Scott Horton

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Scott Horton" on Part Of The Problem

Released: August 5, 2025
Host: Dave Smith
Guest: Scott Horton
Network: GaS Digital Network

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Part Of The Problem, host Dave Smith engages in an in-depth conversation with renowned libertarian and non-interventionist commentator Scott Horton. The discussion delves into current foreign policy issues, the evolution of media influence, and the shifting dynamics within the libertarian movement. Throughout the episode, Smith and Horton reflect on past and present events, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities facing advocates of a truly free nation.

Scott Horton's Influence and Contributions

Dave Smith opens by highlighting Scott Horton's pivotal role in shaping the libertarian and non-interventionist discourse. Horton is praised for his extensive work, including his acclaimed books—Enough Already, which critiques the terror wars, and Provoked, analyzing the conflict in Ukraine. Smith emphasizes Horton's comprehensive podcast, which boasts over 6,000 interviews, featuring influential figures like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul. [00:00]

“Scott has been to our entire libertarian, non-interventionist movement. I don't know where we would be without this guy.” – Dave Smith [00:00]

Horton introduces his latest venture, the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, which offers extensive courses on the Middle East, the new Cold War with Russia, and the history of Christian Zionism, among other topics. [01:55]

“We’re about to publish Creative Chaos Dos, which will be the most important book on the origins of the Syrian Dirty War 15 years ago.” – Scott Horton [106:30]

Shifting Political Landscape and Media Influence

A significant portion of the conversation centers on the burgeoning coalition of non-interventionist right-wing thinkers and their increasing prominence in mainstream media. Smith observes a notable shift where figures like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and others are channeling libertarian anti-war sentiments that resonate widely. This alignment is contrasted with the previous dominance of neoconservative narratives, which often justified military interventions under exaggerated threats. [06:20]

“There's just a really large coalition of non-interventionist right-wing types in the country today. It’s really unlike anything that we’ve ever seen before.” – Dave Smith [06:20]

Horton shares his experience recording a lengthy 10-hour podcast with Lex Friedman, highlighting the depth and breadth of their discussion on foreign policy, which underscores the evolving media landscape where long-form, substantive conversations are gaining traction over traditional, shorter formats. [06:20]

“We did all of 'Enough Already,' essentially, and every tangent in the world.” – Scott Horton [06:58]

Challenges to Traditional Propaganda and Smear Tactics

Smith and Horton critique the traditional methods of character assassination and propaganda that once effectively marginalized dissenting voices. They argue that in the age of social media, these tactics have lost their potency, often backfiring and inadvertently increasing the prominence of their targets. [74:13]

“They went to the well too many times. It’s just too low of a TR at this point. You just kind of can’t pull it and it’s backfiring.” – Scott Horton [82:10]

Horton emphasizes that without the ability to simply smear opponents out of existence, open and honest discourse has become more critical. This shift empowers libertarian voices to engage directly with broader audiences without the fear of being easily dismissed through traditional propaganda means. [72:00]

Current Foreign Policy Debates: Iran and Gaza

The episode delves deep into ongoing foreign policy conflicts, particularly focusing on Iran and the Gaza conflict. Smith criticizes the short-sightedness of policymakers who fail to achieve lasting resolutions, often resulting in cyclical violence and unresolved tensions. Horton underscores the dangers of misinformed policy decisions, drawing parallels to historical misjudgments during the Cold War. [15:39]

“If anybody listened to all 10 hours of this, you probably want to sign up for the Scott Horton Academy. I was able to keep your attention this long then.” – Scott Horton [09:24]

Both hosts express frustration with the persistence of war hawks who have consistently failed to foresee the long-term consequences of military interventions. They advocate for a more informed and cautious approach to foreign policy, emphasizing the importance of understanding complex geopolitical landscapes. [17:40]

The Role of Youth and New Media in Shaping Public Opinion

Smith and Horton discuss the pivotal role of younger generations and new media platforms in reshaping public opinion on war and foreign policy. The rapid dissemination of information through social media has democratized discourse, enabling more voices to be heard and challenging established narratives. This shift is seen as a double-edged sword, enhancing free speech while complicating the control over propaganda. [65:24]

“Life is like skateboarding, man. Generations come real fast, things change real quick.” – Scott Horton [65:41]

Horton reflects on the historical significance of media figures adapting to new platforms, noting how personalities like Tucker Carlson have effectively leveraged these tools to amplify anti-war messages, thereby building a consensus that was previously unattainable. [86:55]

Personal Reflections and Debates

The hosts share personal anecdotes about participating in debates and facing character attacks from opponents. Smith recounts his contentious debate with Alex Berenson, where he endured personal smears and attempts to tarnish his reputation. Both acknowledge the emotional toll of such encounters but remain steadfast in their commitment to honest discourse. [79:04]

“It just was a fun night of watching popcorn for all of my fans. Nothing more than that.” – Dave Smith [83:33]

Horton echoes these sentiments, expressing frustration with the ineffectiveness of smear tactics in the current media environment and highlighting the importance of maintaining integrity and resilience in the face of adversity. [82:38]

Future Prospects and Call to Action

As the episode concludes, Smith and Horton emphasize the importance of continued activism and engagement in shaping foreign policy. They advocate for listeners to contact their representatives, participate in democratic processes, and support movements that align with libertarian and non-interventionist principles. The hosts express optimism about the growing influence of informed, grassroots advocacy in countering established power structures. [104:05]

“This is a revolution. And I don't think it really even hit.” – Scott Horton [57:50]

Horton encourages listeners to explore his resources, including his substack and the Libertarian Institute, to further educate themselves and become active participants in the movement for a free nation. [105:53]

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Notable Quotes

• Dave Smith [00:00]: “Scott has been to our entire libertarian, non-interventionist movement. I don't know where we would be without this guy.”

• Scott Horton [01:55]: “We’re about to publish Creative Chaos Dos, which will be the most important book on the origins of the Syrian Dirty War 15 years ago.”

• Dave Smith [06:20]: “There's just a really large coalition of non-interventionist right-wing types in the country today. It’s really unlike anything that we’ve ever seen before.”

• Scott Horton [06:58]: “We did all of 'Enough Already,' essentially, and every tangent in the world.”

• Scott Horton [82:10]: “They went to the well too many times. It’s just too low of a TR at this point. You just kind of can’t pull it and it’s backfiring.”

• Dave Smith [09:24]: “If anybody listened to all 10 hours of this, you probably want to sign up for the Scott Horton Academy. I was able to keep your attention this long then.”

• Scott Horton [65:41]: “Life is like skateboarding, man. Generations come real fast, things change real quick.”

• Dave Smith [83:33]: “It just was a fun night of watching popcorn for all of my fans. Nothing more than that.”

Conclusion

This episode of Part Of The Problem offers a thorough exploration of the intersection between libertarian ideals, foreign policy, and the transformative impact of new media. Dave Smith and Scott Horton provide a nuanced analysis of contemporary global conflicts, the diminishing effectiveness of traditional propaganda, and the empowering role of grassroots movements. Listeners are encouraged to engage deeply with the topics discussed, utilizing available resources to advocate for a more informed and free society.

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For more insights and resources discussed in this episode, visit Scott Horton's Substack and the Libertarian Institute.

Transcript

[Dave Smith]

Foreign what's up? What's up, everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. I am Dave Smith and we are thrilled to be joined, as we always are, by the great Scott Horton. It's, it's just hard I, it's hard for me to overstate how just important to figure, you know, Scott has been to like our, our entire, you know, the whole libertarian, non interventionist movement. I don't know where we would be without this guy who of course wrote the best book on the terror wars called Enough Already and the best book on the war in Ukraine called Provoked. Also his. I mean, if you, if you want to really understand American foreign policy, there's no better resource. I mean, go. The Scott Horton show has over 6,000 interviews. They're all up for free. You can check out all of them. I, from, I from time to time do go back and listen to some of the old ones. Particular the Pat Buchanan and the Ron Paul interviews were always just so good. And it's, it's really so interesting how literally just I think a couple weeks ago I was listening to one of the Pat Buchanan ones and you know, it's in 2011 or whatever and you're talking about the latest thing, but so much of the conversation is like completely relevant to today still, and it's still so interesting. And then of course, you know, you're talking about the conflict and you're kind of seeing, oh yeah, this is how it all played out since then. Anyway, I highly recommend checking that out and of course, I just want to make sure to, before we get started to plug a couple other things because I'm not sure, I can't remember if last time we were on the show we promoted that. You and Daryl Cooper are now doing your own podcast together, also called Provoked. We did, I think we did mention it, but now it's out and there's several episodes and it's just really fun in its groove. It's such a great show. And then of course you have the, the Academy. I don't know if that, if that is up and running yet or is that to be out soon almost.

[Scott Horton]

First of all, thanks, man. And yeah, it's the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. It's my own little liberty classroom Tom Wood set up for me here. And. But yeah, so it's me doing two big courses on the Middle east and the new Cold War with Russia. And then I got great James Bovard on 40 years of investigative journalism on all kinds of things, Ramsey Barud on Israel, Palestine. Bill Buford on how America lost every war since 1945. C.J. kilmer on how Woodrow Wilson is the worst person who ever lived. And we're talking like eight hour courses on Woodrow Wilson. Eight hour courses on all these things or longer.

[Dave Smith]

Better.

[Scott Horton]

Mine are much longer. And, and then Tom woods has brought on a new guy. I forgot the guy's name, but I don't know much about it yet. But it's going to be about the history of Christianity and sort of the new fangled invention of pre. Millennial, pre millennialist dispensationalism, the Darbyite, you know, Christian Zionism invented in the late 19th century. There's. And so, so we're gonna learn a hell of a lot about that too. And so if people go to Scott hortonacademy.com and you watch a cool little video that Dan Smots made to get you excited and then put your email address in there and you'll be the first to know. And I really hope that we're gonna have the first courses that will go up this month.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, it's, it's. I was, I was really excited about this when you, when you first told me you were doing it because it's just like, for a few reasons, I mean, it's just, it's a great tool to like, for people who love your stuff and you know, watch, say, like, they always love when you're on my podcast or Tom's podcast or whatever, or, you know, they know you from Tucker, they know you from Lex or whatever it might be. It's just like, you're like, hey, you want to do the deep dive now and really learn your shit? This is like, you have this tool. And then particularly, I just think for like any, for the, the younger people out there who are maybe like, in our broader world and maybe aspiring to be people, them who host shows or do other things or something. It's like, oh, dude, this is the perfect, like, boot camp for our team of like, dude, just get through this and you'll really know your, like on, on a next, next level. I mean, you could listen to one Scott Horton podcast and probably be above 90% of the general public, but this is like, where you could really, really know what you're talking about, which is, you know, important. Especially now, you know, me and you, Scott, we've been, it's kind of interesting. We're like, on this, you know, professional, you know, journey together in a lot of ways. And me and you have been good friends now for a long time and we're both, you know, we're both much bigger than we ever were before. Just more followers and more people listening and we're doing shows with bigger and bigger audiences. And it's just, you know, you kind of, I was thinking about this earlier today that, you know, it really is, you know, you go back a bit further in this libertarian business than me by I guess about 10 years further. You were like in the, in the mid-90s and I was like in the mid-2000s. But it is kind of crazy that we're just in this position now and I guess me and you kind of, you know, rising a little bit and how known we are as part of it too, that you, you take a step back and you do look now and you're like, wow, there is just like, there is a really large coalition of non interventionist right winger types in the country today. It's really unlike anything that we've ever seen before. Like, like this, our stuff is winning, at least the minds, certainly not any of the minds in power. But our, like, our arguments are kind of winning and having their day and being heard more than ever before. I mean, you know, the more I listen to, I've been listening to like Tucker Carlson just had a bunch of like great podcasts in a row where it's like between you and then having Daryl back on, and he had Segar and Jetty on, who was great, and then he had John Mearsheimer on, who was great, nearly. He just listened to them. They're like, dude, there's like no distance between us almost at this point. I'm sure we could find some finer points, but like, there's. It's. They're so with us. And anyway, so I guess I'm rambling all of this to go. I know you just recorded how long was your podcast with Lex Friedman the other day. And it's just kind of cool that it seems like, it seems like these ideas are starting to, to really take hold like we've never seen before.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, well, it was 10 hours. In fact, I got up today and started looking at my email and some neuron went off and said, oh, you know what? You never answered his question about the Iran war. Because I said, wait, hold that thought. We got to talk about Somalia. And then from there we did the Cold War stuff and we never went back to the Iran war. So you saw hell, well, what do you want to do, man? I mean, we did have the debate with Dubowitz there that we already talked about a lot of that. But like I guess we could record a little more. I said, all right, I'm on my way over there, man. I'll see a little while. So I went, we record another 40 minutes today that we're gonna punch into the middle of the interview. Jeez.

