About this transcript: This is a full AI-generated transcript of Joe Rogan & Dave Smith Full Interview — Explores Markets, War & Big Questions from J-HB Radio Podcast, published July 2, 2026. The transcript contains 15,767 words with timestamps and was generated using Whisper AI.
"- Not a massive investigation into that right away. Didn't someone make like $1.8 billion in like five minutes? - Yeah, there's a lot of those, like trades like that that should be investigated that kind of never are. - Bro, bro. How about, what's his name, Lutnik? Yeah, how about that one? The..."
[00:00:00] Speaker 1: - Not a massive investigation into that right away.
[00:00:02] Speaker 2: Didn't someone make like $1.8 billion in like five minutes? - Yeah, there's a lot of those, like trades like that that should be investigated that kind of never are. - Bro, bro. How about, what's his name, Lutnik? Yeah, how about that one? The tariffs one? - Working for the administration and also standing to gain huge if people can sue over the tariffs, right?
[00:00:28] Speaker 1: - Well, explain the whole thing. Do you know how to, do you know the actual details of it? - No, I don't really know the details. - So essentially he was telling everybody that, you know, don't sweat it, the tariffs are golden, we're getting them through, there's gonna be no problems. Is that what it was? But in meanwhile, he was shorting the tariffs?
[00:00:45] Speaker 2: - Yes, yeah, so he was personally shorting them while promoting them. - Let's find out what that actually is so we don't get sued. - Sure, sure, sure, sure.
[00:00:50] Speaker 1: - I bet he's a quite litigious gentleman. - Yeah, he might be. - See if we can find it. - Look, I got some, I don't know what that means there. - Like is it wild that people were on the files, visited the island, and then they still work?
[00:01:01] Speaker 2: - It was unbelievable. - Some people had to resign from some jobs. - Well, especially just him because he so, the way, there's something about a really confident liar, like where they just said, 'cause I mean that, that interview clip where he's like, let me tell you something, I met Jeffrey Epstein that one time, he had a massage table, he said they were sex massage tables. I went right back to my wife and I said, "Honey, we are never hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein again." And that is that, you know? - Is that really the quote? - Oh dude, I haven't seen that. - I don't know if it's verbatim, but that is the exact spirit of it.
[00:01:31] Speaker 1: - Which is probably pretty verbatim. - Oh, let's listen to it.
[00:01:33] Speaker 2: - Listen to it, I'm very, very close to exactly what he said.
[00:01:37] Speaker 3: - Okay. - Let me get this one again.
[00:01:39] Speaker 2: What was this one? - Let Nick interview about Epstein. And he just sounds, I mean, I was so like morally outraged about the idea.
[00:01:46] Speaker 1: - There's so many people that they exist in that world where you just pretend that you're a different person. You pretend you're one way. - Yeah. - You pretend you think things differently.
[00:01:57] Speaker 2: - It's a, I've been up close with people like that. I said, that was my takeaway from debating Chris Cuomo. Was like, I just could, it's a weird thing to see someone just lie like that.
[00:02:05] Speaker 1: - Here it is. Now this is the one that says he's the greatest blackmailer ever.
[00:02:12] Speaker 3: - Which quote am I trying to find?
[00:02:13] Speaker 2: - Yeah, try to explain it to him. - It was a, let me see the keywords that would downplays relationship with him. That, that might be it.
[00:02:24] Speaker 3: - There was something on the other thing,
[00:02:25] Speaker 2: but I don't know what that is. - What does he do? - He's a, what's he's a commerce secretary. He was a, he was always like a money finance guy. I think he used to work for CNBC, if I'm correct.
[00:02:37] Speaker 1: - In this administration, this like, the wolves have taken over the hen house. - Yeah. - Yeah, they sure have. This is, this is what draining the swamp looks like. - Under fire for Epstein ties, commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, defends visiting his private island. - Yeah, but this is, this isn't the clip. The clip was from-- - Oh, at the top it says, it says, "Lutnick sent an interview last year. He was never in the room with Epstein, other than a 2005 visit to his apartment." Okay, so that's probably it. He said, you know, he met him once, and was like, "This guy sucks."
[00:03:11] Speaker 2: - But he specifically says that he met him, that he saw he had a massage table in his living room, and he goes, "Hey, Jeffrey, what do you, you really like massages?" And he claims that Jeffrey went, "Yeah, and the right kind of massages." And that's when he decided he would never talk to him again.
[00:03:28] Speaker 1: - Nobody likes the right kind of massages. Those are terrible. Imagine if those are legal, just hand job massages, there'd be like no relationships. How many people are in terrible relationships just 'cause they need sex? There's a lot of guys that'd be like, "I'm just gonna hang out with the boys, just get jerked off once on Wednesday, and I'm good." Howard Lutnick downplays relationship with Epstein during Senate testimony. - Testimony, I don't know. - Is this it?
[00:03:56] Speaker 2: - Now, this is from recently.
[00:03:58] Speaker 3: This is from this year. - I did find an article that kinda, I don't even know what this website is, though, I don't know if--
[00:04:04] Speaker 1: - This old firm did not, in fact, profit from the Supreme Court tariff ruling.
[00:04:09] Speaker 3: - It says that there was an article claiming it, and then, that's why I was trying to dig through this.
[00:04:13] Speaker 1: - Oh, we better edit that out then.
[00:04:16] Speaker 3: - I mean, it was reported, though, that they did, but I don't know what this says.
[00:04:21] Speaker 1: - It says, "Firm is run by his two sons. Elder Lutnick announced the sale of the stake in the firm, and other investors of the Supreme Court on Friday. Invalidated many of Trump's tariffs. The president said a White House-- Caster did not consider the product, which has existed for years, was humming trade on Wall Street's Trump first-term tariff push, but decided against it after weighing the political sensitivities. According to a senior banker familiar with this matter, a Cantor spokesman said the salesman erroneously believed the firm was likely to greenlight the business." Okay, I'm missing this. I'm not exactly sure what they're saying here. This is just the legality of tariffs they're discussing now.
[00:05:03] Speaker 3: - I sent an email that said that they're representing 10 million. And that's where I was--
[00:05:06] Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out the accuracy of all this and whatnot. - So what was the accusation? The accusation was that he had shorted tariffs while claiming that tariffs are going to work.
[00:05:19] Speaker 2: - Yeah, the accusation was that he stood to make a lot of money from tariffs being struck down.
[00:05:23] Speaker 1: - Why don't you put that into perplexity, Jamie, and find out if that's accurate, and let it scour the internet instead of us doing it. - God, I love AI. - Yeah, it is something. - For that, I can't wait until it takes over government. It's going to be awesome.
[00:05:37] Speaker 2: - After a while, you're like, "I don't know if it could be much worse than what humans are doing with government."
[00:05:41] Speaker 1: - It's going to be better. It's not going to be greedy.
[00:05:43] Speaker 2: - Well, as long as it determines that human life is valuable, I feel like is really the big--
[00:05:48] Speaker 1: - Which humans? So, let's be honest. You know, some homeless guy's taking a shit on your Jaguar. Is that guy really valuable? - Yeah, but to AI, we all might be homeless guys taking a shit. - Did you see that there was these San Francisco tech guys and they got trapped in their Waymo because a homeless guy started attacking the Waymo and yelling at them, "Why are you paying robots?" - No. - Yeah, like you're a traitor, you're paying robots, you're paying the robots. - The homeless guy was upset about this? - The homeless guy was attacking the Waymo. The tech guys were in the Waymo. We were terrified for our life. We feared our safety because they're being attacked by a crazy person saying you shouldn't be giving money to robots. - That's an uncomfortable position to be in. - I get all my information from the Tim Dillon show, by the way. But they did play a clip. - It's not the worst source of information. - It's the best source. It's the best source. Him and that dude, what's his name? James Lee. He's our other number one source of information. Conspiracy theorist. - There you go. - But another one, a Waymo, a gal got in and there's a fucking homeless guy in the trunk because apparently the last person, when they left their Waymo, they opened the trunk to get their luggage out and they never closed it. So the homeless guy hopped into their fucking Waymo. - And closed it. - Closed it. It was in the trunk. So she orders a Waymo, she climbs in, there's a homeless guy in the trunk. And Waymo's like, "That's unacceptable." Yeah.
[00:07:11] Speaker ?: Oh, you think?
[00:07:13] Speaker 1: Oh, you think? Okay. The main claim is that Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnik's former firm now chaired by his son, stood to profit by buying tariff refund rights that only became valuable if Trump's tariffs were overturned, but the firm insisted ultimately did not execute those trades. The critics say happened. Investigators and reporting, notably by Wired, described Cantor Fitzgerald exploring a business where it would buy the rights to future tariff refunds from importers for about 20 or 30 cents on the dollar. Internal materials cited in those reports suggested Cantor had capacity to trade several hundred million dollars of these refund rights and had already facilitated at least one trade of around 10 million dollars in rights under the IEEPA tariffs. The idea was that of courts later struck down the tariffs the government would have to refund duties and Cantor or its clients would collect the full refund while the original importers only kept a small upfront payment. So why is it seen as a conflict? Is it true? So it just said that they executed on one, right? Didn't it say that?
[00:08:19] Speaker 3: Scroll back up. That was based off that email.
