Dave Smith: “Israel’s Goals Predict U.S. Wars Better Than Trump’s Instincts” | Impact Theory W. Tom Bilyeu

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dave Smith – “Israel’s Goals Predict U.S. Wars Better Than Trump’s Instincts” (Part 1)

Podcast: Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu
Guest: Dave Smith
Date: April 9, 2026
Duration: ~50 minutes (Part 1)

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Overview

In this robust and frank conversation, Tom Bilyeu and comedian/political commentator Dave Smith tackle one of the most polarizing issues in geopolitics today: the influence of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy, especially relating to the Middle East wars under different presidential administrations. The episode explores competing explanations for American interventionism, the role of money, lobbying, and long-standing cultural narratives, and dissects why anti-Semitic conspiracy theories easily gain traction in times of economic crisis. Smith and Bilyeu also examine how tribalism and economic illiteracy conspire to prevent the public from properly understanding the deeper, systemic forces at work.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Israel Lobby, Neoconservatism, and War Policy

• Predicting Middle East Wars:

  • Tom Bilyeu asks whether Israel’s goals or other variables (such as Trump’s instincts or the military-industrial complex) best predict U.S. actions in the Middle East.
  • Dave Smith argues that for the last 30 years, "what the lobby wants, what the Israeli government wants, seems to have... been the best predictor of the outcomes." ([02:03])

• Historical Context:

  • Smith references the “clean break” strategy — neoconservative and Likud Party aim to “remake the Middle East,” not pursue peace talks ([02:03]).
  • Distinguishes Trump’s initially stated goal to “get out of stupid regime change wars” from what transpired.

• Neoconservatives’ Backgrounds:

  • Many early neocons were from humble backgrounds, not from traditional elite power circles; they built their influence through their relationships with defense contractors ([03:15]).
  • “War is big business… There’s huge money to be made here, and that's what we've been pursuing this whole time.” – Dave Smith ([01:02])

2. Business, Influence, and the Machine of War

• Money Runs the World:

  • “I really do think that business is what runs the world at the end of the day, and that there’s huge money to be made here…” – Dave Smith ([04:21])
  • Explains how political advocacy for war reliably attracts weapons-industry financing.

• Influence Mechanisms:

  • The effectiveness of the Israel lobby isn’t just about money spent, but exceptional “influence per dollar” achieved by investing early in American politicians' careers ([22:32]).
  • “Their influence per dollar is unparalleled, maybe in human history.” – Tom Bilyeu ([22:32])

3. The Role of Economics and Economic Crisis

• Antisemitism as Economic Scapegoating:

  • Bilyeu connects historical cycles of pogroms to economic collapse, suggesting people scapegoat Jews in times of hardship:

    “Every time the world breaks economically, there's a pogrom… you confuse a K-shaped economy... with the conspiracy of Jews rule the world.” ([07:06])

• Ashkenazi Jews and Intellectual Achievement:

  • Bilyeu and Smith discuss Ashkenazi Jews’ higher-than-average IQ and historical focus on finance, tying it to prosperity and resentment ([12:19]).
  • “It is undeniably true… there were just cultural forces, like Jews focus a lot on intellectualism and family and hard work.” – Dave Smith ([12:19])

• Limitations of Economic Narrative:

  • Bilyeu: “I can explain the economy to people... but I can't make it any simpler than it actually is. And there’s just enough complexity in it that... you spiral into madness, and this is why people can't ever really get a hold of it.” ([42:02])

4. Lobbying, Loyalty, and the Complexity of U.S.-Israel Relations

• Not a Simple Puppet-Master Dynamic:

  • Both agree: framing America as simply a “puppet of Israel” is misleading.
  • Bilyeu: “America is a puppet to Israel is the thing I’m pushing back on… There are times where we’re aligned... but if you want to talk about something north of 51%, it would be our banking economic structure is creating this madness.” ([22:32], [45:55])

• Examples that Complicate the Narrative:

  • The Obama Iran nuclear deal was “the smoking gun for America is not a puppet to Israel” ([22:32]).
  • U.S. intervention in Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Yemen not cleanly explained by pro-Israel interests ([29:59]).

• Religious and Ideological Elements:

  • Smith notes that many key pro-Israel U.S. politicians—(e.g., Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz)—are evangelical Christians, motivated by religious prophecy, not Judaism or money ([45:55]).
  • “Our government is permeated by people who have this type of loyalty to a foreign government”—but often for theological reasons.

5. Individualism vs Collectivism and the Dangers of Tribalism

• The Problem with Bigotry and ‘Collective Blame’:

  • Smith: “I think a lot of the solution to all of this is individualism rather than collectivism” ([12:19]).
  • Most American Jews, polls show, are not on board with Israeli state policy, so blaming them collectively is “silly.”
  • “That is just the baseline of why bigotry always gets it wrong.” – Dave Smith ([12:19])

• Economic Structure Creates the Real Inequality:

  • “We created this horrific system of central banking and giant, giant governments and huge regulatory capture games... the whole economy is cartelized and rigged…” – Dave Smith ([29:59])
  • Electoral and public discourse gravitates toward culture war simplifications and tribal narratives (“racialism is like catnip to the plebs” – Dave Smith ([29:59])).

6. Competing Biases and Moral Double Standards

• Antisemitism vs. Other Bigotries:
  • Smith acknowledges rising “low IQ, anti-Jew” rhetoric online, but points out anti-Muslim and anti-white bigotry have been even more institutionalized and dangerous in recent American history ([40:28]).
  • Example: Double standards in public outcry over Jewish vs. Muslim bigotry in political figures’ associations (e.g., Laura Loomer vs. Nick Fuentes episode).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On predictive power of Israel's goals:

  “What the lobby wants, what the Israeli government wants, seems to have... been the best predictor of the outcomes.” – Dave Smith ([02:03])

• On the limits of Israeli influence:

  “America is a puppet to Israel is the thing I’m pushing back on… There are times when we’re aligned, but... our banking economic structure is creating this madness.” – Tom Bilyeu ([22:32])

• On American presidents and war:

  “The President of the United States of America has enormous power... but he has zero power to roll back the military industrial complex. Try it. Good luck.” – Dave Smith ([29:59])

• On scapegoating Jews:

  “Every time the world breaks economically, there's a pogrom... A K-shaped economy is devastating, and people go, 'Oh, the bankers are all Jewish.'” – Tom Bilyeu ([07:06])

• On complexity and nuance:

  “If you have any of these kind of black and white, kind of simple narratives, they're going to lead you into mistakes, because the world isn't simple like that.” – Dave Smith ([45:55])

• Comparing American and Israeli interests:

  “This whole Greater Israel project that Benjamin Netanyahu has been pursuing... is the worst thing in the world for average Israeli Jews.” – Dave Smith ([50:22])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:17 – 03:15: Dave Smith introduces the historical influence of Israeli and neoconservative ambitions on U.S. policy.
• 07:06 – 12:19: Bilyeu and Smith discuss pogroms, scapegoating, and the roots of anti-Semitism in economic crises.
• 18:01 – 22:32: Smith and Bilyeu debate whether economics or lobbying better predicts foreign policy, using Trump’s actions as a case study.
• 29:59 – 40:28: Deep dive into the limits of Israeli influence, comparative analysis with other policy drivers (Venezuela, Yemen), and the entrenchment of “culture war” narratives.
• 40:28 – 45:55: Discussion of double standards in American politics regarding bigotry, the primacy of economics over tribal explanations.
• 45:55 – 50:22: Final thoughts on complexity, individual motives vs. collective blame, and the mutual harm of “greater Israel” policies.

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Conclusion

Part 1 of the conversation makes clear that while the Israel lobby has exerted significant influence on U.S. foreign policy—often outpacing other lobbies in efficiency—the real drivers behind war and civil discord are far more complex. Economic structures, institutional inertia, and cultural narratives all intersect in ways that can evade simple explanations. Both Smith and Bilyeu push listeners to resist reductionist, tribal interpretations of history and politics and instead focus on economic literacy, individualism, and critical skepticism of power, regardless of which group wields it.

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Stay tuned for Part 2, where the conversation continues.

Transcript

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[Dave Smith]

The President of the United States of America has enormous power. Mocking Allah on Easter as you announce total war against the civilian population. Seems like a dangerous game to make.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What do you see as a relationship between the Jewish lobby and the military industrial complex?

[Dave Smith]

Israel is an expansionist state. War is big business. Behind this door is forever war. There's huge money to be made here, and that's what we've been pursuing this whole time.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Dave Smith, welcome back.

[Dave Smith]

Oh, thank you. It's good to be back with you, brother.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's good to have you. So my goal here is not to debate whether Israel has influence over US Foreign policy. I think that it clearly has massive influence. But what I do want to figure out is whether that's the variable with the highest predictive validity for what Trump is doing in Iran or whether there's a better model. I think I have something that has higher predictive validity, but I would be very open to seeing that that actually isn't the way and that there's just something I'm missing. So where I want to start is if someone wanted to predict Trump's next move in the Middle east, what do you think is the most important variable that they should be tracking? Is it Israel's goals or is it something else?

[Dave Smith]

Essentially, the neoconservatives and the Likud Party and the Israel lobby, more broadly speaking, for at least 30 years, they're openly, their goal has been to remake the Middle East. Like since the clean break strategy, their goal was like, no, we're not doing Oslo, we're not doing a two state solution. We're gonna remake the surrounding Arab nation. Not just Arab nations, but, you know, Persian, the Middle East, Northern Africa. And we're going to remake them and take down the ones that are supporting the Palestinian resistance or supporting Hezbollah. And Donald Trump's goal was to get out of stupid regime change wars in the Middle east. And both of them were very explicit about what their goals were. And yet here we find ourselves in a regime change war, a regime collapse war that is clearly not in America's interest, clearly not in the region's interest, but it sure did allow Israel to take southern Lebanon in the last few weeks. And so it seems to me that, yeah, what the lobby wants, what the Israeli government wants, seems to have, at least for the last 30 years, been the best predictor of the out of outcomes. But look, there's other things in there too. I mean, look, the fact is part of the reason why the, the neoconservatives, because you know, if you remember, I think we might even talked about this last time I was on. But the neoconservatives, I mean the self identified neoconservatives from the Reagan, Bush senior and George W. Bush administration, they weren't old money guys. They, they weren't guys from the Council on Foreign Relation, they weren't the, the Rockefellers guys. They, they weren't in that world at all. They were middle class kids who went to City College in, in New York City. Like they, you know, but they made their relationships with the military industrial complex on their own. And so of course, war is big business. And you know, whenever you get on the side of that, you're always going to be, you know, sailing with the wind at your back in D.C. okay,

[Tom Bilyeu]

and how do you see the relationship being between the Jewish lobby, which we're probably going to have to take a second to define, but we'll get to that in a minute. What do you see as a relationship between the Jewish lobby and the military industrial complex?

