Yakov Smirnoff + Matt Gaetz

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Adam Carolla Show featuring Yakov Smirnoff and Matt Gaetz

Host: Adam Carolla
Guests: Matt Gaetz (U.S. Congressman) and Yakov Smirnoff (Comedian)
Episode Release Date: March 3, 2025

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1. Introduction and Context

The episode begins with a warm greeting between Adam Carolla and Congressman Matt Gaetz. Matt commends Adam for his impactful rant during the Los Angeles fires, likening him to "America's Jiminy Cricket" for providing moral guidance amid chaos.

Matt Gaetz: "Everyone in America was tuned into your epic rant... you were like America's Jiminy Cricket in that moment and gave us a sense of conscience."
[00:04]

2. Los Angeles Fires and Urban Infrastructure

The discussion quickly shifts to the devastating fires in Los Angeles. Matt inquires about the feedback Adam received from Californians regarding the city's response to the disaster. Adam shares his frustration with LA's infrastructure, emphasizing that the city has long relied on its superficial appeal rather than practical foundations.

Adam Carolla: "LA has been getting by on our looks for so long. But eventually, it catches up to you... We have no work ethic."
[03:40]

3. Media Landscape and Cancel Culture

Adam and Matt delve into the evolution of the media ecosystem, particularly highlighting the peak of cancel culture during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adam reflects on how comedians have begun pushing back against political correctness, signaling a shift towards more unfiltered humor.

Adam Carolla: "It was probably at its zenith during COVID in terms of controlling ideas and thoughts and canceling people... Now there's a backlash and a counter culture to comedy."
[07:33]

4. Political Partisanship and Media Bias

The conversation explores the increasing polarization within American politics and media. Matt expresses concern over Democratic strategies and their disconnect with voters, while Adam criticizes media biases and the decline of traditional outlets like CNN.

Matt Gaetz: "Democrats recruited a lot of hysterical women over to their side... They bite on stuff, they get baited into stuff."
[22:11]

Adam Carolla: "CNN has suffered, the LA Times has suffered... Other people in the news who were consistent and spoke the truth have gained more reverence."
[59:42]

5. Matt Gaetz's Political Journey and Media Challenges

Matt Gaetz shares insights into his political career, including his controversial nomination for Attorney General and the subsequent backlash from both political factions. He discusses how aligning with certain media outlets has led to his exclusion from others, framing it as a consequence of broader political dynamics.

Matt Gaetz: "We were blackballed from all the other shows because we showed up on Fox once or twice... People accuse you of going to Fox hammering checks."
[20:22]

6. The Role of the Black and Transgender Communities

A heated discussion ensues about the Democratic Party's focus on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives and their impact on various communities. Matt argues that these strategies have alienated certain demographics and predicts a shift in power dynamics within the party.

Matt Gaetz: "The trans women who are coming in have... enough masculinity to dominate the party within a few years."
[26:36]

Adam Carolla: "Democrats recruited a lot of hysterical women over to their side... They don't know how to run anything."
[22:11]

7. Media Influence and Corporate Shifts

Both guests discuss the declining trust in traditional media outlets and the rise of authentic, unfiltered content. Matt likens the future of news media to changes seen in sports broadcasting, where authenticity is increasingly valued over scripted presentations.

Matt Gaetz: "There’s not a real growth market for them [traditional media]. They have to pivot to authenticity like Pat McAfee."
[60:31]

Adam Carolla: "People have dried up on CNN, now they have to look elsewhere... It’s cruise business like sports now."
[59:42]

8. Yakov Smirnoff’s Comedy and Emigration Story

Comedian Yakov Smirnoff shares his journey from the Soviet Union to the United States, detailing his early career struggles and eventual success in American comedy. He highlights the cultural differences and the challenges of adapting humor across different societies.

Yakov Smirnoff: "People are laughing their butts off... and my humor triggered the laughter, basically."
[85:34]

Adam Carolla: "You come from a place where comedy was vetted... How did you navigate that?"
[75:20]

9. The Importance of Meeting Audience Needs in Comedy

Adam and Yakov discuss the necessity of tailoring comedic material to suit audience preferences. Yakov emphasizes that understanding and meeting the audience's needs is crucial for eliciting genuine laughter and maintaining a successful show.

Yakov Smirnoff: "We met the needs and then my humor triggered the laughter, basically."
[85:34]

Adam Carolla: "I'm getting paid to make them laugh... I'm just giving them what they want."
[85:58]

10. Reflections on Capitalism vs. Socialism

Both guests reflect on the benefits of capitalist systems over socialist experiments, drawing from Yakov's experiences in the Soviet Union and Adam's critiques of modern socialist policies in the U.S. They argue that human tendencies to exploit systems make idealistic implementations unfeasible.

Adam Carolla: "Socialist systems can never be realized because humans will just exploit every system."
[76:20]

Yakov Smirnoff: "Capitalist principles provide the opportunity to succeed or fail based on merit."
[77:50]

11. Future of Politics and Media

In their concluding discussions, Adam and Matt ponder the future trajectory of American politics and media. They consider how symbolic political stands influence voter behavior and the potential for a resurgence of authentic, results-oriented governance.

Matt Gaetz: "The party that overreaches the most gets punished the most."
[41:04]

Adam Carolla: "I'm hoping that it'll just be a small government versus big government crowd."
[37:53]

---

Notable Quotes:

• Matt Gaetz on LA Fires:
  "You were like America's Jiminy Cricket in that moment and gave us a sense of conscience."
  [00:04]

• Adam Carolla on LA's Decline:
  "LA was always like a hot blonde from high school that just assumed this thing would go on forever. And now she's in her mid-40s and... it’s not what it was."
  [03:40]

• Adam Carolla on Media Backlash:
  "We've turned it around a lot sort of post Covid... This is what we do as a society."
  [07:33]

• Matt Gaetz on Democratic Strategies:
  "Democrats recruited a lot of hysterical women over to their side... They bite on stuff, they get baited into stuff."
  [22:11]

• Yakov Smirnoff on Meeting Audience Needs:
  "We met the needs and then my humor triggered the laughter, basically."
  [85:34]

Conclusion

This episode of The Adam Carolla Show offers a multifaceted discussion on contemporary American politics, media dynamics, and the personal journeys of Matt Gaetz and Yakov Smirnoff. Through candid conversations, the guests explore the challenges of maintaining authenticity in media, the shifting power dynamics within political parties, and the enduring importance of meeting audience needs in comedy. The nuanced dialogue provides listeners with insightful perspectives on the interplay between politics, media, and personal integrity.

Transcript

[Matt Gaetz]

Ace, what's up? Matt Gaetz here.

[Adam Carolla]

Good to see you, Matt.

[Matt Gaetz]

Thanks for doing this. Everyone in America was tuned into your epic rant as we were seeing Los Angeles burn and fire hydrants not work. And we were watching this place of great wonderment and creativity and wealth turn into ashes before our eyes. And you were like America's Jiminy Cricket in that moment and gave us a sense of conscience.

[Adam Carolla]

Thanks, man. I hope we're rolling. Cause that sounded pretty good.

[Matt Gaetz]

We are. I roll right into it. So I am curious, after like, that was on every news clip. It was on every social media page. Of consequence, what kind of feedback did you get from the people that live in California?

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I should tell everyone what we're doing here quickly is a kind of a home. And home. I'm doing Matt's show, he's doing my show. And together it'll be one. And so Matt will ask me some questions. I'll ask Matt some questions. If you're curious, my listeners, of why it seems formatically a little different because we're doing both shows simultaneously. I go through life saying things that I think are very pragmatic all the time. And people. It angers a lot of people. And then eventually Bill Maher says what I say, but it's like seven years later. And then people go, you know, Bill Maher starting to make sense. But it's all shit I talked about for the last decade. So, I mean, I used to be a builder. I was a contractor. That was my job. So I. I had an. You know, I had a relationship with plan check and Building and Safety and the Department of Building and Safety and all the red tape and all the ordinances that went back to the 90s for me. And I've been talking about it for a long time, but nobody really cared because they're just not into the nuts and the bolts of plan checks and engineering and specs and calcs and things like that. But for some reason, the power was out in my studio, where I am now. And so we had to do a kind of run and gun set up in a hotel room in Burbank, California, that I fled to. And I think it sort of resonated with people. Cause a lot of stuff is timing, you know, but it's all stuff I've always complained about.

[Matt Gaetz]

Yeah, I just think that the rest of the country was confronting that very question from afar and wondering. Because I remember growing up in the 90s, you looked at LA as the place where the beautiful people went, the wealthy people went. OJ was like banging white ladies in LA in the 90s. And it just seemed like a place everybody wanted to be. And then you go now, like, even the Spotify studios have gone there to record my show. And it's just like wading through garbage. And it's sad and I don't know how. Do you think it's savable, Adam, do you think that the people of California can wake up and realize they've been given the most temperate climate in the hemisphere, they've been given bountiful natural resources, and if they just don't abjectly screw it up, this is a place that people will always want to be and want to love.

[Adam Carolla]

I've always looked at la, and I'll tell my people somewhere is an article that LA magazine came to me to ask me to contribute to years ago, just so you know how ahead of the curve I was with la and Steve Martin's in there. I'll just tell my guys to try to look for it. I got a big of a skeleton crew today, but it's LA magazine, I don't know, 13 years ago. But the point is this, Louisiana, I always say California was like a hot blonde from high school that just assumed this thing would go on forever. And now she's in her mid-40s and the phone isn't ringing and guys aren't buying her drinks and sending them over to the end of the bar. It's not what it was. She has crow's feet and a little belly and a C section scar. And she never got educated. She never worked at anything. She has no work ethic. She didn't do anything because LA was always like, where? La, where else you gotta go? Other cities have to kinda work for it, you know, they have to have an infrastructure. They need to be safe, they need to be clean. We in California and then especially LA just got by on our looks for so long. But eventually it catches up to you. And you never spent one night studying, you were out with dudes, partying and having a good time, drinking champagne. And now you're old and you have no skill set. And that's kind of what happened. So we're gonna have to get LA some vocational training or something, because LA doesn't really know how. How to do things. And like our representative city council, like our mayor is where in Ghana, wearing a ceremonial headdress and learning whatever dance they're learning. Because everything in LA is, our mayor doesn't run Los Angeles. Our mayor's a sort of ceremonial figurehead. We go, we'll get a black woman in here. And then someone goes, but she doesn't know how to run anything. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It kind of runs itself. We're fine. But we like the idea of a black woman who's running everything, even though she doesn't know how to run everything. So, yeah, yeah, put her in there. And we just kind of carry on. And at some point, everything burns to the ground. And then all the idiots who vote for these people look around and go, what's going on? How come we didn't have any infrastructure? How come we weren't prepared for this? We weren't prepared for this. Cause you vote for idiots who don't or aren't interested in any of this stuff.

