Joe Rogan Experience #2437 - Rand Paul

Speaker 0:00 [upbeat music]

Speaker 0:02 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. [upbeat music] Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. [upbeat music]

Joe Rogan 0:12 Nice to meet you, sir.

Speaker 0:14 Thanks for having me.

Joe Rogan 0:15 My pleasure.

Speaker 0:15 Great to be in Austin, you know? [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 0:17 Have you been here be- you've been here before.

Speaker 0:18 You know, I grew up in Texas, and so we used to come up here, uh, for live music. I went to Baylor, and there was no music, no dancing. If you wanted to hear some live music, you came to Austin. So I've been here many times.

Joe Rogan 0:29 Nice. It's a great spot. Uh, so here's your book, Deception: The Great Cover-Up. You were, uh, a lone voice of reason during the pandemic that, uh, you know, for me, y- you were extremely valuable, and, uh, I was cheering you on every step of the way. When you were grilling Anthony Fauci, "With all due respect, you do not know what you are talking about" That, that guy was driving me fucking crazy. It was, it was mind-numbing how many people were going along with it and how many people just accepted what he was saying, ignored all the evidence that pointed to gain-of-function research, didn't freak out when it was quite obvious that he was lying about gain-of-function research, and I just thank God that you were grilling him, and at least it was on the record, and we could all watch it and see it.

Speaker 1:23 One of the greatest tragedies, and we knew this f- within days, was that children weren't getting sick, but that should have been used to our advantage. Children did not get sick. No child without a healthy, uh, without a health issue really died. Zero.

Joe Rogan 1:36 Well, they got sick, but it wasn't dangerous for them.

Speaker 1:40 Right. But they, they-

Joe Rogan 1:40 My kids both got it.

Speaker 1:41 Right, but most of them had a very mild illness, and the point is, is that we knew this in China in the first couple of weeks, and we could have left the schools open, and some countries left the schools open. For the most part, Sweden left their schools open and treated this completely different and turned out with a similar... Everybody wound up with a similar death rate, with primarily the people dying were people who were older and overweight or both.

Joe Rogan 2:04 Right. And well, the, the argument was, "You're gonna bring it home, and you're gonna infect your grandma, and she's gonna die."

Speaker 2:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:11 That was the-

Speaker 2:11 The argument didn't really hold water, though, because everybody got it anyway. And so-

Joe Rogan 2:15 But we didn't know that in the beginning, right?

Speaker 2:17 Well-

Joe Rogan 2:17 In the beginning, they were lying, and they were saying that... Although we now know that there was no data that showed that the vaccine-

Speaker 2:23 Right

Joe Rogan 2:23 ... stopped infection-

Speaker 2:24 Right

Joe Rogan 2:24 ... stopped transmission.

Speaker 2:25 But here's another thought: You could have said, "Yeah, kids could take it to their grandparents, so until the kid has gotten it and recovered for two weeks, tell them not to visit their grandparents." You know what I mean? And-

Joe Rogan 2:36 Well, the problem was the people that live with their grandparents.

Speaker 2:38 Yeah, I know.

Joe Rogan 2:39 You know?

Speaker 2:39 And there would be, there would be the exceptions to the rule, but most of the people, the death rate we already knew in China was very, very small once you added in the kids. Initially, they were saying it was a three percent death rate, which would have been, instead of one million people, you know, would have been significantly more. Three million people may have died, but they knew the death rate was less than that in China early on. But part of the reason they thought it was so high is they weren't counting all the asymptomatic cases. You know, they knew how many people were sick and how many people died, but the denominator

Speaker 3:09 was the number of people who actually were sick or who actually got the infection, but they weren't counting millions of people. And, uh, but Anthony Fauci denied this at every step. He denied that natural immunity would protect you, and one of my favorite quotes was from a guy named Martin Kulldorff. He was an epidemiologist-

Joe Rogan 3:26 Yeah, I know who he is

Speaker 3:26 ... at Harvard, who ended up getting fired. But recently, he tweeted out, it was about a year or two ago, he said, "Well, we knew about natural immunity from the time of the Athenian plague in 436 BC, and we knew that knowledge until 2020, then we lost all knowledge [chuckles] of natural immunity. But the good news is, in 2025, we're starting to get back that knowledge." But this was... Anthony Fauci knew better. You know, he, he, he couldn't even read his own basic immunology books about, you know, m- the fact that you do develop immunity. Is it perfect? No. Can you get COVID more than once? Yes, but I defy you to tell me somebody who got it the second time, who died the second time. You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan 4:05 Right.

Speaker 4:05 People got it less severely so the second time they got it, if they got it at all.

Joe Rogan 4:09 Much less severely so. I got it twice, and the second time, I couldn't even believe it was actually COVID.

Speaker 4:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:14 It was back when we were testing every day. We would test all the guests. We'd test all the staff-

Speaker 4:19 Right

Joe Rogan 4:19 ... before we did the show, and I came in, and I had the sniffles.

Speaker 4:21 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:21 That's it. And they said, "Do you have COVID?" And I was like, "This is hilarious." [chuckles]

Speaker 4:24 And I understand you did so well because your personal doctor was Sanjay Gupta.

Joe Rogan 4:28 Bah! [laughing]

Speaker 4:31 [laughing] That is... That clip of you and, and he on the program is my favorite clip of all time. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 4:36 I don't know what he thought was gonna happen.

Speaker 4:39 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 4:40 I think he just thought he was gonna come in here, and CNN was gonna send their medical mercenary in with all his knowledge.

Speaker 4:45 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:46 But y- you can't argue with someone when you can't use facts.

Speaker 4:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:52 So he didn't have any facts at his disposal, and he was working for a network that was openly lying about me taking veterinary medicine. Like, the whole thing was-

Speaker 5:02 Right

Joe Rogan 5:02 ... surreal. And for someone who is, you know, up until 2020, I mean, I was reasonably distrustful of mainstream news, but in a normal way.

Speaker 5:12 Mm.

Joe Rogan 5:12 Like, I'm sure they bend things a little bit or twist things a little bit.

Speaker 5:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 5:15 I, I would have never thought I would watch a campaign against me like that, where every night it was horse dewormer, horse dewormer-

Speaker 5:26 Right

Joe Rogan 5:26 ... Joe Rogan, dangerous conspiracy theories, COVID denier, vaccine denier. I was like, "This is f-... fascinating!

Speaker 5:33 I think it, it brings up a broader question, too, that when people tell you there's a consensus, and because the consensus exists, you cannot object. I think that's a real danger to openness, to new ideas, but it's also a danger in medicine. And, and in medicine to say, "This is the consensus, and we're not going to do this." So in the first month of this, maybe first or second month, Fauci comes in, and I said, "You know, many people who die from the flesh-eating bacteria, which is not the same, but it's a serious illness, the- what they give them to try to treat them to prevent death and loss of limbs is high-dose IV steroids." And I had a friend whose life was saved. He didn't lose any of his limbs, and he had this terrible illness. And so I asked Anthony Fauci, I said, "Do you think there's a chance, as they're getting very, very sick and their lungs are filling up with fluid, that we could try high-dose IV steroids like we do in other infections?" He says, "Oh, no, no, we've tried that." Turns out, and we, we mention this in the book, the best treatment when you are just about to go on the ventilator or on the ventilator, when you have a 50% chance of dying at that point, was IV steroids, an old generic medicine that, uh, big pharma doesn't make much money off of.

Joe Rogan 6:39 Which steroids in particular were they using?

Speaker 6:41 Uh, it's, it's called Solu-Medrol, but it's just IV steroids, and it was a 36% percent reduction in death, which is pretty significant when you're in the ICU. The people in the ICU were very, very sick. It was a, a, a third of them had a reduction in death by, by taking IV steroids, but he was dismissing it from the very beginning and already acting like, "Oh, I know it's not going to work, and we're gonna try remdesivir," which turned out not to work very well.

Joe Rogan 7:05 Not only that, it gives people kidney failure.

Speaker 7:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:08 Well, I mean, he has a history of using medicine that has already been through the approval rating with, you know, what they did with AZT during the-

Speaker 7:18 Right

Joe Rogan 7:18 ... the pandemic of AIDS.

Speaker 7:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 7:20 And, uh, that, that proved to be horrific, a, a terrible disaster. It's just amazing that the same guy ran the same playbook, you know?

Speaker 7:28 Yeah. No, and it, it was really sad, and the other thing about natural immunity that needed to be brought up is, so all the people that were declared essential kept working. Like, if you worked in a meat processing factory, these are hardworking people. Many of them, you know, they're, they're busting their butt all day long, and there'd be, like, 296 people at a meat packing f- place in Missouri. All of them got COVID. Most of them survived, but what we should have been telling them is, "Two weeks after you got it, come back to work. You don't have to wear a mask now. You've had it. You have immunity. You won't spread it to your family. And guess what? All the unknown about whether you're gonna die or not, you survived, [chuckles] and you're done."

Joe Rogan 8:04 Right.

Speaker 8:04 But instead, we told people, "You might get it again, and you still might die, and you've got to wear a mask all day long," when in reality, we should have been celebrating the people who recovered and letting them have their freedom back.

Joe Rogan 8:15 Well, there was also this kooky thing where after you got over the disease, they wanted you to get vaccinated-

Speaker 8:20 Hmm

Joe Rogan 8:21 ... which was strange. It was almost like you-- they wanted you to join the team.

Speaker 8:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:24 Like, take the blood oath.

Speaker 8:25 Yeah. I, I met a man in Orange County, and his mom was, like, 83, and she was very sick, and she ultimately died during C- during- from COVID, probably. But she went to the hospital with COVID. They wouldn't admit her until she was vaccinated for COVID while she had COVID, which is actually against all recommendations, and this is the problem with the mass vaccination thing. If you're going to Walgreens, do you think they ask you if you've had COVID recently before they gave you a shot? And so really, the, the best medical recommendation for a young person is, one, you don't need the COVID vaccine, but you certainly shouldn't be taking it close to when you've had an infection because you've got an immune response that's going against the disease. Then you add in another stimulant to it, that's actually related to an increase in the rate of the heart inflammation that comes along with vaccinating some of the young people.

Joe Rogan 9:14 Well, there's also the weirdness of the, uh, what, what happened during the Reagan administration with vaccines, where they're no longer liable-

Speaker 9:23 Right

Joe Rogan 9:23 ... for any vaccine injuries. And when you call this a vaccine, it's very different than any vaccine that had ever been used before, but yet you have all of these injuries that people have no recourse.

Speaker 9:37 Yeah. My dad was in Congress at the time and voted against, you know, g- giving them the liability protection, and he also was there when they had the swine flu epidemic, and in that, more people died from the swine flu vaccine, and I think there were no deaths from swine flu. They said, "Oh, it's gonna take over the world, and, you know, we're gonna lose, you know, 5% of our public." Nobody died. The, um, epidemic quickly stopped, but then several people got Guillain-Barré, and a few people died from the vaccine. And I'm not against vaccines. Look, there, there are m- many miracles to vaccines, but they should be used judiciously, and the risks and benefit for each individual... And it turns out COVID had an age differential that was more significant probably than any disease we've ever seen. It really was an old person's disease.

Joe Rogan 10:24 Yeah, an old person and people with comorbidities.

Speaker 10:27 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 10:29 It was really bad for obese people, but, uh, you know, the disease aside, what, what was it like for you to watch this play being run? Because that's essentially what it was. It was like there was a play being run, and you had to follow whatever their narrative was to the T, or you'd be attacked. You'd, you-- I mean, uh, and you would see these people that were acting like soldiers for, -

Speaker 10:57 Hmm

Joe Rogan 10:57 ... for the pharmaceutical drug complex. I mean, they would-

Speaker 11:00 Right

Joe Rogan 11:00 ... they would go out there and just brutally attack anybody who deviated from the narrative, say the most awful things, talk about how you, there's blood on your hands, and, like-

Speaker 11:12 Right

Joe Rogan 11:12 ... it was very strange.

Speaker 11:14 ... Well, i- i- the, the, the belief in the vaccines and the belief that you should do it was like a religious belief, and that's the way they treated it. So if you didn't believe in it, you were a, you were someone to be demonized as a non-believer. You were to be cast out-

Joe Rogan 11:29 Yeah.

Speaker 11:29 And you weren't patriotic if you weren't wearing a mask, and even if I've already had it, I'm walking down the hallway, you know, between the office buildings and the Capitol, and all those reporters, they're 22 years old. Most of them are journalist majors. They never had a science course in their life, and they're lecturing me about why I should be wearing a mask, and it's like, I already had the disease. I've been-- I've healed up three weeks. I don't need to wear a mask. I'm, I've got immunity. "Well, how do you know that?" But even in the beginning when they said they didn't know, they did know. We had a, a outbreak in 2003. It was a different coronavirus. It was the first SARS virus, but we knew that those people, 17 years later, still had T-cells and still had immunity to it. One of the-- my favorite stories, and we include this in the book, was there was a woman, and she was 102. She goes to the hospital, and they bring her family in. They're talking to her daughter, who's 85, says: "We don't think your mom's gonna make it." And she said, "Have you met my mom?" And they said, "Well..." And she survived. But while she was there, they decided to test her for antibodies to the Spanish flu, because when she was six months old, her mother was coming across the Atlantic. Her mom died from the Spanish flu. She got it, survived. They tested her 100 years later. She still had antibodies to the Spanish flu. So immunity lasts a long damn time.

Joe Rogan 12:47 Wow, that's crazy.

Speaker 12:49 [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 12:50 But w- w- what was it like being in the government and, and seeing a- all this play out and that it was illogical, it, it didn't make any sense, but yet everyone was following the playbook?

Speaker 13:04 Um, well, people without any kind of scientific background were lecturing people. Uh, Sherrod Brown, Sherrod Brown from Ohio, was a senator. He was the worst. He would stop the proceedings and start pointing and yelling at me for not having a mask. In the House, they made him wear the mask, and so you got everybody in there with a mask. I got the, the infection, like, in March of 2020, so I got it just as it came over. I'm all healed up. I volunteered in the hospital when I was done 'cause I had immunity, and at that time, you're right, we didn't know everything, and there were some risks to the orderlies and nurses. So when they had to rotate patients that were on the ventilator, I would go in and help them, so one less person had to go in the room because I had immunity, and everybody acknowledged that I did at my local hospital. They didn't ask... There was no vaccine at the time anyway, and so but they all acknowledged that, "Oh, this is great. He's coming in, he has immunity, and he can help take the place of someone else who's having to, to risk being in the room when we move patients around."

Joe Rogan 14:01 One of my favorite scenes was, uh, there was a musical performance where there was a bunch of flutists-

Speaker 14:05 [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 14:06 ... and they had masks on with a hole cut out so they could play their flute-

Speaker 14:09 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 14:09 -through the mask. I was like-

Speaker 14:11 Yeah

Joe Rogan 14:11 ... "This is wild." I mean-

Speaker 14:13 Well, yeah. Explain to me the science of that I can eat my peanuts for 20 minutes on the plane, and w- my favorite is the some of the flight attendants were great. Some of them would actually come up to me and pass messages. I would get a little folded-up message, "Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for challenging Fauci." But then some of them were Karens, and it brings out the worst in you. A little bit of power can bring out the worst in people, and some of them were, you know, "Sir, you're not eating your peanuts faster. Eat your peanuts faster. You need to put your mask on in between peanuts."

Joe Rogan 14:40 They don't really serve peanuts on planes anymore.

Speaker 14:41 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 14:42 You're dating yourself.

Speaker 14:43 No, they, they still do have peanuts on the planes.

Joe Rogan 14:45 But aren't peanuts-- don't they keep them off planes because of people have severe peanut allergies?

Speaker 14:48 They do, and, uh, that's a, that's a whole 'nother story, and have you, have you ever had Marty Makary on?

Joe Rogan 14:54 I have not, but I'm trying to.

Speaker 14:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:56 Yeah.

Speaker 14:56 He wrote a book, he wrote a book called Blind Spots, and in it, he writes about the peanut allergy.

Joe Rogan 15:00 Right.

Speaker 15:01 And you know how you prevent the peanut allergy?

Joe Rogan 15:02 Give kids peanuts-

Speaker 15:03 Give your kids peanut butter

Joe Rogan 15:04 ... very young.

Speaker 15:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:04 Yeah.

Speaker 15:05 And now, the recommendation, even from the American Pediatric Association, w- who are terrible, they're the worst people in the world on vaccine mythology and religiosity, but they finally came around. They said: "Don't get peanut butter for, like, a decade. We got all these allergies." But now they finally, I think, changed their official position, and I think in three months, you're supposed to start introducing peanut butter to your kid.

Joe Rogan 15:26 Why do you think they're the worst, when you said they're the worst on that?

Speaker 15:30 Um, it's a blind notion, and it isn't based on risk-benefit ana- analysis or anything. It's just devotion that you are a good person, but you are also a smart person if you believe... But it's in all vaccines, and they made the mistake, 'cause sometimes they, they had the first rotavirus vaccine 15 years ago, they gave, and they had to take it off the market because six months later, they, they learned that something called intussusception, where the intestines go inside each other, which can be a real problem for a child, was happening more often with the vaccine. They had to pull the vaccine. But vaccines are like anything else. It's like you and I would sit down, and we'd talk about your drugs, and I'd talk about the side effects of each one, what your disease is, and what we can do. Like, w- I'm not completely-- like, for example, with the COVID vaccine, I don't think children should take it because I think the risk of the heart inflammation is greater than the chance of the disease. Early on, they said for old people and overweight people, that reduced hospitalization and death. But I've been talking to the CDC because I wanna know, is that still true? So let's do a new study. The virus has progressively gotten less dangerous. The community's progressively gotten more immunity. So what was true in 2020 may no longer be true. I wanna know if you're over 65, and I give 1,000 people the vaccine, the brand-new one, whatever it is, and I give 1,000 people no vaccine, is there a reduction in hospitalization and death? 'Cause this isn't 2020 anymore. The-

Joe Rogan 16:55 Well, not only that, I mean, when was the last time you heard of someone dying or being hospitalized from COVID?

Speaker 16:59 That's what I mean. It's not happening. It's not happening.

Joe Rogan 17:01 Yeah.

Speaker 17:01 And so-

Joe Rogan 17:02 But it's also because the strains, the variants have decreased in severity.

Speaker 17:05 The, the variants have become less, they've become less dangerous, and we've also increased our amount of immunity, and so we should study this again. Why? Because Big Pharma's just making a gazillion dollars off of still scaring everybody over 65, and if it still works, I, I'm, I'll come on your show and say, "Take it if you're over 65," but I don't know if it works, and I doubt that it works because I don't hear of anybody dying from COVID anymore.

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Speaker 19:04 Right.

Joe Rogan 19:04 Like, what can you do? IV vitamins are fantastic.

Speaker 19:07 Right.

Joe Rogan 19:07 There's a lot of different things that people can do that are never recommended, and it's strange.

Speaker 19:12 And, and, and really, the two things that were controversial, at least among a lot of things, but ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, people will ask me about it, and I'll say: "I don't know." The government refused to study it, and so it's very difficult because if you took in, let's say, 2020, the virus was dangerous, and let's say you took five thousand people under the age of fifty and you gave them ivermectin, and you did five thousand people, and you gave them nothing, almost nobody died in either category, so it was hard to prove. But I don't think ivermectin was, was harmful. I don't think hydrocloxy- hydroxychloroquine was harmful either, but they wouldn't study it, and you need a big study. So to figure out, since the death rate was so low for healthy people, you might need ten thousand people in each arm of the study to figure out what works and work- didn't work. There were some international studies showing ivermectin worked and hydroxychloroquine. There weren't many here, but Fauci shut them all down. You know, they started a study, and then he shut it down.

Joe Rogan 20:06 How does one guy get that kind of power?

