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Joe Rogan Experience #1639 - Dave Smith

Dave Smith is a stand-up comedian and political commentator. He is also the host of the "Part of the Problem" podcast, and co-host of the "Legion of Skanks" podcast.

Dave SmithguestJoe Roganhost
Jun 27, 20243h 12mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:0015:00

    (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast,…

    1. DS

      (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. NA

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) Hello, Joe Smith.

    4. DS

      Hello, Mr. Joe Rogan.

    5. JR

      What's cracking, brother?

    6. DS

      Not much. Glad to be back.

    7. JR

      Thanks for coming out.

    8. DS

      Thank you.

    9. JR

      Thanks for making the trip, man. Sorry you lost your wallet. We're gonna find out how libertarian you are when you get to the airport. (laughs)

    10. DS

      Oh my God.

    11. JR

      (laughs)

    12. DS

      I'm really such an idiot.

    13. JR

      That's-

    14. DS

      Lost, lost my wallet on a plane buying the stupid internet. I went into my bag to buy, get my wallet so I could buy the dumb internet, which doesn't even work.

    15. JR

      Right, barely works.

    16. DS

      And fell asleep and left my wallet.

    17. JR

      Yeah, if you think you're gonna watch YouTube on that, good luck.

    18. DS

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      Yeah, you can kinda tweet.

    20. DS

      (laughs)

    21. JR

      You can kinda check your email.

    22. DS

      Yeah, yeah, it's, like, pointless.

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. DS

      And I had a great... When I got to the hotel, I realized I lost my wallet and I was like, "All right, there's a Starbucks here in the hotel. I'm gonna go grab a coffee and just relax." And I go up and order a coffee and then it just hit me. I was like, "Oh, I don't have a wallet."

    25. JR

      (laughs)

    26. DS

      And then I was there and I was like, "Wait hold on. Let me figure out the... Is, do I have the app?" And I had to go set up the whole app and everything, and then I... Luckily these days you can buy it with an app.

    27. JR

      Yeah, you can do Apple Pay too at a lot of those.

    28. DS

      I had none of that set up, but now I have it all set up.

    29. JR

      D- It really makes you realize how we, we still need this little piece of plastic, this laminated thing with your face on it.

    30. DS

      Mm-hmm.

  2. 15:0030:00

    Well, uh, uh, that's…

    1. JR

      this is the end, and that the rebels have captured him. They're all screaming and yelling and fucking going crazy, and-

    2. DS

      Well, uh, uh, that's right. And, and what's happened is that the, the corporate press has lost their monopoly on information that they had for all of our lives.

    3. JR

      Right.

    4. DS

      Like now, it's like, well, you can get it from all these places. And that, there's good and bad that comes with that, but they're also now flipping out and, and you can see it. Like, they're losing their grip on power and becoming more and more insane about it. Uh-

    5. JR

      Well, they've lost the ethics of journalism.

    6. DS

      Mm-hmm.

    7. JR

      Like th- like this James O'Keefe thing on CNN, where that guy, who wer- was he the chief whatever he is? Or ...

    8. DS

      Yeah, I forget his position, but a big, he was a pretty big CNN guy.

    9. JR

      And the crazy thing is they catch him on Tinder dates. So, they, they ... He gets ... Like, it must have, she must have been hot.

    10. DS

      (laughs)

    11. JR

      Hot girls get you to talk. So, he's got this hot girl and he's telling her how they do propaganda, how they basically would accentuate anything that was wrong with Trump. They would talk about the-

    12. DS

      Yep.

    13. JR

      ... completely underplay anything that's wrong with Biden. They-

    14. DS

      Which is, which is, to be fair, pretty obvious-

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. DS

      ... to anyone who just has an open mind and watches CNN. But to hear him say it-

    17. JR

      Yeah.

    18. DS

      ... still was ... It was powerful.

    19. JR

      And the fact that he said they're gonna do it now for climate change.

    20. DS

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      It's like, wow.

