Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein critique the politicization of Kobe Bryant's death, analyze Bernie Sanders' surge in Democratic primaries, and dismantle John Bolton's impeachment case against Donald Trump. They argue that withholding $391 million for an investigation into alleged corruption lacks legal basis, dismissing Adam Schiff's claims as semantic rather than criminal. The hosts further challenge the Mueller report's implications on collusion, highlight establishment failures to stop populist candidates, and debate libertarian immigration risks regarding government overreach. Ultimately, they contend that current political narratives rely on flawed interpretations of evidence and media bias. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Tragic World We Live In00:06:55
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 is up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Of course, I'm Dave Smith.
Of course, he is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caws.
What's up, my brother?
Nothing, man.
Ready for show.
Mondays.
Fuck yeah.
Drinking some cappuccino there, I say.
Oh, yeah.
I haven't even started that yet.
Oh, yeah.
You fresh, got a fresh cappuccino right in front of you.
I didn't even know we had a cappuccino machine here.
Well, you should start hanging out at the office a little more with the comic store.
Oh, yeah.
I don't, common folks rub me the wrong way.
But, you know, Fridays, you're drinking Jaeger.
By Monday, you're drinking cappuccino.
That's a good beginning of the week, end of the week.
And we'll get you back to Jaeger by Friday.
That's definitely the way it flows.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have great Monday, Tuesdays, but by the time Wednesday comes around, Wednesday, the second half of Wednesday is rough.
Yep.
Thursday, just jerking off in the office.
It's rough.
All right.
Well, anyway, guys, don't forget me and Robbie Bernstein are torn around a bit.
We will be in Boston.
Very limited seating left.
I think it's sold out.
It might be too late.
I don't keep up with the numbers.
I know there was limited seating as of a few days ago.
It might be sold out.
You might have a chance to go see us in Boston February 7th at the comedy hideout.
It's probably too late.
You slept on that one, okay?
But Boston isn't that far a drive from Philadelphia, I guess.
Anyway, Philly, February 21st, still tickets available there.
So me and Rob, we're doing a live podcast and a live stand-up comedy show, two separate shows.
So come on out to either or both.
Should be a lot of fun, and we'll have some more gigs coming up.
Read it right in the Constitution.
That's right.
We're going in there.
We're taking out some flaws.
What is this amendment about women voting?
Get this crap out of here.
It's not a coincidence.
We've gone downhill since then.
Am I right?
Well, speaking of going downhill, R.I.P. Kobe Bryant.
Sorry to hear about that.
That was a tragic, tragic, terrible situation.
Man, people have...
Am I an asshole for this?
Where I go, I really do have this contrarian thing about me where at first you're like, oh, man, Kobe Bryant died and his daughter died with him.
What a fucking horrible thing.
It's like really sad.
And then after it's so blown up on Twitter, you start to go, maybe this says something a little weird about us as a culture.
It's just strange.
And then I saw like a few different people, like my boy Ari Shafir, just fucking trolling the fuck out of the internet into the most beautiful fashion.
But people are so furious, so furious about it.
And then it was the Kobe thing on many different layers.
Like there were like at least a few major ones that I noticed, like show, demonstrated things about our culture, and almost every one of them was terrible.
But number one, like the most basic, obvious thing was just this, this weird American hero worship of athletes.
Like we're just supposed to care 100,000 times more when a really, really good basketball player died.
You know, like people die all the time.
There's these horrible things, but there's got to be like way more outrage about this than, you know, like the Flintwater crisis or something like that.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, like, hundreds of people died in America yesterday, right?
Like, what?
Why is this one the most?
But it's like, and by the way, he was a really, really good basketball player.
Like, top five in my lifetime.
Really, really good.
But still, why exactly am I supposed to care about this?
Like, why?
It's like, oh, well, he played for the Lakers.
Like, I, you know, it's like this kind of weird thing.
And then you saw the, like, there was like a corner of the social justice warriors that were like, he's, you know, a rapist.
So you can't care about him dying, which is also stupid because it's like, first of all, I mean, okay, it's, it's fucking shady, and the whole thing is who the fuck knows what happened, but he wasn't convicted of it.
You know, he settled out of court.
Take from that what you will.
But it's also like, well, why would you even be bringing that up in a serious way?
I mean, if he is a rapist, then the rapist is dead.
It's just a wife and I think four children who lost their husband, father, and sister.
So why bring what do you want to fucking punish them for what he did?
And then if he didn't do it, you're just fucking like, you know, insulting a guy who just died.
Like, it's so that's like stupid.
And then the other level that was just sad and like disgusting was like how politicized it has to get in every level.
So like Obama tweeted something, like some real nice thing, you know, just like, oh, we liked Kobe Bryant.
Me and you know, me and fucking Michelle are very upset about this, blah, blah, blah.
Just like a standard, nice tweet.
And then there's all these blue check marks showing it, like, I wish we had a president who had this type of class right now.
And blah, it's like, so you're using this as a moment to get another dig in at Trump.
And then by the way, Trump tweeted out almost the exact same thing.
Like almost the same, exactly.
It's just all of this like sucks.
It's like a great basketball player died.
And his daughter died, which is the more tragic thing.
But it's just, I don't know.
It's a weird fucking culture.
Weird culture that we live in.
And then I saw some other comics who are giving Ari shit.
It's like, you can't joke about this.
This is in bad taste.
That's like the comedian perspective.
Like, why?
Why is this one so over the line?
What's your justification for that?
You could joke about every other horrible thing, but this one is just not Kobe.
The guy was the second highest scorer in Laker history.
Can't joke about him.
Why?
Why would that be the line?
I mean, it's tragic, but I don't think your joke is really adding to the tragedy at all.
I think it's equally as tragic whether or not someone jokes about it.
It's all very strange.
Weird culture.
Weird fucking world that we live in, you know?
Why Jokes About Kobe Fail00:03:40
But hey, what are you going to do?
I'll tell you.
Build a wall.
All right.
So there's a few interesting things happening that I wanted to talk about.
Rob Bernstein's wearing a hat.
That's number one.
How's Hat Life treating you?
Well, you know, some days you just get to that a caveman.
I think it's Bigfoot.
Oh, I can't.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
But he's really looking through the owns the monitor.
Yes.
No, you're right.
It's Bigfoot, but he's walking around.
Is it Bigfoot?
He's speaking King Kong.
Why are there skyscrapers in the back?
No, I think it's Bigfoot.
He's out in the jungle.
He just took a shit.
Now he's like walking back to his hut.
Oh, are those trees?
Okay.
Got it.
Now I get it.
Okay.
There we go.
I was literally just trying to buy time because I wanted to pull up.
I could talk about Bigfoot more or my hats.
You know, I'll be honest, I didn't feel like it was going great.
So, topic number one That I wanted to discuss is the state of the Democratic primary, which keeps on, you know, as we get closer and closer.
And we're like within arm's distance now of the Iowa caucus.
And this thing is getting so interesting to me.
So interesting.
So Bernie Sanders in the latest polls has been what you could call surging.
And Elizabeth Warren has been tanking.
The gap between them is really separated.
And now, and I just wanted to pull this up to make sure I can give you the exact exact numbers here.
Okay.
So I got Real Clear Politics, which is a great site to go to for to get the polling and they give you like the Real Clear Politics average and stuff like that.
So right now in Iowa, let's see if I can get the fucking average here.
In Iowa, Sanders is up by one on the Real Clear Politics average, but there was one poll that had him up by, I believe, as much as six.
There's a the CNN UNH poll has him up by nine points in New Hampshire.
And then I think that it was five points in terms of the average.
But more or less, Bernie Sanders has now moved into first place in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Both of these same polls have Elizabeth Warren fading.
I think she's down about five or six points over the last week.
So it seems that right now, Bernie Sanders has really taken over that slot, the uber progressive economic populist Democratic socialist slot, which is interesting for a lot of reasons.
And look, like I've said from the very beginning of this race that from the very beginning of the Democratic primary that this was Bernie Sanders race to win or to lose.
Like it's kind of up to him whether or not he wants to really do this.
Now, one of the things that it that I got to say, one of the real positives of this that really kind of hearten me a little bit is that if you pay attention to the cable news and just the corporate press in general, like the newspapers as well, they were all, it's really been amazing to watch throughout this Democratic primary.
