Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dismantle mainstream media narratives, exposing ABC News' Syria coverage negligence and Rand Paul's constitutional war declaration complexities. They critique Adam Schiff's impeachment inquiry, specifically the misleading whistleblower transcript release and the hypocrisy of equating standard political investigations with election interference. Ultimately, the hosts argue that corporate media prioritizes outrage over accountability while Democrats weaponize process to influence voters, revealing a systemic failure in adult discourse. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Mystery Flavored Oreos00:01:38
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gas Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode.
I am the most consistent motherfucker you know, Dave Smith.
He is the fire, Robbie Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
What's going on, Robbie?
How are you, sir?
Doing so good, man.
Yeah?
Yeah, I just ate some mystery-flavored Oreos.
Mystery-flavored Oreos.
Yeah, you know what's great about them?
What?
You got an excuse to eat more.
So, like, I'm still not sure what it is.
So, I ate a whole bunch of Oreos.
What is a mystery-flavored?
No one knows.
We're thinking s'mores.
So, the box itself says mystery flavor.
Yeah, it's a mystery.
So, it's two Oreo chocolate Oreo cookie things, and the cream is the mystery.
It's a mystery.
But the cream part.
Oh, no, the whole cookie is a mystery.
Well, the outside's clearly chocolate, so it's just the inside that's the mystery.
Brian's waving you off.
He's saying no.
The inside is graham cracker.
Oh, you're saying they just colored it to look chocolate, but it's actually graham cracker.
Technology.
I better eat more cookies.
I'm still not sure about how it's working.
If my grandfather were alive to see the technology.
I like that, Brian.
That's the only time of the podcast he's so outraged by a fact being wrong that he corrected us in real time.
Declaring War on Turkey00:15:14
You're like, no, I won't let this stand.
Not on the show with my name attached to it.
I will not have people putting out this fake news.
I appreciate that.
That's good.
You got to keep it on yourself.
I played some roller hockey on Sunday.
That was real fun.
What did you...
Wait, on Sunday?
Yeah.
Where were you?
1978?
No, no, no, no.
They still play roller hockey in 2019.
Still a thing.
How did you end up playing roller hockey?
I bought myself some gear.
I found myself a game and I played some roller hockey.
Wait, so you're telling me, it's not like friends were like, hey, let's go play some roller hockey.
You independently on your own decided I alone am going to go find roller coasters.
I found a game.
Yeah.
I got out.
How do you find a game?
Underneath the Whitestone Bridge, they got this beautiful, like, you know, roller-like iced ring.
With the White Stone Bridge in Queens?
Yeah.
But I got wheels now, so I can drive out there.
Oh, you got a car?
I got wheels.
Just got to book some gigs.
We can get out in the world.
I don't like that.
You said, I got wheels now.
And then I said, oh, you got a car.
And then you said, I got wheels again.
Are you riding a bicycle?
It seems like there was something sneaky about that.
Like, why do you keep referring to it as wheels?
Is there a car on the street?
I got all those rollerblades I was telling you about.
I just rollerbladed it.
I'm driving a gear now.
It's just me on your back while you fucking rollerblade to Philly.
All right.
Well, maybe, all right.
Maybe we'll make some things happen.
So off of that silly banter, we do have to turn to some serious news.
Sirius in Syria.
God, that was horrible.
I should quit.
All right.
So this is, you know, nobody, including myself, ever said it wouldn't be somewhat ugly if and when the U.S. ever pulls some troops out of any area, you know?
And the situation in Syria is not doing great.
And, you know, let's just go right to it.
Let's go right into the clip.
Here is ABC News breaking down the latest in the war in Syria.
This video obtained by ABC News appears to show the fury of the Turkish attack on the border town of Talabias, a border town bombarded by Turkey's military.
This video right here appearing to show Turkey's military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town.
The Kurds who fought alongside the U.S. against ISIS.
Now, horrific reports of atrocities committed by Turkish-backed fighters on those very allies.
All right, so let's stop the video.
As you might have guessed by the third angle, it was a little bit weird that there was an audience for the war going on in Syria.
I mean, it's just terrible to see that type of stuff going on, except that that's not video from Syria.
ABC fucked up and just ran video of a gun show in Kentucky and claimed it was what's going on in the war in Syria right now.
They've come out and apologized for it.
Don't worry.
ABC is investigating how they were able to leak that footage or to excuse me, not leak the footage, but to air the wrong footage.
But there you go.
There's the corporate press in a nutshell right there for you.
Oh, we pulled some troops out.
Show the most horrific fucking video you can find.
And by the way, no due diligence of whether this is even an actual video.
They just showed a video of a gun.
By the way, whatever goes on in Kentucky looks fucking awesome.
Once you realize there's not innocent people dying on the other end of that, you're like, I will take two tickets for that, please.
One for me, one for Robbie Barnstein.
And they got good bourbons down in Kentucky.
Well, I'm sure you're having yourself a bourbon while you watch that show.
You're not sitting there with a dry mouth watching that awesome kick-ass machine gun show or whatever the fuck.
I don't know what the fuck was rocket launchers or something.
Anyway, the point is, this is not real.
Is there something?
How'd they figure out that it wasn't?
Like, who busted them for that being?
I mean, this is the amazing thing.
It's just the age of the internet that we live in now.
And I guess people have, they take videos of these things at this, this, this is like a popular annual event in Kentucky.
Right.
And people started recognizing it.
And they were like, that's not fucking Syria, dude.
That's the thing.
And then more and more videos started coming out.
And then it's just, they fucking figured it out.
And then ABC ultimately had to apologize and be like, oh, yeah, this is the type of shit they would have gotten away with in the 90s in a second and did.
Yeah, I was about to, they must have done so much of that.
But the thing that's interesting is just how revealing the whole thing is.
So it's like, okay, so you want to find this footage of a horrible gunfight, a horrible, you know, war going on.
And of course, you're going to play it and pull on the heartstrings, right?
So you're going to play that video.
Would you hit the AC on, by the way?
Thank you, Brian.
So you're going to play this video, right, and be like, oh my God, these were our allies.
And they're just getting, you know, destroyed.
As soon as we pull some troops out of a region.
Oh, by the way, like 50 troops.
Pull like 50 troops out of a region.
Oh my God.
Look at this fire that's happening.
But why is it that we've been at war for the last close to 20 years?
I mean, why do you have to find made-up footage?
There's footage of wars going on all over the place.
But every time they play that, they seem to be complimenting Trump on how presidential he is.
Remember when he was bombing Syria and he was getting nothing but compliments?
See, those bombs, those people in Syria were not supposed to care about.
That's just human garbage or whatever.
You know, we're not.
But as soon as it's just interesting, you know, it's like if the, what is it?
It's like an old saying or something like that, but like the bank era is never in your favor.
But you know, it's like if you get, if you get these bank errors, but it's always constantly, you have less money than you're supposed to have, eventually you're kind of like, hey, what's going on here?
Like this, the error always seems to be in that favor.
Well, why is your error always in the favor of pushing us into war?
Pushing us into more and more war and more conflict.
Anyway, it's all what like, again, it might be a mistake, but that's the type of mistake where like heads should roll, people should be fired.
You're messing around in this in this area of war propaganda, letting people know how bad it is anytime we pull troops out of anywhere, just using fake videos.
Absolutely disgusting.
Also, the Kurds seem to work it out with the Syrians pretty quickly.
Yeah, you know, people were, I got several comments on social media where people were giving me like credit.
They were like, oh, you called it on the last episode that they were going to work together.
But I really don't deserve any credit for that, even though, you know, I deserve credit for a lot because I'm right about everything.
But I don't really deserve a lot of credit for that.
That was the easiest, the easiest call to make ever.
Of course, of course, they were going to partner up with Bashar al-Assad as soon as we got out of the way.
Which is the best thing that could happen.
What's the deal with these supposed ISIS prisoners that got lost or released in the shot?
Okay, so interesting you should ask that, right?
So you'll, if you, it's one of those things where if you just read the headline or just read a CNN article or something like that, it's easy to get an inaccurate perception of what's going on.
