#1977 - Dave Smith

The Joe Rogan Experience.

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Hello, Dave Smith.

Hello, sir.

Good to see you, my brother.

Yeah, it's great to be back.

Fun times last night.

Unbelievable, man.

Yeah, that was your first voyage aboard the mothership.

Yes, it sure was.

If you're going to get abducted by aliens at a comedy club, it's the one to be at.

Yeah, imagine if they showed up there.

I imagine if they were going to pick a comedy club to start abducting people, it would be yours.

Well, they would know that we'd be open.

That's true.

The impromptu would probably, like, charge them.

Or you would welcome them in.

Yeah, put them on the guest list.

It is.

I know I feel like I'm just saying the same thing everyone does, but the club is really amazing, man.

You did an incredible job.

It's pretty dope.

Well, it wasn't me.

I mean, it was sort of, but it was a lot of people.

And a lot of it, Richard Weiss, the architect and designer, he's the fucking man.

He did an incredible job.

The whole thing's just very bizarre, you know?

If it wasn't mine, I'd really be able to appreciate it.

Yeah, I'm sure that's true.

But it's cool to see something, you know, like, there's something cool about having a concept in your head and then seeing it manifest into reality.

Yeah.

Because I remember, you know, you talking about this over the last couple years, like, we're going to do this and it's going to be like this.

And then, like, it's cool to see it materialize.

I've never done anything like this before, obviously.

But, I mean, to have an idea and to just, like, go all in on this idea and just really try to cut in zero corners and just do the best version of it.

And there was a lot of delays because, you know, we said, okay, let's change this.

Let's change that.

Let's do this.

Let's do that.

And when I had an idea, you know, an idea to change things, it's just like, you have to kind of follow through with it.

You just, you know, it's like you have one chance to do it right.

And you don't want to go back and close for two weeks so you can do new construction and fix something.

And so we just, you know, took a long-ass fucking time, you know?

There's a lot of people saying, when you ever, you're not opening a closed bullshit.

It's all bullshit.

They just didn't.

I knew once it got, I'm like, talk all that shit because once this thing gets open, you're all going to want to come.

And the ones who can't, a lot of FOMO.

Dude, I thought, do you remember this was like a month ago or something like that?

You texted me, or I texted you congratulating you for the club opening.

It was like right around when it opened.

And you texted me back, I can wait for you to come see it.

I think you meant to say, I can't wait for you to come see it.

But I thought there was something so funny about just texting me.

Like I was, if that was your way of telling me, you don't want me at the club.

I can wait.

I can wait for you to see it, actually.

Oh, that's hilarious.

It has been a problem, though, because there's, you know, a lot of people want to come.

And some of them are just, you know.

People are weird, like that want a headline and you know that they know.

Like, you know that you're not really a headliner.

Like, what are you talking about?

No, I'm in the position where I was talking to Adam about it because I'm trying to find a, he's trying to find me a weekend.

And then he was like, I was like, oh, I'm free this weekend.

And he's like, you know, I offered that to Schultz, but let me see.

And then I have to be like, you know, you don't want to book Andrew Schultz, man.

He harasses the staff and stuff.

So like, you know, I just have to lie about my friends.

He's actually gotten really into drugs, man.

He's been assaulting people.

You don't want to have him here.

Yeah, he like loses it on stage.

Yeah, it's really not cool.

Yells at people.

It's weird when you hear stories like that.

Like someone like losing it, yelling at people and shit.

First like weird stories about people.

Yeah.

I think the pressure of standup, like the constant performance.

It's like, it's like running an engine at very hot at high RPMs for many, many miles.

Like things blow.

And we're all kind of crazy people to begin with.

So some people have that more in check than others.

But yeah, I don't want to name any names, but I've seen, I've seen a couple of hot ones.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the most fun people though.

Yeah.

That fucking green room, like the hang in the green room.

It's like one of the greatest things of all time.

It's just excellent, man.

It's, it's set up like you can just tell it was designed by a comedian.

You know what I mean?

Or at least like there was a, that perspective was taken into account.

And tonight, uh, after the show, we'll go to the bar because the bar becomes like a speakeasy at 11 PM.

It's a private club from 11 PM on.

So it's open to the public until 11.

And then after the shows, the comics and the staff all come down and hang.

I'm in.

It's the best dude.

Hell yeah.

We just like created what I thought would be the perfect environment to develop comedy.

So there's two nights of open mics, which I think is very important.

And, uh, you know, Bill Burr and I were talking about this, uh, when he was in town and he was like, that's something that a lot of these clubs just forgot.

They just want to fill the place every night and make a lot of money, but you gotta have a farm team.

