#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray

Dave Smith is a stand-up comedian, libertarian political commentator, and podcaster. He's the host of the "Part of the Problem" podcast, as well as a co-host of the "Legion of Skanks” podcast. www.comicdavesmith.com Douglas Murray is a political commentator, cultural critic, and author of numerous books, the most recent of which is "Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization." https://a.co/d/fUGXIZQ www.douglasmurray.net Go to ExpressVPN.com/ROGAN to get 4 months free! Don’t miss out on all the action - Download the DraftKings app today! Sign-up using dkng.co/rogan or with my promo code ROGAN. GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, (800) 327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org (MA). Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Please Gamble Responsibly. 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), or visit www.mdgamblinghelp.org (MD). 21+ and present in most states. (18+ DC/KY/NH/WY). Void in ONT/OR/NH. Eligibility restrictions apply. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino & Resort (KS).1 per new customer. $5+ first-time bet req. Max. $150 issued as non-withdrawable Bonus Bets that expire in 7 days (168 hours). Stake removed from payout. Terms: sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos. Ends 4/13/25 at 11:59 PM ET. Sponsored by DK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Joe Rogan?

  All right, we're up. Hey, this is coming. Good to see you guys. What's happening? Are you going no headphones?

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 0:18Joe Rogan?

  Keep the do.

• 0:20Speaker 02

  I'll do that. I'm not quite sure what they add, but yeah.

• 0:22Joe Rogan?

  There we go. All right. The goal of this is every time I see people that disagree with anything that's happening, any gigantic world events, it's one of these retarded shows where they're screaming, is the word again? We brought it. We're just talking about that. The word retarded is back, and it's one of the great culture victories that I think is spurred on probably by podcasts.

• 0:50Joe Rogan?

  These things are always like Pierce Morgan-y, which is fine, you know, where everyone's screaming over each other and, you know, there's five different people talking over each other. There's never just rational conversations where you discuss things, and I respect both of you. I think both of you are brilliant, and I thought, I bet you agree on a lot of things, and I bet you disagree on a lot of things, and it'd be fascinating to see your perspectives on these things. So, that's why you're here together.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Can I ask you something?

• 1:20Joe Rogan?

  Yes, sir.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Since the war in Israel began, and since the war in Ukraine began, you've had quite a lot of people who are very against both in different ways.

• 1:30Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Do you think you've had enough people on who are supportive of either war?

• 1:35Joe Rogan?

  I don't know that word enough, if that's a good word.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Let's say enough people who are on the side of Israel instead of wild critics of Israel.

• 1:46Joe Rogan?

  Well, I've had a few. I mean, I believe God Sad is on the side of Israel.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:51Joe Rogan?

  Jordan is on the side of Israel.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  You had Mike Baker, Coleman Hughes.

• 1:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Coleman did it for like 20 minutes, so it wasn't why he was here.

• 1:59Joe Rogan?

  No. I mean, none of them, and none of them is why they're here. You know? It's a good question.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Tilted one way.

• 2:08Joe Rogan?

  Um, me personally?

• 2:10Speaker 02

  No, no, no, just with a guest you've had.

• 2:12Joe Rogan?

  The guest, yeah, probably more tilted towards the idea that perhaps the way they've done it is barbaric.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  But why do you think that is, just out of interest? I'm just interested in your selection of guests, because you're like the world's number one podcast.

• 2:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's not, I don't, I don't think about it that way. I just think I'd like to talk to this person.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  But can I just, sorry, it's your show, but I mean, if you're going to interview historians of the conflict, or historians in general, why would you get somebody like Ian Carroll or?

• 2:48Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but Ian Carroll, I didn't bring him on for that purpose. I brought him on because I want to find out like, how's one get involved in the whole conspiracy theory business? Because his whole thing is just conspiracies.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:59Joe Rogan?

  You know?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  But do you have any, I mean, there's been a tilt in the conversation, in both conversations in the last couple of years. And it's largely to do with people who have appointed themselves experts, who are not experts.

• 3:15Joe Rogan?

  You mean like Ian? I don't think he appoints himself an expert in anything.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Who's that other dude who thinks he's an expert on Churchill?

• 3:22Joe Rogan?

  Oh, Daryl Cooper does not think he's an expert.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  No, in fact, I think it's everybody else is always calling him an expert and he's like, I'm just a historian.

• 3:29Joe Rogan?

  Have you ever absorbed any of his material? Have you ever consumed any of his podcasts or anything like that?

• 3:34Speaker 02

  I tried.

• 3:35Joe Rogan?

  Yeah?

• 3:36Speaker 02

  It's pretty hard to listen to somebody who says, I don't know what I'm talking about, but now I'm going to talk. Or I don't know about this, or I'm not capable of debating this historian, but I'm going to just tell you what I think.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's not exactly, that's not exactly what Daryl was saying. I mean, Daryl's point of view, however you feel about this, Daryl, what Daryl's saying is, he doesn't really like doing debates. He likes to do long format stuff where he can really explain his position.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  If you throw a lot of shit out there, there's some point at which I'm just raising questions is not a valid thing. You're not raising questions, you're not asking questions, you're telling people something.

• 4:15Joe Rogan?

  Do you think Daryl's doing that?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  I think there's a whole bunch of guys doing that. I think Dave is doing that, very obviously. Dave's a comedian, but he's now mainly.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Talking about Israel.

• 4:29Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'm mainly talking about Israel.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  That's all I see on the internet.

• 4:33Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but that's you just.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Well, that might be what you've seen.

• 4:35Joe Rogan?

  It's just you consuming clips.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  But that is also your shtick now, isn't it?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Well, what do you mean by that's my shtick?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Well, you're not a geopolitics guy in general, are you?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  I don't even know exactly what you're asking.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  I'm saying you've decided, being a comedian, you've decided now to become somebody who talks about Israel.

• 4:53Joe Rogan?

  This is not, I don't, I think you're incorrect. I don't think it's a decision. I just think you have long-form conversations, multiple of them. It's a huge event that's in the news, so it comes up. I don't think it's a thing. I think if you're on the outside, you'd say, oh, look, they're trying to get attention by talking about this very polarizing issue publicly. That's not.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  You do get attention from that. If you'd spent the last year speaking about Myanmar, you would not be on my lips.

• 5:19Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but he does talk about Yemen constantly. He talks about a lot of things that aren't in the news constantly.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  I tend to talk about the conflicts that my government is directly involved in, which I think is reasonable to me. But I don't quite get, like, what's all the appeal to authority stuff? I mean, what, you have to be an expert?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  No, I think authority matters. I think authority matters. And I think that if you just throw a lot of shit out there and then say, I'm not interested in the alternative views on this, and particularly when it's a counter-narrative that is wildly off. And when you get people, look, I just feel, we should get it out straight away. I feel you've opened the door to quite a lot of people who've now got a big platform, who have been throwing out counter-historical stuff of a very dangerous kind.

• 6:04Joe Rogan?

  You mean Daryl? Are you talking about Daryl?

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Daryl, who's the other one?

• 6:07Joe Rogan?

  I don't think Daryl has, uh, only is anything dangerous about what Daryl.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Derek, uh, what's his name? Cooper, is it? Which one is it?

• 6:16Joe Rogan?

  No, that's Daryl Cooper.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Daryl Cooper, who's the other one? Uh, there was one I just checked before on the way here. Daryl Cooper and then, oh, yeah, Daryl Cooper, Ian Carroll. Look, these guys are not historians. They're not knowledgeable about anything.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  No one's calling Ian Carroll an historian.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  But then why listen to their views on Churchill?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Daryl is incredibly knowledgeable.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  He's not. He's not. He's wildly, several reasons. One is, when he was offered to debate the current greatest living biographer of Churchill, he said, I can't, because he knows much more than me, and I admire his work and I've learned from it, but I can't possibly debate him.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  That's Andrew Roberts.

• 6:58Joe Rogan?

  But you don't have to be able to debate people to have opinions on things.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  No, no, no, you don't have to debate people.

• 7:03Joe Rogan?

  If it's not your thing.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  But if you, for instance, well, okay, but if you say, "I've decided that Churchill is the bad guy in World War II."

• 7:12Joe Rogan?

  It's not what he said. It's not what he said.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Neither Carroll nor Cooper have said that?

• 7:15Joe Rogan?

  Well, listen, I don't know what Carroll said, but Daryl Cooper has not said that. What he said was, he jokes with his friend Jaco, who's an Anglo-Saxon. He jokes with him, you know, "I think that Churchill was the secret villain of World War II." And what he's saying is, "By Churchill's actions, the war escalated." He's not, he's not, he's not saying anything-

• 7:38Speaker 02

  He's not just asking questions, then, is he? No, but that's the point of view.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Claim isn't that he's just asking questions. Yeah, he has a point of view.

• 7:44Joe Rogan?

  You can explain this better. He literally says he's joking.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  He said in the comment, he goes, "Listen, I'm being hyperbolic." And then, he once again, uh, disclaimed. He goes, "And I'm not claiming Churchill committed the most atrocities, or was the worst part, but in many ways, I do view him as the chief villain, as my hyperbolic provocative statement." But, but Douglas-

• 8:02Speaker 02

  What's the point of that?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Well, okay, but Pat Buchanan wrote an entire book on this. Is he not allowed? Is he not an expert? Is he not allowed to be interviewed?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  He's certainly not an expert. He can be interviewed. I've watched Pat Buchanan debate. I watched Pat Buchanan debate against Churchill historians, and he was absolutely leveled, because he doesn't know what he's talking about.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  When did he, when did Pat Buchanan debate and get leveled?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  About 20 years ago.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  I'm just curious.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  He debated against Andrew Roberts and several other historians at Intelligence Square in London. I was there. He didn't know what he was talking about. He had a contrary view, and it was interesting and stimulating to hear. But if you only get the contrary view, which is, "Isn't it fun if we all pretend Churchill was the bad guy of the 20th century?" At some point, you're going to lead people down a path where they think that's the view. And that's horse shit of the most profound kind.

• 8:50Joe Rogan?

  I don't think that's what he's trying to do.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  I think that's exactly what they're doing.

• 8:53Joe Rogan?

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• 11:43Speaker 02

  And the problem is, is that because you, I mean, your own platform has come about because you're a very successful comedian and much more, and you do ask questions and you are interested, but there are a lot of people who have come along, partly, I think, because they've come on this show, who have come along and they've decided, I can play this double game. On the one hand, I'm going to push really edgy and frankly, sometimes horrific opinions. And then if you say that's wrong, they say, I'm a comedian.

• 12:15Joe Rogan?

  But wait a minute.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  What do I, what am I, what, how can you tell me I'm just a comedian? I'm just throwing stuff out there.

• 12:20Joe Rogan?

  What horrific opinions that's wrong are you talking about specifically?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Once guys like this get into very obvious stuff, which is-

• 12:29Joe Rogan?

  Guys like Daryl?

• 12:29Speaker 02

  The ones I'm describing.

• 12:31Joe Rogan?

  You need to listen to Daryl to really understand what he's saying. If you take his, Daryl's words out of context, Daryl has some of the most nuanced, balanced, and charitable views on all the figures in, in, in history.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Particularly Hitler, it seems.

• 12:49Joe Rogan?

  No, no, you're wrong. You're wrong. He doesn't. He is a, what did he call him? How did he describe him?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  I think he compared him to a methed out psychopath who was holding an entire nation of people hostage, I believe was the way he put it.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  He also said on here that, that he wasn't anti-Semitic until the Holocaust. There were no speeches of- Hitler's in the nineteen thirties.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  No, again, this is.

• 13:12Joe Rogan?

  No, no, no, no.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Was this on your show?

• 13:13Joe Rogan?

  No, he said he was not public about it.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  He said he was downplaying it to win over. He said there was a period where he was downplaying it to win over popular support in Germany. It was his argument.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  There is no historian of World War Two who thinks that Hitler was downplaying antisemitism in the nineteen thirties. That was what he was doing. He wrote a book about it in the nineteen twenties. He got to power on it and he grew his power on the back of it. The idea that you can argue that in the nineteen thirties Adolf Hitler was downplaying the antisemitism. Like, there's no historian who would agree with that. So why would you throw out the idea that in the nineteen thirties Hitler was not being antisemitic in public? That was what he was doing in public. He announces to the German parliament what he wants to do. So when you're throwing out claims like he was keeping it down in the nineteen thirties,

• 14:08Speaker 02

  first of all, what are you doing? And secondly, why?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Okay. I mean, I think that it's kind of hard because I don't even know exactly what Daryl's point on that was. And so I'm not really in a position to argue what he was saying there. I don't think you're giving him the most charitable interpretation.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  I don't need to give him the most charitable interpretation to be able to see what he's doing.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Okay, I think you're strong manning him, I should say.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Look, anyone can look up what he said on this show and others, what these two guys in particular have said on repeated podcasts with both of you. It's an attempt to downplay Hitler and always to do down church.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  I don't think you downplayed Hitler.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  In whatever way they can. No, I said in conversations with you and others, this is the shtick of these guys. They've decided it's edgy and funny and I think this is very, very interesting and also very dangerous. Because we live in an era now that the right has got some mojo back in America. We saw years of crazy left overreach where they tried to make us all say the craziest things and completely predictably, there are now figures on the right playing with really dark and ugly stuff on their side.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  I agree with that.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  And they are mainstreaming this.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  I don't think Daryl's doing that.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  And I think it's partly being mainstreamed by the two people I just described and both of you have kept speaking to these people and you don't get on the historians who know about this and that that's just alarming to me.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Well, can I just say, so, because I kind of do agree with part of what you said there, like, I do think it is true that almost as a reaction to like the woke insanity that we've seen on the left and I think literally, I think nobody's been a more effective critic of that than you, I do think there has kind of been a right wing reaction that has embraced racialism and is is dangerous and not a good path to go down.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and now they're flirting with Holocaust denial and absolving Hitler of blame and much more.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  But I think you're wrong. I think you're wrong to include Daryl in that group. Now, the other thing is, I'm sorry, because maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying. You're saying people that I've had conversations with have downplayed the Holocaust?

• 16:17Speaker 02

  These two guys are examples of this.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Well, who are the two guys?

• 16:19Speaker 02

  I just told you, Cooper and the other friend of yours.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Ian Carroll. I've never podcasted with Ian Carroll. I have podcasted with Daryl Cooper once and there, he absolutely did not downplay any of the Nazi atrocities at all. And I would also, I would, I think that if we're zooming out here a little bit, maybe this is kind of part of the disconnect. Broadly speaking, in American culture, the idea that it has not been driven into people enough that the Nazis were bad and that Adolf Hitler was a, he is literally the modern devil. He is much more so than the actual devil. Adolf Hitler is what's viewed as the most evil thing, to the point that, I mean, just my entire life growing up, if there was a guy who sold soup on Seinfeld who was like authoritarian, he's a soup Nazi. Everyone was Hitler.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  The left called George Bush Hitler and they called Obama Hitler and they called Trump Hitler. Every single enemy that we've gone to war with is always called Hitler. Hitler, Saddam Hussein's the new Hitler, Muammar Gaddafi's the new Hitler, Putin's the new Hitler. It is so, so the idea that like, we haven't driven into people enough.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  I'm not.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Adolf Hitler was a really bad guy.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying, just as the left likes to play with very dark, ugly stuff. And they've done it for decades. They have, they have played down Chairman Mao's murder of the Chinese throughout his era in power. They played down Stalin. They still march on occasions with posters of Lenin. They, they've spent decades trying to do down evils that were done on their side. And I would suggest that one of the things that is going on at the moment is despite, or maybe because of what you just described. There are movements now on the right in America, subcultures, including people who follow both of you.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Who are very interested in playing with this absolute, beyond the pale thing. Why somebody like Jake Shields wants to play around with Holocaust denial? Why?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  I, I can't answer for Jake Shields. I don't know.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Why do you think?

• 18:28Joe Rogan?

  I have no idea. I think a lot of people get captured by this, by audience capture.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Captured by their audience.

• 18:35Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I think that's, that's the thing. You get a lot of positive reinforcement from a bunch of twisted people.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Well, it's also, I mean, it's, there's something about, you know, Michael Malice had that great line. He goes, when you take the red pill, you're supposed to take one and not swallow the whole bottle. And I think there's like this dynamic, what happens is, and then of course, people know the red pill is the analogy from The Matrix. The idea that you wake up to realizing that so much of the stuff you believed was bullshit propaganda and it's all lies. And this is a real danger when the establishment and the institutions are all caught with their pants down. Having sold a bunch of very consequential policies based on lies. And then once people realize that, they go, well, what else have they been lying to me about? And then they almost wanna look into every single thing and go, yeah, I think the whole thing was lies.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Now, I agree with you, there's danger in that. And I think that there are some things that then people jump to conclusions that are totally wrong. But I guess I tend to look at that and go, well, then maybe the people with power, not random podcasters. But like the people with real power should do a better job of not lying through their fucking teeth about everything.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Well, maybe you have power. Maybe you have power, both of you. We live in an era where podcasters have a lot of power. If you go on a podcast with Jake Shields and Jake Shields goes on to another podcast and says he doesn't think six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. What do you think's happening there? That's an exercise of power.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  A, um, and I agree with you about the breakdown of trust. Absolutely. We have lived through an era where in real time, we saw something called a conspiracy, the lab leak, which turns out to be true, as you and others said it might be from the beginning.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  I find that to be very racist.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  And against Joe.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  How dare you. Both of you, both of you.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  It used to be racist when we were saying that the, it was likely that the COVID variant had come out from the place making COVID variant.

• 20:36Joe Rogan?

  Especially since it's in the exact town.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Seemed like it, seemed like it was possible to us.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  By the way.

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• 22:07Joe Rogan?

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• 22:17Speaker 01

  I was, I was referencing the New York Times calling the lab leak racist, which is just the funniest thing ever that they go, it's racist to think that there was a sophisticated lab where they were developing like gain of function research. And they go, no, what happened is these freaks were eating bat heads.

• 22:32Joe Rogan?

  That's right.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  That's not racist. The other one was racist.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Pangolins. Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  But that one fell apart, that one fell apart in front of our eyes.

• 22:42Joe Rogan?

  Well, it took four years.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  It took four years. And I've said repeatedly, it's kind of inevitable to me that if you see something that is called a racist conspiracy theory fall apart and become also what we used to call true in a few years, it's likely to blow a lot of people's minds. But the question then is, do you help those minds that have been blown, blow themselves out some more by doing a whole load of other conspiracy stuff? Do you decide to go, hey, what else have we been lied to? Maybe Churchill wasn't a great guy. Maybe Hitler wasn't such a bad guy. Maybe the Holocaust, et cetera, et cetera.

• 23:18Joe Rogan?

  Nobody is saying that. No one is saying maybe Hitler wasn't such a bad guy.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  You are saying that. If you're saying that in the 1930s, Hitler kept the antisemitism down.

• 23:28Joe Rogan?

  No, no, no, no, that's not what he's saying. What he, what he was saying is that he didn't do it as publicly. He was doing it in meetings because the support for that kind of thinking wasn't as ubiquitous as it was.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Is I've seen this. I've seen this before. I know exactly what these guys are drinking. They're drinking a couple of very, very discredited historians like David Irving and they are just regurgitating it. And it was always been. The same thing. It is always an attempt to minimize Hitler's antisemitism actions. Eventually down the road, you get to minimizing his actual involvement in the Holocaust. And then you can go on to the next stage.

• 24:10Joe Rogan?

  You can't say that about Daryl. It's not true.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  What you're guilty of here is kind of similar to, I think, something that the woke left has done, which is this concept creep where you're talking about some people online who are doing this thing. And then you're lumping in other people with them. Listen, I'll just say this right now. Daryl Cooper is currently, I believe, almost finished, or he's working on a big World War II series. And when this comes out.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  What's it gonna be on?

