Joe Rogan Experience #1562 - Dave Smith

Joe Rogan 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience. (drums playing)

0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music)

Joe Rogan 0:12 Nice to see you again.

Dave Smith 0:13 What's up, Joe? Good to be back.

Joe Rogan 0:15 Good to see you my bro. Good to see you. Good to see you. What are you doing in town?

Dave Smith 0:17 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.

Joe Rogan 0:23 And you're looking for a place to escape.

Dave Smith 0:25 Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:26 New York, uh, Schults told me that New York is like they just won World War III. People are dancing in the streets.

Dave Smith 0:32 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-

Joe Rogan 0:43 (laughs)

Dave Smith 0:43 ... it was kind of nice for the city to just have one.

Joe Rogan 0:45 Yeah.

Dave Smith 0:45 Just to have a day. It's the only day that it, it's felt happy there since March.

Joe Rogan 0:51 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.

Dave Smith 1:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02 I like that.

Dave Smith 1:03 E- even if they're happy for a stupid reason-

Joe Rogan 1:04 Well-

Dave Smith 1:05 ... you're like, "At least be happy."

Joe Rogan 1:06 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.

Dave Smith 1:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:37 All they, all they want to say is that the good guys won, now we're gonna go back to being America again. (sighs)

Dave Smith 1:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:45 And then Pfizer announces a new vaccine. Ahhh.

Dave Smith 1:49 Well, it would be nice if we could go back to being America again.

Joe Rogan 1:52 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:52 I think we're still far off from that happening.

Joe Rogan 1:55 Totally.

Dave Smith 1:55 But you're, you're right that I think most people ... It, and this is ... It's not just politics, it's true with everything in life, like most people have expertise in very limited areas, um, and for everything else, you're kind of just trusting what somebody else tells you.

Joe Rogan 2:10 Yeah, it's uh ... And b- especially with politics, it's so ... I know very little about it, even though I've read a lot about it. I'm still, I'm like, "What is all this ... " You, d- y- j- you know there's some fuckery going on, and you know there's a lot of special interests and there's a lot of money and there's a lot of shenanigans, but it's like ... To really know how this stuff works, to really understand lobbyists, to really understand how bills get passed, to really understand Congress, to really understand the Senate, like w- you gotta deep dive for years.

Dave Smith 2:42 Yeah, and then you still don't know a lot of it. I mean, you know, y- you can go based off, say, like what's been declassified that the CIA has, has been doing.

Joe Rogan 2:51 Right.

Dave Smith 2:51 But what do we not know? I mean-

Joe Rogan 2:52 Wow, yeah.

Dave Smith 2:52 ... and there's, there's a whole lot that we don't know. But I think we know enough to go i- to know that it stinks.

Joe Rogan 2:59 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 2:59 That there's a lot of corruption. And in many ways I think that's what Trump, at least the people who support Trump, saw him as, is the guy who was outside that system who was kind of fighting for them. Not saying that's the truth.

Joe Rogan 3:12 Right.

Dave Smith 3:12 But I think that's what a lot of Trump supporters saw in him.

Joe Rogan 3:15 Yeah, that was the simplistic comic book version of what Trump was to them, is like ... And that's where, like, that QAnon stuff all comes in and, you know, people thinking that it's really like this plot to stop child molesters and ...

Dave Smith 3:27 Yeah. Well, and t- and the, the system is always corrupt enough to give cover to the wildest conspiracy theory, because they are already ... Like y- you could say, "Okay, well, perhaps, you know, QAnon conspiracy theorists believe some really crazy shit." But then you just go, "But look at what happened with this Jeffrey Epstein guy."

Joe Rogan 3:49 I know.

Dave Smith 3:49 I mean, there really was this child sex trafficking ring that, that was covered up. I mean, we have that woman on ABC News who was basically saying, "I broke the story and my bosses told me no."

Joe Rogan 3:59 Yeah. I think it was NBC.

Dave Smith 4:00 Was it NBC?

Joe Rogan 4:01 Yeah, yeah.

Dave Smith 4:01 Oh, w- we broke the story but, you know, they wanted to protect, uh, access to the royal family. So we would let a powerful multimillionaire or billionaire child sex trafficking ring, uh, leader go, skate, because we wanted access to the royal family.

Joe Rogan 4:18 What the fuck, dude? That, how about that video wh- where, the interview where Princess An- Prince Andrew? It's Andrew, right?

Dave Smith 4:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 4:25 Princess Andrew. Prince-

Dave Smith 4:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:27 I misgendered him, I'm so sorry. Prince Andrew was uh, on television with that lady, and they're asking him questions about whether or not he was there and what happened, and you could see this look in his face like he's never really been questioned before.

Dave Smith 4:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:41 He, he ... The fact that he agreed to do th- uh, is so weird. Like, it's almost like he doesn't understand what a trap is. "Look, I've never been trapped before."

Dave Smith 4:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:51 "I'm a royal."

Dave Smith 4:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:53 Is he a royal anymore, or did they kick him out? Something happened?

Dave Smith 4:56 I, I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

Joe Rogan 4:57 They can kick you out.

Dave Smith 4:58 Yeah, they can.

Joe Rogan 4:59 They kicked out the, uh, the dude who hooked up with the actress.

Dave Smith 5:02 Yeah. He, he wanted to ba- ... I think he left. I think he-

Joe Rogan 5:05 I think he left too, but he wanted to go back for something and they go, "Nah, son."

Dave Smith 5:07 (laughs) You're done.

Joe Rogan 5:09 Wasn't this something recent, Jamie? Wasn't this one weird- Uh, 2020, uh- Which one's he? Harry? Yeah. 2020.

Dave Smith 5:13 Or is that uh-

Joe Rogan 5:14 No, no.

Dave Smith 5:14 ... Harry Potter? Am I thinking of Harry Potter?

Joe Rogan 5:15 No, I think you're right. I think you're right.

Dave Smith 5:16 I think you're right, it's Harry. Yeah, I think-

Joe Rogan 5:17 (laughs)

Dave Smith 5:17 ... you confuse me with the Harry Potter.

Joe Rogan 5:19 I just think it's fucking so preposterous that we literally don't know anything that guy's done-

Dave Smith 5:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:24 ... other than that he's a prince. "Prince Harry saddened and disappointed that his request for a Remembrance Day wreath was denied."

Dave Smith 5:32 Oh.

Joe Rogan 5:32 Oh, no. The Duke of Sussexk, Sussexk ...

Dave Smith 5:36 You know, we, we spend a lot of time, uh-

Joe Rogan 5:38 Sussexky. Look at that name, Sussex.

Dave Smith 5:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:39 ... was saddened and disappointed at the decision to snub his request for a wreath to be laid out at the National Memorial in London.

Dave Smith 5:47 Man, the level of suffering-

Joe Rogan 5:49 Mm.

Dave Smith 5:49 ... that he must go through to not get-

Joe Rogan 5:51 Poor, poor.

Dave Smith 5:51 ... his royal wreath.

Joe Rogan 5:52 Yeah, and, uh, and ... Yeah, Prince Andrew did not attend. Mm. (laughs)

Dave Smith 5:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:55 Yeah, wonder why. (laughs) Yeah, the, I don't think they let him. Decorated war hero? Oh. What? Prince Andrew's a decorated war hero?What did he do?

Dave Smith 6:05 Mm. That's news to me.

Joe Rogan 6:05 "I pressed buttons..."

Dave Smith 6:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:07 "... that led to victory!"

Dave Smith 6:09 Yeah, I have a feeling the prince wasn't on the front line.

Joe Rogan 6:11 (laughs)

Dave Smith 6:12 They weren't just, like, throwing him out. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:13 He's a, he's... "Royal Navy helicopter pilot in the war with Argentina to recapture the Falkland Islands in the 1980s, and returned as a hero." Huh. I didn't even know there was a war with Argentina-

Dave Smith 6:27 That, uh-

Joe Rogan 6:27 ... in the 1980s. Oh, I remember the Falkland Islands. I remember the name.

Dave Smith 6:31 Yeah, this smells like bullshit to me.

Joe Rogan 6:33 (growls)

Dave Smith 6:33 I don't believe he's a war hero for a second.

Joe Rogan 6:35 "I'm a war hero and a royal. I demand a 16-year-old girl."

Dave Smith 6:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:42 (laughs)

Dave Smith 6:42 Well, when you say it like that.

Joe Rogan 6:43 (laughs)

Dave Smith 6:43 I mean, all right. I'm... We'll see what we can get you.

Joe Rogan 6:45 It's just amazing that that Epstein guy roped so many people into that shit.

Dave Smith 6:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:49 That's real weird, man. It's real weird when something that creepy turns out to be true.

Dave Smith 6:54 Yeah. And it's very revealing. I mean, it's like, so if y- you had an honest press, you know, if they weren't, uh, every bit as corrupt as those conspiracy theorists think they are, you would think that the fact that, say, like, a former president was on his flight logs would've led to a huge scandal, where they would really wanna get to the bottom of that. You would think right now they'd still wanna get to the bottom of that. Like, "Hey, who else was involved in this? What did..." Now, okay, he was on his plane. We don't know that that means that Bill Clinton was involved in, in the worst aspects of it. But you would think the, the press would at least wanna find that out.

Joe Rogan 7:32 No.

Dave Smith 7:32 And there's very little interest.

Joe Rogan 7:33 No, because the press goes after Bill Clinton, then Hillary Clinton gets somehow in, like, connected to it, and then that could sink Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and that's bad for the people that hate Donald Trump.

Dave Smith 7:43 Well, that's-

Joe Rogan 7:43 Jeffrey Epstein's-

Dave Smith 7:44 ... that's for sure.

