EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,133 words- 0:00 – 4:17
Public life, broken media narratives, and the “just a comedian” smear
- NANarrator
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) How what is it to be Dave Smith? (laughs)
- DSDave Smith
(laughs) It's a little bit weird.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
It's weirder to be Joe Rogan.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) You think?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, it's gotta be.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's weird. It's weird to be any person in the public eye. But, uh, in this time, it's particularly weird. If you're, like, one of the only people, I mean, the media is so bizarrely compromised. It's so weird when you watch these narratives spin, both on the left and on the right. And, like, is anybody fucking rational? Is anybody looking at th- and there's so few that a comedian, like yourself, just rises to the top of the heap.
- DSDave Smith
(laughs) Well, it's funny, dude, because ... So, like, uh, since the last time, uh, I was on, th- this has been kind of, like, the knock on me in a way now.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that a comedian?
- DSDave Smith
That was, "You're just a comedian."
- JRJoe Rogan
You're my-
- DSDave Smith
This guy's not an expert."
- JRJoe Rogan
... emotional support comedian.
- DSDave Smith
That's right. (laughs) Yes, that's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you ever been-
- DSDave Smith
(laughs) It feels weird.
- JRJoe Rogan
... an emotional support comedian?
- DSDave Smith
It feels weird doing this without Doug, to be honest.
- JRJoe Rogan
Aw.
- DSDave Smith
It seems kinda wrong. But th- that's been, like, the ... Essentially, that's, like, the knock is, like, "Yeah, but you're, you're acting like you're an expert, but you're just some comedian." And it's like, no, that's the point. That's always been the point. Like, yes, I'm just a comedian. I'm not an expert. And, and still, being not an expert, hand me your favorite war hawk and I will tear them to shreds, 'cause it's actually not that hard. And, like, these people aren't really experts either.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, al- also the problem with that is these people that are talking about these things are talking about people not being experts while they're not experts.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's, you know ... What, does Doug have a degree in English?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, okay. His ... Sam Harris is a neuroscientist.
- DSDave Smith
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, there's all these different people who have, you know, expertise in one area that is pretty much outside geopolitical, you know, world politics and international relations and chaos and war and the military-industrial complex. And, like, these are very, very complex, sophisticated, nuanced discussions that you have to have when you're talking about these things, 'cause there's so many different factors at play. There's so much money. There's so much bullshit in terms of, like, what's the truth, what's the narrative, who's pushing the narrative, who's being paid to push the narrative, which is really weird. There's so many of these fucking online influencers that I don't even think are really human beings that have, like, prominent accounts.
- DSDave Smith
Yep. Yep. But then there's also ... It's, it's a convenient kind of way to dismiss somebody-
- 4:17 – 7:18
What expertise really means: martial arts analogies and policy complexity
- JRJoe Rogan
Bro, you can only ask me a few things in life that I can give you, like, definitive answers on.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And even then, I w- I might have to refer to expert. Like, if you wanna ask me about judo, which I've been d- doing jujitsu for f- since '90 ... I think I started in '97, somewhere around then, '96 maybe. I don't know shit about judo.
- DSDave Smith
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I know how to do a few hip tosses, but when someone is doing something, I, I don't even know what it's called. If I go hara goshi-
- DSDave Smith
Right. Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... I might get it wrong 'cause hara goshi might be legs on the outside versus leg on the inside. Wrestling, I gotta defer to DC, you know?
- DSDave Smith
Right. Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
So even in martial arts, I'm not totally an expert.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. And then there might be somebody who is, like, totally an expert, like, uh, like say, uh, you know, a, a wrestler who went to the Olympics.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
And with, like, a total expert, or a coach or something like that, total expert in wrestling, and they could still get something about MMA completely off-
- JRJoe Rogan
Or jujitsu.
- DSDave Smith
... right, because it's like-
- JRJoe Rogan
It happened in the last fight, in the last UFC card. D- Daniel Cormier didn't know about the dead orchard, so he thought this person was fine 'cause they had two arms-
- DSDave Smith
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in while they're caught in a triangle. I go, "No, this is a real submission. This is fucking dangerous."
- DSDave Smith
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, there's this guy, Nathan Orchard, who figured out how to do a triangle with two arms in, and it's replicable. A lot of guys do it now. And I think it was a lady at the last UFC had it. And I was like, "Oh, shit." And Daniel didn't know it yet. There's a couple other things, like the buggy choke. If you don't know about jujitsu and you see a guy who's on his back and he's getting smothered, but all of a sudden he reaches under with his leg and I'm going, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" and you don't know what's going on, like, that's a fucking choke, like a-
- DSDave Smith
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... really dangerous one. Tie ruotolo gets you in that, you're Fucksville.You know, there's guys... So it's like, there's l- areas of expertise, even in areas that I'm an expert in, that I have to call on other people. Like, this is a stupid argument. Like, what are the facts? Does that submission work? Is that genocide?