[Dave Smith]

Well, I mean, you could say so if you look at like, you know, like the guys like Bill Kristol, the neoconservatives who always had like a bunch of different think tanks in Washington D.C. i mean, you can go look at who funds them. This is all public information. It's like all the weapons companies up and down funding the, they just happen to think like, oh yeah, these neoconservatives who want to fight seven wars have some really good arguments to make or whatever, or like maybe there's a little bit of perverse incentive structure there. But so I think that in general, in Washington D.C. if you're advocating that we fight a whole bunch of wars, you're going to find weapons companies that are quite happy to fund your endeavors. And I think that's true, that if you're advocating for, say, vaccine mandates, you're going to find a lot of big pharmaceutical companies who want to support what you're doing. So to me, I mean, I think they're. Obviously there's always like, ideological components to these things, but I really do think that business is what runs the world at the end of the day, and that there's huge money to be made here. You know, this, if you look at, you know, whatever the numbers are, like, since the fall of the Soviet Union, spent like over $20 trillion on, on defense and empire and wars of aggression, you know, there's trillions of dollars that people are making off of that. It's an unreal amount of money. I mean, it's literally. It makes Elon Musk look poor. How much money has been, you know, exchange exchanged around in Washington, D.C. so, you know, I think all of that's. All of these things are components. It's hard to exactly say how much each factor is. But also one of the things that's kind of unique about Donald Trump is that the guy just has no filter at all. Unlike all previous presidents then. And that's a gift and a curse. You know, there's things about that that are nice and there's things about that that are really terrible. But, you know, I mean, look, if, if somebody had just said to you, like, the Adelsons give the president hundreds of millions of dollars and all they care about is Israel and they love Israel more than they love America, and every day they'd go demand things on behalf of. Of Israel because that's who they identify with. You know, you cannot. These, these billionaire Jews living in America are actually essentially Israeli spies. You'd be like, oh, what was that, like a Nick Fuentes, you know, clip or something that went viral? Like, nope, that was the President of the United States of America. The one who's doing it right now just openly says this, just openly acknowledges that. So then it's kind of hard to like, you know, and people still go like, oh, you're blaming the Israel lobby for everything. You're like, I don't know. The guy who's doing it is saying in his own words that that's what's going on here.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's interesting. So here's why this feels important enough to, like, really press down the path. So what you just said as part of it is there's a whole bunch of influences, hard to know which one is the leading one, that if we just made that statement, I'd be like, I agree wholeheartedly. You also said that we have. Economics basically runs the world, or money runs the world. I can't remember what exact word you use, but basically like, hey, money is the real player here. If you just said that, I would agree totally, because that's my punchline, is if you want to understand what's happening right now, there's only two things you need to understand, and that is Trump wants to end up on Mount Rushmore completely unironically, like, he wants to be the fifth head carved into Mount Rushmore. And then he's going to get there by outpacing the inflationary spiral that we're in, because nobody, not Republicans, not Democrats, nobody is going to reduce the budget. So for me, what I'll be attempting to do is basically sharpen that idea or get rid of it based on our time together, because I think you're super insightful on this stuff. But where I come down is when I look at the way that every time the world breaks economically, there's a pogrom. Now, is it one for one? Maybe it's not quite one for one, but ooh, buddy, it gets real close. And so I look at that and I go, okay, why, when economics starts to fall apart, do people turn against the Jews? And so reliably throughout history. Now I've got my explanation, which I'll speed run. And then I want to bring it back to this moment in America and how we begin teasing out, okay, there's all these influences, but what are the ones that we really need to pay attention to? So the speedrun for me, as to why Jews get themselves in trouble, historically, reliably, over and over and over, I do subscribe to the. It just really makes a lot of sense if Ashkenazi Jews have a slightly higher IQ than the average. That certainly makes my following argument that much easier to swallow. So I do subscribe to that. And then if you're smart, one of the first things you realize is that economics is basically the whole game. And so if you can go in and if you're trying to make things better for you, your family, and you're just being shrewd. I'm not even. I won't even go all the way to selfish. You're just being wise. You're going to master economics. I would say that to me. I would say that to you. It's to anybody who will listen to me, go get good at finance. Cool. So they put themselves at the center of that. You've talked very eloquently about the whole idea of usury. It's like if American Christians or Christians in general don't believe that they can charge interest, but you have a group over here that's like, yeah, why wouldn't you? You facilitate modern economics which has given us unbelievable prosperity. So it's a great idea. No matter how angry you get about the rates that they charge or whatever. Like it is a modern miracle that somebody figured out debt, that they figured out interest. Absolutely incredible. But when you run that system for too long, it tends to bump into weaknesses and you're ultimately going to get a K shaped economy as we have seen over and over and over certainly for the last 500 plus years. And so at that moment when that breaks down and people feel like they're being held down by bankers, if you look up and you go, oh, the bankers are all Jewish, then you confuse a K shaped economy, which as we are learning now can be done by Jew or gentile alike. And they are conflating two things which are a K shaped economy is devastating and it's killed every empire that's ever been foolish enough to create one. And because Jewish people are so good at identifying like where the positions of power actually are and they go there and they are tremendously successful, then we go, oh it must be their fault. And that is from where I'm sitting as somebody who's really come to all of this late, I came up as an entrepreneur. That's my whole background. And so getting into the economics of it all, the political nature of it all has been very, I've had to orient and build a new map. So I'm looking at that going, hold on. I can feel this racing now towards anti Semitism and people are no longer making contact with the economic arguments and they're going to something that feels like conspiracy. And that's where it begins to break down. And so while the initial assumption from where I'm sitting is maybe only 7 degrees off, you start taking that down the road far enough and it goes from pro Israel Americans, which is how I'll map the Jewish diaspora here in the US are exceedingly good at being a lobbying organization and finding the alignment with American citizens. And they're now conflating that with the conspiracy of Jews rule the world. And I worry that that then just goes into this self fulfilling prophecy of Jews are bad, got to get rid of them and we end up back in a super dark place.

