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- [00:00]
Theo Von
We have added a second show in Nashville, baby, on May 3rd. It's an early show, 4pm at the Bridgestone arena. And I can't even believe that. And thank you guys so much for all the love and support and honored to be performing here in. In Nashville. We also have tickets remaining for East Lansing, Michigan, Victoria, B.C. in the Canada, College Station, Texas gig him, Belton, Texas, Oxford, Mississippi, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Winnipeg in the Canada and Calgary in the Canada. Get all your tickets@theo vaughan.com to U R. Today's guest is a comedian, podcaster and a social commentator. You know him from his show Part of the Problem and you also know him from Legion of Skanks with Big J and L J Gomez. We get into a lot of topics in this one, one of them being the Israel and Palestine conflict, which we've been learning about on this show over the year. We recorded this on Monday, January 13, which is why there was no talk of the ceasefire. Just wanted to make that note. I'm really grateful for his time and his insight. And today's guest is comedian Dave Smith. I mean, that's most of my goal each day is just. Is to just babysitting myself. A lot of it.
- [01:45]
Dave Smith
Well, that's a good. That's a good way to do it. We have some other people help babysit you.
- [01:50]
Theo Von
Oh, I'd like to get to that point. You know, I think I would like to get to that point. Get a spouse or get a. Get some, you know, spouse or something.
- [02:03]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [02:04]
Theo Von
Caretaker or even get in a hospice, dude. I have some friends.
- [02:07]
Dave Smith
You just want. But not dying, but just have hospice.
- [02:10]
Theo Von
But that's a new thing. A lot of guys, really.
- [02:12]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [02:12]
Theo Von
See, if you bring that up, if you bring young men going to live. My buddy Caleb Presley, you know, he is. He works with barstool. Long hair.
- [02:22]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I think so.
- [02:23]
Theo Von
He does the Sunday conversation.
- [02:25]
Dave Smith
Okay.
- [02:26]
Theo Von
He lives in a senior retirement home.
- [02:30]
Dave Smith
How old is he?
- [02:31]
Theo Von
He got loopholed in, I think 33, 34.
- [02:34]
Dave Smith
That's. That's getting an early start.
- [02:36]
Theo Von
Loves it. Tanning, listening to him argue, stuff like that. It's down in Florida, so it's a. Yeah, he gets all of that three meals a day or like two and a half meals. I'm not sure what they're doing.
- [02:49]
Dave Smith
I feel. Is there a gym there? I feel like you'd feel really good about yourself in the gym. Like if you're just like. You know what I mean? Like, just like. Yeah. Fucking wrecking these fools here, dude. I'm the only One going hard.
- [03:00]
Theo Von
That's a good point, dude. Some guys just fucking.
- [03:04]
Dave Smith
Look at this chump.
- [03:05]
Theo Von
Some guy just zoned out some. I was like, I was Mr. Olympian 1938. Some dude is hopped up on ED pills. You know, that's got to be the scary thing, I think, when you get to a certain age, is risking the erect, going for the erection because of the blood. Just moving all the blood to one, you know?
- [03:28]
Dave Smith
Oh, yeah, you're probably gonna.
- [03:30]
Theo Von
You probably can't stand up to that battlefront.
- [03:32]
Dave Smith
Yeah, but that's like, there's gotta be something. It's probably a real compliment to a chick if you're like, I'm risking it all. I'm risking it all just to try to fuck you right now. That's the ultimate. Like, nothing could be any better. My grandfather lived in a. Like, a. Like, I don't know what, nursing home type deal for, like, a couple years before he died. He was really. The people who work there. It was just such a funny dynamic. It was like all. It was like, all black people from, like, the inner city. And then, like, old Jews and all the black people who work there are just rolling their eyes at these old people the whole time. My grandfather, every time I went to see him, he accused them of stealing from him. None of these people were ever stealing from him. None of them. It was just pure racism. Like, it was just. And it was like, things that, like, he'd be like, they took the art off the wall, and I'd be like, there was no art on this wall. This is all in your mind.
- [04:26]
Theo Von
He's like, there's not now.
- [04:28]
Dave Smith
You made me. He made me move a dress. I was, like, 12, and he made me move this big dresser to check if there was change behind it.
- [04:36]
Theo Von
Oh, yeah.
- [04:37]
Dave Smith
And then there was nothing. I was like, there's no change behind it. And he was like, they stole it. And I was like, wait, there was supposed to be change behind it. Like, you were keeping your change.
- [04:45]
Theo Von
That's the old Jewish change behind the dresser trick, I think, isn't it? Yeah. You're Jewish.
- [04:52]
Dave Smith
You're. Yeah, Okay, I am.
- [04:54]
Theo Von
You are. And so are you Israeli, too. Is that the same thing?
- [04:59]
Dave Smith
No, no, no, no. Israel's the nation. I have nothing to do with that.
- [05:02]
Theo Von
Okay, but are. But some are. Some Jew. But someone's Jewish. They're just there. Just means that they have family that's from Israel originally.
- [05:10]
Dave Smith
No, not even necessarily. It's just like, you. It's. You know, Judaism. It's a weird thing because it's like a religion, but then it's also kind of a race, and then it's kind of a nationality with Israel. So basically, a bunch of Jews went and started their own country in Israel in the 40s, but these were Jews from Europe who went to, you know, now, according to the Bible or whatever, thousands of years ago, we were all from there, but the Jews from Europe went and started there, but lots of other Jews just didn't leave Europe or didn't leave America. And so they never had anything to do with Israel. Yeah.
- [05:43]
Theo Von
Oh, okay.
- [05:44]
Dave Smith
But they still play on kind of like your, you know, come on, you got to support us because we're for you.
- [05:50]
Theo Von
We're.
- [05:51]
Dave Smith
This is the Jewish state. This is what protects Jewish people. So a lot of Jews do feel sympathy to Israel, even the ones who don't have, like, any. Any connection, even ones who have never been there.
- [05:59]
Theo Von
Okay, got it, Got it. Okay. No, that's interesting. Yeah. Because sometimes I wonder, like. Yeah, because I start hearing about, like, Jewish. Then I hear Zionist. And Zionist means.
- [06:10]
Dave Smith
Zionist means. I think, technically speaking, Zionist means you believe that Jews should have a homeland in what is now called Israel. So that's more like the belief that Jews should have this country over there and then there. Now. Then there's, like, kind of a separation between that and someone could theoretically be a Zionist, but also be like, the way they're doing it over there is all wrong. Right. So you don't have to, like, support the government. But Zionist typically means that. But now it's just kind of become. It's become shorthand for someone who supports Israel.
- [06:46]
Theo Von
Okay. Okay. So somebody supports the country. Israel.
- [06:49]
Dave Smith
Right.
- [06:49]
Theo Von
Is Zionist. And what. Sometimes I see black Zionists. Is that just like. Is that like, Zionism? Just, like, with a backbeat or whatever? Like, what is it? Because you know what I'm talking about.
- [06:58]
Dave Smith
Yes. That. Well, those guys, they're like, we're the reals.
- [07:01]
Theo Von
And I'm like, I don't know what is going on.
- [07:03]
Dave Smith
Those guys, they were so. I grew up in New York City, and they would always be out, like, in midtown Manhattan. And there was no. Let me tell you something. And Theo, I mean, I've come up around some incredibly talented comedians. I've seen some of the best in the world. There is no better comedy show than being, like, 15 and just sitting there and watching these guys. They'd scream at people, and then people would get furious back at them. I've watched, like. Because their thing is that they're the real Jews, and then they get, like, Little old Jewish men will start yelling at that. No, you're not the real Jew. I'm the real Jew. And we would just be like stone teenagers just watching. Just.
- [07:38]
Theo Von
It's like with the real slim savings. Please stand up. You know, is that an okay Jewish joke to make or not?
- [07:45]
Dave Smith
I mean, as far as I'm concerned.
- [07:46]
Theo Von
It was good. Just. Yeah, sorry. That was pretty, that was pretty good.
- [07:51]
Dave Smith
No, so they, I don't know what their whole claim is, I don't know, but they say they're the real Jews and the Jews are just pretending to be the Jews, but they're really the white devils or something.
- [08:01]
Theo Von
Yeah, because that's a new thing I've been see, I would see it and then sometimes I wouldn't see it. And now in different, when I'm in, sometimes I'm performing different cities, you'll see a group of black Zionists and they're trying to get you into something, you know, and I can't tell what it is. And. But yeah, and then you see you hear a lot of different terms. So. Yeah, I was just curious about that. Dave Smith, thanks for joining, man.
- [08:20]
Dave Smith
Absolutely.
- [08:21]
Theo Von
You are a comedian and a. I want to say like a politico, is that fair to say? Kind of or.
- [08:27]
Dave Smith
Sure.
- [08:27]
Theo Von
You're like somebody with a point of view.
- [08:29]
Dave Smith
Yeah, definitely that.
- [08:30]
Theo Von
Yeah, I love.
- [08:31]
Dave Smith
I. I'm obsessed with politics and I talk a lot of about it. So yeah, I guess whatever you want to call that.
- [08:37]
Theo Von
But yeah, and you're very funny man.
- [08:39]
Dave Smith
Well, thank you.
- [08:40]
Theo Von
And, and you are a libertarian, is that right? Yes. Okay. And this is awesome, man. Cause so much of my audience and me really is just like, I don't know what a lot of the terminology is, right. Like even asking you about Zionists, like you hear it but you're like, what is it? Right. What does libertarian mean?
- [09:00]
Dave Smith
To me it's basically just. It's the belief in like in self ownership, in non aggression and private property. Basically the idea of libertarianism is that like you own your body, you own your life, you ought to be free. So long as you're not impeding on the rights of other people, you ought to be able to do whatever you want to do. Okay, so a belief in free market capitalism, peace, non intervention and just basically the idea of what. The idea of what most people think of Americanism as that like oh yeah, you have freedom of speech, you have the right to own a gun, you have the right to own some property, you have the right to live your life the way you see best and.
- [09:41]
Theo Von
Do libertarians believe in government?
- [09:45]
Dave Smith
Well, there's a range of different thoughts within libertarians. To the extent that libertarians believe in government, we believe the role of government is to protect people's liberty. Government shouldn't be doing anything more than that. Like, if they're doing anything more than that, then they've become tyrannical.
- [10:02]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [10:03]
Dave Smith
Which I think is true. I think is just objectively true. Like, no matter what is, if government's doing anything that is more than just protecting property or protecting people, then it's always at the expense of someone. Even if they're giving somebody something, they're taking it from someone else because they don't actually have anything themselves. Right.
- [10:22]
Theo Von
So, like, what would an example of that be?
- [10:23]
Dave Smith
Kind of, I mean, anything. Like, even if you just took it down to, like, if the government is cutting a check to one person, well, how do they get that check? Right. It's not like, you know what I mean? Like, they didn't pool their money together.
- [10:34]
Theo Von
Right.
- [10:34]
Dave Smith
People did. They took it from someone. They taxed one group of people to give it to another. Got it. So any service is. Falls within that.
- [10:42]
Theo Von
Got it. Understood. Cool, man. Yeah, I. Okay, so that's good information. Thanks. What. Let's talk about some things that are happening right now. One of the biggest ones right now is TikTok and the sale of it. Right. Like, there's a big uproar right now. You see a lot of videos on TikTok about what to do if TikTok disappears, where to go. People like, there's like, safe rooms and shit. I'm like, I think people are probably. They'll figure it out, but maybe some people won't. What do you think is behind the TikTok ban? Do you think it's actually going to get banned?
- [11:14]
Dave Smith
I'm very unsure about the second question. I really don't know. It'll be interesting. I don't use TikTok, and so I don't really have a connection to like, the. But the people who love TikTok. I've seen this too. They're losing their minds. Like, they're like. I think they are some type of addicted to it. What's behind it is really interesting. And I think that that's like, it's kind of a. It's a. It's a microcosm of like, kind of what's going on in general. But TikTok very quietly, to people who are not, like, on it and not using it, but it became like the main, like, news source for young People.
- [11:52]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [11:53]
Dave Smith
And like, in a crazy way that for people our age, if you even think back to, like, when we were little kids, it's so, like, it's hard to even imagine that it's real. It's like, oh, they. Now, these young people are connected to information in a way that totally, like, goes around older people at all. They have nothing to do with it. You know what I mean? Like, Nancy Pelosi's sitting there just furious. Like, what is this? No, they don't care about, like, they don't even know the people on TV news, you know? And so, okay, when I say this, I'm not just, like, pulling this out of my ass. Like, there was, like, one. It might have been the head of the adl, but it was someone real high up in the. In the ADL who said this.
- [12:32]
Theo Von
And what is adl?
- [12:33]
Dave Smith
The Anti Defamation League.
- [12:35]
Theo Von
And then there was Anti Defamation League. So there. It's like graffiti or whatever.
- [12:39]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, not exactly. They're not. The name doesn't exactly describe what they do. But they're one of these people. Yes. In fact, it was him. It was Greenblatt, CEO of Anti Defamation League. They're a league that was started by Jewish people. And it was kind of, at least at the beginning, I think, was to be whatever, fighting anti Semitism or exposing this stuff. They've come to be an organization that will really try to go after and ruin anybody who's critical of Israel.
- [13:08]
Theo Von
Right. I said they had some issue with Elon. Now, I remember maybe a year ago or eight months ago or something, there was something with him maybe that was adl.
- [13:15]
Dave Smith
Yeah, it's possible. But so they. One of the things that they were real upset about was that from 10-7-23 up until now, TikTok has just been dominated by, you know, anti Israel, kind of critical of this war. That's where a lot of the young people are seeing all the images of, like, the Palestinian babies dying and stuff.
- [13:40]
Theo Von
The kids, like, people, like, begging for food and stuff like that. A lot of. Yeah, like the icc, when they tried to, like, condemn Netanyahu, that was loose on there. Yep. Or it was real information, but.
- [13:51]
Dave Smith
Yes, yes, that's right. And if you remember, it was really interesting to me, but I don't know, what is it? Like a year ago around now, Osama bin Laden's letter to America went viral on TikTok. It was so fascinating for me. I'm 41, and so I was 18 when 911 happened. Wow. And then it's interesting to watch this Whole new generation of 18 year olds discover this for the first time. It's like, oh, yeah, there was a whole thing went down and they're actually reading Osama bin Laden's own letter about why he did it. Yeah. Now, of course, they're young lefties, so a lot of times, I mean, you know, they were like, osama was right. And you know, I'm not saying they took like the best message from it, but it was interesting to watch them kind of like engaging.
- [14:37]
Theo Von
Yeah. It's like wearing that Che Guevara shirt, you know? Yeah. You're like, I don't know exactly what he was doing, but yeah, it seems cool. It seems like a vibe. But then also to hear from like a person who is labeled completely as horrible, Right. As the enemy, like Osama bin Laden was, and to see some of their thoughts. Right. Like to see how they believe that they came to be the enemy. Right. Not taking a side in it, but just like, it's kind of fascinating that you weren't able to really get some of those in some places, in some platforms, you might not be able to hear that view.
- [15:09]
Dave Smith
Well, imagine, I mean, like, imagine it was just like a, like a personal thing. Like if I, if there was like, if I told you I was like in an argument with someone, like a mutual friend of ours, and I was like, yo, me and this guy just got in a huge fight. And you were like, what happened? And I was like, well, he, he's a monster. He's evil. He hates everything good. He's made of pure venom. And I think you might be like, okay, but like, what's really going on here? Because it's not a matter of taking sides to just be like, he probably has a side too, right?
- [15:38]
Theo Von
He has a point of view.
- [15:38]
Dave Smith
He probably has a point. And what the American people were told, I remember when I was 18, was they hate us for our freedom. Like, that was all you were allowed to think of. Al Qaeda, right after 9, 11 was like, they did this because they hate freedom. They hate, they hate your mom. They hate everything about our life. They hate everything that's good. They hate that we have, you know, whatever, that we're Christian, whatever it is.
- [16:01]
Theo Von
And, or, yeah, freedom of religion. They hate any of that. Like there was all these. It was like. But the only way you could get that information was through like the main network.
- [16:10]
Dave Smith
Yeah, you had to listen to Dick Cheney have a conversation with some news lady on CNN or something like that. But what's interesting, I think for a lot of these young people is when you read Osama bin Laden, you realize that. And I don't think the conclusion should be that he was right. Obviously, you're never right when you're killing civilians. Right. Note to Israel. But he had legitimate grievances, and a bunch of those grievances are things that they never wanted the American people to know about, because then you might have a slightly different feeling about the war. I think the same thing's true with the war in Ukraine, too. It's like, why they want you to hear what Putin's issue actually is. Why did he invade this country? That's why they all flipped out when Tucker went and interviewed him. Because you're like, oh, shit. You get to hear his perspective now. And it's not that necessarily the correct position is to side with Putin. It's not. Or to side with Osama. It's not. But it's not wrong to recognize that, like, okay, he's got a point about this. He's got a point about that. Osama, aside from being an Islamist, which we all know he was.
- [17:13]
Theo Von
And what does Islamist mean?
- [17:15]
Dave Smith
Well, meaning like a fundamentalist, you know, not just a Muslim, but, like, a believer in, like, the most fundamentalist doctrine of Islam. So he was that. But then he's got all these grievances listed in his declaration of war against America, in his open letter to America.
- [17:33]
Theo Von
What were some of them? Can we bring them up, you think, or is it too deep to go into?
- [17:36]
Dave Smith
No, no. I mean, it's not even that. That complicated. I mean, the major ones were. The number one was that we have military bases in their holy land in Saudi Arabia. They hate this. They find this to be, like, a total. And I'm no, like, expert on Islam, but from their perspective, this is blasphemy.
- [17:54]
Theo Von
Oh, I can imagine that. Say, if I'm going to my church or my religious place, my place of worship.
- [17:58]
Dave Smith
Oh, yeah.
- [17:58]
Theo Von
And there's a guy sitting over there.
- [18:00]
Dave Smith
And a foreign military. Right.
- [18:02]
Theo Von
Foreign group loudly drinking out of a juice box or something and, you know, pouring Skittle, you know, a loud candy in his hand because he doesn't give a fudge.
- [18:11]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [18:11]
Theo Von
He doesn't even probably recognize him my religion even exists. He may not. He may. He may not. But either way, still, that's going to make me fume. Oh, dude.
- [18:19]
Dave Smith
But also, like, I mean, look, if we. Even if just you looked at it from a not religious point of view, I mean, if there was, like, Chinese or Russian military bases in our country, and we knew that, like, they're the real boss. You know what I mean? Like, it's not. Let's get real. America is not, like, on par with the Saudi government.
- [18:36]
Theo Von
Right.
- [18:37]
Dave Smith
We're the world empire, and they're our little satellite over there. That would make people infuriated. I mean, people. People over here, liberals over here, got infuriated about Trump being connected to Russia, and that wasn't even true. So, like, imagine it was true. And there were Russian bases, like, all over the place. People would lose their minds.
- [18:56]
Theo Von
We wouldn't stand for it.
- [18:57]
Dave Smith
That was a major. That was the major one, but it's the military bases. It was us, Our support for Israel and what they do to the Palestinians.
- [19:05]
Theo Von
And then he mentioned that.
- [19:07]
Dave Smith
Oh, yeah, yeah. This was a major, major part.
- [19:10]
Theo Von
Wow, I didn't know that.
- [19:11]
Dave Smith
Yes. So they, they were furious about that because they, you know, Israel is not too kind to their Palestinian neighbors. And so they. That was a big part of it.
- [19:20]
Theo Von
Yeah. It's heartbreaking over there.
- [19:21]
Dave Smith
Oh, yeah. And, and, and, you know, the war. This has been the worst thing that Israel's ever done to the Palestinians over the last year. Plus. But it's not like this is where it started. It was going on since.
- [19:31]
Theo Von
Yeah, we had some. We had some guys come on and talk about Israel and Palestine, just like the histories of both of them. You know, it was cool. We had Rabbi Wolpe Come. Basim Yousef. Yousef. Come on. And just to give, like, the two different. Kind of different sides and take us through some. The different perspectives of history.
- [19:52]
Dave Smith
But.
- [19:52]
Theo Von
Yes. So this was the message right here that. That Osama had written, Right?
- [19:57]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [19:57]
Theo Von
So those were some of his big issues.
- [19:59]
Dave Smith
Yes, Looks like it here. I can't.
- [20:01]
Theo Von
Okay. Criticism of American military bases in the Middle east, condemnation of US Support for Israel, accusation of US Exploitation of the region.
- [20:09]
Dave Smith
Number. Number three. So there. What he. What he was specifically talking about.
- [20:12]
Theo Von
Let's just say it. So.
- [20:13]
Dave Smith
Well, so what it says here is. I'm not sure what we're reading, but accusations of US Exploitation of the region's natural resources. And what he's talking about there is us insisting that they keep oil artificially low. The price of oil artificially low. Which is true. I mean, you know, even just when I remember a couple years ago when inflation was at its worst by the Biden administration just asked the Saudis to lower the price of oil because, you know, then. Well, that'll make prices cheaper here. Help face less political pressure of people being mad about gas being so expensive. But when you really think about what the. Ask Is there? The ask is, hey, make your people poorer so that our people can be richer. And so this was a big beef they had too.
- [20:59]
Theo Von
But by lowering the value of it, basically by saying it's worth less.
- [21:02]
Dave Smith
Right. By selling it for less, we get cheaper energy, but your people get less money. So that was one of their major beefs. And then the. At the time, you got to remember, because this was in the 90s, or actually, I'm not sure, the letter to America might have been later, but his declaration of war against America was like in 96. But so the big thing at the time was the Clinton's bombing campaign of Iraq and his blockade of Iraq. So there's like, it's debated how many people died from it. The UN estimated at one point that 500,000 children had died from starvation and malnutrition. So that was enough. So it's like he had all these grievances, and a lot of them involved the US either directly or indirectly killing Muslim kids.
- [21:46]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [21:46]
Dave Smith
And, you know, I mean, look, I. Obviously you're. He's wrong for doing terrorism, but I think most of us could admit that, like. Yeah, if anyone, you know, if any of us, like children that we care about were being slaughtered, we might be ready to do some violent stuff on behalf of that too.
- [22:03]
Theo Von
I mean, well, depending on what perspective you look at. Robin Hood is a tale of a terrorist. It depends on what perspective you look at it through.
- [22:09]
Dave Smith
Yeah. No, I mean, look, and that's. Or, or, you know, you know what I'm saying?
- [22:12]
Theo Von
Does that make any sense to you? A little bit.
- [22:13]
Dave Smith
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the, like, I think according to the British Empire, our founding fathers were a bunch of terrorists. Probably right.
- [22:19]
Theo Von
When you could look back to American history. I mean, what we did a lot to the Native Americans, sure, they had huge beef amongst each other, but they were also blatantly lied to and taken advantage of countless times.
- [22:31]
Dave Smith
Absolutely.
- [22:31]
Theo Von
By other people that had come in. You know, by white settlers that had come in. Or. And by the Spanish as well. You know, a lot of times it all gets put onto honkies or whatever, but it was also darker. Honkies? The Spanish.