[Dave Smith]

Wow.

[Scott Horton]

But so we did all of enough already, essentially, and every tangent in the world. Like, with Tucker, it was like, okay, I got three hours max here. Like, I already know. Pushing it there. I gotta like stay on track. Lex Freeman was like, no track. Let's take every tangent, dude. Let's go on whatever we want to talk about, dude. Who's Jalaluddin Hakani?

[Dave Smith]

Let's just.

[Scott Horton]

Whatever. That's a bad example. That wasn't one. But let's just take. What. No, no time limit, right? The YouTube time limit is 12 hours. Let's just. And I told him, hey, I'm down to. For whatever, man. I'll talk about whatever. So we just went all the way through it and took every tangent and went down every culdesac and then came back again. And. And it was cool. It's like, oh, man, it's almost 1 in the morning. Probably about quitting time. And so, yes, Longest interview probably either of us have ever done on either end, you know, there.

[Dave Smith]

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[Scott Horton]

We're really running out of time. The. We gave relatively short shrift to the Cold War with Russia. You know, we didn't really do like Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, like all the way through the way I might have liked to. So you get. But I did say at the end of that, I was like, all right, if anybody listened to all 10 hours of this, you probably want to sign up for the Scott Horton Academy. I was able to keep your attention this long then. Yeah. And I'm not sure how people are going to react to it. They're either gonna, you know, on Twitter, people are just LMAO or whatever, but I don't know if they're gonna think, well, this is, this guy is just a blowhard who likes hearing himself talk and that's why it's so long. Or if they're gonna be like, wow, Lex is interested and I'm interested as long as he is. And I mean, we are talking about substantive stuff most of the time. He asked me about myself a little bit in the middle, but mostly we're just talking about the things. And so, yeah, I don't know, the book's long too, but people are reading it cover to cover and having a good time with it. You know what I mean? I'm getting those. Like, man, I didn't think I could do it, but I actually knocked this thing out in a week, no problem.

[Dave Smith]

So, yeah, dude, I mean, I think, you know, one of the things, the reason why I kind of brought the two points up that I did leading into it is that it did, it did just feel to me like there's, I don't know, I'm just. Again, you know, there's some polling data that really backs this up too, but I have kind of, I know this is somewhat anti scientific sounding thing to say, but I have kind of found over the last few years that just like what I observe in the country and the trends is, is a better, you know, like, predictor than these, these polls even are at times. Like, it was so easy to see in, in 2024 that like Trump is leading big, even though all the polls were saying, oh, it's like dead even. You're like, no, it's not. I, I don't know. I Don't. And then we find out that they, the, the private Biden campaign polls had him like, losing like every electoral vote, you know, but it's, you know, I've been talking about this a lot on the show, like going to the Charlie Kirk event when I went to Turning Point usa and I'm going so hard against Israel and against Trump, and like a huge faction of the crowd is completely on my side. Like, not like a super majority, but certainly like twice as many people are cheering as are booing, you know, and this is at Charlie Kirk's event. You know what I'm saying? Like, this is not at Ron Paul's event. And, and then you see like all of these things. Like, you know, you see Piers Morgan, how he went from being like an Israel supporter to like the most hardcore critic now just exposing them every day.

[Scott Horton]

He had me on last week, too. He let me debate Wesley Clark for the third time.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, yeah, it was great. It was really. That was actually very good. And. Yeah, but so there's just. Right, like, there's a thing where now you have this show with Piers Morgan, it's like getting like huge, huge numbers on YouTube. And every day it seems like now it's just, it's the Zionists are getting shredded kid show. And then it's like, you know, even. And I guess the thing with Lex, it just. And I really am not, I'm not saying this to criticize Lex the same way. I'm not saying it to criticize Piers Morgan. I'm just saying that, like, the way it went down where like, you get on the show and have this contentious debate where Lex kind of seems to be kind of. Look, I want to be as charitable as I can here, but kind of seems to be putting his finger on the scales a little bit and not in your favor. And then you were a little not happy about the way and like, the responses like to immediately have you back and now do this crazy long episode. And I just see a lot of these things. Like, all I'm saying is that it. It just seems like, dude, the people have shifted so much on this issue that now everybody's kind of got to deal with this new market demand of like, no, no, no, you don't get to just like, shut down the anti war voices and, and, you know, I think there's a lot of reasons for that. I think we have better arguments and we've been winning the arguments. And I, I think also just what's happening is so horrible, but also it's just like I don't know. The Warhawks have been wrong about everything for 25 years. And like, you know, blatantly for 25 years. And they were wrong before that many times. But, like, there's, you know, and, and it's funny, even like with the Iran thing, they try to jump on us. Oh, you guys were alarmists. See, it wasn't that big of a deal, but it'll be people who are like, dude, you're sitting on 25 years of being catastrophically wrong about everything. You know, and that, I don't know, it just feels like there's a major shift going on.

[Scott Horton]

Look, Doug McGregor says time wins more arguments than reason. And so the fact of the matter is that, like, who could deny you should have all been anti war.com this whole time? Dude, what can you say? You know what I mean? And, like, on. Even on the Iran thing, you know, people talk real big, but most of them don't know the first thing about it. And if you zoom in on the situation, you see that it's entirely unresolved. And just as we always said, you shouldn't bomb them because now they're more likely to make a nuke. And you're not going to be able to achieve. You're not going to be able to certainly prevent that without a regime change, and you're not going to be able to do a regime change without escalating the war far beyond what your anyone is willing to do. In other words, sending in the 82nd Airborne and the 3rd Infantry Division and taking the country over. Nobody wants to do that. Nobody's considering doing that. Well, but you can't have a regime change from the air. And you can't make the Ayatollah give up enrichment just by threatening him and bombing. Bombing him. So he's still saying, I'm still gonna enrich. So now that Trump has bought Israel's definition of a nuclear program is a nuclear weapons program, and we have to prevent it from existing at all. That means that we're just at. At halftime right now. The war's not over at all. The entire issue is unresolved. It could have been unresolved at the table, but Donald Trump let Israel drag us into war. People say it was the 12 Day War. Well, you know, it's like somebody asked some Chinese somebody about like, hey, so is the French Revolution good or bad for world history? And he's like, well, we'll see. One day we'll know for sure. You know what I mean? Like, you gotta have a little bit of a, of a longer time horizon to examine these things on that was just, you know, a month and a half ago. We don't know what the results are going to be.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, yeah. And you would think particularly in, you know, fairly recent memory, maybe not anymore because things move so fast, but like, it's like, I don't know, you just, you guys were spiking the football on Mission Accomplished, you were spiking the football on Gaddafi after he died. You were spiking the football on how good the, how strong the Afghan army that we were building was. You know, you're like, it's like after a while you're like, yeah, I don't know if you quite yet get to say, look, perfect, this ended really good. And, and all that seems to, at least so far all that seems to have happened to me in the 12 Day War is that like some, like some Iranians got killed, some Israelis got killed, absolutely nothing was accomplished and there was no threat to begin with. It was all done on false pretenses anyway. So like even if it does just end at that, like what the. I don't know, it's just so like, it's such a weird even mind state to just be like, well if it does, if it doesn't end in a catastrophe where hundreds of thousands of people die, then hey, that's a win. Like what?

[Scott Horton]

And best interpretation here is that they set the program back a bit. But yeah, yeah, and they, they swear, and I'm not taking their word for it, they swear they're still not breaking out for a nuke and that the old rules still apply. But they also say they're never gonna an enrichment as you pointed out many times. Well, we're all just lucky that the ayatollah fired only 14 missiles and called ahead of time and warned us to please shoot them down and essentially deliberately missed firing at the corner of a base and cutter kind of thing as a symbolic retaliation. Only when didn't have to be that way. A certain point in desperation, they very well could start launching thousands of missiles at our bases over there. And what are all the pro Israel hawks going to say then? Oh yeah, see that's why we had to do this is because that's the kind of danger they always represented, you know, after we start losing a bunch of sailors and airmen over there in Bahrain and Qatar. So yeah, that situation, I mean, well.

[Dave Smith]

Look, well, and, and also, and, and one of the things that I thought was, was really interesting even in this little 12 day war, even just saying it was just a 12 day war. It was amazing how quickly like the, the narrative and the justification would change, like day to day to day. Like, literally, like even leading up to it, it was like one day Trump was like, you know, we can negotiate on enrichment levels. And then all the hawks freaked out about it. And then he posts like, there can be no enrichment, you know, and then you're like, oh, what, so we're not going to do a deal? Then he's like, we're still negotiating and blah, blah, blah. Then Israel attacks. Then he says, we were in on the, you know, then all the war hawks, one day were going, literally one day, 24 hours before they weren't. They were going, oh, no one's dragging America into war. Israel can handle its business on its own. We just want America to get out of the way and let Israel do it. And then after the Israeli strikes, all the hawks were out on their shows and on social media saying Israel has just completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program. And then 24 hours later, it was like, well, yeah, we only need a few bunker busters. I mean, like, that's, you know what I mean? And you just know, like, it'd be so easy for them, as you were just describing, to just change one more time, you know, and then the next day just be like, oh, yeah, regime.

[Scott Horton]

Changed, you know, and they were kind of going for, I mean, the Washington Post had that story where the Israelis sent those messages to all those military officials there, tell them, we're going to kill your families if you don't turn on the regime right now and overthrow it. Which didn't work, but. And they were tweeting out pictures of, I think it was the Defense minister or maybe deputy Defense minister or something, ping around with the son of the Shaw. Like they're going to parachute the monarch back in there and he's just going to cast a magic spell over these people. Where I think probably what's more likely is what Mearsheimer told Tucker is they want to wreck Iran. Like I says to that Israel lobby girl on the Piers Morgan show before she goes, oh, well, you know, they'll just fix it. The new Iran will be great or whatever. No, the new Iran will be probably well armed by foreigners, a giant faction fight with a series and, and Kurds and, and Sunni Arabs and Shiite Persians and Balu keeping Ladenite suicide bombers and God knows what over there. D which is, I'm sure, what Israel prefers. Remember, I think we've talked about this before, although I'm Sure. It's been a while. It's. The Oded Yanon plan was. Explain this to Lex. Yeah, so this is before the Clean Break. This is an earlier version of the same sort of thing, and it's from 1982. And Odedianon was an advisor to Ariel Sharon, and he wrote this thing where the. The whole. It's funny because it's a hysterical screed. Like, if you read it, you're like, holy crap, this guy's freaking out. And it's like the. The premise of the whole thing is that it's obvious that Soviet communism is going to conquer the entire planet, like, any day now. And Israel is going to be all alone out there. Right? This is just a handful of years before the Soviet Union ceases to exist entirely, but Soviet communism is going to rule the entire world. Poor little Israel is going to be all alone, surrounded by these enemy Arab states. And so they only really have one choice, which is to smash them into as many small pieces they can, as many warring tribal factions. So that basically instead just have an angry Arab with an AK47 over his head is basically the biggest threat that they'll confront.