[Dave Smith]

You know, I think a lot of, a lot of the almost like the solution to all of this is individualism rather than collectivism. And you know, even when talk about like say the Jewish Diaspora in the United States of America, the fact is that, I mean, I saw one poll that recently where it was like, I think it was a super majority of Jewish people in America were against this war. Jewish people, I know for a fact, in America were, I believe, the biggest critic, like as a demographic, the most against the Iraq war. Like they were like 10 points higher against the Iraq war than they, than the general population was. And, and so already you say like, hey, look, if you're like the majority of. Now, this might be because a lot of them are leftists and I'm not a leftist. But the point is they're not on board with Netanyahu in the Israel lobby's game here. So certainly the idea that like Barry Horowitz, the Jewish accountant down the street, has anything to do with any of this is just kind of silly. And that is just like a, the baseline of why bigotry always gets it wrong. Like, even if it is true that whatever, like if black people commit a higher percentage of violent crime than Asian people, that doesn't mean that like this guy Earl, some black guy down the street, has anything to do with that. He might be the most peaceful person in his neighborhood. I think there's no question that Ashkenazi Jews are like a standard deviation IQ higher than the general then. Well, I guess it depends on what group you're comparing them to. But as many people have pointed out, right? Even just like one standard deviation on the average IQ means that at the far end of geniuses, you're going to produce a lot more geniuses than you otherwise would. So that's an aspect of it too. Also. It is undeniably true. I think this is less true in my generation, but it was certainly true of my father's generation that there's a lot of, you know, nepotism or whatever you might call it. And I think some of that is somewhat understandable, you know, if you're, if you identify with a group who's kind of been persecuted and beat up on, and particularly Post World War II, I think there was a sense amongst Jews that like, hey, if you can help out another Jew, you do that because no one else is going to, is going to do that. So that's kind of on you. And then of course, there were just cultural forces like Jews focus a lot on intellectualism and family and hard work. And I think all of these things are great and are all part of the reason why Jews get ahead. Now also to your point, I heard Nicholas Wade, he wrote this book, very interesting book that I read like 20 years ago. It was called before the dawn or beyond the Dawn. Anyway, Nicholas Wade, if you don't know, he was the New York Times science editor and he was the editor of Nature for a while. Very accredited guy who got totally drummed out of polite society because he told the truth about lockdowns. But anyway, but he wrote this book and he basically argued in it, there was one chapter on it where he was basically saying for 900 years only Jews were allowed to lend it interest. And that there's actually like an evolutionary argument that that's a long enough period of time for there to actually like Jews basically evolved to be better at finance. I don't know, this is a little bit above my pay grade, but just saying a real, a real accredited smart scientist did make that argument and that that might be true now I would argue and maybe we don't have time to get into all of this but yeah, like lending it interest isn't just important. It's the only way to have anything resembling a modern economy. However, once you get into central banking and using the power of the state to shield to, you know, give banks essentially government like powers, then it becomes a thing that leads to that K shaped economy that you're talking about and becomes extremely exploit, you know, exploitative by nature. Now that being said, all of that is true and also it's true that the Israeli intelligence and the Israeli government and the Israel lobby all kind of use a lot of those dynamics. So they use the fact that there were historically pogroms against Jews for really messed up, unjustifiable reasons. Like, you know, there's a virus going through town and we blame the Jews for the virus or something like that. These are things that did happen to real people. That being said, we're hitting pause for

[Tom Bilyeu]

a moment, but there's plenty more ahead so don't go anywhere.

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[Tom Bilyeu]

Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

[Dave Smith]

