B (4:05)

Yeah, it has been. I'm tired.

A (4:07)

Yeah. What do you make of the media's performance this year? What's your assessment of them?

B (4:14)

Man, it's like I, the answer is obvious, but I'm trying to find the words to really, I mean it's, it's not, you know, I'm, I view the corporate media apparatus in not just the United States of America, but in most Western countries as essentially state propaganda. It might as well be state media. There's essentially no difference there. Their job is to cover for powerful people and to spin the narrative that those powerful people wish for the plebs to believe. So I think that's always been true. Like that's not. There's nothing drastically different in, in this last year as opposed to, you know, 50 years ago or something like that. And if you look at the way, you know, the media lied the United States into Vietnam or something like that, or, you know, this is always what they've been in the business of doing. What's striking to me about the last year is how profoundly stupid the propaganda has become and kind of their inability to adjust to the new fact on the ground. So, you know, something like just. Just for one example, that. Which I guess I care about because he's a friend of mine, but. So Tony Hinchcliffe, when he speaks at the. At the Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden, if you are at all plugged into, like, social media or this world of Internet shows that we're a part of, you just kind of know this. This video has gone viral. I mean, there's, you know, you. The video of Tony doing his insult comic routine is. You'll see one clip on Twitter that's got 3 million, another has 7 million, another has 600,000, another has that. Now CNN at the same time is getting like, 200,000 views on their. Their daytime show. And this show is telling you that a speaker made a comment at a Trump rally. But everyone who's seen that is also seeing the actual thing. Like, they can literally see that you're lying to me. So, like, you got to step it up here, guys. You got to adjust. And they just didn't adjust. They. And the lies, it's not. It's not that they're lying. That's nothing new. But the lies, like, Joe Biden is sharp as attack, and Kamala Harris is a phenomenon of joy. And, you know, like, they were just so blatant that it's, you know, it's like, well, of course nobody's going to be fooled by this or next to nobody. So I think the best thing that's come of. Of this election and the fallout since is that even the corporate media has finally had to admit that they are not the mainstream anymore. And that, to me, has been really fascinating. Watching them. They're like, well, I guess the real action is over here with Joe Rogan and with all these Internet shows and not with us, which. Which has been true for a while. You could just look at the numbers. It has been true. But to see them finally have to grapple with that has. That has been glorious.

A (7:23)

The best clicks that the mainstream media now get a. Commenting on what independent media is doing.

B (7:28)

Yeah, and. And for good reason, man. Like, you know, there's been a lot of discussion about this lately, and you know, I had Sam Harris called me out.

A (7:41)

You've been making friends, him and Chris Cuomo, you've been making friends.

B (7:44)

Yes, yes, that's right. Yes, my dear friends Chris Cuomo and Sam Harris. And you know, what he said was that, you know, he was like, listen, you know, Joe Rogan has some comedian Dave Smith on to break down the history of Ukraine or the Israeli Palestinian conflict or something like that. And I'm sorry, but that's not what are we looking at this guy like he's the next Henry Kissinger or something like that. And to be clear, I get his point. He's not entirely wrong. Sure, it is kind of ridiculous that we don't have serious credible institutions and we don't, you know, like, okay, there's a fair point to that. But if you're just being honest and not as Sam Harris is trying to rationalize away why he's not wrong for getting all of the major stories wrong over the last few years. The truth is that, look, converse like shows like this and shows like Joe Rogan's show and shows like a whole bunch of these, these Internet shows. There's just, what's going on is just levels more intelligent and thoughtful and interesting than anything that's happening at CNN or ABC News or any. It's like, it is the dumbest. I mean, I listening to, I don't know if you saw this, but there's a clip, one of the, I can't remember her name, but she's one of the CNN ladies and she's, she's, she's being interviewed about what went wrong in this election. And I'm listening to it and it's just like the dumbest take. Like, there's not one thoughtful moment. There's not one thing where you go, oh, okay, that. And I'm somebody personally who's like, I really enjoy reading like brilliant left wingers, brilliant right wingers, you know, libertarians, different, all types of different views. If, if you're thought interesting, I think there's something that can be gained from their work. I, you know, I am certainly not a left winger, but I think Noam Chomsky is like, like, must read stuff. Like, you're missing the game. If you haven't read Noam Chomsky, I promise you, you will benefit from reading him. And like, so I'm just saying, if you're just objectively looking at this, I'm sorry, Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald sitting down and having a discussion is just light years more intelligent and thoughtful than anything that you'll ever catch out of any of these corporate media outlets. And so like, for them to all look around like, well, this is ridiculous that we're relying on, on Joe Rogan and Dave Smith, like, yeah, okay, it is, but it's also for a reason.

A (10:22)

Well, look, it's the best that we've got. You're right. The, the fact that the mainstream media is totally bereft of any honesty or useful or interesting insight is not good. And yet is it a damning indictment of our media landscape that we have to turn to you and Rogan for like, accurate analysis and insight or at least something which is original or at least something which is said because you believe it as opposed to because it's what you think is socially acceptable or will toe the party line or will get the outcome that you want? That's not to say that people don't have their own. Everybody is pushed by biases that they're conscious and unconscious of. But yeah, damning indictment indeed. And yet who do you propose that we speak to? It's the same conversation. I have this all the time around masculinity. People will have happily point their finger at a number of role models that are often held up for men and say we don't like them. I'm like, okay, who do you suggest instead? And there's no one. So it's like, right, okay, identifying a problem without proposing a solution seems unuseful. And yes, should we be talking to Dave Smith and Joe Rogan to be like the fucking harbingers of truth in 2024? Alas, here we are.