Joe Rogan 7:44 ... palanquin mansion to be demolished. Oh my God. "Local real estate developer says he's in contract to buy the waterfront estate and has planned to knock it down and build a new home." That's the smart move.

Narrator 7:53 $22 million house.

Joe Rogan 7:55 Oh, shit.

Dave Smith 7:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:57 Yeah, well, it's expensive down there. Meanwhile, it's gonna be underwater in, like, five years according to Al Gore. Right?

Narrator 8:02 But I also read he left it to a Christian group, which I was trying to find too. So it's kind of, I don't know which one of those two stories. This is in The Wall Street Journal, so I'll believe that over the, he left it to someone.

Dave Smith 8:10 Do you think they just have to knock it down just because it's his?

Joe Rogan 8:13 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 8:14 So they kind of have to?

Joe Rogan 8:15 Yeah.

Dave Smith 8:15 Do you think it'd be awkward if there was, like, part of it they wanted to keep?

Joe Rogan 8:18 When I was looking at real estate in Boulder, the house where the little girl was killed... What is her name, the little girl who was in the, uh-

Narrator 8:24 JonBenét Ramsey.

Joe Rogan 8:25 JonBenét Ramsey. Th- that house is, been for sale forever. They can't sell it. I think they even changed the address. They might have even changed the name of the street trying to sell it, and they just couldn't sell it. 'Cause I remember we were looking at it. We're like, "This house is nice." Like, "Why is it so cheap?" It's one of those deals. And then you find out and you're like, "Oh, fuck."

Dave Smith 8:43 'Cause if you can afford a nice house, you'd probably prefer not the one that a little girl was killed in.

Joe Rogan 8:48 Nobody wants that house.

Dave Smith 8:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:49 Nobody wants that house.

Narrator 8:50 They're gonna do it to the one in New York. It says it's listed at $88 million.

Joe Rogan 8:53 I'm gonna buy it.

Dave Smith 8:55 (laughs)

Narrator 8:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:55 I'm moving to New York.

Dave Smith 8:57 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:58 I'm moving to, moving the show to New York.

Dave Smith 8:59 All right.

Joe Rogan 8:59 I'm buying it as long as it comes with a painting of Bill Clinton in the blue dress.

Dave Smith 9:02 (laughs)

Narrator 9:02 (laughs) I've heard it's, it's set up with a lot of equipment, so we should be able to do a show out of it.

Joe Rogan 9:05 Okay. Let's do it. Yeah, it streams right to the CIA.

Narrator 9:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:08 You don't even... (laughs)

Dave Smith 9:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:10 You don't even have to get them to watch you on YouTube. They get a fl- they get a live feed. Yeah, I'm gonna buy that house.

Narrator 9:15 All right.

Joe Rogan 9:16 Fuck it.

Narrator 9:17 Let's do it.

Joe Rogan 9:17 Why not?

Dave Smith 9:19 It'd be pretty epic.

Joe Rogan 9:20 It's probably... It's, it's a probably a really good investment.

Dave Smith 9:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:23 Probably worth $89 million eventually.

Dave Smith 9:25 Yeah. And then-

Narrator 9:26 I think it was 70 or something, so it's already gone up.

Joe Rogan 9:28 (laughs)

Dave Smith 9:28 And then if you try to sell it-

Joe Rogan 9:30 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 9:30 ... it'll be like, "Oh, this was Joe Rogan's place."

Joe Rogan 9:32 Yeah.

Dave Smith 9:32 It'll, it won't have that Epstein-

Joe Rogan 9:33 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 9:33 ... you know, stink on it anymore.

Joe Rogan 9:34 Right. That's what I'm saying.

Dave Smith 9:36 I think it's a good move. I support it.

Joe Rogan 9:38 I need to talk to my guy, see if I can make it happen.

Narrator 9:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:40 (laughs) No. I wouldn't buy a fucking newsstand in New York City.

Dave Smith 9:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:46 I don't believe in New York City anymore. I don't. I think that de Blasio guy has ruined that place for a solid 10 years.

Dave Smith 9:53 Yeah. I think you're right. I think-

Joe Rogan 9:54 And we got the fans on here, right? I can smoke the cigar?

Narrator 9:56 Uh, they were. I'll go double-check.

Joe Rogan 9:58 Okay.

Narrator 9:59 Yeah, here it... It says it's for sale right now, "gargantuan New York City mansion."

Joe Rogan 10:03 Mm.

Narrator 10:04 "Home to Epstein horrors."

Joe Rogan 10:05 Mm.

Dave Smith 10:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:06 Oh, you could rent it.

Dave Smith 10:07 That's...

Joe Rogan 10:07 $30,000 a month.

Narrator 10:08 Yeah, bam.

Joe Rogan 10:09 That's what we need to do. We need to just rent it.

Dave Smith 10:11 Go-

Narrator 10:11 Could do a month of podcast there.

Joe Rogan 10:12 You know what we should do? We should fill it up with homeless people.

Dave Smith 10:15 (laughs) Then leave.

Joe Rogan 10:17 Just rent it and just let it, let homeless people live there.

Narrator 10:20 Oh, yeah. Sure.

Joe Rogan 10:20 Just tell e- tell them we want one room to do the podcast-

Dave Smith 10:23 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:23 ... and then we'll have security that makes sure the homeless people don't go in th- that room. Everything else, you do whatever you want.

Dave Smith 10:29 That... Now, that actually sounds like a Bill de Blasio plan that you're putting into effect.

Joe Rogan 10:32 Yeah, it's-

Dave Smith 10:32 That's more or less what he's been doing.

Joe Rogan 10:34 ... it's progressive.

Dave Smith 10:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:34 It's progressive.

Dave Smith 10:35 Yeah. There you go.

Joe Rogan 10:36 Imagine if we did that. Imagine. (laughs)

Dave Smith 10:39 They'd probably give you a freaking medal. Bill de Blasio would probably celebrate you for doing it.

Joe Rogan 10:42 That guy is so silly. You know that's not his real name?

Dave Smith 10:45 Yeah, I, I do know that.

Joe Rogan 10:46 He's probably got a German name.

Dave Smith 10:47 Uh-huh. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:48 Yeah.

Dave Smith 10:48 He's very, very weird guy.

Joe Rogan 10:50 Oh, he's the weirdest.

Dave Smith 10:51 Um, and really, uh, committed to his weird ideology, that he wants, uh, you know, like, to, uh, not just when things get back to normal, they can't get back to the regular normal. It's gotta be this, uh, more, you know, inclusive normal. And he, so he's taken it upon himself that he's going to try to remake New York City, uh, in his progressive image, uh, while the city is going through the worst year it's, it's been through in my lifetime.

Joe Rogan 11:18 He's an odd duck.

Dave Smith 11:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:19 I don't know how he got there. I don't, obviously I don't live there, so I don't understand it. But, um, New York City, it, it's... Um, tell me if this is true, but I'm pretty sure, Jamie, that 1% of the people in New York City pay 50% of the taxes.

Dave Smith 11:33 That sounds reasonable.

Joe Rogan 11:35 Yeah.

Dave Smith 11:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:35 The fact that you could piss those people off and still be mayor is hilarious.

Dave Smith 11:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:40 Like, how does... (sighs)

Dave Smith 11:41 Well, they still only get one vote each, so, you know, that's kind of the way it works. You can-

Joe Rogan 11:46 That's cute.

Dave Smith 11:47 ... you know?

Joe Rogan 11:47 What you just said is cute. Like, it really works that way. "It's just one person, one vote. That's it."

Dave Smith 11:50 Yep.

Joe Rogan 11:51 "No one has any additional influence at all."

Dave Smith 11:53 Well, no, but I'm just saying that if you can win elections by playing to, to the other bit-

Joe Rogan 11:57 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Dave Smith 11:58 ... to, to other people, and also that, you know, some of those people kind of like the progressive rhetoric.

Joe Rogan 12:02 Look at this. Look at this statistic. It's ba- bananas. "The highest earning 1% of New York City res- residents generated 43% of the city income taxes and 51% of the New York state income taxes collected from individuals living in the city as of 2016." That's crazy. (laughs) That's so much money.

Dave Smith 12:21 And then you hear all this stuff about paying your fair share.

Joe Rogan 12:24 Jesus.

Dave Smith 12:24 And it's like, so where exactly does that come in? Is that not enough?

Joe Rogan 12:27 Well, it's like LA, right? It's like, a lot of people felt like even though the taxes were exorbitant, it was worth it because LA pre-COVID was pretty badass. You know, The Comedy Store wa- for us, like-

Dave Smith 12:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:39 ... obviously I'm comedy-centric, but The Comedy Store was open. The restaurants, restaurants were amazing. There's so much, so many things to do, you know? It's just, yeah, it's crowded, but h- the people are cool as fuck. It's like there's a lot of good things. And then as soon as COVID hit, everybody was like, "Why are we here?"

Dave Smith 12:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:57 Like, "Why am I paying so much?" And then they start talking about raising the taxes to 16 plus, 16+ percent state taxes. That's more than I give my agent.

Dave Smith 13:07 (laughs) Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 13:08 Imagine.

Dave Smith 13:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:10 It's crazy.

Dave Smith 13:10 Well, and it's, uh, I think that also happened, I think even more so in New York, um, because when the l- you know, like, uh, New York, it's the same thing. It's like, well, it's expensive. You pay a ton for your rent or, or to own or whatever, but you know, it's like the best museums, the best-

Joe Rogan 13:24 Yeah.

Dave Smith 13:24 ... nightlife, the best food.

Joe Rogan 13:25 Yeah.

Dave Smith 13:25 The best all these things.

Joe Rogan 13:26 Yeah.

Dave Smith 13:26 But then all of a sudden when the lockdowns hit, now people are, like, locked down in a one-bedroom apartment that they could get a house for-

Joe Rogan 13:34 Yeah.

