“Trump Is Shook”, Candace Owens, & The Israel Problem | Dave Smith
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- How did the Jews JFK? - Once you can control the weather. There are so many of these Ben Shapiro types. When Candace was taking the gloves off with black people, they were all like, "Yeah." But then it's like in this situation where the state of Israel has just been mass slaughtering these captive people. But as soon as you take the gloves off with them,

It's like, all of a sudden Ben Shapiro's the woke. Basically Trump's going, wow, they tried to take me out. And now he's like, holy shit, it is that easy to take me out? I barely survived this one. They will try it again. I better behave. That seems to be the only explanation that makes sense to me. There's an obvious blueprint for Donald Trump that Donald Trump would always follow. And he's not following it. Trump shuck. You know, I really feel like the Democrats deserve to lose. And then I see Trump.

What's up, everybody? Welcome to Flagrant. This week has been quite entertaining on Twitter. The discourse online has been, maybe I shouldn't say that, entertaining. I've got to find the right words. What do you mean entertaining? Yeah, it's terrifying. Engaging? Engaging for sure. I think the perfect explanation of Twitter. We have Dave Smith here, by the way.

To make sense of this whole, okay? We need America's sweetheart, dad of two, stand-up comedian, political pundit, and now endorsed by Joe Rogan as the man to go to for political discourse. I don't know exactly what he said, but it was something like genius of our time, everything he says is true, something along those lines. Something...

I don't remember verbatim, but I really think you just encapsulated the whole thing by just going, all right, so the discourse on Twitter has been, wait a minute, this is offensive. You're like, oh, man. How do you even say this? I mean, you can't stop looking at it. Yeah. It's just the second I open it up, I'm like, the Jews did everything? Everything? The good with the bad. You know what I mean? The JFK thing, I had no clue.

Yeah, apparently they did that. They did that. What else did they do? 9-11, apparently. But they made a polio vaccine. So it's like, it comes down to wash. Vaccines, though. Now we're back. We're back. We're back. Fuck. I bet traditionally would have been the thing that everyone would go, yeah, polio vaccine. And now everyone is like, does it give you polio?

Most of us had natural immunity. Okay, Dave, can you make a little bit of sense of that? You were on... Well, actually, can you say how this all started percolating? This last week, I think we saw it reach a zenith, as Akash would say. Well...

Well, with the Candace stuff specifically, I mean, she has really touched a nerve. Let me tell you something. I'm terrified of Candace. I hope that she does not fixate with at all, have a fixation with me at any point in time. And if she does, I apologize because she will not let it go. Have you met her? Do you know Candace? No. She's like the sweetest lady.

Like, when you meet her, she's just like a total sweetheart. I am terrified. It's very weird, though. Black people are happy she got her eyes off of us right now. Talk about the Jews, guys! Oh, she'll be back. Thank you.

enjoy your moment while she's focused on us she's Thanos bro like she does not play she will read every book well like and then she's very smart and she dives deep into things and and she's diving right now into some wild conspiracies that I don't really know like I don't know enough about whether she's right or wrong or whatever yeah um but there is something that I gotta say to like like you

you know, like to your, the thing you're alluding to there, it's like, there are so many of these conservative types, the Ben Shapiro types who, when Candace was taking the gloves off with black people, they were all like, yeah, you know what I mean? And like, and, and look, I'm,

it's okay to take the gloves off with all groups of people sometimes. Sometimes you need tough love. But when she was like, I mean, and Ben Shapiro himself will take the gloves off with black people and be like, oh, listen, you want to know why you have this? Because you're committing too much crime. Yeah, you're committing too much crimes. How about you stay married? How about you don't have kids out of wedlock? How about this, this, this, this? Good point. But as soon as you... Yeah, yeah.

Broken clock is right. So he was nailing it. And then, no, but then it's like if you direct any of that energy toward Jewish people, and again, all of these things are like, the problem is like when you speak in terms of collectives, you always get everything wrong. Because if you're talking to the black community and you're like, hey, black people, you need to take care of your kids. There's like some black dad who's a great dad who's like, who are you talking to? Also, they know. There's still black people. We got to take care of them? Yeah, right. Thank God this fucking little hat guy

The black guy who's not taking care of his kids is like, I know I'm supposed to. I don't want to. You have black kids. I said I was getting milk on purpose. I needed an alibi. They're easy when they're these little Jewish kids. They don't run as fast, but these black ones will fall. Come back and he goes, yeah, it's easy when they're little white kids. I take care of them.

But, like, again, like, look, but what Ben Shapiro would say to that, right, is like, okay, but I'm not talking to those people, but I'm talking to, we're talking about statistics here. It's like, okay, fine, but look, then in this situation where for the last 10 months the state of Israel has just been, like, mass slaughtering these captive people in the most horrific way, but as soon as you take the gloves off with them, it's like...

Oh, all of a sudden Ben Shapiro's the woke. All of a sudden he's the same thing that he's been railing against the whole time. I'm offended. Safe space on college campus and all that. So I'm so disgusted. Facts don't care about your feelings. Yeah, that guy. All of a sudden they do. All Mr. Free Speech. So I'm so disgusted with that. And I think what Israel's doing is totally wrong. But then, of course, with all these things, there are excesses on the,

you know, anti-Israel side. And I do see that all over Twitter too. I mean, in my replies, people who are trying to back me up, first of all, I'm Jewish. So I'm probably not going to love, I'm probably not going to love your gas all the Jews comment. And then, oh,

Oh, you didn't like DEFCON 3 on the gym? You're one of the good ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, like, listen, if it ever goes down, I'll take it. But for now, I don't need it. But then it's like, you're also like, do you think you're helping me? Yeah. Do you think you're helping the argument right now? Because now you're making us all the parents.

I think what you do well, and I think what anybody who's actually pro-Palestine, actually pro-Palestine should do, is really stamp out anti-Semitism. Be like, yo, we're not doing that. Israel and Jewish people are different things. I don't support what Israel's doing. Jewish people, no issue with you. It's a government. 100%. Especially because that's the tactic...

of all the pro-Israeli people. So you're almost embracing their whole thing was that they go, oh, you're criticizing Netanyahu? Well, that's because you hate Jews. And then it's like, so if you hand them that also, you're falling right into their trap. It's the same thing. It's always the same with all these like weird, you know, there's always like these kind of movements that seem like they're enemies, but they weirdly help each other. So like something like Charlottesville was like the best thing for MSNBC.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

there's some room in between those two. - Yeah, 100%. That's a great point. So the rampant antisemitism

It completely discredits any logical and fair criticisms of Israel and what's happening right now. I wouldn't say it discredits it, but it allows a pro-Israel voice to say, it allows them to go, well, look at all this anti-Semitism. And you can't disprove them because when I'm on Twitter, I'm like, yeah, it seems like they should do it. Yeah, it's really hard to know exactly what's going on.

With all of that stuff. Cause you know, in social media, it's almost always accounts without like a real name on them. I'm like, is this a 14 year old trolling? Is this somebody, you know, is it, is it a 14 year old who's stepdad just beat the crap out of them or something, you know, or is this like a real deal? Like I have been reading mine comp and I agree with government that's paying for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, they love this stuff. I mean, they could. Wait, wait, wait. Sorry to interrupt. So break that down. I've heard the foreign government thing. I thought this was really interesting. So anytime there's like dissension within America, it behooves our enemies to stoke as much of that as possible, right? So they could just put the juice on it. You can buy ads. You can inflate tweets. You can do whatever you want to continue that discourse that is incredibly, let's say, toxic or problematic. Why would our own government do it? Well, because you already said our enemies are doing it.

Our biggest enemies are in Washington, D.C. So, I mean, well, look, think about it like this, right?

How would it benefit them, I guess? Well, I'd just say, first of all, have our own political leaders and our own corporate media, have they not been stoking all these divisions all these years? I mean, like, they push it more than anybody. I mean, it's like since basically for the last, like, 12 years, there has been like a tsunami of just people

pushing the most divisive issues from all. And, you know, I've talked about this many times before, but do you ever see those charts, like the Nexus charts where they track words that are used in the big corporate media outlets and it'll track words like mentions of the word racism in the New York Times, mentions of the word transgenderism or toxic masculinity, all these things. But it's all...

at 2011, 2012, it's like, and then it skyrockets up. All of them in unison, all just started doing it. - Like election time. - Well, it was- - What was specific about? - Well, it was on the heels of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Party movement and like all these, you know, kind of, you got a bunch of leftists standing outside the big banks

screaming we are the 99%, and then all of a sudden, the entire corporate media and the entire political class decided what we want to talk about is transgender bathrooms. That is the burning issue of the day, and it hits right-wingers and left-wingers against each other, fighting over something that is no threat to power whatsoever. So once it's class unity. I think that's a huge thing. Okay, slow down. So there is a, the Occupy Wall Street is this movement that right-wing and left-wing can get

It was certainly more left wing than right wing, but the message of it was we are the 99%. And we're getting robbed by those people. And we're getting robbed by the... And they didn't even really mean 99%. They meant like 99.9%. They were like, it's the people who own banks against the rest of us. And the fear of that catching, that becoming trendy, that catching on, and there being a unified front against these banks or these people in power...

makes them reposition the conversation to something that, one, those liberals that are out there have to support,

They have to support the pro-transgender argument because if they don't, then they're going to look bigoted. Oh, wow, it's like the perfect foil. Dude, they're such geniuses. Listen, they found the perfect thing that, first of all, just like you said, any left liberal type can't be against because your whole identity is that you're the non-bigoted ones, right? So you can't be against anything that might make you bigoted. You've got these bankers at the edge of the building and you're just like, okay, trainees can go to the peak. And on top of that, right,

It's that you found the thing, particularly with the transgender thing, that will make a right-winger's blood boil. Oh, so now the same group that were about to come together are going to start fighting again. Wow. And where do these conversations happen? Does this happen organically and then they put a little bit more gas on it? Or is there like a think tank process?

In the Pentagon. I can't say this for sure. I think this was a straight CIA op. That's my guess. Which, by the way, they were in. There were commercials for the CIA bragging about how they hire and

indigenous women of color with anxiety issues and all this stuff. They all started pumping it out. And particularly because, look, I mean, you see how much they've just bought off the left. There's freaking Bank of America floats at the gay pride parade.

These guys are riding down on a big bank float. And it was the ultimate. Think about the deal from the bank's perspective where they went, OK, you're mad because we just wrecked the economy and then got bailed out by the taxpayers. So here's our deal. We will send all of our white executives to diversity training.

Are we good now? Is that a figure? And keep looting the American people. Keep raking in record high profits. But we'll focus on all this stuff. And

I think that basically it's just that the elite, the ruling elite, failed so much on every policy that eventually, that people were waking up. And, you know, when you had the, I think there was something, you had the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Can you describe the Tea Party movement? Well, the Tea Party was like around 2010, I think it started. And it was, it also started, it started from the Ron Paul campaigns and in opposition to the banker bailouts. Right.

But it was all against like record government spending. But the way it was positioned, it was a racist. Oh, yeah. Right away, of course, because I had no clue that that's where they were pissed off about. Yeah, that was the whole thing. Did you know that? Yeah, I know. It was the main one, but they quickly got positioned as like, oh, that's the racist guys. Yeah. Stay away from those. They always. The same racist who ended up voting for Trump. Yeah.

In my brain, it's a guy who doesn't... I don't know. I'm not plugged in. That's what I thought it was. Life tour update. San Antonio, we added a second show. Las Vegas, same weekend as USC Sphere. Come out there for both. Then we got Cleveland, Columbus, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Denver, we added a third show. Cincinnati, we added a second show. Rama...

Ontario Salt Lake City we had a second show Reno Nevada we had a second show San Jose we had a second show Portland and then finally closing it out in Honolulu Hawaii TheAndrewSchultz.com for tickets we'll see you guys there peace alright

All right, guys. September 6th and 7th, I'm going to be at Wise Guys Comedy Club in Las Vegas. I'm excited to do Vegas. And what a run of fun cities after that. I'm going to be in Miami, Doral, Florida, technically. September 12th through 14th, get your tickets. I'm going to be at the Improv. September 19th through 21st, I'm going to be in Timonium, so the Fun Cities tour ends. But I'm going to be at Magoobies, which is a great comedy club. September 27th and 28th, Greensville. October 17th through 19th, New Brunswick, New Jersey. There's plenty of dates. Go to akashsingh.com to check all of those out. Thank you guys so much.

Let's get back to the show. Well, listen, and look, this is like what always happens, though. They always try to infiltrate these movements and push them into cultural issues. This is what happened back with the right-wingers back in the 60s, where they would come in and the New Republic...

I'm sorry, not New Republic, National Review and William F. Buckley and these guys, they'd come in and like, so the old right, the old right pre-World War II were always like non-interventionists. They didn't wanna fight wars. They believed in immigration restrictions, trade restrictions.

and sound money, like no fiat currency. Those are like the things they cared about. And then National Review came in and they were like, "You know what it really means to be a conservative? We're against the homos." "These homos are everywhere and we have to oppose these homos. By the way, we're not gonna do the whole sound money thing anymore. We're gonna have a fiat currency and we're gonna fight a lot of wars. But these homos, man, these homos are all over

over the place. And they're always kind of like throwing you off of the issues of substance that actually matter. And they're just kind of like, okay, well, you know how you guys were against entangling alliances and adventurism overseas? Well, we got a war in Vietnam to fight. So we're not doing that stuff anymore. But you should really worry about, you know, whatever. And it's always adjacent to Christianity, an issue that is religious that will overtake any government care that I have. If you attach it to my...

Christianity is against homosexuality. Are you going to let that happen in this country? It's a Christian country. Yeah, because it has to be something that is part of your core identity. Yeah. If it's not that important to you, you're not going to latch on. Wow. It's actually you feel guilty not latching on. You feel guilty not having a voice about it.

Listen, I feel it myself. You guys know me for a long time. I'm totally obsessed with all of these issues of war and money and banking and all government corruption. But I'll be the first to see a Libs of TikTok video on Twitter and I'm like, ooh, what are they doing to these kids? What are they doing to them?

What's wrong with this? Get that tranny away from those kids. You know, like it's just, it pulls at something deep inside. And by the way, I don't think they should be bringing this stuff to kids. I think that's really crazy. But to your point, there's probably five times that's happening in America. Well, you have no sense. The thing is, you have no sense of it. You're like, oh, okay. So, I mean, like my kids don't go to public school and I haven't been to a public school since I was in public school. So I don't know. I see the video of this. Is this one out of,

100,000 teachers are like this? Is it one out of a thousand? I have no sense of proportion, but I know there's a video there that'll get my blood boiling. But I'm not even saying some of the distractions are important issues, right? But like even like a fight over like say abortion or something like that, which is a very important issue depending on how you see it. Again, it's into religion though. Right, it also plays on the religious thing, but it's also like it doesn't, it's not a threat to anyone in power.

Like, no one in power is threatened by whether, you know, you're pro-choice or pro-life. But if you're like, hey, you know, I think we should, like, I think these big banks shouldn't get bailed out anymore. Or like, hey, I don't think we should fight these wars that these weapons companies are making hundreds of billions of dollars off of. That is a threat to their bottom line. I mean, these rich people are going to get their abortions, is my point. Yeah. How can they be so proficient at, like, distracting and stoking the culture war? And so...

seemingly inefficient at everything else. Like which government is doing it? We talk nonstop about how inefficient government is, but the way that you've described it, they've masterfully manipulated us for the last, what, 30, 40, 50? I would think they're efficient at getting things. I think they're very efficient. I think the government is inefficient model is based off of a faulty assumption.

So when people say government's inefficient, it's almost like, well, look, they took over health care, but they're not delivering good health care at a reasonable price. And you're like, go look at Obamacare.

The profits for the giant insurance companies skyrocketed. They're efficient, just not for us. They're incredibly efficient. You're assuming that their stated goal is their actual goal. This is interesting. They're the most efficient. Were the Nazis efficient at killing Jews? There's nothing more efficient than government. It's just always for evil. Do you think they've lost control of the PSYOP?

What does that mean, Mark? If you're suggesting, which I'm with you here, that this is effectively a CIA operation to create a culture war to distract from the actual class struggle, have they lost control over that? And you get things like January 6th, and you get things where it's like we're on the brink of civil war. Because of new media, because of art. I didn't really push this pillow onto you, by the way. This is just now. He made a quotation. You're speaking my life as well. So,

So I think both things are happening. So I would look at it and say they were incredibly effective. If I'm right and their goal was to start a culture war, you'd look back and go, wow, they did a really good job of that. At the same time, I think what's gotten away from them

and this is one of the crazy things that we're living through, this moment right now, is that for the first time, the state has lost the monopoly on the flow of information, which is always the most important thing for them to control. Always. I mean, look, if you think about what the government really is, which essentially is the...

the gang that rules the land. - The monopoly of violence. - Well, the monopoly of legal violence, right? Or I should say more specifically, the monopoly on legal aggression. 'Cause you can commit violence in self-defense, I mean, depending on what state you're in, there's different rules for it, but you can't initiate violence against other people, but the state can. And that's what they have.

And then they monopolize certain services, right? But there's a reason why, like, why is it that governments just happen to run, like, the schools and the post office and the TV channels and the radios? Radio makes sense. TV makes sense. School makes sense, right? Because you can push propaganda. And I remember we were having a conversation. It was actually over at the stand. You're like, yeah, why do you think they run the post office? I go...

I don't know. And you're like, well, how do you get the information around? Yeah, well, at the time, that was the only way to get the information. That's right. So you better fucking control it. Well, why is it that? But government's never been like, you know, we need to have a monopoly on shoes. Yeah.

We need to make shoes because everyone needs shoes. It's like actually a real basic thing. Black people would revolt. Because they're not wearing these trash shoes. Because we need shoes. These shoes don't match my hat. No, but the reason is Trump won. It was kind of fun. But the reason is because we need shoes.

Right. They don't need us to have shoes. Yeah, exactly. And it doesn't... It doesn't benefit their control in any way. But now, and this really is a very new thing, is that they're like... I mean, look, you see how much they freaked out about Elon Musk buying Twitter. Like, why would it really matter to these people? Who freaked out about that? Just like all the political pundits, all the corporate media, they were nuts over Elon Musk buying Twitter when he said he's going to make it a free speech platform. Real quick, do you think that these politicians are...

useful idiots, some of them aware, some of them unaware, all of them aware. Like, I'm trying to get an understanding. Like, do you think the second people enter government, there's a conversation where it's like, hey, this is the agenda and this is what we're going to do? Or do you think they just kind of fall in line and then get nudged in the right direction? I think it's more of the latter. Like, it's for...

It's like it depends on what level kind of you're at. I think that like for someone who's like a freshman congressman, no, they just enter. And then someone kind of explains that they've already got the system locked down. It's like, listen, leadership is going to put a bill forward. You can either vote for it or against it. You can't amend anything that's in it. But if you vote against it when leadership wants you to, you're never going to get put on any committees. You're never going to rise up the ranks. You're never going to like that. Now, the head of the Senate Arms Committee.

that dude's talking to the CIA and talk, you know, or if he's not that look, Diane Feinstein, um, who was the head of the Senate intelligence committee at the time, she came out, she was actually furious about this, but they caught that the CIA was spying on her.