[Matt Gaetz]

By that standard, is Miami like the hot Latina chick who's cool hanging out with bitcoin bros and drug dealers, I think.

[Adam Carolla]

I wish I knew more about Miami. That's your neck of the woods.

[Matt Gaetz]

But yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think, you know, that's like our iconic city in Florida is. Is Miami. And so I'm trying to think with. With this analogy to whether or not people are in their prime or not. But I tell you what, man, I started listening to you on Loveline and in the 90s and early 2000s, there's not somebody my age who. You didn't get through like, at least one breakup on Loveline with the candor. And I was just like, looking up some of the stuff you used to say on there, and you could just. You could never get away with that on the radio today at all. And I wonder now, like, reflecting on that being a way you built such a. Like a deep connection to an audience that endures to this day. How you think about the media ecosystem and the comedy ecosystem that would have sent you to the, like, far dungeons of Facebook jail for half the stuff you used to talk about.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I think we've turned it around a lot sort of post Covid. It was probably at its zenith during COVID in terms of controlling ideas and thoughts and canceling people. And it really got to a kind of fever pitch, especially here in California with closing of beaches and closing outdoor dining and so on and so forth, and people sort of ratting out neighbors and people being deplatformed and all that kind of stuff. It really hit its zenith and it's been sort of correcting back the other direction over the last couple of years with lots of comedians pushing back and sort of going harder in a sort of un. PC direction. So it kind of would depend when the time was. I think now, this very second. Maybe there was some room for that, like four or five years ago. No, certainly while Biden was in there and the Tech Bros controlled everything and everyone was canceling everyone and firing everyone and needed everyone to get their vax card together. No, I don't think it could have worked. Now there's a backlash and there's a counter culture to comedy and it's the counter guys that are getting popular now. But as a society, I always tell people, if you listen. So what we do as a society is we gorge ourself on one thing and then we get full. And then we get sick of it and we push the plate away and we go, no more. We want the opposite, you know. And so what we do, like, if you listen to the music of the early 70s, if Crosby, stills and Nash and Neil Young and this real gritty Taylor.

[Matt Gaetz]

The band.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, the band, right. Very authentic, very gritty.

[Matt Gaetz]

The best music. The best music. I would say.

[Adam Carolla]

I would say too. But they're doing protest anthem about Vietnam and Four Dead in Ohio and Creedon's Clearwater Revival and all that stuff. And then what's next? The Village People, Donna Summer. Pure disco. You go from. I mean, what is the opposite of the band and Credence and Neil Young?

[Matt Gaetz]

It's the Bee Gees, it's the Bee.

[Adam Carolla]

Geese, it's Donna Summer, Diana Ross. Right? If you, if you look, you know, you just picture sort of Neil Young sitting there with his straw hair, strumming on a guitar and playing the harmonica. And then you go to the Village People, you go, that was, that was two years later. So we had an ass full of this and we went, fuck it. Where's the cocaine? Where's the disco ball? Where's the spandex? Where's the sequence?

[Matt Gaetz]

Maybe it's just that we found the cocaine. Maybe without the cocaine that transition would not have been possible.

[Adam Carolla]

Like they did with the Hunter stash at the White House, which somehow no one has ever been able to figure out what happened, by the way.

[Matt Gaetz]

I have never complained about that because it's at least a performance enhancing drug. A bunch of the people I was there with, they were on so many blood thinners, antidepressants, whatever, not. And it was slowing them down. I'm guessing there was some 30 something year old staffer that wanted to get a few extra hours at work and brought a little bag of cocaine and left it around there. And you know what? Directionally correct in my opinion, when coming off the lethargy of so much that the left has brought us. But in the 90s, when you were doing that stuff, the people who were the most, I would say, like clutching of their. I just lost complete sense. Oh, the people who were clutching their pearls were the right. It was the Moral Majority. It was the kind of George W. Bush flavor of Republicanism that wanted to shut everybody up. And now it's like the other way around. The right is far more accepting of criticism and dissent and you've got the left unwilling to accept it. You are one of these comedians, I would say you, Dennis Miller, you start doing Hannity a little bit, you start calling out both sides. When do you think you crossed the line as one of the people who could legitimately criticize both sides? Whereas much of the comedy in the 90s just criticized the right.

[Adam Carolla]

You're correct. So just so people know, when I was starting in the radio in the mid-90s, 94 to be exact, if the program director called you into his office and said, we got a letter and there's some issue with some content that you put out there, it was always a religious Christian right wing group and they were active and they would monitor you. And it was right and religious. And now if someone's trying to cancel you or has an issue with something you said, it's always the left and non religious people. Which is a complete pendulum swing in just my career from who did all the complaining. The left was considered open minded and progressive and let your freak flag fly and you could say whatever you wanted. This is a recent thing for me. What happened with me is I've been consistent in my themes such as raise your own kids, feed your own kids, don't have kids if you can't afford to have kids. Try to keep government small, keep government out. See if you can keep them out of your life as best you can. They don't deserve half your money in taxes. These were themes that were always in my words. And I was always just a practical guy. There was never really a political designation assigned to raise your own kids, feed your own kids. I like government small. Pay your taxes and listen. Don't involve yourself with crime and you won't have to worry about the cops. You know, things like that. Like that was not considered outlandish and it wasn't considered political at all. Recently became political. But I think for me, as I think back on, if I think of the origins of it, I did a rant about Occupy Wall street on this podcast years ago. I just went on a rant about it, and it wasn't anything I'd planned. And like you'd alluded to at the top of the show, giving a soliloquy about the LA fires from a hotel room. It's not something I didn't shut the mic off and go, excelsior. That shit's going viral. I just, I just went, yeah, all right, put it out. And then I got on an airplane and went to Vegas to go do a show. And it was somewhere later the next day. I was like, why is everyone calling me? You know what I mean? So you don't know what's gonna go, what? But I just went on a rant about Occupy Wall Street. And the next thing you know, a lot of people picked up on it. And then the next thing you know, it's like, oh, Bill, oh, God, who am I thinking of? I get invited to go, Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly wants to invite you on his show. And my policy was always open door. You wanna invite me on your show, I'll come on your show. You wanna invite me on CNN, I'll come on CNN. You know, I did Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher 25 times. Easily. Easily 25 times. I was just on the short list of when someone drop off, they would just call me and I'd come down.

[Matt Gaetz]

Do you think Politically Incorrect is a better show than Real Time?

[Adam Carolla]

Real Time to me is when you watch it. When I watch it, I kind of go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I go, oh, come on. You know, yeah, it was good. I've done them both. I think Bill is drifting toward a pragmatism and a kind of a sanity. And it's not really. People go, now he's talking more right wing stuff or more Republican stuff. It's really just pragmatism. He's just talking about pragmatic, talking about.

[Matt Gaetz]

Your journey to pragmatism. And your brand on the radio was you told people direct truths, even if they didn't want to hear them. Whether it was a lover that was cheating on them, a romantic interest that wasn't going anywhere, a marriage that was dissolving. You gave people like the straight truth. And it was hilarious to hear that play out. And so then as you're going and doing more stand up, you're doing more acting, you show up on Fox News with Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. And that must have driven some of the people that you knew in Hollywood crazy.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, yes. And the problem with maybe current day politics, and it happens a Lot is. And it's sort of unfair because I've seen this happen with Dr. Drew, I've seen this happen with attorney Mark Garagos. I've seen it happen with a lot of people myself. So what ends up happening is the policy is I'll go on any show and talk about anything. That's my policy. It always has been. I've done the View a few times. I mean, not to mention Letterman and Leno and all that stuff. But the deal was someone asked me to come on the show, I'd come on the show and people would say, why are you going on that show? And sort of validating whatever their things are. And I'd go, no one ever tells me what to say. So I'll go on their show and I'll just say whatever I'm gonna say. And that's my opinion. And then O'Reilly can have whatever thoughts and Tucker can have whatever thoughts and Matt Gaetz can have whatever thoughts. But that don't affect my thoughts. I'm just going on their show. So also I talk for a living. I don't really look at it as that big a hassle. I did real work for so many years in construction that like sitting in air conditioning and have someone hand you a CO and a water and tell you to speak your mind. That was always fine with me. I never had any thoughts about it. So what ended up happening to me, which happened to Dr. Drew and Mark Garagos and many others, is they started getting invited onto a Tucker Carlson or Jesse waters or Bill O'Reilly. And then once they popped up on those shows, they were shunned by cnn, MSNBC or anybody else on the left. They would not have them. They were shunned. They were considered FOX people. And so CNN, Dr. Drew and Mark Garagos and Adam Caroll would love to go on CNN and speak to their audience about stuff, but CNN won't have it. So then what would happen is a book would come out or a documentary would come out, or there'd be something we would want to talk about, something to plug, something to sell, what have you. And so then what would happen is you end up going, all right, well we'll do Jesse Watters and then we'll do Hannity and then we'll do Laurie Ingraham show. And it became a self fulfilling prophecy because the only ones who would have us would be the people from Fox and we have a book to sell. So that's where you end up. And then the people accuse you of going to Fox hammering checks and echoing right wing talking points. But the reality is, is we were blackballed from all the other shows because we showed up on Fox once or twice. So it's not Fox's fault. It's CNN and the View and all the other shows that formerly would have had us on their programs blackballing us. And nobody wants to exclusively go on Fox, but if no other network is gonna have you, then you end up on Fox.

