“Sold on LIES” Dave Smith on Midterms, Trump, Iran War & More

I'm not voting for a socialist, I'm not voting for a woke Democrat and I'm not voting for a Neocon. If there was a ballot and on the ballot is Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. At a certain point, I don't want to get into an argument about which, what is worse than the other. I want to just, I want to reject the entire system. Don't launch a war of choice, sold on lies on behalf of a foreign country and then lose the war. Now I'm not defended anything Putin or Assad did, they're both very bad guys. But, if you had to be trapped on a desert island for a calendar year with one of the following, who would you choose? Adonisosnik, Douglas Murray or Natasha Haustol. It is just you, that's such a crap. This week, Uncensored is heading to Washington, DC for midterms coverage with a twist. Namely, it's going to be extremely enjoyable. There will be special guest appearances from across the Uncensored aisle, getting Patrick Met David, a media son, and I'll be hosting a marathon live show from DC on Tuesday night from 7 p.m. Eastern. Our diverse and balanced studio panel is so good, it might burst into flames. In the red corner, Congresswoman Nancy Mace in the blue corner with Jaha Ali, watching it all burn, will be the libertarian Dave Smith. And on that note, here is my extended interview with Dave Smith, members of the Uncensored Club over here's Morgan.tv, good oil this last week, join the club for ad-free episodes, exclusive bonus content, and early release episodes. Well, Dave Smith, host of Part of the Problem, welcome back to Uncensored. And the reason I wanted to chat to you, just me and you, two old buddies together, is because we don't do this, right? Normally, I pick you against somebody, you go up against them, it's a spirited debate, and you normally prevail, and you become, as a result, one of the most popular Uncensored guests. And I thought it'd be quite fun just to have a one-on-one with you, but to start, by playing you a little clip from your very first appearance in March 2024 on Uncensored. Let's take a look. I think Donald Trump, at least rhetorically with foreign policy, is much closer to where the American people are right now, which is after 20 plus years of terror wars, every last one of them, an absolute disaster, the funding, the war in Ukraine, everything they said was going to happen has not happened. And I think that the kind of non-interventionist, America first, again, at least rhetorically, there's a lot of things Trump did on foreign policy that I don't support, but I think he's certainly much closer to where the American people are, than Joe Biden, on all of the biggest issues. Okay. Well, here we are, two and a bit years later, two and a half years later. I think it'd be fair to say that you may not say that with quite the same confidence today. I actually look younger in that clip. The reason that it's really depressing. Has it been that long? Have we been doing it? I thought the show was brand new, man. Well, I did. I did, if you could tell, though, I'm already caveatting it in that statement. You know, like I was going, well, at least rhetorically, because the truth is that I knew Donald Trump's first term, he had been incredibly pro-Israel, and he had been hawkish in many ways. I mean, I was very critical of Donald Trump's foreign policy in his first term, particularly him surging in Afghanistan after he had already admitted that the war was unwindable. He continued backing the Saudis' destruction of Yemen. I think a problem that has come back to bite us and has a lot to do with the dynamics of what's going on right now. And of course, Piers, we've talked about a bunch on your show. He tore up the JCPOA and all that stuff. However, you know, I do think as I look back on that at the time, there was some reason to be cautiously optimistic. I mean, first of all, he had, you know, when people make the point as many have on your show that all the previous presidents resisted Benjamin Netanyahu, lowering them into this war in Iran, it's worth pointing out that Donald Trump was also one of those presidents. Donald Trump also did resist this in his, and there were major polls to get him into Iran after they downed that drone and after the response to the Salamani attack. And he resisted that. And then in 24, he brought Tulsi Gabbard around. His vice president isn't Mike Pence now. It's JD Vans. He's got Bobby Kennedy and Tucker Carlson. And he's explicitly promising no new wars and all of his surrogates are saying she's going to get you into the war. So, you know, look in hindsight, I guess I look back at that and say, yeah, I guess I was wrong to make that point because he ended up getting in and then launching us into yet another war. But at the time, that is what they were running on. Viewers are always wanting to have their say about this show in the comments, but there is a more direct route. Let me give you my phone number, my home address, a personal email address. Now, if you're thinking, why would I do something so reckless, the answer is the information's probably out there anyway. Mine and perhaps yours. Because data brokers hover up personal details from all over the internet, build detailed profiles and sell access to anyone who'll pay. And that's how the spam calls, scam texts, and junk emails find you because somebody bought your details. Here's the kicker. The people running these firms often don't appear on their own search sites. Are they surprising, given they know the risks better than anybody? So, they protect themselves. Privacy for them are price tag for you. That's where today's sponsor Aura comes in. Aura finds the data broker selling your information, submits opt-out requests on your behalf, and keeps checking every month. Then your service is claimed to do this, and none of them offer as many features as Aura at the same price. So, how many of these companies have your family's information? Go to Aura.com/pears to find out. You'll get a 14-day free trial and Aura will immediately begin