Dave Smith: “Israel’s Goals Predict U.S. Wars Better Than Trump’s Instincts”

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

What do you see as a relationship between the Jewish lobby and the military-industrial complex? Israel is an expansionist state. War is big business. Behind this door is forever war. There's huge money to be made here. and and that's what we've been pursuing this whole time.

If someone wanted to predict Trump's next move in the Middle East, what do you think is the most important variable that they should be tracking? Is it Israel's goals or is it something else? Essentially the neoconservatives and the Lood uh party and the Israel lobby more broadly speaking for at least 30 years they're openly their goal has been to remake the Middle East like since the Clean Break strategy their goal was like no we're not doing Oslo we're not doing a two-state solution we're going to remake the surrounding Arab uh nations um not just Arab nations but you know Persian the Middle East northern Africa and we're going to remake them and take down the ones that are are supporting the Palestinian resistance or supporting Hezbollah. And Donald Trump's goal was to get out of stupid regime change wars in the Middle East. And both of them were very explicit about what their goals were. And yet here we find ourselves in uh a regime change war, a regime collapse war that is clearly not in America's interest, clearly not in the region's interest, but it sure did allow Israel to take southern Lebanon in the last few weeks. And so it seems to me that yeah, what the lobby wants, what the Israeli government wants seems to have at least for the last 30 years been the best predictor of the out of outcomes.

But look, there's other things in there, too. I mean, look, the fact is part of the reason why the um the neoconservatives, cuz you know, if you remember, I think we might have even talked about this last time I was on, but the neoconservatives, I mean, the self-identified neoconservatives from the Reagan uh uh Bush senior and George W. Bush administration, they weren't old money guys. They they weren't guys from the Council on Foreign Relations. They weren't the the Rockefellers guys. They they weren't in that world at all. They were middle class kids who went to city college in in New York City. Like they, you know, but they made their relationships with the military-industrial complex on their own. And so, of course, war is big business. And, you know, whenever you get on the side of that, you're always going to be, you know, sailing with the wind at your back in in DC.

Okay. And how do you see the relationship being between the Jewish lobby, which we're probably going to have to take a second to define, but we'll get to that in a minute. What do you see as a relationship between the Jewish lobby and the military-industrial complex? Well, I mean, you could say, so if you look at like um uh you know, like the guys like Bill Crystal, the the neoconservatives who always had like a bunch of different think tanks in Washington DC. I mean, you can go look at who funds them. This is all public information. It's like all the weapons companies up and down funding the they just happen to think like oh yeah these neoconservatives who want to fight seven wars have some really good arguments to make or whatever or like maybe there's a little bit of um uh perverse incentive structure there. Um, but so I think that look in general in Washington DC if you're advocating that we fight a whole bunch of wars you're going to find weapons companies that are quite happy to to fund your endeavors. Um, and I think that's true that if you're advocating for say vaccine mandates, you're going to find a lot of big pharmaceutical companies who want to support uh what you're doing. So to me, I mean, I I think there obviously there's always like ideological components to these things, but I really do think that business is what runs the world at the end of the day and that there's huge money to be made here. You know this uh if you look at you know whatever the numbers are like since the fall of the Soviet Union we spent like over 20 trillion dollars on on defense and empire and wars of aggression you know there's trillions of dollars that people are making off of that it's an unreal amount of money I mean it's literally it makes Elon Musk look poor how much money has been you know uh exchanged around in Washington DC so you know I think all of that's all of these things are components it's hard to exactly say how much each factor is.

But also, one of the things that's kind of unique about Donald Trump is that the guy just has no filter at all, unlike all previous presidents. Then, and that's a gift and a curse. You know, there's things about that that are nice and there's things about that that are really terrible. But, you know, I mean, look, if somebody had just said to you like, "The Adlessons give the president hundreds of millions of dollars and all they care about is Israel and they love Israel more than they love America." And every day they'd go demand things on behalf of of Israel because that's who they identify with. You know, you cannot these these billionaire Jews living in America are actually essentially Israeli spies. You'd be like, "Ah, what was that?" Like a Nick Fuentes, you know, clip or something that went viral. Like, no, that was the president of the United States of America, the one who's doing it right now, just openly says this. Just openly acknowledges that. So then it's kind of hard to like, you know, and people still go like, "Oh, you're blaming the Israel lobby for everything." You're like, "What?" I mean, I don't know. The guy who's doing it is saying in his own words that that's what's going on here.

It's interesting. So here's why this feels important enough to like really press down the path. So um what you just said as part of it is there's a whole bunch of influences. Hard to know which one is the leading one that if we just made that statement I'd be like I agree wholeheartedly. Um you also said that we have um economics basically runs the world or money runs the world. Can't remember what exact word you used, but basically like, hey, money is the real player here. Uh, if you just said that, I would agree totally because that's my punchline is if you want to understand what's happening right now, there's only two things you need to understand. And that is Trump wants to end up on Mount Rushmore completely unironically, like he wants to be the fifth head carved into Mount Rushmore. And then he's going to get there by outpacing the um inflationary spiral that we're in because nobody, not Republicans, not Democrats, nobody is going to reduce the budget.

So for me, what I'll be attempting to do is basically sharpen that idea or get rid of it based on our time together because I think you're super insightful on this stuff. But the where I come down is when I look at the way that that every time the world breaks economically, there's a pogrom. Now, is it one for one? Maybe it's not quite one for one, but woo buddy, it gets real close. And so I look at that and I go, okay, why when economics starts to fall apart do people turn against the Jews? and so reliably throughout history. Now, I've got my explanation which I'll speedrun um and then I want to bring it back to this moment in America and how we begin teasing out, okay, there's all these influences, but what are the ones that we really need to pay attention to? So, the speedrun for me as to why Jews get themselves in trouble historically, reliably over and over and over. Um, I do subscribe to the It just really makes a lot of sense if Ashkenazi Jews have a slightly higher IQ than the average. That certainly makes my following argument that much easier to swallow. So, I do subscribe to that. And then if you're smart, one of the first things you realize is that economics is basically the whole game. And so if you can go in and um if you're trying to make things better for you, your family, and you're just being shrewd, I I'm not even I won't even go all the way to selfish. You're just being wise, uh, you're going to master economics. I would say that to me, I would say that to you. I'd say it to anybody who will listen to me. Go get good at finance. Cool. So they put themselves at the center of that. You've talked very eloquently about the whole idea of usury. It's like if American Christians or Christians in general don't believe that they can charge interest, but you have a group over here that's like, "Yeah, why wouldn't you? You facilitate modern economics, which has given us unbelievable prosperity. So, it's a great idea. No matter how angry you get about the rates that they charge or whatever, like it is a modern miracle that somebody figured out debt, that they figured out interest. Absolutely incredible. But when you run that system for too long, it tends to bump into weaknesses and you're ultimately going to get a K-shaped economy as we have seen over and over and over certainly for the last 500 plus years. And so at that moment when that breaks down and people feel like they're being held down by bankers, if you look up and you go, "Oh, the bankers are all Jewish." Then you confuse a K-shaped economy which as we are learning now can be done by Jew or Gentile alike and they are conflating two things which are a K-shaped economy is devastating and it's killed every empire that's ever been foolish enough to create one and because Jewish people are so good at identifying like where the positions of power actually are and they go there and they are tremendously successful then we go oh it must be their fault. And that is from where I'm sitting as somebody who's really come to all of this late. I came up as an entrepreneur. That's my whole background. And so getting into the economics of it all, the political nature of it all has been very um I've had to orient and build a new map. So I'm looking at that going, hold on. I can feel this racing now towards anti-semitism. people are no longer making contact with the economic arguments and they're going to something that feels like conspiracy and that's where it begins to break down. And so while the initial assumption from where I'm sitting is maybe only 7° off, you start taking that down the road far enough and it goes from um pro-Israel Americans, which is how I'll map the Jewish diaspora here in the US, are exceedingly good at being a lobbying organization and finding the alignment with American citizens. and they're now conflating that with the conspiracy of Jews rule the world. And I worry that then just goes into this self-fulfilling prophecy of Jews are bad, got to get rid of them, and we end up back in a super dark place.