Dave Smith 13:35 ... you know, anywhere else in the country. And a lot of people started to re-question, "Why am I here?" What-

Joe Rogan 13:40 And people started looking real pale.

Dave Smith 13:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 13:42 Like, a lot of my friends that lived there, they would go out very rarely, and when you see them, they'd be, like, real sunken in. And, like, that is the worst look for your immune system 'cause, I mean, you're not getting any vitamin D.

Dave Smith 13:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:53 You're not out there at all.

Dave Smith 13:54 Well, that's the terrible irony of this whole thing, right, is that it really ended up fucking over so many people's immune systems because the worst thing you could do... Like, the best thing you could do for COVID is, is have your immune system in good shape.

Joe Rogan 14:05 Yeah.

Dave Smith 14:06 And the worst thing you could do for your immune system is, like, stay inside all day, be in a constant state of anxiety, don't get sun, don't get fresh air, eat like shit, drink too much, you know, everything that people have been doing.

Joe Rogan 14:17 And have no money-

Dave Smith 14:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:18 ... right? 'Cause you're out of work, so the... Incredible pressure on you.

Dave Smith 14:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:23 (sighs)

Dave Smith 14:23 And we'll n- uh, I mean, we may never know exactly what the total human cost of all of that was, but we'll s- we'll get more of a sense of it over the next few years.

Joe Rogan 14:31 Yeah. It's, it's a, it's sort of a disingenuous argument 'cause they're comparing the total cost of the lockdown to the lost lives because of the pandemic. The problem is if there wasn't a lockdown, the loss of lives would be far greater. And so you're comparing it to a different thing.

Dave Smith 14:50 Well-

Joe Rogan 14:50 You know?

Dave Smith 14:51 ... s- sure.

Joe Rogan 14:51 'Cause they're saying we shouldn't lockdown, no one should have ever locked down, but if they didn't lockdown, how many more people would have died? It's, it's a real good question, right?

Dave Smith 14:58 No, it's, it's very... It, 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...

Joe Rogan 15:17 I think for sure it was some.

Dave Smith 15:18 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-

Joe Rogan 15:33 Oh, yeah.

Dave Smith 15:33 ... 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?

Joe Rogan 15:52 Right.

Dave Smith 15:52 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-

Joe Rogan 16:02 Yeah.

Dave Smith 16:02 ... 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."

Joe Rogan 16:13 Right.

Dave Smith 16:13 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?

Joe Rogan 16:23 Yeah.

Dave Smith 16:24 Which is... sucks 'cause you have to think.

Joe Rogan 16:25 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-

Dave Smith 16:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 16:46 ... 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.

Dave Smith 17:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:11 Like, do you... You're, you're going to Soviet Russia type shit. Like, y- this is-

Dave Smith 17:17 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."

Joe Rogan 17:24 Yeah.

Dave Smith 17:24 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-

Joe Rogan 17:40 Yeah.

Dave Smith 17:40 ... 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-

Joe Rogan 17:48 Yeah.

Dave Smith 17:48 ... of people." So, like, this-

Joe Rogan 17:50 Well, AOC said it.

Dave Smith 17:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:51 Yeah.

Dave Smith 17:52 You know, a pretty, uh, influential member-

Joe Rogan 17:53 Very.

Dave Smith 17:54 ... of, of the Democrats.

Joe Rogan 17:55 Yeah.

Dave Smith 17:55 Which, you know, she's made herself, like, huge. Um...

Joe Rogan 17:58 She gonna be president.

Dave Smith 17:59 I don't know about that.

Joe Rogan 18:00 She could do it.

Dave Smith 18:01 She's not very popular outside of her district.

Joe Rogan 18:03 I don't know about that. I think with young people, she represents, like, uh, this, uh, this idea that someone like her, young, hardworking, out there hustling, seriously progressive values, that you can get pretty far and certainly in the public eye.

Dave Smith 18:21 Well, you certainly can do what she's doing. I mean, she's proved that. Like, you could go to a very blue district and, and, uh, primary one of the most establishment Democrats and, and rise to national prominence. So, so she did that. I don't know, right now in the country, I think AOC would have a really tough time getting elected, uh, on a national level. But-

Joe Rogan 18:41 Maybe.

Dave Smith 18:42 ... who knows? Maybe it's just the future.

Joe Rogan 18:42 Well, she's only 30.

Dave Smith 18:43 Yeah, it's insane.

Joe Rogan 18:44 Yeah.

Dave Smith 18:44 It's insane.

Joe Rogan 18:44 So she's got a lot of time. Boy, when I was 30, I was so fucking stupid.

Dave Smith 18:48 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:48 It's kind of amazing. Not that I'm not that stupid now. I'm fairly stupid now, but boy, when I was 30, I was dumb.

Dave Smith 18:54 Yeah, well-

Joe Rogan 18:54 Kind of amazing she's a congresswoman.

Dave Smith 18:55 ... she, she has a little bit of that too. (laughs) She has-

Joe Rogan 18:57 Yeah, well, everybody does-

Dave Smith 18:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:58 ... when they're 30. Um, you know Bridget Phetasy? Bridget Phetasy, uh, was ... Read some of her writing that she wrote when she was 24, she's like, "Oh, my God. I was basically AOC." She's like-

Dave Smith 19:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:07 ... "I was such a lefty. I was so delusional." She goes, "And now, I'm just so much more of a realist." It ... I'm, um ... My worry about this Biden thing is that people voted for Biden because they hate Trump. They didn't vote for Biden because he's a leader that they respect and they want and they admire and they're like, "He's gonna lead us out of it." Like, if Obama was calling for unity, if he was the guy that was the president, and he was calling for unity, "We've gotta abandon all these ideas, you know, about division. We're all together," and he brought everybody together again, that might work. That might work. People might recognize that this really intelligent guy with this message of unity should be listened to.

Dave Smith 19:49 Well, th- ... But that did happen, right?

Joe Rogan 19:51 Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Smith 19:51 I mean, that happened in 2008. That's what Obama said-

Joe Rogan 19:53 Yeah.

Dave Smith 19:53 ... when he won.

Joe Rogan 19:54 Yeah.

Dave Smith 19:54 And there was some d- ... A decent amount of unity. I'm thinking at over 70% approval rating when he first came in. I mean, it wasn't certainly anything like the country is now.

Joe Rogan 20:03 Right.

Dave Smith 20:03 But at the end of eight years of Obama, you had a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and Donald-

Joe Rogan 20:08 Yeah.

Dave Smith 20:08 -fucking Trump elected-

Joe Rogan 20:10 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 20:10 -président. So, we had that, but, eh, it, it didn't matter because, uh, even with such a charismatic guy like Obama calling for unity and saying a lot of the right things, at least at first, the, the policies and what was actually happening in the country were really fucking over huge numbers of people. And then also things that might've been somewhat out of Obama's control, but not completely out, um, is that the era of ... It was like, like, the, the Obama recovery, which was the most, like, croniest, corrupt recovery ever, and the woke lecturing all rose up at the same time-

Joe Rogan 20:47 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 20:47 ... in the Obama years. Not all of it, his fault. But some of it is.

Joe Rogan 20:50 Did you see that Kamala Harris has, uh, her gender pronouns in her bio-

Dave Smith 20:54 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:54 ... on Twitter now?

Dave Smith 20:54 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:55 (laughs)

Dave Smith 20:55 She's ... I saw her say that, uh-

Joe Rogan 20:57 (laughs)

Dave Smith 20:57 ... in a CNN Town Hall when she was still-

Joe Rogan 20:59 Oh.

Dave Smith 20:59 -running for president. She came out and just ... No one even asked her. She just went, "I'm Kamala Harris. My genders are she/her."

Joe Rogan 21:05 No!

Dave Smith 21:05 And we're like, "What the fuck is this?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:07 No!

Dave Smith 21:07 (laughs) "What is going on?"

Joe Rogan 21:09 No! Did you see what Yannis Papas wrote?

Dave Smith 21:12 No.

Joe Rogan 21:13 He wrote, uh, uh, "My, my gender is he/haw."

Dave Smith 21:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:17 He's like, "I'm gonna start a trend here. Everyone go as he/haw."

Dave Smith 21:20 (laughs) That's great.

Joe Rogan 21:21 (laughs) I might take that on too. I might, I might do that.

Dave Smith 21:26 W-

Joe Rogan 21:26 Hee-haw. I like it.

Dave Smith 21:27 It's a very strange, strange thing.

Joe Rogan 21:29 There it is. (laughs)

Dave Smith 21:32 (laughs) Oh, it's in his bio?

Joe Rogan 21:35 Hee-haw. Science t- ... "Scientist and journalist," he wrote. (laughs)

Dave Smith 21:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:40 Ah!

Dave Smith 21:41 Oh, that's fucking great.

Joe Rogan 21:42 I love it. It's hilarious. Mm. Mm.

Dave Smith 21:45 I think though people, like, uh, they ... If, if you really did care about w- unity or whatever, which is, I think is, like, something that maybe we should care about a little bit, like-

Joe Rogan 21:54 For sure.

Dave Smith 21:55 I mean, not that we all have to, like, agree on everything or... I, I, I don't like this... We don't have to all be one and all have the same, you know, attitude-

Joe Rogan 22:01 No.

Dave Smith 22:01 -about everything. But when you see what's going on in the country over this year, the culture war shit is really scary. And, like, people should be appropriately concerned about that. When you see what's going on in, like, uh, what's going on in Portland this year where you had, like, the fucking, you know, like, like, f- ... Militias facing off against each other. You have, like, the Antifa versus the Proud Boys type shit. It's, like, the, we're ... It's like a ... They're playing pretend civil war.

Joe Rogan 22:26 Yeah.

