How worrying is this?

I mean, this is an incredibly sweeping, comprehensive bill.

It basically allows them to censor anything they don't like.

The specific language in one part is they can censor anything that, quote, may cause serious harm, unquote.

That could be psychological harm.

You know, that could be, you know, calling, you know, biological male a male rather than a trans woman.

That could include saying that we don't want mass migration or we're worried about terrorism from migration, all very legitimate concerns.

Can you talk a bit about this?

Certainly after 2000, that just didn't exist at all when I was your age.

So it's pretty new.

Part of it too.

I think, I just think, you know, Jordan, your work has been so influential on me because you know, that thing you said about, um, um, if you don't know what someone's motivations are, it's good to look at the consequences of their behavior.

I'm sorry.

The consequence.

Yeah.

It's like...

Mm-hmm

... saying, "We have to get over the Pentagon Papers principle." Pentagon Papers principle is that The New York Times is gonna publish these leaked documents from the Pentagon about how we're losing the war in Vietnam.

It's '69, uh, Supreme Court, '70.

Um, major foundation for free s- it's why we can publish leaked government documents and not risk going to prison.

Uh, it's still illegal often for the, the leaker, but for reporters we're protected.

Here they come out with this whole report being like, "We reporters should get over that idea and not report on the [laughs] leaked information," um, which is, like, basically saying, yeah, we should just be, you know, puppets of the military intelligence community.

Then you get this other thing that I only connected later, which was that the FBI goes to Senators Grassley and Johnson and gives what's called a defensive briefing saying, "We have intelligence that your investigation into Hunter Biden's corruption is being used by the Russians to spread disinformation." They then, FBI then turns around and goes and tells the, the news media, in this case it was Politico, they go do these stories on it.

[laughs]

But, um, you know, I think, I think now that I follow a lot of kids into their, into their mid-twenties, I'm always like, "Oh, the dog isn't doing it for you, right?" Yeah, they're like, "No, I just found this, you know, wonderful partner and now we're having kids and da, da, da." So I think, you know, it doesn't surprise me, but I don't know still what to do for the fourteen-year-olds.

The picture that this organization, WPATH, had presented to the world and to the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, every major medical organization, was a picture of real professionalism grounded in the best available science and evidence.

They have something called standards of care, which are ostensibly guidelines for proper medical care for people suffering from so-called gender dysphoria or gender distress.

And they're in their se- eighth version of that, so they call it Standards of Care Eight or SOC 8.

Based on their public presentation, you would think that this is a serious scientific and professional body.

It is not.

When you read these documents, what you see is a lot of spitballing, a lot of people making things up.

Yeah.

And so, you know, Venezuela and Argentina, great counter examples.

The Congo.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that picture that you're describing is the same one that Harvey Mansfield lays out in his wonderful book, Manliness, where he has three levels of masculinity.

The first is weak men who are incapable of defending themselves and others.

Manly men who are strong men who look down on the weak men, but will also abuse their power.

And then the gentleman who has the power of the manly man, but keeps it in reserve to protect his family, his bride, his children, his family, his nation.

civilization but he's not going to abuse his power so we've seen a regression where civilization was created by gentlemen as you said they gentlemen they became gentlemen they came in the process of creating civilization they become gentlemen or in the process of becoming gentlemen they create civilization which is to say a society based on universal rules on the view of humans as all equal under first god and then equal under the law and that everybody has these fundamental inalienable human rights.

And

Though AARO has said that many of the reported sightings they investigated could be attributed to common objects like balloons or consumer drones, hundreds still remain unexplained.

I think that what the American people need to know is that the US military and intelligence community are sitting on a huge amount of visual and other information, still photos, video photos, other sensor, uh, information, and they have for a very long time.

And it's not those fuzzy photos and videos that we've been given.

There's very clear-

Orbs were also a common feature.

The report describes various incidents found in the human intelligence databases.

One involved orbs surrounding and forcing an F-22 out of its patrol area.

