Joe Rogan Experience #2025 - Dave Smith
Joe Rogan (host), Narrator, Dave Smith (guest), Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Dave Smith (guest), Dave Smith (guest)
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Joe Rogan and Narrator, Joe Rogan Experience #2025 - Dave Smith explores dave Smith and Joe Rogan Deconstruct War, Media Lies, and Power Joe Rogan and comedian–political commentator Dave Smith spend nearly three hours dissecting U.S. foreign policy, the Russia‑Ukraine war, COVID policy, media propaganda, and the American security state. Smith argues that U.S. and NATO actions, especially around the 2014 Ukraine coup, NATO expansion, and years of anti‑Russia rhetoric, deliberately provoked Russia and are now being memory‑holed by the media. They detail how intelligence agencies and corporate media colluded in narratives like Trump–Russia collusion and Hunter Biden’s laptop to shape elections and public opinion while suppressing dissenting voices.
Dave Smith and Joe Rogan Deconstruct War, Media Lies, and Power
Joe Rogan and comedian–political commentator Dave Smith spend nearly three hours dissecting U.S. foreign policy, the Russia‑Ukraine war, COVID policy, media propaganda, and the American security state. Smith argues that U.S. and NATO actions, especially around the 2014 Ukraine coup, NATO expansion, and years of anti‑Russia rhetoric, deliberately provoked Russia and are now being memory‑holed by the media. They detail how intelligence agencies and corporate media colluded in narratives like Trump–Russia collusion and Hunter Biden’s laptop to shape elections and public opinion while suppressing dissenting voices.
The conversation then pivots to COVID: lockdowns, vaccine mandates, censorship around lab‑leak theories, and the sidelining of natural immunity and basic health. Rogan and Smith highlight the financial incentives driving hospital behavior and pharmaceutical profits, and how these incentives eroded trust in public health and legacy media. They also examine Sam Harris’s ‘we need institutions we can trust’ stance by pointing out that institutional lying, not public skepticism, is the root problem.
Finally, they discuss the deep state, CIA/FBI overreach, the weaponization of the legal system against Trump, and the broader populist backlash evident in phenomena like the ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ song, RFK Jr., and Vivek Ramaswamy. Smith lays out a libertarian diagnosis: the federal government and its intelligence and media arms have become a corrupt empire that must be radically downsized, even if it’s politically daunting.
Key Takeaways
The Ukraine conflict is far more than an ‘unprovoked’ invasion narrative.
Smith argues that U. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Corporate media openly shapes and then rewrites history to fit current agendas.
Examples include mainstream outlets once admitting U. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Intelligence agencies are political actors, not neutral ‘referees.’
From the Steele dossier and FISA abuses against Trump’s campaign to 51 intelligence officials branding Hunter Biden’s laptop ‘Russian disinformation,’ Smith contends these agencies actively interfered in elections while later facing zero accountability.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
COVID policy revealed deep collusion between government, pharma, and media.
Lockdowns, vaccine mandates, financial incentives for hospitals, censorship of lab‑leak theories and early treatments, and dismissal of natural immunity all point, in their view, to policy driven by profit and liability protection rather than transparent science.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Institutional lying—more than public ‘misinformation’—destroyed trust.
Rogan and Smith argue that it’s rational to distrust agencies like the CDC, FDA, CIA, and FBI after repeated deceptions; calls to ‘restore trust in institutions’ ring hollow unless there’s real accountability for their past conduct.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Legal actions against Trump are seen by many as political warfare.
Smith emphasizes the contrast between unpunished, large‑scale presidential crimes (wars without declarations, torture, targeted killings) and novel, shaky indictments against Trump, which half the country interprets as an attempt to pre‑emptively block their candidate.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
A durable solution would require radically shrinking federal power.
From a libertarian standpoint, Smith says CIA, FBI overreach, permanent war, financial bubbles, and cultural manipulation are structural products of a massive centralized state; the real ‘cure’ would be abolishing or drastically curbing many agencies and returning to a much smaller constitutional government.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Notable Quotes
“If you really cared about Ukrainians, why would your move be to prolong the conflict and let more of them die?”