discovering who's selling your details and have you removed. No, 100%. And, you know, this is what I've been so bemused by in terms of what's happened this year. And I guess, you know, who'd he blamed, you think, for Trump's dramatic shift in thinking? Because when he campaigned for the last election, he was crystal clear repeatedly. I'm not going to waste American lives and money on pointless foreign wars, especially in the Middle East. I want to focus on America first, on cost of living, get inflation down. He was crystal clear, shut the border. And he got off to a pretty good start, you know, if you remember, early on he took all the woke stuff head on. Most normal sensible people kind of agreed about about his stuff there. He pretty well closed the border in a very successful, very rapid manner in a way that made the way Biden had lost control of it, look even more startling. And I thought, well, this is off to quite an interesting, encouraging start. And then suddenly, you know, I sort of was wondering before I spoke to today, who we should blame most for the change of thinking? Was it Netanyahu for pushing him, I think, into attacking Iran? Or was it Maduro for allowing himself to be captured so quickly and so easily that actually Trump got hubris and thought, actually, this foreign policy lock is easy. I can take out all the bad guys without even blinking with no loss of life and we get it all done in a few hours and that's the way it's going to be. We're so powerful, you know, genuinely thinking, which one of those things or was it a combination? Was it the 12-day war last year where it was very quick and very clinical and seemingly very effective? But here we are with Trump heading to the midsense where many people think he may lose both the House and the Senate. And if he does, I would chart it back to the attack on Iran as the catalyst for all the problems that came afterwards. Yeah, I mean, I think there's really no question, you know, it's funny even as you, as you say all that, I think I agree with every word that you said there, right? Like, it also, it's hard to overstate that, you know, with some of the arguments that, you know, you've had on your show and some of the stuff you covered in your book about wokeism and the trans argument, it's hard to overstate. You can't believe we even have to have this argument. Like, it's so absurd when you, you know, when you have like the trans activists on your show, you're ridiculous. You're ridiculous. You look like, why can't I answer it? I genuinely believe, yeah, I believe like in 20 years time, even. Maybe earlier, people will look back and they go, what the fuck was going on in the world? Where you had six foot five-inch brooks dominating women's swimmer. What was happening? Why did it happen? People defended it and unable to answer the simplest of questions. You know, but then one of the problems you have when there's cultural madness like that is that it's almost like a second order issue is that then it becomes very low-hanging fruit for anybody opposing that to kind of get your support. Okay. Thank. But then what are we doing? We're kind of giving someone credit. We're giving a leader credit for knowing that there's a difference between a man and a woman. Well, we have reached a very low point if that is even, you know, in your favor. And, you know, people will will criticize me, you know, all the time and rightfully so, all of us should get criticized a lot if we're going to, you know, state our arguments in public like this. But they'll say, oh, Dave, you've turned on Donald Trump because you're not getting everything you wanted or something like that. And it's like, dude, the expectation here was not everything we wanted. The expectation was just the most basic. Like, please, just stop the bleeding. Like, we're talking no more open border, no more converting little boys into pretend little girls. No, no more, you know, like printing trillions of dollars per year and just destroying our currency. You know, I was not expecting everything I ever wanted. When Donald Trump said we're going to abolish the income tax, I never took those pledges seriously. I wasn't like, oh, if we, if we come out of these four years with still an income tax existing, I'm going to turn on this guy. I'm sorry. Don't launch a war of choice sold on lies on behalf of a foreign country and then lose the war. This is this is low bar stuff here. And I'm sorry, when you do that and you go out and cause this catastrophe after promising not to. And then also Pierce add in spit in the face explicitly of all of those of us who supported him. I mean, literally explicit, you know, maybe never said my name personally. He did promote Douglas Murray's book the day after we debated. I don't know if that was a shot at May, but named my, named my friends, you know, Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, you know, all these people and said explicitly, if you're upset about the Epstein cover up, you're, I don't want your support. If you're upset about these wars of choice, I don't want your support. And now they're going into the midterms wondering why the coalition ain't there anymore. And Ben Shapiro's blaming us. Yeah, it is really baffling. And it's kind of fascinating to watch, you know, I'm in London at the moment. I've watched a lot of this from across the pond, a lot of it from America. And what's been kind of really intriguing to me is the way the conservative riot has been completely fractured in the last two years. In a way I never thought I'd see where all these people who were big pro trumpets from Tucker, to Megan, to Candace Owens, to whoever, you know, loads of people. They've all done complete U-turns on him. And yeah, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene. And yeah, if you ask them, they say, well, he just did the opposite. What do you say they do? And, you know, I've not interviewed Trump for a while, but that would be my first question. Is that when you look back at the decisions you've taken in the last year in particular, do you not see how many people think you reneged on what you promised to do in a pretty dramatic way? And therefore, they find it hard to support you. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there was, there was a debate that I saw that was like a three on three debate with a bunch of conservatives, well-known conservatives, a bunch of them on your show who are like, it was like half who aren't supporting Mag any more and half who still are. And then they talk about how they're leaving over the war. And then when it comes out, it was only Will Chamberlain. He was the only one there who actually supported the war five out of the six of them opposed it. Yeah. And you're like, and it just leads to this dynamic. You're like, so then why does one guy get his way? Yeah. What is the one guy? Get his way where five out of six of the base? And I'll tell you it appears this is part of the reason why there is so much fertile ground for speculation and conspiracy theorizing about this stuff. Because it just makes absolutely no sense, Pierce, that even if the Israel lobby is a powerful lobby, and even if the Lakudnik/Neocons and man, it is blurry where one begins and the other one ends. But even if all of them are a force, they're a political faction in this fight. You would just think, Pierce, that Donald Trump and JD Vance and all of these guys would have all of the leverage in the world to just go, hey, look at what's going on on the left right now. You want to go deal with the Muslims who hate Israel? Or do you want to come over here and deal with the most pro-Israel administration in American history? Hey, get in line on this issue, heal on this issue. No, we're not going to, like it just seems like it should be so easy to not, and yet we get, again, with no real explanation, Pierce, this 180 in the course of Donald Trump and no new wars in the path that we were on, without a real explanation. All he's giving us is this absolute nonsense, Pierce, which everyone knows is alike, everyone you need. If you know, if you know what was going to happen, would you have voted for him again in 20s? Well, if I take you back, would you have voted for him in 20s, 24 again or not? No, no, no, to be here, no, it didn't work, you know, like I would maybe say if I'm trying to give myself a little bit of, I'm trying to be fair, but if I give myself wiggle room, knowing what I knew at the time, I think there was a good argument for it, and there were so many factors that led into me deciding to kind of un-enthusiastically. Could you have voted, even knowing what you know now, could you have voted for Kamala Harris? Or would you just know? So what would you have done? No, man, I couldn't. I don't know. I do it. Pierce, I think I would physically disintegrate before I could pull the lever for Kamala Harris. I don't think it's possible. No, I don't know. I just stayed home or, or, you know, written in Ron Paul. Because there are people on the, people on the liberal side on the left. They go, you know, it's all very well, people like Dave Smith and Joe Rogan, and all these guys, they're all now saying, "Well, you know, it's all gone wrong." Well, you know, they should be more accountable for getting it wrong about Trump. It's a bit like the scorpion, right? And the frog is like, "He was always going to do this." What do you say to people that have that critique of people like you who are not fully fledged, maggot, or right-wing conservatives or anything, but who bought into what you thought you were going to get with Trump? Obviously, it's not turned out that way. He'll probably pay a big electoral price in the midterms, and ultimately, you know, maybe a very lame duck because of it. But what do you feel about when you look at yourself in your own responsibility, self-accountability? Do you feel guilty? Do you feel embarrassed? Or do you feel, well, as you just said, you know, I was kind of basing my decision-making on what I assumed I was going to be getting? Well, I guess, look, I would say, to the extent that I do feel guilty, I guess that I feel that I, because I have a big platform, and I'm on big shows like yours, and I find myself in this position where I'm on like so many of the biggest shows, and I represent kind of like a school of thought of like the Rothbardian, Ron Paul libertarians. And to as a representative of those ideas, which I think are really beautiful and important ideas, if me attach in my name to this thing, it all tarnished my name in some people's eyes, and therefore tarnished those ideas, I would feel very bad about that. Do you feel that something? I mean, have you had, have you had people? No, I mean, no, I don't really think so. I mean, I think to some degree, maybe with some, you know, there's so many people out there. Everyone's got their own views. I think I've always been very clear about where I stand on the issues, and I also maybe got the benefit of the fact that I snapped and turned on Trump the quickest out of like anybody who was supporting him. So I've kind of always told you, look, Pierce, I look at voting in a little bit of a different way. I think that we are forced into this, this binary in the United States of America over which party is going to rule this gigantic government, which is never supposed to have been this big to begin with and is all totally illegitimate. I think that Barack Obama back to genocide that the Saudis led in Yemen, so did Trump, by the way, and both Trump and Biden and Kamala Harris's VP back to genocide in Gaza. We are forced into a binary of choosing between genocidal war criminals. And there was reason for me in this moment to go, I think this is the smarter play here than that. I think what you didn't see after Obama became president and he betrayed all of his promises and expanded the worst of the Bush policies, is you didn't see Rachel Maddow and and and Lauren so Donald and all the supporters of him turn on him and criticize them. I think that's a really good point in that with Trump. I think that's a very good point that they want you to, but actually I remember the Obama years. I