[Dave Smith]

I apologize. Let me just interject for a second. Just. I want you to get to this because this is really fascinating stuff, but there's just. For, like, again, because we got like, younger people who listen to the show just like. So if people don't know, before the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, that was what Israel used as their justification to the west for why you had to support them. Like, this was the entire argument. And in fact, the same way that you see now where people go, you know, like, Tucker Carlson is funded by Qatar or, you know, like, try to make connections, the whole. And you can watch young interviews of Benjamin Netanyahu, I think he was going by his real name back then, where he's talking about how the PLO is just a proxy for the Soviet Union, America, and that's the justification. And just like, all funny because just like, I mean, look, it's not. It's. It's nothing unique about Israel. It's like it's the same thing NATO did. It's the same thing the entire military industrial complex and the whole, you know, like neoconservatives and just Republican establishment in general did. But they all just use the Soviet Union as the excuse for why you got to do this thing until it went away. And then they just came up with another excuse, which, you know, ended up being Iran and radical Islamic Islam. Yeah, right. But. But like, it's so funny because, like, so back in that time, it's funny because even as you. It's like the similar thing, like where they build up the nuclear threats of, say, Saddam or, or the mullahs in Iran or whatever, but back then they were building up the threat of the Soviet Union in order to justify the same. And you could just see in hindsight how full of they're just like, they're full of every time, you know, it's like every time they're just full of.

[Scott Horton]

When you say they, I mean, who was Team B, right? It was the neoconservatives that they created this group to do a reassessment of the CIA's estimations of Soviet military power. And where they came up with, there's an entire fleet of brand new super high tech, completely silent Soviet nuclear submarines. And the more we can't find them anywhere, the more it proves how silent they are and how many of them there are out there and all.

[Dave Smith]

Dude, you can't. I know it sounds like you're making this up, dude. I've literally. I don't know if you remember this, but this was when me and you first, when we hung out, we had like, met a couple times and we had podcasts a few times, but me and you first hung out like a bunch was on that Tom woods cruise. And I remember, literally I just started talking to you about Team B and then you were like, oh, you know your shit, dude, you've been reading about this. And then we had like a whole conversation about this like the first night. But it is, dude, it was literally like, this is literally in like government CIA reports where they would literally use. You can't make up how insane this is, that the evidence that Russia had these new high tech tech, undetectable subs was, look, we can't detect them. Look at it right here. And this was literally the argument that they made. Always just a justification about always just exaggerating blatantly, you know, clearly for like intentionally dishonestly exaggerating the threat to try to justify more militarism, higher defense budgets, like just the same thing over. And it is. It's funny, it's fun to look back at the old ones because it's so. It's even so much more obvious how full of the same people are. Always are. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Crowd Health, longtime sponsor of this podcast. I love this company. With Crowd Health, you can finally Rid yourself of the bureaucracy of the healthcare system and take agency over your own health. Crowd Health just introduced the Black Swan membership. It's the healthcare alternative for people who want autonomy over their care, their costs and their lifestyle. They just need a little help with the Black Swan events that happen in life. Well now for just $95 a month, you get access to a team of health bill negotiators, low cost prescriptions, lab testing tools and a database of low cost, high quality doctors vetted by Crowd Health. You stay in control without insurance and their networks dictating your care. And what if something major happens? You pay the first 15k and then the crowd steps in to help fund the rest. It feels like the options that we used to have before Obamacare messed everything up. And if you use the promo code POTP, it's only $80 for the first three months. Visit joincrowdhealth.com and use the promo code POTP to get that deal. $80 for the first three months. Crowd health is not insurance. Opt out. Take your power back. This is how we win. Join CrowdHealth.com promo code POTP all right, let's get back into the show, right?

[Scott Horton]

It's like watching old movie tone news with all the trumpets and stuff. Or is it?

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

Pretty ham handed here, you know.

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah. Andrew Coburn, the great Andrew Coburn wrote a book called the Threat that came out in 1981 about how the Soviet Union's military was so overblown and how their, their tanks didn't work. They had no gasoline, their soldiers had no boots, no ammo. The, the tanks that they had at the time would cut your arm off half the time when you tried to reload the thing and whatever. It was just, they had no morale. Everybody's just sitting around smoking Victory brand cigarettes and drinking vodka and doing nothing. And I saw Mearsheimer said on Tucker that he kind of got himself in a little bit of trouble in that era because he also went on a tour of Eastern Europe and said that the, the Soviet military in Eastern Europe is far less than it's cracked up to be and that kind of thing. And so that was the real estimation of what was going on at that time. And I mean you can get the book from Coburn, it came out in 81 saying this is all just, you know, nonsense, paper mache army over there and then. But Robert Gates and the CIA, they were so busy lying about how the Soviet Union was 12ft tall that they completely missed it, that the Soviet Union was falling apart and like, that was, like, at the time they were famous for, like, the Central Intelligence Agency had no idea that their primary enemy was in the middle of ceasing to exist, completely disintegrating, where they're not a damn thing left. And they were the last ones to know.

[Dave Smith]

It's. It's. It's. So. It's not even just that it's their prime enemy. It's that again, up until that point, the. The intelligence state as we know it is 40 years old. You know what I mean? It's. And. And its entire raison d' etre is this, like, the entire justification for it exist is to know what the hell's going on with the Soviets. And when it comes to the fact that they're collapsing, not only do they miss it, but they, like. I remember there's, you know, like, dude, there were, like, the neocons who were attacking Reagan when he was talking about, like, Daytone with the Russians in. In the late 80s, and it was like, 88, 89, like, around that time. And they're attacking him because he just guaranteed another, you know, you know, reign of dominance for the Soviet Union. And you're like, yeah, like, they call.

[Scott Horton]

Him Chamberlain at Munich. Norman Pothor. It's called Ronald Reagan, Chamberlain at Munich.

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

Three. Three years before the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

[Dave Smith]

I know. It's literally. It's unbelievable.

[Scott Horton]

It's. It's. Well, it goes to show who the neocons are. And by the way, I was just trolling through YouTube and I saw some random girl had a YouTube video about what is a neocon, anyway? And then she's reading Pat Buchanan's book, Where the Right Went Wrong, and I'm like, all right, well, I don't even have to watch the rest of this. I know she's on the right track. And whoever that is, that's a whole new audience that's being like, who the hell is Leon Trotsky? And what's that got to do with the Republican Party? And I'm confused. You know, catch up, everybody. Catch up.

[Dave Smith]

Dude. It really is, by the way. It is. There is. I. I gotta say there's something that I'm at least on, you know, on the war front, which really is the most important thing for so many different reasons. You know, it's just the most important thing about government. It's always banking and war, and those two things are so goddamn interconnected and related. And that's, you know, the. A big part of it, too, by the way.

[Scott Horton]

I even got to talk about Austrian business cycle theory with Lex for a minute there.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, that's great.

[Scott Horton]

For ruining everything.

[Dave Smith]

That's awesome. It really is such an important message to drive home, especially these days. But I've just never, you know, so like, okay, on the, on the Austrian economics front, like on that stuff, stuff you're talking about, I don't feel like, oh, I'm tremendously encouraged. Everyone's waking up. The younger people really understand this. Like we still got our work cut out for us there and we real. But man, on the foreign policy front, especially with young people, it does just. Dude, there's like, there's something cool about kind of being, you know, in the. As I was getting at at the beginning, just being in the camp that we've been in, in this game for a while now and seeing the fact that like, dude, you know, it's like people like, like Mitt Romney wrote books, you know what I mean? But like no one has read the idea, like the idea that you would have heard a young person go, yeah, I've just been passing around Mitt Romney's book, dude, and yo, you gotta read this. But like, of course not. But you do see Pat Buchanan out there and there's something cool. This kind of like, you know, like you're the Douglas McGregor quote that you mentioned. But it's just like, oh, these days it's like, yeah, it does seem like these ideas really are winning out and getting more traction, particularly amongst like the young right wingers. I really see that. You know, by the way, I don't.

[Scott Horton]

Know if I told you this, that they reviewed provoked in parameters, which is the journal of the army war college.

[Dave Smith]

That's awesome, dude.

[Scott Horton]

And they said it was the. At least last I heard it was the second most downloaded book review they ever did after Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder.

[Dave Smith]

Wow.

[Scott Horton]

Big deal. So that means that's the U. S. Army officer corps is. Who reads that journal, dude, you know?

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, I mean it's just like, yeah, we just never had things like this happening before. And I do have to say like even, you know, I said particularly the right wingers. But I do also think that you know, this for whatever reason and, and there's several of them, but this, the, the war in Gaza really did shake the anti war left back into existence to some degree at least after many years of, of being kind of lulled to sleep. And, and I, I think there are a lot of reasons for that. I think the. Anyway, whatever, we could get into that some other time. But it, it just does seem like Kind of going forward, you know, I. I was thinking a lot about this kind of as much of a, like, ridiculous show as this debate that I did last night.

[Scott Horton]

That thing was wild, man.

[Dave Smith]

I. Yeah, you know, look, I don't know if, you know, I don't know. I was thinking maybe I'll. I'll do a little, like, I'll. I'll record some. Some thoughts on that at some point and get into it a little bit more. Maybe not. I don't know. But there was something about it, what I thought was kind of what was just interesting to me about it afterward. And.

[Scott Horton]

Wait, hold that thought. You know what was funny was Lex told me. He goes, yeah, did you see the debate with Dave, or. I asked him, yeah. He goes, yeah, I watched it last night as I was going to sleep. Dave. Watching Dave Smith always calms me. So he was. He was like, chill and watching that debate last night, whereas I watched it this morning going, oh, man.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, well, I was.

[Scott Horton]

It was a lullaby to Mr. Friedman, that debate.

[Dave Smith]

Well, that's interesting. But I, you know, it was. I don't know, it was. It was a weird experience. And then seeing, you know, it was like one of these, you know, seeing the reaction today. I mean, it's just. It's exactly what, you know, you would kind of expect it.

[Scott Horton]

Oh, yeah, the comment section was brutal, dude.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, just, you know, and it's. It's interesting. I've just. I've been in a lot of these debates now where that ends up being the result. Like, the common section is just like, oh, my God. Not just like, it's not just like, oh, you beat this guy in a debate. It's like, yo, this guy. Just like, you all never look at him the same type. And. And look again, this wasn't anything I did. It was just what he brought to the debate. And. And, you know, maybe I. I could have handled it differently or something. I don't ever know what the right move is there. But the thing I've been thinking about today, off. It was just kind of. There's, like, a few things that were interesting takeaways to me from the whole thing. One of them was that it's just crazy that, like, this guy who was at the New York Times for a decade has to come through me, and he's picking the fight with me to try to gain relevance, and then he's got to just come take this spanking from me. Like, it's just so weird. I don't know. It's just a strange situation. And Then on top of that, what, what was very interesting to me was that. So he essentially. And, you know, Scott, you, you know the ends of this more than some people who, who may not. But, you know, we were doing a whole thing in the Libertarian Party for years where I was kind of planning on running, you know, on, on the LP ticket. And we, I did a lot of debates in that time, and we were kind of prepped and ready for, like, Like, I. The point I'm just making is, like, I've spent years of my life knowing that, like, there's. It's very plausible. There'll be a scenario where a mainstream media person is saying, hey, how about this connection with you? Blah, blah, blah. Like, and I've always just kind of me and you have talked about this for a year. Like, you just flip that around on them. Who the are you to be outraged about me? Look at the track record you guys have. And so here I am, right? So this was one of my major takeaways from it. It was kind of the first time I ever got to do that to someone from the New York Times, right? Like, you know, like, like, I, I. There were people, you know, like, Cuomo didn't come at me like that. Like, he didn't come at me with, like, oh, you talk to Christopher Cantwell or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, he, he came at me with other things. So I didn't. But it was just crazy that I got to do that to him. And he just had no response for it. Like, I just sat there and went, you know, I just went, you know, who is your best friend at the New York Times? Was it Judith Miller? You want to talk about how she got a million people killed? What's your point? I spoke with Richard Spencer once. You worked with Judith Miller. And then he goes, I'm not here to defend Judith Miller. And you're like, of course not. Who could. Like, she can't defend herself. The paper apologized for Judith Miller, obviously. Like, you can't defend you. And there's. So that was really interesting to me. And then the other thing that was interesting was just like, that he could. He goes, look, I'm not going to defend the government of Israel. And you're just like, wow. So that's where we're at. You have to come take a spanking by me. And you have to come on and go, yeah, I can't. I can't defend the New York Times. I can't defend Israel. I don't know. It's just like, too. Because, because at this point, how the could anyone. He didn't even pretend. He couldn't even pretend to try to put up an argument.

[Scott Horton]

All he had on you was like, that you made a joke. You just wanted to replay the joke. That was obviously like, like everyone could understand the underlying premises of the joke. You're on the line with a white nationalist, you know.

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, that, that's the kind of thing he would think. Get it? Party. Har har, har.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, no. Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Dave, I'm so offended.

[Dave Smith]

Well, I mean, that's what, you know, they'll say.

[Scott Horton]

He makes a great avatar for the times. Like, look. Yeah, this is how it should have always been, Dave. What you're talking about is it should have always been us versus these guys. And we'd have whooped them back then, too. You know, I mean, the few chances that I had to go on TV back, like 10 years ago when I lived in LA, I always kicked the guy's ass. Whenever we were on the Kennedy show, it would always be you or me or Spike Cohen or whatever other Libertarian versus a Republican and a Democrat. We always won every time. You know, so literally back then, I.

[Dave Smith]

Remember it was literally because it was almost like, you know, it'd be like, I forget exactly the rotation, but, like, every week it would meet. One episode would be me, one episode would be you, one episode would be Spike Cohen. Like, every week, that's what he did. And every time I wasn't on the show, I would just, like, be on my phone and, you know, like, you'd get the, the, you know, you'd see the video and I'd be like, oh, let me go watch Spike Cohen kick everybody's ass. Let me go watch Scott kick everybody's ass. It's just all, every single time, like, there's no and, and it is. Yeah. You know, I, you know, I remember back in the, you know, me and you are both going to Ron Paul's birthday party here in a few days. And I do, I remember back then, that was kind of the thing where they would black him out so much and the media wouldn't cover him, and they'd only give him, like, you know, some of those debates. He got like six minutes of speaking time total. There were a couple where he got, like, nothing, but they'd give him, like, a few minutes, but in those few minutes, he just. Everybody up.

[Scott Horton]

Yep.

[Dave Smith]

And, you know, I really do, like.

[Scott Horton]

I, I, the social media was the way it is now. He'd have won, man. I mean, we're just. He was on MySpace. Everybody changed their MySpace picture to Ron in 08. That was where we were then. So it's just pro.

[Dave Smith]

It's the greatest.

[Scott Horton]

You know, it's doesn't compare.

[Dave Smith]

The greatest tragedy in the goddamn world that Ron Paul can't just be the age he was in 2008 and 2025. Because, dude, the landscape today, like Rogan and Tucker and I mean, dude, he would go on a massive, you know, it would be Rogan, Tucker, Candace, Theo, Vaughn, Patrick, Bet, David. All these guys just go around and just destroy everybody. I it really. I don't see how it's possible he wouldn't have won in terms of mad about that.

[Scott Horton]

I'm mad that the economy crashed in September of 08, September of 07. Because, man, if it had collapsed in September 07, he'd have been elected because he was the only one who could explain the boom and bust. And they're the only. It literally crashed like three weeks after he finally dropped out of the race.

[Dave Smith]

All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Kalshee. I've been seeing them more and more on social media. If you're like me, you've probably seen them all over the place on social media. I personally have downloaded the app and have been checking it out. Kalshi is America's first fully regulated prediction market. CFTC approved in all 50 states. You can bet on just about anything, cash in or just see what the world's thinking without the mainstream filter. It's always interesting to watch trends when there's money on the line and. But you know what, people are betting on whether interest rates are going to go up or down or how the midterm elections are going to go. All very interesting stuff. Go sign [e-mail] Dave. You can sign up there and start trading right away and see where the markets are. That's Keli, where your gut meets real money. All right, let's get back into the show. But I'll tell you from dude, from my perspective, but you got to understand from my perspective to what was. So it was such an amazing time to come into libertarianism because literally I got introduced to Ron Paul in the Giuliani moment. So this is late 2007. And then I got really interested in him. Oh, that was. I'm sorry. That's right. It was, it was early 2007. And then I got really, really interested in him through, you know, the, the presidential campaign. And I was really like get like dove into the rabbit hole of becoming who I am today. And so then when the economy crashed, it was like, no, no way, dude. Oh, they were totally right about every, you know, it was like this great, like, kind of like shot of confirmation of like, oh, no, this really is. You're on to some good here. But it is just, you know, like we've always said this and this is, you know, it's like when you have the truth, you want free speech and you don't, you don't care about censoring other people because you're like, whoa, no, let them talk, let them talk more. But another, you know, I was even saying the other day, I stood up. I, I don't know who they are, never bad, but I stood up for those Nelk boys guys a little bit because people were giving them a lot of like, you shouldn't even have platformed Benjamin Netanyahu if you're going to give him softball interview. But I was even like, I was like, hey, dude, there's nothing wrong with that. Actually, let him talk. It's better more talking than less. Talking is always better. You never know what, what interesting sound bite you might get out of a guy. Sometimes they're, they more likely to reveal something in a friendly environment. Like, there's use, there's use in all of these things. But I will say to the point I was making before, it was pretty goddamn interesting. Did you see that dude? Did you follow that at all? There was evidently only on the, on.

[Scott Horton]

The smallest thing I saw where somebody else was talking about them. I forget who. And they just played the clip where they're arguing about, do you like McDonald's or Burger King cheeseburgers better? And it's just like, oh man. Well, this week, really? Geez.

[Dave Smith]

Well, let me take, let me. If you didn't know this, let me change that attitude that you had about that with a different piece of information. What's interesting. So these guys are like, they're like a huge podcast for like, you know, like 20 something year old dudes, I think, you know, but. Yeah, me too. But they're not for us. You know what I mean? They're for young people, but like there's, but they're huge. And their audience was up in arms over it. Dude, they had to like apologize. I mean, he said, I'm not apologizing, but made an apology video. Then they had to have like, they had Bassam Yousef on to like to scold them for being so soft on them. And then there it's like the thing I was saying before where now the market pressure from your audience is like, yo, dude, you better make up for that. What are you doing? And now they gotta go have like hardcore critics of Israel come on to come it, you know, it's like there's just so, even that part of it was to me like, and, and you know, like the entire. The. If the plan for Netanyahu was to go on the Nelk boys and win over the young bros, it's like, dude, that did not happen at all.

[Scott Horton]

Hey man, there's the new poll said that 50 of Republicans are opposed to Israel now like on overall just approval or disapproval, you know, and it was much higher. I'm sorry, I forget the numbers. Much higher for under 49, you know, so older people. I just crossed the line. And the. No, I'm still on. I'm still, I'm not 50. I'm, I'm still through 49 here, through 49, not up to 49.

[Dave Smith]

There you go, there you go.

[Scott Horton]

Oh yeah, no, we're, we're, we're better than, than by far the majority, right? Way better than the majority. It's 50 when you include all the baby boomers too. And so, and on the Democratic side it's like 73% never mind leftists who are unanimous. Okay, yeah, but, but among liberals and moderates and sort of barely left of centerists, it's just, and this is what, you know, I've always said about, you know, the left wing anti war movie, say whatever you want about these people and their potential agriculture policy if they were ever to seize control of the apparatus of power in Washington or whatever. We need the leftists to be the pressure on the liberals to stop being so, to stop being so damn bad on everything. And on the very worst things, especially like torturing people to death and launching wars and bailing out banks and the liberals, if it was up to them, they would just, just be nothing but devils. And so the leftists are actually better than them on a few things. And so we need that for what it's worth.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, right.

[Scott Horton]

There are a lot of things that leftists are much worse than liberals on. And so of course we got to be careful too. But in terms of like some liberal Democrat congresswoman out in California somewhere, does she have to deal with leftist screaming at her for supporting Israel all day or doesn't she? And the answer is she has to, right? Like if there's not left wing pressure against her, she will vote to give Israel every last cent of wealth In California, if necessary. Right. Like, like Nancy Pelosi said, if America fell and Washington D.C. burnt to the ground, the Capitol building burnt to the ground, the very last thing standing forever would still be our support for Israel. You know. Well, that's only true when leftists are quiet it. Right. If people, if, if the pressure from the left on the liberals is strong enough, they can't act that way. They just can't. And, and it's come to a head on the left, it's coming to a head on the right. And then where the Israelis going to go? Russia, you know, China.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

You know, Chinese want them, you know, and they're. What are they good for other than stealing American technology?

[Dave Smith]

Right. Really? So it's, you know, and there's also. Right. Well, look, and I, I will say there's also just something, you know, there's something about, you know, anti war leftists that as much as we may disagree with them on a lot of other things, it's like when they're standing up for that, they're just standing up for something that's right and they're against something that's wrong. And, and it's hard to not admire when someone's doing that. I don't know, you know, no matter how much you disagree with them. And you know, I will say this isn't like a completely well thought out argument. I'm kind of just speaking off the top of my head here, there. But I do kind of feel like there is a little bit something to like, you know, you want the left being focused on anti war because, you know, then they can't ruin your society as much and they have less, they have less energy to put into that. And I, you know, I really do think there is something about how like, you know, my buddy Kurt Metzger was like such a incredibly funny comedian.

[Scott Horton]

That guy, dude, he's so funny, man.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, dude, almost, you know, he lives in Austin. Dude, I'll, I'm gonna be out there in a couple, yeah, I'm gonna be out there in a couple weeks. We'll all go to dinner or something like that. If he's in town, you know, he travels too, but he'll, if he's in town, we'll definitely all link up. But yeah, he had that bit about such a great bit, but he was like, you know, say what you will about Vladimir Putin, but he sure did cure Covid.

[Scott Horton]

Right.

[Dave Smith]

It was his bit about that. And you know, it's like, say what you will about Benjamin Netanyahu, but he sure did cure Wokeism. And you know, so many people say that like the fall of wokeism was Donald Trump getting elected again. And like that is true. I'm not like downplaying like that is true. And there was just a large rejection of it. And, and there were like the boycotts I really think from a couple years ago of like Target and Bud Light. I think that really did start to like. I'm not saying that there were a lot of factors involved in this, but there's just no question that this was like a major, major factor. Like, like, and I will give. I, I really do think, by the way, I think the, a lot of the Zionist hawks get this a little bit wrong and they make it like their own self serving narrative where they'll say something like they'll be like the reason the left is anti Semitic is because they see Jews as like the European white ones and they see everything as oppressor versus oppressed and so they really just hate Jewish people or something like that. That. I, I think I, I will say this. I think there is some truth to the fact that in this war it's much more easy to paint who is the oppressor versus the oppressed. And one of them sure does look a lot more European and one of them looks a lot more brown. And I do think that made it easier for the left to kind of recognize what's going on, you know, and, and to feel comfortable, you know, because like there, there's no question like there were wars that they just didn't care about me. And you have known there's like, there's like Iraq war up until me and you were still being anti war. And there sure was a whole lot of gap there where the anti war leftists were just not up in arms in big numbers like this. So this, there was something about this one. But at the same time it's like once those leftists started protesting the babies being slaughtered in Gaza, there was just, it was impossible to create the same type of outrage about like someone called a dude and address a dude in a dress. Like it just, it just really did, did it broke that whole thing, that whole thing up. And I do think that that's something that sane people should be happy about. Like what do you want your left wingers doing? You want them going around talking about how like that man in a dress isn't a perv, let him near your 8 year old or you want them saying, hey government, stop blowing up babies? I prefer the latter.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, definitely. And the thing is too Is it's shown where there's so many because especially because of what Israel is doing is just so horrific. Traffic deliberately.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Civilians the way that they are. So then you have so many right wingers as you're saying, people like Tucker Carlson, of course, Candace Owens and others are just absolutely as opposed to this as they can be. And you have good liberals and progressives and leftists who agree with that, who because it's so horrific, it's really a very high priority of theirs right now.

[Dave Smith]

Right, right.