• 24:32Speaker 01

  We can see.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  It's a podcast?

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, he does long form podcasts. When this comes out, I am quite confident to say beforehand that if you're going into it expecting him to be downplaying the atrocities of the Nazis or downplaying the evil things that Adolf Hitler did, you're gonna be disappointed.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  My point is, why are we even talking about this guy?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Because you brought him up.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Yes, because he comes on podcasts like this. My point is, this is not a serious historian. He's not a historian.

• 25:00Joe Rogan?

  He's been, he never claims to be. He's been doing these long form podcasts on these subjects for over a decade. And if you go back to 2015 and listen to Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem, it's an incredible piece. And it's, how many hours long?

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Thirty something.

• 25:18Joe Rogan?

  And it literally starts from the persecution of the Jews, where they're being driven out of Europe. It's like this horrific account of what happens to these people. It's, what he's trying to do is paint a picture of how the world goes mad and how the world goes sideways. And he's doing it from the perspective initially of these Jewish people that are living in Europe that all of a sudden their neighbors are turning on them and they're being attacked. Like, it's incredibly charitable. But what he's trying to do is...

• 25:52Joe Rogan?

  Show what happens to human beings when they're confronted with unbelievable atrocities and how things go so incredibly sideways.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Lots of people have written and spoken about that.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  So why is he not allowed to? I don't understand.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  He is allowed to. So when he is allowed to, I'm saying that there is a weird way in which figures like him, whose ideas are not being countered when they are raised, are given platform after platform to spread their views. They are welcome to those platforms. I'm not saying they shouldn't be platformed. I'm saying these are very, very fringe figures who are pushing ideas that are either debunked now, have been debunked before, or they will not stand up against somebody who disagrees with them.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Okay, I would just say, maybe this is the disconnect here. When you say there's like not pushback, Daryl's one line on Tucker Carlson, this one line where he himself said he was being hyperbolic and kind of says this to prod at his buddy, got more pushback than any one line I've ever heard on a podcast. There were numerous articles written by historians, numerous shows that covered it, people went through, there were Twitter threads about it. So I don't exactly get your point. Like, there was lots of pushback. If you're saying he should go and debate somebody who's giving him pushback on that, okay, maybe. I also think it's reasonable for him to say, "I don't really do debates."

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's weird to mainstream very fringe views constantly and not give another side. I think that's weird.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, okay, I think there's a little bit of a contradiction here. You're saying now that these are fringe views, but then you're also saying that these are enormously powerful views.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  No, no, no, there's no contradiction. Let me clear it up if you think there is. I think there are very fringe views that have become mainstreamed on the right.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  But then aren't they not fringe by definition?

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Sure, you can play an epistemological game with them if you want.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  No, I'm just saying what's be at there.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  But you do understand the concept, don't you?

• 27:41Speaker 01

  That fringe ideas become mainstreamed? Okay, sure.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  So that's it.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Okay. I still, I'm not exactly sure. So you're saying that what Joe shouldn't have Daryl Cooper on?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  No, I'm saying that that has, that there will have, that if you mainstream very, very fringe views, which are easily able to be debunked, if you mainstream them, at some point, that view that was so fringe will be what eager, very disconnected, unhappy people are going to start playing with too. And if, if these people are such experts in how you see a society go weird, they can look at what is happening to a portion of the right everywhere on this stuff. There is a portion of the right across the West that is playing this very dark game, and they're doing it deliberately, and you can't not be aware of that.

• 28:37Joe Rogan?

  I am aware of that.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Well, I agree with that. I don't think Daryl Cooper is doing that, but I do agree with your characterization. I think it's a pretty important distinction there.

• 28:44Joe Rogan?

  You're just taking this one statement, and then this, where he's trying to joke around with his buddy, this Churchill statement. And this is, this is the basis of this.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  No, because he and these other guys are all doing the anti-Churchill stuff now.

• 28:57Joe Rogan?

  But he's not doing an anti-Churchill stuff.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Okay, he and the other people in the orbit I'm describing.

• 29:02Joe Rogan?

  Churchill was the author of this whole Operation Unthinkable, right? Where they wanted to use the Nazis to invade Russia. Wasn't that Churchill?

• 29:12Joe Rogan?

  Is that not true?

• 29:14Speaker 02

  We're gonna have to get into the weeds on Churchill. There is always going to be a corner which you can get me on, on a bit of Churchill.

• 29:23Joe Rogan?

  But that's the point. But that's the point, is to have a comprehensive view.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Churchill was never working with the Germans to invade Russia.

• 29:31Joe Rogan?

  No, no, no. This is a plan that was drawn up. Do you know about Operation Unthinkable?

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Fire away.

• 29:38Joe Rogan?

  Pull it up, Jamie. Um, Operation Unthinkable was at the end of the war, I believe Churchill was concerned about the rise of Russia, in the rise of the Soviet Union. And the idea was, and we'll find out what the historical facts are about this. Operation Unthinkable, the name given to two related possible future war plans developed by the British Cheats of Staff Committee against the Soviet Union during 1945. The plans were never implemented. The creation of the plans was ordered by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on May 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces Joint Planning Staff in May 1945, the end of World War II in Europe. One plan assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany to oppose

• 30:23Joe Rogan?

  the will of the United States, impose rather, the will of the United States and the British Empire upon Russia. The will was qualified as a square deal for Poland, but added that that does not necessarily limit the military commitment, the assessment, signed by the Chief of Army Staff on 9 June 1945 concluded. It would be beyond our power to win a quick but limited success, and we would be committed to a protracted war against heavy odds, the code is, yeah.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  This is, okay, first of all, I never do Wikipedia.

• 30:54Joe Rogan?

  Okay, we don't have to do Wikipedia.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  No, no, that's okay, that's okay.

• 30:56Joe Rogan?

  This is just what Jamie pulled up.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Okay, but first of all, yes, at the end of the war, and a plan requested that wasn't seen through, that suggests that after the defeat of Nazism, Communism of the Soviet Form is also going to be a threat to Europe, was simply evidence, I mean, it was obvious.

• 31:15Joe Rogan?

  True.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  It's what Churchill worried about throughout the 40s. Worried about it in Yalta, he worried about it everywhere. I'm sorry, but I have to return to this point, that this man manages to do one of the most heroic things in human history, in standing alone against evil in its most concentrate form, and he does about as much as any human being can do to save the civilized world.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  If you just park that and you go on to a plan in 1945 to try to counter Soviet domination of Europe, you see what I'm saying?

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but no one's doing that.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  This is not doing something in the round.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's also, look, I mean, look, I'm not even like, I'm not at all the expert on World War II, and I'm not like, gonna debate with you about World War II. But I would say that like, that is, there's a lot of room for nuance and disagreement with what you just said. You know, in the 20th century, we had two world wars. They're the worst thing, objectively speaking, the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of the world. And the Second World War is the biggest bloodbath in human history, and it ended with handing the man who you just mentioned, Joseph Stalin, half of Europe. So, listen, if you want to argue, I'm Jewish and like, of German descent, so like, I'm not against the argument that it was, the Nazis had to be defeated and that was the

• 32:43Speaker 01

  most important thing, but there still is just the basic facts, that it was a, it almost couldn't have gone worse. It was like, just a nightmare for civilization. And if people want to look back at that and go, man, was there any other way this could have been handled? Was there any other way, were there blunders that were made here? Now, personally, what I feel much more comfortable arguing would be that, I try to blame everything I can on Woodrow Wilson as much as I can, because also, he created the income tax on the Federal Reserve and did so much to damage my country. But I think American entry into World War I was really a disaster, and imposing the Treaty of Versailles on Germany was a disaster. I also think that's kind of fairly mainstream history, like, that's not a particularly

• 33:26Speaker 01

  controversial view, that like, imposing the Treaty of Versailles on Germany ended up in disaster.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Well, no, except that as Martin Amis said, the only way to not get to the Treaty of Versailles would be for Germany to win World War I, but yeah.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but we're not talking about the Nazis winning the war. We're talking about, you know, listen, I think that-

• 33:43Speaker 02

  But, secondly, sorry, I just have to address that fundamental. You say that the outcome of World War II and everything that happened in it was the worst thing that's ever happened, and the worst thing imaginable, worst possible outcome, you said.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Just about.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  You said worst possible outcome. Let me give you a much worse possible outcome. Hitler wins.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Right, okay.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Okay, so it's not the worst possible outcome.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  I mean, listen, but, okay, Hitler, yes, okay, I'm not saying you can't dream up a worse outcome, I'm saying what you have-

• 34:11Speaker 02

  It's not dreaming up, that's just what my country, birth and others, went through.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  But what did end up happening was the, what, sixty million people died, including the Holocaust, and then Joseph Stalin takes half of Europe. So, okay, fine, I should, I'll correct that. There is a worse outcome.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  But, that's not a great one.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  No, nobody said it was. This is like, there's a very weird argument that you now hear about this, the, this, this attempt to revision this, and I know why it's happening.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  I don't think, I don't think there's anything I'm saying that's revisionist.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  I think there is. But, this, this attempt to sort of say, look, you know, the end of World War II, what have we got? Stalin has half of Europe, what was the point, and so on. That's, that's going on, that's going on. And, uh, there are people who are feeling it. Uh, that argument is very similar, this, this, this particular school of, as it were, history. Is doing something that I've seen happen with American history as well, particularly with Lincoln. Lincoln's an interesting comparison to make with Churchill on this. Uh, there are people who will criticize Churchill for mistakes made not hard to do. Quite hard not to make mistakes while fighting at a war of total annihilation against your country.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  People will say, oh, he didn't sort this out in nineteen forty-five. You know, it's rather like Lincoln. He didn't solve every problem in the world for all time, but he solved a hell of a big problem for his time. And that requires some kind of generosity, of spirit and understanding in hindsight. As opposed to, I will find something that he did that I wouldn't have done, because if I'd have been running the, uh, the British Empire in nineteen thirty-nine, I'd have known exactly how to do it. And I'd have known how to hold the whole thing together, and I'd have kept Stalin back, and he'd have been great at Yalta, and, like, this is-

• 35:56Speaker 01

  But I don't think anybody's saying that. Yeah, I, I, I agree with you. I think there was a tendency of like, woke left kids to do this, but I, I don't think that's what, certainly not what I'm saying, and, and I don't think what Daryl's saying. I do also think that one of the bigger, um, kind of the bigger picture dynamics to all of this, is that we have, um, at, at least since nine eleven, been in a state of perpetual war. And all of these wars have been disasters, they have been so many lies involved in selling all of them, I mean, oh- The whole Iraq war, the whole war in Afghanistan, just lying the whole way through. I mean, I remember literally having conversations with Green Berets in the middle of the war in Afghanistan.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  And they're like, George W. Bush is telling you that the army we're building up there is really successful. This thing's gonna fall in a week without us. And then all through the Obama administration, it's just like lie after lie after lie with disastrous wars. And so this does create a fertile ground for people to say, I wonder if they were lying about all these wars. Again, I'm not really trying to argue about World War II. I'd rather argue about these wars today.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  It's fertile ground. I think the interesting question is whether you're busy watering it.

• 37:04Joe Rogan?

  Well, should you not talk about mistakes that were made if overall?

• 37:08Speaker 02

  You should. Absolutely. Absolutely. I have all four going back and looking at mistakes.

• 37:12Joe Rogan?

  So what are you, what is your argument then?

• 37:14Speaker 02

  It's a very weird thing to go back, zone in on a man, say, this one thing is a mistake and should characterize him, and you ignore everything else.

• 37:23Joe Rogan?

  You're taking him out of context when you're talking about Darryl, who's done, what was it, 30-plus hours?

• 37:29Speaker 02

  So what? 30-plus hours of podcasting? You'd do that in a week.

• 37:33Joe Rogan?

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• 38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a very, it's a very different thing. It's a very different thing. He's not doing a podcast like talking to people.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Okay, nor is he doing scholarly work, nor is he working in the archives clearly. Come on, I mean, this is, he is not the historian of our era.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  He's not claiming to be.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  This is the thing, Joe, this is like punching jelly.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  No, but you, you don't, you don't consume, but you don't consume his work.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  What I'm saying, because I don't need to consume endless versions of a revisionist history. I understand, I know where this comes from.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  But it's not revisionist history. If you listen to his work, it's not revisionist history. He's basing it on historical work.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, but, okay, so this is my point about jelly. It's a shape shifting thing. Comedian or historian?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  He's not a comedian.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Historian or podcast? Would be historian or actual historian? You say he doesn't claim to be a historian, but he's pumping out tens of hours of history.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Neither does Dan Carlin. He doesn't claim to be historian either.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  You see my point about the move? It's like some weird jujitsu move.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Where you say, hang on, you know all about this as well. You say, I'm not a historian, but I'm gonna spend my time talking about history. I'm not a journalist, but I'm gonna spend my time talking about this thing. I'm not an expert on this, but I'm gonna spend my time talking about this thing. It's a weird move, yeah?

• 40:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  You don't think?

• 40:16Speaker 01

  No, I'm a free American. I can talk about what I like to.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  You can talk about what you want. I've noticed you can, but we all can. The point is, what are you pushing? What are you watering?

• 40:26Speaker 01

  What am I pushing?

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Liberty, free markets, peace, prosperity? Not getting in another stupid catastrophic war which we're on the precipice of right now? That's what I'm pushing.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  What are we on the precipice of?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Well, I think you, weren't you just talking about it the other day? Everyone I hear on the inside says we're about to attack around.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  I think you just said something about that the other day. Am I wrong about that? I thought I saw in one of your interviews that you did.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Possibly. That doesn't mean we are on the verge of a war. I mean, you keep referring to we being in wars. There's a very big difference between a country having a military that's engaged. And a country being at war. This country has not been at war for 25 years. You have not been fighting for the American homeland for 25 years.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Yes, we haven't, that's true. We haven't had a war on our shores. We've been picking on third world countries halfway around the world.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Well, you haven't been randomly picking on them. I mean, Afghanistan, you went.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  I didn't say it was random.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, okay. It wasn't like you suddenly decided to bomb again Myanmar or something. You went for Afghanistan to find bin Laden and take revenge for nine 11 and stop an attack like that happening again on the American homeland. That is very different from a country being at war.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's a total mischaracterization of the war in Afghanistan. It's one thing to say, that might be an accurate characterization of the special operations mission in late 2001. But then we fought, then we fought a 20 year regime change war against the Taliban.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Because you got dragged into the quicksand of war.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Okay, fine, but I thought it wasn't a war. Like, what, I don't get your argument.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  No, I said it was a war. It's your, it's your use of we, as if you're personally like suffering this war. Yeah, you're a taxpayer. We're taxpayers, so we pay for it. Okay, fine.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Douglas, would you go, if I went back and corrected you on every time you've used the term we to refer to your government or something like that, like if I were to say, oh, we just imposed tariffs on China, would you point out that I didn't and it was the Trump administration?

• 42:15Speaker 02

  I'm saying you take it obviously very personally and that's your right to do so, of course. I'm just trying to make sure we're accurate here.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  What, what do you think I'm taking personally?

• 42:23Speaker 02

  It's just that, the American wars.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah, I think they've, they've killed hundreds of thousands of people and cost my country eight trillion dollars and degraded my country very much.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  And there's a very good argument to make on that. I'm still slightly bemused about this move from, I'm an expert on this and I have views, to, I'm a comedian.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  I've never claimed to be an expert on anything.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  This is the problem, Joe. I mean, if, if, if, if somebody says.

• 42:52Joe Rogan?

  Wait a minute, you have to claim to be an expert on something to have an opinion on something?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  No, you don't have to be, you don't have to be.

• 42:58Joe Rogan?

  So what's the issue?

• 42:59Speaker 02

  This is like, I'm not a historian, but I'm pumping out history. I'm not an expert, but I'm talking all the time about this thing.

• 43:04Joe Rogan?

  But you're not even talking about specifically on what he just said.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  No, I'm saying, this is my point about this, you say, I'm not an expert.

• 43:12Joe Rogan?

  So what's the solution, to not talk about it?

• 43:14Speaker 02

  No, it's to have more experts around.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Well, the expert class hasn't done a great job, man. This is follow the science.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. I agree with that. I just said to you, I agree with that.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Right, right. I know, so Douglas, during all of Covid, I will put my track record against any of the expert class on Covid. I'm glad to do that. So should I have just shut up? Should I have shut up by opposing lockdowns and opposing vaccine mandates?

• 43:39Joe Rogan?

  No, that was the argument at the time. You realize that, right?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  That's the entire argument that you're making. Let the expert handle this. You're not an expert. You're right, I was just a comedian.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  You're wildly, not listening to what I'm saying. I think you have to take, I think we should agree perhaps on the following, that one major thing can break down in front of your eyes, or many major things. And it does not mean that every single one of the sewer gates should be lifted. Okay?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I get that point.

• 44:08Joe Rogan?

  But who's saying it should be?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  I'm saying this is the chatter on what is part of our side at the moment. Is that a lot of the sewer gates are being lifted. Sometimes by people who know that they're doing it, sometimes by people who don't, sometimes by people who say, "I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there." But at the very least, there's some damn hygiene that should be required, isn't there?

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but sure?

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Just that. Let's have a bit of hygiene on our own side, not lift every sewer gate.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  And when you say our own side, you mean the right wing broadly, speaking?

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Broadly speaking, and I'm sort of funny about libertarians, I'm never quite sure, I always think, I always say, I think libertarians are essentially the bisexuals of politics. They should just choose, Joe. They should choose. It's kind of, they just want everything as a buffet.

• 44:59Joe Rogan?

  That's very funny.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Well, I think we want some things. I don't know. Okay, that's a weird way to put it, but I get your point. All right, well, I mean, I don't know. Look, I mean, essentially, I just don't, maybe there's something I'm missing here. But if your argument is that like, you're saying, "I claim to be an expert, but then I have like a parachute to get out of it by being like, hey, I'm just a comedian, who's just saying this." But I don't think I've ever like really claimed to be an expert. I have opinions on things.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  But if you're not.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Because I'm interested in these topics.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, but isn't it weird to go around, for instance, let's get to the last year and a half. It's a bit weird to be simultaneously saying, I'm not an expert on a conflict and talking about it everywhere.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  I don't think so, not really. I mean, I don't know. I don't think like, I don't see how you can have an opinion on things.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Which things?

• 45:46Joe Rogan?

  All these things that we're talking about.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Some of them, yeah.

• 45:48Joe Rogan?

  Are you an expert?

• 45:49Speaker 02

  I am on some, yes.

• 45:50Joe Rogan?

  On some, but not.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  But you're talking about some that you're not an expert on.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  You'll notice that I didn't do.

• 45:54Joe Rogan?

  What should you do if those subjects get breached?

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Well, I think that you educate yourself as much as you can.

• 45:58Joe Rogan?

  Shouldn't you say, I'm not an expert and then give your opinion if you're in the middle of a conversation?

• 46:02Speaker 02

  I think it's, as I say, I think that it's a weird move to say, I'm not an expert on this, but I'm going to talk about it nonstop. I think that is strange.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Listen, I will certainly concede that I am weird. So I'm not disagreeing with you. It's weird that I'm as obsessed with all this stuff as I am. I mean, like, okay, I'm a weird guy. I do, I tell jokes at nightclubs and then get obsessed with politics and monetary policy and like, okay, fine. But I just like fundamentally disagree with this idea that, which I really do think is quite anti-democratic in spirit and quite, you know, elitist. That there's an expert class. They can have opinions on all of these things. It's weird for any regular person.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Who's just read about it.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Not my view, not my view.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Seems like what you're saying.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  I conceded already. I said a long time ago that I believe much of the expert class let itself and us all down very badly. And I think that happened in foreign policy in areas, not every area, but it happened in some areas. I think it happened with COVID in many areas, but that does not mean that it's just a free for all. No. There are some things we can still verify to be true and can still agree on as baseline levels of agreement in a free society. And, and yes, everyone is free to air their views, but it does not mean that everyone who sounds off on an issue, whether it's World War II, the war in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine. Has an equally valid point of view, no.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  I certainly wouldn't argue, I mean, that to me is just batting down a straw, man. I mean, I certainly wouldn't argue that everyone has an equally valid point of view. And I certainly wouldn't argue that there shouldn't be some standards of like who you would wanna find interesting and talk to and who you wouldn't. But also, it's like, so let's have the conversation that like, I don't know, like if there's, um, if, if there is, uh, if there are experts out there who can smack all of this stuff down or just destroy every point that I, I make over the years or whatever. Like, okay, so then do it and then let's see.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, but well, that's a bit weird, cause also then it's like the debate me, bro thing, but.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  But you just criticized Daryl for not debating.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  No, it's fine, it's fine, yeah, I know. Let me just make the main point. I think what I'm trying to get at, Joe, is that it's a bit like the Twitter algorithm thing. Which is, yes, everyone is and should be free to say what they like on Twitter, apart from whatever, I mean, the very fringe things of like immediate incitement to violence and all that kinda thing. But we all know that one of the oddities of Twitter, including since Elon took over, is that what you hope is a restored marketplace of ideas ends up pushing you really crazy shit.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  And that is what I'm suggesting is happening on a podcast level and maybe on a wider level beyond that. I get stuff on Twitter I just do not want. I do not want a guy with one and a half thousand followers who's got some zany new view on something, who isn't an expert, but is an expert, to be pushed at me. And effectively, what is happening with the Twitter algorithm is happening everywhere else as well. And we're all for the open marketplace of ideas. I want that, I thrive in it. But it is, it is different once you get into the thing of, is something manipulating the algorithm behind? Is the algorithm being pushed on me? Why am I being given this? Why am I not being given that? Why am I being constantly pushed this view?

• 49:29Speaker 02

  And I think that the answer to a great degree is the same thing in your world as it is in the Twitter world, which is, if you go straight online and you say, you know, JFK file drops, uh, watch livestream of Kennedy historians reading the papers live.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  You're not gonna get any views. No one's gonna watch it. That's what kind of what's needed is for the people who know the documents to go through the documents. But you and I know that if, as there was some guy who did immediately, you do something like uh, livestream Mossad involvement in JFK. You're gonna milk it. You're gonna cream it online. The money comes in. I'm saying that there's a similar algorithm in all of our lives that we're not as aware of as we should be. Which is that we, because we all know this at some level. That there are certain things that uh, get your, a bit of your base going. Or get people going interesting and crazy and then they start debating it and all that sort of thing.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  And that algorithm of online seems to me to be spilling into the real world.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  I, I don't disagree that there's certainly more sensationalist stuff will get you more clicks. I, I also don't think that's a, it's not really unique to social media or podcasting. I mean, this has been true.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  I write for the tabloids.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, right, this has always been true. Right? So, yeah, okay, so it's kind of one of the problems of humanity.

• 50:56Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I don't think anybody's arguing against that. You know, um, it's certainly never my intention when I talk to someone to try to get more views. It sounds crazy, but I'm only talking to people that I'm interested in talking to. And in Daryl's case, it's because I've been a listener of his podcast for years.

• 51:15Joe Rogan?

  That's it. This is like genuinely how I pursue things. That's why you're here. I'm genuinely interested in your views as well. Even though you completely disagree with him.

• 51:28Joe Rogan?

  That's, I mean, this is the marketplace of ideas in real time.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  I agree, although as I say, I think you've massively underrepresented the pro-Ukraine argument and the pro-Israel argument in the last two years.

• 51:46Joe Rogan?

  I don't know. I mean, well.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  That's my observation.

• 51:49Joe Rogan?

  Okay. You're totally allowed to have that observation. What is the, what's the pro-Ukraine argument that you think is not being represented enough?

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Well, my broad view is that, again, something to do with the algorithm, that anything that is

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Conspiratorial about Zelensky or the Ukrainians in the conflict does very well. Anything that says, actually, the Ukrainian army is fighting to try to retain as much of their country as they can, doesn't do as well. I think that everything that is pushing the idea that, for instance, the Americans caused it, or something like that, does well. I think everything that says, actually, in February 2022, Vladimir Putin's tanks invaded Ukraine, and they shouldn't have done, doesn't do as well.

• 52:46Joe Rogan?

  I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that what Vladimir Putin did wasn't horrific.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  That's not my point. The point is that after that, there's a whole set of things. Let's look at, for instance, the issue of corruption.

• 53:02Joe Rogan?

  Okay.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Ukraine is a pretty corrupt country by EU standards, by World Bank standards. And it's been a problem, as it is in that neck of the woods. And it's understandable that if the US is one of the countries putting money and arms into Ukraine, then it's going to be a subject of legitimate interest to the American people and others, the European taxpayers. Nevertheless, you end up in this, and I know this because it's the same thing in the old media, you end up on the new bit of the story. And there's always a risk that you will lose sight of the beginning of the story.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  For instance, I mean, Putin's corruption is legendary, gargantuan, and not as interesting, it seems to me. The algorithm doesn't push that. And I think that's, to a greater extent, the case with the Israel Hamas.

• 54:02Joe Rogan?

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• 55:59Speaker 01

  Well, isn't there a little bit of a concern? Like, I would say a couple things here. Number one, I'm not denying, I don't know how the algorithm works or what it's pushing. It's an interesting thing that we probably should all know more about. But I think there's a danger when you're, to just classify everything as, well, the algorithm pushes this and doesn't push this. It's like, it could also be that some ideas are just resonating more and some ideas are more popular than other ideas. And there's probably, probably both of those things are at work in that dynamic. But I also think that something like, the reason- Why, say, talking about Ukrainian corruption is more interesting in a lot of ways than talking about Russian corruption is obviously because like, well, one of these countries is an enemy and the other one is one that we're sending tens of billions of dollars to.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Hundreds.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  And so, yes, well, debating on between Zelensky and the weapons companies, I don't know, he says he only got 70 billion dollars of it, but we've spent closer to 170, so whatever. But the point is that, obviously, if there is a country that we are propping up funding, arming, and they're corrupt, I would say my starting point would always be to be more concerned with that corruption than an enemy country, which it's almost kind of a given, is a corrupt country.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  I know.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Like, I don't know, I'm sure there are fringes of the right who might say like Vladimir Putin's some great guy or something like that, but that is, I really do not think that is the argument that most people who are critical of this, of Biden's policy, are making.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  Sure, I mean, I think the one of the, I think one of the interesting things that happens in this is the old cliche of losing the wood for the trees. It just happens an awful lot, and it's the nature of the old news cycle, let alone the current one, the social media era. Actually, I remember that, so I would don't go back to World War II, but let me just very quickly, I remember this debate with Pat Buchanan when he was debating much more learned historians on the subject of the origins of World War II. And the whole thing got lost in all of this sort of mad puzzle of views about iron ore production in the Bavarian forest and this sort of thing. And I remember that everyone was all over the place, and the moderator turned to the historian Andrew Roberts and said, Andrew Roberts, why did World War II begin?

• 58:09Speaker 02

  And he said, World War II began because Hitler invaded Poland. And those moments come along quite often at the moment, which is, yes, there's an awful lot of very interesting things to look into. There's a lot of very interesting things going on which we should all be able to talk about and do talk about, but sometimes you have to remember the origin causes of things as well, and you have to stick to keeping that in mind.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I certainly, I agree with-

• 58:39Speaker 02

  And I think that a lot of people are pretty bad at the moment of keeping that in mind. Like, you can, there, you can concede Ukrainian corruption, you can concede all sorts of things, and still not lose sight of the thing of- If Russia rolls tanks into neighboring countries.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  It can't be allowed.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Oh, well, listen, okay, so on that, I think we have an area of agreement. And I do think, like, even, um, while I much prefer, uh, the, the path that Donald Trump is pursuing to the path that Joe Biden pursued when it comes to the, the war in Ukraine. And of course, this is, you know, Donald Trump's thing is, once you piss him off, he's gonna call you every bad nickname that there is. But when he-

• 59:19Speaker 02

  And sometimes when you don't piss him off.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Well, sure. But when he's like-

• 59:22Speaker 02

  The Danes come to mind.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  What did, I, I believe he said, uh, that Zelensky started the war.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Or something like that, which is like, okay, all right, that's a little bit ridiculous.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  He said Zelensky started the war and Zelensky was the dictator.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Yes, okay, all right, so-

• 59:34Joe Rogan?

  Trump said that?

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Yes, he did, but it was after Zelensky pissed him off.

• 59:38Joe Rogan?

  He said Zelensky started the war?

• 59:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was, this is how Donald Trump is, love him or hate him, for better or for worse. Donald Trump, it's like, if, if you, he feels that you disrespected him or come, came at him, he's gonna be 10 times more vicious to you.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  By the way, this happened two weeks before the, uh, disastrous Oval Office meeting.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  And I wrote the next day, the cover in the New York Post, which was a big picture of Vladimir Putin with the headline, "This is a dictator." Just, again, as I say, not to lose track, in all of the melee, not to lose track of the basic facts.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Well, look, I, I will say this, as somebody who is, I'm, I'm very anti-war, broadly speaking, and I do, I do agree with you that it should, like, we should be able to have conversations about all the things that led up to the war and all the different, you know, like, blunders that, that were made, and also still recognize that Vladimir Putin invaded a country and is responsible for, you know, at least hundreds of thousands of, of people dying. And, you know, my, uh, um, uh, Scott Horton, who I always try to promote on here, he just wrote this book called Provoked, I think it's the best book that's been written on the, uh, history leading up to, uh, um, the, the war between, it basically takes you from the collapse of the Soviet Union up to the war in Ukraine. And even in that book, the book is called Provoked, and the argument is that, that Western

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  policy was very provocative toward Vladimir Putin, and there were a lot of, uh, off-round. That could have been explored and should have been explored. But he has an entire chapter in the book where he is saying like, look, Putin had a lot of other options. He didn't have to do this. It's not as if any of that justifies his invasion. And so I do agree with you that whenever we're talking about a war, particularly a war of aggression, that should always be in the front of people's minds. I mean, you can criticize, you know, I would say, I think I'm consistent on this across the board. You can criticize lots of things about the insurgency in Iraq, certainly, but you should remember that George W. Bush invaded the country when he shouldn't have and based off lies.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  So I say that when my government does it, I'll say it when the Russian government does it also. That being said, there's a very strong argument that there were many policies that the US, you know, NATO and Europe as well, but mostly the US pursued that were just almost like if you wanted to come to this inevitable conflict, this would have been the policy to pursue to give you the best chance to end up there.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  You know, I was with a British military friend recently and somebody asked, what does the fog of war mean? And he gave a brilliant example of what it means on the battlefield, which a lot of people don't understand. There's a version of the fog of war in history as well. The great Czech writer Milan Kundera had this beautiful phrase in a book of his from the 90s called Testaments Betrayed, where he said, the odd thing about mankind is, he said, we walk through life in a fog and we stumble along a path and we create the path as we stumble along it. He said, that's not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is that when we look back, we see the man and we see the path, but we don't see the fog.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  Everything looks inevitable when you're standing in the present. Everything looks like it was going to happen this way and you have these endless, often fascinating, often futile explorations of what might have been, but it doesn't take into account the fog.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  It's a very good point.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  And the fog of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union was pretty considerable. The efforts in the 1990s to bring them into a more obvious part of the international order failed. And my own view has always been that in part, we missed an opportunity. To pay a kind of civilizational respect to the Russians, which they deserved.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  But not but also throughout the period that people now say there are all of these off-ramps. And now so many people claim that NATO went around the region desperately trying to provoke the Russians into into some kind of war or inevitably leading them that way because of NATO expansionism. They never take into account what was in my memory and experience very clear, which was NATO didn't go to go around recruiting. People came to NATO. Countries came to NATO wanting to join precisely because they feared the aggression that Ukrainians have suffered since February twenty twenty two and indeed before. I was in Georgia just after the two thousand and eight war began, the country, not the

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  state, always has to be confirmed, otherwise people are like, what? Who invaded Georgia? We attacked Georgia. They're the bastards. But I was in the country of Georgia and Putin had tried to invade them and had seized South Sethi and Abkhazia. And they were desperate to join NATO. In fact, they're desperate to join the European Union. I rather frivolously said to a Georgian friend, if you want, we can swap, you can take our British membership of the EU. But in the NATO thing, they were desperate for it. And they were desperate for it precisely for the reason that many of the Ukrainians were desperate for it, which was only way to stop Putin expansionism.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  So, you know, in the whole fog of the post Soviet era, that is one of the many things that gets left out of the conversation. And by the way, Putin's actions in February twenty twenty two and since, all he's done is provoke two new countries to join NATO and his borders with NATO have grown. That's true. Finland and Sweden wanting to join. And the only reason Finland and Sweden wanted to join was because they too are scared. It's it's it's a heck of a thing to get the Swedish to join a military alliance. It doesn't come easy to them. It doesn't come natural.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  And these countries joined because, like Georgia, like Ukraine, they desperately feared Putinist expansionism. And they weren't wrong.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Okay, but I get your point. First off, the war in Georgia in 2008 actually came, what was it, two or three months after the Bucharest summit where NATO announced that Georgia and Ukraine would be entering NATO. So just making that point, that the NATO aspirations came first. But listen, I don't think you're wrong. I don't think anybody is ever implying that like, we've expanded NATO through force and that the countries who were joining, or at least the governments of the countries who were joining, didn't want it. Although, in the case of Ukraine, there's a great piece in the Washington Post about this in 2006, where joining NATO was actually very unpopular. And there was a lot done, and largely because they just didn't want to take on the headache of the conflict that this might provoke. But,

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  you know, the question I think isn't necessarily like, do these countries wish to join NATO? Of course, I think most countries in the world would like to join NATO. I think most countries in the world would like the most powerful government in the history of the world to guarantee their defense and subsidize their defense. The question is, is that in America's interest? And in terms of your point of seeing through the fog, I mean, look, there was, as you know well, in the 90s, in the late 90s, during the first round of NATO expansion, there was a lively debate amongst this. And I don't mean a debate amongst outsiders or non-expert experts or whatever. I mean, within the real deal experts, the wisest graybeers in the national security apparatus, there was a real debate with at least three secretaries

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  of defense who warned against this. Robert Gates, Robert McNamara, William Perry, the secretary of defense at the time, almost resigned, said his biggest regret in life is that he didn't resign over it. George Kennan was able to see right through that fog. He literally said, the Cold Warrior, founder of the containment strategy, saw right through that fog and goes, this will inevitably lead to a conflict with Russia. And his exact words were, and then when there's a Russian response, everybody will say, look, this is why we needed to expand NATO. But the point here is, okay, even within that deep debate, which there were lively debates about, even the people who were On the pro-expansionist side of things, like Henry Kissinger. Even he said Ukraine would have to be a special arrangement.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Ukraine will not come into NATO because obviously that's leading to a war with Russia. And so I don't think it's unreasonable, and I think this is a fair thing that we should do in all conflicts, is like to have, as Mearsheimer puts it, to have strategic empathy. To say like, hey, listen, let's reasonably place ourselves in the other person's shoes. And say, how would we react if somebody was expanding their military alliance? That is explicitly anti-us and is bringing it up to our borders. And now is openly for years and years and years saying that we are going to bring your largest neighbor, where you have very important strategic interests from your point of view, into our military alliance.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  And you are saying over and over again, this is our brightest red line. Do not do this. And then they keep flirting with doing this over and over. Then they back a street push that overthrows the government there. Don't you think maybe that would be a provocation?

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  First of all, two things.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  The, if you want that strategic empathy that Mearsheimer, I'm not an admirer of. But if you want to do that, you can do it the other way around as well, surely.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  I mean, do the same thing with the Ukrainians.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yes.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  The Latvians and others.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I would never, Douglas, but my response to you was never, I can't understand why the Latvians or the Lithuanians would want to be in NATO. I understand, yes.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  Right, right. And I can understand why Russia thought that Ukrainian membership of NATO was a red line. I can understand that. But that wasn't why Putin invaded in 2022. He, and I think that, and I think there's an oddity, if I can say so, maybe this particularly comes across on the libertarian bisexual side. But the, I think there's an oddity of the.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Let the record show him a happily married heterosexual man.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  They all say that.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  I think there's an oddity that sometimes particularly happens on the libertarian side, which is a presumption that things only really happen in the world because we make them so. And, you know, Russia invades Ukraine because of American policy in Eastern Europe post 1989, 1990. Something happens in the Middle East because of American policy. And I think it's a very blinkered and parochial view of things, because my experience in countries around the world is that there's a heck of a lot going on that America is frankly not really involved in.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Well, that's certainly a straw man of my position. I am not saying that America is...

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  No, no, no, but what I'm saying is, it is very, in fact, it's partly since you very kindly raised the issue, Joe. Your book. Mind your book. On democracies and death cults. It's one of the things I find very interesting about this with democracies, which is that it's one of the things in the nature of a liberal democracy that because we have the right to air our opinion, because we have the right to criticize our government and much more, we end up doing all of that. And there is a misapprehension people can come to, I don't know if you do, but they can come to, which is effectively we are the only force that causes action in the world. And there's a reason for that, which is that we have, thank God, a say in how liberal

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  democracies are run and how we're governed, and we can chew over all of the disagreements that we have. But when a liberal democracy comes against a kind of rock, like a death cult, a totalitarian regime, a dictatorship, like Russia or the Iranian Revolutionary Government, there's always this temptation to say... To focus our attention on our own side because we can't do a darn thing about the other one. It's a version of, you know, the great late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said when he was ambassador to the UN, he had this great rule, sort of known among those who

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  know about it as Moynihan's Rule, which is, he said, if you sit at the UN, or the UN Human Rights Council, or any of these bodies, you would come away with the belief that the most abused people with the fewest rights in the world live in America and other Western liberal societies. And he came, because we're the ones that talk about it. You know, if there's one incident of racism in America, the whole world knows about it. Everyone reads it, there'll be protests everywhere. If there's one incident of racism in North Korea, it's not going to make any news. And then you have on top of that the fact that the way in which despotisms and death cults and dictatorships work, the information just doesn't come out.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  And Moynihan's Rule ended up being that the, it's an interesting point, he said that his rule by the end of his time at the UN was that the number of human rights violations that occur in a country happen in exactly inverse proportion to the numbers of claims of human right violations. Because only, only the countries which care about it and which such things can be aired in are ever going to get it out. But the, the, the point of Moynihan's Law and the warning of it is, be careful not to come away with the mistaken idea that the freest and most liberal societies are the worst. And I think there's a version of Moynihan's Law that applies, whether it's to the Middle

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  East, to Ukraine and Russia, which is, we come away with this, people may come away with the impression that the bad things in the world effectively all come from here.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  And there is quite a lot to be said for some of that, but there's not everything to be said. Much of the world runs on a dynamic and a dynamo, which you can't do a darn thing about, other than to try to understand it.

• 1:13:51Joe Rogan?

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• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, so I, I mean, again, I certainly, there, there, there is truth to a lot of that, and I think that is a fascinating kind of dynamic where there is something about kind of like, you know, I noticed this even just with my own kids, like, it's like, and people, when you have kids and you raise them really, you know, like, you're really sweet to them and you don't hate them and you give them a good life, small things end up becoming huge, like, things in their mind. Like, someone pushed me at the playground and it's like, whoa, this is, whereas, like, the way I grew up, that would have just been kind of like a non-event, but, anyway. I think it would be certainly incorrect to assume that everything that happens bad in the world is somehow a consequence of US meddling. I also think

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  that there's people on the other side here, maybe the people who are more neocon-leaning, more war hawk, uh, hockey-leaning, um, they have a tendency to only focus on the bad things that everybody else does and act like our policies have no impact on this.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it would be ridiculous.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Right, so very specifically, you know, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I'll just get two, like, bullet points on this, and there's, we could talk about a lot of this, but, look, number one, in, in 2008, as, as you well know, right, the Joe Biden CIA director, who was the CIA director for the entire war up until Donald Trump just came back in, he wrote the Net Means Net memo to Condoleezza Rice, a private cable to the then-Secretary of State when he was ambassador to Russia, to let her know that this flirting with bringing Ukraine into NATO is gonna end up in a war. And by the way, the Russians don't want to do it. His words exactly. If you keep pushing with this, the Russians are going to have, they are gonna have to make a decision that they don't

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  want to make, which is whether they intervene or not. And number two, uh, Stra- Straltenberg, uh, I might be butchering that again, but that, the head of NATO, he, he himself said that Vladimir Putin sent him a draft treaty in late 2021 and said, "Look, if you just put into writing that you will not bring Ukraine into NATO, I won't invade." Now, if you want to argue that, um...

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  This, this, you, I admire your appeal to authority to the head of the CIA.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  It's not an appeal to authority.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  Well...

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  How is that an appeal to authority?

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  You, you regard the, the view of the CIA director on that occasion as being useful for your argument, but, secondly...

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  But, you have...

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  Now, secondly, there's an oddity...

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  To believing what Vladimir Putin says.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  No, wait, hold on, you didn't let me finish my point. So don't believe what he says. I'm not gonna pretend to read his heart and mind or something like that. But at the very least, you handed him the giant excuse in order to do it. I mean, maybe he doesn't really believe it, but this is his argument to his own people and to the world. That it's like, look, and we put him in a position. You know, if you hate Vladimir Putin, he's such a terrible guy. Well, we put him in this position where he gets to now very plausibly say to the international community in the same way that if the Soviet Union had survived and the United States hadn't.

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  He doesn't very plausibly have the opportunity to do that. He invaded Ukraine because he wanted to annex the whole country because he was trying to pretend that the whole place had been run by Nazis.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, okay, the whole place wasn't run by Nazis. There certainly were some Nazis there.

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  This is what he told the Russian people.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  Oh, he also brought up, listen, when he announced.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  You can lie an awful lot when you're a dictator and you have the ability not just to run all of the media, but to kill your political opponents. I mean, you can do an awful lot.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:19:17Speaker 02

  None of this, you know, I just got back from Ukraine again the other week. And it's so weird. I saw the Oval Office meeting as it happened from a trench in the front line between the Russian and Ukrainian positions in the east of the country. And it was so weird seeing the way in which this country's territory was being talked about by outsiders, and particularly by America. Because there's so many oddities about it. But the people who are fighting there, the soldiers on the front lines, like the ones I was with, they're not fighting against Putin forces because of NATO expansion or anything.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  They're fighting because. He lied to his own army, he lied to his own people, he lies to the world and he decided he wanted to gobble up Ukraine because he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union. And as a result, these young men are in dugouts in the middle of winter, fighting Russian soldiers because the Ukrainians' homes are 30 kilometers behind them. And I just, I think among much else, that's stuff that cannot be forgotten about. None of this is simply about NATO expansion, or this, or that. It's about a country whose people are suffering in their third year of war. And it's almost total war.

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  It's as much total war as we've got in the modern age. And...

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  But that's not, but that's not, I'm not disagreeing with any of that. I'm not saying, the Ukrainian people were fighting because they wanted to keep their country. People don't very much like being invaded by foreign countries. I understand that completely. And I've also always said throughout this whole thing, that is their right. They have a right to do that. We as Americans have a right to, you know, have an opinion on whether our government ought to be funding and arming the thing. But all I'm saying is that, I'm not making an appeal to authority here. I'm just saying that you have, the top people in the Russian government, all unanimously saying like, this is our red line. You keep flirting with NATO expansion into Ukraine. And then you have all the people at the top of NATO and at the top of the US government admitting it too. And going like, yeah, this is the whole beef. So why is it, like, these two things aren't mutually exclusive?

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

  No, no, they aren't, they aren't. But, I mean, they weren't going to expand NATO to Ukraine.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  Well, they kept flirting with it and you know this.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  That the Ukrainians wanted membership. And it was very unwise whenever anyone from the rest of the West even flirted with it.

• 1:21:51Joe Rogan?

  Didn't Kamala Harris openly say that NATO was gonna join, Ukraine was gonna join NATO?

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I never saw her as the Kissinger of our era.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  Which I agree with. Now, there's some area of agreement, Douglas.

• 1:22:04Joe Rogan?

  That's Tim Walsh.

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  He's the guy for that.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  Well, obviously, that guy's the future. But, okay, but it is still the Vice President of the United States of America.

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  No, sure.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  And it's, listen, it's not just-

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  Again, that's not why Putin invaded.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Well, you can assert that-

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  He invaded because the thing he's dreamt of since the fall of, falling down of the Soviet Union is-

• 1:22:23Joe Rogan?

  Do you know how he dreams?

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  We know a lot from what he's said and what he's done since the fall of the Soviet Union and his statements, certainly very early on in his presence.

• 1:22:33Joe Rogan?

  Right, but if he does have a red lawn and you violate that red lawn, is that because he's following his dreams or it's because he's-

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  His dream is, as is said many times, is the reconstitution of the Soviet Union's territory.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  I don't think that's exactly what he's said. He's alluded many times to like how great the Soviet Union was and what a tragedy it is that it collapsed and things like that. But regardless-

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  Something we can agree is-

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  A fiction on his part. I mean-

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  Oh, I think the Soviet Union collapsing is one of the greatest things that's ever happened in the history of the world. One of the most evil regimes, if not the most evil regime.

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  And very largely a result of American action.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Uh, sure. There's a lot of factors in there, but yes-

• 1:23:11Speaker 02

  Just trying to throw in some pro-American views.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  I will certainly concede that us luring them into Afghanistan was, played a huge role in weakening the Soviet Union. It came with the minor little price tag of 9/11.

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  That was the-

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  But, okay, but you know, that's a-

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  The Soviet Union did not fall just because of Afghanistan.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  No, I didn't say, I said it played a role. I didn't say it was just because of Afghanistan.

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  The main thing was the stationing of European troops.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  Well, also because communism as an economic model just doesn't work and it was a disaster and it was destined to collapse.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  We can agree on that.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  Like, all centrally planned, totally socialist economies are destined for bad results.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  I don't like the word destined in that because, I mean, my experience, things that don't work can go on an awfully long time.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Well, look, the Soviet Union went on an awfully long time. I mean, it was the-

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  I thought when I went to North Korea some years ago, that couldn't go on for much longer and on it goes.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, okay, so fair point there, but certainly it's gonna be, you know, it's a much different dynamic for- Communist country like North Korea, who is a relatively small and not expansionist. Whereas the Soviet Union was trying to maintain an empire, which is a much tougher thing to do. Look, the United States of America is going broke trying to do it, so it was pretty tough for them to do. All I'm saying here is that like, if you, if the dynamic, again, it's not just that like, first off, in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit, we announced we were doing it. Now, we didn't give them a map plan, but we announced they are coming into NATO. Over and over, not just the Kamala Harris comment.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  Over and over and over again through the years, people at the highest level of the US government asserted that this is going to happen. That it's a matter of time. And then, 2014, this was a major, major provocation toward the Russians. That we backed this street protest against the democratically elected government there.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  That's, again, it's tricky, because the Maydan protests were genuine students in the center of the city who were uprising against a corrupt government.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  I'm not even arguing that.

• 1:25:11Speaker 02

  And they were shot, you know, and that, again, it's like, it's the people of Ukraine, like other countries. I mean, they do have agency beyond what Washington.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not claiming any of those people don't have agency. I'm just claiming that Washington poured $100 million into the thing and sent our politicians over there. Our politicians openly saying, "We're on your side. You have the backing of America."

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  I know, but historically, historically, you know, America does like to be, has liked to be on the side of people who desire freedom over autocracy.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  When it's convenient, not so much when it's not.

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  Not in Saudi Arabia, not in Egypt.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  I'm glad you joined me in my dislike of the House of Saud.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Okay, fine, but no, but I'm, but look, it does attack.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  I was worried for a moment there.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it does attack your central point there, that it's like, no, I'm sorry, like, see, this is my beef. My beef isn't ever with talking about the corruption or the evil things that other governments do. What I don't like is this whitewashing over our own corruption and the evil things that are. The idea that America, we have a history of just standing with the people because we love democracy so much. No, we use that as an excuse when we think it's. in our strategic advantage. We will overthrow democratically elected governments with no problem, which by the way, Yanukovych was democratically elected with elections verified by the EU. But I'm not denying any of those kids had agency, and I'm sure a lot of them were protesting against their own corrupt government. But the point is that, like, look, imagine on a, I think Jeffrey Sachs came up with this, isn't mine, but imagine on January 6th.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  If like Chinese politicians were coming over and handing out sandwiches to the rioters and saying, we have your back. We have, I mean, listen, we would lose our collective minds if another country came in and did something like that. Okay. And but I mean, we lost our collective minds about Vladimir Putin installing Donald Trump, and it was all just completely made up. It wasn't even a real thing. But so to think, okay, those people.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  Well, we didn't lose our minds on that. A certain subset of mainstream media lost their minds. Yes.

• 1:27:10Joe Rogan?

  Wasn't even a subset.

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  For me being the.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  No, main set.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  For me being the bisexual libertarian here, you have, you have corrected me on my collectivism several times here, and you are right. Yes, we didn't lose our mind. I am speak, but others, many other people here did. But you, look, I mean, you're pouring a hundred million dollars into a street protest against a democratically elected president of Ukraine. And the whole issue is over essentially, whether he's going to tilt toward an economic deal with Europe or tilt toward an economic deal with Vladimir Putin. I mean, Douglas, like if anyone did that in our region of the world, we would, DC would overthrow that government invade in a moment. If China poured a hundred million dollars into Mexican protests and was able to overthrow the democratically elected government.

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  Well, I have to say, if it's a change the subject maybe, but Qatar pours hundreds of millions of dollars into this country, billions indeed. And tries to change policy in this country, and nobody's trying to overthrow Qatar. Nobody's trying to overthrow the, overthrow the Emir or his family. And they are, they've been poisoning American universities, American institutions, buying up American politicians. They pour billions into this country. sent you something about that this morning.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, well, okay, but that is a little bit different than overthrowing our neighbor government and trying to install a hostile government toward us.

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  You're saying that like we'd lose our mind if anyone tried to interfere here. There are lots of people who try to interfere here. And the most obvious one is Qatar, which pours money into DC and into elite institutions and universities in this country. And I don't find from one week to the next, anyone who's particularly riled up about it.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Well, so they've been, I mean, so they're pouring money into DC.

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  And so do you think that they are influencing US policy through doing that?

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  I think they're trying to, yeah.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe they are trying to.

• 1:29:06Speaker 02

  They're definitely succeeding with universities and others.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  They should try with the political class more if they're trying to turn us anti-Israel or something like that, because both major parties in this country will fund and unconditionally support Israel no matter what. So, I mean, I don't know.

• 1:29:22Speaker 02

  Well, I don't think it's no matter what, but I mean Qatar is definitely trying to influence things their way as other countries are. I mean, I cited as an example of something that's very interesting, which is an attempt to interfere in American public life, which gets almost no attention. And indeed, the governments, whether Democrat or Republican, still seem to adore the Qataris, even as they act as one of the backers of terrorist groups across the Middle East and elsewhere. And I cannot understand why it doesn't get more attention.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Well, according to the former Defense Minister of Israel, they were begging Qatar to pour that money into Hamas.

• 1:30:03Speaker 02

  No, that's not what happened.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  Well, that's what he said.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  His words, begging.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  The, you're referring to the funding of Hamas in the 2010s?

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, no. The Qataris poured the money in, and the question on the Israeli side was what are you allowed to do with funds that were going into Gaza? And the Israelis allowed the funds to go from Qatar to Gaza.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  I think a little bit more than that. I think when the funds dried up, Netanyahu sent the head of the Mossad in there to beg him to keep the funds going.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  Again, I'm not sure. It's like quoting the head of the CIA, quoting the head of the Mossad. Maybe. But that's not the, that's not the evidence of the last eighteen years.

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  I mean, it's, you can, okay, so I, I mean, I guess, I think I'm allowed to quote powerful people when they admit what they're doing.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  I mean, it's kind of like, you know.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  No, I know, but again, I mean, it's just, it's just an interesting thing, because again, it's a discipline about this. Which is, do I only quote powerful people when they say the odd thing that I agree with? Or do I simultaneously distrust all powerful people? It's just an interesting rhetorical.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Well, no, I mean, I think that, obviously, like, I don't blindly trust any, anyone in the political class, or the media class, for that matter, either. But when they admit things that are like very against their interest to admit, and kind of give away the whole game, that now they're pretending doesn't matter.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  Are you sure, are you sure whether it's the CIA or Mossad that it isn't just if they say something that you happen to want to be the case?

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  Well, this is kind of like saying, if I were to end on trial and I were to, like, I'm the prosecution, and I'd enter into evidence a written confession by the defendant. And you go, well, are you only entering this in because this kind of goes along with your case? Like, I, I suppose we're all guilty of having these, these incentives to some degree. But I do think it's a relevant detail that the former Defense Secretary admitted this. And by the way, Netanyahu's admitted this, Ehud Barak has admitted this, all through.

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  They admitted that they allowed funds to go from Qatar to Hamas because Hamas was governing Gaza.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  For, for the reason of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state.

• 1:32:08Speaker 02

  No, that was not the case.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  That is what Netanyahu said, that is what Ehud Barak said, it's all up and down.

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  There's one, uh, uh, claim, there's one recording of Netanyahu saying something along those lines. But look, I mean, we should get on, we should get on to it.

• 1:32:22Speaker 01

  I could read you the quotes from Ehud Barak as well.

• 1:32:24Speaker 02

  No, I know, I know.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  It's all of them have talked about it.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  The, the situation, let's, let's get on to it.

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  The situation there, on the war of the last eighteen months now, more than eighteen months in the Middle East. Is a result not of that, but of Hamas deciding to start another war with Israel and trying to annihilate their neighbor.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  But you don't think if they if they were being propped up by Israel, that has nothing to do with the group?

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  They were not being propped up by Israel. The reason why Hamas were in power, as you know, much, much against the interests of the Israelis, was that they were voted into power after the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in oh five. Condoleezza Rice and other American and other American states folk insisted that the Palestinians should have elections straight after the Israeli withdrawal. They had elections, perhaps unwisely, and Hamas won and then didn't have another election again and ruled the Gaza for eighteen years until they finally got the great fruit of their labors on the seventh of October, twenty twenty-three and went around southern Israel,

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  massacring everyone they could, including young people at a dance party, and then caused in turn the destruction of the place that they were meant to be governing. It's a the whole thing is a great tragedy and all of it is at the feet of Hamas.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  I certainly agree with you that it's a it's a great tragedy and I do, you know, I I think it's it's, you know, when you accuse me of using the quotes that kind of, you know, back up what I believe, I think it's very convenient here to remove all responsibility from the Israelis. Like, even if I'm telling you that you have these quotes, I mean, I'm again, I'm not talking about fringe figures, figures, we we could read through the list of people who have admitted what the strategy was with them funding Hamas and propping them up. But hold on, let me just say, so if you're going to tell me Israel props up this this terrorist organization in order to kill the peace process, in order to make sure that the international community gives them a no one, by the way, Smotrich, right, the the

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  finance minister, okay, he's on record, he's on record saying, look, Hamas is an asset. The Palestinian Authority, they're the liability. Hamas is an asset because we then we can tell the international community, well, look, what do you want us to do? There's a terrorist organization here. We can't do business with them. And and then even Ehud Barak admitted like this was also so that liberal Israelis, you know, if it was the Palestinian Authority, they'd be like, hey, we should make a deal with them. But since it's Hamas, they can't. Okay, so if Israel props up this terrorist organization, and then as a response to them committing a horrific act of terrorism, decides to level the entire place and just slaughter women and children in large numbers.

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

  Well, it didn't decide to do that, and it didn't do that. But, yeah.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  It didn't level the place. Gaza's not hasn't been destroyed.

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  Gaza's pretty leveled by now.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  But it did not go in to level the place like that. No.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Okay, they went in and leveled the place, but that wasn't their intention?

• 1:35:29Speaker 02

  Let's just let's just go back to the beginning if we can.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  Because it's important. Since you're interested in the question of the Palestinian state, the Palestinians were given another state in 2005, when every single Jew was removed from the Gaza by the IDF, and when even the graves of Israelis in Gaza were dug up and taken into the rest of Israel. The of all of the what ifs of Palestinian Arab history, the era since 2005 should be one of the great what ifs, which is what if the American taxpayers' money that was poured into Gaza, the European Union taxpayer money

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  that was poured into Gaza, had been used by a government in Gaza to build a state that lived side by side with their Israeli neighbors and flourished? And it's not like the money wasn't there. It's not like there wasn't the international will. Ismail Haniyya and the other leaders of Hamas used that money, as you know, to make themselves billionaires, and to buy themselves and their kids condos in Qatar, and to live extremely well, whilst withholding the money from the Palestinian people, whilst building their network of tunnels throughout Gaza, and building an infrastructure of terror. And that's what they did with 18 years in Gaza.

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  And of all of the what ifs, just consider that that one was in their hands. The Israelis did not make them vote in Hamas. The Israelis would not want a terrorist entity that wants to annihilate the state of Israel, that is there on their doorstep, constantly firing rockets, starting wars every few years. Why would the Israelis want a group there that means that if you're living in towns like Sderot, or Ashkon, or Ashdod, your children grow up all the time knowing that they might have to go to the bomb shelters? And that's during peacetime.

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  Well, according to them, the reason they want it there is because then it kills the peace process. And then you have a no one to negotiate with certificate. And that then you can keep your eyes on building up settlements in the West Bank.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  There are, as now, many people to negotiate with. Mahmoud Abbas may be, I don't know as a joke goes, currently in something like his 20th year of his first four-year term as head of the Palestinian Authority. But Mahmoud Abbas is there in Ramallah. The compounds of the Palestinian Authority, which I've been to many times, in Ramallah are there. They run their portions of the West Bank. They could be there to negotiate with at any moment. The Israelis have said they want to negotiate with them at any moment and come to the deal. In fact, Netanyahu, you're fond of quoting, said again, before this war began, that he would come to the table with no red lines to begin with, to start another negotiation

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  with the Palestinian Authority. But let's just get back to this thing, because this is so crucial. I am so startled by the post-October the 7th world, not just in Israel and Gaza and everywhere where I've spent most of the last 18 months, but in what's happening here in the United States of America. It blows my mind, much of the response here, and the desire to leap over the first victims of this and go on to all of the proximate causes, theoretical causes, what ifs, and so on. I was, as I describe in the opening of this book, I was in New York on the 7th of October,

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  and I woke up and started seeing what was happening. And discovered that later that day already, there were attempts, there were plans to organize a protest in Times Square. And what was a protest in Times Square? Massive protest in support of Hamas, as the massacre was still going on. And one of the things I just cannot get out of my head is, why in the last eighteen months, when Hamas did what they did, have so many people made excuses for them, or decided to side with them, or deny their actions, or excuse their actions?

