Joe Rogan Experience #2465 - Michael Shellenberger

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Good to see you, sir.

Thanks for having me back.

My pleasure, always. So much crazy shit going on in the world, and even before we scheduled this, like, more crazy stuff has happened. The war broke out, all kinds of things.

Yeah. How are you feeling about President Trump?

That's an open-ended question.

Do you text with him and talk to him?

Occasionally, yeah, occasionally he'll send me a text. I get these like, true social posts of things that he's saying. But this whole fucking Iran thing, man, like, did you see this coming?

No, definitely. I don't know. I mean, who did? I mean, when did he even decide? Their national security strategy they put out in November basically just said we've degraded their capacity. It's a win. There was no sense in which there would be additional action. I think it ushers in a new paradigm, completely. The older post-war era is just over. Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, articulated that at the World Economic Forum, probably better than the Trump administration did, saying very clearly that older rules-based

order is gone. You saw AOC try to sort of articulate it, but she sort of fell apart at the Munich Security Conference in February. So this is an administration that is – I mean I don't even think they're thinking – I wrote a piece and I decided not to publish it because I was sort of like decapitation doesn't really work for regime change. But it's not clear that they're really out for regime change or they're just asserting power, shaking up things. I mean, some of it's art of the deal,

changing the person that we're negotiating with. That's Venezuela and Iran. Is it really gonna change those regimes? I don't think most people don't think so, but I'm not sure that that's what they're going for. They're just going for an assertion of American power

in service of American interests. And then what happens in Iran, what happens in Venezuela, I don't think they care that much about. At least they're not behaving as though they do.

Trevor Burrus Well, neither thing made any sense to me. The Venezuela thing, I mean, look, they wanted him out forever and he definitely stole the election to get in there in the first place and he was a dictator. But at least that one was at least clean. They in kidnap him get him out this one's nuts like and what's happening in Tel Aviv it's it's hard to know what's real and what's not because there's a lot of fake video going around and a lot of weird posts on X so it's

you know when I do peek in it's hard know, and you have to listen to Grok, and then Grok's dismantling a lot of the fake videos.

Mm-hmm.

What are the fake videos that you're at the show?

This is like fake videos of, you know, like an insane amount of bombs dropping down on the city, but it seems like there's a massive amount of destruction in Tel Aviv.

Yeah, I haven't checked in lately, but I'm assuming. Was that just today or?

Yesterday?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the president is, there's been some, you know, Rubio said something about how, oh, we had to act because we knew that Israel was going to act anyway. And I think people interpreted, and then Netanyahu was in the White House a lot. I think this president has shown, whether you like him or not, and there's certainly things that I'm unhappy about and have criticized, but I think Trump is in charge. He's making these decisions. There's nobody behind him. There's nobody pulling. For all of that, the Russians or whoever, now the Israelis, it's just he's clearly, Elon gave him $250 million and he still didn't give him even the electric

car credit. Trump is in charge. I think that's one of the big lessons from this and I don't think that – I think that means that there's not a lot of like second order thinking here. Like, what's the move after that? He doesn't know.

He's just acting. That's what's so wild about it is that this older foreign policy establishment, which, you know, was like, let the experts decide what the right foreign policy, you know, all these think tanks, that's just gone now. It's just irrelevant in this presidency. And I don't think it'll come back. Like if you get a Gavin Newsom or a President AOC, I don't-

What? President who?

I don't think- For real? before Munich, but I don't think it's going to come back. And I think that that's what the prime minister of Canada realized. I think that's what the Europeans are starting to realize is that this is a completely different world that we live in than the one we lived in just a couple of years

ago.

Which just doesn't make any sense to me, unless we're acting on someone else's interests, like particularly Israel's interests. It just didn't make any sense to me. they had supposedly dismantled their chances of making a nuclear bomb. Whether or not that's true or not, I mean, it's so hard to know.

He was unsatisfied and just like he was like, I'm not getting anywhere in these negotiations and I'm going to replace the person I'm negotiating with. It's just, you know, turn over the table, like change things up. You're not getting anywhere. And you could credit, you could say he was too impatient. view was the Democrats were too patient with Iran. They kept trying with Iran. Iran, they

weren't giving them what they wanted. I'm not defending it. I'm just saying I think that's what explains it. They haven't done a very good job explaining it because I think that it just sounds to some extent like what it is, which is that it's, they're acting without, they're sort of like, well, does it result in regime change in Iran? We don't know, they might say that we want that or whatever, but that's not ultimately,

they're not acting on the basis of achieving regime change.

But it just seems so insane based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? And he ran on no more wars and these stupid senseless wars. And then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it.

Well, but he said he's against endless wars. Well, they're all endless wars.

Listen, man, they're all endless.

Well, if we put- Did you ever hear Rumsfeld talk about Iraq when it first happened?

Tell me.

They were talking about like six weeks, six weeks.

Oh, yeah.

Six weeks. Oh yeah. Six weeks. Yeah. But they put that was ground force and I know that they've not ruled that out. For me that would be. They have? They have not. Oh, they have not. I'm sorry. My understanding is that they have not. Yeah. I thought you said and now. Yeah. Now. But they don't seem eager to go into, I mean, my, I, I criticized the Venezuela action because I sort of was like, how are you possibly going to run Venezuela? And then I think a little bit more time passed. I was like, oh, they're not. They're not going to try to run Venezuela. Like, that's not what this is.

They just wanted to take over the oil. Yeah. And even there, I mean, the oil, it's not significant at any global level. I don't it's hard. I don't even think it's really about the oil. I don't think it's about the oil in Iran either. Well, the oil reserves are significant. It's just the type of oil and how to extract it is extremely difficult. It's the worst, Joe. It's in the Amazon. The big abundant reserves are in the Amazon.

So you're talking about what a nightmare. It's super far away. It's terrible. You had a guerrilla conflict. If you had a guerrilla conflict break out around those oil facilities. I mean, it's already more expensive because you have to heat up that particular type of, it's really heavy oils.

To heat it up to get it out of the ground, then you have to heat it to transport, it's a total nightmare. I just, I mean, and as a conservationist, I would say that would be the last place I'd want to see us getting oil from.

There's a lot of other places that have oil shouldn't be going into the Amazon. Trevor Burrus So what, if anything, makes sense to you

about this attack in Iran?

David Teper I don't know that – I'm not sure what I think of it. I mean I don't like it. I don't like – I mean the whole older system was that you had this international – the Security Council would have to agree, the Congress would have to agree. That's all gone now. I mean, it's just a totally different – this guy is just acting. He says he's not getting where they want to get in the negotiations with the Iranians. So he says we have some leverage over you and we're going to use it.

Similarly –

Trevor Burrus But clearly Israel wanted this for a long

time. Jonathan Capehart Israel has its own motivations I think. Trevor Burrus Yeah. quite accurate to say that I just don't think I think all the evidence shows that Trump is his own man and he is the president and like literally he couldn't even give back he couldn't even give Elon the battery subsidy that he wanted. You know, it's like I get that I've never seen a poll. I mean, I've never seen a politician act that independently

that's I mean a poll a president act that independently. So I'm skeptical of, I mean, I think that Rubio was sort of like, well, they were going to attack and so we had to, you know, there's some of that, but I just think Trump's doing what he wants to do. And we should-

You really think it's that simple? Trump's doing what he wants to do.

That's it?

Yes. You don't think people are influencing him? Because there's a lot of war hawks around him, right? people that want this and have for a long time. I mean Netanyahu's in there, but then Tucker was in there a bunch. But do you think Tucker has the kind of influence that Netanyahu has?

Well, I mean, I guess if you just base it on the outcome, then the answer is no. But that's what I'm saying. I just think he listens to everybody, but I just don't think it's Russians aren't behind him. I mean, Trump is, look what he's been through. I mean, he's, you know, he's got where he is. There's no way he's going to, they don't have anything on him.

That's why I know that.

I don't think they have anything on him.

But how do you behave that way?

Well, he could, but I'm not, we don't see any evidence for it. Well, you wouldn't see evidence of something, then you can't assume that it's happening. I haven't seen any evidence. I've seen evidence that Trump is fully independent with it, particularly this case of Elon surprised me. I would have thought at a minimum, you'd give your largest campaign contributor the one thing he wants. I mean, Doge was something he wanted to, but and then I look at Iran, I kind of go – Trump has always won. I mean Trump has been – he said he doesn't want Iran

to have a nuclear weapon for a really long time. I don't know the exact date but certainly

– Trevor Burrus Well, no one wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon other than Iran, right?

Paul Meyer Yeah. I think that the – Trevor Burrus Or their allies. Democrats approach, which was the sort of the mainstream IAEA approved approach because of course, under international law, Iran has the right to nuclear energy and to nuclear facilities including nuclear centrifuges and the enrichment. Iran has a right to all that under international law. And so, and Trump doesn't agree with that and he's not going to let international law get in his way.

Trevor Burrus So when you say he has a right to it, you're talking just about nuclear power.

Yeah, right.

Right. But that includes enrichment. So, you know, we-

To a certain point. Right. But they've already surpassed that point, right?

Yeah. And I believe I, you know, if I'm wrong, I been a cat and mouse game. I personally do not doubt for a minute that Iran wants nuclear weapons. That's what's been going on. I think most people think that. But the Obama administration was like, we can lift sanctions in exchange for controlling their nuclear program. Trump has not for a very long time agreed with that approach. I think he was criticizing it for many years before 2016, before he decided to run, but definitely for the last 10 years.

Did you read the thing today that came out that they're discussing some sort of a leak transmission that seems to be an activation of terror cells?

Iranians have. Yeah.

I'm not, no, but I'm not surprised.

Right.

Sounds bad.

Yeah. That's one of the things that obviously, that was the first thing I thought of, no, but I'm not surprised. Right. Sounds bad. Yeah. That's one of the things that obviously, that was the first thing I thought of, was like, oh great, are we gonna get a bunch of Iranian suicide bombers in the United States now? It's obviously.

I don't know if it's gonna be suicide bombers, but I would imagine it would be something a little bit more destructive than that.

Could be. I don't know what they can get in. I mean, Sean Ryan's been having folks on that say that. People are getting in with heavy artillery. I just don't know the status of it.

Well, the real problem is, for four years, the border was wide open. And definitely some people from the Middle East got through. And we have no idea what is waiting. I'm sure there are some intelligence agencies that

have an understanding of what the threat is. I hope so. I mean, I think we see that these terrorists are able to do an incredible amount of damage with pretty simple rifles, you know, and sometimes, was it the French, the club, that particular terrorist action, there were other people that were using bombs that like only killed one or two people, but the guys with the machine guns were able to gun down like dozens of people so certainly it's terrible that's scary I think none of us want I think that's where a lot of Americans when it happened the reason so many people were

against it I believe a majority is against it is because you're like great what we you know first of all is it gonna be another endless war and second of all are we gonna get a bunch of terrorist actions here? I think if we did I don't think support for the war goes up I think it goes down. Oh for sure

Yeah, I mean It's just such a fuck. I mean the whole The whole situation internationally has been so tense already with what's going on in Gaza with what's going on in Ukraine It's like and to add this to the pile, it's like, I mean, it genuinely feels like there's a real possibility that we might be entering World War III.

How would that, what would that look like?

I don't know, I never expected Iran to start attacking, you know, they launched bombs into UAE, Dubai, I mean, where

else?

I think they expected that though, right? I mean, it makes Iran look, Iran looks pretty isolated. I mean, I will say, you know, I was totally obviously, maybe not obviously, but very much on the left and was opposed to all the stuff Reagan was doing. I remember even in the 80s. But it's like he really did. I don't I'm not gonna say he was the major the only reason there was obviously a bunch of weakening within but I mean, he really did push back against communism. He challenged the entire foreign policy establishment

on the basic view of just, you know, of just, just kind of keeping it, you know, keeping the keeping the communists where they were. And instead Reagan really pushed back against it and said, there's got to be regime change. It sort of almost had a moral – certainly there's a defense buildup but a moral argument. And I think it had a big impact to bring down communism. So I'm – you know, the Iranian – it's – I'm obviously – I have very mixed feelings about it. The Iranian regime is just so evil and so awful that every time you see videos of people taking these courageous actions, you're like, somebody bring that regime down.

On the other hand, that country is pretty – the people of that country are pretty radical and the Shah in 1979 – I just spent last night watching all the old 60 Minutes from the 70s. They're amazing. But the Shah was really modernizing the country. There was a lot of wealth coming in.

There was a lot of wealth coming in. There was a lot of more inequality. There was also a lot more state repression

from his intelligence services But the country was full of radical

Muslims who wanted that when all that instability wanted to revert back to a radical Islamist regime and that's still

Now I've seen other estimates to say that the current regime is incredibly unpopular in Iran

But how that works out, it's really hard to say. But there is something – I caution my own – I talk back to my own anti-interventionist instincts when I think about Reagan just being like, we're not going to do just containment strategy anymore. We're actually going to talk back to communism because people deserve to be free. And now, is everything better for – is everything fine in Russia? Maybe not. But I mean communism was just awful, just a totally soul-killing, crushing – a giant

lie. I mean it's awful totalitarianism. So I think we have to kind of keep that in mind and especially when you're in a moment of just such incredible chaos like we're in now. I tell my students, I'm like, you get to live through one of the most interesting moments in history, certainly in the last 80 years, because the entire paradigm where the United

States had these allies and everything's going to go through the Security Council and we're going to try to make it to the UN and there's – got to get agreements and all this stuff. That's just gone. I mean, it's just – it's gone to the part where they don't even – where you're kind of like, how are you – what's going to happen inside Iran? They're like, that's not our concern. We hope that there's an overthrow of the government but they're not – we're not like going to necessarily commit to that.

Trevor Burrus Well, they're also calling on the people to rise up, which is – I mean look at what they did with the protesters.

I mean they killed thousands of people. And look at Iran and Venezuela, they don't have internal – the opposition is not united. There's not a united opposition with a united figure. I mean, remember it was so interesting watching 79 with these protests against the Shah were going on. The left and the Islamists made an alliance in Iran, something really interesting topic I'm only starting to explore right now. But they made an alliance. So they'd be holding up the Ayatollah Khomeini pictures in the street. Like they had their guy. And the left was like, look, we're just going to go with this guy. I think he was making promises to

the left around allowing more liberalism and then they came in and just consolidated into this really hardline Islamist regime. But they had a guy. We don't have a guy in Venezuela. We don't have a guy in Iran. I don't know if there's anybody in Cuba, really. In the older regime under like the Biden, the open society people, the old open society establishment, they had somebody for Venezuela, this Machado woman. But Trump gets up there and he just goes, yeah, she doesn't have enough support. So she's not with us. Gone. Like they recognize that they don't have – there's nobody with an opposition street cred that

can come into power. So I think – and they know that. They're not like unaware of that. So I think some of the like, oh, they should rise up and whatever, it's a little half-hearted. I don't know that they believe that that's going to happen. They're certainly not – they don't seem to be offering them material support.

Trevor Burrus Right. So it's just a symbolic gesture to talk about it.

Matthew Feeney Sounds like it. And I mean, in this kind of the beautiful collapse of communism, which occurred so peacefully with the Berlin Wall and the guard, eventually just sort of like it's just in the vibes. And the guards are just like, yeah, we're not guarding this wall anymore. And it's just over, you know, and it was just over. And it was like, it was a kind of like a moral collapse. Not so sure that they're going to get that in Iran. Doesn't seem like it.

It seems like they've been preparing for this for a long time.

The Iranians?

Yeah.

They're dug in. Now it's the sun and he's just part of the represents the, the, I mean, it's their guy. It's what you would do. It's rally around the flag. It's classic what happens. And so, but you never know. I mean, these guys then might just negotiate more what the Trump administration wants. I think the Trump administration is like, we'll just keep killing your leaders

until we get somebody in there that will make a deal with us. I think that's how Trump thinks about it. Really? That's my best guess.

You're smiling. Do you think this is-

Because it's funny. Because it's funny because it's so- Joe, it's just like, you just look at all the think tanks and all the white papers and the State Department and the planning and whatever,

and it's just like, Trump's just, he's going to listen to Tucker, he's gonna listen to Netanyahu, and he's gonna decide what to do. This episode is brought to you by Visible. Folks, there's one thing nobody wants this season, and that's getting catfished. And it's not just dating profiles that are putting you at risk, it's also big wireless carriers. You know the type, looks great at first, promises a low price, but once you're locked in, surprise fees and an expensive bill that

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Is that good?

