Joe Rogan podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan experience. Always. Yeah. So much crazy shit going on in the world. In and even before we scheduled this, like uh more crazy stuff has happened. The war broke out, all kinds of Yeah. How are you uh how are you feeling about the President Trump? That's a open ended question. Um Do you text with him and talk to him? Occasionally. Yeah, occasionally he'll send me a text. I g I get these like truth social posts.
of uh d you know, things that he's saying. But this whole Fucking Iran thing, man. Like, did you see this coming? No, definitely. I don't know, I mean, who did? Uh I mean when did he even decide? You know, their national security strategy they put out in November basically just said we've degraded their capacity, it's a win. There was no sense in which there would be additional action.
I think it ushers in a new paradigm. Complete like the older postwar era is just over. Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, articulated that at the World Economic Forum, probably better than the Trump administration did. saying very clearly that older rules based order is gone. You saw AOC try to sort of articulate it, but she sort of fell apart at the Munich Security Conference in f in February.
So this is an administration that is I mean and I don't even think they're thinking I wrote a piece and I decided not to publish it because I was sort of like decapitation doesn't really work for regime change, but it's not clear that they're really out for regime change or they're just asserting power. Shaking up things. I mean, some of it's art of the deal, changing the person that we're negotiating with. That's Venezuela and Iran.
Is it really going to change those regimes? I don't I don't think most people don't think so, but that I'm not sure that that's what they're going for. They're just going for an assertion of American power in service of American interests. And then what happens in Iran, what happens in Venezuela, I don't think they care that much about.
Well t the none neither thing made any sense to me. The Venezuela thing, uh I mean, look, they wanted him out forever and he d definitely stole the election to get in there in the first place and he was a dictator but
At least that one was at least c clean. They go in, kidnap him, get him out. This one's nuts. Like and what's happening in Tel Aviv? It's it's hard to know what's real and what's not because there's a lot of uh fake video going around and a lot of weird posts on X so it's you know, when I do peek in it's hard to know and you have to listen to Grok and then Grok
dismantling a lot of the uh fake videos. Mm-hmm. Wh wh what are the fake videos that you're thinking about? These are just like fake fake videos of you know, uh like an insane amount of bombs dropping down on the city. But it seems like there's a massive amount of destruction in Tel Aviv. Yeah, I haven't checked in lately, but I'm assuming was that just today or Yesterday? Yeah. Yeah.
I mean I think the president is there's been some disc you know, Rubio said something about how oh we had to act because we knew that Israel was going to act anyway. And I think people interpreted it and then Nutanyah who was in the White House a lot This I think this president has shown f whether you like him or not, you know, and there's certainly things that I'm unhappy about and have criticized.
But I think Trump is in charge. Like he's making these decisions. There's nobody behind him, there's nobody nobody pulling for all of that, you know, the Russians or whoever some you know, are these now the Israelis? You know, it's just he's clearly I mean Elon gave him, you know, two hundred and fifty million dollars and he still you know the electric car credit, you know. Like like Trump is in charge, you know, like I think that's one of the big lessons from this and I don't think that I think
That means that there's not a lot of like second order thinking here, like, oh, what's the move after that? He doesn't know. He's just acting. That's what's so wild about it is that this older foreign policy establishment, which, you know, was like let the experts decide.
forum policy of all these think tanks and that's just gone now. It's just irrelevant in this presidency. And I don't think it'll come back like if you get a Gavin Newsummer or President AOC. I don't President who? I don't think yeah for really she for a minute before before Munich.
But I don't think it's going to come back, and I think that that's what the Prime Minister of Canada realized. I think that's what the Europeans are starting to realize, is that this is a completely different world that we live in than the one we have. Just a couple of years ago. Which just doesn't make any sense to me unless we're acting on someone else's interests, like particularly Israel's interests. It doesn't just didn't make any sense.
Like if they had supposedly dismantled their chances of making the nuclear bomb, whether or not that's true or I mean, it's so hard to know. He was unsatisfied and just like he was like, I'm not getting anywhere in these negotiations. And I'm gonna replace the person I'm negotiating. It's it's just, you know, shit turn over the table, like change things up. You're not getting anywhere. And you could credit you could say he was too impatient, he sh I mean their view was
the Democrats were too patient with Iran. They kept trying with Iran. Iran they weren't giving them what they wanted. I'm not defending it, I'm just saying I think that's what explains it. They they haven't done a very good job explaining it because I think that it just sounds
to some extent like what it is, which is that it's they're acting without they're sort of like, well, does it result in regime change in Iran? We don't know. They might say that we want that or whatever, but that's not ultimately they're not they're not acting on the basis of achieving regime change. Which just seems so insane based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? And he ran on no more wars.
And these stupid senseless wars and then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it. Well but he said he's against endless Well they're endless with the man, they're all endless. Do you have you ever heard Rumsfeld talk about Iraq when it first happened? Tell me. They they were talking about like six weeks. Six weeks. Oh yeah. Six weeks.
Yeah. But they put th that was ground force and I know that they've not ruled that out. For me that would be They have? I'm they have not. Oh, yeah. I thought you said and now. Um But they don't seem eager to go into I mean my I I criticize the Venezuela uh action because I sort of was like, How are you possibly gonna run Venezuela? And then I think a little bit more time passed and I was like, Oh they're not they're not Yeah, and and even there, I mean the oil it's not
significant at any global level. I don't it's hard I don't even think it's really about the oil. I don't think it's about the oil I don't think it's about the oil in Iran either. Well the oil reserves are significant. It's just the the type of oil and how to extract it is extremely difficult. It's the worst Joe. It's in the Amaz like the big uh big abundant reserves are in the Amazon.
So you're talking about what a nightmare. It's super far away. It's terrible. You had a guerrilla conflict. If you had a guerrilla conflict break out around those oil facilities, I mean it's already more expensive'cause you have to heat up that particular type of it's you know, it's really heavy oils. If you heat it up to get it out of the ground then you have to heat it to transport it's total nice.
I just I mean and as a conservationist I would say that would be the last place I'd want to see us getting oil from. There's a lot of other places that have have oil we shouldn't be going into the So what if anything makes sense to you about this attack in Iran? I don't know that it I'm I'm not I'm not sure I what I think of it. I mean I don't I don't like it. I don't like I mean, the whole older system was that you had this international
You know, Security Council would have to agree. The Congress would have to agree. That's all gone now. I mean, it's just a totally different this guy is just acting. You know, he says he's not getting where they want to get in the negotiations with the Iranians, so he says we have some leverage over you and we're gonna use. But clearly Israel wants. Israel has its own motive.
Yeah. But I don't think I think it's not quite accurate to say that I just don't think tr I think all the evidence shows that Trump is his own man and he is the president. And like literally he couldn't even give bat he couldn't even give Elon the battery sub.
I get that. I've never seen a pol I mean I've never seen a politician act that independently. That's I mean a pol a president act that independently. So I'm skeptical of I mean I think that m I think that Rubio was sort of like well they were gonna attack and so we had to you know there's some of that but I just think Trump's doing what he wants to do.
And we should do that? You don't think people are influencing him? Because there's a lot of war hawks around him, right? There's a lot of people that want to do it. I mean Nanya was in there but then Tucker was in there a bond. But do you think Tucker has the kind of influence that Netanyahu has? Well I mean I guess if you just base it on the outcome then the answer is no. No. Um but that's what I'm saying. I just think he listens to everybody, but I just don't think it
Russians aren't behind him, Israelis I mean, Trump is look what he's been through. I mean he's you know, he's got where he is. There's no way he's gonna they don't have anything on him. That's that's why we know that. I don't think they have anything on him. But how does he behave that way? Well he could, but I'm not we don't see any evidence.
Well you wouldn't see any evidence until it broke out. Until they released it. Yeah. And and well we'll get I'm sure we'll get into Epstein. But I mean I just think when you don't have evidence of something then you can't assume that it's happening. Um I haven't seen any ev I've seen evidence that Trump is fully independent with it particularly this case of Elon. It's surprised me. I would have thought at a minimum you'd give your largest campaign contributor
the one thing he wants. Um I mean Doge was something he wanted too, but and then I look at Iran and I kinda go, you know, Trump has always one. I mean Trump has been He said that he doesn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon for a really long time. I I don't know the exact date, but certainly.
Right? Yeah. Um I think that the also put it this way, he was also critical of the Democrats' approach, which was the sort of the mainstream IAEA approved approach, because of of course under international law, Iran has the right to a nuclear uh to nuclear energy.
And in nuclear facilities, including nuclear re uh nuclear uh the centrifuges and the enrichment. Iran has a right to all that under international law. And so and Trump doesn't agree with that and he's not gonna let international law get in his way. So y when you say he has a right to it, you're talking just about nuclear power. Right. But that includes enrichment.
Right. But they've already surpassed that point, right? Yeah, and I I believe I you know, if I'm wrong I'll correct it on X, but uh I don't think it specifies the level of enrichment. Is part of the issue. And then you've got these centrifuges, and so it's all been a cat and mouse game. I personally do not doubt for a minute that Iran wants nuclear weapons, and that's what's been going on. I think most people
think that. But the Obama administration was like, We can do s you know, we can lift sanctions in exchange for controlling their nuclear program. Trump has not for a very long time agreed with that approach. I think he was criticizing it for many years before twenty sixteen before he decided to run, but um definitely for the last ten years.
Did you um read the thing today that came out that they're they're discussing some sort of a leak transmission that seems to be uh an activation of terror cells? Iranians have. Yeah. I'm not s no, but I'm not surprised. Right. Sounds bad. Yeah. That's one of the things that obviously that was the first thing I thought of was like, Oh great, are we gonna get a bunch of? Iranian suicide bombers in the United States.
I don't know if it's gonna be suicide bombers, but I would imagine it would be something a little bit more destructive than that. Could be. Um I don't know what they can get in. I mean there's Sean Ryan's been having folks on that say that people are getting in with with heavy artillery. I just don't know. Um well the real problem is they can do a four years the border was wide open. Oh yeah. And definitely m some people from the Middle East got through it.
And we have no idea like what is weight. I mean, I mean I'm sure there's some intelligence agencies that have an understanding of what the threat is. I hope so. I mean I think we see that these terrorists are able to do an incredible amount of damage with pretty simple rifles. You know, and sometimes uh
Was it the French uh the the club the um that particular terrorist action there were other people that were using bombs that like only killed one or two people, but the guys with the machine guns were able to gun down like dozens of people. So it's certainly it's terri that's I think w none of us want to I think that's where a lot of Americans when it happened, the reason so many people were against it, I believe a majority is against it.
is because you're like, Great, what do we you know f first of all, is it gonna be another endless war? And second of all, are we gonna get a bunch of terrorist um actions here? I think if we did, I don't think support for the war goes up. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's just such a fuck it I mean the whole The whole situation internationally has been so tense already with what's going on in Gaza, with what's going on in Ukraine. It's like and to add this to the pile.
I mean it it w it genuinely feels like there's a real possibility that we might be entering World War Three. How would that what would that look like? Pff, I don't know. I well I never expected Iran to start attacking, you know they they launched bombs. UAE, Dubai, I mean, where else? I think they expected that though, right? I mean it makes Iran look Iran looks pretty isolated.
I mean I will say, you know, I was totally obviously maybe not obviously, but very much on the left and was opposed to all the stuff Reagan was doing. I remember all even even in the eighties.
But it's like he really did I don't not gonna say he was the major the only reason. There was obviously a bunch of weakening within. But I mean he really did push back against communism. He challenged the entire foreign policy establishment on the basic view of just um you know, of just of just kind of keeping it
you know, keeping the keeping the communists where they were. And instead Reagan really pushed back against it and said w there's gotta be regime change. It sort of almost had a moral certain there's a defense buildup but a moral argument And I think it had a big impact um and to bring down communism. So I'm you know, the Iranian it's it's I'm I'm obviously have very mixed feelings about it. The Iranian regime is just so evil.
And so awful that, you know, you're you're you're every time you see videos of people taking these courageous actions, you're like Somebody bring that regime down. On the other hand, that country is pretty the fo the people of that country were pretty radical and the Shah in nineteen seventy nine, I just spent last night watching all the old old sixty minutes from the seventies, they're amazing.
But the the Shah was really modernizing the country. There was a lot of wealth coming in. There was a lot of more inequality. There was also a lot more state repression uh from his intelligence services.
Uh but the country was, you know, full of radical Muslims who wanted you know, that when the all that instability they wanted to revert back to you know, a radical Islamic regime. And that's still now I've seen other estimates that say that, you know, the current regime is incredibly unpopular in Iran.
But, you know, how that works out, it's really hard to say. But there is something I I caution my own I I talk back to my own anti interventionist instincts when I think about Reagan just being like You know, we're not gonna do just containment strategy anymore. We're actually gonna talk back to communism because people deserve to be free.
And uh now, is everything better for you know, is everything fine in Russia? Maybe not, but I mean communism was just awful, you know, just a totally soul killing, you know, crushing
you know, a giant lie. I mean, it's awful to totalitarianism. So I think we have to kinda keep that in mind. And especially when you're in a moment of just such incredible chaos like we're in now. I tell my students, I'm like, you get to live through One of the most interesting moments in history, certainly in the last eighty years, because the entire paradigm
Where the United States had these allies and everything's gonna go through the Security Council and we're gonna try to make it to the UN and there's gotta get agreements and all this stuff. That's just gone. I mean it's just
It's gone to the part where they don't even where you're kinda like, how are you what's gonna happen inside Iran? They're like, That's not our concern. We hope that there's a an overthrow of the government, but they're they're not we're not like gonna necessarily commit to that. Aaron Ross Powell Well they're also calling on the people to rise up. Yeah.
And look at Iran and Venezuela. They don't have internal the the opposition is not united. There's not a united opposition with a united figure. I mean remember it was so interesting to watch in seventy nine with these protests against the Shah were going on. There are the the left and the Islamicists made an alliance in Iran. Something I'm very it's something really interesting topic I
st only starting to explore right now, but they made an alliance, so they'd be holding up I you know, they'd be holding up the Ayatollah Khomeini pictures in the street. Like they had their guy. And the left was like, look, we're just gonna, you know, go with this guy. I think he was making promises to the left around Allowing, you know, more you know liberalism, and then they came in and just consolidated into this really hard line Islamicist regime. But they had a guy.
We don't ha they don't you know, we don't have a guy in in Venezuela. We don't have a guy in Iran. I don't know if there's anybody in Cuba Really? You know, the in uh the older regime under like the Biden, the open society people, the old open society establishment, they had somebody for Venezuela, this Machado woman. But Trump gets up there and he just goes, Yeah, she doesn't have enough support, so she's not with us. Gone you know. Like they recognize that they don't have
There's nobody with a opposition, you know, street cred that can come into power. So I think they and they know that. They're not like unaware of that. So I think some of the like, oh, they should rise up and whatever It's a little half hearted. I don't know that they believe that that's gonna happen. They're certainly not they don't seem to be offering them you know material support. Right. So it's just a symbolic gesture to talk about it. Sounds like it. And I mean I in this kind of the
This beautiful collapse of communism which occurred so peacefully with the Berlin Wall in the guard eventually just sort of like it's just in the vibes and the guards are just like, Yeah, we're not guarding this wall anymore and it's just over, you know. And it was just over. And it was like a it was a kind of like a moral collapse. I'm not so sure that they're gonna get that in Iran. Doesn't seem like it. The Iranians? Yeah.
They're dug in. Now it's the sun and he's just part of the he represents the uh the I was the IGRC, the um the the security forces. I mean it's their guy. I mean it's what you would do. It's rally around the flag, it's classic what happens. And so
But you know, never you you never know. I mean these guys then might just negotiate more what the Trump administration wants. I think the Trump administration is like we'll just keep killing your leaders until we get somebody in there that will make a deal with us. I think that's I think that's how Trump thinks. Really?
You're smiling. Do you think this funny because it's funny because it's it's so Jo Joe, it's just like you just look at all the think tanks and all the white papers and the State Department and the planning and whatever and it's just like Trump's just he's gonna listen to Tucker, he's gonna listen to and he's gonna decide what to do. This episode is brought to you by Visible. Folks, there's one thing nobody wants this season, and that's getting catfish.
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I don't know if it's good. I mean, um I just we don't know yet. I mean I think part of it is does it gonna work? Part of you go is it moral and you're like, Well, but does it does it work to make have better outcomes? I don't know. We're in a realm of absolute chaos. I mean that I mean that is going on. That is so interesting, this thing with anthropic and the DOD and what's happening there. That is really
So initially Anthropic was hesitant to allow them to use autonomous weapons, right? I don't know the status of it, but you saw the OpenAI the head of OpenAI autonomous
Uh it was auto she was the head of Autonomous Weapons, I think. I'm not don't don't give me exactly right, but she just quit like a couple of days ago on X and it was just like a huge So you have a bunch of You have a you have you have A g a rift in between now I'm now I think um you know, Sam and Elon are both on board and wanna keep working with the DOD, but it looks like anthropic broke and you know, and then it and then Hegseth was like, Well, but then we're gonna punish you.
For the Uh that's very consistent with a kind of nationalist vision, which is that which the Trump administration has, which is that your security strategy, your economic strategy, your border strategy, it's all a single your industrial strategy, it's all a single Your trade strategy, it's all a single And I think for Trump it's just you're either asserting power
And demand in using your leverage and demanding more or you're engaged in managed a client. You're just giving up, you know. And I part of me I'm of mixed minds on it because on the one hand I'm with the kind of I kinda go, let's invest at home. We have all the you know, we have skid row to clean up. You know, uh we should be focused on that, not on trying to do regime change or bombing other countries or creating other problems. On the other hand, I think there's something right about
defending the West. I mean defending Western civilization, you know, uh defending our s our institutions, our norms, our liberal values. And and nobody's done that. And we just had a guy in power that was that opened our borders
that kinda gave a blank check to Ukraine. It seems like at a minimum with Trump you have somebody that is taking responsibility in ways where Biden would be like, well we're gonna do what the you know, we're gonna work with our allies and it was just all kind of Like it was like it was all kinda gonna be decided in this.
in this, you know, what Curtis Yarvin famously calls the cathedral, you know, just the the the single thing of the media and the think tanks and the academics and and Trump was like, it's not working and the working class uh of this country elected me to
to show strength and to demand a better return on our investment in terms of protecting our allies for our people. So that part of it I think is really overdue and really necessary, an assertion of why the West is special, why we need to defend the West. Um Is bombing Iran and replacing the you know, the Khmanni with his son is Masha you know, is what's happening in Venezuela, is that the right approach to that? I don't know. But I think we were the system was
was failing. I mean the open society system which is supposed to be this liberal, you know, uh you know, system of tolerance, it became intolerant, it became totalitarian, it created a censorship industrial complex. They They weaponized the intelligence communities. We, you know, started getting ourselves into conflicts that we that was not clear why we were in them, including Venezuela. I mean, sorry, including um Ukraine. I mean with Ukraine it's like
That war only continues because we continue to to arm it. Like if we stopped if we just were like, let's just have the just you know just cut a deal wherever the border is right now and you're just like that's where it's gonna stop, then you can I mean I don't know I'm not sure what's preventing that from Trump. I think he's annoyed with Putin. But yeah, I mean my view is like
I don't see an interest in that war um continuing. I don't know how it's in the interest of the working of working class Americans or Americans. And I have the same questions about Iran and Venezuela and Cuba, but I think that is a totally different paradigm than the one that we had from nineteen forty five to twenty.
Mm. Well th the idea of tolerance for you know, with the last administration, that seems just to be a narrative. I i it seemed to be a political strategy of keeping the borders open to uh increased populations in blue states. Raise the census, get more congressional seats, and then a path to citizenship where you'd have permanent voters. That's what it seems like. And then there's also a ton of Medicaid fraud that's wrapped up in that that we're now seeing.
Yeah, I think that's part of it. I mean the w the Times did a piece on why Biden left the borders open. And it was what was there It was a funny piece. Like there was this it was you know, part of it he's so out of it, right? Like there were just it was not
clear, like there wasn't clear there was like a meeting where he was like, Yeah, we're gonna just do this thing. They kind of concluded that uh I think Cecilia Munoz, who's one of the um more moderate advocates and was in the Obama administration, I think she said something like, Biden just wanted to give the left Just felt like he wanted to give the left what they wanted.
And that's what, you know, the Soros think tanks and the you know, the pro the very progressive immigration groups have been and you know have been advocating. He did the same thing on climate. So it makes sense. I know Elon talks a lot about how, oh, it's about importing voters and whatnot. Maybe um but it's not even clear that that's a good a strategy that's gonna work. Why not? Well because
First of all, we don't know that Latinos like why are like why do we assume Latinos are all gonna, you know, vote for Democrats? Well, if you've got them all on Medicaid and Social Security. The numbers there are it's it's actually more complic Europe is definitely the case that you have higher rates of crime and higher rates of social services among migrants. Here are y Latino migrants traditionally, you know, bec you know
really thrive. You know, they do much better than than the mostly Muslim immigrants in Europe. Um So I mean I'm skeptic I mean the other thing I the other statistic that I learned uh from David Shore, who's like the one of the top Democrat pollsters when he was talking to Ezra Klein after the twenty twenty four elections. He was like if all eligible voters had voted, Trump would have won by three percentage points rather than one point five.
So it's also so I always think it's kinda funny'cause the Republicans are always like trying to make it harder for people to vote. But under that calculation anyway, and maybe it's just Trump, maybe other Republicans won't go to do it. What do you mean? You mean mail in vote? Yeah, just the whole effort to But the problem is mail in voting has always been a f vector for fraud. Uh that's it maybe. I don't know how much of it there is. Um I've seen different things on it.
Decades people have been talking about mail and voting just being too open to fraud. Well but then the but then maybe. But then the question is does it really benefit I mean in the words, if David Shore's right, if everybody who could vote had voted, Trump would have won like basically by twice the margin. Well, I don't know if that's necessarily true, but when I see laws like what California has where you're not allowed to show ID.
I mean, I've tried tried to find some sort of charitable way where that would make sense, other than you want to open the door for fraud. There's nothing. This this narrative that they say, Oh, poor people don't have like see Kamala Harris. They don't have a Xerox machine. No, but dump you you ever see the thing, I think it was a guy I don't know if he did it for free press, uh a guy was going around interviewing Well first he interviewed liberals at like I think U C Berkeley and he was like
you know, do you think that you should have to have an ID to vote? And they were like, No, because black people don't have IDs and like that's just because they're hearing that on NPC. No, no, I know, of course. But they believe that. Yeah. I mean but then I I don't know if you saw that saw that it's an incredible video because then he goes to like I think he goes to Harlem or
He goes to like a black neighborhood in New York and he was just ax asking black people, he's like, Do you have an ID on you? And it was like everybody was like, Yeah, like what's the matter with you? Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well it's also we just got done with three years of you need an ID to prove that you have been vaccinated. So you need to be able to have that to go to work, to get on the plane, to eat at a restaurant.
It didn't make any sense. It was so immediately contradicting what had just gone down, you know, months earlier. It's just stupid. Well yeah, that was about that was because the left wanted to control people's behavior.
Um and on voting they the the old I I know because I j when I talk to my progressive friends about it, what uh you know, and and family and friends, it's it's very much like no, we can't put barriers on the way of voting because that's what they did during Jim Crow. I mean that's where it goes back to.
It's just an insurance that you're a citizen while you're voting. And then they say there's really not much fraud. They say there's very little fraud. I'm just telling you what they say. I'm not saying I agree. I'm just saying this as they say. Yeah. Do you believe that? That's horse shit. That's a horseshit.
I'll put it that way. Yes. I do. I think they just say it because that's the thing that everybody says. I think it's a group think thing. I mean I think if you uh you sit down with any rational person and no one's watching. Most people in this country who are citizens have some form of ID or can get some form of ID. And it's entirely reasonable to ask people to prove that you are who you are if you're voting for the president of the United States.
That seems pretty reasonable. I'm I I I find it totally reasonable and I support it. I'm just saying that if you make it I'm just saying you may the Republicans may it may result in outcomes that are not the predictable ones that they think they'll get. Just because Trump at least and Trump is maybe, you know, a special case. But I mean he was able to turn out
Reluctant voters. Like he motivated people to vote. Because people were fed up with what had gone on in the last four years. And I think the open border was the biggest I mean it was one of the biggest ones because people just felt hopeless. Like this is crazy. Like what you're doing, you're letting in what's equivalent o at least uh if you're if you're just being charitable, it's uh ten million people.
It was it was huge. If you're just being conservative, it's ten times Austin. You let ten Austins in in four years of people who you have no idea who Yeah, and and Americans were on board with closing the borders and then when it came time to actually asking all the getting those folks to leave that came in, the all the support disappeared, right?
I mean Well it's not asking'em to leave, it's showing up at Home Depot and just rounding people up and raiding places and going to restaurants and pulling people out of their houses. I think people got very uncomfortable with the idea of militarized police wearing masks on the street. Yeah. And then when you find out that these guys have only been trained for seven weeks and there's they get a a fifty thousand dollar signing bonus.
And then you find out that a giant percentage of them are Latino, which is kind of crazy. You know, like the two guys who shot that guy in Minnesota, they're both Latino. And th yeah, I mean that's what you get when you have Completely untrained, unprepared people. Well that's a disasters like that. The whole Minnesota thing with Alex Pratt is a complete clusterfuck. I still not have have not seen verification of whether or not
the the the the s the narrative that makes sense is true. But the narrative that makes sense was that there was an accidental discharge of his gun as they were pulling it away from him. And then that led to them thinking that maybe he Still had the gun on him,'cause you're in the chaos of arresting someone. Someone says he has a gun, a gun goes off, and then they shoot. Um I bet when you go I bet when they do the proper evaluation of it, they're gonna find multiple mistakes.
I'm sure by the law enforcement institution. And then there was the thing with the woman who got shot, where you have a guy who had almost been run over just a couple of weeks before and been dragged in his car. The guy who shot her had been dragged by another vehicle. I didn't see that. Something crazy. So when a car is coming at him, you could imagine this guy's got some PTSD from that and he should not have been certain he should not have been
No. And also Alexander. That's crazy too. Yeah, I mean the reaction The just the heartlessness of the reaction to the killings was terrible, including by the administration, that's probably why K Christy Gnome ended up having to go. But then on the other side These protests are organized. They're organized and they're paid for.
that people need to understand. These are not organic protests. It's not organic that it just happened to be taking place in the very same place where you s found hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud. Right? This is a one of the clearest, most obvious distractions you've ever seen Like arena like where you have these people who are being paid to protest. They they give them money to go out there and protest. They give them signs. They're organizing it. They give signal groups.
They're uh doxing all these different ice workers. They find out what their license plates numbers are, they find out where they're staying, they go to the hotel, the cops the local cops are being told to stand down. So you've got it like this this convergence of all these factors that lead to chaos. And you know Mm. Mike Benz was talking about it and he was essentially saying it's a mathematical
And that if you have these things play out, you're going to have a certain amount it was Mike Benz, right, that was saying that? It was a certain amount of people that are you're gonna have incidences. You're just playing it out over the numbers. certain amount of these protests, you have organized protests, you have untrained ICE agents, you have a lot of chaos, you have support for people screaming in the streets, someone gets shot, boom, and then it moves the needle. And this is
Calculated. They want it to happen this way because then this kills all the support for people that, you know, we're kind of on the fence whether or not I should be deporting all illegals. Excuse me, w it should uh Whether they should just go after violent criminals and And then there's these weird narratives like oh, only fourteen percent are violent criminals that have been arrested. Yeah, but sixty percent are criminals. Sixty percent of the people plus were criminals.
And like what what by what definition violent criminals? Like what do you like What do you is it okay if they just come in here and rip people off? Like w are you fine with that? It's just like the violent ones we need to get rid of? Like I think they didn't, yeah, they did a... fairly poor job of it. Like why were they focused on on Minneapolis? I think most people don't understand how radical the left in Minneapolis is.'Cause you think it was a midwestern place, but it's actually got a long
radical left tradition. Yeah. Um and as you were saying, I mean Alex Pready, he should have been arrested several days before when he had a gun on him and got into an altercation with the police. They should have arrested him then and then they could have The judge could've done a lot of different things, but they could have taken away his gun, they could have put a restraining order on him.
So the next time he showed up and people would know to look for him, then he would have been you know kept out of the area. Do you know the story about the gun that he was carrying? No. Okay, so he's carrying a gun called a SIG P three twenty, which is notorious for accidental discharge.
Not not mean there's lawsuits all over the place. There's videos of cops in precincts bending over to pick something up and the gun goes off in his holster. There's uh a ton of So I don't know if this is completely accurate because this is obviously the fog of chaos of these type of altercations and situations, but
There's a video that many people have reviewed and it's their conclusion that if you watch the video when one of the ICE officers removes his gun, even though he does not have his finger on the trigger. He has his hand on the gun and his fingers on the slide. As he's moving off, it appears the gun goes off.
correspond with the sound of a gunshot. Okay. It's it's just hard to know. Yes, but I don't know if it's legitimate. It's hard to know. But it but if it was any other gun like say if it was a glock, I would say that doesn't make any sense. His fingers not on the trigger, it's not. But that gun is notorious.
that he he shows a video where he takes the gun and he manipulates the slide and it goes off. Uh and it goes off without nothing touching the trigger. No one no one's pulling on it. It's just if you have The other problem is people alter guns. Okay. So the issue with the SIG was They...
Fi they had I I believe up to 2017, they had a lighter trigger. And this lighter trigger, if the gun was dropped or if something happened to it, it was going off. And they determined it's The gun does not have an internal safety like some other guns do.
My understanding is that the trigger mechanism is different than their other guns. Like they have another gun that's notoriously reliable. It's a SIG P365. You could drop that gun, it's not gonna go off. It's not known for accidental discharge. But the 320 is known. And there's tons of videos of people demonstrating this online. There's a video where they're on a range and a gun goes off and a guy's holster.
And the range instructor says, What the fuck just happened? And this guy uh he points to this g you know, the the gun that went off and he said, Is that a SIG? And he goes, Yeah, he goes, get that fucking thing off the range. So it's it's that notorious. This one particular model. And it just happened to be the one particular model that Alex Pretty was carrying, which is fucking crazy. Well his behavior was
Really reckless. I I I it's really hard for people to hold two ideas in their mind at the same time. Like I Mess that up. I think clearly And Alex Predy. I mean we see the earlier video, you know, where he kicks out the tail light of the ice vehicle. Right. And he's I mean, he's got a gun in the waistband of his of his jacket, it's hidden by the jacket. He gets into this altercation with the police. I mean, I had a b when I posted about it and I didn't say this.
But one a lot of the responses were suicide by cop. People were like, suicide by cop. I mean, and I'm not making that claim, but I mean it his behavior was I mean the the recklessness of the gun choice mirrors the recklessness of his behavior in those instances.
And I heard people being like, Oh well he you know, he was just defending that poor woman. There was a police officer engaged in an arrest of a person and Alex Pretti intervened in that. I mean I think you could mess around about it. It was a little I don't know if it was an arrest. The police officer shoved this woman. Yeah, he put he was in an altercation with somebody.
You don't go people in other words, people go, Oh, you gotta put yourself in what do you think you're like who d what do you think is going on here? Like he should put himself in between that. No. The way the the the ICE officer wasn't police officer. The way the ICE officer reacted to the woman did that bothered.
Like he ju he just shoved this lady, like f like stepped forward and fully shoved her. That's when Alex Prady gets involved. And then Pepper Spray comes out and then And Alex Prady should have absolutely filmed it. Should have filmed the whole thing. That that's exactly what it was. A lot of people were filming it. It was clear there's cameras all over the place. So but but don't it's multiple angles. Yeah. So but it's like um
I just don't think that's appropriate behavior. That's not that's not the tradition of like I mean, I think there's a nonviolent left wing tradition that's actually quite beautiful and spiritual. And it's Thoreau and Gandhi and King. That's not what was going on in Minneapolis. That's not at all what's going on. This is a part of the problem with these things being organized. Right? Organized, paid, protests, and also people being radicalized by narrative.
Then of course, very different than what was going on with the the civil rights movement, you have social media. So people are like radically pushed in one direction or another, and it's not clear whether or not that's organic. It's not clear is this the voice of the people or is this bot farms that are pushing things in one direction or another? Is is it I mean there's I there's a lot of people that I I I cautiously watch their their posts on on X where I know that they're I know it's a
I can just tell by the way they run. There's so much AI slop on X right now. Yeah. It's weird because it does muddy the water and it does fuck with discourse, but it also radicalizes people one way or the radicalizes people towards the right, radicalizes people towards the left. It's not good. And I think this guy, whatever his mental health struggles were, that they they appeared to exist. It se it seems like he was a troubled guy already.
So a thing comes along that defines them, a cause that they're going to stand up for and fight for. Because their life's probably a fucking mess. And their mind is probably a mess and they look at this they look at it like it's this black and white binary situation. For sure. Good guys and bad guys. And let's fuck all these fascists.
kicking taillights and you know, and getting involved in pushing matches with ICE agents. It's like that's crazy. Like all that stuff can should and can get you arrested. Yeah, I mean I think on the organized issue, remember like the Civil Rights Movement was really well organized and in terms of it was like actually people weren't being paid for it. It wasn't being promoted on social media, it wasn't people's jobs.
There are people in America right now that are unemployed that are paid protesters for a living. Oh. I mean that's the entire like left wing NGO sector is basically that. Right. Yeah. I mean that's like the we saw it with I see it at the level of San Francisco and for homelessness. They just go and you work at an NG a a government funded or Soros funded NGO and then you do all that civil disobedience stuff on your free time and
But I was I just think I think that you're you're right you were right when you're saying like'cause you I think it's the problem is not the organization. The problem is that the organization in Minneapolis had a goal. of causing exactly what occurred. Yes. The the or the organization around the civil rights movement was to desegregate soda counters. Yes. You know, and so um one of'em was about actually
I mean the other thing is that brought p pull back a little bit further, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement was about affirming our liberal democratic Western civilization. Black people wanted to be a part of it. Yeah. This stuff where you're like, we wanna, you know, open the border and defund the police. and basically start attacking all of these institutions of liberal democratic civilization, that's different. That's a radicalized left. Um fundamentally different.
I don't agree with Gad on. No? You don't think it's suicidal empathy with the thing? Because empathy is empathy is like the immigration thing. I don't think he'd necessarily i I think it was actually long before the immigration thing that he was talking about at Suicidal Empathy. The idea being that you need the rule of law to have a a safe and peaceful society. Yes, that part's true. Yeah, you need you need no violence, you need no crime.
And when you're taking criminals and just releasing them from jail and you have no cash bail and you're doing all these things If you want to put on the fucking tinfoil hat you would do that because you want chaos. Because you want chaos so you can have more rules and tighten down on people and have more control over the s the civilization. Yeah, I mean I think in that I mean I think
like it's not empathic to allow more violent crime. Like I don't think that's empathy towards victims. So I don't think I wouldn't call it empathy. And not only that, but like When you look at like the these who these folks are and I spent a lot of time looking at them and was one of them
Um, they hate Western civilization. They hate the United States of America. They hate capitalism. Like it's it's an anti civilization thing that's motivating it. And that's not to say that like MSNBC watchers don't feel like, Oh, I feel bad for that person. But I mean I always you know it's like Like the people I hear complain about ICE, they don't know any illegal image.
