Joe Rogan Podcast: #2474 with Dave Smith (Transcript)

It says that Lutnick’s old firm did not, in fact, profit from the Supreme Court tariff ruling. It says that there was an article claiming it and — I was trying to dig through this.

It says firm is run by his two sons. Elder Lutnick announced the sale of the stake in the firm and other investors. Supreme Court on Friday invalidated many of Trump’s tariffs. Cantor did not consider the product, which has existed for years, was humming trade on Wall Street’s Trump first term tariff push, but decided against it after weighing the political sensitivities, according to a senior banker familiar with this matter. Cantor spokesman said the salesman erroneously believed the firm was likely to greenlight the business.

Okay, I’m missing this. I’m not exactly sure what they’re saying here. There’s an email that said that they’re representing $10 million. I was trying to figure out tariff refund rights, accuracy of all this and whatnot.

So what was the accusation? The accusation was that he had shorted tariffs while claiming that tariffs are going to work.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. The accusation was that he stood to make a lot of money from tariffs being struck down.

JOE ROGAN: Put that into Perplexity, Jamie. Find out if that’s accurate and let it scour the Internet instead of us doing it. Got to love AI.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, it is something.

JOE ROGAN: I can’t wait until it takes over government. It’s going to be awesome.

DAVE SMITH: After a while you’re like, I don’t know if it could be much worse than what humans are doing with government. It’s going to be better.

JOE ROGAN: It’s not going to be greedy.

DAVE SMITH: Well, as long as it determines that human life is valuable — I feel like that is really the thing.

JOE ROGAN: So let’s be honest — some homeless guy’s taking a shit on your Jaguar. Is that guy really valuable?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. But to AI we all might be homeless guys taking a shit.

The Waymo Incidents

JOE ROGAN: Did you see that? There were these San Francisco tech guys and they got trapped in their Waymo because a homeless guy started attacking the Waymo and yelling at them. “Why are you paying robots? You’re a traitor. You’re paying the robots.”

DAVE SMITH: The homeless guy was upset about this.

JOE ROGAN: The homeless guy was attacking the Waymo. The tech guys were in the Waymo. They were terrified for their life. They feared for their safety. Because they’re being attacked by a crazy person who’s saying you shouldn’t be giving money to robots.

DAVE SMITH: That’s an uncomfortable position to be in.

JOE ROGAN: I get all my information from the Tim Dillon show, by the way.

DAVE SMITH: It’s not the worst source of information.

JOE ROGAN: It’s the best source. Him and that dude — what’s his name? James Lee. He’s our other number one source of information. Conspiracy theorist.

DAVE SMITH: There you go.

JOE ROGAN: There’s another one. A Waymo — a gal got in and there’s a fing homeless guy in the trunk. Because apparently the last person, when they left their Waymo, they opened the trunk to get their luggage out and they never closed it. So the homeless guy hopped into their fing Waymo and closed it — was in the trunk. So she orders a Waymo, she climbs in, there’s a homeless guy in the trunk. And Waymo’s like, “That’s unacceptable.”

Okay. The main claim is that Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick’s former firm, now chaired by his son, stood to profit by buying tariff refund rights that only became valuable if Trump’s tariffs were overturned. But the firm insisted it ultimately did not execute those trades.

What critics say happened — investigations and reporting, notably by Wired, described Cantor Fitzgerald exploring a business where it would buy the rights to future tariff refunds from importers for about 20 or 30 cents on the dollar. Internal material cited in those reports suggested Cantor had capacity to trade several hundred million dollars of these refund rights and had already facilitated at least one trade of around $10 million in rights under the IEEPA tariffs. The idea was that if courts later struck down the tariffs, the government would have to refund duties and Cantor or its clients would collect the full refund while the original importers only kept a small upfront payment.

So why is it seen as a conflict? Is it true? So this said that they executed on one, right? Didn’t it say that? Scroll back up. That was based off that email. It says internal material cited in those reports suggested Cantor had capacity to trade and had already facilitated at least one trade of around $10 million in rights. It’s only $10 million. Let it go, Dave.

DAVE SMITH: That is small potatoes for those guys.

JOE ROGAN: These kind of guys. What Cantor and Lutnick’s side say — Cantor Fitzgerald has publicly stated that while some salespeople “explored” brokering tariff refund rates in 2025, the firm never executed any transactions or taken any position on tariff refund claims, calling contrary reports false. Follow-up reporting has echoed that Cantor considered products tied to the Supreme Court tariff ruling but ultimately backed off, in part because of the political optics around Lutnick’s government job.

Latest coverage — there’s no public evidence that Cantor actually booked profits from this strategy, though the investigations in Congress are ongoing and focus on whether there was any attempted or potential profiteering. Are you more interested in the ethics conflicts of interest here or the nuts and bolts of how the secondary tariff refund market works financially?

No. So it seems like we don’t really have evidence.

Democrats, Midterms, and Political Theater

DAVE SMITH: Well, it’ll be interesting. I mean, if — which is probably going to happen — the Democrats take the House and the Senate in the midterm elections this year, they’re going to be — that’ll just be — the next two years of politics will be investigations. And some Democrat lady just —

JOE ROGAN: She just took over the — in Trump’s neighborhood where Mar-a-Lago is. So a Democrat lady just won.

DAVE SMITH: Yep. Yeah, well, they’re — yeah, I mean, look, in his first term, they impeached him twice for absolute bullshit. So they’ll go after him for anything. But I have a feeling now there’s probably a lot more for them to investigate and work on — stuff like this and the meme coin stuff and whatever business deal.

I don’t have the details at the top of my mind, but I do know that they said at one point that Jared Kushner would not be involved in this administration at all because he does so much business over there. So they were like, “Oh, no, no, no, he won’t.” But now he totally is. It’s him and Witkoff who are like the lead negotiators in this too. So just a lot of meat on the bone for Democrats to make big political theater out of for the next two years.

Is Any Part of Government Clean?

JOE ROGAN: Is there anywhere that’s not corrupt? I mean, when we look at the insider trading in Congress, when you look at all these slimy deals that get made with NGOs, you look at everything — it’s like everything’s dirty. There’s not one part of government.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well, that is true.

JOE ROGAN: Like, maybe the post office.

DAVE SMITH: That’s —

The Post Office, Going Postal, and Video Games

JOE ROGAN: I mean, post office is pretty f*ing good, dude. Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: Compared to all the rest of it? Sure.

JOE ROGAN: You get a letter moved across the whole country for, like, what is it, like, 30 cents? How much is a stamp these days?

DAVE SMITH: That’s true. I mean, I don’t know if you include the cost on the back end, like, the taxes that pay for the whole thing. Maybe it’s a little more expensive, but relatively speaking, yeah, you can get something.

JOE ROGAN: Not a bad organization in terms of government organizations. You never hear. Except going postal. That used to be a thing. Remember those days?

DAVE SMITH: Yes, I did.

JOE ROGAN: There was a while where so many post officers went so crazy and started shooting people that they started calling it going postal, but it just went away.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. Young people, if you’re listening to this and you don’t know what we’re talking about, in our day, we didn’t have school shootings. Okay. We had to do it the old fashioned way. You had to drive a postman crazy until he went around shooting people. And it happened several times to the point that that became a thing. Like crazy postal workers.

JOE ROGAN: There was a video game called Postal where you run around shooting people. It was in, I want to say, the 90s.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that would be about the time period.

JOE ROGAN: The first one came out in 97. Yeah. And it was like highly criticized. Weren’t they cartoon looking characters? Can you see? If you pull up a video of Postal, it was like South Park looking characters just blasting people. So it felt like less, if I remember correctly. Or maybe that’s the box. I never played it. Maybe I played it. Oh, this is going postal. No pissing everywhere. This looks way better than 1990s.

DAVE SMITH: This was in the 90s for sure.

JOE ROGAN: Is this the new Postal? Here’s what it looks like. There might have been a newer version right there. Oh, Jesus. You just run around jacking people? Yeah. So it was like the first Grand Theft Auto. Really? I mean, Grand Theft Auto came out around then too, actually. It didn’t look like this then though. But real weird though, right, that post office workers were just killing a bunch of people. That’s what it looked like. Like that. Okay, this is what it looked like. It didn’t look like that other thing. It was like it wasn’t a first person thing. It was like you’re seeing it from above and just running around killing everybody. I played Postal though. That was the first person like that. Maybe they had more versions of it also. I don’t want to show it, because I don’t know what could be some bad stuff on there. Yeah, probably nudity or anything.

Video Games as an Addiction

DAVE SMITH: Dude, video games really are like a crack problem. I loved your rant about that years ago, about how the problem is that they’re so much fun and you’re not accomplishing anything.

JOE ROGAN: Yep.

DAVE SMITH: So the last video game I got into was UFC 3 and I loved that game, I just loved it. And then I got married, my wife got pregnant, and I was like, all right, I got to get rid of this. I just can’t. So I was at the Dojo of Comedy. It was a club in New Jersey. Great club.

JOE ROGAN: They have a LA one, too.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, do they?

JOE ROGAN: Sam Tripoli.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Shout out to Sam.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, so I was at the one in Jersey and they have, in the green room, they have UFC 3. And I was like, oh, that’s the game that I got really into. So I was there for a weekend. And I just, the whole time I was there, just in the green room playing this video game. And it was like a feeling almost like a drug addict who’s around their drug of choice, where I was like, I need to be away from that. Like, I will play this until I kill myself. It’s so much fun.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a problem.

DAVE SMITH: Robbie Lawler fighting, whoever, and just.

JOE ROGAN: And they keep getting better.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I know. Well, I stopped at that. So I never even learned how to play the new ones, but.

JOE ROGAN: What number UFC game are they at now? 5. The graphics keep getting better. The movement keeps getting more natural.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And first person shooters, man.

DAVE SMITH: Who was the. Was it Joe?

JOE ROGAN: No, was it Joe?

DAVE SMITH: Joe Lauzon, I want to say, was the 155 guy. Really good grappler. Wasn’t his thing. Like, he was obsessed with video games. And then he went, I got to just do something else instead of this. So he just did Jiu Jitsu, and he just got amazing at Jiu Jitsu. I swear, I think that was his story. I could be misremembering this, but I swear I heard him talk about this in an interview once, and that there was just like, I just played video games all day, all night. And then eventually I was like, I got to do something productive with this. And so I just started doing Jiu Jitsu instead.

Joe Lauzon’s Career

JOE ROGAN: I wonder what he’s up to these days. He was a fun guy.

DAVE SMITH: He was a fun fighter to watch.

JOE ROGAN: Fun dude, like in person, too. Him and his brother used to beat the f* out of each other on the yard. Like in the front yard. They would have like full on MMA fights, like full power. They just beat the piss out of each other in the front yard. I was like, boys, save it. Like, save it. Wailing on each other.

DAVE SMITH: That’s crazy. That’s a young man’s game.

JOE ROGAN: They had like a bunch of guys hanging around, looked like it was a picnic or something like that. They decided, let’s spice this picnic up. You and me. Fight, motherf*er. And they would fight, like, fight, fight.

DAVE SMITH: But all across this country, there are boys fighting in their yard. And that was of the highest level of yard fighting. I mean, that was top 1%. That was two legit MMA professionals.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, two legit MMA professionals mad at each other because they’re in the house with each other all the time. You didn’t do that. You were supposed to put that away.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yep. That was.

JOE ROGAN: You ate my food. Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: They both ended up being real fun fighters to watch.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah, yeah. Joe was awesome. He was a great fighter. Yeah, he had a lot of fights in the UFC, too.

DAVE SMITH: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: And I think it got to, how many years was he in? I want to say he was at least in the UFC for around a decade.

DAVE SMITH: He was. Yeah, he had a pretty long career.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: Because he was fighting. I mean, he fought. I don’t know. I mean, he fought like the whole, I think when he started was like BJ Penn era of lightweight. And then he fought into like, Anthony Pettis was the champion.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Pull up Lauzon’s Wikipedia, find out when he retired. His first fight was September 23rd, 2006. And his last fight is 2019. Wow. That’s crazy.

DAVE SMITH: 2019.

JOE ROGAN: Some of these guys just don’t want to stop. It’s just too fun.

DAVE SMITH: It’s a very hard job to keep going for a while.

JOE ROGAN: Maybe the hardest.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: On your body.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Other than football, there’s a lot of those guys in the NFL. They only last a couple of years.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, for sure.

The Unforgiving Nature of MMA

DAVE SMITH: No, I mean, that’s a real tough one. But there’s nothing. Well, I guess, like professional football, there’s a similar aspect to where you’re not just. I mean, look, you can go to the hospital from basketball, you know, you can get hurt and get a bad injury, but the NFL or the UFC, you kind of know every time you go into it, like, there’s a very reasonable chance you’re leaving here on a stretcher to go to the hospital.

But particularly with MMA, it’s the most unforgiving sport where you’re one mistake away from, like, if LeBron James misses a wide open layup, he runs back on defense and tries to get a block or something on the next play. But in MMA, you could be dominating, fighting a perfect fight, make one mistake and it’s like, okay, you’re unconscious now, maybe.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Perfect example.

DAVE SMITH: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: Kamaru’s way ahead in the fight. It’s in the fifth round. I think there’s like 20 seconds to go or something crazy. And Leon just plants one. A perfect head kick.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And John Anik makes the perfect call, like something had been said about him maybe deciding to quit. And then John Anik says, “But that is not the cloth from which he was cut.” Boom. Head kick, knockout. It’s like, come on, man, is this real?

DAVE SMITH: One of the most amazing MMA championship knockouts ever.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, ever, ever. And then his post fight speech, “Look at me now, look at me now.”

DAVE SMITH: And then comes back and wins the rubber match.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: Which was like, it’s an interesting thing how much, well, first off, like, getting knocked out cold like that, and you know better than me, but that does a number to your body. Like, that’s not just psychological. Well, psychologically and also physically, and then also just the confidence that that gave Leon Edwards going into the next fight, like, just changes everything now.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Kamaru had to be very careful because he knew at any point. I mean, he dodged most of the big ones until the big one landed. Yep. So in his head in that fight, he had a narrative, and that narrative completely changed with one head kick. So going into the next fight, the narrative is now, if you f* up, you will be unconscious. You can’t get knocked unconscious again. And he fought much more cautiously.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. In the second fight, I remember seeing that with. I felt like you could watch that when Dustin Poirier fought Conor McGregor the second time. Like, McGregor had knocked him out years earlier, and you could kind of see, you know, like, you could see Dustin. I’m not saying he was nervous or anything. He’s like one of the greatest fighters ever. But you could kind of just see, like, he gets in there and he starts and he takes a couple shots from Conor and he’s still there, and then he lands a couple shots. And you could see, like, in that first round, his confidence growing. Like, you almost got to get that out of your head, that it’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy beat you there back then, but you’re a different guy now.

Conor McGregor’s Legacy and Fighting Style

JOE ROGAN: Well, with Conor, it’s all about weathering the initial storm. The initial storm is crazy. He’s so explosive, so fast, so accurate. And then another part about that second fight was Dustin setting up those calf kicks, specifically because both of those guys fight southpaw. And when you both fight southpaw, if you’re a southpaw like Dustin, a lot of times the calf kick’s not really available. You have to throw it with a switch or it doesn’t have the same sort of potential. It’s slightly different potential when you’re exchanging it in combinations.

But with Conor, it was wide open because Conor has two things going on. One, he is a southpaw. Also, he had just gotten off the Floyd Mayweather fight. He’s very boxing heavy. Not just that, but he had really concentrated on striking with his hands. His hands were elite. So because of that, your stance is a little wider and you’re putting a little bit more weight on your legs. And he always had a wide stance anyway. He had that karate stance. The craziest thing about that is the calf kick really didn’t become a big deal even until Conor was a superstar. Like, it was after that. That’s how recent it is.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, it’s very strange that that was almost like a thing that didn’t get figured out until so recently and then just totally changed everything. Like, at this point, you pretty rarely see guys kick guys in the thigh anymore. Not saying you never see it, but compared to what it used to be — where that was what a leg kick was — yes, for many years in MMA. And now I’d say, like, the majority of leg kicks are targeting the calf.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: Like, you’ll see almost like a thigh kick, almost just to switch it up a little bit. These guys got really good at taking those.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, they got really good at being conditioned. And we also saw a few leg breaks. We saw the Anderson Silva one, we saw the Chris Weidman one. There’s been a few leg breaks from guys just full power leg kicking the thigh, and then someone just lifts up their knee a little bit and takes it right where the shin bone meets the kneecap. And I’ve seen way too many of those. I’ve seen a bunch in person, but because of the Internet, I’ve seen dozens and dozens of small promotions where a guy throws that kick wrong really hard, and the guy checks it and his f*ing foot just wraps around the leg.

You see it dangling there and you’re like, “Oh, no.” I’ve seen it so many times now that I recognize it right away. Like, that injury is so recognizable. I see it and I just go, “Oh, it’s going to wrap around the calf. It’s going to flop. He’s going to fall down.”

DAVE SMITH: I’ve seen it several times on Internet videos and in UFC fights. I’ve only once seen a guy continue to talk shit about the other guy after, from the ground, which is the craziest thing ever. Everyone else I’ve seen is, like, crying, in pain. And Conor’s talking about your wife or whatever.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, he asked me to come and sit down with him and do a podcast. He’s an animal. The dude is one of a kind.

DAVE SMITH: He’s one of a kind.

JOE ROGAN: He apparently made a post on his Instagram saying he’s back, and if it’s true, that would be awesome. His suspension for whatever he took before is up. So, yay.

DAVE SMITH: What was it?

JOE ROGAN: Something.

DAVE SMITH: I think it was Douglas Murray, when he wrote that article about me, he —

JOE ROGAN: “Mr. Confidence returns to save fighting again. Call your grandma nanny. We did it. Watch and pay me. F you, pay me, you fat Irish prick. You don’t have my money. I put your brain to sleep.” Who’s that? What’s that about? Who’s he talking about? “C is in the casinos after the Mac. Loves yous all. I got love for years. It’s an honor. It’s light work. It’s easy for life and eternity.” It’s McGregor. How drunk was he when he wrote this? “I do this fight game. Easy peasy. The sound of my shots off the head. Go bing in green dot laser form.”*

Okay, well, I really hope he is actually back. I hope it’s true. It’d be fun to see.

DAVE SMITH: It’d be a lot of fun.

JOE ROGAN: Greatest personality the sport’s ever known.

DAVE SMITH: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: There’s no one even close. He’s the most dynamic personality the sport’s ever known.

DAVE SMITH: And he was, for a time there, just such an unbelievable fighter. I mean, it was incredible what he was doing.

JOE ROGAN: The Danny Alvarez fight.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, yeah, I was there. Well, thanks to you, really good seats. But that was one of the best — that might be the best fight I’ve ever been to live. Because that whole card was just stacked, and the main event was just unbelievable.

JOE ROGAN: He was in the Matrix. He was just in the zone. Dana said it best. He’s like, “That kid eats pressure. He eats it.”