So, okay, so the Kurds, who, of course, were partnering with us in fighting ISIS, which we, of course, you know, the U.S. government, the CIA, and Saudi Arabia and Israel and Turkey created.
ISIS funded them and led to their creation.
But then they got out of control and we started partnering with the Sergey.
So the Kurds.
So they have a bunch of them in prisons.
And there's a concern about what's going to happen with these prisoners.
You know, like if the Turks come in and slaughter the Kurds, what happens to all these prisoners?
Which is, again, why you'd probably want them to make a deal with Assad.
Because I do personally think that ISIS is the only thing to really be concerned about in this region.
So there were some reports coming out that a whole bunch of these prisoners have been let out.
So right away, it's like, oh, there you go.
ISIS is going to come back, right?
Except the more that you look into it, here's what actually happened.
They have several of these prisoners, and then they have a whole bunch of camps that were basically for the women and children.
And when I say children, like legit children, you know, it's not like if a 16-year-old, some fucking ISIS killer, they throw him in the prison with the fucking ISIS guys.
But then they have these camps that were women and children.
A lot of them were just kind of like, you know, they might, some of them might have been radicalized or involved in ISIS, but they're fucking women and children.
And they ended up letting a bunch of them out.
Like once the war started coming like close to them, they were like, just go, save yourselves, try your best.
So that's what ended up happening.
That's what all this reporting about.
So they're upset that women and children's children are no longer being held by the glorious, you know, Kurds who are supposed to now be like these great people who, you know, they're just really great.
So, okay, yeah.
So some women and children were let go.
There's been no confirmation that actually any male ISIS military age people have been let go, but we'll see what happens.
But yeah, if that's your big concern, well, then you better hope that Assad fucking, you know, gets in there and fucking protects them.
Said, you know, Rand Paul said something really interesting on he was on Meet the Press.
And I think it was on Meet the Press, he said it, but maybe it might have been a different interview.
But he said, he goes, well, look, somebody said one of the questions, I think it was Chuck Todd who posed the question to him and said, well, what do you say to people who are like, look, we made these promises to the Kurds, you know?
It's like we promised that we would defend them.
And he said, well, I take an oath to uphold the Constitution.
I don't take an oath to uphold somebody's promise.
And what the Constitution says is if we want to go to war, Congress has to declare the war.
So let's do that.
You guys want to fight a war in Syria?
Let's declare the war in Congress.
And he goes, Here's why you won't declare a war in Congress.
You don't know who to declare the war against.
And it was just such an interesting way to put it that really exposes the whole thing.
So really think this through.
Who are we declaring war on?
I mean, who do you want to declare war on?
Are you declaring war on Turkey?
Our NATO ally?
Right?
Are you declaring war on Bashar al-Assad?
The only person who's now going to rally to help the fucking to help the Kurds?
The person who, right?
I mean, like, what who are you going to do?
We'll kill the Kurds ourselves.
Right.
So you're going to declare war on Bashar al-Assad, who's allied up with Turkey and with Russia and with Iran.
You want to go down that rabbit hole?
Who do you want to declare war on?
You want to declare war on ISIS?
The guys who we fucking like funded and armed?
The guys who Russia and Assad are fighting?
So it's like, which side of this do you want to declare?
Who do you want to declare war on?
And then once you realize that, you're like, oh, yeah, I guess that's kind of part of the reason why they aren't going to take a vote on this.
But anyway, the whole, yeah, I mean, predicting that the Kurds will, again, it's not even like, it wasn't even a prediction.
It's, I just go off like I read antiwar.com every day and I talk to Scott Horton on the phone and I know that they tried to make a deal with Assad before and we basically discouraged them from doing it.
And they had a deal with Assad before.
So it was just obvious.
It's like, well, where else are they going to go?
That's the answer.
And it's funny, you know, the thing that's so interesting, right, is that like, so you just watch the pieces to the puzzle not fit.
So the person who comes to my mind, maybe just because personally I know her, is SE Cup.
And, you know, I was arguing with SE Cup last year a lot about this Syria thing.
And back then, way, way back then, the justification for staying in Syria had nothing to do with the Kurds.
The justification was Basar al-Assad is a butcher.
And we got to do something.
And we got to do something.
I mean, he's killing these people.
And I think he gassed his own people.
And look at what's going on in Aleppo.
Aleppo was kind of over by then, but you know, look at what happened in Aleppo.
Look at this chlorine attack.
Look at these gas, the sarin gas attack.
I mean, come on.
Assad's such a bad guy.
We got to go in there to stop Assad.
And then I see SE Cup, of course, because she's going to say exactly the same thing everyone else on CNN is saying is like, oh, he's bailing on the Kurds.
The Kurds, we have to protect the Kurds.
And then you watch the Kurds turn around and make a deal with the butcher, Bashar al-Assad.
And you're like, oh, so what do you want to do now?
I mean, you want to go, I mean, according to your own logic, they just allied up with the guy who's the reason why we needed to send a military presence in there to begin with.
So should we go kill the Kurds now?
Should we declare war on the Kurds?
Should we declare war on Bashar al-Assad?
Like, what's going on here?
Or at what point are you admitting that, hey, we're not having regime change in Syria?
Sorry, neocons.
This one didn't stick.
Listen, congratulations.
You've gotten like seven out of eight of the last regime changes that you wanted.
You missed one.
That's not bad, baby.
Seven out of eight puts you in the Hall of Fame, okay?
But you're not getting this one.
So accept that.
And once you accept that, realize the best case scenario here is Bashar al-Assad reconsolidates power, takes back over all of Syria.
That would be the best thing is if he took back over the north.
The best thing that could happen in this situation within reason, you know?
I mean, the best thing is they all start reading a lot of Murray Rothbard and embrace, you know, natural rights libertarianism.
But I think that's the Assad thing's a better shot, I would say.
That's my guess.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
So it has not been a great couple days for the mainstream media.
Media Messes and Tone00:15:27
They had that thing with ABC.
Small little mess up where they, you know, tried to lure America into yet another war using fake videos.
That's not so great.
The other thing that happened is this James O'Keefe guy at Project Veritas.
Did you see the video that they put out?
All right.
So they got a guy.
Project Veritas does these like undercover media hit organizations or sting operations.
And they got a CNN guy to wear a wire and like recorded all these like morning like phone calls to like higher ups at CNN.
And they've got what appears to be, and no one at least seems to be denying it.
They're not talking about it so much.
But they've got Zucker on the phone, who's the head of CNN, basically giving marching orders about what they're going to talk about on CNN.
And it's like, we're going hard on impeachment.
Like they're going forward with impeachment.
That's the story.
He goes, oh, Lindsey Graham defended Trump.
Lindsey Graham's an enemy now.
We're going hard on Lindsey Graham.
I don't want to hear anything about Hunter Biden.
I don't want to hear about any of this other stuff.
We're going hard on Trump.
And it's funny to just see that.
And then you see how CNN 24-7 is just going hard on Trump.
And it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, this kind of fits together.
Just straight up orders coming down from the top.
So that was an interesting piece.
You know, just kind of confirms everything we've already thought.
No talk about the Hunter Biden thing.
Let's not get into that.
By the way, Joe Biden, who's, oof, man.
I mean, I thought this campaign was going to crash and burn, but it's just even more painful than I could have imagined.
He's oofing all over the place.
Yeah, he sure is.
He came out and said that none of his family members will have any positions in his campaign.
And his son, Hunter Biden, I think, like stepped down from the Chinese.
Well, it sounds like an easy job then.
You mean he's not going to help out his own kid?
Yeah.
I don't like a guy like that as my president.
It's hilarious to just turn it around at him that way.
I'd be like, dude.
You're just selling out your old son.
But it's just so, you know, it's like at a certain point, they had to just like address that.
It's like, anyone who looks at this knows this doesn't look good.
This just doesn't look good.
And it's very obvious what it is.
So, you know, I'm kind of interested.
My guess is nobody will.
But tomorrow there's another Democratic debate.
