EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,005 words- 0:00 – 15:00
Coming to us live…
- JRJoe Rogan
Coming to us live via technology from the other side of the continent, David Pakman, ladies and gentlemen.
- DPDavid Pakman
So good to be back with you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to be with you too, and I love your facial hair, as I was saying before. I- I-
- DPDavid Pakman
Thank you.
- JRJoe Rogan
... say stick with it all the way, maybe get some kind of a cult leader guru thing happening.
- DPDavid Pakman
I'm actually five days from a man bun and I- I- I-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DPDavid Pakman
... wanted to see what you thought about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
The man bun's the starter kit for a cult leader, right?
- DPDavid Pakman
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
The man bun is like, "I'm trying to get people to listen to me more and take me more seriously, I'm spiritual."
- DPDavid Pakman
I need a, I need, like, a gimmick of some kind.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm. I think your gimmick is just being a nice guy-
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and smart. How about that? That's rare.
- DPDavid Pakman
To a fault. Nice to a fault is the new thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, you're- you're nice to a fault?
- DPDavid Pakman
I don't know. I- I get emails from people who are, like, "You don't have to kowtow to the dumb part of your audience." Like, you don't have-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DPDavid Pakman
... to say stuff like, "Listen, I wanna apologize in advance for using a slightly off-color phrase, but," th- um, people are like, "You just don't, you just shouldn't do that. It's better for the show for you just to say the thing."
- JRJoe Rogan
I love that you listen to those people. I think you should be yourself and if you-
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... feel like you need to say that, I feel like you should just say that. It's nothing wrong with it. Doesn't hurt my feelings when you say things like that. You know-
- DPDavid Pakman
That's fine.
- JRJoe Rogan
... even if I understand what you're doing, it's not... it's no big deal. I feel like there's too many opinions in this and it sucks for the people with opinions in this. And I think it's one of the problems with what we do and one of the reasons why people get so angry at us. So, if you and I are having a conversation and we- we, maybe per- perhaps we agree on something, but someone listening is like, "Fuck that! This is what's wrong with that idea." And they wanna say it, but they can't. There's... and so, the comments are almost inherently angry 'cause it's really, uh, so much of it is just people who wanna say something, but there's no forum for them. They- they- they-
- DPDavid Pakman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... only can say it in the comments. They can't... they feel like they're in on this conversation, but they wanna jump in on and interject.
- DPDavid Pakman
Well, I got an email today from someone who said, "I love everything you've been doing for the last six years, but yesterday, you used the word anti-vaxxer and I- I just... that's it, that was it."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DPDavid Pakman
"When you used that word, that was it for the David Pakman Show." And it's like, I... you can't win with that. You can't win-
- 15:00 – 30:00
That's, that's a good…
- DPDavid Pakman
replace potentially Ruth Bader Ginsburg with someone who would want Roe v. Wade overturned? Like, I couldn't do it in good conscience.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's, that's a good point, and, well, I'm gonna get into it in a second. But Jamie just pulled up this video of Trump, and I'm gonna get to watch him have this weird twitch for the first time. Okay, hit me with it, Jamie. Okay, so he's talking. I'm watching it. Is that it, that little move that he made? It's one of them, I guess. Oh, this is hil- this is hilariously silly. Now it's the part I can't tell. "Trump neurologically malfunctions with a full spasm." No, he's talking and he just went like this. People do that. That's silly. Maybe it's just-
- DPDavid Pakman
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
... maybe that video is silly.
- DPDavid Pakman
So, I mean, there's a dozen of them. Yeah, I don't know. I couldn't hear it, and I don't remember.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think a better, a better thing is something that you showed me on your show.
- DPDavid Pakman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
A better example, when there was real problems with him enunciating words and w- you know, there was speculation like, was he falling asl... Was he sick? Was, was he on a sedative? Was, was something, something going wrong? It a- almost seemed like his tongue wasn't working correctly, right?