- [22:44]
Dave Smith
Yeah. You know, just so you know, we don't even consider them white. Okay. So it was really your beef is with each other.
- [22:49]
Theo Von
But, but. So let's. Let's tie this back into the Tick Tock. Okay, so you're saying that it's because. And this. I believe that. Yeah. One of the main reasons Tick Tock has been banned is. Or is there's a threat of the ban or the force of the sale is because they don't want it to be in the hands of a place where they can't have the other side of the story come out. Well, whether it be about Palestine or about anything.
- [23:14]
Dave Smith
Now, the COVID story, the reason they claimed at first that they were trying to ban it was because of China. But it really wasn't until the war broke out in Gaza that this pressure kind of started mounting. But the China thing, I mean, I don't know. You know, I remember like Tucker did a whole thing on this back when he still had the show on Fox News and he was showing the thing where like, I don't know. Have you ever seen like the way the algorithm on TikTok works in China compared to the way it works in America?
- [23:42]
Theo Von
Theirs is more educational and Fun.
- [23:43]
Dave Smith
The number one trending video for 17 year olds in China is like a kid playing the violin or something. And then ours is just some chick twerking, you know, like on a sports car or something like that. And then they were like kind of saying like, oh, see, it's China's poisoning our kids minds. But I always thought, I mean, I don't know what the answer is, but like, isn't it possible that our kids.
- [24:03]
Theo Von
Are just poisoning our own minds?
- [24:04]
Dave Smith
Yeah, like their algorithm is just showing them this garbage and their algorithm is showing them this because like if I go, if I just made a conscious effort to go on Twitter every day and only look up like violin lessons, I'm sure that's what the algorithm would start sending me after a while. So I, I've always like been suspicious. That is like, I think our culture is just messed up and that's our.
- [24:24]
Theo Von
Worst enemy at this a lot of the same time because it's like want certain things but we're not willing to let go of any comforts or any. Or really battle some of our addictive natures. You know, I think some of that's too. Is just a side effect of capitalism and a side effect of comfort over time and a side effect of like kind of deterioration of our society. You know, like even if you look at like I was reading this the other day about pornography, like a lot of the, the videos in progress, someone will be like dad's daughter, dad. When you really think about the fact that that's how they're. You know what I'm saying? It's like there's somebody has a dark goal to tear down like the little things, like family things that matter, you know, I'm saying, like, so, you know, I was wondering.
- [25:10]
Dave Smith
I remember asking a friend about this. Like, this was a while ago, but it was 10 years ago or something like that. But it was like when I started noticing that, I was like, what's up with all the porn categories of like Family Swap and this and that? And a buddy of mine said this to me and I thought, oh man, that kind of makes sense. But he was like, oh, you know what it is, is he goes, nowadays, like, families are so broken up and mishmashed and everyone's from divorces and everything that so many people grew up with like a stepmom and step siblings. So you just be a kid and then all of a sudden you got like these new girls who aren't your mother and sister, you know what I mean? Like, living in your house. And so like, that's what led to that, which I don't know if that's theory is correct or not.
- [25:55]
Theo Von
Sounds like that dude kind of.
- [25:56]
Dave Smith
I was like, yeah, either he's a really sick person or you're on to something.
- [26:00]
Theo Von
That guy sounds like he was building. Like he was literally using you to build a case for. For a future indictment he was going to face. But no, it's kind of.
- [26:08]
Dave Smith
He came out with it really quickly too. Like it was.
- [26:11]
Theo Von
He's like, we just signed. Sign this petition right here.
- [26:13]
Dave Smith
Dave, I'm so glad you asked. I've been dying to talk to someone about this, but let me.
- [26:19]
Theo Von
I'm trying to tell this. What are we talking about?
- [26:20]
Dave Smith
In my mind, just tick tock and then.
- [26:22]
Theo Von
But TikTok. Yeah, like, yeah, we're also part of the. Our pro. It's like we just keep creating this stuff, but. Or just ridiculousness. We. And we get addicted to the ridiculousness. But also some of that's part of the freedom of just being in a place where you can make whatever you want. And you have that like, freedom of creation kind of to an extent, or freedom of your own creativity. Some places you can't even really be creative in because it's not. It's not. Not allowed. But the expressions of certain creativities aren't. Yeah, I don't buy the Chinese. I don't. I don't know if I buy the Chinese thing or not, because to me it's like, aren't all these apps, like, all of them seem like they're foreign to me? Yeah, like they're.
- [27:05]
Dave Smith
And what difference does it make? I mean, I just, you know, I know people were giving me shit because I said Something about this on. On Piers Morgan show the other day. But, you know, they were trying to make it out. Like it was. It was. The topic was about how Mark Zuckerberg just announced that he's gonna let people talk on Facebook again or whatever. And, you know, someone was arguing with me that, like, well, the government, the US Government has to, like, have these conversations with Facebook because all of these foreign governments are trying to propagandize us. And I'm just like, I don't know, after the last few years, how are you gonna tell me that DC should get in charge? Because other people are trying to lie to us. Like, all of the most blatant, most consequential l lies have come from my own government. So, like, I just don't get worked up over this. Like, Iran is trying to. Propaganda.
- [27:57]
Theo Von
I agree.
- [27:58]
Dave Smith
Ok, so, like, tell me, when was the last time Iran had, like, an effective propaganda campaign that actually, you know, like, like, led to something in America? Ok, well, my own government had. This country, like, literally had people, like, cutting family members out of their lives because they didn't take a vaccine.
- [28:14]
Theo Von
Yeah. And the Russia gate host.
- [28:15]
Dave Smith
Yeah, the Russia. You literally sat here, all you guys, four years and literally told us that what, if true, would have been the biggest story in the history of the United.
- [28:23]
Theo Von
Nothing true at all.
- [28:24]
Dave Smith
But imagine if it were true. Like, you were making the claim that the sitting President of the United States of America is involved in a conspiracy with a hostile foreign power. It was all bullshit. And all you guys still have your jobs.
- [28:36]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [28:37]
Dave Smith
All the people who sold that are still the ones complaining on the news today that no one trusts them without even thinking about that.
- [28:42]
Theo Von
Yeah. And you could ask in regular. I'm a pretty regular guy, I think, you know, like, and I don't mean that in, like, a braggy way. I just feel like I try to, you know, I try to be smarter. Sometimes it's hard for me. And I realized I just have to try my best at where I'm at. And I, I thought immediately Russia, I was like, they're running out of steam. They have an old dude. A lot of people go over there for perverted stuff. You know, it's like, I could certainly see a lot of our leaders passing through there. And you know what I'm saying, we'll do a few favors for Russia because they don't want some videos getting released. But I don't think that this, you know, this fraud there. They don't seem like they're on the cusp of. Of, like, chain like holding us at bay for something. You know, I just immediately. They didn't pass the smell test to me.
- [29:29]
Dave Smith
Well, also just that it's Donald Trump. I mean, like, say whatever you want about Donald Trump. He was a known commodity. He's like the most American thing. He's the most famous rich guy of all time. Like you're telling me he was a Russian spy. It just made, it made no sense. And then they had nothing, they had no evidence to support, never.
- [29:49]
Theo Von
Except they just beat you into it over and over again with the beliefs. Oh, I just got a notification from Moonpay that bitcoin is trading at near $100,000. Well now that's crazy. It's, it's just off its all time high of $108,000 in December. If you're interested in bitcoin or crypto, then you need to download the Moonpay app. That's it. Moonpay is like your friendly neighborhood convenience store if all it sold was crypto and it was open 24 hours a day. When you buy crypto with the Moonpay app, you can use any of your favorite payment methods, like Apple Pay, Venmo, PayPal, credit and debit. They took out the hassle of buying crypto and made it as easy as buying a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. Hmm. Thank you, Moonpay. In the last week, people in over 100 countries have bought bitcoin using Moonpay. If you want to be one of them, visit moonpay.com the to download their app on iPhone or Android and create a free account. When you create a Moonpay account, you can also use it to buy crypto on other popular wallets and trading apps like Phantom, Exodus, Metamask and Trust wallet. That's moonpay.com T H E O or just search Moonpay in the app Store. And I'm not giving you investment advice. I don't have that. But I am telling you that if you want to go with crypto, Moonpay is the way. You're a startup founder. That's what you are. You've, you've founded a startup and, and now you've got to find product market fit. That's right. That's probably your number one priority now. Maybe you have a new software, you have a new type of drone that takes family photos from outer space, or maybe you developed a new shoe and it purifies water and sorts coins while you walk. I don't know. But finding product market fit is probably your number one priority. But to land bigger customers, you also need security compliance. That's where Vanta comes in. Vanta is the all in one compliance solution, helping startups like yours get audit ready and build a strong security foundation quickly and painlessly. How well Vanta automates the manual security tasks that slow you down, helping you streamline your audit. Join over 9,000 companies, including many Y Combinator and tech stars. Startups who trust Vanta, simplify compliance and get $1,000 off at vanta.com/t H E O that's V A N T A.com/theo for $1,000 off. And the thing. And that's where I think, that's really where I think the media started to go, really lose its grip on, on people and, and on control. And so that's why I really worry a lot. Like with this tick tock band, I'm like, well, because if news is getting out there, right, about all types of things, it could be like. There was also a lot of Barbara O'Neill. Did you see those clips on her? She's a medicine woman, an Australian medicine woman. But there was a lot of like, natural remedy stuff that started to just be put out there. Like, I don't know if it was valid or not, but it was like, you would see a ton of it. Like, like, so basically opposition to all these medicines you, all these like prescriptions you need. Like, so I could see certainly how nobody, like the powers that be, if they exist, don't want a lot of this type of information out there. Oh yeah, and especially with Palestine, you know, I don't think, you know, I don't unders. You know, I don't understand what's going on over there. I mean, that Netanyahu guy, I mean.
- [33:50]
Dave Smith
What he's doing to these people is like, it's the most inexcusable, just horrific thing in the world. And the fact that, you know, like I said this on Rogan's podcast and I, I got shit for it, but I stand by this. But it's just like, you know, it's just like throughout all the history, there's just all this horrible shit. There's just slavery and wars and genocides and ethnic cleansing campaigns and all this. And every single point in history, there was someone there who would justify it and be like, no, we have to, we have to. And we have reasons why it's okay to do this. And they bend over backward and twist themselves into pretzels to explain why they're the real victims. And they really have to do this to These people, because if they don't, then they do it to them, but it's all indefensible. You're like, you're just defending evil shit. And I feel the same way about Israel, man. Like, it's just to defend what they're doing to a group of people who are captive, who they've been occupying since 1967. You know, you've been occupying.
- [34:44]
Theo Von
They have.
- [34:44]
Dave Smith
They don't have a military, they don't have a government, they don't have an air force. They don't have it. They have no means of defending themselves. And you are just destroying the place.
- [34:53]
Theo Von
But you're not letting the news out. That's the thing, right? You're not letting people get a fair take of what could potentially be going on there, right? You're not letting it. You're doing everything you can to stop that, right?
- [35:05]
Dave Smith
Well, they always do. They. You know, the only thing that's different is that now it's actually a challenge for them to do that. So throughout. But every war relies on lies, and every war relies on totally dehumanizing the enemy. Because if you can't do that, you're in a lot of trouble. You know, if you leave just a little inch of humanity for those people, then immediately you're gonna go, oh, my God, what are we doing? Because if that was your, like, brother's kid or your nephew, your son, your. You'd lose your mind about someone doing that to them.
- [35:34]
Theo Von
Oh, well, I think it's like, I'm not an anti Israel guy. I am a. But that guy seems. It just seem. He gives me this vibe that it's evil, right? And it's not something I'm making in my head. It's something that starts inside of me. It's not like I'm. Because I know it. Because I knew it. When I went to Cuba when I was in college and I would see people that would come up to the windows and they weren't allowed to share what they. Their. They had to whisper if they wanted to tell you something, right? Or when we went to the libraries there, and they only had books that started at Fidel, their history books started at Fidel.
- [36:12]
Dave Smith
That's crazy.
- [36:13]
Theo Von
So if you're a kid and you wanted to. You couldn't. You didn't exist. Your grandparents didn't even. Whoever. Your essence didn't exist, you know, so. And they had. I read a quote somewhere that the Theahu guy, that his father said that, oh, he didn't like Arabs, right? And he didn't like the essence of Arabs. And that to me was just like a thing. Like that's the same type of. It seemed like that Hitler would have said, like, I don't like whatever, the, the, the granule, the grain. I don't like this, The. The atom of this person. I don't know, man. Maybe. And, And I don't know.
- [36:51]
Dave Smith
No, it's. Listen, I mean, it's. There's, you know, my.
- [36:54]
Theo Von
It just makes me. And the biggest thing, it just breaks my heart, like. And so I know when that kind of shit's happening where my feel, it's like, that's where it comes from. It's like, you know, it just like. I don't know. I've always had a barometer for, like, the underdog, I think, you know, and maybe that's all. Maybe some of it's that too, you know, I don't know everything. I don't know. A ton of history, you know, But. But yeah, some of that shit, it just fucking hurts me. Think about how many children have been killed. How many kids have been killed over there.
- [37:21]
Dave Smith
Estimation, I mean, the estimates, I think, have been so far, like, undercounted. I think a lot more people than we initially thought are dying. But it was. I think I saw the estimate was that two thirds of the dead were women and children. So I don't know what, you know, exactly. The breakup between the women and children is. And I don't know if there are good numbers on that, But Gaza is 50% children. Like, that's one of the major things that makes it such a humanitarian. Yeah.
- [37:51]
Theo Von
Because it sounds like such a fun place to kids. Gaza, if you tell the kid, like, where are we going to go? You know what I'm saying? If you're like, we're going to go to Yemen or Gaza, they're going to go there.
- [38:00]
Dave Smith
One of the parks at Disney World.
- [38:02]
Theo Von
And I don't mean Epcot Gaza. I can't. Conservative figures show that more than 6,000 women, 11,000 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last 12 months.
- [38:12]
Dave Smith
I mean, it's way. This is way, way undercounted.
- [38:15]
Theo Von
It seems like it to me. Yeah.
- [38:16]
Dave Smith
For today, like, as of right now, I think the estimate testaments are.
- [38:19]
Theo Von
Dude, here's the toughest part. My. A lot of my Jewish friends are heartbroken by this man. And they'll come to me and, you know, and we'll be talking about it, you know, because. And they're just like, it's just sick that this is the guy who's representing us, you know, and that this is the choice. I don't understand why. Well, I guess if you live in Israel, then you feel like, well, these people are gonna kill us. And so you don't have. You have to. You have no choice but to support your governor.
- [38:45]
Dave Smith
I mean, I don't know if you have no choice, but there's definitely, like. There's this human impulse, and it's. This is always what's going on with all these wars on both sides. Right.
- [38:56]
Theo Von
Are they getting in trouble for talking about this, do you think?
- [38:58]
Dave Smith
Yeah, probably. I don't know. I don't know. But, yeah, maybe. I can't really get in any more trouble.
- [39:04]
Theo Von
Have you been in a lot of trouble?
- [39:05]
Dave Smith
Well, I've been talking about it so much for the last year, and I don't know what trouble even means anymore. I mean, I'm fine. So, like, some people seem mad at me on the Internet, but I don't care. And so it's. I. It seems okay. But, you know, of course, like, you, I could totally imagine that if you were like, let's say one of your family members was killed by Hamas militants on October 7. I could understand where you'd have the attitude. You'd be like, man, let's go fucking. Fuck this.
- [39:33]
Theo Von
Oh, I turn into. Yeah, I turn into William Wallace, you know.
- [39:36]
Dave Smith
Sure. But that's. But that also is the same thing that's going on with the Palestinians, right? And so a whole bunch of them, in fact, a lot more of them have seen their family members killed and stuff, and so they're ready to go, you know, like, slaughter as many people as they can. In the same sense that, like, right after 9, 11Americans were like, hey, let's go. Let's go blow some shit up. I mean, I don't know. You tell us who did this, and let's go blow them up. And then, like, even if it's not exactly the people who did it, you know. Ok. I mean, when we fought the war in Afghanistan, even. Forget Iraq, that just had nothing to do with it. But in Afghanistan, it's like, it wasn't Afghans who attacked us. It was. It was some Arabs who were Saudi Arabians, right? It was Saudis and Egyptians, right, who were hanging out in Afghanistan. And then we. The. With the special ops missions, we drove them all out and destroyed all their bases. And then it was like, okay, we got this Taliban here. Now, they're not exactly guilty of it, but, well, something's got to be blown up. And so we're going to go fight those guys. So. But then the thing is that if you, the thing with Osama bin Laden's letter is that you're like, oh, but that's kind of their motivation too. Like, they're also a bunch of people going, hey, we just saw a bunch of our people get killed. We're gonna come fuck some of you guys up.
- [40:47]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [40:47]
Dave Smith
And so that's kind of the attitude everybody has.
- [40:49]
Theo Von
Yeah, well, that's the crazy thing. It's like you. And the toughest part is the people are the ones who have to go and shed the blood. The people are the ones who have to have the blood shed based on what their leaders, who they elect, and they would never elect them and tell them to do that, then choose to do. That's what I'm just like, how does this. But then that's how things. That's just being alive, I guess, in human. Sometimes as sad as that is, or that's just how humanity's gone for a long time and society is gone and war is gone. But yeah, you have to think how many Iraq Iraqi people who had nothing to do with 9 11, if they had nothing to do with it, were affected by our military presence over there and are just waiting in the wings to affect harm on New America.
- [41:36]
Dave Smith
Well, I mean, there's. This is why we had to deal with that insurgency over there that took us so many years to ultimately lose to. You know, there's people, people don't like when you invade their country and destroy and destroy their homes and kill their relatives and stuff like that. And yeah, imagine if you think about that, first of all, nobody in Iraq had anything to do with 9 11. I mean, there were some Al Qaeda members who came into Iraq to fight as part of the insurgency after we invaded. But like, when we invaded, there was no one in Iraq who had anything to do with 9 11.
- [42:08]
Theo Von
And they must have been like, what the fuck?
- [42:10]
Dave Smith
Well, imagine particularly if you're like, Saddam Hussein was their problem, not ours. Like, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, but he wasn't our brutal dictator. He was there. They were the ones who had to live under Saddam Hussein. So now they're living under this brutal dictator. And then they got the most powerful military in the history of the world invading and just wrecking the country all because, well, we could get into that, but largely because Netanyahu wanted us to do it.
- [42:37]
Theo Von
Did he really?
- [42:38]
Dave Smith
Netanyahu is a huge, huge part of the war in Iraq.
- [42:41]
Theo Von
Why do we keep supporting him?
- [42:44]
Dave Smith
There's an interesting dynamic. I mean, there's a lot of things going on. So part of it is that there's the. Well, there were the neoconservatives who were really big in the George W. Bush years, and they were all of them fanatically pro Israel. There's AIPAC and there's the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law center, and there are these organizations in the country that will. It is their business to ruin your life if you're against Israel, particularly if you're in politics and you're against Israel. I mean, they just poured insane amounts of money. They lost. But they tried to get Thomas Massie Primaried out of his Congress seat.
- [43:28]
Theo Von
He's the guy that doesn't want to have an APAC guy, right?
- [43:30]
Dave Smith
Yeah, he's the only one who doesn't, according to him, the only one who doesn't have an APAC guy. So they do not like him.
- [43:36]
Theo Von
But do.
- [43:36]
Dave Smith
But there's the other. There, there's lots of other factors involved in this. There's also like, things like. There's blackmail operations. There's like, like Epstein, stuff like that. And then there's also Evangelical Christians in this country fanatically support Israel as well. So there's like a whole bunch of forces that. Israel has a, let's say a very outsized influence on U.S. policy.
- [44:01]
Theo Von
Is there something that. I guess that. Yeah, I guess I don't understand why we would support it while they're doing that murdering.
- [44:07]
Dave Smith
Yeah. Well. And then even if you.
- [44:09]
Theo Von
Unless there's something I don't understand, like that's also the thing. It's like. Or do we. Are they just our best friend from a long time? And that's just what it is. And so it's like a. Like, I just, I worry that. I just also don't understand like the history of much as. Why. Why there is so much support there.
- [44:32]
Dave Smith
Well, it's been.
- [44:33]
Theo Von
But you have to have a support in the Middle East. You have to have like a friend in there.
- [44:37]
Dave Smith
Well, that's been. That was the thinking for a long time.
- [44:40]
Theo Von
Right.
- [44:40]
Dave Smith
You know, and that it's. And, and that if we had, you know, there was a big concern, a lot of people in the American security apparatus back in the day, that the Soviet Union was going to take control of the Middle east and if they really controlled that oil supply, then they would be too strong and we'd have a real problem on our hands. This is why Jimmy Carter, who just died, he, in 1980, declared the. What's known as the Carter Doctrine, where he was like, listen, we are treating the Persian Gulf like it's America if essentially saying to the USSR they had already invaded Afghanistan. And it was like, if you invade Iran, we are going to fight on. We're going to fight with the US Military because we won't let you have all of this. So that's always been a concern. And I do think that Israel, being kind of like our buddy there, felt like, okay, this will be a good way that we can control the region. But then, you know, this is. Yeah, he. This was at his State of the Union in early 1980.
- [45:38]
Theo Von
Yeah. The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union address on January 23, 19, 1980, which stated the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf. So there's a ton of business interests over there and there's a ton of, like, peacekeeping or what we believe is peacekeeping over there.
- [45:57]
Dave Smith
By the way, this just to. It's interesting here, right? So this is. He's saying this in January of 1980. It was in 1979, was when the ayatollahs had the revolution in Iran. So this is the government that's in Iran today, our mortal enemy. They had just come into power. So what Jimmy Carter is talking about doing here is defending Iran against the Soviet Union. Like, this country now, that is the one that they all want war with. Back then he was like, but. But if. You know what I mean, If Gorbachev or whoever. Was Gorbachev in there yet by 80. Yeah, I think so. They'd be like, if he goes and moves on Iran, then we're going to come to the defense militarily of Iran, which is just kind of weird to think about now.
- [46:41]
Theo Von
So this was saying that if Soviet. If the Soviets intervene, then we're going to come and defend Iran.
- [46:46]
Dave Smith
Yeah. And they had just. Well, they had just. They had just lured them into the war in Afghanistan, which was also their plan. And this guy, Zabigny Brigniew Brzezinski, who you see down there, he's the National Security Adviser, he had been the one who really pushed this. This policy of luring the Soviets into Afghanistan to give them their own Vietnam was the idea. And a lot of people credit that as one of the major fact that brought the Soviet Union down. And so that. So we had lured him into a war in Afghanistan. But then they got real concerned that, like, while they're here, they might also just go take Iran. So we better send them a message. Like, if you do that, you're gonna have problems.
- [47:27]
Theo Von
Wow.
- [47:27]
Dave Smith
So that was. The idea was to keep them out of there.
- [47:29]
Theo Von
Just shows you how much we've had, like, once you become this thing that's this entity that's trying to control everything, how many. It's hard to keep. You know, they say, like, it's hard to keep track of the lies or whatever. That's not really it, but it's hard to. It just seems like hard to manage. It's hard to be an air traffic controller for the world, you know, especially when the, the planes have different religions and ideas and histories and beliefs and, you know, hopes, you know, it's. That's.