[Matt Gaetz]

I loved going on the View. I thought it was terrific. But they did not invite me back to that particular platform. And it's interesting because where we sit right now in our politics, it does appear to look more normal versus crazy. You see all the stuff that Elon Musk is exposing. I don't know that there's a massive constituency in the United States to pay for Peruvian transgendered comic books or to have, like, DEI seminars in Serbia. Even people who are for that stuff probably figure Serbia should have some role in their own DEI seminars, particularly since they were, like, involved in ethnic cleansing. All that. Not all that long ago. But as this is happening, I am noticing my former colleagues in Congress, the Democrats, are choosing, like, all the wrong battle strategies. They're showing up at these buildings like the Department of Education and USAID as if the building has some magical powers and they're there to defend the people inside when, like, most voters feel so utterly disconnected from those monstrosities in Washington, D.C. and I think the fact that they're so lost in how to respond to this moment, like, they've called Trump Hitler, they've said that we're all, all the MAGA people are insurrectionists, and folks voted for us anyway. And so I just wonder how you assess, like, the persuasive tools that the left is using rather than engagement, rather than inviting critics on their programs and having a thorough discussion about what's before the country, they're trying to convince us that, like, Elon's trying to get our Social Security number. So what? So Elon could have access to the $382 in my checking account. I'm sure he's real interested, but would love your take.

[Adam Carolla]

Democrats recruited a lot of hysterical women over to their side. And so that's a lot of it. Like, I would call sort of crazy friends of my mom when I was in high school. And they are.

[Matt Gaetz]

But not the hot women.

[Adam Carolla]

We got the hot women.

[Matt Gaetz]

The hot women decided they wanted to be with the alpha men and the cool black guys, and they didn't want to be with the beta males. And the transsexuals. They got the ugly women, we got the hot women.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And they got the hysterical reactionary women. And also a lot of it is just DEI stuff. So a lot of them aren't really up to the task at hand. And so they bite on stuff, they get baited into stuff. It's just like the women. Remember when all those women. Now you have to think about this from a sort of sociological standpoint. They took all the women who were presidents of the college, of the Ivy League colleges, and they put them up in front of Congress, right? And then they did a really smart thing. They got a female, a Republican female to go at them and she kept saying, just denounce antisemitism, do it, do it. And they all fought her, right? And they didn't know what they were doing. What they were doing is some bitch was coming at them and some bitch with an R, some Republican bitch was coming at them, trying to tell them what to say. And they were telling her to fuck off and that. So they started. That was female on female crime. They were no longer presidents of universities. It was just some bitches coming at me.

[Matt Gaetz]

And.

[Adam Carolla]

And they told her to go pound sand and anything she said to do, all she wanted them to do is denounce anti Semitism. And they wouldn't do it. Not because they're against anti Semitism or for antisemitism, because a woman was trying to browbeat them into it. They all fought and then later on, everyone checked the tape and they all had to resign because they're hysterical and they're reactionary and they attract those people on their side, and men too, who are hysterical and reactionary as well. So when something like this happens, all they can think to do is scream into a microphone, this won't work, or we're gonna get you, or let's go block the opening to the school building or whatever it is. There's no strategy to it. It's basically a crazy person being dragged off of an airplane after being told to sit down for half hour. Eventually they get dragged off and they just start screaming, what's happening? That's essentially where the Democrats are.

[Matt Gaetz]

Now, that may be the performance element, but there is a real smart infrastructure that undergirds the Democratic Party. It's the Pelosi's, the Barack Obama crowd, the Mark Eliases. These are not low IQ individuals. These are very smart, very competent people. And they have used all of these grant programs in the government. And the fact that they've ceded people at every Middle management layer of every agency into a very economically productive patronage system where, if that is the politics you ascribe to, there's a job for you at the Commerce Department, there's an NGO ready to fund your time out in Europe. And then some poor schmuck in Iowa who's a farmer has to pay for it, or some welder in Vermont is having to see his children incur more and more debt and see his dollar not go farther because we have to spread money all over the world like dead money at the table. But I contend that on the performance side, very soon the most masculine force in the Democratic party will be the trans women. Because you've got the weak men, you've got the sort of angry pit bull adopting lesbians and self loathing women. But then you have the trans women who are coming in with, I would say, probably enough masculinity to dominate the party within a few years.

[Adam Carolla]

It's gonna be interesting. I just, you know, their problem is they. You brought up pit bull, and so picture them as the pit bull and then picture Trump as the guy who's holding like a rope toy and the pit bull's got it in its mouth and Trump is pulling. And what the pit bull does is, if you've ever done this with a dog, you pull one direction, it pulls the other direction. So you go, I want, I wanna close the border. I want border safety. They pull the other direction. I want cheap gas. You pull the other direction. But if you notice the pit bull, you can spin around 360 degrees and it'll keep pulling the other direction. So now you go, doge, we would like to save the American taxpayer money. And they go, oh, no, you're not. Because all they know is to pull the opposite direction. And so when you say things that the American people agree with, you know, you go, I don't want men competing in women's sports and I want to save the American taxpayer money. And they go, what's our job? Our job is to pull the opposite direction of whatever direction you're going.

[Matt Gaetz]

And I think we did that too much when Obama was president. I think Republicans allowed Barack Obama to define what Republicans were for and against, because there was that reflexive opposition. And I think we were poorly led by people like Mitch McConnell to not try to influence some of the things going on by being cooperative when our interests were served. In being cooperative, you mentioned the men and women's sports. I was loving the public testimony at the Worcester City Council when this Massachusetts town got browbeat by transsexuals into becoming a trans sanctuary city. And for the life of me, Adam, I do not know what they are seeking sanctuary from. Is it a place you literally go if you wanna go to the bathroom with transsexuals or if you wanna have men playing in women's sports? And what was amazing to me is I'm watching what was really at its core a sad display of eroding mental health. Oh yeah, Council voted for it. They voted to become a trans sanctuary. And I'm wondering if this is going to be contagious.

[Adam Carolla]

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[Matt Gaetz]

Well, I'm gonna push back on that because there's just too many of them now. Right. That may be the initial wave, but it would start with one kid at a middle school saying they were trans. And then you'd wake up, you know, a few weeks later, and there'd be 14 of them that were making that claim. And what I believe is that the wonder years are hard enough, adolescents are sufficiently challenging without throwing a gender query into the whole mix. And once you do, and people are feeling ostracized or mentally unwell for whatever reason, that doesn't necessarily trace back to some sort of abuse that they have incurred, that the expression of that mental health degradation is, well, then I must be trans. You know, it can't be.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, no, I agree. There's a Johnny come lately trans component, which the aforementioned Bill Mars brought up, which is, why are there so many trans people in Los Angeles and New York and barely any in Nebraska or Kentucky? Like, obviously, there is a sort of popular, trendy. This is where we're going kind of. There are a lot of people that glom on to any movement, really. It's almost like fashion. Anyone who has teenage kids at some point, your daughter comes home from the ninth grade, and every single one of her friends is dressed exactly the same because it's fashion.

[Matt Gaetz]

You know, people wonder whether this was a big part of the election or not. And I actually think that the most powerful ad that was run was Trump's ad that ended with, Donald Trump is for you. Kamala Harris is for they. Them.

[Adam Carolla]

Right?

[Matt Gaetz]

And it cut to the root of what's going on. So I actually think it was a big deal. There are others who would say, oh, no, no, no, it's just about. It was just about the price of groceries.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, let me cut you off and say that it was symbolically a big deal for a lot of Americans, because the reality is, and it's the argument that the left makes, they go, why do you care? This represents almost nothing. Like, why do you care so much about biological men competing against women when it doesn't affect you? And it's barely 1/10 of 1%. And, and that is all true. And then my answer is it's symbolic. It's emblematic. We're taking a symbolic stand against that because that's the direction we're going. So it can be both. Like, it can be. Well, that turned the election because people didn't want biological men competing against their daughters. But that was never going to happen statistically. But we took a symbolic stand against it, which is no more. That represents the craziness of the left.

[Matt Gaetz]

Well, and by the way, I think all elections are like that.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Matt Gaetz]

You know, when George W. Bush's reelection was symbolically. Are you against the terrorists? Barack Obama's election was symbolically. Do you think people should get healthcare or do you think they shouldn't get health care? And then, you know, the, the. Yeah, this probably was a big symbol. What do you think the next ones are? Like? If you look out over the horizon as a, you know, you're a very significant cultural commentator and say, like, what are the symbols that are gonna unify and have people gravitate to.

[Adam Carolla]

I think, and I'm hoping this Doge thing, that people get kind of momentum with it and energy with it and realize that our government has grown completely out of control. And it's sort of Doge also meets the rebuild in Los Angeles and Malibu and Palisades because we will see if we can keep shrinking the government versus this sort of ever expanding government that seems to rule over all of our lives. And I'm hoping that it'll just be a small government versus big government crowd. The Democrats represent big. Obviously Republicans, at least for now, are trying to shrink it. I think I kind of a Pete Hegseth, kind of Joe Rogan, like Budweiser now has dudes, has Post Malone doing commercials instead of Dylan Mulvaney. I think that's gonna be what we're. If you take a look at Budweiser, two, three years ago it was Dylan Mulvaney, and now it's Post Malone. And I think that's what's gonna be the new world order for a little bit.

[Matt Gaetz]

And you see the corporate Fortune 100 companies moving away from DEI or at least rebranding it in some form or fashion. And it does show that culture is upstream from politics on those questions.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, that's Crosby, Stills and Nash. Then off to disco. Then disco hung around for a while. And then what was next? Punk rock, the exact opposite of disco. And then punk rock gave. Gave way to glam rock hair bands, which is the opposite of punk rock. And then hair bands ruled the day. And then grunge showed up, which is the opposite of hair bands. So what we do is we go for a while and then we go. We want the exact opposite. And that's how we work.

[Matt Gaetz]

How long do we have until the trannies are in charge and we're back in our pronoun seminar? If we just swing back and forth.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, what I'm kind of hoping is that we move toward a results oriented group. Like no matter meritocracy.

[Matt Gaetz]

A meritocracy.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, a meritocracy meets results. So you go, you know, look, maybe you're left wing and maybe you're Democrat, maybe you voted for Gavin Newsom in the past, but gas is down 2 bucks a gallon and there's no homeless encampment across the street from my house. And I feel safe walking around at night. And I just got a raise and my taxes went down a little. At a certain point, people put party aside for this is, you know, I like cheap gas, you know, and I will be there.