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs) Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, like he was wrestling-
- DPDavid Pakman
That's-
- JRJoe Rogan
... with, with a paralyzed tongue. Like, tr-
- DPDavid Pakman
Your perspective matches mine, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DPDavid Pakman
... I, I think... I really... For me, it's like this stuff... We're not probably ever gonna really get an answer to this. And I don't know that it's imperative to know the answers for me to know who it is I'm gonna vote for, I guess is the point I'm trying to make.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm. It's, it's fascinating that, um, pro-choice is such a, a hard-line issue on r- left-wing people and right-wing people. It's, um, it really is. That it's this line in the sand, and people are willing to s... They're, they're, they're willing to make concessions in favor of going in that direction as v... Because they recognize the slippery slope of eliminating people's rights and the dangers of going in the other direction. You're not gonna stop abortions. You're just gonna stop legal abortions. It's gonna be very dangerous for the women. It's gonna be... It's, it's, it's almost, you know, it's, it's al- it's almost a black and white issue in that regard. But what's not a black and white issue is abortion itself, right? Like, there's a time in the baby's life, or the fetus, when it's inside the woman where everyone gets uncomfortable, whether it's five months in, four months in, three. Whatever it is for you where you're like, "Oh, Jesus, that's a baby now." And to deny that, I think, is, uh, is very odd. That's a, uh, a weird thing that we... Because it's so uncomfortable. What it is is so uncomfortable, it bothers us so much, that we, we just draw these lines and we've got this opinion in a box. And it's this and this... Here we go. W- we've got this bulletproof right-wing box, and you can never have an abortion. Okay, well, what if your daughter gets raped by, uh, some robber? You think that your daughter should have to carry this man's child? Like, if they know about it immediately when it's a, a bundle of cells? Really? You think that? Like, that to me is insane.And-
- DPDavid Pakman
Right. Now, if you knew that it was conceivable that Trump would put someone on the court who has that view, that'd be pretty scary, wouldn't it?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's scary in a lot of ways. It's scary in a lot of ways. Um, I think the more control government has over your body and the more it can dictate what you can and can't do, the scarier things get. And then it gets scary in that this is a subject that, you, you know, it's so polarizing and if you, you move in the direction of limiting it, you run the risk, I always feel, of shifting even, like, the consciousness of the public. Shifting the way people approach things like this, accepting control, that the government has control over your body. That's like one of the mo- like... the, the idea that they can come and, and decide what you, what you have to do for the rest of your life now, based on maybe something that wasn't even your choice, that to me is crazy. But that's not the only thing-
- DPDavid Pakman
Of course.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that's going on. There's so many other issues.
- DPDavid Pakman
And, and
- NANarrator
Me, too.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's one of the reasons why picking a president and picking apart, it's so cr- it's so crazy that we let one person, m- and then his group that he gets with him, shift the consciousness of the public or shift the direction of the country one way or the other. It's just, it's a really weird choice that we make in even making a president and in doing it every four years and having all these checks and balances that you have to follow. I mean, I think it's a gr- it's a great system for the time when they invented it. It's, I mean, it's amazing how well it holds up from 1776 to today. It's incredible. It shows you how amazingly wise they were. But just think about what we know now in 2020 about just the nature of communication, like what you and I are doing. I mean, the, the, this is gonna affect millions of people and their opinions. If, if you knew that today in 2020 and someone asked you to make rules based on what was going to be in place 300 years from now, you would be like, "I'm not qualified to do that." It's really, it's incredible how well they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights back then. I mean, it's really... it's one of the most amazing things ever if you really think about, like, all the, the, the different times that it's come up and then you, you, you think about how long it's been that, that it was created. I mean, it's really an astounding piece of human work.
- DPDavid Pakman
It is. Your, your argument though is really one for having to update the infrastructure that we ba- right? So like, as you're saying, if in order to change the way that we govern the country, as you're saying, you know, one person making all these decisions with all of these different areas that they're responsible for, if you wanna change that, you do have to change that document that you just said.
- JRJoe Rogan
I know. It's kind of crazy, right? It's like, we don't want to update Windows 95. Like, I'm comfortable with it. I know where the icons are. But Windows 10's like, "Hey, you know, come, come, come make the switch. We've got a better system."
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"We figured it out better." We, we don't have a Windows 10 of government, you know? We still, we're still working with 95. We, you know, we still have the older versions of Apple's software. We don't have, uh, OS X 10, whatever the rate- latest version of it is. We, we are in this weird place where, you know, we, we have this system that's better than anything that we could see anywhere else, but yet it really... it doesn't necessarily work perfectly for the complicated issues that exist in managing just the 330 million people and all their problems.