• 1:39:54Joe Rogan?

  Why do you think that is?

• 1:39:55Speaker 02

  Several very, very big things. One is, I think people wanted to ignore the nature of the atrocity because it was so appalling that it went against much of their narrative. I was at a reunion of one of the survivors of the Nova Party on one occasion, and he said to me, what would you do if this had happened in your country? And I thought, well, it hasn't happened at this scale, but something like it has happened. The Ariana Grande Arena bombing in Manchester in 2017, the Batterclan massacre in Paris in 2015, the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2015.

• 1:40:39Speaker 02

  But all of these occasions, when young people were murdered for being at a pop concert or a nightclub, the world's attention, the world's empathy, the world's sympathy went to the victims. Only in the case of the young Israelis dancing in the early hours of the morning on October the 7th, 2023, do the victims become victimized again and not believed. The era we lived through in the late 2010s was the era of believe all women. And of all the Israeli women who were raped that morning, much of the international community does not want to listen to them at all, and certainly doesn't want to believe them. And there are many reasons.

• 1:41:21Speaker 02

  One, at the most fundamental level, is that I think a part of a generation that's coming up has been told there is something especially wicked about Israel, that there is something especially wicked about Israel's existence and its actions and its people, and it means that when their people are burned alive in their homes, or raped at a music festival and shot in the head, they are uniquely undeserving of sympathy. And I think that people have been indoctrinated by very bad actors into this, and as a result have excused atrocities, or will make excuses for them, make excuses for the people who do them.

• 1:42:04Speaker 02

  I think, in addition, it plays to the, some of the darkest things of the regional mind, as well as the international mind. The aims of Hamas, their stated aims include the annihilation of the Jewish people, and October the 7th, they'd had their best go at doing that. And the fact that in a, in a decision between whether or not you're on the side of the people who want to dance and live in peace with their neighbors, or whether you're on the side of the people who want to rampage through a dance party bar in the early morning, machete-ing at people, I find it amazing that there are so many people who don't know

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  which side they're on. But there are a lot of them, there are a lot of reasons for that, but one of the foremost reasons is the fact that the state of Israel has been uniquely libeled, has been uniquely lied about, its history has been uniquely lied about, it has been uniquely put under an international spotlight, and then misrepresented in a way which I cannot think of many other countries in the world that have been treated that way. And there are deep reasons for it and shallow reasons for it. The deep reasons include some of the most ancient bigotries of the human heart, and the shallow reasons are people who don't know what the hell they're talking about.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  Um, okay, I think that there's, look, I'm not gonna speak for what every person out there believes. I don't exactly agree with like the characterization that there was no outpouring of like feeling after October 7th, and certainly like everybody I know was just like, oh my god, this is like a horrific atrocity and like what the, an unprecedented terrorist attack from Hamas, the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history, um, against Israelis. And it was horrible. I think what a lot of, I'm not, I'm not arguing that there are no people who are actually pro Hamas, or there are no people who are actually like hate Jews

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  or something like that. I do think that what happens is that a lot of people get put in that category who do not belong there. Much like we've seen this over the last year and a half where a lot of people, you know, you have, um, uh, John Podhoretz calling Thomas Massey anti-Semitic scum because he said, "We're dead broke. We can't afford to fund everybody else's war here." Um, people have been calling Tucker Carlson, uh, anti-Semitic all over the place. But these are two guys, Thomas Massey and Tucker Carlson, who have never uttered the words "the Jews" in their life. Like, they're just not anti-Semites at all. So there's a lot of people, I think, who are, when they're critical of the Israeli government's response to this, get lumped in as pro Hamas. I will certainly say, that's

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  certainly not my position. I think your description of them, death cult, by the way, the same term that Daryl Cooper, uh, Daryl Cooper used to describe Hamas, I think is an accurate one. Um, and it was horrible. But I, I think that the, you know, I think that your characterization, first of all, of, that they gave the Palestinians a state in 2005 is just wrong. I just think that is not at all an accurate way to describe the disengagement, which we could get into more if you want to. But first of all, I would just point out that if the, if the two-state solution was achieved, um, I assume you're arguing it was taken away after that. You're not still arguing that the Palestinians have a state, or are you saying they have had a state since 2005?

• 1:45:41Speaker 02

  They had, they were given a state in Gaza.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  And when did it, when was it taken away?

• 1:45:45Speaker 02

  Well, they kind of screwed it up for themselves on the 7th of October.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  So you're saying from 2005 all the way till October 7th, there was a two-state solution. It had been achieved?

• 1:45:54Speaker 02

  Well, it was another state, yeah.

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  Okay, but that would be two states then?

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  No, it was another state. It was different from the PA.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  Okay, right, but I'm saying a Palestinian state.

• 1:46:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so what's interesting about that is that this is not how, like, this is not how any of the leaders really describe it. I mean, Netanyahu himself is not claiming that they had already achieved a two-state solution. Why are you talking about this? What happened in 2005, in the disengagement, was that essentially Israel went from occupying the place to surrounding the place. And they've had it under a brutal blockade since 2007. And yes, you were right.

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  Why do you think, why do you, I don't agree that blockade was brutal by any means.

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  You don't think the blockade of Gaza was brutal?

• 1:46:37Speaker 02

  I mean, how brutal do you think the Egyptians are?

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  Pretty brutal.

• 1:46:42Speaker 02

  My.

• 1:46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:44Speaker 02

  They laid, allowed stuff in.

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  Okay, I mean, since, some stuff has gotten in, yes, that's true.

• 1:46:51Speaker 02

  No, more than some stuff, more than some stuff.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Okay, some, from, I'll say this, right, because there's been different levels of blockade, even before 2007, going back. I know in 1996, they had like a, a pretty strong blockade that year. According to the World Bank, it contracted 40% of the GDP of Gaza. So just for, for, for reference, the Great Depression was a 30% contraction. This was in 1996, for one year, they gave them something worse than our Great Depression. That was just one year. They, from 2007 on, there's been a blockade of that country. You don't think that's kept the country poor?

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  Why do you think there's a blockade of any kind?

• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  Why is there a blockade? Well, I mean, the, the argument from Israel would be that...

• 1:47:35Speaker 02

  No, why do you think?

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  I would say, okay, I think that the disengagement, I think Smotrich was correct when he said, I'm sorry, my, my mistake there. I think the, which, another quote that I'm sure you're familiar with, but Dove Weisclaff, who was the senior advisor to Sharon, was the prime minister at the time. He essentially said, "The reason we're doing the disengagement, the reason we're doing this, is so that we can put the peace process in formaldehyde." This is the reason we're doing it.

• 1:48:01Speaker 02

  You're not answering my question.

• 1:48:02Speaker 01

  Yes, no, no, I'm getting there.

• 1:48:03Speaker 02

  You're continuing to cite very right-wing Israeli politicians, but what do you think is the reason?

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  I'm getting there, I'm saying, so I think they disengaged in order to kill the peace process. I think they put the full blockade around the country for the reason that they've always kind of done it there, that, yeah, they don't want too much stuff getting in. They want to keep them, as they put it, on a diet, and they don't want rockets to fly into Israel.

• 1:48:24Speaker 02

  The second one is a kind of important one, isn't it, the final?

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:48:28Speaker 02

  If, if the Palestinian leadership in Gaza after 2005 had not, from the get-go, decided to use Gaza as a stockpiling place for rockets to fire into Israel, all of it would be different. If they had just resisted the temptation that so many of us do in our lives to stop keeping RPGs in our cellars and then Katusha rockets in our children's bedrooms, all of it could have been different. If that desire to live in peace beside your neighbors had superseded the desire to stockpile rockets, it would all be different.

• 1:49:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, or if Israel just hadn't occupied them for 60 years, it would all be different too.

• 1:49:12Speaker 02

  They weren't occupying.

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  Why is it the onus always on them?

• 1:49:15Speaker 02

  Well, you believe in self-determination, I'm sure. Yes.

• 1:49:19Speaker 01

  I believe in individual rights, yeah, sure.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  Okay, individual rights. And that includes the right to make bad decisions. Yes. The Palestinians in Gaza, when they voted in Hamas, made a very bad decision.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, Douglas.

• 1:49:32Speaker 02

  And in the years, hang on, hang on. And in the years after that, they made bad decision after bad decision. It was a very bad decision to continually fire thousands of rockets into Israel. It was a very bad decision to use what boats came in early on and, and to use the smuggling networks from Egypt, not to bring in supplies you could actually build a thriving society with, but to bring in rockets. It was a very bad idea. No, there was not starvation in Gaza after 2005. No, there was no deficit of goods coming in. I've been plenty of times.

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  There was no deficit?

• 1:50:09Speaker 02

  No, there were plenty of.

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  No goods were kept out?

• 1:50:11Speaker 02

  There are plenty, how many? Have you been to the crossing points?

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:50:16Speaker 02

  When were you last there at all?

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  I've never been.

• 1:50:20Speaker 02

  You've never been.

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not, am I not allowed to talk about it now? I've never been to, have you ever been to Nazi Germany? Are you allowed to have feelings about them?

• 1:50:28Speaker 02

  You can't time travel, but you can, but you can travel.

• 1:50:31Speaker 01

  Okay, but so what? So what's the point? Like, okay.

• 1:50:33Speaker 02

  I find that very.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  Lots of people have been there and agree with me, and lots of people have been there and agree with you.

• 1:50:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, but if you're gonna spend a year and a half talking about, about a place, you should at least do the courtesy of visiting it.

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  Uh, all right. I just think this is a non-argument, but okay. No, I think it's a non-argument.

• 1:50:48Speaker 02

  But if you're an expert.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  But you have to go and touch the ground to be able to talk about it?

• 1:50:52Speaker 02

  I think it's a good idea to see stuff, particularly if you spend a career talking about something. Yes. I, I have a journalistic rule of trying never to talk about a country even in passing unless I've at least been there.

• 1:51:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:51:05Speaker 02

  It's a sort of normal, in, it's a normal thing to do. You're talking about, hang on, you're talking about crossing points. And not only have you never been to a crossing point in either Egypt or in Israel, but you've never even been to the region.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  Okay, again, I think this is a non-argument.

• 1:51:19Speaker 02

  How can you? No, no, no, it's not a non-argument. It's not a non-argument if you're insisting that you're an expert of some kind, or not claiming you're an expert, but still talking about it, about the provisions going into Gaza or not, if you've never seen any of this going on.

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  So you're not allowed to speak about things that you've read about? You ha, you can only speak about things that you've seen with your own eyes?

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  You can talk about what you want.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:51:45Speaker 02

  As you're proving. But that is a different matter from spending an awfully long amount of time talking about an issue in a region you haven't even had the courtesy to visit whilst developing all of these views about it. I mean, now I slightly get an idea of where you're coming from. You've read about this blockade. And so you imagine that that's what it is. I imagine you've read all the people who say that Gaza was a concentration camp. And you probably think that too.

• 1:52:24Joe Rogan?

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• 1:53:08Joe Rogan?

  That's T E C O V A S dot com. And right now, get 10% off at tecovas.com/rogan when you sign up for email and texts. This episode is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog. Here's a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on average than dogs who are overweight. Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra-processed kibble still the status quo for most dog owners? Healthy alternatives exist and trust me, I know. I buy one, The Farmer's Dog. I use it for both my dogs. They love it, they eat it up quick.

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• 1:54:35Joe Rogan?

  This offer is for new customers only.

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  Am I right?

• 1:54:40Speaker 01

  I mean, again, it literally a concentration camp. It shares a lot of similarities, I would think.

• 1:54:46Speaker 02

  Wow. Well, as I say, you can't time travel back to the Nazi era.

• 1:54:51Joe Rogan?

  Let's go back to the blockade.

• 1:54:53Speaker 02

  But you could go to the Middle East and actually visit it. It's not hard to do.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  Okay, the World Bank said in 1996 for the one year of the blockade.

• 1:54:59Speaker 02

  Now the libertarians are quoting the World Bank, I'll do it.

• 1:55:01Speaker 01

  It doesn't mean anything. This is a non-argument. Yes, I'm saying the World Bank did their own analysis of this, and they said that it was a 40% of the...

• 1:55:09Speaker 02

  Why don't you do your own analysis?

• 1:55:10Joe Rogan?

  Hold on. You gotta stop interrupting and let him finish the sentence.

• 1:55:13Speaker 02

  I will. Fire away.

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  The World Bank said that 40% drop in the GDP of one year due to the blockade. And there's been a blockade from 2007 on. So are you saying that this hasn't had an economic effect? Is that the argument?

• 1:55:26Speaker 02

  No, of course it'll have an economic effect.

• 1:55:28Joe Rogan?

  So you're saying you have to be on the ground and do an audit of the blockade in order to be able to comment on it?

• 1:55:33Speaker 02

  I think you should at least know what it is, what the territory is, what the situation is in the region. Yes, absolutely.

• 1:55:38Joe Rogan?

  And the only way to do that is to be there in person?

• 1:55:40Speaker 02

  I think that's the best way. It's not the only way, but it's the best way, for sure. For sure. If you have never seen the countries in question, you've never spoken to the people in question, you've never interviewed anyone, you've never gone around, you've never seen the terrain, and so on, and you've used Wikipedia. I'm sorry, no, that's not the same thing.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I've not just used Wikipedia, but didn't you write a big piece when the war in Ukraine first came out titled something like "I've been to Ukraine and they can win? They can repel the Russians"? So you could go there and still get it wrong, right?

• 1:56:13Speaker 02

  No, I was with the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2022 when they were retaking territory from the Russians.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Right, the last time they had any advances, yeah.

• 1:56:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I said I can see how they can win, which would be advances like that, yeah.

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  You said if we just fund them, or if we just arm them, that they can then...

• 1:56:27Speaker 02

  No, I didn't say that. I said that the Ukrainian army was making great successes, which it was when I was with them in the fall of 22.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  Okay, listen, there were lots of people who went to Iraq and said, "We'll be greeted as liberators, and it'll be paid for in oil, and democracy will spread through the region." So I don't know, either take on the arguments or don't, but I don't think like...

• 1:56:43Speaker 02

  But I'm saying that your argument's incorrect.

• 1:56:44Speaker 01

  Okay, fine, well then, then present a counter-argument to it, but to just tell me I'm not allowed to talk about something, because I'm not an expert.

• 1:56:51Speaker 02

  I'm not saying you're not allowed to talk about it. I said repeatedly, you're talking about it now.

• 1:56:53Speaker 01

  Okay, fine, well, you're not an expert, so you shouldn't talk about it. You haven't been there. Yeah, I know. But you keep playing this game where it's like, the whole opening to this podcast was like, "The non-experts talking about this is such a problem." Now you're saying, "Because I haven't been there, I can't talk about it." Is there a blockade there that's causing economic devastation or not? According to the World Bank, there is.

• 1:57:10Speaker 02

  First of all, I don't think it's a game. I don't think it's a game at all.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  Me neither.

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  I'm not playing a game.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Okay, but this is semantics.

• 1:57:19Speaker 02

  No, but this is important. I've seen plenty of this up close. I've seen plenty of this with my own eyes. Because I do believe that one of the things you should do if you're talking about something is to see it.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've established that. Is there a blockade?

• 1:57:36Speaker 02

  The blockade that existed, to the extent it existed, was a blockade to try to make sure that the Israelis and the Egyptians knew what materials were going in and out of Gaza after the first rocket fires when Hamas, in fact, before Hamas was elected. The Israelis and the Egyptians, the Egyptians didn't do a very good job of it, were meant to be trying to make sure that the materials that went into Gaza were not materials that could be used to build up the Gazan Hamas war machine. The reason why trucks get searched is not because the Israelis want to search through grain or flour. It's because they wanted to stop the trucks containing the arms and the munitions

• 1:58:18Speaker 02

  that the Gazan Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters were going to use to fire against Israel. And I'm sorry, it just makes the most obvious strategic sense, as the great, late, great Joan Rivers once said, if, if, if, as an appeal to authority.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  That one I'll, that one I like.

• 1:58:37Joe Rogan?

  She also said that Michelle Obama's a man.

• 1:58:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, she did that.

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  No, I'm saying, she got everything right. So continue, go ahead.

• 1:58:43Speaker 02

  But as Joan Rivers said, if, if New York was being rocketed from New Jersey, we would level New Jersey. I don't think you need to level it, by the way. But you would at least try to make sure that rockets weren't being imported in larger quantities into New Jersey.

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:58:59Speaker 02

  Okay, that's all the Israelis were doing.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  And they haven't turned away any food or aid? They haven't turned, they haven't said you can't bring potato chips in, or you can't have cookies because they have dual use? Isn't this their whole argument, that there's anything that could be used to build a rocket has to be excluded?

• 1:59:13Speaker 02

  Anything that could be used to build a rocket, yeah.

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:59:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, but that's a good reason, again, not to build rockets and fire them at your neighbors. It's almost like there's a cost to play. It's almost like there's a cost to pay for, instead of living in peace with your neighbor, constantly trying to wipe them out. And that is what Hamas did for 18 years, 18 years. This is what, this is why I think it's so. Unbelievable, taking agency away from the Palestinians of Gaza is that the Hamas had eighteen years, and eighteen years is obviously the time from the birth of a child to the end of their formal education. They literally had the opportunity to create a generation in Gaza that wanted to live beside their Israeli neighbors.

• 1:59:59Speaker 02

  And from everything I have seen since the seventh of October in the region, and from all of the dead and the survivors and the family members I've seen, so many of them, particularly the people in the south who were attacked on the morning of the seventh, were literally people who dreamed of living in peace with their Palestinian neighbors. They were people like Vivian Silver, whose body wasn't identified for months because there wasn't enough of her charred remains left to even extract DNA from. She spent every weekend, like so many people in the communities in the south of Israel, every weekend, driving children with the most rare medical conditions that couldn't be treated in one of the Hamas-run hospitals in Gaza into very specialist units inside Israel.

• 2:00:41Speaker 02

  And she spent every weekend doing that and working with Betsalem and all of these radical-left Israeli groups, and it didn't matter a bit when Hamas came in because they burnt her in her own home anyway. My point is, in all of the counterfactuals of this conflict, the most important one is, what could have happened if instead of educating a generation into wanting to annihilate their neighbors, Hamas in power had spent eighteen years building up a state, teaching peace, creating coexistence with their neighbors? You think any of the people on the kibbutzim in the south, or the young people dancing at the Nova party, weren't dreaming of the day that the Palestinian government in Gaza

• 2:01:26Speaker 02

  would have created those conditions for them to live beside as well? Of course!

• 2:01:31Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm. Right.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, right.

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  Everybody argues against it.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  Nobody's arguing. Douglas, it's just, again, it's...

• 2:01:37Joe Rogan?

  No, I mean here.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not what I'm saying. Look, I'll say this again, because you bring up the point about agency again. And I hear this a lot as a counter, much like I said in Ukraine, it's not denying anybody agency. I'm not saying that... Believe me, if I was in control of how people acted, I would certainly... There are...

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Palestinians could have handled things much better and there are different points where we probably all would agree that we wish they had done it this way and not this way. And I think that embracing for those Palestinians who embrace terrorism, which from, you know, which is pretty early on, I mean, Israel and Palestine have been at war since the existence of Israel, really. And I know it's convenient to like kind of pretend October 7th was like the first thing, but actually there's a long history here. I'm not denying any of them agency. The problem is that I see it as like you only seem to focus on the agency of one side. And then, you know, if you want to talk about counterfactuals, I think the most interesting counterfactual, well, maybe I'll give you two. Number one would be Heim Weizmann,

• 2:02:42Speaker 01

  who was essentially supposed to be the David Ben-Gurion, like he was in line as like the number one ranking Zionist, this is pre the creation of the state of Israel, who urged all of the Zionist militias to not embrace terrorism. And he ended up losing that battle ultimately. In many ways, this is how terrorism was introduced.