I don't know if it's good. I mean, we don't know yet. I mean, I think part of it is, is it going to work? Part of you guys said moral and you're like, well, but does it work to have better outcomes? I don't know. We're in a realm of absolute chaos.

We're also in a realm where AI is going to be powering autonomous weapons, if not already.

I mean, that is going on. That is so interesting, this thing with Anthropic and the DoD and what's happening there. That is really interesting.

So initially, Anthropic was hesitant to allow them to use autonomous weapons, right?

I don't know the status of it, but you saw the OpenAI, the head of OpenAI, autonomous, she was the head of autonomous weapons, I think, don't get me exactly right, but she just quit a couple of days ago, was on X, and it was just a huge story. So you have a bunch of, you have a rift in between. Now I think Sam and Elon are both on board and want to keep working with the DOD, but it looks like Anthropic broke and then Hegseth was like, well, but then we're going to punish you for this. That's

very consistent with a kind of nationalist vision which is that – which the Trump administration has, which is that your security strategy, your economic strategy, your border strategy, it's all a – your industrial strategy, it's all a single thing. Your trade strategy, it's all a single thing. And I think for Trump, it's just, you're either asserting power and using your leverage and demanding more, or you're engaged in managed decline.

You're just giving up. And part of me, I have mixed minds on it, because on the one hand, I'm with the kind of, I kind of go, let's invest at home. We have Skid Row to clean up. We should be focused on that, not on trying to do regime change or bombing other countries or creating other problems. On the other hand, I think there's something right about defending

the West. I mean defending Western civilization, defending our institutions, our norms, our liberal values and nobody's done that. And we just had a guy in power that opened our borders, that kind of gave a blank check to Ukraine. It seems like at a minimum with Trump, you have somebody that is taking responsibility in ways where Biden would be like, well, we're going to work with our allies. And it was just all kind of like, it was like it was all kind of going to be decided

in this – what Curtis Yarvin famously calls the cathedral, just the single thing of the media and the think tanks and the academics. And Trump was like, it's not working. And the working class of this country elected me to show strength and to demand a better return on our investment in terms of protecting our allies for our people. So that part of it I think is really overdue and really necessary, an assertion of why the West is special, why we need to defend the West.

Is bombing Iran and replacing the, you know, the commanding with his son, is what's happening in Venezuela, is that the right approach to that? I don't know. But I think the system was failing. I mean, the open society system, which was supposed to be this liberal system of tolerance, it became intolerant. It became totalitarian. It created a censorship industrial complex.

They weaponized the intelligence communities. We started getting ourselves into conflicts that we – that was not clear why we were in them, including Venezuela. I mean, sorry, including Ukraine. I mean with Ukraine, it's like that war only continues because we continue to arm it. Like if we stopped – if we just were like, let's just have the – just cut a deal wherever

the border is right now. You're just like that's where it's going to stop. Then you can – I mean I don't know – I'm not sure what's preventing that from Trump. I think he's annoyed with Putin. But I mean my view is like I don't see an interest in that war continuing. I don't know how it's in the interest of the working – of working class Americans or Americans. And I have the same questions about Iran and Venezuela in Cuba, but I think that is a totally different paradigm than the one that we had from 1945 to 2024.

Well, the idea of tolerance for, you know, with the last administration, that seems just to be a narrative. It seemed to be a political strategy of keeping the borders open to increase populations in blue states, raise the census,

get more congressional seats, and then a path to citizenship where you'd have permanent voters. That's what it seems like. And then there's also a ton of Medicaid fraud that's wrapped up in that that we're now seeing.

Yeah, I think that's part of it. I mean, the Times did a piece on why Biden left the borders open. And it was a-

What was there?

It was a funny piece. Like there was this, it was, you know, part of it, he's so out of it, right? Like there were just, it was not clear, like there wasn't clear. There was like a meeting where he was like, yeah, we're going to just do this thing. They kind of concluded that, I think Cecilia Munoz, who's one of the more moderate advocates and was in the Obama administration, I think she said something like Biden just wanted to give the left, just felt like he wanted to give the left what they wanted. And that's what the Soros think tanks and the very progressive immigration groups

have been advocating. He did the same thing on climate, so it makes sense. I know Elon talks a lot about how, oh, it's about importing voters and whatnot, maybe, but it's not even clear that that's a strategy that's gonna work.

You know, well, because first of all, we don't know the Latinos. Like, why are like, why do we assume Latinos are all going to, you know, vote for Democrats?

Well, if you've got them all on Medicaid and Social Security.

The numbers there are it's actually more complicated. Europe is definitely the case that you have higher rates of crime and higher rates of social services among migrants. Here are Latino migrants traditionally really thrive. They do much better than the mostly Muslim immigrants in Europe. So I'm skeptical. I mean, the other statistic that I learned from David Shore, who's like one of the top Democrat pollsters when he was talking to Ezra Klein after the 2024 elections. He was like, if all eligible voters had voted, Trump would have won by three percentage points rather than 1.5. So I always think it's kind

of funny because the Republicans are always like trying to make it harder for people to vote. But under that calculation anyway, and maybe it's just Trump, maybe other Republicans

won't be able go into it. When you say harder for people to vote, what do you mean? You mean mail-in voting?

Just the whole effort to –

But the problem is mail-in voting has always been a vector for fraud.

It may be. I don't know how much of it there is. I've seen different things on it.

That goes back like decades. People have been talking about mail-in voting just being too open to fraud.

Well, but then maybe, but then the question is, does it really benefit? I mean, in other words, if David Shore is right, if everybody who could vote had voted, Trump would have won like basically by twice the margin.

Well, I don't know if that's necessarily true, but when I see laws like what California has where you're not allowed to show ID, There's only I mean I've tried, tried to find some sort of charitable way where that would make sense other than you want to open the door for fraud. There's nothing. This narrative that they say, Oh, poor people don't have like, you see Kamala Harris. They don't have a Xerox machine.

No, but you ever see the thing – I think it was a guy – I don't know if he did it for Free Press. A guy was going around interviewing – well, first he interviewed liberals at like I think UC Berkeley and he was like, do you think that you should have to have an ID to vote? And they were like, no, because black people don't have IDs and like …

That's just because they're hearing that on NPR.

No, I know. Of course. But they believe that. that saw that, it's an incredible video, because then he goes to like, I think he goes to Harlem, or he goes to like a black neighborhood in New York, and he was just asking black people, he's like, do you have an ID on you? And it was like, everybody was like, yeah,

like, what's the matter with you?

Well, it's also, we just got done with three years of you need an ID to prove that you have been vaccinated. to work, to get on a plane, to eat at a restaurant. It didn't make any sense. It was so immediately contradicting what had just gone down months earlier. It's just stupid.

Nat Malkus Well, yeah, that was about – that was because the left wanted to control people's behavior. And on voting, they – the old – I know because when I talk to my progressive friends about it, and family and friends, it's very much like, no, we can't put barriers in the way of voting because that's what they did during Jim Crow. I mean, that's where it goes back to.

It all goes back to that.

ID is not a barrier. It's just an insurance that you're a citizen while you're voting.

And we know that there's fraud. They say there's very little fraud. I'm just telling you what they say.

I'm not saying I agree. Yeah, but do you believe that that's horseshit? That's a horseshit. I think they believe it. I'll put it really. Yes I think they just say it because that's the thing that everybody says I think it's a group think thing I mean, I think if you sit down with any rational person and no one's watching, you know There's no cameras on and you asked him does that make any sense? No one would say it makes any sense Most people in this country who are citizens have some form of ID or can get some form of ID. And it's entirely reasonable to ask people to prove that you are who you are if you're voting for the president of the United States.

That seems pretty reasonable. I find it totally reasonable and I support it. I'm just saying that if you make it – I'm just saying you may – the Republicans may result in outcomes that are not the predictable ones that they think they'll get just because Trump was at least and Trump is maybe a special case. But I mean, he was able to turn out reluctant voters. Like he motivated people to vote.

Adam Bateman Because people were fed up with what had gone on in the last four years. And I think the open border was the biggest one. I mean, it was one of the biggest ones because people just felt hopeless. Like this is crazy. Like what you're doing, you're letting in what's equivalent, at least if you're just being charitable, it's 10 million people.

It was huge.

If you're just being conservative, it's 10 times Austin. You let 10 Austins in, in four years of people who you have no idea who they are.

Yeah. And, and Americans were on board with closing the borders. And then when it came time to actually asking all the getting those folks to leave that came in the all the support disappeared. Right?

I mean, well, it's not asking them to leave. It's showing up at Home Depot and just rounding people up and raiding places and going to restaurants and pulling people out of their houses. And I think people got very uncomfortable with the idea of militarized police wearing masks on the street. And then when you find out that these guys have only been trained for seven weeks and they get a $50,000 signing bonus, and then you find out that a giant percentage of them are Latino, which is kind of crazy. You know, like the two guys who

shot that guy in Minnesota, they're both Latino.

And yeah, I mean, that's what you get when you have completely untrained, unprepared people with disasters like that.

The whole Minnesota thing with Alex Peretti is a complete clusterfuck. I still have not seen verification of whether or not the narrative that makes sense is true, but the narrative that makes sense was that there was an accidental discharge of his gun as they were pulling it away from him. And then that led to them thinking that maybe he still had the gun on him because you're in the chaos of arresting someone. Someone says he has a gun, a gun goes off, and then they shoot the guy.

Trevor Burrus Yeah. I bet when you go, I bet when they do the proper evaluation of it, they're gonna find multiple mistakes.

I'm sure by the law enforcement that and then there was the thing with the woman who got shot where you have a guy who had almost been run over just a couple of weeks before and been dragged in his car. The guy who shot her had been dragged by another vehicle.

I didn't see that.

She got dragged like 300 feet to something crazy. So when a car is coming at him, you could imagine this guy's got some PTSD from that.

And he should not have been. He should not have been. No. And also, Alex already shouldn't

have said that fucking bitch like after he shoots her in the face, too. That's crazy

too. Yeah. I mean, the reaction, just the heartlessness of the reaction to the killings was terrible, including by the administration. That's probably why Kristi Noem ended up having to go.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But then on the other side, these protests are organized. They're organized and they're paid for, which is also something that people need to understand. These are not organic protests. It's not organic that it just happened to be taking place in the very same place where you found hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, right? This is one of the clearest, most obvious distractions you've ever seen in the public arena, where you have these people who are being paid to protest. They give them money to go out there and protest.

They give them signs. They're organizing it. They have signal groups. They're doxing go out there and protest. They give them signs. They're organizing it. They have signal groups. They're doxing all these different ICE workers. They find out what their license plates numbers are. They find out where they're staying.

They go to the hotel. The cops, the local cops are being told to stand down. So you've got like this convergence of all these factors that lead to chaos and you know Mike Benz was talking about it It was essentially saying it's a mathematical thing and that if you have these things play out You're going to have a certain amount. It was Mike Benz, right?

It was saying that it was a certain amount of people that are you're gonna have incidences You're just playing it out over the numbers Certain amount of these protests, you have organized protests, you have untrained ICE agents, you have a lot of chaos, you have support from people screaming in the streets, someone gets shot, boom, and then it moves the needle.

And this is calculated. They want this to happen. They want it to happen this way because then this kills all the support for people that were kind of on the fence whether or not I should be deporting all illegals, whether they should just go after violent criminals and then there's these weird narratives like, oh, only 14% are violent criminals that have been arrested. Give us 60% are criminals.

60% of the people plus were criminals. And by what definition violent criminals? Like, what do you – is it okay if they just come in here and rip people off? Like, are you fine with that? It's just like the violent ones we need to get rid of?

Like –

Matthew Feeney I think they didn't – yeah, they did a fairly poor job of it. Why were they focused on Minneapolis? I think most people don't understand how radical the left in Minneapolis is. Because you think of it as a Midwestern place, but it's actually got a long radical left tradition.

And as you were saying, Alex Pretty, he should have been arrested several days before when he had a gun on him and got into an altercation with the police. They should have arrested him then, and then they could have... The judge could have done a lot of different things, but they could have taken away his gun.

They could have put a restraining order on him so that next time he showed up and people would know to look for him, then he would have been kept out of the area.

Do you know the story about the gun that he was carrying? No. Okay. So he's carrying a gun called a Sig P320, which is notorious for accidental discharges. Not mean there's lawsuits all over the place. There's videos of cops in precincts bending over to pick something up and the gun goes off in his holster. There's a ton of these.

So I don't know if this is completely accurate because this is obviously the fog of chaos of these type of altercations and situations, but There's a video that many people have reviewed and it's their conclusion That if you watch the video when one of the ice officers removes his gun even though he does not have his finger on the trigger has his hand on the gun and his fingers on the slide as He's moving off. It on the gun and his fingers on the slide, as he's moving off,

it appears the gun goes off. Now they've zoomed in on it and shown that it does look like the gun's going off and it does correspond with the sound of a gunshot. It's just hard to know.

There is a sound. You hear a gunshot in the video.

Yes, but I don't know if it's legitimate. It's hard to know. But if it was any other gun, like say if it was a Glock, I would say that doesn't make any sense. His finger's not on the trigger, it's not gonna go off. But that gun is notorious for going off. There's a guy online that he shows a video where he takes the gun and he manipulates

the slide and it goes off. And it goes off without nothing touching the trigger. No one's pulling on it. It's just if you have... The other problem is people alter guns. So the issue with the SIG was they had, I believe up to 2017, they had a lighter trigger. And this lighter trigger, if the gun was dropped or if something happened to it, it was going

off and they determined it's... And this lighter trigger, if the gun was dropped or if something happened to it, it was going off. And they determined it's... The gun does not have an internal safety like some other guns do. I'm not an expert, so I don't know exactly what the trigger mechanism is. But my understanding is that the trigger mechanism is different than their other guns. Like they have another gun that's notoriously reliable.

It's a SIG P365. You could drop that gun, it's not gonna go off. It's not known for accidental discharge, but the 320 is known. And there's tons of videos of people demonstrating this online.

There's a video where they're on a range and a gun goes off in a guy's holster and the range instructor says, what the fuck just happened? And this guy, he points to the gun that went off, and he said, is that a Sig?

And he goes, yeah, he goes, get that fucking thing off the range. So it's that notorious, this one particular model. And it just happened to be the one particular model that Alex Pretty was carrying, which is fucking crazy.

Well, his behavior was really reckless. It-I-I-It's really hard for people to hold two ideas in their mind at the same time. Like, Ice messed that up, I think, clearly. And Alex Pretty, I mean, you see the earlier video, you know, where he kicks out the taillight of the ICE vehicle.

Right. And he's, I mean, he's got a gun in the waistband of his jacket, it's hidden by the jacket. He gets into this altercation with the police. I mean, I had a book when I posted about it, I didn't say this, but one of the responses were suicide by cop, people were like suicide by cop. I mean, and I'm not making that claim. But I mean, his behavior was, I mean, the recklessness of the gun choice mirrors the recklessness of his behavior in those instances. And I heard people being like, oh, well, he, you know, he was just defending that poor woman. There was a police officer engaged in an arrest of a person.

And Alex Pretty intervened in that. I mean, I think you can mess around.

Well, it was a little, I don't know if it was an arrest. The police officer shoved this woman.

Yeah, he was in an altercation with somebody. Yes. You don't go, in other words, people go, oh, you gotta put yourself in, what do you think you're, like, who do you, what do you think's going on here? Like, that he should put himself in between that? No.

The way the, the, the ICE officer, wasn't a police officer, right? It's an ICE officer. Do you call them police? The way the ICE officer reacted to the woman, did, that bothered me. like step forward and fully shove her. That's when Alex Pretty gets involved. And then Pepper Spray comes out, and then...

And Alex Pretty should have absolutely filmed that. Should have filmed the whole thing. That's exactly what she would have done.

Well, other people were filming it. It was clear there's cameras all over the place.

But don't...

Multiple angles.

Yeah, so, but it's like, um... I just don't think that's appropriate behavior. That's not the tradition of like, I mean, I think there's a non-violent left-wing tradition that's actually quite beautiful and spiritual.

I agree.

And it's Thoreau and Gandhi and King. That's not what was going on in Minneapolis. That's not at all what's going on.