B (11:33)

Yeah, well, that's, that's exactly right. You know, and if, if, if the institutions had done a better job, none of this would exist. I mean, if you think about the head start that they had on all of us, not to mention the fact that these are, I mean, even. Listen, you know, like, Joe Rogan has some money in the bank, but he doesn't have anything like the resources that CNN has. He doesn't have a multi billion dollar operation. You know what I mean? Joe Rogan's like few guys. That's his whole operation. And so that it should say something that he's not only caught them, but has lapped them several times over. And you know, that's, that's kind of unfortunately where we are. And I get your point on the masculinity issue. I think it's like the perfect comparison where, okay, you, you may not like Andrew Tate or someone like that, but I don't know, for these Young for, for a 20 year old young man who's had nothing his entire life except is probably grown up without a father, was probably thrown on, you know, Ritalin or Adderall or something like that when he was a kid. Every, every teacher has been a woman, every, you know, college professor or any influence in his life has had nothing to say except that masculinity is toxic and that somehow if you want to get up and run around, like from, from the first grade, if you want to get up and run around, that's worse than someone who wants to sit and listen. And like I'll tell you as some. I have a son and a daughter and it is, I mean, when my daughter was, I remember when she was like a year and a half old and she would sit on my lap and she would stare into my eyes and we'd play like patty cake and she'd like touch my face because it's so sweet. And my son, from the time he was a year and a half old, like if you tried to put him on your lap, he was diving off head first, you know, to go sprint into the wall and then fall down and then, you know, either, either start crying or crack up laughing or whichever one it's going to be. But so it's like, oh yeah, from the very beginning we're instilling in these kids that masculinity is bad and femininity is good. So of course they're going to look for somebody who could be a. So again, to your point, it's like, okay, so if you don't like this guy, well then provide something, you know, that usually. Right. And this is true throughout history, is that usually when. I wouldn't say usually. Always when far right, when, when far right or far left radical groups actually take over or get a strong foothold. It's because the establishment has failed on every level. And you could you pick the historical example. That's always the case. And if the establishment is doing a great job, listen, if we had peace and prosperity and you know what I mean, like a healthy society, there's no way you would see the far left and the far right gaining as much traction as they are today. Why do you think it is that it's all either the Bernie Sanders wing or the right wing populist wing that has any traction amongst voters because the establishment has failed?

A (14:40)

Is it people unhappy with the current situation? So throwing out the current order and trying to move as far away from what they see as moderate or reasonable or right now as is Possible. Is that the sort of thesis here?

B (14:54)

I mean, I think so. I think, I think that's a large part of it for sure. And I think that, you know, certainly with like young kids on the left, they're embracing socialism because they view that as the opposite of what we have right now. And as far as like the kind of right wing populist movement, I don't even think, you know, it's been fairly incoherent in terms of theory. It's not really clear. And I think we're going to see a lot more of that emerge now. It's already kind of started to with like Vivek Ramaswamy and his kind of push against big government, right wing populism and more for like, well, no, that's actually not the best theory, guys. Let's not go in that direction. But I think the, the truth is that Donald Trump's drain the swamp message is really what resonated with voters. That it's really like, we know this whole thing is corrupt and we oppose that and that's enough to unify a lot of people. That was enough to get me to vote for Donald Trump. And I don't like a lot of things about Donald Trump, but I'm, I'm pretty unified in looking at Kamala Harris.

A (16:02)

And going, I'm against, yeah, 69% of Americans have absolutely no or very little trust in the corporate media. 31% of Americans are retarded. As you cited not long ago. What do you think happens moving forward with sort of trust in media? The media going to learn anything from this? Do you think that they're going to pivot or change?

B (16:27)

Well, I mean, I don't think so and I don't see how they can. And I'm not like the best at predicting the future. I've gotten things wrong in that regard. But even just looking at like the post mortems over the last few weeks, none of them, even the ones like, there's kind of a split between, within the corporate media, between the real loons who are like, no, it was sexism and racism and that's all that we're going to say about this, you know, and then there's like the ones who are, I guess, only have one foot off the cliff, who are like, well, maybe, you know, there are certain things we could have done better. Maybe the transing the kids thing was a little bit too far or something like that. But even with those guys that just none of them. And in some ways it's just because they're so strongly incentivized not to admit this even to themselves. But none of them can really have an honest postmortem. None of them can really go like, oh, I guess what happened is that we just can consistently lie through our teeth. And we've gotten every single issue wrong, every single one of them on the side of power. Like, there's not one of all of the issues. You know, if you were to just say, in the 21st century, what has the corporate media gotten completely wrong? And you could list off like these humongous that, you know, like, from the war in Iraq to the financial recession, you know, Covid and, you know, Russia gate and all this stuff. Isn't it convenient that they always get it wrong on the side of the CIA? Because it's so bizarre, you know, and none of them can admit that. And none of them can admit that, oh, we were lying when we said this is a great economy. Actually, we've totally gutted this economy and, and rigged it against any honest working class person. And I mean, like, you know, it's like that was one of the major ones. That was just unbelievable to watch them pretend this is a really great economy and when it's. It's terrible for working people is one of the worst economies, the worst, I think, in my lifetime. And so. So again, it's just, you look at them, okay? They have no ability to actually grapple with what got them here and why they've lost all their credibility. And then on top of that, you know, and this was the thing that I think a lot of people got wrong, because I even saw a lot of people who I kind of agree with in respect saying that Kamala Harris made a huge mistake by not going on Joe Rogan's podcast when she was invited on. But I think you've got it all wrong if you're looking at it like that. That was a wise move on Kamala Harris's part. There's no way that would have gone good for her. There's no way it wouldn't have been a disaster for her. Because Kamala Harris is not built to be able to speak openly and unguarded for three hours. Her whole thing is she's got to say talking points, because otherwise you might find out that she has nothing. She doesn't. She's not interested in any policy. She doesn't have a deep thought on a single issue. And so they've constructed. There's a new game in town now, and it's an amazing precedent that's been set over this last election, where now you have to, if you want to be president of the United States, you have to go and sit for an unedited three hour long in depth conversation. And Trump had to do a bunch of them. And it's just simply the case that what the corporate media does, what the progressive establishment Democrats do, isn't built for that. Like it just can't be done. There is nobody, if you're, let's say, if you're on the side of transing the kids or whatever, you don't do well in a long form conversation. You rely on shutting down your opponent by calling them a bigot and then having censorship and having the power and having the control. You can't, because there's just no defending it. It's not like there's not one single person out there who's a good defender of it. It doesn't exist.