[00:08:21] Speaker 1: Yeah. It says internal materials cited in those reports suggested Cantor had capacity to trade and had already facilitated at least one trade of around 10 million dollars in rights. It's only 10 million. Let it go, Dave.
[00:08:36] Speaker 2: That is small potatoes for what we're talking about.
[00:08:38] Speaker 1: For those guys.
[00:08:38] Speaker ?: Yeah.
[00:08:38] Speaker 1: For these kind of guys. Uh-huh. What Cantor and Letnick's side say. Cantor Fitzgerald has publicly stated that while some salespeople explored, I like that in quotes, brokering tariff refund rates in 2025, the firm never executed any transactions or taken any position on tariff refund claims, calling contrary reports false. Follow-up recording has echoed that Cantor considered products tied to the Supreme Court tariff ruling, but ultimately backed off in part because of the political optics, duh, that's a big duh, around Letnick's government job. Latest coverage is no public evidence that Cantor actually booked profits from this strategy, though the investigations in Congress are ongoing and focused on whether there was any attempted or potential profiteer. Are you more interested in the ethics conflicts of interest or the nuts and bolts of how the secondary tariff refund market works financially? No. So it seems like we don't really have evidence.
[00:09:40] Speaker 2: Well, it'll be interesting. I mean, if, which is probably going to happen, but the Democrats take the House and the Senate in the midterm elections this year, I mean, they're going to be, that'll just be the next two years of politics will be investigations and subpoenas.
[00:09:54] Speaker 1: Some Democrat lady just over, she just took over the seat in Trump's neighborhood where Mar-a-Lago is. So Democrat lady just won.
[00:10:04] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Well, they're going to, yeah. I mean, look, they, in his first term, they impeached him twice for absolute bullshit. So they'll go after him for anything, but I have a feeling now there's probably a lot more for them to investigate and work on stuff like this and the meme coin stuff and, you know, whatever business deal. You know, I don't, I don't have the details at the top of my mind, but I do know that they said at one point that Jared Kushner would not be involved in this administration at all because he does so much business over there. And it's just like, so they were like, Oh no, no, no, he won't. But now he totally is. It's him and Whitcoff are like the lead negotiators in this too. So there's a lot of meat on the bone for Democrats to make big political theater out of for the next two years.
[00:10:51] Speaker 1: Is there any where that's not corrupt? I mean, when we look at the insider trading in Congress, when you look at all these slimy deals that get made with NGOs, you look at every, it's like everything's dirty. There's not one part of government. You're like right there. They nailed it. Yeah. Well, that is true. Like maybe the post office. That's, I mean. Post office is pretty fucking good, dude. Yeah. Compared to all the rest of it. Sure. You can get a letter moved across the whole country for like, what is it? Like 30 cents? How much is a stamp these days?
[00:11:23] Speaker 2: That's true. If, I mean, I don't know if you include the cost on the back end, like the taxes that pay for the whole thing. Maybe it's a little more expensive, but relatively speaking. Yeah. Relatively speaking.
[00:11:33] Speaker 1: You can get, you know, something done. It's not a bad organization. Sure. In terms of government organizations, you never hear, except going postal. That used to be a thing. Remember those days? Yes, I did. There was a while, like where so many post officers went so crazy and started shooting people that they started calling it going postal, but it never, it just went away.
[00:11:51] Speaker 2: Yeah. Young people, if you're listening to this and you don't know what we're talking about, in our day, we didn't have school shootings. Okay. We had to do it the old fashioned way. You had to drive a postman crazy until he went around shooting people. And it happened several times to the point that that became a thing. Like these crazy postal workers.
[00:12:07] Speaker 1: There was a video game called Postal. What? Where you run around shooting people. It was in the, I want to say the 90s. Yeah. That would be about the time period.
[00:12:16] Speaker 3: The first one came out in 97.
[00:12:17] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And it was like highly criticized. They were like, weren't they like cartoon looking characters? Can you see if you pull up a video of Postal? It was like, they're like South Park looking characters just blasting people. So it felt like less, if I remember correctly, or maybe that's the box. I never played it. Maybe I played it. Oh, this is new stuff. This is going postal? No. Pissing everywhere. This looks way better than 1990s.
[00:12:43] Speaker 2: This was in the 90s for sure.
[00:12:45] Speaker 1: Is this the new Postal? There's what it looked like.
[00:12:48] Speaker 3: There might have been a newer version right there. Oh, Jesus.
[00:12:51] Speaker 1: You just run around jacking people.
[00:12:53] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[00:12:53] Speaker 1: So it was like the first Grand Theft Auto, really.
[00:12:56] Speaker 3: Kind of. I mean, Grand Theft Auto came out around then, too, actually. It didn't look like this then, though.
[00:13:00] Speaker 1: But real weird, though, right? That post office workers were just killing a bunch of people. That's what it looked like. Like that. Okay. This is what it looked like. It didn't look like that other thing. It was like, it wasn't a first person thing. It was like you're seeing it from above and you're just running around killing everybody.
[00:13:20] Speaker 3: I played a postal, though, that was a first person like that.
[00:13:23] Speaker 1: Maybe they had more versions of it.
[00:13:24] Speaker 3: Also, I don't want to show it because I don't know what's going to be some bad stuff on there. Yeah, probably. There's nudity or anything.
[00:13:30] Speaker 2: Dude, video games really are like crack. They're a problem. I loved your – you had a rant about that years ago about how the problem is that they're so much fun and you're not accomplishing anything. The last video game I got into was UFC 3, and I loved that game. I just loved it. And then, like, I think it was – I got married, my wife got pregnant, and I was like, all right, I got to get rid of this. I just can't. I'm always – so I was at the dojo of comedy. It was a club in New Jersey. Great club. They have an L.A. one, too. Oh, do they? Okay.
[00:14:02] Speaker 1: Sam Tripoli.
[00:14:03] Speaker 2: Shout out to Sam. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was at the one in Jersey, and they have in the green room, they have UFC 3. And I was like, oh, that's the game that I got really into. So I was there for a weekend, and I mean, I just – the whole time I was there, just in the green room playing this video game. And I was like – it was like a feeling, almost like a drug addict who's around their drug of choice, where I was like, I need to be away from that. Like, I will play this until I kill myself. It's so much fun. It's a problem. Robbie Lawler fighting, you know, whoever, and just – And they keep getting better. Yeah, I know. Well, I didn't – I stopped at that, so I never even, like, learned how to play the new ones. But I'm like, I can't.
[00:14:42] Speaker 1: What number UFC game are they at now?
[00:14:44] Speaker ?: Five, I think.
[00:14:45] Speaker 1: Five. The graphics keep getting better. The movement keeps getting more natural. Yeah. And first-person shooters, man. Oh, my God. Who was the – They're so good now.
[00:14:54] Speaker 2: Was it Joe Lozon, I want to say? Was that – was the guy – 155 guy? Really good grappler. Yeah. Wasn't his thing, like, he was obsessed with video games, and then he went, I got to just do something else instead of this. And he just did jujitsu. And then he just got, like, amazing at jujitsu. I swear I think that was his story. Is that really what happened? I could be misremembering this, but I swear I heard him talk about this in an interview once. And then it was just, like, I just played video games all day, all night. And then eventually it was, like, I got to do something productive with this. Oh, my God. And so he just started doing jujitsu instead.
[00:15:23] Speaker 1: I wonder what he's up to these days. He was a fun guy.
[00:15:26] Speaker 2: He was a fun fighter to watch.
[00:15:27] Speaker 1: Fun dude, like, in person, too. Him and his brother used to beat the fuck out of each other on the yard, like, in the front yard. They would have, like, full-on MMA fights. Like, full power. They'd just beat the piss out of each other in the front yard. I was like, boys. Save it. Like, save it. I'd wail on each other. That's crazy. That's a young man's game. They had, like, a bunch of guys hanging around. It looked like it was a picnic or something like that. They decided, let's spice this picnic up. You and me fight, motherfucker. And they would fight. Like, fight, fight.
[00:15:56] Speaker 2: But all across this country, there are boys fighting in their yard. And that was of the highest level of yard fighting. I mean, that was top 1%.
[00:16:05] Speaker 1: Oh, that was vicious.
[00:16:07] Speaker 2: Two, like, legit MMA professionals.
[00:16:09] Speaker 1: Yeah. Two legit MMA professionals are mad at each other because they're in the house with each other all the time. Shut the fuck. You didn't fucking do that. You were supposed to put that shit away.
[00:16:19] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. That was, uh, you ate my food. Yeah. They both ended up being real fun fighters to watch.
[00:16:27] Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Joe was awesome. He was a great fighter. Yeah, he had a lot of fights in the UFC, too. Yep. And I think it got to, you know, um, how many years was he in? God, I want to say he was at least in the UFC for, like, around a decade.
[00:16:44] Speaker 2: He was, yeah, he had a pretty long career. Yeah. Because he was fighting, I mean, he fought, I don't know. I mean, he fought, like, the whole, uh, like, I think when he started was, like, BJ Penn era of lightweight. And then he fought into, like, Anthony Pettis was the champion.
[00:16:59] Speaker 3: Pull up Lozon's Wikipedia and find out when he retired. Well, his first fight was September 23rd, 2006. And I think his last fight was 2019.
[00:17:08] Speaker 1: Mm, wow. Yeah. That's crazy. 2019. Whew. Some of these guys just don't, they just don't want to stop.
