The Epstein Email Pattern Nobody Can Explain... | Ben Swann | DSH #1980

Summary

Digital Social Hour – "The Epstein Email Pattern Nobody Can Explain..."

Guest: Ben Swann
Host: Sean Kelly
Date: May 25, 2026
Episode: DSH #1980

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Episode Overview

This provocative episode of Digital Social Hour features investigative journalist Ben Swann discussing censorship in media, the coded language found in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails, the implications for free speech and AI, and a candid breakdown of current U.S. and global politics. The conversation explores controversial topics like the dark side of elite circles, the intersection of surveillance, AI as a societal gatekeeper, institutional media manipulation, and the uncertain future shaped by rapid technological and geopolitical change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Media Censorship and Social Media Control

[01:04–03:15]

• Ben details his experience being shadow-banned and deplatformed from YouTube and Facebook, losing a channel with over 3 million subscribers and no growth for years due to content moderation and political shifts.
• [01:10] Ben Swann: “...Elon blew a lot of that up when he took over X. And then once he did that and Trump started to win...suddenly everybody became kind of libertarian-ish...and said, yeah, we’ll let people back on.”
• The recent resurgence of more open platforms is attributed to business interests and political climate shifts.
• Concerns linger that with a future administration shift, censorship may creep back in.

2. Epstein Files & The Coded ‘Pizza’ Language

[00:00 | 04:44–07:49]

• Ben expresses shock at finding the same ‘pizza’ coded language in the Epstein files that was flagged during the Pizzagate controversy.
• The FBI and digital communities had been aware of the code (“cheese pizza” for “CP” = child pornography) as early as 2010.
• [04:44] Ben Swann: “I did not ever expect to see the pizza language in the Epstein files. Never would.”
• [06:31] Swann points out “911 times, pizza's mentioned...None of them is an order for pizza...it’s conversations between people—about pizza.”
• The bizarre obsession, strange context, and frequency are highly suspect, especially given nothing references legitimate food orders.
• He theorizes similar coded language around “jerky,” suggesting possible references to cannibalism based on email context.
• [07:49] Ben Swann: “It looks very much like it could be associated with cannibalism...He has jerky in his freezer enough to last six weeks...I thought the whole point of jerky is that you don't freeze it.”

3. Elite Circles, Ritual Language, and Cultural Denials

[03:38–06:46]

• Pizzagate wasn’t proven, but Epstein’s communications validate clues about hidden language and code among powerful circles.
• Some “elites”—a term Swann dislikes—are involved with sexual activity with minors, and sometimes engage in ritualistic behavior.
• Swann points to an email where Epstein essentially admits to being “the bad man who takes children to his island for sex.”
• [10:04] Ben Swann: “The email that stands out the most to me is Jeffrey Epstein himself writing...I ran into your friend who was writing an article about a bad man who takes children to his island for sex. She almost fainted when she found out that bad man is me.”

4. AI and Information Control

[11:01–12:28 | 12:39–15:04]

• Ben and Sean discuss the growing role of AI as an informational gatekeeper, capable of restricting or shaping narratives and historical information.
• [12:15] Ben Swann: “AI’s main function will become the gatekeeper to all information, which has already happened to some extent with search engines...generationally, how young people will be conditioned to believe the only truth is the truth provided by AI.”
• Examples: ChatGPT refusing to give names of Epstein survivors, or info on controversial figures like Andrew Tate.
• Wikipedia’s evolution from a decentralized knowledge source to a controlled, edited, and censored platform.

5. Deepfakes, AI Leaders, and the Future of Trust

[16:00–22:20]

• Discuss the proliferation of AI-generated videos and the difficulty in distinguishing reality—case in point: recent controversies around whether world leaders (e.g., Netanyahu) are alive, and the use of AI to simulate appearances.
• [16:32] Ben Swann: “Very soon though, we're really headed towards a time where you're not going to be able to tell the difference between what is real and what is [not].”
• Theorize about future acceptance of AI or virtual leaders and question whether the public will eventually accept “fake” realities, drawing parallels to the acceptance of staged wrestling.
• Generational trust in AI is suggested to soon surpass trust in elected officials.
• Ethical dilemmas around AI’s use in foreign policy, warfare, profiling, and as autonomous agents.

6. AI, Labor, and Universal Basic Income

[24:59–29:54]

• Anticipate the rapid displacement of entire industries—trucking, bartending, paralegals, accountants, even surgeons—due to AI advancement.
• Universal Basic Income (UBI) is discussed as a practical necessity, rather than fringe idea, in a post-labor world.
• [28:32] Ben Swann: “...universal basic income will ultimately become what has to happen because there aren't enough jobs.”
• Explore existential loss of human purpose, referencing Wall-E and Ready Player One as dystopian near-futures.

7. Political State of Affairs: Trump’s Second Term, the Iran War, and Foreign Policy

[31:15–38:05]

• Swann is deeply critical of Trump’s failure to deliver on promises like ending wars and “draining the swamp.” While holding out (slim) hope for a “5D chess” geopolitical maneuver, he doubts any true master plan.
• Insight into the Iran conflict: U.S. military shortcomings revealed by effective, cheap Iranian drone warfare versus expensive, outdated American defense systems.
• [35:54] Ben Swann: “$20,000. So the Shaheed drones are so useful because one thing the Russia, Ukraine war demonstrated is that warfare has completely changed. It's not all going to be drone warfare.”
• American petrodollar dominance is crumbling as military leverage wanes and global dynamics shift.
• Skepticism about Trump’s control over or willingness to break ties with entrenched politicians and the Israeli lobby.

8. Right-wing Political Chaos and Influence Operations

[44:46–62:14]

• Discussion of infighting, ego, and manipulation on the right—Trump attacking his allies, influencers turning into “copy-paste” mouthpieces, and fractured coalitions.
• Swann critiques the lack of authenticity and the rise of influence operations, highlighting coordinated social media messaging and the dangers of echo chambers.
• [49:27] Ben Swann: “The problem with attacking those people is...the people on the right loved it when you said that Rosie O’Donnell was a fat pig...But now...it’s a knife fight inside the tent, and it’s craziness.”

9. Suspicious Deaths of Scientists and State Infiltration

[62:46–65:53]

• Eleven scientists—connected to advanced government and defense projects—are now reported missing or dead in mysterious circumstances.
• Swann draws parallels to Israeli tactics of targeting scientists, speculating that a foreign entity may be eliminating experts to slow technological advancement.
• [65:25] Interviewer: “Well, it's definitely planned and targeted. It's not a coincidence. Eleven people in what, two years?”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [00:00 and 10:04] Ben Swann: “What I'm trying to show people is that the FBI already knew this...Jeffrey Epstein himself writing...I ran into your friend who was writing an article about a bad man who takes children to his island for sex. She almost fainted when she found out that bad man is me.”
• [06:31] “911 times pizza's mentioned...None of them is an order for pizza.”
• [12:15] “AI’s main function will become the gatekeeper to all information...generationally, how young people will be conditioned to believe the only truth is the truth provided by AI.”
• [16:32] “Very soon though, we're really headed towards a time where you're not going to be able to tell the difference between what is real and what is [not].”
• [28:32] “A universal basic income will ultimately become what has to happen because there aren’t enough jobs.”
• [49:27] “Now you're watching it happen inside...It's a knife fight inside the tent, and it's craziness.”
• [62:46] “Have you seen these missing scientists? 11 of them now. Missing or dead scientists.”
• [64:52] “...A foreign entity that is specifically targeting nuclear, space, anti-gravity—like the top scientists in this country. Because there’s a long-term detriment to being able to compete on that level.”

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Segment Timestamps

• [00:00–01:34] – Ben’s shock at finding Pizzagate language in Epstein's files, overview of his battles with social media censorship
• [03:38–07:49] – FBI knowledge of coded ‘cheese pizza’ terminology; problematic nature of coded language in elite circles; “jerky” as potential code
• [10:04–11:20] – Epstein's own email admission and implications
• [11:01–15:04] – AI as an information gatekeeper; Wikipedia's decline into controlled narrative
• [16:00–22:20] – Deepfakes, AI trust vs. human leaders, generational attitudes toward AI
• [24:59–29:54] – AI’s impact on jobs; necessity of universal basic income; loss of human purpose
• [31:15–38:05] – Assessment of Trump’s second term, Iran War strategy, U.S. military vulnerabilities exposed by drones
• [44:46–51:55] – Chaos and manipulation in right-wing politics, coordinated influence ops
• [62:46–65:53] – Disappearance of scientists; speculation on foreign targeting of top experts

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Closing Thoughts

This episode stands out for its depth and unflinching look at taboo and complex topics that mainstream media often bypasses. From the disturbing details in the Epstein files to the broader implications of AI, surveillance, and the evolving social-media landscape, Sean and Ben combine meticulous attention to digital forensics with a sweeping view of societal shifts. As the genre of “unfiltered discourse” promises, listeners are left with provocative questions, a wary eye on future developments, and a deeper understanding of how power, information, and technology intersect in the modern era.

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To connect with Ben Swann:

• X: @benswann_2
• Instagram: @benswann_2
• Website: (launching soon) truthanmedia.com

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This summary captures the main substance of the conversation and highlights the most critical arguments and revelations, with attributions and timestamps for deeper reference.

Transcript

[Ben Swan]

I did not ever expect to see the pizza language in the Epstein files. What I'm trying to show people is that the FBI already knew this. Cheese pizza is an acronym CP for child. Jeffrey Epstein himself writing to someone else saying that I ran into your friend who was writing an article about a bad man who takes children to his island, for she almost fainted when she found out that bad man is me.