You know, I think a lot of um a lot of the almost like the solution to all of this is individualism rather than collectivism. And you know even when you talk about like say the Jewish diaspora in the United States of America, the fact is that I I mean I saw one poll uh that recently where it was like I think it was a super majority of Jewish people in America were against this war. Jewish people I know uh for a fact in America were I believe the biggest critic like as a demographic the most against the Iraq war. like they were like 10 points higher against the Iraq war than they than the general population was. And so already you say like hey look if you're like the majority of now this might be cuz a lot of them are are leftists and I'm not a leftist but the point is they're not on board with Netanyahu in the Israel lobby's game here. that certainly the idea that like like Barry Horowitz, the Jewish accountant down the street, has anything to do with any of this is just kind of silly. And that is just like uh the baseline of why bigotry always gets it wrong. Like even if it is true that whatever like if black people commit a higher percentage of violent crime than Asian people, that doesn't mean that like this guy Earl, some black guy down the street has anything to do with that. He might be the most peaceful person in his neighborhood. I think there's no question that Ashkenazi Jews are like a standard deviation IQ higher than the the general uh um than than well I guess it depends on what group you're comparing them to, but as many people have pointed out, right? Even just like one standard deviation on the average IQ means that at the far end of geniuses, you're going to produce a lot more geniuses than you otherwise would. So that's an aspect of it too. Also, it is undeniably true. I think this is um less true in my generation, but it was certainly true of my father's generation that there's a lot of uh you know, nepotism or whatever you might call it. And I I think some of that is somewhat understandable. you know, if you're if you identify with a group who's kind of been persecuted and beat up on, and particularly post World War II, I think there was a sense amongst Jews that like, hey, if you can help out another Jew, you do that cuz no one else is going to is going to do that. So that's kind of on you. Um, and then of course there were just cultural forces like Jews focus a lot on intellectualism and family and hard work. And I think all of these things are great and all are all part of the reason why Jews get ahead. Also to your point, you know, I heard um uh Nicholas Wade, who's uh he he wrote this book, very interesting book that I read like 20 years ago. Uh it was called uh Before the Dawn or Beyond the Dawn. Anyway, Nicholas Wade, if you don't know, he was the New York Times science editor and he was the editor of of Nature for a while. Very accredited uh guy who got totally um drummed out of polite society because he told the truth about lockdowns. Um but anyway, but he wrote this book and he basically argued in it. There was one chapter on it where he was basically saying for 900 years only Jews were allowed to lend at interest and that there's actually like an evolutionary argument that that's a long enough period of time for there to actually like Jews basically evolved to be better at finance. I don't know this is a little bit above my pay grade but just saying a real a real accredited smart scientist did make that argument and that that might be true. Now, I would argue, and maybe we don't have time to get into all of this, but yeah, like lending at interest isn't just important. It's the only way to have anything resembling a modern economy. However, once you get into central banking and using the power of the state to shield to to, you know, give banks essentially government-like powers, then it becomes a thing that leads to that K-shaped economy that you're talking about and becomes exploit, you know, exploitative by nature. Um, now that being said, all of that is true and also it's true that the Israeli intelligence and the is Israeli government and the Israel lobby all kind of use a lot of those dynamics. So they use the fact that there were historically pogroms against Jews for really messed up unjustifiable reasons like you know there's a virus going through town and we blame the Jews for the virus or something like that. And these are things that did happen to real people. That being said, we'll get back to the show in a second, but first, let's talk about the thing your business just can't survive without. I go live three days a week at 7:00 a.m. And every single morning, you guys show up. You're there ready. And if my connection drops in the middle of that live stream, the moment's gone forever. You do not get a second chance with live content. When you're a digital media company, your internet isn't a utility. It's your entire operation. Every live stream, every interview, every piece of content flows through that connection. One drop and I lose you. I lose the momentum and I lose the trust that I've spent years building with this community. And I know a lot of you are in the same position. Your business depends on staying connected. That's why I trust AT&T Business. They're built for business owners who cannot afford downtime, reliable connectivity, simple setup, and the kind of dependability that helps you stop worrying about your infrastructure and start focusing on your people. Impact Theory is powered by AT&T Business, built to work. Get AT&T business at business.att.com. And now, let's get back to the show. If you look at some of those polls where it really is like amazing how much support for Israel has collapsed, it's been since the destruction of Gaza. And so I just do think it becomes a very convenient excuse for a lot of pro-Israel people to say that um oh this is just like all those other pogroms like it has nothing to do with the genocide in 4K that we you you are forced against your will to fund and watch like that. I mean, that seems to overwhelmingly be the obvious like, you know, prime driver of what's at least happened over the last couple of years. And then there's also just a lot of other factors. Like, look, this is I'm I'm not a person who like blames the Jews for everything. And I've always been a guy who's like, "No, what happens is essentially America created a world empire. We created a central bank and an income tax and a regulatory state and a military-industrial complex and this huge mess. And it was it was ripe to be taken over by someone some everyone's always jockeying for position. I mean, when the government when you have a government that spends over $7 trillion every year, it's the biggest organization in the history of the world. Of course, everybody's going to be competing over who gets the levers of power there. Now, Israel, honestly, Israel was a creation of Europe. It was a creation of um European empires and big bankers and all of that. But that doesn't mean there weren't some people who really ideologically believed in it. And so, again, you have all of these things going on at once. And then the the other fact is just that in this game, which Israel did not invent, Israel was only created in 1948. you know th this has been going on for a very long time. But in this game of intelligence agencies and central banks and all types of, you know, the Epstein class, whatever exactly all of that is. Um, you know, I do think that the Mossad had a tremendous advantage that other intelligence agencies would have exploited if they had had that advantage. But you you had uh a diaspora of Jews, like not a ton of Jews, but there's some in like all these different places. And the collective self-identity of Jewish people was that like look, they tried to exterminate us in World War II. That is why we have Israel. Israel is the not but for them, we would be in another Holocaust. This is something that people really genuinely believe. And I think that made it very easy for Mossad. I mean, imagine if anyone else, imagine if British intelligence or American intelligence had an advantage like that. Do you think we, you know, like if there were a bunch of Americans in Iran right now who it was that easy for the CIA to just call up and go, "Hey, you want to serve your country? You know, you want to help your people? You think we wouldn't be taking advantage of that?" And so I I think this is, you know, all of this is kind of part of the very complicated story of how we got here. Um, and I'll just say real quickly to to your point before, right? Like there are if you look at like uh like someone like John Rawls or um or uh Keynes, right? Uh John Maynard Keynes there, these were intellectuals who made arguments. I would say both very flawed arguments, but they were intellectuals who made arguments. And then there were real people who really agree with them and read their books and were persuaded by them and believe in this thing. But that's not why they took over politics. You know what I mean? Like it's not like it's not like the government was sitting there and going, you know, we've weighed the arguments of F.A. Hayek versus John Maynard Keynes and we are more persuaded by Keynesian econ. It's just that well Keynesian economics says the government gets a lot more power and F.A. Hayek economics says they get like basically no power. So obviously the government's like, "Hey, we like this guy." So then there's this thing where there are ideologues, there are people who believe in things, but then they're also used in a way that it's like like I don't believe that Lockheed Martin is really committed to greater Israel. You know what I'm saying? Like I don't think that's part of their thinking. It's just like, oh, they like those guys cuz those guys say we should have a $1.5 trillion defense budget next year. Uh or at least they don't call it that anymore. A war budget, which is a better term for it. But anyway, so if that makes sense, I think there's all of these things are happening at once.