And so, like, she's tasked with oversight of the intelligence communities, but they're spying on her. You know, it's like... I mean, if there's one person you need to spy on, I would say it's the person who's tasked with the oversight of the committee. Well, yeah, I mean, that would be one of your first things you're going to spy on. Because what if they're a fucking Russian spy or something like that? I think you've got to lock in in that way. I like that. Well, look, I mean... Good for her catching it, though. She's shrewd. I don't think she's the one who caught it. Someone else. It came out somehow. I can't remember. But the point is that there's...

The real point is that our elected representatives are not who's actually running the government. I think you're sorry. You're also assuming they have good intentions of making sure she's not a spy. I think the reality is probably- They got proxy wars to start. Nefarious intentions of we need something to blackmail her with. Don't get in the way. Don't get in the way, ladies. I gotta hold this over her head when we need to push our shit through because, oh, you don't want me to expose this about you, do you? Yeah. That's what I think we would all kind of agree it probably is. Fuck. Okay, so-

One thing that I've always been very – if I can't compliment you for a second, I think a lot of times the people that get – what would you call this now? I don't want to even call it red pill because I feel like that's too niche. But what do you call when you wake up – what is the term that people use? Red pill used to be our term, but then now it means –

arguing with seven club hoes so we can't use that one anymore what is your what is the new one don't marry a porn star guys that's my tip that was something i thought we just knew in high school but i guess that that's got to be settled on a lot of different podcasts um but i don't know yeah whatever whatever it is like just i don't know that we have like the perfect

But whoever kind of the dissidents are that just like see this whole system as like just totally corrupt and fake. And that's kind of why I liked the red pill analogy, because it was a great analogy from the Matrix. It's like you take this and you realize that everything is like this carefully constructed illusion that is constructed by Bambi.

bad people who don't have your best interest at heart. You know, so one thing I think you've done really well is I think you've managed your like emotional state. I think a lot of people that go down this rabbit hole, they get incredibly anxious. They're miserable. And it's hard to not be miserable when you start seeing all these institutions that are potentially lying to you. Yeah. So I'm curious and I want to go back into more of what's going on, but I'm just curious, like how,

How often are you checking in with yourself so you don't become one of these people who get... They kind of go crazy. Yeah, well, no, 100%. And I've seen so much of that. And I do sometimes kind of...

sympathize with those guys because it is when you start like getting into this stuff it is stuff that's so evil that you're like it's like worth dying over or flipping out over or something you know like even just like just if you just go study like the war in Iraq and like how these fucking people who

wanted this war for years before 9-11 literally wrote if you go read this project for a new American century which was the think tank of all the neocons the people who it was like 20 people who were the signatories on it it was like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz and like you know um

Richard Perle, and I think 10 of the 20 went on to have high-level positions in George W. Bush's administration. And they wrote before 9-11 that our whole plan here is to fight multiple wars in the Middle East, and the first stop is overthrowing Saddam Hussein. And in their own words, they wrote, but we probably can't get public support for that short of another Pearl Harbor type event. Wow. And then after 9-11, they went...

Got it. And then like a million people got killed in Iraq. Like just that alone. If you just look at that, you're like, yo, this is like so evil. So it's very easy to flip out over that stuff. I think at least at this point in my life, having a wife and little kids helps a lot. It just kind of focuses me on like that's my actual life. This is just the stuff I'm interested in talking about. I can see if you don't have that, you could completely drown yourself in this information because it's never ending.

I think being a comedian before that also really helped. It was just kind of, there was just like this light and fun thing. You're going to see the levity in this.

Yeah, right. You're always kind of going to be like, okay, well, can I turn this into a joke? Or at least, even if not, even if I couldn't turn it into a joke, tonight I'm going to be at a nightclub with all my friends who happen to be hilarious people. We're all going to be laughing and we're all going to be working on our sets. That kind of kept me grounded. And then also, I'm just, whatever my own insecurity is, I have an obsessive need to not get it wrong. Mm.

And so I'm constantly guarding myself off like, okay, I'm not going to just fall over the deep end here and just believe some nonsense that's not true just because it kind of suits my narrative. I mean, I just like, I naturally guard against that, but I've seen a lot of people who don't

guard against that. And it gets bad quick. And that's where the rabbit hole is, probably. I'm curious. You say the government's so evil. I haven't heard you say one good thing. Is there anything good that the government's doing? They're really good at being evil. They do a great job. I said the thing about the Nazis, what they did with the Jews. They put up incredible numbers. You don't think there's nothing that the government is doing that's good?

Oh, no, I mean... Are there well-intentioned people in government? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. No, I think there are well-intentioned people in government, and I think that... You may get shot in the head often. If they're too well-intentioned, you know too much. But it's like...

I don't know. Of course there's things they do that are good, but in the same sense that there could be a serial killer could still do something that's good in his life. You know what I mean? A serial killer at some point, they might be like, will you donate another dollar for children who need so-and-so? He's like, okay. I think that the instrument itself is kind of evil. So anybody who plays it is just going to be complicit with the evil.

Yeah. You're going to get caught up in that. It's like a system you can't... But in the same... I look at the government as like a criminal organization, morally speaking. So in the same sense, if you were to ask me, like, has a mob family ever done anything good? Like, yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure they have.

Boston was good. Yeah, right, and I'm sure they did. Like, even that guy, like, you know, like in any of those gangster movies you watch, I'm sure there was a time when some guy was, like, beating up his wife and they went and tossed that guy a beating or something like that. Like, yeah, there's some good things they do, sure. Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to ask, is that American government or is that, like, capital G, the institution of government itself? The institution, everywhere. I think the illusion...

Right. Like that's kind of how like Americans go into it. Maybe black Americans are a little bit more distrusting of the government. But once you find out that there are these government institutions or just like corporate entities in general that are operating with like high level collusion and corruption.

It's kind of a staggering moment. I think that's right. But what's even crazier to me is that people who are kind of like onto the government corruption and start realizing how corrupt this whole system is, still, if there's a conflict between us and Russia, they kind of snap back to their like,

No matter how corrupt they see our government as being, they could still never see it like Russia. You know what I mean? It's been amazing, particularly with the war, since the war in Ukraine broke out, how many people in the U.S. will just be like, we can't stand for someone invading a sovereign country. And you're like, you are familiar with very few.

- Very recent history. I'm not saying like 80 years ago we did something like this. I'm saying we're still there. We still have troops in Iraq right now. We still have troops in Syria right now. What world are you living in that like, the vehicle we have is our government. So what you think that's DC's motive is that they're just like, we just can't stand by while someone invades another country. - So what is their solution?

Well, I mean, like ultimately the solution would be for government to stop doing a lot of the evil stuff that they're doing. But how do we get that? I'm asking you as like someone I consider a leader in this idea. What would your solution be? I'm not like John to do gotcha. Well, we're already in trouble if I'm the leader. But I think that I think...

I really think that propaganda is incredibly powerful, like, as I was saying before. And I think the fact that, like, there's so many, like, shows with huge audiences now that can kind of, like, shine a light on all this stuff. I think that's really powerful. So in short, I think, like, telling the truth is very, very powerful. And then in terms of what would actually roll back kind of government corruption, I don't know. You know, I mean, I think there's a...

There's something going on. We have not figured it out yet. But I'm not saying anything positive about how Donald Trump actually governed. But the fact that there was so much hunger for a Donald Trump-like figure, I think, shows something of people waking up. Even Bernie, too. Bernie, Bobby Kennedy, like all these guys. Honestly, I'm not just saying this because I'm Indian. Vivek. Oh, yeah, 100%. Vivek Ramaswamy. I mean, he took a very hard line on government corruption. I mean, when he was on the pod, I was like...

I was like, what if this corruption benefits us in certain ways? Like hypothetically, what if these government policies, this interventionism that we're doing benefits us and gives us a better lifestyle? Would you, if you found that out, would you still want to go through it? And, uh, if, would you still want to go through it? If it meant getting rid of the managerial class, that's what he talks about. I'm sure you've heard the term. Oh yeah. And, um, he goes, uh,

The people deserve a government that represents them for better or worse. So he's like, I will take a shittier America or higher price for food or higher price for medication, whatever it is, if we're actually making the decisions or there are people representing our decisions. Yeah, how would you answer that? Well, I think that – so I'd say that I think –

if there's one like kind of universal truth that I've found in my life is that like lying to yourself is destructive. I think it's worse than lying to other people. Lying to other people is bad too, but lying to yourself is like the most powerful, destructive thing you can do. And so if it were the case that us going in

mass slaughtering a bunch of people in Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan and Syria and Yemen and Somalia and all these places that gave us a better a higher standard of living then let's look ourselves in the mirror and have that honest conversation is that who we are do we is the role of the United States of America that we are the world Empire and we're going around to take your shit and give it to us and

And if you want to have that honest conversation with yourself and then conclude, yes, that's what we're going to do, then at least have that honest conversation. Don't sit here and pretend. I've had that conversation. This is why I know I ain't shit. I've been like, yeah, all right. My life is much better.

So either I can leave or I can just accept this is what it is and I ain't leaving. Well, fair enough. Unless there's another empire coming and I'm jumping ship. That's the first step would be to ask that question. But I don't... I just don't believe that it's true. I think that, like... I think that it has made...

There's special interests that have benefited tremendously off of all of those wars. But I don't know. I mean, I'm like looking around the country. It's like, no, I don't think this has been good for not only our economy, but just like our soul. I don't think it's, you know, I know it's a Biden thing. He said the soul of the nation or whatever. But there's something to that. You want people to be proud of the country they're living in. I think an American pride right now is at an all-time low. And you've got to give them something to be proud of. I've actually thought a lot about this. Like,

A friend of mine, I got to give him credit, Ben Uyeda, was like, why are you proud to be American? And he's like, I think you can be the best version of yourself here. And I thought that that was the...

That to me was, is America and something you still can be represented by. Yeah. And like, but it was, it was important. I thought it was like July 4th and we were thinking about like doing a piece on it. And it was like, yeah, why should we? I think, you know, we have to bolster some like American sentiment. This is a great country. This is amazing. There's always opportunity. We get to be fucking comedians running around talking shit. We actually get to, you know, provide for our families. But he brought that up and he's like,

Yeah, we can be the best version of ourselves here. Yeah, I mean, I think that's always been the best thing about America is that you could kind of be the author of your own story and you can kind of like, you know, it's never been perfect, never will be perfect, but it's like, yeah, you could like make something of yourself. And I think we very much take it for granted. It has not been true in most of the world for most of human history that you could like

come from something kind of humble and make something really cool of yourself here. And that's awesome. But in terms of like, say like the war stuff and dominating the rest of the world, I just, I don't see any evidence that that's connected to like that the two are connected. I mean, look, even after we get hit on 9/11, we launched the war on terrorism in late 2001, we started the war in Afghanistan, 2003, the war in Iraq.

In 2008, we have the worst financial recession in 100 years. I don't see this evidence that it's like, oh, this is building up our great economy. So it's not even beneficial to them. Well, it's really beneficial to Lockheed Martin and Ray Theon and them. Yeah, but to the average American, it's not. I don't think so. Guys, this segment is brought to you by our newest partner, Stake. Okay? You guys already know Stake. You know it because Drake's dropping half a million on our boy Stylebender, which is absolutely tragic just because Stylebender lost, not because Drake lost a half a million. Yeah.

But listen, we got to play more things. We got to play more setups, play more bets for you guys to make. You're betting on sports. Shoot, if you're going to bet on the presidential election, Stakers got your back. You go there. You make it happen. They are the official partner of the Flagrant podcast. We are happy to have them. Now let's get back to the show. Do you think there's ever, like we hear about this term like global police and stuff. Do you think that since World War II there's been any foreign intervention that's been generally positive or moral?

Great question. From the United States of America? No. Korea, anything like that? No, no. I mean, it's a disaster in Korea. This awful bloody war ended in a stalemate and North Koreans have been prisoners ever since. I mean, it's just... Vietnam was just horrific, obviously. I think even Clinton's intervention in Serbia was horrible. Yeah.

I didn't know that was a thing. Yeah, well, it didn't go well. Vladimir Putin knows. He was pretty pissed about that. And then, of course, all the terror wars have just been, I mean, just wrecked the Middle East and spent trillions of dollars on slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people. So, no, I don't think so. And it was like, you know, America was never really supposed to be the policeman of the world. That's a fairly new thing. And it doesn't make sense. It's like you can't.

The whole thing about America was we were supposed to be like a constitutionally limited republic. The idea is people are free here, with some exceptions. We got around to it eventually. I'm not saying we were perfect. But no, the idea, I mean, come on, it's just like so obvious. It's like, come on, you can't have that much power and not be corrupting. You're telling me you're, this is what the neocons, also those same ones in a project for a new American century, are doing.

or actually, no, it wasn't a project for a new American century, but it was two of the guys. It was Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and they wrote in the piece is called "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy." It was in the weekly standard, or it was in Foreign Affairs, actually, I think.

And they wrote, that was what they were suggesting. It was after the fall of the Soviet Union. And they said, America has to be the benevolent hegemon. What's a hegemon? You know, it basically means empire. It means controlling everything, you know? But the good empire, you know? Like, we rule the world, but, like, we're the good guys. Is it really as simple as there are a few companies that benefit...

in a dramatic fashion by creating wars around the world? Is it that simple? No, I mean, I think there's more to... Like, that is definitely true. That's just a fact. But are they sitting in a boardroom going, okay, let's invent some more because we've got some bombs to sell? No.

Well, I think that there are there's ideologues in there, too, and they all kind of weirdly meet up. And so, like, if you have like part of the reason that neoconservatives just totally hijacked American foreign policy is that their agenda was that we should be like, look, they were saying back in the 90s.

that when there was this big kind of turning point, which I think is really underappreciated by people around our age, because we were kind of kids in the 90s. And you're kind of like, oh, I just remember that as being a time when America was more America. And now everything's kind of crazy. Back then, it was more what we like was simple to understand. But what happened in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.

And for the first time in human history, there was a true unipolar superpower. Like, there's really never been anything like that before. It was just the United States of America. And there was this big debate about what we're supposed to do now. And basically, the Soviet Union had been used as the excuse for the military-industrial complex.

Military industrial complex. False. Now there's no excuse. They have to create one. Dave. So this is the whole thing. Can you just say that one more time so people are on? This is really interesting. So just to rewind a little bit, right? You understand...

There was not really a military industrial complex until World War II. World War II is when it was created. This is Eisenhower. Eisenhower was the five-star general who led us to victory in World War II. And when he was president, he goes, listen, that was his farewell address. Listen, we've created this military industrial complex. We built up these great big weapons companies. And he was basically saying there's a business of war now.

And it's big business. And so they want... So now... Real quick, real quick. This is so important. I just want to make sure everybody understands it. Just the term military industrial complex, can you just briefly say basically what that means, who you're talking about, and then we get right to it. Well, just basically that there's a big business of war now. There are these huge manufacturing arms companies...

that are in the business of selling weapons to the government. And there's big business here, and they're heavily incentivized to get more business. But the way they get more business isn't like you or me. It's not like we've got to get more people to come to our shows or something like that. It's like they've got to get more politicians to sign off on wars so that they use the weapons they just sold them and need to buy more weapons from them for the next time. So now William F. Buckley, who was president,

Sorry to interrupt one more time. Was Eisenhower's point, we need to be wary of this? Yes. Or was he like, okay. No, he was like, we need to guard against them trying to get more power. Got it. And this is five-star general. Yeah. Dwight D. Eisenhower was saying it. And the country needed to create one to win World War II. Yes. Well, to win the war, yes, we probably needed to do that. Because everybody got on board, right? But we didn't necessarily. Ford was making tanks and shit. Yes. It became. Yes.

But then we created right after World War Two, we created the CIA, which was in the beginning supposed to be like kind of like a newspaper for the president, like a secret newspaper. It's like, listen, we need to know what's going on around the world. So you come and give the president all the intelligence of what's really going on. And then it very quickly turned into like a paramilitary secret kind of black ops thing. Yeah.

No offense. But...

But so, okay, so this get now Bill Buckley, who was really the most kind of influential conservative figure in the second half of the 20th century. He wrote this big piece about it where he was basically like in converting the old right into the new cold warriors. He was like, listen, we are supposed to just be like a city on a hill, limited government, traditional conservative thing. But here's the thing is we got this Soviet Union.

So at the end of World War II, the two big winners are America and the Soviet Union. And they're communists. And they were explicitly for world domination. Like, they wanted to spread communism across the world. And so then there's this thing like, we have to be in this battle with them. We gotta fight a war in Korea. We gotta fight a war in Vietnam. We have to... So then in 1991...

They collapse. They just throw in the towel. Nobody saw it coming on our side of intelligence. The CIA didn't see this coming. They thought they were going to be around for a while. I thought it was a slow decay and it was just kind of... Well, it was, but they didn't really perceive it. So George H.W. Bush at the time, he went over, gave what's called his chicken Kiev speech, where he was trying to keep the Soviet Union together. They didn't want him to collapse. They were...

Because you'd need the boogeyman? I mean, I don't know. I mean, partly, I'm sure that's part of it. I'm sure also they were just like a little concerned about like what replaces this. You guys got a lot of nuclear weapons. Like what's next, you know? Enemy you know is better than the enemy you know. Right. I'm sure there's some of that too. But anyway, as this thing falls in the 90s, there's a lot of debate over like, so what are we supposed to do now? And a lot of...

conservatives and liberals were like, oh, we can go back to being a normal country now. Like we don't have to dominate the world. We can go back to like, we could have a peace dividend. We can save money on all this stuff. Okay, so the neocons come in and they go,

They go, "No, no, no, no. This is what Charles Krauthammer called the unipolar moment." And he was like, "Look, we have a moment right now that we can remake the world and no one can stop us. No one's got the power." It used to be kind of like, "Well, could we get away with doing this over here? The Soviet Union might try to stop us. Can we impose our will on Vietnam versus can the commies impose their will on Vietnam?"

But he goes, now there's no one like that. We can go do whatever we want to do. And the neocons advocated huge increases in the military budget. Even though the Soviet Union just fell, we're supposed to be pulling back on this. They haven't got huge income. And then, of course, all of their think tanks got huge donations from weapons companies.

So now they get to thinking. Right, exactly. So is it one thing? Is it as simple as there's this business who has this? It's like, no, there are these people who I think do have these beliefs. If those beliefs happen to be weapons companies should make a ton more money, the defense budget should be increased by $200 billion, a whole lot of weapons companies are like, I like that young man. I think he's got some important ideas. So then the system kind of perpetuates itself.

And then go, go. There's no fix to stop that, though. Even if you get the truth out there to everyone, just like Akash's honest answer, we're not going anywhere.