- DSDave Smith
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, what, what is... You know, what's going on?
- DSDave Smith
(laughs) Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, were you funding Hamas? Is, is Hezbollah a proxy of Iran? Did Iran get our, the money to do this when Biden released the funds? Because th- what, what... What, who's, who's allowed to be an expert on all these things?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. And then, of course, there are... Then there are things like, say, um, say like, uh, "Do you s- do you support lockdowns?" And like, in order to have, say, an expert opinion on this policy, it's like, okay, well... You'd be like... They'd say, "We're following the science." You know, so in other words, they have an epidemiologist or something like that who's arguing lockdowns will, will cut down on the transmission of the virus. Forget they turned out to be wrong but, leaving that aside, you're like, okay, but are they also an economist? Are they also a, a specialist-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sociologist.
- DSDave Smith
... a sociologist, a specialist in childhood development-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
... who would tell you what closing the schools... Oh, who's the person who has expertise in every single one of those fields? Doesn't exist. There isn't an expert in all of those fields. You know what I mean?
- 7:18 – 9:17
COVID-era fear, compliance, and the role of media-driven panic
- JRJoe Rogan
But that was the problem with that time because that time everyone was so fearful, and the news was pushing fear, and it was clearly a narrative. I forget who it was, but some, some health official was being interviewed recently, and he said that during 2020, that Anthony, uh, Fauci said to him, "The problem is Americans aren't scared enough," which is crazy to say.
- DSDave Smith
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a wild thing to say, that your goal is to make people more fearful, so you're trying to put out a narrative that makes people more fearful, which, by the way, fucks with your immune system in a gigantic way. Not good at all-
- DSDave Smith
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to be scared. I don't know how any people got really, really, really sick from COVID because when they got it, they freaked the fuck out and they couldn't sleep and they thought they were gonna die and they were riddled with anxiety, and that makes you attack people around you, and then you look for a solution. And when these trusted institutions, which up until five fucking years ago, I was a... 100% on board with, with everything, with vaccines, with every medical innovation other than psychiatric medications which I think are pretty much over-prescribed, I... All the sudden, y- everyone's like hoping these people have the answers. So, anybody who's going, "But, but there's this guy, Jay Bhattacharya, you know, he's also an expert." No, no, fuck you.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Fuck you. It's like an anti-science, trust the science, COVID-denier, vaccine-denier... It just became this fearful res- because everybody just responded to the fucking media, because everybody's too tuned in to all of this negative shit, man, all day long.
- DSDave Smith
Well, you have to scare people. You know, if you wanna, if you wanna implement like a tyrannical policy, you almost-
- JRJoe Rogan
You have to scare people.
- DSDave Smith
... always have to scare people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Always.
- DSDave Smith
I mean, that's... Now-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's the only way, if it-
- DSDave Smith
Now... Yeah. Now, everyone knows, right, like you just said, like, being, uh, terrified is not good for your health. Th- on a human level, we also all know that it's not good for good decision-making. You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. No.
- DSDave Smith
But it is excellent for, "I will turn my brain off and give the authority to you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- 9:17 – 14:15
9/11, unity, and how crises get leveraged into surveillance and war
- DSDave Smith
... to go do..." I mean, look, it was, uh, um, right after 9/11, if you... You know, people forget about this but like, the level to which Dick Cheney and George W. Bush used to fearmonger. Uh, Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States of America, who was a bit more than just your average vice president, he said, "It's not a matter of if, but when, there will be another 9/11 attack." They built the... They were trying to tell the American people, right after 9/11, to be in a constant state of fear, w-
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you remember the COVID warnings, where they had colors? Or-
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... excuse me, the war-
- DSDave Smith
The, the t- the, uh...
- JRJoe Rogan
... the terror warning, where they had colors?
- DSDave Smith
The s- the threat level or whatever.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, colors.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, one day, they'd be like, "It's up to yellow."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
And then... And, and I mean, we were really still traumatized from 9/11.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
But the thing about it is, is that they knew what they wanted to do.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
They knew the, the policy they wanted to start embarking on. And it was the mix of, "They hate u-" the big lie, which was, "They hate us for our freedom," which was like really the big lie after 9/11, was like... 'Cause, 'cause the American people very organically wanted to know what the beef was. Like, 9/11 happened, you know, everybody was like, "Yo, why do they hate us?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
"What's this beef about?" And their answer was, "They hate you for your freedom. And by the way, this is gonna happen again. So, be terrified. Second off, understand that they're so irrational that their beef with you is that, like, your grandma can go to the grocery store." So, what do you do with that other than say what the American people said, which is, "George W. Bush, you have a blank check to go attack whoever you want to, and we'll support you."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I remember feeling that way. I remember feeling that way. Right? I remember feeling, "It's up to these fucking guys, these hard-nosed generals and military leaders that are... These are the guys that are gonna protect us now. We gotta put all our faith in them. This shit is real and it's going on." But I had no idea. This is... So, 2001, I wasn't that much of a conspiracy theorist. I was into UFOs. I was into Bigfoot. I was into stupid shit.