They've never talked to them other than maybe their server or that you know, but they don't even really talk to their gardeners or their or their you know, their their maids. I think it's like the idea that they ha empathy implies a deep understanding of someone's situation. And so I think it's a I think in some ways it's more quite the opposite of the same thing.
That they're actually not showing empathy for all the people that are hurt by their policies. Whether it's open borders or enabling addiction or euthanizing poor and mentally ill people in Canada Um, or transing kids. I don't think that those things are empathic. And the person that's doing them, I don't think is suicidal. If anything, they're actually quite Full of themselves um and quite arrogant about what they're doing.
I mean I use the word pathological altruism in San Francisco when I say it's close to Munkhausen syndrome by proxy. Maybe it is Munkhausen syndrome by proxy, but I don't think it's I I worry about I worry about affirming'cause I think that's how progressives go. They go, Oh well if we if the homeless are are worse off, that's just because we care so much. I just don't think Well that's the homeless thing is nuts because the homeless thing is just
And we know that basically because of California. Like California, what what's happened with the whole homeless budget is so insane. And that they vetoed audits of these budgets. There's been twenty four billion dollars spent. No one knows where it went. There's no accountability. And then the homeless situation increased.
Well that's why. I mean remember it's like I it's funny, like I my students just did a paper we have something we've been working on it too, like the Canadian Youth in Asia program. Yeah. And it's like every year the numbers just keep going up and up. And it reminds me of when you interview homeless
you know, service providers in San Francisco that'd be like, Yeah, no, we're doing an amazing job. Every year we serve more and more people. It's like right, you have an you have all the you have the wrong incentive. You're trying you're you have an incentive to serve to
You have incentive to create homelessness, and that's what they've done. Well if you get more money, if you have more homeless, your incentive is now not to eliminate homelessness because that's your job. Right. That's how you make all your money. Like when you find out the amount of money that's involved in homelessness. Like that. They spent twenty four billion dollars. Okay, where'd that go?
Where and then there's no accountability? Okay. There's no fraud? You're saying there's no fraud? Zero? Well, I wish there was fraud. I mean somebody was sort of like, Can we expose you know, like Nick Shirley exposed the daycare is not doing anything in Minn Minnesota? I was like, I wish the homeless Service providers weren't doing anything. Well what
using the money to create homelessness? Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean think about like so San Francisco was like up between a hundred and a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year per homeless person. Think San I think LA at a bargain of something more like twenty five thousand. That's that's just San Francisco. That doesn't count the twenty-four uh billion that California gave. So that money's going to, you know, single resident occupancy hotel owners.
It's going to nonprofit service providers who are just bringing food and, you know, alcohol and drug paraphernalia to make it easier for people to do drugs and overdose and live in tents on the street. That's you're sp it it's very expensive to kill that many people. That's what's going on. Right, but it's really about the amount of people where that's their industry Like that it there is an industry in taking care of the homeless situation and addressing the homeless situation.
And you know, Collian Noir when he was on the podcast he was explaining to me that he went to San Francisco and He was like, Why is it so bad up here? Do they need money? He's like, No, no, no. This guy who's a lawyer was explaining it to him. He he's a lawyer as well. He's explaining it to him, like, No, no, no. These people are getting money to deal with the homeless situation and some of them are making
quarter million dollars a year and and more, which is just nuts. And then it's not getting better. It's only getting worse. And yet they k ste they still keep getting that money. So it's like there's zero incentive to make it better, there's an only an incentive to make it worse, and then when you have no accountability, so there's no auditing over the money. Twenty four billion dollars is a lot of fucking money.
So where's who's getting greased up? Where's that money going? Aaron Ross Powell Mostly it's into the it's into the temporary what they call they call it permanent it's propaganda word. Propaganda it's uh permanent supportive housing. It's neither permanent nor supportive.
Often warehousing attics where they die, I mean, we know that they die at very high levels in those little this is little crummy, you know, single resident occupancy rooms. Yeah. They bought a lot of motels that were, you know, low in low income, you know, low, you know, cheap motels. Converting them, having s but they don't really there's no I mean, all that money should have gone into a centralized addiction and psychiatric care system.
Yeah, cal psych is what it should have been. And instead it's just um it's just kind of yeah, it's just basically incentivizing people to live on the streets and use hard drugs and dying over.
Well it's just so crazy. I mean if you wanted to make it better you would incentivize them and pay them based on the amount of people that are no longer homeless. Right. But they don't do that. But then the problem with that is well, you're eventually gonna fix it all and then your business is gonna go away. Right.
And that's all happening I think it's I think it's all happening unconsciously. Like there's no room there's no like, you know, secret room where they're rubbing their hands and being like, Oh, that we're gonna make a lot of money this way. It's just um You know, when you interview them it's a very basic view, you know, it's just these people are victims. They're victims of white supremacy and capitalism and
And to victims everything should be given and nothing required. Trevor Burrus Well, I think that's a nice narrative, but I think once you start getting monthly paychecks from from the homeless industrial complex I think your incentive is to keep this party going. Well sure, but they that's your job. I mean they they go this shows how how good we're doing that we got a bigger budget this year and that's how they that's how they rationalize it. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh I mean it it's a sign of a very sick society. Hence the title of your book, San Francisco Sicco, which is a great title. I mean it's a sick place. I and it was one of my favorite cities. Well California my Netflix special there in two thousand sixteen. So in just the amount of time in ten years, it's completely fallen apart. When I was there in two thousand sixteen it was great.
With the I mean, there was always a lot of homeless people there, but you have that in any liberal city. But it was never an epidemic. It was never like tents everywhere and shit on the streets. That wasn't the case. It was just You know, it was a liberal city, a progressive liberal city, but it was cool. There was a lot of outdoor music, it was fun, it was a great place to go to restaurants and people walked around. It was a a great city.
Filled with intelligent, interesting, open minded people. Man, I lived there when I was a little kid. I was there during the Vietnam War. From age seven to eleven, I I lived in Sar. It's a little bit better now. They've had a new mayor. Yeah, a little bit. Um I mean I wanna acknowledge I can't lie about it. It's a little bit better. I agree. Um I interview a lot of people still about what's going on.
It's still there. But did you see what happened with the mayor? With his security guard. Yeah. Got pulled down. Yeah. First of all security going on. For sure. He needs to learn some fucking jujitsu. The way he let that guy grab him, you didn't he didn't pummel, he didn't do anything. It looked like he had no understanding of what to do when that guy grabbed his body. Like how is he a security guard? That's crazy. How how can you be a security for the mayor?
If you literally don't know what to do in a clan. I thought he looked like he didn't really see the guy as a threat or something. Like maybe he thought he was just a crazy homelessness. He banged him on the ground. He body slammed onto the fucking concrete and then he just walks away. And he walked away like it was nothing. Like he walked away, not he didn't run. One hundred he was looking that way and it's not he was here when they started physically uh was struggling with each other.
And then when they're struggling with each other, he walks off and then the guy gets body slammed. Oh yes, okay. Running off? Yeah, let me let me uh refresh this real quick. What was it? So there's the merit there. Okay. He pushes this guy here in a second. As soon as he gets to the sidewalk it takes off. So why why are they hanging out with this guy in the first place? Oh so the security guard started it and he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.
Okay. Oh look at his uh like shitty technique. And the other guy's a lot stronger than him. So the mayor walks off. Hold on, he takes he starts running right. He seems really Okay. Okay, he did start walking slowly and then starts without gonna get help. That guy started it all. He pushed that guy. If you're a security guy, the last thing you want to do when there's one of you and two of those other guys is deal with a situation that way where you push a guy.
I'm oh I have to say it's so interesting you say I'm always surprised when I see them do like that was the same thing that happened with the pretty we were just talking about. Don't you think this guy's probably armed too? I mean But also he shouldn't have pushed that guy that way. I mean the whole thing is fucking stupid. Look at the ki look at the chaos. There's somebody else just running around another homeless.
Yeah. Yeah. The other guy's probably talking shit. I bet that guy's funny. I bet he's funny. Guy with the big coat on? I mean, I don't uh for the life of me, none of it makes sense. None of it makes sense. The the the mayor walking off casually and then eventually running. It doesn't make sense as a security guy just walked up to th those guys and pushed him when your details to take care of the mayor, you should be escorting him around that. And getting him away from any potential trouble.
The brazenness of just walking up and pushing that guy. Well you don't know how to fight at all. It's very clear when you watch the way they grappled with each other. He doesn't know what he's doing. This episode is brought to you by Intuit TurboTax. April fifteenth is coming fast. There's been so many tax law changes this year, which means you're going to need an expert who has your back. You're in luck.
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I can't believe the pushing is I mean that's not even the pretty thing. Like why pushing is that like a Is that like an important law enforcement technique? I mean what is that? Well he not only that, he pushed a small woman. The the ice guy just f completely just full on shoves this small woman. Which means he was emotionally out of control for a while. Right. He was angry. These these guys are not like special forces guys. They're not well trained. These guys are this discipline.
Seven weeks and a lot of'em are financially incentivized.'Cause like if you can get fifty thousand dollars to like if you're in debt. And then you could take this job on and I don't when they get the fifty thousand dollars, how long do they have to stay on the job for to to g to have that money, to have that signing bonus?
Or is it one of those things where you get the fifty thousand dollars as a signing bonus but you pay it like a record deal type deal where you d it's not really your money, you have to make it up later. I imagine there's a lot of people that'll take that job. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Oh, so you only get it after four years. But that might not be a good thing. Right. But for some people that have no job opportunities and no nothing on the horizon, that fifty thousand dollars looks like
Look, it's an extra twenty five K a year or an extra, you know, tw twenty five K um for for four years? For fifty for four years. Then once every But either way, it's fifty thousand dollars that you would not have been able to make ordinarily. I mean we had police shortages before twenty twenty. We had a bunch of police shortages after that, mostly by police officers who were just
felt mistreated by the society and by their local mayors who said that they were evil. Well didn't a lot of cops resign when Ram Dani got elected? Oh I'm sure. And then a COVID drove and then they and a bunch of police officers driven out during COVID. So there was already our p our security forces have been, you know, and they were just
People underestimate how important it is to feel like important in your job and and respected. And it's not just about the money, because they would be offering more money. But I think a lot of like, oh no, I don't want to be in a job where people are like spitting at me or throwing urine and feeling. Well not just that a job where your life is on the line. Yeah. Your all your life is already on the line and then you're mistreated by the wider society, which actually creates additional risk.
You know, as this chaos in Minneapolis shows So yeah, it's just um people wanna believe that they're doing something that is appreciated by the community. And so when the community decides that they're against policing, your civilization's pretty far gone. Right, but this is the difference between policing and this ice thing. The ice thing is a different thing.
Right,'cause they're looking at it differently. It's not like you're watching a violent altercation take place, the police show up and people are spitting on them. Like you're trying to break up a violent crime. This is different. They're looking at it like the in the progressive narrative is like no one's illegal on stolen land and we need to have open borders and illegals or or immigrants rather are the foundation of this country and you hear all that those narratives.
The president and those the president and the administration they wanted to pick a fight, obviously, with this left wing with activists in this left wing city. They thought it would redound to their benefit to show how crazy the left was and it back. Well I think they wanted to do something about the amount of illegal fraud that was just recently exposed in Minneapolis
But that w I don't know that that's but you wouldn't do it with ice raids though. I mean Well it's illegal immigrants. If you have illegal immigrants that are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud. And you know at least some of them are illegal. It's uh seems rational that you would send ice in to find out who's illegal and who's not and put a stop to some of it. And there's also this nationwide focus on this one place because of the Nick Shirley videos.
Yeah, though I think that the motivate my understanding uh um is that the motivation was to uh motivate people that are here illegally to self-deport. And so that that's the the main part of the strategy is the show of force because of course it They wanted the publicity. They wanted people to be scared and self deport. They claim that, you know, one point I think three million people self deported or one point four and then another four hundred thousand or six hundred thousand
deported through the normal channels and apparently they're just limited to how many people they can actually deport through the normal channels, but they can get people can self deport. They can just go. Right. And'cause of course there's this thing called e verify where you just have the employers have to prove that everybody you're employing is here legally.
And they don't wanna do that. The Trump administration doesn't wanna do that because they'll upset in particular like the agricultural lobby, but others who depend construction who depend on so it's a it's a funny It it's not great. I don't know I'm not saying that there's that I have the perfect, you know, answer to the other one, but obviously like politically the president doesn't feel like they can do e verify and maintain support from the business community for his political agenda.
So you end up but you end up with a kind of underclass. that's here illegally, but that's protected because they're working in a sector that the president and the administration wants to protect, but then you're also self deporting people. I I'm not sure exactly how they're thinking about it, but that appears to be
uh what the the the heart of their goal is is always you know what a lot of people on the left back in the day would say that illegal immigrants was this was uh like a Koch brothers thing. This was like a right wing thing that they wanted this for uh for exactly what you just described. And that this is not a left wing progressive idea. And that what it would do is would lower the wages for the lower class and the middle class of this country and it would be bad for the citizens.
And so you don't want unchecked illegal immigration. Unchecked illegal immigration would just be for the right. Because they're the ones who own these massive corporations that are profiting off of illegal labor, they don't have to pay them benefits, they don't have to pay them health care, any of the things that are, you know, that cost money.
Yeah, I mean the on the the left was always balancing a sort of open society. You know, they wanted the Soros Foundation always wanted to have a free movement of people to d that was sort of their view of why and part why the Holocaust occurred is that you couldn't move peop you know, or you know, or at least the persecutions you couldn't move people as easily. But then you had the working class, you know, who were negatively affected by bringing in migrants who would push down wages.
and unions who are a big part of the Democratic Party. So the Democrats were sort of divided on it for a while, but they managed it and Hillary and Obama would sort of if you look at when they were competing in in two thousand eight They were very carefully like there was a whole thing around like driver's licenses, whether she would give them or not, and Obama accused Hillary of
Of kind of playing both sides of it, you know, typical thing. But they also both spoke out strongly against uh mass migration. Fast forward ten years. No, fast forward much more than that. It was at sixteen years into in today, and now you've got a much more working class Republican Party who is unified around uh keeping the borders closed and and restricting the supply of low income unskilled workers because
I mean it's just obvious I mean it's f it was really weird to watch people that are always defending supply and demand and economics and economic policy then say, Oh no, but having open borders and having all these working class people come in um is gonna have no impact on wages when obviously it would.
And I think that's now that's also now gone. I think that's another thing that's just Trump has just changed. I don't think you're gonna see Democrats going back to advocating that kind of mass migration. Right, but you could see a world where they would push back against what has happened, what would they say the barbaric nature of some of these ice raids and then saying from there's uh filtered w ice water in that too if you'd like.
But you don't have to not have your bottle. We don't care. Oh, I think it's in the shot. No. No, it doesn't matter. We don't care. Um but you could see how they could go back to a much m looser border policy. I think they won't. I think they won't. I think the close border I mean, I think that that sweet spot of public opinion is like people really want to close I think it was just really um
But I don't think public opinion supported an open border even on the left. No. During those last four years, but yet they did it anyway. Right. And they were moving people to Blue State. They were moving people to swing.
They were flying people in, busting people. They were doing it on purpose. Isn't that b isn't that also though because the blue state governors were more welcoming of them? There's a little bit of that, but there was also the idea that you're going to juice up the congressional seats because you're going to change the census. Maybe although California lost seats, right? Well, because California's done such a fucking terrible job of governing their state.
It's so it that place is so crazy. Like every time there's some new law that they're trying to push through, some new bill. And I'm like, did they just want everyone to leave? Like, well they drove the billionaires out, right? Yeah. I mean I know they drove out David Sachs, came to Austin. I think Mark Zuckerberg moved to Florida. I heard rumors of Steven Spielberg. I don't know if that's I don't want to spread disinformation.
I don't want to spread misinformation but I heard he was leaving. But yeah, it's cool that the the thing that drives me the most nuts is when these progressive talking heads saying they don't want to pay their fair share. With the amount of waste and fraud, why would you you don't think there should be some accountability to how much fucking waste and fraud that has been clearly uh demonstrated?
Like you the the solution is just give more money. Oh, and they can do it because they have it. So what? You just give more money and now it's thirty billion dollars goes to homeless with no accountability? Like what are you what are you saying? Like where do you think this money's gonna go?
actually gonna uh help people and affect things in a positive way. There's been no indication that that's the case. That the real problem is they just haven't had enough money from the billionaires. That's fucking ludicrous. That idea is ludic it's such a lazy, intellectually lazy way of framing this whole discussion.
That's saying, oh, they don't want to pay their fair share. Fuck you. That's not what's going on here. What's going on here, you have a completely incompetent government that's absolutely corrupt. And they want more money. Oh yeah. Gas is like eight dollars a gallon almost now. Oh. That's bananas. They were gonna shut down I mean the refineries are being shut down. In th that that initiative, the billionaire's tax, is an SCIU initi.
So meaning it's the union that covers healthcare workers like nurses. They're very radical, very radical left, and the money is to provide Medicaid for undocumented immigrants. Like that's what they want it for, right? So like that's the whole thing. And and so you literally get the this is like this is what people
worry about democracy. You get all the it's very democratic, but you get these powerful unions and they're able to change the laws like that. I mean, it's called the Curley effect because there was a Boston mayor named Curley who made everything so bad for his political opponents that they left.