- [48:04]
Dave Smith
Oh, it's. It's insane. I mean, the job. Yeah. I mean, imagine. It's just impossible.
- [48:08]
Theo Von
It's impossible. That's what I'm. It seems impossible. And especially at a time when our own country is struggling so much and. I don't know, I hope. Yeah. I don't mean to be like mean to Israel. I just don't understand, you know, I love my Jewish friends. I don't understand that shit, though. I don't understand why, why they're doing that over there. And then I think it falls in the power of this, the, the, the wealthier person to figure it out, you know.
- [48:34]
Dave Smith
Well, that's right. That's exactly right. And it's that if you're coming from. If you're in a situation where you're. Look, when it comes to Israel and Palestine, there's no parity between the two of them. It's not like, oh, these are two nation states around the same strength. Like, Palestine isn't a nation state. They don't have a government.
- [48:52]
Theo Von
It was a halfway house of people of Arabs.
- [48:55]
Dave Smith
Yes, exactly. And so there's. When Israel has all the power, all the leverage, all the chips, and if you're in a situation where everybody's saying, hey, you guys have been like at war for so long and we want peace. Well, who's supposed to make the first concession when one side has all the chips? That's obviously, you need that side.
- [49:14]
Theo Von
Don't push me. Don't push another bullying video at me.
- [49:17]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [49:18]
Theo Von
Unless it. That's going to be the first one that you fucking right cite.
- [49:21]
Dave Smith
Exactly.
- [49:22]
Theo Von
That's the thing. And that's the shit I don't understand sometimes. Yeah. I don't know. I don't understand how we would have media that would be like, so anti bullying and then this bullying is going on and it's like, well, what kind of. Who's believing you, you know? Or what? Or what are we doing? I don't know. And also, I don't fucking know, dude. And I'm like nine days up in nicotine, so.
- [49:43]
Dave Smith
Oh, are you really?
- [49:44]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [49:44]
Dave Smith
You gave up nicotine?
- [49:45]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [49:46]
Dave Smith
Good for you, dude. I mean, I guess. Were you like smoking or vaping or just doing the pouches?
- [49:50]
Theo Von
Oh, I would do. I was smoked. I was, I was vaping.
- [49:56]
Dave Smith
Okay.
- [49:56]
Theo Von
I was vaping. It's sad to say it as an adult too, like slipping off, just slurping on something.
- [50:00]
Dave Smith
I know I'm. I vape all the time. I'm totally embarrassed by it. I wish I was a man and I just smoked, but I don't know. But yeah, but if you go on.
- [50:08]
Theo Von
Your porch now and light a pipe, somebody will shoot you with a fucking musket. Yeah.
- [50:11]
Dave Smith
And no one will feel bad for you. Everyone will side with that guy. Yeah.
- [50:14]
Theo Von
They're like, free the slaves and they'll fucking pull right up and fudgeing, pop one in you. But. So do you believe that the Tick tock ban, what do you really believe? Or do you think we're still figuring it out? Do you think that our elected officials will let it stay around? Trump seems like he's wishy washy on.
- [50:31]
Dave Smith
Yes. He seems like he's not exactly clear what. And it's weird because the talk was initially the talk was like that it was a China thing. And Trump always tried to be the most hawkish on China, but even he does seem like. He doesn't really seem like he's got strong convictions about getting rid of it. My guess is that TikTok survives. I don't know if I'm right or wrong about that.
- [50:53]
Theo Von
Frank McCourt and someone else is going to be buying TikTok, they said.
- [50:56]
Dave Smith
So I think the thing is that if they sell, then they escape the legislation because basically it was saying it's because it's owned. Their parent company, is owned by the CCP or whatever. So, you know, I have a feeling, I think that there's been. There was a real move to really censor the Internet over the last few years. It seems to me like it's failed and that they're just. They've accepted they're not going to be able to do it.
- [51:20]
Theo Von
As the deadline for a potential TikTok ban in the US approaches, billionaire and former Los Angeles Dodgers owner. Oh, hell yeah. Frank McCourt's Project Liberty confirmed making a formal offer to ByteDance the platform's Chinese parent company to buy the social media giants American Assets. And he was going to do it with, in conjunction with one of the guys from Sharks. Good evening, Sharks. Whatever that show is. Shark Dance or whatever. Shark boy. No, there's a woman.
- [51:48]
Dave Smith
Shark Tank.
- [51:49]
Theo Von
Shark Tank.
- [51:50]
Dave Smith
There you go.
- [51:50]
Theo Von
Shark Tank. Who was it? Danny or something from Shark Tank.
- [51:54]
Dave Smith
Oh, one of them billionaires was gonna.
- [51:56]
Theo Von
Throw in Kevin O'Leary. So him and Kevin O'Leary, I believe. I believe. Don't quote me on that. Was supposed to be.
- [52:06]
Dave Smith
The videos are short on TikTok, right? Isn't that the idea there?
- [52:10]
Theo Von
Some of them now can be longer, some of them can be, I think 90 seconds is the length on Instagram. TikTok can be a couple minutes now.
- [52:19]
Dave Smith
It's a weird thing how the Internet has kind of like very organically grown into almost. It's almost like long form or seven seconds. Yeah, like there's, there's no like middle ground anymore. It's always like, okay, we want to hear a four hour conversation or give me six seconds of whatever you got and then we'll do a hundred thousand of those.
- [52:40]
Theo Von
It is kind of true, huh? TikTok videos can range from 3 seconds to 60 minutes long, depending on how you film or upload the video. But this also could have been from chat gbt, I don't know where or from AI this fact. And so who knows if they're harboring that from years ago and today videos or images and TikTok stories can go up to 15 seconds long, but they disappear after 24 hours if you put it in the story.
- [53:02]
Dave Smith
So the way I look at it is kind of like, it's like if you had like, say like a buddy of yours or something was in like just an awful relationship, you know, like, just like the chick he's with is like the worst. Oh, it's like you hate her and she's shitty to him and she, she's so mean to him. She cheats on him. She's just the worst. And then like if you. He breaks up with her and he's like, I'm just dating, I'm dating a bunch. And you're like, great, thank God you're like back out there, go find someone else. That chick was a nightmare, you know? And they'd be like, well, I'm meeting some nice girls, but I'm meeting some real awful girls too. It's like, ah, okay, well whatever, just get out there. And that's kind of how I feel about like, I'm just happy that the young generation isn't consuming the corporate media. And like, I'm sure on TikTok, they get some bad stuff and then they get some good stuff. But at least you're out there, like, shopping around and you're not just listening to, like, CNN tell you that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and we need to go fight this war with them. Or just listening to MSNBC tell you that Trump's a Russian spy or whatever. It's like, all right, yeah, get out there, mingle a little bit. See what kind of crazy persons on Tik Tok. I don't know. Yeah, one of them might be like, oh, it's, you know, one of them's like, it's the Jews. And then someone else is like, you know, whatever, the gays or whatever. Okay, maybe some of them are wrong, but at least you got a shot of meeting someone who might have something interesting to say to you.
- [54:16]
Theo Von
Yeah, that's interesting, man. That's certainly. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah. At least you're kind of out there meeting people. You're. There's deflas everything. There's like people shooting each other. There's Mexican stuff, there's dancing, there's, you know, bacchanalia, there's people getting their nails done. Sometimes you pop into a live. You don't even know what's going on. You're just in some kids live and he's eating a burger. There's some kid eating, look at this burger. There's some kid, like, in a broth who lives, I think, under a brothel or something in Scotland, and somebody gave him a big burger and he just made this video. He's like, look at this burger. And it's like eight parties. Eight parties stocked up, boys, and it fucking went crazy, right? And that kid could be the next governor of Glasgow, right? But it's like, that's the thing, I think, because people also can maybe over time, maybe they get to know you. I don't know what it is, but, yeah, I think it's fascinating, man. And tick tock, it does pull more my information. And that's the only thing. I just want it to be fair. That's my thing. I just want it to be fair. Don't say that this, this truth can't come out. If this truth can't come out, like, just make it fair.
- [55:25]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [55:26]
Theo Von
You know what I'm saying? If, if. If America isn't a country that's American and it's a country that's owned by other countries, tell me that if that's the case. But just let me live fair. Let me live through the truth.
- [55:38]
Dave Smith
Look, 100%, I completely agree. And then also it's just like, I think, like I was saying before, I don't trust any of you motherfuckers to be the arbiter of what is true and what isn't true. So forget anyone having this control over getting to decide what's misinformation or what's disinformation. Cuz it's the old, it's like the old Lord Atkin quote about like Atkins diet. He's the original. No, it was before that. He didn't figure that out, but he's the guy.
- [56:08]
Theo Von
Atkin or Atkin.
- [56:10]
Dave Smith
Man, am I messing. Atkin, I believe he's the one who said the quote about power. Corrupt. Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But it's like as soon as you have the power to determine what the truth is, then you're corrupted already just by like having that power.
- [56:26]
Theo Von
And I never liked fucking rich people anyway, bro. Facts, dude. I fucking hated him. I didn't hate him, but I didn't fucking like him. Yeah, you know, I don't. Yeah, I just. I don't know. And maybe, yeah, and I have money now and that's true, but I'll never fucking really have money, motherfucker. You know what I'm saying? Not like deep inside of me, you know what I'm saying?
- [56:46]
Dave Smith
Yes.
- [56:47]
Theo Von
Like that part of me will never have any fucking money, bro.
- [56:49]
Dave Smith
Now you need three more generations of Vaughns before you're like a real rich prick who just thinks they're better like in old money.
- [56:57]
Theo Von
Oh, deep inside, dog, I'm a real fucking wigger, son. You feel me? Well, oh, but Kevin O'Leary, I think I wanted to get that right. It was 250 million they offered to investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary is willing to pay up to 20 billion for TikTok, calling it a legacy opportunity. I think that that is a steal.
- [57:17]
Dave Smith
Well, Elon bought Twitter for 44 billion, I think. Right.
- [57:21]
Theo Von
But he's getting his use out of it. I mean, he doesn't sleep.
- [57:24]
Dave Smith
He seemed to be enjoying himself on there.
- [57:26]
Theo Von
Is he addicted to Twitter, do you.
- [57:27]
Dave Smith
Think he tweets a lot?
- [57:29]
Theo Von
How many tweets does he have right now? Let's see how many tweets he has. I mean, he tweets and he tweets more than we think, I think, Dave.
- [57:35]
Dave Smith
It's, it's constant. I've clicked on his thing before and been like, Jesus.
- [57:42]
Theo Von
How do we see how many?
- [57:44]
Dave Smith
It used to show you right up at the top.
- [57:47]
Theo Von
66.5 thousand posts. Right up there, right under his name at the top.
- [57:52]
Dave Smith
Wait, so hold on. 66.5 thousand posts? I want to like, I thought that's what it said.
- [57:59]
Theo Von
Can you find out?
- [57:59]
Dave Smith
How do you.
- [58:00]
Theo Von
There you go, right there. 66.5.
- [58:01]
Dave Smith
Do you see how many I have? I'm curious, how many tweets have I ever sent? Like I want to compare this to.
- [58:07]
Theo Von
Are you big on there, Davey?
- [58:08]
Dave Smith
I mean, I use it pretty often. Yeah.
- [58:12]
Theo Von
22,000.
- [58:13]
Dave Smith
All right, I'm falling behind. Wow. I've spent too much time on Twitter. 2012, it says there's.
- [58:21]
Theo Von
How long have you been on?
- [58:22]
Dave Smith
Well, it says January 2012, so I guess that's.
- [58:26]
Theo Von
And how long has Elon been on? Well, I guess he was on before, but when did he start really getting in?
- [58:30]
Dave Smith
I think it was. I think a lot of his have come recently. You know, like, yeah, he's real. And it'll be like late at night too. And there'll be like just like a bunch of them all hours.
- [58:39]
Theo Von
Some of it's like a Barbados accent too.
- [58:41]
Dave Smith
He does. He seems like he's enjoying kind of bureaucracy.
- [58:48]
Theo Von
Dogecoin. Doge. Doge.
- [58:51]
Dave Smith
Vivek. Vivek.
- [58:52]
Theo Von
Bus. Yeah, it's very kind of archipelagian sometimes or something. Barbadian. Yeah. You all know I like to keep things cool, even in the winter. And nothing's cooler than a Blue Cube cold plunge. I'm fortunate enough to have one at home and let me tell you, it's like baptizing your soul, baby. Get in that little crispy bucket, baby. It gets rid of them demons we all have and makes you feel great for seven or eight hours afterwards. It's good. My buddy Thomas Schiffer, the genius behind Blue Cube, and I go way back and he just launched a pre sale for their new stand up Cold plunges. Wow. These things are the Cadillacs of cold plunge therapy. American made, full immersion, weatherproof frames and built like a Sherman tank. I'll say this, they are built well. And because you're listening to me, you can get a sweet discount when you mention my name. That's right. Just tell them Theo sent you and they'll knock a good bit off the price. So if you're ready to boost your metabolism, eliminate inflation and blast away your anxiety, give them a call, head over to their website, blue cube baths.com and dive into the details. Opt in on their website or give them a call. I Am grateful for the one that I have and I feel honestly thankful to be able to have one. I know they're not in everybody's price range and, and that's understandable, but at the same time, I want to support my friend and his amazing company. Yeah. What's. What Censorship. What do you think censorship looks like? Like right now? Do you think it's changing?
- [60:37]
Dave Smith
It seems to me it's definitely changing. I mean, really drastically. And it's. But it's not gone. Like there are still people who are getting censored and there are still. There was a thing like a couple weeks ago where I guess a group of people who. Let's say the people who liberals would call anti Semitic. And I think, you know, like people who talk a lot about the Jews, whatever the. I'm not like trying to add my own value judgment into this, but whatever you think you would call it, a lot of them lost their blue check marks and like, stuff like that.
- [61:12]
Theo Von
What they were accusing people of doing anti Semitic.
- [61:14]
Dave Smith
Yeah, yeah. So there was, There have been like, there are. But I mean, to compare it to like, I mean, during like 2020, 2021, 2022, I mean, you couldn't. If you said anything about like the vaccine or whatever, I mean, you know, I know you felt it with, you know, you had the thing when Dana White was on. You were talking about sponsors giving you a hard time and stuff. There was a total. Not just on social media, but in general, there was a total like feeling that like you weren't even allowed to say anything that went against the regime. The regime is this.
- [61:46]
Theo Von
That's a great point.
- [61:46]
Dave Smith
And if you are against, what they're doing right now is. And I mean, I, you know, there's always pressure, like, there's always like you'll get called names or something if you do that. But for a while there, it was straight up, like you would lose your, your accounts. And for a lot of people, like, for, for me that was a scary prospect for a long time. Cause it was kind of like we had. At least in the comedy world that I'm in and in the political shit talking world that I'm in, it's. I kind of long ago accepted like, okay, I'm not gonna get like a corporate job. Like, no big corporation is gonna hire me at this point, because. Which is fine. But then you're like, oh, there's this Internet thing. So you can have your show on the Internet. You can have your own fans. You could have.
- [62:30]
Theo Von
But then when you have your own Voice. Yeah.
- [62:32]
Dave Smith
But then you're like, oh, they might come and take that away. Yeah, it's not just that you can't get Saturday Night Live or something on Comedy Central or something like that, but it's like, oh, they could come and like, you know, if you. You could have your podcast, but if you can't have. If you can't be on iTunes or YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or whatever, you're kind of screwed in this world. And so I am very happy that at least now it at least kind of feels like the dominant culture seems to more be like, no, we should be able to say what we want to say right now. I think that's a very positive change.
- [63:04]
Theo Von
But are you. Are you think they're gonna take me down for talking about Yahoo?
- [63:08]
Dave Smith
No, I think you're gonna be okay on this one. But I don't know. I mean, you know, I would hate to say that. And then, like, next week you just show up at my house and you're just like, hey, man, can I crash for a while? Because you, you ruined me. So that's. I'm like, all right, but you can.
- [63:21]
Theo Von
Be anti Netanyahu and not. And that's. You can. I can have that belief if I want. Right? If I don't like his practices, of course.
- [63:28]
Dave Smith
And it's. Oh, it's so ridiculous, the idea of, like, in the same way, if you were like, well, I don't like Joe Biden very much and you' so does that mean you hate Americans? You're like, what? No, I just don't like this guy. And you could hate the whole government and not hate the people. And then. And it's only with Israel and they intentionally do this where they conflate this thing where it's like, oh, if I have the. If I like, if I was like, if I came and told you, like, you know, the government of France just did this thing. I think it's terrible what they did. And there's lots of terrible things that the government of France has done. So I could pick some, but, like, whatever.
- [64:02]
Theo Von
That doesn't mean I'm not going to cheer for Cyril Gane when he fights.
- [64:04]
Dave Smith
Yeah. You know, and you were like, you're an anti. Frank. I. You hate all the French people. You feel like, this doesn't even make sense as a response to. I have a problem with the government. You know, but they tried it. They. They use that, you know, with Israel, where it's like, oh, if you criticize them, you hate Jewish people. That's stupid.
- [64:20]
Theo Von
It started becoming the boy that cried wolf. Because they would say that for everything.
- [64:24]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [64:24]
Theo Von
And then it would be like, well, what do you. You're not even. You're. You're doing this.
- [64:28]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [64:28]
Theo Von
You're saying this. This isn't true.
- [64:31]
Dave Smith
Right?
- [64:31]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [64:31]
Dave Smith
And it's not even clear sometimes. Like, what do you even mean by that? Like, what are you even accused? And also, I do think, just like, the whole wokeism stuff has been so rejected, especially recently, that you're like, people are kind of sick of. Just like, accusations of bigotry aren't actually a response to someone. You know, if you're like, if I say I think what Israel's doing is wrong and your response is, oh, you're a bigot, it's like, no, your response should be, oh, I don't think what they're doing is wrong, and here's why. And then we could actually talk about it. But just to call someone like, oh, you're a Jew hater, you're racist, you're homophobic, you're. It's just played out and tired.
- [65:09]
Theo Von
Yeah. Let's talk about Zuckerberg a little bit, because he just had that kind of about face sort of on. And Facebook, they just had that kind of about face on Rogan where he was talking about. Where's that clip? That clip? Yeah, right here where he kind of says, the Biden administration would call Meta to scream and curse at them, to censor true information on their platform. Platforms. This is what Zuckerberg said, Right. What do you say? Play it real quick. A little bit of it.
- [65:36]
C
These people from the Biden administration would call up our team and, like, scream at them and curse, and it's like these documents are. It's all kind of out there.
- [65:46]
Dave Smith
Did you record any of those phone calls? I don't know.
- [65:48]
C
I don't think. I don't think we.
- [65:50]
Theo Von
But.
- [65:50]
C
But I think I want to listen. I mean, there are emails. The emails are published.
- [65:53]
Theo Von
It's all.
- [65:54]
C
It's all kind of out there.
- [65:55]
Dave Smith
And.
- [65:56]
Theo Von
And they're like.
- [65:58]
C
And basically it just got to this point where we were like, no, we're not gonna. We're not gonna take down things that are true.
- [66:04]
Theo Von
Okay, that's good.
- [66:06]
C
They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonard.
- [66:09]
Theo Von
Yeah. What do you think about this? To me, I just don't know if I. I don't. Because Facebook didn't do the best job of, you know, they had issues over the years with the Hunter Biden thing. Right. With Russia stuff where they wouldn't Let people say this is bullshit. Like, they really chose to decide what was misinformation. So it just seems weird that suddenly people are calling and screaming, I love, like, the simple facts. And you're like, is this. It seemed like now you're trying to seem like. Like that wasn't happening the whole time and you weren't listening to it before type of vibe.
- [66:47]
Dave Smith
Yeah. It's a very, like, convenient retelling of history.
- [66:51]
Theo Von
Yes.
- [66:51]
Dave Smith
For Zuckerberg to go. So the government was saying, we have to censor these things that are true. And we were like, no, we're not gonna do that. Okay. What really happened is the government said, you're gonna censor these things that are true. And he said, yes, sir. And did it for eight fucking years. Okay. And then at the end of these eight years, when Trump wins a dominant victory, and now the guy who you kicked off of Facebook is now president again, and now the whole culture's turned against you, and he's threatening to, like, you know, like, look into you. He's coming, and there's a lot of, like, pretty quasi illegal stuff that was done. So now you said, okay, we're not gonna do this again. While Joe Biden is literally on his hands and knees pooping his pants. Yeah. On the way out with terrible numbers. And Donald Trump's coming in popular again. So. Okay. Yes. So for him to spin that as the government said we should do this thing, and we said, no, that's ridiculous. Okay. That's not exactly what happened.
- [67:54]
Theo Von
It seemed like he's just back here trying to slurp back onto humanity.
- [67:57]
Dave Smith
Now, if you.
- [67:58]
Theo Von
That's a slurp job.
- [67:59]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I agree. Now there's. And this is why Joe, you know, remains like, the biggest show, is because he just gets these moments. But if you. The last time he was on Rogan's podcast was one of the most interesting admissions. And it was before he had done this. 180 and turned around. But when Joe asked him about the Hunter Biden thing, and he goes, so. So, like, the story with the Hunter Biden laptop, how did you guys handle that? And Zuckerberg said, the FBI came to us and told us there's about to be a big Russian dump. So they must have known that this laptop was about to come out, and they went to Facebook, told them preemptively it's Russian disinformation. And that's why they censored the whole thing. And that is, like, that admission is like, blatant election interference by the FBI against the Sitting president, which makes it that even that much worse. Cuz like in some, on some level, like if the FBI or the CIA or someone like that was like interfering in an election, you'd already be like, okay, that's crazy, illegal, unethical, you know, unconstitutional. Like we don't have a democracy if we have three letter agencies interfering in elections.
- [69:10]
Theo Von
Right.
- [69:11]
Dave Smith
However, you'd assume at least they were doing it on the side of the president who they work for, not against the president, who they work for. Now we're in a level of like treason. Like you're working against the commander in chief who you're supposed to say sir, yes sir to and follow his rules. You know, I mean, ok, you, if you're at the FBI, you're in the. Under the Justice Department, but still like the president. Is that.
- [69:35]
Theo Von
So this was in, this was in. Trump was in office.
- [69:38]
Dave Smith
Yeah, this is the one I'm referring to. Yes, this one. This is when. Or I don't know when the podcast was, but he's talking about the Hunter Biden story, which was October of 2020. So right before the election, when Trump is still in office.
- [69:50]
Theo Von
Okay, let's play a little bit of that.
- [69:53]
Dave Smith
How do you guys handle things when they're a big news item that's controversial. Like there was a lot of attention on Twitter during the election because of the Hunter Biden laptop story. The Neo.
- [70:07]
C
Yeah, we have.
- [70:08]
Dave Smith
Yeah. So you guys censored that as well.
