EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,058 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- NANarrator
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- NANarrator
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Hey, bro.
- MBMike Baker
Hello, Mike Baker.
- JRJoe Rogan
What's happening, buddy?
- MBMike Baker
Hey, you know what? Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
We turn to you...
- MBMike Baker
Uh, we turn to you to find out what's happening.
- JRJoe Rogan
... whenever shit gets completely sideways, it's time to bring in Mike Baker for, uh, some sort of analysis.
- MBMike Baker
Yeah, that was... (laughs) Sounds very Sunday morning news talk show.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MBMike Baker
Thank you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, great. I mean-
- MBMike Baker
Well, thanks, Chris Wallace, for having me. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Tell me, what the fuck is going on?
- MBMike Baker
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
This place is falling apart. Who's running the show? What's happening?
- MBMike Baker
Well, first of all, I want to thank you for my antibody test.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- MBMike Baker
I'm psyched about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're psyched.
- MBMike Baker
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You don't need that, that wacky booster.
- MBMike Baker
No, no, I got that, I got that... I got a picture of it and everything? I'm like, "Yeah."
- JRJoe Rogan
So, you must have been exposed. You've been vaccinated, but then-
- MBMike Baker
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... you probably got exposed to COVID somewhere along the line recently.
- MBMike Baker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You said you had a day where you were kind of run down?
- MBMike Baker
I had a day where I was a little bit run down, and then, uh... But I got th- I got the second of the, uh, vaccines, uh, shots was at the end of February. So, that's, what, seven months.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Sounds crazy. (laughs) …
- MBMike Baker
camp, right? So people who are on the, the hard left or ... They're not gonna want to hear the fact that the Doha Agreement was based on conditions, right? But (laughs) the, the, the most senior military commanders today reaffirmed that, yes, there were seven conditions for that agreement to follow through, for us to follow through. We had eight conditions for the US. And now, during the course of the discussions and the negotiations, and this whole agreement was based on a power sharing. The idea was we want to create an opportunity for the Taliban and the, the Afghan government. We want them all to come together and create a power-sharing agreement. Well, uh, you know, uh, uh, on one hand, you could argue and say that's, that's never gonna happen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sounds crazy. (laughs)
- MBMike Baker
Yeah, it sounds crazy, but that's, that's where they were. And you could also argue, and again, you know, because people are so entrenched, no one's wanna give any credit to whether they want to give credit to Biden or they want to give credit to Trump, or any Republican president or Democrat president, uh, you know, the Trump administration did kind of broker the hard, uh, heavy lift of saying, "We're getting the hell out." Right? There had been talk around the edges in previous administrations about, well, how long would it be there, right? But the Trump administration did finally actually say, "Fuck it. Let's get a negotiation. Let's go, and let's set a timeline to get the fuck out after 20 years, right or wrong." So they, they put that on the table. They set the table for, for that, you know, hard line withdrawal. But the Taliban never met those conditions. The only thing they did was not attack US troops directly. But as Milley and McKenzie said today, they never met any of the other conditions. So it had been explained to the Taliban that, "If that was the case and you don't meet these conditions, we're not going to leave in May. We're gonna just keep pushing the, the, uh, the withdrawal date further to the right."
- JRJoe Rogan
So why was the decision made to withdraw then?
- MBMike Baker
Well, look, in part I think because, uh, I think everybody got behind the idea that we can't stay there forever, because I think everybody, you know, understood that it just wasn't happening. They weren't buying what we were selling. They never have, right? I mean, and, and you don't want to be completely fatalistic all the time, but i- with Afghanistan, it's not a bad, it's not a bad frame of reference to remember all the other times that things like this have failed. And so the idea that somehow we were going to build a stable pseudo-democratic government in Afghanistan was always flawed, and it was, uh, there was never really any evidence to show that that was gonna happen, and it was propped up, and I think nobody really wanted to tell the truth, um, in positions of leadership, whether it was military or government or intel community. And so I think there was general agreement that, "Yeah, we gotta, we gotta get the fuck out." Uh, and then it came down to, "Well, how do we do that," right? And we faced some of the same problems that the old Soviets faced getting the hell out of Afghanistan. But I think with this case, you know, part of it was we had pulled advisors off the Afghan units, you know, two, three years ago, right? That had been a process. So the withdrawal process had been going on for a number of years, you know, over the past decade or so, you know, in a sense, right? We'd been drawing back, pulling out some resource, pulling out troops, lowering the troop numbers, um, putting more responsibility on contractors, and-... once you take the advisors out of the Afghan units, right, in a sense, you don't have really eyes and ears, right, inside the Afghan military. So, you can have, you know, President Ghani or, you know, some bullshit Afghan commander just telling you whatever you want to hear. But you didn't have a lot of folks at ground level working with the troops saying, "All right. This, (laughs) this shit's not gonna hold," right? Particularly after the Doha Agreement, right? Once I think the, the Doha Agreement was made, I think the writing's on the wall. It, even the Afghan military could see it, right? And they could read it. And they could say, "Okay. This shit's not gonna happen. We're not gonna keep getting money, we're not gonna keep getting advisors, and, um, we're not gonna get the air support that is really the only thing that keeps us in, in, in power." So, (sighs) you know, at some point, over a period of a few years, we are, we were degrading our own ability to, to actually understand just how bad it was getting, right? And, um, so, (sighs) then it became a logistical exercise. You gotta move personnel and you gotta move material out of the country. And that's where, y- you could argue it all kinda went sideways.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, they left behind how much shit?
- MBMike Baker
A lot of shit.
- JRJoe Rogan
A lot of shit.
- MBMike Baker
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Crazy shit, right?
- MBMike Baker
No. We left, we left, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Blackhawks?
- MBMike Baker
Yes. Yeah, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars as a conservative estimate. Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Why?
- MBMike Baker
That's a conservative estimate. Well, because, (sighs) uh, partly because you could argue that, um, some of the material was decommissioned. You know, some of the heavier platforms were, uh, made non-functioning. Okay, fine. Um, I don't know, to answer the question, I don't know why the military wouldn't have moved more of the gear, the, the, the light gear out there. In other words, the, the night vision devices. The, the, uh, the, the weaponry, right? The small arms, um, ammunition. Why not spend three or four months- (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MBMike Baker
... getting that gear the hell out, right? You don't have the troops to, to, that, that require them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MBMike Baker
So, now you've got all this shit stored. Now they, the thought could've been that this is for the Afghan military, they're gonna hold. But here's the, here's the thing that, that, interesting point that came out from General Milley and General McKenzie w- uh, during these hearings is that, they claim, they're stating, and I have no reason not to believe them, they're stating that the general consensus by the fall of 2020, right, was that without the troops in there, once you take the US troops out, and the, um, and, and the money, then uh, the government's gonna collapse probably by fall of this year, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
And it took like three hours.
- MBMike Baker
Yeah, it took like, it took, yeah, it took 11 days.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MBMike Baker
Now, in, in a classic piece of Washington-speak, I think it was, uh, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in answering a question said, "No. We never saw any assessment that said that (laughs) the government would collapse in 11 days." He's very specific, right? (laughs) He's not saying, uh, "in short order".
- JRJoe Rogan
Period, yeah.
- MBMike Baker
He's just saying 11, "I didn't see one for 11 days." I'd say, they, we had one for like two weeks, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- MBMike Baker
Uh, so that's, that's, that's just the shit that happens on the, on the side, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
So, they assumed the Afghan Army eventually was not gonna fight the Taliban?
