Luke Thomas Breaks Silence on Charlie Kirk’s Death | DSH #1572

I did feel a duty to say as someone who occupy a space to political adversary of someone like Charlie Kirk, I did feel the need to come out and be very, very clear that I think what happened to him is unconscionable, a horror, no way defensible, counteractive to the political project that all of us are trying to move forward.

Like it's bad.

Bad, bad, bad.

Unethical, bad, disastrous.

I think it's important that people of all political persuasions make a very clear statement about that in public.

Okay, guys, we are in Las Vegas.

We got someone as tall as me today.

We got Luke Thomas in the building.

What's up, man?

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I know you've transitioned into politics about four months ago, right?

Yeah, give or take, something like that.

Sometime around the new year.

Yeah, what sparked that move?

Because prior to that, you were talking about fighting combat sports, right?

I think a few things.

I would say, in part, the state of the sports business more broadly.

Sorry, the state of the sports media business is

in decline.

I think there's not, it's slow, it's not automatic, but it, you can kind of see where it's all headed.

And so partly a recognition about like what opportunities are going to be there going forward.

But the other part, I mean, on the political side was just that,

I mean, Trump got elected, or sorry, he got elected obviously in November, but he was inaugurated in late January.

And, you know, he has not been

idle.

He has been quite busy.

And I think there was just a lot of things I saw that I didn't care for that I wanted to say something about.

When you were covering sports, did you ever feel like you were scared to speak up about politics?

Not really.

No, I don't think that that, I mean, don't get me wrong, I've recognized that there can be a cost to be paid for it, which is a separate consideration about whether or not I was afraid.

But if you're asking, yes, like, can you say things in the course of just ordinary covering sports that at times can be flagged as either perceived as political or even if you have to weigh in on some kind of political dimension, can that get you into trouble?

It can.

It can.

Not always.

I don't want to say it's a every time thing, but it can.

Certain things you can speak out about will absolutely get you a call from HR or your editor or whoever the relevant authority is.

That's why I actually respect Stephen A.

Smith because he's taken that leap too recently.

He's covering a lot of politics.

Yeah, I mean, I would question to what extent he's really challenging power in the way that he speaks, right?

I mean, it's one thing to speak out about political issues, but...

Who are you going after?

You know what I mean?

Are you going after like genuinely powerful coalitions that are really affecting American society?

Or are you, you know, kind of turning politics into a sports debate?

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not knocking the hustle.

If there's a market for it, then there's a market for it.

But I just mean, you know, I think somebody who has arisen to the top of ESPN, and he's earned it, I'm not in any way upset about it.

But

if you harbor certain views, you're not going to rise to the top of ESPN.

You know what I mean?

And so I think that there's probably an Overton window within which he constrains what he talks about.

I don't know that for a fact, but but just based on how the world works, that would be my assessment.

I mean, yeah, let's be honest.

Anyone signed to Disney, you saw what happened to Shannon Sharp.

They're going to make the cut when they need to.

But that wasn't a speech issue, right?

That was a

personal legal matter that I think reflected poorly on him one way or the other.

I don't know if it's the same.

I mean, I'm not to say that there aren't people who haven't been, you know, lectured or censured or whatever for speech that probably, of course, has happened.

I just don't know if that's Shannon's speech.

Yeah, that's different.

I can see that.

What do you think of the whole debate culture?

Like, are you a fan of of like stuff like Tierce Morgan going to places to debate, setting up spots to debate up?

You know what?

It's a good question.

I actually have what I would call mixed feelings about that.

So let's talk about the good.

I think the good is anytime a group of people, and I think you would agree, not every time are the Piers Morgan debates perfectly civil.

They can get a little bit out of hand, which is part of the dramatization of it for sales and for ratings.

But I think the truth of the matter is it's better that people can engage in that kind of a process where you have the airing of ideas and and people say exactly what they think.

And then they go through some kind of process to try and rebuttal it.

I do think that that is a, in general, a healthy exercise.

But the problem is, did you ever debate in high school?

Or no?

I mean, I was never very good at it, but I did a little bit of time in it.

And what you realize, and you don't, again, you don't, I'm not some like, you know, the king of debate.

That's far from it.

But what I mean is that when you do it enough, you realize that you have to have rules in place that everyone has to obey ahead of time and that it can, the system can easily be gamed.

Where, can have I seen people who were superior debaters beat people who had all the evidence on their side?

I absolutely have.

People tend to view debate as the person who wins the debate was the one who was most closely expressing the truth.

No, it was the person who was doing the best advocacy for the point they were making.

And as long as you can understand and disentangle those two, I have no problem with it, but it can be difficult to do that.

Yeah, I'm learning that now as I get into the space and start moderating debates.

It's tough to moderate some of these.

And again, because you're dealing also in theory with subject matter expert, subject matter expert, and you're trying to play referee.

You don't know if what you have to assume what they're saying is true, but it's hard to know

Have I given enough time to this position?

Am I more natural to be disinclined to this position?

How much ideological work do I have to, you know, to reap to find this person convincing?

You're not even starting from a clean slate more and also how you referee this.

It can be a challenge.

It's tough.

Do you see yourself going down that route?

Are you going to stick more on the commentary side?

I definitely would be open to the idea in certain cases, but it's kind of what I mentioned before.

I mean, listen, if there's a part where like a big-time show asks you to go on there and advocate for it, it's probably in your interest in our current media environment to at least entertain that idea.

And I would.

But I do think, and I will say this, I think the best kinds of debates are the ones that are structured.

They're not free-for-alls.

That's the problem that you get.

So if there was a structured debate over, you know, with with a worthy adversary, I think it would be in everyone's interest to have more people participating in things like that.

Yeah, I think we'll need more structure more than ever.

On a basic level, if you're going to do this, and again, debating is a separate skill than what you know to be true and what is true.

But on some level, you should be able to advocate to the world why you believe what you believe.

And they can decide how convincing it is, but you should know how to do that if you're going to do this job for a living, I think.

Yeah, I think structure is needed more than ever, especially with what happened yesterday.

Rest in peace to Charlie Kirk.

Yeah, that was terrible.

Awful.

How old are you?