[00:17:17] Speaker 2: It's just too fun. It's a very hard, uh, job to keep going for a while. Maybe the hardest.
[00:17:24] Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, like, on your body. Oh, yeah. Other than football. There's a lot of those guys in the NFL. They only last a couple years.
[00:17:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's a real tough one. But there's nothing. Well, I guess, I guess, like, professional football, there's a similar aspect to where, like, you're not just. I mean, look, you can go to the hospital from basketball, you know, you can get hurt and get a bad injury. But the NFL or the UFC, you kind of, like, you know every time you go into it, like, there's a very reasonable chance you're leaving here on a stretcher to go to the hospital. But particularly with MMA, it's the most unforgiving sport where, like, you're one mistake. One mistake away from, like, you know, like, if LeBron James misses a wide open layup, he runs back on defense and tries to, you know, get a block or something on the next play. But in MMA, you could be dominating, fighting a perfect fight, make one mistake, and it's like, okay, you're unconscious now. Maybe in four months. Leon Edwards, Kamaru Usman. Yeah.
[00:18:23] Speaker 1: Perfect example. Yep. Kamaru's way ahead in the fight. It's in the fifth round. I think there's, like, 20 seconds to go or something crazy. And Leon just plants one. A perfect head kick. Yeah. And it was the perfect, and John Anik makes the perfect call. You know, like, something had been said about him maybe deciding, you know, to quit. And then John Anik says, but that is not the cloth from which he was cut. Yeah. Boom, head kick, knockout. It's like, come on, man, is this real?
[00:18:50] Speaker 2: One of the most amazing MMA championship knockouts ever.
[00:18:54] Speaker 1: Oh, ever, ever. And then just his post-fight speech, look at me now. Look at me now.
[00:19:01] Speaker 2: And then comes back and wins the rubber match. Yeah. Which was, like, it's an interesting thing how much, you know, like, well, first off, like, getting knocked out cold like that, and you know better than me, but, like, that does a number to your body, like, that's not, you know, psychologically, well, psychologically, and also, I think physically, and then also just, like, the confidence that that gave Leon Edwards going into the next fight, like, just changes everything now. Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker 1: Yeah. Camaro had to be very careful, because he knew at any, I mean, he dodged most of the big ones until the big one landed. Yep. So, in his head, in that fight, he had a narrative, and that narrative completely changed with one head kick. So, going into the next fight, the narrative is now, if you fuck up, you will be unconscious. You can't get knocked unconscious again. And he fought much more cautiously. Yeah. In the second fight.
[00:19:51] Speaker 2: I remember seeing that with, um, I felt like you could watch that when Dustin Poirier fought Conor McGregor the second time. Like, you know, McGregor had knocked him out years earlier. And you could kind of see, you know, like, you could see Dustin, I'm not saying, like, he was nervous or anything. He's, like, one of the greatest fighters ever. But you could kind of just see, like, he gets in there and he starts, and he takes a couple shots from Conor, and he's still there, you know, and then he lands a couple shots. And you could see, like, in that first round, like, his confidence growing. Like, you almost got to get that out of your head. That it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy beat you back then, but you're a different guy now.
[00:20:26] Speaker 1: Well, with Conor, it's all about weathering the initial storm. Yeah. The initial storm is crazy. He's so explosive, so fast, so accurate. And then another part about that second fight was Dustin setting up those calf kicks, specifically because both of those guys fight southpaw. And when you both fight southpaw, if you're a southpaw like Dustin, a lot of times the calf kick's not really available. Like, you have to throw it with a switch, or it doesn't have the same sort of potential. Right. It's a slightly different potential when you're exchanging it in combinations. But with Conor, it was wide open because Conor has two things going on. One is a southpaw. Also, he had just gotten off the Floyd Mayweather fight. He's very boxing heavy. Not just, but a while back. But he had really concentrated on his striking with his hands. His hands were elite. So because of that, your stance is a little wider, and you're putting a little bit more weight on your legs. You know, and he always had a wide stance anyway. He had that karate stance. The craziest thing about that is the calf kick really didn't become a big deal even until Conor was a superstar. Like, it was after that. That's how recent it is.
[00:21:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very strange that that was almost like a thing that didn't get figured out until so recently. And then just totally changed everything. Like, at this point, you rarely, I'm not saying you never see it, but you pretty rarely see guys kick guys in the thigh anymore. Well, no, but I mean, like, compared to what it used to be, where it used to be, like, that was what a leg kick was for many years in MMA. And now it's, I'd say, like, the majority of leg kicks are targeting the calf. Yeah. Like, you'll see almost like a thigh kick, almost just to switch it up a little bit. Because guys got really good at taking those.
[00:22:08] Speaker 1: Yeah, you got really good at being conditioned. And, you know, we also saw a few leg breaks, right? We saw the Anderson Silva one. We saw the Chris Weidman one. There's been a few leg breaks from guys just full power, leg kicking the thigh, and then someone just lifts up their knee a little bit and takes it on the right where the shin bone meets the kneecap is where they like to catch it. And, boy, I've seen way too many of those. I've seen a bunch in person, but because of the internet, I've seen dozens and dozens of small promotions where a guy throws that kick wrong really hard. And the guy checks it, and his fucking foot just wraps around the leg. And you see it dangling there. You're like, oh, no. I've seen a bunch. You recognize the thing. Like, that injury is so recognizable. Like, I've seen it so many times now. I see it. I just go, oh, it's going to wrap around the calf.
[00:23:00] Speaker 2: It's going to flop. He's going to fall down. I've seen it several times on internet videos and in UFC fights. I've only once seen a guy continue to talk shit about the other guy after from the ground. Which is the craziest shit ever, dude. Everyone else I've seen is, like, crying in pain. And Connor's talking about it. Your wife's like, whatever. Your wife sent me DMs. Jesus Christ.
[00:23:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, he asked me to come and sit down with him and do a podcast. He's an animal. I mean, the dude's a one of a kind. He's one of a kind. He apparently made a post on his Instagram saying he's back. And if it's true, that would be awesome. That would be awesome. The idea is his suspension for whatever he took before is up.
[00:23:43] Speaker 2: So, yay. What was it? Something, I think it was Douglas Murray, when he wrote that article about me, he said.
[00:23:52] Speaker 1: Mr. Confidence returns to save fighting again. Call your grandma. Nanny, we did it. Watch and pay me. Fuck you, pay me. You fat Irish prick. You don't have my money. I put your brain to sleep. Who's that? What's that about? Who's he talking about? C is in the casinos after the Mac loves you's all. I got love for you's. It's an all. It's an honor. It's light work. It's easy. For life and eternity, it's McGregor. How drunk was he when he wrote this? I do this fight game. Easy peasy. The sound of my shots off the head go bing in green dot laser form. Okay. Well, I really hope he is actually back. I hope it's true. It'd be fun to see him fight a few more times.
[00:24:43] Speaker 2: It'd be a lot of fun. It'd be a lot of fun to see him again. Greatest personality the sport's ever known. Yeah, that's right.
[00:24:46] Speaker 1: There's no one even close. I mean, he's the most dynamic personality the sport's ever known.
[00:24:51] Speaker 2: And he was, for a time there, just such an unbelievable fighter. I mean, he was like just, it was incredible what he was doing. The Andy Alvarez fight. Oh, yeah, yeah. I was there. I was there. Well, thanks to you. With really good seats, thanks to you. But that was one of the best, that might be the best fight I've ever been to live, because that whole card was just stacked, and that as the main event was just unbelievable.
[00:25:15] Speaker 1: Bro, he was in the Matrix. He was in the Matrix. He was just in the zone. And, you know, Dana said it best. He's like, that kid eats pressure. He goes, he eats it. Yeah. Like, he thrives on pressure. Pressure that makes other people wilt, he, like, shines under that pressure.
[00:25:32] Speaker 2: And he had an amazing ability, even very early in his career, which was, like, kind of, it was really unique, like, because even, like, on his first fight ever, if you watch his first fight in the UFC against, like, Brimage, I think the guy's name is, and he was a relatively unknown at the time. But, dude, the place is going nuts. He already had made so much kind of, like, street cred for himself. And then the Irish thing, like, the Irish were really, really into it. But he, from the very first fight, he would always create these moments where it's like, dude, this is going to be the biggest spectacle that you, my opponent, has ever been in in their career. Like, I'm going to get you mad with shit talking. I'm going to get the fans so excited because he's completely comfortable there. Like, I'm not sure if you're really comfortable here, but I'm, and so it would, and even with, with Aldo, who had been the entire division, he would, literally, when they started the division, they started him as champion. He didn't even win it. He came in because they absolved the WEC. So he was the entire featherweight division, had just dominated everyone, and he even created such a moment that, like, like, Aldo was, like, uh. He was the boogeyman. Yeah, dude. He was incredible. He was incredible. He was one of the greatest featherweights of all time. But he got him to the point where he was, like, so furious that he was, like, I'm going to take this fucking guy's head off. And then Conor's just, like, relaxed. He's, like, like, he didn't care about any of the shit talking. He was just, like, yeah, we're having fun.