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: He thrives on pressure. Pressure that makes other people wilt — he shines under that pressure.

DAVE SMITH: And he had an amazing ability even very early in his career, which was really unique. Like, even on his first fight ever, if you watch his first fight in the UFC against Brimage — I think the guy’s name is — he was a relatively unknown at the time, but the place was going nuts. He had already made so much street cred for himself. And then the Irish thing — the Irish were really, really into it.

But from the very first fight, he would always create these moments where it’s like, “Dude, this is going to be the biggest spectacle that you, my opponent, has ever been in in your career. I’m going to get you mad with shit talking. I’m going to get the fans so excited,” because he’s completely comfortable there. Like, “I’m not sure if you’re really comfortable here, but I am.” And even with Aldo, who had dominated the entire division — he literally came in as champion when they started the division, he didn’t even win it, he came in because they absorbed the WEC — so the entire featherweight division had just dominated everyone. And he even created such a moment that Aldo was, like —

JOE ROGAN: He was the boogeyman.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, dude, he was incredible. He’s one of the greatest.

JOE ROGAN: One of the greatest featherweights of all time.

DAVE SMITH: But he got him to the point where Aldo was, like, so furious that he was like, “I’m going to take this fing guy’s head off.” And then Conor’s just, like, relaxed. He didn’t care about any of the shit talking. He was just like, “Yeah, we’re having fun. Let’s play.”*

The Irish Invasion of Las Vegas

JOE ROGAN: He lost his composure. And he looked very overwhelmed by the moment. And oh, by the way, everyone from Ireland came to Vegas for that fight. It was the nuttiest thing I’ve ever seen in my f*ing life. The entire Mandalay Bay was overcome with Irish people. I mean, overcome. Like, you couldn’t move. There was nothing but Irish people everywhere. And they were singing — they were all singing together in the halls of this gigantic casino. Packed, bumped, like they’re waiting in line for something. And they were just there partying for Conor.

DAVE SMITH: I remember — I want to say it was when —

JOE ROGAN: Look at all these people. It was nuts, dude. They’re all Irish people. Like, you got to realize nobody had a following like him. And for the Floyd Mayweather fight, they were still ride or die with him even for that fight.

DAVE SMITH: I think it was when he fought Dennis Siver, I want to say. So I went with Louis Gomez, my good friend, hilarious comedian. Me and him went to some Irish bar — we just happened to be in midtown Manhattan and we were like, “Oh, the fights are coming on. Oh, they’re playing it at this bar.” It was just like an Irish pub. And dude, it wasn’t even that big of a bar. It was shoulder to shoulder Irish people losing their f*ing minds. It was the most fun environment to watch a fight in because they’re just — I mean, all that singing and chanting, it seemed like everyone had an Irish flag with them. Like, in a little bar, it was this —

JOE ROGAN: That’s nuts, man. Look at that. That’s Mandalay Bay. Wow, look at this. Oh, that’s MGM. Well, they were everywhere. They were probably at every casino there was. This is crazy. Imagine — imagine if you’re from Northern Ireland and you still remember the Troubles, and you’re making your way to the hotel. You just came to Vegas for a little gambling. You don’t follow MMA. You have no fing idea what this is all about. “I’ve picked the wrong fing week for me vacation.”

Douglas Murray’s Op-Ed

DAVE SMITH: By the way, I was going to say — Douglas Murray’s big knock on me when he wrote his op-ed in the New York Post was, he goes, “Dave goes on Joe Rogan and he talks about foreign policy like he’s an expert. But I bet he wouldn’t go in there and talk MMA with him, because then Joe would recognize he’s not an expert.” And I was like, we do that all the time.

JOE ROGAN: We do that every time.

DAVE SMITH: We do that all the time.

JOE ROGAN: That’s so stupid.

DAVE SMITH: I was like, almost every time we hang out, we end up talking MMA. And it probably is fair that, yeah, there’ll be moments where you’ll correct me if I get something wrong.

JOE ROGAN: So what?

DAVE SMITH: But if I get it right, you don’t go, “You’re not an expert.”

JOE ROGAN: Imagine we don’t talk about MMA because you’re not an expert. Silly.

DAVE SMITH: Well, I watch a lot of it. I have some thoughts.

JOE ROGAN: Why is he so silly? I love Douglas. I really do. I’ve enjoyed talking to him. I think he’s a brilliant man. But I was very disappointed with that sort of strategy — that you shouldn’t be talking about these things that are factual. And even more disappointed with that notion that you would never talk about MMA with me. Like, you think we would — first of all, I don’t think I argue about MMA with anybody. If someone has a point about MMA, I never argue. I might say —

DAVE SMITH: You’ve corrected me when I’ve gotten things wrong.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Or I might say I disagree. Like, some people think that a certain thing is going to happen, and I’m like, “Ooh, I don’t see that. I disagree.” That happens.

DAVE SMITH: Sure.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. But —

DAVE SMITH: Well, also, whatever point you’re making is either a good point or it’s not a good point if it’s an objective claim. So, like, if I say, when Volkanovsky fought Lopez, his jab was crucial — okay, that’s either correct or it’s incorrect. Whether I’m an expert or not, I’m not an expert on fighting.

JOE ROGAN: You can watch the fight and that would be correct.

DAVE SMITH: Yes. Right. So —

JOE ROGAN: You can see it’s right. “I saw he hit a home run.” You’re right. That’s crazy.

DAVE SMITH: Well, it was a weird thing during that show, because there are weird incentives built into all of this.

JOE ROGAN: Incentives — incentives are the right word, because there’s a lot of people that are saying things and you go, “Why are you saying that?”

The Debate with Destiny and the Gaza Question

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. Well, also, from my perspective, I was a little disappointed with it. Because I kind of thought, I was like, oh, this could be like a really cool thing. And it had been literally, which I don’t think I’m saying anything that is like betraying confidence here. But the only thing that was ever said to me, I remember you called me and you were like, what do you think about doing this? And I think I said yes before you could finish answering the question. Yes, absolutely, let’s do that.

And then you told me that he had said, hey, he really doesn’t want this to devolve into like a food fight. He wants to make this like a good faith thing. And I was like, oh, awesome. And now I feel like he like Trump-Witkoff negotiated me. Because then he came in and the whole thing was about me. He didn’t want to talk about the issues at all. And so in a weird way I was like, well this sucks because I thought we could have had a really cool thing. But then there was this other part of me that was like, I mean, he’s really just handing this to me, you know what I mean? Like, he kind of just like gave me the win in a thing that was a big show with like, a lot of people I knew were going to watch it. I mean, obviously every time I do your show, a lot of people are going to watch it, but that was a particularly big one.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: And so I was kind of almost like for the first 45 minutes of it, I was kind of sitting there like, oh, I can’t believe he just, he went this route.

JOE ROGAN: Well, if you look at it objectively, there weren’t a lot of options. Right. It’s very difficult to argue the side that what they’re doing. Like we were talking about Gaza in particular.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Arguing that that’s not horrific. If you’re a human being and you recognize that there are human beings that are subjected to that government, just like you’re subjected to ICE, you’re subjected to Homeland Security, you’re subjected to the cops. If you’re a civilian, you have to listen to these orders. So if you’re living in Gaza and you’re a child or you’re a woman and you’re not Hamas. Okay. And the idea that you’re responsible for October 7th, even if you’re one of the people that cheered in the street, boy, don’t you think you kind of have to cheer in the street if everybody else is cheering in the street? If you’re in terror for your life and you have to keep your safety intact, like you gotta kind of go along with whatever everybody else is doing. I’m not saying that’s good, but when you look at how that place is leveled, I mean, the most recent videos that I’ve seen were still like a few months old. So I don’t know if it stopped. Did they stop bombing? I don’t know what’s going on.

DAVE SMITH: No, they’ve slowed down a bit, but they haven’t stopped.

JOE ROGAN: Okay. There was nothing left, man. And that represents people’s homes, that represents schools, that represents hospitals. There’s no way you can argue that that’s not horrific.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: So he was stuck.

DAVE SMITH: That’s right. That’s right. It’s kind of indefensible. And so instead you pivot to arguing against this guy rather than against the issue.

Well, I think that, it’s in — I can’t remember if this was in the Letter to America or this was in his declaration of war against America, but Osama bin Laden literally said that civilians are fair targets because you guys have elections and you vote for these politicians and they’re the ones who conduct these wars that slaughter innocent Muslims. So just saying it’s the logic of Osama bin Laden to say that civilians are responsible — and in Gaza, like, they don’t even really have a government. Hamas is not a government. They don’t have regular elections. They had one election back in ’05 or ’06 or whatever it was, which Hamas did not even win majorities of. They won on pluralities. You know what I mean? And so the idea that you’re holding these people responsible for Hamas just doesn’t make any sense.

And just on a very basic human level, you just kind of go — and I’m not like an egalitarian. I’m not saying all people are equal or all cultures are equal or anything like that. But on a very basic human level, those are real people too. And when a mother is like pulling her six-year-old dead body out of the rubble, that’s this same exact experience as if your wife was pulling your six-year-old out of there. Like that same thing is happening to her.

And once you even just admit that, it does just change the calculation. It changes the calculation to be like, okay, look, the onus is on you to demonstrate that this is absolutely necessary. Like, there is no other option than to do it this way. And that makes defending most wars very difficult. Not all of them, but most wars are very difficult to defend if you just run it through that filter of like, is there any other option other than this? Have you exhausted everything else?

And then, of course, in the case with Israel and Palestine, you go, oh, you never even tried to just give them their independence. You’ve never tried to just let them out from this occupation and see if maybe that will improve things. And it is crazy that the world

JOE ROGAN: didn’t at one point in time stand up and say, there’s a simple solution here. Like, these people should have a state. Like, why do you get to control them? They’re not Israelis. Like, they’re a kind of a country, but not really, because they’re attached to you.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, it’s —

JOE ROGAN: Why don’t you guys go buy another country, give it to them and let them have a country? Yeah, they don’t like being attached on the same small patch of dirt to people that have a totally different ideology, I guess.

DAVE SMITH: Well, that’s right. And look, I mean, it’s just — we are —

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, we have Canadians right there.

DAVE SMITH: Yes, but Canadians — Canadians do get citizenship in their own country.

JOE ROGAN: They get citizenship here, too. Boy, that’s the last thing ICE is looking for, is f*ing Canadians. Like, oh, yeah, your visa is expired. Don’t worry about it, buddy. Get on the plane.

DAVE SMITH: They probably have a much easier time. Like, Canadians go, all right, guess I got to go.

JOE ROGAN: Well, yeah, also, they can just ditch the accent and pretend they’re Americans and everybody will buy it.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: As much as they’re — yeah. You know, they could just say, “Aha, sorry, I don’t have my license on me.”

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that’s true.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Like, okay, buddy, where are you from? “I live in Iowa.” Okay, sounds right.

DAVE SMITH: That does check.

JOE ROGAN: Get out of here.

DAVE SMITH: All right, that does check.

ICE at Airports and the Real Number of Illegal Immigrants

JOE ROGAN: The stuff that’s going on at the airports. Are they using ICE now at the airports? Because first of all, how many ICE agents are there? Aren’t they busy? How do you have time to put them in all the airports? How many f*ing airports?

DAVE SMITH: It’s in the low tens of thousands. There’s not that many of them.

JOE ROGAN: Right. So, like, how many airports are there? There’s a lot of airports. Okay, so you’re putting ICE in the airports. Where are you getting all these ICE guys? Are you hiring new ICE guys to take the airport jobs? Like, is this like — it takes seven weeks to train them. So did they have, like, a surplus, like an ICE factory where they’re churning them out and putting them out there?

DAVE SMITH: I heard — so I didn’t see any of them. I flew out here the other day and I didn’t see any of them. But then I did see people saying that they were at the airport. I flew out from later that day — up to 150.

JOE ROGAN: That’s not a lot. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were deployed at airports across the United States on Monday. So I, of course, you know, you get on social media, somebody sends you something, and somebody sent me something. I’m not sure if it was true, but it was like, look at the difference between the lines at the airport before ICE was there and after ICE was there. And tell me that only 10 million illegal aliens got in. Like, what is the real — we were talking about this last night — what’s the real number? What is the real number of illegals in the United States?

DAVE SMITH: We don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: You were saying something about Ann Coulter.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well, she had — and this was from a while ago. She had in her book Adios America — I believe it was from Bear Stearns, I could be wrong, double check on that — one of the big finance companies, that they had put a thing where they put it between like 30 and 50 million total in the country.

JOE ROGAN: Why?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, and this is before Joe Biden and them. Now, I don’t know, maybe I got those numbers wrong.

JOE ROGAN: This is before — but what year was this book?

DAVE SMITH: I want to say 2014, 2015.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God, that’s 10 years ago.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, a lot of them have come in since then.

JOE ROGAN: Well, at least 10 million, they believe, came in through the Biden administration. So over four years.

DAVE SMITH: Well, I remember the numbers being like, during the Biden administration, where they’d be like, it was something like, last month there were 700,000 border apprehensions. And you’re like, well, geez, then how many were just flooded through? And you’d see those big caravans coming in and stuff. I mean, look, it’s a huge — that still is a huge scandal. And as much as I have really been criticizing Trump and the Trump administration since last summer, he’s done a good job in securing the border. That is the one thing that you kind of gotta give him. And he got that secured, like, right away.

JOE ROGAN: Even if you think that it should be open and those people should be able to travel freely — “there’s no one’s illegal on stolen land,” that kind of stuff — how much sex trafficking happened during that time? How many children were trafficked that way? How many children were dragged across the border and sold to psychopaths?

DAVE SMITH: Oh yeah. Oh, it’s horrible. I mean I saw — oh, there’s Ann —

JOE ROGAN: “At least 50 million illegals in the country today. See my book Adios America for the analysis from Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters and numbers crunchers from Bear Stearns.”

DAVE SMITH: I was right.

JOE ROGAN: It was Bear Stearns. 2022, this post. Wow. The book is even older though.

DAVE SMITH: The book is from before — I want to say 2015, but it’s around then. That is crazy.

JOE ROGAN: That’s crazy.

DAVE SMITH: Supposedly this is the book that got Donald Trump on the immigration issue. At least I’ve heard Ann Coulter say that before. Maybe that’s right, maybe that’s not right.

But yeah, I mean, look, it’s also a particularly profound act of treachery for a government to do that to its own country. Like, to allow that and really facilitate that to happen against the will of the domestic population. Like, if you were to — I’ve tried to look this up before. I was trying to figure this out because I did a big immigration debate last year, or maybe the year before, and I was trying — you can’t even get numbers on what the polling on open borders is. Because no one even asks the question in polling. They ask like, “Do you think immigration policy should be less restrictive or more restrictive?” Because the number of people who support open borders — it’s like maybe 1% of the country supports that. It’s as unified an issue as anyone could have, that no, you can’t just have the border wide open.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

ICE Enforcement, Open Borders, and Foreign Policy

DAVE SMITH: And so to do that to the American people — against the like, you drastically change the country in a way that is not really, it’s not easy to just undo. I mean, as we’ve seen, right, Donald Trump backed off mass deportations almost immediately because big business doesn’t want it. And then because, look, the level of violence that you’d need to just physically deport 50 million people is going to be something that the American people just aren’t going to put up with.

I mean, you even see in Minnesota, and rightfully so, I completely understand it. But you see, I saw one thing — I saw that Trump had asked the ICE agents who were going to the airports to not wear their masks. And I was like, is that even a — that’s even an option? Why would they be masked in the airport?

JOE ROGAN: Because they’re ICE agents. Because they get doxxed.

DAVE SMITH: Well, that’s their concern. And look, I understand that’s a real concern. I understand that concern.

JOE ROGAN: Organized.

DAVE SMITH: But at the same time, there is a balancing act there. And a lot of right wingers will say, “Hey, look, if you came here illegally, then that’s a crime. You’re here illegally. That’s the law.” And hey, I get that argument. But also the supreme law of the land is the Constitution of the United States of America. And I’ve seen a ton of videos where there were masked ICE agents not even identifying themselves, going up to people telling them that “you have to answer my questions, you don’t have an option to walk away,” which is just not true at all.

JOE ROGAN: That’s my take on it, is that you can’t accept people that are masked, that don’t have any paperwork, that don’t have a warrant, on the streets in militarized situations. Because if they’re using it for this, which you agree to, that opens up the door for them to use it because you won’t take your vaccine, or because you did this or did that or whatever the f* it is. If a different person gets in power, maybe they’re going to use it for something you don’t support. It’s just not something you’re supposed to accept.

DAVE SMITH: That’s right, you don’t want to accept that.

JOE ROGAN: Someone told me — and this is a very credible source that I can’t reveal — that there are people in this country, and not just a few, but many, many that are affiliated with terrorist organizations, directly affiliated, but they’ve applied for asylum. And because they’ve applied for asylum, you can’t deport them until they go through the entire process.

DAVE SMITH: That is wild.

JOE ROGAN: That is wild. So there are people that are known — at least terrorist sympathizers, they’re in direct communication with terrorists, terrorist networks, they’ve done things with terrorist networks — and they’ve applied for asylum. So you have to go through this long process through the legal system, and it’s up to a judge whether or not this person, who may or may not be a part of a f*ing sleeper cell, gets to stay in America.

Suicidal Empathy and the Problem with Sam Harris

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, suicidal empathy — that’s what Gad Saad calls it. And I think he’s right.

DAVE SMITH: He’s got a fair point there with suicidal empathy. In terms of the idea that we cannot say on some level, “No, look, we have a desire to preserve our society and we want to do what’s best, and we don’t have to, out of some feeling of guilt, turn our country into something worse than what it otherwise would be.” So I think he’s got a point there.

And look, I’m not a big fan of Gad. He literally just — him and Sam Harris and a few others, they literally just trash me all the time and refuse to engage on a single thing I’ve said. It’ll just be — he calls me “Wikipedia Dave” on Twitter, and it’s a —

JOE ROGAN: Well, look, I like the guy. I have a different relationship with him than you do.

DAVE SMITH: Well, that’s true. And I’m a big critic of Israel, and he’s a Mossad agent, so there is that. That is part of —

JOE ROGAN: You think he is?

DAVE SMITH: He’s admitted that he worked for Mossad in the past. Yes. Yeah, I guess he would say he’s not.

JOE ROGAN: He retired. Like, I used to work for Newport Creamery. I don’t represent them anymore.

DAVE SMITH: I think it’s a little bit different with the Mossad thing. But I also think the big component that all of those guys are missing is that we also create more enemies with our foreign policy. And that’s not to say that — they always kind of caricature my position on this. I’m not saying Islam is all peaceful and there are no problems in the Islamic world or anything like that. In fact, I don’t think any religion has truly always been peaceful.