[Scott Horton]

And they go, wow, Tucker Carlson ain't so bad. I see the comments. I never thought I'd like Candace Owens, but I do now. It says some leftist right. I remember her from back when she disagreed with me about something. But boy, she sure is a powerful ally. And so then. But that helps kill woke too because it destroys the whole narrative.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Of the right wing being just the evil white supremacist.

[Dave Smith]

Yes. That's such a good deal point.

[Scott Horton]

Leaders of the right actually really got soul here, man. You can't deny it.

[Dave Smith]

And, and, and that's right. That's such a good point. And also it's not because even more specifically to drill down, what they always try to scare you with is the extreme right wing. You know, they always go look at these extreme right wingers and now just know that's everybody. You know, like look at Richard Spencer and that's also Donald Trump. And so. But now when, when you're a good anti war leftist, you look around you go, the extreme right wing is Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and, and the people who are actually really great on this issue that you put so much importance on. And then it just makes you start to realize that like, which is a really important realization that the problem isn't left right in the way you think. It's like it's this center part here that's all attached to the establishment that's really the problem. And, and you know, while there are many, you know, conflicting views amongst far leftists and far right wingers is actually, you know, whatever. It just obviously our prescription would be like, yeah, but liberty solves just about 90 of this. And then it's just you go about your way, you go about your way.

[Scott Horton]

And that's that for liberals and conservatives, we don't have to work together. We can just all do the same thing at the same time.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, right, exactly.

[Scott Horton]

Too worried about getting cooties on you. It doesn't matter. You just do do the same thing as us and do it as Hard as you can and we'll see you there, you know what I mean? And get it done that way. Yeah, it doesn't even have to be that broad of a coalition, just has to be.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

The loosest broad network where it is. And this is what I've always has said, you know, like if, if you watch my old speech about where after the, after the primary campaign in 12, I gave that speech where I said, Dr. Paul, you should keep running, but you should make Dennis Kucinich your running mate and you should make a new political party called the Democratic Republicans. And then you should demand that Obama fire Joe Biden and replace him on the ticket with Mitt Romney. And then they'll be the war party of taxes, tyranny and death. And we'll be the party, the Democratic Republicans, the party of the American people. And then we'll finally have a two party system in this country and people can make their choice. That's real realignment that we need. Need. And Kucinich is bad on plenty of things and disagreed with Ron on plenty of things. But could anybody deny that that would have been a much, first of all, a better race to run with such darker options and, and just such a different divide in the way that we're splitting the, the opposing parties and then that their presidency, the, the Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich presidency wouldn't have been superior to Obama too. And then the coming of Trump in reaction to that, I think we could have done better, you know, and then that's the realignment that we need is the people versus the power. It's obvious, right? You don't have to be a commie to think like that. You just be in America. That's why the slogan the 99 was so great. If they put some of their weirder left wing stuff away and actually tried literally to represent the 99 as best they could, maybe even the 99.9%, then that could have, you know, obviously gone a lot further. But, but that's the whole thing is because it really is the same problem here as it is all around the world. Too few people with way too much power. And of course, as the libertarians always argue, we, this is why we end up being anarchists, is because you're not going to talk us out of private ownership of the means of production. But then as long as you have a state, the wealthiest of those owners are going to use that state, you know, for their own advantage in such a way that it requires everybody else to have to come together against them in this way. And so that sucks. That's why we shouldn't have a state at all. It's not just in the Fed, it's in the Congress that created the Fed, you know.

[Dave Smith]

Right, right. Well, look, I mean, there's. The state probably isn't being ended or withering away anytime soon, but, man, it is like I, I do. And, you know, I've been talking about this, this has been a major theme of mine for a while now on the podcast. But it does seem like we're living through some crazy experiment where, where nation states, powerful, modern nation states, have always relied on propaganda and controlling, you know, the, the narrative, controlling the discourse, controlling the flow of information, you know, as, as we know. Right, Scott? Like, it's, it's not out a. A coincidence that this is, you know, more kind of basic libertarian, anarchist insight stuff. But it's not a coincidence that, like, of all the things that governments can monopolize and you could think of anything, you know, they could make shoe factories or they could make, you know, telescopes or whatever, but they, they always, you know, add a monopoly or. Not always. But modern nation states all have monopoly on, like, children's education and public radio, radio waves and television stations and then post offices, which, you know, don't seem like a big one now, but was a really, really big form of communication for many years. It's like, it's not a coincidence that they've always tried to monopolize, like, who controls the information. And it does seem like really in a profoundly new way, we're just like, now they're running with that entire apparatus being broken. And the question now is like, can you do that? Can you have government minus propaganda? Can you what can, you know, like, what. But Donald Trump, like, there really was something. And this is another thing that I think was really fascinating about the 12 day war, if we want to call it that, for now, with all the caveats that we made earlier in the show, is that you saw that, like, I've just never seen a thing where a president was flirting with a policy where you just saw right away you go, oh, if he does this, he's going to lose, like, such a huge percentage of his base over this. Like, you know, there just never was a situation where George W. Bush was flirting with doing something. And you went, dude, if he does this, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are gonna flame him tomorrow. Like, there just never was a situation where if Obama did something, Rachel Maddow was gonna take him to task the next day. Yet with Donald Trump, he was in that situation. And. And the Epstein thing. The Epstein thing is a good example of this, too. It's like, this is just. There's something so new about this. Even the other day I was, was. I was making a big deal out of some of these polls where, like, Donald Trump has fallen to his lowest approval rating, that people hate his handling of the Epstein thing. They hate him on all these things. And then the Democrats who are down in the dumps haven't gained one point from all that. Not one person has gone, oh, screw you guys, we're going over here. They all. Wait. No, obviously we still remember. It's like this is just so new in a lot of ways. I. I don't know.

[Scott Horton]

And it's a crisis. I mean, that's what you're talking about for them was. I was just showing a friend of mine the old documentary. I don't know if you ever seen the documentary. I'm sure you've read the book, but. Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great book. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Scott Horton]

And so there's a documentary about this, too. And it's, you know, mostly a documentary about the propaganda model and the point of the book, but it's also documentary about Noam Chomsky himself and his life, his career and all this stuff. It's really great. Came out in, I'm going to say, 93, 94. So, like, the Internet is just brand new and is not. Not as relevant at all. You know, it's not. In fact, it may have even come out earlier than that. So it's all just about the New York Times and about the major TV networks and the way that they handle their propaganda and as compared to radio and whatever and this kind of thing. There's so much insightful stuff in there. But just the point being, what you're talking about is. Yeah, no, it really is a revolution. And I don't think it really even hit. I mean, the Internet did a lot. Anti war.com was important and all kinds of things mattered a lot people. But the first time that I ever could really directly relate the difference made was in the slaughter in Gaza in 2014, because that was the one. It was the first time that the polls showed that the American people overall sided with the Palestinians over the Israelis, and it was just because of Twitter and Facebook, Gaza under attack. And people could just see women and children being blown to bits by the Israelis, you know, hiding safe behind their walls and whatever. And that was just unheard of. That that narrative would go again, like you were just saying, we're like, I don't know, the Jews are whiter, they're our friends, we're on the Israeli side, what's the problem? You know what I mean? And then in this case, all of a sudden, the American people by and large siding with the Palestinians and it was Simply because of 3G retweets, man, that was it. They can take a picture, upload it, and then people got a hashtag and a retweet and it gets out there. And that was enough. And it was broken. And then you can see how, how, you know, the Global Engagement center and the, all the, the Twitter censorship and all that really escalated after that because they realize, you know, they like these social media platforms, they like pushing free speech in countries they want to overthrow. Because a lot of times those are sort of gray democracies with a lot of censorship themselves. So if they can get everybody using onion routers and having, and improving free speech technology and methods in those countries makes it easier to do a color coded revolution and overthrow the thing thing, right? But for the same reason that they want to censor us so that we can't have control over our own society when that was supposed to be the point over here in the first place. And the point of overthrowing those governments they claim is to make them good, free, self governing democracies like our own. And so you're right though, man, it's coming to a head. I keep saying it every day that other than Trump himself, Tucker Carlson is the most important man in America because he's no longer on Fox News, now he's on the Internet, now he's free. And now what the hell are they gonna do with that guy? You know what I mean? And I'm not trying to give any bad ideas, but I'm just saying like for them it's a crisis. Candace Owens going on and saying, listen, I would rather saw off my own foot than ever support Israel again. I went, I saw her today, she said I was pragerus you to I'm gonna be your enemy for the rest of my life. How do you like that? And that's a paraphrase. But what are in fact they going to do with this charismatic woman who is going to be around, you know?

[Dave Smith]

Well, there was something, you know, it's, and again, not to make this all about me, it's just that, you know, I'm, I'm living life as me. So I do think about that from time to time. But there's this was another thing that I was just thinking about, about the debate. Debate I did last night where, and I think this is, it's a, it's a more, it's a broader theme of what you're talking about now that kind of goes hand in hand where it's like, okay, so like one of the things that stuck out to me about the debate with Alex Berenson, which again, like, I'm not trying to sit here and say, hey, I want to debate last night. I, I, maybe I'm guilty of doing that sometimes. But like, I mean, it really was ridiculous. Like he, he was, he was like on the level of like some of the like, libertarian guys with no following who I used to debate who you'd be like, oh, you just come on, that you can't do that in the debate. Debate. But it was kind of like this kind of fascinating thing where Alex Baronson, first of all, he telegraphed to me that this is what he was going to do in the debate, which, you know, just doesn't seem wise, especially if you're going to use such cheap tactics. Then at least the point of it would be to try to surprise the guy with it. You know what I mean? And not like he posted about like how I had interviewed Christopher Camp. Well, and he was digging up into me. And then he went, he posted a thing on Twitter where he goes, goes, this is going to go so bad for Dave. He's never been confronted by a real reporter who's actually dug into him. Like, he actually thought that like that old model smear thing was gonna work. Like, I'm gonna do this. And then the crowd response is gonna be like, yeah, you took him down. Oh my God, he made an off color joke 10 years ago. You got, got like, it's like they're so, like daydream. They're so right. They're so trapped in this old model that they have this inability to like, adapt and to recognize that, like, oh, read the room. That's not that this is going to make everyone laugh at you. This is not going to make, this isn't going to work. And so the old model was like, I'm gonna ruin your life. Like, you know, in one way or the other. Like, that was the old model. It's like, I will smear you. You will be dropped by your publisher, you will be fired from this company, you will be removed from the conversation, and I will ruin your life for doing this. And this, this was effective for years and years. And this happened to like, so Many good people got ruined like this and, and really effectively taken out of the national conversation. And now that that doesn't work anymore. Like, this, like, Alex Baronson doing that to me, objectively speaking, has zero effect on it. It was just a fun night of watching popcorn for all of my fans. Nothing more than that. And now I move on with everything. I'm doing the same. Like. Like, it's just like, I don't know, we're in the new model now, and Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson like me, so suck a dick. Like, there's nothing you can do with any of this. And. But so now it's not just that it doesn't work anymore, but as you were alluding to with Candace Owens, it just has the effect of you sitting there going like, hey, that guy just tried to ruin my life. I mean, like, yeah, it missed. Like, the bullet missed me and didn't hit. But like, dude, you just took a shot at my head. Well, now. Now I'm. Now we're at war. Now I'm gonna ruin you. You know what I mean? And so it's just like, it's like, not only does it not work anymore, but it went from like water on a fire to, like, water on an electric fire where you're like, ah, no, dude, you're just spreading this, like, way, way, way further. It's. It's just fascinating to watch. This show is sponsored by Better Help. If you are considering starting therapy, I would just tell you that I personally have benefited from it in the past, and I know lots of other people who have as well. And if you're think, give Better Help a try because there's no easier way to do it. It is convenient. It's online, it's suited to your schedule. It's the way to do therapy in the 21st century. All you do is you fill out a brief questionnaire and they match you with a licensed therapist. And you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. So rediscover your curiosity today with better help. Visit betterhelp.com problem and you'll get 10% off your first month. That's B E T T E R h e l p.com. cash problem for 10 off your first month. All right, let's get back into the show.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, it. Yeah, it's exciting, man. It's really great. This is sort of, you know, going back to the dawn of the Internet. This is what Timothy Leary was, you know, had in mind. It's like, you'll have this. This Equality of information spread throughout.