never really bought into St. Barack and if you actually study his eight years, you know, from leaving Guantanamo Bay open, still open today, having campaigned in '08, '09 to close it, he waged one of the biggest many view illegal drone programs in American history, dropped more bombs, I think, in a calendar year outside of World War II, in American history. He deported over three million people in eight years, making him by far, pro-Rata per year, the biggest deporter of illegal immigrants in American history. You know, there are lots of things about Obama, which when I tell my liberal friends this, and I've always skewed, I say I'm a centrist now because the woke left got so mad, I couldn't possibly identify as left wing. I used to run a left wing newspaper in the UK, the Daily Mirror for 10 years. I don't, you know, now it would be seen as a centrist paper, the one that I ran, but certainly I'm not right wing and never have been. And I look at all this, I think, wow, you know, Obama, full of shit for a lot of the stuff, grenade on all sorts of promises, a bit like Trump has, and then you start thinking historically, well, who was, who really, of all the leaders? Take American presidents. Have any of them really, do you think, when you look back at it, kept their word? Have there been, any of them been true to what they campaigned on, do you think, or are we basically expecting too much of these people? I almost think it's, it's not just expecting too much, it's respecting the exact, you know, inverse of the whole point of the institution. It's like looking for a mafia Don who's got no blood on his hands or something like that. It's like, you know, whoever is for better or worse, right? Whoever is running the United States of America's military is running the biggest empire in human history. And in the same way that whoever was running the British empire for a period of time was running the biggest empire in human history. And that means like when you get things right, it's going to have the biggest effect on humanity. And when you get things wrong, it's going to have the biggest effect on humanity. And, you know, decisions that Winston Churchill might be making about moving food from this colony to this one are the different, that's the decision of whether millions of people are going to starve to death. And we've, I think we've just kind of come into an age of particular decadence amongst elites in America where, look, there's this huge business behind the military industrial complex. There's this huge kind of center of war hawk intelligentsia that is completely propped up by said military industrial complex by the way peers. You want to go look at where Bill Crystal's think tanks are funded by, by the way if you've noticed when I'm putting forward my ideas, I don't have 15 think tanks in Washington DC because no weapons company is interested in giving me any of them. But if I'm arguing for these wars, then I might get all of it. In fact, I probably would by doing all of that. So you know, there's this huge business. It's very corrupt and it's very easy for every single president to just make the excuse of we're going to fight another war. But also peers as we talk about on this show, you know, Obama's worst crimes there, the worst things he did were toppling Gaddafi in Syria, starting the civil war in Syria. I'm sorry, toppling Gaddafi in Yemen, starting the civil war in Syria and backing the Saudis as they committed a genocide in Yemen. All of those policies minus the Yemen part, but really the Syria and Libya one were exactly what the Likudniks and the Neokhons wanted and had written the vets. I mean, I would, I would, I look back on Obama and I think the worst thing he did was blink on the chemical weapons, red line against a sat because what he did in bold and Putin. And I do wonder whether Putin would have ended up invading Ukraine and everything else. If he hadn't actually been given license in that moment to surgeon and do what he wanted to do. But he showed America when it really meant him blinking, am I right or not? Well, I think what we're missing there is that also look, it's the entire war in Iraq led to millions of refugees flooding into Syria there and totally destabilize the country. And then Obama decided that it was the policy to overthrow Assad and to arm the anti-Assad rebels. And that predated Putin intervening. Now, I'm not defending anything Putin or Assad did. They're both very bad guys. But they're, look, man, there were decisions made on all ends here, but there's just no question that this was the dominoes of the global war on terrorism and Obama's whole decision to switch, which really started under the Bush administration. And Sy Hirsh had a great piece on this called the redirect, I believe it's in the New York hour, but the switch from going to war against the Sunni radicals to going to war against the Shiites, which is where we've been ever since essentially the very end of the George W Bush administration, which has never made any sense. We weren't attacked by radical Shiites. We were attacked by Al Qaeda, and so then we got in the business of funding ISIS to oppose Assad, which then brought us back into Iraq, which then for the, you know, spun out of control into a civil war in Syria where hundreds of thousands of people got killed. So I'm just saying when the media spins it, which was the spin at the time, Assad killed 500,000 of his own civilians, well, that's not exactly right. A civil war broke out. Assad killed a whole lot of people there, and it was responsible for a lot. So there were head shoppers on the other side of that civil war who were killing tons of people, you know, with American weaponry driving around in Toyota trucks. So my whole thing is that the lesson of all of this has been that every one of these interventions have cost trillions of dollars, led to hundreds of thousands of people dying and made us a much worse country. There's absolutely no reason why we should be in it. And what we all agreed on was we don't just by choice voluntarily enter into