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

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

Yes. Well, yeah. I mean, we'd all be interested to be at that dinner. Let's get real. Whoever you agree with. Um, but this this was a huge controversy. Trump had to come out and denounce Fuentes. I didn't know who he was. He just ended up here. Blah blah blah. Laura Loomer has been working with the Trump campaign this whole time. And there's just no type like now there might be some people like me who point that out but there's no type of like the institutional pressure like he doesn't have to come out and go yo I'm so sorry that I have this clear anti-Muslim bigot working for me I and and the thing is she's so much worse than Fuentes like what she says about Muslims is so much worse than what he says about Jews and it's just accept I've done debates where people have argued to me on more than one occasion including Laura Loomer have argued to me that Palestinians don't have rights.

They just straight up don't have rights.

Or what?

No, like there's no innocence. There's no in uh one of them was an objectivist actor, uh he argued that um because Hamas is the government there and because Hamas rejects the idea of natural rights, therefore the people there don't have natural rights. And Laura Loomer argued that there's no innocence there because Islam is so perverted. It's such a perverted belief system that you're already an aggressor just by believing in it. This is like the actual Now, I'm just saying and I know maybe you could find some crazy neo-Nazis on Twitter who would say the same thing about Jewish people. But I've never heard anyone even the people and I know some of the guys who are in kind of what would be considered that camp. I've never heard any of them say anything like that. Like Jews just don't have rights or sort of something like that. Um, so anyway, I just I guess yeah, I don't like any of it. I don't like any of the the racialism or the the bigotry, any of that stuff. There might be some anti-Jewish bigotry, but also like broadly speaking, Jews are doing okay. We're kind of fine. Um, whereas like the anti-Muslim bigotry is done at a time where Muslims are being slaughtered in huge numbers. And so I guess maybe I am a little bit more sensitive to that. Uh, even though I'm Jewish, but yeah, I do I do agree with you that like I think we would all be better off if man if people were as interested in talking about sound economics as they were in racialism. We'd live in a better world, I believe. But that's not the world we live in. We'll be right back to the show, but first, let's talk about why most e-commerce businesses never even get off the ground. It's often not the product, it's everything else. It's building a storefront that actually looks credible, writing product descriptions, getting your photography right, running email campaigns, managing inventory, processing returns, all of that stuff. It's not one job, it's like six. 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And so now you spiral into madness. And this is why people can't ever really get a hold of it. They're just too busy. They've got too much going on. They're being abused by the economic system so lavishly that they just can't even pick their head up long enough to figure out all the nuance. Now, the one thing though that I I do worry that you and I might be two ships passing in the night on is um all of the uh bigotry that you're talking about, whether it's Jews, Muslims, white people, all of that. One, I agree with you. Um, and at the same time, at least for the drum that I'm trying to bang, is a non-sequitur. What I worry about is that there there is a and I I've avoided using this phrase up until now because I don't I don't mean to be derogatory, but there's like conspiracy brain rot that people fall into and it becomes this groove that history has shown us people will slide into that groove and it has really horrific consequences. And that could be Jews. They are certainly not the only people that have been persecuted throughout history. I mean, right now you can make an argument that Christians are being persecuted um in the in other parts of the world. And so it's like, yep, all of those things are real. What I'm specifically trying to push against is as I So I get routinely called by my own community, by the way, uh as oh, he's just paid for by AIPAC. And I'm like, what's happening right now? So, uh, I'm just like, wait, hold on. Yes, Israel lobby very effective. And we can talk about mechanisms. That's my whole thing. What's the mechanism? I can walk you through the mechanisms of exactly what they're doing, how they're doing it. I did the speedrun earlier, so I won't repeat, but it's like that's a knowable thing and I get why people are worried about it. What I'm saying is don't let it become this greased chute by which you then interpret everything that's happening through the lens of America is a puppet to Israel. America is a puppet to Israel is the thing I'm pushing back on. That's the part that I'm like, hold on. There are times where we're

aligned. There's times where Israel is trying to pull us in a direction. Some leaders may be more, um, like easier to pull in that direction. So, even think of somebody like Mike Huckabee, who had me clutching my pearls hard when he was like, "Well, God is just cool with, uh, Israel taking all of basically the Middle East." And I was like, "What?" So, any as a representative of America, Mike Huckabee, you can't say that. Like, if you would like to go privately believe that and talk about it in confession, like that's your thing.

Uh, so that was wild. So somebody like him, it's going to be very easy. Is if he were to get more and more powerful, you can understand how that's going to the them lobbying will meet somebody who already believes it and now they're really going to run at pace. And so what I'm saying is, I really want people to understand Mike Huckabee for his own reasons, almost certainly pertaining to Christianity. He's like primed to believe it. And so getting people to understand that the, the low resolution is Israel just throws around a bunch of money, blackmail, they got you America puppets and we just do it. I'm like, okay, that's that's going to get you to think poorly through the situation. So, we, we've established that stuff. So anyway, I, I will leave that there. If you want the final word on that topic, I'm specifically just trying to get people to understand America's not a puppet of Israel.

I, I certainly agree with you that I think that if you have any of these kind of like black and white, um, kind of simple narratives, uh, they're going to lead you into mistakes. Um, because the world isn't simple like that and it's very complex. And even between, you know, it was very interesting the two interviews on Tucker, but with Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz. You can see now again, this is just my, uh, you know, my kind of best guess as to how I think about these guys speculating about their own motives, but to me, it seems like Huckabee is a true believer in this craziness. The idea that God gave Iraq to Netanyahu or something like that. Um, Ted Cruz, I don't think believes that at all. I think Ted Cruz has just decided that like this is the track in Washington that I'm going to take and this will help me for the rest of my political career to be like, I am apex guy. I am for, you know. And so there's and then again, they're both not Jews. They're both Christians. And so again, it's it's just more complicated than any of that. But I, I will say that and and to some degree, right, like like I was talking about the kind of tribalism being hardwired into our DNA. Um, but there is something where however exactly we got here, we are in a place where you actually do have a US ambassador to Israel whose deeply held view is that God has this relationship with Israel. And therefore, man, that's more important than your own national views of anything. Cuz if you're saying God believes it, well, there's no one above that in Mike Huckabee's hierarchy of values, right? And so, and you have things like Tammy Bruce saying that Israel is the greatest country in the world. We're number two. Ted Cruz saying he ran for Senate to be the greatest defender of Israel. And anyway, our government, these are just examples I'm pulling out. We could do a whole show on examples like this. Our government is permeated by people who have this type of loyalty to a foreign government and then we've also fought several wars that are not in America's interest and certainly those people who have that view about Israel have strong feelings about fighting these wars and it's not unrelated to how they feel about Israel and so I would just say that look, just having that situation is like intolerable to most humans and understandably so. I mean, if if there was any type of loyalty to any other government like this that was pervasive in our own government, we would all stand up and go like, "Hey, look, like that's great if you are from Sweden or you, I don't know, are not from Sweden, but have some biblical connection to them, but you can start making US policy based on what's best for the Swedes, cuz that's just too crazy."

