James Smith and Robbie Bernstein analyze Michael Bloomberg's entry into the Democratic race, arguing it cements a field incapable of winning without a major recession. They critique Joe Biden's age, Bernie Sanders' health, and Elizabeth Warren's economically nonsensical $52 trillion Medicare for All plan. Smith contends Barack Obama destroyed the anti-war left through cognitive dissonance regarding Yemen and Syria, while Trump's entertainment value overshadows traditional intelligence. Ultimately, the discussion suggests American culture prioritizes "alpha" figures over policy competence, making victory impossible for current candidates short of an economic collapse. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Fox News Legacy Debate00:13:28
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash 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.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
A day late, a dollar short, but better than nothing at all.
Is that a thing?
I don't know.
The dollar short part perked my interest.
I was like, wait, there were going to be dollar bills on this episode?
Yeah.
I'll take some of those dollars.
You got your dollar back.
You're right back to zero.
That's where you started with.
That's what you end with.
Yeah.
We're recording a day later.
I like Saturday episodes.
Yeah, me too.
I'm relaxed on Saturdays.
Yeah, you are.
You've had your sandwich fix for the day.
You're feeling good.
I was recording the Greg Gutfeld show yesterday at our normal time.
I heard that Greg Gutfield's ratings are bigger than any of the night shows.
I don't know.
He's killing it in the ratings.
He gets like 2 million views in an episode, something in that ballpark.
That might be bigger than Kimlin Fallon.
I don't know.
I really have no.
I don't know if it's bigger than Kimlin Fallon, but it's definitely bigger than the late night shows, which is what he's competing with, I think.
I don't know.
I don't really know.
I don't pay attention to the ratings nearly enough, but he's doing very good.
I know.
I know that I get a lot of response on social media when I do the show now, and I didn't used to.
And also, Greg has come around to the anti-war position to some degree.
I know that he's like, now, you know, when I used to do the show back in the day, he would kind of be like, oh, you know, you libertarians on foreign policy, you're a little too crazy.
Like, we shouldn't, you know, we got to go bomb some places.
And now he's like, yeah, these wars are goddamn insane.
And that actually made me think a little bit about the impact and the legacy of Donald Trump.
You know, I said, I've said on the show before that, look, obviously, if I'm just judging a president by their policies, whether it's Obama or Trump or whoever is next, you know, I try to call him like I see him.
Like you go, like, you know, it's about 98% bad.
And I'll tell you the 2% that's good.
Maybe Donald Trump is like 5%, 10% that's good.
You know, I liked that Obama did the Iran deal.
I know I get a lot of shit for this.
I like the Iran deal.
I like that he opened up trade relationships with Cuba.
You know, I could probably think about something else if I had hours to come up with it.
There's not too much.
For Donald Trump, I like the tax cuts.
I like the deregulation of the energy sector, particularly.
There's a, you know, I like that.
I love what he did with North Korea.
I like trying to meet with them and do that shit.
I hate the spending levels.
I hate the war in Yemen.
I hate it.
You know, you just kind of call him like you see him.
But one of the things I said, this is back in 2016 when I did a three-part podcast series.
This was before you came on board, Robbie Bernstein.
You were just a child out there in the world.
But one of the things I said about Obama when you started, I did a three-part series on his legacy.
And one of the things that I talked about was the fact that, and I think about this, and it's not anything Obama himself did, but when I think about Obama's legacy, one of the worst parts of it is that I think, and this is a little bit of my own theory on the situation, but I think that Obama destroyed the anti-war left in a way that probably no one else could have pulled off.
Like there was something about Obama being the man he was and continuing all the wars and then launching all these new wars that just destroyed the anti-war left.
Because there was a cognitive dissonance that they so loved him and that they moved their liberal agenda forward and we got our first black president.
Yeah.
And they couldn't possibly root against him on anything.
Yes.
Now there are some principled people, don't get me wrong.
Like, look, Jimmy Doerr is the first name that comes to mind, but there's a lot of like leftists out there who were still like, no, fuck this.
Obama's foreign policy is terrible.
Kyle Kalinske, who I was, you know, we were talking about his segment on Rogan on the last episode.
He was absolutely, you know, like, no, Obama's foreign policy sucks.
And I give credit to those guys.
But broadly speaking, for people on the left, there was something about Barack Obama where it was like, yeah, whatever it is.
It's like first black president.
He's this charming, charismatic guy.
Like all of these things that made you feel so good to support him.
You got so much of your like, I'm not racist proof out there by supporting him that it was too hard to confront that he was just another war criminal.
It was too much to confront that.
And they'd rather just pretend, like, I've talked to some of these people before.
It's unbelievable the mental gymnastics that they'll go through to be like, yeah, yeah, no, we are anti-war, but also Obama was the greatest president ever.
And you'll bring up things like, you know, whatever, you know, well, look what he did to Libya.
Look what he did in Syria.
Look what he did in Yemen.
Look what he, how he, how he escalated the war in Afghanistan.
Look at Iraq, all these things.
And it'll just be, you know, excuses.
Ted Alexandra had that great joke.
Do you remember that joke he told him the Libyan Peace Prize?
Yeah, great joke.
Great joke.
I'll give you the honors.
I don't remember it specifically.
I just remember it was so simple.
He was like, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.
I hate doing other people's jokes.
I'm going to butcher it.
But he was like, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize while he was conducting two wars.
He goes, seems a little bit strange.
He goes, there might have been someone more deserving, like someone conducting no wars or even someone conducting one war.
Ted Alexandra is such a funny fucking comic.
And by the way, he's another guy who I would put in there who I think of as a left-wing guy, but was very quick to criticize Obama's foreign policy.
