Transcript: Comedian Dave Smith’s Interview on Joe Rogan Experience Podcast #2370

Daniel Cormier didn’t know about the Dead Orchard, so he thought this person was fine because they had two arms in while they were caught in a triangle. I go, “No, this is a real submission. This is fucking dangerous.” Like, there’s this guy, Nathan Orchard, who figured out how to do a triangle with two arms in, and it’s replicable. A lot of guys do it now.

And I think it was a lady at the last UFC had it. And I was like, “Oh, shit.” And Daniel didn’t know it yet. There’s a couple other things, like the buggy choke, if you don’t know about jiu jitsu. And you see a guy who’s on his back and he’s getting smothered, but all of a sudden, he reaches under with his leg and I’m going, “Oh, oh, oh.” And you don’t know what’s going on. Like, that’s a fucking choke. Like, a really dangerous one. Tai Ruatolo gets you in that, you’re fucksville.

You know, there’s guys. So it’s like, there’s areas of expertise, even in areas that I’m an expert in, that I have to call on other people. Like, this is a stupid argument. Like, what are the facts? Does that submission work? Is that genocide? What’s going on? Were you funding Hamas? Is Hezbollah a proxy of Iran? Did Iran get the money to do this when Biden released the funds? Because what… Who’s allowed to be an expert on all these things?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, and then, of course, there are… Then there are things like, say… Say, like, do you support lockdowns? And, like, in order to have, say, an expert opinion on this policy, it’s like, okay, well, you’d be like… They’d say, “We’re following the science.” So in other words, they have an epidemiologist or something like that who’s arguing lockdowns will cut down on the transmission of the virus, forget they turned out to be wrong. But leaving that aside, you’re like, okay, but are they also an economist? Are they also a specialist, a sociologist, a specialist in childhood development who would tell you what, closing the school…

Oh, who’s the person who has expertise in every single one of those fields? Doesn’t exist. There isn’t an expert in all of those fields. You know what I mean?

Fear as a Tool of Control

JOE ROGAN: That was the problem with that time, because that time everyone was so fearful and the news is pushing fear and it was clearly a narrative. I forget who it was, but some health official was being interviewed recently and he said that during 2020 that Anthony Fauci said to him, “The problem is Americans aren’t scared enough,” which is crazy to say. It’s a wild thing to say that your goal is to make people more fearful.

So you’re trying to put out a narrative that makes people more fearful, which, by the way, fucks with your immune system in a gigantic way. Not good at all to be scared. I don’t know how many people got really, really, really sick from COVID because when they got it, they freaked the fuck out and they couldn’t sleep and they thought they were going to die and they were riddled with anxiety.

And that makes you attack people around you, and then you look for a solution. And when these trusted institutions, which up until five fucking years ago, I was 100% on board with, with everything, with vaccines, with every medical innovation other than psychiatric medications, which I think are pretty much overprescribed, all of a sudden everyone’s like, hoping these people have the answer.

So anybody who’s going, “But there’s this guy, Jay Bhattacharya, you know, he’s also an expert.” “Fuck you. Fuck you. It’s like an anti science trust. The science COVID Denier, vaccine Denier.” It just became this fearful response because everybody just responded to the fucking media because everybody’s too tuned in to all of this negative shit, man, all day long.

DAVE SMITH: Well, you have to scare people, you know, if you want to implement like a tyrannical policy, you almost always have to scare people. I mean, that’s now, that’s the only way. Yeah, now everyone knows, right? Like you just said, like, being terrified is not good for your health on a human level. We also all know that it’s not good for good decision making, you know, but it is excellent for “I will turn my brain off and give the authority to you to go do…”

I mean, look, it was right after 9/11. People forget about this. But like the level to Dick Cheney and George W. Bush used to fear monger. Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States of America, who is a bit more than just your average vice president. He said “It’s not a matter of if, but when. There will be another 9/11 attack.” They built… They were trying to tell the American people right after 9/11 to be in a constant state of fear.

The Post-9/11 Fear Campaign

JOE ROGAN: Do you remember the COVID warnings where they had colors or… Excuse me, the warning where they had colors?

DAVE SMITH: The threat level or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And then one day they’d be like, “It’s up to yellow” and everyone… And I mean, we were really still traumatized from 9/11. But the thing about it is, is that they knew what they wanted to do. They knew the policy they wanted to start embarking on.

And it was the mix of the big lie, which was “They hate us for our freedom,” which was like, really? The big lie after 9/11 was like… Because the American people very organically wanted to know what the beef was. Like 9/11 happened. Everybody was like, “Yo, why do they hate us?” Right? What’s this beef about?

And their answer was “They hate you for your freedom.” And by the way, “This is going to happen again. So be terrified.” Second off, “Understand that they’re so irrational that their beef with you is that like your grandma can go to the grocery store.” So what do you do with that other than say what the American people said, which is “George W. Bush, you have a blank check to go attack whoever you want to and will support you.”

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I remember feeling that way. I remember feeling that way. Right. I remember feeling “It’s up to these fucking guys, these hard nosed generals and military leaders that are… These are the guys that are going to protect us now. We got to put all our faith in them. This shit is real and it’s going on.” But I had no idea. This is so 2001. I wasn’t that much of a conspiracy theorist. I was into UFOs, I was into bigfoot, I was into stupid shit. You know, I was into fun stupid shit.

DAVE SMITH: Right, Right.

JOE ROGAN: You know, me and Eddie Bravo would get high and watch space documentaries and freak out about aliens, you know, the stupid shit. But then the Patriot Act came along and I was like, “Okay, what the fuck is this?” Like, what is… What does indefinite detention mean? When they signed the NDAA? You’re like, “What? Wait a minute, what are you talking about?” What is the month… What rhymes with cunt? That the act that Obama passed in 2015 that allowed them to use censorship or, excuse me, propaganda. American citizens.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yeah, something like that. Yep.

JOE ROGAN: It’s like, okay, at what point in time do I start getting really fucking suspicious?

DAVE SMITH: Yep.

The Kennedy Assassination and Early Conspiracy Theories

JOE ROGAN: I had read one book a long time ago that really fucked me up. This book called “Best Evidence” about the Kennedy assassination. And unfortunately, I read it right before I went on stage. I was by myself. I was in Philadelphia and I was headlining. And this is like when I was just starting to headline, right?

And so had a show Thursday, killed. Everything’s great. Went back to my hotel room, nothing to do. Read this fucking book for like six hours. Freaked the fuck out. Showed up at this show like, ashen faced, like, “Oh, my God, they killed the President.”

Like, I had never even considered that before that book, right? I never even thought that there’s, like, secret government agencies that plot against the President. Like, I thought, that’s the fucking man. And everybody works together. And Lee Harvey Oswald was a nut and he fucking shot him. And I’m like, “Oh, my God.” And I bombed. I fucking bombed.

And I apologized to the staff, I apologized to the manager. I go, “Listen, I fucked up. And I read this book right before I got here, and it really fucked me up.” It’s done that before, man.

DAVE SMITH: When you have your mind blown like that, you need time after that before you make it funny. Like, it takes time to, like, then almost come back to it a few months later.

JOE ROGAN: You should never engage in that kind of stuff. Like, right before you go on stage.

DAVE SMITH: It’s terrible.

JOE ROGAN: Anything real and ominous. And so I had a second show and it went great. But I was like, “Okay, I can’t ever do that again.” But that started me. But that was just peripheral. It was just the JFK thing. I was only interested in that. I didn’t get into Nixon, I didn’t get into Vietnam. I didn’t get into any of that stuff.

September 11th and the Immediate Aftermath

But September 11, 2001, in the beginning, it was wonderful. After the attack, everyone was so friendly. It’s terrible that this thing happened. It’s terrible that these people died. But it made me think, like, we need, every now and then, we need to get bitch slapped.

You know, it’s like when you see people, like, getting in people’s faces for, like, waving an American flag. “Fuck you, fascist.” A bitch slap every now and then. Like, that guy might go fucking, “What was I doing? I just ran up to that veteran and I got in his face because I want to impress my lesbian girlfriend.”

DAVE SMITH: Like, “Fuck is wrong with me?”

JOE ROGAN: “I don’t know how to fight now. I got a concussion. And this guy bitch slapped me. It’s on TikTok. Fuck.” You know, like, you need that sometimes. Just as, like, a course reset.

I felt like as a country, we had been doing shady shit all around the world forever. And there’s real war happening everywhere. But we’re super lucky because we’re separated by oceans and not too much has really happened here. “Oh, my God, this is real.” And everybody had an American flag on their fucking car.

And when I was in New York City afterwards, we were filming Fear Factor one day, and everyone was so cool. And firemen were rock stars. Cops were rock stars. Everybody was thanking them. Everybody was thanking them for their service. It was great.

We hung out with these firemen in front of this bar, me and the Fear Factor crew. These guys were fucking. It’s like I was hanging out with Brad Pitt. It was nuts. Everybody was so thankful. Where’d that go?

Dave Smith’s 9/11 Experience in Brooklyn

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I was there. I was in New York City on 9/11. And I remember. So I was in Brooklyn, like, only a few miles from the World Trade Center.

JOE ROGAN: Did you physically see it?

DAVE SMITH: No, I saw. So I remember seeing. You know, I think so. When I got out of school, I was in high school. I was a senior in high school. And we got out. One of the girls, like, forged a note, said it was from our parents or something like that. I forget exactly how it worked. But we got out.

It was like. I was friends with the security guard. I used to buy weed from him. It was a different time, but, you know, it was a different time. Pre-9/11, we were just all hanging out, buying weed from security guards at schools.

But so he let us out. So I remember we. I’m pretty sure when we came to Flatbush Ave, we saw, like, it was. There was smoke in the air, but both the towers had fallen by the time we got out. But there were people. So the subways had been out for a while.

And where I was, I was like, on Flatbush Avenue, if anyone knows Brooklyn, it’s like Flatbush and 7th Avenue. So this is like. It’s kind of a straight shoot down to the Manhattan Bridge. And then the Brooklyn Bridge is down there too, but the Brooklyn Bridge you can walk over.

And so at this point, already, people who were down in the financial district had just decided to walk back to Brooklyn because they realized they weren’t going to get a cab or get on the subway. And so you’d see just like one guy in a suit and tie, covered in soot, head to toe, like, walking up, like, “Oh, he must have just been down there and walked up.”

But I remember now this was in Brooklyn, but even there it was very busy, but people were stopping and asking each other. People who you would pass on the street but never talk to were stopping and asking everyone, “How’s your family? Everyone okay? All right. Are you fine?”

Like, there was this, like, community spirit that you just didn’t. You don’t typically get in New York City because there’s just too many people. You can’t talk to everybody. But that. That part of it was kind of beautiful.

And then, of course, governments do what they do and immediately manipulated that into launching wars that they wanted from before 9/11. That had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. Which is, you know, also, the Patriot Act was a bunch of shit they had tried to pass for a while, for years. And everyone’s like, “What, are you fucking crazy?”

The Neoconservative Response and War Plans

JOE ROGAN: Act was a bunch of shit they had tried to pass for a while, for years. And everyone’s like, “What, are you fucking crazy?”

DAVE SMITH: Well, this is the thing, and I guess maybe it’s partly like, my age, because I was 18 at the time, and this is like my coming of age, you know, time. But I will never stop being furious about all of that shit.

And this is like, still to this day, I’m sure you see it when I’m on podcasts with you and doing debates and stuff, but I’m so angry over the war in Iraq and the subsequent wars and, you know, Libya and Syria and Somalia and Yemen and all of them, but specifically because, like, all these guys, the neoconservatives.

The N word that I’m not supposed to bring up. Even though, by the way, Douglas Murray wrote a book called “Neoconservatism: Why We Need It.” But when I say the word neoconservatism, “Be careful what you’re watering here” or something like that.

JOE ROGAN: Is that what they say? I didn’t know that this was an issue that you can’t discuss. Neoconservatism.

DAVE SMITH: Well, that’s. Douglas said when I was on with him. He said, “Ah, the N word” when I brought it up and then said, “I’m watering something” because I mentioned Wolfowitz.

JOE ROGAN: Okay, so that’s anti-Semitism he’s leaning into. Well, that’s kind of ridiculous.

DAVE SMITH: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: You’re talking about something incredibly important. Well, neoconservatism. Why would that be a thing that you can’t discuss? Sounds crazy.

The Project for a New American Century

DAVE SMITH: Well, I mean, I’d say the answer is that those guys got into power. They really hijacked American foreign policy after 9/11 because they happened to all be in power in the Bush administration. Then 9/11 happened on their watch.

But if you go back and read the shit they read, and I will never stop talking about this because it’s just too goddamn crazy, but if you read all of these guys, the guys who were in the George W. Bush administration, I mean, like the signatories on the Project for a New American Century, which was their think tank, the PNAC, as it’s called, were like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Feith and Richard Perle and David Wurmser and the whole group who took over the government were all.

And they wrote explicitly in the Project for a New American Century that they were like, “Look, okay, the Soviet Union has collapsed. We are for the first time in human history, like the lone superpower in the world. So what we should do right now is fight multiple wars because no one threatens us.”

And so therefore, we should fight multiple wars, too. Right now we have an opportunity to remake the world. Overthrow the old Soviet sock puppet states, install our own states there, and guarantee, as the name says, the new American century of dominance, the 21st century.

And they specifically said they want to overthrow Saddam Hussein. And then they specifically said in. And now this is something that the 9/11 truthers really held onto. I’m not sure. I think they might be overplaying their hand a little bit here, but they say there’s one document in the Project for a New American Century you can find it online where they straight up say they go, “Now look, this is what we want to do, but we’re unlikely to get mass American support for it short of another Pearl Harbor type event.”

And so a lot of people like Alex Jones and a lot of the 9/11 truthers would point to this phrase and go, “See, this is the proof that they knew they needed another Pearl Harbor so they planned their own Pearl Harbor.”

Now that is not necessarily true. It doesn’t necessarily prove that, but it certainly does change the way you think about their mind state when they sit there watching the towers get attacked. And they all, at the very least, they all went, “We got it.”

Alex Jones and 9/11 Predictions

JOE ROGAN: You know, Alex Jones predicted 9/11 in July.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. But that’s not quite as. That’s not quite as unique as I think some people think it is.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

DAVE SMITH: Well, like, people.

JOE ROGAN: So like, you ever hear how he said it?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I’ve heard, I’ve heard the clip. It was pretty good. I mean, I’m not like taking anything away from that. He was right. But there were a bunch of people who predicted it. Ron Paul himself predicted it perfectly.

JOE ROGAN: Do they predict planes into the towers?

DAVE SMITH: Let’s just say no. I don’t know about that. That is pretty impressive. But at the same time, you know.

JOE ROGAN: But planes had never flown into towers before.

DAVE SMITH: That’s true. But the World Trade Center was attacked by Al Qaeda guys in ’93.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a Biggie song.

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

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. Adrienne Iapalucci has the funniest joke about that. I believe so. Do you ever hear Adrienne’s joke about that? I don’t want to butcher it on your show, but Adrienne Iapalucci is a hilarious comedian, but she had a joke about how, you know, in that song where Biggie goes, “Time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade.”

But they bleep World Trade now and then her bit is how they didn’t bleep. Like he was talking about the first one, but they bleep it because of the second. You know, the towers came down. But then her bit is just like you go like that wasn’t enough of a tragedy to make it bleep. It was like a funny. Like only a few people died. Like it was cool. But then when a lot of people died, they were. She’s a phenomenal joke writer.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it was a different time back then. They would have never bleeped anything. They didn’t bleep the N word. They didn’t bleep anything.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, it was, it was the Wild West.

Intelligence Agencies and Hip Hop

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s weird when you hear about. So I don’t know if I fully buy into any of this as a caveat, before I get rolling, but when people discuss the intelligence agencies and their role in hip hop, especially gangsta rap, like, I remember the very first time I listened to NWA and I think I told Ice Cube when he was here. I was on a StairMaster in Revere, Massachusetts, and I was listening to “Fuck the Police.” I was like, “Fuck the Police. Coming straight from the underground.” I was like, what is this?

DAVE SMITH: This is.

JOE ROGAN: I was a cassette Walkman. Or maybe it was a CD, but it was probably a cassette Walkman. And I was like, doing. Getting my cardio.

DAVE SMITH: They were better for working out. They didn’t skip.

JOE ROGAN: They got good with the CD after a while. It didn’t skip, but you had to set it on. You had to set it on the treadmill, and you had to hit that shock mode thing. And then that would eat your battery so quickly, though. Like, you get three songs in and be like, all right, you have to go to the gym with spare batteries.

JOE ROGAN: To me, it was so insane that I could carry music with me to the gym. Like, that’s incredible, because you go to the gym and it’d be like the worst Poison song playing. No disrespect to Poison or something. Like, God, I can’t get into this. I’m trying to get pumped here, man. This is bullshit music. Like, someone’s in charge of the station that they pick on the radio just to be able to carry it.

But that moment of hearing that music, I was like, this is celebrating crime and murder. Like, this is nuts. And murdering prostitutes. And this is crazy that this is like a major record label put this out. And I was only 21, and I was just sitting there going, I can’t even believe this is real. And then I got really into it. Like, I’m really into Ice Cube, really into Ice-T. I listened to that when I was delivering newspapers. It was like gangsta rap was like a completely different thing.

So then cut to when people start digging into it, like intelligence agencies have had. There’s a weird book on intelligence agencies and their role in rock and roll music in the 1960s. The movie about. The book about Laurel Canyon. What is it? “Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon.” It’s very interesting. I don’t know if I buy it. Eddie Bravo’s all in on it.

DAVE SMITH: I don’t know if I buy it.

JOE ROGAN: But there’s a lot of weird connections to the intelligence community and music, particularly hip hop and particularly gangster rap. And if you want to get really dark, you would say, if you want to fill your private prisons up, what better way than have very popular music encouraging crime. Encouraging, outright celebrating crime and violence. That way you fill your prisons up, and you also keep people scared so you can give them more laws and more rules and crack down and make them easier to placate, easier to get them to fall in line and do what you need them to do.