You're 28.

28.

Yeah.

I don't know how many things like that you've seen in the world.

That was the first time.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, okay, domestically, that's the first time I've seen something like that in a really, really, really long time.

You know, I remember, I'm old enough to see some, some,

I'm sure this will come as a great surprise to your audience that I'm old, but,

you know, I was, and I'm not comparing the two, but I'm saying, what kind of public horrors have I witnessed?

Dude, today's 9-11.

I was in, I was in my dorm room senior year in college when I watched that collouse on TV.

I was in, was I in, I can't remember, was I in high school?

No, I think it was, I was in middle school when the Oklahoma City bombing took place.

It killed over 100 people.

Like, I've seen some crazy ass shit.

And again, I know this is, I'm not trying to compare everything to that.

I'm not saying that these are all on the same level.

That's really not my point.

But to see,

my basic point is that to see a public horror in that way, it is, it challenges your spirit, right?

It does.

Did it influence you to like speak out more, speak out less?

Did it change any of your beliefs, seeing something like that?

Well, we're still trying to gather information.

I mean, I think you always have to be open to the idea of like what new evidence.

If your views don't change over time to some degree,

something might be wrong.

I don't mean core principles.

Sometimes those can be right, although sometimes those can be wrong too.

But over the course of a lifetime, you begin to see things a little bit differently because the evidence tends to move in one direction or the other.

So let's see what happens with this situation and any subsequent subsequent one.

What I would say is in general, no,

but I, in terms of like a changing of the views,

you know, again, we'll see what happens.

But what I would say is,

in some ways, it reaffirmed them, but I did feel a duty to

say as someone who was, I occupy a space to, you know, the political adversary of someone like Charlie Kirk, I did feel the need to come out and be very, very clear that I think what happened to him is unconscionable, a horror, in no way defensible, counteractive

to the political project that all of us are trying to move forward.

Like it's bad, bad, bad, bad, unethical, bad, disastrous.

I think it's important that people of all political persuasions make a very clear statement about that in public.

And I did that yesterday, and here I am going to reaffirm that today.

Respect.

Yeah, seeing some of the TikTok videos of these young people celebrating, it just broke my heart.

I think anyone can understand: oh, here's a person or some kind of abstract entity I didn't like, and therefore they're gone.

And, you know, I feel like isn't this great for my side?

I think there's a natural part of certain people that can see that, but you have to stop and take a breath and say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Dude, this was murder.

This was murder on, I wasn't live television, but you know, almost brought to you live on your phone, some kind of, you know, close

analogous process.

And

letting that kind of a thing wash over you and bring you joy to me will corrode your soul over time.

You have to have a modicum of respect for just the decency of human life.

I'm a father.

I know he had a young daughter.

I think he had a couple of kids.

Yeah, but I know for a fact he had one young daughter.

I have a daughter.

You know, now they are left fatherless.

How can you not have deep sympathy for the life that they're going to inherit as a consequence?

Like, you have to hold, again, the political project doesn't work if we don't collectively hold on to human decency in the process.

That doesn't mean we have to agree with this person or that person, but it means we have to respect the dignity of human life along the way.

Yeah, well said.

Crazy times we're in.

I know you're in DC now.

How's that been with the National Guard moving in?

Do you feel pretty safe?

Are you on edge?

It's a weird question to ask me that.

I mean, sorry, it's a perfectly reasonable question, but it's a hard answer to give because the way I try to explain this to people is: it's like, do you feel safe?

It's like, well,

sort of,

because if you walk outside i cannot overstate to you there are police every the tri-light from therisage is no joke medical grade red and near infrared light with three frequencies per light deep healing real results and totally portable it's legit photo biomodulation tech in a flexible on body panel this is the tri-light from therisage and it's next level red light therapy it's got 118 high-powered polychromatic lights each delivering three healing frequencies red and near infrared from 580 to 980 nanometers.

It's sleek, portable, and honestly, I don't go anywhere without it.

Every five feet.

Wow.

It's insane how many there are.

Dude, I go into my local grocery store.

They're National Guardsmen hanging out in like Harris Teeter.

You get on the Metro on every stop.

I see them, and particularly obviously in the bigger ones like Ying Station or Metro Center, they're all there everywhere.

You go down to Chinatown on H7th, and it's like, dude, I counted one the other day on the four corners of H7th, I counted 58 police officers.

Now, that includes cops.

That includes National Guard.

That includes HSI.

That includes ICE.

So it was just like, you know, it was a whole, but dude, like an enormous amount.

So it's like, if you're walking down the street, you would think, well, am I worried about being carjacked in a situation like this?

No, no, I am not worried about being carjacked in a situation like this.

But that's not the issue.

The issue is, number one, these folks, the extra folks who are here, they're not going to be here forever, right?

The D.C.

police are going to be unfederalized.

National Guard are eventually eventually going to go home.

What policies are we putting into place to meaningfully address crime long term?

And I haven't seen anything.

I haven't seen anything.

So that gives me a little bit of concern.

More to the point, anybody who has Hispanic relatives, I think, has to have a degree of concern.

I have Hispanic in-laws.

I have a Hispanic wife.

They don't leave the house now without their passport.

And I have heard, I haven't talked to my family about this, but I have heard other people in the community who are Latino who are afraid now of speaking Spanish in public as a consequence of now some of the abilities ICE has to simply racially profile.

Like, dude, my wife is an American citizen.

My mother-in-law is an American citizen.

My brother-in-law, these are all American citizens.

Everyone in my family that way is an American citizen, and they're terrified of leaving the house without their passport.

And I would ask you, as an American and in the capital of the United States, should law-abiding citizens who've never even been late on their taxes, much less jaywalked, much less had a speeding ticket, never interfaced with law enforcement ever, should they be made to feel this way?

I would humbly submit to you that it is un-American to ask them to feel this way.

That is terrifying.

I did not know that was going on.

I'm actually marrying a Latina next month.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the situation is like here in where you live.

I mean, perhaps it will be different.

Again, we're under quite literally federal occupation in Washington, D.C., which right now here it's not.

But these are why we have to raise concerns.

People are like, yeah, it's easier to go out to dinner.