    22. DS

      Mm-hmm. And, and th- their, that push is already starting.

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. DS

      Um, can you imagine just, like, if you were, like, the head of CNN and you have to give a meeting in the morning and you're like, "All right, so one more time, guys. (deep breath) If a hot chick takes you out-"

    25. JR

      (laughs)

    26. DS

      "... to a bar and starts asking you to tell her about how we're propaganda, that's, that's James O'Keefe, all right?"

    27. JR

      (screams)

    28. DS

      "So, please, please don't just start babbling about how we do propaganda."

    29. JR

      It's so crazy. It's just, it's so weird to see it laid out like that, where, you know, he's explaining how they do it, but what a blabbermouth. The fact that this guy, like, you know, "Hey, man, this is kind of import- Like, imagine if someone heard you say this."

    30. DS

      Yeah.

  3. 30:0045:00

    (laughs) Right. …

    1. JR

      the other day, me and, uh, one of my daughters. And while we were walking to the restaurant, we were, we were laughing about how silly it is. I go, "Okay. Now, finally, we sit down. We're in our protected bubble."

    2. DS

      (laughs) Right.

    3. JR

      "We can take our mask off."

    4. DS

      So true. (laughs)

    5. JR

      "But when we're standing up three feet away, gotta wear that mask."

    6. DS

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      "Super important." Like, we're all in a room together. We're all in a room together. We're breathing the same air, and no one has a mask on while we're sitting down. But when you get up to go to the bathroom, better put that mask on. It's very important.

    8. DS

      Yes, just like-

    9. JR

      So, we've developed these sort of patterns that we expect people to follow, and if you comply with those patterns, we know you're a good person. And if you don't, look ...... the worst case scenario's what's happening in Canada, where y- I mean, I'm s- I'm sure you saw that one pastor who's screaming and yelling, "Get out, you Nazis! Get out of my church!" It was on Passover-

    10. DS

      Mm-hmm.

    11. JR

      ... and this guy was freaking out because they were telling him, "You can't have a service because there's too many people there." And then, I'm not sure if it was the same church or if it was another church, but there was, uh, a church video not long after that where there was 200 cops showed up-

    12. DS

      (coughs)

    13. JR

      ... militarized, bulletproof vests, gas masks-

    14. DS

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      ... the whole thing. And you're like, "What in the fuck? You guys are going to people that are at church." Like, they've taken the most authoritarian approach. And for people that don't understand the difference between the United States and our politics, and the freedoms that are provided to us by the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, by our Bill of Rights, by the Constitution, Canada's very different. First of all, they do not have a First Amendment. They don't have a freedom of assembly. They don't have the same rights that are bestowed upon them by their constitution, but we think of them as the same as us.

    16. DS

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      But they're not. Justin Trudeau and the government over there, and th- the local governments, whether it's in Ontario or wherever it is, they have way more power over the people. They enforce human rights laws, and this is all the stuff that Jordan Peterson was freaking out about-

    18. DS

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      ... a long time ago. He's like, "You gotta understand." And he did understand from a perspective of being a Canadian. It's like, this is, th- this is... This stuff goes badly. This stuff-

    20. DS

      And it's very, it's very easy to, when you're dealing with Jordan Peterson, when he's speaking out about, uh, the bill, uh, C16-

    21. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    22. DS

      ... or, you know, one of these things. You're like, "Oh, right. Well, they're just kind of making you call a trans person their preferred pronouns. It's just kind of this small thing." But you have these legal precedents that are set, and then when the big thing comes, they already have the precedent to say, "Well, we don't have to respect your freedom to gather, or your freedom of speech-

    23. JR

      Right.

    24. DS

      ... or any of this." It's a very dangerous road to go down. And even, look, even here in America, we... The Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all of this is still just kind of an idea. Like, the, you know, G- Governor Murphy, the governor of New Jersey. I don't know if you saw this, it was last M- April or May. It was pretty early into the, the lockdown stuff, when he was on Tucker Carlson's show. Did you see that?