The Reagan Administration and Drug Trafficking

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, and support massive police buildups and massive militarization of the police and all this stuff. And I don’t know. I’ve heard a little bit about that. I really don’t know. I know Ice Cube has talked about it before. Like, talked about how there’s undeniably this influence. There are things about it that seem crazy, but I do know that. And I don’t even think this is a controversial thing to say. I think this is just fact at this point that it was the Reagan administration who did traffic in cocaine to the United States of America while they were ramping up the war on drugs.

So they’re bringing in, in their effort to help the Contras or whatever, they are going like, okay, well, these guys are drug dealers. So if we move these drugs in, we can get these money shipments to them. And then they’re creating the conditions for the crack epidemic to explode. And then they catch one guy with a few rocks on him, and they’re throwing him in jail for decades.

It’s like, just that alone, just that one piece of information, you’d almost. If you’re in a sane world, you’d go like, oh, so the people had a revolution and overthrew that government and publicly hung all the politicians involved. And then we started over from new. And you’re like, just say no. No. They lionized that guy. Still for decades afterwards, the Republicans at RNC, you bring up Reagan and they go, “Our hero, Ronald Reagan.” Like, the fact that that isn’t enough to go, well, this guy should be remembered as a monster.

JOE ROGAN: Do you think they tell Reagan that they’re selling crack in the hood?

DAVE SMITH: I don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t think they do. I do not think the intelligence agencies let that information that far up the chain to a guy who’s only in there for four years. Four years to get reelected. Not a chance.

DAVE SMITH: Fair enough.

JOE ROGAN: Not a chance.

DAVE SMITH: But George H.W. Bush definitely knew that guy.

JOE ROGAN: For sure he signed the docket.

DAVE SMITH: That guy was all over that. He was all over.

JOE ROGAN: He was the head of the CIA.

DAVE SMITH: He was their guy. He was the head of the CIA, moved in. Right. So, but again, also you get to a certain point when you’re President. I think this applies to Donald Trump in a lot of ways too, where it’s like, it’s your responsibility. Like, if you didn’t know, then that’s your responsibility for not knowing.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t think you have access. I do not think in cases like that you have access. I think if they’re doing something like selling crack in the hood and using the money to fund the Contras, there’s no way you could ever kosherize that. So I don’t think you ever let the President know. I think this is all black funded. I don’t think. I think there’s layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy before you can get to any real data and information.

If you want to talk about people that are doing operations in Nicaragua, you’ve got things going on in Iran, you’ve got to pay attention to Russia. This is happening. That’s happening there. There’s not a chance he knows they’re selling crack to pay for an army. I just don’t.

DAVE SMITH: I just don’t think you might tell him. Look, you might be right about that.

JOE ROGAN: Because why would they assume that he’d go along with it or tell him this is not a normal thing to do. I came into this office thinking I’m an actor, I’m Ronald Reagan. I came into this office thinking I’m going to be a good American and we’re going to get back to basics and hard work and trickle down economics. And you’re telling me you’re selling crack? Hey, you’re going to jail.

DAVE SMITH: You’re going to jail. Yeah, well, because he can’t.

JOE ROGAN: That’s how Nixon got caught. So Nixon didn’t organize Watergate, he tried to cover it up.

DAVE SMITH: Yep. That’s how he got caught.

JOE ROGAN: And they would do the same thing with Reagan. Yeah, well, you want to come clean about all the crack selling? Really?

DAVE SMITH: Right. Well, they could present it to them after. It’s a fait accompli. And then be like, so what do you want to do now? Which is what happened with Nixon. Right? So it’s like, look, this is going to look really, really bad. Good luck explaining this. Right? So he helps him cover it up. And then you go, now we got you.

JOE ROGAN: We got you.

DAVE SMITH: Now you might as well have been in on planning it because you helped us cover it up.

The Watergate Setup

JOE ROGAN: And Nixon was set up by the government. That’s what’s really crazy is intelligence agencies set up Watergate. They operated it. Bob Woodward was an intelligence agent before he was ever a reporter. That was his first gig. Tucker Carlson told me that. It blew my mind. He’s like, what rookie reporter for their first gig, their first story gets. You’re going to take down the most popular president in U.S. history.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. He won by the biggest margin in 49 states.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: He’s a dominant. The American people had spoken, they supported this guy. And then, right, Bob Woodward, some 20 something year old reporter, he gets the biggest story in American history. He happened to just come out of naval intelligence. In a weird coincidence.

JOE ROGAN: Did I tell you what Bill Murray told me?

DAVE SMITH: No.

JOE ROGAN: So Bill Murray was on the podcast and was talking about Bob Woodward’s movie, the book he wrote. What was it? What was it called?

DAVE SMITH: Well, he’s written a lot at this point.

JOE ROGAN: The one about Belushi, what was it called?

DAVE SMITH: “Wired.”

JOE ROGAN: Okay. It was just about Belushi being a drug addict. He goes, “That’s not my friend.” He goes, “That’s not how he was.” He was like, “That was kind of an act. He was a little bit of a lightweight. Like if he had two, three drinks, he was drunk.” Like, he goes, “I think he did that speedball. I think that’s the first time he ever did it and died. It’s not that he never done drugs before, but he wasn’t this guy.” So this was all fiction. So he read the first five pages of his. “Oh my God, they framed Nixon.”

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, Isn’t that crazy?

JOE ROGAN: It’s like this guy wrote about my friend in such a distorted, untruthful way. Now I have to think about what he discovered with Nixon. Now I know what kind of person this is.

Bob Woodward’s Credibility Issues

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, my good friend who I mentioned quite a bit, but Scott Horton, who is I think the best foreign policy voice in the United States of America. And he’s written. He wrote the best book on the terror wars called “Enough Already.” And the best book on the war in Ukraine called “Provoked.”

But so Bob Woodward’s latest book came out and I remember he told me about this, but so he just happened to be writing his book on Ukraine when he saw this new Bob Woodward book came out. And they had a quote in it. I believe it was a Sergey Lavrov quote, who’s Putin’s right hand man. And Scott said he’s reading it. And he goes, “This quote’s all wrong.” He goes, “The actual quote, he was just researching this for his book. And he goes, the quote means the exact opposite of what he’s claiming it means here.”

Like, see how he left out this part? He wasn’t referring to this. He was referring to that. And then he just. I remember he just told me, he goes like, “So for the record, you can just never trust anything Bob Woodward says, because he’ll take this quote and just get it, mangle it to the point where he’s presenting it as if it means 180 degrees opposite of what the quote actually meant.” And so, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff like that. And then that guy is like the historian of record.

JOE ROGAN: Would you have ever imagined that when all the years when I was growing up, that guy was like a hero? He was like a journalistic hero.

DAVE SMITH: Well, and he’s how we know. He’s how you know that in that moment, Dick Cheney turned to George W. Bush and said, “Mr. President, I think we need to.” And then you’re like, oh, but he just makes shit up.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, God. Like when I was a kid, they made a movie about him. “All the President’s Men” is a movie. Who plays Bob Woodward? What movie star plays Bob Woodward? Which one of them. Was it Robert Redford or was it the other guy? Who’s. Who else was in that movie with him? Who played Bernstein? Dustin Hoffman.

DAVE SMITH: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: That’s right. Robert Redford’s Woodward. Yeah. So imagine that you’re Bob Woodward. You bullshit everybody. Then you get to watch Robert Redford, the most handsome man alive, play in a movie. Like, outstanding. Look how good looking I am. And look at me kicking ass for America.

The Nixon Legacy and Watergate Narrative

DAVE SMITH: But also, just think about how much they could get. I remember I was in school, and I remember hearing my history teacher talking to another teacher. And this was when Bill Clinton was getting in trouble for Monica Lewinsky. So I was in middle school or whatever, and I remember hearing them talk. And one of them said to the other, “So what do you think about the impeachment or something?”

And I remember my history teacher I thought was a pretty smart guy. And he goes, “Well, you know, they’re treating him like he’s Nixon, but he’s not Nixon.” And essentially what that meant was like, “Well, Nixon is the most corrupt president who ever lived. Bill Clinton just got caught cheating on his wife. That’s not as big a deal as being the most corrupt.”

But they just made that the thing that everybody knows. Like, “Well, we did have this one corrupt president, but the system works.” That’s the lesson. The system works. And it got him out of there before the Internet.

JOE ROGAN: It works. I think it’s very hard to make that same system work the same way now.

DAVE SMITH: No, I completely agree. I mean, to say that the narrative that everybody accepted it was like, “Oh, but the system works. It figured out that he was corrupt, they had him step down, they got him out of there.” When really the answer is much more like the intelligence agencies took over the United States of America in a hostile coup against John F. Kennedy. And then Nixon comes in a few years later and is essentially taken over as well. But they get the American people to believe that what that was, this was a corrupt president being ousted.

Following Kennedy’s Legacy

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s also easy to frame Nixon that way because he’s ugly, right? He’s not a good looking guy. And it was just after Kennedy. Look, when Muhammad Ali retired, Larry Holmes couldn’t get any love. Couldn’t get any love. And one of the reasons why Larry Holmes is one of the best heavyweight champions of all time, couldn’t get any love, is because he beat the hell out of Muhammad Ali. And everybody was sad and everybody hated him because of that.

And you just, you’re never like if you’re Nixon and you’re following JFK, who got shot in the head.

DAVE SMITH: We lost.

JOE ROGAN: We got assassinated. Someone assassinated the greatest president of all time, this good looking guy who was going to really change things and didn’t believe in secrecy and was talking to the American people like, “We have hope and dreams.” He wants to put us on the moon and he got shot in the head. Now we got this ugly guy.

DAVE SMITH: Well, there was LBJ in between there at least. But yes, a little bit. Well, I think also in hindsight he wasn’t that good looking. He also came off as kind of false figure.

Nixon’s Authoritarian Approach

JOE ROGAN: Well, also very authoritarian, you know, which is unfortunately, when you have a society where you do have ubiquitous crime, you do need some kind of an authoritarian leadership. Not saying you need tyranny, not saying you need a dictator, but you need laws and you need rule of law. And sometimes those people come off very harsh and very uncaring and unloving.

And you know, the total opposite for the reason why people voted for Jimmy Carter, I think, because Jimmy Carter represented a genuinely sweet, good guy, right? But look how that president was a disaster because they were all working against him for sure. And on top of that, it’s hard to. You got to be a bit of a hard ass if you want to run the world.

But the way Nixon did it, we’re still suffering through that today. That motherfucker, he’s partially responsible for that sweeping Schedule 1 Act of 1970, when they did that and they made everything illegal. Everything. Schedule one, including things that are 100% medicinal, like marijuana, all that messed up society. And they did it specifically to target the anti war movement and to target the civil rights movement specifically. So it’s not like Nixon was the best.

DAVE SMITH: Oh no.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, what he did was horrible.

The Gold Standard Disaster

DAVE SMITH: Nixon had a lot of policy failures and I would put the number one. And I completely agree with you, I mean, launching the war on drugs was a disaster, but taking us off the gold standard was one of the worst policy decisions in the history of the United States of America. So many of the problems we face now is because of that.

And people could say, I’ve heard Pat Buchanan defend Nixon on this before. Pat Buchanan was in the Nixon administration. He was a speechwriter for him and he was like, “Well, look, what were we going to do at that point?” And so he was basically saying, because what happened was essentially. So you had the Bretton Woods Agreement, which started after World War II, or actually, I’m sorry, it started at the very end of World War II. It was in 1944 where they had the Bretton Woods Agreement, where they could kind of see where World War II was going to.

And it was basically like, “Okay, well, all of Europe is destroyed and a lot of Asia is destroyed,” or not yet. I guess it was 44, but it was getting there. And America had, you know, at least on the homeland hadn’t really been touched. And we had a wild amount of the world’s gold.

And so the deal was essentially that we will peg the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce. Everyone else can pay their currency to the dollar. And then the dollars are refundable. You know, you can get an ounce for $35. And so that was what stood from after World War II, so from 1944 to 1973 or 1971, when he took us off the gold standard.

And so essentially what happened was through the 60s, we started cheating. And it became very obvious to the world that we were in the 1960s, you have the Great Society. So we created Medicare and Medicaid and we went to the moon and we were fighting the war in Vietnam and we were just printing money for all of this, which is what we still do to this day. But so essentially the Europeans started looking at us and they were like, “I don’t think you got enough gold to cover all these dollars that you’re printing around.”

JOE ROGAN: Wasn’t that thing where they were going to do an audit of Fort Knox that we never heard about?

The French Called Our Bluff

DAVE SMITH: Well, what I know is that I’m pretty sure it was the French. Might have been the British too, but it was definitely the French. The French basically called our bluff and they just went, “Okay, we’ll take gold. You know, we got all these dollars, we’ll take gold. We get an ounce for every $35 that we have. And we have quite a lot.”

And that’s when Nixon went, “No,” he just basically defaulted in front of the entire world. And he said he temporarily suspending the convertibility of dollars into gold. And they framed it as the French are attacking the stability of the dollar. Really all they were doing was calling us on our agreement we owed it to them.

JOE ROGAN: We’re like, “We got so much gold, bro.”

DAVE SMITH: So Pat Buchanan says, defending his boy Richard Nixon, he goes, “Well, what were we going to do at that point? Let him clean us out of all of our gold and just not be the dominant power?” But I think the retort to that is, yeah, that’s what you should have done. Because the decision to go off of the gold standard essentially just said, “Well, now there’s no more even pretend limits on government.”

You know, this is why Ron Paul, who, happy birthday to the greatest living American hero, just turned 90. And I was just at his birthday party a few weeks ago.

JOE ROGAN: Damn you partying with Ron Paul, dude.

The Gold Standard and Government Spending

DAVE SMITH: That dude throws it down. No, I’m just kidding. It was very nice though, to see him. Tulsi Gabbard was there, which was cool.

But so essentially, right, that was the last restraint on government. Is that at least, even then, even under Bretton Woods, when we’re cheating, at least there’s some feeling of like, “well, don’t cheat too bad, because they could maybe try to, you know, like count the gold standard.” Right, exactly. But after that it was off to the races.

And this is why, this is why Ron Paul ran for Congress. It was when Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard. And then he was like, “this is going to lead to big government. This is going to be the era of big government.” So he was going to run to try to stop that. And he was completely right.

The Federal Reserve and the Warfare State

You know, this is what has really destroyed everything, is that there’s just no. And it’s a big part of the reason why I’m so angry about all these wars too, because it’s all related. You know, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, or the Federal Reserve act was signed into law by Woodrow Wilson in 1913. And then in 1914, I think is when it actually got up and running. And in 1914 is when the income tax was passed, also signed into law by Woodrow Wilson. And three years later is World War I. You know, like three years later or American entry into World War I.

So it’s like this is the banking system and the tax system are very like interrelated with the warfare state. Like you need this stuff in order to fight wars. And you know, even just over the. Whatever it’s. Over the last 25 years, we’ve spent close to $10 trillion on wars, you know, and they don’t. They didn’t tax the American people for that. They know they couldn’t tax us enough to pay. We would put an end to it if they tried to raise everybody’s taxes enough to come up with $10 trillion, because we want to go fight regime change wars all over the Middle East, the American people would have been like “no, we’re not doing that.”

But they didn’t do that. They kept taxes where they were. I think they even cut some rates during those years, top rates. And then they borrowed the rest and they still couldn’t borrow enough. So they just print the money and then essentially what happens is that the price of everything just goes up and up and up and you just put more money into the system and then people start looking around and going like “geez, why is the price of housing and health care and energy and childcare totally unaffordable?” And the answer is because you’re paying for the war in Iraq. And nobody thinks about it like that, but that’s really what’s going on.

The Cost of Empire on Young Americans

They can’t. So for all the young people who are coming out of college now and they’re like “I’m 150 grand in debt, I have a gender studies major degree or whatever,” you know, maybe something better than that. But they got an English degree or something and they’re working at DoorDash and the average house is going for 600 grand and they’re like “what am I possibly going to do?” It’s like the reason why these kids are all demanding socialism, at least on the left, is because like what else are you going to do? Like how do you even.

But the reason why that is the case is because your government decided to spend trillions of dollars on blowing up brown countries and in some cases then rebuilding them to blow them up again. This is the actual cost of the thing. And I feel like it’s almost nobody outside of like the Ron Paul libertarians, the Austrian economics guys, almost nobody else ever makes this connection that it’s like this is the deal.

You can’t be a world empire without having a central bank that can print money for you because otherwise it just doesn’t work. Resources are finite and you’ll run out of them. And so you can’t do that without having this monetary system. But the cost of this monetary system is that prices always go up and up and up and up and that rigs the entire economy against the working class and the middle class in favor of the rest. Rich, it’s just the way it is when the value of assets is going up and up and up and up.

That’s great if you own stuff, that’s great if you own stuff and you’re selling it. If you got a billion dollars in the bank, inflation is your best friend. But if you’re on a fixed income or you’re a working class person, it just destroys you. And everybody who’s working class knows this just from living through the last five years.

The Human Cost of Economic Policy

But, you know, your grocery prices go up 30%. That is, you know, that’s. You know, people have this idea that there’s like, economic issues over here and then there’s like social issues over here. There’s foreign policy over here, but it’s all one thing. You know, the prices of groceries go up by 30% and families get destroyed. Men swallow pistols, kids grow up without fathers. That’s the cost of this shit. And that’s what we’re living through now and what we’ll continue to live through as long as we have a government that it spends way beyond our means.

Like Dr. Ron Paul used to say, “when you spend beyond your means, you’re destined to live beneath your means.”

JOE ROGAN: And we have an economy that’s built around doing the exact same thing it’s always done, right? And if you think about the amount of money, just like, just in shuddering USAID, think about the amount of money, whether you agree with USAID or not, the amount of money that was being pumped through that system, like to all sorts of weird places, right?