But dude, I don't know if you paid attention to this.

What has happened as a consequence to the D.C.

economy is it's the entire thing has been depressed.

So there's less foot traffic traffic everywhere.

Restaurants have reported a collapse in reservations.

The tourism industry has reported a collapse in the folks signing up.

Now, how much of that is Americans coming over versus Europeans or international visitors?

That part hasn't been teased out.

Bar owners are saying they've lost 50 to 70% of their revenue as a consequence of the loss in foot traffic.

And this goes on and on and on and on.

And I'm going to say, If you want to improve the crime situation in any city, I think it starts with not hurting the economy.

Because to the extent the economy gets hurt, I think you would probably agree you're now causing

you're risking

the crime rate going up because of these all these other factors that are in place.

Wow, that's interesting.

So, when you see him saying he wants to spread the National Guard to other cities, that's concerning to you.

That's extremely concerning.

How could it not be?

I mean, again,

let's take DC because I can't speak for Chicago, right?

And I have no ability, and I can't speak for D.C.

I'm not D.C.'s representative, but I've lived there most of my life and I've been here a very, very long time, and I'm 46 years old.

I lived there in the 1980s.

I've seen seen what crime looks like in a real bad way during the era of Mary and Barry, for example.

What I would say to people is like people ask, is DC safe?

Everyone's going to have a different answer about that.

In my opinion, yes, of course it is.

But I can recognize for other people that certain level of crime may not go that direction.

But the question is not that.

The question is, is there a crime emergency?

Because you'll notice throughout the Constitution and other sort of legal provisions, it's the emergency declaration that gives the people in power an extra set of powers that they don't have, but for the emergency.

So he's claiming, President Trump, there's a crime emergency in D.C.

I am looking at you dead in the face.

There is no crime emergency in D.C.

He's trying to unilaterally impose tariffs, and he's using emergency powers to do that.

We are not experiencing emergencies in this way such that we should be handing to the federal government, whether it's Obama, Biden, Trump, Bush, I don't care, powers under the pretense that we're living in an emergency when we're living in no such thing, at most challenging, but definitely not an emergency.

And I think that kind of concern is what I have, not just about the National Guard, but more broadly about how he is pursuing his agenda.

Interesting.

Wow.

Because I know after the Charlotte stabbing on the was that the bus or the train?

I think it was the bus.

Bus.

They're trying to move the guard over there too.

Also, another horrifying, deeply tragic,

I mean, just,

you know,

the terror in that poor girl's eyes from what I've seen on the video is actually, again,

extremely uncomfortable.

I don't know the crime situation in Charlotte enough to know to speak about what kind of crime interventions

are important.

But here's what I would say.

One thing that drives me up the freaking wall is when people from outside D.C.

tell us what we want and they say things like, oh, D.C.

residents are happier.

How would you know that?

How would would you know that?

Because you actually look at the polling on what DC residents want.

It's none of what they're getting.

It's if you actually like list like the Washington Post did a big poll about this, if you'd like to fact check this.

And people are not happy with the federal intervention.

So the question is, what do the people of Charlotte think about their crime situation?

And what kind of interventions do they want to do that?

And I leave that to the people of Charlotte to answer.

I cannot speak for them.

Yeah, that's a good point, though.

You don't hear the residents there speaking out, you know?

And again,

maybe we need to do a better job of asking them and maybe you'll get an answer that says they want to invite some other greater degree of law enforcement into their lives but to me it seems like a great way to solve a problem is to ask the people who live there how can we help you and to see what kind of answers they give agreed uh the israel-palestine stuff is is a really hot topic were you pretty outspoken on that early on i've been uh i've been I've been probably outspoken on that all my life.

My name is as ordinary Anglo-Saxon as it comes, right?

Like of clear European descent, which of course I am.

But my mom was an Armenian Christian born in Syria who was raised in Lebanon and in particular Beirut.

She grew up in Beirut.

She grew up in Beirut at the time it was, you know, more widely considered to be the Paris of the Middle East.

And

that has always kind of shaped my perception because, you know,

what her impressions were of what the state of Israel did and what it was.

This is obviously long, long, long before October 7th, you know, decades, obviously preceding that, preceding even the intifada, the first intifada.

So yes, I have always felt that Palestinian advocacy has been missing in mainstream media and American culture.

I don't think I've seen anything in my life as challenging as the last two years relative to that.

It's funny you mentioned that.

We started this conversation talking about have I ever been like afraid to speak out about political issues?

Here's,

let me connect the dots for you a little bit.

The only time in my life, so I've criticized different countries at different points in different sports contexts, Qatar in the World Cup.

I mean, you know, China with the Olympics with the Uyghur Muslims, or, you know, whatever the situation may be relevant to that.

The only time I ever got a phone call about a country I criticized was when I asked why

a MMA organization that's now defunct called Bellator, why they were holding shows in Israel.

This was 2018.

That is the only time I ever got a call about it where someone was asking me, hey, maybe tone this down and don't do it.

And I was simply asking a question, which is, why are MMA promotions going to a country that has been credibly accused of apartheid?

It's a very simple question.

And

there was more resistance to that than anything I'd ever faced.

So even prior to all of this, even in a sporting context, this is not something I've ever been especially quiet about.

I did not know that was going on in 2018.

Well, I mean, this is a, I don't know how far you want to go back.

There's a question about what

is the, you know, what is

the problems that exist between Israel and Palestine

go back to

1940s, 1947, 1948.

I mean, these are, and there's a question about like what kind of project has been built this entire time, and what does that say about the plight of the Palestinians?

I mean, it's not in any way controversial to say that the Palestinians, for example, in the West Bank, they live under military occupation.

That is a fact.

It is an unequal society in what is ostensibly Palestinian territory.

This did not happen starting in 2020.

This has been happening

for decades preceding that.

And so these conversations about where we go from here and what has happened, they need to start where the story starts.

And that precedes even my birth, as well as yours.

So not many living people can really explain that, I guess.

Well, they tried.

They tried.

I mean, they tried in the 70s.

They tried in the 80s.

They tried in the 90s.

There have been academics who lived here.

Edward Saeed was a big one.