[00:26:53] Speaker 1: Let's play. He lost his composure. Yeah, and he looked, he looked very overwhelmed by the moment. Oh, and, oh, and by the way, everyone from Ireland came to Vegas for that fight. It was the nuttiest thing I've ever seen in my fucking life. The entire Mandalay Bay was overcome with Irish people. I mean, overcome, like, you couldn't move. There was nothing but Irish people everywhere, and they were singing. They were all singing together in the halls of this gigantic casino, packed, bumped, like they're waiting in line for something. And they were just there partying for Conor. I remember, I think it was when, I want to say it was when. Look at all these people. Yeah, it was nuts, dude. Bro, this is nuts, man. They were all Irish people. Like, you got to realize nobody had a following like him. Like, this is actually Irish people for the Floyd Mayweather fight. They were still ride or die with him even for that fight.
[00:27:49] Speaker 2: I think it was when he fought Dennis Seaver, I want to say.
[00:27:52] Speaker 1: I think that was in Boston.
[00:27:53] Speaker 2: So I went to, I went with Louis J. Gomez, my good friend, hilarious comedian. And he, me and him went to some Irish bar. Like, we just happened to be in Midtown Manhattan. And we were like, oh, the fights are coming on. Oh, they're playing it at this bar. You know, it was just like an Irish pub. And dude, I mean, it wasn't even that big of a bar. They must have, I mean, it was shoulder to shoulder Irish people losing their fucking minds. Like, it was the, it was the most fun environment to watch a fight in. Because they're just at, I mean, they're just like, but all that singing and chanting. It seemed like everyone had an Irish flag with them. Like, it was, it was this in a, in a little bar. It was this.
[00:28:31] Speaker 1: That's nuts, man. Look at that. That's Mandalay Bay. Wow. Look at this. Oh, that's MGM. Well, they were everywhere. They were probably at every fucking casino there was. This is crazy. Imagine, imagine if you, you're from Northern Ireland. And you like, you still, still remember the troubles. You make your way to the hotel. Just came to Vegas for a little gambling. You don't follow MMA. You have no fucking idea. What's this all about? I have picked the wrong fucking week for me vacation.
[00:29:14] Speaker 2: By the way, I was going to say that Douglas Murray's big knockoff. When he wrote his op-ed in the New York Post was he goes, he goes, you know, Dave goes on Joe Rogan and he talks about foreign policy like he's an expert. But I bet he wouldn't go in there and talk MMA with him because then Joe would recognize he's not an expert. And I was like, we do that all the time. We do that every show. We do that all the time.
[00:29:32] Speaker 1: That's so stupid.
[00:29:33] Speaker 2: I was like, almost every time we hang out, we end up talking MMA. And like, it probably is fair that, yeah, there'll be moments where you'll correct me if I get something wrong. So what? But if I get it right, you don't go, you're not an expert.
[00:29:45] Speaker 1: That's so dumb. Imagine we don't talk about MMA because you're not an expert. That's so silly. Well, I watch a lot of it. I have some thoughts. Why is he so silly? I love Douglas. I really do. I've enjoyed talking to him. I think he's a brilliant man. But I was very disappointed with, uh, you've never been? I'm very disappointed with that sort of strategy that you shouldn't be talking about these things that are factual. But even more disappointed with that notion, the notion that, like, you would never talk about MMA with me. Like, do you think we would, first of all, I don't think I argue about MMA with anybody. I don't think anybody. If someone has a point about MMA, I don't, I never argue. I might say. You've corrected me when I've gotten things wrong. Yeah, or I might say I disagree. Like, some people think that a certain thing is going to happen, and I'm like, ooh, I don't see that. I disagree. That happens. Sure. Yeah, but.
[00:30:38] Speaker 2: Well, also, like, it's, whatever point you're making is either a good point or it's not a good point, if it's, like, an objective claim. You know what I mean? Right. So, like, if I say, like, you know, when Volkanovsky fought Lopez, his jab was crucial. Okay, that's either correct or it's incorrect. Like, whether I'm an expert or not, I'm not an expert on fighting. But, yeah, geez, you can watch the fight and that would be correct. Yes, right. So, well, it doesn't. You can see it. Right. I saw he hit a home run. You're right. You're not even an expert. There you go. That's crazy. Well, you know, it was a weird, a weird thing during that show was, because it's a weird, I don't know, there's, like, weird incentives built into, like, all of this.
[00:31:16] Speaker 1: Incentives are the right word because there's a lot of people that are saying things and you go, why are you saying that?
[00:31:21] Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, also, from my perspective, I was a little disappointed with it because I kind of thought, I was like, oh, this could be, like, a really cool thing. And it had been literally, which I don't think I'm saying anything that is, like, betraying confidence here. But the only thing that was ever said to me, I remember you called me and you were like, what do you think about doing this? And I think I said yes before you could finish answering. Yeah, yeah, you did. Yes, absolutely. Let's do that. And then you told me that he had said, hey, he really doesn't want this to devolve into, like, a food fight. He wants to make this, like, a good faith thing. And I was like, oh, awesome. And now I feel like he, like, Trump Whitcoff negotiated me. Like, he started, he was, because then he came in and the whole thing was about me. He didn't want to talk about the issues at all. He just wanted, and so in a weird way, I was like, well, this sucks because I thought we could have had a really cool thing. But then there was this other part of me that was like, I mean, he's really just handing this to me. You know what I mean? Like, he kind of just, like, gave me the win in a thing that was a big show with, like, you know, a lot of people I knew were going to watch it. I mean, obviously, every time I do your show, a lot of people are going to watch it. But that was a particularly big one. Yeah. And so I was kind of, almost like, for the first 45 minutes of it, I was kind of sitting there like, oh, I can't believe he just, he went this route.
[00:32:35] Speaker 1: Well, if you look at it objectively, there weren't a lot of options, right? Yeah. It's very difficult to argue the side that what they're doing, like, we were talking about Gaza in particular. Yeah. Like, like, the arguing that that's not horrific. And if you're a human being and you recognize that there are human beings that are subjected to that government, just like you're subjected to ICE, you're subjected to Homeland Security, you're subjected to the cops. If you're a civilian, you have to listen to these orders. So if you're living in Gaza and you're a child or you're a woman and you live, you're not Hamas. And the idea that you're responsible for October 7th, even if you're one of the people that cheered in the street, boy, don't you think you kind of have to cheer in the street if everybody else is cheering the street? If you're fucking in terror for your life and you have to, like, keep your safety intact, like, you've got to kind of go along with whatever everybody else is doing. I'm not saying that's good, but when you look at how that place is leveled, I mean, the most recent videos that I've seen were still, like, a few months old. So I don't know if it stopped. Did they stop bombing? I don't know what's going on.
[00:33:52] Speaker 2: No, they've slowed down a bit, but they haven't stopped. Okay.
[00:33:54] Speaker 1: There was nothing left, man. Yeah. And that represents people's homes. That represents schools. That represents hospitals. There's no way you can argue that that's not horrific. Yeah. So he was stuck.
[00:34:07] Speaker 2: That's right. That's right. It's kind of indefensible. And so instead you pivot to arguing against this guy rather than against the issue. Well, I think that, you know, it's in, I can't remember if this was in the letter to America or this was in his declaration of war against America. But Osama bin Laden literally said that civilians are fair targets because you guys have elections and you vote for these politicians and they're the ones who conduct these wars that slaughter innocent Muslims. So like just saying, it's the logic of Osama bin Laden to say that civilians are responsible for. And in Gaza, like they don't even really have a government. Hamas is not a government. They don't have a regular election. They had one election back in 05 or 06 or whatever it was, which Hamas did not even win majorities of. They won on pluralities, you know what I mean? And so the idea that you're holding these people responsible for Hamas just doesn't make any sense. And just on a very basic human level, you just kind of go, and I'm not like an egalitarian. I'm not saying all people are equal or all cultures are equal or anything like that. But on a very basic human level, like those are real people too. And when a mother is like pulling her six-year-old dead body out of the rubble, that's this same exact experience as if your wife was pulling your six-year-old out of that. Like that same thing is happening to her. And once you even just admit that, it does just change the calculation. It changes the calculation to be like, okay, look, the onus is on you to demonstrate that this is absolutely necessary. Like there is no other option than to do it this way. And that makes defending most wars very difficult. Not all of them, you know, but most wars are very difficult to defend if you just run it through that filter of like, is there any other option other than this? Have you exhausted everything else? And then, of course, in the case with Israel and Palestine, you go, oh, you never even tried to just give them their independence? You've never tried to just let them out from this occupation and see if maybe that will improve things? And the answer is no.
[00:36:15] Speaker 1: It's crazy that the world didn't at one point in time stand up and say, there's a simple solution here. Like these people should have a state. Like why do you get to control them but they're not as really? Like they're kind of a country, but not really because they're attached to you? Why don't you guys go buy another country and give it to them and let them have a country or they don't like being attached on the same small patch of dirt to people that have a totally different ideology, I guess. Well, that's right. And that, look, I mean, it's just. But we are. Yeah, we have Canadians right there.
[00:36:52] Speaker 2: Yes, but Canadians, Canadians do get citizenship in their own country.
[00:36:57] Speaker 1: They get citizenship here too. Boy, that's the last thing ICE is looking for is fucking Canadians.