• 2:02:59Speaker 02

  He was the first president of the state.

• 2:03:01Speaker 01

  David Ben-Gurion was. I was saying Heim Weizmann. Yes, yes. And he basically ended up losing his position to David Ben-Gurion because they just wanted to be more hardcore. And by the way, the, you know, the Ergon and the Lehi and the Haganah, they openly embraced terrorism to drive out an occupying force. This is literally the story of the creation of the state of Israel. The Palestinians fell into a terrible tragic mistake early on. And I'm saying, listen, I reject terrorism as we all should just because killing innocent people is wrong. I'd like to get to that a little bit more in a second because it's interesting that we haven't really gotten into the, what I think is a great humanitarian crisis here. But they were following, I think in some ways they were very influenced by

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  the Algerian model, that they were like, hey, look, we could embrace, listen, there's a lot of groups, whether it's.

• 2:03:52Speaker 02

  Which Algerian model?

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  Well, the driving the French out.

• 2:03:54Speaker 02

  The first Algerian war?

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  Yes. And, right. And, but look, I mean, there's a lot of these scenarios where we look back at Nelson Mandela, for example, you know, Nelson Mandela was not imprisoned because he was, you know, making picket signs. I mean, there have been people who have embraced violence as a means to achieve a policy end, including the early Zionist settlers, including the Israeli government, including the US government and lots of governments around the world. The tragic, tragic mistake in terms of political outcome from the Palestinians is that they really just underestimated the fact that these Jews had no home to go to. This was their home. And you could drive out the French from Algeria because they go, screw it, we're going back home to France. The Jews had been so persecuted in Eastern Europe that there was no home to go back.

• 2:04:41Speaker 01

  And of course, then after World War II, they were here to stay. And so, of course, it's been a tragedy. And of course, a lot of Palestinian actions I wish would be different. I wish Hamas didn't exist. It should be pointed out, by the way, that in 2005, you did mention that it was really part of the Bush administration's exporting democracy around the world that put pressure on them to have these elections. It should also be mentioned that Hamas did not win a majority in one single precinct. They won pluralities all around. So, just saying, when we're bringing up this election, half the population of Gaza today is under the age of 18. They were toddlers, if they were alive, in 2005. Of the other half, that maybe, maybe half of them voted in these elections, it was never a majority that supported Hamas. They eked out a victory.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  And then, of course, there was an attempted coup after that, and that's when Hamas seized complete control. The coup failed. Regardless of any of that, I agree with you that, like, yeah, the Palestinians have agency, and I wish some of them had made better decisions. Now, many of them have made better decisions, and it's still resulted in nothing better happening for them and their people. And so, I do find it kind of hard to, like, lecture a group of people who are going through so much. Like, the level of human suffering that's being inflicted on the people of Gaza right now cannot be overstated. And so, you know, to lecture them about how you're supposed to handle that exactly. But I will say, man, I think there's kind of this selective empathy that you have here.

• 2:06:11Speaker 01

  Like, I agree with you, you know, talking about these teenagers being slaughtered at a music festival on October 7th. It's like, my God, like, I have little kids? I can't, like, imagine the nightmare of this happening to somebody's children. But at the same time, we're not having this conversation on October 9th, or in November or December of 2023. We're having it in 2025, where the tragedy that's been inflicted on Gaza is orders of magnitudes greater than October 7th. There are just every day, people are inundated with images of just dead women and children. This is like one of the most brutal wars. And by several metrics that really, you know, like personally matter to me, like the number of dead kids.

• 2:06:54Speaker 01

  I think that's a pretty good one. It's more children have died than in any recent war. I mean, this is like, it does, I do think there's almost like a fundamental framing bias that you get into when people have these debates, and I've had several of them as you have also. But it seems to me that there's almost an implicit difference in the value that you place on Israeli life versus the value that we place on Palestinians' life. And to even like, we've gone this far into the conversation and haven't even talked about the fact that like, Israel has, feel however you feel, if you want to argue, I haven't been there, stuff does get through the blockade, okay, fine. This is a captive people, you know, that Israel has dominated since at least 1967.

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  Many of them are there because of the creation of the state of Israel, who used to live in what is now called Israel. And they are just, I mean, the amount of human suffering that's being inflicted on them, when even as you kind of acknowledged with the George W. Bush exporting democracy, Hamas in many ways was forced on these people. In fact, we saw protests against Hamas just recently. So, I don't know. I mean, that to me seems to be the greatest human tragedy. And I think much more so than you can characterize it as people being pro Hamas or people being anti Semitic. But I actually think that the mass movement around the world of people who oppose this war has been that people feel really awful about all these babies and who are being slaughtered.

• 2:08:21Speaker 02

  Okay, quite a few things. First of all, just let's just get one term correct because you said you do think it's a concentration camp.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  Said it shares many, you know.

• 2:08:33Speaker 02

  And you also say that there's a disproportionately heavy youth population in Gaza.

• 2:08:39Speaker 01

  Yes, I do you think that's not accurate?

• 2:08:42Speaker 02

  I think the second one is accurate.

• 2:08:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:08:44Speaker 02

  But it's a very strange thing to say that there's a population boom in a concentration camp. In Auschwitz in the nineteen forty's, there was not a doubling of the population.

• 2:08:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't say it was a concentration camp.

• 2:08:58Joe Rogan?

  He said it shares many of the characteristics.

• 2:09:00Speaker 02

  Auschwitz was a concentration camp.

• 2:09:03Speaker 01

  It was ultimately a death camp, no?

• 2:09:05Speaker 02

  Yes, it started as a concentration.

• 2:09:07Speaker 01

  Yes, correct.

• 2:09:07Speaker 02

  You'll notice that people were not doubling in size their number because of the children they could have in Auschwitz.

• 2:09:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, but nobody's making, nobody's calling it a concentration camp because it's the same as Auschwitz. I don't know.

• 2:09:21Speaker 02

  Okay, but let's just just just at least tidy up the language a bit. Either you think the place is a concentration camp or you think it's not a concentration camp and I don't think it can be a concentration camp or any such term is suitable when you're talking about a place which you yourself have admitted has a disproportionately young population. So that's the first thing.

• 2:09:36Speaker 01

  I don't think breeding in any way argues again, but okay, I didn't call it a concentration camp, you did.

• 2:09:42Speaker 02

  Well, you said it has many of the same characteristics.

• 2:09:44Joe Rogan?

  But you asked him if it did. You asked him if it had any of the characteristics of a concentration camp.

• 2:09:49Speaker 02

  Yes, because he said earlier that it did.

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  Okay, well, all I'm saying, okay, so let me be, let me be much more precise. Let me be much more precise, okay? So I'm not claiming that it is a concentration camp or that it is akin to Auschwitz. I'm saying that it's been under full blockade since two thousand and seven. Israel rules the seas, the airs, they control electricity that goes in. They're not allowed to have an airport, they're not allowed to have a seaport, they don't have the freedom to leave without permission from the Israeli government, they don't have the freedom to trade with the world, they don't have a freedom to vote over the government that rules them. I don't know, call it whatever you want to. That's the situation.

• 2:10:21Speaker 02

  All of which is a result of the election of Hamas.

• 2:10:24Speaker 01

  None of it's Israel's fault. Israel's not responsible for one of the babies that have died of the bombs that they are dropping.

• 2:10:29Speaker 02

  Let's get on to that then, because you say it's one of the most brutal wars. It's a very brutal war. It's a very brutal war. It's certainly not even sadly about among the standards of our time by any means the most brutal. We don't need to get into the rather statistician ugly debate about whether or not you follow the Hamas.

• 2:10:50Speaker 02

  Government in Gaza's figures for the death counts, which is what they, which most of the world's media rely on and which I don't think are reliable to the least extent. But you don't need to rely on that to say that even by the standards of a conflict in neighboring Syria, the highest Hamas death count inside Gaza for the appalling last year and a half is less than an average year has been for the last decade in Syria during the civil war.

• 2:11:23Speaker 01

  So the whole deck, I mean, total far more people died in Syria. I'm not arguing that. But you're saying it's less than any year. I think there were years that were pretty.

• 2:11:31Speaker 02

  Six to eight hundred thousand people have been killed in Syria during the civil war there. And I give it as an example, far too many examples of wars in the region and in the wider world to go to. But I think we get once again back to the issue of of language on this. It says, one of the most brutal wars, it's simply obvious that it's an appalling war, but it is not by any numerical or other standards, the most appalling war of our time. It's a war that Hamas started because they shouldn't have invaded their neighbor and they shouldn't have tried to genocide their neighbor. Now, if the war can be prosecuted, could be prosecuted, it was always for two reasons, always for two reasons.

• 2:12:13Speaker 02

  The first one, as stated by the unanimity of Israeli politicians and others, was to retrieve the hostages, who we also haven't spoken about, but there are still hostages in Gaza held for the last eighteen months by Hamas, including young Eden Alexander from New Jersey.

• 2:12:32Speaker 02

  If Hamas had not stolen the hostages and hidden them in their tunnels and hidden them in civilian homes, this war would have all been different. If they had have given them back, and they could give them back tomorrow. It would all be different, but they didn't. They decided to do what they did on the seventh and to hold on to the 250 hostages as it was at the beginning, from the beginning. The second reason why the war is still being prosecuted is because of the stated aim to destroy Hamas, which is the stated aim of the Israelis. Neither of these things is remotely easy, okay? And just from a point of humility, I think, on every one side, we should concede none of that is easy.

• 2:13:16Speaker 02

  It is not easy to get 250 hostages back when they have been distributed across Gaza to civilian homes, hidden in tunnels, surrounded by munitions and much more. Hamas is not an actor like Denmark. Its backers don't behave the way that our governments do in the West. They have a totally different timescale that they think along. They have a totally different scale of values as well. The taunts of Hezbollah's leadership, of Hamas's leadership, of their backers in Tehran are annihilationist to their core.

• 2:13:59Speaker 02

  But at any point in the last 18 months, the Qataris, for instance, or the Iranians, the Iranian Revolutionary Government, or the Turkish government or others, could have put their pressure on Hamas to return the hostages who are still being held in captivity, and everything would be different. Secondly, as you know, I'm sure, you don't have to have seen this with your own eyes to know it. As I'm sure you know, the way in which Hamas built up the structure of the Gaza throughout the 18 years that they had was precisely to flout and use every law of war against the Israelis. Every army in a conflict

• 2:14:42Speaker 02

  has certain rules of war that you're meant to abide by. One of the most obvious is that you are identified as being a combatant, not as a civilian, okay?

• 2:14:56Speaker 02

  Another is, you don't put weapons in civilian houses and civilian buildings. You do not fire from houses of worship rockets. You do not launch attacks from hospitals. You do not keep detention facilities where you can torture and disappear people inside hospitals and other medical facilities. All of these laws of war are the laws that Hamas breaks every minute of every day by their actions. So if you want to get the hostages back, and if you want to destroy Hamas, when you're fighting against a force which does not only not follow the rules of war,

• 2:15:38Speaker 02

  but uses your following of the rules of the laws of war against you, at least concede, this is a highly specific and complex military operation. And if you have, or anyone else has, and I say this genuinely, a better way to get back the hostages and to destroy Hamas, I at any rate am all ears.

• 2:16:07Speaker 01

  Okay, um, okay, well, there's, there's a lot there. So number one, like, I, I do agree generally with your point about having some humility in these complex situations, but I would also say, like, do you not then, at any point, as you're like a very well-known public figure who's supporting this war, think about the level of human suffering that is being inflicted on these innocent people? And go like, man, is there another way? Maybe I'm getting this wrong? Maybe this is the Iraq war all over again? You know, which you also supported, that like, maybe that was a big mistake?

• 2:16:36Speaker 02

  If I say it, I don't need to think about it. I've seen it.

• 2:16:39Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:16:39Speaker 02

  I know it. I describe it in my book. I describe what I see in Gaza with the Palestinians when they're, when they're moving down the humanitarian corridor.

• 2:16:49Speaker 01

  Okay, let me just respond to some of the stuff you say. Okay, so then I guess it's not really that much of humility involved in this, but there's two very different goals that are being stated here, right? Like, there's the retrieving the hostages, and then there's taking out Hamas. Now, the retrieving the hostages... And actually, many of the families of hostages who are taken have been some of the only people really protesting this war in Israel, because of course, you know, if you imagine, if you have your family over there and your government is leveling this place, that is not the best path to pursue, to make sure you get all the hostages out alive. I would say that it fell apart, but Donald Trump having his envoy Witkoff go over there and work out this ceasefire

• 2:17:30Speaker 01

  deal that they had for a few weeks. They did get, I believe, 30 hostages back during the phase one of this ceasefire. Seems to me like that would be the method to pursue to try to get the hostages back. But if you're talking about eliminating Hamas, and I think there's something kind of interesting that you touched on there, I don't completely, you know, I disagree with much of your characterization of it, that like, Israel are the good guys who always follow the rules. We could kind of get into some of that. There's lots of rules, like, that Israel does not follow. That being said, yes, of course, I mean, you're describing guerrilla warfare, terrorist organizations, that's right. They stated differently, Gaza doesn't have an air force, or an army, or a navy, they're just

• 2:18:13Speaker 01

  basically militias running around, terrorists, who are trying to do everything they can to fight an asymmetrical war. And just like we helped teach Osama bin Laden how to do the Soviets, and then Osama bin Laden successfully did to us, the whole game in these asymmetrical wars is to get exactly what Hamas got out of this, right? Like Osama bin Laden knew that he couldn't bankrupt the United States of America by taking down the Twin Towers, but he thought he could lure us into a war in Afghanistan that would bankrupt us. Now, it didn't completely, but it, you know, came pretty close. That being said, well, I just mean, in terms of how much it drained the treasury, it was way more than could have any terrorist attack could have possibly done. That being said...

• 2:18:57Speaker 01

  The idea that it's not like, I don't think morally speaking, when you're inflicting this level of suffering on a group of people, that the calculation should be like, well, we want to remove Hamas from power. That's the goal. Justice for October 7th. You know, there's lots of governments around the world that we would, Hamas isn't exactly a government, but there's, there's lots of regimes around the world that we would all like to see removed, but that doesn't mean that we would approve of any means by which to get there. You know, if you were like, hey, I, I think Kim Jong-un's government should be dissolved. I'm sure we would all agree with that. But if you were like, I'm going to level the place and just like slaughter people in order to do it, you might be like, okay, hold on.

• 2:19:39Speaker 01

  But aside from that, this has been acknowledged at the highest levels of Israeli intelligence and US intelligence. There's just no way to get rid of Hamas without it being replaced by more Hamas or Hamas-like group, because it's the basic understanding of this whole situation, right? It's, it's General McChrystal's insurgent math. There, there's still Hamas, Hamas are popping back up in the areas that Israel's already leveled. And the more innocent people you kill, the more radicalized you're going to get this population, the more these people are going to hate you and join up with the resistance movement. And so I just think that to use the justification that we're trying to get rid of Hamas and therefore it's not like, it doesn't matter how many innocent women and children die

• 2:20:24Speaker 01

  in the process.

• 2:20:25Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:20:26Speaker 01

  Or there's no responsibility on you? You, you now are not responsible for the bombs that you drop, how many people they kill?

• 2:20:32Speaker 02

  No, of course you're responsible.

• 2:20:33Speaker 01

  So Israel is responsible then?

• 2:20:35Speaker 02

  They're responsible for the means of their retaliation and their war aims. Yes, of course. But first of all, let me, first of all, let me just say, I totally disagree with your characterization of Osama bin Laden and what he wanted to do. And I don't think that Osama bin Laden's stated public utterances were along those lines. But anyway, the, the reason why the hostages have been released, the numbers that have, is because of constant kinetic force by the IDF. The only, Hamas does not come to the table and ever hand over hostages out of goodwill. It doesn't do it out of the goodness of their own heart. It does it because of the constant kinetic force of the IDF in Gaza.

• 2:21:19Speaker 02

  And if it weren't for that, all 250 hostages would still be there. Second thing is, when it comes to Hamas itself, I totally disagree with the presumption that if you tackle a terrorist entity, you will create more terrorists, ergo, you should not attack the terrorist entity.

• 2:21:41Speaker 01

  That's not the argument that I'm making, but, okay.

• 2:21:43Speaker 02

  It's a commonly held argument, that if you respond to terrorism, you create terrorism. And of course, the only thing in that case is you just have to sit back and take it.

• 2:21:52Speaker 01

  The argument that I'm making is that when you slaughter innocent people, those people around them tend to hate your guts. That's the argument that I'm making.

• 2:22:00Speaker 02

  First of all, your characterization of the slaughter, it's horrible, the war in Gaza. It's horrible that young Israelis have to go in, yet again, to Gaza, and try to find Israeli hostages and try to get the leadership of Hamas.

• 2:22:15Speaker 01

  That's what's horrible about it?

• 2:22:16Speaker 02

  It is not the case, yes, because I think there's a consequence to starting wars.

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  But so it's not horrible for the people who didn't start a war? Why do we become like these collectivists as soon as a war starts?

• 2:22:27Speaker 02

  It is horrible for everybody involved.

• 2:22:30Speaker 01

  No, it's the most horrible for the Palestinian people in Gaza right now. That is the group of people who are being fucked over the most right now. No?

• 2:22:38Speaker 02

  Yes, at the moment, yes.

• 2:22:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:22:40Speaker 02

  But they're not being fucked over. The IDF has been moving through Gaza for 18 months. No Israeli soldier I have spoken to ever wanted to go and see the Gaza again, okay? Nobody wanted to go back. They were dragged back because of Hamas's actions. And if Hamas had acted differently, or the Palestinians had voted in different people to govern them, it would all be different. But again, that's a hypothetical.

• 2:23:06Speaker 02

  The reality of the war on the ground is that in this incredibly heavily built up area, with weaponry hidden everywhere, with soldiers, I've spoken to too many of them, they go in, you have a group of people coming out of a civilian building with their hands up, and from their midsts come a bunch of Hamas terrorists firing at you, in the hope that the IDF will fire back at the civilians. Gadi Eisenkot, one of the members of the war cabinet in the early stages of the war, lost his own son and then his nephew. His nephew was killed in a firefight in Gaza because the Hamas terrorists were firing from a mosque. And that was why Gadi Eisenkot, from the Israeli cabinet's nephew, died.

• 2:23:51Speaker 02

  The whole operating theater is hideous because of what Hamas has done to the Gaza. The reason why Sinwar cropped up in Rafa, finally, the mastermind of October the 7th, one of the most brutal sadistic psychopaths, to use an overrated term, you can ever imagine, in an Israeli prison, by the way, for having strangled Palestinians to death in the 2000s. But anyway, the reason why Sinwar crops up in Rafa late last year is because there was nowhere else for him to run because of the actions of the IDF to pursue the leadership of Hamas that was responsible for the 7th. Now, can all of Hamas be destroyed? Probably not.

• 2:24:35Speaker 02

  Can you make it effectively impossible to function or incapable of functioning? Unable to fire rockets and govern the Gaza? Yes.

• 2:24:47Speaker 01

  Right, but it comes at the price tag of slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people.

• 2:24:51Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 2:24:51Speaker 01

  And you're accepting that price?

• 2:24:53Speaker 02

  No. Every single war of this kind will include civilian casualties, and you and I will almost certainly disagree on the numbers.

• 2:25:01Speaker 01

  I'm not claiming that the health ministry's numbers are perfect, yeah.

