#2355 - Mike Baker

the Joe Rogan experience Mike Baker what a good time to talk to you what a good time to have you in what a fine time there's so much chaos there's so much madness oh my god did you see the South Park episode which which They did a Donald Trump one with Satan. No. No. It's fucking hilarious. I love it. The show is fantastic. I raised my three boys on that show, much to my wife's horror. But it's a great show. But I haven't seen that episode. When you think, like Bridget Phetasy had a funny quote, like when you think that they have reached the bottom of the highest level of not giving a fuck, they reach unseen levels. is it the whole the Epstein thing is so crazy like and him saying like what do you care why does everybody care about Epstein like well that's it yeah but it is look I mean although again going back to South Park yeah once they did the Woodland Creatures episode all those years ago you thought okay that's got to be the worst they can get which one was the Woodland Creatures one oh my god you got to look it up it's fantastic I'm not going to do it justice if I try to explain what it's about well remember when they did the gay teacher where you had a whore off with Paris Hilton. He stuffed her up his ass. This was the other one. Oh, God. They're all cussing. Oh, that's right. Oh, I forgot about that one. Yeah. That was 17 years ago. They don't give a fuck, dude. No. They haven't given a fuck since the beginning and it's the greatest show of all time. Yeah. Honestly, if you said what would be the best job that you could have imagined, it would be being one of those two guys working on that show. Yeah, they're killing it. Yeah. And the thing is, it's so beautiful because they have cartoons and you could do things with cartoons you could never do with real people. You can kill them. They can fuck each other. They can stick things up their ass. Yeah, Cartman gets that alien probe. Anything can happen. And it's also they're not realistic cartoons, so it's like you're somehow or another detached from it. Yeah. And they did a documentary one time. I don't know if you saw that. Oh, yeah. Where they tracked the six days it takes them to make the show. This Trump event with Satan. Satan's back. Satan's upset at Trump. It's very funny. Well, you remember the Satan and Diddy episode. That was fantastic too I didn see that one Oh the Satan episode And then they they had the What was that Is that Reason Mass murderers No this was a few years back too It was a Diddy party and he wanted to It's a long story. He wanted a Lamborghini cake, but it was like the devil wanted it, and they said, no, Diddy did it already. It's fantastic. Remember when they had the movie with Saddam Hussein? Yes. And Saddam Hussein was in a gay relationship with Satan? Oh, God. We could spend the entire time. People are like, oh, they're going to talk about this the whole time? Yeah. The Epstein stuff is so crazy because when Kash Patel was on here and he was like, there's no, there's nothing. And I was like, what are you talking? Yeah. I didn't even know what to say. My thought was, and people are like, why didn't you push back more? My thought was like, I'm just going to put this out there and let the internet do its work because there's nothing I can. The guy's saying there's no tapes, there's no video. That doesn't make any sense. Everyone knows it doesn't make any sense. let's just and then he didn't know about the mike the michael badden stuff the autopsy stuff where it showed that he had three broken bones in his neck which never happens yeah when you hang yourself even when you like leap from somewhere with a rope around your neck and it snaps your neck you never have three broken bones he's not launching himself off the first floor balcony the whole thing was nuts and then they really he's like well we have a film we're going to release that film, and the film has a fucking minute missing from it. Yeah. Like, do you think we're babies? Like, what is this? Also, you got people, including Dan Bongino, right, making bank for a couple of years talking about how awful it is, and we got to get this shit, and this is a huge conspiracy. And then you release a two-day, you know, a two-page memo that says, yeah, there's nothing to see here. Yeah, because you're walking by your bedroom window, and you see a little laser, a little red laser moving across your chest. But it really is. It's so kind of... Look, you know me, I'm not a conspiracy guy by nature. But I am today. I'm fully on board with this shit. Everybody's in today. Yeah. But they're actually doing it. As we speak, and I find this fascinating, is that the assistant attorney general, Todd Blanche, is down in Florida for an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell. And she's serving 20 years in a Florida prison for sex trafficking. To who, though? Um, what's that? To who? Well, he's down there to interview her. Right, but I'm saying she's sex trafficked to who? Oh, she was a co-conspirator of Epstein's, right? But don you have to have a person who you sex trafficking to Exactly And they talked about the victims somewhat during her trial It was a very difficult trial in the sense of you know they trying to protect certain victims and others who are coming forward But, you know, my surprise was nobody from DOJ has ever, according to her legal team, nobody has ever interviewed her from DOJ. Right? Department of Justice. So this is the first time the Department of Justice, you're telling me. And meanwhile, up on Capitol Hill, you've got Democrats like Adam Schiff and others going, we have got to release these fucking files. They had four years under the previous administration. Look, everybody's fucked in this situation. But they had all that time to do whatever they wanted to do. Nobody up until this point apparently has talked to it. Now, some folks on the legal side are saying, well, look, if she had anything interesting to say, she would have said it during the course of her trial to save herself or to cut a deal. No. I don't think so. I don't. Don't kill her. Yeah. The smartest thing for her to do is to keep her fucking mouth shut, which is what she did. They put her in a cushy prison where she could do yoga. Yeah. Yoga in prison. That doesn't sound good. Here's one of my favorite ones. I'm going to send you this, Jamie, because somebody tweeted this, and it's just so perfect. And it just shows you how crazy this whole thing has been from the very beginning. Someone tweeted this from the Atlantic. And this is what's funny about this. Check this out, Jamie. So it's these fucking people. It's like they all knew her. They all knew him. So many people knew him and knew her. And they're all pretending that they didn't. That no one knew him. Check this out. This is the Atlantic says. Go up, beggar, so we can see it. So we can see the quote below it. Below it. No, go back. There we go. I can't read it. There it goes. This is what The Atlantic posts. If the Epstein scandal teaches us anything, it's that America needs a dedicated and decently funded group of people whose job it is not to just ask questions, but to find answers. And then this guy, Sean Davis, posts, the woman on the right is Ghislaine Maxwell. She trafficked children for Jeffrey Epstein. The woman on the left owns your magazine. this is so fucking wild just that alone is so wild that they would have the balls to post that we need dedicated journalists not just people asking questions which is like for sure an attack on podcasts like listen you guys didn do shit yeah you didn do shit so just asking just the fact that we're just asking questions along with that or is this a knock on the defunding of pbs which is essentially a propaganda network for the democratic party yeah which is now being apparently, we'll see if that happens, but apparently being defunded. But yeah, look, everybody's worried now, right? At first it was like, okay, again, I go back a handful of years. Nobody was pushing for this, right? Because you got people from all sides probably on whatever that list looks like, whatever that Epstein file looks like, whoever was involved. You got people from all sides of the spectrum here going on. And so everybody's worried. So it looked like, all right, you know, there's kind of this bizarre bipartisan moment where we're not going to push for this, really. We're not going to make a big effort here. We're not sending anybody from DOJ. The Dems aren't, during the Biden administration, calling for the release of the files. Now, all of a sudden, they smell, you know, blood in the water and a particular, you know, political motivation here. So let's get these files out. And, you know, nobody's going to look good from this. But again, I would caution some, you know, just because a name might be in a file, no matter whose it is, right, doesn't necessarily mean there's nefarious activity. It could be like any police file, right, that says, okay, the individual stopped at this particular location and this person was there. Doesn't mean they're connected to something awful. They weren't fucking underage girls. Maybe they were if they're in the file, right? And I'm just saying there's a lot of people probably in that file that are going to be named if it ever comes out who may or may not have been engaged in illegal activity. But just release the goddamn things. Yeah, there's probably a lot of people who just went there. Did I send you that thing where this guy was breaking? Did I say NPR or PBS earlier? I meant NPR. Did I send you that thing, that link where this guy's breaking down all the different tweets that the lady who is the CEO of NPR made? I don't think so. She's getting questioned on whether or not she's biased and then this guy like goes over all the different tweets Goddammit, I know I saved it. I should I should have been prepared. I know I have it in here because it's so funny It's so funny listening to her. It's so funny listening to her. See if you can find it. You might be able to find it. I just think I just found it. No, you found it. Beautiful. Because it's so adorable, this pretending that this was an unbiased news source. Yes. Directly from her own account. Well, this is one of them. But this one guy broke it down. Football is back. And you could win big on DraftKings, the official daily fantasy partner of the NFL. One player turned a single $5 entry into $50,000. Real players, real wins. Could your lineup be next? This week, new customers play free for a shot at a share of millions in prizes with your first $5 deposit. Download the DraftKings app and use promo code ROGAN, that's code ROGAN, for a free shot at a share of millions in prizes with your first $5 deposit. In partnership with DraftKings, the crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. In New York, call 877-8-HOPE-N-Y or text HOPE-N-Y at 467-369. In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org. 18 and over in most eligible states, but age varies by jurisdiction. Eligibility restrictions apply. Minimum $5 deposit required. One single-use $3 ticket rewarded that expires in 14 days. Ends December 31st. See terms at DraftKings.com slash promotions. This episode is brought to you by the Farmer's Dog. I think we can all agree that eating highly processed food for every meal isn't optimal. So why is processed food the status quo for dog food? Because that's what kibble is, an ultra-processed food. But a healthy alternative exists, the farmer's dog. They make fresh food for dogs. And what does it look like? Real meat and vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients and help avoid any of the bad stuff that comes with ultra-processing. And it's not just random ingredients thrown together. Their food is formulated by on-staff, board-certified vet nutritionists. These people are experts on dog nutrition, and they're all in on fresh food. The Farmer's Dog also does something unique. They portion out the food to your dog's nutritional needs. This ensures that you don't overfeed them, making weight management easy. Research shows that dogs kept at a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer. Head to thefarmersdog.com slash rogan to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. This offer is for new customers only Sorry Maybe I said it to Dave Smith We find it Yeah. But again, anybody who at this stage of the game thinks that the media doesn't have an agenda, that they're not complicit in one way or another with whatever may be, come on. Yeah, it's a joke. It's a joke. And they're all funded. I mean, the fact that the government was funding NPR is crazy. You can't have a completely biased, one-sided media organization that's funded by the government and taxpayers. That's crazy. And they went over all the amount of people that were on NPR that were Democrats, and it's 100%. Yeah. It's like out of 87 people, it's 100%. And look at the New York Times. Yeah. I mean, so none of that should be a surprise to anybody who's paying half of mine. But the New York Times is at least a privately funded company. Right. I mean, it's like NPR relied on tax money. Yeah. And there's this giant outrage that the government's going to defund it. Well, a lot of what they're trying to do is they're trying to couch it as saying, look, you're taking away, you know, the only source of news for, you know, rural locations, for example. Like you've got some place up in North Dakota that, you know, has no other access. And so they rely on NPR for their news. I don't know a lot of people up in North Dakota that say, I wonder what NPR is saying about this. Well, not just that, but it's like at the end of the day, the reality is the Internet exists. And you don't need to publicly fund something that's clearly biased when the Internet exists. You can get whatever you want. If you want to just absorb and consume only left-wing media, there's so much available. You can go find it. But our tax dollars should not be going to that. No, no. And to be fair, if anybody wants to know what the hell's going on in the news, they can just listen to the President's Daily Brief podcast, frankly. Oh, your podcast. I'm good, right? Yeah, yeah, your thing. Yeah, boy, I just stuck that in there. I can't find this fucking thing. Yeah. Did you find it? Let's hear it. Show me a story that concerns you. That's fantastic. As far as the accusations that were biased, I would stand up and say, please show me a story that concerns you. Because we want to know and we want to bring that conversation back to our newsroom. And then they have all these. And then all these. Fatphobia and its racist past and present. some white people may choose thumbs up because it feels neutral but some academics argue that opting out what does that mean thumbs up signals lax awareness about white privilege akin to society associating whiteness with being raceless what does that mean How about how racism became a marketing tool for country music Oh yeah that a good one This right-wing conspiracy theory about eating bugs is about as racist as you think. No, that's like literally this is. And there's usually another great quote that she said. If you look on the right side, Jamie, where it says the truth is a distraction from getting things done. That is such a fucking Orwellian thing to say. Click on that just so you can hear her say this. Because it's so bananas that someone would say this out loud and not think it's... One of the most significant differences, critical for moving from polarization to productivity, is that the Wikipedians who write these articles aren't actually focused on finding the truth. Oh, no. They're working for something that's a little bit more attainable, which is the best of what we can know right now. And after seven years there, I actually believe that they're on to something. That for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth isn't necessarily the best place to start. In fact, I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done. What? Oh, my God. That's fantastic. I love that. Wild is that. And you want government money. That is such a wild thing to say. You know, going for the truth as a journalist, no, no. It's not important. No, it's not important. It's a distraction. The truth is a distraction. You know what I hate? I hate that. And you see that all the time. And I don't know whether that's a TED talk or not. But as soon as I see that type of forum where they're earnestly standing there and they've got their little mouthpiece there around there and they're talking and they're looking out into the distance and you think, climb out of your own fucking ass, right? It's just awful. Yeah, I don't like any of those things. Yeah. I don't like that little Bobby Brown microphone either. Unless you're on stage. The Bobby Brown. Remember? Yeah, I remember. You used to sing with that? Yeah. A little step I take. Sorry. Step on your line, I'll join in for the chorus. I don't like those little microphones. Hold the microphone like a real fucking human. That's madness. That video clip is madness. That's a piece of madness. That's a crazy thing to say. I will say truth gets in the way I will say that that the the Epstein The Epstein situation going to be so disappointing to so many people now because um i have this theory that nothing ever gets done in washington dc right investigations go to die there nothing ever happens there's never any real consequences of any nature and we got all sorts of things happening right now right so so the epstein case is just one of them but right now you've got you've got the dems focused on epstein because Because, you know, again, they see this is a good opportunity here to go after Trump, regardless of who else is in the files. Right. And the Dems, I think, were worried for quite some time and didn't pursue it because, you know, years back they were thinking, OK, Clinton's going to be embarrassed. We don't want that. So, again, my point would be just release everything. I don't understand how if you just look at the way that they handled this logistically, whoever thought because the mob wants to eat. Right. And they've been throwing red meat to the mob about Epstein files now for four years. It's part of how they got elected. Right. And so whoever in their communications group or in their strategic thinking arena in the administration thought, you know, that we can get away with just saying there's nothing to see here. They should be fired. Right. Because there's no way you can satisfy this this mob. And now the mob is oddly bipartisan because it's got the Demps and it's got, you know, part of the base of Trump in there. Yeah, and they're all you know screaming to have this Goddammit just release this shit. Otherwise, this is gonna be around like Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy and well, that's what's crazy They did release more Martin Luther King doc. Yeah documents, which is really crazy. Like why are you? holding secrets about the murder of one of the most beloved historical figures of all time from 1968 part of that is a family request. Yeah part of that's a family request a family has asked in the past on a number of occasions, they really don't want some of this. Because some of it, look, some of it's salacious about Martin Luther King, which doesn't take away from everything that he did, right, as a leader of a cause and a movement. But some of it is, you know, extramarital affairs. So there's been some push to be concerned about that. But, yeah, now do the Epstein files. Well, they'll do it in the same amount of time, 56 years from now. Just like they did with him. It's 56 fucking years later they released this stuff And we're still not any closer to I mean, again, I don't want to disappear down that rabbit hole But we're still not any closer with Martin Luther King Again, not a conspiracy god except today, apparently But there's shit there To I mean yeah again. I don't want disappeared on that rabbit hole, but we're starting to closer with Martin Luther King To I mean yeah again. I don't want disappeared on that rabbit hole, but we're starting to closer with Martin Luther King I'm you know I get not a conspiracy God except today apparently, but there's shit there Yeah, you said yeah, you've said multiple times if there's one that you think looks really bad. Yes that one It's that one, but I going back to it. I know I'm bouncing around here, but going back to the Epstein thing I don't understand how they handle this so poorly right for Pam Bondi to to come out and talk about the files And then like within a blink of an eye, they come out with this bullshit Sunday night memo saying there's nothing to see. How could there's just a lack of coordination? Yeah, I do. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's a messaging problem is always kind of a key element of the Trump administration, whether it's this one or not. And look, that's not a you know, I'm not knocking a lot of the policies. I like a lot of the policies that come out of this this administration. This one in the previous the first administration. But I'm just saying a hallmark of a Trump administration is the ability to have a self-inflicted wound. You know, shoot yourself in the foot because of messaging usually. Right. So I think they've done it again. And I don't see how they walk this back. They're trying to, I think, with this interview with Ghislaine Maxwell to say, look, we're trying. We're talking to her. But how does Pam Bondi say we have thousands of hours of footage? and then Kash Patel says we don't have anything that you're looking for. Yeah. And then Tim Dillon said he has lunch with J.D. Vance and J.D. Vance says that 10,000 hours is commercial pornography. Right. Yeah. You think this freak show of Epstein wasn't like, it didn't have hidden cameras or wasn't taped and shit? I mean, come on. 100%. Well, that was the thing about that house, that house they had in New York City, which is, by the way, for sale. Oh, really? Yeah, nobody wants to buy it. You want to buy Epstein's house do the cameras convey, but this is the thing I mean you got a gut the walls How are you gonna know what the fuck is in there? Yeah, imagine you walking around your house naked, and you think that the CIA is cut or your your organization Whoever to be fair the age a lot of hours of videotape of me walking around naked. I'm sure yeah, but Massad whoever it is that was involved in this intelligence gathering. I mean, I'm just guessing I have no idea But there's fucking pinhole cameras all over that house. Yeah, yeah you have to start from that perception, right? Because again, if anything else, you're just being naive if you think now there's nothing. Again, you gotta take it down to the bare beams You gotta strip the wallboard off You gotta fucking every baseboard you gotta pull everything it like it like we had a knows what in that house we had a we had a situation in moscow one time where we're building uh it was the new embassy the u.s embassy in moscow right and for some reason you know part of the deal was to allow russian contractors to work on the construction of this what the fuck you know so but that's it's a government thing you know and so you can imagine, there's, like, to your point, there's not a lot of coordination. So, you know, the Russian contractors are thinking, oh, this is great. We're helping to construct the U.S. embassy. And they know there's going to be sensitive areas within there, the station, you know, for the agency and other areas. Anyway, at a certain point there, they're just about finished with construction. And just by, not by happenstance, I mean, there were efforts to try to examine what the Russians were doing, right? So the security side of things, they were concerned about the fact that the Russians were working on it. You know, you had the State Department and others that were like, no, it's a good idea. You know, it helps with diplomacy. So the security guys were doing things, they were x-raying, you know, parts of materials that were coming in for the construction. And apparently at one point, what was going on was the Russians were installing listening devices inside the rebar, right, of the construction process. And apparently, at one point, they, you know, one of the wires on one of these communications devices that was stuck in there had broken. And so they soldered it. The Russians did. They soldered it with aluminum. And that showed up when they were X-raying that particular large bit of material that they were going to install. And that was the way that they found out. And they said, what the fuck? Then they had to tear the entire goddamn thing down I forget, I think it was two or three different floors of this embassy. They had to remove, they bit by bit shipped it back to the States to examine fully. And it was just loaded with listening devices by the Russians, right? So it's going to be the same, long story short, it's the same at Epstein's place. You've got to tear it down. Yeah. It's a nice house too. And it's like right on the park. Yeah. And I was like, wonder why that's still for sale. What are they asking for it, do you think? I think it's like 60 or 70 million. Oh, I might look at it. Jamie can find it. It's pretty dope. It sold at $20,000 for $51 million. Holy shit. But it's for sale now, though, right? That I didn't see. I'm pretty sure it's for sale right now. I wonder if it gets a premium because it's Epstein's place. You know like a celebrity premium for a home I wonder if that the case You have to be a fucking complete psycho to want to live in that guy house Same guy going to buy Diddy spot Yeah, I don't know what they're... What the fuck? God. But there's... So you've got the Epstein thing going on. Like, how does that get resolved? This is the question. Like, if you're the administration and you're looking at this puzzle and you're trying to figure out how to make this a PR win... We're too late for that. What the fuck can you do at this point? Is it for sale? 65 mil two years ago, it says. Holy shit. Is it not for sale right now? Not according to Zillow. Zero bedrooms, only one bath. That's not a very nice place. What the hell? It's just one big fuck hole. Yeah, we call it the playroom. This is the house? Oh, my God. It looks like a Saudi. 65 million bucks in Manhattan. What the hell? The wild thing is, though, it's like right on the street. Like anybody can come to your door and just knock on your door, like walking by. Yeah. Prince Andrew. It's weird. Living there is weird. Yeah. Look at that. Meanwhile, no one can explain where he got the money. No one can explain why he got so rich. You know, and Eric Weinstein, who is like a legit financial guy, said he talked to him. He had a meeting with him once. He's like, it was really clear that he's a construct. He's like, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't know anything. Yeah. That's not for sale right now? I didn't say it was. Oh. It's listed on Zillow, but not for sale. It's like everything's still on Zillow kind of. Oh, like it was for sale. Yeah. Maybe there's another service. Because sometimes Zillow doesn't have all the stuff because someone I know was looking at it. Yeah, maybe it's on cheap old houses. That's a good site. It's a bargain. It's a fixer-upper though. Yeah. But like you'd have to go through that house. You'd have to hire like the top of the food chain security experts. and they would probably recommend you take that house apart. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could do a sweep of the thing, but that's not going to guarantee, right? You really have to pull the walls down and look because, again, maybe I'm wrong. There's never say never, but I can't imagine that a psycho like Epstein wasn't enjoying videoing some of the activity that was going on. For sure. Yeah So what do you think from your perspective What do you think that was all about Who do you think was involved in that Do you think it was the Mossad Do you think it was some rogue intelligence agency in America Was it a coordinated effort You know what? I know there's a lot of talk about, you know, did he have some sort of intel connection, right? Right. You know, from my perspective, it's complete speculation. But I will say, like, from an operational perspective, I have no idea. Was it Mossad? Was it anybody? Who knows? Right. But from an operational perspective, if you see a guy like this who's super connected and is and, you know, all the way back to what, 2008 was like his first trial. Right. So he's had a long history of these problems. But if you know that he's kind of engaged in a variety of things, as an example, if I'm the if I'm Chinese Intel. Right. And I just read the goddamn entertainment news. and there's these rumors and allegations of high-level people flying off to his island. I'm going to think that's interesting because potentially if I could get an access source there, if I can get somebody inside that operation, whether it's Ghislaine Maxwell, whether it's Epstein himself, whether it's somebody who's just on the outskirts of it, maybe I'll start picking up some pretty interesting leverageable information on people that maybe I want to influence. And it's so funny to me that it always comes down to carnal needs. and carnal desires. It's always sex. Because these guys, when you get to this Bill Gates level and Bill Clinton level, you can't just go pick up gals at the bar. Yeah. You know what I mean? So if you're a super famous super freak and you like chasing skirts, but you can't do it, what do you do? Well, you do what he did, right? Which is you get somebody to procure for you, which apparently was primarily Maxwell's job. Yeah. And she's out there And, you know, she was described, you know, usually as his girlfriend, but she was clearly operating as his pimp or whatever the female version of a pimp is. Yeah, a curator. A curator. Yeah, it's a curator. And so, you know, she's out there doing that. But look, again, you know, I can't speak to, you know, the rumors about him working for one Intel agency or another. But I will say if I'm working for an Intel agency, and I see something like that Yeah, I might find that of interest right and I would I would definitely go after somebody to see what's going on Just if for no other reason then you know again, maybe it's a opportunity there You know it's the easiest connect the dots puzzle of all time. Yeah, you got rich power to see what's going on. to see what's going on. Just if for no other reason, then, you know, again, maybe it's an opportunity there. Well, it's the easiest connect the dots puzzle of all time. You got rich, powerful people and hot chicks and probably drugs and cameras. Yeah. And I tell you, the Russians love nothing better than, you know, the truth. The reality is in terms of recruiting an asset, recruiting an asset by using blackmail is tough, right? You got to, you got to, that window starts closing immediately, right, in terms of their operational usefulness, right? Because there's a lot of issues there, right? You're blackmailing somebody for their cooperation. At some point, that's going to go south on you, right? It's not like you've recruited somebody for ideological reasons, right? Or even something as straightforward as, like, they need the money because their kid's sick or whatever it may be. So blackmails. But having said that, look, the Russians in particular love that, right? And Chinese Intel, they'll do whatever works from their perspective. You know, the agency, again, people are going to say that's bullshit. The agency tries, the blackmail is never really ever on the table as an option because it always leads to a problem. And sometimes those problems can be very, very bad. In what way? Well, you know, the asset will turn on you, right? Next thing you know, you've got an agent working now, a double agent working for the other side, right, because they're so fucked over by the fact that they've been blackmailed. And at some point, they lose their shit and decide to roll for the other side. But aren't you constantly monitoring them and looking at their phone? There's only so much you can do, right, in terms of maintaining, particularly with a hard target, Particularly with an asset who's in a difficult or challenging environment, you know, for us, and you've got limited access to them, whatever it may be. So you're really relying on clandestine communications. You don't have a lot of face-to-face meetings. And at some point, you never know when things are heading south, right? And then the next thing you know, look, you know, so that's the operational reason for trying to avoid blackmail, right? Has it ever been done? Well, sure. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying it hasn't been done. Of course. But some services go to it much quicker than others do. Which services? Well again the Russians are primary users of something like that Because they got a shotgun approach Israelis have been known to do that in the honeypot operations that they do and other things But the Russians throw a lot of shit at the wall and see what sticks right It's very much a shotgun approach, right? And, you know, honestly, sometimes, you know, that can work. Wasn't that kind of, if you thought about this island, if you're bringing award-winning scientists, like famous people, politicians, world leaders, all to one place, you're Basically throwing as much shit against the wall as you can. Yeah. And then you have all this stuff on all these different people and they know it. And so then you just kind of like, wasn't there like some CEO that had to step down because he wound up giving Epstein? It was found out that he gave Epstein like $150 million that they couldn't explain why. Wasn't that the case, Jamie? So it's one of those things where there's obviously value in having all these people on your side. Yeah. But when you do get all this information on these people, like, what are they trying to accomplish with it? This is the question. Are they trying to get support for a policy to step down after a firm finds more payments to Jeffrey Epstein? $158 million. He paid the convicted sex offender $158 million. Can you scroll down a little bit, Jamie? Yeah. His plan to step down. I was chief. I've advised the Apollo board that I will retire as CEO before my 70th birthday in July. Remain as chairman. Oh, he's going to remain as a chairman. New York Times detailed at least $75 million in payments and found that Mr. Black had paid Epstein $158 million in a five-year period ending in 2017. He also lent Mr. Epstein more than $30 million, only $10 million of which he was paid back. So that's a guy that they got something on. I love this. Leon viewed Epstein as a confirmed bachelor with eclectic tastes. This was after his 2008 guilty plea. Yeah. Wow. Jesus Christ. Mr. Epstein's advice was worth perhaps $2 billion in tax savings to Mr. Black, according to the report. Right. What the fuck? But this is, again, this is what Weinstein said. Eric said that this guy is not good. He's not good. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He wasn't a good financial advisor. Yeah. I mean I think part of it is you can say okay why was he collecting people around him Why was he doing it Was he keeping a file Right You still have to figure out what that file looks like You know part of it could have been initially self right I mean he engaged in all sorts of activity He gets a few people into it, then suddenly, you know, he doesn't look so bad, right? And he's kind of protecting himself because now I'm surrounded by people who also have to keep that secret. And so, but then the question becomes, you know, at what point is he or somebody in this little tight circle there, Are they approached by anybody who's interested in some of these folks? But we don't know because we don't know who the fuck's in these files. Or if the files even exist. If the files even exist. And apparently there's nothing in there according to Pam Bondi. And Kash Patel. The whole thing's nuts. Yeah. And then, you know, have Bongino and Kash Patel saying he definitely killed himself. Like, what? Yeah. What? Okay. The level of convenience It's so convenient That the guards were asleep So convenient that the cameras didn't work So convenient that years later You have a recording of the outside of the cell But a minute is missing from it Three minutes Yeah they found out it was like almost three minutes Two minutes like 53 seconds It's like the missing Watergate tape It started off as a minute And then people kept looking at the metadata And metadata like okay it was saved this many times and I was actually up to three minutes missing. God. That's plenty of time to kill somebody. Three minutes is more than enough time. Oh, three minutes, you could get a whole bunch of people killed by then. You saw that guy that was his cellmate too, right? Yeah. Guy is a fucking gigantic human being. A huge guy who was a mass murderer who had killed multiple people, a bad cop who was built like a brick fucking shithouse. The kind of guy that you could really easily get to strangle somebody. It would take him, I could kill him in 30 seconds. How is this fucking giant dude could do it easy? Metadata from Raw Epstein. No, thanks. Metadata from Raw Epstein prison video shows approximately two minutes and 53 seconds were removed from one of the two stitched together clips. The cut starts off at the missing minute. Wow. Weird. Yeah, shocker. Yeah, yeah. So a guy like that decides, yeah, he's going to off himself. And again, yeah. But here's the thing, it's like, these guys that are all involved in this are still, they've been around for a long time, and they have this mentality that existed before the internet where you could just kind of put stuff out there and you wouldn have all these psycho sleuths out there that are going to go over everything with a fine tooth comb especially guys who are tech wizards who can look at the metadata and he can figure this kind of stuff out well shit died a lot quicker you right so something would happen and look we still have adhd right collectively as a nation right i mean things move on and i think maybe that's what they're you know some people are saying look they've called the recess on capitol hill because they figure by the time they come back in september everybody will have moved on from this, right? I think they're wrong. I don't think this is, again, this feels like and just looks like that one of those handful of conspiracies, again, you go to JFK or whomever, that's just going to hang around. There's a line in the sand. This one's a line in the sand. Because this is one where there's a lot of stuff about, you know, when we thought Trump was going to come in and a lot of things are going to be resolved. We're going to drain the swamp. We're going to figure everything out. and when you have this one hardcore line in the sand that everybody had been talking about forever and then they're trying to gaslight you on that well you would have thought that I hope not it's my wife should I answer silent buddy you know it was on silent but it still goes how does that happen it literally is on silent and are you sure yeah no I'm positive because it's got a little thing up top that says silent and your phone's compromised CIA doesn't trust you you're friends with me Well, they don't trust you anymore. They did call me this morning. What are you going to talk about? I don't know. Do they ever talk to you about that? Do they ever have questions about your appearances here? No, no. In fact, I'm in the building on occasion, and we're actually working on a show that's going to be a great TV show based on this amazing museum that's inside agency headquarters. But nobody ever says that. We have a really nice relationship. They don't tell me what to say. If I go on TV to talk about something, they just like, you know, it's not like they're going to call up and say, well, here's our view on this. They trust you. Yeah, they trust me. I'm not going to open my app and talk sources and methods. And at the same time, you know, I'm just going to try to just talk from an operational perspective. But, yeah, so that was my wife, which reminds me, it's my boy Muggsy's birthday today. Happy birthday, Muggsy. Yeah. Thank you very much. With a thing like this, what is the general feeling about people that you talk to that are still in the agency or people that are still involved in the government? How are they feeling about this? Because the general public is outraged, right? Yeah. Do the people inside, are they frustrated? People that wanted this