“You DIDN’T Make Arguments” - PBD Confronts Adam On His Dave Smith Debate

Adam, you were on the Dave Smith— you and Dave Smith did a debate together on, what do you call it, on Piers Morgan.

I think that's the first time you were ever on.

Mm-hmm.

Obviously, the market has responded and they've been, you know, saying their thoughts on how it went, what you did, what was said.

Dave has retweeted and said something about this is the end of Adam funeral.

He made some comments that went viral.

You've responded.

You made some videos.

At him as well.

But I just want to kind of get— because a lot of times from the audience, you have to know how this works.

The audience sits there and watches and says, I know for a fact Pat prepped him and the team prepped him and this and this and that, and they don't know what happens.

I want you to share with us, because the audience is curious, they're asking me, what is your impression on how you did on the debate with Dave Smith?

Well, despite what you think, I haven't listened or watched any of the internet comments.

Zero.

Like, I have— like, I don't go on to Twitter, I don't, uh check the comments.

It's just not something that I do.

Uh, some people are messaging me on my neck, what do you think?

I don't know, people are saying stuff, and I'm listening to a song called Ain't Nothing Gonna Break My Stride, Ain't Nothing Gonna Slow Me Down, and that's how I feel about this.

So they told me last minute, hey, you're gonna go on, uh, Piers Morgan.

Sure.

I think Tom was maybe gonna do it.

Tom wasn't able to do it.

They called me up.

I said, sure, I'll debate Dave Smith.

Listen, there's no doubt that Dave Smith is smart or wise or well-read.

Yeah, the same thing could be said about when you debated a room full of 20 communists on Jubilee.

They were all very smart.

I was very impressed by all these people.

But just because you're smart doesn't mean you're wise.

Now, do I think Dave Smart is— Dave Smith is smart and capable?

Sure.

Do I think he's funny?

No.

Do I think he's right?

Definitely not.

I'm asking you, how do you think you did?

I think I did fine.

I— my intention wasn't to be— play nice.

So I went on Piers Morgan.

I don't really have plans on going on Piers Morgan every single day.

That's not my thing.

It's a food fight every single day.

Respect to Piers Morgan.

I wanted to make some waves.

That was my methodology.

I could be right, I could be wrong.

I don't care.

Okay, so the problem is you said you don't care.

No, meaning like I don't care what the market thinks of me.

Yeah, I know what I believe.

I know who I am.

I know what I stand for.

I stand for what America stands for.

Dave Smith, what pissed me off He continues to say that America is the greatest terrorist regime in the world.

So what?

And that Israel is the greatest terror regime in the Middle East.

So what?

That's his argument.

Sure, that's his argument.

My point was that only 1% of Americans vote for libertarians.

He's a hardcore radical libertarian.

So when you wrote the book Choose Your Enemies Wisely, you said, who's your enemy?

Yeah, I said, I don't know who my enemy is.

I don't really have a lot of enemies.

You know me, Pat.

It's a big difference between the internet and comments in real life.

I walk around in real life, I have zero issues.

You don't have issues there.

That's not, that's not the conversation I'm having.

The conversation that, that, that I was just basically establishing is that Dave Smith, as, as, uh, as, uh, potent as he might be on a, uh, podcast, or even on Joe Rogan's for that

matter, people don't support this guy.

I support our troops, I support America, I support our allies.

I think, I think Joe's had him on 20, 30 times.

Irrelevant.

No, it's not irrelevant.

So ask whether you agree with the guy or not.

You know, Joe likes Dave, right?

So the question you got to ask yourself is, from my perspective, there is issues, there is approach, there is what's next for you.

When I look at everybody in the marketplace, including myself, everybody in a marketplace, including myself, I leave and I say, okay, how am I recreating myself for this next phase?

What areas do I have where it's a leak for me?

What habits do I have that I need to pay attention to?

When we started building an insurance company yesterday, I had Lee Strobel on.

We had a great conversation together.

One of the guys that would study a lot was Billy Graham.

And Billy Graham and his friends in 1948, they came out with something called the Modesto Manifesto.

And at that time, there was a lot of pastors that were getting caught up with young girls.

And they came up with this thing saying, hey, what are our threats?

And it came out with the threats that they had.

It was 4 things.

One of the ones was pastors hooking up with members.

Number 2 was churches taking advantage of the members with money.

Number 3 was the ego of a pastor.

When you get on stage and you feel like, you know, you are God, like some pastors actually become godlike because of how much the church fears them and they like it anyways.

They go through this.

I said, okay, how do we want to build this company?

It's very hard, but so you gotta, you gotta think about ways to improve.