[Interviewer]

Foreign, Out here in Vegas. Haven't seen him since Atlantic City.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. How you doing, man? I've been good. Yeah, really good.

[Interviewer]

Been busy.

[Ben Swan]

Very, very. Doing so much stuff now. Turning out so much content. Yeah. Creating a ton of new stuff right now. New podcasts, new everything.

[Interviewer]

So, yeah, I see you back on YouTube. Congrats.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, they finally let me back on. They didn't let me have my. My previous videos or my previous subscribers. Had to start from scratch.

[Interviewer]

You got a big channel, right?

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, like 3 million people, so. But I've been off for five years, so when they decided, the YouTube gods decided that it would be permissible to try again. We have to start from zero, so.

[Interviewer]

So was that because of Trump taking over? What do you think happened?

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, well, why? They're letting people back on? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that's good.

[Ben Swan]

So there was a big push, I think, within all, you know, social media for a while. It was going to be very regulated, very controlled. I think Elon blew a lot of that up when he took over X. And then once he did that and the. And Trump started to win. Listen, they're still business people at the end of the day. And they looked at it and said, this isn't working, and we're going to get. We're going to get on the wrong side of the administration. So then suddenly everybody became like, kind of libertarian, ish, in their view, and said, yeah, we'll let people back on.

[Interviewer]

So do you worry if it goes left in 28, that free speech will be under attack again? Platforms will break people.

[Ben Swan]

I don't think they'll do it as quickly. I think it'll start to creep back in again because they weren't doing it for a while. Right. And then it took time to see, you know, where it was all heading.

[Interviewer]

They were hiding it at first.

[Ben Swan]

They were.

[Interviewer]

It was like shadow banning.

[Ben Swan]

And so I was one of the first people who was really shadow banned with a big account.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

So think about it this way. So when I was on 2016, right. On Facebook at that time, which was kind of the premiere besides YouTube, the premiere video, Instagram didn't have Video. Then there was no TikTok.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Ben Swan]

So Facebook video. At that time, I was growing at a rate of 11,000 people a day. I had half a million followers. Right. I get shadow banned. And then between then and this year, did not grow by one subscriber or follow crap. In that time, in 10 years, did not grow at all.

[Interviewer]

That's crazy.

[Ben Swan]

Content is still there, does not grow.

[Interviewer]

And you were still posting. Wow, that's actually not grow.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. Same thing with Instagram. Like, we. We could barely grow. Now this year, what's finally happened is I guess some of that shadow banning stuff has been coming off.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

So all of a sudden, now we're watch ourselves grow again. But again, it's like. It's like 10 years. So what was frustrating for me is a guy who, again, I was so far ahead of everyone else in terms of the independent media and that the size of the audience, to not be able to grow, to basically be on pause for 10 years and then you're watching everybody else come along and they have their channels and they're all outpacing you, outgrowing this. Like, what the heck is. And I would have people who would tell me, like, I don't ever see your content. Right. So I've been subscribed to you on all these different platforms. But, like, you do not come up on my feet. So finally that some of that's coming off and it's starting to happen now.

[Interviewer]

I never saw a single video of yours.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And I doom school for hours a day. I never saw.

[Ben Swan]

Dude.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I feel like after P get you exposed PK like, they just completely censored you.

[Ben Swan]

They turned it off completely. Yeah, it was. I was the first one again before Alex Jones. People talk about Alex Jones being kicked off of YouTube. That was 2018. Two years before that when they showed all my stuff. That's not because of Pizza Gate.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And now you're vindicated. So congrats.

[Ben Swan]

In a lot of ways.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, a lot of ways. I mean, it's pretty much validated in my opinion.

[Ben Swan]

I think so. I think anybody. You know, I had a conversation with Michael Tracy on our show because, you know, he's very like, this is much to do about nothing. Right. People are building up a myth. He calls the myth around Epstein. I disagree. I don't think there's a myth around Epstein at all. And I think what. What Epstein demonstrated was, look, at the end of the day, Pizzagate was not a conclusion. It was a series of questions that were being asked about whether or not this was real. And I think what Epstein has proven is that a lot of the clues that were in that original Pizzagate theory were validated with the Epstein stuff saying, nope, they are absolutely talking this way. There is coded language. And these elites, if you want to call them that, I hate the term. Because they're not elite. Right. They're just powerful. But these powerful people, there are some of them, not all of them, but some of them who absolutely have an appetite for sexual activity with children, some who are ritualistic and satanic in that view.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Did any of it surprise you when it came out?

[Ben Swan]

It did surprise me with the Epstein thing, because I did not ever expect to see the pizza language in the Epstein files. Never would.

[Interviewer]

Because I felt like you were dreaming.

[Ben Swan]

I was stunned. Stunned. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

It was like, are you kidding?

[Interviewer]

You've been dying about it for so long to finally see some actual evidence with your own eyes.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, well. And. And it's. It's. And it's actually not even evidence of anything. Right. Other than the fact that it's the same thing again. So it's the same language that was used and you brought. When I talked about it in 2016. Right. What I'm trying to show people is that the FBI already knew this on 4chan and HN. Back in 2016, there were pedophiles who were saying, yeah, we do use that language. In 2010, there was an entry into Urban Dictionary. So that's six years before Pizzagate, where cheese pizza is an acronym CP for child.

[Interviewer]

No way.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Ben Swan]

2010, the FBI, since 2007, have been talking about the fact that they knew that pedophiles communicated this way with this. With that specific kind of language. And so then when you look at it and you say, oh, okay, well, so maybe there is something to this. And then everyone tells you, no, you're crazy. No, that's insane. Not true. And then it shows up again. The most prolific child predator. At least I think, in the way that the public would view him. Jeffrey Epstein also uses this language, also talks about cheese, pizza, and pizza. Listen, people can talk innocently about pizza. Doesn't mean just because you mentioned pizza that you're a pedophile. But the reality is, if I searched your inbox, you probably do not have hundreds of emails talking to people about pizza.

[Interviewer]

No, probably not. I don't think I have five.

[Ben Swan]

Right. And if you have any.

[Interviewer]

Usually text.

[Ben Swan]

Well, right. And if you do have it in your emails, it's probably related to an

[Interviewer]

order you placed right for Domino's or whatever.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. Whereas if you look through the Epstein vals 911 times, pizza's mentioned.

[Interviewer]

Holy crap.

[Ben Swan]

Right? 911.

[Interviewer]

And that's just the released ones.

[Ben Swan]

So that's just the released ones. And of those, none of them is an order for pizza. None of them is a pizza place. It's conversations between people about pizza. And. And the other thing is there's a. One of the things I find myself doing a lot more nowadays because of the. Where social media is and where online media is, is trying to add context to content. A lot of content out there. Right. Not much content. Good point. Right. And so one thing that I think I'm able to bring some value to the online world in that respect. If you look at the context of. Of the Epstein emails about pizza, it's so bizarre. It's like he's just like a fiend for it and he's desperate for it and I've got to have it. And the way that they communicate not just about the pizza, by the way, the other one too is the. Is the jerky. There's all these different things about jerky in there.

[Interviewer]

What is jerky to them?

[Ben Swan]

So I don't know what I would say is from. From the emails that I have read and putting context to it, I would. It looks very much like it could be associated with cannibalism. Really Is what it looks like.

[Interviewer]

Holy crap.

[Ben Swan]

But when you start to look at the way they talk about it, I'll give you, for instance. So they'll write about the special jerky. Right. That he has to have. There are emails that aren't even from Epstein. It's from people about Epstein, like his assistant asking for this one person who specializes in jerky. Are you going to bring this jerky? You promised it last time you came to town and you didn't bring it with you. And I wish you had told me. I could have at least picked it up from you because now Jeffrey's going to be very, very angry that he doesn't have this jerky. Well, who gets that angry over jerks first? Second of all, they have emails about the jerky being frozen. She says he has jerky in his freezer enough to last six weeks. So he get you. He can hold him until then. I thought the whole point of jerky is that you don't freeze it. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

No one's freezing jerky.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I've never met a single person people don't even put in the fridge.

[Ben Swan]

Right? That's the point. The point of it is it's dried out so that it doesn't have to be kept like normal meat.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

So why would you freeze it? So there's, there's a lot of the context around those emails. It's just, it's beyond what I would call bizarre. Right. It's. If you're putting it in context, you'd say they're not clearly talking about beef jerky again. Also, beef jerky is the simplest food in the world to access. If you really, really want it that badly, you can get it almost anywhere. And yet he seems to have. Well, there's also one about how he's on a all jerky diet and he only wants to eat jerky.

[Interviewer]

Jeez.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. So it's very strange stuff that surrounds that. So again, if you put context on all this stuff, you'd say the way the emails are written, the way they're communicating, why do they end conversations about pizza with winking faces? Like, who does that ever, ever? Right. So it's things like that that I think really stand out about those years.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Which email stood out to you the most that just creeped you out? Was it a specific email?

[Ben Swan]

Well, not necessarily pizza related, but you know, when again, Michael Tracy was talking about this, one of the positions he takes, he wants to be a contrarian, I think, on some levels. And I think Michael's a good guy and I, I appreciated him even having a conversation about it. But one of the things he said was, he said there is no evidence at all that Jeffrey Epstein had a interest in young children. We're not talking about like barely under 18. He's talking about children.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Ben Swan]

And he says there's no evidence at all. I disagree. The email that stands out the most to me is Jeffrey Epstein himself writing to someone else saying that I ran into your friend who was writing an article about a bad man who takes children to his island for sex. She almost fainted when she found out that bad man is me. That's what Jeffrey Epstein admitted to it. That's what he says he called himself the bad man who takes children to his island for sexual.