- [70:10]
C
So we took a different path than Twitter. I mean basically the background here is the FBI, I think basically came to us, some, some folks on our team and was like, hey, just so you know, like you should be on high alert. There was, we, we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump of, of that's similar to that. So just be vigilant. So our protocol is different from Twitter's. What Twitter did is they said you can't share this at all. We didn't do that. What we do is we have, if something is reported to us as potentially misinformation, important misinformation. We also this third party fact checking program because we don't want to be deciding what's true and false. And for the, I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being determined whether it was false. The distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it. So you could still share it, you could still consume it.
- [71:18]
Dave Smith
When you say the distribution has decreased.
- [71:20]
Theo Von
Okay, how does that work? So saying that they had some effect on it, though.
- [71:25]
Dave Smith
Yeah. Well, he goes on to say that it was a meaningful impact that turning down the signal had on Interweb. But what's interesting is that he blatantly says that it was the FBI who came to them and, like, told them that this very true story, which was a real scandal, that was an October surprise that, you know, very clearly could have moved the needle in the election. They suppressed that for one reason only, and that's because they wanted Biden to win and not Trump to win. And Zuckerberg played a big role in that. Not as big, I guess, as Twitter at the old.
- [71:59]
Theo Von
Oh, yeah, Dorsey admitted it.
- [72:00]
Dave Smith
Yeah, yeah. And look, I do think to some degree, these guys are under duress from the government. I mean, they're threatened and all types of pressure is put on them to go along with the censorship stuff and to be.
- [72:14]
Theo Von
You're basically become communications in the universe. Like, you are like. If everybody had to talk in, like, a hallway, you're the hallway, you know, you are.
- [72:23]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, and if you think about, like, even just the. You know, if you think about the. How much government cares about controlling the narrative, you know, one of the things that's really interesting from the more recent clip that the one we played first here, you know, he says that they were really upset about a meme.
- [72:41]
Theo Von
Oh, yeah, it was Leonardo DiCaprio.
- [72:43]
Dave Smith
Leonardo DiCaprio meme. Like, they were really upset about that.
- [72:46]
Theo Von
Oh, dude.
- [72:47]
Dave Smith
Which literally. Isn't that fascinating in a way that they are so threatened by, like, you making a joke about their bullshit. But if you, like, zoom out, right, and think about it, it's like governments always insist on controlling, monopolizing information. You know, controlling the narrative is the most important thing to them. That's more important than controlling the money or the banks or the laws or anything. It's like controlling the narrative. Controlling how people think. What the kind of, like, the range. The Overton window of allowable opinion or what, you know, and that's. And you see it all the time. You see, they spaz out when people are just outside of the realm of allowable opinion. And even if you think about, like, the way. Think about the way our government's set up where, like, okay, the government, there's, like, a group of, you know, services that the government has a monopoly on. And they had a monopoly on the schools, the post office, you know, it's like, wherever the information is coming from, the media, the universities, you know, these are always the things that governments get involved in. And then all of a sudden there's a revolution. And now the, you know, the public square is Facebook and Twitter and these social media. So now these people are in control for the first time of this. So of course, and what really happened was after Donald Trump won in 2016, they really started cracking down on them.
- [74:15]
Theo Von
Because they're like, holy shit.
- [74:16]
Dave Smith
The guy who wasn't supposed to win won. And he did it by utilizing social media and going around the corporate media and going around the political machine just to talk. Right. To voters. That really shook them up. And so, yeah, they hauled Zuckerberg and Dorsey and all of them before Congress. They threatened the shit out of him. I'm sure he's right that they were on the phone cursing and screaming at him and putting all types of pressure on him. So fine, if Zuckerberg. I would be much more sympathetic if Zuckerberg had come out on Rogan's podcast this time and been like, listen, I just, I've under the weight of this pressure, I gave in.
- [74:50]
Theo Von
Right.
- [74:50]
Dave Smith
And I became like a tool for the regime to censor people. But I don't want to do that anymore. And so now I'm committing to this. I'd be like, yes, he's a hero, but the way he kind of like yada yadas over like anyway, the government wanted us to do this stuff. I was like, nah, man, I'm not going to do that. I'm cool.
- [75:06]
Theo Von
Right?
- [75:07]
Dave Smith
Rogan, you're like, eh, not exactly.
- [75:09]
Theo Von
Like, it almost seems sometimes the way he. He almost seems like a doll. Does he? A little bit. When you're. And I don't mean it in a bad way, I just mean it in an interesting way. I'm fascinated by the guy. I mean, I can't imagine what his life is like or what he's like as a person or what it's like to talk with them. I would love to have that opportunity, but I am. Yeah. I'm just so curious as to like, the pressure if he feels it. You know, they had that one moment where like they had all those families that had. People had been solicited or whatever, young people had been caught by traffickers or like approached by traffickers or solicitation. Sexual. Can you bring that up? It was Faith. It was Zuckerberg before Congress. Watch the moment that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the families of victims during a hearing on online child safety. That's what it was.
- [76:04]
Dave Smith
National television. Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed. Pictures. Would you like to apologize for what you've done to. These good people.
- [76:24]
C
Have suffered. And this is why we invested so much and are going to continue doing industry leading efforts to, to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families had to suffer.
- [76:37]
Theo Von
Wow. Okay, that's good. I think it just seems like a robot doing it.
- [76:41]
Dave Smith
Like that wasn't great. That wasn't a great mo.
- [76:45]
Theo Von
That's why I wonder, does he feel. It seems like he doesn't have a lot of feel in him.
- [76:49]
Dave Smith
Yeah, listen, that's. Yeah. To apologize. I don't even exactly understand what they were. Like they're, I think a lot of the laws of kids who got trafficked or something like that.
- [76:58]
Theo Von
And I'll have to look into that.
- [76:59]
Dave Smith
Yeah, but that also shouldn't be done. Like an apology like that shouldn't be done with reporters flashing all this. I also cannot stand. I'm sorry, but I just hate the grandstanding of politicians in Congress. Like, like, I think Zuckerberg's like response to that should have been like, you preside over the biggest war machine in the history of the world. So if you want to talk about apologizing to innocent people who have got. You got your work cut out for you, you focus on your apologies. But I would love to invite like any of these parents if they want to sit down in a private room after that. We can have a long conversation about this and then like give a real moment or like, you know, you can't. Someone like loses their kid or their kids raped or tortured or something. It can't just be like, I'm sorry that happened. And we are working hard to make sure it doesn't happen in the future. You want to sit down and be like, hey, that's a great point. Tell me your story and don't even hear from me. Let me hear from you. You tell me your story and then I'll try to like empathize with what you've gone through.
- [77:54]
Theo Von
But yeah, that's a great point. They shouldn't have put him on the spot to do it right there because that wasn't really helpful.
- [78:01]
Dave Smith
Because they're not looking for a sincere apology. They're looking for a political stunt to be like, I got Zuckerberg to admit that he had, you know, is wrong.
- [78:09]
Theo Von
And the families always get wheeled out for that kind of stuff.
- [78:11]
Dave Smith
And I also don't like that the heir is always like, it's always a question of what you should be censoring and like, listen, I'm sure we would probably agree, right? Like, if there are people trying to traffic kids or something like that. Like, yes, okay, you'd want to kick those accounts off or report them to the police or whatever, but it's always Congress, like, talking about how dangerous the freedom that people have is on your site. Oh, it's so dangerous that people can communicate. And people. You got to clamp down on this.
- [78:37]
Theo Von
Right?
- [78:37]
Dave Smith
And it's like, personally, I'm much. What is it? The old. I think it's a Thomas Jefferson quote. Or maybe I'm getting that wrong. Actually, it's not Jefferson, but whatever the quote was, like, it might have been Hamilton, but it was like, I'd rather deal with the inconveniences of too much liberty than those associated with too little of it. You know, it's like, I'd rather. It's always like, they're always warning you about the problems of too much freedom. Oh, everyone can communicate. That means people are gonna come get your kids. I'm like, I'm sure that is. There is that concern. And, like, you know, I got little kids. I'm concerned about that stuff, but I also kind of feel like, okay, I'll handle making sure my kids don't, you know what I mean? Get, you know, taken advantage of on the Internet. And how about the government get the hell out of the way so we can tell the truth? Yeah, it was Thomas Jefferson. See, I should be sure of myself.
- [79:24]
Theo Von
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. Yeah, I agree. Why not err on that side of it? Yeah. Facebook has had issue. I mean, remember when they had. There was a thing where they had. There was like, these canyons or something. See if you can look that up. There was a. They were looking up information. They were using people in Africa to look up. They were the fact checkers or whatever. And I think there was a lawsuit. Facebook content moderators in Kenya call the work torture. Their lawsuit may ripple worldwide. Not even sure what happened with this. What. When was this? Oh, it's 2023. Okay. On the verge of tears, Nathan, recall.
- [80:10]
Dave Smith
I admire you for trying.
- [80:11]
Theo Von
Oh, thank you. Yeah. On the verge of tears, Nathan Kunzimana recalled watching a video of a child being molested and another of a woman being killed eight hours a day. His job as a content moderator for a Facebook contract required him to look at horrors so the world wouldn't have to. Now is among nearly 200 former employees in Kenya who are suing Facebook. Look, it's so wild. Where worker. Let me see. The group was employed at the social media giants outsourced hub for content moderation in Kenya's capital of Nairobi, where workers screen posts, videos, messages and other content from users across Africa, removing any illegal or harmful material that breaches its community standards and terms of service. Can you even imagine having to moderate the stuff in Africa?
- [80:57]
Dave Smith
Someone's job is actually to watch a child being molested and then be like, nope, that video can't go up on Facebook.
- [81:05]
Theo Von
This is bad. The moderators from several. And that was. I shouldn't. That wasn't a fun time to joke. I'm sorry. That wasn't funny. And I love Kenya. I've been to Mombasa. I love Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico, I love it. I've been there.
- [81:21]
Dave Smith
Oh, no. Do not touch that girl. Yeah, you're okay so far. You're okay so far. Nope, you are banned.
- [81:28]
Theo Von
The moderators from several African countries are seeking 1.6 billion compensation fund.
- [81:33]
Dave Smith
Oh, that's a lot of money.
- [81:35]
Theo Von
After alleging poor working conditions, including insufficient mental health support and low pay. Wow. Wonder what happened to that lawsuit. If you find out that something happened, let me know. But they've had issues over there. And I'll say this. Well, that's not really it. But I can't imagine. I can't imagine having to be actual person doing that work. But that's what it comes down to. You're basically having to moderate the entire world of communication. You've taken on that responsibility, you know.
- [82:02]
Dave Smith
Well, and I know that, you know, it was. I think when. When the. I think it was the Egyptian revolution, which, you know, didn't last that long. But they. When they. A real. I believe. And forgive me, because I haven't, like, I'm not the expert on this at all. I haven't read that much about it. But like, when they overthrew Mubarak, I think that was like a real genuine revolution where like, the. The people really did agree, like, we want this dictator gone. But I remember that they were. This was. What year was Mubarak overthrown? I want to say it was like 2010. 2010.
- [82:42]
Theo Von
That was in Kenya.
- [82:43]
Dave Smith
No, this is in Egypt. But I do remember that that was one of the things that people were making a big deal of, was that there were these giant protests that ultimately ended up bringing down the government. And it was all organized on social media. You know, everybody's like, oh, we'll meet up here. The protest starts Here and then it was like almost like the first time that they were like, whoa, there's real power in these things. And you know, if you could 2011.
- [83:07]
Theo Von
So like, oh, the power of social media.
- [83:10]
Dave Smith
Yeah, that's just like, yo. I mean, you're going to get. If you could overthrow governments with these things, you're going to get, you know, you're going to get a lot of attention from governments who are going to be very concerned about what's going on on these sites.
- [83:20]
Theo Von
Yeah. Well, it's just interesting. At what point do you think that there could be a revolution in America? Because if, if it, if, if, if people don't trust the FBI now, they don't trust the CIA now you're not sure that your FBI isn't out to get your own. It's like, who, what is even. Like, it's.
- [83:39]
Dave Smith
Well, right. And then, and then on top of that, like, you had, say, someone like Donald Trump. Look, the first time Donald Trump ran, right, all of the political class, all of the media, all of Hollywood, they all said, this guy is unacceptable. You cannot support this guy. He still won, but he also won on like a razor thin margin, lost the popular vote and just happened to win the right swing states against Hillary. So there was like a little bit of a caveat. But then after January 6, with how much they pumped into, like, this is the worst thing ever. And look at this horrible guy. You could never support him. Then they go after him with the legal cases, Then he almost gets his brains blown out on national television. And then after all of that, all the years of, he's a Nazi, democracy's over, he's Hitler. The American people go, well, we like him even more now. Like, that's just so crazy. It's so crazy that there's just trust in every American institution has evaporated. They have nothing. I mean, it's unbelievable that the most famous Hollywood celebrities can't move the needle at all the entire.
- [84:48]
Theo Von
In fact, it's an ant time movement. If they get the second one of them is involved, I'm fucking out.
- [84:53]
Dave Smith
Well, that's right. It almost like, well, that is. And I mean, look, even me, I will admit I'm guilty of it too, that I. Right away, you know, you see another celebrity, they'll be endorsing Kamala Harris tonight. And I'm like, what did you do at the Diddy party? What do they got on you? You know, what do you like? It's just there's so much mistrust of the whole thing, and it's you know, the thing about it is, is a lot of us, like I said this in our conversation already today, at one point, I don't even remember if it was about Russiagate or Covid or what, but I said, all those people still have their jobs or whatever. You know, if you, if you look at the New York Times or you look at CNN or all these places, they still got people there who sold us the war in Iraq, and they still have their jobs. You know, like, they didn't get fired. These people make great money. They're still at the end, nothing. But it's like, it's something almost like spiritual. There's always a price. Even if you think there was no consequence. Oh, there is a consequence. And so like, you just think for so many years, they lied us into wars, the. Into financial recessions. They. They lied about every thing about COVID they lied about Russiagate, they lied about all this shit. They lied about Joe Biden not being senile. They lied about Kamala Harris not being. They lied about everything they could think of. And there is a price for that. And the price is that no one believes you anymore.
- [86:09]
Theo Von
Yeah, not even people that believed you believe you. That's what's crazy is watching people that were like, devout believers come on over and be like, I just don't believe these people.
- [86:20]
Dave Smith
Then there's so many people like that. So, like, could there be a revolution? I mean, you know, there's. The American government is still so powerful. It's not like they're getting overthrown anytime soon.
- [86:32]
Theo Von
Right.
- [86:32]
Dave Smith
But.
- [86:33]
Theo Von
And we're not saying that government, no.
- [86:35]
Dave Smith
If the government is listening, I highly recommend everybody follow the law. But there is. There's been a revolution in communication already. There's been a revolution in the media. I mean, they.
- [86:50]
Theo Von
All.
- [86:50]
Dave Smith
This happened a while ago, but after this election, they all kind of admit it. They all kind of admit that, like, look like Donald Trump did, like your show and Schultz and, oh, that blew my mind. And this was a huge factor for him, you know, and this was, and I will say, I think particularly yours was. I mean, obviously Rogan's was humongous. But particularly the interview with you saw like, a much different side of Donald Trump than I'd ever seen before. And that's crazy. It's crazy that there's been this revolution.
- [87:21]
Theo Von
I mean, it's crazy. You know, there hasn't been. There's not a lot of people where I'm from who even get to ask questions a lot of times.
- [87:26]
Dave Smith
No, I think I don't think so.
- [87:27]
Theo Von
There's not a lot of, of people where I'm from who ever even getting a raise their hand in front of a president and ask a question about something that means something to them. You know, a lot of times, yeah, you just get pigeonholed into being some type of way. And so then as a person, as part of even just a group, you start to feel like, well, I don't even exist, you know what I'm saying? And I think that's part of how I always felt my whole life. I don't even. Nobody, nobody gives a about a poor off white kid, you know what I'm saying? That's the last group. And so yeah, I think, I don't know, I don't know what I'm saying, man.
- [88:00]
Dave Smith
I'm just, I think it's a really great point. I mean, I think if you think about it like at least my whole life, right?
- [88:05]
Theo Von
Well, finally we made our own voices because you don't even see that I am a voice. You don't even think I have a voice. And so finally I. You don't think, and you also, you don't think I work hard enough to fucking put my voice out there.
- [88:19]
Dave Smith
They called it flyover country. Yeah, that's what they call fly over country. And what is flyover country? Everything except New York and la. I know, right? The whole rest of this annoying country that you gotta fly over on your way from New York to la. If you think about like when we grew up, me and you grew up in the era of the TV, there wasn't. We didn't watch shit on YouTube and stuff, you know, this didn't exist. We watched what was on tv and TV was made in New York and la. That's where it was made. And every show, whether it was Seinfeld or Fern double dare or whatever it was, all these shows were about living in a city on the coast and they were about people who lived there. And then just think about how bizarre that is. You have this giant country that occupies the middle part of North America called the United States of America. It's this huge country and you only have representation from these two coastal cities. And this has now been totally blown open where it's like, yeah, I think for the first time people in the middle of the country, in the south of the country can actually have a voice. And why shouldn't they when there's tens of millions of people who like fall into those categories. Yeah, look, it's crazy to me being in stand up comedy. It's been a total revolution since when I started. Like, the path for how you become successful is so different. Podcasts weren't a thing when I first started. And so having a revolution in government, that still seems like we're not there. But there has been a huge cultural revolution over the last 15 years in communication or in.
- [89:55]
Theo Von
What is it called?
- [89:55]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I think. I think in media, in entertainment, in comedy, and. Yeah.
- [90:01]
Theo Von
So Trump has his new cabinet picks, right? Has he picked all of them yet or not?
- [90:05]
Dave Smith
Yeah, I think. I think he's picked. I mean, there might be some more, like, smaller positions that he still gets to pick, like, judges and stuff like that, but he's picked. I think he's picked his cabinet.
- [90:15]
Theo Von
What do you feel like? Who are some of your favorites? Who are some. You're kind of on the fence about? Doug Collins got picked.
- [90:23]
Dave Smith
The coach. The basketball coach.
- [90:25]
Theo Von
Remember? He was with the Wizards, dude.
- [90:27]
Dave Smith
Wait, are you talking about Jordan's coach, Doug Collins, or is this someone else now? That's a different Doug Collins.
- [90:32]
Theo Von
Oh, damn. Who's that guy?
- [90:34]
Dave Smith
Doug Collins was. Got the Bulls right there. And then Phil Jackson came in and took all the glory.
- [90:39]
Theo Von
I remember that. Dude, that's a great point. That's never really talked about, is it? But what about his. Some of his cabinet picks? Who do you like? Where. Where are you at with some of that?
- [90:50]
Dave Smith
I love. Okay, well, the best ones to me, by far were Bobby Kennedy for health department was just amazing. I think that's really gonna shake things up.
- [91:01]
Theo Von
Is he one of the first doctors that's never been in charge of the health department?
- [91:05]
Dave Smith
That's a good question. I don't know. No, I think. No, I think the guy who's the head of IT now was a lawyer, too. So I'm not sure. But he is the first real outsider and real critic of the American health state, and so that's really interesting. He also put. Which I'm sure has a lot to do with Bobby being at hhs, but he put J. Bhattacharya as the new head of the draftkings. The J. Bhattacharya?
- [91:35]
Theo Von
Yeah. He sounds like a bookie.
- [91:36]
Dave Smith
Oh, dude. Yeah. Well, he's got a. I think he's Indian. I don't know.
- [91:40]
Theo Von
Oh, Bhattachary's Indian.
- [91:42]
Dave Smith
I might be wrong about that. If I'm wrong, I apologize. But he was one of the signators on the. The Great Barrington Declaration. He was amazing during COVID He was like one. He's like a brilliant. You know, he's got a Degree, I think, in economics and in science.
- [91:56]
Theo Von
Jay Bhattachary. Bring him up. It sounds like he's from Madras, New Jersey. Dude, bring him up. Jay Bhattachari. Let's get a gander at him. I just want to get a peek at him. I haven't seen his face before. Batachari. Oh, yeah. I like this guy. Huh?
- [92:12]
Dave Smith
He was phenomenal during COVID Really like a goddamn hero. Just calling out all the bullshit.
- [92:18]
Theo Von
And, like, I would love to interview him, dude.
- [92:20]
Dave Smith
That would be great. Super, super smart scientist who's, like, really understood why lockdowns were terrible and why the vaccine mandates were insane and all of that stuff.
- [92:31]
Theo Von
Oh, that's. You know.
- [92:32]
Dave Smith
So he got Fauci's old job.
- [92:34]
Theo Von
Really?
- [92:35]
Dave Smith
Which is gonna be real interesting. Yeah. Head of the nih.
- [92:37]
Theo Von
Heck, yeah. That's cool.
- [92:39]
Dave Smith
Now all these guys gotta be confirmed by. Not done. But the other great pick was Tulsi Gabbard. As Director of National Intelligence, I. Makari.
- [92:49]
Theo Von
Do you know who that is? Marty?
- [92:53]
Dave Smith
I'm not sure.
- [92:54]
Theo Von
Marty Makari. Can you look him up? Marty Makari for FDA Commissioner.
- [92:59]
Dave Smith
Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't know enough about this guy.
- [93:02]
Theo Von
He has a great book called the Price We Pay. Bring up one of his books. I want to. I want to talk with this guy. It's about the insurance, the whole scale, the whole. The scam. What broke American Health Care. There's another great book he has, too, dude. One of his books, he has this thing, like, where they were going to black churches. Okay. He's a surgeon. Let me see. Martin. And a British American surgeon, professor, author, and medical commentator where they were going to. They were convincing, giving people scans at their churches showing them that they needed, like, their blood vessels dilated or shunts put in their legs. And it was just. And the. And doctors were making a ton of money through Medicaid. It was just this big scam. And a lot of the doctors were funding the groups that would go. And they would do it at black churches and black religious get togethers and they have tables set up, and they were just using these people, basically sending them through as. Just like a. As a varicose vein mill, you know?
- [94:02]
Dave Smith
Wow.
- [94:02]
Theo Von
Unreal.
- [94:03]
Dave Smith
And just making tons of money, I'm sure.
- [94:05]
Theo Von
Yeah, but he. He talks about that. He talks about a lot of neat stuff. Oh, that's another one. Blind Spots When Medicine. That's one I'm reading. When Medicine Goes Wrong. That's one that I've been reading. But he seems like an interesting Guy, but he got put in. That's one I'm excited about. Gabbard, you said. Who else is in there?
- [94:24]
Dave Smith
Cash Patel, who took over the FBI.
- [94:29]
Theo Von
Really?
- [94:30]
Dave Smith
Director, who is. He was a huge critic of, like, Russiagate. And a lot of the crazy stuff that. A lot of the election interference that FBI has been doing. Again, you know, we're going to see how there were reports out. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but that Tulsi Gabbard was saying she's changed her mind on government surveillance, and now she's okay with the intelligence agencies spying on us. You know, D.C. has a way of poisoning people, but how does that happen? But also, I'm not throwing her under the bus or nothing like that. I think maybe she's saying what she needs to say to get confirmed, and then she'll do some really great stuff.
- [95:02]
Theo Von
Could that be something that happens?
- [95:04]
Dave Smith
Quite possibly. It's. You know, it's hard to say, but it is. Like, there's all types of pressure and. And then there's probably pressures that I don't know about at all that when you're actually on the inside, there's probably all types of threats and things like that that you gotta deal with. So I think these. These picks were all very, very good. He had a bunch of really bad picks that I did not like.
- [95:24]
Theo Von
Let me see. Let's finish this one, though. Gabbard, 43, was born in the US territory of American Samoa. Raised in Hawaiian, spent a year of her childhood in the Philippines. Yeah, she's definitely. I love the way that she talks, you know, I love how. Just her own. She always seems to have her very own voice. But when you get in, like, who compromised? What do they use to compromise, you think? That's what I always wonder.
- [95:49]
Dave Smith
I mean, I think.
- [95:50]
Theo Von
I don't know, you just didn't get to say, do. You're gonna have to do what we want or we're gonna kill. You think that's what it is?
- [95:54]
Dave Smith
It's possible. I mean, I wouldn't put it past some of these people. There are a lot of killers in our government. You know, I also think that sometimes it's just the way the machine works, and it's like, well, you're never gonna be able to do anything unless you do this, unless you do that. You know, it was real interesting the way that Obama got rolled when he first came in, and he had a lot of these plans, like we were gonna end these wars and we're gonna do all these things, and we're gonna. And he just immediately ran up against the machine and it was like, you. You have no idea how to actually control this thing. And I got to say, I think that happened a lot to Trump too. When he first came in, Trump had a lot of plans. And I think that. I think Donald Trump looked at it like, hey, I've been the CEO of this big company. I've been the boss before. I'll go be the boss again. But it's like, that's not how this one works. This is a whole different thing. It's not like when you're really the boss and you dictate orders and everyone follows them. And he, you know, Donald Trump, Trump, he ran in 2016 on what was such a great idea at the time was. And he used to say this on the campaign all the time in 2016. Cuz back then the war in Syria was still going. Well, it's like raging. And he would go, why are we even in Syria? I don't care about overthrowing Bashar Al Assad. He goes, russia said, they're only in Syria to kill isis. I was like, okay, well, we want to kill ISIS too. We're against the terrorists. He goes, so why don't we stop trying to overthrow regimes in the Middle east, work with Russia to take out all the terrorists, and then we could just leave the Middle east and then we could all be friends. We could be friends with Russia. And he openly ran on that. I was like, yeah, that's a great idea. Except then you get in there and the media's saying you're a Russian spy every single day, all day long. So now how are you gonna make a deal with Russia, right, when everyone's saying you're a Russian spy?
- [97:42]
Theo Von
Oh, they tricked you then.
- [97:43]
Dave Smith
Because if you make a deal with Russia, that'll just be proof that you're a Russian spy. And so then don't. Donald Trump went, no, I'll be hawkish toward Russia. And so he went out of his way to prove what a Russian spy he wasn't. Which is like, oh, so they got you so you couldn't do what you wanted to do, and instead you gotta do this.
- [98:00]
Theo Von
But this time, they may not have the value of the media.
- [98:02]
Dave Smith
Well, that's. They don't. They for sure don't. I mean, I think.
- [98:05]
Theo Von
I think unless they come and kill all the podcasters and stuff. Do you think that they could do that? Have you ever worried about your own safety?
- [98:11]
Dave Smith
No. I don't know. I've always felt like I Fly at a nice, you know, I'm far enough from the sun that I'm okay.
- [98:19]
Theo Von
Yeah, same. I don't know what I'm even doing.
- [98:21]
Dave Smith
Well, right. So I'm not. And also, I just, I do think, like, there's too many of us and there's too. I think, like, the toothpaste is out of the tube on this. And I don't think, I think even they've finally realized that. Like, even if, you know, it's funny, when they were coming after Rogan a couple of years ago when there was that major push and the artists were, you know, Neil Young was saying, I'll take my music off Spotify or whatever, I remember talking about it then. And you're like, so what do you, what do you guys even think happens? Like, let's say, let's say, hypothetically, you could take Joe Rogan out, right? What do you think his audience goes back to cnn? You think everyone who is listening to that is going to go, okay, I guess we plug back into the Matrix now they're just going to find somebody else. They're going to find someone else probably more radical, you know what I mean? Probably not, not less. And so I think they even kind of know they can't really, you know, But I do think, I think the two things that make it that, that make the dynamic very different this time for Trump. Well, like, like you said, it's that the corporate media has been destroyed. But the two things that really destroyed them since the first Trump president presidency to this one is Russiagate and Covid. They just, they were such big stories and they got them so wrong. And everyone kind of knows it now. Like, nobody, you know, nobody believes in Russiagate anymore.
- [99:39]
Theo Von
Anymore.
- [99:40]
Dave Smith
Nobody is sitting. No one on television is going, a Russian spy is about to retake the White House. The. None of them are saying that. None of them are saying, hey, we were wrong about all of that. But if they weren't wrong, why wouldn't they still be freaked out about it?
- [99:52]
Theo Von
I'm just amazed that none of them ever come on and said, hey, you know what? I want to apologize for wasting your fucking time. That's what I want to do. I want to apologize that we didn't care enough to even really look into things, truly. And that we wasted your time. That would be like a real thing to do, right? Like, I just. Yeah, it's like, that's why sometimes you're like, are the people run this thing? Do they have any human feelings? Because that's where I don't see a lot. Like, you would think if you really cared about your customer base at all. Right?
- [100:26]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [100:26]
Theo Von
You would go and say, hey, I'm sorry, I got this wrong. We. This was wrong. Or we didn't. We didn't know it was wrong, but we didn't even try to do our best practices. We got caught up something right.
- [100:39]
Dave Smith
Listen, man, I mean, they hate. They fucking hate this country and they hate the people of the country. And I don't like, just say that to be like, to make a sensational claim, but it's like, if you. If. If my kids are. Were hungry and I was feeding other kids, like, what conclusion could you draw from that other than, like, you don't love your children, you hate your own children, because that's like your number one responsibility. What do you mean? You're feeding other kids while your kids are going hungry. It's just too evil to even wrap your head around. And that's literally what our government does.
- [101:15]
Theo Von
Yeah. Especially right now.
- [101:16]
Dave Smith
What they do is they feed other countries that don't need it, by the way. You know, not just the ones who maybe do, but ones who don't while our people are here, like, like starving. I mean, I'm not trying to, like, overstate it. Like, there's mass starvation, but I mean, I should say surviving a hurricane or fires or whatever.
- [101:33]
Theo Von
Oh, I agree. I think I was thinking today was like, hey, well, Ukraine. Zelensky, can you give us back some of our money so we can pay our teachers better? So we can feed people who are starving in our own country, so we can get homeless people off the streets. We can help cure some of our mental health, so we can help repair some of this fire damage for people that were uninsured or help the displaced people that are over here. You know, just countless things. I mean, I could go on and on, but it's like, yeah, it just feels like we're just being money laundered a lot of times.
- [102:05]
Dave Smith
Well, even just. And, And. And to like, like.
- [102:07]
Theo Von
And I know those people have problems, but it's like, you know, the perfect example for me was that Karen Bass lady from with the LA fires.
- [102:14]
Dave Smith
Right.
- [102:14]
Theo Von
I've never heard of her before, and she seems like a nice woman. I bet she's a great woman. But she was in Ghana. Unless she was on vacation. She was in Ghana, Africa, while this was happening. And if she was on vacation, then do. She should be able to do whatever she wants. And she should be able to do whatever she wants anyway. Just in Los Angeles, Mayor freezes up. This is exactly how people should be treated. Do you owe citizens for being absent while their homes are burning? You regret cutting the fire department budget? Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this was unfolding back home? But can you look up what she and gone on vacation? That's what I need help on. But she's in Ghana. But it's like, why are you even in Ghana? Like, you're the mayor of a town.
- [102:55]
Dave Smith
And they knew that, like, big wind storms were coming and they knew that, like, this is a danger, you know, with wildfires and stuff. So it's just. You would expect you'd be around there. But it is, you know, it's hard.
- [103:06]
Theo Von
To point fingers at this point, though. Like, it's like, like, obviously things were bad. They had their reservoir that was dead empty, that was like, took countless millions of dollars and held millions of gallons of water. Just a lot of bet, just, you know, I don't know. It's heartbreaking. What's happening up there is heartbreaking. But that's the weird part. It's like, why is she even you. You have people. We have. How much do the people have to suffer or be struggling in our own country for our own country to be like. Like here? And how are we electing these people that aren't saying, here, America, we're gonna help you first?
- [103:44]
Dave Smith
Yeah. It's unbelievable. It's totally outrageous, man.
- [103:46]
Theo Von
How is that happening? I just don't understand how it's happening.
- [103:49]
Dave Smith
Well, I mean, I do think perhaps it's kind of like what you said earlier. Like, part of this is that we have just, like, acquired such a level of wealth and power as a country that it's almost like the politicians who now control the tax base of the American. American people, they feel like gods where they're like, we can do all of this stuff. I mean, I remember when. And I think this was sincere. I think Joe Biden actually heard and understood this question and had a moment of being lucid. But it was when the war in Gaza first broke out and some reporter asked him and was like, they were like, well, you know, you're all in on this war in Ukraine. You've already given them hundreds of billions of dollars, and now you're saying you're gonna support Israel. Like, are you sure America can take on another war, that we have to foot the bill for now. And he goes, of course. This is the United States of America. Of course we can do it.
- [104:42]
Theo Von
Who said that? Ricky Gervaise? Joe Biden?
- [104:44]
Dave Smith
Yes. And. And I'm sure in some way Joe Biden like, believes that, you know, like Joe Biden is a, is a child of the unipolar moment after the Soviet Union collapsed and, and America is dominant. We can do anything. This is America. We could do whatever we want to. It's like you just haven't updated this script because, like, it's 30 years later now. And no, we can't just do whatever you want to. And you know, we just found out through this, you know, it's like, okay, yeah, we could do whatever we want to, but we can't tax people enough to raise the money and we can't borrow enough to get it. So we have to print the money and then we deal with this price inflation we've been dealing with for the last few years. It just like destroys working class people and it's like, yeah, I guess if you don't care about that, we can do it. But if you do care about that, then actually no, we can't. We don't have limitless funds. And, but, and I'll just say with this, right, look, you think about the United States of America, the federal government, it's the biggest, most powerful government in the history of the world by far, by any metric. And yet as we're doing everything, as we're back in the war in Israel, as we're backing Israel's war, we're backing Ukraine in this war, we're overthrowing regimes all around the world. We're talking about what the, they have a summit where they talk about what the temperature is going to be in a hundred years. The government's trying to manage everything, and yet the most basic functions of government have all gone to shit. We can't win our wars, we can't balance our budgets, we can't protect our borders.
- [106:05]
Theo Von
Post office sucks. Dude, I was in the post office like three weeks ago, right? There's no, there's a home. I want to say, I don't want to say homeless, but pretty homeless guy in there, right, Yelling faggot over and over again, right? Just yelling it into the fucking distance or whatever. And dude, dude, I'm second in line, right? So I'm like, ugh, you know, but nobody even came to help him. We're in there for seven minutes. I just walked out.
- [106:27]
Dave Smith
I'm like, you know, well, that's the thing.
- [106:29]
Theo Von
But this is, but that's the U.S. postal system in a nutshell.
- [106:32]
Dave Smith
And California is a little microcosm of this, right? It's the biggest state government has the biggest budget of any state.
- [106:37]
Theo Von
And they're trying to turn our whole country.
- [106:38]
Dave Smith
They do everything. They're trying to say, oh, we're gonna have electric cars and we're gonna have a new power grid and we're gonna have all of this. Meanwhile, the most basic service, like make sure your fire department has enough water in the area where that is known for wildfires spreading. Like the most basic thing you fail miserably at. And then you're gonna talk about all these pie in the sky visions of how you're gonna run the world and do all this shit. And it's like, no, you're not good. You're not good at this. You're not doing anything right. And there is something interesting about that where it's like when you try to take on way too much, you end up failing at the most basic responsibility that you have.
- [107:16]
Theo Von
Yeah. Oh, always. Yeah, man, it's wild. And also when you push, when you position yourself as this, we will handle it all, you don't let other societies and cultures kind of create their own narrative and wherewithal for themselves, you know?
- [107:34]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [107:35]
Theo Von
In a weird way, you know.
- [107:37]
Dave Smith
Oh, I think that's absolutely right. Yeah. Oh, I think that's true. That's true. Like internally in America and throughout the world. But even like, you see, like, you see like in America, like the rise of the welfare state, like when it was really in the 60s and 70s when welfare became huge and then churches get diminished, you know, it's like, oh. Because that used to be what people would do if they needed help is they'd go to the local church and kind of ask them to help. So it's like, oh, as you try to take care of everything thing, you end up killing and boxing out this other more organic thing where the people themselves would actually figure out, like, who in the community needs help?
- [108:16]
Theo Von
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- [109:52]
Dave Smith
I saw a lot of people got up out there now. I saw Whitney's video. I felt awful.
- [109:57]
Theo Von
Yeah, Whitney's had a lot of videos.
- [109:59]
Dave Smith
Yeah, she has. Well, I meant the one where she was crying and stuff.
- [110:01]
Theo Von
Oh, I didn't see that one. Oh, maybe I did. I'm sorry if I did. I've watched a couple of hers. I wake up at about 5:15 and watch tick tock for like 40 minutes every night.
- [110:13]
Dave Smith
Get it while you can.
- [110:15]
Theo Von
I know. Not doing that good. Here's one thing. Yeah, Play that Mel Gibson right there. I just love the way he communicates.
- [110:24]
Dave Smith
Okay, I have three friends.
- [110:28]
Theo Von
I'll tell you a good story. Okay, I have three friends.
- [110:34]
Dave Smith
All three of them had stage four cancer. All three of them don't have cancer.
- [110:39]
Theo Von
Right now at all.
- [110:40]
Dave Smith
And they had some serious stuff going on. And what did they take? Jesus. They took some. What you've heard they've taken Ivermectin, Bendazole. Yeah, yeah, I'm hearing that a lot. They drank hydrochloride something or other. There's studies on those now where people have proven that people are drinking methylene blue. Okay, yeah, methyl blue, which was a fabric dye.
- [111:07]
Theo Von
Okay, stop. Now we're getting into breaking bad territory.
- [111:11]
Dave Smith
That's part of the.
- [111:12]
Theo Von
That's the wild part of that, you know?
- [111:14]
Dave Smith
Yeah, look, man, I mean, by. By default, this is to go. I probably think that's not true. Like, I don't know. But I also do. I. I don't know a lot about like, medicine and the health stuff. But I will say my. My eyes were definitely opened over Covid to like, how corrupt the whole thing is. And so it is almost like now when people say stuff like that. I'm a lot more be like, all right, I'm listening. Yeah, like maybe.
- [111:38]
Theo Von
Yeah, I'll order 12 ounces. Give me 12 ounces of methylene blue. You know, I'll try it.
- [111:42]
Dave Smith
I don't know. I mean, like, if I had.
- [111:43]
Theo Von
Give me a chaser.
- [111:44]
Dave Smith
If I had stage four cancer and like, they were like, there's nothing we can do. I'd be like, hey, Joe, can you get me Mel Gibson's number? I want to talk to him and his buddies about what they did. I don't know why not?
- [111:56]
Theo Von
Oh, yeah, I would be drinking fucking pool water. Or whatever happened, you know, whatever it needed did. What was one thing else that happened the other day? Yeah, we're supposed to start shooting a movie. Me and David Spade wrote a movie, and we're supposed to be shooting it last week in la. But the fires. So now it's just up in the air. It's been like, kind of bizarre, you know? But the weirdest thing about LA that I'm hearing is like, I'll get a text from a friend or talk to a friend who's crying, you know, their home is burnt down. Then I'll get a call from a friend who's like, hey, man, do you want me to go by your place and move your car to my apartment or whatever, because case the fire switch wind. And I'm like, I think I'm okay right now. And. And I was like, what are you up to? He's like, I'm going to a couple auditions today, you know, and so it's just such a crazy.
- [112:42]
Dave Smith
There's still normal shit happening in the middle of all of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting.
- [112:47]
Theo Von
And that guy lives right. I mean, he's going along the 405, like right where the border of like where the next evacuation. It's just. It's amazing. I remember when I lived there during some of the last fires. You'd be driving the 405 and there would just be fire on both sides. And it almost feels like. It's like that. What's that place in Florida with the adventure park or whatever, Six Flags. It almost has us. Because you can't believe that it's real.
- [113:15]
Dave Smith
I know what you mean.
- [113:16]
Theo Von
And you're in Hollywood, where shit is a lot of things are made and manufactured and created. So you're like, well, of course this isn't real.
- [113:22]
Dave Smith
Well, it's one of the things about cities that are real strange. Like these modern cities where there's millions of people. And I saw this a lot during COVID particularly in New York and la, where it's like. It's almost like there's nothing that people won't just adjust to. Cause they're kind of trapped there. You can't really get out. You can't really, you know. And so it's almost like, all right, well, they're doing this now. All right, I guess we gotta live that. You know, in New York, it's just like, all right, there's homeless people all over the subways. That guy's jerking off. I guess I gotta just, like, walk around him and get to my work. Cause I got it. What else am I gonna do?
- [113:54]
Theo Von
Better bring my Cumbrella with me. Yeah, this is the kind of stuff it was. This is very insane. This must have been 2017 from Andrew Mutts.
- [114:03]
Dave Smith
Wow, that's a wild picture.
- [114:05]
Theo Von
But, bro, this same highway, same spot, Skirball Drive. Keep playing that for a minute. I mean, that's insane. Like, how should you be able to drive this close? It's just.
- [114:23]
Dave Smith
I mean, yeah, there's something very bizarre about the, like, juxtaposition of just going about your daily life while this craziness is happening.
- [114:30]
Theo Von
Right there, live there. There's people.
- [114:32]
Dave Smith
Yeah. Like, someone right now in that car. Like, someone's wife calls their cell, and they're just like, would you mind stopping at the store on your way home? Like, we're at a milk or whatever. And they go, okay, fine, I'll stop by there. And then just look out their window and they're like, oh, God's angry. All right. Yeah. Gosh.
- [114:46]
Theo Von
Hey, Siri, play Spotify. Play Firework by Katy Perry. You know what I'm saying? There's somebody picking up a song and then realizing, oh, maybe not right now. Or some guy smoking is like, oh, it's already. Anyway.
- [114:58]
Dave Smith
Yeah, yeah, it's like, what is this really going to be the problem?
- [115:01]
Theo Von
It's just people be. It's just people are still going to be people. What else was something else that I wanted to talk about? Oh, some of the Trump's picks that you're not excited about.
- [115:12]
Dave Smith
Marco Rubio at the State Department, I hate.
- [115:15]
Theo Von
And what does the State Department do?
- [115:17]
Dave Smith
Well, I mean, there. It's a pretty big responsibility. I mean, there is. The State Department basically interacts with the rest of the world on behalf of the United States of America. And. And in recent years, I mean, the State Department is involved in a lot of war making, even as much as the Defense Department is. And I mean, two examples I could think of, like, right off the top of my head were the war in Libya, overthrowing Gaddafi, was enormously led by the State Department under Hillary Clinton. And in 2014, the backing the Maidan revolution that overthrew Yanukovych in Ukraine was mostly done by the State Department. And so Marco Rubio's like a real neocon warhawk. And has been for many years.
- [116:11]
Theo Von
What does neocon mean?
- [116:12]
Dave Smith
Well, neocon at this point has kind of like, I'm using it in kind of the informal sense. It's basically just come to mean like the war hawks who push for war after war, after war.
- [116:25]
Theo Von
Oh, they want war.
- [116:26]
Dave Smith
Always more regime change, wars. Always the next target, always the next thing. The neoconserv, like the self identity. Marco Rubio is not a self described neoconservative. The people who actually called themselves neoconservatives was actually like a small group of people. The Wikipedia probably has some good information on it here. But these were guys who really, they really took power under George W. Bush. A lot of them were in Reagan's government and in George H.W. bush's government, but they really took over when George W. Bush was in power. But yes, Dick Cheney, Richard. Richard Pearl, Douglas Fipe, all these guys, Paul Wolfowitz, Abrams.
- [117:02]
Theo Von
Do they make, do we think that they make money off of war?
- [117:04]
Dave Smith
Well, it's a fact that a lot of them work at thick think tanks that are funded by weapons companies. It's a fact that Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton. I mean, like these things are true. So they are connected to interests that make lots of money off the wars. But so they're. A lot of them basically they were not all, but a lot of them were Jewish and a lot of they were leftists who came over and kind of became conservatives in the second half of the 20th century. And they were. So they. In the 90s, there was one major think tank that was called the Project for a New American Century. And they basically wrote out all their plans of like what they wanted to do back in the 90s. And, and the major thing was that they wanted the Project for New American Century. The idea of it was that, right, so it was a neoconservative think tank in D.C. and a lot of these same people, I mean Robert Kagan and William Kristol were the guys who founded it. But if you look through the name of signatures, you'll see Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, a lot of these guys now they basically, this was, if you could imagine, in the 90s, this is right after the Soviet Union collapses. This is where what Charles Krautenhaumer, who's another neoconservative who's dead now, he called the unipolar moment. And what that meant was that it was like, hey, for the first time in the world, for the first time in the history of the world. There is one global superpower that is more powerful than any other country that's ever existed. Now that the Soviet Union's gone, it's ours. So what do you want to do now? There was this big divide amongst conservatives. A lot of conservatives, what are called the Paleo conservatives, was like, Pat Buchanan and guys like that. They were like, well, now that the Cold War is over, we can come home. We were fighting this war because it was the Cold War, because it was the Soviet Union. But now that the Soviet Union's gone, we can disband NATO.
- [119:04]
Theo Von
I want him with some Don McLean.
- [119:06]
Dave Smith
That's right. Close all the bases. Bring everyone home. We could go back to being a normal country. Was the idea, we don't have to rule the world. We were never supposed to rule the world in Pat Buchanan's idea. They were only doing this because the Soviet Union existed. But then there were these neoconservatives and they went, no, no, no, no, no. Now that we control the world, we have to come up with a project for the new American Century. We want another century. The 20th century was dominated by America, and we want to make sure the 21st century is dominated by America. And this is by. I'm not exaggerating. You can go read these papers, you can go Google Project for a New American Century, and you can find all this stuff. And they said their plan was.
- [119:45]
Theo Von
They were like, look, statement of Principles. They released on June 3, 1997.
- [119:50]
Dave Smith
Yeah, there's. If you go to the calls for regime change in Iraq, they might have a good link there. That would be like the document. I'm just blanking on the name of some of the documents that they put out. But they basically said, no one can mess with us. And so what we need to do right now is, is we need to have multiple wars in the Middle East. We need to have regime changes and get rid of all of the old allies of the Soviet Union, put in our people, who we like, specifically advocating.
- [120:18]
Theo Von
Regime changes through a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The letter suggested that any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Hussein, even if no evidence linked Iraq to the September 11th attacks.
- [120:33]
Dave Smith
Well, listen, you gotta understand, a lot of this stuff was written. This is in the 90s. This is before the September 11 attacks that they were talking about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. They actually say, there's one paper, and this is what the 911 truthers, they would love to hang onto this.