stuff? people that are still involved in the government, like, how are they feeling about this? people that are still involved in the government, like, how are they feeling about this? Because, like, the general public is outraged, right? Yeah. Do the people inside, are they frustrated? Like, people that wanted this stuff to be exposed? Yeah, you know, it's funny because with the agency, it's not like the Bureau of the Agency, I think most people, honestly, don't really probably give a shit about the Epstein files. They're more concerned now about this release from Tulsi Gabbard and the talk about, you know, manipulating intelligence, you know, for the 2016 election and Russian collusion and all of that, that speaks more to the agency than the Epstein files does, just from a, you know, whose responsibility is whose, right? This Epstein thing is a DOJ, FBI issue. I think if they're concerned about it, it's because of how it erodes trust in organizations, institutions, right? And And that's happened a lot. So, you know, there's a lot of good people. I know, again, every time I talk about the agency, people are like, fuck you. You're such a shill. But there's a lot of good people doing very difficult work for the agency. I believe that. I believe that. And so, you know, I think, if anything, they take it personally when people think, fuck the CIA. You got to burn it down and start over again. You know, like they said with the FBI as well. I've talked about that many times. Like, you don't know what the fuck is going on in the world. The world is filled with chaos. Like you need people that are paying attention to that shit and they should be on your side Yeah They should be on the side of the American people paying attention to threats if you'd think that that's that Not paying attention at all is gonna do you any good when there's all these countries out there that are fucking plotting constantly You're crazy. Yeah, no, this is a you're living in the Utopia You're living in a fake world. The real world is filled with madness and you gotta have people paying attention to yeah But I think so I think that you know to answer that that question I think they're more focused on or interested in or, you know, looking at this issue of, you know, and it's surfaced again right at the same time as the Epstein files, right? Now, it's like sucking all the oxygen out of the room for the past couple of days. Tulsi Gabbard comes out and says, I'm releasing these documents. She releases these documents. What do you think about all that? Like, so this is the accusation. They're throwing around the word treason. Yeah. They're saying that Obama knew that Russia did not meddle in the election, did not have any impact in the election, but yet promoted this idea. And then there been some incredible clips of all these different news reporters CNN and MSNBC just saying over and over and over again clear evidence of Russian collusion Yeah And you got Hillary Clinton saying you know there's an air of illegitimacy around Trump's victory from 2016 because of this. I mean, she was very clear about it. And as were many others. The noose is tightening on Trump. It's all going to come out. He's an agent of Russia. Yeah. Adam Schiff coming out on camera numerous times saying, you know, I can't tell you what I've seen, but I've seen things. It's a lot more than circumstantial evidence about this collusion. So, yeah, they but again, it's it's much more complex. It's always the same thing. It's much more complex than what folks tend to hear just in like a two and a half or three minute news segment. Right. So the Democrats want you to think there's nothing to see here in these documents. How could you possibly spend time doing this? You're just trying to distract from the Epstein files. And the Republicans are saying Obama committed treason, right? The reality is, as it oftentimes is, is somewhere in that middle, right? There's a lot of conflating of issues here. So nobody is questioning, Republicans or Democrats, nobody's questioning that the Russians meddled in the election, just like they did in the previous one, just like they did in this last one. They've been meddling since World War II, right? Since the end of World War II. They've always had an interest in influencing U.S. politics. Now, when you say meddle, do you mean like social media bots? Do you mean like influencing politicians? What do you mean by meddle? Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, in the early days, what were they doing? In the early days, they would pay off trade union representatives, right, to push a certain line, to, you know, to push for a softer tone, much like the Chinese do now, push for a softer tone against the Soviet Union, right? Or during World War II to push for isolationism, keep the U.S. out of the war, right, before the Nazis turned on the Soviet Union and they tended to need us. Or they would pay journalists to write articles pushing a particular point of view. And so there were those things. Now, social media meddling is a lot easier, right? It's a lot cheaper. For sure they do that. Yeah, for sure they do that. And for sure they did that in 2016. Absolutely. And nobody's questioning that, right? What happening is that once again there a bit of a messaging problem from the Trump administration The Trump administration at the end of the day is saying what was bullshit was this Russia collusion angle right Was the idea that you know this is complicated to explain and I'm not doing a very good job of it, but they're saying, yes, there was meddling, but you pushed a story, meaning Brennan and Comey and, you know, all the others that were involved in this and now going up to the top with Obama saying, you took what was a intel community assessment, an ICA, because everything has an acronym, that said there was no indication of Russian efforts to push or influence in a particular direction the election. And most of that initial reporting was on election infrastructure. So there was a fairly significant bit there that said the Russians weren't able to hack into election machines and actually alter vote counts. So they said we have seen no evidence of that. And so you could argue that in part the Trump administration is having a hard time explaining, much like I am, that the problem here wasn't that there was anybody saying there's no meddling. There's meddling. They just saying that you at a certain point around about December 9th, I think it was, you had a meeting where Obama was sitting in there with Comey and Andrew McCabe and a variety of others. And the president himself requested a different intelligence community assessment, which is a little unusual for a president to say, I'd like you to do an ICA on a particular thing, which is what he did. Can you elaborate on that? So they were telling him what? Well, they were telling him, we don't see that Russian meddling impacted the election, basically. The Dems are saying, well, that's just about the electronic infrastructure, about the voting machines, right? In reality, the ICA was also, that instruction, the president's daily brief and the writing that had been done, the analysis had been done up to that point, was saying, we haven't seen anything that the Russian meddling influenced the outcome of the election. Well then, shortly, and then they squashed that particular piece, right? They said, let's shelve that. And that's what a lot of the emails that Tulsi Gabbard released show, right? All this agonizing. It amazing any shit gets done in the government when you read these emails going back and forth between James Clapper at the DNI and other places Yeah you sent me some of that stuff to go through Yeah the analysts and others And they all saying OK well what kind of tone do we give it What do we say about this? And you can also see in there that they're saying, we don't think the Steele dossier is credible. You know, the two senior Russian analysts, right, at the agency were telling John Brennan at the time, if you put the dossier in there as a piece of information into this assessment, you're compromising the credibility of the whole thing because we don't believe it right and this is december right and brennan instructed and it's in writing instructed them to go ahead and do it right because it basically he was he liked the narrative right of the steel dossier right and so he chose that over um the analytical um process right over the discipline that you need to corroborate information that's going to go to a high-level intel assessment. So, you know, if anybody's in the crosshairs right now, it's probably John Brennan, right, in terms of because he went up on Capitol Hill at some point and said that, you know, the Steele dossier didn't form an important point of, you know, wasn't in the document, wasn't in the ICA. The ICA is now out there. And sure enough, it was not only in the annex, it was in the body of the report, which gives it much more credibility. So, yeah, so he, you know, I'm not a lawyer, but, you know, I think he should be concerned a little bit about where that might go. But Obama reportedly, and it's in email traffic, you know, requested a different ICA. And so shortly thereafter, they produced a report. How does he say it? I forget what the exact wording is. Because that's a crazy thing. If you have a bunch of experts that give you an assessment, this is the facts. This is how it went down. You're like, I don't like those facts. Well, I don't think he said I don't like the facts. And that's where this is going to be a problem. Anybody who thinks Obama's going to go to prison for treasonous conspiracy. I think, again, much like Pam Bondi, you know, with her treating of the Epstein files, which was ridiculous. Tulsi Gabbard's gotten out over her skis. Treasonous conspiracy. Is that what she said? That's what she said. It's not going to happen. Anybody who thinks Obama's going to forget about it. You know, it'll be you'll be lucky if you get any consequences of anything out of this again I'm very cynical about where investigations go. Well, there's also based on the Supreme Court's Justification of everything that Trump did while he was in office. So you can't try them for things they do when they're in office. Well, this is also based on the Supreme Court's justification of everything that Trump did while he was in office. So you can't try them for things they do when they're in office. immunity for, you know, for acting, you know, under the authority as a president. But so and it's also very nuanced, right? He can sit in there. He's perfectly got the right to sit in a meeting and say, OK, well, I tell you what, let's let's sit on this. Right. And James Clapper and the others agreed, we're going to we're going to take this document, we're going to set it aside that we all worked on. Now we want to restructure it, focused on, you know, the outcome of the election and the Russian meddling and where this went and how they, so it was, he can do that, right? And it's nuanced and he can, and never get in trouble because, yeah, fine, you've got the right to do that. I mean, it's not, it's not illegal by any means, but there is no doubt in my mind that there was a desire to, to drive this thing in a certain direction, right? And so there is no doubt in my mind that, A, first of all, using the Steele dossier in there was just horseshit, right? Because that thing, there hasn't been any allegation in that Steele dossier that's been verifiable. And they knew that, right? So they went, and remember, they used that Steele dossier in part to then go to FISA courts and get warrants, right? So that's another issue that I think from a legal perspective, again, not a lawyer, but I think some people should be probably concerned about how they represented that information, knowing, right, based on kind of what we're seeing from the document releases from Tulsi Gabbard. But again, you can see, by virtue of how difficult I'm trying to explain this, it's much more complex, right, than just them bad, these guys good, these guys good, these guys bad, right? There's layers here that I think need to be examined. And I think that at the end of the day, you're not really going to get, much like every fucking everything else that happens in DC, you're not going to get a lot of satisfaction on this one. But I do think I'm convinced that, yeah, they drove this narrative shortly after into January, when they released the new ICA, then suddenly leaks to the press. And that's when the Russia collusion story happened, right? And that's the, you know, That's the thing that they should be focused on, right? They losing the message because they throwing shit out there There a lot of detail and people get bored And you know so I think that a problem they going to have here trying to push this thing forward. And I do think also that Tulsi Gabbard should have been a little bit more circumspect in the way she explained this, right, and how she described the actions. Because I think there were some people who are culpable in terms of going after this narrative and pushing this Russia collusion story that then wasted a couple of years. and God knows how much money on investigations and impeachment hearings and all the rest of it. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Sometimes finding the perfect hire for your company can feel like an impossible task. It's like trying to find an alternative to sugar that tastes good and is good for you. Or like trying to find a specific star among the billions out there with the naked eye. Skip the hunt for the needle in the haystack and use ZipRecruiter instead. They can find exactly what you're looking for fast. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. As soon as you post your job, ZipRecruiter's powerful technology will get to work, sending you potential matches as soon as the same day. And when you find someone that you think might be a good fit, you can reach out using ZipRecruiter's pre-written invite to apply message, which is a great way to encourage people to apply sooner. Ditch the other hiring sites and let ZipRecruiter find what you're looking for, the needle in the haystack. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at this exclusive web address, ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. This episode is brought to you by Visible. I want to let you in on something. Your current wireless carrier does not want you to know about Visible because Visible is the ultimate wireless hack. No confusing plans with surprise fees. No nonsense. Just fast speeds, great coverage without the premium cost. With Visible, you get one line wireless with unlimited data powered by Verizon's network for $25 a month, taxes and fees included. Seriously, $25 a month flat. What you see is what you pay. No hidden fees on top of that. Ready to see? Join now and unlock unlimited data for just a month on the Visible plan Don think wireless can be so transparent so Visible Well now you know Switch today at visible slash rogan Terms apply See visible.com for plan features and network management details. Why do you think she chose to frame it that way? Do you think she was instructed to do that, or she was guided to do that, or encouraged to do that? Yeah, I don't know. Because if it's not warranted, if you don't believe it's warranted based on the evidence that you've looked at, Like she's the director of national intelligence. How does well, I think I think she's part of it is the realization that looked I mean you put that information out there. I think it would have been more Appropriate if she'd released all the documentation Said here's and lay out in a very good like almost like a PowerPoint Presentation for the you make it very simple for the press because the press isn't inclined to pursue this because the press were complicit Right, so you're trying to say this is what these people did and you helped them Now what we want is for you meaning the media to uncover all of this and report on it They're not gonna they're fucking I gotta they were winning awards Journalistic awards for their coverage of the Russia collusion story, right? So the idea that they're gonna somehow now say yeah, that was a problem So I think they should have maybe just made this more factual based stayed away from the you know the sort of the hyperbolic statements about treason and all the rest of it and then You know tried to explain it to the American public in a way that they can digest a little bit better But when you throw out things like treasonous conspiracy, once again, much like with the Epstein thing, you're creating this kind of howling mob that's going to expect something. And I just don't know that they're going to get it. Right. So do you think that it's possible that she was encouraged to do this because this kind of takes away some of the heat off of the Epstein thing? I'm sure that was a thought process in there somewhere. Possibly. Yeah, I think possibly. It's a reasonable assumption. Look, it's an important issue, right? If you have the intel community or you have the White House deciding to themselves, look, we know this information is kind of bullshit, but it certainly serves a narrative, which is we want to delegitimize the new president that's coming in because we can't stand him. Then that's a really, really serious problem that needs to be examined. It also so short because do you not know that that information is eventually going to come out that going to compromise the confidence that people have in anything that the intelligence agencies put forth after that Yeah Well I think a lot of you know part of what was going on was the expectation that Hillary Clinton was going to win right So like with the Steele dossier try to, you know, dig up leverageable information or dirt on Trump. You know, I think they were all under the assumption, well, Hillary Clinton's going to win. It doesn't really matter what we do right now because she's going to cover for us, right? Right. And, you know, I don't think they ever expected Trump to win. So, you know, then suddenly they've got to shift course a little bit and think, okay, all right, well, now that... That didn't work. Now what? Well, let's say that we've got this document over here talking about Russian meddling. Is it that much of a push to kind of say that we believe there might have been collusion? And the media ran with it. They didn't have to do much. They ran with it for three years. For three years, yeah. Three years, hardcore, all the time, every time they talked about Trump. Yeah. Which is crazy regardless of how you feel about trump if you're the biggest trump hater in the world I understand but understand this that that is dangerous It's dangerous to have the media in lockstep with the government who's saying something that's not true Yeah, yeah, I mean and they and they they scream about, you know threats to democracy all the time Let's just be a little bit more self-aware realize, you know what that looked like, right? You can't you know, people were just bullshitting about evidence that they had or that they saw Well, the Democrats saying anything's a threat to democracy is wild when they haven't had a primary since 2012. That's wild. Yeah, yeah. That's really wild. I mean, they kicked Bernie out. They made sure RFK Jr. wasn't in. And then when it came time for Kamala to run, no primary at all. They just put her in position. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah, they didn't know what else to do. And, by the way, there's so much going on right now. So today, speaking of Kamala and now speak about Biden, but today was his name, the chief of staff, the former chief of staff for Biden. I think he was only there for a couple of years. Ron Klain was up on Capitol Hill to talk because they're holding these interviews up on Capitol Hill to try to figure out what the hell was going on. Right. At what point did people decide they're going to cover up the mental condition of Joe Biden? and that's another look I mean and then they're all pleading the fifth they're all pleading the fifth Kevin O'Connor his the White House doctor pled the fifth senior advisor to Jill Biden what's his name Bernal Andrew Bernal pled the fifth right um you know and Ron Klain apparently stayed up there for a couple hours talking. Right. But, you know, again, he wasn't there for the last couple of years of the administration, I think, but he was there for the debate prep. Right. And he's come out publicly and said, I was shocked at his condition. So, you know, people think they set him up for failure in that debate. Joe Biden, what's his name? Bernal, Andrew Bernal, pled the fifth. Right. You know, and Ron Klain apparently stayed up there for a couple hours talking. Right. But, you know, again, he wasn't there for the last couple of years of the administration, I think, but he was there for the debate prep. Right. And he's come out publicly and said, I was shocked at his condition. So, you know, people think they set him up for failure in that debate. why first of all why are they having a debate that late why would they agree to a debate at 9 p.m yeah when you got a guy who's really old and kind of broken down why would you do that television timing who knows and it seemed like didn't someone blame it on him being on ambien yeah hunter did hunter that fantastic interview that hunter just did with uh i forget his name andrew callahan or something like that. Yeah, he referenced, now he's walking it back, saying, you know, I wasn't meaning that he was on Ambien during the debate. I'm just saying, you know, they had him on Ambien because of his travel schedule. The guy was at Camp David and resting in Delaware for 10 days prior to the debate. So, yeah, I don't know. Jesus, what a mess. I think they set him up. I think they wanted him out, and this is the way to do it. Get him in the debate. Don't give him his medicine. excuse me don't give them the proper medication to keep them up and peppy and let them out they're all confused and apparently you had a cold at the time too so it was but if you if they were going to do that wouldn't you think that they would um i don't know um have a better plan a plan b no they didn't have a plan and i think the biden administration the people didn't want him to step down there's people inside the organization that didn't want him to step down particularly supposedly Jill. Jill did not want him to step down. But then there's the cancer thing. Like, how do they not know that he has cancer? Stage four. Yeah. Yeah. Which is crazy. Like, that's years of developing. Yeah. Yeah, I just think if there was a plan, if there was a nefarious plan to have him step down, I think they thought he would get through it. I think they did. he might have if he performed the way he performed in the first debate yeah I don't know I just it seems to me that that they were caught in the headlights at the point where he did so poorly Take some water buddy I going to I know I sound like it Jesus Christ what the fuck is going on with you It the ambient It's starting to kick in. Have you ever taken that stuff? No. It scares the shit out of me, no. You don't? No, my friend Kevin took it and he got up in the middle of the night, cooked a meal, went to bed, and didn't know he cooked a meal, so he went back and saw the plates in the kitchen, and thought someone broke into his house and cooked. Like, yeah, that's not good. No, no. I've never taken, have you taken Xanax? No. No, neither have I. That stuff's scary. That stuff's really, that's what fucked Jordan Peterson up. That stuff's really hard to kick. Oh. Yeah. Benzodiazepine is one of the hardest things to kick. It's one of the things that if you get off at cold turkey, it can kill you. Good God. Yeah. Yeah, and they put everybody on it. Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say. It seems like it's readily available. As is Adderall. Yeah. Readily available and fucking super bad for you. Although during the, what was it, during the pandemic, you couldn't get Adderall. I remember that being an issue, right? I remember reading stories about that. Make it overseas? Couldn't, yeah, exactly. As they do with most of our pharmaceuticals, including what we've been talking about. And so then people probably bought black market Adderall, which probably has fentanyl in it, which probably contributed to a lot of deaths. Yeah, yeah. I got this voice now. I sound like Kim Carnes, you know, Betty Davis eyes, Kim Carnes. It's a very sultry voice I've got going on here for a second. I forgot about that song. Yeah. Well, I suspect most people have. Time waits for no one. Yeah. But I think. Yeah. So the Biden, let's call it a cover up. that's again it's it's an example of um how people are not more upset about that right i mean it again with the idea that we've got adhd and everybody's moving on but you would imagine that that story if if none other right because it's not quite as complicated as the as the intel issue or even as the epstein files it's pretty straightforward people hiding the condition of the leader of the free world. So, anyway, it's just a thought. I'm surprised that it's gone away. Well, then there's the auto pen as well. That's another wild thing. Yeah. Because so many of these people that were pardoned were pardoned by auto pen And so you have to it begs the question like how was that negotiated Like who was involved in that Who made those decisions? What was their motivation? Were they compensated? Like what was, and look, he was, he says the former president Biden says he was advised on all of this. He was in on all of these and, and the auto pen was primarily used for, you know, you know, sort of wrote pardons, collective pardons, whether you're pardoning, you know, for an action, you know, and so you have a number of people included in that that you're giving pardons to. But all of this, whether it's that, whether it's any of the other things we've been talking about, at the end of the day, it's no wonder. Look, people's confidence level in politicians and government institutions and the media is at an all-time low, right? And I think it's a really dangerous thing, but I don't see how you walk the dog back on that, right? I mean, how do you do that? How do you suddenly create more trust in any of those things? Well, I think a lot of people thought that draining the swamp would create trust, right? The idea of Trump coming into office, we had four terrible years under Biden, Trump's going to come in and clean things up. Everything's going to make sense now. But everything is just as chaotic, if not more, and just as confusing. I mean, there's good things that are happening. The closing of the border is clearly a good thing. That was fucking scary and dangerous. Look, from a policy perspective, the other day they had nine crossings. Nine. Compared to maybe 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 a day in the previous administration. So that's a huge win. And that's what they should be talking about. And they should be talking about the trade deals, right? They got a good trade deal with Japan. They got a good trade deal with Indonesia. They got a good trade deal with Vietnam. They signed one with the UK. They're getting ready for the European Union. There's things that they should be talking about. And instead, once again, we're fucking consumed with what we've been discussing. Epstein and the intel manipulation, you know, everything in Biden's condition. and it's like, God. Obama, treason. Yeah, yeah. So it's really, it's disappointing, but again, I don't know how ... I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than the fact that it very depressing if you think about where our focus is now right There a lot of flashpoints around the world a lot of real serious crises right And threats to national security and concerns. And, you know, the White House can't seem to, you know, get a focus, right, on things. But yeah, the border thing is a great win. That's a very, from a national security issue, that's a terrific win. Yeah, the fact that it was open for so long is so insane to think that anybody would think that would be a good idea unless you wanted chaos. Yeah, that is always discussed as like, was it intentional? I don't see how it's not intentional, right? And I mean, that's because we can see now after six months of the second Trump administration that you can fix the problem, right? Yeah, they could have fixed it instantly. They could have done it. And they chose not to. So, you know, clearly there's a lot of people in the Dem Party, in the Democratic Party that, you know, are fans of or believe in open borders. But there's also the moving of the people to swing states and the fact that it changes the number of congressional seats regardless of whether or not someone's there legally or illegally. Once they do a sentence on how many people live there, it raises the number of congressional seats that's available. Yeah. Which is crazy. Well, yeah. All that's so wild that it's so transparent. I mean, look at Europe. I know that's kind of a, you know, people talk about this, but look at France, look at the UK. I mean, you know, much smaller environments. And you can see what happens when you have massive migration, right? And look, I'm not against immigration. I'm just saying it should be legal. You should know who's coming across your border. You should have security. You can't pay for everybody, right? So opening up your borders and say, come on in and we're going to provide you with whatever Mamdani in New York is providing, new free grocery stores and free bus and free childcare and everything's going to be free. And they're going to tax businesses. That's what he said. He said, and if you're wondering how I'm going to pay for this, I'm going to tax the rich. You think like, oh, my God. Stalin. You know you've been going all the way back to you know the communists have been talking that way for years Feeding the same bullshit lines to gormless sheep. We're just now mom Donnie's just talking to a new generation of sheep and and you know he Utopian perspectives We're just now mom Donnie's just talking to a new generation of sheep and and you know he We're just now mom Donnie's just talking to a new generation of sheep and and you know he Utopian Perspectives are really attractive to young people because you see the way these older rich people have been running the world It's all corrupt. They don't care. They're all capitalists and monsters all they care about is money. I don't have any money I want them to take the money away from the rich people and give it to the poor people and then everything will be fine Yeah. It's like a common thought amongst young people. I get it. If you're a young person, you probably look at your parents, if your parents have done okay, done well, and you're thinking, well, that, you know, maybe I'm not going to be able to do that, right? I mean, a lot of young folks now are saying, I can't buy a house. How am I going to get a down payment for a house, right? You know, I'm drowning in school loans, which, of course, they took out. but so I get the frustration in a sense and so I think you know Mamdani is doing again what you know a lot of slick socialists or communists in the past have done right he's speaking to the to the masses and he's using all these platitudes and there will be an element that that buys into it right because they haven't seen how shitty it can be well it seems like a huge element bought into it he won the primary they won the primary yeah no I so what happens now so Eric Adams is the current mayor. So if this guy wins the primary, is Adams even, is it possible for him to run? Like what, how does it work now? Well, I guess, I mean, he could run as a, he could run as an independent, which maybe is his intention. Because he apparently is still running, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. He plans on running? Wasn't Cuomo also planning on running or did he drop out again? I believe he's still trying to run as well. So he lost the primary and I think people think that people are so horrified that Mondani's in that they think that maybe it's possible. And then there's Curtis Sliwa. He still wants to wear that stupid fucking hat. Yeah, God bless Curtis Sliwa. If he took that fucking hat off, maybe he'd have a chance. Yeah, at some point he's got to stop that. But I think there's a good chance that if Eric Adams ran as an independent, maybe that's the plan, and if Cuomo dropped out, I think if they split the vote, then I think Mondani wins. but they're going to have to, and the Democrats nationwide seem to have some real concern over Mamdani, right? Because that's not the message they want to send at a time when they see sort of this cultural shift in America where we think okay we might be done with this whole woke issue right And then they see Mamdani out there slinging the bullshit doubling down And you got Bernie Sanders backing him You got Jerry Nadler in New York backing him. You got obviously AOC backing him. So they rightly so because what do they want to do? They want to reclaim the White House, right? And they want to reclaim the Senate. They're not going to do it right in the backs of a avowed socialist, right, who wants to reclaim. More than a socialist. essentially a communist yeah yeah so and he's you know he's uh you know again you know god bless the ideology of the youth but you know people should you know do a little bit more research um into his ideas and how they've worked elsewhere right um and and maybe they this is only one way to enforce those ideas and that's with guns yeah yeah that's it that's how that's it that's how Government grocery store. Get the hell over there. Yeah. Government grocery stores and taking money away from the rich people. How are you going to enforce that? You need force. Well, they're trying to. I mean, look, California tried to. I think maybe they've even enacted it. They've tried to figure out a way to tax people who are leaving the state. Yeah. That was a thought that they had that I don't think is constitutional. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They wanted to. I think it was five years. So if you had left with it. So me, I could get taxed. God. Even though I've been out of there for five years. But that's just... Yeah. They're just so irresponsible with what they've done with the tax money. They have some of the highest taxes in the country, and it's chaos. And then they're also upset that people want to film what's going on in the Palisades and Malibu. Oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah, I was there not too long ago, and... Nothing. Nothing's happening. Nothing's done. It's still a war zone. You drive up towards Malibu, and everything's just gutted. Yeah. And it's because you've got thousands and thousands of regulations in place that prevent the reconstruction. Just trying to get a simple permit for something takes you forever. It's going to be years. Yeah. I think it's going to be interesting because Gavin Newsom obviously is in sort of a soft campaign right now to set the table to run for president. I mean, he's desperate. He's like some kid who wants to be the class president. Did you see him on Sean Ryan's podcast? I did not. I'm sorry. I missed that one. He's doing podcasts. Wow. It was a disaster. Well, he's got his own podcast, right? Allegedly. Yeah. Yeah Yeah Yeah So how did he do on Sean Terrible Yeah of course Terrible It was terrible I mean there only so much you can say Like the record speaks for itself His record is terrible. And that's the problem. People are fleeing the state. The disaster that came about because of the fire, the homeless situation is untenable. It's all madness. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. You thinking about starting a website to sell online? Squarespace is the way to go. They make it easy for customers to find you thanks to the integrated SEO tools that optimize your online presence. Plus, Squarespace's selling tools allow you to offer services, take payments, and streamline bookings all in one place. Go to squarespace.com slash Rogan for a free trial. And when you are ready to launch, use the code Rogan to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. They got Willa. They got my daughter. I need to find her. Willa! From acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson. You can save that girl. On September 26th, experience what is being called the best movie of the year. This is the end of the line. Not for you. Leonardo DiCaprio. Sean Penn. Benicio Del Toro. Tiana Taylor. Chase Infinity. Let's go! Here I come. One battle after another. Only in theaters September 26th. Experience it in IMAX. Rated R. Under 17, not admitted without parent. You can't hide. Look, if you look at the Democrat Party and you say, okay, so what does that mean, right? Because right now they're flailing about, right? They're doing this autopsy of what happened from this last election, even though they're not going to address the issue of, you know, Joe Biden and, you know, at what point did we know that he shouldn't be running. They're going to leave that off the table. But their purpose of the autopsy is essentially to try to figure out what's, you know, what's our next step? Who's our next leader? and they did a survey not that long ago. And they said, who's the top of the Democrat Party? And the top three individuals were AOC, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders. And none of them got more than like a 10% of the total on the survey. So when you've got those three as your option, and you're trying to figure out how do you appeal more to a larger mass, they got an issue. Yeah I agree It not going to be Gavin Newsom It won be Pete Buttigieg They got a solution Jamie I just texted you something This is the solution The solution Yeah Here a solution It's coming up. I hope it's not Hillary. Finally, a Democrat who could shine on Joe Rogan's show. Hunter Biden is unrepentant by Helen Lewis. Helen, take your medication. Oh, my God. He did the best ad for crack ever, though. Yeah. It was a great ad for crack. It was not just an ad. It was a cooking show. That fucker taught American youth how to make crack. Yeah. I was astounded as he sat there. Nobody, I mean, he loves crack more than anything in the world. It sounded great. He was romantically involved with crack. He said it's safer than alcohol. Yes. Yes, take that to the bank, kids. Holy shit. It's a thing. What the fuck? Talk about not learning from what happened during the crack epidemic ruined American cities. Yeah, no. Which reportedly was done by the agency, by the way. Reportedly, yeah. Again, conspiracy theories. But, yeah, I am battling a summer cold, apparently. It's probably the allergies. There's so many allergies here in Austin. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. That interview with, how is it, apparently the family has no control over him, but how is it that they allow him to go and do podcasts or interviews of any sort, right? They need to do an intervention. And, you know, look, I hope he's clean. I hope he's not, you know. He's clean. When he was talking about it, I mean, he said, I'm reluctant to explain this, but he was being honest about like why it works and what's so euphoric about it. Well, it feeds into the Democrats have decided apparently that they need to be tougher. Right. Because after the last election. And so they would send Tim Walz out there and, you know, Elmer Fudd and in his hunting gear to try to try to appeal to to middle America. And so I can see it. You know, and you see more Democrats getting out there and swearing because that makes them tougher. So that interview with Hunter Biden, I can see feeds into this idea that the Democrat strategists have is we've got to be more mainstream. We've just got to be, the Democrat strategists have is we've got to be more mainstream, right? We've just got to be, which again, is kind of in part why they're so concerned over Mamdani in New York City. Yeah. Well, they were trying for a long time to squash masculinity and frame it all as being toxic. And people rebelled against that in a huge way. Eventually. It took a while. Well, a lot of young men in particularly went to the right because of that. And a lot of young men that would ordinarily have probably voted Democrat if you were just fucking reasonable, But you turn them into villains for no reason other than just being men. Yeah. And that was a narrative that people were really sick of. And it's like the pendulum swings one way and the other way. It always does. It always has. This is how we course correct. We try to figure out our way through this world and people go one way too far. And then they overcorrect going the other way. And then we try to bring it back to the middle. It never really kind of goes there. Yeah. No, you're right. It is. And that's been the problem for quite some time. Yeah, it is. It's like that pendulum you have you're over here and then instead of it like settling in the center You're back over here and every and that happens every every administration change, right? So you get this knee-jerk Reaction and you know from a legislative perspective That's a real problem right because you never you really never do get shit done Right because you're bouncing from extreme to it's also a problem with this four-year term thing It's like every four years. We have a new person or the same person does it twice? These are the opposite the only options that you have so you have this terrible situation where you're always like shitting on the other side And there's no There's no like hey, this is the president now. Let's all work together. Yeah, what if you had up a Setup like like Mexico Mexico has a presidency where you can you you serve a six-year term, and that's it You're done one term, but it's six years How do I know it's the same thing? Yeah, it's the same thing thing you know it was like we these people fucked it up we're gonna do a better job and then they get in and it's the same fucking thing yeah well and also you get the self-interest obviously obviously that's not rocket science but if you can be a senator for 46 years or however long which is nuts which is nuts and you can make hundreds of millions of dollars somehow or another right and that's another thing i always wonder how how do people not and again maybe some intrepid investigative journalists, if there are any left, I mean, who wouldn't want to do a story about the wealth gains by politicians Just look at the past 10 years right And take them on both sides right So you look at Chuck Schumer and AOC and you look at on the other side you look at Grassley, and you look at Mitch McConnell, whatever, right? And you look at those. And that would make a fascinating series if he just said, how the fuck did you make your money? It's 100% both sides too, which is so important, because everybody wants to point to Pelosi, and Pelosi made a lot of money for sure. But it's a lot of them. It's a lot of them. Yeah. We do a, I don't handle any of our finances because I'm not smart enough, but we do have a fund that tracks Pelosi, right? There's a Pelosi tracker fund. And it's done very well, right? It's done very well. And I'm always fascinated because I'm thinking, well, of course it does well because you're sitting up there on goddamn Capitol Hill. You hear in these hearings, you hear about developments, right? And it doesn't have to be about a particular company. It could be about our particular dealings with a country, right? Right. And regulatory concerns with that country. Or it could be about a sector and where we're going. And you can, yes, of course you can use that information to your benefit unless you're a moron. But it shouldn't be legal, right? It shouldn't be legal. No, no. It's insider trading. Yeah. Like they put Martha Stewart away for insider trading. Yeah, yeah. So how about politicians? Actually, they put her away for lying. Did they? Yeah, they didn't get her on insider trading. They got her for lying. Oh. Because, you know, during the investigation, she didn't tell the truth about something. But they didn't actually, I don't believe she was actually jailed for insider trading. It's always the cover up. It's always the cover up. But it's all just horseshit when someone like Nancy Pelosi is able to do it legally. If you're able to make hundreds of millions of dollars legally through some, well, your salary is so low. Most people who make, not that it's low, but most people who make a salary, it's a great salary, but most people who make $170,000 a year might have $170,000 in the bank. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. They won't have $200 million. Yeah. That's crazy. And they'll argue, well, I get a lot of it from speeches and from books. Nah, I don't think you do. No, you don't. I don't think you do. You can track it. You can see how much money should be in the stock market. Well, that's what I'm saying. That would be a fascinating series if that's what you did, is if you did asset tracing and a financial review of modern day politicians. How did you make your goddamn money? Also, why are you still doing it? You're older than Biden. She's older than Biden. Chill out. Go on a vacation It never happen It not even about the money It about the access the power the people who carry your bags and toady after you and they love that shit So I get it. I get what the attraction is. I'm just saying that if we had any balls, we would have had enacted term limits quite some time ago. Anyway. Yeah, well, at the very least, they should block insider trading. I'm sure you've seen that time when she was questioned about insider trading. Yeah. Well, we should be able to participate. You're not participating, lady. You're making hundreds of millions of dollars. It's insane. And this is not a partisan. I agree with you 100%. It's not a partisan issue. Not at all. It's everybody gets up on there. If you look at the trades, if you look at it between the red and the blue, it's across the board. They're all doing it. I think it's like it lures them in. And I think once they get into office, and even if they have good intentions, they get lured in by a corrupt system, and then they play ball. Yeah. And then they get paid. Yeah. Well, and then you get a lifetime pension. Yeah. Which, again, makes no sense. How about you say, okay, fine, you're going up there on Capitol Hill. You get your pension while you're up there. Your pay is maybe similar to, I don't know, the military. You're a congressman. Maybe you get a major's pay. I have no idea. I'm just making that shit up. But take the financial incentives and the excitement out of it. And maybe you get a different group of people who want to pursue that work. And then they just go the hell back to wherever they came from and work a job. Well, also, there's a problem that the campaigns are so ugly. And we've agreed sort of as a society that that's how we do it and that these people are going to attack each other. You know, I remember one of the things during the – when Biden was running, when Kamala Harris was saying that he was guilty of sexual assault. Like, you remember that? And then afterwards, she gets interviewed. I think it was by Colbert. She's like, it was a debate. Yeah, yeah. It was a debate. Like, imagine that. It's a debate. And so you're willing to say something in a debate that's not true? Well, it's this policy that you can, you know, I think it's partly just a disdain for the American voter and the belief that you can, people will move on and they do. Maybe that's, you know, it a self prophecy People tend to you know forget pretty quickly Well we overwhelmed by information now We are constantly consistently overwhelmed by the news cycle And it is almost impossible You have to have some sort of a Mike Benz style recall in your head where you can keep track of everything because it's just coming at you so fast. And Doge and Elon and this and that. I I had some guy ask me last night, do you think that the Elon Musk and Donald Trump thing was staged? And I go, do you think it's staged? He's like, absolutely. I think it's all fake. I go, do you think that they made an agreement that Elon would say that you're on the Epstein client list and that's why you won't release the file? You think that like Donald and Elon came to that agreement? Yeah. Just sitting around over a Diet Coke thinking, yeah, that's a good idea. They're all in on it. They're all in on it. Like, are you out of your fucking mind? What do you think about Musk's political party? First of all, my wife told me you really can't name it the America Party. It's not legal. Really? Yeah. Why? I don't know. She told me I believed her. Jamie will find out. You didn't follow up. You didn't follow up. You weren't interested. We were eating dinner. Thanks, honey. We were eating dinner. She goes, you know, you can't just call your party the America Party. I go, really? She goes, no, you can't. You can't use the term America for your party, which makes sense. I would think you could, but I don't know. No, I would think you couldn't because I'd be like, fuck you. I'm the America Party. It's the whole country. You know what I'm saying? Like, if you decide you're the America Party and I'm against the America Party, well, that sounds like I'm against America. I guess, but you couldn't. You take, I'm calling it the America Party. I'm going to trademark that name. That was my problem with the Patriot Act. Like, you can't call it the Patriot Act, you motherfucker, because then if you go against it, you're against the Patriots. Goddamn right. That's crazy. The terrorists win. Is it legal to call your party the America Party? I'm looking into this. For example, additionally, New York state law has outlawed the use of words like independent, independence, America, and Americans in the names of political parties. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Okay. So she's right. Yeah. So listen. Just in New York. Got to come up with it. Oh, just in New York. That's what it sounds like. So nationally it's legal? That seems sus. Yeah. If it's in New York, I'll bet it's- What does an independent call himself in New York then? if you run as an independent and it says you can't. Well, you can run as an independent. You can't call your party the independent party. Oh, okay. It's all quite sus, isn't it? Sus. Look at you. Is it a little sus? That's what the kids call it. I have young kids. Yeah, I know. They call everything sus. party the independent party. party the independent party. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's all quite sus, isn't it? Sus. Look at you. Is it a little sus? Look at you. That's what the kids call it. I have young kids. The kids, yeah, I know. They call everything sus. Likewise. But it's, you know, like, what is he going to do with this party? You're not going to get, you know, how's that going to work? Yeah, I don't think this, you know, as much as I don't, you know, I think there should be room. I guess I should say it that way. There should be room for another party. 100%. But I don't think there's enough oxygen to do it. Here it is. The name America Party has been used by several different political parties in the United States, most famously as the official name of the Know-Nothings. The Know-Nothings is my favorite. That's what you should call it. Why doesn't he call it the X Party? He likes the term X. A nativist group sometimes dubbed the America's third party that rose to prominence in the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War. The Know-Nothings were during the Civil War. That's crazy. The name of America Party is an attempt to brand the party as a force of patriotism and unity. That's what you're saying. Yeah, okay. Wow. As well as the names of an anti-Mormon party in Utah and the supporters of George Wallace. Wow. Jesus Christ. Oh, there he is. He's not a handsome man. Boy, he looks evil. Yeah, he does. Some people just look... I'm not voting for you and your fucked up eyebrows, bro. Some people just look like they are. You know what I mean? George Wallace. I remember watching... I mean, I was tiny, but I remember still to this day. watching when he got shot at that rally that he was at. Oh, that's right. Put him in the wheelchair. But, yeah, I don't know. Again, I don't think there's room for a third party. There should be, but I just don't see it happening. We're too entrenched in the way that we do things, and you start splitting the vote, and I think maybe it's, who knows, maybe you get more chaos than we've currently got. Yeah, I mean, This episode is brought to you by Poncho. Texas is full of outdoorsmen, but where do they find shirts that deliver performance, comfort, and fit with none of the frill? A company right here in Austin called Poncho. Their shirts are comfortable as hell, they fit right, and they feel like your favorite tee, and you can wear them all day, on the lake, hunting, grilling, whatever. Poncho's committed to one thing, making the best outdoor shirt you'll ever put on. And because that all they do the fit is dialed in Regular or slim you guaranteed to find one that feels right And they back it all up with what they call their poncho promise Free shipping free returns free exchanges If it's not your favorite shirt, they'll make it right. If you've been looking for the perfect shirt, check out poncho. Go to ponchooutdoors.com slash rogan. Sign up with your email. They'll give you $10 off your first order. That's p-o-n-c-h-o outdoors.com slash rogan. We've all joked about stalking each other online, but let's not forget, some people do it for real. Remember the Minnesota state representative and her husband who were shot dead in their home? Authorities now think her killer found her home address and the names of her family members from data brokers. So how can you keep your personal information private? ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is an app that hides your IP address and reroutes all of your online activity through secure encrypted servers. That means data brokers and the scammers and criminals they sell to won't have a shred of your personal information. But what if your info is already out there? No sweat. ExpressVPN has a feature called Identity Defender, which is a free add-on for U.S. customers. Identity Defender helps get your information taken down fast. It's the best tool to stay safe and regain privacy in a dangerous world. ExpressVPN is fast, easy to use, it works on all your devices, and it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. And right now, you can get four extra months free if you tap the banner or go to expressvpn.com slash rogan. That's expressvpn.com slash rogan. And if you're watching on YouTube, get your four free months by scanning the QR code on screen or by clicking the link in the description. Those two together, it's like, geez, I saw that coming. I was like, this is not going to work out. Yeah. When his son was with him in the Oval Office and the son told him to shut up. Don't drop the shut up. The little kid told Trump to shut up and he said, you're not the president. Oh, my God. What is that? It actually lasted longer than I thought it would. Well, it destroyed Elon. Yeah. Destroyed his company. Destroyed Tesla. I mean, and then on top of that, when people started putting swastikas on Teslas and king Teslas Firebombing shops Yeah Yeah yeah yeah Madness Yeah Madness I mean and then people were probably very reluctant to buy a Tesla because they were worried Like hey if I buy this fucking thing and park it somewhere someone going to key it. I know somebody who actually covered up the Tesla insignia on their car. Bro, I was behind someone the other day on the highway, and they had a fucking thing on their car that said, I bought this before Elon went crazy. God. Like, oh, God. You know. You're conceding. You're giving into the mob and it was also the dumbest mob, but there was an element also that was like Oh, you know they're there it's legitimate form of protest. You know what to blow up a fucking Tesla Dealership right that's not a charging station. It's certainly not legitimate to destroy people's private property Yeah, who are just paying a lease on a car that they probably had for three or four fucking years before any of this shit Went down. Yeah. Yeah, but they've not but they do it if someone walks by and keys the car right keys a car a Tesla and you can just use a they I don't know why they all tend to look alike but they do and they're just like this this this man says of self-righteousness like I'm I deserve to do this because I'm in the right I'm do I'm on the side of good so therefore I could do whatever the fuck I want yeah so and mentally ill people yeah and there's a lot of them in this country and unfortunately you can weaponize them yeah and we've also So played into it, right? I mean, so it's, you know, the U.S. Olympics, by the way, the U.S. Olympic Committee just said, you know, males will not be able to participate in female sports. Shocker. Shocking. I had no idea that we had to actually say that out loud, but apparently we do. Or they're going to take that gold medal away from that dude who pretended he was a woman and won the boxing. Yeah. God, that was bizarre. Fuck off, man. So crazy. It's like that's where this woke thing just hits the wall where people who have daughters and people were just like, like, hey, look, I want you to live your life and be whoever you want to be. I really do. I don't want to infringe upon your right to express yourself. But at a certain point in time, when you impose this on other people and you fuck up their lives and Vivek had a great term. He was calling it the tyranny of the oppressed. That the oppressed people who are legitimately oppressed in a lot of ways then they turn that on everybody else and they want everyone to concede to their demands It like okay Yeah It that you know I the victim so therefore I following Therefore we going to throw society into a wood chipper Yeah I agree with you I want yeah again I busy enough that I don have to spend a lot of time worrying about what other people are doing At the same time, I don't need to play along, right? Exactly. With your imaginings. Exactly. And so I think that's where it started to, once it started to impact other people, you know, like a kid who loses a race because now suddenly she's racing against a dude. Yeah, exactly. 