Clint Russell, Reed Coverdale & Andrew Stern | From Liberty To Lockdowns & Back | OAP #19
Chase Geiser is joined by Clint Russell of Liberty Lockdown, Reed Coverdale of Naturalist Podcast & Andrew Stern.
This conversation covered everything from Liberty and Libertarianism to the Deep State and government overreach during the lockdowns and beyond. We tackled the dollar as the global reserve currency, gold standards, Austrian Economics, and cryptocurrency including conversation ranging from the ideas of Dave Smith, John Schiff, Ron Paul, and many others.
EPISODE LINKS:
Clint's Twitter: https://twitter.com/LibertyLockPod
Reed's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReedCoverdale
Andrew's Twitter: https://twitter.com/android_stern
Chase's Twitter: https://twitter.com/realchasegeiser
PODCAST LINKS:
Support Us On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IAmOneAmerican
Oh, if you're gonna be hitting it too, then I'll keep hitting it.
I was trying to get one last thing.
I'm not afraid to do it on camera, but I don't have like a public persona that I gotta protect.
I'm just an individual.
Yeah, my public persona is that I don't give a fuck, so it's perfect.
Okay, we're good then.
Uh I got a Novo 4.
A Novo 4.
Yeah.
Never heard of that one.
It's it's great.
I love it.
Yeah.
I'm a fan.
Chase just quit his.
Good job, Chase.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're very we're very proud of him.
Wasn't too long ago.
Oh, we're live.
Yeah.
Cool.
Did you not get the memo?
That we're live?
Yeah.
No.
I mean, I didn't see the timer.
So hold on.
I'm just gonna make a tweet so that we can so I can push it out.
Um so Clint, you were on Chase's podcast two weeks ago.
How long two or three weeks ago, yeah.
Two or three weeks ago.
And then you got your own podcast.
I I watched a little bit of it, but I didn't have time to get through all he Chase does like three podcasts a week now.
I can't keep up.
Uh sorry.
There's so many good podcasts out there.
It's tough.
Yeah.
Uh yeah, yeah, I have my own.
Um started it a year ago, right?
As the lockdowns really started to bite viciously and uh closed my mortgage company and started to scream into a microphone about how pissed I was.
So did the lockdowns close the mortgage company?
More or less.
I mean, oh really.
I'm uh I'm a private money lender, so I have to actually care about the underlying collateral as opposed to a bank who gets all their money from the Federal Reserve.
So I I could no longer, you know, in good conscience be a fiduciary for my investors and lending that environment, so I closed down.
And then you got on the mic and just started yelling.
You got it.
I haven't seen your shit.
I don't know.
Maybe you don't yell.
Maybe you talk very quickly.
Oh no, I yell he yells.
He pounds us, he pounds his fist.
Yeah, I uh I've been on, I don't know if you'll know any of these shows, but I've been on the part of the problem with Dave Smith.
And yeah, I love that show.
Tim Cass with Tim Poole.
Um Free Man Beyond the Wall with Pete Cañonas, so it's I don't know that one.
That's all been in the past three months, so it's it's been crazy.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Did you know?
Sorry, I'm I'm like interviewing you now.
But did you know did you know going into it that you had a pension for getting on a mic and talking and just being natural and doing that kind of thing?
Or not I mean, not really.
I I had done a uh like a three best friends, best guy friends shit talking podcast that was just for fun.
And I was always directing it towards political topics, and neither of them were very pro that.
So uh we ended that a couple years prior to the lockdowns, and then when the lockdowns happened, I was like, well, I know I you know I have the equipment, I know how to do it, so I need an outlet so I don't lose my mind, and I just hopped on and started to do it.
And I had a very small Twitter following, but um because of my threads about the lockdowns and how evil and awful and misguided they were, it's kept going viral.
It started to bring in more listeners, and I just kind of snowballed.
Just snowballed, yeah.
That's pretty cool.
You got your own show?
No, I don't have my own show.
I'm just an engineer.
Good for you, man.
Don't don't get a show.
We d there's too many.
I go on I'm on Chase's show when whenever Chase wants me.
Nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So um uh Andrew is always the guy that um uh pushes back at the dinner table on like the Thanksgiving and stuff when our family celebrate together.
So uh he's um always great to be with.
You should have your own show, Andrew.
You'd be really good at it.
I you know what would be a really fun show is like have a dinner table, invite my family, and I'll just host the podcast from the end of the table and just be like listen to what these idiots are talking about.
You know, and like push back on a call we'll call it pushing back with Andrew Stern.
There you go.
Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner once a week, and I'll and I'll tell them how dumb their ideas are.
I don't know.
It's just that the thing is that our our like our entire family and I guess Chase's in-laws all consume the exact like the exact subset of information available online and in the media, right?
They watch the same three shows and they get the same chain of emails and stuff, and so then these conversations wind up just being um I don't know, I hate to talk too much smack about all of them, but you know, like just sort of a you know a recap of exactly what's going on in the news, and of course I we you and I and and Chase reach out.
I'm I'm uh you know, I'm outside the bubble, I listen to Tim Cast, but I also listen to some left-wing ones and I get news from everywhere, and then you know, you kind of gotta pop a hole in it.
Yep.
No, I find that it was um it's crazy that I I've tried to have uh liberal guests on and not to like debate, but just to hang out.
Uh my podcast is just very free for him.
and uh they're always polite, but they message back and they're like, you know, I don't think I'm a good fit.
I'm like, come on, like are we supposed to have conversations across any sort of political lines if uh if we're too scared to hang out with the opposition.
The the reality is is that because cancel culture is largely derived from the left at this period, um they aren't allowed to speak to people like you.
Um, because they can actually get canceled just for talking to someone who has beliefs that are disallowed.
Um I've found that I've found the same thing on my show.
It's very it's very challenging to get leftists to come on.
You got guests that say that they won't come on.
Chase, that's definitely that would definitely happen to you, right?
I mean, you're just so outspoken on Twitter.
I'm sure I'm sure that left there's no I guess, but I don't think I've maybe I have and I you know I probably haven't just don't know it, but I don't think I've said anything cancelable.
Oh, trust me, you have for for a hard for a hard leftist, I assure you you have.
Yeah, you're probably right.
I probably just think I'm too reasonable.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that you've said anything that's necessarily that bad.
I'm just saying that you have said things that would absolutely hey reads up.
Look at this guy.
What's up, Reed?
This is uh my buddy Andrew with us, and uh I take it.
Yeah, I know Reed, I know Reed quite well.
He's my buddy.
Yeah, can you guys hear me fine or come through?
Yeah, you sound great.
All right, that's a rarity, so I'm just making sure.
But we're just talking about how it's impossible to get any um any uh liberals to agree to come on the uh the show with us.
Yeah, liberals are hard.
Leftists will usually do it like hardcore communists, but I can't get liberals to do it to already outside the Overton window on the other edge.
Exactly.
There's nothing to get thrown out of.
I'm not very lucky with like uh mainstream conservatives either.
Mainstream conservatives and liberals don't really want to talk to me and don't they they get triggered following me pretty easily too.
So yeah.
Now when you say mainstream conservatives, do you mean like actual representatives or just sort of talking heads?
No, just like pro-Israel, like pro uh, you know, I don't know, just like tip your typical conservative person on police pro-military, pro John McCain.
Yeah, probably somebody somebody whose source of income is coming from the establishment, right?
That's the that's the real thing that's keeping it locked, locked in.
Yeah, I mean, I don't have I don't have access to too many like high up people.
I just mean like I've offered to people on Twitter who have 10,000 followers or something, like, hey, you want to talk about this?
And never so yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, what are we gonna do?
I've been tweeting a lot of stuff uh that's antagonistic toward the FBI.
Um and a lot of my followers are like super mega followers because um uh I had like a Tony Schaefer interview that went viral that was critical of the the integrity of the election.
So I sort of got the whole like Q and on crowd very spontaneously and then a massive flourish.
And whenever I tweet anything against the FBI, it's like I get a rash of comments like, you know, I used to like what you had to say.
It's like I haven't changed, man.
Like we just saw a small part.
If these if these are people that are that are concerned with election integrity after after January 6th, they're they're still FBI supporters.
That's incredible.
I know, I know.
And I had um I had the guy that founded Revolver News on uh list this weekend.
That that dude is brilliant.
Um it's like that it's like they're all waiting for the government to tell them when it's okay to start believing conspiracy theories.
Like they're waiting for the CDC to come out and say, you know, it's uh conspiracy theories are safe now.
Well I mean it's it's true though.
It's it's just like the the alien investigations, like now all of a sudden it's okay to talk about since Tucker's talking about it.
But before you know, six months ago, you were a complete Alex Jones nut case if you talk to that.
That's what that's what I gotta take down Tucker because he greenlights these things.
He gives the seal of approval, it reaches critical mass, it's safe.
You got safety in numbers now.
And Tucker has that power to sort of like sweep an issue over the finish line, and now now everyone can talk about it.
So he's like the he's like that guy that like lives right on the edge of where what's permissible, and he can usher things over, and that's like such a dangerous thing.
He could do whatever the hell he wants.
I would have his head's on the chopping block.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, uh the moment that I remember that was really crazy was right after Trump's first impeachment, you know, all the Republicans came to the deep state.
And then the fact that you have to say first.
Well, uh, you know, the the Republicans all hated the deep state, but then as soon as we air strike Solomon and we had a reason to go to war, then they all instantly believed everything that was coming, you know, from that area of the government.
They're like, oh yeah, no, they have the facts, they have the facts.
I was like, what are you talking about?
You just hated these guys three days ago, and they're like, no, no, no, no, but I don't know.
There's just no mixed bag.
Do you think that sometimes the intelligence community gets it right and sometimes they blow it, or do you think it's just always evil?
No, they get it right sometimes.
I agree.
No, they definitely do.
They do a lot of good stuff for our cybersecurity.
I mean, we're we would just be able to do that.
Yeah, like keep the pipelines up and going and well, they fuck up too.
Like I said, they get it right a lot of the time, they get it wrong sometimes.
But we would just be dead in the water if if we didn't have them protecting us from China trying to hack the shit out of us all the time.
It's good.
You think so?
Yes, I know so.
How do you know?
Because I you're tight with around.
I knew you were.
I've been I've been around intelligence people that work in cybersecurity.
We have a deep state operative amongst us.
Sorry, sorry.
Well, I have the documents.
I'm not sure that the um FBI or the intelligence community is required in order to protect us from cybersecurity threats.
And in fact, I would go so far as to say that I think that they're probably several steps behind most um proficient hackers.
Uh and private private defense firms are almost certainly better.
I think I think that my biggest concern is that it gives a false sense of security.
That's really what it does, is that it it it makes it makes the private, you know, enterprise space feel as if they don't have to protect themselves when that's a very good point.
Yeah, in truth, they ought to be.
I mean, they ought to be taking this extremely seriously, and and I don't think they are yet.
Right.
We never we never give any of these markets.
I mean, every time that we we catch this falling industry that like fumbled, we never give them the the opportunity to really suffer and evolve and become more robust.
It's like every single market freaking industry, they fuck up.
The government steps in and they never they never get any better.
Not which is why, which is why we are on the cusp of yet a worse, bigger real estate apocalypse, because we did not let the banks fail like we should have in 2008.
So here we go again.
Really?
Are we I'm not following this?
Is that what's happening?
Same thing.
Really?
Well, I mean, when the medium when the medium house home, excuse me, when the median home value increases 23 or 25% over the course of a year, and that year was a basically nationwide lockdown.
It doesn't really make any sense why prices would go up.
Uh because it's not like people were making money last year.
No, but one hypothesis is a bunch of people said, Oh fuck, I'm locked in this apartment, I gotta move to the country, I gotta get out.
So they they all decided to buy a house in the suburbs.
Yeah, maybe that explains one percent.
Well, well, no, it does explain a big chunk of it, but it doesn't explain why you wouldn't have collapsing prices in those cities, which to a large extent you do not.
And the the the real underlying factor, the tie that binds between those two uh you know, disparate market uh marketplaces is that interest rates are hyper low and you can't find yield anywhere, so everyone is gonna buy real estate because it's a place to store capital, and that's all there is to it.
There is no rescue.
That's me.
That's what I'm doing.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, that's you and about 50 million other people in this country that are all saying are all having the same thought process to go stock markets crazy overvalued.
Um I'm sick of living in this small apartment because I've been locked in it for a year.
I'm gonna go buy something to try and try and get my leg on the economic ladder.
And now they're looking at two.
The banks too.
I mean, when they get loaded when they get pumped full of cash from the central bank because of various stimulus packages, and they have nowhere to put the money, they're more likely to just give out mortgages because even if the homeowner defaults on the mortgage, if the value of the home is greater, then there's very little low risk.
Uh unless, of course, the value of the home collapses, right?
So it's why well it's money.
Even even if the value of the home collapses, they get bailed out.
So it's a it's all the way across the board.
It's a I mean, it's a like it's a case study in moral hazard.
You have absolute definitional moral hazard across the board from the banking sector because they are able to borrow money for free, lend it out for little, and Yeah, I mean, this it's it's a recipe for disaster, like guaranteed recipe for disaster.
You cannot have starter homes that are at three quarters of a million dollars.
It's insane.
Yeah.
Where's that big short guy, Chase on this on this?
Uh I don't know what Michael Burry thinks about the the housing bubble.
I know that he thinks that the economy's about ready to totally collapse.
So I don't know that would include the housing bubble.
That would include that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I think he thinks is uh he's he's he's posted quite a bit about the uh M1 money supply going through the roof, which it did last year, and they tried to explain it away by saying it was just liquidation of existing savings, and that accounts for like maybe a fourth of it, but it's still an astronomical amount of money that was printed last year.
And um, and I think that I think that he's absolutely right.
It's just the the thing that's really tricky is that it's in my opinion, it's easy to get predictions right.
It's just really hard to get the timeline right for when it's gonna play out.
So, like Shift, for example, has been right for like 20 years, but the longer he's right without it actually happening, the more like a quack he seems, right?
And I don't think he's a quack at all.
Yeah, that's kicking this hand is like very awesome at it.
He's correctly predicted 18 of the last three recessions, so remember that uh Nate Bergazi joke where he's got either the dog the dog was gonna die.
I got a six-year-old daughter, it's gonna be the first pet that's died in her life.
I I said, you know what, we just gotta tell it, honey, the dog's gonna die.
That dog lit for six more months.
But I didn't want to stop telling her.
So I told her every day, honey, the dog's gonna die.
Yeah, and let me let me clarify too.
I it's not that I think because inventory is so low, I don't think that the collapse is imminent.
But if interest rates rise, get the fuck out.
That's that's when that's when you'll know the game is absolutely over.
Because if interest rates rise to even close to a normalization level, say four or five percent on you know, on uh prime rate, so you get like six percent mortgages.
Oh my god.
It's I mean, it would be well, and the thing to consider too, though, the difference, you know, and maybe I'm totally wrong about this.
So Clint, please correct me if I'm off base.
But last time, you know, the major problem was that the the banks were lending money to uh consumers that should never have been given mortgages, right?
They're they're subprime, right?
Their their credit was super low, they were high risk individuals.
And I'm not sure that that's what's going on now in terms of the banks just recklessly lending the money to uh bad risks, but the fact that inflation is such a major player, and if interest rates go up, then yeah, housing values could collapse.
You know, that's that's a major detriment.
But if people still if people hodl and still pay their mortgage, even if the home value is less than what they owe, um, you know, we're not gonna see as much of a collapse as we did the last time, but maybe I'm totally off base on that.
Well, I mean, it there's a fair argument to be had there, but um, you know, first off, I I don't buy that lenders have tightened their their standards that much, you know, that that it's like, oh yeah, before we would lend to anybody for any reason without any proof of income, and now it's all perfect, you know.
Like yeah, now that the federal government taught him a lesson by bailing them out, right?
That it won't do it again.
Yeah, I mean, they're gonna work around this in any way possible.
It what what is a major, you know, significant difference is that there aren't nearly as many adjustable rate mortgages.
So we actually had like a ticking time bomb that we could watch uh the last go-around, where like you could see okay, how many of these mortgages are set to reset their rate higher in 12 months, 18 months, 24 months.
You could actually like time it.
That's how Michael Burry and these other guys knew that the implosion was coming.
This time we don't know because we don't have adjustable rate mortgages that are gonna blow up the market.
Um, because adjustable rate mortgages are very rare these days.
So it is it more fundamentally based.
Yes, I would say it is.
However, prices are higher than they were in 2007, you know, significantly.
So you also have further away to fall.
So it's like I don't know.
Uh I mean it ultimately it's just predicated on low interest rates.
If interest rates stay low, you know, if they stay at one and a half or two percent and you get a three percent mortgage for the next 10 or 15 years, yeah.
We could be like Japan where you just have this like this dead market that just fucking kicks around forever.
I just don't believe that's gonna happen.
I think that at some point the Federal Reserve will have to interest uh hike interest rates or we'll have a hyperinflationary death spiral.
What makes them what makes them hike interest rates?
I'm not sure.
I'm not as uh knowledgeable about the economics of that as I would.
Yeah, it's it's inflation.
I mean, if you uh basically what you're seeing right now is monetary velocity is picking up because there's so much money that's being pumped in the system, they print it out.
So if the interest rates are lower than the inflation rate, then they're still losing money, even if they're gaining uh the actual unit number of dollars on the interest at the yeah, that's that's part of it, but it's it's really for them, it's not about that.
The I mean they set the rate wherever they want.
I mean, this is only short-term interest rates we're not we're talking about, uh, long-term interest rates are set by bond buyers and things like that.
Um, but yeah, it's basically as long as inflation kicks up.
I mean, if you have six or seven or eight percent inflation annually, which is what it looks like we have right now, I would say it's arguably significantly higher.
You start to see two percent.
Yeah, well, it's yeah, two.
I think they said it was three now.
But anyway, I think it's double digit.
I think it's yeah, I think it's 70s level right.
I agree.
So this is my point is that as people as consumers start to go, uh, especially people that are on fixed income, like social security people, they go, I go to the grocery store, I go get my drugs, I go do my XYZ, and I can't afford my life anymore.
You start to see people in the streets going, Hey, fucking this is a problem.
Um, so that that's why they have to hike interest rates because you'll have a populist revolt.
I I've been saying, I said last night, you know, if the Federal Reserve every day the Federal Reserve doesn't hike interest rates is a day closer to a Marxist revolution in this country, and I believe that.
So we'll see what happens.
Right, but then hiking the interest rates at the same time could cause the collapse, like you mentioned earlier, right?
And and it should, yes.
Right.
So it's basically a hyperinflationary death spiral or a deflationary uh death spiral, but I would prefer deflation because it's it's a more reasonable market response.
I mean, that's what should be happening.
Real estate shouldn't be a million dollars for a starter home, like it's fucking dumb.
Um so we we need to correct it.
It's the status in the world.
Yeah, sorry, Chase.
I was just gonna say when the average net worth of a 30 year old is seven thousand dollars in the United States, it doesn't make any sense that they'd be paying five thousand dollars the original million dollar home.
Yeah, seven grand, and you can Google it.
That's this year or last year.
Yeah, net worth.
Yeah, so uh and and 60 year olds have a net worth of like 80 grand on average.
I mean, it's it's wild.
I mean, we we are we are so close to the precipice, and and everyone's just like, Well, I can I can get money for free, so I'm gonna go buy a house.
I'm like, okay, good luck, you know.
Like man, it's it's super scary.
Um, I'm worried too, and I don't like I said, I'm not an economics expert, but I'm very worried about the state of the dollar as the um world's reserve currency and how that's gonna play out as as China starts making moves in terms of the digital the digital yawn that they're um they're putting together.
And I think it seems to me from um just my perspective that they are intentionally doing everything they can to subvert the status of the dollar, and yeah, if we're not the world's reserve currency, we're really really screwed because we've been sitting pretty for like 50 years, 60, 70 years off of basically the Ponzi scheme that is the dollar, and it's why we're all rich, even though we don't produce anything that the world uses, right?
And we're just sitting at the top like like uh Bernie Madoff uh of the scheme, and it's like as you know, it works as long as GDP grows faster than inflation, but like that's not gonna happen with this with these lockdowns and the economic pressures that we're having.
I think that we're really really on the verge of something uh tragic.
But yeah, well, inflation is already outpacing GDP growth.
So I mean, we are we are existing in stagflation.
We are in the 1970s again.
This is that's what it is.
So it's just a matter of, you know, is this temporary?
Because that's what the Federal Reserve is claiming.
They're claiming that they could print seven trillion, put it into existence, they put 30% of the total monet monetary supply that's ever been in existence, they did over the past 12 months.
So uh is is inflation temporary?
I'm gonna argue no.
I'm gonna argue no, fuck no, it's not.
Um, but they are gonna say it is.
So we're gonna find out who's right.
Clint, the guy who actually predicted the 08 real estate collapse, or the Federal Reserve who's told you that we're never gonna have a collapse ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.
No, Peter Schiff's the only guy who predicted the 08.
That's true.
Yeah, that's true.
And and and seven others he got wrong.
Well, I was actually growing a business and lending money for the past 12 years, and then I then I shut down my business a year ago because I was so concerned about what I was seeing.
Peter Schiff was telling you to buy gold in 2011.
Oops.
So I don't know.
You know, I I like I love Schiff.
I think he's I think he's got great analysis, but I think he was dead wrong for about a decade, and now he's right, and now he Sounds like a nutcase because he's been wrong for a decade.
So well, but if you if you look at Michael Burry and what happened with the big short, um, you know, he he was correct in the timing because I knew when the the um variable interest rates were gonna kick in.
However, he was very alarmed if the movie's actually accurate to what happened historically or in the book that it's based off of.
There was the behavior in the market did not reflect what he predicted initially.
There was a delay, and it was because they were lying and kicking the can, too.
So it's very possible that Schiff is actually right in all of his claims and predictions, but the market is just totally fixed in such a way that it doesn't reflect real uh the real environment in a in a real-time way, it's just delayed.
And so I mean that's what explain why why he gets it wrong, even though he's right.
No, no, that's 100% true.
But it's it's important if you're gonna be giving people advice that you explain to them that the Federal Reserve and the Federal Government have the capacity to kick this can a lot longer than you believe.
So maybe you shouldn't be buying gold in 2011, you know, like that's where he fucks up because you should be clarifying to your listeners who are relying on you for an investment advice to know all of the potential factors that exist, and it's completely naive of Schiff to have you know been advising an imminent collapse for 15 years straight when he knew as well as I did that the Federal Reserve was gonna do what they did.
They printed a ton of money and they they propped the shit up and they kept lowering interest rates to prop the shit up further.
And it's like this is not rocket science.
Anybody with an Austrian economics background understands what the problem is, but they should also understand what the Keynesians will do in the meantime.
So I don't know.
I don't know, I don't know why.
I think I unfortunately I think that too much of his business um model is tied up in this.
Like he has uh avenues to profit from selling gold and selling all these things, and I think I think it it makes his his advice tainted.
That's my personal point.
One thing to consider too is and and I could be, you know, from I really appreciate Reed and uh Clint your perspective on this as libertarians.
Um, and I don't know where where you are with this, but typically libertarians are very pro-gold standard, right?
Uh on money.
Um it makes sense to me that gold would be a great investment in a in a hyperinflation situation, but it doesn't make sense to me that gold would be a good investment in the case of like a total currency collapse, right?
So, like if if our currency collapses, especially as the world reserve currency, and we've seen other currency collapses in history, but never as global reserve currencies.
We're talking about a situation in which cigarettes, ammo, and canned food are going to be more valuable than gold in my mind.
Right.
But if it's just hyperinflation like the 70s, then you know, like it's things are still functioning just in a really inefficient and shitty and desperate way, then gold seems like a really good investment.
So do you think if there's gonna be a collapse, like kind of shift kind of implies there's gonna be a collapse?
It's like I'm not sure that lugging around a bunch of gold is gonna be as helpful as nine millimeter, you know.
Yeah, I think he kind of overvalues gold for its uh inherent wealth because I mean it doesn't have that much anymore.
I mean, you can use it in electronics and it's very malleable, but I mean it's not nearly as valuable as it always has been, you know, it's being used for um, I'd say I mean there are other metals that are far more useful than gold now.
Gold's just rare and shiny and pretty, and you can make nice jewelry out of it.
So I don't know.
Uh but what with the world reserve currency, I mean, I I was wondering what you guys think about um, you know, how does OPEC play into all this?
Because this isn't just a trade thing, like there's a lot of military um, you know, threats and alliances and uh uh weapons deals that go into maintaining the dollar's sovereignty around the world.
So even if we are losing to China, the petrodollar is that I mean, how do we how does Saudi Arabia switch to supporting China or Russia or whoever ends up taking over instead of us after all the weapons deals we've done with them, all the you know stuff we've done against Saudi Arabia, uh sorry, against uh uh Iran for them, you know.
Like, I mean, we've done we're just so far down this tunnel, I don't see how it just smoothly transitions to them going with something else, you know what I'm saying.
So my thoughts are that if the dollar does completely collapse, the world will not allow the United States to be the um uh uh global reserve currency again.
So there if there were to be a reset all come together and say no, or you see you see behavior from China and you See that they're importing a ton of gold and they're stockpiling the gold that they're mining.
And I think that they're trying to position themselves to be the most desirable uh reserve currency in the event of a reset.
Now that could be conspiratorial or alarmist.
I don't want to be like that.
Um, I agree with you.
But that being said, so so if there's a total collapse and all these countries come together, the United Nations or whatever to try to figure out what to do, and China's got all the gold, then it's gonna make a hell of a lot of sense for the world, the world to be like if they trust China, which they may not, right?
But it for the world to be like, listen, we're gonna make it the yuan because they have all the gold and they're gonna back it by gold for real this time because the United States basically lied and didn't after you know, after a number of years.
And so I'm thinking that that's probably what we would see happen uh in the event of a dollar collapse.
But that's just my speculation as a layman who's run a lot of Wikipedia pages.
Okay, so I'm not I'm not by any means the right person to ask.
I mean, we probably wouldn't be the world reserve currency anymore without all of our military in uh influence around the globe, right, Clint?
Or do you think we still would be?
Oh no, we definitely wouldn't be.
I mean uh I will I will push back on Chase saying we don't produce anything that the world uses.
I mean, we certainly do produce a lot and electronics and yeah, I I mean we also consume a lot, which is also a thing that they need.
Oh, we're the I mean, I think we're the number one consumer for sure.
So um, but we also produce a decent amount too.
So like it's not as if we're you know a dead economy, like we we do exist and we do put produce value, and um, but to answer your question, no, the US dollar would certainly not be the reserve currency given how you know profligate we've been with our spending.
I mean, anybody who's trying to maintain purchasing power with their reserves wouldn't put it in the US dollar with them inflating it like they are.
Um, but you know, historically, buying US bonds has been a very good investment, it's been very secure.
So I think that that like there's something about trends, like the longer they persist, the harder they are to break.
So, but when they break, they break viciously.
So that's that's how I envision it.
It's like everyone has relied on the US dollar and US treasuries to maintain their purchasing value of their assets for you know decades and decades and decades.
So the it's very they're very slow to adapt.
But the the smarter countries, the ones that see this trend starting to become tenuous, they are they are positioning themselves, as you said, like China with Yuan and other nations, Russia as well, um, to try and fill that void when we collapse.
I personally don't think it's gonna be a snap from one to the other.
I think that it's more likely that we'll have a balkanization where we have uh a polar a polarized globe where you have XYZ countries that are afraid of us, or we're giving them military support.
They still trade in the dollar because they're our bitch, just putting it bluntly, and then you have all these other nations that will use the yuan and uh and maybe the ruble or whatever.
So I mean that's kind of how I see it going too.
Just it seems like everyone wanted gold for a long time, and then we kind of switch from gold to uh gold to oil, oil basically ended up running the world.
What if uh electric motors really end up taking off and supplanting oil?
Do you think that could be another way that the world reserve currency shifts, so it doesn't even have to be through OPEC aligning with different countries?
It could just be you know, oil becomes more obsolete and it's gonna be lithium or something instead that becomes more valuable or it's certainly possible.
How rare is lithium?
I know they call it a rare or thing, but I have no idea.
Yeah, I guess I don't know.
It's not either it's unaffordable to have a cell phone.
Yeah, it's true.
Well, cell phones are pretty expensive though, but yeah, I mean it's the there's just a ton of rare earth minerals that are used in technological development.
So I think that like you could I like I don't think it's a bad idea to diversify into a a portfolio that would hold you know seven or eight of them and and just kind of bank on one of them being um you know the primary driver behind that new technological innovation.
Like if you had some capacity for cold fusion, but it needed you know so much cobalt, you know, like if you owned a shitload of cobalt, you'd be like, dope.
Um so yeah, that's that's kind of how I hedge against this stuff because I I'm not I'm not enough of a technological expert to know what's gonna win out, but I agree with you that there will be other other assets.
I mean, Bitcoin is another one.
Um I'd be surprised we made it this far without talking about crypto.
Well, you know, libertarians, we gotta bring it up at some point.
So, first of all, first of all, I want to talk about the um uh legitimacy or potential of crypto, but also I I'm interested to hear your thoughts on Bitcoin versus other cryptocurrencies.
Um, because there are a lot of options and a lot of technological advan advantages and disadvantages, depending on where you want to uh sure invest.
Yeah, I I mean I'm again that since I'm not a technological specialist, like I don't I don't read code, so I can't I like I have to read about these different coins from other experts that do understand the underlying programming because I simply can't do it for myself.
Um, but I believe that there are many, you know, alternatives that hold additional properties that have tremendous value.
Um, you know, Monero and these other ones that are privacy coins, I think are very intriguing.
Um I like Bitcoin a lot just because it's the one that like I said, with trends, it's hard for people to break out of it.
So if people believe that Bitcoin is going to be the replacement for gold for a store of value, it's gonna be really hard to get people off that uh the value is the belief in the first place, right?
So as soon as people believe it, it has the value.
To some extent, to some extent, yeah.
I mean, because it does take actual resources to produce, there is some intrinsic value to it.
I mean, it's not like it's zero, but is it 30,000 per coin?
You know, well, and in the event of a total currency collapse, it's a lot easier to exchange crypto for goods and services than it is to exchange physical gold for for goods and services.
Well, it is it is as long as the government doesn't make it illegal.
So aren't we kind of aren't we kind of to the point on the timeline where there is always going to be not a fiat currency, but we're beyond barter.
I mean, we're never gonna be back to where gold coins have the intrinsic value that they once did.
I mean, we're not we're so far be at beyond like trading your chickens and your cows.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
Like it doesn't seem like we're ever gonna go back to something bad.
It wasn't even a year ago that I was I was hoarding toilet paper pulled up from an apartment.
So currency happens.
Shit happens indeed with toilet paper.
Um yeah, I was gonna say, you know, it's oh sorry, Chase.
Uh if you want to hop in.
No, I'm not, I'm chewing gum.
Okay.
Um, yeah, I mean you guys are on the vapes, I'm on the nicotine gum.
Good job.
Uh, but beyond you know, apocalyptic um, you know, nuclear war or uh totalitarian government, which we kind of experienced over the past year, um, you know, yeah, I don't I don't think that we will switch to trading gold and and bartering in that fashion, but I think that it's important to have a hedge in that arena simply because we are nearing a severe economic collapse.
Like I know Shift's been wrong, he's not gonna be wrong forever.
We are nearing it.
And if you if you are concerned with you know bank closures and things like that, you're damn right you want to have some precious metals on hand.
Um one thing you can say about gold is that it has retained value across civilizational collapses, which you can't say for any fiat currency.
And you can't even say for Bitcoin yet, because it hasn't existed long enough.
So that that's the main reason I don't like the the pushback from the crypto space against gold.
It's like it's like y'all have been around for a dozen years.
Like, yeah, come on.
I mean, I'm not saying that that you won't replace gold, but for you to say definitively you will is a huge like it's just unbelievable hubris.
Gold has retained value for eons.
And I don't, you know, they're they just get excited about it.
I when I first got into yeah.
I think there's a fundamental question here, and I think it's why is gold valuable?
Because if gold is valuable because it's very difficult to duplicate, it's very hard to inflate the market with gold by mining a bunch of it.
If that's the reason that gold is valuable and not some other reason that we ascribe to it, some social construct of oh, it's shiny or pretty or good jewelry.
Um, then Bitcoin, you can make an argument that Bitcoin is just or potentially just as valuable as gold because you know it maxes out at 20 million units or whatever it is that it's it's set to max out.
So it is an anti-inflationary currency, it's not a fiat in that sense that it can just keep bringing it.
So if you think that gold is valuable because it is like this fixed precious limited asset In a way that nothing else really was a better substitute throughout all of history, then you can make a case for Bitcoin being just as valuable.
But if that's not the reason, then you know you have to be cautious too.
Well, let me make the the Austrian counter argument is that sure you cannot.
I mean, I could take Satoshi's code and I could create Clint coin and I can cap it at 21 million coins, and you can make the same argument from a clint coin that it has 21 million.
I like that.
Yeah, it does.
Chase is effectively saying how long have we just been relying on the social contract around gold and not really aligned relying on any of its underlying utility.
And so you can't you can't say that you could just make clint coin.
There is no social contract that has you know sort of built from the ground up in Clint Coin, but it has luckily built in Bitcoin.
There is a social contract going on, but there are competing Satoshis for value and there are competitors.
But there are competitors.
That's that's my point.
Is like the yes, you have some competitors in platinum and silver and things like that for gold in terms of retaining value.
Um, but you also have I mean, there are I think there's thousands, I know there's at least hundreds that are tradable regularly of cryptocurrencies.
So it's a different thing.
I mean, it just is like I'm not saying that it it won't replace gold in the in the social framework and that people will perceive it that way.
Like it has a very powerful network effect and it has you know tremendous amount of adoption.
So like there is steam behind this this you know, engine.
Probably the the probably the better way to think about this is not whether or not it's gonna replace gold.
It has a bunch of properties that gold never had.
One of them is just that portability and and that like true hardness.
Um so it'll just be it'll do something different.
We don't actually know what what kinds of social organizations would evolve around having that technological power yet.
So it's not like will it replace gold, you know, supersede it.
It it'll just have a different function than what people normally think of as a store of value, it'll simply just be different.
I totally agree, but that that's the argument that many of them make is that Bitcoin is replacing gold, and that's why you haven't seen gold in uh you know appreciate in value very much at all, even though you've had seven trillion dollars printed, like you would have expected to see gold at least double in value over the past year had it still means lying about the inflation rate too, and I think that a lot of the investors are looking at CPI and it's like that's a bullshit number.
Yeah, that's what you're saying that you know, people don't know how to read the market because it's so manipulated.
I mean, that's really true.
I mean, if people were doing what they're supposed to do as a reaction, then we'd see a lot more growth, but you don't see it.
So that effect.
And by the way, I'm invested in gold and silver, so I don't I'm not shitting on it, but I I have just realized um, you know, Peter Schiff talks a lot about how it does have a lot of inherent value, and I don't think it really does, not anymore.
I mean, people don't know.
Silver is used in a lot of electronics, it is, but there's a lot of mining infrastructure for it too.
So it just gets them, you know.
And I think that 25% of the world's silver or something like that is in landfills, just thrown away with little computers and shit.
So it's like 25%.
Wow.
It's it's high.
Yeah, the dude from Rich Dad Port said that on an interview.
Uh I like that guy.
Yeah, I like him too.
But so it's interesting because you know, silver's got that that use case.
Um, but at the same time, we we treat it like it's worthless.
All I'm all I'm arguing for in the crypto space is humility.
That's all I'm arguing for.
I'll make you have a lot of incentive to pump too, because that everybody's all in.
Yeah, it's hard.
I I have money in crypto, and I want to get on here and say, yeah, it's completely going to replace gold and everybody throw your money in.
Um, but you got to be honest about where it's really at.
Yeah, well, you got tens of thousands of watching this.
Yeah.
You got tens of thousands of talking heads out there that are doing that every single day, and they have financial, you know, uh inclinations to do so.
And it's just it's it's tainting the what should be um a really beautiful movement with you know short-term greed, pump and dump scams, things like that, and it's and it damages the the crypto space.
And this is why I just say have humility, please.
Yeah, I I agree.
Do you think Elon Musk sees everything that you just said and a lot of his behavior surrounding Dogecoin and sort of the um I don't know, just the general irreverence towards how serious the Bitcoin maxis take it, um, has been to sort of inoculate everybody to this kind of shitty behavior.
If yeah, I wish I believed he was that calculating.
I I honestly don't think he understands um, you know, Bitcoin's you know, underlying value properties.
Like I the fact that he No, I think that's it that's a big overstatement.
That dude's smart.
And he invented PayPal.
Oh, he didn't invent it, but he was like one of the co-creators of PayPal.
He gets money.
He gets it.
Uh I'm not sure.
I it why why would a guy that that gets money pump Dogecoin?
Like arguably the worst cryptocurrency that exists.
Because it's hilarious.
It's hilarious.
And he saw that they were taking it too seriously.
You're bailing against them taking it too seriously and giving it wrong though.
But but he's he's costing how many young, dumb people money with his not take it seriously stuff.
You don't get jokes.
I'm still making money on Dogecoin.
I don't know.
All right.
Well, yeah.
I'm with you though.
I think I agree with you though, Clint.
I think that you know, some of his behavior is can certainly fall into the reckless category.
It's just very flippant.
I wouldn't describe his flippant behavior as a lack of understanding so much as a lack of um like being responsible.
Well, when he says that that you shouldn't be investing in in Bitcoin until they get you know their their energy consumption down for mining.
I think I think that's that was bizarre.
That's fucking weird, man.
Like that's a lack of understanding of of what Bitcoin does.
I think he I think he knows.
I think you lied for some reason.
I think he was buying the dip, uh, to be honest.
Okay, well, they're buying the dip, or he's getting pushback from regulators.
I don't know what is going on, but I don't think we know the whole story.
We can't we can't say that he's he's a genius and that was an accident, or like you have to you have to ascribe really bad intentions.
If you believe that he understands Bitcoin as well as I I would assume he does, and and he and he understands why Dogecoin is such a fucking obvious pump and dump scam.
I don't understand how he like all of this paired together paints him as a really bad actor.
And I and I'd I'd rather not believe that about it.
I'm not coming out and support well, I do like Elon, but I wasn't I wasn't trying to defend him, I was just asking you what you thought was going on with him.
Um I don't know.
I mean, that's what I'm saying.
There's there's so many different ways that he handles this stuff.
I'm like, I don't understand.
Like it makes me feel as if he doesn't understand the crypto space as well as he should.
But then if he's just being predatory and you know buying dips and things like that, then he's a fucking bad guy.
So like I you know, I don't know.
I don't know.
Could be definitely could be.
I've got mixed feelings about it because it I thought it was very bizarre that they came out and said that they were gonna temporarily halt um receiving Bitcoin in exchange for Teslas due to environmental concerns, given that I don't think fiat is really any better for the environment.
It's not that's the whole point.
And I don't think that not using Bitcoin is going to keep you know China from mining a ton of it like it is, and I'll also their electro their electric cars that they're making right now are primarily, I believe if I could be wrong, uh at least substantially fueled by electricity generated with fossil fuels, right?
And the US military, the US military is responsible for the most carbon production.
The petrodoll is the reason that we've been such a fucking dominant force militarily.
If if Elon can't connect these dots and say, like, okay, maybe getting away from fiat, no matter the electric, you know, the electricity consumption it requires to go to switch over to a bitcoin um service.
Like that's weird.
That's just weird behavior.
Like a week later, he capitulated.
He got them all together for whatever little environmental conference they did, and they and they set some targets about him about efficiency and uh carbon emissions, and then he capitulated and said, We'll accept it again as soon as you meet that.
So it's you know, yeah, yeah.
I I know, but it's like that also was the kind of the tipping point from the 60 uh level down to like crashing all the way to 30.
So um, you know, if he's if he's doing it for for predatory reasons, he's a bad guy.
If he's if he's just a a true believer in the the carbon emissions, the whole you know, global warming.
He seems to be it.
I think you gotta look at his track record here.
He's trying to get us off the planet because he thinks it's gonna burn up and he's trying to make electric cars to keep it from burning up.
I think I think he's a true believer in that, but I do think that some of the um Tesla dumping uh Bitcoin was motivated by kind of getting out ahead of the news cycle.
I think he probably saw what was coming down the pike, and they were saying, you know, Bitcoin is bad for the environment, it uses more energy than entire countries, and he's like, I can't be seen to be the fucking Tesla guy and supporting this thing that's using more energy than countries.
I'm gonna get out ahead of this and say we're gonna stop accepting it for right now.
I I would agree with you if it weren't for the fact that three months prior, he was the guy who said I'm gonna accept Bitcoin.
Yeah, I know.
I don't know, maybe not in his dead.
Did he did he discover the electric consumption uh over the those 90 days?
Did he buy billions dollars of bitcoin and not know about the electric consumption?
Like this, there's no point was simply that he might have been making a PR move to get out ahead of that news cycle, right?
Yeah, that I'm he he he very well might have, but I'm just saying if he if he knew that that was gonna be like he didn't know it three months prior, it's just it's just weird.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It is very weird.
It's been very entertaining.
I wonder what happened with Facebook and their token.
Remember, they made the Libra coin and then it never went to market after they got interrogated basically by uh Congress in um some uh um hearing.
Hopefully, oh yeah, yeah, I remember.
I I would imagine that the uh the Federal Reserve said, Hey, you know how we're financing your entire operation, you know, and the CIA came to him and they're like, hey, you know how how we pay you trillions of dollars so that we can spy on all your users.
Uh that ends.
That ends if you create some maybe that happened to Musk.
Maybe they're like, listen, you know all these environmental contracts you're getting from the federal government for Tesla.
It's like if you keep pushing this Bitcoin thing, those are all gonna go away.
It's a distinct possibility, and that's one I do not overlook at all.
Moment of silence.
Yeah, yeah, for Doge.
R I Dogecoin investors.
I bought a little bit of it.
I think it's cool, it's fun, it's just fun.
Don't worry about it.
As long as it's just funny.
As long as I want to hear a read story because Reed, I don't know, I don't know much about you other than you have an awesome mustache.
That's all you need to know.
But well, um, all I can say, Clint is get ready for Freedom Fest.
You're it's weird, you're gonna be a celebrity.
I was a celebrity at Workfest.
It was strange.
Like uh I I went up there with my dad because he lives in New Hampshire and said, Hey Dad, you know, they might there might be some people who know who I am here.
There, like they're over 200 people came up and shook my hand and wanted pictures, wanted autographs, and it was it was weird.
So bring merchandise, you know, be ready.
But uhwesome.
Congratulations.
How many shirts should I bring, man?
I mean, Freedom Fest is bigger, right?
Aren't there gonna be tons of people there?
Or there it will be, but it won't be so Mises Caucus centric.
So, like more like right wing in general, right?
And it's kind of a right to not even know what Freedom Fest is.
Will you guys enlighten me?
Yeah, Freedom Fest is just like the big annual kind of quasi libertarian/slash libertarian conservative uh convention.
Uh Christy Gnome and Dr. Drew and uh you know, Dave Smith Tomwoods, bunch of people will be there talking.
It's like a four or five day thing.
So yeah, read it now.
Was there a or last couple of weeks?
Was there some big news about some leadership shifts?
Oh, yeah, crazy.
Reed can recap that if he wants to.
Yeah, what happened, Reed.
Well, uh answer your original question.
I've been on the scene for like I started my uh podcast actually the same month Clint did, I think it was May of last year.
Um, and then we both kind of started rising at the same time.
It's all been kind of funny watching um right around the beginning of this year is when I really started taking off.
Um and uh Dave kind of brought me to the spotlight.
Uh he I ended up becoming friends with him, and he gave me a big uh big platform, and here I am.
And I'm uh I'm a truck driver, libertarian.
I do most of my shows in my truck.
It's kind of my shtick.
I don't think anyone else really does that, at least live streaming on YouTube.
Um, and I'm just trying to get people to uh open their minds, talk to each other, stop thinking so dogmatically and try to work together where we have uh areas of agreement.
But um, yeah, and the party.
Um, so basically what happened is in March, I think it was the New Hampshire Libertarian Party had their elections, and they over they more than doubled in size, and they had a ton of new people come in from what's called the Mises Caucus, and um they decided they were gonna elect a chair who wasn't from the Mises Caucus just to show crossover and good faith and everything, and she seemed kind of chill with them.
So they made her the chair of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, and everything seemed to be going fine.
And then uh there's a guy who was working on the social media team and he put out a few tweets.
Um and one was uh what was it?
John McCain's brain tumor saved more lives than Anthony Fauci.
Another one was uh about child labor.
Uh he put out like four or five of them, and they were all very hard in the paint.
And I guess the chair of New Hampshire freaked out about this, and so she decided she was just going to try to start a new New Hampshire Libertarian Party and just dil disaffiliate all the old members and then bring all the data From that party over to her party uh without any due process.
And then she reached out to the chair of the national party, and he said he was going to recognize the new Libertarian Party that she was creating as the official libertarian party of New Hampshire.
And because some dude made some inflammatory tweets.
Yeah.
But it just uh got more and more complicated, and more and more people got in on it.
And instead of admitting that they had made a mistake, they doubled down and just kept going and going and going, and then just blew up in their faces because of course it was so obviously wrong.
You can't just do that.
You have to go through due process and everything.
And well, the libertarian parties that's a dudes-paying party, isn't it?
Yeah.
I don't know how many people that's different.
I don't know how many people have resigned now.
The chair resigned.
Um a bunch of people from his area of the party resigned.
The pragmatist caucus dissolved.
Um, it was just crazy.
Like, I mean, it was the best case scenario because the New Hampshire Libertarian Party got all their members back and all their data back, and then the pragmatist caucus disappeared, and all of it was the most pragmatic thing to do.
All these bad actors just left.
So I mean, it was actually the greatest thing that could have happened because everyone got exposed, everyone showed their hand, and then um, you know, like Spike Cohen and Justin Amash, who are not specifically Mises caucus members, they even came out and said, Hey, you guys can't do this, you know.
This is we have a process for this, you can't just disaffiliate a party because you don't like how they're speaking.
So in my uh, you know, a lot a lot of people were saying, like, oh, the libertarian party's done, we're never gonna be able to unite again.
And in my opinion, that was great.
Like, you got rid of all the you know, all the all the backstabbing losers, and then everyone who had principles kind of united and said, Nope, you can't do this.
And so it's me, I thought it was all great.
I don't know what you think, Clint.
That's what I can tell you from the the outside perspective, it looks like the Libertarian Party has never been getting more attention, maybe the Ron movement, but I wasn't paying attention back then.
But maybe it looks like shit on the inside.
I don't know, I'm not there, but on the outside, it looks like just more and more podcasters coming up, more and more attention.
Looks like it's all been uphill, you know.
By the way, Reed, uh no, Clint, you gotta put your cap on, man.
It's weird seeing you without it, says Rogue Liberty Pod.
I know, I know.
Rogue Rogan, the guys always give me shit when I don't wear my hat.
I don't give a fuck, Rogue.
I'll look however I want.
Um, so yeah, you were on Timcast last week.
Is he also um Mr. Clean?
Uh he wore the beanie the entire time I was there, brother.
I have no idea.
I figured he did, man.
He's got he's got Voldemort like under there, man.
Source and stuff.
And check this out.
This is how this is how I know he is committed to his craft.
The air conditioner went out, so it was over 90 degrees in that room because we're in the attic in his fucking mansion house thing in uh Virginia, and he still rocked the beanie the entire time.
So I was like, All right, this dude does not take it off.
Period.
Smoking like a branch Dividian, right?
Oh my god, that was a that was a terrible state of the attic, no matter how hot it gets.
That was that is that is one of the hardest.
That's the hardest joke you can throw at libertarians.
You just went there.
What do you think of that?
I I appreciate the uh the gusto with which you went there, but I I disavow, I disavow this joke.
Of course, it's funny because it's hurtful.
Um I like that attitude.
This is this is why we get along.
Um yeah, yeah.
So I I don't know.
I don't know, you know what honestly, because I'm so deep in it now.
Like, I feel like I went from an orbiter of the libertarian space to kind of like a part of it that I can't I can't sense if more people are paying attention to the libertarian party than they used to or not.
Like they are glad it's Dave Smith.
Great.
Well, then because he's on his shoulders and it's like, yeah, boom.
And everybody's pissed off about what happened last year, you know.
So I don't think it's like dangerously dependent on Dave Smith.
But I'll say this.
I had two, I had two of Dave's biggest detractors on my show for episode 100, and they went really vicious against him, and I fucking despised it.
But um, nonetheless, the the reason I bring it up is like people were I mean, outraged.
Like there was there was major major pushback against these guys.
So I think that that showed to me that you know, even on you know, Dave wasn't on my show, it was just other guys, one of them being Venarmani or formerly Venarmani now Cyprian, uh, which you may or may not know, and uh and Matt Ericsson, and they were just launching into Dave, and it's like that even that can go viral.
So it's like Dave is that big of a figure that a conversation about him from some detractors can now become kind of a viral uh community discussion thing.
So it's it's getting it's getting intense.
I I am a personal, you know, total believer in Dave's character, and I think that he can do great things, and I think that we need a Ron Paul 2.0.
I think he can do it.
I've said this a thousand times, but I just want to re-emphasize that for my listeners that thought I didn't push back against uh Vin and Matt hard enough.
Um that's that's how I feel.
So I think he's a pretty cool guy.
He's he's brought me much closer to the whole libertarian thing than I ever was before.
Awesome.
Um, so yeah, it's been good.
Yeah, that's what I really like for him.
I was chatting him up to my parents the other day.
I was like, you won't believe this, but the libertarians finally have somebody who's not like totally embarrassing.
I know, right?
And he's very funny.
That's the other thing, you know.
You can just you can get up there and talk, he's got the gift of gap, you just keep going, you know.
Doesn't get oddly when you're listening to him, kind of like how and I think part of what's going on too is that there are a tremendous amount of people in the United States that are Republicans because they perceive the Republican Party as the party of freedom, but that becomes increasingly obvious that it's not the case, and the more and more obvious that becomes, the more appealing libertarianism becomes because where else is everybody supposed to go?
And I'm not a libertarian in the sense that you know, I I I believe there's a place for a central central government.
I'm like a I'm a John Locke guy.
I just I I buy that argument.
And so libertarian isn't like a perfect fit for me, but damn, it's a hell of a lot better than what we're doing now in the direction that we're going.
And I think there's way more common ground between what I believe and what libertarians believe than there are differences.
And you know, uh uh, I I I just I would like to see even if the even if the Libertarian Party wasn't elected um um for major positions, I still think there's a tremendous amount of power uh in the Libertarian Party to pull conservatives back to liberty.
I hope yeah, so we'll see.
Yes.
Yeah, and uh I since you guys aren't in the libertarian space, I I want to ask you, um do you think that it's a false dichotomy to think that you have to either be mellow enough to appeal to people?
Uh or let me let me see, how should I frame this?
Like I'll just say I think the best way to get votes is to be extremely principled and loud a what about what you believe.
And I think you can do that without being autistic.
You know, you can you can like give me an example of the autism.
Okay, so do you know who Darryl Perry is?
No.
Um, do you remember that viral clip uh from 2016 where Gary Johnson and uh Austin Peterson and all the libertarians are on stage and they get asked about drivers' licenses, and people are flipping out about drivers' licenses, and Gary Johnson goes, well, you know, I think people ought to have some sort of licensing to drive, and everyone just was like boo boo, and everyone was screwing and everything and I mean, and it got that's what everyone sees.
So contrast that with Ron Paul, who was not at all moderate about what he believed, he didn't water down anything, but he knew how to present the message, he knew which parts would resonate with people without sacrificing any of his beliefs.
Um so do you guys think if someone can do that, if they can be extremely principled but smart about their message that they're also gonna be more successful as a candidate than someone who kind of just comes in and is like, well, you know, we might tweak this and we'll do this, and basically would a libertarian Donald Trump sell.
So yeah, so let me answer this one, please.
Uh, my background's in advertising, I've run an advertising business for almost over five years now.
And I've read all the advertising books, I've studied all the advertising gurus.
I've went back to Confessions of an Advertising Man by Ogilvie from the 50s.
I mean, I am entrenched in advertising.
I fucking love advertising, all right.
And one of the primary principles of advertising, which I don't think the Republicans apply to politics in the same way that the Democrats do, which is why the Democrats win, is that people make buying decisions emotionally and they justify later logically, right?
And our problem, our problem is we are so focused, libertarians and conservatives alike are so focused on having the best argument that we just totally disregard the emotional side of the debate.
So, like I see like Elizabeth Warren and some of these other Democratic candidates, and they say that dumbest shit ever, but it's way more emotionally appealing, right?
Like, you know, billionaire Jeff Bezos, his wealth increased 300% last year.
Meanwhile, you know, the average American spent 25% of their income on taxes.
Like that makes an emotional case, but it's like obviously it's more complicated than that, right?
So the it depends on what the zeitgeist did.
This is why it's so hard.
It's not a fixed problem with one solution.
It depends on what the spirit of the times is, right?
So when Hitler came to power in the late 20s, 30s, we're seeing 30% unemployment in Germany, and everybody, even though they're wrong, all the Native Germans think it was the Jews' fault that they lost World War One.
And that dude came up there and without any sort of actual logical argument was so appealing emotionally because he resonated so well with the zeitgeist that he was able to become a dictator within just a few years of having sort of a minority office in government, right?
And we saw the same thing with with Obama, for example, right?
He he never really even said anything.
It was just hope and change, right?
People just wanted hope and change after 2008.
And with Trump, for example, you know, he had his own brand.
He brought his own brand to the to the presidential election.
People didn't vote for him because he was a Republican, they voted for him because he was Donald Fucking Trump.
And so I think if libertarians want to see success, um, they're they're gonna have to have a candidate, like maybe like a Dave Smith, right?
The reason he's so badass is because his brand is awesome.
He was on Joe Rogan, he didn't sound like a dumbass, he was cool, he looked good, he looks like a celebrity, and he's not bought by anybody, he's not full of shit, like in the same way that all these politicians are.
So I think we need to focus on we need to focus on understanding what the the zeitgeist is, what the spirit of the times is, and then how can we brand candidates or make candidates very conscious of that and aware of that, and every single thing they utter, publish, produce, do has to be with that in mind in order for it to work.
This this is why I think Dave is such a phenomenal candidate, actually, because he does everything you just said naturally.
And and what makes him so special is that in this moment, people don't want buttoned up, you know, classical politician looking dudes.
They want they want people that go out there and say bad words sometimes.
You know, Donald Trump did it quite a few times on the campaign trail.
Um, I think that that's what makes Dave really, really great.
And and why I think that he will he will catch fire because he like he has he I really believe that he's tapped into the zeitgeist.
Like we are no longer interested in militarism as a as a country.
We hate it.
Like even the conservatives now are like, no, I don't want to go to war with Iran, I don't want any more wars, no thank you.
Pull us polar troops home.
Like that is a huge shift.
And I think and coincidentally, much of that zeitgeist began with the Ron Paul moment in 2008, and now it's carried on through Donald Trump.
And now I feel like Dave Smith can carry on that that torch and and lead the way.
And then additionally, oh, go ahead.
Sorry.
Oh, I was just gonna say, additionally, the the and the reason that I got involved, the reason my show was called Liberty Lockdown, is because there was no politician that was railing against the lockdowns like they should have been.
Dave Smith has been doing that since day one, and he will do that on the campaign trail.
He will he will assure no lockdowns will ever happen again.
Now, will that make him alienated to the left?
Sure, some of them, some of the more diluted ones.
But my hope is that as you get further and further away from COVID and the lockdowns, that we will have more and more analysis of what we did to ourselves in that period.
And even those that were horrified and believed wholeheartedly that the lockdowns were necessary, some of them will start to question those assumptions.
And I think that he can play off of that and even grab some from the left to add to his base.
So all the way around, I agree with your entire analysis, Chase.
I thought it was brilliant.
Um, and I think that Dave fits that mold.
Yeah, I think the you know, when when it comes to reaching the left, they don't actually like it when you pander to them or when you're soft.
I mean, a lot of leftists really liked Ron Paul, and they didn't like Rand Paul.
They're like, ugh, you know, even though he wasn't quite as extreme as his dad, they were just like, I don't know.
There's something very non-threatening about Ron Paul.
Ron Paul is basically the same brand as Bernie Sanders.
They just have completely opposite policy views.
And it's funny because you see the same demographics support Ron Paul that supported Bernie Sanders.
It's like young college kids, right?
And I just think that's really interesting.
Kind of goes to back the point that People are resonating with the brand emotionally and not really policies logically.
Yeah, I think what Bernie has done though is proven that he's just a complete fraud.
I mean, he's not a he's not a socialist, he's a corporatist, he's a warmonger.
I mean, all his all his rhetoric is just rhetoric.
If you look at his voting record and who he or uh who he urges all his supporters to vote for, I mean, he's his endorsements alone should have made him just be pillaried by his supporters.
What a scumbag.
So you have to vote for him.
He stole the election.
The DNC stole the election.
I mean, Donald Trump is more anti-establishment than Bernie, and he was the president.
You know, that's pretty bad.
Um, but uh, yeah, I mean, I think those hardcore fans are sick of being lied to, they're sick of having someone who talks the talk and then at every turn doesn't walk the walk and just you know bends over and does whatever the establishment wants, and you know, that that goes for Trump supporters too.
A lot of Trump supporters that really believed in Trump.
Uh that stimulus bill right before Christmas last year, where he looked like he was gonna veto it and he stood up and then he ended up just caving and signing it, and then he didn't do anything about Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, you know, he lost a lot of people there too.
So people are sick of people, they're they're sick of leaders who tell them one thing and then do another.
So someone like Dave, who has a record of always saying what he thinks all the time, you know.
I've been in lots of private messages with him.
Whatever he says to me privately, he ends up saying later in public.
That means a lot.
I mean, because it's easy to talk to your friends and be like, oh man, this is how I think, and then you go out there and say something completely different.
He doesn't do that.
Uh so I I'm with Clint.
Like, I think uh I think Dave's the man, you know.
I used to be kind of sympathetic toward Amash, and I I like Amash, he's okay, but he's not as Ikeist at all.
And uh, you know, it's just like trying to force a shoe that doesn't fit.
Um, Dave actually gets it, he gets how people feel, and he tells the truth all the time.
That's what we need.
Yeah, and I think the one thing that he's gonna have to do is he's gonna have to understand and realize that maybe he already does that there's half the country that is passionate about freedom, and there's the other half of the country that's passionate about safety, right?
And these are loose generalizations, but it's it's really true, and it's been it's it's played out that way the last year or two, or the last year as well, with people freaking out at the end of the day.
There's a fair argument that there's more than half that are concerned with safety more than they are for so the challenge with the libertarian party as a whole has which has been a challenge historically, and Dave is gonna have to face if he runs as a serious candidate, is that we have to figure out a way to frame freedom as not antithetical to compassion.
So there's this idea, this feeling that libertarians are like, I don't give a fuck about you.
I'm just doing my thing, and I got my guns, and I'm gonna protect my property and my family.
And if you're disabled, then you can go to hell, right?
And so we I don't know what the solution is, but we have to figure out a way to make the opposition see that freedom is actually more just, see that freedom is actually safer, see that freedom is actually gonna help those who are most vulnerable more than these other government entities or programs that we've been trying to push for the past 50 years, because all I'm gonna say is the Democrats have been in power for a hell of a long time, and things seem to keep getting worse for the most vulnerable among us, and better for the wealthiest among us.
And it's not because of capitalism, and it's not because there's too damn much freedom in this country, it's because there's too damn much government.
Well, this is exactly why the the black vote increased for Donald Trump.
Um, is because people are starting to realize that they've been lied to for so many decades, and they're like, wait a second, you know, the guy that the that you've been telling us is a racist Hitler reincarnate is doing more for the black community than all of these leftists that promised us shit for the past 50 years.
Yeah, that's the truth.
And and what you're what you're really describing is that we're gonna we're gonna have to break the monopoly on emotional appeals that the left holds.
And and I think that Dave can do that because he can he speaks with passion and fire and and concern for the the nation and for the people, and that's that will that will cross over.
Like people will feel that, and I think that it's really important because um, you know, I think that's why Ron was actually really successful too.
Is that like, yeah, you're right, he didn't come across as a dangerous person.
He didn't come across as as you know, probably vicious as Dave can be at times.
Um, but his passion for liberty and his his his belief in the beauty of it and the you know just the beneficial nature of it for everyone involved shine through to anybody.
I mean, it reached Dave, Dave exists because of Ron Paul.
Dave was a leftist before Ron Paul.
So, like, this is this is what can happen again.
And I really I believe it's going to happen.
Like, we are on the precipice of this happening, and I am fucking thrilled because we literally don't have a minute to spare.
Like, this shit is gonna fall apart.
So, God willing, we wake some people up.
Yeah, I really hope Dave spends as much time as possible lifting up more podcasters, because from my perspective, the biggest roadblock to Yeah, it's true.
Um, my perspective, the biggest roadblock for most ordinary people that are not in the liberty movement and just sort of been watching it from the outside.
The biggest roadblock from them is not any particular candidate, but just sort of not knowing what exactly the liberty movement stands for.
Uh, what are the principles?
They don't understand the benefits of it.
So you they do it just comes across as I don't give a shit if somebody hits you with their car, they don't need a driver's license, and we should have open borders, right?
You know, it's like you know, well, and the big one they hit Ron Paul with was would you are you in favor of legalizing heroin?
And it's like, how do you respond to that without looking reckless?
Like well, I guess he handled it well, and just like yes, yes, I am.
And it kind of worked for him, actually.
I mean, republicans.
Of course, for guys like us, Carolina cheered for him.
So well, no, he he asked, he asked the audience, he said, raise your hand if if everyone was illegal, would you do it tomorrow?
And they and no one raised their hand, and he said, Exactly, yeah, exactly right.
So even on the fly, this dude can still make the the principled libertarian argument without sounding like a lunatic.
So I think Dave can do the same thing.
And to your point about him uplifting podcasters, you're talking to two of them.
I mean, myself, my myself and Reed have been helped out tremendously.
He hasn't said shit about me because I'm a statist.
Well, he he probably doesn't know it about you yet, but hang in there, hang on there.
You just started.
Um so I I think that you're right.
I think that that is necessary, and as we get bigger and we can get onto bigger platforms, like the problem is is that you know, we're still largely speaking to our our own audience.
Like that's right.
Yeah, that's we're not at the level where we're you know, outsiders are hearing us.
But give us time.
I mean, I I am like dedicated to becoming the Tim Cast, the the JRE experience of the libertarian space.
Like, we need it.
We have to have a a bigger umbrella that allows more people to fucking know what we actually believe in, and most importantly, we have to allow them to understand that the the blue pill libertarians that actually exist in in power don't represent the libertarian movement, they really don't.
Like, no disrespect to Amash, but his whole thing with Trump and the impeachment was a fucking disaster because it demonstrated that he didn't identify that the deep state was against that presidency and that they were trying to sink him.
And I think that was a huge mistake because you had this opportunity with 75 million people that are now you know disenchanted with democracy.
Now now you have you want to have Justin Dimash represent the Libertarian Party, the guy who pushed for impeachment of Trump.
No, thank you.
That's not gonna fucking work.
Whereas Dave spent a full year and a half demonstrating definitively how corrupt that investigation was.
So I think he is the perfect guy to do it.
Yeah, when I really uh started separating myself from Amash was on January 6th, just the way he and so many people in the Libertarian Party reacted to that.
It was that that too.
Yeah, I mean I had I had such mixed feelings.
I didn't I was I was watching it, I was watching it live.
Yeah, and uh I was like, hell yeah, like this is awesome, you know.
Like that dude with the Buffalo costume, the horns, man.
No, not the horns.
I that was the part that part wasn't when I was watching live.
It was more like people screaming at the cops, and like, you know, I just like I was so inspired by it, like on an emotional level.
Seeing Nick Fuentes say fuck the police, you know.
It was like, yeah, that type of stuff.
But exactly, right?
But but you know, it was like the rage against the machine in me, you know, like the like the 16-year-old in me that was like, Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me.
You know, I was like rocking that with my back in my mind.
But then, like I thought about it, I'm like, man, like this is really really gonna come back to hurt the conservative movement.
And then on the third hand, what really pissed me off was how everybody, all the leaders that were going to um uh object to the certification of the election, uh, you know, it's a symbolic gesture, but they were going to do it out of concerns for election integrity.
They all buckled because of January 6th, as if January 6th Had anything to do post facto with what happened in November.
And so I just it just became very clear to me that both parties, the leadership of both parties, they're just sellouts and they pander and they do what's politically convenient, not really based on principle at all.
And so, you know, I think that it was inappropriate the way that people behaved on the sixth.
Uh, and I think that you know there were some Antifa instigators.
I think the FBI was involved as well.
I think there were some Trump Trump supporters that crossed the line, but it was by no means an insurrection.
And no, I mean, I it I thought it was just dumb the whole thing because what are you gonna do once you get in there?
Yeah, and what do you expect the response to this to be?
But when Nancy Pelosi had to go in lockdown for the first time during the whole pandemic, that felt like justice.
Yeah, I mean, it it it felt good for a couple minutes, but this anti-terrorism bill that's just come out.
I mean, I call that the day of January 6th.
I I mean, you guys can go back and watch my live stream.
I was like, just watch they're gonna use this to try to push gun control or anti-domestic terrorism laws.
Like this was the dumbest move that these guys could have made, and they screwed us all.
I mean, you know, they they probably would have tried it anyway, but they didn't have the political ammo that they have now because they did that and they didn't accomplish anything, you know.
All they got.
I mean, all you request was you know political ammo for the other side.
But although I I mean, I was tweeting out, like, you know, I I love the I think they had a guillotine and a noose, and I I wanted to see you know, politicians getting beheaded personally.
That's what I was hoping for.
I didn't get that far.
So and we're banned.
Uh well, let me let me let me make the the only pro argument for for one six since no one else has here.
Um I I think that it's it's a big mistake for the conservatives to look at that as as uh a negative because ultimately the the left dominated all you know civil uh disobedience over the those 12 months.
That was the only time you guys did.
And and what did it show you?
It showed you that the left will have charges dropped against them, and you guys will have the book thrown against you.
I think that's done by our people.
The the US government is literally holding conservatives as political pris prisoners right now, exactly and no one's standing up for them.
Yeah, we get that.
But that but that's a regular correct buildings, you know, like they were going after they were going after the capital where they were gonna vote, they weren't burning down their local RBs or whatever, you know.
I mean, they rock with some spirit of 1776 on that one, and and I I respected the hell out of it.
So now now, can you have a pragmatic you know argument as to whether or not it's you know efficacious?
Sure, you can, but I I really think that you know, anyone that believes that that Biden and and company weren't gonna roll out uh anti-you know domestic terrorism bill, regardless of what happened that day.
I mean, there was no one that died that day other than Ashley Babbitt.
That's the truth.
So what did it matter?
No, it didn't.
It didn't matter.
Because they were gonna do this anyways.
I think it does a little bit because you know, they were gonna do vaccine passports anyways, but there was just so much social pushback against it that they didn't do it.
So I mean, the the social acceptance of these things does matter to a point.
I know we are not the government, but we sort of allow the government to become what it becomes, you know.
I mean, there is there is this power.
But isn't January 6th a great example of us not allowing the government to persist?
Like, I think that that's you have to show that there is a limit at which you will start to do radical shit.
Like, I'm not advocating for radical shit, I'm just saying that if you don't ever have that limit, if you don't ever make them concerned for their safety, why should they be concerned?
Why should they stop?
Like, I think that that yes, they got nukes and F-15s.
Why should they be concerned?
Well, yeah, that's mine was said that, you know, the only their kryptonite is if you have a buffalo headdress, that's what can take them out, I guess.
But unbelievable, and not to mention the fact that I think every war that we've been in, starting with Vietnam, we've pretty much lost, and none of our opponents had F-15s or nuclear bombs.
So it's like and it also wasn't recording.
It also wasn't a civil war with nukes.
You're gonna nuke your own people where where yours your troops are stationed all around them.
Like it's it's I always make this point that everybody imagines that the first thing that will happen if they try and put down the insurrection is that the actual US army will roll down the streets in tanks.
But if you look around at how things progress towards tyranny over time, it doesn't, it's not just soldiers that come in, it's your neighbor starts tyrannizing you first and ratting you out to the cops.
You need your I hate to say this.
I'm not gonna shoot my neighbor, everybody, Jack.
I'm not shooting my neighbor, but you need your you need your AR fifteen for your damn neighbor and and the mob of people that live in your neighborhood that are gonna start, you know, that try and send you off to the gulag.
It's not the cops and the and the military, maybe eventually it's the military.
That's why that's why no totalitarian government can do it with military force alone.
They have to have they all they have to sow division within the people.
If there's no division within the people, they go away.
If there's a division of the people, we go away.
So we have to find some way to come together and realize that we aren't each other's enemies just because we believe in different economic models or whatever the fuck else.
The people that have the power, the people that have the printing press are the actual enemy.
Those are the people that you need to be fucking scaring the shit out of.
Stop yelling at your neighbor because they're not woke enough, you pussy.
Yeah.
Uh the other thing they've done though is they've made it so the guns don't.
I mean, you cannot tell me the second amendment really matters anymore.
I mean, after the last year, and we have what half a billion guns in this country, maybe, and our insurrection has a few handguns, and the cops are the only ones that end up firing.
I didn't even know they were handguns.
I I think everybody sa there were some in some pictures like the guy farting on Nancy Pelosi's desk, he's got one in his belt, and I mean, but there was there was like I mean, there was no resistance.
There was that little bit of a um of a uh protest at the Michigan Capitol building, I think, but that was all that really happened.
I mean, no one did anything.
So I I think if they actually go after the guns, they're gonna be poking a hornet's nest.
I think if they're smart, they'll be like, hey, look at these idiots.
We can take literally everything except their guns, and they will still think they're free.
You know, so let's let them keep their guns and then we can tap their phone, we can lock them down, we can bail out ourselves, keeping them in their houses.
Like they won't they won't just seize them.
They'll they will they will just they'll they'll create very lucrative buyback programs and they'll make it very difficult to get new guns.
So I think that what they're gonna in my opinion, what they're probably gonna try to do is just get it so that it's so um uh enticing for a majority of gun owners to just sell it back to the state.
Um like kind of like what Australia did, right?
If you instead of declawing a tiger, if you just put him in a cage or a big cage where he feels like he's still in charge, you're not gonna go in with flyers to declaw him, you know.
Like, why?
Why bother?
I mean, that's what they've done to us.
Like this is this is why Reed and I, I think agreed that Trump's presidency was kind of a disaster during the the lockdowns, because he pacified the tiger.
The tiger was the conservatives that had had it been Hillary Clinton that said, Hey, all you conservatives that believe in liberty, you have to stay home for a year and close your business and go bankrupt.
Imagine they they would have been like, uh fuck you, bitch.
No, yeah.
So yeah, he thought he was gonna he thought he was gonna have four more years to fix it and he didn't take any risks during the election.
And um, and ultimately, uh it was the wrong call.
I think I think he should have been taking a lot more risks and and been a lot more principled in the way you absolutely right.
I loved the ads that were Trump was president and the ads were saying this is Biden's America.
It's like this is literally your America, Trump, like you are president right now.
And like you saw the keep America great logo go away, it went back to make America great again.
I don't know if anyone's so what should he have done?
Should he just should he have just sent in the National Guard to quell these um these uh uh protests at these major cities?
I mean, that would have been not allowed the lockdowns.
I don't think we have what we saw over the summer.
So it's he he holds the responsibility for putting Fauci in power and listening to that fucking liar and letting us have all of our liberties stripped away, and then you have all of these people who are now getting you know government stipends to stay home and not work that are like, Oh, someone got killed and I saw it on the internet, and now there's people on the street and I have nothing to do.
I don't think this should even get to that point if it if it weren't for the lockdown.
So I think that that was his by far.
If that if he had not locked down this country, I think he'd still be president.
So I'll take it a little bit, I'll take it in a slightly different direction.
I largely agree.
I think he shouldn't have gotten involved with the lockdowns.
He should have said, Governors, you've got to figure it out, but you're gonna be responsible what he did though.
Well, he gives them advice.
Hang on, he didn't have the stimulus caveat.
Yeah, he didn't have the stimulus caveat because they would have been much more judicious with their lockdowns.
They wouldn't have locked down when it was economically impractical, um, if they knew that they were on the line for the money.
And there wasn't just stimulus, there was like the Federal Reserve was buying municipal bonds, right?
Like for cities down to two hundred fifty thousand citizens or something crazy like that.
I mean, it was it was way beyond just the stimulus bills, too.
Yeah, plus the federal, you know, addition to the unemployment, so that made it so that it was like more profitable to not work for a huge amount of young people.
And those are that huge amount of young people all of a sudden.
I couldn't hire anybody.
I couldn't hire anybody.
I still got people saying I'm getting more money from, and I was offering like 20, 25 bucks an hour part time, and they're like, sorry, I can't take it.
It's still a problem to this day.
I mean, this is all a product of the Federal Reserve.
But Trump, in his position of power, had the capacity to really put the brakes on it, or at least uh, and I've said this from the jump.
Like, even if you believe that the president is toothless, which I think largely they are, um, he could have gone out every like, you know, how you remember during the summer when he was doing those daily press briefings with Fauci by his side, he could have gone out every day saying any governor that uh that locks down, like especially after he realized it was bullshit, because I think he realized it was bullshit like three months in.
If he had just gone out and said, any governor that that that persists with these lockdowns unnecessarily, I am going to uh remove federal funding from your state.
Like he could have and or he could have threatened it, or he could have just gone out there and said every day he has a press conference and he says, This isn't the American way, this isn't what we do here.
And if he just kept going out there and saying that, he would have had my vote and he didn't get my vote.
Like, and I know there's a lot of people that were fucking furious about the lockdowns that would have voted for him, even though I hated a bunch of things about him if he had just you know strongly advocated against it.
So that was his failing in my opinion.
And the thing that both bothers me so much about the lockdowns is you know, on one hand, it makes sense from a pragmatic standpoint that you know, if there's a if there's a viral crisis, you know, lockdowns make sense.
But on the second hand, on the other hand, it's like if there was if people were really afraid of this pandemic, you wouldn't have to mandate them to lockdown.
Like if if my brother or if if Andrew died of COVID, I would have stayed home, you know, we're the same age for the same guy, you're right, right?
Basically, right?
I would have been like, I'm not going anywhere, regardless of whether or not there was a mandate.
And I think the reason that the lockdowns were so controversial is because this pandemic was so vanilla in terms of its like danger and risk, and it was so obvious early on who was actually at risk and who wasn't, in terms of like old obese, whatever, that it was it was just stupid that we were locked down at all.
I mean, you're telling me that I can't go to church, and I have like a less than half a percent of chance of dying if I get COVID, and I may not even get it.
It's just it was just so ridiculous.
Not to mention the states that didn't have lockdowns early on, we saw the exact same numbers when it came to like uh uh foot traffic and and vehicle traffic.
People were already taking the precautions necessary before the government came in and said, Hey, take these precautions because we were scared to death.
I don't know about that, man.
I well, I was I was here in Florida during spring break, and the the 20-something-year-olds were out on the boats just raging and pouring beer down each other's throats and spreading COVID like that.
But 20 year old shit in 2020.
No, 24 dying.
That's the thing.
But we didn't know.
Remember, you got to remember back at that time, no one really had any idea whether or not this thing was going to be so bad that it overwhelmed the hospital system.
So a major argument wasn't that everyone's gonna die, it's that there's actually some critical capacity to the hospitals, and if we reach that, then you're gonna die of cancer because every all the beds are gonna be taken.
Remember that period where you're making that architect.
I mean, I agree that we were close.
We didn't know.
But that I think that happens every year.
That happens every year during the flu season.
It was just bullshit because it was supposed to be never too long to spread, and then you know, we still have places that are like.
I agree.
Some of it was in hindsight, but if you actually look at the states that didn't lock down versus those that did, you still had very comparable uh infection rates as well as fatality rates.
It's just it's just nonsense.
The states that locked down the hardest actually had worse fatality rates, including New York, which was like a fucking the death, the epicenter of death.
And then they were that was largely because it was centrally planned because you had the governor orchestrating having the elderly housed with COVID patients.
It was it was psychotic, and like all you had to do was allow people to make their own decisions, they would have made much better decisions.
This is the this is the power of the free market.
This is why we believe in capitalism, because we believe that having decentralized decision making creates the best outcome.
And why would we not believe that during a pandemic?
It makes no sense.
It's counter to to what we believe fundamentally.
So it's just I mean, the evidence demonstrated it too.
And if you allow people to make their own decisions, then it eliminates the culpability of any central government.
It's like that's right, you get sick, it's not my fault.
Right, yeah.
And Trump there was so many regulations that whenever anybody dies, people are pointing fingers at leaders and politicians.
It's like, you know, if we would have just been hands off, then all the deaths would have been whoever, you know, whatever decision they made, or just you know, tra natural tragedy, but not actual bureaucratic culpability.
So I got a question for you guys.
Um, whenever there's a social rift when something like this is going on, I always have my eyes open looking for um, you know, some ulterior motives.
So if you look at all of the money that has been spent throughout the last year, like going to giant corporations, going to overseas governments, going to pet projects.
Um, most people were not talking about that at all.
We were talking about masks, and I felt like they knew masks were bullshit earlier than you know, I mean, pretty super early on, but they realized the social rift that was causing.
And I'm not saying masks don't matter, like I don't like masks, and I think it's had an effect on young children that's been bad, but compared to all the upward transfer of wealth that's been going on, the masks are kind of a dumb thing that I felt like they really wanted to distract us with, and they saw that conservatives hated them, liberals loved them, they saw how religious it got.
So I feel like they really pushed the mask thing just to get us to fight about that instead of you know, well, you gotta keep in mind bailouts that what they were able to do was they were able to brand the mask as a political statement, right?
And this is this is what the Democrats do that's so smart and they do it all the time.
And so when you're out in public and you see everyone wearing a mask, there's just kind of this undertone that you know, maybe they're voting for Biden, right?
And I I think that it was a political, I think it was a campaign move, if if nothing else.
I think at first, you know, there was like, hey, we don't know enough about this virus, just wear a fucking mask.
And then it became so political that the Democrats just rode with it, and then they started having people wear two masks, even though there's no reason behind it, and it was just to show it was like walking around with a campaign sign.
I mean, you might towards the end there, you might as well have been wearing a Biden t-shirt if you were wearing a mask.
Yeah, I mean, but now like we're getting to the point where mask mandates are ending, people aren't wearing masks anymore.
And so then everyone's like, Yay, everything's back to normal.
And it's like, no, I mean, the masks weren't the worst thing that has happened over the last year.
There's been way more damage that's gonna take forever to recover from.
So it's almost like it was just hey, why don't you guys squabble about this, and then we're gonna you know facilitate all this crazy uh wealth transfer, and you guys are gonna forget about it and you're not even gonna remember it after it's over.
I don't know.
But it's definitely um performative symbology, like they uh because uh if you read Fauci's emails, or if you just listen to the motherfucker back in April, he said, you don't need a mask, it's not gonna save you because he understands you know how this stuff works, you know, like and then and then all of a sudden he he changes his tune, and then it's one mess and it's two mess, and it's uh three, four, whatever.
And and then he shifts back to like, okay, well, you know, as as soon as he's being skewered by Rand Paul, he's like, Well, of course, a mask isn't gonna protect everybody.
I mean, I no one ever said that.
I never lied about that.
And it's like the guy, the guy's been on every side of this topic, so you can no longer pin him down.
So to me, what it adds up to is obvious political gamesmanship.
And and I don't, I don't know, you know, like the exact intention.
I think you're right that it was certainly a distraction.
Um, but it was it and it was a good one to use because it was important.
I mean, it was for anyone that values freedom, it felt like you were being muzzled.
And and I completely understood it.
Like, I I was viscerally upset all year because I live in California.
It was so symbolic, you have to admit, like putting it over your mouth.
Yeah, right.
You want to bitch about it, and you've got this thing over your mouth.
It was like the perfect symbolic thing to muzzle, yeah, like a muzzle.
Yeah, and then and then I'm I'm going to the gym, and like I I basically every store I'm in Southern California, so everywhere I went for basically an entire year, I saw no one's face.
I mean, that is a that is a crippling psychological weapon that you're using.
I didn't think it was I didn't think it would, but it really did get to me psychologically toward the end there.
Um it would it's subtle how it kind of creeps on you, but there's like this sort of like drudgery sort of depression that just kind of creeps up after you don't see people for a year or look at their face, and you have all these rules, like definitely there was a psychological impact.
And I'm not, You know, convinced that it was necessarily intentional, but it was definitely a symptom of the policy decisions that were made, and it was necessary.
The fact that it was persistent, the fact that they continued with it, that's where I get to the point of like, okay, this is this is a decision that you're making consciously because you now have totally I would totally agree with you, but you know, this sort of like conspiratorial mind that they it it was it was run of the mail everyday democrats down the street from me that were pumping it.
It wasn't just Fauci.
They believe they were it was the social taboo of taking it off because my neighbors don't like it.
Yeah, but they don't have reinforcing it.
But to orchestrate that with a network of agents or something, they just create mindsets, and then those mindsets are just triggered like this, so you can be like, yeah, trickle down idealism.
Yeah, it's actually it's all about scientism.
I mean, they they bel they worship science, they talked about Fauci, like they they painted him with fucking wings and shit, like they deified this man over the past year.
So of course it doesn't take a grand conspiracy, it takes one guy who's been given the authority to tell everybody what to do, and the left loves authority figures, and he was the top guy.
So when he said it, that's all it that's all that was required.
I don't think it's like a grand conspiracy.
I think you could have you know five people in the political sphere that sit down and they say, Hey, we can do XYZ, and we're gonna have you know, milli half the country is gonna do this gleefully, and and they will they will talk shit to anybody who goes who gets out of line with it, and then I mean it's it it goes deep, man.
It goes really deep.
So have you guys read uh Orwell and Huxley, that's Brave New World and 1984.
So, like both I haven't read Huxley yet, I need to still in 1984, it's like this oppressive government that just controls every single thing you do every day, is always spying on you, always monitoring you.
Where brave new world, they're more hands off.
They're just like, if you give people what they want, then they won't give a shit about anything, and you can take their rights away and they won't even notice.
I'm always way more weary when the government tries the uh brave new world stuff because the 1984 stuff just doesn't last, like people get sick of it after a while.
They're like, fuck this, I'm not doing this anymore.
If they can convince you that they're there to help you, which was like the $600 stimulus payments, or you know, um, the if they can make a like a fake enemy that they're scaring you with and telling you that they're protecting you from it, that is always way more effective than trying to subjugate you through a boot on your neck.
So, like the mask thing, I don't know.
I mean, I didn't like it at all, but it just never even though it bothered me, I was like, this just isn't gonna last.
People are gonna they're gonna shuffle it off eventually, they're not gonna take it.
It's the it's the stuff where they can convince you that they are that they are helping you or they're making your life better, that type of stuff always the most galling one going on lately is Joe Biden opening up the economy and giving us back this booming economy thing so much job creation.
So much kicking your boot up my neck stuff.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it's it's that it's also MMT, it's making people feel like they have you know wealth that's imaginary.
Um, you also have critical race theory, which I know has become this hot topic that uh there's a huge amount of disagreement as to how serious it is.
I think it's very serious.
I think if you're teaching children that like there are enemies all around you, that's a fucking terrible uh principle for a young child to here's the deal.
Here's the deal critical race theory itself is in my opinion a fad, but installing the psychological thought process of oppressor versus oppressed, that's permanent.
And the problem that the Republicans are the the issue, the mistake the Republicans are making is that they're just attacking critical race theory from a race standpoint by saying it's racist, and what they're doing is they're just saying, Look, your teachers are oppressing you by lying to you.
So it's actually still Marxist, it's just the inverse Marxism in the argument.
And so and so, in my opinion, it's like we need to be attacking oppressed versus oppressor and installing individual responsibility and freedom in the minds of our youth, not so much.
I don't think you give them enough credit.
I think a lot of parents are aware of what they're pushing back at those PTA meetings.
I've heard the I've heard Marxism tossed tossed around quite a lot.
I actually think critical race theory is one Of the best things, not critical race theory itself, but it's one of the best things that's happened to conservatives and and libertarians in quite a while because the left so massively overplayed their hand that it woke up all the bombs.
I mean, it's been a slow march through the institution for a long time now, and parents just go into those PTA meetings and not paying attention to anything that's going on.
And then they went and they fuck with their kids, and they put a bunch of crazy people in charge of these people's kids, and now all the moms are awake to it.
And yeah, they're not getting the word critical race theory quite right.
We're having this stupid parsing of what critical race theory actually stands for, but it doesn't really matter.
All the moms saw the curriculum, everyone's seen the stupid videos of the kids getting you know harassed by their teachers, and it's woken everybody up to it.
And we have all this legislation, some of it's good, some of it's not going to be that good.
But it doesn't really matter.
It really it's the first victory we've had in a while because the left like severely overplayed their hand.
That to me, that's a positive.
I think that's a compelling.
There's a compelling argument there.
I'm just saying that I'm not I'm concerned that it's too late that you've already gotten too many of the the young people because I mean, this is not new, like that they may be for like formalizing and giving it uh you know a term that uh a brand that people identify.
But you have had for a decade now people coming out of Ivy League colleges that are fucking deeply immersed in this ideology.
Yeah, so so those people are now in corporate America, they're they're responsible for HR.
The reason our advertising is fucking telling me that I'm evil for being white and straight.
Like this is the reason this all is.
Did you see that one today?
Yeah, yeah.
So, like all the way across the board, it's just it's a trend.
I like I agree with you.
I'm fucking grateful that it's happened now, and people are have caught on.
But this has been a trend that has persisted for quite some time, and it's like I'm just concerned that that it may be too late that this is like this will be the dominant um ideology moving forward.
I pray to God not, because I will absolutely leave this country if this is what I have to live with for the rest of my life.
I think we're gonna we're in for a rough ride, but I do have a lot of faith in Americans.
I've seen some incredibly based people on Twitter that do not give a fuck about this stuff.
You know, it's hardening, it's hardening to see people that are just not you can't cow them.
You call them a racist and a homophobe, and they go fuck you, and you're like, Oh yeah, thank god, you know, those alike those people, those people get it for sure.
Yo, I I have not eaten since noon.
I am dying for gotta run.
Um, thank you.
We can call it a night.
We can call it a night.
This might be a good uh stopping point.
Okay, it was awesome having you guys on, it was super fun.
Uh this again sometimes.
I I could do this for three hours, honest to God, but I'm so hungry, I'm about to fall over.
Go eat something, bro.
Okay, all right.
Uh nice meeting you.
Yeah, great to great to meet you, and thank you guys for having me on.
If you want to follow me, go to uh Liberty Lockdown on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, everywhere else, and at Liberty Log Pod on Twitter.
Thank you.
Reed, thanks for joining us too.
Where can everybody follow you?
Yeah, I'm the only read coverdale and the only naturalist capitalist in the world.
So if you search that anywhere, you'll find me.
I'm on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, uh, Instagram, and yeah, on Anchor, so Apple, uh, Spotify, all the places you can find podcasts.
Look for me there.
Reads them in.
Followership.
Well, that thank you guys so much.
Love you, and we'll stay in touch.
Yeah, it was a blessed.
Thanks, guys.
All right, thank you.
I started this podcast because it occurred to me that there was a concerted effort to shame America and what it means to be American.
When I asked myself, what can I do about this?
It's really hard because I'm not a political action committee, I don't have a tremendous amount of followers.
I certainly didn't when I started.
I am one American.
One American podcast reinforces the values and ideals of America, it reinforces Americanism by having conversations with key influencers of all sorts of different backgrounds, beliefs, but with one thing in common the belief in America and that America is inherently good.