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

The. The world. And then that will do the same thing to the power. It will dilute the power. Power to the people, away from the center and out to the people because they'll be the ones with the information. So it's a long time coming, of course, as Snowden showed and Bamford before him that, you know, it's in all the great whistleblowers before him, it's a double edged sword. I mean the whole thing was created to enslave us in the first place, but I think we're doing a pretty good job of using it back against them and, and you know, life is like skateboarding, man. Generations come real fast, things change real quick. You have brand new people coming in who, you know, I think you mentioned this to me before, you'll be flipping through YouTube and find some channel where some guy has a million followers or two and you never heard of him before. But he's great and he's doing his own thing out there in some other corner of society you didn't know about. But like, good for him, man. It looks like he's doing a good job too kind of thing. It's just more and more of that going on everywhere, you know. All I ever hope for, like when I was doing radio and in, in first starting out in radio in the late 1990s was I just my, my biggest ambition, I guess would be that I would have the show that comes on after Rush Limbaugh in the afternoon in a city somewhere.

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

That would be the most effect I could ever have. And that's would be just enough essentially. Just like with doing pirate radio in South Austin is just enough to get this off my chest, but not ever really imagining that it would change anything or have any effect on anything really. Really. Because why Nobody really thinks that that's, you know, delusions of grandeur to think that, you know, go from driving a cab to talking where anybody can actually hear you. You know what I mean? So, yeah, this is better than I ever hoped for, I guess at this point.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, well, it's also, you know, we, I guess, you know, whatever. It's, it's, you know, there's a lot of obviously like factors coming together to create this, this whole moment. But there is something to where there, you know, there was, and we've talked about this before, you know, as well, but there was like, say for example with like the neoconservatives and you know, few people know the history of this better than you, but there was kind of like the fir. There's just no question that, like, the first generation neoconservatives were, like, objectively more impressive than the second generation generation. Like, just in terms of, like, thinkers, like, in terms of being people. In terms like. Like all of them. Like, Irving Crystal is more impressive than Bill Crystal and Norman Pot. Horace is more impressive than John Potter. Yeah, like, by a lot. Like, it. Like, Norman Pot. Horus had some bad politics, but, like, I read a couple of his books, and they were interesting books. Like, he was worthless. Just, like, literally just like a. Like this fat little weirdo. Like, I mean, and then. Then there were, you know, again, like, when.

[Scott Horton]

When.

[Dave Smith]

See, like, when I was like a little kid, the. The media that my mom would have been watching, even on, like, TV news would have been like Firing Line with William F. Buckley or maybe like Crossfire with Pat Buchanan and. And Kinsley and some of these guys. These were, like, These were intelligent people. Whatever you think of them, like, they. This wasn't. This wasn't Sean Hannity and Stephen Colbert. Like, it was. It's just. It got. And. And somewhere around, like, the 90s and around the time of kind of the. The, you know, well, Fox News was a big part of it, but the unipolar moment was a big part of it. And the. The kind of phony Prosperity of the 90s was a part of it. But it also. The neocons and. And Fox News, as you say, you know, which, you know, obviously were very linked, but they started, like, they started celebrating these people as geniuses who just weren't particularly impressive, you know? Like, remember that everyone used to always say that, like, in the neocon circles, they'd always say that Charles Krauthammer was like this.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah.

[Dave Smith]

Like, they would always. Yeah, well, they would speak of them like they were these geniuses, and then you'd, like, read their stuff and you're like, they've never said anything interesting. Like, these people are just not. And it just to this level where you're talking to someone like I'm talking to Alex Baronson, and you're just like, yo, dude, you are like, you are so much less impressive than you think you are.

[Scott Horton]

Did you see Alyssa Slotkin, the former CIA officer turned congresswoman?

[Dave Smith]

Oh, yes, yes. On Breaking Points.

[Scott Horton]

On Breaking Points.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, I shared it on Twitter, so. Great.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, she's just some lady. She has nothing, nothing, like, against her, but just if you measured her up against every other lady that lives in her neighborhood, she's no smarter than them. She didn't know anything Better about the world than them. She talked about. I forgot exactly what she said. But talking about her time in the CIA, she sounded like, oh, wow, they really will just hire some lady to be a CIA officer. I guess there's just nothing impressive there. And these are supposed to be the elite cutting edge of our security forces here. And well, it's not even like, not if she could be, have any other job in your town and you wouldn't see her as out of place, just, you know, running whatever.

[Dave Smith]

That's, well, that's like the thing, right? It's like, even with, and I'm not, it's not even a comment on good or evil. Like, it's like I'm, I'm not, I, I regard Bill Buckley as being evil. I'm just saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right? Like, Bill Buckley doing a, a talk show with Gore Vidal is like a heady conversation. These are two people with IQs north of 135 who are discussing things. You know what I mean? The, like, it's just like, but now it's just like what permeates our society. Like, it's, it's. And, and it's funny when people say this thing where like the biggest knock on me now really since the Douglas Murray debate, and I've kind of been at a bit of a, you know, higher profile and the only knock, like, it seems like they have on me. You're just a comedian, so what does the comedian know about this? And you're like, listen, buddy, I, I, I just can't explain it enough stuff. I know, I know. I'm not making the argument that I'm up here. I'm making the argument that they're down here. Yes, it's like, yes, I can go on, dude. I can go on a debate with fucking the number one show at CNN host Chris Cuomo or the number one British intellectual Douglas Murray. And you're like, dude, these people are not smart. I don't know what you guys are saying. These are not, not like, it's not even a comment of good or evil. It's, that was one of the thing that was blow. I was blown away by Alex Baronson too. Like, it'd be like this thing. Like, I'd be, you know, I'd be like, how's Daryl Cooper, a Holocaust denier? And you go, well, the Holocaust Museum says so. And I go, right, that's an appeal to authority fallacy, though, dude. So you make the argument like, why, why is he a hoga? You go, I just told you that the Holocaust museum said so. Dude, he put out. I know you made the comment when you were arguing with Gnome, which was part the of perfect. It's like arguing with a drunk woman when you like, you disprove their thing and then they just say the same thing. Dude, he put out a substack today and he goes, you know, the Holocaust museum said that Daryl Cooper was a thing. Like, still just like. Wait, you didn't hear the three times that I like, you're repeating just a logical fallacy. Like, it's just, it's. It is pretty wild. And I think a huge part of this is just that like, like the propagandists got so. There was so much atrophy amongst the, like the. The propagandist class.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah. And look, it's just like with the anti semite thing, like Mr. Baronson, you really want to wear that out making false accusations against people. Because now when people call somebody an anti Semite, everybody goes, whatever. Anyway, if he is or if he isn't, I'm still on his side against the person tattletailing and pointing their finger at him and calling them that. Because I'm just sick and tired of hearing people called that. I don't even want to hear your evidence against the guy. Whatever it is that you claim, I don't believe you anyway. I'm sick and tired. So now, now we're going to do that with Holocaust deniers too, and compare people who actually aren't. Not even compare. Falsely claim that people who aren't denying the Holocaust. In fact, are you going to do that? X many times before people just say, yeah, I guess that thing never happened after all. I guess we're all deniers now, since. You know what I mean? Like, that's what it. Not that that's what they're trying to do, but that's what they're sure to succeed.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Horton]

You know, Peewee Herman said, that's my name. Don't wear it out. You know what I mean? You can't just, you know, do that repeatedly. We see it right now. Right? Look at the. The think of the power of the word racist. That guy's a racist now. Now compared to 15 or 20 years ago.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, yeah, right. No question.

[Scott Horton]

Just gone. Nobody cares. Same thing with anti Semitic. That guy's an anti Semite. Oh, why? You say something good about Israel and you're a genocidal lunatic. Piss off. Nobody wants to hear it. So now Berenson wants to do the same thing. You know, just like ratcheting it up to the, on the, to the next level, you know, you got to find something to smear people with. You end up with nothing left to smear anybody with with. Because there's nothing you can say about anybody that anyone's going to take seriously anymore when it comes to character assassination like that, you know, which, whatever is for the good in the end anyway. It always was kind of weird, like, oh, if people say this one thing, then no, everybody, you know, turn their back and never engage with them ever again or, or in any way kind of thing. Like you can't stop it now, man. With the Internet the way it is, whatever the argument is, it can't be too verboten to discuss. Everybody's got to get in there and fight about it, you know, Know.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah. And I think the new like, you know, with. Because it really is, it's hard to explain like how brand new this is. It's not just as brand new as social media, which really is, you know, relatively speaking, a very brand new phenomenon. Like it was like, you know, like Obama in 2008, I remember, got a lot of credit for like his team effectively using Twitter and using social media. But like that's the first one. That was the first presidential election. It's only been a couple cycles that we've even had social media. But then, you know, that freedom of Twitter was very short lived. You know, then, then like the censorship regime like kind of rose up and it's really only been, you know, when I'm talking about like, like the cancel culture backfiring to the point now where like say the guys like Tucker Carlson gets fired from Fox News. He's bigger than he ever was. Our buddy Daryl Cooper is the center of a, you know, a cancellation campaign. He's bigger than he ever was. Rogan, they tried to cancel. He's. Than he ever was. Another guy, Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, like all these guys, Alex Jones, like they've all been, you know, kicked off of everything and they're bigger than that. It just doesn't work anymore. Like this just doesn't. It's, it's at least as of right now that ain't working. And in that environment, which is very new, it, it does almost become this thing where it's like, yeah, you just, sorry. Like if somebody's here, they're here and you got to take on what they're saying thing or, or you know, you can't. But there's no, you can't just like you can't do the thing where you just Smear people out of, you know, out of existence, or smear them out of the argument. You know, it's. I do remember there was one that it was very simply. Not that it's the most profound thing ever, but I do remember when Christopher Hitchens said this. And, you know, Christopher Hitchens was, you know, pretty bad on a lot of issues. But, yeah, yeah, he was. Although he did. He was good for saying a good thing every now and then. He did have a great thing about how, like, Zionism was stupid. And he actually was pretty. Pretty incredibly. He was really, really good on Iraq War one and then went really, really bad on Iraq War, too.

[Scott Horton]

He hated Kissinger, so he loved Richard Pearl.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, it was bad. But I will say I did read that many years ago. His book on Kissinger was very good. But so, you know, anyway. Yeah, well, he's. Anyway. But. But he said this one time, which was like a very great. You know, when he. When he was right, he was great. Great at being right in that snotty British way. But he said a thing where he was like. He goes. He was just talking about people being offended, and he goes. He was like, the only reasonable response when someone tells you that they're offended is, who cares? And why did you ever presume that it mattered at all if you were offended? And, like, it was just like a great way to just, like, put it, where it's just like, it really doesn't mean anything. Like, saying I'm offended is, like, great. And. And, like, that was really the point I was getting at with Alex the other day, where you're just like. It's like, he's like, I'm offended. And I'm like, I'm a hundred thousand times more offended anyway. What do you got? Yeah, I'm offended. I'm offended that you didn't respond, you know? No, but I mean, like, essentially that was his point, you know, I'm offended by what you're saying. And it's like, it doesn't matter. Like, I'm. I'm offended by your, you know, like people at the New York Times. It doesn't matter. And this is just. You just can't call at this point, even if something is legitimately racist or. Or Jew Haiti or whatever, it's like, well, then you got to make the argument they shouldn't be like that, and why they're wrong. You can't even just say you're a bad person. Go away. Respond. We're not doing that anymore. You know?