I'm asking you, the argument is one end, because I don't know if you focused on making a— I've seen you make better arguments with Bassam Youssef than you did with Dave Smith.

I didn't see you making arguments on Dave Smith.

And, and, and the reason why I'm doing this with you openly, and I'm talking to you openly with you, is there's an element of also representing where you're coming from, where the expectation

is 'Hey, where do you go and be professionals?' That's not how I handle debates.

I don't handle debates that way.

That's not my M.O.

So if you're close to me and you're handling it that way, that is not my style.

I don't do stuff like that.

And Dave and I don't even agree on some of these issues.

But if I'm having a conversation, it's about what is this next phase?

And by the way, the reason why I'm having this direct feedback with you publicly is for the following reason.

This is how I roll at them.

I will give you private feedback and have your back 100%.

I've always been like that.

This is why my guys like working with me and they know how tough it is at times because I'm always challenging them.

But if my private feedback that I'm giving doesn't land and it feels like you have immunity to go run around and say whatever you want and keep saying, I don't give a shit what people

say, I do.

There's an approach to take about this game.

I don't care that we have differences and debates.

We push each other here and we have arguments and, you know, comment, I side with Vinny today.

You know what, today actually I side with Adam.

You know, there was a couple moments we had where you had a couple clips of like, they sided with you.

I think Adam's the point today.

And I'm like, oh, okay, Adam had a point.

And then, hey, Tom, no, I'm siding with Tom today.

Pat, you were off today.

No problem.

But it's recreating for the next phase.

Of what is that next phase for you.

And that's a very important thing for you to be thinking about.

I've had that conversation with him recreating himself.

I've had the conversation with him recreating himself.

I have the conversation openly with me on what I need to recreate.

But for me, when I saw that, I'm like, you know, you brought up another guy from the past that beat Dave.

Great.

You know, you brought up— no, there needs to be the Adam that I've seen debate that is prepared.

He actually would have made some real good points there.

And you, by the way, you've been a moderator for Zero Hedge with Dave Smith and, and, uh, what do you call it, uh, uh, Laura Loomer, if I'm not mistaken.

Is that what you did?

Didn't you moderate?

Yeah.

And I was a pretty good job you did as a moderator.

So I don't know, I'm saying this publicly to say this next phase requires all of us to recreate ourselves, and that includes you in a big way.

And I've said this privately 8 weeks ago, 9 weeks ago at that dinner place we went to, and I was very direct with you.

But you're cornering me to have to say this publicly to you right now.

And you have to make a decision on what you want to do with this next phase.

You got to recreate yourself.

It's a very important thing.

I'm being very respectful to you.

And you had no idea that I'm going to go here this morning.

You had no clue I'm going.

And by the way, I intentionally changed today's business podcast to do this because obviously Monday I couldn't be here.

We had certain things that was going on this weekend.

I had, what do you call it?

SLS.

SLS.

Sean Hannity did it last Friday, so I changed everything, and Rob and I, we had to talk about it yesterday and calendar to do it this way.

But for me, sometimes, you know, when people say, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, and sometimes this is like the Trump effect.

Well, Trump doesn't care.

Well, Trump doesn't give a shit.

Well, Trump doesn't do this.

Well, contrary to popular belief, Trump looks at every poll.

Trump listens to every comment.

Trump listens to every criticism.

So what you think that Trump does— I'm not telling you go read the comments the next day and go through all chat.

I don't recommend that at all.

But I do believe a little bit of criticism to see, well, maybe there's a little bit of credibility there, there's a little bit of value there for me to receive.

How can I receive this and recreate myself?

Because if you're not too careful, Adam— and I'll open it up to you guys if you want to say anything.

I'll give you the final thoughts, and then I want to get on the next story.

But I wanted to open up with this, get right into it.

Is the following.

There is no April Fools' jokes today.

I don't have one.

Okay, so if you guys are expecting an April Fools' joke, I don't have one.

This is not April Fools' joke.

I know what day today is.

This is not— you know, I've had certain friends of mine that are very good.

I used to be very good at the April Fools' stuff.

I don't have one today.

Maybe I'll have one for you next year when I'm in a different mood.

But this is the part I want you to be thinking about,

is

the market is going to criticize you.

There's a very big difference between the bots.

I will— I read a comment yesterday, made the most disrespectful comment to me, and the first thing I did, I went to the account.

It got started in February of 2026.

Weird.

It has 2 followers, follows 6,000 accounts.

That's a bot of somebody that created to say it.

Forget about the bots.

There are some people that are giving real feedback.

That we have to pay close attention to because, you know, we can disagree, you know, even with the Dave Smith part, Dave Smith's issues.