- [120:49]
Theo Von
So they said they did 911 because they wanted this to happen.
- [120:51]
Dave Smith
Well, there's one thing it was in the 90s, I can't remember what year it was, but you could find this. But they say basically they go through this whole thing of how we really want to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq and then we want to fight multiple wars in the Middle east and have multiple regime changes. And they actually said in the paper they go, but it would be very challenging to get enough popular support to do something like this short of another Pearl harbor style attack. So they literally say, we really kind of need an attack on America in order to work up enough support to go fight these wars. Now that isn't, that isn't proof that they did 9 11, but it does.
- [121:31]
Theo Von
Certainly indicate that they know the recipe.
- [121:33]
Dave Smith
Well, at the very least, when 911 happened, they went, yes, now we got our. So this is one of the worst, you know, like the worst thing that, that ended up happening was that when 911 happens, George W. Bush is president and all these motherfuckers are in power. So they got their opportunity and right away after 9 11. And we know this because the four star General Wesley Clark himself said that he, he was out of power at the time, but he went to the Pentagon and he said that he saw plans late 2001 already drawn up for the invasion of Iraq. So like as soon as 911 happened, they were like, okay, we're going to use this to go overthrow Saddam Hussein now. All right, if I could pull it back a few. So a few years before 911 in.
- [122:20]
Theo Von
1996, and in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power. Power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly unless there were some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor.
- [122:32]
Dave Smith
Yeah, so that's, I mean, this was their words.
- [122:35]
Theo Von
And that's all the PNAC or whatever.
- [122:36]
Dave Smith
Yes, this is pnac, the Project for a New American Century.
- [122:39]
Theo Von
Okay.
- [122:40]
Dave Smith
Now a lot of these same people involved here, but there was a letter, okay, There was a letter written.
- [122:45]
Theo Von
Dark artists, huh? Yeah.
- [122:46]
Dave Smith
So check this one out. In 1996, so just four years before this report, there's a letter that was written by Richard Perle and it was not Douglas Spyf, it was Richard Pearl and Wormser. And David Wormser was the other guy who wrote it. And so two of these neoconservatives and they wrote this letter. The letter is called A Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. And it's written to Benjamin Netanyahu, who in 1996 was the first year that he became Prime Minister. Okay. And in this, basically what this was all about is that they were, the neoconservatives were saying, hey, here's the new strategy. Okay. And the new strategy is in the early 90s you had had these Oslo Accords which were the, what was known as the peace process.
- [123:34]
Theo Von
The peace. And that was like the Oslo Accord, it was to try to get, that was supposed to help with Palestine, right?
- [123:41]
Dave Smith
Yes. So Bill Clinton is, famously, was a big deal when, when I was a kid was. Bill Clinton had Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, the leader of the PLO and the Prime Minister of Israel here together to work out, we're finally, we're gonna do a two state solution and we're gonna make this deal. They brought em together, shook hands. I mean after years and years, you know, decades of bloody fighting, this was like, it seemed like an amazing step forward. And Israel committed to what they call a peace process. So eventually, essentially they committed that. They're like, you know, this land that we know is not ours, that we've been occupying since 1967. We do have to give this back to you. Like we have to give this to you and we have to have a two state solution of. Some says we will do that, but there has to be a process that we go through. So you know, better than nothing at least. Right? So this is what, what started now then Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel was assassinated by a right wing Israeli by. Yeah, by a Netanyahu supporter. Assassinated him for betraying his own country and talking. But Israel was still on the hook for promising to eventually give the Palestinians their own state. And the clean break memo, and it's a little bit coded, but it's basically like, listen, we gotta get away from that, we gotta get away from this peace process. And the idea of like giving the Palestinians their land, this threatens Israel's stability. Now for years, okay, I could see.
- [125:08]
Theo Von
Them thinking that though for sure, sure.
- [125:10]
Dave Smith
Now for many years, the thinking which culminated in the Oslo accords, right. The reason why there was this peace process is that the thinking, the Yitzhak Rabin thinking was that, listen, you have the Arab world who hates Israel's guts over their treatment of the Palestinian people. And so you have to make peace with the Palestinians so that you can be friendly with the surrounding Arab world so that they don't all hate you and you can coexist and you can, you can be prosperous. Right now the clean break is essentially A break from that line of thinking. And they go, no, no, no, no, you don't need to make peace with the Palestinians so that you can then make peace with the broader Arab world. What you need to do is overthrow the regimes in the broader Arab world that are pissed off at you. And that way you won't have to ever make peace with the Palestinians. You'll never have to give them land. If we could just overthrow Saddam Hussein and then overthrow the mullahs in Iran and then overthrow Bashar Al Assad in Syria. And so they lay out this strategy and this is the clean break. The clean break. Excuse me. And these are our guy, our top neoconservatives who end up in the George W. Bush administration explicitly saying that the reason they want to overthrow Saddam Hussein is because he's a problem for Israel. And when a few years later, when four star General Wesley Clark, who by the way, recently in a debate with my friend Scott Horton admitted that these plans went all the way back to 96 and not just 2001, which he had said before, but this was the famous. I don't know if you've ever seen it before, but the seven countries in five years. So this is Wesley Clark. You pull up this video if you want to. It's pretty interesting and has a lot.
- [126:53]
Theo Von
This is when are we really down a rabbit hole? Right now we are.
- [126:55]
Dave Smith
Well, this is when you told. This is when Rogan told you, if you want to talk about Syria, I'll take you down a rabbit hole. So here's the rabbit hole.
- [127:03]
D
11. About 10 days after 9 11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld, Eldon and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs, so he's talking about.
- [127:12]
Dave Smith
The guys from Peanut staff who used.
- [127:15]
D
To work for me. And one of the generals called me and he said, sir, you got to come in. You got to come in and talk to me a second. I said, well, you're too busy. He said, no, no. He says, we've made the decision. We're going to war with Iraq. This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, we're going to war with Iraq. Why? He said, I don't know. He said, I guess they don't know what else to do. So I said, well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to Al Qaeda? He said, no, no. He says, there's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq. He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists. But we got a good military and we can take down guns, governments. And he said, I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail. So I came back to see him a few weeks later and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, are we still going to war with Iraq? And he said, oh, it's worse than that. He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper and he said, I just got this down from upstairs, meaning the Secretary of Defense's office today. And he said this amazing memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran. I said, is it classified? He said, yes sir. I said, I said, well, don't show it to me. And I saw him a year or so ago and I said, you remember that? He said, it's all right. I didn't show you that memo. I didn't show it to you.
- [128:53]
Theo Von
I'm sorry, what did you say his name was?
- [128:58]
D
I'm not gonna give you his name.
- [129:00]
Dave Smith
So that's essentially the part to show. But so there's so this and is.
- [129:03]
Theo Von
He joking around you think, or he's being serious?
- [129:05]
Dave Smith
Oh, he's being serious. He was just asked about it recently and he was like, oh yeah, no, this happened. And he actually said in this more recent, he had a one on one debate against Scott Horton. And when Scott brought this up, he goes, you know, it actually went back further than that. I had seen those plans back in 96. It was the NE conservatives, right? And so the neoconservatives, the ones who were in charge of the W. Bush administration or were at very high posts in that administration. This was their plan. And as they had mentioned in the Clean Break explicitly for Israel, like it was to change the dynamic so that Israel, we would take out all of their enemies and put them in a situation where they never had to come through on the peace process. And so that's why, or at least a huge part of the reason why we fought a war in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, in why we've backed Israel through all of these proxy wars. It's all about that. And it's, this is what even more so than their treatment of the Palestinians. This is the thing that I'm furious at Israel about. It's like, what is with this, like pressure of like lying my country's people into war after war after war that does nothing but create disasters for us?
- [130:22]
Theo Von
Well, we Always looked at then certainly I think as the. You start to get looked at as the bad guy. If that's true, you know, you start to get looked at at the bad guy. If you invite me to come help you, you know, or if I have the bullets, you know, and you have me come along and fire the gun. Even if you give me the orders or whatever, I'm still a murderer, you know, I'm still complicit. It a clean break. A New Strategy for Securing the Realm is a policy document prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Pearl for Benjamin Netanyahu, then Prime Minister of Israel. Key points, abandoning the Oslo Accords and the concept of a land for peace. Re establishing the principle of preemption rather than retaliation.
- [131:02]
Dave Smith
So just to be clear, because again, they're saying these in kind of like. And this is how they talk about it, right? So it's all coded a little bit. But abandoning Oslo means the peace process. The concept of land for peace, meaning like this concept that the Palestinians deserve their land. Get rid of that weird concept. And then number two, think about how creepy that is. Reestablishing the principle of preemptive rather than retaliation. So in other words, we don't wait for you to attack us, we just start attacking you right away because we know you're going to. So essentially giving up on the idea of a just war, like giving up on the idea of like, oh, we were attacked and therefore we go to war, war. And instead we'll just keep attacking you because we've decided you're going to attack us in the future.
- [131:46]
Theo Von
But now part of you say if this is all true, right. You almost have to give Israel credit as well because they're fucking gangsters. That's another thing. It's like, no question, sometimes people are like, you know, you hear people say stuff about, you know, why we're fund Israel and this and that and why, you know, but then you're also like, well if like, like they pro, like they did it, they. If we're still playing by all these old rules of like, you know, like Game of Thrones style and it's a dog eat dog world and occupying land and all that kind of stuff. If you're still playing Risk, right? Yes. But you're convincing everybody that we're not playing that way anymore. But you're still playing that way. It's really gangster.
- [132:35]
Dave Smith
If might makes right and the only thing that matters are, are the laws of conquest and winning is winning, then okay, sure, you got to give it to them that, like, hey, you've done it. But okay, if that's your feeling, then fine, but then you don't get to cry these tears about, oh, October 7th was so horrible and they did this to us because, hey, you're just playing the game of might makes right. And whoever can kill the other side can kill the other side. And then also. Okay, even if you're playing by those rules, I'll respect gangster. Like, I respect gangster. Sure, yeah.
- [133:06]
Theo Von
I just want to know what the rules are. But.
- [133:08]
Dave Smith
Right, but then at the same time, you also gotta understand that we live in a new world now. And like, all the stuff we were talking about before, like, people can talk about this stuff now and people can communicate. And I'm sorry, but if that's the case, then what I'm rooting for is what's best for my country. And none of these wars made my country better. You know, in fact, they made it much, much worse. You know, all we got to show for the war in Iraq is, is, you know, thousands of our bravest young boys dead, tens of thousands of them killing themselves in the wake of it. Tens of thousands more injured and horribly just a shell of themselves and unsure.
- [133:47]
Theo Von
Of what they're true. I think. And I don't know if people would want to admit this or talk about it, and it may be anti American for me to say it, but I think the definition right now of being American is frayed in some ways by. But what they were fighting. I mean, the truth of probably closing your eyes at night and be like, well, what was I fighting for? You know?
- [134:07]
Dave Smith
Yep.
- [134:07]
Theo Von
And. And maybe that's messed up. Is that messed up of me to say that? No, I'm just speculating. I don't know.
- [134:11]
Dave Smith
No, I don't think so. I've heard a lot of combat vets say the same thing. Yeah. So I don't think that's messed up at all. Yeah.
- [134:16]
Theo Von
What was that fighting for?
- [134:17]
Dave Smith
I think that's right at the core of why they had, you know, there were wars, you know, like World War II was. Was much more bloody and vicious than any of the fighting in the terror wars. And we didn't have suicide rates the way we do now. And I do think a huge. That is because, like, those guys felt like, hey, we were liberating Europe. Like there was. They didn't come back and feel like, oh, what the did I even do that for? You know, And a lot of these guys, they come back and they're like, oh, I was straight up lied to like, I was lied. Oh, I was just a pawn in your. In some rich guy's game. And that included me, like, doing all types of shit to people. That is very hard for any civilized person to do.
- [134:57]
Theo Von
Your conscience can't. It's a teeter totter.
- [135:00]
Dave Smith
Well, you immediately, you know, you put yourself in a crazy situation. So, like, look, if I'm going to. If I'm gonna break into your house with a gun, like, once I've already made that decision that I'm gonna break into your house with a gun, whatever justified me to getting to that point. There's now, there's a whole different dynamic where now, like, okay, I could say, hey, I'm just trying to break into your house with a gun. I'm gonna be the good guy here. But if I break into your house with a gun and you run up at me with a gun, I gotta shoot at you now. Now. And then once that's over and I'm back home, you go like, I mean, from this guy's perspective, I broke into his house, who was really the aggressor here. I mean, sure, I shot him because he raised his gun at me, but really I was the one who went. And so this is what it's like for an invading arm. And also, it's not.
- [135:47]
Theo Von
And what were we even doing there? And when you find out that a lot of the people were Saudi Arabian or something and we didn't even deal with, it's like, what was going on? Oh, I can't even imagine.
- [135:55]
Dave Smith
And it's also like, there's something to be. For the. You know, even if you, like, if you fought a guy, let's say, like, you know, back in your. In your drinking days or something like that, you got into a bar fight or something like that, and you fight a guy who's around your size, you know, and you go and you end up, like, winning the fight even. It's like, there's still something different about that than if you just went and beat up a dude who was like a third of your size, you know, like, at least when we fought In World War II, the Nazis were very powerful. It was at early in the war, it wasn't clear exactly who was gonna win. But Iraq, you know, for the US Military to go fighter, it's like, come on, dude, this is a. This is a joke. We took down their government in a matter of weeks.
- [136:35]
Theo Von
Well, remember they had those videos of them training on, like, jungle gyms and stuff? Remember those videos? Oh, yeah.
- [136:41]
Dave Smith
Well, I think that Was like Al Qaeda or something like that. But, yeah, it's still like, yeah, yeah, that was their. The monkey bars or whatever. It's all just so ridiculous. There's no way you're gonna go fuck those people up and not be left with a little bit of a feeling like, fuck, we beat up the. What did I just do? Yeah.
- [136:55]
Theo Von
Weekend to do.
- [136:56]
Dave Smith
Yes. Yeah.
- [136:57]
Theo Von
Damn. Who were some Trump picks? Some other cabinet picks you're not sure about? You feel like.
- [137:03]
Dave Smith
I know I. I'm blanking on his name. I know his national security advisor I really didn't like, and I heard some statements from him that I didn't like. You know, Pete Hegseth was an interesting one. I don't really know enough.
- [137:15]
Theo Von
He's from Montana. Is that that guy?
- [137:17]
Dave Smith
Is he from Montana? I'm not sure. I know he was a Fox News guy for a long time. I've met him a couple times.
- [137:22]
Theo Von
Former Georgia congressman is. Is up first. Let me see what to know about. Pete says Trump's Hegseth, 44, has developed a close rapport with Trump, a military veteran and popular conservative media personality with a large following of his own.
- [137:38]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, he hosted, like, the Fox morning show for years.
- [137:42]
Theo Von
Oh, I think I remember who he is now. America's whites, sons and daughters are walking away, and who can blame them? I think he's talking about the military. Yeah, yeah.
- [137:51]
Dave Smith
No, he was. So I met him back in, I want to say, like, 2016 or something like that. And he was like, I think he had pretty standard, like, Republican, you know, politics. I think he's. From what I've heard, he's kind of changed a bit over the years and has become much more skeptical about a lot of the wars. I do remember this one moment I always thought was really interesting that I saw him on one show on Fox News, and this was such a not Fox News type thing for him to talk about. But he brought up and went into pretty graphic detail the epidemic of warlords raping little boys in Afghanistan. And this was a major thing that a lot of the guys who served in Afghanistan talk about. But so when we were against the Taliban, we were trying to overthrow the Taliban. And a lot has been made in America, and rightfully so, about how the Taliban are really brutal on women's rights. They, you know, they don't let girls go to school. They don't let women have any type of freedom. However, on the other side were these tribal warlords who we were propping up. And it is true that they would let the little Girls go to school, but they would also rape the little boys. There's like an epidemic of it. And they, they'd bring them. And so the dynamic was that our soldiers over there. They are. Weren't allowed to say anything about that because they'd be like, well, listen, this is their customs and their way of life. And so they would talk about how they could hear the screams from the little boys, like in their rooms and stuff. And so he talked about it on Fox News, which just kind of gave me the impression that I was like, oh, maybe this guy is willing to kind of like, tell the truth in a thing where it's a little uncomfortable in an audience that isn't typically used to hearing that.
- [139:36]
Theo Von
That.
- [139:36]
Dave Smith
So we'll see. I don't know, though. He used to really support the wars. I'm not sure where he is now.
- [139:42]
Theo Von
Interesting. Wow, There's a lot going on, huh? Do you think that Trump's. That things are going to be different this time? Do you really think that, say, there is this deep state, right. Do you think we can really get away from it? Or it's. Is it just a lost cause? And. And sometimes it's like, I almost just wish they. My thing is I just wish. Wish they would. I wish. I just want to know. I don't like, I don't like not knowing. Just tell me, I'll do what. I'll do the game. You know what I'm saying? But tell me what the game is. Tell me what the rules are.
- [140:13]
Dave Smith
I understand that impulse. I think that. I think the best part of Trump winning is that there it's been, the cultural effect of all of it, I think, has been amazing. Like, I really think everything, like, from November to now has just been great. It's been great. There's been this big reset set that we needed in America. It's like the corporate media is crumbling, Wokeism is receding. Like, the insane kind of political correctness of the last few years seems to be, like, largely defeated. I think all of that is great. I don't think the deep state is going anywhere in the next few years, but that I don't like in turn. I'm very optimistic. Long term term, I think that, you know, it's easy to say, like, we're never gonna beat this thing. And it's all. It's always gonna be this way. They have so much power, we have so little. But the truth is like, you know, communism fell, slavery was abolished, America declared independence from the British monarchy. You know, these things all would have Seemed impossible. And you could have easily said, oh, this is just gonna be here forever. It's just the way of the world. But it wasn't. Those things are gone now. And I think there's no reason why America can't have like a great, kind of a great reformation, a great return to the best things about America. A huge increase in liberty and decrease in awful state corruption. Like, I don't see any reason why that can't happen, especially when they don't have the propaganda machine anymore.
- [141:44]
Theo Von
Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, it.
- [141:46]
Dave Smith
I've always.
- [141:47]
Theo Von
I've always thought like, the sand, like. Like it all gets remembered, right? Like, I think sometimes it's like, are we just. Is. Is America still suffering from, like, what it did to the Native Americans here? You know, And I know that's kind of wild, but they had like the. There was a line that they put. I think it was around the Mississippi called the something frontier, general frontier or something, where they're like, we'll prom. It was like just a deal that they'd made with the Native Americans. We promise we will never cross here. This is your land. It will always be your land. Land. And then within 30 years, it was like, you know, and it's like, I just feel like the ground remembers. It's like sometimes it's like you're just. You can't completely escape sin, I don't think. You know, or wrong. I don't think you can completely escape. You can feel like you can, and you might in your generation, in your life, but what you're going to leave is something that's not. It's. In the end, it all has to be even. And so I just feel like, like, you know, like the ground just keeps the score.
- [142:46]
Dave Smith
Yeah. There was something. Was it to you? I can't remember. There was something Jordan Peterson said about that that is like how you can't get away with lying. How you can't, like, twist the fabric of reality and it not snap back at you. And there is something to that. I don't know if it's exactly perfect, but, like, there is something to, like, where no matter what, you know, it's like it's true. Like in a relationship, like, you know, if you think like, oh, maybe you're like, oh, I could get away with treating my wife shitty, and maybe you even can because she'll take it for a while. But, like, ultimately there's gonna be a price to pay for that. You kind of can't get away.
- [143:20]
Theo Von
There's gonna be a Dateline episode.
- [143:22]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [143:22]
Theo Von
And people are gonna side with her. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's all gonna. You can't.
- [143:27]
Dave Smith
Well, it's the same way. You could stay up. You could stay up for three days in a row and not sleep. But then, like, on that fourth day, you're gonna just fall out and be in deep because, like, you owe REM sleep. You owe it like you. So we gotta. The universe has a receipt for you of REM sleep that you owe for the last. And there's. There's something about how, like, you know, it's like, okay, I could, like, I could go on my treadmill right now and, like, go run for 20 minutes, and that will suck. I hate those 20 minutes when I go run on my treadmill. Or I could eat a big piece of cheesecake and just love the next 20 minutes and feel so good. But there's gonna be a price to pay for that. You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna feel better about myself. I'm gonna be in better health if I do the running. There's just this weird thing with the universe where it's like, you kind of can't cheat the system. And if you try to cheat the system, there's always a price associated with it. And now you owe that price. It may come later in life. It may. Whatever, you know, like, if I. If. If I want to, like, whatever it is, if I want to be really shitty to my wife now, it's like, maybe I think that gets me some advantage in the short term. But then when my son's older and he remembers that and he hates me, it's like, oh, okay, okay. There's the price for me not being good to his mom. So you always, like, in life in general, you're always better off if you err on the side of, like, doing the right thing so that you don't owe these prices later in life. I see it all the time. You see it with, like, old men who were, like, shitty drunk dads and were. And now they're alone and they're old alcoholics. And you're like, oh, man, the ultimate loser here is you. Like, you got, like, a grandkid you never met, you know, and you got. It's like. Like this. You can't cheat this game, so you're better off just doing the right thing and not accruing all these. These debts.
- [145:07]
Theo Von
Yeah, I. What do you think about Elon and Vivek? Do you think that that is a. Is that really something that's going to have an effect on, on things. Who do they have to answer to? Because they're not an actual government entity. Is that correct?
- [145:22]
Dave Smith
Yeah. So it's, it's, it's, it's ridiculous, but it's also really interesting. And yeah, Donald Trump just gave him a made up departure department that they're in charge of. So they're not technically a government department.
- [145:34]
Theo Von
Department of government department, but it's not a real government department of government officials. He does. So it's not real. But this, I've been saying this for a while. I feel like we've entered this kind of like privatized communism, I call it. Where, and, and you could call the. And this wouldn't maybe be considered communism, but it's privatized democracy. Right. It's like we have like, we don't have the post office anymore, we have Amazon, we have email, you know, which. It's like it's all been privatized. Right. We don't really realize that there's still. Everybody's like, the government sucks. It's like, yeah, but the government's a company now. It's some other company that's doing the shit that the government used to do.
- [146:07]
Dave Smith
Well. Right. It's. So instead of the game because, because what it is is that in most people's minds they have kind of roughly at least the idea of like capitalism versus socialism. And I understand, I'm speaking like, like with a broad brush here, but like they're like, okay, so like on one hand you have like the government is, isn't involved and it's all like competition and private companies. And then on the other hand you have like the government's much more involved and the government takes over these services. But really what we have isn't either of those. What we have is gigantic multinational corporations that long ago bought off the government. So you have this huge government that's involved, but it's just working for these private interests.
- [146:45]
Theo Von
Right? It's just wrapping paper.
- [146:46]
Dave Smith
Exactly. So like I think that's exactly the correct way to look at it.