    25. JR

      No.

    26. DS

      He... So, Tucker Carlson, again, feel however you feel about him. He's, he's good on some things, he's bad on some things. But he gave one of the lockdown governors a really tough interview at the height of it. And very few people were doing that. And he said to Governor Murphy, straight up, he goes... Okay, so he, he talked about this thing that had just happened where I think, like, 15 Jewish people were arrested for going to synagogue. And he goes, "Okay, so you just arrested these people for going to synagogue. Where do you get that authority? I mean, this is a clearly constitutionally protected right. Like, I... You can read the First Amendment, and no, you don't have the right to do this." And Murphy just responds without, you know, without any hesitation, he responds, "We weren't thinking about the Bill of Rights." He goes, "That's above my pay grade." He goes, "What we're thinking about is the health issue." So, he just told you straight up that, like, well, we repealed the Bill of Rights, at least for this moment. And basically, that's what happened all around the country. Um, uh, the United States of America went totalitarian in 2020. Now, you can believe it's justified because of the virus. I'm not even arguing that. But the fact is... I mean, like, the word totalitarian gets overused. But how would you describe 2020 other than totalitarian? Uh, when you have p- people watching their television to find out what they're allowed to do today from their governor.

    27. JR

      Yeah.

    28. DS

      "Oh, my governor said I can have a funeral for my father." Or, "My governor said we can go to work, or we can go to church, or we can..." Or that, "Now he said we can't do that." I mean, that is blatant totalitarianism. And you could be really concerned about COVID, fine, but are you telling me you're not also concerned about totalitarianism? Like, take a look the 20th century. It's hundreds of millions of, of people were killed by totalitarian governments. That's scary, scary shit. And-

    29. JR

      But people that are on... They think they're on the right side, don't ever think that's going to happen with their ideology. Like, woke totalitarians never connect themselves-

    30. DS

      Yeah.

  4. 45:001:00:00

    (laughs) …

    1. DS

      society. Like, you know, I'd say what you want, you know, I don't even know exactly what that would be, but what you would be like, "Oh, this is a pretty normal society, you know, we don't fight stupid wars, uh, we're not all at each other's throats, there's good healthcare, good education." Like it, it's a reasonably what Joe Rogan wants society. And so now you're the centrist who supports the status quo, 'cause you like the country, you like what the government's doing, you think this is all good. And then some radicals came to you and made proposals, like, "This is what I think we should do instead of this society that you have." And let's say one was the most radical left-winger that you know today and one was the most radical right-winger that you know today, saying all of their crazy shit. And you know, the left-wingers are like, "We should have the woke police and hate speech laws and all of this," and the right-wingers are like, "We should be nationalists and we should build a wall and we should..." You know, whatever it is. And then there was someone else who represents the neoliberal/neoconservative establishment order, and they came to you and they said, "Well here's what I think we should do. I think we should, um, uh, attack seven countries in the Middle East and slaughter millions of innocent people. I think we should spend ourselves $20 trillion into debt that we'll pass on to our children. I think we should build up huge, a huge prison industrial complex and put people in there for non-violent, victimless crimes. I think we should tax people and then bail out big banks and big corporations with the money." And you're just looking at these three people. Would it be obvious who the radical is? Would you, would you look at the left-winger and the right-winger and say, "Well that's really crazy, but this guy really has something to say"? I think there's an argument that that's the most radical shit you, you could, you could propose. So now those guys became the extremists, and now they have no leg to stand on to tell a radical leftist or a radical right-winger, "Well you're being a little bit too radical." It's like, fuck you, you're too radical.

    2. JR

      (laughs)

    3. DS

      Look at this whole goddamn system. You inherited America and destroyed it. So who are you? And then truthfully, Donald Trump, I think, signified the, yeah, fuck the whole establishment, and then he did such a bad job with it that he handed them back one last out, where Joe Biden could go, "Eh, isn't normal a little bit better than this?"