But the consequence was that he ended up gaining more power. So i all of when everybody moves to you know, when all the like moderate Democrats move to Austin or Miami or Denver or wherever, uh California just ends up locked in more to a progressive agenda. I well I think the idea is that it's so good there that most people are just gonna tolerate
Whatever new bullshit they throw your way. And also, I mean it seems like the tech community is now backing the San Jose mayor who's running, who's a m very Democrat, very moderate, I you know, he's but he's been critical of Gavin. Running for governor? Yeah. Matt Mayhem. So keep your eyes on him. I mean he's not um
I w he's not like maybe the most exciting guy, but he's definitely running as a moderate and some money. I know. They want he might be enough to I don't know, it's hard to say, but uh it does look like'cause I mean th look there's plenty of The the tech community only woke up politically in twenty twenty four. That's how long it took. And it really took
things getting so bad where they were telling Mark Andreessen, as he said to you on your show, that they were shutting off whole parts of AI. The Biden administration was openly threatening AI in this huge new and you know, there's concerns. I'm not saying that there's not But I think the I think at some point the tech community which had been, you know, either leaning Democrat
you know, for a long time since the Obama era, you know, or wanted to stay out of politics'cause they just wanna focus on their machines and they and their investments. They don't really want to be involved in politics. But they woke up in twenty twenty four and so hopefully 'Cause it's not I mean when you see what Soros has done and you really appreciate the power that one billionaire can have, you kinda go, Why is there nothing like that, you know, on the other side?
Why is it so dominated by Soros? And so I hope that that's starting to happen. But yeah, when you start to chase out the billionaires and the billionaires just give up on California, then it's got to be whoever's remaining to to try to you know put the money behind the guy that can get some change. Yeah, that's I mean, I don't see a pathway
where California any time soon turns around. I don't see how it could. I feel like it's the momentum has shifted so far in a terrible direction and the solutions are always tax more. take more money from people. And you see of this c completely corrupt, irresponsible fraud ridden, wasteful government that wants more of your money. And the solution is if we take more money, we're gonna make things better. Which is just
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So I mean you could see it, right? I mean Matt if say Matt Mahan or somebody more moderate gets in to be governor Rick Caruso runs for LA mayor again. I mean, honestly, like if somebody can't defeat Karen Bass after she let Los Angeles burn away, which is now we now know for a fact was just totally preventable, absolutely preventable. I was saying at the time, but
Now we know. Trevor Burrus How'd they try to rewrite the w report? Well the report, you know, said here's all the things that the fire department should have done that didn't happen. And ultimately, you know, the mayor is the one that chooses the fire chief and fires the ch the fire chief and the mayor
was war they were warned. And she goes to flies to Ghana for this little junket presidential inauguration, pallying around when she should have been in LA with a com at a command uh headquarters and you know, and if she wasn't then Gavin should have been
You know, Schwarzenegger, towards the h end of his administration, they would just mobilize planes full of water, you know, huh these those huge cargo planes full of water before there were fires, just to start to circulate, just to get ready to put stuff out. This idea that L there was this idea promoted that it was inevitable that the fires that oh eventually it's just an no. Like it's absurd. Like of course you can protect it with adequate fire. Oh the pipes weren't big enough. No. Like
Maintain your reservoirs, have water in them. Even the one that was like was like not repaired yet, which should have been repaired, they could have kept it. Uh they could have air gapped the pipe so that it didn't contaminate the water supply but left it for firefighting. They didn't do that. They didn't station the engines where they needed to station them. Nobody was on you know, it's like
They're not taking responsibility. Like they they weren't taking responsibility for it. So anyway, to the point being Get a new governor, you get a better mayor of LA. You've got a guy in San Francisco now who I think has still has a lot of potential. I mean, this latest video Uh you know, showing the chaos there. But you with that I think you could fix that. Yeah. His you know, the criticism of him is he walked away too casually. Yeah, no big deal.
Yeah, so I mean I think there is a there is a way for California to come out. And my view is like look, you've got the it's it's on the tech building. They they you know, and I know some of them have left and obviously they don't need but th th there's still a lot of billionaire rich guys in California that are perfectly capable of financing an alternative effort. The vote you look remember, seventy five percent of San Francisco voters
want to arrest people using fentanyl in public. They they want to arrest them. Okay, that sounds so that's so taboo in progressive that's 75% of San Francisco voters. So the voters are not they're not the radical. Some ways they're radicalized in their hatred of Trump and the Trump derangement syndrome. But I mean everyone like Caruso and Mahan and anybody else there will all just be a good idea.
be able to say they hate Trump like everybody else. Well I think they've seen the consequences of these policies. Oh yeah. There's people are s people are really There's it's not like anything has changed that significantly. They will in fact when I interview people in San Francisco, they're a little reluctant to admit that's gotten better because I think they don't want to take any pressure off the politicians.
So I mean I do think it's it's rescue, um, but it's hard. Aaron Ross Powell When you say it's gotten better, like how so? Mostly the encampments are being broken up. Now you see a little you see more of that sort of thing that we just saw in the video where there's like I call'em like a little more of like a nest, you know, there's just a little homage encampments like yeah, the whole block. That's in Oakland. Yeah. That's in Skid Row. Oh Oakland's nuts. Oakland is Oakland might not.
Um they had a chance to save themselves and they ended up voting for the wrong person for mayor and it's just as bad as ever. So but I think if you get San Francisco, LA and a new governor in place, uh I think you've got the makings to save it. Have you seen this video where this guy does this description of what's going on in Oakland and then drives across the county line into the next place and it's immediately all done?
And you just see what the difference between two different forms of government and how it works. I I didn't see that one but I saw the one between Venice and Santa Monica. Yeah. I was there when the Venice and Santa Monica was similar like you're like, Why are there tents why aren't there any tents there? It's like that's Santa Monica. Yeah. Uh it's different. Well there's still some Santa Maka got bad too. But they'd cleaned it up a little bit better. Yeah. But Venice is banana. It's just
Venice is okay now. Venice is okay now. Yeah, they cleaned that up pretty quickly and then they and then the voters fired their city council member who represented them, who was total crazy radical, Chessa Bodine level radical, and replaced him with a more moderate person. So But yeah.
I'm not gonna there's always it's but I mean remember before it was just it was tense everywhere. I mean it was chaos. And they were dug in, you know, it was like crazy. So no, that's gone. Um but Skid Road's back. Skid Row is fifty blocks. Fifty blocks is so crazy. Fifty blocks of tents and homeless people. When we first heard that, I was like, that's gotta be wrong. It's probably five blocks. No, it's five zero, fifty blocks. That's an enormous amount of things.
That's completely covered by homeless in campus. There's like a whole genre of like of like influencers when they first visit Skid Row'cause everyone hears about it and then you see like their their tweets are just like they're just like all I couldn't believe like I think it's like maybe Ben Shapiro or
There's various conservative influencers who have gone to Skid Row and they're like, I had no idea. There was a com You have no idea until you see it. There was a comic from the comedy store that filmed something. He went like undercover and st he had
like in his past. He had some I don't know, I don't I don't think I think currently he was sober when he did this, but he decided to go there and film and stay in one of these encampments just to show what it was like. And this is like two thousand six ish. Six ish somewhere around there? And it was fucking nuts even back then. And you know, we talked about the story of how Skid Row with the whole Jerome Hotel and how it all had had started.
Skid Row was the place where they would take all the homeless people and all the people that were problematic and they would move them there and keep them there. And the idea was that you just keep em out of Beverly Hills, keep'em away from Hollywood. We're doing movies and we've got famous people walking around. We can't have homeless people. So just snatch'em up, take'em downtown and contain them. So they had them contained in this area and they called it Skid Row and then
Aaron Powell It's not that different from the tender one in the sense that those are places where those single residents are the places where the really cheap hotels were. They were like often for like working for like working people that were in town temporarily, like temporary hotels.
Some of them would just be cages. There were no walls. Like you would just get your own little that was how primitive they were. And then it'd be just evolved over time and then they became all of them became subsidized for for the home. But yeah, it's um I don't think I think California I think it's important I think with Trump and again, like him or hate him or disagree or whatever, you see the potential of this country in particular to make a big change.
And I think that it's ultimately resulted from a unleashing of, you know, social media made it all possible. It allowed for people to get, you know, accurate information for the first time and a different paradigm. So I I I I don't want to lose hope on The Golden State. Mm. But you lost hope on Oakland.
Yeah. Yeah, but maybe I never had hope for Oakland, so at one point in time Oakland was great. Yeah, I mean Jerry Brown actually brought it up a bit, you know, got it more development there, but yeah, it's all about Hey, can I use the bathroom? Yeah yeah sure, sure. We'll pause. We'll be right back folks. sent Jamie something funny that someone just sent me about San Francisco. There's this guy, uh I think he calls himself the gay republican.
The gay Republican? The prop there's a lot of those, actually. Um but which is Shouldn't shock people. They're closeted about the Republican part now. That's the thing. Well it depends on how wealthy they are. I mean some of'em are pretty, you know, Peter Thiel, pretty open about it. He will he was yeah, about his republicanism. Grand Transit. We refuse to release crime surveillance videos because it will make people racist.
Releasing videos would create a racial bias in the riders against minorities on the trains. Why would it do that, San Fran Transit? Why would it why would it create a bias? Is there is there a recurring theme among the people committing crimes? But you could say that about European crime statistics as well. That's also why the the the Germans actually uh in particular, but I think other European countries did not want to release. But they they they did get'em out. They have come out.
And the UK. Yeah. Yeah. Um so let's move on to happier subjects, shall we? So what do you think about all this uh UAP talk? It's one thing that Trump has said that he's gonna release whatever files that they might have on UAPs uh alien terrestrial beings, all this jazz. Uh I talked to Jesse Michaels about it. He is highly skeptical and he said the people that are involved are all old guard And you know, they're just it's just gonna be a bunch of horseshit.
Maybe. I mean just first of all look. I mean I think whatever you think about the phenomenon, this is amazing. I mean the president just said he's gonna release all these things. So I mean after decades of saying we're not interested in this, we're not c we're not following this, uh we're shutting down Blue Book. You know, there's nothing there.
Uh they're like he's sa he's saying so I mean that right there is is I think amazing. And I thought the whole thing was amazing. Like Obama comes out and he goes, What there's definitely aliens. Oh, but they're not under Area fifty one. Unless they're hiding it from presidents Which is like a well established conspiracy theory, so to have Obama even say that. And then Trump comes up and he goes, He goes to
Obama revealed classified information with a little grin on his face,'cause he's a little r rivalry with Obama. I might help him out by declassifying it. And then a few hours later he did. I mean I What can't you like about that? I mean I think that Well uh it's theater. That's what you can't like about until something really comes out, this is just another distraction.
To keep us from thinking about all the other things that are going on. But you can't be so I mean, we should get into Epstein files too, because I do think I have a different view of Epstein now, but um Look, I just think we've been asking for more transparency like we had in this very brief period in the mid seventies with the church committee hearings, and it really took a whole water gate. It took something big. It's been over fifty years.
We got a lot of Epstein files. Yes, there's some missing, but we got JFK files, Amelia Airhardt files, and now we're gonna get some UFO files. Is it gonna be everything? Of course not. Like there's just no way. Um you know, but I don't think like I think we should
Hold both we should be ex happy that like there is an acknowledgement that there's a lot of government files and that there's some commitment to release them because I do think like it's easier to get new Epstein files released after you have some Epstein files released than if you have none. I feel the same way about UFOs. So it's easier to get more UFO files released. What do we want?
And I've been uh you know, I respect John Greenwald a lot. He runs something called the Black Vault dot com where he has been foyering, he's been issuing, you know, Freedom of Information Act requests on UAP but also a ton of other issues since the mid nineties. when he was like fifteen years old, he became obsessed with doing a FOIA request. And he has identified a number of documents that we know exist with redactions. One of them is the UAP task force.
Which has a line that just says potential explanations. You know, the first explanation is redacted, it's blacked out. The second one is, you know, some sort of natural phenomenon. Number three is blacked out, is redacted. Unredact those. I mean come on guys, you can't tell me well we have to protect our sensor data. Come on guys. I mean like that's not censor data. Uh tell us what the potential explanations are are are.
On terms of the sensor data, John also made a great point. Do you remember when the the Pentagon released the video of the Russian jet uh dumping fuel on a on one of our drones? Uh there's like a famous video where like they show it's a hostile act by the Russians jumping fuel on our drone. When was this? Just recently. I mean must have been within the last year or so. So like they're not we do see they do release
Uh you know, warfare, various uh various times they do release things and you can kinda go, Okay, that means that we have I don't think uh what I'm saying is the main excuse has been not to reveal our methods uh for g for getting you know this if we're just talking about UAP here. getting uh, you know, photographs and video. We know that a huge amount of it exists. They haven't even released the the full
you know, gimbal and uh go fast videos. There's a whole bunch more video left. Really? So just re yeah. So that the video that came out that w those are whistleblower leaks, right? Eventually they released them formally though, the Pentagon. So there's much more of that. So And the the particular sorry to interrupt you, but the the was it the gimbal or the go fast where there was many more crap. I believe that there was so there's three videos, right? It's Gimbal, GoFast and then
Uh what was the one where it m the tic tac video it moves out of a frame. My understanding is that there's significantly more video for all of those. And then I also my understanding is also there's just a lot of other videos, um, particularly from th those two incidents. Certainly have. There's so much more sensor data from because we know those incidents had a lot more going on, right? And just was filmed by those videos.
So I think that now there is I was gonna say the UAP community, there isn't really an organized one, although Jesse's doing an amazing job of organizing it. Um we should be really specific and say, you know, here's what we want. I did a piece with John Greenwald. Um Representative Nancy Mace wrote an open letter to
uh the intelligence and military community saying, here's a set of documents that we want to release. So I think the good news is we're like, look, the president has said he wants this. We've identified a bunch of documents, identified a bunch of videos and films.
Yeah. I mean are they gonna withhold stuff, are they gonna mislead? Probably, but that's been the story for eighty years. Well yeah, you saw the age of disclosure, right? Yes, of course. Okay. So I think they make a really good point in age of disclosure that if they
did release things. The real problem is misappropriation of funds lying to Congress and the fact that some of these y you would assume that The way these things are being handled, if they do have crafts, if they are if there is some sort of a back engineering program, that back eng engineering program is going to be held by a military contract. So so whatever the contractor is whether it's
you know, f rocketny or who whoever has it, right? You would imagine that the other competing groups would be very pissed off that they didn't have access to this thing and they they could sue. The misappropriation of funds, lying to Congress, people could go to jail. Also, most likely fraud. There's there's gotta be tons of fraud. If there's so much money that's being like shuffled away into these black ops projects.
If y there's no oversight, then who knows where the money's going, right? And so there's a problem there. If you open up the books and and s people go, Well where why why was there a hundred million dollar check written here? Where where's the two point three billion that's missing here? I'm yeah, I have doubts now. I mean I have to say I didn't finish watching it, but you know, Jesse just dropped a video with him and Eric Weinstein.
And Eric Davis. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh uh Eric Davis. Yeah, uh I found it really it really made me question whether there any there there. Um what does Eric Davis do? Eric Davis, you know who he is? He's got the bushy beard and he's in age of disclosure and um is part of the whole p you know bigelow
You know, that whole OSAP, A tip, he was uh I I don't know his exact he was a ch he's a scientist. Okay. But he was sort of talking about like'cause I think Eric Weinstein was asking these really hard questions like, okay, well like How many people are in this, you know, reverse engineering program and what is it? And I just found his answers to be very thin. So I'm I haven't seen it yet, so I can't comment on that. I know that is both skeptical and open minded at the same time. There is a
Like, yeah, I just I definitely think there's a lot more than they've revealed. I think my skepticism on the reverse engineering stuff. I mean, obviously there's crash retrieval'cause they're just retrieving it could be foreign or they're retrieving something.
The reverse engineering, I mean, if it's advanced tech, nuclear just took so much I mean, I'm just familiar with the history of nuclear, it just took so much effort to create nuclear energy and you'd have these huge, it was a huge enterprise, thousands of people. If they're not do I mean, that's why I kinda go And I mean a whole other form of propulsion, I mean it's just really it would require so many th so such a big bureaucracy.
That's where I'm a little skeptical that that exists because I don't know how you maintain a cover up that long. But I could be wrong. I mean, as uh um you know, as people have pointed out, they've maintained secrecy of a lot of things for a really long time, so it's not inconceivable. Well, especially when you're dealing with government contractors and military contractors. They m they've done a I mean, they they have a long history of keeping a tight lip.
when it comes to all sorts of top secret projects that they're working on. I mean it's weird because like if you look at the UAP task force, which was created by people that had it you know, it was like comes out of they have OSAP and then ATIP and then UAP task force and then they create Aero, which is much more like what Blue Book was, which is their whole point is to debunk and dismiss, I think. That's the whole point.
It's n it's to just to say that we looked into it and there's nothing there. So then they and they cherry pick. the cases. Like they don't actually deal with it with stuff that they can't explain. That's what Arrow's point is. But the UAP task force was people that seemed genuinely interested in it and they have potential explanations and three separate things. So that means that they didn't know themselves. And so I would think that if you if there was some reverse engineering program
Then you would have a better idea than just three potential explanations. But that's assuming they actually got access. The UAP task force people? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good thing. If they open themselves up for if they do have access, then you open up those questions misappropriation of funds, lying to Congress.