[Matt Gaetz]

And I think the party that overreaches the most gets punished the most. And a lot of those swings back and forth, some function of overreach. And I actually think zeroing in on the government waste is important because, look, what's gonna happen here is a lot of this stuff is gonna get cut and people are not going to see a difference in their lives. And they're gonna say, well, sending all this aid abroad or doing all these bureaucracy oriented programs weren't really affecting me anyway. This is kind of my final question to you, and then I wanna hand you the wheel to drive for a bit here. But what happens when this administration just gets one of these court orders that they don't abide? We now have courts that are saying, you have to put back up the FDA HHS website. It's on trans surgeries. We have courts now that are limiting the executive agency's access to its own data. And I believe the moment is coming where Trump is just gonna say, look, I'm not following that order. That's crazy. And he's gonna proceed anyway. And do you think, you know, do you think that is an overreaction that swings people against what Doge and Trump are doing, or is that something that we just sort of accept because of the progress being made?

[Adam Carolla]

Well, you know, there's two courts. There's the courthouse and then the court of popular opinion. And the Democrats are gonna have to be real careful because they may win in the courthouse, but lose the court of Popular opinion. And they're gonna have to sort of keep an eye on that because I think that's kind of where they're at now. They're gonna. They may win in the courts with the liberal judge, but the people don't like what they're selling now and what they're doing. And so I think the pressure from the people in the court of popular opinion may get them to back off. As far as what Trump does, I don't think that there's any lengths that his detractors won't go to. I think we've already seen that with the Steele dossier and four years of Russian collusion and impeachments times two. I don't think there's any. There's nothing that leads me to believe that they'll ever be reasonable. I mean, with exceptions like Fetterman and guys like that. But in general, they're just going to fight every. They're gonna pull the other direction like the pit bull does on the rope toy. So I think the first time he thought he could go in there and kind of make friends and the la, you know, the New York Times would write something nice about him and stuff like that, he was just sadly mistaken. It's now just, you know, roll up the sleeves. It's a barroom fight, and he's just gonna have to run roughshod over everybody. And I don't know that he has other choices.

[Matt Gaetz]

I agree. Well, you're driving, man. Thanks for letting me lead the discussion.

[Adam Carolla]

For our wide fun back and forth. So for you, what's the future hold? You're out. Are you out of politics? And you are out for good. You're out in, like, San Diego area now, I believe.

[Matt Gaetz]

Yeah, man. So you had all these people go from media to the government in the Trump administration. I figure some of us had to go the other direction. You had Pete Hegseth and Monica Crowley and so many of the people going into the administration with strong communication skills. And I had served eight years in Congress before then. I served six years in the state legislature. So I've been an elected official from age 26 to 42. And so my wife is from Southern California. We're hanging out here for a little bit. I work at One America News and make a nightly show called the Matt Gates Show. And it's a way for me to stay involved and keep my ear to the ground. But I miss the warm Florida shores a great deal and will likely be heading back to my home state. And one thing I know about Florida Adam, anything is possible. LA is where people go to be famous. New York's where they go to be rich. DC is where they go to be powerful. And Florida's where everyone goes for second and third and sometimes even fourth chances in life.

[Adam Carolla]

The whole Attorney General nomination, you being, like, the first and maybe the most controversial, possibly brazen nominee. Did you know that? Did you feel like it was kind of a stunt almost? Or did you feel that?

[Matt Gaetz]

Are you telling me that I'm. The 25% tariff threat on Canada and Mexico? I mean, look at what Trump just did on trade. He makes the 20, he goes out there and he makes this outlandish 25% tariff threat, and then Canada and Mexico come running back, say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Is there anything else you can do? Trump says, tell you what, shut down the fentanyl from Canada, shut down the migrations from Mexico, and we have a deal. And so I was, like, thinking about that. I was like, huh? Maybe Trump was like, you know what? Matt Gaetz for top cop in the world. And the United States Senate comes running back and say, tell you what, we can't take Gates, but Tulsi Gabbard, rfk, Cash Patel, we'll give you all those guys. And by the way, if that's how it went down, then it served a patriotic purpose.

[Adam Carolla]

Were you. Yeah. But you were all in, right? I mean, you never thought it was.

[Matt Gaetz]

I would have loved the job. I would have loved the job. Now, I never campaigned for it, Adam. I mean, I was on Trump's plane with him, pitching somebody else, explaining how another person would be an excellent selection. And he just looked at me and said, I deserve the Attorney General I want, and I would like you to be Attorney General. And I explained to the President that I'd said some pretty unsavory things about members of the Senate, including Republicans, during my time in the House. And I would be willing to eat a lot of crow, but I would have to eat a lot of crowd. And he said no. He really wanted me to do it. And one thing I know about Trump is he's so all in on everything that when he wants his buddies there all in with him, there's a strong desire to accommodate that. Like, I watched after January 6, so many of Donald Trump's friends talk bad about him in the media, either on the record or off the record, snicker about him, criticize him. And how could that not hurt somebody? How could that not, like, gut you to your core, that people you thought were with you in a dark moment, in an unpleasant moment, just sort of turn on you. And so Trump really has this personality trait where when he calls you into the battle, he wants to know you're gonna be there. And though I was not successful in accumulating the requisite number of votes, it was a fun experience. I'm glad I did it and glad I'm onto the next thing.

[Adam Carolla]

So you draw the ire of Democrats and some Republicans. And I look at everything through a sort of lens of like, sort of psychology, and I realize Trump does as well because he's like an archetype of the man. You know, like, first off, he's physically a large guy, and then secondly, the way he dresses and the way he speaks and the way he carries himself and. And it really upsets the aforementioned women, especially I was talking about. But it's more than. I disagree with this person's politics. They really are affected in a way that, in a way, when a person is a woman or smaller in stature or has a different hair or jawline or something, part of it is a physical reaction. And I always thought of you as a guy who, if you were an animator, had to draw an evil politician. They might look a little bit like you. Now take that in the spirit in which it's intended, because they're always good looking, but they draw that guy and you go, I don't trust that guy. And then you talk and it rubs Democrats the wrong way. But a lot of it is kind of the aesthetic, and a lot of it is the way you carry yourself in a sort of a bold and brash kind of approach to this stuff. Do you realize, and did you realize that almost your presence would piss a lot of these people off?

[Matt Gaetz]

I've seen it have that effect on people, no doubt, and I have wondered about it. The Internet seems to be always quite interested in my appearance, and I don't think there's anything remarkable about it. I sort of just like, I look like if Matt Damon was having an allergic reaction to shellfish, you know, that is. I don't think that's. That's too far out of what. What most random white dudes would look like. But I think that my coarse approach to some of these people in Washington offended the establishment in both parties. I was on the Armed Services Committee, and if some general was sitting in front of me, a bunch of the people that were there had been in the military or had such reverence for the fact that it was a general that they wouldn't ask basic tough questions like, why are you Guys doing drag shows on military bases for children. And, hey, like, why are you reducing this? Valuable training for pronoun training and a willingness to do that really greats people in a way that the normal professional wrestling of politics doesn't. Because most of it is fake. Most of it is just performative. And the politicians are just actors who are playing out the scripts that are written, produced and directed by special interests and lobbyists who fund them. And I have no interest in playing that game. I could have played that game. Didn't want to, because who even wants to win that game? What, you rise up in the leadership so that you can be a valet at just a higher level for the wishes of others. And I happened to represent a district that was pretty homogenous and pretty conservative and had my back. And so I didn't care about the criticism. If I was going to take an action, I would endure the criticism. And by the way, I ignored it from both sides. Like, I do not believe that an organizing principle of the Republican Party should be being mean to gay people. And I have said so. And that's, that's really riled up some of the religious right. I don't believe that we should, like, throw people in jail for marijuana use. I actually think marijuana use can help a lot of people. And that has also been something that I've taken criticism for. But at least the folks I represented knew that if I held a view, I wasn't full of shit and I wasn't doing it for a donor, because I was the only Republican in the whole Congress who took no lobbyist money and no PAC money. And that gives you a way to see through the matrix and to break it. But if you're that multibillion dollar lobbying industry or if you're one of the PAC financiers or funders, someone who stands up and says, you don't need this shit anymore, becomes very dangerous, existentially so.

[Adam Carolla]

In terms of, like, lawfare, we saw it against Trump, felt like they were always trying to cook it with you and all the allegations, drugs, women, underage, so on and so forth. Also, I kind of wonder, like, are they as bad or as evil as. As they are, or are they misguided, or is it just sort of will take this person down at any cost, regardless? Like, a lot of stuff they did to Trump seemed insane to me. The allegations against you, I was like, now I don't believe them, because this is what they do when there's somebody they don't like. But how did that play out for you?

[Matt Gaetz]

Well, it was frustrating because in my case, in Trump's case, in a lot of these cases, what they do is they take half truths and then they weave them together with whole lies. And, you know, are there things in my past that are embarrassing when it comes to my relationships with adult women which were consensual? Yeah, I probably wouldn't relive those years as I sit here and chat with you now. But at the same time, then they put in false, gruesome, grisly allegations on Trump, on me, on whomever, and you're left having to splice through all that. In my case, even the Biden Justice Department, I think, realized Matt's been around some people who. They've done some unsavory things. So if we can hold this investigation over his head for years and years, we can do some guilt by association. Then the Biden Justice Department investigated me for four years and at the end said, there's no charge of any crime here. I've never even been sued for any type of misconduct. I was a modestly wealthy white guy, straight, in power for 14 years as an elected official, and never once did a woman show up and say, I was in an uncomfortable situation. Here's my story. Like, I have zero of that. But, you know, it does. It does ultimately resolve as part of your digital identity that, you know, there were people who tried to smear you and you just got to persist nonetheless. So it was frustrating. It was people who had an ax to grind against me. But, you know, I would. I would probably make better choices.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, look, first off, reading the transcripts of whatever you did when you were a young man, I realize in any context, it would always just be a shit show. And every guy know, it was sort of if I was trying to be nominated for Supreme Court job, and they just went and read whatever I was doing in high school and when I was 23, it would sound horrible. And it bothers me that that's the society we're living in, because it is so easy. I mean, they did it to Pete Hegseth, and they'll do it to anyone they disagree with. I mean, I guess they started with Clarence Thomas, but it is so easily done to anybody. At any time anyone has ever gotten to an argument with their wife or girlfriend or vice versa, and you just read the transcript, they would sound like the worst person in the world. And then we all pretend like we've never engaged in whatever that behavior is when we've all engaged in it multiple times. But it would have Nothing to do with your ability to do your job. And I really do hate that. That's where we've sort of come to as a society.

