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Joe Rogan Experience #1562 - Dave Smith

Stand-up comedian, radio personality, and political commentator Dave Smith is the host of the Part of the Problem podcast and a co-host of The Legion of Skanks podcast, both part of the GaS Digital Network. @PartOfTheProblem

Joe RoganhostDave Smithguest
Nov 11, 20203h 8mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:0015:00

    (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

    1. JR

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. NA

      The Joe Rogan Experience. (drums playing)

    3. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music)

    4. JR

      Nice to see you again.

    5. DS

      What's up, Joe? Good to be back.

    6. JR

      Good to see you my bro. Good to see you. Good to see you. What are you doing in town?

    7. DS

      I came in, I was, uh, doing my buddy Scott Horton's show, and uh, hanging out with him for a little bit. And uh, here.

    8. JR

      And you're looking for a place to escape.

    9. DS

      Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

    10. JR

      New York, uh, Schults told me that New York is like they just won World War III. People are dancing in the streets.

    11. DS

      I, I was there, um, in Union Square the other day. We did a show at The Stand, and it was the day they called it for, for Biden. And, uh, as much as I just despise Joe Biden and Kamala Harris-

    12. JR

      (laughs)

    13. DS

      ... it was kind of nice for the city to just have one.

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. DS

      Just to have a day. It's the only day that it, it's felt happy there since March.

    16. JR

      Here too. L- people are honking in the streets. I went, went to dinner with Tom Segura, he was in town, and we were driving down the streets, people were honking and cheering and people were so happy. I'm happy for people to be happy.

    17. DS

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      I like that.

    19. DS

      E- even if they're happy for a stupid reason-

    20. JR

      Well-

    21. DS

      ... you're like, "At least be happy."

    22. JR

      It's just ... It's too complicated, and you're a guy who knows a lot about politics and, and the way the world works, but it's too complicated to really go into depth about it for most people. So, so many people just have this sort of cursory understanding of politics, and then they follow a narrative. The narrative is, "Trump is bad, you get him out. Biden's good." And then you go, "Yeah, well what about the crime bill? What about the Iraq War? What about this and that and da?" And, "What about what she did?" And da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody wants to hear it.

    23. DS

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      All they, all they want to say is that the good guys won, now we're gonna go back to being America again. (sighs)

    25. DS

      Yeah.

    26. JR

      And then Pfizer announces a new vaccine. Ahhh.

    27. DS

      Well, it would be nice if we could go back to being America again.

    28. JR

      Yeah.

    29. DS

      I think we're still far off from that happening.

    30. JR

      Totally.

  2. 15:0030:00

    I think for sure…

    1. DS

      it, it's... A lot of people like to make this a simplistic calculation, and it's an enormously complicated one because there's many different variables on both sides. So, how many lives were saved, uh, b- by locking down? I think that's very debatable. I don't really know that it's a tr- But I, I don't claim to know, you know? But it's...

    2. JR

      I think for sure it was some.

    3. DS

      Oh, quite possibly, but then you'd also have to look just first apples to apples, how many lives were lost from the lockdown. And I've read stuff... Uh, I was reading the other day, uh, it was in England, but I'm sure the same is true here, that, uh, cancer screenings have, like, plummeted-

    4. JR

      Oh, yeah.

    5. DS

      ... over the last year. So now there's gonna be all types of preventable cancers that are gonna... We won't know this for years if we can ever really trace it back, but a whole bunch of people will die from that. Depression has been way up. You know, suicides seem to be going up. There's all these different costs. And then, of course, what is the cost, the human cost, of destroying people's livelihoods?

    6. JR

      Right.

    7. DS

      And it's very, very hard to, uh, weigh these things out. Um, and, and as you pointed out, you'd have to weigh it verse the cost of lives without the lockdown-

    8. JR

      Yeah.

    9. DS

      ... not necessarily with, but it's, uh... It's like with a lot of these other issues, people like to make it a very simplistic, "Well, if you wanna prevent the, uh, the virus, you have to be for the solution."

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. DS

      Same with, like, uh, climate change. If you wanna prese- prevent climate change, you gotta be for the Green New Deal. But the truth is that the real answer is, like, well, what is this gonna cost verse what is this gonna cost and which one is worse?

    12. JR

      Yeah.

    13. DS

      Which is... sucks 'cause you have to think.

