#2274 - Mike Baker

Speaker 0 Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Speaker 1 The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

Speaker 1 Mark Baker. Good to see you, my friend.
It's good to be seeing you. Thank you, Mr.
Rogan.

Speaker 1 Thank you. You're taking notes already? I am.

Speaker 1 He said, good to see you. Yeah, I know.
I don't know what I do this. So tell everybody what you were doing in the Middle East because it's pretty crazy.
Pretty interesting. Yeah, thank you for that.

Speaker 1 Look, it all started with

Speaker 1 some colleagues of mine from the UK Special Forces Club. And these guys are tremendous, right? But Howard Leedham and some others who came up with an idea.

Speaker 1 They said, look, we have to do something to help the benevolent fund, which is for the UK Special Forces. It's like

Speaker 1 wounded warriors here in the States.

Speaker 1 And I can say this because I'm a dual citizen. with the UK,

Speaker 1 the British don't tend to be very good at raising money or asking for money for very important causes.

Speaker 1 So, here in the U.S., where you've got 100,000 different groups that are advocating for veterans, over there it's not the case, right? But they have the same need, right?

Speaker 1 And they have all these wonderful people and their families. So, the idea was: what can we do?

Speaker 1 A big event, something massive that can really help to raise funds and awareness for the Special Forces Benevolent Fund. They came up with this crazy idea at the time, still crazy, to recreate

Speaker 1 a 1917 epic journey that Lawrence of Arabia did through what was considered the unpassable deserts of Saudi and Jordan to go from essentially northwest Saudi through these unpassable deserts and then into Jordan and then down to Aqaba to rout the Turks who at the time controlled the area.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 with a small Arab army led by several sheikhs, and Lawrence, they did this trek of about 1,100 kilometers.

Speaker 1 Took them several months because they had to stop along the way. Plus, they were fighting Turks along the way.
So

Speaker 1 we took off in January, mid-January, five riders, ten camels, and an incredible support team. An incredible support team.

Speaker 1 Is this your first time riding a camel? Well, we went out in December, spent about a week and a half. Howard lives out there, as do one of the other fellows.

Speaker 1 To go through camel riding training? Camel riding training. That's exactly what we did.
Oh. Oh, my God.
What is that? You're riding a camel. It is not comfortable in any fashion.

Speaker 1 It's not like a horse. A horse has, you can fall into sort of a rhythm, and a horse has a much smoother gait.

Speaker 1 You know, so the camel, basically, all you're trying to do,

Speaker 1 there's the crew.

Speaker 1 Wonderful guys. Howard, James, myself, Tomo,

Speaker 1 there's Craig in the back.

Speaker 1 An amazing crew. I've rarely worked with guys that are just so impressive.

Speaker 1 And again, going with the support team, everybody that was on that group, a small group of eight or nine folks.

Speaker 1 Why does everybody ride with one leg to the side like that?

Speaker 1 It's essentially a comfort issue. And because you'll notice there's no,

Speaker 1 they're not really saddles. They're called Shaddads that sit on top of the hump.
That's a Saudi Shaddad. The Omani Shaddad is different.
It sits behind the hump and is even less comfortable.

Speaker 1 And now, these things were probably designed some 2,000 years ago, and they've never felt the need to improve them. They're basically just some wood

Speaker 1 tied together. And then you try to throw a couple of things on top of this piece of wood to make it comfortable.

Speaker 1 And I think all the Bedouins and others were laughing at us because we just kept piling blankets on to try to see if we couldn't. You know, it was tough.
And so ass blisters are a real thing.

Speaker 1 And yeah, so anyway,

Speaker 1 that's what you see there. But there's no stirrups on these things.
Like a horse, you know, you ride and you're in the saddle. You got stirrups.
And it takes the pressure off your legs.

Speaker 1 You're just hanging on. So you don't want to ride with one leg on either side because

Speaker 1 it's just not comfortable. So you hitch your leg over the front,

Speaker 1 and then you kind of put your leg or your foot behind the other leg. Is it because they're too wide?

Speaker 1 Is that why you don't want to ride one leg on the other side, or is it just a ball buster? I'll tell you, it's a ball buster, particularly if that Shaddad shifts and it starts to lean forward.

Speaker 1 And then suddenly, like there's these large dowels in the front, large dowel in the back. You know, they kind of basically look like big wooden dildos on this Shaddad.

Speaker 1 And so if that Shaddad shifts forward, as it did on occasion,

Speaker 1 your package is just jammed against that thing. And you have to cover these guys.
Look, I got injured. I had some soft muscle injury, and

Speaker 1 there's the crew walking through.

Speaker 1 And I tore some muscles in my rib cage. You were just riding? No, it was a rather inelegant dismount from the camel.
And so I twisted really badly and then went the other way.

Speaker 1 And then the next thing you know, I had fucked up some

Speaker 1 muscles along my obliques and then rib cage area. And so, I spent the next couple of days.
We had a team medic, Jed, a wonderful guy, great sense of humor, as did they all.

Speaker 1 And he eventually got tired of me like asking him for painkillers and anti-inflammatories.

Speaker 1 And so, eventually, I had to tap out, which was more painful probably than the actual injuries. And the guys just continued to grind it out.

Speaker 1 How far was left when you were in the middle? Oh, I was in the first 25% of the journey.

Speaker 1 And then I went back for the end, for the arrival into Aqaba. There's the whole crew right there.

Speaker 1 I just can't say enough about these people.

Speaker 1 Again, 25, 26 days, longer than that, actually a month out in really bad conditions. People think, well, that's the deserts, right? Well, it's called the unpassable deserts for a reason.

Speaker 1 Massive sandstorms, freezing temperatures at night, bitter cold. And we were sleeping in one-man tents.
And then you'd get up,

Speaker 1 you'd get the camels ready.

Speaker 1 How much supplies did you bring? Well, did you have a supply camel?

Speaker 1 We had Land Rover did a wonderful job of helping to sponsor this. So they provided vehicles that the support team used to kind of trail and then get ahead and help to establish the next.
And

Speaker 1 Howard and Craig had done the recce, so we had the camps mapped out because this is a long trek, 1,100 kilometers.

Speaker 1 And so they were able to supply and do all the work that kept these guys moving forward.

Speaker 1 Imagine doing that without them. Oh,

Speaker 1 it wouldn't have been impossible, but they'd still be out there sleeping. Jesus, you'd have to bring several cameras just to carry your food and water.
Yeah, no, it's exactly right.

Speaker 1 There's no water out there, right?

Speaker 1 No. No.

Speaker 1 There's a spring occasionally. Yeah,

Speaker 1 you pass through a a handful of areas near small. I mean, when I'm saying small, I mean like there's nothing there, little tiny village.

Speaker 1 Maybe there's a mosque, and the mosque would have a water supply, so you could stop and

Speaker 1 maybe refill, let the camels drink. Are they getting water from the ground? Are they getting water from

Speaker 1 a well. Yeah, from a well.

Speaker 1 So they have, they have, I mean, because you're talking thousands of years, they've figured out where the wells are.

Speaker 1 And part of this, you know, from 1917, look, the Turks never expected these guys to come from this direction because who was going to do that? Right. And they did it.

Speaker 1 These guys all did it.

Speaker 1 I was just honored to be a part of it, even though I had to tap out, which was, goddamn, that was. Jamie, can you show me what that looks like on a map? All right.
It's February.

Speaker 1 And by now, 80% of people have probably abandoned their New Year's resolutions. And it makes sense.
Life can get crazy and all of a sudden you don't have the time.

Speaker 1 But one easy habit to stick with is AG1. It's an easy, realistic habit that you can make to benefit your whole body health.

Speaker 1 AG-1 makes hard-to-get micronutrients easy to get and replaces multiple vitamins and supplements with just one scoop.

Speaker 1 You just mix it in some cold water, take a nice moment in the morning to do your body right. And honestly, it tastes pretty good.

Speaker 1 It's not easy to pack this many high-quality ingredients with this much nutrient density, but AG1 makes it happen without added sugars or artificial sweeteners ever.

Speaker 1 AG1 is a great way to invest in your health now and in the long run, which is why I've partnered with them for so long.

Speaker 1 Try AG1 and get a a free bottle of vitamin D3, K2, and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription at drinkag1.com/slash Joe Rogan.

Speaker 1 That's a $76 value gift for free when you go to drinkag1.com slash Joe Rogan. Check it out.
Like what that area looks like? Yeah, I should have included a map of the route itself.

Speaker 1 Like, tell me where to look.

Speaker 1 Look for Al-Waj, Al-Waj, Saudi,

Speaker 1 on the coast,

Speaker 1 sort of northwest Saudi.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 look at Jamie spelling it correctly and everything.

Speaker 1 This guy's crazy. Look at that.
No, he's right there, right there at the top.

Speaker 1 So we started in Al-Waj,

Speaker 1 and then, yeah, there you go. There you go.
Now, click out. And then you start heading north.
You start heading northeast. You can see Jordan is up there above that area.

Speaker 1 You start heading sort of on a diagonal northeast.

Speaker 1 You pass through all. You just look at it.
It's just like, what the hell? And you keep going, you keep going. Eventually, you get,

Speaker 1 if you zoom out a little bit, so you'll see the border with Jordan.

Speaker 1 Okay, you go up, pass, keep going in that direction.

Speaker 1 And the place looks inhospitable. There's just not a lot there.
And then you come up to where Jordan is. But anyway, at the end of the day, you see Aqaba.

Speaker 1 We came down through Jordan and into Aqaba, which is at the tip there, right there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Which is where the fort was, which is where they routed the Turks, and then eventually that created all sorts of opportunities for the Paris.

Speaker 1 Look at this whole area. There's fucking no green.
No, no, there's nothing. There's just tiny parcels of semi-green areas.
Yeah. No,

Speaker 1 when I say it's desolate and there's nothing,

Speaker 1 there's nothing. Jamie, zoom back out again? Look how wild that looks.

Speaker 1 Like, what happened? So these...

Speaker 1 doesn't that all look washed out, Jamie? This is all Randall Carlson stuff, right? Yeah, and we

Speaker 1 went through the Royal Reserve. Uh, the Saudis were very good, and the Jordanians were amazing as well.

Speaker 1 Uh, Jamie, what were you saying?

Speaker 1 Looks like it all washed down. Yeah, it totally looks like it washed.
Yeah, you'll find you'll find like all these waddies that are in there.

Speaker 1 That, you know, it's essentially there's a lot of dried-up riverbeds,

Speaker 1 and you know, the danger is, of course, that they flash floods on occasion, not not very often.

Speaker 1 but so this this this thing took place and they eventually

Speaker 1 the whole thing ended in Aqaba again the Jordanians couldn't couldn't have been greater about supporting this

Speaker 1 I think everybody I know the Bedouins when we got started they were staring at us like what the hell are you doing they couldn't imagine that people would do this willingly right for no especially from their perspective no reason Americans and Europeans man I tell you what I yeah I know I know when I got injured I know every single one of those damn son of a bitches were laughing.

Speaker 1 They were like, what the hell?

Speaker 1 And they were looking at our shadads with all these blankets and furs on them, trying to make it somewhat comfortable. Those guys must have leather balls.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think, or they just had them removed. I don't know how you do it because, and then, and you have to trot, right? You can't just walk.

Speaker 1 Walking was comfortable enough, but you have to, you have to, to cover the distance, right? And the trot on a camel is

Speaker 1 not comfortable, right? And so it was,

Speaker 1 anyway, I just can't say enough good things about these people.

Speaker 1 But the cause, the UK Special Forces Club Benevolent Fund, if people want to go and read more about this, they can go to,

Speaker 1 what is it, WWWSFC? That's how old you are. You keep using the W's.
Everybody else can't. Because I don't have to.

Speaker 1 So that's three W's.

Speaker 1 And then.

Speaker 1 Everybody used to say that. People used to say HTTP.
Poland backflag.

Speaker 1 I still do because I think that's what you have to do. So it's

Speaker 1 sfcbf.org. You can go there, you check it out, and if you're so inclined, there's even a button you can click on to donate, even if it's a price of a cup of coffee.

Speaker 1 If you get enough people putting in a price of a cup of coffee, it makes a huge difference for these people.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it was one of those bucket list items that I just can't describe. When you see some of the things that USAID fund,

Speaker 1 does it get you upset that they don't fund things like this? Yeah, it really does. It does me too.
It does me too. It's just, it's, it's, come on.
Because this is a direct, right?

Speaker 1 As is Wounded Warriors, as are all the other groups. It's a direct way to help people.

Speaker 1 And it's not like they've got massive administrative costs, right? Like the government tends to.

Speaker 1 And so, no, absolutely goddamn right.

Speaker 1 It seems to me, and so we, you know, we were fortunate to have a lot of, you know, corporations that went in on it.

Speaker 1 You know, there were some that looked at it and goes, okay, so let me see. You're talking about five white guys on camels, you know, recreating what we think is a club.

Speaker 1 It was still sort of the vestiges of that bullshit DEI thing, right, from a corporate perspective. Right.
So we were like, no, goddammit, it's sporting, you know, veterans. How difficult.

Speaker 1 And their families, how tough is that to understand? But, you know, some. You're just taking a difficult trek.
It doesn't mean you support colonialism. Yeah, no, exactly.

Speaker 1 And by the way, the Arab sheikhs led the way, right? It was their effort.

Speaker 1 They have to look at things through this lens of who in the furthest left, kookiest perspective is going to be offended by this bunch of white people in the desert.

Speaker 1 If anything, it should give you a perspective on how unbelievably brutal the times were back then. No, absolutely.

Speaker 1 And you also think that, honestly,

Speaker 1 it's just, look at the cause, look at the reason for it.

Speaker 1 But I do think,

Speaker 1 I think we are

Speaker 1 on the downhill slope of DEI.

Speaker 1 I think the grifters who built up that cottage industry are going to have to be looking for new jobs because I think most companies are starting to think, you know what, let's get off of this thing.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I think so too. And I also think that if you look at the overall body of work that they've produced, it's

Speaker 1 very obvious what many of them are doing. I think there's some genuinely good people that are involved in this that really want to do good work.
They're very sensitive, kind souls.

Speaker 1 They probably grew up rich. Probably grew up rich.

Speaker 1 But I think there's

Speaker 1 a lot of grifters too, unfortunately. And the grifters, they've they've been so egregious and obvious that i think it's turned a lot of people up even rational

Speaker 1 kind compassionate progressive people are like enough this is stupid yeah yeah especially when you hear like the the anti stuff

Speaker 1 it's not just like pro whatever you are it's anti whatever you're not yeah and then you realize okay this is not like this is not rational this is this is cult like thinking and this is a thing where if you don't agree, the punishment is very

Speaker 1 grave. Like they'll go after you so hard if you don't agree with them.
And then you kind of realize what it is. And then eventually they start to eat their own.
Yes.

Speaker 1 You can never be progressive enough. No, no, no.
The mob's always going to turn on, no matter who you are and how righteous you pretended to be.

Speaker 1 And I agree with it. Yeah.
Good people with good intentions, you know,

Speaker 1 mixed in. But I think a lot of people saw this as a terrific opportunity, right? And I also think that what it taught me was that, yes, I am racist.

Speaker 1 I hate elite

Speaker 1 progressive white people more than

Speaker 1 I just can't stand them. It's the one group that I would say that I just can't stand because they're very, there's something about them.

Speaker 1 I feel sorry for them.

Speaker 1 I feel like at this point in our culture,

Speaker 1 the divisions are so fucking crazy, and it's so counter to what America should be standing for, for, which is a United States, united country, a community, a large group of people that all agree on a few very key rules, one of them being freedom.

Speaker 1 And I think that

Speaker 1 we've got to stop. This division is set up not by us.
It's set up by world leaders. It's set up by the media.
It's set up by the people who benefit from keeping us divided. Most of us agree on a lot.

Speaker 1 And one of the things you're seeing is like from all these USAID disclosures

Speaker 1 is the mainstream media cannot ever say that anything this administration is doing is positive.

Speaker 1 So even if they find unbelievable corruption and they've found some really wild shit, like what was the $4.7 trillion in untraceable money? Oh, yeah. I sent that to you, right? Yeah, you did.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was, that was, Doge, you know, was

Speaker 1 digging through

Speaker 1 the,

Speaker 1 you know, essentially the way that money is audited within the government. And they look at

Speaker 1 the data sets and how things are divided and how you have to explain what's going on. And the idea is that

Speaker 1 there's a lack of links to payments, outgoing payments,

Speaker 1 budget line items. So this payment goes out, what is it for, right? I mean, it would be the same thing if you had a, well, and I do, I have a business.

Speaker 1 And in that business, you have to know what you're spending your money on, right? I mean, that's a logical thing. I'm not a rocket scientist,

Speaker 1 but what they're saying is that they've, well, there you go. Yeah, here it is.

Speaker 1 So Treasury Access Symbol TAS is an identification code linking Treasury payment to a budget line item, standard financial process.

Speaker 1 In the federal government, the TAS field was optional for $4.7 trillion in payments and was often left blank,

Speaker 1 making traceability almost impossible. As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going.

Speaker 1 That's a big

Speaker 1 treasury for the great work.

Speaker 1 It would be like if I got my monthly reports, my monthly numbers from our finance director,

Speaker 1 and I looked at it, and there's the outgoing line, so I can see how much money is going out, but there's nothing that links it to where did it go. Did it go to pay a vendor? Did it go to pay rent?

Speaker 1 Did it go to pay staff? Who bought a jet? Who bought a jet?

Speaker 1 By the way, when a company buys a jet, it's usually that's a key fraud indicator. If a company buys a jet,

Speaker 1 not all companies.

Speaker 1 Not all companies.

Speaker 1 Let me just make a note of that. UFC jet.

Speaker 1 No, it's what I mean is, obviously, it's not like if it's Nike or an established large business. But you're making so much money, you can buy a jet.
Right. If you've got a business that

Speaker 1 in a space and it's a growing business or it's a new business or a startup, whatever,

Speaker 1 a purchase of a jet usually is a fraud indicator on the list of all the fraud fraud indicators. You should be cashed in your meme coin.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm not cashing. This episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog.
I think we can all agree that eating highly processed food for every meal isn't optimal.

Speaker 1 So why is processed food the status quo for dog food? Because that's what kibble is, an ultra-processed food. But a healthy alternative exists, the farmer's dog.
They make fresh food for dogs.

Speaker 1 And what does it look like? Real meat and vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients and help avoid any of the bad stuff that comes with ultra-processing.

Speaker 1 And it's not just random ingredients thrown together. Their food is formulated by on-staff board-certified vet nutritionists.

Speaker 1 These people are experts on dog nutrition and they're all in on fresh food. The farmer's dog also does something unique.
They portion out the food to your dog's nutritional needs.

Speaker 1 This ensures that you don't overfeed them, making weight management easy.

Speaker 1 Research shows that dogs kept at a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer head to the farmersdog.com slash Rogan to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping this offer is for new customers only this episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

Speaker 1 If you've got something to sell or want to take your business online, Squarespace has you covered. Their built-in SEO tools help people find you

Speaker 1 and you can sell products, take payments, even manage bookings all from one easy platform. Go to squarespace.com slash Rogan for a free trial.

Speaker 1 And when you're ready to launch, use the code Rogan to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Have you thought about a Mike Baker boom coin yet? You know what?

Speaker 1 It's funny you say that. It seems like it's legal gambling, is what it is.

Speaker 1 And it seems like, even though it's horrible to do and very unethical to dump it, to pump and dump it, it seems like that's legal for some weird reason. Yeah.
You know, because I know that's the

Speaker 1 turmoil around the Hoctua coin, and that's the fear about the Trump coin. And I think, didn't the president of Argentina do a pump and dump as well? Allegedly? Well, allegedly.
What did he do?

Speaker 1 What did he do, Jamie? That is getting way messy this week. I want to speculate.
There's all sorts of shit going on with that. What do you think is happening? Coffeezilla had a video come out.

Speaker 1 Of course, I think late last night. He's the guy you do not want investigating your shit coin.
Yeah. Some guy's admitting to stuff that didn't sound

Speaker 1 like that. Yeah, that's why I was like, I didn't even watch the videos yet.
I've been seeing the stuff on Twitter.

Speaker 1 We were trying to figure out is there a way to do it where you don't pump and dump it? Because anybody can kind of make money now, which is so strange.

Speaker 1 And we're like, we'd make a JRE coin if we, what if we didn't dump it? What if we didn't pump and dump it? Like, what would it be for? Would it be? How can you just do that?

Speaker 1 The regulations

Speaker 1 have not caught up yet, right? So you see

Speaker 1 any new, any, any, any new emerging business, industry, technology, you know, you, I think there are people who look and go, there's an opportunity here because, you know, regulatory policy hasn't caught up.