In another incident, the crew of a Navy aircraft carrier watched a small orange-red sphere rapidly descend from a high altitude of 100 to 200 yards directly above the flight deck of a c- of the CVN or aircraft carrier.

But tell us about how you got into thinking about UFOs and your general theory of how to look at it.

Sure.

Well, it's great to talk about it.

Great to be with you guys.

And it's a fun topic to get on, especially today, which you may know is the second big release of videos and documents from the Department of War.

This itself is a massive event, historically very significant.

The history of the U.S. government's relationship to UFOs is kind of long and complicated.

Nice.

What is your-- What's your thought about the Democratic Party and some of the sounds you just heard and some of the beliefs that are out there?

there?Hey, Brian, it's great to be with you.

This is a massive subject obviously.

I think that the radicalization of the left and the Democrats is the big political story, and this was really confirmed earlier this year.

There was a major study that was done comparing the radicalization on specific issues between Republicans and Democrats, and they found that, uh, the left had radicalized 10 times more than the right.

This was an independent study done by, I think, four British, uh, social scientists.

You know, at the heart of socialism, I think it's important for people to remember, is the desire for revenge against a system that people feel like has treated them unfairly.

He's now says we can expect an ice age.

Mm-hmm.

And maybe all, the all, I don't know if the other All In guys fled.

And, um, now we know that Sergey Brin has been red-pilled by his MAGA girlfriend and has been financing both, uh, I think he gave some money to Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate.

He may have supported Matt Mehan.

I can't be sure about that, but I think he stepped up with a lot of money to fight the, fight that billionaires tax.

So it's just, I think it's, you know, you look historically.

I think it's the role of the cap- the new capitalist money, whether it's the Carnegies and Rockefellers and Fords, or it's the David Sax, Elon Musks, you know, Sergey Brins, to kinda bring in a new political elite and finance them to r- to t- to transform government.

Mm-hmm.

So I just wanted to give you some bona fides there.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's, uh, obviously, it's a big issue, and I think many Americans felt that they didn't need to pay attention to the issue at all.

And but now we've seen, uh, trans-identified people, uh, engaged in, uh, shootings, uh, obviously, or maybe not obviously, uh, probably obviously to your audience.

It was the last thing that Charlie Kirk was talking about, uh, before he was assassinated.

It appears as though the evidence that Tyler Robinson, uh, committed that assassination is pretty overwhelming and, and to be fair to, to Joe Kent, he didn't dispute that.

What's really-- what he's raising here is that there may be some broader conspiracy, and there's not a lot of evidence for that.

Please.

So I just wanted to give you some bona fides there.

Thank you.

Yeah, obviously it's a big issue, and I think many Americans felt that they didn't need to pay attention to the issue at all, but now we've seen trans-identified people engaged in shootings, obviously, or maybe not obviously, probably obviously to your audience, it was the last thing that Charlie Kirk was talking about before he was assassinated.

It appears as though the evidence that Tyler Robinson committed that assassination is pretty overwhelming, and to be fair to Joe Kent, he didn't dispute that what's really what he's raising here is that there may be some broader conspiracy and there's not a lot of evidence for that.

And but nonetheless, because Kent is such an important voice, he could easily be used by the defense attorneys.

I did directly ask him repeatedly that, you know, given that his agency is an intelligence gathering, a really an intelligence synthesizing and coordinating agency as part of the broader coordinating intelligence mission of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

You know, he didn't have the authorities to do a law enforcement investigation.

Please.

Mm-hmm

...even, even in the '80s.

But it's like he really did...

I don't- I'm not gonna say he was the maj- the only reason.

There was obviously a bunch of weakening within.

But I mean, he really did push back against communism.

He challenged the entire foreign policy establishment on the basic view of just, um, you know, of just, of just kind of keeping it, you know, keeping the, keeping the communists where they were.