- DSDave Smith
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, I was into fun, stupid shit.
- DSDave Smith
Right, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, you know, me and Eddie Bravo would get high and watch space documentaries and freak out about aliens. You know, the... Stupid shit. But then the Patriot Act came along and I was like, "Okay, what the fuck is this?" Like, what does, what does indefinite detention mean? When they signed the NDAA, like what... Wait a minute, what are you talking about? What is the, the MUNT?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What, it rhymes with cunt? That, the act that Obama passed in 2015 that allowed them to use censorship... or excuse me, propaganda on American citizens?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
SMICMUNT, is that what it was?
- DSDave Smith
Uh-huh, something like that, yep. Something like-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's like, okay, what... At what point in time do I start getting really fucking suspicious?
- DSDave Smith
Yep, yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, I, I had read one book a long time ago that really fucked me up, this book called Best Evidence, about the Kennedy assassination, and unfortunately, I read it right before I went on stage. I was just-I was by myself. I was in Philadelphia, and I was headlining, and this was like when I was just starting to headline, right? And so, uh, had a show Thursday, killed, everything's great, went back to my hotel room-
- 14:15 – 19:45
Personal 9/11 memories and the immediate human aftermath in NYC
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, like you need that sometimes just as like a course reset. And I felt like as a country, we had been doing shady shit all around the world forever, and there's real war happening everywhere but we're super lucky 'cause we're separated by oceans and not t- too much has really happened here. Oh my God, this is real. And everybody had an American flag on their fucking car. And when I was in New York City afterwards, we were filming Fear Factor one day, and everyone was so cool. And firemen were rockstars.
- DSDave Smith
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Cops were rockstars. Everybody was thanking them, everybody was thanking them for their service. It was cra- We hung out with these firemen in front of this bar, me and the- the Fear Factor crew. These guys were fucking... It's like I was hanging out with Brad Pitt. It was nuts. Everybody was so thankful. Where'd that go?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, I was there. Uh, I was in New York City, uh, on 9/11, and um, I remember... So I was in- in Brooklyn, like only a few miles from the World Trade Center, and like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you physically see it?
- DSDave Smith
No. I saw... So, I remember seeing, you know, I think... So I, when I got out of school, I was in high school, I was a senior in high school, and we- we got out. One of the girls like forged a note, uh, and said it was from our parents or something like that. I forget exactly how it went, but we got out. And it was like I was friends with the security guard. I used to buy weed from him.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
It was a different time. Uh, but yeah, it was a different time. Pre-9/11 we were just all hanging out, buying weed from security guards at schools.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
Um, but so he let us out. So I remember we c- I'm pretty sure when we came to Flatbush Ave we saw like, it was, there was smoke in the air. But both the towers had- had fallen by the time we got out.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DSDave Smith
But there were people. So the subways had been out for a while, and where I was, I was like on Flatbush Avenue, if- if anyone knows Brooklyn, it's like Flatbush and 7th Avenue. So this is like, it's kind of a straight shoot down to the Manhattan Bridge and then the Brooklyn Bridge is- is down there too. But the Brooklyn Bridge you can walk over. And so at this point already, people who were down in the financial district had just decided to walk back to Brooklyn 'cause they realized they weren't gonna get a cab or get on the subway. And so you'd see just like one guy in a suit and tie covered in soot, head to toe, like walking up-
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus.
- DSDave Smith
... like, "Oh, he must have just been down there and- and walked up." And, but I remember, now this was in Brooklyn, but even there it was very busy. But, uh, people were stopping and asking each other. People who you would pass on the street but never talk to, were stopping and asking everyone, "How's your family? Everyone okay?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
"All right? Are you fine?" Like there was this like community spirit that you just didn't, you don't typically get in New York City, 'cause there's just too many people, you can't talk to everybody.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
Um, but that- that part of it was kind of beautiful. And then of course governments do what they do and immediately manipulated that into launching wars that they wanted from before 9/11-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
... that had absolutely nothing to do with- with 9/11.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
Um, which is, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Also the Patriot Act was a bunch of shit they had tried to pass-
- DSDave Smith
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... a- a- a- for a while, for years. And everyone's like, "What are you fucking crazy?" No.