A (20:28)

Yeah, the, you may not have noticed this. The other day was Transgender Day of Remembrance, not to be confused with Trans Day of Visibility, which is in March, or Trans Day of Action, which is in June. Last week was the last day of Transgender Awareness Week. Transparent Day was earlier this month as well. California legislature has declared August to be Trans History Month. Pronouns Day. Pronouns Day is in October. Also in October is Gender Fluid Visibility Week. Non Binary People's Day and Non Binary Awareness Week, both in July. October designated as LGBTQ History Month, which was initially Lesbian and Gay History Month. And of course LGBTQ Pride Month, formerly Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, is in June. So I assume that you've been celebrating appropriately.

B (21:15)

Yes, I, I, I don't eat until sundown on all of those days. Whatever, whatever it is you're supposed to do. I can't believe you have all those memorized, Chris.

A (21:24)

Jeez, look, I, they're on my calendar. I, that's, I'm being a good contributing member of society. But yeah, this, this idea of sort of the media landscape and it's changing. It really did feel like there was a couple of breakthrough moments when independent media went mainstream. So the CNN hors dewormer thing with Joe, the one, two punch of the N word video as well shortly after that. And then a lot of the stuff around Covid lab leak, hypothesis, vaccine skepticism, stuff like that. And then it kind of, you know, it came back down a little bit, I think, that sort of independent crossing over into the mainstream. We saw Mr. Huberman have his little eruption earlier this year, and then the election has just thrust it so much, I think, into the public zeitgeist, because so many people are invested in the outcome of the election. So many clicks and so many eyeballs are bothered by it, and it just garners all of that attention. So, yeah, you know, it really wouldn't surprise me if within the next four years we get to the stage where there's more than 50% of the population, maybe not more than 50, because I often overestimate how not normal the normies are, and I fail flat on my face. A significant portion of people say, we don't want MSNBC or CNN to host the presidential debate. We want it to happen on a piece of independent media. We want fucking Rogan and Glenn to do it, or Douglas Murray and fucking Cenk Yuga. I don't know. Like, you know what I mean? Like, we want that. And it. I feel like we're on a trajectory where that doesn't seem as ridiculous as it might have done only five years ago.

B (23:08)

Yeah, well, in a way, what seems ridiculous now would be to have it on one of the networks. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. And I, you know, I know so many, like, yeah, I was going to say blue check journalists, but that's not a thing anymore. But if you remember back in the day on old Twitter, that used to be a thing when it was the journalists with the blue check, and that's how you knew they were like an official journalist. But I remember all of them for years just like deriding Twitter and, and podcasts and it'd be like, twitter isn't real life. And oh, the podcast bros are upset. Does that even really matter? And I remember always looking at this and being like, guys, it's. It's as much real life as the New York Times is real life. Why isn't in any. It's a show. What we're doing right now is a show. There's two people, there's cameras, there's a microphone. Who cares whether it's on the Internet or it's on ethics or something like that. It's like the. What matters is how many people are watching. And there's just way more. There's just no, listen, if Elon Musk and Joe Rogan decided they wanted to host the next presidential debates, we all know that that would get not more views than if Jake Tapper were to host it, but, like, by orders of magnitude, more viewers on it. So why. It's just the more you look at it on paper, you're just kind of like, oh, yeah, it would make no sense to go in that direction. And all the sense in the world to go in this direction and all things being equal, that's probably what you're going to get.

A (24:43)

Just to try and play a bit of devil's advocate for sort of the other, the other direction is there because for all that I love and I'm a part and will happily contribute to the degeneracy of the independent media space, there is a bit of me that thinks, well, I never went through formal media training. I'm not held to any particular standards. Fairness and biasness, all the rest of this stuff, even if the media has totally disregarded those, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Is there a place or is there a way, a case to be made of how we could salvage that other side of the fence, the more sort of corporate legacy media thing? Because I, I again, I would benefit massively if everyone just fucking discarded them and came over to our side. But there is a bit of me that thinks, well, you know, they, they've split, tested a lot of how media works for a long time. They have the money behind them. It just seems like they're pointing in the wrong direction and if we could just adjust the direction a bit, maybe we could have two really fantastic worlds that presented the public with information.

B (25:49)

I'm not against that in theory, but I do think that institutions in general, there's a line you can cross of being so corrupt and so evil that you essentially lose the right to exist. You lose your legitimacy. And so I think, you know, if in, in 1990, someone was arguing that, you know, we just need to point the Soviet Union in the right direction and then, you know what I mean, because it's important, it's important to have these, these big institutions or something like that. I think you would go like, well, no, they've lost their right to exist. And I think the corporate media is well beyond that point. And by the way, I don't like, from my perspective, I, I'm not flippantly making that comparison. I think it's a well earned comparison. I mean, the corporate media has lied the American people into war after war after war over the last 25 years. That is, I mean, millions of innocent people have been slaughtered over these conflicts which were, they weren't mistakes or things they got wrong, they were blatant lies. And some people in the corporate media may have just been parroting these lies and not known that these were lies. But all you got to look at, right, to understand, because I love talking about this, but all you got to look at is go Jet four star General Wesley Clark, who is on tape on Democracy now, saying that in 2001, he saw the plans that were not only to go topple the government of Iraq, but also Libya and Syria. And I think. I forget the other. I think Lebanon was in there and there's a whole list of countries ending in Iran that we were going to go topple all of these governments. And then years later, well, two years later, when we went into the war in Iraq, they said, oh, it's weapons of mass destruction. And he was in bed with, with Osama bin Laden. And then when we went to topple Gaddafi, they said, he's about to go genocidal against his own people. And then when we went to topple Assad, they said, oh, he's going genocidal against his own people. And they make up the lies to justify the plan that was already the plan from well before any of this, this nonsense was going on. And as a result of those wars, if you add them all up, it's in the millions of innocent people, trillions of dollars wasted, the whole region destabilized. Like, if that's not enough to say, yeah, you've lost your legitimacy, you've lost your right to exist. Especially when your role was supposedly to inform the public and the role. Because again, this is why I make the comparison to the Soviet Union. In theory, your role was to help the working class. Your role was to be the champion of the people, and you've been the greatest enemy of the people. Well, then, I'm sorry, there's no writing that ship. The correct answer is to abolish that institution.

