James Smith and Robbie Bernstein analyze Biden's collapse following Trump's acquittal, labeling the impeachment a failed deep state coup. They critique a desperate Biden ad attacking Pete Buttigieg's local record and condemn Bill Maher's hypocrisy regarding Steve Bannon and the "deep state." The discussion highlights Bannon's defense of Trump's administrative dismantling against Maher's civil liberties concerns, while exposing bipartisan fiscal hypocrisy. Ultimately, the hosts argue that Trump's aggressive rhetoric allows conservatives to finally push back against years of media labeling, signaling a profound shift in American political dynamics. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Too Big00:04:37
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.
Woo!
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
It is good to be back in the studio, back in New York City, and back with my BFF, the king of the cocks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What's up, brother?
Dude, we had a fun time up in Boston.
We sure as fuck did.
Great show in Boston.
Big thank you to everybody who came out.
We sold that bitch out.
It was a killer fucking show.
So much fun.
BK Chris killed it.
Robbie the Fire Bernstein torched that motherfucker.
And I changed a few lives, if I do say so myself.
Very, very fun.
Thank you to our great Boston audience fans who came out.
My favorite part is our fans know us and we're doing nothing but jokes and they're all fucking hilarious and everyone's murdering.
But the look on the staff, just because the jokes are so different and like, if you didn't know better, you're like, is this a Trump rally?
What the fuck is going on here?
But you're like, yeah, but you know, it's only part.
I mean, the proceeds did go to Trump's reelection campaign, sure.
But I wouldn't call it a Trump rally.
I mean, he Skyped in and spoke to the crowd for a little bit.
Oh, yeah.
No, it's not.
It's not your fucking, you know, with these guys who run like a comedy club.
That's probably a lot of like, you know, local Boston guys coming up.
And it's probably not exactly what they're used to.
But I'll tell you, I saw a lot of...
The owner loved us.
I saw the owner cracking up there.
I saw the girl who is managing the place was cracking up.
And so that's always, that makes me feel good where I'm like, okay, I know we're pushing the line, but everyone's laughing.
And that's, you know.
So anyway, no, they were very happy with us.
And more importantly, we sold the bitch out and made him some money.
So that's what really matters in this world.
But anyway, don't forget also on the 21st, me and Robbie Bernstein will be in Philly at Frankie Bradley's, a live podcast and a live stand-up show, two separate shows.
Come out to one or the other or both.
We're excited for that.
Those are going to sell out as well.
So go get your tickets now.
There's still some tickets available for that.
Don't be like the people in Boston who were tweeting me the day of and the day before, like, oh shit, I forgot.
Can you get me in?
I can't.
There's no more.
We're at capacity.
So we're going to sell out in Philly too.
Make sure you come out to that one as well.
But yeah, loved it.
Had a great time in Boston.
Definitely regret the late night McDonald's.
I don't know what I was thinking.
Holy shit.
I cannot, I can't.
My body just couldn't handle it.
You're in the moment, man.
We're on the road.
I was like, oh, I was like, oh, there's a McDonald's.
I was like, I'm going to get some.
And then I went, no, I'm not.
And I went, fucking, I'm going to get McDonald's.
And it was great.
It was just a classic McDonald's experience.
It was great in the moment.
And it was like the second I ate the last bite.
I went, fuck.
Oh, no.
Why would I do that?
Now I just have to live with this.
And I swear to God, I had a two-day McDonald's hangover after that shit.
Anyway, I'm back.
I've never seen someone body shut down quicker.
You finished that last bite.
I finished the last bite and I was just out.
Yeah.
Out.
I finished.
Anyway, it was, you know, hey, you live and you learn.
And this is the week.
I'm up at Steamboat Springs.
I'm going to be skiing with a couple people during the day and Steamboat Comedy's second annual Desperation Day, which is a great, great label for a show.
They both have Valentine's Day.
Valentine's Day.
I'll be there eating sandwiches, sleeping with some people's wives.
Very good.
Bring them.
Sounds good.
I'm just going to take my wife out to dinner, who I love.
Okay.
Anyway, so go see Rob if you're if you're in that area.
Make sure you go check him out.
Hilarious.
Rob is fucking on fire up in Boston.
It was fun.
I've been, you know, me and you used to do stand-up shows together like all the time, and we don't work together as much now.
So it was fun to see all your new stuff.
Really, really funny stuff.
Anyway, so much going on.
So much that we haven't talked about that I don't even know where, where to begin.
But I guess let me try to fucking Dave Smith big picture my way into this.
All right.
Big picture of the last two weeks.
Probably the best two weeks of Donald Trump's presidency from Trump's perspective.
Trump's Impeachment Victory00:06:50
I mean, just about everyone's admitting this.
Even Bill Maher is admitting this.
We're going to play a clip from him a little bit later in the show.
He's, you know, I saw even like CNN and MSNBC panelists are like, it's starting to hit them that man, everything this week or everything over the last two weeks really could not have come up better for Donald Trump.
So obviously Donald Trump is acquitted on this ridiculous fucking impeachment.
It was the ending that we all knew was going to happen.
And, you know, I don't know what to say.
It's like, I'm not even taking a victory lap on this one the way I did with the Mueller report, where we're like, yeah, we told you there was fucking nothing here.
But it is just, I don't understand how so many people and some good people who I know actually got sucked into this thing and thinking that this was anything more than what it obviously was, which was a partisan, deep state attempted coup over a non-existent scandal, a non-existent scandal.
Donald Trump, the idea, look, if you're going to impeach a president, there's two things that you need because it's not illegal.