This is a part of the problem with these things being organized, right? Organized, paid protests, and also people being radicalized by narratives. Then of course, very different than what was going on with the civil rights movement, you have social media. So people are like radically pushed in one direction or another and it's not clear whether or not that's organic. It's not clear. Is this the voice of the people or is this bot farms that are pushing things in one direction

or another? Is it, I mean, there's a lot of people that I cautiously watch their posts on X where I know that they're AI. I know it's AI. I can just tell by the way they write.

Oh, it's awful now. There's so much AI slop on X right now, it's bad.

It's weird

Because it does muddy the water and it does fuck with discourse But it also radicalizes people one way or then radicalize people towards the right radicalizes people towards the left It's not good. And I think this guy whatever his mental health struggles were that they they appeared to exist It seems like he was a troubled guy already. So a thing comes along that defines them a cause that they're going to stand up for and fight for. Because their life's probably a fucking mess

and their mind is probably a mess. And they look at it like it's this black and white binary situation, good guys and bad guys. And let's fuck all these fascists and these kicking taillights and, you know, getting involved in pushing matches with ICE agents. It's like, that's crazy. Like all that stuff can, should and can get you arrested.

Yeah. I mean, I think on the organized issue, remember like the civil rights movement was really well organized and in terms of it was like actually...

But people weren't being paid for it. It wasn't being promoted on social media. It wasn't people's job. There are people in America right now that are unemployed that are paid protesters for a living.

Oh, I mean, that's the entire like left-wing NGO sector is basically that. Right. Yeah, I mean, that's like that. We saw, I see it at the level of San Francisco for homelessness. They just go and you work at a government funded or Soros funded NGO and then you do all that civil disobedience stuff on your free time. But I just think I think that you were right when you were saying like, because I think it's the problem

is not the organization. The problem is that the organization in Minneapolis had a goal of causing exactly what occurred. The organization around the civil rights movement was to desegregate soda counters. One of them was about actually, I mean, the other thing is that brought, pull back a little bit further, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement was about affirming our liberal, democratic, Western civilization. Black people wanted to be a part of it.

This stuff where you're like, we want know open the border and defund the police and Basically start attacking all of these institutions of liberal democratic civilization. That's different. That's a radicalized left It's what's gone to many different clearly. He defines it best as suicidal empathy. I don't agree with Gadd on that

No, you don't think it's suicidal empathy

I don't think it's either suicidal or empathic. Because empathy is like fundamentally-

Well he implies that to a lot of progressive ideas, not just the immigration thing. I don't think he necessarily- I think it was actually long before the immigration thing that he was talking about, suicidal empathy. The idea being that you need the rule of law to have a safe and peaceful society. Yes, that part's true.

You do.

That part's true. Yeah, you need no violence, you need no crime. And when you're taking criminals and just releasing them from jail and you have no cash bail and you're doing all these things, if you want to put on the fucking tinfoil hat, you would do that because you want chaos, because you want chaos so you can have more rules and tighten down on people and have more control over the civilization.

21 I mean, I think in that, I mean, I think, like, it's not empathic to allow more violent crime. Like, I don't think that's empathy towards victims. So I don't think I wouldn't call it empathy. And not only that, but like, when you look at like the these who these folks are and I spent a lot of time looking at them and was one of them They hate Western civilization. They hate the United States of America. They hate capitalism like it's right. It's an anti-civilization thing

That's motivating it and that's not to say that like MSNBC watchers don't feel oh, I feel bad for that person But I mean, I always you know, it's like like the people I hear complain about ICE, they don't know any illegal immigrants. They've never talked to them other than maybe their server or – but they don't even really talk to their gardeners or their maids. It's like the idea that they – empathy implies a deep understanding of someone's

situation and so I think it's a misdescription of empathy. I think in some ways it's more quite the opposite of that, that they're actually not showing empathy for all the people that are hurt by their policies, whether it's open borders or enabling addiction or euthanizing poor and mentally ill people in Canada

or transing kids. I don't think that those things are empathic. And the person that's doing them, I don't think is suicidal. If anything, they're actually quite full of themselves and quite arrogant about what they're doing. I mean, I use the word pathological altruism in San Francisco

and I say it's close to Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Maybe it is Munchausen syndrome by proxy, but I don't think it's... I about I worry about affirming because I think that's how progressive is going to go Oh, well, if we if the homeless are worse off that's just because we care so much. I just don't think that's the case

Well, that's the homeless thing is nuts because the homeless thing is just a scam and we know that basically because of California like California what what's happened with the whole homeless budget is so insane and that they vetoed audits of these budgets. There's been $24 billion spent. No one knows where it went. There's no accountability. And then the homeless situation increases.

Well, that's why. I mean, remember, it's like, it's funny, like I, my students just did a paper, we have something, we've been working on it too, like the Canadian euthanasia program. And it's like, every year, the numbers just keep going up and up. And it reminded me of when you interview homeless, you know, service providers in San Francisco, they'll be like, yeah, no, we're doing an amazing job. Every year we serve more and more people. all the, you have the wrong incentives. You're trying, you have an incentive to serve,

you have incentive to create homelessness and that's what they've done.

Well, if you get more money, if you have more homeless, your incentive is now not to eliminate homelessness because that's your job.

Right, that's how you make all your money.

When I first was alerted to that, I was like, I can't believe this is real. Like when you find out the amount of money that's involved in homelessness. Like that they spent 24 billion dollars. Okay where'd that go? Where and then there's no accountability? Okay there's no fraud? You're saying there's no fraud? Zero? Well I wish there

was fraud. I mean somebody was sort of like can we expose you know like Nick Shirley exposed the daycare is not doing anything in Minnesota. I was like I wish the homeless service providers weren't doing anything. If they're stealing the money, then there'd be a lot less homelessness.

Well, what do you, so you think they're actually using the money to create homelessness?

Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, think about like, so San Francisco was like between $100,000 and $120,000 a year per homeless person. I think LA had a bargain of something more like $25,000. That's just San Francisco. That doesn't count the $24 billion that California gave. So that money's

going to single-resident occupancy hotel owners. It's going to nonprofit service providers who are just bringing food and alcohol and drug paraphernalia to make it easier for people to do drugs and overdose and live in tents on the street. It's very expensive to kill that many people that way. That's what San Francisco has proven.

Right. But it's really about the amount of people where that's their industry. There is an industry in taking care of the homeless situation and addressing the homeless situation. And, you know, Kolyan Noir, when he was on the podcast, he was explaining to me that he went to San Francisco and he was like, why is it so bad up here?

Do they need money? He's like, no, no, no. This guy was a lawyer, he's a lawyer as well. He's explaining it to him like, no, no, these people are getting money to deal with the homeless situation and some of them are making quarter billion dollars a year and more which is just nuts and then it's not getting better it's only getting worse and yet they still keep getting that money so it's like there's zero incentive to make it better

there's an only an incentive to make it worse and then when you have no accountability so there's no auditing of the money. $24 billion is a lot of fucking money. So where's, who's getting greased up? Where's that money going?

Mostly it's into the, it's into the temporary what they call, they call it permanent, it's propaganda word, propaganda. It's a permanent supportive housing. It's neither permanent nor supportive. It's often warehousing addicts where they die. I mean, we know that they died very high levels in those little this is a little crummy You know single-resident occupancy rooms. Yeah, they bought a lot of motels that were you know, low and low income, you know low You know cheap motels converting them having but they don't really there's no I mean all that money should have gone into a centralized addiction psychiatric care system

Calps Ike is what it should have been. And instead, it's just kind of, yeah, it's just basically incentivizing people to live on the streets and use hard drugs and die in overdose.

It's just so crazy. I mean, if you wanted to make it better, you would incentivize them and pay them based on the amount of people that are no longer homeless.

Right, but they don't do that.

But then the problem with that is, well, you're eventually going to fix it all and then your business is going to go away.

Right. And that's all happening, I think it's all happening unconsciously. Like there's no room, there's no like, you know, secret room where they're rubbing their hands and being like, oh, we're going to make a lot of money this way. It's just, you know, when you interview them, it's just these people are victims. They're victims of white supremacy and capitalism and and to victims

Everything should be given and nothing required. Well, I think that's a nice narrative But I think once you start getting monthly paychecks from from the homeless industrial complex I think your incentive is to keep this party going. Well sure, but they your job, but they think it's good

I mean they go this shows how good we're doing that We got a bigger budget this year. And that's how they rationalize it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, I mean, it's a sign of a very sick society. Hence the title of your book, San Francisco, Sicko, which is a great title. I mean, it's a sick place. And it was one of my favorite cities. It was an amazing city. I mean, I filmed my Netflix special there in 2016.

So, in just the amount of time, in ten years, it's completely fallen apart. When I was there in 2016, it was great. I mean, there was always a lot of homeless people there, but you have that in any liberal city. But it was never an epidemic.

It was never like, tents everywhere and shit on the streets. That wasn't the case. It was just, you know, it was a liberal city, a progressive liberal city. But it was cool. There was a lot of outdoor music.

It was fun. It was a great place to go to restaurants and people walked around. It was a great city filled with intelligent, interesting, open minded people.

Man, I lived there when I was a little kid. I was there during the Vietnam War. From age seven to 11, I lived in San Francisco.

It's a little bit better now. They've had a new mayor. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I want to acknowledge... I can't lie about it. It's a little bit better. I agree. I interview a lot of people still about what's going on. It's still there. Like, you know that- But did you see what happened with the mayor? With his security guard?

Yeah.

Got pulled down, yeah.

First of all, security guard-

That's still going on, for sure.

He needs to learn some fucking jujitsu. The way he let that guy grab him, he didn't pummel, he didn't do anything. It looked like he had don't know what to do in a clinch? I thought he looked like he didn't really see the guy

as a threat or something. Like, maybe he thought he was just a crazy, homeless guy or something.

Even if I didn't see a guy as a threat, if a guy grabs me like that, I'm not gonna let him get that position on me.

And he cut back, apparently he cut his back of his head. He banged him on the ground. He body slammed him onto the fucking concrete. Kind of a metaphor for the whole situation.

The mayor just walks away.

And he walked away like it was nothing. Like he walked away, he didn't run.

Did you see though? Because I saw that video and I couldn't tell if the mayor actually saw what was happening.

100%.

He seemed like he was looking that way and this guy was just laughing.

He was here when they started physically struggling with each other. And then when they're struggling with each other, he walks off and then the guy gets body slammed.

It was the weirdest video to watch. Yeah, because they both seem so nonchalant. They both seem, yeah. As a metaphor for the city.

This is a different angle. The mayor actually is running off to get help.

Oh, he is, okay.

Running off? Yeah, let me refresh this real quick.

What is it? Hold on, hold on, hold on. Show me. So there's the mayor right there.

Okay.

He pushes this guy here in a second. The mayor sort of, as soon as he gets to the sidewalk, he takes off.

So why are they hanging out with this guy in the first place?

That looks like they're in Canada right there.

Oh, so the security guard started it and he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. There's the mayor over here. Okay. And there's the mirror here, okay Oh, look at his like shitty technique. This is a much better video. And the other guy's a lot stronger than him. So the mayor...

He walks off, hold on, he starts running right. He seems relaxed.

Okay, okay, he did start walking slowly and then starts... He's not gonna get help. That guy started it all. He pushed that guy. If you're a security guy, the last thing you want to do when there's one of you and two of those other guys is Deal with a situation that way where you push a guy

I'm I have to say essentially said I'm always surprised when I see them do like that was the same thing that happened with the pretty

We're just talking about don't you think this guy's probably armed too. I mean but also, he shouldn't have pushed that guy that way. I mean, the whole thing is fucking stupid.

Look at the chaos. There's somebody else just running around, another homeless person or something.

Yeah. Yeah. The other guy's probably talking shit. I bet that guy's funny. I bet he's, the guy with the big coat on. I mean, I don't, for the life of me, none of it makes sense.

None of it makes sense. The mayor walking off casually and then eventually running, it doesn't make sense that a security guy just walked up to those guys and pushed them. When your detail's to take care of the mayor, you should be escorting him around that and getting him away from any potential trouble. The brazenness of just walking up and pushing that guy,

well, you don't know how to fight at all. It's very clear when you watch the way they grappled with each other, he doesn't know what he's doing. This episode is brought to you by Intuit TurboTax. April 15th is coming fast. There's been so many tax law changes this year,

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Seems like we're having a lot of security problems in our society right now. It's wild, right? I can't believe the pushing, I mean that's the same with the pretty thing, like pushing, is that like a, is that like an important law enforcement technique? I mean, what is that exactly?

Well, not only that, he pushed a small woman. The ICE guy just completely, just full on shoves this small woman.

Which means he was emotionally out of control first, right? It means that he was angry. He was angry.

These guys are not like special forces guys. They're not well trained. These guys are, that's seven weeks. Seven weeks and a lot of them are financially incentivized. Because if you can get $50,000, if you're in debt, and then you could take this job on, when they get the $50,000,

how long do they have to stay on the job for to have that money, to have that signing bonus? Or is it one of those things where you get the $50,000 as a signing bonus, but you pay it like a record deal type deal where you know It's not really your money. You have to make it up later. I imagine if you can get

$50,000 there's a lot of people that'll take that job. Yeah, I they're just

Yeah, it was just a bunch of bad bad choices

Comments saying they have no personal experience, but they've heard that it's 50K over four years if you're in good standing at the end of those four years.

Right. Oh, so you only get it after four years.

But that might not...

Right. Right. But for some people that have no job opportunities... Oh, yeah. ...and nothing on the horizon, that $50,000 looks like, look, it's an extra 25K a year or an extra, you know, 25K for four years, for 50

for four years. Another person says that's incorrect. It's broken in 10 payments once at 90 days, then once every year for four more years.

Anyway, it's broken.

By the way, it's $50,000 that you would not have been able to make ordinarily.

I mean, we had police shortages before 2020. We had a bunch of police shortages after that, mostly by police officers who were just felt mistreated by the society and by their local mayors who said that they were evil.

Well, didn't a lot of cops resign when Mdani got elected?

Oh, I'm sure. And then a bunch of police officers were driven out during COVID. So there was already our security forces have been, and they were just, people underestimate how important it is to feel important in your job and respected.

And it's not just about the money, because they would be offering more money, but I think a lot of people are like, oh no, I don't want to be in a job where people are spitting at me or throwing urine

and feces, it's crazy.

Well, not just at a job where your life is on the line. Yeah. Your life is already on the line, and then you're mistreated by the wider society, which actually creates additional risks, you know, as this chaos in Minneapolis shows. So, yeah, it's just people want to believe that they're doing something that is appreciated by the community.

And so when the community decides that they're against policing, your civilization's pretty far gone.

Right, but there is the difference between policing and this ICE thing. The ICE thing is a different thing, right? They're looking at it differently. It's not like you're watching a violent altercation take place, the police show up and people are spitting on them. Like you're trying to break up a violent crime. This is different.

They're looking at it like in the progressive narrative is like no one's illegal on stolen land and we need to have open borders and illegals or immigrants rather are the foundation of this country and you hear all that those narratives.

The president and those the president and the administration they wanted to pick a fight obviously with this left wing with activists in this left wing city they thought it would redound to their benefit to show how crazy the left was and it backfired on them.

Well I think they wanted to do something about the amount of illegal fraud that was just recently exposed in Minneapolis.

But I don't know that that's, but you wouldn't do it with ICE raids though. I mean-

Well, it's illegal immigrants. If you have illegal immigrants that are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud and you know at least some of them are illegal, it seems rational that you would send ICE in to find out who's illegal and who's not and put a stop to some of it. And there's also this nationwide focus on this one place because of the Nick Shirley videos.

Yeah. Yeah. Though I think that the motivate, my understanding is that the motivation was to motivate people that are here illegally to self-deport. And so that that's the main part of the strategy is this show of force. Because of course it's's they wanted the publicity. They wanted people to be scared and self-deport.

They claim that, you know, one point, I think 3 million people self-deported or 1.4 and the other 400,000 or 600,000 deported through the normal channels. And apparently they're just limited to how many people they can actually deport through the normal channels, but they can get people can self-deport they can just go right and Because of course there's this thing called E Verify where you just have the employers have to prove that everybody you're employing is here legally and they don't want to do that Trump administration doesn't want to do that because they'll upset in particular like the agricultural lobby Yeah, but others who's a construction who depend on so it's a it's a funny

It's not great. I don't know, I'm not saying that there's, that I have the perfect answer to the other one, but obviously like politically the president doesn't feel like they can do E-Verify and maintain support from the business community for his political agenda.

So you end up, but you end up with a kind of underclass that's here illegally, but that's protected because they're working in a sector that the president and the administration wants to protect, but then you're also self-deporting people. I'm not sure exactly how they're thinking about it, but that appears to be what the heart of their goal is.

Well this was always, you know, what a lot of people on the left back in the day would say that illegal immigrants was, this was was like a Koch brothers thing. This was like a right wing thing that they wanted this for exactly what you just described. And that this is not a left wing progressive idea. And then what it would do is would lower the wages for the lower class, the middle class of this country, and it would be bad for the citizens. And so you don't want unchecked illegal immigration.

Unchecked illegal immigration would just be for the right because they're the ones who own these massive corporations that are profiting off of illegal labor. They don't have to pay them benefits. They don't have to pay them health care, any of the things that are, you know, that cost money.

Yeah. I mean, on the left was always balancing a sort of open society. You know, they wanted – the Soros Foundation always wanted to have a free movement of people. That was sort of their view of why – in part why the Holocaust occurred is that you couldn't move – or at least the persecutions, you couldn't move people as easily. But then you had the working class who were negatively affected by bringing in migrants who would push down wages and unions who are a big part of the Democrat party. So the Democrats were sort of divided on it for a while but they managed it and Hillary and Obama would sort of – if you look at when they were competing in 2008, they were

very carefully – like there was a whole thing around like driver's licenses, whether she would give them or not and Obama accused Hillary of kind of playing both sides of it, typical thing. But they also both spoke out strongly against mass migration. Fast forward 10 years, no, fast forward much more than that. What is that? 16 years into today and now you've got a much more working class Republican Party who's unified around keeping the borders closed and restricting the supply of low-income,

unskilled workers. Because I I mean, it's just obvious, I mean, it was really weird to watch people that are always defending supply and demand and economics and economic policy, then say, oh no, but having open borders and having all these working class people come in

is gonna have no impact on wages, when obviously it would. And I think that's now, that's also now gone. I think that's another thing that's just Trump has changed. I don't think you're going to see Democrats going back to advocating that kind of mass migration again.

Right. But you could see a world where they would push back against what has happened, what they would say the barbaric nature of some of these ice raids, and then saying from this filter, ice water, that too, if you'd like, you don't have to not have your bottle. We don't care.

Oh, I think it's in the shot.

No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. But you could see how they could go back to a much looser border policy.

I think it'd be back to what they're doing.

Because it wasn't, they won't, I think they won't. I think the closed border, I mean, I think that that sweet spot of public opinion is like people really want to close. I think it was just really...

But I don't think public opinion supported an open border, even on the left. No. During those last four years, but yet they did it anyway. And they were moving people to blue states. They were moving people to swing states. They were flying people in,

busing people. They were doing it on purpose. Isn't that also because the blue state governors were more welcoming of them?

There's a little bit of that, but there was also the idea that you're going to juice up the congressional seats because you're going to change the census.

Maybe, although California lost seats, right?

Well, because California's done such a fucking terrible job of governing their state. It's so, that place is so crazy. Like every time there's some new law that they're trying to push through, some new bill, I'm like, do they just want everyone to leave?

Well, they drove the billionaires out, right? Yeah. I mean, I know they drove out David Sachs, came to Austin. I think Mark Zuckerberg moved to Florida.

I heard rumors of leaving but yeah It's called the thing that drives me the most nuts is when these progressive talking heads saying they don't want to pay their fair share With the amount of waste and fraud Why would you you don't think there should be some accountability to how much fucking waste and fraud that has been clearly? Demonstrated like you the solution is just give more money, oh, and they can do it because they have it. So what? You just give more money and now it's $30 billion goes to homeless with no accountability?

What are you saying? Where do you think this money's going to go where it's actually going to help people and affect things in a positive way? There's been no indication that that's the case. That the real problem is they just haven't had enough money from the billionaires. That's fucking ludicrous. That idea is ludicrous. It's such a lazy, intellectually lazy way of framing

this whole discussion. That's saying, oh, they don't want to pay their fair share. Fuck you. That's not what's going on here. What's going on here, you have a completely incompetent government that's absolutely corrupt and they want more money.

Oh yeah.

Gas is like $8 a gallon almost now. That's bananas.

They were going to shut down, I mean the refiners are being shut down. That initiative, the billionaire's tax, is an SEIU initiative. So meaning it's the union that covers healthcare workers like nurses. They're very radical, very radical left. And the money is to provide Medicaid for undocumented immigrants. That's what they want it for, right? So like that's the whole thing.

And so you literally get the, this is like, this is what people worry about. Democracy, you get all the, it's very democratic, but you get these powerful unions and they're able to change the laws like that. I mean, it's called the Curley effect because there was a Boston mayor named Curley who made everything so bad for his political opponents that they left. But the consequence was that he ended up gaining more power. So when everybody moves to – when all the like moderate democrats move to Austin or Miami or Denver or wherever, California

just ends up locked in more to a progressive agenda. That's the problem.

Well, I think the idea is that it's so good there that most people are just gonna tolerate whatever new bullshit they throw your way.

100%, and also, I mean, it seems like the tech community is now backing the San Jose mayor who's running, who's a very, he's a Democrat, very moderate, been critical of Gavin.

Running for governor?

Yeah. Mad mayhem. So keep your eyes on him. I mean, he's not, he's not like maybe the most exciting guy, but he's definitely running as a moderate. I think he's giving some money.

That might be good.

It seems like exciting people are a fucking problem.

I know. He might be enough to, I don't know, it's hard to say, but it does look like, because I mean, look, there's plenty of, the tech community only woke up politically in 2024. That's how long it took. And it really took things getting so bad where they were telling Marc Andreessen, as he said to you on your show, that they were shutting off whole parts of AI. The Biden administration was openly threatening AI and this huge new, and you know, there's concerns. I'm not saying that there's not, but I think that I think at some point the tech community, which had been, you know, either leaning Democrat, you know, for a long time since the Obama era, you know, or wanted to stay out of politics because they just want to focus on their machines

and their investments. They don't really want to be involved in politics. But they woke up in 2024. And so hopefully, because it's not, I mean, when you see what Soros has done and you really appreciate the power that one billionaire can have, you kind of go, why is there nothing like that on the other side? Why is it so dominated by Soros? And so I hope that that's starting to happen.

But yeah, when you start to chase out the billionaires and the billionaires just give up on California, then it's gotta be whoever's remaining to try to put the money behind the guy that can get some change there.

Yeah, that's, I mean, I don't see a pathway where California anytime soon turns around. I don't see how it could. I feel like the momentum has shifted so far in a terrible direction, and the solutions are always tax more, take more money from

people. You see this completely corrupt, irresponsible, fraud-ridden, wasteful government that wants more of your money. And the solution is if we take more money, we're going to make things better, which is

just insanity.

I mean, things that can't go on, don't. So, I mean, you could see it, right? I mean, Matt, if it's a Matt Mahan or somebody more moderate gets him to be governor, Rick Caruso runs for L.A. mayor again. I mean, honestly, like if somebody can't defeat Karen Bass

after she let Los Angeles burn away, which is now we now know for a fact was just totally preventable, absolutely preventable. I was saying at the time, but now we know. They tried to rewrite the report, but it's clear it was totally preventable.

Trevor Burrus How'd they try to rewrite the report?

Josh Lewin Well, the report said, here's all the things that the fire department should have done that didn't happen. And ultimately, the mayor is the one that chooses the fire chief and fires the fire chief. And the mayor was – they were warned and she goes to – flies to Ghana for this little junket presidential inauguration palling around when she should have been in LA with a – at a command headquarters. And if she wasn't, then Gavin should have been. Schwarzenegger, towards the end of his

administration, they would just mobilize planes full of water, huge cargo planes full of water before there were fires just to start to circulate, just to get ready to put stuff out. This idea that – there was this idea promoted that it was inevitable that the fires – oh, eventually it's just – no. Like, it's absurd. Like, of course you can protect it with adequate fire.

Oh, the pipes weren't big enough? No. Like, maintain your reservoirs. Have water in them. Even the one that was not repaired yet, which should have been repaired, they could have kept, they could have air gapped the pipes

so that it didn't contaminate the water supply, but left it for firefighting, they didn't do that. They didn't station the engines where they needed to station them. Nobody was on, it's like, they're not taking responsibility. Like they weren't taking responsibility for it. So anyway, to the point being, get a new governor, you get a better mayor of LA,

you've got a guy in San Francisco now who I think still has a lot of potential. I mean, this latest video, you know, showing the chaos there. But with that, I think you could fix it.

Well, that's not him though.

Yeah, it's deal. Yeah, so I mean, I think there is a way for California to come out. And my view is like, look, you've got – it's on the tech billionaires. And I know some of them have left and obviously they don't need – but there's still a lot of billionaire rich guys in California that are perfectly capable of financing an alternative effort. The vote, remember, 75% of San Francisco voters want to arrest people using fentanyl in public.

They want to arrest them. Okay, that sounds so, that's so taboo in progressives. That's 75% of San Francisco voters. So the voters are not, they're not the radical left. Some ways they're radicalized in their hatred of Trump and the Trump derangement syndrome.

But I mean, everyone like Caruso and Mahan and anybody else there will all just be able to say they hate Trump like everybody else.

Well, I think they've seen the consequences of these policies.

Oh, yeah. There's people are people are really there's not like anything has changed that significantly. They will. In fact, when I interview people in San Francisco, they're a little reluctant to admit that it's gotten better because I think they don't want to take any pressure off the politicians. So I mean, I do think it's, it's rescuable, but it's hard.

When you say it's gotten better, like how so?

Mostly the encampments are being broken up. Now you see a little, you see more of that sort of thing that we just saw in the video where there's like, I call them like a little more of like a nest, you know, there's just a little big encampments like yeah the whole block. That's in Oakland. That's in Skid Row. Oakland's nuts. Oakland might not be savable. They had a chance to save themselves and they ended up voting for the wrong person for mayor and it's just as bad as ever. So but I think if you get San Francisco, LA and a new governor in, I think you've got the makings to save it.

Have you seen this video where this guy does this description of what's going on in Oakland and then drives across the county line into the next place and it's immediately all done? And you just see what the difference between two different forms of government and how it works?

I didn't see that one, but I saw the one between Venice and Santa Monica Yeah, I was there when the Venice and Santa Monica was similar like you're like why are there tents? Why aren't there any tents there? It's like that's Santa Monica. Yeah different. Well, there's still some Santa Monica got bad too, but they cleaned it up a little bit better. Yeah, but Venice is bananas It's just but Venice is nothing compared to skid row skid rows 50 blocks. Venice is okay now, but it's okay now Yeah Skid Row is 50 blocks. Venice is okay now. Is it? Yeah, they cleaned that up pretty quickly and then the voters fired their city council

member who represented them, who was total crazy radical, Chesa Bodine level radical, and replaced him with a more moderate person.

But yeah.

So when you go to the beach, it's not chaos anymore?

No.

I mean, I'm not going to... There's always, but I mean, remember before it was just, it was tents everywhere. I mean, it was chaos. And they were dug in, you know, it was like crazy. So no, that's gone, but Skid Row, it's bad as ever.

Skid Row is 50 blocks. 50 blocks is so crazy. 50 blocks of tents and homeless people. When we first heard that, I was like, that's gotta be wrong, it's probably five blocks. No, it's five zero, 50 blocks. That's an enormous amount of land that's completely covered by homeless encampments.

There's like a whole genre of like, of like influencers when they first visit Skid Row, because everyone hears about it, and then you see like their tweets are just like, they're just like all, I couldn't believe, I think it was maybe Ben Shapiro, or there's various conservative influencers who have gone to Skid Row and they're like, I had no idea.

You have no idea until you see it. There was a comic from the comedy store that filmed something. He went undercover and he had, in his past, he had some, I don't think, I think currently he was sober when he did this,

but he decided to go there and film and stay in one of these encampments just to show what it was like. And this is like 2006-ish, six-ish, somewhere around there. And it was fucking nuts, even back then. And we talked about the story of how Skid Row with the whole Jerome Hotel and how it all started.

Skid Row was the place where they would take all the homeless people and all the people that were problematic and they would move them there and keep them there. And the idea was that you just keep them out of Beverly Hills, keep them away from Hollywood. We're doing movies and we've got famous people walking around. We can't have homeless people. Just snatch them up, take them downtown and contain them.

So they had them contained in this area and they call it Skid Row. And then it just kept getting bigger.

It's not that different from the Tenderloin in the sense that these are places where the single resident, those are the places where the really cheap hotels were. They were like often for like working people that were in town temporarily, like temporary hotels.

Some of them would just be cages. There were no walls. Like you would just get your own little – that was how primitive they were. And then it just evolved over time and then they became – all of them became subsidized for the homeless. But yeah, it's – I don't think – I think California – I think it's important – I think with Trump and again, like him or hate him or disagree or whatever, you see

the potential of this country in particular to make a big change. And I think that it's ultimately resulted from a unleashing of social media made it all possible, it allowed for people to get accurate information for the first time in a different paradigm. So I don't wanna lose hope on the Golden State.

But you lost hope on Oakland.

Yeah. Yeah, but maybe I never had hope for Oakland. So one point in time, Oakland was great. Yeah. I mean, Jerry Brown actually brought it up a bit, you know, got it more

development there, but yeah, it's all about governance. Yeah, it is. Um, I guess. Hey, can I use the bathroom? Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. We'll pause. We'll be right back, folks. I just, uh, sent Jamie something funny pause. We'll be right back, folks. I just sent Jamie something funny that someone just sent me about San Francisco. There's this guy, I think he calls himself the gay Republican. The gay Republican? There's a lot of those, actually. But, which is, shouldn't shock people. Their closet is about the Republican part now. That's the

thing. Well, it depends on how wealthy they are. I mean, some of them are pretty, you know, Peter Thiel, pretty

open about it. He will. He was. Yeah. But it's Republicanism. Watch this.

Fran transit. We refuse to release crime surveillance videos because it will make people racist. Releasing videos would create a racial bias in the riders against minorities on the trains. Why would it do that San Fran transit? Why would it create a bias? Is there a reoccurring theme among the people committing crimes?

You could say that about European crime statistics as well. That's also why the Germans actually, in particular, but I think other European countries did not wanna release.

Right.

But they did get them out. They have come out now.

And the UK.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So let's move on to happier subjects, shall we? So what do you think about all this UAP talk? It's one thing that Trump has said that he's going to release whatever files that they might have on UAPs,

alien terrestrial beings, all this jazz. I talked to Jesse Michaels about it. He is highly skeptical and he said the people that are involved are all old guard and you know, they're just it's just gonna be a bunch of horseshit.

Maybe. I mean just first of all, look, I mean, I think whatever you think about the phenomenon, this is amazing. I mean, the president just said he's going to release all these things. So, I mean, after decades of saying we're not interested in this, we're not we're not

following this. We're shutting down Blue Book. You know, there's nothing there. They're like he's he's saying. right there is, I think, amazing. And I thought the whole thing was amazing. Like, Obama comes out and he goes, well, there's definitely aliens. Oh, but they're not under Area 51 unless they're hiding it from presidents, which is like a well-established conspiracy theory. So to have Obama even say that. And then Trump comes up and he goes, Obama revealed

classified information with a little grin on his face because he's a little rivalry with Obama, I might help him out by declassifying. And then a few hours later he did. I mean, what can't you like about that? I mean, I think that…

Trevor Burrus Well, it's theater. That's what you can't like about it. Jonah Hill It's theater, but I mean… Trevor Burrus Until something really comes out, this is

just another distraction to keep us from thinking about all the other things that are going on. But you can't be so, I mean, we should get into Epstein files too, because I do think I have a different view of Epstein now. But look, I just think we've been asking for more transparency like we had in this very brief period in the mid 70s with the church committee hearings. It really took a whole Watergate.

It took something big. It's been over 50 years. We got a lot of Epstein files, yes, there's some missing, but we got JFK files, Amelia Earhart files, and now we're gonna get some UFO files. Is it gonna be everything? Of course not, like there's just no way. You know, but I don't think like,

I think we should hold, we should be happy that like there is an acknowledgement that there's a lot of government files and that there's some commitment to release them because I do think think it's easier to get new Epstein files released after you have some Epstein files released than if you have none.

And I feel the same way about UFOs.

Okay. So it's easier to get more UFO files released. But like,

What do we want? Well, I think one of it is like, what do we want? And I've been, I respect John Greenwald a lot. He runs something called theblackvault.com where he has been foyeying. He's been issuing Freedom of Information Act requests on UAP but also a ton of other issues since the mid-'90s when he was like 15 years old.

