Mike Baker: Former CIA covert operations officer turned intelligence/security commentator and host of the President's Daily Brief podcast. He runs a private intelligence and security firm and is a frequent media voice on geopolitics and espionage.
What this episode covers
Joe Rogan and Mike Baker cover the chaos dominating the news cycle, opening with the Epstein files and the convenient gaps in the case before pivoting to the Tulsi Gabbard document release and the Russia-collusion narrative. Baker, drawing on his CIA background, explains how intelligence assessments get politicized and why blackmail-based asset recruitment usually backfires. The conversation ranges across the Biden mental-decline cover-up, NYC mayoral politics and socialism, congressional insider trading, and parenting risk. The back half digs into AI-generated media erasing trust in everything, Chinese espionage and talent-recruitment programs, and the US strikes on Iran's nuclear sites. They close on the deaths of Hulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne, and Malcolm-Jamal Warner, plus Baker's own near-drowning story.
Recommended on this episode
South Park
Trey Parker and Matt Stone
“I love the show is fantastic. I raised my three boys on that show. Much to my wife's horror, but it's a great show”— Joe Rogan
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Star Wars
George Lucas
“they're doing Star Wars AI, like fan created AI scenes of stuff that they wanted to happen. And it looks better than the actual Star Wars.”— Joe Rogan
Tesla
Tesla
“people were probably very reluctant to buy a Tesla because they were worried like, if I buy this thing and park it somewhere, someone's going to key it.”— Joe Rogan
Big reveals from this episode
- Baker says Cash Patel's claim of 'no tapes, no video' on Epstein makes no sense and points to autopsy findings of three broken neck bones.
- Baker insists Epstein's house must be 'torn down to the bare beams' because it's certainly riddled with hidden cameras.
- Recounts Russians embedding listening devices in the rebar of the new US Moscow embassy, forcing demolition of multiple floors.
- Says Gabbard's emails show Brennan was warned the Steele dossier wasn't credible but ordered it included in the intel assessment anyway.
- Predicts Obama will never face consequences and Gabbard 'got out over her skis' calling it treasonous conspiracy.
- Says his company works for studios who are watching full AI-written scripts of their franchises appear, and animators/writers are right to fear obsolescence.
- Details Chinese national Chenguang Gong downloading ~3,600 classified sensor files in one month while applying to CCP 'talent programs.'
- Contradicts the 'completely obliterated' claim on Iran, saying assessments show only Fordo took significant damage.
Worth remembering
- Apollo CEO Leon Black paid Epstein $158 million over five years, reportedly for ~$2 billion in tax savings.
- Metadata analysis showed roughly 2 minutes 53 seconds were cut from the Epstein prison cell video.
- Benzodiazepines like Xanax are among the hardest drugs to quit and cold-turkey withdrawal can be fatal.
- Border crossings dropped to about nine in a day versus 10,000-12,000 a day under the prior administration.
- Baker says he holds a fund that tracks Nancy Pelosi's trades and 'it's done very well.'
- Roughly 900 medals that would have gone to biological females were won by biological males under recent trans-inclusion policies.
- New York state law bars naming a political party with words like 'independent,' 'America,' or 'Americans.'
- Israeli strikes reportedly degraded Iran's missile launchers and stockpiles by roughly 40-50%.
- North Korea is reportedly about to send another 30,000 troops to fight for Russia in Ukraine.
- Malcolm-Jamal Warner died in a rip-tide swimming incident in Costa Rica, the same week as Hulk Hogan and Ozzy Osbourne.