[Interviewer]

Pretty clear cut to me.

[Ben Swan]

I mean, if we're in a court of law, pretty much you're going to be found guilty. If somebody turns us in and says, here's the evidence. Right. You may say, hey, I'm, I'm not guilty of anything. But in your own words, you said you were.

[Interviewer]

The weird part to me is how they suppress the survivors because I was trying to interview some on the pod. And if you look on CHAT GPT right now. Give me a list of Epstein survivors. It says I can't do that for you. H. Isn't that weird?

[Ben Swan]

That is weird.

[Interviewer]

So that to me is always weird.

[Ben Swan]

Like why would it not be able to tell you at least who's accused him?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, they're hiding it.

[Ben Swan]

Have you searched Epstein's accusers?

[Interviewer]

I didn't, but I'm sure with ChatGPT, because there are some links with certain AI platforms in the government that they are hiding or throttling certain search ups and information.

[Ben Swan]

That's very interesting.

[Interviewer]

Which scares me about the future.

[Ben Swan]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

They might start gatekeeping certain information and dull down the population, make everyone dumb.

[Ben Swan]

Well, 100%. AI's main function is to do that. AI's main function will become the gatekeeper to all information, which has already happened to some extent with, with search engines. They're already. We know that Google does that. Right? They suppress results, they push different results. What concerns me more is generationally, how young people will be conditioned to believe that the only truth is the truth that's provided by AI. And if it doesn't come from AI, then you can't be trusted. Because AI is the all knowing, allseeing. Right. Benevolent source of information and facts and knowledge. The problem is, of course, all AI is programmed right. And so if you tell the AI, we're not going to talk about this, or we're going to control it this way. Listen, no government in the world, especially not the US government, would allow an AI program to exist that cannot be controlled in some form, 100%. So I think that's where it's all heading. It's very scary.

[Interviewer]

We're heading that way. There's certain guests I have on the show, and when I'm looking for research and questions to ask, the AI will say, I can't do that for you. And that's already happening today.

[Ben Swan]

That's crazy.

[Interviewer]

So it's only going to get worse, I think. You know, luckily for you, it pulled some stuff I guess you're not totally canceled.

[Ben Swan]

Right. But who.

[Interviewer]

Who did they not give me answers for? I think Andrew Tate was one of them. I think Nick Fuentes was one of them. People like that, they will not give any information on, really, because they want to control the narrative.

[Ben Swan]

You know, you're not allowed to know anything about them.

[Interviewer]

No, they want to have the Wikipedia page front center, which is just a hit piece these days. I'm sure yours is terrible. Horrible.

[Ben Swan]

Well, actually, I have a couple of distinctions about Wikipedia. I was the very first person to ever have their Wikipedia page Locke locked.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, after Pizzagate.

[Interviewer]

Wow. What does it locked mean?

[Ben Swan]

So locked means it cannot be altered unless you're a super user.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Ben Swan]

So a super user has the ability to edit information. So for, for years it was just one hit piece after another listed there. And then we started threatening lawsuits and we started having to threaten them and we, it was opened up enough for some people to add some information to it. So all we were trying to do is add some context to it. Right. But if you look at it and they've tried to like add in a bunch of things that are completely untrue, like stuff about Sandy Hook.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. Which has nothing to do with me. That's all Alex Jones stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

You know, I reported on Sandy Hook when it happened, but there was never any controversial, you know, claims about Sandy Hook made. But they have it in there, right, to try to, to, to create that image. Obviously the Pizzagate thing, the funny thing about the Pizza Gate thing is to the conversation we're having now, it's not even a negative anymore. Where it was, it was for a long time. But there's a book, this is so interesting to me as an old man, but there's a book called the Starfish and the Spider, right? It's about 20 years old and it talks about the concept of decentralization versus, you know, centralized companies. And a couple of the examples they would use, right, for the centralized companies would be like Coke, it would be like CBS News, you know, things like that, but for decentralized. And then the starfish and the spider, right, the spider, if you cut its head off, it has eight legs, you cut its head off, it dies. But a decentralized starfish, you cut one of its arms off and throw it into water, grows another starfish, right? And so they use these great examples of these decentralized companies. And Napster, right, Napster, which of course doesn't exist anymore, didn't last very long because it was sued into an oblivion when Sean Parker started it. But then you look at others, they miss, they mentioned. And one of them that's very top Wikipedia was this brilliant source of decentralized user generated content and information, right? And so they talk about how powerful Wikipedia is. And I, as I read this, I read it just a couple of years ago, just had to shake my head at it like, oh, it's so sad because Wikipedia had a chance, it had an opportunity to be like a really valuable source of information 100%. And instead it became a joke of Itself like this complete.

[Interviewer]

Now I don't trust it.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's a joke.

[Interviewer]

But when I was in school, I used to reference Wikipedia in a lot of my research papers.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I think maybe back then it wasn't as bad. I'm not sure. Or maybe I was just brainwashed with public education. I don't know which one, but it could be both.

[Ben Swan]

It could be that you thought it was a real source, but at one point it was a good source. And you know it was a good source at one point because at one point you were told not to trust it. Remember early on when you were in school you were told you could never use Wikipedia as a source because it can't be trusted? Why? Because anybody can post that.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Ben Swan]

And then all of a sudden after a few years and really, really around 2015, 2016, 2017, Wikipedia becomes completely co opted and now it becomes like this authoritative source that you can, you can go to and you can trust this. Why? Because government agencies and NOS and all those groups funded it. They got into it and they got control of it and then they decide what shows up there and then it gets pushed to the top of the search engine whenever you search in it.

[Interviewer]

Dude, it's like the number one thing, the domain authority is like in the 90s on the.

[Ben Swan]

It's literally the first thing only happens when governments are involved.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Which that's, that's what scares me about AI though. Yeah. And now the AI videos are getting so good with the Netanyahu videos, like is he dead or is he alive? Like we're not going to know who's, who's dead or alive anymore in the future. It's great.

[Ben Swan]

It's true. It's true. And people, you know, as you probably know, I've done a lot of the Net Yahoo videos and people keep telling me stop doing those because you're actually teaching them what's wrong. Right. Because there are a lot of things wrong with those videos and they're going

[Interviewer]

to fix it on the next batch of videos.

[Ben Swan]

It gets smarter and smarter.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Very soon though, we're really headed towards a time where you're not going to be able to tell the difference between what is real and what is.

[Interviewer]

I agree.

[Ben Swan]

All right. It's going to be identical. You could in theory have a world leader who was dead that could be in office for years and people not know.

[Interviewer]

I think so. I think within our lifetime. Isn't that nuts?

[Ben Swan]

Think about even with the Netanyahu press conference he had. Right. Where people would Talk about, like, well, there he was in front of reporters. But then the IDF and the Israeli government put out a statement saying that no reporters were actually in the room, that he was virtual. So reporters were in a separate room. And then he's. But I. I don't even know what's true at this point. Like, I've tried to verify. I can't even figure out which one's true. They put out a statement saying he wasn't, but then you see reporters who claim that they saw him. But then the reporter. Some reporters say, but we weren't in the room he was in. Another. Don't know.

[Interviewer]

I truly don't. All I know is there was weird situations around it. Like, his son didn't tweet for a week.

[Ben Swan]

For a month.

[Interviewer]

For a month. Right. And he was tweeting, like, five times a day before that, every day. The videos were obviously faked, so those are confirmed. AI.

[Ben Swan]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

That was weird. And then he canceled all his appearances that month.

[Ben Swan]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Like, he was supposed to speak at a few events.

[Ben Swan]

He was supposed to go to cpac, Hungary.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Ben Swan]

And he did not show up.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

And it's been silent since.

[Ben Swan]

And he has not been seen with any other world leader. So he. Even. Even to this point. And I'm not saying he's dead. I don't know if he's dead. I honestly have no idea. But at this point, he has not met with Trump, even though there's an active war going on. And he visited the White House seven times last year to get the war started. Yeah. He has not been back. So why have you not met with Trump at all? They're supposed to be trying to get to a ceasefire. They're supposed to be trying to get to some kind of resolution. So where is he?

[Interviewer]

Crazy.

[Ben Swan]

You know, and so part of me wonders if it's not that he's dead, if they're testing a way of saying, but what happens. What happens if we do lose the Prime Minister, but we want to keep going in a certain direction, so maybe he's alive. But they're saying, we're not going to have you do this because all your appearances will be. AI Generated.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Because as you said, it's. There's no question those other videos are. AI.

[Interviewer]

No doubt. It's already, no question, proven at this point. That's.

[Ben Swan]

Yes. And they don't even look like it.

[Interviewer]

No. I mean, didn't he have six fingers

[Ben Swan]

in one of them? He had six fingers in one. He had two ear canals. Even the. The video he did with Mike Huckabee, where Mike Huckabee, who was the US Ambassador to Israel, meets with him in person to prove he's alive. Netanyahu has two ear.

[Interviewer]

Mike looked weird in that one, too. Like, he looked. I don't know, something was off about him.

[Ben Swan]

There's the video where Netanyahu comes out just to prove that he's alive. His sleeve grows on his arm.

[Interviewer]

And this video was years old. They debunked that one. Yes.

[Ben Swan]

And, well, the other interesting thing is almost every single video, including when he goes to the coffee shop, you could go to chat GBT or to crock, and you could take a freeze frame of the video, and then you could say, when did this happen? And instead of it pulling up the AI version, it was finding where Netanyahu had done these visits either two years before or two months before. So all of these were actually from real events that had happened, but they were taking the real event and then turning the AI into him talking about this moment.