There are principled leftists out there.
I'm not trying to pretend there aren't.
But broad strokes, the bigger anti-war left-wing movement was destroyed by Barack Obama.
Like they just, it just was too much for them to deal with having to criticize Obama and losing the racial street cred you get for being like, I supported, you know, the first black president.
Anyway, one of the things that I was thinking about, and maybe this is just, maybe I'm wrong, but this was where my mind went and what I was thinking about was of the legacy of Donald Trump, which we won't know for sure for a little while.
And if Donald Trump isn't the president at the end of 2020, or he will definitely be unless he's impeached.
But if he isn't the president in 2021, then maybe it's time to start talking about his legacy.
I thought to myself that having like one of the one of the big names at Fox News be, hey, I'm against these wars might be the inverse of what I'm talking about with Obama.
So it's not necessarily that it was anything specifically that Trump did, but the fact that Trump rhetorically is like, these wars are bullshit and they don't make sense might give cover to a lot of people on the right, a lot of people who identify as conservative, to be like, yeah, you know, it's okay to be anti-war.
It's okay.
Because this Trump guy who was president, he was saying all these wars were stupid.
So really, you're just kind of agreeing with him.
And anyway, it was just, it was something that was in my mind.
Like, that would be really cool.
If, if nothing else, I hope that Trump's legacy involves some things like that.
Like, in terms of policy, there's just so much bad shit that I've been talking about for a long time that it's really, you know, it's hard to even think about supporting the guy.
But there might be a bigger, you know, tone of his legacy that would be something like calling out the media for being completely full of shit and calling out these wars for being complete bullshit.
That would be cool if that was the case.
We'll see.
We will see.
It's interesting because the biggest thing really to call him out on is reckless government spending and the left wouldn't think to criticize him on that.
Well, no, it's the two things.
Here's the thing, right?
It's, look, reckless government spending.
I get where you're coming from.
You're absolutely right about that, right?
But what seems to me at least would be the easy, and this is the point I was making about Obama.
The easiest thing to call him out on from the left is the wars.
I mean, I know he talks about ending the wars, and it seems like there's tons of people who call him out for talking about ending them.
But the easiest thing to call him out for would be like, okay, you're on the left.
You're a left-wing person and you hate Donald Trump.
Okay, there's children starving to death in Yemen because of him.
So how about that?
This is, by the way, the war in Yemen is something that Congress specifically rebuked and he overrode it and was like, no, we're going to continue supporting the Saudis in this war.
So that seems, to me, it seems like the left-wing position is obviously that would be the thing.
And by the way, when George W. Bush got us into this bullshit war in Iraq, that is what people on the left did.
They called him out for that.
So I'm just saying, why is it that people on the left won't call Donald Trump out for the war in Yemen?
And the only plausible answer, which seems to be the answer to me, is that in order to do that, you would also have to call Obama a war criminal.
There's no way to do that without also going, oh, hey, Barack Obama wasn't, forget what you like about him.
He's a murderer, a murderer of children.
Now, I don't know what, what could you call someone that's a worse thing than a murderer of children?
I don't think it's just the Obama legacy.
I think for sure CNN just has some sort of an end with the military-industrial complex.
There's some sort of military CIA.
I agree with you, but that was true during George W. Bush, too, during George W. Bush, too.
And they still fucking, there was still an anti-war resistance on the left during W.
And it's not the same thing during Trump.
So I wonder, you know, I wonder, like, maybe, I don't know, maybe you're right.
Maybe it's just media kind of propaganda, but I wonder maybe if we, the way to solve it, the way to like conclusively figure out what the answer would be is if Trump had started another war that was his war that he owned.
And I don't know.
Maybe like, say Trump had started a war in Venezuela.
Would then the left be comfortable being like, he's a war hawk?
I think they probably would.
I think they probably would.
I think the problem is that in Yemen and in Syria and in Iraq and in all of the theaters that he's involved, he's continuing Obama's war.
So there's really no way to call him out without also indicting Obama.
And they just can't do that.
For the average liberal or the average leftist, they just can't do that.
And that's to me the worst of Obama's legacy is that you robbed the left of their most redeemable quality.
Do you see that footage of us shipping military gear over to Yemen?
Yeah.
Sickening.
Yeah, sure is.
Sure is.
It's, you know, the whole thing is just, it's out of a, it's like the villain in a novel.
You know, like you're like, no, there couldn't be this level of evil in real life.
And then you're just watching it happen.
All right.
Anyway, big news, big news of the last few days.
Big news, Brzezinski, of the last few days.
Michael Bloomberg is entering the race.
It's almost a certainty.
Michael Bloomberg is entering the Democratic primary, vying to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.
It's something that's been discussed in the past.
You know what's interesting to me, right?
Is that there was this New York Times article about a little less than a month ago, maybe three weeks ago.
Infinite CBD Gummies Highlight00:03:02
And the article was basically about these big Democratic donors who were saying, we're freaking out.
And they were freaking out because they're like, whoa, we're looking at this field right now and Joe Biden is supposed to be the guy and he's not the guy.
Joe Biden, I think, looks older every time I see him.
Every time I see him, he looks older and dumber than he did the last time I saw him.
And he won't stop nuzzling children.
He won't.
He's just like, look, this is, you're either going to vote for me with the nuzzling children thing or you won't, but I'm not going to stop nuzzle humping children.
And that's, that's an issue.
He's like, look, here's what I bring to the table.
I was Obama's VP on the pro side.
On the con side, I can't put two sentences together.
I can't remember times and dates.
I don't even know what state I'm in right now.
And if you put a kid in front of me, I'm going to nuzzle hump that kid.
So what do you think of that package?
And they're like, could you like maybe work on the nuzzle humping?
I understand if you can't remember the times and dates, you can't control that.
But could you not nuzzle hump kids?
And he's like, no, I'm not going to be able to help you on that one.
I'm going to do what I got to do when it comes to nuzzle humping kids.
And they're just like, oh, all right.
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Wealth Tax Reality Check00:15:54
So anyway, the Democratic donors, this is what the Times article said.
None of that stuff.
But what they said was that they're very worried.
They're looking at Biden and they're like, I don't think this thing has the legs on it.
I don't think he can win.
They're looking at Warren and Bernie Sanders and they're like, I think running on a socialist message is not going to be the way to beat Donald Trump.
Most Americans are going to reject this.
They're looking at all the other candidates.
They're like, Kamala Harris got no traction even after that huge media rollout.
Beto O'Rourke is already gone.
You know, Pete Buttigieg can't really get any black support.
I mean, they like him.
Pete Buttigieg is the only one in the field who's not humiliating himself, but he just can't get any real traction going.
And everybody else is, you know.
Is that a gay thing that the black community won't support a gay guy?
No, people of color and LGBT people are all exactly the same.
It's funny because I haven't heard the left talk about that at all, and it's a very interesting topic.
Well, I will say I've wondered the same, and I believe I've mentioned it on the show before, but I've wondered the same thing about Bernie Sanders, who got no black support against Hillary Clinton.
I just wonder.
It was hard for me to think of what the reason is.
Well, that's part of it.
But black people supported Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly over Bernie Sanders.
And Bernie Sanders was offering them more stuff.
I mean, he was offering them more government assistance.
It wasn't even enough to make a dent.
And I just wonder.
I don't know.
Just a theory.
I have no idea.
Not even a theory.
Just a question.
But I don't know.
And is look, there's something to be said for the fact that America is pretty cool on the gay issue in general.
You know, there are some people who aren't.
But generally speaking, America is not really...
Like, even when gay marriage got passed, it's not like, you know, there's like Muslim countries in the world where being a homosexual is illegal and where they actually like, you know, fucking kill gay people.
And that's never been the case in America or in Western civilization and modern history.
But gay marriage was kind of the thing that like people would fight for a while when I was a kid.
You know, they'd be like, okay, you can be gay, you can do whatever you want to do, but marriage means something.
And that means a man and a woman.
And you can't.
And then state by state by state, they started making gay marriage legal.
And then finally, the Supreme Court came in and was like, hey, you 20 odd, some odd states who haven't made it legal, it's legal.
You're not having fucking, you know, you're not having referendums.
You're not voting on this.
It's legal.
That's it.
And basically all the red states just kind of took it.
They're like, okay.
And the next presidential nominee after that for the Republicans was Donald Trump, who was always fine with gay marriage.
It's not like the Republicans started supporting Trump.
He's like, it's not an orgy unless people are butt fucking in the corner.
This goes, I mean, really?
I like everyone in my orgies.
Listen, in Trump Tower, I've put my penis in a lot of things, where some of them do, but there's no way to know.
Okay.
My penis goes in things.
It might have been a toaster.
It might have been a vagina.
It might have been a dude's, but the point is we don't win anymore.
But the point is that it's not like the Republicans were like, well, we're going to nominate a presidential candidate who will run on repealing that.
They just kind of accepted it and that's it.
We move on.
That's more or less the American position.
It's like they don't really care about whether you're gay.
They're not trying to write a law that says you can't get married or you can't do this.
However, when you're talking about voting for president, there's something about it that's still very primal.
Like, look, I think a huge part of Donald Trump winning the presidency was that he out-alphaed everybody.
Look, we are still, we have these monkey brains and we put a, like, we're putting a leader to be the alpha.
You're the leader.
You're our fucking commander in chief.
And are we quite there yet?
Which I don't mean to imply that I hate that term.
Are we there yet?
As if it's an inevitability that we will be there at some point.
But do people really feel comfortable voting for a dude?
You know, like, is there this base primal level where someone, you know, when someone just goes publicly, well, I'm, you know, I'm an open, you know, gay man or something like that.
But then on some level, all of us, you know, hear like this dude being like, I blow other dudes and have butt sex with them.
Is that something that like plays into people's psyche where they wouldn't want to support that guy?
I don't know.
He's aggressive.
Well, you got to be specific then.
Well, you got to be specific, Mayor Pete.
I don't know.
But I do think it's an interesting question.
And I know you're like not allowed to ask that in polite society, but it's something to me that is interesting to ask.
Just as a kicker to what you're saying, it's kind of like a cultural alpha that if we really cared about intelligence and policy, people could be alpha in a different way.
Like you could almost have a math alpha.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
We have a TV alpha.
We're a culture of television and entertainment.
And when it comes to being entertaining, like watching pro wrestling, Trump was the best at it.
Yes.
Well, if we were a better society and a better culture, we probably wouldn't have Donald Trump as our president.
I mean, that's the truth.
And I, look, I, this was like a major theme of my comedy special, Libertas.
And this is, which you can get at GastDigitalNetwork.com.
But it's been something that I've talked about for years on the podcast now.
One of the things that was really crazy to me about the whole Trump presidency and Trump being elected was when the media would try to be like, my God, this man is not dignified.
And you're like, who are you talking to?
Like, what culture are you talking to?
Do you think this is the 1950s or something, where we're all a bunch of men in like suits and hats and we, you know, we bow and a woman curtsies or something?
You know, maybe I don't understand the 50s, but I think that's what was going on.
And like, what world do you think we live in?
This is not my grandfather's world.
People today grew up on, and I'm not talking about 15-year-olds.
I'm talking about 35-year-olds, 40-year-olds grew up on Howard Stern, Jerry Springer.
Like, the culture is this fucking free-for-all of, you know, loose values, let's say.
And so, of course, it makes sense that Donald Trump would come up and just be like, I'm the, yeah, who cares?
He said, Grab him by the pussy, whatever.
Who doesn't?
You know, and that, like, that's kind of where we're at.
And yeah, I think there's something to be said for that.
That maybe in an older, better time, someone who is super well-educated would be like, wow, that guy's an alpha because he knows fucking everything.
You know, that's not where we're at right now on either side.
And the Democrats or other Republicans can play this, like, well, I speak in a very professional manner, or I speak in a presidential language, but they're doing the same thing.
It's just propaganda.
No one's actually, you know, look at Elizabeth Warren's fucking plans.
Look at Elizabeth Warren's fucking $52 trillion fucking Medicare for all plan.
Look at her fucking, you know, her wealth tax.
There's no, there's no intelligence behind this wealth tax.
Like I was saying on the last episode, you know how stupid it is?
How dumb the population that you're talking to has to be to buy into the idea of a wealth tax.
You don't even ask like a few follow-up questions.
Like, what does that mean?
What is wealth?
What does someone's net worth mean?
Oh, if your net worth is over $2 million or whatever, she says we're going to tax you this more $10 million, whatever it is.
It's like, okay, well, Jeff Bezos's net worth is $130-something billion dollars.
I don't even know offhand, but something like that, $130 billion.
It's like, so what does that mean?
Does that mean Jeff Bezos has $130 billion sitting in a vault somewhere that you can just tax 2% of?
No.
Jeff Bezos's net worth is like in stocks.
Means he's going to sell stocks every year.
Right.
And lose his own company.
Who knows?
Right, exactly.
His net worth is tied up in all these different investments, right?
And then if you go, oh, we're going to test that.
It's like, well, you're worth $130 billion.
Well, how did we come up with whatever the number is?
It's basically an estimation.
It's a valuation.
How do you actually know what it's worth?
Well, the only way to actually know what it's worth is you have to fucking sell that and then see what someone will pay for that.
What is someone's, you know, have you ever, do any of you familiar, just as an example, do you ever know anyone who's had a house appraised?
Like maybe someone owns a house and they tell you, hey, your house is worth $400,000.
But then someone sells the house and they get $320,000 for it.
It happens all the time.
Because there's one thing when an appraiser comes in and tells you, this is what I think it's worth.
And then there's another thing when you go, who wants to buy it for that amount?
And a lot of times it's not exactly the same.
Sometimes you get more, sometimes you get less.
You don't know what any of this fucking shit is actually where there's no way to like know somebody's net worth.
Certainly, I mean, you could know someone's net worth if their net worth is $3,000.
You'd be like, okay, they have $3,000.
That's what they have.
But when you're talking about big money, what are you talking about?
You don't even realize when you're talking about people like on that level of wealth.
I mean, you may own a painting, like a really, really like I'm sure Jeff Bezos or Michael Bloomberg or people like that own like really expensive paintings.
What's that worth?
Well, I don't know.
It would have to like go, you'd have to try to find someone to buy it.
All that something is worth.
Here's the Mesessian Austrian economics understanding of things, which is just goddamn factual and accurate.
What something is worth is what someone else is willing to pay for it.
Okay?
That's what something is worth.
If you go, hey, this table is worth $5,000.
And I go, I want to sell it.
And the best offer I get is $500.
Well, then guess what?
It's not worth $5,000.
It's not.
At least not to anyone else.
And if you refuse to sell it, then I guess maybe it's worth that to you, but it's not worth that in any value.
Is subjective, you know?
It's whatever someone thinks it's worth.
So anyway, but if we lived in that smarter country where than someone like where intelligence would be the alpha in a sense, I know this is all kind of, that's not exactly what alpha means, but I get the point that you are making.
And I think you get the point I'm making.
If we lived in that world, then Elizabeth Warren wouldn't be able to propose something like a wealth tax.
So it's all, it's just as stupid on their side as it is on Trump side.
Anyway, back to the point.
Michael Bloomberg has jumped into the race.
And I think there's a few things worth pointing out right away.
Number one, the problem right now in the Democratic field is that nobody there can win.
Now, we've said before there is one asterisk that goes on that, which is short of a huge economic recession.
And it's got to be a really big one.
But a big economic recession is a game changer.
And then who the fuck knows what could happen?
Okay?
Short of that, there's no one on the Democratic side who can win.
No one.
Not a single one of them.
And also, it turns out universal healthcare is actually very unpopular.
Well, here's the thing.
People didn't bite.
They don't trust it.
Here's the thing.
Even on the far left.
I'm just telling, like, people are nervous about it.
Obama's sale was, listen, you know, that healthcare thing that people have and you can't afford?
Well, I'm going to make it so you can have what they have.
And people were like, oh, well, I know that if you have that, it's good.
I'm okay with that.
But then when they said, hey, government's going to come in and start providing healthcare for you, people aren't buying it.
No.
They're not going that way.
Here's the thing, right?
And this is borne out in a lot of the polls, but it's if you poll, like here, I think I've made this point before on the show, but it's worth repeating.
If you were to ask, do you support a government takeover of one-fifth of the economy?
That would pull very low.
Probably in the 20s.
Like, people don't want that.
If you were to say, do you want socialized medicine?
That would pull very low.