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

Like, but what is that? 'Cause I was saying in the intro, you know, if you were just to read the, the articles about what's in these files, they wouldn't say that he was an asset to anybody, but Bibi Netanyahu came out and wrote that himself a couple of months ago.

Yeah, I mean, it looks, it looks like he was somebody that was involved in, um, you know, is- was involved his whole career in being an expert at moving money around, hiding money, creating tax havens.

Uh, probably, I mean, it...

I, we can't prove it, but, I mean, I think he looks like he was involved somehow in arranging finances, uh, during Iran-Contra, um, you know, potentially other, uh, in, you know, intelligence or clandestine operations.

Uh, that's why it's so frustrating, is you really don't feel like we have the full picture at all yet.

We just have these glimpses.

Um, you know, he talked about going into a SCIF several times.

And didn't then Epstein and Gates invest in that guy's company, the guy, the employee in whose voice Epstein was allegedly writing this email?

So Michael, that rather cutesy advertisement for helping s- find lost dogs, um, freaked quite a lot of people out, and I think rightly, didn't it?

Yeah, I think so.

And hey, Freddie, good to see you again.

Yeah, I don't think anybody saw this coming.

There was no hint that this was happening.

We've sort of learned gradually about all the ways that our privacy is being violated in the United States.

You know, I will say that I think that the United States is different than Europe in the sense that I think that we're much more concerned around free speech and much less concerned about privacy than folks in Europe, and I get the sense that I think Europeans are much more concerned about privacy than about free speech.

We just- we have- we're not no- we're so distracted with everything else, that we're not noticing the fact that, um, uh, the surveillance of our lives through tech is growing and growing and growing, and it's a major, um, privacy concern.

How so, Michael?

Yeah, this is a great one.

I'm glad you picked up on this, John.

So, you know, what we were talking about earlier is basically kind of these Superfund laws, and, you know, as I mentioned, you know, the Superfund laws are a retroactive tax on a handful of companies which are providing products that the consumers are demanding, right? So why should a hand- a handful of companies be paying all of the tax? That's the big issue, uh, on these Superfund laws.

So the interesting thing is, you know, if we look at places like California, where they tried to get a Superfund law through, and it stalled in the state of California, right? Why did it stall? And the reason it stalled is, uh, people do not like paying high energy costs.

This has become a big issue.

And so actually, you know, the, the political leadership of California, even Gavin Newsom, was kinda lukewarm on this idea of a climate Superfund.

What is the presentation?

Yeah

... that was not well-prepared.

I don't think it was well-managed.

And other things can be true, which is that Alex Pretty put himself right in front of that officer, stepped into the street, uh, you know, got himself involved in this altercation that he didn't need to be involved in, certainly not to film it.

So they are clearly intervening, and, and of course, Renee Good, uh, you know, drives perpendicular to blocking the street.

Her partner was outside the vehicle, taunting ICE agents.

I think it's just obvious that these are behaviors aimed at interfering with law enforcement operations, and again, that's not justification for the behaviors of the ICE agents or anything else.

So clearly, you know, acquiring power is the short-term goal, but, like, what's the vision for the country that activists like this have? Like, what are they working toward?

You had your finger on the pulse long ago, and it's amazing to me as we watch the Portland authorities, as we saw, you know, in Chicago, um, and elsewhere, these local officials say, "We don't want your help." We- they would literally rather have the rioters out there in gas masks threatening and assaulting ICE officers.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that what the president is trying to do is to send a strong message that he wants to see s- uh, state and local governments enforce the law.

That's not something that they've been doing on a whole range of issues.

Obviously really different problem in terms of like homicide in somewhere like Washington, DC.

You know, this is a problem, I mean just demographically, this is a problem of overwhelmingly young Black men.

You know, in Washington, DC, I think I looked at the homicide, uh, rate and it was over 95%, um, African-Americans.

You look at somewhere like Oregon and Portland, you have a problem of massive disorder as a result of allowing large open air drug dealing, drug scenes, what they euphemistically call homeless encampments, but there's nothing particularly campy about it.

