Dave Smith: Israel, Hamas, Ukraine, Russia, Conspiracies & Antisemitism | Lex Fridman Podcast #464

All the people who sold the war in Iraq, they lied us into war after a war. They've bankrupted the country, damn near destroyed the dollar. And like, no one loses their job. No one even gets in trouble over any of this. If you make everybody monsters and they're not human beings, well, you can't do diplomacy with monsters. You can't make a deal. You can't negotiate with monsters, but you can with humans. Maybe there are times where you're not, you shouldn't negotiate, or you can't negotiate with humans, but it's better if you can. And we could use a lot more of that thinking. Donald Trump has put a lot of political capital chips into the middle of the table that I can end this war, you know, and he's going to look very, very bad if he can't. So he's very highly incentivized to get this thing done as quick as possible. You are fighting in a way that produces more of the thing that you're fighting. And so the first step is to stop doing that. Like your, your cure is making the patient more sick. So stop doing that. And then let's see if maybe we could heal. Where are the tapes? Why is everyone talking about the flight logs and the files? Where are the tapes? This guy was clearly taping people to blackmail them. Like, why does anything need to be redacted for national security? Like, I'm sorry, you're telling me there's a pedophile ring and we can't tell you everything about it for national security? Why would that be related to national security?

The following is a conversation with Dave Smith, an outspoken and at times controversial anti war libertarian comedian and podcast host. This is the Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Dave Smith. You are a longtime libertarian, perhaps an anarcho capitalist. You can talk about that. Can you explain the different variants, flavors of libertarianism and where you stand among those variants?

Yeah, so there's almost like anything like with left wing schools of thought or right wing schools of thought. There's many different camps and different thinkers. And so within the kind of broader theme of libertarianism, there was a lot of influence from people like Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell. Those were, I think, some of the more mainstream figures. And then there's kind of like the Ron Paul brand of libertarianism, which is kind of distinct from that other camp where they're much more of an emphasis on foreign policy. All of them kind of fall into the radical Minarchist points of view. And then there's Rothbardian anarcho capitalist. Then there's also like David Friedman, who's an anarcho capitalist, but from a completely different perspective than Murray Rothbard. I would probably be most. I'm most closely like with the Rothbard school, which is very similar to Ron Paul, but even maybe a little bit further in that, you know, the very little bit of government that Ron Paul might support.

You've been a big fan of Ron Paul. Can you explain what you admire about him?

A big fan is an understatement. I think Ron Paul is like the greatest living American hero. I revere him on the level of, of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, number one. I mean, all of the major issues that he. He was correct in his understanding of them, his diagnosis of what caused these problems and his solutions. And in hindsight, there's just like a million different examples of where almost everybody today would agree. Even though his ideas were very controversial at the time, be like, oh, my God, if we had just listened to Ron Paul about that, we'd be so much better off. But I think there's something almost deeper than that about why. So why Ron Paul inspires so much love from so many people is, okay, so number one, the guy, he was a champion of these views for decades when there was no payoff for it at all, where he was just kind of alone in the woods being. You know, they used to call him Dr. No because, well, he was a medical doctor. And then he was. He would be the lone no vote in Congress, like, all the time, like on the bills that the entire Congress, bipartisan agreement, everything is. And there's one vote against it, you know, and that he would be that guy, he clearly kept doing what he was doing simply because he believed it was right, not because there was any benefit for him. In fact, he dealt with a lot of headaches for the views that he had. And then he was just a genuine person of integrity. You know, he's the only congressman who I've ever heard this about. And like, DC Insiders, people on the Hill will say this. He was the only congressman of my lifetime who the lobbyists simply stopped visiting. He was the only one who. They just stopped going to his office because they were just like, there's just no getting through to this guy. He was just not playing politics like that. And he was, you know, you imagine what it must have been like from like, the lobbyist perspective when they first tried to go there, you know, and they'd be like, all right, listen, we really need you to, you know, vote yes on this or that. And he was like, the Constitution doesn't authorize us to do that. And they're like, what? Like, who. Who in this town even talks like that? You know, and so there was just. He's also just. I've. I've met him many times at this point, and he is just genuinely. He's like one of those guys who's just from, like, an older, better generation. Just. He's the sweetest guy, but he's like. But he's not a pushover. Like, he was a tough guy in. In his day, and he was an athlete, and he was in the Air Force and is married to the same woman for, I think, over 60 years at point. Has, like, a big, beautiful family. He was a country doctor. He was a baby doctor who delivered thousands of babies. Like, he's just. It is. He's like this kind of classic American figure. And, you know, I just think, you know, at the risk of. Of falling into, like, hero worship or something like that, I do think he's a. I think he's a genuinely great man, and I think great men are to be revered.

Yeah. As you said, there's integrity there. Can you speak to the ideas that Ron Paul represents? Like, you said, some of the things he's been right about. Maybe. Can you speak about the economics, the Fed, and maybe war and being anti military intervention?

Well, I think it comes. It all came from kind of the same central thesis, which is that the highest political value ought to be liberty. And, and that, you know, the government, by its very nature, is an instrument of force and tyranny, and that therefore, the more government you have, the less liberty you have. I think he also was. He was way ahead of his time in. In like, really calling out the corruption in D.C. and I think that's one of the things that's kind of. That's that it's a common through line between the Federal Reserve and government spending and, of course, this crazy war industry that our country has there. So there's a lot of components to that. But essentially, Ron Paul was talking about draining the swamp way before it was like this dominant mass message. And I think Ron Paul in many ways laid down. He laid the groundwork in his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns for not. Not saying that he leads to Donald Trump, but he laid the groundwork for Donald Trump to be able to get up at the South Carolina Republican primary debate and look at Jeb Bush and Say your brother lied us into war, and. You know what I mean? And. And to have the Republicans agree with him, you know, the same. These were a lot of the same people who had voted for George W. Bush twice and supported the war and even mocked their liberal, you know, fellow countrymen for not being on board with it. And. And a lot of that was the work that Ron Paul did and people waking up to the. How. How messed up all these wars were. And I think that at least from there, there were a couple major things for me, okay, at the time. So I was like a. I was a young man when I first found Ron Paul. I was in 2007 was when I first saw him, and then started obsessively reading all of his books. And so I. I was young, I'm born in 83, so that maybe 23, 24 when I first met him. So I was a young guy. And at least for me at the time, there were, like, kind of two categories in my, you know, naive mind, where, okay, there were, like, the liberals who supported big government at home but were skeptical about, you know, big government abroad, or they're skeptical about wars. And then there were the conservatives who said that they supported small government, limited government at home, but were always on the side of whatever the next war is. And at least for me, and I think for a lot of people at my generation, Ron Paul was the first guy who came along and said, like, no, I'm for limited government here and abroad. And it was kind of like a portal where you could, like, access a different perspective on the world. And then once you saw that, you were like, wait, that's actually what makes sense. It makes. It doesn't make sense to, like, what are. What is it exactly? That, like, all the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and even, like, Milton Friedman and guys like that and Thomas Sowell and the. It's like, you want a constitutionally limited world empire. Like, that's what you guys stand for, because that doesn't. That doesn't fit together at all. And so why is it that we took. We were taking this as a given. And then, of course, the more you. You look into it, you realize that, like, okay, there those two things do make sense together. And then also that kind of like in the initial wave of, like, the original progressives, you know, look, people like Woodrow Wilson or fdr, these were people who were pushing big government at home and big government abroad, and that made much more sense as a cohesive worldview. And to oppose that would be the Ron Paul Worldview. And then the other thing for me, and this was actually, this was my introduction to Ron Paul. And this too, to me was like kind of a portal in a way. It was, it was a way, at least in my naive, not fully functioned brain or fully developed brain at 24 years old or whatever. It was a way for me to kind of get like, like I tapped into something that was outside the empire. And I had, I had heard a lot. You know, I was already against George W. Bush and I didn't like the war. I could, I had already figured out, you know, I think this, I think this war in Iraq is. And I think that we were lied into it. And so I kind of got that. And then there were, there were liberals and left wingers who I knew. I grew up in New York City, so I was very familiar with the left wing perspective and who are critical of, of George W. Bush and, and for fighting the war and, and, you know, signing the Patriot act into law and things like that. But I had never really heard anybody break it down the way Ron Paul did when he was, when he basically was like, look, there's a reason why these terrorists hate us. And it's not what they're telling you. They don't hate us for our freedom. It's not as if I remember the way Pat Buchanan put it, which I always loved was, he goes, he said, dick Cheney makes it sound like Osama bin Laden stumbled on like in the deserts of Afghanistan, he stumbled on to a copy of our Bill of Rights somewhere. And he was like, oh my God, they're free to look at this speedy trial. Are you kidding me? Like, this is like, what is going on here? They can own guns and their women can wear mini skirts and that. And that just made people so angry that they were ready to, you know, like suicide bomb themselves. Like that makes no sense at all. And then Ron Paul was just like, no, look, here's the thing. If we think we can just go around the world killing people, propping up dictatorships, putting our military bases in the Muslims holy land and not engender hatred from that, then we do that at our own peril. And I thought that was, it was such an interesting kind of, you know, it had always been, I'm an 80s and 90s kid and to me it was always kind of a given that like America's number one, we're the force for good in the world and we're. And it was like an interesting introduction to the idea that there are people outside of that who are Dominated by that, who don't care for it very much. And like that that's what 911 was actually about. And for me, you know, I was living in New York city. I was 18, I think when 911 happened. And that was like the moment of my childhood. It was a huge thing to live through. I mean, we were attacked. This seemed like something that could only happen in a history book. That didn't happen to America in the 90s. 2001 was basically the 90s and, and it was just like, oh, finally it clicked. It was like, that makes sense is the first time I had ever heard like an explanation and an understanding of this whole thing that we're involved in now from 911 to the terror wars, that actually just made perfect sense.

Yeah. We should also say that there's some degree of truth, that the battle is not just militaristic, it's also cultural. And then many of those parts of the world don't want other people's values forced onto them.

Right. But the way that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and every right wing host in America and Sean Hannity and Bill o'reilly and like everybody, what they were saying is that they hate that we are free. Whereas it was much closer to saying like, they don't like us imposing on them, even like all the hardcore neocons. Bret Stephens, the New York Times. He wrote this piece on the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, so 2023 to cheerlead the war in Iraq. And he goes through the whole piece and there's not one mention of the million people who died in the war. You know, he literally just goes, the pieces just measure life under Saddam Hussein versus life under the Shiite parliamentary system that they have now which one's better? And I, he's arguing, this one's better, therefore it was worth it. But there's like no mention. It's like, okay, but what about the 20 plus million people who were displaced? What about the million people who were killed? What about all the millions of people who are injured? What about the tens of thousands of our soldiers who have blown their brains out in the aftermath of the thing? Like, it's like so, so many times this true with government policy. People talk about like the end result that they want, but you're like, yeah, but what about the process by which you get there and how much hatred, you know, could you, I mean, like I, you know, it's not that hard for me to like put myself in, in other people's shoes. And like, I have two little Kids and a wife. And if anybody were to ever try to argue to me that they have to be the eggs that get broken to make some bigger omelet, like, it's okay. Like, you know, we're ultimately going to impose something on your society that's better than what you have right there. It sure does. Suc. Your wife and kids got to be the one who get taken out. I mean, I'm as. I'm just saying this to myself, and this is not real. This is just a thought experiment I'm making up. I'm already pretty close to being a terrorist. Like, my next thought is kind of like, well, okay, well, I hope you're going to like it when you watch your family die in front of you. You know, now I'm not. Hopefully, even if that happened to me, I wouldn't go kill that guy's family. Like, maybe I just go after him or something. But. But I could understand, and I think most people who have kids could understand going to a level of like, the. The most evil, dark place you could imagine if something ever. Anyone ever threatened or actually did something to your kids.

Yeah. We have to remember the thing that's difficult to measure that you just mentioned, which is the hate that's created by every bomb that's dropped.