[Interviewer]

Holy crap.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I mean, it definitely makes you wonder because obviously when Biden was president, he wasn't running the show, so we could probably assume with other countries that could be similar. Right.

[Ben Swan]

Have you seen the videos of where they claim that Biden was really one of those Elon's robots?

[Interviewer]

Oh, I saw that. Yeah. Optimus.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's hilarious the way he's walking, because he really did walk like he was a robot. I don't think he was a robot,

[Interviewer]

but I think he just wasn't doing anything.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, he wasn't doing anything. But to your point, you're absolutely right. When you have a. They've already proven you can have a president. Right. Of the most powerful nation in the world, while we at least are that for now, who is completely incapacitated, can't make decisions, is left out of everything, doesn't seem to have any. Any sense at all of where he is or what he's doing. And it can all be run. But then if you turn around and you say, okay, so what if we don't need him to be bungling the way Biden was bungling? What if we just have an AI version of him and all the press conferences, remember the. When he was in the White House, they built a fake White House room only for the press.

[Interviewer]

That's all up.

[Ben Swan]

Right. And so this was all constructed where you could set it up in a way where if the press goes along with it and.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it was all a show. Right?

[Ben Swan]

It's all a show.

[Interviewer]

Crazy.

[Ben Swan]

So why not advance it to the next level, where the star of your show isn't incompetent and bumbling and can't finish a sentence, and instead, he's. He's quite articulate and he's able to say whatever you want him to say.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Makes you wonder if the future is just going to be all, like, AI leaders or, like, who knows?

[Ben Swan]

It absolutely could be.

[Interviewer]

It's nuts.

[Ben Swan]

And here's the bigger question. It goes back to when people found out WrestleMania just happened. Yeah. Remember when I was a kid, people found out wrestling wasn't real. They thought it was real for so long, and then they found out it wasn't. And guess what? They didn't care. They accepted it. I mean, Otherwise, why is WrestleMania still happening? And why is it filling up the allegiance?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Right. So on that theory, what is the point where we get to an AI leader and the public doesn't care?

[Interviewer]

Wow. I wonder if that's why they're being so blatant right now. They're kind of testing the waters, you know, see how people react.

[Ben Swan]

How many people do you think, especially generationally, your generation. Yeah, specifically, would actually think AI would do a better job of leaving the world?

[Interviewer]

Oh, I would say a majority. Honestly, I think almost everyone, like, probably 80, 90% of my generation is using it on a daily basis right now. And they like it.

[Ben Swan]

So they trust it. They probably trust it more than they trust their elected leaders.

[Interviewer]

Probably.

[Ben Swan]

And AI would probably be more consistent. AI might have better foreign policy, depending on who's feeding the information into it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

But if you asked AI how to get out of the Iran war, it would give you some pretty good answers.

[Interviewer]

It probably would give you better answers than the President would.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, it probably would. And it probably would not encourage you to eliminate an entire civilization of people in order to do so.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Because it is technically supposed to eliminate human bias. But you're right about who programs it, right?

[Ben Swan]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

That's a crucial part of it.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. Because if, obviously you program AI to believe that, for instance, Iranians or Persians are subhuman, then it would probably tell you to eliminate them. But if the AI saw them as just as human as you and me, which they obviously are, then it would do things very differently. Like, the AI probably wouldn't recommend bombing a school full of little girls.

[Interviewer]

Not at all.

[Ben Swan]

Right. It would tell you that's a bad idea. It probably wouldn't tell you to start a war that would close the Strait of Hormuz. When the Strait of Hormuz was already open, and now you're trying to figure out how to reopen it, but you didn't. If you didn't go into the war, that wouldn't have happened.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

So in theory, theoretically, if AI were programmed correctly to view all people as having the same inherent value of wherever they are in the world, it would probably have better foreign policy concepts because it would say these people's lives are just as worthy as your people's lives.

[Interviewer]

But instead, that AI will be banned. The person who made it will be no longer here, most likely.

[Ben Swan]

What was it? Was it Claude, or. There was a version of Claude, I think. Anamorphic, I believe, is the company.

[Interviewer]

I know what you're talking about. Anthropic.

[Ben Swan]

Anthropic. That's what it is. Yes. Who. They just lost their Pentagon contract. Yeah, you see that?

[Interviewer]

I saw that.

[Ben Swan]

And it was because there were a couple things they wouldn't do, and one of those things was they refused to allow their AI to be used for autonomous killer robots.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Ben Swan]

Cannot be used for that. And I believe the other one was that they wouldn't allow it to be used for cataloging people in some way, something like that.

[Interviewer]

Profiling.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, profiling. I believe it was. And they lost their government contracts over there. That tells you a lot about what the government's planning to do with AI.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, there's already been cases where you search certain things and then you get arrested.

[Ben Swan]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I've seen that with OpenAI.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Isn't that nuts?

[Ben Swan]

Oh, it's totally crazy.

[Interviewer]

It's crazy.

[Ben Swan]

And, you know, on that note, I. I heard there's a guy I watch a lot, James Sexton. He's the lawyer on Tick Tock. But he talks about AI being used. AI searches being used in divorces, and that now they're trying to drag in your AI searches for, like, for instance, how do I not have to give up this much money? Or how do I. And you and your spouse can subpoena your AI chat history. He's making a note that don't do this. But your AI chat history could be searched.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

And to say, well, this is. If you search this, it must mean this intent to have this crazy.

[Interviewer]

So they're using that in Core.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And it's probably giving you some good answers, too.

[Ben Swan]

I'm sure it is.

[Interviewer]

Oh, my God.

[Ben Swan]

Here are the smart ways to stay out of trouble.

[Interviewer]

That's nuts. So be careful what you search for.

[Ben Swan]

Be careful what you search. Use a vpn for sure.

[Interviewer]

We're in a crazy time Man, Yeah, we really are.

[Ben Swan]

And we're at it. We're at a moment that I think we're watching a shift, right, to AI that is fundamentally different than even the original advent of the Internet. Right. Which completely transformed the world in ways that obviously everyone knows now it's a completely different world that we're in. I think AI is just as equal of a shift because it's taking all of the power away from the user, all of the understanding away from the user. It's taking all the art away. I think we're moving into an AI world where entire industries will be eliminated. So it's also an industrial revolution because it's going to completely end. For instance, things like truck driving.

[Interviewer]

Driving.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, it's going to end. I think low level cpa, paralegal jobs are all going to be gone. Accountants will be gone. AI is going to take over all of that. And at some point, look, there's AI in India that's being used right now, where they're making workers sit with little cameras on their foreheads and as they're doing their work, it's watching their hands and it's. Even if they have to correct a mistake or whatever, and it's cataloging all that information. Well, why would you do that? Because eventually when you put robots in there, the AI will say, this is how you do it. And we've watched, you know, thousands, cumulative hours, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of hours of video input into the AI system that watches how that labor, manual labor is done so the robots can do it afterwards.

[Interviewer]

It's crazy.

[Ben Swan]

It's wild. I don't even. I have no idea what that future looks like.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, bartenders. There's a couple in Vegas already. AI Bartenders.

[Ben Swan]

Really?

[Interviewer]

Yeah. They're making your drinks for you. You just press a button. It makes it.

[Ben Swan]

It makes it. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Bartenders are screwed. Surgeons, believe it or not, some of this AI is producing better results than surgeons on surgeries.

[Ben Swan]

So there's the question, right? The question is, so obviously, is it not a good thing when you see entire industries eliminated? Because what do you do with those jobs? Right? And then we can't all, you know, do what George W. Bush once said, which is become an IT guy. So what do we do with a population, right, that lives that way? But at the same time, how do you balance that with the better results? Because when you're saying, if there are surgeons and AI is doing surgery better, I want that surgeon.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

I don't want to say, well, let's, let's save the jobs and get a worse result. So, I mean, at what point do we. Do we get to that point where you have to trade one for the other? Do we take the better result or do we say in some ways it's a better result, but for a society of people, maybe it's not.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. It's an interesting dilemma. Right. I personally want the better result, and I think you would agree on that. But at the same time, what's going to happen to everyone? So are you in favor of like an income, universal basic income.

[Ben Swan]

So I know that Andrew Yang had talked about this a long time ago and kind of was the. The forerunner on this, saying this the only way that people can exist. I think that's true.

[Interviewer]

I used to think he was crazy for that.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But now with AI I can see it.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, it's. I think it is the only way. I mean, just, we use the example of trucking. Right. Five million jobs in the United States are truckers.

[Interviewer]

Jeez. And that's not counting Uber drivers and.

[Ben Swan]

Nope. And all those. I mean, Waymo is going to take all those jobs away.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

I live in Miami, and you drive down the street and it's one Waymo after another. I don't know how it is there.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, they just launched here this month.

[Ben Swan]

It's. They're everywhere. And you know what? In Miami, people are terrible drivers.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

And it's a much better. It's a much better system to have. But. And it's not just. It's not just the Waymo. Right. The guys that I know, a lot of the guys I know who own Teslas don't even drive their own car anymore.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, Self drives.

[Ben Swan]

It self drives.

[Interviewer]

It's going to be working for you at night now, too. You're going to be able to send it out, make some money.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, It's. It's completely crazy. So, yeah, I think a universal basic income will ultimately become what has to happen because there aren't enough jobs.

[Interviewer]

That's nuts. I wonder that what. That. What that's going to do to people mentally, because we find a lot of purpose in work and providing. You know what I mean?