You gotta have guys coming up.

You gotta have, you know, places where women can go on stage, where men can go on stage, where anybody can go on stage, where you could just fucking just, you don't have to have any experience.

You don't have to have nothing.

You just have to have a dream and some ideas and a sense that you think you could be funny and you can get up.

Yeah.

And when, you know, one of the things that's cool about it, and I think a lot of this is like, because it's your club that there's just, um, there's this kind of like, uh, there's just this thing in you where you're like, you can be fearless here.

You know, this is like to borrow a safe space to be a comedian, like go for it.

And it's almost because it's, because it's your club and you know, the crowd knows that they know that like, they're coming for comedy here.

And it's just great.

Cause that's one of the things that's, uh, especially in cities across America now, like in terms of like regular showcase clubs, it's different when you go out and like headline.

Cause that's kind of like your crowd coming, but just random like spots and stuff.

That's a lot of comics.

Like, Oh man, is there going to be someone here who's looking to get offended at something I'm saying?

And that's, that's a real thing.

There are, I've seen it.

I've seen it at clubs.

It's fucking bizarre where someone will start a premise and then someone will yell out bullshit.

Fuck that.

Yeah.

Like they'll, they'll yell out like to like virtue.

They'll like have my flag of virtue.

I will hold it up in this, this crowd of people that are trying to enjoy something that's obviously not real.

It's called standup comedy.

You know what it is.

I remember I had a bit about this on my, uh, in my hour, uh, that I put out in 2017 and it was just like right when Donald Trump, you know, like first came into office.

But I remember like working out stuff at clubs in New York city.

And if you started a premise about Donald Trump, you could feel the tension in the room where people are being like, you better not like him.

Like you better get to the point where you're against him.

Like, are you on my team?

Are you not?

You're not on my team yet.

You could like feel it in, uh, you know, especially New York.

Yeah, dude.

I was there when he got elected and, uh, me and my friend cam Haines, were you there, Jamie?

We're walking on the street and Jamie too.

We're walking down the street and there was an anti-Trump protest and I was watching this guy and this guy, this fucking stereotypical liberal progressive white guy was walking down the street and he was, he was chanting out.

Donald Trump, KKK, uh, racist, sexist, anti-gay Donald Trump.

And then he saw this black couple walking towards him and he starts going black lives matter.

Black lives matter.

He just like on cue is like, he got up.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That part black lives matter.

He just starts in like, this is adorable.

These people are adorable.

It's it is really, it's something bonk.

He really, Donald Trump, um, he broke a lot of brains.

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's a really weird impact that he had on people where he just got them so angry that they could no longer think straight.

I remember I was living in the upper west side of Manhattan at the time.

Um, when, when he first got elected and I remember seeing like some of those like protests, I remember seeing, you know, like I remember that a couple with like their little girl, like maybe she was like 12 or something like that.

And she was holding up a worst president ever sign.

And you're like, okay, first off, he's had the job for two months.

Uh, second off, this is very disrespectful to all of the horrible presidents before him.

Like LBJ slaughtered like 2 million Vietnamese.

He doesn't even get like a shot at contention here.

You're already giving it to Trump.

Like give him time.

He'll do some bad things.

He's probably involved in the Kennedy assassination as well.

Almost certainly.

Yeah, probably.

You don't want to talk about that.

Seems like he didn't like JFK.

It seems like maybe he liked the CIA.

It seems that way, but you don't want to talk about it too much, Joe.

You could lose your Fox news gig that way.

You know what I love about LBJ?

He used to take a shit with the reporters, like standing there.

Yeah.

With a stall open.

He was a wild dude.

Just take a shit.

Come on, come on.

Let's talk.

We just sit there and fucking grunt one out.

It's the strangest, but yet most alpha thing to possibly do.

Yeah.

To just comfortably shit.

Come watch me shit.

While you talk to someone about Cambodia.

Yeah.

That's a wild move, watching people shit.

It's a wild move.

It's more wild to just have the confidence to just shit in front of people.

He's like, I'm the fucking president.

Yeah, he was just, I guess.

Yeah, he was a bad guy.

He would have never been elected.

You can't say never, because if Biden was running against him, he probably would have been elected.

Yeah, Jesus.

Biden was only 50 at the time.

The fact that he's running again is so wild.

When you watch him talk, the fact that there's no leadership that can find a solution to this, because there really is no solution.

I mean, we've bantered about it, you and I, and a lot of other people have as well.

What are they going to do?

Other than Biden dying very soon, and then someone stepping up in a big way that makes sense.

Which is not beyond the realm of possibility.

He's older than the average life expectancy, I believe, already.