Speaker 20:11 He was there forever. You know, he was there about as long as J... [chuckles] I wrote a, I wrote an op-ed comparing him to, uh, J. Edgar Hoover. You know, Hoover was like there-

Joe Rogan 20:20 Yeah

Speaker 20:20 ... for seventy years, abused the civil liberties of people protesting for civil rights. He abused, uh, the liberty and pers- the privacy of people protesting the Vietnam War, and so Hoover was a terrible person with his longevity. I think Fauci ranks right up there with his disregard for people's privacy. But even the stuff about the masks, do you know that we studied pandemics for a decade? Bill Gates has been given gazillions of dollars, and he's gotten the government to spend money, and when we studied pandemics, all the way up until 2020, there was never a recommendation for masks among the public for respiratory virus.

Joe Rogan 20:56 He recommended against-

Speaker 20:57 [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 20:57 Fauci recommended against masks in a very public interview. That was a video where he was talking about, you know, it's not gonna help you, and worse, maybe you'll mess with your face, and-

Speaker 21:06 Yeah, well, the, uh, the good one was the-- it was that Birdwell woman. She was in the administration, and she writes him a letter in January. She says, "I have to go to a conference. Should I wear a mask?" And he writes back to her, "Uh, no, we've, we've done all the studies, and there's no evidence that for a respiratory virus, it works." And it turns out almost all the masks, the cloth masks, you know, you've heard all this, the pores were bigger than the virus.

Joe Rogan 21:27 Yeah.

Speaker 21:27 The virus goes through them. The surgical mask, a little better, but if you have these big gaps on either side, you think the virus isn't going around the mask? And it probably goes through that mask also. The N95 mask, if you're a doctor or nurse and you're going in and out of a room, and you wash your hands and throw away the mask, there probably is some value. So in the, in the hospital, they recommended this. But one of the reasons Anthony Fauci was such a danger is what he recommended was actually dangerous. So he's wearing a Washington Nationals cloth mask to show people, or he's wearing a Black Lives Matter mask to show people he cares. But if that's the advice, and you're seventy-five years old, and your wife has COVID, and you're going into her room to take her food, and you wear a cloth mask, you are risking getting COVID and dying yourself. He didn't tell-- he gave us the wrong advice, and then people thought they were safe with a cloth mask, so they're actually doing something they shouldn't do. Or they're, you know, eighty-five years old, and they're going to church, but they're wearing a cloth mask. Well, know that you probably shouldn't go to church, frankly. You shouldn't be told you can't go to church, but actually, the advice early on to avoid crowds and stay home if you were older or vulnerable. But the kids should have just gone to school and tried to stay away from, you know, people. But eventually, it happened anyway. It, it went everywhere. There was no stopping this virus.

Joe Rogan 22:46 Well, there's never been a respiratory virus that stopped with a vaccine anyway, right?

Speaker 22:52 No. The, the flu vaccine doesn't really stop with it either, and I'm trying to get more statistics on the, on the flu vaccine as well to see if it's accurate, because I think they lie to us every year about... You know, they say, "Oh, well, it was a, you know, it wasn't this, it wa- it wasn't even the same ca- category or type, but you're getting some crossover effect." Uh, I think most of the time, that is, um, being inflated. What they're, what they're telling you is not actually true, and I'm trying to get them at the CDC to study all of this again because they have the power and the numbers to look at large numbers. And let's be objective and tell people, you know, "What is the odds next year the flu vaccine will work for you?" And we used to say: "Well, it might not work, but if you're at risk, go ahead and take it." So it used to be over fifty or over sixty-five. Now, they want everybody to take the flu vaccine, and it probably, i- it is probably better, unless your child has an immunodeficiency disease, to go ahead and get these and develop immunity over time.

Joe Rogan 23:46 ... And what do you think is going on? Like, why are they recommending this? Is this purely a profit thing?

Speaker 23:54 Um, I think if they were here, they would argue that it's, it's, it's science and it isn't for profit, but they argue vigorously against revealing if they're receiving money from Big Pharma. So what I ask is, if you're on the vaccine committee and you're gonna recommend that every child get a COVID vaccine, shouldn't you have to release whether you get royalties, you know, from Big Pharma? And Anthony Fauci, in committee, said, "We don't have to do it. The law," and he quoted the law, "says we don't have to do it." So for two, three, four years now, I'm still trying to get this passed. I've gotten all the Republicans to agree to it, and I've gotten all the Democrats but two or three, and I'm still trying to get it passed unanimously. But it would say, if you're a government scientist and you get royalties from Pfizer or from one of the big companies, you have to actually, uh, list it on a form, and really, you should be then recused from voting.

Joe Rogan 24:43 Yeah, well, also, why, why are doctors allowed to be financially incentivized?

Speaker 24:48 Yeah, that, that should be un- that should be considered to be unethical or-

Joe Rogan 24:53 Yes

Speaker 24:53 ... inappropriate. We did change some of the things with pharma and gifts to doctors about 10 years ago. It is better than it used to be as far as gifts to doctors, except for then they, they don't call this a gift. I think this should be under the gift ban. You should not be get- getting paid to use certain, uh, choose certain things, because I, I think it, it's-- really, I think it's actually malpractice to give children the COVID vaccine.

Joe Rogan 25:15 Are you aware of, uh, Mary Talley Bodin?

Speaker 25:17 Yep.

Joe Rogan 25:18 Yeah. You know her story?

Speaker 25:19 Not a lot. I've met her before, I think.

Joe Rogan 25:21 She told me that if... You know, she has a small practice that's in, like, a strip mall, I believe, outside of Houston. She said that in her small practice, if she had vaccinated everyone, she would have been compensated $1.5 million.

Speaker 25:34 It's, it's a significant amount of money, yeah, and the people I've listed-

Joe Rogan 25:37 That's crazy!

Speaker 25:37 Yeah. No, it's insane, and it's the-- it's, it's the one sort of exception to... We have all these things preventing kickbacks to doctors, except for vaccines, and that's somehow exempt. Um, so yeah. Now, we've looked at whether legislation could fix this, and I don't think we've found a good answer, but I have definitely looked to see if there's a way Congress can try to fix this.

Joe Rogan 25:57 What's amazing to me is how many people in the general public are not skeptical, how many people in the general public will hear this kind of conversation, and immediately their hackles get up, and they want to argue against this. [gasps] "Vaccines have saved more-- vaccines are so important."

Speaker 26:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 26:13 "Vac- ah!"

Speaker 26:14 Um-

Joe Rogan 26:14 They get-- And there's-- they have no information. They have- they've done no research. They've never looked at it objectively. They don't understand the whole history of compensation and, and w- w- what happened with the, the immunity.

Speaker 26:27 So in the, in the book, I tell the tor- story of George Washington, one, to let people know I'm not against, and the smallpox vaccine was amazing. And in George Washington's day, it was actually live, so that what you did is, if you'd had smallpox and you were doing pretty well, and you survived, and you didn't have a bad case, you had a minor case, you had four or five pocks, not a lot, uh, as you were recovering, they'd open a scab, take pus from your arm, stab somebody else's arm, and take the pus from your infection and stick it into someone else. That's a live vaccine. That's, that's crazy. But... And they did have some people die from it, but the death rate from smallpox was one out of three, and when it would show up in Boston, you'd have, like, 20,000 people die, and the whole town would get it. It was terrible, and so people actually chose, but people weren't being forced to do it. But the George Washington case is very instructive. Martha wants to come visit him at the camps, at the war camps, and there were more deaths in the Revolutionary War from disease than there were from bullets. He says, "You can't come until you're vaccinated for smallpox." It wouldn't vaccinate. It was called inoculated because you're getting stuck with a disease, not a vaccine. And, uh, but people say, "Well, I guess Washington took it, too, if he believed so much in this." Well, it's like, no, 'cause he'd already had smallpox. He got smallpox when he was 15 in Barbados. They understood immunity. We have understood immunity for thousands of years, and yet it just went out the window with Anthony Fauci saying, "Well, we just don't know. We just won't-- We just don't know." We do know. W- we don't always know how perfect it's gonna be, but we do know that nobody got COVID the second time around and had a worse case the second time around.

Joe Rogan 28:00 Well, one thing we do know is that when Biden left office, he was granted this biz- very bizarre pardon-

Speaker 28:07 [chuckles] Yeah

Joe Rogan 28:07 ... where he got a pardon that goes back to 2014 for crimes he was never accused of-

Speaker 28:12 Yeah

Joe Rogan 28:12 ... never convicted. I mean, is that-- it's gotta be one of the first times that anybody's ever been pardoned for-

Speaker 28:16 Yeah, and I, I think it should be challenged, and so we have, um... Under the Biden administration, I sent criminal referrals for Anthony Fauci to Merrick Garland, um, twice, and I sent them evidence that he had lied to Congress, which was a felony. They just ignored me. I've been working with Bobby Kennedy, and he's been very helpful on this. I have good relationship with him. He's given us a lot of information, and we've looked at the communications, and in Anthony Fauci's communications, we now have evidence that he was telling people, like Francis Collins, "Read this and destroy it." Well, you can't do that. The executive branch, when they communicate, they're required to keep their communications, and they're required to do it on government devices. So we have this evidence, and I've summarized it again in a criminal referral to, uh, Trump's attorney general, and I still haven't gotten action. But there's a couple reasons we should do it. One, he, he shouldn't get away with lying. He shouldn't get away with destroying records. But two, we should check the pardon. Is an autopen pardon valid? And is a pardon a retrospective pardon back 10 years that doesn't mention a crime? Can you, can you give people a pardon for everything they did in a 10-year period? I can't imagine, and I think the court might narrow that, but it doesn't happen unless the, the Trump Justice Department will do something, and I've, I've been sending them referrals, and I can't get them to do anything. Um, I can't guarantee they'll win. They might lose, but they ought to go to court. Take this, take it to court.

Joe Rogan 29:42 [lips smack] When y- you were having that conversation with him about gain-of-function research, which clearly, gain-of-function research was being done at the Wuhan lab-

Speaker 29:51 Right

Joe Rogan 29:52 ... what, uh-- and he was just standing in front saying that under the definition of gain-of-function research, that that does not qualify.... What was that like?

Speaker 30:01 I- I- We all knew he was lying, and he was parsing words. He was, uh, trying to have a semantics type of argument. But one of the reasons we know he's lying, and one of the things that I presented as evidence, is there was a group, uh, text chain on February 1st of 2020. So you have all these virologists who are saying privately it came from the lab and publicly it didn't. You have them all communicating, but one of the things Anthony Fauci says about the Wuhan lab is, he says: "We know it's, we know it's, um, it's, it's dangerous and possible 'cause we know they're doing gain-of-function research, so we're funding them." He would never admit we're funding them, 'cause we were funding EcoHealth-

Joe Rogan 30:42 Right

Speaker 30:42 ... this intermediary. So he said, "Oh, we're not funding them. Well, we're funding them through EcoHealth. It's not gain-of-function," except for then he says the experiments they're doing are gain-of-function. And so I think everything about it was dishonest. He got away with it because people in the scientific community still to this day defend him, and people on the left made it a partisan- I don't know why this is a Republican-Democrat issue, but all of the main networks still defend him. You know, he was given a million-dollar prize? Some nonprofit, uh, gave him a million-dollar prize. A- Well, how does a bureaucrat get to accept a, a million-dollar prize while they're working for the government?

Joe Rogan 31:18 You tell me.

Speaker 31:19 [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 31:19 You work for the government. [laughing]

Speaker 31:21 Then when he leaves the government, he gets twenty-four/seven limo service and security. He's got people in front of his home stopping traffic like you do for a president getting in the car, which I'm okay for former presidents, but that's about it. You know, Anthony Fauci should have never got this. I will say that Trump ended it, you know, and everybody said, "Oh, he'll be, he'll be killed." And it's like, you know, I guarantee a lot of us have more threats than Anthony Fauci has, and none of us have a, a limo picking us up every day.

Joe Rogan 31:50 Well, I'm sure he has threats.

Speaker 31:52 Um-

Joe Rogan 31:52 I'm sure Anthony Fauci has threats, and I think he probably, you know, should be concerned.

Speaker 31:59 But so, uh, yeah, but the government-

Joe Rogan 32:00 Just based on what everybody knows.

Speaker 32:01 Right, but the government doesn't... You know, you're a famous person.

Joe Rogan 32:04 Right.

Speaker 32:04 Government doesn't pay for your limousine.

Joe Rogan 32:05 Right. Right.

Speaker 32:06 He shouldn't have a limousine paid for by the government with twenty-four/seven security.

Joe Rogan 32:09 No, no, I agree. I mean, it's-- Also, how much money did he make? Do we know?

Speaker 32:14 We know he got the million-dollar prize. We know he made more than the president towards the end. He was making $450,000 a year, but his wife, if he ever had an ethical problem, you know who he went to, his wife. His wife was in charge of, uh, bioethics for the NIH. So if it was a question of whether or not his royalties were a conflict, he would ask his wife to find out if he was acting unethically. She made about two fifty, so they're really making a combined seven hundred, which I don't-- I'm not against money. You work hard, people pay you money, I'm all for it, but I am against the government paying bureaucrats that kind of money, and so... And he really-- There, there should be term limits for people in those positions. You shouldn't be there for 40 years. So he appointed all the people beneath him, and he stacked the deck. And, you know, I asked the question, and this was an email from Francis Collins to Anthony Fauci. He says, "Take him down," talking about Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the NIH now, talking about, uh, Martin Kulldorff, and then an epidemiologist from Oxford. "Take them down." And so when I have scientists come before my committee, I'll ask them the first question: "Have you ever, or would you ever, send another scientist a note saying to take down a fellow scientist you disagreed with?" My goodness, what kind of-- That sounds like the mafia or something.

Joe Rogan 33:35 Yeah.

Speaker 33:35 Doesn't sound like someone who's supposed to be above the fray, objective scientist.

Joe Rogan 33:40 Were there any other avenues for revenue for him because of the creation of the vaccine or any other medications-

Speaker 33:48 Um

Joe Rogan 33:49 ... that he profited from?

Speaker 33:49 I don't think with this, with the current one, he-- we, we don't know, uh, um, all, all of his royalties. He would say, "Oh, I got $25," or something. That's not-- It might have been true for a year, but there are years in the past that he was getting more. The, um, I think Open the Books or the Open Secrets, that group, has gone through and through Freedom of Information, has gotten information that, um, like 1,500 doctors got $1.5 billion, or 1,500 scientists got $1.5 billion in royalties. So it's not an insignificant amount of money.

Joe Rogan 34:24 Mm.

Speaker 34:24 It's a lot of scientists, and once again, I'm not even sure I'm for forbidding it. I just wanna know if any of them are on a committee-

Joe Rogan 34:33 Right

Speaker 34:33 ... voting for the drug, that they got money from that particular drug company. The woman that was appointed for the NIH under Biden and never got approved, um, you know, she may well be an ethical person, but I think she's, uh, done research grants of $231 million from Pfizer, and it was listed. And doesn't mean she's a dishonest person, but I wonder how she could be objective with Pfizer [chuckles] if through her career... And all that money didn't go to her.

Joe Rogan 34:58 Right.

Speaker 34:58 It was grants that she oversaw, and some of the money went to her, and that doesn't mean it's illegal or unethical, but I think it's hard for her to judge objectively a company that has been the main financer of her entire career.

Joe Rogan 35:12 Well, it certainly incentivizes her-

Speaker 35:14 Yeah

Joe Rogan 35:14 ... to be more favorable towards them, clearly. Like, you follow human nature, I mean, it just makes sense.

Speaker 35:21 Now, Bobby Kennedy has put, you know, and the left-wing people hate all the people he's put on there. I think he's doing a good job of getting the people out who were so pro-vaxxing that it was a religion for them, and I think they have better people. And I've noticed as they go around the room, I don't know if you've seen this when they vote, they start by saying, before they vote: "I have no conflicts of interest." They are verbally announcing, "I have no conflicts of interest," which is a big improvement, but I really wanna see all the scientists, who they get it from, how much, and then let... You know, part of oversight is not just Congress, it's the public, it's, it's people who analyze these issues, looking in and seeing how much they made and what do they oversee. Is there a conflict of interest?

Joe Rogan 36:02 What is-- Like, what is the tone like in the government?... uh, now in comparison to when the pandemic was going on?

Speaker 36:14 Um, I'd say it's a calmer tone. There was hysteria that sort of ruled the day, and I think that, you know, and this was sort of the problem and how Anthony Fauci became so prominent. You know, there was-- You know, the president was out speaking, and the president speaks off the cuff and doesn't always say things that are always exactly accurate.

Joe Rogan 36:34 Right.

Speaker 36:34 And so, as he was saying stuff, many of these, uh, sort of establishment senators were saying: "We need somebody else. We need a scientist at those press conferences." So it was actually many of my colleagues who pushed Anthony Fauci, pushed them through Pence, and pushed them through the president to accept him. And one of the things that's still inexplicable to this day is that as Anthony Fauci leaves government, President Trump gives him a gold medal, a Presidential Medal of Honor, you know, as he leaves, which, uh, you know, knowing what we know, I think is, um, should have never happened.

Joe Rogan 37:10 Yeah. Um, the people that were so vehemently opposed to your position and the people that were so pro-vaccine and pro-mask, like, a lot of them are still in the government.

Speaker 37:21 Yeah, and a lot of them are still in the, in the news media, too.

Joe Rogan 37:23 Yeah.

Speaker 37:23 I was called all kinds of names by people, and it turns out that almost everything I was complaining about, turns out, in retrospect, I was right about most of them. The masks, really, most of them didn't work, and even the ones that work, a lot of people don't realize this, an N95 mask works to a certain degree, but once you've touched it, you've contaminated it. And also, after you've worn it for four hours, the moisture from your breath, uh, gets rid of the electrostatic charge, and it doesn't really work very well. So the doctors don't reuse them. They might use them a couple times, but really, the doctors-

Joe Rogan 37:54 You're breathing in your own bacteria.

Speaker 37:55 Yeah, the doctors throw them away-

Joe Rogan 37:57 Yeah

Speaker 37:57 ... and wash their hands after every one. If you can do that, there's maybe some value or someone's sick in your house. But for the general public, riding in a car, particularly when you ride by yourself in a car, an N95 mask does not help you. I hate to tell the Democrats this-

Joe Rogan 38:10 I like when they do it.

Speaker 38:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:11 I think it's important.

Speaker 38:12 But you-

Joe Rogan 38:12 It's important when people drive with a mask on 'cause it lets me know who's out of their fucking mind.

Speaker 38:16 Well, and also, you don't have to ask them what party they're registered with. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 38:19 Yeah. [chuckles]

Speaker 38:19 It's, it's automatic.

Joe Rogan 38:20 Yeah, I said it was a Democrat's MAGA hat.

Speaker 38:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:23 That's-

Speaker 38:23 If you're, if you're hiking the Appalachian Trail and you see someone out by themselves and they have an N95 mask on, um-

Joe Rogan 38:31 Yeah

Speaker 38:31 ... you can probably guess their party registration.

Joe Rogan 38:32 A hundred percent, yeah. It was a strange time to go through. Um, it's interesting, most of the people that were at CNN are gone now, except Brian Stelter. They got rid of him, and then that's how bad the talent is out there. They had to bring him back.

Speaker 38:47 Yeah. Yeah, one of them called me a, a bloviating ass, and I haven't been back on since then-

Joe Rogan 38:53 [chuckles]

Speaker 38:53 ... about four years ago, and said I was so awful to Anthony Fauci, and that everything I said was dangerous, and I was endangering lives. But I was right about the masks, I was right about natural immunity, but I was also right about this six feet of distance. It's actually the opposite of what they told you. So let's say you were 80 years old, and you and I were coming together in March of 2020, and well, let's say even more, if we're gonna go to choir practice, but we're gonna spread out six feet apart, is that safe for an 85-year-old to go? No, they should be staying at home. That's the best advice for them, stay at home in March of 2020, because guess what? The virus goes 30 feet, 40 feet. You know, if you're in this room-

Joe Rogan 39:32 It was just made up.