Dave Smith 22:27 You know? Like, it's kind of a game.

Joe Rogan 22:28 They're LARPing.

Dave Smith 22:28 Right. But it's kind of not that far off.

Joe Rogan 22:31 Right.

Dave Smith 22:31 You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 22:31 Because people got shot and killed.

Dave Smith 22:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:33 Yeah.

Dave Smith 22:33 And there are people on guns staring each other down. And for everybody, for every sane person, should be like, "You do not wanna see a civil war in this fucking country."

Joe Rogan 22:42 Yeah.

Dave Smith 22:42 I don't care how much fun you think this is-

Joe Rogan 22:44 No.

Dave Smith 22:44 -right now in the moment, you don't want this to actually come to you holding your buddy's head while he bleeds out and-

Joe Rogan 22:50 Yeah.

Dave Smith 22:50 -screams for his mom, like-

Joe Rogan 22:51 Yeah.

Dave Smith 22:51 -you don't want that. So, the idea of toning that down is, is a good idea, but I think the only way to do that is to understand why Donald Trump was president to begin with. And that, like ... To me, the big story of all of this isn't that Joe Biden looks like he's gonna be the president. That's kinda boring to me. It's like, yeah, Joe, uh, Joe Biden got elected. He's been getting elected for fucking almost 50 years. Like, what? Uh, uh, okay. The story is still that Donald Trump won the presidency and then it ... Four years later, got, like, millions more votes than he got the first time, and almost, by the, by, by a hair, almost won it again.

Joe Rogan 23:32 Oh.

Dave Smith 23:32 I mean, that's, like, pretty fucking crazy. Did you see, uh, when he was in Pennsylvania, and he drew 53,000 people to his rally in Central Pennsylvania?

Joe Rogan 23:41 Yeah.

Dave Smith 23:41 And their start off ... The first, like, four minutes of it are a chant, "We love you. We love you." I mean, like, what the fuck is that?

Joe Rogan 23:51 (sighs)

Dave Smith 23:51 What's going on here? And to just kind of dismiss it, like, the corporate press attitude is like, "Well, it's racism." I think it's-

Joe Rogan 23:58 I think it's-

Dave Smith 23:58 -I think there's a little bit more.

Joe Rogan 23:59 -Failure of the education system.

Dave Smith 24:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:01 (laughs)

Dave Smith 24:01 I mean, I-

Joe Rogan 24:03 I don't-

Dave Smith 24:03 -I always, I always agree with failure (book slaps) of the education system. That is always an acceptable answer. But I think a big part of it-

Joe Rogan 24:08 It's rejection of looting. It's a rejection of the woke culture. It's a rejection of being called a racist and being called a, a fascist.

Dave Smith 24:16 That's a big part of it.

Joe Rogan 24:18 It's, it's a lot of the what ... This, this-... call for a radical shift in the identity of America.

Dave Smith 24:26 Well, that, I think that's a huge part of it. I also think that if you're ... It, the, the woke lecturing is almost like just the insult on top. Like, if you're one of these people who, who lives in these towns, uh, you- you've seen for, for decades now, like, factories disappear, jobs get outsourced, the- the- the life expectancy has gone down, suicides have gone up. You know, you're one of these, the- the ... Some guy in central Pennsylvania, or, or all over the country, and what ... You know, you probably lost your job. Now you're working a shittier job. Uh, you never really came back from where you were after 2008. Uh, you, maybe you got a son who's addicted to opioids. You got another son who like, you know, has never been the same since he got back from one of these stupid wars. Um, and then after all that, the people who sent you there are now lecturing you about your white privilege. And then Donald Trump, all it really took was Donald Trump came in and said, "You know what? I'm for you."

Joe Rogan 25:21 Yeah.

Dave Smith 25:21 "I'm for you. I'm not for the Mexicans or the Muslims. I'm not for this woke sh- I'm for you, and I want you to win." And that's, like, and- and they-

Joe Rogan 25:27 It's a s- like a simplistic message.

Dave Smith 25:29 Sure.

Joe Rogan 25:29 That's one of the things that he got across.

Dave Smith 25:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:31 He, he boiled down the whole thing to, like, make America great again. Like, that's a simplistic message, and to people that wanna sorta, like, they really ... You know some, some country music songs? I- I ... By the way, I'm a fan of country music. I like a lot of country music. But a lot of country music I don't like, because I know what you're doing. You're just trying to box everything into this real simple-

Dave Smith 25:54 (laughs) Right.

Joe Rogan 25:54 "We're gonna go down to the lake. We're gonna have ourselves a drink."

Dave Smith 25:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:59 You know, like, you know what I'm saying? "We're gonna ... Take my truck."

Dave Smith 26:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:02 "Everything's gonna be great. You know I miss my grandma." Like, there's like this simplistic, really boiled down worldview.

Dave Smith 26:11 Y-

Joe Rogan 26:11 And it comforts people, because people are scared of nuance and they're scared of, they're scared of the complexity of life.

Dave Smith 26:18 Yes. And Donald Trump was a master at that.

Joe Rogan 26:20 Yeah.

Dave Smith 26:21 Boiling things down to a real simple slo- slogan, a real, you know, simple phrase that i- that people can wrap their heads around-

Joe Rogan 26:28 Yeah.

Dave Smith 26:28 ... and get behind. But there's also that on the opposition to Trump's side, where they try to boil things down to, like, "Well, uh, th- it was racism," or, "It was-"

Joe Rogan 26:37 Yeah.

Dave Smith 26:37 "... white supremacy," or something like that.

Joe Rogan 26:39 Yeah.

Dave Smith 26:39 And you're like, "There's a lot more going on here." And I, I really think that i- i- if ... Like, they're ... These people on some level recognize that they've been screwed over by the establishment, forgotten by them, and that they, they are hated by-

Joe Rogan 26:56 Yeah.

Dave Smith 26:56 ... by the establishment, which is true. I ... Like, they're right about that. And so they wanted someone to fight for them, and I think Trump represents that-

Joe Rogan 27:03 Yeah.

Dave Smith 27:04 ... uh, uh, to them. I do- I don't think he really was that, uh, from my perspective. I think he's kind of a con artist. But I do think that he tapped into something that's really powerful and that actually could get a lot worse if there's not some kind of, like, reconciling with it.

Joe Rogan 27:20 Yeah. How does it get better now? That's the real question. Like, because what ... Like, w- how does it get better with Biden and Kamala Harris? I mean, unless people start rejecting ... Unless people realize that things aren't gonna change for the better with them in office.

Dave Smith 27:36 Well, that's ... I think that is ... that realization is gonna come, uh-

Joe Rogan 27:40 About a year and a half from now.

Dave Smith 27:42 ... soon. Yeah, ma- something like that, maybe. Maybe even sooner, 'cause things go ... You know, things move fast these days.

Joe Rogan 27:47 Yeah.

Dave Smith 27:48 Um, but I do think that ... See, o- one of the things that's interesting with Biden and Kamala Harris is that a lot of these, like, s- super progressive people are celebrating right now because Trump w- was out, you know, and so Trump was defeated. And they feel like they helped get Biden and Kamala Harris in, which is ... They were certainly a portion of helping them. And then Trump also is the one who is saying like, "Well, you know, Joe Biden, he's just a Trojan horse for AOC and Ilhan Omar. He's, he's a Trojan horse for socialism," which is actually complete bullshit. Uh, Joe Biden, if anything, is a Trojan horse for Dick Cheney. Jo- Joe Biden is a Trojan horse for the establishment war hawks, big banks, corporate elite, tech giants, all those people.

Joe Rogan 28:27 Well, look at the people he's filling his cabinet with.

Dave Smith 28:29 Yeah, it's gonna be them.

Joe Rogan 28:30 He's filling his cabinet with Republicans.

Dave Smith 28:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 28:32 (laughs)

Dave Smith 28:32 But those Republicans.

Joe Rogan 28:33 Yes. (laughs)

Dave Smith 28:33 But those Republicans.

Joe Rogan 28:35 Yeah, well-

Dave Smith 28:35 The- the ones who basically caused this whole mess to begin with.

Joe Rogan 28:38 One of the things that, that Trump said during his campaign, he's saying, talking about how much money that Joe Biden raised, he said, "I could raise that money too, but I'd have to make those deals, and then I- I'd have to be compromised." And when he was saying that I was like, "He's right."

Dave Smith 28:53 He's not wrong about that one.

Joe Rogan 28:54 He's not wrong about that, because if he decided to play ball with all those guys, like, they woulda got behind him.

Dave Smith 29:00 No.

Joe Rogan 29:00 The n- The narrative woulda switched.

Dave Smith 29:02 Yeah. That's for sure. And, and, and it's interesting. It's a really important question that people might wanna, uh, like, ponder, even people who really hate Donald Trump. And you can really hate Donald Trump. That's fine. But you might wonder why it is that the establishment hates him so much. And I have ... I ... Like, my, uh, guess is that it's not for the same reasons that your left-wing friend hates Donald Trump. Like, I don't buy for a fucking second that the, uh, the CIA and the Republican establishment hated Donald Trump because he said mean things about Mexicans. Like, I just don't buy that for a fucking second. These are people who will slaughter brown people in third world countries and lose no sleep over it. Like, I- I don't buy that's why they hated him. I think what they hated about Donald Trump was that he was a wild man who would blurt out things. And he blurted out a lot of crazy shit, but then he'd also blurt out the truth. And that was something that nobody ... You're not supposed to say that. Like, you're ... Uh, when Donald Trump was running 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?"

Joe Rogan 30:18 (laughs)

Dave Smith 30:18 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-

Joe Rogan 30:36 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."

Dave Smith 30:45 (laughs) Well, imagine he didn't say that.

