and do is have people on from the political spectrum. But the reason it was so rewarding for us speaking with you back then, by the way, we're going to get to our disagreements imminently. Of course, I hope so. But the reason it was so rewarding is that, increasingly now, when we talk to people from positions that they don't agree with us, this is particularly true of the progressive left, I have to say, because it's factually accurate, is they don't even know what a conversation is anymore. It's like you're having a discussion and all they want to do is interrupt and derail. And, okay, in a 10-minute Piers Morgan debate, this is the only way to do it, and I get it. But once you're sitting down with somebody for two hours, which is what we often do, it just, like, it's like, ugh, like, why are we doing this? Like, what is the point? Yeah. The thing that I noticed, and I've seen this in several of your interviews with more left-leaning people, which, really, I've got to say, I only see this with the progressive left. And I will say, at some times, maybe with elements of, like, the Warhawks, like the worst of the Warhawks, but where they do this thing, it's very hard, it's very frustrating because you can't really prove it, but you're, like, you're actively, intentionally not hearing the point that I'm making. Like, you're working hard. It's not even like you're not, you're trying to not hear the point that I'm making, and you know you're doing that, and, like, it's just a very frustrating thing. So, yes, I do. I also, I think, whatever it is, I think the three of us have, this is a similarity, despite very different views. Maybe this is more of a personality trait. But it's almost a thing where, like, I want, I don't want to just, like, win the exchange. I want to actually be correct, you know? And, like, the way to be correct is for me to have a good counter to what your argument is. So, like, I want to hear the best version of your argument, and it's going to bother me if I don't have a good counter to that. And, by the way, you might change your mind if you hear a better argument. I mean, for example, if we move on to, like, issues and stuff, I mean, the war in Iran hasn't gone well, and we've been saying that from basically day one, which is very counter to what people expected us to be saying. But we talked to people, and we asked them questions, and we went, I actually don't have a better answer than the one that Robert Papes just sat there and gave us. Right? And we interrogated him for, like, two hours trying to, like, find the chink in the armor. I couldn't find one. Yeah. I mean, I'm almost like, the only chink in Robert Papes' armor that I can kind of find is just any time an academic is ever going, I have the model, and it's going to work this way, I immediately go like, hey, don't speak with certainty on that. There's a lot of different factors here that none of us are ever going to be able to create a model where we account for every single factor. That being said, the way he's mapped out how an escalation trap actually works, I mean, it's been enormously beneficial for me to read his stuff. Also, by the way, I just got to say, because he's blown up off the escalation trap thing, and I don't know if ever, I found Robert Papes back in, like, 2008, 2007. All right, we get it. You're a political hipster, Dave. So I was, when no one was buying tickets to Robert Papes' shows, I was out there jamming with, I actually don't like his later stuff so much. Yeah, yeah. I do like the escalation trap a lot, but his first book, I'm sorry, I shouldn't know this, this is his first book, this is the first book I read of his, I don't know what his first book was, but his book, Dying to Win, it's like the biggest study on suicide terrorism, is just phenomenal. Really highly recommend it. I believe I gave you a shout out on Rogan for this, but I may have been wrong. You, and this is something that's very interesting to me, you were like the only guy I saw who supported the 12-day war, who once this war launched, was like, eh, no, I don't think so. Now, there might be others. Do you want to hear how that happened? Well, sure, but I'm just saying, there's one, I just find it very interesting. You would just kind of think there would be a lot of people in that camp, and yet I don't see almost anybody else, because from my perspective, as you could imagine, when I'm arguing about the 12-day war, the defenses that so many people who were defending the war gave me are all destroyed by this war. You know, no US troops have died, it didn't cost a ton of money, it hasn't turned into a disaster, like all these things. And so it would have just made sense to me that a lot of the people, using those defenses, when they all were different with this war, would have been like, well, wait, this is a different thing. And yet, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, I can't think of another prominent person besides you two. I think I've certainly met a lot of people that would say so more privately. Polls would suggest there's a lot of people who feel that way, who were okay with the 12-day war, but aren't okay with this one. But in the commentary podcast-istan class, I just, all the, it seems like all the people, the Mark Levins and the Ben Shapirs, all the people who are defending this, who are defending the 12-day war, very explicitly, like on the grounds, mocking people like me, you're all concerned about what we're living through right now happening. Just from, you can understand, from my perspective, I was getting mocked last year for being worried about what we're living through this year, and none of them seem to be phased by it. Well, look, there is a steel man version there, which we can talk about, which I think, so the reason, for example, that we, we're perfectly happy to be pro the 12-day war and anti this war is, I don't think these things had to happen. Like, you could have done the 12-day war, and even if you realize we didn't get all the nuclear material, you still go, well, taking this next step doesn't make sense, right? So those things don't have to be connected. There's nothing in the laws of physics that said, we had to go to this war because we did the 12-day war. However, if people like me were like warning, and people like, say, paid warning about an escalation trap, that like we shouldn't have gotten involved in this at all, because it does make it that much easier to get more and more and more dragged in. There's probably a point to that, too. Like, it's probably, so your point is absolutely correct. It is not, like, you could have done the 12-day war and stopped there. There's nothing, there's no laws of logic or physics that say you couldn't have stopped there. It's also probably true that you're more likely to get this war after the 12-day war. Maybe, maybe, but I don't think it's a causal relationship. The mentality of a president who would do the 12-day war to begin with, you're more likely to have. There's a reason why no other president did the 12-day war or this war. Donald Trump did both of them. There's something to that. The fact that he was willing to go to war with Iran once, that same guy went back again. But see, I'm not being argumentative for the sake of it, but to me, they're just completely different situations. Like, if I know you have a gun in your house and you're planning to shoot me with it someday, and I send in an elite unit to snatch the gun out, that's one thing. If I start a gang-based, you know, gangland war in our entire district, that's like a whole different. Based off the gun after you claimed you already smashed the gun last year. Yeah, that makes it a little bit tougher. I'm not denying that's a little bit tougher. It's a whole different kettle of fish, which brings us to the other thing I was going to raise with you about this, which is, I can see the. So this is what I want to explore with you on this issue, because I actually think it's genuinely interesting. The answer that we're going to get Robert Pape back on the show, and the thing I want to explore with him is about the nuclear weapon thing, because. The rationale from the people who support dealing with Iran, right, is, well, look, Dave Smith, Dave Smith's a clever guy, and his argument is if Iran had a nuclear weapon, like, they'd be really safe, right? And that's why they want a nuclear weapon, right? I'm sorry, I'm just not following. My argument is that if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd be safe. Well, I think you'd agree that, for example, North Korea has nukes, because from the perspective that you have, they want to be safe from foreign aggression, right? Well, I mean, is that just my perspective? I think it's just my perspective. I think we'd probably all agree that, yeah, a deterrent is at least part of the reason why all these. Right, that's fair. And also, certainly, with maybe the exception of, well, obviously, with the exception of what's going on in Ukraine, with the exception of the drone bomb campaign in Pakistan, but overall, like, say, since World War II, since nuclear proliferation, we don't really mess with nuclear armed countries. That's true. Yeah, that's totally fair. But what I mean is everyone would agree on that, right? So then the question is, from an American and Western perspective, more broadly, are we okay with Iran having that level of safety from our ability to do stuff, given that their actions are incredibly hostile? Well, I guess it's like the word okay there is doing a lot of the lifting, like, are we okay? I mean, I don't know. Are we prepared to tolerate a nuclear run? Are we? The question is, are you going to launch a war of aggression to stop that? Yeah. And look, no. If that were the question, if it was, to me, from my perspective, if it was Iran is dead set on getting a nuclear weapon, they are breaking out, let's just say, hypothetically, you know, before the 12-day war, they had kicked the IEA inspectors out. They had announced we're breaking to weapons grade and we're building a nuclear weapon. No, I wouldn't say launch a war over that. I don't think it's worth it. We sat as a country and watched Joseph Stalin develop nuclear weapons. We watched Mao Zedong develop nuclear weapons. We watched Kim Jong-il develop nuclear weapons. We didn't launch a war of aggression over any of them. I just don't think you can convince me that these are not the case. I don't think you can convince me that these are not the most evil regimes ever. Mao Zedong had nuclear weapons. Like, this is, no, I wouldn't say launch a war of it. That being said, as I think we argued about this last year and we can do again, that's not what the situation was. I mean, it just wasn't that. We had a situation going into the 12-day war where we had IEA inspections. We had verification of what was going on. We had our own CIA, Mossad, an annual threat assessment, all saying that they had not made the decision to start getting nuclear weapons yet. So launching a war over that, to me, is really crazy. To your point, no, I don't like nuclear weapons at all existing. And I think, you know, I don't know, to get into like abstract libertarian theory or something like that, but it's not a just weapon. It's not like a gun. A gun can be used with a just purpose. Even maybe you could argue a bomb can be used with a just purpose. A nuke really can't. A nuke is civilians being destroyed by definition or its uses. I guess that's not true. But typically, that's where you're going to drop a nuclear weapon. So no, I don't like the idea of Iran getting nukes. I think U.S. policy has pushed, you know, incentivized a lot of these countries. But you would accept that happening over fighting a war, right? Yes. And there are people. But so this is what I'm saying is there are people who have a different threat assessment of that. They believe that Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be very dangerous for the Middle East. It would upset the balance of the Middle East. It would mean that there was the Saudi Arabia would need to get nuclear weapons. And effectively, you get escalation throughout the world now. And now everyone's got nuclear weapons, right? I mean, that's that's someone could make an argument. Sure. I'm not arguing that. Well, I don't know if it's a reasonable argument to say this is the way it would happen for sure. I mean, but I remember the Saudi said if Iran gets nuclear weapons, then we will have to. If Saudis get nuclear weapon, then other people in the region will. Yeah, but China got nuclear weapons and Japan didn't. It's not that. And they may have said because America prevented them. Yeah, perhaps. I'm just saying lots of things like that could happen. Perhaps America prevents Saudi Arabia from getting them. I don't know. I mean, I'm just saying like it's not it's not a given. I don't I'm not trying to downplay the dangers of nuclear proliferation. That being said, there's also like I don't know you. I remember I'm old enough to remember people horror stories about if India and Pakistan get nuclear weapons, then this is going to be like a you don't understand. It's a blood feud. They hate each other. They will use the nuclear weapons like there can also be alarmism about what will happen if a country develops nuclear weapons. And quite often, like in the case of North Korea, essentially what it just means is no one can mess with them now. And now that's not great in the case of North Korea. I mean, I'm not saying I want outside nations to mess with them, but it's allowed them. I guess the regime is in a question at the moment, but it's allowed them to continue oppressing their people all this time. It's not great. I don't think George W. Bush invading North Korea would have been a better alternative, though. You know, I also think as well, if you look at the Iran, one of the main reasons that I was behind it was against it. Sorry. The second one, it's it's pure pragmatism. I was talking to a guy who's ex special forces and I said to him, what do you think? And he went, look, this isn't going to work. Let's take everything out purely on a geographical level. It's not going to work. And so then you have people going, oh, it is going to work. And this is what we should do. You got my man. You've never been in the military. You've never fired a gun. I've just spoken to someone who's ex SAS for about 10 years and he's just broken it down in five minutes. So an idiot like me can understand. As you're saying this, I was literally laughing because I'm just remembering when you guys had what's her name on the show. And she really doesn't like me. I'm not trying to bash her or anything, but it's just a funny moment. The Iranian expat lady who I've debated on and you had her on the show and I literally thought she was like making her case for the war. And I feel like you guys just broke her by after she said everything, you just went. You know, like it was just like like she just goes, Reza Ali has has an army of two million people. And you were like, and what's your source on that? And she goes, his office. And you're like, you know, like, and that just kind of made the whole thing fall apart. I'll tell you, this has been shocking to me through this. Forget the 12 day war, this latest war in Iran. I've seen this from both the kind of arch neoconservatives who are still alive, like what's his name? Not I keep wanting to say Bill Kristol, but not Bill Kristol. The other one, the other neoconservative, who's that? Podhoretz. They were saying this on their podcast. Hey, you guys, we don't support this war. This is crazy. Yes, we've been advocating for war in Iran for for 25 years. But like, no, not like this. This logistically doesn't make sense. I recently debated Alan Dershowitz on the war. The topic of the debate was the war six months in. And he just refused to debate this war. He just goes, no, in theory, I'm for. And you're like, to a certain point, no matter what you're for, in theory, you got to deal with the logistics eventually if you're trying to put something into policy. And it has been shocking. I mean, I got to say, man, I think. Because it's Donald Trump, he's such a unique president in a lot of ways. It's also like, I mean, if Donald Trump is not being honest, it's like, you know, it's Donald Trump. Obviously, he's going to, you know, but this war, it's it's unlike any of the ones I've ever seen, not in terms of a humanitarian catastrophe so far, but just in terms of. How incoherent the sales pitch has been from the very beginning, there was just never any plan. It was always like these crazy announcements like regime change, total, surrender, people take over the government, straight open, all the nuclear, like all these things like how are you going to accomplish any of this? Never. It's never been clear that there was a strategy. The American Revolution wasn't just a row about taxes. It was an argument about who gets to govern, where our rights come from and what government is actually for. That argument never really ended. Hillsdale College's new series, Revolutionary America from Subjects to Citizens, tells us a whole story across six episodes covering the growing conflict with Britain through independence, the war and the writing of the Constitution. You visit the historical sites, hear expert accounts from Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and Valley Forge, and get material that didn't make it into the full length documentary. Watching this as a Brit is a strange experience. For six episodes, you're essentially watching your own country get it wrong repeatedly and then lose. Very educational. Not great for national pride. This is one of more than 43 courses Hillsdale offers on the Constitution, the Roman Republic, founding, Genesis, the Second World War, and more, all built the same way, taught properly, not dumbed down. I couldn't recommend Hillsdale courses more highly. Go to hillsdale.edu slash trigger to watch. It's totally free. Learn the history, understand the founding. Start right now at hillsdale.edu slash trigger. And it's really interesting that you brought up Trump because this is the one thing that it's really damaged him. We've spoken about, is this the end of Trump more times than I care to remember? But you look at this and you go, this is a real thorn in his side, not only politically, but economically as well. Oh, yeah. Well, there's something about, there's certain things that just you tie your presidential legacy to. Launching a war is one of them. And that's not necessarily, I'm not, because we talked about this last time, I'm not claiming that everyone cares about war as much as I do or as much as the three of us do for understandable reasons. But Iraq, how Iraq goes, that becomes George W. Bush's legacy. How Obamacare goes becomes Obama's legacy. You know, you overhaul the health system, like how this works out is going to be part of your legacy. And the bottom line here is that Donald Trump launched a war of choice. Everybody kind of knows this was a war of choice. Even you guys, I don't even think you guys really argue with me on the 12 day war being a war of choice. You just kind of would think it's a, it's a higher stakes choice where there is a potential threat. But you're not arguing like we absolutely don't care. We absolutely don't care. We absolutely had to go to war. We did not have an option in the way that say, like, if Canada bombed Hawaii, you'd say we have no choice but to respond to this or something like that. It's a little, I'm putting it making you an American. Let me just say it in my language and then you can carry on. I would say that the 12 day war was the percentage play. Robert Pape would disagree. He would say you had no chance of taking the nuclear material. I think that's a little certain. Not being a military expert, but nonetheless, you know, I don't think these things are as predictable as people claim. So to have a go at getting rid of their nuclear program is no bad thing. Very little cost, you know, in terms of lives and all. No, right. I don't think anyone got killed, right? I don't know that it's killed that. No, I don't know if it's if it's clear that no, no, I think some Iranians and I think some Israelis might have died in counterattacks. But you know, they're both both those regimes are very hard to get like real information from. No Americans died. And there certainly was very low civilian. And by the way, when you fight a war, you know, people, people dying is tragic, but it was part of the calculus. And sometimes as a country, you might want to go to war. I mean, that's probably where we get into disagreements, but you might want to go to war to protect things that really matter to you. And sometimes tragically, that means some of your people will die. But that didn't happen with the 12. So to me, it was like you