Speaker 39:33 Yeah, it was made up, but it was made up in the wrong direction. So what it did is encourage people to stay six feet apart from people, go to a crowded room, go to choir practice, and just stay away from people. But if you're at risk, you shouldn't be at choir practice, not by law, but by advice. So he actually gave you unsafe advice on the masks. Cloth masks don't work, so he's giving you unsafe advice to go help and feed your wife or your husband with a cloth mask on. Natural immunity does work, and he told you it doesn't work. It was the opposite of everything he told you, but he also never got... and I kept saying this in the hearings, he needed humility. Humility to know that there's a possibility he's wrong in what he's saying, and it should be advice, and this is what they don't get about public health. If I were the public health doctor and a new pandemic came up, I should give advice, not mandates, advice based on the best things we know, and other doctors should give advice 'cause there might be other doctors that disagree with me on it, so you can choose. That's- it's sort of the idea of getting a second opinion. You go to your doctor, and you think something's not quite right, and he or she wants to operate on my leg, and maybe I wanna wait another three weeks, [chuckles] see if my leg feels better in three weeks. You get another opinion, or you go home and wait three weeks and see if you get better.

Joe Rogan 40:49 W- when y- y- you're an ophthalmologist, right?

Speaker 40:52 Right.

Joe Rogan 40:52 Uh, when you're one of the rare people that's in the government that does have a, a background in medicine and, and at least in, uh, medical training, and you're experiencing all this illogical shit, like, what is, what is that like for you? Did you, do you, did you try to educate your family?

Speaker 41:12 You, you, you try, but most of them aren't willing to listen, and you wonder now if they've even gotten it. Um, but my favorite is sort of the response you get 'cause the internet is full of trolls, and so one of the favorite insults, if you'll read insults of me, "Oh, you know, he's just a failed dental assistant." [chuckles] And it's like, "Well, not quite," but, um, you-

Joe Rogan 41:32 Why, how'd they come up with that one?

Speaker 41:33 I don't know. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 41:34 Yeah.

Speaker 41:34 They somehow think I'm a dentist or an optometrist, and I fit glasses or something. None of, none of that's r- really true, but, um, the people- it takes a long time for people... I think slowly, some of them, like, I think half the Democrats actually think it may have come from the lab now. They're not real outspoken about it-

Joe Rogan 41:53 Mm

Speaker 41:54 ... but-

Joe Rogan 41:54 Only half?

Speaker 41:55 Maybe. I-

Joe Rogan 41:56 What's going on with the other half?

Speaker 41:56 The elected one. Yeah, this is maybe, so- [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 41:59 The other half still believe in-

Speaker 42:00 So-

Joe Rogan 42:00 ... natural spillover?

Speaker 42:01 Three years into this, the doctor of the Senate was still recommending there are 16-year-olds, uh, that are pages, that are 15, 16 years old, that they get three vaccines.... and I absolutely steadfastly think that that's malpractice and a risk to them. So I fought it, and I would come to the floor, and this is weird. No one's ever done this. I would ask on the floor of the Senate for unanimous consent to pass a rule of the Senate that they don't-- they can, they can opt out of this program. You know, they can listen, write, check something, and opt out. Because it turns out that the myocarditis increases in prevalence the more you take. So if you take one COVID vaccine, it's less likely you get myocarditis. If you take a second one, it's a little more likely, a third one. So it's the opposite of what you should be telling children, and the death rate for a healthy sixteen-year-old really is essentially zero. I mean, it, it is so close to zero, somebody might be able to find a healthy year-old that died at sixteen. Almost everybody that was on CNN, not to keep mentioning CNN, but they would put these people on there, and they would hide the fact that they had terminal cancer, and it is sad that a child dies anytime, but they were dying from their cancer, and they just happened to have COVID, you know? And it was dishonest because they were trying to scare regular people: "Don't send your kid to school. The teachers' union is right. We should never go back to school. We need another year out," which was just crazy and damaging.

Joe Rogan 43:23 Well, it's also, it's also, there's a giant incentive that in this country and in New Zealand, they're the only two countries in the world where they allow pharmaceutical drug companies to advertise.

Speaker 43:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:33 And it's, it's a problem. I very rarely watch regular television, but every now and then I'll just go, "What are these fucking crazy people up to?"

Speaker 43:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:41 And I'll watch MSNBC or CNN-

Speaker 43:43 And see a million drug ads.

Joe Rogan 43:44 And the number of drug ads is staggering-

Speaker 43:47 Yeah

Joe Rogan 43:47 ... and the weirdness in those ads, the calm tone of their voice as they list off these horrific side effects. [laughing]

Speaker 43:55 Well, and the thing that's hard to imagine is there's sometimes for a disease that, like, five thousand people in the country have, a disease that-

Joe Rogan 44:02 Right

Speaker 44:02 ... as a physician, even though I know the names of most of the diseases, I'll be kind of uncertain on that. I don't remember seeing anybody ever with, with that disease, and yet it's being advertised on MSNBC. And then the question is: do you think that affects what the, the newscasters are saying on the news?

Joe Rogan 44:18 Right.

Speaker 44:18 And it does. That's why they're, they're so all in with this. Um, but you're right.

Joe Rogan 44:23 But it's not-- They're not trying to use those ads to sell those drugs. They're using the money by putting those ads up to make sure that those-

Speaker 44:31 You're probably right

Joe Rogan 44:31 ... pundits don't talk badly about the pharmaceutical drug companies.

Speaker 44:34 It's probably more about shaping the news than it is getting sales.

Joe Rogan 44:37 Well, the, the proof is in the pudding. There have absolutely been horrific side effects of a bunch of different pharmac-

Speaker 44:44 Right

Joe Rogan 44:44 ... pharmaceutical drugs. You don't hear a peep about any of that stuff-

Speaker 44:47 Right

Joe Rogan 44:48 ... on CNN.

Speaker 44:49 And you wonder who's buying a drug when they say, "Well, you could die, you could become paralyzed, you could have a stroke, you could have a blood clot." [laughing]

Joe Rogan 44:56 Explosive, bloody diarrhea. Yeah. Loss all your memory, suicidal ideation. It's just, they just list them off.

Speaker 45:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:03 But-

Speaker 45:03 And they list them off like this-

Joe Rogan 45:04 But-

Speaker 45:05 ... "Consult your doctor."

Joe Rogan 45:06 They're protecting you, so you can take Ambien, but God forbid you take a, a hemp gummy, they will put your ass in jail if you take a hemp gummy.

Speaker 45:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:14 And they've just recently outlawed all the hemp stuff, and I've been fighting this for the last two months. But all the hemp products, I know Texas actually has a lot, they're all going to be banned within one year now.

Speaker 45:24 Now, how did that get passed?

Joe Rogan 45:26 Mitch McConnell.

Speaker 45:28 How is that guy still around when he just freezes up every now and again?

Joe Rogan 45:31 Yeah.

Speaker 45:31 He locks up like Windows 95.

Joe Rogan 45:33 [chuckles] He is, uh, very, very powerful, and a lot of people owe him. You know, he raised money for decades, hundreds of millions of dollars, passed it out to the lesser-known senators and helped them get elected when they would get challenges, and so then they all owe him. And so I forced an amendment, and it's funny, then the people on the internet go, "Why are you doing this? The government shut down. Why are you gumming up the works with a vote on a, on hemp?" Because they stuck it on the bill to reopen the government. It's not my choice to talk about-

Speaker 46:02 Right ... hemp at that time. That was my only choice, and so I brought forward an amendment. I got, like, twenty-something votes, and seventy of them voted, but they voted to set the limit and to change the, the amount of THC in the plant. So all the plants are illegal now. All the seeds are illegal. There's a real industry of farmers who grow this. Um, and the thing is, who, who are we to tell somebody who can't sleep at night that an Ambien's better for them than, than taking a hemp gummy to go to sleep at night? Or a veteran who could take Percocet or some kind of psychotropic drug or who has anxiety or post-traumatic stress, and we're gonna tell them they can't take a hemp gummy. I, I think it's, uh, insane and very much, uh, you know, this presumption that we know what's best for everyone.

Joe Rogan 46:46 Is this the alcohol lobby? Like, what i- what is the motivation?

Speaker 46:50 There was a little bit of the alcohol lobby and the cannabis lobby. The cannabis people hate the [chuckles] hemp people. The-

Joe Rogan 46:55 The cannabis people hate the hemp people?

Speaker 46:57 Well, it's complicated. The cannabis industry develops state by state, and you really can't make a marijuana product in Colorado and sell it in Kentucky. It can't go across state lines. The hemp, because it was legalized nationally, um, they've-- they were selling it across state lines, so we have big, uh, companies now that sell the hemp gummies. You can order them through the mail across state lines until this law came about, and McConnell always felt it was an unintended consequence, and some of the growth might have been, but I don't think it was... There were some bad products out there, and all of us, including the hemp industry, said, "All right, let's, let's regulate this. Let's not have one hundred milligram gummies." The more traditional is sort of like five milligrams. That's in a drink or in a gummy that people would take.

Joe Rogan 47:43 Reasonable.

Speaker 47:44 Yeah, and, and, and I think... I, I haven't taken it. I, I'm for the freedom to take it, but I just-- I, I sleep pretty good. But, uh, so it's not really something I can attest to exactly how it works, but people who do take it tell me that, that to have one of the drinks say it might be like drinking a beer or maybe not even drinking a beer when you drink one of these, uh, THC drinks.

Joe Rogan 48:04 So the cannabis businesses in the states where it's legal don't want it legal nationally?

48:13 ... because then it would interfere with their business, because you'd be able to order it through the mail.

Speaker 48:17 Well, they'd probably accept it if we'd legalize cannabis nationally, and then they would compete with hemp.

Joe Rogan 48:21 Right.

Speaker 48:21 But what was going on is we haven't legalized cannabis nationally, we've legalized it state by state. But I don't think even if your state has legal adult use and another one does-

Joe Rogan 48:31 You-

Speaker 48:31 -I don't think you can transfer it across the state lines.

Joe Rogan 48:33 You're saying hemp, but you really mean THC.

Speaker 48:35 Uh, that's-

Joe Rogan 48:36 Right

Speaker 48:36 -for marijuana. That, that's, that's-

Joe Rogan 48:37 CBD, CBD and THC, correct?

Speaker 48:39 Yeah. CBD has a little bit of THC in it, and so do the hemp gummies have some THC in it, and then the drinks, too. It's about five milligrams-

Joe Rogan 48:48 Right

Speaker 48:48 ... in a lot of the different dose. There are different doses, but that's essentially-

Joe Rogan 48:50 And so all of those are gonna be illegal?

Speaker 48:53 Yeah, the, the, the McConnell language says you can't have more than 0.4 milligrams, which is such a low number that I don't think it'll have any effect. I mean, frankly, the THC is the effect. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 49:04 Yeah.

Speaker 49:04 You know, and so if you make the THC number so small, uh, I don't think people will take them. Um, the CBD oil, people might still take some of that, but I assume if they're, the effect that people are getting from the CBD oil, if they rub it on, has to be the THC.

Joe Rogan 49:18 No, no. CBD itself with no THC has a beneficial effect.

Speaker 49:22 Okay.

Joe Rogan 49:22 There's, there's CBD balm that you can-

Speaker 49:24 Right

Joe Rogan 49:24 ... use for, like, arthritis-

Speaker 49:26 That may be still-

Joe Rogan 49:27 -and things along those lines

Speaker 49:27 ... that may still be legal. The plant, though, they changed the definition of the plant that the CBD oil comes from, so they're gonna have to re-hybridize all these plants.

Joe Rogan 49:35 What I was gonna say was, um, my mom, or my, not my mom, rather, my wife's mom, um, uses, uh, CBD with THC, and she's found that that's more effective for arthritis and-

Speaker 49:48 Right

Joe Rogan 49:48 ... aches and pains-

Speaker 49:49 Right

Joe Rogan 49:49 ... than CBD without it.

Speaker 49:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 49:51 She's done both, and she says the CBD with, with THC is more effective.

Speaker 49:55 And there are some people, and once again, I'm not here to tell you to take it or not take it. I'm telling you, I'm for the freedom for people to make their own decision.

Joe Rogan 50:02 Yeah.

Speaker 50:02 There are some people with children who have seizures, who take medications, and the kid still has 100 seizures a day, which isn't good for your brain and for the child, and then some of them have added some CBD drops they give to the child, of CBD oil with the THC-

Joe Rogan 50:16 Right

Speaker 50:17 ... and they think it slows the seizures down some.

Joe Rogan 50:19 Yeah, I have a friend whose child has severe autism and sometimes has seizures, and the only thing that stops the seizures is, uh, CBD with THC.

Speaker 50:29 And the best way to think about it is, is I'll never forget this. This was in, I think, 2007, when Romney was running for president. My dad was... In fact, I know somebody who was a supporter of my dad in 2007.

Joe Rogan 50:39 I love your dad.

Speaker 50:40 But anyway, they go up to Romney, and it's a person in a wheelchair with MS, and they said: "Would, do, are you in favor of making it illegal? I take marijuana at night to sleep. Are you in favor of making that illegal for me to take it? I have MS. Would you, would you be for making it illegal?" [chuckles] Romney looked right at him and said, "I sure would." [chuckles] And I was like, "What kind of person says that?" What kind of person is so presumptuous of their moral position that they're going to tell you it's immoral to take that, but fine to take some, you know, antipsychotic drug or some kind of narcotic that the pharmacy- pharmaceutical companies sell, but we're not gonna let you, uh, use marijuana?

Joe Rogan 51:19 Well, it's ignorance. You know, it's people that have never consumed it and have these preconceived notions of what it actually does versus what it does. I mean, you'd be surprised at how many, you know, little old ladies are taking CBD with THC in it for-

Speaker 51:34 Right

Joe Rogan 51:34 ... you know, to help with their aches and pains-

Speaker 51:35 My-

Joe Rogan 51:35 -and help them sleep.

Speaker 51:36 [chuckles] My joke when I tell people who's opposed to this, like McConnell, you know, who's older than, um-

Joe Rogan 51:44 Dirt

Speaker 51:44 ... older than dirt, is that they all watched Reefer Madness in 1937-

Joe Rogan 51:49 [chuckles]

Speaker 51:50 -at the matinee, and-

Joe Rogan 51:52 Yeah

Speaker 51:52 ... they'll never forget what happens if you get that reefer madness. And, uh, some of them probably were alive in 1937, could have actually seen the movie. But, uh, that's it, it's an irrational sort of fear. But on the other side of this, we're on a program that a lot of people will hear. I don't want people at home thinking I want everybody and every 15-year-old out there smoking marijuana after school. I think there are some, some side effects to smoking marijuana all the time, particularly for the developing brain.

Joe Rogan 52:17 100%.

Speaker 52:17 And, and I'm not here to encourage it.

Joe Rogan 52:18 And also drinking, drinking alcohol as well.

Speaker 52:20 Yeah, same, same thing.

Joe Rogan 52:20 I'm for personal choice for adults, and the, the problem with the whole Reefer Madness thing, I'm glad you brought that up.

Speaker 52:25 [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 52:25 Do you know the whole story behind it?

Speaker 52:27 No.

Joe Rogan 52:28 William Randolph Hearst. William Randolph Hearst was responsible for this whole, uh, terrifying craze of, of people thinking that marijuana was driving people nuts and jumping out of buildings. In 1930-something, I forget the year, they, they came up with a new product called the decorticator, and it was in Popular Science Magazine, "Hemp: The New Billion Dollar Crop," because they had this new machine that allowed them to effectively process hemp fiber. William Randolph Hearst owned Hear- Hearst Publications, but he also owned paper mills. Hemp was a far more effective and far more, uh, durable form of paper. He was gonna compete with hemp, and he had forests that he was using for-

Speaker 53:09 Right

Joe Rogan 53:09 ... his paper, wh- where they were, you know, for paper mills, and hemp was gonna replace all that. It was a competitor. So they were, they were arguing against it as a commodity. Marijuana was never a name for cannabis. Marijuana was a name for a wild Mexican tobacco. And so they started saying in his newspapers, they started printing these fake stories about how Blacks and Mexicans were taking this new drug and raping white women.

Speaker 53:37 Great shit.

Joe Rogan 53:37 And that's where Reefer Madness came from, and they called this new drug marijuana. This episode is brought to you by PaleoValley, 100% grass-fed beef sticks. I live a super busy lifestyle. I'm always running from one thing to the next, and PaleoValley is the perfect on-the-go snack.... These beef sticks are legit. No junk, no garbage ingredients, just pure, clean protein, fermented the old school way, so they're shelf-stable without chemicals. That is huge! And the fermentation part, it's actually good for your gut. Most people don't even think about that, but if you care about performance, you have to care about your gut health. And taste-wise, they're awesome. They've sold over fifty-five million of these things. That's not just hype, that's people coming back again and again because it works. Right now, you can get twenty percent off your first order. Just go to paleovalley.com/rogan and use the code Rogan.

Speaker 54:31 I know this is gonna be shocking to you, but that's the story of government.

Joe Rogan 54:35 Yeah.

Speaker 54:35 Most things that come out in government, if you look beneath the surface, they all, they all have pretty names, they have acronyms, say, patriotism, the Patriot Act. How-

Joe Rogan 54:45 Right.

Speaker 54:45 You must be anti-patriotic if you're not for the Patriot Act. But most of the things they say, it's the opposite, or someone has put something forward that really is about... Like, let's say it's a banking regulation. You say, "This is gonna protect the poor people." But it turns out the banking regulation is easier paid for and absorbed by big banks. And so what happens to your small local bank, and you say, "How come all the small banks get gobbled up by big banks?" It's 'cause you put regulations on that who favored? The big banks favor the regulations 'cause it puts the small bank out of business, they get absorbed by the big bank, and then the new banks trying to come in can't afford the compliance cost. Um, right now, one of the extraordinary things we're doing with, with banks, and I don't think many people know this, the Federal Reserve is now paying interest to big banks on keeping reserves at the Federal Reserve. There's $3 trillion there. Last year, the big banks, primarily the big banks in New York, got $187 billion in interest. Previously, that interest would go back to the Treasury to offset the debt. That's about ten percent of our debt. So our debt is ten percent worse because we're now paying, and we never did this before 2010. We never paid interest on, on reserves. And what it means to pay interest on reserves is that it's an incentive for the Fed just to leave it there. Why loan it to you if you're expanding a business, when I can just leave it here and get four percent? It also keeps interest rates from going down, 'cause if the Fed pays the big bank four percent, are they gonna loan it to you for three and a half when it can just sit at the Fed and gain four? So it's, it's kind of, you know... President Trump always wants what he wants, and sometimes he wants good things, but he, you know, may not go about it the best way. He wants interest rates to be lower. I think most people do. But one way to make interest lower is tell the Fed they can't pay interest, uh, to these big banks.

Joe Rogan 56:29 Have you ever had a conversation with him about this?

Speaker 56:31 I've been trying for, like, three months to get a conversation with Bessent, and I held up one of their, uh-- with the Secretary of Treasury, I held up [chuckles] one of their appointees last week, which is one of the things you do to get the attention of the people you want to talk to. And they've agreed to meet with me, but we're already, you know, halfway into January. But I'm trying to get a meeting with Bessent to talk to him about this idea of paying interest because they said, "Oh, it'll only take thirty billion dollars to set up the system." Then it was a trillion, now it's three trillion, and I think it just keeps growing and growing, but that money really isn't being productive, and it's a gift to these big banks.

Joe Rogan 57:05 Oof! When it comes to this, uh, this THC thing, what, what can be done?

