EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,004 words- 0:00 – 15:00
[upbeat music] Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!…
- SPSpeaker
[upbeat music] Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. [upbeat music] Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. [upbeat music]
- JRJoe Rogan
Nice to meet you, sir.
- SPSpeaker
Thanks for having me.
- JRJoe Rogan
My pleasure.
- SPSpeaker
Great to be in Austin, you know? [chuckles]
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you been here be- you've been here before.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, they got sick, but it wasn't dangerous for them.
- SPSpeaker
Right. But they, they-
- JRJoe Rogan
My kids both got it.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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."
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
That was the-
- SPSpeaker
The argument didn't really hold water, though, because everybody got it anyway. And so-
- JRJoe Rogan
But we didn't know that in the beginning, right?
- SPSpeaker
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... stopped infection-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... stopped transmission.
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, the problem was the people that live with their grandparents.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, I know.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know?
- SPSpeaker
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 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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I know who he is
- 15:00 – 30:00
Right.…
- SPSpeaker
allergy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
And you know how you prevent the peanut allergy?
- JRJoe Rogan
Give kids peanuts-
- SPSpeaker
Give your kids peanut butter
- JRJoe Rogan
... very young.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why do you think they're the worst, when you said they're the worst on that?
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, not only that, I mean, when was the last time you heard of someone dying or being hospitalized from COVID?
- SPSpeaker
That's what I mean. It's not happening. It's not happening.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And so-
- JRJoe Rogan
But it's also because the strains, the variants have decreased in severity.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
... Okay, if your New Year's resolution was change everything and be a new person, good luck. So instead of pretending you're going to meal prep kale forever or do morning cold plunges, here's one actually realistic thing: AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that supports your energy, gut health, immune health, and helps fill common nutrient gaps. Just one scoop in cold water each morning, and you're off. It's got over seventy-five vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food ingredients in there. So instead of guessing whether you need a probiotic or a prebiotic or sorting through ten different bottles of pills and powders, you can just do one scoop and get on with your day. It's great because it feels like the grown-up move, but for once, it's actually really easy. It takes, like, thirty seconds, and you'll notice a steadiness that sets you up for the day. Not wired, not crashing, just functional human being energy. I partnered with AG1 for years, and if you want to give it a try, head to drinkag1.com/joerogan, and for a limited time, you'll get a free AG1 duffel bag and free AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. Only while supplies last. That's drinkag1.com/joerogan, or visit the link in the description to get started. But it's also there's this weird binary thing where it's like there's one thing that you could take, and that's it. There's no talk about strengthening your immune system with vitamin supplementation and what, what are the other options that you could have once you actually get sick?
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, what can you do? IV vitamins are fantastic.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's a lot of different things that people can do that are never recommended, and it's strange.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
How does one guy get that kind of power?
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
He recommended against-
- SPSpeaker
[chuckles]
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- 30:00 – 45:00
I- I- We all knew he was…
- JRJoe Rogan
What was that like?
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right
- SPSpeaker
... 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?
- JRJoe Rogan
You tell me.
- SPSpeaker
[chuckles]
- JRJoe Rogan
You work for the government. [laughing]
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I'm sure he has threats.
- SPSpeaker
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm sure Anthony Fauci has threats, and I think he probably, you know, should be concerned.
- SPSpeaker
But so, uh, yeah, but the government-
- JRJoe Rogan
Just based on what everybody knows.
- SPSpeaker
Right, but the government doesn't... You know, you're a famous person.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Government doesn't pay for your limousine.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Right.
- SPSpeaker
He shouldn't have a limousine paid for by the government with twenty-four/seven security.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, no, I agree. I mean, it's-- Also, how much money did he make? Do we know?
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Doesn't sound like someone who's supposed to be above the fray, objective scientist.
- JRJoe Rogan
Were there any other avenues for revenue for him because of the creation of the vaccine or any other medications-
- SPSpeaker
Um
- JRJoe Rogan
... that he profited from?
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right
- SPSpeaker
... 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.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Yeah.…
- JRJoe Rogan
suicidal ideation. It's just, they just list them off.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But-
- SPSpeaker
And they list them off like this-
- JRJoe Rogan
But-
- SPSpeaker
... "Consult your doctor."
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- SPSpeaker
Now, how did that get passed?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mitch McConnell.
- SPSpeaker
How is that guy still around when he just freezes up every now and again?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
He locks up like Windows 95.
- JRJoe Rogan
[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-
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is this the alcohol lobby? Like, what i- what is the motivation?
- SPSpeaker
There was a little bit of the alcohol lobby and the cannabis lobby. The cannabis people hate the [chuckles] hemp people. The-
- JRJoe Rogan
The cannabis people hate the hemp people?
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Reasonable.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
So the cannabis businesses in the states where it's legal don't want it legal nationally?
- JRJoe Rogan
... because then it would interfere with their business, because you'd be able to order it through the mail.
- SPSpeaker
Well, they'd probably accept it if we'd legalize cannabis nationally, and then they would compete with hemp.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
You-
- SPSpeaker
-I don't think you can transfer it across the state lines.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're saying hemp, but you really mean THC.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
Right…
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... in state parks and forests.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- SPSpeaker
Hmm
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... everywhere else, but they would use them.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... and the moonshiners.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, so when this, this national one, when does this go into effect?