I'm not saying he will die, but that is possible.

I'm sure there are a lot of people in the Democratic establishment who have been –

I could just imagine there's a boardroom with very powerful people meeting who are like, okay, we're getting him out.

What's the plan?

How do we do this?

And I think they just cannot come up with one.

I can't come up with one.

I mean, I'm not a political strategist, but I know the landscape.

I know who's out there.

He's perhaps brilliantly insulated himself by making Kamala Harris his vice president.

It's not a bad move.

Because they're like, well, we can't have her.

It's like with Dan Quayle, with Bush.

What do you want?

Yeah, you think Bush is dumb?

You want this guy?

Look at this fucking guy.

Yeah, it's amazing.

It's a good move.

I mean, it's kind of a bitch move, though.

You know what it's kind of like?

It's kind of like those headliner comics who bring terrible openers.

Yeah, that's what it is.

You know?

Yeah, you really want to do an hour after Kamala Harris?

Like, all right.

The crowd's dead, but all right.

Time is like time.

It just passes, and time is something that we're all aware of.

I got to say, I don't understand the joke.

Because sometimes you'll see it, and you're like, all right, you're doing a thing here.

Like, this isn't real.

Is this a strategy of some sort, to just say nothing and sound as dumb as possible?

Because you can't be this dumb.

I think it's panic.

Maybe.

I think it's anxiety, and I think it's panic, and I think no one can understand,

even you and I who perform live in front of strangers all the time,

we would never be able to understand the kind of pressure that must be on a person

who's deeply unqualified for the job, and then all of a sudden finds herself in there through, you know,

some, I mean, he went out of his way to say that he was going to have a black woman.

Like, it was a thing that he wanted to do.

It was like they had these diversity and inclusivity checkpoints that they had to reach.

Which is also just a really shitty thing to do to her.

It's like a really profoundly selfish thing, if you think about it.

Because if you wanted, say, you wanted to make Kamala Harris your vice president because, you know,

you want a woman of color in there or whatever, the thing to do would be to say,

I'm going to find the absolute best, most qualified person, and then pick her.

But if you do that, like, that would be more generous toward her,

because then it makes it look at least like she was the best person for the job.

Whereas if you say, I'm going to make sure I pick a black woman,

now you get all the brownie points for, like, oh, how woke you are.

But now you kind of undermine her as, like, well, she's the best black woman I could find.

Not necessarily the best candidate.

So it's a shitty move.

But a lot of people think it's a good thing.

I've talked to a lot of intelligent people that think it's important for representation.

And I'm like, I could see how you would say that in a lot of jobs.

But this is probably the most important one that anyone could ever have ever.

It's got to be a meritocracy.

Well, what's weird about it is it's almost as if there's some weird prejudice built into that idea.

Because if you don't believe in, like, superiority or inferiority of different races or different groups.

Or genders.

Right, different genders.

Then you would just go, well, make it a meritocracy.

And let the absolute best person have the job.

And I'm confident in that system that lots of different people will be represented.

Whereas if you're saying, like, well, no, we need to make sure.

Like, wouldn't it be more ideal to just have the best person at every job than to have any type of forced diversity?

Like, why would that not be better?

Everyone in society is better off if the best person qualified for jobs gets those jobs.

You want the best scientists and the best doctors and the best pilots.

You want everyone to be the best.

No one ever wants, like, your surgeon to be picked based on anything other than the best at performing this surgery.

Yes.

Yeah.

You don't ever say, I want a white man doing surgery on me.

Is that Chinese lady the best?

Bring her in.

Do more people survive when she does this?

I'd like her.

Who's the expert?

Fix my brain.

Yeah.

It's interesting because it's like it's very similar in some ways to affirmative action.

Right.

And affirmative action, in my opinion, is you're addressing a problem without addressing the root of the problem.

The root of the problem is why are so many people of color disenfranchised?

Why are so many people who grow up in neighborhoods where there's rampant crime and violence?

And why haven't they fixed those fucking neighborhoods?

They're dumping so much money into all these problems overseas.

We have systemic problems in America that never get addressed.

And this is like generations it takes to fix these problems.

It's like a long-term strategy.

But I've always said this.

If you want to make America the best, what would be the best way to do that?

Well, you want less losers.

Right.

So what's the best way to have fewer losers?

To give more people opportunities.

So who are the people that have the least opportunities?

The people that are in the most fucked places.

You can fix that.

There's ways you could dump tons of money and resources into inner cities, into these problem areas with law enforcement, with community centers,

places where people can go where they have things to do and people can train them in whether it's athletics or different jobs and show them and mentor them.