    14. JR

      Well, it's really important to have lively debate on these things. And one of the things that's going on now is people are trying to shut down debate. They want you to agree with their side, and this is something that social media has really reinforced, right? Like, uh, social media echo chambers. They want you to be on their side, and if you're not on their side, they just hit you with a bunch of bullshit about-

    15. DS

      Mm-hmm.

    16. JR

      ... why you shouldn't and why you're on the wrong side of history and why you're a bad person and... We were talking before the podcast about lists that people are making, about people who supported Donald Trump or people who voted for Donald Trump or people who worked in the administration. They're making these lists and, uh, like, literally blacklists. Like, they have no irony about suggesting these blacklists.

    17. DS

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      Like, do you... You're, you're going to Soviet Russia type shit. Like, y- this is-

    19. DS

      Right. And, and meanwhile, Joe Biden is saying in his acceptance speech, uh, that, you know, "Well, now's the time to bring everybody together."

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. DS

      You know, like, "We all need to be one," yada yada, which is kind of a nice thought, um, but it's, it's a little hard to take seriously when all of these people in your party and who, who have been, you know, supporting you, uh, have been calling, uh, everybody else on the other side, you know, white supremacists-

    22. JR

      Yeah.

    23. DS

      ... Nazis for, for the last four years. So now that you're claiming you won, say, "Hey, we all have to come together." Meanwhile, other members of your party are saying, "We gotta create lists-

    24. JR

      Yeah.

    25. DS

      ... of people." So, like, this-

    26. JR

      Well, AOC said it.

    27. DS

      Yeah.

    28. JR

      Yeah.

    29. DS

      You know, a pretty, uh, influential member-

    30. JR

      Very.

  3. 30:0045:00

    (laughs) …

    1. DS

      in 2016, you know, he stood on the Republican primary debate stage in South Carolina, Republicans in South Carolina, and looked at Jeb Bush in the eyes and said, "Your brother lied us into war in Iraq."And everyone was like, "What the fuck?"

    2. JR

      (laughs)

    3. DS

      Like, you can't say that at the Republican South Carolina. And all the pundits, all the media class, they were like, "Trump's finished now," 'cause you can't... These are the people who fought the war in Iraq and these are the most pro-military people around. And the next day at the, at the primary, Donald Trump took 60% and all the other Republicans, all 12 of them, split the other 40%. He-

    4. JR

      Imagine if he didn't say a lot of the dumb shit that he said, like the shit about McCain, like, uh, "I like people don't get caught."

    5. DS

      (laughs) Well, imagine he didn't say that.

    6. JR

      Imagine he didn't say the dumbest shit, the dumbest shit that he said. Remember the, the Gold Star family?

    7. DS

      Mm-hmm.

    8. JR

      The family where d-

    9. DS

      The Kahn family, I believe?

    10. JR

      Yes.

    11. DS

      Yeah.

    12. JR

      Yeah. Where he, what did he... He criticized the family about some... I forget what the exact...

    13. DS

      It was, they spoke at the DNC.

    14. JR

      Right.

    15. DS

      And then he started trashing them.

    16. JR

      Yes. And their, their son died-

    17. DS

      Mm-hmm.

    18. JR

      ... representing this country in war. And everybody was like, "Well, you can't..." That's it. He's, he's done. Nope.

    19. DS

      Wasn't.

    20. JR

      Nope.

    21. DS

      Wasn't done.

    22. JR

      Imagine if he didn't do that.

    23. DS

      Well, by the way, when that happened, I remember just screaming about this on my podcast where I was just like, the, the response was right there and it took him like four days.

    24. JR

      (clears throat) Yeah.

    25. DS

      But eventually he did, uh, get it right where he was just like, "Yeah, they died in a war that Hillary Clinton supported."

    26. JR

      What?

    27. DS

      That's the response.

    28. JR

      Is this a new one? Trump suggests Gold Star families may be to blame for his infection.

    29. NA

      I think it was the second thing.

    30. DS

      Oh yeah. No, this is a different thing than what we were talking about.

  4. 45:001:00:00

    And Bill. …

    1. DS

      get out and it's like, "Oh, here's four..." What? The bankers really just wanted to hear Barack Obama speak? I mean, he's a good speaker, but come on, man. Like, what's going on here? Well, Hillary got a lot of those too. Oh, yeah. Tons.

    2. NA

      And Bill.

    3. DS

      Tons of them. Yeah.

    4. NA

      And that's where they make the bulk of their money, right?

    5. DS

      Mm-hmm. When they get out of the office, then they do these speeches. Yeah.

    6. NA

      Which is kind of hilarious.