[00:37:02] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
[00:37:02] Speaker 1: Although, your visa's expired. Don't worry about it, buddy. Get on the plane. They'd probably have a much easier time. Like Canadians would go, all right, guess I got a goo. Well, yeah, also, they can just ditch the accent and pretend they're Americans and everybody will buy it. Yeah, it's much easier. As long as I don't say about wrong. Yeah. You know, they could just say, ah, sorry, I don't have my license on me. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, like, okay, buddy, where are you from? I live in Iowa. Okay, sounds right. That does check it out. Get out of here. All right. Shit, that does check it out. Do you see the shit that's going on in the airports? So, are they using, they're using ICE now at the airports because, first of all, how many ICE agents are there? Aren't they busy? How do you have time to put them in all the airports? How many fucking airports are there? It's in the low tens of thousands. There's not that many of them. Right. So, like, how many airports are there? There's a lot of airports. Okay, so you're putting ICE in the airports? Where are you getting all these ICE guys? Are you hiring new ICE guys to take the airport jobs? Like, is this, like, it takes seven weeks to train them. So, do they have, like, a surplus of, like, an ICE factory where they're churning them out and putting them out there?
[00:38:04] Speaker 2: I heard, so I didn't see any of them. I flew out here the other day, and I didn't see any of them. But then I did see people saying that they were at the airport I flew out from later that day.
[00:38:13] Speaker 1: Up to 150. That's not a lot. Immigration and customs enforcement officers were deployed at airports across the United States on Monday. So, I, of course, you know, you get on social media. Somebody sends you something. Somebody sent me something. I'm not sure if it was true. But it was, like, look at the difference between the lines at the airport before ICE was there and after ICE was there, and tell me that only 10 million illegal aliens got in. They were like, what is the real, we were talking about this last night, like, what's the real number? What is the real number of illegals in the United States?
[00:38:50] Speaker 2: We don't know.
[00:38:51] Speaker 1: You were saying something about Ann Coulter.
[00:38:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, well, she had, and this was from a while ago. So, this was, well, she had, she had in her book, Adios America, she had, I believe it was from Bear Stearns. I could be wrong, double-checking on that, was one of the big finance companies, that they had put a thing where, like, they put it between, like, 30 and 50 million total in the country. Jeez. And 50 is wild. Yeah, and this is before Joe Biden. Now, I don't know, maybe they got those numbers wrong. This is before Biden. So, what year was this book? I want to say 2014, 2015, something like that.
[00:39:25] Speaker 1: Oh, my God, that's 10 years ago.
[00:39:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, a lot of them, a lot of them have come in since then.
[00:39:29] Speaker 1: Well, at least 10 million, they believe, came in through the Biden administration.
[00:39:33] Speaker 2: So, over four years. Well, I remember the numbers being, like, during the Biden administration, where they'd be, like, it was something like, last month, there were 700,000 border apprehensions. And you're like, well, jeez, then how many were just flooding? And you'd see those big caravans coming in and stuff. I mean, look, it's a huge, that still is a huge scandal. And as much as I have really been, really criticizing Trump and the Trump administration since last summer, you know, he's done a good job in securing the border. That is the one thing that, like, you kind of got to give him. And he got that secured, like, right away.
[00:40:09] Speaker 1: Even if you think that it should be open and those people should be able to travel freely, they should. There's no one's illegal on stolen land, that kind of shit. You know how much sex trafficking happened during that time of children? You know how many children were trafficked that way? You know how many children were dragged across the border and sold to psychopaths? Oh, yeah.
[00:40:32] Speaker 2: Oh, it's horrible. I mean, I saw, oh, there's Ann Coulter with at least 15.
[00:40:36] Speaker 1: At least 50 million illegals in the country today. See my book, Adios, America, for the analysis from Pulitzer Prize winning reporters and numbers crunchers from Bear Stearns. I was right.
[00:40:46] Speaker 2: It was Bear Stearns.
[00:40:47] Speaker 1: This is 2022, this post. Wow.
[00:40:50] Speaker 3: The book is even older, though.
[00:40:51] Speaker 2: The book is like, the book is from before, I want to say 2015, but it's around then. The book is crazy. That's crazy. Supposedly, this is the book that got Donald Trump on the immigration issue. At least I've heard Ann Coulter say that before. Maybe that's right. Maybe that's not right. But I mean, look, it's like it's also a particularly it's a it's a profound like act of of treachery for a government to do that to its own country, like to allow that and really facilitate that to happen against the will of the domestic population. Like if you were to I've tried to look this up before, I was trying to figure this out because I did a big immigration debate last year or maybe the year before. And I was trying. You can't even get numbers on what the polling on open borders is because no one even asked the question in polling because it's like they asked, like, do you think immigration policy should be less restrictive or more restrictive? Because because the number of people who support open, it's like maybe one percent of the country supports that. It's as unified an issue as anyone could have that. No, you can't just have the border wide open. Right. And so to do that to the American people against the way, like you you drastically change the country in a way that is not really it's not easy to just undo. I mean, as we've seen, right, Donald Trump backed off of mass deportations almost immediately because big business doesn't want it. And then because look like the level of violence that you'd need to just physically deport 50 million people is going to be something that the American people just aren't going to put up with. I mean, you even see in Minnesota and rightfully so. I completely understand that. But you see, like, you know, I saw one thing. I saw that Trump had asked the ICE agents who were going to the airports to not wear their masks. And I was like, is that even a that's even an option? Why would they be masked in the airport? Because they're ICE agents. Yeah, they get doxxed. Well, that's their concern. And look, I understand that. That's a real concern. I understand that concern. It's organized. But at the same time, you know, there is a balancing act there. And, you know, a lot of people like a lot of right wingers will say, hey, look, if you're you know, if you came here illegally, then that's a crime. You're here illegally. That's the law. And hey, I get that argument. But also the supreme law of the land is the Constitution of the United States of America. And I've seen a ton of videos where there were masked ICE agents not even identifying themselves, going up to people, telling them that you have to answer my questions. You don't have an option to walk away, which is like not true at all.
[00:43:25] Speaker 1: Well, that was my take on it is that you can't accept people that are masked, that don't have any paperwork, that don't have a warrant on the streets in militarized situations. Because if they're using it for this, which you agree to, that opens up the door for them to use it because you won't take your vaccine or because you did this or did that or whatever the fuck it is. If a different person gets in power, maybe they're going to use it for something you don't support. It's just not something you're supposed to accept. That's right. You don't want to accept that president. Here's something that someone told me that is this is a very credible source that I can't reveal what the source is. But they told me that there are people in this country, and not just a few, but many, many that are affiliated with terrorist organizations, directly affiliated, but they've applied for asylum. And because they've applied for asylum, you can't deport them until they go through the entire process. That is wild. That is wild. So there's people that are known at least terrorist sympathizers. They're in direct communication with terrorist networks. They've done things with terrorist networks, and they've applied for asylum. So you have to go through this long-ass process through the legal system, and it's up to a judge whether or not this person, who may or may not be a part of a fucking sleeper cell, gets to stay in America. But suicidal empathy, that's what Gad Saad calls it, and I think he's right.
[00:44:57] Speaker 2: I think he's got a fair point there with suicidal empathy in terms of the idea of like that we cannot say on some level that it's like, no, look, we have a desire to preserve our society, and we want to do what's bad. And we don't have to, out of some feeling of guilt, turn our country into something worse than what it otherwise would be. So I think he's got a point there. I think, and look, I'm not a big fan of Gad. He literally just, him and like Sam Harris and a few others, they literally just trash me all the time and refuse to engage on a single thing I've said. So like it'll just be- Gad doesn't engage with you? He calls me Wikipedia Dave on Twitter, and it's a- Well, look- I like the guy, but I have a different relationship with him than you do. Well, that's true. And I'm a big critic of Israel, and he's a Mossad agent, so there is that. That is part of- You think he is? He's admitted that he worked for Mossad. Yeah. In the past? Yes. Yeah. He's, I guess he would say he's not currently- He retired. Like, I used to- Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
[00:45:55] Speaker 1: I used to work for Newport Creamery.
[00:45:56] Speaker 2: I don't represent them anymore. I think it's a little bit different with the Mossad thing. But I also think that the big component that I think all of those guys are missing is that we also create more enemies with our foreign policy. And that's not to say that, like, you know, they always kind of caricature my position on this. Like, I'm not saying Islam is all peaceful, and there are no problems in the Islamic world or anything like that. In fact, I don't think any religion has truly always been peaceful. But, you know, for guys like, say, like, Sam Harris, who these kind of, like, pretend intellectuals, who have spent- He spent his entire career talking about how violent and irrational the Muslims are, and how you can't even draw a cartoon of Muhammad, or Muslims will want to do violent stuff. And, like, hey, fair enough. That's bullshit. And we should all say, like, if you want to be over here in the West, our values are free speech, and you cannot kill people for cartoons. But then, like, none of them ever also go, hey, you know, murdering an Ayatollah might be dangerous. During Ramadan. Yeah. Like, that is, you know, that is not just a political figure to Shiite Muslims. That is a- So, at the same time, it's like, okay, I'm fine with saying, okay, you don't want to have suicidal empathy. My buddy, Keith Knight, who's brilliant, works over at the Libertarian Institute, he had, I forget what he said, but he said something like, okay, I don't want to have suicidal empathy. Let's also not have homicidal empathy, you know? And so, like, maybe it also is, like, as we were tying into that whole conversation with, no, I'm okay, thanks, with the whole thing about the kids and women in Gaza. It's like, it's also the fact that if you just view slaughtering Muslim children in the Middle East and in Northern Africa as, like, just an acceptable political price, you know? That's just collateral damage, and unfortunately, that happens when we pursue this policy. You're going to deal with more and more of that. And the combination of both, Joe, like, the combination of having open borders, having all these people get in, and continuing the war on terrorism and slaughtering people in these numbers must be the most insane combination ever. The idea that you'd be like, we're going to, you know, we're going to just make an entire generation of Muslims hate us, because so many of them have seen what we've done to their countries. And also, we'll welcome all of them in with no checks, and we can't get rid of them when they come here.