We can sit down and have a debate over the number, and I can still do it respectfully.

You know, even when I went to Jubilee, they disrespected me.

I didn't disrespect the kids.

Yeah.

When I spoke to them, our position has to be a different position.

And even when Trump calls out, he still is very paying attention to the likability score that he has.

Love him or hate him, people like him.

I'll pause.

Vinnie, any thoughts you had?

Respond real quick.

So I'll just break this down real quick.

We didn't have this discussion prior.

You just kind of preemptively brought this up, and I'm totally okay with it.

If I wanted to have an ideological debate with Dave, I would probably rephrase it that the world is a dangerous place and he wants to pretend that he's an ostrich and not engage with

anybody.

So, you know, to use an analogy, if this guy was a dating coach, he would say just sit at home all day and wait for women to knock on your door, and that's when you can respond to women.

The world doesn't work that way.

If you're a sales coach or if you're a sales manager, that's like saying just, just stay, stay by the phones.

What do you think's the outcome of a debate?

But the outcome of a debate— forget Dave Smith, for this isn't a Dave Smith conversation.

That could have been Joe John Doe.

I'm not talking— the point is that I'm trying to— what is the idea of a debate?

We're not aligned.

What is the purpose of a debate?

To find the truth.

The purpose of the clash of ideas so somebody can watch and say, wow, good point, never thought about it that way.

Let me go back and look at it.

Right.

That is the purpose of a debate.

The purpose of a debate is for me to get a look at something when, like the moment where Hillary Clinton and Trump are going at it and Hillary says, you know, you know, him and all

his— he didn't pay any taxes and he didn't do this and he didn't do that.

And then the moderator asks Trump a question and says, is it true that you paid this?

He says, yes, I will use every single tax code that you have, just like all her donors do.

And by the way, you've been there for 36 years.

How come you've never changed it?

So me as the voter sits there and says, that's a very good point.

You've been there for 30.

That's the debate.

It gets people thinking.

Sure.

So if I'm going into a debate and I didn't make anybody think, what was the purpose of debate?

Sure.

Well, now, fair point.

The point that I was trying to make is that ideologically we're not aligned here.

I'm supporting Trump.

Was I supporting Trump for 5, 10 years?

No, you were not.

So I'm all behind Trump.

Everybody wants to criticize Trump right now.

The thing that I'm basically establishing is the fact that this guy has the luxury of living in America and wants to criticize the heck out of Trump when I'm defending Trump and our

troops.

The point that I was saying is I'm defending Trump.

Dave's the type of person that will root for the bad guy in the bad movie.

So that's who Dave is.

Aside from that, other than that, I understand what you're talking about.

The reason I brought up the Coleman Hughes, and I encourage people to go watch it,

this was the sort of like the swan song event.

Imagine you hype up this event.

Here's what's going on.

The SLS is coming this weekend.

Here's what's going on.

And this debate takes place and it was a 12-0 drubbing.

So that's my point.

Should I have conveyed it a little bit better?

Sure.

Should I have not brought up someone else's debate in my debate?

Maybe I'll learn that for the next time.

That's fine.

I just— but the reality is this question, he got whooped and I called him out on it.

That's all it was.

Yeah, but it was, it was your fight and his.

Sure.

For the next time I'll debate him just heads on.

I brought up something from the past.

But my, my feedback isn't actually that.

My feedback is

it's okay to pay attention to the pulse of the market every once in a while.

Good feedback's being given.

Not 80% of people, not 90% of people, but there are reasonable people that will give you good feedback.

Sure.

And none of us, there's not a single human being in the world that actually likes to be given feedback that we get excited about it.

So it's not like anybody likes it, but it's in those moments where your character is being tested to say, you know what, let me receive some of this and see if there's some good feedback

and then process it.

I'm gonna turn this over to Vinny.

I'll just say one thing.

You know what Vinny and I do when you're not around?

What's that?

We say, hey, what feedback do you have for me?

What feedback for me?

We actually talk, we actually convey.

How many times have we done stuff like that?

Remember, but the difference is, you know what the difference is?

What's up?

Here's the difference.

So this event at SLS, I asked the question because I used to always look at my guys and judge them on how hard they work, how great they're on scripts, how many books they read and

all this stuff.

Eventually I'm like, let me look at it in a different way.

It was how much information does this guy retain from what I teach?

So you teach something.

This guy retains 10%, that guy retains 20%, this guy retains 30%.

Then the next thing is, okay, so he's winning on retaining information.

He's smarter than you, let's just say hypothetically, right?

Okay.

Now the next part is what?

