Joe Rogan Experience #1630 - Dan Crenshaw

Narrator 0:00 (drum music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays)

Dan Crenshaw 0:15 I have a theory on this place.

Joe Rogan 0:17 This place, Austin? Go ahead. T-

Dan Crenshaw 0:18 No, your studio.

Joe Rogan 0:19 Oh, what's the theory? Tell me the theory.

Dan Crenshaw 0:22 Well, it looks like a spaceship.

Joe Rogan 0:23 Yes. So here's my theory.

Dan Crenshaw 0:26 Okay.

Joe Rogan 0:26 'Cause you had this grand master plan to get Elon Musk to admit that he's an alien.

Dan Crenshaw 0:31 He's definitely an alien. But that's not correct. This was already... This already existed. This was, uh, this-

Joe Rogan 0:36 Oh, really? You bought it as is?

Dan Crenshaw 0:37 Yeah. Well, (coughs) it's a long story and I can't get into too m- many details, but this was a conference room and so we converted this c- the conference r- conference room was already circular. We converted it.

Joe Rogan 0:49 But you put this weird alien stuff on it.

Dan Crenshaw 0:51 Yeah, this stuff we put on. These are just, uh, sound deadening panels.

Joe Rogan 0:55 So that wasn't an attempt to get Elon to admit that he's an alien.

Dan Crenshaw 0:57 No.

Joe Rogan 0:58 Because... Okay, so here's how I thought you were doing this.

Dan Crenshaw 1:00 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:01 You've conditioned him over time, right? You, you, you bring him into the studio, you're drinking with him, you got him really high. Let's say-

Dan Crenshaw 1:07 I didn't get him really high. He barely got... I don't even think he inhaled.

Joe Rogan 1:11 Oh.

Dan Crenshaw 1:11 Did he inhale?

Joe Rogan 1:11 Wow. All right. Well, the rest of America thinks differently.

Dan Crenshaw 1:14 He took a little puff. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15 (laughs)

Dan Crenshaw 1:15 He's just naturally high.

Joe Rogan 1:16 Well- Pot probably doesn't work on aliens.

Dan Crenshaw 1:18 But you get him, you get him comfortable, right?

Joe Rogan 1:20 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 1:21 And then you put him in a situation that looks like his home base-

Joe Rogan 1:24 Mm.

Dan Crenshaw 1:24 And then you, and then you ask him that question.

Joe Rogan 1:26 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 1:27 And he answered it kind of funny. He answered it exactly like an ali- (laughs) alien would answer it, I would think. Um, so I don't know. Did it work? Did it... What do you think? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:36 Um, his denial of the possibility of, uh, alien visitation was interesting and it got a lot of people like, "Hmm." Like, you-

Dan Crenshaw 1:44 Yeah. Like, "You've never thought about it, really?"

Joe Rogan 1:45 He believes in the simulation theory.

Dan Crenshaw 1:48 Really?

Joe Rogan 1:48 Yeah. See, see, see-

Dan Crenshaw 1:49 I don't believe in the simulation theory.

Joe Rogan 1:50 Well-

Dan Crenshaw 1:51 It doesn't explain anything because who's, who's running them? If they're running us, who's running them? It doesn't, it doesn't explain existence.

Joe Rogan 1:57 You don't understand the simulation theory.

Dan Crenshaw 1:58 Maybe not.

Joe Rogan 1:58 That's... It's not that someone's run... It's a, it, it becomes the universe itself. The i- the idea is that-

Dan Crenshaw 2:05 But somebody created it.

Joe Rogan 2:06 Yes. But-

Dan Crenshaw 2:07 But who created them?

Joe Rogan 2:08 Okay, us. Listen, if we are... If we exist, right?

Dan Crenshaw 2:11 Okay.

Joe Rogan 2:11 We, we do exist. We agree to that?

Dan Crenshaw 2:13 Yes.

Joe Rogan 2:13 Right. And we agree that we have fantastic technology that's indistinguishable from magic if you brought it to three, 400 years ago, right?

Dan Crenshaw 2:21 Okay.

Joe Rogan 2:22 What we experience now is nothing in comparison, especially as, you know, the laws of technology and they expand at an exponential rate. If you look at what we can do now and look at what we're gonna be capable of 100 years from now or 1,000 years from now, it's gonna be impossible to distinguish between reality and simulated reality. They will, they will develop an alternative virtual reality that's impossible to distinguish from. So the question is, how do you know if that hasn't already taken place?

Dan Crenshaw 2:54 Th-

Joe Rogan 2:54 And maybe that's how the universe works. Maybe the idea of things being concrete and physical that you can touch and things that you can weigh-

Dan Crenshaw 3:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:02 ... is just the experience that we've currently been accustomed to. Maybe that's not the whole way the universe works.

Dan Crenshaw 3:09 Yeah, I had this conversation with Scott Adams. He was on my podcast and I was kinda... I had to think about it later and, um, it still, it still fails to explain existence for me. Because i- if we're the ones who created it, then still somebody like us in a future state still created us or created the reality that we're in.

Joe Rogan 3:29 Yes.

Dan Crenshaw 3:29 And I get that there's this kind of circular reasoning associated with it, but it still fails to explain some basic truths.

Joe Rogan 3:35 But it doesn't. It doesn't because here's the pro- the thing. Like, you have single celled organisms, they, they turn into multi-celled organisms as they evolve and then eventually you get something that's sentient and also can alter its environment. That's human beings. That thing starts creating these virtual worlds and these virtual worlds are run by artificial intelligence-

Dan Crenshaw 3:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:55 ... that becomes sentient as well. So that artificial intelligence continues to create newer and better virtual worlds and then it's a self-sustaining system. And this self-sustaining system becomes a new version of reality. If you think about the, the-

Dan Crenshaw 4:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:12 ... idea of multiple dimensions and even multiple universes, there's, there's an infinite number of possibilities for not just life, but life creating technology that we don't even... We can't even wrap our heads around. You know? If there's things on other planets... Let's, let's imagine a solar system-

Dan Crenshaw 4:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:30 ... where they don't have the issues that we have with meteors and asteroids.

Dan Crenshaw 4:34 Okay.

Joe Rogan 4:34 So they, they have... Maybe they don't have the super volcano issues that we have. So they're not dealing with extinction events every X amount of years. So they've had the ability to go from becoming, you know, a primate or whatever it is on their planet that, you know, similar-

Dan Crenshaw 4:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 4:52 ... to becoming this super advanced thing without any hiccups and they've gone on for millions of years. So we've been human beings in this form for hundreds of thousands of years, right? If you go back and you take a guy from 100,000 years ago and you dress him up in a suit and put him in a movie theater.

Dan Crenshaw 5:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 5:10 Not that you go to movie theaters anymore. Put him in a restaurant i- in Texas-

Dan Crenshaw 5:13 Sure.

Joe Rogan 5:13 ... where it's legal. And then you, you wouldn't notice.

Dan Crenshaw 5:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:17 He would just be a guy. He wouldn't be any different than you or I physically, other than he probably would be starving to death, right?

Dan Crenshaw 5:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:24 Y- The difference in the world between 100 years from that... 100 years ago and now is insane, right? Well, as... If you think about what it could be like if you go a million years from now. If this... I- if there's no hiccups, if we don't nuke ourselves, we don't get hit by an asteroid, we don't have-

Dan Crenshaw 5:42 Sure.

Joe Rogan 5:42 ... a super volcano, we could have technology that's impossible to even imagine today.

Dan Crenshaw 5:48 Right.

Joe Rogan 5:49 Even in Star Trek they didn't imagine the internet. Think about that. They didn't even understand ph- cell phones, right? It was like, "Kirk out." Like, he had a fucking walkie-talkie, right?

Dan Crenshaw 5:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:58 That's, th-

Dan Crenshaw 5:58 I mean, it was pretty close, but yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:00 Sort of. But meanwhile you couldn't google shit on it. I mean, there's so many things-

Dan Crenshaw 6:04 Sure.

Joe Rogan 6:04 ... that we can do now. I, I mean, they were beaming themselves up in a board. But the point is that if you keep going and nothing interrupts it, w- y- your, your imagination can't even im- There's not even a way for you to think of what's possible when you have hundreds of millions of people innovating without interruption and they go on for millions of years. What, what, what's possible is just-... it, your imagination is not gonna be able to grasp it.

Dan Crenshaw 6:32 I, I get the theory, I just don't know how to believe it. I don't know how somebody can believe it.

Joe Rogan 6:37 Why not?

Dan Crenshaw 6:38 B- b- I, there's just-

Joe Rogan 6:38 Do you believe in video?

Dan Crenshaw 6:41 ... Yes.

Joe Rogan 6:41 Video's time capture.

Dan Crenshaw 6:43 Sure.

Joe Rogan 6:43 I'm cap- if I videotape you right now, like this is being videotaped, and someone is gonna watch it later.

Dan Crenshaw 6:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:48 This is time capture.

Dan Crenshaw 6:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:49 You're capturing a moment in time.

Dan Crenshaw 6:50 But I can touch it, I can manipulate it. You, you can't manipulate this theory in any sort of way. It's, it's a fine theory, I suppose. I'm just not sure what the point of it is. I'm not-

Joe Rogan 6:58 Are you a reductionist? Are you one of those guys that reduces everything down to, like, the simplest of terms?

Dan Crenshaw 7:03 Not, not everything. I, uh, some things deserve a, a complex conversation. Uh, but, but in this case I'm just, I'm, my first question is what, what's the point of the theory? Is, is it, is it meant to explain us in some existential way?

Joe Rogan 7:16 It's not meant to explain anything. The theory is, the idea is-

Dan Crenshaw 7:20 Just, it's kinda, it's kinda for fun.

Joe Rogan 7:21 ... that fun it is inevitable, if we don't kill ourselves, if we don't blow ourselves up, if we don't go back to Mad Max days, if we don't nuke ourselves back in the Stone Age, it's inevitable that someone creates something like the simulation-

Dan Crenshaw 7:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:34 ... like the Matrix.

Dan Crenshaw 7:35 I hope not. I hope not. I, I, I would like to think that the human psyche and the human consciousness is a little bit more libertarian than that, a little bit more individualized, a little bit more rugged, and, and, and un- uh, unable to be captured in that sense. Now (laughs) the year 2020 might have convinced me otherwise.

Joe Rogan 7:53 It should.

Dan Crenshaw 7:53 But, um, and it scares the hell out of me, frankly. Um, but, but, you know, you're in Texas now and that's, (laughs) that's what we're all about is that get independent-minded thinking. And I would like to think that it would break the system, that, uh, that it's just not possible.

Joe Rogan 8:07 Well, the simulation might be something that you can exist in and use the same principles that you can exist in as a rugged individualist in reality. Like, it, it's, just because it's a simulation-

Dan Crenshaw 8:22 Yeah, but there's-

Joe Rogan 8:23 And maybe the word simulation-

Dan Crenshaw 8:23 ... there's an answer, there is an answer for everything in this theory. Well, it would just, it would just fix it because it's so advanced. And it's like, okay, well-

Joe Rogan 8:30 I'm not saying it would fix it.