[Matt Gaetz]

Do you think the pendulum swinging back though, Adam? Because to your point in our earlier discussion about these things coming in waves, you almost look at the Amber Heard moment as a cultural moment where we started to bring some sanity to this ecosystem of allegations and denials. Where do you think we are in the pendulum swinging on?

[Adam Carolla]

Well, what I've figured out is if you're gonna call everyone a racist all the time, then no one's a racist and no one believes you. And they went to that well so many times. You know, if a Democrat said on CNN tonight, I have very credible new information about Trump and his illegal behavior, 80% of America would just go, yeah, okay, now that doesn't mean he didn't do something. That's what I keep saying all the time. It doesn't. You know, if, if Anthony Fauci said, I've got something to say, I'd go, okay, yeah, I'm not listening anything to say. But it doesn't mean he doesn't have something important to say. He just wore out his welcome with me and many other Americans. So they went to the Wells so many times and they burnt so many people out. Like if Adam Schiff said, I have new news on Trump and his, his felonious behavior, people be like, nobody, right? And it actually works because maybe he does have new news and maybe it is real, but no one would believe Brenner or any of those people going on CNN who lied to us.

[Matt Gaetz]

Post truth era, we just have to wait for our robots to tell us what the truth is. Now because everyone has spread so much bullshit about everybody at this stage of the game that we can't get out of the horizon.

[Adam Carolla]

I think there are people and entities that hurt their brand a lot by doubling and tripling down on the bullshit. You know, CNN has suffered, the LA Times has suffered, the New York Times has suffered, like many of these outlets have suffered. Consequently, other people in the news who were consistent and sort of spoke the truth and were interested in accuracy, certain doctors during COVID now people have more reverence for them and are more apt to listen to what they're saying. So it's not a one way street where no one will listen to anybody. There were people that had some dignity and some accuracy and I would be more likely to listen to them and then less likely to listen to cnn. Whereas I did an informal survey around here where I have a bunch of youngish people working. And I would say to him, 10 years ago, if I told you some CNN said something, what would you have said? And they would have said, I would assume that's what happened. I said, how about now? They go, mm, I don't think so. I'd have to look into it. And I'm like, all right, cnn, that's what you did with your brand.

[Matt Gaetz]

Yeah. And they see it in valuation. But I also just think that regardless of what traditional cable news is doing, they have so many cord cutters and people that are not ever going back, and there's not a real growth market for them. They have to wake up every day and say, how many fewer viewers do we have through coaxial cable today than we had yesterday? And ultimately, I think that news is going to go the way sports did, where ESPN had to fire all of these very highly paid anchors and they had to go pay Pat McAfee, whatever. He wanted to stream a podcast all day because people value the authenticity more than the scripted news stuff that is in either sports or politics.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, Matt, we've drawn to the end of my unbiased show, but your show is on the One America News Network and weeknights, 9pm Eastern Eastern Time on OAN. And I'd be happy to come back and continue the conversation anytime you like.

[Matt Gaetz]

I enjoyed it. And again, man, those years where you and Dr. Drew dominated the radio, it was just such a freaking eclectic time. And you think now about how these people are meeting, like half of all relationships are online and how you coached people through the bar approach, through the friend referral, and it needs to be opened up in some time capsule when the aliens ultimately find out what the heck happened with human beings. But thanks for having me on your program.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I'll tell Dr. Drew tonight because I cannot go back to my home in Malibu and I am living with Dr. Drew.

[Matt Gaetz]

Are you guys going to have the mudslides?

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, yeah. That's next.

[Matt Gaetz]

That's your next little.

[Adam Carolla]

That's the next thing first. Yeah. First the fire, then the rain, just like James Taylor said. Thanks, Matt. Oh, oh, oh. O'Reilly Auto Parts. Bam. You know the song, right? They're in the business of keeping your car on the road. O'Reilly Auto Parts offers friendly, helpful service and all the parts and knowledge you need to maintain and repair your automobile. Always been an O'Reilly guy. Used to go the one out in North Hollywood when I was over there. Then I moved to La Crescenta and went to the one up on foothill. Still swing by there every once in a while because I'm a hands on guy. So whether you're a car aficionado or an auto novice, you'll find the employees at O'Reilly Auto Parts are knowledgeable, helpful and best off, they're friendly because some of those auto parts guys can be a little tough around the edges. Stop by O'Reilly Auto Parts today or you can visit us at O'ReillyAuto.com Adam that's O'ReillyAuto.com Adam well, you want to start a business, your own business, a small business, and grow it this year? Let's do this. And now's the best time to start. Shopify is going to help you. I started a business and I use Shopify and I'm glad I did. Shopify makes it simple to create your brand, open for business and get your first sale, get your store up and running. It's easy. And they've got thousands of customizable templates that can help you with all the details like shipping, taxes, payments from one single dashboard, allowing you to focus on the important stuff like growing your business because you want to be freed up to grow your business, not burdened with the nickel and dime stuff. Let Shopify help you with that. With Shopify, your first sale is closer than you think. It's Shopify, right? Dawson Established in 2025. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com corolla all lowercase go to shopify.com Corolla to start selling with Shopify today. Shopify.com Corolla Pluto TV is the place.

[Matt Gaetz]

For movie fans like me and TV fans like me.

[Adam Carolla]

They've got something for everyone and it's totally free. You can binge, laugh out loud sitcoms like Frasier and rewatch cult classics like Higher Learning.

[Matt Gaetz]

Whether you're in the mood to solve a little crime before bedtime with NCIS.

[Adam Carolla]

Or Tracker, or curl up with a surefire hit like Forrest Gump.

[Matt Gaetz]

Run Forrest.

[Adam Carolla]

Pluto TV has thousands of movies and shows, all for free. Pluto TV Stream now pay never. Yakov Smirnoff so good see you, my friend.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Nice to see you.

[Adam Carolla]

So if you're listening and the acoustics are a little bit different than you're used to, it's because we're on stage at off the Hook Comedy Club in Naples, Florida. I came out to do some shows, Yakov snuck into the audience, saw me.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Stole most of my material, used it next.

[Adam Carolla]

No, it was Nice enough to hang out and come backstage and then come up before the late show and do a very funny set. And, you know, one of the good ones. Always excited to see you, my friend.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Thank you so much. Thanks.

[Adam Carolla]

And I love, I love your story and I also love that your later in life got into psychology and the subject of happiness.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

And it's interesting to me, you know, Dennis Prager, our friend, wrote a book called Happiness is a Serious Problem. And I think it's important and probably not discussed enough.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

I would agree. And to me, you and I talked a little bit about engineering the mind of engineering things. And I noticed something, why I got into it so much because I went through a divorce, two kids, similar to what you had. And what was interesting to me that we in the beginning of the relationship, we had a lot of laughter, like, a lot. And then for the years, laughter was kind of diminishing, but I wasn't paying attention to it. And then when divorce started happening, the only people who were laughing were the attorneys. And I'm like going, so what happened to laughter? Because. So I started questioning that this is just me. And then I started asking my audience, and I have a big 2,000 seat theater in Branson, Missouri. So I would just ask, I said, how many of you remember laughter being part of that honeymoon stage of the relationship? And everybody would clap. And then I say, how many of you would go on the second date if you didn't have laughter? And no one would clap. And so that kind of gave me. It's like, wait a minute. So that's so important. But we're not paying attention to it. As a comedian, you and I do that. We pay attention to every joke, every laugh in the end of the joke. And if there isn't one, we go, what happened? Why didn't that, why couldn't they relate to that? You're not questioning that they don't have a good sense of humor. You're just questioning why this audience doesn't relate to that particular joke. And then you change it and then you get the last batch. Well, that wasn't happening in my marriage, so it fell apart. And that's what sent me on this quest going, okay, is there a formula? Is there? And so that was my master's degree in psychology in UPenn got me to a certain level of kind of questioning that, putting that as a dilemma, as a hypothesis, what if people laugh together? Will they end up having good, successful relationship or not? And I wasn't necessarily able to prove one way or another so that's why I went to Pepperdine, got my doctorate degree. So, yeah, I was a little bit more specific of what is it? What are the ingredients that we all can use to continue to create more happiness? And it boiled down to. After the whole process boiled down to meeting the needs of the person that you're with, or whether it's children or parents or co workers or your spouse, if the needs are met. Because one of the definitions of happiness that I was really into to like happiness is when your needs are met.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, what is the difference between happiness and satisfaction? So for me, I don't think in terms of happy or sad. I think in terms of satisfaction, accomplishment. Like, I want to get stuff done. Done. And it's not, you know, it's not like, all about money, although it usually leads to money when you have some accomplishment. So it's kind of a byproduct of accomplishment. But I'm much more thinking in terms of accomplishment and satisfaction. And I don't even. It's funny because I don't like, nice. Nice kind of scares me a little bit. I worry about nice.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Well, I don't think that's what I'm talking about. I'm thinking a bigger umbrella, like satisfaction. If you choosing make it a need, you say, I need to be satisfied. Okay. And then you meet that need, and then humor triggers the laughter. That's what I'm talking about. So it's a bigger umbrella. It's much more generic umbrella than anybody really talks about. However, when you boil it down to each relationship and say, am I meeting Adam's need, whatever it is, or satisfying, whatever you want to call it, but you were generous enough to say, yeah, come on, we'll do your podcast. My podcast. It was great, and it met my need. I'm like, wow, I'm nervous. Being kind of in the podcast world, where you've been for now a very long time and been very successful, my need was. I was nervous going, will Adam want to do this with me? Or he'll see me as a rookie and whatever it was. And you were so generous with your time and. And the way you embraced this idea was great. So that met my need, that made me happy. And when the base, the bottom line, the baseline, or the ground zero is happy, then laughter happens. And that's why it happens in the beginning of every relationship, because people meet each other's needs. They don't see it as technically as I'm saying it, but they're doing it.

