#2277 - Woody Harrelson

Joe Rogan (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

SPEAKER_3 (0:06)

Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Joe Rogan (0:12)

What's happening, man?

Jamie (0:13)

How are you?

Woody Harrelson (0:15)

Everything's groovy as could be. I'm happy to be in Austin. I love it here, you know.

Joe Rogan (0:20)

It's a fun place.

Woody Harrelson (0:21)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I stay here, so.

Joe Rogan (0:24)

Oh, do you?

Woody Harrelson (0:25)

Yeah, and I don't know. It's like just it's just a special place in this country.

Joe Rogan (0:33)

Yeah, I agree. It's perfect because it's like a blue city and a red state. It's like even the really kooky liberal people are pretty reasonable in comparison to like the kooky liberal people from California or New York.

Woody Harrelson (0:47)

Yeah, kooky liberals. Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about that lately.

Joe Rogan (0:52)

Did you get a lot of that after Saturday Night Live? A lot of kooky liberals coming your way?

Woody Harrelson (0:58)

Yeah, that's a good transition.

Joe Rogan (1:01)

That monologue was great, by the way.

Woody Harrelson (1:05)

Yeah, well, I got a lot of blowback, as I know I would, because...

Joe Rogan (1:11)

Because you told the truth.

Woody Harrelson (1:13)

Well, yeah, it's just that you don't want to say anything negative about vaccines, which I didn't. What I was talking about in that monologue was was really about profiteering, OK? So World War II, necessary. Everyone could say that was a necessary war. Let's say that this war on microbes was a necessary war, right? Why is anyone profiteering?

Joe Rogan (1:43)

Yes.

Woody Harrelson (1:44)

Why did, you know, FISA get to make $100 billion in 2021?

Joe Rogan (1:51)

Right.

Woody Harrelson (1:53)

Anyway, why did the government profit off of it? The profiteering of war is just wrong. Like, OK, if you say that it has to be, there's conflicts happening right now, I disagree with, but I'm wondering why are people making money off of it? You know, even if you think you have a legitimate vantage point from the other side of it, why did someone get to make so much frickin money off of it?

Joe Rogan (2:20)

Yeah, yeah, it's the dirtiest aspect of human beings. We find a way to profiteer off of everything, everything and anything, even if it's just, and they'll prolong just things in order to make more profit.

Woody Harrelson (2:36)

Well, I mean, I'm sure you know that, you know, Richard Nixon knew it was imperative that the war continue, you know, the Vietnam War back before he got elected, you know, he didn't want that to get settled.

Joe Rogan (2:52)

Yeah.

Woody Harrelson (2:53)

And there's a great phone call. I don't know if you've listened to any of Johnson's phone calls. Lyndon Johnson.

Joe Rogan (3:01)

What phone call?

Woody Harrelson (3:02)

There was a phone call he had with Nixon saying, Hey man, you're going against the peace, because he was trying to get a peace to go before the 68 election, right? Which he eventually just bailed out of anyway, because he could see he was going to lose it. Johnson. Maybe you haven't thought about this.

Joe Rogan (3:27)

No, I've never heard the conversation between Nixon and Johnson.

Woody Harrelson (3:29)

It's an incredible conversation. And Nixon's like, oh, I wouldn't do that. I would never. And of course, he was doing that. He was subverting the peace process, in the same way that they wanted to make sure Carter didn't get those guys released in Iran.

Joe Rogan (3:51)

Yeah. I always wondered about the Vietnam War. How much of it was about heroin? Three days before 1968 presidential election, President Johnson contacted Senate Majority Leader Everett M. Dirksen to inform him the White House had received hard evidence from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The campaign of Republican presidential candidate Richard M. Dick Nixon was interfering with Johnson's effort to start peace talks to end the Vietnam War. And this call Johnson referred to contacts between Nixon's campaign and South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thi, I don't know how to say his name, urged that they thwart any such negotiations.

Woody Harrelson (4:32)

Yeah. Yeah. And that did happen. And also, they definitely Bush, you know, the senior Bush, George Bush Senior, he met with the leaders of the Iranian, what do you call it, the party, whatever, before the election, the Carter, the fight between Carter and Reagan, and insisted they needed to not be letting those hostages go. Right. And so I met Carter in Austin, or rather in Atlanta, I don't know, a couple, three years ago, right? It's very exciting for me because I've, I've always been a big, big fan of Carter. I think he's the best president in my lifetime. And I talked to Carter and he was like, and I said, I'm sitting there, I'm thinking to myself, is there a better time to ask? When am I going to have another time? And so that was known as the October surprise, right?