What's after retention?

Implementation.

Execution.

So he only implements of the 30% he retained, 5%.

He retained 20%, but he executes 20%.

You retain 10%, but you implement 50%.

Then it comes to coachability, then it becomes the speed of implementation, then all of that stuff.

Feedback is feedback.

It's receiving and implementing that matters.

That score of coachability, high, low, is the difference between you and Vinny.

And that's the coachability marker that I want you to be internalizing for yourself.

So Vinny, again, I don't wanna be on this too long.

I wanna move on, but if you wanna say something, say it.

This will take me 2 minutes.

From a debate point of view, Because I'll give both sides.

He's never been in this environment.

Meaning when they send a van, when I go and do these debates with a panel of 6, everybody's yelling, talking over each other.

People don't realize you're in a van, you're sitting in the sun in Florida.

I'm red.

I know you were hot.

Even what's his name was in there.

Jaden was in there.

People are like, he's on cocaine.

I read the comments because I want to know what the temperature is.

The negatives were obviously you referred to another debate, which nobody wants to do.

You were a little off.

I felt, because I know you as a brother, I know that you were nervous.

This is what bothered me, Adam.

We are in here, and I know it's going to happen today on this podcast.

We're going to— Israel is going to be brought up, and we're going to go into it.

You are amazing at that debate.

And I was disappointed because, you know, you're in the moment, and you refer to whatever.

You have the arsenal.

You had the ammunition.

You had this big-ass arsenal, and you just used a pistol.

You were just like kind of going after and doing personal.

And I was disappointed because I was like, yo, you have it, you have it, you didn't use it.

And this is my attitude.

When I was young and I would get my ass whooped, my mom would be like, you're going to go outside and you're going to fight that guy right now.

You're not going to sit here and let it fester.

I know that you're going to do it.

You have to debate him again.

You have to do it again.

Okay.

All right, Tom, you don't look like you have anything to say.

It's all good.

We can't— I don't have anything.

Tom, it's all your fault.

I was filling in for you.

No, no, no, no, no.

Let's— no, Pat was very articulate about it.

He's got standards.

We get feedback.

We try to meet those standards.

We want to represent well wherever we are.

Okay, all right, all good.

Thank you, Tom.

We got a lot of messages, Pat.

You know, Monday, who do I go to if we don't have the podcast we were expecting?

We changed the business podcast.

Yesterday I sat down with Lee Strobel for 2 hours, great conversation, the author of Case for Christ.

Tomorrow we're going to have Richard Werner to talk about the economy, and I'm very excited about talking about it with him because he's got very good angles he goes through.

But to those of you guys that message, thousands of you that message saying we miss you, We want to hear the conversations, we want to hear the exchange, and the podcast keeps climbing.

Every time we're doing a podcast, it climbs, and it happens because of you guys.

And I'm grateful for you and for the 51% of you guys that tune in on a weekly basis.

We would like to take that down to 25%.

51% of you that watches this who doesn't subscribe, it would mean the world to us if you do so.

We're real close to getting past 3 million.

We'd like to take this thing to 5 million subs and take Valentin to 10 million subs.

Valentin is right now at 7.1 million subscribers, and that only happens with your help.

So if you don't mind subscribing and subscribing to the channel, that will be wonderful.

We're grateful for that.

And then next, many of you said, hey, I couldn't make it to the SLS.

We have people from 40+ countries attend Sales Leadership Summit, the greatest event we ever had.

And if you're watching this yourself saying, how do I get the recording?

How do I get what the event was all about?

Rob, is this the clip?

If you want to play the clip, go for it.

This was the SLS at the end of the meeting.

This is the SLS event that we just had.

Go for it, Rob.

We just finished the 2026 Sales Leadership Summit at Trump Doral.

People are literally just leaving right now.

The greatest event we ever have.

Content I've never spoken of before in this 250-page manual.

If you want to be one of the first to get the recording, it's officially available.

Click on the link below.

Place your order.

The type of content to help your sales team go to the next level.

All right, there you go.

There's a QR code.

Click on a link below as well to purchase the recording.

I've never had an event— we had— never have we had an event like this where we had this many companies over $100 million attend this event.

We've never had— we had a guy sitting in the corner of my table at $300 million, flew in from Finland.

At 6 guys sitting on this side with $100 million.

Guy sitting right across from me $375 million EBITDA is what he had.

Another guy in the corner, toilet paper business, doing $220 million a year, uh, from Miami.

Incredible quality.

If you want to find out more about the event, uh, click on the link below, get the, uh, recording.

It's officially available for you to get.

If you enjoy this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.

And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.