He was a professor at Columbia.

He wrote a very famous book, Orientalism.

This is hardly the only

work that has been done to this capacity, but they have tried.

It is very interesting to me.

I have never seen the country take

Palestinian sovereignty and Palestinian humanity as seriously as I thought that it ever needed to.

And nowhere has that been more true, I think, than in the last two years.

But it's not like the Palestinians haven't tried.

And they've made points, too.

If they violently resist, of course, the world comes crashing down on them.

If they peacefully resist, like they did prior to, you know, obviously the tragedy of October 7th,

it doesn't work and they are

attacked for it.

So like they're like, what level of resistance to occupation, to military occupation, are they allowed to have?

And I know these are complicated questions that deserve a thoughtful answer, but it just goes to point.

They have been trying to raise awareness about the inhumanity of their condition.

And it does not appear to me that the world has done a lot of listening.

It's a tricky topic as a content creator because I make my living off this show and I've had on some of the most polarized people in the world, but this specific topic, I've gotten banned off platforms for speaking about.

Is that right?

For even moderating debates about it.

For even moderating debates about it?

I've been banned on TikTok.

I'm shadow banned on multiple platforms.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's an issue clearly about to what extent we're even allowed to have, to your point, honest debates about, you know, introducing.

And we're not talking about like, you know, conspiracy theory.

I have no interest in that.

And I certainly soundly, affirmatively, and in no way unambiguously reject anti-Semitism in every possible way.

And I do recognize that it is real and it is a problem.

I do not come to the point of Palestinian advocacy because I have any kind of acts to grind against any particular religion.

Far from it.

It is my humanity that calls upon me to raise awareness for the people that I think are being negatively impacted.

But I do recognize that there are these other kind of toxic factors swirling around this debate, and it makes it very difficult to have, you know, I think meaningful and sober, let's say conversations about it absolutely um you were on rogan in 2020 yeah i don't know if he was covering politics like he was like he is now back then but um

uh

you know that's a good question um

i don't know well i'll i'll say this i don't think he had on quite as many politicians back then yeah you know i think a little bit later he began to have more of the politicians on i do think he was you know that was obviously the um that was obviously in the early stage of the pandemic And so I think maybe right, maybe right around that time, he started talking more political stuff.

We, we got into a little bit of that, but it was mostly about MMA.

Got it.

Okay.

Well, now there's this term called the Rogan sphere.

I'm sure you heard of it.

Yeah.

And he just platforms a lot of these people.

Like, has your opinion on him changed, I guess, over time?

Yes.

My opinion on Rogan has changed.

As I mentioned, like, if you go through life long enough, I think new pieces of evidence should inform your judgment.

You shouldn't hold on to things

just out of, I don't know, inertia.

Like, this is the way I've always believed it.

I'm just going to keep doing that.

Well, I mean, there could be reasons why you would want to do that, but you always have to kind of check it.

I mean, Joe's career has changed, right?

Like, when we first got to know him in the MMA side, he was a comedian.

He had done Fear Factor.

There was no podcast.

He was famous because he was on news radio.

I don't know if you remember the sitcom News Radio.

It was even before my time.

So it's definitely not.

But I mean, at the time, there were big-time comics on it.

Like Phil Hartman, who was on Saturday Night Live, was on it.

And,

you know, he was kind of like just that irreverent guy.

He was, he called himself himself the bridge between the meatheads and the stoners.

And, you know, he was interested in all kinds of fun topics.

And I do think over time, well, dude, I mean, I don't think just his show has gotten more political.

Don't you feel like life?

Every show, no.

Well, it just in general, our lives more broadly have just become politicized.

Like the ways in which we were able to kind of, you know, separate it, segregate that part of it and just have normal lives.

I feel like a lot of that has gone away.

So rather than Rogan just getting more into politics in some kind of unusual way, I would defend him a little bit and say, I think everything has gotten a little more

and you see it as a consequence of now watching his show.

When I was growing up, there was no mention of politics in my household, like my whole life.

Really?

Like, the most, I guess,

we would say, like, who did you vote for?

Like, that was it.

Like, we weren't talking politics in the house.

My house was a little bit different because my dad worked for the federal government.

So we had, and we lived in DC, obviously.

So, you know, but it didn't consume everything.

And it wasn't a forward part of identity.

Now it's like your entire identity.

Dude, I don't know if you noticed.

Political scientists have, I mean, there's many ways and they call it layered identity.

So like it didn't used to be so layered where so many things lined up along one partisan valence and then so many things.

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about.

They can tell what your voting pattern might be based on the proximity to which you live close to Whole Foods.

Really?

Yes.

Because what they have figured out is these are often happening in dense urban centers.

The people more likely to shop there and live in these places tend to vote along X or Y patterns.

Typically, it's going to be a Democratic pattern.

Really?

Yes.

This is,

if you, again, I'm not going to come on the show and not say anything I can't back up.

Ezra Klein in his book, Why We're Polarized, discussed this particular thing in the opening chapter.

So this can all be verified.

But there are the same kind of signifiers on the right.

And what it means is that it's not just that, hey, maybe you have one kind of political view and I have a different one, but we both like some of these other kinds of activities and we live similar kinds of lives outside of it.

Now our lives are beginning to segregate along not just you voted X, I voted Y, but because I voted Y, I'm going to live in certain places, I'm going to visit certain places, I'm going to shop at certain places, I'm going to wear certain things, I'm going to listen to certain kinds of music, I'm going to eat certain kinds of food and vice versa.

Now those layers are being stacked onto our voting patterns.

And I have to tell you, I find that to be very bad for the political experiment that

is this country.

Wow, that is crazy.

Because when you think about how much data these social social media platforms and these AI companies now have on us, they pretty much can predict who we're going to vote for based off what you're saying.

Exactly.

And that's another component to everything else is surveillance data and to what extent this is being used or manipulated.

But to the point you raised, we're living more siloed and siloed and siloed and siloed existences along lines that did not used to be the case.

We could both go to the same concert because we both like the same band.

Now there is some research to suggest, of course, there's still going to be a mixing of crowds, but now there's evidence to suggest that those kinds of things can be better predictors of one political party or voting pattern versus the other.