another huge catastrophic war. Yeah, you know, it's interesting listening to you because when I look back at the clip when you first came on, you were introduced along with Benny Johnson and Destiny as free titans of the YouTube world. And of course, you know, for those who don't know, you're a stand-up comedian. That's how you began your career in New York. You're still very much a comedian. There might be a lot of people who watch you on my show, not because you're not funny because you are often very funny on the show, but who don't ever see you as a comedian. They see you as a major YouTube political analyst and commentator. How do you feel about that? I mean, have you noticed a sea change in how you perceive yourself in the last two, three years? Yeah. Well, I don't know. No, not in how I see myself, but how others perceive me, I suppose, as all kind of the eye of the beholder. You know, I've been doing stand-up comedy for 20 years now. And like you said, I started in New York City. And I still, I fell in love with stand-up comedy when I first started. I still love doing it. I tore headline all around the country, and it's like, but I'm so lucky that I get to do the art form that I love for a living. And then I also just got totally obsessed with politics and all of these ideas. And I'm very passionate about ranting about them. When I come on your show, yeah, generally, I'm not being a comedian. I'm coming on as a political commentator. And I'm not like, if you come see me do stand-up fears, which I hope you get to some day, I'm being a stand-up comedian. I'm actually very funny. Absolutely. I would love to watch you do the stand-up, because I've never seen, I've never even seen footage of you doing it. Well, you know the thing is, and I'm working on a special that I think will be out in the next few months, but you know the thing about it is, it's just, this is kind of just what I love to do. And with the rise of podcasting and this kind of new world, I get to do it. I know, you know, it's funny, because both on the last show I did of yours where I debated that the Navy SEAL Tardio, and that was his big knock on me, which has been the knock on me several times. It's like, well, I'm a green beret. I said Navy SEAL, I'm a green beret. I'm a green beret and you're a comedian. And I was Douglas Murray's knock on me and all this. And I just, I've always, from the first time I've heard that knock on me, I've always just kind of smiled with it. Like, yeah, that's right. That's what I am. I'm comfortable with that being the parameters. I don't know how these people don't see that they're really setting themselves up to fail here because it's kind of like, well, then you better really blow me out of the water here since you're a man. When you're asked what you do for a living now on any paperwork, what do you say? I'm Dave Smith, man, I don't got to tell him what I do. I don't know. I'm just me, you know, my mentor and hero and great friend in life is Joe Rogan and one of the lessons that I took from him very early in my career was that, dude, no one, no one else except him was ever going to say, well, here's the format. You got to like be a standup comedian, do a sitcom, commentate on cage fighting and then take radio to the internet. No agent was ever going to tell you that, you know, that was his goal. So I'm just saying, this is what I love to do. So this is what I do. People could think of me as a political commentator as a comic or whatever, but I'm fine with people saying I'm not an expert. I was never, I was never pretending to be an expert. The way I look at it is. I'm a person. My only criteria for guests on here is they've got to be well informed. I don't care. I don't care what their opinion is, although I do try and balance up the opinion. So we get a broad cross section of what people are thinking about any particular issue. But I've always to start with you, you're very up to speed on what's happening and very well informed. If people are going to try and take you on a debate, they've got to know their shit. You know, and I think that the people that let themselves down on this show and I assume yours as well is just people who were just a bit lazy, intellectually lazy and try and wing it. They get found out in this kind of environment. Yeah. Well, I used to think it's amazing because I started doing cable news shows when I first started like like 10, 12 years ago, I would do say, and I feel like since now doing it on like your show now that it's on the internet, I think in general, the people are, they're much sharper. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to overstate how many people on cable news who were just like the commentators have nothing to say, haven't read books about anything, just don't even, and then I will say, man, even within this world, you do kind of see, I think for people who are can discern, they see it. There's people who read books and have deep thoughts about these things, and then there's other people who kind of read the headlines and really don't have much. And if people want to take me on on that, I'm quite happy to go like, no, I've done my homework. Definitely. The other thing about you is issues. You will come on on debate pretty much anybody. What I've been very disappointed by in the last like year and a half in particular since I became increasingly critical of what the Israeli government was doing in Gaza, on the West Bank, everywhere, pretty much Iran. And it started being deliberately conflated by people, very, very pro-Israeli, very pro-this government, pro-Nitanyahu, as well you must be anti-Semitic then, which really annoyed me, because obviously I'm not. And people like Ben Shapiro, Douglas Murray, they just, that was it, they not only stopped coming on, they stopped having to do with me. They wouldn't, this wouldn't have anything to do with me, it's like, if you're not prepared to be blindly supportive of this incredibly hard right, Israeli government, which contains some of the most psychopathic people I've ever seen in an Israeli government, from Ben