Well, I mean, like, yes and no. Why would they ever stop? Because nothing lasts forever. I mean, look, the Soviet Union, why did they ever stop? Because eventually they just kind of realized that the jig was up and the people were on to them and they didn't want to be a part of it anymore. And they were like, I guess we could force them all to stay. We could go put down these revolts. But there just wasn't the will anymore. And I weirdly do see America getting closer to that goal.

where at a certain point, the evil people in Washington, D.C., maybe they would be like, you know what? National Guard, go put down this movement. But the National Guard, they don't even really believe in this thing anymore either. They're like, it's kind of wrong what you're doing. But then they just throw trans in your algorithm and now we're not caring about it. Well, that worked for about a decade so far. So yeah, that's one way to play it. No, look, I'm not saying like,

who's gonna win this or not but I don't think it's look what is crazy right now is that like if you think about even the COVID there was a I'm trying to remember exactly what time this was there was like they came out I remember saying this to to Rogan

one time in the green room at the mothership where I was just like, did you know how crazy this is that they were like floating out the idea of doing another round of lockdowns. It was like right at the end of like the Omicron variant or something like that and

And you know how they do these things. They put trial balloons out there. They go, we're thinking about having a national vaccine passport database. And then people get furious and then they go, no, no, no, no, we were never going to do that anyway. They're always testing what they can get away with. And they floated out lockdowns again. And it was just like for three days on Twitter, everybody was like, I will burn this place to the ground if you try to do lockdowns again. I was like, that's not happening. And I said to Joe, I was like, you might be the reason why we're not having lockdowns again.

You may have just changed the course of the... If it was all just corporate media and you hadn't broken that paradigm, they may... I don't know for sure, but they may have been able to get away with this again. And so stuff like that is like...

I actually think there's a lot of that going on where there's things that, you know, it's like you can't see the counterfactual. Something voices that are not under their control. And what could they have gotten away with if they didn't have that? So we're just comparing it to what exists, not what it could have been without, I guess, these free voices. Does that reach globally, you think? Because did they impose that anywhere else, like a late-stage Omicron lockdown or whatever? You know, I do think, I don't know. I don't think so. Didn't China have a second lockdown? China did.

Yeah, China had a few rounds of lockdowns there. I mean, they can do whatever they want. What would be the benefit of another lockdown for them? Like who profits off that? Oh, it was really good for big business, man. Lockdowns were great for big business because it totally, it killed all the small and mid-sized businesses. Put their competition out. And then everyone's ordering from Amazon. You know what I mean? It's all like, it was very good. It's a big wealth transfer.

Like those couple years. And then for all the, oh yeah, it was the largest transfer of wealth in human history. That's what I read. Yeah, yeah. Oh no, it clearly was. I mean, it's just the bills that they were signing. I mean, they printed like $6 trillion in 2020 and handed it out. You know, I don't know, like American people got like 1,200 bucks and then the rest went to corporations. Yeah. You hear a lot of buzzwords in these types of conversations. Yeah.

uh companies like blackrock is always brought up why is is blackrock evil they don't seem good and why like you'll hear they said they're buying all the single-family homes like okay they're not allowed to do that are they a hedge fund they're allowed to buy all the wheat you know what i mean like but like why are they specifically bad and why are they worse than another hedge fund

Well, I think it's as simple as that they're the biggest. They're the best. So they can inflict the most damage. And a few others. And you just see this thing being consolidated into what it's like Vanguard. There's a couple really big ones. But it's also just that they're in these crazy...

corrupt partnerships. Like, it's not... You know, it's like, if a company gets really big organically, like, just in the market, I mean, it's like, you rarely see people angry about that. NVIDIA is a good example. Well, there's... It's anything where it's voluntary, it's just kind of like...

I don't know, that's what people are choosing to go to. They're choosing to get their products from there because they like the product or whatever. But when you're getting, say, big because you're getting all the government contracts, or for example, with some of these big companies where, and by the way, Vivek Ramaswamy wrote about this in his book, it's really interesting, one of his books, Woke Inc., I think, where it's like, they'll have these state

pension funds so they have the pensions for all every government employee in like california say so they've got like just billions and billions of dollars because you know the only people who have good pensions are government workers anymore and so they get to choose where they're going to invest that money and they'll be like oh okay we'll invest it in these companies but only if you meet

certain DEI standards or only, you know what I mean? So it's like- So they impose their will on the companies. Yes, they kind of impose their own cultural agenda on,

Through financial means but it wasn't like a bottom-up thing like whenever it's a bottom-up thing You don't see this type of like resentment over it like if it's if there's like a bottom-up thing like I do think like the acceptance of like gay marriage was very much a bottom-up thing eventually people just like not You know what I mean like but it's like but this is different like this stuff all being pushed as is totally top-down and

Okay. What's happening? What happened on the Twitter spaces? You popped in with Candace. What was the conversation? What's going on? What does she latch on to? What does she care? What is she trying to do? She feels that America has been taken hostage by Israel? Well, I think from what I understand, it kind of started. So she was over at the Daily Wire. And I do think this was, you know, like...

I don't know Candace like super well, but we've like, we've done shows together and we've hung out a little bit. And she seems to be very genuine to me. But she, I guess, had just had a baby. And she's had, I think, several kids in a short period of time. Two, right? I think three. Yeah. But like,

And so she had just given birth and the war in Gaza kicks off. And she started talking on her show about like how heartbreaking the images of like all these dead kids in Gaza was.

And I guess because it was a Daily Wire show and the people she was around were around her and so and people started like flipping out at her like, like, oh, Israel has to do this. How dare you criticize Israel? And she was like, I'm just saying it's sad to see dead kids. And when she got that kind of pushback, I think because I think that's her personality type, which she was immediately like, no.

I'm doubling down on this now, and I'm going to really dig into this. And she got more and more critical of what Israel was doing and the Israeli kind of relationship with Israel, which there's a lot to criticize there, the more you look into it. Our relationship with Israel? Yeah, the relationship. What is our relationship? What is misunderstood about our relationship with Israel? Well, okay, so John Mearsheimer, who's like just, I mean, like just a total genius and one of like the, I think, world...

the kind of leading world intellectuals on like foreign affairs. The way he put it, which I think is more or less right, is that it's unlike any other relationship

between any other two countries. The relationship between the United States of America and the government of Israel is like they get unconditional support from us. We prop them up in everything they do, no matter what they did. And no matter whether we want them to do something else...

whether they do exactly the opposite of what we have. If we just go, hey, I know you've done these nine things. Could you just not do this 10th thing? It's a real problem for us. They go, nope, we're doing the 10th thing and we still fund them while they do it. And that's true for a lot of different reasons. Why? Why? Well...

Part of it is because there's a very powerful lobby in the United States of America called AIPAC. Yeah. What is AIPAC? AIPAC is the Israeli lobby. Is that actually what it is? Yeah. Yeah. It's the American-Israeli lobby. What does that mean? So technically they'll say they're not a foreign lobby. They're a lobby of Americans. Right.

lobby on behalf of a foreign country so it's kind of like are there other lobbies that are like this like for qatar are there other lobbies like this for saudi arabia nothing like apec nothing like apec but there are other countries that are financially they certainly have yeah there's business interests all around but apec is particularly powerful and and is very good at um

at getting people in a lot of trouble if they're critical of Israel. And on top of that, then you have this kind of widespread belief amongst evangelical Christians that the Jews kind of have to be in control of Israel in order for Jesus to come back and save them or whatever. Boy, did that work out for the Jews, huh? Yeah, I mean... Well, if you listen to the evangelicals, it's not going to work out well ultimately. Yeah.

They get Israel for a little bit. You're not coming along for this ride. Just so you know. It doesn't actually help you that much. But you better accept Jesus pretty soon. They'll convert. If you see the J-Man come back, you've got it, right? Hey, if he comes back,

I'll sign up. Comes back. Let's go. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. And you can, as a Jewish person myself, we're, we are a stubborn people. Okay. I can see a lot of Jews, like even if Jesus came back, just being like, no, no, it's all, it's an illusion. Um, but, but so there's, there's just, it, there's a weird relationship where, uh, because of a lot of different circumstances, they cut, I mean,

American politicians are kind of, have an inability to put any pressure on Israel, but are required to support them. So what are those circumstances? Again, I truly just don't know. And I think this is important because this helps people veer away from anti-Semitism. And I would say, yeah, because all that stuff is stupid, by the way. But I don't want to empower these fucking idiots. And I think people are insecure. I think they're insecure to ask even questions. No, no, no.

No, but I think they're, like, concerned to ask questions because they're like, I don't want to come across as one of these people that I see are just blatantly anti-Semitic. Yeah, yeah. And I don't want to stay silent. Giving them any ammo. No, I... Listen, I completely understand that. And it's like...

Because there's no question there is an absurd amount of anti-Semitism online right now. But there are questions that are not anti-Semitic at all that we should be able to ask and get to the bottom of. And like steel man the answers. Like literally give, what would AIPAC's best argument be? Well, sure. But also if you don't, it's almost like

if you don't ask these questions that are reasonable questions, then you cede the ground to the Jew haters and those are the only people who are asking these questions and then they seem like, well, how come no one else is willing to talk about that? So if you want to be critical of Israel and not Jewish people, you say, hey, here's the issue. And not just,

that, but like, we just want to know about the relationship. But dude, the best critics, or at least a lot of the best critics of Israel are Jewish people. I mean, the tradition of Jews who criticize Israel is like, I mean, from Noam Chomsky to Max Blumenthal and Glenn Greenwald. There's a ton of Jews who are like... That's the other conversation I want to get to eventually. Like, what do Israelis think right now?

And I think that, you know, we may have lost the plot with that a little bit. Like America got tons of criticism for the war in Iraq. And there was a separation, though. I think people would be like America's fucked up. But I like American music. I like American TV shows. I like American culture. But America was fucked up. And there was this separation. And I feel like with Israel, there isn't that much.

So I'm curious what the people there think. Sure. But get to that after. Well, either way, I mean, that's a, you know, it's a really good point. And in fact, it was in Osama bin Laden's declaration of war against America that he basically said, like, look, here are our grievances, is what your government's done to us. And since you guys have free elections...

and you've elected this government, you are also fair game and we can also kill your citizens. And so like, but I'm just saying that's the mentality of Osama bin Laden, who is, if you follow the story, not the good guy in the story. You know, and so like, that's the mentality of saying that like, you're not going to separate like the actions of a government from like some dude who runs a bakery or something there. Like they're all

the same thing. But we do elect him. I mean, he has a good point. Yeah, but at the same time, you can't hold regular people responsible for the crimes of their government. And especially you when you look at how corrupt and nefarious governments can be and how they can restrict the people's ability to be represented, of course. But the idea in like a true representative government, it would be like, hey, you put that guy there and he is doing your bidding.

We now know that that is not the case. You can't hold us accountable. Right. Because we're kind of held hostage. Yeah, well, that's right. So that separation should exist and there's that protection. But the logic is if it was a true democracy, the logic would make sense. I can kind of get where you're coming from. No, because you don't know what they're going to do once you elect them in.

They told us a bunch of things and then they could flip the script once they're in. That's a good – OK. That's a fair point. But if they went into office with these ideas and we elected them for that reason, you could at least hold the people that elected them accountable? I mean I guess – I don't think you can kill them though. Yeah, I don't know –

Listen, I always tend to be like on the side of people against the corrupt powerful. And also who was running on a, hey, let's kill everybody in the Middle East policy. Even in those situations, they always kind of propagandize people into thinking they need to do this or it's in their interest. As far as like how the people in Israel are feeling, I'd say that.

Let's say pre-October 7th, just like historically, there's always been a much wider array of opinion on Israel inside Israel than there is in the United States of America. And there's been tremendous pressure put on the Israeli government by Israelis to...

to not be so brutal to the Palestinians over the years. Like, there's a lot. Listen, it was in a, I mean, it ended up making its way to our press too. But on October 8th,

Tal Schneider for the Times of Israel wrote a huge piece about how for years Benjamin Netanyahu propped up Hamas. And it was like the next day. It was like, this is your creation. Or maybe not creation, but at least you've aided them for your own purposes for all of these years. And look what happened.

now. You got all of our people killed over this and now we got this war on our hands. And so like they were pointing the finger right at him. Whereas like on October 8th, you wouldn't have had, if someone had said that here, that'd have been crazy, you know, like radioactive. And so like there is a diversity of opinion. Also,

You know, like anything else, there's this kind of rally around the flag effect. And after October 7th, there was a lot of people in Israel who were like, let's go get these guys no matter what, which is kind of the same way we felt after 9-11 and all of that. Absolutely. And by the way, the same way the Palestinians feel after some Israeli strike kills a bunch of them. They're like, let's go get them. They're easily galvanized. Have you heard that there's...

or like assigned an AIPAC handler. Like there was a dude from Kentucky that signed it. Thomas Massey. So break this down. Yeah. So break down AIPAC, how they influence. Break down this. Do you believe that? No, no. It's actually true. There's a checklist. If you're going to be in Congress or the Senate, like part of your thing is you do the trip and everyone gets to say, I've gone on that trip to Israel. It's their birthright. Wow. Yeah. I can't deny it because someone I've gone to a...

I've gone to a talk and then they'll come to me and they want me to pledge my 1800. So you're Jewish like me, right? So how crazy is it that you... A little different. Okay, fair enough. So you're a good one. Both your dicks are cut. That's great. We're really talking about you. How crazy is it, right, that even that... I mean, I don't think I have mine anymore. I'm not sure, but I don't think they would let me in. But...

Just being Jewish, you have what they call a birthright.

to go to Israel on them, a free trip, and you can also become a citizen there anytime. You have a right to Israel. Yet, the people living in that land for hundreds of years before the Zionist project have no right to return to their homes. They still have keys, some of the older ones, there to their homes. And they have no right to go back to it, which is just so wild to me. But

Anyway, that's kind of neither here nor there. I'm sorry, what was the question? APAC, just the experts. So yes, well, Thomas Madison's telling the truth about that. Yeah, they- Or maybe first, can you just explain how lobbying works in general and then break down- Well, I'd say it like this, okay? So after 9-11-

Colin Powell went to George W. Bush. Colin Powell was the wisest member of the George W. Bush administration, still pretty bad guy, but he was by far the wisest of the people in George W. Bush's room. And the thing he told George W. Bush after 9-11 was, you have to make a two-state solution now.

Like, this is the time to do it. You just hit 9-11. You have record high approval ratings. This is the time that you can cram this through and get it done. And you have to do it. And why? Because he knew. He goes, this is at the heart of why we have this terrorism problem. Like, a big...

The central reason why they hate us is because we prop up Israel and they kicked the Palestinians out of their holy land. And then there were other reasons too. They didn't like that we had our military bases in Saudi Arabia bombing Iraq and all of these things.

But he really pushed him to do it. And George W. Bush agreed. He was like, OK, I mean, if Colin Powell tells me that's what I got to do, I'll go do that. And then it was Tom DeLay in the House of Representatives who said, if you push for a two state solution, I guarantee you're a one term president.

Because AIPAC will turn on you in a second. We will whip every evangelical Christian against you. Like, it's just over for you. And so he just gave up on doing it. Oh, interesting. So that's kind of, in effect, how it works. So the evangelical vote is tied to...

the Israeli lobby in a way, even though they're really not tied for the future, but for the immediate. Kind of, yeah. This is like that thing you were saying where there's two different things that have the same interest. Yeah. Right, right. What's interesting is you go from, I mean, what percentage of Americans are Jewish? 0.2%. I thought you were going to say too many. So if the evangelical Christians...

are tied to, I guess, let's just call it American Jews. I know American Jews don't all have the same opinion, but let's just call it percentage-wise. You take that 2% and you increase it significantly. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of evangelical Christians in this country. There's like tens of millions of them. So now it's not such a minor... I think a lot of times people are looking and they throw that number around, like, why do we have so much consideration for 2% of the population? Well, because 2% of the population and a large swath and a huge voting bloc

all agree on a really important thing for their identity. So you're not really looking at 2%. Got it. Now, okay, now it's making sense. So you do, you start, but you do, it kind of built up this culture. And again, this isn't anything like that,

The problem when people go down the path of just the anti-Semitic stuff, just hating Jews in general, is that it's like with anything else. It's like the same mistake that feminists make whenever they talk about men. Or when a feminist will just be like, 95% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are men. And then they extrapolate from that some comment on men. But you're like, but that's not men. That's like this

substrata of men, the tiniest of men. You know what I mean? It's like being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company does not explain the life of an average man at all. And then you're like, oh, well, you could also look at, like, you know, prisons or homeless or all that. You know, it's just like whenever you try to collectivize people, right, it's just...

It's much more complicated than that. But it's also like there are Jews are very successful, broadly speaking. And so, all right, when you if you offend Jews, there ends up being consequences that there aren't necessarily for other groups. I mean, look, if you think about like, say, let's imagine like black people in this country had the wealth of.

that Jewish people have. And after the George Floyd thing or something, someone- The government started making sneakers. So now the government's making sneakers, okay? And they're making them good sneakers. But so after George Floyd, someone goes like, ah, he was on fentanyl or blah, blah, blah. I don't think the cop did anything wrong.

You think that guy would lose his job or lose his pet? There might be some black people who are like, no, you know what? We're going to punish this guy for saying that. So that does end up happening. Right. People do kind of get like punished for speaking out against this. And then that starts building up like a resentment against that. Well, yeah. Well, what who resents it?

The people who speak up about it, for sure. A lot of people on Twitter. Do you get fired for simply speaking out or do you get punished for saying something that is not true?

I think there's definitely been cases of people getting punished for saying things that are true. I mean, I remember Pat Buchanan said once, this was years ago, right? This is like in the 90s. And he was talking about the first war in Iraq, the Persian Gulf War under George H.W. Bush. And he goes, nobody in America wants this war in Iraq except for some weapons companies and the Israel lobby.

And they flipped out on him for saying that. Did they? Yes! Well, why would they flip out? They totally wanted it. Because you're just not... It's anti-Semitic. What are you saying? Oh, you're saying the Jews want war. You're saying that Jews are manipulating us into war. Like, something like that. But, like, no, he was talking about a very specific group. And, look... I mean, aren't there, like, minutes? Aren't there, like, records that show that they... It just doesn't matter. Yeah, but, like, it just... If they have been. Well, they certainly were lobbying for it. No question about it. Why would it be advantageous to them?

Well, because they were... Saddam Hussein was a big rival of Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu came and testified before Congress in 2002, right after 9-11. This is now going to the next. And he came over and testified as a regional expert that if we just overthrow Saddam Hussein, democracy will sweep the region and it'll have all these positive reverberations and...

oh, by the way, you should also have a regime change war in Iran. That should be next up for you guys. But it is just kind of all his enemies, like all his regional enemies. He's lobbying us to get our young boys to go fight a war over there on

his behalf. Now, when you call that out, if you call that out, it's very easy to sound anti-Semitic. But like, you don't have to be. You don't have to hate Jews to just point out that it's like, well, hey, look, there's a foreign government lobbying us into a war. Question. It is their job to lobbyists. Sure. It is every country's job to convince the more powerful countries to do the things that they want.

don't we kind of got to blame the evangelical Christians? I'm just like, you can't. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. Ultimately, we have to take responsibility for what we do as a country. But what I'm trying to say is they are so easily manipulated into supporting a foreign government because of this thing that they believe in that now, and without

them, the lobbying wouldn't work based on what I'm understanding from you. You need the numbers and you need the votes. It's not just the money. You can't just pay the politicians. You still need votes at the end of the day. I more than agree. I think there's a lot of blame to go around. But I guess what I'm just trying to say is I don't I don't

totally believe that you could do this without voting support. Oh, no, 100%. So you need a group to come and support blindly. And it seems like they're supporting blindly. But isn't it groups like AIPAC and evangelical groups that tell them which way to vote? It's the groups that are telling them which way to vote. So it's like, I don't blame the actual evangelicals. But I guess what I would say is like, if I'm a country, right, and...

