Joe Rogan Experience #1875 - Dave Smith

Narrator 0:00 (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

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

Dave Smith 0:12 But that's good.

Joe Rogan 0:13 Yeah.

Dave Smith 0:13 I think that's what makes you so good at what you do.

Joe Rogan 0:16 Yeah, the last thing you wanna do is be like, super confident and wrong. (laughs)

Dave Smith 0:20 Yeah, right, exactly. You wanna at least be always questioning. Like, always maintaining that possibility. "I could be wrong about everything."

Joe Rogan 0:28 When you start... When you, when you go over stuff, like when you talk about like, libertarian ideas, and you, you, you look at like, the way the government is run now, do you, do you run through that thought process, like, "Maybe the only way to do it is the way that we're doing it right now"?

Dave Smith 0:43 Yeah, I, I try my best to always do that. I mean, I'm guilty of not doing it. But I try my best to always be like, "Okay, well maybe, theoretically, uh, they know something I don't know," which kinda means like, "This is the best way to do it." Or maybe I'm just wrong, and my theoretical model couldn't work, and this is the best. But that... Try to give like, the toughest arguments against it, and then go like, "Okay, but we still didn't need to kill a million Iraqis." You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 1:07 Oh, yeah.

Dave Smith 1:07 Like, we still didn't need to do this, or we still at least didn't need a... But I try my best. I use... It's dangerous, 'cause the more, the further into it I get, the more convinced I am that I'm right, and then that's also dangerous. 'Cause I'm not as insecure about it as I used to be.

Joe Rogan 1:22 It feels like the only way... Like, the system is broken. Everyone sort of agrees that. The... And the only way to do it right would be to create a more ethical, moral, logical system that's actually based on Constitutional rights, and how the government is supposed to be, in terms of like, the kinda power they're supposed to have versus what they're always constantly trying to acquire. But if you did that, how much would you have to blow the system up? And how would we run things? Like, what, what period of vulnerability would we have while we're trying to reestablish a new system? And how would we know if the system could even work correctly without being influenced by money and power, and all the shit that's fucked it up-

Dave Smith 2:07 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:07 ... for, for what we've got right now?

Dave Smith 2:08 It's, it's a daunting challenge. I think that... Like, what, what Ron Paul used to always say was basically... I mean, these are my words, not his, but there was... Basically his plan was, he goes, "End all the worst shit first."

Joe Rogan 2:20 Hmm.

Dave Smith 2:20 Like, end all the most evil shit first. So the first thing is like, stop bombing third-world countries.

Joe Rogan 2:26 Right.

Dave Smith 2:26 Stop locking people in jail for victimless crimes. Stop doing, like... Stop bailing out-

Joe Rogan 2:30 Yeah.

Dave Smith 2:30 ... billionaires and corporations and stuff.

Joe Rogan 2:32 Yeah.

Dave Smith 2:32 Like, stop that first. You know, you don't, you don't start with like, "Well, okay, if there's a vulnerable population that's, like, dependent on this government program, get rid of it tomorrow."

Joe Rogan 2:40 Right.

Dave Smith 2:40 You know, so like, try, you try to do that. And then the more of the corruption that you roll back, you're gonna see le-... You know, like, less wealth being extracted from regular American people and going to special interests, kind of build that up over time. But it's a challenging thing to go ba-... To go from this insane system to something less insane-

Joe Rogan 2:59 Right.

Dave Smith 3:00 ... is tough. And throughout human history, usually it's a... There's a pretty rough period in between there.

Joe Rogan 3:06 Sure.

Dave Smith 3:06 It's usually not a smooth transition.

Joe Rogan 3:07 Well, it's kinda fascinating when you think that this is the only country that has been really established as, like, a colony that went on to take over the world. And it did it inside of 300 years-

Dave Smith 3:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:20 ... which is pretty fucking wild.

Dave Smith 3:22 Yeah, that's the most wild part, is the time, the time span, 'cause-

Joe Rogan 3:25 It's pretty crazy.

Dave Smith 3:26 'Cause going from being a republic to an empire has happened before, but we're the most powerful empire in world history. At, at, at least in terms of, like, raw power.

Joe Rogan 3:36 Right.

Dave Smith 3:36 Like, the, the technology, the level of wealth, all that shit. And we, we did it in a very short time.

Joe Rogan 3:41 And some of the most unexceptional people are the ones who want to run it, which is so weird. When you see like, the Squad... Did you see that, that debate that she was having with those bankers, where they were talking about eliminating fossil fuels? Uh-

Dave Smith 3:55 She made me root for the bankers, Joe.

Joe Rogan 3:57 I was rooting for the bankers.

Dave Smith 3:58 Ju-... It is quite a feat to get me to say-

Joe Rogan 4:01 And also-

Dave Smith 4:01 ... "You know, I think the head of Goldman Sachs is making a good point."

Joe Rogan 4:03 Imagine that she was dangling the carrot of the $10,000 we gave back in student loan debt forgiveness-

Dave Smith 4:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:10 ... that those people are gonna have bank accounts, and those people that got that free money are gonna take that free money outta your bank account. Like, that was the immediate thing that she dangled, which lets you know some of the incentive involved in giving student loan debt.

Dave Smith 4:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:26 It's not really that we wanna help these people. It's that now we will have influence over those people for voting.

Dave Smith 4:33 Oh, it... This was clearly like, just throwing a carrot, like pre-mid-term elections.

Joe Rogan 4:36 Right. So how about, how come only $10,000? How about all of it?

Dave Smith 4:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:39 If you're gonna really absolve student loan debt, if someone's $700,000 in the hole or whatever their... What's like, worst-case scenario if someone goes to med school, someone gets a PhD?

Dave Smith 4:47 Oh, yeah, if they do all of that, probably 3, 400 at least, probably-

Joe Rogan 4:51 Yeah, and then it compounds with interest-

Dave Smith 4:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 4:53 ... over the decades. Like, I was reading this story about this woman who took out $150,000 in student loans and she hasn't been able to pay them back, and now she's 250,000 in the hole.

Dave Smith 5:02 Yeah, jeez. And they're the most vicious type of loans, too.

Joe Rogan 5:05 Of course, 'cause you never pay it back.

Dave Smith 5:05 Like, it's easier to get out of credit card debt, you know? It's, uh... You can't even get out through bankruptcy.

Joe Rogan 5:09 Oh, it's the only one you can't get out of.

Dave Smith 5:09 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:09 People are having their Social Security docked, people who've made it to the end of life. They're, they're rel- relying on government assistance, right? It's essentially government assistance that we pay for, and they're getting that docked to pay for student loan debt.

Dave Smith 5:25 Yeah, it's such a, it's such a fucked-up system. Like, I'm completely against student loan debt, just 'ca-... I, I, uh, um, you know, forgiving the debt, just 'cause I think it's like... It's, it's just... You're just punishing the taxpayers for the, the debt of a, in many cases, a more privileged group. It's like, the, the people who didn't go to college now have to bail out the people who did, you know? But man, it is such a fucked-up system that they trap these 18-year-old kids-

Joe Rogan 5:52 It's ruthless.

Dave Smith 5:52 ... into signing up for... And that no one at the colleges even... Like, the fact... I mean, obviously the politicians are, like, soulless and the bankers are just trying to make money, but that none of... No one in the university...... ever has the, the h- basic human decency to look at one of these kids who goes, "Hey, you know you're spending 150 grand on a gender studies major? Just think about that. Think about whether or not this is really a good idea." They just go, "Oh, okay. We'll take the money."

Joe Rogan 6:19 Well, all they're-

Dave Smith 6:19 "No problem."

Joe Rogan 6:19 ... hoping is they're gonna get a job in university.

Dave Smith 6:22 Right. It's a Ponzi scheme, basically.

Joe Rogan 6:23 If you... yeah.

Dave Smith 6:23 You'll teach this to other people until no one's signing up for this anymore.

Joe Rogan 6:27 (laughs)

Dave Smith 6:28 You'll s- you'll learn useless shit that isn't even true, and then you'll teach it to other people who wanna use- learn this useless shit to teach it to other people. And let's just hope we keep getting new investors into this thing until it all goes belly up.

Joe Rogan 6:39 And what's really wild is then most, especially tech companies, they're so progressive and so liberal. And they're kind of trapped in that ideology, which can hamper what they want to do and what they're, what they're allowed to do with their company. Because you get activists who are employees. So your employees become ac- And they go straight from universities, where they're indoctrinated into this ideology, and then they permeate these tech companies. And some of 'em are fucked.

Dave Smith 7:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:10 And some of, some of 'em are realizing it and they're pushing back and they go, "Da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Stop, stop, stop. You guys are killing our stock. You're fucking up the bus-" Like it's a, it's a giant loss in terms of like whether or not it's good for the overall company. It's a giant loss for some of 'em, like Netflix.

Dave Smith 7:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:26 Netflix took a giant hit after all that Ch- Chappelle shit.

Dave Smith 7:29 Oh, yeah, yeah. Of course. Well, it... I mean, it just... And, and if you think about like with the tech censorship stuff, uh, um, if you think about like in like 2014, 2015, this basically didn't exist. This isn't that long ago that y- you kind of could say whatever you wanted to. Yeah, I'll have a little bit. Thank you. You could say whatever you wanted to on, on Twitter, more or l- I mean, I remember-

Joe Rogan 7:49 (laughs)

Dave Smith 7:49 ... like really wild people saying crazy shit on Twitter. And there was never even a thought like, "Oh, you're gonna get kicked off for saying this."

Joe Rogan 7:56 Right.

Dave Smith 7:56 It was just like, it's, it's the internet.

Joe Rogan 7:57 That's Twitter.

Dave Smith 7:58 That's Twitter.

Joe Rogan 7:58 Yeah.

Dave Smith 7:58 YouTube. You could say what you wanted to.

Joe Rogan 8:00 Twitter has hardcore porn.

Dave Smith 8:02 Well, that's the other thing that's very weird about what is, is allowed and what's not allowed.

Joe Rogan 8:06 Which I'm for. I don't think sh- I'm not saying th- they should censor hardcore porn. If you wanna follow a porn star, if they wanna post pictures of them fucking and videos of them fucking-

Dave Smith 8:14 Yeah, I don't care.

Joe Rogan 8:15 ... who cares?

Dave Smith 8:16 Well, I just... I also ju- Yeah, I'm completely against any of the censorship. I think it's an awful slippery slope to go down.

Joe Rogan 8:21 It's a giant slippery slope.

Dave Smith 8:23 And-

Joe Rogan 8:23 And it shouldn't be navigated by people who are, again, indoctrinated into this system that they get straight out of universities and they're, they're locked into these progressive ideas.

Dave Smith 8:32 Yeah, but the oth- I, I agree with all that. But I mean, th- so the point I was just making is when you talk about like the bottom line. So you could see why originally back then why they weren't kicking people off of their platforms is 'cause like, well, there's no incentive for them to kick people off the platform. The whole point is they want people to be on their platform. There'd certainly be no incentive to kick like really popular people off of their platform.

Joe Rogan 8:54 Right.

Dave Smith 8:54 That's w- That's how they get people in, onto their platform. And it is, there is a lot of truth to the fact that a lot of these kids coming out of the universities came in with this woke ideology. But there was also like tremendous pressure from the top coming down. So like what really, really sparked all of it was in 2016 once Trump won.

Joe Rogan 9:13 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 9:13 And then Congress hauled all the heads of the, uh, the, the big tech companies in front of Congress and basically threatened the shit out of 'em that like, "Look, Donald Trump won and here's why he won. He won because of fake news and Russian interference in social media. And so you guys gotta do something to crack down on them." And you see that to this day. Did you see, uh, Alex Berenson like shared the evidence? I mean, he was able to get back on Twitter through that lawsuit. But he shared that, that the White House specifically asked about Alex Berenson.

Joe Rogan 9:40 Yeah. We read it.

Dave Smith 9:41 And said, "Why are they still on Twitter?"

Joe Rogan 9:42 We read it. Uh, we read the-

Dave Smith 9:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:44 ... quotes and who quoted them on the podcast.

Dave Smith 9:46 Now, technically speaking, they didn't say, "Kick Alex Berenson off of Twitter."

Joe Rogan 9:52 Right. What are you doing about it?

Dave Smith 9:53 But they, but they did go, "What are you doing?" It's like this mafia shit almost. So that's, you know... I guess you could kind of say it's not exactly a violation of the First Amendment 'cause they just asked. But it's kind of like someone robbing you by just asking for your money-

Joe Rogan 10:07 Well, here's, here's-

Dave Smith 10:07 ... in an aggressive way.

Joe Rogan 10:08 ... another more important point. He was right.

Dave Smith 10:13 That is pretty important.

Joe Rogan 10:14 This is a very important point, which is why he's back on.

Dave Smith 10:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:17 He was cit- he was citing studies. He was using the Israeli data. He was talking to scientists-

Dave Smith 10:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:24 ... that were willing to go outside of the company line. And there's quite a few of them. These are legit people. So what he was getting in trouble for with the government was being correct.

Dave Smith 10:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:35 Which is really crazy 'cause you're talking about a health pandemic. So you're talking about decisions that could possibly either save people's lives, ruin people's lives, save people's health, ruin people's health. The only way you're gonna know what's what is if you get accurate data. So if there's a guy who's talking about data, but the data's inconvenient to whatever the narrative is, if it's because it's inconvenient because the pharmaceutical companies fund 75% of all the ads on television and how many campaigns and how much, how much money do they have invested in this? And does the government actually have a piece of the Moderna vaccine? Isn't that-

Dave Smith 11:12 Well, there was... So, uh, Rand Paul, I don't know if you saw one of these moments where he w- It, it was, uh, months ago now, but where he was, uh, grilling Fauci in one of those-

Joe Rogan 11:19 Yeah.

Dave Smith 11:20 ... Rand Paul versus Fauci moments. And he said that they found out through a freedom, uh, Freedom of Information Act that it was something like $135 million in royalties had been paid out to scientists on the NIH, uh, at the NIH from pharmaceutical companies. And he asks Fauci straight up, he goes, "Have you received any money? Will you disclose all the money you've received?" And Fauci, in a roundabout way, you know, was like, "Well, Doc- Dr. Paul, I think I may have had one royalty for very small money, but no, I don't n- I... The law doesn't require me to reveal that." So like, hmm.

Joe Rogan 11:53 Oh.

Dave Smith 11:53 Don't you think like, shouldn't we know that? Shouldn't we at least be able to know like, how much money does Fauci make-

Joe Rogan 11:58 Yes.

Dave Smith 11:58 ... from Pfizer and Moderna? 'Cause that seems like a tiny conflict of interest.

Joe Rogan 12:02 A giant conflict of interest.

Dave Smith 12:04 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:04 And-

Dave Smith 12:04 So th- But, but to your point with the Alex Berenson stuff like, look, even if he was wrong, which he was right a lot more than he was wrong. Put his track record up against Fauci's track record over the last couple years. He was right way more than Fauci was. But even if he was wrong, theoretically-He was making data-based arguments.

Joe Rogan 12:21 Yes.

Dave Smith 12:21 Like he wasn't like, he wa- you know, they, they justified like tech censorship with like, "Well, what if someone's just like a Nazi preaching hate? Or what if someone's spreading, intentionallyspreading false information to change an election?" But he wasn't doing any of that.

Joe Rogan 12:34 No.

Dave Smith 12:34 He was just like a guy, who was... worked for the New York Times. He was just a guy who was presenting sound arguments. And even if he got some things wrong, the idea that we would shut that down is really creepy, very creepy thing. And then, that it's coming from the White House, that it's coming directly from them. This isn't just like some random, you know, like, it, it's not just that, "Oh, there's a company with a woke ideology who doesn't think you should be allowed to do this on their platform." Like the kind of, almost the libertarian argument that some people make, "Well, they're a private company. They can do what they wanna do." But that's not what's happening here. Here, you have the government who's saying, "Silence our number one critic to our policies-"

Joe Rogan 13:13 Right.

Dave Smith 13:13 ... of lockdowns and vaccine mandates and all this stuff."

Joe Rogan 13:15 Right. And they also affected that Hunter Biden story. They-

Dave Smith 13:19 Well, that's the other thing. What... and... What... I mean, wasn't that pretty incredible, dude, what Zuckerberg said to you?

Joe Rogan 13:24 It was-

Dave Smith 13:25 I mean, that was... Look, it... he... You asked him about the Hunter Biden story.

Joe Rogan 13:30 Yeah.

Dave Smith 13:30 And his first response to you was, "Well, here's what happened. The FBI told us there was gonna be this, this misinformation, this Russian"-

Joe Rogan 13:39 Yeah.

Dave Smith 13:39 ... "misinformation coming." Now, I'm not saying the FBI told him specifically, "You have to turn down the Hunter Biden story." But when you asked him about the Hunter Biden story, the first thing he said was, "Well, the FBI..." So clearly, at least he took it that way, and then when the story came out, the FBI and the CIA and all these intelligence, uh, people are saying, "This has all the earmarks of Russian disinformation."

Joe Rogan 14:03 Yeah.

Dave Smith 14:04 And Joe Biden's bragging about this at the time. So if nothing else, they at least clearly sent a signal to these companies that like, "This is the one. This is what we were"-

Joe Rogan 14:13 Right.

Dave Smith 14:13 ... "talking about."

Joe Rogan 14:13 Now, could you imagine if you're these people at Facebook, what do you do? Like, what, what... If you get that phone call or whatever it is, email, probably a fucking person-to-person meeting when they put your phone in a basket.

Dave Smith 14:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 14:28 Really. What is it... what is it like and what do you do? And do you go into a deep dive and try to find out what's legit and what's not legit? Do you go and interview the people from the New York Post that wrote the article? What do you do?

Dave Smith 14:40 Yeah. It's, it's, it's a weird situation where they're kind of asking you to have this level of expertise in a thing that is not your area of expertise.

Joe Rogan 14:48 Right.

Dave Smith 14:49 Or do you just have some faith in the system and go, "Well, I mean, this is the FBI telling me this, and if they're saying it's Russian, uh, misinformation, then I don't wanna put it out there if that could affect the results of an election."

Joe Rogan 15:01 Imagine if it is.

Dave Smith 15:01 And so maybe you err on that side.

Joe Rogan 15:03 Right, imagine if it is.

Dave Smith 15:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:04 Imagine if you've been warned and then it is Russian d- Russian disinformation, but you also allow people to share it and it turns out to actually affect the election.

Dave Smith 15:12 Yeah. Well, that's-

Joe Rogan 15:13 Uh, swings the election the other way, Trump wins again, and then we find out it's a hoax, and we find out he really is in cahoots with Russia. That was the big fear, right? And that's, that's not a narrative that you didn't hear. Like you, you heard constantly he was in bed with Russia. You heard-

Dave Smith 15:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:27 ... constantly Russia had stuff on him. Russia has this, Russia has that, he did this, people peed on him.

Dave Smith 15:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:32 You know, there was-

Dave Smith 15:33 Yes.

Joe Rogan 15:33 ... this whole dossier.

Dave Smith 15:34 Right. And, and no matter... And, and there's an interesting thing like that because... and there's, there's polling to... that shows this. Like a forget exactly what it is, but it's a very large percentage of Democrats, uh, Democrat voters still believe Donald Trump-

Joe Rogan 15:45 Still believe.

Dave Smith 15:45 ... was in bed with Russia, even though-

Joe Rogan 15:46 Yeah.

Dave Smith 15:46 ... the investigation found no evidence that there was any conspiracy or anything like that. And in fact, anyone paying attention to it, go... the whole thing was just completely orchestrated to box Donald Trump in.

Joe Rogan 15:56 Yeah.

Dave Smith 15:56 Um, so again, I'm not a Trump supporter, if anyone needs that disclaimer, but I'm just saying-

Joe Rogan 16:01 Nor am I.

Dave Smith 16:01 ... ob- objectively, he was framed-

Joe Rogan 16:03 Yeah.

Dave Smith 16:04 ... but... for treason, essentially, for being a traitor to his country, working, uh, uh, I- i- with Russia, involved in a conspiracy to change the election results of 2016. Um-

Joe Rogan 16:13 Also, and then there was no public apology-

Dave Smith 16:16 No.

Joe Rogan 16:16 ... once the investigations were over. There was no exoneration publicly.

Dave Smith 16:22 No, they just kind of, in the last year of his administration, stopped talking about it as much, never basically ack- acknowledged that we had been saying Trump-Russia collusion for all this time. After the, the report fell apart, they moved immediately over to the Ukrainegate thing, which is very interesting given the context of everything going on now. Um, and then they just pulled it up again in the presidential election of 2020 when this, this, uh, laptop came out.

Joe Rogan 16:45 Yeah.

Dave Smith 16:45 And they were like, "Oh, this is, uh, Russia again. Seems like that old thing." And it worked.

Joe Rogan 16:49 The thing is, there is Russian diff- disinformation, right? There's that too.

Dave Smith 16:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:54 How the fuck do you know if your Twitter or Facebook or any... and, and I'm not exonerating them for what they did, right? They shouldn't have done it. I don't believe in censorship, especially when it comes to censoring a story that's from the second oldest newspaper in the fucking country. It's kinda crazy. Like they're, they're journalists, right? Whatever you might think of the New York Post and their funny headlines-

Dave Smith 17:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 17:14 ... they're essentially journalists.

Dave Smith 17:15 Yes. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:15 When they print something like this, like you're supposed to, uh, uh, like th- think f- first about where is it coming from? Think first about like what, what, what's the, what's the ramifications of censoring this? What if it's accurate? I don't think anybody thought that. I think the orange man scared the fuck out of everybody and they all acted irrationally. And I think that's one of the things that broke mass media, mainstream media, in terms of like television media and news.

Dave Smith 17:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:43 And th- it was just this, this hate for Trump was so overwhelming. It's like you had to say that he was bad, no matter what the story was.

Dave Smith 17:51 Uh, he pissed off a lot of people in a...... in a, in an unbelievable way. But he also, he, I mean, he really pissed off people in, like, the intelligence agencies-

Joe Rogan 18:00 God.

Dave Smith 18:00 ... and people at very high levels-

Joe Rogan 18:02 God.

Dave Smith 18:02 ... um, for a bunch of different reasons. But, like, that stuff, it's like the same thing with the Alex Berenson thing. It's like, okay, but then you censored that story and you turned out to be wrong and they turned out to be right.

Joe Rogan 18:13 Right.

Dave Smith 18:13 And they were telling the truth. And so now, while you, in theory, may have been correcting for this one mistake, which was a Russian mi- misinformation could sway an election, what ended up happening was that the intelligence community interfered in the election. And that they did not allow this story, uh, the R- the intelligence, uh, agencies and big tech interfered in the 2020 election. They, they silenced this story, which was a newsworthy story. No matter how much weight you put into it, whether it's, is it the- should it s- change your vote that the son of the President, uh, uh, then former Vice President, is clearly selling his last name for political, y- you know, his, his political influence to make money from foreign governments? I don't know how much you shou- how big a deal you should think that is, but that is a story. That's something that if someone broke that, that's a story there. And then there were questions about what did Biden know about this, um, was he getting kickbacks from that. Uh, the, Bobulinski, Bo- something like that, I think, was, uh, Hunter Biden's partner. He testified, uh, or not testified, but he was interviewed by the FBI. We just found this out, uh, last month, that he was interviewed by the FBI and told them this. Told them that, "Yes, I've met with Joe Biden several times. He knew about all these business dealings." While Joe Biden is claiming, "I've never talked to my son about his business." This is at least worthy to print, this story. And to have Twitter shut down one of the biggest newspapers in the country and then b- and then c- like, make it so you couldn't share the link. And then o- and then Facebook, as, as Zuckerberg said, I don't know, lowered the signal in a significant way, I think was the way he put it?

Joe Rogan 19:47 I don't remember what he said, the way he said it. But essentially, he a- admitted that there's some complex shadow banning-type-

Dave Smith 19:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 19:56 ... mechanism that's in place for information, you know. And (sighs) fucking, the whole thing is so complicated and I do not envy them at all. Imagine being someone at Facebook and the FBI tells you that. Or being someone at Twi- like what the fuck are you supposed to do?

Dave Smith 20:13 And you-

Joe Rogan 20:13 Tell the FBI to go fuck itself? Do you know how fucking scary that would be?

Dave Smith 20:16 Yeah. Yeah. And that, and even if you, if you look at the way that the, the Congress talked to him when they hauled him in front of Congress several times. I mean, they, like, really kinda shake him down.

Joe Rogan 20:26 Yeah.

Dave Smith 20:26 They're like, "What are you doing about this?"

Joe Rogan 20:28 Right.

Dave Smith 20:28 "What are you doing about that? How are you making sure that the ..." And imagine the task of making sure. You create a platform where people can speak to each other and you now have the task of making sure they're all being honest.

Joe Rogan 20:38 Yeah.

Dave Smith 20:39 Like, how the fuck (laughs) do you do that?

Joe Rogan 20:40 How the fuck do you do that?

Dave Smith 20:40 It's an insane thi- And, and I, I really do think that obviously there's costs to everything, but the only obvious, like, like human answer here is like, well look, we believe in the spirit of free speech or we don't.

Joe Rogan 20:52 Yeah.

Dave Smith 20:52 Like people can say things. And then if you believe in democracy, which everyone claims to, right? They all say the reason they hate Trump is 'cause he denied democracy-

Joe Rogan 21:00 Right.

Dave Smith 21:00 ... or he's a threat to democracy. Well, then you have to believe in the f- in the ability of voters to like make a determination for themselves of like what's what. And if they can't, then the whole project doesn't work anyway.

Joe Rogan 21:11 But they're like, "These people, we've been lying to them for so long."

Dave Smith 21:13 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:13 "And they're so dumb, we can't let them run things."

Dave Smith 21:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 21:16 "We can't let them just vote."

Dave Smith 21:17 Well-

Joe Rogan 21:17 "Just regular vote."

Dave Smith 21:18 Well, it's like I see people up here, it's like, um, 'cause all the people who are like selling the, the war in, in Ukraine right now and how we have to send more weapons in and we have to cr- crack down harder on, on Russia and be more involved in the war, it's like all the same people who sold the war in Iraq. I mean, not all of 'em, but a whole bunch of 'em are like the exact same people.

Joe Rogan 21:35 They're just people who sell war.

Dave Smith 21:37 Like it's a ... Yeah. And, and you're like, you, and those same people were complaining about misinformation.

Joe Rogan 21:41 And this is-

Dave Smith 21:42 And they're like the ones who sold the war in Iraq and then they go, "Okay, remember how I told you that Saddam Hussein was in bed with Osama bin Laden and he had nukes that he was gonna, uh, detonate in Kansas? Well, let me tell you what's going on now." And you're like, "How do you get to tell me what's going on now?"

Joe Rogan 21:54 (laughs)

Dave Smith 21:55 How are you even here?

Joe Rogan 21:56 This is precisely what they warned about, like when, when Eisenhower gave that speech.

Dave Smith 22:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 22:03 It's precisely what he was warning about.

Dave Smith 22:05 Well-

Joe Rogan 22:05 We're warning about undue influence and that there's a whole business behind war now-

Dave Smith 22:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 22:11 ... and they wanna go to war.

Dave Smith 22:12 So he, B- Eisenhower basically said that b- 'cause it, during World War II, we built up this arms industry that has never been built up before. And now you have these companies and that, that's, he coined the term, the military-industrial complex. And you see this all over the place in, in Washington DC, man. There are like these think tanks that get funded by the weapons manufacturers. And then those think tanks come up with pieces about why we need to go fight a war.

Joe Rogan 22:40 Yeah.

Dave Smith 22:40 And then they go and lobby the politicians to support some other war. It's like a- it's- it's, yeah. It's something out of like a crazy movie.

Joe Rogan 22:48 And you can see ... And you can see that same thing in response to disease.

Dave Smith 22:52 Oh yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 22:53 The pharmaceutical companies get involved. The response to disease is always their pharmaceutical products. It's never lifestyle and health changes. What's one of the, one of the best videos of Fauci is early on before the pandemic kicked off where he's saying, "Just lose weight. You don't need a mask, it's not gonna work. Just don't drink, don't smoke."

Dave Smith 23:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:14 "Try to take care of yourself. That's the most important thing." Like where did all that go?

Dave Smith 23:17 Well, and-

Joe Rogan 23:18 Well, that's not convenient to pharmaceutical companies. And it's also lumping everybody physically into the same boat, in the same category of risk. It's so crazy. And that's what's really freaking people out 'cause they're trying to do it to little children.

Dave Smith 23:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:32 'Cause they're trying to do that now to little children where there's significant risk of myocarditis. It's a real thing. We know, we, we know it's a thing. These goddamn commercials that you see where they're talking about little kids and myocarditis on television. Like, when, when was that an issue?

Dave Smith 23:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:45 You're, you're trying to pretend that this was an issue before? This was not an issue that you needed to advertise on television, the risk of myocarditis in children and just give them some medicine and then they're gonna grow up and be happy and healthy. Like, you don't even fucking know that-

Dave Smith 23:57 No.

Joe Rogan 23:57 ... 'cause you don't know the extent of the heart damage. You don't know that.

Dave Smith 24:00 There, there was a... There was another clip of Fauci, um, that was... It was, uh, in, it was in... during the lockdown regime before Operation Warp Speed. So before, before the vaccine regime when we were still in the lockdown regime. And I... This video I haven't seen go as viral, but I- I played it on my podcast, my... uh, part of the problem. If you go look, it's in, like, one of the last five episodes if someone wa- anyone wants to check it out. But he was saying point blank during, during the COVID lockdowns, that when people were going, "Well, maybe we could get a vaccine and that'll get us out of these lockdowns." And he was like, "No, no, no, because even if we got a vaccine, it would take at least two years of trials before we would know whether this vaccine was safe. And then sometimes vaccines can have a negative effect-"

Joe Rogan 24:44 Yeah.

Dave Smith 24:44 "...where actually you're worse at fighting off the, the virus afterward." And he kind of breaks down this whole thing. Then, then all of a sudden, once Operation Warp Speed starts and then once Biden gets in, you're not allowed to talk about that anymore. And in fact, when I was on with you, it was a couple of times ago, it was the clip, uh, that we went... that you got, like, all this fu- this heat for. And Fauci even responded. And essentially what you were saying was like, "Hey, if you're a young person, just be really healthy."

Joe Rogan 25:10 Yeah.

Dave Smith 25:10 "That's my advice to you. Eat healthy, exercise, get a lot of sunlight, get vitamin D." Like, all these things. And that became like a, like a controversial statement. There is... All of the science backs that up, that that is absolutely excellent advice.

Joe Rogan 25:24 But it had nothing to do with science at that point. It was a narrative.

Dave Smith 25:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:27 "This is what's going to get us out of this horrible thing we're in now. Take it." And everybody had to take it. And if you didn't take it, there was all this crazy nonsense. Like, first of all, they knew in the beginning that it wasn't gonna stop infection. They knew. The... Burke said that.

Dave Smith 25:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:43 She said that now. "I should have said that before."

Dave Smith 25:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:46 She said that, "I knew that it wasn't going to prevent infection."

Dave Smith 25:48 She said, like, we oversold it a little or something like that, yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 25:51 I don't know what she was... what she said, how she said it. But, you know, that, that was known back then. And it's also if you talk to virologists about respiratory illnesses, like, you can't contain them.

Dave Smith 26:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:04 You, you do your be-... Like, can you stop yourself from getting it? Yeah. If you completely isolate from humanity and you stay on a ranch and you never leave and you get your own well water and you wait this bitch out.

Dave Smith 26:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 26:14 That's possible. You could do that. But other than that, if you're gonna be in contact with human beings, and especially something that you can spread before you know you have it, which apparently is the case.

Dave Smith 26:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:26 Like, people could have a mild form of it and be spreading it, and then other people can die from it.

Dave Smith 26:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:30 And you might not be affected by it by... at all, but the other people that get it might die. And so that was the big fear, right? And everybody was like, "If you are irresponsible at this point, you're contributing to this horrible situation." I get that. But why didn't we put that same sort of... same sort of focus and, and, and same sort of pressure on people to take care of their health? Because that makes a big fucking difference. A giant difference.

Dave Smith 26:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:56 As big as anything-

Dave Smith 26:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:57 ... is whether or not you're healthy and you have a robust immune system that can fight off any kind of infection. Not just this one, but all the ones that people get constantly and die from. I mean, there, there, there's fucking... in the neighborhood of 30 to 50,000 people every year die from the flu, right? Isn't it something crazy like that every bad year?

Dave Smith 27:13 Yes, depending on the season. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:15 What about that? You know, what, what are we just gonna do the same lockdown thing for everything now? Like, what are we gonna do when diseases come? Is 50,000 okay but 500,000 is bad? And out of those 500,000, how many of them were fat? How many of them were old? How many of them had four comorbidities, which is the average? Four comorbidities, the people that died from it?

Dave Smith 27:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:37 That... This is wild shit.

Dave Smith 27:39 Yeah. And it's been... And this has been true way before COVID, uh, in America or something like... Uh, according to the CDC, um, there was... It's something... I think it was between like 66 and 70% of medical costs are associated with preventable-

Joe Rogan 27:52 Yeah.

Dave Smith 27:53 ... uh, illness. So whether it's obesity, uh, smoking, you know, drugs, you know, what... all this, like, unhealthy lifestyle type stuff. And then, you know, we have, like, these debates over, like, Obamacare and all these other things, and none of that ever comes up. Like, no one ever brings up the fact that like, well, if we actually wanna have a solution to the health, uh, problem in this country, well, we kind of know what the solution is. Solution is to, like, eat good and exercise and things like this and don't do drugs and don't, uh... or at least the unhealthy ones. Don't smoke cigarettes, you know. That's kind of the solution. And no one ever seems to be like, "Well, we're asking the people to do this." I'm not... I'm certainly not advocating forcing anyone to do anything, but w- you could at least mention that.

Joe Rogan 28:35 Well, you know, I mean, you could find a world in which that would be encouraged, where it could be encouraged in a positive way and it would really literally change people's lives. Like, they would start doing it and start feeling better and then that would become a new way of life for them. And then they would look back a year or two, three years from now with so much more energy and so much healthier and feel so much better and go, "God, why didn't someone tell me this earlier?"

Dave Smith 28:56 Yep.

Joe Rogan 28:57 And th- that's a thing. That, that's a real thing that we can do. This is a... it's just such a fucking fascinating time to watch people's thought processes and how quickly people are to join the herd mentality and to not question things, especially the people that put all their faith in some of the companies that have been shown to be the most deceptive and profited the most from that deception and have been penalized. Even though they've been penalized financially, if you look at it like the gain versus loss, it's a fucking... uh, it's not even a slap on the wrist 'cause they were still allowed to make billions of dollars from pharmaceutical medications that killed millions of people.

Dave Smith 29:35 Yeah.And then it's just like-

Joe Rogan 29:36 Or at least thousands of people.

Dave Smith 29:38 Yeah. And then, and then they're just like, uh, they're just doing math.

Joe Rogan 29:41 Right.

Dave Smith 29:41 They're like, "Okay, well, we pay this $5 billion fine, but we make 40 billion in profits."

Joe Rogan 29:45 But that's what Abramson said when I had John Abramson on, who's the guy who's litigated against pharmaceutical companies in the Vioxx case. He got the internal memos where they said, "There's going to be all these complications, but we will do well." Like, they knew the health complications that were gonna be associated with this medication, that wound up killing at least 50,000 people.

Dave Smith 30:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:05 Which is fucking wild. And they made like 12 billion, they got penalized a few billion. And so they made profit.

Dave Smith 30:12 Right.

Joe Rogan 30:12 They made profit off of a disease which they s- they pushed through knowing that they were hiding data.

Dave Smith 30:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:20 It's f-

Dave Smith 30:21 And-

Joe Rogan 30:21 Fucking w- And then people were willing to trust them. Like-

Dave Smith 30:23 And, and then, you know, the, uh, when you look at, like, things like th- when they had these COVID passports in, in all of these big cities, there, you know... The thing that's so crazy, it's like, so then they go, "Okay, so the government is basically forcing you to consume this pharmaceutical product, or you can't participate in the society-

Joe Rogan 30:39 Right.

Dave Smith 30:39 ... that you live in." And then all these people get forced into it. It's clear as day that this did nothing. I mean, this, they, they put the vaccine passports into effect in New York City before the Omicron variant. And when Omicron came through, it just wiped through the... Everybody got Omicron in the city. It was like the most contagious variant. It did nothing to stop this. And then ultimately it was like so obvious and the people just weren't having it, so they pulled back on it. But then there's no admission that like, "Oh, we got that wrong."

Joe Rogan 31:05 No.

Dave Smith 31:05 There's no reconciliation, no correction. But the pharmaceutical companies, they kept all the money for all the people who were forced to consume their product.

Joe Rogan 31:13 Well, not only that, they have zero risk.

Dave Smith 31:15 Right. Ze- Protect- Completely protected from liability.

Joe Rogan 31:17 Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Smith 31:18 Uh, many of them got funding from the government for the development in Operation Warp Speed. So, it's a pretty sweet, uh, gig.

Joe Rogan 31:24 Look, whenever there's a pandemic or ever there's a new thing, there's a crisis, there's always going to be mistakes made. And it's whether or not we learn from those mistakes and whether or not you have a healthy distrust for narratives that are being pushed by people who have a financial incentive for these narratives to be correct. Here's another one we don't talk about, respirators. Do you know how many people died because they were on respirators? And the, is it a correlation or is it a causation? Well, they don't fucking use them as much anymore. That's a fact. And 88% of the people in New York who they put on a re- something like that. Find out what percentage of people who got put on respirators who wound up dying.

Dave Smith 32:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:04 And then you could say, "Well, they were gonna die anyway, and that's why." There's some people-

Dave Smith 32:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 32:09 ... that disagree with that and they say, "No, you blew out these people's lungs."

Dave Smith 32:11 Well, the reason I tend to, uh, I think that you're right to disagree with that is 'cause what you said at the b- is that the... So at the beginning, right?

Joe Rogan 32:18 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 32:18 This is when, uh, Cuomo, when he was still, uh, governor there, was demanding that Trump send in 50,000 more respirators-

Joe Rogan 32:24 Yeah.

Dave Smith 32:24 ... 'cause we needed them or people are gonna die. And then the doctors, basically all from the bottom up, determined like, "We're not gonna be putting these people on respirators anymore 'cause they're, so many of them are dying."

Joe Rogan 32:33 Most New York COVID patients on ventilators died. Yeah. Rose to 88% of those who received mechanical ventilation. Among the 2,634 patients whom outcomes were known, the overall death rate was 21%, but it rose to 88% for the ones who were ventilated. Jesus Christ. So even just that. So let's just pretend it's only, what is that? 67%? Imagine that.

Dave Smith 33:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:01 Just that. 67%? What, what... That's a lot of fucking people dying.

Dave Smith 33:06 And, and this one, to your point though, I would say, I don't think there was anything like malicious about this. I, I do-

Joe Rogan 33:10 No.

Dave Smith 33:10 ... think doctors were trying to save people.

Joe Rogan 33:12 Yes.

Dave Smith 33:12 And then they quickly started realizing, "Our patients are doing really bad when we put them on these ventilators."

Joe Rogan 33:16 Right.

Dave Smith 33:16 And then they backed off and they were like, "Let's not do this anymore." So to your point, yeah, like mistakes will be made. And I think that one was like an honest, uh, mistake. But the point is that at least the doctors then corrected that.

Joe Rogan 33:27 Right.

Dave Smith 33:27 And they went, "Okay, we're not gonna do that anymore. We're gonna wait until we absolutely need to, to put them on these ventilators." But there seems to be with all of these other, like, m- like major policies from the federal government and from a lot of these state governments, that there's just kind of... You know, there's like no admission, no recognition. And y- I, I mean, I remember like when, when Texas here, when, when you guys first opened back up and just ended all of the, the COVID restrictions. All the blue state governors were saying, "This is so reckless and insane and people are gonna die." And then the, the death rate was no worse than in any of these other blue states, and now they all stopped.

Joe Rogan 34:03 Yeah, everyone wants to point-

Dave Smith 34:03 And they don't even acknowledge it.

Joe Rogan 34:04 Everyone who wants a point to Florida, like Florida, what they did, they had the highest rate of death in COVID. Yeah, but they have the oldest people. And, and if you age adjust, it's no different than California.

Dave Smith 34:16 Yeah, yeah. That's right.

Joe Rogan 34:18 If you age adjust, that, that was the right way to do it. He was right. Like it's not... No, no one's saying that COVID's good. It was not good. But these people that did things that were not good for society, were not good for small businesses, were not good for people's mental health, were not good for the development of children's language skills, like all these things were wrong, man.

Dave Smith 34:39 Well, look, I mean, there's so much stuff. The, the, we're... It's gonna be, like, a generation before we even see the damage from the lockdowns.

Joe Rogan 34:47 Oh, yeah.

Dave Smith 34:47 And we won't even be able to know for sure what exactly, like trace it back to what exactly was the damage from the lockdowns. But just think about what a nightmare, you know, 2020, I mean, there were riots in that year that were obviously about the George Floyd thing, but were very related to the lockdowns as well. Like it's, it wasn't a coincidence that after three months of being locked in your home with no bar, no sports, no friends' house-

Joe Rogan 35:10 Lost your job.

Dave Smith 35:11 ... no work, you know-

Joe Rogan 35:12 Right.

Dave Smith 35:12 ... that you... Then all of a sudden people were rioting 'cause cops have done, you know, fucked up shit a lot of times before. And this one led to national, you know, riots. Um, that was all part of the cost of lockdowns. So the, the economy, the inflation that we're dealing with right now was a huge part of the lockdowns. And it was, uh, partly because they printed trillions of dollars as a result of being like, "Well, what are we gonna do to make sure we're not in a depression if we just stop the economy right now?" So of course the answer is always, "Well, we'll print trillions of dollars, hand out most of that to-"... big corporations-

Joe Rogan 35:43 (laughs)

Dave Smith 35:44 ... and give some crumbs to, to the American people. Um, and so now, you think of the cost of inflation. I mean, people are getting destroyed from the, the value of the dollar-

Joe Rogan 35:54 Yeah.

Dave Smith 35:54 ... uh, going down right now, and the cost of everything rising. This is all ... These things are all interrelated, you know? And it's like, uh, it's very hard to measure the cost of shutting down society.

Joe Rogan 36:04 No. And that should have been taken into consideration. The fact that it wasn't is so crazy. But everybody wanted to be safe. And the government, you know, said, "We have to at least have, uh, uh, it has to sh- have an illusion that we're doing something to protect people."

Dave Smith 36:19 Yeah. But really, I mean, in, in hindsight at this point, looking back at it, that if the government had just said, "Look, there's this, uh, there's this virus, this nasty upper respiratory virus that's, uh, coming over here. And we think that, um, if you are i- if you're in very bad health..." 'Cause this b- like, by March, it was very clear in the data of who was dying from this. It was very clear that it was old and sick people. This was right away.

Joe Rogan 36:43 Yeah, but you, you, we, they focused a lot on outliers. They focused on young people.

Dave Smith 36:47 Yes, yes.

Joe Rogan 36:47 And a lot of those young people, unfortunately, were ventilated.

Dave Smith 36:50 Yeah. Well, that's true too.

Joe Rogan 36:51 You know, Michael Yeo's doctor told him, "I'm not gonna put you on a ventilator because, if I do, you'll die." And he got it early.

Dave Smith 36:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:57 He got it in, like, February. So it was-

Dave Smith 37:00 So w-

Joe Rogan 37:00 ... early on. His doctor was wise enough, fortunately, to say-

Dave Smith 37:04 It's lucky, yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:04 Yeah.

Dave Smith 37:05 Yeah. No, but I'm just saying, if you were being honest and not focusing on the outliers, and actually looking at, like, what we can learn from this data, th- they could have just said, "Look, if you are at risk, we really recommend you isolate yourself. For everybody else, try to be smart, try to be as healthy as you can, like, be ... You know what I mean? And then, if you feel sick at all, don't come into work."

Joe Rogan 37:25 Right.

Dave Smith 37:25 Like, "Don't ... Do not power through it. Do not assume it's allergies, or a cold, or something like that."

Joe Rogan 37:29 Get tested.

Dave Smith 37:29 "Like, make sure ... Get tested. I know tests weren't as readily available back then, but just stay home, wait it out."

Joe Rogan 37:34 Right.

Dave Smith 37:34 "You know what I mean? Whatever." Just doing that and not locking down the economy, and not having all of these crazy restrictions, would have unquestionably been a much, much better way to handle COVID.

Joe Rogan 37:47 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 37:47 Because, look, from all these states, if you look at the, the lockdown states versus the non-lockdown states, or the lockdown countries versus the non-lockdown countries, th- if you look at the mask mandate counties versus the non-mask mandate counties, there's ... You can't draw any conclusion from any of them. The truth is that this virus just moved the way it was gonna move. And so all you were doing was just destroying people's lives.

Joe Rogan 38:08 Yeah.

Dave Smith 38:08 You were just adding more of a cost than the virus itself was gonna add, which was, uh, already significant.

Joe Rogan 38:14 And here's another thing they never did. When they got data, and the data was pretty clear, that a large percentage of the people in the ICU for COVID were deficient in vitamin D. And this is not saying that vitamin D is gonna prevent you from getting COVID, but it 100% will increase the power of your immune system. Vitamin D deficiency is a real problem-

Dave Smith 38:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:34 ... with, with people's overall metabolic health. And there's a large percentage of our country, because we stay indoors all the time, we don't do things, we're not active outside, that it's ... Vitamin D is a hormone, and your body produces it from the sun, and that's the best way to get it. But if you're not getting it that way, you can supplement. And it's a d- definite best second choice, and it really helps.

Dave Smith 38:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:57 And it makes a big fucking difference. It makes a big difference in everything, in muscle development, brain function. Like, it's a real f- fucking problem with human beings. They had that data. There was no, there was no, like, public declaration of this.

Dave Smith 39:11 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:12 There was-

Dave Smith 39:12 This was known way before COVID, yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:13 Such a simple thing to tell people, "Vitamin D is so important. Go outside, lay in the sun." Go to a fucking park. Parks should be l- that, that ... When they shut parks down, that was fucking nuts.

Dave Smith 39:23 Playgrounds down, basketball courts down, everything.

Joe Rogan 39:26 The ocean.

Dave Smith 39:26 Yeah, yeah (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 39:26 Remember the fucking guy wakeboarding?

Dave Smith 39:28 Yeah (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 39:29 It's like, th- th- these people are out of their fucking minds. And if they just did that, then I would know at least you are taking measures based on data to try to help people and protect people.

Dave Smith 39:39 Yeah. And, and just the insane thing is that they, they all accuse people like us, who talk about it like this, of, like, spreading misinformation throughout the whole c- time.

Joe Rogan 39:48 Yeah.

Dave Smith 39:48 Meanwhile, the people who say that, like, you know ... Right, like, "You should, you should stay inside," are not accu- you know, they don't get accused of spreading misinformation. The people who say ... The people like the President of the United States and Dr. Fauci, the head of the pandemic response, who say, "If you get the vaccine, you won't get COVID and you won't spread it."

Joe Rogan 40:05 Yeah.

Dave Smith 40:05 Point blank.

Joe Rogan 40:06 Point blank.

Dave Smith 40:07 That's what they say.

Joe Rogan 40:07 Yeah.

Dave Smith 40:07 That's how they sold this to the American people.

Joe Rogan 40:09 They sold, yeah.

Dave Smith 40:09 And that's not ... Like, that's not, you know, that's not gonna get you kicked off Twitter or whatever.

Joe Rogan 40:14 No, it's fucking, it's wild, man. Or the people that spread that story about, uh, folks that were, uh, they were having overdoses of ivermectin, and so they were being rushed into the hospitals. They had no room for gunshot patients 'cause so many people were taking ivermectin.

Dave Smith 40:31 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:31 A total 100% fabrication and lie that was in Rolling Stone, that Rachel Maddow tweeted, and then she doubled down on it afterwards-

Dave Smith 40:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:42 ... after it was proven. We looked at the photo. We were like, "Why are those people wearing coats?" It's August-

Dave Smith 40:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:46 ... in Oklahoma.

Dave Smith 40:48 Well, it also just, i- i- ... If you would just had anyone who knew anything, I'm not a doctor or anything, but if you know anyone who knows anything about it, you would just look at that, like I did the second I read that story, and go, "That doesn't sound right." Because ivermectin is known for being a very safe drug. N- whether the argument is that it, it helps with COVID or not, it's n- ... The reason why, at the beginning, doctors were giving it to people is 'cause they were kind of like, (clicks tongue) "Well, this may help or it may not, but it's definitely not a dangerous drug to take."

Joe Rogan 41:12 It's one, it's on the World Health Organization's-

Dave Smith 41:14 So-

Joe Rogan 41:14 ... list of most important medicines.

Dave Smith 41:15 Yeah. Like, so that ... So it just made no sense. You'd at least go in being skeptical of this. By the way-

Joe Rogan 41:20 Billions of prescriptions.

Dave Smith 41:20 ... didn't it just get added-

Joe Rogan 41:21 Yes.

Dave Smith 41:22 It just got added as a COVID treatment, I believe.

Joe Rogan 41:24 Yeah.

Dave Smith 41:25 So, uh-

Joe Rogan 41:25 I don't know what the ... Find out what that is, 'cause what I've heard is it's just, they just put it on there because, just to give people information about it, whether or not-

Dave Smith 41:34 You know-

Joe Rogan 41:34 ... they're admitting that it's, uh, it's, it's def-

Dave Smith 41:37 But why do they even call it ivermectin? Why don't they call it horse paste?

Joe Rogan 41:40 (laughs)

Dave Smith 41:40 Like, why do they even, why would they even refer to it like this?

Joe Rogan 41:42 Well, see, the, that, n- ... Here's the crazy thing. That might have worked on some people at the moment, where people are like, "Oh my God, these idiots are taking horse paste."But now, given the amount of time that's gone on, what it's done, really, is it's eroded significantly people's respect and people's trust in mainstream news.

Dave Smith 42:01 Which I think is good.

Joe Rogan 42:02 Which is fucking very good.

Dave Smith 42:03 'Cause, you know-

Joe Rogan 42:03 We, we got to find out what CNN really is.

Dave Smith 42:05 Yeah, well that's-

Joe Rogan 42:06 It's the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.

Dave Smith 42:08 But if you think about it like, there's, this is, um, this is the consequence of all of this stuff. And this one with COVID is the biggest one, by far. But even when people would... I remember like when, when Donald Trump was running for president in 2016. And the people in the corporate press, uh, who I know some of them, and they'd be saying these things like, they'd be like, "He's just calling us fake news and liars and all of this." And like, how is this resonating with so many people? And they were like completely like d- And you're like, guys, I don't know, I mean, you sold a war where a million people died off th- this guy had weapons of mass destruction, and he didn't. Like real people's kids went and fought in that war, and then came back and blew their brains out. And this happened, tens of thousands of American soldiers blew their brains out. You know, like, who, a lot of people knew that guy. Like you know what I mean? Like I don't know. And they know that you sold this war. Do you think that the, in, in the next 10 years after that, the fact that people have no trust in you, there might be a connection there? You know? Do you think the fact that even like Barack Obama, you know, s- saying, you know, uh, whatever, "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan."

Joe Rogan 43:10 Yeah.

Dave Smith 43:10 Or just all these lies.

Joe Rogan 43:11 Yeah.

Dave Smith 43:12 Like people remember this stuff. But man, if they think that the people in 2016 didn't trust the corporate press, after this, the amount of people who will never, who will never look at CNN again, will never look at The New York Times again. And a- a- as- as- as if there's any pretense of even your pretending to tell the truth. It's just not gonna happen.

Joe Rogan 43:34 It's not gonna happen.

Dave Smith 43:34 And, and, or at least it's for huge numbers of people. They'll never trust you again. You can never talk to them again.

Joe Rogan 43:40 Well, I think what CNN's trying to do now is rebuild, and they're trying to become a source of objective news. And I think this new guy recognizes the mistakes of... You, you're allowing editorials by some of the dumbest fucking people on television, people that are only there because they were hired. One of the beautiful things about whether it's, uh, Breaking Points with, uh, Krystal and Saagar, who-

Dave Smith 44:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:02 It's my favorite show.

Dave Smith 44:03 They're great.

Joe Rogan 44:04 One of the bea- one of the best points about it is there's no one, no one running that, but them. That's... You're getting objective information from people that you trust. They're gathering up everything they can find a- and they can give an assessment based on their understanding of these issues, and then they, they debate it and they talk about it and they go over it back and forth. I- th- people chose them. People know they can trust them, so they follow them. It's, that's not the case with people on television. They just get hired.

Dave Smith 44:33 Well, and, and it's, right, it's a thing you can read that it's kind of like however you feel about, um, uh, Krystal and, and Saagar, they're not lying to you.

Joe Rogan 44:42 Right.

Dave Smith 44:42 You can kind of tell that they're telling you-

Joe Rogan 44:43 Yes.

Dave Smith 44:43 ... what they think.

Joe Rogan 44:44 Yes.

Dave Smith 44:44 Not that, not to say that they're right about everything.

Joe Rogan 44:46 Right.

Dave Smith 44:46 But they're tell- they're also, um, there's no pretense of them being, um, uh, objective journalists. They both are opinion journalists. Like they're both like-

Joe Rogan 44:55 Right.

Dave Smith 44:55 ... "Okay, like she's kind of like a left wing populist, he's kind of a right wing populist type."

Joe Rogan 44:59 Right.

Dave Smith 44:59 But so they're like, "But that's our opinion. We'll let you know that up front."

Joe Rogan 45:02 Yes.

Dave Smith 45:02 Rather than pretending, "I take no opinion here, I'm just an objective journalist." And e- you know, what Brian Stelter did.

Joe Rogan 45:09 Those two-

Dave Smith 45:09 "And everybody knows that we're real news and they're fake news."

Joe Rogan 45:13 Exactly.

Dave Smith 45:13 "That's the objective truth." It's like, no, it's not.

Joe Rogan 45:16 It doesn't work. Uh, no one trusts you. The, you, you're not even a real person, like the way you talk is like a-

Dave Smith 45:20 (laughs) It's so bizarre.

Joe Rogan 45:21 ... a lizard pretending to be a person. It's like very strange, right?

Dave Smith 45:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:25 But what, what gives me hope about those two, Krystal and Saagar, is that they are a right wing populist and a left wing populist, and yet they're very good friends, and they get along great, and they have respectful conversations about things.

Dave Smith 45:36 And you actually realize that they, uh, have a lot of overlap.

Joe Rogan 45:39 Mostly.

Dave Smith 45:39 Which is a big, which is a big, uh, thing that I, like I think that the kind of powerful, uh, like the, the establishment work very hard to make sure that you don't ever think about that.

Joe Rogan 45:54 Right, don't think about the overlap.

Dave Smith 45:55 How much actually that your average like l- you know, left of center person, right of center person has in common. And that they... And this is why they love pumping these culture war issues so much, because they're the things that get, uh, the two sides fighting with each other while they're off at the top not caring.

Joe Rogan 46:14 Right.

Dave Smith 46:14 Like, you know, like what, what JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs or the Federal Reserve, what they love is when left wing America and right wing America are at each other's throats and they're just raking in billions of dollars in profits.

Joe Rogan 46:27 100%.

Dave Smith 46:27 'Cause no one's looking at them. But if you really think about the things that most people care about, like most regular Americans care about the most, is they're like, um, you know, "My, my health care is like really unaffordable." Or the, the, you know, "Groceries just went through the roof. My rent just like went up by 25%." And this, so it's like, you go, well, you know, like does, does inflation fuck over left wingers or right wingers? It fucks over both of them. Like it's the, all of these things... It's not a left verse right issue, it's like a top verse down issue. You know who it really helped? It helped all the people that got, the big corporations who got all that bailout money when the Federal Reserve printed $6 trillion in 2020. It was really good for them. It's really bad for you. It's the old George Carlin thing, right?

Joe Rogan 47:09 Yeah.

Dave Smith 47:09 "It's a big fucking club and you ain't in it."

Joe Rogan 47:11 Yep.

Dave Smith 47:12 And that's a left winger or a right winger.

Joe Rogan 47:13 Yep.

Dave Smith 47:13 You're not in this club.

Joe Rogan 47:15 Nope.

Dave Smith 47:15 It's that club verse you.

Joe Rogan 47:16 Right.

Dave Smith 47:16 That's the narrative. And they have a lot more in common with each other. Let me tell you, the Republican politicians and Democrat politicians have a lot more in common with e- each other than they, than they have with you. And left winger and right winger American, you have a lot more in common with each other than you do with Biden or Romney. You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 47:34 Yeah. And those culture war issues, that's the most important thing that you're saying. And this is something that people need to get in their head, that these culture war issues that w-... we, we're seeing in the news every day. There is an element of distraction about that. No matter how much you think these issues are important, they are important, they certainly are. They are to people.

Dave Smith 47:54 Yeah. There's lots of them that are, that are very important. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:56 They're very important. But they're not talking about them because they're important.

Dave Smith 47:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 48:00 They're talking about them because they know this will solidify people's adherence to the ideology, whether it's the right-wing ideology or the left-wing ideology. When you have people like Stacey Abrams saying that a fetal heartbeat is, is an illusion? Like how did she say it?

Dave Smith 48:15 Yeah. It's not, it's not real.

Joe Rogan 48:17 She said-

Dave Smith 48:17 What you're hearing there isn't real or something like that.

Joe Rogan 48:20 What did she, what did she say about a heartbeat? 'Cause this is like-

Dave Smith 48:23 She said at six weeks-

Joe Rogan 48:24 ... established biology.

Dave Smith 48:26 I heard my daughter's heartbeat when she was a six-week-old. I mean, you know, like I-

Joe Rogan 48:30 It's established biology. This is wild ideological crazy-

Dave Smith 48:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:36 ... cult talk.

Dave Smith 48:37 Well, you just go, "Well, what was making that woomp-woomp, woomp-woomp sound that me and my wife listened to in the ultrasounds?"

Joe Rogan 48:41 Like what did she say? She said is a ... no such thing as a prenatal heartbeat at six weeks. The sound is manufactured. That just that statement alone should discredit you to the point where people should never listen to anything you ever say again.

Dave Smith 48:55 And what does she even mean?

Joe Rogan 48:56 Like who is, who is manufacturing it?

Dave Smith 48:57 Who is manuf- just like my, my wife's, uh, like OB was just in the corner going-

Joe Rogan 49:00 He's like this. Yeah. (singing)

Dave Smith 49:00 "Woomp, woop, woomp, woomp, too-whoop."

Joe Rogan 49:01 Saying, "Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum."

Dave Smith 49:02 "That's your baby." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:03 Yeah. Like what? He's faking it?

Dave Smith 49:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:04 Like what does that mean? She supports no limits on abortion. Um, that's crazy too, 'cause you're saying like eight months and four weeks, or eight months and three weeks rather? Like right before-

Dave Smith 49:16 I mean if-

Joe Rogan 49:17 ... the, the kid's coming out?

Dave Smith 49:18 Well, this is-

Joe Rogan 49:19 That's okay?

Dave Smith 49:19 Well, this is-

Joe Rogan 49:20 Like wh-

Dave Smith 49:20 I- i- it's when ... it's like this is the logical conclusion of this kind of like, well, my body my choice.

Joe Rogan 49:25 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 49:25 And no restrictions. And you go, so let's say that there's a woman who whatever, right. Eight week- l- nine months, 'cause not everyone goes-

Joe Rogan 49:32 Right. Right.

Dave Smith 49:32 ... on their, their due date. Nine months, walks in and goes, "I just don't feel like it anymore."

Joe Rogan 49:36 Oof.

Dave Smith 49:36 "Can I have an abortion now?"

Joe Rogan 49:37 Jesus.

Dave Smith 49:37 Like almost everyone would go-

Joe Rogan 49:40 Christ.

Dave Smith 49:40 ... "No. (laughs) I'm sorry. At this point, no." Um, but anyway with all ... do, do you ever see, to the point of the culture wars as a distraction, do you ever see like a ... You know one of those like Nexus charts-

Joe Rogan 49:49 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 49:49 ... um, where you can chart like words that are used in, in mainstream like big-

Joe Rogan 49:54 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 49:54 ... newspapers and stuff? So you could chart like a word in the New York Times and how many times it's used.

Joe Rogan 49:58 Right.

Dave Smith 49:58 And if you ... so, you know, or Washington Post or whatever. If you take any of these like woke t- you know, you take the term racism and you put it in a Nexus chart and they'll show you throughout the years how many times the term racism is used in the New York Times. And it's like this and then around like 2011, 2012, sh- goes way up. And oh, social justice, way up. Toxic masculinity, way up. Like all ... And this isn't coming from like the, the young kids. This isn't coming from 20-year-olds. This isn't coming from the college universities. These are the biggest corporate, you know, media, uh, platforms in the country. All at this time, like flooded the market with this woke shit. Now I'm not saying it didn't exist in, in college universities. I'm not saying that that wasn't already going on. I'm just saying that what changed around that time, and it was right toward Obama's second term, what changed was that all the sudden the woke shit went from being shit that was taught, like critical race theory and this stuff was taught in college universities, but all the sudden it had the backing of all of the biggest, most powerful corporations in the world. And all of the political class and all of it just got pumped in. And the theory kind of is that what had happened right then in 2010 was you had these huge ... th- these, this big left wing populist movement and this big right wing populist movement. You had the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party Movement. And they were kind of started over the same thing, which were the banker bailouts. Like the first tea party l- like things were started over the Ron Paul campaigns and the TARP. That was like when the first tea parties broke out. And then the Occupy thing was in direct response to the banker bailouts and all of this stuff. And you had these big movements and the lefties back then were standing outside of the big banks screaming, "We are the 99%." And when they were saying 99%, they didn't mean 99%. They meant 99.9%. They were like, "We're the people who don't own banks."

Joe Rogan 51:54 Right.

Dave Smith 51:54 Like the people who own banks versus the people who don't own banks. That's who we represent. That was like the leftist populist movement. And then all of these huge publications, I'm not talking about mom and pop newspapers. I'm saying the New York Times and the Washington Post. Do you know what I mean? All they wanted to talk about all day was what divides all of them. It was like, "No, no, no. You're not the 99%. You're the whites versus the blacks, the gays versus the straights, the trans versus the cis." And it does ... If ... And now you look at it and you see like the gay pride parade floats and there's like a Bank of America float. And it just seems to me like these big banks essentially bought off the left with all this woke shit, completely distracted them from where their eyes were on the prize, and then turned the left and right against each other, where now they're all fighting. So like to your point, it's not that what they're fighting about doesn't necessarily mean anything. Some of them are very important issues, but none of them affect the bottom line for the most powerful people in our society. And what are the bankers doing now, since those banker ballots? They got a whole new round of ballots in 2020. They, they've like ... Th- they are, they're raking in profit still. Nothing was ever addressed about th- that whole corrupt system.

Joe Rogan 53:01 So do you think that there was a concerted effort to do this? Like was there a conversation? Like how do you think something like that happens? If you think that there's this ramp up and it's been proven by these studies that if you look at the words, like is it a function of people graduating from these universities and taking these jobs in these, these companies and deciding to push this agenda because they think that social justice is important? Because they do see, you know, these opponents of Obama's being these racist people that are like, uh, this, this like underbelly of society that we weren't totally aware of and what ... it needs to be addressed? Or do you think that there is really like a concerted effort from corporations to get people to divide? And if, if that's the case, how was it discussed?

Dave Smith 53:48 Well, I can ... Um, so, uh, uh, look, the thing is b- essentially the answer is I don't know, um, 'ca- you know, I don't ha- like factually, I don't know for sure. But there's a ... I think it was either ... I can't remember if it was Michael Tracy or if it was, uh, uh, Matt Taibbi.One of 'em said it, but he goes, "I'm not saying wokeism is a CIA operation, but if it was-"

Joe Rogan 54:09 (laughs) .

Dave Smith 54:09 "... everything makes perfect sense." You know? So I'm-

Joe Rogan 54:11 Yeah.

Dave Smith 54:11 ... like, I don't know. I ... And, and a- again, those nexus charts, they're not even, like, studies. They're just mapping the words-

Joe Rogan 54:17 Right.

Dave Smith 54:17 ... and how many times it's used. But there is no question that amongst the most powerful, you know, like, forces in media, there was a concerted effort to do this. And my guess is that it's much less likely that that came from the 20-year-old interns than that that came from some power source up at the top.

Joe Rogan 54:35 Okay.

Dave Smith 54:35 And I think there was an effort to do this. I ... Like, I think ... And I think it came from the very top. And I think it ... And this has been going on, by the way, for a long time. Like, back in the day, there was, uh ... This is what they did to the right wing in this country. This is what National Review did when they turned the right wing into culture warriors when they never were before. Like the old right, the, the old, um, you know, like Robert Taft, who was known as Mr. Republican, his whole thing was like, non-interventionist foreign policy, sound money, like some protectionism, so you protect, like, American, uh, uh, jobs and stuff like that. It was all, like, this old school right wing thing, and then National Review and all this, like, new right rose up in, in, like, the, the '60s. And they were like, "No, no, no, no, no. Listen. What really matters is, like, there's homos out there."

Joe Rogan 55:19 (laughs)

Dave Smith 55:19 "All right? Like, that's really what us right-wingers care about."

Joe Rogan 55:22 Yeah.

Dave Smith 55:22 "What we really care about is abortion. What we really care about is the ..."

Joe Rogan 55:25 Yeah.

Dave Smith 55:25 Again, not saying abortion is not an important issue. I'm just saying, but they, they used that and then they were like, "Oh, and by the way, that non-interventionist foreign policy thing? Yeah, we're not doing that anymore. We're called warriors now, and we're gonna fight communism all throughout the world. Get on board."

Joe Rogan 55:37 Mm-hmm.

Dave Smith 55:38 And so it just ... It seems like this is, this is a, a tried and true tactic to, like, break up these, these movements that can actually threa- threaten where, like, the real gravy train is.

Joe Rogan 55:51 Right.

Dave Smith 55:51 And where is that? That's, like, in the military-industrial complex and the banking complex, the pharmaceutical industrial complex. That's where, like ... That's where the real American fascism lies, not in some, like ... Not in some people who, you know, trespassed on government property on January 6th, who ha- had nothing, was completely powerless, and then is now sitting in solitary confinement for how many hundreds of days. That's not, like, the face of fascism in America. If you wanna talk about fascism in America, look at, like, the Patriot Act. Look at vaccine passports. Look at, like, you know, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. That, that's where the fascism lies.

Joe Rogan 56:25 Well, the January 6th thing is not a small thing. Like when people entered the Capitol with zip ties, that's not a small thing. You know? And I don't think dismissing how fucked up that was is ... I, I, I understand what you're saying.

Dave Smith 56:40 No, I'm not, I'm not even saying that it wasn't fucked up or the guy who had zip ties ... And I heard ... I don't know exactly what the story was with that guy with the zip ties. I ... I'm not downplaying it.

Joe Rogan 56:48 But there were ... There was people-

Dave Smith 56:48 I'm saying-

Joe Rogan 56:49 ... in there that were 100% unhinged.

Dave Smith 56:50 I think there were some people in there that had they gotten their hands on Mike Pence or something like that, like something very ugly could have happened. So I'm-

Joe Rogan 56:56 100%.

Dave Smith 56:56 I don't mean to downplay that aspect of it. I'm just saying that, like, those people, even had they done something to Mike Pence or something like that, would have been shut down by ... L- I mean, the military would have come in. The National Guard would have come in. They were never a real threat to take over the United States of America and implement fascism. My point is that these people that I'm talking about are really powerful and actually affecting the lives of everyday Americans. And my other thing is that a lot of those people in January 6th weren't that guy.

Joe Rogan 57:24 Right.

Dave Smith 57:25 And were just people kind of in the crowd who entered the building.

Joe Rogan 57:27 I can't believe we're inside. Yeah.

Dave Smith 57:28 And also what the hell was going on with Mike Epps, and how does it make any sense that he is being-

Joe Rogan 57:32 Ray Epps.

Dave Smith 57:32 Ray Epps. I'm sorry. My f- (laughs) Not Mike Epps.

Joe Rogan 57:34 Mike Epps the comedian. Sorry, Mike.

Dave Smith 57:35 That's a, that's a great, great comedian. (laughs) Mike ...

Joe Rogan 57:37 Sorry, Mike.

Dave Smith 57:37 By the way, for the record, Mike Epps was not in January 6th.

Joe Rogan 57:40 (laughs) .

Dave Smith 57:40 I'd like to correct the record and apologize to Mike Epps.

Joe Rogan 57:42 (laughs)

Dave Smith 57:43 So sorry. Ray Epps, who Democrats are now defending as, like, some guy who's being villainized ... Uh, vilified. Uh-

Joe Rogan 57:49 Who's defending him?

Dave Smith 57:50 Well, there was some Democrat in Congress the other day who was like, "Just leave the guy alone. I mean, he wasn't a fed."

Joe Rogan 57:55 Well, we should be concerned.

Dave Smith 57:55 Well, look-

Joe Rogan 57:56 You should be concerned if he's not a fed, then he's on the other team. So why would you be defending him if he's literally inciting violence?

Dave Smith 58:03 Yeah. You would be calling him-

Joe Rogan 58:04 Yeah.

Dave Smith 58:04 ... an insurrectionist or a domestic terrorist.

Joe Rogan 58:06 He, he's telling people to go inside.

Dave Smith 58:08 How is that ... How are all these other people arrested and sitting in jail and this guy isn't, is, is already quite an interesting question.

Joe Rogan 58:14 Well, what is his history? Do we know?

Dave Smith 58:16 I, I don't really know much about him. I know that that day ... And I know that, um, point blank, uh, it was Wray, the head of the FBI, and one other woman who was like, I think one of the top, uh, people in the, in the Justice Department, were straight up asked, uh, in Congressional testimony if there were any, uh, uh, FBI, um, agents or, um, uh, or, or, like, uh, people working with the FBI involved in the, the raid.

Joe Rogan 58:42 She would not respond.

Dave Smith 58:43 And they would not answer.

Joe Rogan 58:44 They would not answer.

Dave Smith 58:45 They would not answer the question.

Joe Rogan 58:46 The, the whole-

Dave Smith 58:46 So I'm just ... Again, just-

Joe Rogan 58:48 Yeah.

Dave Smith 58:48 I'm g- I'm very ... I'm more conspiratorial than I ever am on this show today, but just saying.

Joe Rogan 58:52 Well, you kinda-

Dave Smith 58:52 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 58:53 In that case, this is not just a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy with evidence. There's a real person.

Dave Smith 58:57 There's a ... It's a ... There are real conspiracies, and it's reasonable to, to question some of this stuff.

Joe Rogan 59:02 Amazing job they did of making the term conspiracy theory sound like a... You're a kook.

Dave Smith 59:07 Yeah. Even though-

Joe Rogan 59:08 Like you have to ... It has to be like Sandy Hook. It has to be something, like, completely preposterous. It has to be Pizzagate. It has to be, you know, lizard people.

Dave Smith 59:15 Yes.

Joe Rogan 59:15 It has-

Dave Smith 59:15 Even though the official story of, like, all of these events are conspiracies.

Joe Rogan 59:18 100%.

Dave Smith 59:18 Like the official story of 9/11 is a conspiracy. It's a ... The official story is it's a conspiracy with Osama bin Laden-

Joe Rogan 59:24 Yeah.

Dave Smith 59:24 ... and a bunch of, uh-

Joe Rogan 59:25 Yeah.

Dave Smith 59:25 ... pissed-off Muslims in Afghanistan.

Joe Rogan 59:27 Yeah.

Dave Smith 59:27 Like, that's the-

Joe Rogan 59:28 They conspired to take down the United States.

Dave Smith 59:29 They, they conspi- Right.

Joe Rogan 59:29 Yeah.

Dave Smith 59:29 Like it ... That's a conspiracy.

Joe Rogan 59:30 Right.

Dave Smith 59:30 The war in Iraq was a conspiracy.

Joe Rogan 59:32 Right.

Dave Smith 59:32 Like, no matter how you look at it, all these things are people conspiring.

Joe Rogan 59:35 Yeah. The, the conspiracy theory being a negative term is a really genius thing.

Dave Smith 59:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:41 What they've done is really amazing. And I think they started that during the Kennedy assassination. I think that's when the whole conspiracy theorist term, 'cause they're like, "Uh, this is uh-"

Dave Smith 59:51 Yeah. Like, you're not allowed to ask questions about this thing.

Joe Rogan 59:53 Yeah. Especially that thing. That was ... That's one of the nuttiest ones. And to this day, I still hear pe- people saying that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I'm like, "You're out of your fucking mind or misinformed or under-informed or purposely ignorant because you want it to be Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone." The more you read about ... You ever talk to Oliver Stone?

Dave Smith 1:00:12 No, I've never talked to him, but I've watched a lot of his stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:00:14 Jesus Christ. Oliver Stone will, will take you down a fucking rabbit hole.

Dave Smith 1:00:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:19 And he has it all off the top of his head. He could just rattle off data and information, and he's been following this w- uh, since, like ... He made that film in the '90s.

Dave Smith 1:00:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:30 That JFK film was in the '90s. And, you know, he just released a documentary series recently on Showtime that-

Dave Smith 1:00:36 I haven't-

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 ... that goes over it in depth.

Dave Smith 1:00:38 I haven't seen that. His, uh, his, like, American history, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:00:41 Oh, yeah.

Dave Smith 1:00:41 ... uh, docuseries thing was-

Joe Rogan 1:00:43 Secrets of America.

Dave Smith 1:00:43 ... really, was really excellent, man.

Joe Rogan 1:00:44 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:00:44 Like I, I highly recommend-

Joe Rogan 1:00:45 He's incredible.

Dave Smith 1:00:45 ... people watch that.

Joe Rogan 1:00:46 Oliver's incredible. I mean, it's incredible that that guy was this g- and still is this genius filmmaker who also is incredibly well-informed about certain things, and he's a patriot. I mean, the guy served in Vietnam. He's a ... And he, he understands, like, the, the pitfalls of all this shit and where, where those go. You can't just let it slide.

Dave Smith 1:01:05 Yeah. Also really worthwhile is watching his, uh, his interviews with Putin.... um, that, that-

Joe Rogan 1:01:10 Hmm.

Dave Smith 1:01:10 ... series of interviews-

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:01:11 ... that he did, pa- particularly considering what's going on right now, which is like the, to me, the most important thing in the world. And, um, it's, it's, this is like the next thing where now ... You know like, you know like how kinda now me and you could talk about ... Like you could talk ab- I, I tweet, I put things on YouTube about, like, the vaccine, you know, and negative effects of the vaccine. And I'm just like not worried about it. It's just like not, like it's not that hot right now. But last year ...

Joe Rogan 1:01:37 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:01:37 ... you were doing that, you were like, "Man, this might get me flagged. This might get me like kicked off." Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:40 The conversation that you and I had.

Dave Smith 1:01:42 Oh yeah, we got so much like heat for that. It was-

Joe Rogan 1:01:44 So much for me saying young people, I would tell them, "Don't get vaccinated."

Dave Smith 1:01:47 Yeah, like and that, just, just that comment, and then-

Joe Rogan 1:01:50 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:01:50 ... going on to say, "I would tell them to be really healthy and all of this,"-

Joe Rogan 1:01:52 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:01:52 ... that comment, we, it was like trending for a week afterward.

Joe Rogan 1:01:56 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:01:56 The White House is commenting on it, Fauci. But now, this conversation we just had, doubling down on it-

Joe Rogan 1:02:01 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:02:01 ... and defending it, this isn't gonna trend, because it's just we're not in that right now, but right ... But then you see with, with the Russia thing, when that first starts, then all of a sudden if ... That's what's hot now. And this is how they always do this. Like in the moment, they try to really make it ... They try to make you intimidated to say the important thing in the moment. But man, dude, this thing with Russia is just like the craziest thing in the world. Like the idea that we're actually flirting with a nuclear conflict with Russia is the most important priority in the history of humanity is that America and Russia do not go to war. There's nothing more important than that. That's, that's it. We'll destroy h- the, the human species if we do this. And yet there's this war right on Russia's border and there's no effort to negotiate going on. There's a, like no effort. In fact, wh- from th- from very, uh, solid reporting that actually America through Boris Johnson in, in U- told Ukraine not to negotiate with Russia at the very beginning of the war when they had a deal worked out.

Joe Rogan 1:03:02 (exhales)

Dave Smith 1:03:02 They had a, they had a deal worked out, it's been reported in multiple sources, that they had a deal worked out and the deal was basically that Vladimir Putin would pull back, he would pull back his troops and leave Ukraine under the condition that th- the very simple conditions that Ukraine, uh, uh, guaranteed, um, autonomy for the Donbas region and agreed to never join NATO. And like that was the deal. Like okay, I'm not saying everyone thinks that's the perfect deal, but it's better than what we got right now.

Joe Rogan 1:03:27 Better than nuclear war.

Dave Smith 1:03:28 And, and right now just the other day ... Dude, the official narrative on this, this whole war, it's just like it makes no sense. A- and again, like I said, remember, the same people who are pushing this are the ones who were telling you Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and stuff. But the official narrative, Joe, is basically that, um, okay so uh, uh, Vladimir Putin is a, a madman, a crazy war criminal who's hellbent on, um, reforming the Soviet Union and this is a real threat that he could do this, but also he's, he's getting humiliated in this war in Ukraine. It's like he's j- he's losing to the poorest country in Europe and he's just getting humiliated and beat back, but he's still a real threat to take over all of Europe. And he's a complete madman, by the way, Joe. But when he says he's gonna use nuclear weapons, don't listen to that. He'd never actually do that even though he's a complete madman. And as everyone says this, this war, the word they use over and over and over again, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, all of them, unprovoked. Vladimir Putin led an unprovoked war in Ukraine. But then it's just like with Osama bin Laden, what they did with him then. Don't listen to him. Whatever you do, don't listen to what he's actually saying 'cause none of that's his motivations. Like what, his motivations are what we tell you. Osama bin Laden hates us, uh, 'cause we're free. And then like Ron Paul would just go like, "Yeah, but that's not what he's saying at all." Like o- he, h- Osama bin Laden was so clear about why he hated America. I mean he's like, "Look, I hate you because you murder innocent civilians in the Muslim world, you prop up brutal dictators in the Muslim world, you prop up Israel who mistreats the Palestinian people, and you have our, your, uh, your bases in our holy land in the Arabian Peninsula." And then they're like, "No, he hates us 'cause we're free." He didn't mention anything about freedom there. And then if you say that they're like, "Well are you defending Osama bin Laden?" And you're like, "No, I'm just saying listen to your enemies. There's a reason why he hates us." And if you listen to Vladimir Putin and what he's saying, I mean look, he's wrong for invading, uh, Ukraine. And y- I mean you know me, Joe, I'm the most antiwar fuck- fucking person there is and there's no excuse for that. I'm like tens of thousands of people have died. It's horrible. A- and a lot of them are soldiers but a lot of them are civilians. And um, but to say he was unprovoked is like insane. It's just only people who know nothing about the history of this conflict would say there was no provocation.

Joe Rogan 1:05:47 Did you see the conversation that Roger Waters had with that CNN guy?

Dave Smith 1:05:50 Yeah, and Ro- 'cause Roger-

Joe Rogan 1:05:51 Amazing.

Dave Smith 1:05:51 ... Waters was awesome on that.

Joe Rogan 1:05:52 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:05:53 'Cause he knows what he's talking about, dude.

Joe Rogan 1:05:55 Yeah.

Dave Smith 1:05:55 And he's, he's right about all of that shit. He's a ... Look, the, the prom- and this is what he was saying, and he's absolutely right, is that the promise when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and this was, uh, like verbally promised and put in writing, was that NATO would not expand one inch to the east. And NATO at that point, the line then was through Germany, right? Like the J- the, the western half of Germany was in the west and the eastern half was with the Soviet Union. And they were like, "We'll let all of these nations, you know, secede and the Soviet Union will collapse and we're giving up on communism," which is one of the greatest things that ever happened. And the deal was, "Okay, you do that then we won't move NATO, we won't move our military alliance into your area that used to be your realm of influence." And every single president since then has moved NATO east to the point that NATO is now on Russia's border.And in Ukraine, even though they didn't officially join NATO, there was always talk of it. Kamala Harris, very... right before the start of the war, said, "We're looking to put Y- uh, Ukraine into NATO." And the, the, um... you know, they, they put... under George W. Bush, they put in, um... in, uh, Poland these dual-use rocket launchers. There's a big complaint that Vladimir Putin has. That he's like, "These laun- these can be used to get nukes here in a matter of minutes." Like, "This is a th- this is like, a threat to us that we cannot tolerate." And then in 2014, there was a coup in Ukraine that was (laughs) completely led by the West. Th- th- it... I, I don't know if you've ever heard, but like... uh, uh, like, I think I sent you actually once the, uh, the tape of Gideon Rose, who was the editor for Foreign Affairs Magazine, on the old Stephen Colbert Report, uh, show, back when Colbert was hilarious. And he was just openly bragging about what the game is here. And then he was like, "Well, Ukraine is kinda like the Robin to Russia's Batman, and so our job is to steal Robin away from Batman and make him come over here and join us. And aha, Vladimir Putin's so stupid that he won't do anything." And then Colbert's in his old character, so he's like, "Well, shouldn't Obama be spiking the football and saying, 'Yeah, in your face, Putin'" And Gideon Rose is like, "Well, no, no, 'cause then Putin might invade Ukraine (laughs) . So, we wouldn't wanna spike the ball." But they... there, there's these... Oh yeah, here it is.

Joe Rogan 1:08:07 Let's play it, let's play it, let's