[Ben Swan]

Well, I think, I think in a healthy society, we do. I think that man is designed to work. I think that if you don't work, you don't have purpose in life.

[Interviewer]

Agreed.

[Ben Swan]

And you can't just be sitting there. It's like, remember that movie, Wall E cartoon? Sitting there on the ship. But they don't do anything for themselves. The robots do everything and everyone's overweight and they have their cup in their hand and just brings them what they need and they have no purpose and they're not happy. Like there's no happiness at all. I think that a lot of our happiness in life comes from finding purpose, deriving value from building something. Oh, my gosh. I think the most important thing that people do is build something.

[Interviewer]

100%. Yeah, I agree.

[Ben Swan]

You don't build something in your life, you don't have a life worth living. And that doesn't mean it has to be economically viable. I'm talking about building a chicken coop outside. I'm talking about, you know, putting pavers down in your own house. Right. Building a patio, anything. Building a family, doing stuff with your family. Those things bring incredible value. And I think as a human experience, we're losing it and we're losing it fast, Fast.

[Interviewer]

I mean, it is really heading towards, like, Ready Player One. If you've seen that, like an AI kind of world, where the virtual world, social media is more important than the real world. Yes, I think we're heading towards that.

[Ben Swan]

So thank God the metaverse is dead. I think that's a good thing. You remember there was a big push where.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah.

[Ben Swan]

All in. Yeah. Change their name for it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

And it was. It was going to be this metaverse. People were spending millions of dollars buying metaverse properties.

[Interviewer]

NFTs. Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. And I think in the last. Within the last month.

[Interviewer]

It's dead.

[Ben Swan]

It's dead. Project's gone. That's a good thing. Right. The virtual world is not the real world, and you don't need entire generations of people trying to live in it and exist in it. My hope is that we're moving towards something, though. Maybe what AI can do is say we can fill in the gaps of a lot of the stuff that maybe is minutiae in life. That's what I would hope. I would hope that AI takes up the minutia and it stays away from the stuff that really has value. So art has value. Music that's created by people, not just repeating the same concept, has value. Again, doing stuff, building stuff with your own hands has value. So if I can. Can supplement the stuff that's we don't really need help doing and it can free us up for the others, then it could have a great value. But that's where the AI serves us. It doesn't become the master.

[Interviewer]

I'm with you on that. Going back to politics, how are you? How have you been feeling with Trump so far, second term?

[Ben Swan]

Oh, my Gosh, Listen, Trump was. Is two people, right? He's. He's candidate Trump, which I was all in for. Yeah, man. He had me at hello. He did like the no more wars. I'm there for it. Closing the borders, getting that under control. I'm there for it. Doge. Oh, I was there for that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Like, all about Doge. Like, we're going to cut out all this crazy, insane waste of money and the corruption, draining the swamp, all that stuff. Still waiting for any of it to happen. I guess the border was close.

[Interviewer]

Border was the one thing he did. He did legalize psychedelics yesterday, which I liked.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, that was a good one. That was. I don't know why they did it on a Saturday, but, yes, that was good.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Shout out to Rogan for putting that together. But overall, I agree with you. He's been a letdown.

[Ben Swan]

I think the. Here's why I'm still holding out hope on the Iran thing. I'm holding out hope that we're going to find out the 5D chess is a real thing. I don't think it is, but I hope it is. And here's what it would be that Trump says, look, you know what I realized is there's no way I'm going to be able to get all the bases closed in the Middle East. He has said that the Iran war will be the end of the forever wars.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Ben Swan]

He said that? So here's what I would hope. And when he watches your podcast, maybe he'll take advice. So Iran's already destroyed, like, 13 US bases in the region. Really? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I didn't know that.

[Ben Swan]

Oh, yeah. You can't even see the video or the satellite images because the Pentagon has asked satellite imaging companies to not allow people to view above the region.

[Interviewer]

So when they say 15Americans are dead, you think it's more?

[Ben Swan]

Definitely more.

[Interviewer]

Damn.

[Ben Swan]

Definitely more.

[Interviewer]

That's awful.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. And. And the numbers, they've. They've really suppressed the numbers. It's. The problem is it's not a war that's winnable. Right. The only way you can win that war is you have to go in and obliterate an entire country full of people, and that starts World War iii, because China and Russia and everybody else is not going to sit by and just watch you do that. So the. So you can really get out of it. I think Trump believed that there was going to be a decapitation strike, which they did have. The problem was that the Iranians figured out the decentralization thing, and they figured out that you need to not have everything centered in one guy, like Saddam Hussein or Assad. And so they have been very successful in that. And so it's much, much harder than we thought it was going to be. Now, going Back to the 5D chess, here's what I'm hoping he's doing. I hope he turns around and says, okay, what I. We need to get out of this. We need to go away from this. $12 trillion of US treasure has been spent in the last 30 years building up bases across the Middle East. We don't need to be there. That's an insane amount of money that could have been used here at home. It could have been used for the American people. But if he said, hey, there's no way out of there, but here's what I could do. I could start a war with Iran. I could hit a couple targets. Maybe there are some that shouldn't have been hit, like the school. And that wasn't intentional. We'll go with that theory for now. But he says the goal is let him close the Strait of Hormuz. Doesn't hurt us as the United States. Maybe the American people don't like the gas prices. Yeah, I understand that. But as far as oil is concerned, if the rest of the world wants to decouple from the dollar on oil, then it doesn't hurt us all because we don't set our. We wouldn't have to set our price anymore with opec. The US has plenty of energy. More so way more than Europe, way more than China does. And by keeping that straight closed, you could actually weaken China. Theoretically, yeah, absolutely. Now what the Chinese are doing right now is they're getting their ships through, but it's still slowing them down. Right.

[Interviewer]

So they're letting China through, but it's slower.

[Ben Swan]

The Iranians have a deal with China. They say, you're allowed to come. The US Put up a blockade. And the Chinese said, you're not going to blockade us. And the US Said, okay, come on through. And so the Chinese are getting through.

[Interviewer]

Got it.

[Ben Swan]

Because you're not going to go to war with them. But. But what you could do is then turn around at the end of this and say, hey, you know what? All those bases that were destroyed, we can't afford to rebuild those, so we're out of the Middle East. He could potentially do that. I hope that's what he's doing, because it would pull us out of that region. And that's one of the things the Iranians want. They want us out of the region. And we should be out of the region. We do not need to continue to sit there and try to control every single thing that happens in the Middle East. The other thing that this war has exposed is it has exposed how the military contractors in this country have run a sham on the American people for decades. Think about it this way. There's a. There were seven planes that the US has under these specialized radar planes, right? There are only seven of them in the world. They cost $600 million apiece to build. There are now only six of them in the world because the Iranians destroyed one of them.

[Interviewer]

Whoa.

[Ben Swan]

Right. They were sitting in Saudi Arabia, and they cut it in half with a $20,000 Shahid drone.

[Interviewer]

For real?

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Holy crap.

[Ben Swan]

$20,000. So the Shaheed drones are so useful because one thing the Russia, Ukraine war demonstrated is that warfare has completely changed. It's not all going to be drone warfare.

[Interviewer]

Right, because they're so cheap to make. Right?

[Ben Swan]

So cheap. 20 grand. Right. For one.

[Interviewer]

And that's on the pricey side for drones. I've heard some are even cheaper than.

[Ben Swan]

Oh, I'm sure. No question. You could make them cheaper than that. Here's the problem. The US does not make anything cheap, right? We build a drone for $5 million, and some contractor has it, and they're like, oh, we'll give you 30. Okay, great. Well, you're gonna blow through 30 of those in an hour, right? No offense to Iran, but Iran's just a regional power. This is not a great power that we're fighting over there. But we already have enormous problems, and a ground war with them would be disastrous. So that cannot happen.

[Interviewer]

We would lose. That.

[Ben Swan]

We would lose. I mean, we're losing now, and we don't even have a ground war happening. Right. Because we're even. For us, a stalemate is a loss. For the Iranians, a stalemate is a win. Because you didn't end up Iraq and you didn't end up Afghanistan, you didn't end up Libya or Syria. Here's what I think that Trump has realized. So in the last week, the administration had meetings with GM and Ford, okay, about converting some of their auto plants into designing military equipment and producing military equipment. Now, that's pretty unusual. That has not happened since World War II.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Ben Swan]

U.S. has not asked for a domestic automaker to retrofit their factories to produce munitions. You say, well, why would you do that? I mean, especially in the war that we're in. My theory is that what that's really about is about drone warfare. That what We've realized is we are unbelievably far behind that. You know, these Patriot. Patriot missiles that we have, that made us like this great power since the 1990s. We have the Patriot missiles. We knock anything down, Totally obsolete. We're still buying that. Contractors are still selling us Patriot missiles. Here's the problem. What the Iranians just proved is that you don't have enough Patriot missiles to stop us anyway. So all you need is more missiles than the Patriots. It takes three to five Patriots to knock down one missile.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Ben Swan]

So we're shooting them up at an incredible rate. I think we've burned through half of our entire Patriot supply in the first six weeks of this war.

[Interviewer]

Holy crap, right?