Um, and then the only other thing that I would add in there is to just go like look in the same way the same dynamic is going on with Israel that goes on in all uh countries under that live under governments which are all of them for the most part. Um, is that this isn't it's not about what's in Israel's interest. It's about what's in powerful people in Israel's interest. And in the same way, you know, the basic public choice theory, but in the same way that we the same dynamic we have here. It's not like the DC class makes decisions based on what's best for the American people. And in some cases, powerful people don't even make decisions based off what's best for powerful people. They make decisions based off what's best for them. Think about Joe Biden being unwilling to drop out of the race until he was strong-armed into it. That wasn't even what was best for like the progressive Democratic establishment. That was just what was best for Joe Biden and his wife and his son and his chief of staff. And so, no, I, I, I would completely agree and I think it's important to emphasize that this whole Greater Israel project that Benjamin Netanyahu has been pursuing for all of these years, is still actively pursuing, this is the worst thing in the world for average Israeli Jews. And they they've put themselves in a situation where they are more hated and more of a pariah and in more danger than they've ever been in my lifetime. So, you know, this I don't think this is good for the people of any of these countries. Um, least of all the Iranians or the um, you know, people of Lebanon or something like that, but it's not good for the Israelis and definitely not good for the Americans either.

All makes sense. So now moving to the next related topic when I try to think my way through, okay, how do we get out of this has been this intractable problem? I come back to, well, I think the thing that we really are puppets to is the economy. So what is it that we could leverage from an economic standpoint to make progress? And for me, the oversimplified version I've always given people is, um, the Israel-Palestine problem is never going to resolve itself until, um, everyone on board is thinking about kids having the ability to progress in their lives and here on earth, by the way. And so until we're able to get to that, I think we're always going to struggle. And so one, I'd be curious, do you agree that this has that element of people have to feel like they're making progress? Economics basically is the way in which we measure progress, so that there, it, it will only ever be an economic solution. And then when you think about, if you agree with that, then how do we get to an economic solution? And are the Abraham Accords a first step or a total misfire?