That's not prohibitively impossible.

You're not saying they all deserve their own nuclear power plant.

You know what I'm saying?

It's like what you're saying is totally doable.

And that's the way to fix all these problems of disparity.

Because people that grow up in wealthy communities where everyone is sort of trying to achieve things, there's a vibe of those places.

And so many of those people from those places wind up succeeding.

Yeah.

A lot of it I think also is that there's a very kind of like shallow narrative about what it is that keeps people in these areas down.

And so it's kind of like, you know, it's just, well, it's racism or it's systemic racism.

Just these kind of terms that aren't specific.

It's like what is actually happening here?

And so much of the problem is that like the kind of culture and family units have just been destroyed.

Like they've been decimated.

And then it's like you can pump money into like the public schools there, which we do.

We spend a lot of money on public schools.

And they're still crappy schools.

And the results are still bad.

And if you're not like, you know, even back in – and there's a lot of like Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, who are both like two black conservative, really brilliant thinkers.

They both wrote a lot about this, how like in the 40s, even during – there was, you know, segregation in the South.

And there was like a whole bunch of horrible policies.

But even back then, you know, you could walk around Harlem with no threat of like violence or anything like that.

And family units were together.

I believe the black legitimacy rate was higher than the white legitimacy rate at the time.

And there were a lot of policies that came in that really destroyed like the family unit.

Like what policies?

Well, the rise of the welfare state was a really big one.

It kind of subsidized single parenthood, which is – people respond to incentives even though it seems like that's an ugly thing to think.

But if you pay people for having children out of wedlock, you do get more of it than you otherwise would have.

And the other major one to me was the war on drugs, which I just think was absolutely devastating to these neighborhoods.

It's, you know, when – just like with prohibition of alcohol, where we – I think was still the highest homicide rate in American history was under prohibition of alcohol.

And then when – once they legalized alcohol again, it drastically reduced in the next few years.

The same thing with the prohibition of drugs.

You create these black markets.

You create a lot of like violent crime.

And that's what's really destroying these neighborhoods is like the violent gang culture.

And it's all built and funded around drugs that would – the black markets for which would not exist if we just called the whole thing off.

It's just calling the whole thing off is so scary politically.

Because if you were a guy like Joe Biden that said, I'm going to legalize all drugs, you know, people would fucking turn on you.

They'd freak the fuck out.

Yeah.

Well, getting the political will up to do it is something.

But, I mean, you even see it even with this – you know, we got like 100,000 ODs a year now.

And so much of it is driven by the fact that people are getting fentanyl and shit that they don't even know – that's not supposed to have fentanyl in it because it's in black markets.

And Joe Biden is absolutely – I mean it's hard to like hate him so much now because he's so old and senile.

It's hard to even hold him responsible.

But his career, he was like probably the worst person on this issue.

Joe Biden since the 80s was pushing ramp-ups in the war on drugs.

He challenged Ronald Reagan from the right, partnered up with Strom Thurmond and was criticizing Reagan for being too soft on drugs.

And then he was the one who authored the crime bill that Bill Clinton signed into law.

He's just – he's got a lot of death and destruction on his old hands.

Yeah, that crime bill.

The whole just war on drugs thing is such a strange issue because logically everyone knows that when you legalize things and certainly when you decriminalize things, you get a giant drop in violent crime.

You get a giant drop in addiction.

It's so counterintuitive.

But people are so terrified because drugs have been so devastating.

Because I think that if we did legalize all drugs and it happened quickly, you're going to have more overdoses.

You're going to have more deaths.

You're going to have more addicts.

You're just going to because there's going to be more access.

Yeah, but when do people – when does it balance out?

Well, I don't know.

I think there will be more access for sure.

But I don't – I think so many of the overdoses now are because people become addicted to pain pills or become addicted to heroin and get fentanyl in it.

And you wouldn't have that if drugs were legal.

So you wouldn't have – you would have – like there's not a problem with people smoking cigarettes and finding out there was fentanyl in their cigarettes.

You know what I mean?

Because it's not – but there would be if – or there could be if it was on a black market and you were just getting it from some gang member.

So it would reduce – I think it would reduce overdoses in that sense.

There's no question it's a tradeoff.

There's no good perfect solution where there's not any costs.

But the major benefit would be you would eliminate, like, the gang violence.

And already even I think when they – and I don't have this, like, numbers right at the top of my head – on the front of my head.

But the weed trade from Mexico, that used to be the big thing.

And I think that's all but gone.

Not necessarily.

It's not.

Apparently because there's so many states where marijuana is still illegal.

Most of the illegal weed is actually being grown on state land by the cartels.