Gavira Smodrich, and increasingly I would include Netanyahu in this, if you don't blindly sign up to everything they're doing, without any criticism, you are anti-Semitic and you must be banished. I mean, they've neither of them have been on since I became more critical. It's crazy. It's absolutely insane to me. And you would think they would at least have to admit, okay, yes, this is pretty controversial what Israel's doing and these are pretty controversial statements that the head of their government are making. I could understand where some would disagree with that. You know, I also, I'm just remembering, I won't say our name because I don't want to get sued. But of course, I debated that one lady who is the very little to just lady, but it was, if you remember, she kept complaining that you interrupted her too much when we debated, but if you remember what happened was, she comes on the show before we even start the debate. She immediately accused you of spreading Hamas propaganda. And it's like, well, you can't just come on a show and accuse the host of that and think they're not going to now push back and you're not going to get into it. And it's like, it was the whole time it was like, these are the only answers. Either you're a Hitler-loving, Jew-hating anti-Semite or you've fallen for Hamas propaganda or, but then you would sit there and go, or option C, I have a very real issue with what this government is doing and what they're saying about what they're doing and they're just like, It seems like the They have this inability to take that out. And by the way, you know, I was, I was obviously, I was hammered for many months after October the 7th by people on the pro-Palestinian side because I was defending Israel's right to defend itself. I was, I was the bogeyman for them. So I've been, I've been the bogeyman to all of them, which is, which by the way, I'm absolutely fine about, because I think what is really critical in a world of tribalism fueled by social media, people get down these rabbit holes, they get stuck in them. They don't want to see or hear anything that goes against the thing. And I would include Ben Shapiro and Douglas Murray. This is a shame. I like them both, personally. Always got on very well with them. But to have a kind of weird fat wire put on me, because I dared to be more critical of something they care about, I found this utterly perverse to people who always bang on about free speech. It's like the whole point of free speech is that you should allow people to express themselves, even if their opinions change in a way, you don't particularly agree with. That's the point of it. Winston Churchill, I think, was the guy who said, "It's not about agreeing with people." The whole point of free speech is to hear something. You implacably disagree with and respect someone's right to say it. And let's talk about something where I think you and I have had a different to the opinion, which is Ukraine, because I've just literally in the last hour interviewed, well, I'd be in relation to when this gets posted. But today, this afternoon, it's been Vladimir Zelensky in my studio sitting in the chair here, and then you. So it's been a busy afternoon. And you and I have been in Ukraine debates throughout all this. And I just felt when I saw Trump do this diesel deal with Putin, something inside me really flicked with that. I was like, you know, you can have a view that America shouldn't really get involved in too many expensive foreign wars. I get that. But if the president who's then got involved in one of the worst examples of that imaginable with Iran, is now getting into bed with Putin in a tokenistic way. It's not materially effective way. It's purely putting his hand up, going, "Okay, I'm with Vladimir now against these guys in Ukraine." I mean, that sat so uneasily with me. Really did. I was like, this is awful. What did you feel? I mean, I know your view about Ukraine would be very consistent. But when you heard that, what did you think? Well, even though we may have a strong differences on, you know, like what led up to this war or something like that, I do share your feeling there. You know, it was John Mearsheimer who I think really kind of got this whole thing, right? You know, in 2014, after the made-on revolution, when Victoria Newland and the Hawks and John McCain at the time in Lindsey Graham, they were all celebrating. Ukraine has joined the freedom-western loving world. This is the greatest thing that's ever happened to Ukraine. That same year in his wisdom, the brilliant Professor John Mearsheimer said, and I quote, "The U.S. and NATO are leading Ukraine down the Primrose path." Man, if that was not a prescient statement, that they were, hey, listen, what you're doing here, man, is you're kind of convincing this little country to act in a way that they never would if they did not have the backing of the big bad NATO and the Western military. And you're going to encourage them to pick a fight here that they do not want to have. You know, and it was only, I'm sorry, it was only a few years earlier, that Joe Biden's CIA director, as Ambassador Sentinette means Net Memo. However, I would say this, Pierce, yeah, man, there is really something about leading a country down this fight, encouraging them to continue fighting, discouraging them from taking peace deals, telling them that we got your back, we'll send you all the weapons, we're going to crush them, and then at the last minute, yes, Pierce, this is encouraging a guy at a bar to get into a fight, telling him you got his back, and then selling the guy, he's fighting bats. You know what I mean, dude, this is, and also, as you pointed out, to not even move the needle for no, so like, I'm not against doing deals with Russia, I'm against us being involved in these wars. I don't think we ever should have been involved. We probably wouldn't have this war if we wouldn't. But I'm with you on that, Pierce. There is something, and also for the US to build up how he's this monster, he's Hitler, he's going to take over all of Europe. It's