Joe Rogan 30:47 Imagine he didn't say the dumbest shit, the dumbest shit that he said. Remember the, the Gold Star family?

Dave Smith 30:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:52 The family where d-

Dave Smith 30:53 The Kahn family, I believe?

Joe Rogan 30:55 Yes.

Dave Smith 30:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:55 Yeah. Where he, what did he... He criticized the family about some... I forget what the exact...

Dave Smith 31:01 It was, they spoke at the DNC.

Joe Rogan 31:03 Right.

Dave Smith 31:03 And then he started trashing them.

Joe Rogan 31:06 Yes. And their, their son died-

Dave Smith 31:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:08 ... representing this country in war. And everybody was like, "Well, you can't..." That's it. He's, he's done. Nope.

Dave Smith 31:15 Wasn't.

Joe Rogan 31:15 Nope.

Dave Smith 31:15 Wasn't done.

Joe Rogan 31:16 Imagine if he didn't do that.

Dave Smith 31:17 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.

Joe Rogan 31:25 (clears throat) Yeah.

Dave Smith 31:25 But eventually he did, uh, get it right where he was just like, "Yeah, they died in a war that Hillary Clinton supported."

Joe Rogan 31:32 What?

Dave Smith 31:32 That's the response.

Joe Rogan 31:33 Is this a new one? Trump suggests Gold Star families may be to blame for his infection.

Narrator 31:37 I think it was the second thing.

Dave Smith 31:38 Oh yeah. No, this is a different thing than what we were talking about.

Joe Rogan 31:41 This is new. "The president who is counting on support from the military members and their families suggests that for a second time in a week, that he... that they might have spread the coronavirus at the White House." Oh, so this is different Gold Star families.

Dave Smith 31:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:54 Oh. Well, did he c-

Dave Smith 31:54 That's the only president-

Joe Rogan 31:55 But hold on a sec. Is that a real direct quote? The problem is, I don't...

Dave Smith 31:59 Yeah. You gotta ask your source.

Joe Rogan 31:59 This is New York Times.

Narrator 32:01 Well...

Joe Rogan 32:02 New York Times has gone full woke. "They want to hug me. They want to kiss me. And they do, frankly, I'm not telling them to back up. I'm not doing it. But I did say it's obviously dangerous." Okay.

Dave Smith 32:13 All right. That's not exactly blaming them.

Joe Rogan 32:14 That's not the same thing. Yeah. That's not the same thing. He's just ta- telling the truth. Yeah. See, that's the other thing too. This, uh, this quote that they keep is sta- they keep reiterating this thing. "He had disparaged American troops who died in wars as losers and suckers." Is there... They, but they're saying this in quotes.

Dave Smith 32:35 Yes, because-

Joe Rogan 32:35 How is-

Dave Smith 32:35 ... it was quoted by some anonymous source who claims that he said that.

Joe Rogan 32:39 Yeah. But that is... How do you do that? Multiple sources. See, but you can say that. You can say multiple sources. But unless the people go on record, it seems like a very disingenuous thing to say.

Dave Smith 32:52 Yeah. Well, did you see the one... the guy who was, uh, uh-

Joe Rogan 32:55 Wait, isn't that... Am I wrong about that?

Dave Smith 32:56 Oh, no, you're absolutely right. Did you see the guy who revealed his identity? Who was the guy who was behind that New York Times story?

Joe Rogan 33:01 Yeah. Anonymous.

Dave Smith 33:01 And they said high-level... Yeah. Anonymous.

Joe Rogan 33:03 Yeah.

Dave Smith 33:03 They said high-level executive. And then there were all these people in the media speculating and they were like, "Well, the New York Times wouldn't do this unless this was a really high-level person." It was basically like wink, wink, this might be Pence, this might be, you know, Jared Kushner. This could be anybody saying this shit. And then it turns out it's like, oh, this was like some guy who was once a chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. Now, I'm not saying that's nothing, but it's not at all what you were kind of making people think, so... I think it's a very shady way to do journalism.

Joe Rogan 33:32 Yeah.

Dave Smith 33:33 And that's one of the things that I think is like one of the bright spots of the Trump administration. One of the best things that he was able to draw out was how agenda-driven the corporate press is. And you can agree with their agenda on hating Donald Trump, maybe that's how you feel, but it's still something to... Everybody knows now that they are agenda-driven. They're not here like, "We just give you the information."

Joe Rogan 33:55 They're activists.

Dave Smith 33:56 Yes.

Joe Rogan 33:57 That, that's the rise of the activist journalist is, uh... I understand from their perspective that they feel like they have this platform to do a good thing. But I feel like you do the best thing by telling the cold hard facts and letting people who are actually advocates, or, uh, actually advocates, uh, uh, activists rather, do the, the activist work with those cold hard facts.

Dave Smith 34:21 I, I have no problem with that.

Joe Rogan 34:22 Yeah.

Dave Smith 34:22 If you want to be an activist, go be an activist.

Joe Rogan 34:24 Yeah. But I think the honest-

Dave Smith 34:25 But just be honest.

Joe Rogan 34:25 As a journalist though, I think it's very... you're r- it's real slippery when you do things like that. Like, like the, those quotes, "losers" and "suckers." Unless you know who said it, unless they're willing to go on record and say, "I heard him say it," then you don't necessarily have a story.

Dave Smith 34:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 34:41 It's not the same. And w- how did he say it? What did-

Dave Smith 34:43 Yes.

Joe Rogan 34:44 What were the... what was the-

Dave Smith 34:45 And particularly if he denies it.

Joe Rogan 34:46 Yeah.

Dave Smith 34:47 So if, you know, like if I were to just say, "Oh, Joe told me this thing-"

Joe Rogan 34:50 Right.

Dave Smith 34:50 ... "last month." And you go, "I never said that."

Joe Rogan 34:52 Right.

Dave Smith 34:52 You can't just run with it and quote that you said it-

Joe Rogan 34:55 Right.

Dave Smith 34:55 ... because-

Joe Rogan 34:56 But it's like-

Dave Smith 34:56 ... you have no way of knowing.

Joe Rogan 34:57 The grab them by the pussy thing. That's... You heard it. Right?

Dave Smith 35:00 Well, that was said. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:01 That's real.

Dave Smith 35:01 That was said.

Joe Rogan 35:02 That was there. Right? So anything else... That's... It's just so strange. I g- I know... I understand their position, that they're coming from this place where they feel like they can do a lot of good. They can change opinions and they feel like the country is going in a bad direction. And they felt like with Donald Trump, this country is sliding into this horrible fascist state, and they want to do everything they can to prevent it. And they have the green light from all the other people that are there. But like all this stuff, these lessons that have been learned in the past about why it's so important to be totally honest and unbiased in, in, in terms of disseminating information, like you have to kind of do that. And then other people are supposed to take that information that you've disseminated unbiased and have these perspectives and debate both sides. That's what supposed to happen. The problem is when you get this distorted perception from the media that's very biased and that is not objective at all. It's like you're, you're, you're trying to lean towards a very particular conclusion that they think is right, they think is the good thing. But when you do that, then you don't have... you don't have a re- Like who is the Walter Mondale or who's... Not Walter Mondale, uh, Walter Cronkite. Who is the, who is the unbiased journalist? Who's the one that we trust for information? It used to be the New York Times. The New York Times used to be like brutally honest about basically everything, and now you read something in the New York Times like we did and we go, "Oh, it's the New York Times though."

Dave Smith 36:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:28 ... like, that's a weird shift that's happened in the last 10 years.

Dave Smith 36:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:32 Or less.

Dave Smith 36:32 Yeah, but it's-

Joe Rogan 36:33 Right?

Dave Smith 36:33 Well, yeah. I mean, it's definitely been like exposed in the last 10 years. But I think that truthfully, I, I think it's kind of a silver lining that at least people are starting to be aware of that. Uh, people are starting to go like, "Okay, I know that th- these institutions are not to be trusted." Because truthfully speaking, they got, you know, it's like I was saying to you before, uh, we started, where it's like for, for all the shit that people give Alex Jones, he got all of the biggest stories right over the last 20 years.

Joe Rogan 37:00 Yeah.

Dave Smith 37:01 And I'm not saying he didn't get anything wrong, but really, really big things, like, should we go to war in Iraq?

Joe Rogan 37:06 Yeah.

Dave Smith 37:06 Should we bail out bankers? Should all of this? He called these as lies and corruption right away. And the New York Times was selling all, all of these. I mean, they sold the war in Iraq. And so it's, to me, it's not the worst thing in the world if people at least recognize that these institutions are completely compromised. And I, I agree with you that there is a role for objective journalism, but I would at least accept if they were like, "Hey, listen. We think," like what you just said, "We think we have this platform and we need to use this to get Donald Trump not elected." At least be honest with it. Don't bullshit me and tell me, "We're just doing objective news," and every single story is about how Donald Trump is, you know, needs to be taken out.

Joe Rogan 37:45 They don't even address it. They don't say they're doing, uh, objective news anymore. They just do their thing.

Dave Smith 37:50 Well, they call other news fake news. So they'll say, oh-

Joe Rogan 37:53 The New York Times doesn't.

Dave Smith 37:54 Well, the New York Times may not, but I'm speaking in the corporate press in general.

Joe Rogan 37:57 Right.

Dave Smith 37:57 They'll say like, "Well, there's fake news out on the internet." And even the New York Times has done stories about how social media companies need to do more to, you know, combat-

Joe Rogan 38:05 Right.

Dave Smith 38:05 ... fake news on the internet and things like that.

Joe Rogan 38:06 But they're, but they're talking about like super hardcore QAnon type shit, aren't they?