A (28:40)

Well, they're committing such sepuku, I think, that people are losing faith in them. You know, I think about the last five years or so, I find myself being very sort of non conspiratorial, very, like, hopeful about institutions. I still think universities got a strong place to play, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And for me, right, canary in the coal mine, who's got fucking lungs of steel to withstand this stuff. I'm like, yeah, they suck. Like, they absolutely suck. And I just. It's been face plant after face plant after face plant. And yeah, when it crosses over, I've got this rule, the parental clout gauge. So a story hasn't reached real mainstream significance when it's on the front page of the New York Times, when it's trending on Twitter, it's when your dad messages you about it on Facebook Messenger. Like, that's when it's really broken through like, he sent me a message not long ago saying, I see your friend Mr. Rogan is in the news again. I'm like, holy fuck. Like this has really, really broken through another one a couple of years, 18 months ago, that Andrew Tate spelled T A I T. That Andrew Tate's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? I'm like, fucking, wow, Tate, you really, you really reach global domination because you've managed to get my dad in the northeast of England. But yeah, and I would get the sense that even he is like, yeah, this doesn't really feel right that much anymore. So, yeah, maybe they're not going to learn and I don't know, maybe Substack and the Free Press and live streams and all the rest of it, maybe that's going to be the next sort of media landscape. But I feel like there's a lot of stepping up, up to be done there in terms of sort of the volume. Another point that I'm sure you've heard talked about before. I'd love to get your take on the boring stories that get covered. You know, there is still a place for like meteorological insights and surveys on like really, really boring stuff that the press kind of still has a holdover and you hopefully they're not fucking about with what's happening with the weather or whatever, but maybe they are, but with that, like, you know, who's going to come in and who's going to fill that hole? Who's going to fill that vacuum? So, yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of changes to be made. Another trend that we've been seeing recently is exit this departure of journalists and users from X. What do you think of this and the move to Blue sky and sort of the social media landscape and how that's going to get partitioned.

B (31:16)

Yeah, well, I mean, I think there's this which I think, you know, if you, if you think back to like around 2016, 2017, when there, you know, when it, when, whenever it was that like the, you remember the Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson and like the, the kind of like owning College kids video first destroys. Yes. You know, what used to be like the, that Snoop Dog song would come on glasses and they'd be smoking. Yeah. But back and, and one of the things that I actually think for the time, I think it was really necessary and kind of a great thing. I, I think you got to move out of that realm of just owning 20 year olds at a certain point. But like, but there was something about it where you would just see it was like a window for the rest of us who weren't at, at universities to be like, wow, there has been this tremendous atrophy where no one, no one's pushing back on any of these ideas and so they haven't strengthened them. And time they're confronted with someone pushing back on it like they literally have nothing. They have nothing. I like, you know, it would be as simple as like some 19 year old would be like, you know, I was born a man, but I identify as a woman. And like Ben Shapiro would be like, how come you're not a tree? And you know, like, oh my God, he owned her or him or whatever. And there's just this, this dynamic where there's, there's been a tremendous weakening and that, you know, it's just like, it's like anything else. It's like if you haven't been to the gym in years and you're, and you're weak and your muscles have, have all gone through atrophy, well, the only answer is you got to start lifting heavy things again. You got to pick up heavy stuff and put it back down and that's the way you'll recover and get stronger. And so that's kind of like where we have to go going forward, no matter who, no matter what side we're talking about. I'm sorry, remind me of your question. I kind of spaced on that where.

A (33:16)

I had exit going to blue sky.

B (33:18)

I'm sorry. So anyway, so just with all these people leaving, it just, it seems like that to me again, it's like, yeah, after Elon Musk came in and bought Twitter and kind of was like, no, this isn't going to be a controlled environment. You've seen that a lot of these people, they rely on that. They rely on the fact that their, their opposition is going to be censored or kicked off and they can't actually compete in the marketplace of ideas. And so if those people want to remove themselves from the conversation, fin. But it's, that's not going to change the dynamic, I don't think. I mean, that's not going to change which shows have big audiences, which accounts have big audiences, and if they want to go there, you know, I've saw it. What was it? One of the pollsters who got this election all wrong was like, I'm leaving and going to blue sky. It's like, what to go get things wrong by yourself? Okay, have fun. You know.

A (34:14)

Yeah, it's weird, man, because if you just say the headline, richest man in the world, Buys social media website and then endorses candidate and pushes him to 200 million people. Like just that headline is like, fuck like that. I don't know, that sounds like a lot. But on the flip side of it, so many people on the left were happy with the finger being pressed on the scale when it was going in the other direction. And the question now is, is, well, okay, is the sense that people have of Twitter becoming very right leaning and the suppression of people on the left and all the rest of it, is that it? Or is this just a move back to balance? And what you're doing is it's like going from cold water to lukewarm water that feels really hot because you were just so used to having this situation before. And it's like, well, I don't know, the people that were getting suppressed or having their accounts deleted for misgendering people or misnaming people or all of that stuff. Restrictions, all of the stuff that came out, they stuck about for the most part. Yeah, it was gab and truth social, but everybody kind of still played in the pool. And it does feel a little bit like, well, I don't know if as soon as a loss occurs, everyone's like Cartman, like, screw you guys. I'm going home to Blue sky or wherever else, I don't know. But the fracturing and the fragmenting and this sort of of siloing of different groups in different social medias, I wonder what that does because it's going to make your own echo chamber and your own bias even worse. The algorithm already does that. Your followers already do that. You don't even have the offset now of outrage stuff that comes in, apart from, I guess maybe things from other platforms put across onto yours. But then when you see the replies of that, everybody agrees with me. So I wonder whether the myopia on both sides is going to increase more given that people are going to cross pollinate. The misunderstanding that everybody has of everybody else's views also going to increase more because you never get to see a reasonable take. You never have a discussion that brings that, that volume down. Although maybe you weren't having that before. In any case. I don't know.