Dan Crenshaw 8:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 8:30 I'm saying it might be an alternative reality. Like, it might be, uh, human beings have might have created, in, um, or intelligent life might have created an alternative dimension that exists in what you would call cyberspace.

Dan Crenshaw 8:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:43 Like if, if it fully forms out, like look, what if someone in a lab, what if some scientist figured out a way to literally create another universe?

Dan Crenshaw 8:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 8:52 Like there's a, there's a theory about black holes. You know, uh, anything about super massive black holes?

Dan Crenshaw 8:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:58 Inside of every galaxy is a super massive black hole, in the center of every galaxy, that's one half of 1% of the mass of the entire galaxy. The bigger the galaxy, the bigger the black hole.

Dan Crenshaw 9:08 Okay.

Joe Rogan 9:09 There's a theory that I don't totally understand, but I'm gonna repeat it like as if I do-

Dan Crenshaw 9:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:14 ... that inside that galaxy, if you go through that black hole, there is another universe inside, another-

Dan Crenshaw 9:20 Okay.

Joe Rogan 9:20 ... universe filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with black holes in the center of them. You go through each one of those black holes, there's a new universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies. So the universe being infinite, it's, it's, it's too big for dumb people like you and I, not, I should say I and you. I'll just call me dumb first.

Dan Crenshaw 9:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:40 But th- that's the only time it's more polite to call yourself dumb.

Dan Crenshaw 9:42 I minored in physics, Joe, so I know what I'm talking about.

Joe Rogan 9:45 Did you?

Dan Crenshaw 9:45 I took five classes.

Joe Rogan 9:46 Okay. Well, I talked to a lot of smart people-

Dan Crenshaw 9:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:48 ... and I remembered some of the shit they said.

Dan Crenshaw 9:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:49 Like, I don't know what I'm talking about.

Dan Crenshaw 9:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:51 Not gonna, I could pull it off. But the idea is that there is an infinite number of universes-

Dan Crenshaw 9:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 9:57 ... and an infinite number of planets, an infinite number of possibilities in terms of intelligent life forms creating things. And was it Nick Bostrom? Was that the guy who was on? He tried to explain it to me. He was, he was saying that through probability theory, it is more probable that we are in a simulation than not.

Dan Crenshaw 10:16 Hmm. That's, that's a stretch.

Guest’s friend/companion 10:19 Uh, the, the, the, just this weekend I saw Neil deGrasse Tyson posted a video on his Insta. I'm trying to pull it up right now. It might have been on Twitter.

Dan Crenshaw 10:25 I thought you'd be more entertained by my theory about you-

Guest’s friend/companion 10:27 Where he was-

Dan Crenshaw 10:27 ... trying to trick Elon into con- again (laughs) admitting he was an alien.

Joe Rogan 10:30 I'm trying to be cool about that theory because I don't want Elon to know I'm tricking him.

Guest’s friend/companion 10:33 He was just saying it's probable that it's not true.

Dan Crenshaw 10:33 Is it, is it the gig up? I mean, you, you-

Joe Rogan 10:35 Hold on.

Dan Crenshaw 10:36 ... you... It's probable but not true? Okay.

Guest’s friend/companion 10:38 Yeah, no, what you're saying. Uh, he, Neil Tyson was on your side of this.

Dan Crenshaw 10:42 Yeah.

Guest’s friend/companion 10:42 That after all the thought into it-

Dan Crenshaw 10:43 I got Neil Tyson on my side.

Guest’s friend/companion 10:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:45 But hold, hold on. I'll let Neil-

Guest’s friend/companion 10:46 That, like, uh, if the simulation theory was true, we're either, like, you could take yo- he said that you could point at any moment in the timeline and that would be like us, like we're e- like about to create this simulation, but we haven't done it yet and we don't know how to.

Joe Rogan 11:02 What? (laughs)

Guest’s friend/companion 11:03 That's sort of why I wanted to get him saying-

Joe Rogan 11:05 W-T... Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't have a fucking case on his phone.

Guest’s friend/companion 11:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:07 And I told him that was stupid. And last time I saw him, his phone was cracked.

Dan Crenshaw 11:11 Tha- that is proof he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Joe Rogan 11:12 He's got some knucklehead ideas. He's like, "Ah, it's an elegant device."

Dan Crenshaw 11:15 All theoretical physicists have, have knucklehead ideas.

Guest’s friend/companion 11:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:18 (laughs)

Dan Crenshaw 11:18 I mean, that's the entire point of a theoretical physicist. They got too good at math, they got bored, they got bored proving theorems over and over again.

Joe Rogan 11:24 Well, he's an astrophysicist.

Dan Crenshaw 11:26 Yeah, well, which, which require-

Joe Rogan 11:28 I think that's-

Dan Crenshaw 11:28 ... which requires some theoretical physics in it as well. I mean, it's fascinating stuff, it's beyond my scope-

Joe Rogan 11:33 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 11:33 ... to say the least. So the, the, the most advanced physics class I ever took was quantum mechanics. And it just becomes math, right?

Joe Rogan 11:39 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 11:39 And, and I was not an engineering major, I was an international relations major doing a minor in physics, which is an odd thing to do. All right? I, but I liked it. I, I, 'cause I love science, I love math, I was good at it, so I wanted to keep pushing that side of my brain, 'cause you're working two different muscles in your brain-

Joe Rogan 11:54 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 11:54 ... when you're doing liberal arts on one side and science on the other. So I loved doing it, but when you get to trying to, um, (sighs) explain to somebody why you don't know where a particle is at any given moment, it's only you know the probability of it, this becomes confusing and the math behind it is even more confusing. And I was, you know, I'm glad I didn't advance much further than that.

Joe Rogan 12:17 Yeah, when you get into particles and superpositions, you're like, w- wait, what the fuck are you talking about? It's both moving and not moving, it's here and not here-

Dan Crenshaw 12:26 We don't-

Joe Rogan 12:26 ... it's in two places simultaneously. And if you view it, if you're observing it, it changes the way the particle behaves, like-

Dan Crenshaw 12:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 12:33 ... what?

Dan Crenshaw 12:34 And we're not sure how. It, nobody really understands it, that's why it's, it's fascinating.

Joe Rogan 12:38 And I've also heard people-

Dan Crenshaw 12:39 It's spooky.

Joe Rogan 12:39 Yeah, I've also heard explained that the reason why it changes is 'cause there's a method that you're using, you're interacting with it when you're observing it, and that's what's changing it. It's not that it's actually-

Dan Crenshaw 12:49 Right.

Joe Rogan 12:49 ... changing because you're, you're observing it, it's because you're interacting with it while you're observing it. So I'm like, well, okay.

Dan Crenshaw 12:55 It implies that there's some-

Joe Rogan 12:56 ... magic.

Dan Crenshaw 12:57 ... unseen connection between us and the object, and between objects themselves. I mean, quantum entanglement is when you can entangle these two particles and they will copy each other, even from lengthy distances.

Joe Rogan 13:08 Yes.

Dan Crenshaw 13:08 This, this, this is how you do quantum computing, or, or quantum, um, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Not, uh... Well, uh, well, part of computing, but basically, um, security with quantum computers. Uh, thi- this is sort of that theory being applied to that.

Joe Rogan 13:27 Yeah. It's-

Dan Crenshaw 13:28 Meaning, meaning, like, it's like a peer-to-peer encrypt- encryption, quantum encryption.

Joe Rogan 13:32 It allows-

Dan Crenshaw 13:32 What word I'm looking for.

Joe Rogan 13:33 ... people to, to get away with a lot of fuckery too, right?

Dan Crenshaw 13:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:36 Like, that's where-

Dan Crenshaw 13:36 Probably. It's why we should advance it more than the Chinese do.

Joe Rogan 13:39 Well, yeah. But I, but I don't even mean that kind of fuckery. I mean like, uh, like, uh, psychic fuckery.

Dan Crenshaw 13:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:45 Like, that's that movie, uh, What the Bleep Do We Know? Like, you wanna get a, a physicist mad? Talk about What the Bleep Do We Know? Talk about the, the, the fuckery in that movie.

Dan Crenshaw 13:56 I haven't seen the movie.

Joe Rogan 13:56 You haven't seen that movie?

Dan Crenshaw 13:57 Uh-uh.

Joe Rogan 13:58 It's all about... It's, it's, uh... You know about The Secret? You know about the idea of The Secret, the idea of the law of attraction?

Dan Crenshaw 14:04 Ugh, I saw that a... I saw that a long time ago too.

Joe Rogan 14:06 There's a lot of people that believe-

Dan Crenshaw 14:08 Not doing well.

Joe Rogan 14:08 ... that you can sort of manifest reality and that-

Dan Crenshaw 14:11 Okay.

Joe Rogan 14:11 ... reality and the, the quantum world is somehow entangled with your consciousness and-

Dan Crenshaw 14:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:18 ... some sort of a weird, spooky way.

Dan Crenshaw 14:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:19 My point is that a lot of people will take advantage of this weirdness and sort of, uh, apply laws and rules to this weirdness that they have, like, sort of a script for, and that you should follow. And then next thing you know, you're in a cult.

Dan Crenshaw 14:34 (laughs) And that's-

Joe Rogan 14:35 And someone's-

Dan Crenshaw 14:35 And that's how you end up in a cult. That's, that's how-

Joe Rogan 14:36 And someone's banging your wife-

Dan Crenshaw 14:37 ... how, how you end up in a cult. That's how.

Joe Rogan 14:37 ... and you have to pay 10%. (laughs)

Dan Crenshaw 14:39 (laughs) That's, you're drinking weird Kool-Aid.

Joe Rogan 14:41 Yes. That's how it works, man. It's, uh, people are strange. You know, we, we, we wanna find meaning to things that don't necessarily have meaning to them. And we wanna apply rules to things that maybe don't necessarily have rules, like life itself. You know, life itself is very bizarre.

Dan Crenshaw 14:58 Well, the search for meaning, I think, is what's behind this, what I believe is an extravagant theory of the simulation. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:05 Maybe. Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 15:06 You know?

Joe Rogan 15:06 No, maybe. Look, look, I'm not married to the, the th- the simulation theory. In, in fact, um, I think it's more likely, and this is gonna get real strange. I think it's more, more likely that it's, it's an inevitable possibility rather than it's, it's a reality. I think it's an inevitable possibility. I think if we don't blow ourselves up, there's gonna come a point in time where... Did you ever see, uh, Ready Player One?

Dan Crenshaw 15:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 15:28 Great movie, right?

Dan Crenshaw 15:29 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was pretty good.

Joe Rogan 15:30 Fun, fun movie. I think that's gonna happen. I don't think that's far away.

Dan Crenshaw 15:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:33 That's probably 50 years in the future where you, you're gonna be able to put on a haptic feedback suit and some sort of-

Dan Crenshaw 15:39 Sure.

Joe Rogan 15:39 ... VR goggles.