That is nuts.

Do you pay attention to these palantir?

I know you're not into conspiracy theories, but these palantir like mass surveillance theories.

Let me tell you one thing conspiracy theorists have right.

The one thing I'll give them, I am not, you're right, I am not a big conspiracy theory guy, but I think one thing, especially in our present moment, that the conspiracy theory people

get very correct, and I mean this genuinely, absolutely genuinely, they are are skeptical of power.

That is,

I will tell you, I think, a very good instinct.

They need to be skeptical of power.

Joe Rogan, in my judgment, one of his problems is that he used to be very skeptical of power, but then he has on people who like Peter Thiel, like J.D.

Vance, like Donald Trump, but more than that, even William Musk, these guys who are like, who pull powerful levers in society.

And it's like, dude, it's one thing if, let's say you're Joe Rogan and you, who do you want to get on?

You want to get on me?

Cause I'm an archaeology professor at the University of Wichita or whatever.

You know, you can reasonably trust that I'm going to come on here and just geek out about archaeology.

I don't have an agenda to push other than, for the most part, probably just archaeology, right?

Or a physics professor, something like that.

But a political actor has a very different level of what they're trying to do in terms of manipulation.

They have a goal about what they want this experience to yield for them.

You have to treat them very skeptically.

And to me, one of of the things that was missing from his show more recently was that instinct, something he used to have.

But the conspiracy theorist Aron Palantir, you know, I don't know what exactly what some of these particular theories are, but I would say building a surveillance database with the most modern technology, and this is the key, where There used to be, for example, IRS data that was siloed off and not given to homeland security, right?

These things, for example, were very separate.

But what if you began to combine these databases?

That's what the project of Doge was.

Doge was a a project in data theft.

That's what it was.

It was data theft.

They cut out a minuscule amount of the budget.

It didn't matter anyway because the One Big Beautiful Act added potentially $5 trillion in extra debt to the budget.

It had nothing to do with doing any of those kinds of like, we're going to shrink the federal government.

We're going to find waste, fraud, and abuse.

It was about data theft and data collection, but they did it.

And now they have it.

And now, think about it.

If you can combine data that health and human services might have with the IRS, with, I don't know, DOJ, with you name it.

You now, as a federal government, you can get a nice, clean look in one place at every American citizen's, essentially, I'm not going to say all data, but then you throw in health data as well.

You can get a pretty good look at who's out there, what they're doing, and how they've lived their lives in ways that are deeply uncomfortable that I think for people who take privacy laws and restraint on federal power seriously.

Man, they sold a lot of people on Doge.

A lot of people fell for that one.

You know, it's kind of funny.

I heard a lecture.

I will send it to you.

It's from the Citations Needed podcast.

That's the name of it.

And I want to be clear when I come on the show to purposely cite my sources so that anybody who wants to hear this can double-check it.

They did a whole series or a whole lecture, anyway, on that term or the terminology, waste, fraud, and abuse.

This goes back to Robert Barons in both the early part of the 20th century and even late 19th century using

that sloganeering, waste, fraud, and abuse, specifically to target programs that are essentially in the interests of voters, right?

Like, here's, we're going to put, we're going to put more money into healthcare.

We're going to put more money into the welfare state.

We're going to put more money into the social safety net.

These are things that would be good for you.

And then...

oligarchs in society getting out there and calling it waste, fraud, and abuse, even though it's objectively in your interest as a voter for the most part, to vote for these kinds of things.

It has a long history.

And of course, it doesn't mean anything.

It's like, what count, what like you have to define what waste is.

And they were doing things like, oh, the government's counting soybean crops every year.

Yes, you fucking idiot.

There's a reason for that.

The government has a vested interest in knowing what kind of crop yields are existing in the country so that in the event of disaster, what they have on, and by the way, they store some of this data and also some of these reserves, they have to know

what resources are available in the event of a crisis.

This is actually like a critical function of the federal government.

The reality is the federal government is vast.

It is huge.

It does a lot of things.

There, of course, has to be some waste in there.

There, of course, has to be some kind of fraud.

And, of course, there has to be some kind of an abuse.

But if you don't tell us what meets those parameters ahead of time, and then you're just looking through a list of what the federal government does, you're like, that looks stupid, but you don't know why they're actually doing it.

You're actually just tearing apart the government in ways that it can be uniquely helpful.

And for example, you saw a doge came through, like, we're just going to eliminate

so much of the NOAA and our weather

sciences, detection, you know, prevention, messaging, all these kinds of things that help them figure out, you know, what weather patterns are going to be, particularly around disasters.

Then you had this absolutely horrific situation, you recall, in Texas at the girls' Christian summer camp, where

so many of them tragically passed.

And again, it didn't look like there was an issue particular with how the weather service performed there.

But it raised the question, well, why are we now, because the Doge said we had to put cuts in place ahead of of time.

They hadn't gone into effect yet.

But now they were like, well,

we don't want to cut this stuff at all.

And so the Trump administration rolled it all back and said, no, no, no, we're going to keep these capabilities in place.

I'm just pointing out that was not a mission for waste, fraud, and abuse.

That was a mission for data theft.

Wow, that is nuts.

Yeah, they got me on that one.

I'm not going to lie.

The reason why, I think, is because as a business owner, I'm all about optimization.

Sure.

I'm all about cutting costs.

So they really sold me on that narrative.

Yeah, of course.

I mean, I think, and listen,

it's a reasonable, rational concern.

Hey, man, my tax dollars are going to this.

Are they going to a project that deserves to be funded?

Are they going to a project that works?

Much less like, oh, it's a good cause, but does it even work?

These are totally reasonable, rational questions.

But the people who should be undertaking those efforts are people who understand how the government works.

The people who can spotlight and say, this project is not working.

This one is overfunded.

This one, we don't even use anymore, or whatever the case may be.

That's who should have done that.

And that's what was done under the Clinton administration, where they had a huge list of recommendations that Congress ultimately voted on rather than just we're just going to tear apart USAID and then just dare the courts to stop us.

A totally different process.

It's not about not downsizing, it's about doing it thoughtfully.

Right.