He became obsessed with doing foyer requests. And he has identified a number of documents that we know exist with redactions. One of them is the UAP task force, which has a line that just says potential explanations. You know, the first explanation is redacted, it's blacked out.

The second one is, you know, some sort of natural phenomenon. Number three is blacked out, is redacted. Unredact those. I mean, come on guys, you can't tell me, well, we have to protect our sensor data. Come on, guys. I mean, like, that's not sensor data. Tell us

what the potential explanations are. On terms of the sensor data, John also made a great point. Do you remember when the Pentagon released the video of the Russian jet dumping fuel on one of our drones? There's like a famous video where they show a hostile act by the Russians jumping fuel on our drone.

When was this?

Just recently. I mean, it must have been within the last year or so. So like, they're not, we do see, they do release, you know, warfare, various times they do release things and you can kind of go, okay, that means that we have, I don't think, what I'm saying is,

the main excuse has been not to reveal our methods for getting, you know, we're just talking about UAP here, getting photographs and video. We know that a huge amount of it exists. They haven't even released the full gimbal and GoFast videos.

There's a whole bunch more video left. Really?

Yeah. So the video that came out, those were whistleblower leaks, right?

Eventually they released them formally, though. The Pentagon did. So there's much more of that.

And the particularly, sorry to interrupt you, but was it the gimbal or the GoFast where there was many more crafts?

I believe that there was, so there's three videos, right? It's gimbal, GoFast, and then what was the one where the Tic Tac video moves out of the frame. My understanding is that there's significantly more video for all of those. And then I also, my understanding is also there's just a lot of other videos, particularly from those two incidents, certainly have.

There's so much more sensor data from, because we know those incidents had a lot more going on, right? And just was filmed by those videos. So I think that now there is, I was going to say the UAP community. There isn't really an organized one, although Jesse is doing an amazing job of organizing it. We should be really specific and say, here's what we want. I did a piece with

John Greenwald. Representative Nancy Mace wrote an open letter to the intelligence and military community saying, here's a set of documents that we want to release. So I think the good news is we're like, look, the president has said he wants this. We've identified a bunch of documents, identified a bunch of videos and film.

Yeah, I mean, are they gonna withhold stuff? Are they gonna mislead? Probably, but that's been the story for 80 years.

Well, yeah, you saw the age of disclosure, right? Yes, of course. Okay. So I think they make a really good point in Age of Disclosure that if they did release things, the real problem is misappropriation of funds lying to Congress. And the fact that some of these, you would assume that the way these things are being handled, if they do have crafts, if there is some sort of a back engineering program, that back engineering program is going to be held by a military contractor.

So whatever the contractor is, whether it's Rocketdyne or whoever has it, right? You would imagine that the other competing groups would be very pissed off that they didn't have access to this thing and they could sue. The misappropriation of funds, lying to Congress, people could go to jail.

Also, most likely fraud. There's gotta be tons of fraud. If there's so much money that's being shuffled away into these black ops projects, if there's no oversight, then who knows where the money's going, right? So there's a problem there. If you open up the books and people go, go, why was there a $100 million check written here?

Where's the $2.3 billion that's missing here?

Yeah, I have doubts now. I mean, I have to say, I didn't finish watching it, but Jesse just dropped a video with him and Eric Weinstein and Eric Davis. Who's him? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Eric Davis. Who's his? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eric Davis.

Jesse.

Yeah.

So Jesse, Eric. I haven't seen that yet. Yeah. I found it really, it really made me question whether there's any there there.

What does Eric Davis do?

Eric Davis, you know who he is? He's got the bushy beard and he's in Age of Disclosure and is part of the whole Bigelow, that whole OSAP, ATIP. He was a, I don't know his exact, he's a scientist. But he was sort of talking about, because I think Eric Weinstein was asking these really hard questions, like, okay, well,

how many people are in this reverse engineering program and what is it? And I just found his answers to be very thin. So I'm-

I haven't seen it yet, so I can't comment on that. But Eric is both skeptical and open-minded at the same time.

There is a, like, yeah, I just, I definitely think there's a lot more than they've revealed. I think my skepticism on the reverse engineering stuff, I mean, obviously there's crash retrieval because they're just retrieving, it could be foreign or they're retrieving something.

The reverse engineering, I mean, if it's advanced tech, nuclear just took so much, I mean, I'm just familiar with the history of nuclear, just so much effort to create nuclear energy and you'd have these huge, there's a huge enterprise, thousands of people. If they're not doing, I mean, that's why I kind of go, and I mean, a whole other form of propulsion. I mean it's just really – it would require so many – such a big bureaucracy. That's why I'm a little skeptical that that exists because I don't know how you

maintain a cover-up that long. But I could be wrong. I mean as people have pointed out, they've maintained secrecy of a lot of things for a really long time. So it's not inconceivable. But –

Trevor Burrus Well, especially when you're dealing with government contractors and military contractors. They've done – I mean they have a long history of keeping a tight lip when it comes to all sorts of top secret projects that they're working on.

Paul Sherman I mean it's weird because like if you look at the UAP task force, which was created by people that had it, you know, it was like comes out of they have OSAP and then ATIP and then UAP Task Force and then they create AERO, which is much more like what Blue Book was, which is their whole point is to debunk and dismiss. I think that's the whole point. It's to just to say we looked into it and there's nothing there. So then they and they cherry pick the cases like they don't actually deal with it with

stuff that they can't explain. That's what Arrow's point is. But the UAP task force was people that seemed genuinely interested in it, and they have potential explanations and three separate things. That means that they didn't know themselves.

And so I would think that if you, if there was some reverse engineering program, then you would have a better idea than just three potential explanations. But that's assuming they actually got access. The UAP task force people?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, at some point-

If they open themselves up for, if they do have access, then you open up those questions. Misappropriation of funds, lying to Congress, military contractors having access to these vehicles. I would imagine that's too messy.

They get very mumbly. They get very mumbly at that point. I find when you start kind of like, well, what is it? And how many people kind of, it's a lot of like, oh, you know, I mean, that's how I, that was my interpretation of this. I think that it's, I'm much more with Jacques Vallée's view

of the phenomenon. And I think that it, that they don't know what it is. I think they have a lot more photos and videos showing, demonstrating this incredible phenomenon, but I'm not sure that they know what it is. And I'm pretty skeptical that they have a secret reverse engineering program

just because I don't see how they would have carried it out for this long. Because Jesse's theory, of course, is that it would date back to the 50s. And it just, there's just too many possibilities for too many deathbed confessions from people to reveal this knowledge.

So I'm- But don't you think you would keep a really close watch on anyone who had any access to any of these things? And that would be very threatening to them, like Bob Lazar.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know. You believe Bob Lazar.

I do't know. You believe Bob's a liar. I do. Yeah.

I don't know what he was working on, whether or not it was ours or something else or what. But I don't think he's a liar. He's had the same story forever.

Well then we should go demand the documents. I mean, that would be something where we just need to be like, look, these are the documents

that we want and it's on this place, these years. Well, one of the things that Bob said is he thinks some of the documents that he was shown were horseshit and he thinks it's on purpose. He thinks that those fake documents, that the fake narratives are a hook so that if somebody does spill the beans, they know exactly who would, who was doing it because they could point to, like maybe if you're involved in you know X program They give you some bullshit narrative on top of the real truth, right?

They'll make up some stuff right that way if you really well the government told me X and you go. Oh, okay He learned it from this right? He's a part of this program. Now. We've narrowed it down to 250 employees, let's start scouring these people and framing them for questions.

It's counterintelligence. Yeah, counterintelligence. Yeah, I mean, it seems like that, so you know the MJ-12 documents. There's one of them that is this incredible document. I mean, just if it's a forgery, and most people I think think it's a forgery or it's a hoax or whatever. It's so well done. It's the manual on extraterrestrial crash retrieval with different morphologies. You ever seen this? No. People have never seen it, it's an amazing document. Like I spent, went down a long rabbit hole. Look, I would say most ufologists think it's fake,

so it's not even me. What's incredible about it, they show like, you know like the old books from the library, they'd show who checked it out, they had all these names. So then you kind of go like, the only people really. I mean, it seemed like the level of sophistication to create this would have been the government. And so then you're sort of like,

well, why would they have done that? One of the answers is it was just, this is called passage material to be able to detect counterintelligence activities. I'll tell you another one that I can't quite figure out. I mean, it's a lot of effort to, and why that narrative? I mean, another thing I was told people say is they'll go, well, they're using the UAP

stuff as cover for secret weapons programs. And you're like, well, why would that work as cover? And they go, well, because then it's a way to distract attention. I was like, but why would that distract attention? Wouldn't that attract attention? You go, as opposed to like within the military, like, look, this is secret research, that's really important to national security.

We don't pay attention. Instead they're like, oh no, this is UFO crash retrieval. So don't pay attention to it. That seems like you're a recipe for creating more interest in UFOs. So there's a lot of things that the government has done

where you're like, it's almost like, assuming that is, by the way, that we know that like, we know that the government, the US Air Force did, you know, in the early 80s, make this guy Paul Benowitz go crazy, who was seeing things over Kirtland Air Base. And then this guy, Richard Doty, you know, how they make him go crazy, they would be feeding them all this information, convincing them of an alien attack. And he basically ended up going crazy from it. It's this amazing story told by this book Mirage Men, also a documentary. And you look and you kind of go and they go, well, it was to cover up a secret weapons program

at Kirtland Air Base. And it's like, I'm not even disbelieving it, but it's like, that's just such a, like, why would that be the best way to do that? And why would you be so sure that that wouldn't attract interest from people rather than distract it? So there's a bunch of things that don't make sense. And so even if it is all – which is the skeptic view is that it's some combination of government disinformation, sci-fi, dreams, hypnosis, hypnagogic states, and then kind

of the power of belief. I just reviewed this new book on Barney and Betty Hill where the author thinks that it was – that really it was a combination of her – it was the stress of being an interracial couple, her nightmares and then hypnosis where they then confabulate this whole story.

That's the basic skeptic view is that it was sort of – but the government is involved in it and that's always strange because you're like

Why are the government involved in the Betty and Barney Hill story?

No, no in the in the UFO in creating right and these you have assuming that they did the MJ 12 or somebody the MJ 12 But certainly in the case of right. Why would they have any organizations? Why would they have anything right? Why would they have anything, right? Why would they have... Why would you be doing... Like, the thing with the Paul Doty and the Paul Benowitz, or the Richard Doty and Paul Benowitz, is like, why was that the best? I mean, it's just... Why was that the best way?

Like, somebody observes strange activity over Kirtland Air Base, and they discover this. Why was that the right approach? I don't follow it. And you had AJ Gentile on who did the stuff on crop circles. They saw military disinformation around those activities in Britain. So you see a lot of...

Crop circle thing's weird. Really weird. Because you want to just write it off. I mean, I wanted to write it off. I'm like, oh, those guys with boards, they're making designs. But then you see some of the designs and how the wheat is actually woven and how they have these exploded nodes, almost like they're microwaved.

And they've examined these things and it seems like there's some energy that's created these things. And also the sheer size and scale of some of these things with no footprints leading into them or out of them. And just the geometric precision or out of them. And just the geometric

precision of some of them, it's really weird. Like there's, of course, it's eyewitness accounts, it's hard to know if they're being accurate, but people who've flown over areas where there's nothing there, flown back two hours later, and there's these football field size Mandelbrot sets.

That was the Julia set over next to Stonehenge was the one that the guy flew over and there was nothing there. And a couple of hours later, there was the Julia set, which is a spectacular, fractal.

Right.

I'll tell you, it's even weirder.

With incredible precision. That's what's really, as much precision as you can get by folding over wheat. But when you look at it like from above, and you don't get to the micro, you're looking at these things that like, they really do scale in a fractal way.

It's very fucking strange and difficult to reproduce. You would imagine something like that would take a long fucking time to plot out and plan. You would take multiple people. You'd have to measure and remeasure. You'd have to measure and re-measure. You'd have to have some sort of tools and instruments, not just to fold over the wheat,

but if you're going to interweave the wheat, like what is your method of doing that? And how are you doing it where, you know, this one is one dimension and then the next one is precisely three-fifths of that dimension, the next one is precisely three-fifths of that dimension.

The next one is slightly... And they're fractal.

Well, it gets really even weirder than that. So you know how I just described this case of this Air Force counterintelligence guy driving this guy, Paul Bennewitz, crazy at Corona Air Force? That book is written by Mark Pilkington. Mark Pilkington is one of two guys that claim to have created all the crop circles. The other guy is a guy named John Lundberg.

AJ, in his video about the crop circles, accuses John Lundberg, again, they call it the circle makers, they have a website that keeps it updated. He accuses him of being a British intelligence agent. AJ does, or at least he strongly implies it.

And part of that is because there was a bunch of weird stuff on the website about MI5 and the CIA, and then Lundberg went to a school, this is all very circumstantial, so I'm not defending, I'm just saying what AJ said, then Lundberg went to a school that shares a courtyard

with an MI5 campus or an MI5 training area. I asked Mark, I have like three hours of interviews with Mark, who is a really interesting person. I asked him directly if they had any connection to military intelligence. He said, absolutely not.

It's hard to-

Which is what you would say.

Well, of course, you're allowed to say it if you are. But I'm not making any accusations. But yeah, I mean, he claimed that they made all of them And you know there's some of them have you ever seen the massive there's one that was absolutely massive Yeah, pull some of them up Jamie, so we can get there's the Julius said that there's another there's another one It's so big it's really hard to see but he said that he wasn't at that one. Yeah, that's like famous

That's the Julius that's gorgeous. Well the big one right there is in the middle that that one's just crazy. These are enormous. Yeah, they're enormous. Go full screen on that. They're so big. And I mean, the amount of precision involved in them is kind of spectacular.

Now, Mark denies that they have exploded nodes, and he denies that they're interwoven. AJ says that they are definitely interwoven and have exploded nodes. And there was even an article in Science magazine, which argues that they were interwoven. AJ says that they are definitely interwoven and have exploded nodes. And there was even an article in Science magazine, which argues that they were made by humans, but that they point out the exploded nodes. So yeah, maybe that's it.

What's weird, too, is there's like, how did you do this? Where's the evidence of people trampling through this with equipment?

Yeah, it was apparently i'm pretty sure it's the first time that it was a visual explanation of pie

That's my understanding of it now. Maybe maybe there's someone, I haven't seen anything earlier than that, but that's like on its own is really amazing that that was the first time that they had created a visual representation of Pi. Yeah. That's it. And complete with like the, yeah, that's it. It's like, there's another image that will show how it is Pi, probably that one right there. Yeah and so that's a

extremely sophisticated

Extremely crop circle, right? I mean imagine the type of intelligence that you'd have to possess to pull this off and Then not let anybody know that you did it and it's just for funsies Just for funsies in a field.

Yeah, it's, and then you know these MIT researchers went out, that's also part of it, and they tried to do it and it just wasn't, it wasn't nearly as good.

Yeah, what is this article, sir? Okay, it is very fucking weird. It's very weird, but the whole UFO thing is very weird. You know, the Jacques Vallée books are very interesting, and I've read three of his books so far. And I've had him on a couple of times, and the last time I had him on,

I really went on a deep dive, and I read two of his books right before he came on. And one of the more interesting things is the really old stories. Like the stories from the 1700s the 1800s where they lack the context of

Spaceships the idea behind it like none of that stuff exists. But yet you get almost At least you could say oh I could understand how they would be describing it this way But it's kind of the same thing that other people have been describing. The Zimbabwe story, a lot of these other stories, it's kind of the same story over and over and over again, which makes you go, okay, well, what...

Does it have to be from outer space? Or is it possible that there is something here that is, like like far older than us that has somehow or another

removed itself from our view. Or is it social contagion and people I mean I've always struck by it's always like the aliens always are like all protect your environment and avoid nuclear war it's like oh thanks like we didn't know we needed to do those until you guys showed up. And it makes more sense as like, you could see it as a, I mean I got very into, I haven't interviewed her yet,

but I'm about to. There's an anthropologist at Stanford named Tanya Lerman, and she's done this incredible work on religions where she, like anthropologist, a good anthropologist,

and also this guy, Bowman, they're agnostic on whether or not those beings are real. Like, they're just like, we're really interested in the culture and the psychology and the experience of it. But she had this, she did her field work with magicians and witches in England, you know, like modern witches,

not magicians like magic tricks, but like the old, who's the famous magician, not Gandalf, but- Houdini? No, no, the British one, not Gandalf. Houdini? No, no, the British one, Merlin, right? Oh. But like old style, right?