— Dave Smith
“The actual story is almost as big: the intelligence agencies framed the sitting president for treason, and they all got away with it.”
— Dave Smith
“The problem isn’t that we don’t trust institutions. The problem is that they lied.”
— Dave Smith
“COVID was like a stress test. You throw a crisis at something and you see how strong it really is.”
— Dave Smith
“There are predators amongst us. And when you’re not a predator, it’s really hard to understand that someone like you will kill children and sleep like a baby.”
— Joe Rogan
Questions Answered in This Episode
How would U.S. public opinion change if mainstream news prominently revisited and owned past admissions about the 2014 Ukraine coup and NATO’s role?
Joe Rogan and comedian–political commentator Dave Smith spend nearly three hours dissecting U. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What specific reforms or abolitions of intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, DNI) could realistically be pursued without triggering institutional backlash or chaos?
The conversation then pivots to COVID: lockdowns, vaccine mandates, censorship around lab‑leak theories, and the sidelining of natural immunity and basic health. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
In hindsight, what mechanisms could have prevented the suppression of the lab‑leak hypothesis and Hunter Biden’s laptop story without enabling genuine disinformation campaigns?
Finally, they discuss the deep state, CIA/FBI overreach, the weaponization of the legal system against Trump, and the broader populist backlash evident in phenomena like the ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ song, RFK Jr. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Is it possible to design public health institutions that are both scientifically rigorous and structurally insulated from pharmaceutical and political capture?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Given the demonstrated corruption in war, media, and finance, what does a credible path toward a smaller, more accountable federal government actually look like in practice?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music) What's up, brother?
Good to see you, my friend.
Good to be back.
What's crackalackin'?
Oh, I'm just having fun, dude. Great time at Mothership last night.
Last, last ... That was a good time.
Yeah.
That place is always a good time.
Yeah. I can't wait to go back tonight.
Magical portal.
(laughs)
Fun, fun. Great fucking crowds too. The crowds were amazing.
Yeah. Just incredible. Every time I've been there, and I've been there-
Yeah.
... a decent amount now, always great crowds.
Yeah. It's, it's a fun place. Build it and they will come.
Yeah. Well, you sure did.
Yeah. Yeah.
(laughs)
Yeah. So, uh, we were, uh, on our way over here and I texted you that Prigozhin thing.
Mm-hmm.
Wild. But not unexpected.
Well, yeah. Y-
Is he definitely dead? Is he definitely-
I, I don't think it's definitely. I think this is what people are reporting. I mean the-
Right.
... the plane just went down. I, I wouldn't say definitely yet. Um, but I think a lot of us did expect, after he kind of flirted with a mutiny against Vladimir Putin and then they kind of came to an agreement and he leaves, you're like, "I don't think that guy has very long to live."
Yeah.
Vladimir Putin doesn't seem to me to be the type of guy you can try to overthrow and then go, "My bad. I think we're cool."
What do you think that was all about?
Um, I don't know. I really don't know. Um, they ... At, at first, they were spinning it like he was pissed off about the war, but that never really seemed to make sense to me. I think some type of power struggle and, um, he kind of went for it in a pretty major way, started, like, destroying equipment and moving his forces toward Moscow and then they reached some agreement and they backed off. Um, and now a plane went down, so-
Yeah.
... we'll see.
We'll see. Yeah, if I was him, I wouldn't be going anywhere by plane.
(laughs) Yeah, r- yeah, you would think, right?
Yeah. You should take a bus, bro.
Yeah, yeah. You should take-
(laughs)
I have ... You should take a tank anywhere you go.
Yeah. You should be inside a safe-
Yeah.
... riding on a bus.
Yeah. What was crazy is when it first, uh, went down, so many people in, like, the corporate press were like, "This is it for Putin. He's done. Russia's collapsing because they're doing so bad in the war." And all of those narratives seem to be completely disproven.
Install uListen to search the full transcript and get AI-powered insights
Get Full TranscriptGet more from every podcast
AI summaries, searchable transcripts, and fact-checking. Free forever.
Add to Chrome