• 2:25:04Speaker 02

  But there will be, almost certainly, the best case analysis is that one innocent Gazan has been killed for every one terrorist. That's the best case scenario you can hear. But that would be almost unparalleled in the laws of war, and it's not how the American or British militaries operate in terms of casualties to terrorist ratios. But when we had the campaign against ISIS a decade ago, after ISIS's fighters had gone and massacred people at the Batucourt Theatre in Paris and so on, we used Turkish fighters, brilliant brave fighters from the Peshmerga militias, to work on the ground.

• 2:25:47Speaker 02

  And the French and American and British air forces bombed like hell from the air. And we made ISIS, effectively, touch wood, ten years later, operationally incapable in capital cities in Europe. Has ISIS as a whole gone away? No, they still have pockets in Syria and in Iraq. But we stopped them from being able to do what they most desired to do. And the same is possible with Hamas. Will they be replaced by some other group? Again, then we get to one of the crucial decision points for the Palestinian people.

• 2:26:28Speaker 02

  Is it inevitable that they constantly have to elect people who want to annihilate their neighbors? Or will there ever be a generation that can find a way to live in peace with their neighbors? I agree, most people don't like being bombed. In fact, nobody does.

• 2:26:46Speaker 02

  But if the people, the Palestinians in Gaza,

• 2:26:51Speaker 02

  can find it within themselves to realize the thing they asked for in the elections is the thing that has destroyed the area they live in. And like that brave young man two weeks ago in Gaza, who rose up against Hamas and was identified by the people who remain in Hamas and was tortured and then his body thrown onto his parents' doorstep in Gaza. And the parents started a, well, the family, the clan started a bit of a war against Hamas. But that's how Gaza, that's how Hamas treats Palestinian dissidents. But if there were more people like that young man, and of course, as we all know, the history of totalitarian and terrorist groups running societies is,

• 2:27:31Speaker 02

  they're very successful and they stay in power because they're willing to torture and use violence and much more. That, it's a horrible thing you have to contend with. But if more people like that young man had come about in Gaza in the last eighteen months or before, yes. Yes, it would all be different. And if they could avoid electing a terrorist group that invades their neighbors and fires rockets at their neighbors, yes, it could all be different. It could all be different tomorrow. And I'll tell you, sorry, again, there is not a person living by the Gaza in the south of Israel who does not dream of the day that such a generation of Palestinians emerges. Yeah.

• 2:28:10Speaker 01

  Um, I think that I, okay, a few things here. On Syria there, because it is true. I mean, I think, so, okay, so John Brennan and Barack Obama, the head of the CIA and, and of course, the former president of the United States of America, had a policy of committing literal treason, before they ended up accusing Donald Trump of treason, which was all bullshit. But they had a policy of committing literal treason by funding Al Qaeda and ISIS in the Syrian civil war. Poured billions of dollars and tons of weapons into that conflict. When Donald Trump, now, it is true, by the way, that you are correct, that like, there certainly were military actions taken against ISIS after they invaded Iraq, which was not supposed to be part of the plan.

• 2:28:55Speaker 01

  There was also a lot of military actions taken by Vladimir Putin against ISIS after he came in on Assad's request, as you know. In 2017, when Donald Trump came in, one of the best things Donald Trump ever did, he cut off the CIA program to fund the anti-Assad rebels. And this was also a big part of what ended up like, taking the, you know, the energy out of ISIS. Also, I think there was a lot of good reporting that just, they turned enough people on the ground against them. They were even just too radical and just people ended up hating them. It is true that they receded for quite a while, although the former Emir of Al Qaeda, Al-Jalani, is now ruling Syria, which does not seem like a great deal or something that people in America should support.

• 2:29:39Speaker 01

  The true enemy of the American people, Al Qaeda, now being in charge of Syria. I think that, you know, it's, it's easy to talk about how like, if the Palestinians had done this different, then maybe things would have worked out different. But I just think, again, when you look at things, when you say, which essentially, I think, is your point here, right? Which, I mean, I tried to push you on this, but you're saying, look, we can degrade Hamas, but the cost of that is gonna be slaughtering a whole bunch of people.

• 2:30:08Speaker 02

  It's not slaughtering, it's war.

• 2:30:10Speaker 01

  Okay, I think you're, okay, they're not being slaughtered, they're being killed, okay, whatever word you want to use.

• 2:30:16Speaker 02

  They're being killed in a brutal war started by Hamas, yes.

• 2:30:19Speaker 01

  Yes, it's babies and little kids screaming out for help under rubble and no help is coming. They sit there under the rubble until they die. That is the level of human suffering that's being inflicted. And if you want to say, "Well, listen, that's a price that I'm willing to pay to try to degrade Hamas even though you yourself recognize that we can't totally eliminate them, but we could maybe degrade them or maybe take them down a peg." And the price for that is these babies being tortured to death essentially, whatever you want to call it, that, okay. But, from the other side of that story, like if there's, like, "I got little kids, I don't know if you have kids, I know you have kids, Joe." If anybody ever was saying to me that like, "My kids were the acceptable price for this

• 2:31:02Speaker 01

  policy that we want to put into place," I'm saying, I don't think there's any scenario, any scenario, Douglas, where there would be any time where you would accept Israeli kids dying like that as an acceptable price for a policy that you're going to be advocating for.

• 2:31:18Speaker 02

  First of all, again, go back to the, what is actually happening. There is no desire or aim by the IAF or the IDF to go into Gaza and kill women and children.

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  Well, they're doing it, though.

• 2:31:34Speaker 02

  Hang on, hang on. There is no desire for that? Does it happen collaterally? Certainly, certainly. And that is one of the very ugly rules of war and things that happens in war, and it's another of the reasons why it's almost like you shouldn't start a war and hide your rockets and your terrorists inside civilian buildings.

• 2:31:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, you've made this point a lot of times, but, okay.

• 2:31:55Speaker 02

  Well, it clearly can't be made enough, because there is no intention on the Israeli side to cause the death of non-combatants.

• 2:32:05Speaker 01

  Oh, come on, I mean, listen.

• 2:32:06Speaker 02

  What, you think, you think, why do you think the Israelis would want to go and kill children in Gaza?

• 2:32:12Speaker 01

  I, listen, let me just, how about I say it like this, okay? And, by the way, when I say it like this, I'm not claiming that disputes between... nations are the same as handling dispute domestically. I'm just saying on on the idea of intentionality or who wants to do this or whatever. Look, if you, even if you had the right, let's say, somebody broke onto your property and killed some of your family members and you want to go kill this guy. If he goes back to his apartment building and you know that there's women and children in that apartment building, and so your move is to blow up the building, what you would be charged with is murder in the first degree. Cold-blooded, premeditated, intentional murder. And you could sit there and tell the judge, I didn't want to kill all those people.

• 2:32:56Speaker 01

  Why would I want to kill all of those people? I just had to kill that one guy. But that's bullshit. That's not what counts. You did it intentionally. You dropped a bomb, knowing that there were women and children in that building. You're taking an action, knowing that these innocent people are going to die, then that is by definition intentional. And you know, you could sit here and talk about, and it is true, there have been documented cases of Hamas placing missiles in mosques and in schools and things like that. But when you look at the aerial footage of Gaza, that does not describe every single strike that Israel is, that Israel has launched. There have been tons of bombs dropped where it's simply, and we have very good reporting on this, where they've literally just have information that they believe with some degree

• 2:33:41Speaker 01

  of certainty that a couple of Hamas militants are in this building, and so they blow up the building. That is intentionally murdering innocent people. And you, if you're going to advocate for this war, I don't see how you can do it without saying that, like, at least bite the bullet that Madeleine Albright did when she was asked, we've played this clip on the show before, when she's point-blank asked about the sanctions on Iraq and our 500,000 children, is that price acceptable? And she said, yes, we believe that price is acceptable. You're saying, if you're going to support this war, you know this is the price of it, so why can't you just say, yes, that price is acceptable? Because then we could have a real conversation about why the other side is going to look at you like a monster.

• 2:34:23Speaker 02

  Because, first of all, I don't agree with any of the characterization you make, any of it.

• 2:34:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:34:28Speaker 02

  You say that the Israelis get some information, as if this is like, what, they're making it up? Or you think the Israelis want to drop a bomb? Or like, no, they, they act, they act on information about where the terrorists are, just like they act on information of where the hostages are. Secondly, when you talk about the destruction in Gaza, something you probably haven't realised, but is one of the reasons why the destruction looks so bad and is so bad, is because when the IDF were clearing the areas that they'd asked the civilian population to leave and were going house to house, and it isn't just stories here or stories there.

• 2:35:13Speaker 02

  It's every second or third house in Gaza that has either munitions or tunnel entrances. Every second or third house. This is not the odd case. One of the things that everybody who has been there knows is that you go into a mosque and you know there will be either rockets and/or tunnel entrances. You go into a hospital and you know that there will be grenades or tunnel entrances or dungeons or whatever. Just on a lighter note, early in the conflict when the Shifa complex, which is used as a Hamas headquarters and has also been used as a hospital. But even in 2014, the BBC said this is where Hamas are operating from. When that was shown by the Israelis to have massive weapons stores

• 2:35:57Speaker 02

  in the tunnels and cellars underneath it. They had grenades, RPGs, Kalashnikovs. And the BBC's chief Middle East correspondent was asked live on air, "Why would these things be in a hospital?" And Jeremy Bowen said, "Well, it's perfectly possible because there's a lot of guns in the Middle East. It's perfectly possible the security department of the hospital had the Kalashnikovs." I said, "Yeah, and did the grenades belong to the cardiologists?" I mean, why? Why is this so normal? That these, every civilian building like this and every second or third house in Gaza is a weapons dump or a place that you enter the tunnels from. But the reason why the devastation, which it is,

• 2:36:42Speaker 02

  in the north in particular, but also in Rafah and elsewhere, is what it is, is because every time the IDF went into an area where they had told the civilians to leave.

• 2:36:54Speaker 02

  The Hamas terrorists that remained were in civilian buildings and booby-trapped a very large number of the buildings. So what they did as they proceeded through those areas of Gaza to clear them was to set off munitions which the American military and others use, which sets off secondary explosions in places that are booby-trapped. And much of what you see in the photographs that you see and many other people have seen from Gaza is the result of that. It is the result of the IDF trying to clear an area which has been very carefully and well booby-trapped for years. Let me make one other very quick point about the bigger picture that you said, because I think it's important.

• 2:37:39Speaker 02

  We were talking about the Syrian, you mentioned the Syrian conflict and ISIS. I think, again, it's really important to keep this in mind, what I said earlier about, let's not think we are the primary actors everywhere, or even that important. I remember the debate over the Syrian intervention issue, and at the time, despite being in many cases an interventionist, I said on that occasion, I said, we didn't know what we were doing, clearly didn't know who we were going to back. If you remember, John McCain went to Syria to speak to some rebels, and one of them immediately turned out to be a kind of head-hacking G-hetist. Yep. That wasn't great. And I said, I don't have any confidence that we know who to back. And despite many Syrian friends of mine imploring me otherwise, I said, I don't think it's

• 2:38:23Speaker 02

  something we can get involved in. However, if you look at the last 10 years and more, what is it now, 13 years of conflict in Syria, the US and the Western powers are not remotely significant actors in that conflict. The significant actors in that conflict were, always have been, the Russians.

• 2:38:46Speaker 02

  The Iranians. I mean, one of the things that blows my mind in the analysis of the region is the fact that the prime mover in the region, the revolutionary Islamic government in Iran that has been oppressing the Iranian people since 1979 and has been holding a great civilization in captivity, that the Iranian revolutionary government in Tehran has literally been colonizing the region. I have this rule about, you know, I took it from Vasili Grossman, the great Soviet Jewish writer, who had this great line about, "Tell me what you accuse the Jews of and I'll tell you what you're guilty of." This absolutely runs as well with the accusations against the Jewish state in the region.

• 2:39:28Speaker 02

  The Iranian revolutionary government is constantly accusing the Israelis of colonialism, of expansionism. It is the Iranian revolutionary government that has been colonizing Iraq, colonizing Yemen, colonizing and destroying Lebanon, and colonizing Syria. And the amazing thing, when you look at the disaster that has happened in Syria in the last 13 years, and I don't see it getting especially better under the current jihadists,

• 2:39:55Speaker 02

  the disaster is not of our making primarily. We are bit players. America is a bit player. In Iraq? In Syria. We are a bit player. Yeah, but you mentioned Iraq in there too. I know. Well, the great idiocy of that was that Iraq notices our failings, our lack of staying power, our desire to get out as soon as possible and much more, which is all understandable. No. We agree with it or not. Hang on, hang on, hang on. And they moved in. And they moved in, of course. But I was talking about Syria. In the Syrian theatre, the main actors are not us. And one of the things I'm still interested in about this mindset that you have is, why does it always have to be us?

• 2:40:39Speaker 02

  It's other people who have actions in the world.

• 2:40:43Speaker 01

  Again.

• 2:40:43Speaker 02

  The Russians, the revolutionary government in Iran, they are so busy.

• 2:40:47Speaker 01

  See, I think this is, this is all about framing here because I don't think I've ever once made this claim. You've made this point several times so far, but I've never once made the claim that everything is always us. I think you're the one who's downplaying the influence and impact that we have. We are, after all, when I'm saying we, I'm saying the United States of America's federal government, is the largest, most powerful organization in the history of the world. It is the world empire. And to sit there and say Iran colonized Iraq, no, George W. Bush invaded the country on a bunch of lies, a war that you supported. He went in there and overthrew Saddam Hussein and installed democracy in the Shiite majority country. Of course, he handed the thing over to Iran, but that, but to say that that had

• 2:41:30Speaker 01

  no impact on Syria, or that the US military funding and arming the anti-Assad rebels had no impact, I'm not claiming the entire thing is America. Bashar al-Assad was an actor. There were other forces there aside from the US meddling there. But at the same time, you got the most powerful government in the history of the world, who, as we all know, put Syria on its seven countries in five years list of who we're going to go overthrow. And it's had a profound impact on the region. Of course it did. It was a huge contributing factor to that civil war to begin with.

• 2:42:02Speaker 02

  I think America is obviously a major actor, certainly could be, is meant to be the major actor on the world stage. I think that the history of the region, and many other regions around the world, is that America does not have either the staying power, the capability, the intelligence, the kind of people that you would produce in order to have the kind of impact that you actually think it has. American weakness in the Middle East has been, I mean, I say this as somebody obviously from Britain, but when Britain was a dominant world power, she produced the type of person who was keen to go and be a governor of, you know, a stand somewhere and learn the local dialects and, you know, run the civil service.

• 2:42:44Speaker 01

  You guys were better at empire than we are.

• 2:42:46Speaker 02

  The point is, they produced that sort of person because they wanted to stay. America has never produced that sort of person, and it certainly hasn't in the Middle East in particular. It acts militarily on occasions, and in my view, sometimes well, sometimes poorly. But the reason why America was so badly outplayed by the mullahs in Iraq was simply that, as you say, after the war, America had nothing like the staying power of the mullahs in Tehran, had nothing like the ability to affect post-war change like the Iranian revolutionary government did. And so, yes, if we create a vacuum like that, or somebody else creates a vacuum, and after all, we did not cause the beginning of this, we, the West, I'm saying on this occasion,

• 2:43:30Speaker 02

  did not cause the beginning of the Arab Spring, as it was optimistically called at the beginning, or the beginning of the revolutionary uprising in Syria in 2011. These things were ground up, and the actors in the region moved in much more deftly and effectively than we did. It's the same with Lebanon. It's the same with Lebanon. America doesn't even have eyes over Lebanon. Iran has an army that has a checkpoint at Beirut Airport that will check you on behalf of Hezbollah when you come in there. You can't tell me that America is, just because America's, on paper and much more, has the power, that America is the deft operator in the Middle East.

• 2:44:15Speaker 02

  There are so many people who outwit America in the Middle East all the time.

• 2:44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you can't tell me that there hasn't been an impact from the $8 trillion that we've spent there and the multiple regime changes all around the Middle East that were done by America. These weren't just going to happen on their own. Are you saying that didn't have an impact?

• 2:44:32Speaker 02

  Iraq was certainly done by America, of course.

• 2:44:34Speaker 01

  Okay, so Iraq was certainly done by America. Libya?

• 2:44:37Speaker 02

  NATO.

• 2:44:38Speaker 01

  Right, but, okay, but NATO is the European wing of the American empire. I mean, let's get real, that's an American decision.

• 2:44:46Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:44:47Speaker 01

  Right, I'm saying, it's not because some random European country decided.

• 2:44:50Speaker 02

  By the way, let's just also go back, just because, I mean, the Libyan intervention, I was pretty iffy about at the time, but that was done not to create an empire or anything like that. It was done for one very clear reason, and I remember the debates in the European capitals and in Washington DC at the time. There was a belief that after the uprising against Gaddafi began, that there would be a mass slaughter genocide carried out by Gaddafi against the people.

• 2:45:22Speaker 01

  So we're talking 2011?

• 2:45:24Speaker 02

  And it was 2011, yeah. There was a belief, everybody believed it. He had started, his son, if you remember, Saif Gaddafi, formerly of the London School of Economics, showing that we can produce the best. Saif Gaddafi stood up and said, "We will fight to the last bullet," and so on. And everybody believed them. And the desire to intervene was caused in an attempt to not to... People did not want the resources of Libya. Nobody wanted Libya to fall apart or anything like that. They did it because there was a genuine belief in what was called at the time, which has gone out of fashion, but right to protect, duty to protect. And that was why they went in.

• 2:46:04Speaker 01

  So, okay, if that's why...

• 2:46:05Speaker 02

  So it's just important to keep that sort of nuance around.

• 2:46:07Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think it's correct. I mean, you always kind of like ascribe the best of motives to Israel and the West, and nothing but the worst of motives to all of their enemies. So just riddle me this then. If we just went in because there was this uprising in 2011, and because we were worried that Gaddafi was about to go genocidal, something that your own, the UK Parliament, did an investigation into and found out was just completely, completely wrong. But why is it then that I got four-star general Wesley Clark, supreme commander of the NATO forces? Why is it that he told me that he saw the plans in 2001 to overthrow Gaddafi? And that this was part of a strategy to overthrow seven governments in five years?

• 2:46:50Speaker 01

  And all of them except one have been done at this point? So you're telling me it's a complete coincidence that he saw that the neoconservatives had this plan to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi? And then 10 years later, we happened to do it when we have the opportunity? The two aren't related at all?

• 2:47:05Speaker 02

  First, it's nice to hear the N-word again.

• 2:47:09Speaker 01

  The N-word? Did I say that? Oh, that one. I was thinking of a different one, okay.

• 2:47:17Speaker 02

  First of all, I would assume, I would hope, that there's American military planning for absolutely everything. I would hope that there is a scenario for absolutely everything somewhere in the American, in Pentagon or whatever.

• 2:47:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he didn't say they're drawing up war games. He said, "This is the plan that we're going to input."

• 2:47:34Speaker 02

  I would assume that, I would hope that, any major power like America would have plans in place for almost everything that is likely, including, I mean, this, America could have, well, should have, started planning for some kind of kinetic force in Libya from the 1980s. Of course, of course, there'd be plans.

• 2:47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but again, this is not what, this is not what Wesley Clark's like. He wasn't saying like, "We've drawn up war games." We've drawn up war games with everybody. We have war games with China, war games with Russia. We've, we've mapped out how a kinetic war would work, even with countries that have nuclear arsenals, like, just in case we have to fight a traditional war and nukes aren't being used. That's not what he's talking about. He said that not only, he, he was told, "We're in Afghanistan now." This is late 2001. He goes, "Next, we're going to Iraq. After that, we're going to Libya. After that, we're going to Syria, Somalia, was it Sudan, and, and finishing off with Iran." He laid out the, the, the path of what we're about to do, and then we did it. In the next

• 2:48:40Speaker 01

  administration, you don't think there was any connection between those two?