Speaker 57:12 Trump's been good on some things. You know, the whole idea of changing it from Schedule I to Schedule III-

Joe Rogan 57:17 Yeah

Speaker 57:18 ... is an improvement. It's still illegal without a prescription, but a lot of the research with marijuana didn't happen because Schedule I's just almost impossible.

Joe Rogan 57:27 Right.

Speaker 57:27 You gotta have, like, safes and guards and everything to deal with, with a Schedule I drug, and so very little research occurred on marijuana over time. And, um, so d- lowering the schedule is a good idea. Um, state by state has kind of worked in the sense that it's allowed people to see what it's like and get used to it. Um, but some of the states have, have backtracked, and some are worried that they went too far. Um, it's harder to determine, I think, a- acute intoxication if someone's driving-

Joe Rogan 58:02 Right

Speaker 58:02 ... under the influence, to do a test. I, I would guess the technology should be out there, but I don't know that it's widely available.

Joe Rogan 58:07 I think it would have to be a blood test, right? I, I, I don't know. If you're, if you've consumed an edible, you're not gonna be able to get something with a breathalyzer.

Speaker 58:16 I don't, I don't know that for certain. Your, your breath is amazing what it actually has in it.

Joe Rogan 58:20 Mm.

Speaker 58:20 So I, I don't know the answer to that, if the technology-

Joe Rogan 58:23 So maybe just the-

Speaker 58:23 Yeah

Joe Rogan 58:24 ... the testing is not-

Speaker 58:25 W- yeah

Joe Rogan 58:25 ... adequate.

Speaker 58:26 Which reminds me, there's a guy in California I've met. Just, you meet extraordinary people. He's actually studying, uh, contents of what you exhale to look for cancer markers. So, I mean, they're really minute-

Joe Rogan 58:38 Mm

Speaker 58:38 ... but he's gonna try to diagnose things like, you know, you'll hear of a friend, you know, who's, like, forty-five years old and has pancreatic cancer, or we actually have a former senator right now, Ben Sasse, who says he has Stage IV pancreatic cancer, and the reason it, it spreads before you know you have it. But he's trying to get a... And he has a test that measures markers just from what you exhale to try to pick up on cancers before they be detected.

Joe Rogan 59:01 Mm. So there's a possibility that they can come up with some sort of a detection method to find out if you're intoxicated?

Speaker 59:07 I think probably, and I, I don't know the technology that well.

Joe Rogan 59:11 Uh, but it's either way, uh, just for responsible use for adults, it just doesn't make any sense that they would change it from what it is now and make it more restrictive.

Speaker 59:20 Right. I don't think any states have gone backwards. Most states have gone forward. We finally, in Kentucky, we don't have adult use, but we have-- I think we've just legalized the medical. But the way medical works, it's still strictly by state.

Joe Rogan 59:33 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 59:34 So you have to have physicians who decide to prescribe it, farmers who decide to grow it, and it's a little bit of a niche industry. And, you know, most industries in our country, one state gets really good, and they export it to other states, and some climates are better for growing it. But, um-... that has been a hindrance to the marijuana industry.

Joe Rogan 59:53 Well, it's also you're enabling [coughs] the cartel to make money off of it. That's the real problem. Uh, I had a gentleman on my podcast named John Norris. He was a, uh, game warden in California, and, um, you know, just checking fishing licenses and making sure that people are following the laws, and, uh, wound up, uh, chasing down a dry creek, and, uh, fi- trying to find out, like, had a farmer diverted the creek, like, what had happened here? Well, it turned out there was an illegal grow operation by the cartel, because when California made marijuana legal in the state for adult use, what they did was make it a misdemeanor to grow it illegally. So it's just a misdemeanor. So the cartel just started growing it-

Speaker 1:00:35 Right

Joe Rogan 1:00:35 ... in state parks and forests.

Speaker 1:00:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 And so they would find these heavily armed cartel operations in the middle of national parks and national forests. And, you know, the, his group became-- He's got a great book called, uh, Hidden War, and his, his organization be, became essentially a tactical group. You know, they had Belgian Malinois and bulletproof vests, and they were having shootouts with the cartel in the forest-

Speaker 1:01:01 Hmm

Joe Rogan 1:01:02 ... because these guys were growing this stuff, and 90% of all the marijuana that's sold in these states where it's illegal, was being grown in a state where it's only a misdemeanor to grow it.

Speaker 1:01:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:14 And so they were growing it in California, [clears throat] and they were using all sorts of horrific pesticides and herbicides that are illegal, uh-

Speaker 1:01:22 Right

Joe Rogan 1:01:22 ... everywhere else, but they would use them.

Speaker 1:01:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:24 And so you'd get pesticide poisoning, herbicide poisoning. You know, it's crazy. It's like we're-- it, it is just responsible adult use we're curtailing, and the way we're doing this is by propping up these illegal drug cartels, the same way that during alcohol prohibition, they propped up the mob-

Speaker 1:01:41 Right

Joe Rogan 1:01:42 ... and the moonshiners.

Speaker 1:01:43 And, and this is what people don't understand about prohibition. When you have prohibition, you get products that are more dangerous because they're not openly regulated. You also have more, uh, young people using it, 'cause if it's already illegal, what do I care if I'm selling out of the back of my car? I'm not gonna check your ID. So we, we- to get adult use and to get rules on those things, it's better to actually have it legal. So with the hemp thing, McConnell, I'm in the same state, so he goes home, and he tells everybody, "Yeah, Rand Paul wants your kids to use hemp." That's not true, because Kentucky passed a state law that says you have to be 21, regulates the amount. His law is gonna overturn that, and there is no federal law on the age of hemp. So he's actually the one who's gonna overturn the law by prohibiting it all. But most of the states have reasonably looked at this. Now, Texas looked at it, and then Texas was gonna ban it, and then Governor Abbott stepped up and, and vetoed it. But Texas, the legislature was terrible. Uh, they were gonna, they were gonna-- they passed a ban on hemp here, and then Abbott's vetoed it, and it's sort of in limbo now.

Joe Rogan 1:02:43 Um, so when this, this national one, when does this go into effect?

Speaker 1:02:47 It's one year from when we passed it, and I think we passed it in, uh, probably November. So this coming November, uh, the entire hemp industry will go bust. This is a $25 billion industry. This is not a small industry, and there's a lot of jobs. There's a lot of people using it. Like you say, these aren't reefer madness people out there committing crimes. It's your grandmother-

Joe Rogan 1:03:09 Right

Speaker 1:03:10 ... your mother. It's people who have difficulty sleeping. It's, um, you know... There's still hope, and I'm trying to reverse it. I have several bills that we're working on, going to introduce in the near future, to either try to extend the deadline and/or change it. I'd like to change it where if your state has regulated it, the federal government would, um, accede to your state regulation or, um, allow your state to regulate it.

Joe Rogan 1:03:38 Well, it's gotta be very bizarre being a rational person-

Speaker 1:03:41 Hmm

Joe Rogan 1:03:42 ... working for the government.

Speaker 1:03:43 Yeah. Um, and it-- [sighs] I don't-- The people up there are of a different sort. Many of them have never worked, really, outside of government, so they really-

Joe Rogan 1:03:55 Fun.

Speaker 1:03:55 Yeah, they, they know-

Joe Rogan 1:03:56 Great

Speaker 1:03:56 ... they know nothing about writing checks.

Joe Rogan 1:03:58 What perfect people.

Speaker 1:03:58 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:03:58 Telling you how to live your life.

Speaker 1:03:59 And it's kind of when people come up to me and they say, you know, they're young, smart kids, kids that have been interns in my office, "I want to run. I want to be part of government." And I say, "Go out and have a career first. Work someplace." You know, I worked as a physician for about 20 years before I ended up running. And really, you have to have a real career because politics, one, isn't that great a career, and two, there is no guarantee. You can be the smartest person in the world and not win. It doesn't always-- You have to be in the right, right person, right time, right place, and a little bit of luck.

Joe Rogan 1:04:29 Yeah, and, you know, it's like, how can someone effectively govern if you haven't experienced life outside of the government? It just doesn't seem even rational-

Speaker 1:04:41 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:04:42 ... that you could be a person that would be, uh, a good representation of all these hardworking people if you've never actually had a job.

Speaker 1:04:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:49 It just seems weird.

Speaker 1:04:50 Yeah, that's why people thought one of the Bushes was out of touch. I think it was the elder Bush, when he went to the grocery store, and he didn't know what a scanner was. [chuckles] He'd never seen grocery scan because he'd never been in a grocery store.

Joe Rogan 1:05:00 That's, that's funny. But what is it like, like, being, i- I mean, how... It's got to be incredibly frustrating, but it's also got to be bizarre.

Speaker 1:05:10 Yeah, and, um, I'll give you an example what I think is bizarre. So we've been, uh, blowing up these people in boats o- o- off the coast of Venezuela. They're accused of running drugs, but nobody knows their names, and nobody's put up any evidence. When we've, um, had them, September 2nd, two of them were still clinging to the wreckage. They're shipwrecked. Um, they blew them up. And so what m- I think is bizarre is I hear mostly my Republican colleagues say, "Well, um, we shouldn't have to. How do we know they're not armed?" And it's like, but, but there's this thing called presumption of innocence. They say it doesn't apply. Well, it actually always has applied on the oceans. We have always-- We've had drug interdiction, but we have always stopped boats and asked to search them. If they flee or shoot at the Coast Guard, they will get shot and blown up, but it's usually an escalatory sort of steps.... We know that when the Coast Guard boards vessels off of Miami and off of California, one in four of the boats they board don't have any drugs on them. So I, I look at my colleagues who say they're pro-life, and they, they value God's inspiration in life, but they don't give a shit about these people in the boats. And are they terrible people in the boats? I don't know. They're probably poor people in Venezuela and Colombia, and really, they say, "Well, we're at war with them. They're committing war by bringing drugs into America." They're not even coming here. They're going to these islands in the south part of the Caribbean, and the cocaine, and it's not fentanyl at all, the cocaine's going to Europe. Those little boats can't get here. Uh, no one's even asked this common question: Those boats have these four engines on them, they're outboard boats. You can probably go about 100 miles before you have to refuel.

Joe Rogan 1:06:49 Right.

Speaker 1:06:49 They're 2,000 miles from us.

Joe Rogan 1:06:51 Right.

Speaker 1:06:51 They'd have to refuel 20 times to get here. They really-- It was all a pretense and a false argument, but I guess what I don't feel connected to my Republican colleagues is that those lives don't matter at all, and we can just blow them up, and against all justice and against all laws of war, all laws of just war, we never have blown up people who were shipwrecked. It's against the military code of justice to do that, and we're doing it, and everybody just says, "Oh, well, they're drug dealers."

Joe Rogan 1:07:17 Why do you think they were attacking those people? 'Cause I've heard a bunch of different theories, and one of the big theories was they were trying to get the cartel upset at Maduro in order to get him out of office.

Speaker 1:07:29 It's all been a pretense for ele- uh, arresting Maduro. So we have to set up the predicate, we gotta show you we care about drugs, and but the weird thing about it is they really care about drugs, except for the former president of Honduras, Hernández, who was given a 40-year sentence, was tried, was found guilty, he was given 40 years in a US jail, and he's let go at the same time we're arresting Maduro because we're-- he's w- attacking the United States with drugs. And then I get this stuff. I had this on air from a, a respectable journalist the other day. She said, "Well, don't you care about the kids in our country dying from fentanyl?" I said, "Of course I do, but you know, no fentanyl comes from Venezuela. Not a little bit, zero."

Joe Rogan 1:08:09 Yeah, if we were really interested, we'd be attacking Mexico.

Speaker 1:08:12 Well, they wanna do that next.

Joe Rogan 1:08:14 They'd attack the cartels.

Speaker 1:08:14 They want to bomb Mexico.

Joe Rogan 1:08:15 Well, do you think that this is-

Speaker 1:08:16 [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:08:16 ... like, sort of a predicate, like we're-- they're trying to set that up?

Speaker 1:08:19 I hope not. That's why I've opposed it, because, look, I have no love lost for Maduro. I wrote another book called The Case Against Socialism. I think that socialism, historically, there's been a link between socialism and state-sponsored violence, and so I- in the book, we talk about a 16-year-old girl who has a gang, and her gang's turf or territory are the dumpsters outside of restaurants to scavenge for food. That's what, uh, Maduro and Chávez did, did to Venezuela, and so I'm glad he's gone. I'm glad s- you know, I hope they choose wiser, but at the same time, if the predicate is we're going to snatch people, why don't we snatch da Silva from Brazil? Some people say Bolsonaro is unfairly in prison, may be true, and they say da Silva cheated in the election. May also be true, but should the President of the United States, no matter who or she, he or she is, have the ability, without a vote of Congress, the people's representatives, just go snatch people out of jails in Brazil and put a new government in? One, it doesn't usually work. Yeah, I'm hoping it's successful here, but, you know, we've tried it in other places. Uh, it's one of the things I liked about Donald Trump. He was against regime change in Iraq.

Joe Rogan 1:09:28 Right.

Speaker 1:09:28 He was against regime change in Libya, and it didn't work real well in Iraq or Libya.

Joe Rogan 1:09:33 So what do you think changed? Why do you, why do you think they're so interested in Venezuela?

Speaker 1:09:36 Influence.

Joe Rogan 1:09:36 Do you think it's just because of the oil?

Speaker 1:09:38 Influence, and I've, I've jokingly said that there ought to be a-

Joe Rogan 1:09:41 ... Uh, reoccurring issue that we thought was resolved with the software. We're back? Okay. All right, we're good. Um-

Speaker 1:09:48 Sorry, folks, the program was interrupted by the NSA. [laughing] Uh, you know, they are spying on the show to see if-

Joe Rogan 1:09:55 So, so here's the question: Uh, the Biden administration had a $20 million... Was it $20 or $22 million bounty on Maduro?

Speaker 1:10:02 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:10:02 Like, they've wanted Maduro out forever. Why was that?

Speaker 1:10:06 Um, because, uh, you know, they d- they've, they don't have free elections.

Joe Rogan 1:10:11 Right.

Speaker 1:10:11 It's an authoritarian government. The people are suffering, so it's this idea that that's wrong and government should... A- and, and I think that's a noble concept, to want better government, more freedom for people, but I could probably list for you a dozen different countries that have autocratic rulers right now, and we could go in, and we could arrest them all and put people in place, but it sometimes backfires. For example, I think one of the things... I think there's a good feeling towards America from a lot of Venezuelans right now that are happy that Maduro is gone. But ask them again in six months if we're still controlling their oil and we're doling out a little bit of money, but the money's not going to the people, it's going to the socialist government. So you realize we've traded one socialist for another.

Joe Rogan 1:10:55 Right.

Speaker 1:10:56 Maduro's gone, but his second in charge, who was elected with him and holds all of his beliefs, is there, and if she graciously or fearfully decides to accept what they're telling her, that we're gonna confiscate all the oil, and we're gonna sell it on the international market, and we're gonna give her a little bit back if she behaves, and let's say that austerity doesn't lead to a real vibrant economy, I think six months from now, the people will be just as upset as they were, and they'll still have the same government, essentially.

Joe Rogan 1:11:25 Right. Um, so o- one of the things that I've read was one of the primary reasons why we went in was because Russia and China were also interested in Venezuela's oil, and China had met with Maduro literally the day that he was kidnapped by the United States, right?

Speaker 1:11:44 Right.... Yeah, uh, I think China gets about 4% of their oil, so it's a small amount of their oil. The best way, I think, is not through war to keep China out of, uh, South America. It's through, um, trade, cooperation. That's why threatening to bomb Colombia was a bad idea, because we should continue to trade. We buy coffee from them, we buy bananas from down there. We should have trade. So this Monday, I s- I sent the president a text, and he responded to me. I said, "The ambassador called me, and he said their president's been trying for several months to get a phone call through, and he'd love to talk to President Trump." And the good thing about President Trump, and this is something I always really like about him, he'll make decisions on the spot. He didn't ask a committee to vote on whether he can talk to the president. He said, "Of course, I will." And the president still has good instincts. I disagreed with m- the bombing of the boats and the bombing of Maduro. I'm not too unhappy with the result, but I don't want the s- the, the chaos to spread to Colombia, and I think Colombia does cooperate with us, particularly on the drug trade. It's not perfect, but they, they do cooperate. But he did end up making a phone call to the president of Colombia, and I think the, um, the setting is for less, uh, of a problem. And you say: Well, why have things changed from where he was talking about regime change in the campaign? Some of it's the influence of the people around him. Uh, I've jokingly said we ought to pass a law saying Lindsey Graham shouldn't be allowed in the White House-

Joe Rogan 1:13:10 [chuckles]

Speaker 1:13:10 ... because I think, uh, he, uh, is a bad influence. And I, Lindsey and I are, are friends, you know, we, we, we do okay, but he's much more for a different type of philosophy from me. I say we fight when we have to. We fight when attacked, and that's about it. I'm not too interested in fixing every problem around the world. Look, we have a $2 trillion deficit. We can't really go fix every problem in every country, and sometimes when we try to change a regime and put better people in, it actually we get the opposite.

Joe Rogan 1:13:38 Right. Well, this is your dad's philosophy as well.

Speaker 1:13:41 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:13:41 It's one of the things I really enjoyed about him. Uh, when you see these, uh, things at play, like the kidnapping of Venezuela and the bombing of the boats, how informed are you about why they're making their decisions? Are you, uh, uh, a s- uh, do you have conversations with the people that are making the decisions?

Speaker 1:14:01 We do, but the reasoning is mostly public. Like, we'll get briefings. We've had briefings on the boats, um-

Joe Rogan 1:14:08 Like, what do they say in those briefings?

Speaker 1:14:10 Um, they say that, uh... I'll ask, uh, "Are they carrying arms?" 'Cause it kind of makes a difference when they kill unarmed people to me.

Joe Rogan 1:14:18 Right.

Speaker 1:14:18 And they'll say, "Yes, their arms are drugs, and they're invading us with drugs."

Joe Rogan 1:14:23 Okay, but they're not really-

Speaker 1:14:25 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:14:25 ... right? Because if they're-

Speaker 1:14:26 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:14:26 ... if you look at it geographically, like you were just saying, they're so far away from us.

Speaker 1:14:30 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:14:30 They're in small boats, and, and they're not bringing those drugs to the United States.

Speaker 1:14:34 And the only way they can make war with the drugs is if they're hitting you over the head with the drugs and then making you take the drugs. All right? So I think that's ridiculous, and I think that there is a difference between crime and war, and the reason why they have to get it is it normally-- like, if let's say the boat came all the way here, that speedboat got all the way to Miami, offloaded it into a U-Haul truck, and it's going down the road. Do we stand on the side of the road and hit it with little grenade launchers? Nobody would be for that. All of a sudden, we're going to believe that, well, gosh, that might be the wrong-- we might blow up the wrong truck, or maybe we got the information wrong. We would stop and search them. But why don't we do the boats? The Coast Guard actually still does. Amidst all this, Coast Guard is still top, stopping dozens of boats, but they tell us we're only blowing up the ones that are related to the terrorists, the Tren de Aragua or whatever.

Joe Rogan 1:15:27 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:15:28 Um, I don't know how they can know that with certainty. I don't know how they can know with certainty, uh, that some of the... I think most of these are probably drug boats.

Joe Rogan 1:15:34 So why do you think they're doing it then?