[Adam Carolla]

Did you come from that in your Youth. I think of the Soviet Union as a depressing place. And I think we in the United States think of it as a depressing place.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

It was, it was.

[Adam Carolla]

And then it would also make me think the people were that way. But you did some stand up in the Soviet Union, so there must have been some appetite for laughter.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Oh, absolutely. The need. The need. People, I mean, they. People are laughing like on the street or something. That would be considered mental illness or something. You know, I mean, they, they were just looking down. People were just really depressed in the way they were in survival mode. I got to find food, I got to get. You know, and so when you have that kind of. It's almost like telling jokes at the funeral. People are so tired of crying and, and. And being depressed about losing of their loved one that when you. Their need is to be. To release that stress. And when we provide that, then people are happy and they express it. It's the sound of the happiness, in my opinion, is laughter.

[Adam Carolla]

And what is the difference between the Soviet Union you grow up in and the Soviet Union of today?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Well, there is no Soviet Union. That's okay.

[Adam Carolla]

No Russia.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Russia, yeah. Very different. Very different. Soviet Union was a socialist experiment. Go wrong. Not that it can't go right. I mean socialist experience. Because when you say that everybody's equal and everybody got to get hundred rubles, whether they're a doctor or they're, you know, sweeping a street, they're getting the same pay. It makes no sense to anyone. But they made it, they forced it. It's similar to Covid when they said, we'll just give you money and you don't have to work. Kind of pretend they were pretending they're working governments pretend that they're paying. The whole thing was just a setup. So no food, long lines of living in terrible. I mean, we know we lived in a communal apartment. Nine families, one apartment. I mean, it was depressing. Today it's like it's still a controlled environment by Putin and there is no Communist party necessarily to run it. So there. But prosperity is there. If you want to become someone or make money, you can. At that time, my dad was an inventor and he invented a device that really helped us to get out of the Soviet Union. Was like a device that test this integrity of concrete. But they would not let him manufacturer make it. The KGB was like, no way. You can't open your own shop. You can't do any of that. That was not in today. Go for it. And that's a big difference that most Americans are Not necessarily seeing Russia different from the Soviet Union, but it's a huge difference.

[Adam Carolla]

You know, I think about this a lot and I think about these socialist systems and I think, see, you know, we have Bernie Sanders and other like minded idiots here who push for stuff like that. And what I always think about is that they're not factoring in the human tendencies. And their plan is to is great on paper, but it can never be realized because humans have to do it. And humans will just gravitate toward the least possible and they will pleasure it, will game every system. And I always say it's just the same as when I grew up or when I was younger. I never saw a dog at the airport.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay. People have always wanted to travel with their dog for free, but they wouldn't do it. But then somebody said, you can travel with your dog, but only if you have a disability and a real disability, you know, being colorblind or gluten allergies. That is not a real disability. But we're on kind of the honor system because anyone could get a note from their doctor and everyone went, okay. And 10 minutes later the airport is flooded with dogs because we thought humans were better than they were. And they're not. They will just gravitate toward whatever's easiest and whatever the system is and they'll exploit every system all the time. And that's why the welfare system doesn't work. That's why, oh, you know, we're going to take the homeless and we're going to treat them with dignity and we're going to provide clean needles for them, you know, and it's a shit show. I mean, none of it works except for enterprising people who want more and who are willing to work evenings and weekends and then law and order, and that's about it. Yeah, and I wish the other, I wish the other kind worked. It does not. It cannot. And I have no idea in 2025 why we're even continuing with this retarded experiment.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

There was a joke in the Soviet Union says, what's the difference between a communist and a socialist? The communist who reads Marx and Lenin, socialist capitalist is somebody who understands Marx and Lenin. So that's the difference. People who like you and I embraced the capitalist rules of the game. It's a game and we're saying we want to play this game. That means work hard, do what you need to do, obey the law and you'll be successful. And we took it on. Now we could succeed or we can fail. And there is no Insurance on that. And I've gone through both. You know, when the Soviet Union collapsed, my career went to nowhere, literally in overnight. Six months later, I had no, none of my contracts in Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno, Tahoe. None of that was renewed. And I was high. I was flying really high.

[Adam Carolla]

Wait, you're saying when the Soviet Union.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

When the Soviet Union collapsed and you're already here. I was here. I was successful, right. I was making movies. Robin Williams or Richard Pryor. I mean, I was doing really well. And then doing Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno, town. All of those things were just. I was making over a million dollars a year. We bought a house. My kids were just born and they were little. And we bought a house in Pacific Palisades. That is gone now because of those idiots. And so. And we, and then all of a sudden the rug was pulled out. Letterman had a top 10 list of things that will now change that. The Soviet Union collapsed and I made number one on the list. Yaakov Smirno will be out of work. Why?

[Adam Carolla]

Why did that happen?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Because they pigeonhole you. They, they say he is only funny because of the Soviet Union in Soviet Russia, you know, and.

[Adam Carolla]

Right, right.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

And that's what. They put me in that category. So I, I had no work and I literally was in a tough spot. And so I started looking, I tell that joke in my show, but I started looking for a place where they did not know that the Soviet Union collapsed. I ended up in Branson, Missouri, and they still don't know and I'm not telling. You know, so it. Okay, here's going back to our beginning of conversation.

[Adam Carolla]

So I mean, just to be clear, yes, there are guys historically who made a living doing like Richard Nixon impersonation. And they made all the late night shows and it was very funny. And that was that guy's thing. And next, you know, Richard Nixon is out of office and retired. And now what are you doing with your Richard Nixon? Like, it had an element of that.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

And it's similar the. When John F. Kennedy got shot, there was an impersonator on me there. And he, the moment he got shot, his career was over. Right? That was it. So in my case, thank God for Branson. But it boils down to need. Why was I successful to begin with? And it took me a while to figure this out because I thought, you know, everybody comes from another country, they get movies and they do Tonight show. I mean, I didn't even think about what was I, what need was I meeting for America And Soviet Union was a pain in the butt to America. And I was Preparation H. Right. So when the, literally when the itching and the pain and swelling goes away, what do you do with Preparation H? You don't use it. So that's what in. In American mind, they put me in the medicine cabinet of history, just, you know, in case it flares up again. Right, right. But that was my, my. I had no way to make a living. And when I came to Branson gratefully, and it started with like, Willie Nelson actually is the one who told me about. About Branson, Missouri, because he was doing a Farm Aid concert and I was part of it. And, and he said, you should go to Branson. They'll love you there, you know, and so I, I first time heard about this, I'm going, okay, maybe that's a good place. And I went. And what happened there? I met the need of that community. That community is mostly Christian Bible Belt. So me being clean, patriotic, what a country. That was my gift to them. And they embraced me. And I've been there for 31 years. Year. And I entertained over 6 million people in my theater. So I met the need and then my humor triggered the laughter, basically. That's the formula that I apply to whatever. Whatever that is, whatever. You can take businesses if they meeting the need, whether it's airline or cruise ship or your. Your dry cleaners, doesn't matter. They're meeting the need. The restaurants meeting the need. If they meet the need of the people, they're successful and they laugh all the way through the bank.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, it's kind of interesting that we're sitting here in Naples because, you know, I came out to do my first show and I was talking to people about certain comedians, and they come here and it doesn't work, and they get angry at the audience. And I do well here. And I realize this crowd is a conservative fox watching crowd and they're not the improv on Melrose on a Thursday night. This is a different crowd.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

That's right.

[Adam Carolla]

And so I have, you know, I'm not a conservative comedian by nature. I have thoughts about stuff, but. And they're more pragmatic mainly probably, than conservative. But I have jokes that these people don't like.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Okay.

[Adam Carolla]

And I did the first show, the first night and it went well, but I realized they were responding to Biden jokes and Trump jokes and, you know, some of the. Some stuff that's more political and stuff they agree with, essentially. And I just went back to the dressing room and I'm like, well, I'm just going to give them what they want to hear. I'm not going to do certain jokes that I know they're not going to react well to, you know. And you were.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

You were adjusting your show to their need.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes. And I've realized that, you know, while I may be the artist, quote unquote, they're the ones paying 65 bucks for tickets and another 80 bucks of food and drinks. And they're here to laugh, not see me sort of exercise some creative muscle or something. They want. They want stuff they like.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

And it may not even be my favorite stuff, but that's not what this is about. I'm not. I'm getting paid to make them laugh. So I. I went in and I sort of said, all right, I'm just giving them what they want.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

You know, right now it's also stuff I want and I like. And I'm not. I'm saying what I. What I believe, but I. I just carved out some of the stuff that I just knew they wouldn't vibe on.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

You know, and when I was watching your set, something came to my mind there got a big laugh. And I don't know if you caught that, but I thought that could be a great callback for you. And it was. I crossed the line. Okay. I thought it was a great saving a joke.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I. I didn't do it intentionally, but I will sort of be honest with the audience. I go, look at sometimes this is a joke that I think is funny, but I don't know if you think it's gonna be funny.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Well, I think it had a potential from my perspective, as I had the potential as a callback doing those jokes that, you know, that they're not gonna like. But then you go, yeah, cross the line. Okay, I'm going back. Whatever it was, it was a great laugh because they are going. You cross the line and you acknowledge it. It's just a thought.

[Adam Carolla]

So you start off doing comedy at what age in the former Soviet union?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

I was 15. When I was kind of.

[Adam Carolla]

Did people encourage you.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

In. In some ways they asked me. Like, I was in a technical school, like a college. Not college, but high school, but with skill set, you know, like refrigeration mechanic. That was. My parents thought that I have a future in. In that comedy was not discussed right. And was insane.