Dan Crenshaw 15:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:39 And you're gonna enter into some incredibly advanced artificial reality, virtual reality that's amazing.

Dan Crenshaw 15:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:47 That's more interesting than-

Dan Crenshaw 15:49 Th- that seems likely.

Joe Rogan 15:50 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 15:50 That seems likely.

Joe Rogan 15:51 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 15:52 And, and then it's gonna be a new, a new trick of, well, how do we prevent people from... I don't know if we can prevent people. Or h- how do we deal with this, with this obvious problem where the rate, the virtual reality becomes the preferred lifestyle, which is, it already is for a lot of people-

Joe Rogan 16:06 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 16:06 ... playing the, um, playing video games or-

Joe Rogan 16:08 Call of Duty.

Dan Crenshaw 16:08 ... on social media-

Joe Rogan 16:09 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 16:09 ... or whatever it is. And, um, you know, is, is this, is this a good thing? (laughs) It does- it doesn't seem to me that it, that it is.

Joe Rogan 16:18 My, my position is that it's a thing.

Dan Crenshaw 16:20 It's a thing.

Joe Rogan 16:20 I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't th- I don't know if anything is a g- I don't know if agriculture's a good thing.

Dan Crenshaw 16:26 Everything's a trade-off.

Joe Rogan 16:27 Yeah. I mean, it seems like, you know, the people that wanna, like, go back to the hunter-gatherer days, like, "You know, we, we're better off, we're hunting and gathering. Oh yeah, without all that books and medicine and all that confusing shit." Like, what are you talking about?

Dan Crenshaw 16:38 Right.

Joe Rogan 16:38 No, we're better off right now. Like, right now is the best time to be alive. Even though we just got through a fucking horrible year, that year exposed a lot of weird shit about our civilization.

Dan Crenshaw 16:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:48 It's, it, it exposed a lot of weird shit about a bunch of really freaked out people that are just paranoid and, and schizophrenic, and how many people that are just fragile. There's so many fragile people in our culture.

Dan Crenshaw 17:03 I was blown away by the politics of it. I'm a politician, so this is what I analyze. And I was blown away that the, the conversation about how to deal with the last year became, or, or it, it... The division, the division fell upon partisan lines, right? About whether to lock down or not to lock down, about whether people liked masks or, or didn't like masks. And at first, that seems really odd, and so I, I spent a lot of time analyzing this, 'cause it shouldn't be that way. It, it should, it, it should be mixed. You would-

Joe Rogan 17:34 Mm-hmm.

Dan Crenshaw 17:34 You would think about...

Joe Rogan 17:35 Yes.

Dan Crenshaw 17:36 Just 'cause it, what you're really talking about is somebody's risk assessment and, you know, how they perceive risk and how they wanna deal with that, and how they think everybody else should deal with that. And, um, it's strange. I think there's a lot of factors involved. I, I do think that there was some political opportunism. I think that if Trump says something, people reactively say the opposite.

Joe Rogan 17:55 That's a problem, right?

Dan Crenshaw 17:56 And then that's definitely part of it. However, um, after Trump lost the election, he, it, the, that didn't stop. That, that movement aga- you know, for pro-lockdown movement never stopped. So it didn't, it was not clear to me then that that was the only reason.

Joe Rogan 18:09 But it's, but it is. See, the problem is once people get committed to an ideology or committed to a narrative-

Dan Crenshaw 18:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:15 ... just because Trump lost and now Biden's in power, it's not like everybody just abandons this narrative and-

Dan Crenshaw 18:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:21 ... s- and creates a new reality based on objective truth.

Dan Crenshaw 18:24 But they'll never even do a, do a, an after-action report on it to the point to where it's-

Joe Rogan 18:29 What happened in June?

Dan Crenshaw 18:29 ... to where it's ridiculous.

Joe Rogan 18:30 Oh, I thought you were showing us something.

Dan Crenshaw 18:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:32 (laughs)

Dan Crenshaw 18:32 And, and so, so I, I, I put another, uh, I put another, a few factors in there. I, I think some of it is the fact that, uh, Democrats tend to congregate in urban areas, and it might be s- you know, the, the virus is more in your face in an urban area than in a rural area. That might be some explanation there.

Joe Rogan 18:45 For sure, right?

Dan Crenshaw 18:46 But it, but it really boils down to, and there's, there's studies on this, where our, our brains light up differently, uh, when assessing risk. Now, it doesn't mean that the behavioral outcomes of these studies are, change. Basically, they would, they would take liberals and conservatives and they would give them a betti- what, what amounts to a betting game and see how they react differently. Now, that, now, the actual behavioral outcomes, what they choose wasn't-... di- didn't change all that much. But when they're doing the MRI scans, they see that their brains light up differently. So, that's interesting. So, we clearly assess risk differently somehow. Uh, so I'd looked at data on, uh, the kind of jobs that we choose, and it turns out, and this is intuitive, you would guess this, that the vast majority of conservative ... Or vast majority of dangerous jobs are, are mostly populated by conservatives; lumberjacking, uh, hard labor, uh, military, law enforcement. So there's, there ... It's obvious that we're choosing to engage in risk differently, just overall-

Joe Rogan 19:42 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 19:42 ... in the aggregate. And so, I think that gets at why we think differently about this. I think we're truly wired differently and, uh, a- add on top of that, the, the natural disposition of a liberal to believe in some sort of collective action, whereas the natural disposition of a conservative is to believe that government can only do so much. Right? There, there's life out there and it's, sometimes it's dangerous, and it's up to you as an individual to generally assess that. And that's also the most efficient way to do things, in order to get the best outcomes in the aggregate. So these are two dispositions that are always present and they, and they manifest in policy outcomes all the time. And in this case, it's pretty obvious how they manifested into the, into the way we dealt with coronavirus. Um, and, and I think that kind of explains it 'cause, you know ... And, and think about it this way too, the ... When a, when a more left-leaning public health official talks about it, they always give you the worst case scenario, "Well, it's possible that if you're 15, you could die." Well, yeah, it's possible, but it's also far more unlikely than even if you got the flu. They don't ... They say they leave out that part. They leave out the context. They leave out the probabilities. This is why I've been so frustrated with our public health officials.

Joe Rogan 20:47 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 20:48 Give us the whole truth.

Joe Rogan 20:49 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 20:50 Don't just give us the most dangerous truth. Don't, don't tell us the tail end of the probability, uh, scale. Like, that's, that's not useful information to us. Very ... It's been very frustrating to watch how we've dealt with this over the last year, around the world, not just in America. Frankly, we've had it better than a lot of countries.

Joe Rogan 21:06 I, I think people tend to try to find a group that they can attach themselves to, and Chris Rock has a great bit about this. Chri- ... You know what? You can find ... Uh, Mick Maynard, who is, uh, one of the, uh, matchmakers for the UFC, posted this on his Instagram. Um, go to, um, Mick ... You got it? Yeah. Okay. So, Mick Maynard posted this from the great and powerful Chris Rock, and this is, uh ... We can watch this 'cause it's on his Instagram and if ... Chris will holler at me if it's, it's an issue, but I fucking love Chris Rock and this is one of the, the best points. It might not be one of his best bits, but it's one of his best points ever 'cause he's so ... It's so accurate because he's talking about-

Narrator 21:50 ... mentality, man. We all got a gang mentality. Republicans are fucking idiots and Democrats are fucking idiots and conservatives are idiots and liberals are idiots. And any- anyone that makes up their mind before they hear the issue is a fucking fool, okay?

22:08 (cheers)

22:13 Everybody ... Now, now, hold on. Everybody's so busy wantin' to be down with a gang. "I'm a conservative," "I'm a liberal," "I'm a conservative." It's bullshit! Be a fucking person! Listen! Let it swirl around your head, then form your opinion. No normal, decent person is one thing, okay? I got some shit I'm conservative about, I got some shit I'm liberal about. Crime? I'm conservative. Prostitution? I'm liberal.

Joe Rogan 22:44 (laughs)

Narrator 22:45 (cheers)

Joe Rogan 22:45 A- and it goes on, but that's where the clip ends.

Dan Crenshaw 22:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:48 But that's so accurate, is that wha- what a lot of people are afraid of is being alone. They're afraid of being attacked. And one of the things about today's culture, particularly with, uh, social media, is that it's an attack culture, it's a bully culture. And a lot of these people that are doing the attacking and they're doing the bullying, they've been bullied in the real world, so they want payback, so they're trying to bully people online.

Dan Crenshaw 23:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:10 And that's what you see. There's a lot of, like, low-status males, a lot of, like, really weak people who have n- never really overcome physical adversity or they're not successful, but they found a way online to gather up a group of people that resonate with some of their opinions and they can attack people. And they do it all day long. You know? There's, there's a-

Dan Crenshaw 23:33 I, I find that to be the most (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 23:34 It's fascinating.

Dan Crenshaw 23:35 ... the most probable ... If, if somebody's, uh, saying something ex- extremely crude and awful to me online, it's, it's probably a, a younger man-

Joe Rogan 23:44 It doesn't have-

Dan Crenshaw 23:44 ... uh, who's unhappy.

Joe Rogan 23:44 ... necessarily.

Dan Crenshaw 23:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 23:45 Sometimes it's older men who have failed their life and they've just-

Dan Crenshaw 23:49 Same. Same, yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:49 ... they've decided that this is their stand, this is their line in the sand they're gonna draw.

Dan Crenshaw 23:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 23:53 Whether now they're gonna be anti-racist or they're gonna be, you know, uh, anti-homophobic or anti-transphobic, or whatever it is, and they're gonna attack all these people-

Dan Crenshaw 24:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:02 ... whether, or, or anti- ... You know, there's so many different ideological pathways that you could choose, that you could get a group of people that agree with you and then you fight against anyone that opposes these ideas, and you do it in a really, uh, aggressive and nasty way, which is something that we should push back against, period. Like, uh, ideas should be something that you should be able to discuss and, and debate and analyze. You should be able to sit down and go, "Why do you believe in the simulation theory?" You know? And, and w- we shouldn't be like, "Well, you're a fucking idiot, Joe Rogan, that's why you agree."

Dan Crenshaw 24:38 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:38 It should be like, "B- b- b- b- b- yeah, I'm a fucking idiot. Yeah."

Dan Crenshaw 24:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:41 "But that's not why I agree with this."

Dan Crenshaw 24:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:43 "That's not why I look at this. I look at this 'cause I'm curious and I, I, I, I see all the various components." You know, I think there's a lot of-... there's, there's a lot of truth on both sides. But the problem is when you ignore the truth on a side that doesn't fit with your ideology, then you're not interested in truth, you're interested in what Chris Rock is talking about. You're interested in supporting your gang.

Dan Crenshaw 25:04 So, yeah, unless your gang or team... I, I always say that you're either wearing a blue jersey or a red jersey, and then you act accordingly.

Joe Rogan 25:09 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 25:10 And you repeat these sort of mantras that you think you're supposed to repeat in order to, to gain favor within that group, make them, make sure they know-

Joe Rogan 25:17 Mm-hmm.