Uh, oh, I'm well. Okay. So, I think the Abraham Accords were a disaster. And I really think they set the stage for for October 7th. And, you know, Donald Trump and Jared Kushner and all them would brag about how it was this historic peace deal. But as you may have noticed, you know, none of the countries were at war before they signed the Abraham Accords. It's not as if there was like a conflict. They treated this like it was like Camp David between Egypt and and Israel or something like that. Like they just keep going to war with each other, but then we finally made this deal and now they're going to stop going to war. It was basically essentially a bunch of US sock puppets got bribed with US military hardware to officially normalize relations with Israel. But what was the whole beef about there, right? Like, what was the whole reason why those Arab countries wouldn't normalize relations with Israel officially, even though they really had normal relations with them for decades before that? But the reason was because all of their people are opposed to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. And so they at least had to publicly say like, "No, no, no. Not going to normalize relations until they give the Palestinians their own state, until they end the occupation and the the blockade of Gaza." And this had been, you know, from the very beginning of the creation of of the state of Israel. And forget even like who you want to blame for all of this, like who you hold responsible for the '47 civil war or the '48 war or anything like that. But the reality of the situation is is that the Palestinians, um, got in effect ethnically cleansed out of historic Palestine. Um, in 1948, a bunch of surrounding Arab countries invaded and were defeated by the new Zionist entity that then declared itself the state of Israel at the end of that war. And then of course, there were wars with other Arab states in the '50s, in the '67 war, and the Yom Kippur war. And from the Palestinian perspective, they've always been their desperate hope was always that, oh, some of these other states are going to have our back, that at some point that'll put enough pressure on them. And then you got to remember, right, that this, this is essentially the entire Netanyahu doctrine for his entire political career. If people don't believe me, go read his book, Fighting Terrorism, that he put out in 1995 or '96. Um, and it's a very easy read. It's very short book. You can read it in one sitting. And, um, it's listen, you look at the clean break strategy, coping with crumbling states, every document put out, the Project for a New American Century. I mean, in their own words, they, the Netanyahu doctrine was always so Yitzhak Rabin was, um, the prime minister of of Israel in the early '90s, and he is a little more complicated than this, but at least publicly, the the Rabin doctrine, which is what led to the Oslo Accords and the the beginning of the peace process, supposedly intended on finding a two-state solution, was essentially Rabin was saying, "Look, we're never going to be able to normalize relations with the Arab, the broader Arab world unless we solve the Palestinian conflict." Cuz that's what the whole thing's over. It's over the fact that after again, whoever you want to blame for all of this, and there's blame on all sides, so I'm not like saying it's as black and white as Israel was always wrong and they did a lot of wrong stuff, but regardless, at the end of the '67 war, um, the at the end of the Six-Day War, Israel took control of, uh, Gaza, um, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and they've had it ever since. And this became starting to be a real big problem, like, hey, what are you going to do here? Look, it is one thing, just again, removing morality and just talking about like the logistics of history. It is one thing to ethnically cleanse a group. It's another thing to claim them and occupy them indefinitely. And that's especially very hard to do in the modern world when like everyone on this side of the enlightenment, the standard is like, well, I mean, can't just keep a bunch of people that don't have citizenship and voting rights and, you know, natural rights at all. Like, that doesn't. And so eventually by the '90s, now we're like almost 30 years, 25 years into the occupation, it's like, yo, we got to do something about this, man, like we got to come to some solution or the rest of the world is looking at us as occupiers and we're not going to be able to normalize relations with the Arab world. Now, Benjamin Netanyahu, Rabin's wife, I believe, still to this day, if she's still alive, blames him for her death, for for his death. Um, Benjamin Netanyahu was railing against this and how this is a betrayal to the the Jewish people, and they had like, he had like all these like rallies where they would hold coffins with Yitzhak Rabin's name on it. This before he was killed. And then a Netanyahu fan murdered Yitzhak Rabin. So then Netanyahu comes in a few years later in 1996, and the whole Netanyahu doctrine, the clean break to the Oslo Accords to all of this, was always that he goes, "No, no, no. Yitzhak Rabin had it all wrong. He said, 'You got to normalize relations with,' or he said, 'You got to give the Palestinians a two-state solution so you can normalize relations with the broader Arab world.'" But what we're just going to do, right, is use the US to topple the regimes we don't like in the broader world. Like, oh, we can't normalize relations with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad. Well, guess what? None of them exist anymore. I mean, Bashar al-Assad does, but not in power. Um, and the other two are not on this earth anymore. So, hey, problem solved, right? And so, like the the, um, the, uh, excuse me, the Abraham Accords were in many ways like the culmination of that strategy. It was letting the Palestinians know, listen, there is no Oslo. There is no, we're not even saying like, hey, maybe in five to ten years you can have your own state. Maybe in twenty years you can have your own state. Maybe your grandkids can. They're going, "No, it's over. You lose, we win." The the solution here is that you will be subjugated in perpetuity forever. And then we got October 7th. And, you know, in the same way that if you, if you chart this thing out, and there's always been a big terrorism problem in the Middle East since since, you know, wherever you want to start it, but from the Zionist settlers or from the resistance to the Zionist settlers, there's been a terrorism problem there. But listen, the second Antifa kicked off after the peace process fell apart, that's when things get their most violent. That's when, you know, if you could look at Hamas's, uh, uh, popularity in Gaza and during the peace process, it was way down. After the peace process fell apart, it shoots way up. You know, this is the way these things work. You can listen, you can be for a one-state solution where everybody gets, you know, citizenship and voting rights. You can be for a two-state solution where the Palestinians get to have their own country and they can do with it what they want. But the Israelis get to keep Israel as a Jewish state, like '67 borders or whatever you want to talk. But if you, if you're saying, "No, I'm not for either of those," which is kind of the status quo, essentially saying, "No, it's all Israel. Israel controls all of it, and those Palestinians just don't get citizenship or representation in their government or due process rights or property rights or travel rights or any of the basic human rights that we would all consider to be natural god-given rights." If you're saying, "No, they get none of that," I don't see how you can really even argue against October 7th type events, as horrific as they are. You, you, you can't just say to a group of people, you have to live in subjugation forever. And so to me, listen, as bad as the history is, and maybe this is just me wanting to be like a naive optimist, but I do think there's historical precedent for this. As bad as you may think it is, like, yo, what are you telling me that there could ever be a time where the Palestinians in Gaza live side by side with the Jews in Israel and everything's just fine? I mean, Ireland and England are right next to each other. France and Germany are right next to each other. You know, Poland and Russia are pretty darn close to each other. These are countries that had the bloodiest feuds for for centuries and and had some fought some of the bloodiest wars in the history of the world. And once again, even take the example of Egypt. And okay, you know, it's also true that Americans bribed them off and that was part of the deal. But Egypt and Israel went to war four times in like 25 years. Uh, they were mortal enemies and then they made a land for peace deal and they've been at peace ever since. And, you know, like it's not it's not that they don't have a radical Islam problem in Egypt, you know, like that's not the the factor here isn't Islam. It the factor here is that human beings can actually really swallow a really bloody, really tragic past. You know, I'm, I'm Jewish and I, you know, I've met Germans and stuff and we're just cool now. It's really not that long ago that we really, really weren't, you know, but things like that can happen. And this is just like one or two generations later. I could grab a beer with a German guy and it's not even kind of a weird thing, you know. Now, I know it's complicated and there's a lot more to that, but I guess what I am saying is that at the heart of this is the occupation. That's really the major problem. And the only reason why the occupation could exist at all, let alone persist for nearly 60 years, is longer than the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe. Israel has occupied Gaza and the West Bank and the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. And that only happens because the most powerful country in the history of the world gives it its blessing. There's no question. There's no way they could sustain this without us. And without us, I mean, things have gotten very messy over the last few years, but Israel has the most powerful military in the region. Israel, although they won't admit it, has a whole lot of nuclear weapons. Israel is more than capable of defending itself, of continuing to exist, as they always insist they have the right to. Um, they're not capable of toppling regimes in the region without us. They're not capable of, uh, making the Greater Israel project happen without us. But I do think that in the same way, right, if you wanted to look at it in like economic terms or something like that, if you think about like moral hazard, right, like what's really the problem with say, the government guaranteeing big banks, uh, you know, risky, uh, investments, it's like, well, they get a lot riskier then if you're going to give them this artificial insurance. And in the same way, I think both with Ukraine and with Israel, there's this tremendous like moral hazard that comes along with unconditional US support. All of a sudden, you're going to fight a lot of fights that you wouldn't have otherwise fought. It's like Mike Tyson goes out to the bar with you and says, "Anyone messes with you, I'm beating the crap out of them." Well, you're, you're now taking a lot less lip than you otherwise would have at that night out. And so, to me, that's at the center of it. And people try to make it about a lot of different things, about a religious war, about a clash of civilizations. You know, I've argued this with people before, but, you know, it's a very human thing to not very much like being subjugated. And there's, you know, the Irish violently resisted the British, and the Algerians violently resisted the French, and the Native Americans violently resisted the early American settlers. And this is fairly normal thing about human history. And I'm not saying like, maybe it is true that if you occupied a group of Buddhists for 60 years, like they wouldn't jihad fight back in exactly the same way that a group of Muslims will. I just, I think that's, you know, you think about it like this, like we've never given that a chance in all of this time since 1967. You've never said like, well, maybe the thing here is like, if you don't want slave rebellions, you should abolish slavery. Maybe the thing here is that if you don't want this violent terrorism, you should abolish the occupation and give that a shot. And now, of course, the, the Israelis will fall back to like, you know, the old, uh, what was it? The old Thomas Jefferson quote about slavery where you say, "We've got the wolf by the ear and we can neither afford to let it go nor safely hang on to it." Uh, they're concerned like, "Yo, if we gave them their own state, then they would attack us." And, you know, I always say to that, I'm like, well, if things were different, we'd be having a different conversation, but they're not different. They're like this. And so I, you know, it's like you just much like with Thomas Jefferson, as we now look back back on that now, like, hey, that was a very eloquent quote. Great point. Abolish slavery. Sorry. Like the, like that very nice quote, but that's not an argument for slavery. You can't enslave other human beings. You don't get to do that. You don't have the moral right to do that. No matter what you think the outcome of this will be, I feel the same way about the occupation, they have to end it. And I, I do, I'm somewhat cautiously optimistic that that could make the situation a lot better.

Okay. So, let me start building, uh, my understanding of exactly what you're saying. So, um, you talked about Egypt doing a land swap for peace and that that worked. So, you say that like, um, you've made the whole point, but I'm actually not sure what the implication is. Are you saying that, um, if Israel were to give back Golan Heights, Palestine, East Jerusalem, uh, and just say, "Hey, listen. This is a trade for peace, you've got it now. No more blockade. Do what you're going to do." Um, is that what you mean by, "Hey, it worked with Egypt. It could work here."?