And it would be interesting if anyone up there had the balls to be like, yeah, that like doesn't look good.
And I don't think they will.
My guess is that they.
Tulsi's got the clip meet.
I'm telling you now.
She's got what?
The clip meet.
Well, look, Tulsi's back in the debate.
I'm excited about that.
I'm excited to watch her tomorrow night.
I hope she has a good performance.
Look, I will say that Tulsi Gabbard fucking murked Kamala Harris in that last debate.
That was like the end of Kamala Harris's campaign.
Kamala Harris' numbers started tanking right after that, and she hasn't recovered.
I mean, I think Tulsi did some real damage to her.
Maybe she'd be the one to have the balls.
I mean, come on, Tulsi, go for it.
You got nothing to lose.
You're not in the top three.
Well, that's right.
You might as well do what Kamala Harris tried to do, but just came off like a total cunt.
Well, she, and she did it like in on the dumbest thing possible, right?
Like she did it on an issue that there actually was no principle behind.
Oh, bussing.
I mean, first off, this isn't a relevant issue for 40 years.
And aside from that, it's like the issue was bussing was unpopular at the height of busing amongst blacks.
Like 90% of black people were against busing when it was happening.
So it's just a bullshit issue.
However, you know, Tulsi, you went after Kamala Harris real hard for being a prosecutor who threw people in jail for pot and then laughed about it when you admitted you smoked pot.
Fair enough.
Great, great point, great angle.
I'm with you 100%.
But, you know, Joe Biden is sitting there.
He was like one of the authors of the 90s crime bill.
So you want to go after somebody for that?
I mean, here's the guy who was a powerful senator who wrote the rules that Kamala Harris was following.
So she probably had some discretion as a prosecutor.
But I mean, you know, this was the guy who wrote the law.
So he's right there for you.
Go after him.
And obviously, if Tulsi Gabbard wants to be this like, I'm anti-corruption, I'm not really, I don't put Democrat or Republican first.
I'm like anti-war, anti-corruption.
Her whole thing is government should be of the people, not of the corporation or whatever.
It's like, okay, so there's Joe Biden sitting there.
There's Joe Biden, who Obama puts in charge of Ukraine policy, whose kids making 600K a year from some Ukrainian energy company.
I mean, come on.
We all know what that is.
It's obvious.
And if you're Elizabeth Warren, she put out this whole like ethics plan about like what, and in her own plan, kids wouldn't be, the kids of politicians wouldn't be allowed to do stuff like this.
So there she is surging past the, you know, they're basically tied for frontrunner right now.
She's surging.
He's fading.
Go stick the knife in him, you know, put the nail on the coffee.
And then, you know, Bernie Sanders will, it'll just be interesting to see what type of shape he's in.
Now, the guy is a 78-year-old who just had a heart attack.
You know.
Would it be great?
He's up there.
He's like, I think that the 1% and the 2%, you know what?
You guys figure it out.
He's a short circuit.
Yeah, he just keeps like...
I'm tired.
Anyway, we'll see.
It'll be a- Is there a theme to tonight's debate or it's normal debate?
Tomorrow night's debate.
Tomorrow night's debate.
But you know what?
A lot of people will be listening to this tomorrow, and then you'll sound like the smart one.
Yeah.
No, I think it's just the second debate.
God, the Democrats are at their weakest when they do themes because their themes always stuck.
They suck.
Excuse me.
The themes are.
I still got to go back.
I haven't watched the Democratic Debate 3.
Trannys.
Yeah, I haven't watched the Tranny debate yet.
I got to go watch it.
You're not going to be able to get through.
It's not a debate.
It's just, it's like one on each campus.
Yeah, let me show you how much I love the trannies.
Yeah, and that's basically it.
They just all say the same thing.
It was fucking brutal.
Brutal to watch.
Anyway, with all this stuff happening, the media, you know, you would think that the ABC News airing fake video footage would be a big story.
You would think CNN being exposed as basically, you know, not being the media at all, but being a propaganda machine that just takes orders from the top from some guy who's got a beef with Donald Trump.
I think going back to like their apprentice days or something like that, right?
You would think that would be a big story.
But the mainstream media that we love so much, they've got other things that they've got to deal with.
And there's some things that really make us think about what the real story is here and what's actually important to cover.
So we're going to check in with Brooke Baldwin over at CNN, excellent journalist.
Let's get to the CNN video and just see what she thinks is important to talk about.
Words matter.
The words I use, the words you use, and certainly the words uttered by the President of the United States.
There is nothing that I hate more than fucking journalists, supposedly, anchors at CNN.
Why do they talk like they're talking to a kindergarten class?
How stupid do you think your viewers are?
What adult speaks to another adult this way?
Am I being crazy?
This is how you speak to a child, a very small child, by the way.
You don't speak to a 10-year-old this way.
They kind of roll their eyes.
Words matter.
The words I use, the words you use, and even the words the president uses.
Is this a Dr. Seuss book?
Like, who the fuck speaks this way?
And, you know, words, yeah, they matter a little, but actions are a lot more important, but whatever.
But it's just, I don't know, it just, it makes my blood boil.
Black Lives Matter, and the fact that she's stealing the slogan for something less important really is going to get in the way of the movement of the downtrodden.
Black lives matter, but words seriously matter.
So let's focus on words because, you know, black lives, they come and they go, but words, they're forever.
Okay, Brooke Baldwin.
Words matter.
Night and inspire and also intimidate and divide.
And I just wanted to take a moment today to call your attention to some of the language President Trump has been using as of late.
And just before I do, keep in mind, this is the man who holds the most sacred office in our country, whose revered position is one our children.
You know, a lot of times I'll say that this whole government thing is just some crazy cult, some crazy religion.
But every now and then, you just got to pay attention carefully to where they go.
Donald Trump holds the most sacred position in our country.
Sacred, really?
That's how you describe the presidency?
I've always just described them as war criminals.
But I guess the CNN, and that really does tell you something that this is the media, how they look at government, that you're sacred.
You're in a sacred office.
I mean, I don't know about you, but I think it would be kind of hard for you to hold somebody's feet to the fire if they're sacred, right?
But that's how you look at it.
Basically, what she's saying is it is sacred, but Donald Trump isn't.
The presidency is so sacred.
And here's Donald Trump just, yeah, just, oh my God, it's terrible.
Unlike all those other demigods, Donald Trump is just a dick.
And, you know, because words matter so much.
Words matter.
Try, go tell that to some of the Iraqi children that George W. Bush butchered.
That'd be like, what?
He never said anything mean about you.
Does that make you feel any better?
I know you just watched your mother and your little brother get fucking decapitated in front of you, but he said Islam is a religion of peace.
So we still consider him sacred.
Because, you know, words matter.
Bombs, not so much.
Back to Brooke.
Should look up to.
Here was President Trump speaking at a rally last night in Minneapolis, hurling insult after insult, starting with the city's mayor who had warned Trump to pay his bill in full for holding this event in his city.
Minneapolis.
Minneapolis, you got a rotten mare.
You got to change your mare.
You got a bad mare.
She's either really stupid, okay?
Or she's really lost it.
Or maybe there's a certain dishonesty in this uplifting.
Hunter, you know nothing about energy.
You know nothing about child.
You know nothing about anything, frankly.
Hunter, you're a loser.
And your father was never considered smart.
He was never considered a good son.
He was only a good vice president because he understood how to kiss Barack Obama's ass.
All right, pause it.
Pause it right there.
You know, I just like, I'm wondering.
I really wonder, even like just the regular CNN viewer, you know, airport travelers, how do they feel when this starts with serious kindergarten teacher tone?
You know, words matter and words can hurt.
And the presidency is sacred.
And here's our president.
And he's like, Hunter Biden, you dumb fuck.
It's like, are you, aren't you, even as you wait for Delta Flight 243, just kind of cracking up laughing?
It's like, I don't know, guys.
This is hilarious.
And they're having so much fun.
I mean, it's such a party footage that you just opened up on.
And it's amazing that after three years of Donald Trump, more, because I'm considering the whole 2016, I mean, this was him campaigning, right?
They still have not found one like inch deeper way to analyze what's going on.
Oh, this isn't nice.
You're not supposed to talk this way.
It's like, okay.
I mean, look, I am actually, if you were to put everything else in the proper prioritization, right?
Like, I do kind of agree that maybe you don't really want a president who's speaking this way.
It's funny and entertaining, but like, yeah, this is a little bit crazy.
I was a Ron Paul guy.
It's like a country doctor, very proper Christian guy, would never speak this way, you know?
But all these years later, and the only speed you have is the most surface thing.
You can't just like scratch the surface a little bit.
Just get your nail on that a little bit deeper and go, oh, what's going on here?
Okay.
Well, this guy has decided that he's throwing out that rulebook.
He doesn't play that way.
It's like, no, I say what I want to say.
And guess what?
He won the election.
You know, if people really agreed with you that what's really important to your words and the sacredness of the White House and the fact that a president never says ass, I don't think they would have voted for Donald Trump.
Seemed like other people thought other things were a lot more important than that.
Or maybe they like that.
But at best, they thought this isn't the most important thing.
And you still can't even scratch the surface.
And by the way, you, just in your one-off comments seeing this video for the first time, at least did that.
You scratched the surface a little bit.
You went, man, these people are having a good time.
I mean, there's something there that's interesting that Donald Trump has done something that, look, all these politicians, right?
When you get to campaign season, and I've for years, way before Donald Trump was involved in politics, I would always talk about this is how weird I thought it was that they make it kind of a party.
Like, you know, when people come to like, you know, the night after some, you know, the Iowa caucus and the guy who comes in first, you know, Barack Obama comes out to give a speech and there's balloons and everyone's there partying.
And it's kind of like a party.
It's like, yay, we're all having a fun time, you know?
Now, I've always thought that was kind of weird, right?
Like, who does that for a good time?
Goes to a, especially when they're not even someone who believes in anything.
It's like, who is that person?
It's a very weird thing.
But since everybody uses this party model, we hold a rally, we have an event.
What Donald Trump has done has made his party a way better party than any of your parties.
I mean, I don't care who you are.
You cannot tell me that any group of people are having more fun going to see a politician speak than those guys seeing Trump speak.
Because he's just going to vamp.
He's going to go off the cuff.
He's going to curse.
He's going to say shit that you didn't expect him to say.
And it's like, okay, so this is what's going on.
And all you've got to deal with it is like words matter.
And oh my God, he said Joe Biden kissed Barack Obama's ass.
Are you as outraged as me?
This is a professional pearl clutcher is what she's doing right now.
She's just like, don't you, here, I'll pass out some pearls and then you can clutch them.
Are you like, oh, oh my God, why would he say that about Hunter?
So mean.
Okay.
You know, the funny thing about it is that she's speaking like she's talking, you know, she's speaking in the tone like she's talking down to children, but she's actually the one who's being a child here.
Because this is just unimportant.
Okay, so he said Joe Biden kissed Barack Obama's ass.
Can Joe Biden not handle that?
Well, if he can't handle that, maybe he can't be commander in chief of the military.
Teaching Kids to Boo00:06:28
I don't know.
But I also just don't get how any normal person watches this and just doesn't laugh at the Trump part.
As I say all the time, I think Donald Trump's a war criminal.
I think he's been an absolute disaster as a president.
But every single time a clip comes up, I have a smile on my face because it's just hilarious.
It's hard to deny.
And you know me, funny first.
All right, let's keep playing.
Just adding to that, just in the last week, we have also seen the president call a sitting U.S. Senator Mitt Romney a pompous ass on Twitter.
Oh my God.
He called the investigation into his Ukraine phone call and pardon my language, but I'm just directly quoting the president.
Bullshit.
And when he saw a Fox News poll yesterday that he didn't like, he singled out the pollsters in a tweet with two words.
They suck.
Again, this is the president of the United States.
And again, I come back to our nation's children because they are plugged in.
They are watching.
They are listening to the president and to their parents.
And so I want to leave you with Vimp's image of a little boy, presumably being held by his dad, at President Trump's rally last night.
And do you know what his dad was teaching him?
According to the Yahoo White House correspondent, who was there and snapped these photos?
He was teaching him how to boo the media.
Kid was red-pilled.
He can't be older than six.
And if you look really closely on his t-shirt, it reads, oh, the places you'll go.
The name of a popular book by Dr. Seuss, a book with the message of hope and inspiration.
And it just left me wondering, whose words will be more enduring?
This is actually news for grown-ups.
Like, that's what it's supposed to be.
Okay.
First of all, where they say kids are plugged in and they're paying attention.
I don't know.
My baby's only 10 months old.
She's pretty into Elmo.
Also, I don't know how plugged in the kids are, but go ahead.
Trump's one of the best at Twitter ever, so they might as well learn from the best.
I mean, that guy managed to win a presidency off the power of his Twitter handle.
And as you said, this guy, to me, seems like an excellent father.
He is literally, that kid is red-pilled from day one.
Yeah.
Already going in with a healthy distrust for the media.
By the way, it's like, come on.
This is what you're missing, you fucking dimwit.
They're having fun.
They're having fun.
It's a dad taking his kid somewhere and having fun.
He goes, he's teaching him to chant boo, boo the fake media.
They're trolling you, you fucking idiot.
How goddamn dense are you?
Yeah, because doing that pisses you off this much.
And imagine, imagine, this is the crazy thing where Trump exposes the media is that they take it as like this mortal sin to criticize them.
He's saying, boo, boo the media.
Yeah, he's booing you, Brooke Baldwin.
That's who he's booing.
And you go, can you imagine someone's actually teaching their child to boo?
And look at this shirt he's got on.
It's a Dr. Seuss shirt.
It's like, yeah, I don't know.
It's a kid wearing a doctor's shoe shirt.
Is there something great about being in a shirt that says, oh, the places you'll go?
And it's on to television where you're screaming at the TV guy, boo.
Dude, I loved every bit of that.
I also love that she's like, words matter so much, and then she quotes and plays all the things the president's saying.
It's like, all right, well, you're putting it on your airwaves now.
Miss Words Matter.
And I'm only saying this because I'm quoting the president directly, but he said bullshit.
And you're like, all right, well, you just said it now.
So what is this?
She's got a potty mouth.
Oh, my God.
I don't feel comfortable watching this.
I also find there to be something a little bit.
If I look at the bigger picture of all this, you know, Dave, big picture Smith.
That's what I do.
Zoom out to 30,000 feet and look down at everything from above.
Isn't it weird?
And I know I made this comment in 2016.
I had a joke about this on my comedy special, Libertas.
If you haven't already, go purchase that.
There's something about the way they try to get Donald Trump with this.
Oh my God, like he said bullshit.
You don't curse like that.
You don't say a swear word in public.
I mean, that's just not proper.
And it's almost as if I feel like they're talking to America in 1956.
And they think they're like, we're all in suits and ties and those kind of top hat type things.
And we're like, you know, like put a jacket over a puddle for a lady.
And you're like, you never say bullshit in public.
That's something you say at the parlor.
I'm down with that.
But it's, well, no, me too.
I think it was a better time.
But my point is just that it's like, what do you, like, what country do you think you live in where someone hearing bullshit is like not what we're hearing on every other channel as we flip the channels in the 3,000 channels we have on our cable between you and the other three thousand?
Like, go to HBO right now.
What are they saying?
All two clicks away from porn at all times.
Well, right.
And even like before the internet, I mean, like I was a 90s kid.
I mean, the internet was there, but it wasn't, you know, what the internet is today.
But who was huge?
It was like Howard Stern was the king of radio and Jerry Springer was the daytime TV.
And we were like, look around the culture.
Do you really think people are so like, oh my God, somebody said bullshit.
The president of the United States said bullshit.
I mean, it's just, it seems like it doesn't jive with reality.
And then, of course, all these people, this is like what really bugs me is that these people aren't those guys.
You know, it'd be one thing like when the like religious right, you know, people would like condemn hip-hop music or something like that.
And I, you know, I always thought that was kind of silly too.
But at least I could understand if somebody's like, well, look, I'm a devout, you know, religious person.
I don't curse like this.
I don't, I don't do this stuff.
And I don't think other people should either.
And I don't think kids should hear this.
But give me a break.
Listen, I worked at CNN for a while.
I fucking know people who work there.
I know how they talk in between the fucking, you know, the commercial breaks.
I know they talk when they go out for a beer afterward.
By the way, I know how Chris Cuomo talks if you call him Fredo.
He dropped a few curses in there too.
Outrage Over Toothbrushes00:03:26
So what's your thing?
It's just when the cameras come on, we're all supposed to pretend that like, oh, this bullshit.
I can't believe a president would say that.
That's something that I really hate.
And it's very much in the spirit of everything about this show, everything about Legion of Skanks, my comedy career, like everything about that.
Like, I just hate this phoniness of like when the cameras come on, we then turn into some drastically different person and we're going to pretend that like we're so virtuous.
We're outraged by the way someone does something, which is basically what we all do.
By the way, I'm the opposite when I'm not on air.
I'm taller.
I got a full head of hair.
Well, that's true.
A lot of money and I'm way more dignified.
I go the other way.
Very little cursing.
Yeah.
Off air, Rob gives it on air.
You really let it all fall to pieces.
Yeah.
Everybody does their own thing.
I hear what you're saying.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, just so that's what they're talking about.
Trump Video Rage00:04:04
And now, of course, the other thing that the media is raging about and just showing how out of touch they are too is this Donald Trump video, which I was looking to pull up the video.
I hate this shit.
I can't find it anywhere online.
All I can just find is people commenting on the video.
How does that happen?
So annoying.
Yeah.
There should be one like YouTuber or someone like that.
Source material.
Who's like, I'm always just going to put up the video.
Yeah.
And so you have this.
I'm not going to say shit.
I'm not going to do anything.
Even monetize that bitch.
Play ads during it.
I don't care.
Just fucking do it.
I would, it would be so just call it original source material.
Yes, that would be great.
Great channel.
We just gave a great idea.
Million dollar idea to something like this.
All right, go for it.
Yes, go do it.
But then, you know, after realizing I couldn't find the video, I also realized that the majority of people consume this podcast in the audio format.
And so probably didn't add that much.
But if you haven't seen it, I guess it's a take from The Kingsman.
I never saw the movie, so I don't know about it.
But it's Donald Trump, and it's the most hilarious video.
It's like Donald Trump's face put on, you know, these movie characters, and he's shooting, you know, shooting the media and the Democrats and Black Lives Matter and all these different people and shooting them out.
And they're all acting like this is so outrageous.
And it's just like any, I just feel like any normal human being would look at it and go, oh, it's silly.
This is just silly.
You remember when they tried to do it when he was the WWF thing and he's like clotheslining CNN?
Yeah.
And it wasn't even like a CNN journalist.
It was just like a person with the head that says CNN.
Like, this is violence against CNN.
It's like, no, actually, this is kind of funny.
And by the way, none of this is what you should be talking about.
God damn it.
I hate to like write your script for you.
It's like, okay, guys, be grown-ups.
You hate Donald Trump.
Okay, you want to get Donald Trump here.
He's claiming to end endless wars, and he just pulled 50 troops out of northern Syria and put 2,000 into Saudi Arabia.
That's hypocrisy.
He's not doing what he says he's going to do.
Hit him on that.
The debt is exploding.
He's done nothing on immigration, which was his number one issue.
The tariffs have been bad for the economy.
I don't know.
There's plenty to hit him on.
Do you have a wall?
No.
There's no wall.
Well, I mean, I guess technically I do have a wall.
You know, I got, yeah, I got four of them.
Actually, even more than four.
Each room has four.
That's a lot of walls.
Yeah, no, it's only the bathroom has four.
Yeah.
Kitchen only has three.
I'm a little pissed off about that.
Do you feel like it should have a fourth?
By this point in Trump's administration.
You said it should be like a full room.
It's one door.
It's only a quantum.
It's a partial room.
Yeah, that's right.
Really, when you think about it, it's 75% of room.
It's wide open.
I want to fucking be in the kitchen and see what's on TV.
It's actually pretty sweet to be able to see what's on TV when you're in the kitchen.
I don't spend a lot of time in the kitchen.
And I just want one wall between us and Mexico.
That's the wall that would make me feel sick.
You could take away the other walls once you get that wall up.
Oh, yeah.
If I know it's just good Americans over here on this side, maybe occasional strangling, you know, Canadian.
I'm good with that.
Straggling?
Anyway.
So, you know, it's like, oh, they try to make this thing out.
Like, it's so serious and it's so threatening.
And it's like, guys, this is not news.
Stop it.
You look like children.
To anybody who's actually an adult, you look like a fucking child.
And it is something for comedians to be able to call you out for that because we are supposed to be the most immature human beings.
Comedians are outrageously immature by nature, intrinsically.
Very, very immature people.
We're adults who joke for a living.
It's about as immature as it can get.
And I talk about my wiener a lot.
Yeah, there's nothing dignified or adult about it.
But it's a lot of fun, and people seem to smile and laugh and have a good time.
So, you know, I'm.
And what other career do you get to show up and just talk about your wiener?
I mean, if you're a doctor, you can talk about other people's wieners.
Comedians Are Immature00:15:37
I guess Harvey Weinstein got to do it a lot, but he had to put in dues.
Yeah, and then he got in trouble.
He had to really build up Miramax before he could just talk about his wiener.
And he got in trouble for it.
So that wasn't a long-term strategy.
Dude, when I'm 80, I'm still going to be talking about my wiener.
Oh, did you see Ronan Farrow's book?
I guess is coming out.
There's some new fucking Matt Lauer accusations, speaking of the media and the people that they are.
I guess some chicks accusing him of fucking full-fledged rape, like really forced her to do that.
But then she ended up having sex with him more afterwards.
Then at some point, it became not rape.
Yeah, I'm always.
I'm not saying it can't happen.
I'm not saying it isn't possible to get raped and then just continue hoping.
And then I go, oh, that was pretty good.
But there is something about that that just makes me, first off, question your accusation, you know?
And then it also makes you go, like, well, how bad was that first experience if you would continue voluntarily having sex with this guy?
Can you imagine if your dick was actually that good that you managed to win chicks over?
Just keep raping them.
Yeah, exactly.
You'd be like, she's not going to be into it at first, but every time they.
Fuck, I can't remember.
It was an old Monty Python thing where he was like, so you were raped?
He goes, he forced himself on you?
And she goes, well, at first.
But, you know, I don't know.
I've heard stories about things like this.
I've actually knew someone when I was much younger who had a thing like accused a guy of rape and then was just like hanging out with him at the time.
I don't know if she was embarrassed.
And I saw her hang out with him and I was like, I thought you told me that guy fucking raped you.
And she's like, well, you know, I don't know.
Like, I believe in like, you know, people can grow and change.
And I was like, yeah, I don't know.
That's pretty hard for me.
You know, call me old-fashioned.
And by the way, this is, I'm sure there's a lot of like feminist women who would hear me say this and be like, that's like crazy.
You can't say that.
You know, like, but isn't that like a fairly reasonable thing to say?
That if somebody, if you're accusing somebody of rape, but you continued voluntarily to have a relationship with him to keep having sex with him for years afterward, it just kind of makes me go, I don't know.
I don't know.
Then I guess rape isn't such a bad thing, at least in the way you mean it, right?
Because rape to most people who are rape victims, who are like the really horrible thing that I think rape is, they would be like, yeah, no, of course I wouldn't fucking ever like want to see that person again.
Now their situation is they're like, well, they were working together and this and that, but wouldn't most people, if they were raped, just not be able to work with that guy?
I'm saying you have to go to the police right away, but you just wouldn't work with that person anymore.
Maybe quit, maybe report something.
Well, he went me on Tuesday, but that was last week, you know?
But to keep working with him and keep sleeping with him.