It was a General McChrystal who, you know, was the general running the war in Afghanistan. He wasn't. Like, he wasn't Ron Paul. You know what I mean? Like, he was a sir, yes, sir. How do we fight and win this war, General? And he's the one who coined the term insurgent math. 10 minus 2 equals 20. You know, it's like the more, the more you keep. I was just reading. I was rereading about this the other day because of the, you know, Trump's been bombing the Houthis in Yemen. And, you know, it's like when, when we first. I think it was in. In at least in 2009 is when Obama really stepped up the drone campaign with the then secret drone bombing campaign. And the Yemen was one of the major theaters. And even back then when it really was just a. It was a war on terrorism, like, the main targets were always Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and their presence in Yemen, even then, like, so before the Saudis invaded. So like from 2009 through 2015, AQAP just kept growing. It was doing all these targeted bombing campaigns, or they call them targeted. 96% of the people are innocent who get killed, but they call them targeted drone bombings. And they. And Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula just kept getting bigger and bigger because, you know, it's like, yeah, every time you go in there, it's like, okay, you took out one target and then you took out three little girls and, you know, a few. And every one of those little girls had brothers and uncles and fathers and, you know, and, and all of them just signed up to join the fight now because, you know, and, and I, Ron Paul was the first one who really made this click for me. But it's, in a way, and I'm not like, I'm not a leftist, I'm not an egalitarian, I'm not a cultural relativist. I'm not saying that all cultures are the same or that we all look at the world the same way. There's enormous differences between all of us. And I personally think some are better than others. But there are things that unite all of us. And in a weird way, it's. I remember one time I was arguing with a Democrat guy on a SE cup show. I used to be a contributor on her show. And we were arguing and it was after, it was after a terrorist attack here in New York, a fairly minor one. It was like a guy, like, I think he hit someone with his car and then jumped out with a gun and then the cops lit him up and killed him. This is like back in 2017, I think. And he claimed to be ISIS inspired. I don't remember if there was like a direct connection or not, but they were at the time. They were like, doesn't this mean we got to step up the war in Iraq or In Syria, where ISIS's stronghold is? And I remember the guy saying to me, he goes, you know, I went off on how these wars have been disasters. And he goes, yeah, yeah, but Dave, what you're saying here is we're supposed to do nothing. Like, this just happened and now we're supposed to do nothing. And so, like, even though this guy had a suit and tie on and we're in a cable news studio and we're in a first world country, we're in the United States of America and we're having the, the basic thing that he's saying is, like, what do you say? You're saying we're not going to go kill some motherfuckers? You know, like, I mean, he's, he was just putting it as, like, do something. But what's something. Something is dropping bombs on human beings, you know, when like, yeah, some innocent people are going to die. But okay, that. But it's the Same thing. It's the same after 9, 11. We're like, we got to go fucking invade some countries right now. That's the same impulse. It's like they killed some of our people. You think we're not going to show them who the real killers are? You think there's a chance that you could come here and, and that is like the most human instinct ever. It's like some other tribe just came in here and killed some people in our tribe. So what do you want to do about that? Well, I don't know. It's not going to take me too long to figure out we're going to go kill a bunch of people in their tribe. And I do think that like, that is, I think that's the major motivating factor for both sides of the Israel Palestine conflict. I think that's a major motivator for both sides of the war on Terror conflict. And it's like that's, it's, in a way, when you look at it like that, there's something, even though it's so dark and tragic, there's something almost beautiful about it where you're like, oh, we're all caught in this same cycle.

Yeah, it's deeply human, the, the warring between tribes, but, you know, especially in the recent years, but more and more through human history, there's almost like a third party, which is this military industrial complex which is making money from the two tribes. So if you just have two tribes, one. I've been reading a lot about Genghis K. If this is why Genghis Khan banned this. It was very common in Mongolia before Genghis Khan to steal people's wives. Like, you're my wife now.

Right.

And he realized that that creates a lot of conflict.

Yeah, it sure does.

That seems natural and human, that kind of conflict. But whenever a third party rolls in and starts making money on the whole thing and then driving that forward, then the escalation of the conflict comes with this whole machine that makes de escalation really difficult.

Yeah, the military industrial complex in America, it's so big and it's so sophisticated and it's so, so it's not just that there's, you know, you know, there's this, there's the intelligence agencies, there's the weapons manufacturers, then there's the like people in the media who are either directly or indirectly just parroting, you know what I mean, all of their talking points. And so it' just that you can kind of like, like you make money when there's a conflict but you have this entire apparatus to like create the conflict and then create the public sentiment for that. And then we're. And it's interesting, we're. We're in. In an interesting place because we're kind of in this like, new frontier of now where shows like this can happen. And, and there's a lot of them and a lot of them are humongous like yours. But for so long it, this just didn't exist. And it was just like, oh, like for so long it was the case that like the New York Times and NBC and CBS and ABC and the Washington Post and the, the Associated Press, I guess they could just move the nation. I mean, if they wanted to be like, hey, there is the, the idea that. Forget Even like after 9 11, the idea that in 1990, 1991 that there was any organic movement from the American people going, you know, we really got to see about the Saddam Hussein guy, you know, the dictator in Iraq is having a slant drilling dispute with the Amir of Kuwait. We really got to do something about that. Like, that is not something that organically came from any. That was not like a few soccer moms hanging out, you know, watching their kids game, being like, I really do think. I think in a couple years we're going to. To send these boys over to Iraq to get like, that's not. They just from the top down were able to create this feeling that like, hey, there's a new Adolf Hitler on the rise over here in Iraq. We gotta go see about this. There are these poor people in Kuwait. We have to do that. You know, like there's. They were able to create this desire for war that was.

It's.

It's really incredible when you think about it, because there's for, I think for the most part in human history, you would have had to have some type, type of plausible threat, some type of plausible reality to convince people that we actually have to go to war in order to deal with this. Whereas like, you know, the United. The idea that in 1991 the United States of America would feel threatened by Iraq was just ridiculous. And yet they were able to do it well.

So to push back a little bit throughout human history, there was also a thing, you look at the Roman Empire, where just the cultural values were different, where military conquest was seen as a good thing. So we just almost assume in the United States war has been framed in the defensive sense, where offensive war. We're not doing that anymore.

You make a fair point. It's certainly true that throughout human history there's been overtime, empire building and wars of conquest and things like that. But I guess I'm just saying, at least even there you would have some type of cell of like, why we're going to go take these resources and why that will be good for us. Whereas the idea that they're like Kuwait just needed to be defended by the Americans seems so. It seems so hard to convince anybody. And yet they were able to do it. If you read like neocon writing in the 90s, it was very interesting because they would tell the truth a lot more. And they were essentially, I think there was. The Soviet Union had just collapsed. It was what, what Charles Krattenhammer dubbed the unipolar moment. There was like a lot of. There was excitement, there was a feeling of invincibility. And also the neocons weren't in power. And after 92, really, I mean, they had a little. They were in the George H.W. bush administration, but after 92 they really weren't. So they're just writing at these think tanks and it just didn't seem as, you know, like they weren't as guarded. There weren't like these accusations of you're a war criminal or something like that. But what he said, what Jonah Goldberg agreed with, was that every, I think the statement was every 10 years or so, America's got to find a puny little country and put them up against the wall just to let the rest of the world know that we mean business. And that was actually their mentality.

I'm sure there's people that agree with that. I happen to disagree with that. But the drums of war are beating a little bit over Taiwan and China.

More than a little bit.

Yeah, but there, I can't even see a justification of a just war. What is the long term benefit to society if you do military intervention?

Well, I also think this, and I've been saying this for a while, but I do think there is this like, there's like this empire mentality that Americans have gotta shake off. Like, as if it's even a question of whether we should allow it or not. Like, are we in a position to allow or not allow that? Why do we have. It's almost like if you were, you know, like, I, I don't. I hope China doesn't invade Taiwan. I hope Taiwan remains as free as possible. I hope China becomes free. I root for freedom and prosperity for everyone, you know, but I also root for like, everybody to have a healthy marriage. But if you were like, if you were talking to me and you were like, hey, the guy down the street is cheating on his wife. Like, I don't think we can allow this. I'd immediately be like, that's really not my place. And then on top of that, I also have no power. I have no authority over what they do in their marriage. Like, I have to be concerned with my marriage and the idea that, like, imagine if there were the political will to invade Mexico, like if DC Decided we're taking Mexico City, like, that's, that's going to be part of America now and we're taking it by force. And then China was like, we're not sure if we can allow this. I think immediately most Americans would be like, allow. Like, how the fuck do you think you're going to stop us from taking Mexico City? What are you going to do, China? You're going to send your navy ships over here to fight us off the coast of Mexico? Good luck with that. And at least from my understanding, in almost all the war games that they've run, if we did militarily, even if it doesn't come to nuclear weapons being used, in which case the whole world gets blown up, but even if we go to militarily, try to stop China from invading Taiwan and no one, everyone agrees to not use nukes, and we just fight a conventional war, we lose that war every time.

I think what you said applies to a lot of the wars we've been involved in, but China and Taiwan is a little bit different because. Because of tsmc, Right? Because there's an economic dependence.

If that was the concern, then the response would be we need some type of Manhattan Project. And I'm not supporting a government project here, but there would be. We need some type of Manhattan Project to say, we're going to make these things here. We can't. And look, I was running that experiment before saying, like, what if we all pinky promise not to use nuclear weapons or something like that, but that's not the reality of the situation. The more reality. Look, even in, in Ukraine, everybody, the biggest hawks, the biggest pushers of this policy and Joe Biden policy to fund Ukraine, no one's suggesting we send in the 82nd Airborne, which is really the only thing that could repel the Russians right now and restore, you know, Ukrainian. The original sovereignty of the Ukrainian borders. But no one's suggesting we send in the 82nd Airborne, because we all know, well, we can't have a direct war with Russia. That's the end of the world. And same thing with China. So, you know, I'm not Saying microchips or whatever aren't important, but there's. We can find other ways to. Taiwan is not magical. Like, we can produce these things in other places. No.

So you have the humility to say that you don't really know much about the situation. It sounds ridiculous to say, but there's something magical about not Taiwan, but dsmc. It's incredibly difficult to manage the supply chain and manufacture at such a low cost that they are. And to add to that, China has been signaling about the One China Policy. But you're absolutely right that you shouldn't be doing the Washington thing of beating the drums of war. That's like completely the counterproductive thing there should. You should actually try to find partnerships with China, build friendships and cooperation. Like India is doing a good job of this. Like build friendships. This is the 21st century conflict. This Cold War thinking is going to be destructive to the economy, destructive to humanity, to the flourishing of the individual nations of the world. There's just nothing positive except making money for the military.

Well, yeah, and it was totally destructive during the original Cold War too, and almost led to nuclear war on a couple of different occasions. But look, I would just say. And I really. I'm no defender of the Chinese regime. I hate communism and fascism, whatever they are, some hybrid mix of. Of the two.

They're paying you, aren't they?

Yeah, no, fuck them. I don't care. By the way. I get a lot of people speculate online, but I am not. I'm not getting any of these checks, man. And I'd really like them to start coming in. Yeah, but there's like. Even when it's like China, you say China's asserting the One China policy, but the One China policy is the policy of the United States of America and has been for 50 years now. Right. So it's not. I think what's happening there a lot of times is that essentially, even though officially the One China policy is the policy of the United States of America, all of these American politicians and, and, you know, different figureheads across powerful centers in America are, Are saying that China doesn't have the right to go into Taiwan. And then China's in the position of being like, well, hey, wait a minute. No, that's not actually the policy. We maintain this One China policy, but we allow them to kind of do what they want to do. And, you know, the, the most obvious example of this was when Joe Biden actually said like, oh, we wouldn't allow that and we would militarily intervene if they went into China. And then, and this was so bizarre, then the White House, whoever that was, came out to correct the President of the United States and say, no, the policy of the White House is the One China policy. Which, look, I mean, again, I think the whole point of this is that the reason why whoever the hell was able to overrule Joe Biden and his administration, I don't know who that is. But the whole point is that if you say, and this is why there is some wisdom in America accepting the One China policy is that if you tell China that we recognize Taiwan's independence and that they're not a part of China, that might be the type of thing that would make China invade and say, no, we're not accepting that. And so at least right now it's like kind of like, okay, here's. Look, this is the reality. It's something that you kind of run up against with the war in Ukraine a lot and, and with the situation in China and Taiwan, is that there are. There are constraints placed on us by reality. It's not all just, how would you like the world to be? How would you like it to work? Obviously, I think we would all like that bigger countries don't invade smaller countries and bigger countries don't bully smaller countries around. That is not the way of the world. We are a big country that is the biggest bully in the world. So we're in no position to let. But what we're kind of in the position is just like, you're like, hey, we'd sure love if you don't do that. You know, you can do it and you can get away with it, but we would sure love it if you don't. And so the goal would be to do everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen. When Vladimir Putin starts talking about, like, hey, if you keep pushing the idea of Ukraine joining your military alliance, I'm going to invade that country. The goal there or the move there would be to be like, okay, we'll stop talking about that. Is there something else that we can agree on? You know, like, is there. Is there a way that you will promise you won't do anything to them and, okay, and we'll promise we won't bring them in our military. Like, that's the goal. You don't just go like, no, fuck you, we're doing it anyway, over and over and over again until they do the thing.

I think we got to this discussion from the military industrial complex and military intervention and Ron Paul before that. If you can, like, Rewind a little bit. Is there any amount, according to you and according to various flavors of libertarianism, is there any amount of military intervention that's justified, that's okay?