    7. DS

      Uh, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, I believe the ballpark numbers, they left the White House, they were like net worth was around $4 million, and then it was like well over $100 million, uh, by 2016.

    8. NA

      (laughs)

    9. DS

      So, they made a lot of money after the White House.

    10. NA

      This is the new deal we just made today.

    11. DS

      "US plans sale of F-35 fighter jets to UAE in $23 billion arms deal. Trump administration-"

    12. NA

      Mm-hmm.

    13. DS

      Yep.

    14. NA

      They're saying, I was reading today, they're saying he's making a bunch of deals now on his way out.

    15. DS

      Oh, sure. That he'd planned to sell 50 advanced F-35 fighters to the United Arab Emirates as a part of a broader arms deal worth more than 23 billion. That's the weird thing about someone on the way out. They can do so much. Well, I don't know that he's on the way out (laughs) . I mean, he's-

    16. NA

      You don't think he's on the way out?

    17. DS

      Well, yeah. He's o- he's almost certainly on the way out.

    18. NA

      Do you know-

    19. DS

      But he's gonna fight it.

    20. NA

      Yeah, but do you know how insanely difficult it is to prove, first of all, to prove that there's voter fraud, and then to prove there's enough voter fraud where they could overturn it?

    21. DS

      It's, uh, it's incredibly difficult. And it's not just that he would have to do that. He'd have to do that in a few different states.

    22. NA

      Yeah.

    23. DS

      And so, it's an incredibly difficult task. Uh, but it's pretty interesting. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before where you have one president just saying like, "No, this was bullshit."

    24. NA

      Yeah.

    25. DS

      "And I'm gonna fight it legally." And another thing that I thought was really weird, uh, from the press is that they... So, they're, I saw it twice now, um, was on MSNBC and CNN where he was giving a press conference tell- saying how the votes were stolen from him and the system was unfair.

    26. NA

      Mm-hmm.

    27. DS

      And they cut away. They say, "We will not show this, because he's lying." And then just the other day on Fox News, Neil Cavuto cut away from, uh, Trump's press secretary saying there was voter fraud and he goes, "Well, you know, we can't verify that, so we can't air this." I don't under- And it's like, look, man. Whatever you want to say, this is a story.

    28. NA

      Right.

    29. DS

      The fact that the president is claiming voter fraud is a story. So, air this and then debunk it afterward. But what is this thing where you go, "No, we won't show people."

    30. NA

      Right.

  5. 1:00:001:08:42

    Mm-hmm. …

    1. DS

      Sanders, uh, pretty much agrees with him on that. He's talked about how war is big business and how they ... you know, we were lied into the war in Iraq, and he voted ... Bernie Sanders, to his credit ... He was one of the very few Democrats in the Senate who voted against the war in Iraq at the time.

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. DS

      Very few Democrats in the Senate d- did ... like, actually stood their ground. And good for him for doing that. But you're talking about people lying to get real human beings slaughtered that ... to make people money. I mean, i- if you talk about that and you don't have some type of outrage about it, I- ... that just doesn't seem to make sense to me. Like, that's not how a real human being should feel.

    4. JR

      No, I totally understand. But I wonder if, like, in the middle of that, when you're, you're insulting people, you're perpetuating ... You're, you're keeping going this, uh, this sort of system that's been in place for so long, where you run. You talk about your merits. You shit on the flaws of your opponent. He does the same to you. Whoever lands the most blows wins. I mean, this is highlighted by the way Kamala Harris has, like, sort of talked about her debate with, uh, with Biden, right? When, when she was on Colbert.

    5. DS

      Mm-hmm.

    6. JR

      She's like, "It was a debate."It was a debate. But it's like, that's the only way to do it? Is the only way to do it to shit on the other person?

    7. DS

      I think that you have to ... Like, I think there's nothing wrong with really running on your ideas and I think that part Bernie Sanders did.

    8. JR

      Okay.

    9. DS

      You know? And I- I don't like a lot of Bernie Sanders ideas. I think he's got some that are really good.

    10. JR

      Which ones do you like?

    11. DS

      Well, okay, what I love about Bernie Sanders is that he voted against the war in Iraq, as I just said. He was great in the Senate about the war in Yemen and trying to bring that to an end, which is just this godawful nightmare that's still going on, that Obama started and, and Trump continued. I, I mean, what's happening in Yemen is like one of the biggest tragedies in, in my lifetime.

    12. JR

      Well, explain it to people.