I'm friends with America. I'm trying to get America to do everything I want. Of course. I'm like, yo, these guys are trying to knock down our door. They're trying to kill us. Should we just take them out? Can we get the better trade agreement with China for this thing over? Every day I'm calling up America and I'm like, what can we do to make my country's life better? But the criticism of Israel is not what they do to America. It's what they're doing to Palestine. But, but,

Well, I think it's twofold. It's like, yes, there's criticism for that 100%, but it's the fact that we're supporting it, which makes our discourse here so...

so intense and so look at it on paper if they were why are we agreeing to do these things and then we see the politicians like why are the politicians agreeing to do these things exactly so the person you get mad at is the person who's forcing the politics yeah it doesn't stop on yahoo in that who is we should be who is saying all right we'll follow this little path like who's his yeah well look again so there's all types of there's all types of blame to go around right but like

I don't, I wouldn't let Netanyahu off the hook for that either, because it's not as if like, he's just advocating that like, oh, we get more foreign aid. Can I clarify my position? He could be advocating for something disgusting, horrible, horrific. That's bad. But he, let's say he's doing what he believes is the best thing for his country.

We as Americans should be able to look and go, that's disgusting, horrible. We're not supporting that. And then one day he might be like, oh, here's this cool technology. We want to trade with you. And we'll be like, well, that's really cool. Yeah, we'll do that trade. But it seems to me, and again, I might not know, that because of this large voting bloc, these evangelicals that will blindly support whatever Israel wants...

We are manipulated into the support of these things that we find horrendous. Yeah, I agree with that. Too simplistic? Give me pushback. Sorry, many people have their resurrection. Many people have their issue. Trans bathrooms.

The masses are easily manipulated. You just find the hot button issue for any voting bloc. You can flip them. I just got to press the right button. So their button happens to be this. But this is very tricky because in order for what the evangelicals want to happen—

They need to secure the Jews in the Holy Land. And if the Jews simply go, hey, guys, if you don't support us in this war, we're not going to be in the Holy Land. J-Man not coming back. So they have to go, we got to keep them there, whatever they got to do. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. I...

It's bigger than trans bathrooms is what I'm trying to say. It is... I can't speak for an evangelical, but I think if you ask most people and they're like, hey, if you see the images, what's going on in Gaza, how do you feel about that? I think most people will be like, that's bad. It makes me feel bad. But if the group, if AIPAC or if an evangelical group is like,

They are holding hostage their group of voters to force politicians to do their bidding. So I don't think it's the actual people that are just like, no, we need to keep sending money to Israel. I think it's the group that's telling the politicians like, hey, if you don't keep sending money to Israel, I'm going to get my whole voting block to vote against you next term.

Yeah, so I'm not putting it on the people at all. I put it all on the groups that control the people. And they control the news cycle to say Hamas is doing X, Y, and Z. It's all Hamas. We've got to get Hamas out of here. You can, yeah. No, sure, there's horrible manipulation and propaganda going on. There's no question about that. What I'm saying is without that specific group, maybe they find another group.

But without that group, I don't know if it's possible. Yeah, I don't know either. Do you think it is? I think that there's no question that that voting bloc has been, like, indispensable for them. So, you know, but then again, to your point, it's also like, it's not just, you know, it's like every evangelical, I shouldn't say every, but so many evangelical pastors are out there, like, preaching to their people, and you gotta support Israel, and you gotta support the politicians who support them. So it's a, again, it's like, there's...

I don't know any one of these factors not being there. We might be looking at a different equation. How do you disconnect the two? Yeah, that's a great question. Like, is there no conversation within the evangelical community? I imagine there is a conversation in the evangelical community. There is, and I think there's even debates, and this I just don't know enough about. Like, I don't know enough about whether this is...

like, theologically correct or not, but there's a whole other argument, which I tend to think that they're right, that there's a whole other group of Christians who are like, by the way, this is a complete misinterpretation of the Bible. Oh, really? That we don't need Jews there. This is not a real thing. This is just, that's like, again, I don't know enough about that. I mean, there's like specific language in the Bible that says, like, specifically in the Old Testament that like,

all people, or like, anyone who goes against Israel, and it says exactly, Israel will be cursed and all people that support Israel will be blessed. And that's word from God. And so people, like evangelical pastors, interpret that literally to say the nation of Israel. Whereas other people interpret that to say, oh, this is a metaphor for God's people.

That all the people that are a part of... This was written way before the creation of the state of Israel. So it's like not clear that that's what they're referring to. But it is in reference to like the Old Testament nation of the Israeli Jews. Right, right. So it is what some people would say is a metaphor to say all of God's chosen people. Yeah, but that's Old Testament. Aren't y'all New Testament?

They work in tandem based on interpretation. But God's chosen people being the Jews. Being Christians is what a new interpretation would be. That Israel is in reference to all people that are Christian, that follow God, that read the Bible and Old Testament and New Testament. I don't like this one. Shifty, do you hear anything about this? Keep it that way. What has your interpretation been? What have you been taught? So I was brought up that everyone was God's chosen people and that's what Christians are.

If everyone's God's chosen people, then God doesn't really have a chosen people. Well, not everyone. It's like if everyone's beautiful, what does that mean anymore? Come on.

That Israel is basically... He is a Jew. We got him. I mean, I can only go so far. That all people could be chosen, that Israel is a metaphor for all Christians of the world. Okay, so are you familiar at all with the evangelical discourse about this?

I'm not super familiar with it. I know that there's been like, I've heard like some Catholics and like Orthodox Christians really giving pushback to the evangelicals about this because they don't believe any of that stuff. They're like, whatever it is. I don't remember. You know, I just don't know. But it's something like, yeah, that's not even what Israel means by that. Israel means something else. It certainly doesn't mean any like political group that was formed in 1948. You know what I mean? Like that's not.

That's not right. Either way, you know, like, that's not, like, that's not what motivates me is, like, what is the correct interpretation of the Bible. I'm just saying that I, like, personally,

I think this is really bad policy for Israel. I think it's totally self-destructive for them. I mean, I think they've totally turned global opinion against them. They're now on the precipice of a much wider war. They've had conflict with the Houthis in Yemen,

with Hezbollah in Lebanon. With Iran, obviously, there's always building, you know, like tensions there. And so it's like, oh, you're looking at like this much wider regional war with the world opinion turning against you. The most destructive thing is lying to yourself. Yeah. Is there not a strategic advantage? Yeah, wasn't that their plan maybe? Is there not a strategic advantage to having, I heard people say this, like having a democracy in the region, like a Western alliance with... The thing is like,

First, I don't know. I mean, the issue is that Israel isn't really a democracy.

And like they I mean, they're a democracy within Israel, but Israel has had control of Gaza and the West Bank since 1967. And you could kind of get away with occupying a group of people for, you know, a few years after a war while you're figuring out what you're going to do or on the transition to giving them their independence or something. But

I mean, they've been occupying... And they'll... I already hear in the YouTube comments, people will be like, well, they pulled out of Gaza in 2005. It's like, yeah, and then they put a full blockade around the country and they dominate every single inch of what happens in Gaza. But...

You know, if you've been occupied, it's 5 million Palestinians between, or something in that ballpark, between Gaza and the West Bank. None of them have any voting rights. None of them have any rights at all. And so how long can you have control of an area with a whole bunch of non-citizens who don't have voting rights before you sit there and go, but they're the only democracy in the region. It's like, not really. Hmm.

I don't know. I mean, I don't think we would consider it a democracy if you had half your population just was completely disenfranchised. So I don't think... I just...

I totally think that's wrong. And also, I think that, you know, us being I'm not even saying like we shouldn't be friends with Israel. I think we should, in fact. And like I think that I think that a few months back, I mean, after Israel killed that Iranian in Syria and Iran sent all those rockets at it, we helped defend Israel. And so did Saudi Arabia and Jordan, of course.

But, like, okay, that's somewhat reasonable as far as interventions go. But, like, the idea that we're unconditionally behind Israel and do nothing, you know what I mean, for the Palestinians, I don't think that helps us at all. And, in fact, I think it's a huge part of the reason why we're so hated in the Muslim world. And it wasn't always like that, you know? What do you mean? Okay, so after World War I...

they set up what's called the King Crane Commission. And they went around, they were basically trying to figure out what we were going to do with some of these areas, like the Ottoman Empire had just fallen. Ottoman Empire falls, you've got to organize some stuff. And they went and they surveyed thousands and thousands of people. They went to Palestine at the time, they went to Syria. And Syria, they asked them who they wanted to rule them in a League of Nations mandate.

and they overwhelmingly voted for America.

Because there was just like this positive feeling about America in that part of the world. Like it was like the French and the British they hated, you know, because they had like been horrible to them. But America was like seen as like, oh, that's the freedom people, the city on a hill. Like we like those guys. And so I'm not saying that whenever I bring this up, people love to go like, what about the Barbary Wars or something? Like I'm not saying we never had any conflict with Muslims before. But the...

the serious hatred that we had. That's a deep cut, by the way. It's like, yes, in 1801. People are bringing that up. Yeah, they do. They like to bring it up. Okay, go on. But I do, I think that like,

I think it's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of costs. Didn't Jefferson send like the Navy to? I think he made the Navy to send them there. Yeah, what a fucking. And it's a crazy story, by the way, too, which is like, I don't even know, I don't know enough about it to really speak intelligently. Yeah, your followers are too smart. Yeah, well.

There's maybe. I don't know. Okay, go on. I got some dummies out there. But like, it was something, it was like the, I know the British and the French, they used to just pay them off. Yeah. And it was pirates, essentially. They were just pirates. And they were like, if you want to sail through here, you got to pay us off. And America said, fuck that. Yeah.

But you could imagine... We send the boys... But there's something, like, about Thomas Jefferson, you know, like, the author of the Declaration of Independence. And they're like, yeah, like, there are these pirates and, like, the French and the British just pay them off. And Thomas Jefferson is like, free people do not pay off. No one man can own the...

own the oceans and had some highfalutin belief about it. Just autistic. So then he raises up this Navy, sends them out there, fights this war. And I really don't know this, but you almost just want to run the math on it. You're like, you spent more than you. You spent a lot more than if you had just paid them off. Probably could have just worked. First military industrial complex. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second, man, because we got a little experiment to do right here. Your boy...

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to the ship. I mean, every country does that, I'm pretty sure. They make a navy to protect their trade interests. China didn't really have a navy until they started shipping shit international and they were like, alright, let's get a navy set up. Yeah, you gotta send some security with it. Yeah. But you were talking about the...

What is it? Wars with Muslims in the region. Oh, yeah. And basically having... So there was a positive sentiment towards America in the region, at least after World War I. Yeah, it was certainly much better than it has been since then. And then, you know, the creation of Israel, the...

pissed off a lot of people, obviously. And, you know, it's I'm not trying to like make this like a one sided story, because I do think that there's like there's obviously been atrocities committed on on both sides and all of that's bad. But I just like a lot of, you know, like you can go on YouTube and you can find like Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager and all these guys. They have like these videos. It'll be like, you know,

the brief history of Israel by Ben Shapiro. It's like, well, the Jews wanted to start a free country and then the Arabs attacked them. I'm not even exaggerating. That's like the story of their history. And it's like, well, I mean, there was a middle part there that you kind of left out. And I understand the need for a...

Jewish nation when they historically get persecuted, slaughtered, whatever. I just feel like maybe you just give them the Dakotas. You know what I mean? We got some states we're not really using. Have you heard a good foreign policy solution for the region that protects Israel from getting ran over by Iran or any other aggressor? But also preserves Palestinians. At every point that there were meaningful negotiations, it was always...

basically predicated on the fact that is 67 borders and what they mean when they say 67 borders are they basically the way it happened was as um you know as a uh you know the zionist settlers before israel was created started moving to what was known as palestine then um and they were trying to get more and more people to move there uh at first they had a lot of trouble um getting as most

Jews who are like in London or New York or wherever were like, I'm an accountant and things are okay. And I don't really feel like going to be a poor farmer in Palestine. Like what is this project? After World War II and after the, you know, the Nazis were defeated, it,

really picked up steam and a lot of people wanted to move. There was a lot of, it's a really interesting history. They discovered Sephardics. Well, that also happened like a little bit later as the Sephardic Jews all came. They were kicked out of neighboring Arab countries. But so the...

basically they had been working on creating a Jewish homeland there for, for decades. And in 47, when the British basically got out of there, cause the Jews had become terrorists and were basically drove them out of, of Palestine. Um,

They kicked it over to the United Nations, which is brand new. And the United Nations was like, well, why don't we divide up the land? They made a recommendation. It wasn't like the General Assembly had no authority to just like carve up countries, but they were like, this is what we recommend. And they recommended that the Jews get 56% of the land and the Arabs get 44% of the land. And that was...

Really not based on anything. I think Jews owned like 10% of the land at the time or something like that. So the Arabs were like, no, this is ridiculous. Like this has been our home for hundreds of years, thousands of years. Like, no, we're not giving them the majority. And then a civil war broke out and about 750,000 Palestinians were kicked out and never allowed back in.

And those are the people who are in Gaza and the West Bank to this day. Or the children and grandchildren of them. And some of them are in Jordan and Lebanon and stuff. And so like this, and then the neighboring Arab countries attacked. They fought a war. They fought a war again in the 50s. They fought a war again in the 60s. They fought a war again in the 70s. I mean, it was like there were major problems that came along. And it's a very rich history with a lot of,

you know, this side story or this side story, but you could at least grant that unlike what Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager say in their videos. Now there is a Palestinian side to this story where like a lot of those people were genuinely wronged. And yes, there were some Palestinians who embraced terrorism pretty early on. It was a very bad strategy for them, has not worked out well for their people and also is just horrible and wrong. But

The America ultimately coming into this, which the U.S. was not at first, but ultimately deciding that we will be unconditionally on one side of this conflict, I think was not smart or fair or wise. And how did that happen? Was that AIPAC even back then? Or do you know? Yeah, I mean, it's I don't know exactly. You know, there was a lot of.

A lot of interesting stuff kind of behind the scenes. I don't know exactly. I know that there was definitely some blackmail stuff going on. Ben Gurion was definitely at least attempting to blackmail Alan Dulles for a while. This was in the 60s. He was the head of the CIA here. Oh, Dulles Airport. I believe the airport is named after his brother. But check on that. His brother was Secretary of State, I believe.

Think they wouldn't name the airport after the CIA director that would just be two in our face like what you get an airport But whatever I mean they worked pretty closely together. Yeah, tell me who's the airport named after John John Dulles Yeah, he was the Secretary of State. I believe Alan Dulles was Alan was CIA today but but

I don't know exactly, like, I'd have to brush up on, like, when exactly AIPAC was created and how much, when they gained all their influence. But one way or the other, they ended up getting American support, and I don't think that's been good for anyone involved, including Israel. There's a weird thing, like, it's kind of like being on welfare isn't good for you, you know, if you're able-bodied and you can work. And it's kind of like there's this moral hazard that comes along with being, like, like...

dependent on someone in perpetuity. You don't learn to be your own. The actual healthy thing would be like, hey, if you're going to create a nation here, then you've got to be so long with your neighbors. You've got to know the repercussions of your actions. Yeah, you've got to work out your own balance. There's no repercussions when you're...

Hanging with the boys. And also, and this is one of the major problems in Ukraine too, is that when the biggest, baddest country in the history of the world, the United States of America, goes, we got your back, you end up getting a lot ballsier than you otherwise would be. You're like, okay, well, I'm going to go start a fight because my big brother will come bail me out. And it's like, no, you should actually only start a fight that you actually think you could win without us. What do you think the resolution of that will be, Russia-Ukraine?

Oh, I mean, I think it's ultimately going to be essentially what the peace deal that was on the table at the very beginning, that they made them squash, which is that Russia's going to keep parts of it. Russia keeps parts of it. NATO doesn't get in. Military-industrial complex makes billions of dollars. Everybody's happy. So where do we start? Yeah, well, everybody except the Ukrainians. Yeah, well, everybody's happy except the Ukrainians, but...

What's interesting is if they accept the deal, then the military industrial complex doesn't make billions of dollars. So we've got to stretch this out so that they can cash in a little bit. It's interesting to look at. What's that? Can you ask on the Israel side? There's no solutions. I always say it's tradeoffs. What's the short term and the medium term that you could think would be?

Well, so let me I'll do long term first almost is what I would do, which is, again, it's like this similar thing with Ukraine. It's like what's frustrating about all of this is that it's kind of like I'm not saying like every precise detail is known, but the broad strokes is obviously there. So look in. So the the U.N. recommends 56 percent for Ukraine.

for the state of Israel, okay? Then they go to war, Israel wins the war, and they don't just take that 56%, they take 78% of the land, okay? Then in 1967, they go to war with Egypt and Jordan, they win again, and then they take 100% of the land. So the last 22% is really what we're talking about, which is Gaza and the West Bank.

every single peace deal that's ever been on the table, and I'm not saying what the craziest leader of Hamas yells on social media or something. Yeah, you're talking about legitimate. When they actually sat down in the Oslo Accords, at Camp David, at any of this, it was always about that last 22%, which that's what they mean when they say 67 borders, is they're like, okay, you get the 78%. Oh, really? Not the 56% that you were supposed to have in the 60s.

that we didn't even think was fair back then. Not the 78% that you get that, but give us our last 22%. That's the deal. 67 wars. - But on that, just going back to you saying they went to war, when you go 67, when you go 73, when there is a war that happens, it's like, why do we get to go back to negotiating table after Israel won and say, all right, sorry about that, let's go back to this negotiating table. - I understand that perspective, like yesterday's price is not today's price.

100%. But I think like according to international law, you cannot take more land due to border conflict. I think that's what – There's a lot of international laws. You're also not allowed to like – But I also get that sentiment. Like you keep – we're occupying this land. You keep attacking us. All right. Well, then it's going to be ours.

I get that feeling. Okay, fine. Can you tell us the laws, though? Well, okay, so there is, it is, I'm not an expert on international law, but there is, it is, the settlements are definitely illegal. You're not allowed to transfer your population into occupied territory, which they continue to do in the West Bank. And yes, I do think that Andrew's right, that like you're not supposed, you're not really allowed to seize land from a war. I mean, this idea is like a very, this is the old order, the old order. The whole reason why we have international law

You can't just go win a war and then say your land is ours. But the problem beyond that is that it's not like Israel conquered Gaza and made it part of Israel or conquered the West Bank and made it part of Israel. They're just conquering it and holding the people there forever. And this is just – it's an unsustainable system. And the only – look, nobody – I shouldn't say nobody, but –

I'm not saying, and whenever any of these real negotiations were happening, it's not the claim is like you all have to go back to Europe or you all have to go live somewhere else. That's obviously a non-starter. All this from the river to the sea stuff is not helpful at all.