Bernie Sanders Surges in Polls00:09:02
I mean, how many times, you know, and we've talked about it at length, but how many times they told you that they were like, hey, you know, we got this Beto Arour guy.
He's the guy.
Like, I mean, just look at this charisma.
And then you see him up there and you're like, oh, my God.
I mean, this guy's pathetic.
And the voters felt the same way.
And they were like, well, you know, obviously who, you know, the serious contender is is Kamala Harris.
And everybody, they'll do all of these like these cable news panels, which, you know, I've been on a few of them myself, but it's so funny how they're presented.
Like I have an interesting insight into the way these panels work because I've done a lot of them on multiple different networks and I've talked to a lot of these people and they get put out there as fucking experts.
Like this is the panel.
They're going to tell you what's going on.
These are people who do this professionally.
And in almost any field, that would be somewhat accurate.
Like I don't know if you were just talking about the way stand-up comedy works to a bunch of people who aren't in comedy and you were on a panel to do that.
You could tell people the way it works and like you know a lot better than they do.
Like you'd be right about just about everything you're saying.
Like you'd be like, well, this is how you have to do these are the clubs.
This is how you get into the clubs.
A lot of people do this.
A lot of people work the road.
Like just basic things that like you'd know because you've done this for years and they haven't.
If, you know, if there was just like a panel on plumbing and you had three plumbers, they're going to know more about plumbing than the people who aren't plumbers.
It's literally that simple.
Okay.
But yet with this politics shit, these people don't know anything.
And I am constantly shocked.
Still, it never wears off when I'm there and I'm like, I am some idiot comedian.
I have no title.
I have no business knowing better than all of you guys at the area that you're supposed to be experts in.
And yet I do every single time.
That's again, I'm an idiot.
That's just how bad they are.
So all of the point I'm making is when Kamala Harris attacked Joe Biden for being against busing, remember she had that whole line where she was like, you know, there was a little girl on those buses and that little girl was me.
And the media was all like devastating takedown.
Kamala Harris is the new favorite.
She'll probably be the frontrunner by tomorrow.
And it had no effect.
It had no effect on her polls.
No one fucking bought into it.
They saw right through.
Like even within the Democratic Party, it was kind of nice to see that even the Democratic Party primaries are not woke Twitter.
Like they were like, I don't really care if there's someone who's a black woman of color who called Joe Biden sexist or racist.
Like that's not really doing it for me, you know?
And she just fails.
Campaign completely tanked.
Now, likewise, Elizabeth Warren, everybody in the corporate press was telling you Elizabeth Warren won the day against Bernie Sanders in that last fucking debate.
And we were sitting here.
It was so obvious to call.
It's like, no, she lost that.
Like, I'm sorry.
She lost that exchange, every inch of it.
This was corny and contrived.
And we were right and they were wrong.
They kept saying, oh my God, she had the line of the night.
Bernie Sanders really flubbed it when he had the chance to.
Like, how do you see?
It's amazing how fucking out to lunch these people are.
How do you see somebody?
Like, let's say that she was telling the truth about that conversation.
Let's say Bernie Sanders in confidence two years ago to what is described by Elizabeth Warren as a close friend.
Like she, she says they're close friends.
He said to a close friend two years ago, you know, I don't actually know if a woman can be president.
And then you decided for political purposes to tell the world this three weeks before the Iowa caucuses.
And then after the debate, he extends his hand and you refuse to shake his hand.
How do you not come off looking like the asshole?
Like in what world are you not the asshole here?
Can you imagine just like telling the world about, think of any close friend of yours telling the world that they said something offensive to you two years ago, right before you were both up for a job interview?
Like, what a piece of shit.
What a shitty move.
And it just seems like now it's like, oh, you look at it like in the last couple of weeks, the polling is in.
This clearly was a victory for Bernie Sanders.
And every single time that the corporate press tells you, well, this is how voters are going to react, and they react the exact opposite way, there's a real positive in that because everyone looks at it and goes, oh, you don't, you're not in touch with the people you supposedly are serving at all.
So that's nice.
But this is going to get interesting.
This is going to get interesting.
There's a dynamic now at work where very likely Bernie Sanders is going to win Iowa and New Hampshire.
And that positions him very strongly to win the nomination.
What's going to happen at that point is a lot of other people, their campaigns are going to start to dwindle and eventually fold.
You're talking about Elizabeth Warren dropping out of the race, quite possibly Mayor Pete shortly after.
You're talking about Amy Klobuchar.
I mean, maybe she'll hang around for a while, but I doubt it.
And then you start to go like, oh, wow, Bernie Sanders is going to become the favorite now because he's already got the first two.
He's got the momentum.
He's got the ground game.
He's got the energy.
He's got the fundraising.
And it's going to be against this old man, Joe Biden, who somehow is older than Bernie Sanders.
I don't know how.
Even though he's like a year younger, he's older.
He is just older.
And that's now this becomes an interesting question.
So there's a few different possibilities about how this could go, right?
So let's say Bernie Sanders wins the nomination.
Well, what happens then?
I mean, Bernie Sanders, you know what?
Actually, let's say, let's first, before we even talk about if Bernie Sanders were to win, let's say Bernie Sanders doesn't win.
Let's say he takes Iowa and New Hampshire.
And this is a real possibility right now at this point.
And him and Joe Biden are very close, or maybe Warren ends up winning a few.
Maybe Buttigedge wins a few, and nobody reaches the threshold and they go to a contested convention.
Okay.
Well, now you're going to go to a contested convention, and I promise you, one person will not win at a contested convention, and that's Bernie Sanders.
So what happens now?
You know, Hillary Clinton's going to sit there and say she was so hurt by Bernie Sanders last time.
Well, what are they going to do when there is a clear narrative that the Bernie Sanders people have that Bernie Sanders was screwed out of this nomination again?
That once again, this nomination was taken away from him by the DNC.
How are you going to get those Bernie bros out to vote for Joe Biden or Amy Klobuchar or whoever the candidate is that they would pick?
How the fuck is that going to happen?
That's going to leave a very weak Democratic nominee almost surely would be the result of that if it gets that far and the DNC has to step in.
The other option, as I was saying before, is that Bernie Sanders wins.
Bernie Sanders wins the nomination.
Now, here's a problem with that, right?
Bernie Sanders has now been called by Hillary Clinton, who was the last nominee, a person who nobody likes, who's sexist, who's held up, is, you know, damaged Hillary Clinton is the reason why Donald Trump's there.
Now Elizabeth Warren has also added on to this charge of sexism.
So now Bernie Sanders has to be the guy who was like insulted by all of these people with a lot of support within the Democratic Party.
And he's got to go try and run with that.
I mean, that's going to have some effect on the enthusiasm.
It's like, oh, so we've been selling you basically all of the Democratic propaganda for the last four years has been all about electing the first female president.
And now Bernie Sanders is being accused of being sexist.
And basically he's the reason why this glass ceiling will not be broken.
It's because of Bernie Sanders that he decided to, you know, he killed this chance.
How's that going to play out?
It's starting to seem like whoever ends up limping to the finish line here is going to be in a very precarious spot.
And you're starting to see the Democrats freak out a bit, I think, as this reality sets in more and more.
So we'll see what happens here, man.
Undercover Tourist Saves Vacation Money00:02:24
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All right, let's get back into the show.
You know, something else that I've touched on a little bit, but I just wanted to kind of mention again, because I've said for a while that I was kind of rooting for Biden to win because I think it will be really entertaining to watch the entire media have to pretend for six months that there's nothing wrong with Joe Biden.
Like that would be really, really entertaining to watch them have to be like, oh, he's totally got it together.
All these people questioning his health are crazy, you know, as he's like up there like, I love to play with my leg hair and children.
And you're just like, holy shit.
John Bolton and National Security00:16:14
But I got to say right now, for a more serious reason, I'm kind of rooting for Bernie Sanders.
And the reason is because I think if Bernie Sanders is on the ballot, there's no way like we are forced into a national referendum on socialism.
And I think that like at this point, with how big and out of control our government's grown, that might be the best thing for the fucking country.
It's like we need an up or down vote right now.
Do you want to be a socialist country?
And Bernie Sanders forces that.
Now, don't get me wrong.
Bernie Sanders isn't a pure socialist, and Donald Trump sure as fuck isn't a pure capitalist.
But it kind of makes that the conversation.
Do you want socialism or capitalism?