If you look at some of those polls where it really is, like, amazing how much support for Israel has collapsed it's been since the destruction of Gaza. And so I just do think it becomes a very convenient excuse for a lot of pro Israel people to say that, oh, this is just like all those other programs. Like, it has nothing to do with the genocide in 4K that we, you. You are forced against your will to fund and watch like that. I mean, that seems to overwhelmingly be the obvious, like, you know, prime driver of what's at least happened over the last couple of years. And then there's also just a lot of other factors. Like this is I'm not a person who like, blames the Jews for everything. And I've always been a guy who's like, no happens is essentially America created a world empire. We created a central bank and an income tax and a regulatory state and a military industrial complex and this huge mess. And it was, it was ripe to be taken over by someone, some. Everyone's always jockeying for position. I mean, when the government, when you have a government that spends over $7 trillion every year, it's the biggest organization in the history of the world, of course everybody's going to be competing over who gets the levers of power there. Now, Israel, honestly, Israel was a creation of Europe. It was a creation of European empires and big bankers and all of that. But that doesn't mean there weren't some people who really ideologically believed in it. And so again, you have all of these things going on at once. And then the other fact is just that in this game which Israel did not invent, Israel was only created in 1948. You know, that this has been going on for a very long time. But in this game of intelligence agencies and central banks and all types of, you know, the Epstein class, whatever, exactly, all of that is. You know, I do think that the Mossad had a tremendous advantage that other intelligence agencies would have exploited if they had had that advantage. But you had a diaspora of Jews, like not a ton of Jews, but there's Some in, like, all these different places and the collective self identity of Jewish people was that, like, look, they tried to exterminate us in World War II. That is why we have Israel. Israel is the not. But for them, we would be in another holocaust. This is something that people really genuinely believe. And I think that made it very easy for Mossad. I mean, imagine if anyone else. Imagine if British intelligence or American intelligence had an advantage like that. Do you think we, you know, like, if there were a bunch of Americans in Iran right now who it was that easy for the CIA to just call up and go, hey, you want to serve your country? You know, you want to help your people? You think we wouldn't be taking advantage of that? And so I think this is, you know, all of this is kind of part of the very complicated story of how we got here. And I'll just say real quickly to your point before, right, like, there are, if you look at like, like someone like John Rawls or. Or Keynes, right, John Maynard Keynes there, these were intellectuals who made arguments. I would say both very flawed arguments, but they were intellectuals who made arguments. And then there were real people who really agree with them and read their books and were persuaded by them and believe in this thing. But that's not why they took over politics. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like. It's not like the government was sitting there and going, you know, we've weighed the arguments of F.A. hayek versus John Maynard Keynes, and we are more persuaded by Keynesian economics. It's just that, well, Keynesian economics says the government gets a lot more power. And FA Hayek economics says they get, like, basically no power. So obviously the government's like, hey, we like this guy. So there's this thing where there are ideologues, there are people who believe in things, but then they're also used in a way that it's like. Like, I don't believe that Lockheed Martin is really committed to Greater Israel. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't think that's part of their thinking. It's just like, oh, they like those guys. Because those guys say we should have a $1.5 trillion defense budget next year, or at least they don't call it that anymore. A war budget, which is a better term for it. But anyway, so if that makes sense. I think there's. All of these things are happening at once.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, all of that makes sense to me. The thing that I'm very specifically zoomed in on is I have at least for some stretch of my career, I have decided to try and convince people that it is in their best interest to understand all of the pain and suffering that they're going through right now is because of economics. And that it feels to me, not feels to me, it is mathematically certain that America is going to drive itself off of a cliff fiscally, and that that will have devastating consequences. And as I yell into a mic in a similar fashion to you, trying to get people to pay attention to economics, they keep wanting to talk about the Jews. And I'm just like, for sake, like, this is one of those where again, I'm not denying in any way, shape or form. In fact, I think I can make a very compelling argument for why the Jewish lobby is so grotesquely powerful and has to be paid attention to better than most people who will tell you that the Jews are the problem, which I'll do very fast. When you look at the Jewish lobby, the first of all, it's very important to understand that I mean the Jewish lobby in the way that John Mearsheimer means the Jewish lobby, a far broader thing. It is not just apec, it is a much bigger thing. And when you look at what makes them so effective, it isn't the money that they spend, it is the influence, influence per dollar. And their influence per dollar is unparalleled, maybe in human history. Certainly right now, nobody gets the effectiveness. If you want to understand the mechanism by which they get that effectiveness, it is to what you were saying before, you have a Jewish diaspora, that diaspora feels a deep, Some percentage feels a deep allegiance to having their own nation. Cool. Now they apply a selective pressure and I mean from an evolutionary lens, they apply a selective pressure on members of Congress and the Senate. It is absolutely brilliant. It has been going on for a very long time. And they will find these people when they're like at the city council level and they will work with them for decades as they climb the political ladder, investing in them when they're cheap, making sure that the only people that successfully climb the political ladder in America are people that believe in the pro Israel cause. Okay, that should be terrifying to anybody. It's so brilliant. And people should look at that and go, hey, this is a thing that we should all be looking at. But, huh. It's interesting. It starts breaking down in terms of its predictive validity as we get to what, for instance, Trump is going to do next in Iran or what Obama was going to do next in Iran, which is to me, Obama and the nuclear deal is like the smoking gun for America is not a puppet to Israel. And that if the drumbeat that you're banging is that every bad thing that we see playing out right now is because Israel is dragging us into another foreign war, then I'm just like, oh my God, I'm not able to get people to pay attention. Even though I have just, I hope, articulated very clearly how much influence they have, it still breaks down in the face of economics. And when you. Economics is physics, economics is the way that money works collides with human nature. And the way that it works and it produces an outcome. A K shaped economy, to your point, has very knowable causes. And they are Keynesian economics or modern monetary theory. You need a central bank, you need the ability to print money. It works a thousand fold more for whatever country's reserve currency because they can dilute the inflation across everybody that holds it. And so the deranging moment that we live in is nothing is entirely one thing. But if you want to talk about something that is north of 51%, it would be our banking economic structure is creating this madness. And again, I know I'm repeating myself, but to every time that I go to talk about that thing, it's like this. The Jews are dragging us into another war is the thing that's getting all the attention and it is stopping people from actually solving the problem. And for my money, if you look at Trump and go, oh, this guy sees I have to grow my way out of this problem. I'm not going to spend less money. He literally said it out loud to your point. He's like, hey, I know a lot of you guys want to be fiscally conservative, but we have to get reelected. And so I was just like, oh, there is no hope. And so he understands, okay, I've got to deal with China because. And this gets into the complexities of there's more here. But for America to be in a good position as we go into a multipolar world, we've got to diminish China as much as we can. Like the. And I'll be interested to see if you disagree with this. The Jewish lobby, to me, no matter how powerful Israel, no matter how powerful does not explain Venezuela. And when you look at Venezuela, it's like, oh, this is Trump going, I want to control that oil because that's economically advantageous. It also helps me control China. I like that. And then if you look at Iran and go, yes, I get it, the Israel lobby is desperate for us to go into Iran. But if you're Trump, you've got to make sure that you secure those dollars from the GCC countries to invest in America again as a way to diversify against China to build things here in America. And so now all of a sudden I'm like, I don't even need to think about the fact that it's that we have an alignment with Israel for us to be in Iran, especially the lunatic way that he's doing it where it's like, you're not going to leave this better for Israel when you leave. P.S. and so I cannot imagine Israel's like, yeah, this is great. He's going to pull out, leave them completely holding the bag. They're going to have to keep dealing with a now really pissed off Iran. So, but the economic argument of, well, if I can get control of this, I'm in a better position. If I can't get control of it, it, I'm still in a better position because now the world's going to come to us for oil. So it's like again, going back to this analogy of when I think that Israel's controlling the world, I feel like I'm groping on an object with mittens. It's, hey, I can feel the general shape. I get why we're in the region. But when I go, oh, this is economics for a president who has mapped for me to end up on Mount Rushmore, I've got to grow my way out of this insane deficit. I've got to, like, push China down. And then all of a sudden, gloves are off and I can start feeling the intricacies of what's happening. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned.