But I do think the obvious thing is that, look, you've got 5 million Palestinians living in this land. They have to get to have something. And it shouldn't be Israel's decision even. Why do you decide whether they get to have their own government or they get to – it's like they should have their independence. Let's say that there is an agreement reached, right? And it's – they get the 22%. It's back to whatever – what, 67 borders or – OK, 67 borders, whatever that is.

So how does Israel protect itself from another version of Hamas coming in and saying, hey, you know what? We don't want those. We don't want that agreement. Actually, we want 46 percent. Actually, we want 55 percent. Yeah, we want river to the sea. What are they supposed to do if they just relinquish total power in a vacuum? What would happen? So this is – I always love this quote, which I think I always butcher. But there's a quote from Thomas Jefferson where he's talking about slavery.

And he said, we have the wolf by the ear and we can we can neither afford to hold on to it nor to safely let it go. And essentially what they're what the big concern was is like, OK, these abolitionists are saying slavery is wrong, but like.

I mean, if we just release these slaves, they're going to come kill us. We've been enslaving these people forever. We've done horrible things to them. Like, if we let them go now, they're going to all come kill us. And you can understand where, like, that was a concern at the time. And, you know, a somewhat reasonable one. But...

In hindsight, if you look at it with the moral clarity from like 2000, you can't enslave people. I don't know. Like that's just not an option. So you just can't. So if that were to happen, they have to assume the risk. Well, yes, I'm saying that if Israel were to give Palestinian independence and then the Palestinians attacked Israel, we'd be having a different conversation at that point. But that's the fear of that is not enough to justify keeping people

And what would that conversation be? Well, I mean, look, the other thing about this I'll just say is that there's a lot of reason to think that that wouldn't be the case. And that, look, like when there were peace negotiations going on,

There was a lot of support behind the Palestinian Authority. And when the peace negotiations collapsed, Hamas's support went through the roof. And it's almost like the more desperate people are, the more they're like, oh, let's go blow something up. Whereas if they think there's actually hope and there's actually a chance for prosperity and a better life, they're much more likely to not engage in that. Now, I'm not saying that's a guarantee. If I were Israel, I wouldn't disarm tomorrow.

You know what I mean? Right. Like, Israel's got a pretty badass military. It is still...

hard to believe that they allowed october 7th to happen in the way they did i'm not a lot of this i'm not speculating about anything i don't really have any solid evidence on any of that but it's just it's if you know anything about israel and how much of a fortress it is and how prepared they are it's the wait time just makes no sense it's a tiny country like it's um but they could they could pretty easily just like not let that happen again and like

have solid border security. But that would be, I think, I think ultimately that would be easy to endure U.S. support. But border security was, besides that, and I won't even speak on the West Bank side, that's a complicated thing. And I, the hard right has always said, like, if there was a two state, it's Gaza. It's not, it's not also the West Bank. But you have Gaza.

thousands of rockets for years. So what's the border security? Like, do you believe that had there been just real peace, at least from Gaza over years and years and years, the way that, you know, they took away all the permits for all the workers that would come daily, do you believe that Israel would try to be in quote unquote enslaving them? Or do you think, Hey,

Build it up, let the money come in properly, not go into Hamas's, you know, the kids, billions of dollars. Like, I truly believe the same way we made a deal with the Abraham Accords and within one year, a million Israelis died.

went to the Emirates. Like, they were dying to create business, to spend their money. Like, I truly believe that if just not West Bank, I'm talking Gaza, if there was peace, there would have been that exact same sentiment. And I think that that's what Israelis are like.

Well, yeah, but I mean, it's, it's kind of, look, I mean, there, Israel wasn't occupying, or if you don't like the word occupying, wasn't dominating any of those countries. And so the idea that you're going to, like, I mean, I'm, first of all, just the, the point you made about the money not going right into Hamas's coffers, to be clear, Israel won't let sugar or potatoes or all types of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Right.

But they would facilitate cash payments to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars directly to Hamas, because actually that was the big secret, that Benjamin Netanyahu was intentionally keeping Hamas in power in Gaza. But I don't think the standard can be, we're going to dominate you and keep you in grinding poverty.

And then with impunity, whenever we want to go on these like bombing campaigns, I'm talking pre-October 7th. Like this has just been the status quo in Gaza. And you got to stop firing your rockets back at us. And as soon as you start acting peaceful, then we will tell you that we will allow you. Which order did that happen in? If Brooklyn is firing rockets into Manhattan for years and years, like they're going to respond. I don't think that there were bombing campaigns without

But now we're getting into Chicken and the Egg. For sure. And in order to do that, we have to go back to 1921. But we keep going back and I'm like, what's the next? Well, listen, I grant you that it's hard to say when you go with each one of these things, you go, well, which was a response to which, right? But if I'm just being honest here...

You go, this was a response to that, which was a response to that, which was a response to that, which was a response to a bunch of Eastern Europeans moving to a land they didn't inhabit and kicking hundreds of thousands of the people there out.

Like, that's really what the first thing that this is a response to. And it's just kind of hard to get away from that. Now, again, I'm not saying that means Jews are going away anytime soon. I'm not. It's just like, look, the Native Americans, like that problem here, right, is like solved pretty much. But if we were talking back about like... The old fast. Yes. But I'm just saying...

If we went back to like, well, look, were there instances where Native Americans attacked, you know what I mean, like settlers and then they were responding? Sure. But what was the first thing that the first thing was us coming over here? For sure. And so now if to the degree that there are still Native Americans around, you could make the argument.

there were always Jews there. Even though these Eastern European Jews came, there were Jews that were Sephardic Jews. Oh, there was always a small population. No, and part of the reason why... And there were no Americans here when the natives were here. Yes, yes, that's true. That's why it's a little different. Fair enough. But look, the Jews there also did, pre-Zionism, live in relative harmony with the Arabs. I mean, it's one of the reasons... I've heard back and forth on this. I've heard like, because, and I know everybody uses their own arguments, but like,

There's going to be a skirmish. Does that skirmish, and maybe that's too reductive, define the entirety of the relationship? If there's...

A hundred years of peace and then this horrible thing happens. Does that mean it was horrible the whole time? I don't know. But I have heard both arguments. The early Zionists even said it was part of the reason why they wanted to make their homeland in Palestine. Because it was so welcoming. Well, because, well, I mean, I don't know if I'd say so welcoming, but relatively speaking, the Ottomans and the Arabs had been better friends to the Jews than the Europeans had been. That was really where they dealt with the brunt of...

So maybe the argument shouldn't be that they had this amazing relationship. Maybe the argument is it's better than them white people were treating us. Basically. Everything is compared to what? Yes. That's better. I think that's more digestible. Because I've been kind of told there's this... I've been told, and maybe it's propaganda, that during... I've probably even regurgitated it. During the Ottoman Empire, the Jews flourished with the Ottomans, and they were best friends. I'm like, oh, it must have been harmony. Well...

See, I was saying pre-Zionism because during the Ottoman Empire also was – this is kind of – I mean it depends on what point during the Ottoman Empire you're talking about. I mean there's a – Because I think it's like 400 years or something. Yeah. So it's more like the problems, at least from my understanding of this, the problems got worse and worse as –

kind of like the Zionist experiment got more and more aggressive. And there were a lot of mistakes made along the way. There's one figure in Zionism who I find is my favorite. It was Haim Weizmann, who was like, do you know who that is? So he was like kind of the godfather of Zionism for a little bit there. Before Herzl? No, no, no, after Herzl, but

like before Ben-Gurion, like was a, so he was almost supposed to be David Ben-Gurion who ultimately became the first prime minister of, he was like ahead of him in position. And he's been a, I know it was a, yep, that's him. That's that Jew. That's Colonel Sanders. He makes chicken. Well, he went on to make some very tasty chicken. Of course he changed his name by that point. But so he was, I remember, I know it was a Daryl Cooper who did this amazing, um,

this amazing podcast series. It's basically a book on tape, but it's like the best man. If you, it's like 30 hours long or something like that. But if you really want to understand like the, the history of the conflict, it's the best thing to listen to is just brilliant guy. Um, but he said that he calls him the last humanist Zionist. But so Haim Weitzman's whole theory was that like, look, if this is going to work, there's only one way it's going to work, which is that we have to like,

uh, just smother these Arabs with kindness. And we got to bring all this investment in and make their lives so much better than their lives were before we got here. And that's the only way that we're actually going to have like a meaningful, sustainable homeland where we're not at war with our neighbors. And he, this was fairly like,

This was swallowed by the Zionists for a while. And it was really after World War II when Ben-Gurion and all these other guys, Menachem Begin and these guys, were like, no, no, no, you're living in like a, you could almost hear it from an American perspective. They'd go, you're living in a pre-Holocaust world.

Like the same way they'd say pre-911 world. Like it was almost like, yeah, that's all. That was all nice and good before. But like these guys just tried to exterminate us. So now we're going to take what's ours and we're going to do it by any means necessary. And we got to embrace terrorism to kick the British out. And you could see, you know, you're talking like 1946, 1947. It's Martin and Malcolm.

Well, look, America just dropped two nukes on Japanese cities. We just burned Germany to the ground. Who the hell? They just got Holocausted. Who the hell is anyone to tell us that we're not allowed to break a few eggs in order to make what we want to make? So and by the way, like as a Jewish person, like I'm sympathetic to that. I understand that mentality. But at the same time, you could also go from the perspective of of.

Arabs, you're like, hey, we didn't do that. Yeah. Like, that wasn't us. Like, why are we paying the price for what, like, some Europeans did to you? Like, hey, carve up a part of Germany and give it to them if that's what happened. Like, why are we the ones? These people didn't try to exterminate us. Those people tried to exterminate us. Right. So there's, you know, it's just like the tragedy of history. You know, like on every sitcom,

ever where they would like tease the couple that's supposed to get together. Like this was our childhood was always like, you know, like, yeah, they're about to get together that she got the wrong message. And now it's two more years until they get, you know, it's always like, you guys were right here just to make this work. And so I just think the whole thing could have gone a lot better. But for us to be a country thousands of miles away to not be like, listen, if you're if

you know, if your family member was killed on October 7th, I'm not going to sit there and talk to someone and be like, you really shouldn't be leveling Gaza right now. Cause I know if my family was killed on that, I'd be, I'd be, I mean, I think especially like you got a kid now, man. It's like when you have kids, you kind of like,

you understand a different level of that. I mean, you could always understand like your friend or like some, or like your parents or something like that. But you're like, I mean, like I got two little kids. You're like, dude, if someone hurt one of my kids, uh,

Just the levels of evil that I could sink to, it's really not very hard for me to get there. As soon as I start thinking about it, I'm like, kill anything that moves. Kill anything. And so I totally understand that. Makes you understand human behavior way better. The worst versions of it. So, you know, what originally woke me up, got me really interested in politics was Ron Paul's presidential campaign in 2008.

And this was the point that he made. I don't know if you've ever seen this video. It was Ron Paul versus Rudy Giuliani. And it was in George W. Bush's Republican Party. If you're like for younger people, I know there's a lot of younger people who listen to this show. And I think like I don't know if you could fully appreciate what the culture of America was like post 9-11 when George W. Bush was president. And the whole tone of it was like there. It's like, look, you're either with us or you're with the terrorists.

By the way, the reason they hate us is because we're free. That's their beef with us, is that we're free. So what can you do with that? You really can't do nothing. And they're going to hear from us real soon. So we're going to explode them all to death, because what the hell else can you do with that? And Ron Paul got up and he was like, look, they don't hate us because we're free. They hate us because we're over there. That's why they're coming over here. Right. And so there was this thing where it's almost like it reminded you how...

Like these aren't his words, they're my words, but like, it's like, okay, so you know how 9-11 happened? And then immediately we were all like, we're going to go kill you guys. It's like, yeah.

that's how they feel too. That's like exactly how they feel. And so I do think there's something where it's like- - Both sides. - Right, so the same way that if you're in Israeli after October 7th, you're like burn this whole thing to the ground. It's like, yeah, but I think that's also the mentality of all those people. And then weirdly they'll sit there and they'll go, they'll be like, well, of course we have to burn all of Gaza to the ground. Did you see the videos of them cheering?

After October 7th, and you're like yeah, but I think they're kind of doing the same thing you're doing right now You know what I mean like you see Nikki Haley went over there, and she's signing bombs How fucking sick and twisted is that that's like the darkest thing I've ever seen my and then the same people who will see that go and did you see they were greeting the people on October 7th like they were heroes when they came back you're like that is also pretty sick and twisted yeah, I

All of this is pretty sick and twisted. I think you guys actually have a lot in common. A startling similarity. Benjamin Netanyahu. We hear this name. I'm pretty sure he's a Jew. But

Who is he? Do you think that he is net negative, net positive for Israel? Unbelievable net negative. And what is he inspired by? What is he motivated by? Is this personal interest? Does he have a group that is pushing him in a certain direction? I'm so removed from it. I don't even know what to think about this person. So maybe like a little... Okay, so he is a member of the Likud party.

Isn't this a recent thing, though, that he's a member of Likud? Didn't he have to, like, partner up with them? No, no, no. No, he's a member of Likud, but then they've partnered with people who are, like, a click to the right of the Likud party. Got it, got it. So essentially, it was... And it's a parliamentary system, so they need as many... As many of these people. So they'll go and jail wherever they can.

And in this kind of somewhat ironic and tragic thing, so like when he was, before October 7th, you know, he had huge protests against him out in the streets because they were trying to like crack down on the power of their Supreme Court to give him more power, essentially. Like 30 weeks in a row. And then October 7th brought everyone together. They're protesting against Netanyahu for 30 weeks. And so now if you could imagine, right, in this parliamentary system,

all the liberals are furious at him. But now what does that have the effect of politically for Netanyahu? Then the only alliance left for him is everyone to the right. So he's now got to cater to these extreme right groups, even far to the right of the Likud. And so anyway, the Likud party was founded by Menachem Begin, who was one of the

terrorists in the, before the creation of Israel and a brutal one at that. And anyone can go look this up. This isn't like a pejorative, like this is, they, they said in their own words that they were embracing terrorism. Um, but anyway, so the, the Netanyahu, uh, doctrine as it's been, uh, described was essentially, as you, you talked about the Abraham accords, um, earlier. So the, the,

When I was a kid, Yitzhak Rabin was the prime minister of Israel, and he embarked on what are known as the Oslo Accords, the peace process. And essentially, I mean, the Israelis had committed back in the 70s, okay? So the 70s, they had a meeting at Camp David, and Israel vaguely, you know, if you could think 1967, they took over Gaza and the West Bank. By the 70s, the U.S. was kind of like, listen,

we're gonna give you in perpetuity billions of dollars every year. We're also gonna give Egypt billions of dollars every year. This was basically like, we're gonna bribe you guys to not go to war anymore, okay? So like, you guys make a freaking deal because you've been to war four times in 25 years or whatever it was. So it's like, okay, we're gonna, you gotta stop. Yeah.

And then it was kind of thrown in there like, and by the way, you gotta eventually give the Palestinians a state. Like, you can't just rule them forever. And they kind of agreed to that. So in the 90s, this was supposed to be, oh, they're finally doing it. And, you know, Yitzhak Rabin and...

And Arafat and Bill Clinton took pictures together. And these were good faith negotiations or both sides were? You know, it's politics. It got close. Yeah, I could paint a rosier picture of it than is actually the case, but at least certainly much better than the place that we're at right now. But I hear both sides were not operating in good faith. Yeah, there's probably truth to that too. So there was all types of...

Stuff from both sides and there were all types of political pressures and so like one of the very real political pressures and I've heard this story about so an Arafat went back after initially I don't it may have been initially signing or it may have been one of the subsequent meetings, but people were throwing Palestinians were throwing their keys and

They had their old keys from their homes in, you know, wherever these Palestinian villages that are now part of Israel. Like, you sold us out because they're hanging on to some dream that they're going to take back over the whole thing, which is like just...

never going to happen. And so there's political pressure on him there. And then, you know, there was also some political pressure on Yitzhak Rabin. Like there was that right wing Israeli who murdered him. Yeah. There was also some of that pressure on him. Wow. So both sides, there are factions, the people that are not, there are the right wingers of, of,

respectively of either side, right? Because even Hamas are like, Hamas are the right-wingers within, you know, Gaza. They're the hardcore ones. So anyway, so, but so the Yitzhak Rabin, loosely speaking, and this is somewhat, you know, rose-colored glasses looking back at it, but it was kind of traditionally what the view was, was that, look,

You have to make peace with the Palestinians. Otherwise, you're never going to make peace with the broader Arab world. That was the traditional thinking. OK, and that and because the beef with the rest of the Arab world was over this was over the Palestinians. Right. And all of them essentially refused to recognize Israel because they didn't recognize Israel having control. Well, either they didn't recognize them at all or they didn't recognize them having control of Gaza and the West Bank.

And essentially what the Netanyahu doctrine was, was he was like, no, no, no, I can flip this thing. And the Abraham Accords were really like a culmination of the Netanyahu doctrine. He goes, no, what I'm going to do

is I'm going to go work out deals with the surrounding Arab countries so that I never have to work out a deal with the Palestinians. And then Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, had the brilliant idea that, hey, we got a whole lot of money. We could just bribe the shit out of all these countries and give them fighter jets for you and a little money package for you. And it kind of worked.

until october 7th yeah you know where you go like oh all right yeah it worked in the sense that you let the palestinians know that your case because the only hope for the palestinians ever has been like maybe the rest of the arab countries are coming at some point again and then when you see them make all these deals it's like nope you like you will be subjugated forever you now live in hopelessness more death and that's and that yeah you know culminated in october oh shit

You've created a desperation that would be even more supportive of a terror group. Oh, wow. I didn't even think about that. So Kushner's getting all this credit, like he's actually pushed these countries closer. When in reality, he's created that type of...

You need Hamas. I remember getting in a big argument with Tim Pool about this, like, was it like a couple of years ago? I love Tim Pool. But we got in a big argument about this where he was like, I don't know, Dave, you're all about peace. You got to like Donald Trump. I mean, the Abraham Accords, all these peace deals. And I'm like, which one of those countries were at war?

none of them were at war with each other yeah the uae and israel weren't fighting a war and then he went over and worked out a peace deal he bribed both of them with my money have you seen an f-35 we're giving them fifth gen fighters this is the best counter argument i've heard they are pretty bad that is really interesting i never looked at it like that i i think that

Again, I'm such a casual when it comes to these things, but I figured that Jared Kushner's efforts out there were universally accepted as his finest achievement. He was kind of looked at as this kind of like...

He was kind of positioned almost by Trump like this like bumbling idiot son-in-law. And then when people look back and reflected on what happened with the Abraham Accords, they were like, well, no, this is fantastic what just happened. But it does create a sentiment you can imagine within the Palestinian people that there is no hope. And no hope can lead you to support a terrorist organization.