    13. DS

      So Yemen is a ... I mean, Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East, uh, which is saying something. You know, they were already the poorest country in the Middle East before any of this happened, and the Saudis basically went to war with, with the Houthis in Yemen, um, and America backed the Saudis, uh, under Barack Obama. Uh, what b- Obama administration said to placate the Saudis. Uh, basically they ... The Saudis were pissed off about a lot of things, um, and they're a big business partner with us. And so they were pissed off about the war in Iraq. The Saudis didn't want the war in Iraq. They kind of foresaw what would happen, that it would give Iran control of the region and it would be a, a nightmare, but the Cheneyites really wanted the war in Iraq, Israel really wanted the war in Iraq and the Neocons won and they got the war. And so they were already pissed off about that, and then they were really pissed off that, uh, Obama made the Iran deal with Iran. And so to a ... To placate, which I believe was the direct quote, to placate the Saudis, um, Obama decided to back them in this war against Yemen and they put a full blockade around the country, which was already the poorest country in, in the Middle East, and this led to just disa- ... I mean, the UN said it was the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Uh, this was before COVID, but I, I think it's still probably up there. Uh, there were, there were well over a million cases of cholera, which is basically, I mean, curable with, I think, liquids. Like I think Gatorade could solve cholera. I don't know. You might need antibiotics or something like that. But it was children and old people just dying in massive numbers. I still don't think they know the exact numbers. It's gonna be somewhere on the scale of what the war in Iraq was, hundreds of thousands of people dead. And Bernie Sanders really led the effort to try to end it in the Senate and he did a great job on that. Like, phenomenal. Um, he also has a great... He had a great, uh, bill proposed to, uh, decriminalize marijuana on a federal level, um, which I th- think would be phenomenal. Um, and so there were, there were several thing ... Like those would probably be the ones I'd pick that I thought were really great about Bernie Sanders. So I think running on issue ... My ... Probably one of my big criticisms of him is that he doesn't (laughs) he doesn't really lead with those issues. Like he didn't ... Those aren't the things he talked about a lot on the campaign trail but he was excellent on all of those. Um, so I think you could run ... He could run on his principles, you know? But I think you have to, at some point, have a little bit of a killer instinct to, to become the alpha monkey, to become the leader of this country, and I thought that Bernie Sanders could have won the whole election with the tone that he started-

    14. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    15. DS

      ... in the primary and he didn't. And I think that Bernie Sanders ... Like, look, the, the corporate press completely came down to try to ruin it for him. Who knows what the DNC did this time? I mean, it was exposed in 2016. Who knows what they were doing behind the scenes? But-

    16. JR

      Well, we know what they were doing. We know that that was the reason why Klobuchar and Buttigieg dropped out.

    17. DS

      Well that we know, yes.

    18. JR

      We know that Warren stayed in to siphon votes off of Bernie.

    19. DS

      No question.

    20. JR

      And we know they gave their delegates over to Biden.

    21. DS

      No question, we know that much. We know that right ... Now, we don't know exactly who made the phone calls. I think there was reporting that Barack Obama had called a couple of them to like get them-

    22. JR

      That sounds good.

    23. DS

      That ... Yeah (laughs) it sure does. Uh, but so that ... But you're right, so all the competition with Biden drops out right before Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders competition Elizabeth Warren stays in til the bitter end for-

    24. JR

      I think it felt like with Bernie, even though th- th- there's talk that they couldn't control him, right? There's also talk that he couldn't win 'cause there were certain key states that he's never gonna win because even though that message resonated with a lot of people, including me, what resonated with me is first of all absolving peop- people of student debt. I know a lot of people that are wrapped up in student debt and I think it's one of the best examples of ... First of all, you have, uh, essentially children, right? You have someone who's 17, 18 years old, they're going into school and they're taking on enormous debt and they don't ... I- I think you could make the real argument that they don't have the intellectual capacity to understand the ramifications of this. Maybe some do, maybe some don't, but when you're talking about people that are in debt hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time they get outta school and then they get outta school and they get a job that pays 40 grand a year, do the math, how long before you catch up? You never catch up. There's people to this day that are getting Social Security, that are getting their Social Security docked because they owe money for student loans. I mean, you're at the end of the fucking game.

    25. DS

      Is that tr- ... Are people-

    26. JR

      Oh yeah.

    27. DS

      ... they're old enough for Social Security-

    28. JR

      Oh yeah.

    29. DS

      ... and they have student loan debts like that?

    30. JR

      Oh yeah.

Episode duration: 3:08:16

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