- DSDave Smith
Well this is the thing, and I guess maybe it's partly like my age, because I was 18 at the time and this is like my coming of age, you know, time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
But I will never stop being furious about all of that shit. And this is like still to this day I'm sure you- you see it when I'm on podcasts with you and uh, doing debates and stuff. But I'm so angry over the war in Iraq and- and the subsequent wars in, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
... Libya and Syria and Somalia and Yemen and all of 'em. But specifically because, like all these guys, the neoconservatives, the- the N-word that I'm not supposed to bring up, even though by the way, Douglas Murray wrote a book called Neoconservatism: Why We Need It. But when I say the word neoconservative, um, be careful what you're watering here or something like that.
- 19:45 – 23:16
Neoconservatism, PNAC, and ‘another Pearl Harbor’ as a catalyst mindset
- DSDave Smith
Well, I mean, I'd say the answer is that those guys got into power. They really hijacked American foreign policy after 9/11 'cause they happened to all be in power in the Bush administration, and then 9/11 happened on their watch. And, but if you go back and read the shit they read, and I will never stop talking about this 'cause it's just-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
... too goddamn crazy. But if you read all of these guys, the guys who were in the George W. Bush administration, I mean like, the signators on the Project for a New American Century, which was their think tank, the PNAC as it's called, were like, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and, and, uh, Fife and Richard Perle and David Wormser and li- the whole group who took over the government were all... And they wrote explicitly in the Project for a New American Century that they were like, "Look. Okay, the Soviet Union is collapsed. We are, for the first time in human history, like the lone superpower in the world, so what we should do right now is fight multiple wars. Because no one threatens us, and so therefore we should fight multiple wars to... Right now we have an opportunity to remake the world, overthrow the old Soviet sock puppet states, install our own states there, and guarantee, as the name says, the new American century of dominance, the 21st century."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DSDave Smith
And they specifically said they wanna overthrow Saddam Hussein.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
And then they specifically said in... And now this is something that the 9/11 truthers really held onto. I'm not sure, I think they might be overplaying their hand a little bit here, but they say, there's one document in the Project for a New American Century, you can find it online, where they straight up say, they go, "Now look, this is what we wanna do, but we're unlikely to get mass American support for it short of another Pearl Harbor-type event." And so a lot of people, like Alex Jones and a lot of the 9/11 truthers would point to this phrase and go, "See, this is the proof that they knew they needed another Pearl Harbor, so they planned their own Pearl Harbor." Now, that is not necessarily true. It doesn't necessarily prove that, but it certainly does change the way you think about their mind state when they sit there watching the towers get attacked and they all, at the very least, they all went, "We got it."
- JRJoe Rogan
You know Alex Jones predicted 9/11 in July?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
He pr-
- DSDave Smith
But that's not quite as a, that's not quite as unique as I think some people think it is.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- DSDave Smith
Well like, people, so like-
- JRJoe Rogan
You ever hear how he said it?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, I've heard, I've heard the clip. It was pretty good. I mean, I'm, I'm not like taking anything away from that. He was right, but there were a bunch of people who predicted it. Ron Paul, uh, himself predicted it perfectly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did he predict planes into the towers?
- DSDave Smith
Let's just say, no I don't know about that. That is pretty impress- but at the same time, you know, the-
- JRJoe Rogan
But n- but planes had never flown into towers before.
- DSDave Smith
That's true, but the World Trade Center was attacked by Al-Qaeda guys in '93.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, in '96. It's in a Biggie song.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Adrienne Apaluchi has the funniest joke about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Was it '93? I think it was '93.
- DSDave Smith
I believe so. Do you ever hear Adrienne's joke about that?
- JRJoe Rogan
No. No.
- DSDave Smith
Does she get... Ah, I don't wanna butcher it on your show, but Adrienne Apaluchi is a hilarious comedian.
- JRJoe Rogan
She's so funny.
- DSDave Smith
But she had a joke about how, you know, in that song, uh, where Biggie goes, "Time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
But they bleep World Trade now, and then her bit is how they didn't bleep it. Like he was talking about the first one...
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 23:16 – 29:59
Culture, intelligence agencies, and the dark incentives behind crime narratives
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's weird when you hear about... So, I don't know if I fully buy into any of this, but, as a caveat before I get rolling. But, uh, when people discuss the intelligence agencies and their role in hip hop, especially gangster rap. Like I remember the very first time I listened to NWA and uh, I think I told Ice Cube when he was here. I was on a fucking StairMaster (laughs) in Revere, Massachusetts and I was listening to Fuck Tha Police.