Because the thing is, if you're just a casual, though, it seems so like that on the surface. Because you go, I don't know, the Arabs and Jews have always been fighting. And then here we went over and did a big deal with the Arabs and Jews. Yeah, it seems totally good. We did shows in the Middle East. But what were they fighting over? And was that situation ever actually resolved? Oh, no, this was just papered over by all of this. I'm going to tell you how we solve this, okay? First of all, Dave's people, the Ashkenazis, have caused all this problem.

It is. The Jews are separating. If we make more agreements with all of the Arab countries, remember, Israel is 55% Sephardic. They're Arabs. We love it. Moroccans haven't met Israeli Moroccans yet. Once they go over, people will be like, love these guys. Then we bring them all together, push the Ashkenazis out. Actually, no, no. We need your...

We need your brains. Damn. They can work remote. This plan is the most Ashkenazi thing I've ever heard. I'm pretty impressed. Alright guys, we gotta take a break real quick so I can tell you about CookUnity. It's a meal delivery service, but the meals are actually prepared by award-winning professional chefs. Not some shit-ass meal that gets delivered to your door every week. I'm talking about a

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50% off their first order and 10% off their next three weeks when they sign up at cookunity.com slash flagrant. That's C-O-O-K-U-N-I-T-Y dot com slash flagrant. Now let's get back to the shizzle. But I do have a question. Like every time we do talk about the past and going back...

Say, first, like, all the people that don't know this story, like, we're 40, we've heard this over, we know the layers. Now you're talking. I know nothing. But a lot of people, like Gen Z, are hearing this and then coupling that with, like, from the river to the sea, and then all the people are like, wait a second, is that, like, a war cry? So they don't believe we should have this, now we're defending our current... Not mine, I'm not Israeli, but, like, what would an Israeli... How do they act with that? Like, wait, do I have to prove that I...

I just fight now, I guess, because that's a war cry that you're saying like, you want me gone. What are they supposed to do?

Well, I mean, the Americans look like the tragedy is like really the last nine months because, you know, it's like nobody wants to ever hear this ever because it's like you you just like kind of sound like a pussy or whatever. So it's like that you get dismissed immediately. But look, after 9-11, there was like people forget how much we had the world on our side for like this brief little moment. They had they had candlelight vigils in Tehran.

about 9-11 and like you know I mean I know like you know there are Shiites and Al Qaeda Sunnis so there's a little something there but like also part of it was just like yeah people see that and they're like oh dude this is horrible like we're you know and if if you could imagine if

George W. Bush had done what they did, say, for the special ops missions in Afghanistan and take out the al-Qaeda bases. And if they had trapped Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora when they could have and they allowed him to slip out so they could pursue this terror war and get their war in Iraq that they wanted. Yeah, it's a real interesting little detail there. But let's say we had done it and that was it.

We just, okay, we're taking, these guys hit us, we're taking out their bases. And then we went, hey, listen, okay, we, once you come here and kill our people, that's over the line and we have to go kill you. But there are grievances that were brought up here that are somewhat legitimate. And we have been unfair in our treatment to the Muslim world, you know? And so what we're going to do is we're going to, you know what I mean? Like step back on that. And we're going to like,

We had this powerful opportunity. So like all the things that the worst right-wing hawks complain about the Muslim world, there certainly are a lot of problems there. And then we could have shown that we really were the good guys and kind of like won over a lot of support there and really moved them in the right direction. And likewise, if after October 7th, listen, for the entire history of Israel up until Netanyahu, they always handled the terrorism problem with targeted assassinations and special operations.

They never treated it like a military problem. You can't just launch, like the most, or one of the most densely populated areas in the world, we're just gonna level the place? I mean, this was the worst way to handle it. If they had just been like, listen, if they had said, the people who were responsible for October 7th are going to be brought to justice, that is number one, non-negotiable.

However, we do recognize that the status quo is unsustainable and we want to move. We are starting a new peace negotiations in a good faith position. Any group of Palestinians who's here on the other side to negotiate, we're ready to sit down at the table like they did have like an opportunity to not turn world opinion against them. You know what I mean? And so.

Of course, now after the last nine months, now it's tougher than ever to get back to a position like that. But it at least has to start with stopping this hypothetical scenario. This is something I'm concerned about. But I think that was beautiful. I agree with you. But I do have a concern. Let's say you go back to the borders. You say, hey, we are going to stop. You can use occupy whatever word you want to use. We are going to completely remove ourselves. You guys are on your own.

Imagine there's going to be some support from the Muslim world as well, maybe the United States of America, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't matter. But the message goes out there and it's essentially, but if there is one attack, we are going to respond in kind.

Are there not nefarious actors in the Israeli government potentially that could stage – what is that called? A false flag. A false flag. Like this is – I mean Americans, we've done this. Yeah. Why wouldn't any other country do it? So it's – even if you have everybody operating in good faith, how can you even trust an attack that would come over? Yeah.

It's a very good point. It just feels helpless, all of it. Well, that is a very good point. And I could see where that it feels totally hopeless. But I would just say, again, you're right. Like, I'm not disagreeing with you. But I would also say that, like, you know,

England and Ireland are like right next to each other. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like things are cool. You still have to try. No, you gotta try. There has to be a process. Yeah, yeah. You know, Russia and Germany or like, maybe that's not the best example right now, but like France and Germany are right next to each other. And these countries where you, there would have been a time not that long ago where it would have been like, this is just never going to work. You're never going to get past this and get to peace. But they did.

And like, yeah, so it's it's it's a you know, there's this guy, Gene Epstein is really brilliant economist. And I remember he always said this. He called it his case for radical optimism.

And he goes, he goes, if you were sitting around in 1845 and you're like at the height of slavery and you went, you know, in the next 20 years, I think slavery is going to be abolished across the Western world. Anyone would have been like, you're out of your mind. Like the abolitionist parties got like 1% of the vote. They were regularly lynched. Like it was like, there's no...

No way we're getting rid of this institution, which has been here for all of human history. But like within 20 years, it was gone. So even when things seem at their most hopeless, it's like, I don't know. We also live in a world like clearly we're living through some type of like major revolutionary paradigm shifting moment.

right now. I think that's pretty obvious. Like, things are... Between just, like, how much the corrupt nature of politics is being exposed, the decentralization in the flow of information, the rise of artificial intelligence. Like, I'm not even claiming to understand what the implications of all of this are. But, like...

I don't know, maybe we could be radically optimistic that, like, maybe something much better could come along. Yeah. Or we're all going to die. There's an interesting book on that. Factfulness, have you heard of this book? I don't think so. This dude Hans Rosling, he's like a Norwegian dude. But basically he, like, charts... No, I don't trust him. He, like, charts over, like, the course of human history that things have progressively gotten better.

Yeah. Like there's more accessible drinking water, more people have access to transportation. There's less child mortality. So even as things improve, we also get a distorted view of like how bad things are because the starkness between the goodness and the badness starts to actually come out. I know you said you don't want to predict.

But I'm going to ask you to do one. What do you think the ripple effect is of the sentiment in America seemingly turning, whereas when I was growing up, you were just pro-Israel, no one questioned it. Then starting about 10 years ago, people started being like, whoa, what's actually going on over there? I don't know if I'm pro-Israel. I might be pro-Palestinian. And it seems like the majority of people are feeling that right now. What is the ripple effect of that, do you think?

So really, it's a good question, man. That's a really good question. I mean, there's no doubt that that is right. And, you know, I've done like a bunch of debates on this topic and like I debated Dennis Prager and I've debated like a bunch of these other guys. And it's almost like there's this weird, you see it where there's a real generational gap where like,

part of it is that younger people are just getting their information from different sources. Yeah. And they're not getting it from like the same old corporate media. So like the debate would almost start with Dennis Prager, you know, like just saying the stuff that you could have gotten away with, I'm sure in the nineties. But now you're like saying it to me. And it's just like, you know, the, he goes, the conflict in the middle East is that one side wants peace and the other side wants all the Jews dead. And I'm like, but that's not true. He's like,

Well, I didn't realize we were allowed to tell the other side of the story. So I do think a lot of it is just that people are now coming into contact with other narratives and other stories. And some of those are oversimplified on the other side, too. You know, and it's not that they're perfect, but I do think. Sorry. No, I do think there's people aren't going to buy. Look, even when it comes to our country, not just Israel. I mean, we're not like a blindly patriotic country in the way that we used to be. It's interesting to see.

It's really interesting to see. I also noticed that like the same thing that happened with corporate mainstream media I think is happening with like YouTube journalism as well where it's like at first there was this democratization of information and you were putting truth out there and speaking truth to power. And then the truth gets a little boring sometimes and the views go down.

Yeah, yeah. So then you start chasing those views again and how do you chase a view? Maybe you'll tell the truth about a specific narrative that's really clicky. And it's almost like watching what happened with CNN and Fox News and MSNBC. I'm like watching it happen on YouTube as well. It's kind of heartbreaking. I mean, I'm sure you must have, you know, you hope that like we are kind of like,

at least like old enough and wise enough. And, and, and we're not like, you know, I mean, you know, me, the three of us knew each other literally when we had nothing, when we were literally like, get like, if someone offered you 50 bucks, you're like, I have to go do this because there's 50.

So what am I insane? What a dream. Like, I mean, it was literally like at a time. Brag about that, a weekday gig? We'd be like in the East Village and someone would be like, if you walk to 135th Street right now, I will give you $50. And you're like, well, I guess that's, you know. But okay, so you're not in that situation anymore. So you try to kind of like rise above some of these incentives, but you feel it. You feel the incentives when you're in this world where it's like, I know you guys could do podcasts about like

the dumbest shit that would get huge, huge numbers. We actively push back against it. There are things that obviously we're curious in that are fun, like bringing in the Egyptologist guys over here. Sure, sure. Israel-Palestine, super fun. But I'm just saying the dumbest shit. It's so easy to have certain people that you're just not interested in, and it's just not fun, and you have to...

I don't even look at it as a hit on views. You have to maintain the integrity of your show. I think you've got to do it for your audience, but you've also got to do it for you. You see people lose themselves. Their identity just becomes views. It doesn't become the whole reason why we started talking in the first place. Oh my God, when you said every Twitter account that's always like, what do you notice in this video? Any thoughts? You're like, dude, you're not even saying anything. This is just engagement. And I look. What am I supposed to notice? What do you notice in this video? Nothing.

It's just Taylor Swift walking on stage. What am I supposed to see here? I don't see any of that. What's that guy's name? Matt Wallace or something like that? Should I not even mention him? Is he like... No, I don't know. I don't know. But I know that exact account. I didn't even have anyone specific in mind. I was just like, see these things. But I remember one time, and I won't even say who this is, but it was just like one of the dumbest political commentator guys who's got a huge... Can you say it to us and we just bleep it?

He made a video of like a segment of me on Rogan. So like a video, like a segment, like taken, trying to take apart my arguments. And it was all really, really stupid. And so then I did like a segment on my show, like responding to it and just dunking on him.

And dude, it got like some of the most numbers of anything I've ever done. And it's almost like when you see it, you're like, oh, I could just find the dumbest content creators and just take their thing apart and just get like, and there's like all of the incentives are to like do that. But then you're like, but I don't want to be that guy. Do you remember Red Eye? Of course. Yeah. It was a really fun show for comics on Fox News. It was super late. And, uh,

It was really fun. It was genuinely fun. I would assume you did it. Oh, yeah. You probably started killing it on that. That was probably... No, they were the first TV show to book me. And...

Anyway, I remember going on and I was so naive to all this. I liked just trusted news. I was such an innocent little fucking kid outside of saying horrific jokes. I was like, the news is real. And I remember going a few times and they were bringing us some story of something happening on a college campus. And I remember I even said this out loud. I was like, wait, so is this just what we do? We find the most extreme left-wing thing and then we just act like that's normally happening everywhere? And the rest of them looked at me like,

Is this guy a fucking idiot? That's our entire business model. That is the whole thing. I genuinely didn't get it. Sir, you are sitting in a room in a building worth $300 million and it's all paid for on that model that you just called out in front of everybody. Oh, God.

You got to find that glit. I bet you it's up there somewhere. And I'm just like, oh, God, that is the hack. That is the model. That's when it stops being news. It stops being journalism. But like Fox News was always, in a weird way, it almost became the thing you almost respect more because it's so transparent and obvious. But Fox News was always like, just like Sean Hannity comes over and he's like, the Democrats want to institute communism and take away footnotes.

You know, there's some grandpa out there who's like, hey, what now? Like they're just just the dumbest liberal. And then you and so anyway, just to the point, though, it's that like you just got it. The only real answer is you kind of just got to guard against that. And even though these incentives exist, you always kind of got to try to guard against for yourself. Yeah. Let me not just do the thing that I don't want to become because you do watch a lot of I mean, there's a lot of accounts out there that are just like.

I'm going to give you – I don't know if you'll take it as a compliment. I mean it's a very, very high compliment. I know you guys differ politically, but Jon Stewart to me – and I differ with him on a lot of politics stuff, but I think he's fucking incredible in that he is the smartest person in pretty much any room he walks into, and he does his best to be nuanced within his thoughts.

And I feel like a huge problem since he left is there are a lot of not even reasonable, terrible facsimiles of him that just lean one way to try to give you. I feel like you are, again, a different version because you have different thoughts, but you are the guy to take that. Oh, well, thank you. Because you'll do the intellectual heavy lifting. I think that's what John did. And I think a lot of people that aren't willing to do that, you have to just take.

a party line because it's easier yeah it is so much easier you gotta talk every day every single day and it's like I don't want to read every single book you'll fucking read the books I will read books yeah um

but I do look, I think Jon Stewart, well, they're not boring. No, I know. I can't read them if they're boring, but okay, fair enough. But I guess I'm saying it's boring to me. You're going to, you're going to, you're going to look at, you're going to look at an argument someone made and a reference from a book that they, that they brought up. And I imagine you will, you might buy that fucking book. Yeah. I've done it several times, even when I hate,

Yeah, I've done that. There was one thing where I had to buy this book from the Brookings Institute, which I really hate. I hated to send them money. But someone was claiming there's this book that totally refutes my point. And then it wasn't until like 250 pages into the book that they addressed the thing I was saying. And then they didn't refute it at all.

They just asserted. They were like, that's not true. And I was like, did I just do all of this for absolutely nothing? So yeah, that's my torture. But most people won't do that. And they want to outsource that. And I think that there are times like this where, especially with this specific situation, where people are terrified to kind of share an opinion because they don't know what that opinion will do on either side.

And they look, they gravitate towards people who are going to do that intellectual heavy lifting to figure things out and slice things thin enough where you can comfortably speak about an issue. Well, there's... Look, man, like, there's... Because there's levels to all of this stuff. And so when it comes to, like, being, like, the most informed or, like, an expert on stuff, like, I'm not that good. There's people with, like, levels of expertise above me. But I do think, kind of to, like, your point, like, Jon Stewart, particularly with his original version of The Daily Show, there was just...

Again, I feel like the bar is kind of low. I also feel like that's why I look impressive because the bar is just so low. But it's like there was a thoughtfulness there. There was something in Jon Stewart where he kind of had a view that was like, okay, he's put some thought into this and he actually had... And then it was like everyone after him, every version of that show after him... They just want to be famous. Let me say the talking point.

point that the audience already wants to hear. And this also just happened with Late Night. And by the way, it's not even a comment on these people's talent because...

Stephen Colbert was enormously talented on the Colbert report. And Kimmel's like hilarious back in the day is just that it's almost like the economy became just say the thing. Don't take any chances. Just say what you already know is going to get you. You know, it's like, listen, there is a 200 million dollar check in this for you. If you just get out there and how about your joke is the unvaccinated should die. Ain't that right? OK, back.

I do think for anybody, even if you are just like a Democrat, even if you kind of agree with them, this is no way to live. Your artists aren't supposed to be genetic replicas of the last thing that everyone all day said today. This is terrible. God, I hate that stuff.

And also, like, for us, I just... Like, when the three of us, like, first came up, were coming up in stand-up, it was almost, like, before the rise of all that. And that was, like, the cool thing. It was, like, no, everybody was, like, unique and different and everybody was saying things that were, like, wild and offensive or this. Yeah, because I wasn't mainstream yet. But there was this beauty in the art form. It's, like, really what I fell in love with stand-up comedy over was that you could go kind of, like...

If you somehow could combine this like really wild thought, but then also hitting on something true that everyone kind of knew and felt, you could bring the whole room together in this moment, this involuntary moment where they all went, this guy got us. There's something so beautiful about that. And then even in standup, I mean, you know, it,

I remember like over, really it was like after Trump got in, it was like in 2016, 2017, 2018, the rise of like the woke mindset in standup comedy was so bizarre to me. - Oh see, I felt it was happening before that. And I think Trump was, maybe when it hit its zenith, but when Trump won, I was like, one, I think silver lining to whatever, however dark you think this cloud is,

People are realizing that woke shit is it's a it's a rap for the caucus started. It's gonna run out Yeah, maybe that's right, but it was like but it was wild there. It was like at a fever And make so much sense like stand-up is so hard and so imagine if I just need to get a quick laugh Yeah

You could get an applause break for nothing. Also, they're so terrified. The audience is in there and they don't want to be ostracized by their friends or their coworkers, their communities. They're like, I'm just going to laugh at the things that I'm allowed to laugh with. And then there's also the true believers within the crowd where it was like we had empowered them.

the person who kind of wanted to be offended to like, oh no, you're right. You're right to interrupt this whole show right now. Yeah, you tell them. How dare that, you know, person with his male privilege on stage or whatever say this about you. I remember early in that time, right, when things were getting a little bit like sensitive. Um,

Naturally, I'm gravitating towards the thing that's a little bit more wrong, distasteful, defending a position that you really shouldn't defend and trying to find some logical thread to make it all make sense. But it was so sensitive. I remember there were comics at the cellar who thought I was like big MAGA.

And I was like, no, I'm just doing the thing that we all... We've been doing it. Yeah. Remember like four years ago when we were just making crazy jokes? Yeah. Yeah, I'm just doing that now. It's just crazy to defend that guy. Right. But they truly believed it. That's how sensitive... When even the comics...

Well, that's... We're propagandized. That's what I'm trying to say. Audiences are fine. Think whatever you want. Well, it's also a certain type of comedian, and I know you were always this way. I was always this way. You were always this way, Akash. Like, there's... Not every comic is like this, but would have that thing of being like, well, right away, like, if...

everybody is like, if everybody is against Y, well, like, man, if I could be Thor Y, that'd make the whole room laugh. Like, if I could do that and still win all over, then that would be like the ultimate achievement in comedy right now. And it's the most fun. It's naughty. Yeah.

If you get them on that, it's the most fun. And so it was a weird time where like, even you're like, yeah, we've, this is what we've always been doing, man. And then all of a sudden, like, it was like, no, that's illegal now. So we came here to agree tonight. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the one, I think, negative effect of Jon Stewart is he said things he believed and he made them funny and he was intelligent. But then a lot of comics, I think, were like, oh, that is comedy. That is comedy. Saying the things I believe. Yeah, he was so influential in the way that he did comedy that maybe people thought, okay, I got to be right. Well, it's kind of like, you know how Doug Stanhope is like one of the greatest comedians to ever live? Yes. Every comedian inspired by Doug Stanhope sucks ball.