Speaker 1:15:36 They wanted, they wanted regime change, and I think Rubio has wanted regime change. He's been itching for it for 15 years, and I think he has a great deal of influence with the president, and they've convinced... And it's, it's a, it's a- selling someone like the president that he can use his power for good is a, is a, an argument that I think a lot of people would succumb to. He believes that he's doing good, and if it all works out and freedom rings true in, in Venezuela, people will say: "Well, gosh, yeah, I think he did..." And that's why now people think he did the right thing. I think people don't know yet what's gonna happen, whether or not people are gonna be happy keeping the same socialist government, whether they'll have a free election and somebody else will win, isn't known yet. But I do think that while he's done that, and it seems to have worked, it's my job and others to say that really invading Greenland's not a, a reasonable thing. Invading Cuba, invading Colombia, that there has to be pushback, but I get a lot of flak. I mean, there are, there are, uh, people that rally behind the president that are telling me I need to pipe down, that I need to be quiet. So the threats-

Joe Rogan 1:16:41 Who tells you that?

Speaker 1:16:42 [chuckles] Well, a lot of the pe- the, the mob, the, the internet mob is-

Joe Rogan 1:16:47 Oh, the internet

Speaker 1:16:48 ... is angry. Is angry.

Joe Rogan 1:16:49 Yeah, you can't read that.

Speaker 1:16:50 Yeah, you can't.

Joe Rogan 1:16:51 You can't listen to those people.

Speaker 1:16:52 But yeah, you gotta be a little bit wary also. But, I mean, there, there is a thought, and I, I don't think it's good for government, though. I also don't even think it's good for the president, who I largely like on a lot of issues. It's not good for him to have no critics, for people to be afraid, uh, to criticize him.

Joe Rogan 1:17:06 I agree. Um, so is the argument that they want regime change, that these cartels are working with Maduro?

Speaker 1:17:16 Um-

Joe Rogan 1:17:16 And that's why we blow them up?

Speaker 1:17:18 That's sort of the argument, but I don't think the cartels and the drugs are really important. It's about regime change, 'cause there's-

Joe Rogan 1:17:23 But, okay, but if it's about regime change, why blow up the drug boats?

Speaker 1:17:27 Because they need a drug predicate. They need a-- They want to say this isn't war. It is kind of war, and we're gonna take people as if it's war, but it's not really war. It was an arrest warrant. And they've actually persuaded some otherwise good people in my caucus to say: "Well, normally, I would be against bombing another nation's capital and removing the leader. Oh, but he was indicted for, for..." [chuckles] The indictment. Most people don't know this, part of the indictment is for drugs, but that's- he's breaking a US law. How do we indict foreigners in their country? They haven't broken a law in our country for breaking a law. But other than drugs, they've also indicted Maduro for, uh, possessing or conspiring to possess machine guns.... and it's like, what leader in the world doesn't have security guards with machine guns? We have machine guns. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:18:11 Wait a minute. Did Maduro personally have illegal machine guns? And illegal how? Is it illegal internationally? Like, what does that mean?

Speaker 1:18:19 It means absolutely nothing.

Joe Rogan 1:18:20 But that's crazy-

Speaker 1:18:21 It's, it's-

Joe Rogan 1:18:21 That means just-

Speaker 1:18:21 It's completely insane

Joe Rogan 1:18:21 ... how many people in Texas- [laughing] ... have machine guns? You could-

Speaker 1:18:25 Yeah, I us-

Joe Rogan 1:18:25 legally have them here.

Speaker 1:18:26 I used to go to the Machine Gun Fest, and, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:18:28 [laughing]

Speaker 1:18:29 ... there was a machine, there was a machine gun shootout, and they'd have a line of 50 machine guns, and you have to have a special permit to get them-

Joe Rogan 1:18:34 Right

Speaker 1:18:34 ... but you can get them. And, uh, but the thing is, is what's ridiculous about it is our leaders, our soldiers, have machine guns.

Joe Rogan 1:18:41 Of course.

Speaker 1:18:42 Every country that has soldiers and security forces has machine guns. But to indict him? But that's then their argument, is it's okay to blow up Caracas. It's okay to do something that looks like a, that looks like a war, but it's not a war 'cause it was just an arrest warrant. It's a game- it's gamesmanship for people who might succumb to a, a, a, I think, a silly argument.

Joe Rogan 1:19:03 So but... So what is the primary motivation for regime change? It's- it can't just be he's a bad guy-

Speaker 1:19:11 Well, no, I think it-

Joe Rogan 1:19:11 ... because there's a lot of bad guys.

Speaker 1:19:12 You know, there's, uh... I think a country suffers, and they want- people justifiably want better stuff for the people there. I think they also do worry, as you mentioned earlier, they say there's too much influence of, of Russia and China there. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:19:25 I think that's what I've been reading most that makes sense, is that the, the concern was that China or Russia was gonna ramp up oil production.

Speaker 1:19:34 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:19:35 But I don't know.

Speaker 1:19:37 You know, the, th- the whole oil situation is an example of why socialism doesn't work very well. I mean, it's like 30 years old. Everything's old, everything's rotting and rusting. They do a million barrels a day. They have more oil than Saudi Arabia, but they, they are just... It's completely incompetent, and mainly because the one thing that capitalism does is it gives you supply and demand and a price, and they've controlled the price, not the oil price, 'cause that's an international price, but they've controlled the price of all the things that go into the equipment and who owns it. So you have a bunch of people who studied in Marxism in Cuba running the companies.

Joe Rogan 1:20:15 Mm.

Speaker 1:20:15 That's not what we do here. You either make a profit here or you get fired.

Joe Rogan 1:20:19 Isn't the oil in a much more difficult form to extract than the oil in Saudi Arabia? So by saying they have more oil than Saudi Arabia, maybe, but it's-

Speaker 1:20:28 That may be true. That may be true.

Joe Rogan 1:20:30 I-

Speaker 1:20:30 There's a different, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:20:30 I think it's, like, almost like asphalt

Speaker 1:20:32 ... it's either a lot of it's heavy c- crude, I think. I don't know the details of the, uh, which kind of oil they have, but I think there probably are some technological problems. But I think there's- I think it's easy to make the argument that they're not hitting their, their maximum efficiency with, you know, the current socialist government.

Joe Rogan 1:20:48 Right. Um, I think that's a good argument. Uh, but the, the, the... What I've read about the extraction was that the oil that is in Venezuela is almost like asphalt, and that it requires all these-

Speaker 1:21:02 Th- yeah, that could be

Joe Rogan 1:21:03 ... chemicals-

Speaker 1:21:04 I think then-

Joe Rogan 1:21:04 ... to break it down.

Speaker 1:21:05 Uh, and so there may be more difficulty than Saudi Arabia, but I think also the system, you know... So when you, when you look at Venezuela, and you look at what happens under price controls, you need prices to go up and down based on demand because, um, if you don't, you have shortages. If you set the price too low, and I'm a manufacturer, I'm not gonna sell it for that, so I- you all of a sudden get shortage. If you set the price too high, then it just sits on the shelf, and a black market develops. There was a story in, um, Behind the Iron Curtain, and I think it was in Poland. I love this story. The guy goes in a store, and he says, "Oh, are you the store that doesn't have any eggs?" And the shop owner said, "No, no, no. We're the store that doesn't have any toilet paper. The store across the street is the one that doesn't have any eggs." [chuckles] But it was so common that you always knew that you're al- the stores were always missing something. There were always shortages, and this is the, the main thing about prices that is so incredibly important, and people don't think about it, but it's incredibly important to let prices go up and down without the government getting involved. That's why, like, it's a mistake, it'll sound right, but, uh, president wants to ban interest rates above 10% for credit cards. Well, part of the interest rate being much higher if you're going for a same-day loan is, one, you're a much higher risk, you're more desperate, but also by you having to pay 30%, it's going to teach you to be a better planner the next time because you, you can't keep borrowing at 30%. But the marketplace demands the 30%, is what the market will bear, and if it was too much, then the interest rate will come down. And no one should borrow at 30%. I mean, they should teach in high school how people to plan their budget-

Joe Rogan 1:22:39 Don't they-

Speaker 1:22:39 ... so you don't do that

Joe Rogan 1:22:40 ... sneak those in on college students, those kind of credit-

Speaker 1:22:42 College students-

Joe Rogan 1:22:43 ... people that are a little bit more at risk?

Speaker 1:22:44 We're talking about igno- we're talking about ignorant people.

Joe Rogan 1:22:46 Yeah.

Speaker 1:22:46 College students is, uh, they're high up on the list of ignorant people or people lacking common sense. Yeah, it's that, 'cause people get-

Joe Rogan 1:22:54 Well, they're also very young.

Speaker 1:22:54 Yeah, uh, yeah, people get into a gambling problem. They get into-

Joe Rogan 1:22:57 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:22:58 ... some problem where they don't have money. But if you say it can be 10%, what does that tell me about my behavior? I'll just keep borrowing at 10%. I might have to stop someday at 30%. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:23:08 Mm.

Speaker 1:23:08 You know what I mean? And so the marketplace develops these things, but that price is sending signals back to people. It's the same way with interest rates on houses. Uh, the president's always like, "We, we need lower interest rates. Houses are so expensive." Why don't we just fix the price at, at 2% and tell the banks they can't get more than 2%? The problem is this: if, if there's a boom, and everybody's buying houses, and the demand goes up for houses, prices will go up, the demand for the money goes up, and as the interest rates rise, then the economy will slow down. So in 2000, from 2000 to about 2007, the Federal Reserve kept the interest rates low. It's like 2%. You could get money, it was free, and there was this boom in houses, and there was some dishonesty, too, in the subprime market, but the boom kept going. If interest rates had risen to 4 or 5%, home sales would have gone down, and people would have lamented that, but you wouldn't have gotten such an enormous boom in the crash. So the cycle of the economy going up and down is dictated by interest rates, and you want interest rates. You don't want high interest rates. Nobody wants that. But if you don't allow them to move, that sends a signal back that, that we're buying too many houses, and we're building too many houses, and we'll slow down. If you just send the signal to keep interest rates at 2, you get the boom so high up here that the crash is devastating, like it was in 2010.

Joe Rogan 1:24:28 What, what are your feelings about corporations buying up-... personal homes. Like, w- you, there's Blackstone, and there, there's a bunch of different co- corporations that have bought, I don't know if it's Blackstone, but I heard that Blackstone, there was a, a d- a drop in their stock price because of this thing that Trump is trying to do now to stop corporations from buying individual family homes-

Speaker 1:24:53 Right

Joe Rogan 1:24:53 - and then leasing them out to people.

Speaker 1:24:54 Yeah. So in a, in a, in a free market, in a free world where you can choose a hemp product, you also make contracts with who you sell to.

Joe Rogan 1:25:02 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:25:03 So for me to tell you, to me, it's a freedom issue. If I tell you, uh, you can't sell your house to Blackstone, that's me limiting your choices. Maybe Blackstone's gonna give you 5% more. I'm stealing 5% from you.

Joe Rogan 1:25:15 Right.

Speaker 1:25:15 And it's not a given that it's going to be bad. It might be bad, but I think if you look at this carefully, for example, what's one of the impediments or one of the costs of buying or selling a house is the real estate price. Uh, so the realtor takes, you know, they used to take what? Like, 6%, but, you know, now sometimes you can get 3%, and you go through a bigger company. So corporatization or making something bigger, where a bigger entity owns something, sometimes leads to lower cost because they can actually lower cost. So, uh, it-- to me, it's just a freedom issue. I don't think actually, probably... I think the price of homes has gone up 'cause the value of dollar has gone down. We are destroying the dollar. It's like, is gold more precious? No, people are freaking out about how many dollars have been printed and how much debt we're incurring, so the dollar loses its value, and prices are home. I don't... I, I'm not making light of the problem. You know, I have kids of the age of trying to get into houses. It's, it's difficult. Prices are extraordinarily high, and interest rates are still high, too.

Joe Rogan 1:26:12 Yeah, I think the, the fear is, like, people are terrified that these enormous corporations are gonna buy up all of the single-family homes, and you won't be able to get one, and you'll be forced to lease a home, and you'll never-

Speaker 1:26:24 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:26:24 ... be able to own a home.

Speaker 1:26:26 I w-

Joe Rogan 1:26:26 That's the fear.

Speaker 1:26:26 Yeah, I, I know. I think I would probably wanna study it more thoroughly to find out if that's actually the result, 'cause some people talk about a fear of it happening. Um, you know, if, if I'm Blackstone, I'm not doing stuff just to hold them around. I'm not like, uh, you know, Mr. Potter on, you know, It's a Wonderful Life-

Joe Rogan 1:26:45 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:26:45 ... and wringing my hands together, and I'm gonna wait. They're, they, they don't make any money holding on to a bunch of houses. They're gonna have to sell them, and it may be... What if, what if Blackstone does have 10,000 homes? Maybe they'll do it with a reduced, you go directly to them by website. Um, Goldman Sachs owns homes. There are entities like this, uh, Buffett, War- you know, Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway owns homes as well. So I don't think it's a brand-new thing, but I would explore it. I think the- it's a reaction to think big is bad and that these big players are gonna rip us off. But if it's a free contract, I think more of whether or not I should infringe on your liberty and tell you, "You can't sell your house to Blackstone." I think that's, that's me limiting your ability to contract with whoever you want.

Joe Rogan 1:27:27 That makes sense. Um, I think the fear is... Well, the, the only reason why they would be doing it is that they could make more money leasing the homes out than-

Speaker 1:27:37 Yeah, I don't know. Um, the same way with buying apartments, too. I'm, I'm guessing they bought apartments, too, because m- kids are staying in apartments longer, and the apartment business has been a really good business for, like, the last 10 years, buying apartments, but corporations own apartments. I mean, the real disaster isn't stuff like that, the marketplace. The disaster of, like, rent and, uh, homes and not having enough places like to live in Manhattan, which is very expensive, or New York in general, and I, I, I'm positive the socialist is gonna make it worse. Rent control, what does that mean? So if you're in the middle of Manhattan and you can get an apartment for $300, you're like, "Oh, that's great." But if I'm the landlord and all the stuff's broken in there, and there's holes in the walls, I'm not fixing them for [chuckles] $300 a month.

Joe Rogan 1:28:20 Right.

Speaker 1:28:20 I, I need $3,000 a month to keep the place up. So what happens is the apartments go to, you know, you know, into ruin, and also there's a shortage. You need money, and you need big people with money to build apartment complexes, particularly in New York, where you've got to tear something down and build something new. I'm not doing it if you're gonna-

Joe Rogan 1:28:39 Yeah

Speaker 1:28:39 ... tell me what my rent's gonna be. So socialism doesn't work, and the one thing people don't understand about it, 'cause they, they fear somebody being ripped off and how expensive something is, is there was an eco- an economist, Joseph Schumpeter, and he, he put it this way: He said, "The miracle of capitalism is not that the queen can buy silk stockings, but the factory girl can." But in the beginning, the first person and the only person to buy them will be queens and kings and rich people. So the story of calculators, my dad had a calculator. He was a doctor, and we were well-to-do. We weren't extraordinarily rich, but well-to-do. He had a calculator for 300 bucks in the 1970s. All it could do is add, subtract, and multiply, and it was about this thick and this big, but you can go tour a condo and pretend to buy a condo, and the real estate agent will give you a calculator now. But in the beginning, only rich people got them. But if you forbid rich people from getting them at a higher, high price, the only way it gets to a low price ... Like, Tesla started with more expensive cars at a high price. They're coming down, but they only come down because rich people bought them first. So we can't be- we can never be of the notion that we're gonna make things better by preventing prices from being too high in something. It's how products get started. So the queen may have bought the first s- uh, silk stockings, but eventually, capitalism brings the price down enough that you have mass distribution, and actually, a factory girl can buy them.

Joe Rogan 1:30:03 Cell phones are a good argument about that-

Speaker 1:30:04 Yep, exactly

Joe Rogan 1:30:05 ... in that defense. Um, w- so when it, when it comes to the economy, like, and w- when it comes to s- spending money, what, w- what do you think can be done differently? Like, say, if you had a magic wand, and you could s- turn things around, what would you do differently?

Speaker 1:30:25 I think the first thing to acknowledge is both parties are equally guilty. The debt is the v- problem of both parties, and the spending is both parties. And there is a compromise. I tell people it's a dirty little deal that's going on right in front of your nose. The, the right, Lindsey Graham and the war hawks, want more military money.... the left, Chris Murphy and, uh, Booker, they, they want more welfare. What's the compromise? You scratch my back, I'll scratch you. I'll let you have your military money if you let me have the welfare money. So the compromise of the last fifty years is they've both grown enormously. But the budget we vote on is only one-third of the spending. Two-thirds of the spending is mandatory spending that's just on autopilot. We never vote on it. The one-third that we vote on is about $2 trillion. That's what the deficit is. So when I vote for spending, and I vote against most of it, almost all of that is borrowed. What would be the compromise that would fix it? The reverse. I would go to, um, you know, the left, my buddy Ron Wyden, who I am good friends with, and I would say, "Look, we're out of money. The interest is killing us. It's crowding everything out. What if we spend 1% less next year on welfare? And I'll tell my party they have to spend 1% less on military." If you do that across the board, you'd have to include the mandatory programs, you can balance your budget gradually over a five-year period, and I've called this the Penny Plan. And I think it's a compromise because instead of... What conservatives have typically done is they've said, "It's Sesame Street. If we can get rid of public TV and Sesame Street, we'll, we'll show those liberals and we'll balance the budget." Well, it's not enough money, and I'm not against doing it.

Joe Rogan 1:32:04 Yeah.

Speaker 1:32:04 I voted to reduce the money, but there are some people on the left who live and die by public TV, and they think it's the greatest thing, and it's an offense to them. So rather than cut 100% of it, let's cut the- and you can balance the budget right now if you cut 6% of the military, 6% of Sesame Street, 6% of everything everybody wants, and I think you could actually do it. And I try this message out sometime. Everybody that comes to Washington wants money, and there are usually things that you can have sympathy for. So one week they come, and they wear the purple ribbons, and it's for Alzheimer's disease. Well, I have family members who have Alzheimer's. I have a great deal of sympathy, but we're $2 trillion short. So what I usually say to them is, "We're a rich country, and we should be able to spend some of our money on Alzheimer's research. But you got $100 million last year." I'm making up the number. "But let's say you got $100 million last year, and because we're short of money, everybody has to get less this year. Would it be okay if I only vote for $94 million for you next year?" And when you put it that way, and they're usually in there with tears running down their face, talking about their mom and their grandmother and Alzheimer's, and they're worried they're gonna get it. To a person, you look around the table, and they say, "Well, that sounds kind of fair. Everybody has to take a hit, right? Ninety-four percent." Almost, uh, almost everything that is like... For example, food stamps. People say, "Well, the people are gonna starve without food stamps." Well, why don't we just get rid of Coca-Cola and Pepsi? No sugar dr- uh, no sugar drinks on food stamps. That's, uh, 10% of food stamps. That'd be a 10% cut. We'll do- we'll- we're gonna spend 10% less. No one's gonna starve.

Joe Rogan 1:33:39 Would you spend... Hold on, but would you spend less, or would you just limit the purchasing to non-

Speaker 1:33:44 We'll probably be lucky just to limit the purchase, but I would spend less.

Joe Rogan 1:33:46 But you couldn't spend- but how could you spend less? You would have to give them less, and you say, "Hey, not only can you not buy sugary drinks, but now you'll have less money to buy healthy food, which is more expensive."

Speaker 1:33:55 Well, well, what, what, what you would do is-

Joe Rogan 1:33:57 But you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1:33:58 Well, maybe. If you had a budget, let's say it's $100 million, and next year the food stamp budget is gonna be $94 million, and you say you can't buy Coca-Cola and Pepsi and sugared drinks, they would still have to make their decisions with a little bit less, but they, on average, are spending 6% or... Yeah, I think it's about- no, I think it's about 10% of the dollars are going towards these sugared drinks. They would have to make decisions to do it, but I think even something like food stamps, they don't- there's a strong argument, "Oh, people will be hungry." Hunger is not a problem in our country. It really isn't. Our problem is too much food. It, it frankly is. There is no one starving in our country. There is food everywhere.