B (36:19)

No, I mean, it's a. I agree with all of what you're saying. And you know, just to the, to the first part there, you know, I sure, I could see looking at it on paper and going, hey, the richest man in the world bought this platform. He throws his capital and his influence behind a political candidate. And I could understand people having an aversion to that. But the truth is that that is just the way of politics, whether you like that or not. I mean, over well over 100 years. So what was it, 1912 when Woodrow Wilson ran for president, he was funded by the big bankers and then he got in there and signed the Federal Reserve act into law. It's like the most blatant example of like they're going to give you money to win this race and then you're going to get in there and give them control over the nation's credit supply, which still is the craziest freaking thing in the world. That is just kind of accepted now as that's just how modern nation states operate, I guess. But that private banking interests get to print out of thin air money, they get to create money and then lend it to the big banks at next to no interest so that they can take that money and lend it out at interest to the American people or the British people or whatever government. We all have central banks. It's like the most blatant scam in the world. And this goes on all the time. And so if Elon Musk was doing that so that Donald Trump could pass Policy X that would give Elon Musk billions more dollars, I would certainly be opposed to that. It's a little bit different if he's just doing it because he believes in the candidate. And by the way, I mean, you know, if you're talking about giving Donald Trump a whole bunch of money in order to get a policy that you want, I think Miriam Adelson would be the one to look at, not Elon Musk. And obviously George, Now Alex Soros do the same thing for Democrats. So yeah, I mean, that's the game. For better or for worse. But. And mostly for worse. But to your point, I really do, like in deep in my soul, I totally feel the same way as you and I feel like everybody should be on these platforms together because we got to share a country. So we might as well all be having this argument together. The thing of it is, is that it's not like we were having that, that wasn't the dynamic. But if anybody from say the, I mean, look, I, you know, I debated Chris Cuomo, I debate anybody else from the corporate media. If they want to do, if they want to come engage in this conversation in a good faith manner, okay, let's do it. And it's not just me. I know I speak for you when I say that. And lots of other people that we'd be like more than Happy to have. So if they want to do it, that's fine. But they're also in any type of relationship, like, there has to be standards. And just unifying for the sake of unifying is never a positive in human inter social, you know, relationships. And like, it's if. If your wife was like, if you hit me, I'm leaving you, and you hit her, like, that's a reasonable standard for her to have. And, like, be like, no, sorry, you have to not do that in order for us to be together. And so my thing is kind of like, after, like, all the years of censorship and all of the years of, like, Covid tyranny and all of this other stuff, it's like, okay, hey, if you want to come be a part of this conversation where I'm arguing that you got all of that wrong and it was evil what you did, then fine, come prove me wrong. But if you don't want to do that and you'd rather leave, fine. But the standard is going to be that neither side gets censored. At least that's how I'd like to see it. I've never been, and I don't know anybody, anyone who was like, a critic of the COVID insanity, who was saying that the people pushing lockdowns should be be censored or that the people who are pushing the vaccine should be censored. All of them were saying, let's have this debate. So I do see an asymmetry here where there's one side that's quite happy to have the debate and the other side that relies on censorship. So if that side now has lost the ability to censor, and their response to that is like, well, I'm leaving. Like, the husband. The husband being like, well, if I can't hit you, then I'm leaving. Well, like, well, okay then. Well, then, okay, the door's right there. You know, I don't know what to say.

A (40:40)

Yeah. This MSNBC story with Lake and Riley, have you been tracking this?

B (40:45)

I saw that Rogan tweeted out the headline of it, but I have not read the article.

A (40:51)

Basically, the fact that this person was an illegal immigrant. He was an immigrant. In the headline of the story, all of the pressure and all of the attention is placed on how he never stood a chance and how unfair it was that he was prosecuted and persecuted in the manner that he was. A person who killed somebody else, not only somebody else, but an American citizen, not only killed somebody else who was American citizen, but did it as an illegal immigrant. And all of this stuff has just been buried, buried, buried. New York Times with that fruit loops fact check thing about rfk. It's like the difference between the American version and the Canadian version. It's not that different except for the red 40 and the yellow 3 and the BHT lining inside of the bat and this fucking. The view with this dragon believer thing about Rogan. So for all of my whimsical British sentimentality about, you know, Dave, maybe they're not too far gone. Maybe we can. I'm like, guys, I'm. I fucking. This is. I can't burden. I can't bear this burden anymore. I cannot shoulder this weight. Just continual. Nothing learned. Nothing fucking learned at all. And you know what it feels like? It feels. It feels boomery. It feels like someone who just does not have their finger on the pulse of what is going on. And that's where I'm like, are you this fucking dull? Are you this. This uninformed about everything? Because your only job is to be informed.

B (42:22)

Yeah.

A (42:22)

And apparently so. Which makes me think that it has to be be complicity. It has to be some degree of cowardice or coordination or. Or compliance as opposed to ignorance. I'm like, you, you can't be this stupid.

B (42:40)

Well, and also, I mean, I think a lot of it is just being stuck in your ways. You know that old saying, you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Like, there's a lot of wisdom to that. I don't know about you. Like, I feel it the older I get. I mean, I remember being like 20 and it's almost like everything is a possibility. You don't even know who you're going to become as a person. But the older you get, you're kind of like, yeah, I know. I know who I am. And we're not changing that at this point. Like, sorry, we're far. We're far past that. I mean, I could tinker around the edges a little bit, but, you know, and I mean, the New York Times, what was that? I could. I saw someone. Actually, I first saw it because someone posted like just a screenshot of the text and I read it and then I was like, I got to go pull up this article. There's no way. There's just no way that this was actually the show. But he got that wrong. They literally say he got that wrong. And then the next sentence is how he got it right. It's just unbelievable. But I think so many of these guys, it's just like, this is what they've been doing forever and this is what I was saying before. It's. It's really, it's stunning. But the inability to grapple with this new situation and that the facts on the ground have changed and you are just going to pretend that it's the same old world. And particularly when. When the disparity in audience is so large, you know, like, it's like you're not even winning.

A (44:00)

You're still doing this thing and you're not even winning.

B (44:02)

Yeah, like, let's say, let's say you do a show and it gets like 2 million, you know, views an episode. And I do a show and it gets like 2000 views an episode and you're going to lie about me. You're going to say, hey, you know, Dave believes all these things that I don't really believe. Well, the morality of that aside, that's a fairly effective strategy because a lot of people are just going to hear from you and they're not going to hear when I respond to you. But if I've got 2 million and you've got 2,000 and your strategy is to lie about me, well, that's a really stupid strategy because so many more people are going to hear the truth and the few who hear you are going to know that you're lying. And so it's just like that. It's right in front of you where you're like, what do you think? Are you still acting? And, you know, I remember in my lifetime when that was the case, when they had a monopoly on him information and they could just lie about people if they wanted to remove them. They could just tell you, this guy's a racist. Don't, don't listen to him anymore.

A (44:56)

I mean, look, the Rogan N Word video was the. My favorite example of that, because what the media tries to do, and this is one of my least favorite sort of parts of the Internet, is to take an indiscretion, which may be an error or maybe actually something that they commissioned to do that they meant to say, and say, first off, this is what they meant to say, so there's no such thing as misspeaking. Secondly, after that, they say, this is not one small isolated perspective or an error. This is indicative of an entire ideology. This is the tip of the iceberg. And below it is just bigotry and sewage and transphobia and racism and white supremacy and whatever, whatever, whatever slime they want to throw at you. But the difference with the Rogan position was the media was saying, this is the tip of the iceberg. And millions, hundreds of millions of people were saying, I've seen the whole iceberg. I've watched 500, a thousand, multiple thousands of hours of this guy. And I. I don't think that you're right. And that the ability to take a single indiscretion error vector from somebody who is speaking a lot, like, inevitably there's going to be errors that come out. And saying, not only did they mean to say it, but, and this is indic. Proves that they're the transphobe, bigot, xenophobe, racist, whatever that we always knew that they were. It's like, it's such a tired fucking playbook. And it really bores me. And on top of that, it makes me concerned, it makes me tread more carefully because I think, oh, God, like, what if. What if this minor misspeak. What if the way that I put this particular sentence together is constructed incorrectly and then construed in a manner that somebody else can use? I'm like, this is not. It's not fucking cool.

B (46:51)

No. 100%, man. And just like. So to your point about having seen the entire iceberg, I think that's so spot on. And particularly with something like the Joe Rogan experience, where the guy has, you know, I feel like. Because I've done Joe's podcast so many times at this point, I feel like his. His. I think his listeners have that relationship with me because it's just when you go there, it's. It's a. You know, you talk for three hours and people really. It's not like doing a nightly news show where you come on and there's this energy of like, I'm performing the news now, you know, hello, everybody, and welcome to the nightly News at abc. And our top story, you know, it's. It's not like that. It's not scripted. It's a conversation. People are going to hear the things that I want to rant about, that I want to talk about. You're also going to see me in a situation where. Where Joe just throws something at me that I. I wasn't expecting. And you'll see how my mind works and how I think about things, how I take in new information and all. And you sat there for three hours and really got to know. And I've done the show, like, a bunch of times, but Joe's done every single one of them. Like the fans who are fans of Joe Rogan, they listen to him for nine hours a week in their head like they know him. You know, I get people all the. Because we're Good friends. And they'll be like, oh, what's Joe Rogan like? And you're like, you know what Joe Rogan's like. What do you. That's what Joe Rogan's like, by the way, for anyone I've. How much time you've spent with him. But that's what he's like. He's like, exactly what you know. He's exactly the same. There's no act being put on. And so when people, millions and millions and millions of people who have consumed like hundreds and hundreds of hours of his content, you're going to say, like, oh, we got to cancel this guy. Like, you might as well be telling me, me, I got to cancel my wife? Or something like that. Like, what? No, I knew all, all the stuff you're talking about. I already knew and I knew everything else about it too. So it's just not going to happen. Like, this just is not. It's not possible for you to like, get in between that very authentic relationship that he has with his, his audience.

A (48:55)

I think what else that does. And it can be whichever media form you like, you know, even substack to some degree, the sort of frictionlessness that people are able to publish regular blogs on, whether it's reflections are stuff from science, the, you know, daily vlogs. I love the fact that a lot of vlog editing now seems to be moving down from the whole limbic hijack thing. Sam Suk and his like 45 minute chest and back workout video, which is essentially unedited. Right. There's no fluff, there's no, there's no nothing. There's no curation. I think what all of this does is it throws into very harsh light the much more curated, much more perverted, molested world of the person who. Joe Rogan's a dragon believer. And you're like, fucking what, dude? Like, you're so either malignant or out of touch. Those are the only two options. And both of those mean that I shouldn't listen to you.