Is that right?

Yeah, there's a guy named John Norris.

He wrote a book called Hidden War.

And he came on the podcast to discuss it.

He actually was a game warden and, you know, wanted to have a job, like, you know, checking fishing licenses and stuff, doing game warden stuff.

And he detailed it in the book how they found this creek that had been diverted and dried up.

And they were trying to – they thought maybe a farmer had done this or something, some obstruction.

And they traced it to this grow-up that was in the middle of the forest.

And his unit became, like, a tactical unit because they were having gunfights with cartel members instead of it being, like, game warden.

Now it became, like, a DEA-type situation where you're running into these public land grow-ups where these guys –

they take this area and they level it and they grow weed there.

And these guys were camping there.

And, you know, they had guns.

And it's wild shit, man.

The whole book is incredible.

And the stories.

Yeah, that's very interesting.

So that's 90 percent, he was saying, of all the illegal marijuana that's being sold in America is coming out of these places.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, this is why – again, this is why I think you just got to call the whole thing off at a certain point.

It's been a failure.

I mean, we've been doing it for – what is it, 40-something years?

Yeah.

I mean, it's like – or maybe more than that.

Is it 50 years now?

Yeah, I think it's 1970.

Right, 1970.

Is it 72 or something like that?

Yeah, 50-plus years.

Yeah.

I mean, it's like, okay, so we fought a war and the drugs won.

And now it's time to – just like with the Taliban, it's time to accept –

They keep winning.

Like, they're winning and they're killing us.

It's destroying our country.

And it's not the legal ones.

It's the illegal ones.

And the reason why it's destroying it is because they're illegal.

So it's also propping up the cartels.

It's like they just – you can walk right over there.

People walk over here, walk right over there,

and you have literally one of the scariest results of drug prohibition right there

where you have insane crime and insane resources that the cartels have.

They control the government.

They control cities.

It's wild shit, and it's all because of our policies.

And it's interesting that we got the guy in the White House

who was the champion of it for those entire 50 years.

I mean, maybe he wasn't in the whole 50 years, but he was in for like 40-plus of them.

And he was the great champion of it.

And it's so funny that now he runs on diversity.

Yeah, but I hired the first vice president who's black or whatever.

It's like, yeah, sure.

I threw hundreds of thousands of them in cages.

But now, look at me.

I got one right next to me.

And yes, she's an idiot, but okay.

It's so funny how Dylan Mulvaney is, like, the person they all go to,

whether it's Bud Light or the president.

Like, even the president was getting interviewed by Dylan Mulvaney,

which is like, what do you do?

Why?

Like, what is the—

And she's talking about day 300 of womanhood,

and Biden's like, bless your heart.

You know, it's so funny.

Did you hear the thing where Joe Biden lied and said he was for gay marriage

since, like, the 70s or something like that or whatever it was?

Yeah, he lies all the time.

Yeah, he's just making stuff up.

But it was so funny because he's just so old.

And you know when old people try to say the politically correct thing,

and no matter how they say it, it still comes out, like, old and wrong.

You know, they're just like, colored people could read just as good as me and you.

And you're like, oh, dude, that's the most racist thing.

So he goes—he's telling the story of when he was a kid and his dad,

and he saw two gay people kiss, and then he goes,

and then one of them walked into the bank like they had a job, just like you or me.

He was like—you're like, yeah, dude, they're people.

Like, what are you—this was a revelation to you?

Like, it still just sounds so fucked up, but he's trying to be cool.

What was the thing that he said something about just like white kids can?

He was talking about poor people?

He said poor kids are just as bright as white kids.

And you're like, oh, my God.

Jesus, the Freudian slips.

It's like you just—but it's just also like, you know,

in the same way that if any of us had, like, you know, our 85-year-old grandpa at the table,

every now and then if they say some things, you're going to roll your eyes.

You're almost like, yeah, you can't expect him to be with the times on this.

You're like, just stop making Biden talk about this stuff.

He's not with the—but the fact that he has to not only do that,

but has to be with the latest woke insanity, like that this guy,

like that any man in their 80s has got to be like, oh, yeah,

Dolan Mulvaney, totally, that's a beautiful woman right there.

That's what I'm looking at.

Beautiful woman, but he's got to like actually do that is just hilarious.

Yeah, it's very interesting.

It's really interesting the mental gymnastics that people will put themselves through.

Yeah, it's really something.

Just the idea that they're not stopping him from running again.

I mean, it's just you can't—

I'm shocked.

I didn't think—I thought they were going to replace him as the nominee at the last minute in 2020.

I was shocked he did that, and I was sure he'd be a one-term president,