900 medals lost during this time. Really? Yes. 900 medals that would have gone to biological females that were won by biological males because of this crazy ideology over the last few years. Yeah. And so think about how many girls lost out on scholarships thinks about how many girls just like felt fucked over by the system Where you've got a guy in the fucking locker room with his dick hanging out. You're supposed to pretend that that's a woman Yeah, it's crazy And then God forbid you go against the idea and you know There's a handful of people did and you know spent a lot of time getting pilloried for it. But Riley Gaines Riley Gaines Yeah, yeah example you see people attacking her all the time online. That's just wild I think it's dying down a little bit. I think we hit that top, and then I think it's coming back down to where people are saying enough is enough. Again, with the idea that, look, you want to do that? You want to pretend that you can, you know, you want to believe that a dude can have a baby? Fine, you do that. I don't need to pretend with you. I'm not going to infringe on your thinking that that's the case, you know. And, yes, you need some protections in place for people. Of course you do, right? but at a certain point I kind of lost track. It used to be that you had gay dudes and you had lesbians, right? That was kind of it, right? You had guys that liked guys and you had girls that liked girls, and you're fine. We made progress in that regard, where people that used to have to hide that, they don't have to hide that anymore. It's pretty much accepted by society for the most part. And then they're trying the same thing with this, and it's like, no, this is a different thing. And a lot of the gays they don't want this in their group. They're like no, this is a different thing This is this is not your sexual orientation. You're attracted to men. This is an identity thing This is a totally different thing that you're dealing with and then you also have to factor in as uncomfortable as this is for people you have to factor in as uncomfortable as this is for people with and then you also have to factor in as uncomfortable as this is for people you have to factor in perverts who all of a sudden can just say I'm a woman and wear a dress and now they can enter into women's spaces and you can't stop them and that's that's real man that's real that's not discounting actual trans people or discounting gay people or lesbians not you but you're opening the door for fucking sexual predators yeah people who are out of their fucking minds, man. And you also had, one of the things I never quite figured out was you also have the, you have the parent who's like, they've got a three-year-old son who says, I'd like to play with the dolls. And then suddenly the mother's the enabler, right? They want to get them on hormone blockers. Yeah. And you're thinking like, how about you just let the kid be a kid? You know, maybe tomorrow they want to play football. Maybe the next day they want to do interpretive dance. Maybe the following day they want to play baseball. Let the fucking kids grow up in a certain way without trying to impose exactly you know this this this bizarreness on them so they do it because they want that kid to be whatever yeah whatever it is well they want them to be queer they want to be trans for them it makes them look more progressive and they they have their kid like a fucking flag they plant in their lawn and it's gross but there's a lot of these pathological monsters that happen to be parents they're just nuts yeah everybody anybody gets a license to be a parent. It's like boat drivers. The other day, we were out on the lake in a boat and it was close to 4th of July and I realized, really, anybody, anybody can drive a boat. Yeah, you don't even have to have a driver's license. No, you don't have to do a breathalyzer. I mean, you should and we've got sheriffs out there trying to stop people from drinking and boating. They bust people drinking, but they do it. Yeah, they do it. They do it all the time. It freaks me out. Yeah, it's bizarre because the same people would not say, I'm going to shotgun 12 cores and then drive my car. But God damn it, they'll be happy to get behind that boat and take off. And so we've got, you know, our boys have started driving the boat on their own, taking their friends out and that sort of thing. And it's, you know, it's actually more nerve wracking when they head out on the lake than it is when they get in their car and drive somewhere, right? Because of just like the craziness that goes on. So, yeah, I watched one of our boys head off in the boat. He had like three dudes and seven girls on there. It was his dream right He was heading off to the lake They were going to go cliff jumping and some surfing and everything I watched him going as a god bless you But I was inside I was I was so goddamn nervous of course They did fine people think they're invulnerable when they're young too, which is also a problem You don't think anything's gonna happen cuz nothing's happened yet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you haven't had enough like severe injuries Where you go? Oh this I'm vulnerable shit. Yes is dangerous like people can die. Yeah, you need to see it They go bridge jumping. You know, they'll climb up to the top of a bridge, jump off, and it's just like, oh, my God. I know a girl did that, and she's fucked for the rest of her life. Her back was ruined. Yeah. She fell funny and hit her ass in the water, and it destroyed her spine. Yeah. It's like, I mean, you get higher up there, and it's like concrete. Yeah, exactly. And if you over-rotate or you under-rotate or whatever, but, yeah, you know, there's a balance, right? Because with the boys in particular, you don't want to take away that risk-taking element, right? You want them to take risk, right? But so there's a fine line of saying, no, don't do that. That's dangerous, whether they're doing that or they're going to the dirt track or whatever they're doing. And you think, okay, how do you balance that out? Be smart, you know, but I don't want to stop you from taking risks, if that makes sense. No, it does make sense. Listen, you're talking to someone who spent the majority of my teenage years fighting. you know, with no health insurance. So, like, I'm not, I'm talking from a position of not being one of the wisest people. Yeah. But I was never into, like, jumping off of things. Yeah. And I didn't want to ski. I didn't want to do any of that because I knew how vulnerable I was. Yeah. Which is crazy. Which is crazy because you're risking getting clocked every time you have to fight. And I'm getting clocked in the head all the time in the gym. Like, I'm constantly getting kicked and punched and... God. Yeah. But I realized like hey, I don't want to ski I could ruin my knees. Yeah, I Might I might fracture a rib there. I don't want to do that I just wanted to take as few risks outside of this one risky thing as possible And I think a lot of kids don't have enough like Controlled risks, so then they start wanting to jump dirt bikes. Yeah, you wind up breaking every fucking bone in your body Yeah, our youngest boy again. Yeah, happy birthday Muggsy, but he uh, uh, went over his, uh, his bike, uh, uh, you know, wearing a helmet, very good helmet, uh still banged his head Right This was just a couple of days ago So I on the road and I like okay keep him up Make sure he good So anyway, yeah. But again, then when I talk to him, I don't want to say, well, you shouldn't have done that. You want to say, okay, you're good? Do you know what you did wrong? And he's like, yeah, I didn't get the back wheel on. He's like, okay. But anyway, that's parenting. Yeah, it's, you know, You don't want to completely shelter your child, but you don't want them to expose to unnecessary risks But it's like there's just like this is balance that you have to achieve. It's really hard It's because you don't want a sheltered child that's scared to take any risks at all Yeah, we're sending that the oldest one is off to university in a couple of weeks going down to Ole Miss and And yeah, you're right. I mean, that's a you know, that's a big it's a big step, right? So he's going down. He's been down there a couple of times already. He's met some of the folks down there. He's had a good time. Some of the guys taking him out to the bars. And so at a certain point, you lose control of him, right? Yeah. And so all you can do up to a certain age is just hope you've set the compass right. Yeah, you have to set the compass right. And at a certain point in time, you have to realize that's an individual human being that you don't have control over anymore. And one of the worst things that parents do is they try to control their kids when they're in their 30s and 40s. Like they still treat them like their children. Like you're just going to have a resentful person. Like they don't want you to be the boss of them when they're 30 fucking years old, you know? Yeah. Or honestly, 20s. Yeah. They just, you know, I think they still, they want to know that there's a place they can go or that someone they can talk to. Yes. Or advice they can get. Yes. But yeah, at a certain point you just, and I think, you know, who knows what that point is. I mean, it changes. I think kids seem to be growing up a lot quicker now. Well, it's because of the internet, right? So much information comes their way. Yeah, and then we're at the precipice of artificial general superintelligence, which is going to bust out of its cage if it hasn't already. I mean, there's real good arguments that it's already done it, and we're not aware of it yet because it hasn't assumed control of things. It hasn't acted in a way. It doesn't have a physical form where it can move around yet. Right, we're definitely moving in that direction. I think we probably already there We just unaware of it but I think people at the cutting edge I think But yeah we went from a Rogan show that was done by AI to now you can swing a dead cat on the internet without hitting Rogan babies right Those babies are hilarious. Oh, my God, the babies are great. Theo Vaughn is the best one. Yeah, yeah. Theo Vaughn's a great baby. I will say, anytime, and I don't spend a lot of time digging through things like that, but anytime I see the baby episodes with you and Theo, I'm like, yeah, I got to watch this son of a bitch. Then I send it to the boys. Yeah. Oh, God. But there's no authorization. You have no control. Right. No, there's no. It's just a wild west right now. And it's happening so fast. You know, we had. Who was showing us the Skywalker thing? Was it Joe DeRosa? Yeah. Yeah. So my friend Joe DeRosa was showing us this. They're doing Star Wars AI. like fan created AI scenes of stuff that they wanted to happen. Yeah. And it looks better than the actual Star Wars. Yeah. And it's young Luke Skywalker. It's Mark Hamill from like Star Wars one like that. Like, look at this. Watch this. Look how incredible this is. And look at this. That's AI. I mean, this is nuts, man. I mean, this is like better quality than the original Star Wars itself. And it's his voice. It's his face. It's all perfectly synced. It looks incredible. Like, look at this. Yeah, that's, we, my company does some work for the entertainment industry for the movie business. And I was out there talking to one of the studios, so it'll remain nameless, not that long ago. And this is a massive issue for them. Look, they're seeing full scripts out there, right, written by AI for some of their franchise, you know, movies and characters. And they're seeing, you know, they're animators, they're writers. All these people are, you know, obviously worried and they're convinced that they're, you know, about to be made useless. And they're right. And they're right. Yeah. They're right. Yeah. Because they're finding just what you're looking at here. They're finding you know, but there's there's places where they're dumping full-length scripts and and and you know pieces of movies out there and and it's You know it it's gonna upend much like whatever Netflix and the others did with it with the television market It's gonna upend the whole industry. It's gonna be 100 percent There's no way around it at this point if someone can make something like this whatever Netflix and the others did with the television market, whatever Netflix and the others did with the television market, it's going to upend the whole industry. 100%. There's no way around it at this point. If someone can make something like this, the Skywalker stories thing, I mean, this is just a person doing this with an AI video generator. Again, you just do it through prompts. Or you say to yourself, okay, I want to write a scripted TV series. What am I going to write about? you spend 20 minutes feeding some ideas into whatever uh i forget what the the the aside from chat gpt there's a there's a bunch of them out there and uh it will feed back to you in short order the entire show map right it'll give you all the characters it'll give you a character map it'll give you pitch lines it'll give you uh episode plots it's it's remarkable and it means All those people who work in Hollywood writing, right, or wherever they're based, writing shows or coming up with pilots, they're superfluous to the whole business now. Yeah. And not just that. It's also music. Yeah. You know, Drake had a song that was a hit Drake song that came out that wasn't him at all. It was all done by AI. And they could just kind of guess what people like. and you could just formulate what the big hits were, what's similar, what's common, what are the phrases, what's catchy. Yeah, exactly. Give me the last six songs, the commonalities that made them successful. Exactly. Fine, give me that. Is Drake still beefing with Kendrick Lamar, or is that over? I can't keep track. I think he had to back off of that. Okay, all right. Yeah, I don't know. That's the sort of question we need to be asking. Different people have different perspectives. Some people think Drake won. Some people think Kendrick won. I don't really give a fuck, quite honestly. I'm not a fan of those kind of beefs. But they do make some good songs sometimes. A beef does, you know, like Ether with Nas. That was a good fucking song. There's, it's just. I was about to nod like I knew what the hell you were talking about. You don't know that song? Oh, yeah, yeah. Ether with Nas. Yeah. You don't know that song? Young Gravy. A little gravy. There's a thing that's going to happen within our lifetime where all creativity is going to be suspect because you're not going to be able to know unless someone's doing something off the cuff, like live in front of you you not going to be able to know whether or not something AI generated anymore Like they have AI generated standup comedy now That it not great but it okay You know where you have a guy on stage the audience is fake They laughing What he's saying is comedic. The timing is pretty similar to comedy. It's nuts, man. And it's, this is by the way, impossible three years ago, probably impossible two years ago, probably impossible a year ago now ubiquitous it's everywhere so like where does this go and what does five years from now look like we're just guessing well in terms of driving narratives or telling stories or getting people to think a certain way i mean think about how how simple that is now from a hostile element right like if i'm working russian propaganda for the fsb how easy is it now for me to create a clip um of of whatever let's take a hot topic right and suddenly you you've created a clip where uh trump is talking about you know being in the epstein files or um you know somebody around biden's circle is talking about how they covered up his people will see that they'll release it right people will see it they're not going to necessarily question whether it's because that's not how people work right they right they see shit on the internet and they go oh yeah i'm gonna send that to my buddy and yeah you got some people who who might be more cynical than others but for the most part people just eat that shit up and so which is also yeah shows you the incompetence of the government that they released that video from the cell that's got two minutes and 53 seconds removed because these aren't the best people in the world that are doing that no no and that's that i mean there's yeah that you could argue that the on the hostile side on the on the the whatever you want to call them the hackers or or people on the cutting edge of doing things and using this technology for nefarious purposes, they, you know, I'm not saying the government doesn't have good quality people doing it, but you tend to have, you know, cutting edge folks on the hostile team. Yeah, they're not going to be working for the State Department. No, no, no. They're going to make money otherwise. I got to pee real bad. Let's take a little break. Oh, my bad. And we'll come back. Okay. Be right back, folks. I didn't see a shit about it. Maybe it's a joke. But did you see that? I sent you the Lockheed Martin thing, right? I also sent you the thing that I was looking for earlier which is I believe he a senator that reading off the most ridiculous tweets from the former CEO of NPR Oh God Yeah Which senator is that Do you know I don know Hold on I can find out Eric Schmidt Yes. Missouri? That's who it is. Okay. Yeah. Senator from Missouri. Okay. Watch this. This is fun. This is just a fun one. I thought it'd be appropriate to maybe read some of the craziest tweets from Catherine Maher, who is the CEO. Put the glasses on here. I'm so done with late-stage capitalism. America is addicted to white supremacy. I do wish Hillary wouldn't use the language of boy and girl. It's a racing language for non-binary people. Lots of jokes about leaving the U.S., and I get it. But as someone with cis-white mobility privilege, I'm thinking I'm staying and investing in ridding ourselves of the specter of tyranny. Never underestimate the ability of white people to center ourselves. White silence is complicity. I'm white so my hair doesn't automatically carry with it the freight of my race, or everyone else's encoded assumptions. I'm grateful to those who have pointed out my phrasing could be understood as trans erasure. Horses inspire awe. Horses inspire awe and foster a sense of identity. More kids should have access to these incredible animals. But most horse spaces are white spaces. Horse spaces are white spaces. It keeps going. I love the music. The music is good. Whoever came up with that soundtrack is good. Jesus Christ. Yeah. So the thing that I sent you, the Lockheed Martin thing, is people are claiming, it's, again, a lot of horse shit. Who fucking knows that Lockheed Martin created that tic-tac and that there's been three different versions of it. I sent you that, right? Who are the people claiming that? Yeah. Yeah. So the idea is, this is what I wanted to ask you about. So this is a congressman who says this. Congressman Eric Burleson dropped the bombshell evidence that Lockheed Martin has developed three generations of Tic Tac UFO technology. Is that real, though? Did he say that? Or is this just a fucking tweet? The quote is right there. I had two people come to me. I understand that. But did he actually say that? Or is that just a quote on Twitter? I believe he said that. I saw other people say it, too. Oh, okay. So he says, I've had two people come to me that say that the Tic Tac is Lockheed Martin creation. The latest person came to me says he has video of the first second and third iteration of the Tic Tac Burleson revealed This isn speculation This is a congressman with direct access to classified information The implications are staggering Lockheed Martin allegedly discovered a revolutionary new propulsion system and has been secretly developing it for decades, according to Burleson's source. They used it in the first iteration, which was the Tic Tac. They have an intermediary one that they are more advanced with. And then And now they're putting it inside what looks like conventional so that it's not obvious. Okay. What do you think about? Yeah, I'm going to have to call bullshit on all that. Look, there's an interesting, if you scroll back down, there's an interesting, you know, when you start to, there you go, dissecting this. He says, I've had two people come to me that say that the Tic Tacs are Lockheed Martin creation. Now, he doesn't say who those two people are. I've had two people come to me that said they had sex with Bigfoot. Yeah, I did. But you've got, then it says, this isn't speculation. This is a congressman with direct access to classified information, which is the implication that, well, the people that came to him with this have access to classified information, which is, there's no connection there. So they're taking a data point and another data point, and they're drawing a line between the two of them. Right, making it. And saying, yes, he's getting this from classified. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, and also the next part has been secretly developing for decades. I'm here to tell you that if Lockheed Martin was developing something for decades, a new form of propulsion, maybe I'm just a cynical son of a bitch, but I don't think they'd be keeping it secret for all this time. I don't think it would have been able to be kept secret because somebody would have opened their yap or the Chinese would have gotten their hands on it in their economic and intel espionage efforts. So I don't know this strikes me as and then I've got video of it. Okay. Well, how about you show us the goddamn video? Right. It's always the same. It's always the same thing. It's always like I've seen video. Well fucking show me bitch Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's and here's the problem. The more time they wait the more it's Luke Skywalker shit Like you're gonna show me something. How the hell do I know what's real anymore? It was six months away from never knowing right right that that is exactly right and that's a problem and there look we I think We've talked about this before there are Companies out there private companies that are working trying to figure out how do you get ahead of the curve of deep fakes right and AI? Generated material and it is really difficult right it is it's and it's it's lagging that that that defensive capabilities lagging behind right the offensive and it is really difficult right it is it's and it's it's lagging that that that defensive and it is really difficult right it is it's and it's it's lagging that that that defensive capabilities lagging behind right the offensive potential for ai generated material so you know again i agree with it someone's going to show this and or it's going to be grainy blurry and going like see see there it is oh i had a guy recently come to me with a bunch of videos that he needed me to look at and every one of them was fucking blurry and i'm like i'm not interested in Yeah, yeah, this doesn't mean anything to me every time you you know, you've got another hearing up on Capitol Hill It's always the same. I you know, I can't talk about it I've seen this shit, but it's in a skiff and I can't you know, this very sensitive and you know Kind of goes back to you know people getting in front of the camera and saying I've seen evidence But I can't tell you about it. You're just gonna have to trust me So I don't I don't know. I'm not I'm not a I'm not a buyer necessarily If the congressman wants to make a point of this, then he needs to be more clear on this, right? Right. And when people say things like that and then nothing comes of it, it makes you more and more inclined to believe it's all bullshit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Whereas that's where I am. So I'm like, I think the possibility of alien life, of course. Yeah, of course. There's so many planets. Absolutely. So many stars. The idea that we're alone seems crazy. That seems more unlikely. but I don't know what's real when people describe things and talk about things and things are moving underwater at 500 knots okay show me yeah show me like I can't anymore I can't respond I can't get excited no I I agree you know and sure yeah everybody's chasing just like they're chasing you know a better battery everybody's chasing a new form of propulsion right I mean that's a yeah leading part of what what governments are spending their money on if they have the resources to do it. So, yeah, there's a national security issue there. And you would think that the congressman then would say, OK, maybe if you're telling me this, I'm not going to go out in public and say it. Right. Maybe maybe if we're talking about this, maybe I shouldn't be talking about what Lockheed Martin is doing and obviously working hard, if it's correct, to keep it secret, because that's a national security issue. So what the hell is he doing here? I don't know. It's just it all sounds, you know, like, you know, it's sack of bullshit. Well it also like the problem is a lot of these politicians it kind of a form of entertainment in a lot of a way because they trying to get attention It like they almost like reality stars right They trying to do something outrageous to get attention and that help them get elected That get the constituents on their side and they going I going to be the guy that releases all this information Oh, let's vote for Bob. I'm the UFO congressman. Yeah, but it's like, you're not producing anything. Show me. Tell me. Or shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. Yeah, I agree. And it does, you know, I'm approached maybe once a month about doing a new series, you know, focused on UFOs. And my point is always the same, which is, like, what are we going to talk about? Right. What are you going to show that's going to be something new that maybe people learn something about? Right. And it's always the same. Look, I'm not saying, again, I agree with him. There's definitely stuff out there, right? We've explored, you know, like a drop of water in a glass of the universe, right? So there's stuff out there. I approach it all from a skeptical point of view. Well, I think you have to because there's also, unfortunately, a market in talking about these things. And there's a lot of grifters out there that have made a career out of telling you they know. I have the information. It's been brought to me, and I'm going to release it. And it's like Lucy and Charlie Brown with that goddamn football. Charlie never gets to kick that football. Like, this is the time. This is it. He never has, has he? Never has. Never has. Every time he goes to kick that football, that bitch just pulls it away from him and he goes flying up in the air. Damn it. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe he needed to identify as trans. Then she'd give him a break. I don't know where I came up with that one. I'm going to get lambasted for that. They're going to come for you. Oh, they're going to come for me. I know. You reached on that one. Yeah, I did. It's just like I want there to be some information that's real. And I think there are like Commander David Fravor's depictions and his descriptions of what happened. And there's other fighter pilots that were involved. They have video evidence. That's compelling. What is that? What does it mean? What is it doing? How is something able to go from 50,000 feet above sea level to zero so quickly? Like, what is that? Yeah. No, I agree. We've talked about that. That's one of the few things that I think is legit right out there and needs further investigation. Again, you have to pick and choose. Is there a reason to have an identification program in the Pentagon? Of course, goddamn, there is. It's a national security issue. Figure out what the hell is flying around up there, right? Right. If it's real. If it real and did the Chinese come up with a new form of propulsion right And if they did they undoubtedly stole it from Lockheed Martin There was just a because there never you can never do one of these episodes without me kicking the Chinese Communist Party in the ass But they just finished the sentencing for an American Chinese citizen This is a fascinating case. Another one? Yeah, people always roll their eyes when I talk about Chinese espionage. So I always love to highlight an example. Oh, they shouldn't roll their eyes. They shouldn't, but they do. There's so much. You want to talk about evidence. There's so... That's not UFOs, bro. Yeah. Oh, no, it's true. So this guy, Chen Guanggong is his name. He's like 60 years old, has been sentenced or I think he's awaiting sentencing. He's out free. Believe it or not, he's free on bail right now. And so he went to work in 23. So this stuff has been sealed for quite some time. But he went to work in 23 for some California based company that was contracted with the Pentagon. And he was only there for a month. And during the course of that month that he was there, he downloaded some 3,600 files or so on the technology that this company develops on behalf of the Pentagon related to sensors. Sensors that are very sensitive information that used to detect nuclear missile launches, used to detect and track hypersonic and ballistic missiles, used for fighter jets to track incoming missiles, heat-seeking missiles. So it's very classified material. He downloaded, during the course of his four weeks there, downloaded all these files onto his personal storage devices. And they couldn't find all the hard drives that he had taken with all this information. They've gone missing somehow. So as it turns out, the amazing part about this story is he accepted a job during the course of his brief period of time with this California company working on these sensors. He accepted with a competitor. Right. So they were going to hire him. but ever since like 2014 when he's been working for u.s companies he's apparently nobody gives a shit nobody's doing any due diligence nobody's doing any background investigations from 2014 on he's been applying to the chinese uh communist party for what they call talent programs the chinese government puts out these these uh proposals you know hey send us send us you know your information if you working on you know information of interest they call them talent programs and they provide funding to people who get their applications accepted Well of course what the Chinese Communist Party is doing is they fishing for people with access right And then you know you put in a proposal saying I working on the following I think it could be really interesting And this guy did that. He took several trips to China. He applied for funding for these talent programs, which is essentially the Chinese Communist Party. He stated in emails that he thinks it could be really beneficial to the Chinese military, some of the work that he's doing. And so from 2014 on, he's been doing this, and people are still hiring the guy. And yeah, it's incredible. So now he's out on an almost $2 million bail. I don't know how they're allowing him to roam around free. But it's just another example, I guess is what I'm saying, of what happens out there and why people need to be aware, why companies that are engaged in anything almost, because the Chinese party is interested in everything. But you see this and you think, okay, I get it. The guy was stealing information. but then you look and you go how the fuck did he keep on doing this all these years how did he how was he you know he go from a company and get hired by another company and they were obviously excited by his expertise but nobody bothered to dig into it right and that's always how you know businesses for the most part get fucked is they they don't have a proactive mindset right they're not they're not thinking about that when they're hiring somebody not thinking oh i'll bet you know There's a hostile state-sponsored entity out there that'd like to steal our information. Isn't that also part of the problem with having these administrations that are only in office for four years? So, like, they have all their problems that they have to deal with. They get in. They're basically starting the job anew. And then you've got these companies out there that are hiring Chinese nationals, and you don't even know it. Yeah. You're not even aware of it. There's no way you can pay attention to all of it. And the people that are running the companies, all they want to do is get that company off the ground, start making a lot of money. Yeah, get a government contract. Yeah. Now, you know, theoretically, they're supposed to be going through a variety of security processes about, you know, the dissemination of information, who's got access to it and all these things. But clearly it's not working all that well. Anyway, so that's the thing. and then apparently the news just broke that that there was a breach and I think it was Microsoft's SharePoint software that attacked the Department of Energy. News just broke that there was a breach, and I think it was Microsoft's SharePoint software that attacked the Department of Energy. And it was Chinese hackers. Again, this is just the past 12 hours or so. and they were going after, among other organizations and agencies, the group that's responsible for maintaining our nuclear stockpile, which just sits inside the Department of Energy. So it's the National Nuclear Security Administration, something like that. So, yeah, I guess I always like to point out that it's a hostile world out there. And going back to your point, you need to have organizations that are out there trying to secure the national security interests of America. So, yeah, that sounds like I'm standing. The idea that you don't is crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so naive. Well, it's the idea that everybody, if we just would all get along, right, it's all going to work out fine. And the world's really messy. It's ugly. I mean, we can see that. And when you're talking about the Middle East right now, which is a mess, you're looking the Ukraine-Russia conflict. There's just a lot of shit that happens out there. And so you do need these organizations. Now, again, we talked about this. You need them to be as transparent as they can be and still be operationally efficient, right? But yeah, yeah, Middle East, that's a fucked up situation. Yeah. Yeah. So what do we know about how much damage was done by those bunker buster bombs? I saw some video and again, I don't know what's real, but it looked insane where they were reviewing the damage and they were kind of climbing into this giant canyon that was created by these bunker busters. Yeah. It's a really interesting point. And I think, you know, we talked about earlier about how you can get out over your skis. Tulsi Gabbard probably did it and Pam Bondi about the Epstein files and everything. And I think the Trump administration got out, you know, talking about completely obliterated all three sites, you know, Isfahan and Natanz and Fordow. and you know what wait for the battle damage assessments to come in with credible intelligence right just say we done this we assessing how about that right just keep it like that prevent yourself from having to then walk the dog back right So they didn They came out and said we completely obliterated these sites What appears to be now coming from some of these assessments, at least the early assessments, is that they did significant damage to one of the sites, Fordow. And then the other two sites, they did some damage, but that's where it's questionable. And these are coming from Israeli and U.S. intelligence. And honestly, when it comes to Iran, sometimes we rely very heavily on what the Israelis have because their their intel tends to be a little bit better. I mean, they're it's their existential threat. So they've spent decades developing sources. Right. And so I think did we destroy all three? No, absolutely not. We didn't. Did we degrade their ability to enrich uranium in the short term? Yeah. But does that short term mean three months, six months? I think that's kind of where they appear to be at. They don't know. There's still questions. And the Israelis think that they actually did manage to keep stockpile of some of the enriched uranium that was buried way down inside of, I think it was Isfahan, the site. And so it was successful to a degree, right, but not to the degree that it was discussed early on and what they're still saying. Right. So I think that's you know, and that's a realistic approach. You know, I think the military was was fairly clear in some of their scenarios that they were drawing up prior to this that, you know, we don't have high confidence that we can completely destroy these sites. Right. And and but, you know, if they've if they've destroyed and damaged a large number of centrifuges, well, that takes time to replace. Right. And so, you know, what I think what's going to happen is the regime and I think they're already doing it. They're going to disperse all of their efforts. Right. They're not going to stop trying to enrich uranium. They're not going to stop this drive towards a nuclear weapon, because now in particular, I think they view it as, you know, that's our that's our only leverage going down the road. So they're going to disperse it to smaller sites going to make it more difficult to you know create a single strike scenario where you take it out for the most part and I think that's that's where we're going with it But look the the Israelis during the course of their 12 days or so They degraded the missile capabilities which was a big part of what they wanted to do significantly Now depending on who you talk to that significantly is like 40 destruction of launchers and missile stockpiles to 50%. That's a lot, you know, but again, they still have the ability to make them and they still will. So we've kind of kicked the can down the road, right? We've bought some time in terms of, okay, they're not going to get to a breakout point, you know, next week, but we haven't really solved the problem, right? And you don't solve the problem unless the regime goes away, you know, and then people talk about regime change and then everybody gets all squirrely. So, you know, but you're going to have this same problem. They've already said they are going to continue to arm their proxies, right? And there have already been weapons shipments that have been interdicted, going to the Houthis, going to Hezbollah, right? That process of them getting weapons to their proxies is more difficult in part because, you know, Syria has fallen and the Syrian government is, you know, it doesn't like Iran. The new one, the Islamist government that's there doesn't like Iran. So they're shutting down some of that traditional routes that they use to move weapons back and forth and other resources, but they're going to keep doing it. They're going to keep trying. So we've kind of, you know, again, you know, it's putting lipstick on a pig. We've created a better situation in the short term, but it doesn't solve the problem. Were you shocked that we intervened, that we bombed their nuclear sites? No. By the time we'd gotten a few days into what the Israelis were doing, it looked like there was really very little option. We were going to have to go in and do that because the Israelis did not have the ability to do that, right? They were, there are operations. Again, people can argue about, eh, they should have done it, but from an operational perspective, it was pretty damn impressive, right? Taking out some of the military leadership, taking out some of those nuclear program managers, directors, scientists, was really impressive. Well, one of the things that was so impressive was when they tricked them with a fake phone call. Everybody get together in the bunker. Yes. And they blew the bunker up. Yeah. I mean this it shows the depth of their Intel capabilities because again they've been doing this for years because it's an existential Goddamn threat and so that's their target right we've got as in the u.s. You know you know our Intel Operations are focused on a lot of different things right for the Israelis for the most part It Iran You know yes it you know subsets are Hezbollah Houthis and Hamas and all that But those, you know, those things wouldn't exist without Iranian support and backing. So their focus over the years has been, how do we develop sources? How do we create access, you know, to, so, you know, and they, so when the time comes, they pull out their playbook and they open it up and go, let's do this. And they just push the button, right? and they're able to accomplish these things. But it does show their capabilities. They didn't have the munitions, so they don't have these bunker busters to penetrate and get down to Natanz or wherever. So it wasn't a surprise that we did it. Again, I just think we should be, and I suspect the Pentagon felt like we should have been more circumspect in how we described the success of it. Now the foreign minister from Iran has come out the past couple of days. And he said, oh, serious damage. We've had to stop all uranium enrichment. People are going, look. And even the White House has said, well, see, we've significantly damaged all their enrichment capabilities. Okay, if you believe what the goddamn Iranian foreign minister says. But he's a spokesman for the mullahs and for the IRGC. Why would you? Yeah. So why would they be honest about the losses they've taken? Yeah. So he's he's pushing a message. Right. Right. And so, you know, who knows? But I think I think there's there's been damage, but not to the degree that we you know, they they they would like to have seen. But a lot of people didn't understand, like, why at this point did we do that? Because one of the narratives was that they had the capability of enriching uranium to 90% where they could, but they didn't plan on doing it. They only wanted to have it so that they could use it as leverage. Yeah, there is no civilian purpose for having 60% enriched uranium. So, yes, maybe they thought if we get a stockpile of it, then we're very close because it's an easy lift getting from, well, relatively speaking, getting from 60% to 90% for weapons grade. So, yes, maybe their thought was only we just use it as leverage and we're not actually going to pursue a weapon. But I don't know that you want to you know You know you want to make strategic decisions based on the hope that that's the case right right? I think everything else that it's shown in the past their obfuscation their hiding of their program backing off of past agreements none of that showed that they were earnest negotiators or that they were honest brokers in what that weapons program was like. I think everything else that it's shown in the past, their obfuscation, their hiding of their program, backing off of past agreements, none of that showed that they were earnest negotiators or that they were honest brokers in what that weapons program was like. So I think