It's really not a legal criteria.
And look, in the same way, like there are some legal criterias to like a court of law, right?
But once you go to trial, the truth is, what really matters is what the jury votes, right?
So what is enough evidence, like what proves beyond a reasonable doubt?
Well, it's what these 12 jurors think.
And if they all think you're guilty, then you're found guilty.
Like that's really what it comes down to.
Now, obviously, the judge has a lot of discretion and what they can allow and what they won't and all that stuff.
But and sometimes the judge doesn't even have discretion.
It's just the rules of the court proceeding.
Like there's these different procedural things, but it comes down to what these people vote on.
And when it comes down to an impeachment, you know, it's what Congress decides is an impeachable offense.
You know, the Constitution is somewhat vague about it, right?
Like it's like treason, high crimes, and other high crimes and misdemeanors or whatever the exact language is.
So it's what Congress decides.
But practically speaking, when it actually comes down to like the logistical reality, what you need if you're going to impeach and remove a sitting president of the United States is you need to be able to have it be a bipartisan effort to some degree.
You're going to need, you have to have it, otherwise the appearance is just terrible.
Even if the Democrats had the majority in the Senate and the House, if just the Democrats are voting him removed, then it just comes off as like, so you guys just lost the election and now you're nobody except your party supports this.
So that's better.
We've never actually had an impeachment that was completely partisan until this one with the exception of Mitt Romney in the Senate.
But like for Clinton, they pulled over some Democrats and even for Nixon, they had a whole bunch of Republicans who were on board, even though he resigned.
But that's part of the reason why.
Anyway, but the real thing, just in terms of, you know, the logistics of impeaching and removing a president is you have to be able to convince the American people that this was something really messed up that happened here.
This was something wrong.
And to have an article of impeachment as vague as abuse of power, you got to really show, look, this is like an abuse of power.
Anyone would look at this and go, oh, yeah, you can't.
You can't do that.
And the abuse of power that they were going for was that Donald Trump planned on leveraging foreign aid to get something.
He never ended up getting it and he never ended up holding back the foreign aid, but he was thinking about it.
And like, well, where does he exactly say that?
Well, he kind of said, you know, I'd like to see you investigate these people.
But did he say you won't get the foreign aid unless you investigate the Biden?
Well, no, but that's kind of what he was thinking.
And here's someone else who testifies that that's the impression that he got, even though he never actually said it to him.
This was just like, so even if he did the thing, it's really, really debatable that this is an abuse of power that rises to impeachment and removal.
And he never did it.
And no one actually has him saying, this is what I'm doing.
It was so weak, so weak to say this should be the first president ever impeached and removed when the abuses of power.
I mean, if you just want to use that vague term, that you could just rattle off every president since Woodrow Wilson, I mean, oof, and several before him.
This was nothing.
It's not even close to, it's not in Trump's top 20 abuses of power, but they don't want to go after him for the other abuses of power because they're like, well, that's what every president does.
And we reserve the right for our next president to do that.
So we can't, you know, set a bad precedent.
Anyway, so Donald Trump now, this is a huge, huge victory for him.
Not only did he get acquitted and the Democrats look like, you know, they just did this for purely political reasons, which they obviously did.
It's not just that.
It's that Trump's approval ratings are actually at all time highs coming out of this thing.
He didn't take any licks from it.
It didn't damage him at all.
If anything, it just put the story about Hunter Biden, the Biden's corruption in the news for months.
And that seems to have had an effect.
We'll get to that, which is the second big picture story.
But Trump comes out of this.
And now it's like, okay, you guys were talking about impeaching me from before I got into office.
Finally, after three years, you move forward with impeachment off this bullshit.
Nobody fucking cares about it, except the people who would have been happy to see Trump impeached for anything.
Nobody fucking cares about it.
And now he's acquitted.
And now the impeachment process, even as Democrats and the corporate press, but I repeat myself, are saying, they go, the impeachment process has been completely neutered now.
Because unless you have something really, really huge, to try to move forward with impeachment again will just be like, guys, you can't just keep impeaching your way out of a policy you don't like.
Now they've got to try to beat Trump in the election.
And that's just the reality of the situation, no matter how you feel about the whole process.
So that was a huge victory for Donald Trump to be able to come out of an impeachment.
You know, he's only the third president in American history to be impeached, and he's come out unscathed.
That's huge, huge for Trump.
Then, of course, there's the Iowa debacle.
Just couldn't have worked out better for Donald Trump.
Iowa Debacle Fallout00:05:49
Just look, what a shit show this Iowa caucus was.
And it's not, you know, it does seem to be a wee bit shady.
Hey, man, they flipped coins and fair is fair.
That's the heart of democracy in 2020.
Technology at its best.
We're going to flip a coin.
We're going to have some kid who's not even sure if he's supposed to flip the coin twice, isn't even that official of a coin toss.
But what could be more fair than a guy who flips a coin?
Yeah, it's just, I mean, and they all seem to go for Buttigiege.
It's weird.
And yet somehow Mr. Sanders had more of the popular vote, but because of this coin flip system, he doesn't win the state.
And did you see there's this clip that was going, getting passed around, it was going viral of Buddhajudge actually saying months ago when he was ripping on Donald Trump, he's like, you know, call me old-fashioned, but I think the person who gets more votes should be the one who's elected president of the United States.
And it's just, oh, yeah, all the Democrats.
This is just something about like the Trump era is that this just keeps happening.
Everything the Democrats say comes back to bite them in the ass.
And they've gone all in on this like, well, the popular vote is really what matters.