Speaker 1 Right. And so, you know, by the way.
Well, Dave Portnoy's been paying attention to all this, and he's been buying coins and tweeting about them and then selling them.

Speaker 1 And he's been making a lot of money. And he's like, am I going to jail? Like,

Speaker 1 what is this? Because, you know, you're making real money. Didn't he make like a million dollars off of one of them? No, that's why he's involved in this too now.
It reminds me. He's involved in what?

Speaker 1 Which one? The Argentina thing?

Speaker 1 That's what I don't know. Well, fill me in, dog.
I'm trying to find out.

Speaker 1 It's called LibraCoin, I think. I don't think that's the same as the Argentina coin.
Libra.

Speaker 1 I think that's what it is. Going through whether or not he knew stuff before or who told him and what did he know.
The port noise? And when did he know it?

Speaker 1 He's pretty careful. Yeah.
He's pretty careful.

Speaker 1 I doubt he did anything illegal.

Speaker 1 Also, he's so wealthy, he doesn't have to do anything illegal. I was going to say.
But then again, people get fucking crazy greedy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they do. How much is enough? Well, they hang out with other billionaires.
That's the problem. Yeah, and you're always comparing yourself to the guy who's got $3 billion.
You got $1 billion.

Speaker 1 How the fuck can you have that much money and not be happy? That's the part I don't like. Well, that's what it gets weird, but I get it.
Like, if I hang out with Elon Musk, I feel poor.

Speaker 1 So does everybody else on the planet. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 He's still the richest guy. When you meet really, really rich people, you feel poor, even if you're really wealthy.
Well,

Speaker 1 that's the funny thing with him.

Speaker 1 I always think, like, right now, past couple of weeks in particular, it seems like people are just losing their shit and dropping onto the fainting couch over the idea that he's accessing your private information, right?

Speaker 1 What's he going to do? He's accessing your private information. And you think, okay, well, first of all, I don't think the guy is looking to scam you out of 500 bucks, right? But

Speaker 1 the argument's good. Like, he shouldn't be able to scan your information.
But also, is there any evidence that he's doing that? And here's the other question. Who else has access to this?

Speaker 1 Well, it turns out every company. It turns out a lot of people have access to this.
Even students that are interns who work in the department have access to this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think what they're doing is they're making an argument, and it's a good one, right?

Speaker 1 If you have a, look, if he was evil, if you do have this evil billionaire who wants to control the world and has access to everyone's credit card and just steals all your money or does whatever.

Speaker 1 Didn't that used to be Jeff Bezos?

Speaker 1 I thought he was the guy who they were focused on. Well, they were for a while, but he's just bawling.
Jeff is just like hanging out on his yacht.

Speaker 1 Just bagging his super wife. Like, he's having a good time.

Speaker 1 That sounds a lot better than chasing government waste and fraud. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I remember when Elon Musk was criticizing him for not working hard enough. I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Speaker 1 What is work for?

Speaker 1 That guy's getting $200 billion. I think you can chill.

Speaker 1 When you get $200 billion, then it's time to get that fucking crazy yacht. Yeah, once you start launching your own rocket ships.
Yeah, you got a rocket shape like a dick.

Speaker 1 You're literally trying to fuck space. Austin Powers.
Yeah, have a good time.

Speaker 1 I like the way Jeff Bezos is doing it.

Speaker 1 I mean, but I appreciate the fact that Elon is so psychotic in his drive. It's bizarre.
And also in the face of overwhelming hate. Oh, my God.
It is. It is.

Speaker 1 I mean, part of me finds it very entertaining. Part of me just looks at it and goes, oh, you got to, I mean, I think what they're having a problem with is two things, is

Speaker 1 the messaging and the means of doing this, right?

Speaker 1 Everybody, you would think, would agree that, oh, you're going to go through government spending with a fine-tooth comb. You're going to find the waste and abuse and fraud fantastic, right?

Speaker 1 This is the things that Clinton ran on. Right, exactly.
And implemented during his first term. Actually implemented.

Speaker 1 Very effectively, by the way, and it was a huge boon to our economy.

Speaker 1 But again, the messaging was different. Well, it's also the means were different.
The Democrats were different. That was a different kind of a Democrat.

Speaker 1 That was the kind of Democrat I would vote for right now. I would vote for Bill Clinton, despite all the blowjobs and all the crazy shit.

Speaker 1 But you weren't involved in that.

Speaker 1 I think that they all did that.

Speaker 1 I think you get two types of people who want to be president: pussyhounds and warmongers. I prefer pussyhounds.
Well, but you could be both.

Speaker 1 Yes, you could be Genghis Khan. Yeah.
Yeah. You just use both.

Speaker 1 Good use of the pronunciation Genghis. Well, I'm actually listening to an amazing podcast I'd love to recommend to everybody because Elon recommended it on X, and I've been listening to it.

Speaker 1 It's fucking great.

Speaker 1 Fall of Civilizations podcast. They're doing a series on the Mongols right now, Terror in the Steps.
And I am listening to it right now, so that's why I'm saying Genghis correctly.

Speaker 1 Okay, no, that's great. All right.
Yeah, they even explained

Speaker 1 the pronunciation. They explained where it came from and how it got fucked up over the years of translation into languages that didn't have Cheng.
They didn't have a sound.

Speaker 1 And so Chengis Khan became Genghis Khan. You know, especially when European languages started translating it.
Yeah. That makes, yeah.
Everything I know know about Khan, I learned from Mulan.

Speaker 1 Do you know they didn't even fucking know about this whole story until the 1800s?

Speaker 1 They found a Chinese book, and the Chinese book was written, they thought it was nonsense.

Speaker 1 They couldn't figure out what it was saying because it was written where the Chinese characters made the Mongol sounds of the words.

Speaker 1 And so they had to translate it from Chinese to the Mongolian language, and then they realized this was the history of Genghis Khan and the Khan Empire. Okay, yeah.
It's fucking the

Speaker 1 secret history of the Mongols. It's fucking amazing.

Speaker 1 This podcast is fantastic. Yeah,

Speaker 1 that does sound great because, again, I think when you consider how we're all apparently carrying some of his DNA around. Not us.
Yeah. Not us.
Not Europeans. Mostly Asians, right? Okay.

Speaker 1 Well, I have a little Asian. I mean, I have like 1% Asian.
Really? Yeah. Yeah, 1% Asian.

Speaker 1 Close to 2% African.

Speaker 1 But I'm from Sicily. My ancestors.
And so I think those are the ones that got raped by the Moors.

Speaker 1 That's in the movie True Romance. Remember? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 That scene? Yeah. Christopher Walken.

Speaker 1 Christian Slater? No, no, no. Christian Slater.
Christopher Walken. Who was it with him? True Romance.

Speaker 1 There's a whole series of people. Bruce Stern.
Right. Who's the movie? No, no, Dennis Hopper.
Dennis Hopper. Dennis Hopper.
That's right. Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper, right?

Speaker 1 Is that who it was? Yeah, that's who it was.

Speaker 1 I remember they had a scene together that was. That movie's good.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Fuck, that movie's good. That is a great fucking movie.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I think

Speaker 1 if they had come in, if the administration had come in and said, here's what we're going to do: we are going to root out waste and fraud.

Speaker 1 We're going to go after every dollar that's not spent on behalf of the American public and our national security and advancing American interests.

Speaker 1 And we're going to do it in this efficient

Speaker 1 manner. But

Speaker 1 and again, don't get me wrong. I think sometimes the disruption of fast action is extremely beneficial at times.

Speaker 1 And sometimes you can't see the benefit until other things happen outside the bubble that we may be looking in. But I think that

Speaker 1 if they had messaged it a little bit differently, and then with the means, rather than taking a blowtorch to everything,

Speaker 1 Because, and again, not saying that it can't be effective, but what I'm saying is that

Speaker 1 they're losing, I think, important opportunity from a goodwill perspective. And I know they probably don't give a fuck anymore, but

Speaker 1 all those people who voted for them this time around gave them that chance that didn't the previous time. They said, oh, fuck it, I'm so toned with the Biden administration and all this bullshit.

Speaker 1 They need to see,

Speaker 1 I think, more stability, less chaos. And I think the Democrats are very good.
I think we all thought perhaps that the progressives, the Democrats were just going to go into a cave and hide.

Speaker 1 But they're regrouping, right? And they're starting to come back. They're all beards.

Speaker 1 They're all all getting on testosterone. Yeah, that's right.
Suddenly the toxic male is very attractive.

Speaker 1 You know, shame they don't have any. But

Speaker 1 I think that if they

Speaker 1 if you give them ammunition, obviously they're going to take advantage of it for sure. And I think

Speaker 1 some of the approach to this, again, not saying it's wrong in the sense of let's find that waste and fraud,

Speaker 1 but they're giving them opportunities to start firing back.

Speaker 1 Who's scoring big in the NBA this year? You are with all new ways to get in on the action at DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA.

Speaker 1 From monster slams to dishing the rock to cleaning the glass, get behind your favorite players and the prop bets you can make on DraftKings, the home of NBA player props.

Speaker 1 Plus, for new DraftKings customers, bet $5 to get $150 in bonus bets instantly. Take it to the rack with DraftKings Sportsbook.
Every point counts.

Speaker 1 Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use the code Rogan. That's code Rogan for new customers to get $150 in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks.
Only on DraftKings. The crown is yours.

Speaker 2 Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GABLBLER. In New York, call 877-8 Hope and Y or text Hope and Y-467-369.
In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org.

Speaker 2 Please play responsibly. On behalf of Booth Hill Casino and Resorting, Kansas, 21 and over.
Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario.
New customers only.

Speaker 2 Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG.co slash audio.

Speaker 1 Well, I think the problem is they're trying to do it very quickly because they want to get a lot done before the midterms, right? So they only have 24 months to enact real change. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know, did you see Kevin O'Leary talking about on CNN?

Speaker 1 He was saying they're not doing enough. They should cut more.

Speaker 1 He's like, if you want to, because he's talking about it from an entrepreneur's perspective, if you're taking over like a failing company that's filled with bloat and waste, and he's like, that is the government.

Speaker 1 He goes, you got to cut more. He goes, cut everything, cut it all out, and then find out what's necessary and rebuild it from there.

Speaker 1 Because you're saying on ESP, on

Speaker 1 CNN. And CNN, they're like, oh,

Speaker 1 oh,

Speaker 1 pennies were in a watch. Oh, my God.
Well, the five people that watch CNN still were probably. united.
There's probably 20.

Speaker 1 But the thing about it is, they're all united in their message, whether it's MSNBC.

Speaker 1 I watched MSNBC the other day in the gym. Oh, my God.
It was an awesome motivation to work out because these people look morbidly obese.

Speaker 1 And they were giving, they had this language that they were speaking. It was almost like they were translating from another language.

Speaker 1 It didn't make sense. It's like, you know, we're in danger.
You know, we are, it was the way they were talking.

Speaker 1 It's like, my people feel, my people feel like they're in danger, like they're being criminalized.

Speaker 1 We are, you know, we're being, we're being pushed out of society. We're being told we don't exist.
And then, of course, you have to say you're an ally of the LBGT plus. To be an ally.

Speaker 1 They're digging their heels in on all that stuff, though, which is, that's not going to win anymore. That's, that's too crazy.

Speaker 1 Even like kind progressive people realize like, you know, you've done a weird thing with women's sports. You've done a weird thing with the safety of women in bathrooms.

Speaker 1 And it's not to say that some of these people who are legitimate trans people who really do just want to use the women's room and be treated like a woman.

Speaker 1 That's true too, but you open the door for perverts, and you're not admitting that. You open the door.
You're just allowing guys with beards and hard dicks to wander around the women's room.

Speaker 1 And how tough is it to just

Speaker 1 have a

Speaker 1 whatever, a unisex bathroom? Most places, a lot of places do, right? So you got fine. As long as it's not a big bathroom.

Speaker 1 The problem is a group, if it's all single bathrooms, but that's not economically feasible at like a stadium. Right.
You know, and that's where it becomes a problem.

Speaker 1 And then it's also this like weird cultural line where people are like, which bathroom do you get to use?

Speaker 1 This is like a thing in Congress, right? Because there's that one trans person in Congress who, by the way, said that they do not want to use the women's room. So it's not even an issue.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, I think.

Speaker 1 That was very good.

Speaker 1 You're very sensitive. People always say that.
God damn, Rogan is so sensitive.

Speaker 1 But I think

Speaker 1 if most folks, right, who are in alternative

Speaker 1 lifestyles, however you want to put it, I think, yeah, they just want to get on with it, right? They want to be accepted.

Speaker 1 They don't want to make, you know, people make a fuss over. They just want to move on.
And then you've got a small minority that just can't seem to get enough attention.

Speaker 1 And when they can't get enough attention, then they do something even more wacky.

Speaker 1 Well, I think it's a problem with a lot of the people that are quote-unquote leftists in general is that they've been bullied and picked on all their life, and they've been fucked with, and now they have a gang, and now they're going to go fuck with other people.

Speaker 1 It's not much of a gang, though, is it, really? But it's online,

Speaker 1 the words they use online,

Speaker 1 it's like very attacking. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, it's like this is like a core aspect of progressives right now online is that when they're tweeting about stuff and when they're posting about stuff, it's very aggressive and very angry and insulting yeah and that this is this is their way to demean whether it's Pete Hegseth or Cash Patel or any of these people that are involved or RFK Jr.

Speaker 1 any of these people that are involved even Tulsi it's like the way they're doing it it's like it's not about policy or agreeing or disagreeing about perspectives or the way they're they're choosing to govern.

Speaker 1 It's not that.

Speaker 1 Well, I think they're angry because for a while, right, the mob rule was working right and everybody you know was was being you know silenced from the bullying uh or the fear of being bullied so and it lasted for so long it lasted for years yeah you think about it it lasted until elon bought twitter really realistically yeah

Speaker 1 if he hadn't done that and they were all controlled by the left do you think facebook would have like loosened up their grip yeah i don't think so well look meta alphabet they're all they're all kind of rewriting toning down their their uh dei policies right I think that's also because Zuckerberg started doing jiu-jitsu.

Speaker 1 I really do. They start taking testosterone for a while.
Yeah, shout out to Johnson.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Jiu-Jitsu changed your mind, man.
It'll change who you are. You'll realize, like, there's reality in this world.
He's looking a lot more manly. He does.
He looks a lot more manly.

Speaker 1 He's got a thick neck now. I think that has a lot to do with it because you start looking at things from a more libertarian perspective, from a merit-based perspective.

Speaker 1 Also, you know, you're just burning fuel. You're feeling better.

Speaker 1 You're focused on something other than your own inner angst. Or how do you fit in with this

Speaker 1 again?

Speaker 1 Look, everybody just should be able to live their life.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 That's what we all need to concentrate on. Everybody, just live, as long as you're not hurting anybody else with the way you live your life.
Exactly. Live your life.

Speaker 1 If you want to wear a dress, God bless you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 God bless everybody.

Speaker 1 Just be nice. And I think most of the people, the reason why they're not nice is because people have been not nice to them.
You know, that's that old expression, hurt people, hurt people. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the way to fucking unite us is not to keep hurting people. It just doesn't make any sense to me.
No, I think it, and it's simple enough. I honestly, I don't care.

Speaker 1 Someone's got an alternative lifestyle. Now, I don't need to play along with their imaginary idea that a dude's going to have a baby or can, you know,

Speaker 1 breastfeed or whatever.

Speaker 1 There's this one TikTok person who trolls. Oh, God.
And I don't even know if it's a biological woman because that's one thing that the trans people are very upset with.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of like really hot OnlyFans girls that are pretending to be trans, and they put like a fake dick in their underwear. No.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're like super hot.

Speaker 1 And so the actual trans people are very upset and get ready for this. Their argument is my identity is not a costume for you to wear.
Like, wait a minute. Hold on a second.
Hang on.

Speaker 1 Because that's a real woman, bro. You're already doing that with her.

Speaker 1 She's just got a rubber dick in her pants for money. There's no, there really is no.
I keep waiting for Jamie to throw one up on the screen. I'm like, oh my God.

Speaker 1 There's no, yeah, there's no self-awareness

Speaker 1 or sense of irony. So this one lady who's like, I think it's a lady.
I think she's a lady who's a troll.

Speaker 1 And she said that she went to some country and got a chromosome change and a uterus installed and now she's pregnant. And she like.

Speaker 1 And I just read the comments and people are fucking going crazy. There's a bunch of like sub-90 people, IQ people in the comments just fucking having strokes.

Speaker 1 That is the best part. When somebody throws some shit out there and people buy into it, right? And they're like,

Speaker 1 yeah. Well, I buy into some of the dumb ones sometimes.
I have to send them to Jamie.

Speaker 1 Me and Jamie have to sort out what the fuck is real now. It's so hard to tell.
I see things from myself that aren't real. I saw me

Speaker 1 doing,

Speaker 1 or I didn't see me.

Speaker 1 I heard my voice over some narration of something, of some TikTok story and i was like i never saw this i never this is not me saying this it's all done through ai i'm like this is crazy you're a prime case study for the impact and effects of and the sort of the the um you know the the downside of ai right for sure with my voice yeah yeah yeah you know i guess now with video as well you know if you wanted to have a podcast video of me doing something

Speaker 1 oh absolutely yeah yeah it's it's pretty wild now that i mean we have a little bit of a problem where a bunch of people are selling like cheap things online and using my voice, and we have to get them removed.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 But that's just, you know, that's his opportunist or taking advantage. You know, I'm selling protein powders that I've never seen before, all that kind of shit.
Right.

Speaker 1 They're doing that with my voice. I mean, there's very few, we've talked about it before, there's very few because the idea was always sort of detection, right?

Speaker 1 Okay, we've got to create better systems to detect deep fakes. Right.

Speaker 1 And but now I think the focus, the focus has rightly shifted from sort of the detection to more proactive

Speaker 1 protection of material.

Speaker 1 So get it at the moment of creation.

Speaker 1 Embed the ability within the video clip, the audio clip, whatever, to show that you've got proof of

Speaker 1 whatever you want to call it, reality, credibility, authenticity. And that's the way it's all going.
Because you just can't keep up.

Speaker 1 If all you're doing is trying to create better systems to detect deep fakes, it's a losing game.

Speaker 1 It's like battling terrorists because you're coming up with an idea to prevent a terrorist attack based on the last terrorist attack, and they're on to something else.

Speaker 1 So it's an interesting world. There's not that many companies out there that are doing a great job of it, but there are some.
It's going to get to a point where it's impossible to tell.

Speaker 1 And I think that's not far away. I think we're there.
Honestly, it's pretty close. Most people aren't curious, right? Most people are, or they don't have time or they're not cynical, right?

Speaker 1 And so most people are willing to look at something and go, yeah, you know, I mean, unless it's just clearly bullshit. But for the most part, if it's a half-decent fake,

Speaker 1 I think most people will accept it and move on. I like the ones that

Speaker 1 are obvious.

Speaker 1 They're really good, but they're obvious fakes. Like, do you see the one with Kamala Harris after she lost the presidency? She's wearing a bikini top, walking with a beer that says unemployed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. That's good.

Speaker 1 But it's obvious that it's not real. Yeah.
So it's okay. Like the ones where Trump's playing the guitar, and then there's all these other people like Putin's in the background with the drums.

Speaker 1 Have you seen that one? That is good.

Speaker 1 There's one where

Speaker 1 I don't think I've seen the one with him playing the drums, but I've seen them where there's a whole series of world leaders and

Speaker 1 they're in a ballad together. Yeah.
It's fantastic. Yeah,

Speaker 1 the one with Trump playing guitar, I think they're doing, it's Fortunate Sun, right?

Speaker 1 It is, right? I think it's on my Instagram, right? Credence Clearwater. It's so good, and it's obviously fake.
That's why I like it.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's not tricking me, but I'm like, wow, that's really good.

Speaker 1 I mean, and it's interesting. I mean, again, talk about regulatory policy not catching up.
I mean,

Speaker 1 what do you do? Right. I mean,

Speaker 1 like, if you were in Europe, right,

Speaker 1 you could be fined and jailed

Speaker 1 in a case for pushing something that's disinformation or whatever.

Speaker 1 Or you're just goofing, right? But it's a goof. But you can't, you know, if it's an obvious, to your point, if it's an obvious goof, then okay, you can probably get away with it.

Speaker 1 Maybe not if you're in Germany or somewhere. But

Speaker 1 Germany's going crazy. They are going crazy.