there sounds like there was significant intelligence that came into the Israeli services that said they're fast-tracking this whole effort. and that may have been in part because of the damage done to their proxies. So they may have looked and seen, look, Hezbollah's leadership was torn apart. Their stockpiles were incredibly degraded. Same thing with the others. And so maybe that was the motivation, perhaps, I'm speculating, for the Iranian regime to say, okay, let's get this done. Let's push. If the Israelis picked up on that, then that would be sufficient justification to say we've got to act now. But the thing is, it's like we had to get dragged into it. Yeah. Yeah. That's where it gets fucked up because like one of the things that people voted for with this new administration was no more wars, no more useless wars. And then six months in, we're bombing Iran. Yeah. No, look, I'm not here to argue whether, you know, I know there's a lot of people that say we should not be doing any of this shit. We shouldn't be. We shouldn't have been in Iraq. We shouldn't have been in Afghanistan. We shouldn't, you know, gone to Vietnam. We shouldn't. OK, fine. you know um you know there's a lot of people that that argue that we should just sit in a bubble because the world will happen and it won't impact us right um some of the shit that happens outside you know the u.s borders will come back in a massively you know serious way and bite us in the ass so you know could a conflagration out in the middle east if we don't take any part in it could it impact U.S. national security? Yeah, it could. But it's a call. I get it. People are saying, draw the curtains, and we shouldn't be at war, and we shouldn't be doing any of this, and we shouldn't support Israel. And what are we doing? I understand the mindset. I just don't agree with it. So I think the limited participation in terms of providing the necessary munitions to attack those sites, again, wasn't a surprise. don't disagree with the decision. You know, I just think, you know, we need to be pragmatic about how much damage we done and what the potential is for us having to revisit this whole issue The thing is people are so skeptical about motivations now They so skeptical about public narratives like why we're doing this and why we're doing that. And I think one of the things that's important, hearing it from a person like yourself that's spent most of your lifetime involved in this, that there are things, Like, we really shouldn't be meddling in every part of the world, but sometimes we have to meddle. There are occasions. There are times. Again, it would be great if we lived in a world where we could just worry about ourselves. But that's not, you know, maybe 250 years ago it was, right? Because it would take the Armada a long time to make its way across the ocean. But, you know, shit happens with remarkable speed now. And I just think it's an idealistic idea that you can ignore what's happening and you can just say we're only focusing on us. We're not going to get involved in anything that happens out there. I agree. There's a lot of things that we don't need to be involved in, right? You know, looking back on Iraq, looking back on Afghanistan, right? Now, Afghanistan should have been a surgical move, right? We should have gone into Tora Bora, blown the shit out of that, tried to get, you know, bin Laden. And then we should have said, look, if you do this again, meaning if you let your country be a sandbox for the terrorists, we're going to come back here and do this again. And then we should have gotten the hell out and not worried about, well, maybe we can build a stable federal-style government in Afghanistan, which has never happened, in which we could have looked at what the Soviets said and said, yeah, that's not going to work. So there's things where we should be learning or we're not very good at. We should be learning and saying, but my point being is you got to leave the door open because there are times when shit could go really seriously wrong. And if the Iranians suddenly, you know, if you're wrong about the hope that, well, I think they just for peaceful purposes, because I'm going to, for some reason, believe, you know, counter to their actions up till now, I'm going to believe the Iranian regime. So it's peaceful purposes. And then they announced that they're a member of the nuclear club. You got a shitstorm going on in the Middle East, because it's not like the regional actors like the Saudis are going to go, okay, no worries, we're going to let Iran have the bomb, and we're not going to get it. Right. Right. Now you're going to have multiple nuclear armed nations sitting in the Middle East and at odds with each other, at odds with each other. And I don't know that that's a really good scenario because you're inching closer to use of a tactical nuclear weapon. Like like you know Putin already in his moronic puppet Medvedev You know it keeps rattling the nuclear sable We use a tactical nuke maybe Yeah you start getting closer to that And that a real problem So I think there are times when you got to step in, in an intelligent way, but you got to be pragmatic about what that means. And so what I'm saying about with Iran is we didn't really solve anything, right? And nothing will get solved. The Iranian population isn't going to have a better life until there's a change in that regime. I'm not advocating regime change unless it comes from inside Iran, right? And that's what you'd like to think maybe at some point they rise up and say, fuck it, enough's enough, right? But that hasn't happened, and despite people hoping it would happen. Yeah. Yeah, it's very, it gives people a lot of anxiety when we think about all the possibilities of all over the world, all the different things that are happening, whether it's Ukraine and Russia, Iran and Israel. It's like it's constant. What's going on in Gaza? It's like everything is it's just like this constant feed of doom that, you know, if you're paying attention and you kind of have to pay attention a little because it is kind of crazy and it could it could affect your life. Which is, I think, why why we're so quick to want to, you know, glom on to what's happening with Epstein or what's happening with the, you know, the intel assessment or then because it, it, it takes away the focus from, you know, there's shit happening in the world. You know, they could create bigger conflict, right. And could drag us into something, something bigger. Look, the European union is, they're heavily focused on what's going on with Russia because they're sitting on the border. Right. And so, you know, right now, um, you know, Putin, he has no interest in peace, right. He, he thinks he's still kind of winning, right. And there's this hope that, well, we think the Russian economy is about to crumble. It doesn't look that way. I don't think it's going to crumble. But I mean, my point being is that the EU looks at it from a different perspective than the US does. Now, I think one of the things that Trump's done very well is to get the EU to focus more of their own resources on this. That's a great move, right? And people should be able to say, yeah, whether they're Democrat or Republican, yeah, it makes sense. Focus more on it, right? It's in your backyard. And so I think that's a good step from this administration, they should be talking about it more. But does that mean we should back off entirely Well again I hear from folks all the time and they like yeah why do we give a shit Why should we our you know resources on Ukraine And fine if you okay with you know with Putin winning then fine Okay You know then you know, I get your point. But at least admit that what you're saying is, you know, we shouldn't be supporting Ukraine. And frankly, without U.S. support, you know, Ukraine's not going to win this fight and whatever that win means, right? Can they even win? Not in terms of like a, we've reclaimed all our territory. That's never going to happen. So it's over for that. It's a negotiated settlement of some sort that's not completely unpalatable for the Ukrainian people, right? So what they're going to, who knows? Maybe the goal is clearly to get everything back, but they're not going to get Crimea back. They're not going to get some of the Eastern region that the Russians have been sitting in now for quite a long time, right, even before the invasion. So, you know, you've got some negotiated settlement that they can accept. But, you know, if we say we're not going to support them, and you can't inflict enough pressure or whatever you want to call it, pain on Putin to get him in a serious way to the negotiating table, then ultimately, yeah, you know, the Russian military will overwhelm them, Right. Because they've got the support of China. They've got certainly the support of North Korea. North Korea is about to send another 30,000 troops to the front lines on behalf of Putin. I mean, that's crazy. But we've got North Korean troops and by the thousands fighting and dying in Ukraine. Ukraine. And so, you know, the U.S. providing military support that keeps them in the fight long enough to hopefully, with the EU expanding what they're doing, to hopefully get Putin to think, okay, fuck it, I do have to sit down at the table. Great. This is what's discouraging is that Trump said, when I get into office, I can fix this in 24 hours. Yeah. I know. Messaging problem. Again, messaging problem. Yeah. It's always, again, I go back to that same thing. There's always a problem with, you know, and again, this is not a, I'm just saying maybe get better, you know, comms people and try to get just a tad bit more disciplined. But, you know, the idea that you're going to fix this problem in a day, you know, it's hyperbole but people buy into it, right? And then you get a mob that are saying, well, how come we couldn't? And what are you doing here? And you... Rather than saying, well people buy into it. Right. And then you get a mob that are saying, well, how come we couldn't? You know, it's hyperbole, but people buy into it. Right. And then you get a mob that are saying, well, how come we couldn't? And what are you doing here? And you rather than say, well, no more wars. Just say the world is an unusual, unstable, chaotic place. There may be occasion when we need to be involved, but I'm going to try to minimize that. You know, say some something like that. And then you don't have to throw more red meat to the crowd. But it's the Ukraine situation. And Zelensky's got some other problems. Right. But this is it's an interesting situation that may hopefully doesn't bore people. But it's it's important to keep on the radar is that, you know, Zelensky has just signed a bill that kind of gutted the two primary anti-corruption organizations in Ukraine. And Ukraine's had years and years of history of being a corrupt nation. And it's always been a roadblock to them getting into the European Union because they're saying you've got to do something to clean this goddamn place up. So Ukraine has had a history of not just with Zelensky, but prior to that. And so the parliament wrote up a bill basically handing over control of these two anti-corruption independent organizations that monitor corruption inside the Ukraine government, handed over that control to the prosecutor general, government control of these organizations. And they put that bill that they wrote, a Zelensky supporter wrote it, put it on Zelensky's desk. It was like 48 hours ago. And he had the choice to either sign it or veto it. Again, here's the problem. We think like, who the fuck was advising him? Veto that goddamn thing. But he didn't. He signed it. And now you've got street protests, significant, large street protests in Ukraine against this because they considered this authoritarian takeover. and they know what their history was like. And so the people are worried about this. So they're out on the streets protesting. Putin's looking at it going like, ah, it's fantastic. That's because Putin's been saying that Zelensky's an illegitimate leader for some time now. And one of his demands has always been, you know, I'll negotiate, but, you know, Zelensky needs to go. And because he wants a pro-Kremlin leader in there. So you've got all this going on and then Zelensky decides he's going to sign this bill. Now he's got the protest. Now he's going to have to, he's trying to scramble. So now he said, well, we're going to introduce a new bill to strengthen our anti-corruption efforts. So now he's trying to cauterize that wound. So you know it just again it a self wound He shouldn have done it but I trying to speak to the complexity that going on out there right now Jesus Christ Mike Baker Yeah I sorry about that Yeah. Anyway, so that's, we touched a very big, we haven't even talked about the situation with Hamas and Israel. But I'll leave that for another day because I'm sure if we got together again in another half a year, it's still going on. There's no ceasefire that's going to happen. And every time you turn around, the U.S., Witkoff or somebody in the U.S. administration or the Saudis or the Egyptians or the Qataris, whoever's handling mediation is saying, yeah, we're very close to a ceasefire. It's just not happening. So it's going to be a mess. We can talk about that some other time. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Is there any way you can give us some happy news to wrap this up? Is there anything positive? Yeah. Well. I know you got a bunch of notes over there. I do. I do. Say things like, hey, we're going to be okay. You know what? One of my – I know. None of them – well, I got one about, well, Ozzy and Hulk Hogan. I mean, that's not positive. No. God damn it. We lost Hulk Hogan today. We did. Hulk Hogan, what a guy. And then Ozzy. I mean, what a goddamn career that guy had. But the Ozzy thing was less surprising because he'd been battling Parkinson's and he was very old. But the Hulk Hogan thing was crazy. He was here just – how long ago? A year ago? yeah yeah in the podcast for a year ago well ozzy did that concert on the 5th of july i know yeah i mean in his chair but hulk went in for some surgery apparently and um he got an infection yeah yeah um i think it was neck or spine surgery or something that he couldn't come back from but um yeah and then and it's all in the same week and then and then what what's his name then the other guy uh this poor guy it always happens right um uh malcolm jamal warner the kid from uh the cosby show he dies and then nobody thinks about it because we're like the day after ozzy dies and then hulk hogan guys you know they always die in threes yeah they always say that celebrities die in threes why is that true but poor malcolm i mean he goes and and his his death is completely you know it's like uh it's like if you and i were on a plane and plane went down it'd I'd be like, we lost a legend today. Joe Rogan is gone, along with 240 others. And I'd be like the other. It'd be a sad moment. Malcolm died swimming right He got caught in the undertow Yeah yeah it was incident in the coast of Rica Got pulled out by a riptide Fuck man You gotta be able to swim and you gotta not fuck with the tides Yeah. That's scary shit. Yeah, we were out in the Caymans. My wife and I had gone down there to give a speech or something. So we said, let's go snorkeling, whatever. And so I went out. I didn't take a PFD. I didn't take an inflatable device with me, right? I should have just grabbed a belt. You know, you just pop it and get it. So I was out there swimming, snorkeling around. And at some point I was like, I don't feel good. I don't feel right. And then I could tell because I'd had an heart issue in the past, right? And I knew exactly what was going to happen. And so I started feeling this. And I could just kind of feel the energy drain out of me. But I'm out in the middle of the fucking, you know, water. And I kind of look up and there's no – I can see my wife off in the distance, you know, but I'm like, you know. And so I'm just trying to keep my goddamn head above water. And so I get her attention finally. She comes over, and she's a brilliant person, and she's a great athlete, very strong swimmer. And so she's trying to help. But now I'm doing that dude thing where I don't really want the—I don't want to make a fuss, right? Oh, no. So I'm out there in the water, and I don't want to take my mask off, and I'm saying, I'll be okay, and I'm going to—I'm, you know, I'm just kind of like barely going. But I'm doing that dude thing right when you have as a dude if you're having a heart attack You don't want to alert because you like I don't want to cause a scene. I don't want to be a problem I don't want to show that I'm I'm weak or whatever so I'm right there, so she literally hauls my ass back to shore right and So I was it was one of those moments I got back down but I you know I was fine after after a little bit But it was just one of those moments we realized this would be a fucked up way to go right just kind of drowning and you know being at the bottom of that and they got a fishy out but so i feel bad for yeah malcolm jamal warner but but then also is you know his news got blown out by ozzy and now hulk so it is weird that they always die in threes yeah yeah i don't know what that's all about it's but it's so common cosmic retribution something's going on but it's like there's a pattern to the universe where that happens yeah so but as far as uh you know good news. I'm really working on this one. You're here. Yeah, yeah, I'm here. We're here. Everybody listening is still alive. Going to see Oasis. That's good news. Oh, nice. Yeah, I'm going to go see Oasis. Fuck yeah Coming to Los Angeles Nice That be a big deal I glad they back together God damn it right I just hoping it not because it not until September So the danger is That they feud They feud. They break up. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck off. Yeah, but it's going to be, it should be a great show. They've been doing a bang up job, but as long as they stick, come on guys, stick together, make it to September and we'll be fine. But other than that, there's good news happening out there. I'm sure I just haven't seen it. All right. I'm sorry about that. Tell everybody your podcast. Oh, yeah. Thank you. It's President's Daily Brief. It's available. We've got a YouTube channel. There it is. At President's Daily Brief. It's doing well. Yeah. I see you on the charts all the time. Yeah. Doing well. We're up there. We're always hovering around the top 10. And I think it speaks to the fact that, for the most part, look, we're just trying to tell people what's happening without telling them how to think about it. Yes. And that's what people want because there's not a lot of that. And it's worked out well in that regard. And occasionally I'll say something. I get a little comment in there. But I try to keep the opinion out of it. But, yeah, it's all the podcast platforms, the YouTube channel, and it's gone well. It's been a great adventure so far. And it's been growing, which, again, for me, that is very satisfying in the sense that, you know, nowadays everything's opinion. Everything got to have opinion, right? Not just opinion, but again, what you were saying, telling you how to think. Telling you how to think about it. Yeah. This is how you have to think. Yeah. So it's President's Daily Brief. Anybody gets a chance, check it out, subscribe, whatever you do. And I appreciate you letting me bang on about that. I appreciate you telling me about things and explaining things. I get lost out there. I always feel like I come in here, I bum you out. You definitely do. Yeah. You definitely did today. Dude, I'm going to do your show tonight. I'm going to love it. Okay. America wants to know this before I go. the White House card. Is it happening? Supposedly. Supposedly July 4th next year. July 4th next year? Yep. Okay. It's going to be amazing. It should be wild. Is Jones coming back? I don't know. You know, it's a lot of time between now and then. He's a wild card. I'd like to see him fight for the title on the White House lawn. That would be pretty wild. It's crazy. No, okay. Sorry, I didn't mean to drag that one out. But anyway, thank you, man. All right. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.