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. DS

      "Let's come back to normal." But the problem is that normal is all of that extremist radical shit that destroyed the country, so that's where we are now.

    6. JR

      Isn't that crazy? Like I saw so many people on Twitter saying, "It's so wonderful to have normalcy restored at the White House." It's, I, like, you know he's going to bed at night at a normal time-

    7. DS

      (laughs)

    8. JR

      ... and he's probably being loving to his wife and this... And you're like, "Okay yeah, yeah, yeah," but what are we, what are we doing as a country overseas? Like what is happening with the country? And there's always like some, it's, it's crazy how there's always some new social event, some new thing that happens, whether it's George Floyd's death or the Capitol Hill attack or... There's always something where they can use that and, and, and, and invade more and more into, uh, into people's lives and into, and use this, the, the power of these ideologies and, and force them against each other. It's like there's so many people now that are on edge and right, like after the Capitol Hill attack, like rightly so, like Jesus Christ, the fact that we got that close to these fucking maniacs literally almost killing representatives.

    9. DS

      Yeah.

    10. JR

      You know what I mean? A gu- like as crazy as it gets, right? A guy with war paint on and a fucking buffalo helmet is shirtless standing on the floor of the Senate.

    11. DS

      It was a pretty wild scene.

    12. JR

      Wild fucking scene. But is that our biggest problem? Like what, what is our biggest problem? Well, our biggest pro- well, first of all, how the fuck did we get there? Like what is getting us there? Is it social media? Like what's accentuating this, this divide between us? And how come we can't, how come we can't see the argument laid out the way you just laid it out? How come we can't see like, hey look at what-... what has gone on in the world by following this path that we think is, like, the standard path, we think is, like, normalcy, we think is, like, back to-

    13. DS

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      ... back to basics.

    15. DS

      Well, it's because we're so, like, zoomed in. We're so, like, living in the 24-hour cycle, you know, of like what just happened-

    16. JR

      Yeah.

    17. DS

      ... or what just happened. I mean, like, stories like, like, the accusation that Donald Trump was colluding with a hostile foreign power is like, what? That's years ago. You know what I mean? Like, that's not even, like, we're talking about what happened on the 6th of January when they invade-

    18. JR

      Right.

    19. DS

      ... you know? But if you just zoom out a little bit more, and you're like, "Okay, but what really happened here? And why were the right-wingers willing to go with Donald Trump? And why are they willing to storm the Capitol?"

    20. JR

      Right.

    21. DS

      And, and even if it's just a few hundred storming, the rest of them at least protesting, and tens of millions don't believe the election was legitimate at all. And why do they have such little faith in all of these institutions? And I think, again, you could zoom back very far, but just keeping it in the last 20 years, it's like, well look at everything.

    22. JR

      Yeah.

    23. DS

      Look at what everything was. They fucking, they, they fought all of these wars that everyone knows are bullshit. They've robbed the American people and just given all the money to huge corporations, the big banks. We have the, just incredible levels of corruption.

    24. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. DS

      I mean, just, like, baked into the cake now, where we have the society where there's, like, crazy low interest rates and crazy high government spending. So, all of the new wealth, I mean, Bernie Sanders nails it when he talks about this, although I don't think he looks at those as the reasons. But it's like all of the new wealth coming in disproportionately goes to the top. The whole system is completely skewed toward the already powerful because you have low interest rates, so now you have a whole speculating economy, where everyone's got to get in investments and stocks and bonds and try to make money that way. And so of course, the Wall Street speculators make crazy profits, and then if they fail, they get bailed out. And you have record high government spending, so the politically connected are getting all of this fucking money. So, regular people are just more and more starting to realize, like, "Hey, this whole system is bullshit, and fuck it, I don't believe it anymore." And I think it, it bubbled over to a point, on both sides, on the left and the right.