like with the Iranians, but then in the middle of it, we could pause and do a deal with them. We could pause and trade oil with them if that helps. Well, then it proves that this whole thing was bullshit. It's like infuriating. Yeah, I completely agree. In a way, it's kind of the Trump, when he was a real estate tycoon, it's the kind of deals you do over property and stuff. But of course, here it has real time. One of the most powerful moments of my interview with Zelensky was him talking about the direct impact of Elon Musk, apparently, you know, restricting the speed of Starlink over a period when, far from adjoining an energy ceasefire, Putin just reigned ballistic missiles and drones all over Kiev and Karkev. And, you know, he said, this is directly cost lives. This has killed people, right? Our inability to use Starlink to communicate and the other things that went with it, it's been lethal. And these things have real time consequences. It's not like selling buildings or selling Tesla cars or whatever. It's real time, right? It's real lives. People die. Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, business is a voluntary sector at the end of the day. The guy who screwed you over in a business deal can be forgiven. The guy who launched a war of aggression is slightly a different story. But again, I think it just goes, it also really goes to show. I think with all of these things, much like in, as I mentioned, in the middle of the Iran War, when Donald Trump announced, we're going to do, we're going to buy Iranian oil than that went away, you know, a couple days later. It just kind of shows the desperation and the lack of coherent game plan. Yeah, you know, Donald Trump talks such a big game about Ukraine. And obviously, it was hyperbolic to say he was going to solve it on day one. But he talks such a big game about how he would solve this thing. And it's just continued on an absolute disaster the entire time. And people dying and just like horrific numbers. And same with the Iran, all this weeks, not months talk. You know, the problem is you really do get to a point with Donald Trump, where it's put up a shut up time. We're going, this is your sixth year as president we're going into. And it looks like you're going to have the last two without control of Congress. Yeah. Well, let's get to that judge the legacy now. Let's get to that because I wanted to just to ask you just to wrap things up. There's a few questions about stuff coming up. Do you think he will lose? And the Republicans will lose both the House and the Senate in the midterms? Definitely the House. Very likely the Senate. I mean, that'd be my guess right now. So yeah, it's going to be bad. In that eventuality, two things I guess can be pretty much taken to the bank. One is he will whether he wants to or not become a lame duck. And he'll see the distancing by people who then will move on. Because they'll think, well, Trump can't run again. I don't have to be subservient to anymore. He's turned out to be an electoral liability in the midterms through his decision making. And that's a natural political process whoever you are. And Trump, I think, will react very badly to that. But secondly, you're going to see the Democrats inevitably come after him with all they've got for more of the law fair that he hates so much with impeachments and so on. It's going to get very messy and very ugly very quickly, isn't it? If that happens. Yes, I think you're right. And I think that I would just also add in there that they will totally stall his domestic agenda. But they will not stall his foreign agenda at all because if there's one thing Congress will never do, it's actually assert their war, you know, authorities, their war-making powers. And so this is not even still accounting for the fact that there's probably some people still supporting Donald Trump who are waiting to see if anything positive comes of the war and around. And that's also not accounting for what if things get worse? No, what if there is a major escalation? I mean, we're flirting with all types of disaster right now. What if there is an incident, you know, what if there is an incident where there's more American casualties or there's more horrific casualties over there? What if there's some major escalation? And again, Pierce, from my point of view, the big problem that we continue to face in America that no politician is willing to address is that we can afford the level of government that we have. And so we have to borrow and print the money. And so prices are just going to keep going up and up and up. And so next year things are just going to be more expensive than they are this year. And that's going to be a major problem. So, yes, I think the political project known as Donald Trump is basically over at this point. Well, it's certainly teetering, I think. And the midterms are going to be utterly crucial. The Democrats, though, they need to pivot at some stage from Trump's the new Hitler and Trump's this and Trump's side, everything being about Trump, but not least, because he loves it when he's all about him. They need to have somebody who can galvanize the Democrats to an election win in 2028. And who do you think that person might be? It's very early stages, but do you see anybody? You know, I remember the emergence of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. And you could tell pretty quickly they were something special politically. They had a star quality. There was something about them that elevated them out of the mix. I'm not sure I see anybody quite there yet. Do you? No, I do not. And I essentially going through the potential ones, I could just tell you why that won't work. You know, I could tell you why Gavin Newsom won't work. I could tell you why AOC won't work. I could tell you what Bernie Sanders won't work. Give me a one line. Give me a one line. A why each of those won't work. Gavin Newsom was in charge. Gavin Newsom was in charge of California and it's demonstrably too much of a disaster. Also, he's attached to all the worst of the woke stuff that's