B (49:54)

Yeah. And this has always been one of the worst things about, about, you know, which you kind of touched on just now. But one of the worst things about political correctness or like wokeism, as it's called now, is that it does like, when you set up this system where there's like, there's like third rails everywhere that you're not allowed to touch, and if you touch them, you're supposed to be ruined now. And that is supposed to define everything about you that is, you know, it's. That Might work for really dumb people, but for anybody who's at all intellectually curious, it's like you, you need people who get things wrong sometimes. And some of the most interesting thinkers who I've always loved reading, you know, they get certain things very wrong, but that same person might get something else right in a way that you're like, wow, I never thought about it like that before. There's a lot of figures like this who are kind of like, like, you know, very provocative thinkers who might say four things and one of them you kind of agree with, the second one you think is dead wrong, the third one you think is wildly offensive, and the fourth one you think is brilliant and you've never thought of things in that way before, you know, and like, who wants to get rid of that person? Those are the best people. Like, those are the ones who are really fun to like, read through and kind of, you know, stretch your own brain by thinking about what they're thinking about and what you agree and what you don't agree. And I hate, and not just hate, but I like very bitterly resent anyone who ever tries to make me live my life that way, who tried to make me be like, well, I'm a little bit concerned about talking about this topic because people might think I'm a bad person. And in fact, part of the reason why those types of people are so important is because when, when it really hits the fan and there's like totalitarianism is on the rise and everybody's falling in line, well, who is going to be, who's going to have the personality type to stand up and be like, no, I'm against all of this. It's not the conformist conventional thinker, you know, it's the people who are outside of the box. And so yeah, Joe definitely has some views that are outside of the box and he likes getting into conspiracies and he likes talking about like all this stuff. But at the same time, that's, I think, to most people who listen, at least that's part of what makes it so fun and interesting. Interesting what?

A (52:20)

You've mentioned libertarianism a couple of times there. As a card carrying member, what do you make of the, would you make of the place of the Libertarian Party and that sort of position at the moment? Because it seems to me like the right is going down and the left is going up, so you've got sort of this split. But I assume to you there is more down to be done and less right that would be, that would be.

B (52:46)

Used, useful well, yeah, I mean, I think that the way I look at it is that. I think so. I mean, I'm, I'm a libertarian. Forget the party. I'm a libertarian in terms of my worldview, because I think that the greatest struggle in the history of humanity is between tyranny and liberty. And I think that liberty is the, is the key to a moral and prosperous society and that governments are agents of aggress and that they bring. They bring nothing but destruction, especially when they're out of control and not reigned in, as most current governments in the west are. In terms of the party, there is, you know, third party politics in the United States of America is. The entire system is rigged against third parties. And so there's, you know, the prospects of, like, the Libertarian Party out taking, taking over the Republican Party or something like that is not happening anytime soon. I did think that Angela McArdle, who's the chair of the party, did a phenomenal job this year in really kind of reimagining the role of this third party that is pro liberty and was able to get a bunch of concessions, maybe isn't the right word, but assurances from Donald Trump before he won, and hopefully he comes through on at least some of those. But I think that, I think that what, you know, I. What the country needs is liberty, and what, and what the world needs is liberty, but particularly, you know, in the United States of America, which is what I know the most about. I mean, even in Donald Trump's, you know, like this. Drain the swamp, clean out Washington of corruption. Well, I think the libertarians have a lot to add had here in, in an understanding that the, the essence of the corruption in Washington, D.C. is that the government is so big. That's really why it is so corrupt. Like, definitionally, that's why when you have a government that's spending, I think we're going to top $7 trillion this year. Is the biggest, most powerful organization in the history of the world. And they, they get their money through the threat of force. I mean, it's not like it's a big company that just has a product that everyone wants to buy. They get their money because they say, you pay us or we will throw you in jail. And then they print the money which robs your value from you, or they can borrow the money which is just a promise to tax you in the future. Well, when you have that, you have an organization that is extracting wealth from the American people and then handing them out to their political cronies. And this is why there's more millionaires in the suburbs of Washington, Washington, D.C. than there is anywhere else in the world. World. That's the corruption. That's it right there. And so the only answer to this is drastic cuts in government spending, which I will say with, like, the Doge stuff. I know it's not, like, an official government department, but it does make me excited that that is at least, you know, inserting that idea into the consciousness of the American people that, like, this is what draining the swamp actually looks like.

A (55:58)

Yeah, it must be terrifying. Fine. If you're one of these lots of skeletons in your closet, middle management, bullshit, government bureaucrat people. It must be like the specter of an autistic guy and an Indian guy bearing down upon you. Must be like, oh, my fucking God.

B (56:21)

Yeah. And especially like an autistic and an Indian genius. Like, they're not even just random guys. You're like, oh, man, these guys are really good at getting stuff done, too. Yeah, I think there's a lot of that. And I think, look, I think this really explains why there was such an insanely hostile attitude toward Donald Trump since 2016. And, you know, I know Joe's played on his podcast a bunch of times, but a bunch of people love to look at, like, Donald Trump on the View right before he had won the primaries. And, like, he wasn't that guy. He wasn't a guy who everyone had an allergy to and thought was the next hit Hitler. It wasn't until he started saying, drain the swamp, and it actually looked like he was going to win and maybe even mean it and try to do it, that all of a sudden you had this hysteria come from D.C. and I think what you just said explains it perfectly. Like, that he just terrified all of these people who on some level, know that they're parasites and on some level know that they do not perform a useful service that they could voluntarily get money for.

A (57:28)

We saw Elon do this at Twitter, right? He got rid of some absurd percentage, and it was just him and, like, 20 Asian guys sleeping onto the desk. I remember that selfie when he first. He first started taking over. Yeah, I. It'll be really interesting. I've been thinking a lot. I had this conversation with Shapiro a few months ago about what a lot of the right has done for the last five years or so has been the sort of rebellious voice of righteousness. You know, you're able to push back against overreach and political correctness and victimhood, ideology and identity politics, so on and so forth, and now that everything that you could want has happened, you have the much more difficult task, which is to actually fucking deliver check change. You have to actually make something happen. And you can't just complain from the sidelines about why is this not happening and so on and so forth. And that was a huge part of the failure that Kamala had coming in. It's like, are you a change candidate or do you have legitimacy because you've already been in office? Well, if you go after the record, the record's fucking dog shit. And if you're a change candidate, you need to throw your old boss under the bus. So you don't. It was very difficult, it was a very difficult position for her to play. And you heard this like, what would you have done? Or what would you wish that Biden had done differently? Or what would you have done differently? And she gives this like guffawing, 45 minute roundabout of nothing. But, yeah, I really am interested if, as it may be true, the sort of wokeness will be retracted not just from the mocking it gets from the other side, but even from the left are like, look, the fucking first thing of being of doing government is to get in power. We didn't manage to do that. We need to change tack a little bit. And if that means that there are fewer places for, you know, commentariat on the right to push back against for sort of the sort of news stories that create those myth of martyrdom flags that get planted in the ground, I wonder, I wonder what difference in the dynamic we're going to see over the next sort of four years. Because that rebellious nature speaking, truth to power thing, you don't really get to do that. You're, you are power. You're fucking in power. Make something happen.