[00:48:32] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[00:48:32] Speaker 2: That is quite a combination.
[00:48:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all nuts. It's the Sam Harris thing. I should clarify this, because he's apparently talked about me again recently on Bill Maher. We didn't not talk because it was his idea. It was me. He wanted to do a podcast with me. He wanted to do, like, a COVID, you know, wrap-up, like, to, you know, go over everything that happened, all the mistakes that were made, and his position, my position, because that's where we kind of, like, separated. He was very pro-vaccine. I said, I won't do that until you talk to Brett Weinstein, that you need to talk to Brett. Like, Brett, you disparaged him publicly. I think you said things that weren't correct. You called him a conspiracy theorist, and you said you wouldn't platform him because it's dangerous. I don't believe that's true. I believe the problem is that Sam was incorrect about both the effectiveness and the safety of the COVID vaccines. Brett was correct. And Brett didn't insult Sam. Sam insulted Brett. I mean, Brett's said things about Sam since, but it was Sam. And I said, look, you've got to talk to him first. You can't just talk to me, you know, especially because he's an actual evolutionary biologist. Like, he understands these things. He knows what he's talking about. He's had multiple conversations with high-level vaccinologists and all these different people that worked on the mRNA vaccines. Like, he was correct. We all know that now. We know that all the things that he was talking about, whether it's masking doesn't work, social distancing, the- Lockdowns. Lockdowns. Didn't work at all. All the above. All the above. He didn't want to talk to Brett. And I said, that doesn't make sense to me. Like, you talk to everybody. You have debates with Muslims on stage. Yeah, that's right. That doesn't make any sense. Like, why wouldn't you talk to Brett? I don't think he wanted to talk to Brett because I don't- I think he didn't want to talk to Brett because Brett's right. Yeah. And I think it's indefensible. No, I completely agree. I mean, you know, I had a- By the way, I don't hate Sam. You know, he could say all the crazy shit he wants. He also said, like, I don't think he should interview Gaddafi. Guess what? I would. If Gaddafi was alive, 100% I would interview Gaddafi. Gaddafi- Do you ever hear Russell Crowe talk about Gaddafi? I don't think so. He did a clip that went viral that was on this show where he talked about why they wanted to get rid of Gaddafi. Right. And, like, well, they talked about how evil Gaddafi was and how he subjugated his people. You can't see if you can find that. Russell Crowe on Gaddafi. He wanted to create a United States of Africa. He wanted to get him on the gold standard. He wanted to get him off the U.S. dollar. Like, he had some very dangerous ideas.
[00:51:25] Speaker 2: Now, she was the secretary of state at the time under Barack Obama, but she's really the one who championed that. And I believe Obama wrote in his book that he was 50-50 and that Hillary really pushed him to that. And he said his big regret was that he didn't think about what came next after Gaddafi. So, now we haven't learned that lesson yet? Like, after Iraq, you'd never thought of that? Listen, but thank God Trump's figured it out. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Trump's figured it out. We'll go in this drastic new direction of getting the seventh war that they wanted.
[00:51:55] Speaker 1: Don't be a pussy, Dave. Jesus Christ. Did you see that one, I don't know what military expert was on television who said something about we need, I'm a fan of boots on the ground, like Rome. Like, hey, fucker, Rome didn't have nuclear weapons and drones. Rome didn't have drones that hunt you. What are you talking about, boots on the ground? Should we fight with swords? Should we get everybody to fight with swords? Is that what you're saying? The fuck are you saying?
[00:52:20] Speaker 2: Well, also, like, what even is the plan with boots on the ground? Like, what are you talking about here? You're going to take an island. It goes, okay, well, then you're going to be a target. You're going to be target practice as long as the Iranian regime is still standing. And if you're talking about militarily occupying the country, like we did with Iraq or Afghanistan or something like that, this is a huge country with 92 million people. How many soldiers do you think you need to occupy that country? At least half a million, and probably you can't do it with that. So what are you talking about here? And so you're saying, are we going to start a draft for the least popular war going in in American history? Because I don't think that's happening. Yeah, this is maybe slightly more popular than Vietnam. Going in, it's less. I'm sure Vietnam by the end was very, very unpopular.
[00:53:10] Speaker 1: Well, Vietnam going in didn't make any sense, did it? There was, I guess, the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Most people in America were like, why are we doing this? What's going on? You're drafting people to go to Vietnam? We're fighting communism in Vietnam? Yeah.
[00:53:26] Speaker 2: What? Well, they called it Vietnam syndrome that the American people had, which is that we didn't want to fight a war again after that. From their perspective, that's a syndrome. And it's really something. They think, by the way, Ben Shapiro used this same line called, he said, Trump finally broke Iraq war syndrome. Because they think, see, from Ben Shapiro's perspective, the illness is after you lie the American people into a war and slaughter a million people. The illness isn't that. That, you might look at that as the bad part, but the bad part is that these annoying Americans have this tendency to not want to do that again after that. But he claims Trump has broken Iraq war syndrome. Of course, there's really no evidence with support of the American people that that has changed at all. And, you know, the George H.W. Bush was said to have defeated Vietnam war syndrome in Panama and in Iraq because they were relatively easy, you know, bloodless on the American side or very, very limited, you know, injuries and deaths. And, you know, they weren't like quagmires that went on forever or whatever. But, of course, after the Persian Gulf War in 92, we went on to be bombing Iraq for ever since, essentially. You know, I mean, for 30 straight years after that, we were still at war with that country. I think for a million people being dead.
[00:54:59] Speaker 1: What is public support? Let's put that into our sponsor perplexity. What is current public support for the Iran war in America? First of all, how will they know? No one's asked me. You know what I'm saying? That's a fair point. Like, that's what I always say about polls. When was the last time you answered a poll? When was the last time anybody called you up and said, Dave, man, first of all, when was the last time you ever picked up the phone if you didn't know who was calling? And then when you do answer, when was the last time you said yes to a poll? I don't even remember ever getting called. It has to be the dumbest of dumb people that answer those polls. So then you got to realize, out of those stupid fucking idiots, even how many of them think the war is a good idea?
[00:55:40] Speaker 2: It's even unpopular amongst them.
[00:55:42] Speaker 1: I mean, what does it say here? Most recent national polls show Americans overall oppose the current war with Iran and think U.S. military action has gone too far. A Quinnipiac poll finds 54%, what is the Quinnipiac, Quinnipiac poll finds 54% of U.S. voters oppose U.S. military action against Iran and 39% support it. I wonder how many of those 39% are Jews. Well, not too much. We don't have the numbers. A poll reports about six in, right, what is the number of Jewish people in America? Two percent? Something like that? Six in ten adults say U.S. military action against Iran has gone too far. Only about a quarter say it's been about right. 25% PUFA. First of all, you know, whenever you're talking about these kind of things, it's like, who, again, who are we talking about? Who was asked? Finds Republicans largely support the military action around 86% support. Whoa. Yeah. Really? Because I talk to a lot of Republicans and think it's a terrible idea. While large majorities of Democrats, around 92%, and independents, about 64% oppose it. 92%. Who are the 8% of Democrats that are like, let's fucking go? You think maybe they're Jews?
[00:57:03] Speaker 2: They work for CNN, you know, whatever. CNN thinks it's a good idea? No. Dude, CNN is running cover for Donald Trump during this time. Come on. For real? Oh, yeah. No way. Yeah, they put up a poll the other day. They had a graphic that said 100% of MAGA supports the war in Iran. CNN said that? After all these years.
[00:57:24] Speaker 3: People say he liked it or something like that. Oh, but hold on a second. CNN likes me.
[00:57:28] Speaker 1: Is that running cover or is that making them look bad? Because most Americans don't support the war. And most Democrats, 92%, don't support the war. So if that's the case, wouldn't that just make it look like these MAGA people are a fucking problem? I guess. Oh, my God. MAGA, GOP view of Trump. Can I hear how he says it? Or would it be a problem?
[00:57:49] Speaker 3: Rating among MAGA. That's not him talking. It's someone else talking.
[00:57:51] Speaker 1: Oh, okay. That seems bonkers. That seems bonkers. Approve 100%. How many people did you ask? Two. Two guys with MAGA hats on in the party.
[00:58:00] Speaker 2: If you notice the way they say this, right? So they don't just say GOP voters. They say MAGA GOP voters. And so what they're doing here is that they're filtering who they consider to be MAGA. And who they consider to be MAGA are the people who still say they support Donald Trump. But almost like 100% of the people who don't support this war stopped supporting Donald Trump over it.
[00:58:22] Speaker 1: Right. But look at this little thing on the bottom. They don't show you. 66%, 31% split among non-MAGA. Right. And is that non-MAGA Republicans? Is that what you're saying?
[00:58:33] Speaker 2: No, I think that's non-MAGA Americans. I believe.
[00:58:36] Speaker 1: The whole MAGA thing is like how did, we're so fractioned as it is. Yeah. Like this whole idea of right versus left as it is. And now you've got a MAGA section of the right.
[00:58:47] Speaker 2: It's all just ridiculous, dude. But it's a way to describe it as anything other than what it is. Which is the most unpopular war in American history going into it. And for good reason. Look, dude. He didn't even bother to like sell us on a propaganda campaign about it. It was like the laziest, like just lie, just lie us into it.
[00:59:04] Speaker 1: Let's put on a fucking firm tinfoil hat right now. Let's, let's get a double layer Reynolds wrap, fucking crease the edges, fold it down. Why would he want to do this? Why would he want to? Look, I am not denying that the regime of Iran is a giant problem. I'm certainly not denying that if I was Israel, I would not want them there. They hate you. They're trying to get a nuclear weapon. They're right there. I get the Israel position. I totally understand how they're so just vehemently in defense of their homeland. Like they're surrounded by people that hate them. They're the one Jewish country. Everyone else is a Muslim. They all want a caliphate. They all want to kill them. It's been going on forever. They think it's in God's word that they have it. It's a lot of craziness. I get it. Why now? Like, why now? Like, what does that make any sense?
[01:00:06] Speaker 2: Well, Trump himself has said, which literally this would be like considered an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory if anyone else had said it. But Donald Trump has openly talked about many times how the Adelson's give them all this money and they come by every day and all they have is another demand on behalf of Israel. Donald Trump also very early in his political career got in trouble with Israel lobby and then immediately pivoted to blaming to winning their favor back over by saying he would tear up the JCPOA, the Iran deal that Obama got us into. And it looks to me, you know, other speculation aside, who knows exactly what control they have over the guy. But it looks to me that after Venezuela and when there were these big street protests and riots against the regime and around there, that they convinced Trump. And this is what Joe Kent, his director of counterterrorism has said, too, that they essentially convinced him that this would be the time you could do it swiftly, surgically remove the regime and the people would rise up and overthrow it. And that this is what Donald Trump said when he launched this war, he said, this is a regime change and I'm calling on the great people of Iran to rise up. And they did. They rose up by at least the hundreds of thousands. They were out in Tehran in defense of the regime chanting death to America, because it turns out when you kill 165 little girls, that doesn't make a country go. We love you.
[01:01:41] Speaker 1: Thank you. Right. But before the bombing, there were people in the streets that were protesting. And people were killed because of that a lot. That's the other thing is that that regime is like they clamped down and they do it with public figures. They killed a very prominent wrestler from Iran. Yeah. Really two of them. They killed one a few years back. The UFC tried to step in and somehow or another stop it. But he was also one that was accused of protesting against the government.
[01:02:09] Speaker 2: Listen, I don't know about this most recent one. I'm not saying this is true at all. I don't trust any governments. But he was they claimed he killed a few cops. That's what the Iranian regime said he was being hung for. Now, I don't know. The wrestler? Yeah, the wrestler. Oh, I didn't see that. He was convicted of that, whatever that means in a in a mullah run court, you know. So I'm not saying that's right at all. But I will say this, right, the Donald Trump, when he when he launched this war and there's been a whole lot of just false claims that have been made. But he said specifically that they killed 32,000 protesters. There has not been a shred of evidence presented to back up this claim. Now, I'm not saying it's not true. I'm not putting it past this government that they would do that. And they've acknowledged that a lot of people have died. I think they I think the last I had seen was that I know they were saying the the government of Iran is before the Ayatollah was killed. They were saying it was something like three thousand people had died. And then the CIA. But when you say died, does it mean they killed the protesters? Well, that's unclear. That's that's not what they are claiming. But then the CIA, at least there was a piece in the Washington, excuse me, in the Wall Street Journal where they had said, and this was like a week and a half into it, that they estimated like six and a half thousand or something like that. But this is a huge question, right? And it's not clear at all. Like, were they lining people up and just executing them for the crime of protesting? They hung the wrestler. But I'm saying the people who have been killed here.
[01:03:39] Speaker 1: Iran protest death toll could top 30,000, according to local health officials. And this is from Time Magazine. As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on January 8th and 9th alone. Two senior officials of the country's Ministry of Health told Time, indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll. So many people were slaughtered by Iranian security services that Thursday and Friday it overwhelmed the state's capacity to dispose of the dead. Stocks of body bags were exhausted, the officials said, and 18-wheel semi-trailers replaced ambulances.
[01:04:16] Speaker 2: Now, listen, all I'm saying here, man, is that you've got to be—I've just seen this movie play out a lot of times. You've got to be really careful about these accusations that are made in the run-up to a war. They're basically saying, we have a source who told us this.
[01:04:27] Speaker 1: What year was this? I mean, excuse me, what date was this? January 25th. January 25th.
[01:04:31] Speaker 2: So the protests started in late December and then in January. Time was unable to independently verify these figures.
[01:04:39] Speaker 1: That's right.
[01:04:40] Speaker 2: Listen, the claim being made here, right, is that, look, in this point, they said in two days, in two days, 30,000 people were killed. If that is true, that is up there with one of the biggest massacres in human history. The biggest massacres during World War II were, like, around that.
[01:04:57] Speaker 1: It says, as of Saturday, U.S.-based human rights activist news agency had confirmed 5,459 deaths and is investigating 17,000 more. Yes. So that's at least close. So we're in the 20s, just if what they're investigating turns out to be accurate.
[01:05:16] Speaker 2: If that's the case. But we're talking also here, Joe, about, like, NED-funded, U.S.-based NGOs who are really around hawks, you know? Good point. And I'm just saying, like, look, the claim here is that around, you know, I saw a bunch of the Zionists online when this was first coming out back in January. They were like, oh, my God, they've already killed half as many people as died in Gaza in just a couple days. And you're like, right, that's a pretty, that's a hell of a claim, right? I mean, like, if you, just from following wars all these years, if you started carpet bombing Tehran, Vietnam-style, carpet bombing Tehran, after two days, that's the type of death toll you'd be looking at. Well, the thing is, we don't, they don't have internet access to the rest of the world. Well, they shut down the internet during that period. But there were pictures that came out, all I'm saying is that if you had numbers like that, you would expect there to be some evidence that you could point to. And there's, like, one picture where they've pointed to, like, a couple dozen body bags and been like, see, look at this. But, look, I'm not, maybe it's true, maybe it's not. I'm very skeptical of these claims when they're made right before we launch a war. But I think the other point is that, at least according, and there has been some evidence of this, right, there were police stations that were burned, there were mosques that were attacked. These were not just peaceful protests. I'm not saying they don't have a right to violently rise up and overthrow their government, whatever. But all the hawks in the West were saying, these people are trying to overthrow their government.
[01:06:44] Speaker 1: Not only that, in the past, our agencies, our intelligence agencies, have engaged in nefarious practices where we have conscripted certain people to go and light things on fire and blow things up and create these events to accelerate.
[01:07:02] Speaker 2: Front page of the Jerusalem Post, they were bragging that there was Mossad within the protests. So, now, look, I don't know, but also the thing is this, right, if you are trying to overthrow a government, a government will kill you for doing that. And that's true about every government, including our own. Including our own. If armed protesters went to try to overthrow Barack Obama's government, he would kill those people if they were actually a threat to do that. How about Ashley Babbitt was murdered on January 6th? And every single left-winger in the country went, well, that's okay, it was an insurrection. And by the way, every single right-winger in this country, when this pretty guy got killed, were like, well, he was interfering. Oh, I saw, but by the way, the pretty thing was the most textbook example of a bad shooting. There's just no defending it. They had disarmed the guy, he's down, there's six of them, they panic, they put six bullets in him.
[01:07:53] Speaker 1: Do you know what happened, though? Do you know the whole story of the gun? The gun being removed? Yeah, do you know the whole story about the gun? No, oh, what? Okay, the gun is a SIG P320. Right. A SIG P320 is notorious for accidental discharges. Right. There is a video of the cop removing the gun, walking off. Yes, I saw that. And the gun goes off. And is that his gun for sure? Yeah.
[01:08:16] Speaker 2: Because I thought that hadn't been determined whether or not. I heard people speculating about that.
[01:08:20] Speaker 1: I've watched the video multiple times and I've watched other people's analysis of it. Obviously, I'm no expert, but I do know something about guns. And that gun in particular has been demonstrated online that it will go off. There's a cop inside of a precinct. He bends over, not touching his gun, gun in the holster, and it goes off. There's a video of a guy on a range and the gun just goes off. And he goes, whose fucking gun was that? And the range master goes, is that a SIG? And he goes, yeah. He goes, get that fucking gun off of my range. Wow. Because it's a P320. So SIG, I should be real clear, SIG makes a bunch of guns that are awesome. Like the P365 is like one of the best carry guns in the world. There's a lot of guns they make that don't have this issue. But that particular gun that Preddy had with one in the chamber is fucking knuckleheads walking around with one in the chamber.