Well, I would say so, at least to me, in terms of like pure libertarian theory or just in terms of like what I think is right or wrong, like there is such thing as a just war. The most obvious example of that would be like you're invaded by a military and fighting them off. So in that sense also, like, even if you want to, if you want to kind of isolate from everything else from, you know, all of the awful US policy toward Russia, post Soviet Union, to all of the, you know, NATO expansion and color coded revolutions and all of these things, if you want to, you know, Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine. I do think the Ukrainians have a right to, to fight and, and protect their land. Like they're the, there's an aggressive, there's an aggressor there, and you have a right to defend yourself. So certainly in that sense, I think the American Revolution was a just war. I think there are, you know, there can be just wars. In terms of pure libertarian theory, I think I would say that, look, you, you don't, you never have a right to kill innocent people. That's never morally okay. Now there could be a scenario just like this is true in life in general, right? Like there's lots of things that you don't have the right to do, but you could come up with some scenario where you might be in a position where you have to do it because there were all of these extenuating circumstances. You know, like for, you know, you could think of something where, like, you remember the, the Saw movies where they used to, you know, these crazy, like, horror scenarios. But it's like, okay, so there's a person, you know, a evil bad guy has buried a key inside this person and you have to kill that person in order to get the key, in order to unlock these 20 people to let them out of a cage. Now look, you still don't have a right to kill people. It's horrible and wrong. And what you did there was still evil. But if you were taken to trial over it, you could probably explain to a judge and a jury, be like, I know, but the situation I was in was either these 20 people were going to die or this one person was going to die. And under that, that situation, I chose to save the 20. So like, in other words, by perfect theory, no, you never have the right to kill innocent people. There could be a Scenario where you were like, look, we had to take this military action and some innocent people did die. And it's so tragic and awful that we had to do this. But we are certain that many more people would have died had we not done this. Now in that case, I would look at that as like number one. It's much like killing the one person to save the 20. It's still wrong. It's still an immoral thing that you were forced into doing. It's not justified. I would say that the overwhelming onus should have to be on you to demonstrate that you absolutely needed to do that. And that's how I feel about all these, these wars. You know, it's not like, you know, I think that like, let's just say like if you could make World War II, like you could reduce it down to the simplest caricature of what World War II is and say there's no Joseph Stalin, we're not even partnering with him. Like there was a good guy in Russia who we were partnering with and there's, and, and the British Empire had never done anything wrong. They were just nothing but good guys. And of course FDR was nothing but a good guy and Hitler was even worse than the real Hitler, you know what I mean? And in order to stop them, we had to go on this bombing campaign and we only got Nazis, we only killed the bad guys and we were able to take out the Third Reich. But one 8 year old girl died and you did this thing that stopped the whole world from falling into subjugation. So I think almost everybody would agree. Jesus, man, you have to do that, okay? This is, you have to do that because the whole world's going to be subjugated. There's nothing but good guys here. The Nazis are so evil. And there's one, I still would say that every single time World War II came up. We should all just be somber and we should all just think about that little eight year old girl who died and what a horrible thing it is that we had to do that, you know, and so like when there are these campaigns where like, you know, like where tens of millions of people are killed, the fact that anybody's ever like spiking the football or this kind of like, rah, rah, we were the good ones. And then also when you add in all those other complicated factors like that this wasn't the scenario at all, but I do so, so I guess essentially I'd say no, you don't ever have a right to kill innocent people. It's Never self defense to be killing innocent people. I mean, short of like, you know, some type of scenario where like, you know, if you're holding a baby and coming at me shooting, and I shoot back at you, and okay, I was acting in self defense and it happened to kill a baby. But I'm talking about like what the scenarios where you're dropping bombs on cities, it's never justified. And the overwhelming onus should be on you to demonstrate that you absolutely have to do it and that that should be the standard because there's so many other standards that I see thrown out that I just think are make no moral sense at all. You know, people will argue about like in Gaza, they'll argue about the civilian to combatant ratio, which I like that to me doesn't really. That's not what counts. That's not the measure that's important. And also no one knows what the numbers are. They are all just kind of like pretend. And then the other thing will be that people, as someone just recently argued with me about, they'll say like, well, Hamas has to go. That's the starting point. Hamas has to go. And I'm like, no, I don't think you get to say that. Because the truth is that, look, you can make an argument that Hamas has to go, sure. You can make an argument that the Likudniks have to go. You can make an argument that Kim Jong Un has to go or that G has to go, or that Putin has to go, or that Zelensky has to go, or certainly I would make an argument that Joe Biden had to go. But just because a government has to go, that doesn't mean you could just go kill all their people.

Yeah, that should not be the starting point. Like the assumption, the axiom of the.

Discussion, the question is, is it, is there no other option than doing it this way? It's like, okay, like October 7th happened. We can all agree this was like a horrific tragedy and a, you know, an indefensible act of terrorism. Like, okay, can, is it guaranteed that another one of those is going to happen tomorrow? Or was this the biggest security failure in, in, you know, Israeli history? Okay, well if it's the biggest security failure, let's just say not even going down the inside job rabbit hole or anything like that, but just saying it's a giant security failure. Okay, then put a bunch more men at that fence, first of all. And now you got to talk about how can you achieve your goal while inflicting the minimum amount of devastation on innocent People, let's talk about it.

Since you brought it up, October 7th. So what exactly do you think about the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel?

Well, I mean, like what I just said, that it was horrible. And you know, it's always by the same logic that I'm giving you now, it's always, it's always evil to target innocent civilians. I don't believe, you know, civilians can be held responsible for the crimes of their government. This was, by the way, the Osama bin Laden logic, which I think would also be the logic of like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or Barack Obama. But Osama bin Laden very explicitly said when he was asked, like, well, are you just going to target like US military sites or are you targeting US civilians? It was an interview in the 90s, before 9 11, and he goes, no, civilians are fair game too, because you guys have regular elections and you guys vote for your government and therefore you're responsible for the crimes that they commit. Now I think that's the logic of a fanatic like Osama bin Laden and that's not the logic that any of us should follow. It doesn't make any sense. And it's not true that people are responsible for the crimes of their government. I think that that same argument is used quite a bit by people on the pro Israeli side when they say, like, oh, they, they had an election in 2005 and Hamas won a plurality, therefore 20 years later they have no rights. I think that's insane. So, okay, so Hamas had no right to go after civilians. You know, it's horrible. And you see, you know, the, these, you know, teenagers being killed and the people, you know, you see the images of people who were, who were held hostage for all this time. So it's like your heart breaks for those people. It's truly tragic. I do think that it was in many ways an indictment of so many different things. You know, like October 7th happening was an indictment of the entire occupation slash siege of Gaza and the West Bank. You know, for that matter, it was, I think should have probably forever destroyed the legacy of Benjamin Netanyahu who is, you know, I mean this isn't like George W. Bush, you know, was, I mean he was on the job for almost a year when 911 happened, but it was still kind of new, you know, like it was still kind of in his first year of being president. Benjamin Netanyahu was the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history and had explicitly been like, I'm the tough right winger who's going to be tough on These Palestinians, Palestinians who's going to like, move away from the idea of coming to a two state solution because this is what we need to keep us safe. Like, the justification is like, I'm going to be hard on these motherfuckers because that's because I know what it takes to keep us safe. And that culminates in the, the worst massacre in Israeli history. And then, I mean, the other big one is that, I mean, and it's not like a, I wouldn't even say an open secret at this point. It's just out in the open. And he had this strategy of propping up Hamas for years. And so he had this strategy of propping up Hamas for a myriad of reasons, but a major part of it was that, look, man, as long as there's terrorists in power there, there's never going to be any pressure on us to give the Palestinians a state. Because look, what are you telling me? I got to negotiate with them?

He was allowing Qatar money to float.

Insisting that Qatar money float to them. When the Qatar money dried up, sent the Mossad in to insist that it gets back to him hundreds of millions of dollars brief, in cash. And he said in his own words that the reason for doing this was to keep to. His words were prop up Hamas, bolster Hamas to keep them in power so that the west bank and the, and the Gaza were divided and that the international community as well as the liberal Jewish community in Israel wouldn't be able to put pressure on them to make a deal.

But what are the options? So if he doesn't allow the money in, it also looks really bad for him because if he's not allowing the money in, that means he's not allowing the quote, unquote, aid in to help the Palestinians.

Yeah, but Lex, I mean, the dynamic here, right, is from 2007 to today, Israel's had a full blockade around the country. They won't let potatoes in, they won't let sugar in. And the justification is because they're dual use, you know, they, they can be used to make rockets as well as they can be used to, you know, feed starving children. So we can't let that in because it's dual use. But cash to Hamas, does that not have dual usage? Like, is there, is there nothing else that they can. So, yeah, it's like, yes, when you have a full blockade around the country, you take on certain responsibilities. And I think this is, you know, this is the, the essence of really the, the whole struggle here, which is very tough, I think, for the pro Israel side to grapple with. But the bottom line is that Israel hasn't occupied Palestine for like a few months after a war or even a couple of years after a war while they're figuring out what we're going to do with them. It's been over 60 years. We're talking about a one week long war or a day short of a week long war in 1967. Israel's had control of them ever since. And much like in the same way that like if you kidnap someone and you lock them in your basement and you don't feed them, you murdered that person. So in other words, stated differently, you're not allowed to kidnap people and lock them in your basement, but once you do, you take on a responsibility to feed those people. You know what I mean? Like you can't, you're not allowed to keep someone and not feed them. That is a worse charge than just keeping them. And so yeah, anyway, I guess my point is the solution to that, if you go like, well I'm a bad guy if I out fund Hamas, I'm a bad guy if I don't let the aid in was to let the reputable international aid organizations bring aid in to the people of Gaza. Don't have, don't, don't pressure the Qataris to send in briefcases full of cash, allow internationally recognized, reputable human rights organizations who are lining up trying to do it, but stop turning them away and let them in. And, and this is just, it's so long past due. I mean like it's, it's just, I'm not like defending Arab terrorism. It's, I think it's really, it's, it's a tragedy that the Arabs embraced terrorism. I don't think it's unique to them. And in fact, you know, I think it was the, the Zionist militias who introduced terrorism to that, that part of the world. But there was also like there, look, terrorism persists because it works. And this is true with state terrorism and with non state terrorism, you know, it's like there it, terrorism has often worked for people. The, I think the thing like early, I think early Yasser Arafat I know is very influenced by the Algerians who you know, successfully kicked the French out embracing terrorism. And it was almost like the major miscalculation of the, those Palestinian Arabs who did embrace terrorism was that this isn't the French, this isn't the French hanging out in some colony with their home country back home where maybe a few acts of violence could work enough to the liberal population Back home is like, oh, I really don't like the response to that terrorism. We killed so many people. Forget it. This is too much of a headache. Let's get out of here. The Zionist settlers were there to stay. They weren't going anywhere. They weren't going back to Eastern Europe. You know what I mean? They weren't. They were just that. And so it's a tragedy that this whole thing went the way it did. But you always, whenever you're talking about, like, a conflict like this, the person who has the. Or the. The party who has the power is the one who needs to make concessions, you know, and the. There. It's just indefensible that the status quo of the Palestinian people having no rights, literally no rights being ruled by a government that they do not get to vote for or against, no right to do commerce with the outside world, no freedom of travel, no freedom of movement, no basic property rights can be kicked out of your home at any time. No right to a fair trial, no right to a lawyer, no right to a jury of your peers. I mean, the fact that that has been the status quo since 1967 is just indefensible. And if. And then in the context that that has been the status quo, I guess I'm just not. Even though I'm against it. It's kind of like when you're just lecturing about the way in which they resist this. I think it's very tough to be on a strong moral footing, you know?

Yeah. You have to really empathize with decades of suffering.

Yeah.

In the region. I suppose my question was grounded in how can the Israeli government. How can the world help the Palestinian people flourish? So you suggested allowing reputable aid organizations in, but, you know, that's kind of almost patching.

Yeah.

Just helping humans who are suffering. But that's not how you have a nation flourish. You have to build up the infrastructure. You have to build up a culture of the education system, the democratic processes of electing and regular elections so that the people are represented and you have to form partnerships, friendships, normalization of relations with the Arab world, with Israel. You can travel back and forth and lessen the chokehold, like the security chokehold, you know, that you could say is justified in a militaristic situation. But why is it a military situation? The question is, they're like, where do we go from here? If we, you know, we'll talk about Netanyahu some more. He is, you know, he's very criticized inside Israel as well.

Yeah, for sure.

Maybe less so after October 7, because you know, again, in the same way you can empathize with the Palestinian people, you can empathize with Israelis where October 7th touched, just like it did for Americans with 9 11. It touched some kind of primal thing of fear of like, oh yeah, and.