totally unpopular. Like 80, 20 issues. And he's lied about it because he said I never used the term Latinx and they found about a thousand times he'd used it. AOC Bernie Sanders AOC is a fraud and it's been seen when it comes down to it she'll side with the establishment and that was she didn't lead the pro-Palestinian movement when she had the opportunity to this is why mom Donnie's become the star of the party she was too scared to actually break with the party she wouldn't support she would always come back and support Biden even though he was for sale facilitating a genocide she doesn't have left wing street cred to be that person anymore and then Bernie Sanders is like well he's too old and he's had heart attacks and that's just not going to happen anymore at this point so I don't know who the answer is. What do you think of us off? I just don't see it happen I mean I could be wrong about that I just see this is I just this is when they're trying to tell me beta will roar has the it factor shut you know shut up MNBC you don't know what you're talking about dude this guy ain't the guy I mean it's interesting because some of the most effective talkers like Mamdani like El Said actually he can be very effective when I listen to talk and but I don't think they I mean obviously in Mamdani's case he he couldn't run even if he wanted to could you ever see a candidate like El Said coming through or not. Well I mean I got to say it's we live in a new country and there's a different demographic reality in America so yeah the idea of and I don't mean this to come off the wrong way but the idea of just somebody with his name even being running for you know seemed strange a while ago Barack Hussein Obama seemed very strange in this country at one point that it would be. I mean I remember being told him I will tell you I'm very fatically and El Said is very good on the microphone he's very good and he's very good at interviews and when I just remember being told there's absolutely no way Obama can possibly win because America still to racist and never vote for a black guy and and they did twice you know I remember Trump telling me in 2012 when he was briefly people forget this he was leading the Republican nomination race early on and he pulled out and when I asked him why he said I can't beat Obama he said but if it's Hillary Clinton I can beat her and sure enough the rest is history for years later it was Hillary he did run and he beat her so his instincts were very good for that and who do you think you will vote for in 2028. Well you know what I'm hoping does it depend on who the candidates are. Oh yeah yeah one hundred percent I mean I'm just I will not vote for anybody who's attached to this administration period I just can't I just can't get past that the guy is lying us into war his claim is that Iran was two weeks away from a deliverable nuclear weapon and they would have bombed Los Angeles we all know that's a lie I'm not supporting the regime who lied us into war if Joe Kent ran I'm open to that if Thomas Massey ran if Tucker Carlson ran if somebody on that who was actually picking up the coalition that I was talking about on that clip from the first time I was on your show if somebody representing those and and convinced me that I believed in that person then sure I'm open to that but I'm not voting for a socialist I'm not voting for a woke Democrat and I'm not voting for a Neocon because I just you know at a certain point Pierce if there was if there was a ballot and on the ballot is Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong at a certain point I don't want to get into an argument about which what is worse than the other I want to just I want to reject the entire system if you had to be trapped on a desert island for a calendar year with one of the following who would you choose Adam Soznik Douglas Murray or Natasha House Dorf oh man I mean that's so rough on every level and I'll tell you there's an interesting things I mean I can't choose Adam because I'll never even be able to have a conversation with that Douglas Murray Douglas Murray we might have at least like read some of the same books maybe we could talk about what at least you would have been to say you've both been there which is he's a little bit concerned about Douglas's intentions after we start getting into a few months of this Pierce now full calendar year but I would go it's going to be one of those two I would not take a woman with crazy eyes you never take on a on a year so would she end up being you and Douglas Murray I it might be Adam dude Jesus that's a tough one Pierce you messed up my day you ruined the rest of my day thinking about this question Dave it's credit to see we should do more one I like talking to people like you just one-on-one sometimes it's a change of pace next time next time on my podcast I want to interview you I'd love to love to do that let's do it absolutely deal they've credit to see thanks Pierce likewise all the best for a long time now we've been racking our brains about how we can bring you even more unsensitive without making our small team work 24 hours a day instead of the current 23 and with that lofty goal in mind we are thrilled to announce the unsensitive club it's the new home of extra content which only you get to see what in the hairy depths of Harry hell is going on it was not intrinsically nasty can he put a curse on you plus out free episodes and exclusive insights as well as prior to access to AMAs live events and big interviews without me you can support the show that you love most or get the hold on we know that you watch and listen to all of our shows all sorts of different reasons and we've made sure there is something here for everybody the unsensitive mission has always been to inform educate irritate and entertain by giving you every side of every story real honest opinions you might not find anywhere else it made us agree with my views some of our guests and our host do too but that's the point we're independent and nobody tells us what to say that sounds like you but join the club.