- MBMike Baker
Yes. Yeah. So there was, what they're saying is we all, and look, the intel community, we've been talking about that for years. We, we knew, (sighs) all you had to do was study the, the, the Soviet papers during their time, their occupation in Afghanistan, to understand how we were pr- likely gonna replay that scenario. And we did, right? So, y- you know, you could argue that, uh, (laughs) what should've happened was years ago, we should've like looked around and thought, "This is a bullshit exercise," right? Doesn't mean that the, that, y- y- you know, (sighs) and I think the military today, uh, the senior commanders today, and during this week, I think you'll see them make a huge effort to say, "First and foremost, the veterans, uh, and, and everyone who fought there, and, and, and all the, the, the hardship, it wasn't, wasn't in vain." I think they're gonna focus on that. And, and they're gonna say, 'cause for two decades, uh, uh, the, you know, we haven't been attacked on our home soil. And in a narrow definition, yes, that's why we went in. And then it kinda got blown up into this idea that we were gonna create, you know, like this, this bastion of democracy (laughs) in Afghanistan.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. But it's been widely known forever that Afghanistan is insane. Like, it's impossible to manage.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Right. …
- MBMike Baker
uh, uh, Taliban movement, right? So I'm trying to convince some tribal elder somewhere, uh, for whatever reason. Maybe his kid was killed by the Taliban, right? Maybe the Taliban, um, you know, uh, took his, you know, underage daughter into marriage. Maybe they denied him medical care. Whatever. You're always looking for... It doesn't matter whether it's this case or whether you're-... recruiting anybody, you're always looking for a point of weakness, right? In a sense. I know it sounds wrong, but you're looking for leverage. And so, I'm trying to convince this, this person to work with me, right? And provide me with intelligence. Well now, that's, (laughs) that's counter to his best interest, in a sense, right? Because he's probably gonna think, "Okay, well, if I get found out, I'm getting whacked, uh, so it's not gonna end well for me."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MBMike Baker
Now, imagine trying to do that now when you don't have a presence on the ground. (laughs) You still need that insight, you still need those people reporting to you, but now you've just, you know, gotten off the X and left some people there, and you, you, you've bugged out, and they look at this and go, "Well, what the hell is now is my incentive for helping the Americans, providing them..." And this feeds into... I'm jumping all over the fucking place. This feeds into this, this talk now that's become the favorite phrase in Washington of, uh, over-the-horizon capability. Uh, which means conducting operations from a distance, because you don't have resources within that area of operations. So you're, you're over the horizon, but you're gonna dip in occasionally whenever the, y- you need to and c- carry out some type of operation. W- (sighs) and, um, so yeah, to, to answer your question, it, it, it makes it very, very difficult. Morale was, was, uh, uh, was already not good. Um, once the Doha Agreement, I think, uh, was signed... And again, look, I think, you know, the Doha Agreement, somebody had to finally memorialize the idea that we were getting the fuck out of Afghanistan, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- MBMike Baker
And so, they did. And they-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that a g- is it a good thing that we got out of Afghanistan?
- MBMike Baker
(sighs) Um, in a very pragmatic sense, um, yes. Yeah, because, um, I don't know what the hell we were doing there. I mean, the idea was fine, we go in initially, and we punish those who were responsible for 9/11, right? And we, and we tell them, "Don't let this happen again," and then we should've gotten the, the hell out, right? And, and avoided the last 20 years, because we'd had a recent case study with the Russians. We knew from what the Russians did there, uh, you know, how it could end and how it likely could end. And yet, we thought, because, you know, there's always hubris involved, we thought, "We're gonna do better." Look, the Taliban had no place to go when the Russians were there, right? So they're just gonna wait it out. It's like Vietnam. The Viet Cong had nowhere to go. They're going to wait, right? They know we're rolling troops out there on a, you know, six or eight or 12-month deployment. They're all gotta go home, (sighs) you know, and they wanna get home. These people have no place to go. Taliban, again, same thing this time around. So I don't know why we, w- (laughs) anybody should be surprised about the overall result. But I d- yes, I do think it was, it was time to go. I think it was time to go quite some time ago. (laughs) That was very poetic, but, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- MBMike Baker
... anyway, yeah, it's, uh, it's just nobody spoke the truth, uh, in Washington about the situation in Afghanistan because nobody wanted to hear it, right? And they felt that it wasn't politically a good move. And so, nobody wanted to stand up, 'cause they're all so fucking worried about their jobs (sighs) and say, this is my opinion, so it's, uh, w- what it's worth, a- and say the tough things about the situation there, either because they felt like, "If I say something negative about what we're doing in Afghanistan, it's disrespecting the troops," which it's not, right? Or, um, you know, uh, "I'll probably get drummed out of my, you know, nice political position," right? So yeah, that's, that's... And, and when you watch hearings that take place in Washington, DC, the whole thing is about just finding somebody to blame other than your own self or your party.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it seems like no one's gonna get blamed.
- MBMike Baker
No one's gonna get blamed. No. No. That would, that would, that would mean that there would be accountability. And, and I don't think (laughs) I don't know when that happened last in Washington, DC.