Do you think there should be overall more transparency when it comes to taxes, where the dollars go to?

Sure.

So we agree on that.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, who would be against transparency and where your dollars go to?

But I would also just caution,

not against it, but what I would say is,

to what extent have you looked into it on your own to see?

I'll be honest.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think, especially as a business owner, which you have a thriving business here, kind of, you know, who is your elected representative in Congress?

Couldn't tell you.

Can you name a senator?

I've had a few on the shell, actually.

Is Mike Huckabee one?

No, well, he was.

He's now the ambassador to Israel.

The point I'm trying to make is you should know who your elected leaders are and what their voting record is, right?

So to me, it's a responsibility as a citizen.

Do they, the government, have a responsibility to spend our tax dollars in a transparent, fair, and frankly, operational way?

Yes.

But I also believe that you, especially as a business owner,

some degree of civic engagement can only benefit you in the long run.

I'll try to get more involved.

I know local politics actually matters more depending on.

Also, local politics here is crazy.

So with her, it's a, it's a fun one to get into.

It's supposed to be out here.

Yeah, man.

Some say they still are.

Who knows?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know how to answer that.

Yeah, we'll leave that one to the viewers.

All right.

What else we got?

Let's end off on some lighthearted stuff.

The Rock.

So did you see his massive transformation?

No, which one?

Which one?

Because he's had a couple.

He looked really skinny last week.

Yes, I did see.

What did you think of that?

I was frankly kind of glad to see it, to be honest with you.

Okay.

So he has a new movie coming out, The Smashing machine and which is based on a documentary also called the smashing machine have you seen the documentary i haven't brother it's about his life it's about mark kerr mark kerr was a famous ufc fighter okay and uh they made this this camera crew back in i don't know like i think like 2000 2001 something somewhere around there uh they made a documentary about his life called the smashing machine this this movie is kind of a retelling of the documentary And, you know, The Rock is obviously huge.

He looks particularly huge in that movie.

But as you indicated, he looks more slimmed down.

You know, the reason why I think it's probably a good thing is, you know, he's unnaturally big.

And

I'm not in any way judging like if he is using any kind of performance dancing drugs.

I want to be as clear as I possibly can.

I do not care.

I just don't care at all.

It doesn't bother me even a little bit.

It's his business.

I don't care.

But

long term, could there be some considerations about your health?

And the one that really I thought was interesting is Batista, you know, the former WWE wrestler.

He's the guy who, he's in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Oh, okay.

You know, know, I know him.

Drax.

He plays Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy.

He was in Blade Runner 2049 or whatever it was called.

He's an amazing actor, and he slimmed down big time, and he was very explicit about it.

He's like, I did it for my health.

It's too much work, and it's too hard on the body to just be that big all the time.

And I think as guys get a little bit older and they get a little bit more health conscious, downsizing a little bit.

And everyone's going to be different.

I understand.

But do I, in any way, feel like there's something something wrong with The Rock because he downsized?

No, not at all.

If he feels that's a healthy choice for him, he's probably right.

What's your favorite The Rock movie?

Ooh, the favorite.

That's a good one.

Man,

I don't know.

I've never thought about that.

What is your clubhouse leader?

Is he in Jumanji?

He's in the remade Jumanji.

The second one?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought he was decent in that.

I didn't like him in that superhero movie, Black Adam.

Black adam i thought that was black adam was real terrible yeah that was oh you know what what he's good in um

the mark wahlberg movie where it's a true story about some bodybuilders who engage in these crimes and then they have to cover it up he was what is the name of that movie i forget the name

it's uh it's him mark wahlberg and another guy it's three guys it's a true story about some bodybuilders failed bodybuilders in miami um that one is really really good okay well shout out to him man i've had a couple guests uh really critical of him greg duchette called him out on my show i went really viral but the steroid stuff, I mean, you have an interesting take on steroids.

In sports.

You're actually like not against them taking them.

No, I'm not against them taking them at all.

I think there's just a lot of people who are very disingenuous about their feelings on this.

My rule is very, very simple.

I

pro sports, pro-sports, not.

You and me working out at the Y, right?

Not even Little League and definitely not kids, right?

So we're absolutely excluding them.

But pro sports at the highest level has nothing to do with health and safety, right?

These are guys that push their bodies well past their limits and in any number of ways that have nothing to do with steroids, injuries, and, you know, training loads and you name it.

And what would make someone useful on the football field, let's say, is when they say, oh, he's healthy to play.

What do they mean?

They don't mean that like his blood work looks good.

They mean that

he is ambulatory.

He can move around.

He can do the job.

It doesn't mean that he's actually in good physical condition, that his heart is well maintained.

I mean, look at Vince Wilfork, who played for the Patriots, this gigantic man.

You know, was he in optimal health playing that position?

No, of course he wasn't.

That was about something else.

And so this idea that like, the, that, that performance enhancing drugs are,

you know, some kind of detriment to a world that is based on, you know, what sports is really about is health and safety sports is about health and safety pro sports has nothing to do with that and if those guys want to use it and it improves the entertainment quotient uh and and this is key this is the last part the players themselves are reasonably okay with the use of it i don't i don't have i'm not going to sit here and say i have some kind of problem with it now that can change if the players themselves the ones who have the most skin in the game if they say we want stronger regulations I'm actually okay with that too.

My basic belief is that what do the players want?

Because here's what happens.

When you get a surveillance system, we're going to root out drug testing.

What inevitably happens is, do you reduce drug use overall?

You do.

But A, you cannot eliminate it.

And B, you're going to get a lot of innocent people in trouble.

It happens over and over and over and over again.

It is proof.

You cannot have perfect surveillance.

So at some point, you have to ask yourself, what is the acceptable level of use of performance enhancing drugs in sport?

And my answer to that is, what do the people involved in the sport have to say?

And you can, obviously, if the players want to have a deal with the league, because the league also has some skin in the game.

These are financial investments and assets.

They need to protect them.

But when those entities work out a deal and everyone is happy with it, like you have in pro sports, the union puts in all these protections for all the players about when you can test them and what you can test for and what is a punishment and what does it mean.