- DSDave Smith
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
It was like, "Fuck Tha Police, coming straight from the underground." I was like, "What is this? This is cr-" It was a cassette Walkman, or maybe it was a CD but it was probably a cassette Walkman. And I was like doing, getting my cardio in.
- DSDave Smith
They were better for working out. They didn't skip.
- JRJoe Rogan
The, those, they got good with the CD after a while.
- DSDave Smith
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
It didn't skip. But you had to set it on, you had to set it on the treadmill to hit that like shock mode thing.
- DSDave Smith
And you had to hit that like shock mode thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, right, right, right, right.
- DSDave Smith
And then that would eat your battery so quickly though.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
Like you'd get three songs in and be like, "All right." You have to go to the gym with like spare batteries in your-
- JRJoe Rogan
Still to me it was so insane that I could carry music with me to the gym. Like that's incredible.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because you'd go to the gym and it'd be like the worst Poison song playing, no disrespect to Poison, or something like, "God, I can't get into this. I'm trying to get pumped here, man. This is fucking-"
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... bullshit music." Like someone's in charge of the, you know, the, the station that they pick on the radio.
- DSDave Smith
Dude, I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Just to be able to carry it, but at that moment of hearing that music...I was like, "This is the cr- this is celebrating crime and murder? Like, this is nuts." And murdering prostitutes, and like, wh- this is crazy that this is, like, a major record label put this out. And I was only 21, and I was, you know, I was just sitting there going, "I can't even believe this is real." And then I got really into it, like I was really into Ice Cube, really into Ice-T. I'd listen to that when I was delivering newspapers. It was like gangster rap was, like, a completely different thing. So then cut to when people start digging into it, like intelligence agencies have had... There's a weird book on intelligence agencies and their role in rock and roll music in the 1960s. The movie about, uh, well, the book about Laurel Canyon, what is it? Strange things...
- NANarrator
Something like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's very interesting. I don't know if I buy it. Eddie Bravo's all in on it.
- DSDave Smith
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know if I buy it, but there's a lot of, like, weird connections to the intelligence community and music, particularly hip hop, and particularly gangster rap. And if you wanna get really dark you would say, if you wanted to fill your private prisons up, what better way than to have very popular music encouraging prisons, or excuse me, encouraging crime, encouraging out- outright celebrating crime and violence. That way you fill your prisons up and you also keep people scared so you can give them more laws and more rules and crack down and make them easier to placate, easier to get them to fall in line and do what you need them to do.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah, and s- and support massive, uh, police buildups-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DSDave Smith
... and massive, you know, like, militarization of the police and all this stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
And I don't know, you know, I've, I've heard a little bit about that. I really don't know. I know Ice Cube has talked about it before, like talked about-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DSDave Smith
... how, like, there is undeniably this influence. It does, there are some things about it that seem crazy, but I do know that, and I don't even think this is a controversial thing to say, I think this is just, like, fact at this point, that it was the Reagan administration who did traffic in cocaine to the United States of America while they were ramping up the war on drugs. So, like, they're bringing in-
- 29:59 – 38:24
Watergate, Bob Woodward, and the ‘system works’ mythology
- JRJoe Rogan
And the whole thing was set up by the government.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what's really crazy is intelligence agencies set up Watergate, they, they operated it. Bob Woodward was an intelligence agent before he was ever a reporter. That was his first gig. Tucker Carlson told me that-
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... it blew my fucking mind. He's like, "What rookie reporter for their first gig, their first story, gets you're gonna take down the most popular president in US history?"
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. That's-
- JRJoe Rogan
He had won by the biggest margin.
- DSDave Smith
In 49 states.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
He's ju- a dominant reele- the American people had spoken, they supported this guy and then, right, Bob Woodward, some 20-something-year-old reporter, he gets the biggest story in American history-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
He happened to just come out of Naval intelligence-
- JRJoe Rogan
Did I-
- DSDave Smith
... in a weird coincidence. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Did I tell you what Bill Murray told me?
- DSDave Smith
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
So Bill Murray was on the podcast and he was talking about B- Bob Woodward's m- movie.
- DSDave Smith
Yes, I-
- JRJoe Rogan
The book he wrote, w- what, it, was it, uh, what was it called?
- DSDave Smith
Well, he's written a lot at this point.
- JRJoe Rogan
But, but the one about Belushi. What was it called? It was all-
- DSDave Smith
I don't... I've never read that.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was, uh, Wired.
- DSDave Smith
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wired. Okay. It was just about Belushi being fucking crazy drug addict. He goes, "That's not my friend." He goes, "That's not how he was." He goes like, "That was kind of an act. He was a little bit of a lightweight. Like, if he had like two, three drinks, he was drunk." Like, he goes, "I think he did that speed ball, I think that's the first time he ever did it and died. It's not that he'd never done drugs before, but he wasn't this guy. So this was all fiction." So he read the first five pages of this, "Oh my God, they framed Nixon."