[Ben Swan]

The Thaad missile detectors, those radar detectors, no good, because the Iranians took those out too. I think they destroyed three of them, right? Those are a billion dollars a piece. And they destroyed all three of them. It's insane. But that's not even counting hypersonic missiles. Hypersonics can't be Patriots. Don't take out even one of those. They can't hit them at all. Fads can't even detect them because they come in so fast. Again, Iran's not a great. It's not a great power, but China is. The Russians are. If we went to war with China, we would be obliterated because we can't stop any of their technology. They have way more hypersonics, they have way more ballistics, they have course nuclear. But they also have massive drone production. The Russians before the Ukraine war barely had any drones. Now they're leading the world in drone production. The Iranians have been. Originally the Russians were buying them from Iran because they had so many. Now they're building their own, right? Just factories full of these drones. So what? The entire force of warfare has completely altered now. The direction, the trajectory of it. And so just as a great example, the U.S. one of the things that made us so dominant since World War II are having those aircraft carriers around the world, right? Because you can deploy these planes from them. Aircraft carriers, Iran just proved are obsolete. Wow. Totally obsolete.

[Interviewer]

They took one out.

[Ben Swan]

Well, remember they. We. We heard a lie that the Gerald Ford had a kitchen fire and then the fire was in the bathroom and the bathrooms didn't work. And so. Oh, it was a fire. It wasn't because Trump later gave a speech where he said that there were all these missiles that were being fired at it. And they kept coming. He said every 30 seconds all these missiles came in. We now know that because of the fire aboard The USS Gerald Ford. It's out of commission for the next two years. Right. Again, this isn't China firing hypersonics at you. You'd sink those so fast. Warfare has completely changed. So what the other thing I think is happening is that Trump has realized that the current military contractors that are in place cannot perform the function that they need them to perform. He had called weeks ago the heads of those, you know, biggest companies like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman to come in and to meet with him, and he was not happy with what they told him. So I think the other thing he's going to shift to is there's got to be a totally different way of doing this, and we're going to have to. We're going to have to catch up. But you can never publicly say that, because then you would be admitting we're behind China and we're behind Russia, we're behind Iran in terms of that kind of weaponry. Yeah, listen, in terms of Iran, we still have incredible, you know, Air Force that can fly over and B2 bombers that can bomb. You know, here's the other thing. Talk about AI. The other thing that's very interesting about this war is that the Chinese are cataloging every single thing that happens. Their satellites are monitoring every movement, every ship movement, every troop movement, how we deliver bombs, how we deliver payloads, where the B52s are. You know, our Stealth bombers can now be seen because of AI. They can now be detected. So even the stealth technology has become antiquated. This is stuff that, growing up, you know, made the United States the most superior military in the world. And Trump has to remind us every time he puts out a true social post, that we are. Yeah, we're not.

[Interviewer]

That's what kept the dollar so strong, because we could always just threaten countries to not leave through our military. Right, that's right. And now we can't do that anymore.

[Ben Swan]

Well, it's that and it's the tide oil. The petrodollar. Yeah, petrodollar makes it super powerful because the entire world trades oil. But not anymore, man.

[Interviewer]

We are in the future. We are here.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, it's very, very, very scary. And so one of the things about Trump was, it was supposed to be he was going to end all this globalist stuff and normalize relations. And that needs. He needs to get back to the business of that. Get back to the business of, let's normalize the relations with China, let's get all these sanctions off of Russia. The Europeans are buying Russian oil again. Yeah, they have to. They don't have a choice because they. They can't get any oil from the Straight of Hormuz.

[Interviewer]

Jeez.

[Ben Swan]

Have you seen the timelines that are showing, like, when different countries run out of oil? No, it's all mid April to mid May.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Ben Swan]

It's. Yeah, it's all here.

[Interviewer]

Holy.

[Ben Swan]

So these countries are all scrambling. That's why. That's why Maloney is trying to travel to Iran right now to get a deal to say, please let Italian ships through the Strait of Hormuz because we have to have oil.

[Interviewer]

Geez. I never realized how important the Straight was. I never heard of it before this war.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, the Strait of Hormuz and now every country's feeling the wrath.

[Ben Swan]

Well, again, you look at the main countries that take oil from there going to be China, India, the two biggest. And then European countries depend on it, but also for the natural gas and for diesel. So it's. So you think about, you know, all the different kinds of fuel that's moving through there. Yeah, it's, it's. Plus Europe screwed themselves because they cut off, you know, buying Russian oil and they allowed Zelensky to blow up the Nord Stream.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

During the war. Which, when you blow up. Well, he didn't blow it up. The US Blew it up, but he knew it was coming. When you blow up the Nordstrom. Nordstrom's, where Germany was getting all their fuel from.

[Interviewer]

Geez.

[Ben Swan]

This is. It's totally. It's like suicide. It's watching these countries commit suicide, and it's really the people in those countries who suffer the most.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Which is the worst part of it.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. Because they don't have any say. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Is there any chance you think Trump turns on Israel or do you think he's in too deep with them?

[Ben Swan]

It's tough to say. I would. I mean, I guess depends on what turns on is.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Will he at some point get fed up? He put out a truth social last week in which he said that the bombing of Lebanon would stop. He's had enough and it better stop now. Israel did not stop. At some point, will Trump say, we're not going to keep doing this? I don't know.

[Interviewer]

That's what I meant, I guess, with

[Ben Swan]

the question, does he even have control? I don't know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That's a real question. Honestly.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how much control he has. I mean, you ever think about how powerful the lobbying is for Israel? How many people within the 89 of Congress right, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Three letter. Two is a.

[Ben Swan]

Three letter. Agencies are all compromised.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

You know, so I, I don't know. And then of course, his son in law is compromised. I mean, Jared, right? Jared Kushner.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Some people think Junior too, unfortunately.

[Ben Swan]

A lot of people think that too, which.

[Interviewer]

That sucks. I really looked up to him.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. I think, I think they have time to turn this around, but they got to turn it around. The thing that's shocking to me more than anything is I think that the Trump family is the most media savvy family maybe in history of politics.

[Interviewer]

I can't think of any other family.

[Ben Swan]

They understand their constituency. I mean, the campaign was so brilliantly run in building a coalition that it feels weird to me that they could be destroying it so fast. That's why there's a part of me that just doesn't believe it.

[Interviewer]

Same logically, it doesn't make sense because they're definitely in tuned with the culture and social media and they see all the hate they're getting. So that doesn't make sense. Why they wouldn't want to fix that or address it.

[Ben Swan]

Right. It does not make sense at all. It does not. And they know that when they lose the midterms, because they're going to lose the midterms at this point by a lot, I think. Yeah. He's going to get impeached. They know that's coming.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

And because the Democrats are just dying to impeach, that's the only thing they do when they get in office. They were running on impeaching. Right. So. So I. There has got to be some other play. They're not stupid.

[Interviewer]

No. That's why we're very smart people. There has to be some sort of chess going on because it doesn't make sense. You know, these guys are seeing all the, that people are talking and the Epstein files, how he's saying he doesn't want to release the rest and he knows that's not the right move, but he's doing it anyway. So it doesn't make sense.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. The Iran thing, I think he's a little bit stuck on because I think he's been trying to get out of it. And I think that Netanyahu keeps blowing it up and that's why he can't get out of it. I mean, there's reports that even when Vance was in Pakistan, you know, he's. They're very close to a deal. The Iranians came ready to make a deal. They had dozens of pages of proposals, looked like they were close. Netanyahu gets on the phone and it ends. And according to the Iranians, Vance didn't even come back in the room after the call. They just got on the plane and left and they were told that the meeting was over. So that's why now they're supposed to do another meeting in the rain and say they're not even going to show up for it. We'll see if they do or not. I think they will because they need. They also need it to end.

[Interviewer]

I think if they don't any soon, Vance won't have a chance in 28.

[Ben Swan]

I'm not sure he does now. I'm not sure he does now. Something has something. Here's the problem is that how do you run if you're any part of this administration, how do you run on any of the platform that Trump just got elected on? Right. That's what I'm not understanding. That's the part of me. Maybe you need a political savant to explain to you the madness here and how it works in their favor. I don't see how it works in your favor.

[Interviewer]

I don't know if Roger Stone will be able to pull it off.

[Ben Swan]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

And he's bought the. I don't know, someone on his team bought the domain. Vance Kirk, 28. Did you see that?

[Ben Swan]

Oh, really?

[Interviewer]

Erica Kirk? Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Oh, no way.

[Interviewer]

That got announced a couple weeks ago.

[Ben Swan]

What do you think about that?

[Interviewer]

I do not like that at all.

[Ben Swan]

I mean, you're never going to pick up Gen Z voters.

[Interviewer]

No, I would never vote for that.

[Ben Swan]

No. You know, she can't even. She can't even get people to show up. Tpusa. I saw that she didn't even show up for. And then you, and then you lied and claimed that you were afraid because of threats. And then. But the Vice President's there and the Secret Service is there. And by the way, I don't know if you saw afterwards the Secret Service confirmed there was no threat there, that

[Interviewer]

they were made aware of the last event they had. They were really screening the questions that Vance was getting asked. Did you see that?

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

They were like asking you four times. What's your question? What's your question?

[Ben Swan]

Yes. Being very, very careful. And the thing is that J.D. vance is a smart guy and he's an articulate guy. So listen, Charlie Kirk didn't screen questions. That's what made him so popular, is that you didn't have to agree with him, but you knew he was authentic and that he was. He was there for it. Right. He's here for the argument. He's here for the debate. Because he wants to change your mind. Because he believes in what he's saying. When you're screening questions, not sure what you believe. Right. And what are you scared of? And again, Vance is a smart guy. Trump's smart. Don Jr. Is smart. These guys are smart people. So what are we doing here? And you have the most successful coalition in modern history, the one that led a Republican to win the popular vote. I didn't think I'd ever see a Republican win the popular vote again.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, every swing state.

[Ben Swan]

Unbelievable.

[Interviewer]

Crazy.