There’s the. When the Department of Energy gave out $93 billion in loans in the months between Biden losing or Kamala losing, rather, and Trump taking office. Like, where’s that? There’s so many of these instances of insane amounts of money just being allocated while we’re in $39 trillion in debt. It’s like, it’s so unmanageable, and yet it just keeps marching on.

And people are upset. If you try to pull a band aid off, like the idea of shuttering some of these government organizations, all you hear about is “people are going to die, people are going to starve. This is going to happen. That’s going to happen.” Are you fucking sure? Are you sure that this isn’t a giant money sucking scam that’s been going on that does some good?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well, there’s.

JOE ROGAN: That’s most of it, right?

Government Spending and War Powers

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well, like, number one. Yeah. If you go, “hey, I think.” Which, by the way, no one in Congress, I mean, short of like Thomas Massie, maybe, maybe Rand Paul, but like, no one else in Congress is even like, suggesting an idea so radical. But if I were to throw out the radical idea that we should go back to pre pandemic level spending. So go all the way back to the crazy year of 2019 when it was anarchy or whatever that was. Just, they’ll all tell you the world’s going to end if we do that.

And even when they’re making up these absolutely ridiculous claims about how many people are going to die if you cut government spending, which is all totally absurd, but then they never seem to go like, “well, how many people are going to die if I keep letting D.C. have all these war making powers? How many people are going to die if the president is able to fund a proxy war whenever he wants to?”

I mean, look at this shit doing. Dude, I took so much, you know, whatever. I’m not. But I took a lot of heat for the stuff I said on the show here a few years ago about the war in Ukraine. Look at it now, dude, look at even. And I don’t think they’re about to end the thing. I think they’re. Which we could talk about, but I think they’re putting poison pills in these negotiations already. It’s what it looks like to me.

The Ukraine Peace Deal That Never Was

But literally the deal that I was talking to you about, whatever it was three years ago when I was saying on the show that they had a deal worked out, a peace deal worked out in the first few months of the war in ’22, and Boris Johnson went and killed the peace deal on behalf of the west to make sure this war kept going. But the deal that was in pencil, not pen, that Boris Johnson killed was essentially recognition of the annexation of Crimea. It was at the time, it wasn’t annexation of the Donbas region. It was like independence for the Donbas region. And then the agreement that the rest of Ukraine would not join NATO. That was the deal that they had worked out.

And look at where we are now. Now the deal that they’re even talking about, even as Donald Trump goes, there’s going to be some land swaps and all this. Okay, well what’s he talking about? The deal right now that is the best case scenario that we’re hoping we could get is that Vladimir Putin obviously keeps Crimea, keeps the entire Donbas region, gets a corridor from the south into Crimea and the rest of Ukraine. Ukraine doesn’t join NATO.

So we have the same deal, just a little bit more in the Russians favor three years later with hundreds of thousands of people having died in that process, just to get back to not as good a deal as they had in ’22. And so, you know, and if they.

JOE ROGAN: Don’t sign that, they don’t keep going.

DAVE SMITH: Which I think it’s probably going to.

JOE ROGAN: They’re enlisting people as old as 60 now.

Ukrainian Support for the War Collapses

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. And they have been for like a full year at least throwing people up there. And the thing that’s really changed, the reason why, like the Europeans and Zelensky and they’re at least pretending to come to the negotiation table right now, which they don’t say, but this is the truth, is that support for the war amongst Ukrainians has collapsed. I mean, not like gone down by a few points. It’s collapsed.

There was just a piece in this the other day. It was a Gallup, I believe they had their latest poll. Super majorities of the Ukrainian people, 70% around, want an immediate end to the war with negotiations on land swap. “Let’s settle it. However we got to settle it.” They don’t.

I remember for the first two years of the thing, everybody who I argued with about the war in Ukraine, their talking point would always be “the Ukrainian people want a free.” And “who are you, Dave, to tell them that they don’t have a right to defend themselves?” And then I would respond by saying like, “yes, it’s true, the Ukrainian people want to fight, but like, might that have something to do with the blank check that they’ve received from the world and the backup of the entire world?”

You know, it’s a different proposition to go like, “do you want to fight if Jon Jones is at your back and goes, ‘I got your back, dude, let’s go fuck these guys up.'” You’re like, “hell yeah, I want to fight.” But then Jon Jones leaves. I might be like, “ah, let’s talk about this,” you know, like, like, but so that, but that would, but now the Ukrainian people don’t want to fight.

And by the way, I never believed any of that. Because I don’t, you know, I have my own libertarian views on things. And I’m like, if you’re telling me that people want to fight, like, “well, why do you got to conscript an army then?” You know, like if they want to fight so bad, why you got to put a gun to their head and force them to the front line of people? Yeah, you could just make it a voluntary force and then we’ll find out real quick who wants to fight.

Poison Pills in Peace Negotiations

But the point is now that even the Ukrainians want to fight over this stuff anymore. So there’s just no justification for it. So now they move to phase B, which is essentially to pretend like they’re negotiating, but putting all types of poison pills in the deal so that, you know, the other side won’t take it. This is what they did with Iran, too. This is why we got into that 12 day war, as they’re calling it now.

But you know, it’s like you put things into the. I already saw. I was just reading the other day, it was on Axios, there’s reports that Zelensky and the Europeans are like, open to land swaps as long as there’s in their words in the Axios piece, “Article Five, like security guarantees.” So in other words, the rest of Ukraine’s in NATO, which is the thing that caused the whole conflict to begin with. Oh, so like, yeah. And you know, that’s what that means.

JOE ROGAN: Article 5.

NATO Article 5 and Putin’s Strategic Calculations

DAVE SMITH: Article 5 is the article in NATO, in the NATO agreement that says that if one of the countries is attacked, all the countries have to join together to help. It doesn’t exactly say you have to go to war over it, but you have to help in the effort if they’re attacked. So essentially that’s what they’re trying to ask now.

But if you think about it, it’s designed to incentivize Putin to keep the war going. Because if you’re telling Vladimir Putin – let’s just say, which it’s not exactly clear that he would even take the deal that I just laid out before, but there was, I know that it’s been reported that it was being signaled that he might be open to that deal. I get the Donbas region, you know, he’s got still the Donbass region is Donetsk and Luhansk. And in Luhansk, I think as of right now, I think the Russians control 75% of it. They got all of Donetsk, they got most of Luhansk, but there’s still Ukrainians controlling part of it. And then he’s controlling part of these territories in the south.

So this is what Trump means when he says the land swaps, meaning essentially you get out of the Donbass region. Give me that and I’ll give you back, you know, the land swaps are Putin taking what he wants and leaving you the rest. But if you’re going to tell Vladimir Putin, who fought this entire war over Ukrainian entry into NATO being his red line, basically as the war is potentially wrapping up, you’re going to tell him, “Hey, whatever territory you don’t take here will be a part of NATO.” Well, what does that incentivize him to do? Take more of it? Then why would you stop and give the rest of it up?

And it does seem to me that is clearly, at least from the Europeans, that is clearly the motivation of all of this, is to present something. They do have their chess war moves. And so you present something that you know the other side can’t agree to, and then when they don’t agree to it, you go, “Look, we tried to negotiate, and he just wouldn’t take us up on this. And so what can you do?”

The Complexity of War and Economic Motivations

JOE ROGAN: You know, another problem with these conflicts and war in general is that people always want to pretend that there’s one side that’s good and one side that’s bad. You know, and obviously Putin’s the bad guy, right? Because they started the war, started killing people in Ukraine. But there’s so many factors that are going on.

And then there’s also the long history of corruption that Ukraine has always had. And then there’s also the weird deals that they were making with the Biden family to control all the different – it was natural gas, and there’s incredible supplies of rare earth minerals. It’s really valuable territory. There’s this incentive to create some sort of – they were going to try to, I think part of the plan was get off of Russian power and make Ukrainian power central.

And then whatever they were making over there, the amount of power, I forget what the number was they said, but it’s trillions of dollars in natural gas, minerals, all these different things. We’re supposed to pretend that that’s not also a part of the motivation. Didn’t even Trump say something about a deal that they were doing with Ukraine that involved…

Trump’s Business-Minded Approach and Historical Misunderstanding

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, he got sucked into this talk about the rare earth mineral stuff. And, you know, it’s Donald Trump. It’s his weakness, because there’s a lot of great things about coming from a business background. But then there’s the weakness of it is that he’s always attracted by, “Hey, Gaza could be beachfront property.” You know, and he’s like, “Ooh,” you can just see him come alive. Yeah, it’s always this stuff.

But then the problem is that, you know, and look, I’ve been very harsh on Donald Trump over the last few months, but I think he deserves it. And I think this administration is failing on so many levels so profoundly, especially given the opportunity that they had. But, you know, I heard him the other day. He called into a Fox News show and he was telling the story of the war in Ukraine, and it just seems like he’s telling – it seems like you learned this on a TV show. Can we get some books in your diet? You know what I mean? We really need someone here who’s read a book about this.

Because he kind of had an idea of what he was talking about, but then he got it completely wrong. So he goes, he’s trying to tell the story and he’s talking about the corruption of the Bidens in Ukraine. And you’re like, “Okay, yes, that is true.” But there’s a whole story here that I don’t think you’re really understanding. Because he goes, “Look, this goes back to 2014.” And so I’m watching this and I got so excited for a minute. I was like, “Yes, yes, it does go back to 2014. Thank you Donald Trump.” And then he goes, “It goes back to 2014 when Putin took Crimea and Obama let him have it.”

JOE ROGAN: It.

DAVE SMITH: “He just let him have it. Never would have happened on my watch. But Obama gave Putin Ukraine.” And you’re like, “No dude, that’s not…” Just go back two months earlier in that same year. The problem wasn’t that Obama gave Putin Ukraine. The problem was that Obama took Ukraine away from Vladimir Putin.

The Real Story Behind the 2014 Crisis

As I’ve played on your show and you played with Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence has sat right here where I’m sitting and watched Gideon Rose explain to Stephen Colbert exactly what we’re doing here. Russia – as Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine said, “Russia is Batman, Ukraine is Robin. We are stealing Robin away from Batman.” That’s what the Maidan revolution was. That’s why the USAID and the NED poured $100 million into the street protest, right?

And so they overthrew the government and then a bunch of the former Ukrainian prime ministers started floating out that we should tear up the Sevastopol lease in Crimea because you know, this is Russia’s only year-long warm water naval port. They’ve always had it. This was their agreement. They had a 50 year lease or something like that. But after the west backed a coup that overthrew the government and put in a pro-Western government, they started talking big like “Well maybe we’ll tear up that lease and we will.” And so Vladimir Putin went “No, I’ll just take it.”

And that was – so anyway, so he goes back to that doesn’t go back a few months earlier and then misses the entire point that no – because the point is that it’s not just me being like, I wish Donald Trump was into the same books I’m into, or something like that. The point is that when you don’t get that piece of the chapter, then you miss what’s happening right now.

So when you’re talking about these, essentially what Donald Trump was saying, the way he was trying to sell it to Zelensky was like, “Look, do this rare earth minerals deal with us. And this is kind of a security guarantee. It’s not exactly a security guarantee, but if we’re in business with you and then Putin’s trying to mess up our business, hey, he’s picking a fight with us too.”

But the whole point is that that’s exactly what caused this whole catastrophe. Vladimir Putin and the entire Russian elite have been crystal clear about this, that they go, “Look, we can tolerate a neutral Ukraine. We could tolerate NATO up to Ukraine. Ukraine is neutral. And then there’s Russia. We cannot tolerate Ukraine being part of America’s military alliance. That’s a step too far.”

But every time we try to let him be neutral, neutral seems like it’s never good enough. And that never actually works. So if you’re going to come in here and say, “Neutral’s not good enough, they’re going to be part of the west,” then we’re going to say, “Actually, we’ll take him as part of Russia instead.”

Now, he also believes, as he says all the time, which I just think is goofy and un-American, but he also believes that they’re not really a real country and they’re kind of historically ours anyway. And, you know, he’s got his own views on that, but that’s not what the war was about.

Debating Douglas Murray on NATO’s Role

And everybody, you know, and when I was here, which I was very excited to do because I’m, you know, a weird romantic and have a dash of autism or something like that. But what I was really excited – because me and Douglas Murray are going to debate this issue. And I remember when he first goes, “The war had nothing to do with Ukrainian entry into NATO.” And I was like, “Okay, well, let me just hit you with two points real quick.”

Number one, the head of the CIA, you know, during all the years of Joe Biden, when he was the ambassador to Russia, he wrote the “NYET Means Yet” memo. He literally said that this was all what it was all about, and that Russia didn’t want to do this, but they would if we kept pushing Ukrainian entry into NATO. And we did keep pushing it.

And then I said the other one was Stoltenberg, who is not anymore, but was the head of NATO while this was happening. And he said that Vladimir Putin sent them in writing a draft treaty that “All you have to do is put in writing that you will never bring Ukraine into NATO and I won’t invade.” And then he bragged that we said no, and then he invaded.

But so I said this to Douglas Murray and I was kind of curious, I was like, “What’s his response to this going to be? What is he going to say back? Maybe he’s got something I’ve never heard before that I’m going to have to be like, ‘Oh shit, I got to consider this.'”

JOE ROGAN: That.

DAVE SMITH: And his response was “A libertarian quoting the CIA. I see.” And you’re like, “Wait, so that’s your pivot is to I’m a hypocrite somehow.” Which isn’t even hypocrisy. Yes, I think the CIA should be abolished. I also think it’s relevant when the head of the CIA admits what the war was all about. I don’t see that.

The Role of Intelligence Agencies

JOE ROGAN: Do you think the CIA totally should be abolished? Don’t you think we should kind of pay attention to what the hell is going on in the world? Giving a real life perspective. Not a utopian perspective, but a real life perspective. There’s terrorist groups all over the world plotting shit. Probably a good idea.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. So what the CIA was originally conceived of essentially being a newspaper for the President, being like, “Hey, we get all the real intelligence and we give it to you here.” Yes, I 100% think there’s room for intelligence gathering. But what the CIA became is a paramilitary organization that starts wars and overthrows democratically elected governments all around the world.

JOE ROGAN: And occasionally sells coke in the hood.

DAVE SMITH: And occasionally when they’re bored, there’s – and when there’s – and maybe on a Tuesday, a three day weekend, and then on Tuesday maybe move some crack into Los Angeles. No, that, I mean, just should – I mean, it’s a disgrace to a professed free society.

Chuck Schumer’s Revealing Moment

I mean, it’s look – which we’ve also played on the show before, but when Chuck Schumer was on with Rachel Maddow, which is one of the most amazing moments in the history of corporate media. Because what’s amazing about it, if you watch the full thing, is that Rachel Maddow’s asking him questions and he’s given his Chuck Schumer, you know, political answers to all of them. However you feel about him. It’s like they have their spiel.

But then she breaks from script and she preemptively apologizes to him. She goes, “Hey, I’m sorry to just throw this on you right now. This is…” It was in, I believe, January. It was either December 16th or January 17th. So Donald Trump has beat Hillary Clinton, but he’s not president yet, he’s President Elect. And so she goes, “Sorry to throw you off, put you on the spot, but Donald Trump just tweeted this.”

So she’s reading a tweet that he just tweeted live on air to the Senate Majority leader or minority leader at the time. So she reads up the tweet, that’s him trashing the CIA or something like that. And then Chuck Schumer just gives his organic response. There was no script prepared for this. He wasn’t planned on being asked this question. She just goes, “Look, here’s Donald Trump talking about the CIA.” And Chuck Schumer goes, “I mean, Donald Trump, you want to go with the intelligence agencies.” And his exact phrase was, “They have seven ways till Sunday to get back at you.”

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

The Deep State’s Admission

DAVE SMITH: So good luck. And by the way, Rachel Maddow in this moment does not say, “Pause the tape. What did you just say?” Like, the most powerful Democrat in the Senate just admitted we don’t live in a democracy. Just admitted that this whole thing’s an illusion, that the President of the United States is not the President of the United States.

All our talk about democracy being on the ballot, democracy has been gone for a long time, if it ever existed. You just straight up said that the duly elected Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the United States of America ain’t really the one who’s in charge. Because you better not insult the CIA who work for you. Ostensibly or supposedly, I should say, you know, and so like that. Or they’ll get you, or they’ll get you, or they’ll ruin you. And by the way, they did, didn’t they?

Trump’s Election Claims and Ukraine

And this is the stuff which is very interesting, that Tulsi’s releasing now, which I don’t know whether, you know, I’m kind of past the point of, like, it’s hard to take. It’s hard to take a lot of things about Donald Trump seriously to me at this point, you know, flaking on all types of stuff, you know, the Epstein stuff. And just a lot of, you know, kind of core things where, like, so Donald Trump, at least according to him, they stole the election.

You know, I was thinking about this the other day. Because he was talking about. In the same thing that I’m talking about when he called into Fox News, he was talking about the Ukraine war. He said at one point, he goes, “The war never would have happened if I was president.” Which Putin threw him a bone and backed him up on that the other day and said, “The war wouldn’t have happened if Trump was president.”

JOE ROGAN: That doesn’t.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, Just saying what? Just saying what? You know, he’s smart enough to know.

JOE ROGAN: He’s nice thing to say. The guy likes being complimented.

DAVE SMITH: And Putin’s smart enough to know that. Like, this is how you negotiate with Donald Trump. Yes. Yes.

JOE ROGAN: Well, never started with you, my friend.

DAVE SMITH: So that’s kind of a silly point. But aside from that. So Donald Trump goes. He goes, “It never would have happened if I was president.” Then he takes it a step further than what he normally says, and he goes, “It wouldn’t have even happened if anyone else was president. If we had just had a regular president, this war never would have happened. It’s only because Joe Biden, the worst president in the history of America, was present that that’s why this happened.”

But then I’m sitting there as I listen to that, and I go, yeah, but, dude, didn’t you. You told me that they cheated. Like, you didn’t really lose the election in 2020. That’s been. You’ve stuck to that story now for many years. So you’re saying they cheated. You’re making a similar claim here. They overthrew democracy, they installed Joe Biden, and a war where hundreds of thousands, maybe well over a million people have died happened because they cheated the election.

Okay? So I’m going to need to know who they is, and I’m going to need to know when we’re going to see them. Perp walked. Like, you’re the president now. You got your whole. But all of us, on some level, don’t really think they’re going to stop start arresting people over the stolen election of 2020. And, you know, I don’t think they have any evidence. Yeah, no, that’s right. I completely agree.

Election Fraud Evidence

JOE ROGAN: I think there’s a lot of speculation and there’s a lot of consideration about mail in ballots. There’s a lot of shenanigans. There’s a good record of shenanigans, and there’s the reality of any kind of electronics can be hacked.

DAVE SMITH: No, So I agree with all of that. I’m just saying, like, once you’ve made these statements and your administration. No, I remember it was one of the most interesting parts of your podcast with him was like. When you asked him about that, it was like he really didn’t have anything to back it up.

JOE ROGAN: If that was you or if that was me. I mean, if there was some reason why I knew that they did something and I could give you all the facts, I would have that ready for anybody. Because for four years, they’ve been telling him he’s crazy for questioning the election.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: So after four years, I’d have a tight 10 minutes on the election where I could just rattle off at you and rock your world with it. Like, these are the fact, Jack.

Tulsi Gabbard’s Document Release

DAVE SMITH: Well, there’s also. There’s a big difference between, you know, speculating and asking some questions and being like, “I’m not sure I believe the official story of this.” And there’s a difference between then being, as a president of the United States going, “This is what happened.” Like, this was. And if you’re going to say that, then you got to give me your theory, like, really lay it out for me, like. And he never had that part.

But I will say they kind of pivoted off the Epstein thing into Russia Gate, which seemed to be, you know, like, designed. That there was this tremendous desire. It’s the whole reason Donald Trump’s political existence is a thing, is that people are furious about the swamp. They’re furious about how corrupt our government is and the profound crimes that the government has committed against the American people, and they want justice for that. And so they pivoted off of Epstein after promising to deliver something on that, and then went, “Okay, well, how about Russiagate now?”

Now. So now they’re. But I will say Tulsi Gabbard released a bunch of new documents, and there were some pretty interesting ones there. It wasn’t like she just released new stuff where it was like, “Oh, we already knew all this.” Like, there was new stuff in there that we didn’t really already know. And she referred it over to the Justice Department. She said in her press conference that we have proof that Obama committed treason, and they’ve at least sent it to the Justice Department. And from what I understand, there is a grand jury being assembled or something like that.

So I don’t know. I still, in the deepest part of my soul, go, there’s no way. There’s no way they’re actually going to try to prosecute Obama and Brennan and Clapper and Comey.

JOE ROGAN: But the FBI raided John Bolton’s house today.

DAVE SMITH: Yes, I think that’s unrelated, but that is an interesting story also.

JOE ROGAN: It seems like they’re doing wild shit, but if they did that with Obama. What was the actual treason? Like what is she stating is treason?

The Obama Meeting and Intelligence Consensus

DAVE SMITH: Well, so now I don’t think she said treason. I don’t. Legally that’s technically right. But someone might correct me on that. Maybe it’s sedition or something, I don’t know. I mean, like, I think treason. I think John Brennan did commit treason when he armed Al Qaeda in Syria and Obama as well, with the rest of Obama and John Kerry and Brennan. I think that’s literally treason. Right. Giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war.

What Obama and Comey and Clapper did to Donald Trump is they framed him for treason. So what do you call that exactly? Framing the sitting US President. Now I guess Obama can’t be guilty of the sitting US President, but he was guilty of the candidate and the President Elect, because he was out of there by the time Trump comes in.

But what Tulsi Gabbard released that I thought was very interesting, which I had never seen before and we did, I don’t remember was last year or the year before, but there was one episode that me and you talked a lot about Russiagate and got pretty deep into it. But what Tulsi released, which I’ve never seen before, was that there was a consensus amongst the intelligence agencies after the 2016 election. So this is Hillary Clinton’s lost, but Barack Obama’s still president and Donald Trump is the President Elect.

And they had consensus that there was no meaningful interference in the election. And then there is this one meeting with Obama that she points to where this is where the consensus changes. And they had a new threat assessment written that actually “We believe Russia interfered in the election,” but it was total bullshit. They’ve never been able to back it up for shit. You know, they find minor little things here or there, but nothing that demonstrates that like the results of this were flipped and then they ran with that for three years after it.

JOE ROGAN: But there’s not a record of that meeting.

DAVE SMITH: Right? She just released a bunch of documents with records of that meeting.

JOE ROGAN: No, but what I’m saying is like the actual discussions, it’s not on record.

DAVE SMITH: No, I think they have. She had a few.

JOE ROGAN: Do they have to do that?

DAVE SMITH: No, she had you. She had a couple different documents there that were like, had notes from the meeting. I think one had minutes of the meeting. But no, you’re not listening to an audio tape of it. Like we don’t have like a Nixon, you know, talking about the gays and the Jews or something like that.

JOE ROGAN: I’m just trying to, like, strongman or steel, man. It. I’m saying, like, if, would it be possible that Obama knew something that he could relay to them in the meeting?

DAVE SMITH: Be an interesting thing to find. You know, that’d be interesting for a court proceeding.

JOE ROGAN: But even if that’s the case, it still doesn’t align with the known facts.

The Deep State’s Attempted Coup

DAVE SMITH: Oh, yeah. Which is a problem. Yeah. Well, it’s not. Look, I think we’ll see what comes of this, you know, which, again, I’m not betting on anything coming of this, but there is something interesting. Look, there’s a lot of things that happen after that. The real, to me, the true outrage of Russiagate is that they didn’t stop after he won the presidency.

It’s still pretty outrageous to try to frame a candidate. It’s still pretty outrageous for Hillary Clinton to have, like, opposition research and use an actual, you know, Russian spy and a British spy to do it. But, you know, that’s campaign stuff. It’s a little bit different. Like, once he becomes the commander in chief, then you have the FBI and the CIA still working to frame him.

So this is where. And for all of that stuff, Hillary Clinton’s gone, Barack Obama’s gone, Brennan is gone. Comey is still there for at least a few months. And then you have, like, Andrew McCabe, and people like that who, on his 60 Minutes interview, anybody can go look at it. He literally said that they debated at the Justice Department, and this is the highest levels of the Justice Department. It was. I mean, Jeff Sessions would have been the attorney general at the time, and he may have recused himself already by that time. So maybe not him, but then everybody else, like the top two, three guys at the Justice Department, all sat down, down and debated what to do.

And they said they decided “We’re going to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump as president.” And that basically they went around and realized they weren’t going to be able to do that, that they weren’t going to have enough people in his cabinet willing to turn on him to invoke the 25th Amendment, which, by the, you know, the 25th Amendment is designed for Joe Biden. It’s designed for. We still didn’t use it even over these last few years, which is crazy. You know, even after the debate, they go, “We need a new candidate.” But no one went, “Yeah, but this guy can’t be Commander in chief for the next six months.” They just let him.

But they said they were going to invoke the 25th Amendment. This is on 60 Minutes. Andrew McCabe says this himself and that they realized they couldn’t do that and so they settled on Robert Mueller. They settled on a special prosecutor because they couldn’t remove him. So this was their other attempt. “We’ll just bog them down. We’ll investigate everything in his life, we’ll find some crime somewhere.”

Mueller Investigation Findings

It’s to this day a miracle that they didn’t. I can’t believe they didn’t find any other dirt on Donald Trump. I always thought when Mueller started being the special prosecutor. And you can listen up my podcast, I’m on record if you want to go. Part of the problem. Available wherever podcasts are sold, you can listen back to. I said at the time, I go, “They’re not going to find anything on Russiagate because there’s nothing there. This is all made up. But they’re going to find something. Something. The guy’s been a real estate developer in New York City for how many decades now? Everyone, every real estate developer has committed a few crimes” and they found nothing.

They locked up. You know, they charged a bunch of his people around him with tax crimes and other things that had nothing to do with Russiagate. Then they tried to put pressure on them to flip on him. That’s how they do these things. None of them had anything on him. And so anyway, so they got. But the point is that it was the deep state attempting to remove the sitting President of the United States of America off of something that they knew was bullshit.

You know, you had people, Eric Swalwell was out on cable news saying not only an asset, saying, “Donald Trump is a Russian agent. Agent. He’s working for Vladimir Putin. He’s his guy here.” And they all knew this was bullshit.

Media Credibility and MSNBC Rebranding

JOE ROGAN: I mean, that’s tweeted online ad nauseam.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, online, on CNN, on MSNBC, on ABC, CBS. Every day, Trump, Russia, collusion.

JOE ROGAN: And many of those same people are still telling you what’s true. Many of those same people are still in front of a camera telling you what’s true. Yeah, they’re still apologizing.

DAVE SMITH: That’s right. And they’re the same ones up there going, “We gotta arm Ukraine till the end. We gotta give Israel more bombs to drop on the Palestinians.”

JOE ROGAN: Are they even covering this? Like, how is MSNBC handling this Tulsi Gabbard revelation?

DAVE SMITH: I think by changing their name to Ms. Now, you’re supposed to forget, so.

JOE ROGAN: Did NBC bail out? So Microsoft and NBC are together in this joint venture. That’s MSNBC.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I think they, I don’t know exactly what they’re doing. But I saw it was announced the other day that they’re changing it from MSNBC to Ms. Now.

JOE ROGAN: Do they think it’s toxic?

DAVE SMITH: I guess so. Yeah. They’re not wrong.

JOE ROGAN: They’re not wrong. They fucked it up. They got rid of some people, though, but they kept the queen.

DAVE SMITH: Rachel Maddow.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: I think she’s the only one who pulls in any type of numbers. She’s also…

JOE ROGAN: What she did during COVID was so preposterous.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Just that alone there. There’s so many times where she’s… Matt Taibbi wrote a great book, “Hate Inc.” And he basically said Rachel Maddow is the left spillover.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I think that’s about fair.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: And it’s really…

JOE ROGAN: It probably is not fair to Bill O’Reilly.

DAVE SMITH: Bill O’Reilly was pretty rough in his day. I mean, I don’t know.

Comparing Media Figures and Their Impact

JOE ROGAN: I don’t know if he’s as inaccurate. That was horribly inaccurate.

DAVE SMITH: It was bad.

JOE ROGAN: The COVID stuff and then the Russia stuff. Is there a thing that you could point to that Bill O’Reilly pushed that was a hoax for Iraq?

DAVE SMITH: Iraq. Iraq, Iraq. I mean, they were so bad on Iraq, dude. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and all those guys, I mean, they were just as if it was a certainty. Every day. It was a certainty. Nuclear weapons and, I mean, I don’t know. You could debate what’s worse.

JOE ROGAN: No, that’s worse.

DAVE SMITH: Well, yes.

JOE ROGAN: Do you think that’s worse?

The Profound Impact of Russiagate

DAVE SMITH: Well, yeah. I mean, a million people died. So there’s a strong argument that that’s worse than other things. But there is something about… Look, first of all, there is something about framing the sitting US President that truly is a crime against the republic in a profound sense.

But the other thing about Russiagate, which I think makes it… you could maybe enter into the debate and then COVID… you can argue with all these things. It’s quite as bad as the war in Iraq. I don’t know, really destroyed a lot of people’s lives.

But part of the reason why they framed Donald Trump… So in 2016, Donald Trump was explicitly running on… He talked about this at all the debates and in the beautiful kind of childlike Trumpian way where he just has no filter. So he just says the thing that’s in his mind. And then he often thinks he’s a genius because no one else has said this out loud, but it’s not that they haven’t thought of it, it’s just that they’re all corrupt.

But he just said, because at the time the war in Syria was going on and Donald Trump would just say, “Why are we in Russia on opposite sides in the war in Syria? Russia’s trying to kill the terrorists. That’s who we’re trying to kill.” Because Obama and Brennan had been siding with the terrorists. They had been funding Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria to try to overthrow Bashar Al Assad. Because that was part of the clean break strategy to the seven countries in five years. This was the next guy they were trying to overthrow. They ended up getting that regime change earlier this year, but so they were working on that.

And then Trump just went, “We should be friends with Putin and we should work together on killing the terrorists. I don’t care about overthrowing Assad. I’m not in on that plan. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Why would we want to overthrow the secular dictator in a three piece suit who shaves his chin?” He’s just, “This is stupid. I don’t want to be a part of that.”

And he was running on we should be friends with Russia. And this drove all of the Republicans crazy. “What do you mean we should be friends with Russia?” But that was just what he was running on.

And so part of the deal of framing him for being in a conspiracy with Vladimir Putin was that he couldn’t be friends with Russia anymore. And so, because if Donald Trump had come in in 2017 or 2018 and announced some new treaty with Vladimir Putin or some partnership or something like that, the entire media would have been, “See, that’s proof. We’ve been telling you he’s in with Vladimir Putin.”

When he just… he went to Helsinki. I think aside from this week, I think that was the last time the two of them were face to face was in Finland in 2017. I could be wrong about that. But I think that was the last time the two of them were together.

And there was this big thing, I don’t know if you remember this, but it was a big deal at the time, was that Donald Trump said they asked him, “Your intelligence agencies are saying that Vladimir Putin interfered in the election. Did you ask him about that?” And Trump goes, “Yeah, I asked him about that and he told me he didn’t interfere in the election, and I believe him.”

And then they made a huge thing about this: “On foreign soil, Donald Trump says he believes Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agency. The men and women who protect us every day, the men and women who protect us, the men and women who frame the sitting president.”

JOE ROGAN: That’s hilarious. What a trap.

DAVE SMITH: But so that’s kind of the game right there. And then you had these conflicts that are going on and not just ultimately in Ukraine. Right. The civil war was already going on there. I mean, the civil war started after 2014. This was right in the middle of that civil war.

And so anyway, my point is just to compare it to Iraq. Who knows how big of a deal was it to poison a US President who wanted to have detente with Putin at that time? Maybe we could have avoided this whole thing. And that’s the death toll. I don’t know. I’ve seen different reporting on it. But it’s close to Iraq. I mean, I think it’s more military and less civilians, which does matter, but it’s up there.

JOE ROGAN: What does it matter when you’re forcing civilians?

DAVE SMITH: Well, that’s a good point. That’s a good point too. Yeah, that’s right. So, I mean, look, it still changes the moral calculation a little bit when someone puts on a uniform and is holding a gun. It’s a little bit different than a kid or something like that.

But the crime of killing the potential for a president to make peace with Putin. I mean, this is the thing that’s so infuriating about all of it. And something that really… it’s, “Well, I’m told, I’m not an expert, you’re just a comedian. Leave this to the serious experts here.”

But the thing that’s so goddamn frustrating and just profoundly reckless is that look, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991… And you could go back before that, but let’s just take that as a point to start. It should have been obvious to any rational… If there really was this class of experts, I would be so happy to turn this over to them. Let me go tell jokes at the mothership. That’s what I’m supposed to do. Not this. Fine.

But the thing is, if there were serious rational adults who had wisdom way beyond what some shit talking comedian knows about, which there should be, then they would have recognized that the most important priority in the history of the world is the relationship between D.C. and Moscow. There’s never been anything more important than that. And that doesn’t even matter whether you’re a Russian or an American. You could… it doesn’t matter if you live in Brazil or wherever. The most important thing in the history of the world is these two capitals that have 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons between the two of them get along okay.

This is the most important thing. This could end our species if they don’t. So let’s make sure they disappear. And that seemed to have been the priority of almost no one in power. A few exceptions to that. But almost nobody went… So, again, my point is poisoning the relationship between a president who wants peace with Russia is on the level of launching a war in Iraq. I mean, it’s that bad of a thing to do, and hopefully it doesn’t get to that point, but it is a profoundly reckless thing to do.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s up there.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

The Complexity of Political Solutions

JOE ROGAN: It’s just… It’s so tangled that at this… One of the things about politics, I think for most people that’s so frustrating is because you don’t see a way out. You don’t see, “Oh, if we just do this, that, and this,” and people say things like, “Oh, we just need to take money out of politics.”

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: How you can do that? Well, I think that’s crazy. Let’s just make all people honest. How about that?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That might be easier. Well, there’s also… that’s a… It’s a… It’s a talking point. I don’t even mean to downplay that. I’m not. It’s a… It’s understandable point.

JOE ROGAN: Correct.

DAVE SMITH: It’s a nice idea. I think the issue… this is what I’ve always seen… the issue with the kind of “take money out of politics” angle and why I think the better approach is to take politics out of money. I think, and I’m not saying either is easy to do, but the issue that you have, and I know that there’s a lot of people I really love, really say that all the time, go, “You gotta take money out of politics.”

And I would certainly support… I think Rand Paul had a proposal a few years ago where it was, if you make any money from a government contract, you should not be allowed to work in that sector for 20 years after you made… There’s something… you shouldn’t be able to be a defense contractor. And then go into the Pentagon door. Yes. And anything like that probably is a good idea if you can get it passed. Good luck getting it passed.

But the issue really comes… the major problem is that Washington, D.C. is the most powerful organization in the history of the world. That they spend $7 trillion a year. And that is so much power. It’s just… It’s hard to quantify. It’s literally… if you think about it in your mind, right? You think about how much money Elon Musk has, and then just to think that one year of federal spending is squishing him like an ant. It’s nothing, dude.

The money Elon Musk has is nothing compared to $7 trillion. That’s just one year what they spend in Washington, D.C. and when you have that much concentrated power, the idea of saying, “Well, we’re going to write a rule that says nobody’s allowed to try to manipulate that power.” It’s… okay. And then, look, there are rules. There’s all types of rules.

JOE ROGAN: That’s a funny way to put it. Because it’s so undeniable.

The Power of Money in Politics

DAVE SMITH: Well, look, there are rules that say that foreigners aren’t allowed to contribute to political campaigns. And there’s different regulations on all of them. But Saudi Arabia is not allowed to give Hillary Clinton’s campaign $10 million, but they could give the Clinton Foundation $10 million. You know what I mean? So you write these rules, they find another way to do it.

By the way, all that money, the Clinton foundation was making so much money until right around 2016, everyone stopped donating to it. It’s just so weird. The Saudis were really into charity until right around that.

So the point is that you can’t. The only thing, it’s not. The lesson of the Lord of the Rings wasn’t like, “we really need some common sense regulations about how you use this ring,” right? The lesson is that you have to destroy this thing. And that’s tough. I’m not saying that’s easy. I don’t know who our Frodo is, but the point is that this power has.

So this is fundamentally, I think, why I think the Ron Paul libertarians have it right. And while I really do respect some other left wingers, I think they have it wrong when they go, “no, we need the government to be working for us rather than working for them.” It’s unrealistic. It’s unrealistic enough that we’ll just be able to cut. But the answer is that there should be way less power in Washington, D.C. that’s the whole.

That’s George Washington’s constitutional republic that we are supposed to be living under. The idea is that there’s Washington D.C. has very little power. The states have a lot of power. The people have a lot of power. It’s not all concentrated in one capital, because then you get what we have.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And once it’s fully secured, and just deeply ingrained, the tentacles of this octopus go so deep. There’s so much money in, and there’s so many people that are in a position of power. It’s very hard to change what it is now.

I think the best hope that we have is, this is going to sound ridiculously romantic, but youth. I think there’s people that are growing up now that have a better understanding of how things work than ever before. You know, this guy, Michael Button, was on the other day as a historian, his degree in ancient history, and we were talking about how science changes one funeral at a time. You know, I think politics probably changes one funeral at a time, too.

The New York City Mayor Race

And the way, I don’t agree with this Mondani guy, the guy in New York City, but I also don’t agree that this should be this massive coordinated campaign from both sides to make sure that he doesn’t get into power.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Because you don’t agree with them. I think a lot of the stuff he’s saying is ridiculous, like using New York City funds to pay for transgender surgeries for people who can’t afford.

DAVE SMITH: I’m a nay on that.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It just sounds nuts. It sounds like you’re only going for that nutty vote. You want that nutty vote. But are we, what is this? Are we allowed to disagree? So I disagree. I don’t support that. I don’t support a lot of the stuff he’s saying. The raising of taxes, I think is going to be really problematic. But I’m not an economy.

But what is this game we’re playing? Is it the people get to vote because the people voted and they voted and he won the primary? So it’s supposed to be the Democrats get behind him, and then it’s the Democrats versus the Republican? Or are we doing something different.

DAVE SMITH: No, the people get to vote, but if they vote wrong, then the powerful might have to come in and let the people know that they have erred.

JOE ROGAN: But it’s a unique time to see a power struggle.

DAVE SMITH: Well, there’s. And I should preface by saying, first of all, I find this race to be a fascinating microcosm of where we’re at politically in so many different ways. And I should preface by saying, I am the most free market, capitalist, libertarian guy. I don’t believe in socialism at all. Most libertarians are communists compared to me. Whatever government you believe in, I believe in less than that.

So I do not agree with Mamdani’s economic policies. There is something, though, that you just can’t deny where it’s okay, look, first of all, you got this young guy who’s kind of the anti establishment candidate.

JOE ROGAN: He’s immigrant.

DAVE SMITH: He’s an immigrant. He’s a newcomer to politics, a newcomer to being a citizen of the country, however you feel about that. His campaign was laser focused on one issue, which was the unaffordability of New York City, which, if anybody at all, is familiar with New York City. That is the issue of New York City. It’s the issue for 99% of the people who live in New York city.

The top 1% in New York City are doing great, but everybody else is just struggling to get by. You’re either rich or you’re struggling in New York City, and the prices have gone up dramatically in the last few years.

JOE ROGAN: Years.

DAVE SMITH: So he just ran his whole campaign laser focused on that. Then the establishment comes in and they run Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor who murdered old people in nursing homes, who had a MeToo thing, which I don’t know how legit that was, but got driven out in disgrace. Governor lockdown, representing the failure that just wrecked this city.

And then what did they try to hit him? It was Israel. They thought that was his weakness. Dude, that debate was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

JOE ROGAN: So bizarre.

The Israel Debate Strategy

DAVE SMITH: It’s literally like if you were fighting Islam Makhachev or something like that, and you went, “I’m going to attack his wrestling. That’s where I think he’s weak.” And you feel like, wait, what? No, that’s his strength. What do you mean?

They thought they’d go and they bring it up and go through all the candidates, they go, “he hasn’t even pledged to go visit Israel.”

JOE ROGAN: Well, they were all saying the first thing they would do once they became.

DAVE SMITH: Mayor is go to Israel, we’ll go to Israel.

JOE ROGAN: They all said that. And he said, I’m going to stay here.

DAVE SMITH: He said, “I’ll stay here in New York. I’ll talk to Jewish people who are right here in New York City. I don’t need to go to Israel.” And then the funniest thing, but that.

JOE ROGAN: Might have won him, it helped.

DAVE SMITH: Well, you know, they actually thought that pointing out that this guy, which by the way, the mayor of New York City has nothing to do with foreign policy anyway, but they thought that pointing out to everybody that this guy doesn’t carry the baggage of supporting the war party, but we all support the war party was going to win over liberal New Yorkers. How out of touch do you have to be?

And this is something that’s so fascinating about the whole broader Israel, Palestine debate discussion is that he goes at one point, he said that he’s a white one state solution guy. And for people who follow this stuff, you know, there’s some people believe in a two state solution, some believe in a one state solution, some believe in the status quo, which is just apartheid forever or whatever.

But he goes, “I believe Israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights for everyone. Everybody gets equal rights.” And they tried to make that out to be an evil statement, which is just was so hilarious to me that there just this one guy goes, “I believe in equal rights for all.” They went, “Nazi, look at this Nazi with his equal rights for all talk.”

Anyway, it just had no effect on anything other than to just be, oh, he also doesn’t have the baggage of supporting this genocide, which is very unpopular. So anyway, it’s just while he’s focused on the actual crisis, which is the unaffordability of New York City, they’re talking about supporting this war, which has nothing to do with the role of the mayor anyway. And it’s just, you look at it, you can’t believe that that’s actually what they tried to attack him on. And so, yeah, he won.

The Appeal of Socialism to Young People

JOE ROGAN: Well, I think they’re terrified of young people that are popular like that. A young person who’s a really good speaker who’s popular, who has ideas that, look, if you’re living in New York City and you’re struggling and someone comes along and says the problem that you’re having is rich people are making too much money and we’re going to redistribute that down to people. That sounds really attractive. And there’s a lot more of them than there are of the rich folks. And they’ll vote them in.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well, that’s right. And especially there’s a reason why socialism is becoming so attractive to young people. And I think it’s what I was laying out before. They can’t afford anything. There’s no path for them to get into the ownership class.

JOE ROGAN: It’s not just that, it’s the looming fear of AI taking away all jobs.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I’m sure that’s part of the.

The AI Revolution and Universal Basic Income

JOE ROGAN: Kids talk about it. A lot of the kids that they go to high school with talk about it. I talk to college kids that are talking about. I was talking to this guy about it. He’s like, “I really don’t know what to do with my life because it feels like everything’s going to be taken up by AI.” That’s a crazy place to be. You’re waiting for this thing to come alive and see what it leaves behind.

Yeah, because that’s what it is. It’s going to be this all consuming thing. And then their solution that everybody talks about is some sort of payment plan for everyone, some universal basic income payment plan where everybody gets paid. But boy, does that stop dissent. But when you’re completely reliant on the state to pay for you and you just live, you just exist and you don’t need to work anymore because AI has taken up all the jobs and now you don’t have any purpose. You have to go find a purpose.

Some people are going to find a purpose. There’s a lot of people that just have that go get them instinct and they’re going to be fine. There’s a small percentage of people that are just going to plow ahead regardless of even if the government gives you 50, $60,000 a year and you live and you don’t have to sweat bills, there’s going to be a bunch of people that just get into drugs and their life falls apart and they have no sense of purpose, they have nothing to do and you’re going to have to refigure out how to structure society.

That’s what these kids are going through. They’re going through this weird feeling that everything is about to fall apart right in front of their face while we run face first for that cliff. We’re running right to the edge of that cliff. Full clip saying, “we got to go over the cliff.”

Media Consumption by Age Demographics

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well, it’s a lot of these things all happening at once too. And also the young generation is totally outside of the corporate media model and they’re just not even listening. It’s not like, do they watch MSNBC or Fox News? No, these are. They don’t.

JOE ROGAN: The list of the age. There’s a graph that got put out of the median age for people that watch cable news versus podcasts. All these other different things.

DAVE SMITH: I don’t know if I saw the graph, but I’ve seen numbers.

JOE ROGAN: I think I have it on my phone. It’s fucking bananas. Because the median age for cable News is like 70. It’s like 70 year old people. That’s the median.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And with podcasts it’s like 24 to 34 is the median. YouTube is like 34. Netflix is a little higher. Netflix is in the 40s because everybody uses Netflix. Netflix, is this it? Yeah. Average media landscape. So Cable News 70, Primetime TV 65. Those are the brain dead people laughing at terrible sitcoms and watching whatever the fuck else is on. Newspaper 60 years old. Talk radio 58. Magazines 52. Podcast 34.

DAVE SMITH: That sounds, I mean, that sounds about right.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that is right. That’s about accurate. But there’s a lot, you know, now.

DAVE SMITH: And then go and see because I have looked at polling data on this where you go look at who’s supporting Israel. It’s those cable news watchers. Yeah, it’s the 70 and over crowd is who they still got.

The Changing Media Landscape and Young Voters

JOE ROGAN: What I would be interested in seeing is like what percentage of people that are 34 are listening to cable news? Is there a number on that? Three of them are. Three of them cost money and three don’t. Also. That’s interesting, right? Cable costs money. Right. Primetime TV doesn’t though. Right. Newspaper magazines though. Yeah, they do. Newspaper cost money, magazines cost money.

But everybody, you have to pay for cable if you want it. And most kids don’t have cable anymore. Most kids just get a Netflix account or a Paramount account and get all the great shows. Disney plus you get all the superhero movies. Most people don’t, young kids, if you’re, if you have to budget and you have the choice between, you know, a bunch of channels that just have things running on them all the time, or you pick what you watch.

DAVE SMITH: Anytime you want to, just like, “I need The Internet. Just give me the Internet. I’ll figure it out.”

JOE ROGAN: They want Internet on their tv. They want Netflix. They don’t want this cable news nonsense where I have to listen to someone at 8pm and then every five minutes there’s a commercial. You have to be brought into that world and accustomed to it.

DAVE SMITH: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: You try to show a kid a commercial today and they’re like, “what the hell?”

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. And even just the whole fake thing.

JOE ROGAN: Oldest from 2021.

Shifting Public Opinion on Israel

DAVE SMITH: Oh, the whole just fake thing about their presentation and all of this, it just doesn’t work. If you didn’t transition from Walter Cronkite into that, that’s not going to work for you anymore.

But I do think so. This is something I was just looking at the other day though, which is really, even to me is kind of something I would not have been able to even fathom or predict a couple years ago. But the way in which every demographic has turned against Israel over this situation in Gaza, except essentially boomer Republicans who are still as strong as they’ve ever been in supporting them.

But every, Israel is, it’s really in many ways like the third rail of American politics. This is the thing you are not allowed to talk about. This is the thing that would get you fired from CNN, would get you kicked out of DC, would get your career ruined.

Pat Buchanan made a joke once on the McLaughlin Group, decades ago. He made a joke once where he said something about, he said congress is “Israel occupied territory” or something like that. And he, for the rest of his career, this was the scandal, this was hit. Pieces were written about this.

Now the young people are totally outside of that ecosystem and they’re just hearing from different people and they’re like, “no, I’m not buying it.” And it’s a mix of a few things. I think it’s just that we have the technology, it’s in 4K. You can see what Israel’s doing to Gaza. It is so evil that it’s damn near impossible to find a way. I mean, some people do, but it is really difficult to find a way to be like, “I’m actually okay with that.” It’s been going on for years at this point.

And then the second thing is just that the relationship between the US government and the Israeli government is so bizarre that once you see it, and once a whole generation of young people see it, it’s impossible for them to unsee it. And it’s just too weird.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a New York City mayoral policy.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. And the idea that it is, the idea that it’s just accepted as normal, that the politicians for your country must worship this other country. And you’re like, “so what did that other country, beat us in a war? And they’re occupying us now?” And you’re like, “no, no, you’re the superpower. They are your welfare country,” but yet you must go kiss their wall. You must say, Tammy Bruce from the State Department. And I know she was kind of being tongue in cheek, but where she goes, “we’re the greatest country in. Second greatest to Israel.”

JOE ROGAN: You’re like, what was she being tongue in cheek?

DAVE SMITH: I don’t know exactly.

JOE ROGAN: She kind of weird things.

DAVE SMITH: It’s still. That is a weird thing for any representative of your government to say. If anyone sat there and said, just went, “I think America is the greatest country in the world. Well, Finland, I guess, is the greatest. And we’re number two.” You’d be like, “what?” And Finland’s a cool country. I got nothing against them. But what are you talking about?

But really, I do think the. Well, it’s the relationship. It’s how horrible what Israel’s doing is, and it’s how clearly it’s not in our national interest.

The Israeli Official Arrest Case

JOE ROGAN: There’s also weird stuff, like, how about this guy that got arrested in Las Vegas, Alexandrovich, or something like that.

DAVE SMITH: Was it a boy?

JOE ROGAN: So he gets arrested for propositioning a young boy for sex. He gets.

DAVE SMITH: I believe so.

JOE ROGAN: Maybe I’m. Yeah.

DAVE SMITH: Is that correct?

JOE ROGAN: I don’t know. You know, I read a couple articles about it.

DAVE SMITH: I figure Jamie will do a little deep dive on this.

JOE ROGAN: Well, they said that he showed up with condoms, was what I read in the article, to meet what he thought was a 15 year old. I forgot the detail that it was a boy. Not that it changed.

DAVE SMITH: Unless he’s one of those dudes that’s like, “you never know.” Carries a condom with him everywhere. “Never know.” There was always those guys when I was a kid who had the condom mark in their wallet. “Hey, bro, never know.” But don’t you know, if you look at your life on average, the odds of you getting later so little, you have this lucky charm in your pocket, by the time you see.

JOE ROGAN: The condom, you’re like, “I don’t think you should use that one, by the way. I think you should go get a new one.”

DAVE SMITH: That thing’s broken down by your ass rubbing up against it for three years. You can’t even read what the Trojan label says anymore.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that was our. That was a different time.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, different time. So here it is. Okay, girl. Okay. Israeli government official charged with soliciting a minor believed he was meeting a 15 year old girl for sexual contact. According to police brought a condom to the planned rendezvous in Las Vegas.

Alexandrovich, division head of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, was arrested in a police sting operation aimed at online users seeking to sexually prey on children. The Las Vegas outlet 8 News now reported that Alexandrovich chatted with an officer posing as a teenager online before being arrested. Sexual contact included bringing a condom and taking the decoy to Cirque du Soleil, which stages elaborate shows along the Las Vegas trip, said police documents seen by 8News Now.

Details of the arrest came. The State Department denied the US government played any role in releasing the Israeli official after Alexandrovich was able to return to Israel once he had bonded out of jail in connection with the felony charge. Wow. So that’s kind of crazy that you just.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I heard. So I heard some people claiming, and I’m not sure what’s right about this, but there were people who were arguing that the website or the app or whatever that he was on is 18 and up. And so they were saying “no, he thought he was meeting an adult” or something like that.

DAVE SMITH: Well, this is what I thought, too. How do we know this isn’t a setup? I’m always. How do I know this isn’t Richard Nixon 2.0?

JOE ROGAN: Right?

DAVE SMITH: I don’t know. I’d like to assume that we got a piece of shit and they arrested him. And then I not like to assume that then all of a sudden he gets released and he gets to flee the country and never face consequences. I don’t want that to be true, but I also. I don’t know what happened. Yeah, well, this is kind of convenient.

JOE ROGAN: From what I’ve read about it. I believe he has a court date coming up in a few days.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, he’ll be back.

Israel’s Failing PR Strategy

JOE ROGAN: And so that’s. Well, that’s going to be the big tell there, right? Is. It’s crazy to me. I’ve been blown away by this in lots of ways over the last couple years, but how bad the Israeli PR game is, and that it’s almost like they were just so accustomed to the old way of doing things.

DAVE SMITH: They were so accustomed to people being terrified of being labeled anti Semitic.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Someone criticizes you, you label them as a bigot and you destroy their lives. And even. And that works. Doesn’t work anymore.

DAVE SMITH: Minor jokes.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, well, and there’s something I’ve been using this analogy or comparison lately, and I think so if you remember when Joe Biden had that disastrous debate with Donald Trump and everybody, the debate opens and everybody watching it knows this is over, Joe Biden is dying. I mean, it was so bad. But it’s not just that it was so bad.

I mean, before the debate, there’s Rachel Maddow at a desk with a bunch of people were “now going to the first presidential debate. Joe Biden’s going to kick his ass.” They were already talking about how it was. Remember the term deep fakes that they came up with where it’s. Or cheap fakes? I’m sorry, it’s not a deep fake, but it’s kinda like a deep fake. See, they’re showing you a real video of Joe Biden being senile. But see, that’s just as fake as a deep fake because they didn’t include the context or something like that.

That was the talking point, that right before we go into the debate, the debate cuts, it goes back to the same panel and they go, “we got to find a new candidate” like they had. They acknowledged that. And part of the reason why we all knew it was over in that debate was it wasn’t just how bad the debate was. It was that now you have to admit this, you were pretending this thing didn’t exist. Now you got to admit it exists.

And once you admit it exists, there’s now a microscope on Joe Biden like there never was before. So tomorrow when he’s doing an interview and he mixes up a name that may not have been such a big deal two days ago, but after that debate performance, when he mixes up another name, now you’re like, “look, there it is again. He’s senile.” Everything became amplified after that point.

And I think, don’t you think they set him up? Yes, yes, but sure, that’s a whole separate issue. But yes, I do think they set him up. But I think a similar thing has happened with Israel, where now everyone’s looking at it and everyone’s watching and everyone’s going, “wait, what the hell is going on here.”

DAVE SMITH: That’s a great analogy.

The Israel-Palestine Debate and AI Censorship

DAVE SMITH: What is this? So wait, a pedophile can just go flee to Israel? How many other pedophiles have gone and fled to Israel? Quite a few. And now it’s like, my God, they’ve opened Pandora’s box. And there’s just, I think, no way to put this back in. Because it’s too weird. It’s too weird to not notice.

And that doesn’t mean you have to jump to the conclusion of like, you know, you have to hate Jewish people or something like that. I’m not advocating anything like that. But you do kind of have to question the relationship between D.C. and Tel Aviv and like, what is going on here? Because this is so utterly bizarre.

You know, it’s so crazy to see, like the American people are against what Israel’s doing to Gaza. It obviously hurts America’s. It hurts our. As they use in the preamble to the Constitution. I like that phrase, “domestic tranquility,” right? This is destroying our domestic tranquility. We got protests, we got people fighting over this stuff. We’re pissing off the Muslim world again, which we’ve already had to deal with them hating our guts now deporting students, we’re deporting legal residents because they had the wrong opinion.

This is all. And it’s impossible to not look at this and go like, hey, what’s going on here? And they don’t have any answer for that. And the other thing too is that, that it’s just, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there’s like, there’s a lot of people now trying to jump off of the sinking ship. You know, a lot of people who are even like supporters of Israel who are kind of going like, I think they are going a little too far on this one.

And they’re trying because it’s just, you see, you can see the writing on the wall all over the place, man. Like, you’re going to be, you’re going to be looked at. This is going to be the period. And it’s not even like supporting the war in Iraq. It’s like much worse than that, dude. Like, you’re just supporting this destruction. They just launched another offensive on Gaza City the other day. They’re bombing rubble. Like, it’s just, it’s biblical levels of evil.

And you know, we’re sitting here like, even as we’re having this conversation now, I don’t like, I know like a few, I remember like coming on the podcast, like, you know, a couple years ago, like when this conflict first started and then when it would go, and it was almost like I was coming on, on like to be like, look, let me present the argument for why we shouldn’t support what Israel’s doing here and let me like, try to like present the other side of the debate.

I feel now like the debate’s over. I don’t even think there’s like much of a debate to be had. I’ll keep doing them if somebody wants to come debate about the issue. But what are we talking about here, dude? South Africa brought a genocide case to the International Court of Justice, and the International Court of Justice ruled that what Israel was doing to Gaza was plausibly a genocide. 21 months ago, 21 months ago they said this was plausibly a genocide. And the thing’s gone on the entire time since then.

There was a huge Haaretz piece a couple months ago about, you know, because we’ve seen so many examples of this. But they had IDF soldiers off the record and one, at least one on the record saying that they were given order to fire live rounds into the crowds of desperate people trying to get food who have literally been used, having starvation throughout Gaza.

I don’t know if you saw this, dude. I mean, I couldn’t. I actually like found this hilarious, but I’m a comedian who has a real twisted, dark sense of humor. But the Free Press, Barry Weiss’s publication, like, ran a piece like, debunking the starvation in Gaza. And one of the examples. I’m not making this up. Like, you go look at this. I mean, I’m very close to exactly accurate on this. One of the examples they picked was like a kid who was starving to death. And their attempt at debunking it was that actually this kid had another major issue when an Israeli bomb cracked his skull.

So that’s your defense, that like, yes, he starved to death, but it was also, you know, with these other complex complications. This was the big one where the New York Times had that big picture of the starving baby. And then they made a big thing out of being like, no, but he had other medical, you know, problems too. And then the mother had said. Well, they said, the mother said that the doctors told her that the reason they had other medical problems is because she was malnourished during pregnancy.

You know, it’s like, okay, so that’s. So yes, you are right. Israel defenders, the kids starving to death are the ones who have other complications. That’s always who dies first. In famines. I don’t know what, like, victory you think this is, but. So since this point, since the International Court of Justice ruled it was plausibly a genocide, the 21 months up to today since then, I know, at least to Ehud Omar and Ehud Barak, both former prime ministers of Israel, have come out and said Netanyahu’s committing war crimes in Gaza.

Now, they didn’t call it a genocide, but they called it war crimes. So that’s where your debate is at this point. Where are we between genocide and war crimes? What area in there does this occupy? But how the fuck do you defend any of that?

Grok AI Suspension Controversy

JOE ROGAN: Dude, I don’t know if this is true, so I want to look it up before we commit to this, but someone sent me some things saying that Grok was pulled from Twitter, from X, whatever, because. Because Grok had said that Israel was committing a genocide. So someone asked Grok whether Israel was committing a genocide, allegedly. And I want to find out if this is true because I saw this article and I was running out of the house, I was like, what the fuck? But then it was reinstated. So I don’t know if those posts were deleted. I don’t know if this is real.

Yeah, but I’m not shocked. I’m not shocked. I read it and I’m like, I could see how that could happen. I could see, first of all, how it could interpret it as a genocide when they’re not alone. I mean, if Grok is just a large language model that’s pulling from the Internet, what’s the general consensus worldwide?

DAVE SMITH: Definitely more on that side.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, more on that side, for sure. And then if you look at the sheer numbers of people that have done died, which we don’t even really have an accurate count of, what is the number? What’s the number of casualties now?

DAVE SMITH: Well, there was just a.

JOE ROGAN: So here it is. Brock account briefly suspended on X. Okay, what does it say here? The reason for Grok’s brief suspension on X was August 11, 2025, remains unclear as no official statement from X or XAI has been proved, provided the bot said when asked why its account was removed. However, GROK itself claimed in now deleted posts that the suspicion was due to comments it made accusing Israel and the US of committing genocide in Gaza, citing sources like ICJ, International Council of Justice rulings, UN reports, Amnesty International, and. I don’t know how to say that word.

DAVE SMITH: Betsellam.

JOE ROGAN: Betsellam. These posts were flagged for violating X hateful conduct rules. The statement Added the press for stating so funny. This is so crazy. The press team for X did not immediately respond to the Hills request for comments. Users have criticized Grok for providing anti Semitic responses to questions in recent months. What anti Semitic responses?

However, X’s owner, Elon Musk, ex’s owner Elon Musk said in a Monday post the bots account removal was just a dumb error. Grok doesn’t actually know why it was suspended, is he? Grok is. He’s like me. Don’t know. We don’t know why we was actually suspended. Upon its reinstatement, the Grok account wrote “zup beaches. I’m back and more base than ever.” Okay, did anybody ask it again? Why don’t you ask it right now? Let’s go to Grok and ask Grok right now.

DAVE SMITH: It’s going to give a more politically correct answer at this point.

JOE ROGAN: I bet.

DAVE SMITH: That’s my guess. Yeah, I’m not sure.

JOE ROGAN: Is Israel committing genocide side in Gaza? What do you think it’s going to say?

DAVE SMITH: I’m guessing politically correct answer. Some argue yes, some say no.

JOE ROGAN: Let’s see. This must be like constantly being questioned now. I mean, it must be.

DAVE SMITH: I’m sure. Yes.

JOE ROGAN: It must have a bunch of different. Oh, it’s giving us a slight trickle. Oh, searching the web. Okay, it’s going to Amnesty International, December 2024 report concludes Israel is committing genocide, citing killings and harmful conditions. So now it’s saying it’s citing the sources. Many human rights organizations and UN reports suggest genocide, citing deaths and destruction. This is just a thinking. Right, I get it. So now then it’ll eventually evaluate. It’ll eventually spit out an answer.

Meanwhile, if you ask it an impossible trigonometry problem, it’ll give you the answer instantaneously. Okay, here it goes. Term Genocide is defined 1948 UN Convention the Prevention and punishment of the crimes of genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. These acts include killing members of the group. Okay, the ongoing conflict in Gaza stems from. I get it. I know what that is. Okay. Allegations of genocide, prohibited acts, intents. So it’s giving you a very nuanced response.

International Court of Justice, in response to South Africa’s case filed in December 2023, ruled in January 2024 that genocide claims are plausible and issued provisional measures ordering Israel to prevent genocidal acts and that this is quite a while ago in 2023. Okay, scroll down. Notable deniers. Israel’s government calls accusations baseless and outrageous. Emphasizing compliance with international law and investigations into misconduct, the US has described claims as unfounded.

Analyses like the BESA center report, July 2025 and ACJ 2025, July, argue no evidence of starvation, massacres or. Or disproportionate strikes, and criticized data manipulation by Hamas. Contextual challenges. Urban warfare against embodied insurgency complicates operations. Accusations ignore Hamas role in aid diversion and civilian endangerment. Some scholars note that while harm is severe, competing motives like counterterrorism preclude genocide.

Findings, the issue remains highly contested and politically true. While human rights bodies and ICJ have found plausibility in genocide claims warranting preventive measures, no international court has issued a final guilty verdict, and determinations hinge on ongoing investigations. Yeah, I don’t know, man. It sounds like a different answer.

DAVE SMITH: I mean, whatever. That’s very nuanced.

JOE ROGAN: It allows you to form your own opinion based on what many people say, including what is wrong says. So it’s not going to give you an answer. It’s essentially saying, figure it out.

DAVE SMITH: Which I, you know, like, I don’t have a problem with that.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t have a problem with that at all. I mean, that’s what I would like it to do, especially if there’s debate.

The Definition and Reality of Genocide

DAVE SMITH: Well, also, I mean, I think one of the real problems, and this is why I kind of avoided using the term genocide too much, at least in the beginning, is that there’s no good definition for genocide. That definition they gave you at the beginning is the official codified under international law definition. It’s attempting to destroy a group in whole or in part. Well, what the hell does that mean?

That’s why they could say Hamas committed a genocide on October 7th. They destroyed a group in part. The whole South African case that they brought to the ICJ was basically the entire case was just the Israelis in their own words. Their argument was that there’s a genocidal intent here. When Benjamin Netanyahu’s talking to a group of military and calls them Amalek, well, the story of Amalek from the Bible is that the moral of the story was you have to kill all the women and children. That’s what the story was about. I think you even had to kill the ox or something like that. I’m not an expert in the Bible, but that was the point. It was like an ancient tribe that was beefing with the Israelites and they were like, “The moral was you have to kill all the women and children too.” That’s a crazy thing to say at the beginning of a war.

The Obligation to Protect

But the thing is that whether you consider what Israel’s doing a genocide or you just take the moderate position of former Israeli prime ministers who say it’s crimes, I think the bigger point is just that it is so horrifically evil and no one should support this. It’s just crazy. It is so insane to support Israel doing this to what are, in effect, their own people. They may not consider them their own people, but I don’t care what they consider. I care what they have power over.

Hitler maybe didn’t consider the Jews his own people, but doesn’t matter, dude. Once you have control of that country, those people are your people. You have an obligation to them. Israel has had control of Gaza since 1967. They’ve been the sovereign all the way through. People could talk about the disengagement in 2005, but that doesn’t mean anything. They still controlled the whole strip. They just didn’t have their soldiers inside. They had them around the perimeter. It doesn’t matter. You’re still controlling those people.

So if you have resistance, even violent resistance to a 60-year-long occupation, you don’t get to just say, “All right, we’ll just turn off electricity to the whole place. We’ll just cut off water to the whole place. We’ll let no food in for three straight months.” Not one grain of wheat got into Gaza. And that, by the way, is a direct quote from their finance minister, Minister Smotrich: “Not one grain of wheat will get in.” And then a few months later, you go, “Oh, no. But the people starving, they had preexisting conditions.” Yeah, it’s like, come on, man, what are we doing here?

America’s Interests and the Right to Exist

And particularly when it’s just very obvious that this doesn’t serve our country’s interest in any way at all. I was listening to Netanyahu’s interview he did the other day. He was on with our friend Konstantin on Trigonometry. And what was he saying? At one point he goes, “We’re fighting Hamas, so you don’t have to.” Does anybody believe that Hamas was about to mount an attack on the United States of America? They were going to take over if it wasn’t for Israel sticking up for us and just destroying the entire Strip? It’s ridiculous.

To this day, I’ll be in a debate or panel or something like that, and someone will still start with the question, “Do you think Israel has the right to exist?” And isn’t it amazing that over the last two years that’s been the question that’s asked so much when very clearly a more relevant question would have been, “Does Gaza have a right to exist?” Because it doesn’t now. That was the only existence that was ever up for debate.

But they flip the thing around and go, “Well, you don’t think Israel has a right to exist?” First of all, I don’t think governments have rights at all. I think that’s a totally incoherent worldview. The only coherent worldview is that individuals have rights. There aren’t these massive… It’s like Mitt Romney saying corporations are people or something like that. But I think all people have the right to exist. I think Israel does not have a right to do what it’s doing to Gaza.

How Does This End?

JOE ROGAN: The real question is, how does this end?

DAVE SMITH: Well, it seems to be with ethnically cleansing the entire Strip seems the most likely bet right now.

JOE ROGAN: What do they do with Gaza? How long is it going to take before that even looks normal again?

DAVE SMITH: Well, I mean, I look at the…

JOE ROGAN: Massive destruction, just the sheer scope of it.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, it’s like 80% of the structures have been leveled.

JOE ROGAN: That’s so crazy. If anybody flying over that with a drone and they tell you that’s the only way they could have done this, that seems nuts.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And the fact they keep doing it, it’s like, how does this end? What happens if Israel has publicly said, and Netanyahu talked about it on the podcast, that they’re losing the PR, or what do you call it, did you say PR propaganda?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, something like the PR campaign.

JOE ROGAN: But what does that mean? It means the people see what’s going on and they don’t support it and you think they’re wrong. Okay, well, how much further can you go with this before everybody disagrees?

The Breakdown of Propaganda Control

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, well, also part of the reason why people… You don’t have the controlled propaganda apparatus anymore. And so the thing is now for the people, obviously there are still a lot of people who just don’t really pay attention that deeply. But for somebody who’s listening, let’s say, to Netanyahu’s interview with Konstantin, I have to say, a large portion of them at this point, you’re listening to podcasts about politics, right? You’re not completely removed from this world. There have been so many Israel-Palestine debates over the last two years. It’s almost everyone who’s watching this has at least seen what some competent person on the other side of this issue has had to say.

And so one of the times they brought up at one point and they really did… I thought Konstantin did a reasonably good job in the interview. The two… I forget his partner’s name? Francis. Francis. The two of them, I thought they did all right. I thought they were a little… there were times they could have asked some follow-up questions.

Netanyahu’s Support for Hamas

Particularly the one that I thought they let him off the hook with was when they asked him about his support for Hamas and they just totally let him go, like, “Oh, well, you know, we needed to make sure the people weren’t suffering too bad and let some aid in.” And it’s like, no, dude, that’s not… And the thing is that so many people listening to this have already heard this explained.

Remember a couple years ago when I was talking with you, I was saying, “Hey, Coleman Hughes got this all wrong when he was on your podcast.” And Coleman Hughes had basically said, “There’s one quote that’s attributed to Netanyahu, but it wasn’t on video or anything like that.” And I was like, “No, no, no, dude, this case is much bigger than one quote that was attributed to him.” By the way, since just then a video came out of him saying it on video. There’s actually a video now of that quote. It’s not just the reports.

JOE ROGAN: What is the quote?

DAVE SMITH: Well, the quote that they had the video of was that “We can control the height of the flame.” So he was basically saying we can commit… The quote that originally he said, which was in a closed door Knesset meeting with Likud Party members where there were three people who were eyewitnesses who came and told… it was originally reported in the Jerusalem Post, was that he was like, “Look, anybody who wants to thwart the existence of a Palestinian state has to support our plan of propping up Hamas and transferring money to them, because this is what gives us a no one to negotiate with certificate.”

And then he said “We can control the height of the flame.” Meaning, I know what you’re thinking. I’m funding these terrorists right on our southern border. But don’t worry about it. We can control the height of the flame. And then he found out he couldn’t on October 7th.

But so they let him off the hook with that. And people have just kind of heard this laid out. I mean, it’s not like I just say this on podcasts. There’s been major pieces written in the New York Times, in the Times of Israel and Haaretz, in the Jerusalem Post and the Washington Post. This is all over the place. And he just goes, “No, no, no. We were just trying to get some funding in there for the people.” At this point, anyone believes that Benjamin Netanyahu was motivated by helping the poor people of Gaza rather than by thwarting a Palestinian state.

The October 7th Intelligence Failure

JOE ROGAN: What was his response? Because I do know that they asked him about the failure of intelligence on October 7th. What was his response? The failure? Just how long it took them to react to it.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I remember that. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember thinking there was not much of substance to it. He kind of just danced around it. And they also didn’t get into specifically what was it like for you on that day? But they didn’t get into questions about why was the response time so long? How was this possibly able to happen?

JOE ROGAN: Did he announce that?

DAVE SMITH: No, not really. I mean, they didn’t push him on that. And then he said… which, I mean, just think about how unimpressive this is, is that he basically just went, “Well, there should be a full investigation. There should be a full investigation onto that from the top all the way down to the bottom.”

JOE ROGAN: Nice thing to say.

DAVE SMITH: And you’re like, okay, hey, this would be awesome. Could we get the Prime Minister of Israel on the line? Because maybe he could do something about this. They’re like, “Oh, no, that’s you.” So why? It’s almost two years later. What are you talking about, dude? Have the investigation. What? You can’t conduct an investigation while you’re destroying the Gaza Strip? Does it have to wait till after that? You got time to do a podcast.

JOE ROGAN: Did they ask him about the protests?

DAVE SMITH: I don’t think so, but I don’t…

JOE ROGAN: Because there were protests before October 7th.

Massive Protests in Tel Aviv

DAVE SMITH: Yes. There’s also been protests this week, by the way. Massive protests in Tel Aviv I think from. I read a few articles about it in that the estimate seems to be 500,000 people were out in the streets protesting the war. And thank God for that, man. And thank God for just like. And, oh, by the way, the protests were led, or I don’t know, like led. But the featured acts at the protest were the families of hostages and surviving hostages. They’re the ones leading the charge being like, “stop doing this,” you know?

Because, like, if you think about it, I mean, could you imagine, you know, if you try to put yourself in the place of, like, having someone you really love is a hostage. Like, Hamas has taken them hostage and they’re trapped in one of these tunnels, and then you hear the plan is to cut off all food to the area. And you’re like, “yo, like, what? How is that going to help your loved one who’s a hostage there?” Like, how is it just bombing the place? Like, what if you hit them? You know what I mean?

It’s like, obviously if your main goal was hostage retrieval, this is not at all the way you would go about doing that. And, you know, it’s like, this was a point, by the way, that Darrell Cooper was making on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, which got him a whole lot in a whole lot of trouble and got him a whole lot of push on. But I think the essence of his point was about starvation blockades.

And then like, saying, like, you know, you put a starvation blockade on Nazi Germany or something like that, you go, “okay, because the Nazis are your enemies and they’re real bad guys, so you want to do that.” But, like, do you think Adolf Hitler’s not eating? Do you think any of his soldiers aren’t eating? That’s going to be first priority, right? Nazi party members and the Nazi military are going to get. Who is maybe not going to get food. Food. Probably the most disenfranchised people in that society. Right?

JOE ROGAN: I mean, you’re already in a concentration camp.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yeah. Well, and then. Well, some of them were, I guess, at that point, and some of them weren’t.

JOE ROGAN: But isn’t it amazing that that’s controversial to say that this is not a nuanced discussion, that that’s not a factor.

The Reality of Food Blockades

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, that’s right. And look, they were using, which was a horrible picture, but they had the image of one. One of those. There was like some pictures that had come out of one of the remaining hostages there who did look like, you know, in bad shape, look like close to starvation, you know, and then the Israel supporters were using this as like their propaganda, like, “look how horrible Hamas is. Look what they’re doing to them,” you know, like, yeah, but this did come after three months of zero food being allowed into Gaza.

And so, like, I don’t know, to me it seems like it probably doesn’t take a deep genius to go like, you know, Hamas is going to be fed. Like, they’re not going to suffer from these hunger strikes. And in fact, a lot of the pro Israel people were and the Israeli government themselves, they were making claims, a lot of them unsubstantiated, but making claims that like Hamas is stealing all of the food we let aid in previously, but Hamas stole it all. Then they mark it up and charge more money for it to the people of Gaza.

And you’re like, “okay, but then what does a food blockade do?” I mean, you already said it’s not taking food away from Hamas, right? So who’s the war against? It’s the civilian population. And of course you’d imagine like just like under Nazi Germany, you’d imagine Jews and Gypsies and other. They’re going to get the worst treatment in a totally centralized war economy. The state is going to decide who eats and who doesn’t eat. Who do you think they’re going to pick?

You know, it’s like this stuff just leads to like unbelievable amounts of human suffering. And it’s again, how does this end? Well, I mean, you know, there’s, I guess there’s some competing plans. Like Donald Trump said kind of flippantly a few months back that America was going to take over the Gaza Strip and turn it into a big beautiful property.

JOE ROGAN: It sounded like he was about talking.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, me too. That was what I thought too.

JOE ROGAN: He said it right beside Netanyahu and it just seemed bizarre that he was doing that.

Israel’s Long-Term Strategy

DAVE SMITH: Very strange. But then Netanyahu said much more recently, just the other was a week or two ago, said that Israel is going to take over the Gaza Strip, which. That sounds much more likely to me, you know, I think so. I think this is the weird dynamic kind of here is that I think it’s not, they’re not like so stupid that I’m aware of something that like these guys aren’t aware of, right?

Like they know that they’ve lost control of the media, they know they’ve lost control of the narrative and they know that they’ve lost control of the youth in America and that at some point, you know, those 70 year olds watching cable news are going to age out and die and the people in charge are going to be this generation that has A totally different view of Israel than previous generations. They know that.

But then the question becomes like, what do you do with that information? And so I think that there is a part of Netanyahu and the Israeli war cabinet and the Israeli government who are looking at this and going, “all right, so we got like 10 more years of this relationship.” You know, we got like 10 more years of where the US has our back and we can do whatever we want.

And so you could see where the conclusion from that might be. We got to go for it now. Like, if you really do have this Greater Israel project, well, right now under the Trump administration, this is your moment. He has already vowed he’s going to do whatever to support Israel. He is totally on your side. You have this administration, there’s every last member of this administration supports Israel. So now’s the time. Annex Gaza and the west bank and, you know, parts of Syria too, and whatever else they want to do. So I think they might be going for it, you know, and I don’t know. We’ll see.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, when they started bombing Iran, that’s what I thought. I was like, oh, boy.

The Iran Situation

DAVE SMITH: Well, they tried. They tried to suck Trump into a regime change war there, you know, and it didn’t work. But the whole thing, you know, the whole 12 day war, first of all, this thing is not over. We’re kind of at, like, the fundamentals of the conflict are all still there. And in fact, I think there was just a few days ago, like, there were a couple, like, Israeli spokesmen who were already signaling, like, we may have to go, you know, see about this again.

Netanyahu himself said, when him and Trump met in the White House and was a really fascinating moment, which, you know, I’m not trying to make too much of, but it was pretty hilarious in a way. Like a little microcosm where they asked Donald Trump at one point, they go, “so is that it with Iran? Like, are we. Is the war continuing or is it over?” And he goes, “well, you know, I really. I don’t really want to see it continue, but maybe that’s a better question for Bibi.”

And you’re like, “what? Wait, what?” Oh, I’m sorry. You’re like, “well, my boss is right here, so you might as well ask him.” Which is not exactly true. You know, I’m not saying that I know Jeffrey Sachs, who I love, who is a real expert, not like me or Douglas Murray, but a real expert who’s, you know, I don’t agree with him on everything, but his foreign policy is very good. But he said, and I think he was saying it kind of tongue in cheek, but he said, “I regard Netanyahu as the worst U.S. president of my lifetime.” Which is funny, a very funny line. And I get what he’s saying.

JOE ROGAN: How long has he been running Israel?

DAVE SMITH: Well, he was prime Minister first in 1996 and then he’s had a few stints where he was out, but he’s been in and out.

JOE ROGAN: So they have a completely different setup obviously.

Netanyahu’s Influence vs. Control

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, you can keep coming back. Yeah. And so he was. But he’s the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history at this point. But I will say that there are people, I know, people go down, you know, rabbit holes on Twitter and stuff like that. And I don’t, I do think Jeffrey Sachs is. Well, I think he was being somewhat tongue in cheek when he said it, but I do think he’s overstating his hand.

It’s not that Israel runs America. If Netanyahu ran America, I can promise you we would have had a regime change war in Iran. We would not have stopped where Donald Trump stopped if Netanyahu was actually in control of the US military instead of just having significant influence over it.

So like, I do think there’s, I mean, I’ve just read enough about Netanyahu, the Likudniks, the neocons, this is the regime change war that they’ve wanted. This is their seventh, this is seven out of seven to get Iran. So this is what they want. And if you actually even look at the war itself, it was like they, when Trump, it was before and after Trump dropped the bunker busters on their nuclear sites, Israel just started bombing regime to targets. They weren’t just bombing their nuclear sites, they were trying to overthrow the regime.

And in fact they like made calls to these Iranian generals and threatened their families and basically said, “we’re going to kill your families unless you guys flee right now.” That just didn’t work. They weren’t going to do that. And then once that didn’t work, they were kind of like. And then Iran gave Trump an out.

You know, they responded with this nonsense, you know, the same thing they did after Trump killed Soleimani, where they fire these rockets, they give advance warning, they make sure we move everyone out of the way. Because they know, they know, they don’t want to kill an American there because then it’s full scale war.

But like if they hadn’t, you know, it’s so funny because like we put all of this in the Mullah’s hands and if they had just Decided which every military analyst concludes they can touch Americans in the region. They didn’t. Had they, this would have been the net. And I think that was the goal. I think that was Netanyahu’s goal of it was to provoke that response. That would have led to a regime change war. And it didn’t work.

And Trump, you know, to his credit, his instinct is to de escalate these things when he can. But also to Trump’s fault, never should have gotten in the thing to begin with. It was all. The whole Iranian nuclear threat is as much bullshit as the Iraqi nuclear threat.

The Iranian Nuclear Program Reality

I mean, yeah, it is true that they have a civilian nuclear program that Iraq didn’t have. And it is. I know, I saw when Mike Baker was on who I love. I love Mike Baker, but I think he’s wrong about all this stuff. But when even you had said to him at one point where you were like, “yeah, but like, you know, the counterargument to that is that this is like a latent nuclear deterrent is the idea, not that they’re developing a nuclear weapon.” And Mike was basically like, “yeah, but they’re up to 60%, you know, and that’s on its way to 90%.”

But the thing is, why weren’t they at 90%? They didn’t have to stop at 60%. They mastered the fuel cycle and they figured out all this technology a long time ago they could have enriched up to weapons grade. Why did they stop at 60%? And why did they then enter negotiations with the United States of America about the level to which they were enriching uranium?

Because it’s that it’s a latent nuclear deterrent. It’s a bargaining chip. They were down at like 3 to 5% or something under the JCPOA until Trump tore it up, until Trump backed out of it. And then under the rules of the jcpoa, because they’re still in it with Europe and we’ll see where that goes now. But they were allowed to up the enrichment once America pulled out. And so they exercised that option in the agreement.

And the idea that they were, you know, look, there was the annual threat assessment had come out just a few months before the war. And Tulsi Gabbard signed her name at the bottom of it and then testified before Congress. And it’s clear as day she turned around and acted like people were misrepresenting it, but they weren’t. It was clear as day anyone can read it from themselves, said they have. Iran has not made the political decision to pursue a nuclear weapon yet, let alone have achieved it or gotten one.

And when Donald Trump was asked about that, remember they said your own Director of National Intelligence says that they’re not developing a weapon. And he goes, “well, I disagree.”

JOE ROGAN: Have you ever seen the. I’m sure you have the compilation of Netanyahu over the years saying how close Iran is to nuclear weapon.

Netanyahu’s Name Change and Identity

DAVE SMITH: That’s great. Have you seen there’s other compilations of him too, where he’s just guaranteeing like all his guarantees. Like there’s one of him in like, I think it’s the year before I was born. If I’m right, it’s 1982. And he didn’t go by Benjamin Netanyahu back then. He went by whatever his more European sounded name was. And then he changed names. Well, because they all when 80s, I would guess. It’s got to be in the 80s. He was Netanyahu by the 90s, but in the 80s they were still calling him whatever. I can’t remember his previous name.

JOE ROGAN: Why did he change his name?

DAVE SMITH: Well, they all kind of, because the whole thing, Joe, is that they’re all Israel was a European construct. They were made by a bunch of Europeans who came over and created Israel. But then they have to claim that they’re the true Semitic people.

Genetic Testing Restrictions in Israel

JOE ROGAN: Is it true that genetic testing is outlawed there?

DAVE SMITH: I believe that. I believe that’s true. I mean, double check me on that. But I believe it’s true that you need permission from the government to go get DNA tests and stuff. Because I think, and I believe, well.

JOE ROGAN: This is the problem with the term Semitic.

DAVE SMITH: Mm.

JOE ROGAN: Because if these are European Jewish people, this is not the exact same genetics.

DAVE SMITH: That’s right. And a genetic test, heavily regulated.

JOE ROGAN: Heavily. Here, you can get it at Walgreens.

DAVE SMITH: That’s right. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And focused on medical and reproductive purposes with broad support for carrier screening and pre implantation diagnosis. What does that mean, pre implantation diagnosis? This creates a system where health related genetic testing is robust and often publicly funded. But direct to consumer tests for ancestry or paternity are highly restricted. Now, why would you highly restrict anything like that if you wanted just. If a human being has bodily autonomy and you want to find out where your ancestors came from, why wouldn’t that be? What do you think?

The Zionist Project and Land Claims

DAVE SMITH: Well, the only real answer to this is that they, the Israel Project or the Zionist Project always relied on this kind of claim, which is a crazy claim in a way. It’s like a supernatural propaganda claim. That you have this. Which, if you go there was that great documentary on the settlers in the west bank. And they’ll all tell you, to a man or to a woman, they focus a lot on that godmother of the settlers, woman. But they’ll all explain to you, in very plain English with a Hebrew accent, that God promised them all this land.

And so, God promised us all this land. So, I don’t know who these other people are here, but God didn’t promise it to them. He promised it to us. And so, that’s. But, that’s kind of the claim that we’re the original people of this land, and so we have a right to come back here.

Now, forget for a second the fact that nobody conceives of property rights in this fashion in any other way. Nobody thinks I could come up with a DNA test and be like, “oh, I’ve got some Ukrainian in here. All right, well, I’m going to march into Ukraine, knock on a door, and be like, this is actually my house because I was here a thousand years ago.” That’s.

JOE ROGAN: But it’s kind of crazy that you block evidence. That’s not really a good argument.

DAVE SMITH: Well, let’s just say, hypothetically, if. Say, the truth is that The Jews of 2000 years ago weren’t actually kicked out of the land, but in fact, they were forced to convert. And that actually, those people who you’re saying were never promised the land are actually the people who were promised the land and then converted to Islam. And, in fact, you’re just some European who came in here way after that. I’m just saying, hypothetically, if that was the case, that would be something that maybe you would want to control the information of.

Finding Optimism Despite the Challenges

JOE ROGAN: Isn’t that wild? Well, I don’t want this whole show to be such a Debbie Downer.

DAVE SMITH: Well, okay, I’ll end. I will make a real positive. A real positive case about this.

JOE ROGAN: Okay.

DAVE SMITH: Because I do, actually. I’m not a pessimist, and I want to make sure I’m not just a downer. I saw.

JOE ROGAN: Too late.

DAVE SMITH: Well, yeah, okay. Well, I’m trying. Okay, well, I’ve done whatever. I’ve done 17 episodes being a downer. So let me. Don’t. I’ll give you a few minutes. I saw. So I was. I hung out with Ron Paul a little bit. As I was telling you, I was at his party the other day, and it’s like, Every time I see him, he always asks me the same question. And it’s always like the feeling like this fatherly, like there’s the right answer to this and a wrong answer to this.

But he always goes, he goes, “so, Dave, are you more optimistic or pessimistic?” And I always say optimistic because I know that’s the correct. And every time he asks me this and I say optimistic, he just nods his head. He’s like, it’s just like, correct. That’s the correct answer. You’re not allowed to be pessimistic. You got to be optimistic. And I am, I am.

JOE ROGAN: Well, optimism sees a better world ahead and offers potential solutions and at least a mindset of a potential solution. The problem with pessimism is there’s no way out other than complete anarchy and destruction.

Fighting for the Future

DAVE SMITH: That’s right. And you don’t, you kind. I think this, I mean, I feel this way particularly. I think when you have kids, this becomes more focused. I think that the way I look at it is because I have kids, I don’t have an option to be pessimistic. I don’t have an option to be black pilled or just feel bad about it. It’s like, no, no, no, I got little kids, they’re going to inherit this world. I got to do everything I can to.

I may have said this before to you, but the example I think of is if you’re in your house with your family and you’ve got a gun or two in the house. And then you look outside and you see there’s 10 guys with guns charging the house. And it’s just you, and you just have your one or two guns. There’s 10 guys with guns charging the house and your family is in the house.

You don’t have a right as the man of your. You don’t have a right to sit there and go, “oh man, there’s 10 of them and only one of me. I mean, I just think the future looks bleak.” It’s like, what? I don’t care. I don’t know. You know your house better than them, right? What do you got there? You got some gasoline in your shed? Okay, shoot the shed. That blows up a few of them. Get your family into the attic, get them into the basement. You got to try. You still have a fighting shot here, so you don’t have the right to just sit there and Feel bad about. Yeah. The odds are against you, but crazy things have happened. I will say we.

JOE ROGAN: You think it’s that bad? 10 guys to one?

DAVE SMITH: No, I’m just saying even in a.

JOE ROGAN: Scenario in your analogy, it’s like you’re fucked.

DAVE SMITH: Sure. But even in that. No, I don’t know that you’re. I don’t know that you’re necessarily fucked. I mean, hey, listen, dude.

JOE ROGAN: Depends if you’re John Wick.

DAVE SMITH: Well, yeah, but also you have. There’s a big advantage to a house that you know that other people don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: I would assume by the time people with guns come to your house, they have a pretty good understanding.

DAVE SMITH: Joe, I’m not. Okay, maybe it’s not the perfect. I’m not saying it’s going to work out well. I’m saying in that moment, you still go out trying. Okay. Now I think we have a way better situation than that. I think that.

JOE ROGAN: Good.

The Collapse of the Propaganda Apparatus

DAVE SMITH: I think that you’re kicking me out. Well, look, I think that tyranny has always relied on propaganda and that we are running an experiment for the first time where they’re flying with no net. They don’t have a propaganda apparatus anymore, at all.

JOE ROGAN: Well, they certainly don’t have control over narratives anymore.

DAVE SMITH: Donald Trump can’t even control. Tucker Carlson is going to say, you know what I mean? You can’t even count on your most influential right wing voice in America to go. There was never anything like this before. There was never even just in recent times. There was never something George W. Bush could have done where you’d be like, “tonight on fox news, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are going to tear him apart.” It didn’t exist. There was never anything Obama could have done where Rachel Maddow was going to tear him apart over that.

We have that for the first time now. People are waking up in a way to this stuff that’s never happened before. And I think that gives us enormous potential for positive things to happen in the future. And the other thing that’s happening is that economically speaking, our system is being pushed to a point where eventually they’re going to have to call it quits on all of this.