Speaker 1 And they weren't happy with J.D. Vance's speech.
I'll tell you that much. I wonder why.
Nobody in the EU was happy.

Speaker 1 The head of the Munich Security Conference literally cried after the speech when they were addressing EU leaders following the speech, right?

Speaker 1 Talking about the impact and what it might have meant for U.S.-EU relations and everything. Literally tears being shed over

Speaker 1 J.D. Vance's speech.
What was it about his speech in particular that was offensive?

Speaker 1 Well, I think what they were anticipating at the Munich Security Conference was he was going to come in and he was going to talk about, obviously, the number one topic on the table for them was Ukraine.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 where are we going with that? Because obviously the EU leaders are now very concerned about U.S. commitment to NATO.

Speaker 1 What is the Trump administration planning on doing in terms of further support for Ukraine, really further support for NATO? Are they looking to distance themselves?

Speaker 1 And Vance instead came in and didn't really focus on any of that shit. He turned it on to the European Union and to EU countries in the UK, and the UK in particular, talking about how

Speaker 1 their biggest threat isn't necessarily Russia or China.

Speaker 1 Their biggest threat is what they're doing to themselves in terms of suppressing free speech from all the various groups out there, including conservative groups, the far left, whatever, determining that this type of speech is illegal.

Speaker 1 We're going to pursue you. We're going to fine you.
We're going to jail you.

Speaker 1 Armed raids against people that are pushing content online.

Speaker 1 So he makes. Including anti-immigrant content.
Anti-immigrant content.

Speaker 1 But to be fair, right, I mean, most of Europe at this point is pretty fed up with the immigration policies that their leaders have. Which is why they want to suppress the dissent online.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 They're not doing it because they genuinely think this is a moral and ethical thing to do. They're doing it because they sense an uprising.
Yeah, and they rightly should.

Speaker 1 Look, Olaf Schultz, the German chancellor, he's not getting re-elected. And their election is coming up here shortly.

Speaker 1 And so he's not, it's not going to happen for him.

Speaker 1 So I think, yeah, they're rightly, not rightly, but they are concerned about their own political power. That's

Speaker 1 that's what it is, and that's what people need to understand. It's not rocket science, it's not that the Europeans are the kinder, more progressive.

Speaker 1 No, there's like they understand that it's coming, yeah, and they want to do everything they can to stop it because most people are fed up. Most people just want to be left the fuck alone.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and if you tell them that they can't put a flag meme on one of their Facebook pages or they get arrested, which is what happened in Germany. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Or talk about, so if you talk about the immigration problem and you say, look, we've got to stop this. We've got to maybe secure borders.

Speaker 1 If you talk about the Ukraine war and say, I don't think we should be supporting dumping more resource into Ukraine,

Speaker 1 all those things, or reproductive rights, if you're on the wrong side of that from a European perspective. You know, they're coming after you.
And so that's what J.D. Vance came after.

Speaker 1 He turned the tables on them and focused on that. And that was, A, it was completely unexpected.
And B, I think, you know, the reality of it, the fact that it's truthful, I think upset a lot of them.

Speaker 1 It's truthful and it also appeals to their citizens. That's the thing.
The citizens say, this is the way we want our government to talk. Yeah.
And I think it's funny because a lot of people on,

Speaker 1 you know, there's a lot of people on social media right now going, oh my God, you don't realize how hated, you know, you are now as Americans. And the U.S.
is so hated.

Speaker 1 And I think, like, I spent most of my time overseas, right? And most people are going, yeah, it seems like it's common sense. You guys are finally coming around, right?

Speaker 1 And so I don't think they're going to win the argument that somehow the U.S. is more hated.
Look, we've been hated in a variety of locations. Well, we definitely are hated in Canada right now.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. See the hockey game?

Speaker 1 See, we were booing the national anthem so hard. Oh, are they getting three fights in the first nine minutes? Yeah.
And then we kick Canada's ass, hard Canada, in Canada.

Speaker 1 Which is not good because that's their fucking sport. It's basically their only shot at beating us at anything.
Yeah. Well,

Speaker 1 curling. Curling.
They might be able to win at that. If we practice it, we'd be better at that, too.

Speaker 1 They make great mixed martial arts fighters. One of the greatest of all time, George St.
Pierre is from Canada.

Speaker 1 But after that,

Speaker 1 let me think. Get your football team.
Come fuck with America.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to think of other things that I could throw out there.

Speaker 1 Maybe baseball.

Speaker 1 Blue Jays are really good. Molson.
Yeah, they have strong beer. Yeah.
They have great people. I love Canada.
I love the people. Blackwise.

Speaker 1 It's just they're too nice and they let communists run their country. Yeah.
And that guy's a communist. Well,

Speaker 1 it is one of those moments where you think, okay, I understand. I get your point.
You know, the talk about turning Canada to a 51st. That's a little crazy.
It's a little crazy. It's a little crazy.

Speaker 1 He's serious. He told me on the phone he was serious.
Yeah. Well, at first, I was joking around, but then I was thinking, maybe it's not a bad idea.

Speaker 1 Now I think he keeps talking to him, refers to him as Governor Trudeau. It's so funny.
You know what I love is

Speaker 1 I was just out in the Middle East for some things, including the amazing trek with the guys from the SF Club. And

Speaker 1 it was right during the period of time when President Trump announced his idea during that press conference with Netanyahu about, look,

Speaker 1 we're going to own, the U.S. is going to own Gaza.
Did you see the look on Netanyahu's face when he was saying that? Yes.

Speaker 1 Which was priceless. What in the fuck? I know.
And did I get into? And now you know what they're all doing?

Speaker 1 The Israeli cabinet is fully on board with the idea, in part because I think they understand that, okay, look, this is probably not going to happen.

Speaker 1 but if we take this position, right, it's going to create chaos. It's going to create some movement, right? And maybe that leads to something of interest.
And I think when

Speaker 1 being out in the Middle East, when that idea came out and hearing some of the responses from people out there was amazing. But

Speaker 1 what I like about it, look, you're not going to move 2.3 million Palestinians out of Gaza, right? Because none of the Arab states want them.

Speaker 1 The Egyptians have fought against this idea for years and years and years. That's a a good point, and some that maybe a lot of people aren't aware of.

Speaker 1 Is that the wall on the side of Egypt is way bigger than the wall on the side of Israel.

Speaker 1 That is an impenetrable wall that's heavily guarded. They do not want Palestinians coming into Egypt, which is kind of crazy.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, from their perspective, look, it's a security issue. And there's a lot of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, so it's not like Jordan hasn't tried to do their part.

Speaker 1 But they also, what are they going to do? Absorb another million, two million Palestinians? No. So

Speaker 1 the problem from an operational perspective is it's unlikely

Speaker 1 to happen, right? And also, do you really want the U.S. buying and owning Gaza, right, and then being out there?

Speaker 1 You think that the cost of supporting Ukraine is high? Wait till you see what the cost of not only the reconstruction, but the security of the reconstruction, right? What that's going to mean.

Speaker 1 You think there was a boon in private security contractors during the Iraq incursions?

Speaker 1 This will make that look like nothing.

Speaker 1 So they've got to guard their investment.

Speaker 1 Exactly. So the costs involved, the potential for

Speaker 1 just never-ending

Speaker 1 trouble.

Speaker 1 But what I do like about it is, look, now that

Speaker 1 the Arab states are responding by having a summit.

Speaker 1 They're having a summit at the end of this month, and they've been having little mini discussions amongst themselves, but all the key players in the area are now meeting to discuss what's an alternative, right?

Speaker 1 What is the way to make this happen? And

Speaker 1 it's not going to be by the U.S. owning it and building the Riviera or a series of casinos.
But

Speaker 1 the Arab states are having to react.

Speaker 1 And so, what that means is nothing's worked beforehand, right? Nothing in terms of the two-state option,

Speaker 1 other security agreements, peace agreements that have held for some period of time and then fallen apart. None of that shit's worked.
So, I think

Speaker 1 the sort of the disruptive aspect of sometimes of what Trump does, even though you may look at the idea on the surface and go,

Speaker 1 it's not going to work, you have these other effects, right? And so now you've got the Arab states having to respond, coming up with these ideas.

Speaker 1 They're already, over the past couple of days, saying, well, Hamas can't play a role.

Speaker 1 If you had said that a year ago, Egypt and Qatar and some of these other Arab states out there would have gotten on board with the idea that Hamas has got to go.

Speaker 1 That wouldn't have happened, right? I mean, before the 7 October attacks. Right.
They're also talking about rebuilding it themselves.

Speaker 1 They're like, well, we'll do it. We'll do it.
Just back off. We'll do it.
We'll take care of it. Which is great.
And that's when they have to say, Hamas can't be a part of it.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Activision. You know me.
I love a bit of action. That's why I'm excited to tell you that Call of Duty Black Ops 7 is out now.

Speaker 1 And let me tell you, this game is the biggest Black Ops ever. If you're into intense action, strategic gameplay, and just straight up kicking ass, this is it.
Kicking ass?

Speaker 1 Sounds like that's right up my alley. Black Ops 7 drops you right into three massive modes.

Speaker 1 First, you've got the co-op campaign where you can team up with your buddies to tackle some serious missions. Then, the multiplayer.
It's explosive.

Speaker 1 18 maps that keep the fights fresh and the stakes high. And zombies.
Oh boy, this is the best zombie mode yet, featuring a brand new drivable wonder vehicle that completely changes the game.

Speaker 1 Seriously, whether you're a hardcore gamer or just want to jump into some crazy action, Black Ops 7 delivers. Call of Duty, Black Ops 7 is available now.
Rated M for mature.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Dodge. The 2026 Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat is all about one thing.

Speaker 1 unlocking performance with 710 horsepower 645 pound feet of torque and a supercharged 6.2 liter hemi v8 under the hood. The Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat is the most powerful SUV in the segment.

Speaker 1 It's also insanely capable, towing up to 8,700 pounds with seating up to seven. That's best in class muscle in a three-row SUV.
Plus, you can jailbreak it and customize the hell out of it.

Speaker 1 The SRT Hellcat jailbreak has over 6 million possible configurations. You can customize everything from paint to wheels to badging to seats.
Make it your own. This isn't a quiet SUV.
It's loud.

Speaker 1 It's fast. It's powerful and unapologetically Dodge.
Learn more now at dodge.com based on the latest competitive information available, IHS standard full-size CUV segment and horsepower. Right.

Speaker 1 That's because they know what the problem is. And they haven't been willing to admit it before.

Speaker 1 But because the Trump administration just throwing stuff at the wall, right, to see what sticks, they've got to respond. And so now

Speaker 1 they're coming up with these ideas. Look, Hamas,

Speaker 1 you know, they are a shell of what they were, right? But they're still supported by the Iranian regime, which is a big problem.

Speaker 1 And the Iranian regime, you know, do you think they don't want peace? They don't want stability, right?

Speaker 1 That's not in the books.

Speaker 1 One of the benefits from their perspective of the 7 October attacks was that it completely scuttled the normalization talks that were going on between Saudi and Israel and the U.S. at the time.

Speaker 1 So, you know, they're going to continue to be a problem, but Hamas, you know, is now kind of on its back foot. The Palestinian Authority is saying, well, we'll come in and we'll govern Gaza.

Speaker 1 Well, the Israelis are saying, no, no, that's not going to happen either because you guys are peas in a pod.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the Palestinian Authority has a program where they actually pay the families of people who kill Israelis.

Speaker 1 It's called the pay-to-slay program. Really? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. That's what it's called? Yep.
Pay to slay. How much do you get paid? You know what? I'm not sure what the going rate is now, but

Speaker 1 for out there,

Speaker 1 it's a payment, ongoing payments, to families who have family members who have attacked,

Speaker 1 wounded, or killed Israelis. And so

Speaker 1 that plus other ties between Hamas and the PA. And look, there's been animosity, obviously.
Hamas drove the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza years ago. But the Israelis see it as the same.
And so

Speaker 1 my point being is the Arab states are now reacting, and you could end up with something that actually works as opposed to all the bullshit in the past that never did work and always

Speaker 1 continued to provide nothing for the Palestinian people. And

Speaker 1 if you say, look, all this is about is we want the Palestinians to live a better life, then you should want new ideas thrown at the wall, right?

Speaker 1 And you should want something that eventually is going to work. And from a U.S.
perspective, you should want something where the Arab states actually take it on board themselves. Aaron Powell, Jr.:

Speaker 1 There's also a problem with the reality of the region at this point, right? It's like, what do you want to happen to that area? Because someone has to rebuild it.

Speaker 1 Look, absolutely Israel shouldn't have done what they did and

Speaker 1 kill who knows how many innocent people and literally destroy most of the buildings there. We all can agree that's a horrible thing, but it's done.
So now what?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and we can also agree that it was not. Look, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 It was a very aggressive action. I would argue that the U.S.
would engage in that same aggressive action if we had had

Speaker 1 a proportionate attack from Mexico. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, or Canada. Right.

Speaker 1 Goddamn Canadians. They're plotting something.
I just know it. So if,

Speaker 1 you know, so that's true. But again, it was a war that Hamas started.

Speaker 1 I think you have to go back to the beginning of this one. And yes, there's fault on both sides, of course.
But, you know, Hamas now, at times, has been acting like the aggrieved party.

Speaker 1 It's fuck around and find out in the worst way possible. Yeah.
That's what it is. I mean, they gave Israel the green light to just go ham.

Speaker 1 And now when you see the overhead drone footage of what Gaza looks like now, it's hard to even believe that it's real.

Speaker 1 Everything's gone. Yeah, which I get it.
I mean, from a real estate developer's perspective, I'm sure he's seen overhead imagery.

Speaker 1 Turn us into the Mediterranean of the Middle East. This looks like a demolition site.
So let's clear it out. The real question is: if that doesn't, okay, then what?

Speaker 1 If you don't want that to happen, then what? If the United States doesn't take it over, or

Speaker 1 who should, and what do you do with it? And how do you get the money to rebuild it? And where does that come from? And how do you do it?

Speaker 1 Who do you bring in to rebuild it? Who governs it? How does that work? Who gets what building? How does it work? Yeah. You know, it's a very complicated thing when you destroy an entire fucking city.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Which is essentially.
See if you can find some of that overhead footage.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and when you're talking about moving out 2.3 million people to other areas.

Speaker 1 But look, I think, again, the answer is that the Arab states have to take this on. They finally have to address this issue.

Speaker 1 They've used the Palestinians, some of them have used the Palestinian issue to their own devices

Speaker 1 without doing anything to their benefit of the Palestinians. Look at this footage.
This is unbelievable. I mean, this looks like they got hit with an asteroid.
Yeah. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 The scope of it. It's just insane.

Speaker 1 It's insane to see.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Dave Smith had a very good take on this. He was on one of those Pierce Morgan, everybody yells at everybody panels, which are really fun for about five minutes.

Speaker 1 Let me send Jamie what Dave said because Dave had, in my opinion, the best take on this.

Speaker 1 Where it's like, you see, you're like, okay, yeah,

Speaker 1 that's correct. This is

Speaker 1 the way to look at it, I think. Because it's like, yeah.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 1 again, I think you, unless, I don't know who would be on board,

Speaker 1 take the take it from, you know, beyond this, sort of the initial sentence of the U.S. will take ownership.

Speaker 1 Oh, here we go. I'm guessing if this is it.
I don't know if I. Is that Dean Kane on the right? No.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It is? Yes. Superman.
I don't know if this is the right rant. I didn't click it from you.
I'll click the one you sent. If you just said, yeah, click the one I sent.

Speaker 1 It's probably the same one.

Speaker 1 Sometimes I love these Pierce Morgan panels. You never know who you've got to show up in one of those boxes.

Speaker 1 And it's a bizarre mix of people.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's the same one. This is like the commentary for Wimbledon where we just don't say anything.

Speaker 3 Pictures of Gaza? Are you telling me there was Hamas? Well, there were Hamas missiles in every single one of those buildings, that that's the entirety of the story?

Speaker 3 Is that Israel just had to blow up this building? Which, by the way, stealth, I don't think would be morally justified. But like, come on, man.

Speaker 3 Look, like, it's just, again, even to Dean's point, I always find this fascinating because somehow Americans could say this about the people in Hamas and go, like, you know, like you said, yeah, I wouldn't like to be kicked out of my neighborhood, but if

Speaker 2 my government had done October 7th, I'd accept it.

Speaker 3 Your government, Dean, destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, the drone bombing campaign in Pakistan. So like, what are you, can you get kicked out of your house now?

Speaker 3 Is it not ethnic cleansing if we were to kick you out of your neighborhood?

Speaker 3 This is so ridiculous that we impose these standards on these poor people that we would never dream of holding ourselves to that standard. It's just, it logically makes absolutely no sense.

Speaker 3 And it doesn't really matter what Hamas's approval rating is in the same way that it doesn't matter that George W.

Speaker 4 Bush had record high approval ratings.

Speaker 3 That doesn't mean that the innocent civilians in the United States of America are fair game. And neither should any other group of civilians be.

Speaker 1 Perfectly said. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I mean, look, if you could do surgical strikes and do nothing but kill Hamas terrorists, great.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But, you know,

Speaker 1 that's not the real world. You know, Dave's talking about a world that we don't exist in, right? I would argue.
Like, and that's, this is where we would differ.

Speaker 1 I like Dave Smith a lot, and I think he's incredibly intelligent.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 we fundamentally look at things sometimes in a different worldview because of our experiences, right? And my experience has been dealing with a lot of hostile actors who

Speaker 1 you may look at and think, okay, well, can't we just, I don't say we'll get along, but they exist and we exist, and do we really...

Speaker 1 That's not the world we work in, right? And urban combat is really ugly.

Speaker 1 It's not dismissing, you know, the horrific nature of it and the fact that, yeah, sure, in a perfect world, it's morally repugnant. And it is, you know, but it's the world that we live in.

Speaker 1 So I think, okay, on one hand, I get what he's saying, and I don't disagree on that moral side of things. But, you know, from my background, I don't tend to live in that world.

Speaker 1 I tend to live in sort of the operational side of things. And, you know, sometimes you have to do things that are not good.
But even as extreme as that? Well, yeah. That's the thing.

Speaker 1 It's like it's so extreme. Oh, I know.

Speaker 1 And I don't disagree. And

Speaker 1 they went above and beyond. There's no doubt about it.

Speaker 1 But to my point, and I think to kind of what he was saying, look,

Speaker 1 we did after 9-11, right? And we went above and beyond from a proportionate standpoint. And we felt certainly justified in doing it.

Speaker 1 I mean, we did. America finally came together as a group, right, as opposed to sort of the partisan way that we live now.

Speaker 1 But we were justified based on a lie, which is even crazy, because they used that justification and went after a group of people that had nothing to do with it

Speaker 1 based on a lie of weapons of mass destruction, which is even crazier, right? We went to a completely different country. Yeah.
Well, I think Hamas

Speaker 1 also,

Speaker 1 you know, these are disjointed statements, and I'm not really tying it all together very well at all.

Speaker 1 But, you know, there's also this element that Hamas doesn't give a shit about the Palestinian citizens, right? The civilians, I mean. And

Speaker 1 if they did, they wouldn't conduct their operations. Their methodology would be different.

Speaker 1 They wouldn't bury themselves in their operations and their command centers and everything that they do,

Speaker 1 their depots, their missile weapons supply centers within the public environment.

Speaker 1 They just wouldn't. Trevor Burrus: Well, they probably never expected this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 There's no way they would have done October 7th if they expected this response. Well, there's no way that the Iranian regime, I think, would have allowed them to do this

Speaker 1 if they anticipated they would get this sort of response. So I think you're right.

Speaker 1 But, you know, and again,

Speaker 1 this is the problem.

Speaker 1 People only hear what they want to hear, right? So they hear me say from an operational perspective, I understand that they had an aggressive response,

Speaker 1 but then they stop listening, right? So what I'm saying is, was it over the top? Well, yes, it was over the top. And could they have been more surgical about this?

Speaker 1 Well, yes, they certainly could have.

Speaker 1 Could they have prevented some loss of civilian life? Well, yes. Would that have been difficult? Well, yes.
Why? Because Hamas puts themselves in the center of civilian life there.

Speaker 1 They know this is what's going to happen. This is their currency.
Dead Palestinians, that drives their narrative.

Speaker 1 And they always know it's going to turn against the Israelis as we're having these discussions. That's what happens.
And they've got enough of a track record to know that's what's going to happen.

Speaker 1 So they use it to their advantage. But, you know, again, it doesn't excuse the killing.
I keep coming back to that same thing. You can have

Speaker 1 disparate multiple thoughts in your head at the same time. You can feel bad about that.
And at the same time, you can go, yeah, it was fucked up what they did on 7 October.