• 2:48:43Speaker 02

  What, we did Somalia and Sudan?

• 2:48:45Speaker 01

  No, I'm sorry. He's, his, I'm sorry. If you go look at the list of seven countries, it was Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, I believe Somalia, Sudan, and Iran, I believe.

• 2:48:59Speaker 02

  Why, why would America want to do any of those things? Who, who wants to do it?

• 2:49:04Speaker 01

  Well, what he said is that essentially these plans, he said later in an interview with Pierce Morgan, that he, that he had seen the plans at first in 1991, that they came from Paul Wolfowitz, that basically then they got, what, what's funny about what the Force Star General said?

• 2:49:18Speaker 02

  Okay, continue.

• 2:49:20Speaker 01

  No, I'm just curious, what's laughable about this?

• 2:49:24Speaker 02

  Paul Wolfowitz is a great figure for almost any deep conspiracy in this country because he was a deputy secretary of defence at the highest in his life. He is forever being ascribed almost supernatural power.

• 2:49:46Speaker 01

  I don't think anyone's just...

• 2:49:48Speaker 02

  The highest position he ever got to was as Donald Rumsfeld's deputy. And it's a very strange thing always when Wolfowitz's name comes up because he was a relatively low level person to whom almost everything can be ascribed.

• 2:50:05Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't describe...

• 2:50:06Speaker 02

  And I find it strange.

• 2:50:07Speaker 01

  Again, this is such a straw man. I didn't ascribe everything to him.

• 2:50:09Speaker 02

  Anyway, go on.

• 2:50:10Speaker 01

  No, I'm telling you what the four-star general said about him. And I wouldn't say deputy secretary of defence is like a nothing position. It's a pretty consequential position.

• 2:50:20Speaker 02

  Not as important as Rumsfeld or Cheney, but yeah.

• 2:50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, agreed. But who said it was?

• 2:50:25Speaker 02

  No, fire on.

• 2:50:26Speaker 01

  I just feel like you're batting down straw men. I never said that he is the creator of all conspiracies or anything. I'm literally saying that the four-star general said that he first saw the plans from him, that he had brought this to the national security adviser, and it had basically been like, eh, we'll look at this after the election, and that then it was resurrected later by Richard Pearl, and that these guys were producing... Again, not me saying this, this is four-star general Wesley Clark. He said in a study paid for by the Israelis, and yeah, you can laugh at this all you want to, Douglas, but you can go read the clean break memo for yourself. This was the neoconservative strategy, along with their counterpart, the Likud's in Israel, that they wanted to remake the region in a way, and I'm sure by their own justification, they believed that democracy would sweep the region and it would be better off for

• 2:51:11Speaker 01

  them. Nonetheless, they pursued this path that has ended in nothing but disaster. And I don't think that, to say that in 2011 it was like a purely humanitarian mission to go overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, I do not think is right.

• 2:51:23Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, before I get to the substance of it, why would they want the current situation in Libya?

• 2:51:28Speaker 01

  Huh?

• 2:51:30Speaker 02

  Why would they want the current situation in Libya?

• 2:51:32Speaker 01

  Well, because they wanted Gaddafi out.

• 2:51:36Speaker 02

  Why?

• 2:51:37Speaker 01

  Well, okay, if you read the clean break memo, what their argument essentially is, is that you wanted to have regime change against the hostile surrounding Muslim countries.

• 2:51:46Speaker 02

  But...

• 2:51:47Speaker 01

  Was Gaddafi not hostile to Israel?

• 2:51:50Speaker 02

  To Israel, yeah, sure, but he was, I mean, the Europeans and everybody else in NATO found that Gaddafi was a really relatively easy person to get on with latterly.

• 2:52:00Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah, no, I think it was an insane policy.

• 2:52:02Speaker 02

  No, no, but you'll notice that after he hands over the nuclear program and thus makes himself very vulnerable, unfortunately, for the future of world peace, Libya has been unutterably disastrous for Europe.

• 2:52:18Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, wait, hang on, hang on. No, just a clarifying question.

• 2:52:20Speaker 02

  Unutterably disastrous for Europe.

• 2:52:21Speaker 01

  I agree with you.

• 2:52:22Speaker 02

  And Somalia and Sudan, why, why, why does America or Israel want to, like, do regime change in Somalia or Sudan?

• 2:52:29Speaker 01

  Can I just ask you, can I just ask you a clarifying question on this? When you say that was a disaster for the prospects of world peace, you mean overthrowing Gaddafi was a disaster?

• 2:52:37Speaker 02

  I say that him being, sorry, I should have clarified. My thing is, him being overthrown after he's given over the nuclear weapons is a disaster because it leaves on the table this thing that you have to hold on to nuclear weapons and if you don't hold on to nuclear weapons, you could be dead.

• 2:52:52Speaker 01

  Do you think maybe the Israelis should stop using the term "the Libyan model" to push for negotiations with Iran?

• 2:52:58Speaker 02

  No, I don't think anyone should, should use, what happened to Gaddafi as being a good precursor for...

• 2:53:04Speaker 01

  Well, we certainly have a lot of agreement there. It was an absolute disaster, particularly to do it, to let a guy get sodomized to death after he denuclearized is not a good precedent to set.

• 2:53:16Speaker 02

  I agree, and that's one of the reasons why...

• 2:53:18Speaker 01

  One of the reasons why Iran wants a nuke so bad.

• 2:53:22Speaker 02

  I'm not sure, it's just to have been sodomized to death, as you put it, but yeah, they want a nuke because they, I mean, if you like what the Iranian revolutionary government's done since 1979, you'd love what they'll do with the world when they've got a nuke. But anyway, put that aside for a second. I mean, the, I just, I'm sorry, we slightly come back to where we started, but I, when you start talking about Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearl, I just, it's, it's all awfully...

• 2:53:53Speaker 02

  Noxious smelling. Richard Pearl was a member of the Defense Policy Board, which had an advisory capacity toward the Pentagon in the early 2000s. But it was in no, by no means, a policy board that dictated Pentagon policy. Okay. In the last 30 years of American foreign policy, there'd be many major actors. Paul Wolfowitz is a relatively major one. But we come slightly back full circle. In my view, and I'm not saying you're guilty of this, certainly not knowingly, in my view,

• 2:54:35Speaker 02

  when people start talking about Paul Wolfowitz, I always remember that line of Mark Steins many years ago, and he said, "You can't help thinking that one of the reasons why people find Wolfowitz so appealing to talk about is that his name starts with a nasty animal and ends Jewish."

• 2:54:48Speaker 01

  That is a funny thing to say.

• 2:54:52Speaker 02

  People love saying Wolfowitz. It's such a great name.

• 2:54:55Speaker 01

  It is for any ability in a movie.

• 2:54:57Speaker 02

  You can say, "Aha." He's perfect for it. Perfect for it. And he looks perfect for it. Right. You'll say, "Oh, the crafty Paul Wolfowitz." His crazy eyebrows. Famous hawk.

• 2:55:06Speaker 01

  So you're a bigot. You're a Jew hater if you mention the neocons.

• 2:55:08Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no. Just let me continue with the thought. So I remember those days, and his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, was like the ruler of the world at that time. He had such charisma, such genius was attributed to him for the initial invasion of Iraq. People, you can't imagine the admiration that existed in the defense establishments around the world for Rumsfeld. Dick Cheney was so powerful that people of right and left, particularly on the left,

• 2:55:52Speaker 02

  spent all those years in the W. Bush administration saying, "W. wasn't the real president. He was being run by Dick Cheney because he was the brilliant," et cetera, et cetera.

• 2:56:02Speaker 01

  You're certainly listening to him at the beginning.

• 2:56:03Speaker 02

  Okay, but I'm just saying, it goes back to this thing of when certain ideas catch hold and what's really going on in them. To attribute American foreign policy in the last forty years to Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Pearl is knowingly or otherwise to encourage a conspiracy that has very obvious legs. And I just urge you not to do it.

• 2:56:30Speaker 01

  Okay, let me respond to this a little bit. First of all, I did not, it is not at all saying that these guys therefore just control everything. I'm just pointing out what a four-star general claimed, where plans originated, and that they ended up being implemented. That doesn't mean that they were the absolute ruler or arbiter of what was going to happen. But again, I gotta say, for you to say that I can't bring up the neoconservatives-

• 2:56:59Speaker 02

  I never said you couldn't. I just laughed.

• 2:57:01Speaker 01

  Let me just, right, but the implication is that I'm unwittingly giving fertile ground to some like Jew-hating conspiracy if I bring up a guy who's got a Jewish last name, who was a consequential person in our government. This is like identical to the arguments of the woke left. That would just be like, oh, if you even say something, you know, if you bring up the crime rate in Chicago, you're basically a bigot because other people could take this and run with it.

• 2:57:27Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 2:57:28Speaker 01

  No, you come on. What's the argument?

• 2:57:30Speaker 02

  If you said to me-

• 2:57:31Speaker 01

  I said a four-star general said something, and there's no, what's the response?

• 2:57:35Speaker 02

  If, if, if, if you said to me, or somebody said to me, "Don't you think there's a, that some people are running the global financial system?" And I said, "Possibly," and you, and I said, "Who do you think it is?" And they said, "The Rothschilds."

• 2:57:57Speaker 02

  I think I'd be right in saying there was something a bit off about the character of the person doing that, because it seemed like they were playing to some kind of lazy old trope.

• 2:58:09Joe Rogan?

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• 2:58:53Joe Rogan?

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• 2:59:24Speaker 02

  And I think similarly, that if you, if you give the implication that a cabal of people, particularly, and you should be really careful about this because of the people who will come up underneath you. If you give the implication that these cabals exist and you decide to, to elevate the Jews or people with Jewish names in it, and then play down the non-Jews, I can tell you, you will be opening up a world of madness.

• 2:59:55Joe Rogan?

  But am I really playing down the non-Jews? I mean, go look at the stuff that I've said about Obama, about George W. Bush.

• 3:00:02Speaker 02

  You said Middle East policy is Dick Pearl and Paul Wolfowitz, and I said, how about it's not?

• 3:00:07Joe Rogan?

  No, no, no, no. I mean, this is, this is why I'm saying this is a woke leftist tactic. I literally just mentioned that a four-star general said this. I'm quoting him, and now you're telling me that this is the same thing as promoting.

• 3:00:19Speaker 02

  That when you quote somebody, it's a totally arbitrary thing. You just pluck out of the air. You decided to pluck that out.

• 3:00:25Speaker 01

  I'm not arguing that it's arbitrary. I'm saying I'm using the quote for a reason. I was connecting it to an argument.

• 3:00:31Speaker 02

  And I'm saying to you.

• 3:00:33Speaker 01

  I'm giving fertile ground to Jew haters to mention it.

• 3:00:37Speaker 02

  I think that when you decide to elevate what is a conspiracy of people who are overthrowing the governments of various countries, some of which haven't been overthrown and others of which have, but by the way, were not overthrown by American dominance, certainly not in Syria. And then you say that the people who are doing it are these people with Jewish names. I think you should be more judicious than that because you probably know what bubbles up underneath you online by now.

• 3:01:10Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, look, I mean, there's no question that there are, you know, no matter what. And by the way, you know, it's funny just hearing you say this to me. I mean, look, and by the way, I completely agree with you. I think you've been one of the best champions on opposing Europe's insane immigration policy. I also think the United States of America has had an insane immigration policy. I'm happy to see that.

• 3:01:30Speaker 02

  Point of agreement.

• 3:01:31Speaker 01

  That seems to be being reversed. But imagine you made a point about immigration and I were to say to you, be careful what's bubbling up online. Because now you're getting, look, the fact is, if you are, if you are taking a position that opposes, say, Muslim immigration into the UK. Then yes, it is quite possible that a lot of people who really just hate Muslims are going to end up liking what you had to say or following you. But that doesn't mean you're responsible to it. And if I were to say that to you, you would be the first to very eloquently point out that that is a complete non-argument. The question is, is this policy good or is it bad? And whether there's not, and if you want to say to me, hey, I should like disclaim when I make this point that like, hey,

• 3:02:14Speaker 01

  I'm Jewish. I love Jewish people. The fact that there were some Jewish people involved in our foreign policy establishment does not mean that it's the Jews, then fine, I'm happy to say that. But I just think it's a non-argument to say that like, oh, you know, you're, you're kind of like giving, you're creating fertile ground for this hatred. If I'm being completely honest, I think we've seen what you're talking about bubbling up on Twitter. Do you think that's gotten worse over the last 18 months?

• 3:02:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 3:02:43Speaker 01

  Right. I, I think kind of what Israel's doing in this war and the US funding and arming it have been something that is really a great facilitator for that stuff to bubble up.

• 3:02:52Speaker 02

  Well, as I say, we, we could go back to that, but I disagree. I think that Israel has every right to go in and destroy the terrorist group that carried out the massacre.

• 3:02:58Speaker 01

  Yes, again, but no one's, but no one's arguing that they have the right to destroy the terrorists. The question is if they have the right to kill innocent people.

• 3:03:03Speaker 02

  But let's not go around again, which I think we've done.

• 3:03:05Speaker 01

  Which is not answering what I'm saying.

• 3:03:07Speaker 02

  I think I've already answered that, but just, just to go back to the meat of that, I think you don't realize that actually, uh, people like me who have a voice and write and much more do think about that all the time. It's a profound, uh, concern and responsibility.

• 3:03:28Speaker 01

  So I agree with that.

• 3:03:29Speaker 02

  Right, right. And don't think I don't worry all the time and make sure I intervene into the debate very carefully at times when I think some people have picked up something that I've been saying and are gonna go wrong with it. I, that scares the hell out of me and I do it regularly and I do it because I have to.

• 3:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, listen, so, okay, so that's a point of agreement too, but you don't stop believing in that policy for it and you won't stop bringing that up.

• 3:03:59Speaker 02

  No, no, but you do say, but you do say on occasion, I mean, the most obvious one on that, if there is something where something really, uh, fetid happens, something really terrible, and there's a bunch of people that decide to, uh, riot or commit violence or something like that, I know that I have to, as a duty, say, absolutely, this is to be condemned. If it is people trying to pretend that all Muslims this or all that, absolutely, I intervene to stop that. I think that is, but I think that this is one of the responsibilities

• 3:04:41Speaker 02

  that comes with putting out ideas in the public square.

• 3:04:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:04:45Speaker 02

  And I think that none of us are... Blame free, but all of us have some kind of responsibility to know that what we put out there is very carefully watched, very carefully followed, and that we have to tread well.

• 3:05:07Speaker 01

  Well, OK, so I agree with that, but when you say you intervene, what exactly do you mean by that? You mean you voice opposition to it. You say, hey, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that like we have to have a sane immigration policy that's good for our country.

• 3:05:20Speaker 02

  Or make sure I, you know, say which politician I think can deal with it decently and which ones will not. I mean, I've made plenty of enemies in the European right by saying who I think is bad and who will not do this well.

• 3:05:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:05:33Speaker 02

  I just put it out there. I think I literally, I say it as a point of caution.

• 3:05:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I, I mean, I don't disagree with that, and I've certainly done the same thing and said that like, I don't know, like, I don't like the, I don't like Jew hatred on Twitter, and I don't like people jumping to wild conspiracies that they don't have enough, nearly enough evidence to, you know, actually back up, which I've seen quite a bit of. That being said, I also think there's a whole lot of real conspiracies, and I'm not going to stop talking about those just because some people on Twitter might take it in a bad direction.

• 3:06:09Speaker 02

  Well, as the great Michael Malice said, and as you quoted, one red pill, not the whole bottle.

• 3:06:15Speaker 01

  I've been trying to limit people to one red pill. One red pill a year is all you need.

• 3:06:19Speaker 02

  A lot of people, they take one of those things and they just get hungry.

• 3:06:22Joe Rogan?

  Sort of like boosters.

• 3:06:23Speaker 02

  Like boosters.

• 3:06:24Speaker 01

  Well, it ends up, it ends up, yeah, exactly. Take, take none of those. No, you're supposed to take one red pill.

• 3:06:30Speaker 02

  By the way, what's the one, what's the one in front of you?

• 3:06:32Joe Rogan?

  Which one?

• 3:06:33Speaker 02

  That one there.

• 3:06:34Joe Rogan?

  This?

• 3:06:34Speaker 02

  Black one, yeah.

• 3:06:35Joe Rogan?

  It's nicotine?

• 3:06:35Speaker 02

  Oh, I see. Oh, that's the chewing ones.

• 3:06:38Joe Rogan?

  It's like a pouch.

• 3:06:39Speaker 02

  Chris Williamson showed me yesterday this one that you, he said weightlifters are using in Austin. Uh, it's like a powder or something? Weightlifters.

• 3:06:50Joe Rogan?

  A creatine powder?

• 3:06:51Speaker 02

  No, it's not creatine, it's something like it.

• 3:06:53Joe Rogan?

  Creatine?

• 3:06:54Speaker 02

  No, it's like, it's to sniff.

• 3:06:58Joe Rogan?

  Oh, no, no, no, that's smelling salts.

• 3:07:00Speaker 02

  Smelling salts, that's right, smelling salts.

• 3:07:03Joe Rogan?

  For silly. We do that to be silly.

• 3:07:05Speaker 02

  I hadn't heard of that since like-

• 3:07:06Joe Rogan?

  They're horrible.

• 3:07:06Speaker 02

  19th century women who thought they had the vapors and he said these are smelling salts.

• 3:07:10Joe Rogan?

  Well, they used to use it for boxers when they got knocked out to wake them up.

• 3:07:13Speaker 02

  That was it. That was it. Does it work?

• 3:07:15Joe Rogan?

  It's, uh, well, it works for weightlifters. You sniff it before you lift incredible amounts of weight. Allegedly, powerlifters use them. That's literally why they sell it. It just jolts your entire central nervous system because it's so horrific. Want to smell?

• 3:07:31Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:07:33Speaker 01

  This is, by the way, a little insight into the comedy community. Uh, the deal is that Joe will help advance the careers of comedians unlike anybody since Johnny Carson. But then the cost is you do have to sniff smelling salts. We all have to do that. It's a-

• 3:07:48Speaker 02

  Oh, bring the smelling salts.

• 3:07:49Speaker 01

  It's about the bargain of sorts, but it is what it is.

• 3:07:52Joe Rogan?

  Do you have a hard out, Douglas?

• 3:07:53Speaker 02

  Uh, kinda. I gotta get to DC.

• 3:07:56Joe Rogan?

  Okay.

• 3:07:57Speaker 02

  My, one of my least favorite cities in the country, but-

• 3:08:00Speaker 01

  Another area of agreement. There we go.

• 3:08:03Joe Rogan?

  Um, thank you. Thank you for doing this. Appreciate it. It was very, very good. I enjoyed it very much and thank you, Dave.

• 3:08:09Speaker 01

  I do. Uh, yeah, of course, thank you to you, John. Thank you, Douglas, very much. I do appreciate that. While we do fundamentally disagree on a lot of this stuff, I do admire that you will have these conversations.

• 3:08:18Joe Rogan?

  I'll show everyone the book here. It's, oh, Jesus Christ. Avoided it on myself, luckily. Um, on democracies and death cults, Israel and the future of civilization, Douglas Murray. Did you do the audiobook?

• 3:08:30Speaker 02

  I did do the audiobook. You can hear these mellifluous tones.

• 3:08:34Joe Rogan?

  Yes, love it. It would be a tragedy if anybody else did it.

• 3:08:38Speaker 02

  I trust you.

• 3:08:39Joe Rogan?

  Yes. All right. Beautiful. All right. Goodbye, everybody. Thank you.