Dave Smith 38:11 Well, kind of. I mean, it starts with that. And then they'll use that as an example, but then usually they also go to other things, like, "Look, this, uh, this, this New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop was called fake news from the day it came out, to the point that not only would all of the corporate press not report on it, but that social media companies were banning the link and Twitter froze the New York Post's Twitter account."

Joe Rogan 38:32 One of the CNN journalist on Twitter called it Russian disinformation.

Dave Smith 38:37 Yes. There's a bunch of people called it Russian disinformation.

Joe Rogan 38:39 But I wonder if it was Russian disinformation that the, the photo of the girl giving him a foot job-

Dave Smith 38:44 Yes. Russia-

Joe Rogan 38:45 Was that Russian?

Dave Smith 38:45 That was all ... She was Russian and the foot was Russian.

Joe Rogan 38:48 (laughs)

Dave Smith 38:48 It was a Russian foot job.

Narrator 38:50 Wh- d- what happened to that? I kinda lost track of what was happening with the laptop, but they've like have, have they shared information of it? Or-

Joe Rogan 38:57 Rudy Giuliani sold it on eBay.

Dave Smith 38:59 (laughs)

Narrator 38:59 Is that what's going on at the landscaping thing?

Dave Smith 39:00 Made a killing. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:01 I don't know. (laughs)

Narrator 39:01 At the Four Seasons landscaping?

Joe Rogan 39:03 I don't know. This, this is the thing-

Dave Smith 39:04 Well-

Joe Rogan 39:04 ... that's going on. There's almost like too much information is coming at us.

Dave Smith 39:07 Well, look, r- the ... It's basically been verified that this was Hunter Biden's laptop. I mean, with- within any reasonable standard for, for a journalist to verify something, I mean, number one, the Bidens didn't deny it. Like nobody actually came out and denied that this was ... They had a signature at the repair shop, which they matched up to his signature. They've had other people on the email chains confirm that they were, these were emails between them and Hunter Biden. So it's been pretty reasonably kind of verified that this was Hunter Biden. Now, I don't know about the crazier accusations that were made there. I mean, Rudy Giuliani said that there were pictures of underage girls and stuff like that. I don't know if that's true or not. But Rudy Giuliani did turn it over to the Delaware police. That is true because the Delaware, a spokesman for the attorney general said that they received the laptop and that they sent it to the FBI. Now, I don't know why they would, he would turn this over claiming this stuff was on there and then they would send this to the FBI if there wasn't something, but I don't know. I don't kn- ... But what you do know, right, is that this was a story where they had these emails about Hunter Biden, who is very clearly a swamp creature, who was selling his father's name to rake in money from foreign companies. Now truth be told, that's a kind of run-of-the-mill scandal as far as politics go.

Joe Rogan 40:24 Normal.

Dave Smith 40:24 It's normal. E- every senator's kid, family, wife, they all do stuff like this all the time. It's a corrupt swamp, you know? But it's a story, nonetheless. It may not be the ... But to s- but to just make the conscious decision that we are a few weeks out from a presidential election, this can harm Biden, and therefore we're not mentioning it, we're not covering it, we're not trying to debunk this to a bunch of people, we are trying to make sure people never get their eyes on this.

Joe Rogan 40:52 Well, I think they felt-

Dave Smith 40:53 That's creepy.

Joe Rogan 40:53 ... the heat ... They felt the heat from 2016, from the Hillary Clinton email debate, you know-

Dave Smith 40:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:59 ... whether or not she should have deleted those emails, and the, the fact that Comey then opens up the investigation again in the middle of the campaign. And that was basically what a lot ... Even though she won the popular vote, uh, a lot of people felt like that was, that was a bad move.

Dave Smith 41:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:13 And so this year they said, "We're gonna do everything we can to get rid of Donald Trump." Again, they become activists instead of just journalists.

Dave Smith 41:20 Yeah. That's-

Joe Rogan 41:20 And that's ... It's tricky.

Dave Smith 41:22 Well, that's 100% what happened. I mean, they felt, in a way, that they were responsible for Donald Trump winning.

Joe Rogan 41:28 Ex-Hunter Biden associates' records don't show proof of Biden business relationship a- amid unanswered questions.

Narrator 41:36 This is on Fox News.

Joe Rogan 41:38 Well, Fox News has taken a turn, ladies and gentlemen. They are, um, they seem to have made a, a conscious internal decision to, uh, not favor Donald Trump anymore.

Dave Smith 41:49 I don't think Fox News was ever that behind Donald Trump. I mean, there's a few people at Fox News who are hardcore behind Donald Trump. But as an organization, I mean, remember, they were very hostile to him in the Republican primary. Like he wasn't the Fox News guy. Jeb Bush was the Fox News guy. Um, and he ... I think a lot of people were very happy, are very happy to get rid of him.

Joe Rogan 42:08 Let me see that article again. This is interesting. (clears throat) I wonder what that means. Ex-Ho- uh, Hunter Biden associates' records don't show ... But what does that mean?

Dave Smith 42:18 So they don't ... I- i- it's basically he-

Joe Rogan 42:19 But it's, it's just ... But listen to this. Ex-Hunter Biden's associates' records don't show proof of Biden business relationship amid unanswered questions. That doesn't mean much.

Dave Smith 42:29 No. Well, what he claimed was that... And they're saying Joe Biden, that he couldn't prove Joe Biden was ... Uh, it's a very confusing title, because he claimed that he had met with Joe Biden and Joe Biden was w- aware of all the dealings that that Hunter was doing. Um-

Joe Rogan 42:42 Here it is. Fox News has revealed email ... Reviewed emails from-

Dave Smith 42:46 Look at that name, Bobulinski.

Narrator 42:48 (laughs)

Dave Smith 42:49 ... uh, related to the venture and they don't show that the elder Biden had business dealings. Yeah, but see, I could... That's, that's weird. Like, you know, we could say that Jaime is my business associate, right? And if I'm, uh, involved in some shady shit and Jaime doesn't know about it and Jaime and I are emailing back and forth and they get into Jaime's emails and they say, "Ex-Joe Rogan's, uh, business associate doesn't show any association."

Narrator 43:16 But isn't that what they're making the claim is that this is the evidence is the emails though. They're like, "Hey, we found some emails and the emails say this," and now they're saying, this Fox- according to Fox News, they're like that does, that's not what they say.

Dave Smith 43:25 Right, but the emails to who?

Narrator 43:27 That-

Dave Smith 43:27 Is it to that guy? 'Cause if it's not to that guy, then this is not relative, and then they're playing games with words. Like I would have to read what exactly they're saying and what exactly he's saying.

Narrator 43:38 That's part of the problem too. I've, I've looked a couple times. I've... That's why I was sort of just looking again. Where... Normally this shit gets leaked, you know, like when all the celebrities got their fucking iClouds leaked, all those pictures hit the internet instantly and you could find them all over the place. These emails are, have like barely been seen by I feel like anybody. Like you can't find them.

Dave Smith 43:56 Well these emails were... I, I believe he turned these over to the FBI. Um, so I don't know, you know, where they would leak from. Not to say that they couldn't leak. But I think the, the point of this article is that what he claimed, what this Bobulinski guy claimed, was that Joe Biden himself was very involved in all the business deals that, that Hunter and him were doing, and that his emails couldn't prove that. 'Cause they, uh, you know, the thing was they said they had these references to like the big guy and stuff like that. Yeah. But that they couldn't prove that, that, that Joe Biden knew about this. But he's claiming, whether this is true or not, he's claiming that he's met Joe Biden several times and they've talked about it and Joe Biden was well aware of what Hunter Biden was doing and where he was making his money from. Again, I think it's a kind of run-of-the-mill political scandal, that a- that aspect of it. Yeah. The bigger thing is like that this goes on all over the place. Right. I mean, all over the fucking place. Like the, the, the conflicts of interest, the corruption. We see where Obama, you know, w- w- was spoke, after he's president, we get like $400,000 or something like that- Mm-hmm. ... for a speech in front of bankers. And he was the guy who like presided over the bank bailout. Yep. And then you 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.

Narrator 45:09 And Bill.

Dave Smith 45:09 Tons of them. Yeah.

Narrator 45:09 And that's where they make the bulk of their money, right?

Dave Smith 45:11 Mm-hmm. When they get out of the office, then they do these speeches. Yeah.

Narrator 45:15 Which is kind of hilarious.

Dave Smith 45:16 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.

Narrator 45:27 (laughs)

Dave Smith 45:27 So, they made a lot of money after the White House.

Narrator 45:29 This is the new deal we just made today.

Dave Smith 45:30 "US plans sale of F-35 fighter jets to UAE in $23 billion arms deal. Trump administration-"

Narrator 45:36 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 45:37 Yep.

Narrator 45:37 They're saying, I was reading today, they're saying he's making a bunch of deals now on his way out.

Dave Smith 45:40 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-

Narrator 45:56 You don't think he's on the way out?

Dave Smith 45:57 Well, yeah. He's o- he's almost certainly on the way out.

Narrator 45:59 Do you know-

Dave Smith 45:59 But he's gonna fight it.

Narrator 46:01 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?

Dave Smith 46:10 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.

Narrator 46:17 Yeah.

Dave Smith 46:17 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."

Narrator 46:27 Yeah.

Dave Smith 46:27 "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.

Narrator 46:44 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 46:44 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.

Narrator 47:03 Right.

Dave Smith 47:04 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."

Narrator 47:13 Right.

Dave Smith 47:13 "You can't see this story."

Narrator 47:15 Well-

Dave Smith 47:15 'Cause the lies could poison you or something. I, I-

Narrator 47:17 What if it's proven to be true? What if there is voter fraud?

Dave Smith 47:20 Well, there is. It's a question of how widespread it is, 'cause there's always voter fraud. Which is another secret that they don't fucking like to tell. But there's always fucking some degree of voter fraud.