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[Tom Bilyeu]

Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, okay. So it's all very interesting and, you know, I do think look to. To your point, because there's a lot there. I'll just start with this. But yeah, look, I do think, like, I don't think the Israel lobby opposed the Venezuela strike, but it certainly wasn't the main driving factor of it. And for that matter, you know, the Israel lobby really wasn't the main driving factor in Afghanistan. They didn't really particularly care about the Taliban ruling Afghanistan. And I also don't think that backing the Saudi war in Yemen was largely driven by the Israel lobby. I mean, I've read a lot about it and I know this now people suspect that that one might have been. But really Israel's issue with the Houthis kind of came after all of that. And from everything I've read about it, it was really our relationship with Saudi Arabia was really what pushed the Obama administration to start back in that, you know, Saudi Arabia was upset also. I mean, Israel was too, but they were also very upset. Iran deal, and they were also very upset after toppling Iraq had basically just given Iran the entire region. And so, you know, like, yes, there are other factors that, that play into this too. It's also, you know, if your starting point is that Israel is the puppet master and has full control over the US Then, yes, I think something like the Iran deal is going to kind of blow up that position because, well, if that's true, how come the was this thing they really didn't want, but they still got it anyway? But if your starting point is just like they have way too much influence, then the exception kind of becomes the exception that proves the rule? I mean, you could, I could point to some example of where I did something that my wife really didn't want me to do, but the conclusion from that wouldn't be that she has no influence on me. It would just be that in that one case, I didn't go along with the pressure she was putting on me because we had a disagreement or whatever. Now, to your point, you know, I also think, and this is totally speculating, but I do think, you know, there are the political incentives and that's part of this reality here. And I think that, you know, Donald Trump really, and maybe part of this is like a miscalculation on my part, but last summer when Donald Trump hit us with the one, two punch of covering up the Epstein scandal and launching the 12 Day War, a lot of people like me were like, well, screw you, we're done with you. Like, not like these weren't offenses that were like, hey, I really don't like that he did this, but if he does this and this, he could get me back on board. It was like, we're done. Screw you, you've betrayed all of us. You're Bush and Obama to us now. And I think in some. I think there were enough people like that that it kind of changed the political incentive a little bit. It's like, okay, well, I already lost those guys. You know, I've already tried. You know, he's, he's. If he ever was trying to drain the swamp at some point, I think at a certain point, you realize that's just not, that's actually not possible. From the current position of President of the United States of America, again, you kind of. In Washington, D.C. you can't, you can't really swim against the current, but you could swim with the current all you want to. So, like, the President of the United States of America has enormous power, more power than any king or monarch or dictator throughout human history had when it comes to offensive military engagements, right? You have the biggest, most powerful army in the history of the world. You can literally drone bomb a wedding in Yemen tomorrow if you want to. Like you. You want to do. And you don't need approval from Congress. You know, whatever they'll say about the constitution of the War Powers act, in effect, none of it exists. The president can do whatever he wants to, as is demonstrated by Donald Trump. Trump just this morning announced it's the end of civilization in Iran tonight. Evidently, you know, this one man can do that, but he has zero power to roll back the military industrial complex. Try it. Good luck. You'll be compromised, taken out, framed, something. And so at a certain point now we're in Donald Trump's, you know, sixth year of being president. I think perhaps he kind of concluded that there's no being the greatest president ever going that way, but I could be the greatest president ever going this way. I could go topple all of these regimes. And then he's got the war hawks in his ear, convincing him that, you know, this will work out great if you go and do it. And Venezuela being, I wouldn't say it worked out great, but it wasn't a catastrophe. And that probably really pushed him in this direction as well. But to your broader point that you were making, you know, dude, this is always the battle that we're up against, is that, you know, racialism is like catnip to the plebs. You know, people love plays on something. And look, I even find myself being guilty about this, right, Because I'll, I'll be somebody who completely agrees with all of your assessments there, that we should really be focused on economics, that really, this is the only reason why there's even a thing to hijack is because we created this, you know, like horrific system of central banking and giant, giant governments and huge, you know, regulatory capture games where essentially the whole economy is cartelized