Speaker 1 You're going to go after Hamas. And then what you're going to find is urban combat is really, really fucking ugly.
And you're going to have casualties that you really, really regret having.

Speaker 1 Were there more than needed? I would say yes. They didn't need the extent of their response.
But I understand their mindset for why they went so hard after Hamas.

Speaker 1 This is decades and decades, you know, built up saying no no more. We can't put up with this anymore.
Now, again, the problem is,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 the problem is not that

Speaker 1 it's not really Hamas. I keep coming back to the same thing.
The problem is the instigator of all this trouble, the instigator of the vast majority

Speaker 1 of chaos and instability and violence and death in that region is the Iranian regime. Most Arab states will agree to that.
Maybe not the Yemenis.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 most of those Arab states are not going to be sad to see the Iranian regime fall for this very reason. Everybody wants a better life, right? However they perceive it.

Speaker 1 The Iranian regime, you know, the mullahs and the RGC, you know, they've got a stated objective, and they are pursuing that. As long as those people are in charge, right,

Speaker 1 you know, ultimately, we're not going to get a big sea change here. We're not going to get a huge shift in the way things go.

Speaker 1 But if you want a better life, then you got to look to the whatever you want to call it, the head of the snake or the

Speaker 1 top of the mountain. There they are, the Iranian regime driving a lot of this chaos.
So, anyway, I'm getting away from the point, but I don't disagree with Dave.

Speaker 1 I always like a lot of the things that he says. I just think that we come at it sometimes from a much different perspective.
I don't tend to believe that the world is full of

Speaker 1 good actors who are just trying to create a community of nations.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I'm not putting it well, but I think what I mean is that there's

Speaker 1 it's not

Speaker 1 what I was having a conversation the other day, and

Speaker 1 it was about

Speaker 1 U.S. involvement in a variety of groups, activities, associations over the years, looking to topple governments, looking to change, you know,

Speaker 1 the direction of a government, like all the nefarious things that the CIA has been accused of over the years.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I was like, well, goddamn,

Speaker 1 what did you expect? Of course that's what we're doing, right?

Speaker 1 Of course, we're trying to influence hearts and minds. Of course, we're infiltrating organizations to try to influence the direction of a government.

Speaker 1 You go all the way back to the Cold War, right? We were convinced the Russians or the Soviets were going to blow us to hell.

Speaker 1 Of course, we're going to be doing a variety of things. You want a government over there that's more friendly to you? Okay, how are we going to go about doing that?

Speaker 1 If that means VOA or Voice of America, or that means infiltrating some organization that's going to try to win them,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 is that morally repugnant? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Oh, you think it's necessary? I think there's a, I think it's understandable.

Speaker 1 And I think also.

Speaker 1 So imagine a world without that. Yeah.
So if that is a vacuum and we stop doing that entirely altogether, does that vacuum get filled up by another power? Yeah. Yeah, that's

Speaker 1 the problem, right?

Speaker 1 That's the problem, is that we don't live in a world of benign nations who, like, if we're not the police, you know, at the top of the food chain, nobody needs to be there someone's going to fill that that gap and they're and you know what um maybe i'm maybe i'm wrong i'm but i've been around a long time and i've spent most of it overseas and unusual places um we make a lot of mistakes as a country it's a human endeavor but we do try to correct and it can take time right it can take a lot of time we make a lot of mistakes of course we do but uh I've seen a lot of players out there and I'd rather have us and our allies trying to direct traffic rather than some of the hostile actors that are out there.

Speaker 1 This is the best case scenario perspective. Worst case scenario perspective is that these policy changes that we are initiating and that we are influencing is for corporations to make more money.

Speaker 1 It's to control resources and to control areas and to make things friendlier for business. That's the worst case scenario is this is done

Speaker 1 in a mercenary fashion. Yeah.
But is that

Speaker 1 just Chinese regime?

Speaker 1 But here's my question. Is that just what happens? Like when you do have the ability to control other regimes, isn't it

Speaker 1 almost

Speaker 1 doesn't it almost logical that you're going to need a lot of money and you're going to need a lot of influence to do that?

Speaker 1 And so there's going to be a bunch of people that say, actually, we could use some of those minerals. Actually, you know, that natural gas is very valuable.

Speaker 1 Actually, if we could destabilize Russia's energy systems and pump up Ukraine's and control it, that'd be pretty good.

Speaker 1 And so then we start initiating things and we start the coup in Ukraine in 2014 and a bunch of different things. We started helping things along that would

Speaker 1 benefit us both geopolitically, but also geopolitically in the sense that you're controlling the geology of the land, which is the real term, geopolitical, right? Yeah. That's the real term, right?

Speaker 1 Doesn't it have to do with

Speaker 1 like controlling regions? Well, sure. Yeah, and I think that it's,

Speaker 1 yeah, you're talking about national self-interest. Right.

Speaker 1 I think in the world that we actually live in, every country is acting in its own self-interest. So then it's also

Speaker 1 a national self-interest that's kind of prostituted by corporations. This is what people are worried about: is that we engage in certain activity that's avoidable simply for profit.

Speaker 1 Yes, absolutely. I don't think there's any doubt about that.
I think, look,

Speaker 1 which is what happens when you have a system like this, right?

Speaker 1 When you can influence foreign governments and you do have enormous amounts of resources and you do have the ability to change things and install a government that's more friendly to

Speaker 1 the business. This episode is brought to you by Visible.
When your phone plans as good as Visible, you've got to tell your people.

Speaker 1 It's the ultimate wireless hack to save money and still get great coverage and a reliable connection. Get one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot for $25 a month.

Speaker 1 Taxes and fees included all on Verizon's 5G network. Plus, now for a limited time, new members can get the visible plan for just $19 a month for the first 26 months.

Speaker 1 Use promo code switch 26 and save beyond the season. It's a deal so good, you're going to want to tell your people.
Switch now at visible.com/slash Rogan.

Speaker 1 Terms apply, limited time offers subject to change. See visible.com for planned features and network management details.
This episode is brought to you by Tommy John. I really love their underwear.

Speaker 1 They're very comfortable. And if you prefer classic colors or holiday prints, they have all kinds of different styles.
And comfort never gets out of style with Tommy John.

Speaker 1 They have up to four times more stretch than competing brands. They're very breathable, these fabrics they use to keep you cool and dry.

Speaker 1 No more chafing, adjusting, or jingling, just softness and support right where you need it.

Speaker 1 At Tommy John, I can grab gifts for myself and others all in one place because it's not just men's underwear. They have women's products too, including pajama sets, hoodies, joggers, and more.

Speaker 1 And don't forget, your first purchase is backed by Tommy John's risk-free guarantee. So in the rare instance that you don't love it, you get your money back.

Speaker 1 Look, with 30 million pairs sold, there are thousands of other guys wearing Tommy John right now that are way more comfortable than you are. Don't settle for less.
I wear Tommy John.

Speaker 1 They're great as gifts, and you're going to love it. Give the gift that lasts with Tommy John and get 30% off site-wide right now at tommyjohn.com slash Rogan with promo code Rogan.

Speaker 1 Going to do that.

Speaker 1 Let me go back to

Speaker 1 the Coal Wood because that's probably our best example of what happens when you get, because you actually had, it wasn't just a unipolar world, right? You had the Soviets and you had the U.S.

Speaker 1 Yes,

Speaker 1 there was concern over

Speaker 1 life itself.

Speaker 1 There was this concern over mutual destruction,

Speaker 1 but there was concern over influence. So the Soviets were busy in a variety of places.
Let's pick Africa.

Speaker 1 So in the mid to late 50s,

Speaker 1 as

Speaker 1 Africa was moving, you know, clearly, strongly away from colonialism, right, and independent states started, you know, sprouting up,

Speaker 1 then

Speaker 1 there was this concern over, well, okay, the old colonial era is gone, right? The Belgians aren't going to own the Congo, as an example. The Congo is rich in resources, right?

Speaker 1 Uranium, cobalt, you know, diamonds, obviously, but let's take uranium.

Speaker 1 The Belgians were running Congo when we were developing the bomb.

Speaker 1 And almost all that uranium came from the Congo.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's a good example of the U.S. looking and saying, okay,

Speaker 1 are the Belgians, you know, good

Speaker 1 stewards

Speaker 1 of the Congo? Well, no. They were enslaving people and having them work in the uranium mines.
And we were taking that uranium and using it to build the bomb, the Manhattan Project.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 all those years later, I mean, the Congo, you know, realized its independence, you know, Patrice Lumumbo and all the rest of that history. But

Speaker 1 now, the Congo is wrapped up in conflict still. Why is it still in conflict? Because of its minerals.
Cobalt now is the key, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, uranium you can get from a variety of places, Australia and elsewhere, Kazakhstan and a variety of other locations. But cobalt, they've got maybe

Speaker 1 sixty percent, don't quote me on that, but I think it's about that, of the world's cobalt supplies. What do you need cobalt for? Well, electric vehicles, batteries.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 now the eastern Congo is still in conflict. That place is a mess.
So

Speaker 1 i if it's not the poorest, that's it's like the second or third poorest country in the world. And isn't most of those mines they controlled by China?

Speaker 1 Well, a lot of them are controlled on the eastern side by militias, right? Congo's been a difficult place for everybody to try to wrap up licensing agreements.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 you've got 100-plus militias out there vying for control because it's money.

Speaker 1 And so I guess my point is,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 it's good you brought up China because, yes, they've been busy trying to lock up a variety of locations in terms of critical minerals.

Speaker 1 And they've got a monopoly on refining those minerals essentially at this point in time. But

Speaker 1 I just think it's,

Speaker 1 yeah, maybe what I'm surprised by, because I'm so fucking cynical, is

Speaker 1 the idea when you say

Speaker 1 it's corporate interests, it's government interests, it's self-interest of a nation

Speaker 1 to pursue and do these things.

Speaker 1 I'll be honest with you, I look at it and go, well, yeah, of course it is.

Speaker 1 I don't know any other world, right? I don't know that

Speaker 1 we're not going to walk that dog back over a couple thousand years. People have been doing the same fucking thing all human existence, I would argue.

Speaker 1 So I just got to look at it. And I, and I, and I, you know, maybe because I'm not wired that way, I don't sit around and go, that's fucking wrong.
We have to rail against this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm a very simple person, so I look at it and go, yeah, that's how it works. And goddamn right, I'd rather be on the top of the heap than, you know, not.

Speaker 1 And, you know, as long as we're.

Speaker 1 So this is like a pragmatic perspective. I guess.

Speaker 1 I see your experience overseas and your understanding of how these things are done is that if we don't do something, if we don't act in some way to influence these governments and control these regions and do whatever we can to make sure that our interests are being

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 we are the ones that are kind of directing the way things go. Right.
I would rather be directing how things are going than not.

Speaker 1 And those are the two options.

Speaker 1 I think those are the two options because we're not going to live as a community of nations. What are we going to do?

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, hold hands and say, okay, everybody's going to live as a collective.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I know that,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I'm sure there's all sorts of flaws in the way that I'm thinking, but I'm a very simple person. When I was in operations, you tell me what to do, I'll do it.

Speaker 1 I never sat around and got angsty about anything because I just didn't see any point in it.

Speaker 1 And so.

Speaker 1 Again, pragmatic. Yeah, yeah.
Or just being a douchebag. Well, there's a lot of people listening to probably come to that conclusion.
Yes, I think you're right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but this is the reality of that job, right?

Speaker 1 And this is the reality of

Speaker 1 international relations. Yeah, I just, you know, and look, I'll tell you something.

Speaker 1 Look, there are people over the years, I think, you know, the CIA leadership at times over the years, I'm talking, you know,

Speaker 1 you know, all the way back to World War II and, you know, beyond, certainly during the Cold War, Alan Dulles is a good example of that, where, you know, they they legitimately would sit around and say, well,

Speaker 1 as far as I know, we're not in the business of overthrowing countries. You know, and you think like, well, that's bullshit.
Of course, of course, that's what we're trying to do.

Speaker 1 We're trying to influence countries because we want them on our side. We want to create friendly governments that, yes, will be beneficial to...

Speaker 1 our national security, our economic interests, all those things. So I've always been puzzled also by people who try to minimize that in a sense, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, if you're doing something, then, goddammit, maybe you own up to it. It's like

Speaker 1 John Brennan, who was a director at the agency, right? He's a relatively well-known former CIA official for a handful of reasons. He was very tight in the Obama administration.

Speaker 1 But he said one time, I forget what year it was, but anyway, he talked about the business of the CIA. He says, we don't steal secrets.

Speaker 1 God damn it, of course we steal secrets. That's the point of the exercise, right? You think the FSB or the Chinese Intel apparatus isn't stealing secrets? What the fuck? Why was he saying that?

Speaker 1 Oh, he's trying. You know, it's a kind of gentler nation, right? He's trying to sugarcoat.

Speaker 1 That was a laughable statement, right? Well, why would you say something that's objectively true?

Speaker 1 I have no idea. Well, I mean, because, again,

Speaker 1 objectively false, I should say. Maybe it's the world you want to live in, you know, instead of the one that we actually do have.

Speaker 1 Right, but when you're doing it publicly, that's not what you're doing. It's a PR exercise.
It's a PR exercise. You're kind of pretending that we're different than what we are.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 or you're trying to convince yourself.

Speaker 1 Who knows?

Speaker 1 I don't understand the thinking. I just know what he said, but I think it's an interesting comment from the director of an intelligence organization

Speaker 1 that is in the business of stealing secrets. So I'm sure you've seen Mike Benn's take on U.S.AID and what U.S.AID was really all about.

Speaker 1 And his perspective is that it's for everything that's too dirty for the CIA. He sends U.S.
aid.

Speaker 1 Do you think there can be a rational argument, though, that a lot of these things that seem ridiculous, like sending all this money to influence the votes in Pakistan or in India, and that we look at it like, why are we spending $21 million on education here and $2 million there, and that these things are actually beneficial to the United States as a whole, because even though we're spending exorbitant amounts of money, the results we're getting is we are...

Speaker 1 maintaining peace by being in control of certain areas where someone else would come over, and then you'd get a regime that's not friendly to our interests.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, look, I mean, USAID traditionally, like they were set up, what, during the Kennedy administration, as

Speaker 1 an independent organization, right?

Speaker 1 Because at the time, I think that the thinking was, and they're not the only one that's set up as an independent agency, but at the time, the thinking was we don't want it to be seen as like the U.S.

Speaker 1 administration is picking and choosing and driving sort of where the money's going,

Speaker 1 which, again,

Speaker 1 is, you know, it's kind of a strange way of doing things, right? It's coming from the fucking U.S. government, right?

Speaker 1 So people aren't going to parse words or discern somehow that, okay, well, it's an independent agency, so I guess it's not really what the administration wants, it's what the U.S. AID wants.

Speaker 1 So, you know, is it, you know,

Speaker 1 were dollars going into programs that

Speaker 1 the idea was, can we...

Speaker 1 Can we turn this country around? Can we change? You know, is it, is it,

Speaker 1 who's in charge? Is it Lumumba? Is it Sukarno? Is it

Speaker 1 God, pick any number of folks during that period of time and

Speaker 1 create a government that's more friendly to our interests? Again, I look at that and go, well, yeah. Is USAID also projecting whatever they call it, soft power, diplomatic power? Well, sure.

Speaker 1 That's another way of phrasing it, I suppose.

Speaker 1 Were they also doing things like feeding the poor?

Speaker 1 providing medicines out there, doing actually legitimate things that I think sometimes people in in a righteous world are like, well, that's exactly what they should be doing.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, they should be doing that. We should be, you know, the USAT has got a lot of important programs that they run that actually help people around the world who don't have many options.

Speaker 1 I think what the perspective of this administration has stated is that they're going to review all these programs and keep the useful ones. Yes.

Speaker 1 And I think they're going to run it through the State Department, right? Is that the reason why you're going to be able to do that? They're going to run it. Yeah, they're going to slim it down.

Speaker 1 They've already started. It'll be run through the State Department.
Great idea.

Speaker 1 Take off that. Don't pretend.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a U.S. government agency.
What do you that people are going to assume? Some people will assume the worst no matter what.

Speaker 1 But yeah, fine. Again, under the same theory that what you do is you go in and you say, we're going to go through every program.
We're going to keep the ones that are important.

Speaker 1 And I would argue that's that's food aid, health aid, you know, whatever it may be.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, shit can, all those others that aren't, you know, being really helpful. You mean like the $251 million on transgender animal studies?

Speaker 1 Yeah, is that helpful or not? I don't know. You know,

Speaker 1 they have to figure out how to do those operations.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No,

Speaker 1 I think that, yeah. So

Speaker 1 is there a waste in there? Of course there's waste. And are there programs in there that were designed to be available? So it's the baby with the bathwater? Is that what it is? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So yeah, that's the point is I think going in there and calling it all waste and fraud and a criminal organization, I think, is not the right messaging.

Speaker 1 I think that the American public would be fully on board if you simply said, Again, we are going through, we are going to find the waste,

Speaker 1 we are going to focus on those programs that help people around the world legitimately.

Speaker 1 But I think the problem is the people that are opposed to this administration are never going to see the good in anything that comes out, even if it does uncover undeniable fraud.

Speaker 1 I think we are just so dug in now, especially the fog of war post-election, which seems real in this country, this fog of hate on both sides, gloating on the right,

Speaker 1 and bitterness and anger and

Speaker 1 hyperbole as to the extent of what's happening on the left. It's all a constitutional crisis and a destruction of democracy and a real dictator that's in place.

Speaker 1 And all the things that they feared coming into this election now have come to light in their eyes. Yeah.
No, again, yeah, and that is the messaging that's gone out.

Speaker 1 You can see them coalesce around it. You know, I think the first weeks after the election, there was confusion and

Speaker 1 sort of a, they were going through that grief cycle on the left. But now I think you're seeing that they are coming together on that messaging.
I think now they're starting to get more focused.

Speaker 1 They probably understand they'll probably take the house in two years.

Speaker 1 So they're getting their shit together again. But

Speaker 1 I think that, you know, and on the right side, I think, you know, you'd like to think that the gloating is uh is a bit unnecessary right you one focus on on getting shit done now which is not always not unnecessary it's counterproductive it's counterproductive yeah and it just fuels the other side yeah it's stupid it's like this should be a uniting time for our country well you again you and you would think that uh creating a more efficient government would be a uniting concept right and i think it could be but i i keep going back to that same thing i've never been particularly impressed with the messaging and i get it when i say that people always, you know, on the right come after me and go, oh, God, well, that's what makes MAGA MAGA.

Speaker 1 You know, that's what makes Trump Trump is, you know, just, and

Speaker 1 I don't disagree with, sort of, again, the benefits sometimes of being disruptive, but I do think that

Speaker 1 you can't just look at USAID and say it's all a big old criminal organization, right?

Speaker 1 You should be a little bit more... I mean, Kevin O'Leary, you mentioned him earlier.

Speaker 1 For all that talk, I guarantee you,

Speaker 1 if he had a large company, he wouldn't just shitcan everything right off the bat. I know maybe that's his implication.
But I think he's talking about failing companies. Failing companies.

Speaker 1 When you take over a failing company that's filled with bloat and waste, you cut more out than even you think is necessary, and then you figure out what you need.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But there would be a thoughtful initial review phase in the corporate environment.

Speaker 1 I would argue that, that even he would do that. He's not just going to pull the pin and throw it in the room and say, okay, now let's see what we actually need.

Speaker 1 Well, isn't what this administration has done is putting a pause on everything,

Speaker 1 and then they're doing an audit of things and then a review.

Speaker 1 But that's not the way it comes across, because in part, because the media is not, like you said, they're not going to give them a break, right?

Speaker 1 So even if they said that that's what we're doing and here's how we're doing it, here are the people on the transition team. I mean, you know, who are the people on Elon's Doge team, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, can you name half a dozen of them? Big balls. Big balls.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 All right, fair enough. There's big balls.
This is the kid who deciphered those scrolls from Pompeii using AI. Yes.

Speaker 1 Genius. I mean,

Speaker 1 it's very interesting because the approach is essentially he's mimicking the approach that Elon used at Twitter.

Speaker 1 Just you're saying, okay, I'm going to cut out 90% of this and see how it works. Yeah.
I just think that,

Speaker 1 and again,

Speaker 1 you know, you've got to go after the waste, the fraud. Is there bloat? Of course they're bloating the government.
Go after fraud.

Speaker 1 So your perspective is that, of course, there's waste, of course, there's fraud. But if you don't understand international relations, if you don't understand

Speaker 1 this

Speaker 1 long tradition of supporting regimes that have our interests in mind, if we don't do that, someone else will. They'll gain control of these areas.