Dan Crenshaw 25:17 ... you're part of the loyalists there.

Joe Rogan 25:19 Yep.

Dan Crenshaw 25:19 And if, and if you don't say the things, then, then, then that group gets distrustful of you. We have... But this is a problem we have on the right, right? So I think the left is power hungry, I think the right is paranoid, and we tend to look for, for betrayers in our, in our midst, right? We look for the-

Joe Rogan 25:31 Wait a minute, who's paranoid and who's power hungry? Which one?

Dan Crenshaw 25:33 The right, the right is more paranoid.

Joe Rogan 25:35 Can you switch it back and forth, though? Left is paranoid sometimes, too.

Dan Crenshaw 25:38 Sure, sure. Look, look, everybody's on a spectrum, right? Uh, uh, so, so... And I, and I should say that in the beginning, right? I'm talking... I'm analyzing in the aggregate, the coronavirus, wh- why, why, why people fell on partisan lines on that. But I mean, look, I recognize that not all liberals are risk-averse to this extraordinary degree. I recognize that. We're all on a spectrum, um, and from, from the left to the right. But, but in the, in the aggregate, this is sort of what we see. And then in politics, as you're talking about, we, we put on these jerseys. And so I'm just talking in generalities, okay?

Joe Rogan 26:07 Right, okay.

Dan Crenshaw 26:07 Of course, the left can be ultra paranoid. Um, and of course, the right in, in, in its extreme form can, can, can exhibit more power-hungry tendencies. But it, but it tends not to be. And if we, and if we look at the policies actually being implemented, that, that tends not to be the case. But what I see on my side, because I'm always dealing with my side, we, we tend to be looking... In- instead of, instead of thinking how to persu- this is the problem I have and I'm trying to change, the... Not that I have, I mean, that I think we have. I... We talk about fighting all the time, and I say, "Look, we have to define fighting as persuasion." Persuasion is, is the name of the game in politics. Look, I can, I can go charge a hill as a SEAL, and that's fighting, right? I mean, and it looks cool, but I'm gonna die. Okay? But what, what I really should do is communicate, uh, maneuver, and, and kill the enemy that, enemy that way. In politics, the, the fight must be persuasion. And it, and it... Too often, we, we get more concerned with, you know, saying the things, saying the slogans, saying the things that make us feel good, that make us... That, that, that, that help us recognize one another as part of the same team, wearing the same jersey. I think that's what he's getting at it. If somebody veers from that, well, they're a traitor, uh, they're not one of you, and then they're automatically wrong. And he's... And in- instead of saying, "Ah, I knew you were gonna say that, let me, let me tell you why it's wrong, let me explain it to you, let's have a debate about it," we get really mad, and we go online, and we call names because we haven't actually done the background work to at least understand why we think what we think. And when you understand why you think what you think, that's how you can persuade people. That's, that's the name of the game. And the reason I say we're paranoid is because... and, and, and I always... you know, we're always looking for RINOs on our side, right? Republicans In Name Only. I've never used that word against anybody. Even, even if I think that it was-

Joe Rogan 27:56 Wait, w- w- e- explain that. What does that mean?

Dan Crenshaw 27:59 It's a, it's a commonly used term in conservative politics.

Joe Rogan 28:03 Really?

Dan Crenshaw 28:03 The RINOs. Oh yeah, Mitt Romney's a RINO, Susan Collins is a RINO, like basically every-

Joe Rogan 28:07 Wait a minute, Mitt Romney's a RINO? He's not conservative?

Dan Crenshaw 28:10 He's not conservative because, because he turned on Trump. Okay? So...

Joe Rogan 28:13 Oh, that's hilarious.

Dan Crenshaw 28:14 And so, so I, I, I don't...

Joe Rogan 28:16 (laughs)

Dan Crenshaw 28:16 And, and you... and I can disagree with him for doing that, but, you know, I, I... but the name-calling frustrates me because it's, it's, it's a way to s- it's a way to bypass debate. Name-calling is always a way to bypass debate.

Joe Rogan 28:28 Right, of course.

Dan Crenshaw 28:29 That's always the use of it. It's, it's never... it never has good intentions behind it. And so whether you're calling somebody a RINO or an establishment or a sellout, this is not useful, this is not useful. Even if you think it's true, then, then explain why it's true on that particular issue. And what tends to happen, and this happens certainly on both sides, is, is that sort of Puritan thinking drives out that more moderate member of the party-

Joe Rogan 28:53 Got one of those.

Dan Crenshaw 28:54 Okay. Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:55 Cheers.

Dan Crenshaw 28:55 Cheers. My wife has-

Joe Rogan 28:57 Salud.

Dan Crenshaw 28:57 My wife said I wasn't allowed to.

Joe Rogan 28:58 Your wife loves you.

Dan Crenshaw 28:59 ... you know, joke, so...

Joe Rogan 28:59 Come on, man. You're having a sip.

Dan Crenshaw 29:00 I had to.

Joe Rogan 29:02 This is, uh, the most American whiskey available.

Dan Crenshaw 29:05 It's very good.

Joe Rogan 29:06 Buffalo Trace.

Dan Crenshaw 29:07 Um, it drives out those more moderate members that you need to actually persuade people, and especially in certain districts. And so, look, I've, I'm a very c-... I don't, I don't think I take any left-wing positions. I'm very conservative, but-

Joe Rogan 29:20 Like, what do you mean by you don't take any left-wing positions? Like, what are left-wing positions that you oppose?

Dan Crenshaw 29:26 Well, what, what issue do you want to talk about? (laughs) I mean, th- um, uh, anything. Healthcare, on their energy mix, on taxation, on border, on, on just about anything, um, we disagree. This is the nature of politics. This is healthy disagreement here.

Joe Rogan 29:39 Well, uh, let's go to healthcare.

Dan Crenshaw 29:41 Okay.

Joe Rogan 29:42 Like, wouldn't it be nice if everybody had healthcare?

Dan Crenshaw 29:45 Yes. The left is right about that.

Joe Rogan 29:46 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 29:47 Th- th- th- this... So... And this gets to another point I think you were kind of making earlier, which is there's good ideas on both sides.

Joe Rogan 29:53 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 29:53 I do think we have to listen to what the left wants sometimes, not all the time, it depends. But on healthcare, are they wrong to say everybody should have access to good healthcare? Is that a wrong statement to make?

Joe Rogan 30:03 No.

Dan Crenshaw 30:03 No, of course not.

Joe Rogan 30:04 I mean, I think, I think of us as a community, I think of the United States as a community, and I think if there's someone in the community that is, uh, that's hurting co- because of bad circumstance or bad fortune-

Dan Crenshaw 30:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:16 ... we should be able to take care of them.

Dan Crenshaw 30:18 But the same-

Joe Rogan 30:19 The same way we're able to keep the power grid up, the same way we're able to fix the bridges, we should be able to provide healthcare to the-

Dan Crenshaw 30:25 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:26 ... members of our community.

Dan Crenshaw 30:27 So the question is, how do we get there?

Joe Rogan 30:28 But here's where I get, here's where I get conservative. I think we should also make people personally responsible for their own health.

Dan Crenshaw 30:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:34 I think you should step up and say, "Hey, y- I, I want you to have healthcare based on your current circumstances, but I also want you to do the work to get your health better." And that's where I think we need to make a division.

Dan Crenshaw 30:46 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:46 And I'm n- I'm, I'm as left as I am right, because I'm s- I'm left on so many things, but I'm right on so many things, too. Like Chris Rock said, "I'm, I'm pretty fucking conservative on crime."You know, I get- I get angry-

Dan Crenshaw 30:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:59 ... when- when I- I- I see lax crime or- or- or lax, uh, law enforcement. When I- when I see, like, people not supporting law enforcement or not understanding the nature of crime or not understanding what happens when criminals realize that there is no law enforcement.

Dan Crenshaw 31:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:16 Like, Jesus Christ, like-

Dan Crenshaw 31:17 Incentives matter.

Joe Rogan 31:18 It matters a lot.

Dan Crenshaw 31:19 And- and I think that's the, what you're getting at, and-

Joe Rogan 31:22 Human nature matters.

Dan Crenshaw 31:23 And- and to- to say that incentives matter, um, it- it might be a conservative position. I think that you could also say it's a classically liberal position. You know, if I were to try to categorize you, Joe, I'd, uh, put you in a lot of classically liberal areas, where you, you know, believing in free speech and free debate and these classically liberal ideas that our country was founded on. It does seem to me now that the Republican Party's the only one defending these more classically liberal ideas. Now, in healthcare, again, this is, some- sometimes I, this is what I always say. Look, we have to ... and I think Jordan Peterson puts this the best way, about the- the balance between chaos and order and the balance between the left and the right, the left representing chaos, the right representing order. Now, it's not derogatory to say that they're representing chaos. It just means they're representing constant change.

Joe Rogan 32:07 Yes.

Dan Crenshaw 32:07 But that's unhealthy left by itself, just like may- maybe an adherence to- to pure hierarchal or hierarchal order is also unhealthy left by itself, and so a balance is needed. But to solve the problem, to- to solve problems that you want to solve and to- and to get to the change that we, some- that we agree that we want to make, now, first we have to agree on the change. Now, in this case, we do. Everybody should have access to good healthcare.

Joe Rogan 32:32 Yeah, we all agree on that one, right?

Dan Crenshaw 32:33 Sometimes we don't agree on the change. Like, on the border, we don't agree. The left wants to go a totally different direction.

Joe Rogan 32:36 Well, let's just talk about healthcare first.

Dan Crenshaw 32:38 Yeah, I will.

Joe Rogan 32:38 Let's go to the border, too. I would love to do that, too.

Dan Crenshaw 32:40 Yes. No, I'm sticking to healthcare. Don't worry. So- so they- so they want people to have access to healthcare, and they want to do it through Medicare for All, okay? We say, no, you can't do it that way, because if you do, there's trade-offs associated that I don't think that we should bear.

Joe Rogan 32:54 What are those trade-offs?

Dan Crenshaw 32:55 Well, the trade-offs would be, one, it's really expensive. So, you have to double or triple people's taxes to pay for- for the amount of care that they want to give.

Joe Rogan 33:01 Double or triple?

Dan Crenshaw 33:02 Double or triple, at least. That's what every study would show. Um, and thi- this is not disputed, by the way. This is ... I'm not- I'm not saying things that a- that a Democrat could- would- would disagree with. Um, this is- this is well-known. This- this has a- this has a large cost to it.

Joe Rogan 33:14 But how do you triple ... Like, if someone's in a 48% tax bracket, how do you triple their taxes?

Dan Crenshaw 33:18 Uh, that's a really good question. That's the problem. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:21 (laughs)

Dan Crenshaw 33:21 That's ... It- it- it- you're talking in the aggregate. And look, and look, Nordic countries that do do this, for instance, um, they ... We have the most progressive tax system in the world, by the way. Nobody believes that, but it's actually true. Nordic countries tax their middle class exceptionally more than we do. Okay, well, our- our top 1% pays 40% of taxes.