It really is a testament to how great he is. He's so great. You can't do that. He can. But there is this weird thing where it's like, no, that guy's really good at it. You don't have the thing he has, which is a one in a billion thing. And

And now you're just trying to be like, let me get up there and say something. It's great because the honesty and the people try to be honest the way that he's honest. They don't have the chops. It has to be honest the way you're honest. They don't have the chops. They don't have the affect. They don't have the ideas. He's a truly brilliant guy that is so pure in the way he does it. He makes you think that that's how you are with your friends. And you are not. You know what? He might not.

He has worked on that craft for fucking 40 years and that's why it seems so now. And you're also, you're looking at him like, you know, whatever, 20 years into his career or whatever it was at the time when he was inspiring people. It's like, that probably wasn't him three years in either. He was probably just figuring out how to tell a joke and stuff. But you're trying to jump right to that. So, yeah.

Yeah. Okay, anything else going on in the world? Are you... I know we have limited time. Are you voting in November? Do you vote? Oh, that's a great question. I meant to ask that. We didn't even talk Trump-Harris. Okay. You don't have to say who, but I'm just curious. No, I mean, I would tell you if I was going to. I mean, like, I don't know. I just probably not... I don't really believe in voting for president. I was going to say, I don't think you do. I'm not a big... Well, I mean, I just... I think...

If you're if you're let's just say it takes you an hour or two of your day to go vote, if you're taking an hour or two of your day to do anything that you have a one and one hundred and forty millionth of a say in, if it was anything.

I would look at you and be like, isn't there something better you could do with your time? Like, that's crazy. Like, that's just... Literally, we would not do that in anything else in our lives. It's kind of, I think, this, like, this ritual of the religion of... Feels like a social responsibility. Yeah. I also just don't, like... If I were to vote, it would be some type of protest vote. Like, I wouldn't... You know what I mean? And...

It doesn't matter. I mean, I live in New Jersey. It's going to be a... It's going to go for Harris. That's my issue. There's no real, like... So, I also just... You know, I really feel like the Democrats deserve to lose this election for several reasons. I think... I mean, look, the...

The biggest things that I say of the Biden-Harris administration were like the first big project was we're going to get this vaccine in as many people as possible, no matter what we have to do to get it in them, force, whatever we have to do. And the whole thing was sold off of lies. The thing didn't work the way they said it would work. And most people didn't need it.

Then it was, we're all in on funding the war in Ukraine, which I think is like the most reckless policy in modern American history. And then they just totally weaponized the justice system against their political opponent. And like, if that doesn't mean you deserve to lose, then I don't know what would. And then I see Trump. LAUGHTER

I'm just like, I don't... So on the other day, I'm literally coming off of him. I'm like, these Democrats have to lose in order for this country to survive. And then Trump's up there and he's like, full immunity for cops. You know, you're like, what? What type of plan is that? He didn't even say qualified immunity because I don't even think he knows the difference between the two. But it just goes full immunity. Full immunity? So they can just kill anybody they want. They can do whatever they want. But it just... And I just...

I just hate the campaign he's running. Okay, take us, help us understand the last few weeks. Okay. Biden steps down. Well. Kind of. Do we have a little? Oh, I mean, that was a straight up coup. They just totally stole this. And we're being a little hyperbolic here, I imagine. I mean, I don't know. I don't know.

We don't know how hyperbolic we're being. Straight up cool. Well, look, let's just look at it, like the facts. I don't think he's about to win this. Well, again, tell me where I'm wrong. I read a little something on this. So Joe Biden has been obviously in severe cognitive decline for many years now. The entire media is going, is like in emperor's new clothes mode. You're not allowed. The week before the debate, the new propaganda term that was rolled out was cheap fake.

I don't know if you guys remember. It was the shortest lived propaganda campaign ever. It only lasted a few days. Cheap fake? Yeah, cheap. You know, it sounds like deep fakes. But you see, there's all these cheap fake videos online. Now, cheap fakes are different than deep fakes in that they're real. But they're out of context.

So people are putting out these videos that make it seem like Joe Biden's in severe cognitive decline. But this is all just, this is all right-wing disinformation. So this is what every corporate news outlet was saying the week leading up to the debate.

Then the debate happens. It goes so catastrophically bad that they have to do this crazy 180 degree turn. At least he told the truth. Yeah, right. It's like they're struggling with how do we grapple with what, which was like, I mean, the debate performance itself was like, it's like, yeah, how did you guys let it get to this point? You pretended that it wasn't a problem until literally it's not even just like,

a grandpa out of a nursing home, it was like the guy who's really not doing good within that nursing home. Like your average nursing home, you know, in "Take Patient" is doing better than this guy. - There will never be a worse debate ever. - By far. In the history of televised presidential debates, it was by far the worst appearance. Nothing even comes close. So right after the debate, the entire media has to turn on him and they're like, someone else has to come get him.

He said he's gonna go, he goes to Camp David and he has a meeting with all his inner circle. It's like Jill Biden and Hunter Biden and his closest advisors and they all go there. - Hunter's probably the best. - Yeah, the Hunter's, you got this. - You can do it. - This thing's gonna turn around, bro. Tomorrow we're gonna be up by 20 points. I got a 10 point plan, we follow these 10 points.

But anyway, so they go there. So he decides, he comes out, he goes, nope, I'm running. You know, I beat this guy in 2020. I'll beat him again this year. That's my legacy. I'm going to beat Donald Trump twice. I'm running. He goes,

It's just not working. They send him out on a series of like interviews and things like he blows every single one, every last one. And he really it was just terrible because now it was like it was like, you know, the story of the emperor's new clothes or whatever. This was after now someone's already yelled out. He's naked naked.

And so now there's a microscope on it. So every little, these things that were happening for years, but when he came out there and he's like, hey, my vice president, Donald Trump, has been all over the country. You're like, your vice president, Donald Trump? Or when he introduces Putin. Yeah, yeah. He calls Zelensky Putin. Oh, Jesus. So it was really bad.

But he's still like, no, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have a meeting with him where they're strong-arming him. They're like, we're withholding $90 million from your campaign because you have to step down and step aside. He says, no, I'm not leaving. Then, according to Cy Hersh, who's a real legit reporter on this, and I think he's right about this, Barack Obama comes in, goes, listen,

We got Kamala Harris on board. I got the entire donor class and I got the congressional leaders on board. You are out. We are invoking the 25th Amendment and removing you from office if you don't voluntarily drop out of the race. And Joe Biden says no. Wow. The day that the day that that letter came out was a Sunday.

That Sunday, on the Sunday news shows, you can go watch Face the Nation and Meet the Press from the Sunday Joe Biden's, the letter comes out. Biden's surrogates are on the news going, why are we still talking about this? He's made his decision. He won the primary. This is the democratic process. It's his choice if he wants to run for, and he's running. It's Trump versus Biden. Get used to it. Those are your two options. Who do you want to be president?

Mere hours later, the sitting president of the United States of America, a few weeks out from convention, announces that he's not. After telling you, yes, I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I'm doing it, announces he's not. And he doesn't do this with an address to the nation. He does it with a letter from...

on personal stationery with a signature that does not seem to match other Joe Biden signatures. That's like, whatever, forget even the signature. But like, it's like, that is such a weird way to do it. And then it's on Twitter, but like, that is so bizarre. And then we don't hear from Joe Biden for another three or four days.

And so all I'm saying is if you look at all the information, it seems like what happened is that their next move was to just put that out. And literally before Joe Biden is seen from again, the funds are already being transferred over to Kamala Harris. The move, I think it was presented to him as a fait accompli, as the French say, that it's like this is done. You've already been removed. What are you going to do now?

You're going to go back out there? And look, they could just say, if he went back out there and went, I never wrote that letter, they'll be like, well, we'll say you did. And you forgot. Because who's going to really believe you anymore at this point? And so it's like, and I'm sure, you know, my guess is they had all types of other...

I mean, his son has a legit legal problem. So they're holding other things in. I'm sure there's all types of other things that they had on him. It's like, hey, how do you want to play this here? Do you want your son to go to prison for the rest of his life and your legacy is totally destroyed? Or do you want to be, and you know, as soon as he stepped down, the corporate media went right back to the greatest president ever, a selfless decision that he made for the good of his country. He would step down and then, and now we're into this new propaganda thing.

which is that Kamala Harris is a cultural phenomenon. Okay. We're all supposed to believe that. That sounds like a straight-up coup, as you put it. Yeah. You might be right about the coup. So help me understand the Harris phenomenon, right? Because I think she's universally accepted to be kind of like a bumbling idiot about three weeks ago. And then that immediately transitions into,

to this undying love and even if it was a a like a corporate propaganda push it has transferred to the public effectively meaning they're convinced like if you ask audiences in the city if they're excited about kamala they will cheer and if you ask them why they will not say a word do

Dude, you know what's crazy? So how does that happen? You know what's crazy? As of a week ago, I think, a week and a half ago, you go to KamalaHarris.com, her website, there are no policies on her website. I don't know about now, but it was just donate, buy merch. Comics have more information on their website than Kamala Harris. That's probably pretty smart. Well, yeah, take the time to figure out what all your policy is going to be because she didn't know she was going to be running...

a month ago. Yeah. Like, you expect her to have a whole presidential plan for the country? Yeah. Overnight? Not overnight. You're the vice president. No, because then you throw any of those things up, then now it's shot down. Part of your job description, Al, if the president gets assassinated, you're in charge. Yeah. So you don't have any plan? You have no plan? Joe Biden croaks he's 90 years old over there? And when the president's Joe Biden, don't tell me this hadn't crossed your mind. Yeah. And then if she would have put that up beforehand, it'd be like, oh, shit, is she trying to

pushing the fuck out of it. I'm talking about weeks later. I think the answer is just that policy isn't their strength, and so why even get into that? You know, those crowds that you're talking about, I mean, look, the truth is that

The Democrats haven't, since Obama, had anyone who's like an animating figure. What's motivating those people is that they hate Donald Trump. Exactly. And there's a tremendous sense of relief because they had this crazy liability of a senile guy. And now that's gone. They're embarrassed. Yeah. I think they actually were quiet. Like all these people that are Harris supporters...

anti-Trumpers that felt embarrassed supporting Biden. Because a support for Biden, I think was, I mean, it was a huge liability for the country. Like you would put the country in a potentially dangerous situation by vocalizing your support for this guy who's definitely senile. And also just the pretending that you don't see it. Exactly. So you feel fraudulent, right? And the second there was another option, they fucking jump on it. Which makes sense. But

to see that now turn into enthusiasm is... I think the enthusiasm's more like, oh shit, we might have a chance to win. I think that's part of it. That's interesting. Look, there's a reason why Kamala Harris was picked to be vice president. And the... You know, it's like the progressive DNA...

really into historic firsts. You know, there's something about that. Look, this is why Joe Biden picked her because if it's Joe Biden, it's just, hey, okay, we're going to reject Donald Trump and in favor of the establishment and the guy who's been in politics for 50 years. It's like, eh. But if you could attach to that the first

vice president who's a woman of color then okay all right we got a little something that we're working with here and so now they're rolling this out i think she's benefiting from the contrast between like you know i mean the bar was like she can walk and read words off a telephone that's where the bar was at she can do both of those things she knows she just got off of this plane and so she's not going to try to walk back up the stairs don't walk up

She can tackle stairs. Same numbers. She's really excellent. Anyway, so there's a little bit of that, but then there's also, you know, I do think that liberals, much more so than Trump supporters, they do kind of respond still to the corporate media signals. And so if you just start telling them all day long, this is exciting, they're excited about this, they start to...

I also think there's been a tremendous... So I have... This is totally anecdotal. I don't know what this means. But I've gotten, like, 30 text messages at this point about donating to Kamala Harris about different things. And I've, like... I don't donate to... One time, I've donated to Tulsi Gabbard when she was running. It's the only Democrat I've ever donated to. And it's just like...

And so there's a lot of astroturfing of like making it. And all that money that they were withholding from Joe Biden, they pumped right into Kamala Harris's campaign. And so there's this attempt to build her up. I would, I think a lot of it's an illusion. There's gonna be, there's still gonna be several more hurdles for her that she has to debate Donald Trump at least one time. She's gonna have to sit down for tough interviews. Kamala Harris has this thing where

She can read a teleprompter speech with no problem. You give her a teleprompter speech, she'll read it. When she's asked tough questions, she seems like she just took a 600 milligram edible, just kicked in, and she starts going into this space is above us and around us. Which is like, I don't understand it exactly. Maybe she's very nervous or something. I don't get why she goes into that. But we'll...

I don't know. I mean, I don't really trust that elections are free and fair ever. I've never done before. Wait before Donald Trump ever started saying that. I never trusted elections. So I don't know. But it does seem like, OK, they're going with her. There was a reason why everyone was assuming it wouldn't be her even if Biden dropped out. Because nobody believed. Yeah. OK, so now support. Now explain Trump. Trump is at all time high. He gets shot.

I mean, immediately the day after, I'm like, just hand him the election. It's over. There's no way that they could make up this kind of ground. He's a hero. He did it in this prolific fashion. He's got his fists in the air. Fight, fight, fight.

It's almost like that happened 30 years ago. Nobody is even talking about this anymore. Like, his campaign seems to, like, lack energy. Like, what the fuck is happening in Trump land? Something really changed in Donald Trump since he took that bullet. And I don't know if you guys notice it, but to me, it's very clear. I mean, it's like he... First off, at his convention speech, he was, like, totally affected by it. You know, understandable. But...

Look, there's an obvious blueprint here for Donald Trump that Donald Trump would always follow. And he's not following it right now. What is that blueprint? Well, look, I mean, what did he say about Russiagate? It was a witch hunt. They were out to get me, right? What did he say about all the criminal charges against him? It's a witch hunt. They were weaponizing the Justice Department against me. And if he wanted to keep this story in the media and make this the story of the whole thing, he could just say what...

I mean, look. Everybody thinks the CIA tried to kill you. They allowed... Listen, after framing me for treason and then weaponizing the justice system against me, oh, the Secret Service just happened to allow someone with a sniper rifle to get within 130 yards of me and get a clear shot at my head? This guy who's...

you can see on video, is scoping out the area for an hour plus beforehand while people on the ground are screaming, "He's got a rifle on that roof." And they didn't yank the president off the stage.

He could, Donald Trump always stokes conspiracy beliefs. He always does this. He could easily just be poking this thing and make this the biggest story and totally make this, like this is what Trump always had the ability to do. He decides what's going to be in the news cycle today. It's a superpower, you know? And he is very clearly not doing that. Dude, Elon Musk asked him the other day on their spaces about,

about it. Then he just started praising the Secret Service for what a great job they did. That was the first thing he did. He said, the Secret Service is amazing. What an amazing job. So my conclusion...

Trump shook. So basically Trump's going, wow, they tried to take me out. And by they, that means the CIA or the alphabet agencies, the powers that be. And now he's like, holy shit, it is that easy to take me out? I barely survived this one. They will try it again. I better toe the company line. I better behave. Listen, I think that seems to be the only explanation that makes sense to me. Holy shit. And I think Donald Trump, Donald Trump,

Look, when he ran in 2016, he said, it was like, I'm going to drain the swamp. And that was like his, but the thing is, when you're talking about draining the swamp, you're talking about rolling back the biggest honeypot in the history of the world. I mean, like you're talking, you're drain the swamp. Like, okay. A lot of people. Yeah. Like you, if you want to actually Tucker Carlson said this, but like, I think he's dead right about it. If you really want it to drain the swamp, you have to be ready to die.

You know, like you have to be ready to sacrifice your life for that mission. - Yeah, I actually fear for Vivek if he wins. - Yeah, yeah, exactly, you know? And I don't think Donald Trump was ever ready to die for this, you know? I think Donald Trump was like, the way his mind works is like, I'm tremendous, I'm very smart, these other people are very stupid,

I see the obvious solution to this, you know, like he would always just be like, you know, it's kind of like, yeah, we shouldn't fight stupid wars. It's bad business, you know, so let's not do that anymore. I don't think he had any clue what he was actually up against. And I think that probably, yeah, a bullet whizzing by your head and being like, yo, their plan was actually to blow your brains out on national television and

that might make you think, ooh, I don't know if I want to piss them off. Also, the Secret Service are still responsible for his security going forward. And so my takeaway is just looking at it, having observed Trump over all these years, I'm like, oh, for the first time, he seems really shook. He seems like, yeah, he's worried about this. I don't think he wants to die. I would say even before that, because he...

First time he was running, he was running on, I'm going to drain the swamp. He gets elected. There was no drainage of any swamp. I think immediately once he got elected, he got talking to in a way where it's like, oh, he knows what he can and cannot do. He even bailed out Hillary. Did you hear him talk about Hillary? He's like, we could have done horrible things to her, but I think we should move on. Yeah, no, this is my point. She's just going. You didn't hear this? No. Say what it is. They were like, you know, there were all these campaign promises of lock her up.

but you didn't end up locking her up. And basically, his response was basically just like, oh, you know, we said things on the campaign, but how about we're all just nice to each other? No one's going to lock anyone up. It doesn't look good to do that. Yeah, come on. You lock up a president's wife, a secretary of state, that doesn't look good for America. Yeah, it's like, wow, look at the energy shift in that. So is he running now, despite all of this, just to free his criminal record?

He could freeze criminal record by stepping down. Yeah. I think that's a negotiation. So why is he putting himself through this for the third time? Now they need a patsy. Well, I think. Deep probably. I think Donald Trump is motivated by what Donald Trump is obviously motivated by. I mean, the guy who's like, well, it's not just.

Power. It's like... Yeah, it's like, you know, identity. Like, you know, he's the guy who has to build a huge skyscraper and put his name in gold letters on it. And the fact that he was a one-term president, I think,

really bothers him. The fact that he, it's the narrative is he lost, you know, he has to constantly correct that anytime anyone thinks. And I think he wants to come back and win again, but I don't know what exactly he wants after this assassination attempt. And I don't know, you know,

I think he wants to win still, but he also kind of wants to signal that it's like, hey, come on, man. Like, all right, drain the swamp. Well, all right, we're talking about drain the swamp. Let's just like, you know, make the swamp a little better than the swamp. Here's a question I wanted to ask you. Robbie Slovic, who you probably know, another very smart political comic. I really trust him. Throughout the election cycle, I've been asking him, what do you think Trump's chances are? He's like, Trump has no chance. He even said after the bullet was whizzed by his ear, he goes, people are going to forget this.

Trump has no chance. The only time he was worried was the debate. He's like, Biden is in such bad decline. I don't know. But people aren't going to vote for Trump who are in the middle. They're just not anymore. But Donald Trump has hijacked the Republican Party. So let's say he loses this election, gets bold again, and is like, you know what? Fuck it. I want to run again in 2028.

What are Republicans gonna do? Like, how do they get their party back? - I mean, I think he's just too old at that point. I mean, Donald Trump is gonna be 84. - No.