roll the dice. You're not guaranteed to get a good result, but you haven't really lost a huge amount by doing it. So to me, it was the percentage play. So, OK, this is an interesting thing. No, that's an that's an interesting point. Let me say this, because I do think. It's interesting in the spirit of how we were saying about our last show and kind of the different camps in some ways that we tend to represent or I'll say this. It's definitely true that there were some people who I admire very much and, you know, people like I think Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer, Tucker Carlson, who I would say got a little bit out over their skis and kind of said with certainty in the 12 day war, like if you do this, Iran will respond. And they were kind of saying Iran will respond more the way they did to this war. There's a clear, very different calculation and a different response that Iran had to the 12 day war and to this day. Now, if you go back to 12 day war, the big thing that people like me were arguing is that that risk wasn't worth it. Like so. So, look, it's kind of impossible to know on the 12 day war. Like if it's Russian roulette and I'm telling you, don't put this bullet to your head and spin and you're going, I like these odds. I will concede you won in the sense that you pulled it. And it didn't blow your head off. It didn't. The Iranians calculation after the 12 day war was still to essentially go, we just really don't want it, man. And so they they did this response where they gave advance notice. They hit an American base. Nobody was hurt. So they could say, look, we did respond. We had to do something. We can save face with our own people. But enough. And Trump took the off ramp. Now, I even told you last year at the time, I gave Trump all the credit in the world for taking that off ramp. But just to be clear, had the Iranians responded to the 12 day war? The 12 day war, which is every expert concedes they could have the way they did to this war, we don't get out of the 12 day war easy. It's it becomes this that we get we get sucked into. So so you're right in the sense that I will grant you now, I would from my perspective, I'd compare this more to like you had eight shots of whiskey and I told you not to get in your truck and drive home. You didn't listen to me. You did it. But like you made it home in one piece. There's a problem. You're right. You could have stopped there. You got away with it. Hold on. Hold on. There's one thing that's worth, I think, saying is those both of those analogies. You're presenting it as pure danger for no gain. Right. So putting a gun to your head and playing Russian roulette, drinking eight shots of whiskey and driving home, the upside is very low on driving home. You could. OK, there was an upside that you you got rid of an imaginary nuclear weapon or whatever. Fine. Fine. Listen, from my perspective, there is a little unfair, right? Yeah. You're being caricatures, which is fine. No, I think it's all fun and games. But let's just be real for a second. The potential upside. If you are. Can. Concerned about Iran developing nuclear weapons, which a lot of people, I think, understandably are, is you had a chance to destroy their nuclear program, solving this giant problem with a very low risk, someone like me would argue, of escalation because you're not creating. I mean, the Robert Pape analysis of this, the reason they didn't react to that war the way they have is it wasn't existential. Now you're making it existential. You are now at a point where they. Well, clearly. Yes, clearly. The calculation was changed after the first strike of of this war, where they took out the ayatollah and his family also knew leadership was put in position. So that changes things. It's different people making calculations, which you want before. Sure. But also whoever. Right. So the event of killing leaders and the emotional charge of attacking your country, killing the family members of leaders, I'd imagine that'd be a pretty emotional, you know, like if you killed even people who like are right now don't like Obama and are saying, like, Michelle Obama has a dick on the Internet or whatever. Even people like that, if a foreign government murdered. Right. His girls, you know, who are adults now at this point. But we knew them in America as these little girls. If someone else murdered those girls, that'd be a serious thing. So that also just saying the person or the group of people making their own risk tolerance is different because they're different people. And from everything I've read, younger and seemingly more radical. But yes, so the calculation changed there and they went, hey, if we don't give America a black eye, this is existential, whereas the calculation after the 12 day war was like, if we give America a black eye, this is existential. Like, if we give them a black eye, Trump's going to respond in a crazy way. Therefore, the 12 day war analysis is not Russian roulette. It's very high potential upside for relatively low risk. This is my view. No, the reason, okay, listen, it's a separate argument. I still agree that it's Russian roulette, but I grant that making the example Russian roulette presumes that I'm right about the fact that you didn't even get some big victory. It's a very useful example to your point. But the point I'm making is kind of separate. And the point I'm making is that when you talk about this with Donald Trump, right, when you launch this after you've already claimed that we get for the, we played Russian roulette or a different example you come up with where Russian roulette shoots a tumor out of your brain. There's a big upside to it. But we got away with it. We've destroyed that. But now we just want a little more. Like it's even presented as a choice from the beginning. And in order to make it not a war of choice, Donald Trump now has to tell, again, he gets a little cover because he's Trump. He's the most bombastic, you know, hyperbolic human has ever existed. But Donald Trump has to tell the biggest whopper of a lie that absolutely nobody thinks is real. Literally, no, I've never seen a president lies into war. And I've seen a lot of them where no one believed the official story. No one. But right now, Donald Trump is saying his latest, by the way, he just upped it the other day. It's not L.A. anymore. It's the world. But Iran was two weeks away from a deliverable nuclear weapon and they were about to destroy America. And that's why we had to go to war. You've launched this war that pretty much there was consensus in the country. We really don't want to fight any more of these stupid wars. And he's actually admitted that, yeah, this is cost. This has had costs. This is it's just such a, a remarkable moment where you have like he's literally telling you that for this thing that you don't really care about, that you that we didn't need to do. I'm sacrificing all the things that you put me in for, which are to stop the Democrats to to get prices lower, to make America great again, drain the swamp, all this stuff. We're sacrificing all of it. It's crazy to me. This is it. You guys are here in the United States of America on the last two weeks before it's all over. The Democrats take the House back. And you already know what the next two years of politics are going to look like. It's just going to be relentless impeachments, trials shows, you know, it's crazy. So I guess the question following on from that is, is this the end of MAGA? Well, I guess that depends on what you mean by MAGA and what you know, like MAGA at this point has come to just mean the people still supporting Trump. At least that's what it seems like to me. You know, make America great again, which was not Trump's original. I think some I think Reagan used something. It was, yeah, but he jumped on it and made it his. It's a really brilliant, you know, never think about it. It's really incredible. It's four words that convey at least four crucial thoughts, like one crucial thought per word. It's make America great again. I'll let you know in one like little thing we used to be a great country we are no longer a great country the situation is fixable and i'm the guy who's gonna turn it around like it's so much information in one little thing it was a brilliant you know political strategy donald trump is a to say he's a unique figure is like the understatement of the century i mean there it's like who could have taken out the bushes and the clintons who could have you know against the will of the obamas against the will of of brennan's deep state and clapper's nsa like who could have done this you know like almost if you were writing it on paper it's a video game we need to draft a player who can do this okay make him the richest guy ever and the brashest guy ever and the most famous guy ever and the most callous guy ever and the most camera ready guy ever and like it's such a so when you say like is that well yeah trump's gonna be done something else has to come after this um i think like much of the principles much of the things that donald trump ran on and got americans excited about there's still mass support for i think that you know i'd like to think the areas where i really do look at us as like brothers in arms like soldiers like the areas like like i mean this very sincerely even though this sounds kind of douchey to say it like this but like the people fighting against woke insanity with big platforms are like i don't know man there's a really important service done in all madness that has swept the Western world over the last 15 years. And it needs to be combated. And it also can't stand up to daylight, you know. And so that's like what's so amazing about guys who do what you do with like topics like that. But anyway, that we still won that fight. Like it's 80. Try reintroducing trans and kids today in America. Dude, it's unpopular. Like so. I don't know if someone who's against that can still be popular in elections. The open borders is still unpopular. Trans and kids is still unpopular. Fighting stupid wars is still unpopular. Debasing your currency is unpopular. So like we just kind of need. Like there is potential there for that movement to continue, I guess. I mean, the old adage, the very famous adage is it's about the economy, stupid. And you're looking at the American economy. You're looking at diesel prices. Diesel prices are affecting his base because these are people, you know, you've got, you know, they work in haulage, they work in farming, they work in manual labor. These are the people who need diesel the most. And these prices rising are going to affect them. Yeah. I mean, it's whatever percentage of people who just have a pickup truck. You know, I mean, not every pickup truck takes diesel, but a huge percentage of them do. And and of course, you know, the as you guys know, well, like the price inflation was such a huge part of his mandate, you know, to for success or excuse me for his second term. And I've always felt politically speaking, you know, I've always felt like, you know, I've always felt like, you know, like, if I want to be completely fair here, if we want to give the devil his due, you know, Donald Trump benefited a little bit from the fact that he lost the election in 2020, went away as the ramifications for the year that were 2020 kind of came due in 2021, like in 2020. And I don't know as much about the way England handled it, but we locked down forty nine out of 50 states for at least some period of time. We put like tens of millions of people out of the country. And we put like tens of millions of people out of the country. And we printed like I think five or six trillion dollars and passed like five trillion extra dollars of spending bills in the Congress just to like hold things over. My point being, the next year there was going to be some price inflation, no matter who was sitting in the Oval Office. And yet Joe Biden inherited that. And then all the Trump supporters got to say, look at how bad this Biden economy is. Now, Biden kept printing the money and spending the money. So he kept making the problem worse. But anyway, as Donald Trump comes in here now, those guys that you're talking about, they've not only had to deal with it, which is still with you. The prices haven't gone down. They've gone higher under Trump. The wages going up are like pathetic. And and now you have higher diesel prices. So it's like, yes, it's literally being told that like people whose families are falling apart, who are slipping through the cracks, that you're going to have to tighten your belt a little bit more when explicitly I think that's what, you know, so much like what you talk about, like the climate agenda, the woke agenda. So much of that was always telling people to tighten their belt a little bit more. And so now you're asking for something that isn't even this grander, you know, like that's the climate like demand essentially. Right. Is like you sacrifice your standard of living for this, which, by the way, won't make a difference. It won't even make a difference in the greater scheme of things. I think that's the way a lot of people feel about the wars as well. How many of these projects do we got to sit here and wait? When does the you know, when I met Benjamin Netanyahu guaranteed me in 2002, these positive reverberations that we're going to sweep through the region? Well, we've been launching his wars ever since. Well, it brings us to get him. It brings us to the so the interesting part of this conversation here, because with all of this stuff and like with the Israel Gaza debate, the only reason I personally get involved in it is I really dislike people being dishonest. And right now I'm seeing Trump basically using Zelensky to divert attention away from his Iran. I mean, that's what's happening. Oh, clearly. Like the diesel prices have fuck all to do with Ukraine. And he's done this amazing deal with Russia. Nothing. Yeah. I was just reading about it the other day. It's not in this month. They will deliver not zero point two seven percent of global monthly diesel supply. Like it's literally got nothing to do with Ukraine. Dude, it's so crazy because I've been on and I mean, I don't know that we I wouldn't maybe we're not exactly at this point on polar opposite ends of it. But at a certain point, we certainly were on polar opposite ends of the issue with Ukraine. But man, I got to say, and my politics much more would have been like we shouldn't be backing Ukraine in this fight. We shouldn't have entangling alliances. We should do business with everyone. Including do business with Russia because we have 90 percent of the world stockpile nuclear weapons. Let's have good relations between the country is kind of my default starting place. But like you said, it's also just to after years of first of all, Ukraine didn't just pick a fight with Russia. Okay. Ukraine has been told explicitly since at least 2014 by the entire West. We got your back. Hey, if you have this fight, we got your back. And I'm sorry. Like as I have been saying, by the way, you don't need nuclear weapons. Well, we're looking. This is after that. I'm talking about way after they denuclearized, which I don't know exactly how that would have worked. Like, you know, Ukraine staying a nuclear state. There were lots of problems with that. But even way after they denuclearized. No, we're saying like stand up to Vladimir Putin who's trying to put all this pressure on you to join his economic deal. Join the EU instead. We got your back. He won't mess with you. You're with us. Don't worry. Okay. Even if we can't give you NATO membership, we'll give you joint military exercise. If he attacks you, we'll back you up. Like it's it's literally going to a bar with your your smaller friend and being like anyone messes with you. I got your back for years and years and years. I've been I've been talking about the moral hazard that comes with this type of policy for years. But then at the end of that, when you're still in the fight to snake you in the back and do business with the other guy, just like as you said, just so you can have a headline, not even to solve the problem, but just so that a couple weeks before midterms, there is a headline that says big diesel deal. Maybe the markets react by coming down a little bit. Some voter, the guy you're talking about who's struggling a little bit goes. I just read in the paper Trump made a big a big diesel deal because if they read into it the way you did, they'll find out it's nothing. It's like that's dirty, man. I'm sorry. I got to agree with you on that. There is. And now you have Steve Witkoff in the Kremlin calling Vladimir Putin a humanitarian. And you just go like, shut up. Like you just this is just dishonest and it's despicable. It really is. Also, it would I would have respected it more, man. If like, as you know, because you you know, you you follow this thing for years. It's not as if there wasn't a conflict going on through Trump's first four years. Right. Like, I mean, Vladimir Putin had not invaded the country yet, but there was a there was a civil war. Vladimir Putin had certainly spent sent forces and maybe hadn't invaded with the whole army, but was certainly there were Russian special ops or whatever the hell they call special operations forces over there in the country. There was Russian money and weapons flowing in. There was a hot war going on where people were dying. So like Donald Trump in this period of time in his first four years sent weapons into Ukraine. He's also been in this time for two years. He's had to do that. He's doing this right before midterms. My point is almost like, hey, if you wanted to break with U.S. policy of like supporting Ukraine and you wanted to have detente with Russia and rearrange it there, you had all the opportunities in the world and you just didn't have the courage. You just didn't ever want to spend political capital on any of this. So it's particularly kind of cowardice, I think, to do it at the last minute. Well, it's interesting that you use that word because it is a word that I think is appropriate. And the thing is, it's not only about the headline of big diesel deal. It's also about the headline of Zelensky being unreasonable. So you can put the blame on him when the blame does not belong there. Well, I've always thought I've always, you know, when John Mearsheimer said in 2015, I guess it was. And I always give him credit for this because like in the context of 2015, at least in the Western media, I mean, everyone was celebrating at this point the success of the Maidan revolution and I guess the Yanukovych. I'm sorry, the why am I blanking on his name? Who's the guy who followed Yanukovych? Yushchenko. Yes. Or he might have even been Poroshenko. Poroshenko was before. Yes. He came right before. But so they were celebrating. Victoria Nuland was talking about how they joined the EU. This is now they're now part of the West. They're a European force. Everyone was celebrating it. Gideon Rose was bragging on the Colbert report about how he stole Robin away from Batman, and John Mearsheimer said. the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path. And I remember that phrase because I had to look up what primrose path meant. And I was like, that sounds awfully nice. What does that mean exactly? Like you could almost kind of figure out what it meant, but it's Shakespeare, like leading you down the path to your death that has nothing but beautiful roses next to it. I'm sorry, I'm not a well-educated person, but I was like, oh, that's a beautiful way to put it. But that's kind of been my perspective this whole time. And so I don't look at it like, you know, Zelensky, Zelensky's a leader. I, you know, political leaders, as we said last time, they're all mafioso leaders. I'm not saying any of them are angels. They're all corrupt. But like, no, like the West used Ukraine very clearly, like used Ukraine as like a thorn to kind of jab Russia with. And this ended up getting Ukrainians just like absolutely decimated. And, you know, to turn around and blame Zelensky for it now. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. I don't even think it's about blaming Zelensky because Trump is real. Trump is. Oh, no. Yeah. He's just using him to distract from the consequences of his war that he's actually having said, by the way, that he would end the war in Ukraine on day one. And by the way, my view is he actually had the opportunity to do that when he came in for a second term. The only problem is he cut off his leverage at his own knees with his rhetoric, because the way to end the conflict was to say to Putin, look, we can do a deal that neither you or Zelensky are going to be able to do. And he's going to do it. And he's happy with now. Or I actually will give them all the support that you fear. And again, you might say that's risks escalation. I would say this is negotiation one on one, one on one, which Trump is very familiar with and regularly uses, which is big threat, big reward. And yeah, I mean, like in pure theory, it's not that threat versus reward, like a carrot and a stick can't be used in negotiations effectively. But I mean, I guess I'd be a little bit skeptical after the huge weapons packages that Biden and the EU had had poured in there that that was going to get him to back down. I think at that point he had kind of understood, like, I'll win it, grinding it out. And Vladimir Putin doesn't seem to very much care how many people got to get grinded out. And, you know, I think that perhaps, you know, probably because Donald Trump, I don't think really has a deep knowledge of any of these things, but he probably knew that there was a point early in the war where Vladimir Putin was willing to make this deal if you'd carve him off the Donbass. And so Trump probably just figured I'll be willing to do that. I'll carve him off the Donbass. And so Trump his little piece of Ukraine. And that's how easy it'll be to solve this whole thing. You can solve it in a day. The problem was that by the time Donald Trump got in there, Vladimir Putin was going, you're offering to give me what I already have. That's not really anything. And then I do, I also think that once once he got sucked into the talk about the mineral deals and all of that, it ended up just being so convoluted and corrupt and now just getting more and more entangled into this situation. It's just, you know, I don't know. It's the I guess it's just like, he never came in with a clear vision of like, this is what my parameters are. This is how we're going to make this peace. It was always just the war wouldn't happen if I was there and I'll solve it. And sorry, it's going to require a little bit deeper of an understanding. And speaking of the deeper understanding, I think it's worth explaining to people that the reason Ukraine can't do what Trump is asking is that basically they've made a defensive position called the Fortress Belt in the middle of the Donbass. And he does have other territories in addition. But the Ukrainians are effectively defending the most effective defensive line that they have. Right. For them to give that away in this negotiation so Trump can lose slightly less badly in the midterms means the end of their country because they are now unable to defend their country not only now, but the next time something like this happens, which it will because Ukraine has been going through this for years. So I think it's really important to think about what Trump's doing. He's putting pressure on the guy he actually has leverage over to try and do a deal that he can't do because it would be suicidal for Ukraine to do that deal. Anyway, what's interesting to me is returning your compliment about being honest is you're one of the few people I think because you're not wedded to MAGA that can say this, whereas loads of people, as we know from speaking to people in America on the way that you have. Yeah, I guess that's right. I guess it's because I just never was. I don't I never saw Donald Trump in the same way a lot of Americans saw him where they got super emotional about him. He was either Hitler or he was the savior. It was never any of that to me. You know, I had already decided that I hated everyone. They were all a bunch of criminals who lied us into war and they were all just there to extract wealth from the people and benefit their friends. So when Trump came along to me, it was always just like, oh, well, this is funnier than it was before. This is more entertaining. And also, yeah, I'm just I guess I'm I'm much more wedded to my principles than I am to any politician. I also kind of got dragged into supporting Donald Trump. Not that I exactly got dragged in, but it was like I called it at one point the most unenthusiastic vote in human history. You know, like I just I don't like politicians. I don't like Democrats or Republicans. I didn't. I was so disgusted by the Democratic establishment and what they had handed us over the years. And I I still stand by being disgusted over all that. I mean, I don't want to talk about this stuff. That definitely contributed to it. There were some signals, you know, to suggest that maybe he wouldn't go in this direction. I do think it's been a bit shocking what's happened over the last year. I think perhaps part of it is like like an incentive kind of snowball thing. You know, like once you've lost Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, but Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin still love you, you might as well play to them instead of playing to the people who don't like you or something like that. But it's almost just seemed like it's gotten like where we are now from where we started. I don't I think that Donald Trump. You remember, this is kind of painful to admit, right? Even though we all knew this was true, you know, liberals would stand up 10 years ago and they'd go, he's a disgusting person. You know, what a creep. And you're like, well, yeah, OK, we know that we know. But you're running Hillary Clinton and he's calling her out for what a fraud she is. And I'm kind of enjoying this creep pointing out that she's acting like she's such a creep. Your husband's a creep, too. Like, I don't know. There was something. But look, I'll tell you, the one that really got me was when when Joe Kent resigned over the war. I feel however you feel about that. This is the counterterrorism director. There's a very high position to be. You know, we've seen a lot of wars. A lot of innocent people have died over the last 25 years over wars we were lied into. That's maybe the highest level we've ever seen. I don't know. Is there a higher one? I know some people resigned on Biden over Gaza, but nothing that high level. So he resigns. He goes, I can't be a part of this. I'm sorry. Like, I just can't be a part. There's a guy who's a decorated veteran himself who lost his wife serving in a war under Donald Trump. Donald Trump's response to that is to immediately talk about what a loser he is and then talk about how he remarried too quickly. Dude, that woman died in Syria under President Donald Trump's watch. And he immediately like that is a disgusting piece of shit human being. And I'm just not going to not say that. You know what I mean? Like, I don't care what I voted for last night. Like, I it's not to me the thing that really and me and you have talked like off air about this a little bit. But like the thing that motivates me more than anything else about this podcast to stay on the space and whatever it is that we're doing, where the three of us have these conversations and make way too much money for it, whatever this is. There's a public record and my son is going to be a man someday and he's going to know where I stood, you know, like in what I said. And like the idea that I would just like bite my tongue on that, not point out what a horrible man you are, like just as a man, as a man who's married with kids, someone lost their wife, dude, you should never tell your president, the United States should never talk about their wife that way. But she died under your watch in a war we never should have been involved in that you promised to get us out of and then failed to. I mean, I sometimes I wonder, like, are people not afraid of God? Are they not afraid? Are they not afraid that God exists? Like if I ever did something like that, it would terrify me that my son's going to know this one day and that I'm going to be confronted by my maker and have to explain this. A lot of you listening run your own business and plenty of you do it on your feet, on site and all weathers. This one's for you. The founder of True Work was framing houses for a living when he turned up to work one day in a pair of rock climbing trousers and they outperformed the heavy denim and canvas he'd been wearing for years, which raises an obvious question. Why does most workwear still look and perform like it did 100 years ago? So we build something better. The T2 Work Pant. The T2 is an all season soft shell work trouser, double woven fabric with four way stretch so you can crouch, kneel and climb without fighting your own clothes. A water resistant finish that sheds light, rain and snow. Tough enough to stand up to abrasions and tears on the job site. Articulated knees and nine pockets, each one of which is made from a single piece of fabric. So if you're looking for a specific reason, which is roughly six small pockets, then I have things to put them in. It's been refined for years based on the feedback from the trades people who wear it every day. And I wear them. The quality is genuinely excellent and they last. Get 15% off your first order at truework.com with code TRIG. That's For me, it was Rob Reiner. Ooh, yeah, that was bad. too man yeah and you know and you know him and rob they they disagreed but the fact that his son who was a paranoid schizophrenic murdered his father and his mother and then trump came out and basically you know shat on both of them you're like yeah this guy just died you're the president of the united states and to be clear it's that part because it's like i'm a stand-up comic i know you guys started and you still do stand-up like there's i'm not against shane gillis in the nightclub or tony hinchcliffe down at a comedy club making some vicious joke about it because you almost go in there going like listen we're coping with obvious tragedy here but yeah dude and also man this is this is the most boomer thing i'm ever gonna say that you guys got on record here but rob reiner was part of americana man like forget what the local the the latest little fight over the latest fad for five minutes is but like a part of america just died man that's rob reiner all the family like just i mean i don't know it's just for that it's such a sad thing when something like that happens i actually forgot about that till you just brought it up but yeah the kent one got me more because it's just like she died under you as the commander-in-chief but so also as as i've been saying for years like i'm against all these wars because i'm really against them i'm against government spending because i'm really against i really believe in all these things and from my perspective trump has been terrible this is just a a travesty of an administration so i mean the thing that's done that's undeniably impressive is dealing with the border it's done great with that that's incredible but i i want to come back i mean you bring up joe kennan it speaks to a very important portion of this as well because i feel that i said what pisses me off is when people are being dishonest and i have to say when i look at the narrative of israel tricked america it tricked donald trump specifically into war to me that's just a cop-out and a lot of people in maga use that cop-out now because they don't want to acknowledge the reality donald trump wanted to go into this war it's like my four it's me saying you know what you know what happened dave my four-year-old tricked me into buying ice cream for him yesterday oh my god i just got so tricked well if your four-year-old was benjamin netanyahu people might believe that more than they would but benjamin netanyahu is a more effective politician than my four-year-old but you get the point a country of nine million people right very little power actually along with every other country in the world tries to quote unquote air quotes trick america every country in the world is trying to influence america because it's the hegemonic power of course you are every country in the world is trying to influence china in his direction as well right donald trump went into this war and this is why we changed our opinion over the time because this we i mentioned do you want to hear how we got to our view on on on iran we came to the us and the first thing we did was we went on rogan and we were talking about this and people can look this up and i'm there going the coins in the air and i'm there going the coin's in the air and i'm there going the coin's in the air and i'm there going the coin's in the air and i'm there going the coin's in the air and i'm we don't know how this is going to end. And my thing was, like, there's a plan. There's got to, there's, there could be a plan. There could be a plan. And they, you know, the American military, the American, all of these giant institutions, they have massive budgets. I've, you know, a lot of people outside America like to make fun of Americans as dumb and whatever. There's a lot of dumb Americans, but the smartest people in the world that I've met have been in the world. Yeah, we got some geniuses too. You got some geniuses too, right? So a lot of these geniuses are working in these big, well-funded departments, crafting shit and thinking of shit and blah, blah, blah. And then we spend three weeks in America actually talking to people close to the halls of power, people who are in the room or just outside the room or talk to the guys, blah, blah, blah. And we quickly realized there is no plan. This was just somebody who got carried away after Venezuela, very excited by the possibility of like doing cool shit and look at how powerful we are and whatever. And that's basically, and we were like, we spent three weeks going like, no, that can't, no, that can't be the reason that the world's most powerful nation ever launched the war halfway across the world. Because the people at the top just got together in a room and there's a bit of groupthink and the guys made sure that he's surrounded by people that agree with him. So information that's countered doesn't really reach him. But that is exactly what Putin got. That's why Putin is in a four and a half year, three day special military operation in Ukraine. I mean, they really did. And I've, I mean, I've read a lot about this and I really am pretty convinced that the neoconservatives really believed that if you put a Hashemite king into Iraq, that the Hashemite king with control of Iraq could convince Hezbollah to be friends with Israel. Like they really bought. But that's at least a plan. It's a wrong plan. But I'm just saying, OK, but the plan here was right. This is it's a dumber plan, but the plan was it'll work. No, it's not. No, no, it's not a plan. It's more of a hope. OK, but like, yeah, I mean, honestly, it's kind of just a hope that a Hashemite king put into Iraq would get Hezbollah to be friends with Israel. My point being that I would say don't underestimate the hubris that men in positions of power can find themselves in. It's like a thing that we're very vulnerable to power and we're very. Human beings. I mean, general like men were vulnerable to power and we're vulnerable to hubris. And we're especially, you know, like say like coming off something like Venezuela. It is like I'm just saying, don't underestimate how much that can play a factor of being like, you know, I'm on a roll. Oh, I don't underestimate that anymore. I don't even like the audience. But that was shocking to us. Yeah, I well, I agree. But that is that is our understanding of what actually happened. Right. So so why is it Israel tricked America? This is a bit I really don't. Well, let me just say. Real quick, because I want to I want to answer that. But I just real quickly want to say on the Joe Kent thing and the reason why maybe I'm a little bit more forgiving of him than that, because I do I do certainly agree with you that in the tone of a lot of things I've seen him say, he's almost excusing responsibility for Donald Trump. You know, like it's almost like Mr. The president was like almost as a force that did it. You know, the Israel. I'm not talking about specifically. It's just the narrative. But I want to make the point specifically about Kent, which is that I did notice him doing that quite a bit. And then he would almost be kind of ass kissy with Trump, where he'd be like you and only you, sir, can walk away from this right now and you have the unique strength and all this. But I always did take that as like, look, this is the only way you're going to maybe reach Donald Trump. And this is his former counter. Like this isn't just me on a podcast saying this. This is literally a guy who he picked to have the most important job keeping Americans safe from terrorism. So like maybe that's the way to play it from that. There was a while before Tucker broke with Trump. Where Tucker was very clearly like against all the things Trump was doing, but still wasn't quite bashing Trump. And I think it's a little bit of a weird thing. J.D. Vance is in this position, too. You're in a little bit of a weird position. If you're at all in Trump's orbit and you want to continue to have his ear, then you can't bash him or you're you're done. That's fine. That's a separate. That's a separate. That's fine. But the broader point that you're saying, like, should Trump, you know, have his agency or whatever diminished or should he? Well, clearly, my position is no on that. I mean, Donald Trump is responsible no matter what exactly is the story of how he got it. Now, the official story from the newspaper of record in the United States of America is that it was Benjamin Netanyahu and the head of Mossad who convinced him that it would be easy and that they could get the guy. They didn't convince him. Nobody knows who convinced you. What we know is that they made the case and that they presented information to him. We know they presented information and that nobody else in his cabinet really bought into it. Even the most war hockey of the people in his cabinet were like Marco Rubio said fanciful. Right. Whatever the New York Times. But that makes my point, which is nobody convinced anybody. We don't know. Hold on. Hold on. So if all of his cabinet thought this is B.S. Right. He is the outlier here. Right. It's not about him being convinced. He clearly wanted, like you said, he was on a roll and he was like, let's do this as well. Let's see. I'm not I'm not admitting that that's a huge part of the story here. But you also can't just completely omit, which is just objectively true, that first of all, Netanyahu immediately afterward bragged about he was just bragging. His major pitch to during his election right now to Israel is what his 5000 hours on American television and meeting with American presidents culminated in this war in Iran. He said this is the culmination of my life's work. Lindsey Graham, the late Lindsey Graham, was on record talking about going to Israel and meeting coaching Netanyahu on how to get Donald Trump to be persuaded by this idea of going to war. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has been advocating for this war for 25 years. This is the neoconservatives crown jewel. Wesley Clark, seven countries on the list of seven. So now listen, none of that is a direct argument about exactly what convinced Donald Trump in that room this time to go. However, I think when you omit all of that, it's not as if people are just making something up out of thin air that Israel. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying the Israelis didn't present Trump with information that they believe to be accurate, I imagine. But I'm not saying that the Israelis didn't present Trump with information about what would happen if he started this war. But what I'm saying is, there will be Chinese delegations going into the White House for the last 25 years saying we we really think this would be in the best interest of America. And there will be Russian delegations, there'll be Chinese, British delegations, Somali delegations go and we need more learnings, whatever, right? There'll be lots of this going on. It's ultimately up to the president United States to make those decisions. Look, if I have a tough time buying that there's not something more to the story than either of us have just brought. Like, it's just he got convinced that this would be easy. It's just, it's a bit tough. Perhaps that's true. Perhaps that's the case. It's a bit tough for me to go, but really? You never thought to yourself, like, I'm really rolling the dice here, and what if the regime doesn't fall? And what, I mean, there must also, I know reading, because this has been much more detailed, but I know that I've read a bunch, in fact, John Mearsheimer wrote a bunch about this, and Scott Horton in his book, Enough Already, has a great portion on this stuff, where in 2007, you know, when Dick Cheney was trying to get George W. Bush to invade Iraq, like, George W. Iran? I'm sorry, Iran. Iran. I'm sorry. So, this is by late in Bush administration. He's like, we got to go for Iran now. Because Iraq is going so well. Well, this is the, George W. Bush has finally, like, had it with Cheney at this point. And, you know, he's like, everyone hates me because I've been listening to you this whole time, you know. So, but I know for a fact that, the Pentagon really sat George W. Bush down. And we're like, hey, here are the real hardcore. Now, you got to remember, this is also at a time when the war in Iraq and Afghanistan were going on. So, we had hundreds of thousands of troops in the region. So, like, what you're seeing right now is nothing compared to what the targets around would have had. But I just, it's hard for me to imagine no one gave Donald Trump this, like, you're telling me no one in the Pentagon got to him and went, what we would have known? You know, like, you were just talking about how impressive some of these people in the Pentagon are. No one went, so they will close the Strait of Hormuz. So, they will touch our bases. So, this will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. This will not, you know, there will be casualties. Like, that just seems hard for me to believe. But I guess, perhaps, that's true. Either way, whether that's true, look, if there was something else that persuaded Donald Trump, or if Donald Trump, let's say in the most conspiratorial version you have, Donald Trump is a pedophile in the Epstein files, and they have evidence that he was a pedophile, and they're blackmailing him to get him into the war. It's still 100% his fault. Okay, don't go into a war. Come out and talk to me about this guy. So, no matter what the scenario is, I am holding Donald Trump 100% responsible for it. That being said, I don't think he's a pedophile who was caught in the Epstein files. I certainly don't have reason to believe that. I do think that the Likudniks, the neocons, and the broader Israel lobby are very largely responsible for why we're in this war, why we're even in this conflict to begin with. No, that doesn't make sense, Dave, because you just said, I hold him 100% responsible, and then you say the Likudniks are mostly responsible. Okay, so let me be so clear to this. Let me try to say this. If I hire you to kill a person, I hold you 100% responsible for doing it, for killing the person. I'm also 100% responsible for hiring. So I don't know what that means. You have no less agency. I have no less agency. We're all responsible for the things we do. But it's a whole different situation here, because President Trump is somebody who spent his entire life having stuff pitched to him, right? One of the things, that happens when, I don't know if you, I'm sure you've discovered this as well, when you have money or people think you have money, suddenly all these people emerge out of the woodwork. Amazing ideas for how to convert your money into their money, right? Yes, I have. So he's been dealing with this his entire life. People are coming to him and saying, you know, Mr. Trump, this is a great deal. This is a great idea. We should do this. We should do that. And a lot of them are going to be well-intentioned but wrong about the reality of what it's going to cause. Now, if you, as someone who takes a deal of that kind, or takes information that those people genuinely believe, let's say, and you act on it and you get a wrong outcome, that's 100% on you. Yet what I see, particularly in the new media space, is literally no one wants to say, except you, Donald Trump is responsible for this war. It's all Israel tricked America. No, so I'm saying that's, listen, and it makes no sense to even be more angry at Israel. Even if that's your perspective, it's like, so you should be angry at your own leaders for going with that. Also, as you said, why would Israel even have to trick America, right? Because America is the superpower, because this is where we got the weapons. This is where we make that stuff. I mean, that's like, right? So like, that's, I would be more angry at Donald Trump either way. But like, to your example, to use your example, if I pitch a capitalist on investing $10 million in some idea I have, and I just lose all of the money because it's a terrible investment, yes, that's on him. He chose to invest the money. It's also on me that my pitch was that bad that I like, I don't know, it's on both of us. We both failed together in that venture. So look, I'm just saying, if you're, if you're a, just a pundit on cable news or something like that, and you've been advocating for war and around all these years, I'm not saying you're responsible for the president going, but it's like, hey, look, you got your policy that you've been advocating for all these years. Now I'm going to look at you as it's a disaster. I was right. The tricking thing seems to me like, excusing the real decision maker. Everyone's always trying to trick everyone though. You know, like if you get tricked, that's on you. Like, I don't even know, you know, I mean like, yes, it was like from my perspective, and I think probably yours too, right? Like I've heard you say this before. Israel's goal in this was always regime collapse or regime replacement, right? Or degrading Iran's military. Right. But let's say they have their own angles and they have their own. So if they come to you and go, no, this nuclear threat is really a problem. It's like, okay, well, if you believed that rather than believing that they're also somewhat motivated by their other goals here, have nothing to do with their nuclear program. I do actually think they reasonably believe that Iran wants to develop a nuke because that's what Iran would want to do. I absolutely believe. So number one. And number two, that they rightly believe that would be massively destabilizing to the Middle East. So I believe they're right to be concerned about that. The issue here is, and I think one of the reasons people say Israel tricked America into the war is the assertion is there's a divergence in foreign policy interest between Israel and America, which there is because they're two different countries, right? Therefore, Israel actually knew that this war would go badly, but they were quite happy with that because it's not going bad for Israel. From Israel, from people, this is the argument people make. I'm not saying this is my opinion. Right. The reason people say Israel tricked America is what they mean is Israel knew this Benjamin Netanyahu, let's say it's not Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad knew this war would go like this, but they're quite happy with that because they've used American power to flatten the run. That's what people would say. That to me is a very bold claim. It may be true. It may not be true, but you'd have to have a tremendous amount of evidence to say the Israelis knew this war would go like this. It's very possible, just like elements of the American military and intelligence of a time said, you know, if we do this, this is what will happen. And it's not turned out that way. It's just, I guess it's, it's hard. Yeah. Look, I mean, I'm not even arguing what you said. It's possible people believe. Like I said, I've read enough about it that I, I genuinely believe people believed Iraq would be a cakewalk. I'm convinced of that. Like, I don't think they were lying about that. So that's probably what's happening. This I find a little bit tougher because it's like, I don't know, dude, after the examples of Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and Somalia and Yemen, that you'd still come back to this and not even be a little bit concerned with the, the like, okay, I think there's going to be a cakewalk, but there is at least this, you know, like, okay. I understand that initially, right. This is the thing that, uh, which I'll be happy to get into with Coleman. He was going to come back to this next week. But the thing that, uh, we, we were arguing over the last time, right. When, when general Wesley Clark said that he saw that memo that the plan was in the next five years, just in five years, we're going to take out seven countries. And then John Kiriakou has an interesting footnote that was similar that goes along with it, that he said, I think it was in late 2002, early 2003, that he was in the room where one of the CIA director, his assistant said next year we'll be in Tehran. You know, like the mentality really was, we're going to wrap this up quick and we're going to move on to the next one. Um, okay. But after the, after the, after the after that turned into an eight year civil war where a million people died, you'd think at least, you know, like on the next one, you'd have a little bit of like, and everybody, I know, like on all sides of this, you know, I've, I've been into, in this world for like 20 years now. And I'm in the antiwar.com guys are all my friends. And I bet like these, uh, this has been the war on the table for 25 years that everyone's been writing about. Everyone predicted this. Everyone said Iran's three times bigger. It's a much more mountainous region. It's much more difficult than Iraq or Afghanistan. This is what they will do. If you attack them, they can choke off the straight of her most, they can hit American targets in the region. I guess it's just look, man, I've read, I've read my Thomas soul. I'm a good libertarian. I never want to think that government can not be way more incompetent than you even give them credit for. But like you said before, with all the smart guys in government, it is a little hard to believe that like this wasn't envisioned and particularly for the Israelis. Look, I'm, I'm speculating here. I do tend to think, yeah, they probably knew there was a chance it would go this way. Benjamin Netanyahu is a little too savvy of a guy. He at least knew like it's possible the immediate decapitation won't work, but if we get that we've at least drawn the Americans in the conflict is at least going to degrade around a little bit and maybe it'll degrade them so much that the regime collapses and re we really get what we want. So I agree with you that probably there are real concerns. Definitely. There are real concerns in the Israeli security apparatus about the nuclear around. But I think what you might be leaving out there is that there's other concerns about Iran that have nothing to do with the nuclear program. And in fact, one of the things, well, one of the things that Israel likes about the nuclear program is that that's the thing that moves Americans to be concerned about around. And in fact, this is why Benjamin Netanyahu specifically freaks out every time a deal might be made. It freaks out every time that they might be halting that nuclear program because it removes the pretext for war, which is what he's always really wanted. Dude, they were the ones and it was all the, the Hawks. And this is where I'll say there is something to be said for like the argument - Yeah. the israel lobby or whatever maybe if you want to call them like is advocates of israel in america when when donald trump was in the negotiations for the first round before the 12-day war if you remember donald trump had said publicly at one point which he repeated again the week that we were doing the memorandum of understanding but like they can have some nuclear program we're not going to say they can't have a nuclear program the way all normal countries have nuclear programs for energy and medical you know radiation they can have a nuclear program and it was the hawks insistence that no it must be zero enrichment and ultimately they convinced him and that was where he went with the you have 60 days we got to get to zero enrich and that was just like a non you know but i'm saying to me the only reason why you would have insisted on sneaking a poison pill like zero enrichment because none of you guys care if a random riches to three percent so that no that's not true that's well you don't care you care if they have nuclear programs for energy and medical you know radiation they can have a nuclear program just for civilian power well it's these two things are connected civilian power is very easy to convert into military yeah but it's also very easy once you have the scientists who know how to do it and you've mastered the fuel cycle they can break out if they want to you're i mean listen i'm not saying like like bombing the bunker busters doesn't do any damage or set them back the point being more that like i think if your real concern was the nuclear weapons and you had the opportunity to have a deal that would bring in iaea inspectors lock them in at a low enrichment rate and and monitor the situation seem like you'd be happy about that no i take your issue off the table again see i'm all i'm doing is i'm not even expressing my own opinion particularly i'm just passing what you're saying for logic and and what fails for me here is adopt the position of someone who uh thinks that iran having nukes is a terrible threat to the world it's not an unreasonable position sure right from that perspective you want to hold them back in the journey towards nuclear weapons as far as you can as far as you possibly can therefore we know a civilian nuclear program is a facilitator for a military nuclear program because you create the front the possibility of enriching etc right so from a maximalist position of iran having nuclear weapons is the worst threat in the world it's perfectly logical to want to keep them to no nuclear program whatsoever i guess i'm making the point that it's not i'm not suggesting that it's not logical if you don't want iran to have a nuke to not want them to have a nuclear program at all i'm saying that in the context of the reality where you know that this is going to kill the deal they're not going to accept zero percent enriched uranium because no country is going to accept that and they're no different than that but knowing that they have just a few years ago accepted 3.5 they're at the negotiation table you got a real chance for that the fact my point is the fact that you'd rather blow up the deal than get it down to 3.5 demonstrates that your number one concern isn't the nuclear program so you're not taking on the idea of nuclear weapons but you're not taking on the idea of nuclear weapons but you're not taking on the idea of nuclear weapons but you're not taking on the idea of nuclear weapons i also i also don't i also don't i think there's also a challenge to that which is if you are someone who's really concerned about iran developing nuclear weapons it that seems to me my experience highly correlated with also thinking that iranian regime leaders can't be trusted okay all right fair enough i'm just saying that i think it is not that unreasonable given this entire uh track record to assume that like yes israel the israelis are savvy enough to be well aware that the decapitation strike probably was not going to take out the regime and that they were going like yes we still want to push for this war regardless i don't find that to be like wild speculation a little bit speculative yeah well we don't know the answer to that but maybe that's possible moving on from that one of the things that i really wanted to talk to you about dave it's something that a lot of people aren't talking about we're focusing on mega we're focusing on trump we're focusing maybe on the collapse of mega we're not really talking about the democratic party so what's going on with them i don't know man doesn't look good to me um well so there's what's going on with the democratic party is interesting you know 10 years ago in this country there was essentially politically speaking a civil war on the left and the right uh in the presidential elections right the bernie sanders hillary clinton and the donald trump verse everyone okay now what happened in the on the right if you guys might even remember in 2016 uh what's his name uh previous who was the head of the rnc he floated out laid into the primary season that they might change the rules at the republican convention to not allow donald trump to have the nomination they because they can arbitrarily just say oh we decide you need to have a hundred thousand more delegates and no one meets it therefore we get to pick who the nominee is he floated this out and i'll never forget in one of the moves of pure political genius all right this is the first time i ever looked at donald trump and i thought i think he's a political genius was donald trump in his press conference the next day said and i quote there'll be riots in the next few weeks so he's going to take the nomination from me and it scared the rnc out of doing it he literally went like he really threatened them and he went listen man every barrel-chested man in america is a fan of me and i'm telling him to like do there we will not let you steal this from us which by the way he kind of had every right to do he had won the democratic process just struck okay so on the right side there was a civil war but the north burned the south donald trump won he took over the republican party for better or worse that's what the republican party is now and in fact ultimately even though donald trump was the anti-neocon no new wars he's now been in a weird way you know it's mark levin and ben shapiro's favorite president who anyway it's just kind of a stretch but the only way to take that back over was to take over the trump administration not to find someone else to beat him bernie on the other hand lost but he lost after getting cheated so the democrats had their revolution but the establishment kept control with the insurgency knowing that it was dirty the way they kept the control so that's kind of been like what's been bubbling for for years now on the left now from my perspective kind of like the outbursts of the young leftists like wokeism uh covet insanity whatever over over the last few years that i guess all that stuff has been really soundly defeated in in the grown-up public argument or whatever and so it does seem like that's kind of been left there was a very strange dynamic which i still even being me do not completely understand where after october 7th um the left after just not really caring about foreign policy and war since george w bush all snapped back into really caring about it but that changed the dynamic a lot um the you know it's really changed the dynamic politically in 2024 now going into this new these last two years i think what's happened here is that there's this the left wing of the democratic establishment has been forced to take over the government and they've been forced to take over the government firmly against israel's destruction of gaza firmly against u.s support for israel and firmly against the war in iran and these are all enormously popular issues at this point you know every bit like i think people on the center right or people on the right got to be honest if we're just admitting what's going on here every bit as much 80 20 issues as the trans and kids and the open borders and all the 80 20 issues that we love that we're on the right side of well opposing the u.s support and israel's destruction of gaza and opposing the u.s support and israel's destruction of this war those are 80 20 issues in this country as well are they yeah i mean if you now support for israel overall maybe 70 30 but support for israel's destruction of gaza not being douchey i'm genuinely curious billy would you check that sure would you check that on venice and and check uh and and check the popularity for the war too i mean i might be i might be slightly hyperbolic if i say 80 20 but 75 so the war if it was 80 20 wouldn't surprise me although i don't think it's probably that high but billy can you check uh u.s support for israel is that fair question i think that's what yeah i think if i'm right i think it should be somewhere in that ballpark but carry on but as i could have gotten that right again not being douchey at all no i just so i think i think um and then either way within a democratic primary they're very very popular issues and so i think all these guys have the wind at their back to some degree you know a guy like mom donnie has the wind at his back by just being against this stuff within his own base and then it seems to me that there's been a very which clearly seems a very conscious pivot um to like the democratic socialism stuff the economic populism stuff that we're going to get away from you know even aoc is out there saying woke one was crazy or whatever so they're kind of saying we're going to get away from that and we're going to go toward um running on the unaffordability crisis unaffordability which i just just drives me crazy it's like it's currency debasement we already had a term for this anyway but that seems to be what they're going with and i gotta say at least as of right now electorally it seems like that's a much better game plan than anything that the kamala harris uh camp had and that does concern me because i have a lot of worries about who some of these people are well why do you have concerns about them um all right well let me say