Narrator 47:29 Do, do you find it odd that everybody insist that it's impossible to vote like safely and accurately online?

Dave Smith 47:37 Uh, yes, I find that odd. I also find it really, really odd that we, um, overhauled the way we do voting in this country.

Narrator 47:46 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 47:47 And that now it's almost an entirely different process where both candidates are getting way more votes than they would normally get. And i- it's just very weird.

Narrator 47:56 Right.

Dave Smith 47:56 There were a lot of things that were weird about this election, like the actual logistics of it.

Narrator 48:01 Doesn't it seem like if we can bank online, we should be able to vote online? And doesn't it seem like if you could use like Apple Pay or Samsung Pay or something like that and go buy something, you know, you use your fingerprint.

Dave Smith 48:12 Yeah.

Narrator 48:13 And it registers your fingerprint and then you could, you could buy a house.

Dave Smith 48:18 Yeah, right. (laughs)

Narrator 48:18 I mean, if you... (laughs) I mean, how much can you spend on Apple Pay? Does it have a limit? I just don't think... I, it's not about like that. It's the ease for everyone. Not everybody has that access. And I, I'm talking about down to-

Dave Smith 48:27 Then you get this shit together.

Narrator 48:28 ... everyone.

Dave Smith 48:29 Get. It. Together.

Narrator 48:31 (snaps fingers) Like, they had the, the day of the elections, they were supposed to, where I'm from in Columbus, Franklin County, they were supposed to have like registration via iPads or something.

Dave Smith 48:37 Right.

Narrator 48:38 And that morning, they were not confident that everything got downloaded, so they just scrapped the whole thing and went back to paper.

Dave Smith 48:44 ... it was like that day, so it just-

Joe Rogan 48:45 Isn't that also a problem with these weird deadlines? Like we have to choose the leader in the free world in 20 hours. Ready? Go.

Dave Smith 48:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:54 Like what? Isn't this a big, important thing?

Dave Smith 48:56 Well-

Joe Rogan 48:56 Like do we really wanna boil this down to 20 hours?

Dave Smith 48:59 Well, sure. The whole process is fucking retarded.

Joe Rogan 49:01 It's crazy. (laughs)

Dave Smith 49:01 Like, the whole thing about it. The whole thing that it's like... So, we, the, the system is that we have to basically, like 10,000 votes in Wisconsin is gonna determine which half of the country is furious and which half is, like elated because they get to rule over the other half now. And then hopefully in four years, they can be happy and you're miserable 'cause they get to rule over you now.

Joe Rogan 49:23 (laughs)

Dave Smith 49:23 It's so bizarre. Democracy in general is a very bizarre process. To have it in a country this big with this powerful of a government, it makes it insane. Like, that we're, we're gonna determine the course of history based off what a few votes in swing states determine. There's gotta be a better way. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:42 I was reading this thing about Plato, excuse me, about Socrates. Uh, Socrates was, uh, he was talking about how he didn't like the idea of democracy.

Dave Smith 49:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:52 Because Socrates felt like in order to make really important choices, you should almost have to prove your understanding of these issues. And that this... If it wasn't the case... I'm, I'm pretty sure it was Socrates. Look, look that up just in case.

Dave Smith 50:07 Yeah, yeah. I got them.

Joe Rogan 50:08 Thank you.

Dave Smith 50:08 I just got live quotes about him apparently.

Joe Rogan 50:09 Be-... Because he, he saw the, the pro-... Like what we basically have, like there's a lot of people that were on the ballot in California who was like, "What is this guy doing? What does he want?" I didn't know much about them.

Dave Smith 50:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:21 And I was like, "Hmm, does that sound right?" I mean, I'm looking at this thing for an hour, right? I've got an hour to go and then I can Google some of these, these bills.

Dave Smith 50:30 Right.

Joe Rogan 50:30 And, and that's just me. How many people didn't? I mean, I gave a very cursory review of these ideas. How many people didn't at all? They just went, "Eh, blue all across the board or red all across the board."

Dave Smith 50:45 Oh, yeah. Th- the majority, I'd say.

Joe Rogan 50:46 Yeah.

Dave Smith 50:47 Just guessing, but I'd say the majority of people just vote their team.

Joe Rogan 50:50 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 50:50 And just don't even really look into it that much. But democracy was never... Democracy was kind of considered like a joke, uh, before World War I. Uh, the, the idea of... I mean, there, there weren't too many, like functioning democracies. And that, I think that all changed with, like Woodrow Wilson. "We're gonna make the world safe for democracy. We're gonna overthrow all of these monarchs in Europe." Which Europe was mostly monarchs at, at the time. And they... And that ended. And then after that you had the rise of, like Lenin and Hitler and later Stalin and, you know, things that were much worse than the monarchy is that they, they replaced.

Joe Rogan 51:25 Yeah.

Dave Smith 51:26 Um, but just i- in pure philosophy, like the idea that if 51% of people vote for something or somebody, that then it's completely morally legitimate for them to rule over the other 49% I- is, is completely absurd.

Joe Rogan 51:44 But what's the be- what's the alternative?

Dave Smith 51:47 Well, I mean, look. I think (laughs) the alternative to all of this is liberty, (laughs) which is the best answer. Which is just basically that whether it's a democratic process or not, that the government should be so much more reduced, the power should be so much more reduced than what it is now, that it's not that consequential who gets in there because they're not wielding that much power. And as long as you have... I mean, look. This is the major source of the culture war to begin with. Even before the social media stuff and before the woke lecturing, the major source is that the government is so powerful that you have to fight for your side to be in control of it. Otherwise, you're ruled over by the side who you hate. And it's a, this is... Unless... The only way forward that would solve this problem, that would defuse the culture war, is accepting some type of libertarianism. And what I just mean by that is just some... Whatever exactly it is, something that says, "Okay, listen. You have these cultural views in Portland and you have these cultural views in Alabama. You're not gonna remake each other. You guys can live the way you wanna live, and you guys can live the way you wanna live, and you can peacefully coexist." The idea that you, you have to have this five, $6 trillion a year beast that's controlled by one side or another that hate each other is just gonna keep this thing going and getting hotter and hotter.

Joe Rogan 53:10 Yeah. And then you have these ideological positions that these huge corporations attach themselves to to siphon money off of.

Dave Smith 53:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 53:18 You know, uh, there's, uh, Evan Hafer. He's um, owner of Black Rifle Coffee and he was on and he was, uh, and he's a veteran. And, uh, now runs this huge coffee business and was discussing what he thinks is really going on with Afghanistan. He's like, "There's no reason for us to be over there." He goes, "I think they're over there to, to suck money out of taxpayers and that's what they're doing." And when, uh, Trump was interviewing or rather Steve Hilton was interviewing Trump.

Dave Smith 53:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:51 Um, I've known Ste- Steve Hilton for a long time.

Dave Smith 53:53 That's the, The Next Revolution?

Joe Rogan 53:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Smith 53:55 I, yeah, I've met him.

Joe Rogan 53:56 Yeah.

Dave Smith 53:56 He's a good dude.

Joe Rogan 53:56 He's a very nice guy. I was friends with him long before he was ever at Fox News. Um, I met him in Maui.

Dave Smith 54:03 Oh, yeah?

Joe Rogan 54:03 On the beach. His kids were playing with my kids when they were real little.

Dave Smith 54:07 Huh.

Joe Rogan 54:07 And we became friends and we've gone on vacations together. Like I know him very well.

Dave Smith 54:10 Oh, that's cool. By the way, I know the exact interview that you're talking about.

Joe Rogan 54:14 Yeah.

Dave Smith 54:14 I think it was one of the craziest things I've ever seen. It's so... Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:16 When he's talking about-

Dave Smith 54:16 Yep.

Joe Rogan 54:16 ... the military industrial complex. He goes, "Well, we got to intervene if they want to go to war. Military industrial complex, it's real. Eisenhower warned us about it."

Dave Smith 54:24 This is the thing. By the way, that moment, this is why the establishment hates Donald Trump so much.

Joe Rogan 54:28 Oh, yeah.

Dave Smith 54:29 Because he is uncontrollable and he might just blurt out sitting down outside the White House with Steve Hilton that, "Oh, you know what? There's a whole bunch of people around me who want to go to war because it makes them billions of dollars."

Joe Rogan 54:42 Billions.

Dave Smith 54:43 And, and this is like... And, and this is just the president, the commander in chief saying it. Now, to... On the other side, Trump didn't end any of these wars. He kept talking about doing it and then he'd always back out at the last minute.

Joe Rogan 54:54 Why do you think that is?

Dave Smith 54:55 Well, you know, I, I don't know exactly. But I know that when he ... whenever he would make a move to, to try to end one of these wars, the press would go nuts circling him. I mean, they always were, but they'd dial it up to, like, 11. And then, he'd have people within his administration undermining him at every turn.

Joe Rogan 55:14 Yeah.

Dave Smith 55:14 At every turn. I remember back, I was a, I, I was a contributor, um, on a S. E. Cupp show. She's got a show on CNN. I, I was a contributor there for, like, a year. And, um, there was one time where it was, uh, Donald Trump came out and said that, uh, um, "We're, we're getting out of Syria." And he goes, "Look, our only goal in Syria is to defeat ISIS. That's all we care about. And they're almost defeated. As soon as they're defeated, we're getting out, completely out of Syria." And then about a week later, McMasters d- put out this statement where he was saying, "These are our goals in Syria," and one of them was regime change, to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. And then he gets fired, like a week after that. And their take at CNN was kind of like, "Well, isn't this great that at least one of the adults in the room is like, 'No, no, no, Donald Trump. This is what we're doing in Syria. We're having another regime change.'" And I was, like, losing my shit, like, "Wait. Hold on. However you feel about this, he's the commander-in-chief." The Secretary of State doesn't get to decide, "No, we're, we're fighting a war."