Speaker 1 This is just the reality of the world that we live in, and we should be influencing other countries. Yeah, that said a lot better than I could say it.

Speaker 1 But yeah,

Speaker 1 that's what I'm saying on the international front, on the domestic front. I'm just saying,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 go through all these organizations, right?

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 don't give the other side the ammunition to say, you guys are, you're firing useful people, right? I hear this all the time now in the past few weeks.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh my God, they let this entire group of people who are going working on women's health issues.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they're giving them

Speaker 1 ammunition that they don't need to by virtue of the way that they're going about it. And again, go about it, do it.

Speaker 1 So all I'm saying is it's the means of which they're doing it. You can accomplish the same task, and you can accomplish it quickly, right? It's not like you're reviewing it.

Speaker 1 How could you review USAID while this is all going on, while they're still able to spend money?

Speaker 1 Because they're still able to, if there is corruption, if they're still able to dump a bunch of money into a bunch of different projects and funnel stuff around and move stuff into these areas where it can't be traced, which is apparently where at least some of it goes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would want, look,

Speaker 1 if you're doing a corporate fraud investigation, you don't walk in and say, there's fraud everywhere here, right, where everybody's going. No, you don't.

Speaker 1 You go in and you do your investigation because you don't know what the iceberg looks like. You don't know what's underneath the surface.
So you want to be able to go through it in a methodical way.

Speaker 1 And, you know, if you walk into the World Bank and say, we think there's fraud here in this department over here, right? And the World Bank,

Speaker 1 just as an aside,

Speaker 1 if they think there's fraud somewhere, they have to notify the people that they suspect of fraud that they're going to initiate a fraud investigation before they do it.

Speaker 1 How fucked up is that?

Speaker 1 Pretty crazy. Pretty crazy.

Speaker 1 So, anyway, that's. It gives them a little time.
It gives them a little time. So, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Again,

Speaker 1 I respect the fact that they're actually making the effort. I think that's great.
I just, I'm not sure that it's,

Speaker 1 you know, there's an immovable object in Washington, D.C., made up of lobbyists, defense contractors,

Speaker 1 self-interested politicians.

Speaker 1 They're all

Speaker 1 like this.

Speaker 1 And Doge is obviously bumping up against them, particularly when they start now talking about Pentagon spending.

Speaker 1 So I guess my point is

Speaker 1 it's complex. I don't know that blowing it up and then saying we're going to rebuild it.
It's like when Cash Patel or anyone else for an organization, they talk about the FBI.

Speaker 1 Let's raise it to the ground and start over.

Speaker 1 What? You got thousands and thousands of hardworking street agents out there doing very important work, right?

Speaker 1 You can't just say, okay, you know, we're suspending 30% of them, right? You got to go through and say, okay, well, where is the problem here? And is there enough time to do that? I think.

Speaker 1 This is the question.

Speaker 1 Is this a more time-effective way of

Speaker 1 confronting the reality of what they're trying to accomplish, which is government efficiency, right? It's the Department of Government Efficiency. We don't believe that the government is efficient.

Speaker 1 We do see that there's at least some waste and some fraud, but it's not being chased down. They're going to chase it down.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I think I would argue that they're going to find this is a years-long process anyway, no matter how much of

Speaker 1 a jump they get at the starting block. But I think that

Speaker 1 well, Mike Bennis thinks it's going to take 50, 60 years. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I think he's right, right? I mean, well, okay, I don't think it's going to take that long.

Speaker 1 I think if you're persistent about it, and I think your timeline that you mentioned, the midterms, that would be my focus, right? I want to get it well done before the midterm elections, right?

Speaker 1 Because I'm be concerned about losing the House. So you've got that runway to work with, then go.
But don't feel like you've got to get it done in the first four weeks.

Speaker 1 So there's a lot of messaging that you hear online that you've got to kind of decipher. And one of them is the price of eggs.

Speaker 1 For whatever reason, the price of eggs is a big one that gets bandied about.

Speaker 1 People need to understand what the price of eggs is all about. Well, one of the things is they killed a lot of chickens during the Biden administration because of this bird flu thing.

Speaker 1 So they killed millions of chickens

Speaker 1 because the fear is that these chickens are going to

Speaker 1 hop over to people. And right now, I think it's only in geese and ducks.
Is that correct?

Speaker 1 Did it move to cattle? Cows? I think it has, in some cases, moved to cattle.

Speaker 1 But the question is,

Speaker 1 what happens? Is that treatable with antibiotics? Is this overblown? What is the actual reality of this pandemic, so to speak? This is why egg prices are so high.

Speaker 1 But then, unfortunately, it becomes a political talking point, and so it's hard to get to the bottom of it because you're just trying to use it to cast blame.

Speaker 1 So they're trying to blame this administration on the price of eggs. They're fucking up.
Regular people are going to starve.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Look, he's been been in the office for 23 days.
Egg prices haven't come down. You guys were lied to.

Speaker 1 Well, guess what? It takes a long time for a chicken to be able to grow from a chick to an egg-laying egg. It takes months.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so you're not going to get any discount in eggs anytime soon if they killed millions of chickens, which they definitely did. Oh, no.
It's, you know, remember the old

Speaker 1 mad cow disease years and years ago. Sure.
England had a big problem with that. Yeah.
Yeah. Beef prices.

Speaker 1 I had a buddy of mine who went to England and was living over there during the mad cow crisis, and to this day, he can't give blood.

Speaker 1 Because it's a prion disease.

Speaker 1 The idea is that if he does have, what is it called? Jakobs Kruxfeld disease? I always fucked that up.

Speaker 1 But what that disease, that prion disease is, is from cattle eating cattle brain tissue, which is so crucial. Or sheep's brains.
Yeah. Yeah.
Somebody at some point thought, you know.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Life360. I bet the first things you think of before leaving the house are, where are my keys? Did I leave my wallet somewhere?

Speaker 1 Well, now you can keep tabs on them with Life360's tile trackers. They're small Bluetooth devices that you can stick on anything that can go missing.

Speaker 1 If you like hunting like me, you could put them in your gear or in your cars and track where they are using the location sharing app.

Speaker 1 Tile trackers also have safety features like anti-theft mode, an SOS button, and car crash detection with emergency dispatch for that extra peace of mind.

Speaker 1 And now, Life360 just launched something really cool: a new weekly in-app giveaway called Life360 Pays For.

Speaker 1 Every single week, they're choosing winners and paying their bills, covering the costs for things like your rent, or mortgage, tuition, your car, gas, or even holiday gifts for the fam.

Speaker 1 Get peace of mind in the palm of your hand with Life360's tile trackers. Use code Joe30 for 30% off tile trackers on life360.com slash Joe30.
This episode is brought to you by Traeger.

Speaker 1 Thanksgiving is right around the corner and Traeger is here to make yours legendary.

Speaker 1 Whether you're hosting the whole family or keeping it casual, Traeger makes it easy to grill, smoke, bake, and serve up memorable meals from the bird to the last slice of pie. Let's talk turkey.

Speaker 1 Traeger's got you covered from the first brine to the final bite with their turkey blend pellets, complete with an included brine and rub kit.

Speaker 1 And you can cook the whole meal on your Traeger from savory sides and even dessert, enjoying set it and forget it usability that lets you spend less time cooking and more time connecting.

Speaker 1 Skip the oven this year and make your Thanksgiving a wood-fired one with Traeger Grills. Head over to Traeger.com and use the code Rogan25 at checkout for free shipping.

Speaker 1 What we could do with all these sheep parts is we could feed them to the cows. Jesus Christ.
I know. Grind them all up, and then the cows eat them and get the prion disease, and then they're fucked.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The same thing, which, by the way, happens to cannibals.

Speaker 1 It's the same thing with Papua New Guinea, and the cannibals get that same sort of problem where the neurologicals, their body breaks down.

Speaker 1 Good God. Yeah, good God.
Yeah. Do you ever hear the story about Rockefeller's kid? One of the, was it a nephew? Was it a nephew that got killed and eaten by the...

Speaker 1 Yeah, Yeah, he went over there to live amongst them, I think. Well, he went twice.
And apparently the first time he went, he insulted them by trying to acquire one of their sacred things.

Speaker 1 And the second time he went back, they decided to eat him.

Speaker 1 And they didn't find out about it for a long time. I think he went missing in the 60s.
Yeah. We covered it, Jamie.
Do you remember what year it was?

Speaker 1 I'm looking right now. I think he went missing in the 60s.
I think that's the same story. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And there was debate over whether he was actually killed and eaten by the cannibals or not.

Speaker 1 Yeah, now they're pretty sure he was. Yeah.
And at least that's what they're saying. So he goes back a second time.
You piss him off once. I don't think you're going to get it.

Speaker 1 He's going to piss him off.

Speaker 1 I think he felt like, you know, they just couldn't come to an agreement on whether or not he could take home whatever sacred object he was trying to get from them.

Speaker 1 I forget what it was, but it was something that they would never sell or trade, and he was insisting on it. And they're like, oh, fuck this guy.

Speaker 1 And then I think they had some time to stew on it while he was gone. And then when he came back, like, this dumb motherfucker's back.
Can you imagine how surprised they were when he showed up again?

Speaker 1 Oh, boy. We're going to eat him.
Yeah, they're probably thinking of it. If he comes back, I'm going to fucking eat him.

Speaker 1 I get the haunch. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, again, this is, you know, rich liberals.

Speaker 1 That's what he was. He was a rich liberal who wanted to fix the world and travel around and went into a world that he didn't understand.
Like, literally didn't understand.

Speaker 1 He didn't understand what they were saying. Didn't understand the culture.
It was

Speaker 1 fairly, you know,

Speaker 1 I'm here to help you. Infusing.
You know, in my own way.

Speaker 1 I'm going to bring enlightenment to you. Yeah, and also, what a great story when you get back to the university.
Oh, guess what I did? Yeah. Yeah.
I went to Papo and Yogini. So interesting.

Speaker 1 You've got to wonder about his family.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sure. You should go back to Papua Guinea Gay.

Speaker 1 Can you pull up a story? We can see this cat.

Speaker 1 There's photos of this cat, like with the.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I remember this. I remember kind of his

Speaker 1 middle of the pumpkin.

Speaker 1 There we go. So 62.

Speaker 1 Hold up. Go back up.
It says the first public report that Rockfoer was killed killed and dismembered. Scroll up.
And his long burn bones turned into weapons and fishing equipment. Yo.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Was published by the Associated Press in March of 1962. A second

Speaker 1 investigation later that year by a patrolman named Wim Van de Waal on behalf of the Dutch colonial government came to the same conclusion.

Speaker 1 Van de Waal was given a skull bearing no lower jaw and a hole in the right temple, the hallmarks of the remains that had been head-hunted and opened to consume the brains, which he turned over to Dutch authorities, who never asked him to write a written report and never asked him to verbally report his conclusion.

Speaker 1 The information was apparently deemed politically sensitive, in part because of the fragile state of the Dutch Empire in the Indonesian archipelago

Speaker 1 and in part because of Nelson Rockefeller's political celebrity in the United States. The findings of Van der Waals' investigation are restated in the written memoir of Anton van der Waal, a

Speaker 1 successor missionary to Van Kessel. Hmm, the famous Van Kessel.

Speaker 1 Is he famous? No, I just added that because I thought he deserved it. Wow.

Speaker 1 See if you can find photos of that dude. That's crazy.
Because there's photos of him hanging out with the people that ate him.

Speaker 1 I love that. Go out and investigate.
Ooh, this isn't the conclusion we wanted. Don't bother giving us a report.

Speaker 1 Keep that to yourself. There he is.
Yeah, I remember this guy with the glasses. There he is, chilling with you.
Go to that one right there. No, the third one.
The third one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that one. Look at that.
He's like, I'm going to eat you. Those classic 60s glasses, right? And look at the smile on his face.
He's looking at that dude. Oh, I know.
Oh, look at them all.

Speaker 1 Look at the guy behind

Speaker 1 the front guy.

Speaker 1 He's looking. He's going, yeah.
And eventually they ate him. Oh.
Crazy. He looks such a nerd.
Yeah. What a moron.
Well, back in the day, he thought he was being look at him. Soy boy, even back then.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, look.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm having such a wonderful time with all of you people. Yeah.
Yeah, they're gonna eat you, bro. That is, that is the we're about to cook you dance right there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're fucking around in a place you don't understand, and you don't understand that they have a long history of that. You think about his family?

Speaker 1 Wouldn't his family have said, Look, uh, oh, what is that? I gotta tell you, don't, oh, God.

Speaker 1 What is that? I don't know. I was just clicking around.
Is that supposed to be him? I don't know. Oh, God.

Speaker 1 Click on that. It could be anything.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 What is that image of? Does it say?

Speaker 1 Michael, that is him? No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 It says Michael rockefeller that's that's that's probably a picture that he took oh yeah it could be that even more up like he already knew they were doing that

Speaker 1 jesus bro i'm sure this wouldn't be me someone brings out that like hey check this out we did that to this guy yeah like look at that fuck scroll look at that fucking skeleton that is so creepy i gotta tell you they look well fed i would i would worry about that yeah that one guy on the right he's got a big old belly yeah just been eating people

Speaker 1 well a lot of them they get bloated because of parasites too that's true yeah tapeworms 30 foot tape worm oh god um

Speaker 1 well there you go so

Speaker 1 click on that one where the guys are holding the arrow right below that right below your cursor yeah look how fucking terrifying is that

Speaker 1 geez imagine that guy you show him on the beach and that guy's there you're like

Speaker 1 you think they do like a like a movie they give you a 10-second head start into the jungle and then track you down i mean i i honestly as purse used to do that If I was in the tribe, I would do that, right?

Speaker 1 Why wouldn't you? I mean,

Speaker 1 it's entertaining.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's a famous story of a guy where they killed his friend, chopped him up, threw his guts on him, and then they gave him, like, I think a 30-second head start, and he escaped. He did.

Speaker 1 He hid in a beaver den. Nice.
Yeah, I think this is in Montana.

Speaker 1 I think this is in Montana.

Speaker 1 A couple years ago? When was that?

Speaker 1 1800s. Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 I believe it was the Nez Perce, and I think he hid in a beaver den and made his way naked all the way back to the fort.

Speaker 1 I think it was like a couple hundred miles, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, people were tougher there back then, I would argue. You had to be.
They had to be. Yeah.
Wow.

Speaker 1 What? Here's the story on what happened to him. Michael reportedly told his companions, I think I can make it, and jumped into the water.
That was the last time they saw him.

Speaker 1 Oh, this is when he swam to the shore.

Speaker 1 1961, Michael Rockefeller was traveling to this dangerous area of dense rainforest, mangrove swamps, and crocodile-infested mudflats known as the land of lapping death when a small catamaran capsized in rough seas.

Speaker 1 This is the, oh, so Michael Rockefeller, a strong swimmer, immediately jumped in the sea and began to swim to shore. But this is the second time, right? This is when they killed him.

Speaker 1 It says they don't know. No one saw him after he jumped in the water.
So they don't know what happened. Right.
Now, here's an interesting thought.

Speaker 1 If you're offshore from whatever, the lapping island of death, right, and your catamaran

Speaker 1 capsizes. And so it's still there, right? It's still floating.
And you've got your shipmates, and they're there. And your decision,

Speaker 1 the way that you've processed this, is to swim to the lapping island of death.

Speaker 1 That doesn't show a lot of thought there. Well, he thought he could make it, and he's already visited them before.

Speaker 1 There was another article that I had read, Jamie, that actually recounted the moment he was killed, that they picked him up in a canoe and speared him in the canoe.

Speaker 1 That's what I was reading through the Wikipedia. There's been multiple times, starting seven years later, to try to investigate what happened.

Speaker 1 And I don't know how you would really go about doing that. Yeah, the most recent article was like there was some recent revelation,

Speaker 1 some information that was given to them by the tribespeople before what happened. I said that they sent a guy down there and private investigated

Speaker 1 with three skulls, and they said one of them listed a skull. So I don't know how they would

Speaker 1 prove that. Well, why do they have skulls laying around?

Speaker 1 You know what's going to solve this problem? It's going to be the newly formed U.S. government agency for the declassification of documents

Speaker 1 that's going to solve this problem. Federal secrets.
Which one's federal secrets? Say it. Federal secrets.
Is that the JFK UFO one? Yep. JFK Epstein files.
Is that how ladies running it?

Speaker 1 Anna Paulina Cruz. Why is she running it?

Speaker 1 Because she's hot. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I think maybe they should just release the documents. It's like, if you're going to release the documents, release the documents to the people on the internet.
They'll figure it out.

Speaker 1 They don't need you. I know.
They've got this new committee,

Speaker 1 and they're going to sort of COVID is also on the table.

Speaker 1 The UFOs, now Michael Rockefeller, the UFOs, I'm hoping that's where the $4.7 trillion went.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wouldn't that be good, though? I'm hoping that's what it is. It's all these government crashed retrieval programs and re-engineering and back engineering.
Developing

Speaker 1 developing our own technology that we've kept secret. But a lot of it is.

Speaker 1 I could absolutely be wrong, but I think that's what a lot of it is. I think we have some super sophisticated propulsion systems that are way ahead of our time.

Speaker 1 And then also, I think we're being visited. I think there's a bunch of different things happening simultaneously.
Well, I think a 4.7 trillion.

Speaker 1 Okay, when you think about that, it says, well, that sounds like a lot. But

Speaker 1 in terms of government spending,

Speaker 1 we can blow through that pretty quick. So I'm thinking, you know, yes, I do.

Speaker 1 Well, it's over how long, though. How long is the 4.7 trillion? When they say 4.7 trillion, they don't give you a timeline.

Speaker 1 That was the thing about Politico, right? Like, there was this talk about we gave Politico $8 million. Well, sort of.

Speaker 1 What the real story was there's a pr subscription model for Politico where you get news like instantaneously and it costs like $10,000 and there was a bunch of those subscriptions that were in many different agencies.

Speaker 1 Right, right.

Speaker 1 And this is over the course of eight years. Like that $8 million was from like 2016 to today.
Right. So I mean, so say that, right?

Speaker 1 You know, roll that out rather than saying, you know, they've been funding political. Because in the short burst, it sounds much worse.

Speaker 1 You still can argue, is this really necessary? Do you need to be doing this? Well, I don't know. If you want information instantaneously, which would be very beneficial to someone in government,

Speaker 1 you're paying for a database for information that's going to hopefully inform better decision-making.

Speaker 1 The problem is the way you say, if you say we gave Politico $8 million, oh, those motherfuckers, that's why they're fucking, that's why they're biased.

Speaker 1 And then you realize, like, oh, that's not exactly what happened.

Speaker 1 So so yeah I think the people that are doing this have to make sure that they're not hyperbolic well I'm sure yes exactly and that that goes back to this whole thing that I've probably beat to a death is the messaging idea but I think this is important too because today now they're talking about social security yeah and that people are receiving social security that are 150 years old that but I don't think that is the reality as it's being explained by people who understand COBOL, the language, and this computer programming language that they use is ancient, right?

Speaker 1 Which is kind of crazy that they're still using that, right? It's a government.

Speaker 1 So some guy who understands it was explaining that if

Speaker 1 certain factors aren't taken into consideration or certain things aren't entered in,

Speaker 1 you know, like date of birth or when,

Speaker 1 there's certain things entered. Or date of death.
Right. But it doesn't even necessarily mean that all these people are receiving checks.
Right. Right.
They're just listed on the files. Right.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't mean money's going out to them. And so, yeah, again, from a message perspective, you know, does Elon need to

Speaker 1 screenshot that and then send it out as a tweet or whatever we're calling X nowadays. And then suddenly you've got a couple million people going, oh my God, we're paying dead people.

Speaker 1 Well, right, right, right. That's the problem with being hyperbolic.
I'm going to send this to you, Jamie, because I was confused myself. And so I was like, what exactly are they saying?

Speaker 1 Because it seems like the people that understand that programming language are the ones that aren't jumping on board and saying, hey, this is what's happening.

Speaker 1 Vampires exist amongst us. Just 300-year-old people getting Social Security.
That's not what they're saying. The people that actually understand it are saying that's not really the case.

Speaker 1 Although, how cool would that be if vampires existed among us and we found out the 300-year-old people were making benefits? That would be crazy. Like, how crazy? So, I'll send you this, Jamie.

Speaker 1 This is this guy's explanation of it. Aaron Powell, Jr.: But that 4.7, I'm sure we're going to find the trillion.

Speaker 1 Of course, some of that money goes out. And I think if you follow money in the government, it's always more effective and interesting than anything else, right?

