Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1295 - Tulsi Gabbard
Uploaded: 2019-05-14T01:00:03.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1295 - Tulsi Gabbard' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-05-14. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1295 - Tulsi Gabbard' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-05-14. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1295 - Tulsi Gabbard

Three, two, one, and we're back.
What's up?
How are you?
We're back.
Aloha.
I'm good.
Nice to be back here.
When you first came here, you were thinking about running for president.
Now you're out there.
We're all in.
It's happening.
Yes.
Are you nervous?
No.
Is it weird?
No.
No?
Not at all.
None of it?
Do you feel like this is like destiny?
No.
So how does it not feel weird?
I'm on a mission.
Oh.
I'm on a mission.
You know, there's a lot of issues I think we're going to talk about, about why
I'm running
for president.
But being out and connecting with people all across this country, bringing this
message
really of ending these wasteful, destructive foreign policies that have been so
costly on
the American people for so long, costly on our troops, costly on our veterans,
ending these
wasteful regime change wars, ending this new Cold War and nuclear arms race,
and taking the
trillions of dollars that we've been spending on these programs and that we
will continue to
spend if the status quo is allowed to continue, and investing those dollars
back into serving
the people in our communities, serving the people of this country.
Things like health care, education, infrastructure, protecting our environment,
clean water.
There's so much that we need to do.
We've got limited resources to accomplish that.
These are my favorite things that you talk about.
My question is always, though, why do we spend so much time and money at such a
titanic human
cost for these regime change wars?
What do you think is the cause?
Other than the obvious, if you have a dictator that's in place, there's an
obvious outcry, like
Saddam Hussein, post 9-11.
Other than that, what is the reason why we invest so much time and energy into
regime change war,
so much so that we've just accepted that this is a part of our gross economy?
If you're going to take all the money that the United States earns and all the
money that
goes to taxes, we just automatically put a gigantic chunk of that into
investing in
these wars in other countries.
Blindly.
Why is that?
Blindly almost.
Without any kind of real accountability.
Six to eight trillion dollars is what's estimated that's been spent since 9-11
alone on these
regime change wars without even taking into account what the cost will continue
to be to
take care of our veterans, those who have gone and fought in these wars and
have come home
dealing with visible and invisible wounds that they'll have to live with for
the rest of
their lives.
Let's start back.
You mentioned Saddam Hussein.
I don't think it was necessarily an obvious outcry.
Saddam Hussein and the toppling of his regime was done for oil, right?
It was done for financial reasons.
And the architects of that Iraq war sold it in the guise of, hey, Saddam Hussein
is working
with al-Qaeda, those terrorists who attacked us on 9-11, and he's going to give
them his
weapons of mass destruction, both of which turned out to be false.
False intelligence and lies that were sold to the American people.
Sold to soldiers, people like me, who believed what they said.
You know, I enlisted after 9-11, like so many people in this country, to go
after the terrorists
who had attacked us on that day, killing thousands of Americans.
And they sold this lie for financial gain, for oil.
You look at some of the architects of that Iraq war, guys like John Bolton, who
today is
President Trump's National Security Council director.
And you look at what's happening in Venezuela, almost the very same playbook
being used, where
they're selling this regime change effort, threatening to use U.S. military
force to go in and topple a regime, under the guise of humanitarianism.
When in fact, and Bolton has said this on national television, that, well, we
really want to make sure that American oil companies are able to go in and
access that oil-rich country in Venezuela.
So do you think that's why there's so much turmoil in that country right now,
that this is this battle over regime change because of the fact they want to
control the oil?
I think the U.S. coming in and trying to insert itself into what is happening
in Venezuela is what is the problem.
So they're doing that through very, very heavy sanctions.
They're doing that through various means and threatening to use our military to
go in and topple the regime there, rather than taking the approach that I would
take as president, which is to recognize that the people of Venezuela, like
people in other countries in the world,
need to be the ones to determine their governance and their future, just like
we wouldn't want any other country to come in and threaten to use their
military to topple our government or to tell us who should or shouldn't be the
leaders in our country, we shouldn't be doing that in their country.
There are serious issues that are causing a lot of suffering for the Venezuelan
people, if we really want to be helpful, we should be a force to help move
towards reconciliation and peace, rather than what this administration is doing,
which is throwing fuel on the flames of a civil war that'll be devastating,
devastating.
When you say move towards reconciliation and peace, how so?
Well, you see there's differences, right?
There's the people who are with the current government in Venezuela and there
is the opposition.
Clearly, they have differences on what kind of future, what kind of governance
and who should lead that government going forward, rather than threatening to
use the United States.
The United States coming in and trying to act once again as the world's police,
which, by the way, throughout history has not had good results, not for the
people in those countries, what to speak of the cost that we, the American
people pay, rather than saying, hey, let's work towards peace, try to push
forward diplomacy and find what are the conditions that would make some form of
reconciliation going forward.
Is there an argument, and I really don't know the answer to this, but is there
an argument that these regime change wars, although terrible, we would be way
worse off if those weren't in place?
I think that's an argument that proponents for regime change wars try to make,
but history shows and proves that the very opposite is true.
You can look at Iraq, you can look at Iraq, you can look at Syria, you can look
at Guatemala and Ecuador, you can look at other countries, Iran, where in the
past we have either overtly or covertly through the CIA gone in and toppled
leaders of countries or dictators or regimes, and the result has been more
suffering for the people in those countries.
Their lives have been worse off, not only in the short term, but in the long
term, and the cost, once again, to the American people has also taken a toll,
as we see more and more of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars going to pay for
these wars, these regime change efforts that are counter to our national
security interests, counter to the interests of the American people, and
counter to the interests of the people in those countries.
So is this one of those things that's just a counterintuitive thing where you
would think that getting rid of someone like Gaddafi would be a good idea, he's
a terrible, evil person, but they get rid of him and now Libya is a failed
state.
It's horrible what is happening in Libya as a result of that.
I mean, you can watch slave auctions on YouTube.
It's insane.
Exactly.
It's hard to imagine that an era of YouTube and slave auctions exists in a
place that, you know, at least some part of the blame has to be on us
supporting the rebels that went in and took out Gaddafi.
Like, it's not good to have -- see, it's one of those counterintuitive things,
right, where it's not good to have an evil person in control of a country.
Yeah.
But it's also not good to kill them.
They get rid of them and then this power vacuum, right?
Yeah.
It's that -- it's hard to accept sometimes the reality that there are bad
people in the world.
There are leaders of countries who are doing bad things against their people.
What the real question is, is we recognize this is the world that exists in
reality, not the world that we wish existed.
And then the question is for the leaders of our country, is what role should
the United States play?
Does it make sense to try to act as the world's police as we have been for far
too long, both as we look at what is in the best interest of the American
people, what's in the best interest of our national security, as well as what
impact will our actions have on the people in these countries?
And with Libya, not only do we see strengthened terrorist groups, there are
terrorist groups all over Libya now, failed state.
The Libyan people are suffering now far more than they were before.
But we see the ramifications of that in countries like North Korea, where,
again, John Bolton and the Trump administration is talking about using the
Libya model with North Korea as we work towards this objective of denuclearizing
the Korean peninsula.
One of the leaders in the North Korean government just said the other day, the
United States government is talking about using the Libya model with North
Korea to get them to get rid of their nuclear weapons.
They don't want to end up like Libya or Iraq, where in Libya, as you remember,
the United States went in and told Gaddafi, hey, get rid of your nuclear
weapons program and we're not going to come after you.
And he did. He got rid of it. And what happened? A very short time later, the
United States and other countries went in and took him out.
So that action and that decision, that policy is directly undermining our
national security and our efforts to make us and the world more safe to denuclearize
the Korean peninsula.
So would the argument for regime change wars being that would it be that if we
didn't go over there and if we didn't have a military presence and we didn't
make them fight against us, that they would somehow or another gain more power
and we would deal with this evil superpower?
Is this like the worst case scenario for the pro interventionalist foreign
policy?
I wouldn't even go that far. I mean, the argument that's made by people who are
advocating for these regime change wars is we've got to do something to help
people who are suffering.
That's generally the argument that's made. And they sell this to the American
people knowing that, hey, we have good hearts and we want to help people if we
can.
But what they fail to do is to tell the truth and be honest about what they are
hiding behind this guise of humanitarianism.
Right.
I mean, if you look at Saudi Arabia, for example, and you look at the kinds of
atrocities that that theocratic dictatorship is conducting against its own
people,
decapitating LGBTQ people, persecuting religious minorities, being the biggest
propagator of this this most extreme intolerant ideology of Islam that is fueling
terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda,
waging a genocidal war in Yemen, killing tens of thousands of people, you know,
that murder of the journalist in Turkey.
The list goes on and on and on, yet what are we hearing from leaders in our
government, both Democrats and Republicans?
Saudi Arabia is a great ally of the United States.
But then you look at what's happening in Venezuela.
Ready to launch our military to go in and take out another dictator.
Ready to go in and launch our military, ready to go and wage a war against Iran.
So this is this is evidence of the hypocrisy that exists between those who are
waging regime change war in some countries.
By the way, usually countries that don't have nuclear weapons and usually
countries where they have some other underlying interests and ulterior motive,
which is not helping the people of those countries.
And then when it's convenient for them, countries like Saudi Arabia sidling up
to a country whose leadership directly and indirectly supports Al Qaeda, the
very terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, who we are trying to defeat.
Your