Joe Rogan 33:38 Do they-

Dan Crenshaw 33:38 You know what? That share increased after the tax cuts under Trump.

Joe Rogan 33:41 Do they have a benefit to that tax increase?

Dan Crenshaw 33:44 Sure, they have a large welfare state. So, they have a very large welfare state in Nordic countries.

Joe Rogan 33:47 Do they have a lower crime rate?

Dan Crenshaw 33:48 That's- that's the trade-off.

Joe Rogan 33:49 Do they have a lower crime rate as well?

Dan Crenshaw 33:51 Uh, my- I'm sure it depends on the location and tha- that- that's ... I'm not sure that's associated with- with this- with the particular discussion about welfare, necessarily. Um, but- but going back to healthcare, so- so that's one trade-off. It's expensive. And the second trade-off is if you're talking about Medicare for All, and under these bills that they propose, you- you are reimbursing doctors and hospitals at a Medicare rate. Okay, that's- that's a really important part of it. That ef- that effectively means price controls. That's how you maintain that- that- that budget that you say you're gonna stick within. That's how Canada does it. That's how the UK does it. That's how all these countries do it. So, there's a- there's a particular reimbursement rate. We're gonna pay you this much for this service. We're gonna pay you this much for this drug. That's price controls. Anytime you have price controls, you have less supply. That's an economic truth that you can never escape. If I say that I'm only gonna pay you a certain amount per episode, well, you're do- you're recalculating how much you're, how many episodes you're gonna do, no matter what. Everybody- everybody controls their supply based on a price. Now, if you think you can get more for that price, you'll increase your supply. This is always true in healthcare. It's why- it's why during the pandemic, this was made really clear. We have more beds, ICU beds per capita than any other country. For instance, we have more ventilators per capita than any other country. We have access to far more, uh, drugs than any other country. We do, because we make most of them here, um, because there's a profit incentive.

Joe Rogan 35:12 I thought we made most of them in C- China.

Dan Crenshaw 35:14 Uh, uh, on some of the more generic stuff. That was- that was- that was a problem during the pandemic that was being talked about.

Joe Rogan 35:18 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 35:18 When it comes to your- your next generation drug, that's made mostly by American pharmaceuticals because there's a profit incentive.

Joe Rogan 35:26 Is it- is it invented by most American pharmaceuticals, but then produced by China? Is that what the issue is?

Dan Crenshaw 35:32 They- they- they- they might produce, like, a certain compound or something in China. It was- it- it was not our most exceptional drugs being produced in China. The- there is supply chain issues that we're addressing that we should address.

Joe Rogan 35:41 Is there a hierarchy of- of drugs?

Dan Crenshaw 35:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:44 Like essential drugs, like there's a hierarchy-

Dan Crenshaw 35:46 Well, there- well, there-

Joe Rogan 35:46 ... of businesses, essential businesses?

Dan Crenshaw 35:46 Well, there's the mo- well, there's the most advanced kind of cancer drug, for instance.

Joe Rogan 35:50 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 35:50 Like, you're only gonna get that here in the United States.

Joe Rogan 35:52 And you're only gonna get it in terms of the way it's invented or the way it's processed and produced?

Dan Crenshaw 35:57 I mean, get it, period.

Joe Rogan 35:58 Get it.

Dan Crenshaw 35:59 Because- because so's-

Joe Rogan 36:00 'Cause we make it?

Dan Crenshaw 36:01 Right, because we make it, and that pharmaceutical company might offer it to Australia or the UK, but the UK says, "Well, we're not gonna pay you that much for it." And so they just don't get it. So, uh, depending on what country you're looking at, uh, a lot of times you'll see, like, Australia, I think, has access to maybe 60% of the drugs that the United States has access to.

Joe Rogan 36:19 Okay.

Dan Crenshaw 36:19 So- so we get something ... We pay too much for our healthcare, but we also get a lot for it. We are much more likely to survive cancer in the United States. You're much more likely to survive rare diseases. They- the left will throw out this stat that says we pay, you know, double what other countries pay for healthcare, but our- but our life expectancy is the same. That- that's- that's- that's playing with statistics a little bit, 'cause life expectancy also includes suicides, homicides, these- these things that have nothing to do with the quality of your healthcare system. Now, those are problems, to be sure, but they have nothing to do with the quality of care that you're getting when you have a really, really rare disease.

Joe Rogan 36:52 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 36:52 Here in the United States, this is the place you want to be. This is where people are coming from Canada when they have things that can't be solved there, because it takes them six months to get an elbow surgery. So, we're- we are getting something for our profit-incentivized healthcare. When you put price controls on it, you're going to get less of it. I talk to independent clinics all the time. They're like, "We're just gonna close. If we have to take Medicare rates of reimbursement for our, for the care that we're giving, we're just gonna close. We can't make a profit that way."Hospitals probably won't close. They've done a good job, you know, aggregating (laughs) different hospitals together to, to make more profits. But they're gonna fire doctors. They're gonna pay doctors less. Now you have less of an incentive to go to medical school. You definitely have less of an incentive to go to, to be a primary care doctor. All of these problems start to compound, and you- and your, and your healthcare system starts to look a lot like Canada or the UK. Uh, specifically Canada, for what Medicare For All is. And Canadians flee there, again, when they need really, really specialized care. Okay, so what's a better way to do this? I mean, I would- I would say simply, the way

Dan Crenshaw 37:53 Obamacare works (sighs) and the way Medicare For All would work, is it puts the money in the pockets of the insurance companies, in the case of Obamacare. Or in the case of Medicare For All, simply is a, it's a one-payer system right to the, to the doctor or hospital and then, and then they negotiate that price. Um, a better way to do this, and this starts to look a little bit like, say, Switzerland, where you put the money in the pocket of the patient. The patient then controls it. Now think about, here's something else we agree on that people need: food. Right? People need food, and so what do we do? Do we create these government-run food production facilities and distribution facilities? Do we, do we tell the grocery store, "Look, okay, this person's gonna go buy some, some cereal and then we're gonna reimburse you for that cereal on the backend"? No, we don't. We give the person a, a food stamp, a voucher, and then they go buy what they want.

Joe Rogan 38:40 Is the issue that they're buying what they want? This is where it gets weird, right? It's like, if you give someone food stamps, should you say, "Well, you can only buy real food."

Dan Crenshaw 38:51 Maybe.

Joe Rogan 38:51 "You can't use food stamps to buy cigarettes."

Dan Crenshaw 38:52 That's a different conversation.

Joe Rogan 38:53 Can you buy cigarettes with food stamps?

Dan Crenshaw 38:55 No.

Joe Rogan 38:55 No?

Dan Crenshaw 38:56 No.

Joe Rogan 38:56 Can you buy booze?

Dan Crenshaw 38:57 I- it- it is ... No.

Joe Rogan 38:58 No?

Dan Crenshaw 38:58 And, and, it would be the same with healthcare. We-

Joe Rogan 38:59 Can you buy-

Dan Crenshaw 39:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:01 Can you buy Cocoa Puffs?

Dan Crenshaw 39:01 I'm not gonna let you distract me here.

Joe Rogan 39:03 (laughs)

Dan Crenshaw 39:03 So we would- it would be the same with healthcare. Like, it's- a lot of people have health savings accounts. Okay, so this is a tax deductible, basically a tax-free zone you can put money into, but you have to spend it on healthcare. So yeah, there's, there's qualified things that you can spend that money on. Imagine a system where you put your money into that health savings account. The gover- and if you can't afford healthcare, the government puts the money in there, and then you have a choice of insurance plans to buy. Or, one thing I'm working on is direct primary care, and this is separate from insurance. But we need to get back to this place in America where you feel like you know who your doctor is. You have a quarterback for your healthcare, and that quarterback is your primary care physician. And a lot of people don't have that. You might have that ... I h- I have a specific doctor I always go to for just basic stuff. Just really basic stuff, usually telemedicine involved, usually just a phone call. It's not- you don't go to them when you break your arm, but they're your primary care doctor. Now, direct primary care is a system that's already growing in America. It's about $75 a month on average, and you have total access to a doctor. So it's more like a gym membership than it is insurance. And there's no copays. There's no third-party insurance. That's what I want to normalize in America to get people to this point. And again, you could, you could, you could put that money on a debit card for the poor.

Joe Rogan 40:17 Wait a minute. Explain what you're saying. Like-

Dan Crenshaw 40:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:20 ... when, when you're talking about that money, where's this money coming from? How does it get allocated? Like, what, what are you talking about?

Dan Crenshaw 40:25 Yeah. So instead of spending all this money on, on Medicaid, for instance-

Joe Rogan 40:28 Okay.

Dan Crenshaw 40:29 Take the people who are eligible for Medicaid and even above that, right, and you could, you could have a, a tiered program. Um, instead of wasting all that money on a Medicaid program that doesn't have, uh, improved outcomes, by the way. Every study shows this.

Joe Rogan 40:42 What do you mean by that, doesn't have improved outcomes?

Dan Crenshaw 40:44 It, it means that-

Joe Rogan 40:44 If they don't-

Dan Crenshaw 40:44 ... when you compare the people from the same socioeconomic status and they're in Medicaid enrolled or they have no insurance at all, their health outcomes are no different. So again-

Joe Rogan 40:54 Is that m- malarkey? Is that fucking around with statistics?

Dan Crenshaw 40:56 This, this, a lot-

Joe Rogan 40:56 I mean, I would've-

Dan Crenshaw 40:56 ... a lot, a lot of studies have shown this from-

Joe Rogan 40:58 But, but hold on a second.

Dan Crenshaw 40:59 ... multiple universities.

Joe Rogan 40:59 You're, you're talking about someone getting medical care or not getting medical care.

Dan Crenshaw 41:03 No, no, no. They still- 'cause you always get medical care in America.

Joe Rogan 41:05 How so?

Dan Crenshaw 41:05 You o- you just show up. The hospitals never turn anybody away. It's a myth.

Joe Rogan 41:09 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 41:09 It would be a myth to say that.

Joe Rogan 41:10 But, but is it true that people that have Medicare were more likely to go to a hospital to take care of stuff versus people that ignore that issue-

Dan Crenshaw 41:18 No.

Joe Rogan 41:18 ... if they don't have health insurance?

Dan Crenshaw 41:20 It, i- i- it's not, for whatever reason.

Joe Rogan 41:23 It's not?

Dan Crenshaw 41:23 I- i- it's, it's not because-

Joe Rogan 41:23 So if you have no health insurance and you're worried that this is gonna put you into debt for the rest of your life, you're the same- in, in the same line as someone who has medical insurance who can go to a, a, whatever-

Dan Crenshaw 41:35 S-

Joe Rogan 41:35 ... emergency room, whatever it is-

Dan Crenshaw 41:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:37 ... and deal with whatever personal issue they're dealing with and not worry about it being something that ruins them financially forever? The same motivation, the same, th- the same action?