- [146:51]
Theo Von
But the belief is that we still have this thing of freedom and you still do kind of have democracy in some ways. Right? You could still run for an office, you could still vote for someone. But it's, it certainly feels things feel more manufactured. Yeah, yeah. Like even like that's why I think very. The uber wealthy, they don't care that much about the police and shit because they have their own security. They have, they're not fucking worried about that.
- [147:18]
Dave Smith
Well, that's the crazy thing. And it has really. It's been one of the things that I think turned Americans against Hollywood. But there's something about, like, kind of the, like, elite progressive, you know, like the people who lecture everybody else about guns and support gun control, but they have armed security. Right. The people who are offended that Donald Trump talks about building a wall, but they live in a gated community. The people who, you know, go talk.
- [147:48]
Theo Von
About climate change, but then take private.
- [147:50]
Dave Smith
Planes everywhere, dude, you could go endless, endless examples of this. They talk about you. If you're upset about what they're teaching in your local public school, they say you're a bad person. Meanwhile, their kids go to private school. They don't have to deal with what's going on in the. You know what I mean? It's like at every. They're totally insulated from the effects of the policies that they support. And so, you know, anyway, to go back to the Doge thing, what I think. So I had dinner with Vivek, like, a couple months ago.
- [148:17]
Theo Von
People say he's a neat man. I never met.
- [148:19]
Dave Smith
He's. I like him a lot. He's. I've gotten to know him pretty good over the years.
- [148:24]
Theo Von
Is he Bangladeshi or Indian guy?
- [148:25]
Dave Smith
He's. He's Indian, but he's American. He was born here.
- [148:28]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [148:28]
Dave Smith
Yeah, but he's first of. He's brilliant. He's very, very successful. And I will say, you know, I won't, like, divulge too much stuff that we said in private, but he is really big on this Doge thing. And he's like, listen, man, me and Elon got some tricks up our sleeves, and we're going to get some. We're going to be very effective with this. Essentially, what they're going to do is make policy recommendations, and their recommendations already are going to be massive cuts in government spending, which is, I think, the absolute correct answer. And so I'm at least excited to see that, like, that's being interjected into the public. And him and Elon are both. I mean, these are brilliant guys. So maybe they could really come up with something here.
- [149:08]
Theo Von
I agree. Well, it's just amazing how our country keeps going more and more in debt. In the end, we're going to have a loan to some other country, and that country is just gonna be like, now you belong to us. Right.
- [149:20]
Dave Smith
Or the whole thing has to, like, crash, and then we're setting ourselves up for failure. And even just now. Right?
- [149:27]
Theo Von
Yeah. I don't wanna sound too gloom and doom too well, but even just now.
- [149:30]
Dave Smith
It'S like forgetting the debt is a major problem and we're going off like the fiscal cliff and we're not gonna be able to keep this up. But even just right now, the reason we're racking up so much debt is cause the government spends so much money every year. And that is the corruption. Corruption. It's not like a symptom of the corruption. It's like you got an organization in Washington D.C. that by force extracts $6 trillion of wealth away from the American people every year and then give it out to their connected friends.
- [149:57]
Theo Von
It's like the most, like, it's fucking, it's, it's laundering.
- [150:01]
Dave Smith
Yeah, it's, it's the most criminal shit in the world you could imagine. The only reason why we don't think of it as criminal is because it's so big and successful. But if anyone did it on a small level, you'd be like, oh, I know what that is. That's a gang. That's a crime. Like that's. And, and, and even, and, and like I said before, the other big thing is that in order to have such a big government, what you need is because you can never tax people enough to pay for all this shit. And they can't even borrow enough money to pay for all of it. So they have to just constantly be printing money. And that sends us into living in an inflationary world where everything's constantly getting more expensive and the value of your dollar is constantly going down, down. And again, this is. If you're rich, it's fine. If you own stuff, you can kind of protect yourself from it because the value of your, your assets goes up too. But for middle class and working class and people on a fixed income, this just destroys them. Absolutely destroys them. I mean, the price inflation over the last few years has just like. I don't even know, you know, the Federal Reserve keeps numbers on the stuff, but I don't know if they've done it over the recent wave of price inflation. But how many marriages get destroyed by this? You know, like people commit suicide over stuff like this. I mean, they don't care.
- [151:12]
Theo Von
They don't think about that. It's the same way they didn't think. Whenever they, they don't care. They don't. It's same way they didn't care that every AA room and meeting was going to shut down when they, when they started Covid, you know, or whenever Covid started. It's the same way that they didn't care about the Pill epidemic that's taken Hundreds of thousands, 600,000 lives. And not only. Not to mention the. The ripple effect of those deaths that have broken the hearts of mothers and. And children and wives and husbands. They don't care. I just. That's what it feels like anymore. It feels like they don't care. So what can I do now?
- [151:52]
Dave Smith
Well, it's also.
- [151:53]
Theo Von
But then also, I also have to remember that throughout history, people have lived in this exact same space, feeling like their government did not care about them.
- [152:01]
Dave Smith
And worse. I mean, in much worse.
- [152:04]
Theo Von
You're right. So that's why I think other countries, like, well, this is. Hey, welcome. Yeah, you know, welcome to what it's really like, you know, to exist.
- [152:11]
Dave Smith
Yeah, okay, fine. But, like, at the same time, that doesn't.
- [152:14]
Theo Von
We should have better.
- [152:15]
Dave Smith
Yes, that's right. Look, I mean, so there's. There's lessons to take from all of that stuff, right? Like, there are people. In the 20th century, we had two world wars, you know, like, yeah. Tens of millions of people just got caught up in this for no fault of their own at all. And I'm not even talking about just like the standard tax textbook history. Like, there were people who just happened to be Germans. You know what I mean? They didn't necessarily even support the Nazis or anything like that. There were ethnic Germans. Daryl Cooper just put out the prologue for his new World War II series. And the first one is so good, but all talking about, like. And this is like a forgotten chapter of history, but after World War II, ethnic Germans not even living in Germany, weren't even living under the Third Reich, just in Eastern Europe, just got totally, like, slaughtered by the millions raised and beaten and ethnically cleansed. Like there were. So, and this is obvious, I only lead with that because it's like the one that people don't know as much about, but, like, obviously there were Jews who just happened to live in Germany or in Eastern Europe. There were Russians and Poles and just all types of people who just got destroyed. So. No, okay. People have had it much worse. But at the same time, I do think it's your point being, you know, especially when you see, like, the corporate media and you see the way they freak out over January 6th, the way they freak out over whatever it would be, the latest thing Donald Trump says. And then you sit there and you go, yeah, 100,000 people die of overdoses in this country every year. And by the way, calling them overdoses is not entirely accurate.
- [153:51]
Theo Von
Poisoning is a good term.
- [153:52]
Dave Smith
Yeah, poisoning is more. I mean, when you're talking about the fentanyl thing. I mean, at least for me, when my whole life, when I thought of what the word overdose meant, what overdose meant to me was essentially like, you become such a drug addict that you build up such a tolerance that you gotta take so much drugs in order to get high that eventually you have to take so much that it kills you before you even get to, like, feel good. But that's not the same thing as someone thinking they're taking a Percocet and it actually has fentanyl in it and then they just kill themselves. That's not exactly an overdose. Yeah, you got poisoned.
- [154:29]
Theo Von
And that company didn't even face any random customers. They're still allowed to come into America.
- [154:32]
Dave Smith
I know. And this isn't even something that comes up.
- [154:34]
Theo Von
People care, but they can't do anything right.
- [154:37]
Dave Smith
Well, what I just say is, like. It's just like, say, like, okay, I understand that, like, some people broke some windows of the capitol building on January 6th, and I understand that AOC was real scared for 20 minutes or whatever. Okay, but like, that the amount of coverage and outrage that that gets compared to 100,000 of your fellow Americans being poisoned to death every year. And it's not like it's a 1 to 1, it's a 100 to 0. Like, this just doesn't even come up. It's not even like a.
- [155:03]
Theo Von
Until Hollywood is like, oh, we'll make a series about it. Yeah, so we'll make. Now we'll make money off of it.
- [155:09]
Dave Smith
Well, I'll say this, dude. And this is like, I'm mildly embarrassed to admit this, but as somebody who's like, obsessed with this shit and talks about politics all the time, it wasn't until Bobby Kennedy ran for president and he goes, you know, America leads the world in chronic illness. And I remember being like, is that right? Do we lead the. Like, I didn't even know that we led the world in chronic illness. And there's like, just. It took Bobby Kennedy. Why has no one else who's run for president ever brought this up? How is this not a thing that we all talk about all the time?
- [155:39]
Theo Von
Well, Bernie Sanders talks about a good bit of it a lot.
- [155:41]
Dave Smith
Well, he talks about. Bernie Sanders talks about the health insurance stuff. He talks about the Medicare for all stuff. But I never really heard anyone talking about what Bobby's talking about in terms of, like, why are we so sick? Like, forget whether you think we need universal healthcare or private healthcare or whatever. Like, whatever health insurance you're talking About I'm saying, like, why are we so sick as a people to begin with? And that's more about, like, what we're eating, you know, like what we're consuming.
- [156:07]
Theo Von
But, okay, then say if there's these forces and they see, like, okay, we can poison them this much and we can make the money here and this. But why? What do they get out of all of it? Or do you think there's just such a level of wealth and control that after generation and generation, you just start to see it as a game? Almost like that's. That's the part I can't understand because I couldn't understand. Like, at a certain point you start to do well and then you want to help other people. Like, whether it's like, build a facility for drug people or whatever it is, right? Like get clean water. Like, do something positive. Like, I can't understand getting to the part where you start to see people just as nothing more than some then basically ghosts to launder your money through.
- [156:52]
Dave Smith
Well, I do think that when you get. Well, obviously, like, so it's control.
- [156:56]
Theo Von
A lot of it must be control.
- [156:57]
Dave Smith
A lot of it's control. So much of it is business. You know what I mean? Like, so much of it is just like there are these companies that make tons of money off this shit. But I do think that there's like a mentality that gets developed when you get to a certain level of power where, like, you know, the same thing, like with, you know, like, if there's companies, like, if there's a little mom and pop store, they kind of know everyone in the area and they kind of care a little bit more. They're more connected to the community. When you're talking about, like a giant corporation, you're just kind of like a cog in a machine to them. Like, they're. But when you get to like the top, top level of power. And I think they've been pretty explicit about this. I mean, Henry Kissinger pretty much like, admitted this in his own words that people are pawns on a chessboard. And that's the way they look at it. It's not. They don't believe that they are, like, they're almost above what me and you would consider morality. You know what I mean? It's like they're at this super high level where it's like, listen, we're. We're moving these pawns over here so that the Soviet Union collapses. And oh, yeah, it sure does suck if you happen to be a Vietnamese person. Person. But we're at war with the Soviet Union. And so you're just pawns on a chessboard and that. And that's what they're doing with Ukraine right now. What they're doing with Ukraine right now is just using them as cannon fodder to hurt Russia. And they pose as the ones who care about Ukrainians so much, but really, they just led them down. As John Mearsheimer said, the primrose path. They went, go ahead, fight this big bully who could totally fuck you up. Go ahead, fight him. We got your back.
- [158:26]
Theo Von
To Ukraine.
- [158:27]
Dave Smith
Yeah, to Ukraine. And by. We got your back. Not like the military is gonna come in and actually, like, back you up, but we'll just give you weapons so you can keep going out there and dying, but it'll hurt the Russians also. And that's the goal. You're like, it's a real sickness if you start looking at human beings that way.
- [158:42]
Theo Von
Yeah. What did Kissinger say? Bring that back up. He said, military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.
- [158:50]
Dave Smith
Is that real hooch? I knew he had some quotes about that, but that one even surprised me.
- [158:56]
Theo Von
I was like, oh, geez, where was he from? Kissinger.
- [158:59]
Dave Smith
Where was he originally from? Eastern Europe. It's a good question.
- [159:04]
Theo Von
Henry Kissinger. Bring him up. Get to there.
- [159:07]
Dave Smith
The Secretary of State under Richard Nixon.
- [159:10]
Theo Von
Scroll up.
- [159:12]
Dave Smith
Born in Germany. Okay.
- [159:14]
Theo Von
Born in Germany. A Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution. Maybe that's what made him believe that, huh? That probably was what led to his belief, huh?
- [159:23]
Dave Smith
Well, I mean, I'm sure it. I'm sure that had a profound influence on who he was.
- [159:27]
Theo Von
Yeah, man, it's heartbreaking. Attended Harvard University. Very smart guy.
- [159:32]
Dave Smith
Yeah. Oh, he was a genius. Super, super genius. But look, I mean, I think a lot of that even, you know, when you talk about the Nazi connection for his views. But a lot of that. A lot of that is true with the Israel stuff, too. That it's like, you know, a lot of this. It's like people who, like, went through a lot of the shit that they went through got it in their minds that, like, you do whatever you have to do to make sure you're the one in power to survive.
- [159:55]
Theo Von
Oh, I get it. Look, that's what I'm saying. The sand, remember, you know, or the. It all remains. All remembered. The big brain of time, it holds it all, you know, whatever it is. The soul of time, it holds it all.
- [160:11]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [160:11]
Theo Von
And it's interesting, it's fascinating, it's painful. It's. It's life. You know, it's death. It's all of it. It's like, I think it's just like, I don't know, some of it makes you fucking sad, you know, and some of it, like, yeah, maybe it's easy for me to just sit here and say things from my home that has heat in it, you know, I don't know. I don't.
- [160:33]
Dave Smith
But that's life, right? Is that there's like. Life is that there's like constantly tragedy all around us, but then there's beauty all around us also.
- [160:40]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [160:41]
Dave Smith
And then if you can kind of like reconcile yourself with the tragedy and accept that you can really enjoy the beauty in. In life. And that's, you know, that's the best we could try to do. But, yes, you're right. We speak from a position, as the lefties would say, from a position of privilege, and we're able to. But at the same point, like, my thing is kind of like, if you are in that position and we're fortunate enough to, like, be in a heated studio and in a comfortable environment or whatever, then like, ok, so then we should try our best to kind of rise up above. Like, what I was saying before, we're like, hey, if you're an Israeli Jew and one of your family members were killed on October 7th, of course you're going to be like, go get those guys. And if you're a Palestinian who saw one of your kids get killed by an idf, you know, mission, of course you're going to be like, let's go get those guys. But from our position of not being in either of those positions, we should at least be able to go like, okay, let's try to calm things down. Let's try to, like, push for peace. Let's try to go like, we understand how both of you could feel that way, but understand where the other one feels the same way you do. So, like, at least sometimes there's an advantage to be like on a perch in a little bit of a better situation where you can kind of see things and go, okay, let me at least call balls and strikes on this. And not just kind of form blame, more conflict, which is what people on the ground are doing.
- [161:59]
Theo Von
Yeah, Yeah. I think I've always just like, I don't know. I. I think I just. If I feel like something's the underdog, then I'll air. I'd rather err on that side.
- [162:07]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [162:07]
Theo Von
For me, it's like somebody said, oh, you got mad. Somebody get mad. You up, You. You chose the underdog all right. Yeah, my bad. You know, I just. That's like. I just think that's how I feel. How do we know? Like, Dave, tell me this. Is there any country where if you live in the country, you have to. You have to like. Like, commit to that country?
- [162:34]
Dave Smith
Well, in what sense? Like, what do you.
- [162:36]
Theo Von
Because America just starts to seem like this place where everybody can just commit for their other country if they want to.
- [162:41]
Dave Smith
Yeah, well, I think that's one of the things that is been a big catalyst for Donald Trump rise at the whole America first thing, like this idea that, hey, like, we should be for our country. I think that there was, particularly after World War II, which is really when you had the rise of the current world order. I mean, obviously the Soviet Unions were part of it, and then they fell. But the kind of American dominance started really after World War II. I mean, we won and we dropped the nukes. And the situation was that all of the industrialized world had been destroyed except for us. The war touched everyone, basically every power except us. And we lost some men there, but we still came out, like with the homeland.
- [163:24]
Theo Von
We had a big head start.
- [163:25]
Dave Smith
Yes, that's right. We got in late and we developed the nukes, and so just it all. And we used nukes, and so it was like, oh, they have this new weapon that nobody else has. And so after that, the.
- [163:36]
Theo Von
Which was sick, by the way.
- [163:37]
Dave Smith
Too horrific. Oh, just like. I mean, totally inexcusable and disgusting.
- [163:42]
Theo Von
Which almost makes you wonder, do we have our. Just our judgment day coming? You know?
- [163:45]
Dave Smith
Well, not us.
- [163:47]
Theo Von
We didn't.
- [163:47]
Dave Smith
Well, you would hope. You would hope that the universe can pick out who was involved, at least to some degree, and who wasn't. But in some ways, there's this great old John Quincy Adams quote, which I'll probably butcher, but maybe you'll pull up. So I get. But it was something like, if we go around the world looking for monsters to destroy, we will become the dicatrice of the world, but we will lose our own soul. Which is pretty profound that he said this back in the early 1800s, I believe.
- [164:14]
Theo Von
What does the dictatrice mean?
- [164:15]
Dave Smith
Like dictator, like the female version of dictator. So, like, will rule the world, but you'll lose your own soul or something like that. I might be butchering this quote, but that's essentially the gist of it. The point was that you're like, oh, you go dominate the world, but you lose your own soul. Like, you lose. You know, you kind of. You take over everything else, but you lose the essence of who you are.
- [164:37]
Theo Von
Well, it's the same thing as like, being like, I think, like somebody like Jim Carrey or some type of a celebrity. You put so much of you out there that you are all over, but you don't know who you are anymore.
- [164:48]
Dave Smith
Right. And there's a weird, like, you know, like, there's a weird equation to that. But after World War II, America kind of took on the mantle of being like, okay, well, we're gonna rebuild Europe. And there were arguments for why we should. We're gonna. We're gonna be the defense of Europe. We formed NATO so that we could protect Western Europe because they weren't in a position to do it for themselves. And it just. It's almost like we became. Became then the country that was always in the business of welfare for other countries. And I think what happened with Donald Trump, where a lot of people were, is that, particularly after the years of the terror wars that were such disasters, is that people started kind of reassess that and be like, well, look, we're not in a situation right now where Europe is destroyed. And you know what I mean? Like, we're the only ones unscathed by this war. Europe is rich. They're fine. A lot of these other countries are like, in. They're stable. And we're $36 trillion in debt. Our dollar is getting weaker. Our culture is like, totally pitted against each other. Things feel like they're kind of falling apart here. And so it's just. It's a different proposition to go like, hey, you know, my family is taken care of and doing really good, and I'm gonna help out this other family who's like friends of ours. That's a totally different proposition than like when my family's falling apart and are broke and hungry helping out somebody else, like, that's like, that's just a different thing. And so I do think, like, there should. It's. It's healthy and normal and natural that there should be a movement in America that's concerned with America. Oh, yeah.
- [166:24]
Theo Von
Well, you have people too, who lost their grandfathers, who lost their siblings, who lost their great grandfathers to helping liberate other groups and helping around the world, helping be those military presence around the world, you know, and who served. And they thought that that meant something, you know.
- [166:42]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [166:42]
Theo Von
That there was some value, that it meant something. That the American flag hasn't. Hadn't just been pitted by. Hadn't just been divided as if it was a conservative emblem. That's crazy to think that Somebody got fucking half of America to think that the American flag stands for, like, rednecks or something. Think about that shit. People don't want to think about that. People don't want to think that. Oh, that's true. There's a little part of me that caught, that took that bait, you know what I'm saying? And wondering who's. Who has put the bait in front of you, and then see the hook, man. There's a fucking hook.
- [167:16]
Dave Smith
Yeah. Like, if loving America is right wing.
- [167:18]
Theo Von
And free baits on a hook, free.
- [167:20]
Dave Smith
Speech is right wing and working out is right wing. So shouldn't we all be right wing? Like, what are we even talking about now?
- [167:27]
Theo Von
Like, and then I think that that's all changed. It's like you have Democrats that are Republicans now. You have people that don't know. You have a ton of people that want to be libertarians that don't know what it is. And so that's one of the reasons why I think we wanted to learn from you what it is. What does a libertarian idea of health care look like? What does that look like?
- [167:44]
Dave Smith
Well, look, I mean, the libertarian idea with all of this stuff is to, like, actually get the government out of the way and let there be a real market. I mean, so much of the problem in healthcare in general is that it's just. It's not a real market like any other market. The prices, good luck even finding the prices are. It's the only business you could walk into where no one in the room knows what the price is and it's not. And. Because, like, you know, I remember there was one time that my. It was like years ago. It was, I think before we got married, but my wife was like. She had a month where she had a lapse in her insurance, and so she had like one month without insurance before she got on mine or something. And she had blood work done the month that she didn't have insurance. So we get some bill, you know.
- [168:31]
Theo Von
Doing blood work or whatever.
- [168:32]
Dave Smith
Oh, yeah, like taking her blood. And so we get a bill for like 1,400 bucks. And my wife calls them and she's like, oh, yeah, I think what happened was she. She went to the doctor when she still had the insurance, but then they sent it to the lab after her expired, before the new one kicked in. So she's stuck with this bill or whatever. And she goes, oh, so this fell in my lap, so I don't have insurance. And they go, oh, you're uninsured? And she was like, yeah. And they go, oh, we'll knock 70% off. Wow, just like that. Now, part of you, I remember in the moment being kind of like, this is many years ago. And I was, I'm doing better now than I was then, but at the time I was like, oh, sweet. We just knocked 70% off. But then as soon as I'm like, sweet. I'm like, wait a minute, minute. That's all. The prices are inflated by 70% for everybody else who has, who has insurance. It's like this. And it's all because of these crazy overregulation over government involvement. It's just literally, things work better when you have a free market and there's real competition. So that's the libertarian answer to almost everything, is like, deregulate it. Let there be real competition. Competition, let it be privatized. But if these private companies fail, let them go out of business. Don't come in and bail them out. Let them actually have to compete for who can provide a better service to their customers. That's when we get good things.
- [169:52]
Theo Von
Yeah, there's another part in that book where Marty Makari, that doctor who's just. Who got. Is gonna be appointed by Trump. He, he talked about how, yeah, there was a guy whose father had like a stroke and they kept him in the hospital, hospital. And they could do a procedure and they're like, it's like $150,000. And the guy's like, what the. We can't do that. And they just, they kept kind of like holding them off and eventually they're like, yeah, it's $15,000. Yeah, just like just insane. Every couple of days they would just call him back like, we'll do it now, we'll do it now. And he, he was visiting America from another country and he decided just to go back to his own country and have it done there. But he was just shooting shocked at how just the price went down because they were going to possibly lose the patient. Right. Which is the way that businesses should be. The potentially you could lose the customer. What about the Federal Reserve? What is it? And is it us?
- [170:47]
Dave Smith
Oh, yeah, totally. Oh, it's the worst thing I've heard about this Ben.
- [170:50]
Theo Von
Ask.
- [170:51]
Dave Smith
The worst thing about our government is.
- [170:53]
Theo Von
Because I noticed this, if I make money and I pay taxes on it, right? And then if I use that money, money to pay somebody for something, they have to pay taxes on it. If I die, I get taxed like 30, 40% on the money that I'd already paid taxes on.