Military contractors having access to these vehicles. I I would imagine that's too messy. They get very mumbly. They get very mumbly at that point. I find when you start kinda like, well what is it and how many people kind of It's a lot of like, uh, you know, I mean that's how I s that's how m that was my interpretation of this. I think that it's um I'm much more with Jacques Vallée's view of the phenomenon and I think that it um
that they don't know what it is. I think they have a lot more uh f photos and videos showing d demonstrating this incredible phenomenon, but I'm not sure that they know what it is. And I'm pretty skeptical that they have a secret reverse engineering program just'cause I don't I don't see how they how they would have carried it out for this long.'Cause Jesse's theory of course is that it would date back to the seven to the fifties. Yeah. And it just
There's just too many possibilities for too many deathbed confessions from people to reveal this knowledge. So But don't you think you would keep uh really close watch on anyone who had any access to any of these things and and that would be very threatening to them, like Bob Lazar.
Yeah. I mean I don't know. You believe Bob's Lor. I do. Yeah. I don't know what he was working on, whether or not it was ours or something else or what. Yeah. But I don't think he's a liar. He's had the same story forever. Well then we should go demand the documents. I mean that would be something where
We just need to be like, look, these are the documents that we want and it's on this this place, these years. Well one of the things that Bob said is he thinks some of the documents that he was shown were horseshit and he thinks it's on purpose. He thinks they're th that those fake documents that the fake narratives are a hook. So that if somebody does spill the beans, they know exactly who would.
who was doing it because they could point to like maybe if you're involved in, you know, X program, they give you some bullshit narrative on top of the real truth. Right. They'll make up some stuff. Right. That way if you really well the government told me X and you go, Oh, okay, he learned it from this. Right. He's a part of this program. Now we've narrowed it down to two hundred and fifty employees.
Let's start scouring these people and counterintelligence. Yeah, I mean it seems like the So you know the MJ twelve documents. Yes. There's one of them that is this incredible document. I mean, just if it's a forgery and most people I think think it's a forgery or it's a hoax. It's so well done. It's the manual on extraterrestrial crash retrieval.
Um with different morphologies. Have you ever seen this? No. It's an amazing document. Like I spent went down a like a long rabbit hole. Look, mo I would say most Uphologists think it's fake, so it's not even me. I what's incredible about they show like you know, like in the old books of the from the library, they'd show who checked it out. They had all these names. Mm-hmm. Isn't it so then you kinda go like
The only people really I mean it seemed like the level of sophistication to create this would have been the government. And so then you're sort of like, well, why would they have done that? One of the answers is it was just this they call passage material to be able to detect counterintelligence. activities. I'll tell you another one that I can't quite figure out. But I mean for me it says a lot of effort to and why that narrative.
Another thing I was t people say is they'll go, Well, they're using the UAP stuff as cover for secret weapons programs. And you're like, Well, why would that work as cover? and they go, Well, because Then then it's a way to distract attention. Attract attention. Wouldn't that attract attention? You go
Don't if you as opposed to like within the military, you're like, look, we don't this is this is secret research, you know, that's really important to national security. We don't should pay attention to Instead they're like, Oh no, this is UFO crash retrieval, so don't pay attention to it. That seems like your a recipe for
creating more interest in UFOs. Yeah. So there's a lot of things that the government has done where you're like it's almost like assuming that is, by the way, the we know that like we know that the government, the US Air Force, did
You know, in the early eighties make this guy Paul Benowitz go crazy who was seeing things over Kirtland Air Base and then this guy Richard Dodey, you know, was How'd they make him go crazy? They would be feeding him all this information, convincing them of an alien attack. And he basically ended up going crazy from it. It's this uh amazing story told by this uh by this book, Mirage Men, also documentary.
And you look and you kinda go and they go, Well, it was to cover up a secret weapons program at Kirtlin Air Base and it's like it's like I I'm not I'm not even disbelieving it, but it's like that's just such a like why would that be the best way to do that. And why would you be so sure that that wouldn't rather than distract it. So there's a bunch of things that don't make sense.
And so even if it is all, you know, which is w the skeptic view, you know, is that it's some combination of government disinformation, sci fi. you know, dreams, hypnosis, hypnogogic states, um and then and then kind of the power of belief. You know, I just reviewed this new book on Barney and Betty Hill, where the author thinks that it was s that that really it was a combination of her
uh it was the stress of being an interracial couple, her nightmares, and then hypnosis where they then confabulate this whole story. That's the basic skeptic view, is that it was sort of but but the government's involved in it. And that's always strange'cause you're like the government be part of the sort of. No, no, in the in the UFO in creating in these UFO assuming that they did the M J twelve or somebody did the M J twelve. But certainly in the case of currently organizations.
Why would they have anything, right? What why would they have a lot of people? Why would you be why would you be doing th like the thing with like the Paul Dody and the Paul Benowitz or the Richard Doty and Paul Benowitz is like why why was that the best I mean it's just a Why was that the best way? Like if somebody uh observes strange activity over Kirtland Air Base and they discover that
Why was that the right approach? I don't I don't follow it. And you had A. J. Gentile on, who did the stuff on crop circles. We saw they saw military disinformation around those activities in Britain. So you see a lot of Um the crop circle thing's weird. Really weird.
I mean, I wanted to write it off. I'm like, oh those guys with boards. They're making designs. But then you see some of the designs and how the the the wheat is actually woven and how they have these exploded nodes that almost like they're microwave. And they've examined these things and it seems like there's some energy that's created these things and also the the sheer size and scale.
of some of these things with no footprints leading into them or out of them, and just the geometric precision of some of them. It's really weird. Like there's Of course it's eyewitness accounts, it's hard to know if they're being accurate, but people who've flown over areas where there's nothing there, flown back two hours later and there's these
Football field size, m Mandelbrot sets. Was the one that the guy flew over and there was nothing there and then like a couple of hours later there was the Julia set which is a spectacular Yeah, it's incredible. Right. I'll tell you what. With incredible precision. That's what's really as much precision as you can get by folding over wheat. But when you look at it like from above and it you know, you don't get to the the m the micro.
You you you're looking at these things that like they really do scale in a fractal way. It's very fucking strange and difficult to reproduce. You would imagine something like that would take a long fucking time to plot out and plan. It would take multiple people, you'd have to measure and remeasure, you'd have to have some Some sort of tools and instruments, not just to fold over the the wheat, but if you're gonna interweave the wheat, like what is your method of doing that?
And how are you doing it where, you know, this one is one dimension and then y the next one is precisely three fifths of that dimension, the next one is s slightly you know and y and they're fractal. Well it gets really even weirder than that. So you know how I just I just described this case of of of this Air Force counterintelligence guy driving this guy, Paul Benowitz crazy at Korean Affairs. That book
Is written by Mark Pilkington. Mark Pilkington is one of two guys that claim to have created all the crop circles. The other guy is a guy named John Lundberg. Oh, right, right. AJ, in his video about the crop circles accuses John Lundberg, again, the circ who they call it the circle makers. They have a website they keep it updated. He accuses him of being a British intelligence. AJ does, or at least he strongly implies that.
Um and and part of that is because there was a bunch of weird stuff on the website about MI5 and the CIA. And then Lundberg went to a school this is all very circumstantial so I'm not defending it, I'm just saying what AJ said. Then Lundberg went to a school that shares a courtyard with uh with an MI with M I with an M I five campus or an M I five training area.
I asked Mark, I have like a three I have like three hours of interviews with Mark, um who I'm really inter is a really interesting person. I asked him directly if they had any connection to military intelligence. He said absolutely not. Um It's hard to Which is what you would say. Well, of course you're allowed to say it if you are but I'm not making any accusations. But yeah, I mean he claimed that they made all
And you know, there's some of'em have you ever seen the massive one? There's one that was m absolutely massive. Yeah, pull some of them up, Jamie, so we can get some. There's the Julia said but there's another fr there's another one that's so big it's really hard to see, but he said that he wasn't at that one. Yeah.
That's the famous that's the Julius that's gorgeous. But the big one right there is in the middle. That one's just uh just crazy. These are enormous. Yeah, they're enormous. It's they're so big. And I mean the amount of precision involved in them is kind of spectacular. Now Mark denies that they have exploded nodes and he denies that they're interwoven.
AJ says that they are definitely interwoven and have exploded nodes. And there was an even an article in Science magazine which you know argues that they were made by humans, but that they they point out the um the exploded nodes. So yeah, maybe that's it. What's weird too is there's like how did you do this? Where how what what's the where's the evidence of people trampling through this with equipment? No it's all missing. Like it's strange.
And then also no one's caught doing them. How about the pie? Here's the other one. I asked Mark about this and he didn't know about it. But do you know the pie one? Yeah. That was apparently I'm pretty sure it's the first time that it was a visual explanation of pie. That's my understanding of it. Now maybe I maybe there's someone I haven't seen anything earlier than that, but that's like on its own is really amazing that that was the first time that they
had created a visual representation of of pie. Yeah. Um complete with like the yeah, that's it. It's like um there's a there's another v uh image that will show how it is pie, probably that one right there. Yeah. Um Extremely sophisticated. Extremely. Crop circle. Right. Um I mean ima imagine the type of intelligence that you'd have to possess to pull this off. And then not let anybody know that you did it. And it's just for funsies.
Just for funsies in a field. Yeah. It's um and then you know these MIT researchers went out, that's also part of it, and they tried to do it and it just wasn't it wasn't nearly as good. Yeah. What is this? Okay. Yeah. It is very fucking weird. Yeah. It's very weird and it but the whole UFO thing is very weird. It
You know, the Jacques Vallée books are very interesting and I've read three of his books so far. And um I I I've had them on a couple of times. And the last time I had him on, I I r really went on a deep dive and I read two of his books right before. And w w one of the more interesting things is the really old story.
Like the stories from the seventeen hundreds, the eighteen hundreds, where they lack the context of spaceships, the idea behind it, like none of that stuff exists. But yet you get almost uh at least you you could say, Oh, I could understand how they would be describing it this way, but it's kind of the same thing that other people have been describing.
Like the the Zimbabwe story, a lot of these other stories, it's kind of the same story over and over and over again, which makes you go, Okay, well what Does it have to be from outer space? Or is it possible that there is something here? that is n like far older than us that has somehow or another removed itself from our view. Or is it social contagion and
People c I mean, I'm always struck by it's always like the aliens always are like, Oh, protect your environment and avoid nuclear war. It's like, oh thanks. Like we didn't know we needed to do those until you guys showed up. And it makes more sense as like You could see it as a I mean I got very into I haven't interviewed her yet, but I'm about to. There's a there's an anthropologist at Stanford named Tanya Lerman.
And she's done this incredible work on religions where she um like anthropol like good anthropologists and also this guy, Bowman, like they they're agnostic on whether or not like those beings are real. Like they're just like we're really interested in like the culture and the psychology and the experience of it. But she had this she
She was like did her field work with magicians and witches in England. You know, like mo you know, like modern witches and not magicians like magic tricks, but like the old uh uh who's the famous uh magician gan uh not Gandalf. Houdini? No, no, the uh British one. Uh Mer Merlin, right? Oh. Um
But like the old style, right? Like but they were like so she didn't really believe in it, but she would they were like, You have to practice witchcraft in order to do this. And she had like multiple anomalous experiences. One of them that she woke up and there was five druids in her room.
beckoning to her and people were like, Is it a dream? And she's like, No, I'm not it's not a dream. She had another instance where they were trying to like conjure energies to like turn off to like sh uh tur shut down her watch and she felt a huge energy surge through her and shut off her watch. And her point is that she thinks that the practice. She's the she we put too much focus on the beliefs, but she says like the practices themselves
I don't know if she would say conjure. I also interviewed Diana Pasulka on it. They would say more like reveal these different realities. So they're much more it's a very interesting set of work because they're not They're not trying to answer the question of whether the Druids were really in her room or not. Um I mean the watch thing, you know, apparently definitely happened, but
Uh apparently definitely is a weird way to put it. Apparently to her definitely. I know, but you know what I'm saying? It's like Show me, man. Um, the conjuring thing is strange because that's a recurring theme that you go outside and you have like uh these experiences where you say, I'm not afraid Come s show m show yourself to me. And given enough time with enough intention, apparently things will appear in the sky.
My favorite one is the the black guy talking about Yahweh, who where the the local ABC newscaster goes out and it's gonna be one of those ha ha, this guy thinks that he can conjure UFOs and they go out with him and he conjures an org.
Do you ever see that one? No. That's like an incredible that's like one of my favorite of those videos. And the newscaster's like, uh he called literally they see him calling his I think it's like an NBC affiliate or an A B C affiliate somewhere. Jamie can probably find it. Um
But if it's uh he literally calls his boss, the newscaster's like, Oh, uh the story's turned out a little differently than I thought. Um it's like one of my favorites. I'm sure you could say, Oh, it's a balloon or whatever, but like comes in and out. I mean it's really and it comes right as he's calling it. That's the weird thing is I've talked to multiple people that have actually done this. Oh, people it's that have gone with these, you know, air quotes experts.
And they you go out to some deserted area and you call these things. There's a second guy, white guy, that also does it and Reuters did a whole story on him'cause apparently there's a whole bunch of people around that they saw it. And of course, Jake Barber, who's this former, you know, uh contractor, helicopter pilot, contractor for special forces, announced that he was gonna go and uh conjure UFOs and bring one down.
We met up with Prophet Yahweh, seer of Yahweh, at Doolittle Park off Lake Mead. We picked the day, we picked the time. And we pick the location. Everyone's gonna think you're absolutely nuts. Well, I thought I was absolutely nuts. Until he says he saw UFOs. Over the years, 1500 of them. Can we make it uh 1501 today? What do you think? He says the voice in his head told him to go public now, so we took him up on his offer and we scanned the sky.
Nothing but a few clouds. When the prophet started praying for a sighting, I wasn't exactly convinced. I pray, O Yahweh, that you sent a sighting so that they know that I am not mentally ill. I am not a false prophet. Like those who seek to kill me say I am. Oh, people trying to kill'em? Brother, look at it, there it is. You can barely see it, a white speck. Then another sighting. There it is. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. Photojournalist Jonathan Hawkins locks in.
Let's take a closer look here. It's an orange sphere that appeared out of no I called a boss with an unexpected change in my story. I'm tell I could see it clear as day. In fact it's bright. I can't believe it. It's it's moving pretty fast. It's going to Nellis Air Force Base. It wants to be seen. We called Nellis to see what these things might be. Guess what? They didn't call us back.
But this thing started coming back toward us. It's coming toward us now, I think. What? See it's coming up toward us. Oh man! Oh hallelujah! Then, a few seconds later, it disappeared. It's going back up in space. Prophet Yahweh isn't concerned. He says, it'll be back. I would take this more seriously if that guy didn't have your reporter voice. It's amazing. I think it's um
I love it because I don't I don't think you can I don't think it's gonna convince any skeptics. But it's like one of the few things in our in our world where it inspires a set of like wonder and a set of awe. And, you know, for those of us that struggle with our faith
Um it's inspiring because it is sort of a spiritual like I mean he c he calls himself Yahweh, right? So there's like there's didn't it wasn't about like gray aliens or whatever, it was just something else. And that's what I mean about like why more valet His work explains all of this much better um and th than the sort of the extraterrestrial hypothesis did. And he's had that since sixty-eight. Well I think what he does best is not explained.
Yeah. There really isn't an explanation, but here's what we know. He calls it a control system though. Yeah. Which is sort of like I asked Diana, I was like, Is that how is that different from God? Um because he's sort of a control system that is his his view is that there's a control system that's evolving human consciousness and it will manifest different
things or in that in r in relationship with humans over time. And so he looks at the you know, the apparition the Maria um or Saint Mary apparitions in Spain and the airships of the late nineteenth century where people saw these things that looked like the Zeppelins, even though they hadn't been invented yet. All of these things he says his view is they're sort of being sort of produced in some relationship as well with our culture.
That's Vallet's argument. And that sounds a lot like God in some ways when you say control system. Right. What does that mean? Like is it uh a higher life form that is monitoring us? Like that that's the the the secular version of religion for a lot of these people that are really interested in aliens. Like that there's some advanced being that's making sure we don't fuck everything up completely.
Uh certainly for me, that's my interest. I mean I um like again this anthropologist uh Lerman, you know, she says, you know, William James is this famous Harvard psychologist who wrote a book about the varieties of the religious experience in nineteen oh two. And he says everybody wants to kinda be like, is it real or not real? Is like this world just what we see? And he says, I think there's something more. There's not so this this very
you know, skeptic or debunker thing which is like, Oh no, it's just gotta be a b that thing's gotta be a bird or it's a b it's like, well, but it really you haven't ex just calling it that and as they point out, it's like they showed up when they wanted to. I mean it's a pretty amazing if it's just a coincidence
It's a really amazing one. And so I think for me it's like because I am a Christian and it is hard to believe in an in an all powerful and all good God because he obviously allowed the Holocaust to occur and allows terrible things to occur. But I love that that segment and there's I love there's another one I love right now. It's like a British woman in the fifties doing an interview about seeing a what she calls a Mexican hat UFO over her house. And the kids saw it.
And she and everybody in the village made fun of her and they ridiculed her and she's like, But it's you know, but it's I saw it and it was real and it was like it's like those are like our those are spiritual uh experiences I think. Um so I don't know that like I want the files released from the government. I'm also skeptical that it's gonna tell us what it is because I think
At some level we're not supposed to get more much more information about what it is. I think it's something else is going on. Or maybe It's having a positive effect. I think it's I think uh one of the sometimes people get really mad at UFO believers, like skeptics get really like angry, like how do they
Well, they're so s you know, whatever, they get so mad and I'm always like, But like how often do you see them causing real harm or problems? I mean, we had one cult where they you know, like a few people killed themselves But for the most part They cut their balls off first. Yeah, agree.