[01:09:11] Speaker 2: Absolutely. And all for, I'm just saying, the only point I'm making is that it's clearly, it was a fuck up. I'm not saying like they wanted to execute the guy. I'm just saying like they had the gun taken from him. They didn't communicate that to each other. They freaked out. But literally all it took was seeing one video 11 days earlier where he kicked the back of a cop car. And for every right winger to go, yeah, whatever, dude, got what you deserve. So all my point is about this, looking at this in the Iranian regime, it's just not clear. Like, what are you actually accusing them of? Are you saying that somebody was trying to overthrow the government and the government mowed them down? Are you saying that they lined up protesters and shot them all in the back of the head simply for voicing their opinion? Like, none of this is made clear. But when the war drums are beating, no one even cares to like ask these questions. It's just like, yeah, they killed their own people. And then if you notice with this war, much like with Venezuela and almost like with all of them, they just keep giving you like they throw like 15 justifications at it, you know, and you're like, which one is the reason we're fighting this? Because I saw that all of them like to play the humanitarian card and go, we're doing this to, you know, for these oppressed people. We want them to rise up. They've been living under this brutal regime. And you're like, okay, two things. Like, number one, that is simply just not how U.S. foreign policy works. We don't fight wars on humanitarian grounds. You know what I mean? Like, we're partners with some of the most brutal authoritarians in the world. And we've, and in the case of like Israel, we've been funding their destruction of Gaza for the last two and a half years. Like, it's, and, and so like, that's not really what's motivating this here. And then number two, Donald Trump, even just the other day said he'll be partners with the new Ayatollah and run the Strait of Hormuz together. He's backed off. Did he say that? Yeah. He's backed off of regime change. Or there's the idea that.
[01:11:00] Speaker 1: Are they even talking to him? Is someone talking to him? Like, who, who is he talking to? Do they know who they're talking to? Because it's not like they're meeting in person. Donald Trump said. Some guys on the phone, I am free to negotiate.
[01:11:14] Speaker 2: Dude, he's, he said, Donald Trump himself said the other day that, um, that he goes, negotiate, we're negotiating, negotiations are going great. And they go, who are you negotiating with? And he goes, a person we believe to be in charge. And then they said, so is this the new supreme leader? And he said, no, no, no one's heard from that guy.
[01:11:32] Speaker 1: We don't know where he is. There's some hacker in his basement in Belarus. And he's talking with an Iranian accent and he's got them convinced. Well, it's just. I have the authority to negotiate. Let's be partners. Let's be, wire one million Bitcoin to this address.
[01:11:54] Speaker 2: Well, everything I'm seeing publicly reported today is that Iran is like, no, we're not in these negotiations. We've made our terms clear. And their terms, what they're asking for is something that Donald Trump is not going to be able to give them.
[01:12:07] Speaker 1: What's that?
[01:12:09] Speaker 2: Their demands were that we stop attacking immediately, like that part they might get. That we pay them restitution for all the damage so far. Boy, that's a lot of money. Essentially that we leave the region. I mean, they had a few other things there that were just like. And they want them to open up a Terry Black's in Tehran.
[01:12:34] Speaker 1: This one was really important to us. If we could just get one. One Terry Black's barbecue. We don't have a good barbecue here. It doesn't seem like. If he's not really negotiating with this guy. If that's not true. And he's just like putting this out there in the public as like a negotiation ploy. What a clusterfuck. Because you're dealing with people that don't mind dying. They believe. I mean, these are very religious people. They're fanatical. They believe they're going to go to heaven. They believe they're martyrs. And they're fighting for Allah. This is the just and holy war.
[01:13:12] Speaker 2: Well, they've also been attacked. Well, that's right. And they've been preparing for this for a long time. You know, and they like. There's, you know, people make a lot out of the chants. That the Iranians, you know, they chant death to America.
[01:13:25] Speaker 1: What do you got there, Jimmy?
[01:13:26] Speaker 3: Sorry.
[01:13:29] Speaker 1: And who's in control of it? Will Iran still be able to control the flow of oil?
[01:13:33] Speaker 4: Be jointly controlled.
[01:13:36] Speaker 1: Like who?
[01:13:37] Speaker 4: Maybe me. Maybe me. Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is, whoever the next Ayatollah. Look. And there'll also be a form of a very serious form of a regime change. Now, in all fairness, everybody's been killed from the regime. There's automatically a regime change. But we're dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid. The people within know who they are. They're very respected. And maybe one of them will be exactly what we're looking for. Look at Venezuela, how well that's working out.
[01:14:15] Speaker 2: I mean, dude, this is such a fucking mess. This is such a mess, dude. I mean, this is just too ridiculous, dude. And the thing is that a lot of people, you know, I've spent a long time at this point being against this war because this war has been telegraphed since, you know, the Bush administration wanted to do this shit. And at least for like 15 years, I've been publicly opposing this war. And one of the reasons why so many of us oppose this, and it's a shitty way to be vindicated, but is that look, Iran is just not like any of the other opponents in the global war on terrorism. It's a it's a different beast entirely. And you've seen this already only three weeks in, we never dealt with any of this with any of the other countries. You know what I mean? We had what the Pentagon calls escalation dominance in all of those other wars, which is all essentially like it's just like meaning like if you do this, we do this. If you do like we're prepared for everything. It's kind of like escalation dominance is a lot like you're like in jujitsu where you see really high level guys who basically put you in a position where you can make one of two choices in either way. You know, like, OK, you can you can give me your back and I'll choke you or you can push me. You can push off me and I'll arm bar you and, you know, like whatever option you have, I'm going to get you. We don't have that with Iran and Pentagon's been open about this since at least 2007. And the fact is that, as we're already seeing, they can target ships in the Strait of Hormuz. They can target our assets, our bases, our embassies in the region. They can target our allies. And this is a big problem. And so, like, it seems like Donald Trump got into this thinking it would be like Venezuela. It would be quick and bloodless and easy and he could claim victory. Now that it's not gone that way, it seems like he's kind of scrambling for what the what the off ramp is here.
[01:16:05] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[01:16:05] Speaker 2: Now, at least I give Donald Trump as angry as I am with him. Like, at least it is true that he's looking for an off ramp. It seems like. And he did this with the 12 day war. Right. Like he started the war. He saw an off ramp and he and he took he took it. The problem here really is that this war changed the calculation from the Iranian perspective. And that much is clear so far. You know, the after 9-11, all the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, all the ones where essentially they all waved the white flag. All of them. Saddam Hussein welcomed U.N. inspectors in. He was trying to do anything he could to not meet the fate that he ultimately met. Gaddafi denuclearized, got rid of chemical weapons. Bashar al-Assad got rid of all his chemical weapons. Like they were all just like, we don't want it with you, you know. And Iran was very much the same way. They got into the JCPOA. They allowed an inspections regime in to come look at their their nuclear facilities, all of that. And even up to the 12 day war, when we we dropped the bunker buster, as in Israel, bombed a whole bunch of regime targets. They still, in their response, called ahead, made sure there'd be no U.S. troops there. They they hit the side of a little base there. And then they kind of went like they gave Trump an off ramp because they didn't want it. You know, they didn't want it. They don't want to die like Muammar Gaddafi. They don't want to, you know, have their country destroyed. So for self-preservation reasons, they showed restraint. The calculation this time, clearly already from the Iranians, was that we can't do that again. We have to give you a bloody nose and a black eye. We have to make this cost as much as possible for you. Otherwise, you guys will just be back here in another five months doing it again. And they're they're probably right about that. They're probably right. And so now we're in this situation where we're already in a in a quagmire. It's already like over a dozen Americans have died. I think a couple hundred wounded at this point. Israel isn't given real numbers on what's going on there, but there's some pretty substantial damage. And definitely some Israelis have died. And I'm sure thousands of Iranians have died at this point. It's cost. I mean, Pete Heggs has just asked for 200 billion dollars. I don't know if it'll get up to cost him that much. But this thing is certainly already in the tens of billions. If you consider munition, military movements and then just the damage to embassies and bases and stuff like that. I mean, this thing is already a disaster. And so now it's not like Venezuela where Donald Trump could just stop and declare victory and even say, like, look how great it's working out. Is Venezuela really working out that great? I don't know. That's you know, we took one guy away. The regime's still in place. The people haven't been liberated. But whatever. He can claim that this now. The problem here is that, OK, number one, Donald Trump's not really in a situation where if he just quit right now, how is he really going to say, look how wonderful this is? It's like, I don't know, dude, this cost a lot already. And it doesn't seem like there's any clear, like, what did we get out of this?
[01:19:06] Speaker 1: Well, the only way it would work is if there was some sort of a deal with whoever the fuck is going to be the new guy in charge. And they did come to some sort of an agreement and they did give them some compensation for all the shit we blew up. Yes. Well, that. So they'll just print some more money for that.
[01:19:22] Speaker 2: Sure. And inflation to go up. But look, here's the thing is that it's not just Donald Trump. There's two other participants in this war or two other entities in this war. There is Iran and there's Israel. OK, now is Iran going to accept that? Maybe. But look, just like the 12 day war, look at the position you're in now. We're relying on the Moas. You know what I mean? Like it's that that is not an ideal situation to be in. And then the other factor is that there's Israel who also gets a say in this for some reason, because we allow them to. Netanyahu just the other day was very clear about this. This is a regime change. And he even said it will require ground forces. And he said he's not sure who those ground forces will be. And so now this happened. If you do you remember the moment during the 12 day war when it was the closest Trump ever came to like flipping out on Israel. And he said they don't know what the fuck they're doing. It was but he said Israel and Iran don't know what the fuck they're doing because Donald Trump. So after he drops the Bunker Busters, he goes, that's it. We're you know what I mean? We're taking the off ramp. And then he said, I want to work out a ceasefire now.