Like the same thing I said before, like, I could also very easily go if my, if one of my kids was like at that rave or something like that and just got gunned down or kidnapped by, I could understand being like, level the whole goddamn place. And I'm sure I would feel that way if that was one of my kids, you know. So. Yeah, no, that's, that's exactly right. I mean there's lots of examples in the world of, you know, like France and Germany are right next to each other and Ireland and England are right next to each other and they're just totally living in harmony right now. Like there is just no. The thought of them going to war is like inconceivable right now. Not saying it could happen in the future, but it seem, it seems pretty hard to imagine. And that being the case would have been very hard to imagine for a very long time. You know, like there, I mean, there's some serious levels of brutality between those two societies. And even more directly involved, you know, Egypt and Israel went to war four times in a couple decades. They went to war and then in the late 70s they made a land for peace deal and they haven't been to war since, you know. And like I do at least try to hold out that like that is, you know, it's not like Egypt is, you're not going to say they don't have an issue with radical Islam in Egypt. You know what I mean? Like there's, that's not the answer. It's just that they made a land for peace deal and once there wasn't, you know, once that wasn't the, that was solved, it was kind of easier to avoid the war. And I do like to think that, that there, there could be a solution to the, the Israel Palestine question, but the, it's going to have to, it's going to have to involve Israel taking their boot off of the Palestinians neck. And I know that that's scary and I understand that there are like legitimate concerns about that. There's the great Thomas Jefferson quote about slavery which was, we have the wolf by the tail and we can neither afford to hold on to him nor risk letting them go. Which is like, you could see where that would have been like a real concern of people like right toward the end of slavery or, or, you know, whatever in the early 1800s, say the first half of the 19th century, we'd be like, okay, okay, okay, we recognize this is wrong now, but we've had these millions of people enslaved for all these years. If we let them go, they're gonna fucking kill us. And what are you saying? They're citizens now, meaning the Second Amendment applies to them. Meaning that the guy who I enslaved now can get a gun. You know what? And, and so, okay, there are the. But I think in hindsight, looking back at it, we would all just go, yeah, but you can enslave people. So, like, whatever risks come with the next phase of this, unfortunately, you know, like, you're going to have to just deal with that and, and move. You have to start with abolishing slavery.

And it is good to also remember in the hopeful message you sent, like, at any day you can make a deal. That's one of the frustrating things I had with. I hosted a debate on Israel. It just felt hopeless. And a lot of people I talked to, it feels hopeless. But, like, I have a lot of. I maybe naively see a lot of possibilities of peace there. I see, for example, normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel and then Saudi Arabia taking some ownership over Gaza. Gaza, something like that. Some interesting. Where a big major player in that region takes ownership and steps as the middleman.

Yeah, I agree with you, and you're 100% right. That, and even before October 7th, I think many steps had been taken away from the peace process and the feeling of that, I mean, really, I think since the second intifada is when, like, the appetite for peace, I think, in Israel was greatly diminished there. But to your point, I mean, it's going to take really painful concessions on all sides in, in order to get there. And I think that the, the. Personally, I think, and I don't know if I say this for the. Not necessarily like the Arab world, but at least the nation states, like their governments, I think are. Are pretty much there. Like, like Saudi Arabia and UAE and Jordan and Egypt. Like, if the Israelis, they're almost like, look, these are American sock puppets, you know, for the most part. Right? And so their. Their thing is that, like, okay, 100% of my population is completely opposed to what Israel's doing to Palestine right now. And they just hate that Israel, that the nation was created at all, that all the Arabs were kicked out of what is, you know, very important land to them religiously. And, and so the governments there are like, look, we want to continue to have US tax dollars flooding in here. We'd love to make a deal with Israel, but like, you gotta stop doing this to the Palestinians. So my own people don't, you know, rise up against me. So I think as long as the Israelis were like, fine, we'll do a two state solution or something like that that I think Saudi Arabia couldn't wait to broker. In fact, they proposed a two state solution just a few years ago. I mean they're, they would love to be a part of that, normalize relations amongst the Palestinians. Like which again, I think this, I think this had been accepted multiple times, at least by their leadership. It's like, yeah, you're going to have to accept that like you lost in 48, you know, you're going to have to accept that you lost in 47. You're going to have to accept that the state of Israel does exist. And you're going to have to accept that like the right of return is not going to literally mean that everybody can go back to where they were. And what Israel's going to have to concede is that it was awfully fucked up that they kicked a lot of people out of their land and that the whole a land for people, for people without land was never true. That was just a slogan that made, that felt good to avoid what you guys actually did and the fact that it was inexcusable that you guys occupied these people for 60 years. And that has to end immediately.

Like I interviewed Douglas Murray recently. He just wrote a book on Israel and Hamas called On Democracies and Death Cults. He makes what I think is a strong pro Israel case focusing on Hamas as an evil organization, you know, evil for its corrupt leadership who's essentially stealing money from the Palestinian people and allocating the money that is there towards terrorist militaristic operations versus like building up Gaza. Can you steel man the case for, and then against this perspective sort of centering. We've been talking about the people about centering around Hamas, which is like this extremist religious organization. The perspective being like they need to be, as you mentioned before, eliminated before any progress can be made.

Okay, so if I were so steel man, in Douglas Murray's case, I would say, well, I guess the case is right. Look, Hamas is a fanatical death cult, essentially, which I do think is a fair description of them. There is no question that they have pursued, they have pursued a path that was just devastating to their own people. And there's no question they have not spent the resources they have on. Their priority has not been uplifting their own people. Their priority has been, I think, essentially antagonizing Israel into this overreaction so that they can turn world opinion against Israel. I think they've been very effective at doing that. And again, I think the argument would come back to something like, and the people kind of voted for this in 2005. And the people sure do. We sure do see a lot of people cheering when Hamas is doing some pretty horrific stuff. And so, hey, you got that on one side and you have a kind of a country that's much more similar to Western societies on the other side.

If we can just like linger on that steel, man. What do you make of the celebrations in Gaza after October 7th?

I think it's sickening and incredibly disturbing. I just, just, I guess the way I look at it, I always, and maybe there is a degree of like, naivete to this, or perhaps it's just that I just don't want to allow myself to go down a certain path because I think it leads to such dark outcomes. But I just always, I always try to be kind of like against the government, for the people, against the powerful, sympathetic to the powerless. I think that, that, look, it's, it's sickening. You see big crowds cheering on, you know, people who have been, you know, that with these people who have been in captivity for, for, I think some of them for over a year and a half. I also thought when Nikki Haley and other Israeli politicians are signing the bombs before they're launched into Gaza, I found that sickening. I think there's all types, I think, like mission accomplishments, banners and flying on jet. I mean, I think all of the, I think having Bob Hope specials at the end of the Persian Gulf War was sickening. I just think all of it is like horrific. I just, I look at it and I try to say to myself, okay, we had 1, 9, 11 in this country and we all, like, collectively, we lost our minds as a society. You know, we were ready to go bomb whoever the hell our politicians told us to bomb and we didn't care how many people it killed. And we killed a lot more than, a lot more than Israel or Hamas has killed doing it. And try to, I try to think to myself, okay, imagine being trapped in what is, you know, people can call it whatever they want to. I do think Pat Buchanan and these guys were right to call it a concentration camp. You're trapped in a 5 mile by 25 mile area where you cannot leave. You are Stuck there. You don't have an airport because the Israelis bombed it. You don't have a seaport because they won't allow you. You have no access to trade with the outside world. And you're not suffering through a 9 11. You're suffering through a thousand 9 11s. Your whole life is people. The people in Gaza are. Their entire life has been being refugees. You know what I mean? Their entire life. There's generations of people have been in this status now. And so, you know, if my society lost its mind after 19 11, I just have a tough time like judging the people who, who came up in this environment. But there's no question it is, I mean it's, you know, profoundly disturbing.

But I wonder how much of the indoctrination is really made the software of their mind permanently anti peace. Yeah, like extremify them and that, you know, it doesn't justify anything but it's more concerning for the prospects of peace.

Well, I'd say I get your point. I get it's an interesting question that I, I don't know if any of us know exactly the answer to, but I would say that like, you know, even after, what was it, 80 years of the Soviet Union, you know, it's like, and there were real debates back then about like the new communist man and whether the minds had been so warped of people that they would never even want, they would never even care about these things like liberty or national identity or independence. And, and then yet at the end it was all still there. You know, it was, it was very repressed and it went underground and people weren't allowed to talk about it, but they all still had it. And in fact I was just listening the other day to this Murray Rothbard speech from like the early 90s and he was talking about how there was something where there was like a, like a camera crew interviewed like a Chinese family under like real deal Chinese communism. I believe it was before Mao Zedong died. And they were like, they were just saying all these this crazy to the camera. Like they were like, would you rather, you know, your, your sons are like healthy and live good lives or would you rather they suffer but be loyal obedience to the state? And they were like, we rather they be obedient to the state and blah blah blah and all these things. And Murray Rothbard was saying he saw this interview and he was talking to his friend, he was oh my God, this is horrible. Like it's hopeless. These people's minds have been warped. And then he was talking to his friend who's like a China expert who had been there a lot, and he was like, no, they're not. That's what they say when the cameras are around. As soon as the cameras go, like, they're. So anyway, I'm just making the point there that, like, there is, like, look, even in the situation with Israel and Gaza, specifically Gaza, not even the west bank, when you could look at it, when the peace talks were going on, support for Hamas plummeted. When the peace talks fell apart, support for Hamas went way back up. You know, every time there's an aggressive military campaign, support for Hamas goes back up. So I just think that, like, I'm more hopeful than not that, like, you could get to a place where, like. But it requires, like, you have to, like, if you do understand the Ron Paul point about blowback, the General McChrystal point about insurgent math, you just realize that it's like you're. You're. Like you're. You're fighting in a way that produces more of the thing that you're fighting. And so the first step is to stop doing that. Like your. Your cure is making the patient more sick. So stop doing that. And then let's see if maybe we could heal.

What about the case against the Douglas Murray case of the death cults, and that a fundamental part of this process, Hamas, needs to be eliminated?

Well, I mean, first of all, I would just say that, and I'm not saying this as a fan of democracy. I'm not a big believer in democracy. I believe in liberty, and I think democracy is often not in law line with liberty.

The Chinese government paid you to say that as well.

That was. That's all I had to get out. But I get to say that. What I want the rest of the podcast. But there's that. I had that. No, I'm. Well, I don't. Well, no, I mean, my beef with the Chinese government would not be that they don't hold regular elections. My beef with them would be that they silence speech, that they. That they put people in camps and things like that. The surveillance, that stuff. I think, look, when you call Israel a democracy, which I guess is right in the title of his book, and full disclosure, I haven't read the book, but I have listened to some of his thoughts on this stuff. I think you've run up against a real problem, which is that the creation of the state of Israel, even though he tried to walk away from those comments, as Norm Finkelstein called out Benny Morris for writing in his book 1948, which is a great book. His words were, the Zionist project always knew it was going to involve transfer. That was Benny Morris's words. Now, when, when Finkelstein was grilling him on this, on your podcast, he kind of said, like, yeah, but that doesn't mean ethnic cleansing. That could be voluntary transfer. That. You know what I mean? Like, but the point is the Zionist settlers and they all, they spoke about this openly. They all knew they had a major problem, which is like, well, you can't create a Jewish state if it's like, like 5050, which is. And in all of Israel, it was much less than 5050. But even in like, the, the Israeli portion of the partition recommendation, it was very close to 5050. Now you can't really have a Jewish state with a 5050 voter base because now you're just kind of in a breeding war for the next generation and, or, you know, like, or like, who, who turns out the vote any more than we could hope it would be. The prospect right now of making America an official Republican state or an official Democrat state. Well, how are you going to do that, man? It's like 50, 50 between the two. And so I think what Benny Morris was saying was that they always knew some of these Arabs are going to have to get moved out of here so that we could have more of something. Which ultimately where they got to like an 80, 20, which is pretty much what Israel's maintained the whole time. Now, Benny Morris could quarrel about whether that necessarily meant voluntary, but when it happened, it wasn't voluntary. Okay, so like when it actually happened in a fraud effect, it involved a massive amount, something somewhere between 700 and 800,000 Arabs being forcefully evicted out of this area. Now that's one thing. You know, a lot of nations are started on some things like that. I suppose if you just did that and then you were left with your 80, 20 split and you go, but we have elections from here on out. I guess you could claim it's a democracy. Still seems like kind of gaming the democratic system a little bit, you know what I mean? Like, like if I just, if I just deported 80% of Democrats and then say, look, Republicans win every election, you might be like, yeah, dude, but you didn' exactly get there democratically. You got there through force. But forget that. I'll let that one go and just say, I'll call you a democracy if you just kept being a democracy like that. Moving forward, the real problem is the occupation that starts in 1967 because look, when you've occupied an area since 1967, you can't even really call it an occupation anymore. It's an annexation. You know, you took these lands, you have control that you are what the definition of the government is. And you could call Hamas the government all you want to, but they're not the sovereigns. They're not the final decision makers. Israel's the final decision maker. Hamas does not meaningfully in any way decide the biggest questions about Gaza. I'm talking before this war, not even, you know, pre October 7th. And so the problem Israel has in order to call themselves a democracy is that there's somewhere between 5 and 6 million people less now because they've killed a lot of them, but there's somewhere between 5 and 6 million people who live under Israeli control who do not have voting rights. And I just. By any other, like, reasonable, commonly held standard of democracy, we would not call that a democracy. I mean, like, I'm not. Again, I'm not even saying this to try to be inflammatory or try to pick on the Israelis. There's things about Israeli society I like. I don't hate the people there. I'm Jewish. I love Jewish people. It's not. But the fact is that's not a democracy. That's an apartheid state. Like, and that's just. I'm not even trying to be inflammatory when I say this. It's just literally describing what's in front of you. If we in America right now said black people no longer get to vote and black people can only live in these few neighborhoods, we don't get to call ourselves a democracy anymore, then, you know, and like, I'm not even coming at this from a pro democracy point of view. I'm just saying, like, if your defense of them is like, well, we're a democracy, which seems to be the case so much. Well, no, you're really not. You're really not. As long as you got millions of people who have no say in their own government, like, then. Then you're really not a democracy. And so again, so you could frame it as democracy versus death cult was his language for Hamas. It's like, all right, you know, it's a little bit difficult to accuse another group of being a death cult when the group you're supporting has killed so many more people. Thank you, them. Now, I'm not saying that's the only metric. Like, there's other things that are factors too. But the fact is that, like, you have. I. I mean, I don't know, to look over the numbers for the whole history of the conflict. But the amount killed by the Israelis on the Palestinian side versus the amount killed by the Palestinians, it's 20 to 1 in Israel's fa, you know, killing more people, maybe more than that. I don't exactly, you know, I'd have to look at the numbers. But Israel's killed far, far more Palestinians than Palestinians have ever killed Israelis. And so it just, it rings a little hollow to me me to just call them a death cult like we're the democracy, even though none of you know there's millions of people who can't vote over, you know, who rules them. But they're the death cult. I mean, look, they kill people in a more primitive, barbaric way. I guess you could say, you know, there's something a little bit cleaner about like, you know, when it's done by a government and it's collateral damage and it was done with sophisticated weaponry, you know. Okay, day still innocent people on the end of those bombs.