So, you know, UFO like for the most part UFO people that are interested in UFOs um are dreamy seekers, spiritual um and I think it's um I I I think it's wrong to I think it's lovely and and wonderful and it reminds us of
You know, that we're small on the one hand we're humble about our knowledge and there's just surrounded by mystery. I mean you're So much of your career and this this platform has been to allow us to talk about things that are unexplained and that or where the explanations don't really seem to explain it. There's something more as yeah, as as William James would say, there's something more
And I think that the denial of anything more, this idea that oh we know everything and we know where the hubris. It's just crazy. But that th those people are silly. They're more silly than the believers. Because th this this idea that like look If there is a if you have a completely novel experience Like say if you are Commander David Fraver and you encounter this tic tac shaped object that's hovering over something that appears to be a ship that's under the water. This thing
takes off at a absolutely preposterous speed that is documented both in radar and visually and on camera. Right? So they've got video of this thing moving. They say that it went from above fifty thousand feet above sea level to sea level in less than a second. Which would require more energy than the entire United States produces in a year in order to get a an object to move that quick.
And it does that with no heat signature. Okay, if this is all true, just that alone. Now imagine you have this completely novel experience. And because y I haven't had it and you haven't had it and Jamie hasn't had it, well, it's very simple and easy to dismiss it. But if this happened What do you what what do you expect the person to do? What do you expect a decorated pilot?
in the in the Navy, a guy who has a rock solid record, who is there's nothing about him that screams that he's a kook or he's mentally ill. And when you talk to him, he's incredibly meticulous, very intelligent. Very disciplined. Well look his face.
experience. He's got a smile on his face. I went to the when I was in Delhi, I went to the Jain temple and I went to the Hindu temple. And I'm not Jain, I'm not Hindu. Um But I had a look on my face that reminded me that sort of That's sort of that sort of like that starry eye the look in your face where you've ha experienced the wonder and the awe of being alive and we're on this planet and we don't really understand it all, but it's beautiful and it's okay and
I think that that's the spiritual I mean that's where it's like he's been touched by I don't you know, I'm not imposing this, but he's sort of touched by God in some way, or but touched by something. Something extraordinary. Yeah. And the thing look, I think the other thing you read that environment, you're like that thing showed dominance in that environment. So on the one hand it showed its dominance. You call it technological Valet might call it spiritual dominance.
what's special about it and I think it's not gonna go away and I don't think we're gonna get to the answer. I don't think I don't think the government how could the government, you know, I don't think they know and I don't I mean even if they even if there was some contact I don't know if that would really tell you all the answers. Well what I could imagine is that they have acquired both eyewitness, video, radar, all all the various sensors data.
And they have done this with multiple instances of these things and they are trying to assess what this is. And they have a longstanding study of these things that would both be disturbing. and confusing to a lot of people and disruptive to society. Assuming Hal's telling the truth, and I have no reason to think he's lying. They brought him in and a bunch of other scientists and and a bunch of other thinkers and said
I want you to create a chart on one side list the positive aspects of disclosure and the other side what are the negative ram ramifications of disclosure. Government, religion,
the finances, uh all all the different things that could happen in the world. And the negatives outweighed the positives and they decided not to disclose. But the premise that he was brought in with this was saying we have acquired physical crafts that are not of this world, we have biological entities that are not of this world, and we are a part of some sort of a back engineering program. We want to release this information. What would happen if we did? And their conclusion was chaos.
Trump Trump didn't seem to go through that checklist. I don't think he got that memo. But also I do think he doesn't I don't think he I think he ignores the memos from experts in general. Right. If he was in office and that was the case and they came to him and you know and someone like Tucker or someone that
influential to him, could sit down with him and talk to him and he thought it would gain their favor, he might just release it. I mean it's wild'cause on the one hand it looked like it was spontaneous, but on the other hand Lau you know, Laura Trump who's like someone that's like a trusted family member who's like really competent, like they sent her in to like take over the R and C and fix it and fire all the people and get their get their loyalists in there.
She was out there talking, saying that, you know, oh the Trump is c I was hearing a lot of noise, but it wasn't from people that I trusted, so I didn't report anything on it. But I was hearing a lot of noise too that
The Trump administration was considering doing something, but you didn't know. I didn't know if it was circular reporting. But I thought the Laura Trump thing was interesting because I don't think I don't see her as sort of a she's not just speculating or bullshitting, you know, she's a trusted, you know, kind of uh
Trusted source for that. So she said that and then Obama was asked about it and then Trump made that announcement. So I don't know what they have planned. You know, we were pushing on the intelligence community privately to release the stuff and it was going nowhere. The Obama thing was nuts because the guy didn't have any follow-up questions. That was r that was part of what was really weird about it. Also they put it in a speed round.
Like it's like why would you put it in a speed round? Which is probably why he didn't have follow up questions if you think about it that way. But I mean, uh that's a just a massive dropping of the ball. Well, the guy says aliens are real. How do you know? How do you know is the next question, right? It's right there. How do you know aliens are real? Well yesterday the day after then he said, Oh, I just meant theoretically.
Well why don't you ask that? So you you catch him on the spot instead of when it becomes this big viral moment and then everybody's talking about it and then he comes up with a rational explanation for why he said that. Yeah. I mean and and and he told Obama told one of the late night hosts. I can't remember if it was Kimmel or Colbert or somebody, but He said they said something like, Tell us what you know and he said, I c you know, I can't tell you. There's things I can't tell you. So I mean
He obviously knows more than he said. Right, otherwise he would say there's nothing. And then Trump said that he knows more. He goes very interesting. You know, I talked to Trump about it. He goes a lot of things. I know some things. There's a lot of
It's very crazy. But you know, he won't tell you any they said they weren't gonna release the Epstein files and that came out, so I just kinda go No, I have a vi different I don't know if you wanna get into it, but I have a slightly different view of Epstein than than I think I did. Well before we get into that, you know Tucker's Thoughts on this whole UFO UAP thing?
He thinks they're like angels and and demons from the Bible. And he thinks that they're they've always been here. And you know, I'm I'm sure you're aware of like the book of Enoch. The Book of Enoch, which was one of the original biblical texts that wasn't included in the canon, but just because of a few rabbis decided it didn't jive with the Torah, and they found the Book of Enoch along with the Book of Isaiah as a part of the Dead Sea Scroll.
And uh when when you find out that there was a biblical text that uh that was contemporary to books that did make it into the old testament and that they talk about the watchers who come from above and and mate with humans and create this race of gium giants called the Nephilim who destroy everything and consume everything and you're like, What the fuck is this? Like what is this? And and just Stop and imagine if those rabbis hadn't disclose.
if that hadn't been excluded. Like Wesley Hopf is great talking about this stuff. He's a real historian when it comes to you know, really understanding the the history of these biblical texts and you know, and he's absolutely fascinated by it. And he's like Yeah, it is kinda crazy that they just decided to not put that in the Bible. Imagine if they did.
And part of when you're going to church and they you know they're going over the Old Testament, like, okay, this week we're gonna go over the book of Enoch. And we're gonna figure out who the watchers are. Like what do you what is that? Like what is that story? The crazy thing that Wes Huff told me was that The book of Isaiah that they found in the Dead Sea Scroll predates the oldest version of the book of Isaiah by more than a thousand years when they found it.
They found out that there was a book of Isaiah that is a thousand years older than the one they thought was the oldest one, and it is verbatim. It's verbatim from the one that's a thousand years later. Wow. Which is kind of crazy. Wow. But then it's also in the same fucking caves as the book of Enoch. It's all the it's all together there in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Amazing. and we've had this
Aaron Powell We've we've been fed the story that sort of all of these religions and myths from the past are all just false. Right. They're all just hallucinations. Right. They're all just lies. I don't believe that. just really uh it's really arrogant actually. Like it's like, well no, now like we've been around for you know humans been around for like millions of years, but the last hundred and fifty years is like we really figured it all out. And we figured out that all human knowledge before
You know, whatever, some recent time period is is nonsense. Yeah, I think that's um quite arrogant. It's very arrogant, but I all look I'm a believer that history is far older than we think. I'm and I think the more time goes on, the more that gets revealed. So When you're talking about something that's four or five thousand years old, I think really you're talking about a retelling of a far older story. And I think there's
It's very difficult when you're dealing with people that don't have an understanding of science. The written language is fairly new. It's an oral tradition for generations before it's ever written down. So my question with all this is always like what were they trying to talk about? What were they trying to say? What was the original experience that someone documented in story?
And then that story was relaid over and over and over again, generation after generation, until it's eventually written down and then they study it and take it literally. And then also translating it from Aramaic, which is the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ancient Hebrew, all these different languages to Latin and Greek and eventually English.
But what's the original story? Like what it what are they trying to document? What is this important knowledge that they wanna share? And how screwed up would that get? Over the generations and generations of talking about it, but what ultimate truth is in there? Like I'm I'm absolutely fascinated by the story of Jesus Christ. Because if you wanted to come up with a way that people would live
that would absolutely be far more beneficial than g just going on natural instincts and tribal behavior and you would you would follow Jesus' teachings. Like There's I can't find a flaw in the way he tells you to live life. There's a lot of religions that involve You know, torturing non believers and and and raping infidels and d being able to do terrible things to the people that don't believe your religion. There's none of that in case.
It's all forgiveness. It's all treating your brother as and your your your your your neighbor as if they're you. Like it is it's a beautiful way to live life. Are you Christian? Well, I go to church. Okay. So I've I've been doing it for the last three or four years. But that's not really an answer to the question. Because I don't know. I I I think it's very interesting and I do believe that if you follow the teachings of Jesus Christ you will live a better life. I really do believe.
And one of the things I talk about is like the people that I go to church with are the most fucking polite people I've ever met in my life. They're so kind and so nice and everybody lets you out of the parking lot. Everybody's like, Hugo, you go. It's like the one pl like it works. You know what I'm saying? Like if if people are trying to find an idea, does that mean I believe people came back from the dead? Does that mean I believe Moses part of the Red Sea? Uh
Not really. No. It seems like that's most likely a story where people are telling it generation after generation after generation, but there's probably something happening. There's probably some truth to it. Then when t you take into account some of the stories from the Old Testament, like the book of Ezekiel, which I'm absolutely sure. Book of Ezekiel and his account of the wheel within a wheel and
and the the the fire flashing forth continually and in the midst of the fire as it were gleaming metal. Like what it what the hell is that? Like what is that? Like what are these stories? And in the midst of the the the this gleaming metal there's
The the the likeness of four living creatures. Like, okay. They darted to and fro, like the appearance of a flash of lightning. Okay, what is that? Like what are they What were they trying to say and what was the original experience that people documented that was so important? And it might have been a lot more similar to these UFO experiences. That's the point.
The the Christian story is so beautiful and so important. You know Rene Girard's view of of Christianity as really stopping the cycle of scapegoat. You know, scapegoating where and I'm seeing it right now as part of the reason we've been pushing back against the moral panic on Epstein is that You scapegoat the thing. You know, traditionally it literally was a goat, but you scapegoat the person or whatever. But if it originally was a goat? It really was a goat. Yeah. It really was a goat, yeah.
Really? How's that? Yeah, it would carry the sins of the community. Oh you'd sacrifice the goat? Oh but over time it became a lot of people. Yeah. Uh Oh interesting. Yeah. And then he's a goat. But generally goats are the devil. Goats are everything. Goats get a bad rap. Goats are in your lobby, aren't they? Or those are elk. No. No, there's a big difference.
Yeah, but I mean so th Christianity puts an end to that. It says, uh, stop scapegoating. I mean, they scapegoated Jesus, really. I mean you kind of go they you scapegoat the com the way the purpose of the scapegoating was to Was for this the community to unite the community and and scapegoat to to put all of its sins on one thing and then kill it or get rid of it and that was the way the community would restore unity. Christianity said no.
we're not gonna do it that way. Uh that that's that's immoral. And so, you know, he with the f you know, without sin should be the first to cast a stone. Jesus wasn't saying that prostitution was good or anything. He was saying that we should not be scapegoating, you know, you've got sins too, so don't scapegoat this person. Mm that's a really radical moment in human history and it really is what allowed humans to
Spread, it creates a universal I mean Christianity is the first universal, it's really universal religion. Maybe it's not the only, um, but it's a universal religion. It says everybody you know, as a child of God and it's and it's evangelical and it wants other people to become Christian. That's very
That's different from other other religions where more like this is my God and I've got my own God here and we're the best and you suck and they make it very difficult to join. Yeah. And it's not to say that Christians, you know, obviously there was, you know, fighting the Muslims and there's
Some interesting uh revisionism there, but it's a beautiful religion. There's terrible things that have been done under the guise of Christianity, but if you listen to the teachings of Jesus Christ, they're not following his teachings. So it's like it's just human behavior. That they have
tagged on to Christianity. So when people say Christianity is responsible for horrible atrocities, I say no. I say humans are. Because if you if it was actually Christianity, you would be following the teachings of Christ and there would be none of those things. I mean anti Semitism is not Christian. Right.
So uh true Christianity is not that. So I I think it's lovely and I I hope there's a re revival of some of it. I'm not sure there is I think there is more now than before. There's a lot of young people that are getting into In into Christianity. It's an awareness that there's a higher power. So one can sort of say, look, the UFO thing, it's not the same as Christianity or whatever. This awareness that like we're not
Like there's something else going on, there's something more, there's something higher than us and that we should be humble in front of in the face of this just gigantic mystery. I think that puts us in a better Mentality. It certainly does. And if if anything, i if he's not the son of God, if this was an actual historical figure, what an insanely wise human being. who didn't have these thoughts that are inherent to all of us of vengeance and lust and greed. He's ha has none of these?
So radical. Also, um you've heard it said before that you should, you know, love your friends and and hate your enemies. I say to you, you know, you should love your enemies. I mean that's just it's like the hardest I'm not there. I think very few people are there. Uh, but it's certainly the right aspiration. Yeah, it's the right aspiration. And Tucker thinks that this whole UFO thing is somehow connected to the spiritual realm.
Well because we've we've been told for so long that there is no spirit. That spiritual realm is just a mental illness. Right. You know, it's like I love how he's like the Yahweh thing. He's like, But the problem with the people that tell you that are all mentally ill. They're all very unhappy. Like l like atheists, like secular like hardcore atheists are some of the most unhappy, depressed people I know.
I don't see like incredibly happy unless they do a lot of mushrooms. And those people tend to not be atheists anymore. That's the one weird thing. People that have had like intense breakthrough psychedelic experiences, one of the first things they go, maybe maybe there is
Like maybe maybe I don't know what I'm talking about because if I just experienced that and that's a real thing that you could have while alive on earth where you are confronted with divine wisdom and love in some weird, strange form. Yeah when there's a lot of people that believe that that's the source of a lot of religious experiences and instead of alienating and making those things illegal, we should study them and make them a part of the religious experience.
Because it's probably what they were originally. Well that's right. And so now that people are having spiritual experiences with UFOs, it's wonderful and they should talk about them and kindle them. Um I think the thing about psychedelics that's so interesting is that um at least my experience with them was that you uh become d you don't become so attached to your ideas. And your beliefs. Right. And so um which is a big problem in our society is people that get too attached to their their egos.
get attached to their beliefs as opposed to like, oh, I thought that I mean I've made I'm I'm I've made my whole career out of being wrong about things and then correcting them. Um but I think it it's hard because that you do it's really It's great quality. It's oh thank you. It's a very but it's still I hate it. I hate being wrong. Um it's totally natural to hate it. Um but I do think like having a practice that makes you go, you are not your There's something there you have an existence
separate from the things that you wrote on your blog or you were on X and just don't be so attached to them. Right. Don't make them your identity. Yeah. Um and that uh it's it's it's actually there's something really quite It there's an awful part of when you feel like you got wr something wrong, but then there's another part where you're like all
It feels good to get it right and you feel clean. And that that's like uh th that's what sh that's what we should be going for. But it does require for me, being humble about my limitations before some higher power is really important. place to begin. Because if you think there's no higher power or that I the other one is like souls. We don't talk about souls enough. Um a a new friend of mine at the university
was talking about how important it is to really to care for your soul and to care about other people's souls. That's one of the things that Christianity is so good at that you have something divine inside of you connected to something divine outside of you and that your behaviors affect its treatment and You know, when you tell people that you're just, you know, a meat suit and you're just worm food and your life doesn't matter and that it's all just, you know, random and pointless.
That's a terrible story. It's a it makes people feel terrible. Um but when you kind of go no, you have uh there was one of the most beautiful the I loved all the Charlie Kirk videos that went out after his death'cause there were so many once where he had these beautiful moments. But he's talking to these women that are doing the OnlyFans. Did you see that one? Uh huh.
And they're describing they're trying to shock him and saying just really kind of crude things about their sexuality and how it like the sex they have, it doesn't matter to them and and he was like, I just don't believe that. I think you have a soul. I think God has a purpose for you. What a much lovelier.
And it wasn't a you didn't feel like he was morally condemning them. Right. He was actually saying God loves you and so for me Christianity brings if that is the part of Christianity that I think is so special.
But it is hard. I mean, one of the things that this anthropologist that I'm relating to is talking about, she says it's it's h the more the God the more different the God is from humans, the harder it is to believe in them. And so people like Christians in particular, she would talk about their even evangelical ones are always complain about not believing enough and not having enough faith.'Cause it is so hard'cause you do have the Holocaust problem, the problem of evil.