    26. JR

      But then there's like, okay, well, I understand what you're saying, and, and you're making a lot of sense, but what's the solution? Like, how do we stop something like the Capitol Hill riot from ever happening again? How do we, you know, how... Well, here's another one. How do you clean up the police? Like, how do you fix this thing? I don't think defunding the police is right. I think you probably need to train them and make, make it much more difficult to become a cop, make it much more respectable.

    27. DS

      Yeah.

    28. JR

      But how do you do that?

    29. DS

      Okay.

    30. JR

      How do you do that at this stage of the game? 'Cause this is crazy.

  5. 1:00:001:08:31

    Right. …

    1. DS

      are we slaves or are we free men? Like, which one are we? Because if I can't choose what I can put in my own body, then I'm a slave to somebody else.

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. DS

      And I don't mean like child slavery or in the same sense-

    4. JR

      No, no.

    5. DS

      ... but like, you are not a free person-

    6. JR

      Right.

    7. DS

      ... if you can't make a decision about what you put in your body.

    8. JR

      Right.

    9. DS

      And so obviously, directly, like you just said, the most immoral thing about it is the idea of throwing a human being in a cage like an animal for the crime of putting something in their body.

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. DS

      That... But then on top of that, when you talk about the relationship between people and cops, the effect of the war on drugs has... I mean, look, just like under prohibition when the gang culture rose up and the murder rates skyrocketed, and then when we repealed prohibition, the murder rate went back down. And then the gang members moved into, you know, prostitution and gambling, you know, the other prohibitions.

    12. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    13. DS

      This is where violent gangs flourish, is like in the dark corners of prohibited, um, activities that there is a large demand for because then there's money to be made there. And whatever you do about the, the laws on drugs, the demand is not going away. And so now you're gonna have gang violence in all the inner cities. Now you're gonna have gangs shipping, uh, um, drugs through the border and stuff like that. You get all of this violence comes in that doesn't need to be there, and there would be nothing that America could do to turn around the crime problem in the inner cities throughout this country than to just end all of the prohibitions.

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. DS

      Just be like, there's no more money to be made here for you guys. And now let what happens in California and in other places, let legitimate businesses come in and do it. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a lot better than having high murder rates and high incarceration rates.

    16. JR

      Well, it'd be really fascinating to see how they would manage trying to legitimize-... things like heroin and cocaine, and things that have been sold by the cartels forever. What we're doing right now is the same thing, again, as y- you're saying during alcohol prohibition that propped up the mob, we propped up the cartels. And it's a really dangerous scenario because it's like, oh, it's out of sight-

    17. DS

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      ... out of sight, out of mind. It's right over there. But it's right over there, but there's this fucking gigantic industry in providing us with stuff that we've decided is illegal. And so, the people that are providing it to us-

    19. DS

      (coughs)

    20. JR

      ... are th- the, some of the most dangerous fucking well-funded people-

    21. DS

      Yep.

    22. JR

      ... on the planet Earth. And they can drive here. Like, we're in Austin, Texas, they can drive here from Mexico. It's not far.

    23. DS

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      It's r- and it's wild, man. It's w- I have friends that are in the military that have, uh, w- worked the border recently, and they go, "Dude, it's crazy down there now." Like, because Biden is in office, there's a, a lot of messaging going on that it's like it's okay to come-

    25. DS

      Yeah, Trump's been defeated.

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. DS

      They're, they're, now they're more including of immigrants. You can get in now. And, and also, and there's, it's really tragic and very complicated, but they'll, even when you do these things that do sound kind of humanitarian and nice, so Biden'll do a thing where it's like, "Hey, we'll, look, we're not gonna... You know, if you're on the other side of the border, if you have, like, a young kid with you, we're gonna, we're gonna bring you in."

    28. JR

      Yeah.

    29. DS

      "We're not just gonna leave you there on the other side." It's like, okay, that sounds nice, but now what, what did you just incentivize? Everyone gotta bring a young kid with you.

    30. JR

      Yeah.

Episode duration: 3:12:32

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