And I think that to me, if Bernie Sanders is running, then there's, you have to have that conversation to some degree.
And I think that that's, we got to hope that's a conversation we can win and be like, yeah, no, you don't want to embrace the deadliest ideology in human history.
That's probably not a good idea.
And the fact is, he doesn't run away from that label.
He uses it.
There's no way Donald Trump isn't going to use the fact that he praised all of the most brutal socialist regimes in his day.
He's going to have to use that against him.
And let's fucking, let's, let's have it out, you know, like at least to some degree.
Maybe it'll force Donald Trump to run a little bit more as a capitalist.
And, you know, and then Jacob Hornberger can come in there and show him why they're all a bunch of fucking idiots.
But anyway, I just, the likelihood that Bernie Sanders wins has gone up.
The likelihood of a contested convention has gone up.
And a contested convention, it might just destroy the Democratic Party.
I mean, it's certainly going to be.
It's, you know, there's been a civil war going on in the Democratic Party since 2016, and they have not had a decisive victory yet.
So it'll be interesting to see how this ends up turning out.
We'll be watching.
It's coming up real soon.
Real soon.
I love this shit.
I got to say, as much as I hate politics, I fucking love politics.
It's fucking, this is going to be a real interesting one.
All right.
So let's see.
All right.
The other thing that I wanted to talk about, and this has been the big impeachment news, which is, you know, just completely fitting for the Donald Trump presidency, is that it seems that the new hero of the liberals is John Bolton.
John Bolton, the new hero to the left.
I mean, I speak in jest a little bit when I say that, but he, so John Bolton has, of course, completely selflessly written a book, and he's timed the book to release soon.
And there are accusations about what Trump did with Ukraine.
Of course, John Bolton was the national security advisor to President Trump, who was fired a few months back.
And, you know, he's, if you don't know him, war hawk, extraordinaire.
You could more easily count the places that he doesn't want to invade than those that he does.
And, you know, so he, of course, if you do look at this whole thing from the perspective that we have, which I believe is the correct one, that this is kind of a CIA-led attempted coup, and that there's basically been a deep state coup, you know, against Donald Trump or an attempted one for since basically the very beginning and even before he was elected president.
And you realize that the reason that there's all of this animosity toward Donald Trump and there's all of this importance placed on getting him out is because he does not go along with the foreign policy consensus of both parties.
Then, of course, you'd understand why John Bolton would be eager to damage the president who didn't, you know, give him the wars that he wanted and then ultimately fired him.
So anyway, have you did you hear about the John Bolton stuff?
Yeah, or read any of the excerpts from his book.
I haven't read the excerpts, but I saw that the whole time, I mean, the story goes back to the beginning of that they got to put these adults in the room to keep their eye on Trump.
And every time they opened up their mouth, oh my God, you wouldn't believe how bad this guy is.
And that's been the Democratic story from the beginning of we can't have this guy here.
Yeah.
This is just more of the same.
They're just trying to get Trump to look bad.
And the story now is that Bolton has can give direct testimony to the fact that there was quid pro quo.
And I guess I'll believe it when I hear it.
Well, there's what happens.
Or that he's just lying.
Well, right.
I don't really believe that Bolton's not part of.
Well, I don't, you know, I'm not even so sure that he's lying because the more you look into it, it's not sure exactly what's there.
Like, what exactly is the accusation here?
What happens with a lot of these things?
And this is how, you know, like we were talking about before, how someone like Adam Schiff can continue to say there was collusion and Mueller did find collusion.
It's like, well, they start with this accusation.
Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
And collusion, while it is an antitrust law, is not actually a law in regards to this case.
That's not like collusion.
What does that even mean?
Well, obviously what you're implying when you say there's collusion is that there's some type of nefarious conspiracy going on here.
You know, it doesn't mean like he had lunch and talked about golf with Vladimir Putin.
They're saying he colluded to do something, right?
Like that's the obvious implication.
And then Trump says, no collusion.
There was absolutely no collusion.
And then Robert Mueller comes out and says, we couldn't find any evidence to support that there was a conspiracy between the two of them.
And they go, he never ruled out collusion.
I mean, he met with the Russians on this many times.
And they're like, see, we have Trump on tape saying no collusion.
And look, I call this collusion.
He met at the Trump Tower with some Russians.
And you're like, wait, wait.
But this is all getting so bogged down in semantics and hazy.
And what the claim was, was that Donald Trump was conspiring with a hostile foreign power.
And that was made up out of thin air.
And you all knew this was made up for two years before the Mueller investigation wrapped up.
And then that kind of gets lost and they get to play these word games.
So what happens right here is they go, oh, there was quid pro quo.
And then Donald Trump says there was no quid pro quo.
And then they can go, see, haha, quid pro quo.
But what gets lost in all of this is that there's nothing illegal about that.
Quid pro quo doesn't mean anything.
It just means you give me something, I give you something.
That's how politics works on every single level, domestic and foreign.
The question is whether Donald Trump, you know, like did something nefarious for political reasons.
And that's a lot murkier.
And in fact, there's almost no evidence to suggest that as of right now.
But we'll get into it a little bit.
I wanted to read a little bit from, there was a New York Times article about this this morning.
So here from the article, and this is a New York Times article by Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt.
And the article is titled, Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book says.
Drafts from the book outline the potential testimony of the former national security advisor if he were called as a witness in the president's impeachment trial.
Now, from the article, we don't have to read the whole thing, but I wanted to get into at least the beginning of it.
All right.
Because you just see how they present these things and then see what's actually there.
All right, from the article.
President Trump told his national security advisor in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former advisor, John R. Bolton.
So right away, sounds devastating.
Like if you've already bought into the Democratic talking points, this is devastating, right?
I mean, oh, oh my God, there it is.
He was withholding the aid to investigate the Bidens, okay?
So this is exactly what we were always accusing him of.
There we go.
All right, back to the article.
The president's statement, as described by Mr. Bolton, could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense, that the holdup in aid was separate from Mr. Trump's requests that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office.
Mr. Bolton's explosive account of the matter at the center of Mr. Trump's impeachment trial, the third in American history, which included in drafts of a manuscript he has circulated in recent weeks to close associates, he also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books.
Multiple people described Mr. Bolton's account of the Ukrainian affair.
The book presents an outline of what Mr. Bolton might testify to if called as a witness in the Senate impeachment trial, the people said.
The White House could use the pre-publication review process, which has no set timeframe, to delay or even kill the book's publication or omit key passages.
Just after midnight on Monday, Mr. Trump denied telling Mr. Bolton that the aid was tied to investigations.
If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book, he wrote on Twitter, reprising his argument that the Ukrainians themselves felt no pressure and falsely asserting that this aid was released ahead of schedule.
Over dozens of pages, Mr. Bolton describes how the Ukrainian affair unfolded over several months until he departed the White House in September.
He described not only the president's private disparagement of Ukraine, but also new details about senior cabinet officials who have publicly tried to sidestep involvement.
For example, Mike Pompeo and Rudy Giuliani.
Okay, so what's interesting, by the way, kind of interesting that the New York Times refers to Trump as Mr. Trump.
Just saying, and you see this, like, aren't they supposed to call him President Trump?
And then they're also, you know, it's like this kind of explosive allegation by, I mean, they're clearly, you know, like painting their own narrative and treating this as if it's a, you know, a fact.
But there's a couple key phrases that I thought were that were interesting here.
So the article says in his August 2019 discussion with Mr. Bolton.
Oh, the other thing that should be noted is that they're now saying that, if you understand, that people have seen the manuscript and have told the New York Times about this.
So this is now, this is the one person's accounting of a conversation that other people have read that person's accounting of the conversation and told the New York Times.
And the New York Times is now going to tell you what other people said about one person's side of a story.
But of course, it's treated, you know, almost as if this is a factual, you know, explosive, if true, all of this stuff.
Okay.
But from the article, in his August 2019 discussion with Mr. Bolton, the president appeared focused on the theories Mr. Giuliani had shared with him, replying to Mr. Bolton's question that he preferred,
listen to this, that he preferred sending no assistance to Ukraine until officials had turned over all material they had about Russia, about the Russia investigation that related Mr. Biden and supporters of Mr. Clinton in Ukraine.
Okay, so that's a pretty important passage.
Just keep that in your mind.
And then I just wanted to reiterate the first paragraph from the article.
And these are things that you almost have to like, you have to actually really think about this.
So back to the first paragraph of the article.
President Trump told his national security advisor in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by John Bolton.
So again, it's very fuzzy.
It almost seems to indicate that this was about 2016 more than it was about 2020, which of course changes everything.
But they're not reporting that in the New York Times article.
So do you get where I'm coming from here?
It's if this was about, as they say, the Russia investigation, well, then this wouldn't have to do with the 2020 election.
This would be in regards to the 2016 election.
And it's going to be a much harder sell to say that if Biden was somehow caught up in that, that you're not allowed to, he's not allowed to want that investigated, especially when all they've been for is investigating this whole time.
Here's, listen.
So so far, basically, there's nothing here.
They're making it out like it's this huge new revelation, but there's nothing.
Look, I mean, I guess the something that you could say is there is that if Donald Trump says there was no quid pro quo, and you're like, well, there kind of was.
It's like, okay, fine, but that's not impeachable.
It's not an impeachable offense for the president to downplay something or for the president to misspeak or falsely speak or misrepresent something.
The problem is this.
And this is the problem they've had from the very beginning.
Number one, if you want to say that the rule is that you're not allowed to get any information from foreign countries that could be beneficial to you in a campaign, it's like, okay, but there is no rule that says that.
There's no law that says that.
There's nothing illegal about that.
And oh, by the way, they just made up that rule and they're only applying it to Donald Trump.
Because if you applied that to Hillary Clinton, all of a sudden she's working with a former British spy named Christopher Steele to get the whole fucking, I mean, yeah, Christopher Steele to get that whole dossier.
So now you've kind of got a problem on your hands.
The other issue is that Donald Trump, well, okay, so here's just a few of the issues.
You have Adam Schiff who's saying that this was a matter of national security.
And the reason why we had to, you know, we have to impeach is because Donald Trump threatened our national security for his own political purposes.
There's a few major problems with that.
Of course, the idea that Ukrainian foreign aid, military aid, is a matter of national security is a completely subjective assertion.
Like there's no real proof that that is in fact the case.
And of course, I think many, like we would probably argue that actually sending money to one side of a military conflict, the side that's against Russia, is probably more dangerous to our national security than anything else.
But even that aside, another big problem that you'd have to have is that Trump actually ended up sending aid and more military aid than Obama sent.
He actually sent like anti-missile technology to them, whereas Obama didn't.
Fabricating Dirt on the Bidens00:14:51
Obama refused to.
So by their own logic, then Obama was putting national security, you know, in jeopardy, and Trump's been better on that issue.
So there's another big problem that they have.
But more so than that, the heart of the matter, which is what this impeachment really, where it really all falls apart, is that they can say all this stuff about Donald Trump digging up dirt on political enemies.
They can say he wanted the Bidens investigated or something like that.
But the real problem is that you, look, if they had something like, let's say this, if they had Donald Trump in any way saying that he wanted them to, let's say in the phone call, he said that he wanted them to fabricate dirt on the Bidens, then that you would really have something there.
Okay?
Then you would really have something.
If he was saying, I want you to frame Joe Biden for something, you'd have yourself a real argument.
And if then you could connect the fact that he asked a foreign nation to frame Joe Biden, and then you could connect in some way that he was actually withholding military aid, and it seems like those two were connected.
Like it seems like he was withholding money that had been allocated by the Congress to Ukraine, and he was holding it unless they framed Joe Biden, then you would have something.
But what's the big difference between that and reality?
He didn't ask them to frame Joe Biden.
He asked them to investigate corruption.
And there's no law against that.
There's nothing illegal here.
There's nothing, there's just nothing.
He asked for an investigation into corruption.
Now, if you think that there's nothing there, if your argument is that there is no corruption by the Bidens, okay.
But then what would be the problem with investigating it?
Right?
I mean, we investigated Donald Trump for years and found nothing there.
Are you against investigations now?
Or is it only by foreign governments?
Well, who else would investigate Barisma?
It's a Ukrainian company.
Wouldn't the Ukrainian government be the ones to investigate them?
You start to see how this is such, this is all grasping at straws.
And I think it's ultimately why this impeachment is not going to go the way that the way that a lot of these Democrats would like it to.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Have you been watching any more of the hearings?
Scattered.
It's so boring because I see it.
See through it.
The whole thing is going to get thrown out anyways.
It's been a showing of bullshit by the Democrats to just try and keep Trump in the news and, you know, keep parading around how terrible he is.
And it's boring.
I can see the ending.
Yeah, no, I agree with you on that one.
And it's, you know, there was a...
It's interesting, though, how that you see kind of like the it's just like many of these other things.
If you just were to, if you weren't to dig any deeper and just take the surface level of it, I can see how they're making this case that it's kind of like, well, look what he did.
He tried to, you know, he tried to bully them with the foreign aid to do what he wanted them to do.
It's just as you scratch a few levels underneath, you're like, but are you actually telling me that, like, are you saying this?
Are you saying that if Joe Biden was involved in some corruption, let's say there was something illegal, just hypothetically, that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were involved in some illegal activity in the Ukraine.
Are you telling me Donald Trump can't ask them to investigate that because Biden's running for president?
Well, what if Biden wasn't running for president?
Then could he investigate that?
It's like, okay.
Well, you may think there's no illegal activity there.
It's like, okay, he didn't ask them to frame the Bidens.
He said, I think there is illegal activity here.
Can you investigate it?
By the way, I'm not convinced at all that there is illegal activity there.
I think it's damn sure corrupt.
I think there's no question that the Ukrainians were purchasing influence from Joe Biden by paying his fucking unqualified son a shit ton of money.
But I don't know that there's actually a law against that.
From what I understand, this is pretty much how politicians' kids operate.
I think this is pretty standard for a senator's kid or a vice president's kid to be in this type of situation.
I don't know that there's a law against it.
Maybe, or maybe there should be one, but I don't know that there is.
But there's just, there's nothing wrong with what Trump did.
There was a good article in National Review by Rich Lowry, who, you know, I'm not a big fan of National Review or Rich in general, but it was called 15 Flaws in Adam Schiff's Case.
And he goes through a bunch.
I don't know if we'll go through the whole thing, but there were a bunch that were just worth just breaking down the quotes of Adam Schiff and then showing you how he puts this in a certain way, but it just upon scrutiny, it's complete bullshit.
So Adam Schiff said, Do you think is there any possibility for accountability against Adam Schiff?
I mean, I suppose there is some, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
You know?
Like, has he done anything illegal throughout this whole process in terms of like making a charade out of it?
Almost certainly.
Yeah.
You know, almost certainly.
But again, you know, it's like this is a guy who is working in lockstep with the CIA and has been this whole time.
And those guys don't tend to face consequences.
I mean, maybe someday they will.
But I wouldn't bank on it happening anytime soon.
You know.
Okay.
Hold on.
Oh, shit.
It's fucking Lewis literally texting right now.
This shit freaks me out.
Lewis's son has the flu and he's texting me.
Dude, I'm starting to feel a little bit sick.
I think I'll probably still be able to come to Skankson.
I'm like, do not come tonight.
I have a baby and I do not need a flu to bring home.
Let me text it.
I may have just been hungry.
All right.
Anyway, there's a moment of Lewis J. Gomez for everybody inside.
All right.
Stop texting me, Lewis.
I'm in the middle of the podcast.
He goes, oh, you know what?
Just had to fart.
Sorry.
All right.
All right.
Number one.
Okay, so here's a quote from Adam Schiff.
All right.
This is a quote from one of his speeches at the Senate trial.
He says, just as he made use of Secretary Clinton's hacked and released emails in the previous presidential campaign, and that's the quote.
So he's trying to connect Trump to the WikiLeaks dump.
And of course, this is, as Rich Lowry points out here, he's like, well, if you can blame Donald Trump for this, then you're also indicting everybody who reported on it.
I mean, Bernie Sanders used it as well.
Everybody kind of made a big deal of that about this.
And it also was legitimate information.
So it's just this weak argument of like, I don't know, to say like, well, he made use of Russian hacking.
Now, by the way, he also, again, like I say, in Rich Lowry won't go this far, but I need to see some evidence that Russia was involved in the WikiLeaks dumps.
And I still have not been presented with any of that.
All right.
Number two, a quote from Adam Schiff.
In 2016, then-candidate Trump implored Russia to hack his opponent's emails.
This is the one that they just won't give up on, is that one time Donald Trump at a press conference, which is how nefarious and secret his activities was, as a press conference, Donald Trump said, you know, this famous moment, right, where Donald Trump said, Russia, if you're listening and you can find, you know, those remaining emails.
They always try to remind you that he said, Russia, if you're listening, you know, there's these emails, but they never finish off what he said.
It's just like the Charlottesville thing where they take everything he said.
They don't give you the context of it.
But what did he actually say?
He said, I think you'll be handsomely rewarded by the press.
Speaking about the mainstream media, he was basically like, they'll love it if you can find these fucking emails.
Is this a thought crime of Donald Trump to say, I bet the press would really reward you?
He didn't say we'll reward you.
It's just like, of course.
And like anyone else, like, can you imagine?
Do you think Hillary Clinton wouldn't have wanted dirt on Donald Trump if she thought the Russians would give it to her?
Isn't this so ironic, right?
That the whole steel dossier, the foundation of it, I mean, it turned out to all be bullshit.
But the idea was that they had these, the claim of the steel dossier was that they had these high-level Russian officials who were telling you that Donald Trump was compromised by the Russians.
So it's okay to appeal to the Russians to get dirt on Donald Trump.
We can investigate that for years.
But Donald Trump appeals once to the Russians for dirt on Hillary Clinton.
And this can never be forgotten.
Here's another one.
In pushing the Ukrainians on the discredited crowd strike theory, Trump was, quote, attempting to erase from history his previous election misconduct.
Again, the problem with this is that there was an investigation into this, and there was no election misconduct that was uncovered.
So it's again, he's trying to make it out like Trump was found guilty of something by the Mueller investigation, but he wasn't.
And everybody knows that.
Number four, Robert Mueller testified that the Russians systematically interfered in our election to help elect Donald Trump, that the campaign understood that, and that they willfully made use of that help.
Again, the problem is that Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion.
So you can say that they made use of that help in some way, but they found that there was nothing criminal about what they did.
And again, what the help was was true information.
So again, this is all the stuff that Adam Schiff is invoking in order to try to convince you that we have to impeach Donald Trump.
It's just very, very weak.
I go through a couple more of these.
After Mueller cataloged Russian interference the very next day, quote, President Trump is on the phone with a different foreign power, this time Ukraine, trying to get Ukraine to interfere in the next election.
So now again, he's taking it almost as a given.
By the way, this is not bad salesmanship.
He's almost like just taking it as a given that he interfered the last time.
And now he's right back on the phone with another country.
Except the evidence wasn't that he interfered in any election or that he did anything wrong.
There's no charges filed.
There was no indictment.
And Mueller said that it wasn't just because he was president.
It was that they couldn't reach any conclusion on any of this stuff.
So then, the day after he's interfering with the Russians, he's on the phone with the Ukrainians, trying to get them to interfere.
Well, of course, the weird thing there is that if you were claiming that he was in bed with the Russians, why would he be jumping in bed with the Ukrainians who are the enemy of the Russians, who have been in a conflict with them for years?
But also, if you look at it in reality, it has a whole different feel to it.
It's like, oh, yeah, as soon as he was found not guilty on this investigation, he started asking people to investigate the origins of that investigation.
See, now it doesn't sound so crazy.
It actually all kind of makes sense.
All right.
Okay, so then he said at one point, Trump believes, quote, that under Article 2, he could do anything he wants.
Now, this is referring to when Donald Trump said that under Article 2, he could fire the special prosecutor.
And he did say that.
And I think he's right.
I think he could.
I think that is a power that's delegated to the president.
That being said, it probably would have been a bad political move.
And more importantly than that, he didn't.
Like, do you see?
Isn't it interesting?
Like, if you just say under Article 2, he says he can do anything.
And you're like, well, we're here for abuse of power.
I mean, yeah, this guy's saying he has the constitutional authority to do anything.
But then if you actually look at it, it's like, oh, but he didn't.
He didn't fire Mueller.
He let Mueller conduct his investigation.
And Mueller found nothing.
So now you're saying, like, imagine it's like, like, you're how much you're grasping at straws where you have to go, well, this guy said he could do something that he didn't end up doing.
And you're not even really arguing that he can't do it.
Anyway, it goes on and on like this, if you want to check it out.
Mitt Romney vs Donald Trump00:02:23
It's over at National Review.
The articles by Rich Lowry.
And it's titled 15 Flaws in Adam Schiff's Case.
And it just goes on and on.
And Rich Lowry, these National Review guys, I mean, you know, say what you will about them, but they were like never Trumpers for a long time.
These guys aren't like in the tank for Donald Trump.
National Review actually did a whole entire issue on any basically saying anybody but Trump.
Donald Trump can't be the nominee back in the election.
And I'm just telling you, it's like these are, this case is extraordinarily weak.
And I think for that reason, this whole thing is going to backfire.
But anyway, we will see.
We will see.
I guess it's really just about like Mitt Romney and two other fucking like liberal corporatist senators who aren't.
Is that all they need to flip is three people?
No, I think they, you know, I'd have to, I read it at one point, but I'd have to look that back up.
I think they need a little bit more than that.
But they're Romney's an easy flip.
Well, you know, Romney hates Donald Trump.
Well, Trump pulled the ultimate move on him.
Romney was the biggest shit talker.
And Trump said, you know what?
Why don't you be, was it Secretary of State he offered him?
And then Romney stopped talking shit and interviewed for the job.
Yeah.
Went out to dinner, shook his hand, said I'd be honored to.
And then Donald Trump said, We're going to go a different direction.
And then it's like, oh, okay, yeah.
So that's exactly who you are.
What a fucking alpha move.
Just bitched that guy out.
Just bitched him out.
But yeah, it was also in every way also that it was like, you know, then Mitt Romney came out, and which, by the way, I actually forgot about the other week.
I was, you know, it's funny, the last episode I was asking, is there anything that you could compare Hillary Clinton coming out and shitting on Bernie Sanders to?
But that's the comparison right there.
Is when Mitt Romney came out in the middle of the nomination process, the previous nominee, and said anybody but Donald Trump.
And it was just like crickets.
Like nobody gave a shit.
Everybody was like, yeah, fuck you, Mitt.
This is our guy.
And, you know, whether you like Trump or don't like Trump or, you know, hate Trump or whatever, there's something really interesting about that that you're like, oh, wow, the last nominee comes out and says, this guy cannot be our nominee.
And nobody cared.
Like, it had no effect on them whatsoever.
Free Market Property Rights Debate00:16:00
They were like, no.
In fact, I think it actually bolstered his case.
And I think the same thing is happening with Bernie Sanders right now.
Like, I think that's another part of it.
When you see CNN trying to make him look bad and it's obvious, that kind of like strengthens Bernie Sanders' hand because it's like, see, the establishment's fucking afraid of me.
And that's the same thing that happened with Donald Trump.
All right.
Anyway, I guess we'll see where all of this goes.
All right.
So for the rest of the show, I guess it'll probably take, hopefully we can get through this.
But I did want to address that because I felt like I, you know, I talked about this on the show before.
And, you know, it's a topic I care about a lot.
But this guy, Andrew Kern, over at the Principled Libertarian, he wrote an article.
I think you might have been out that episode that I talked about it.
But he wrote an article responding to a podcast I had done about immigration.
And then I went through it and kind of responded back to it.
And he wrote another article back.
And this one I have not read.
I read, I think, the first two paragraphs of.
But I was thinking we have some extra time on the show today, so maybe I'd read it and respond back to it.
Now, full disclosure, I haven't read this whole thing, so I'm going to go in fresh and go in open-minded as well.
You know, I do, I find this topic to be really interesting and what the libertarian position on immigration ought to be.
I am a guy who, like, I like to get into these like, you know, libertarian autist thought experiments, but I like to operate from first principles and not just like, you know, from a kind of consequentialist point of view.
So I think it's interesting to talk about these things.
And there's a lot of debate amongst a lot of really good people who, you know, in the liberty movement who feel differently on immigration.
So I'd be interested to take this on.
And I appreciate Andrew.
I think he's pretty straightforward with the arguments that he makes.
He keeps the articles fairly concise.
Let me actually just scroll through this one so I'm not.
Yeah, okay, reasonably concise.
I was going to say that, and then you're like, 16 pages.
Oh, shit.
We're not going to get through this.
But anyway, so the article is over at principledlibertarian.com and it's titled Dave Smith, A Reply to a Reply to a Reply.
So this throw one more reply on there and that would be what we're doing.
I like the time.
Now.
Yeah, it's pretty good.
All right.
So let's read from the article and me and you can both kind of give our thoughts on it.
All right.
So Dave Smith recently took the time to respond to my last article, which was a reply to an episode where he discussed immigration.
My primary goal in the article was to show that some other value or principle besides simply upholding property rights should be acknowledged as a part of libertarianism.
I argued that while libertarians ought to be limited to only legal political questions, property rights are not enough to cover every legal or political issue.
A number of times Dave expressed disagreement on this point.
He maintained that everything can be boiled down to upholding property rights.
However, I think he is really appealing to two separate values.
Okay.
Fair enough.
Now, just I would just say in there that it's not, I would say property rights and the non-aggression principle are to me the libertarian business and everything gets deduced from there.
And that's not to say that that, again, like I don't want to repeat everything I said last time, but that's not to say that that describes every value you have in life, but that is what libertarianism is about.
So, you know, that's, it's, it's a legal, it's a moral legal theory.
It's the idea of what the law ought to be.
And yes, that is what I like, I still believe.
I don't think there are other values that are a part of libertarianism.
Now, that is, and it's hard to kind of separate this sometimes.
That doesn't mean that libertarians don't care about other values.
And that doesn't mean that libertarians should care about other values.
For example, right?
Libertarians, I think it would not only be reasonable, but absolutely preferable for libertarians to care about families.
Say something like that.
Like, I think it's a good idea for libertarians to care about people being raised well by their families.
Now, that is completely separate from libertarianism, but if you got a bunch of kids who aren't taken care of, what are the odds, a bunch of kids that aren't taken care of, aren't educated, aren't raised, right?
What's the odds that you're really going to have a peaceful society where people aren't demanding welfare and things like that?
You know what I mean?
So you could say there are these other values that would help support this legal order or help support a libertarian society, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a part of the law or a part of libertarianism.
Okay, back to the article.
Dave explains that when there is not private property due to government-imposed public property, we should support less initiation of violence against peaceful people or a policy that is closer to how it might work in a private property-based system.
Dave contends both still come from property rights and the non-aggression principle.
In a sense, they do, but surely he would admit there is a distinction between not aggressing against people and supporting policies that we predict a private owner might enforce.
After all, these two things have plenty of potential to conflict.
It is only the fact that a private owner legitimately owns his land that makes enforcement of his rules not aggressive.
These are really two separate values that Dave is appealing to.
So, yeah, look, I'm not like, I'm not saying there's nothing to that.
Yes, if there is a government involved, it's not going to be perfectly libertarian.
But if a libertarian, if you're going to say, what should a libertarian think that we ought to do while the government is involved in a certain area?
Well, the number one thing we want to do is abolish the government, get the government out of the area.
That's obviously the ultimate goal.
Short of that, we would probably prefer something that's closer to that situation.
So I don't think these are two different values.
It's like there's a North Star and I'd like to, you know, like I'd like to move in that direction.
So if I am, you know, let's say whatever, your end goal is 100 feet away.
If I'm saying let's move 50 feet in that direction, it's still motivated by what the end goal is.
So just like an obvious example of this, if the current tax rate is 30, you know, 5% for people making whatever, like $100,000 a year, let's just say it's 35% is their federal income taxes.
And there's a proposal to reduce that to 15%.
I might say, well, I think we should abolish the income tax altogether, but I would also be for reducing it to 15% because that is closer to the goal.
And there will be less initiation of violence.
Like there'll be less theft at 15% than there is at 35%.
And then you could also make a bunch of like practical arguments for why this will be better for the economy and things like that.
But yes, I would still support that.
And that's not appealing to something separate from wanting to abolish the income tax.
The same principles that make you want to abolish the income tax would make you want to reduce its burden.
All right.
So there's that's my first response.
Okay.
Predictions.
For one thing, we can't really know what private owners would do.
This is part of the reason markets are so important.
We need those private actors with their decentralized knowledge operating with the feedback of profit and loss in order to allocate resources effectively.
So this principle is problematic to begin with.
On the one hand, to suggest, as Rothbard does, that open borders really amounts to a compulsory opening by the central state contradicts the evidence we have and economic reasoning regarding discrimination.
If Dave does want to embrace the principles of mirroring predicted private property owners' decision in regard to government immigration policy, open borders seems to be a close approximation.
Okay, so there's basically two arguments that he's making in there.
One, I completely agree with, one, I don't.
That you can predict how things would work in a free market, but that's hard to do.
And we don't exactly know, you know, how they're going to work out.
I completely agree with that.
And that's why you'd want a free market and we'll figure it out.
Yeah, I mean, this is a major, major problem with central planning.
But if we're already conceding that the government's involved, so what do we want to do with this?
Either way, we're predicting.
We don't fucking know.
And yes, it would be way better.
Now, to predict that there would be open borders, I do not think that that is accurate.
But maybe we can get into that because I think he's about to make his case for why we would predict that.
I do think, right, like in some of the examples I used before, it's fairly reasonable to predict, you know, like in the direction of what you think this would look like.
So like I said before, and I'm going to keep coming back to this example because I think it is an important one.
Not that it's the perfect comparison to immigration, but again, if you were to say whether like a public school and should we allow anyone to wander into the public school whenever they want to, and you're like, no.
Sorry, I think it's perfectly reasonable for a libertarian to say no.
And I think it's fair to predict that if this was a private school, they would not let someone just enter and start shooting up heroin in the middle of a classroom.
I'm basing that off every single private school that exists.
So I think there's a pretty strong argument.
But that being said, I guess you're right.
I don't technically know that for sure.
I don't know that there wouldn't be a private school whose policy was open borders.
Now, that being said, my guess is nobody would send their children there and that school would go out of business.
But even in that sense, you don't know for sure that there wouldn't be some crazy people.
Now, obviously, I'm using an extreme example, but I'm just saying I still think in that case, it's reasonable to say, well, it probably wouldn't work like this in a private society and it's going to be a fucking disaster if we do it.
So maybe there's an argument to not doing it.
Okay.
The one major, back to the article, the one major factor that presumably encourages more migration than there otherwise would be is welfare.
But there are many other things that would encourage more migration into a libertarian society.
Even now, it's impossible to ignore that the wages immigrants from underdeveloped countries increase dramatically when they move.
Mexicans with similar work experience and education average 250% higher real wages merely by residing in the U.S. For Bolivia and Ecuador, it's five-fold increases.
Haitians experience a 1,000% gain.
Some African countries like Egypt and Nigeria are even higher.
Combine this with the fact that foreign-born have a relatively high labor force participation rate, especially foreign-born men, 77.9% versus 67.3% for native-born men.
And it seems likely, or it seems like the tremendously higher compensation in the U.S. would be an important motivation for migrants.
The other stark difference between the United States and many South American countries is the rate of violent crime.
On average, immigrants from Mexico decrease the chance of being murdered by 80%.
Some countries are more than that.
Okay, so look, there's no question that I think that's true.
There's no argument here that you're going to live a wealthier life if you come to America than if you stay in a third world country.
And there is a lot of the immigration that's motivated by that.
And quite possibly that incentive would still exist.
But it's not just as simple as saying, oh, we have this giant welfare state, and also people can make way higher wages.
So wouldn't that attract, like, wouldn't more people come?
You know, like, or wouldn't a lot of people still come if, you know, there wasn't the welfare state or something like that?
Or is welfare not really the magnet here?
The point is that you get different people with different magnets.
Okay.
So yes, if you have, like, this, this is just basic incentives, right?
But if you have a welfare state, you will draw in more people who want welfare than you would if you didn't have a welfare state.
That's like a basic Misesian a priori deduction.
Okay.
So yeah, that's so that's a problem.
We wouldn't be drawing in people like that.
If you have a free society with no welfare state, you're going to draw in more people who want to work and contribute.
If you have a not free society with a welfare state, you will draw in more people who want to get on welfare.
So this is a major problem.
All people aren't the same.
And it's going to be a different type of person who gets drawn in.
Again, not to say that we're not drawing in a lot of good people who want to work, but we also have this giant welfare state that is a reality.
If we're talking about government policy within an area where government is already intervening, you have to deal with the facts on the ground.
And yes, but yes, there's much less violence.
There's much more money to be made in America.
Completely agree with all of that.
Back to the article.
I think it's safe to say libertarians agree that without local NIMBYism, rents would be lower.
Without all of the numerous interventions in the economy, including in inflationary currency, real wages would be higher.
And with fully privatized security and criminal justice, crime rates would be lower.
What's NIMBYism?
You know, I'm not sure I'd have to look that up, but I have a feeling it's referring to like zoning laws and regulation in the housing market.
I'm actually not sure.
I think I've heard it before, though.
If true, then high wages and low crime become even more pronounced as motivations for immigration.
Further, imagine how much more appealing the U.S. becomes if there was actually a free market in healthcare, housing, education, and every other industry.
Yeah.
So I think the flaw in this line of thinking is, and I certainly agree with a lot of that, but that's like saying imagine, so imagine all these libertarian policies would make things a lot better.
Therefore, more and more people would want to come, right?
Okay, so making things better.
Yeah, but without forced social benefits, human beings are a form of capital.
So if you're attracting people, that's generally speaking a good thing.
If all industries are running and you have a totally free market and there isn't, like, you know, there aren't social benefits where you're forced taxation to give benefits to these people.
So if they want to show up in their industries that want to use them because they're a good source of labor, that's a win for everybody.
Yeah, that's not what we're discussing.
Well, no, and but I also think that I agree with you, but I also think there's another piece that we're missing.
If you're saying that this is that these libertarian policies are going to make us richer, safer, better.
So like wages will be higher.
And I think he correctly said real wages, you know, not nominal, but like we didn't have this inflationary policy.
So like crime is going to be lower, wages are going to be higher.
We will be wealthier and more successful.
Economic Benefits of Open Borders00:14:49
And therefore that will draw in more people or more people who want will want to live there.
Absolutely true.
But that's not the whole story.
So let's take a look at somewhere where people are really successful.
They're really rich.
There's really low crime.
People are making money and shit like that.
Take Beverly Hills or something like that.
Well, okay, lots of people want to move to Beverly Hills.
Lots of people would like to live there, but I don't see a mass flood of third world immigrants piling in there because there's also measures to keep them out.
There's also gated communities and fucking now.
You can argue that the cost of living would be lower, but the truth is the nicer areas get, that's where it's going to be more expensive.
So that's a market force.
And the other market force is that people don't have to let you in.
And my guess is, if we're actually looking at human beings and the way human beings work, do you think that, like, just be honest, this might be a little uncomfortable to talk about, but do you think areas that are really, really successful tend to like bringing in huge numbers of migrants from third world countries?
I think those areas usually aren't where they're going to end up going.
That's not to say there wouldn't be other areas where they would go.
You see, the market can do both.
Like, my honest guess is that in an anarcho-capitalist society, and again, I can see it.
We don't know.
You'd have to like run the experiment and find out exactly how it would work.
I know it would be the best possible solution and the most ethical one.
But I think there would be some areas where a lot of people were welcome in and others where they were very exclusive and, you know, didn't let people in.
That would be my guess.
Okay.
So hold on, wait.
Where did I?
Okay.
This still, back to the article, this still opens the possibility that property owners could exclude foreigners.
Sure, some might.
I agree with Dave that residential areas would probably be more restrictive, while commercial areas would be more open.
The most important question, though, is what owners of major roadways would do.
As long as major highways allow foreigners to travel, then an immigrant might, then an immigrant will have access to countless private businesses and housing units, of which at least some will undoubtedly be willing to engage in mutual transactions.
So, okay, I mean, I don't necessarily disagree with that.
Like, right, some would be willing to engage.
The problem is that right now they're all forced to, right?
So that's kind of the issue.
And, you know, it's also, you know, if you're being honest about this, it's like, right, so they're not going into Beverly Hills.
They're not there because just the price of admission kind of keeps them out there.
So where they end up going into is a lot of these poorer residential communities.
And then they attend the public schools that those people, you know, their kids attend their public schools and they've got English as a second language and all this stuff.
And like those people aren't happy about it because the state has disarmed them against having any means of protecting their own neighborhoods and cultures or whatever they want, which the libertarian ethic is more or less that both parties should be consenting to any interaction or any association.
All right.
Discrimination is costly.
It's difficult to imagine a profit-seeking firm that manages a highway discriminating based on country of origin.
Discrimination in business is costly and the enforcement of discrimination.
A highway that did screen for nationalities would tend to be out-competed by others that did not.
The former not only would need to invest in more enforcement mechanisms, but they would also lose revenue due to excluding a significant number of customers.
Even in the post-Reconstruction South, when the culture of racism was endemic, there was widespread opposition to segregation laws by businesses.
Just as rascals needed to utilize the power of government force, excuse me, just as racists needed to utilize the power of, that's a funny thing to call racists.
That's fucking rascal.
Just as racists needed to utilize the power of government force to impose discrimination, the exclusion of immigrants from the country required the same top-down force.
While there is some cultural opposition to immigrants, it does not come close to the racism present then.
Again, plenty of property owners could still exclude foreigners, but as long as some don't, the result would be similar to open government borders, where generally speaking, immigrants would be allowed on roadways, on trains, on airports, and able to travel to private property whose owners welcome them.
Okay, I don't disagree with this, right?
Like, I don't really disagree that yes, in a libertarian society, probably you wouldn't have, well, well, you wouldn't have government borders.
There would be lots of areas that were like open to the public.
And then there would be some that are not.
The problem, and this is the point Rothbard was making, is that when you have government running the borders, government running the roads, government running the schools, government running the welfare state, all of it's open to them, which is a compulsory opening.
So that's also an initiation of violence.
So it's kind of like it's a compulsory closing or a compulsory opening.
That's the idea.
And to say that opening is closer to the libertarian solution, well, no, I mean, you're just pointing out the areas where opening would be closer.
So you point out the idea that segregation is bad for business.
Discrimination is bad for business.
Well, fair enough.
I mean, that's true in many, many instances.
Not all, but in many, it is.
So in many instances, right, if you're a lunch counter and you're serving hamburgers and there's a whites only sign out there, there's some black guy who's like, I'd like to buy a hamburger from you.
Here's my money.
And you're like, no, because you're black, I won't take your money.
Well, obviously, that's not good for business in that sense.
And the, you know, like whatever, if somebody else is willing to take that money superficially, well, they're getting more money.
They're getting more business.
However, I think you're a little bit defeated there by your own argument where you kind of say, well, we don't know how the market would work, right?
We don't know how market.
Well, maybe if there really was a racist culture, it's possible that you could see it actually being bad for business to like if there's a group of people who don't want to be integrated and you're like, well, this lunch counter takes everybody in.
I'll take black or white people's money.
And maybe there's a group of white people who are like, no, I don't, I don't want to go to a restaurant where there's black people.
I'm just saying, I don't know.
But I tend to think you're right in that situation.
I tend to think that the market solves most of these problems.
It at least shows you who the bigots are, and usually they'll be out-competed in examples like that for, you know, enforcing segregated business spaces.
However, to say that segregation is just a state-enforced policy, I think is a little bit misleading and inaccurate.
Okay.
So, yes, you can look to examples of state-enforced segregation.
That was horrific and really just, you know, terrible.
And, you know, compulsory segregation is horrible.
And I think compulsory integration is terrible too.
People should be allowed to self-organize and associate with who they want to.
But when they are allowed to do that, you actually do see a lot of segregation, like a lot.
I mean, like New York City here where we live, and it's not, you know, as blatant as it used to be.
But, you know, there are these areas like Chinatown, Little Italy.
You know, like there's all of these different little quadrants where different ethnicities go and live or nationalities or whatever go and live around people of the same nationality.
And it's not because the government enforced that.
It's not because there was any, this was not a top-down phenomenon.
This was bottom-up.
It's that people wanted to associate where they wanted to associate.
And if you look at just about every area of life, not just economic, you're right that business is more where you find the integration because people care about making money.
But if you look at where people go to churches and temples, if you look at where people, the neighborhoods people live in, and there's still a whole lot of segregation.
And it's not so clear to me that there wouldn't be a lot of that in a free society.
I think by your own argument, we could at least say we don't really know.
We're not completely sure.
Okay.
Finally, Dave says our last requirement for choosing a government policy is that it shouldn't be a, quote, fucking disaster.
Agreed.