Why if the God is all powerful and all good, is he allowing the Holocaust? Why do you allow Hiroshima? Why you know with these terrible things? Um and part of the answer for Christians has been well because he wants us to exercise free will. And to to be in touch with our better sides and and to realize our potential as
as moral uh moral humans and moral souls and and that's a that's a pretty good answer. Um but it is I I find my I was glad to hear that her say that. People struggle with it because I certainly do. Well I I mean I think everyone struggles I'm just I'm really fascinated by it. I'm I'm fascinated by it because when I go to church and I listen to them talk about various passages in the Bible, my mindset is always like what was the real
Like what are we missing out of these tales? What are we missing out of these recounting of these experiences? What what happened? I don't think it was not I really don't. I think there's something real to it. And and it again, it works. That's the the that's the main one. It's like you want to live a better life. Like if you live as a Christian, you'll have a better life. You'll have a more love filled, more wonderful life. That's real. And that this idea that oh it's fairy tale.
Is it if if it's a method for life that gives you a more rich and loving and peaceful life? Isn't that better for everybody? Isn't that a a real thing? That's a real thing. It's n there's no way you can know whether or not any of the stories in the Bible happened exactly as described. We can't know. So you have to have this leap of faith to lead You know, and it gets weird like Jesus comes back on a white horse, like, hey, slow down. You know? Like Revelations. The book of Revelations is weird.
what's going on in Iran is to light the the fire to uh bring to have Jesus return to light the signal fire? Like did you hear those recount things by that uh these non commissioned officers that went into these Briefings, combat briefings. Oh no. Yeah. Okay. Here's one of'em'cause I saved it.'Cause it's so kooky that I I read it and I was like, wait, what the fuck did they say to him?
'Cause it's it's so crazy. I tend to be anti apoc my my knee jerk is anti apocalyptic'cause I don't see apocalyptic movements uh doing a lot of good in the world. So Yeah. That's probably better off. Most of the I think a lot of Christians have ignored the Book of Revelations. Um I Yeah, I think focusing too heavily on that particular book is probably leads to bad outcomes. Okay, so this was the story that I wrote. This was in uh Yahoo. I can I'll send this to you, Jeremy, so you can get this uh
So we could put this up on the board. Did you find the thing? Okay. He urged us to tell our troops that this was all part of God's Now this is the guy who goes to this is a combat readiness uh briefing. Urged us to tell our troops this was all part of God's plan, and he specifically referenced numerous citations of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.
Uh he said that President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to earth. And they said that the guy was saying this had a giant smile on his face, which made it all the weirder. Like like, see if you could find that in there. Does it say that? No, it's not in that particular article. Oh, this is just military. Oh yeah, a bunch of people complained. There's actually like a lawsuit.
Yeah. You risk like the whole self fulfilling prophecy with that one. What are you doing? What what machines what what weapons do you control? So it's not just and also that is not how Jesus Christ would handle it. Let's go bomb Iran, that's how Jesus is gonna come back. Like do you think he would tell you that's the right way to do it? Like how did you interpret the text? Jesus E. Like how did you interpret that in the text? Okay, uh before we so we're we're deep into this show. So the episode.
All right. So what is your take on this? All right. You've changed your position? Yeah, I've changed I think uh spent a bunch of time with the files. Um I will say I think I did do a piece well, I do think that the shrimp is a code word. For g for young women. Um I'm pretty sure about that. What do you think pizza's a code word for? Well that was okay, so then I did a I did I had I had read this article about code words in the Epstein files and I did the shrimp.
And then I had some stuff about pizza and grape juice in there, about grape soda, and my co-author Alex was like, dude, you can't go if you can't go full pizza gate, you know, like you gotta you gotta like so we kept it out. And then the Times mentioned the pizza thing, so I wrote some on X about it, but I ended up taking it down because I was like, I don't really know this one. I mean what we what weird to me about the pizza one was where his urologist
Was like, take your erection dysfunction pills, and then we'll go out and get pizza and grape soda. And I was like, that is creepy. you know, as hell. Uh. So but I c I don't the shrimp one, I'm like ninety-five percent that means young women'cause you just see how they talk about it. And I think I proved it in my piece.
There's other ones like people were like the jerky is like cannibalism and whatever. It's like well it didn't help that the the restaurant owner was like the restaurant's name was like cannibal and something. Yeah. Uh but um I'm skeptical that that's what that Well, you would be skeptical unless you were part of some of these fucking bizarre satanic rituals, and then you would go, Oh my god, it's real. Like there are
People have sacrificed people, right? Could we agree to that? In in in human history. And there have been satanic rituals throughout history. Can we agree to that? Sure. Okay. So There has been cannibalism in history. We agree that unfortunately a lot actually. Why wouldn't we think they're talking about that? We don't want to believe it, right? Is that what it is? We don't want to believe that these people these
multimillionaires and billionaires that go to this island and engage in all this crazy shit aren't doing something like child sacrifice or cannibalism. Well let's start with the let's start with the thing that I think a lot of us thought it was, which is that it was an intelligence community sex blackmail operation. That's what made it for me a story. I mean, a creepy guy
Doing creepy things. There's just that's we call that a dog by man story. You know, what makes it a man bytes dog story is like is that you kinda go, Wow, is like Mossad and CIA running a honeypot. I mean, that's the premise of Whitley Webb's two volume book, One Nation under Blackmail.
Um, but when you look at it like we don't see that. We see we see one case where Epstein emails himself something that sounds like it's in the voice of the Bill Gates science advisor, Boris Karsich, I believe is the name.
And in it they talk about, oh, you know, it's the famous email where he says, Oh, you know, I got S T Ds, you know, you I he's it says you got S T Ds from Russian hookers or from Russian women and then you tried to slip antibiotics or you wanted me to slip antibiotics in Melinda's drink. And Melinda like they asked her about it, it was awful. Um it doesn't like that's not it's weird what that is. So first of all it's not even clear. We're just talking about emails. Right. Right? So
Who knows what was said? W just from the email we know that there at least implies that he's got dirt on people and that he is exercising Is doing something with this dirt that he has on Epstein or on uh Bill Gates. So we we're very limited in the amount of data that we possess. Right.
Inside those emails we find a lot of creepy shit. We find that one description where he was talking to this woman where she said, I'm doing a p um doing investigating a story about an island where they bring children for sex And he goes she almost had a heart attack when I told her that person is me. Well he was talking about the the rumors and gossip about him. But he wasn't saying that he's bringing children to his island for sex. But that is what he said. But if you look at the same thing.
She said I'm doing a story on A guy who brings children to his island for sex And he says she almost had a heart attack when I told her that person is me. The p the person that I my interpretation. Someone's bringing children to an island. I told her that person was me. Yeah. He didn't say I told her that's a bullshit rumor. I let her know that's not true. But that's very much in his style. I mean Look, look, let's back up to the intelligence system.
Um and I think Mike Bence has sort of pointed out the ways in which Epstein might have been a contractor or a financier or somebody hiding money for the intelligence. Beyond that, I don't see any evidence that he was doing much for the intelligence community, if at all. But you're only getting emails and only half of the emails. Right. So there's only three million emails that have been released. There's another three million that the FBI possesses that they're not released.
Right? So we're making it. And then if there is fifty percent of the data that hasn't been released, why? Is that way worse? 'Cause this stuff is fucking nuts. Like this this is nuts. Like
Take your erection pills so we can go get grape soda. Okay, what? And it's weird. Th this lady is investigating a place where they an island where they bring children for sex. I told her it was me. What? Well we should put that one up. I wanna look at that one. Okay, I think I mean here you're talking about um You're talking about so first of all
I think the picture is of a guy that is fully in charge of his life and he's doing he's like he is like amazing at getting people to love him and care about him. People call him his their best friend. In Florida clearly he was abusing girls and was, you know, busted for that. I think he was doing that because he's a pervert. Um, I don't think I didn't see th I don't see blackmail coming out of that. And then you get to later
And you've got okay, you've got the Bill Gates thing, which doesn't even appear to be from Epstein. It appears to be for Boris. And remember Boris, the science advisor, wanted Gates to pay for like a bigger apartment for him in New York. It appeared to be part of him threatening Gates.
to get something that for that Boris wanted. So maybe Epstein was advising him on it. But I mean to have a the other thing I'm struck by these emails, Joe, is that there are so many different attorneys people of the FBI, people in the Eastern District, the Southern District, the Florida Southern District.
They would all have to be in on it. And I'm skeptical because Why would they all have to be in on it? Well, because they would be they're in these I mean, they're in this they're reviewing the information. They're trying to bring you know they're trying to bring action against them. Well it depends on who are the powerful people that are implicated and what kind of influence they have.
over what gets released and what doesn't get released. Clearly names were redacted that are powerful people that are not victims. So that shows you right there that there's some info. But there's a reason to do that. Why? Because they're not guilty. Okay, what about the one where the guy says where Epstein says, I like the torture video.
Why would you redact the name of the person who sent you a torture video if you're not trying to protect a powerful person? Yeah, that's the Sultan, is that right? Okay, but that was someone had to just figure that out. I mean look the redactions are sloppy. Well but they didn't though in a lot of cases. But they did right there. Yeah, I mean the redactions I mean they were making them. I mean it was like a lot of powerful people's names. Yeah.
I mean look at like we're in the midst I mean literally the people that are being cancelled for this, like Peter Atia, these people are like victims of a of we're in the middle of a complete, you know uh you know, moral panic. I mean, we're now it's a McMe version two. I mean people are having to leave boards. I mean look, these are people I don't like. I'll just be honest. Like if part of me hesitated because I don't like Larry Summers. I don't like Bill Gates.
Uh, I don't care about Sarah Ferguson. Um, you know, I didn't say anything. Then they came for Peter Atia. I um you know, it's a little bit like like Peter Atia like They he didn't do anything wrong. He just like lost his job with CBS and you know, he's sort of now they're under this cloud and people go, Oh, but he was in the hospital and his wife was or he was with Abyssine, his wife was in the hospital.
We don't like what are we doing here? Like we're getting involved in Peter Atia's like personal life and so but he has to get fired for that? I mean it's gone way too far. Sarah Ferguson had to step down even though she you know, she said terr I mean, like these people I don't like them. Like these are not uh people I agree with or think their behaviors but I don't see So they're not guilty of crimes. Tighten that thing down.
I I uh I I think like, you know, they were I mean I'm glad the following There was definitely problems with the redactions. There was also a case where the members of Congress were trying to get stuff redacted, names got redacted of people that. Like I know in one case there were people that were getting licenses for guns that had nothing to do with Epstein on a list.
other people's names were revealed who were not you know guilty of anything. So that's why you you protect those people. I think we You go everybody the the logic right now is that anybody who had any interaction with Epstein had to have known of all the abuse he was doing and are somehow responsible for a lot of these people were hanging out with him and doing business with him after he was arrested. So this is also what is our view of people that
Do the crime and serve the time. I mean the left view has been a very good thing. Stop right there. He didn't serve any time. Do you know he served he served a year? Okay. He did not go to jail for a year. You know he did house arrests. Yes. It was a very sweetheart deal. And the prosecute was it the prosecuting attorney or whoever it was?
was told that he was intelligence. And this is why they were giving him this. That was a that was uh by the way, that I looked into that. Yeah? Yeah, that we looked into that one and that was um heard second hand. Uh So we don't even that wasn't even heard from Acosta directly. Someone said that they heard Acosta say that and they told Vicky Warden I believe her source is anonymous.
Yeah. So that's weak. And you know, Mike, I mean when Mike Benz was in here and Mike has done a deep dive this, he's sort of like, Look, at best you get Epstein tied up with intelligence. With the Iran Contra stuff. Right. But he wasn't I mean, there's two things to see here. Th on with his relationship with the intelligence community, he was at best a contractor, financier, which means he's not an important player in deciding covert o clandestine operations.
Um it was the it's you know, the head of state he killed Cold Fusion. He said p he he killed Pons his his work on cold fusion. I mean uh I don't know, did did he? I mean i c I Cold Fusion they keep doing it, right? They keep it. No, they haven't done it yet. Well car I know Carl Page the founder of the the brother of the But he stated that he killed Cold Fusion recently. Because he cut off funding for it?
I don't know that. Well th I mean we say he killed it. Why would he kill it? Because it didn't work. Or maybe it did work and it's problematic that it does work because it kills all these people that have all this all other money in various energy modalities. I just I mean I go fusion is like a whole I mean the idea that we have a secret that we've secretly tapped cold fusion and are hiding it
Or that he was on the way to breaking through to cold fusion and then they killed all of his research. Or but why? You don't think that could be done? Because there's so many people that have money and all these other types of energy. I just don't buy that you could first of all, that technology is super difficult. To get nuclear
Fission was this enormous undertaking, huge numbers of people. The cold fusion stuff was always the cold fusion stuff is really fringe. I mean it was like we're gonna be in the lab and doing co you know. But if you're not a physicist, so how do you know that? Well I mean I interview a lot of physicists and talk about it. I mean the big fusion projects are incredibly difficult. They keep announcing advances on them. They can't get them. Cold fusion is not even considered a mainstream fusion.
So to assume that there's some secret and I just think this is why I have a problem with the whole reverse engineering thing, is I just kind of go, you'd have to have So many people working on it and covering up for such a long time, I don't know how you get away with that. Well what if he was on the verge of a breakthrough but
this guy steps in and stops funding and puts some leverage on the university. Clearly he had dirt on a bunch of people that were at high levels of many universities. That's why a bunch of these guys had to step down. Didn't the head of Harvard step down? Didn't the head of Harvard step down?
Uh, because of him? Wasn't there a connection between Jeffrey Epstein? Well I mean Larry Summers, you mean? Or well Larry Summers was you know, he had to step down because he made those remarks about women as president. And then he just qu he just had to step down as professor.
And I say this look I say this genuinely as someone that is not a Larry Summers fan. I don't think I think it's ugly what he did. It's terrible. He was trying to get advice from Larry Summers about how to bet a Chinese economist and they were gross in their emails and it's terrible. But I don't think that you lose a job at Harvard over that. I don't think that Peter Tia should lose his job at CBS.
We've got that's we're in me too too. I understand and I agree with I see what you're saying. But what I'm saying is clearly he had influence over some very high and powerful people. He he also exaggerated his influence. Like he took a lot of credit for Santa Fe Institute, which was a lot of other people
I mean he was really I mean he was really interesting and smart. Like he w he gave a thing to you know, Bannon, talking to Bannon about it. That was really interesting. But he was also um Steve Pinker talked about him as a kibbitzer, like a kind of a bullshitter. Um And he was like we also saw in the files, I think it really overlooked. We saw how he made his money. Like he he needed the get the Rothsch he needed to get a deal with the Department of Justice for his client Ariana de Rothschild.
He hires Catherine Rumler, who was Obama's White House. Chief Counsel, and she goes and makes a deal at the Department of Justice, forty-five million dollar fine for the Rothschilds, ten million for Kathy Ruml Catherine Rummler,$25 million for Jeffrey Epstein. Everyone's like, where did his money come from? Uh doing deals like that. Like you realize
I mean one of the things you're Succession actually had a little little subplot about it. Like there's a few people in the world that do these crazy high-level deals, like often like mergers and acquisitions, that have these obscene fees because they're taking some tiny percentage. Epstein was operating I think the thing we didn't realize is that when you read the files is the levels at which Epstein was operating. I mean his his social and emotional intelligence is just off the chart.
Which is often rare among somebody that's that good analytically, someone that really understands like investments in the economy to be so I mean he was a master manipulator. So I don't think it's um I don't think it's fair to to say to people you had an association with him after he's commit after he's convicted of this crime. Rich guys
Look, we have a totally separate system of justice for rich people. I think we've known that for a really long time. It's terrible. I l I condemn it. We should find solutions to it. That's what Epstein used to get out of it. I don't see any evidence that intelligence helped him.
You know, we got other problems. The victims, Virginia Jaffree, she claimed that she claimed that she had sex with Dershowitz. She then goes, Oh, I was wrong about that. I mean, there's a lot of those victim testimonials that are untrustful.
So you get yourself in a situation where you start to put like some of them were probably prostitutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and that's the other one is we I did some reporting where we uh helped to we we found a fourteen year old girl who was being trafficked on the street
She turned fifteen in the process of us reporting on it. Um, you know, we're covering these PIs, they get the police involved, the police go get her. You know, her she's orphaned, she goes and backs to live with her aunt.
She's back on the street, voluntarily back on the street. Nobody wants to talk about it. It's like it's like you go rescue people and they're in that world. So these situations are much more complex than um I think the final thing on Epstein that kind of made me question is that I like a lot of other people had assumed that someone murdered
But you start looking at the evidence for that, look, maybe there more will come out. And even this last round, last few days are some new things that people point to, but they actually are not actually evidence of it. They said You know, Epstein's brother's attorney or Epstein's brother's uh examiner said that uh that he broke his hyoid bone and the hyoid bone bone is not
Usually broken in in hangings, only in strangulations. Actually it is broken in hangings, particularly for older people. And it's low on his neck. Yeah, and they s and that happens. Also the lady who is the guard deposited money into her county. But that doesn't what does that mean? Okay. Well, she also Googled his name.
Before he's got a lot of people. Okay, but why are you dismissing I don't understand why you're dismissing this? But hold on you are. Because if you do have a guard and all of a sudden this guard acquires M several payments. She she made several deposits. One of them was five thousand dollars just ten days before he died. And then the cameras are cut.
Okay, and then they mysteriously don't pay attention to the cell of one of the most important defendants of any case, any gigantic public case involving in enormously famous public fiction. And then this guy hangs himself while he's on suicide once. Because that alone is weird.
That alone is weird. That the cameras are cut, that there's no video of it. The whole thing is weird. You don't think it's weird? Well, I think You don't think it's weird that this guy that he just finds a way to s hang himself in this cage?