Speaker 1 You always get to the bottom of things by following budgets,

Speaker 1 depending on how it's hidden, right? And so a lot of that money is going to be ⁇ you know, perhaps it's in black budgets for, who knows, for Defense Department activities.

Speaker 1 It's worth digging into because it's always fascinating. So in that, this is a guy that explains it.
I'll read this. I hope he's correct.
This is a gentleman named House of Carter on X. He said,

Speaker 1 this isn't a vampire conspiracy. It's just COBOL, C-O-B-O-L.

Speaker 1 Legacy government systems, especially Social Security, still rely on COBOL, a language designed before anyone thought databases would need to track people beyond 99 years old.

Speaker 1 The numbers you're laughing at aren't literal ages. They're most likely

Speaker 1 misinterpreted categorical categorical codes or data artifacts from outdated formatting. Social Security isn't paying 150-year-olds.

Speaker 1 The system uses fixed-width fields, and when modern databases misread them, they mistakenly interpret grouping codes as real ages.

Speaker 1 This happens when old mainframe logic isn't properly translated into newer systems.

Speaker 1 So, no, there aren't thousands of people over 150 getting checks, but there are a lot of outdated systems that need modernization, Maybe focus on fixing that issue instead of hyping up a non-issue.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there's multiple people that have said the same kind of thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 This guy says, I'm an old programmer, coder in today's parlance. As many old programmers know, COBOL, young coders don't.

Speaker 1 When Musk claims that Social Security is paying thousands of 150 Euros, I think someone should let him know that COBOL, in COBOL, if a data is missing, if

Speaker 1 a data is missing, the program defaults to 1875.

Speaker 1 Example: 2025, 1875 equals 150. So for some reason, if data is missing, the program defaults to this ancient date.
And it's just a problem with data. Yeah.
Which makes more sense than 150-year-olds.

Speaker 1 Exactly. But again, so fine.
I dig into it, find out. And you know what?

Speaker 1 If the end result is, you know, you don't have 150-year-old people getting benefits, but the end result is that you modernize the way that we store information, right?

Speaker 1 Then great, there's a benefit to Doge right there.

Speaker 1 We've created a more efficient system for tracking and paying out,

Speaker 1 and good. So

Speaker 1 again, everybody

Speaker 1 should not have a hard-on about an organization called the Department of Government Efficiency.

Speaker 1 And I think ultimately, I think they're going to do a very good job. I just think let's so this is something to think about with Social Security, though.

Speaker 1 So there's that, which is probably a misinterpretation of data.

Speaker 1 But there's another one that I just sent Jamie.

Speaker 1 So there's this woman who's a whistleblower, and she's saying they were incentivized to qualify illegals for long-term disability to qualify illegals for Social Security for life.

Speaker 1 So they were set for life. And in quotes, she says, they wanted us to try to identify them in such a way that they would qualify for long-term Social Security disability.

Speaker 1 Now, long-term Social Security disability is for life. So if if they got identified and qualify for long-term social security disability, they're as good as set up for life.

Speaker 1 That doesn't sound like a refugee to me, she's saying, just being honest, it sounds like someone who's planning on staying here.

Speaker 1 So they're instructed to try to identify, to try to get the client, because once they arrive here, now they're called clients.

Speaker 1 So they told us that we needed to talk to the client and ask them if they had any headaches, recurring headaches, or any lower back problems.

Speaker 1 Anything that would qualify them for Social Security long-term disability,

Speaker 1 which is crazy. Yeah.
Yeah. And then

Speaker 1 but again, trackable information, you would think, right? So you can go in, if you're serious and persistent about it, you should be able to go in and identify, yes, we can't do that.

Speaker 1 Let's listen to this lady talk about this.

Speaker 1 So this is something that, you know, when people are talking about the problems of Social Security, this seems, if she's telling the truth, this seems real.

Speaker 5 Just being honest, that sounds like somebody who's planning on staying here a refugee stays until the problem's over and then goes off well that's right and so uh they they instructed us to try to identify to try to get the client because once they arrive here where they're now called clients they're now called they're called clients

Speaker 5 okay because clients pay sure

Speaker 5 sure I'm certainly see where this is leading so

Speaker 5 they told us that we needed to talk to the client and ask them if they had any headaches, recurring headaches, or any lower back problems.

Speaker 5 Excuse me. Anything that would qualify them for Social Security long-term disability.

Speaker 4 Wait, wait, hold, wait, wait, wait. So let me get this straight.
Part of the screening is supposed to be, are you sick, maimed, injured, whatever? Right. No.

Speaker 4 Okay, good. You can come in.
You get on the airplane. Are you sick, maimed, injured, whatever? Yes.
Good, so we can give you disability. Correct.
What?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 3 This is insanity.

Speaker 1 Yes, it is insanity.

Speaker 4 But in order to get Social Security disability benefits, don't you need a Social Security number?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 6 we were instructed in the meeting that one of the first things we were supposed to do was sign them up for Social Security.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Wait.

Speaker 4 This is unbelievable.

Speaker 4 So they come over here and they get a Social Security number. Right.

Speaker 4 They become legal. Correct.

Speaker 4 Are you pulling my leg?

Speaker 5 No, I'm not.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 6 after we process them for a social security card, then we were to process them for a U.S. passport.

Speaker 4 No, you're not.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think we,

Speaker 1 again, fascinating if it's true. It's outrageous.
Fascinating. If it's true.
If it's true, but you need corroboration on something like that. Where's that lady? Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's odd. Due diligence.
She's every time you've seen a whistleblower the last few weeks. She's rushing disinformation.
You can show

Speaker 1 who they are, what they did, who they're going to do. I don't even know where they came from.

Speaker 1 See if you can find that out. I don't even know what that's about.
I mean, that's just due diligence, right? Okay, who, you know, let's. So I think that's great.

Speaker 1 And the obligation then is to say, okay, well, who is she? Why does she have this knowledge? Is she credible? Can you corroborate it with other sources?

Speaker 1 And if you can, then yeah, you've got a serious problem.

Speaker 1 At that moment where she said,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 get them a U.S. passport, that's where I started.
That little flag went off, and I thought, hold on a second.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, wait. Let's dig into this and actually see.
Is that possible? That video is from 2017. 2017.
Wow. It's a radio show.

Speaker 1 A Missouri woman is interviewed by radio show Josh Tolley. So I don't, you know.
Wow, that's 2017. That's crazy.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 God.

Speaker 1 So, but what would be the benefit of that? The benefit of that would be you get a voter for life. This episode is brought to you by ShipStation.

Speaker 1 Look, if you run an online store, you already know that shipping can make or break your business. People remember if their stuff shows up late or if it's smooth and fast.

Speaker 1 That's where ShipStation comes in. There's a reason why successful businesses use ShipStation.
See, it isn't just about printing labels. It's a full-on order fulfillment system.

Speaker 1 You can automate your workflow, cut down on mistakes, and handle everything from one simple dashboard.

Speaker 1 Plus, ShipStation's rate browser compares over 200 carriers to make sure you're always getting the best rates, up to 90% off. And here's the crazy part.

Speaker 1 Customers report scaling their operation by 40 times the original amount and 98% of companies that use it for a year stay for life Wow your customers and get rave reviews with cheaper faster and better shipping upgrade to ship station today to get a 60-day free trial at shipstation.com slash JRE there's no credit card or contract required and you can cancel anytime that's shipstation.com slash JRE This episode is brought to you by Manscape.

Speaker 1 The holidays are upon us, and that means it's time to take care of that shopping list.

Speaker 1 And finding the perfect gift just got a whole lot easier this year, though, because you can just get Manscaped's Performance Package 5.0 Ultra.

Speaker 1 It's perfect for your partner, your dad, your brother, or even yourself. Everyone needs a decent razor and a little self-care after all.

Speaker 1 This all-in-one grooming kit comes with everything you could possibly need to trim, shave, and get ready for a festive occasion.

Speaker 1 It comes with two trimmers, one for body hair, and one for those small, pesky nose and eyebrow hairs. And there's the aftercare.

Speaker 1 The performance package 5.0 Ultra also includes aftershave lotion and deodorant to keep you fresh, comfortable, and confident when you finally step out of the bathroom.

Speaker 1 Because nothing says I care like a well-groomed man. Give the gift of smooth this holiday season with the Performance Package 5.0 Ultra.

Speaker 1 It even comes with two free gifts, a pair of boxers, and a spiffy toiletry bag. Get 15% off with the code JRE at manscaped.com.
That's 15% off plus free shipping at manscaped.com with the code JRE.

Speaker 1 If you know, if you are in whatever party,

Speaker 1 whether it's the Republican Party or whoever it is that allows this to happen and hooks these people up and sets them up, you would think that those people are going to vote that way for life because those are the people that gave them American citizenship, essentially, gave them Social Security for life.

Speaker 1 Like, all you have to do is tell them, look, you get this check for life. All you have to do is keep voting.
And you know how to vote. You know the right way to go.

Speaker 1 Don't vote with your fucking conscience. I want you to vote with, you know.
Yeah, I mean, you know,

Speaker 1 and we'll regularly remind you who to vote for. Yes, we'll tell you.
We'll send you newsletters. Yeah, I mean, that would be theory.

Speaker 1 And that is the theory, the narrative that says that's why, you know, the last four years we had essentially an open border policy was to bring in 10, 11, 12 million new voters.

Speaker 1 That's the way that that story unfolds. That's one version of that.
That's one version of that. The other version is cheap labor, right? Cheap labor.

Speaker 1 Also, just sort of the, you know, then there's the soft,

Speaker 1 well, it's, you know, it's the way the world should work. You know, we need an open borders world.
Yeah, I'm not buying that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't think that's that version is horseship. Most people don't follow along the lines of I'm doing things for ideology.
Most people have other more base motives.

Speaker 1 My take is if you've got a a place that's awesome and you got a system that's awesome, expand awesomeness. Don't bring in people that aren't awesome.

Speaker 1 And don't bring in people from places that aren't awesome.

Speaker 1 So the problem is if you bring people in that are criminals and then have a lifelong history of selling drugs and being involved in the cartel, they're not going to come over here. You know what?

Speaker 1 I need to join the union to be a pipe fitter. You know,

Speaker 1 they're going to fucking continue to do what they've done their whole goddamn life. So like the problem is not that.
The problem is where you're from sucks.

Speaker 1 So I think the best way, I mean, and I'm not saying we should take over all these countries and run them, but the best way

Speaker 1 to do it, that's probably the only way that it would really work. But the way to do it is to somehow or another encourage those countries to become more like the United States.

Speaker 1 Well, yes, and then you would do that through soft power and organizations that could influence hearts and minds.

Speaker 1 So I'm trying to look at this from a bunch of different perspectives. This is a very complicated situation.
It's not as simple as

Speaker 1 we need to stay out of the way of other countries' businesses. Right.
Right. No, it's not.
No.

Speaker 1 Again, and that comes back around to it'd be lovely if we were all working on the same team.

Speaker 1 That's not how I don't think human nature is. So,

Speaker 1 you know, I

Speaker 1 Well, that's not the state of the world. It's not the state of the world.
And

Speaker 1 the last four years, and I would argue during the Obama administration, they oftentimes, from a national security perspective, seem to run it based on how they they hoped the world would be, right?

Speaker 1 As opposed to how the world actually is, right?

Speaker 1 And so, you know, like them or hate them, you know, again, the current administration tends to, you know, I think look at things in a more pragmatic way.

Speaker 1 Do you think they'll be able to do that with USAID?

Speaker 1 Do you think they'll be able to convince some of these other people that are all these USA first people that don't think we should be spending any money overseas that maybe some of this money is well spent for our best interest.

Speaker 1 Aaron Powell, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question.

Speaker 1 And are you even allowed to say what you're actually doing then?

Speaker 1 Because how do we discern whether or not how are you going to tell people that $20 million for Iraqi Sesame Street is actually a really good idea? And here's why.

Speaker 1 But how are you going to tell them that buying and owning Gaza? is a good idea, right?

Speaker 1 I really don't think he's going to do that. I don't think that's a good idea.
I think that's one of those things. Yeah, I don't think so.
Trump a candidate to the 51st state.

Speaker 1 But to the people

Speaker 1 on that side of the fence who say no money spent overseas,

Speaker 1 how are you going to justify that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, what are they going to do? Look at that and go, well, that's a fucked up idea, right?

Speaker 1 But it's still President Trump, so yay, we've got to support it. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Do they discern or do people on the base, do they just say, yeah, everything that comes out of the White House is a great idea?

Speaker 1 Because that certainly runs counter to the idea that we don't want to spend money overseas. What are you going to do? Substitute Substitute Ukraine now?

Speaker 1 Because we don't want to spend money in Ukraine. You've got to substitute it for Gaza? Right.

Speaker 1 Again, that's

Speaker 1 the idea that we would protect American interests better if we were in control of that.

Speaker 1 And so, like, if Israel did something, if someone did something, we would be able to respond in minutes versus in days.

Speaker 1 Well, that goes against the idea that we don't want to be involved in foreign wars, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, if President Trump doesn't want to be involved in foreign incursions and wars, he's picked a hell of a spot to not be involved.

Speaker 1 You're going to drop yourselves in the middle of the day. No, he's going to fix it.
He's going to fix it. Well, I know.
make it nice. Build a Trump hotel.
Yeah, so, I mean, but again, hey, look,

Speaker 1 I think it's great in the sense that I never thought I'd see the day where some of these Arab states would turn around and say, Hamas has got to go. I mentioned it before, but

Speaker 1 that's a sea change. That's a big, goddamn sea change.
And it's kind of like with Ukraine right now, right? He comes out and he says, you know, okay, we're going to start these.

Speaker 1 They finished already earlier today, they finished conversations in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia, between Sergei Lavrov and Marko Rubio and Steve Witkoff on the U.S. side

Speaker 1 to start the discussions about peace in the conflict right without Ukrainian representation or the Europeans there. NATO wasn't represented either.

Speaker 1 But how do they have those kind of conversations if they don't have Ukrainian representation?

Speaker 1 A lot of people asking that question.

Speaker 1 But now that they've done it,

Speaker 1 again, under this idea that, yeah, you can't, you have to bring them in, but the fact that you just jumped into the breach and got started, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, you think about it, in the previous administration or in a normal administration, I'd argue, getting to the table where you'd sit down and talk, look,

Speaker 1 this is the first time we've talked to the Russians really in a serious way since the invasion back in 2022, right? So the fact that

Speaker 1 most administrations would have taken a year just to map out, okay, well, this is what the talks are going to look like. And

Speaker 1 this is what the conference table will look like. And this is where people are going to sit.
And this is what we're going to be able to say. And it would take months and months and months to get that.

Speaker 1 These guys just said, eh, fuck it, let's go over. We're going to sit down.
We're going to talk with them. Now that's forced, right? That's forced the Europeans to say, okay,

Speaker 1 how do we get involved? We've got to be relevant. And they do, right? Look, the European nations and European institutions have allocated more money to Ukraine than the U.S.
has.

Speaker 1 I mean, they're up to, depending on numbers you look at, they're up to maybe $130 billion allocated in financial.

Speaker 1 How much have we allocated? Probably about $119, $120 billion. I thought it was way more than that.
I thought it was

Speaker 1 $100 billion. Merzelinski said he hasn't received it.
No, well, when I say allocated, not all of it has been dispersed, right? Right. So now the U.S.

Speaker 1 is the leading military provider of military hardware gear.

Speaker 1 But if you combine humanitarian, financial, and military all together, EU institutions and EU countries have actually allocated more than the U.S. has.

Speaker 1 And that, you know, logic would say buys them a seat at the table for any peace talks. Aside from the fact that they're sitting right there, you know, close to Russia.

Speaker 1 They've taken in a vast number of Ukrainian refugees.

Speaker 1 You've got Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania sitting right there on the border with Russia. They've got a real reason to want to be involved.

Speaker 1 But again, Trump saying, let's just start the conversation with Russia. It's forced the EU to say, okay, how do we get involved? How do we rethink? Much like the Arab states with the Gaza issue.

Speaker 1 So now they're saying, well, Kier Starmer over in the UK is saying you know, we'd be willing to put boots on the ground for some sort of peacekeeping force.

Speaker 1 You know, and other nations, some are pushing back, you know, Poland, Germany.

Speaker 1 I don't know about deploying troops to Ukraine to enforce some sort of peace deal. But they're talking, right? And that accelerated the process.
So, you know, they'll have to be involved.

Speaker 1 And Ukraine will certainly have to be involved. What are you going to do? You've got an invaded country.
Right.

Speaker 1 And they're not going to be involved in the future of what happens to the invaded country. So they'll be involved, and Marco Rubio has said as much.
But

Speaker 1 I think it's good. I think people are really up in arms over the idea that they've started the talk without the Ukrainians sitting at the table.

Speaker 1 But I don't think there's any intention in any plausible scenario where the U.S. doesn't get them involved here in the very near future, because otherwise it's going nowhere.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: When Zelensky says that he hasn't received $100 billion,

Speaker 1 what does that actually mean? Does it mean it just hasn't gotten to Ukraine yet? It means, you know, money. It doesn't mean it's missing.
It's not, no, it's not missing. Well, though.

Speaker 1 So this is the thing that people are saying. It's like Tucker Carlson was talking about this.

Speaker 1 And he was essentially saying that there's a bunch of people that are spending money and he went to some wealthy ski town and these Ukrainians are all super wealthy and he thinks that some of that

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 is, you know, yeah, he's not going out on a limb there, right? I mean, look, Ukraine, one of their big problems over years and years has been corruption and fraud. And one of the reasons why

Speaker 1 there was pushback against this idea of NATO, even though back

Speaker 1 in 2008 or 9, 2008,

Speaker 1 at a European summit, they actually

Speaker 1 said during the NATO summit, they said, yes, at some point in the future, Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO. We're not going to give you a timetable.

Speaker 1 We're not going to tell you what that's going to look like, but you can become members of NATO. But one of the problems has been the level of corruption within Ukraine.

Speaker 1 So is some of that money, both from the U.S. and from the EU, gone missing and lining pockets? Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 There's no doubt about it. Look at Iraq, the money that we spent in Iraq and how much, I mean, just anytime you've got government disbursement of that size, look at fucking COVID fraud, right?

Speaker 1 Anytime you've got money going out in large buckets from the U.S. government, you're going to have to go.
You're going to have to have some fraud. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're going to have people who are going to take advantage of it. So, yeah,

Speaker 1 that's not a surprise.

Speaker 1 And Tucker's right for pointing it out. I'm just saying it's not rocket science.

Speaker 1 How much?

Speaker 1 Well, that's, again, you would like to think the Doge, one of their jobs would be to go, you know, and I think if there was more transparency in how the money is spent, as there should be, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, then maybe the taxpayers would be a little bit more

Speaker 1 understanding or lenient.

Speaker 1 But they're not going to be lenient or understanding for any fraud where people are getting getting rich off of this.

Speaker 1 There are people that are getting rich off of this.

Speaker 1 I remember there was one guy that had to resign because it turned out he had somehow or another moved around a billion dollars that he shouldn't have. Remember that story? A billion dollars.

Speaker 1 And he's like, well, I'll just step off. And so he kind of went away.

Speaker 1 He's living on a yacht. There's these stories, and it's so confusing because we're getting the

Speaker 1 mainstream media version of what's going on versus boots on the ground. Where is the money actually going?

Speaker 1 What is actually happening? Why did Russia actually invade in the first place? Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, my company was out in Iraq,

Speaker 1 you know, shortly, actually a little bit before, but then following the 2003 entry of the U.S. into Iraq.

Speaker 1 And so we were there for a handful of years, right, providing security assistance to a variety of organizations.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 you didn't have to look hard or far far to see, you know, there'd be some group coming into town saying, hey, we just started up this company, you know, and it's, you know, it's an A-day company.

Speaker 1 Look, we're owned by Eskimos or, you know, handicapped women or whatever. They just set up some bullshit company to get government contracts.
No experience, no other.

Speaker 1 And, yeah, so, you know, we watch. that unfold.
Anytime you have an environment that's that's steeped in chaos, you know, yeah, that's that's fraud is definitely going to happen.

Speaker 1 So you have to you have to be incredibly aggressive and

Speaker 1 to hunt it down, right?

Speaker 1 But I think sometimes the problem is in government, there's like an accepted loss concept, like with

Speaker 1 credit cards or retail operators, right? We ain't got an accepted loss. We know we're going to lose a certain amount each year to fraud.
Columbia Ricketts Club. Yeah.
Remember that? I do.

Speaker 1 I was a member. I was too.

Speaker 1 I think I still owe the money.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 1 I'm still getting notices. I have not received my.