[Adam Carolla]

Were there TV shows that were funny in the Soviet Union at that time?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

No, no. There were a couple of comedians that were on the radio and sometimes on tv, but they would be government approved kind of material, everything. And there was Couple of them that I was mimicking because they were very funny and I had good memory and I could listen to them and repeat their stuff and get laughs with my friends or whatever. And that was encouraging me. And then I was asked to. There was one holiday, maybe it was Mayday or Revolution Day, whatever it was, and there would be like a talent show and they asked me to be a part of it. And initially I thought, I'll sing. And I had a couple of songs. And as I start singing, I hear people laughing. So that made me go, I don't think this is my way to go. But I was also asked to be an emcee. So I put couple of jokes in between other acts and that was genuine laughter. And I was like, wow, okay, that's pretty cool. So that's what got me on the road. And then I was funny doing it for real, for money. It was probably about five to seven years before I actually got paid for doing something like that. But I was funny. In military, I would do like talent shows and I was always in the middle of that. It was fun to watch how soldiers would, like 10 o'clock would be like, everybody, lights out. And I. I would be on the lower bunk and the soldiers would crawl under the. The beds and to come around me. It was like a little pod of, of soldiers sitting there laughing after we were supposed to be sleeping. That was encouraging to me. And then starting then, you had to submit your material to Minister of Culture, which had the Department of Jokes, which was. Yeah, so all of those things had to go through the steps. And then I get licensed to become a paid comedian and. And then I start working the cruise ships. I mean, it was just one of those things that it's evolved. And then I meet some people on the cruise ships that were from United States or from Germany or from Poland or whatever, and they're happier. You could tell the difference between the Soviet people and the foreigners. And I just go, I want that. I want that spark in their eye that I never imagined to have, and I want it in my children. And that's what planted the seed to get to, at least to try to get out.

[Adam Carolla]

So you'd have to get licensed in the Soviet Union as a comedian.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

And your jokes would be vetted?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

And they had.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Once a year.

[Adam Carolla]

Once a year?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Once a year you just give them up all your material.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yep.

[Adam Carolla]

And if you were doing material that wasn't vetted, they would find out most.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Of the time the. The theater, everything run by the government. So There was no private clubs or anything like that. So the manager of the theater normally would be a member of the Communist Party. And their responsibility in terms of safety to the public is to protect them from this comedian who might say something against the Soviet Union. So it kind of came with the mother's milk that you don't go against that system. That system is going to kick your butt, right? So I didn't. And I was, you know, pretty successful compared to.

[Adam Carolla]

And so when did the decision. When was the decision to come out to the United States made then?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

When I was in a cruise ship and I invited. So here's a. Here's a kind of a life changing story for me. So I do. I'm invited on this cruise ship as a vacation. And it's a Soviet, Soviet cruise ship, yes, as a vacation. They said, we won't pay you, but if you do some shows and do mostly like master of ceremonies, create some contests and things like that, like cruise director, then you know, you can go for free. And so I did that and then they liked me and they said, you want to go again? And I go, well, I've been on the road touring with a singing group, emceeing for a year, and I want to spend some time with my parents, so if you let me have another cabin, then I'll do it for free again. If not, maybe you can pay me so I can buy a cabin for this. And they kicked me out of the office. They just said, who do you think you are to tell us that you want. Oh my gosh. It was like, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was like 55 years ago and kicked me out. And it was like early in the morning, the ship just came in. I go to that office and they go, get out of here, you'll never work here again. And I go, like with the dog with the tail under my butt. And I go home and I go, I asked for this and didn't work out. So 10 o'clock in the morning, I knock on the door. We had no phones. So 10 o'clock in the morning, knock on the door and it's a messenger from the company that brings tickets for me and my parents. And they said, ship leaves at 5pm and I go, okay, we packed, we go on the ship. I never heard of anything like that, that they would go back in their ward. There was no way. So I go on the ship and I told, I said to a cruise director who I became pretty friendly with during the first trip, I go, what happened I mean, I. I don't believe this ever happened in the Soviet Union. And he goes, well, you see, the reason this happened because we. This ship gets leased out to foreign companies nine months out of the year, and we go to different places, Europe, whatever. And we learned, because the upper management learned, that if you are more talented, you should get paid more. This is a. It seems so basic. Right, right, right. But it was like light bulb when I went, wait, wait, are you saying. And they said, yes. And the captain liked you, so he said, if you want to give him my cabin, I want him in the ship. Which was like, oh, my God. And chokes me up. It's like the ugly duckling all of a sudden finds the swans, you know, And. And. And so my parents watching me doing this, and I. My dad wanted to get out years ago, but my mom was like, no way. We're not going.

[Adam Carolla]

Your dad wanted to get out of the Soviet.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yeah, yeah. And mom was scared. There was no way. She didn't think I would learn the language. She didn't think that I'm. I'm smart, you know, she just thought refrigeration is better. Yeah. So mom is watching me now doing a show with all different. Because there was like. Would be a group of people, let's say a thousand people on the ship. There was like 200 from Poland and 200 from Germany, and 200, 150 from Lithuania or some from America. Some all speak different languages. I don't speak. I speak only Russian. And so they give me an interpreter to explain to the people what gonna happen. Like, I would do like a Ms. Cruise, and I would give them contests to run with an egg and a spoon or whatever the hell it was. And I. They translated. And then I do this show. And I did, like, several of them that week. And people are laughing their butts off. And all I'm speaking is in Russian. So it's. It translates with my voice, translates with my facial expression, whatever the heck it was. And my mom says, you have international audience. Maybe we should go.

[Adam Carolla]

How did you go?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Jimmy Carter made a deal with Brezhnev at that time that they needed wheat. And Carter said, allow some people who want to get out to go to America. And so we were basically exchanged for some wheat. And then the door was open. And I sensed that immediately, because I had this knowledge of Americans, we were not allowed to talk to foreigners. You would have to cross the street. If you see a foreign group, you have to go across the street not to talk to them, nor Anybody. And they kept us all, like, in that bubble, Soviet bubble. And I was given the privilege to talk to those people and realize how normal they were, how happy they could be. And I just wanted that.

[Adam Carolla]

So where did you end up? At what age and where in the United states?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

I was 26. We came to New York. We had a. I had a friend who immigrated before we did. We're still friends. And. And so she was the one who was kind of feeding me information, like what to do, what not to do. And she said, forget comedy. You will never make it here. Because there are comedians, there are people like Donnie and Maria Osmond. There is no way you can do anything like that. So if you learn how to drive a car or jewelry or something, do something with your hands, you're good at that, you'll be okay. And I'm like, I'm listening. I'm reading those letters. I'm going, we'll see, we'll see. And so we came here and they lived in Queens, and we stayed with them for a couple of days. They had no money. I mean, the whole thing was just sleeping on the floor and stuff like that. And that friend, Gala, she goes, so you're going to rent an apartment next door, right? And I go, no, I'm going to go to Manhattan. I'm going to be between American people, because if I get stuck here, I'll never speak English. No, I'm not staying here. And she goes, but the only people who live in Manhattan are bankers and bank robbers. And I said, well, I'll be one of them, whatever it is. And so my parents agreed, and we moved to Washington Heights and kind of found a tiny apartment and the rest is history.

[Adam Carolla]

What was your dad doing for work back then?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

My. My dad was a building construction engineer in the Soviet Union. And when he came here, he was. He didn't speak English, so he was really not doing much when I came. When I went to Hollywood and Mitzi saw me at the Comedy Store, she said, you know, stick around. There's always place for good and different. And I said, I can't. I gotta. I gotta go back. My parents, you know, are there. And she goes, so what does your dad do? And I said, he's building. Construction engineer. She goes, can he be a carpenter? I go, I think so. Said, bring him here. I'll give him a job. So that's how my dad and I were building the Belly Room and the La Jolla Comedy Store and things like that needed to be done. And so was your dad a Carpenter, he was good in with his hands. I mean he was always good. Not professional carpenter. He was an engineer, more construction engineer. But he was good at that. And I became professional pretty good at that. So that's. I was helping him out.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, what was your first trip to California?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

That was the first trip I was working at, at the place called Greeting Bells. And it was kind of a place where they hired a lot of people from the Soviet Union because they didn't, they didn't have really way to make a living. So they would give them like $2 an hour to sit home and glue decorations for Christmas trees. So my parents loved it because they were making two bucks each, two dollars an hour each. And they would make those things and they. And dad was, because he was handy, he would do that. And mom was stapling the little packages and they were happy watching Russian television. It was perfect. And so then the season was over and the lady that owned the business, she didn't need me anymore. I was like a shipping manager for them. And she said, why don't you take a vacation? And she said, I know you want to do comedy. Maybe you can go to Hollywood. I know somebody who knows somebody who knows the executive producer of Three's Company, Ted Bergman. And so I go, okay, I'll go. So I bought a ticket, round trip ticket for 10 days. And this is my genius plan. The plan was I'm going to become a big star in 10 days. And then I coming back to New York to buy my parents a fifth Avenue apartment. That was, that was. And I gave myself 10 days. Okay. And so I go and Ted Bergman tells me that I need to audition somewhere. He needs to see me perform. And so I went to the Comedy.

[Adam Carolla]

Store audition four, three company or just.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Just to see what he can do with me or how he can help me. And, and I go to the Comedy Store and there was a pot lock night. I think it was Sunday maybe or I think Sunday open mic. Open mic. And I, I went and they gave me a slot and five minutes. And then I get a message from Ted Bergman that he is not going to make it. And I'm like bombed. I'm like going, this is day four. And I'm like nowhere. You know what's going on. But I do my set and I leave kind of head down going, oh boy, this is not good.

[Adam Carolla]

And what set is was just few jokes that you'd been working on stage, was it?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Well, I had couple of opportunities to do open mic night in Catch a Rising Star. New York and in the comic strip, very little. I mean, I maybe had three, four jokes for whatever. Just enough to see that I can do it. I was. I was funny. People were laughing. So we go there, I go there and I'm bombed. But I'm gonna do a set. So I did my set and I'm leaving. And I remember her name. Chrissy was a assistant of Mitzi, and she runs after me in on Sunset, and she goes, yakov, Yakov, congratulations. And I go, what? For what? The guy didn't show up. He said, no, no, Mitzi liked you. I go, who is. Who's Mitzi?

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

She's the owner of the Comedy Store. Go sit, talk to her. That's when I sat down and. And she said, you got to stick around. And. And then. But then she said, come back next. Next day. Come back to see a regular show and then decide what you want to do.

[Matt Gaetz]

Do.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

And I got back Monday night, and there was a radio show in the original room. And first person on stage is Robin Williams.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Second person is Billy Crystal. Third person is Letterman. Fourth person is Prior. I mean, they. And I'm sitting back on the back seat there and going, wow, this is day five. I'm ahead of schedule. If she likes them and she liked me, I'm in the good spot.