Absolutely. But there, there is, I think a powerful ethical difference. When you mentioned about the 8 year old girl.

Right.

If you're in your stated goals of the war is to do everything you can to avoid the death of that girl versus saying, you know, we love death more than we love life and Israelis democracies are not our pro life for life.

There's a little, I mean, Okay, I don't 100% disagree with you, but I think if I would say the degree to which that matters, you know, like at a murder trial after somebody's been convicted and before sentencing, sometimes the judge will allow them to give a statement and like if their statement is like, I'm very sorry for what I did and I'm so sorry to the family and this or that or that, like that might be like life without parole rather than the death penalty, you know what I mean? Like it might make that bit of difference in that. And if you get up there and you're like, hey, I'm happy for what I did, screw the family, but that, that might make a judge who was going to give you life without parole, give you the death penalty or something. Like it's like that type of margin around the edge, let's say, like you're a really bad guy and I want to kill you and you're at home with a bunch of women and children and I know there's women and children there. Like I know for a fact that if I blow up this building, it's going to kill all those babies. You know what I What I would be charged with is murder in the first degree. And the fact that I went in there and said like, well, listen, hold on, it's a shame that I had to kill those babies. I really just wanted to kill that one guy. I wish the babies weren't there and they'll be like, yeah, but you knew they were there and you did it anyway. You get murder in the first degree. Maybe it would make some little difference tinkering around with the sentencing at the end of it. But it does doesn't like in kind change what the crime is there. And so I just think at a certain point when you're, if you're doing something like, you know, look, I'll say maybe with a little bit of an edge, you know, let's say Barack Obama wants to drone bomb, you know, this place to kill a terrorist and he thinks he can do it without killing any innocent civilians, does it? And then it ends up killing some innocent civilians, that's one thing. But once you've done it over and over and over again and every single time it kills innocent civilians and then there's a wedding and you order a drone bomb strike on a wedding, like, no, you murdered those people. That's murder in the first degree. Like, I just don't. And so, yes, like, you know, like whether you say out loud, oh, it sure is a shame that we got to kill all these kids, when you're doing it over and over and you know the action you're taking is going to kill more kids, I just don't think it like it's, yeah, it's a little bit different, but really not that much. It's still pretty much. And then also when you mix in with that, the fact that like, you know, I mean, if you go, and I'm not taking an opinion on the word genocide, I don't even like to get into that conversation. I feel like it just derails it anyway, what Israel is doing. Whether you think it's a genocide or not, it's certainly not what most people envision when they hear the word genocide. But you know, if you could look at South Africa's case that they promoted at the International Court of Justice, the whole thing is just quotes from Israeli leaders. And so, and I'm just saying, like, by the way, it's not like they're always saying, oh, it sure is a shame that we had to kill that eight year old girl. They like half the time they say that when they're talking to the international community and then the other half the time they seem to basically be saying there's no such thing as an innocent eight year old girl. And so I just, I guess I just don't find that argument to be very compelling, especially when the thing has been going on for so long.

There is some disagreement I have with you there. I think the thing you're implying is when, whenever they state it, it's not quite genuine to some degree.

Not, no, I'm saying it might be, it might be genuine by some people. I'm not saying it's necessarily not. I'm saying that when there's a lot of people who are saying the opposite, it doesn't seem like it's consistently genuine from, from the entire, you know, Israeli leadership class. And that even if it is genuine when some people say it, that, that's, that's kind of not enough to get away from the, the fact that it's, you know, when, when Tucker was on Piers Morgan, he said the thing, he goes, you know, I don't like my tax dollars being used to intentionally kill Trump children. And a lot of people really objected to that word intentionally because I think so many of the defenders of Israel fall behind this. Like, no, no, no, that's not intentional. We're just trying to kill Hamas. But again, like I said, we would never accept that standard in like a domestic murder case. It's like, no, like the, the thing is that if, you know there are kids there and you know they're going to die, then that's intent.

I think I agree with you fundamentally because war is hell and that's why I'm against war. But there is a difference. So I think we're mixing in a lot of things. I think you're fundamentally against war and that's why to you it really doesn't matter. It is murder. It's just murder and we shouldn't do murder. And there's a lot of democracies with colorful flags that justify murder murder because they're trying very hard not to kill civilians. And then when you say, you look at the reality of the Obama administration, the entirety of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, you're murdering civilians. Yes, you're trying to kill bad guys, but you're murdering civilians. That said, on a ethical consideration, on which kind of ideals, ideologies you can build a society after the war, one that even on the surface level states that the value of every life, of every civilian life is equal and high in value. That's a good society. That's the concern with extremist ideology that Basically is very difficult to build a flourishing society on. But then the argument against that is the one you said, which is like, yeah, well, Hamas is really supported now because of the war.

Right. But by the way, I don't disagree with the first part of your statement there. I just don't think it's in conflict with what I'm stating. It's like, look, I understand first of all that, like, there is a difference between the way you're gonna say, prosecute crime domestically within your own country and the way you can prosecute crime or what a war between two different countries, Right? Like, maybe it's. It's not exactly the same. You don't have cops that you can just send in. You can't arrest somebody and put them on trial. It's not the. So, like, fine, you could say. But the point I'm making is more like. I'm just saying how we would think about these things in a domestic setting. We're talking about, like, morality here. And morality, by its very nature is something that rises above, you know, the. It rises above logistics. It rises above, like, nationalities or governments or borders or any of those things. Like what's right or wrong. Like if it's, if it's wrong to rape somebody in New Jersey, it's also wrong to rape somebody in Central Africa.

Like.

Like it does. And so I'm just saying you're committing the same act that we would consider murder in the first degree here. And then just to go one step further, I think particularly, like, part of the reasons why people have different attitudes about the way two nations fight. Like, what. What we think of as war versus what we think as. As like, say, like a policing issue. Like, we would never accept the idea that, like, you know, if, um, if. If whatever the same. The logic that's used in wars, used in World War II, even used in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially used in the war in Gaza. If, if, you know, if there was a bad guy, even a guy who had done something like October 7th, you know, at which we have school shooters and things like that here, you know, if there was an active duty school shooter and he's in a school shooting people, and we know he's already killed like 25 people, blow up the school. He's. Hey, he's using them as human she shields. No, it's not our fault. You see, listen, those deaths, those deaths, Lex, while tragic, were the school shooter's fault because he used all these people as human shields. We would never for a goddamn second if those were our kids. In there, we'd never accept that excuse. Be like, what? Yeah, that guy was bad. You still had an obligation to do something else. That was never accepted. Now that we may look at things differently in the context of a war, but also. Also, by the way, I'm not sure I completely do, but typically speaking, when people think of wars, they're thinking of this government versus this government, this military versus this military. That's not the situation here. You know, so, like, while Israel is saying, hey, they're using human shields, it's also like. And that is true, I think, to some degree. I think the Israelis overplay it a little bit. But there have been, I think, clear instances where Hamas is using human shields. But it's kind of a flip side of a different point. And like, the other point is like, oh, well, why aren't they using their army or their air force or their navy? Oh, right, because they don't have any of those. Oh, that's right. So you're fighting a war against a people that don't have a government because you've denied them their right to have one. And so that's. That's the thing where I do think if you've occupied the place since 1967, you almost now take on an obligation that you kind of have to almost conduct this as a police matter. You know, you're not allowed to just because otherwise. Because now we are getting awfully close to the scenario that we just laid out. We're like, oh, there's a school shooter. Blow up the school.

It's difficult to have a discussion about ethics when you're talking about war. It's really at the core of it all. War is immoral.

Yeah. I mean, by its very definition, it's innocent people dying almost always. Right.

Like, it's difficult to pick which is the just war. And Even World War II, because of the complexities that you mentioned, is difficult.

Yeah.

Because it's Stalin.

Well, as my. As my buddy Daryl Cooper demonstrated, I think we can have a reasonable civil discussion about these things without anybody blowing their lid. We can all just. No, but look, I mean, look, there's so many. World War II is just. It's the third rail like nothing else. I really. World War II and the Civil rights movement, I think, are the, like, third rails of American politics that if you, like, if you have any type of view that is not the. The approved, authorized view of how these events went, you're in a lot of trouble. If you wanted to compare Hitler to Stalin's body count at that Time, Time. Stalin was already a genocidal maniac, and Hitler had not gone genocidal yet. So there is a weird dynamic that now, in hindsight, it looks a little bit better because you go, yeah, yeah, but he went so genocidal at the end there, you know, but, like, that's a weird decision at the time to ally with. With Joseph Stalin when he had already done the worst things that Joseph Stalin had, or at least a lot of the worst things he had done. I guess there were a lot more. More in the war as well.

But it's curious, though, you didn't mention Mao. It's that funding again, because he did even worse than Stalin. Is that the second?

I'm not sure that's officially known. Do we actually know that Mao killed anybody? I mean. All right, I'll come. I'll say it. Here we go. I'm going to blow my funding. Bad guy. That Mao Zedong. Do not care for him.

I think the Chinese government officially says they have, like, an actual percentage that he was 70% correct.

Is that true? They actually broke it down to that 70%, but the 30% was being the worst, worst mass murderer in human history. That's such a communist thing to do.

Yeah, we measured it.

We measured it and perfectly scientifically figured it out.

Since you mentioned Daryl Cooper, you're friends with him. Can you tell me about him and tell me about the whole saga about where he got attacked after the.

Sure.

The Talker interview.

Yeah. Yeah. So, well, Daryl, I was just a big fan, and still, I'm really just a big fan of him. I was. We chatted like a few times, and I interviewed him on my podcast, and I consider us friends. Martyr Maid podcast is his show, and it's just phenomenal. I found out about him from. My guy is Scott Horton, who's a very close friend of mine and I think the best. The best person on war in the country. He's just a genius. He runs the Libertarian Institute, and he's also been the editor at Antiwar.com, for many years now. So he first told me about Daryl and that I. What I knew of Daryl was just that he did a podcast with Jocko, and so, like, they did their show together, and I listened to a couple episodes of it and really enjoyed it. And then it was Scott who was like, dude, you gotta check out his podcast, Martyr Made. It's like the best history podcast you got. And I ended up listening to his. The first thing I listened to of his was the Fear and Loathing in The New Jerusalem. Jerusalem. He's done a few things on Twitter where he's kind of like shit posting and stuff like that, but when you listen to his work, like when he lays down, like, I'm going to put together this. This thing, I'm going to take years to put together, like, a long presentation on the history of this conflict or the history of this. He is. Has, like, the utmost responsibility in the way that he tells the story and the way he presents it. I cannot understand how anyone would listen to his work and come away with the feeling that this guy is any type of. Of like Jew hater or Nazi apologist or anything like that. It's just. It's just not who he is. What Daryl said on Tucker's show was that he goes, you know, I'll say this to be provocative sometimes to kind of rib my buddy Jocko, who's like Anglo Saxon. So this kind of gets to him. He goes, and I'm being a bit hyperbolic when I say this, but I'll. I'll sometimes say that Winston Churchill was the chief villain of World War II. Now, he didn't commit the most atrocities. He wasn't like the worst person there, but he was a guy who was hell bent on kind of this thing becoming what it ultimately, ultimately became. Whereas, like, it. This might have just been an invasion of Poland. This may not have been this whole cascade of, like, the worst thing that ever happened in human history. Now, the retelling of that is always. People go, he said Churchill was the chief villain of the war, but it's like, no, not exactly. Like, he. You know what I mean, what. He. He's making a point. And I think he's. He's putting out right now a long series on World War II. He just put the prologue to it, which was excellent, by the way. Um, and I really just have, you know, listen, if after it's out, maybe I'll come back and regret saying this, but I don't think I will. I really have, like, trust that Daryl will handle this, like, responsibly. And in fact, I think that he might be. And not because he's, like, involved it like this is his angle or what he's attempting to do. I think just that he's going to tell the truth, and the truth will take you where it takes you. I think he's actually going to probably serve a function of bringing a lot of those types kind of back to reality and bringing them back to being like. Like, he. If you think he's going to be excusing the atrocities of the Nazis in this thing. I just don't. I don't think you're going to be happy with the end product if that's what you are coming into it for.

Okay. One thing I want to say is I think calling Daryl Nazi Nazi sympathizer is just wrong and it does a lot of damage. I think he. He has a lot of value to his podcast. I think we're like. There's several things to sort of make very clear. I think as a really interesting guy, I'm sure I'll talk to him in the future. But I just want to lay on the table that I think what he's saying about Churchill is just dead wrong. I think legitimately that statement, removing the trolling from it, is a revisionist history statement that I think is wrong. The invasion of the Soviet Union would have happened no matter what. What, and possibly which I'm actually learning a lot more. Stalin could have gone the other way as well. That was going to be a global war, no matter what. Churchill, the role of Churchill we can debate. And I still don't think he was a main instigator of that expansion. There. There's a lot of historical documentation of that.

Well, look, that's a fair debate to have, and it'd be interesting to see you two kind of talk about that, or maybe not even debate it, but just like have a conversation about that.

I think the broader point you're making is a lot of. I mean, there's just a lot of trivialization of the World War II that happens in the west, in the United States especially, and that's used by neocons, by. Oh, yeah, by warmongers to sort of.

Oh, I constantly. I mean, I've never. I don't think I've done a bunch of, like, Israel, Palestine debates. I don't think I've ever done one where World War II wasn't invoked and where that wasn't like the. Well, I mean, let's. Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. You're going to tell me it's not okay? And immediately, just if you just look at it like that, like, let's say the official narrative is 100% true in World War II. Let's. Let's even say every aspect of the official narrative is really true. Like the lesson of World War II is that we should have gone to war sooner, which is essentially right. Like the dominant mainstream narrative that Chamberlain is the failure. That was the problem, the appeal, appeasement. Churchill was the solution. If only Chamberlain had been Churchill or if only we had gone to war with Germany and, you know, whatever, in 1933, we would have just. It would have been better. Okay, let's say all of that's true. It still doesn't follow from that that therefore, in every situation, appeasement is wrong and aggression is good. It doesn't follow from that. That's the only lesson of history. And that now it's just okay to slaughter civilians. Like it's okay to go to total war against a civilian population. Population. Because this one time it was necessary. Like, it's. And the idea that Bobby Kennedy said this to me, again, somebody who I really do love and admire in many ways, and I'm glad he's the health Secretary. I remember him saying this, invoking the Nazis and making a comparison between Hamas and the Nazis. Like, dude, Hamas doesn't even control Gaza. Really. The Nazis had most of Europe at one point. This is just not an apples to apples conversation. This is not. You can't even compare the two in terms of what type of method, menace or threat they are to the world. I mean, like, sure, maybe if Hamas had a lot of power, they'd use it in a bad way, but like, that's true with like some homeless guy on the street too, but he doesn't have that power. So, like, what are we talking about here? And so the way I do think that the way the World War II narrative is weaponized has been. Even if World War II itself was necessary, and just the way that that's been weaponized over the years has led to just like countless relentless catastrophes. And like, you know, and it's always. There's always. It's not just like, you know, I mean, I guess it's just in some ways there might be something positive about the fact that everybody's always called Hitler if they're bad. You know what I mean? We make Hitler the, you know, the face of what is evil eternally or something. He really does play the role of the devil in our society in a strange way. Other. Um, but there is like, you know, Saddam was the next Hitler and Gaddafi was the next Hitler, and Bashar Al Assad was the next Hitler.

Trump.

Trump is Hitler. Hamas is Hitler. Except the problem is that, like, none of them are Hitler. None of them are even close. It's just totally different.

Yeah. And the amount of power is really important. It matters how much destructive power you have within you, the capabilities. But like, every, every major superpower with nuclear weapons, weapons has the potential to be that destructive. It's just unproductive.

And yet the only ones who ever have dropped them are us.

Yeah.

I was arguing with one guy on a podcast, and he said that. He goes, you can't allow dictators to have nuclear weapons because they might use them. And I was like, but. But we are the only ones who ever used them. And he goes, ah, come on, that's naive. Or something. Like, wait, what? Why shouldn't that be pointed out? And I don't know. I mean, I'd prefer Iran not get nuclear weapons. I. You know, I think we're pushing them to probably want to pursue that. And I also think there's been a lot of propaganda about the nuclear program in. In Iran. I know. At least since the 90s. According to Netanyahu, they've been five years away.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of warmongering going on about all parts of the world, Iran especially. I do. I have a lot of friends in Iran from Iran. It's one of the most beautiful cultures in the world. Like this just super superpower of intellect and culture. And it's really sad and disappointing that the regime is basically suppressing that culture.

Yeah.

You have to always remember, like, there's parts of the world where the. The people are beautiful and we don't get to see it because of the suppression, the lack of freedom.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

So, all that said, there does seem to be a lot of hatred of Jews on the island.

Sex. Yeah.

How much of it do you think is actual hate of Jews? And how much of it is just trolls and grifters and conspiracy nerds just, you know, cosplaying as Nazis?

It's really hard to tell. I mean, I don't know. I don't know how you even figure it out. And. And I think this is one of the problems that with outrage culture, it's kind of one of the unintended consequences of it, is that now you just have no way of knowing who's saying this just to get a rise out of you or who really sincerely means it, or who's some version of both. Then there's also. It's like, there's so many weird dynamics, because there's no question, like, I see it all the time. I mean, I see a level of, like, Jew hatred on Twitter that I've never seen before in my own own replies and other people's things. Like, it's. And that's interesting. Like, first off, you're like, okay, what's going on here?

Interesting sociological phenomenon. Yeah.

Right. You know? Yeah. Concerning and troubling and all of that stuff. But then you also see people who will be asking like completely legitimate questions or making completely legitimate points that are called anti Semitic. And then that I think does not help the dynamic at all. All because now you're almost like, oh, there's number one, you just kind of. You make the word meaningless. You take away the disincentive for anybody else to actually be a Jew hater. I mean, I think there's a lot going on. You know, one of the things is that for young white men in America today, they've lived through the years of, of real insane progressive wokeism. And so, you know, which is something like my, like I'm 42. It's just a different thing for me. Like I come from a different culture in a different time. That is just simply was not the case that when I was a teenager or when I was in college or when I was in my early 20s that the school, the faculty, the politicians, Hollywood, all of them embraced racialism. You know, they all said we're playing identity politics and it is okay to dice people up along these racial lines and have that first and foremost in your mind mind. You know, and there is this weird feeling over this last year and now with Trump being reelected that like we snapped our fingers and wokeism went away or something like that. But these guys still came up in this, in this era. And there was, it was always the case that like one of the, the dangerous elements of playing this game was like, you think you're going to play this and that like young straight white men aren't going to start playing this game to too. Why the hell would they not like, why, why would they just accept we'll just sit here while everybody else is allowed to have a racial identity and a grievance about it. And yet we'll be the one group. Yeah. You could just stomp all over us. We're the bad guys. And that's part of the reason why I always opposed the woke insanity. I mean, first and foremost, just because I think it's wrong. I think it's wrong to like be shitty to people based on their racial group. And that includes white people too do. But then also you're like, you don't see that this is gonna result in something bad. So there's, there's that. But I mean I, you know, clearly, and, and it was weird to me is that I, I guess it's because a lot of the people who are the most upset about the anti Semitism also happen to be supporting Israel. Like, there's a big correlation between that. But clearly it's a huge factor in this. Like, it's, it's not a coincidence that all of this rose up while Israel is just conducting this brutal campaign with our weapons and money. And so I always think with these things, whether it's with Putin or with Al Qaeda or with whoever. And I'm not saying like the guy who posts like, Jew Haiti stuff on Twitter is the same as them. I'm just saying in all of these situations, you always kind of got to separate, like, what are legitimate grievances and what are like, okay, that's. You're wrong on that and you shouldn't be doing that. You know, like, so it's pretty easy for me to like, if I listen to like the Putin interview with Tucker. I thought his whole 30 minute opening thing was like, horrible and just like kind of stupid. Especially when you're talking to Tucker Carlson. You know, this is like, for an American audience, you know how much that does not resonate with Americans being like, we have a historic claim over another our entire society is founded on. We think that's bullshit. Like, that's the entire history of our. Is like, no, it doesn't matter, sorry. Like, literally read the Declaration of Independence. It just refutes everything Vladimir Putin said in the first 30 minutes. Minutes. Like, our view of the world is that God wants us to be free and we get to overthrow governments if they're infringing on our rights. Like, that's so that was stupid. But then when he's talking about like NATO enlargement and bringing Ukraine into the American military alliance, you're like, I, okay, he's got a legitimate point there. We would not allow one of our neighbors to be brought into China or Russia's military alliance. And so likewise, when it comes to those guys, I do think that, like, you almost. Look, it is, it is just true. It is the case that America has fought many wars over the last seven years with Israel playing a very influential role in us fighting those wars. And, you know, these were, this was like a scheme that was cooked up by the neoconservatives and the Likudniks in Israel, that we would go through this path. But this has been confirmed by four star General Wesley Clark. He literally said it was a study paid for by the Israelis, that we were going to topple seven countries in five years. And we didn't get there in five years. But we've been made attempts to topple all of those countries since Then, you know, you see Trump's bombing the Houthis because they're pissed off about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. And so they're trying to shut down their straits or whatever. And it's like, so we're just bombing another group on behalf of Israel. And if you really are concerned about the rise of Jew hatred, I would say, like, look, it's much like, you know, sometimes people argue where, you know, the thing I said in the beginning about the terrorists don't hate us for our freedom, they hate us because we're over there. And people would say that's just what Osama bin Laden says. He just says he hates us for our military, but he really just hates us because he's an Islamist and we're free people or whatever. And he'd be like, okay, well, even if that's what's in his heart, that sure is his recruiting shtick. That sure is how he gets other people to blow themselves up. And so even if you want to say which is, which might very well be the case case that some of these people just hate Jews and it wouldn't matter if Israel was at war with Gaza or not, it's like, okay, but that sure is their recruiting shtick. That sure is how they get other people to go look at what these Jews are doing in our foreign policy. So I would, I don't know. There's a lot going on. I do think, I think racialism of all different forms is stupid and wrong. It always just leads to sloppy thinking and bad results. It's always kind of ugly. And then weirdly, it also always ends up hurting the person. Like, it's not good for you, it's not good for your soul. So I don't like seeing that stuff. But then I also think, you know, like I was saying before about there's like this hierarchy of outrages that you got to have in order to think and act. You have to kind of put these together and, you know, I just hear a little bit, it's something that I'm, you know, despite being described as a self hating Jew, I am really not. I love Jewish people. I love Jewish culture. I've benefited a lot from it. It's, it's in many ways made me the person I am and I think made. I think it's influenced some of the best parts of me. But there is like a whininess and a hysteria about this stuff that I think is just like not healthy. I think it's not good. I've told many Jewish friends and family this privately. But it's like the way I look at it is like I'm an American American. This has been a wonderful country to be Jewish. Jews are doing exceptionally well in this country. We are 2% of the population or so. And we are thriving by any metric. And if mean stuff on Twitter is our great burden to bear, I don't think we should be talking about it like we're in the middle of Nazi Germany or something like that. So I do think people get hysterical.

About it in a way that's completely not productive. But to me, I think, I think of the Jew hating nerds and trolls on Twitter is just the other side of the woke.

I kind of get that.

Yeah, it's almost like a response like you were saying. It's just that the, the woke weren't censored and the response to the woke was censored. And now that I next they're less censored or not censored. You just get to see it. And they're both annoying.

I agree with that.