- DPDavid Pakman
What is your sense of... I mean, is there, like, uh, is there a particular issue where when you think of Trump and Biden, you're on the Trump side, uh, in terms of the political position?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. Like what political positions? See, s- see, one of... my opinions on political posi- positions, especially like the really scary ones, right? Like the possibility of war, um, the environment, things along those lines. I, I wish I was more informed. I wish I knew exactly w- you know, like, when, when there's some negotiations i- i- in these trade war deals with China, for instance, like I wish I understood that better. I wish I really knew what was at stake and what China's actually trying to do and whether or not, uh... l- like in particular, like when you think about Chine- China and the military and their, their engagement with the companies, the reason why... like, I was... I never understood why they were trying to keep Huawei out. I was like, "Why do they keep..." that doesn't make any sense to me. Like shouldn't they show that they've done something bad and... but it's a company that they feel is inexorably connected to the, the Chinese government. So that's like negotiating with them and that kind of... like to, for me to say that I think that this person's doing a better job or I like the way Biden would handle it better, like, do I really know what the fuck I'm talking about? I don't. You know, I really don't.
- DPDavid Pakman
Yeah.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Well, you're completely right,…
- JRJoe Rogan
go under, go bankrupt, and they're absolved of their debt, but a kid who wanted to learn something goes to a school and w- winds up... You know, you're 22. You're not even a fully formed human yet and you're in debt. You're fucked. You're starting out of the gate crazy, crazy behind the line.
- DPDavid Pakman
Well, you're completely right, of course, uh, about the toxic nature of the word socialism-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DPDavid Pakman
... just to go back to that for a second. I think that that hurt Bernie. In 2015, I was saying, "Bernie may well have been a socialist in the 1970s. He may still be one, but he's really running on, on social democracy, which is what they have in Northern Europe." It's a type of capitalism, and this is what I think Andrew Yang actually did well. I, I, I don't know if it was p- like, people-centered capitalism that he called what he was doing or, or what phrase he used. But I do think in my postmortems about what happened with Bernie, because it wasn't by a little bit that Bernie lost. I mean, b- even before he dropped out, he was down, like, 1.8 or two million votes to Joe Biden. Like, this, this was really not close. I do think that the continued use of the, that word socialism w- was not helpful, and I know people will hear, hear me say this and they'll say, "David, either way, they were gonna call him a socialist. What difference does it make if he embraces the term or says it's not the right term or whatever?" Sure, that, that applies to some people, but I fail to see what the advantage was to using a term that didn't really describe what his campaign was. He w- he's talking about capitalism where you say, like you're pointing out, "We can't let people drop too low. We need to ensure some basic level things happen that aren't people's fault." It's not just about you're gonna do as well as you want to do. There are circumstances people are born into, injuries, pandemics, all this stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DPDavid Pakman
So, I, I do think that whatever your opinion is about socialism, s- quote, unquote, there was really no advantage to Bernie Sanders from using or, or at least to some degree allowing that term to continue being used.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, he wanted to redefine it, and when he came onto my show, he actually did try to define it and des- describe the difference between the concept of socialism, which a lot of people connect to communism, and what he calls democratic socialism. You know? And what he was showing a more, uh, a more tamed down version of this, this concept that, you know, a lot of, like, real young lefties, like my friend, uh, my friend, uh, Bridget was on the podcast the other day, Bridget Phetasy. She's a hilarious writer, very funny comedian. And she was talking about how she found some stuff that she wrote when she was in her early 20s, and she read it and she's, she's more, uh, center today, I would say. M- maybe e- uh, I mean left on many issues politically, socially rather. Uh, but she was like AOC, she said. She said she's reading this stuff and she was, like, uh, like a radical when she was young, and I think that happens to people. You d- I'm sure Bernie was probably a full-on socialist at one point in his life. But, like, what did that mean back then versus what does it mean now? And even the term socialist. Like, the term, like, when you, when you look at the term conservative or the term socialist, you're talking about a spectrum. You're not talking about a one or a zero. It's not a, it's not a... You can't have a, uh... No one has the same number factor of conservative as... There's a lot of people that are conservative that they, you know, they're very liberal on a lot of social issues, but yet they still ver- vote red. And I think there's a lot of people that consider themselves c- uh, like, a socialist. But what it, what does that... At what level? And if you're pro-fire department, I think you're k- you, you embrace some socialist values, right? If you're pro- a lot of the services that we use that are a part of your tax dollars... Like, we're combining our money so that w- the world is better for all of