Yeah. Essentially that it's, you know, they, they for for 25 years the Israeli propaganda was that the reason that Egypt kept attacking them was because they were crazy radical Muslims and they just hated Jews and wanted to drive all the Jews into the river and so they would never stop. But then America forced them to make a deal and the, you know, the lobby was not as powerful in those days. Um, and they made one and it led to peace. I'm not saying it's a guarantee that any of that could happen, but it is like it's not beyond belief that like, yeah, if you just ended the occupation, you know, human beings are interesting creatures, you know, like we have our economic incentives. We have, uh, kind of a universal desire, um, for for, um, comfort and shelter and prosperity. Um, but we also have our pride and some irrational, you know, tendencies and then some rational irrational tendencies. And what I mean by that is like, so at the, um, and this is still true to this day, but less so than it used to be. But, you know, when, um, there were Palestinians who were getting who were who got ethnically cleansed out of Israel before Israel was even a state, um, uh, for decades, uh, slowly and then much more at once in 1947, 1948. So in many cases, there, right, it would be the house that the Israeli was living in was the Palestinian's house. Like, it's not like they just tore down their villages and then built up high-rises. That did happen years later in many parts of Israel. Not everywhere. Um, but in many cases, it would be like your house that your grandfather built and you had the locks changed on you and were kicked out and a soldier pointed a gun at you and said march that way. But now you're living that way, like 10 miles that way, not flown halfway across the world. You're in Gaza, you know what I mean? You're looking at the house that your grandfather built. And then you're in some makeshift refugee, you know, uh, um, camp and you're watch. And so you, this is how Daryl Cooper put it, which I always thought was very, uh, very articulate. Um, he goes, "Now you, if you were some Palestinian 17-year-old at that time, you had no no way of giving your grandmother back her house, right? But you could burn that house to the ground while the new family was inside it." Now, that may seem irrational, but actually, I think it's kind of rational on a human level. Most human beings, most human beings are like that. We will not tolerate that level of humiliation without doing something violent. Like, there is a point where like I will cut off my nose to spite my face. Like I would, you know what I'm saying? Like people are like that. And I think that once you at least give a little bit of like, hey, listen, we're not humiliating you here. We're not saying that. You know, if you just look at the indignities that Palestinians face on a daily basis, a daily, and I'm not even saying like the worst things that even make the news, like, oh, you know, these IDF soldiers went into the West Bank and shot guys as they were surrendering and it's on video and we can all just watch it. Just one story from this last year, but how many different stories there are of them just pointing a gun at an old lady's face and pushing her over while her family watches. And like again, maybe it's because I'm immature enough and angry enough and I'm in my own, you know, I'm I never got a job. I just do stand-up comedy and podcast, so I'm in my own state of arrested development or whatever. But man, it's very easy for me to get in the mindset of like, yo, you point a gun at my grandmother and push her over. Like, okay, I'm taking out as many of you as I can before you kill me, and I don't really care that you're going to. And yeah, I think if you were to publicly admit that this was wrong, it shouldn't have happened this way. We're returning your land. There's no more military occupation on your land. Then yes, you give a much better chance for those positive human incentives to to flourish and go, okay, we actually would like our kids to not be slaughtered. So, I'm hopeful that you could do that and things could get a lot better. And I think really it's the only thing we can choose. It's like that or genocide are our options at this point.

Well, I'll put one more option on the table. And I'm going to be talking right now about what is, not what ought to be. I, um, we can certainly touch on what ought to be in a second, but in terms of what is, you can ethnically cleanse, which seems to be the actual path that they're taking. Um, going in, and I'll define ethnically cleansing really fast, driving out people of a given ethnicity from the place. You don't necessarily have to kill them, though that is often kill a few of them and then the rest scatter. Uh, and I would put that in the same camp. So obviously Israel's killed tons, uh, post October 7th, and so that gives you plenty of impetus to flee the area if they had someplace to go. So that's what when I hear the Riviera, um, idea that there'll be the Riviera of the Middle East, I'm just like, "Okay, that's the ethnic cleansing option. It'll be done under the guise of we're going to build something that's better for you. You're going to love it. It's going to be amazing. We just have to displace you for four or five years." And so that's that strat. The other strategy is what I think the Egypt strategy that you laid out is, which would be, okay, there's those three parcels of land back. I don't know if that's what people mean when they say the '67 borders or whatever. Uh, but cool, here we go. You guys rejected it at one point when, uh, oh God, Clinton was in office, but hey, the past is the past. Like, there it is. New lines for you to do what you will with. Um, that one, of course, the argument is going to be that, well, hold on. There's something different about the Palestinians, which is they have not only the, "You just took my grandfather's house that he built with his bare hands, pointed a gun at my grandmother," but there are plenty of other places. My wife is Cretan, and so I'm very close to people that literally had a gun pointed at them and they were told to march in that direction. The island got split in half between the Turks and the Greeks. And so I know intimately what that looks like. And they have let go of trying to, they still want to pursue political means, but nobody's talking about invading. They're not bombing. Like, there's a, a cold, um, you know, standoff there. And so you look at other places in the world where this kind of bad thing, because to me, I've talked so endlessly about this to my audience, but, um, the strategy that now who we would call Israelis ran to take over the area, um, is it's a brilliant strategy. It's been used by others before. It's being used, and I don't know, this may be an area of conflict for us, but for me, this is the exact strategy that's being run in Europe by Muslims. And you go in, you become politically important, you become economically important, and then you get things your way. And that's exactly the strategy that Israel ran. So, if somebody was like, "I hate that Israel did it, and I don't like that Muslims are doing it to Europe," I'm like, "That's consistent." But anyway, in this instance, there seems to be a kicker, which is a religious element of it. Is an embarrassment that I'm not willing to tolerate that specifically Jews have taken land from us. Now, maybe we're right, maybe we're not. But if you end the argument there, which is what most people do, and they bicker about whether that's going to be true or not, it's you're guessing about the future, which I think is, uh, less useful than playing out what are the different scenarios. So, a scenario that you painted is it looks like Egypt, we have peace. It will clearly have been the right answer if they do that and that's the result that they get. The other option that seems more likely to me, which is that they do that and then, um, instead of building up civilian infrastructure and making life great and just looking forward and trying to make things economically better for their kids, I think they do, um, versions of building military tunnels 2.0, whatever that actually ends up looking like. And then from a position of power, they launch an attack on Israel. And so given that, I may be wrong about that, but that certainly is a plausible scenario. Um, the question becomes, okay, how do we let things play out at that moment? Like, what would Dave Smith, Tom Bill, you would say, if you guys do that and you attack Israel, I would expect Israel to go in and defeat you to the point where you just have no fight left in you. Period. End of story. It is what it is. You're broken. We take all the territory. You, you had your chance. You blew it. And now I'm pushing all the way to every border. This is all mine now. And I would be like, "Yeah, like at some point, like if, if Canada kept invading us, I would do exactly that." And I'd be like, "Nope, sorry." So, um, I don't expect that to be a popular, uh, opinion, but nonetheless, it is an opinion. So, what I'd love to hear is in your thinking, obviously, you're hoping for, and I love the optimism. Lord knows I hope that's what would happen as well. Egypt, stale conflict, we just get along. But if Palestinians were to take the next five or ten years to build up real strength and then attack Israel, what would you consider a reasonable reaction on behalf of Israel?

Well, I think that like even when you say like, you know, hey, if Canada kept attacking us over and over again, um, then but again, like it's just that's not the the apples to apples comparison.

Really fast and let me put it in your language. So, you know, I do understand it was just oversimplifying.

