Joe Rogan Experience #2225 - Dave Smith

Recorded the morning after the 2024 election, Dave Smith and Joe Rogan dig into why Trump won decisively and why the corporate media's narratives stopped working. They argue podcasts and X reshaped the information landscape, allowing long-form unfiltered conversation to outcompete cable news. The conversation ranges across foreign policy (Ukraine, Israel-Gaza, non-interventionism), the COVID vaccine debate and liability protections, FBI sting operations, abortion and states' rights, and chronic illness in America. Smith repeatedly urges Trump to pardon Ross Ulbricht and Edward Snowden, end the wars, and keep war hawks like Mike Pompeo away. They close on psychedelic therapy for veterans and the need for more empathy across political lines.

• Smith claims Trump didn't pardon Assange and Snowden in his first term partly because he was listening to advisers like Mike Pompeo and wanted to run again.
  00:46:29
• Both argue that if media truly believed Trump was Hitler, their own logic would justify cheating to stop him, exposing the incoherence of the narrative.
  00:53:13
• Smith says he can accept that mild autism went underdiagnosed but insists moderate or severe autism could not have gone unnoticed, so a real increase must be investigated.
  01:19:14
• Smith recounts a doctor embedded in Gaza who reported treating toddlers with bullet wounds to the head and published x-rays to back the claim.
  02:45:33
• They assert the 1970 psychedelics ban was designed by the Nixon administration to demonize and arrest anti-war and civil rights protesters.
  02:49:42
• Smith says it is now widely accepted that a Ukraine-Russia peace deal was reached in principle early in the war but Boris Johnson intervened to keep the war going.
  02:54:25

• Smith describes the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case where 12 of the 14 people involved were FBI informants.
  00:39:43
• Rogan recalls a 1990s video game called Postal where players ran around shooting people.
  00:51:37
• A cited figure claims 77% of Americans aged 17-24 are not considered fit for military service, with 44% having more than one disqualifying condition.
  01:14:04
• Smith cites a UN estimate that 500,000 children died from starvation or malnutrition during the 1990s sanctions and blockade on Iraq.
  01:30:33
• They discuss a Texas woman jailed on murder charges after taking misoprostol at 19 weeks, charges later dropped.
  01:49:15
• Rogan says his X video of the Elon Musk interview got 65 million views in a day across both accounts.
  02:11:38
• They look up that the word botulism derives from the Latin 'botulus' meaning sausage.
  02:33:35
• They learn that in 1600s Sweden, saltpeter for gunpowder was made from urine-soaked earth collected from under barns.
  02:38:19
• Snopes and doctors are cited debunking the myth that saltpeter lowers libido.
  02:35:09