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Isn't that crazy?
- DSDave Smith
That's interesting. I know-
- JRJoe Rogan
He goes like, "This guy wrote about my friend in such a distorted, untruthful way. Now I have to think about what he discovered with Nixon."
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- 38:24 – 47:27
Nixon’s legacy: drugs, the gold standard, and the empire-finance link
- JRJoe Rogan
But, like, look how... That presidency was a disaster 'cause they were all working against him, for sure. And on top of that, it's, like, hard to... Like, you kinda, gotta be a bit of a hard ass if you wanna run the world. But the way Nixon did it, we're still suffering through that today. That motherfucker, he, he's partially responsible for that sweeping Schedule 1 Act of 1970. When they did that and they made everything illegal, everything Schedule 1, including things that are 100% medicinal, like marijuana, all that fucked up society and they did it specifically to target the antiwar movement and to target the Civil Rights Movement, specifically. So, it's not like Nixon was the best. He, he-
- DSDave Smith
Oh, no. Oh, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
What he did was fucking horrible.
- DSDave Smith
D- Nixon had a lot of policy failures. And, and I would put the number one... And I completely agree with you. I mean, launching the war on drugs was a disaster, but taking us off the gold standard was one of the worst policy decisions-
- JRJoe Rogan
Terrible.
- DSDave Smith
... in the history of the United States of America.
- JRJoe Rogan
Terrible.
- DSDave Smith
I... That is... We're, we're... So many of the problems we face now is because of that. And people could say... Like, I've heard Pat Buchanan defend, uh, Nixon on this before. Pat Buchanan was in the Nixon Administration. He was a speechwriter for him. Um, and he was like, "Well, look what we were gonna do at that point." And so he was basically saying... 'Cause what happened was, essentially... So you had, like, the, um, the Bretton Woods agreement, which started, uh, started after World War II. Or actually, I'm sorry, it started at the very end of World War II. It was in 1944 where they had the Bretton Woods agreement where they could kind of see where World War II was going. And it was basically like, "Okay, well, the... All of Europe is destroyed and a lot of Asia is destroyed." Or not yet, I guess, this is '44, but it was getting there. And the... And America had, you know, at least on the homeland, hadn't really been touched. And we had, like, wild amount of the world's gold. And so the deal was essentially that, like, we will peg the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce. Everyone else can peg their currency to the dollar, and then the dollars are, uh, refundable. You know, you can get, uh, an ounce for $35. And so that, you know, was... Whatever. There w- there were problems with the Bretton Woods agreement, but that was what stood from after World War II into... So, from 1944 to 1973 or 1971 when he took us off the gold standard. And so essentially what happened was through the '60s, we started cheating, and it became very obvious to the world that we were... Like, you know, the 1960s, you're like... You have the Great Society, so we created Medicare and, and Medicaid. And, um, they... We went to the moon and we were fighting the war in Vietnam, and we were just printing money for all of this, which is, you know, what we still do to this day. But, so essentially the Europeans started looking at us and they were like, "I don't think you got enough gold to cover all these dollars that you're printing around."
- JRJoe Rogan
Wasn't that thing where they were gonna, like, do an audit of Fort Knox that-
- DSDave Smith
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
... we never heard about?
- DSDave Smith
Well, what I know is that... I'm pretty sure it was the French. Might have been the British too, but it was definitely the French. And the French, uh, basically called our bluff. And they just went, "Uh, okay. We'll take gold. You know, we got all these dollars. We'll take gold. We get an ounce for every 35, uh, dollars that we have, and we have quite a lot." And that's when Nixon went, "No." (laughs) Like, no. He just basically defaulted in front of the entire world, and he said he's temporarily suspending the convertibility of dollars into gold. And they framed it as like, you know, the, the French are attacking the stability of the dollar. Really, all they were doing was calling us on our agreement.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
We were... We owed it to 'em. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
We're like, "We got so much gold, bro."
- DSDave Smith
So, Pat Buchanan says, defending his boy, Richard Nixon, he goes, "Well, what were we gonna do at that point? Let 'em clean us out of all of our gold and just not be the dominant power?" But I think the retort to that is, "Yeah." Like, that's what you should have done, because the decision to go off of the gold standard essentially just said, "Well, now there's no more even pretend limits on government." You know, this is why Ron Paul, who... Happy birthday to the greatest living American hero.
- JRJoe Rogan
How old is he now?
- DSDave Smith
Just turned, just turned 90. Um, and, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DSDave Smith
... I was just at his, uh, birthday party a few weeks ago. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
Damn, you-
- DSDave Smith
He was-
- JRJoe Rogan
Look at you partying with Ron Paul.
- DSDave Smith
Party... Dude, that dude throws it down. No, I'm just kidding. (laughs) It was, it was very nice though to see him. Tulsi Gabbard was there, which was cool. Um, but, so, so essentially, right? That was the last restraint on government, is that at least... Even then, even under Bretton Woods when we're cheating, at least there's some feeling of like, "Well, don't cheat too bad."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DSDave Smith
'Cause they could maybe try to, you know, like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Count the gold.
- DSDave Smith
Right, exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
But after that, it was off to the races. And this is why, this is why, why Ron Paul ran for Congress, was when Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard. And then he was like, "This is gonna lead to big government, this is gonna be the era of big government." So he was gonna run to try to stop that. And, um, he was completely right. You know? This is w- what has really destroyed everything, is that there's just no ... And it's a big part of the reason why I'm so angry about all these wars too, 'cause it's all related. Um, you know, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. Or the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law by Woodrow Wilson in 1913. And then in 1914, I think is when it actually got up and running. And in 1914 is when the income tax was passed, also signed into law by Woodrow Wilson. And three years later is World War I. You know? Like three years la- or American entry into World War I. So it's like this is the, the banking system and the tax system are very like interrelated with the warfare state. Like you need this stuff in order to fight wars. And you know, even just over the, whatever it's, over the last 25 years, we've spent close to $10 trillion on wars. You know? And they don't, they, they didn't tax the American people for that, 'cause they know they couldn't tax us enough to pay. (laughs) We would put an end to it. If they tried to raise everybody's taxes enough to come up with $10 trillion 'cause we wanna go fight regime change wars all over the Middle East, the American people would've been like, "No, we're not doing that." But they didn't do that. They kept taxes where they were. I think they even cut some rates during those years, top rates. Um, and then they borrowed the rest, and that's, they still couldn't borrow enough, so they just print the money. And then essentially what happens is that the price of everything just goes up and up and up. And the, the, you just put more money into the system and then people start looking around and going like, "Geez, why is the price of housing and healthcare and energy and childcare-"
- 47:27 – 1:10:00
DC spending, government ‘scams,’ and Ukraine: deals killed, poison pills, and incentives
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm. And we have an economy that's built around doing the exact same thing it's always done. Right?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And if you think about the amount of money, just, just w- like just in shuttering USAID, how ... Like think about the amount of money, whether you agree with USAID or not, the amount of money that was being pumped through that system, like to all sorts of weird places.
- DSDave Smith
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right? There's the, when the Department of Energy gave out 39 or n- $93 billion in loans in the months between Biden losing or Kamala losing rather-
- DSDave Smith
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and Trump taking office. Like where's that ... There's so many of these instances of m- uh, insane amounts of money just being allocated while we're $39 trillion in debt. It's like it, it's so unmanageable and yet it just keeps marching on and people are upset if you try to pull a Band-Aid off. Like the idea of shuttering some of these government organizations, all you hear about is people are gonna die, people are gonna starve, this is gonna happen, that's gonna happen. Like are you fucking sure?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Are you sure that this isn't a giant money sucking scam that's been going on that does some good?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. Well there's a hu-
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause that's most of it, right?
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. Well like, uh, number w- yeah, if you, if you go, hey, I think ... Which by the way, no one in Congress, I mean short of like Thomas Massie maybe, maybe Rand Paul, but like no one else in Congress is even like suggesting an idea so, so radical. But if I were to throw out the radical idea that we should go back to pre-pandemic level spending, so go all the way back to the crazy year of 2019 when it was anarchy or whatever-That was just, they'll all tell you the world's gonna end if we do that.
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- DSDave Smith
And even when they're making up these absolutely ridiculous, you know, claims about how many people are gonna die if you cut government spending, which is all just totally absurd. Um, but then they never seem to go like, "Well, how many people are gonna die if I keep letting DC have all these war-making powers?"
- NANarrator
Right. Right.