Joe Rogan 56:19 Here it is.

Dave Smith 56:20 Oh, this is the-

Joe Rogan 56:21 The president.

Dave Smith 56:21 ... Steve Hilton one, yeah.

Narrator 56:22 Now, hold on. Dammit. Oh, I have the Egypt thing muted.

Dave Smith 56:25 He was particularly orange that day.

Narrator 56:27 They wanna keep ... They ... You have people here in Washington.

56:31 That they want it.

56:31 They never wanna leave. I say, "You know what I'll do? I'll leave a couple of hundred soldiers behind." But if it was up to them, they'd bring thousands of soldiers in. Someday, people will explain it.

Joe Rogan 56:42 Well, this is an example-

Narrator 56:43 But, but you do have, you do have a group, and they call it the military-industrial complex. They never wanna leave. They always wanna fight. No, I don't wanna fight. But you do have situations like Iran. You can't let them have nuclear weapons.

Joe Rogan 56:56 Okay.

Narrator 56:56 You just can't let that happen.

Joe Rogan 56:58 A friend of mine today was talking about The Art of the Deal. I've never read The Art of the Deal. It was ... H- he was in rehab. When he was in rehab, he had a lot of time, and he, he read The Art of the Deal. And he's like, "It's remarkably progressive, even by today's standards."

Dave Smith 57:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:11 He's like, "He wr- ... He wrote this in, like, the '80s."

Dave Smith 57:14 Well, Donald Trump was never that ... I mean-

Joe Rogan 57:17 He's got flaws.

Dave Smith 57:18 Oh, no question.

Joe Rogan 57:19 That o- ... But the problem is they, they overwhelm anything good about him, where, like, you get these flaws, like the bragging and the craziness and the, the not telling the truth about things and the-

Dave Smith 57:31 The, the tricky thing with Trump is that if it wasn't for these character flaws or these qualities that are partly, you know, have these character flaws, he'd never be the president.

Joe Rogan 57:43 Right.

Dave Smith 57:43 But then once he becomes president, you're like, "Man, I wish you could just plug up these couple holes and keep saying shit like that-"

Joe Rogan 57:49 (laughs) Right.

Dave Smith 57:49 "... 'cause that would be really awesome."

Joe Rogan 57:51 Yeah.

Dave Smith 57:51 Like, we really do need a guy who's taking on the military-industrial complex and pushing to end these wars-

Joe Rogan 57:56 Yeah.

Dave Smith 57:56 ... and exposing a lot of the corruption. But also, the other problem is that this was never really what animated Trump. The, the, the problem is that with Donald Trump, I think that a lot of the Trump haters project this, this thing onto Donald Trump, like he's literally Hitler. A lot of the Trump lovers project this thing onto him, like he's our savior.

Joe Rogan 58:15 Yeah.

Dave Smith 58:16 But it ... The reality is, it's just what you see.

Joe Rogan 58:18 Yeah.

Dave Smith 58:18 He's just that. He's the guy who ... He's, he's as shallow a, (laughs) a thinker as he seems. He's instinctually brilliant. But in term- ... Intellectually, he really just cares about being the best. "I won. I was terrific. Everybody knows it." You know? And that's ... And so I, I think-

Joe Rogan 58:35 That's served him well his whole life.

Dave Smith 58:37 Sure has.

Joe Rogan 58:37 The idea-

Dave Smith 58:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:38 ... that all of a sudden, he becomes president, he's gonna abandon that and become presidential.

Dave Smith 58:41 No. It's not gonna happen. But anyone who was a decent gentleman or, like, didn't have those qualities would never have, have gotten to where he was. He got to where he was because he was willing to say ... Like, he got to where he was in large part because he had a quality that Bernie Sanders didn't have about him. Bernie Sanders is entirely too nice of a guy to lead a revolution. I'd s- ... He would always say, "We're leading a revolution." And then you'd have Joe Biden, who's the epitome of the system that you wanna revolt against, and he'd go, "Look. Joe's a very decent guy. He's my friend. I'm not gonna say anything bad about him." And you're like, "Well, you're probably not gonna lead a fucking revolution if you're not willing to lob some insults." Like, I'm not saying you have to lob bullets, but like, you gotta at least-

Joe Rogan 59:23 Do, do you, though? Do you have to do that?

Dave Smith 59:23 Well, you have to at least attack ... You have to at least attack what he stands for.

Joe Rogan 59:27 But here's-

Dave Smith 59:27 I'm not saying you have to call him a fat loser.

Joe Rogan 59:28 (laughs)

Dave Smith 59:28 I'm saying you have to go, like ... You have to go, "Listen, you are the epitome of Washington corruption. You've enriched your own family while you're getting other people killed, while you're selling out the country." Yes, I, I think you have to go for the jugular if you're actually gonna beat this system.

Joe Rogan 59:44 Isn't it strange, though, that you have to do that? You can't de- ... You can't just espouse the merits of your own ideas.

Dave Smith 59:52 Well-

Joe Rogan 59:52 Y- you have to attack.

Dave Smith 59:54 But, you know, if you're a, a real human being, right? Like, let's say what Donald Trump was just saying. And by the way, Bernie 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.

Joe Rogan 1:00:13 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 1:00:13 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.

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 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.

Dave Smith 1:01:10 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:10 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?

Dave Smith 1:01:20 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.

Joe Rogan 1:01:27 Okay.

Dave Smith 1:01:27 You know? And I- I don't like a lot of Bernie Sanders ideas. I think he's got some that are really good.

Joe Rogan 1:01:31 Which ones do you like?

Dave Smith 1:01:32 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.

Joe Rogan 1:01:52 Well, explain it to people.

Dave Smith 1:01:54 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-

Joe Rogan 1:04:26 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 1:04:26 ... 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-

Joe Rogan 1:04:39 Well, we know what they were doing. We know that that was the reason why Klobuchar and Buttigieg dropped out.

Dave Smith 1:04:44 Well that we know, yes.

Joe Rogan 1:04:44 We know that Warren stayed in to siphon votes off of Bernie.

Dave Smith 1:04:47 No question.

Joe Rogan 1:04:47 And we know they gave their delegates over to Biden.

Dave Smith 1:04:50 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-

Joe Rogan 1:04:57 That sounds good.

Dave Smith 1:04:58 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-

Joe Rogan 1:05:09 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.

Dave Smith 1:06:12 Is that tr- ... Are people-

Joe Rogan 1:06:13 Oh yeah.

Dave Smith 1:06:13 ... they're old enough for Social Security-

Joe Rogan 1:06:14 Oh yeah.

Dave Smith 1:06:14 ... and they have student loan debts like that?

Joe Rogan 1:06:16 Oh yeah.

Dave Smith 1:06:16 Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:06:16 Oh yeah, that's going on right now. Make sure that's true, Jamie.

Dave Smith 1:06:19 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:19 I'm pretty sure. Sounds really good what I'm saying.

Dave Smith 1:06:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:21 Pretty sure it's true. Um-

Dave Smith 1:06:23 Well that is ... And, and they are victims-

Joe Rogan 1:06:25 But, but-

Dave Smith 1:06:25 ... of a corrupt scheme, for sure.

Joe Rogan 1:06:26 Yes. It's a ... Well, it's a bad system and I think if we have all this money to go to Afghanistan and, and put on these endless wars, y- the idea that we don't have enough money to provide a reasonably priced education. I'm not saying it should be free. Maybe it should cost a little bit because I think people work harder when they have to work for something, but the idea that you should be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt by the time you get out and, and the reality of the economy is that even before COVID, if you got out, the odds of you getting a job that's like gonna be able to even put a dent in that debt in your chosen field, they're not that good.

Dave Smith 1:07:03 Oh yeah. Oh no-

Joe Rogan 1:07:04 So that's-

Dave Smith 1:07:04 ... no question about all of that.

Joe Rogan 1:07:05 Here it is. 19% of their Social Security payments can be garnished to repay a student loan debt.Your monthly benefit cannot sink below seven hun- Well...

Dave Smith 1:07:14 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 Good luck living on 750 bucks a month.

Dave Smith 1:07:16 And this is also for people who are, what, like, 35 now when they retire?

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:07:20 Like, what's that gonna be worth?

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 So, I mean, th- that's not that long ago, man. If you think about someone who's 65, right? So once, once... No, look at this.

Dave Smith 1:07:28 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:28 "Are student loans forgiven after 65?" "There are no student loan forgiveness programs specifically for senior citizens. Elderly student loan borrowers are eligible for the same loan forgiveness programs as other borrowers." Well, that's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. If you're that old-

Dave Smith 1:07:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:44 ... and you're on a fixed income, and you really can't physically work anymore and w- we don't ha- Uh, if we're a community, right? And this is one of the things I think about the United States, the idea of a country. We're supposed to be a community. Even though we're broken off into these countries and then broken off into these cities and we're broken off by ideologies, and we're separated by all these different lines in the sands that we draw. At the end of the day, we're all contributing to this pool, we're putting our tax dollars in, and we're deciding what's important and what's not. For me, student loan forgiveness was a big thing 'cause it was like, we've gotta stop this cycle of fucking people over economically when they're 18 years old.

Dave Smith 1:08:17 F- Fair enough.

Joe Rogan 1:08:18 Doesn't make any sense.

Dave Smith 1:08:19 Fair enough. But I just think that if... Like, I agree with the spirit of everything you're saying. And I think when I, when I said it's a corrupt system, it's just that-

Joe Rogan 1:08:26 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:08:26 ... the fact that you have all of these parties involved where you have, like, the government who's guaranteeing all of these student loans. And then you have, for a while, I think now it's all done s- straight from the federal government. For a while, you had these financial companies that are giving out the loans and then