And now, of course, when Bernie Sanders gets more votes on a statewide election where there's actually a much stronger argument that the popular vote is what should matter and not this delegate system, that's anyway.
So that's, you know, but of course, these other people don't want to make that argument because they don't want Bernie Sanders to win.
You said Pete officially wins by one.
Well, I don't know that it's actually official, but as of right now, the Democratic Party of Iowa is saying that Pete Buttigieg got one more delegate than Bernie Sanders did, even though Bernie Sanders got about 6,000 more initial ballot first choices or whatever, you know, the equivalent of what a popular vote in a caucus would be.
Now, look, I'll say this, right?
It is fair.
Yeah, so that's, oh, I guess it's two, according to this source.
The Associated Press is now saying that it's two.
564 delegates to 562 to Bernie Sanders.
It's like a John Jones victory.
It's just on the card.
Yeah, just on the card.
I mean, sure, you know, it seemed like he lost three rounds and only won two, but you know what?
Fuck it.
It's the greatest ever.
Pete Buttigieg.
So, but now look, if it was just an isolated incident, just this Iowa thing, I suppose maybe you could make an argument like, hey, there was no funny business here.
This is just, you know, it's like, oh, the app fucked up or whatever.
But there were a few things about the way it happened that seemed pretty fishy.
And then if you also take the broader context into this, you know, it's like if you, if you have like a, like a girlfriend who you know has cheated on you 12 times and then, you know, she like doesn't come home one night and she comes back and like her hair is messed up and she's fucking, you know, smells like booze or something.
And, you know, then like you see there's a text from some other guy on her fucking phone.
By the way, this is hypothetical.
This is not a story about me.
Anyway, but if you see, right, like it, maybe if she is like a really loyal girlfriend who never does anything like that, you'd be like, well, she would never do that.
But if you know that she's tweeted, cheated 12 other times, maybe you start to go, ah, this seems a little bit fishy.
And knowing what we know that the DNC did to Bernie Sanders in 2016, knowing what the mainstream media has done to Bernie Sanders in 2016 and has been doing all year, it's just, it's bananas.
They're still doing it.
To see the fact that Iowa is clearly going in Bernie Sanders' direction.
And then all of a sudden they only report certain districts that put Pete Buttigieg in a bigger lead than this.
So the story doesn't even get reported as like they basically split it.
It gets reported as Pete Buttigieg won.
And we're only going to give you the results of 62% of the regions in Iowa.
And we're not going to tell you why we chose these districts.
And then we're going to give it up and just slow play it the whole time and keep the basically no winner in the headlines.
And then Pete Buttigieg in the headlines, and then only let it trickle out a few days later that Bernie Sanders actually got thousands more votes than anybody else in Iowa.
It seems awfully shady, awfully fucking shady.
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Untuck It Promo Code00:15:12
The other big story, and I guess that there's maybe two sides to this, which is essentially the same coin, is that aside from being robbed of a victory night in Iowa, this last week could not have been a better week for Bernie Sanders and could not have been a worse week for Joe Biden.
This is a major, major story.
Now, Bernie Sanders, just to go over Bernie Sanders, you know, like what's exactly going on here.
Bernie Sanders, you know, okay, look, technically, and I don't know that this is even official because I think they're still re like counting some of these votes, but maybe he's two delegates behind after Iowa.
But he's got a lot of momentum and he's going into Iowa, into New Hampshire, which is tomorrow night, is the New Hampshire primaries.
I'm assuming we will get results from those primaries.
I guess we'll see.
I learned last week never to make assumptions like that.
But okay, so right now, just going through the latest polls that are coming out.
There's basically four polls that are the absolute latest ones.
There's a CNN, UNH, a Boston Globe, an Emerson, and a UMass Lowell.
They have two of them have Bernie Sanders up seven.
The other two have him up eight points going into New Hampshire.
Pete Buttigieg is in second in all four polls.
Then Klobuchar, Warren, Biden, Yang, and Tulsi Gabbard, who's getting about 3%, 3% or 4%, depending on which poll you look at.
So Bernie Sanders is looking like he's going to go get a victory.
I don't know how they're going to try to cheat him out of this headline, but it's going to be very, very hard.
He's going to get that victory.
Now, the other news, this is a, now, I've said before, I don't put too much stock into national polls because that's not how these races are won, right?
Like that's that you don't have a national vote.
You have in delegates and state races and then in the general, the Electoral College.
But basically throughout the entire campaign, Joe Biden has kept his lead in the national polls.
The only thing the national polls are really good for is measuring trends, like what direction things are going in.
And in the latest Quinnipiac Democratic national poll, Bernie Sanders is up by eight points.
It's Bernie Sanders in first place with 25, Biden in second with 17, Bloomberg in third with 15, Warren in fourth with 14, and Butige in fifth with 10.
Now, national polls don't tell you everything, but if Boutige is becoming Bernie Sanders' real competition here, and he's in fifth place at 10%, and he's got 0% black support, this tells you this guy can't do it.
Like, this isn't going to happen.
There'd have to be some major shift here in order for him to actually win the nomination.
And so that is very good news for Bernie Sanders and very, very bad news for Joe Biden.
And it seems if you're following momentum or trajectories, that Joe Biden is basically, his campaign is doing what we have been saying for six months it was going to do, which is collapse.
Now, I will admit, I'm surprised it took this long.
I thought Biden would collapse much earlier than this, but it seems like it came.
It was like once it was time to actually cast ballots.
There are a bunch of lying-faced pony people out there.
It's not easy to handle all these pony people.
I'll tell you, that stuff doesn't help.
That stuff sure doesn't help.
Trying to run an honest campaign.
I got the best credentials here, and it's just a country full of pony people.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the truth is that the pony people, they show up to vote, and the bucket people left Joe Biden high and dry.
You know, he bet on the wrong group of people.
And bucket people, Iowa is bucket people central.
You know, you would think that's where the bucket people would come out.
Who would have thought all the pony people were going to get in the way of the bucket people showing up to show their support for Biden?
But I'll tell you, Rob, you had a great insight about this months and months ago.
And this is why I have you on the show for these great insights.
And you said, you know, I'm just not so sure that bucket people want to be thanked.
And I think Joe Biden inspired a lot of people to start thanking these bucket people.
And they were like, dude, you know, I work in a bucket for a reason.
I want to be up here left alone.
I want to be up here left alone.
I could have chosen any job.
I chose to be high up in the sky alone in a bucket.
You think I want a fucking audience?
Let me get to work.
There's a phone poll that needs fixing, you know?
And the pony people are like, all we're looking for is a thank you.
Yeah.
We're out here day in, day.
Joe Biden never said thank you to the pony people.
It's just politics 101.
He fucking blew it.
What can I say?
But this is a, it's, it's a disaster for the Democratic establishment.
It's a disaster for the DNC and for the corporate press.
And you see that.
And they're like, oh my God, it's just so desperate and pathetic.
I watched them.
So as Biden's been collapsing in New Hampshire and Buttigieg went up a few points, they're like, you know, the story becomes all the energy is with Buttigieg.
And you're like, no, I'm sorry.
The story is that Bernie Sanders is up in New Hampshire, but they will never, they will never just give him that.
And it's just, you know, people are starting to see through this shit.
And that's the really good part about all of this.
But yeah, Biden is just, look, like we said from the very beginning, he's got nothing to run on other than being Obama's vice president.
And that's a really, really tough central organizing campaign message.
You know, it's just like I was with this other guy.
That's, you got to have something that you're there for.
And he's got nothing.
He has no issue.
Like, why, you know, this is why he's saying things like his first campaign ad is like Charlottesville and saving the soul of the American people.
There's just, because there's no substance there.
And this is what we could tell from the very beginning.
There's no reason.
There's no reason for running.
You know, like it's everybody else, like feel however you feel about Bernie Sanders.
I do not like the guy.
I think he's horribly, like, he's an economic ignoramus, you know?
But if you go, why is Bernie Sanders running?
What's the reason?
It's pretty obvious.
Like, there's a clear-cut reason there.
It's like, okay, because he believes like income inequality is a moral outrage.
We have a like this crazy gap between rich and poor.
We have a few, you know, very super, super rich people who have this dominant control in our society.
And he wants, and he thinks we need more democratic socialist policies.
You know, that's Bernie Sanders.
That's why he's running.
We should have universal health care on a $15 an hour minimum wage and whatever the other stuff.
You know, it's very obvious.
If you ask why Joe Biden is running, it's like, because Joe Biden wants to be president.
That's why he's running.
And if your central message is, I was Obama's vice president.
Let's go back to Obama.
It's going to be really hard to sell that without a glowing endorsement from Obama.
Like it almost very obviously requires that in order to pitch you on we're going back to the Obama years, you know?
It's like he's he's fucking, you know, running these ads.
We're going to play one of his ads later in the show, but he's running these ads where he's talking, he's, he's playing clips of Obama saying nice things about him.
And it's like, okay, fine, but you don't have his endorsement.
So how lame is this?
Now you're running an ad, but look, he said this nice thing about me.
I mean, what the fuck is that?
So anyway, now you see the desperation is they had this debate the other night.
And I'm watching the post-debate panels because I actually, I find that in many ways to be a little bit more interesting than watching the debates is just watch, and you only have to check out like a few minutes.
Like you watch the first 10 minutes of CNN's reaction and MSNBC's reaction, and you just see this desperation.
And this has been true through every Democratic debate so far.
The desperation of these guys to control the narrative of like they're going to tell you what happened in this debate.
And this has been happening the entire field.
Like it's and the entire season, I should say.
And they're so out of touch with reality.
Over and over again, these experts tell you what happened.
And then the people are like, nope, that is not at all how we saw it.
So from the very beginning, when it was like Kamala Harris called Joe Biden racist for his busing policy, and it's like, Kamala Harris wins the night.
You know, it's like it was nothing.
No one gives a shit about his busing policy in the 70s.
Like, this is insane.
And then, of course, you know, like all the way through up to Elizabeth Warren won the night when she challenged Bernie Sanders.
And just look at what's happened in the last couple of weeks since that debate where they said Elizabeth Warren dug this dagger into Bernie Sanders.
So they were actually trying to convince people after the debate the other night that Amy Klobuchar won the night.
This is what they were all saying.
This is how desperate they are to get one of their establishment hacks in there.
One person on that stage sounded more nervous than Amy Klobuchar.
She's just, she's terrible.
She does nothing interesting.
She has these like painfully rehearsed lines about what her resume or whatever.
It's just America is ready to vote for a lady who talks like she's in a hostage situation.
I mean, really, that's like that is not, which, you know, maybe she is.
Who the fuck knows?
But anyway, so that's they're just getting desperate.
And all of this goes back to the first point that this is just great for Donald Trump.
It's all just a big victory for Donald Trump.
And the other thing that seemed to be somewhat significant to me was actually, we'll play the ad, the Joe Biden ad first is that, you know, this Joe Biden ad going hard at Pete Buttigieg.
It does seem to indicate that Biden now feels like he has to take on Buttigeg because he holds that establishment language.
Would Pete have a chance against Trump?
At least on the debate stage, not that I agree with any of his policy or any of his anything, but he just does come off as the best of the bunch.
Yes, he in many ways comes off as the least crazy of the group.
I've said this for a while.
I think that Donald Trump would own him.
I think he would eat him for lunch.
I just think that Mayor Pete is tiny and gay and has nothing in his resume that would warrant him being in this situation.
He has no minority support.
That's going to be a really big problem for him.
I mean, if you, if you like, look, you have to, obviously, just by being the Democratic nominee, if he could get there, which his big problem is he can't get there.
But if he could get there, sure, there'll be a lot of minorities who vote for you just because you're the Democrat.
But if you go in as someone who's polling zero with African American voters and damn close to it with Latino voters, the opportunity for Donald Trump to peel away 20, 30% of those groups is much, much stronger.
And that buries the Democrats.
And you don't want African Americans to start seeing Trump as gangster because their other option was that could be real bad for the Dems.
Yeah.
Well, it's like, what do you guys want?
A baller or this gay guy?
Yeah.
It's good.
The campaign ads write themselves.
So I just, I don't think so.
I mean, we'd have to see it play out.
Who the hell knows?
But I think he'd have a nightmare with Trump.
It's so funny the way they're handling the fact that black people don't like Pete.
Oh, yeah.
It's just like they're trying to tiptoe around it.
Just, how come you have no minority support?
He's like, I'll win them over.
Don't you worry.
They love me in my counties.
And yeah, right.
He's like, well, these three black people supported me in, you know, the seventh biggest city in Indiana.
Anyway, so here's the, let's play the ad.
This was the attack ad that Joe Biden released this week against Mayor Pete.
Barack Obama called Joe Biden the best vice president America's ever had.
But Pete Buttigieg doesn't think much of the vice president's record.
Let's compare.
When President Obama called on him, Joe Biden helped lead the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which gave health care to 20 million people.
And when parkgoers called on Pete Buttigieg, he installed decorative lights under bridges, giving citizens of South Bend colorfully illuminated rivers.
Both Vice President Biden and former Mayor Buttigeg have taken on tough fights.
Under threat of a nuclear Iran, Joe Biden helped to negotiate the Iran deal.
And under threat of disappearing pets, Buttigeg negotiated lighter licensing regulations on pet chip scanners.
Both Vice President Biden and former Mayor Pete have helped shape our economy.
Joe Biden helped save the auto industry, which revitalized the economy of the Midwest and led the passage and implementation of the Recovery Act, saving our economy from a depression.
Pete Buttigieg revitalized the sidewalks of downtown South Bend by laying out decorative brick.
And both Biden and Buttigieg have made hard decisions.
Despite pressure from the NRA, Joe Biden passed the assault weapons ban through Congress.
Then he passed the Violence Against Women Act.
And even when public pressure mounted against him, former Mayor Pete fired the first African-American police chief of South Bend.
And then he forced out the African-American fire chief, too.
We're electing a president.
What you've done matters.
Okay, so look.
Wait, if what you've done matters, how come I don't see one picture of a kid being touched?
Yeah.
I feel like that's relevant.
He did that and people know him.
That's what he likes to say.
I'm sure there's an uncut version of the ad where that stuff's included.
Look, I try to separate at times.
Obviously, I'm a very opinionated fellow, but I try to just acknowledge what is, I think, an effective ad and what isn't.
This is just terrible.
This is pathetic.
It's like, okay, look, I get, you have every right to make the argument.
Look, I was the vice president and you're the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Or not, like, I have more, uh, you know, I have stronger qualifications than you.
But this just comes off douchey and like just being shitty to like what a may the little things a mayor does in a small town.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's just, I didn't, I just didn't find anything effective about this ad at all.
And then the thing that's just so pathetic and outrageous, it's like what all the only thing the Democrats can go to, and it's particularly the Democrats who don't have real issues to run on.
Like, there is a reason why you don't see Tulsi Gabbard or Bernie Sanders ever leveling these type of attacks against other people.
I mean, sure, Bernie Sanders will, to be fair, he'll call Donald Trump racist and things like that.
But in general, when you see Bernie Sanders going against other people, it's not like you hate women or you hate gays or you hate black people or something like that.
You're a sexist, racist, homophobe.
It's not that stuff.
It's usually like, you know, you voted for the war in Iraq.
I led the opposition against that.
Pathetic Minority Attacks00:02:44
You don't support Medicare for all.
I do.
You know, it's things like that.
And Tulsi, of course, when she's attacking people, it's like Hillary Clinton, you're the queen of the war mongers.
Like it's corruption.
It's Kamala Harris.
You were locking people up for marijuana.
When people actually have issues that they care about, even like in the case of Bernie Sanders, when they're wrong about these issues, when you have real issues that you care about, it makes a lot more sense to use those to attack people because it's like, well, I mean, we're trying to win voters.
And what voters really care about is like healthcare.
What voters really care about is their kid not dying in a war.
You know, like this, this is a real issue.
So let's talk about it.
When you have nothing, you go with this, you know, you're racist, you're sexist, you're a homophobe.
And for Biden, it's just so weak and also just like painfully stupid that he's going, he fired two black people.
That's, and I'm just supposed to take that, like, I try, I try, let me get into the mind of a Democratic voter.
I'm just supposed to take that as a priori wrong because he fired two black people.
Like, I don't need to know anything about the situation.
I don't need to know if that person deserved to be fired.
Is it just wrong?
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, I'm just assuming, as you know, I pay attention to politics a little bit more than the average person does.
I have no idea what these, what the local politics in South Bend, Indiana is, and why this first black police chief or whatever got fired or why these two black people got fired.
I don't know.
But am I just supposed to go, well, they're black, you can't fire them.
I mean, sure, if you just fired some whites, I mean, everyone's got to do what they got to do, but a black guy can't be fired.
Like, really?
Is that the position?
Like, no matter what they do, they can't be fired.
It's the lowest level of identity politics, like just this fucking, the really, really dumb shit.
And you wonder, like, like, not that this ad is going to have some huge impact, but you wonder, like, could there be any more evidence that the Democrats just didn't learn their lesson from the Donald Trump moment, from the Donald Trump campaign and presidency?
Like, it's just like, how do you expect, first off, it's so stupid that even a substantial percentage of minorities are not going to get into this, even though it's like in their favor, the idea that you can't fire a person of color.
But how are white people ever expected to get on board with the message of like, well, you can't fire a black?
That's just wrong.
You fire a white person, that's completely fine.
But you fire a, you know, a person of color.
I mean, this is just, this is horrible.
We can't elect this guy president.
Two people.
Anyway, it's just, I thought just an incredibly weak, desperate ad.
Circle CPA Tax Help00:02:46
And it also seems like if, you know, if you're like, I'm the vice president, I'm making decisions like, should we bail out the auto companies?
And you're making decisions like, should we fix a local sidewalk?
It seems then the problem with this type of ad is that it's self-defeating.
Because if you're all the way up here and someone else is all the way down here, why are you devoting this ad to taking shots at them?
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you should just be riding above that person.
It's like, it's everything about this was very, very poor.
And what about people that like nice lights, pets, and don't like black people?
Yeah.
I mean, they might watch this and be like, I got to vote for them, Mayor Pete.
Well, it's possible.
I also thought there might have been a tinge of kind of like, you know, they're like kind of just shitting on small town issues that they might care about.
Like they're like, I don't know.
There's a lot of people in small towns in this country might be like, oh, well, he fixed up the sidewalks.
That's kind of nice.
I don't know.
Doesn't seem like the worst thing ever.
But anyway, just seems desperate and very, very, very bad for Joe Biden.
And I got to say, I just don't, like I've said from the beginning, I just thought this has always been Bernie Sanders' race to win.
And the question is just if he wants to go take it.
And that seems to be where we're at.
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Civil Liberty Concerns00:13:40
What's also very interesting about the last couple of weeks is that, as I kind of alluded to before, it seems that finally the reality of the situation is settling in on a lot of these left-leaning people, that they're starting to realize what's going on.
Like there's been these, you know, from the very beginning, like, you know, whether it was Donald Trump being elected, they've played these games, these mental gymnastics to avoid dealing with reality and believing in these things that just seemed, you know, like the people who are supposed to be serious people who know what they're talking about, believing that, you know, well, he only got elected because of the racists.
And, you know, right away, you're like, well, there's like millions of people who voted for Obama and Trump.
Like, so they're Nazis.
They were all converted to neo-Nazism, you know, since Obama's second term.
Eight years of Obama can do that to a man.
I mean, you know, the more you say it, I'm like, yeah, maybe there is some truth there.
But you know what I mean?
This just, this doesn't seem very realistic.
And then all the, you know, Russian interference stuff.
And then they're like, well, Mueller's going to lead him out of the White House in handcuffs.
And then it's like, well, no, he'll be impeached.
And as each one of these things has kind of been peeled away, you know, okay, that hope's gone.
That hope's gone.
That hope's gone.
And then in hindsight, I think even for some of them, you know, you look back at it, you go, oh, yeah, that was kind of ridiculous to think that any of this was going to go down any other way.
Reality starts to set in and you see that happening.
And so anyway, I got this morning, I watched, I got YouTube recommended this video of Steve Bannon on Bill Maher's show.
And then I watched it and I was like, oh, we got to talk about this on the podcast.
And then you emailed me the video and you were like, dude, we got to talk about this on the podcast.
So it was one of those things where we were thinking the same way when we saw this.
And it was, I thought, a very kind of like in many ways, it was a microcosm of everything that's going on right now in the political landscape.
And we're kind of like a standard Democrat Bill Maher and a populist Trumpian in Steve Bannon and where their minds are and how they're thinking.
And anyway, let's play it.
So let's play the interview.
Steve Bannon was on real time with Bill Maher.
Former White House chief strategist and the co-host of the War Room Impeachment and War Room Pandemic podcast.
Steve Bannon has agreed to come by again.
Great man, Steve.
Thank you for doing this.
Thank you for being polite.
Okay, Steve, so look, I'm not going to lie about it.
Your boy had the best week so far, don't you think?
Was the last two weeks?
I think you see the culmination.
All right, I admitted it.
Don't gloat.
No, no, but I think this shows you the actions he's been taking the entire time.
It's not just the impeachment.
It's the Middle East peace plan.
It's what he's doing on opioids.
It's USMCA.
It's Brexit.
One action after another.
Okay, but Steve, as a student of history, which I know you are, nothing this week bothered you?
Like yesterday when he we find out now that he's you know the thing he said about Comey.
We'll see what happens.
If it was Obama, people would be in jail.
Vindeman gets frog marched out.
Mitt Romney is a suppressive person.
This is very von Stoffenberg, isn't it?
After the coup failed.
All right, let's pause it.
Let me just say that sassy pants shit ain't going to work on Steve Bannon.
You can flash your hands around all you want to go, ooh, you're not afraid about this.