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right
- SPSpeaker
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's gotta be very bizarre being a rational person-
- SPSpeaker
Hmm
- JRJoe Rogan
... working for the government.
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Fun.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, they, they know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Great
- SPSpeaker
... they know nothing about writing checks.
- JRJoe Rogan
What perfect people.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, exactly.
- 1:15:00 – 1:30:00
Mm-hmm.…
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
So why do you think they're doing it then?
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Who tells you that?
- SPSpeaker
[chuckles] Well, a lot of the pe- the, the mob, the, the internet mob is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, the internet
- SPSpeaker
... is angry. Is angry.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you can't read that.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, you can't.
- JRJoe Rogan
You can't listen to those people.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
I agree. Um, so is the argument that they want regime change, that these cartels are working with Maduro?
- SPSpeaker
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's why we blow them up?
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
But, okay, but if it's about regime change, why blow up the drug boats?
- SPSpeaker
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]
- JRJoe Rogan
Wait a minute. Did Maduro personally have illegal machine guns? And illegal how? Is it illegal internationally? Like, what does that mean?
- SPSpeaker
It means absolutely nothing.
- JRJoe Rogan
But that's crazy-
- SPSpeaker
It's, it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
That means just-
- SPSpeaker
It's completely insane
- JRJoe Rogan
... how many people in Texas- [laughing] ... have machine guns? You could-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, I us-
- JRJoe Rogan
legally have them here.
- SPSpeaker
I used to go to the Machine Gun Fest, and, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughing]
- 1:30:00 – 1:45:00
Cell phones are a good argument about…
- SPSpeaker
mass distribution, and actually, a factory girl can buy them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Cell phones are a good argument about that-
- SPSpeaker
Yep, exactly
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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?
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Would you spend... Hold on, but would you spend less, or would you just limit the purchasing to non-
- SPSpeaker
We'll probably be lucky just to limit the purchase, but I would spend less.
- JRJoe Rogan
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."
- SPSpeaker
Well, well, what, what, what you would do is-
- JRJoe Rogan
But you know what I'm saying?
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, but it's not too much food. It's non-nutritious food. I mean, it's not even-
- SPSpeaker
Too much bad food.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not even food.
- SPSpeaker
Well, you're right. [chuckles]
- JRJoe Rogan
It's things you eat that have no nutrition in it at all-
- SPSpeaker
Exactly
- JRJoe Rogan
... like Coca-Cola.
- SPSpeaker
Yes, exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like candy and cookies and all the shit that you can buy with food stamps.
- SPSpeaker
And I've been talking- you can get candies. You know, you can get a bag of candy on your food stamps.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
I think it's arguable that sugar drinks are as bad as buying alcohol.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's close.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, certainly in terms of health consequences.
- 1:45:00 – 2:00:00
Right…
- JRJoe Rogan
energy to go pursue your dreams-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- SPSpeaker
So, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
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."
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes, I agree.
- SPSpeaker
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
"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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right
- SPSpeaker
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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-
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
-being a plumber, those are go- always gonna be valuable.
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, you're gonna have to carry things and install things.
- SPSpeaker
I, I think-
- JRJoe Rogan
You're gonna have to get in to open up walls.
- SPSpeaker
I agree. I think it's still gonna exist.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
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."
- 2:00:00 – 2:15:00
Yeah…
- JRJoe Rogan
but a lot of these people that were getting a lot of money from this fraud were donating to politicians. There's, uh-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- SPSpeaker
It's extraordinary.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's one of the best things for AI.
- SPSpeaker
No, it's extraordinary.
- JRJoe Rogan
AI will give you-
- SPSpeaker
I saw a good-
- JRJoe Rogan
... good information.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- SPSpeaker
And can you imagine, just be- ship size-
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... where the money went, and the problem just got worse.
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
... No evidence Minnesota daycares gave millions-
- SPSpeaker
[laughing]
- JRJoe Rogan
-to political campaigns. What is this, Yahoo News?
- SPSpeaker
[laughing]
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so one of the ways to cover their tracks is to debunk things and to post stories, and-
- SPSpeaker
The-
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't think we really know how much money is missing.
- SPSpeaker
I think part of the reform is we just shouldn't give out welfare.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think-
- SPSpeaker
And this doesn't mean we shouldn't help people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
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.
- 2:15:00 – 2:22:20
Right.…
- SPSpeaker
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?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... Democrat will vote for it.
- JRJoe Rogan
I doubt it. Well, also, it'd be terrible for their base.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, if they found out that these are the people that are voting to audit-
- SPSpeaker
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's-
- SPSpeaker
... who are poor
- JRJoe Rogan
- 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-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... like, this is just how-
- SPSpeaker
And that's the problem with having the debate.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Is the debate is demagogued.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Um, um.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... giving them EBT cards, giving them cell phones. What was your take on all that?
- SPSpeaker
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it seemed like the Democrats wanted the problem to exist.
- SPSpeaker
I think 'cause they want more voters. They don't vote immediately-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, and they were moving people-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... to swing states, and the idea being that the census only counts human beings, it doesn't count citizens.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so you get more congressional seats.
Episode duration: 2:43:37
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode koSIQ-ASW8k
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome