BJ Penn & Tulsi Gabbard on the Joe Rogan Experience #2032, fact-checked

What the evidence shows: On August 10, 2023, two days after the Maui wildfires began, the White House sent Congress a $40 billion emergency supplemental funding request. The request did include $24 billion for Ukraine (security, economic, and humanitarian assistance), but it also included $12 billion for FEMA to address wildfires and other natural disasters nationwide, plus over $3 billion for border and migration needs. The request was broken into three tranches (Ukraine, disaster relief, border security) and was not itemized with a specific Maui dollar figure, but disaster relief broadly, funds that would flow toward Maui recovery, was part of the same package rather than $0. Gabbard's claim is accurate on the $24 billion Ukraine figure but omits the $12 billion disaster relief component of the same request, making the framing misleading.

What the evidence shows: No statewide Hawaii law bans planting fruit trees. The University of Hawaii's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR), the state's primary agricultural extension authority, publishes free guides actively encouraging and instructing residents on how to grow fruit-bearing plants at home, including dragon fruit and blueberries, which would be nonsensical if a blanket statewide prohibition existed. Hawaii does maintain agricultural quarantine and pest-control rules, including restrictions on interisland and interstate movement of certain fresh fruit due to fruit fly risk, and some counties, HOAs, or specific land-use zones impose narrower restrictions on trees near property lines or utility corridors. These localized or fruit-movement rules are categorically different from a statewide ban on planting fruit trees anywhere in Hawaii, which does not exist. The claim as stated is false.

What the evidence shows: BJ Penn suggested that childhood asbestos exposure was harmless because he hasn't personally heard of anyone getting sick from it. Asbestos is a well-established human carcinogen: exposure causes most cases of mesothelioma and increases risk of lung, laryngeal, and ovarian cancer, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. A defining feature of asbestos-related disease is a long latency period, often decades between exposure and diagnosis, which the World Health Organization notes means illness and death from past exposure continue to appear for many years even after a country stops using the material. This latency means an individual's lack of personal awareness of nearby cases is not informative about safety, since symptomatic disease frequently does not surface until 20 to 40 years or more after exposure. Occupational exposure standards set by OSHA reflect that asbestos handling carries documented long-term cancer risk, and casual childhood exposure of the kind Penn describes is consistent with exposures documented in epidemiological studies as raising that risk.

What the evidence shows: House Oversight Committee bank records released in 2023 did document roughly $20 million in payments from foreign sources flowing to a network of Biden family members and business associates, so the raw figure is not fabricated. However, fact-checkers who reviewed the same records found the money was not a direct payment to Joe or Hunter Biden: about $14 million went to Hunter Biden's business partners and associates, while roughly $5 million (other analyses put it closer to $7 million) went to Biden family members, almost entirely Hunter Biden. Of that, only about $2.6 million has been specifically tied to Burisma, based on IRS whistleblower testimony that the company paid $6.5 million total, with $2.6 million to Hunter Biden and the rest to his business partner Devon Archer. No bank records reviewed by the committee, Democratic staff, or independent fact-checkers show any payment reaching Joe Biden personally, and a separate, more serious allegation that Burisma's CEO paid $5 million bribes each to Joe and Hunter Biden traces to an FBI informant (Alexander Smirnov) who was later indicted for fabricating that claim. The $20 million figure as invoked in the conversation is therefore misleading: it conflates a broader network total with a specific payment to the Bidens and does not distinguish Burisma-specific money from other foreign sources or from payments to associates rather than family members.