I thought I had that same story. I was like, the cameras are cut, the security guards are asleep. All those things are true. All those things are true. Um it's also true that the cameras went out a long time before that night. It didn't just go out that night before. Security guards fall asleep at night all the time. Um he
Attempted suicide, I believe eighteen days before. Eighteen days before he said that his roommate tried to kill him. Did you know that? Do you know his roommate was a cop that had killed four people in contract killings? His his cop Roommate, his uh jet cellmate, was a murderer. He was a guy who was a drug-dealing cop who had killed four people in contract killing.
And hi that was his fucking jailmate. And eighteen days before he said that guy tried to kill him. But he said that's his fucking cellmate. Why would you put a guy who's one of the most high profile defendants in any case ever In a cell with a hired killer who's a giant gorilla, like this huge fucking jacked Italian guy. But he wasn't in the cell with him that night. He was by himself in the cell. But Epstein tried to kill himself. I don't think there's any doubt about it.
I don't know if there's I don't I've never seen him say it, but I do know that he said that guy tried to kill him and they found him unresponsive eighteen days before. He said that guy tried to kill him. And couldn't he have lied about that? Couldn't he have lied about that? Video outside cell during Jeffrey Epstein's first suicide attempt no longer exists. How weird.
Yeah, why would he lie about that? He's in jail. Because he doesn't want to sell the guy who he's already saying this guy's trying to extort him. Yeah. He's already saying this guy's trying to get money from him. And this guy is a known killer. He's killed four people in contract killing. I how did you not know about that? I will say it's possible
I did know about that. You knew about the guy being a contract killer that was his cellmate? Yeah, I knew I knew that story, but I mean he w didn't have a cellmate at the night of his of his death, right? He that was one of the mistakes they made is that because he was on supposed to be on suicide watch
He was supposed to have a cellmate, didn't have a cellmate. I think that looked I don't know, but eighteen days before he did have a cellmate and eighteen days before he said that guy tried to kill him. But eighteen days before he tried to commit suicide. I don't know why they would put him in jail with a contract killer. Well, I mean how many who who's in that jail? Aren't the people in that jail pretty rough? His cellmate is a contract killer.
Why would he be in a cell with a cop who's a contract killer? I mean aren't there a lot of uh The night Jeffrey Epstein claimed his cellmate tried to kill him. New documents revealed Jeffrey Epstein claimed his cellmate tried to kill him in an incident before his death. Yeah, but we don't know if that's true.
Yeah. Why are you dismissing it though? I'm not dismissing it. Joe, look, maybe more evidence will come out. I'm just saying like if you look at the evidence we have. No, I'm saying I was confident it was a homicide and now. Were you aware of this? Yeah, of course all that's a good thing. Well how come you never brought it up before? You you seemed shocked when I brought it up. Well, because uh because my understanding is it was a suicide attempt eighteen days before.
But if he said that into consideration. No, no, no. I didn't no. I I my view earlier was that it was a homicide because the hyoid bone bone doesn't break when you uh have hangings Um he said he didn't want to commit suicide. The video went out, the s the the security guards are asleep. I mean this was a hu there was a huge investigation of this by the inspector general.
So the number of people that would have had to been involved in this conspiracy and cover up is very large, and it's a large number of people who are in this job. for to be do gooders. And so I'm very s I mean that's Look, maybe there was some evidence that's sometimes they're in the job to be do-gooders. Sometimes they're influenced by very powerful figures that want a particular result.
Yeah. Does that not happen? But we underestimate. But hold on a second. Does that not happen in the real world? It does, right? And wouldn't you imagine if you're dealing with multiple billionaires that may be compromised by the evidence that this guy's gonna relay in a trial? That that would be one of the times that they would want to exert that kind of influence? It's possible. And like I said, in our piece we wrote It's possible.
But I think at this point we don't know. I don't think we have the evidence either way. And and that's for me, that's the change. I went from I think it was a homicide to now I don't know. I didn't understand that that he committed suicide eighteen days before. No no no. He didn't commit suicide eighteen check before his cellmate tried to kill him eighteen days before.
They found him unresponsive. He said my cellmate tried to kill me. Yeah, but well how do we know that? Why would we think that's a good idea? Okay, and then was it reported that it was an attempted suicide to try to dismiss the fact that his cellmate was trying to kill him?
Because they wanted his cellmate to kill him, we don't know. But y but you can't dismiss that. The psychologists thought he was suicidal. They you know, I think um my understanding he could have lied about the room. He didn't want to have a roommate.
Um that's like why and they didn't have a roommate and I think I have a roommate who's a fucking contract killer. Well, who's a sociopathic cop who killed four guys. But if you're a s if you're a contract killer and you're in Epstein's um cell Why would you uh want Epstein to die in your cell? Because you wanna kill him because people are gonna give you like extra cigarettes at the commissary state. Do we have any evidence? Who fucking knows? No, but who fucking knows?
So for that guy, you say, Will you kill that guy for me? Like that y it's not even much of a stretch. It's not much of a stretch that Epstein would have killed him. It's not much of a stress that that guy killed him either, if the c if he's telling the truth that there was a report eighteen days before that that guy tried to kill him. We just don't know. Well we certainly don't know, but I don't understand why you would want to make the conclusion that he tried to kill himself.
Don't please don't misrepresent. I'm saying I don't know. And that the change for me is going from really looking like a homicide to really not knowing.'Cause there's some evidence that I had not considered before then. Right. You know the guy who did the autopsy was the guy from that autopsy show on HBO. Who his name is Michael Batten and he was famous the official autopsy. No no no. The one his brother authorized.
Because he's famous for ketting the autopsy though. He was a medical examiner. Site conducted a post suicide watch report. Epstein denied suicidality. uh and stated I have no interest in killing myself. and that it would be crazy to take his life, although he was depressed and unhappy about his current legal situation, he was told he will remain on psychological observation in the near term.
He says he didn't recall he got the marks on his neck, so he didn't blame that on the But no no no that's th i that's here. But then the other details from the other report said that he complained that the guy tried to kill himself. That the the his cellmate rather tried to kill him. Can you go back to the right?
I don't think but Joe, I think the I don't think that you've got it. I don't think you've got it. I don't think you've got the I don't think you've nailed I don't think we've nailed the the case that it was a homicide at all. Well I'm not saying that I know. Yeah. But I'm saying we agree we don't know. Yes, but you're dismissing these major factors of him being a cell with a contract killer, him saying eighteen days before the guy tried to kill him.
Yeah, but I mean there's just as uh you can make a case either way. Is my point. You can make the case that he was he was murdered. Cameras being down, the guards being asleep. But the cameras were down I think I I don't wanna don't quote me on exactly, but it w they weren't down like that day before or something. They were down for a while before. And the security guards fall asleep all the time. What did you find uh about him the the roommate trying to kill him?
He's found in the fetal position. Laying on the floor, snoring. Epstein told officers that Taglione cellmate had tried to kill him and that had been harassing him. Taglione claimed he had been asleep and woke up to see Epstein with a string around his neck. Right. Does that make fucking sense? Well yeah actually, but Joe, just to
So tried to kill him. And if Epstein but so and the result of this is that Epstein doesn't have a cellmate, right? So Epstein doesn't want to have a c if you want to kill yourself, you don't want a cellmate. So if you're going to get the same amount of facts. If you want to go got a guy to go back and finish the job, you shut the cameras off and you open the cell and you let this guy kill him. But they shut the cameras off. When they shut the cameras off.
Oh it doesn't matter. There's no video. Even the video that's there's been edited. The one video they show of the outside of the cell, a minute's missing from it. There's a lot of weird shit to it, man. I agree, but it's not It the where you should arrive on in my view where the the facts lead you is that we don't know.
And so that's that's a different thing to me than just saying That's safe. Well we don't know. But it is kinda fucking weird that he's in a cell with a contract killer. Kinda fucking weird that he made a complaint that the contract killer tried to kill him. eighteen days before. Not if you're trying to get So did they remove that guy from his cell? Is that what happened? He did, yeah. He was by himself obviously the night he killed himself or or was killed. Um or was killed.
Find the did you find the email where he's talking about um the lady on the island With she's saying that we brought children to an o that that someone brought children to an island. Remember he's faced with life in prison. Mm-hmm. He loved his decadent, hedonistic life. There's plenty of motivations for him to kill himself rather than live in prison. Right. And remember recent and like I think it was like a day or two before he lost his bail appeal?
So he thought he'd get on bail, he didn't even get on bail, he's gonna be stuck there. Mm-hmm. Um the the psychologist didn't believe him. She thought he was suicidal. And and so the the are so one way you interpreted it is that they messed up.
They they did a bad job. They and they should have did they should have known that he was suicidal and they should have had a roommate there. They the guards should not have fallen asleep. They should have fixed the video camera. I just can't imagine such a high profile defendant and you're not watching him like a fucking hawk.
I would imagine that a guy like that would be in protective custody with, you know, no fucking shoelaces, no no way to hang himself. I think you overestimate our prison system. I would think that you would do your very best in this case to make sure that this guy is watched. They didn't they bring him to channel. I mean they didn't. They they should have had a roommate in a cell and they didn't. Well they put him in a fucking cell with a
So it seems a little bit more than that. But that you when you say it that way, you make it sound like the killer was in the cell the night he was killed. I make it sound like the killer was in the cell with him when he says the killer tried to kill him. Right. But or he tried to kill himself. Isn't that a little weird?
Why didn't the guy do it then? Why didn't it work? Well he probably choked him unconscious and thought he was dead and he survived. They found him unresponsive. Or he tried to kill himself and then when they said, Why'd you try to kill himself? he blames it on the roommate so he doesn't have to have a roommate anymore. It's possible. Yeah. So find that um email where he says that it's him. Yeah. It's gone. And it is they've taken it down.
So if you kinda go so for me, if I go if I go we don't know if it was a homicide or suicide. Um the intelligence community work was appears to be of a long time ago and he was a contractor. Mm-hmm. We don't have any other evidence of a sex blackmail operation other than that email. Now there is one other thing that I thought was one so one
uh for the uh the theory that he's a blackmailer is that he put f he's like we have emails of him putting cameras in Kleenex boxes. Hidden cameras in Kleenex boxes with motion detectors. Was that in order to engage in a blackmail operation? Or was it just a pervert? Okay. Your friend uh told me about the projects he's doing researching a really bad guy who gets children for sex sent to his island. She almost fainted when I told her that person is me.
That seems pretty clear. I think no no, I think he's saying that she's writing a story i it was about him, but I don't think he's admitting that. I don't know about you. But if I was r sending an email and I was talking about someone researching someone who's sending children to an island for sex.
I would also include that I let her know that that was bullshit. Well she ends up coming and and meeting with them, right? You've seen the follow up to this? No. So she ends up coming to meet with her and I don't know if he like gives her money or something or funds her, but it's like
The thing is that like without justifying I mean, I think that after two thousand eight there's not I don't think there's any evidence and I could be wrong, there's not a lot of evidence that anybody underage came to you know, that Epstein uh you know, abused anybody under eighteen. And I'm not d defending abusing women over eighteen, but it that did seem like a pretty big change. Epstein associate found dead in Paris prison cell after he said he was gonna
Weird. Maybe he got sad too. Well maybe he's one of the co conspirators also. I mean people kill themselves a lot, you know. Psychopaths also kill themselves a lot. Also, people get people killed because they're gonna flip. It's possible and it's just uh it's just we would just need evidence for it. Yeah. So this is really if you're gonna kill somebody you should probably make it so that there's not a lot of evidence.
Right? Yeah. How did they find him dead? Did he kill himself? He hung hung in a cell. Oh. Hung himself. Hunged himself. Hang themselves. So then it's like Uh hired a contract killer to or who did it then? I mean, who knows? Yeah.
Well who knows what who knew what about what and when? But I don't think it's the I don't think it's the intelligence community because we're not seeing I just we're not I mean Mike came in here and you guys talked for a long time and Mike's not suggesting Well there's no evidence that it was. I mean we don't have like clear cut he did this and they killed these guys because of that. Right. We don't have that. Right. Yeah.
So I mean But we also don't have three million files. We also like the thing is that we don't he doesn't need blackmail to make money. Well he also doesn't need blackmail in order to be able to get people to do things and influence them. And if you have video of people fucking people and doing things they're not supposed to be doing and you're giving them drugs and you got'em on this island for these wild parties, they're more inclined to do things that would
Do stuff for you. I mean it's possi I mean, I'll tell you, I mean FBI confiscated a lot of films and videos. They had that. I was always very suspicious of that. The fact that he's talking about hidden cameras and motion degrades is very bad.
Well that was the narrative before that there was thousands of hours uh hours rather of horrible videos. Yeah. Right? So it's possible that there was now I don't know that I would be um visitors describe a bathroom reminiscent of James Bond movies hidden beneath a stairway lined with lead to provide shelter from attack and supplied with closed circuit television screens and a telephone.
Both concealed in a cabinet behind the sink, wrote the Times. The townhouse is now reportedly owned by Wexner's even more mysterious protege, Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah. So this is even before his arrest. Yeah. And also the the other part of it, think about this, remember when Jeff Bezos was blackmailed? And he was just like Yes. Yeah. But I mean it was still it was private personal things where he was sending them to a woman he loved. It shows the risk.
And so Well that turned out to be a dummy. That was like someone's brother. Yeah. Right? So but Epstein I mean in other words, if you use it, like if you actually like use your blackmail. I I think it's very hard then to maintain your reputation as somebody now maybe it was sort of hovering, never articulated
He was attracting people. I mean what's so striking about it is he's attracting people to him. He's got all this bonami, oh come hang out with Chomsky and Ehud Barak and um and all these people. It's like a really good time. You know, I think then being like, Oh, I have blackmail material on you, you need to do it. I mean, he's getting people to do what he wants them to do. For money, you know, for for feeling like good vibes, being in on some Israeli peace talk.
I don't then see him going around and maybe I look again, like I totally conve maybe I I just haven't seen the evidence then that he's going around being like, Oh, I have black men with churr on you, you have to do what I want. He got Clinton, he probably got why do you think he's filming it? That is he could be a pervert. I mean there's plenty of evidence of perversion, right? Um Oh the rant.
Investigators have finally looked into Jeffrey Epstein's New Mexico Ranch. Federal authorities apparently never searched the property, but now state authorities will reopen a two thousand nineteen investigation. About time New Mexico ranch. The lottery. Oh yeah, how they won the lottery. Wait till that if that's accurate. It's weird, I agree. That one's crazy. I mean Mike also points out that he
was leased this incredible mansion in New York by the State Department. But then the State Department like sued him. So it's you know, they're like he requ if he was like Les Wexner give him a house in Manhattan? And then the well didn't that didn't the big house the that was the this was a previous mansion. What about that thing I told you about someone found that the person who notarized that ten dollar transfer of the house? conveniently filmed like the best nine eleven footage.
And that those are the three million like the the timing of those missing files is right around the two thousand Yeah. I mean we s I think that what the files are important is that we saw he's able to make his money as a high level fixer. We saw people were really into him. People loved him. He was magnetic. He's able to get people to do things that he wants without using that as a tool. And we're not seeing
I just don't see we're I don't think we're seeing any signs or footprints or any of that of engaging in in blackmail. We have the cameras. We don't have half of the files. We what we have is weird. The the grape soda, the shrimp, the pizza references, the jerky, all that stuff's weird. This this lady saying that there's an island where a bad guy's bringing children for sex. She almost fainted when I said that person's me.
All this stuff is kind of fucked. Well that you admit it's kind of fucked. I think it's I think that he was I mean my interpret I mean one interpretation of it is that yeah he's freely admitting on an email. that he's trafficking children. I find that difficult to believe. That you would put that I mean, if you're gonna say that well, he doesn't put the blackmail stuff in email, but he's gonna put in an email that he's bringing children to the island, I mean, I think he's being sarcastic.
I think he's saying, Oh, that guy is me, like that's what they say about me. Why wouldn't you elaborate and say I mean if you're sending the sort of thing? That's why Bec I mean that I think that person works for him, right? Masha, is that one of the women that he had? I don't know. I I just I don't think that's him saying I'm Maybe. Yeah. Maybe. All right. I can share it with you guys. Of what? Oh, okay. Can I send it to Jamie? Yeah. You can airdrop it.
Is it compelling? More compelling than Yahweh's video. You don't like the Yahweh video? No, it's kinda interesting. It's fun. Is it compelling? All right, let me s uh you guys will decide. Or no, here I sent it. Oh can I ask you something? Yeah. I was curious about. What? Um oh I was gonna say you know, Elon. You think you think Elon knows more than he's letting on about UAPs. Yes. How is how do you know that? Well, because he works with NASA.
If he knows somet he knows something. Also, some people have told me that he knows some things. But don't you ask him privately? He don't tell me shit. Okay. I got a big mouth. I uh I asked somebody that was high up in his operation. Yeah. Uh we were it we were on the record, but I won't reveal who they are, what they said.
And they go, I said, You guys must be I was like at SpaceX you guys must just like have to don't you have to edit out like UFOs that you get, you know, before And the person just looked at me and they just said, Elon's really close with the federal Oh no. Just playo. What am I looking at? This is her this is her video in here. I think she shows I think she zooms in. I don't know what we're looking at. It's here in Texas. What are you looking at, lady?
Okay. It's like most UFO videos. It's just a dot. It gets better, guys. Come on. Okay. She's tripping. You know her? Is she your friend? She's my friend. Is she intoxicated? I think she's not. No, no, she's not. And this is like a not far from here. It's somewhere in Texas. I think she zooms in at the end. No. No? Well we still got ten seconds for it to get good.
Oh, she doesn't I thought she had a when she once she showed me she zoomed in on it as much better. Disappointing. We probably should have looked at it. All right. Let's wrap it up. Thank you, sir. Appreciate me, Joe. Good to see you. All right. Bye.