us. It's not just a dog eat dog fight. We recognize value in community and society and a civilization where we all work together. We just don't wanna work together too much. We don't want people leeching off of it. And, and I'm on that side as well, because I know that although there are m- and we're seeing these more than we've ever seen in our life, that multiple circumstances beyond your comprehension, totally out of your control that fucks up your life. But yet we also see people who are lazy and who keep fucking up their life and you keep enabling them and helping them. It doesn't help anybody either. Both those things are true. It does... Just because you agree with one thing, that we need to help each other, doesn't mean you deny the fact that there's a real problem psychologically to giving people free money and to giving people free room and board and taking away incentive for them to survive. There's something, for whatever reason, that a lot of us need this sort of, like, inner drive, this k- knowledge that you, you're responsible for your own destiny and you have to go out there and you have to put in the work. You have to get out of bed when the alarm goes off. You have to do the things you're supposed to do. And there's people that don't do that, and yet they still want to be rewarded. They still want money. They still want their check. They still, they still want the thing they feel society or government owes them. That's not good either. See, both of those things are not good. It's not good to let people who are sick rot and, and, and, and, and l- live their life in a compromised position because they don't have enough money for the medical care. That's sick too. It's not, uh, it's not a good person, it's not a good society, it's not a good model to have people starve. It's, that's not good. If there's money in food and we could sh- distribute it more evenly, especially the people that are unfortunate, but it's also not good to let people just camp out on the sidewalk where you can't walk through it. Los Angeles is filled with tents now, especially now because of all this craziness and the pandemic. It's gotten way worse. There's areas where you can't go anywhere. You, you literally can't walk under underpasses. There are these campgrounds. Like, that's not good either. You know, and, and, and, and now, now we're-
- DPDavid Pakman
Okay. So, let's Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
... dealing with mental health problems, I'm sure, and a lot of other issues.
- DPDavid Pakman
L- let's talk about, getting into that. I mean, there's a lot, so, okay. You mentioned the areas where even right-wingers tend to be okay with sort of, like, socializing certain services, so fire department's an easy one.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DPDavid Pakman
Who does the road? Those are, those are all really easy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DPDavid Pakman
But I think that there's some more pernicious ones that the right is less eager to own. Like, for example, it's all about free market capitalism for profits, make a business, build up the business, et cetera, even when that business is built on-... law enforcement that's socialized to protect your offices, uh, law infrastructure that you count on to protect your intellectual property. It's- uh, so put that aside for a second. But then, the- they're okay socializing the clean-up or the fixing in many cases.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DPDavid Pakman
So with the drilling and fracking companies, for example.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, great examples.
- DPDavid Pakman
Capitalism for the profits. Look at me, capitalist. I figured out how to do this drilling, how to, how to extract this energy from the earth. I bought the land, I bought the equipment, I'm hiring employees. Look at me, you know, pulling myself up by- by the bootstraps. Something goes wrong, people downwind, you know, get sick, whatever. Now, they're going to say, "Let's socialize that clean-up cost, though." Right? Because, you know, we should do this through taxation. Let's make sure that we're cleaning this up at the state level. We want state-funded, uh, we want state funds to get this all cleaned up. So, that is an area of hypocrisy that's more difficult than just, like, we mostly all agree the fire department should be socialized.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DPDavid Pakman
A few people will say, "No, if you call and there's not really a fire, you should owe money." Or s- that's, like, a tiny percentage. It's an easy one. The- the other- uh, the ones I'm talking about are a little bit tougher, and you're gonna get a lot more pushback, I think, if you were to focus on those.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I- I think you've got a really good point with the environmental clean-up, like something like the BP oil spill. That's a really good point, and that's a weird one. It's like you don't wanna ... Uh, so it's almost like you- it's such a catastrophic event, you don't wanna leave it in the hands of someone who is so ... Uh, th- they've- I mean, they- they fucked up in the first place to make this happen. I don't trust them. I don't trust the way they do business. I mean, they- they, uh, maybe it's just something that happens when you drill under the ocean and you pull oil out. Occasionally, things go wrong. But I don't wanna trust them to fix that. Uh, I wanna th- uh, have some sort of environmental clean-up crew that's in place, and maybe give them the bill.
- DPDavid Pakman
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, I don't know what did it cost? How much did it cost BP to- to have that ... And isn't it still leaking? Hasn't it been proven that that- it's still polluting the ocean?