Yup.

Yes.

... and the blob elites after 2020.

Europe's a slightly different story, but, um, you know, I think it's just what it looks like.

There's just this woke religion has just absolutely displaced the older story that we had of Western civilization, which is that Christianity gave way to the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment secularized a whole bunch of Christian values, including the idea that we're all born with dignity and rights, and we just...

That old story just got replaced by this really ugly story, which is that humans are a cancer on the Earth, that Western civilization is just genocidal and, um, you know, it's just the opposite of really what it's been historically, which is a massively liberating phenomenon.

And we got stuck in this awful story.

Right.

The next day, they said, "Per the president's direction, we're going this other route." They went an entirely different way and the very next day, the news media then ran, including Michael Schmidt's newspaper, with the new narrative, which was Russia tried to help Trump.

We are now starting to get a really clear picture in which what the Russiagate hoax was, was basically a disinformation effort created in concert by the intelligence community, the CIA, the FBI, uh, most dramatically with some concerns raised by the NSA, which are interesting, um, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, to create the perception that Donald Trump had committed treason and was a puppet because he was controlled by Russia in a sex blackmail operation.

That incredibly outlandish conspiracy theory was promoted by the New York Times and the Washington Post along with the CIA and FBI over years.

And so what you're seeing in the, the Michael Schmidt podcast is just a continuation of that disinformation effort aimed at, first of all, we now know achieving either impeachment, um, or, or criminal prosecution of Trump-

Michael Shellenberger, thoughts on that one?

I mean, you know, we, we don't know too much more about Obama's role than we did before, but we do know that on December 9th, he held that meeting to basically require all, with all of his intelligence and security agency heads to, uh, to do that intelligence community assessment that would come out in January 2017.

And we also know that exact same day that The New York Times and Washington Post, uh, had conversations with multiple sources, according to them, who reported that, in fact, the Russians had helped, uh, had wanted to, um, help Trump and help, help Trump win the election.

So, uh, you know, for a administration that was famously cracking down supposedly on leakers, the, the, the Obama administration was part of creating this disinformation in early December.

So now you have spoken to a whistleblower still inside the CIA who worked on that 17 ICA, and this person is telling us what?

Well, yeah.

So this person, just to put it in context too, I mean, this was one of four analysts at the CIA, uh, one of, uh, and there was also two to four analysts from the National Security Agency, which of course does signals intelligence, and then, uh, two other analysts from the FBI.

These were the people that were involved on the, they were on the drafting committee to write this ICA, Intelligence Community Assessment, and what this person said was that really Director Brennan, CIA Director Brennan really rode roughshod over the process, that Brennan, uh, demanded that the, uh, ICA include the debunked Steele dossier.

This was a piece of fraudulent, uh, memos that suggested that Trump was, uh, being sex blackmailed by, uh, President Putin.

Um, they u- they, it appears that Brennan coordinated with the FBI, that the FBI insisted that this Steele memo be included in the ICA.

Um, the analysts were misled by Brennan, thinking that, oh, he was on their side.

Keep going.

Right.

... any foreign intelligence, whether it's France or Germany or Israel or anybody else.

I think the context is, is important here.

I mean, it's, I think if you're a defender, a strong defender of Israel right now, this is a difficult time.

You have to remember, a majority of Americans currently have an unfavorable view of Israel, and the share of Americans with a very unfavorable view nearly doubled between 2022 and 2025.

Now, among Republicans ages 18 to 49, which was that audience that you were with on Friday night at Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA-50% hold negative views of Israel, up from 35% in 2022.

So, I don't think that they're...

(laughs) If it had.

First off, Michael, your thoughts on the reality of the America Party making an impact.

Hey, Brian.

It's great to be with you.

Yeah, I mean, what can I say that people don't already know? It's very hard for third parties to get off the ground.

At the same time, Elon Musk is, you know, our greatest innovator and technologist.

And as Peter Thiel famously said, "Never underestimate Elon Musk." So, you know, we'll see.

I mean, I think things have obviously been moving more in the direction of economic populism and away from libertarianism, from globalization.

He says, "I'm politically homeless." Do you think that the Republican Party is not doing a good enough job keeping them in? Because they seem to have been drifting there and somewhat dissatisfied now.

He moved to the city to be part of something he believes will be truly special, a place that champions free speech in academia.

The university is supposed to be a sanctuary for truth-seeking and truth-telling.

And it's incredible that the universities in the United States, so many of them have become the exact opposite about... of that.

They've been about censorship, cancel culture, about con- about self-censorship.

Professors are terrified to say what they believe or to pursue the truth.

So to be able to really create a university that's going back to its, its original roots-

Right

... as a place of free thought is just a thrill.

The next session will begin in five minutes.

This is probably Tom who will put a mic on you.

Hi, I'm David.

How are you?

That's the big Substack money.

That's, that's right.

(laughs) That's how I, that's how I spend my money.

That and, that and, uh, old man glasses.

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What you're seeing them bringing into government, which none of us could have imagined, is first of all this awareness that you can't really reform institutions. When insti- there's, there's, people talk about that, but really, you have to just shut them down and build something fresh. That's the only way you can get the old guard out and you have to have new leadership and a new con- a new constitution or a new set of rules. But also, that you don't really know what's going on until you move fast and break things. And they, so like, this is something, you know, that I experienced too, which is like, is you just have to go out there and sort of do things in the world to figure out what is the federal government. You sort of think you know what the federal government is because we, you know, we have lists of agencies and employees and whatever, but we saw with the US Agency for International Development, we didn't know what they were doing. And what we discovered is that they were part of the blowback of US counterinter- counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, counterpopulism that was pushed abroad with the Arab Spring and then the Color Revolutions in Eastern Europe and came back. And that those characters that led the censorship, disinformation, lawfare, and other dirty tricks that they used for regime change abroad brought those tactics and strategies to the United States and weaponized them against Trump, MAGA Republicans. And again, you play stupid games, win stupid prizes, and that's what they got. And so when they broke open AID, suddenly it was available for all of us to see, and there's been some very good research and scholarship by some of our allies on what was going on there and making sense of it. And so we've been in a process of sense-making as a country for about what ev- whatever it's been, a week, a week and a half, about what exactly is this agency doing? How did it become so deranged that it would use the weapons of regime change against our own democratically elected president from 2016 to 2020, including, you know, many of us suspect but can't yet prove in January 6th. How did that happen? And then the, the subsequent question is, what do we do now? I mean, Jordan, after we've spent billions of dollars creating this elaborate foreign policy establishment, otherwise known as the Blob, which includes many academic journals, academic divisions of universities, whole think tanks, parts of the federal government, nobody has theorized what comes now. Nobody has theorized what happens if the United States shuts down its main agency for soft power. That's what USAID was, Agency for International Development. It was just a mechanism of soft power alongside the CIA. It was really supposed to be, you know, State Department, AID, CIA, all supposed to be run by the National Security Council, all supposed to be run by the president of the United States. What happens when that's not there anymore? And I think there's some real questions. I mean, I'm fairly anti-interventionist, anti-imperialist, have been really for all my adult life. But there's a real vacuum that does get created. Uh, the critics of what they've done are not wrong in being concerned about, well, what happens when Russia and China move into those places? And maybe that's fine. I mean, let, let the Chinese g- get, get involved in trying to build nations in Africa. But I do think it raises some existential questions about what is the, what is the United States? What is the United States in the world? Because we are entering, as you mentioned, 70, 80, 75 to 80 years of Pax Americana, where the United States has been holding together a global system. And people talk about multi-polarity, but China, you, and China and Russia are not the United States. I mean, we are still the center of action. We have all the, we have all the talent, we have the AI, we have all the energy. S- we remain the most secure country in the world, not just because of our nuclear weapons and military, but also because we're protected on both, both, uh, coastlines, um, by huge bodies of water. So I mean, the United States is still a, arguably the big superpower. Obviously, China's a superpower, but it's not, it's not playing anything, uh, you can't even imagine China playing anything close to the role that the United States played after World War II. So we're in a moment of, you know, we're, we're just trying to figure out what's going on. I think everybody's trying to figure out what's going on and, and much less we've got to spend some time figuring out what do we want the United States to be. And JD Vance and Trump are further along in that, I think, than anybody. But honestly, it's not like, it's not like there's a consensus even within the Republican Party about what the United States' role in the world should be in this post-Pax Americana, post-post-Cold War period.

And so...

Yup. No, I mean, look, it's an incredible story. It's an incredible story arc, you know. I just don't think Trump really believed in God until he, until he almost died from a bullet. I mean, all of which remains mysterious, unsolved. You have maybe the greatest innovator in American history, you know, uh, working to reform government. You know, you have these incredible story arcs with Tulsi and Bobby coming from the left, even the radical left, really, if, if we're being honest, um, coming to this, this place which... You know, to kind of even get the story arc of our, of our villains in this story, you know, the characters who have been abusing power in the ways that we've been looking at, these are people who forgot what America was. I mean, the United States has, has never... has been very reluctant to do foreign entanglements. I mean, the rise of the media industrial complex, of the kind of mass media complex, it's so recent. It's a 100 years old in the United States. It sorta gets created by US elites in order to persuade young men to go fight in World War I. That was when we really start with government propaganda. By the time you get after... You know, W- World War II, of course, it just goes on steroids. You get out after World War II, but the media's very controlled after World War II all the way through the rise of social media, but you have the people running those foreign policy institutions, Jordan. I mean... And I mean the w- whole foreign policy establishment. Just think big, you know, the elites. Let's just say all of 'em. They forgot what America was about. They forgot that, like, literally free speech is number one, literally and figuratively. Like, you don't mess with that. That is the third rail of American life. If you start to step on someone else's free speech rights in the United States, this is a country that defends the... It's like... A- as far as I can tell, I c- can't find another country that allows Nazis to march in neighborhoods of Holocaust survivors. That is US law, from Supreme Court, from the Brandenburg decision in the 1960s reinforced in the Skokie decision. That's how seriously we take that. You... These guys went and messed with the First Amendment. They then went and, and tried to incarcerate their political opponent, making up just phony thing after phony thing about him misstating, him misou- him misdescribing the payment to the porn star and, and that was somehow five felonies, or that somehow he had some papers. You know, even though he's the only person that can declassify. I mean, that can s- can sort of declassify documents from... Right? Somehow he took some papers to his house and it merited an FBI raid on the house of a former president? These are bonkers behaviors. You look at it in retrospect, that is a kind of madness. These are people that forgot what the United States was and they had got conditioned to thinking that their power... They, they thought that they were the United States. They thought that in their narcissism and their nihilism and power, but they forgot that... Like, you just go back to that period of 1776, the founders of our country were hardcore. They were hardcore in their demand for democracy and free speech. Our establishment forgot it, they turned on their own people, they became swept up in their power, their narcissism, their elitism, their nihilism, and I mean, I love this... I mean, I'm in a great mood. I mean, I mean, this is... By the way, I also wanted to say, we're headed to Arc. We have seen the complete destruction of the World Economic Forum. It has no legitimacy. It's embarrassing for world leaders to go there. It's run by a cartoon character villain, a character who dre-... Who's, who's literally in Joe Rogan's toilet. Like, you go to do a Joe Rogan podcast, he's in the toilet. That's how seriously, in the pop culture mind, he is a ridiculous villain. World Economic Forum... 'Cause I know you founded Arc, in part... I'm sure you had a lot of motivations, but certainly in part, as a counterweight to wh-... You're not the counterwei-... Arc is not the counterweight anymore.