They don't really help the discuss Israel. They don't help the discussion on anything. In fact, I one of the reasons I stay away from that discussion of Israel, which I think is nuanced and really complicated in the way that we've been discussing. In order to have an intellectual like exploration of ideas, you have to be able to misstep and try ideas for size. And if I'm going to be punished severely by these, I'm okay being criticized by. But when there's like low brain takes that are just lying about me en masse, like he gets a huge amount of engagement just because you're like thinking out loud and reading history and yeah, it's just annoying. And by the way, I'm really interested about World War II probably in the way that Dan Carlin and Daryl Cooper are interested because it's such an interesting stage on which human nature was explored in all its forms. The geopolitics of it, every everybody on that stage was complicated. There's a lot of also there's a lot of fascinating military taxes and strategy and military technology, plus the nuclear bomb, all of that. That's like a moment in human history. Listen, I love Genghis Khan, Roman Empire, Alexander the Great. Those are all interesting studies of human history, of military tactics, of brutality, of human nature, all of that. That's why I want to be able to discuss discuss that. It's fascinating like that humans are able to do that kind of thing. What causes them to do it? What were the dynamics involved? The propaganda on all sides could have, could it been avoided or not. You know, Plus Stalin is part of this picture. Yeah, it's like, what the fuck?

What?

Like you don't get characters this, you don't get after the nuclear bomb. You're just not going to get characters like that. You're not going to get a global war of that kind. It might be a different one, maybe a cyborg war or maybe a war in space, but we're not going to get this kind of war ever again. That was the last, the biggest and the last global war we're going to get. So I want to be able to like mouth off and explore and yeah, argue with Daryl Cooper, Bob Churchill and say stupid in the process. And Daryl says stupid shit in the process too. And like together come up to the. So anyway, the, the trolls on the left and the right just make everything worse and it's annoying.

No, I, I agree with that and I'm sure like I, I'm, I, I'm sure I'm not without my own bias in this because I like. But from my own like self interested perspective, I'm not saying like this is the main reason to be annoyed with them or anything like that. But I, what I personally get is all types of like self hating Jew, Nazi apologist. All this literally just because I criticize the way Israel's conducting this war. So I think that's like insane. But then I also feel, feel like, and I'm not. Listen, I want to be clear. Disclaimers. I'm not saying this is the worst thing about people who are Jew haters on Twitter, but just from a personal perspective, I'm like, guys, you are not helping me, man. Like, it's like I'll get people in my comments who I think are trying to like catch my back, who just don't know I'm Jewish. And they're like, I'll say something critical of Israel and then someone will argue with me and they'll be like, oh look, a Jew came in here to defend Israel. And I'm like, dude, first of all, do you, you're like, literally, you might as well be working for Mossad. You literally make the entire, you make the movement who's criticizing Israel look terrible, dude. Like, you are literally the enemy that they would like to have. And so it's, there's a very weird dynamic in the Israel Palestine conflict where all of, there's so many of the loons on both sides sides who almost seem like they're Secretly working for the other side. Like, if you. When you see the. The Palestinian protests and they're chanting death to America and all this stuff, you're like, what are you. What are you doing? Are you trying to make people more sympathetic to Israel? Because that's. If. If Rabbi Schmuli was working for Adolf Hitler or something like that, it would all make perfect sense. You were like, oh, I get it. You sent this guy out to make everyone hate Jewish people. And then, like, it's just. There's just a very. And then with the, with the, The Jew hating post too, it's just. Yeah, it's. It just feeds right into the. The opposition side of how to caricature. You know, it's like, oh, so their game is they'll smear everybody who's a critic of Israel as. As being a Jew hater. So your answer is to just really be a Jew hater. Like, I. All right, I don't think that's helping.

So maybe this is a good time to ask for your advice, because these folks are the reason why I'm hesitant. So I've interviewed several world leaders recently. It's looking likely that I'll interview Vladimir Putin and several other similar level major world leaders. I've previously interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu for an opportunity hour. One of the biggest regrets I have about that interview is it was only an hour. I realized that. I mean, I learned a lot, but I think he's a really important historical figure and I think it's impossible to have an effective conversation with him that's shorter than three hours. So it looks like he's interested now to do round two with me for three or more hours. Hours. And I've personally. So this is a bit of a therapy session, but I've personally been leaning against doing it. And I hate that I'm leaning against doing it because the reason I'm leaning against doing it is because the very people you're talking about, because I just don't want them to. On either side, pro Israel, it doesn't really matter. But the chanting sheep of Animal Farm, Jew hating or otherwise, just make your life. They follow you around everywhere online and make it difficult to think. I think whenever I come across these crowds, the woke left or the. Whatever you call the Jew haters, the woke right, let's call them. They just decrease the quality of my thoughts. Thoughts for the rest of the day. Like, I feel dumber. It's like Rogan talks about when he hears a bad comedian, he feels like nothing is funny anymore. This is what I feel like when I read their thoughts. It's like, I can't. I'm gonna go read a book now because I need to, like, recover.

Well, it's a dangerous kind of poison to let in your mind because then you're like, it's like, hey, I can't be thinking about you when I'm doing what I want to do. Like, I can't be thinking about what your reaction to this is going to be. The way I always thought about it was like, when I get, like, you know, hate online, which I'm, you know, always get. It's always just kind of like, I look at it like this. Like, I got. I got a great family and a great career, and I really love what I do. I make really good money at what I do. And I go. I do shows all the time. I get crowds of people who love what I do. I got a lot of people who listen to my podcast who love what I do. And it's like, so if I get all that and then the price that comes along with it is there's some people who talk online. It's like, that's a very. That's a very good price to pay for all of this. Like, it's just. And I just, like, I just kind of made a decision at a certain point that it's like, I'm just going to accept that that's the price of business here. That's what it costs. And then, okay, fine. And then sometimes I try to have fun with it or mock them or whatever to go back that. But to me, now, again, I. I can never tell you what to do because this is a. It's a very personal price that you have to pay. And it's a very weird psychological dynamic. I mean, it's just not. It's almost something like that We. We were not evolved to deal with and is very artificial and it's very, you know, like, if you're. If there's a group of, like, thousands of people who hate your guts and are furious at you, we're almost like hardwired to be like, well, I'm going to be killed now. Like, that's the next thing that happens. You're. You. You're not supposed to get to know what just someone in Arkansas thinks about you right now, you know, but. So that's a very personal, like, decision to make. But I kind of feel like guys like me and you have already made the decision that we're in the arena and we're going to deal with that, that price. And so I just, from my perspective, I'm like, yeah, but how could you turn down, down getting three hours with Netanyaho? Like, that would just be so interesting. And I'm not even saying, you know, like, I hate the guy, but I'm not saying you should interview him like you hate the guy, or I'm not saying you even have to like grill it, but just if you get three hours with somebody, something interesting is going to be revealed there. There'll be a benefit to that. It'll be interesting to just see him talk that way. There's also something about, as we kind of saw with, with True Trump doing the podcasts and even with JD Vance doing some of the podcasts, there is something really interesting about this format, the long form podcast, where it just gets people to let down their guard and reveal themselves a little bit more. Like it is. It's not just the time factor. Like, that's a big one, it's a huge, huge one. But it's like there's something about like if me and you were just like, if you, we were having this conversation right now, but in back of us was like a cable news, you know, background of red and blue and sparks and a ticker at the bottom of the show and then you just start interviewing someone, it's just a different thing. Whereas this, you just kind of like fall into conversation mode. And I'd be interested to see him fall into that Putin too. Like, I just think that it's great.

First of all, thank you for the encouragement, encouragement. But to push back on the complexity of a little bit, I think everything you said about your life is also true about my life, except family. I want to have a family, you son of a bitch. You bragging on the podcast side, I could have a lot of incredible conversations. Some of my favorite is talking to programmers or video game designers or to you about Netanyahu versus talking to a world leader is a very specific thing. And people don't understand, understand that, for example, you and I can mouth off. We can be super supportive of Netanyahu, super critical in a way that you can't do in front of the guy.

Yeah, that's true.

If you want to reveal something about that person, there's a different skill involved there. In order to reveal how they think who they are as a human being, you have to, just like we said with Darrell Cooper, you have to humanize the person to a degree in order to, to let their mind flourish in front of you in order for them to Break to let, let down the berries that they've put up. And Benjamin Netanyahu has put up a lot of barriers internally in Israel. He gets attacked insanely. There's, there's a Game of Thrones constantly going on. And this guy has maintained power for a very long time, so he's very good at putting up those barriers. Plus, you know, globally gets attacked, attacked a lot. So the task there is difficult. And so each one is a puzzle and you have to make a decision. Do you want to take this on as a project which might become a lifelong project because of the consequences? And you don't need to.

There's a calculation there. I'm not saying it's not so self evident that there is a correct and incorrect answer. And I do think that we've probably all had things like certain type of ventures in life where you're like, all right, no, I don't want to do that. But then you have to have a moment and be like, well, why is it you don't want it? Oh, is it just because it's going to be a lot of work? Is it just because you're scared of it? Is it just because this. And those typically are not good reasons to not do something like, you know what I mean? And then now there might be. There is a reasonable, I think, point that you made in there where it's like, when it is a different game to interview a world leader, that is a very different thing. Like talking to some comedian about his thoughts on all this stuff is a very different thing than talking to a world leader and especially one who's conducting a brutal war as you're talking to them, you know, like, that's a. And I don't know exactly what the way to navigate that is. I agree with you. It's not just to be like hostile and be like, I've got you here for three hours, I'm going to grill the. It's like probably not the, the best way to do it. There's probably to like have a conversation, to talk to the guy, probably try to get some important questions in, but also give him a chance to breathe and be a person. Person. I just, from my perspective, but again, it's a very personal thing for me. I just do think that I like, I'm going, I hope you do it because I'd love to see that podcast.

Okay, well, see, this is why. It's part of the reason I asked you is because I get a Dave Smith endorsement on the, On.

There you go. So that when this Completely ruined.

At least there's another guy who thought there's a chance it might be a good idea because, I don't know. I said that's the coolest thing about the things we do. You've been through a lot of battles. You, you walked into a lot of tough debates and it's like, you don't know. This could be the conversation that like, ends you.

I know. I, well, I'll say that's. I think that's one of the things that I love about doing debates. And there is something about that where it's. I, I do kind of feel this, like I'm a little bit of, of like an adrenaline junkie. I mean, not like really, you know, I don't like skydive or do stuff like that, but like doing standup is kind of like, you know, there's always something about that that's like you're risking a lot by doing it. You're like, you feel alive, you know, like not and not like the way you do when you first start. But there is something about that and there's something about. Well, first of all, I just kind of, I feel there's kind of two things. Like, number one, I feel like I'm obligated. And I wouldn't say this for you, but I think this is true for me. I think I'm obligated to do like at least several debates a year. And I think that, I think that if I'm going to go on shows like your show and Rogan's show show and, and Tucker's show and you know, Candace or whoever else, you know, Patrick Bet, David and Tim Pool, and I go on these big shows for long form things and I'm sitting there and I'm being like, okay, it's like this, like, and this is, and I think it's like this and that then if I'm gonna do that, I kind of have an obligation to like test myself against someone being like, no, it's not like that. And then, you know, like showing that I think I can stand up to these, these kind of challenges. So I feel like I'm kind of obligated. But then I do. Like there is a feeling to it where, where you're like, hey man, like, this is not my career is not a joke. Like, I got little kids, this is how I support them, you know, and like, I am kind of taking my career in my hands every time I go do one of these debates. Like, if I just get smoked and this guy just totally beats me Up. It's like, I don't know. I don't know. How are you. How's anyone going to look at me again after that? You'd be like, oh, you. You acted like you had such a good point, and then this guy just totally destroyed you. Your point. So. But that then kind of motivates me to be like, okay, I gotta really be on point. I gotta really make sure I've done my homework. I gotta make sure my argument's really tight. I gotta think about this thing from all ends. And then on the other level, it's like, if someone can do that to me, then kind of, that's the way the movie is supposed to end. You know, like, if you. If I. If there is some hole in my argument that I'm just not thinking of and then someone else can point it out to me and I got no response to it, then I kind of deserve to be humiliated publicly for that. So. All right. I don't know that it's kind of exciting in a way because the movie.

Ends at some point.

Well, that's true. Unless you and your genius friends can figure out how to, you know, give us eternal life or something.

I don't think I want to live. I don't think I want to live forever. I think flirting with that idea too much is dangerous. This kind of transhumanism kind of idea. Idea, it's not a good way of thinking. Of course, I do want to heal diseases and extend human life, especially high quality of human life.

But, yeah, if we could live, if we could be in much better shape and much healthier and extend life by a few decades, I think that would be great. But I agree with you. I think there's supposed to be an expiration date on it. I think we're supposed to. There's something about scarcity being a necessary component in a lot of different fields, you know what I mean? Where it's like the life itself having a finite amount of time on it, I think makes it more precious. Yeah.

At the individual level. And then at the societal level, it just does seem like death is the way you get new ideas. It's like people kind of solidify their ideas and are unwilling to change their mind. Mind. And the only way you get new ideas.

Interesting. Right. The next generation has to take them over.

Yeah, you have to keep churning. All right. Speaking of the trolls and Israel, I gotta ask you about this. Let's talk about Jeffrey Epstein. I recently got attacked because a conversation, a couple conversations I had with Tim Dillon. Three and Four years ago. I love Tim Dillon. He's hilarious.