- DPDavid Pakman
I don't know of over the last year. I- I honestly don't know what's going on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you ever see the videos of when it was-
- DPDavid Pakman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... coming out of the ground?
- DPDavid Pakman
Oh, yeah. It's crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, the- the world's ending. Like-
- DPDavid Pakman
It's a high pressure. It's just a high- it's just open for days, right? I mean, months-
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
I wanna be clear.…
- JRJoe Rogan
drinking whiskey.
- DPDavid Pakman
I wanna be clear. It wasn't the smoking pot that worried me.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was the reaction to it?
- DPDavid Pakman
It was, it was what happened with-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DPDavid Pakman
... I think it was around the same time where he said, "I might have found someone to take the company private."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DPDavid Pakman
And the SEC got involved, and I just panicked, and I, and I was like, "I'll keep... I'm up so much, I'll just sell half, so-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- DPDavid Pakman
"... it's not the end of the world. I'm hedging my bets here."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, he has two qualities that I would never bet against, and the first one is an insane work ethic.
- DPDavid Pakman
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
His work ethic is insane. It's insane. I mean, that guy will work 16 hours a day, seven days a week. He just keeps going. He's, he was, when he was trying to get the Model 3 production out, he was sleeping on the floor of the factory. I mean, he's a maniac, and he's weirdly intelligent, like, weirdly. It's, um, like, when you're, when I'm talking to him, I feel like I'm talking to someone in the future. Like, this is what p-... You know, if I, if I had to go back in time and, uh, have dinner with, uh, a Neanderthal, you know-
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... uh, I, I feel like it'd be real similar to when I sit down and hang out with Elon, how he feels. 'Cause like, I think he's like another, another level of human being. I think that that, that is a natural course of progression for evolution, that we are going to eventually find people that are... where they're, they're getting smarter. They're gonna get... It's... We're not gonna stay in this static state forever, right? Just like we didn't stay as an Australopithecus. We became human beings over, you know, natural selection and evolution, all that good stuff. That's gonna keep going, and if it's gonna keep going, you're, y- especially when it's integrated with this insane access to technology that kids have today and in- insane access to information, you're gonna have smarter people. It's gonna be a different thing, and they're, you know, maybe they're gonna... I mean, he's a, he's a person, he's a human being, so he, he does make mistakes just like human beings make, like when he called that guy a pedo guy and that kinda shit. But when it comes to his, uh, ability to allocate resources and do things and get things done, like, they, he's so smart, they just let him drill tunnels under LA. They're like, "Okay, go ahead."
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They're like, "How many-"
- DPDavid Pakman
So, what, I mean, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
... "people would be able to go to the, you know, the, the city of Los Angeles and go, 'I've got an idea. I wanna put a tunnel, go all the way to Vegas'?" (laughs) They'd be like, "This guy's on coke. Get him outta here." But with Elon, they, they let him try. It's, uh, I think he's a really important person for our culture, really important, like probably one of the most-
- DPDavid Pakman
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
... important people.
- DPDavid Pakman
... where are you on... I mean, I guess, at some point, coronavirus is the topic. Where-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- DPDavid Pakman
... where are you on what's going on with him reopening the factory and saying, "Arrest me," and, I mean, I, uh, like, I- I've been following it to some degree.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's really complicated, right? It's like, who should be able to decide when you can or can't go back to work? It's not, it's not straightforward. It's not cut and dry, because if you say that people should be allowed to make their own decision, you run into the very real possibility that, especially if you have to go to work at that factory, and you can't not work, and you do get sick, and you do go home, and you do spread it to your family, a loved one could die. That's, that's real. On the other hand, the government doesn't really seem to have any sort of straightforward plan as to how people can economically bounce back from this. They, I mean, there was one of the m- weirdest quotes. I think it was Trump that said this. We were just talking about businesses and restaurants, that they'll be open, maybe not with the same owners, but they'll be-
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... open again.Did you- did you see that quote?
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs) No, I don't- I don't- I didn't see that, but it's like, what does that really mean? Does that just mean, like, a different business will be created? What does that mean?
- 1:00:00 – 1:10:37
Okay, may- maybe he…
- JRJoe Rogan
what are, what's happening over there?" That's one more thing. It's one more unit of the mental bandwidth that you have. This fucking guy is taxed out. He's taxed out with just the arguments that he's getting with the press. Just think about how much that's, how much real estate that's taking up in his head, right? And then you think about the disease, you think about restarting the economy, you think about... He very well might not remember bragging about disbanding the pandemic team. It's very possible.