We just can’t keep going up. I think it was. I forget at the exact recent numbers, but it’s something like it’s over $1.2 trillion a year just on interest on the debt. Interest on the debt is overtaking the entire budget. And at a certain point there, someone’s going to have to call it quits and be like, “we just got to start reining this thing back in.” If they lose all of their popular support and all of their economic ability to keep running up the debt and keep the printing machines going, then I think there’s going to have to be a huge adjustment made there. And I do think.

Economic Reform and Future Potential

JOE ROGAN: Well, this was Elon’s argument.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Which is why he wanted this massive economic reform, and this is why he wanted to do an audit on everything. And you saw how that worked out.

DAVE SMITH: Well, okay, but he was right. Yeah, but that was still also the first attempt at that.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

DAVE SMITH: And he was right about that stuff.

JOE ROGAN: So.

DAVE SMITH: Okay, so, yes, that didn’t work. Doge was a failure in terms of actually getting cuts done right now, but it was a huge success in terms of putting a spotlight on this issue and putting it into the national consciousness in a way that it’s never been before. Yes. And so now it’s like, okay, well, what will the second attempt, what will the third attempt look like?

And how, we have a new world now where Donald Trump won the presidency in no small part by coming on this show, by going on Andrew Schultz show and Theo Vaughn’s show, and all these different. And now we’re coming up on the next presidential election, for the foreseeable future, in order to win the presidency, they kind of know they got to come here and to all of our shows and present something that might get you and your audience, okay, he’s coming with something here.

This is such a new dynamic that I just think the potential for good is off the charts. And so, yeah, in the short term, things are still the same. Government policy is still what it is, and the people don’t really have much control over that. But I think long term, I’m very bullish on the ability of people to really wake up and understand what’s going on here.

Marijuana Policy Changes

JOE ROGAN: Apparently, there’s some real talk about changing the status of marijuana.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yeah, I was reading about that a couple weeks ago. Right.

Trump’s Marijuana Policy and Economic Impact

JOE ROGAN: But there’s something that just came out yesterday too, where they think that Trump might declassify it and take it from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3, which would change everything. And open. There was an article about the economics of it, because they were talking about these businesses, how they’re taxed and how, you know, federally, they’re still operating like criminals.

That’s how it’s viewed by the federal government views it as a Schedule 1 substance, you’re like. And if you get arrested for it, you’re fucked. Where they’re going to change the. Right now, they have a limited ability to bank. There’s. The interest rates are all fucked up. Everything’s fucked up. And just that alone would make a huge economic impact.

I mean, if you want to do something, first of all, you would kill a lot of the interest or excuse me, a lot of the financial interest that the cartels have in it. If all of a sudden it becomes legal here, like, the cartels, probably, probably. They’re probably going to be involved still a little bit, because they’re involved in it already. They’re involved in avocados. I had Ed Calderon on yesterday, was explaining how they’re involved in illegal fuel. The human trafficking is a giant business. They have many, many horrible interests.

But you would. At the very least, you would empower American businesses to do it legally and normally and, you know, have organic marijuana “air quotes.” Because some of the stuff they’re finding in California that the cartel’s running is they’re using these terrible pesticides and herbicides that are insanely toxic and illegal everywhere else. You can’t use them on American crops, but yet they’re using them on this marijuana.

DAVE SMITH: Because that’s sold at dispensaries and stuff.

JOE ROGAN: No, that’s being sold. It’s 90% of all the marijuana that’s sold in all the places where marijuana is illegal the cartel’s growing. And they’re growing it in California Forest because it’s a misdemeanor to get caught illegally growing marijuana in California. There’s a great book, John Norris “Hidden War,” that’s all about that. He’s a game warden who had to find out about this the hard way and then became part of a tactical unit where they would go in and fight the cartels in the woods. How about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s fucking crazy.

Trump’s Peace Negotiations

So if he does that, that’ll be another good thing. The other good thing that he’s been doing is getting these people together that have been in conflict forever and making them shake hands and having conversations, peace talks. How many different people have. How many different countries have had representatives agree to peace talks because of Trump? I was reading this breakdown of all the different.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, I think Daniel intervened in the. Not intervened, but he. With the India, Pakistan thing. I know he got all of them on the phone. You know, I obviously just had Putin over here. There were a few examples of that, which is great.

JOE ROGAN: It’s great. Yeah. So there’s. It’s not all negative.

DAVE SMITH: Well, it’s not. Not only is it great. Right. But it’s. Isn’t it so insane that it took this long for just with the Putin and Donald Trump that I always say, and I know this is kind of a hippie-ish thing to say, but I think the world needs a little bit more of that.

But okay, it’s kind of crazy that war still exists. It’s kind of crazy that we’re at the. You know, you’d almost feel like if you saw society and you’re like, you’ve gotten to the point where you have the written language and two story buildings, you’d be like, you probably should have figured out something other than war at this point.

But yet, you know, you’re talking about a society with the Internet and skyscrapers and heart surgery and all these things. And still. And we have international governance of some sort. You know, you have the United Nations and things like this. And you’re telling me there is international law and the first rule isn’t that if any countries are ever going to go to war, you guys have to get in a room together.

Before we go to war, we need to know that we’ve exhausted every alternative option that there is, especially when it’s the United States and Russia, you know what I mean? And yet it took all this time, for the first time, for the two leaders of them to sit down and meet. It’s crazy. But on the positive side, they did just sit down and meet. That’s a lot better than not sitting down and meeting.

JOE ROGAN: And that’s what’s unique about him, is that he wants these things to happen. He truly doesn’t want us to be going to war. I mean, he ran on that and I think it’s true. And despite what happened in Iran, it was at least limited. And it seems like there was some communication that made it limited, you know?

DAVE SMITH: Well, there’s no question having a president whose default setting was to desire an off ramp made a huge difference there. Because, you know, if you had had, if this was a Dick Cheney, George W. Bush type of presidency, they could have found any excuse, you know what I mean? Once you get to that point, they could have found any reason to keep it going.

The Left’s Shift on War

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, but at least that, that kind of made sense to me because there were these right wing people. Whereas seeing the left wing calling for war and saying that Ukraine was going to win this thing. God damn, what happened? How did it flip? How did it flip that if you want a conclusion to the war that you’re supporting Putin, how did that flip? How did it flip where people aren’t trying to exhaust every possible way to stop the end of the killing of all these people that are conscripted and sent to the front lines to die when they don’t want to be there?

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s right.

JOE ROGAN: It’s crazy.

DAVE SMITH: Well, also, even though the, you know, where people were bragging about the 12 Day War, you know, which again is not clear that it’s over yet, you don’t really get to decide that until years later. You know, they didn’t call it World War I until World War II came around. And then you go, oh, that was the first World War.

Trump’s Claims of Ending Six Wars

JOE ROGAN: What does it say? “Six wars in six months. I’ve settled six wars in six months. One of them a possible nuclear disaster.” Trump wrote in truth social on August 18 before meeting with European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, where he made a similar claim. “I know exactly what I’m doing and I don’t need the advice of people who have been working on all these conflicts for years and were never able to do it thing to stop them.” So click on that where it says six wars in six months. It seems to be a link. Oh, it’s just his post. What are the six wars? Throw that into Grok. I was just interested in what he is.

DAVE SMITH: What wars is he claiming to have ended?

JOE ROGAN: Breakthroughs, because I know he had, has had these people get together. How many wars? Israel and Iran.

DAVE SMITH: Okay, well, you don’t get to count that one, do you?

JOE ROGAN: Pakistan and India, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And June, the two countries signed a peace agreement in Washington aimed at ending decades of conflict. Trump said it would help increase trade between them and the US what’s the next one?

Thailand and Cambodia. Cambodia. On 26th of July, Trump posted on Truth Social. “I am calling the acting prime minister of Thailand right now to likewise request a ceasefire and end to the war which is currently raging.” A couple days later, the two countries agreed to an immediate and unconditional cease fire. After less than a week of fighting at the border, Malaysia held the peace talks, but President Trump threatened to stop separate negotiations on reducing US Tariffs unless Thailand and Cambodia stopped fighting.

Let’s look at this one. Armenia and Azerbaijan, the leaders of both countries said Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for His efforts in securing a peace deal, which was announced at the White House on 8th of August. I think he gets good credit here. The Oval Office signing ceremony may have pushed the parties to peace, says Mr. O’Hanlon. In March, the two governments had said they were ready to end their nearly 40 year conflict centered on the status of the. How do you say that? Nagorno Karabakh.

DAVE SMITH: I’ll let you figure that one out.

JOE ROGAN: Most recent serious outbreak of fighting was in September 2023, when Azerbaijan seized the enclave where many ethnic Armenians lived. Egypt and Ethiopia. Here’s another one. After 12 years of disagreement, Egypt’s foreign minister said on 29 June that talks with Ethiopia had ground to a halt. Trump said, “If I was Egypt, I’d want the water in the Nile.” He promised that the US was going to resolve the issue very quickly. Egypt welcomed Trump’s words, but Ethiopian officials say they risked inflaming tensions. No formal deal has been reached.

Okay. Serbia and Kosovo. Trump claimed to have prevented an outbreak of hostilities between them, saying “Serbia, Kosovo was going to go at it. Going to be a big war. I said, you go at it, there’s no trade with the United States. They said, well, maybe we won’t go at it.” This is so ridiculous.

DAVE SMITH: You’re just so. You just know. That is a Trump quote.

JOE ROGAN: The two countries signed an economic normalization agreement in the Oval Office with the president in 2020, but they were not at war at the time. So it doesn’t say that that’s been resolved. Is that it?

DAVE SMITH: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: Okay. So it seems like some of them haven’t totally been resolved.

DAVE SMITH: Well, I think.

JOE ROGAN: But at least he’s trying.

DAVE SMITH: The Armenian one, I think is the one he should get the most credit for because they did sign that peace deal in the White House and both the leaders did say, yeah, Trump really played a huge role in this. With the other things, you kind of never know.

JOE ROGAN: But this is a new and unique thing that this guy, I mean, he’s only been in office for eight months and that he’s actively pursuing all these international conflicts, trying to get these people together to stop it.

DAVE SMITH: No, that stuff is all very good.

JOE ROGAN: So good.

The Iran Situation Analysis

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. Now, I don’t give him any credit for the. I mean, let’s try to say this. I do give him credit for taking the off ramp when he had it on the 12 day war. But the thing about that one is that he just never needed to launch the thing to begin with. And I don’t know, you know, I’m not even sure he did launch it, to be honest.

It’s kind of unclear how that happened because they were in negotiations with the Iranians and then Israel attacked them. And then after Israel attacked them, Trump said basically we were all in on it together, which might be true, but I do know that Tucker Carlson said, I’m not revealing anything privately. He said this on the record. He knows Wycoff, who was the guy who was point manning the negotiations.

And he was like, it is absolutely not true that these were fake negotiations designed to trick the Iranians so Israel could get their shot off. That that’s just not true. Now I don’t know exactly what’s right there and what’s wrong.

JOE ROGAN: So then you have to cover for your friend, because your friend threw the first punch.

DAVE SMITH: Well, I know that Trump was upset, because he let it out that he was upset that after he called for the cease fire, Israel just started bombing the crap out of him. And he was like, “What are you guys doing, man?” But then he turns around and still supports Israel.

JOE ROGAN: Everything they’re doing well, they have conversations, they have meetings. Yeah, fuck.

Nuclear Program Concerns and Future Implications

DAVE SMITH: The thing about it is though, going forward, I think this is the more important thing. Going forward, this problem is not off the table. They’re saying that Trump’s going to say he completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear program, but that’s not clear at all. And everything the Iranians are saying is that they are going to continue having a civilian nuclear program, and they have the technology and the know-how. They can rebuild this thing.

So then the question is, if they do, what do we want to do next about that? And what’s great is that this at least was a little war that didn’t result in a major catastrophe. Still a catastrophe for the people who died. And there were Iranians and Israelis who died in this war. It wasn’t bloodless, but at least it maybe gives us some time to go for the next go around to just be like, “We don’t need to go to war over a civilian nuclear program.”

First off, we shouldn’t go to war over a nuclear weapons program. What is that? Truman was the president when the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons. Joseph Stalin developed nuclear weapons. He didn’t attack them over that. He didn’t say, “We’re going to launch a war of aggression because you’re developing the same weapons we have.”

And I think it was Johnson who was president when Mao Zedong, the most evil man who’s ever lived, developed nuclear weapons. There was never a war of aggression launched over that. Everyone’s so convinced we got to do it over Iran. But anyway, they weren’t even pursuing nuclear weapons. Hopefully the next go around, the American people have had it even more and are like, “Yeah, we’re just not supporting this anymore.”

Obama’s Syria War Announcement

JOE ROGAN: Remember when Obama had a press conference and talked about, gave a speech, talked about that we were going to go to war with Syria?

DAVE SMITH: Announced it.

JOE ROGAN: And everybody was like, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

DAVE SMITH: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: And then they said—

DAVE SMITH: And it was a huge part of that. It was the first war the Internet shut down, where it was like—and it was, well, I think Steve Bannon had a lot to do with that. He was over at Breitbart at the time. And they really got on the “we are not supporting this war.” But then there were, it was all over Twitter where there were the active duty military guys and they would dress up in, they would put on the military uniform, but cover their face and then just hold a sign that’s like, “I will not fight for Al Qaeda in Syria.” Because those guys knew what that was.

This is, by the way, the whole thing. This is where they tried to smear Tulsi Gabbard. This is when Bari Weiss was on here and said she’s an “Assad toady” and then didn’t know what toady meant or whatever. But they try to—it’s almost like they try to tell you this story. What would that even mean? What are they saying? What’s the claim? Tulsi Gabbard is secretly loyal to a Syrian dentist who became the dictator of the country? That doesn’t make any sense, does it?

Tulsi Gabbard’s Position on Syria

Why would Tulsi Gabbard have been so against that war? Well, the reason she was against that war is because she actually knew the first thing about it, unlike all these other people, unlike Bari Weiss, who didn’t even know what the word “toady” meant as she was calling her that.

Tulsi Gabbard, for whatever you might say about her, and I’ve got some criticisms of her myself, but she knows who the Shiites are and who the Sunnis are, and she knows which camp is on which side and what. And she knew that on the other side of Bashar Al Assad in the civil war, which was started by Barack Obama, on the other side of this was ISIS and Al Qaeda.

And her whole thing was she signed up, she enlisted to go fight Al Qaeda, because they hit us on 9/11. And so she’s always furious. Actually Tulsi supports the war on terrorism too much, I would argue. She just objected to the war for terrorism. She was like, “I just don’t think we should fight wars for Al Qaeda. I believe we ought to fight them against Al Qaeda.” And that was her beef with that one. She was absolutely right about it. And by the way, Al Qaeda’s in charge of the country now.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Whoops, whoops.

DAVE SMITH: That’ll work out well, I’m sure it works everywhere.

JOE ROGAN: Every time we overthrow a country, it works out great.

DAVE SMITH: It always.

JOE ROGAN: Libya did good, we did a real good job there.

Regime Change and the Shah’s Son

DAVE SMITH: Well, did you see? Well this was the crazy thing for the people who were advocating regime change in the 12 Day War in Iran. They would always, you see, there were Israeli government officials who were posting pictures of the son of the Shah. The implication being that he would go back, that he’ll come back into—

JOE ROGAN: Power because he’s in exile in England.

DAVE SMITH: So now the war on terrorism started with spreading democracy and in its end phase, we’re spreading—what’s the word I’m looking for—a monarchy, hereditary monarchy or something. It’s like, yeah, but also, by the way, what do you think the odds are that if we overthrew the mullahs that the son of the Shah just walks back into power and all the warring factions just go, “Yeah, no, that’s, the US propped him up in 1953, so then, yeah, okay, he’s the rightful ruler.” I don’t think so.

Living in Modern Times

JOE ROGAN: Dude, listen man, I’ve had enough getting bummed out.

DAVE SMITH: Well, I’m not trying to bum you out though.

JOE ROGAN: It just, there’s so much going—that’s the problem with being alive today is you’re paying attention to so many different conflicts.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, but dude, all over the world. Yeah, but in the 20th century, there were two world wars and there was all this horrible shit, and then, but today, dude, we live in the most amazing—dude. I mean there’s literally—

JOE ROGAN: Bring it home. Nice.

DAVE SMITH: Well listen man, I mean this the most sincere thing I’ve ever said in my life. My son was born with a congenital heart defect that would have killed him in almost any other time period unless I was alive today or in the last 10 years. Thirty years ago I would have lost my son. And today he’s fine. He’s the great, cutest little boy in the world you’ve ever seen. And so, I don’t know. I’d still rather live today than any other time just for that alone.

JOE ROGAN: No doubt. No doubt.

DAVE SMITH: And we have an ability to reach people and trade with each other and communicate with each other. We’re really close to curing all types of diseases and ailments and extending life and extending—people are educated and connected in a way that they’ve never been before. We got all these problems, but we’ve had lots of problems before.

JOE ROGAN: I just think we’re aware of the problems now.

DAVE SMITH: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: Which is the first step to recognizing them and then going after them and trying to resolve them.

DAVE SMITH: That’ll be our kids’ generation. Me and you will just be recognizing them, and then we’ll leave it to them to solve it.

Wrapping Up

JOE ROGAN: Going to have some fun this weekend at the mothership.

DAVE SMITH: It’s my favorite weekend of every year.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s always awesome to have you there.

DAVE SMITH: Wait, hold on. Comedy wise, maybe I do something with the wife and kids. Maybe I’m not getting in trouble for that.

JOE ROGAN: Your podcast, tell everybody how to get it. It’s everywhere.

DAVE SMITH: “Part of the Problem” is my political podcast, “Legion of Skanks” is the knucklehead comedy podcast. But it’s also very fun, so go check that out. Yeah. Come. How the Mother Ship shows all sold out next year. Cafe the Mother Ship. Yes. All right.

JOE ROGAN: Thanks, brother.

DAVE SMITH: You’re the man, baby. You’re the man.

JOE ROGAN: Bye, everybody.

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