[Ben Swan]

How are you burning that down in a year? And it's just. It's totally nuts. And then you mentioned, you mentioned Kirk Charlie, Kirk Gahn. I mean, that was one of the most important people because he helped to shape that coalition in a lot of ways.

[Interviewer]

He held it together. They called him the glue. Now there's so much infighting on the right, it's ridiculous.

[Ben Swan]

What do you think about that?

[Interviewer]

I think part of it's orchestrated. I think part of it's just people frustrated. I think Trump's lost a lot of support just with all those decisions he's making. So I think it's just everything, you know.

[Ben Swan]

Do you think they're lying to him? I feel like they're not telling them what's really going on.

[Interviewer]

I could see that. And he, let's be honest, he does have an ego. Oh, of course. So he's going to believe what certain people tell him. Yeah. You know, and act on it. So I think that's a role in it, too.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, I think so, too. I think. I think that he's being sheltered because, again, he's too smart. Yeah, I think that. And Trump has always had a really good sense of where his base was until now.

[Interviewer]

100. How are you not aware now he's so disconnected.

[Ben Swan]

And you're coming out and attacking, like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and Megyn Kelly.

[Interviewer]

Candace.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. And you're calling all of them name. See, here's the thing. Here's the problem again. If you're watching this Donald, his team

[Interviewer]

probably is, to be honest.

[Ben Swan]

They probably are. The problem with attacking those people is that the people on the right loved it when you said that Rosie o' Donnell was a fat pig. They loved it. They thought it was hilarious because no one had ever talked this way in politics. And they thought it was great when you called Kamala names and you give everybody a nickname and Little Marco and Low Energy Jeb, and people loved all that. I loved all that. I ate it all up, but now you're watching it happen inside. Roger Ailes over at Fox News when he was running that. Not a good man, but he certainly understood how to build a successful brand. The most successful brand in news in history.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Right. And one of the rules he had was no shooting inside the tent. If you were on his team, you never attacked somebody else who was on that channel, whether you had a personal beef with them or not. It never happened. You never talked about him outside of. Of, you know, you could. You talk to him in person. Right. But never outside. You would never trash them. You never bash him, ever. You never shoot inside the tent. And that's what's happening right now is it's not just shooting. It's a knife fight inside the tent and it's. It's craziness.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. People are getting assaulted now.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, it's totally.

[Interviewer]

There was just a kid shout out to Riley Niemi. He got assaulted.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

There was someone else, like, recently, too. Crazy, man.

[Ben Swan]

Well, and then Trump attacking Riley Gaines.

[Interviewer]

Oh, that was wild. That made no sense.

[Ben Swan]

No.

[Interviewer]

He's so out of touch with his base.

[Ben Swan]

It's. Yeah. And it feels like someone's doing that to him. That's how I feel. Someone on the inside is keeping him from seeing what's really going on. Because when you started talking Riley. And like, Riley Gaines didn't do anything bad. She has said, hey, posting yourself as Jesus, maybe he needs some humility.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

And like, she gets attacked for that. Come on.

[Interviewer]

Well, that was his most unpopular post of all time. It's a. Yeah. No one supported that post.

[Ben Swan]

No, no. And then. And then he just lied about it and said, I thought it was a doctor. And then I thought I was a Red Cross worker. And. And then Vance comes out and says, oh, it was just a joke. And you didn't land. Which one was it? You think it was a doctor or was it a joke? Yeah, like, come on, guys, this is messaging 101. At least get on the same page. What's the message here? What are we claiming here?

[Interviewer]

It doesn't seem like getting along right now either. No, I don't think so, Trump.

[Ben Swan]

They seem to be very, very distant from each other.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, well, I. I don't blame Vance because he's going to lose now because of him.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, I'm sure. Well, I just saw that Vance is. I don't know if it's true or not, but it looks like he is considering walking away.

[Interviewer]

No way. Yeah, dude, that would be.

[Ben Swan]

In order to start to try to Run. Because he has to get. He has to get away from it. That's what I want to do.

[Interviewer]

But I think she waited too long now. So even if she doesn't now, it's kind of like, you know.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Tulsi Gabbard.

[Ben Swan]

So I think the thing with Tulsi is I almost feel like. Because I keep trying to think, how is she gonna spin this?

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Right.

[Ben Swan]

And I. My guess is she spins it as there had to be an adult in the room. That's why I didn't walk away, because somebody had to stay in there or who. If I let Lindsey Graham run the foreign policy. Right. If no one else is there in the presidency here, we end up in a nuclear war. If she were to make that case. I think you got a good case.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I could see that. I don't know.

[Ben Swan]

But you had to throw him under the bus. Right? You have to throw. You have to throw the administration under the bus to do it. Which at this point, doesn't seem like a liability.

[Interviewer]

Not at all.

[Ben Swan]

But you say, listen, if. If I'm gone and it's just Laura Loomer and Mark Levin and Lindsey Graham coaching this president on the next steps in the war, we're all screwed. So I had to stay in there and hold on because I didn't really validate him during my testimony in front of Congress. But I also didn't attack him because I knew this president needs good people beside him who can try to, like, hold this thing together.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

If you make that case, I think you make a decent case.

[Interviewer]

I could see that. What about Joe Kent?

[Ben Swan]

I don't think he'll run for anything again. You know what's sad about him, though? Again, the president, he's attacking in all the wrong ways, you know, to go after him about his wife and him remarrying. And he has to. Why is it every time he posts about Joe Ken, he has to mention that he got married too soon? It was four years after his wife was killed because Trump had her in Syria fighting a war. We shouldn't have been there fighting.

[Interviewer]

And he still worked for him. That's. He took the high road on that.

[Ben Swan]

He did. Joe Kim, by the way, to this, to this day, has still not actually attacked Trump in any way personal. Wow.

[Interviewer]

That is the ultimate high road.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Because he could have easily done that. And Trump's gone, Adam.

[Ben Swan]

He has. He has to just keep kind of taking that dig about his wife, and it's like, you know, and again, I don't. One thing about Trump. That's so interesting is Trump did something that no previous president had ever done. He was able to walk in having been married three times and cheated on his wives and had affairs with porn stars and had all these women around him. And everyone knows that. Right. Like, it's not a hidden thing. The public looked at him and said, we don't care if you'll tear this thing down, if you'll reform this thing. We don't care. You could be Hugh Hefner. Doesn't matter. Right. And so Trump was given this pass that in the past, politicians were never given. It's like, oh, you got divorced. You can't be president.

[Interviewer]

Death sentence.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, absolutely. And that's why people were shocked by the whole, you know, grab them by the. You know what, like, how they thought that was the end of his campaign. It was like, people were like, yeah, it's not entirely untrue. Right. And so people. Media was shocked. Like, reporters could not believe. Anchors could not believe. Like, wait, this was our kill shot. We have this tape of him saying this disgusting thing. And the people like, yeah, it's fine,

[Interviewer]

because he owned it back then. He owned it. You know what I mean? Now he doesn't own up to his mistakes.

[Ben Swan]

No, exactly. But. But for a guy who. Who was able to do all of that and people gave you a pass because they did. Why. Why do you feel the need to go after Joe Kent about his wife when he didn't do anything immoral. It's not immoral to get remarried four years after your wife is killed and you have two children you're trying to raise on your own and you meet someone else. You know what I would say? I would say, thank God Joe Kent found someone else.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Thank God that Joe Kent found another woman who he could trust with his children and build another life with. Because for a lot of people, that's almost an impossible thing to do.

[Interviewer]

I'm with you on that, you know,

[Ben Swan]

so why do you feel the need to punch him over that? It's just. It's the worst things. He did it to Alex Jones the other day and mentioned how Alex Jones is bankrupt.

[Interviewer]

I couldn't believe he went after Alex. That's day one.

[Ben Swan]

Alex is bankrupt for the same reason that he tried to bankrupt Trump. They did to him what they were trying to do to Trump. Lawfare.

[Interviewer]

He knows this billion dollar judgment. Yeah, I just had Rex on the show.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Ruined their whole business. They were doing 100 million a year. Completely gone now. Horrible, Crazy.

[Ben Swan]

Absolutely horrible.

[Interviewer]

Like, for the rest of his life. He will never be able to have money. Basically disgusting. All over one missed story that he misreported.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I mean, it happens, but.

[Ben Swan]

But it only happens to certain people. Right. The, the lawfare is only like, that doesn't happen to cnn. We went down the list of all the stories of CNN's gotten wrong just in the last five years. Right. You totally bankrupt them.

[Interviewer]

Probably hundreds.

[Ben Swan]

Right. Hundreds, if not thousands. Right. I mean, look, you could bankrupt every media company in the entire country over Covid.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Because everything they told you was wrong. And it's like, well, why, why didn't, why didn't CNN get destroyed over the Ivermectin stuff with, with Joe Rogan.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Right.

[Interviewer]

They have immunity. Right. I think I saw something where the New York Times hasn't lost a lawsuit in like 40 years.

[Ben Swan]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

Something like that. Because there's certain law legislator that you can't really win a case like a defamation case against them.

[Ben Swan]

Defamation is almost impossible. Right. Because you have to prove that they were not only wrong, but that they still reported it knowing they were wrong. Right, Right. It has to be intentional.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. How do you even prove that?

[Ben Swan]

Motivation is very hard to prove. But then look, look at Alex Jones and the whole Sandy Hook thing. It's like, what did they prove there? And prove anything other than the fact that Alex Jones said stuff he shouldn't have said and came out and said, I shouldn't have said it.

[Interviewer]

Right. And you still.