it like this this is where i usually start first of all i think there is something so fundamentally dishonest that all these guys call themselves democratic socialists and don't run as socialists and then also say um you're creating a boogeyman if you call it socialism it's like very strange like okay so mom donna you're a democratic socialist so your your position here is that we should what democratize the workplace and like um nationalize the means of production no we should open four more grocery stores like with 30 cheaper meat like wait that's socialism so it's already a moving target like what are you even saying you stand for are you saying you're a welfarist who wants slightly more welfare than the big welfare state that we already have because That's what you call a moderate Democrat. What do you mean you're a socialist? and then number two it's um they do the thing that i do think uh really liberal democrats who hate the socialists have no one to blame except themselves for this but they do the thing where they just pretend government services are free and that you're against free stuff that seems to be the basic thing i'm for free stuff for people and you're against it so you're a bad guy and like you're like that's the extent of the conversation so like why am i not mom donnie has this proposal you know it's like the minimum wage reducto absurdum arguments mom donnie has a proposal for four supermarkets with 30 cheaper grocery okay i say we do six forty percent cheaper am i a better socialist am i a better person you know so it's um there's a lot of that and then i'll also say at the risk of being maybe a little bit more controversial and i know this does bother some even some of my own audience when i talk like this but like um i don't know i find there being something a little bit weird about new arrivals being revolutionaries i don't really like it i don't really like people who are brand new to your country telling you how we should reorganize the whole thing you know if the ever hits the fan in this country like i'm pretty damn convinced i was born here i'm gonna die here and i'm gonna raise my kids in this country but if this thing ever falls apart to the point that i really decide like yo i gotta grab what i can and my family and i gotta get out of here and like japan is kind enough to let me in and let me be in their country and i'm i'm thriving the last thing i would ever do you be like let me tell you about how you have to revolutionize everything let me tell you about what's wrong with everything like dude you just got here um no i'm not saying i'm me i'm not saying i would shut up and i'd still be like hey i think i got some really good points about economics and stuff like that but i just don't like kind of revolution being led by people who are very hostile to the country and very new to the country and the question that i think is it on everybody's lips is this it's you see mamdani and you see the democratic socialists how much support do they have away from the metropolitan from the new yorks the la the columbia graduates is the average american going to vote for these people or do they just see them as socialists and therefore crazy loons i you know it's such a good question and you know even perhaps even we don't even know say mom donnie we didn't even really have an experiment of him running here in mayor that wasn't against andrew cuomo like it is so it is hilarious like it's a this is something antipython sketch that the best the establishment could come up with was the face of lockdowns who went down for sexual harassment and had a me too violation whose side hobby is being best friends with benjamin netanyahu and the way he attacked mom donnie in the democratic primary was to go you won't promise to go visit israel right now like just the dumbest i mean while we're on that should we bring up the stat billy about israel support yes roughly from g stats around 36 percent americans support israel which is quite a sharp downshift in three years earlier when it was 54 so it's fallen from 54 to 36 but 36 supporting israel i was more saying supporting u.s financial support of israel's destruction of gaza more so i was saying that would be like 10 points lower than that i imagine if you're willing to say in the present climate that you support israel you're probably maybe you're right so maybe i maybe i i over what's a threat but it's but certainly still super majorities oppose 65 okay sure fair enough yeah um so uh anyway and then within the democratic primary i think i mean i've seen polls that said 75 call it a genocide so to your same point if you're calling it a genocide you're probably not supporting your money going toward it that would be real weird if you met that one person uh it's genocide and i'm i think his name is ben gavir uh but uh anyway yeah it's ben gavir and smotrich might actually meet that uh that camp but um i'm sorry what we were talking about the democratic socialist and we were talking oh yeah yeah so so now even like it wasn't even cuomo didn't even come at him like hey man like there's jewish new yorkers who are worried for their safety there's synagogues that have armed like he didn't even come at him with like an amount he went you won't commit to going to this foreign country so my point being let's just say it had just been a democrat not responsible for lockdowns not tied with israel not me too violations not tied with israel not tied with israel not tied with not murdered old people by forcing them the senior citizens to take in covid positive patients as they screamed for help and pleaded please don't do this you'll kill people that's that guy let's say it was just cardboard democrat we don't even know if mondani beats that guy so to your question of like out of the city we don't even know necessarily if he wins we haven't even really run that experiment the the uh the general election was pretty close actually i tend my guess to your question tends to be i don't think so it has that much play i don't think i think a lot of this left-wing stuff plays very very well in specific areas but is gonna turn people off the the broader you get in the american voting base that's kind of my feeling about it um but i'm not entirely sure and i think that there's a lot's been done over the last five six years particularly with the covid stuff to kind of upend like the traditional you know where the american voter is exactly and what the constituencies are so i'm not sure but i think that it's quite possible that after particularly after these midterms the next two weeks i think probably the republicans are gonna have a really really bad day um they're gonna lose the house i think they might lose the senate as well and i think that there's probably going to be a lot of feeling um amongst the left like they may get a little cocky over the next couple years and be like yeah this socialism stuff is really popular everyone hates donald trump we're on the ascendant but we'll see how that goes in in 28 because you know i think that's the interesting thing is i look at the democrats and i don't see a figurehead yeah i don't see a figurehead i don't really see anybody who i think that's the potential to be you know the next leader i mean who really is there no if you go through them it's like you could just tell you all the reasons why they won't work you know what i mean like each person you could go well this is why this won't be aoc here's why it won't be gavin newsom here's why it can't be this guy um i think that yeah that's real it's really interesting and i actually think on both sides to some degree even though you know the republicans have jd vance and marco rubio some people who kind of like logically would make sense it's kind of wide open on both sides it's really amazing that no one kind of established themselves as the leader or even a major leader of kind of the leftist movement right now i think aoc was kind of positioned to be it but she just kind of lost it by not she she didn't become kind of like the face of the pro-palestinian movement she kind of wanted to like ease into it and not upset the establishment too much either and then it wasn't until it was really really popular that she kind of like came into it and i think that hurt her a lot i think that's kind of like why mom donnie and el saeed have become kind of like the leaders where she was more positioned bernie's just too old and gavin is just too tied to california and too much of a snake too much of an obvious traditional politician you know the democrats need like their own trump they need someone who can like credibly be like i'm against this whole thing that's what they're looking for and but they they've never been able to identify that guy you know and and that to me is the real it's very sexy well i mean let's be real they've tried it the other way yeah but they've never but they've never identified there are options you could go half and half right yeah you got trans yeah so it's kind of bit of both oh that's true that is true depending on what year it is i don't know what what you are i mean isn't it wild though i do think there's something to like you know is it true by the way fact check me on this but isn't it is it true that aoc is going to be the leader of the pro-palestinian movement yeah i think like a couple of them right and there is there's something about that do you find i'm sorry from your perspective right because you're probably kind of similar to me on this when when guys like that do something and you've been a guy you gave the speech at oxford you've been fighting wokeism like professionally for on a high level for years you know and then you see something like that like the tide has turned man like after after losing and losing and losing and losing oh shoot the tide has turned man like after after losing and losing this this take that was very unpopular you know i remember um someone just shared uh this actually made me proud but someone just shared a clip of my podcast from april of 2020 when i'm just railing against the lockdowns and how all the numbers all it involved all this and i'm like in i'm in my mother-in-law's house while i'm doing it like right here and we can see why you were angry you don't want me to rant i'm running my phone in my mother's house anyway i actually like her she's cool uh but and i'm like oh i'm proud of that because it was so unpopular at the time you know what i mean and it aged so well so there's like a lot of yeah yeah and but there's a feeling so you're almost like dude this was so unpopular i stuck my neck out there now it's the the super majority consensus and they're taking their pronoun by that and there's a part of it that you almost feel like good but then there's also a part of you that goes like you coward you're like you lie no go down with it you pin this to you forever it should be tattooed to your forehead your pronoun every one of you like no you have to defend this because you you acted like you really believed it you not only acted like you really believed it you acted like you believed it you acted like we were nazis for opposing it and i i do think that there's something that trump captured that jd vance does not capture that aoc does not capture that's you can't be that you can't be the person who puts your pronouns in and then takes them out when they're not popular either go down with this either go down believing in this or don't ever do it at all it's it's going to be very hard to like lead a movement if you don't have that like perceived authenticity billy give us the fact check so we know whether the last five minutes was all based on a complete fabrication so she does not have her pronouns in her twitter or her linkedin but she used to and then her Instagram. Oh, okay. Oh, so she's really making sure to. But she did used to have them on her Twitter or something. So it's like, all right, look, man, you're still. No, no, you're totally right. I get points for that still. Totally. I get half points for the first one. Full score. No, but it makes sense because when Elon took over Twitter, you know what happened, right? It's like all the people who were left-leaning, they basically went to Instagram. Mm-hmm. Yeah, right, right. So there, well, there you go. So it's not risky over here. It's like when the Coca-Cola will have their pride flag in their billboard here, but then their billboard in Saudi Arabia, you know, they don't got none of that. Right, right, right. Instagram is the Saudi Arabia for work. I would actually argue, I don't think woke has gone anywhere. I just think what happens is it moves on to the next issue. And the next issue is economic populism. Yeah. Well, it's Israel and economic populism. And Israel and economic populism. And I think this economic populism has got way more, the potential for way more traction than any of the other previous issues. Because people are feeling the pinch. People are feeling the pinch. And the stats in some ways are undeniable, Dave. You know, the ever-growing gap between rich and poor, the people who can no longer afford to make ends meet or barely, and they did nothing wrong. The fact that there's a group of people getting richer and richer and richer, et cetera, et cetera. AI, I mean, look, this is fertile ground here. Let's be honest. Oh, no. Oh, and we'll look like the major hole that it plugs up, moving to like the, economic populism is that you're just, one of the major problems with woke-ism as a political strategy is that it was all, Bollocks. Well, yes, but it was all, it was upper middle class white women world, like hierarchy of priorities, you know, like the, which is, and again, not for nothing, like nothing against being like an upper middle class, like woman. And, you know, in fact, I'm married to one and I support her and I really like her quite a bit. And I like that. But like, as you, I'm sure it's no, right. There's just the things you're dealing with, like say in your day when you're say like, you know, are just different. And the problems that a college kid has might be who offended them, but that's not the problems that like a guy on the job site has. That's not the problems that a guy in the military has. That's not a, you know, it's like, and one of the major electoral issues that woke-ism had is that just like the gender decisions of three-year-olds or climate change or what, that microaggressions are not on the top 10 of anyone's issues. Like no one really cares about these issues. I think one of the problems the Warhawks have is that the Iranian nuclear program is not on the top 10 of anybody's issues. You know, people care about like what we all, by the way, the only reason we care about all of these more kind of abstract issues that we're spending this whole show talking about is because all of our immediate issues are taken care of. Like if your wife was not okay, if your kids were not okay, you'd be much more concerned with that than you are with any other issue. And most people who are living paycheck to paycheck are gonna be most concerned with like the price of their mortgage, the price of their healthcare, their grocery bills. They're like their immediate life, making sure their kids are okay. And so, yes, when you're doing economic populism, you at least are speaking to those issues. And I will say that like you're right in the sense that a major, major issue of our time, and I think it's probably the same in the UK, but it's definitely the case here is that like I would have said, it's currency debasement. We've destroyed the currency or damn near destroyed it. We've made the price of everything out of control. And I mean, if there is one stat that I think sums up the problem with the United States of America, it is that the median age of the first time house buyer is 40 or average, either average or median. I can't remember, but either way, it's the average person's first house, they buy it. It's 40 years old. Now, that is, and to me is purely a result of the currency destruction. So anyway, I say all of that to say that, yes, the democratic socialists are talking to the issue, to the crisis, to the real concern. That's a big advantage from what the woke 1.0 had. But the one thing they kind of can't answer is like, well, what created these conditions? What causes prices to go out of control? What is a price? What is an economy? Like they don't have, it's really something, they don't have thoughts on any of these most basic things. Like they don't really have thoughts on like why, look, we had a whole debate in the Biden administration over forgiving student loan debt. And it almost never came up why prices of college are so expensive to begin with. - I can tell you why. It's very much the point that you made earlier, which is Francis and I were talking about today, and you're not supposed to talk like this and you're a bad person if you do, but wokeness is fundamentally a feminine ideology. And feminine ways of being actually really valuable for certain things like looking after, looking after people. So wokeness is about, there's a bad thing happening. How do we look after people? Which is a great attitude, but you also, your point is you sometimes have to go, well, how did we get here exactly? And that's less, that's sort of more masculine. - It's almost, any time you're taking on wokeism, you're almost always bringing masculinity to a feminine conversation. Going like, guys, I understand why we're having this conversation. And by the way, listen, after being married and having little kids, you really appreciate why there is femininity. It's like, oh, why are they so emotional? Because you tried dealing with a toddler, okay? And also by the way, like when a toddler's, when you have human beings, all that, they're so precious and they're so easy to die. And they're like, if you have a one and a half year old, they're basically just trying to kill themselves all day long, like all day long, they're trying to commit suicide and you're going, no, no, no, that will kill you. You can't do it. And if a car, if somebody isn't paying attention to the kid and a kid's about to wander in front of a car, the reaction is not, to explain to them how that is logically not a good, you know, like you go, no, and you freak out and you make, 'cause that's what you need that emotion for, to protect little ones. And as you said, to take care of vulnerable people, it's not how you make political decisions. It's just a very sloppy way to do it. - I would say it's definitely gotta be, this is why I'm not right or left, genuinely. People don't believe this, you know, both left and right call us right wing because the right wants us to be right wing and the left also wants us to be right wing so they can attack us. But actually, I think the compassion and empathy side that the left brings to political conversations is important. It's just not, you can't only make decisions from the perspective of how do we look after vulnerable people? Because if you did that, you'd never create any wealth or do anything of any kind in the first place. And that's kind of what you're saying. - Agreed, agreed. And when you lean, right. So concern for the marginalized and the vulnerable is something that any decent society needs. To have some people are there. So if the left serves a purpose, I guess it's to encourage us to have that. The problem is that when you get emotional about these things, it's also easy to get sloppy. That's why you don't wanna be emotional in a crisis. That's the exact reason why you wanna be calm and rational is 'cause you get sloppy. You miss factors, you know? You're so focused on the fact that this schizophrenic homeless guy's a victim that you didn't think to yourself like, "Hey, this mother, this pregnant woman on the bus is also a victim. There's other victims to protect here." You know? And so I do know. And so I agree with you, right? There's always kind of the. I think there's something masculine about what's this gonna cost? Where's it gonna come from? Who's gonna pay? Like that's the father advice, right? Like this is the father, you know, that your son comes to you and goes, "I wanna go and make it big and show business. I wanna start a business and do this." The mother's like, "I believe in you. You're a star." Your father sits down and goes, "Rent is gonna be $2,100 a month. You're gonna need to make at least $5,000 a month." You know, like that's just, that's the way fathers are. If you're gonna sit here and go, like, isn't it an interesting question? If you just go, "Hey, we all, Grant, we're having an unaffordability crisis, okay? The price of everything is crazy. People can't buy homes until they're 40." Well, look, let's look at things here, okay? My grandfather could buy a house when he was 21. He worked at a factory. He went and got a job and he could buy a house. His wife never had to work. Now, why would it be, in such a more productive economy, with technological advances the way they are, that we can't get to a point where 20-year-olds who have a job can afford a house? Okay, this is an interesting question. You know, if you go, why are the, okay. Then you add in that in the last 25 years, and I don't exaggerate this, we have embarked, and because your currency is tied to ours, you guys have as well, embarked on the biggest printing spree in human history. - Right. - Okay, like once you have that piece of information, wouldn't you then go, "Well, golly gee, maybe there's a connection between the two." It is the most intuitive thing ever. This is the most basic law of economics. You can't just buy and demand. You can't just flood the economy with trillions of dollars every year and think that you're not gonna end up, and by the way, the fact that we have military dominance and dollar hegemony, or maybe hegemony is not the right word anymore, but there is so much of the world that still use the dollars as a reserve. We're able to keep it to the level that it is right now, and not, you know, if we didn't have any of that and just printed the money, we'd be in Weimar, you know, wheelbarrows full of cash at this point. Anyway, we've had an experiment for 25 years. In big government spending and money printing. Like, that's been the experiment, objectively. And it's gotten us here. And I just think this was very predictable. I think it's just kind of demonstrated that like, yeah, all the free market economists were right. That was real economics. This is what happens. You can sit here and promise the government will give you a whole bunch of stuff. It does not work. - And that goes back to, you know, being daddy, not in a sexual sense, but going, talking about-- - There's a relief, mate. - Yeah, talking about about the one thing we don't want to talk about in your country and in mine in my country the deficit has just hit three three trillion in our country yours is on 40 i mean what are we going to do we can't can we can we keep going like this no oh no no there's no and it's so everyone's so irresponsible man it almost feels like everyone in leadership it's like the you know the boat's going down and the rats are just get you know nancy close is like dude i'm making stock trades i i guess yes we got i mean if you just do the math out for like the next 20 years the if the if we continue on this trajectory i think it's like 6.5 trillion dollars a year just to pay for the interest on the debt we will not make it to that point something will crack up in this system before we go there but it's like uh the great ron paul said uh in a speech was but it's like the most just basic wisdom from a previous generation because if you live above your means you're destined to live below your means it's true on a personal level it's true on a family level it's true on a government level the bottom line that no one will admit you know you know the either political party or really just like in this never even really comes up much in podcasts or in news shows is that we cannot afford the government that we have we just can't afford it and it's not we can't afford the entitlements and we can't afford the the military we don't have the money and so we we can't tax nearly enough to pay for it and we can't even borrow enough to pay for it and so we just have to print the money and so that's what you've got now and there's other economic factors because it forces you to live in an inflationary environment where you're always printing the money you know the fed is targeting two and a half percent they're trying to keep the the goal is inflation but just like not too bad that it crushes you so you want to keep it in fact but then of course what that does is it forces everybody to speculate now you're losing money on your you're losing value on your money if you're just holding money you got to give it to wall street you got to speculate you invest into things that you wouldn't otherwise have invested into it creates like all this malinvestment and of course in an environment where prices are going up and up and up and up and up people who own assets do fine they benefit from the price inflation at times but who it destroys is the more vulnerable and of course the young the people coming into the workforce who don't own anything they're the ones who get it the worst yeah and one of the reasons i think it doesn't really get talked about i mean we talk about it all the time and you you've got i think a very good articular summation there but let's be honest the majority of the people want this this is what they want it's the same in our country people people will say they will say that they are against tax and spend if you poll people on tax and spend they're against it like 30 30 something percent it's the lowest it's ever been in the uk or lowest it's been in decades but if you ask them about specific measures should we cut this should we cut that should we lower taxes oh no no no no no no no no they want more tax and they want more spend and that's right and it's um you know like this is stuff that you know i know this stuff is a like kind of sensational internet we're gonna get to winston church like i'm telling you the jews killed charlie kirk just bear with me for a moment but if we could just get if we could just get through thomas soul's basic economics here you know like it's like there is like the the fact is that looks something like uh like there's old milton friedman stuff right but it's really true something like the sugar quota you know you have like a sugar quota where this might mean that all of us pay like seven dollars a year more for sugar than we all otherwise would but for the sugar industry dude this is worth like a hundred billion dollars not that much but like this is worth billions of dollars and so how can we ever compete when like just one little inch of spending is such a concentrated special interest and it's only screwing everybody else over like this much you know and this is true with every inch of government it's true look we saw this with donald trump his big mass deportation you know effort right so you have this thing where really joe biden moves the country to the right on immigration further than really imaginable in my life by the end of joe biden like the majority of the country support mass deportations they're like screw this open borders nonsense um and then almost immediately like a few months in donald trump announces that we're not going to be deporting farmers and people who work at hotels well ain't that a random choice right like why did you read oh in other words big business likes the cheap labor and we just ran up against two you know you so this is the problem is that you create as milton friedman would have said when you have government spending you create this thing that is against the general interest but it's very in this special interest or this special interest and they will fight like hell to keep that little privilege that they have so it's a very difficult situation that's big business and special interest i'm just talking about the ordinary person oh yeah and people also want their benefits people also don't want you know people um you know i thought it was very interesting which you know of course it became like a like a trending kind of hot button issue but you know when there was that 20 burrito uh thing like a few because there's an interesting thing for young people where look there is a point and i even understand i'm very harsh on boomers in general but i do understand where boomers at a certain some of them will look at this and go dude do you know how much harder my life was than like a 23 year old's life is today and in many cases that really is true like they just the amount of luxuries that like a 23 year old today has this boomer and also by the way this boomer's like getting beat with a belt was like had a very different life than you you know led that being said boomer could get a summer job and pay for his college boomer could get a job pretty easily and you could support a family off that and so it almost becomes a thing where it's like yes you've got a much cooler tv you have much better medicine you have much better you know food but it's really hard to say how do you weigh that verse being able to own a house because i got to say in my life you know as as with you guys right we're kind of lucky we get to have cool careers we do a career that like you know you're going to have a cool career you're going to have a cool career you know this is kind of like a dream job you get to do what you really love to do and it's a very narcissistically rewarding job you're in front of the camera you have fans you walk down the street someone recognizes you hey you're the guy from that show that i like you know it's cool but like if i had to compare that to like dude just how cool it is being the head of a household it's just like the most awesome thing man like being a dad is just the best being a like i'm the man of this house i'm like the benevolent king of my little fiefdom i got little people who just adore me and i'm like i'm the man of this house i'm like the benevolent king of my little fiefdom i got little people who just adore me like in this insane way like this the cutest little seven-year-old girl in the world just runs up and adores me and this wife who adores me for some reason puts up with me like that's so much cooler and i don't know it is really sad that that's the thing everyone can have not everyone can have this not everyone's gonna have like a kind of be a quasi celebrity or something but like everyone can have their own little fiefdom everyone could be the you know that and so i do just think there's something like that was almost missing from that whole barrio debate where it's like it's not either or dude it's not it's not like like who had it tougher or hey like there is something to be said for like well hey dude if the burrito is twenty dollars then like cook at home you know you're 20 i don't know you know how broke i was at 20 it's a but at the same time you kind of can't downplay how much has been robbed from them and that has been robbed by policy of politicians who have gotten filthy rich as they've done it yeah well it's not about i guess what you're saying it's exactly the same in our country it's not about the 20 burrito it's about the million dollar two-bedroom apartment right why does an apartment cost that much and i and i i remember in fact i really apologize if i said this last time we were on the show but i but there is i just this stuck out with me that i bought a house like four years ago and i got uh maybe a year and a half ago i got a letter from just like the realtor so this isn't like an official appraisal but just like the realtor has sold me my house goes we've estimated that your house has gone up like two hundred thousand dollars and something and i'm thinking about this and at the exact same time i got my baby brother is moving out of new york to go to a cheaper city where he can afford it because he's he's not my baby brother anymore he's in his 30s and he won't take money from me and he won't come live at my house and so he wants to make it on his own so he has to leave new york in order to like be able to afford to make it on its own and at the same time i just got an extra couple hundred grand of like net worth for nothing other than the privilege of living in new york and i'm thinking about this and i'm in an inflationary economy and being in the owner class and so it does look man this is where the socialists almost have a point but they're idiots for being socialists there is a socialism to the current system that is favoring the rich over the poor you know what i'm saying like that is essentially welfare that i just got i didn't earn it's almost a quarter million dollars i didn't earn it i just sat on owning a thing and there is something to being said you you got like in my okay so there's a younger brother who's coming up in the world very bright kid very good kid by the way but it's not financially established yet has to work hard i'm the older one who is established doesn't need the welfare and we're giving it to me like that's kind of insane and so they're i don't know there's something to that no there definitely is there definitely is look everybody's been waiting for it let's talk about churchill i'm not even the churchill i'm just the proxel the proxy to daryl cooper way too much agreement so far right and this is i've literally given you to speak to all of your friends right this is outrageous okay well what happened now what is the latest controversy with the latest did he get us in another war it's the same controversy okay right about winston churchill the worst blah blah blah he's putting in another nicotine you're probably gonna need two you're gonna put a bunch in right nothing these are tucker's pouches they'll get me through this tucker carlson jacob reese mogg all this look that we we believe in free speech everyone should have whatever opinion they want but if we came to your country right and started slagging off george washington and saying he was the greatest villain of american history Now that's not cool. I don't think you'd respect that. I didn't like it I didn't like that very much as we ran that experiment didn't care. Yeah, I bet you didn't the accent did make it worse Yeah, well exactly Your accent is superior. Anyway, my point is George Washington is such a badass man. He won the revolution It's a purely defensive war. He gave up the presidency. It could have been King gave it up, you know I don't deny that because I'm historically literate but these historically illiterate people with whom you your friends, right? It's just - what do you know? Okay, let's Listen, I want to be objective here and I don't even think me and you necessarily have that far of a disagreement on this There is something comical about in this conversation with the three of us calling Darrell Cooper a historic illiterate The just objectively speaking the guy has forgotten more about history than any of the three of us No having like that's true. You may say he's gotten some things wrong And that's fine, but having only reading one side of the conversation I promise you he has not only read one side. I promise you I promise you this is just a it's nothing we could ever solve I promise you Darrell Cooper has read more Mainstream history about World War two than everyone in this room combined. I promise whatever Come back. First of all, you said George Washington really cool, right? What do you know about Winston Churchill and how cool he was? Um, I can tell you dude. I was if you want my that listen, dude, I have the utmost respect for functioning alcoholics I just want to make that clear. I want to make that very clear others podcasts Like I just do think they are that is actually what keeps a society running And they're they're one of the most demonized and underappreciated groups the line as a comedian the line that you'll still be ugly in the morning but I'll be sober is almost We we should all just stop trying like comedy has already been done. Like no one even needs to come out with another If I may say I got something looking at some of the superficial aspects of his career I would really argue. I think this is very substantive The functioning drunk thing. Okay. So what is it you want to argue about? I don't want to argue about anything on this I just I don't think people in America who talk about this stuff appreciate why we all get triggered Yeah, because it's incredibly inaccurate and disrespectful the way that people talk about a man that we as a country voted as the greatest living Britain in the same way that George Washington probably would be right Winston Churchill became an MP at the age of 24 25 For the first time he was a war hero served in war He has written more words in the English language than anyone including Shakespeare. He has a no true Wow, that's he has a Nobel Prize a Nobel Prize for literature Okay, and This is where we might disagree. He kept the he single-handedly kept Britain in the war Long enough that things would change on the ground Americans and that was part of it for sure Yeah long enough to win the war against a great Receival of the 20th century. Well, I think anytime you're conducting a war to try to get another country into a war There's gonna be criticism Well, you just said that's part of it. I'm sorry. You said that was part of it strategy. Well, let me see This is one part of the historical literacy Churchill wasn't in charge of Britain when World War two broke out church. Oh, I'm well aware Churchill was deeply unpopular For saying we need to confront Hitler. Yes. He was an advocate for confrontation for for Hitler and then later Became he was an anti appeasement advocate The appeasers were in charge They were in charge. They pursued the policy of appeasement Which well aware of this but but but I think the people who are talking about this don't seem to get this part of it Tucker Carlson's one of these people where they don't they don't seem to understand that Churchill didn't cause World War two Churchill was the voice in the wilderness who everyone mocked for saying this will happen and then it did happen And they said oh you were right come and run the country now, please. That's what happened Sure. Sure. No, let me just say by the way, just like to preface any of this conversation goes despite the accusations of Douglas Murray I don't actually think I'm guilty of what he accused me of so I do just want to disclaim I think I've read three books ever about World War two I've probably seen 25 documentaries about it because it's the most documentary tised thing ever And I'm currently listening to Daryl Cooper's series On it, but so I just disclaim I don't I don't really have a very high level of expertise on World War two And I've never read like a biography of Churchill, but if you want to recommend one I will read whatever you think the best documentary of Churchill video Andrew Roberts walking with destiny I okay on on our show and his book is called walking with destiny I've never I have a car. I have a what was it? He wrote a Rothschild book, right? That has the Rothschilds. I don't know. Maybe I might be wrong about that. I have that book. I think it might be him But anyway, anyway walk on with this so I would say this um, first of all, I think obviously like Terrell and Tucker are aware that Winston Churchill was not the Prime Minister and they don't act like it Okay, maybe not. But I also think certainly Daryl I know has talked about this quite a bit. But yeah, look there's no question that Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler humiliating Neville Chamberlain were a huge factor that led to the war and it's really I think um, I even Adolf Hitler I'd say up there with one of the worst things he did even with somebody like Adolf Hitler who is guilty of the worst crimes in human history Because Neville Chamberlain was the most powerful figure in Europe who desperately wanted to avoid a war and he humiliated him in front of the World and I think that that was probably pretty devastating to the prospects to not fighting the war But so look I'm aware of all the stuff you said my take on World War two is more kind of this I mean, this is more broadly speaking There is a strange dynamic and there's reasons for this dynamic but World War two is radioactive in a way that no other war hits and then you know if I were to come on your podcast and Say we never should have fought World War one, which I've actually read a bit more about than World War two That would not be controversial at all. In fact, I'd be right you should both agree with me. The war was stupid It was destructive as horrible never should have fought Vietnam that you know, you might get some pushback if I say We never should have fought the war in Korea, but it's not gonna be radioactive pushback World War two is different World War two is this is the it is The worst calamity in human history. It involves the Holocaust in it, too It involves the creation of the US Empire It involves the creation of the state of Israel and if like it is such a powerful kind of force that it just sets off a reaction when you talk about it almost unlike any other issue and Also, it is weaponized to justify every war I don't know if you guys watched which I don't even recommend it It's a waste of time. I don't know if you watched me debating Alan We don't know it's for the very reason you are taking it to them. It was not a good debate Listen, man, I really do like the good ones more than the shit It wasn't like a show and like didn't like turn like I mean He called me an anti-semite and flipped out at one point calling me