But they were like, so she didn't really believe in it, but they were like, you have to practice witchcraft in order to do this. And she had like multiple anomalous experiences. One of them that she woke up and there was five druids in her room beckoning to her. And people were like, is it a dream?

And she's like, no, it's not a dream. She had another instance where they were trying to like conjure energies to like turn off, to like shut down her watch. And she felt a huge energy surge through her and shut off her watch.

And her point is that she thinks that the practice, she's, we put too much focus on the beliefs, but she says like the practices themselves, I don't know if she would say conjure, I also interviewed Diana Pasulka on it, they would say more like reveal these different realities. So, they're much more, it's a very interesting set of work because they're not, they're not trying to answer

the question of whether the Druids were really in her room or not. I mean, the watch thing, you know, apparently definitely happened, but...

Apparently definitely is a weird way to phrase it.

Apparently, to her, definitely.

I know, you know what I'm saying? It's like, show me, man. The conjuring thing is strange, because that's a reoccurring theme, that you go outside and you have, like, these experiences where you say,

I'm not afraid. Come show yourself to me and given enough time with enough intention, apparently things will appear in the sky.

My favorite one is the black guy talking about Yahweh, who were the local ABC newscaster goes out and it's going to be one of those, ha ha, this guy thinks that he can conjure UFOs and they go out with him and he conjures an orb. Do you ever see that one?

No. That's like an incredible,

that's like one of my favorite of those videos. And the newscaster's like, he literally, they see him calling his, I think it's like an NBC affiliate, or an ABC affiliate somewhere. Jamie can probably find it. But if it's he literally calls his boss the newscasters like all the stories turned out a little differently than I thought

It's like one of my favorites. I'm sure you could say oh, it's a balloon or whatever But like comes in and out. I mean, it's really and it comes right as he's Calling it

That's the weird things. I've talked to multiple people that have actually done this Oh people it's that have gone with these, you know, air quotes experts. And they go out to some deserted area and you call these things.

There's a second guy, white guy, that also does it. And Reuters did a whole story on him because apparently there's a whole bunch of people around that they saw it. And of course, Jake Barber, who's this former, you know, contractor,

helicopter pilot contractor for special forces, announced that he was going to go and conjure UFOs and bring one down.

They're just sitting right up there.

We met up with Prophet Yahweh, seer of Yahweh at Doolittle Park off Lake Mead. We picked the day, we picked the time, and we picked the location. Everyone's going to think you're absolutely nuts. Well, I thought I was absolutely nuts. W absolutely nuts until he over the years, 1500 of t 1500 and one today. What

I'll try it. He says the told him to go public now on his offer and we scann but a few clouds when the for a sighting, I wasn't exactly convinced.

I pray all y'all wait that you send a sighting so that they know that I am not mentally ill. I am not a false prophet. Like those who seek to kill me say I am.

Oh, people are trying to kill him?

Oh, brother, look at it, there it is.

You can barely see it. A white speck. Then another sighting. There it is. I got it.

I got it. I got it.

I got it. Photojournalist Jonathan Hawkins locks in on it. Let's take a closer look here. It's an orange sphere that appeared out of nowhere. I call the boss with an unexpected change in my story.

I'm sorry I could see it clear as day. In fact, it's bright. I can't It's it's moving pretty fast. It's going to Nellis Air Force Base. It wants to be seen We called Nellis to see what these things might be Guess what? They didn't call us back, but this thing started coming back toward us coming toward us now, I think What see it's coming up toward us Oh, man! Oh, hallelujah! Then, a few seconds later, it disappeared. It's going back up in space. Prophet Yahweh isn't concerned.

He says it'll be back.

I would take this more seriously if that guy didn't have your reporter voice.

It's amazing. That's part of the charm of it. I think it's, I love it because I don't think it's gonna convince any skeptics, but it's like one of the few things in our world where it inspires a set of wonder and a set of awe.

And for those of us that struggle with our faiths, it's inspiring because it is sort of a spiritual, like I mean, he calls himself Yahweh, right? So it wasn't about, like, gray aliens or whatever, it was just something else. And that's what I mean about, like, why more Valet,

his work explains all of this much better, um, and then the sort of the extraterrestrial hypothesis did, and he's had that since 68.

Well, I think what he does best is not explain it. Yeah, he doesn't. There really isn't an explanation, but here's what we know.

He calls it a control system though. Which is sort of like, I asked Diana, I was like, how is that different from God? Because he's sort of a control system that is, his view is that there's a control system that's evolving human consciousness

and it will manifest different things or in relation with humans over time. And so he looks at the apparition – the Maria or Saint Mary apparitions in Spain and the airships of the late 19th century where people saw these things that look like zeppelins even though they hadn't been invented yet. All of these things, he says – his view is they're sort of being – sort of produced in some relationship as well with our culture.

That's Valet's argument. And that sounds a lot like God in some ways when you say control system.

Trevor Burrus Right.

What does that mean? Like, is it a higher life form that is monitoring us? That's the secular version of religion for a lot of these people that are really interested in aliens, like that there's some advanced being that's making sure we don't fuck everything up completely.

Certainly for me, that's my interest. I mean, I, like again, this anthropologist Lerman, you know, she says, you know, William James is this famous Harvard psychologist who wrote a book about the varieties of the religious experience in 1902.

And he says, everybody wants to kind of be like, is it real or not real? Is like this world just what we see? And he says, I think there's something more. There's not – so this very skeptic or debunker thing which is like, oh, no, it's just got to be a – that thing has got to be a bird or it point out, it's like they showed up when they wanted to. I mean it's a pretty amazing – if it's just a coincidence, it's a really amazing one.

And so I think for me it's like – because I am a Christian and it is hard to believe in an all-powerful and all-good God because he obviously allowed the Holocaust to occur and allows terrible things to occur. But I love that segment, and there's another one I love right now, it's like a British woman in the 50s doing an interview about seeing what she calls a Mexican hat UFO over her house. And the kids saw it, and everybody in the village

made fun of her and they ridiculed her, and she's like, but it's, I saw it, and it was real. And it was like, those are spiritual experiences, I think. So I don't know experiences, I think. So I don't know that, like, I want the files released from the government. I'm also skeptical that it's gonna tell us what it is,

because I think, at some level, we're not supposed to get much more information about what it is. I think it's something else is going on. Or maybe it's having a positive effect. I think it's, I think one of the,

sometimes people get really mad at UFO believers, like skeptics get really like angry, like how do they, they're so, you know, whatever, they get so mad. And I'm always like, but like how often do you see them causing real harm or problems?

I mean, we had one cult where they, you know, like a few people killed themselves, but for the most part UFO, people are interested in UFOs, are dreamy seekers, spiritual. And I think it's, I think it's wrong to, I think it's lovely and wonderful and it reminds us of, you know, that we're small, on the one hand we're humble about our knowledge

and there's just surrounded by mystery. I mean, you're, so much of your career and this platform has been to allow us to talk about things that are unexplained, and that, or where the explanations don't really seem to explain it. There's something more, as William James would say, there's something more, and I think that the denial

of anything more, this idea that, oh, we know everything, and we know where the, I mean, we don't know anything.

That's hubris. It's just crazy. But those people are silly. They're more silly than the believers. Because this idea that, look, if you have a completely novel experience, like say if you are Commander David Fravor and you encounter this tic-tac-shaped object that's

hovering over something that appears to be a ship that's under the water, this thing takes off at a absolutely preposterous speed that is documented both in radar and visually and on camera. So they've got video of this thing moving. They say that it went from above 50,000 feet above sea level to sea level in less than

a second, which would require more energy than the entire United States produces in a year in order to get an object to move that quickly. And it does that with no heat signature. Okay, if this is all true, just that alone, now imagine you have this completely novel experience.

And because I haven't had it and you haven't had it and Jamie hasn't had it, well, it's very simple and easy to dismiss it. But if this happened, what do you expect the person to do? What do you expect a decorated pilot in the Navy, a guy who has a rock solid record, who is, there's nothing about him that screams

that he's a kook or he's mentally ill. And when you talk to him, he's incredibly meticulous, very intelligent, very disciplined.

Well, his face, it looks like he had a spiritual experience. He has a smile on his face. I went to the, when I was in Delhi, I went to the Jain temple and I went to the Hindu temple. And I'm not Jain, I'm not Hindu. But I had a look on my face that reminded me, that sort of, that sort of, that sort of like that starry eye, the look in your face

where you've experienced the wonder and the awe of being alive and we're on this planet and we don't really understand it all, but it's beautiful and it's okay. And I think that that's the spiritual, I mean, that's where it's like he's been touched by, I don't, you know, I'm not imposing this, but he's sort of touched by God in some way or but touched by something and it's not something extraordinary. Yeah. And the thing, look, I think the other thing you read that environment, So on the one hand, it's technological dominance, call it technological, whatever, whatever, they might call it spiritual dominance, you know. So

but that's, for me, what's, what's special about it. And I think it's not going to go away. And I don't think we're going to get to the answer. I don't think I don't think

the government, how could the government, you know, I don't think they know. And I don't think they know and I don't even if they even if there was some contact I don't know if that would really tell you all the answers. Well, what I could imagine is that they have acquired both eyewitness video radar all the various sensors data and they've done this with multiple instances of these things, and they are trying to assess what this is. And they have a longstanding study of these things that would both be disturbing and confusing to a lot of people and disruptive to society.

I'm sure you're aware of Hal Puthoff and what happened with him during the Bush administration where they brought him in. they essentially told how put up now this is assuming house telling the truth and I have no reason to think he's lying they brought him in and a bunch of other scientists and a bunch of other thinkers and said I want you to create a chart on one side list the positive aspects of disclosure and the other side what are list the positive aspects of disclosure, and the other side, what are

the negative ramifications of disclosure? Government, religion, the finances, all the different things that can happen in the world. And the negatives outweighed the positives, and they decided not to disclose. But the premise that he was brought in with this was saying, we have acquired physical crafts that are not of this world. We have biological entities that are not of this world.

And we are a part of some sort of a back engineering program. We want to release this information. What would happen if we did? And their conclusion was chaos.

Trump didn't seem to go through that checklist and come up with the same answer.

I don't think he got that memo. But also I do think that he-

I think he ignores the memos from experts in general.

Right. If he was in office and that was the case and they came to him and someone like Tucker or someone that's influential to him could sit down with him and talk to him and he thought

it would gain their favor, he might just release it. I mean, it's wild because on the one hand, it looked like it was spontaneous. But on the other hand, Laura Trump, who's like someone that's like a trusted family member, who's like really competent, like they sent her in to like take over the RNC and fix it and fire all the people and get their loyalists in there. She was out there talking, saying I was hearing a lot of noise, but it wasn't from people that I trusted, so I didn't report anything on it. But I was hearing a lot of noise too, that the Trump administration

was considering doing something, but you didn't know, I didn't know if it was circular reporting. But I thought the Laura Trump thing was interesting, because I don't think, I don't see her as sort of a,

she's not just speculating or bullshitting, kind of trusted source for that. So she said that and then Obama was asked about it and then Trump made that announcement. So I don't know what they have planned. You know, we were pushing on the intelligence community privately to release the stuff and it was going nowhere.

The Obama thing was nuts because the guy didn't have any follow-up questions.

That was part of what was really weird about it.

Also, they put it in a speed round? Which is probably why he didn't have follow-up questions, if you think about it that way. But I mean, that's just a massive dropping of the ball. The guy says aliens are real. How do you know? How do you know is the next question, right? It's right there.

How do you know aliens are real? Well, yesterday, the day after then, he said catch him on the spot instead of when it becomes this big viral moment and everybody's talking about it. And then he comes up with a rational explanation for why he said that.

Yeah. I mean, and he told, Obama told one of the late night hosts, I can't remember if it was Kimmel or Colbert or somebody, but he said, they said something like, tell us what you know. you know, I can't tell you, there's things I can't tell you. So, I mean, he obviously knows more than he said.

Right, otherwise he would say there's nothing.

And then Trump said that he knows more. It was very interesting, you know.

I talked to Trump about it.

Yeah.

He won't tell you shit.

He kind of moved around.

There's a lot of things, I know some things.

There's a lot of, it's very crazy. They said they weren't going to release the Epstein files and that came out. So I just kind of go, now I have a different, I don't know if you want to get into it, but I have a slightly different view of Epstein than I think I did.

Well before we get into that, you know Tucker's thoughts on this whole UFO, UAP thing? He thinks they're like angels and demons from the Bible and he thinks that they've always been here. And I'm sure you're aware of the Book of Enoch, the Book of Enoch, which was one of the original biblical texts that wasn't included in the canon, but just because of a few rabbis decided it didn't jive with the Torah. And they found the Book of Enoch along with the Book of Isaiah as a part of the Dead Sea

Scrolls. And when you find out that there was a biblical text that was contemporary to books that did make it into the Old Testament, and that they talk about the watchers who come from above and mate with humans and create this race of giants called the Nephilim who destroy everything and consume everything. And you're like, what the fuck is this? Like what is this?

And just stop and imagine if those rabbis hadn't, like, if that hadn't been excluded. Like Wesley Hopf is great talking about this stuff. He's a real historian when it comes to, you know, really understanding the history of these biblical texts. And, you know, And he's absolutely fascinated by it. And he's like, yeah, it's kind of crazy that they just decided to not put that in the

Bible. Imagine if they did. And part of when you're going to church and they're going over the Old Testament, like, okay, this week, we're going to go over the book of Enoch. And we're going to figure out who the Watchers are. Like what is that? What is that story? The crazy thing that Wes Hough told me was that the book of Isaiah that they found in

the Dead Sea Scroll predates the oldest version of the book of Isaiah by more than a thousand years when they found it. They found out that there was a book of Isaiah that is a thousand years older than the one they thought was the oldest one, and it is verbatim. It's verbatim from the one that's a thousand years later, which is kind of crazy. But then it's also in the same fucking caves as the book of Enoch.

It's all together there in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Amazing. We've had this... We've been fed this story that sort of all of these religions and myths from the past are all just false. They're all just hallucinations. They're all just lies.

I don't believe that.

It's just really, uh... It's really arrogant, actually. Like, it's like, well, no, now, like, we've been around for, you know, humans have been around for, like, millions of years, but the last 150 years, it's like, we really figured it all out, and we figured out that all human knowledge before, you know, whatever, some recent time period is nonsense.

Yeah, I think that's quite arrogant. It's very arrogant, but I, look,

I'm a believer that history is far older than we think it is. And I think the more time goes on, the more that gets revealed. So when you're talking about something that's four or 5,000 years old, I think really you're talking about a retelling of a far older story. And I think it's very difficult when you're dealing with people

that don't have an understanding of science, the written language is fairly new, it's an oral tradition for generations The written language is fairly new. It's an oral tradition for generations before it's ever written down. So my question with all this is always like, what were they trying to talk about? What were they trying to say? What was the original experience that someone documented in story? And then that story was relayed over and over

and over again, generation after generation until it's eventually written down and then they study it and take it literally. And then also translating it from Aramaic, which is the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Hebrew, all these different languages to Latin and Greek and eventually English, but what's the original story? What are they trying to document? What is this important knowledge that they want to share?

And how screwed up would that get over the generations and generations of talking about it, but what ultimate truth is in there? I'm absolutely fascinated by the story of Jesus Christ. Because if you wanted to come up with a way that people would live that would absolutely be far more beneficial than just going on natural instincts and tribal behavior, you would follow Jesus' teachings. I can't find a flaw in the way he tells you to live life. There's a lot of religions that involve

you know torturing non-believers and and and raping infidels and being able to do terrible things to the people that don't believe your religion. There's none of that in Christianity. It's all forgiveness. It's all treating your brother and your neighbor as if they're you. It's a beautiful way to live life.

Are you Christian?

Well, I go to church. I have been for quite a while. I've been doing it for the last three

or four years. But that's not really an answer to the question.

Well, because I don't know. I think it's very interesting. And I do believe that if you follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, you will live a better life. I really do believe that. And one of the things I talk about is like, the people that I go to church with are the most fucking polite people I've ever met in my life. They're so kind and so nice and everybody lets you out of the parking lot. Everybody's like, you go, you go.