B (59:40)

Yeah, no question. I mean, it's a, it's very easy to criticize something and it's much harder to build something. And particularly if you're talking about, you know, draining the swamp, if you're talking about cutting down on the corruption in Washington D.C. you're talking about taking on the most powerful entrenched interests in the history of the world who are very prepared to fight for what they have. They're not going to give it up voluntarily and they're not going to give it up easily. And, you know, you can already see a lot of this happening where, you know, say, like Donald Trump might say on the campaign trail, oh, we're going to deport all the illegal immigrants. And even he just reaffirmed the other day, we'll use the military to deport all of them. You're like, ok, that's very easy to say. Try implementing that, because you are going to get resistance on every level, and not just on, like, you know, like local law enforcement in blue areas, but activists, the media. Every story of some, you know, humanitarian catastrophe that happens along the way is going to be blown out of proportion.

A (60:52)

Mistreatment of some poor migrant that's been evicted and separated from their child, etc.

B (60:58)

Which inevitably will happen if you are actually trying to deport every single illegal immigrant. And so then, whereas that might be great campaign rhetoric, then you have to make a whole different calculation when you get in there, which is like, okay, how do we actually accomplish this? And, and this was really the failure of Donald Trump in his first term, is that he didn't have any idea. He had absolutely no plan. I mean, like, he may have had some ideas in his head about how we'll do this, but I don't think he ever really understood how deep the swamp was or what they would come after him with. It's like what they. And they did it to him right away. You know, Donald Trump ran in 2000, 2016 on let's have detente with Russia. This was a major theme in his 2016 campaign. He was like, you know, Vladimir Putin's in Syria because he wants to hunt down isis, because, ok, we also want to get isis. I don't care about overthrowing Bashar Al Assad. Let's get along with Russia. Let's make a deal. Let's kill the terrorists together, and then let's get out of the Middle East. We don't need to be there at all. He's like, ok, all right, that sounds good. That's a good campaign idea. And that would be a great policy if you could implement vent at. But then you're framed as being a Russian spy. Well, what are you going to do now? And this is how they. What are you going to do now? You're going to go make a deal with Russia? Because that would have just been proof to the American people that you are, in fact, a Russian spy. Wait a minute. The whole media is saying you're a Russian spy and now you want to make a deal with Vladimir Putin? So he couldn't do that, so he had to back off of that, you know, and, like, there's just, there's a lot of things like that that are. It's much easier to be in my business business than it is to be in Donald Trump's business. And in his business, he actually has to figure out how you can manipulate this machine in a way that you can get things done. That's no easy task. I'm certainly not going to sit here and pretend that I have all the answers of how to do that. I don't think the answer is giving Marco Rubio the State Department, but that's just me. We'll see.

A (62:52)

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's funny to think about. I find it really fascinating that even Trump was kind of a bit surprised when he got into office the first time and didn't have anything prepared. Who are the staff that you're supposed to go through? What's the process that you're supposed to do with this? Even if fucking Hillary had got in, at least she's got like, you know, the husband can be like, hey, you know, this is kind of the way that it works. And then this was the whole, I guess, justified argument behind Project 2025, which is, hey, last time he got in and he had a blank piece of paper. We're just trying to kind of play a game plan. Even though I still don't know how, how much a part of that he was or wasn't. But this time, you know, you've been in this world for coming up on a decade. You've had on the ground experience. Last time you had all of the evidence that you've lost. You have everything that you need, and if it doesn't get delivered, that will be big egg on face.

B (63:50)

Yeah, for sure. And especially this time, coming in after this guy has been so burned by this system in every way you can. I mean, with the exception of Jack Kennedy, no American president has been more burned by the system. And so you got that. Now he also has not only a much bigger victory than in 2016, but he actually won the popular vote. And there also has been this incredible cultural shift where it seems to make me that kind of the, the shock troops on the ground, meaning the people, the kind of useful idiots, the young leftists who would protest Donald Trump, the antifa and black block and all those types, there just doesn't seem to be the same energy there. Like, maybe they're just tired. I think they've been distracted because they've been protesting the war in Gaza for the last year. And, and I think, first of all, I think they're right to protest that. I think it's an absolute outrage. But I think it's just very toug that when you've been protesting women and children being slaughtered all year, it's very hard to turn around and now protest. Tony Hinchcliffe cracking jokes at Madison Square Garden. It's just kind of, you know, it's. It's hard to get that energy going. But because of that, because, you know, in 2016, if Donald Trump had held a big event at Madison Square Garden, there'd have been tens of thousands of protesters outside. There was nothing. According to the Secret Service. I think there was like 100. No one showed up to protest. So, Don, all what I'm saying is that Donald Trump is uniquely set up this time to be able to get these things done. So if he can't get them done now, that's. That's a real shame. I don't know, maybe. Maybe the future will be even better, but. Or even a better opportunity. But at least in my lifetime, I've never seen an opportunity like he has right now. Control of the Congress, control of the Supreme Court, winning the popular vote. Not the same resistance behind you. You. Let's. Let's drain some swamps.

A (65:52)

Pressure is on. Dave Smith, ladies and gentlemen. Dave. Fucking awesome, man. I really appreciate you. I appreciate your work. Where should people go? Don't keep up to date with all the things that you do.

B (66:01)

Oh, part of the problem.com is that's what my. My podcast is, and all my stuff is there. And then I'm comic Dave Smith on Twitter, and, yeah, I'm all over the place. Part of the problem is my podcast. That's all. Thanks so much for having me, Chris. I really appreciate it.

A (66:16)

Appreciate you too. Cheers, man.