names, but there was kind of whatever But literally and I'm not exaggerating when I say his entire argument was World War two His entire argument is we're living in 1930s. This is Germany. And so my beef with it. I find the you know, the period in time like I Shouldn't even say I haven't read by the way, I'll bet I've read a lot about the Holocaust particularly But that's almost like a different thing than just reading about World War two It's a fascinating period in time It's a the most horrific period of time ever and it is what's used constantly to justify More and more military activity and I so that is kind of like what I find interesting about the whole thing Well, I know and when I wrote about what I termed the world cry is a very controversial term blah blah blah blah blah, but my central argument was and I think this applies to you actually the reason you have to undermine the World War two narrative It's the one counter example to the overall worldview that you have which is war is always bad, right? Well, I don't think my worldview isn't that war is always bad But the like no, I mean, I don't necessarily agree with that I mean World War two isn't as if it's like some example where like look everything worked out well here It's like no things weren't really horrible and you could argue they would have gone even really more horrible without the war But it's certainly not as clean-cut of an example And I was always it is a clean-cut example because we know what the alternative would have been we know well It's a clean-cut example of what it's a clean-cut example of there is a time in a place Just like in your own life and you're you're someone who's courageous and you know, there's different forms of courage I don't know if you you'd be the first running into battle with a machine gun, but you speak up for what you believe This is something a lot of people fear doing right? You're a courageous person and you're prepared to make a stand on things you believe in and I believe if a Portion of your audience wanted you to go in a direction that you didn't agree with You would not go in that direction. You would actually stand up to that as we have done on numerous Yes on our show, right? That's for sure Yeah So in the same way that sometimes you stand up for something that you believe in or what is the right thing to do? Even though it might cost you right? It might cost you heavily even we admire people Who do that and the outcome of that is the terrible thing? Doesn't happen as a result of that World War two is the perfect example of why? Sometimes you have to fight even though it's horrible Even though the losses are catastrophic because the thing you are preventing would have been way worse even than that Um, I don't know. I just don't know if I agree that it's a clear example. Let me just say look first of all I would just say that I think and this is what I have read a bit more on but I think the Pretty obvious takeaway from all of this is that there was the intervention in World War two the total victory the Treaty of Versailles the international humiliation of the germans that perfectly kind of led the table for all of this to happen and so no what starts is you have woodrow wilson saying he's going to make the world safe for democracy you have this huge intervention explicitly with the goal of policing the world and democracy spreading that works out in the catastrophe that results in the rise of lenin stalin and adolf hitler so you already if you start there no you don't have a perfect example of why intervention is the case in fact it's a real like non-interventionist example of how we never should have got now if you want to say after making this horrific intervention after making all of these bad decisions but we get up to this point and we can't change the past anymore so we're right here if you want to argue that world war ii was a just war at that point and the examples would have been worse there is a real argument there i'm not denying there isn't look obviously you're basically saying you agree with that argument i'm saying if you want to say that when adolf hitler was uh in 1934 or something like that if england had just invaded and toppled adolf hitler at the time or whatever maybe england invading wouldn't have been the most logistical whatever yes probably in hindsight knowing everything we know yeah that probably would have presented prevented a lot of human suffering also when the bolsheviks were just 12 guys reading das kapital in a basement somewhere if you had put a bullet in every one of their heads probably would have saved a lot of uh you know suffering in russia it's hard to know these things at the time you know and we can't prosecute future crime but yes no i'm not denying that like i'm not saying that intervention or or aggression could never lead to a better result than non-intervention would i think that would be a silly claim right to make but there is a point where like people very intentionally try to extrapolate the lesson of world war ii is that the guy who doesn't want to fight the war is always the appeaser and the guy who does want to fight the war is always the guy getting adolf hitler in the basement before he becomes adolf hitler and i'm not like saying like some guy on the internet used this logic i'm saying harvard law professor president of the israel lobby alan dershowitz uses this george w bush used this justification the neocons have called everyone hitler who they don't like and i've every single war that i've been that i've opposed which in my young career is all i already got like seven under my belt every war that i've opposed in real time i've been called neville chamberlain for opposing it so that's the mythology that i think most people wanna to blow up whether you think world war ii look and i'll just say this my last thought on it one of the books i've read on world war ii was pat mccannon's uh book which i kind of left it feeling like i don't know that his thesis is correct i think he's got a reasonable case in the same way that people argue hey if we had taken him out earlier it could have maybe led in this direction his argument is that the war could have been avoided if you didn't have the war you wouldn't have the holocaust how could it have been well you got to read the book but his argument his argument essentially is that um the war guarantee to poland is what led to all the the yeah this is the argument again i'm not prepared to like make the argument i'm saying the guy wrote a book on it i read the book i thought it was compelling if people who are more uh uh um have counter arguments to that have superior arguments i'm willing to look at them i did see which douglas murray recommended i did see that big debate that pat mccannon uh did where he said he got destroyed and i didn't see it that way but it was a very interesting debate i didn't think he got destroyed at all in it well you say yourself you you it's not an air of expertise no it's not mine no listen i'm way more like if it's again this is why i invoke the douglas murray thing like i will like if we're arguing about the iran war the iraq war things that i just feel like hey i really do feel like i've done my due diligence here and i'm very convinced of my position i'll argue it that's what i'm like i don't know because i do grant that yeah look you have a point and you have so look there's also there's another whole angle without it even being like an argument between the two of us on is that dude if adolf hitler which is almost always the case right if he had just chilled a little bit you probably could have won it wasn't really at least no no but but isn't it a thing but there is a thing about that that it's almost like like even like you look at someone like bernie madoff dude like you could have been like a hedge fund manager but that's you did this to yourself dude if hitler just hadn't declared war on america and hadn't invaded uh russia right he probably could have controlled europe and none of us would have done that and this is why we have the disagreements or you have disagreements with people who think iran really must be dealt with because what they would say is your framework of seeing the world does not include the fact that some people will not stop you say basically the iran is run by people who are rational acting in their own interest and we would act in similar ways if we were in their position and so we do tit they do tat right so we escalate in this way they escalate in this way and the reason that there are people who disagree with you about these issues and again i'm not even committing myself to that position i'm just trying to explain why world war ii matters in all of this is that we recognize through history that sometimes there are people who will act in ways that are not rational but who will do things in perpetuity if they're allowed to get away with it right and so the reason world war ii matters here is precisely what you described which is hitler was not the sort of person who would be reasonable and stop because all the that tucker carson says about how well you know the sudetenland was actually populated by germans and it was taken from germany afterwards it's true it's absolutely true and i've often said as someone who's very pro the western intervention in world war ii obviously i'm very anti russia and putin in the current war vladimir putin had as much justification for invading ukraine as as hitler did for invading the sov uh invading uh the sudetenland re because basically germany was broken up after world war one right and he was trying to collect the pieces back together he had more of a reason but anyway yeah i'm sorry i'm listening to similar yeah yeah yeah i get your point but the broader point is are you dealing with a rational actor and actually i think with putin you're much more dealing with the rational actor certainly than you were dealing with hitler or are you dealing with a one of a kind once in a century kind of person who is absolutely not going to do that and by the way i mean one of the other things that people like who are critical of the allies conduct and world what you like to bring up is the same conversation as it is with gaza which is why this all matters so much that's why i'm bringing up with you with you is the amount of destruction that the west did to germany and japan right dropping nuclear bombs firebombing all of this now let's set aside it was a totally different technological environment you didn't have precision blah blah blah the reason that germany got bombed into the ground is that hitler wouldn't surrender which was absolutely the rational thing to do because it was clear they'd lost the war i mean to many people historians would say it's clear they lost the war at the battle of moscow in 1941 right you tried to take moscow you fail and from that point on for the next three years you're betting you're basically very well but moving backwards all the time and eventually you find yourself within the borders of germany like at this point a rational leader who cares about his people goes okay we might have lost this one guys we've got to surrender right but you see with hamas and gaza that that is not the case so what my point is sometimes you are dealing with people who are not rational actors and when people talk about world war ii as a thing that informs their views about other conflicts that's what they're pointing to whereas your argument is always well let's look at it rationally they do this we would do this in their position this is what exactly the same thing that we would have done i don't think you're summing up my position exactly i mean i'm not well first of all i guess it depends on what you mean by a rational actor exactly i mean like like rational like like what do we mean exactly by a rational actor i'm not exactly claiming that other people are rational actors and to the extent that i say like we should put ourselves in their shoes and say hey we'd react the same way if this happened to us there are situations where i feel that way but that doesn't mean that i'm saying that we're all the same we all have the same motivations that there aren't enormous differences so like okay to be the reason why i think the um the the israelis or the israeli government or the pro israeli you know the israeli defenders invoking world war ii constantly over the destruction of gaza the reason why this has resulted in whatever it's been like a 50-point collapse in support for israel in the polls the reason why this is not convincing anyone is because on some human level the only real way to convince people that the um that the atrocities that were committed by the allies in world war ii were justified in the more meta sense is that you you have to have hitler controlled all of europe you have to have how evil imperial japan was and what they did to china you have to have this feeling that at least the argument has to be for this to be justified that something on the scale of this bad was going to happen if we hadn't done that right like there's there's got to be like it would have been so bad in a similar way that i always felt throughout covid uh the great shout out to the great tom woods who wrote the best book on covid diarrhea about psychosis but like he would always say like look dude when you look at the the non-lockdown areas and they're doing about the same as the lockdown areas that should devastate the case for locker it's over because you have to in order to support lockdowns you have to inherently argue that things would have been so much worse what exactly that standard is is arbitrary when you have adolf hitler controlling basically all of europe that's one argument when you have hamas that doesn't even really control the gaza strip i just don't think anybody's buying that, like, things would have been so horrible if Israel hadn't destroyed the entire strip. You don't have the same level of, like, what would have happened over here. Now, to your point, I'm not even denying that some of the people care about the legacy of World War II for the reasons that you're explaining. What I have seen that I'm aware about is that so many people care about World War II and protecting this legacy so that they can advocate for the next war and so that they can dismiss concerns about targeting of civilians or treatment of civilians. This is the entire Israeli defense. Hey, you guys did it during World War II. I've watched Netanyahu use this defense 40 times. I don't think it's a very good defense, but I think the point I'm trying to make to you is you don't. You don't see the threat to Israel as existential in the way that we would see the threat that Hitler posed and the Japanese imperial armies and project posed. I think there's no question that Hitler was an existential threat to his European neighbors. And when you say existential threat, I mean, what? Like, that you would take over the country, that they would actually fall. Not just a threat that, like, this could hurt us, but that this could be the end. And the end meaning the regime falls, I guess I would describe. The end could also mean the peace. People are slaughtered. The end could mean, you know, could mean several. A very significant portion of your population would be killed, including many of its leaders. I certainly think Hitler was an existential threat to France and Austria. You got me on the record. No, he was an existential threat to Russia. Sure, sure. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I wouldn't. And the entire continent, right? And obviously all the countries that he overtook, for sure. So now look at it from an Israeli perspective. See, you see the Gaza Strip as the Gaza conversation, but from an Israeli perspective, if we zoom out a little bit, objectively speaking, Israel is a country that is surrounded by people who hate them. That's a fact. And not only because, look, we have this guy. Not only for good reason, also for some bad reasons. Well, it's interesting you say that, because I was going to do a slightly more steel man version of this, which is we have this guy called Thomas Small on our show, not Thomas Hall. It'd be great if you could get Thomas Hall. I think he's like 93. Is he alive, Thomas? I think he's still alive, right? He is. He's great. So Thomas Small. Thomas Small. Thomas Small. Thomas Small. He's the co-host of the Conflicted podcast. He's a Christian guy who spent a lot of time in the Middle East. And he said, you know, a lot of people talk about Israel being a Western country, and when you do, their actions don't make any sense. Yeah. I think that's a very good point. But if you look at them as a Middle Eastern country, then their actions make perfect sense. So Israel, in his conception, is another country in the Middle East. Now, if you take that perspective, stop applying Western moral rules and all this other stuff to them. They're basically a country in a region where everyone else hates them. And they don't just hate them for geopolitical and geostrategic reasons. They just hate them because they're Jews. A lot of them do. That's just a fact, right? And Francis, who has. You know, him and I talk about this all the time. He has relatives in the region, and his family's from the region. It's not just Muslims either. It's just there are a lot of people in that region that do not like Jews, right? So Israel is surrounded by people who hate them, who repeatedly say that they will wipe them out, that they will wipe them out, that they will wipe them off the face of the earth, and then try to wipe them off the fence of the face of the earth to the very best of their ability. And the only reason Israel is still there is it's strong enough to resist that. Now, when it suffers an atrocity like October 7th, it's not unreasonable for the leader of Israel in that situation to go, well, we're actually dealing with an existential threat. This is part of a bigger thing. This is exactly what they would have done. And that's why people make that argument. Yeah. And I just think the reason why the argument isn't persuading a lot of people, and the reason why this argument is kind of losing in the marketplace of arguments, is because, look, even as we look back now, with all the stuff that's come out about October 7th, and there's some real questions about what exactly happened. Clearly now, this is kind of weird on the timeline here, but Benjamin Netanyahu, we now know, was warned by Egyptian intelligence. He was warned by the Egyptian intelligence. Also got warnings, it seems like, from the president of the UAE. This, Haaretz had a big piece on this. The New York Times then backed it up. Benjamin Netanyahu, I think, is threatening to sue Haaretz over this. And it's not exactly clear, but it does seem like the timeline kind of laps up of like, he's getting all of these warnings. And this isn't just like George W. Bush, like one in a million, you know, flyers, oh, bin Laden determined to attack. This is like the president of the AEU going like, no, dude, they're planning a thing from Gaza that's Then on top of, this is the same time it overlaps with where Netanyahu is still sending the head of Mossad to Qatar to beg that the funding keep going in to Hamas. Then there is this massive security failure on October 7th. So like, however you want to use this words like existential, yes, the people who broke out of Gaza on October 7th were trying to kill as many people as they could kill. I think there's no question about that. The idea that like October 7th would have just happened again and again and again and again, I think is ludicrous. I mean, Israel had been existing next to Hamas for all of this time. Israel has been living next to Palestine since they've existed. And they've been dealing with Hamas since at least 2005. They've been dealing with those 2007 officially. They didn't have to do that. It wasn't an existential threat. Like if we don't do this to them, we will be completely destroyed. I don't think anyone believes that. Well, but you're, you're, you've narrowed it back down to Hamas and I am zooming out with you to the position of Israel as a country within the region. Israel, let's say Israel wasn't full of Jews. It was full of, I don't know, blue head people or whatever. It doesn't matter. And everyone in the region hated blue head people and hated the blue head people stay and had its tensions and whatever. And they kept invading the blue head people over and over again, every single time they could. And it's only because the blue head people, I mean, it's a bad example. This isn't the history. Blue head people aren't great at defending themselves militarily, but right. But let's say, let's say that they were, you could see why blue head people, when something like October the 7th happens would say, oh, me, when they said they meant to kill us all, they really, they really, really did. Right. So we can't allow, we cannot allow the, we have to do, and this is what actually Israel, I think should have said better, which is we want to do in Gaza, what the allies achieved successfully in world war two, which is win the war and then win the peace. That's what we want. We want to rebuild, build society in that part of the world so that the hatreds that animated the beginnings of world war two cannot be allowed to exist. And that means you're not going to be in a place where in Gaza, they teach you to hate Jews in school that we can't have that because the result of that is October the 7th. Well, I mean, I guess I couldn't have thought of a better example of using the world war two model to go. So this is what we do now. We just completely destroy civilian. We have a total war against the civilian population. I think, well, essentially that's the world. That's not what happened in world war two. No, Germany, as I said before, did not have to be bombed into the ground. It didn't just like Gaza parts of it did, but, but no, it didn't because if Hitler had surrendered when he lost the war. So at that point, the same thing could have happened without this. And it's the same with Gaza. It's the same with Gaza. I'm stress testing the argument here, right with you. And you know, I'm not having a go at you. It's respectful. So it's exactly the same with Gaza. Because you go, well, if Hamas had handed over the hostages and the terrorists who took them and surrendered on the first day of this war, this war wouldn't be going and Gaza would not have been bombed into the ground. Yes. But again, you could just as easily go. And if Israel hadn't been occupying Palestine and if Leah, like it's, it's perhaps possible that people could have done things different ways. I certainly would have hoped that Hamas would have turned over all of the hostages or whatever would have made a deal. And then in fact, there's actually some conflicting arguments about what deals were offered versus what deals were taken. Look, the story that Israel are these nice Jewish communities who everybody just hates because they're Jewish and everybody just blue haired. I didn't say your blue haired history is a cartoonish version of one side being hated purely for existence and then being constantly invaded. Let me know. Hold on. We conduct this discussion by not misrepresenting each other. And we've done that for two hours. But I didn't think I was misrepresenting the blue haired example. Yeah, because I made a very, very clear statement that Israel, remember when I said Thomas Small, Israel behaves like any other Middle Eastern country, which basically wants to be dominant in the region and will beat up its neighbors if it feels it's in its interest to do so. And the hatreds go both ways. I think they do. Sure. So the blue haired people, I'm not saying, I mean, no country in the Middle East is innocent. They're all fighting for, like every other country, they're all fighting for survival, whatever. But it's also undeniably the case that their neighbors absolutely, and hate them. And it's not the leaders as much as it is the population. This is why a lot of Muslim countries actually kind of pro-Israel, the leaders are, but they are very wary of their populace on these issues because their populace hates Jews. Yeah. Our sock puppet governments, we bribe them to be friends with Israel, but their population, 100% of them hate it. We don't, no, we don't bribe them. They, the, the, the governments of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, they're not pro-Israel because they have been bribed. They're pro-Israel because they perceive it to be in the national interest of their country, which they're trying to take in a different direction. They don't want to be It seems to be a weird splitting hairs. I mean, I guess we can, we're both just arguing over what their motivations are. So, but I would just say that it's like, look, like again, if you want to say Israel is just another country in the Middle East and they aggress against their neighbors sometimes, like, sure. I, I guess I would agree with that. I'm certainly not painting any of the other countries in the Middle East as being angelic or something like that. I just think that, look, Israel, you kind of can't remove from the project of Israel that it really has depended at least since 67 and before that on Western, you know, backing them up. Like this is a, this is a project of Western power that is propping up this country in this part of the world. And so like, look, if you want to say, well, look from the Israeli perspective, this is how they feel. It's like, okay, that's probably true. They probably perceive these people circling them as a threat from the Palestinian perspective. They have a lot of reasons to perceive the Israelis as threats. You know, I'm looking at this from the American perspective and I'm saying this is not, first of all, I do, as you said, I don't look at a Middle Eastern country with Middle Eastern values as we all do. We look at Middle Eastern countries with Western values and we are like outraged at the way they fall short of those Western values. Israel is explicitly claiming that they are a Western country, even by your own, you know, like construct here, they're lying, claiming there's something they're not in order to get this unique funding and this unique relationship. I personally think that what Hamas did on October 7th is horrific. I would never want my government supporting any organization who would do something like that. I also think Israel's destruction of all of Gaza is horrific and I don't want my country supporting that. I'm not the blue haired people or the other haired people. I'm the American over here. You just don't want to be involved at all. Yeah. And what if, just a hypothetical, but I mean, we are talking about one small country surrounded by a hell of a lot of countries that don't like them. What if, as a result of America's withdrawal, the entire population of Israel is slaughtered by its neighbors? Well, I certainly wouldn't want the entire population of anything to be slaughtered. And if you were going to say that, like the, um, the withdrawal process, you know, like if you compare it to like leaving Afghanistan or something like that, you really will try, try to do it in the way that doesn't get as many people killed as possible, you know, try to like at least protect us on the way out. But if you're telling me that this experiment, that this, this country started in 1948 and we're now in 2026 and they're not, not only dependent on foreign aid, but you're telling me like the second this aid stops, everyone's getting slaughtered. I'm not saying that if that's the case, I'm not saying let everybody get slaughtered. Like, okay, we got to figure out some other type of transition plan here, but there is information in that. And the information is that this whole project has failed. If you, if you still are at the point where you are relying on us supporting a country, which is unpopular, our people do not support your country or what you're doing to your neighbors, but you need our support or your whole, not only your, your nation falls apart, but you're saying like, worst case scenario, all your people are slaughtered. Then this is not a sustainable project. Well, no, I, I, I actually personally think Israel needs to get to a position where it's not relying on Western support, not least because I don't think it's going to have a lot of Western support for the foreseeable future. Um, but I, I was asking you more of a hypothetical because in your conception of foreign policy, more generally, it's like non-intervention. So I'm guess I, what I'm getting at is if 10 million people get slaughtered as a result of non-intervention, is it still going to happen? Well, I mean, you got to get real specific, I guess, about what that case would be. All the neighboring countries of Israel invade and say, uh, it's, it says in our holy book that we'll find the Jews. So we're killing them. It's kind of hard, like October 7th, but something like that, like Israel is militarily the most powerful country in the region. It is also just very hard to imagine going from not only the place of like complete full unconditional support, especially in a country like Israel, but it's also just very hard to imagine going from a very special relationship to not only are we not giving you, you know, it's, it's so hard to fathom us just cutting off the financial aid or cutting off the military support, but the idea that like, if actually Israel is about to be slaughtered, we just don't lift a finger and just allow it to happen. Look. But that is what you believe, isn't it? I'd say, look, in pure theory, I don't think like, and this is philosophical theory. It is. Yeah. I don't think the role of, I think the role of government ought to be the protection of liberty of its people. I don't think the role of government ought to be the protection of liberty of its people. I don't think the role of government ought to be the policemen of the world. And I do think that like, one of the moral issues that, look, obviously you've created, like, this is really interesting thought experiment stuff. You've created a very real thought experiment. Like, hey, this non-intervention will lead to this amount of deaths. And the problem on the other end of this equation, right, is that if you, if you accept that the role of government is that like, okay, just in those worst case scenarios, when there's a genocide about to happen, we, we go in and we intervene in that, right? Well, now you've put, you know, the most powerful people in society, you've given them the power to decide when to use it. So already, just like with the free speech issue that we always have, you got this major problem of who decides what is and isn't hate speech, who decides what is and isn't. Because if you want, this is the brilliance of maybe not technically a founding father, but one of our most brilliant sons of a founding father, John Quincy Adams. I think he was the worst villain of World War II, mate. So that one hurts. He said, you know, if you want to look around the world for monsters to destroy, you'll find no, you'll find a limitless supply. We'll become the dickatress of the world, but we'll no longer be the rule of our, of our own spirit. I think there's real wisdom in that. You know, you're going to, you're, you're, there's always catastrophes going on all around the world. So number one, you've now given a blank check to government to all, you could, right now, if you just on that stage, well, we got Sudan, we got Gaza, we got Ukraine, we got, I mean, there's a ton of things in the world we'd have to, right? And then on top of that, you create this moral condition by which, look, if there's a humanitarian crisis going on halfway around the world. And I, I turn to my neighbor to ask him to, to help. Like, hey, man, I know things are tough for you, but can you contribute a little bit to this effort? I think there's nothing wrong with that, but like, by what right do I have to compel him by force to threaten to, you know, when you're talking about what we use government for, you're talking about like, what are we ready to throw someone in a cage for? This is why I'm very libertarian on all these issues. So it's not so much, if you want to get very specific, it's not so much that like, there couldn't be an example where intervention might, you know, like I said, like, there's an example where maybe it could save lives. I think there's a recognition with the understanding of like what the founding fathers had, the understanding of limited government, small L libertarianism, that like creating this power is going to do more to undermine liberty and prosperity than restricting the power of government would. So in a more general sense, not applied to Israel, like there's a genocide going on over there. Do I think we should intervene? No, I kind of don't think so. I know it's a very like, that's a very bitter pill to swallow. And I will say like, just with the caveat of like, not all government interventions are equal. There might be some, you know, there was. Hold on. Can we just pause there? Yes. So by that logic, you're perfect. You believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. You, while you don't approve of genocide, if America wasn't giving Israel help, you'd be like, well, that's not, that's not our issue. Yes. And you wouldn't be complaining. Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, look, I mean, I'm not saying I wouldn't be complaining about it. Like, I might say something about it. Or if you ask me, if you ask me about what's going on in Sudan, I'm quite happy to. I didn't. It sounds like a dirty trick. No, no, no, no, it's not. No, I think it's a fair question. And I do think it's like a tough, you know, there's a weird, I had recently a very like kind of Christian conservative said to me that they go, you know, the flaw in libertarianism is that you have to allow, you have to legalize all this stuff that you know is bad, that you know you hate. I can have all the liberty for the good stuff, but I can also outlaw all the bad stuff. So there's a problem you have with your system. And I, my rejoinder to that was like, no, this is a problem we all have with every single system. Even if you go to North Korean style communism, you still have this problem. So, and I asked her, she's a Christian conservative. I said, are you going to outlaw lying? Are you going to outlaw coveting your neighbor's wife? Are you going to outlaw adultery? Are you going to, you know, like there's a million sins. A lot of them would. Yeah, well, maybe. No, but actually I don't, you know, they might. I don't want to say they would on Twitter, but it's all LARPing kind of. I'm not saying this person particularly was LARPing, but I just mean that like, no, like, look, it is a bitter pill to swallow if you believe in a free society that like someone has a right to ruin their life. Someone has a right to do something really, really, you know. And likewise, in the non-interventionist idea, which is the same thing, not intervening the government domestically and not intervening abroad. Look, if Israel, if Israel was just doing what they were doing and they were able to do it without Western support, number one, I would find the to be something more honorable about just doing it on your own than doing it with other support. I would still be against what they were doing. Yeah, I think that's horrible. I don't think you should just bomb a building because you suspect a terrorist is inside of it. But yes, it would not be the issue that I'm spending all my time on. It wouldn't be. I'm an American. I'm to the degree I'm trying to affect any type of thing. It's like I want to talk to my fellow Americans about the policy of our government. You know, so that's because otherwise, I mean, there's just always tragedies going on all around the world. You'll never find an end to it. Dave, it's been an absolutely brilliant interview. Thank you so much for coming on. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Hmm. All right. I gave you the last time you asked me, I gave you the debt. So I'm not it's still a good answer, but I'm not going to give you that one. But I will say, man, and maybe this will be the more controversial one. I think you guys have talked quite a bit about this. The big thing is the complete demographic change of all of Western civilization. It's just kind of happening. It is. It's a weird kind of like like, you know, boiling frog thing i don't even know if that experiment actually works but i know it's a good uh thing to bring up in there but there is something that like you know if you had ever told anyone in 1965 that the london immigration policy and the demographic policy was going to be what it is like you know like they would have lost their minds about that but because you did it to them slowly it's just kind of been accepted i think we live at too high a standard of life that no one's really going to be revolutionary or violent over it but very slowly the greatest thing that's ever happened to humanity which is western civilization is like completely being erased demographically i find that to be a pretty big deal i mean i think there's a couple eastern european countries that have like a replacement rate and just about everybody else like the irish people are going to go extinct i mean this is like a a tragedy that's hard to put into words and meanwhile during the rise of like when it became clear that all of these demographic changes are are taking place happened to be during the rise of wokeism when no one was allowed to talk about any of it and if you even tried to talk about it it was only the people who said all right screw it i'll be alt-right i'll be an alt-right nazi only those people were allowed to talk about the issue and every other reasonable person just got shamed as a nazi if you ever even brought it up if you ever even went like hey is this a good idea this seems like a big change well i think that's going to shape a lot of our politics going forward it's interesting you say that because to me that's a very european concern whereas the united states um from my understanding as an outsider and correct me i'm wrong has always been a country that didn't have a rigid demographic profile that is kind of being eroded but we were always much more fluid that's for sure well look i mean america i think unlike european countries where european nations are kind of true nations in the traditional sense of the word like they're a people you know there's the irish are a people like you said before you've talked about this like it's not just that like british are racist and that's why if you're born in saudi arabia you can never really be british it's like you're just not it means this group of people and you're not one of this group of people italians ira like oh now america has the united states of america has had demographic upheaval its entire history and it's always had like a radically open definition of what it is to be an american and you know i think sometimes when people look back and if they see the language of like what is it in the the initial like 1801 immigration statute you know where it said like all white men all european white men of good standing can come to america and people today might look at that daryl cooper makes this point a lot people today look at that like it's restrictionist you know they see it today through the modern woke lens and go oh so just white europeans you don't understand how radically open that was for the time it's like when people read quotes of abraham lincoln being racist and they think he was a racist and you're like no dude for the time that was like the most progressive thing where he was like look i'm not saying black people are equal but like they should have some rights you're like no that was cool at the time that was really really cool so america we had massive waves of immigration we had massive demographic change from blacks in the south moving up to the north we've always been reinventing who we are however who we are was always kind of like 90 percent european white nine percent black heritage of slaves one percent other so even though the definition of american identity was not as clearly rigid or defined as british or irish or something like that it wasn't nothing and now that has just been you know kind of like now in one generation we've transferred that from being what we always were our entire history to being completely different demographically so it's not like i guess it's not as clear as like oh the irish are going extinct but there is something i think radically transformational going on yeah dave thank you so much for coming on the show it's been a pleasure as always make sure to follow us on sub stack where you get to ask dave your questions let's imagine a world where your foreign policy is implemented and the us announces that they are no longer going to police the world do you believe that no other country will step in to take that role on a global or regional level or is that just something you're willing to accept the real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables it's the feeling that your home stopped being safe simply safe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection one smart ai cameras and live us-based agents help stop intruders before they break in two we sound the alarm at points of entry three our agents request emergency response plans starting around a dollar a day right now get 60 off your new system with professional monitoring at simply safe.com spotify outdoor deterrence plans start at 49.99 a month visit simply safe.com licenses for alarm license information