and, and rigged on behalf of the powerful against the, the regular, you know, working person. But all throughout, throughout American history, I know the, the pivot to the culture war stuff always gets more attention. You know, it was always the if, if you look back at the old right, what Murray Rothbard called the old right, which was really sabotaged by the new right. Now these terms have flipped a little bit because he was talking about Bill Buckley and the neoconservatives being the new right. And he was talking about the old right being guys like Garrett, Garrett and you know, Robert Taft and guys like this. But the old right, they were always about sound money, non interventionist foreign policy, limited government. You know, they also had some stuff, immigration controls and stuff like this. And then after World War II, when the military industrial complex was really created and National Review became this huge publication, their whole, they started purging all the members of the old right out. And then their whole line was, no, you know what conservatism is. Now I know you thought conservatism was like sound money and restrained government, but no, listen, there's these homos. There's these homos out there and they're kissing each other and they're all, you know, and like, they made it all like this culture war slop. This was like the original. And dude, it caught on like wildfire because who wants to talk about, you know. And look, I'll be even myself. I've found myself in moments like through the Biden years, through the craziestness of like wokeism, where I'm sitting here and I'm going, guys, we are burying ourselves under a mountain of debt and we're debasing our currency and it's ruining the American dream for the whole next generation. Like, look at it, they've destroyed this whole thing where like now you got these kids who are, who are making 70k a year, but they got 200 grand in student loan debt and the average house goes for $800,000. And they're like, I don't know, the first time homebuyer is 40 now in America. Like that that means, you know, do you have conservative family values? Well, that like, there's no difference between economics and social issues. It's all one thing. If you can't buy a house till you're 40, then there goes the American dream. There goes starting families, you know, like it's all. But then I got to say, even as I'd be making that point, you see a video on Libs of TikTok of some tranny giving a lap dance to a seven year old and you're just like, yo, I want to. I'm like ready to shoot someone. Like, this is. I've never been so angered in my life because you could feel it. It does, it just plays on this tribal thing. Like it's us versus the other tribe who's coming trying to slaughter our children. And so again, like as. And you've seen this. Look, it's through all of wokeism. Look how much racialism just like took over and destroyed the left in America. Like it. And look, I do think you're seeing a lot of that stuff with the, with the low iq, anti Jew kind of nonsense. Like even I've seen, even Nick Fuentes, I've seen on his show, like ranting against how dumb some of the like open blame the Jews for everything is. So, you know, again, like all of these things are going on at once. My, my best take on how to deal with that is, you know, I learned everything I know from Ron Paul. It's like you just tell the truth, you plant your flag. Here you go. No, no, no, guys, the problem isn't this group of people or this group of people. It's not any immutable characteristic or anyone's religious view that. Okay, so all of that being said, I'm against all the bigotry of all of this stuff, but I also will say that I think there's something that becomes a little bit messed up when there is. There's so much focus on like the anti anti Jewish bigotry, which certainly I see in Twitter replies and YouTube comments and stuff like that. But then there's just like, look, I don't know, it pales in comparison. Like, I mean, over the last 15, 20 years, the anti white bigotry has been orders of magnitude bigger than this and, and way more institutionalized. Like, you know, and part of this may be, as you said, the power of the Israel lobby, but then there's also like the anti Muslim bigotry, which is just like outrageous and so much more accepted. Like in. So for example, right, Nick Fuentes, I guess Kanye west had dinner with Donald Trump a few years ago and he brought Nick Fuentes along. This ended up being a huge controversy. Yes, well, yeah, I mean, we'd all be interested to be at that dinner. Let's get Real, whoever you agree with. But this, this was a huge controversy. Trump had to come out and denounce Fuentes. I didn't know who he was. He just ended up here. Blah, blah, blah. Laura Loomer has been working with the Trump campaign this whole time. And there's just no tight. Like, now, there might be some people like me who point that out, but there's no type of, like, the institutional pressure. Like, he doesn't have to come out and go, yo, I'm so sorry that I have this clear anti Muslim bigot working for me. And. And the thing is, she's so much worse than Fuentes. Like, what she says about Muslims is so much worse than what he says about Jews. And it's just. Except I've done debates where people have argued to me on more than one occasion, including Laura Loomer, have argued to me that Palestinians don't have rights.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like, they just straight up don't have rights or what?