It's like the one place, like it works. You know what I'm saying? Like if people are trying to find an idea, does that mean I believe people came back from the dead? Does that mean I believe Moses is part of the Red Sea? Not really. No, it seems like that's most likely a story where people are telling it generation after

generation after generation, but there was probably something happening. There's probably some truth to it. Then when you take into account some of the stories from the Old Testament, like the book of Ezekiel, which I'm absolutely fascinated by, book of Ezekiel and his account of the wheel within a wheel and the fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire as it were gleaming metal, like, what the hell is that? Like, what is that? Like, what are these stories? And in the midst of this gleaming metal, there's the likeness of four living creatures.

Like, okay, they darted to and fro, like the appearance of a flash of lightning. Okay, what is that? Like what were they trying to say? And what was the original experience that people documented that was so important?

And it might've been a lot more similar to these UFO experiences that we've been seeing.

That's the point. Yeah. And I think this is one of the things that Tucker goes back to.

The Christian story is so beautiful and so important. You know, Rene Girard's view of Christianity is really stopping the cycle of scapegoating. You know, scapegoating where, and I'm seeing it right now as part of the reason we've been pushing back against the moral panic on Epstein is that you scapegoat the thing, you know, traditionally it literally was a goat, but you scapegoat the person or whatever.

Wait a minute, originally it was a goat?

It really was a goat, yeah. It was a goat, yeah.

Really? carry the sins of the community... Oh, you'd sacrifice the goat? I think you would send it away to die or something.

Oh.

But over time it became people.

That's what a scapegoat was?

Yeah. Oh. Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And then...

It's always a goat.

But generally...

Goats are the devil, goats are everything. Goats get a big difference. Yeah, but I mean, so Christianity puts an end to that. It says, stop scapegoating. I mean, they scapegoated Jesus, really. I mean, you kind of go, you scapegoat... The purpose of the scapegoating was for the community would restore unity. Christianity said, no, we're not going to do it that way.

That's immoral. And so, you know, he with the, you know, without sin should be the first cast of stone. Jesus wasn't saying that prostitution was good or anything. He was saying that we should not be scapegoating, you know, you've got sins too, so don't scapegoat this person. That's a really radical moment in human history, and it really is what allowed humans to spread. It creates a universal, I mean, Christianity is the first universal,

it's really a universal religion. Maybe it's not the only. But it's a universal religion, it says everybody is a child of God, and it's evangelical, and it wants other people to become Christian. That's very, that's different from other religions where I'm like, this is my God, I've got my own God here, and we're the best, and you suck.

And they make it very difficult to join.

Yeah. And it's not to say that Christians, you know, obviously there was, you know, fighting the Muslims, and there's some interesting revisionism there, but it's a beautiful religion. It's a... It's a... It's a...

It's a... It's a... It's a... It's a... horrible atrocities. I say no. I say humans are. Because if it was actually Christianity, you would be following the teachings of Christ and there would be none of those things.

Ted Well, I mean, anti-Semitism is not Christian.

Tom Right.

Ted So, true Christianity is not that. So, I think it's lovely. And I hope there's a revival of some of it. I'm not sure there is.

Tom I think there is more now than before. There's a lot of young people that are getting into Christianity.

I think it's good to – I think it's also – I mean essentially with the UFO thing, it's an awareness that there's a higher power. So one can sort of say, look, the UFO thing, it's not the same as Christianity or whatever. But this awareness that like we're not – like there's something else going on. There's something more, there's something higher than us and that we should be humble in front of in the face of this gigantic mystery. I think that puts us in a better mentality.

It certainly does. And if anything, if he's not the son of God, if this was an actual historical figure, what an insanely wise human being who didn't have these thoughts that are inherent to all of us of vengeance and lust and greed, he has none of these?

So radical. Also, you've heard it said before that you should love your friends and hate your enemies. I say to you, you should love your enemies. I mean, that's just, it's like the hardest, I'm not there. I think very few people are there,

but it's certainly the right aspiration.

Yes. Yeah, it's the right aspiration. And Tucker thinks that this whole UFO thing is somehow connected to the spiritual realm. And that we're...

Well, because we've been told for so long that there is no spiritual realm. That spiritual realm is just a mental illness. Right. You know, it's like, how he's's like the Yahweh thing. He's like...

But the problem is the people that tell you that are all mentally ill. They're all very unhappy. Like, atheists, like secular, like hardcore atheists are some of the most unhappy, depressed people I know. I don't see like incredibly happy unless they do a lot of mushrooms. And those people tend to not be atheists anymore. That's the one weird thing. People that have had like intense breakthrough psychedelic experiences, one of the first things they go, maybe there is a God. Like maybe, maybe

I don't know what I'm talking about, because if I just experienced that and that's a real thing that you could have while alive on Earth, where you are confronted with divine wisdom and love in some weird, strange form. You know, when there's a lot of people that believe

that that's the source of a lot of religious experiences, and instead of alienating and making those things illegal, we should study them and make them a part of the religious experience, because it's probably what they were originally.

Well, that's right. And so now that people are having spiritual experiences with UFOs, it's wonderful, and they should talk about them and kindle them. I think the thing about psychedelics that's so interesting is that, at least my experience with them,

was that you don't become so attached to your ideas and your beliefs. And so, which is a big problem in our society, is people that get too attached to their egos get attached to their beliefs, as opposed to like, oh, I thought that.

I mean, I've made my whole career out of being wrong about things and then correcting them. But I think it's hard because you do, it's really-

It's a great quality.

Thank you. It's a very, but it's still, I hate it. I hate being wrong. and it's totally natural to hate it. But I do think like having a practice that makes you go, you are not your beliefs. There's something there, you have an existence separate from the things that you wrote on your blog

or you wrote on X and don't be so attached to them.

Right, don't make them your identity.

Yeah, and that it's actually, there's something really quite, there's an awful part of when you feel like you got something wrong, but then there's another part where you're like, oh, it feels good to get it right, and you feel clean.

And that's what we should be going for, but it does require, for me, being humble about my limitations before some higher power is a really important place to begin. Because if you think there's no higher power, or the other one is like souls. We don't talk about souls enough. A new friend of mine at the university

was talking about how important it is to really – to care for your soul and to care about other people's souls. That's one of the things that Christianity is so good at, that you have something divine inside of you connected to something divine outside of you and that your behaviors affect its treatment. And when you tell people that you're just a meat suit and you're just worm food and your life doesn't matter and that it's all just random and pointless,

that's a terrible story. It makes people feel terrible. But when you kind of go, no, there was one of the most beautiful. I loved all the Charlie Kirk videos that went out after his death because there

were so many ones where he had these beautiful moments. But he's talking to these women that are doing The Only Fans. Did you see that one?

Yeah.

And they're describing, they're trying to shock him and saying just really kind of crude things about their sexuality and how the sex they have, it doesn't matter to them. like, I just don't believe that I think you have a soul. I think God has a purpose for you. What a much lovelier way to engage somebody. And it wasn't a, you didn't feel like he was morally condemning them.

He was actually saying God loves you. And so for me, Christianity brings, that is the part of Christianity that I think is so special. But it is hard. I mean, one of the things that this anthropologist that I'm really into is talking about, she says it's the more the God, the more different the God is from humans, the harder it is to believe in them.

And so people like Christians in particular, she would talk about, even evangelical ones are always complaining about not believing enough and not having enough faith. Because it is so hard, because you have the Holocaust problem, the problem of evil. Why if the God is all powerful and-good, is he allowing the Holocaust? Why do you allow Hiroshima? You know, these terrible things. And part of the answer for Christians has been, well, because he wants us to exercise free will and to be in touch with our better sides and

to realize our potential as moral humans and moral souls. And that's a pretty good answer. But it is – I was glad to hear that hear her say that people struggle with it because I certainly

do as well.

Tom Hanks Well, I mean, I think everyone struggles with it. I'm just, I'm really fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by it because when I go to church and I listen to them talk about various passages in the Bible, my mindset is always like, what was the real experience? Like what are we missing out of these tales?

What are we missing out of these recounting of these experiences? What happened? I don't think it was nothing. I really don't. I think there's something real to it. And again, it works.

That's the main one for me. It's like, you wanna live a better life? Like, if you live as a Christian, you'll have a better life. You'll have a more love-filled, more wonderful life. That's real.

And this idea that, oh, it's fairy tales. Is it? If it's a method for life that gives you a more rich and loving and peaceful life, isn't that better for everybody? Isn't that a real thing?

That's a real thing. There's no way you can know whether or not any of the stories in the Bible happened exactly as described. We can't know. So you have to have this leap of faith to... You know, and it gets weird, like, Jesus comes back on a white horse,

like, hey, slow down, you know? Like Revelations, the book of Revelations is weird. But what's really weird is some of these people that think that what's going on in Iran is to light the fire to have Jesus return, to light the signal fire.

Like, did you hear those recountings by these non-commissioned officers that went into these briefings, combat briefings?

Oh, no.

Okay. Here's one of them, because I saved it, because it's so kooky that I read it and I was like, wait, what the fuck did they say to him? Because it's so crazy.

I tend to be anti-apocalyptic. My knee jerk is anti-apocalyptic because I don't see apocalyptic movements doing a lot of good in the world.

So …

Trevor Burrus Yeah.

That's probably better off. Jonah Goldberg I think a lot of Christians have ignored the book of Revelations. I think focusing too heavily on that particular book probably leads to bad outcomes.

Trevor Burrus Okay. So this was the story that I read. This was in Yahoo I'll send this to you Jeremy so you can get this So we could put this up on the board did you find that thing? Okay, here urge us to tell our troops that this was all part of God's now. This is a guy who goes This is a combat readiness

briefing Urge us to tell our troops This is all part of God's plan and he specifically referenced numerous citations of the book of Revelations

Referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ

He said that President Trump's been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause

Armageddon and mark his return to earth

And they said that the guy was saying this had a giant smile on his face, which made it all the weirder

Like like see if you could find that in there. Does it say that? No, it's not in that particular article. Oh, this is just military.com.

Someone complained about it.

Oh yeah, a bunch of people complained. There's actually like a lawsuit.

Yeah, because you risk like the whole self-fulfilling prophecy with that one. Well, it's like, what are you talking about? Wait a second, what are you doing? What machines, what weapons do you control?

Yeah, there's a lot of fucking religious kooks. So it's not just, and also, that is not how Jesus Christ would handle it. Let's go bomb Iran, that's how Jesus is going to come back. Like, do you think he would tell you that's the right way to do it? No, it doesn't sound very Jesus-y. Like how did you interpret that in the text? Okay, before we, so we're deep into this show, so the Epstein stuff.

All right. So what is your take on this?

All right, well, so I-

You've changed your position?

Yeah, I've changed, I think, I spent a bunch of time with the files. I will say, I think I did do a piece where I do think that the shrimp is a code word for young women. I'm pretty sure about that. What do you think pizza is a code word for? Well, that was, okay, so then I did a, I had this article about code words in the Epstein files

and I did the shrimps. And then I had some stuff about pizza and grape juice in there about grape soda. And my co-author, Alex, was like, dude, you can't go, you can't go full pizza gate. You gotta, so we kept it out. And then the Times mentioned the pizza thing, so I wrote someone on X about it,

but I ended up taking it down because I was like, I don't really know. This one, I mean, what weirded me out, the pizza one, was where his urologist was like, take your erection dysfunction pills, and then we'll go out and get pizza and grape soda.

And I was like, that is creepy, you know, as hell. So, but I don't the shrimp one. I'm like 95% that means young women, cause you just see how they talk about it. And I think I proved it in my piece. There's other ones like people were like, the jerky is like cannibalism and whatever. It's like, well, it didn't help that the restaurant owner was like the restaurant's name was like cannibal and something. Yeah. But, um, I'm skeptical that that's what that was.

So well, you would be skeptical unless you were part of some of these fucking bizarre satanic rituals and then you would go, oh my God, it's real. Like there are, look, people have sacrificed people, right? Can we agree to that in, in, in human history? Yeah, sure. Of course.

And there have been satanic rituals throughout history. Can we agree to that? Sure. Okay, so There has been cannibalism in history. We agree that okay, unfortunately a lot actually there was a lot. Yeah Why wouldn't we think they're talking about that? We don't want to believe it, right? Is that what it is? No, I don't want to believe that these people, these multi-millionaires and billionaires that go to this island and engage in all this crazy shit aren't doing something like child sacrifice or cannibalism.

Well, let's start with the thing that I think a lot of us thought it was, which is that it was an intelligence community sex blackmail operation. That's what made it for me a story. I mean, a creepy guy doing creepy things,

there's just that's we call that a dog bites man story. You know, what makes it a man bites dog story is like, is that you kind of go, wow, it's like Mossad and CIA running a honey pie. I mean, that's the premise of Whitley Webb's two volume book, One Nation Under Blackmail. But when you look at it, like, we don't see that. We see one case where Epstein emails himself something that sounds like it's in the voice of the Bill Gates science advisor, Boris Karsich, I believe is the name. And in it, they talk about, oh, you know, it's the famous

email where he says, oh, you know, I got STDs. It says you got STDs from Russian hookers or from Russian women, and then you tried to slip antibiotics or you wanted me to slip antibiotics in Melinda's drink. And Melinda, like, they asked her about it. It was awful.

It doesn't, like, that's not, it's weird what that is. So, first of all, it's not even clear what that is.

We're just talking about emails. Right. Right. So who knows what was said? Just from the email we know that there at least implies that he's got dirt on people and that he is exercising. He's doing something with this dirt that he has on Epstein or on Bill Gates rather. Yeah. Although we're very limited in the amount of data that we possess. Right. Because we just have emails between him and other people. Inside those emails we find a lot of creepy shit.

We find that one description where he was talking to this woman where she said, I'm doing a, I'm doing investigating a story about an island where they bring children for sex and he goes she almost had a heart attack when I told her that person is me. Well he was

talking about the the rumors and gossip about him but he wasn't saying that he's bringing children to his island for sex. But that is what he said. But if you look at the text. No, he said they're talking about me. No, no, no. She said I'm doing a story on a guy who brings children to his island for

sex and he says she almost had a heart attack when I told her that person is me.

The person that, my interpretation of it- You're being charitable.

I'm not, well-

But you're being charitable because that's not what the text says. What the text says is someone's bringing children to an island. I told her that person was me. He didn't say I told her that's a bullshit rumor. I let her know that's not true.

But that's very much in his style. I mean, look, let's back up to the intelligence.

Wait a minute. Why would you, why would you dismiss that?

We can pull it up and look at it. I just think I think what we see from the files and I think Mike Benz has sort of pointed out the ways in which Epstein might have been a contractor or a financier or somebody hiding money for the intelligence community. Beyond that, I don't see any evidence that he was doing much for the intelligence community, if at all.

But you're only getting emails and only half of the emails, right? So there's only 3 million emails that have been released. There's another 3 million that the FBI possesses that they're not releasing, right?

100% it's possible.

So we're making something there. Why would you draw any conclusions based on only 50% of the data? And then if there is 50% of the data that hasn't been released, why? Is that way worse? Because this stuff is fucking nuts like this. This is nuts like take your erection pills so we can go get grape soda Okay, what and it's weird this lady is investigating a place where they an island where they bring children for sex

I told her it was me what well we should put that one. I want to look at that one Okay, I mean, I think, I mean, here you're talking about, you're talking about, so first of all, I think the picture is of a guy that is fully in charge of his life. And he's doing, he's like, he is like amazing at getting people to love him and care about him.

People call him their best friend. In Florida, clearly he was abusing girls and was busted for that. I think he was doing that because he's a pervert. I don't think, I don't see blackmail coming out of that. And then you get to later and you've got,

okay, you've got the Bill Gates thing, which doesn't even appear to be from Epstein. It appears to be for Boris. And remember Boris, the science advisor, wanted Gates to pay for like a bigger apartment for him in New York. It appeared to be part of him threatening Gates to get something that Boris wanted.

So maybe Epstein was advising him on it. But I mean to have a – the other thing I'm struck by these emails, Joe, is that there are so many different attorneys, people at the FBI, people in the Eastern District, the Southern District, the Florida Southern District. They would all have to be in on it. And I'm skeptical because FBI-

Why would they all have to be in on it?

Well, because they would be there in these, I mean, they're in this, they're reviewing the information. They're trying to bring, you know, they're trying to bring action against them.

Like- system. Well, it depends on who are the powerful people that are implicated and what kind of influence they have over what gets released and what doesn't get released. Clearly names were redacted that are powerful people that are not victims. So that shows you right there that there's some influence.