- DSDave Smith
How many, how many people are gonna die if the president is able to fund a proxy war whenever he wants to? And I mean, look at this shit, dude. I took, I took so much, uh, you know, whatever. I'm not... But I, I took a lot of heat for the stuff I said on, on the show here a few years ago about the war in Ukraine. And look at it now, dude. Look at even... And I don't think they're about to end the thing. I think they're, which we could talk about, but I think they're putting poison pills in these negotiations already. That's what it looks like to me. But literally, the deal that I was talking to you about, whatever it was, three years ago, when I was saying on the show that they had a deal worked out, a peace deal worked out in the first few months of the war in '22, and Boris Johnson went and killed the peace deal on behalf of the West to make sure this war kept going.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
But the deal that was, that was in pencil, not pen, that, that Boris Johnson killed, was essentially, um, recognition of, uh, the annexation of Crimea. Uh, it was, at the time, it wasn't a annexation of the Donbas region. It was like independence for the Donbas region. And then the agreement that the rest of Ukraine would not join NATO. That was the deal that they had worked out. And look at where we are now. Now the deal that they're even talking about, even as Donald Trump goes, "There's gonna be some land swaps and all this." Okay, well, what's he talk... The deal right now that is the best case scenario that, that we're hoping we could get is that Vladimir Putin obviously keeps Crimea, keeps the entire Donbas region, gets a corridor from the south into Crimea, and the rest of Ukraine doesn't join NATO. So we have the same deal, just a little bit more in the Russians' favor, three years later with hundreds of thousands of people having died in that process.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
Just to get back to not as good a deal as they had in '22.
- NANarrator
Oh.
- DSDave Smith
And so, you know...
- NANarrator
And if they don't sign that.
- DSDave Smith
It'll keep going, which I think it's probably going to. Um-
- NANarrator
They, they're enlisting people as old as 60 now.
- DSDave Smith
Yeah. And they have been for a, like, a full year at least.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
They're throwing people up there. And the thing that's really changed, the reason why the, like, the Europeans and Zelenskyy and, and... They're at least pretending to come to the negotiation table right now, um, which they don't say, but this is, this is the truth, is that support for the war amongst Ukrainians has collapsed. I mean, not like gone down by a few points. It's collapsed. There was just a, a piece in this the other day, it was, uh, Gallup, I believe. They sa- they had a, a, their latest poll, super majorities of the Ukrainian people, 70% around, want an immediate end to the, uh, war with negotiations on land swap, like with...
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- DSDave Smith
Like, "Let's settle it however we gotta settle it." They don't... I remember for the first two years of the thing, everybody who I argued with about the war in Ukraine, their talking point would always be, "The Ukrainian people wanna fight. And who are you, Dave, to tell them that they don't have a right to defend themselves?" And then I would respond by saying like, "Yes, it's true the Ukrainian people wanna fight, but like, might that have something to do with the blank check that they've received from the world and the backup of the entire world?" You know, it's, it's just, it's a different proposition to go like, "Do you wanna fight if Jon Jones is at your back and goes, 'I got your back, dude, let's go fuck these guys up?'"
- 1:10:00 – 1:30:33
Russiagate, Tulsi’s document releases, and distrust in legacy media institutions
- DSDave Smith
Like is, and, and he never had that part. But I will say, um, they, they kind of pivoted off the Epstein thing into Russiagate, which seemed to be, you know, like, designed that there was this, um, this tremendous desire, it's the whole reason Donald Trump's political existence is a thing, is that people are furious about the swamp. They're furious about how corrupt our government is and the, the profound crimes that the government has committed against the American people, and they want justice for that. And so they pivoted off of Epstein after promising to deliver something on that, and then went, "Okay, well how about Russiagate now?" So now they're... But I will say, Tulsi Gabbard released a bunch of new documents, and there were some pretty interesting ones there. Um, it wasn't like she just released new stuff where it was like, "Oh, we already knew all this." Like, there was new stuff in there that we didn't really already know. And she referred it over to the Justice Department. She said in her press conference that, "We have proof that Obama committed treason." And they've at least sent it to the Justice Department, and from what I understand, there is a grand jury being assembled or something like that. So I don't know. I still, in, in the deepest part of my soul go, "There's no way. There's no way they're actually gonna try to prosecute Obama and Brennan and Clapper and Comey." But...
- JRJoe Rogan
The FBI raided John Bolton's house today.
- DSDave Smith
Yes, I think that's unrelated. Um, but that is an interesting (laughs) story also.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, it's... I mean, it seems like they're doing wild shit. Uh, uh, but if they did that with Obama, what was the actual treason? Like, what did, what is she stating is treason?
- DSDave Smith
Well, so, um, now I don't think... She said treason. I don't think legally that's technically right. Um, but I've, uh, someone might correct me on that. Maybe it's sedition or something. I, I, I don't know. I mean, like, I think treason, I think John Brennan did commit treason when he armed Al-Qaeda in Syria, and Obama as well with the rest of the... Obama and John Kerry and, and Brennan. I think that's, that's literally treason, right? Giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war. What, what Obama and Comey and Clapper did to Donald Trump is they framed him for treason. So what do you call that exactly?
Episode duration: 2:53:06
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Transcript of episode U-4tp0XJ1O8