But for guys like Sam Harris — these kind of pretend intellectuals — he spent his entire career talking about how violent and irrational the Muslims are, and how you can’t even draw a cartoon of Muhammad or Muslims will want to do violent stuff. And hey, fair enough. That’s bullsh. And we should all say, if you want to be over here in the West, our values are free speech and you cannot kill people for cartoons. But then none of them ever also go, “Hey, you know, murdering an ayatollah might be dangerous during Ramadan.”

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: That is not just a political figure to Shiite Muslims. So at the same time, it’s like, okay, I’m fine with saying you don’t want to have suicidal empathy. My buddy Keith Knight, who’s brilliant, works over at the Libertarian Institute — I forget what he said exactly, but he said something like, “Okay, I don’t want to have suicidal empathy. Let’s also not have homicidal empathy.”

And so maybe it also ties into that whole conversation about the kids and women in Gaza. It’s also the fact that if you just view slaughtering Muslim children in the Middle East and in Northern Africa as just an acceptable political price — just collateral damage, unfortunately, that happens when we pursue this policy — you’re going to deal with more and more of that.

And the combination of both, Joe — the combination of having open borders, having all these people get in, and continuing the war on terrorism and slaughtering people in these numbers — must be the most insane combination ever. The idea that you’d be like, “We’re going to just make an entire generation of Muslims hate us because so many of them have seen what we’ve done to their countries. And also, we’ll welcome all of them in with no checks, and we can’t get rid of them when they come here.” Yeah, that is quite a combination.

Joe Rogan on Sam Harris and Bret Weinstein

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s all nuts. The Sam Harris thing — I should clarify this because he’s apparently talked about me again recently on Bill Maher. We didn’t not talk because it was his idea. It was me. He wanted to do a podcast with me — like a COVID wrap-up, to go over everything that happened, all the mistakes that were made, his position, my position, because that’s where we kind of separated. He was very pro-vaccine.

I said, “I won’t do that until you talk to Bret Weinstein. You need to talk to Bret. You disparaged him publicly. I think you said things that weren’t correct. You called him a conspiracy theorist and you said you wouldn’t platform him because it’s dangerous.” I don’t believe that’s true. I believe the problem is that Sam was incorrect about both the effectiveness and the safety of the COVID vaccines. Bret was correct. And Bret didn’t insult Sam — Sam insulted Bret. I mean, Bret said things about Sam since, but it was Sam who started it.

And I said, “Look, you’ve got to talk to him first. You can’t just talk to me,” especially because he’s an actual evolutionary biologist. He understands these things. He knows what he’s talking about. He’s had multiple conversations with high-level vaccinologists and all these different people that worked on the mRNA vaccines. He was correct. We all know that now. We know that all the things he was talking about — whether it’s masking doesn’t work, social distancing, the lockdowns — all of the above. He didn’t want to talk to Bret. And I said, “That doesn’t make sense to me. You talk to everybody. You have debates with Muslims on stage.”

DAVE SMITH: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: That doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t you talk to Bret? I don’t think he wanted to talk to Bret because Brett’s right.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I think it’s —

JOE ROGAN: And I think it’s indefensible.

DAVE SMITH: No, I completely agree. I mean —

JOE ROGAN: By the way, I don’t hate Sam. He can say all the crazy sh he wants. He also said he didn’t think I should interview Gaddafi. Guess what? I would. If Gaddafi was alive, 100%, I would interview Gaddafi. Do you ever hear Russell Crowe talk about Gaddafi?

DAVE SMITH: I don’t think so.

JOE ROGAN: He did a clip that went viral that was on this show where he talked about why they wanted to get rid of Gaddafi.

DAVE SMITH: Right.

JOE ROGAN: They talked about how evil Gaddafi was and how he subjugated his people. Can you see if you can find that Russell Crowe on Gaddafi? He wanted to create a United States of Africa. He wanted to get on the gold standard. He wanted to get off the US dollar. He had some very dangerous ideas.

DAVE SMITH: Now, he also supported Palestinian resistance.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

RUSSELL CROWE: We are taught, for example, to regard Gaddafi in a certain way. But if you look at what happened in his country while he was the leader — you look into the fact that every person is given a house at a certain age, you look at the fact that everybody’s education and healthcare is free, you look at if somebody showed a particular talent for something that required further education overseas — all of the costs of that were paid for by the government. Now, these are all things put in place by the same country’s leader that we’re told is evil and corrupt. So it doesn’t quite balance.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

JOE ROGAN: Well, there’s also U.S. government interference. That is one that we definitely monkeyed with. He ran afoul of the United States government. There was the famous clip with Hillary — I showed a friend of mine the other day that he hadn’t seen it, and he couldn’t believe it was real. She was on this show and she gets unconfirmed information first that they got Gaddafi, and then she gets confirmed that he’s dead. And she goes, “We came, we saw, he died.”

DAVE SMITH: She was so excited about it, laughing.

JOE ROGAN: And then that led to Libya, at least for a while, becoming a failed state.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, it still is. It still is. This whole time, man, it’s been a disaster.

Hillary’s War and the Lessons Never Learned

DAVE SMITH: And you know, the thing is that they called that “Hillary’s war.” She was the Secretary of State at the time under Barack Obama, but she’s really the one who championed that. And I believe Obama wrote in his book that he was 50/50 and that Hillary really pushed him to it. He said his big regret was that he didn’t think about what came next after Gaddafi — because I wonder why somehow we haven’t learned that lesson yet. Like, after Iraq, you’d never thought of that.

JOE ROGAN: Listen, but thank God Trump’s figured it out.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, yeah, that’s — yeah, Trump’s figured it out. We’ll go in this drastic new direction of getting the seventh war that they want you, Dave.

Public Support for the Iran War

JOE ROGAN: Jesus Christ. Did you see that one? I don’t know what military expert was on television who said something about, “We need. I’m a fan of boots on the ground. Like Rome.” Like, hey, fer, Rome didn’t have nuclear weapons and drones. Rome didn’t have drones that hunt you. We’re talking about boots on the ground. Should we fight with swords? Should we get everybody to fight with swords? Is that what you’re saying? What the f are you saying?

DAVE SMITH: Well, also, what even is the plan with boots on the ground?

JOE ROGAN: The ground.

DAVE SMITH: Like, what are you talking about here? You’re going to take an island, it goes, okay, well, then you’re going to be a target. You’re going to be target practice as long as the Iranian regime is still standing. And if you’re talking about militarily occupying the country, like we did with Iraq or Afghanistan or something like that, this is a huge country with 92 million people. How many soldiers do you think you need to occupy that country? At least half a million. And probably you can’t do it with that. So what are you talking about here? And so you’re saying, are we going to start a draft for the least popular war going in in American history? Because I don’t think that’s happening.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, this is maybe slightly more popular

DAVE SMITH: than Vietnam going in. It’s less. I’m sure Vietnam, by the end, was very, very unpopular.

JOE ROGAN: Vietnam going in didn’t make any sense, did it? There was, I guess, the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Most people in America were like, why are we doing this? What’s going on? You’re drafting people to go to Vietnam. We’re fighting communism in Vietnam. What.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. Well, they called it Vietnam Syndrome that the American people had, which is that we didn’t want to fight a war again after that.

JOE ROGAN: That’s.

DAVE SMITH: From their perspective, that’s a syndrome. And it’s really something. They think. By the way, Ben Shapiro used the same line. He said Trump finally broke Iraq War Syndrome. Because they think, see, from Ben Shapiro’s perspective, the illness is after you lie the American people into a war and slaughter a million people. The illness isn’t that. You might look at that as the bad part, but the bad part is that these annoying Americans have this tendency to not want to do that again after that. But he claims Trump has broken Iraq War Syndrome.

Of course, there’s really no evidence with support of the American people that has changed at all. And George H.W. Bush was said to have defeated Vietnam War Syndrome in Panama and in Iraq because they were relatively easy, bloodless on the American side, or very, very limited injuries and deaths. And they weren’t like quagmires that went on forever or whatever. But of course, after the Persian Gulf War in ’92, we went on to be bombing Iraq ever since, essentially. I mean, for 30 straight years after that, we were still at war with that country.

Poll Numbers on the Iran War

JOE ROGAN: I think for a million people being dead, what is public support? Let’s put that into our sponsor, Perplexity. What is current public support for the Iran war in America? And first of all, how do they know? No one’s asked me.

DAVE SMITH: That’s a fair.

JOE ROGAN: That’s what I always say about polls. When was the last time you answered a poll? When was the last time anybody called you up and said, “Dave, Matt,” first of all, when was the last time you ever picked up the phone if you didn’t know who was calling? And then when you do answer, when was the last time you said yes to a poll?

DAVE SMITH: I don’t even remember ever getting called.

JOE ROGAN: It has to be the dumbest of dumb people that answer those polls. So then you got to realize out of those stupid f*ing idiots, even how many of them think the war is a good idea.

DAVE SMITH: It’s even unpopular amongst them.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, what does it say here? Most recent national polls show Americans overall oppose the current war with Iran and think US military action has gone too far. Quinnipiac poll finds 54% of US voters oppose US military action against Iran and 39% support it. I wonder how many of those 39 are Jewish and.

DAVE SMITH: Well, not too much. We don’t have the numbers.

JOE ROGAN: A poll reports about six and. Right. What is the number of Jewish people in America?

DAVE SMITH: 2%, something like that.

JOE ROGAN: 6 in 10 adults say US military action against Iran has gone too far. Only about a quarter say it’s been about right. 25. First of all, whenever you’re talking about these kind of things, it’s like, who again, who are we talking about? Who was asked? Finds Republicans largely support the military action. Around 86% support.

DAVE SMITH: Whoa. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Really? Because I talked to a lot of Republicans who think it’s a terrible idea, while large majorities of Democrats, around 92%, and independents, about 64%, oppose it. 92%. Who are the 8% of Democrats that are like, “Let’s f*ing go?” You think maybe they do.

DAVE SMITH: They work for CNN. Whatever.

JOE ROGAN: CNN thinks it’s a good idea.

DAVE SMITH: No, dude, CNN is running cover for Donald Trump during this time.

JOE ROGAN: Come on, for real?

DAVE SMITH: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: No way.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, they put up a poll the other day. They had a graphic that said 100% of MAGA supports the war in Iran. It’s like after all these years,

JOE ROGAN: he liked it or something like that. Oh, but hold on a second. Is that running cover or is that making them look bad? Because most Americans don’t support the war and most Democrats, 92%, don’t support the war. So if that’s the case, wouldn’t that just make them look like these MAGA people are a f*ing problem?

DAVE SMITH: I guess.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God. MAGA, GOP view of Trump. Can I hear how he says it? Or would it be a problem rating among talking. It’s someone else. Okay, that seems bonkers. It seems bonkers. Approve 100%. How many people did you ask? Two?

DAVE SMITH: Well, two guys with MAGA hats. If you notice the way they say this, right, so they don’t just say GOP voters, they say MAGA GOP voters. And so what they’re doing here is that they’re filtering who they consider to be MAGA, and who they consider to be MAGA are the people who still say they support Donald Trump. But like 100% of the people who don’t support this war stopped supporting Donald Trump over it.

JOE ROGAN: Right, but look at this little thing on the bottom. They don’t show you the 66%, 31% split among non-MAGA. Right, and is that non-MAGA Republicans? Is that what you’re saying?

DAVE SMITH: No, I think that’s non-MAGA Americans.

JOE ROGAN: The whole MAGA thing is like, how did. We’re so fractioned as it is.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Like this whole idea of right versus left as it is, and now you’ve got a MAGA section of the right.

DAVE SMITH: It’s all just ridiculous, dude. But it’s a way to describe it as anything other than what it is, which is the most unpopular war in American history going into it. And for good reason. Look, dude, he didn’t even bother to sell us on a propaganda campaign about it. It was like the laziest. Like, just lie. Just lie us into it.

Why Now? The Motivations Behind the Iran War

JOE ROGAN: Let’s put on a fing tinfoil hat right now. Let’s get a double layer Reynolds wrap. Fing crease the edges, fold it down. Why would he want to do this? Why would he want to. Look, I am not denying that the regime of Iran is a giant problem. I’m certainly not denying that. If I was Israel, I would not want them there. They hate you. They’re trying to get a nuclear weapon. They’re right there. I get the Israel position. I totally understand how they’re so just vehemently in defense of their homeland. Like they’re surrounded by people that hate them. They’re the one Jewish country. Everyone else is a Muslim. They all want a caliphate. They all want to kill them. It’s been going on forever. They think it’s in God’s word. It’s a lot of craziness. I get it. Why now? Like, why now? Like, what? Does that make any sense?

DAVE SMITH: Well, Trump himself has said, which literally this would be considered an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory if anyone else had said it, but Donald Trump has openly talked about many times how the Adelsons give him all this money and they come by every day and all they have is another demand on behalf of Israel.

Donald Trump also, very early in his political career, got in trouble with the Israel lobby and then immediately pivoted to winning their favor back by saying he would tear up the JCPOA, the Iran deal that Obama got us into. And it looks to me, speculation aside, who knows exactly what control they have over the guy, but it looks to me that after Venezuela and when there were these big street protests and riots against the regime, that they convinced Trump — and this is what Joe Kent, his director of counterterrorism, has said too — that they essentially convinced him that this would be the time you could do it swiftly, surgically remove the regime and the people would rise up and overthrow it.

And this is what Donald Trump said when he launched this war. He said, “This is a regime change. And I’m calling on the great people of Iran to rise up.” And they did. They rose up by at least the hundreds of thousands. They were out in Tehran in defense of the regime, chanting, “Death to America.” Because it turns out when you kill 165 little girls, that doesn’t make a country go, “We love you. Thank you.”

JOE ROGAN: Right. But before the bombing, there were people in the streets that were protesting and people were killed because of that a lot. That’s the other thing is that that regime clamps down and they do it with public figures. They killed a very prominent wrestler from Iran. Really two of them. They killed one a few years back. The UFC tried to step in and somehow they stopped it. But he was also one that was accused of protesting against the government.

DAVE SMITH: Listen, I don’t know about this most recent one. I’m not saying this is true at all. I don’t trust any governments. But they claimed he killed a few cops. That’s what the Iranian regime said he was being hung for. Now, I don’t.

JOE ROGAN: The wrestler?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, the wrestler.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, I didn’t see that.

DAVE SMITH: He was convicted of that, whatever that means in a mullah-run court. So I’m not saying that’s right at all. But I will say this, right. Donald Trump, when he launched this war — and there’s been a whole lot of just false claims that have been made — he said specifically that they killed 32,000 protesters. There has not been a shred of evidence presented to back up this claim. Now, I’m not saying it’s not true. I’m not putting it past this government that they would do that. And they’ve acknowledged that a lot of people have died.

I think the last I had seen was that the government of Iran — before the Ayatollah was killed — they were saying it was something like 3,000 people had died. And then the CIA.

JOE ROGAN: But when you say died, does it mean they killed?

DAVE SMITH: Well, that’s unclear. That’s not what they are claiming. But then the CIA, at least there was a piece in the Wall Street Journal where they had said — and this was like a week and a half into it — that they estimated like six and a half thousand or something like that. But this is a huge question, right? And it’s not clear at all. Like, were they lining people up and just executing them for the crime of protesting? They hung the wrestler. But I’m saying the people who have been killed here.

Iran Protest Death Toll

JOE ROGAN: Iran protest death toll could top 30,000 according to local health officials. And this is from Time magazine. As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on January 8th and 9th alone. Two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told Time, indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll. So many people were slaughtered by Iranian security services that Thursday and Friday it overwhelmed the state’s capacity to dispose of the dead. Stocks of body bags were exhausted, the officials said, and 18-wheel semi-trailers replaced ambulances.

Iran, Protests, and the War Drums

DAVE SMITH: Now listen, all I’m saying here, man, is that you gotta be — I’ve just seen this movie play out a lot of times. You gotta be really careful about these accusations that are made in the run up to a war. They’re basically saying, “We have a source who told us this.”

JOE ROGAN: What year was this? I mean, excuse me, what date was it? January 25th. January 25th.

DAVE SMITH: So the protests started in late December and then in January.

JOE ROGAN: “This is Time was unable to independently verify these figures.” That’s right.

DAVE SMITH: Listen, the claim being made here, right, is that — look, in this, they said in two days, in two days, 30,000 people were killed. If that is true, that is up there with one of the biggest massacres in human history. The biggest massacres during World War II were like around that.

JOE ROGAN: “As of Saturday, U.S. based Human Rights Activist News Agency had confirmed 5,459 deaths and is investigating 17,000 more.”

DAVE SMITH: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: So that’s at least close. So we’re in the neighborhood, we’re in the 20s. Just if what they’re investigating turns out to be accurate, if that’s the case.

DAVE SMITH: But we’re talking also here, Joe, about Ned-funded US-based NGOs who are really war hawks. And I’m just saying, look, the claim here is that around — I saw a bunch of the Zionists online when this was first coming out back in January. They were like, “My God, they’ve already killed half as many people as died in Gaza in just a couple days.” And you’re like, right, that’s a hell of a claim. I mean, if you just from following wars all these years, if you started carpet bombing Tehran, Vietnam style, carpet bombing Tehran — after two days, that’s the type of death toll you’d be looking at.

JOE ROGAN: Well, the thing is, they don’t have Internet access.

DAVE SMITH: Well, they shut down the Internet during that period. But there were pictures that came out. All I’m saying is that if you had numbers like that, you would expect there to be some evidence that you could point to. And there’s like one picture where they’ve pointed to like a couple dozen body bags and been like, “See, look at this.”

But look, I’m not — maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. I’m very skeptical of these claims when they’re made right before we launch a war. But I think the other point is that at least according to then, there has been some evidence of this, right? There were police stations that were burned, there were mosques that were attacked. These were not just peaceful protests. I’m not saying they don’t have a right to violently rise up and overthrow their government, whatever, but all the hawks in the west were saying, “These people are trying to overthrow their government.”

JOE ROGAN: Not only that, in the past, our agencies, our intelligence agencies have engaged in nefarious practices where we have conscripted certain people to go and light things on fire and blow things up and create these events to accelerate.

DAVE SMITH: Front page of the Jerusalem Post, they were bragging that there was Mossad within the protests. So now look, I don’t know. But also the thing is this, right? If you are trying to overthrow a government, a government will kill you for doing that. And that’s true about every government, including our own. Including our own. If armed protesters went to try to overthrow Barack Obama’s government, he would kill those people, if they were actually a threat.

Ashley Babbitt and the Bodycam Shooting

JOE ROGAN: Ashley Babbitt was murdered, not January 6th.

DAVE SMITH: And every single left winger in the country went, “Well, that’s okay. It was an insurrection.” And by the way, every single right winger in this country, when this Pretty guy got killed, were like, “Well, he was interfering.” I saw it. But by the way, the Pretty thing was the most textbook example of a bad shooter shooting. There’s just no defending it. They had disarmed the guy. He’s down. There’s six of them. They panic, they put six bullets in him.

JOE ROGAN: Do you know what happened, though? Do you know the whole story of the gun, the gun being removed?

DAVE SMITH: No.

JOE ROGAN: Okay. The gun is a Sig P320.

DAVE SMITH: Right.

JOE ROGAN: A Sig P320 is notorious for accidental discharges.

DAVE SMITH: Right.

JOE ROGAN: There is a video of the cop moving the gun, walking off.

DAVE SMITH: Yes, I saw that.

JOE ROGAN: And the gun goes off.

DAVE SMITH: Is that — and that — is that his gun?

JOE ROGAN: For sure? Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: Because I thought that hadn’t been determined whether or not — I heard people speculating about that.

JOE ROGAN: I watched the video multiple times and I’ve watched other people’s analysis of it. Obviously, I’m no expert, but I do know something about guns. And that gun in particular has been demonstrated online that it will go off. There’s a cop inside of a precinct, he bends over, not touching his gun, gun in the holster, and it goes off. There’s a guy — there’s a video of a guy on a range and an ax — a gun just goes off. And he goes, “Whose fing gun was that?” And the range master goes, “Is that a Sig?” And he goes, “Yeah.” He goes, “Get that fing gun off of my range.”

DAVE SMITH: Wow.

JOE ROGAN: Because it’s a P3 — I should be real clear, Sig makes a bunch of guns that are awesome. Like, the P365 is like one of the best carry guns in the world. There’s a lot of guns they make that don’t have this issue, but that particular gun that Pretty had — with one in the chamber — is f*ing knuckleheads walking around with one in the chamber.

The War Drums and Humanitarian Justifications

DAVE SMITH: Absolutely. And all for — I’m just saying, the only point I’m making is that it was clearly a f* up. I’m not saying they wanted to execute the guy. I’m just saying they had the gun taken from them, they didn’t communicate that to each other, they freaked out. But literally all it took was seeing one video 11 days earlier where he kicked the back of a cop car, right? And for every right winger to go, “Yeah, whatever, dude. Got what you deserve.”

So my point is about this — looking at this in the Iranian regime, it’s just not clear what are you actually accusing them of. Are you saying that somebody was trying to overthrow the government and the government mowed them down? Are you saying that they lined up protesters and shot them all in the back of the head simply for voicing their opinion? None of this is made clear. But when the war drums are beating, no one even cares to ask these questions. It’s just like, “Yeah, yep, they killed their own people.”

And then if you notice with this war, much like with Venezuela and almost like with all of them, they just keep giving you — they throw like 15 justifications at it. And you’re like, “Wait, which one is the reason we’re fighting this?” Because I saw that all of them like to play the humanitarian card and go, “We’re doing this for these oppressed people. We want them to rise up. They’ve been living under this brutal regime.” And you’re like, okay, two things.

Number one, that is simply just not how US foreign policy works. We don’t fight wars on humanitarian grounds. We’re partners with some of the most brutal authoritarians in the world. And in the case of Israel, we’ve been funding their destruction of Gaza for the last two and a half years. So that’s not really what’s motivating this here.

And then number two, Donald Trump even just the other day said he’ll be partners with the new Ayatollah and run the Strait of Hormuz together. He’s backed off.

JOE ROGAN: Did he say that?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, he’s backed off of regime change.

JOE ROGAN: Or there’s the idea that someone’s talking to him. Who’s he talking to? Do they know who they’re talking to? Because it’s not like they’re meeting. Donald Trump said, “Some guy’s on the phone. I am free to negotiate, dude.”

DAVE SMITH: He said — Donald Trump himself said the other day, “We’re negotiating, negotiations are going great.” And they go, “Who are you negotiating with?” And he goes, “A person we believe to be in charge.” And then they said, “So is this the new Supreme Leader?” And he said, “No, no, no one’s heard from that guy. We don’t know where he is.”

JOE ROGAN: Some hacker in his basement in Belarus, not talking with an Iranian accent, and he’s got them convinced.

DAVE SMITH: Well, it’s just —

JOE ROGAN: “I have the authority to negotiate. Let’s be partners. Let’s be fair. Wire 1 million bitcoin to this address.”

Iran’s Demands and the Negotiation Chaos

DAVE SMITH: Well, everything publicly reported today is that Iran is like, “No, we’re not in these negotiations.” We’ve made our terms clear. And their terms — what they’re asking for is something that Donald Trump is not going to be able to give them.

JOE ROGAN: What’s that?

DAVE SMITH: Their demands were that we stopped attacking immediately — that part they might get — that we pay them restitution for all the damage so far, essentially, that we leave the region. I mean, they had a few other things there that were just like —

JOE ROGAN: And they want them to open up a Terry Black’s in Tehran.

DAVE SMITH: This one was really important to us.

JOE ROGAN: Terry Black’s.

DAVE SMITH: One.

JOE ROGAN: One. Terry Black’s barbecue. We don’t have good barbecue here.

It doesn’t seem like — if he’s not really negotiating with this guy, if that’s not true and he’s just putting this out there in the public as a negotiation ploy — what a clusterfuck. Because you’re dealing with people that don’t mind dying. They believe — I mean, these are very religious people. They’re fanatical. They believe they’re going to go to heaven. They believe they’re martyrs and they’re fighting for Allah. This is the just and holy war.

DAVE SMITH: Well, they’ve also been attacked. And they’ve been preparing for this for a long time. And there’s — people make a lot out of the chance that the Iranians chant, “Death to America.”

JOE ROGAN: And what do you got there, Jimmy? Sorry. And who’s in control of it?

DAVE SMITH: Will Iran still be able to control the flow of oil?

JOE ROGAN: Be jointly controlled by who?

DAVE SMITH: Maybe me.

JOE ROGAN: Maybe me. Me and the Ayatollah. Whoever the Ayatollah is, whoever the next Ayatollah — look, and there’ll also be a very serious form of a regime change. Now, in all fairness, everybody’s been killed from the regime. There’s automatically a regime change. But we’re dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid. The people within — they know who they are. They’re very respected.

DAVE SMITH: And maybe one of them will be —

JOE ROGAN: Exactly what we’re looking for. Look at Venezuela, how well that’s working out.

The Iran War: A Quagmire in the Making

DAVE SMITH: I mean, dude, this is such a f*ing mess. This is such a mess, dude. I mean, this is just too ridiculous, dude.

And the thing is that a lot of people — I’ve spent a long time at this point being against this war, because this war has been telegraphed since the Bush administration wanted to do this. And for at least 15 years, I’ve been publicly opposing this war. And one of the reasons why so many of us oppose this — and it’s a shitty way to be vindicated — is that Iran is just not like any of the other opponents in the global war on terrorism. It’s a different beast entirely. And you’ve seen this already, only three weeks in. We never dealt with any of this with any of the other countries.

You know what I mean? We had what the Pentagon calls escalation dominance in all of those other wars, which essentially means — if you do this, we do this. If you do that, we’re prepared for everything. Escalation dominance is a lot like being in jiu-jitsu, where you see really high level guys who basically put you in a position where you can make one of two choices and either way they get you. Like, okay, you can give me your back and I’ll choke you, or you can push off me and I’ll arm bar you — whatever option you have, I’m going to get you. We don’t have that with Iran. The Pentagon’s been open about this since at least 2007.

The fact is that, as we’re already seeing, they can target ships in the Strait of Hormuz, they can target our assets, our bases, our embassies in the region, they can target our allies. And this is a big problem. So it seems like Donald Trump got into this thinking it would be like Venezuela — it would be quick and bloodless and easy, and he could claim victory. Now that it’s not gone that way, it seems like he’s kind of scrambling for what the off ramp is here.

At least — and I give Donald Trump this, as angry as I am with him — at least it is true that he’s looking for an off ramp, it seems like. And he did this with the 12 Day War, right? He started the war, he saw an off ramp and he took it.

The problem here really is that this war changed the calculation from the Iranian perspective, and that much is clear so far. After 9/11, all the countries in the Middle East and North Africa — essentially all of them — waved the white flag. Saddam Hussein welcomed UN inspectors in. He was trying to do anything he could to not meet the fate that he ultimately met. Gaddafi denuclearized, got rid of chemical weapons. Bashar Al-Assad got rid of all his chemical weapons. They were all just like, “We don’t want it with you.” And Iran was very much the same way. They got into the JCPOA, they allowed an inspections regime in to come look at their nuclear facilities, all of that.

And even up to the 12 Day War — when we dropped the bunker busters, when Israel bombed a whole bunch of regime targets — they still, in their response, called ahead, made sure there’d be no U.S. troops there. They hit the side of a little base and then kind of gave Trump an off ramp, because they didn’t want it. They don’t want to die like Muammar Gaddafi. They don’t want to have their country destroyed. So for self-preservation reasons, they showed restraint.

The calculation this time, clearly already from the Iranians, was that “We can’t do that again. We have to give you a bloody nose and a black eye. We have to make this cost as much as possible for you, otherwise you guys will just be back here in another five months doing it again.” And they’re probably right about that.

JOE ROGAN: They’re probably right.

DAVE SMITH: And so now we’re in this situation where we’re already in a quagmire. It’s already like over a dozen Americans have died, I think a couple hundred wounded at this point. Israel isn’t giving real numbers on what’s going on there, but there’s some pretty substantial damage and definitely some Israelis have died, and I’m sure thousands of Iranians have died at this point.

Pete Hegseth just asked for $200 billion. I don’t know if it’ll get up to cost that much, but this thing is certainly already in the tens of billions if you consider munitions, military movements, and then just the damage to embassies and bases and stuff like that. I mean, this thing is already a disaster.

And so now it’s not like Venezuela where Donald Trump could just stop and declare victory and even say, “Look how great it’s working out now.” Is Venezuela really working out that great? I don’t know. We took one guy away, the regime’s still in place, the people haven’t been liberated. But whatever, he can claim that. The problem here is that Donald Trump’s not really in a situation where if he just quit right now, how is he really going to say, “Look how wonderful this is?” I don’t know, dude, this cost a lot already. And it doesn’t seem like there’s any clear — what did we get out of this?

JOE ROGAN: Well, the only way it would work is if there was some sort of a deal with whoever the f* is going to be the new guy in charge. And they did come to some sort of an agreement, and they did give them some compensation for all the stuff we blew up.

DAVE SMITH: Yes, well, that. Right.

JOE ROGAN: So they’ll just print some more money for that. Sure. And inflation goes up.

Israel, Iran, and the Greater Israel Project

DAVE SMITH: But look, here’s the thing — it’s not just Donald Trump. There are two other participants in this war, two other entities in this war. There’s Iran and there’s Israel.

Now, is Iran going to accept that? Maybe. But just like the 12 Day War, look at the position you’re in now. We’re relying on the mullahs. That is not an ideal situation to be in.

And then the other factor is Israel, who also gets a say in this for some reason, because we allow them to. And Netanyahu just the other day was very clear about this — this is regime change. And he even said it will require ground forces. And he said he’s not sure who those ground forces will be yet.

Do you remember the moment during the 12 Day War when it was the closest Trump ever came to flipping out on Israel? He said, “They don’t know what the f they’re doing.” He said Israel and Iran don’t know what the f they’re doing. Because after he drops the bunker busters, he goes, “That’s it, we’re taking the off ramp.” And then he said he wanted to work out a ceasefire. And then after he said that, Israel just started lighting up regime targets, just bombing the crap out of them. And they weren’t bombing nuclear facilities — they were bombing government buildings. And they’ve been doing a bunch of that in this war as well, bombing local police departments, things like that. Just creating chaos.

Because what they want is what they’ve been getting in the rest of the war on terrorism. They are quite happy with a Libya model or a Syria model.

JOE ROGAN: They don’t want anyone that’s organized as a threat to Israel.

DAVE SMITH: They don’t. It’s all about Iran’s support for Hezbollah. They want southern Lebanon — which their defense minister Katz just announced that they’re going to occupy.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that’s crazy, right? They just announced that they’re going to be occupying another country.

DAVE SMITH: That’s what it’s about, man. And look, this isn’t like a conspiracy theory. The guys all tell you this in their own words. Benjamin Netanyahu was asked point blank a few months back what he thought of the Greater Israel Project. And he said, “It’s very near and dear to my heart.”

This is the point of denying the Palestinians a state for all these years. You can’t let the Palestinians have a state because then how are you going to take that all over someday? That’s all supposed to be part of Israel.

And the U.S. Ambassador — not the Israeli ambassador, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel — is on record saying that God promised Iraq to Benjamin Netanyahu, and that God promised Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and the West Bank and parts of Syria, and that all of this is Greater Israel. That is it.

By the way, Sam Harris — where are you on that? Where are the new atheists when you could finally use them for something? Hey, that’s pretty crazy. Is that how we do politics? We work on this ridiculous religious superstition that somehow when God said “Israel” in Genesis, he was referring to the state that was created and named after that passage?

This would literally be on the level, Joe, of if I named my son Jesus Christ and then told you, “You have to worship my son. Look, it’s right there in your Bible.”

JOE ROGAN: Exactly.

DAVE SMITH: That you worship — no, you named it after that dude. That doesn’t count.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: That doesn’t count.

JOE ROGAN: It’s crazy. And they took the spot where it was. I mean, they took over and they did it in a horrific way. Like the Nakba.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You listen to some of those soldiers — the translation of some of those soldiers talking about what they did, and even laughing about what they did. Some of them even smiling, in 1948.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. Because it wasn’t in 1848, right? You know what I mean? Like, these guys were alive. Maybe not so many of them now, but 20 or 30 years ago, you could put a video camera in front of one of these guys and ask them to tell their story.

JOE ROGAN: It was 78 years ago. It wasn’t that long ago.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

The Broken Promise of “No More Wars”

DAVE SMITH: And so, look — the idea that America, after just 25 years of catastrophic failures, launching wars of choice, wars of aggression, lying the American people into it, slaughtering millions of people, bankrupting this country, and really severely degrading the country with these wars — the idea that we would jump into another war of choice for Israel is just too crazy, man. And especially when it’s the administration that really ran on and promised that we want to get out of this game of fighting stupid wars in the Middle East.

JOE ROGAN: That was what we were all supporting. That was the one thing that he was saying that was so promising to so many people that were independent, that were on the fence. Like, “This guy wants no wars. He wants closing the border, which I think is a great idea. He wants no wars.” That enough?

DAVE SMITH: Let’s go. Well, especially considering the fact that — even if there are some things about Donald Trump that maybe you don’t like — the other guys were saying we want to keep fighting forever wars, and this guy was saying we should stop doing that. That’s enough to go, “Well, then he’s better than you on net.”

And don’t get me wrong — I endorsed Donald Trump in 2024. People give me shit for that. Some people like that, some people give me shit for it. But I kind of view it like this. And I will say, maybe I’m a little biased here because I love you, but I don’t think I’m being biased — I really think you played an enormous role in kind of standing up to the progressive Democratic establishment and their narrative over the last decade or so. And it’s really hard to overstate how crazy they were, how much of a threat to this country they were.

So for anybody who wants to give shit to anyone who voted for Donald Trump, it’s like, hey, man — the alternative was the party who bragged about, first off, insane woke stuff like poisoning the minds of children in a really grotesque and abusive way. They gave us open borders, flooding the country with people. They gave us all types of COVID tyranny based on pseudoscience. They gave us the most reckless foreign policy in American history, which was this proxy war on Russia’s border. And they were pretending the President wasn’t senile when he clearly was. Then, in the fourth quarter, they threw up a cackling candidate who was not democratically picked in any process.

So, sorry — it does make sense that a lot of people went, “Okay, we’re going to go back with this other guy.”

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

The Destruction of the Coalition

DAVE SMITH: Also there was an interesting dynamic happening in ’24 where, okay, this wasn’t, you know, Donald Trump. They had actually tried to throw him in jail, maybe even tried to murder him. We never really got any answers on that one. He now had Bobby Kennedy with them, he now had Tulsi Gabbard with him. He now had all, you know what I mean? Even J.D. Vance. Like a lot of these people who were supposedly much more non-interventionist, there was reason to hope that maybe it wouldn’t end up here.

But anyway, I guess my thing is that you played such a huge role in this. And I, to a lesser extent, played a role in standing up against a lot of that progressive insanity over the last 10 years. And I just feel like after ’24, you know, this coalition came together where Donald Trump for the first time ever wins the popular vote, wins every single swing state, and really more remarkably won the youth and the culture. Like, Donald Trump went from being like the cultural pariah to being the guy like Jon Jones is doing the dance at the front. And it was just, it was. And that whole coalition has been destroyed over this war. And now he’s going to hand the country right back over to these Democrats who we’ve been fighting so hard. All for what? All for a war that Netanyahu wanted against a country that, dude, by the way, the justification for the 12 Day War was bullst. They weren’t trying to make nuclear weapons. They were trying to negotiate out of that unscathed.

Well, that’s right. But then all. And I want to, you know, he said some nice things about me when he was on here the other day with you. So I will say some nice things about Constantin Kisin, who, despite our disagreements, I really like that guy a lot. But he is, I could be wrong. I could be missing someone. He’s the only guy I’ve seen who supported the 12 Day War, but is really skeptical about this. And I’ve seen so many people. It’s unbelievable, dude.

Like, they just so, like the 12 Day War comes, for the first 48 hours of it, they’re like, “Dude, Israel’s doing this on its own. All they want is for you to stay out of it.” Then like the third day, they’re like, “All right, they do need some help shooting down the missiles that are coming back toward them. But whatever. This is just defensive, you know what I mean? Like, you don’t have to get involved.” Then it’s like the next day, like, “All right, we don’t. We don’t have bunker busters, so we do need you to drop the bunker busters.”

But then their whole, like, defense of the 12 Day War was like, “Look, no Americans died. It didn’t cost us a lot. It didn’t turn into this disaster.” And now we’re at the. Okay, well, fine, all of that happened, but it’s still a good thing. Constantin was the one guy I saw who was like, “No, I supported that one, but I am not getting on board with this one.” And I give him a lot of credit for that. I give him a lot of credit for that.

JOE ROGAN: I like that guy a lot. I like him a lot. I like Francis a lot, too.

DAVE SMITH: I do, too.

JOE ROGAN: Their show Trigonometry is one of the best shows. Agree with them or not agree with them. They’re always reasonable. They’re never ideologically driven. They have opinions that you may or may not agree with, but they’re real clear about their opinions and why they believe what they believe.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that’s right. And I will say.

JOE ROGAN: And they’re great guys.

DAVE SMITH: Genuinely good dudes.

JOE ROGAN: Great guys.

Online Arguments and Good Faith Debates

DAVE SMITH: I really liked. You know, I get in a lot of, like, the st show arguments. I find myself in them. I probably should be better than them and just not engage, but I’m not, and I’m petty.

JOE ROGAN: What do you mean by st show?

DAVE SMITH: Like, where it just becomes, like, an insult thing or, you know, I debated Alex Barron, say, or. It’s kind of embarrassing in hindsight, but, like, I don’t know, it gets me really angry when the guy’s calling me a Holocaust denier or something like that.

JOE ROGAN: I think what he was saying was kind of silly, the way he was saying it was silly. And he was just trying to play gotcha with you, and then you called him a f*.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, it’s not my finest moment.

JOE ROGAN: You can tell he was really shaken by that. Well, it’s just that he expected that

DAVE SMITH: I kind of have a thing where, like, look, I’m really into this st and I nerd out on it, and I’m obsessed with all of this for whatever reason. It’s just, like, my calling in life, but I’m also a stand-up comic at heart, you know? And so, like, as soon as someone goes like, “Oh, I want to be vicious,” you’re like, “Oh, you want to be vicious? Cause, like, I’m pretty good at being vicious. So, like, I could do that. And you’re probably not used to hearing this type of vicious st that, like, comics say to each other, right?”

But one of the things that I really appreciated about Francis and Constantin was when I went to do their show, it was just like, it was genuinely a good faith conversation. And they weren’t trying to, like, win the point or get a clip that they could go, “We destroyed Dave.” And then once they do that, I’m like, “Okay, well, then I’m not trying to do that either, man. Like, let’s talk about this st.” That’s always what I’d rather do.

But the thing that’s. I guess the thing that’s really interesting about this moment is that because the kind of corporate media propaganda apparatus has been completely destroyed, and because the Internet and social media and podcasts are where people go now for conversations and debates and news and all this stuff, they’re kind of like they’re running without a propaganda apparatus. You know, like Israel, just Israel in the last two and a half years is down, like, 50 points in the polls. Like, in terms of American approval. They’ve just been. It’s a drastic change. Like, I’ve never seen on any issue

JOE ROGAN: over the last years in our lifetimes, where it’s been an issue that we are dealing with the consequences of the relationship.

DAVE SMITH: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: There’s never been a time in the past where people were completely aware of, “Oh, there’s no other reason why we’d be going into Iran.” Like, most people. Most people don’t think 100%. It wasn’t for Israel asking us to. Netanyahu’s consistent visits to the White House.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, you can’t even. You can’t even pretend otherwise. I mean, people can, but people do. Yes, well, they try to, but people.

JOE ROGAN: Coleman Hughes just got in a debate with Glenn Greenwald about it.

DAVE SMITH: I saw that they did it. I have not had a chance to watch it.

Social Media and the Brain

JOE ROGAN: Somebody sent it to me and it was, you know, being a good boy when it comes to social media. It’s been so good for my brain. Yeah, it’s kind of remarkable. So I got.

DAVE SMITH: Just staying off, you mean?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, my new phone, I’m not going to put anything on it. I’m going to have my old phone and leave it at home, and I’m not going to be able to look at it. So when I have to post things I got to post it on my other phone. That’s not going to be with me. I’m not doing that anymore because I just think eventually, ultimately it rots your brain. But you do get some cool debates and some insight into what’s going on. And I don’t know what Coleman’s argument was, but Glenn and Coleman were arguing about Israel’s influence on this.

DAVE SMITH: Well, I’ll be very interested to watch that. I do respect Coleman, despite disagreeing with him very adamantly on this. Very smart guy, very smart guy, no question about it.

JOE ROGAN: And a very nice guy too.

DAVE SMITH: And look, one of the things I really respect about him is when I did his show, he literally starts it by going, he goes, “You know, almost all these debates I see you in, like you’re kind of debating issues and then people just debate your character. And I’m not doing that at all. I want to talk about the issue the whole time.” And I do, I just genuinely appreciate that.

JOE ROGAN: No, agree with him or disagree with him. He’s a super reasonable guy and a very nice guy. I like him a lot. I like him a lot. Whether I agree with him or disagree with him, he’s a wonderful person.

Coleman Hughes, Israel, and the Iraq War

DAVE SMITH: Agreed. This is what I will say about his position on this, which I think is kind of interesting. So number one, when I was on Piers Morgan with him right after Venezuela happened and his position, I don’t want to mischaracterize it, but I think this is pretty accurate. Was he was like, “Look, a lot of people are comparing Venezuela to Iraq or Libya or Syria, but like that is a different region, a different culture, a different religion. And so really what we should be comparing this to is other interventions in Latin America and South America.”

And I, you know, I didn’t completely agree with that. I was like, “Actually I think there are some lessons you could learn from other wars that we’ve been in that might apply here.” But I was like, “Okay, fair enough. Hey, let’s look at other interventions in Central and South America.” Cause we’ve got a long list of really disastrous ones. Like if you want to look at Guatemala or Nicaragua or you know, Cuba, Mexico, a whole bunch.

But then when this war in Iran starts, I don’t see him going the equal opposite of that going, “Hey, now that we’re at war with Iran, we have to judge this by Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria,” because you know what I’m saying, like that would be the flip side to the other position.

And so I don’t see that. The other thing is that when he’s arguing with me about. Cause I was arguing that, you know, that the Israel lobby and the Israeli government were a huge part of why we fought the war in Iraq. And his big point that he stuck to, a lot of the hawks stick to this, is that Ariel Sharon was actually. Who was the sitting Prime Minister at the time, he was actually against the war in Iraq.

Now that’s not exactly true. He wanted George W. Bush to invade Iran first, not Iraq. And then when he got assurances that Iran would be next, he got on board. You could go look at Sharon’s speech. He gave a speech, I think it was in August of 2002, to the Knesset. And it’s all about how Iraq is the biggest threat. They have weapons of mass destruction. But the Mossad was cranking out all types of BS intelligence about the nuclear weapons that he could detonate in 15 minutes or whatever. It was all nonsense.

But if you’re going to say that that is evidence that Israel was not pushing us into this because the sitting Prime Minister at the time didn’t like this war. Okay, but again, then how does the current sitting Prime Minister of Israel feel about this war in Iran? Because he’s fighting it with us. And he said after it started that this is the culmination of his entire life’s work. He has been trying to lie our government into this war for my entire lifetime coming here. He testified. How many times do you remember?

JOE ROGAN: He testified with the cartoon of a

DAVE SMITH: bomb at the UN. Cartoon.

JOE ROGAN: A bomb cartoon with percentages of the enriched uranium and like a Daffy Duck bomb.

DAVE SMITH: Not like the bomb that’ll blow your beak around with a few things. And he was already up real high. He was already up real high. No, dude, he was on record saying that Iran was three to five years away from getting a nuclear weapon. In the ’90s.

JOE ROGAN: In the ’90s.

DAVE SMITH: I mean, he’s just been lying through his teeth. And there is something. Look, man, there’s something really profoundly dishonorable about trying to lie another country into war. Like not even trying to sell the war to your own people and have your own military do it, but because you care.

JOE ROGAN: It’s.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, there we are. We were up to 90% first stage.

JOE ROGAN: No, it was first stage we were at. He was saying, “They’ve hit the first stage.”

DAVE SMITH: Oh, oh, oh, excuse me. Okay. Yeah, you’re right. I guess this is. We can’t. We can’t go anywhere. It’s just so ridiculous. And he knows. He knows he’s lying.

JOE ROGAN: He’s like your friend that, like, you’ve been friends with since high school, and every time you go out, he gets you in a fight. Yeah, like, “Dude, don’t do this. Like, those guys over there are fing problem. Let’s go over there and f them up.” And like, you know, all your buddies are like, “Dude, again.”

DAVE SMITH: Did I use that exact analogy when I debated Josh Hammer at Princeton University?

JOE ROGAN: And.

Tim Dillon

DAVE SMITH: Or maybe it was in the Charlie Kirk. It was one of the times I debated him, but I used that exact analogy. He was like, is Israel an ally? And I was like, no. It’s like, they’re not a good friend, bro. If your friend’s getting you in a bar fight every night, stop hanging out with that guy, bro.

JOE ROGAN: Tim Dillon did an ad for Neuro Gum and Neuromints on his podcast where he’s like, I have a friend. Let’s just call her Erica. And he does this Erica Kirk ad. He doesn’t say, it’s Erica Kirk for Neurogum. Have you heard of it? Oh, my God. Oh, my God, it’s so funny. Oh, my God, it’s so crazy. He’s so out of his. I f*ing love him so much. I’m so happy Tim Dillon’s in the world.

DAVE SMITH: He is.

JOE ROGAN: He’s the best. If you’re not listening to his podcast and you want a rational but hilarious take on all the f*ing madness that’s going on with not just this war, but the Epstein Files, his episode on the Epstein Files. I hardly ever tweet about other people’s podcasts, but I hardly ever tweet. But I posted it. I’m like, this is one of the best podcasts about anything ever.

DAVE SMITH: His ability. Tim’s ability to rant.

JOE ROGAN: It’s like unprecedented.

DAVE SMITH: A hilarious rant that is laced with excellent points, but it’s just hilarious the whole time. And just him going off is second to none.

JOE ROGAN: And he’s sober. He just puts on his magic glasses.

DAVE SMITH: Him and Fuentes are the top two.

JOE ROGAN: But he buries Fuentes. Fuentes is really good. Fuentes has very.

DAVE SMITH: Tim can do something different that anybody else can do well.

JOE ROGAN: His ability to blend sarcasm and just celebration of chaos.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, he’s second to none.

JOE ROGAN: Best ranter that’s ever walked the face of the planet.

DAVE SMITH: I remember when I first met Tim in New York, back before he moved out to LA after that. But when I first met him in New York, I think he was a green stand up. I think he hadn’t been doing it for that long. But I remember just being on a podcast with him and just being like, yo, this dude is going to be a fing superstar. Like, it was just his ranting. He would go off on things where you just find yourself. You almost have a moment where you forget you’re on the show with him. You’re like, I’m just sitting here watching. And then I’m like, oh s, I’m here too. I better say something. But he’s just unbelievable.

JOE ROGAN: Listen to this ad. Listen to this ad.

DAVE SMITH: I don’t know if I should tell this, but it does show how effective Neuromints can be. A friend of mine, let’s call her Erica.

JOE ROGAN: She’s had a wild life, this woman.

DAVE SMITH: She was in Romania. She had an orphanage. She was on a reality show, married this famous guy who was an intelligence asset. And I said to her, how do you do this? And she says, Tim, it’s Neuro’s energy and focus. And I said, but how do you

JOE ROGAN: do it after the guy, the husband

DAVE SMITH: and father of the kids, gets murdered and you’re out there doing all kinds of stuff. You’re doing fundraisers and you’re dancing around with glitter pants. How does this happen? She goes, I could lie to you, but I’m telling you, it’s Neuro’s energy and focus mix. I said, really?

JOE ROGAN: She goes, sure.

DAVE SMITH: I said, how are you running this organization seven hours after this guy got popped? She goes, a lot of people speculate, but it’s Neuro’s energy and focus mints. I go, really? She said, yeah. Neuro energy and focus is powered by natural green tea, caffeine, L-Theanine for calm focus and vitamin B12 and B6. I mean, whatever they’re paying him, they should pay him more.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s not enough. No one could pay him enough. He’s the goat.

DAVE SMITH: Well, that’ll also just make you remember that product forever.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, he’s the greatest of all time. He’s the goat, dude. I had someone in the White House come up to me and go, Tim Dillon, really good. I go, yeah, he’s really gay. Like, you think he would fake that?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: How long have you known him? I go, I’ve known him forever. He’s really gay.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well, he’s a real good undercover. But every now and then, you see it come out. Every now and then you see, like, I remember this was back when he was young and he was broke at the time, but Tim was always kind of a snob, even when he was broke. Like, it was always kind of. And I went. I forget what it was, but I was like, oh, we could get food from this restaurant. And he goes, from there? I go, yeah, they got good food. And he goes, you think that’s good food? Because he’s like a real foodie or whatever. And then it was just like, oh, I saw it for a second there.

JOE ROGAN: Well, he used to have money, because he had money when he was selling

DAVE SMITH: subprime mortgages. He had money in finance.

JOE ROGAN: Then he decided to be in subprime mortgages. And he was a part of the housing crisis.

DAVE SMITH: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: And he was doing cocaine back then.

DAVE SMITH: He did topple the US economy for a while.

JOE ROGAN: He was part of it.

DAVE SMITH: But then he got into comedy. He more than made up for it. He’s more than made up for that.

JOE ROGAN: This is where he belongs. He belongs in front of that screen with the glasses on, just going on these insane rants. Oh, yeah, he’s so funny, man. And look, his Epstein Files take was genius.

DAVE SMITH: That was great, dude. His thing about Sam Harris having a meditation app and also supporting genocide. Like, what human being does both of those? Such a great take on that.

The Decline of Corporate Media

JOE ROGAN: Oh, he’s so funny, man. Yeah, we’re lucky, dude. We’re part of a really cool group of people right now. It’s a very unusual time that the mainstream has lost all of its power of influence on people. It still puts out information, it still puts out shows, but they’re trying to look like you, but they’re f*ing stick. That Jake Tapper thing was so crazy. I was like, what are you doing? Are you doing a podcast now? What are you doing?

DAVE SMITH: Oh, it’s such a perfect little microcosm, though, of, like, it’s almost painful. Like, I’m like, guys.

JOE ROGAN: Just.

DAVE SMITH: Can you hire me? I mean, like, I would explain this to you.

JOE ROGAN: No, it wouldn’t work either, because they’re so trained. It’s like, if you get a dog and that dog has been. Yeah, a cat might be a better example. Like, if you never had a litter box in the house and the cat’s been pissing all over the carpet, you are always going to have that cat piss on the carpet. That’s what that cat does, you’re not going to fix them. If your entire life you’ve been spitting out nonsense from a teleprompter, and now all of a sudden you have to be yourself. You’ve been functioning in a world of executives and producers where everybody goes over every little thing you say. And do you 100% read things you know aren’t true? Or at least partially? Mics for, like, everything?

DAVE SMITH: Oh, yeah, yeah. Their whole setup is they’re all trying to look like podcasters.

JOE ROGAN: Wait a minute. They put mics out like podcasters? That’s crazy. Imagine if they think that’s all it takes.

DAVE SMITH: Well, this is. But, Joe, talk about completely missing the point, right? It’s just fundamentally missing it. They go, okay, so all of these people have left watching cable news in droves, and now a lot of people listen to podcasts. They’ll listen to you or Theo Vaughn or whoever it might be. And a huge reason why people, a huge reason why you’ve been number one for so long now is because however anyone feels about you, you’re authentic. It’s very hard to deny that.

One of the biggest questions I get when people meet me, if I do a meet and greet after shows or something, is, what’s Joe Rogan like? That’s a question I get all the time. Because we’re buddies, and I’ve been on the show a lot of times, and people love you, and they’ll go, what’s Joe Rogan like? And I always tell them the same thing. I go, you already know. You know, like, you already know who he is. He’s that guy. And then offstage, he’s that guy. You know what I mean? Like, that’s who he is. And people like that. Whatever you think about Theo Vaughn, he’s authentic. He’s being himself. That’s who he is.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that’s how it works.

DAVE SMITH: And because you guys in the corporate media are all professional liars and have lied to the American people about the last 17 crises, they don’t trust you anymore. And so then their reaction to that is, you go, well, what if we pretended to be podcasters? You’re like, no, you dummy. That’s the whole thing. This is just proving further how inauthentic you are, that you’re pretending to have meetings on this.

JOE ROGAN: 100%.

DAVE SMITH: 100%. They do, dude. They all. This was to me, despite the fact that people give me s* about voting for Donald Trump and they could say I should have known better and whatever. I was a huge critic of him in his first term, and I’m a huge critic of him in his second term.

But the best thing about Donald Trump winning in 2024. And I did predict this. I’m not always the best with predictions. I’m pretty good on issues, I think, but I’m not great at predictions. They’re tough. But the best thing about Donald Trump winning was that the corporate media finally admitted it. They had been pretending for so long. I remember we used to joke about. I remember coming on a few years ago, and we would joke about how Brian Stelter would always, whenever he talked about you, he would always kind of go like, the fringe Joe Rogan. Like, as if he’s the mainstream and you’re the fringe. As if the numbers aren’t readily available

JOE ROGAN: to all of us.

DAVE SMITH: That we could be like, your show has like 200,000 listening and his has 20 million. So how is he the fringe and you’re the mainstream?

JOE ROGAN: I think.

DAVE SMITH: But they would pretend. Well, they maybe believed it, but that 2024 election, that’s when they all admitted it. And then the talking point moved to, we need to find our own Joe Rogan. The Democrats need to find a Joe Rogan. Whatever. Remember, that was like this thing. So they kind of admitted that, oh, the podcasts have become the new mainstream and we are the fringe.

JOE ROGAN: Right. But the dumb part of that statement was, you already had me. F*ing idiots just lost your mind. I’m not right and I’m not left.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I think both of them suck. And I think the adherence to the ideologies that the left supports or the right supports is out of their. You got to be out of your mind. Whether it’s these crackpot Christian nationalists that think that this whole war is a way to get Jesus to return on a white horse.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Do you see those guys that were talking during the readiness meeting?

DAVE SMITH: That.

JOE ROGAN: I think that’s nuts, too. I think the woke s and all the chaos of the fing last four years of having a completely open border and the justifications of all these things, that’s nuts, too. I’m not on either side. But I think the Democrats aren’t ever going to get someone like me because I’m not with either or. I’m with whoever f*ing makes sense. And no one makes sense until AI comes along.

DAVE SMITH: I think they’re going to do a really good job.

JOE ROGAN: President Perplexity is going to run this country fairly and balanced, man.

DAVE SMITH: I’m willing to try it at this point.

Thomas Massie, MAGA, and the Problem with Group Identity

JOE ROGAN: I’m dead serious, man. As long as it doesn’t do something to harm people. As long as that’s its goal is just to manage society.

DAVE SMITH: It’s a big if that you got there. But yes, if we can get that. Well, but what you just said, I think is really — this is something that I’m encouraged by — is that I think what you just said there, I really do believe that you speak for super majorities of the American people. And that’s why even though Donald Trump has shattered his coalition by lying us into this stupid war on behalf of a foreign country, that coalition is still ripe for someone else to pick it up and run with it. And that’s kind of what I’m hoping.

I hope Thomas Massie runs for president. I think, by the way, they’re doing a big money bomb for Thomas Massie on March 30th. And I think him winning reelection in Congress is like the most important political election in the country right now. Because he’s done nothing wrong except actually stand up for America first and for all the stuff that Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard and all these people ran on. And he’s gotten the Israel lobby and the Adelsons — but I repeat myself — have been pouring millions of dollars into his race to try to unseat him for the crime of not going along with the Epstein cover up and not going along with another stupid war and having some fiscal sanity. So I hope he wins.

JOE ROGAN: Imagine those being three negatives that people are saying. He’s not MAGA.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well then, okay, well then MAGA then. If that’s — I don’t know — my position is always like, if not supporting covering up the Epstein files or not supporting a stupid war of choice, a war of aggression on behalf of Israel means I’m not MAGA, then okay, I’m not MAGA. I’m not attached to the phrase “make America great again.” I don’t care, then fine, that phrase sucks.

JOE ROGAN: Here’s the thing — first of all, America is great. “Make America greater,” I’m down. But “make America great again” — and then it becomes a movement of a bunch of fing dorks, because a lot of them are dorks. A lot of them are these really weird, fing uninteresting, unintelligent people that have got something they cling to. And there’s a lot of people that are just real genuine patriots and they’re all lumped into this one group. And you’ve got to accept the dorks too.

The concept of making America great is a great idea. But as soon as you have a team and you allow anybody to join up, you don’t even have tryouts for your team. So you’ve got a bunch of dip shits that are running around spouting out opinions and you have to go along with them because they’re MAGA. And then you’ve got bots online that are probably from fing Indonesia or Russia or wherever and they’re pretending they’re MAGA and they’re saying crazy things. So that’s a part of MAGA too. You’ve fed up by becoming a part of a group.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Whether it’s a Republican group, a Democrat group, a MAGA group, a fing woke group, whatever it is — you fed up by being in a group.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. George Carlin said people are great as individuals. But when they get in a group, man, they’re the worst things in the world. And that’s why it should be about the issues. It should be about your principles and what you believe in.

And look, I’ve said many nice things about Tulsi Gabbard over the years and I was extremely critical of her since last summer and to now. Because I think she’s lying us into a war which is the war that she was always opposed to. The one — the one she sold “no war with Iran” T-shirts. This was —

Tulsi Gabbard and the Iran Nuclear Threat Assessment

JOE ROGAN: How is she lying us into this war?

DAVE SMITH: So —

JOE ROGAN: Well, because that’s a big statement.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s true. So last summer, Tulsi Gabbard had given her — as the Director of National Intelligence does every year — they give their annual threat assessment. Then she testified before Congress about it, and it was very clear in her annual threat assessment that Iran was not attempting to build nuclear weapons, that they had not yet made the political decision to attempt to build nuclear weapons, let alone actually going for it. And she testified before Congress saying the same thing.

And then after negotiating — while they were negotiating — Israel sneak attacks them. Then she had some post where she goes, “Iran could be weeks or months away from nuclear weapons,” which was total bullshit. It made absolutely no sense.

JOE ROGAN: Let me see what the post says. Sure.

DAVE SMITH: This is from — if you could find it. This is from last — it must have been last June.

JOE ROGAN: Right. But is that a fact? So if they’re enriching uranium up to 60% and they just have to enrich it further for the ability to use nuclear weapons, that is a couple weeks away.

DAVE SMITH: No, but not before — it would be to build a bomb and to make it deliverable. I think all the experts say at least a couple years. But the point aside from that is that at the time — this is over now — but at the time, Iran was still members of the JCPOA, they were still in it. So it’s like, what is that? This is the Iran deal that Obama got us into. And Obama — horrible on foreign policy, the butcherer of Libya and Syria and Yemen, and he surged in Afghanistan — but in Iran he made a deal with them.

And the deal, but it wasn’t just with the US and Iran, it also involved Russia and France and England and there were other countries involved in it too. And the JCPOA said that Iran couldn’t enrich above — I think it was 3 to 5% or something like that. And they were staying in it. And it created a new inspections regime, which Iran — so they were having full inspections. They weren’t enriched. But the deal also said that if America gets out of the deal, they can enrich up to higher. So when America got out of the deal, they started enriching.

JOE ROGAN: And when did America get out of the deal?

DAVE SMITH: Donald Trump tore it up in his first term. I want to say 2017 or 2018.

JOE ROGAN: And then they immediately started enriching?

DAVE SMITH: No, they went up a little bit and then I think there were a couple of Israeli attacks and then they went up to enriching at 60%. But the reason we knew they were enriching up to 60% is because they were still members of the JCPOA with an inspections regime. Who was going in there and saying they’re enriching up to 60%?

JOE ROGAN: Right. How much do you actually know about enriching uranium and what it takes to turn into a bomb? Let’s read what she says. “New intelligence confirm what POTUS has stated numerous times — Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed.”

DAVE SMITH: I think this is after. This isn’t the right one.

JOE ROGAN: This is —

DAVE SMITH: Her tweet was before.

JOE ROGAN: This is from June.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. This would have been just shortly before —

JOE ROGAN: This is June 25th. There’s a recent one, though. Oh, edited June 25th. Yeah. But it seems like it was still edited the day it was posted? Probably. Can you go to her page? Because she doesn’t tweet a lot. She’s not a psycho. She’s not one of those — if she tweets, it’s generally something important. Or someone from our team is — so is this the — hold on, above that? “Overwhelmingly elected by the” — click on that — “show more.” I think that’s it.

DAVE SMITH: Well, this is what she testified to Congress this time. I was referring to a different one. But I also think this is a lie. For her to say that the President determines what is an imminent threat or is not —

JOE ROGAN: Not —

DAVE SMITH: No. Either there is an imminent threat or there is not one.

JOE ROGAN: That —

DAVE SMITH: This is like saying the President determines the weather.

JOE ROGAN: Right, right, right, right. But you’re taking her words out of context. She’s saying something that’s factually correct. “As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat.” That is true. “And whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people, and our country.” That’s just an actual fact.

DAVE SMITH: Okay, yes, fair enough.

JOE ROGAN: Enough.

DAVE SMITH: But when she testified before Congress, they asked her point blank a bunch of times about this, and then she goes, “That’s not my job to determine what’s an imminent threat. That’s the job of the President. And if he says it is, then it is.”

JOE ROGAN: Okay, so look at this here. Initially, she’s contradicting Trump, saying that Iran did not rebuild after the 2025 strikes. Contradicting Trump. So this is also from Time magazine. So she’s saying that. Now, what you’re saying that she said earlier was a lie — is not a lie, dude. Because that is actually his —

DAVE SMITH: Well, I wasn’t referring to that.

JOE ROGAN: I understand, but you did say that was a lie. Which she said was a lie.

DAVE SMITH: Okay, fair enough. That was not a lie. But it was —

JOE ROGAN: But it is avoiding — actually correct. And if you’re in a position like she’s in, where you’ve got that guy breathing down your neck and you’re forced to make a statement, you’ve got to tread very carefully on this tightrope that you’re walking.

DAVE SMITH: Okay, fine. But let’s just say, hypothetically, that you know for a fact that Iran did not pose an imminent threat, and then that’s your answer when you’re asked if they did. Fine. It’s not a lie. But it is very misleading, to say the least.

JOE ROGAN: How much? Okay, hold on. “Intel Chief Gabbard declines to say if Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S.” She declined to say on her own personally, but she — this is the Congressional test —

DAVE SMITH: Yes, yes, yes.

JOE ROGAN: This is —

DAVE SMITH: I think this is what I was referring to here. And she does at one point say that it’s not her job to make that determination, which I do think is her entire job.

JOE ROGAN: It’s interesting.

DAVE SMITH: Look, maybe I’m being a little harsh by saying “lying” in that example. And fair enough, to your point there — that technically is a true statement. I do think it’s very misleading. And I do think that she really was the one who advocated against this specific war for the reasons that we’re seeing unfold right now.

I get your point. It’s a very tough tightrope to walk. The options are essentially, I think, to do what Joe Kent did and resign, or to stay on and support the thing. I mean, I think it’s kind of hard to thread that needle.

The Military Industrial Complex

JOE ROGAN: Right. Do you think that there is any value in being one of the few reasonable voices that has his ear? Yeah. Ultimately, it is his responsibility to determine what’s an imminent threat and what is not. I would imagine that she gets access to most of the same classified information that he does as the Director of National Intelligence. I don’t know, though. I don’t know how it works. But what can she do other than try to be a voice of reason? If ultimately this guy is going to do what he wants to do.

DAVE SMITH: Right.

JOE ROGAN: And he’s going to do also what Israel wants to do, clearly. And he’s talked about it — and also in his first term. I’ll never forget this f*ing conversation that he had with Steve Hilton, because I think it was one of the first times I remember I’ve seen a president say — Steve Hilton, by the way, I’ve been friends with him for 12 or 13 years. Met him and his family in Maui on the beach when my daughter was really young and his kids are really young, they became friends. We’ve hung out together, on vacation together. He’s a sweetheart of a guy. I love that guy.

And when he was interviewing Trump, Trump said that there is a military industrial complex and these guys want to go to war.

DAVE SMITH: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: And we were like, “What? This is crazy. You’re just saying that.” It’s one of the many reasons why a lot of people liked him. Because he would do things like that where he would completely break protocol and just say — let me inform you — there’s a bunch of people that want to go to war, and they’re pushing me all the time to go to war. That’s what they want.

Bot Farms, AI Music, and Social Media Manipulation

DAVE SMITH: It was so crazy, dude, because also, even Eisenhower, when he coined the term, it was in his farewell address to the nation. He was literally like, this is my last stop, and then I’m leaving. Trump was just in the middle of his presidency, and he goes, “All of them want war. They all want me to be in war all the time. If it was up to them, we’d always be at war.”

And I do, now, look, that was great. I thought, actually, the one to me that was even crazier was, if you remember, when Bill O’Reilly was interviewing him and he’s talking about Vladimir Putin. At the time, Donald Trump, which he had run on, was saying we should have detente with Russia. O’Reilly goes, “Putin’s a killer. You want to have a detente with a killer?” And he goes, “We got a lot of killers, too.” And then O’Reilly goes, “Whoa, whoa, what do you mean, we got a lot of killers, too?” And he goes, “What was Iraq? What was that? We got a lot of killers on our side, too.” And then Bill O’Reilly’s like, “Well, I mean, Iraq was a mistake.” But he goes, “Yeah, we got a lot of killers, too.” And I love that, by the way.

JOE ROGAN: That’s breaking protocol.

DAVE SMITH: Yes, yes. Well, I think this is kind of one of the main reasons why the establishment revolted against Trump the way they did. There’s something very scary to the powers that be about a guy who, by his very nature, I don’t even think he’s capable of not letting things slip.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DAVE SMITH: You know what I mean? Like, he’s just. That’s who he is. And that was a big thing that people really didn’t like about him.

Very interesting to me is that so many of the Never Trumpers have come to define his presidency. If you remember back in 2016, the War Hawk kind of Israel Firster Republican crowd, the neocons and all them, they hated Donald Trump, hated him with a passion. Ben Shapiro was a Never Trumper. He said because of his deeply held principles, he could never support Donald Trump. Mark Levin was a Never Trumper. All of National Review, all of them. And now they are the biggest Trump supporters ever, as he’s blown up the coalition that got him elected. So it’s kind of interesting that they all, you know.

JOE ROGAN: But again, tell those guys to all stay off Twitter. There’s not one thing that they ever say that makes them look better. They get in these silly fing. They just feel like they’re going to make some stupid fing statement and then refute a couple of people, and don’t understand the crowd reaction when you’ve got thousands of people tweeting against you now. Thousands just attacking you, destroying you, posting memes, posting videos. “You said this and you said that, you piece of sh.”

DAVE SMITH: It’s amazing.

JOE ROGAN: It’s crazy.

DAVE SMITH: I gotta say, I do love that dynamic of it. There’s something.

JOE ROGAN: That’s why I stay off of it.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well, that’s. Look, there’s problems with it, but there is something about that dynamic now that was just never true in the past where it’s like, look, I’m not saying it’s perfect, and obviously there’s bots and there’s things like that. But the people kind of get a voice in a way that they never had before.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DAVE SMITH: And there is something kind of cool about that.

JOE ROGAN: 100%. I love it. But it’s not all the people either. It’s a lot of fake people. There’s a lot of state sponsored actors.

DAVE SMITH: No, that’s true, that’s true. There’s manipulation, but there was always manipulation in the old order.

JOE ROGAN: Also, did you see this YouTube bot farm that they just busted?

DAVE SMITH: No.

JOE ROGAN: They busted this warehouse that had cell phones all rigged up for YouTube views, where people would just hire a company and say, “Hey, I’d really like to blow up and get to number one.” And you hire them and they can get you views.

DAVE SMITH: Interesting. Yeah, well, I mean, if you’ve got advertisements, that’s legit fraud. That’s like actual fraud.

JOE ROGAN: 100%. And it’s kind of a weird loophole where I don’t think it’s illegal.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that’s gotta be. It’s gotta be some type of fraud though, if you’re intentionally doing that. Like, maybe if you didn’t know, you could.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DAVE SMITH: You could.

JOE ROGAN: But listen, Twitter pays people. X pays people to post. You get paid based on engagement, right? That’s how you get paid. So you farm out engagement. So what percentage of what we’re interacting with is just horsesh?

AI Music and Streaming Fraud

DAVE SMITH: Well, what does it say here?

JOE ROGAN: I know this story just happened. A guy got arrested, pled guilty because he made. I think what happens. He made a fake band. Yeah, yeah. He had an AI generated song. He got.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, wow.

JOE ROGAN: It played billions of times. “In an effort to mimic the genuine streaming activity of real consumers. Smith pled guilty today. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Wire fraud.”

Check this out, though. I heard a similar story in Japan, where. First of all, let me stop you right there. Michael Smith generated thousands of fake songs using artificial intelligence. Hey, hey, hey. Stop talking sh about AI music because it’s not fake. Those are real songs. Don’t say fake songs.

DAVE SMITH: They.

JOE ROGAN: They’re real songs, and some of them are f*ing bangers. Unfortunately, some of them are really good. You’re going to like what I was going to say. There’s a guy who was doing this in Japan and it went viral. And so he hired people to be the band.

DAVE SMITH: And now the band is a real

JOE ROGAN: band, kind of popular.

DAVE SMITH: So AI is creating jobs in this case.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Well, you know, Shifty Brent rules, though. You can never create him in real life. He’s the guy who does the 50 Cent ones.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I’ve seen.

DAVE SMITH: I’ve seen quite a few guys.

JOE ROGAN: First of all, that guy was real. He’d have lungs like an ultra marathon runner, because the flow. How can you even have air to say what you’re saying? Someone was saying that to me. She was like, “I think you couldn’t do this.” And my argument was Eminem. I was like, “Yeah, you could. You just have to be wicked at it.” Like Eminem in his prime. That motherf*er spits in a way where you’re like, I can’t believe he’s still talking.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I remember there were a couple of his things where I was like, can he actually do this? And then I saw him do it live. Not like I was there, but saw it on YouTube, where you’re like, oh, he can actually rap like this.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I saw him recently. It was great. He’s still great. He’s thin. He looks good. He was killing it, man. He was killing it. But the speed at which he can rap made me go, maybe AI is not bullshting. But, you know, 50 Cent himself was much more casual in his delivery.

DAVE SMITH: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: You know, it was much slower. This Shifty Brent AI version is like, damn, that was a real person.

DAVE SMITH: That’d be pretty great.

JOE ROGAN: He would be the greatest artist on.

Dave Smith’s Twitter Bot Accusation

DAVE SMITH: There was a guy, I can’t remember his name, but just the other day, some guy who works for Fox News came out and had a whole post about me. And he goes, “Dave Smith’s account is clearly botted by foreign.” And I’m almost like. When he said that, I was almost kind of like, there’s a weird thing. I know I’ve never paid for anything, but I don’t know, you know what I mean? Like, what someone else might have done or something like that.

But I asked him. So I replied to him and I go, “Wait, what evidence do you have of this?” And his post was that he said, because I had 900,000 followers on Twitter, but I’m playing Laugh Boston this weekend. And he goes, “That’s a 300 seat venue.”

JOE ROGAN: So I played that. Obviously.

DAVE SMITH: Well, I was.

JOE ROGAN: First of all, he doesn’t understand.

DAVE SMITH: You just don’t get comedy clubs, dude. This is not. And first of all, I’m doing five shows there, by the way. Come on out this weekend.

JOE ROGAN: Great club, great club, great club.

DAVE SMITH: One of my favorite weekends of last year.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a great room.

DAVE SMITH: But I was like, look, man, I sold out all the shows last year, hoping to do the same this year. But I go, that is. I just know the industry of standup comedy pretty well. And I was like, anybody who you’re saying would be selling more than this, so what, selling out big theaters or selling out a stadium or something like that? All the people who do that have more followers than me. So he’s not even right about the ratio of it or whatever.

JOE ROGAN: He doesn’t understand numbers.

DAVE SMITH: But then I kind of grilled him on it a bit more. Because, listen, I’m kind of like you. Like when you were talking about suing CNN back in the day for slandering you. I’m never actually going to do it, but I don’t mind saying it, you know what I mean? So I tagged Fox News. I go, “Hey, Fox News, shouldn’t you have some evidence if you’re going to make a claim like I’m clearly botted by foreign influence or whatever?”

JOE ROGAN: Fox News actually said it?

DAVE SMITH: The guy works for Fox News.

JOE ROGAN: Was he on Fox News?

DAVE SMITH: No, he’s on.

JOE ROGAN: Just on Twitter.

DAVE SMITH: Twitter. But he’s like a Fox News contributor or something like that.

JOE ROGAN: But I’m a UFC contributor. It wouldn’t be like the UFC.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I guess that’s true. So I don’t know, maybe it would just be him. And either way, I’m not suing anyone.

JOE ROGAN: Gotcha.

DAVE SMITH: But I did want him to just. I go, “Just admit you don’t have any evidence for this. Just retract that.”

JOE ROGAN: Well, here’s the thing. I would agree that your account is botted because you’re a very controversial public figure. So I’m sure.

DAVE SMITH: All right.

JOE ROGAN: I’m sure my account is botted too.

DAVE SMITH: Right.

JOE ROGAN: I’m sure Jamie’s account is botted 100%.

DAVE SMITH: I think Jamie might be a bot himself.

JOE ROGAN: We’re all botted, man. If you look at, we’ve brought this up a million times, but there was an FBI, former FBI analyst who analyzed Twitter before the purchase, and it was his take that as much as 80% might be artificial. Now, this was back then.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Before Elon purchased it. I think they’ve done. They’ve taken some steps to try to ensure. One of the things is you could go to the person’s page and see what country they’re posting from.

DAVE SMITH: Yes, I like that. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Because there’s a lot of people that are like, pro America, and you’re like, “Hey, man, you’re in Pakistan.”

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: “What’s going on here? This is kind of kooky.” So there’s a lot of that going on.

DAVE SMITH: I’ve had before where people go like, “Oh, Dave, you always say Israel’s trying to lie us into war, but this is America. We decide what war we’re going to fight.” And then you click it. Israel. David, Israel.

Ben Shapiro, Debates, and Intellectual Honesty

JOE ROGAN: At least we’re getting steps to know those. Listen, if it wasn’t for Elon Musk, we would be f*ed. I’ve said this before. I’ll say it again. History will go back and look at his purchasing Twitter. And it has changed the course of communication in this country for the better. I know a lot of you thought, “Oh my God, the racism is up and all this stuff is up.” That’s people. That’s the Internet. That is an accurate representation of people. It’s not good, but it’s also accurate. And the only way that’s going to change is if the other voices are more compelling. And at least now they have an opportunity to do that.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, and you have to kind of engage in this. I’m not saying you have to be on Twitter or something like that, but I would love to very much get to a place where you’d be like, “Hey, let’s all agree that we’re not on board with the bigotry stuff.” And I mean this, whether it’s against white men or whether it’s against black men or whether it’s against Jews or whether it’s against Muslims or whatever. I see a whole lot of all of that and I’d love to move past that. I also wish there was a way that Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson could have a cool conversation, and not like be like—

JOE ROGAN: Well, look, it’s like I wish Santa Claus and Jesus would come meet me for dinner.