[Ben Swan]

And then it's like, oh, well, you shouldn't have said it. Well, now we're going to hit you with a billion dollars. A billion dollars. It's just crazy. But they were testing. See, Alex was the test case. And then they tried to do it with Trump also. Yeah. They tried to bankrupt him. They tried to destroy his life. If the left had had their way, Donald Trump would be penniless and in prison right now, and his children would be penniless and his grandchildren would be penniless. They would have destroyed all of their lives.

[Interviewer]

Agreed. He knows that Eric Trump was the most subpoenaed man.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Of all time.

[Ben Swan]

I believe they were hated. And now some of the people who would have rejoiced over that are Trump's closest advisors, while the people who fought to prevent that from happening are the most hated by Trump. And that's the part that I don't understand.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. The tables have turned.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's almost like people that saved him are just controlling him now. In my opinion.

[Ben Swan]

That's what it feels like.

[Interviewer]

That's what it feels like even worse. Even with the shooting now they're starting to look into that. Why doesn't he talk about it anymore? Like that's a whole conspiracy.

[Ben Swan]

But it is. Well, and I've seen the videos where like the Secret Service guy is positioning the photographers and they lowered the flag down. I was watching it. I was like, I kind of want to stay away from it, but it's

[Interviewer]

any public shooting now. I just, I don't know what. Like with the whole Charlie thing, that was wild. Like. Yeah, it's all orchestrated. To me, it's all a show. Yeah. You know what I mean?

[Ben Swan]

The Charlie thing's really interesting too, because if you watch what Candace is saying about it and what some of this stuff that's been coming out, even like the stuff about the bullet not matching.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

I don't even know how this guy's going to be found guilty. I don't know.

[Interviewer]

I saw something last week saying they matched a fragment to his gun now apparently.

[Ben Swan]

Is that what they're saying?

[Interviewer]

Did you see that? Yeah. So apparently they're going to try to get him on that.

[Ben Swan]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

I think he was just a fall guy, though.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. I think there's no question here.

[Interviewer]

I mean, he hasn't been allowed to say a single word since. That's the weird part to me.

[Ben Swan]

Well, and then some of the stuff was like him showing up and posting, hey, guys, it was me.

[Interviewer]

I'm the one in the discord.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, that's a pretty good tell that it's not him.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Right. Is when that happens. And even the timeline with that apparently doesn't match. I think he was already in custody at the time that that was actually sent. So it's, it's, it's story is. It's so wrong. It's so.

[Interviewer]

Man, I have faith in FBI when cash.in and now I do not trust.

[Ben Swan]

Have you seen that there's all these reports about him being drunk all the time.

[Interviewer]

Oh, really?

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, there's. There's all these reports now that people inside the FBI are claiming that like they tried to. They tried to wake him.

[Interviewer]

What?

[Ben Swan]

On some flight and he was too drunk to wake up. And him taking the FBI plane all the time to see his girlfriend and stuff.

[Interviewer]

It's like what his emails got leaked. You saw that. Was that Iran? They said it was. I don't know.

[Ben Swan]

They claim it was Iranian.

[Interviewer]

Who knows? Who knows? And his telegram bio had a flag for Israel and before the American flag.

[Ben Swan]

Had so much hope for him. So much hope for even Bongino, when he went over and he. He not only did I a horrible job, but now his podcast is in below the top 100. He's not falling out of the top 100. Because, of course you have. Because you literally went out and said Epstein killed himself. We know it's true. There are no Epstein files. We know it's true. And now he's tried to grift his way back into the podcast world by simply going after anybody who he thinks he can punch in order to say, well, they're unloyal. And like, he attacks Thomas Massie every day. He posts every morning. Thomas Massie's an asshole or something like that. And then he writes, you know, have a great day. Yeah, that's. That's going to do what really well, man. I think there's a big audience for that.

[Interviewer]

I think, unfortunately, a lot of people in the political podcast scene are compromised now. You know, whether it's through a government, through a company or there, I feel like people are just slowly listening to another person. Entity.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah, I think that there's a lot of it. I think there's a lot of influencers who are getting. Influencers is probably the right word, because, I don't know. They're journalists.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Because they're just posting on social media. He's posting stuff. I think the real way that you. You monitor it, though, and this has been happening a lot is like with Cat Turd and some of these big accounts is you just go back two years to 2024. What were they posting then? So, for instance, like Trump now saying that he supports the Fisa warrantless spying 702. Right. It's like FISA was what you built your entire campaign on. They spied on him and they did. They used FISA warrantless buying to wrap up all this information to go after people in his campaign and try to destroy his presidency and throw him in prison. And now you're president and you're going out saying, I'm willing to give up some of my rights if it means us being safer. Like, who's writing these? It almost feels like he doesn't even have control of it anymore. So. Yeah, but people like Cat Turd, right, who have these big accounts in 2024 was like, anyone who votes for this is a traitor. Do you still feel that way? Or have you changed your mind now? Because if you changed your mind, any one of those people, right, on any of these positions, if you've changed your mind in the last two years, you don't believe anything you're just. You're just doing what you're told to do.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a fan of those anonymous Twitter accounts. I see a lot of them paste the same messaging as other accounts too. You ever see that? Oh, yeah. The same word and everything.

[Ben Swan]

They did that with.

[Interviewer]

With. With Candace. Yeah. And. And Tucker, I think.

[Ben Swan]

Yep. They'll just all start saying the same thing on the same day.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Literally the same paragraph.

[Ben Swan]

It's so poorly done. Like, wouldn't the part of the deal be. If I'm paying you. Here's the idea. Now, please write it in your own words.

[Interviewer]

100.

[Ben Swan]

Right.

[Interviewer]

But these people.

[Ben Swan]

Five minutes.

[Interviewer]

They can't do it though.

[Ben Swan]

No.

[Interviewer]

They need to be given specific instructions. Copy paste.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's pathetic.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Have you seen these missing scientists? 11 of them now. Missing or dead scientists.

[Ben Swan]

We reported on it when it was 9, but it's now 11.

[Interviewer]

Crazy.

[Ben Swan]

It is crazy. Especially when you look at this. I think the 11th guy was an anti gravity scientist and they're all connected to government research, NASA, UFO stuff, nuclear. It's very interesting.

[Interviewer]

And.

[Ben Swan]

And they're going missing or they're found dead or. I think one of them. The guy was like dead for two months at the bottom of a lake near his house. And then they were like. Like nothing to see here.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. There's no foul play. No foul play. But they. A lot of them have gone. Just vanished completely. And now it's 11.

[Interviewer]

I wonder what they found out.

[Ben Swan]

It's a good question. The other. You know, there's something else to think about. The Israelis. I'm assuming the Israelis are doing this. I'm not saying they're doing this one, but the Israelis.

[Interviewer]

The 12th person.

[Ben Swan]

Huh?

[Interviewer]

Let's not have you as the 12th.

[Ben Swan]

Exactly. Exactly. The 11 of them, though. One thing that's interesting is the Israelis have a. Have a methodology that they use and they've bragged about it for a long time. That's the only reason I even bring it up. Which is when they would go after the Iranians and trying to stop the Iran nuclear program. They were killing scientists and they had an assassination program for Iranian scientists. And this is all very, very public. Like it's not even hidden. They brag about it, though. Everything from. They'll have Mossad doctors who are working as dentists who perform stuff on these guys and they put tracers inside of the. The fillings in their teeth so they know where they are, they can find them and assassinate them.

[Interviewer]

That's crazy.

[Ben Swan]

Yeah. They're super super methodical in the way they go after these. And again, you just search. Israel kills Iranian scientists. They brag about this constantly. They go after them. And so part of me wonders if this is not a foreign entity. I'm not saying it's Israel. I have no idea who it would be. But a foreign entity that is specifically targeting nuclear, space, anti gravity, like the top scientists in this country. Because there's a long term detriment to being able to compete on that level.

[Interviewer]

That would make sense. Kind of prevent nuclear war, some type of advanced warfare. Right. Take out these guys. So they don't know how to use the weapons.

[Ben Swan]

Exactly. Or the people who are on the cutting edge of developing those weapons. Right. If you take out the best, the smartest people and leave kind of the minions underneath them, they're not going to advance technology. So I just find it very odd that so many people in such a specific kind of field, which really is the cutting edge of. Of war.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

100 are the ones who are being taken out.

[Interviewer]

Well, it's definitely planned and targeted. It's not a coincidence. Eleven people in what, two years?

[Ben Swan]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

And that's just known. There's probably even more, honestly.

[Ben Swan]

And it's. And it seems to be accelerating.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

Like, the more it's being talked about, the more that seem to.

[Interviewer]

The more diverse. Yeah. It's crazy. I remember when it was like six, like a couple of months ago. Now it's 11.

[Ben Swan]

It's saying six for a while.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Ben Swan]

So. And you might be right. It might be that family members or people around them are connecting the dots and say, wait a minute, if all these people are missing, what about, you know, grandpa's gone or my dad's been gone or whatever. Right. He said he was getting the milk, but he.

[Interviewer]

Well, Ben, it's been a pleasure, my man. What's next for you? Where can people find you, support you?

[Ben Swan]

So on X, Ben Swan Underscore two wins on this one. And the same thing on Instagram, truthan media.com which is our site, is under renovation right now, but we're. We're going to be putting that back up probably within the next two weeks or so.

[Interviewer]

Cool.

[Ben Swan]

So you can check it out there.

[Interviewer]

We'll drop this around then.

[Ben Swan]

Thanks, man.

[Interviewer]

All right, man. Check them out, guys. Peace. Thanks for watching all the way to the end, guys. Please hit like and subscribe. It helps us grow the show and helps us get bigger guests. Thank you so much.