Yeah, that seems kind of tough.
Tough for old Smitty to get on board with that.
Get on board with that one.
All right.
Let me see.
So what else is there that we wanted to talk about?
There were some, what was the latest thing that you brought up in the impeachment drama?
Oh, you should see if you can find the video.
Adam Schiff was on the news the other day talking about how he's trying to move forward with the impeachment hearings.
And one of the big claims by the Trump administration is that without, you know, without like the formal vote and them having access to the witnesses and the people that are coming forward, it's not a very fair process.
And so what Adam Schiff did, which is pretty insane, was he absolutely demanded that they needed to have a congressional hearing for the guy who held back the whistleblower's complaint, even though he ultimately made it available.
And then his whole big thing was, hey, if you hadn't made this complaint available, we wouldn't have known about it.
And then it turns out that Adam Schiff was working with the whistleblower.
And now they're saying, well, we at least want to know who the whistleblower is.
Trump accurately called the person a spy, which turns out they work for the CIA.
So technically is a spy.
But then also, hey, what's the CIA doing in the White House that he's now making whistleblowing complaints?
Is that another branch of government spying on the White House and trying to see what they're up to and keep tabs on them illegally or maybe not illegally?
I don't know.
But you'd think, hey, someone in the CIA is apparently monitoring and working with Congress to try and shed light on Trump's administration while Trump doesn't want him to.
I'd like to know who that guy is.
I think we should be able to ask him some questions.
Adam Schiff goes, no, we don't need to bring him forward because now, forget this guy's testimony.
His testimony doesn't matter anymore.
Is this a video?
Yeah.
Okay.
But let me just say this last thing because this is the crazy part.
He goes, now that we have the documentation of the phone call, we have enough evidence to move forward with the impeachment hearing.
What he's essentially saying is like, let's say that I just sat down with this guy and we totally came up with treasonous reasons for busting the president.
We don't need to hear from this individual anymore because we actually don't even need his, his testimony is no longer important.
So let's move past the testimony and now let's talk about this quid procrow document.
And by the way, you'll hear him at some point.
Says, listen, I don't want to talk about this because I don't want Trump to be able to undermine our efforts, but that's not the way legal proceedings work.
Legal proceedings are: you have to show people the evidence that they can defend themselves.
Right.
You're describing fucking Banana Republic.
Yeah, can you imagine like using that in a court of law?
Being like, so what evidence do you have that this guy committed a murder?
Go, well, I mean, if I show you that, then he's going to try to argue against it.
So I'd rather keep that secret, but trust me.
Trust me, it's really good.
Oh, man, there's some good-ass evidence.
Yeah.
All right.
So let's, I have not seen this.
Let's let's play the club.
This is what happens when I haven't seen it.
Thank you, Chairman.
Good to have you here.
Good morning.
Before we move to impeachment, I want to ask for your reaction to the president's decision to pull out of Syria.
Well, I agree with my colleague.
I think this is disastrous.
Well, they'll probably get to it.
I think that's a good complete capitulation to Erdogan that is putting at great peril probably our strongest ally in the fight against ISIS, and that is the Syrian Kurds.
They were fighting side by side with American forces.
We have pulled the rug out from under them.
They're being slaughtered.
There are war crimes being committed against them.
You pause it for a second.
And we're seeing ISIS fighters released from something funny about just like old-timey sayings that somehow stick with us.
But I don't know.
Sorry, this is just the comedian in me speaking.
But because we've pulled the rug out from under them and now they're getting slaughtered.
It's like pulled the rug out from underneath somebody just brings like a hilarious image into my mind where you just like pull a rug real fast and they fall over and then they're getting slaughtered.
You're like, wow, I mean, I wouldn't be so angry about that rug thing anymore.
I'd be pretty pissed off about the slaughtering that came right after that.
I mean, first off, why were we just standing on this carpet when a slaughter was on its way?
It's just a real funny thing to describe a war.
Yeah.
You go, we just pulled the rug right off.
It was a harmless prank.
I mean, we were just trying to play around with our friends, the Kurds, and pull the rug out from under them.
Oh, man, this went so bad.
I didn't know there was that Turkish army coming in on the other side, just trying to have a fun game of rug tug.
All right, let's keep playing.
Just as we predicted would happen, and for the president to say, well, you know, they're just going to go to Europe, we're not going to have an ally left after this presidency.
You can imagine how Europe feels about President of the United States saying, well, we're not really concerned about foreign fighters going to Europe.
They're going to pose a direct threat to our homeland as well.
And we ought to care about our allies.
This wouldn't be happening but for this impulsive decision by the president to capitulate to Erdogan by precipitously withdrawing our forces.
It's just what Secretary Mattis warned against.
Erdogan took this as a green light, and who can blame him for perceiving that that was the president's intention?
And the consequences will be far lasting.
The damage to our standing, the fact that Kurds are now entertaining going to the Russians to protect them because the Americans wouldn't, this is just an unmitigated disaster.
And I deeply fear, as Secretary of the United States, I know none of this is getting into the stuff that we wanted to talk about.
I think they're going to get into it in a second.
But it does already, I just find it so funny watching their head spins as they try to justify this narrative for this war that they want in Syria.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
And by the way, don't get it twisted.
The reason they want this war in Syria is to degrade Assad if they've accepted that they can't overthrow him, is to degrade Assad and to hurt Iran.
That's why they want this war in Syria.
It has nothing to do with the Kurds.
But it's so funny to be like, you know, we're allowing these Kurds to get slaughtered and now they're allying up with the Russians.
You're like, I thought the Russians were the people you guys hate the most.
Adam Schiff, haven't you spent years talking about how the Russians are colluding with the president and they're such a bad guy?
So these guys who you're so concerned with saving are allies with the Russians.
Oh, interesting.
But now you're telling me that Russia is a hostile foreign power, but we have to send our boys to go fight and die to protect their allies.
And you try to spin it in its way where it's like, well, we've abandoned them and now we're forcing them into the hands of Assad and Russia.
It's like, well, okay, they were kind of already allied with Assad before we got in there.
It's just, it's really like a mindfuck to think that we have to go, of all the groups of people who are dying around the world, you are going to sit here and tell me Bashar al-Assad's a busher and the Russians are a hostile foreign power, but we got to go fight and die to protect their allies.
Wouldn't it be great in a week from now?
There's just footage of the Kurds and they're all like on vacation.
They're like, man, this joining with Syria thing really played out in our favor.
And she goes, we actually haven't been in Syria for months at this point.
They sent us to Honolulu.
This is great.
All right, let's keep playing.
Well, I want to get to the other big topic, and that is the impeachment inquiry that you are leading.
Do you see this widening?
Well, we're keeping our focus right now on the president's coercion of an ally, that is Ukraine, to create these sham investigations into his political opponent.
We have discovered in very short order not only the contents of that call, but also the preparatory work that went into that call, the effort to condition something the Ukrainian president deeply sought, and that was a meeting with the president to establish that this new president of Ukraine had a powerful patron, the president of the United States that was of vital importance to Ukraine, was being conditioned on digging up dirt on the Bidens.
So you see that as the quid pro quo, not just the military aid.
First of all, there doesn't need to be a quid pro quo.
But it is clear already, I think, from the text messages, that this meeting that the Ukraine president sought was being conditioned on their willingness to interfere in the USA.
Please pause one second.
To help the president, I don't watch this part of it, but quid pro quo being that you're able to meet with Donald Trump.
Like, that's the most wonderful thing in the entire world.
Can you imagine trying to sell that argument?
The guy that you hate more than anything, the quid pro crow was that you got a fan meet and greet with the president.
Right.
And then he says it doesn't even matter.
Like that doesn't even matter.
It's like, well, what exactly does matter, right?
Like what here?
I just also want to pull up because I quid pro quo, the definition is a favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something.
So this is what bothers me about this term.
This is complete bullshit.
This is not like he's right in the sense that this has nothing to do with anything, right?
So any interaction in foreign policy is always a quid pro quo.
Always, right?
Like, even when we were talking about partnering with the Kurds, well, why were we partnering with them?
So they'd fight ISIS, right?
That's the deal.
We'll give you weapons, but you got to fight ISIS.
We'll get something in return for what we give you.
You're always kind of like making a deal, like I'll give you this and you give me that.
So the issue isn't quid pro quo.
The issue is if Donald Trump asked for something that was only beneficial to him, or the issue, as they're putting it, is interfering in the elections.
And we've broken this down a bunch of times, but what do you mean by that?
What do you mean by interfering in the elections?
So let me ask you this, right?
To the Adam Schiff people of the world or to anybody who's kind of defending the Donald Trump abused his power.
Let's say Joe Biden wasn't in the race.
Would it be okay then?
What if there was no advantage to Donald Trump for investigating Joe Biden?
What if it was just, I'm concerned that the former vice president committed a crime.
I want you to look into that for me.
Would that be okay?
Even with Biden running, now that you frame it that way, it still shouldn't be, it should be illegal to fabricate everything.
Of course, yes.
It should not be illegal to go, hey, I want you to go look into this.
It's very important to our democracy that the people running aren't committing these kind of crimes.
It seems absurd.
How do you draw the line there?
So it's interfering in an election if the guy is in the campaign, but if he's not, what if Joe Biden drops out tomorrow for unrelated health reasons or something like that?
Joe Biden drops out.
And then he keeps going with it.
Then it's fine.
Is there a problem with it there?
Or what is it?
What is the standard?
Is the standard just that you can't ask a foreign government to do any type of investigating?
Because, you know, if that's the standard, then the Democrats are kind of in a lot of trouble because they asked the previous Ukrainian administration to investigate Donald Trump.
No one accused them of interfering in an election, although they obviously were.
Hillary Clinton asked a former British spy to dig up dirt on Donald Trump.
None of you guys seem to be worried about that.
Just please let me know more specifically, because quid pro quo is not it.
So let me know more specifically what exactly is the standard that Donald Trump broke and how do we apply that?
Digging Up Political Dirt00:14:34
Because if the standard is just some vague bullshit, that's kind of bullshit.
I'm sorry.
I don't mean to offend Brooke Baldwin.
I know I shouldn't use that term bullshit, but it's bullshit.
That standard is bullshit.
And if you're saying something else is the standard, but we only apply it to Donald Trump and not others, then that seems to be bullshit and hypocrisy.
So it's not exactly clear to me.
Let's get back to old shift dog.
That is a terrible abuse of the president's power.
Now, whether that abuse goes further, that is the withholding of military aid also as leverage.
There's certainly strong indications that that is true as well.
And we're going to get to the bottom of it.
But here you have a President of the United States abusing his power to the detriment of our national security and doing so to get yet another foreign country to intervene in our election.
It's hard to imagine more of a corruption of his office than that.
When will you begin to hold public hearings?
The polling that CBS has done has shown that Americans really are not clear on what to think about this impeachment inquiry over the past two weeks of work you've done.
Well, actually, you know, I think that the public attitudes have swiftly moved in strong support of the impeachment inquiry.
And what we were trying to do is do a methodical and yet with a sense of urgency investigation of these matters.
Well, the Republicans say it's behind closed doors so you can cherry pick information to be released.
The Republicans would like nothing better because they view their role as defending the president, being the president's lawyers, if witnesses could tailor their testimony to other witnesses.
They would love for one witness to be able to hear what another witness says so that they can know what they can give away and what they can't give away.
There's a reason why investigations and grand jury proceedings, for example, and I think this is analogous to a grand jury proceeding, are done out of the public view initially.
Now, we may very well call some of the same witnesses or in public hearings.
Here's the two elements of this that are particularly crazy.
So first is if you're going to go, well, this needs to be done away from public view, then it's not right of you to come forward and make any statements about what's going on in the process until it's completed.
But to do everything behind closed doors and then keep showing up and going, well, we got this thing.
Well, we got this thing.
So basically you're saying, well, this is analogous to a grand jury proceeding, but I'm coming out and telling you the guy's guilty.
Yeah.
The guy's guilty.
But we have to keep it secret because it's a grand jury proceeding.
Well, no, the whole point of a grand jury proceeding being secret is that you don't know whether you're going to move forward with an indictment or not.
And if you're not going to move forward with an indictment, you don't want to just let details out that are just like damaging details or could lead opinion one way or the other.
So you do it in secret because we're not even sure if we're going to indict.
And then if we decide we're going to indict, we let you know that a grand jury decided to indict you.
Then you make it public.
So I'm just saying this is analogous to a grand jury proceeding.
So we have to keep it secret.
But by the way, the guy's guilty.
It's kind of like what they did with the Mueller thing for two full years.
They said, hey, it's going to be behind closed doors, but here's a little detail about why we think there's some guilt here.
And now the other just crazy part of this, which just keeps kind of getting confused, is that impeachment is not a criminal process.
It's a political process.
So every time he keeps talking about like kind of the criminal prosecution standard by which we're going to be proceeding with this is essentially Adam Schiff going, well, here's some bullshit because that's not true.
That's not the way.
Now, I don't have a full understanding of the way that the process does work.
I'm just telling you every time he goes, well, it's similar to this criminal thing.
That's Adam Schiff just making something up because that is not the way that impeachment works.
Right.
No, absolutely.
And he can choose whatever analogy is convenient for him at the time.
Because if you make the analogy a grand jury proceeding, okay, but how about if the analogy was like a court trial?
Then it would be nothing like what you're talking about now, where everything would be presented in discovery, right?
So that, but what I think is so crazy, right, is that Adam Schiff is a guy.
So he's out here.
And I know I've said this and I repeat myself, but it's worth repeating.
Adam Schiff is claiming that Donald Trump was trying to get a foreign power to interfere in an election.
Like interfering in an election is such a terrible thing to do.
But Adam Schiff was a guy who was right at the center of this Russia collusion nonsense and told people going into the primary elections, you have the head of the House Intelligence Committee telling people, or I guess at the time he wasn't, but he was a member of the House Intelligence Committee, telling people that he has seen evidence that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
And he's lying through his teeth.
And he's saying that going into a midterm election.
Now, how exactly is that not interfering with an election?
By the way, if you want to use this loose definition of like, hey, my opponent is being investigated, so that is interfering in an election.
Like, look, okay, it seems very abstract to me to say.
I mean, you know, like, are we, you know, it's like, is Bernie Sanders' heart interfering in the election right now?
Like, yes, it is probably going to have an effect on things.
Like, I don't think even if he was trying to win, I don't think Bernie Sanders could possibly win right now because of the heart attack.
I think at the end of the day, we're still basically just slightly more evolved monkeys, and we're not going to vote for a 78-year-old who just had a heart attack to be our head alpha monkey.
That's honestly how I think.
But like, really, I do.
I think the same way, Jeb Bush versus Donald Trump, Jeb Bush just alpha Donald Trump just alpha Jeb Bush, you know?
And that's part of it.
People respond to that because we're fucking monkeys, okay?
However, I mean, we're not actually monkeys, Christian conservative, but God created both of us.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
My point is, if you're saying investigating someone is interfering in an election, okay, but then what would, let's make another analogy, what would starting an impeachment investigation a year before a presidential election be?
Is that interfering in an election?
Now, by the way, I would say, no, that's ridiculous to say it that way.
If you had something legitimate to impeach a president over, well, then, yeah, you're going to impeach him.
And if that's going to affect the election outcome, well, whatever.
He did something.
You know, like, let's say Donald Trump committed some high crime or misdemeanor or whatever that was obviously a violation.
Like, let's say he, you know, even after the Congress said they didn't want to, he supported the Saudis in a war of genocide against the people of Yemen.
Let's just say, hypothetically.
And you wanted to impeach him for that.
And he went, hey, this is interfering in the election.
If you impeach me for war crimes right now, then fucking, I'm not going to be able to get re-elected.
You'd go, well, tough, you committed the crime.
So I don't know what to tell you.
If it affects your election, it affects your election.
But likewise, if Joe Biden's son or Joe Biden were to be investigated by a government, our government or some other or whatever illegitimate government they want to claim, and he went, this is interfering with an election.
It's like, well, tough, did you commit the crime or not?
Seems fair to me.
In other words, I mean, how did Mueller not interfere with the midterm elections this year?
I mean, Donald Trump got off, but not till after the midterm elections were over.
But I'm sure no Democrat would go like, well, yeah, but we had to get to the bottom of that, right?
So, okay.
So Ukraine has to get to the bottom of this.
I don't see it.
All right.
Let's play the rest.
As well.
But we want to make sure that we meet the needs of the investigation and not give the president or his legal minions the opportunity to tailor their testimony and in some cases fabricate testimony to suit their interests.
You've been the whistleblower has.
In any trial or any anything, if you share the evidence, that risk always exists.
But the point is you have to share the evidence so that people at least know what they're up against.
Yes.
Well, we just want to work with the CIA to get all our fucking evidence together, and we don't want to give them a chance to know what it is or maybe have a response to that.
Seems legit.
Let's keep on.
Made these complaints and handed them over.
Why push for this whistleblower to come before Congress?
Because Republicans are calling for it, and some Democrats would like to ask questions too, but this information is already out there.
Can't the committee do its own investigation without risking the identity of this person being.
You know, and I think initially before the president started threatening the whistleblower, threatening others, calling them traitors and spies, and suggesting that we used to give the death penalty to traitors and spies, and maybe we should think about that again.
Yes, we were interested in having the whistleblower come forward.
Our primary interest is...
Not anymore?
Well, our primary interest right now is making sure that that person is protected.
Indeed, now there's more than one whistleblower that they are protected.
And given that we already have the call record, we don't need the whistleblower who wasn't on the call to tell us what took place during the call.
We have the best evidence of that.
We do want to make sure that we identify other evidence that is pertinent to the withholding of the military support, the effort to cover this up by hiding this in a classified computer system.
We want to make sure that we uncover the full details about the conditionality of either the military aid or that meeting with the European Union.
It may not be necessary.
Isn't it great how he just said, yeah, the whistleblower thing was bullshit?
Yeah.
But now we got the better evidence from it.
Now, it goes, oh, by the way, the whistleblower didn't even know.
I mean, he wasn't even on the call.
You don't know.
You know, first of all, but here's what's amazing about that.
So, Adam was the guy who was out there plugging, hey, listen, there's this whistleblower.
And that's when Trump finally turned around and said, Fuck your whistleblower.
Here, I'll just give you the transcript.
There's nothing in it.
And guess what?
There is nothing in it.
But just to unravel how good this guy is at getting in the news and spinning some total bullshit, he spun the bullshit of listen, the whistleblower, there's a whistleblower.
And now it turns out, by his own admission, oh, the whistleblower, what's that?
That's not evidence.
Well, I mean, there is something.
It's not that there's nothing in the phone call.
There is something in there.
There's just nothing impeachable in there.
What's in there that is interesting, and you actually made this point right away.
The most interesting thing to me was: you see how Donald Trump talks to foreign leaders, which was pretty fucking interesting.
There certainly is this kind of mafioso tactic.
But, you know, from my perspective, as somebody who I may have said this before, you know, the state is kind of like the mafia.
So it's not that surprising to me.
But what Donald Trump says is that he'd really like you to look into what happened with this 2016, you know, the origins of the investigation into Donald Trump and Russia in collusion.
And oh, by the way, this Biden, Hunter Biden thing smells like corruption to me too.
So maybe look into that.
That's what Donald Trump says in the phone call.
And I don't see anything impeachable about that.
And the funny thing about Donald Trump is that he just goes, yes, that's what I said.
And let me say it again.
I absolutely want them to do both of these things.
So there's no controversy here.
Donald Trump, Donald Trump went out on the lawn and said, We played the clip last week and he said, Hey, Ukraine should absolutely look into Biden.
China should do it too.
And yes, we should look into the origins of the Russian hoax, as he calls it, the witch hunt or whatever, which it was.
So, okay, I mean, he's kind of right.
You don't need the whistleblower.
But like you said, you're the one who made this whistleblower such a huge thing.
That was you.
Same guy, right?
All right, let's keep playing.
Necessary to take steps that might reveal the whistleblower's identity to do that.
And we're going to make sure we protect that whistleblower.
You know who was on that July 25th call.
You know all the participants?
I can't say that I do, but we now know what took place on that call.
We are bringing in witnesses this coming week from the National Security Council, other State Department officials, to find out what they can tell us about the conditionality of this vital military assistance to an ally, the conditionality of this vital meeting between the two presidents and the president's effort to dig up dirt on his opponent.
Quickly, do you regret saying that we, the committee, weren't in touch with the whistleblower?
I should say, by the way, can you just pause it right there?
Because I do want to play this and hear his answer to that too.
Because they just, maybe we just bring it back a few seconds.
But can I just say that I actually, the way he phrased it there, I don't have a problem with.
I actually think that is a fair way to phrase it.
That Donald Trump was trying to dig up dirt on a political opponent.
Fair enough.
You know, I mean, I don't believe, like, if we're just being honest here, I don't believe that Donald Trump was just so outraged by Hunter Biden and Joe Biden's corruption that we needed to get to the bottom of this.
I think he's, yes, I think he's self-serving and he is trying to dig up dirt on his political opponent.
Fair enough.
That's an accurate way to describe it.
Not asking someone to interfere in an election because that's just obviously misleading bullshit, right?
Like interference.
That just evokes these images that are like, like you're tampering with voter booths or something like that or mess it like, which is not what you're accusing him of doing.
But dig up dirt on a political opponent.
That's what he's doing.
That is a great, accurate way to describe what he's doing.
Okay.
So that's the standard.
The standard is now you're not allowed to dig up dirt on a political opponent.
Okay, you know who in politics is guilty of digging up dirt on a political opponent?
Everyone.
Everyone.
Every fucking one of you.
You guys ever seen a negative campaign ad before?
That's all they're doing is digging up dirt on political opponents.
I'm pretty sure that's the process Adam Schiff's involved in right now.
Yeah, I mean, he's literally in the process of digging up dirt on a political opponent.
He's going, hey, I think Donald Trump committed these crimes, so we have to investigate.
I mean, yes, okay.
I mean, like, how could you possibly make that the standard by which to damn a politician?
That's all they do.
That's what every single one of them does.
Okay.
I mean, like, what else can you say about this?
There's no politician who doesn't try to dig up dirt.
And if they're offered dirt on somebody else, go, yeah, okay, sure.
Anyway, okay, let's keep playing.
And the president's effort to dig up dirt on his opponent.
Lying About Contact00:01:21
Quickly, do you regret saying that we, the committee, weren't in touch with the whistleblower?
I should have been much more clear, and I said so the minute it was brought to my attention, that I was referring to the fact that when the whistleblower filed the complaint, we had not heard from the whistleblower.
We wanted to bring the whistleblower in at that time, but I should have been much more clear about that.
Congressman, thank you very much.
Still seems unclear to me.
And that's the only little caveat that he'll give.
I should have been more clear.
And of course, the follow-up question to that in traditional mainstream media fashion is, thank you very much.
I should have been more clear about that.
Well, thank you.
Thanks for having you.
Not like I should have been more clear about that.
No, but you specifically said we haven't had contact with him.
And you had.
Like, that's a lie.
That's as close to a lie as you can get.
I mean, his staff had contacted with him and he said, we haven't had contact.
He's going, oh, I meant we.
I meant me and my wife.
You know, like, okay, maybe you can weasel out of it somehow.
But that's as close to a lie as you can get.
And he goes, I should have just been more clear.
Yeah, you should have.
You shouldn't have lied about it, I suppose.
That guy, Adam Schiff, is really one piece of work.
One face-ass mouth.
Yeah.
All right.
That's a, we're going to wrap there.
That's our show for tonight.
Thank you guys very much for listening.
We'll be back on Wednesday and then on Friday and then on Monday and then on Wednesday, Friday and Monday.