Speaker 1 People don't remember that. That was when you used to to get cassettes and CDs in the mail.
Wow. And you sign up and you get, like,

Speaker 1 it was a big hustle with the music industry to sell more copies. Yeah.
And you could never unsack. You could never get rid of it.
You could never get rid of it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But it made it look like they had a lot more people buying albums than they were. They weren't really buying them.
They were getting them from Columbia Record. And you get like 10 of them for a buck.

Speaker 1 And everybody's like, oh, this sounds great. And then you get them for regular price afterwards.
Like, well, fuck this. They'd sent you a little cat and you'd check off which ones you want.

Speaker 1 Everybody defaulted.

Speaker 1 Nobody paid. Yeah.
It's like all my friends did it. That was

Speaker 1 a completely weird scam that went on in the 1980s. It was, I remember Netflix started by mailing you.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. I remember that.
And yeah.

Speaker 1 You used to get a CD in the, or a DVD in the mail. Yeah, I told that to my boys the other night.
They put on Netflix. And I said, you know how this got started?

Speaker 1 And they were like, they couldn't believe it. I mean, they're still amazed when our postman walks by the house.
They think it's incredibly quaint that some guy walks by and leaves you with some mail.

Speaker 1 I wonder what they would I mean imagine taking a kid to like 1988 and bringing them to a blockbuster video.

Speaker 1 They would walk around and go, what is going on? Well, we don't have the Internet anymore. I mean yet.
So this is how you get movies. They'd be like, shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 You don't watch it on your phone. Like we don't even have phones.
Yeah, no, no. No one had a cell phone anymore.

Speaker 1 Your evenings were spent with a bowl of unshelled nuts, walnuts, and you'd crack them and that was your activity while you talked to your mom and dad or something.

Speaker 1 If you ever showed someone a phone back then and say, someday people are going to jerk off looking at that,

Speaker 1 they'd be like, what are you even talking about? That's the dumbest prediction of all time. That's not in Star Trek.

Speaker 1 You get a phone call. I remember

Speaker 1 some girl would call

Speaker 1 and my privacy was only as long as the cord on the phone. Oh, yeah.
Right. Right.
Because everybody was in. You'd have to go to the closet.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you had one of them ones that had the button, like a little portable one with the cord attached. Yeah.
And then you'd hang it up on that like a desk one.

Speaker 1 You could bring a long cord if you were lucky. If you were lucky.
But we had the wall ones. And so they had the little curly cord.
That was the worst.

Speaker 1 I could go around the corner and then, you know, and the cord's always fucking tangled. You had to spin the headset around to untangle the cord.

Speaker 1 Most people don't know. The cord you just drag to the ground.
Do you remember your landline phone number from when you were a kid? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
I do too.

Speaker 1 It's the craziest thing. I can still, I I can't remember what I did two and three hours ago.

Speaker 1 And I could still, you could put a gun to my head and I could recite the phone number I had when I was eight years old. Yeah, isn't that weird? We used to be able to remember so many numbers.

Speaker 1 I only know like three or four numbers of my friends by heart. Yeah.
You know your kids' numbers by heart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And my wife's and maybe a couple of my buddies that have had, like, my friend Eddie's had the same phone. Well, he's got a new one now.

Speaker 1 So it's weird that we don't have any numbers in our head anymore. No.

Speaker 1 I will say,

Speaker 1 and I know this because just a day and a half ago,

Speaker 1 I was doing something. I was filling out some application for one of my boys, the middle boy,

Speaker 1 a scooter,

Speaker 1 and it asked for his phone number. And I had to look it up.
So I was thinking like, well, I don't know. I just pushed the button.
I have to look up mine sometimes.

Speaker 1 Does that change it? When I give someone my number,

Speaker 1 I have to go,

Speaker 1 hold on. Yeah.
Yeah. I fuck it up.
I haven't changed my number in fucking generations.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I don't know.
It becomes an issue. Yeah.
Well, yeah. Yeah.
For you, I think it's. At a certain point in time, you're just getting bombarded by people that you don't want to talk to.

Speaker 1 You're like, okay, there's only one way out of this. I've got all the friends I want.
I got a vanish.

Speaker 1 It's not even the friends you want. It's all transactional.
That's the problem. The problem is like you

Speaker 1 realize this person only texts me when they want something. Yeah.
And the texts before they want something are bullshit. The say hi texts are bullshit because it's coming.

Speaker 1 Here comes the thing you want.

Speaker 1 And then that comes. Yeah.
I get that from

Speaker 1 I've got a startup. Oh, fuck.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I do want to invest fuck off. Yeah.
I don't get the investments because nobody thinks I have money.

Speaker 1 But, you know, I'll get like sort of a request for, you know, how about a hookup with

Speaker 1 somebody in some part of the country or government.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I'm not going to put you in touch with anybody. I don't know.
Yeah, those are the worst. Yeah.
So it's interesting.

Speaker 1 You know what today is? You know what today is? What is today? Today is my 20th wedding anniversary. Congratulations.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
I just, I was thinking about that.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 It was funny because

Speaker 1 you proposed the 18th for us to get together. And immediately I thought, well, that's our anniversary.
And then I thought, well, she loves Austin. So I could combine the two.
There you go.

Speaker 1 And I don't know that I got credit for it. I'm not sure.
You won't. No, if you combine work with anything, even if it's the most awesome vacation, but it's also work, you don't get credit.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So you didn't even go out of your life life to do this.

Speaker 1 You know, you kept doing the same stuff, and then you added a thing. And here it is.
Yeah. 20 years, and here you go.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 You're going to a nice restaurant?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, we are.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we had a dinner

Speaker 1 in Boise with a bunch of folks on Saturday night that was really lovely. So we got everybody together.
Do you guys have wolves out there?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I saw you. You put something out about wolves being near Aspen 30 minutes outside of Aspen My friend has a ranch and they just released wolves there a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and he's already finding he's I took a photo of it and put it on my Instagram He found a dead elk leg the neighbors spotted the wolves and they're on his property and he has I mean they've released them on his ranch.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no one let him know. That's the leg we found in the snow.
No one told him. And these are big Canadian wolves that they got from BC, by the way.
Oh, no, the repopulation program.

Speaker 1 Look, the way you feel about it is entirely jurisdiction-based. What I mean by that is if you live in New York City or Chicago,

Speaker 1 you love the wolf repopulation program. If you're a rancher or

Speaker 1 you live out in the Northwest or the West, you're like, what the fuck are we doing? Where he lives, it's all ranchers. This is what's crazy.

Speaker 1 It's like they released the wolves where the fucking livestock is. What's crazy is they had a mandate to release wolves in Colorado.

Speaker 1 So the first wolves they released, they got from Oregon, who they took out of areas where they were killing killing livestock.

Speaker 1 So they got wolves that were accustomed to killing livestock and then reintroduced them to Colorado where there's livestock and what do you know they start killing livestock. Yeah.
It's kind of crazy.

Speaker 1 And it's true and what and what you said is absolutely true here. Give it a short period of time and they're going to start laying on wolf hunts.
Right. And you're not going to find them.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Here's another thing my friend said. You can shoot them if they kill, if you're killing your livestock or if they're killing a working dog.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But you can't shoot shoot them if they're killing your pet.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 This is what he said. I don't know if that's true.

Speaker 1 You can in Idaho. Well, in Idaho, you can kill them.
In Idaho, they're giving out tags and they're giving out tags in Montana. And this is what people need to understand.

Speaker 1 When they first reintroduced them, there was no way you could shoot them. And then it got to a point where they're like, okay, this is not just sustainable.

Speaker 1 This is a large population of animals that is doing a lot of damage.

Speaker 1 And they do surplus hunting. So in one place in, I think it was Wyoming, they had killed like some crazy number of cow elk, like 15 or 16 of them.
Type A predators, man. They're incredibly efficient.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and they work together. They're the only animal in North America other than coyotes, which are actually wolves too.
They're a small wolf. But they're the only animals that work as packs.

Speaker 1 And they're so good at it. They're so good at it.
And they're so fucking smart. They're so smart.
They're all psychic. They all fucking think together.

Speaker 1 They're in a hive mind. Yeah, their hierarchy is amazing.

Speaker 1 The way that they, yeah.

Speaker 1 I did

Speaker 1 several days days out in Yellowstone one time for a TV show, an episode, and

Speaker 1 following or trying to anyway,

Speaker 1 the lives of a family out there. And it was amazing, right? It was amazing.

Speaker 1 It's just incredible. They're amazing animals.
It's just this ballot box biology. These people that are in Denver and Boulder, they're the ones who are the big population centers.

Speaker 1 They're the ones that are voting for this. But you're not going to release wolves in the middle of downtown Denver, right? No, you're going to release them out in the area where they release it.

Speaker 1 I wish that that they would, though. The area where they released them first were areas where people voted against the wolves, which is like a big fuck you to those people.
Yeah, well, it always is.

Speaker 1 And if you're a rancher, I mean, even in Idaho, right, and you're constantly fighting for just kind of common sense decision-making.

Speaker 1 And, you know, luckily, you know, the state house is very, you know, favorable. You know, who knows? I mean, maybe that changes in 10 years.
But for right now, you know, they understand, look,

Speaker 1 this is what's important to this state.

Speaker 1 Why it's such a great, it's a great place to live. But yeah, so I don't know.
I saw that, and

Speaker 1 it's front and center, but I know exactly who's voting in favor of it, right? Because I've talked to those people who don't understand at all

Speaker 1 how it operates. Well, apparently it's a pet project, no pun intended, of the governor of Colorado's husband.
His husband is big on wildlife, which everybody should be.

Speaker 1 Who's the governor of Colorado again?

Speaker 1 I don't remember.

Speaker 1 oh well, yeah, not important.

Speaker 1 Not important. It is important if you live in Colorado.
But the reality is, it's already started. The wolves are there.
And they were coming into Colorado anyway.

Speaker 1 There's Colorado wolves that were moving in from neighboring states. Colorado borders Wyoming, of course.

Speaker 1 And they don't stop at the border. It's not like they can go, ah, fucking toll.
Oh, they travel hundreds and hundreds of miles. You know,

Speaker 1 we showed a video on here once of a friend of mine filmed a wolf in Bakersfield, California.

Speaker 1 And I was like, well, these people that live out there, the ranchers that live out there, talk to me about it. One of my buddies who actually works on a ranch filmed it, filmed this wolf.

Speaker 1 And we actually played the video. It's a big black wolf that's in a cattle field in like in fucking Bakersfield.
It's just outside of Bakersfield. It's like off the five.

Speaker 1 Well, what we had Diane Boyd on, who is a wolf reintroduction specialist.

Speaker 1 She's studied wolves her whole life, and she's not in favor of reintroduction of wolves. She thinks

Speaker 1 they should reintroduce to areas naturally, and they were going to do that anyway. They were going to migrate into these areas naturally, and that's the best way to let it happen.

Speaker 1 But she said they can travel hundreds and hundreds of miles, and that this wolf probably came all the way from Oregon and just made its way down.

Speaker 1 It probably wasn't even because their fear was that some crazy wildlife group is like, we're going to reintroduce the wolves ourselves.

Speaker 1 And they're capturing these wolves and then bringing them to California. Fuck you, rancher.
You should be eating soybeans. And they just release them.

Speaker 1 She doesn't think that. She thinks those wolves actually probably made it from the wild all the way down there because they really travel insane distances.
Yeah. I mean, no, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 And I'm glad to hear that she's, after all that experience, she's not in favor of a program. I mean, that shows a lot of conversation.

Speaker 1 Well, it just throws a giant monkey wrench into whatever ecosystem there is.

Speaker 1 But the reality of the ecosystem in Montana, where they did reintroduce wolves, was that they were very overpopulated with elk to the point where, well, she was explaining this, they used to have these winter seasons for cow elk.

Speaker 1 And you know, it's basically shooting fish in a barrel because they're stuck in deep snow, and you could just pick them off. And they did that because they were heavily overpopulated.

Speaker 1 The land couldn't sustain the numbers, and so they offered opportunities for hunters. Hey, it's great.
You shoot an elk, you get even a cow elk, you get like 150 pounds of meat, 200 pounds of meat.

Speaker 1 It's great.

Speaker 1 That's your meat for a year almost. I remember a park ranger out in Yellowstone told me one time, he said he was driving, he was out just sort of like checking things and came across

Speaker 1 a large, I forget what he called it. It was a van of some sort, but it was like a VW, you know, hippie van of some sort.
And there were four

Speaker 1 young folks, he said in the early 20s, and they were trying to herd this little baby

Speaker 1 bison.

Speaker 1 that had gotten separated from the herd, right, and was now all on its own. And they had been driving along, and they saw it off in the distance in the fields.

Speaker 1 And they so they decided they were going to rescue this thing. So they were out there trying to get this thing to come towards their van.
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 He says, I don't know what were they going to do? Put it in the van? He had no idea what they were trying to do, but he stopped and said, What are you doing? He says, Well, we got this baby.

Speaker 1 We're trying to save it. He said, What the fuck? Get in your van and drive off.
He said, This is how this works, right? And they're going, but it's not going to find its mother.

Speaker 1 Have you ever seen the Instagram page Torons of Yellowstone? No. It's one of my favorite.
Tourons. Toron, Torah, like morons that are tourists.

Speaker 1 Tourons of Yellowstone. It's a great Instagram page.
It's all

Speaker 1 definitely assholes taking selfies

Speaker 1 with deer and selfies with bison. German tourists.
It's people trying to feed bears.

Speaker 1 And it's all people just getting fucking thrown through the air by giant bisons. Yeah.
I love that when

Speaker 1 they're like this and it's right behind them and they're just trying to get that picture. And once that bison starts staring, right? Once it starts staring at you,

Speaker 1 you got problems. This is what I saw the other day.

Speaker 1 These people are right, this black bear is eating fish right on the edge of this lake and they're getting right up to it. I mean, these kids are literally 15, 16 inches away from this fucking thing.

Speaker 1 And he gets closer too, by the way. Look, look at the red jacket.
He's like, yeah, get our picture. Come on, I got my thumbed up.
Yeah. One of them winds up touching it.
Holy shit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he reaches over at the end of this stupid fucking video and touches it.

Speaker 1 And the bear is just like, get the fuck out of here. I'm trying to eat.
No. They don't care, but they're so habitualized to being around people.
No wild bear, a truly wild bear, would ever allow this.

Speaker 1 No. This is just a bear.
You know, they start eating people's garbage. They start taking fish from fishermen and that kind of shit.
And look at this kid taking this selfie.

Speaker 1 He gets closer. This fucking dumbass.
Look at this fucking stupid kid. Look, look, he's going to move in and touch it.
Oh, God. Yeah, that could have been the end of your life, buddy.
Holy shit.

Speaker 1 And look, he's got flip-flops on. These kids, they're so silly.

Speaker 1 We go up fishing in Alaska, and I'll tell you one thing we're not going to do.

Speaker 1 A bear comes out of the brush. We're not going to stop and take a selfie.
No, don't take a selfie. No, no, not at all.
Alaska, though, they are scared of people because they hunt them in Alaska.

Speaker 1 It's the only state in the United States. And they want to open up a season in Montana, and there's arguments about that right now because of the interactions that people are having with bears.

Speaker 1 This is part of what the governor of New Jersey ran on, that he was going to stop the bear hunt. And people are like, yeah, stop the bear hunt.

Speaker 1 That shit lasted one year. And there were so many problems with bears, they said, all right, you're right, you're right.
And then they reintroduced the bear hunt. Most of those are black bears, right?

Speaker 1 Oh, that's only black bears.

Speaker 1 But New Jersey has more black bears per capita than any other state in the United States, which is nuts. Yeah, you always forget that New Jersey,

Speaker 1 how big it is, but also just how green it is. And it's fucking rural.
Yeah. New Jersey is like Newark and Hackensack and

Speaker 1 those places. And then

Speaker 1 it's all pine flats and all the rest of it.

Speaker 1 Mountains. It's like you get into the woods of New Jersey.

Speaker 1 It's fucking real woods. And it just doesn't seem like it should be because New Jersey's the Sopranos.

Speaker 1 In our mind, it's, oh, it's Tony Soprano. It's New York.

Speaker 1 There's nothing green about Newark. Yeah, that's what we think about with Newark.
We think about. Oh, is that your Soprano voice? Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1 Big pussy. Yeah.
You excited about the JFK Files release? We haven't even talked about that.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 I feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy keeps pulling that football away. You know, like, today's the day I'm going to kick that football.

Speaker 1 And then she fucking yanks that football, and Charlie goes flying through the air and lands on his head. Yeah.
That's how I feel. It's going to be the way it is, too.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think they'll actually kick out the door. I don't think they, this time around, I don't think they can hold any more documents.
And they don't have that many left to hold.

Speaker 1 Well, here's, I think they just found thousands of new documents. They found 2,400 more.
That is actually a a good way. They found the FBI says, oh, look at this.

Speaker 1 What they did was

Speaker 1 they did a review.

Speaker 1 They started in 2020, and they said, okay, all our closed cases, we're going to start

Speaker 1 compiling all of them in one place.

Speaker 1 Why weren't they doing that? 40 years ago, 50 years ago. How do you not do that? I have a central repository.
Anyway, so they said, well, this is what we're going to do.

Speaker 1 So they did, and they said, we're updating the way that we digitize and hold onto all our records.

Speaker 1 And during the course of that, then when Trump issued his executive order about the release of the files and also for RFK and MLK, then the Bureau says, well, we were able to, because we've done this digitizing and this way of tracking our records, we were able to find 2,400 documents that are related that we just didn't know about.

Speaker 1 So there's those, and then there's maybe 5,000 other documents left that haven't been released.

Speaker 1 Well, Trump was quoted as saying that if you saw what they showed me, you wouldn't release it either.

Speaker 1 Right. What does that mean? You know, it's a really good question.
What can that mean? It's a really good question.

Speaker 1 Here's what I think.

Speaker 1 I think, and I don't, obviously I don't know what's in those documents either. Wait a minute, you don't?

Speaker 1 Well, you know, remember, I was a toddler when he was shot. And although that would have been the perfect cover, because

Speaker 1 nobody's fucking looking for a toddler to come off. From behind the microphone, magnifying glass, come off that grassy knoll.

Speaker 1 But what could pop I mean, it's not like they're going to say in in the documents, we did it.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 what could the documents have that would be so incriminating that they wouldn't want to release them? Like, what would you document if you assassinated the president?

Speaker 1 We'd say, well, me and Mike were sitting over here on the grassy knoll.

Speaker 1 And then we, this is, yeah.

Speaker 1 I think some of the documents, the redactions are really pedestrian.

Speaker 1 Like, they've redacted, in the old days, they redacted a person's name who was an investigator or a social security number of somebody who was interviewed. But there's whole page they're redacted.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 So those are like weird things. Yeah, there's still going on.
I think they held on to the Biden administration held on to like 2000 some odds. Well, 2017, they were supposed to release them.
Right.

Speaker 1 And then this was when the Trump administration didn't do it, and that's when people got mad. Yeah.
It's like, hey, you said you were going to do it.

Speaker 1 And this time they are saying they're going to do it. And then they got this hot lady who's involved in all this, which is odd.

Speaker 1 Well, again,

Speaker 1 why'd they pick her? Yeah, why'd they pick her? Is she

Speaker 1 a JFK expert? I think she's an assassination expert. Well, it's not just assassination.
She's in charge of UFOs, too, right? Right, and Epstein and all the rest of it.

Speaker 1 I think what we're going to find is this is just me speculating, obviously, but I think what we're going to find with the released documents is, A,

Speaker 1 there's no smoking gun.

Speaker 1 B, it's not going to stop people from believing what they believe. It's not going to put anything to rest.

Speaker 1 And I think also there probably will be

Speaker 1 one of the reasons I think some of these things were withheld was because it's embarrassing perhaps to

Speaker 1 the CIA and the FBI also in terms of their collaboration. Look, Lee Harvey Oswald was on their radar for good reasons, right? For counterintelligence reasons.
He had lived over in Minsk.

Speaker 1 He'd defected to

Speaker 1 the Soviet Union. He'd lived over there for three years.

Speaker 1 Came back.

Speaker 1 So that alone puts him on the radar, right? Now suddenly he's a CIA concern. So the CIA is definitely monitoring him.
And then he goes down

Speaker 1 to Mexico. He goes to the Cuban and Soviet embassies.
He's desperate to get involved in the revolution, even though he's, you know, the Soviets by that time had decided he's a complete loser.

Speaker 1 And I think we... Do we have the narrative, though? I mean, do we know what they really decided? Well, I think, you know, I'm just speaking again from

Speaker 1 experience in the intelligence community, at a certain point you look at somebody and go, there's nothing here. This person is more of a liability than an asset.