But if you say, do you want Medicare for all?
That polls pretty well.
Polls at about 51%.
And they go, a majority of people support socialized healthcare.
It's like, well, hold on.
You take this one program that's been around since the 60s that people rely on when they're old, and you say, do you want that for all?
And that polls well.
But if you ask any follow-up questions, if you go, do you want Medicare for all, but your taxes go up?
All of a sudden it drops down to the low 40s.
Or do you want forced Medicare for all?
It's down to the 30s.
If you want Medicare for all, but private insurance is illegal.
It's down to the low 30s.
So this is the thing: the more, and if you're going to run on this as your central issue in a presidential campaign, there's no way that more follow-up questions don't get asked.
Even if you're going in front of a media that's protective of you, there's no way you can't run on something and no one asks a follow-up question.
You know what's in?
Even poor people in this country, I think they have a sense of, I'm going to use the word fairness.
They feel like, hey, listen, someone should step in and be helping me out.
But we have like a lottery culture and no one likes the idea that if you are able to win and step up and get more resources, that you shouldn't be able to purchase good shit.
Like people like the idea of, hey, that rich guy has that Lamborghini.
He's got that hot chick.
We like that.
No one, if you stepped in and said, hey, you know, all you poor people, if one of you make money, you're never going to be able to buy a nice car because government's going to step in and we're going to have a standard issue car for everybody.
That's not popular in this country.
No, there's still something that's kind of amazing about the American spirit that's like even people who are Democrats, even people who are Republicans, they still kind of believe, wait, aren't we supposed to be for freedom?
And everyone's got like a rough kind of vague, abstract view of what freedom means, but they'll still be like, but wait, aren't we, shouldn't I have the right to do that?
That's kind of an American thing.
To go with the car example, if someone stepped in and said, hey, we're going to make sure that there's proper trans, everyone should be able to get to work.
So if you can't get a car, we're going to get you something so you can get to work.
People go, oh, that sounds good.
But if you step in and go, listen, we're going to get everyone a Kia, whatever.
And we were going to make it illegal for you to pick the car that you want.
Everyone's going to be like, intuitively.
Yeah.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
And I actually think Elizabeth Warren, it's not even the Pocahontas thing.
I think she's killed her candidacy on this healthcare program because she staked it all on this.
She said, hey, this is my signature issue.
And it's not, not only is it not popular, it tapped into what I said.
Yes.
And the most like she said, hey, we got a problem in this country and it's healthcare.
And then she goes, here's my solution.
Everyone went, I don't like that solution.
She's finished.
Yeah.
Well, I think you're right.
I absolutely think you're right.
I think that now, look, I think that Elizabeth Warren, I think the being a fake Indian thing was going to kill her.
Yeah, but now she's dead for self-defense.
And particularly that Elizabeth Warren, look, it's not like Barack Obama who ran on hope and change and I'm the most charismatic guy and I can give a great public speech.
She has none of that.
Elizabeth Warren's calling card, self-admitted, is I have a plan for everything.
And her plans are actually the worst part about her.
Like her plans fucking stink.
So that's it's a real weakness for her.
Bloomberg Campaign Funding Power00:15:43
And I think Bloomberg entering the race actually in many ways was, it's not a coincidence that this happens a week after Elizabeth Warren puts out her fucking healthcare plan.
It's like people are starting to realize.
They go, oh, Joe Biden can't fucking win because he's too stupid and he's too old and he's too into humping children.
Bernie Sanders is 80 and just had a heart attack.
And Elizabeth Warren is, I will probably say this several more times.
So if you don't want to hear this again, I'm sorry, but you're going to hear this more.
So deal with it.
Elizabeth Warren has proposed in her Medicare for all plan, which is $52 trillion over 10 years.
Wrap your head around this.
Elizabeth Warren has proposed the biggest government in the history of the world in this plan.
There's never in the history of the world been a government who spent $52 trillion over 10 years on everything.
She's proposed bigger than that for just healthcare.
Okay?
This is a deal breaker for anyone who's got any modicum of common sense who understands math or very, very, very, very basic economics.
You go, this can't possibly work.
This can't possibly work.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So, okay, that's...
And then Michael Bloomberg's looking at that and going, okay, I'm going to get in.
I'm jumping in.
Here's the problem.
All of these people can't possibly win.
And Michael Bloomberg is one more person who can't possibly win.
He can't possibly win.
Cannot possibly.
There's no chance that Michael Bloomberg could win the presidency.
Again, short of some huge economic catastrophe.
I just, I don't see.
Why do you say he has no chance?
Okay, let's go through it.
Number one.
He is a whiny, effeminate New York billionaire Jew that does not play well to the country at large.
Pick any one of the adjectives that I just fucking listed that doesn't play well.
He is a whiny, lispy, effeminate New York City billionaire Jew.
You think that's what's going to take back the fucking battleground states?
You think that'll win the rust belt back over from Donald Trump?
It's not going to happen.
He's also a gun grabber, a fucking climate change radical.
None of this is going to happen.
This is not going to happen.
Do you think, okay, do you think that the temperature of the Democratic Party right now is that we want a billionaire fucking New Yorker?
Well, I mean, look, he did make all of his money by building a giant coat factory that gave away coats to cold, poor people.
Oh, no, wait, it was in finance.
That's where he got all his fucking money from.
$50 plus billion dollars.
Again, sorry to let Elizabeth Warren know that's just a fucking estimate.
We don't actually know what his net worth is.
But that's, no, no, no, this guy isn't the guy.
He's not going to be the guy.
I called right away that Joe Biden wasn't going to be the guy.
I will much more certainly call that Michael Bloomberg is not going to be the guy.
He is now going to embarrass himself.
Do you know what was the nickname Trump gave him the other day?
Like the video, just even with a little Michael.
He said, I'd love to run against little Michael.
That was great.
Great nickname.
The second Biden announced, same as you, I said, didn't he always have that reputation of being an idiot?
And then we just saw more of him being an idiot.
And then you piled creepy on top of that and he was finished.
And now you're a creepy idiot.
Now, I think within a week, I might totally change my opinion on Bloomberg because you're just going to see, hey, do people kind of get excited about him or not?
And now is going to be the biggest time for people to go, hey, this is our guy or not.
It's all going to be within this week.
Where I think he does have a little bit of a chance is, yes, he's got the whiny gay thing, but he's not that whiny and gay.
I listened to a few of his speeches.
Pretty whiny and gay.
I listened to a few of his speeches, and I think he's got a little bit of an even-tempered, professional sales vibe to him.
And I think what he really has, which is great, is I noticed when Khabib was fighting McGregor, he had this whole thing where he's like, dude, we don't need all the bullshit.
We don't need all this trash talk.
We don't need the trash talk.
We don't need the trash talk.
And then we went to fight Dustin Poirier.
The numbers were great and we found, yeah, you don't really need the trash talk.
If you're the best of the best, you can show up on the bank.
The numbers with Connor were way better than with Khabib.
With him with Poriac.
I'm just saying, I think he somewhat proved, hey, we don't need that much.
Like, I bet if Khabib keeps fighting and keeps winning, the numbers might turn out to be as big as the Connor numbers are.
Let me tell you, I think Donald Trump is actually a master of this.
That if you don't talk shit to Donald Trump, he isn't going to just talk shit all day long.
But Bloomer's got the bigger dick because his whole claim is, look at my wealth.
Bloomberg's wealthier, substantially wealthier.
20 billion to 2 billion, I think.
I think it's more like 50 to 2.
50 to 2.
There you go.
That's all Bloomberg's got to say.
Hey, listen, I'm worth 50.
You're worth two.
What do you got on me, dude?
Yeah, but I don't think that was ever Donald Trump's claim.
I don't think his claim, I mean, his claim was being a successful businessman, but I think Donald Trump's claim was more like, we don't win anymore.
We have really stupid people in office.
We need to protect our borders.
We're going to build a wall.
I'm about you.
I love, you know what I mean?
I love America.
We're going to make America great again.
We're getting out of these stupid wars.
We're going to get out of these stupid trade deals, all this stuff.
I don't think Bloomberg has something.
Listen, that appealed to the right in a way.
What's Bloomberg's pitch to the left?
Here's Bloomberg's.
Listen, I'll tell you the thing, right?
Yeah.
So, so no, I'm curious to hear.
What Donald Trump was able to do and what he's still doing, go look at a Donald Trump rally.
He is firing up his base.
What can Bloomberg do?
Who is his base?
And how can he fire them up like that?
So I don't think Bloomberg's not walking around firing anyone up.
It's not that.
He's not going to show up to a rally and people go, hey, this is my guy.
Where he can win people over is people going this whole shenanigans of, oh, Donald Trump's not presidential.
People might look at Bloomberg and go, oh, he's more professional.
And I think what Bloomberg can step in is go, hey, you know, he was claiming he was a business guy and he's going to win for us.
Guess what?
I'm a better businessman.
He hasn't done that for you.
I think on the far left, they're going to go, hey, he's not Donald Trump.
And I know that he's for he's going to, you know, he's going to stand up against gun rights.
He's going to stand up against global warming.
So the people on the far left go, well, at least he's better than anyone else.
And then I think he can win a lot of people in the center by kind of just being down the road.
And then also, he's got a very good track record from his time in New York.
Very good.
Now, some of that might be circumstantial in terms of just property values going up, but crime was way down while he was here.
I think generally speaking, he's viewed as a favorable mayor to New York City.
I don't remember having any particular issues with, well, actually, no.
The big issues with him were there was a lot of stop and frisk shenanigans.
There was also he wanted to increase, he increased surveillance and just in terms of like cameras that exist here.
He also wanted to create the tax for getting in and out of New York City on the roads.
There was the sugar tax.
Those were the big things.
But on the far left, those aren't like, so in other words, okay, on your far right, you're going to have your Trump supporters.
And on your far left, you're going to have like the Bernie or Buss people.
I think they would actually show up and vote for Bloomberg just because he's going to oppose.
So you're just talking about these people in the middle that kind of shifted.
And so I mean, it really comes down to what are your swing states?
Yeah, this is the problem.
Yeah.
Is that he's not, look, not, he can't rally people up in the blue states and he can't win any of the swing states.
Here's what I think.
And look, maybe I'm wrong about this.
I'll be interested in that.
I'm telling you, I might change my tune in a week.
It all comes down to this week when he formally announces.
It depends on what sandwich he ate that morning.
No, he might flake out like the guy from Starbucks.
I was like, hey, this is an interesting billionaire.
And everyone just said, hey, I have no interest in him.
I think that's right.
So this is the same thing.
I could see that there's enough here that people would get behind it.
But if it doesn't happen in week one, he's not winning people.
Here's what he can do.
He can.
Here's what I think the only thing Michael Bloomberg can do.
He can destroy Joe Biden.
Oh, that's going to be a good idea.
I think he can destroy Joe Biden because Joe Biden is already running out of money.
Which I was shocked by.
He's struggling to raise the amount of money that he needs to raise.
Bloomberg can fund.
Listen, that's one thing Bloomberg has is money.
He can fund his fucking campaign for as long as he wants to go.
No problem.
And he can split the moderate, reasonable one-in-the-room vote with Joe Biden.
I don't think he's the Starbucks guy.
I don't think he's some of these other.
He's a bigger name than that.
He'll get a little bit more attention than that.
He can pull from them.
I do not see how anybody who's supporting...
Look, if you look at the people who are supporting Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren versus Joe Biden, which is really the more precise way to look at it than a three-way race.
Look at the people supporting Bernie plus the people supporting Elizabeth Warren versus the people supporting Biden.
There's way more energy in the radical, progressive, quasi-democratic, socialist area.
And no way can Bloomberg pull something substantial from them.
But he could pull, he could split what Biden has right now.
So it's going to be a disaster for Biden.
Biden's in a lot of trouble, I think.
I also think, though, that Biden, what Biden has, I don't know that Bloomberg will actually end up doing better than Biden.
I mean, Biden has something.
Biden is kind of beloved by the political establishment, and he's associated with Obama.
I don't think Bloomberg even has that.
All right, let me ask you two crazy questions.
Two crazy.
They're not that crazy.
One at a time.
All right, let's go with if, so if he actually enters the race, who do you think ends up taking down the, like, does it change, or does he just knock Biden down lower so that Elizabeth Warren more likely takes the nomination?
That to me seems like the most likely place right now.
The other thing I'm just guessing is that if he's actually stepping in to run, it would seem less likely that Hillary Clinton's running.
I don't know.
Because I know, I think the reason he didn't run the last time is because he doesn't want to oppose Hillary Clinton.
And I would think on the inside amongst just the political advisors trying to figuring it out, he wouldn't be stepping in if internally he, or maybe he thinks that if he gets ahead of her, it makes her less likely that she wants to step in.
I don't know.
You know, that New York Times article that I cited earlier, what it said was that the Democratic donors were really upset with the field and they were looking to Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton to maybe get into the race.
And one of them's already gotten in the race.
And I wonder, you know.
Does Hillary Clinton just take the nomination again?
No.
I think she loses it.
Oh, that's even better.
Oh, yeah.
It's wonderful.
Oh, that's like you come back to the tournament the next year and you don't even make it to the championship.
I don't see how she possibly does.
I mean, she'd need a lot more cheating than they had last time.
No, I mean, it's so easy to Hillary Clinton.
The only thing you need to say to beat Hillary Clinton in a Democratic primary is she's the reason we have Trump.
You had your shot and you lost.
And now we have Donald Trump and you want to come back.
It's so easy to say all you care about is power.
I mean, look at you.
You refuse to step aside.
No, Hillary Clinton is not right.
She's also older and worse and broke.
Like Hillary Clinton is just not well, if you've seen her recently.
She's not well, but that doesn't mean she won't jump back into the race.
And I think there's a decent chance that she will.
I think it's 50-50 right now.
I'm putting it back to 50-50 that Hillary Clinton jumps into the race.
Just because when she sees, Hillary Clinton wants power so bad that when she sees a race that's wide open, which it's going to be one way or the other, I think she might think this is a chance.
And if she's got a chance to seize power, I think she will go for it.
I remember when this New York Times article came out, it was a few weeks ago, three weeks ago, something like that.
And I was on Kennedy and I was talking to Juan Williams, who's like a Democrat guy who's been around for a long time.
And I was talking to him on Kennedy.
And he said, he goes, there's absolutely nothing to this.
This is just a bullshit article about what the donors think.
Who knows who actually said anything?
I don't think there's anyone worried.
We've got a great field of people.
And then you see exactly what the article said a few weeks later happens.
Michael Bloomberg is entering the race.
Because maybe there is something to it.
Maybe there is something.
Maybe we're not the only ones who are seeing what we're seeing right now, which is a field of people who cannot possibly win, short of some crazy circumstance.
These people can't win.
None of them can win.
And meanwhile, Trump is going on and having rally after rally after rally.
And he's doing something that I've never seen anyone in politics do before.
I don't know if anyone's ever done it.
Definitely not in this country in my lifetime.
Trump Rally Party Atmosphere00:08:35
But what Donald Trump is doing is he's having a party at every one of these rallies.
Have you seen a Trump rally?
It's like, it's a show.
People, they are more entertained.
They're having more fun.
They're laughing more than any of these other people's fucking rallies.
I mean, there's nothing even close.
Nothing even compares to it.
It reminds me of almost like Dane Cook or Eddie Murphy in their prime just selling out these huge fucking shows and just fucking, they're like a rock star comedian fucking leader.
Everyone's laughing and having a great time.
He's looser than he's ever been.
I don't know how, but I think he might even be getting better at them.
He's like loose and he's saying these things like, he's like, he said at one point, he goes, the bullshit, this bullshit invest, he goes, this bullshit impeachment inquiry.
And the whole crowd's laughing.
Dude, he goes at one point at one of the rallies the other day.
He looks into the crowd and you just see him, like the camera's on him.
And he goes, sir, thank you for coming.
He goes, is that your son?
Is that that's your son?
How old are you, son?
How old are you?
And he goes, eight.
He's eight years old.
Eight years old.
But you don't see the people.
You just hear Trump say he's eight years old.
He's eight years old.
He goes, he knows more than Hunter Biden about energy.
It's like fucking genuinely funny shit.
Like you're like, this is genuinely, by comedian standards.
This is like genuinely a good show.
And I just, I think there's something he's doing that no one else is.
And by the way, as I'm laughing at this, I'm like, I think he's a war criminal.
But there is something that he's doing that I don't think anybody else has figured out how to how to grapple with.
And that's what I see right now.
I see Michael Bloomberg as being one more can't win, can spoil candidate.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe you're right.
We'll see as the weeks go on.
Believe me, I've been shocked by other things.
Maybe we'll see.
But he's going to have some major issues with his personality type, with his policies on guns, with his policies on climate change, all this stuff.
It's going to be major, major issues.
And we'll see what happens.
My take on him is his one talk is we can do better.
We'll do it better.
We'll get out there.
It's going to be better.
Yeah, he also, like the fucking big gulp thing, as stupid as that is.
Oh, that he takes.
He wanted to ban fucking people.
As stupid as that is, that's something that I'll piss people out.
But that's that same story.
Do you know how much of America is fat and loves to, they're like, I have the right.
Like, Americans don't.
Yeah.
Listen, you got to understand what country you're running in.
I don't know how much people care about their right to privacy or their right to property or their God-given right to blah, blah, blah, whatever, but they really care about their right to the bottom.
Trump showed up on that.
The soda is large.
Guess what?
I've been having chugging big gulps.
I could see him coming out with a Big Mac and a Big Gulp and being like, I'm so rich and I drink this shit all the time.
Pride from my cold dead hands, Michael.
Little Michael wants to take your Big Mac.
I didn't even exercise.
I look great, okay?
I'm fucking Milani every night.
No problem with my boners.
Excuse me.
I mean tremendous condition.
There's no problem down there, believe me.
I look so good with the shirt off.
Yeah, it's, I just, I think it's something.
Here's the thing, right?
It does, it demonstrates.
It's like a piece of evidence that indicates that a lot of the things we're saying about the Democratic field are correct.
Because let's get, if we were wrong and Joe Biden was really a strong candidate and Elizabeth Warren were really a strong candidate and Bernie Sanders was a strong candidate, there'd be no room for Michael Bloomberg.
There'd be no reason for him to get in right now.
The fact that he's getting in is just evidence of what we all know to be the case, which is that as you start playing this out in your mind, you go, there are these hurdles in front of all three of those guys that are like insurmountable.
There's just, there's no way I can see them getting over these hurdles again, short of an economic collapse.
And all of the other candidates, they're just, they're polling in low single digits.
So what evidence is there really that they can fucking get this thing all together?
In some ways, I still do think Mayor Pete is the sleeper.
Like, I think there's something about him that he doesn't, the gay thing is who knows how much that actually affects the psyche of voters' minds.
But there's nothing about him other than that that screams out, here's the problem.
The issue is that there's nothing about him that screams out, here's the reason, either.
There's nothing about him that screams out, well, here's the reason why you got to support that guy.
There's just really nothing there.
But he's good at playing a politician on a debate stage.
You know, he can do that.
But aside from that, there's not a single one of them that doesn't have a glaring problem, a glaring problem that basically means they, I don't think there's any way that they can do this.
I guess maybe Yang, you could call the other sleeper in the fucking thing, but I just don't see it.
I just don't see that one happening.
It seems like too far-fetched.
And of course, I love Tulsi.
She's my favorite of the Democrats.
But, you know, look, there comes a certain point where, you know, if you can't register over two, you know, percent in any poll, it's hard to start taking you really seriously as a contender.
I also got to say, even though she's clearly the best candidate on the war issue, when I listen to her talk, I don't think, hey, this person's that well informed.
Yeah.
She doesn't, she's not selling her intelligence that well or that she can handle a wide variety of issues.
She certainly can't handle a wide variety of issues.
She's pretty good on her issue.
And even that, she's not, she's not great at communicating that right away.
Like, she's great at, you know, saying, hey, I'm not a Russian agent, and that's outrageous to call me that.
But that's, you know, a pretty simple, that's a pretty low bar for what you have to defend.
She had good moments.
She had a few good moments.
Obviously, the one that stands out the most is the Kamala Harris thing.
Think she is at least partially responsible for tanking Kamala Harris's chance to be president.
For some reason, I still feel like Kamala Harris is going to end up as someone's VP.
I don't know why.
I just think she'll be the one that they pick for VP to check all the boxes.
Did you see the video of her dancing?
I don't think so.
There's a video of her dancing in a high school, like marching band style.
She was really throwing down.
Yeah.
Oh, she can dance.
But let me tell you, she's all right.
Hold on.
See if you can find that and we'll close out because we're going to wrap up the show in a second.
There's a little bit of a short episode.
All right, so we're holding stuff.
Good shit for Monday.
Tune back in on Monday.
Yeah.
Let's see if we can find a.
She's way more attractive than she looks in the debates.
Really?
Kamala.
Yeah, yeah.
Kamala Harris is attractive, too.
Dude, you got to see her busting some moves.
Did you eat a poisonous sandwich today?
What's going on with you?
Is the AIDS getting to you, Rob?
You got to see this lady throw down some dance moves when she hits the pole.
Oh, no, this is not it.
No, you're right.
She looks hot.
No, no, you got to, you got to bust ahead when she's coming down the hallway.
Or maybe I saw a video of someone else dancing and I'm just racist.
Is this just a black stripper who you saw?
You're like, you know what?
That was a Jay-Z video now that I'm thinking about it.
I thought there was a video posted where she was like coming down the hallway with a whole bunch of kids.
No?
All right.
I'm animated up.
Well, that was a bit anticlimactic.
All right, guys.
Look, we're going to wrap the show up on that note.
But we will be back on Monday with a brand new episode.
Not official yet, but I believe on Wednesday we're going to make it happen for the Gene Epstein recap of his debate on socialism.
I got to make sure that Gene's okay with that.
But one way or the other, it'll be out in the next week.