Joe Rogan 1:34:37 Right, but it's not too much food. It's non-nutritious food. I mean, it's not even-

Speaker 1:34:42 Too much bad food.

Joe Rogan 1:34:42 It's not even food.

Speaker 1:34:44 Well, you're right. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:34:44 It's things you eat that have no nutrition in it at all-

Speaker 1:34:47 Exactly

Joe Rogan 1:34:47 ... like Coca-Cola.

Speaker 1:34:48 Yes, exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:34:49 Like candy and cookies and all the shit that you can buy with food stamps.

Speaker 1:34:51 And I've been talking- you can get candies. You know, you can get a bag of candy on your food stamps.

Joe Rogan 1:34:56 Right.

Speaker 1:34:56 There's no... That should- And so I've been talking about this for years, and so I had a Democrat senator who I can talk to, we're friends. We're walking down the hall, and I tell him about it. He says, "Well, that sounds reasonable, but I don't want to reduce the dollar." So what you're saying is the compromise is probably Democrats are never gonna vote to reduce the dollars. We should, but we won't get it. But even when we got- push came to shove, his staff piped up, and they said, "Oh, I thought you were a libertarian. I thought you were for choice." And I said, "I am, with your money. [chuckles] I mean, the taxpayer money. We don't let you buy alcohol."

Joe Rogan 1:35:27 Right.

Speaker 1:35:27 I think it's arguable that sugar drinks are as bad as buying alcohol.

Joe Rogan 1:35:31 It's close.

Speaker 1:35:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:35:32 I mean, certainly in terms of health consequences.

Speaker 1:35:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:35:35 You know, diabetes and obesity and all the other comorbidities that come along with more obesity. But the thing is, it's like if you're asking them to buy healthy food, healthy bo- food is definitely more expensive.

Speaker 1:35:48 Sometimes. If you want to go to Whole-

Joe Rogan 1:35:49 Sometimes?

Speaker 1:35:50 Well, if you want to go to Whole Foods and, and buy things there, it is more expensive to buy all the fresh fruits and things, but there is a lot of things that you can buy that really, frankly, aren't, uh... You know, a head of lettuce is not that expensive.

Joe Rogan 1:36:02 Right, but it's not gonna fill you up.

Speaker 1:36:03 Beans aren't that-

Joe Rogan 1:36:03 If you get- if you want-

Speaker 1:36:04 Well-

Joe Rogan 1:36:04 ... a calorie-rich food-

Speaker 1:36:06 Right

Joe Rogan 1:36:06 ... if you want to match calorie per calorie-

Speaker 1:36:08 Beans aren't that expensive, and they're healthier for you than most-

Joe Rogan 1:36:11 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:36:11 ... of the things we eat. But really, the thing is, is-

Joe Rogan 1:36:13 You gonna teach people how to cook now?

Speaker 1:36:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:36:15 That's the problem.

Speaker 1:36:15 Actually, I would. [chuckles] I- I... Not me.

Joe Rogan 1:36:18 Right.

Speaker 1:36:18 Uh, I, I would have, uh, this in schools. So I would have, uh, the old concept of home economics in schools, and here's what I would teach. Uh, some of this comes from a book. There was a book written by Charles Murray years ago called Coming Apart, and it, it compared people and said, "These are the rich people in your society, and these are the poor people." Just divide it into two groups, and the two main statistics that put you in either rich group or poor group, having kids before you were married and, uh, education.

Joe Rogan 1:36:46 Charles Murray, isn't that the guy that had very controversial ideas about race and IQ?

Speaker 1:36:50 Uh, yep.... yeah, yeah, but this wasn't racial. This was, uh, based on, um, whether or not you, um, you know, uh, were in one of those two categories. But I would teach this in home economics. I wouldn't teach morality. I wouldn't teach people that it's evil to have sex. I would say that the odds are, the statistics are, if you have not had your children, you have a choice. The statistics are overwhelming that if you have your kids before you're married, uh, you'll be poor, and the thing is, it is true. Why not teach that? But in that same class, I would teach, uh, how to go to the grocery store, what to buy, and also how to, uh, to prepare it. I'd go to the grocery store. I would do this for obese people in our country. So Medicaid pays just gazillions of dollars for diabetes and all this stuff. I would pay for, um, dietary training, but I actually think you need to go to the grocery store with people and show them all the crap they're putting in their cart that they shouldn't be putting in.

Joe Rogan 1:37:46 That sounds like you're for another government program.

Speaker 1:37:48 [laughing] Damn, you got me!

Joe Rogan 1:37:50 Well, it's also-

Speaker 1:37:51 You got me.

Joe Rogan 1:37:52 It's like, it sounds great on paper, but the reality is, in order to change people's behavior, it takes a radical shift of your perceptions.

Speaker 1:37:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:37:59 And that's very difficult to do. You, you can't just teach, teach people like, "This is how you make spaghetti and meatballs-

Speaker 1:38:04 Right

Joe Rogan 1:38:04 ... and then now they're gonna eat healthy." It's, it's not that spaghetti and meatballs is the most healthy.

Speaker 1:38:08 Well, I mean, you don't really have to teach people. People aren't as dumb as you think they are, so-

Joe Rogan 1:38:11 It's not that they're dumb, it's just they're set in their ways.

Speaker 1:38:13 I know, but they... You're right.

Joe Rogan 1:38:14 To, to change people's behavior patterns-

Speaker 1:38:16 But that's why you have to give them-

Joe Rogan 1:38:17 ... is extraordinarily difficult.

Speaker 1:38:18 I know, but that's why they have to be able- have to make choices. They become smart very quickly. If you give somebody 96% or 94% of what they were getting for food stamps, they will be smart within a week. They, they-

Joe Rogan 1:38:29 Oh

Speaker 1:38:29 ... will make these decisions.

Joe Rogan 1:38:30 I, I, I would argue against that. I, I would- I think that there's a problem in that people are very set in their ways, and they've developed a pattern of behavior-

Speaker 1:38:39 Right

Joe Rogan 1:38:39 ... over the course of decades. So you're not just gonna shift with a change in policy and a reduction in their food stamps.

Speaker 1:38:44 What, what about this? Do you think anybody has changed their lifestyle in America since two people at McDonald's costs 20 bucks to eat now? A burger, a drink, and fries is 20 bucks for two people. Do you think anybody in America has shifted their buying patterns for food and are eating at home more? I guarantee you, thousands and thousands of people are eating, uh, less out.

Joe Rogan 1:39:03 Probably, yeah-

Speaker 1:39:04 I've seen many go out of business, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:39:06 But it's still a bad example because McDonald's is fucking terrible for you, too.

Speaker 1:39:09 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:39:09 Like, that doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1:39:10 The president eats it. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:39:13 Yeah. Well, I do, too, but it's, it's not good for you. Filet-o-Fish is-

Speaker 1:39:16 No, but I think people-

Joe Rogan 1:39:17 ... actually a delicious little sandwich

Speaker 1:39:17 ... people will not-- You can't teach-- I, I agree with you to a certain extent, that I don't think you can teach people to make wiser decisions. You can sort of encourage it as part of the educational model, and I wouldn't spend more money on this. We spend a lot of money on education. I would make this part of the curriculum. But I do think that if you aren't given a financial incentive to make these decisions, you won't do it. You could ban the foods, and I actually am for taking them off the formulary. Uh, we have something called WIC, which is, uh, uh, w- um, Women and Children. It's for food during pregnancy. It only has healthy food on it. You can't get Coca-Cola with your WIC dollars, but you can go through the line with your SNAP, plus your WIC, and all that stuff, and... But I'd get rid of the sugared drinks, I'd get rid of chips, I'd get rid of candy-

Joe Rogan 1:40:01 Yeah

Speaker 1:40:01 ... Ding Dongs, and doughnuts.

Joe Rogan 1:40:02 Well, I think that's a no-brainer.

Speaker 1:40:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:40:04 That's a no-brainer because that stuff's not food.

Speaker 1:40:05 But, but, but I don't have one Democrat sign on. I have yet to get a Democrat. No reduction in money, so my bill doesn't reduce money. I think we should-

Joe Rogan 1:40:13 You know, the problem is-

Speaker 1:40:14 But I don't have the votes

Joe Rogan 1:40:15 ... their voters.

Speaker 1:40:15 But the Democrats won't vote.

Joe Rogan 1:40:16 They're held prisoner by their voters. Their vote- their voters want that. They don't want you to-

Speaker 1:40:21 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:40:21 ... tell them what to do with that money, and they- a lot of people feel entitled to that money, which is also very odd.

Speaker 1:40:26 Yeah, but I don't do it because I dislike people on food stamps. I do it because I want them to be healthier.

Joe Rogan 1:40:32 Yes.

Speaker 1:40:32 And I actually don't want... You know, the goal is- see, people think the goal is we need more Medicaid. No, what we need is less people on Medicaid. The goal should be an economy where 5% of the economy, really, in a f- good, functioning world, five, six, not much more than that, shouldn't be able to take care of themselves. There really should be, um, healthcare that almost everybody can afford, um, except for a small percentage of people. You know, once you have kidney disease, you're on dialysis, it's sort of an expense, so almost everybody's on Medicaid.

Joe Rogan 1:41:02 Yeah.

Speaker 1:41:02 It's a little more understandable. Diabetes, if we fed people right, 80% of adult-onset diabetes is curable by loss of weight.

Joe Rogan 1:41:09 Right. Um, uh, I, I see, and I, I, I see where they're gonna argue against what you're saying about food stamps and, and, you know, from this libertarian perspective, but I think you're absolutely right, in that you should be allowed to do whatever you want with your own money. But if you're gonna get government assistance, there should be some sort of a limitation to you getting food that's only healthy. We shouldn't be paying for you to kill yourself-

Speaker 1:41:32 Right

Joe Rogan 1:41:32 ... just like you can't buy cigarettes-

Speaker 1:41:34 Right

Joe Rogan 1:41:35 ... right? You can't buy alcohol.

Speaker 1:41:36 And this is something Bobby Kennedy is changing, and they hate him, just hate him.

Joe Rogan 1:41:40 Because they're voters.

Speaker 1:41:41 They hate-

Joe Rogan 1:41:41 Their voters know-

Speaker 1:41:42 No, not the voters, the establishment hates him more.

Joe Rogan 1:41:45 Of course.

Speaker 1:41:45 His own family hates him more. But you know what? If he only does one thing, and one thing he's remembered for, is treating sugar as a, not a sin, as a, as a bad food.

Joe Rogan 1:41:57 Right.

Speaker 1:41:57 Sugar added, to convince us that adding sugar to cereals and all these things that we add sugar to, that it's bad for your health, that will transform if, if, you know, the people-

Joe Rogan 1:42:08 It certainly will

Speaker 1:42:08 ... who accept that.

Joe Rogan 1:42:09 It certainly will, and the education, the understanding of that. When I was a kid, and we, we- I talked about this the other day with my friend Whitney. We were doing a podcast. Like, we didn't think sugar was bad for you, we just thought it gave you cavities.

Speaker 1:42:20 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:42:21 You know?

Speaker 1:42:21 Yeah, I agree.

Joe Rogan 1:42:21 We would throw sugar-

Speaker 1:42:22 I agree

Joe Rogan 1:42:22 ... on our cereal, and-

Speaker 1:42:24 Right

Joe Rogan 1:42:24 ... people put sugar in their coffee, and sugar in this, and sugar... Nobody thought anything of it.

Speaker 1:42:28 But since the government is responsible for so much food anyway, think about how healthy. I don't think we should have, uh, sugared drinks in high schools. They have machines in all the high schools, and they say, "Oh, we get extra money for our football field." Let them put non-sugar drinks in. I- if you really want-

Joe Rogan 1:42:43 Yes

Speaker 1:42:43 ... their advertising dollars.

Joe Rogan 1:42:44 I agree.

Speaker 1:42:44 You know?

Joe Rogan 1:42:45 I agree. I mean, [exhaling] look, uh, but again, you know, if you're a kid and you work, and you've got a job, you know, you're working at a corner store, and you're making, you know, whatever you make, 15 bucks an hour, whatever, not, not even. What's, what's minimum wage?

Speaker 1:42:59 ... Well, uh, state, uh, federal is different. State, some states have fifteen dollars an hour.

Joe Rogan 1:43:05 What's the federal now?

Speaker 1:43:05 Federal is still, like, seven dollars.

Joe Rogan 1:43:06 Okay.

Speaker 1:43:06 It's inconsequential.

Joe Rogan 1:43:07 So if you're a kid and you make seven dollars an hour, let's say, working at a store, and you want to use that seven dollars to buy a Coca-Cola and a pack of Ring Dings, like, who cares?

Speaker 1:43:16 Seven dollars is probably gone now. [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:43:18 Yeah, it's, it's, it's, that's it. That's your whole paycheck for the hour.

Speaker 1:43:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:43:21 But the, the point is-

Speaker 1:43:23 Yeah, I'm not for banning any of these things

Joe Rogan 1:43:24 ... when the government is giving you money, I think it's very reasonable to say, "This money cannot..." Like, "We're supposed to be helping you get back on your feet." This is the problem with social safety nets, who-- wh- where I'm a big believer in it. When I was a child, my family was poor, and we were on welfare, and we were on food stamps, but they worked their way out of it, and then when I was in high school, they were doing re- really well.

Speaker 1:43:49 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:43:50 So it's like, it's, it's a very valuable thing for families that are down on their luck-

Speaker 1:43:55 Right

Joe Rogan 1:43:55 ... and things aren't going well, and I'm a big believer in... I think we should treat this country like a community, and when you have the downtrodden and the people that aren't doing so well, I think it's really important to help them. I think the, to let abject poverty and starvation exist w- in a country that has such extreme wealth-

Speaker 1:44:14 Right

Joe Rogan 1:44:14 ... is abhorrent. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Speaker 1:44:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:44:17 But I also think people get very dependent on social safety systems and social safety nets, and when you have people that have generation after generation have existed on welfare, then it becomes a problem.

Speaker 1:44:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:44:30 And it, it, it becomes a problem where we have to figure out how to motivate people or educate people as to choices that they can make that'll be more beneficial to their lives, to provide for themselves and be outside of it. Another thing that's gonna mess with that motivation is unhealthy food.

Speaker 1:44:48 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:44:48 'Cause one of the surest ways to keep people unmotivated and have no energy is to keep them unhealthy. Healthier people have more vibrancy. You have more energy to go pursue your dreams-

Speaker 1:45:02 Right

Joe Rogan 1:45:02 ... and do the things you wanna do in life. If you're constantly dealing with type 2 diabetes because you've been eating sugar all day and garbage all day, and you're m- you're morbidly obese, you're not gonna have the same energy as, uh, a person who's eating healthy food and getting up early and drinking water. And y- it's just, it's gonna affect the choices that you make because it's more burdensome to carry around that body.

Speaker 1:45:26 Yeah, I think that... And I don't disagree with what you're saying on having a safety net, but we have to have tough love involved with it, and we have to have the idea that it's, it's temporary, and we're trying to get you to another place.

Joe Rogan 1:45:39 Yes.

Speaker 1:45:39 So, um-

Joe Rogan 1:45:39 We can't enable people to continue bad choices over and over and over again and say, "Well, we just have to take care of them."

Speaker 1:45:45 Right. So food stamps, when they started, were really primarily for, for mothers, uh, single mothers with many kids who can't work. So Mom can't work. We didn't want them all to starve.

Joe Rogan 1:45:54 Right.

Speaker 1:45:54 She has four kids, and once you've had the kids, I'm not against that. They're there, and you gotta do something with the kids. But we didn't give it to, um, able-bodied, you know, twenty-one-year-old men who were in college didn't get it, or able-bodied men who were, uh, in high- out of high school didn't get it. You didn't do that 'cause they need to work, and they still can work. There are jobs everywhere for able-bodied people. So we have to look carefully at all these programs, and this is what some people on the left complain about. Able-bodied people, if they get something, it should be very, very temporary, if at all.

Joe Rogan 1:46:24 Yes, I agree.

Speaker 1:46:24 And, um, so then all the programs have to be re-evaluated. Like, when I first, uh, moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1993, uh, one of my patients was head of the local welfare, and there was a local welfare department, and there was some, um, real degree of the people had to come in on certain deadlines. They had to prove that they were work- uh, looking for work or why they couldn't look for work, and there'd be some people that, that still have four kids at home, will come back and won't be able to work again. But the able-bodied people come back in six weeks, and she would show them, "Here's the newspaper. Here's a job. I want you to go here tomorrow."

Joe Rogan 1:47:00 Right.

Speaker 1:47:00 And she'd make them do that, and not 'cause she hated them. She worked with welfare because of the beneficial part of it, but we've gotten away from that, and so if I, if I propose something like that, it's like, "Oh, you don't like the poor?" No, I want them to become rich. But we also do have, and this is a fallacy: people are moving up and down from rich to poor all the time in our country. Twenty percent of the people born in the bottom twenty percent make the top twenty percent. Sixty percent of the people who make a million bucks this year will not make a million bucks next year. People are going up and down. We have great income mobility, and the reason you have to express that is otherwise you lose hope. If you live in a poor area of town, and, you know, you're a single mom, and everybody tells you, you know, "You're just never going anywhere," that's when your reaction is, "I might as well steal or sell drugs or something."

Joe Rogan 1:47:49 Right.

Speaker 1:47:49 Instead, the message to our young people is there's n- it should be, "There's never been a better time to believe it, be alive." I believe that so strongly, and that we're doing a disservice to our young people by saying, "You're a victim."

Joe Rogan 1:48:01 Right.

Speaker 1:48:01 "Oh, your color of skin is dark. Nobody's gonna wanna hire you." It's the opposite. We live in a time where people are less likely to judge you based on your color of the skin than ever in the history of mankind. Doesn't mean there's no bigots out there. People are less likely to judge you on your sexuality than they ever have-

Joe Rogan 1:48:18 Right

Speaker 1:48:18 ... on the color of your skin, on your religion. We are an incredible country. Are we perfect? No, but there's never historically been a better time to be alive, and you can do it. I mean, you literally can do a manual job, earn enough money to start your own small business. You know, if you wanna-- If you're in high school and you're a decent student, but you're not a rocket scientist, and you don't love reading books, and you don't love math, but you're pretty good, and you're intelligent enough, if you do HVAC, you will have one hell of a career. You go to a technical school in Louisville, all of the people in the class... I went to one recently. There was 100 people in the class for HVAC, fixing air conditioners. Every one of them, their tuition was paid for, and they had a job if they completed the course. And HVAC, if you're an HVAC worker, I'm guessing, I'll bet you, you could make 80 to $100,000 a year, uh, fixing air conditioners. But if you start your own HVAC company, you'll be the richest man or woman in town. They, they're the, they're-- In my town, the people who own the HVAC companies are some of the richest people in our town.

Joe Rogan 1:49:18 ... Well, it's the, it's a good argument also with automation and AI, because automation and AI is going to do a lot of jobs that people are going to school for, unfortunately. A lot of people are getting degrees that are going to be irrelevant when automation and AI takes, uh, uh, whatever percentage of jobs it's inevitably gonna take. But trades, being a carpenter-

Speaker 1:49:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:49:42 -being a plumber, those are go- always gonna be valuable.

Speaker 1:49:44 I think things like that, you, you may have technical assistance when you get there, that a computer helps diagnose the problem and helps fix the air conditioner, but I don't think the jobs-- I, I talk to people every day, and many of them are-

Joe Rogan 1:49:55 Well, you're gonna have to carry things and install things.

Speaker 1:49:57 I, I think-

Joe Rogan 1:49:58 You're gonna have to get in to open up walls.

Speaker 1:49:59 I agree. I think it's still gonna exist.

Joe Rogan 1:50:00 Yeah.