Dan Crenshaw 41:48 Y- you get your healthcare either way. Again, our, our pricing system sucks. Our payment system sucks. That's what everybody's pissed off about. When you're en- when you're enrolled in Medi- I'm not saying it's- I'm not saying Medicaid's fault that you have worse outcomes. I'm saying-

Joe Rogan 41:59 Isn't it a problem though that we're dealing with these giant numbers of people and we're, we're trying to figure out like what's the same action? Like if you have someone who has health insurance versus someone who doesn't have health insurance, just naturally I would assume someone who has health insurance is gonna get medical care more often, or at least seek out medical care more often. Is that unreasonable?

Dan Crenshaw 42:17 Um, it, it doesn't end up turning out that way necessarily because their-

Joe Rogan 42:21 Statistically?

Dan Crenshaw 42:21 ... because their deductibles are so high. So but you know that when you go seek out, "Hey, I just wanna check up on something."

Joe Rogan 42:26 So if you have Medicare For All-

Dan Crenshaw 42:27 So if you got a $6,000 deductible-

Joe Rogan 42:28 Is that what a deductible is for Medicare For All?

Dan Crenshaw 42:31 Well i- i- in, in Bernie Sanders' idea of Medicare For All, you would never pay for anything. And again, that sounds really nice.

Joe Rogan 42:37 Does sound nice.

Dan Crenshaw 42:37 It does sound nice until you- but I explained all the trade-offs you're, you're getting with that. You, you're getting a mu- you're, you- you've, you've driven profits outta the system completely.

Joe Rogan 42:45 How do you do that, what Bernie Sanders wants? How do you merge the two?

Dan Crenshaw 42:49 I'm trying to. I'm trying to.

Joe Rogan 42:50 Is it possible?

Dan Crenshaw 42:51 I, I- well the way I'm explaining it, I would, I would say it is.

Joe Rogan 42:54 Okay.

Dan Crenshaw 42:54 Right? How do, how do you have your cake and eat it too? 'Cause I'm not willing to sacrifice the quality of our system for what Bernie Sanders wants. I'm not willing to make us look like Canada. We're the last country in the world truly innovating. Okay, so now, now if we were done innovating, if we said, "We don't, we don't need any-"

Joe Rogan 43:07 You mean with medical stuff?

Dan Crenshaw 43:09 With med- uh, medical devices-

Joe Rogan 43:11 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 43:11 ... and pharmaceuticals.

Joe Rogan 43:12 Okay.

Dan Crenshaw 43:12 All of it. If we didn't need anything else, if we were at our maximum, if we were at the pinnacle of success when it comes to medical technology, then may- you might be able to make the argument. Okay, like a moral argument. "Okay, the government should just confiscate all of this technology and distribute it equally."I mean, maybe. I still don't think it would work very well because y- y- you know, you also, you also have to conscript doctors into, and doctors and nurses and hospital administrators into this, into this sort of, um, system where you're forcing them to work the amount that you want them to work, which is, which is, uh, which is problematic. But ... And so, so how do you get both? How do you maintain the incentive to innovate? How do you maintain the incentive to hire more doctors and to, and to compete with one another? The only thing that drives better quality in the system is generally competition and some kind of choice associated with that. So again-

Joe Rogan 44:02 We, we could-

Dan Crenshaw 44:02 ... this is why, this is why I brought up the analogy with food stamps.

Joe Rogan 44:04 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 44:04 'Cause there's a way to do it, and it's putting the money, it's empowering the patient to make those choices. Okay? It's not saying, it's not saying, "We're gonna, we're gonna leave you out to dry." It's saying, "Let's empower this patient. Instead of putting them in this Medicaid enroll-" Because the other problem with Medicaid, by the way, is a lot of doctors won't take it because of the reimbursement rates and because of how difficult it is to deal with the government. Nobody likes dealing with the government. The reason hospitals can make a profit at all is because insurance companies, well, our insurance is so expensive, 'cause insurance companies are paying 150% of the cost of a procedure, whereas Medicaid, Medicare might be paying 60 to 70% of the cost of p- of a procedure. So, if you make everybody pay 60 to 70% of the cost of a procedure, you're gonna get less supply.

Joe Rogan 44:46 So, is the idea that the reason why Medicare is only willing to pay 60 to 70% of the procedure is because they believe the procedure is overpriced?

Dan Crenshaw 44:56 It's a negotiation. It's a, um, it's a formula.

Joe Rogan 44:59 Like, how, how do they justify that?

Dan Crenshaw 45:02 Well, they're saving money. I mean, it's-

Joe Rogan 45:03 Like, if you say ... But I understand that, but if you say, like, it costs X amount to repair an ACL surgery.

Dan Crenshaw 45:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 45:09 If you blow your ACL out and you gotta repair it, if Medicare is only willing to pay 60% of that rate, like, what are they saying?

Dan Crenshaw 45:16 Well, the, the-

Joe Rogan 45:16 Are they saying you don't deserve any more money because it's not-

Dan Crenshaw 45:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:19 ... worth that much?

Dan Crenshaw 45:20 Right. That's what they're saying. And, and this, and this-

Joe Rogan 45:23 But, so, is it just a-

Dan Crenshaw 45:23 ... and this, and this gets at another problem that, that, that the Trump administration fixed, was just price transparency. 'Cause, 'cause this is the other thing, nobody seems to know how much anything costs. Okay? So, so the way things, the way we price out how much things cost in healthcare is based on these formularies that are derived from CMS, which is Medicare and Medicaid.

Joe Rogan 45:41 What's CMS?

Dan Crenshaw 45:43 Uh, uh, it's Medicare and Medicaid. It's the government organization. Um, and, and derived from private insurance. And so, that's how we sort of analyze what it costs. But, but you go ask a hospital, not all hospitals, but many, and they're like, "Well, I can't tell you exactly how much it costs." I'm like, "Well, what do you mean you can't tell me?" So, price transparency something is a rule that was imposed recently that will fix this problem and get us to this point where we can finally start shopping around. Now, some hospitals do do this, and they make a big deal out of it. They say, "Look, here's our prices. We're posting them." A lot of, um, this, um, independent, um, facilities will do this as well. This is, this is what it's moving towards. The direct primary care system that I was just talking about, that's, that's getting at that truth. Well, it's like, "Look, this is what your care costs. Here's all the services you get for 75 bucks a month." Again, it's not insurance. It's not catastrophic, but here's all the services you get. Now you have a relationship with your doctor. You never have to talk to insurance. It's just he's, he or she is there all the time. So, what do you do about insurance? Go back to the food stamp analogy. Put money in a, in a, in a health savings account and it'll allow you to choose what insurance works for you. Like s-

Joe Rogan 46:51 Wait, hold on. Stop.

Dan Crenshaw 46:52 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:52 When you say, "Put money in a health insurance account," w- what does that mean? Like, where's that money coming from? I don't-

Dan Crenshaw 46:57 That would, that would be ... So, that would, that would-

Joe Rogan 46:58 So, so do you get to allocate how much money goes to, to this or to that?

Dan Crenshaw 47:01 Yeah. It would be means, it would be means-tested just like anything else.

Joe Rogan 47:04 Means-tested? How so?

Dan Crenshaw 47:05 It means t- mean- if you're poor, you get more. If you're you, you don't get any money.

Joe Rogan 47:08 But, uh, w- when you say the money goes into some sort of account, like, what, what ... The individual.

Dan Crenshaw 47:14 Health savings account.

Joe Rogan 47:14 Like, the individual wants ... But the individual who wants healthcare, like, what happens if that money runs out? What if you have so many health problems? What if you're just unfortunate biologically and you have a-

Dan Crenshaw 47:23 Well, you'd be buying insurance with that, with that health savings account. So, the idea-

Joe Rogan 47:26 You would be buying insurance.

Dan Crenshaw 47:27 Yeah, it would, 'cause-

Joe Rogan 47:27 So, it would be up to the individual to choose-

Dan Crenshaw 47:30 Right.

Joe Rogan 47:30 ... which insurance they, they buy or don't buy?

Dan Crenshaw 47:32 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:32 So, they would have to be educated on this.

Dan Crenshaw 47:35 Yeah, that's why you have a direct prim- a primary care doctor as well.

Joe Rogan 47:37 So, the primary care doctor would also have to educate you on what kinds of insurance you need?

Dan Crenshaw 47:40 You, you al- you already have to be educated on it. I mean, that, that, that, that, that problem already exists.

Joe Rogan 47:46 How so?

Dan Crenshaw 47:47 In the sense that we have private insurance out there and you've gotta choose on Obamacare between Gold plans and Platinum plans and all these things.

Joe Rogan 47:53 Well, you have to make a choice. You don't have to be educated. (laughs) You could just make a choice, right?

Dan Crenshaw 47:56 Yeah, yeah. But choice, choice is important. There's this, there's this idea out there that nobody knows how to make choices, um, for their things. And that's a, that's a common refrain I hear from the left, people are just too stupid to do it.

Joe Rogan 48:06 It's not that they're stupid. It's just they don't understand what's going on.

Dan Crenshaw 48:08 It's complicated.

Joe Rogan 48:09 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 48:10 It's complicated. But look, there's, uh, these, the, the ... We, we have systems in place that score these plans as well. Um, and these are insurance plans, okay? So, th- this ... I would say, I would categorize this in three phases as well. Primary care, insurance, and then catastrophic, um, and preexisting conditions. So, say, cancer and preexisting conditions, lifelong care needed. We already have a system for that too that works rather well. It's at the state level reinsurance programs, meaning the government steps in and basically subsidizes that insurance plan when it gets too expensive. Okay? And that's where we kinda pool our money together. That's the collectivism that does happen.

Joe Rogan 48:44 They do? How so? How does it happen? Like, let's say, uh, you need your disks fused, you have a spinal issue.

Dan Crenshaw 48:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:50 Like, where's that money coming from?

Dan Crenshaw 48:53 Um, uh, that's probably just insurance. I mean, I, I don't know if-

Joe Rogan 48:57 That's a lot of fucking money for spinal surgery. What if your insurance doesn't cover that? W- who, how does, how does one deal with the deductible?

Dan Crenshaw 49:05 So, so the way a lot of states have, have innovated through this is getting waivers from Obamacare, um, 'cause Obamacare legislation is extremely regulatorily, reguatorilarily ... Is that a word?

Joe Rogan 49:17 (laughs) I think so.

Dan Crenshaw 49:17 Burdensome.Um, and so you get waivers and then you set up your reinsurance program at the state level. What this basically means is when that dollar sign hits too much, in order to, in order to prevent the insurance company from increasing premiums on everybody, they basically pay them back on the backend. The patient never really sees this. So, that's how you deal with those really, really catastrophic cases that do cost exorbitant amounts of money. So, there's a, there's an answer for everything on this. And again, what do you get from this that you're not getting from Medicare For All? You're maintaining the quality of the system, you're maintaining those profit incentives, and you're maintaining that choice and competition, and you're empowering the patient to actually choose. In Medicare For All, you have no power.

Joe Rogan 49:59 So, are- are you defending the current options that are available or are you trying-

Dan Crenshaw 50:06 Oh, no, no, no. I'm- I'm- I'm advocating for change on this. It's, yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:08 You're ... but what- what's the specific change? What do you think the specific change should be?