[Adam Carolla]

What year is this?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

That was 78.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow, such luminaries on the stage. I mean, Prior, we knew Crystal, we knew Robin Williams, we knew. And maybe Letterman.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

He was already. He was already at that time kind of graduating the Comedy Store. He was emceeing at the Comedy Store.

[Adam Carolla]

He wasn't doing his late night show.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

No, not yet.

[Adam Carolla]

Soon after.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yeah, that's right.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, that's right. And so then what happened?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Well, Dan, she, you know, basically I brought my parents and she gave me. She said, do you have a place to stay? I go, I'm staying with some friends. And she goes, I have a house above the Comedy Store, the Crestel House. And I put comedians up. If you want to pay $120 and get a room there, that's fine. I go, okay. So that's where I was living already there and working as a carpenter during the daytime. And I had. Andrew Dice Clay was my roommate. Yeah, you can. You man. He was teaching me English. So, yeah, so I. And there. And there was. It was a party house with all the people, you know, like Robin would show up and Richard Pryor would show up and they would party all night long and downstairs. And I had to go to bed because I had to get up in the morning, and they would just go to bed at 6am or whatever.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

And then I would go downstairs and I see a mirror on the table and I'm. And there's powder on it. And I'm like thinking, why are they eating donuts on a mirror? On a mirror. Okay. And so I would wipe it off, put it on the wall. Next day, the same thing. I'm not going, you know. You know, probably Argus Hamilton, right. He was one of the roommates. And I go, argus, why don't you use plates? And he would just laugh and not, you know, it took me forever to figure out what they were doing.

[Adam Carolla]

So you're physically working. Physically working as a carpenter and going down to La Jolla.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

And working, fixing. Maintaining.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Maintaining. Yeah. We put, like, Mitzi would come up with the idea, let's put a window in this La Jolla comedy store. And so dad and I go. And we break stock out. Yeah. And. And put the mirror, window in there, Stuff like that. And then she would always come up with something.

[Adam Carolla]

So she really should get a lot of credit for your career. Right.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Everything. Everything. I mean, without her, if she didn't see me, I don't know if I'll. You know, I mean, literally, I get a movie with Robin Williams, like six or eight months after I started working there.

[Adam Carolla]

Moscow and the Hudson.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And then, you know, beer commercials and Tonight show spots. I mean, it happened pretty fast.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

It did. It happened fast to the point that I didn't even understand what happened because, you know, I was performing in the White House for Reagan's. It was mind blowing. And Mitzi would always say, you and Reagan changed the world. And I go, come on, Mitzi, what did I do? And said, you gave him weapon that nobody else could. You gave him the jokes that disarmed Gorbachev and that's what took the Berlin Wall down. And I was like, oh, come on, I'm just telling jokes. And she wouldn't. Yeah. And now I look back, I go, there might have been something there.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I remember seeing you early. Must have been on the Tonight show or somewhere, and memorizing one of your jokes.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

What was that?

[Adam Carolla]

The joke. And I'll see if I can do it. You'd say, you know, in America, you guys can make fun of Reagan, and in Russia, it's the same. We can make fun of Reagan. Right. Was that the.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

That's exactly right.

[Adam Carolla]

I remember going, oh, that's funny.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And I remember, but. And I remember sort of going, I I was young, you know, I wasn't doing comedy, but I guess I was thinking comic. Like I was going, oh, that's what he does. He does that, you know, And I could see why that was really palatable and so consumed during that period because such. We had such an appetite for that back then and there was nothing else like it. And we were probably done. I mean, I say we, I mean, sort of societally not people, but I just mean we're kind of done with the George Carlin sort of complain about America and beat up this country. We wanted to kind of cheer.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

What a country. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

We wanted to do. Well, essentially what we're reliving now with Trump. It's like we got tired of being beaten up and we wanted to cheer. And it's funny because I come from sort of progressive hippie stock, my mom and my. And I realize the one thing that would anger them every time, all the time, is if you ever said, this is a great country, better than all that, they immediately go, they start talking about slavery and the Trail of Tears and what we did to the indigenous. It angered them so much. If you ever said anything that was patriotic or positive about this country, now they would say, and it reminds me of all the modern. It's been going on for a while. But everyone on the left, they always do the. I love this country, but the history of slavery and institutional racism and stuff. And I'm like, why would you love a country that had institution, institutional racism? That doesn't even make sense. If I thought we had institutional racism, then I wouldn't love this country. But you love it. But now you're gonna tell me what's wrong with it. And you would get at a saturation point with it. You're like, God, I'm so tired of feeling bad and all the sins of the past. And then we'd watch Roots, you know, and we'd sit there, my mom, you know, would just look at me every 10 minutes and do you see what we do you see what we did? Do you see what we did? And I'd go, us? We don't own anything. No one in my family owned. I have a car. Forget about humans. You don't own anybody. We grow up on a plantation. We're in a crappy one bedroom apartment, you know, so we take it for a while and then we get saturated, and then we want some sort of eagle. Red, white and blue. Make America great again. Trumpian, you know, Reagan was that. And we just had a renaissance. We just relived Reagan in the 80s.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

And I really feel that it could possibly. And we'll see what happens with the Ukrainian war. But I have a hunch that they'll find a way to make a deal somehow. And I think Putin and Trump will somehow get along, and I think that that could be good for me. I just needed to wait 35 years to say, what a country again.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, you had a rocket ship, you know, ride career wise. And, you know, I've always said I. The hard. The hardest part of life is sort of stepping backwards. And I don't. And I think people understand, you know, they understand that, look, you make. You made a million dollars 10 years ago, and now you make $500,000. And they go, all right, well, I get it. You wish you were still making a million dollars. But it's not a financial thing. It's a sort of spiritual, like, almost emotional thing. And I've experienced it myself. And, you know, you'll have people, like, say stuff like, I remember I put it in my movie, but it was a very real scene. I was visiting my dad in the hospital, like, 10 years ago, and I was leaving the hospital, and there was a guy just like working the floor buffer or something, and he saw me and he goes, hey, hey, man, show man, show guy, right? I go, yeah. And he goes, he goes, what are you up to these days? Right? And you know that one I do. And I go, well, you know, I'm writing books, I'm doing a podcast. He goes, don't worry, something will come up. And he walked away. Oh, he thinks I'm driving for Uber now. Like, he's. Yeah, that little exchange with that guy, it was so humbling because I'm like, this guy thinks of me as I was a star, and now he's not anymore. He's not doing anything, you know, and it's, you know, it's baked in to this profession. But I gotta say, there's a lot of people I know and, you know, they didn't, you know, they didn't have the trials. They've been having a real solid career for making tons of money and just kind of cruising through show business and, you know, you have to sometimes take a step back, a lateral step. But I never was at your height. I was successful, but I was never what you were. You were a household name. You were ubiquitous. And when I had to step back or settle in or encroach a recede a little bit, that's fine. But it wasn't that big a gap, you know?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

And You. And it's not, I'm not talking about a fall from grace or anything. I'm just saying settling into a career versus sky high, you know. Career.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yeah. And in my case, again, it was. I didn't have anything when I lived in the Soviet Union. I mean, I had nothing. No car, no phone, no whatever. So to me, an opportunity was a huge gift. So when this thing happened with me losing my contracts and stuff like that, yes, it was a major hit. And going two little kids, what am I going to do? How am I going to make a living? Go there. But that, it brought me to Branson where the opportunity was waiting and it was just me. It's like Wild West. You want to dig for gold? Just get a shovel and go for it. And I saw it like, okay, I can do it. I can start all over again. I remember walking in, there was a, A Japanese fiddler, fiddler player, Sojita Buchi. He was very successful. He was there for about 20, 30 years or more. And I walked into his theater, it was May of 93 when I was like down on my luck. And I walked in and I see 2000 seat theater full of people in the afternoon. It was like I was in Vegas and never seen that. Then I go to Sandy Williams in the evening. The same thing, like huge theater, state of the art equipment. I'm like going, pinch me somebody. Where am I? So I saw it as an opportunity and I said, you know what? I roll up my sleeves. It wasn't easy mentally. It was hard because first show I did, I rented a theater. I had 17 people came because they booked like year in advance and nobody knew I was coming. So I was like, oh no, this is going to be bad. But then next day there was 19 people and I did like 400 shows a year just to get the momentum. Momentum. And then ended up owning a guy who had nothing in the Soviet Union, owns 2,000 seat state of the art theater on the 18 acres of land that I never could imagine that. So if it didn't happen, I would probably still working for Steve Wynn or somebody in Vegas and have their life, my life in their hands.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Not own the land or the theater.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

That's right.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Well, I'd probably still be doing radio somewhere and not have my own land in my own studio too.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Exactly, exactly. So it's a, it's a blessing in disguise that they. The circumstances like that. You can cry about it or you can pick up yourself and go. Now I'm looking at this whole new possibility of What a Country 2.0. And I said, I want to take a shot at that. I want to still do this. So that's why I'm in the club working on new material, hoping for podcasts to take off, you know, whatever that I need to do. But I'm excited about it.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, let's give the plugs. It's comedy Couch.

[Matt Gaetz]

Right?

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Comedy couch.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm on it.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

You are on it.

[Adam Carolla]

Wherever you find finder podcasts.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Yes, yes.

[Adam Carolla]

Get them anywhere.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Anywhere. And go to yaakov.com if you you need information or on Instagram, it's Jakub underscore Smirnoff. And here we are.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, this has been serendipity, as we say here in the States, because I was excited that you stopped by and then they said, well, hang out. I'll do your show and we'll do my show. We'll do it up from the stage at off the Hook. So one of the nicest guys in show business. And I'm. It's always happy to see you, my friend.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm kind of glad that you didn't have to leave early today so we were able to do this.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And I'll, you know, whenever you're in la, come by and say hi. I know you're touring around now, mostly Florida area, but you're going all over the place.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Going all over the place.

[Adam Carolla]

So just go to your website, find the dates.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Sounds great. Until next time, thank you.

[Adam Carolla]

Adam Crawford, Yakov Smirnoff Smith saying mahalo.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

Thank you.

[Adam Carolla]

Thanks, Ja. That was great.

[Yakov Smirnoff]

That was wonderful. Thank you.

[Adam Carolla]

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