Speaker 1:50:00 But I talk to everybody every day, and they're scaring the world, saying there'll be no more jobs, and everybody will just sit around looking at each other. And I, I really- [chuckles] I don't... I hope that's not true, and I, and I... You know, they're richer and smarter than I am, maybe, but they all say it's gonna happen. But I say, "If it happens, what will also develop is secret societies, and they'll be like speakeasies, and you'll go down the stairs, you'll knock on the door, and someone will decide. You'll do the password, and you'll go inside, and you'll be able to build shit in there, and you'll be able to, like, grout bricks and put them together. You'll be able to nail wood together, secret work, because people will still wanna work. Even though there are no jobs, they will secretly wanna work."

Joe Rogan 1:50:37 Why would, why would it be secret?

Speaker 1:50:38 Because the government will make it illegal. The government's stupid.

Joe Rogan 1:50:41 Wait, wait, wait. The government will make work illegal? Is that what you're actually saying?

Speaker 1:50:43 Yeah, I think this is a dystopian society. Hear- bear me out. So-

Joe Rogan 1:50:47 What novels are you reading? [laughing]

Speaker 1:50:48 ... This is, this is- I taught a course in this. So when we have AI, people are saying the jobs disappear. Work will become so foreign, but there'll be a small remnant that searches for work, but they'll do it secretly, and after you build stuff in the little speakeasy down under with a secret password, you'll have to destroy it before the government comes.

Joe Rogan 1:51:07 Hmm.

Speaker 1:51:07 So that's just my theory of what's, what's going to happen.

Joe Rogan 1:51:09 Well, that's your theory.

Speaker 1:51:10 I might be wrong. I could be wrong.

Joe Rogan 1:51:11 Have you ever had a conversation with Elon?

Speaker 1:51:12 Uh, yep.

Joe Rogan 1:51:14 He thinks that we're gonna need universal basic income.

Speaker 1:51:17 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:51:17 And, uh, he thinks it won't actually be universal basic income. His rose-colored glasses version of it is universal high income.

Speaker 1:51:25 Um.

Joe Rogan 1:51:26 Because he believes that AI is gonna create so much wealth, that there will be so much money that people won't have to work anymore. Which the, the, the-- so hear me out here. So the question is, like, is it essential that the only way you take care of yourself and feed yourself and house yourself is through work?

Speaker 1:51:45 No.

Joe Rogan 1:51:45 And can people find meaning outside of work? Can they find things to do, or will they just be sitting around playing video games all day?

Speaker 1:51:52 So the first thing that I'll probably just acknowledge is, he may be smarter than me, and he, he's probably a little bit richer than me, so I don't discount his opinion, Elon Musk, but I hope he's wrong. And with regard to work, I think work is something so necessary, that the problems we have in our society are with the people who aren't getting the benefit of working. And so I see work, and I would mandate work for welfare programs. I don't-- If you're able-bodied, you would have to work. I wouldn't give you a penny. Everybody would have to work. But I tell people, I don't-- I'm not in favor of that as punishment. That is w- reward. Work is a reward. I can tell you that I've, I've never been unhappy. Maybe I'm lucky in the work I've had, but I've always wanted to go to work, and I've done hard jobs. I've roofed houses, I've worked on lawns, I've, I've done every job that a kid growing up in the '70s ever do, but I was never unhappy to do it, and I always felt better. If I sweat off five pounds, ten pounds in the hot sun, I felt great. And, but-

Joe Rogan 1:52:52 Okay, you and I are very different-

Speaker 1:52:53 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 1:52:54 ... because my bad jobs that I had motivated me to never want to do those jobs.

Speaker 1:52:57 Well, yeah, I don't want, I didn't want to do them forever. You're right about that. But there are some-

Joe Rogan 1:53:01 Well, it motivated me to find a thing in life-

Speaker 1:53:02 Right

Joe Rogan 1:53:02 ... that I didn't have to just work as a laborer.

Speaker 1:53:05 Yeah. And I noticed you don't really sweat too much in this current gig you've got. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:53:08 No, this is a pretty easy gig. But, I mean, I did a lot of those kind of jobs when I was younger.

Speaker 1:53:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:53:14 What they did was teach me that I didn't wanna do that forever.

Speaker 1:53:18 Yeah. There has to be work, and I don't- I hope people won't preach too much that AI is gonna be no work, 'cause that, to me, is a despairing future. It's a dystopian future when there is no work. Most of the time, and, and this is... While I do respect Elon Musk and think he may know more than I know about this, the reason I would say is that from a historical perspective, every bit of automation has led to more jobs. This would be the first time in the entire history where automation took jobs. They feared that when the, um, automated loom came, that all the weavers would go out of business.

Joe Rogan 1:53:53 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:53:53 What they found instead is people had to make the sewing machines, people had to fix the sewing machines, and then clothing prices went down, and people used to have one wardrobe, maybe two shirts. Now people have dozens- even regular people can have dozens of shirts. You can get a shirt for five bucks at Target or eight bucks at, at Walmart. So it changed things. When electricity came around, the candlestick makers rioted. The Luddites in the 19th century broke the looms with hammers and protested against, but we always got more jobs. Progress went on. So I guess from a historical point of perspective, I don't know that there's a good example of automation. It could lower employment in a certain industry, but overall employment... Look, we have, like, seven billion people on the planet, and we have less poverty on the planet than we've ever had right now.

Joe Rogan 1:54:42 Right, but d- it's not Luddites that are concerned.... it's people that are aware that this is an unprecedented technology.

Speaker 1:54:49 That's the question.

Joe Rogan 1:54:50 Artificial intelligence is an unprecedented-

Speaker 1:54:52 And that's the question. They're, they're positing that this is different than it's ever been, and I guess my argument, and I'm-- like I say, I am willing to [chuckles] acknowledge these people may know more about this, but my argument is, from a historical perspective, we've never had any kind of invention or automation that ultimately led to less jobs. It always led to more and led to more prosperity. Now, they're arguing AI is gonna get more prosperity, and that's why... Then they'll say artificial high income, there'll be plenty of money. But there, there has to be work for the mental well-being of, of people. They, they cannot sit around, and it, um-

Joe Rogan 1:55:28 No, I agree, but I mean-

Speaker 1:55:29 It'll be a terrible world.

Joe Rogan 1:55:30 Can you find meaning in life without it just being for money? Can you-

Speaker 1:55:34 Um-

Joe Rogan 1:55:34 Can you find tasks, and things, and goals, and-

Speaker 1:55:37 Which gets back to my speakeasy, and it may or may not have to be secret.

Joe Rogan 1:55:40 Uh.

Speaker 1:55:40 But people are gonna go work, w- even just to work. But, um-

Joe Rogan 1:55:44 Well, why does it have to be work? I mean, why can't it, it be art? Why can't it be, uh, you know-

Speaker 1:55:49 It, it could be

Joe Rogan 1:55:49 ... learning how to play music?

Speaker 1:55:50 It could be.

Joe Rogan 1:55:50 Something interesting.

Speaker 1:55:51 But I also think that the more leisure time you have, AI is going to give... I, I, I, grant them that AI is gonna give us more leisure time, and we also are progressing, and progress is exponential at this point. Um, in 1820, before the Industrial Revolution, or at the beginning of it, 98% of people lived on less than $2 a day, and the World Bank does these statistics. Everybody. The only people who didn't were royalty, you know? The only pe- the ob- the only obesity was among royalty. Regular people-

Joe Rogan 1:56:21 Right

Speaker 1:56:21 ... even in 1920, there were no fat people.

Joe Rogan 1:56:23 Well, they didn't have processed food back then.

Speaker 1:56:26 They didn't ha- they didn't, they didn't have abundance of time and abund- they didn't have an overabundance of food. The reason we're taller, everybody but me, got more calories and got taller-

Joe Rogan 1:56:34 Protein.

Speaker 1:56:35 Yeah, and, uh, so it's a food thing. But in 1820, 98% of people lived in abject poverty, less than $2 a day. Today, not just the United States, the entire world is less than 10%, live on $2 a day. Constant dollars, controlling for inflation, we went from 98% to less than 10%. AI is gonna continue that, and maybe it's exponential, but when you have more leisure time, you have time to think of other stuff to do. We have, we have time for our idle brains, which are pretty big, to come up with new ideas. So I think it's not yet known what we will think of, what may pass as work. Maybe art is work at some point, and everybody's an artist. Um, but maybe there also are, um, people who like to, uh... You know, e- even now, there's automation, and we can grow with pesticides and fertilizers and stuff, just an enormous amount of food, and actually, that's been good for the most part, in apply- in supplying more food for people. But there are still people who have organic farms, who don't use pesticides or any of this. There are people who have cattle with no antibiotics and no vaccines, chickens. Um, and that's sort of labor-intensive and not as cost-effective, but the only way that can exist is you kind of let them charge more. You know, so that niche market, you know, can, can still exist. So it's the same with AI. There probably will be some things that maybe AI could do, but maybe you'd rather a human do it. Um, even now, with, with art, um, my wife, uh, Kelly, has written a children's book, and she's looking at art. She looked at the AI, and it was pretty darn good, but she really wanted an artist 'cause she wanted something to be, uh, to have real meaning, you know, and to be something that people connect with. M- you know, for children's books, a lot of it is connecting with the pictures.

Joe Rogan 1:58:19 Well, I certainly think there's gonna be a lot of value in art that's made by humans, just like there's value in music and in, and even films, you know? That's the argument that-

Speaker 1:58:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:58:29 You know, I had Bradley Cooper in here the other day, and we were talking about the concern that a lot of these, uh, artists that create films, they're really worried that they're gonna start using digital actors and-

Speaker 1:58:40 Right

Joe Rogan 1:58:40 ... and doing everything through computer-generated AI prompts, and-

Speaker 1:58:44 Right

Joe Rogan 1:58:45 ... films even being written by AI prompts.

Speaker 1:58:48 My, my favorite, uh, uh, Dilbert cartoon is, uh, this woman comes up to Dilbert, and she says, "I'm really worried about the robots. I'm worried about automation, and I'm worried my son won't get work because of the robots." And Dilbert looks at her, and he says, "Well, you know, I've met your son, and he could be replaced by a hammer." [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 1:59:07 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:59:07 Um, always has been this fear, but you ha- we have to have innovation and get around it. There will be, you know, technical jobs, there'll be other jobs. Um, I, I, I don't know. I guess I'm not- I'm an optimist, just by nature, and I- uh, technology historically has not destroyed jobs. It's created jobs, and we're way better off. You know, absent the Industrial Revolution, all those inven- inventions, we'd still be living, 98% of us, uh, on $2 a day.

Joe Rogan 1:59:37 Uh, one of the things I wanna talk to you about is, uh, what's going on in this country right now. Um, w- well, one of the big ones, one of the big things that's in the news is this whole Minnesota thing. Um, particularly, well, there a lot of things to cover, but particularly fraud, and that they're uncovering a lot of fraud, that it seems like not only was there a lot of fraud, but a lot of these people that were getting a lot of money from this fraud were donating to politicians. There's, uh-

Speaker 2:00:06 Yeah

Joe Rogan 2:00:06 ... I believe, $35 million by daycares was donated to Democrats in Minnesota last year. Is that an accurate, is that an accurate number? Let's find out.

Speaker 2:00:16 It's extraordinary.

Joe Rogan 2:00:17 That's one of the best things for AI.

Speaker 2:00:18 No, it's extraordinary.

Joe Rogan 2:00:19 AI will give you-

Speaker 2:00:20 I saw a good-

Joe Rogan 2:00:20 ... good information.

Speaker 2:00:21 I saw a good cartoon yesterday. It was an iceberg, and the top of the iceberg was Minnesota fraud, but the iceberg beneath the surface was California.

Joe Rogan 2:00:29 Yes.

Speaker 2:00:29 And can you imagine, just be- ship size-

Joe Rogan 2:00:30 Well, they're looking into California fraud now because of Minnesota fraud, and it's... Look, just the homeless thing alone, just the fact that California spent $24 billion on the homeless, can't account for-

Speaker 2:00:43 Right

Joe Rogan 2:00:43 ... where the money went, and the problem just got worse.

Speaker 2:00:46 Well, there, there's a couple things about the refugee thing. I don't think refugees should get welfare, and I have a bill to say they shouldn't get it. If you come to this country, and your church sponsors somebody to come to it, you support them. You sign up, you sponsor them, you support them. Uh, the taxpayers shouldn't support them. The other thing is, is we did a lot of the- a lot of these people came on special visas. They weren't part of the normal. It was part of this refugee program, but they got special visas. The Somalis came because there was perpetual war in their country and famine. Um-

Joe Rogan 2:01:16 ... No evidence Minnesota daycares gave millions-

Speaker 2:01:18 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 2:01:19 -to political campaigns. What is this, Yahoo News?

Speaker 2:01:22 [laughing]

Joe Rogan 2:01:22 You know, who's-- I don't believe that. I, I- oh- So I don't believe they haven't given any money. This is where I got it from. Okay, the figure appears to come from a viral social media post, widely shared video alleging that the daycares... So there's- here's a problem with this: if this fraud is as widespread as it is, you're gonna get a lot of people that are covering their tracks right now.

Speaker 2:01:43 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:01:44 And so one of the ways to cover their tracks is to debunk things and to post stories, and-

Speaker 2:01:50 The-

Joe Rogan 2:01:50 I don't think we really know how much money is missing.

Speaker 2:01:53 I think part of the reform is we just shouldn't give out welfare.

Joe Rogan 2:01:56 I think-

Speaker 2:01:57 And this doesn't mean we shouldn't help people.

Joe Rogan 2:01:58 Right.

Speaker 2:01:58 But if you're coming to this country, and you wanna experience the greatness of this country, and someone sponsors you, they should take care of you. But what happens is, most of these charities that work on bringing refugees in, they have a big heart, they're bringing them in, but the first paperwork they fill out is signing up for welfare.

Joe Rogan 2:02:15 Okay. So according to our AI search, it says: "Fact-checking organizations review campaign finance data and public records report no evidence that Minnesota daycare or childcare operators donated anything close to thirty-five billion dollars to political campaigns. One fact check notes that supposed charts circulated online misrepresents or fabricates contribution totals and far exceeds what small childcare businesses would realistically give." But it depends on how much money they're making.

Speaker 2:02:45 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:02:46 When you say small- just I don't like the way they phrase that, "small childcare businesses," 'cause you're talking about a, a large number of these businesses, and so the total, the all, you know, all told, what is the number? Especially compared to large corporate donors, that's fact, right?

Speaker 2:03:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:03:02 Also, they're listing Snopes as a source, which I don't like.

Speaker 2:03:06 So-

Joe Rogan 2:03:06 Uh, it's a very biased source.

Speaker 2:03:08 So I had this debate for years with McCain. McCain said we should admit all these people who were interpreters in Afghanistan-

Joe Rogan 2:03:16 Right

Speaker 2:03:16 ... all these people that are interpreters in Iraq, and my response to him was this: "If they can speak English and they're pro-Western, they need to stay in their country and be the founding fathers of their country. If the people who speak English and are pro-Western all leave, then all the crazy jihadists are the ones gonna run the government." So the ta- part of the reason the Taliban runs Afghanistan again, is eighty thousand of the best people probably came over here that speak English and have some kind of knowledge. They should have stayed in their country, and-

Joe Rogan 2:03:45 Well, but isn't that kind of a simplistic perspective? Because a lot of those people would be dead. You know, they, they, they were-

Speaker 2:03:50 We won, we won the, we won the war.

Joe Rogan 2:03:53 What war?

Speaker 2:03:54 Well-

Joe Rogan 2:03:54 We won what war?

Speaker 2:03:55 We s- we- well, the war went on forever and ever. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 2:03:57 We didn't win anything in Afghanistan.

Speaker 2:03:59 W- well, [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 2:03:59 I don't, I don't think saying we won the war in Afghanistan is even remotely-

Speaker 2:04:02 They won it, and immediately reverted to the Stone Age when we left.

Joe Rogan 2:04:05 Well-

Speaker 2:04:05 But for many, many years when they were coming over here-

Joe Rogan 2:04:07 But you can't say we won it.

Speaker 2:04:09 What I'm saying is, from the perspective of the people, the government that was in place for the twenty years that we were there, was a moderate government that was friendly to these people. I think them leaving was them... They should have been the founding fathers of their country. So, for example, um-

Joe Rogan 2:04:24 But wait, wait a minute, once we left, they had no protection, and they were d- they were in grave danger.

Speaker 2:04:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:04:29 A lot of them became ref- also, a lot of them were working with the Americans.

Speaker 2:04:32 Yeah, I know, in 18-

Joe Rogan 2:04:33 We left them there to die.

Speaker 2:04:34 In 1812, the British came back and attacked us. If we would've all left and said, "Oh, well, damn, they're attacking us again. We're under attack" No, they should have fought for their country. And the thing is, is everybody... Sure, you can- it sounds like a good thing to bring them over here, but we really didn't need another eighty thousand people from Afghanistan. We didn't need another eighty thousand people from Iraq, and we certainly didn't need another eighty thousand people from Somalia. And if they're coming, they should be ineligible for welfare. If you come as a legal immigrant, you're not supposed to get welfare for five years, and yet we know it's happening. The refugees can get it immediately, and that just-

Joe Rogan 2:05:08 Right

Speaker 2:05:08 ... they're on Medicaid-

Joe Rogan 2:05:09 That's the problem, is the refugee status.

Speaker 2:05:10 We shouldn't be- and then they figured out, gosh, they are- they, they are smart at one thing. That's those learning center- those learning centers-

Joe Rogan 2:05:16 [chuckles]

Speaker 2:05:16 -boy, are they smart at those.

Joe Rogan 2:05:18 Well, I mean, once you realize that you can get a lot of money doing that... There was also autism diagnosises, and then they'd open up an autism center, and-

Speaker 2:05:26 And, you know, all that money going overseas

Joe Rogan 2:05:27 ... I, I don't, I don't fault people for taking advantage of a system that has giant loopholes in it, especially when you come over here from a war-torn country, and there's a bunch of people that are already doing it. You're like: "How do you make money? Let's do this"

Speaker 2:05:40 Everybody's doing it.

Joe Rogan 2:05:41 Yeah.

Speaker 2:05:41 Um-

Joe Rogan 2:05:41 But somebody had to have helped them.

Speaker 2:05:43 But, you know, there are people-

Joe Rogan 2:05:44 Right?

Speaker 2:05:44 ... there are people saying, uh, and this need, we need to- the whole thing needs to be audited, and I'm also presenting a bill that will audit the whole system-

Joe Rogan 2:05:52 Right

Speaker 2:05:52 ... everywhere. But there are people saying that there are, um, either Chinese hackers as well as Russian hackers that are also stealing millions of dollars. The Somalis were so good at it, they were sending hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, back overseas. So I think that we're at the tip of the iceberg.

Joe Rogan 2:06:10 Has that been proven?

Speaker 2:06:11 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 2:06:11 'Cause we asked Snopes.

Speaker 2:06:12 We should ask Snopes. We need to ask Snopes. [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 2:06:14 No, don't ask Snopes. Put it in a Perplexity. If Snopes gives it in a, as an example, ignore it.

Speaker 2:06:20 Well, they said it was seven hundred million the other day. Uh, the reports-

Joe Rogan 2:06:23 I have this question. I was looking at that

Speaker 2:06:23 ... were seven hundred million dollars. I think you have to check off a box when it goes through the airport, and they weren't even hiding that they were sending it back. So the poor Somalis sent, like, seven hundred million dollars over the last couple of years.

Joe Rogan 2:06:36 So if they had seven hundred million dollars to send back to Somalia, if that's true-

Speaker 2:06:42 [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 2:06:43 ... where is that coming from?

Speaker 2:06:44 Well, they stole nine billion, and they s- they said that-

Joe Rogan 2:06:47 Is that real?