But isn't it like, look, this is the disconnect.
And to be fair, I was giving the same credit to Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders.
And by the way, I disagree with Steve Bannon on, I think, every one of the issues that he just laid out.
Like, not necessarily all of them.
Like, I'm very pro-Brexit, but, you know, Trump didn't do anything to, you know, make Brexit happen a couple weeks ago.
And he's not really doing great with the opioid.
Opioid deaths have been a nightmare throughout Donald Trump's presidency.
You know, he can brag that they went down a little last year, but I mean, come on, they've been record highs throughout his presidency.
That's because the economy is down for heroin addicts.
Yeah.
They just can't afford as much of it.
Yeah, right.
Well, it's also, you know, like sometimes with these things, like just so many people kill themselves with it that there's just less of them around.
And it's, you know, anyway, it's.
It's like impossible to get Percocets anymore.
Do you know how easy it used to be?
Well, yes, that's.
You went to a dentist, Percocet.
You made up something.
Well, a lot of the people are killing themselves with the fentanyl is a big one these days.
But regardless of any of that, even it's like with Bernie Sanders, even when I disagree with him on the issues, he comes with issues.
Like at least come with issues.
And then what is Bill Maher's first thing?
It's like, but he's Hitler, you know, like, but isn't this just like Nazi Germany?
Because he said, and this is the thing that is very, I've noticed this a lot with these kind of Democratic establishment types.
And Bill Maher, of course, is a comedian, but he's a guy who's very, you know, supported Obama and Hillary Clinton and is always, you know, obviously going to support whoever the Democrat is this time.
They are, they operate in this weird world.
Like Bill Maher used to do this whole segment about Republicans living in a bubble because they only watch Fox News.
But he is so, he has such a blind spot for his own bubble.
So they operate in this world where it's a given that they're the virtuous moral ones.
And then they can condemn other people and not even think to themselves, like maybe there's like a tinge of hypocrisy here.
So right away, it's like, well, shouldn't it be concerning that he like was musing about Comey going to jail?
I mean, isn't that like over the line?
Like, excuse me.
Did you guys not, Bill Maher himself was talking about Donald Trump and his family getting locked up for years throughout the Mueller investigation?
Talking about how when Mueller came out and said there were no more subpoenas, he goes, what, or no more, not subpoenas, no more indictments.
He goes, what do you mean?
I thought Trump Jr. and like and fucking Donald Trump were all going to go to jail.
What are you talking about?
I mean, he was openly talking about them going to jail, but that's fine.
You see, like there's nothing like, there's nothing Nazi-esque about that.
It's just when Donald Trump talks about, hey, maybe Comey would have gone to jail if a different president had been involved.
Why is it that we can discuss the idea of Donald Trump going to jail, but not Comey?
Let's look at like who actually committed crimes between the two of them.
I mean, Donald Trump's committed plenty of crimes, like traditional presidential war crimes, things like that.
But Comey certainly committed many crimes as well.
And Bill Maher ain't talking about Trump going to jail for any of that shit.
So that's the crazy.
And then it's like the fact that he fired this guy.
And there's a lot of talk that he's going to fire more people and more Obama loyalists and stuff like that.
And I don't know.
I mean, I'll certainly, I'll take it a step further than saying it's not evil that he's firing these people.
I think it is a stain on the Trump presidency that it has taken him this long.
It's an absolute outrage.
And more Trump supporters should stop giving him a pass for this bullshit.
Like they, they really, you know, it's like when Bolton was going to, you know, writes this bullshit in his book.
And when he was, they were, they were talking about the idea of him testifying against Donald Trump.
You know, one of the things that just, it really bugged me is that there's all these fucking, you know, like Trump supporters.
I see him on Twitter and stuff.
And they're all like, you know, Bolton's a traitor and he's this horrible guy.
And they're, they're mocking the left for now embracing John Bolton as a hero.
And like, fair enough.
All of that's, you know, true and worth pointing out.
But like, at what point do you go, Trump has some fucking responsibility forever appointing this snake in the first place?
We, there was, this wasn't a surprise.
We all knew who the fuck John Bolton was.
Also, didn't Trump, I might be getting this one wrong, but didn't he endorse Mitt Romney for his Senate run?
Okay, so like, what are you doing?
Why are you supporting these people?
Why are you, why did it take you this long to actually start getting some of these people who are clearly, you know, like, okay, maybe you can say it's fucked up if the president goes around and like, you know, just gets rid of anybody who isn't like completely, you know, like on his side or doesn't agree with him on everything.
I mean, I guess I could see that argument.
But if you are actively working with the deep state in an attempted coup against a democratically elected president, why would a president not get rid of that guy?
Doesn't that seem a lot crazier than him finally doing it after three and a half years?
I think, I mean, when I saw these people giving testimony in my head, I said, oh, okay, they've just decided with the Dems and they really think that they're going to be able to impeach him.
And they probably got promised something pretty good that they took the gamble.
Right.
Very clearly, when you show up to try and unseat the guy, you're going to get fired.
There's no question about it.
So I also think Trump somewhat learned his lesson with Sessions and some of the other people that turned against him early and thinking, hey, I better let these people keep their jobs.
He's starting to realize, man, I really got to clear house and actually have control of this thing.
Otherwise, I'm never getting any work done.
Yeah.
Well, I think you're right.
But I also think just, you know, just from like a practical matter, if you had somebody working for you, like if I had somebody working for me on the podcast, like let's say you went to Lewis and Ralph and go, I think you should kick Dave off the network.
Brian, are you in on this?
