EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,010 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- JRJoe Rogan
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- DSDave Smith
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- NANarrator
(instrumental music plays) Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays) Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan Experience. Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan. Edward Smith, good to see you again, sir.
- DSDave Smith
Good to see you too, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you again in these times of trouble-
- DSDave Smith
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and chaos.
- DSDave Smith
W- wild, wild times.
- JRJoe Rogan
Where leftists are lighting Teslas on fire and putting swastikas on them. (laughs)
- DSDave Smith
(laughs) And that's, and that's the calmest they've been in years.
- JRJoe Rogan
(coughs)
- DSDave Smith
This is actually, for them, probably the best.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's so weird how these people are so easy to wind up and get them to do what you want them to do. Just put a narrative out there, "You're a good person if you go do this," and they just go run out and fucking cause chaos.
- DSDave Smith
And it's the most... I mean, look, it's not like as much chaos as, say, like, uh, the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 or something, but the one about the Tes- It's like you're destroying electric cars.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which are mostly owned by liberals.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, like, but th- But I thought you've been telling me for so long that this is gonna save the world. Like, the importance on going green was that we're all gonna die unless we do it. And now you're taking the most successful, uh, electric car company and trying to destroy them?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
Because... For the crime of pointing out that maybe the $7 trillion that our federal government's spending has a wee bit of corruption in it? You know? (laughs) Like, maybe we could cut some of that. It's so... I don't know, it's so... On every level, it's just so surreal. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
It is surreal. It feels fake. It does. It, it genuinely feels like we're living in some sort of a stupid movie. (laughs)
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. Man, it makes you wonder. It makes you wonder how controlled the whole thing is, you know? And I don't know, I don't know, but there is a... Do you remember? I think I sent it to you at the time, um, but there was a... Like, four years ago, there was a Time Magazine piece about the 2020 election. It was, like, a real long article, um, about- It was something... Like, the title was something like, "How the Shadow Government," (laughs) like, "Stole..." I, I... It wasn't exactly that, but it was like, basically went through the real conspiracy of 2020. And they're writing it from the pro-conspiracy point of view, but they're r- r- Forget anything about, like, ballots or any of that stuff, which I don't... You know, even when you interviewed Trump, he didn't really have a good answer for that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
You know? He's like, "It's, it was stolen." And you're like, "Well, how do you know it was stolen?" He's like, "It was stolen." You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
"I have the information."
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. But the... But what we- we do know, like, the real conspiracy in broad daylight, that they just totally, like, tanked the economy, overhaul-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, that's it. The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.
- JRJoe Rogan
Saved.
- DSDave Smith
And they go deep into, like, admitting so much about, like, the censorship on social media, um, the- the support of the riots and the protests. And what's amazing about it is it really is incredible, their ability to turn on and turn off the protest machine. Like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's just money.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, yeah.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Yeah, they sure did.…
- JRJoe Rogan
phenomenal. It's, it's like they created a monster with her. When they, when they fired her from The Daily Wire, they created a monster.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, they sure did.
- JRJoe Rogan
She can't be stopped.
- DSDave Smith
(laughs) Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. There's no stopping Candace Owens at this point.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because she's hitting all the fucking third rails that no one wants to touch.
- DSDave Smith
B-
- JRJoe Rogan
She's got a six-hour presentation on how Bridget Macron is a man.
- DSDave Smith
(laughs) I know.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's fucking six hours plus long. It's-
- DSDave Smith
I like... I don't know, I don't know if she's even kinda right about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think she's right.
- DSDave Smith
But she's got a lot of shit to say on it.
- JRJoe Rogan
B- bro, she would be getting sued right now instead of trying... They're trying to bribe her. Instead of trying to give her money to shut the fuck up-
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... they would sue her.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, no, you're probably right about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know if they are suing her. Are they, have they tried to file anything? They probably have. They probably filed some bullshit lawsuits too.
- DSDave Smith
I'm sure, I'm sure she's dealing with several.
- JRJoe Rogan
But I'm pretty sure she's right. I don't know. I might be wrong.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think she's right. The whole thing stinks. And what stinks way worse than that giant distraction is that the number one opponent for Macron just got sentenced to four years in jail and barred from political life for five years.
- DSDave Smith
And the front-runner, not just the number one opponent-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, the front-runner.
- DSDave Smith
... the one who's winning.
- JRJoe Rogan
Winning.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. Yeah, it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's fucking crazy. It's what they try to do to Trump, plus.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, they were able to take it further.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
And then we'll see if there's the backlash the same way there was when they tried to do that to Trump. And it's just so... It's like the, um, the... There's some propaganda that's, like, almost too... It can't be successful propaganda. Like, saying Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and is in bed with terrorists, that's good propaganda right there.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Yeah. …
- DSDave Smith
it's, it is a ... It's like they lost ... They were trying to play that, like, Donald Trump's, like, down here, and we're the digger-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
And then that didn't work, so they were like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
... "I guess we'll just try to be like him too now."