The league signs off on it and you don't scandalize it like you do with usada trying to get every little you know a micro particle in in someone's urine and then it's this huge scandal and you have long punishments no one really complains the players don't complain the tv networks don't complain the the sponsors don't complain the fans don't complain why am i supposed to complain i don't quite get it they are okay with it

I'm okay with it.

Simple, easy.

Very interesting take.

The more you spoke, the more you sold me on it, honestly.

It doesn't, it doesn't.

And I want to be clear.

Kids in high school is an absolute non-starter, 0%.

I mean, never going to be allowed, ever, not.

And I would say, do I think it's a good idea for 19-year-old men to, or whatever you want to call them, boys, men, whatever.

Do I think it's a good idea for them to be taking performance dancing drugs?

I don't.

But if you want to compete in elite pro sports, there is some level of inevitability around these questions.

So what should the rules be?

The rules should be what the league and the players agree is a reasonable framework.

And what they tend to do is put in protections, some punishments,

some banishment, some things they can do to limit this testing or whatnot.

And then they just let it rock and nobody seems to care.

I don't know why that's supposed to be a scandal.

It's not.

I'm sure they've invented ways to get around some of these tests by not too.

Brother.

It's not to say there's no value to testing.

There's value to testing.

It's not to say that there's no value to some prohibitions.

There is value to some prohibitions and some work better than others.

But these systems can all be cheated.

The question is, what kind of effort are you going to put in to stamp it out?

And every time you see a like a super hardcore zealous effort to stamp it out, innocent people get hurt.

You cannot ethically justify a system where you have to invade the rights of privacy of athletes and hurt innocent athletes en route to your goal.

Any system of justice that hurts innocent people is an illegitimate system, or at least a system in need of some serious questions being asked.

Yeah, when you say innocent people, Ryan Garcia comes to mind, are you kind of grouping him in that conversation?

I don't know how innocent I would consider him.

I think that there is some plausible evidence that you could consider.

I don't know that I would describe him as the most sympathetic character, but let me give you an example.

I know you might sound,

to certain people, this sounds so laughable, but this is exactly the point.

There used to be something, it still exists, called strict liability you ever heard of this no the notion of strict liability was that imagine that you go to take a piss test or a blood test whatever and all of a sudden you didn't do anything wrong you did exactly what you were supposed to do but somehow they flagged that you had a metabolite for i don't know some kind of steroid in your system you're like how can this be this is this doesn't even make sense i didn't even use anything but the rule of strict liability is that you are strictly liable for it it doesn't matter how it got in there it's your problem but something happened along the way recently.

And what they discovered was that there is so much cross-contamination in the world that they've had to be much more specific around what threshold shows up because they're having a hard time distinguishing from what's just been contaminated versus like somebody actually took something in your body, digested it.

And you might say, well, where is this showing up?

In pharmaceutical drugs that are prescribed by your doctor, it will just have something else on it.

You could get prescribed literally, I'm going to make up something, an antibiotic, And the antibiotic is laced with,

again, very small amounts, but some kind of prohibited substance.

They found it for a gymnast.

This is true.

I'm not in any way exaggerating this.

In tap water, her tap water was contaminated.

Now, she was ultimately exonerated, but what happened first?

They announced that they had, there was an adverse finding.

She was suspended.

There was this whole process.

So her name got dragged through the mud.

She had to sit out during the course of these processes being adjudicated for drinking tap water.

So the question is, in a world with that kind of contamination and in a world where people can get around some of these things, what is a rational policy that you can employ?

And I'm going to say it one more time.

What the stakeholders can mutually agree to seems to me a very usable model.

Yeah, that's nuts.

And it's such a good point.

When you get clear, no one gives a shit.

It's too late.

It's way too late.

And again, people are going to be like, oh, he got a good lawyer.

You know,

he got lucky.

Rich people get out of the system.

And again, there is some of that, of course.

I don't want to say that there's not.

But the reality is there are a lot of people that end up getting hurt in these very aggressive anti-doping systems.

And I just don't think there's need for that kind of a thing.

Yeah.

And you and I talked to a lot of fighters.

We both know back in the day, everyone was on them.

Dude, I mean, there appeared to be.

Back in the day before the UFC was the biggest organization, there was another one called Pride, which was based out of Japan.

And there was a time where Pride and UFC, well, there was a a time when Pride was the biggest one.

Wow.

And then there was a time, biggest promotion.

And then there was a time where they were like roughly co-equal.

But there is some evidence to suggest that at the time when Pride was like the most

popular and large MMA promotion in the world, that they would, not only did they not test for drugs, there is some evidence to suggest that they may have even encouraged certain people to use them.

They didn't care.

Now, that to me seems...

quite reckless.

I mean, there's a certain degree of transparency about that.

Like you just have to know they're purposely not testing.

You have have to know like what you're up against there a little bit.

At the same time,

those, I mean, I want to be clear.

The idea of doing nothing around steroids to me is equally problematic.

You have to have some kind of system in place.

I just advocate one for rationality.

If you had to guess, because LeBron gets accused of being on steroids, if you had to make an educated guess on if he's on it or not, what would you say?

What I would say is, I'm going to be very careful so I don't get sued.

Okay.

But what I would say is, I think it is naive to assume.

I get this question all the time because people are like, what about so-and-so in tennis?

Yeah.

What about so-and-so in soccer?

Or you, I mean, pick any sport, pick any celebrated figure.

I think people are deeply, deeply, deeply out of touch with how ubiquitous some level of performance dancing drug use is.

Now, when I say that, what does that mean?

Does that mean they're on it right now?

No, it could not be the case.

But at some point in their career, were they on it?

Did they use it?

By the way, this is a common thing.

Did they use some kind of a performance dancing drug to rehabilitate from injury?

That is extremely common because it shortens the amount of time that you are on the shelf, you know, not being able to participate.

And, you know, obviously it can, in certain ways, heal whatever is injured

perhaps more forcefully, although there's some debate about that.

But you get the point, like it shortens the window of which you can compete.

I think that, you know, there's been anonymous track and field surveys.

There was one done, I think, in the, I want to say 2010, 2011.

There was an anonymous track and field survey.