Speaker 1 Well, wouldn't that be the perfect person to make a Patsy? Well, unless they decided the guy is just unstable. Look, I mean,

Speaker 1 reportedly,

Speaker 1 he was finally granted

Speaker 1 permission to exist in the Soviet Union after he tried to kill himself. When they said they were going to send him back, he couldn't stay there.
How did he tried to kill himself?

Speaker 1 No idea.

Speaker 1 I don't know that part of it. But I think it's ⁇ I I guess so.
My point is that I think he was on the radar. And I think what happened was in the documents we may find that the CIA

Speaker 1 at the time

Speaker 1 was not proactive enough, and they didn't work

Speaker 1 well with the FBI. There was real friction between those two.
And I think that

Speaker 1 if they had...

Speaker 1 If they had brought in the FBI, informed them, said, look,

Speaker 1 we've got the Cuban embassy and the Soviet embassy down in Mexico under observation. We've had this guy on our radar for some time.
He's now come back to Dallas and New Orleans.

Speaker 1 He's back in the States.

Speaker 1 We've got to keep an eye on him. I think if they had done that, maybe history changes.
But I don't think they did, obviously.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, but this is assuming that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, which I'm not buying into.

Speaker 1 Under this scenario, yes, I'm not buying that at all. But I think that's what we're going to see in some of this documentation.
Well, if Trump really did say that.

Speaker 1 that if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn't release it either. It has to be something.
And that something might be a second shooter. Well, it's not

Speaker 1 or more. I agree because Trump has never been known to say anything hyperbolic.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, there's a chance that he was, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 He attempted suicide, a striking indication of how much he desired to remain in the Soviet Union.

Speaker 1 Showed how willing he was dramatically and decisively when he faced an emotional crisis with few readily available alternatives at hand.

Speaker 1 He was shocked to find that the Soviet Union did not accept him with open arms. The entry in his self-styled historic diary for October 21st, 1959, reports, I am shocked.
Two exclamation points.

Speaker 1 My dreams, exclamation point. I have waited two years to be accepted.
My fond's dream. I don't even know what it means.
Fondest. Fondest.
It's probably, they forgot the T. He can't spell this.
Fuck.

Speaker 1 My fondest dreams are shattered because of a petty official. I decided to end it.
Soak fist in cold water to numb the pain, then slash my left wrist. What a pussy.

Speaker 1 The then plague wrist. Oh.
Plug. Then

Speaker 1 plunge, plunge, wrist. Boy, can't spell plunge either.
Then plunge or plunge, so he spells plunge, P-L-A-U-G.

Speaker 1 I guess it's plunge. Wrist into bathtub of hot water, somewhere a violin plays.
As I watch my life whirl away, I think to myself, how easy to die and a sweet death to violins.

Speaker 1 Oswald was discovered in time to thwart his attempted suicide. He was taken to a hospital in Moscow where he was kept until October 28, 1959.

Speaker 1 Still intent, however, in staying in the Soviet Union, Oswald went on October 31st to the American Embassy to renounce his U.S. citizenship.
Mr. Richard A.

Speaker 1 Snyder, the then second secretary and senior consul officer at the embassy, testified that Oswald was extremely sure of himself and seemed to know what his mission was.

Speaker 1 He took charge in a sense of the conversation right from the beginning.

Speaker 1 He said,

Speaker 1 he presented the following signed note. I, Lee Harvey Oswald, do hereby request that my present citizenship in the United States of America be revoked.

Speaker 1 And then they let him back into the United States. So this is why the more tinfoil hat wearing amongst us, say this fucking guy, he was working for the government.
This is all bullshit.

Speaker 1 They were setting it up, and they were using him as a patsy. Oh, no, I know that's, I mean, there's obviously there's a strong belief that the CIA was involved, the mob was involved.

Speaker 1 And again, hey, I haven't seen all the documents like, you know, Trump has. So

Speaker 1 everything's on the table. I wonder if he's even seen them all.
Everything's on the table. I don't know if he's seen everything either.
What? Has he gone through all the files?

Speaker 1 Yeah, is he sitting there in his office checking Diet Coke reading the documents? Who knows? But I think, you know, and who else?

Speaker 1 Who else said he's Cash Patel said he's seen all the files? Oh, okay. He said he's seen everything.
Now, I'm not sure how, in what capacity that was he part of a review committee, perhaps.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Interesting.

Speaker 1 We'll find out, right? We'll find out. Well, you have long said that you think that the Martin Luther King Jr.
assassination was fishy. Yeah, yeah, I really do.
I believe that.

Speaker 1 And I also, it's interesting that

Speaker 1 his family doesn't want this released. They don't want the remaining documents released.
And I think the reason there is because, look, they, you know, Hoover and

Speaker 1 the federal and state law enforcement had a real hard on for Martin Luther King, obviously, right?

Speaker 1 And they were covering him three ways to Sunday, so including wiretaps, some that were signed off by RFK, right, by Robert Kennedy, so as Attorney General. So I think

Speaker 1 the family is like, look, do you really need to release these records? Because I think they're worried about embarrassing information about there, perhaps about his lifestyle.

Speaker 1 Hasn't a lot of that already been released? Yeah, it's been talked about and everything, but I think if you dump it out there,

Speaker 1 whereas with RFK's, or sorry, with JFK's documents, look, they've released some 5 million pages of his, right? I mean, estimates are like, oh, we've released like 99% of the documents.

Speaker 1 It's not that high a percentage with MLK. So I think there's a potential for embarrassment, but I also,

Speaker 1 same thing. I don't think in those documents, because I don't think anybody's going to,

Speaker 1 they're not going to self-incriminate, right? And I do think that there was something going on. Look, James Earl Ray is a much more interesting case study, I think anyway, than Lee Harvey Oswald.

Speaker 1 James Earl Ray and his

Speaker 1 behavior leading up to the shooting at the Lorraine Motel,

Speaker 1 kind of going off the radar, disappearing.

Speaker 1 The guy couldn't keep himself out of jail. He was a failed petty thief, right? And he was just a fuck-up.

Speaker 1 And then suddenly he disappears off the radar screen and he shows up and he looks like a college professor and he's kind of got his shit together. And then after shooting him, he ends up in Belgium.

Speaker 1 He got money and guns. Yeah, he got money and guns.

Speaker 1 Suddenly he had a bag full of cash to go buy himself a Mustang, which he used to drive around the south and kind of be off the grid.

Speaker 1 I don't know. That one strikes me as, and then

Speaker 1 sort of the interplay with federal and state and local law enforcement.

Speaker 1 To me, but again, my point is that they released the documents. What do you think? There's going to be some note in there saying

Speaker 1 must kill MLK.

Speaker 1 Somebody talked to Hoover.

Speaker 1 That's why it's fun to think,

Speaker 1 what's the JFK document? It's going to say, what is the MLK?

Speaker 1 What are they going to tell us about UFOs? But

Speaker 1 how much are they documenting? Like, if someone is involved in killing the president, I would imagine they wouldn't write that down. Yeah, you would think, right?

Speaker 1 I would imagine.

Speaker 1 Kyle, we're going to need you to make a statement here about shooting.

Speaker 1 So I think that there's probably, I don't know why I picked the name Kyle. That seems odd.

Speaker 1 A good name for a shooter. Yeah, it was.
It wasn't a popular name, I don't think, back then.

Speaker 1 So I think, look, release everything. If they don't release all the documents at this stage, if they say we're going to hold on to or redact 1,000 thousand pages, what the hell are they doing?

Speaker 1 Everyone's dead. It doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't make any sense. It's 1963.
Just put it to fucking rest. And if there's embarrassing things in there, then own it, right? Accept it

Speaker 1 and fucking move on. But again, it's not going to change the narratives that are out there, I don't think.
I don't think

Speaker 1 it's not going to satisfy anybody.

Speaker 1 Wasn't it also a problem which so much time has passed that the waters are so muddy in terms of like trying to see clearly exactly what happened and when it went down and how it went down, unless they did somehow another document everything, which seems insane that they thought that they would just tuck that away somewhere.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it seems like it doesn't seem realistic. It doesn't.
It seems much more likely that that would be something that you would have a conversation about in a closed room and you would, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if there was actually a cadre of people that did that, it's not in the documents, right?

Speaker 1 It's because those documents are like interviews of people on the grassy knoll, interviews of people who knew Jack Ruby in his

Speaker 1 life.

Speaker 1 My friend Evan Hafer has an interesting perspective on it, special forces guy.

Speaker 1 He thinks that those guys who got fucked over at the Bay of Pigs when they didn't get air support from Kennedy, that if you were going to find a group of hardened individuals that were

Speaker 1 essentially assassins for the government, those would be the guys that would have a bone to pick with JFK. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 until everything's visible and out there, I think everything's on the table. Yeah.
He's not wrong in the sense that they hated Kennedy.

Speaker 1 But a lot of people hated Kennedy. The mob hated RFK immensely.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because he wouldn't play ball. Well, also, he fucked them over because they got him elected in Chicago and then he turned on them and then they started investigating them.

Speaker 1 And they're like, hey, motherfucker.

Speaker 1 And then, depending on who you talk to, Jack Ruby was either mobbed up or he did it because he was Jewish and he didn't want the

Speaker 1 Jewish community to take the

Speaker 1 MKUltra version is the best version. That's Sirhan Sirhan, Charles Manson, everything.

Speaker 1 I'll say it again, but read Chaos by Tom O'Neill, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah.
No, MK-Ultra is that is a dark history or chapter in the history of the agency. There's no doubt about it.

Speaker 1 And again, it's one of those cases where you can't. It's like we talked about with Alan Dulles saying, as far as I know, we've never overthrown a country.

Speaker 1 It would be like if I sat here and said, well, as far as I know, we never did anything.

Speaker 1 They've never done any mind control experiments.

Speaker 1 Of course they did. Yeah, it was like the experimentation that went on and that was outsourced.

Speaker 1 Did you see the most recent thing that people are saying about China? I think Kurt Metzger sent it to me, so I know it's got to be accurate. He's not out of his fucking mind.

Speaker 1 Something about

Speaker 1 some

Speaker 1 new thing that they found,

Speaker 1 some Chinese mind control thing.

Speaker 1 Where

Speaker 1 you saw that, Jamie? The stuff that, yeah, they burned the ether.

Speaker 1 That thing? I don't know. They burned the cryptocurrency, and the guy said that they were being taken over by

Speaker 1 Yeah, that has to be it because it was going viral like yesterday. Oh my god.

Speaker 1 How would I miss?

Speaker 1 Because I was not on Kurt Metzer's email list.

Speaker 1 Actually, I just checked. It wasn't Kurt.
He spent like a million dollars to do that, or like wasted. That's how people saw it, I guess.
It's a better way to put it. Wait a minute.

Speaker 1 What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 What I'm talking about is some mind control thing that they're involved with with their version of a Neuralink.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 There's a bunch, there's more than one different scenario that they're picking. This is crazy because what goes around comes around, right? Everything that's old is new again.

Speaker 1 Because when we talked about MKUltra, the whole reason behind MKUltra was fear that the Soviets were engaged in mind control. This is a different one.

Speaker 1 Someone burned 500, yeah, this is it. ETH to accuse Chinese head funds, CEOs, of using

Speaker 1 brain computer weapons. Allegations of mind-controlled tech spark a crypto donation spree amid intrigue in Chinese finance circles.
Yeah, this is it. So, this dude, how do you say that name? Hu Lezi.

Speaker 1 Hu Lezi? Hu Lezi burned 603 ETH to alleged Chinese hedge fund CEOs' use of brain computer weapons. Large donations totaling of 1,950 ETH

Speaker 1 Ethereum

Speaker 1 were made to various addresses, including WikiLeaks in Ukraine. A self-identified Chinese programmer has burned 603 ETH, approximately $1.65 million,

Speaker 1 and donated $1,950 ETH, approximately $5.35 million, through a series of blockchain transactions while making allegations against Chinese, against executives of a Chinese hedge fund.

Speaker 1 And so this guy, I don't understand why he's donating the money. Yeah, I'm not getting this.

Speaker 1 So people would see it, essentially. Okay, he sent 500 ETH to the burn address with this message.
The CEO of Kwande Investment, Feng Jin and Zhu Zhiji. How do I say it? Yu Zhi, I don't know.
Yuji

Speaker 1 used brain computer weapons to persecute all company employees and former employees, and even they themselves were controlled. Like, what?

Speaker 1 Okay. The individual identifying as Hu Lei Zi

Speaker 1 sent multiple on-chain messages accusing Kwande Investment CEO Feng Jin and Zhu Zhu Zi of using what they termed brain-computer weapons against employees and former employees.

Speaker 1 Kwande Investment, known as Wizard Quant, is a hedge fund specializing in quantitative trading. Hmm.

Speaker 1 That old story. Yeah, so scroll down.
It says, this is a new mode of crime in which the victim is gradually deprived of his senses of desire until he becomes a complete slave to the digital machine.

Speaker 1 And if one day I become a victim of the final stage, I will leave the world.

Speaker 1 As the brain-computer interface and mind-reading technology keeps developing, there is a new mode of crime in which wild animals become puppets or complete slaves to the digital machine.

Speaker 1 I saw this on South Park. It was

Speaker 1 the human caterpillar episode. Wow.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I don't understand, and Jamie, maybe you do, why burning through and donating, why putting all that money just to get it seen?

Speaker 1 It would draw a lot of attention to it that someone just

Speaker 1 just literally like lit a million and a half dollars on fire so that's it that's really yeah yeah

Speaker 1 same reason people light themselves on fire yeah

Speaker 1 get their message okay get attention wow whether or not it's true doesn't that doesn't right right right it doesn't mean it's true well it could be just china bullshitting us and saying that they have this so yeah well but again the the amazing thing is is that is that look everything kind of repeats itself i suppose if you could look at it that way i i'm not going to go into some grand thought but look i mean you know we're engaged engaged in World War I-style warfare in Europe now, right, with trench warfare between Ukraine and Russia.

Speaker 1 This,

Speaker 1 we're talking about mind control from the Chinese regime, right?

Speaker 1 There was a, that was what started MK-Ultra, was fear of the Soviets and the North Koreans at the time getting engaged in mind control and the worry that we were, you know, somehow behind the curve and that they had this technology, the capability to control minds.

Speaker 1 And so next thing you know,

Speaker 1 you know, MK-Ultra is born. And, you know, I wonder what's the method they're supposedly using to control these people's minds.
Like, it was pretty vague. Slaves to the digital machine.
Like, what?

Speaker 1 Elaborates on a lecture activities they're engaged in, which include deploying brain computer chips to control all citizens until they become

Speaker 1 complete slaves to the digital machine. Seleni, distraught, lazy, who describes himself as an ordinary computer programmer and entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 That's what I'd say, too, if I work for the Chinese government.

Speaker 1 Claims he's been controlled by the mind control organization from the time he was born, but only discovered he's being manipulated in October 2022.

Speaker 1 So from the time he was born, they had a chip in his brain? Is that what he's saying? That's not real. No.
Because they didn't have that back then. Yeah, I'm concerned over the legitimacy of this.

Speaker 1 Or if they did,

Speaker 1 how would it still be active in your brain? Like, how do you not have brain cancer? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's been a very painful. I mean, maybe it's real.
I'm just fucking around here.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's been a very painful in the last two years. Lazy wrote, now I have completely lost my dignity as a human being.
I've decided to leave this world.

Speaker 1 I hope this ugly world will be destroyed soon. Oh, well, that guy sounds like a whole bunch of fun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I said that he just did it just to give the story some credence, which I don't know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's the problem with today. It's like there's so many bullshit stories.

Speaker 1 That sounds fun to say. Mind control.
Well, that's it.

Speaker 1 If you throw shit out there and you couch it in a certain way, and you, you know, oftentimes you'll see some of this and, you know, I'm using big words and I'm talking about the and you know it's like the it's like the fucking UFO hearings up on Capitol Hill right I don't know how many times I've had to sit and listen to you know I've seen some stuff I can't tell you what the stuff is yeah it's hidden stuff but I've seen some stuff I know I get so tired of it all yeah and and I think there's I think there's

Speaker 1 there's something out there right I'm not you know again I

Speaker 1 you know I agree with you in the sense that you know we

Speaker 1 we're certainly not the only ones out here floating around right

Speaker 1 I don't know what it means. I don't know whether we've been visited or anything like that.
But every time there's a

Speaker 1 UFO hearing, it's sort of that same thing, it's that tantalizing look, oh, look, he's talking, he's talking.

Speaker 1 And then it's the thing about the release of those documents, though, that seems to me that that's something that you would document. Like, so

Speaker 1 rather than say, I killed JFK, I'm going to write, where do I sign? Instead of that, it's more, that's more tangible. Like,

Speaker 1 if the government had recovered some crash in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, and it really was an alien spaceship, that seems like something they would document.

Speaker 1 I agree. And I think that's worth pursuing in a big way.
They should, look, there needs to be more transparency about it.

Speaker 1 And it's also the same like with the COVID files, if there's such a thing as COVID files. But sure, go through and look.

Speaker 1 I mean, transparency, to the degree that you can, where you're not releasing national secrets that are going to get people killed, great.

Speaker 1 But the Epstein files, you know, so I think there's real value in saying we've got because the government always overclassifies, always overclassifies. And

Speaker 1 it's unnecessary and it creates

Speaker 1 this distrust, I think, half the time of the

Speaker 1 yeah. They're just like, what the fuck? We don't believe anything you're saying now.
So release everything,

Speaker 1 let the chips fall.

Speaker 1 Because I don't think, honestly, I don't think there's a lot of information there. But I do think with the UFOs, all the documentation

Speaker 1 and the investigations that took place of unknown sightings,

Speaker 1 but it's still going to not convince people that we're not holding on to crashed

Speaker 1 spaceships. Well, when you've got guys like David Grush,

Speaker 1 who's the whistleblower that comes out and says, not only do we have these ships, but we have biological entities. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, then,

Speaker 1 you know, maybe explain yourself a little more. Right.

Speaker 1 You've already come out. You kind of like opened your kimono a little bit.
Let's, you know, fucking say what do you know and then put it to rest. Maybe you got an obligation to do that, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, I think he wants to, according to him,

Speaker 1 but he has to get clearance.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's already pushed that door open, right? I mean, I don't know. As an individual, right?

Speaker 1 He's explained on the podcast that he's authorized to say what he's already said, but nothing more, and he has to be very careful. But then again, it's like, how do I know? Yeah.
How do I know?

Speaker 1 That's not horseshit. I know.

Speaker 1 And that's the problem, and that's going to be the problem with the release of the files. Also, it's just to

Speaker 1 obscure some sort of a government propulsion system that's like 50 years ahead of anything we could imagine. That's how I would do it.

Speaker 1 I'd obscure it by saying, oh, there's some fucking alien technology that's available, and we don't really know how to use it, but they do visit us from time to time, and occasionally they crash.

Speaker 1 They came over to New Jersey. Remember the drones over New Jersey? Right.
And now the Trump administration has said those were running some tests, and those were ours. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So why wouldn't the Biden administration say that? What the hell? Fuck. You know.
I mean, what's new? You know, maybe you should tell me. Well, I do know, but

Speaker 1 I'm not authorized to say.

Speaker 1 We got to get you in a skip. Yeah, but I know some stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just can't say the stuff.
Anyway. Listen, Mike, it's always great to talk to you.
Thanks. It's been a blast, as always.

Speaker 1 Tell everybody about your show, where they can watch it. Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And listen to the presidential briefing. I can't think of a way I'd more rather spend my 20th wedding anniversary than right here.

Speaker 1 You want to go out to dinner?

Speaker 1 Here's the best. So President's Daily Brief with Mike Baker.
Subscribe, YouTube.

Speaker 1 President's Daily Brief on YouTube. That's very easy to listen to, 20 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon.
We just cover the news. We don't tell you how to think about it.

Speaker 1 It's top stories happening around the globe. And I like the idea that

Speaker 1 it's not an opinion show. I mean, occasionally something sneaks in, but for the most part, we try to keep it based on the facts.
And it's really simple.

Speaker 1 And you can find it, again, at President's Daily Brief on YouTube. Or world lead for something like that today.

Speaker 1 Well, you know, know, it's doing really well because I think people will actually want that nowadays. And they also

Speaker 1 like the brevity of it, right? Nobody wants to listen to me for, well, I don't know, hours. But anyway.

Speaker 1 We just did. And we just did.

Speaker 1 All right. Hey, thank you.
Thank you, Mike. Appreciate you.
All right. Bye, everybody.