No, no, no, no. I understand. I just say I, I'll just say real fast. It's the Native Americans on a Native American reservation except we don't let them leave the reservation. They're they're trapped in the reservation and also we never gave them citizenship or we never gave them anything and so there's still and then also every now and then, uh, when they attack, we go in there and just mow the lawn and kill a whole bunch of them, right? And so like, like this is more the dynamic. Now, if you're saying if they were to give them their own state and if they were to end the military occupation and then it was more a situation of Canada attacking America over the fact that look, we had done that to them forever. Like, let's say they just don't let that go in the same way that like if there were black people in 1890 who were still just attacking random white people and going, "Hey, you enslaved us all this time." Well, okay. In the context of that, like it depends. Are we talking in a one-state solution? Are we talking in a two-state solution? If it's a one-state solution, well, then the answer is that that's a police matter and you arrest those people and you prosecute them. Yes. Sorry. You're still, you're not allowed to be violent just because there was violence done in the past to you, and otherwise there's no way to move forward from this. But if you're asking me what, no, I wouldn't say that then Israel should go annex all of the land or ethnically cleanse all of the people. No, I would say you'd still have to operate under some type of just war of Christianity or some type of constitutional process or something where it would be like, hey, if you were attacked, you kind of have the right to defend yourself. You have the right to a proportional response. You have to try to take out the people who were the aggressors in that situation. But no, I wouldn't say you get to just go on some like medieval type conquest or something like that. Um, but again, if you want to talk about the situation as it is, I mean, the situation as it is is evidently, uh, according to, uh, Katz, the defense minister in Israel, he just announced a few days ago that they're doing a massive ethnic cleansing campaign in southern Lebanon. And there's been something like 600,000 people have fled southern Lebanon to the north, uh, because Israel's been attacking the area, uh, pretty viciously for for, um, well, intensely for weeks now, but for months and years, and they just announced none of them can come back. So like, what's actually going on here is that Israel is an expansionist state that is looking to take over these territories. And, you know, there is this dynamic where like, even as the thing is that we live in a liberal world order and there, it, even I don't mean liberal just in the way that people think of liberal versus conservative, but there is a very, um, inherently left-wing idea about the global world order, the idea of international law and democracy and equality and all of these things. And Israel plays on that. They go, "We're the only democracy in the Middle East." You know, like they say, "Hey, look, we're just like you. We're one of the Western nations here." But the thing is, if you want to be a democracy, then you can't have control of like 7 million people who don't have citizenship or voting rights, cuz that's not what any of us consider democracy to be. If you wanted to be a decent liberal country, then you'd have to either have a one-state solution where everyone was given citizenship or you could have a two-state solution. They don't want to do either of those things. But I will say because I'm not a left-winger, um, there's also a way that Israel could be like, kind of an honorable right-wing country if they wanted to do that. That to me would look something like, because essentially what Israel argues is like, we can't give them their own state because then they could build up their own military and then they could use that to attack us. And we can't have a one-state democratic solution because then we don't have the votes to keep this as a Jewish state. We essentially lose the state because there's there's as many non-Jews as there are Jews here and they're outbreeding us. So, pretty soon we're not going to be. But there is a right-wing solution that would offend the entire global liberal sensibilities. But that would just be like, okay, it's all one state. It's Israel. It's staying a Jewish state. You guys don't have voting rights. You are citizens though, and that means you do have property rights and you do have the right to a fair trial with a jury of your peers, not these military tribunals which the Palestinians are lucky to get, which is like a 98% conviction rate or something like that. Um, they just were pouring champagne about introducing the death penalty for those people who don't even get fair trials. Um, but like, yeah, you have property rights and the right to travel and the right to a fair trial and the right like you have every bit equal rights, but this is a Jewish state that you live under and there's one government here and you guys can't build your own military. I think that would also be like a reason. But again, if you're saying like, let's not have the conversation about what could be, let's have the conversation about what is. What is is none of those things. And I think you are certainly right that, you know, they've been floating out ethnic cleansing plans of Gaza since the war started, really since since right after October 7th. You heard, uh, talk of this, um, backed by the president of the United States, who in fact announced that we're doing it. Never has, but announced that we are taking control of it. Um, and now they're taking over, uh, southern Lebanon. They've expanded their territory in Syria in the last few years, and they recently, very intentionally, while JD Vance was in Israel, they had a vote in the Knesset to formally annex the West Bank. And so it seems to me that Israel, the highest levels of Israeli leadership have made a calculation. And it's not that irrational of a calculation. It's certainly immoral, but I don't think it's that irrational from their perspective. And it's basically this. They have, um, uh, global opinion has been turned against Israel in a profound way in in the last few years, but American opinions about Israel have drastically changed. And there's all types of polls you can you can look at on this, but it is unbelievable. I mean, like it is like 50 and under do not support Israel in this country anymore. And the Israelis are not stupid. Um, we talked about that Ashkenazi IQ before. They're they see that too. And so you've got a dynamic where, um, Benjamin Netanyahu has just been the biggest thing he's ever done that Israel's ever done. Really, there was in the whole Israel-Palestine conflict, there was never a terrorist attack as big as October 7th, and there was never, uh, an Israeli attack as big as the destruction of Gaza. This is the biggest thing ever. And he's got, uh, this country that is totally dependent on America having their back. He's got the most pro-Israel administration in American history in there right now. But it's over for the future. And so if you're them, you go, we got to do it right now. Right now is obviously the time to strike. And so this is what we're doing right now. And in this context, we have, by the way, I mean, we'll see. Donald Trump is a madman and also a buffoon. So, who knows if he's going to fight, but he just posted today that we're about to end Iranian civilization and said the deadline is 8:00 p.m. tonight. And but the, the, uh, Iranian foreign minister just said he's canceled all talks. Like they're not agreeing to a deal unless some magical rabbit comes out of a hat in the next few hours here. The president has promised, like they're calling his bluff, and we'll see what happens. But this to me seems to be the perspective of the Israelis. Forget any of that. We're not going to be an honorable right-wing society, and we're certainly not going to be a liberal or a left-wing society. We are going to conquer this region and we will see what the reaction to that is, man. But I do, I, I mean, I just think there's nothing but disaster behind that door. So there might be people who who want to say, "Oh, Dave's being naive to think that it could be like Germany and France just living right next to each other and being fine, or they could be like Ireland and England." By the way, those same people would have called me naive if I had suggested back then that it, you know, that it could have been like this with those countries. But you want, you know, you want to see what's behind door number two. I mean, it is quite possible that the Iranian response says he's going to take out every bridge and every power plant in the country. I don't see why they wouldn't take out some of those desalination plants. I'm sure you've read some of those numbers there, which that, you know, turns out desalination is really important in the desert. Um, and, uh, there's like there's like in a bunch of these different countries, like 98% of the drinking water in the UAE in Oman are like come from desalination, and there's all types of major energy targets that Iran has not hit yet. So I'm just saying like, already in this thing, you can see where this is going. And what do you think, like, you think that the, the in southern Lebanon now, you just ethnically cleansed 600,000 more people. Is that going to help Hezbollah's recruitment efforts or hurt Hezbollah's recruitment efforts? And this is this behind this door is forever war. And and that's what we've been pursuing this whole time. And so it's like, you know, the reality of the situation is it seems to be that the argument amongst the American people has been won by the critics of Israel and this neoconservative foreign policy. And yet the policy is going to be, I mean, pushing the accelerator down to the floor and seeing how much Netanyahu can take right now.

When you say how much he can take, what do you mean?

Oh. Oh. How much land he can take.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, look, look, it's right in front of. Look, he said himself that the Greater Israel Project is near and dear to his heart when he was asked about this like six months ago. He's look, when Bashar al-Assad immediately fell, they went and took a bunch of territory in Syria.

Does the Greater Israel project have specific borders that they're trying to achieve?