I love Tim, too. I've. No, I've known Tim for many years. Years. Love that guy.

Yeah. So we, I, I bring up Jeffrey Epstein often because there's a, there's a fascinating study of evil to me, whichever angle you, you take on it. And I think they're partially to talk, but I showed some skepticism that he's connected to Mossad. So to me, there's three. And I've evolved on that since then, by the way. I'm not actually sure it's Mossad. It could be any intelligence agency. It could be CIA. But I was wondering if you could educate me. I did a little research on this last night. I looked into it a little more, and then I saw that you said he's definitely Mossad.

Well, I don't know if I said. I didn't say he was definitely Mossad. I don't know my exact. I mean, I made one kind of jokey post, as is the case with almost any intelligence operation. It. Look, I don't want to like, poo poo anybody's hopes here because I guess like, the JFK files just got released and supposedly the rest of the Epstein files are coming out. And there's a lot of. There's a major yearning right now to get to the end of the movie where we find out everything that happened, you know, and that I think it's great that people have that desire and I hope more and more does come out. I think the truth is, is that with any intelligence operations, we're probably never going to know all of the details of exactly what happened.

The funny thing about intelligence agencies, and I've been regularly accused of being CIA, FSB or Mossad, depending on the group that's attacking me. But I think it's a fascinating topic and it's very difficult to know somebody's intelligence. But if you have any nuance, I want to discuss the nuances, then the, the, the, the comment is going to be that guy for sure is right if we're talking about Mossad or so on. But yeah, that's one of the things I didn't know. And I saw the. What is it Alex Acosta said that basically mentioned that Epstein's intelligence. That to me is like, okay, that's a piece of evidence. That's a really valuable piece of evidence that he's intelligence. And that was very. Not just intelligent, but Mossad. Because that. Before that I thought it might be CIA, because that's. I kind of heard and It's, I.

Think it's quite possible that he was working with elements of both. I mean, as I think is often the case, I also think that's something that people get a little bit wrong, like when they think like, okay, this guy was CIA or this guy was Mossad. And then there's also, I think there's the possibility that there are rogue elements within those organizations. Like, this is not necessarily coming from the director or what, you know, I don't know. But you look at the guy, the way his, his career trajectory tracks is like completely unexplainable outside of being connected to intelligence. Like, it's not just like the one or two people saying that he's intelligence. It's like, dude, the idea that you're just like, you have no experience and you're a teacher at Dalton, which is like this incredibly elite New York City private school. And then all of a sudden you're at Bear Stearns and like within two years you've like made partner and you've made, you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows where you made your money from. This just doesn't happen. And then you're just in, you're just inserted into this world with all of the most like, highest level political leaders and cultural figures and stuff. But the thing that's amazing about the Jeffrey Epstein story is that it's like the level of evil and the level of corruption that it exposes. No matter what the answer is, like, no matter what the answer is, it's, you're gonna, you're gonna tell me that there was a pedophile ring in our country that involved. I mean, listen, dude, if you had said this shit before it came came out, this would have been the wildest conspiracy theory. But a pedophile ring that involves the most powerful people in the United States of America and in the the world, to some degree, touching the Royal family, the Clintons, like all these people. And that this was known and covered up and then allowed to continue. I mean like the, there's a blackmail operation that relies on raping American children. And, and like, if this is, is, you know, whether it's CIA or Mossad, doesn't make one less, you know, it's equally horrible. But then there's like these elements where like you're like, okay, so when it, when he first got arrested and then he was given a slap on the wrist, Slap on the wrist. And then the prosecutor says, well, I was told by the intelligence community that he's intelligence and to go easy on him. It's like, oh, okay, okay. And, and you didn't resign and discussed that day, you know what I mean? Like, I don't think that's too much to ask for. You know, there was the, the ABC reporter who said that, that she had the whole story. She's on the hot mic saying she had the whole story and then the network told her to squash it. It's like. And you stayed working there. Like that's. I'm sorry. Like, I'm not asking for, I'm not saying like we're all imperfect and none of us are heroes. But like you're in a news network and you unconscious uncovered a child raping ring that implicated the most powerful people in our society. And your news network told you we will not run this story because of our relationship with the royal family. And you did not resign in disgust that day and take this story to every single independent, independent, you know, outlet that would maybe publish it. I'm sorry. It's like the thing, it's so damning to the entire apparatus that we did not see at the very, the very least see mass resignations over this. Forget even like at the very least expect that it would have been prosecuted and shut down. And then, you know, still to this day, you know, even, it's like, I think Tucker Carlson just said this recently, but like. And I guess it's a little bit of a weird area when you're filming people raping children, but what. Where are the tapes? Why is everyone talking about the flight logs and the files? Where are the tapes? This guy was clearly taping people to black people, blackmail them. Where are. There is. I don't know what the legal process of this is, but like, because I think technically it's child porn. So like, yeah, ok, you can't just like distribute it out and let everybody watch it. But isn't there a way that like somebody has to sit down and watch it and see who is implicated in this and see who would like. I just don't. And there seems to be. There's even. I think there's a lot of LARPing with this administration going on right now on this topic. But does anybody really expect that we're actually going to get to the bottom of this? Because I don't. And that in itself just tells you what a sham this whole goddamn system is. One of the things that's so amazing about the Jeffrey Epstein story, right? I mean you have all of that and then of course the end of it, which is just like, wait a minute. Wait, what? Hold on. He's in, like, the most secure, like, prison, and then he gets the. The cameras go out and the correctional officers don't fill out the log, and he's found dead? I mean, it's the M.O. like, like, it's just. But when you look at it in totality, there's just, like, no getting around the huge indictment it is of this entire, like, everything. And I mean, even the fact that even the Trump administration, when Pam Bondi goes, we're going to release all of this information. We've only redacted what needs to be redacted for national security meme. Like, why does anything need to be redacted for national security? Like, I'm so sorry, you're telling me there's a pedophile ring and we can't tell you everything about it for national security? Why would that be related to national security? I mean, there's just. It's like. And I do think there's something. And it's very interesting because, you know, like, we talked briefly. Was that on air before? We were talking about. We were talking about Sam Harris kind of, like, criticized me a little bit for not having the credentials to talk about some of this stuff, which, you know, like, I even said, okay, he's got a point. But it's like, one of the things that, like, guys like Sam Harris will talk about a lot is that, like, look, we need trust in institutions. And this, this is his big thing when he goes, you know, these people like Joe Rogan and Dave Smith are just tearing down the institutions. And while I recognize that's an issue, I also think we need trust in these institutions. Well, it's like, yeah, but what? Yeah, well, if you talk in that tone, then it means you're not being emotional and you're only being logical and rational, which is like, I actually don't think is appropriate when you're talking about a child rapist ring, but whatever. That's my take on it. But it's like, okay, so where, where are these institutions I'm supposed to trust, man? You're telling me there's a pedophile ring that is, at least in some degree, associated with national security? Like, what? And, and how could you possibly have this story? Like, if you did care about the trust in institutions, then you should be even louder than me talking about, like, you got to tell the truth on this story, otherwise we'll never have trust in these institutions.

I'm the same, actually. I believe in a. Institutions like, I, I think they have out so this is where you and I probably disagree on the libertarian side. I think it's. I think institutions, if they're run efficiently, can. Right.

Who's the utopian now?

That's right. I mean, there is a utopian notion to it for sure, but because it's very possible that bureaucracies always destroy the productivity and the effectiveness of institutions. It's possible.

It's a Lord Atkin kind of power corrupt.

Yes.

Type deal.

And it's. You're absolutely right. If you believe in institutions, you be. You should want to release everything about Epstein. You should want to be transparent as much as possible. Yeah, I. But the one thing I'm. And it is very suspicious. So I'm more and more becoming convinced that there's some intelligence agency connected to it. But I also want to, like, setting that aside, just comment on one thing where, again, it's super entertaining. But people say about me that I came out of nowhere and that's proof that I'm intelligence. So first of all, there is a track record of where I came from, quote, unquote. It's just people are too lazy. And there is something sexy about like, just saying, fucking Mossad. Oh, he's denying it. Fucking Mossad.

Yeah.

By the way, the Mossad thing is a new thing. It used to be FSB and CIA. What do I want to say about that? Oh, yeah. I've been gradually growing in popularity over the past 10 years. I've been doing interviews, lectures, podcasts, and they've been just. It's actually very gradual and I. I don't know what else.

There's a difference. There's something. And I know I've experienced this too, right? Like, there's such a difference in perspective because, like, if somebody, like, if somebody just found me and they just found out who I am, and I go, this guy's brand new and he's doing like all these shows. But you're like, yeah, well, I don't know, dude. Not from my perspective. I'm not brand new. Like, dude, I've been doing. I've been doing stand up comedy for 19 years and I've been podcasting for like 15 years. And you're like. And then when it, like, starts taking off, everybody's like, oh, this guy just came out of nowhere. And you're like, I mean, all right, I wish, I wish I had been aware that it was all this quick. But look, a lot of this stuff with. With so much of this too, it's just laziness and people searching for confirmation bias and People searching for a simpler story because that's easier. So if you're. If they believe that Epstein was Mossad and there's a clip of you where you're like, I don't know about that. Then they go, see, he's Mossad too. And now that fits perfectly into my little story. I don't know. The truth is that it's quite possible that people just aren't convinced. However. However, given enough time, Tim Dillon is always right about everything. So you got. Eventually you'll have to admit that he got it right.

And you know, not to say the cliche, cheesy thing, but it is true that the comedians sometimes say kind say the obvious thing that people are a little resistant to say, that ends up being. Being true. Now we just landed some more credibility to Tim Dillon's insanity. Great. Now, I. I do want to comment on the, the. There's the other aspect of me that came out of nowhere. Fine. But I do get to talk to world leaders, which I have to really admit, I don't understand why. So the experience I've had is.

You.

Basically gain a reputation. Like, I talked to a lot of scientists early on. You gain a reputation like that. This is. This is interesting person to talk to. And that travels. And then over time, you just, you get fans. And world leaders are humans too. Like, they listen to this stuff. And sometimes it's their family that listen. Yeah.

Oftentimes. Right. Like their kids. It seems to be a big one.

And so that's just how it happens. And so you sent an email, hey, you want to talk? And then the. Their team or them directly, in several cases, they just respond. Respond. Yeah. And that's it. It's as simple as that. And they're like. They're human beings. And I think a lot of them as human beings are exhausted by journalists, but shitty journalists, I should say. And it's hard for them to know which is the good journalist, by good. There's the cynical view that they want somebody who's just going to spout propaganda that aligned with their propaganda. No, they just want a good faith person in front of them. Not now. Like. And I should also say that no single world leader has told me which questions to ask. There's this meme about my conversation with Modi that's like scripted. Nope. There is zero oversight. I have full control.

Well, it's also like there's. I mean, obviously one of the major dynamics, which is just like one of the most interesting kind of themes in the world I think right now. Now but it's particularly true in, in America is that like the corporate media is just shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. And this, whatever this is, which is so weird that we still all call them podcasts because that's just not the right name for them at all. And none of us have had an ipod in quite a long time. And like, I don't know, it's just such a, like the first thing person came up with it. It's a cast on an ipod. It's a podcast past. And we all still use that term even though it's. But whatever these, these shows on the Internet have the audience. And so that's a big factor. Just that it's like, oh, this is where you can go to the audience. And then I would say, and I don't know exactly, like, I have no idea I should say the motivations inside any individual's heads. But I would say, like in the case of Vladimir Putin, he is completely blacked out in American media. And to the point that even RT has been blocked out. They, they never play any of his speeches, they never allow you to hear, are like, look, this is what this guy's perspective is. It's, it's very interesting in the same way that they kind of all flipped out when Osaba bin Laden's letter to America went viral on, on TikTok. And you know, then all the talks of banning TikTok increased and stuff. So for him, say, like when he did the Tucker interview or if he does an interview with you, well, that's a way for him to do an end around and allow his perspective to be heard, which I personally think is like, obviously a good thing. Like, if you're going to go in a war and we're kind of at a war with Russia right now, you should know what is the other guy's perspective is not that you should take it as gospel, but. And then from Netanyahu's perspective, I would imagine, you know, they, Israel has a lot of control in a lot of different areas, but they have been losing the Internet battle very, very badly. And it's a major problem for Israel. I mean, I, I don't know. I still think, I think in a very strange way, everybody seems to be underestimating how grave the implications of all of this are. But Israel, the view of Israel from the world is never going to be the same what it was before. The entire. And the generational divide on it is so stark. Like Everybody, you know, 40 and under, who very quickly, you know, the time goes by quickly, pretty soon. That's, you know, the 40 and overcrowd gets aged out pretty quick, quickly. And this is just go. It's never going to be the perception of Israel that my parents generation had ever again because of this war. And you know, I'm sure to some degree at least, Netanyahu is like, feels like he has to try to get his.