- [171:09]
Dave Smith
Oh, yeah. And then you like, I mean, it's insane. And then when you. If you think about how much money is actually taxed, I mean, like, it's not just like that you pay taxes on, but then if you go and buy something from someone else, then they gotta pay taxes on the money that you already paid taxes. I just, just. It's nutty. But the Federal Reserve is the central bank that's so the. It's all kind of confusing because they call it like the Federal Reserve. And so you kind of get this impression that it, like, well, it's part of the federal government where they keep reserves of some money or something like that. But that's not what it is at all. It's technically not even a part of the government. It is. It's the worst of the government and the worst of not the government. Right. So it was created by an act of Congress in 1913.
- [171:53]
Theo Von
Okay.
- [171:53]
Dave Smith
It's the treasurer, the head of the Federal Reserve is appointed by the president. So it's in that sense very much a part of the government. However, it gets to maintain its status as a private independent company. They print the money and then lend it to us. So they charge us for using dollars at all. They make money off the fact that we use our own currency that they're just given the right to print out of thin air. So they're a bank, in effect, print out of thin air. I mean, most of it's done on computers these days, but so what they do is it was created by a bunch of powerful bankers. There's a great book on this called the Creature from Jekyll island that really goes through the whole history of it.
- [172:34]
Theo Von
But of course, let's order that book, the Creature from Jekyll Island.
- [172:37]
Dave Smith
Oh, it's a good one by G. Edward Griffin.
- [172:44]
Theo Von
We have to order it right now. But let's go back to that Federal Reserve.
- [172:46]
Dave Smith
Great book. I highly recommend everyone read it. It's also Ron Paul and the Fed is another great book on the Federal Reserve also. So essentially they print the money and then lend it out. Now they lend it out to what are called their member banks, meaning all the big banks. So JP Morgan, Chase, Schwab, bank of America, all these banks, Wells Fargo. Yes. So they lend it out to them, and then those banks lend money to the rest of us at a much higher interest rate than they got it for. So all of the banks now are in the business essentially of getting free money. Money. They just get the money at low interest and lend it out to us at higher interest. So they all get rich off of this. It allows the government to spend as much money as they want to because they can print as much money as they want to while it destroys the currency of the rest of us. And the worst thing about the Federal Reserve from, from my perspective is that it lets the government get away with just really evil things that they would never be able to get away with if they couldn't print all the money to. So you know, you could do lockdown and then just hand out checks. Cause you can print the money, but if you couldn't hand out the checks, you probably wouldn't be able to get away with lockdowns. You could fight a war in Afghanistan for 20 years now, if you had to tax people for that war, if you had to say, okay, listen, we wanna fight a war in Afghanistan, so every quarter we're gonna come to you for another, you know, 10% of your income. There'd be massive pressure from people to end the war. But since they just print the money, they're able to keep it going for 20 years.
- [174:12]
Theo Von
Wow.
- [174:13]
Dave Smith
And it also does a lot to like distort markets and just mess everything up. Cuz they pump money into markets where there's no real demand for there to be growth there. It's a huge scheme, it's privately owned. We don't even have real information on it. There's never been a full audit of the Federal Reserve. There was. Ron Paul was the only one in Congress who was really pushing for an audit. I think Thomas Massie also was, but never got it done.
- [174:38]
Theo Von
The federal government sets the salaries of the board's seven members, seven of the board's seven governors, and it receives all the system's annual profits. After dividends on member banks, capital investments are paid. The Federal Reserve earned a net income of 100.2 billion in 2015 and transferred 97.7 billion to the US Treasury. So they make some money in there. They made $5 billion.
- [175:00]
Dave Smith
Yeah, but there's, but the thing is that their books have never been opened and audited. So we don't really know exactly what's going on.
- [175:07]
Theo Von
Are we banked, Are we banked based on gold or not?
- [175:09]
Dave Smith
No, we haven't been on gold for many years. We have. It was a 1973 or 71, was it? Nixon suspended the gold standard and we've never been back on it since then. 71. Sorry, I should have had that one.
- [175:21]
Theo Von
Why did they suspend the gold standard? Well, so basically, let me say the gold standard was a monetary system that linked a country's currency to a set amount of gold. So. So our currency was actually backed by an actual.
- [175:33]
Dave Smith
Yes. The idea was that you could, for every dollar you printed, you had to put away a certain amount of gold. So. So, okay, so what I was talking about before, after World War II, Europe is destroyed. America is still left stable. This is when America. They created what was known as the Bretton Wood Agreement. So essentially, America was like the dominant power in the world. We had the huge portion of the world's gold at this point. And so the deal that we came up with was essentially that other. Other countries would peg their currency to the dollar dollar, and we would peg the dollar to gold. So you were kind of on a dollar standard. You were kind of on a gold standard if you went on a dollar standard.
- [176:13]
Theo Von
Got it.
- [176:14]
Dave Smith
And we set the price at $35 an ounce. So for every $35 we printed, we had to put away an ounce of gold. Okay, so this in a Fort Knox. Yeah, I think that's where it was supposed to be caught. Also has not been audited, but I.
- [176:28]
Theo Von
Think that's where it was empty, I'm sure.
- [176:30]
Dave Smith
Dude, who that. It's, I think, law gone. But so, okay, so then you have. So this starts in the what year? Late 40s. Bretton woods started. I want to say 40s.
- [176:40]
Theo Von
Yeah. The gold standard was largely abandoned during the Great Depression before being reinstated in a limited form.
- [176:44]
Dave Smith
It had. So we had gotten off of it and then gotten back onto it. But so what happened is when we're. We're on the Bretton woods standard, we go onto it in the late 40s, so through the 50s and into the 60s.
- [176:55]
Theo Von
Okay.
- [176:56]
Dave Smith
And that standard, was it early. It was before the war ended. Is that that? Right. Okay.
- [177:00]
Theo Von
And that standard was that for every ounce of gold, we had so much money. That's $35.
- [177:04]
Dave Smith
Yes.
- [177:05]
Theo Von
And then other countries had penned their.
- [177:08]
Dave Smith
Or using the dollar currency to the dollar. And so they're holding dollars.
- [177:11]
Theo Von
Right.
- [177:11]
Dave Smith
But the dollars are redeemable in gold. Like, that's the idea that you could trade them in for gold anytime you want.
- [177:17]
Theo Von
So it's all real. There was a checks and balances system.
- [177:19]
Dave Smith
Right. Except that they. We started cheating. And we started cheating really blatantly. And so in the 1960s, if you could think about it, right, America is doing a lot in the 1960s. We have the Great Society. We created Medicare and Medicaid. We put a man on the moon. We fought the war in Vietnam. America is just spending a ton of money. And so what happened is that a lot of people were holding dollars, right? And they're holding dollars that they're promised are good, are convertible to gold. And I believe it was mostly led by France, but I think England was involved in this too, too. But they essentially called America's bluff. And they went, you know, you guys are spending a whole lot of money. I'm thinking, we'll take our gold. Like, we got all these dollars. We'd like to convert them into gold. So they called America's bluff, and Richard Nixon was like, nah. And so the way. The way he spun it, it was just a giant default. Slick Rick, it was just a huge default to the world. Like, we're just not. No, but the way he spun it, which is actually pretty laughable if you. It was. He was like, you know, the French are trying to destabilize the dollar, and we will not let this attack stand. So I have to temporarily. Those are his words, temporarily suspend the convertibility from dollars into gold. So he basically told them, go fuck yourself. You know, we don't have gold, but we do have a much bigger military than you. So you will take this, you know, and then, you know, you know, throughout the years, I mean, America just came to continue to dominate the world, so there was no real option for France to do nothing. But ever since then, we have not been on a gold standard or any standard whatsoever. They can print as much money as they want to with no limit.
- [179:06]
Theo Von
It says the Nixon shock was the effect of a series of economic measures, including wage and price freezes, surcharges on imports, and the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar gold. Although Nixon's actions did not formally abolish the existing Bretton woods system of international financial exchange, the suspension of one of its key components effectively rendered the Bretton woods system inoperative. Wow. And what happened to all the golden Fort Knox then?
- [179:30]
Dave Smith
Your guess is as good as mine.
- [179:32]
Theo Von
Can we look that up? What happened to all the gold after the Bretton woods system? I don't know.
- [179:38]
Dave Smith
I mean, I think they would say they still have it, but again, it's like, much like the Federal Reserve, I. I believe. I. I don't think Fort Knox has been audited in all of this time, so I don't think we really know.
- [179:48]
Theo Von
You know, we got to get in that bitch. I'm asking Trump if I get to see him. Vance would give us an honest answer, I think.
- [179:54]
Dave Smith
Are you going to the inauguration?
- [179:56]
Theo Von
I think I'm going to go because, well, first of all, I got excited to go, I got invited to go, and then I never will get to go again.
- [180:04]
Dave Smith
Are you going? Yeah. Just because I got invited and it's just kind of like, how could you not go? I mean, it's just, it's like, it's American history. And it's also, this was such a big election too. It feels like such a seismic shift. And I got invited and I'm just like, come on. I mean, I don't know. I can't. I'm too much of a history nerd to not be like, yeah, you have to go to that. Yeah.
- [180:25]
Theo Von
And I love that you always seem to have like this open ended. Like, you're not really, you're not attached. You don't, it feels, you don't really attach yourself to. You don't get overly attached.
- [180:37]
Dave Smith
Well, I try to be, I try to be attached to principles, you know, and not be attached to politicians. So, you know, it's like, I supported Trump in this last election just because I thought Kamala Harris was, I thought she was such an insult to all of us, you know, like, it was like, come on, you can't actually do this. And to not have a primary and then just hand select her. And then all the lying about Biden, all the going around with the.
- [181:00]
Theo Von
Yeah, the lying about Biden was crazy.
- [181:02]
Dave Smith
I just couldn't stand that. So I supported Trump. But as soon as Trump starts doing something I think is wrong, I'll be the first one to be like, yeah, dude, this is. He's fucking up.
- [181:09]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [181:09]
Dave Smith
I just, I think that's the way everyone should be. I think people are way, way, way. I hate, I'm also glad for that, that election season's over. I hate when people get so, like, dug in. You're not even really being a person. You're not even really having a conversation anymore. You're kind of getting into this like once you pick a side and you're like, I've decided my side is the good side, they're the evil side. Now you're in a like, ends justify the means conversation.
- [181:32]
Theo Von
Now you're trying to make the world fit that. Yeah, yeah.
- [181:35]
Dave Smith
And it's also just a thing where it's like you would see this all the time. Time.
- [181:38]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [181:38]
Dave Smith
Especially during the election. I mean, I remember being on a couple of these shows that I do where I think I said to Piers Morgan at one point, like, I was just like, I was like, maybe everyone will be willing to have a conversation in a couple of weeks once this Election's over. But right now, everyone's just in their dumb. Like, because you're. You get to a point where you're like, I gotta just win. My side has to win. And it doesn't matter about, like, telling the truth. It doesn't matter about actually grappling with what the other person said. So I try my best to. To. To stay away from that. I think it's not good for you.
- [182:07]
Theo Von
Yeah, I think, you know, I think that's really how I am. I'm not, like, I'm not the. I was never the biggest Republican or the biggest Democrat. I feel like I was always. I mean, I guess I voted Democrat, had voted Democrat most of my life, you know, But I want there to be more parties than there are, you know, I want. I just want things to be real or. I just want to know what's really going on. I just don't like being, like, taken advantage of. That's the thing I don't like, like. And so, yeah, I think that's my biggest curiosity, you know, usually is. Is trying to think, trying to get things to be fair and. Yeah. Just have a voice if I'm right or wrong. You know, I tried, you know, I tried to speak up for what I felt like was. Seemed like. Tried to be the best, you know, or whatever I thought was the best. But then sometimes you're also so deceived, you don't know. And that's one thing that's kind of fascinating about life. And that's one thing that I think does get me up these days. It's like, what a tricky fucking little Game of Thrones we're in, right? And everybody should feel that way. And you get up and you see, where are they tricking you? Who's tricking me? Who's fucking me? Who am I fucking? You know what I'm saying?
- [183:11]
Dave Smith
And it's crazy. And it's. It's one of these weird things, right? Because it's like someone will, you know, it's like someone online who you don't even know. You could see a video and someone's saying something really compelling, and you're like, oh, that's interesting. And then you're like, oh, yeah, but people are liars. Yeah. So, like, this guy might be lying to me, or the guy he's talking to. To about might be lying to me. And, you know, there are things like this all. It's like, you know, there's, you know, part of the thing when the people on CNN or whatever, they'll be like there's misinformation on the Internet. Like, they are right. There is misinformation on the Internet. Did you see the thing with the Hollywood sign on fire was burning. Going super viral, like everyone thought.
- [183:46]
Theo Von
And it wasn't.
- [183:47]
Dave Smith
Now it's just a doctored, you know, AI image or whatever.
- [183:50]
Theo Von
Yeah, I heard it burned up.
- [183:51]
Dave Smith
There are people who will lie to you, but then at the same time, time the person on CNN who's like, oh, all these guys are lying to you. You're like, yeah, but you're lying to me too, man. So that's the weird thing, navigating this world. There's just like, all this information, and so much of it's.
- [184:05]
Theo Von
That's a dirty Halloween and your life is at stake. And that's what does put some. That's what puts something on the line, you know?
- [184:13]
Dave Smith
Yeah.
- [184:13]
Theo Von
And that is something that's kind of inspiring, man. Yeah, that's. And yeah, and if you don't speak up and you don't try to say, then like, yeah, it just like. That's what you got to do, man. Use your fucking voice. You know what I'm saying? Use your voice. Is there anything that you would like to talk about, Dave? You have a tour coming up or anything like that? You want to.
- [184:33]
Dave Smith
Oh, I'll be on. I'm on the road, like, all year, so. Comic Dave Smith dot com. Yeah, I've got a bunch of ticket links and dates that are up there already, and there should be more on the website in the next week or so.
- [184:44]
Theo Von
But why are you going to Bozeman?
- [184:46]
Dave Smith
Oh, yeah. For the first time ever. I've never been to Montana before.
- [184:49]
Theo Von
So beautiful, dude.
- [184:49]
Dave Smith
I'm really excited to go out there in a few days. Days. And then Louisville, Fort Wayne, Key West.
- [184:56]
Theo Von
Oh, wow.
- [184:57]
Dave Smith
That should be fun.
- [184:59]
Theo Von
Maybe Nick Schwartz will be down there at the bar. He spent a year in Key west during COVID at the.
- [185:04]
Dave Smith
Is that true?
- [185:05]
Theo Von
Yeah, dude. He went. This is alleged. And I love Nick. And he came here and told the story. I think he spent a million dollars at a hotel there.
- [185:13]
Dave Smith
Just staying in a hotel every night, basically. Yeah. I guess if you do that for a year, you could rack up a lot of money down in the Florida.
- [185:21]
Theo Von
I went to Key west for supposed.
- [185:22]
Dave Smith
To be 10 days.
- [185:23]
Theo Von
Yeah. And I was there a year and a half. I heard that you ran up a bill at a. At the hotel there. That was like, astronomical. It was insane.
- [185:31]
Dave Smith
I stayed at a resort on the beach for a year and a half, and it cost.
- [185:34]
Theo Von
I heard A million dollars? I don't think it was a million, but it was. It was a lot of money if you tipped it. Did you tip?
- [185:38]
Dave Smith
I always tip.
- [185:39]
Theo Von
What do you think it was when you say a lot of money? How much was it? I mean, it was definitely only probably.
- [185:45]
Dave Smith
Half a mil, for sure.
- [185:46]
Theo Von
I feel like. I feel like it was more than.
- [185:48]
Dave Smith
It might have been.
- [185:49]
Theo Von
I kind of don't want to know. Yep. See, and that's our Federal Reserve right there.
- [185:54]
Dave Smith
Well, that is. It's true.
- [185:55]
Theo Von
And that's how our Federal Reserve operates.
- [185:56]
Dave Smith
That for 50 grand on my grandpa's dollar. But there you go. Yeah, you can't stay at a resort for a year and a half, man. That's going to be a really big bill.
- [186:04]
Theo Von
But then also, man, it's so like. Like that's nice. He's like, you know what? Fuck it. The world might be ending. I might have like lung aids or whatever the k know, whatever they were calling Covid and I'm going to go sit. I'm going to have a margarita and listen to some Jimmy Buffett.
- [186:21]
Dave Smith
There's. I definitely know people who did worse during the pandemic than that. So that's not bad.
- [186:26]
Theo Von
Yeah, yeah. Montana is great. There's a great place to eat there. Can you look up the farm in Bozeman, Montana? I think that's what it's called.
- [186:34]
Dave Smith
Oh, by the while I'm plugging things, I should mention this one to make my friends happy. But we are a dude, man. You gotta come. But we're doing Skankfest in New Orleans.
- [186:47]
Theo Von
No way. During the Super Bowl.
- [186:51]
Dave Smith
Huh?
- [186:52]
Theo Von
When is it?
- [186:53]
Dave Smith
I believe it's in November. Ooh, but it is. If you haven't been to Skank Fest, it's the best comedy festival in the world. And we've done it in Vegas for the last few years, but we're moving it to New Orleans this year. Very excited for that. I've never done comedy in New Orleans before.
- [187:08]
Theo Von
Yeah, New Orleans is a one of a contact place to do comedy. Oh, there's the crew right there. A tell Dylan, Bobby Kelly, who all's in there? Is that bird in the back, Mark?
- [187:19]
Dave Smith
Yeah, that is bird.
- [187:20]
Theo Von
Mark Lewis J.
- [187:22]
Dave Smith
Look at him with eyeliner on.
- [187:24]
Theo Von
I know. God, that's hot. There's Christine, right? No, no. What is it her? Christine.
- [187:30]
Dave Smith
Christine and Rebecca.
- [187:32]
Theo Von
Yeah, Christine and Rebecca.
- [187:34]
Dave Smith
They are. They're the. They like run the whole festival. They do a phenomenal job.
- [187:38]
Theo Von
Yeah, Christine.
- [187:39]
Dave Smith
Shout out to Christine and Rebecca. Rebecca runs the. Owns the creek in the cave. In Austin. Great comedy.
- [187:45]
Theo Von
Oh, I seen her before. I was just there two days ago yesterday.
- [187:49]
Dave Smith
That's a fun room.
- [187:50]
Theo Von
Oh, yeah, it is great, man. Austin's. Man, Austin, dude. It's really. I'm like, man, you can do so much stand up there.
- [187:59]
Dave Smith
It's a. It's.
- [187:59]
Theo Von
It's like the new Hollywood. It feels. It's like the new comedy. It really feels. This is the time I really felt.
- [188:05]
Dave Smith
It every time I go there, dude. It's just like I felt. And even before Rogan opened the mothership, obviously, like, more so now, but even before then, it was just kind of like, oh, there's like an energy here. It's like, fun to do spots and hang out. And there's like. It's. I feel like in New York, like, even. Which is where I'm from, where I started. Even when I go back there, like, I don't. I like, feel like I don't know anyone anymore. But like, in Austin, be like, oh, all my friends are hanging out. You know what I mean? It reminds me of what it used to be like in New York when it always everybody. Every night would be, all my friends are hanging out. Now you get there, I'm like, I don't know who half of these people are.
- [188:37]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [188:37]
Dave Smith
It's just that. I guess that's part of just getting old.
- [188:40]
Theo Von
Part of that's getting older, too. Yeah, it is. Did I. I know. Since you said you're Jewish. Did I offend you with anything I said?
- [188:47]
Dave Smith
No.
- [188:48]
Theo Von
Okay.
- [188:48]
Dave Smith
No, of course not.
- [188:49]
Theo Von
Okay, man, thanks.
- [188:50]
Dave Smith
No, I was waiting for you to go further.
- [188:52]
Theo Von
You. Further about you.
- [188:53]
Dave Smith
You disappointed me.
- [188:54]
Theo Von
I did.
- [188:55]
Dave Smith
I'm just kidding. Oh, I was waiting for you to really tear into the Jews. No, no, no, no. You didn't offend me at all.
- [189:00]
Theo Von
Okay.
- [189:00]
Dave Smith
You made. I think you made perfect sense.
- [189:03]
Theo Von
Yeah. Sometimes some. Some stuff is hard to talk about. I think I'm trying to do a better job this year of, like, being brave about. Trying to talk about some things, even if it feels kind of scary. Sometimes I have a tough time like. Like saying, hey, slow this down so I can make sure I know what I'm thinking too. Like, it's been a Learning at being conversations has been. And it's unreal. It's harder than you think. I can stress.
- [189:28]
Dave Smith
No, it's a skill set. It's a real skill set. And there's a difference also between just like, there's like, just like doing your own thing. Like, just ranting is a whole different skill set than like, talking to Somebody. You know what I mean? And I do think that, like, I think there's nothing wrong with, like, being like, hey, all right, hold on. Let me think about that for a little bit. In fact, I think not nearly enough people do that in conversations. Be like, huh, you just said something. Let me, like, actually think about that for a second.
- [189:54]
Theo Von
Yeah, I need.
- [189:55]
Dave Smith
Rather than just give you, like, my first. First. The first thought that comes to my mind, let me actually give you, like, what my genuine thought is.
- [190:01]
Theo Von
Yeah, I'm gonna try to focus on that a little bit more or unfocus on it a little bit. Just leave a little bit more room for things. What was one other thing I was gonna say? Yeah, man, I just. I love the way you're able to think and share, and it feels very. You always feel to me like you are being genuine to what you believe. And that's something that I just. I think, think it's important, you know, because I think that people can know that that's true. Whether you're right or wrong about stuff. You feel like, well, this is how I feel, you know, and this is what I think. And, yeah, I just appreciate it. I feel like we're in a special time where people are trying to figure stuff out.
- [190:39]
Dave Smith
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that, and I do. That's always what I admire in other people. So that's kind of like what I always try to do. Like, I'm sure I'm wrong about a lot of stuff, but I'm not lying about any. Anything. And I'm not, like, I believe everything I'm saying.
- [190:55]
Theo Von
Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying. Yeah, I'm trying. My. Yeah. And a lot of it's learning, and it's just interesting, man. We're lucky to be able to be alive and think out loud and. And grateful to anybody that listened. And you got Skank Fest in New Orleans later this year.
- [191:08]
Dave Smith
You have comic davesmith.com comicdavesmith.com and then that's my. On Twitter. That's my handle, too. Comic Dave Smith.
- [191:14]
Theo Von
Yep. And, Dave, thank you so much, man. And best of luck this year with. With comedy and everything, man. And I might see at the inauguration, bro.
- [191:22]
Dave Smith
Hell, yeah, dude.
- [191:23]
Theo Von
All right, man. Have a good one, brother.
- [191:24]
Dave Smith
Thanks for having me.
- [191:25]
Theo Von
Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these.
- [191:30]
Dave Smith
Leaves I must be cornerstone oh but.
- [191:37]
Theo Von
When I reach that ground I'll share.
- [191:39]
D
This peace of mind I found I.
- [191:42]
Theo Von
Can feel it in my bones but it's gonna take.