- JRJoe Rogan
They're like, "Fuck Elon Musk! Yeah!"
- DSDave Smith
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Everybody's excited again. It's interesting. They're, they're adopting podcast language is what it is.
- DSDave Smith
Yes. But it's, um ... I don't think it's gonna be successful for them, because what they're not adopting is the authenticity of it, and it comes off as kinda like, um ... It goes, "Oh, now you're doing this?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
"Like, after all these years of pretending-"... you were all formal and-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
... everything was about decorum.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
And how Donald Trump was an embar- he wasn't presidential enough. And now you're like, "Oh, so you never really believed any of that shit." It's like, it's like them trying to turn on the woke stuff. It's like, it just doesn't... It's too long.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
It, you, you were so married to this for too long.
- JRJoe Rogan
You, you gave up your authenticity for too long.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And n- where n- It's like a Chris Cuomo type deal.
- DSDave Smith
It's, it's, yes. It's like Chris Cuomo.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know what I mean? Like, I, I get-
- DSDave Smith
It's, uh, Elizabeth Warren drinking the beer.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
But, like, not doing it right. You know, putting, like, her whole mouth-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
... over a bottle of beer.
- JRJoe Rogan
I get, I want people to get better, right? So if you were a propagandist and then you're like, "You know what? This is bullshit." But there's examples of those people out there that are legitimate. You know?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then there's al- also people that realize, like, "Oh, well, that job is over. I can't do that anymore. Now I have to be something different. Let me try to be authentic."
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Quiet support for Saudis…
- DSDave Smith
- JRJoe Rogan
Quiet support for Saudis entangles US in Yemen. This is, uh ...
- DSDave Smith
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Here it is. Obama, in an awkward twist, becomes Saudi Arabia's defender. Wow.
- DSDave Smith
And it is, uh ... It is hard to overstate how brutal the Saudis were in this war. I mean, like, you know, it's ... You can think of Gaza, something not, uh, too unsimilar to that. But you're talking like a full blockade around the cou- this was the poorest country in the Middle East before any of this. Full blockade around the country. The Saudis were bombing. They were bombing their agriculture. They were bombing their, like, wheat silos. They were bombing their irrigation ditches. There ... Just like a total war on the civilian population all the way from 2015 into 2021 when it essentially ended in like an Afghanistan style, "I guess we give up." Like, it was just eventually the Saudis ... I think the Houthis ... You know, one of the things that's really interesting that happened this whole time, like you were talking about, the drone wars. So back in 2009, th- first of all, it was secret. The drone program wasn't ... Everyone knew it. There had been good reporting on it, but the way they got the good reporting was like people found the drones in Yemen, you know, and they'd take like little, you know, grainy cellphone pictures and be like, "Look, this is a US drone." So there's clearly ... But actually, the, um, uh, Obama's press secretary, it's not ... Goddammit, not Jay Carney, his first press secretary. Um, hmm, I'm blanking on his name. But he admitted this on NBC News. It was like a really amazing e- But he ad- like, uh, was talking about th- how the drone program ... This is years later, like 2012. He's at NBC News now, and he was talking about how when he used to get questions about the drone program, he wasn't allowed to, he wasn't allowed to even acknowledge that it was real. Th- so he would just sit there ... Yeah, yeah, yeah, Robert Gibbs. I apologize. I should've remembered that.
- JRJoe Rogan
"I was told not to even acknowledge the drone program."
- DSDave Smith
There's video of this.
- JRJoe Rogan
"When I went through the process of becoming press secretary, one of the first things they told me was, 'You're not even to acknowledge the drone program. You're not even to discuss that it exists,' said former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Up with Chris Hayes Sunday."
- DSDave Smith
So now think about ... Okay. By the way, there is video of this. It wasn't, you know ... I don't know if it's in this article or not, but it, it ... I mean, that was essentially the point. But the thing in the video that's so funny is they, they all are laughing about it. Like, they're talking about like what kind of what a funny thing it is, like, "Imagine being in the position where you can't admit that a real thing's real and journalists are asking you questions." And he said, 'cause i- uh, it is kinda funny in a weird way, but that's like you'd think a newsman would, that wouldn't be the number one thing. Oh, here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hold on. Let me, uh ... press on.
- NANarrator
I certainly think there are aspects of that program, uh, (clears throat) that are and will remain, uh, highly sensitive and very secret, but, but let me give you a, an example here, Chris. When I went through the process of becoming press secretary, one of the things, one of the first things they told me was, "You're not even to acknowledge the drone program."
- DSDave Smith
Hmm.
- NANarrator
"You're not even to discuss that it exists."
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- NANarrator
And so I would get a question like that and literally I, I couldn't tell you what major asked because once I figured out it was about the drone program- (laughs)
(laughs)
... I realized I'm not supposed to talk about it.
- DSDave Smith
Wow.
- NANarrator
And, but here's what's inherently crazy about that proposition. You're being asked a question based on reporting of a program that exists.
(laughs)
Right? So you're the official government spokesperson-
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly.
- NANarrator
... acting as if entire program-
- DSDave Smith
... whenever you see anyone over the last, like say, eight years, on MSNBC or CNN, talking about, "A threat to democracy and the free press," and all this, shut the fuck up. You hired that guy. The guy who's sitting there telling you... Like, when it comes to the issu-... Forget whether you're for the war or against the war. It's a secret war. You're not e-... Forget democracy, the people aren't even allowed to have an opinion on this.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're not even... As the White House Press Secretary, you're not even allowed to acknowledge it.
- DSDave Smith
And, and like, why not? Like, I mean, it's just, it's not as if they were like, "Well, if Al-Qaeda knows that we're coming for them, then something is compromised." It's just like, oh yeah, Obama ran as the peace candidate. He collected a Nobel Peace Prize before he had done anything, and he didn't particularly wanna tell people that he had just started this new campaign of just murdering whoever he wanted to for whatever reason he wanted to. And, you know, one of the things that's interesting about the technology of it, and I remember people much smarter than me predicting this at the time, um... I guess I never really appreciated like exactly the, the timetable of all of it. But it went in 2009, which he's talking about 2009, eh, a few years later there. It went from like, oh, the US has this new technology where we can use drones in war, to all of a sudden now, in 2025, you're sitting around and everybody ha-... Like, this is just part of war now, you know? Literally the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
... the, even the Houthis, I mean, they don't have the capabilities we have, but they have drone bombs. And that's part of how they were able to get the Saudis to finally back out is like, they could hit some of their oil fields with their drone bombs, and it was enough of a pain in the ass for the Saudis to be like, "All right," like, call it quits. Yeah. And so, they ended that war in, in '21. But now these Houthis have been in charge of Yemen the whole time since. You know, in the same way that it was like, we fought this whole war to get the Taliban out of Afghanistan. We just lost. Like, they just still run the whole place. And so these guys are still there. They have gone through the, what was the worst humanitarian crisis in the world from 2015 to 2021. Um, they've survived all of that and they're still there. And now they see the same goddamn thing happening in Gaza, then they're the one... Again, I'm not... Like, this is their stated thing. I'm not saying like, they're all great people or something, but they're going like, "No, fuck that. We're standing up for the people in Gaza." And so they were like, "As long as all of you guys are supporting Israel, just slaughtering all these people, then we're gonna start, you know, like trying to shut down these shipping lanes." Which they don't really have the capacity to do, but they can hit some cargo ships and hit some military ships.
- JRJoe Rogan
How does this ever settle? How does this ever relax? Like, when you look at what happened in Gaza, and you think about the tensions that existed before October 7th, and then this happens, and then Go-... Th- then the At-... The Israeli attack happens. Like, how does anything come to a peaceful resolution at this point?
- DSDave Smith
Well, it looks really bad at the moment right now, you know? And like, what I always like to say, which I, you know, is like 50% just me telling myself something to feel better about the situation, but then 50% like, it is kind of, you know... Like, you, look, you could go around the world right now and like, England is right next to, um... I- is right next to Ireland, and everybody's just cool there right now. And that would have seemed like impossible, you know?
- 1:00:00 – 1:12:27
Right. …
- DSDave Smith
like, for me and you, to even understand the world they grew up in. It's very different than the world we grew u-... Like, they grew up in this woke era. And okay, now it's kinda like that's receded and wokeism has been defeated. But they grew up in a time where racialism was accepted by every powerful institution. Just against them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
You know? Like, it was totally fine to demonize straight, white men at your high school, at your college, in your movies, in your TV shows, uh, your politicians, celebrities, everybody. It was just... And that does, like... It unlocks a certain thing that we kinda all had a gentleman's agreement to not unlock. Like, we're just not really gonna do that, you know? We don't wanna be, like, racialists. And so that's... I think that's a component to it too. But there's also no question that it's... You know, it's exploded since Israel's launched this war on Gaza.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
And-
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's exploded on the left, which you never heard anti-Jewish sentiment in public spaces before. You really never saw that on campuses. You know, if Israel did something, you may see a protest, but it was gen-... Generally, it was organic. These don't seem organic. They seem very funded, and they're very disruptive. And you know, some universities experienced vandalism and fires and crazy shit and people being threatened and doxxed. You know, it's, um, it's different.... it's, it's, it's a different level of it than I think we've ever seen before. And it's kind of, it's, it's created a giant divide on the left, right? Because on the left you have a lot of people that are, uh, their whole life they've been in support of Israel. Right? And now all the sudden there's these free Palestine people that are also on the left. So you have this divide on the left.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know?
- DSDave Smith
Right. And, and, and there was... That divide goes back a lo- like, there, there were leftist divides over the Israel-Palestine question going back really to, like, 1967-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DSDave Smith
... um, where most of the, um, the kind of like, uh, the, the Black Power movement people, like the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, those guys, they all sided with the Palestinians 'cause they all saw it as, like, an extension of, like, yeah that's the whole, you know, we're against, um, this kind of, like, racist, colonizing-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
... you know, like, force. Um, and then of course there were a lot of influential Jewish people on the left who were like, "No, not in... In this case we're okay with it." Uh, "But you sh- you guys sure are right about all that civil rights stuff, but, like, eh, I don't know. Let's not look at it... Let's not look over there." Um, a- but so a lot of that has kinda reemerged. Now I do also... You know, I don't know, um, like I've talked to a, I talked to one kid who was, like, a grad student in, at Columbia which was really, like, the center of so many of these protests, and he's Jewish. And I was like, uh, I was like, "So what's it like there?" And he was like, "Ah, they're annoying and they're loud and, like, some of their, their, their chants are, like, real kinda weird. Like I don't really know what they mean by it." And I was like, uh, "Well do you ever feel, like, threatened or..." And he's like, "No. No, it's not. Like, it's fine. They'll just chant as you walk by." And then I do know also that they, um, they had at least one time, they had like a Seder service which... 'Cause they got, like, Jewish people in those protest movements too. Um, and so they o- over last Passover, it was a year ago, they had like a Seder service with the Jews, uh, like, in there too. So I also don't, I don't know, like, what percentage of them are, like, just against the war and seeing pictures of dead babies and stuff like that, what percentage of them are actually, you know, like, harbor resentment toward Jewish people. Like it's, it's kinda hard to, to measure. But I would just say that, like, in... Almost in a very similar way to, like, what I was talking about with the, the drone war against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. It just made them stronger.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
You know, it's like, hey, if you wanna see less Al-Qaeda, maybe stop having the American military kill innocent civilians in their land, because that seems to be fueling them, and at the same time for the people who are so concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism, you're like, okay, well it has exploded since Israel's been doing this to Gaza, right? So, like, maybe the US shouldn't be funding and arming the whole goddamn conflict 'cause that does seem to, like, at least give those people a giant talking point to latch onto. Maybe we shouldn't have a system where, like, our political class is not allowed to criticize a foreign government. The, and, and, and a foreign government that's gotten us into, like, seven wars, or at least played a large role in getting us into those wars explicitly. I'm not, like, alleging some secret conspiracy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. That's...
- DSDave Smith
I'm saying like Benjamin Netanyahu is John McCain.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
Like he's ver- he's, he's been telling us Iran has a nuke... He's been telling us they're five years away from a nuke since I was seven. Literally he's been saying Iran is five years away from a nuke the entire time. And he, he came over here, he testified before Congress in 2002 that we... As a regional expert, that if we were to overthrow Saddam Hussein, democracy would sweep the region and there'd be all these positive reverberations. And then he goes, "And you also gotta overthrow the regime in Iran, and you also gotta overthrow Muammar Gaddafi," and, like, every single one of these things, uh, we... Not Iran yet, still pushing for that, but we went and overthrew Saddam Hussein, we went and overthrew Muammar Gaddafi, and I don't know what swept the region, but it wasn't democracy.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, I remember w- in the early 2000s when I realized there's two fighting factions of Islam. I was like, "What?"
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that Saddam Hussein had actually kept that from boiling over-
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... because he was in control.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. No, it's... I remember learning it too right around the same time. You're like-
- JRJoe Rogan
I was like wait a minute.
- DSDave Smith
... "You're telling me there are Shahs and Shins over there?"
- JRJoe Rogan
"They fight against each other? Like what do they..." Do you know the difference between Sunni and Shiite?
- DSDave Smith
Uh, I mean, I know that they're different sects of Islam but, like, in terms of, like, the religion itself I...
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it like the Catholics versus the Protestants?
Episode duration: 2:51:52
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