[Scott Horton]

And again, Only just because they wore it out. Like, if they hadn't, you know, spent the last few years calling people who don't hate Jews Jew haters, then people probably still take that seriously. You know, you got to hold your fire and only, you know, shoot at your intended targets, or otherwise you're all out of ammo. Ammo. How'd you like that? That was a pretty good metaphor.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, no, it was very good. And. And that's. Right. And you. And. And like I was saying, with the effect on Candace or me or whoever, it's like, yeah. And now you're just pissing people off. It's not only are you losing people, but now you're the guy who just shot at them. And it is like, you know, like, I. You know, I. I'm, you know, I did, like. Like, I lost my cool a bit, I guess, in that debate. And I, you know, I. I typically don't, like, call people and stuff like that in a debate. Debate. But there is something where it's like, I do. I don't know. I mean, maybe this is me being crazy. You know, me and you are kind of kindred spirits in the sense that we're always, you know, we say it all the time on the phone, but we're always pissed off teenagers to some degree, even though, you know, even though we're in the position of being right about all this stuff and, like, winning these debates and stuff. But it is like, I don't know. I just can't. Like, you know, there's a certain point where you're like, look, dude, like, this is what I do do. This is my job. This is how I support my family. This is my livelihood. And you really. When you call me a holocaust denier and pin it to your social media, like, it's. It is like you're like, I'm trying to ruin your little girl's life. Like, that is kind of how I take that. It's. It's not. That's not. Like, I think Dave is wrong. I. I wanna. I wanna challenge him to a debate where I can eviscerate him on a topic or something like that. It's like you're trying to. Like, you're trying to smear me, to ruin my career so, like, that my kids don't have the good life that I'm trying to give them, and they have a shitty life and then reminds me of.

[Scott Horton]

Of. Of little girls in first grade where they would tell. Like, Susie would tell Sally to not be friends with Mindy anymore. Yeah, like, don't be friends with her anymore because I don't like her now. You're not allowed to be friends. And then they would have a little fight over who's allowed to be friends with who. And this kind of thing, like, aren't grown men talking like that? You know what I mean?

[Dave Smith]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Listen, that Dave Smith, you don't want to go near him him, because I heard he was a Holocaust denier from Alex Baron. You don't want to get your career all cified from them Smith cooties, not after what Baronson hunger on him, you know, and like, you're right that there was a time not long ago at all that that would have worked. Well, maybe not in this particular circumstance, but where that really did work against people a lot more than it ever had any right to.

[Dave Smith]

Or.

[Scott Horton]

Or probably could now.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, no, 100%, you know, it's. There's that. That is kind of. And I'll tell you, that is a part of the thing that I guess gets me kind of angry about it, which, like, I try to tell myself I'll be like, all right, listen, like, whatever, it doesn't matter. I know Alex Berenson has no impact on me, but I'm like, hey, dude, like, only a little bit of time ago, this might have really had an impact, and you would still be doing it. Like, you. You are doing this to. Hopefully, in your mind, it does have that impact.

[Scott Horton]

And that's what Dubowitz tried to do with me. He didn't call me a Holocaust there, but in that debate on Lex Friedman show, he tried to go, yeah, Scott Horton's world view is that everything would be fine if it wasn't for the Jews. I was like, oh, that's funny, because we've been at this for four hours and I hadn't said that yet.

[Dave Smith]

You know, he had to come up.

[Scott Horton]

With that and try to put those words in my mouth because that was the best shot he could take. You know, he didn't have. After four hours, it couldn't come up with anything I said that was wrong, you know?

[Dave Smith]

Right, right, exactly. And it's. And it just. Like you said, they went to the well too many times. It's just too low of a TR at this point. You just kind of can't pull it and it's backfiring. But it's also just like, I don't know, I guess there. You know, it's like all that. All that it ever required for that to not work was just for the other side to get a Fair hearing, too. And just like, you know, whatever is like, you know, it's like, I, I, what was that? Maybe it was one of your times on Pierce Morgan, but like, someone asked you, you're like, hey, which war in the last, you know, 25 years do you not blame on the Jews? And you were like, I, I don't know what you say. Like, I mean, you wrote a book on Afghanistan. You've never, is anyone going to say you didn't, you didn't talk about Yemen enough or something like that, which, like, those are two very important chapters in the terror wars that really had very little to do with like, the Israeli.

[Scott Horton]

Lobby, you know, provoked is this thick. And the only role of Israel in there is Naftali Bennett, the guy who caused September 11, trying to stop the war right after it started doing shuttle diplomacy on behalf of the United States, which ultimately undermined him and made him not succeed. But he was trying in good faith, by all indications that I've seen, to do the right thing there. That was his job as a head of a small state allied with one and friends with the other, you know, and see if he could play middleman in there.

[Dave Smith]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

And so, yeah, I don't, I do blame a lot of our Russian policy on the neoconservatives, but that's not, it's not that everything that they do is in service of the Lakuda, the largest sense of keeping the American empire active overseas at all costs. Because as Brett Stevens says, isolationism is the biggest threat to Israel. American isolationism is Right. Not that that's why neoconservatives support American imperialism or anything. You got to understand that would be anti Semitic. Brett Stevens, former editor of the Jerusalem Post, wrote in the New York Times.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, that's right. Former editor of the Jerusalem Post. They don't make it, it's not that, you know, much of a secret, I guess, but, Right. And like, but so even when they'll say things like that, it's like, look, I don't, I, I also, you know, one of the things that, this is one of the things that Josh Hammer argued during the debate, again, speaking of just like unimpressive arguments. But when I was debating him, he argued, he, he goes, you know, for. They asked me like, about APAC or something like that. That, and I was like, well, yeah, you know, APAC should be registered as a foreign lobby. And you know, like, they should, you know, none of you guys should support them. They support woke progressive Democrats, even if they, you know, they're whatever you Know, is it Turning Point usa? And then, and then Josh speaks and he goes, Dave's going to sit here and tell you that the APAC is the all controlling lobby that has full dominance over our governor. And yet the JCPOA got signed when APAC was against it. And like, wait, that. First of all, I never said APAC was this all controlling entity that had full control over the government. But like, really? So your, your big ace up your sleeve is that you can point to one policy that APAC was against that got through that then APAC got their way on. By the way, that was torn up two years later.

[Scott Horton]

Later.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, at like literally Trump went to APAC to get their support when he was running for president. And his opening line of his speech to APAC was we're going to tear up the Iran deal on day one. And like, anyway, it's just, it was. But the thing is like, people try to character all this, but I've never, I don't actually think that Israel has full control of the United States government. I mean, I think we would have overthrown the regime in Iran by now if they did. Like, I, I think there's pretty, I think there's really no doubt that if Netanyahu had the full control of Donald Trump's presidency, we would have had a regime change in Iraq. It doesn't matter what it would have cost this country. Netanyahu, if that's his decision, he'd absolutely go for it. I don't think there's any way he wouldn't have America go do that. Okay, so like, yeah, they don't have full control. They do have a lot of influence and we're going to discuss that and.

[Scott Horton]

Like how much control is permissible when we're talking about foreign nation state deciding our policy.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, exactly. And the, you know, the idea that, that like, you know, people even like when they, as the way you put it, when they phrase it, like, oh, like if you're saying like, oh, if Israel just went away, then everything would be fine. It's like, no, like we have a giant military industrial complex, we have a Federal Reserve, we have an IRS and an ATF and a CIA. We got a lot of problems over here. It's like, yeah, someone, it happens to be that the neocons like hijacked American foreign policy. But like someone else else could have hijacked it and done really bad things with it too. It's just that like, hey, those are the ones who did and we're going to talk about that now. If we're talking about how bad George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are. That doesn't imply that if it wasn't them, whoever the president was would be perfect. It's just that, like, no, they're the guys currently ruining everything. And so, yes, let's get. Let's talk about that as. You just can't shut this down once there's an open conversation station.

[Scott Horton]

Yep. And look, more and more, I mean, I see it, you know, in your, in your debates and your appearances on these things. The comments all say, man, when something happens, I just say, man, I can't wait to find out what Dave Smith says about this. Just because you've earned their respect and credibility over time, that, like, hey, I, I hear a lot of people with a lot of opinions, but that Smith guy makes a hell of a lot of sense to me on a consistent basis. That's what they say, say, and it's just, what are you gonna do? So this is with equal access to the market. This is what the free market of ideas delivers is it turns out that actually, as you often point out, Bill O'Reilly, when he got kicked off of Fox News, went away. Tucker. Tucker Carlson exploded. Now, part of that maybe is the timing, but part of Also, Bill O'Reilly was always being foisted on us, whereas Tuck Carlson really has something to offer, offer. And so, you know, that's the difference is between like AstroTurf and grassroots there where, I mean, yeah, yeah, Tucker does come from on high, but he's earned his support from down below by now, you know.

[Dave Smith]

Well, it's. No, but it's. It's a testament to. Look, the part of. It is an age thing. I think Tucker had a much younger audience. I think Bill O'Reilly's audience was unlikely to figure out what a podcast or an Internet show was, you know, but they're also. But there is something to a passion factor because, like, you know, I, I remember during the years of people who were, like, getting kicked off YouTube and Facebook and stuff, there were people who I liked who, like, I used to watch their YouTube channel, and then they got kicked off, and now they're like, oh, I'm doing my thing over here. And I just never followed them over because, like, I liked them, but I didn't actually have the effort to, like, let me go find their website and join up to that and now listen to them on a. On a player that I'm not used to listening to and like, like, but if it's someone you love, loved, you know, like, you're like, no, I'll go do whatever to go follow that. So, so, like, that's a big part of it for sure, is just how much people, you know, how much closer to his audience Tucker Carlson was. And I think part of that has to be right just by the nature of it, that Bill O'Reilly may have been your favorite guy on Fox News, but he wasn't saying anything different than what Sean Hannity was going to say in the hour after him or than what, whoever, you know, hour before him or really have anything. Like, it's like every hour of Fox News was going to be Bill O'Reilly's opinions. He just, he might say it in a little bit better of a way where you like it. Whereas like Tucker Carlson, he leaves. And now nobody's going to be saying what Tucker Carlson was saying at Fox News. There's that just inherently, I think, makes you more valuable. And then, you know, look to your, to your point about people, you know, saying they go to me for this stuff or whatever. It's just, you know, know, you know, I, I've benefited a lot from just being lucky, being exposed to the right people. Like, you know, no one higher on that list than you and, and learning a lot of really good from a lot of really good people. But I do think, and this would be my message, you know, my message to like, young people who like, are want to get into the business of doing like, what me and you do or any capacity in this world is. It's like, look, br. Like there's the same way that like Ron Paul and the people I admired had it. Like, what I have is I get, I have the benefit of a track record now. And the more you kind of build, you know, when you're good on stuff, you just get the benefit of this track record. Like, oh, he was the guy who got Russia Gate right and got Covid right and got Ukraine right and got this right. And you know what I mean? And like that after a while you just, you build up credibility. Like there's real, there's real value, long term, low tide preference value in sticking to the, the hardcore libertarian principles during these crazy times like you do. It does age well. And I think also that's, you know, I think that's obviously a huge part, as we were saying before, of you and Anti wars kind of, you know, anti war.com and all your shows and kind of your explosion is that, you know, know, you just get to a point where you're like, I, I don't know man, we got like three decades here of Scott Horton being right about all this stuff. So now when the next thing comes up, I kind of want to hear what he has to say. And I'm going to just start with the de facto. He's probably right about this again.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, well, and the fun part too, about especially, you know, kind of locking myself away to write provoked for a couple of years. There is now there's so many people who've never heard of me before and then. But I have been doing this for this long.

[Dave Smith]

Right, Right.

[Scott Horton]

They don't know why I know all this stuff if I'm brand new and you know what I mean? They don't understand where this stuff has come from. I saw someone on the, in the comments on me and Daryl's show that said, oh, Scott Horton has a show too. I sure do, man. You. You wouldn't know it. I admit that you wouldn't know it, but I sure do.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, but.