DAVE SMITH: Well, both would be nice. The latter is more likely, I think, at this point. I had a weird thing. I don’t know if you saw this, but Ben Shapiro made this video about Piers Morgan and going at him over having me on the show. He went through this whole thing, and he insults me a few times or whatever. And then he goes, “Now I can hear Dave Smith right now and his response to this is, ‘Debate me, bro.'” Which, fair enough. That kind of is always my thing. I only have one tool in my toolkit. Like, come, let’s podcast about this. I don’t know, this is what I do. I talk.

JOE ROGAN: He’s not willing to do that.

DAVE SMITH: He goes, “No, because you’re like—” So he said, “Because I don’t debate such intellectually dishonest people,” or something like that. Which I thought was a weird criticism of me. Like, you could say I’m wrong, but I do believe the stuff I say.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I don’t think there’s a single moment that I could point to where I think you’ve been intellectually dishonest. I think that is factually incorrect. That is gaslighting. You are very honest. You’re a very honest person.

DAVE SMITH: Well, thank you. I try to be.

JOE ROGAN: No, you are. It’s one of the things I love about you. You’re honest about your f* ups. You’re honest about what you’re incorrect about and what bothered you about things that you’ve said. You’re very honest. So that’s a silly thing to say. That’s total gaslighting.

DAVE SMITH: Well, it’s also — honestly, if Ben Shapiro wanted to debate, I would do it.

JOE ROGAN: Everybody — before all this stuff went down, you

DAVE SMITH: — go, dude, you can’t say I’m beyond the pale when you’re known for debating 19-year-olds who are confused about their gender. I don’t know if you remember this, but Ben was on this show years ago — years before October 7th or anything like that — and he was talking about Israel and his defense for Israel. And you go, “That’s interesting. Would you ever debate someone who’s a critic of Israel?” Just generically, not about a specific person. And he goes, “Absolutely, I’d be happy to do that.”

The thing about guys like that, particularly with Ben Shapiro, is that for the last two and a half years, Israel has been the number one topic of conversation. And in that time, Israel’s support has been bleeding — to a level you couldn’t have imagined two and a half years ago. You couldn’t have imagined going, “This will be a pro-Palestinian country.” That was unthinkable. And it’s become that.

Forget me, there are way better people than me. Ben Shapiro debated no one. He never once had a conversation with a competent critic of Israel. And people saw that, people noticed that. So I kind of, in a weird way, feel like it’s like, “Hey, dude, I don’t care if you do the debate with me or not.” I wish there would be a world where we could have a good faith conversation, like a guy like me and Ben Shapiro, but he refused to do it with anyone anyway. So while you’re smearing everybody who’s a critic of Israel, you’re not willing to — listen, there are some people who don’t debate. But he branded himself as the debate guy, right?

JOE ROGAN: If you don’t like Dave, sit down with Scott Horton.

DAVE SMITH: Sure, absolutely. Scott Horton’s way smarter than me and knows way more about this stuff than me anyway, so talk to him about it. I mean, he’s a better guy.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, if you’re saying that this is the reason why you won’t do it, that sounds crazy. Because wouldn’t you want to debate someone who’s intellectually dishonest, because it would be so easy to refute them with facts? So come on. It would be perfect. It’s like sparring a guy who knows fake kung fu. He thinks he’s got a death touch. And you’re Dustin Poirier. You’re like, “Oh yeah, bro. Lace the gloves up. Let’s go.”

DAVE SMITH: Well, that was kind of my thing with the Douglas Murray situation too, where at a certain point you’re like, “Dude, you can’t just say you’re an expert and I’m not an expert. Demonstrate that then. If that’s the case, then it should be easy for you to just chop me up in front of the world right now.”

JOE ROGAN: And there were some things that you had to correct him on.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: The history of Israel.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. Well, he just got it wrong.

JOE ROGAN: And you could see the tremor in his eyes. Like, “Ah, s*.” They don’t want to give up that ground because they’re playing a very different game. And the game is not, “Let’s be intellectually honest about what we think is going on and what we think is good and bad about what’s going on.” It’s, “I’m trying to win.”

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And one of the ways to try to win is to appeal to authority. “You’re not an expert. You’re not a professor. You’ve never been there.” That kind of—

DAVE SMITH: That—

JOE ROGAN: That is all hack, fake kung fu moves you’re going to try on Francis Ngannou. You know what I mean?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. Like, okay, good luck with that.

JOE ROGAN: Not that I’m comparing you to Francis. That’s very disrespectful to Francis.

DAVE SMITH: Certainly not when it comes to fighting. You’d much rather fight me.

Francis Ngannou and the Heavyweight Division

JOE ROGAN: This Ronda Rousey card they’ve got — Francis is fighting Philipe Lins. Philipe Lins, who’s a light heavyweight in the UFC, and the UFC cut him, and he’s fighting the scariest heavyweight who’s ever walked the face of the earth. I mean, next to prime-time Alistair Overeem. Prime-time Alistair Overeem, when he was Ubereem, I think is even scarier, because he was way more skillful. He was terrifying when he was on the sauce.

DAVE SMITH: Yes. But even Francis — Francis has this thing where it just seems like you have to fight a perfect fight against him.

JOE ROGAN: Yep.

DAVE SMITH: Which Stipe Miocic did in the first fight.

JOE ROGAN: Their first fight, he took a lot of shots. That’s the thing about Stipe. Stipe could take a shot, and—

DAVE SMITH: You would see he’d jab him, and he’d be rocked, but he’d still get the takedown. And he was skillful.

JOE ROGAN: He beat him with skill, strategy, experience, everything. But in the second one, DC said it best. He goes, “A patient Francis is a f*ing terrifying thing, dude.”

DAVE SMITH: My favorite commentary ever in a fight was when DC said — it was just so hilarious to me, it was so real, like he just meant it — it was when Francis Ngannou fought Gane. And he grappled a little bit in that fight, which we had never seen him do before. But there was one point where he was on the ground and he took his back, or he passed his guard or something like that. And D.C. just goes, “Oh my God, he’s doing Jiu-Jitsu now.” It was like he was speaking of a robot who just learned how to feel feelings. He goes, “Oh my God, it’s learning, it’s advancing. This is so terrifying.”

JOE ROGAN: A guy that’s that much of a destroyer, that learns how to take backs and strangle people, to control you from the back and blast you unconscious — like he did with that dude in the PFL in his last fight. Took his back and just blasted him into the netherworld.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that’s scary.

JOE ROGAN: He’s the scariest guy that’s ever fought in the UFC.

DAVE SMITH: Props to that dude for taking the fight.

JOE ROGAN: Natural, clean guy, I should say that.

DAVE SMITH: With a caveat.

JOE ROGAN: Fair enough. Yeah. Because we only got a couple of Alistair Overeem fights where he was Ubereem. The big one being Brock Lesnar. That was the big one.

DAVE SMITH: And of course, the other fight on that card that they added, which is huge, is the Nate Diaz—

JOE ROGAN: Well, here’s — here was my point.

DAVE SMITH: Nate Diaz is fighting — I’m paying whatever you’re charging. I’m going to be wherever it is.

JOE ROGAN: And it’s Mike Perry.

DAVE SMITH: Great fight.

JOE ROGAN: Yep. That’s a great fight. But my point is they also have Robelis Despaigne, who’s on the card — a 6-foot-7 Cuban taekwondo expert, a heavyweight, a knockout artist. Why didn’t they have him fight Francis? He’s fighting Junior Dos Santos, and Junior Dos Santos — he was an all-time great, but he had a long career and he’s had some bad knockouts.

DAVE SMITH: Some wars, too.

JOE ROGAN: Bad wars. The wars with Cain Velasquez took years off his life.

DAVE SMITH: It was almost criminal that they didn’t stop both of those fights.

JOE ROGAN: Well, they were definitely horrible and terrible to watch. But the point is, Robelis is huge. He’s a real heavyweight. He’s a big, giant knockout artist. That would have been an interesting fight versus Francis — a big, super tall guy that’s hard to hit.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And if it’s just a striking fight — the problem with Robelis is he got exposed in his last UFC fight on the ground. He got beat up on the ground. His ground game’s not that good. Could have gotten better. But on the feet, that’s a little bit more interesting to me than Philipe. Although Philipe’s a skillful fighter. He’s just used to fighting at light heavyweight. The UFC cuts him, and now all of a sudden he’s fighting Francis.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that’s a little bit of a mismatch. But, hey, we’ve seen crazy things happen.

JOE ROGAN: Philipe — I think it’s pronounced Felipe. Felipe Lins. But he’s a good fighter. And it’s not a bad fight in that sense, but it’s like you’re going up against a guy with a chip on his shoulder. He’s the lineal heavyweight champion of the world, the real one. Like, if you really plotted it out, no one beat him for the title. That’s a crazy fight. That’s how shallow the heavyweight division is outside of the UFC. There are so few fights available for Francis. This fight is in the PFL. I mean, the UFC’s heavyweight division is a real mess.

DAVE SMITH: It’s very hard to find gigantic men who are excellent fighters.

Gable Steveson and the UFC Heavyweight Division

JOE ROGAN: I guess there’s a lot in Russia. Okay. Yeah, there’s guys that are fighting in other countries that are really good that are coming up. It’s just like, it’s hard to get them over here. There’s Josh Hokut. He’s bad. That’s that wrestler dude who’s crazy, who has these crazy speeches after the fight, puts on an American flag bandana, and he said, “Brittney Griner has a dick. Brittney Griner’s a man.” I forget what he said, but he’s just nuts. But he’s also, like, really smart about marketing.

DAVE SMITH: Who’s the other guy? You talked about him several times. He’s the Olympic wrestler guy.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, Gable. Yeah, Gable. He’s not in yet, though. He’s not in. I had him on the podcast. He’s not in the UFC yet.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, but he’s—

JOE ROGAN: When he’s in the UFC, he’s going to be a f*ing problem. Olympic gold medalist, elite wrestler, moves like a cat at 250 pounds. Young, super dedicated, and just recently learned striking and is picking people up with his hands.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. And is picking it up quite quickly.

JOE ROGAN: And is a Jon Jones protege. So he’s been being mentored by the GOAT and absorbing his mindset and how that guy’s helping him. He’s investing his time into training. If you’re a young guy, you know what a boost of confidence it is when the greatest of all time says, “You’re going to be the man. You’re going to be the f*ing man. You just stick with this plan.” And they’re bringing him up the right way. He fought in dirty boxing. He fought some small MMA organizations. He’s just building up experience.

DAVE SMITH: And there’s not really, right now in the heavyweight landscape, a Frank Mir or — what’s his name? Minotaur, Nogueira. Where there used to be these guys who were, like, kind of known for fighting off their back. Most heavyweights don’t really like fighting off their back. Even the guys who are really good at Jiu Jitsu. I also think just in general, fighting off your back is a lot harder than it used to be.

JOE ROGAN: Fabricio Werdum was the greatest.

DAVE SMITH: Yes. That’s a great example. He was incredible. But there aren’t really that many guys like that. A lot of these guys, you take them down, they’re in trouble.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And when you got a guy like Gable, guess what? You’re going to get taken down. And there’s not a f*ing thing you can do about it. That is a next level wrestler.

DAVE SMITH: I just saw one of his recent fights where he’s finishing a double leg before he realized he knocked the guy out.

JOE ROGAN: It seemed like he KOs him with a left hook. And he’s so fast that as the guy’s collapsing on the way down, he shoots a double, connects, takes him to the ground while he’s unconscious. So before the guy has a chance to drop, that’s how fast he is. He’s already on him, taking him down and pounds him out while he’s already unconscious.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that was scary. That guy’s a problem.

JOE ROGAN: He’s a problem. And that’s an American heavyweight, motherf*er. We need one of those. We need some American champions. We’re down.

DAVE SMITH: Get him in the White House.

American Champions in the UFC

JOE ROGAN: Are there any American champions right now? Who are the American champions? Mackenzie Dern is the strawweight champion, so she’s technically an American, although her dad is a very famous Brazilian legend. Megaton Diaz is her dad, and she was a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu champion, but she is American, so she’s a champion. Other than that, who?

DAVE SMITH: Sean Strickland’s fighting for the title.

JOE ROGAN: Kayla Harrison. That’s right. Kayla’s — so it’s only women that are the Americans. Yeah. Look at that. You got to see a lot of those dudes with those beards coming over here. Joshua Van is an American. That’s right. But that’s a caveat, though. No disrespect for Joshua, because I think he’s an awesome fighter, but he won that fight —

DAVE SMITH: We got to have a rematch on that one.

JOE ROGAN: That was a freak injury. I mean, he fell and dislocated his arm. It’s a complete freak injury. And Pantoja still hasn’t fully recovered from that. So it was pretty bad, whatever the f* they said. His shoulder dislocated and his elbow.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I remember hearing that afterward. It looked like it was just his elbow, but they said the doctor said it was his shoulder.

JOE ROGAN: And so the thing about the elbow is the elbow is a less complicated joint. When the elbow gets dislocated, if someone just pulls on it, it can pop back into place. As long as they know what they’re doing, right? Because you don’t want to do it like Jiří Procházka’s team did — they ripped his shoulder apart and he needed surgery. You probably need surgery anyway if it was dislocating like that. It was probably loose. But the point is that his elbow might have popped back into place by the time they brought him backstage. And that’s when they realized his shoulder was — because his shoulder probably hurt more even though —

DAVE SMITH: Right. That was unfortunate because that was a real interesting —

JOE ROGAN: Shoulders dislocate a lot, and sometimes people dislocate their shoulders and don’t even realize they do.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, really?

JOE ROGAN: Apparently, according to the orthopedic surgeon that I went to back in the day, before I realized that stem cells could fix it. This guy was convincing me that I had to have surgery. And one of the things he said was, “Do you know that your shoulder’s been dislocated?” And I said, “It has?” He goes, “You didn’t know?” I go, “No.” He goes, “How many times have you hurt your shoulder?” I go, “How much time you got? Sit down and talk about how many times I’ve been arm blocked, how many times I’ve been caught in a triangle, how many times, posting on the ground, I’ve jostled my shoulder.”

The good news is there’ve been no fracture or ligament injury. Pohompa said that. So from that, we have great expectations for his return, but the exact time frame is still unknown. Still needs a lot of physiotherapy. Start moving his arm. Then he can go back to light training and then hard training. Bro, we got to get that guy down to the CPI — the Cellular Performance Institute that the UFC uses — get that dude down to Tijuana.

The UFC’s Move to Paramount+

DAVE SMITH: I’m worried about the new model for the UFC, the Paramount model. I’m worried about the new UFC model. This is what keeps me up at night.

JOE ROGAN: I get it. So what are you worried about with the new UFC model?

DAVE SMITH: Look, I’m no genius, but it seems to me — I’m a hardcore fan of the UFC, right? So I order every pay per view. Every one. And so any Saturday, if I’m on the road in my green room, we’re watching the UFC. If I’m not on the road, I’m either at home watching it, or I’m trying to go to the event if it’s in town.

So then it’s like, okay, ESPN is over. We’re not doing that anymore. So then they’re going, “We’re switching to Paramount.” Now, I already had Paramount because my kids like some shows on Paramount.

JOE ROGAN: Yep.

DAVE SMITH: Landman. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I watch Landman. Great show. So I have Paramount Plus. I’m like, “Oh, okay, well, that’s easy enough.” And then I’m like, “So wait a minute, hold on. You tell me I just get every one for free now? I just don’t have to order pay per views anymore?”

And there’s just something about that. Now, I’m not saying whether this is Paramount’s mistake or the UFC’s mistake or whatever. But just the basics of business to me go — so you just had a loyal customer who was very happy to pay for every pay per view. And I’m just not now. On some level, I understand it’s because Paramount gave them a whole bunch of money, but on some level I go, number one — how is this good for business if the customer no longer has to pay for a thing that I was happily paying for?

JOE ROGAN: Let me correct you.

DAVE SMITH: Okay, sure.

JOE ROGAN: First of all, Paramount — the idea of doing this and investing $7 billion into the UFC over the next few years — the positive that they’re going to get from that with loyal new customers is massive.

DAVE SMITH: So if you’re introducing it to a whole new audience — if you’re a loyal pay per view buyer, what is it? 70 bucks for pay per view?

JOE ROGAN: I think something like that.

DAVE SMITH: So 70 bucks for this big time pay per view card, now you get it for free. You just have to pay for Paramount Plus every month for the year. You’re saving so much money.

JOE ROGAN: Huge amount.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. So the amount of new people that are going to go, “Oh, this is awesome, I don’t have to pay for pay per view anymore. I pay for Paramount Plus. And I get all these awesome shows too,” because Paramount Plus has a ton of great shows.

JOE ROGAN: Great deal for the consumer.

DAVE SMITH: You get roped in through that. And then you go looking around on Paramount Plus and you’re a loyal subscriber. They have all these years with this new influx of viewers from the UFC deal to build up more of a library, more shows. It’s huge for business.

JOE ROGAN: Okay, fair enough.

DAVE SMITH: Take their app from where it is now and take their streaming model from where it is now and quadruple it over the next X amount of years.

JOE ROGAN: So for them, they’re bringing in the whole UFC audience.

DAVE SMITH: And how many people would look at a pay per view card and — look, I would buy every one of them. Even when I was working for the UFC, I would go on ESPN Plus and I would buy them.

JOE ROGAN: Even though I was there, I was like, I want to be able to watch it in the gym. When I get home, I’m going to buy it. And so you’ve got all these people that were looking at those cards that were like, “This one, I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s worth 70 bucks.” If you’re on a budget —

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And you’re looking at this one. You’re like, “Who’s fighting now? I’m going to pass on this one. I’ll watch it a couple weeks on ESPN Plus.” Because you could just wait a few weeks. I don’t know how long the time frame is, but you wait a few weeks and you watch it. You don’t have to do that anymore. It’s 10 bucks a month. What is Paramount Plus a month? How much does it cost? Maybe 12 or 13. Let’s find out so we’re accurate. But you’re saving so much money.

DAVE SMITH: But also on ESPN, they charged you something like that too. Like you had to pay an ESPN fee and then you had to pay for each individual pay per view. No, listen, I’m saving a lot of money off this.

JOE ROGAN: Okay, $13.99 a month, or $139 a year for the ad-free premium plan, which includes Showtime. New and former subscribers can currently get any monthly plan for $2.99 a month for the first two months. So for a new subscriber, you could try it out for two months for $2.99 a month and watch every UFC for $2.99 a month for two months. It’s f*ing worth it.