Speaker 2:06:47 Well, that's the number they're saying. That's why it all needs to be-

Joe Rogan 2:06:51 Who's that?

Speaker 2:06:51 It's been in the press reports. I can't tell you exactly-

Joe Rogan 2:06:54 Right

Speaker 2:06:54 ... who, but we need- the whole thing needs to be audited.

Joe Rogan 2:06:56 Right.

Speaker 2:06:56 Calif- California and New York, uh, you know, are going to be enormous problems with the same kind of fraud.

Joe Rogan 2:07:03 Yeah.

Speaker 2:07:03 And, uh, I think it's virtually a guarantee that we will find more. But why in the world would we run a government where we don't audit this stuff every year?

Joe Rogan 2:07:10 Right. How did it get to this point? That's the real question.

Speaker 2:07:12 We, we don't audit the Pentagon.

Joe Rogan 2:07:13 Right.

Speaker 2:07:13 The Pentagon can't match their records either.

Joe Rogan 2:07:16 Okay, but this is the TSA stuff. The- this is just-

Speaker 2:07:18 Yeah, this is a... No, but this is you check it off in a box.

Joe Rogan 2:07:21 Okay, this is-

Speaker 2:07:22 So for a total of nearly seven hundred million dollars over two years.

Joe Rogan 2:07:25 Okay, so this, we ran, actually ran this through Perplexity, so which is our sponsor. It's a AI program. It's always-... pretty accurate. Federal officials say that TSA flagged nearly $700 million in cash and luggage leaving Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport-

Speaker 2:07:40 So if you have more than $10,000, the law says you have to check a box.

Joe Rogan 2:07:44 Uh-huh.

Speaker 2:07:45 And I think these people voluntarily checked a box, so they're, they're looking through data, TSA forms, they just added them all up. So I think it's real.

Joe Rogan 2:07:53 So but this is the same thing. This is this one weird website that we found the other day, Just the News. So this website, Just the News, published a report saying, uh, a report recently that revealed Transportation Security Administration has flagged approximately $700 million in declared U.S. cash. But the question is, like, where is Just the News getting this information from?

Speaker 2:08:14 I think from TSA. It- see, the TSA-

Joe Rogan 2:08:16 But why is it one weird right-wing website that is reporting this, that everybody refers to when they're talking about this-

Speaker 2:08:24 Well-

Joe Rogan 2:08:24 -the, the number of the taxes fraud?

Speaker 2:08:24 ... because nobody's been looking. John Solomon is a good researcher, and he does come up with stuff, so, uh, ha- have him on, ask, ask him where he came up with it. I'm pretty sure it comes from TSA forms.

Joe Rogan 2:08:34 Okay.

Speaker 2:08:34 I don't think he's making the number up. I think this is-

Joe Rogan 2:08:36 But that's how insane amount of money-

Speaker 2:08:38 It is

Joe Rogan 2:08:39 ... is sent back to Somalia.

Speaker 2:08:40 But this is also the gall. You're stealing welfare money, and you're taking it out of the country, and you, you are so in the belief that you won't get caught. You're not smuggling it out. You're putting on the form, "I'm taking-

Joe Rogan 2:08:53 Right

Speaker 2:08:53 ... $20 million out of the country today."

Joe Rogan 2:08:54 Well, they've been doing it, if it's true, and it seems to be true. They've been doing it for decades, and this is... I mean, when did we start m- uh, uh, mass immigrating people from Somalia into this country?

Speaker 2:09:09 You know what I think we should do? The next step would be, okay, we know how much is going out of Somalia.

Joe Rogan 2:09:14 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:09:14 Let's look at every airport around the country and see where- see, see who else is, uh, shipping money out.

Joe Rogan 2:09:20 Yeah, I was- we tried to find out the other day, too, but we couldn't find any. We tried looking at different, uh, money that was like, how much does the TSA flag over the entire course of the coun- you know, the year all over the country? We couldn't find that data, but that might just be because nobody's published it.

Speaker 2:09:37 Well, I'll ask.

Joe Rogan 2:09:38 I-

Speaker 2:09:38 I can ask, and I'll have my staff... We'll look into it and see if we can find that answer for you.

Joe Rogan 2:09:42 That would be great. Um, one of the things I was reading recently is interesting because Minnesota has this one group of, uh, immigrants in the Somalis, but they also have another group in the Hmongs. And they have a completely, uh, different result in terms of the amount of people that are on welfare, the amount of people that graduate from college or high school, uh, the amount of people that are on Medicaid, all of them are, like, radically different.

Speaker 2:10:08 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:10:08 It's much lower in the Hmong, Hmong community.

Speaker 2:10:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:10:11 Which is interesting. It's like, well, what is that? Is it education in their community? Is it they-

Speaker 2:10:16 [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 2:10:16 ... they don't from- they c- don't come from, uh, a culture that enables fraud? I mean, you have to realize Somalia is obviously where you get an enormous amount of piracy.

Speaker 2:10:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:10:27 You know, I mean, this is- that's the movie with Tom Hanks. "Look at me, I'm the captain now," right? That's Somalia.

Speaker 2:10:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:10:34 And by the way, they were kind of forced into that behavior.

Speaker 2:10:38 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:10:38 You know, their original name, they didn't call themselves Somali pirates, they called themselves the People's Coast Guard of Somalia-

Speaker 2:10:44 [chuckles]

Joe Rogan 2:10:45 ... because the Europeans were dumping toxic waste off the coast and killing all their fish, and they were fishermen. So they started kidnapping the people that were in these boats, and then, you know, to try to get a ransom because if you destroyed our fishing ground, and then they went, "Oh, well, you know what? It's probably easier to just kidnap people than it is to be a fisherman."

Speaker 2:11:05 So y- the, the discussion reminds me of a story. So the Hmongs versus Somalis, why, why are 86% of the Somalis still on Medicaid, and why are the Hmongs-

Joe Rogan 2:11:13 Right

Speaker 2:11:13 ... doing better? So, um, they used to always make this argument that Sweden is so great 'cause it's socialist, and that Swedes are all just doing fine. They're all so happy. Everybody's happy in Sweden. And so they were talking to Milton Friedman about that, and, uh, he was over there, and they, they were bragging about their country, about how great Sweden was and everything, and, and they were attributing it to socialism. And he looked at them, and he says, "You know, we, the Swedes are very happy. They're also very happy in Minnesota. If you look at the statistics of s- people from Sweden who immigrated to Minnesota, they're kicking butt. They're in the top 1%," and it gets back to what is the argument? Why do Swedes do so well? It, uh, many people say it's this northern Scandinavian work ethic. They brought it with them and kept it in their families, and it's transmitted down.

Joe Rogan 2:12:00 They're also not fleeing a war, right? So they-

Speaker 2:12:03 Oh, I mean, I'm not saying it's more difficult. It's more difficult for refugees-

Joe Rogan 2:12:05 But they're not coming over here-

Speaker 2:12:06 Right

Joe Rogan 2:12:06 ... as a refugee from a war. They're coming over here as an immigrant who wants a better life.

Speaker 2:12:11 Right. But I will tell you that... So, for example, there are people who come and in one generation just kick ass.

Joe Rogan 2:12:16 Right.

Speaker 2:12:16 I'll tell you, the Vietnamese.

Joe Rogan 2:12:18 Yes.

Speaker 2:12:18 The Vietnamese came- I know a guy, he, uh, came over here. He was on an island for a year, and he got one cup of rice. He lost, like, 60 pounds, and he wasn't fat to begin with. He was just nothing. He finally got here 'cause he had fought with us, or his brother had fought with us. He gets here, opens a transmission business. Three of his kids are doctors, one's a vet, one's a pharmacist. They just kick butt in one generation. There are, uh, Nigerians that have come here. Um, they have dark skin, and everybody says, "Oh, America's racist." They kick ass. They have- the average Nigerian income is higher than, than the average white income. So people-

Joe Rogan 2:12:53 They're also famously scammers overseas-

Speaker 2:12:56 [laughing] Well-

Joe Rogan 2:12:57 ... in Nigeria.

Speaker 2:12:58 Yeah, but what I'm saying-

Joe Rogan 2:12:59 They do a great job in tricking people out of their money.

Speaker 2:13:00 But, but I think it is, I think it is, it is... It's not so simple as to say racism keeps people down. It's ingenuity, it's your family-

Joe Rogan 2:13:07 Right

Speaker 2:13:07 ... and it doesn't matter-

Joe Rogan 2:13:08 And Nigerians are particularly inge- ingenious when they come into this country.

Speaker 2:13:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:13:12 They, they-

Speaker 2:13:13 Well, they're hard workers-

Joe Rogan 2:13:13 Yeah

Speaker 2:13:14 ... and, you know. But it's also what we should, in an immigration system, select for. Instead of saying we're gonna bring in 50,000 Somalis, why don't we look one at a time, and if you want to sponsor a family or another Somali family wants to, let's do it one at a time, and then let's not offer them any kind of welfare, and if they struggle, you take care of them when they come over, whoever sponsors them.

Joe Rogan 2:13:34 What do you think they're gonna uncover when they do a full audit of the... Just- let's just talk about Minnesota. What do you think is gonna... I mean, what do you-... W- what do you en- envision the real sca-

Speaker 2:13:45 Right

Joe Rogan 2:13:45 ... scope of this is?

Speaker 2:13:47 Well, I think it's going to be out-and-out fraud. It's not gonna be, like, just some mistakes on forms or something.

Joe Rogan 2:13:53 Right.

Speaker 2:13:53 It's going to be these learning centers that have nobody coming to them. They just don't even exist.

Joe Rogan 2:13:59 Food kitchens that aren't feeding anyone.

Speaker 2:14:01 But I do believe the 700 million leaving Israel, they say it's only a few people, but I believe it's real 'cause I think it's marked on the forms voluntarily by the people doing it. So this isn't-

Joe Rogan 2:14:09 700 bil- million leaving Israel? What do you mean?

Speaker 2:14:11 No, 700 mi- million leaving Minnesota.

Joe Rogan 2:14:14 Okay-

Speaker 2:14:15 The Somali money

Joe Rogan 2:14:15 ... you said Israel.

Speaker 2:14:16 I didn't mean to say-

Joe Rogan 2:14:16 I, I was like-

Speaker 2:14:17 The 700-

Joe Rogan 2:14:17 "What's going on with the new thing?"

Speaker 2:14:18 ... Yeah, the 700 million leaving, I think, is voluntarily checked off on those forms by Somalis. So that-

Joe Rogan 2:14:23 Well, that has to be fraud, right?

Speaker 2:14:25 Yeah, so I think that's gonna- I think that's part of the fraud as well. But I think that if we audit the system, we're gonna find organized gangs of Russians and Chinese doing the same thing. We know that during COVID, there were gangs of Russian hackers and Chinese hackers stealing stuff. There were Americans stealing stuff.

Joe Rogan 2:14:42 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:14:43 But we have to have a tighter... Our problem is that everybody's so generous. Everybody wants to help people, and you're a grumpy, old, terrible Scrooge if you don't want to give refugees more money. But ultimately, you have to give them less money, or you won't get to this. So let's, let's say we gave them $5 billion last year. If you give them $6 billion, do you think we're gonna do a better job at rooting out the w- the fraud or a worse job? If you give them more money, they'll steal more money. You have to give them less, so everybody's looking harder at the money, and you do it. It's the same way with the Pentagon. If you give the Pentagon, you know, $500 billion more, do you think they're gonna be better with our money or worse?

Joe Rogan 2:15:19 Right.

Speaker 2:15:20 So we've got to give less money. So you've got to give less money to the refugees, and then you have to have more scrutiny of it. But the interesting question is, if I put forward a bill that says we're gonna audit all the welfare, not just the refugee program, we're gonna audit all the cash transfer programs for every state, do you think any Democrats will vote for that? Zero. I don't think one-

Joe Rogan 2:15:39 Yeah

Speaker 2:15:40 ... Democrat will vote for it.

Joe Rogan 2:15:40 I doubt it. Well, also, it'd be terrible for their base.

Speaker 2:15:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:15:43 You know, if they found out that these are the people that are voting to audit-

Speaker 2:15:46 But you could, but you could argue you're actually making it better for poor people 'cause I'm trying to get rid of the, the Somalis stealing it, so more of the dollars actually go to people-

Joe Rogan 2:15:53 That's-

Speaker 2:15:54 ... who are poor

Joe Rogan 2:15:55 - great to say, but most people think you're trying to reduce the amount of money that a hungry family gets. That's how they would frame it, and then people would frame it as you being cruel. Unfortunately-

Speaker 2:16:04 Right

Joe Rogan 2:16:04 ... like, this is just how-

Speaker 2:16:05 And that's the problem with having the debate.

Joe Rogan 2:16:06 Right.

Speaker 2:16:07 Is the debate is demagogued.

Joe Rogan 2:16:08 Right.

Speaker 2:16:09 Um, um.

Joe Rogan 2:16:10 So speaking of which, so if you... Like, what do you- what was your take on the border being wide open for the last four years? And not just wide open, but they were encouraging people to come to America, telling them how to do it, and even helping them get across-

Speaker 2:16:28 Right

Joe Rogan 2:16:28 ... giving them EBT cards, giving them cell phones. What was your take on all that?

Speaker 2:16:34 I do believe that they understand that most of the people coming across will ultimately be voters, and that two out of three will vote Democrat, so it's all power politics. Um, they say it's about, um, you know, humanity and being humane and all that. It isn't that. It's all about voting demographics, and they want these people to come in because many of them are suffering, you know, through sex trafficking, all the other crap that went along with this mass migration. So I don't think it's necessarily the best place to be, but I'd say it's one of the most extraordinary accomplishments. You know, as you know, I occasionally am on the other side with Donald Trump. We don't always agree on everything, but on the border, I think he did a ma- a fabulous job by sheer force of personality. He fixed it before any money was allotted. He fixed it in the first three months, and it went from whatever the number was, down... He reduced it by 98% by sh- he relocated some people there, but by sheer force of personality, before any money was even spent, he, he fixed the problem on the border.

Joe Rogan 2:17:35 Well, it seemed like the Democrats wanted the problem to exist.

Speaker 2:17:38 I think 'cause they want more voters. They don't vote immediately-

Joe Rogan 2:17:40 Yeah, and they were moving people-

Speaker 2:17:41 Yeah

Joe Rogan 2:17:41 ... to swing states, and the idea being that the census only counts human beings, it doesn't count citizens.

Speaker 2:17:46 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:17:47 And so you get more congressional seats.

Speaker 2:17:49 So California probably has a couple of congressional seats that are based on illegal aliens, you know? So there's such a large population that I think you have about, what, it's about 750,000 people per congressional district, and there's got to be one or two congressional districts that they have that they probably don't, uh, they shouldn't be allotted.

Joe Rogan 2:18:08 So then the pr- the problem becomes the people are here, and a lot of the people that came across the border are here il- illegally. Illegally. Even though they were encouraged to be here, they are here illegally. What do you do?

Speaker 2:18:21 Um, well, this is... gonna shock you. I'm a moderate on this. I actually think that most of the people that are here and working lawfully and can pack- pass a background check, I would give them no welfare, and I would, I'd give them no citizenship, no voting privileges, but you can work, and we won't arrest you.

Joe Rogan 2:18:39 Okay, um, no citizenship, but a potential path to citizenship?

Speaker 2:18:45 I think it's better just to say the trade-off is this, that you came illegally. Right now, the law says you gotta go back, and you'll never get in, basically. So the compromise is, you came in illegally, you just don't get to be a citizen. Your kids will be. Now, the new ones, the 8 million that might have come in last year, some of them need to go back, and particularly any of them committing crimes. And I think people are very open, and I think the Trump administration has sent a lot of criminals back. I think that's good. Um-

Joe Rogan 2:19:10 There's no question, they've sent a lot of criminals back. There's also no question they've arrested citizens-

Speaker 2:19:15 Right

Joe Rogan 2:19:15 ... that they thought were, were illegal aliens. Uh, they've sent people back that were in this country most of their lives. They came over here as infants, and they don't have birth certificates, and-

Speaker 2:19:26 Right

Joe Rogan 2:19:26 ... they don't have ID, they don't have citizenship.

Speaker 2:19:29 See, what- the compromise I'm offering is different than anybody's ever talked about. Everybody thinks the compromise has to include voting and citizenship. If in Texas, we gave amnesty and let, I don't know, a couple million people vote, immediately Texas becomes Democrat for the next 20 years. So that's what it's all about.

Joe Rogan 2:19:47 Right.

Speaker 2:19:47 It's about voting. But-

Joe Rogan 2:19:48 Is the problem the census?... because why are they counting people and giving congressional seats based on people that aren't citizens? W- if they changed that alone-

Speaker 2:20:02 We could, we could-

Joe Rogan 2:20:02 -and made it so you're counting people-

Speaker 2:20:04 We could change-

Joe Rogan 2:20:04 -but you're only giving congressional seats based on the amount of citizens.

Speaker 2:20:07 We could change the law, but changing the law is difficult. You know, I mean, you have to end up getting 60 votes, which means we need seven Democrats-

Joe Rogan 2:20:14 Right, but isn't that a crazy law-

Speaker 2:20:15 To change anything law

Joe Rogan 2:20:15 ... to begin with, where you, you, you can get congressional seats based on the amount of illegal aliens-

Speaker 2:20:21 Right

Joe Rogan 2:20:21 ... you have in your area, which is crazy, because then it encourages you to bring in illegals so that you get more congressional seats.

Speaker 2:20:28 Right. Yep.

Joe Rogan 2:20:28 Kinda nuts.

Speaker 2:20:30 Crazy law. Nuts.

Joe Rogan 2:20:30 And then what do you do? You give those people Medicaid, you give those people food stamps-

Speaker 2:20:33 Yeah

Joe Rogan 2:20:33 ... and then they're on your side.

Speaker 2:20:34 And as part of the answer to immigration that makes it less of a burden on us, is if we base our society on work, we put a wall around our welfare system, and we don't give it to people, refugees or immigrants-

Joe Rogan 2:20:47 Right

Speaker 2:20:47 ... legal or illegal, nobody gets any, and you have to come for work. And what that does is you're gonna select out for people who work. And that's why I try to say, and not many people on my side will see this, say this, I think some of the best Americans just got here, frankly. They have good work ethic. They're hardworking people. They work in our fields. They pick our tomatoes. They clean fish. They work in chicken houses. They do a lot of the- the dirty jobs in our country are done by immigrants. So-

Joe Rogan 2:21:12 They also came here with ambition 'cause they want a better life-

Speaker 2:21:14 Right

Joe Rogan 2:21:14 ... at great peril and great risk.

Speaker 2:21:16 And some of them here are here illegally. I would have a work program. I'd let them sign up for a work program, pass a background check, and-

Joe Rogan 2:21:22 But do you think that they should have to go back home in order to become a, a citizen?

Speaker 2:21:26 Um-

Joe Rogan 2:21:26 Like, if you could sh... Like, if some guy-

Speaker 2:21:27 No, I just wouldn't-

Joe Rogan 2:21:28 ... came over here 20 years ago, started off as a laborer, now he's a carpenter, he's working for some construction company, but he's an illegal.

Speaker 2:21:36 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:21:37 Like-

Speaker 2:21:37 The trade is you don't get citizenship at all, your kids will. I would just say you don't get citizenship, that's your trade-off. You know what? Here's an interesting survey: Let's, let's find 1,000 people who are in Texas illegally and do a poll and say, "Would you accept this? Would you accept that you don't get to vote during your lifetime, but your kids will get to vote if they were born here, in exchange for not having to worry about being in a car accident or being sent back to Mexico?" I'll bet you 80% of the people who are here illegally would take work without citizenship. But you know who wants the citizenship and doesn't care about work? Democrats. All they care about is the voting part. See, what I'm trying to propose is something humane on the work part, plus I think