- DPDavid Pakman
Okay, may- maybe he doesn't. To your question, there was this pandemic response team. He disbanded it in 2018, and he sort of bragged that, uh-... "Hey, you know, we're, we're not gonna do stuff where we don't need these people. We just don't, they're not really doing much, so we just, we don't really need them." So, he did do that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoops.
- DPDavid Pakman
So this thing, so this thing about the press though, um, you know, and he's busy with, between the press and the virus and reopening and all this different stuff. I don't know if you saw the reports that he often gets into what we would call work, like, at noon or later after watching, like, five or even more hours of, of TV and tweeting.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DPDavid Pakman
It doesn't strike me that he's that busy with actual work.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) I think he is and he isn't. I think he, it's still taking up bandwidth in his head.
- DPDavid Pakman
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
But look, it, it is so American that he does that.
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You know what I'm saying? I mean, and not in the best way possible, but it's so ... W- we're so comical in so many ways that our president, he's eating junk food and watching TV-
- DPDavid Pakman
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and tweeting, angry tweeting at people while he's watching Fox News.
- DPDavid Pakman
It's, so, so, okay. Here's the point I wanna make about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- DPDavid Pakman
One of the things that scares me about the way that this president is sometimes covered by, um ... Sometimes it's people who call themselves centrists or sometimes it's people who say, "I'm just, I'm just reporting facts and not giving an opinion." Or whatever. One of the things that really scares me is that this is being treated like a normal presidency when, as you're pointing out, it's really not a normal presidency. And the a- the analogy that I would sort of apply to it would be, like, imagine that you're doing UFC commentary. And I'm re-, I'm going, this is like me going out on a limb because I, this is not my area of expertise, but let's see if the analogy will work. Imagine that one of the fighters comes in and he, at one point, tries to light his opponent on fire.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DPDavid Pakman
And you as a commentator say, "This is an unusual strategy that's very aggressive." You're treating it like it's within the realm of normality-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. (laughs)
- DPDavid Pakman
... when this is the, a destruction of the system, right? Like, what is ... It's not an aggressive strategy. This is crazy, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. That's a great analogy.
- DPDavid Pakman
And that's what scares me. It scares me because I see, you know ... So, I, I like to use the term enlightened centrist. And it's a little bit pejorative, but it's someone who believes themselves to be above the fray of the, of the bias, of the left/right stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DPDavid Pakman
Where they'll say, "You know, listen. Yeah, Trump kind of has a different way of talking about politics, but I think he's pretty good on trade."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DPDavid Pakman
It's like, what are you talking about? And that really scares me because there's like a normalization going on that's, that's crazy to me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, there's also a thing that we desire as humans that's for our leaders to exhibit virtue and, and, and dignity. There's, there's like a thing, we expect them to be a statesman or a statewoman, right? You expect them to ... Like, Tulsi Gabbard's an excellent example of that to me, of someone who, who speaks like someone that I would appreciate addressing the nation in some sort of a disastrous state. Like, if something was going wrong, I would want someone who speaks the way she speaks talking about it. You know, there's, there's a, a certain ... Cuomo has it. There's a certain characteristic that you would want from someone who is in a position of leadership. Like, I get a certain amount of calm out of listening to him break down the current situations and what they're doing to remedy and mitigate all the problems in New York. And you, when you think about it, New York got hit harder than anywhere in the plan- or excuse me, anywhere ... I guess anywhere on the planet, right? It turned into a city?
- DPDavid Pakman
I think that, I mean, yeah. I think so.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. So, at this point it's p- anywhere on the planet. I mean, he's done a remarkable job of exhibiting all the characteristics. Whether or not you think his decisions were correct or not, 'cause there's some real arguments, especially with the early days of letting, uh, old people go back to nursing homes when they had tested, and that's obviously horrible. Um, but the way he communicates, he communicates like a guy that you would feel comfortable he's gonna make good decisions. That guy, that, he, he seems like a president.
- DPDavid Pakman
Yeah. And I think that this is why, you know, ev- a, a lot of mistakes have been made during this. A- and a lot of it came from, like you're pointing out, we had incomplete information.
Episode duration: 2:59:54
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode Wf93nfm2U2o
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome