Dave Smith dismisses the impeachment hearings as boring, arguing that withholding Ukraine aid for a non-existent Biden investigation lacks evidence compared to historical abuses by Bush or Yang. He critiques media hypocrisy in ignoring Democratic foreign intelligence tactics while condemning foreign aid as theft from American workers. Shifting to the 2024 race, he labels Elizabeth Warren's $52 trillion plan impossible and attacks her persona, whereas Pete Buttigieg emerges as the only reasonable establishment hope amidst a field of flawed candidates like Biden and Sanders. Finally, Smith identifies Stephen Miller as a die-hard white nationalist driving fascistic immigration policies, distinguishing true fascism from mere border control. Ultimately, the episode suggests current political narratives rely on selective outrage rather than substantive governance or historical accuracy. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Heshy Socks Season 400:01:23
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The Quid Pro Quo Bombshell00:15:17
All right, let's start the show.
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 the part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up?
What's going on, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith, and I am flying solo for this Wednesday episode.
No guest, no Robbie the Fire, just me and all of you good people.
But it'll mostly be me talking.
You guys won't really get a word in edge-wise, but you know, still, hope you enjoy it.
Holy shit.
I am just recovering from that virtual boxing.
Whatever.
Ralph was here and he has like a VR set.
And it's the first legit virtual reality I've ever played.
I've done that thing with like phones before where you put it in the little case, but that's nothing.
But this is just a virtual reality set and it's a boxing game.
And I've played a lot of sports video games before, but this one is just like you're fighting.
I was exhausted.
That was serious.
You're throwing punches.
You really feel like you get hit when the guy hits you.
It's pretty nuts.
You like look up and see gloves on your hands in front of you.
No, fucking these kids today.
They got some crazy stuff.
And by kids, I mean Ralph, who I think is 60.
But anyway, it was fun.
Good time.
I've recovered my breath and now we can start.
This is going to be a little bit of a shorter episode because I got to run over and film Kennedy.
So I'll be on that tonight on Fox Business at 9 p.m.
If you're listening to this today, go check that out.
And if you're listening to it after today, you blew it.
Missed me.
Missed me on Kennedy.
I don't know what we're talking about tonight.
I haven't even had a chance to look at the notes that they sent over of what the topics are, but I'm sure there'll be some fun stuff going on.
So, a couple things that I wanted to talk about starting off today.
So, two big things, I guess.
Number one would have to do with the impeachment hearings, which have basically been going non-stop for days now.
Every time you turn on the news, there's some impeachment.
Someone's being grilled.
I mean, they're going for hours and hours and hours.
And it is so fucking boring.
I mean, even for me, like, I usually get into this.
Like, I nerd out about politics and I care about a lot of this stuff.
And the vast majority of people just find politics boring in general.
And good for them.
They're right.
By the way, if you just tune out all of this shit, you're probably better than 99% of the people who pay attention to it.
God bless you if you're able to.
But I can't.
I'm too obsessed with it.
But these impeachment hearings, I mean, they're just so fucking boring.
I mean, at least the Trump-Russia collusion thing, even though it all fell apart and turned out to be nothing, at least there was like a claim there that was like, well, the claim is that Donald Trump's involved in a conspiracy with the Russians.
You know, that's a pretty serious claim.
Like the president of the United States has been compromised and he's working on behalf of a hostile foreign power.
The claim here is, and let's just make it very clear.
The claim is that Donald Trump attempted to abuse his power by getting an investigation in the Ukraine started.
Attempted.
Never did.
The accusation is not that there was a quid pro quo.
It's that Donald Trump attempted a quid pro quo that fell apart for whatever reason.
I mean, who knows?
They haven't proved at all that he actually attempted it.
But if he did, it didn't happen.
The military aid to Ukraine was relinquished.
They did meet in New York, and they never announced any investigation of the Bidens.
If they are investigating the Bidens, they're not doing it in a way that would have been politically advantageous to Donald Trump.
They're doing it hush-hush, which you would imagine is not what Donald Trump would have wanted if he was trying to bribe them into this thing.
The crazy thing about it, and I can't stress this enough, and it's hard.
I don't want to just repeat myself, but it's hard not to when you're going through this whole impeachment thing and this is the news of the day every day.
But the idea, it's like accusing any politician of a bribe or of an abuse of power is like that's all politicians do.
All they do is pass out bribes and abuse their power.
That's like, it's not like that's most of their job.
That's 100% of their job.
Even if you look at it, like even if you support a politician and you like what they're doing, it is by definition a bribe.
I mean, if a politician says, vote for me and I'll get you better health care.
I mean, like, what is that technically?
It's technically, you give me this and I'll give you better health care.
Vote for me.
I'll create more jobs or vote for me.
I'll give you whatever the thing is.
They're always bribing somebody.
It's the one thing I kind of got to respect about that Andrew Yang motherfucker.
At least he's just straight up like, I will give you cash.
Vote for me.
I'll give you cash.
Let's stop beating around the bush here.
It is what it is.
I want to give people money.
Give me a vote.
I will give you money.
And in terms of abuse of power, I mean, you know, come on, do I even really need to?
I saw someone who put out the clip that I was talking about George W. Bush, but they whoever's running that part of the problem clips channel, they're doing cool stuff.
I appreciate those guys or that guy or that girl.
But let's get real.
It's a guy.
But the clip of George W. Bush saying Saddam Hussein and his sons have 48 hours to leave Iraq before we start bombing the shit out of you guys.
Talk to me about abuse of power because he requested an investigation.
I mean, come on, man.
Anyway, so what the media is telling you today is bombshell.
There was a bombshell today.
That's at least what the narrative is in the mainstream media.
And of course, they've kind of, you know, like maybe this is a bombshell today, I guess, but they really have.
They've got a little bit of a boy who cries wolf syndrome claiming there's a bombshell.
It's the walls are closing in.
It's the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning or whatever, you know, they've been saying for literally Trump's entire presidency.
But today at the Trump hearings, there was testimony by Gordon Sondland, who he basically claimed that there was a quid pro quo, that Trump did hold up the military aid and promise Zelensky a meeting for the investigation of the Bidens.
So they've got one person saying this so far.
So that is their big their big bombshell.
Anyway, I'm going to, let's just go to Chris Salizza over at CNN, who's the CNN editor at large.
And he wrote a piece on this today.
I thought maybe we'd go through this and see what it is that they're saying.
And you guys can judge for yourself what you think is legitimate or important about any of this.
All right, so Chris Salizza over at CNN, he writes, the title of the piece is, Gordon Sondlin just saved himself and jeopardized Donald Trump's presidency.
The question coming into Wednesday was whether Gordon Sondland would try to save himself or save President Donald Trump.
He chose himself.
Sondlin, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, in his opening statement before the House Intelligence Committee, laid out in no uncertain terms how he was part of a broader effort to force the Ukrainians to open an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for a White House meeting.
I followed the directions of the president, quote, said Sondland.
Later, he added, quote, everyone was in the loop.
It was no secret.
Everyone was informed via email on July 19th, days before the presidential call.
As I communicated to the team, I told President Zelensky in advance that assurances to, quote, run a full transparent investigation and turn over every stone were necessary in his call with President Trump, which, well, wow.
The statement disrupts, actually destroys the defense of both the White House and congressional Republicans who have insisted that the Ukrainians had no clue that there were any preconditions to getting what they wanted most.
A meeting between Zelensky and Trump, and then later, the release of nearly 400 million in military aid from the U.S. to Ukraine.
All right.
So there's a few things about this that I think might be a little bit of a problem.
Okay, number one, if you're talking, there's two different things that they're claiming here.
And actually what was testified, like if you distinguish what's in the quotes here from what's out of the quotes, right?
So Zelensky, in quotes, he said, everyone was in the loop.
As I communicated to the team, I told President Zelensky in advance that assurances to run a fully transparent investigation would turn over every stone were necessary in his call with President Trump.
So he's saying here that he's not going to get a meeting with Donald Trump unless he's investigating Joe Biden.
So later, Chris Zelinsky says, this destroys the narrative that the Ukrainians had no clue, that there were any preconditions to getting what they wanted most, a meeting between Zelensky and Trump, and then later, the release of nearly 400 million in military aid from the U.S. to Ukraine.
So there's a difference between a meeting with Trump and the military assistance, right?
And the difference is that the military assistance is something that they can say was passed by Congress.
And if Trump is withholding this, okay, then the argument goes that he's using the power of the executive branch, right?
So the executive branch is there to enforce the laws, right?
Congress writes the laws.
The executive branch enforces the laws.
So in other words, they're saying Congress wrote something and you're enforcing it in a way to aid your own political campaign by going after your political enemy, Joe Biden.
Again, like I said before, I think there's already problems with that because, you know, saying you want to investigate something, well, the real question there, I mean, you know, whatever.
Maybe we'll come back to that later.
But that's the claim that they're making there, right?
But a meeting with President Trump is a little bit different than that.
That's not really using the power of the executive branch as much as you're just, you're meeting with somebody.
You're talking to him.
He's got a lot more discretion there to just say, I can meet with who I want to for whatever reasons I want to.
So if they're just withholding a meeting, that makes it a little bit different.
You know, like that's, that's kind of in a whole different area.
And that makes it kind of tough.
Now, the other problem, which is the major problem with the military aid part, is that they got it.
They didn't investigate the Bidens and they did get the military aid.
So how exactly do you claim that Donald Trump withheld this money for this condition?
Well, at least now you have to go to, he wanted to do this, but he never did.
Now, what Adam Schiff claimed today, which was actually pretty interesting, is that he says it's because they got caught.
He's like, well, that's, they got caught and Congress was on to what they were doing.
And that's why they released the military aid.
Okay, but now you got to fucking prove that.
You got to prove that.
And that seems to be a lot more challenging.
Of course, none of that's in the article.
They just kind of make it sound like they've got him in a slam dunk.
And again, there's then, of course, is the issue of just how insignificant all of this actually is.
And just in case, back to the article, and just in case there's any doubt as to what Sondlin is saying, he made it plain.
I know that members of this committee have frequently framed, in quotes, I know that members of this committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question.
Was there a quid pro quo?
As I testified previously with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.
So there you go.
There was in fact a quid pro quo.
Of course, the problem there is that this is just the term that the Democrats start using.
And then it's like when they use the term collusion between Trump and Russia.
They start with this term that isn't a legal term.
So then they can be like, well, I mean, he did meet with Russians at one point.
And you're like, oh, yeah, but that happens with lots of presidents who are president-elects.
They meet with foreign powers.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But so quid pro quo, it's like, well, yeah, but that's true with every military aid deal ever.
We never give money with no strings attached.
And it would be awfully stupid if we did.
I mean, obviously, we shouldn't be giving any of these money to any of these countries to begin with.
That's the other thing that makes it really funny to me.
And particularly, as I've mentioned on the podcast for weeks now, what really bugs me about other libertarians who like, you know, favor Donald Trump being impeached for this, isn't the libertarian position that we shouldn't be, that we should have no foreign aid?
I mean, isn't that the obvious position?
Who supports stealing money from workers in this country to send to some corrupt government abroad?
Why the hell should we have any of this shit anyway?
Why should we be sending weapons to Ukraine when they're in the middle of a conflict with Russia?
Why do we want to get involved in some conflict over there?
Is it really that?
You know, so the libertarian position is that Donald Trump threatened to withhold something that you're against to begin with.
So who the fuck cares if he threatened to withhold it?
I'm more pissed off that he finally relinquished it.
The hell are we giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Ukraine for?
I mean, if you really think that we should be giving military aid to Ukraine, then fine, but don't ever tell me that America, you don't want America to be the policeman of the world or you don't want to be in constant wars or you don't want to be an empire.
Because let's get real.
Deep State Conflict of Interest00:15:03
If a conflict between Russia and Ukraine is America's business, what isn't our business?
What conflict do you not want to get involved with?
These are two countries that used to be the same country, or at least used to be both members of the Soviet Union.
And now they're in conflict.
Like, okay, sorry.
Is there any conflict that we don't have to get involved in?
Like, Jesus Christ.
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All right.
Anyway, back to the article.
So before we go any further, it's important to note that Sondlin was appointed to his ambassador role by Trump.
Sondlin had financially supported Trump's inauguration to the tune of a $1 million donation.
Sondlin isn't part of the so-called deep state.
He isn't a never Trumper.
So that's, you know, you would think, like, in a way, to Chris Alizza, that should be irrelevant, right?
I mean, okay.
So he gave Donald Trump some money and he was appointed by Donald Trump and all of all these things.
He isn't a member of the quote deep state.
He isn't a quote never Trumper.
So, I mean, now I understand what Chris Saliza is doing.
He's doing this just to take away the argument that you're saying, oh, well, this is a never Trump or deep state.
But if he's conceding that that would change something, then basically everything that's come before this would be completely invalid.
And then, of course, if you're going to go down this line of saying, well, he's not a never Trumper.
He's not a deep state member.
And that's why This is like, I don't know, more trustworthy or something like that.
Well, okay.
But then you understand why we want to know who the whistleblower is.
Because if the whistleblower is who these publications online are saying he is, and he's a CIA agent who worked for the Bush and Obama administration, then that guy probably does fall into the category of never Trumper and definitely falls into the category of deep state.
And he's the reason why we're having these whole hearings to begin with.
So if you're going to take credit for this guy being a Trump, not being a Never Trumper, then wouldn't the flip side of that be that this whole thing was started by a deep state never Trumper?
But don't even worry about it because Chris Salizza has got us covered in his next line, the very next line from the article.
So I'll read that last one again and then see if you can pick up the line that's kind of revealing.
Sondlin isn't part of the so-called deep state.
He isn't a never Trumper.
Although he did originally support Jeb Bush in the 2016 primaries.
So there you go.
I mean, you can't consider this guy a never Trumper because he was a Trump supporter.
I mean, actually, he was a Jeb Bush supporter, and then Donald Trump destroyed the person who he was supporting.
But then he started giving Donald Trump money and got nominated after that.
Oh, by the way, even that right there, which of course they don't even want to get into because this guy is testifying against Trump, so he's their new hero.
But that sounds like a kind of a little bit of a conflict of interest there.
Oh, why don't you hit Trump for that?
He gave this guy gave a $1 million donation to Trump's inauguration.
I didn't even know they took donations for inaugurations.
I figured that was all taxpayer money, but all right.
So he gave him a $1 million donation, and then he was appointed to an ambassador role.
All right.
But that's just business as usual in politics.
They don't want to go after anyone for that because that's just like, oh, yeah, well, we all do that.
People donate to us and then we fucking give them positions.
So anyway, Sondlin also testified under oath, meaning that if he lies, he is committing a felony.
A lesson that Roger Stone learned the hard way last week.
Right.
But god damn, this is what's so frustrating about people like Chris Salizza, right?
It's like that sounds kind of nice.
I get where if you don't pay attention to this shit closely, that sounds kind of nice to be like, oh, well, look, I mean, he said this under oath, and you can't lie under oath because that's a fucking felony.
And look at Roger Stone.
This motherfucker just went to jail for lying under oath, for lying to Congress, right?
So you know you can't lie under oath.
Only there's a little bit of a difference, right?
Because this guy's testifying against Donald Trump, and Roger Stone was testifying for Donald Trump.
And that does seem to change things a little bit because lots of people lie to Congress and don't get punished for it at all.
Do we have to go through the list again?
James Clapper said that the NSA was not involved in collecting data on American citizens.
There's no way.
This isn't like getting a date wrong.
He's fucking, he fucking knew exactly what the NSA was doing and he's he said before Congress they're not doing it.
And then Mr. Snowden came around and we found out, yeah, not only are they doing it, they're collecting all of it on everybody.
And it's the biggest program that the NSA has ever been involved in.
Okay?
So it's the so that guy lied on what was the lesson of him?
If the lesson of Roger Stone was that you go to jail for lying to Congress, right?
What's the other side of that coin?
The lesson of fucking Clapper and Brennan and Comey is that you can lie to Congress and get away with it.
Really, the determining factor doesn't seem to be whether you lied or not.
It seems to be which side you're on.
So if you look at things in a more complete way, actually the message that Sondlin might have realized is that if he testifies on the side of the deep state against Donald Trump, he will be fine.
But if he goes in there and testifies to defend Donald Trump and he got one fucking date wrong, he might go to jail for the rest of his life.
That's the goddamn lesson.
Now, back to the article.
Now, for the bigger question, where do we go from here?
The quid pro quo, announce an investigation into the Bidens in exchange for a White House meeting is now beyond doubt.
Now, realize what he said there now.
Just notice the sleight of hand.
Now, all of a sudden, we're not talking about military foreign aid.
We're talking about a meeting with Donald Trump.
But Donald Trump can meet with whoever he wants to and set whatever preconditions for that that he wants to.
He's still, you know, even though he's the president, he's still a human being with rights.
He can talk to somebody and he can set conditions on talking to them.
That's not the same thing as withholding military aid for those conditions.
But anyway, let me just, and then there's another angle from this statement, right?
The quid pro quo, announce an investigation into the Bidens in exchange for a White House meeting is now beyond doubt.
Well, think about something there.
Isn't that a hell of a thing for a journalist to say because one person testified that it is?
So we're, that's just it.
It's beyond doubt.
Like, imagine like a trial works that way, right?
Isn't that the standard supposedly for a criminal trial?
You have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody's guilty.
Well, we have one witness.
Well, it's beyond doubt.
That's it.
Do I even get to, can I present my defense?
No, it's beyond doubt.
That's the journalist take on it right there.
One guy said it.
All right.
One guy said it, and he gave Trump a million dollars.
So yeah, I mean, he was obviously a Trump supporter said it, so it's beyond doubt.
I mean, yeah, sure, the guy used to support Jeb Bush, but whatever.
That's not a big deal.
It's beyond doubt because one person said it.
The next step seems to be figuring out just how high it went.
To that end, two other excerpts from Sondlin's opening statement seem relevant.
First, this, quote, Mr. Giuliani conveyed to Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volcker, and others that President Trump wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing to investigating of Burisma and the 2016 election.
Mr. Giuliani expressed those requests directly to the Ukrainian Mr. Giuliani, also expressed requests directly to us.
We all understood that these prerequisites for White House call and White House meeting reflected President Trump's desires and requirements.
All right, that is something.
But now again, we're also floating back into territory of Donald Trump investigating the 2016 election, which I'm sorry, but there's no way.
The whole crux of the argument here is that Donald Trump wanted to damage his political rivals.
Looking backward into the 2016 election doesn't meet any of that.
I mean, I don't know what to say.
You can maybe make the argument that looking into Joe Biden, he's doing that for political reasons, but I'm sorry, looking into the origin of the Russia conspiracy collusion investigation, that is completely legitimate.
That is completely legitimate for Donald Trump to do.
Look, for anybody who questions that, just look at it this way.
Donald Trump was investigated for being in a conspiracy with the Russians.
The finding was that there wasn't evidence that he was in a conspiracy with the Russians, right?
So where did this all come from?
And of course, the deeper layer of irony is that where it actually came from was the, You know, the Democratic establishment, namely Hillary Clinton, and I'm sure Barack Obama was involved as well because he was the president at the time.
And I doubt all this was going on in his intelligence agencies with his former Secretary of State without him knowing, which would be, you know, would be damning in its own way, but I'm sure he was aware of it.
Maybe not.
Maybe for plausible deniability, they kept him out of the loop or something like that.
But you have all these Democrats, like their nominee, Hillary Clinton, who was using foreigners, Christopher Steele, and supposedly high-level Russians to dig up dirt on their political enemy, Donald Trump.
And now they're all so outraged about someone doing that.
It's really unbelievable that they can, you know, pretend to be this level of outrage, you know, when they got caught red-handed doing this themselves.
But regardless of all of that, this is just, you know.
Okay, then this.
Back to the article.
Quote from Sondland.
Within my State Department emails, there is a July 19th email that I sent to Secretary Pompeo, Secretary Perry, Brian McCormick, who is Rick Perry's chief of staff, Miss Kenna, acting chief of staff, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, and Mr. Mulvaney's senior advisor, Robert Blair.
A lot of senior officials.
Here is my exact quote from that email.
I talked to Zelensky just now.
He is prepared to receive POTUS call.
We'll assure him that he intends to run a fully transparent investigation and will, quote, turn over every stone.
He would greatly appreciate a call prior to Sunday so that he can put out some media about a quote friendly and productive call, no details, prior to Ukraine elections on Sunday.
Chief of staff Mick Mulvaney responded, I asked NSC to set it up for tomorrow.
So this is the actual email that he turns over.
But you'll notice something there.
No talk of any of this.
I mean, he kind of wants to make it out to be that turnover every stone indicates something about these investigations, but it's not clear that it is.
He just says turn over every stone.
And here's the problem: Zelensky was running, his whole campaign was about transparency in government and ridding the Ukraine of corruption.
They're a notoriously corrupt country, but then again, who isn't?
But again, let me read this.
I talked to Zelensky just now.
He was prepared to receive POTUS call.
We'll assure him that he intends to run a fully transparent investigation and will turn over every stone.
He would greatly appreciate a call prior to Sunday so he can put out some media about a friendly and productive call.
So run an investigation.
Well, what investigation are we talking about?
Turn over every stone.
I mean, it's just like there's actually no smoking gun here.
Although it could be about either one of these investigations.
It's certainly not clear that it's about either one of these two investigations.
It could, it's definitely not clear that it's about Biden.
It could very easily be the 2016 investigation.
My guess would be that Donald Trump would be more concerned with that because that was the whole Trump-Russia bullshit that fucking destroyed the first two years of his presidency.
All right.
In just those two chunks, Sondlin makes clear that the president's personal lawyer, his energy secretary, his secretary of state, and his acting chief were all made aware of the need for Ukrainians to announce an investigation into the Bidens in order to get the White House meeting they wanted.
Well, no, that wasn't made clear.
Sorry, but in those two chunks, that doesn't make it clear because you'll notice a word that doesn't come up in those two chunks.
Bidens.
So it doesn't make it clear.
It makes it clear that Zelensky says he's willing to investigate, but what are we talking about?
It's not clear at all.
And that, by the way, is a huge, huge difference.
It's a really big difference.
It's like if somebody was like, if somebody was saying that me and Brian, the producer of this show, they're accusing us of meeting to plan on murdering somebody.
Slippery Political Language00:04:01
And they go, look, here, I've got an email to prove it right here.
And it's an email from Brian going, the meeting's set for tomorrow.
And you go, well, there it is, proof that they were meeting to plan on murder someone.
And you're like, whoa, whoa, wait, what's actually written here?
What's written here is the meeting.
We work together.
It's not that crazy that we'd have a meeting.
So I'm sorry.
Like, I know that you've already decided it's beyond a doubt that this is the case, but like, actually, what's going on here?
The timing of all of this is important too.
The email Sunlin sent came six days before Trump and Zelensky got on the phone for that now infamous phone call in which Trump asked the Ukrainian president for a favor to look into the debunked conspiracy theory that the Ukrainians had hacked the Democratic National Committee server and where Trump makes clear that he wants the Ukrainians to look into Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Well, look, we've all read, or at least I imagine most of you guys have read the transcript by now.
And yeah, Donald Trump, no doubt about it, says in that phone call that he wants him to look into the, he goes, you know, that Joe Biden thing smells fishy to me.
I think you should look into that.
However, I thought the email before this phone call already confirmed that he was going to look into the Bidens.
So why would Trump even need to ask him on the phone to do that if you're saying that was already confirmed beforehand?
That doesn't really seem to make sense.
So there's something shady going on there.
Again, Donald Trump did say to the Ukrainian president, hey, I think this Trump thing, excuse me, I think this Biden thing looks shady.
I think you should investigate it.
But look, there's nothing illegal about that.
I don't even think there's anything unethical about that.
Asking a country to investigate.
Completely legitimate.
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All right, back to the article.
So it is beyond any doubt that the Ukrainians understood before their president got on the phone with Trump on July 25th that in order to get what Zelensky wanted most, a White House meeting with Trump, he would need to announce the investigation into the Bidens.
Just notice here in this article how slippery, they're being really slippery with two things, okay?
Four things total.
They're being slippery with two concepts on two different counts.
Impeachable Offense Debate00:05:26
So the investigation between 2016 and the Bidens.
Those are different things, okay?
But they keep kind of like using them interchangeably.
And then the other thing that they're being pretty slippery about is withholding military aid and getting a meeting with Donald Trump.
Two very, very different things.
So both of these things, the 2016 investigation and the Biden investigation, the meeting with President Trump and the military aid with President Trump, these are all, these are four different things and they have wildly different implications.
So, you know, notice the trickery that's going on here.
Sondlin's testimony, put simply, changes the game.
It is now impossible for Republicans to claim that there was no quid pro quo or to suggest that the likes of Sondlin were acting solely on their own accord with no coordination from the higher-ups back in Washington or to suggest that this was all just normal stuff that happens every day in the world of international diplomacy.
Okay, why not?
But what in this entire article or in this testimony was evidence that this isn't normal stuff that happens in international diplomacy?
The question now is whether there was a quid pro quo.
I'm sorry, the question is not whether there was a quid pro quo.
There quite clearly was.
The question is whether Congress and Republicans and Congress specifically believe that this is an impeachable offense.
Well, if you're saying the question now is whether this was an impeachable offense, that's kind of revealing in itself because last I checked, this was an impeachment inquiry.
So that should be the question from the very beginning.
All right.
The question is whether they believe this is an impeachable offense.
Let's just put it this way, right?
You, if you're talking about impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office, that is an unprecedented event.
Hasn't happened in our country before.
Richard Nixon, you know, resigned.
Bill Clinton survived after being impeached.
Nobody's ever been impeached and removed.
So this may not be spelled out.
I know it's somewhat vague in the Constitution, high crimes and misdemeanors, you know.
Okay.
If you're talking about doing that for the first time ever, ask yourself and be honest, does this offense rise to the level?
Let's just say this testimony is true and let's grant you that it was the Bidens.
Donald Trump's like, yeah, I'll meet with you, but you got to look into the shadiness the Bidens were doing if I'm going to meet with you.
You think that rises to the level?
All the crimes that have been committed in this country, what presidents have gotten away with?
I mean, this is not, it's not even up.
Like these things are not even up for debate.
This is just accepted by everyone.
Barack Obama had a secret kill list with American citizens on the secret kill list.
American citizens who had not been charged with a crime were on a secret kill list.
Okay?
George W. Bush instituted torture.
Bill Clinton starved children to death with sanctions.
Also killed a whole bunch of children at Waco.
Fucking George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan helped bring, helped traffic drugs into the country while they were fighting a war on drugs.
They had their CIA bringing drugs into the country while the DEA was arresting people and throwing the book at them.
And we've never impeached and removed any president ever.
Yet this, this holding up a meeting over a potential investigation, this is the one where it should happen.
Doesn't it kind of, when you take a look at it and you go, so there's a CIA, the whistleblower, a whistleblower who's beloved by the CIA, by the way.
That's how you know someone's not a whistleblower.
If you're a CIA whistleblower and everyone in the CIA is defending you, you're not a fucking whistleblower.
But so you've got this CIA anonymous person bringing this forward.
So this is the one time we're going to try to impeach and remove a president.
Doesn't it just lead you to ask the question, why?
Why for this?
Why now?
And if you're not suffering from Trump derangement syndrome, you don't just go, well, because he's so uniquely horrible.
It's like, yeah, yeah, okay.
You might think so.
Maybe he even is.
But that ain't the reason why.
That's not what's going on.
It's something much bigger and much uglier than that.
And again, as I've said before, this whole thing is just so utterly unimportant.
Who cares?
Who cares if he was holding, if he, like, what is, where's the there there?
What is the thing here?
Donald Trump tried to negotiate a meeting for an investigation into Donald Trump.
You're like, oh, but you can't just investigate your political enemies and use that for political gain.
It's like, okay, well, Hillary Clinton did it and actually got an investigation going on Donald Trump.
You're telling me Trump tried to do this and failed?
Trump tried to do this and backed off and then just had the meeting and then gave them the fucking money.
I mean, I guess they met in New York.
They didn't meet in the White House, but they got the military aid.
It's okay.
So none of this ended up happening.
Establishment Candidate Polls00:15:55
So what's the big issue here?
It's not like there's not some crazy abuse of power.
There's nothing like horrifically immoral about this.
The most immoral part of all of this is that we give Ukraine foreign aid.
This is the most, as Ron Paul used to say, Ukraine, foreign aid rather, is where you steal money from poor people in a rich country and give it to rich people in a poor country.
So I think that's the best way to describe foreign aid.
You steal from poor people in a rich country and give it to rich people in a poor country.
But that's the most immoral thing about any of this.
And maybe the fact that, you know, Joe Biden's fucking kid can rake in millions of dollars because his father is the vice president.
Maybe that's the other real angle.
Any of this other stuff, like, who actually really cares?
Anyway, weird, weird fucking story that has nothing to do with any of the many important issues that the country has going on right now.
So the other thing, moving on, the other thing I wanted to talk about, because it seems somewhat relevant, and we'll probably do a recap episode on Friday.
But tonight is another Democratic debate.
And I thought I would do a little bit, maybe a few minutes of preview for the Democratic debate that's coming up tonight, because something interesting has been going on in the polls over the last couple weeks.
And that has been two things.
Number one, the surging Elizabeth Warren has stopped surging.
She really hasn't.
And in fact, it looked like she was going to overtake Joe Biden in like most of the national polls.
And that didn't end up happening.
And it seemed to me that the timing seemed right around the time that she released her ridiculous borderline insane health care plan.
If you haven't been keeping up, Elizabeth Warren introduced a $52 trillion health care plan.
I'm not misspeaking or making that up.
That is actually what she's claiming the plan will cost.
This isn't like she's putting out a plan and then some other economists are like, oh, this is going to cost way more.
It's going to cost like $52 trillion.
No, she is admitting that her plan will cost $52 trillion.
And then, of course, independent economists are saying it's going to end up costing way more than that.
And it would.
It absolutely would cost way more than that.
But, and, and there's actually far more devastating effects than just the cost.
But just to get this straight, $52 trillion, even for lefties, I think might be a little bit like, wow, that's pretty insane.
I mean, they may not think about it exactly in the same terms that we do, but Jesus fucking Christ.
I mean, $52 trillion.
I said this before.
I just think it's worth it so you can picture this.
Elizabeth Warren's health care plan, just her health care plan, is the biggest government in the history of the world.
There's never been a government that spent $52 trillion in 10 years.
And she's proposing that just on healthcare.
Okay.
It would be more than doubling the federal budget.
So it's more than our entire government right now just on her health care plan.
Now, to keep this in mind, I mean, you can go through these numbers and it just gets so goofy and wacky, but like if you took, if you taxed every person who makes $200,000 or more and every corporation 100%.
So you took everything they had, like their entire income, they're taking all of it.
You couldn't pay for one year of this plan.
It's just la-la-land.
Like it's the most ridiculous, absurd plan that I've heard anyone put forward.
And I've heard some real ridiculous plans out there.
It's, it's, in some ways, it's more ridiculous than George W. Bush saying, we'll be greeted as liberators in Iraq.
You know, because theoretically, it is possible that they would go like, hey, thanks for bombing the shit out of us.
We really appreciate it.
It's unlikely and it didn't turn out that way.
But theoretically, you could do that.
Like it could happen.
There's no way to tax people enough.
So by the way, if you had this tax, if you had this 100% tax on everyone who makes 200,000 and above and every corporation, not just individuals.
So you didn't even pay for a year of Elizabeth Warren's healthcare plan and you've fucking destroyed your economy.
Because, you know, also, I mean, you have a new problem of poverty because now everybody who made $200,000 a year and up is poor because they made nothing now.
But forget any of that.
Maybe now they'll get some handouts from Elizabeth Warren.
But by the way, let's make it clear one more time to reiterate.
This is just Elizabeth Warren's healthcare plan.
She's also got plans for like free college and housing and all this other shit, but that just her healthcare plan alone.
So Elizabeth Warren was running on this thing that like she's got a plan for everything.
It's like, look, she's not very charismatic.
She's not very fucking charming.
She's kind of screechy on stage.
She's a fake Indian, if that fucks with you at all.
But she's got a plan for everything.
And now it came out.
It's actually like her plans turn out are her weakness.
That's a bad spot for Elizabeth Warren when you got to run on charisma.
So anyway, she has not been doing good in the polls.
She hasn't been tanking, but she hasn't been surging the way she was.
But who has been surging is our boy Mayor Pete Buttstuff.
Butajej is doing very well in the polls.
Not so much in the national polls, but he is, the last polls that I saw had him in first place or tied for first place in both Iowa and New Hampshire, which are the first two primaries.
That's a very big deal.
It means, it actually means a lot more how you're doing in the polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, because what happens is when people actually start voting, polls shift up and down, especially these polls where like amongst the Democrats, the biggest issue that they have is who can beat Donald Trump.
That's like their biggest fucking thing because they hate Donald Trump.
They want to see him lose.
So if one person starts winning, it's very easy for a lot of people to go behind him.
Joe Biden might be up in the polls, but as soon as Buttige wins, you know, hypothetically, he wins Iowa and New Hampshire.
All of Biden's support now goes to Buttigeg because they're like, well, he's the guy.
And he basically is Joe Biden younger and gayer.
I mean, there's no difference between, like, they're all basically, look, I'll say this.
They're all into, and this is how politics always works.
You have a whole bunch of candidates who are just interchangeable.
They're establishment candidates.
They're going to do the exact same thing.
They're going to appoint the exact same people.
I mean, if you could look back at like the 2016 Republican campaign, right?
It's a bunch of Republicans, Donald Trump and Rand Paul.
That's what the Republican stage was.
Those other Republicans, you can mix and match them.
They make no difference.
Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or John Kasich or Lindsey Grant, they're all exactly the same.
Like, I mean, literally, exactly the same.
They will appoint the same people.
They will pass the same laws, the same policies.
Everything will be exactly the same.
And with the Democrats, it's like you basically have a whole bunch of people, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Tulsi Gabbard.
Those are the only ones that are actually different from the rest of the pack.
Corey Booker and Joe Biden and fucking Mayor Pete, they're all the same person.
None of them are any different.
Amy Klobucha is not any different than Kamala Harris.
They're all the exact same.
It's just which flavor of this establishment do you like more?
Okay.
So Mayor Pete, and I want to make this clear because I said this before and some people were giving me shit.
Like I'm not complimenting.
I'm not giving you my opinion on this.
I'm just speaking politically speaking.
Okay.
Mayor Pete is the Democrats' only hope to be sane.
And it actually looks like he's going to the top.
Because look, Mayor Pete, he's got some problems.
One of his problems is he's got no reason for running.
There's nothing he's passionate about.
He doesn't have like an issue.
He's just looks politician-y, looks kind of presidential.
But when you start going through the list of other possibilities, they're all insane.
Like we just did Elizabeth Warren.
Joe Biden is fucking 80 and he can't put a sentence together.
He literally can't remember names and places.
He's a constant liar and he's got a real weird problem with nose humping children.
Like that is really bad optics and he won't stop.
He just won't stop doing it.
Bernie Sanders, you know, has a loyal following, but he's also 80 and he just had a heart attack.
And like an 80-year-old who just had a heart attack is not going to be commander in chief and be in the most high-stress job in the world.
That's just not going to happen.
Going down the list after that, Kamala Harris is like a cop who is just like horrifically unlikable.
They're fucking, you know, all the other guys are just racing to the left.
They're putting their hands up for things like we should have open borders and pay for the health care of all illegal immigrants.
These are policies.
Feel however you feel about them.
You cannot get elected on this shit.
It's not going to happen.
But Mayor Pete, out of the people who are running now, is the most reasonable.
Oh, I guess Bloomberg is the newest one.
But as I said before, he is a fucking whiny fucking New York billionaire Jew.
And as a whiny New York Jew, I feel comfortable saying that's not going to win the presidency.
Anyway, so Mayor Pete surging is interesting.
And Mayor Pete does fairly well in these debates.
I mean, he doesn't actually like say anything.
He doesn't have any ideas, but he sounds presidential enough and he doesn't embarrass himself.
Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, has been a nightmare in these debates.
She's done terrible.
Biden's done terrible.
Bernie Sanders is fine.
He does what Bernie Sanders does.
He's kind of a one-trick pony.
You know exactly what he's going to say, but he delivers it with a fair amount of passion.
And, you know, he knows his talking points.
But I think tonight's debate is going to be a big, a big test of that.
Like this is when you have something like Elizabeth Warren's momentum fading and Joe Biden kind of hanging on, another bad debate performance for both of them could be very devastating.
And if Mayor Pete has a good debate performance, I think you could see him start to take over and maybe be the frontrunner.
He's the only one there that I see as plausible.
Literally the only one.
All right.
And the other thing about tonight's debate, which I, which, you know, the candidate who I'm most interested in and who I'm most fond of on the Democrat side is Tulsi Gabbard.
Of course, I actually really like her because she is, as Scott Horton said recently, she is the least bad on the most important issue.
And of course, that's the war stuff.
And she inserts the most important issue as the most important issue.
And she's the only candidate to do that.
She's the only candidate since Ron Paul who I've seen who actually does that.
Says the most important issue is this question of war, which, by the way, I think no matter what your politics are, you should agree with that.
Even if you're like a pro-war neocon, you should go, well, what's the most listen?
If you're saying we have all of these different policies and one of them is to go send big metal machines of fucking fire-breathing death into countries and fucking slaughter people, that should be just by nature the most important issue.
And so she at least does that.
And I'll say, man, Tulsi really, really needs a big night.
She needs a big night.
I mean, just to stay in there.
Tulsi's hope at this point is basically that her little following, which is, you know, I don't know.
The highest I think I've seen her in any poll was like 4% or 5%.
Maybe there's somewhere she's been higher than that.
But a lot of the polls, she's at like 1%.
But her little following at least is passionate and is there for a reason.
And she needs to at least keep them engaged and keep them on board so that she can stay in the race.
This is Tulsi's only angle at this point is either to have some huge moment at one of these debates that gets her way up in the polls.
But I'll tell you, she had that moment against Kamala Harris and it destroyed Kamala Harris, but didn't do that much to really move her up in the polls.
And part of that is because in that confrontation with Kamala Harris, she was taking Kamala Harris apart, but she wasn't really talking about her own policy.
Like she wasn't putting out what she stands for.
Like the difference, what she could have said, like theoretically there, right, is that like you could be like, hey, Kamala Harris, which, by the way, was the best moment of the debates so far, I think, but when she said to Kamala Harris, you put 1,500 people in jail for marijuana, and then you laughed when you admitted that you've smoked marijuana before when you were on like a hip-hop morning show.
It's like, what?
Now, that's a great example of just fucking government, like the whole corruption of this whole thing.
Like you fucking, you throw people in cages for something you've done yourself, but you get to run for president.
They can barely get a job because they got a fucking felony conviction on the record.
And you're running for president?
Excellent.
But what could have been added in there was her saying, if I'm elected president, we will repeal the war on drugs.
This has been a disaster.
We're not giving the pretense for cops to just go harass anyone they want to.
And then you've inserted your policy into it too.
It's not just about her.
But she didn't do that.
So it hurt Kamala Harris, but it didn't help her that much.
So she either needs one of two things for Tulsi, okay?
She either needs a really big moment that gets her up in the polls, or she needs to at least keep her little audience engaged enough that she can last while a lot of these other people start dropping out.
She needs to get down to the last three or four people in the race.
And if she can do that, then there's then it makes it a lot easier to look at all four of them.
Like, if you get down to a point where there's four people in the race left and you're having a debate with four people, it's pretty impossible for them not to give you a decent amount of time, right?
When there's 10 people on a debate stage, it's pretty easy to fucking, you know, basically give you fucking 90 seconds of speaking time.
And that makes things a lot harder.
I don't know.
I really just hope, I hope Tulsi can do something just because I mean, we could fucking use an anti-war left in this country.
It seems to me like almost all the anti-war energy is coming from the right these days, and it doesn't seem to be enough to actually do anything.
And god damn it, if there's one fucking policy we should all be together on, it's that these fucking wars are retarded.
They're evil and retarded.
They fucking, they do nothing except waste our money, kill innocent people, and destroy entire regions.
It's like, what the fuck, man?
Been in Afghanistan for longer than World War I and World War II combined, and we have nothing to show for it except one-legged fucking vets and fucking lines at the VA and fucking crying families.
Like, Jesus fucking Christ.
I mean, at what point do you just go, this is, I mean, this is madness.
You don't have to be some like ideological anti-interventionist like myself to just go, this is just, I mean, just the, the, the most evil and stupid policy imaginable.
Fascist Immigration Policies00:10:00
Longer than World War I and World War II, we've been in Afghanistan.
And, and what do we have to show for it?
I think even Donald Trump was like, we got to talk to the Taliban because they've got more territory than they had when we came in.
So we got to negotiate with them because it's their fucking country.
We haven't even, we haven't even fucking taken the country from them.
So what a nightmare.
Anyway, so I hope Tulsi does good, but we'll see.
You know, I mean, she's bad on a whole bunch of issues, but she's at least inserts the conversation of like, what are we doing fighting all these wars?
Which basically the only other person who talks about it is Trump.
And then he gets convinced by all the people around him to fucking stick in them.
And he's talked a decent game about pulling some troops out, but never seems to.
And, you know, you could go back to tweets from Donald Trump in like 2014, 2015, where he's just like laying into Obama.
Like, what are we still doing in Afghanistan?
What are we doing in Syria?
These wars are a disaster.
The problem is he's been president for like three years now.
And evidently no one's told him he's the commander in chief and he can end these shits.
But, you know, he's got, I guess, the wrong people around him.
Either that or he's just a con artist and he's never really believed any of it anyway, which I don't put any of that beyond the pale.
I mean, Donald Trump does give me a little bit of a con artisty feel.
But he also, I think Donald Trump has a thing where he just kind of like, you know, like I think I've said this before, but Donald Trump's like, don't get me wrong.
There's a brilliance to Donald Trump.
There's like an idiocy and a brilliance to Donald Trump.
He's an interesting guy, but he thinks he's way more brilliant than he actually is, even though he's got, he's like instinctually brilliant.
Like he's got these instincts for how to like lead a room and market himself and all of these things.
But then he thinks he's like fucking Einstein.
So he blurts out these really obvious, and he also has no filter.
So he blurts out these really obvious things and then thinks he's like a fucking genius for saying them because no one else says them.
But then you realize that you're like, no, it's not that they, no one's thought of this.
It's that they're all fucking corrupt liars.
So he'll just be like, why do we pay for everybody's defense?
Why don't they pay for their defense?
We get more money.
See, I'm so smart.
I figured it all out.
You're like, wait, what?
It's like, no, this is a racket, Donald Trump.
They want in on this racket.
Anyway, all right.
So before we get out of here, we got a crazy bitch watch for you motherfuckers.
There was a report this week about Stephen Miller, who is the president's point person on immigration.
In fact, to the extent that he is, he's kind of run roughshod over DHS as an independent agency or an agency that functions.
There are about 700 emails of his leaked in which he's cultivating a Breitbart reporter and pushing white nationalist themes that immigrants are criminal and he's recommending racist books.
You've called for him to resign.
You've started a petition.
Why?
If we have a white nationalist at the helm of U.S. for U.S. immigration policy, it means that U.S. immigration policy will become increasingly more fascistic.
And we cannot allow that to be us.
And so long as Stephen Miller is in charge of U.S. immigration policy, hundreds of thousands of people's lives are going to be in danger.
Over 70 or around 70,000 migrant children have been detained, and including child separation, including horrific conditions, including young children who have died in U.S. custody.
This is not normal.
And when we have, I mean, it's nuts because earlier this year, when I echoed the consensus of experts, of historians, of experts, of political scientists in saying that the conditions on our border, the mass expansion of detention camps qualifies as a concentration camp, everybody thought it was nuts, right?
Until we realized this week that Stephen Miller is a no-joke, die-hard white nationalist.
This is what our policy has become.
And in order for us to rectify and to begin to heal as a country, he has got to go.
I feel duty bound to note that Miller's defenders, I think Miller himself would say, I'm Jewish myself.
I come from a Jewish family and it's offensive for you to invoke that word, particularly as regards someone who is Jewish.
Well, I'm sure that's also the way in which he's weaponized his identity, right?
Like, you know, they say, and there's this, there's, you're, the color of your skin.
All right, let's pause there.
Well, listen, I guess if you believe that a fucking, you know, a dude can be the best female powerlifter in the country, believing a Jew could be a Nazi really isn't that big of a fucking stretch.
And look, technically, if I'm going to defend, I just love the moment that Chris Hayes has put in where they go, he is a hardcore white nationalist fascist.
And even he has to go like, you know, he would probably point out that he's Jewish and comes from a Jewish family.
And like, that's probably what his argument would be here.
Hey, look, if you want to be technical, sure.
Okay.
I guess a Jew could be a fascist.
I think I've heard some people say there were like a few Jews who Hitler let in his like military or something like that.
Okay, fine.
But look, When she goes, if you have a white nationalist who is in head of immigration policy, it's going to look more and more fascistic.
It's like, what?
How like casually do we just throw out these terms?
And what do they even mean?
Like, what does white nationalist mean?
So if you're saying that you're a white nationalist for wanting to crack down on illegal immigration, or let's just take it a step further.
Let's say, let's pretend that Stephen Miller has ever actually said, I just want white immigrants coming into this country, right?
That's being white nationalist.
The problem with that is that then you have to realize that we were a white nationalist country for basically our entire history.
And the entire history of America was being about 90% white.
That was our history basically until the 70s.
So basically all of American history, all of European history, it was basically just taken as a given that these were majority white countries.
Feel about that however you want to.
That's just a historical fact.
That's just the reality of the situation.
Now, there's lots of countries out there who have strict immigration policies, like Japan.
I guess Japan are fascists because they fucking have like explicit immigration policies to keep the country Japanese because they have this idea that we're a country for Japanese people.
Obvious other example that comes to mind would be Israel.
Israel is straight up like this is a Jewish state.
That's who it's here for.
Jews.
So are they also fascists now?
Now, by the way, they kind of are.
But that's not for their immigration policy.
Look, if you could say, this is what's so cheap about it, right?
What is the reason why people, what is the reason why fascism is considered such a horrible thing to call someone?
Why is it?
Why is it?
Because of Hitler's genocide.
That's why.
Okay.
That's the implication of calling someone a fascist.
It's the idea of the genocide.
That's the fucking problem.
If Hitler had rose to power and said, I'm closing the borders of Germany and that's it, I don't think we'd look back at him as being the worst human being ever.
The idea was not that he had a strict immigration control, okay?
That's not the big problem that Hitler had.
So even if somebody was arguing, now, if you could make an argument, like there are lots of countries that have very strict immigration controls, right?
Very strict about who can immigrate there.
America ain't one of them.
America lets in more immigrants than any other country in the world.
They let in a million immigrants every year legally.
What guys like Stephen Miller and Donald Trump have stood up and said is that that's it.
Okay, this is their line is that we let in more than anybody else, but that's it.
You can't have another several hundred thousand.
We have no idea how many flood in every year illegally.
We got to cut off the illegal immigration.
Donald Trump has even said it certain times, and I know it's pissed off some of the nationalists who support him.
He's been like, I'm not opposed to letting more immigrants in legally.
I just don't want the illegal immigrants coming in.
Okay.
So that's the position.
Now, even if you were to advocate, no, forget just not illegal immigrants.
I want to cut down that number.
Let's say we're going to cut it in half.
I only want half a million people.
I mean, who's to say a million is the right number?
Maybe it should be 1.1 million.
Maybe it should be 500,000.
Maybe 200,000.
I, you know, I don't really know.
I don't know exactly what the fucking right number of people immigrating.
I think we should just have a free society.
And that way it's like if people are invited in, they can come.
And if not, not.
But this is the problem when you have a government and a welfare state and all this other bullshit.
But even if you were to say, no, we should cut the number in half.
That doesn't make you a fascist.
It doesn't make you a fucking fascist.
If you said, I want to close the borders altogether, that doesn't make you a fucking fascist.
If you go, we don't want any more immigration.
And you know, we're a diverse, multiracial, multicultural society.
We got to blend and melt together and we don't want more people coming in right now.
That doesn't make you fascist.
Okay.
So there's that.
Doesn't make you a fascist.
Now, you know what might make you a fascist?
If you were to say, I, the president of the United States, have the right to detain an American citizen who's never been charged of a crime and hold them indefinitely without a trial, that might make you a fascist.
And Barack Obama signed that into law.
So, if you want to fucking complain about fascism, there's plenty of shit to complain about.
And there's plenty of things Trump does too.
You know, in many ways, we do have a fascist system, but putting controls on immigration ain't on the list.