And this is a world where they do like pretty aggressive testing.

And it asked anonymously, how many of you are on it now or have taken it recently and the answer was 40%.

Holy shit.

Now that's also a world, again, where there is relative to the NFL, NBA, or MLS or whatever, relative to that, a much higher degree of testing and surveillance.

So imagine a world where the guys have more money and there's less surveillance.

It is just naive to assume that the very best of the world are all not using, that they're all natural.

Do they have incredible genetics?

Yes.

Are they, you know, savants in their sport?

Like Messi, is he a savant in his sport?

Of course he is.

LeBron, the Ronaldo, whoever you want to pick.

They have basketball or football, IQ, in ways that we can never imagine.

And they are preeminent athletes.

But dude, like in baseball, there's 170 games a year.

In basketball, it's what, more than 80?

And the NFL season is only, if you get eliminated, it's only 16 or 17.

But dude, that's a, you know, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

That's a brutal ass game.

How do you get through some of those seasons on tapioca and a good night's sleep?

It's ludicrous.

That's not.

And And then it goes back to this conversation we were having.

What is the purpose of pro sports?

Is it health and safety?

How can you make a claim that American football is principally about health and safety at the pee wee or junior levels when you're trying to teach sportsmanship?

Different conversation.

But at the pro level, like what, like, what it's just a ludicrous, it's a ludicrous suggestion.

I just don't accept it at all.

Yeah.

Are you still watching UFC pretty actively?

Oh, yeah.

All the time.

And combat sports and boxing.

I'm a fight junkie.

I think people who are fight junkies are always going to be fight junkies.

I don't know if if that ever changes, but yeah, for sure.

Big fight next boxing match next week, right?

No, this weekend.

Or is it this week?

Yeah, we're all at

given when we're recording it, it's in two days.

Wow.

Canelo Crawford at the Allegiant Stadium.

You're going to throw some money on it?

I'm not a big sports gambler.

Really?

You think with your expertise, you would throw some money?

I appreciate that, but

I

will tell you this.

I don't have nothing against people who want to bet on fights.

It's part of the fight culture.

And I would actually argue betting on fights is much more part of fight culture than betting on hockey is part of hockey culture.

Like betting and fighting, these are two vice sports, sorry, two vice activities anyway.

So, no, I don't, it doesn't, it doesn't do anything for me, but I, but I certainly recognize that when people have, you know, money on it, they tend to have

outsized reactions, let's say, to, to, to the action.

Yeah.

Have you been to a power slop event yet?

I would.

You'll never catch me in one.

Yeah, I noticed the fight enthusiasts hate that sport.

Yeah, and I think most people just don't care.

You like it?

I like it in the sense of entertainment.

I don't view it as a sport, but it's really good networking.

I'll admit, Dana does a good job at bringing people in that room.

Is that right?

That's how I got Andrew Tate on the show.

Is that?

I've met Theo Vaughn there.

There's all sorts of interesting people there.

So I go, I go to network and have fun.

Yeah, I mean,

I don't know about the networking side,

but what I would say is on the,

I just don't quite get the appeal, to be honest with you.

It's like, if you, like,

okay, well, tell me what the appeal is.

I mean, it's, I'm not going to lie, some of the knockouts are tough to watch.

Like being there in person, one of the guys was on the floor for two minutes.

It's hard to watch.

But people just like big slaps.

I don't know.

Like, the energy in the room just goes crazy.

I mean, what I would say is, to me, it's like, what's the difference between a hunter and a poacher?

You know, a hunter,

they have to set up.

They have to set up a deer stand.

They They have to sit in that thing and get bitten by mosquitoes, and they have to wait and they have to put bait there weeks in advance.

And they might have to be sitting in that deer stand for hours and hours at a time.

It might be daylight.

It might be nighttime.

They might be hungry, but they kind of got to wait and get the perfect shot.

Then they got to go retrieve the animal and do everything else.

There's a process to it.

There's a defense to it.

There is a difficulty.

There is a task.

And there's a challenge, right?

And there's a two-way thing that that goes.

Poaching, to me, is the exact opposite.

Some jerk off on the side of the road, just shooting available animals and collecting them.

This is to me, this is not a game.

This is not a sport.

This is not a thing that we should glorify.

And I recognize that the poaching analogy has some limits because you have two willing participants.

But

the point of what makes combat sports beautiful is, yes, offense.

Everyone loves knockouts.

I love knockouts.

You love knockouts.

I mean, anybody who likes fights loves knockouts.

And I love defense too.

And I love not just one or the other, but the interplay between them.

And

that is what makes combat sports beautiful.

If you just take away one portion of it, to me, it's, it's like, hey, do you want to go on a hunting trip or do you just want to go get the revolver and go shoot the fish in the barrel?

It's like, yeah, you're going to see, you're going to see me shoot fish and they will blow up in the barrel.

But it's like,

there's, I don't know, it seems almost pointless.

It does feel like a bit of Russian roulette because the guy that goes first has a huge advantage and it's based off a coin flip.

Oh, is that right?

I wasn't even sure how the rules worked.

Yeah, the guy who goes first it's based off a coin flip and usually if you're a good slapper you're knocking a guy out on the first slops yeah and then you get knocked out it's over right it's over yeah it's rough this is what i mean and it's like you know also like what kind of person are you attracting doing that i don't mean to demean them but you know you're not getting ronaldo or messi walking through that door to do power slap right you're getting a much lower caliber of not just athlete but someone who has a appetite for recklessness that maybe is not healthy.

For sure.

Well, Luke, this has been fun, man.

Where can people find your show and keep up with you?

What do I plug?

Oh, how about I got a couple of YouTube channels?

You want my MMA combat sports stuff?

Yeah, it's just my name, youtube.com/slash Luke Thomas.

And if you want my political stuff, it's the, I don't know what the handle is, but it's called Luke Thomas Gets Political.

Just search that and then you can find out whichever one you want.

Perfect.

Thanks for your time, though.

Thank you, buddy.

I appreciate you.

I appreciate you.

Check them out, guys.

See ya.

Move.

I hope you guys are enjoying the show.

Please don't forget to like and subscribe.

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Thank you.