But there's a reason to do that. Why? Because they're not guilty.

Okay. What about the one where the guy says, where Epstein says, I like the torture video.

He probably did.

Someone did find the torture video.

Why would you redact the name of the person who sent you a torture video if you're not trying to protect a powerful person?

Yeah, that's the Sultan. Is that right?

OK. But that was someone had to just figure that out. I mean, the redactions are sloppy. No, no, no. That's evidence that you're trying to protect a powerful person.

Well, but they didn't though in a lot of cases.

But they did right there.

Yeah, I mean, the redactions, they were making them. I mean, it was like, my understanding is that there was- But they rejected a lot of powerful people's names. Like we're in the midst, I mean, literally the people that are being canceled for this, like Peter Atiyah, these people are like victims of a, we're in the middle of a complete, you know, you know, moral panic. I mean, we're now, it's like Me Too version two.

I mean, people are having to leave boards. I mean, look, these are people I don't like. I'll just be honest. Like, part of me hesitated like Bill Gates. I don't care about Sarah Ferguson. You know, I didn't say anything. Then they came for Peter Atiyah. You know, it's a little bit like, like Peter Atiyah, like, like he didn't do anything wrong. And he just like lost his job with CBS. And, you

know, he's sort of now they're under this cloud and people go, oh, but he was in the hospital and his wife was, or he was with Abyssinian, his wife was in the hospital. We don't, like, what are we doing here? Like, we're getting involved in Peter Atiyah's, like, personal life, and so, but he has to get fired for that? I mean, it's gone way too far. Sarah Ferguson had to step down even though she, you know, she said, you know, like, these people,

I don't see so they're not guilty of crime. I don't yeah, they're not Yeah, they're not like they were like they were all making a big deal out of like well So first of all, let me just say I'm glad they released the file tighten that thing down I think they keep moving that around every time you do it bumps tick I I

I think like, you know, they were I mean, I'm glad the files were released. There was definitely problems with the redactions. There was also a case where the members of Congress were trying to get stuff redacted. Names got redacted of people that, like I know in one case, there were people that were getting licenses for guns

that had nothing to do with Epstein on a list. In another case, other people's names were revealed who were not guilty of anything. So that's why you protect those people. I think we, you go, everybody, the logic right now is that anybody who had any interaction with Epstein had to have known of all the abuse he was doing and are somehow responsible for it.

I think that's not right.

Okay, but a lot of these people were hanging out with him and doing business with him after he was arrested. So this is all post 2008 and it was very public.

Okay, so then what is our view of people that do the crime and serve the time? I mean, the left, the left view has been that-

Stop right there. He didn't serve any time. He served a year. He did not go to jail for a year. You know, he did house arrest. It was a very sweetheart deal.

And the prosecutor, was it the prosecuting attorney or whoever it was, was told that he was intelligence.

And this is why they were given the straight character. I looked into that. Yeah? Yeah, we looked into that one and that was heard secondhand. So we don't even, that wasn't even heard from Acosta directly. Someone said that they heard Acosta say that and they told the Vicki Ward and I believe

her source is anonymous. So that's weak. And, you know, Mike, I mean, when Mike Benz was in here and Mike has done a deep dive of this, he's sort of like, look, at best you get Epstein tied up with intelligence with the Iran-Contra stuff. But he wasn't, I mean, there's two things to see here. With his relationship with the intelligence community, It was the, you know, the head

of state.

He said he killed Cold Fusion.

I mean.

He said he killed Pons, his work on Cold Fusion.

I mean, I don't know. Did he? I mean, Cold Fusion, they keep doing it, right?

No, they haven't done it yet.

Well, I know Carl Pace, the founder, the brother of the-

But he stated that he killed cold fusion research.

Because he cut off funding for it?

Yeah.

Well, but there was-

He manipulated people.

I don't know that. He said he killed it. Why would he kill it?

Because it didn't work.

Or maybe it did work and it's problematic that it does work because it kills all these people that all this other money in various energy modalities

I just I mean I go fusion is like a whole I mean the idea that we have a secret that we've secretly tapped cold fusion and are hiding it for some or that he was

On the way to breaking through to cold fusion and then they killed all of his research or but why you don't think that could Be done because there's so many people that have money and all these other types of energy.

I just don't buy that you could, first of all, that technology is super difficult. To get nuclear fission was this enormous undertaking, huge numbers of people. The cold fusion stuff was always, the cold fusion stuff is really fringe.

I mean, it was like, we're gonna be in the lab and doing cold, you know. But if you're not a physicist, so how do you know that? Well, I mean, I interview a lot of physicists and talk about it. I mean, the big fusion projects are incredibly difficult. They keep announcing advances in them. They can't get them.

Cold fusion is not even considered a mainstream fusion project. So to assume that there's some secret and I just think this is why I have a problem with the whole reverse engineering thing is I just kind of go you'd have to have So many people working on and covering up for such a long time. I don't know how you get away with that

well, what if he was on the verge of a breakthrough but this guy steps in and stops funding and Put some leverage on the university clearly he had dirt on a bunch of people that are at high levels of many universities That's why a bunch of these guys had to step down. Didn't the head of Harvard step down?

I think it's exaggerating.

Didn't the head of Harvard step down?

Because of him?

Wasn't there a connection between Jeffrey Epstein?

Well, you mean Larry Summers, you mean? Yeah. Well, Larry Summers was, you know, he had to step down as professor. And I say this, look, I say this genuinely as someone that is not a Larry Summers fan. I don't think, I think it's ugly what he did. It's terrible. He was trying to get advice from Larry Summers

about how to bed a Chinese economist and they were gross in their emails and it's terrible. But I don't think that you lose a job at Harvard over that. I don't think that Peter Thiel should lose his job at CBS over that. We've got, that's, we're in Me Too territory. I understand and I see what you're saying. But what I'm saying is clearly he had influence

over some very high and powerful people at universities.

He also exaggerated his influence. Like he took a lot of credit for Santa Fe Institute, which was a lot of other people. I mean he was really, he's really interesting and smart. Like he gave a thing to Bannon, talking to Bannon about it. That was really interesting.

But he was also – Steve Pinker talked about him as a kibitzer, like a – kind of a bullshitter. And he was – like we also saw in the files, I think it really overlooked. We saw how he made his money. Like he needed to get the Roths – he needed to get a deal with the Department of Justice for his client, Ari DeRoss Child. He hires Catherine Rumler, who was Obama's White House chief counsel,

and she goes and makes a deal at the Department of Justice, $45 million fine for the Ross Childs, 10 million for Catherine Rumler, 25 million for Jeffrey Epstein. Everyone's like, where did his money come from doing deals like that?

Like you realize, I mean, one of the things, Succession actually had a little subplot about it. Like there's a few people in the world that do these crazy high level deals, like often like mergers and acquisitions, that have these obscene fees because they're taking some tiny percentage.

Epstein was operating, I think the thing we didn't realize is that when you read the files, is the levels at which Epstein was operating. I mean, his social and emotional intelligence is just off the charts, which is often rare among somebody

that's that good analytically, someone that really understands like investments in the economy to be so, and he was a master manipulator. So I don't think it's, I don't think it's fair to say to people,

you had an association with him after he was convicted of this crime. Rich guys, look, we have a totally separate system of justice for rich people. I think we've known that for a really long time. It's terrible, I condemn it.

We should find solutions to it. That's what Epstein used to get out of it. I don't see any evidence that intelligence helped him. You know, we got other problems. The victims, Virginia Jafri, she claimed that she had sex with Dershowitz. She then goes, oh, I was wrong about that.

I mean, there's a lot of those victim testimonials that are untrustworthy. So you get yourself in a situation where you start to put like-

Some of them were probably prostitutes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's the other one is we I did some reporting where we Helped to we found a 14 year old girl who has been trafficked on the streets She turned 15 in the process of us reporting on it You know, we're covering these PIs they get the police involved the police go get her, you know, she's orphaned She goes and backs and live with her aunt She's back on the street voluntarily back on the street. Nobody wants to talk about it. It's like you go rescue people and they're in that world. So these situations are much more complex than,

I think the final thing on Epstein that kind of made me question it is that I, like a lot of other people, had assumed that someone murdered him. But you start looking at the evidence for that, look, maybe there are more will come out.

And even this last round, last few days, are some new things that people point to. But they actually are not actually evidence of it. They said, Epstein's brother's attorney, or Epstein's brother's examiner said that he broke his hyoid bone. And the hyoid bone is not usually

broken in hangings, only in strangulations. Actually, it is broken in hangings, particularly for older people.

Broken in three places.

Yeah and that's like-

And it's low on his neck.

Yeah and that happens.

Also the lady who was the guard deposited money into her account.

I saw that. But that doesn't, what does that mean?

Okay. In other words there's some money. She also googled his name before he died.

All that's totally-

Okay. before he died. She's got a, all that's totally, it's like, let me scooby-doo it. Why are you dismissing, I don't understand why you're dismissing this. Because if you're going to pay- I'm not dismissing it, I'm saying- But hold on, you are. But hold on, you are. Because if you do have a guard, and all of a sudden this guard acquires several payments,

she made several deposits. days before he died. And then the cameras are cut. Okay. And then they mysteriously don't pay attention to the cell of one of the most important defendants of any case, any gigantic public case involving enormously famous public figures. And then this guy hangs himself while he's on suicide watch?

Now remember, he tried to commit suicide.

I understand, but why are you not letting me finish what I'm saying? Because that alone is weird. That alone is weird. That the cameras are cut, that there's no video of it. The whole thing is weird. You don't think it's weird?

Well, I think-

You don't think it's weird that this guy,

he just finds a way to hang himself in this cage? I thought I had that same story. I was like the cameras are cut. The security guards are asleep All those things are true. All those things are true It's also true that the cameras went out a long time before that night. It didn't just go out that night before Security guards fall asleep at night all the time he

Attempted suicide. I believe 18 days before 18 days before he said that his roommate tried to kill him. Did you know that? Do you know his roommate was a cop that had killed four people in contract killings his cop? Roommate his cellmate was a murderer He was a guy who was a drug-dealing cop who had killed four people in Contract killings and that was his fucking jailmate and 18 days before he said that guy tried to kill him But he said that's his is there any look at that guy? Yeah, that is his fucking jailmate and 18 days before he said that guy tried to kill him But he said that's his there any look at that guy. Yeah, that is his fucking cellmate

Why would you put a guy who's one of the most high-profile? Defendants in any case ever in a cell with a hired killer who's a giant gorilla like this huge fucking

Jacked Italian guy, but he wasn't in the cell with him that night He was by himself in the cell that night. He was the guy who 18 days before Epstein said tried to kill him. But Epstein tried to kill himself. I don't think there's any doubt about that, right? I don't know if there's, I don't, I've never seen him say it,

but I do know that he said that guy tried to kill him and they found him unresponsive 18 days before. He said that guy tried to kill him.

And couldn't he have lied about that?

That guy was trying to get money.

Couldn't he have lied about that?

Video outside sell during Jeffrey Epstein's first suicide attempt no longer exists. How weird. Yeah, why would he lie about that?

He's in jail.

Because he doesn't want to extort him. Yeah. He's already saying this guy's trying to get money from him. And this guy is a known killer. He's killed four people in contract killings. How did you not know about that?

I will say it's possible.

Hold on.

How did you not know about that?

I did know about that.

You knew about the guy being a contract killer that was a cellmate at the night of his death, right? He that was one of the mistakes they made is that because he was on supposed to be on suicide watch He was supposed to have a cellmate didn't have a cellmate

I think that look I don't know but 18 days before he did have a cellmate 18 days before he said that guy tried to Kill him but 18 days before he tried to commit suicide. That's my understanding. I don't know if that's true. I don't know why they would put him in jail with a contract killer. Well, I mean, how many who's in that jail? Aren't the people in that jail pretty rough? His cellmate is a contract killer. Why would he be in a cell with a cop who's a contract

killer? I mean, aren't there a lot of bad guys in that?

The night Jeffrey Epstein claimed his cellmate tried to kill him. New documents revealed Jeffrey Epstein claimed his cellmate tried to kill him in an incident before his death. Yeah, but we don't know if that's true. Why are you dismissing it?

I'm not dismissing it, Joe. Maybe more evidence will come out. I'm just saying if you look

at the evidence we have.

But you're looking to dismiss it.

No, I'm saying I was confident it was a homicide and now I'm not. Were you aware of this? Yeah, of course, all that stuff. You were aware that he tried to kill her? Yeah, of course. You were aware that he said that? Yeah, I was aware that he said that.

Well, how come you never brought it up before? You seemed shocked when I brought it up.

Well, because my understanding is it was a suicide attempt 18 days before. Okay, but if he said this guy tried to kill him 18 days before. Why didn't you take that into consideration? No, it is. I mean, I'm just saying that was all that was part of... But it doesn't seem like you took it into consideration at all and you're looking to dismiss it. I didn't. No, my view earlier was that it was a homicide because the hyoid bone doesn't break when you have hangings. He said he didn't want to commit suicide. The video went out. the security guards are asleep. I mean, there

was a huge investigation of this by the inspector general. So the number of people that would have had to been involved in this conspiracy and cover-up is very large. And it's a large number of people who are in this job to be do-gooders. And so I'm very – I mean, that's – look, maybe there will –

Trevor Burrus Okay. Stop right there. Steven Horwitz So maybe there was some evidence that will come out. They're not in the job to be do-gooders. Sometimes they're in the job to be do-gooders. Sometimes they're influenced by very powerful figures that want a particular result. Does that not happen?

But we underestimate-

But hold on a second. Does that not happen in the real world? It does, right? And wouldn't you imagine if you're dealing with multiple billionaires that may be compromised by the evidence that this guy's gonna relay in a trial, that that would be one of the times that they would want to exert that kind of influence?

It's possible. And like I said, in our piece we wrote, it's possible. But I think at this point we don't know. I don't think we have the evidence either way. And that's for me, that's the change. from I think it was a homicide to now I don't know. I didn't understand that he committed suicide 18 days before.

No, no, no. He didn't commit suicide 18 days before. His cellmate tried to kill him 18 days before.

That's what he said, right?

They found him unresponsive. He said, my cellmate tried to kill me.

Yeah, but how do we know that? Why would we think he's trying to kill you?

Okay, and then was it reported that it was an attempted suicide to try to dismiss the fact that his cellmate was trying to kill him? Because they wanted his cellmate to kill him? We don't know. But you can't dismiss that.

The psychologists thought he was suicidal. They, you know, I think, my understanding, he could have lied about the room. He didn't want to have a roommate. That's like why, and they didn't have a roommate and he was killed.

Why would you want to have a roommate who was a fucking contract killer? Who's a sociopathic cop who killed four guys.

But if you're a contract killer and you're in Epstein's cell, why would you want Epstein to die in your cell?

Because you want to kill him because people are going to give you like extra cigarettes at the commissary. Do we have any evidence? No, no, but who fucking know is a guy who already kills people and he's in jail forever He's gonna be in jail forever So for that guy you say will you kill that guy for me like that? It's not even much of a stretch

It's not much of a stretch that Epstein would have killed himself

It's not much of a stress that that guy killed him either if that if he's telling the truth that there was a report 18 days before that that guy tried to kill him.

We just don't know. I mean, that's my view is we don't know.

Well, we certainly don't know, but I don't understand why you would want to make the conclusion that he tried to kill himself.

It's not the conclusion.

And that this guy, who's a contract killer, was not actually trying to kill him when he I mean, please don't misrepresent. I'm saying I don't know. And the change for me is going from really looking like a homicide to really not knowing, because there's some evidence that I had not considered

before that.

Right. You know, the guy who did the autopsy was the guy from that autopsy show on HBO, who, his name is Michael Badden, and he was famous for-

The official autopsy. No, no, no the one his brother authorized because he didn't think he's a Nazi though. He's a medical examiner He's a medical exam. He's also famous for he's also paid

Psych conducted a post suicide watch report Epstein denied suicidality And stated I have no interest in killing myself and that it would be crazy to take his life All the though he was depressed and unhappy about his current legal situation, he was told he will remain on psychological observation in the near term."

He said, look, and you can see even there, he says he didn't recall that he got the marks on his neck, so he didn't blame that on...

But no, no, no, that's here, but the other details from the other report said that he complained that the guy tried to kill himself, did the his cellmate rather tried to kill him Can you go back? Okay, we can find that again, but I do I