Joe Rogan Experience #1414 - Mike Baker

(singing) Hello, Mike Baker.

Hello. (laughs) Hello.

Good to see you, buddy.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me back on.

My pleasure. So tell me what's up? Are we in trouble? What's going on, man?

No. It's World War III, haven't you heard?

Is it?

Uh, no.

No.

No, it's not. No.

No.

I'm here to burst that bubble, I think. Uh, not that anyone's gonna say, "Okay, I, I, I'm writing this down. Mike said no World War III." Um, but it was, it was amazing how, how fast the... Uh, I'll put that closer there. It was amazing how fast the, uh, the narrative came out.

Yeah.

Right? I mean, we'd barely smoked, uh, Soleimani and, and suddenly, uh, the current president's gonna get us into this, this, uh, conflict. And-

I was nervous.

Well, I think everybody stepped back because it was such a shock to the system, right?

Yeah.

We... I mean, when was the last time we dealt with Iran in this fashion? I mean, uh, as opposed to, like, a, a harshly-worded demarche or a note or maybe an extra sanction here or there. But th- it, it was such a strange, um, uh, development that I think it did... And the natural reaction was to say, "Uh, oh my God, here we go." You know, and certainly everybody's exhausted from, you know, 19 years out there, so. But, you know.

I was, uh, shocked that Trump could make that call. 'Cause they had a bunch of different options. They had-

And they're like, "Or we could kill him." He's like, "Let's kill him."

(laughs) Well-

I was like, "Whoa, I didn't know you could do that." Well, you know what? He's, he's been a target before.

(coughs) Yes.

Uh, Soleimani is... I mean, it's, there's e-... I guess I should first say, um, where I stand on all this, which is I'm, I'm not mourning his, uh, his, his passing, right? I mean, I think he deserved it. I think his justice, it should've been served up some time ago. He's responsible, not ju- not just for, uh, as people have talked about, the hundreds of, of, uh, US servicemen, um, but thousands and thousands of people. This guy was a completely, um, bloodthirsty douchebag. I mean, there's no way about it. And he was, and it was, and we're talking about the second most, um, structure-wise, the second most important person within the Iranian regime, next to the Ayatollah. So, but the idea that somehow we took out a foreign leader, right? Or a military general, like he was some sort of, um, Ike, you know, Eisenhower-

Yeah.

... uh, is insane. The guy was a mob boss. He was, he was, uh, the head terrorist for a state that is the number one sponsor of terrorism around the world. And so, but he's been on, on target lists for a long time. You go back to, I think 2008, there was an operation to take out a guy named Mughniyah, who, uh, himself was also a, a, uh, bloodthirsty psychopath. And, um, he was running Hezbollah operations. So the Israelis, uh, had been tracking him, as had we. Um, and, uh, at one point they had an opportunity to take out Mughniyah and also, uh, Soleimani. And they backed off at the time, um, essentially because the US wouldn't, you know, get behind the idea that we're gonna take out Soleimani. That was, you know, at that point, that was a, a step too far. So they, uh, eventually we got Mughniyah. Um, but Soleimani is just, uh, uh... I mean, I don't even know where to start with the amount of blood that he, he's responsible for. Um, people talk about, again, okay, he authorized operations and activities in Iraq against US soldiers, and against Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi civilians. But it goes back to the beginning of that. I mean, you could go back to 2003. And Soleimani was the, was the architect, he dreamt up this idea as the US was going into Iraq, that, um, he was gonna... I mean, what he did was insane. He basically authorized, I mean, he's in charge, right? So he authorizes the release of a bunch of Sunnis that they've been holding onto. Iran being Shiite, um, arch-rivals being the Sunnis essentially. Um, and the Saudis are, are their archenemy, uh, a Sunni nation. And, but he released all these Sunni extremists that Iran had been holding onto, uh, essentially ever since we'd gone into Afghanistan, right after 9/11. And he released them into Iraq, in- including a guy named Zarqawi who became the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. And within a few months of our getting out to Iraq, the, uh, the Sunnis, uh, under, basically under Soleimani's tutelage, uh, had a series of bombings and started bombing everything from Shiite mosques to, um, UN facilities, the Jordanian Embassy, a variety of targets, killing thousands of Shiites. Now, he's a Shiite, right? So this is how bad this guy is. He goes into Iraq with this plan that, "I'm gonna push the Shiites in Iraq to Iran. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make them come to us for protection, for coverage essentially. We can ride in there." Because he, what does he want? He wants to exert their influence within Iraq. He doesn't want a strong Iraq. He doesn't want the US in there building a strong, stable Iraq. I mean, you go back to the Iran-Iraq War where Soleimani started his military career. And, you know, he's not, he, he, there's no way, uh, he's a true believer. There's no way he's ever gonna let Iraq become stable again. And he's insane enough that he kills thousands of Shiite, his own people, right, in order to push, um, the Shiite population in Iraq to Iran. I don't know if I'm, I'm, I'm may not-