This is more or less what I meant by libertarians should generally support as little government regulation as possible.
Yes, a heroin addict in a classroom seems like a disaster.
Foreigners in the country do not.
For starters, immigration creates jobs.
By extending the division of labor and increasing consumer demand, this paper estimated each immigrant creates 1.2 local jobs for local workers.
And even immigration critics recognized immigrants raise real wages of natives by around 0.2% and increase economic output by about 36 billion in the year 2010.
Okay.
So the argument comes down, and what you seem to have kind of conceded here is that we can make our decision based on what we think will be, to use my term, a fucking disaster.
But of course, that is now, this is like I said, and I was making the point myself.
This is fairly vague.
And so what about now you just wonder where you can push this principle to?
Can you say, like, if it's a fucking disaster, what if it's very likely going to be a disaster?
What if it's very likely just going to be really, really bad and have really bad consequences?
Okay.
So now you can say that there's a lot of things about the freedom of free movement of people that is economically beneficial.
I don't deny that.
Absolutely.
A lot of it is economically beneficial.
There's no question about that.
There's and you can find papers to back that up and stuff like that.
How about voting patterns?
Is that economically beneficial?
Is it economically beneficial when the Democrats take Texas?
Now, I don't know.
I mean, look, the Republicans are pretty bad.
They deserve to fucking, you know, get destroyed.
And the Democrats are, you know, like obviously bad too.
But I'm just saying, is it possible that that's going to have some pretty bad effects?
Certainly seems like a strong possibility to me.
Is it possible that bringing in a million people a year, a million people a year, many of whom, you know, go on welfare, many of whom burden the system, not saying all, not even saying most, not saying even more than add to the system, right?
But that's not the point alone.
So if we're bringing in all of these people, let's even say like, so we bring in a million people a year, about 90% of them are from the third world.
And then there's just, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands more come in illegally.
We really don't fucking know what the number is, but there's tens of millions of illegal immigrants here in the country.
And there's just millions and millions and millions of people who legally immigrated into the country.
Let's say 90% of them contribute to society.
Let's just say of the legal immigrants, 90% of them get jobs, contribute to society, don't take a dime on welfare.
10% of them go on welfare and don't contribute to society.
It's 100,000 a year of people who are just on welfare.
Can that have some problems?
The only point I'm trying to make, and this is the only point I've been trying to make from the beginning, is that it's not as clear-cut as the open borders advocates try to make it out to be.
And that's really been the heart of this issue.
All right, let's keep reading.
Dave's primary fear seems to be the potential votes of immigrants.
That's true.
Judging by our current immigration views, this fear is overblown.
First-generation migrants' answer to questions about taxation levels, welfare spending, and government aid to the poor are statistically insignificant compared to later generations.
Perhaps this is due to what Brian Kaplan calls status quo basis, status quo bias.
Most people don't like to rock the boat.
Regardless, immigrants vote at much lower levels than native borns.
Anyway, legal immigrants vote around 10% less often than natives, while illegal migrants vote at very low levels.
If voting Democrat is what bothers you, immigrants have favored different political parties throughout the years.
So that is not a permanent fact.
Right.
But when and what immigrants favored which party?
You got to look into that a little bit.
I'm sorry.
The reality of the situation is that if Donald Trump were to carry 20% of the Latino vote in America, it would be a home run for him.
Okay.
They're voting in best case scenario, they're voting.
You should throw more parades.
Well, yeah, probably.
But at least 80% of them are going to end up voting for the Democrats.
And you can see this effect in California and places like that.
There's also, if you want to look into it, there's a lot of studies that have been done on illegal immigrants voting.
There's one major study that seems to show that Al Franken won his seat in Minnesota because of illegals voting.
And that was the determining vote for Obamacare.
So this is like a real life consequence.
Now, I don't know if this meets our fucking disaster level, but Obamacare versus not having Obamacare.
That's a really big difference.
Like that's a tangible, real difference in less freedom in the economy and in people's lives.
Less Government Intervention Needed00:04:55
So I just, you know, I think it's comfortable.
You got a tit grabber elected.
You're okay with that?
Yeah.
That's right.
It's my favorite thing about him.
So don't ruin that for me.
While problems can arise, immigration is far from a disaster.
And I think the burden of proof rests on whoever thinks that it will be such a disaster that we need government intervention.
So far, I'm not convinced.
Further, it's mirroring what private property owners would do in a privatized society is our goal.
It appears that open borders would be more accurate.
Again, it's not really true.
It's not open borders wouldn't be more accurate.
Actually, it would be, you know, probably lots of open borders and lots of completely closed off borders.
And that's next to impossible to completely mirror in a society where the government runs the borders.
But let me just say, and this is one of the things that bothers me, right?
It's not, and I appreciate Andrew.
I think he's being like honest and straightforward in his arguments.
And I think there's a lot of truth to a lot of what he's saying.
That's why I'm also, I wouldn't just come out for closed borders.
And I've never done that.
I'm just saying that to me, they're almost equally reasonable from a libertarian perspective.
It's why I also won't be for open borders.
There's got to be some type of system in place.
And I've said for a while, I think localizing immigration controls, you know, voter ID laws, invite, you know, policy where you sponsorship policy, I think all of these are like fairly reasonable libertarian compromises.
But just when you say, well, the onus is on you if you want more government intervention.
It's like, look, I am not advocating for more government intervention.
That's not what I'm advocating for.
And in fact, if there was a complete closing of the border, like wall was built, you could argue that's far less government intervention.
It's not government rounding people up all the time.
It's not government doing this.
Like so many, you would eliminate the need to have this like border, you know, constitution free zones that expend that extend like 100 miles into the country.
I think in many ways it might be much less government intervention.
But it's just, it irks me when people go, well, the onus is on you to argue for more government intervention.
The whole reason I'm thinking about this issue is because I want less government intervention.
The whole idea is, is bringing in a voting block for the Democratic Party, which I really think is hard to deny that.
You can say immigrants have done, yes, you're right.
When like fucking, you know, German immigrants were coming over in the 1920s.
Maybe they weren't, you know, all voting for the Democrats, or maybe they were.
But the point is, like, the voters that we're bringing in right now, Latino South American voters are coming in and block voting for the Democrats.
And that's why the Democrats are all about fucking bringing in more immigrants.
You know what I mean?
This is, I think, fairly straightforward.
The question is, you know, is that going to lead to a lot more government intervention?
And that's the concern.
And so if they're raising native wages by 0.02% or whatever, which maybe is true, I don't know.
But even if that's true, is that worth giving the party of AOC and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren the country?
And that seems like that, because that to me does smell a lot like a fucking disaster.
And again, it's not that the Republicans are great.
They're pretty damn bad.
And truthfully speaking, about 80% of the Republicans, the establishment 80%, are basically no different than the establishment 80% of the Democrats.
But I don't think it's unfair for a libertarian.
It's like, we're not exactly egalitarians here, right?
Like we don't have to believe in this bullshit thing.
It's like if you have two political parties, there's no reason to assume that they're both equally exactly the same level of bad.
And if you look at, say, The radicals in the Republican Party, it is, you know, Rand Paul, you know, Mike Lee, Thomas Massey, Justin Amash, like the best people are all on the Republican side.
And the fringes, which are becoming kind of the mainstream of the Democratic Party, are the AOCs, Ilhan Omars, fucking Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warrens.
Like those, you know, Elizabeth Warren isn't really fringe, but that's kind of coming from that party.
So forgive me if I worry about giving that party every national office.
Freaks me out a little bit.
And I think it could be very, very bad.
Anyway, I appreciate Andrew responding.
And, you know, maybe we'll leave it at that.
I think he's made his points and we've made ours.
Catch Us Next in Boston00:00:44
All right.
That's our show for today.
Don't forget, come see me and Rob.
It's possible that there's a couple tickets still left in Boston.
Sold out.
Definitely, 100%.
Yeah, you were too late.
We're going to be back there at some point.
Well, now you're going to feel like a dick if there's four seats open, and we said that.
No, I confirmed that.
Oh, you confirmed this tweak.
You confirmed that.
Yeah, they wanted to add shows, and I said, no, we're not adding those shows.
No, we couldn't add that.
These people couldn't add.
They're late with their tickets.
They'll be on time the next time.
All right.
So anyway, for Phillip.
Philadelphia, February 21st, live podcast, live comedy show.