[Dave Smith]

No, like, there's no innocence. There's no. One of them was an objectivist actor. He argued that because Hamas is the government there and because Hamas rejects the idea of natural rights, therefore the people there don't have natural rights. And Laura Loomer argued that there's no innocence there because Islam is so perverted. It's such a perverted belief system that you're already an aggressor just by believing in it. This is like the actual. Now, I'm just saying, and I know maybe you could find some crazy neo Nazis on Twitter who would say the same thing about Jewish people, but I've never heard anyone, even the people, and I know some of the guys who are in kind of what would be considered that camp. I've never heard any of them say anything like that, like, Jews just don't have rights or something like that. So, anyway, I just, I guess, yeah, I don't like any of it. I don't like any of the. The racialism or the bigotry, any of that stuff. There be some anti Jewish bigotry, but also, like, broadly speaking, Jews are doing okay. We're kind of fine. Whereas, like, the anti Muslim bigotry is done at a time where Muslims are being slaughtered in huge numbers. And so I guess maybe I am a little bit more sensitive to that, even though I'm Jewish. But, yeah, I do, I do agree with you that, like, I think we would all be better off if, man, if people were as interested in talking about sound economics as the they were in racialism, we'd live in A better world, I believe. But that's not the world we live in.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That is not the world we live in. I will grant you that. The thing that I lament is that I can explain the economy to people, the, the way that the physics of it work very quickly, but I can't make it any simpler than it actually is. And there's just enough complexity in it that even when you go to explain it simply, there's going to be words that people don't understand, or they've got a ton of baggage around something like inflation that they think they understand, but they probably don't. And so now you spiral into madness. And this is why people can't ever really get a hold of it. They're just too busy. They've got too much going on. They're being abused by the economic system so lavishly that they just can't even pick their head up long enough to figure out all the nuance. Now, the one thing, though, that I, I do worry that you and I might be two ships passing in the night on is all of the bigotry that you're talking about, whether it's Jews, Muslims, white people, all of that one. I agree with you. And at the same time, at least for the drum that I'm trying to bang is a non sequitur. What I worry about is that there, there is a. And I, I've avoided using this phrase up until now because I don't, I don't mean to be derogatory, but there's like conspiracy brain rot that people fall into and it becomes this groove that, that history has shown us. People will slide into that groove and it has really horrific consequences. And that could be Jews. They were certainly not the only people that have been persecuted throughout history. I mean, right now you can make an argument that Christians are being persecuted in the, in other parts of the world. And so it's like, yep, all of those things are real. What I'm specifically trying to push against is as I, so I get routinely called by my own community, by the way, as, oh, he's just paid for by aipac. And I'm like, what's happening right now? So I'm just like, wait, hold on. Yes, Israel lobby, very effective. And we can talk about mechanisms. That's my whole thing. What's the mechanism? I can walk you through the mechanisms of exactly what they're doing, how they're doing it. I did the Speedrun earlier, so I won't repeat, but it's like, that's a knowable thing. And I get why people are worried about it. What I'm saying is don't let it become this greased chute by which you then interpret everything that's happening through the lens of America is a puppet to Israel. America is a puppet to Israel is the thing I'm pushing back on. That's the part that I'm like, hold on. There are times where we're aligned. There's times where Israel is trying to pull us in a direction. Some leaders may be more like, easier to pull in that direction. So even think of somebody like Mike Huckabee, who had me clutching my pearls hard when he was like, well, God is just cool with Israel taking all of basically the Middle East. And I was like, what? So as a representative of America, Mike Huckabee, you can't say that. Like, if you would like to go privately believe that and talk about in confession, like that's your thing. So that was wild. So somebody like him, it's going to be very easy as if he were to get more and more powerful. You can understand how that's going to the them lobbying will meet somebody who already believes it, and now they're really going to run at pace. And so what I'm saying is I really want people to understand Mike Huckabee, for his own reasons, almost certainly pertaining to Christianity, he's like, primed to believe it. And so getting people to understand that the, the low resolution is Israel just throws around a bunch of money, blackmail, they got you America puppets, and we just do it. But like, okay, that's going to get you to think poorly through this situation. So we've established that stuff. So anyway, I will leave that there if you want the final word on that topic. I'm specifically just trying to get people to understand America's not a puppet of Israel.

[Dave Smith]

I certainly agree with you that I think that if you have any of these kind of like black and white kind of simple narratives, they're going to lead you into mistakes because the world isn't simple like that. And it's very complex. And even between, you know, it's very interesting, the two interviews on Tucker, but with Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, you can see now, again, this is just my, you know, my kind of best guess as to how I think about these guys speculating about their own motives. But to me, it seems like Huckabee is a true believer in this craziness, the idea that God gave Iraq to Netanyahu or something like that. Ted Cruz, I don't think believes that at all. I think Ted Cruz has just decided that, like, this is the track in Washington that I'm gonna take and this will help me for the rest of my political career to be like, I am apex guy. I am for. You know, and so there's. And then again, they're both not Jews, they're both Christians. And so again, it's, it's just more complicated than any of that. But I think I will say that and to some degree, right, like, like I was talking about the kind of tribalism being hardwired into our DNA. But there is something where, however exactly we got here, we are in a place where you actually do have a US Ambassador to Israel who deeply held view is that God has this relationship with Israel and therefore man. That's more important than your own national views of anything. Because if you're saying God believes it, well, there's no one above that in Mike Huckabee's hierarchy of values, right? And so. And you have things like Tammy Bruce saying that Israel's the greatest country in the world. We're number two. Ted Cruz saying he ran for Senate to be the greatest defender of Israel. And anyway, our government, these are just examples I'm pulling out. We could do a whole show on examples like this. Our government is permeated by people who have this type of loyalty to a foreign government. And then we've also fought several wars that are not in America's interest. And certainly those people who have that view about Israel have strong feelings about fighting these wars. And it's not unrelated to how they feel about Israel. And so I would just say that, look, just having that situation is like, intolerable to most humans. And understandably so. I mean, if. If there was any type of loyalty to any other government like this that was pervasive in our own government, we would all stand up and go like, hey, look like, that's great if you are from Sweden or you, I don't know, are not from Sweden, but have some biblical connection to them. But you can start making US Policy based on what's best for the Swedes. Cause they. That's just too crazy. And then the only other thing that I would add in there is to just go like, look, in the same way the same dynamic is going on with Israel that goes on in all countries under that live under governments which are all of them for the most part, is that this isn't. It's not about what's in Israel's interest. It's about what's in powerful people in Israel's interest. And in the same way, you know, the basic public choice theory, but in the same way that we, the same dynamic we have here. It's not like the DC class makes decisions based on what's best for the American people. And in some cases, powerful people don't even make decisions based off what's best for powerful people. They make decisions based off what's best for them. Think about Joe Biden being unwilling to drop out of the race until he was strong armed into it. That wasn't even what was best for like the progressive Democratic establishment. That was just what was best for Joe Biden and his wife and his son and his chief of staff. And so no, I would completely agree. And I think it's important to emphasize that this whole Greater Israel project that Benjamin Netanyahu has been pursuing for all of these years is still actively pursuing. This is the worst thing in the world for average Israeli Jews. I mean, they've put themselves in a situation where they are more hated and more of a pariah and in more danger than they've ever been in my lifetime. So you know this. I don't think this is good for the people of any of these countries, least of all the Iranians or the people of Lebanon or something like that. But it's not good for the Israelis and definitely not good for the Americans either.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's it for part one. Make sure you are subscribed so you do not miss part two. Coming up soon.

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