What is he saying? Oh, wait, you're saying next election? You're saying if he was running in 2028. That's too much. I don't think it's possible that he's going to run again there. I don't agree with Robbie on that. I mean, I think that certainly if it was Trump versus Joe Biden, I think there's... If there were real elections, I think no question Donald Trump was going to win that. Look, Donald Trump was down...

pretty big in the polls against Hillary Clinton and ended up winning. He was down substantially more in the polls than he ended up. He did better than he was polling in 2020. That's how Trump always is. He always does a little bit better than he's polling. He was even up in the polls in every single swing state against Joe Biden. Now it's kind of returned back to where Trump

Typically is, which is like the polls say he's going to lose, but there's a lot of closeted Trump voters out there. I think what Robbie's probably underestimating is that like,

There's real the inflation is really killing people. And the immigration is really unpopular. And I think that really, really hurts the Democrats. Now, that being said, I'm more on the conspiratorial side where I'm like all the signals that I've seen so far is that the powers that be will not allow Donald Trump to be in the White House again. Not even with his capitulation? No.

I mean, maybe, maybe, I don't know. Maybe that could be a game changer. But I will say that all the signals for the last four years have been that all the most powerful people are telling you this guy will not be allowed to be in the White House again. And those people have a lot of power. Hmm. You bet against the CIA, you usually don't win. You think some mail-in ballots or something worse?

I mean, what have we seen already? I mean, I don't know what the next step of all this is. But I think, I certainly think that like it is...

Listen, whatever, man. I don't want to say anything that could get anyone's channel in trouble. So I'll just say like in hypothetical. Say it and we'll cut it. Okay, so in hypothetical. Do you want us to cut it or are you just going to. No, no, you can. I'll try to say it in the best. Let's just say like I was reading this novel the other day. There we go. About this crazy corrupt country that totally changed the way they did elections on the year that the guy that they didn't want to win was getting was up for reelection.

It just seems a little bit suspicious, you know, like, I don't know. You guys decide. I don't know what the latest YouTube rules or whatever. I don't know what I'm allowed to say, but I certainly I don't know anything. But I definitely have my my suspicions about what they would do. And I don't think it would be that hard for them to do that. My question, my question is going to be how accurate do you think Trump was in 2020 saying rigged, stolen, blah, blah, blah. OK, so I'll say it like this, right?

So I've read a lot about like US-sponsored colored revolutions, you know, which is like where they're basically like these CIA operations and they've done them in like Serbia and Iran. Yeah, well, what they'll do is basically everything they did in 2020.

It's almost like down to a T, like everything from like, though, though they get protests in the streets, which remarkably they are able to control in a way that is like really wild to me. But it is amazing how like that whole BLM protest thing. It's amazing how quickly the Democrats could turn that off.

As soon as Joe Biden's back in there, it's like, well, that's off. You're not on the streets anymore. Nope. And in the middle of COVID, when they were telling everyone to stay inside, they just sent all the signals that you're allowed to go out now if you're doing this protest thing. Um, there was big money people who were bailing out the worst of the rioters. Like these people would be getting arrested nightly and they'd be raising money to like, uh, bail them out. I believe, uh, Kamala Harris even donated to one of these organizations. Double check me on that if I'm right on that. But, uh,

But regardless, then there was like, you know, like the media campaigns against the guy, the lockdowns being prolonged even way past when it was obviously like unnecessary and not mitigating the virus. I think a lot of that was kind of to tank the economy. There was mass censorship in 2020 of pro-Trump things.

Influencers, just anything. Yeah, just getting kicked off. And then they totally overhauled the way we do voting with no real mechanism to like verify that these cards were coming from the right places. And so I don't know, looking at all of that after Trump lost, I could understand why any one of his supporters would be like, you know, this was not fair, especially after they had framed him for treason. And the whole Russiagate thing was completely...

Completely made up, dude. It was all based off lies. The total deep state psyop is not true at all. It was totally laughable that Donald Trump was in a conspiracy with the Russians. Just bullshit. And so now Donald Trump...

in Trumpian fashion had no idea how to wield power or how to combat this so he just bitched and moaned about it and then he sent his lawyers out to like be like we have proof and then every time they went to court they just got thrown out of court because they had nothing you know they had nothing other than what I just said like it was just like beating them like no fair this whole thing is no fair and the judge would be like uh

around here we need evidence. You know what I mean? You can't just come into court and go no fair. But looking at all that stuff, you're like, I mean, it's clearly like...

you know a lot of circumstantial evidence yeah yeah you could just look at it and be like look they're clearly like kind of setting this whole thing how far did that actually go i have no idea i'm not going to say anything about any of those voting companies i don't have that money to pay those lawsuits but uh but i also don't know i'm not you know i'm not trying to say anything more than i know but i'm like you know you could look at this and be like it does seem like it's not beyond the realm of possibility the weird thing like with all the stuff we were talking about like the um

The way Donald Trump, which has always been one of the most fascinating things about him to me, is the way he triggers left-wing people, like the reaction that he gets out of them is so... It's so enraging that it's like blinding them to anything else. So I've never really liked Donald Trump. He's never been my style. I don't like that...

Just a million things about him I don't like. But I was never so enraged by him that I couldn't be like, oh, this is a kind of fascinating moment right here. This guy's running against the system and winning. And so it was almost like a lot of those left-wing people, they were just like, oh, I hate Donald Trump. They were like, well, he's a Russian agent. They're like, that's right, he's a Russian agent. You know, they'll just jump on whatever the anti-Trump narrative is. They'll jump on it and then you'll be like, hey, you know, that was the CIA who told you that. And you know, left-wing guy...

you're not supposed to like the CIA. Yeah. Since when do you like the CIA? Like, there's just no more even critical thinking. So it's like, you don't have to like Donald Trump to look at this and go like, it does seem like there's something going on here. Yeah. Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and some of these guys who it's almost like they are trying, like they have a...

like a startup oligarchy. Like, they're just like, hey, listen, this, well, like, this oligarchy has failed us so much that, like, we have to start our own oligarchy. Who are these guys, the tech guys? Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, these guys. And I generally do kind of go like, well, I mean, the current oligarchy is really failing the country. So, like, maybe these guys would be better. I don't, I mean, they're certainly not, like,

principled libertarians or something like they're not me. You know what I mean? Like they're not, they're willing to do, they're willing to get CIA contracts or do whatever it is. It's like, I think my, my read on it is kind of like, I think these guys, first off, they're brilliant.

Um, they're very successful and I think they see the current trajectory as a real longterm problem and that they're kind of like, listen, like this is going to be really bad for business ultimately. Like if we keep going in this direction, this whole, this whole thing is going to collapse and then we can't do what we're doing right now, which is making billions of dollars. Yeah. Sure. Well, I mean, maybe, I don't know, to the extent that it overlaps, maybe both. I don't really know. Um,

But it does seem like there's no question that like Elon Musk, you know, I tend to kind of take him at his word that he wanted Twitter to be more of a free speech place to some degree. I think he believes that to some degree. But there does seem to be a dynamic there where it's like, I do also think he wanted to kind of

let the pro-Trump people back on to Twitter. And that that was kind of like, you know, a big part of, you know, if you're going to let the people who have been kicked off, well, who is that? It's mostly the pro-Trump people who have been kicked off. Not exclusively. But I don't know, there's an interesting force there where they are really behind Trump now, especially with J.D. Vance, who's Peter Thiel's guy. Why did Elon back off of the $35 million a month that he said he was going to give Trump?

Oh, I wasn't even, I heard someone say something about that, but I don't know. I don't know that. Yeah. I'm going to go. And then he just backed off of that. I didn't hear that he backed off. Yeah, he backed off. Wow. Yeah. Someone probably crunched his numbers. They were like, you know, you spent a lot of money on this platform. Really? Another 35 a month. So that was, I was a big Elon Musk fan.

Now I find it all a little bit disingenuous to buying Twitter for free speech. I don't care if you let pro-Trump people on, but I'm a little annoyed when all your tweets are suddenly pro-Trump. And it's like, do you want free speech or do you want your guy to win because it benefits you? And that's fine. Just don't present yourself as some fucking...

Guy putting on my cape and I'm letting you guys speak. Well, maybe the argument would be that he thinks his guy can only win if there's free speech, but that free speech is still the principle. You know what I mean? Those things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. I mean, I do... Look, I do think that the...

Like, I don't know. I don't know what's in his heart or what is his brain that works differently than all of our brains do. But I think what he exposed with the Twitter files was pretty wild. It's really it was a service to the American people that we know that. Yeah. And that it is kind of like, you know.

it's obviously a little bit of a gray area. But, you know, if the idea of the First Amendment was that, like, in the public square, you can go make whatever argument you want to make, and if people want to listen to you, they can. Well, like, the public square is outdated. The public square is social media now. And so if you're saying that you could be out there making arguments, which in many cases people were making correct arguments, like about lockdowns and vaccines and how they were not what they were...

were sold as. And they, and the government could come in and put pressure on these companies to like silence you. To me, like that's the most terrifying thing. Cause like I was saying earlier, like that's the whole prospect for like, Oh, maybe we could actually save this whole thing. It's cause they've lost their grip on control. So like if you, if you have that, then it's almost like the first amendment is meaningless at that point. Cause if the government can control that you're screwed. So,

I'm sure he's a flawed person, but to the extent that he's rolled that back a little bit, I'm pretty grateful for that. I'll say personally, I at least feel I felt like through 2020, 2021, 2022, I felt like

I was navigating through this like fear that I was going to get shut down. Yeah. And I had to constantly be like, all right, man, like how do I say this in the way that's best going to not be? I mean, I can't tell you how many tweets like back before Elon Musk took it over where I like wrote it and then went, dude, like what am I doing? Am I going to risk everything over? Cause I want to say this one thing. And, and,

Even just getting people like me to make that calculation constantly, it's a real chilling effect. And I don't feel that way as much anymore. So maybe that's just my feeling about it. I don't know if that's right. No, I think it's probably a net positive. And I do think the free speech is important. I just don't necessarily trust his intentions as he presented them.

Yeah, no, you might be right about that. And also, look, he has kicked people off still. There are people who still aren't left back out, which is almost like a weird thing because he'll say constantly, he does kind of contradict himself. He'll say, hey, look, as long as you haven't done anything illegal, then you're allowed to say it on X because we're for free speech. But then Kanye tweets like a swastika flag or something and he bans him. And you're like,

all right, well, which one is it? You know, like, I mean, I don't know, either you believe in this or you don't. So he certainly hasn't been like a hundred percent of what he said, but I think it's probably better. Yeah. And also, you know, the thing with Kanye, it's like, he was just trying to get kicked off anyway. I think that was going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if, uh, I wonder if we need an adjustment period for the, the fullest form of free speech. So

So I think like the knee jerk reaction to what we're seeing on Twitter, even like this week is like, what the fuck is going on? Maybe you can't let people just say whatever they want. But I think that is what happens when you give someone a sports car, they drive it as fast as they can go. And I think eventually it takes time, but.

the people that are consuming this stuff eventually start to weed it out. It's a good analogy, man. You're like, listen, we're going to crash that first car. We're going to crash this first civilization. But if you give us a few... Civilizations, we got this. Again, it's not like you give us free speech and we're like, I'm going to behave with all this freedom that you're giving me. I'm going to go do some wild shit. It's spring break. We're in Mexico. Something's going to happen. And then...

after maybe, I don't know, five years, 10 years, a few different election cycles, when you start to realize the same patterns happening, maybe people are less manipulated by them. I feel like right now it's a,

we're consuming content. Like our parents respond to like Nigerian credit card scams. You know what I mean? Like I'm on the timeline, like the Jews did what? Right. Like my parents are like, no, I just got to pay the tax. And then I get 10 million from this Nigerian print. Like I am that susceptible to information. And it's great. I intentionally don't click on things. So I don't introduce any of that to my algorithm. So it's like, I almost have to, um,

buffer myself from certain news or from certain free speakers just so it doesn't like muddy up my timeline and it sucks because I want to see it all but then I don't want to see all that type of shit. Did Ari ever tell you about the thing he did when he like...

He took charge of his algorithm or whatever. It's such an Ari thing, but he just did this experiment where he wouldn't click or search anything except puppy videos for a month or something. It was just all puppy videos, and he actually got it to where the algorithm was just showing him puppy videos, and that's all it was. And he was like, yeah, I was pretty happy for that.

I believe it would be like puppies dressed as Hitler. It would be puppies, but it would be all the other. Well, I know just from like,

doing such a deep dive on the war in Gaza and just trying to keep up with the news about it constantly at first. It was, after a while, where I had to stop doing it on social media because it's like, ah, dude, I can't watch... Listen, I want to be up on what's happening, but I can't watch videos of babies dying every day. What am I doing to my soul right now to just be constantly seeing this? We all got to figure out how to navigate this. At least, though, to your point, though, it's like, I just... I think that I'm...

You know, like with Candice and with that space particular, the one thing I am like grateful to her, you know, I've had so many people, you know, like, you know, coming at me for just being on there. Yeah. And the crazy thing, and this is what bugs me, is it's like it's not even like the people coming at me are disagreeing with anything I said.

on there but the fact that you're associated with her with this person i'm like yeah but i don't really do that guilt by association thing man like i don't believe in that yeah and then also it's like well if you were going to play this game then like let's let's play it out like who do you have on and what have they supported what have they you know and it's like okay like yeah like on the on the side that's critical of israel there are people who have said bad things about jews on the side that's pro-israel there's a lot of people have said real bad things about palestinians you know and like there's okay

I can't not talk to anyone. I've talked to lots of people who are pro-Israel too. But also, like, look, Candace does say over and over again, like, maybe she's wrong on some of the conspiracies that she's talking about. But she does say over and over again that she has no problem with Jewish people and she doesn't hate Jewish people. She loves, she has lots of Jewish friends. She's always had lots of Jewish friends. And she's like, and...

I do appreciate that she's at least saying that. And the way I look at it is it's always like, oh yeah, you try to silence these people. It's like some Freudian thing. You know, you repress something. It always kind of reemerges in an uglier fashion. And you're like, okay, you know, you try to suppress this one. Watch it reemerge as someone who's not saying that anymore. And now they're just like, no, you know, like all of them. I think that's part of what got Trump elected. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. And like, so,

I think that the way it should be handled is like if those guys are saying something that's so wrong and offensive, then it's like, all right, so take them on and win the argument. If it's so wrong, it should be really easy to just destroy their whole thing. And I'm not saying the marketplace of ideas is perfect.

but it's better than the alternative. Which is the restriction. Yeah, just what it's dictated from top down. What is the truth and what isn't. This is the price we've got to pay for it. Have you seen the people getting arrested in England and I think even in Canada for the things that they've said? I don't remember the exact details. Facebook posts or whatever. There's a guy recently that just got arrested in...

Yeah, I don't know much more than that. Like, I basically read that that was happening. And that's the thing. Like, they have freedom of expression or whatever it is, but that's a bullshit way of saying you can't say what you want. Yeah, that's right. Go express it. I am expressing with my words. Well, not that you can't. I think that's a really, really dangerous path to go down is that, you know, and look, you know, what happened in Canada

I know this is, you know, you said the Trump assassinations 30 years ago. So this is like 500 years ago. But, you know, it isn't actually. It's only a couple years ago. The way they cracked down on those trucker protests was really insane. Taking their credit cards and stuff. Seizing bank accounts. And then seizing the bank accounts of people who donated money to them. Like not even like you were out there or did anything, but you were just like, hey, I'm going to throw a few bucks to this cause. You're like, geez, this is freaking crazy.

Creepy. We don't want to go in that direction. Yeah. Okay. Are there any countries you feel are doing it, like any countries or governments you feel that are doing it right, that America would be like, eh, we should maybe model ourselves like they're doing it. Or the closest to right. Closest to right. I'm a big fan of Lichtenstein.

I really like what they're doing over there. Very low taxes. No, I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, all of them have their own problems. I don't know that there's any country that I... You know, the country that I model that I'd like us to be a lot more is the United States of America. You know, like, that's, like, what we were always kind of supposed to be and what I think...

in many ways we did a better job of in the past. And there's obviously certain things we didn't do a good job of in the past. But I think that like, you know, so I'm 41 and I was born in a pre-War on Terror America, like a pre-9/11 America. Remember all those rom-coms where they would always end with the guy running up to the plane?

You could run up to a plant. You could just go in the airport. We weren't all treated like terrorists and stuff. We didn't have these crushing deficits and these endless wars and these unprotected borders and all of this stuff. And I think we could just go back to being more of a free country. Honestly, to me, I think the Declaration of Independence...

is like the most amazing document that's ever been written in the history of the world. And like, that's our founding document. Let's try to live up to that. That's, that's the example I'd like to follow. Okay. Last question.

how did the Jews kill JFK? Okay. So, uh, once you can control the weather, you say, everything else, man, nice and sunny. Magic bullet. Really? Fog would have rolled in. No comment. But if you want to find out the answer, I'll be honest. Spaces with Candace Owens. What was she saying? And is that a real conspiracy? Uh, there,

Or is this like just trope? No, there's a real conspiracy that Israel was involved in the JFK assassination. Again, it all, like I do not, this is not a claim I'm making at all, but there is a conspiracy out there that that, I think there is evidence that the Israelis were attempting to blackmail Israel.

Alan Dulles, as we said before. That would be the connection there. Alan Dulles was fired from the CIA by Jack Kennedy because he was furious at him because he was totally working against him. And it was a big thing. But JFK fired the head of the CIA and supposedly...

And Bobby Kennedy told me this is true, that he said he's gonna crack the CIA into a million pieces, like that he was basically like, "I'm going to war with the CIA. I'm gonna like destroy this organization." And then he took a nice limo ride through Dallas. And then on the Warren Commission, which was to investigate what happened in the Kennedy assassination, they put Alan Dulles on the commission.

which is just like the biggest like signal of like, yeah, oh, we'll be looking into this, you know? So I think the theory is extrapolated from, oh, they had Alan Dulles blackmailed and therefore the Israelis. There were issues between David Ben-Gurion and John F. Kennedy. He was very upset at them over like nuclear testing or something. I don't know that conspiracy that well inside and out, but anyway, that's the theory. I never, look, again, with all this thing, I think the thing to keep in mind here, and then by the way, all the, the,

real hardcore, like, anti-Semites, this is where they'll say, see, this is why Dave's working for the Jews, too, because he's just telling you to tone down the temperature or whatever. But even if the Israeli government was involved in that, it's like, yeah, governments do evil things. That's, like, all over the place. It doesn't mean you've got to blame, you know...

Barry the dentist who lives up the block. He didn't have anything to do with that, I promise you. And he does really good work. - He does. - But you're gonna pay. You're gonna pay. - Dave Smith, ladies and gentlemen. Dave, tell them about your show where they can watch more of this. You just started going, what, four days a week now? - Yeah, yeah, I go four days a week. Part of the Problem is my podcast. It's available everywhere, but if you wanna support the show, partoftheproblem.com is the place to do that. Plus you get an extra episode that's only for members.

But it's up on YouTube and iTunes and all the other things. And then Comic Dave Smith on Twitter and ComicDaveSmith.com for all my road dates. Let's go. Get out and go see him do stand-up. He's great stand-up as well. Thank you so much, Dave. Thank you, fellas.