[Scott Horton]

So, yeah, so that's a little bit, you know, fun part of it too, where, you know, like on the. Going on Pierce Morgan or whatever, where I'm old enough now I'm ready to take on General Clark or whoever you got, you know.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And. And I think that, no, it is an interesting, you know, thing. It's kind of like this, you know, this, this, you, you at an interesting time. Like right when you and me and, And a lot of people were kind of like peaking or no, I don't know, peaking. Hopefully we keep going much higher. But like at the time when we were like, kind of coming up and really kind of hitting that, like, breaking that wave, where it's like, oh, you've hit this critical mass where, like, you're really a player in this world. You buried your nose in writing this like, gigantic book. And then it's cool as you come out of that to be like, oh, this, this, you know, is a lot different than it was after your last previous books where now you're getting on these like, huge shows and so many more people are reading the thing and so many more people are hearing what you have to say. It's just, again, listen, you know, I. You did this 10 hour podcast yesterday, and most of the times when me and you talk, you know, we end up talking about, you know, I'm asking you questions about details and foreign policy conflicts and. But I did think it would be fun today to just kind of like talk about all this stuff. And, you know, I found myself just. I just kind of found myself thinking about a lot of this stuff about particularly you and, and me over, you know, with last night, you doing this 10 hour podcast. We're recording this one early, so it'll be in a few days. But as we're recording it, last night, Scott did this 10 hour podcast and I did this debate with this New York Times guy. And I don't know, it's just interesting. It's a real interesting moment on so many different, you know, fronts.

[Scott Horton]

It's something to celebrate, man. Obviously we're not in charge of the policy or anything, but, you know, I was told there's somebody in the Vice president's office is a fan of mine and reads my books. And I just thought, wow, you know, that was not the case in the Bush years.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, right, right.

[Scott Horton]

And Scooter Libby and, and David Wormser.

[Dave Smith]

And now whoever's up there, Scooter Libby never went like, did you hear Horton's take?

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, they weren't doing that then. So it ain't, it ain't everything, but it's a little bit, man. It's a little bit. And, you know, I told Tucker Carlson, I was like, you know, the most important thing about you, really, is that you're the moral voice of the right. Like, there is no Billy Graham now. Like, the, the, the leader of the right is not Trump either. It's Tucker Carlson. And the most valuable thing about his approach to all of this is the way he just says, this is disgusting. Sting. This is sickening. What are we doing? This is wrong. I know it's wrong. I was praying about it and God told me, no, wait, that's not a quote. But just whatever he, he, he is afraid to do sin, and he's trying to make up for his past transgressions, and he's just so sincere about it. There's. You know what I mean? There's no gimmick.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Scott Horton]

He's legitimately, you know, you know, working hard to try to, to make amends for past mistakes and all that. And that just makes him such a great leader. You think how many people supported these wars along with him, who now can feel good about following him back the other way? They're like, you know, what if Tucker says we don't have to believe this crap anymore? Maybe we really don't, you know, and that's it. And then with the absolutely not, I will not stand for it. Put my foot down because of how disgusting and sinful the horrific, horrific, terrible things are. Like, the way that he takes that moral approach to the moral condemnation of it all just makes it, you know, complete. You know, it just drives the point home so strongly that no, no question, no going back for that. It's not really a debate about policy. It's a debate about whether we should be indulging in evil or not. And the answer is no. You know, very simple.

[Dave Smith]

No. That's right. That's right. And I will say, say as much as, you know, look, I've been incredibly hard on him over the last couple months and I have a feeling that that is not going to stop anytime soon. But there really is something about the effect of Donald Trump that he, he did in a way open this conversation that even he's not able to close now. You know, he, you just, and, and, and I, I know we, Ron Paul played a huge role in this stuff, too. I would never downplay that. But we also being honest here, I mean, what Donald Trump, you know, I remember when, I don't know if you remember this exact moment, but this actually came up recently because now the Iran hawks started using this example again. But Ron Paul used to make the point in the presidential debates, or at least he did this once in one of the Republican primary debates where he said to the Republican audience, and it was a very smart, you know, strategic way to present this by, by Dr. Paul where he goes, you know, in the 80s, Ronald Reagan sent the Marines into Lebanon and then he turned tail and ran and we came back home and he wrote in his memoirs that, like, he just underestimated the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics and that that's why he came home. And there was something so powerful to, for your boomer Republican audience to go, oh, Ronald Reagan said that, that, oh, all right. You know, like as soon as you just go, oh, all right, all right. Ronald Reagan said that. Now that's only one thing that Ronald Reagan said in a sea of a lot of other things that Ronald Reagan said. But like, you still just in a way you give them permission. Like I'm allowed to talk about, oh, I'm allowed to feel that way. And I'm okay if, if Ronald Ray. And there is something about Donald Trump, like Donald Trump just said all these wars are stupid too many times that, like, it's not an out of bounds thing anymore. More to approach any right winger with like, I mean, across America. I'm not talking about like, you know, like, you know, neo reactionary Curtis Yarvonites or something. I'm saying like your Fox News watching uncle. You could approach them and be like, all these wars were stupid. Right? What are we spending money over there? And everything's so expensive over here. And, you know, and they're open to that. And it's just, you know, obviously, Tucker. Yeah. There's just nobody who's played, like, a bigger role in that than him. And it's really, it's. It's amazing.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah. And it is. It's truly building consensus. And look, we always were right. It was just a matter of people didn't want to get Michael Moore's commie cooties on him.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Didn't want to. They didn't want anybody calling him a hippie. And, you know, Ron Paul, he handed out hall passes to, I don't know, a couple of 10 million people at least. But maybe he's just too gentle of a family doctor of a. Yeah, man. You needed like, only Nixon can go to China, only Ronald Reagan can go to Moscow. You know, you need Donald Trump to say, we're coming home from the Middle East. Not that he's doing that, but I'm just saying he's. And he certainly, you know, in his campaigns, in his statement, like you're saying, has absolutely normalized those opinions that, like, you know, this is an idiot thing to do. Tough is tough, but stupid is stupid, and we shouldn't be doing these kinds of things anymore. And so, like, you're saying, pretty hard to walk that back. Just like I say about Afghanistan, I was like, think Donald Trump really knows a lot about Afghanistan. It's just he took one look at it and said, this is a stupid waste of money. You can't pacify these people. I want to come home now. Well, so he doesn't have a deep knowledge, but he's still right. And now that he's that correct about it, how could you ever make him wrong again? You're going to convince him now that, no, we can pacify these people, Mr. President. They just need to get hit a little harder. Like, no, dude, he's already decided, cited correctly, that that ain't going to work with anything short of HBomb. So forget it. And so same with anything, you know. But the thing is, it's got to get reinforced from out here in the country, and it's worth making a call to action here. Even Dave, I think that, like, people should be calling their congressmen and they should be calling the White House and even their state senators and whatever, and letting people know the, the way that the consensus is going to now, you know, if. If there's like, whatever, some old black and white movie Where Carrie Grant says, you know, call your congressman, kid, and democracy will work for you or whatever. Well, forget that. Like, I'm not saying that it all works great.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Horton]

And it's something to believe in or have faith in or whatever. But I am saying that it's worth a shot and it's important that their phones ring and that they know. And I'll give you a great example. That was just a couple weeks ago. I saw a congresswoman say, day the phone is ringing off the hook, and the only topic is Epstein. People are pissed about this. They want to know about this. They want to know why we don't want to know about this. And, like, geez, I'm not sure I can go about my other business until we figure out what we're doing about this. So either the phone keeps ringing or it stops. And the phone, when it rings, it's either. Half the time, I want to stop supporting Israel. Israel. And also because I'm suspicious that they're behind this Epstein thing anyway. But also I want all the truth about Epstein or the phone ain't ringing at all. Right. Or it's all Epstein, or it's all Gaza, or it's neither. Or it's something else. I knew a guy that worked at the state legislature in Texas. He said the only lobbyists who come up here who want anything are either businessmen who want a free handout or some public interest group that wants to restrict somebody else's freedom. It's the only people up there. It's the only people who participate at all, who care at all.

[Dave Smith]

All.

[Scott Horton]

Until, like, occasionally you have a big thing that gets the phones ringing. And so this is the kind of thing where when there's a war on, they have to know, like, the. Just the water cooler talk in the office is, man, people are pissed about this, or people are really happy that we stopped doing that terrible thing that we were doing, that we stopped or whatever. They need positive reinforcement when they're doing the right thing, and they need to be scolded when they're misbehaving, behaving like Thomas, like a picture, just Donald Trump in that Oval Office, just kind of staring out the window, imagining America out there. Like, when he imagines us, are we pissed or are we happy? Right. If he's worried, oh, man, they're all pissed off at me. Well, at least that's something, right? If you don't even have cause to worry about that, then we're not even in his conversation today, Right? He's. Well, the Israelis are Pissed. That's who I have to keep happy, you know, rather than the Texans or the New Jersey museums.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, no, that's right. And it should, it should be pointed out that like, you know, they're the as much as there listen, there is, there are many pro and anti democracy arguments and I am very sympathetic to a lot of critiques of democracy, but we do have a democratic process in this country and it is worth pointing out out that the bad guys are really afraid of that. They're very like, they're very concerned about democracy actually, you know, even though they, for that reason.

[Scott Horton]

Right.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Talking about.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, well look, I mean like the, you could just look at the last few years. I mean, what do you want to do? The Democrats first, the Democrats haven't had an honest primary at least since 2008. I mean I don't think there's been a real primary since then. The 2016 was rigged. 2020 money was rigged. 2024. They didn't even pretend to have one. They just straight up just killed the whole process there. They blatantly interfered in the election in 2016. They blatantly interfered in the election in, in 2020. I guess there's some open questions about what exact what type of interference there was in 2024 or what exactly what different timeline we could have been living in with a slight, you know, know, centimeter difference of a turn by Donald Trump. But just saying like it is worth noting that like yeah, the, the ruling elite are very concerned with propagandizing you and very worried about you having an honest chance. And so we don't have that much leverage at our disposal. But it is leverage. They do need to get reelected and they, they do worry about that. And so if they think, oh my God, the voters are going to hate my guts if they do this, it's at least a disincentive of. So again, like to your point, the question isn't is this going to change the world? The question is like is this better than not doing it? And yeah, it's a lot better than not doing it to you know, take, take the 10 minutes to just make a phone call anyway. Scott, I do, I do gotta wrap up on that but I really did enjoy this. Next time we're on, it'll be more back to more me asking you details about foreign policy conflicts and all that stuff. But yeah, to remind people anything particular else that you, you want to plug or tell people where they can come check out your stuff?

[Scott Horton]

No, just my substack is Scott hortonshow.com you can get the first two sections of. Or the first three sections are the first two chapters of the audiobook of Provoked. And it's already like 12 hours worth for just like the first third of the book. So that's pretty good to get you started there. I gotta finish the academy before I finish the audiobook, but that's my substack. And then otherwise, check out the Libertarian Institute. I got a bunch of really great guys over there. Great podcast, great articles. And we're about to publish Creative Chaos dos, which will be the most important book on the origins of the Syrian Dirty War 15 years ago, which you're going to absolutely love by William Van Wagonen. And that's coming out any day now, probably tomorrow. So really excited.

[Dave Smith]

I can't wait to read that. Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Libertarian institute.org all right, awesome.

[Dave Smith]

Well, Scott, as always, thank you so much. Like I said before, I really don't know. Not just me, man. And like, obviously, look, you've had a tremendous influence over me. I'm a total, you know, whore Tony in When it Comes to War and Peace and, and, and most other things, to be honest too. But yeah, dude, it's just cool, it's cool to watch you getting your flowers the way you are here and I, I really can't wait for this Lex Friedman episode to come out. I think it's gonna, I think it's gonna blow a lot of people's minds and, and gonna be really, really great. So anyway, thanks so much for coming on. Uh, I do, I just wanna, by the way, I'm to, to the audience, I'm on vacation, uh, this week with my, my family. Uh, this, you know, that's important in life. And so this is. We pre recorded this episode. I will try. I'll get another episode or two out this week. But the schedule. Bear with me, may it might not be our regular schedule. The following week we'll be back to regular schedule. So anyway, thank you guys very much. Catch.

[Scott Horton]

See you Saturday in Houston, buddy.

[Dave Smith]

Oh yeah, yeah. See you Saturday, August 9th, Ron Paul's birthday. See you there. All right, have a good night, guys. Peace, Sam.