- JRJoe Rogan
So how do you think they could've pulled out and made it less of a clusterfuck?
- MBMike Baker
(sighs) Well, I think they have to... Look, they, they pulled the advisors out. There, there were two parts to this, right? There's the, there's the, uh, there's the, whatever they call it, the retrograde, right? And, and drawing down the, the troops, right? Getting... And, and the troops that we had there, right? The 2,500 were basically to train, advise, and assist, right? Well, that's very, very important, right? For the, for the, for the presence. It, it almost becomes, at that troop level, almost becomes an optic, but that's still important to boost, uh, the ability of the Afghan military to hold their shit together for a period of time.
- JRJoe Rogan
And this 2,500 was the one that they had advised that they leave behind.
- MBMike Baker
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was the total amount of troops that were there before it pulled out?
- MBMike Baker
Well, shit, it was coming down. It was, uh, before, (sighs) I think before the inauguration, we were probably in the 5,000 to 4,000 range. We had, uh, probably 3,000 or so, um, you know, uh, paramilitary troops there from the agency. We probably had, uh, I don't know how many contractors, you know, a few thousand more contractors. So it was a significant st- at that point, it was a significant presence, but it was a significant drawdown from, uh, even a couple of years b- ago, right? So the, again, the drawdown had been happening, right? Um, and it's, and, and if you look at... And, and so you had that, you had the retrograde of the, of the, of the military operation, and then you had this, uh, evacuation, right? Or this wa- withdrawal of all the, you know, uh, uh, diplomatic personnel, the other Americans there, the SIVs, all of those people. And that, you could consider a sort of a separate operation, and that's the withdrawal part of the whole thing that took place that seemed so chaotic, and, and, and, and was, right? But the military also, you know, look, the military is very good at planning a variety of scenarios, right? So it's not like they didn't think, "There's a chance this whole thing goes to shit," right? And so they pre-positioned troops, um, they had a lot of, you know, uh, air assets available, right? But...... again, it's, uh, at a certain point you could think of it in terms of a (laughs) of a UPS operation, right? You're moving, uh, in this case you're moving people and you're moving stuff, right? And I, I just think that we, (sighs) we completely botched the job of understanding how shitty the government and military capability was there, right? And that's, that, y- you know, is, is down to bad intelligence, it's down to political maneuvering in Washington, and just a desire to get the hell out and maybe ignoring assessments. Because whether you're saying your assessment is, as General McKenzie and General, General Milley are saying is that, you know, by the, the end of 2020 they were basically saying, advising the president and, and his team, that, um, things could fall to shit in a matter of months, right? Or whether you're saying things could fall to shit in a matter of a couple of weeks, you have to plan for the worst case scenario, that's, that's your job. So their, their default position should've been, "This thing is gonna collapse in a couple of hours." And, and they didn't do that, and I'm not quite sure, you know, why, but ... and I, I, I don't suspect we're ever gonna get full transparency on this, 'cause, again, it's not the way Washington works.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you get concerned when you see all this, um, sort of woke ideology making its way into the military?
- MBMike Baker
Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
You, I know you've seen these ...
- MBMike Baker
Oh, yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You know what I'm talking about?
- MBMike Baker
Yeah, I do.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- MBMike Baker
Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, I got a lot of calls about the, uh, the CIA recruitment, uh, video.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, what the fuck was that?
- MBMike Baker
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Explain that to me.
- MBMike Baker
Yeah, that was, um, um ... Look, somebody, uh, somebody decided that the right messaging for trying to improve recruitment ability, uh, for the agency ... And mind you, the agency isn't lacking in, in candidates, right? We have a, a lot of people applying, uh, for the agency. Uh, but at some point someone thought the right message was to just go all out on the, whatever you want to call it, the woke issue and the, you know, inclusion. And, and so they had a, they had a, an individual who basically spent her time talking ... While she said she didn't want to be identified in such a manner or in such a manner, then she then proceeded to identify herself in these various, you know, uh, categories.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
(laughs) …
- NANarrator
themselves, their families, their community, and their country. It's a great brainwashing, uh, process, which goes very slow and it's divided in, in four basic stages. Uh, the first one being demoralization. It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years which requires to, uh, educate one generation of students in the country of, of, of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of, of, of at least three generations of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism. The result? The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in '60s, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals-
- MBMike Baker
(laughs)
- NANarrator
... are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system. You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you, if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black uh, uh, is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logical behavior. In other words, these people, uh, uh, the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To get rid society of these people, you have, you need another 20 or, or, or 15 years to educate a new generation of patriotically minded and, and, and, uh, common s- commonsense people who would be acting in favor and in the interest of, of the, uh, of the United States society.