Well, you know, I think it's essentially what Mike Huckabee said, right? It's for it's there, all of this land. So it would include, um, big chunks of Saudi Arabia, chunks of Lebanon, chunks of Iraq, obviously all of the West Bank, all of Gaza, um, big chunks of Syria. Um, and and and look, I mean, again, this isn't like I'm not like putting together dots on a chalkboard of like a conspiracy. I'm just saying like literally they're talking about nicely cleansing Gaza and taking it over. They're expanding settlements in the West Bank and and at least formerly in the Knesset saying that they're going to annex the thing. They just ex took a bunch of territory in Syria. They just took a bunch of territory in Lebanon. This is an expansionist regime. Like there's no, you know, like they may call it, they don't call it Lebanon's realm. They call it a security buffer. But okay, would that have been okay if Hitler had just called it something else? This is what they're doing. They're taking more territory and they're openly acknowledging it.

Okay. So, um, we're certainly going to get to see how it plays out. But if I just try to map your mental model of, um, how this is going. Uh, Israel is using the destabilized nature of the region right now precisely because they have the most pro-Israeli, um, US government in a long time. Uh, they are gobbling up territory right now in Lebanon and Syria. Um, calling it a security buffer, but obviously territorial acquisition by any other name is still territory acquisition. Um, do when I think about them having to prosecute those regions, Lebanon would have to have a reason not to attack and that could just be that they think they'll lose. It could be that they think that the Americans will get involved. Same with Syria. Do you have a sense of what the calculation is coming out of Lebanon or Syria around this issue?

Um, no. I, you know, I, I don't know. I mean, uh, I think that Hezbollah really was, um, greatly, um, set back by, um, by

The MSAD uh pager attack and a bunch of different bombing campaigns in Lebanon over the last two years. And they really, they Israel had dealt with less trouble from Hezbollah than they have in decades over the last uh year and a half or so. But then Hezbollah, they were taking some rockets uh when the after the war in Iran kicked off.

Now I don't know, will America get involved there? I know Lindsey Graham was urging Donald Trump to get in on the fighting in in Lebanon. I don't know. You know, I mean, like I I would have said even a year ago that I think Donald Trump's pretty hesitant to get more bogged down in conflicts like that, but I really am just not sure where his mentality is at this point.

Um, >> so really fast because this I think is bringing into sharp uh contrast maybe the different worldviews that you and I have and so we can both make a prediction because I think the way you see things makes one prediction. The way I see things makes another. uh you've been very clear that you know that this is complicated and so there's many forces pulling so you may um effectively hedge at this moment. I'm not going to hedge partly because I just want to test my own thesis. So um because I believe that Donald Trump is I'm trying to get on Mount Rushmore. I know that I do it by growing. This is an economic question purely. I'm thinking about China and financial growth for America. Period. Full stop. That that is my mental map. So he will not get involved in uh Lebanon. He's not going to get involved in Syria. He would sell weapons because that's good economically. So he'll support with all weapons all the time um anything that rings the cash register from that point. So would he do air campaigns? Probably not. I I would say I'd give that less than a 10% chance even though um that gives him a way to feed the military-industrial complex back home. I think if that money um at a minimum isn't coming back to us as vouchers that we gave to the Israelis, I don't I my prediction just to keep myself uh accountable is that he will not get involved in that. Sell weapons? Yes. Actively targeting? No. Iran.

>> No, I think Go ahead. >> So, no, no, I'm sorry. No, I don't think necessar, you know, I I I have a tough time with these predictions, making predictions like this because there are just so many factors and variables to them. But I don't necessarily uh disagree with with that. I mean, I think that it seems pretty clear to me and there's a lot of reporting to back this up that Donald Trump got convinced he was he was convinced and particularly after the Venezuela strike and with these huge protests in Iran that he could decapitate the regime with an air campaign. um and that he would go in the day one where they killed Solommani. They clearly had some good intelligence on where he was going to be. Um although there's reports that he knew that and just was not going to go into hiding. Who knows if that's true or not. Um but they decap I mean Donald Trump announces on the first day that to for the Iranian people stay inside tonight but then you're going to take over this government. You know, like this was kind of the plan and then clearly it didn't go that way. And I do think that Donald Trump's been looking for an off-ramp much like he was in the 12-day war. I think the problem is that there is this escalation trap at this point that he may not be able to get himself out of. Um, and the escalation trap part of it is that Donald Trump goes like, "Okay, I'm going to talk crazy tough to bring you guys to the negotiating table." And if that doesn't work, the only speed he has is I've got to go even tougher to bring you to the negotiating table. And that's a very difficult game. So, I think it's quite possible that you're right. Um, I'm praying that somehow Donald Trump is able to just call it quits and declare victory and then we'll see what happens uh from there.

Um, but I I think you're right that I think when Donald Trump it it may not maybe where I would differ with you is I don't think it's just economic. I think that Donald Trump it he feels like, you know, Rubio's got this whole bankshot strategy that he loves, which is Venezuela, and then you get a regime change in Cuba. I think Donald Trump saw that like, hey, if he was the guy who like liberated or and maybe that meant business for America also, you know, but if he this was a Mount Rushmore type accomplishment to be like, I freed Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran. These were all the places that were given America problems all these years. None of these presidents could figure it out, but I came in here because I was so smart and figured it all out. So, I do think there's there's, you know, that's a big part of of the motivation. I think it's pretty reasonable to conclude that Donald Trump's sense of himself is his main motivator in life always. Um, him winning and being tremendous is always the most important thing. And he makes that very clear at every turn that that's the the lesson you have to take away from this. So, I don't know that might that like that might be the case. However, what I worry about, and I wouldn't make a prediction here, but what I worry about is like whatever the next Iranian response is to this might put him in a situation where he feel, you know, like Donald Trump, I think, is very capable of uh feeling that he has to show everybody that he's got the biggest junk in the land. And if you if you slap him in the face, that's a dangerous game. And I will say again, this Donald Trump, I try not to take anything with you try to take everything with a grain of salt because he speaks in a different way than normal people do. But we've simply never had a sitting US commander-in-chief talking about doing to a country what he's talking about doing to them right now. Even in World War II, the the they may have done it, but they didn't like have this type of bravado where they were saying and even, you know, what what we saw Tucker Carlson flip out on Trump for last night, which I think was totally uh he was totally right to do, but it's like, dude, the like mocking Allah on Easter as you announce that you're sending like as you announce like total war against a civilian population. Like geez, man. What are you trying? You're just you're just really kicking this hornets nests and then talking to the hornets hornets while you do it. It's seems like a dangerous game to me.

Yeah, that that is the perfect conclusion. Dave, always really enjoy talking to you. Really enjoy listening to your takes uh even when we are not actually engaging with each other. So, thank you for being out there. Hopefully, uh we'll get to do this again sometime. Uh where can people connect with you? >> Oh, I'm all on uh comic Dave Smith on Twitter. Part of the Problem is my show and then I'm I'm a traveling comedian. So if you go to comic Dave Smith.com I'm I'm traveling all around the country for the rest of the year doing shows. But dude, always really enjoy our conversations. Thanks for having me on again. >> Same, man. I appreciate it. All right, take care. All right, everybody. If you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you like this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. Iranians have said that their goal is to spike the price of oil to $200 a barrel. If Trump were to leave the Middle East, basically the American empire would collapse. It's very risky to use military force to resolve an economic issue. It isn't enough.