Dan Crenshaw 50:13 Um, liberalize HSA accounts to an extraordinary ... 'Cause you gotta do this in steps, right? I- I would, I would lay this out.

Joe Rogan 50:17 HSA? What is that?

Dan Crenshaw 50:18 Health savings account, the thing we talked about.

Joe Rogan 50:20 Okay.

Dan Crenshaw 50:20 Government puts money ... Instead of government spending hundreds of billions of dollars, wasteful dollars that don't have the outcomes we wish they had-

Joe Rogan 50:27 But where's that money going to? What's the waste?

Dan Crenshaw 50:29 Well, a lot of it's through fraud, for instance-

Joe Rogan 50:31 Really?

Dan Crenshaw 50:31 ... because people who are not qualified for Medicaid still get on Medicaid. Um, doctors-

Joe Rogan 50:36 What makes someone qualified for Medicaid?

Dan Crenshaw 50:38 A- and it- and it's ... It- it's a means-tested program.

Joe Rogan 50:39 So, it's a matter of how much money you make?

Dan Crenshaw 50:41 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 50:41 So, there's a lot of people that make money that don't want to spend that money.

Dan Crenshaw 50:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 50:44 And they- they- they lie?

Dan Crenshaw 50:46 I mean, this happens with any welfare program, right? There's- there's a lot-

Joe Rogan 50:48 Sons of bitches.

Dan Crenshaw 50:48 There's a lot of fraud and abuse that happens in- in all, in all of these government programs. When you put trillions of dollars of taxpayer money into a program, there's a lot of people that have an incentive to try and extract as much money as possible out of those programs. That's just a- that's always gonna be-

Joe Rogan 51:03 Human nature.

Dan Crenshaw 51:03 ... human nature. Um, so that's ... And- and they don't seem to have the outcomes that we'd like them to have. It doesn't- it doesn't- it doesn't appear to anybody or to any of the people studying this who've done, um ... Again, there's a lot of university studies on this that would, that would indicate what I said. You don't get any better outcomes even though we're spending all this money, so what might be a better way to do it? And, uh, a lot of us think that- that empowering the patient with those funds, um, but also, but also ensuring that they have that quarterback as well, in the form of a primary care doctor, uh, would be a m- would have much better outcomes, maintain the profit incentives that actually make our healthcare system have the high quality that it does have, uh, but also ensure that we get, th- that we meet the left's goal of getting people access to good-quality healthcare.

Joe Rogan 51:51 Have you argued, uh, i- i- with anybody on the left about this? Have you ever had a debate about-

Dan Crenshaw 51:56 Every day 'cause I'm- I'm on the Healthcare Subcommittee now.

Joe Rogan 51:59 (laughs)

Dan Crenshaw 52:00 So ... (laughs) But-

Joe Rogan 52:00 But have you had anything, like, uh, publicly where people can, uh, sort of, like, uh, watch this-

Dan Crenshaw 52:05 The Joe Rogan Show. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:07 Yeah, but it's only me on the other side. I don't really understand what I'm talking about. You know, I- I have ideas about what I would like. I would like everybody to have healthcare, that's it, but I don't-

Dan Crenshaw 52:15 Yeah. Uh, that- well, by the way, that's basically their only point.

Joe Rogan 52:17 Yeah. Well, that's what most people would like. They would like everyone to have healthcare. I don't think they understand ...

Dan Crenshaw 52:23 They don't understand the trade-offs, and everything has tra- there are no solutions in policymaking. There are only trade-offs. And if we're not honest about the trade-offs with Medicare For All, we're gonna go down this path and you're gonna end up in a place that- that is, that is less than ideal (laughs) , I- I promise you that, with much higher taxes, uh, worse outcomes, and less quality.

Joe Rogan 52:44 Mm-hmm.

Dan Crenshaw 52:45 It's not a good place to be. But we can agree on the overall goal. You know? And- and again, that's- that's where the, that's where you have to, conservatives do have to listen to the left sometimes. And sometimes they do have these aspirations that I think are worth trying to attain. But then you have to, but then you have to solve a problem within a framework. And this is where I, where I'm constantly criticizing my liberal friends is, what's your framework? What are, what are the principles by which you solve problems? See, I can name my principles, right? I can name the questions that I ask before I solve a problem. How much does it cost? Is that sustainable? Am I infringing on anybody else's rights when I do this? Um, am- am I, am- am I (smacks lips) am I, uh, a- am I adhering to the, to- to the, to the basic notions of checks and balances and- and the rights of localities and states to make their own decisions that might fit their population the best? You know, there's- there's a series of questions. Um, the left doesn't tend to ask those questions, right? It- it- it- it seems to me that every time they propose a solution to a problem that we agree is a problem and needs to be solved, that solution is sort of like the first thing that sounds good (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 53:50 How so?

Dan Crenshaw 53:51 Uh, well, they, Medicare For All. People need healthcare? Okay, just give everybody healthcare.

Joe Rogan 53:55 Right, okay.

Dan Crenshaw 53:55 Right, but it's, but it's n- like, you know, it's like, oh, oh, people should have higher wages? Okay, just raise the minimum wage. No problems, right? No trade-offs. They pretend like there's no trade-offs with any of their solutions, and I- I reject that, and I'm always trying to expose what those trade-offs are to people and explain to people why there's a, there's a, there's a real reason why we should have a debate about this. And there might be better solutions, better solutions that, you know, maybe take a scalpel to a problem instead of a hammer. And those solutions have to be tailored around, I think, classically conservative principles.

Joe Rogan 54:30 It is fascinating what you talked about earlier, that people who are involved in dangerous occupations, whether it's soldiers or fighters or firefighters or ... Th- they genu- generally tend to be conservative-

Dan Crenshaw 54:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:47 ... because they have these occupations where they test themselves, whether they're forced to be tested, where they're forced to be tested, whether it's, uh, their will, their discipline, their ability to understand the consequences of whatever it is they- they have to engage in. And there's real life risks, real risks. And people who don't get tested and people who are, uh, maybe uncomfortable with the idea of physical risks or don't understand what the- the- the consequences of their, uh-... of, of, of physical risks are because they don't engage in them. Maybe they don't engage in anything physically.

Dan Crenshaw 55:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 55:32 May- maybe everything they engage in is intellectually. Maybe they, they don't, they don't blend the, the physical world with the intellectual world. They tend to be more liberal.

Dan Crenshaw 55:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:42 It is really weird. It's r- it's really weird how there's, like, this line in the sand where you ask a person, "What do you do for a living, buddy?" And they go, "Well, I'm a Navy SEAL." You go, "Oh. (laughs) That fucking guy's gonna vote for Republican."

Dan Crenshaw 55:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:54 "What do you do for a living?" "Well, uh, you know, I'm a social worker." "Oh, well, (sighs) for sure-"

Dan Crenshaw 55:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 56:00 "... you're a... you voted for Biden-Harris."

Dan Crenshaw 56:02 We have dispositions that are different, you know?

Joe Rogan 56:04 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 56:04 It's like, um... I mean, you should do things that are hard. They, they help you build capacity. And, and, and ever-

Joe Rogan 56:10 You should do things that are hard. Yes.

Dan Crenshaw 56:11 It's like chapter eight of my book, Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage. I'm not, like, plugging it or anything.

Joe Rogan 56:15 You just did.

Dan Crenshaw 56:15 I'm just saying...

Joe Rogan 56:15 It's okay.

Dan Crenshaw 56:16 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:17 People plug things. It's okay.

Dan Crenshaw 56:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:19 But you're right. You should do things that are hard. That should be a quote. Should be a picture of your face and it says, "You should do things that are hard."

Dan Crenshaw 56:25 And, and you-

Joe Rogan 56:25 It's true.

Dan Crenshaw 56:26 ... do it all the time.

Joe Rogan 56:26 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 56:27 I mean, you, you, you know, you, you might choose... I mean, you probably do a lot of hard things. You're an extremely productive individual, which means, by definition, you're doing something that is challenging in order to reach the, kinda the next, the next horizon, if you will.

Joe Rogan 56:38 That's all I do. I don't like to do things that are easy. I don't like things that are easy. I don't do a fucking single... Other than, like, love my family-

Dan Crenshaw 56:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:46 ... there's not a thing that I do that's easy.

Dan Crenshaw 56:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:49 Everything else I do is, is hard. And the only reason why the things that I do that are... which are easy, are easy, is 'cause I put in the work to make them easy.

Dan Crenshaw 56:57 Right. Right.

Joe Rogan 56:57 Whether it's stand-up comedy or martial arts or anything-

Dan Crenshaw 57:00 That's a good way to put it.

Joe Rogan 57:01 That's all it is. The reason why they're fairly easy... Like, if I roll with a white belt, it's fairly easy. Why is it fairly easy? Because I've been doing jujitsu for 30 fucking years.

Dan Crenshaw 57:10 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 57:10 That's why it's easy.

Dan Crenshaw 57:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 57:11 It's not... Not really 30 years, but 25 or whatever it is.

Dan Crenshaw 57:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:14 But it's that, that's, it's, it's-

Dan Crenshaw 57:16 Fact check.

Joe Rogan 57:16 It's-

Dan Crenshaw 57:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:17 I'm just being honest. It's time. It's all just time.

Dan Crenshaw 57:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:20 It's time. It's time and effort. But you have to put in time and effort. And the problem with this world today is there's so many people that are given participation trophies. And they're, uh, they tell you you're special, period. You know? And you, you know, you're a, you're a, you're a fucking curve model. You don't have to lose weight. You're a this, you're a that. You know, everyone's amazing. Everyone is amazing in their potential. Everyone is amazing.

Dan Crenshaw 57:44 It's, it's the worst thing you can tell somebody, though, when you... Like, the, the-

Joe Rogan 57:47 Right. We... The worst thing you tell someone is they're great without doing any work.

Dan Crenshaw 57:49 Like, the, the self-esteem movement is, is detrimental. You know? Like, "You should have high self-esteem no matter what. You're perfect the way you are. Your truth is what matters. Just tell us your truth, and we will, and we will, and we will mirror it for you."

Joe Rogan 58:03 I think we need two things. We need both. We need, "You're okay." Everyone has been in a down state. Everyone has been low. Everyone has failed. Everyone has been weak. Everyone has been, uh, unworthy or felt terrible or (sighs) just, uh, just fell short of their goals. But you're, you're, you're still loved as a member of the community. But here's how you can feel better about yourself. And one of the best ways to feel better about yourself is to push yourself into a realm where you didn't know that you had the capacity or the fortitude to enter. You... Whether-

Dan Crenshaw 58:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 58:40 What- whatever the fuck it is. Whether it's playing chess or whether it's swimming. Whatever it is, push yourself. Find a place where you didn't know that you can get to, and get there. And then you'll feel better, because life is bizarre, and, uh, and it's bizarrely challenging. And if you decide to not engage in any challenges and you just want, you just want the benefits, you just want, you just want, uh, uh, accolades, you just want love, you just want respect for, for just existing, well, fucking frogs exist. Everybody exists. Trees exist. They don't ask for anything. You're asking for something because you want to d-... In some way or another, you, you, you want to quantify, you... and you wanna... You wanna figure out a way where whatever you're doing with your life is more valuable than what you re- realize you probably should be doing. What you should be doing is pushing yourself. What you should be doing is trying to figure out what makes you satisfied. There's lows and highs. There's peaks and valleys. And unless you, uh, you experience those valleys, you don't understand and you don't appreciate the peaks. And some people don't wanna experience the valleys. They don't wanna experience failure. They don't wanna experience the, the uncomfortable feeling of pushing themselves. They don't wanna experience that fucking... the darkness of not knowing if you can keep going. And, and, and... but forcing yourself and then getting to the bright light of success, getting to the bright light of understanding your boundaries and your limitations, and that these are flexible, and that you can expand those boundaries and expand those limitations and become a stronger version of who you are today. But people don't like that, 'cause it makes them uncomfortable. So what they wanna do is chastise all the people who are calling out for them to be better and get angry at all the people that are forcing them into a position where they have to look at themselves objectively and understand that they've got some flaws. But we all have flaws. But a guy like you, who's been through BUD/S, who's a Navy SEAL, who's wearing an eye patch for a fucking reason 'cause you were blown up, right? You're a guy who understands the real physical consequences of actual danger, real danger, and real work, real hard work, and overcoming those things. And a lot of people don't like that. They don't like being forced to acknowledge the fact that some people have experienced things that they couldn't possibly understand and they couldn't possibly comprehend.

Dan Crenshaw 1:01:00 Yeah. Th- there's a, there's a lack of perspective out there. And, um, you know, at the end of Hell Week is the most elated that any man will be, because they're get... that you, you, you end Hell Week on a Friday afternoon. You've been through hell. I mean, it's... Your body is, is swollen. It's beaten. You, you look like a bag of shit. It's, it's really, it's really impressive what we do to these people (laughs) and that they can sustain it for wha- what, uh, what is... It starts about Sunday and then ends Friday afternoon. Um, and, and you're elai-... But it, but, but people... You would think that you'd go to sleep immediately, but it's not what happens. There, there's a problem where we have to get guys to sleep.... on Friday because they have a, the, the, it's almost like they're elated.

Joe Rogan 1:01:45 Euphoria.

Dan Crenshaw 1:01:45 Yeah, there's a euphoric feeling and they won't stop talking. I would not stop talking. And then I ate like a whole tub of ice cream and then I threw it all up. It was really weird.

Joe Rogan 1:01:51 (laughs)

Dan Crenshaw 1:01:52 And it, and then you, and you don't really sleep that much anyway 'cause it, 'cause your body's really bloated so you also pee all night. But anyway, um, but yeah, so you don't sleep. So you'd think you'd be tired, but you're not because at a certain point you're just, because you get that brown shirt. So that's what happens, like if you, if you haven't been through Hell Week, you wear a white shirt. After, after, after Hell Week, you wear a brown shirt. It's a very significant thing. And, um, then you find out that, uh, the training just gets suckier and so that, that sucks. So the euphoria is, is gone ...

Joe Rogan 1:02:18 (laughs)

Dan Crenshaw 1:02:18 ... after S- and then you get blown up and who knows? But, um, but that moment is special because there's value in suffering. And in today's society, we have convinced ourself that there is no value in suffering, that the entire role of, say, government is to end your suffering. But this is a false promise. Not only is it a false promise, but it w- it will create a weak society that is unable to sustain itself. That's a really important point, and I think there's, I think there's deep truth in that. This is why victimhood politics is so dangerous, and I would say populism is too. I, I, I, I, I think the two are almost indistinguishable from each other. People are always trying to talk about populism on the right and the left, and I say, "Look, well here's what populism is. It's telling you what you feel, it's mirroring your feelings back to you, it's telling you what you want to hear as opposed to the truth." So that, I, I think that's a decent definition of populism. I don't like it, I don't like people embracing it, um, it, it doesn't just mean, hey, things that are good that people are for. Well, you know what? A lot of people are for $1,600 checks that are free (laughs) . That doesn't mean it's a good policy.

Joe Rogan 1:03:20 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 1:03:20 That's a good example of populism.

Joe Rogan 1:03:21 Right. If people voted, if they voted and said, "Do you want $100,000 for free a year?"

Dan Crenshaw 1:03:25 Yeah, totally.

Joe Rogan 1:03:26 Mm, everybody would vote yes.

Dan Crenshaw 1:03:27 Yeah, why wouldn't you?

Joe Rogan 1:03:28 Yeah, it's like-

Dan Crenshaw 1:03:29 But is, but is it, uh, but is it a sustainable policy? You know, of course not.

Joe Rogan 1:03:31 Right, of course not.

Dan Crenshaw 1:03:32 Um, and the, the kind of amounts to the, to the, I think, drastic lurches in, you know, welfare policy or infrastructure spending and all of these things that, that we're seeing. It's populism on steroids. It's telling you what you want to hear, and that's not truth. That's not truth, and we have to get back to truth and we have to get away from this victimhood mentality where we actually, we actually elevate this idea of being helpless. See, that's what's changed. That's what's changed in the last decade. It used to be that, well, you, you might feel some shame if you were the type to, "You know what? You know what? I just, I, I need some help. I feel bad about it. I'm gonna get back on my feet, but I need some help right now." That used to be the sort of American way, all right? We, we need a safety net.

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 Yeah.

Dan Crenshaw 1:04:13 That's n- nobody would disagree with that. We, we need a safety net. We need to help people who have truly fallen on hard times, who've lost their jobs because of COVID. But does that also mean we need to provide a $1,400 check to somebody who never lost their job and whose biggest hardship has been Zoom meetings? Of course not. But over 100 million people were getting checks that never lost their jobs.

Joe Rogan 1:04:31 100 million?

Dan Crenshaw 1:04:32 Easily. It's, it's-

Joe Rogan 1:04:33 Through COVID? Did-

Dan Crenshaw 1:04:33 It's way more. It's way more than that. I, I'm, I'm cutting it off at 100 million so I don't get fact checked.

Joe Rogan 1:04:37 Hold on. Explain that to me.

Dan Crenshaw 1:04:38 W- when we, when we send out checks, the direct cash payments, I've always been against direct cash payments.

Joe Rogan 1:04:43 So, uh, these, the COVID stimulus checks?

Dan Crenshaw 1:04:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:47 So-

Dan Crenshaw 1:04:47 'Cause they go out to anybody who makes-

Joe Rogan 1:04:49 ... people got those checks that didn't lose their jobs?

Dan Crenshaw 1:04:51 Of course.

Joe Rogan 1:04:52 What?

Dan Crenshaw 1:04:53 Yeah, if you, the, the, the cutoff was like 75K a year, so that means-

Joe Rogan 1:04:56 Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Dan Crenshaw 1:04:56 That means every federal r- well, not everybody-

Joe Rogan 1:04:58 So people that didn't lose-

Dan Crenshaw 1:04:58 ... a lot of federal workers getting them too.

Joe Rogan 1:05:00 ... any money because of the pandemic still got checks?

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:03 Yeah, these were never, these were never based on your situation.

Joe Rogan 1:05:08 What?

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:10 Really?

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:10 It's ridiculous.

Joe Rogan 1:05:11 I didn't know that.

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 I thought you had to lose your job.

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:14 I thought there was a problem.

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:16 Wait a minute. So people-

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:17 If your staff is-

Joe Rogan 1:05:17 ... who never lost a penny, so if you look at their, their, their tax r- receipts.

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:22 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:05:22 You look at their, their, uh, the, what they made in 2019-

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:27 ... versus 2020.

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:28 Correct.

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 If they, they didn't lose any money?

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:30 Yeah, no, they w- it was, it's based on your just, just your income. So I think 75K a year was the cutoff. But also if you're a married couple, 150K, and if you have kids, then it's even more.

Joe Rogan 1:05:40 So if you're-

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:40 So you've got like, I've got like a lot of active duty military friends who are getting thousands of dollars because, you know, they have kids and, but it's like why? And, and they're like, "Why? Why am I get ... This is such a waste of taxpayer money." You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 1:05:52 I had no idea.

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:52 Do your duty and go s- go spend it on a local business that's been suffering, but-

Joe Rogan 1:05:55 I thought the money was allocated to people that lost money because of the pandemic.

Dan Crenshaw 1:05:58 No, no, no, because we already have a system for that.

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 That's how naive I am.

Dan Crenshaw 1:06:00 It's unemployment insurance. Our, our system works fine for that. It, that, and this is, this was always my thing. It's like, look, I'm in favor of temporarily boosting payments t- to those who are unemployed on unemployed insurance. Usually state-run unemployment insurance runs at, it, it, it's, it's at a formula that would, that would make sure that you're not making more than you would have if you were already employed because you don't want to have a disincentive to go back to work.

Joe Rogan 1:06:23 Right.

Dan Crenshaw 1:06:23 What we did in the initial stages of the pandemic was increase that to 600, an extra $600 a week if you're unemployed. I'm okay with that for a few weeks during hard times. The problem is Democrats want to keep it forever, and now every business I talk to is like, "I can't hire people. I, I have so many job openings right now, can't hire anybody." Because we still have it. It's $300 a week, but we still have it. It means people are getting paid to stay home because the distance... They're, they're making a purely rational financial decision. But again, uh, that's one conversation. That's (laughs) , that's at least a debate to be had, you know-

Joe Rogan 1:06:54 Okay.

Dan Crenshaw 1:06:54 ... during hard times. But the direct cash payments? That's nuts. That's nuts.

Joe Rogan 1:06:59 So what, what are the direct cash payments?

Dan Crenshaw 1:07:01 Tha- that's the free money. That's the free-

Joe Rogan 1:07:02 That's the free money.

Dan Crenshaw 1:07:03 That's the free money.

Joe Rogan 1:07:03 So this is the people that even though they still make the same amount they made-

Dan Crenshaw 1:07:07 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:07:07 ... in 2019 and 2020-

Dan Crenshaw 1:07:09 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:07:09 ... they got a big check for no reason.

Dan Crenshaw 1:07:11 Yep. Yep. 100%.

Joe Rogan 1:07:13 That seems crazy. If you didn't-

Dan Crenshaw 1:07:14 And that's well, uh, and if, if you do the math, that's well over 100 million people.

Joe Rogan 1:07:17 If you didn't lose your job, they just got it, they didn't ask for it, they just received it, so it's not something they're guilty of.

Dan Crenshaw 1:07:21 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:22 They just received it.

Dan Crenshaw 1:07:23 But, but, but it gets to the cultural argument that we're talking about. No, there was no backlash for this. Even on the right, I remember, I, I remember, and I was, I was, I was a little frustrated with the president, or, or, uh, the ex-president, Donald Trump, uh, the president I voted for, that, uh, he was, he was pushing for those $2,000 cash payments.I said I-

Joe Rogan 1:07:41 But don't you think that