DAVE SMITH: No.

JOE ROGAN: And then you’re going to get this huge influx of people that — if you’re on a budget, you’re not going to subscribe to Paramount Plus. You already got Netflix. Netflix costs X amount of money. Maybe you got HBO Max. That’s X amount of money. “I can’t afford Paramount too. I don’t want to pay another 10 bucks a month or $14 a month.” Now you just — it’s easy. No pay per views.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, they made a lot of wives of hardcore fans happy, I’m sure, for that. “I don’t have to buy these pay per views anymore.” They get the Paramount shows and they don’t have to do that. All right, fair enough. I guess it’s just — in some ways, I don’t really have much of a mind for business, but in some ways there’s just a thing where it’s like, “We’ve always done it this way. Now we’re doing it a whole new way.”

UFC on Paramount, White House Fight Concerns & Weight Cutting

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, but it’s been on streaming for the last few years.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: So it’s always been on an app anyway. And then Paramount, you could get it on Apple TV, you can get it on Android TV, you can get it on all these different things. It’s like there’s no reason to not have it. It’s easy. It’s just great for — as a business move for Paramount, it was a smart f*ing move because you get this built-in hardcore fan base now. Now, have some of the cards been lackluster? Yes. But guess what? That has always been the case.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. And that’s just a matter of time — eventually, though.

JOE ROGAN: Watch Rose Namajunas vs. Carla Esparza. There’s been some fights back in the day that just weren’t great. And there’s been cards that even though they look good on paper, in reality, they weren’t so fun.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. But I also — I’m with you because I remember you used to say this back in the day all the time. But I am like a purist fan in MMA in the sense that all of that is like, I don’t care. I feel like, “Oh, it’s boring.” You’re like, it’s the most exciting sport in the world on its worst day. Even in a fight that’s a bad fight. Because if you remember, the Frank Mir vs. Cro Cop is a good example of this, where it was just a boring fight the entire fight, and then there’s a spectacular knockout at the end of it. And even if that doesn’t end up happening, you’re always watching. Like, that could happen at any moment.

JOE ROGAN: It always can happen.

DAVE SMITH: I also am with you. I believe in — I don’t believe in stand up. I don’t think anyone should ever be stood up. I don’t think you should be separated for stalemate or whatever. It’s like if someone puts you in that position, then yeah, you’ve got to get —

JOE ROGAN: — get up. If they’re not doing enough on the top, that’s silly.

Sean O’Malley explains why piracy led to the UFC’s massive Paramount deal. Oh, interesting. There’s a lot of people that’ll pay for it every week, but there’s a lot of people that won’t. That makes sense. They’re streaming it illegally. That makes sense. I knew there was a lot of that because there were sites that you could go to and people would openly talk about it. You can go to it and just watch the pay-per-view. It’s a good move, dude. It’s a good move for the business. It’s just like, they just need a few banger cards to make people forget about the stale ones.

DAVE SMITH: But that will always happen. It’s inevitable.

White House Fight: Heat, Humidity & Logistics Concerns

JOE ROGAN: You’re going to have stale cards. I’m concerned about the White House fight. I’m concerned about it not just from a security standpoint. I’m concerned about it because it’s outside. It’s June and it’s in Washington D.C. If it’s hot out — and it could very well be — what’s the average temperature? I looked this up the other day. Average 67% humidity. In last year, 2024, it was 100 degrees on June 14th. Okay, that’s tough. And I think it’s supposed to be at night also.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that’s an issue.

JOE ROGAN: Okay, that’s a f*ing big problem, dude. That’s a big problem. You are going to radically affect their performance if you make people fight in 100-degree temperature with 67% humidity outside. You’re also going to radically affect my ability to do commentary. My head doesn’t have any hair. The top of my head is going to be beet red. I’m going to have to put some toxic sunscreen on it. You’re going to see me with that white zinc powder that the surfers use on their nose. It’ll be all over — I’ll make like fake hair with white zinc. Dude, my head’s going to get —

DAVE SMITH: That is an issue.

JOE ROGAN: 80% chance of thunderstorms with highs in the mid — okay, are they building a tent? Is this outside outside, or is it outside in a tent? Are they going to have fans blowing cold air on us? You know how much DC is going to complain? That f*ing dude, he’s going to be right next to me. His shirt’s going to be soaked.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that’s a beautiful —

JOE ROGAN: You’ll be able to tell with mine because I always wear black anyway. But everybody with a white shirt or a blue shirt — if Anik has a light blue shirt on, his pits are going to be f*ing filled up with sweat. It is going to be ridiculous.

DAVE SMITH: That also like really legitimately changes the —

JOE ROGAN: — actual fight itself, 100%. Isn’t that like the rendering of it? I don’t see any AC there, bro. How are you going to get AC on those people? What is that going to be like? That sounds insane to do that in June just because that’s a fun time to do it.

Ilia Topuria’s Historic Run & Justin Gaethje’s Challenge

JOE ROGAN: I mean, if I was Justin Gaethje or I was Ilia Topuria — if I was Justin Gaethje — first of all, he has to take the fight. It’s a historic fight. It’s at the White House. He’s a true red-blooded American. He wants to win the title at the White House. Come on, you have to do it. But he’s 37 years old. He’s had a long career and he’s fighting maybe the most lethal guy he’s ever faced.

The one guy out of all the guys he’s faced that can shut the f*ing lights out with one shot every time. His last three fights is the craziest résumé in the history of this sport. Knocks out Alexander Volkanovski, knocks out Max Holloway, knocks out Charles Oliveira — two at featherweight, one at lightweight, all of them elite level.

DAVE SMITH: I wouldn’t even say — well, I guess it’s debatable, but certainly you could make an argument the two best featherweights of all time.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

DAVE SMITH: And one of the greatest lightweights of all time. And by the way, I know MMA math is never perfect, but you look at what Oliveira just did to Max Holloway — who I love, one of my favorite fighters of all time — you look at what Charles Oliveira just did to Max Holloway, and then you think about the way Ilia Topuria handled —

JOE ROGAN: — sidelined him in the first round.

DAVE SMITH: And not what was to me — almost as impressive as the knockout was handling him on the ground, passing his guard. He tried to take him down. Think about the way he got one of those body locks and tried to take him down. Think about how helpless Max Holloway was for that. How helpless a whole bunch of guys we’ve seen are when he gets his hands around you. And Ilia Topuria — he tried to do that, he ends up on top and passes his guard right away. Also, he ate a really clean elbow early in that fight and just shook it off like it was nothing.

JOE ROGAN: Like, I mean, shook it off like it was nothing. He’s a special talent. But then again, when you are dealing with special talents and great fighters like Justin — this is probably his last opportunity to fight for the title. I want that under the perfect conditions. I want that to be in an arena where it’s 72 degrees and air-conditioned. I don’t want it to be outside. I don’t want there to be any additional stress or distractions because you’re warming up at the White House. Like, what do you have — tents with mats on them? And these guys are going to be slipping around in puddles of sweat, or —

DAVE SMITH: — shadow boxing in the Situation Room before you come out. Who’s going to slip —

JOE ROGAN: — on sweat and blow their ACL out? I mean, if you’ve ever done striking on mats when a bunch of dudes have been training in a class, it’s so f*ing slippery, man. If it’s that hot, it’s going to — unless they have these mats set up in an air-conditioned building somewhere. Unless they have —

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, maybe a facility. Yeah, maybe they can do that.

JOE ROGAN: I hope they think that through. I hope they prepare it. I just — I like the idea that it’s like this big celebration of the UFC, that the president loves the UFC so much he wants to do it at the White House. But in practice, I don’t like it at all. Because you’ve got two world titles — you’ve got the interim heavyweight world title, and then you’ve got this world title with Justin and Ilia at 155. I don’t like it. I want those to be at the T-Mobile Arena. I want those to be at Madison Square Garden. I want those to be somewhere dope. The TD Garden in Boston. Put it in a f*ing real arena where it’s air-conditioned, damn it.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: These are amazing fights. I don’t want anybody fighting when it’s 100 degrees outside.

DAVE SMITH: And correct me if I’m wrong, but also I would think you’re going to get sweaty so quick in weather like that. And that is a big deal for grappling and stuff like that. I mean, that’s a huge advantage if you’re trying to not get grappled by someone.

The Weight Cutting Problem in MMA

JOE ROGAN: Here’s another fact. These are people that just were radically dehydrated 24 hours ago. And then you’re asking them to compete in a sauna. You’re basically asking them to fight in a sauna.

DAVE SMITH: That is still so crazy to me that there’s not a way that we can just get two guys who weigh 180 pounds to fight at 180 pounds. I’ve had some conversation about that. Instead, we have to have two guys who weigh 180 pounds, cut down to 150 pounds, and then rehydrate up to 180 pounds to fight at 180 pounds — and weaken themselves.

JOE ROGAN: Radically weaken themselves. I see those guys the day they weigh in. The worst I ever saw was Travis Lutter.

DAVE SMITH: Travis vs. Anderson Silva — I remember he —

JOE ROGAN: — missed weight, but I was backstage for all of it. So this was back when the weigh-ins were at the time of the actual weigh-ins. It wasn’t the ceremonial weigh-in. Like now they give him more time. You can weigh in in the morning and then by the ceremonial weigh-in, which is usually 5pm, these guys have significantly rehydrated. They do it slowly, but they have a process to it.

But Travis missed weight. And so I was backstage while they gave him a certain amount of time to make the weight. And, dude, he couldn’t walk. He was shuffling — shuffling like he couldn’t pick his legs up. His lips were cracked, his face was dry. He looked like he was going to die. He looked like a guy who had been shipwrecked, lost at sea, drinking his own piss for a week, and they finally rescued him. That’s what it looked like.

DAVE SMITH: Well, he was dying, I guess.

JOE ROGAN: Right?

DAVE SMITH: I mean, that is what you’re looking at.

JOE ROGAN: And then 24 hours later, he has to fight the greatest middleweight of all time. He has to fight Anderson motherf*ing Silva in his prime.

DAVE SMITH: And did — for that being the story — remarkably well. I mean, he got viciously elbowed. It was elbowed in the triangle. Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That would not have happened if Travis wasn’t compromised. Travis was a real problem back then.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: He was one of the best Jiu-Jitsu guys to ever compete in MMA.

DAVE SMITH: And he was stylistically kind of like the best shot against Anderson Silva at that time.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly.

DAVE SMITH: Because Anderson Silva just looked untouchable, and he got him down and got him into good positions a few times —

JOE ROGAN: — even though he was fed from the weight cut. But the thing was, he never made the weight, so even if he beat him, he wouldn’t have got the title. The whole thing was fed.

But it’s like — I’ve advocated for a solution. One of them is multiple weight classes that are additional to what we have — at least one every 10 pounds, and it probably should be more. And a lot of people push back against that. But listen, 10 pounds for an elite athlete is a big deal. 20 pounds is crazy. So when you go from 185 to 205, that’s crazy. That’s too much of a gap. You could have multiple champions in between those weight classes, and it’s just better for the sport overall. You’ve got more champions, you’ve got more champion versus champion matchups you can make.

MMA Weight Classes, Rules, and Wrapping Up

DAVE SMITH: Well, it also, first of all, it’s very unhealthy and dangerous, and that’s the biggest issue. But then it also makes it a thing where it’s like, now there’s two factors. It’s not just who’s the best fighter. It’s also who’s the best at dehydrating themselves, losing a ton of weight, and rehydrating themselves.

And I’ve heard GSP say before that some people are just naturally better at that. Some people just fluctuate in weight more. Some people can lose a lot of weight and then gain it all back. And he used to always say, “I just can’t do that. I’m not a guy who can do that.” But I think all of us, we just want to see who the best fighter is.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly.

DAVE SMITH: We don’t care about who’s the best at dehydrating.

JOE ROGAN: Anything that hampers your ability should be removed from the equation, especially if it’s something like this. But there’s a solution. First of all, there’s a real silliness to the MMA weight class, and why I say silliness — the names that we use have been owned by boxing for more than 100 years. And the names that we use are for different weight classes than boxing uses.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that’s dumb.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that is dumb as s*. Like, if you want to have a 170 pound champion, fantastic. But don’t call it a welterweight, because welterweight is 147.

DAVE SMITH: Right.

JOE ROGAN: It’s been 147 for over a hundred f*ing years. The fact that you have a 147 champion — or a 145 champ — you call that a featherweight? Featherweight is 126.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That’s what it’s been in boxing forever. Lightweight has always been 135. That’s what Julio Cesar Chavez was the champ of. 135. Lightweight is 155 in the UFC. Come up with your own names. Why do we still have these stupid names?

DAVE SMITH: I never thought about that. It’s a good point.

JOE ROGAN: They attached these names to it when they first started developing weight classes, because it used to just be one weight class.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, another one on this — why am I not getting the leg reach?

JOE ROGAN: They do that sometimes.

DAVE SMITH: Do they?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, they do.

DAVE SMITH: Because on the regular tale of the tape, it’ll still just be reach. But for MMA, that’s such a huge deal.

JOE ROGAN: Sure.

DAVE SMITH: It’s such a huge deal. Because if you’re kicking — if you’re in kicking range of me, but you can’t touch me — your jab doesn’t matter as much as in boxing, you know?

JOE ROGAN: Right. And some guys, they have really long legs for their torso. My friend Larry Jones from my Taekwondo days, he had this short torso. What is this? All those leg reaches longer than Stipe’s. Whoa, that’s crazy. Stipe just has a way longer torso. They’re the same size.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, wow.

JOE ROGAN: That’s crazy. Well, Aldo was such a good kicker. It’s probably part of the reason why. My friend Larry had this short torso, like, really short. But he was like six-three and he was all legs, and he was this insane kicker. He was like a freak. Like, he was made in a lab.

And when guys would fight him, like, you’d see guys in tournaments fight him, they’d be like, “What the f* am I going to do with this?” Because his reach was so nuts and he was so fast with his kicks, and you couldn’t get anywhere close to him if you were in his weight class and you were normally built. His torso was shorter than mine, but he had crazy long legs and long arms.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Some people are just built certain ways, and for striking, it’s a giant problem. There’s another thing that makes Ilia Topuria so unbelievably impressive. He’s not tall at all.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And he’s just flatlining people.

DAVE SMITH: I mean, Charles Oliveira looked so much bigger than him in that fight.

JOE ROGAN: So much bigger than Max, too. Oliveira is big. Look, the sport’s fine. It’s not in trouble. The heavyweight division’s in trouble though. The heavyweight division is in a weird situation. The Alex Pereira thing is very interesting. Alex Pereira versus Ciryl Gane is very, very, very interesting because Ciryl Gane is a problem. That guy’s a problem. He’s super athletic. He’s really fast. He’s super skillful with his striking. His Muay Thai is absolutely elaborate, and he does a lot of things different than what a lot of people do.

DAVE SMITH: Has anyone — because even Francis, like I was saying before, grappled with him a lot in that fight. Obviously, Jon Jones took him down and choked him. But has anyone really stood toe to toe and beat him up?

JOE ROGAN: No, no. No one’s beat him up toe to toe. Tai Tuivasa went toe to toe with him and tried to, but he got lit up. Ciryl Gane is a problem.

DAVE SMITH: And even in the little bit — Tom Aspinall — it looked like he’s tough to fight like that, man.

JOE ROGAN: Not just tough. He was getting off on Aspinall, and it didn’t look good for Aspinall. It’s very unfortunate that he got his eyes poked. We really never got to see what happens if he drags Aspinall into deep water. The way Tom had adjusted for the second or third round —

DAVE SMITH: — which we’ve never really seen out of Tom either. It was very interesting. We got robbed of that.

JOE ROGAN: We got robbed of that. And poor Tom — he said two f*ing eye surgeries, and then he felt like the UFC disrespected him. The whole thing’s a mess.

DAVE SMITH: Well, I don’t know about the UFC, but a lot of fans did disrespect him. I saw that. Which is crazy. That’s really stupid.

Fouls, Eye Pokes, and Referee Corruption

JOE ROGAN: We talked about this last night. It should be one point, period, if you poke someone in the eyes. If it’s like a glancing thing, maybe get a warning. Same with a nutshot — straight nutshot, one point. The glancing thing, maybe a warning. I think that could be up to the judge’s discretion upon view of the replay.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well, the thing is — and we were talking about this last night — if you land a nutshot and it’s accidental, as it almost always is, you know what I mean? You’re trying to throw an inside leg kick and it comes very close. So I just see this all the time in MMA. It’s the first one, it was an accident. This guy gets kicked in the nuts, he needs a few minutes. Usually they don’t take the full five or whatever they’re offered, and then you just go back.

It’s like, look, even if it was an accident, that’s such an advantage to the guy who kicked him in the groin. You hurt him. You hurt this guy, and now he’s got to get back to it. So it does seem like there almost has to be some accounting for that.

And I think there’s still too much referee discretion. Like, there should be an official rule for what we do in this situation. It’s still a very young sport.

JOE ROGAN: Those fouls — it’s like, doesn’t exist in basketball, right?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: If somebody fouls somebody in basketball and everybody sees it, that’s a foul. And the crowd will go nuts. But it’d be like a real one, like throwing someone to the ground. I could show you examples. There are some f*ing wild things that don’t get called.

DAVE SMITH: Don’t you think that’s a little bit of the corrupt referees? I’m not saying all of them, but that is one thing that’s been 100% proven — that referees do get paid off in order to influence gambling lines.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, there was that one referee who confirmed it. It was the Sacramento Kings versus the Lakers, which was a series that was notoriously like — everyone was like, “Yo, it was crazy.” They didn’t call any of these fouls on the Lakers and they called all these fouls. And then a ref came out and was like, “Oh yeah, that’s what we were doing.” And it does kind of make sense because it was the Shaq and Kobe Lakers. You’ve got to get them in the finals, dude. It was big money.

JOE ROGAN: God, it’s so gross. His defense weirdly was like, “No one told us what to do, but you kind of know what they want, so you sort of do it. And then you put on good games and you keep getting the good stuff.” Hang them. Public hanging. Hang them all in front of the kingdom.

DAVE SMITH: But we can deal with Congress’s insider trading, but basketball must have fair judges.

JOE ROGAN: Hang them. Hang them all in front of the kingdom.

Signing Off

JOE ROGAN: All right, dude. Anything else before we wrap this up?

DAVE SMITH: No. Thank you for letting a non-expert talk MMA with you.

JOE ROGAN: I love talking to non-experts, dude.

DAVE SMITH: Thank you so much for everything, as always.

JOE ROGAN: Pleasure, brother. Thank you.

DAVE SMITH: You’re the man.

JOE ROGAN: I love you. You’re the man too. I love you too. We’ll have fun tonight, right? Are you leaving? Damn. Last night was fun, though.

DAVE SMITH: There was a lot of fun.

JOE ROGAN: All right, bye, everybody.

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