- NANarrator
And yet these people who have been programmed and as you say, in place-
- NANarrator
Yes.
- NANarrator
... and who are favorable to an opening with the Soviet concept-
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- NANarrator
... these are the very people who would be marked for extermination in this country?
- NANarrator
Most of them, yes.
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- NANarrator
Uh, uh, simply because the psychological shock when, when they will see in future what the, what the beautiful society of equality and social justice means in practice, obviously, they will revolt. They, they, they will, uh, they'll, they will be very unhappy, frustrated people. And the Marxist-Leninist regime does not tolerate these people. Uh, they, obviously, they will join the links of dissenters-
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm.
- NANarrator
... dissidents.
- NANarrator
Yes.
- NANarrator
Uh, unlike in present United States, there will be no place for dissent in, in future Marxist-Leninist America. Uh, here, you can, you can get, uh, popular like, uh, Daniel Ellsberg and filthy rich like Jane Fonda for being a dissident, for criticizing your Pentagon. In future, these people will be simply squashed like cockroaches. Nobody is going to pay them nothing for their-
- JRJoe Rogan
We're seeing this happen right now.
- NANarrator
... beautiful old ideas.
- MBMike Baker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, we... Th- this goes on. This is a 13-minute video. The title of it is KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov's Warning to America. You should watch it. It's on YouTube. It's fucking wild-
- MBMike Baker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and it's so accurate. It is exactly what's happening. This guy was talking about it in the 1980s. When, when was it?
- MBMike Baker
In the 1990s, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
29 years ago.
- MBMike Baker
Yeah. We are in 2013, so...
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but that's when it was posted.
- MBMike Baker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't believe it's from that. I believe it's from the 1980s. Can you scroll down and see if it says?
- MBMike Baker
It didn't say. That's why I was looking. Or maybe in the comments, but...
- JRJoe Rogan
Um-
- MBMike Baker
Bezmenov, uh... I'm trying to think of...
- 1:00:00 – 1:14:36
Look at that. That…
- NANarrator
funds classified programs, projects, operations, and tech developments. And each of these activities is a black file. Now, travel with me as we open up the black files. What you learn will change the way you think about our past and our future.
- JRJoe Rogan
Look at that. That looks very exciting, Mike.
- MBMike Baker
Everybody should be watching. Everybody.
- JRJoe Rogan
They should.
- MBMike Baker
It's coming to you in the new year. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Are you gonna tell people what's going on with UFOs?
- MBMike Baker
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was that thing with the red lights that shot up there? What was that?
- MBMike Baker
It's a drone swarm.
- JRJoe Rogan
A drone swarm.
- MBMike Baker
It's a drone swarm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Drones.
- NANarrator
Dollars in a black-
- MBMike Baker
(laughs) Let's just keep watching it. Put it on continuous loop-
- JRJoe Rogan
Put it on a loop.
- MBMike Baker
... for the next-
- JRJoe Rogan
Play in the background so-
- MBMike Baker
... next hour.
- JRJoe Rogan
... background noise. Yeah. That drone swarm right there?
- MBMike Baker
Yeah. Yeah, it's a drone swarm.
- JRJoe Rogan
How big are those drones? They look tiny.
- MBMike Baker
Uh, they are tiny. And that's, uh, that's, that's part of the, uh, the game plan.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's real? That's not, like, CGI?
- MBMike Baker
No, that's, that's real. That's real.
- JRJoe Rogan
Show it, show it again, Joe.
- MBMike Baker
There were a hundred of those there. Oh, look there. Ooh.
- JRJoe Rogan
Look at that hands moving.
- MBMike Baker
He's got that look on his face.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, that-
- MBMike Baker
That's what those are.
Episode duration: 2:51:35
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