Hey, wait, what's going on here?
So like if you were to go to Lewis and Ralph and be like, I think you should kick Dave off the network.
Like I think he's done something so fucked up that he needs to be removed from the network.
And then they go, no, I don't think so.
We're going to keep him.
And then it comes back and it's like, well, how are we going to work together now?
Like, how is this going to work?
You thought I should have been removed from my position and now I'm supposed to just like, it's like, oh, yeah, okay, I guess just practically speaking, this probably isn't going to work anymore.
So it just, it seems just kind of even to the non-political person, seem kind of obvious.
This is just, okay, we got to go our separate ways now.
And I'm the president, so you're going to leave, not me.
I don't know.
Anyway, let's keep playing.
Enemies list kind of situation that doesn't make you a little nervous.
You trust him with that power?
No, absolutely.
In fact, here's what I've argued from day one.
We should have a, should have had a longer impeachment.
We should have had Bolton.
You should have had Mulvaney.
You should have had all the OMB memos.
Witness.
Witnesses.
Let him get cross.
But we get the whistleblower.
We get the second whistleblower.
We get Schiff as a factor in this.
Let's get it all out.
This is not, and Trump says this, it's just not about Trump.
This is about going forward, the office of the president.
If Bernie gets in and you're his advisor, trust me, the same thing's going to happen.
If you think the neoliberal, neocon national security apparatus is just going to sit there and let Bernie as commander-in-chief make the decisions that he's empowered to as commander-in-chief.
They're going to fight him every step of the way.
And that's why this thing has to be vetted.
The abuses of the FBI and the CIA in the 50s and 60s culminated in the church commission in the 70s.
That's what we need today.
I think the Senate Judiciary Committee ought to start calling witnesses.
We've got to get to the bottom of the 40 subpoenas that were out there by the House intel.
We've got to get, he ought to declassify this, crossfire hurricane, and let Bolton, let Mulvaney, let them all talk.
Let's get all the emails out there.
Let's see the whole thing.
Okay, when you say crossfire hurricane, the liberal audience doesn't have the decoder ring for that one.
That's just an FBI.
It's the FBI.
I know.
But no, if they don't know it, they shouldn't.
Listen, this is about civil liberty.
It's about protecting the office of the president.
Your audience should know that.
And that's why it's got to be official apparatus.
Okay, Steve.
You can't even.
Steve?
All right.
Pause everybody.
I'm trying to create propaganda here, Steve.
I don't know how to respond because you made a good point.
Steve, you lying, Steve?
Steve, I mean, he made like seven really good points.
And Bill Maher is reduced to just kind of this kind of like lame comedian trick of going, oh, God, what do I even do to that?
Like, everything you just said is so ridiculous.
How do I even respond to that?
I mean, what about that is unreasonable?
He's saying, look, and this was a brilliant, and if nothing else, Steve C. Bennon is really smart about this type of like political messaging stuff.
But what a great way to play it on Bill Maher's show.
To go, well, look at Bernie Sanders, who is everything you guys should like.
And I'm sure a big portion of the audience right there in front of him are Sanders supporters.
And you go, and look at them.
You know, look at how the whole system's working against him too.
Wouldn't they do the same thing if he came in?
What do you think the national security apparatus is going to do with the president Bernie Sanders?
So, you know, this was a great way to play it and to say, like, why should we not care about, you know, FBI and CIA abuses of power?
And then to even invoke the church hearings and things like that to be like, hey, remember, there was this time in the 70s when wanting to, you know, expose CIA corruption and criminality was something that left-wingers were for.
You know, like it's almost like reminding them of their roots.
It's this weird, it's this funny dynamic.
I remember talking about this when Tulsi Gabbard was on the debates in the early debates.
Quip Toothbrush Sponsorship00:03:06
And even when you'd have these kind of like...
Like even like the really left-wing, like the kind of crazy modern left that's all about, you know, like the woke fucking social justice shit.
But then Tulsi Gabbard would be up there in front of them and she'd be like, well, the real issue is that we need to stop fighting these wars.
And even to like some, you know, 2020 social justice warrior leftist, when you hear that, it's like, doesn't that sound right?
Like, doesn't that sound like the team you're supposed to be on?
The anti-war team?
Like, I know you don't talk about this stuff anymore, but isn't that your side?
And it's the same with Ben and like going to them like, it's FBI and CIA abuses.
What do you mean that's the Fox News stuff?
That's the Fox News stuff?
I thought this was stuff that like a left-wing crowd should jump on.
And so he was very smart to kind of attack the left from the left in that, you know, like following the Scott Horton kind of rule of, you know, persuasion there.
But and then for Bill Martin, just his, his whole response to that is, oh, okay.
How do you argue against we should have all of the facts come out?
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Since, you know, the whole war thing died out because they came woke and realized the real issue is microaggressions and race issues.
Forget there's still some macroaggressions out there.
Yeah, well, not since they woke up.
Yeah, that's right.
All right, let's keep playing.
Dangerous Labeling People00:15:28
Let's go back to history because he used words like scum, horrible people, evil people.
He has a different house style.
Okay, but he's right on the screen.
But we've seen this happen.
It's just so lame to be a comedian going, but he used the word scum.
It's very lame for a comedian to do it.
But truthfully speaking, for anybody who's just having, because look, I'll be fair and go, look, like I'm a stand-up comedian, but I also do things in a different capacity.
Like I'll go on news shows and talk about politics.
And this podcast, I talk about very serious issues and things.
But even just someone, like I agree with you, it's worse for a comedian, but even just someone who's in the space of having a conversation about politics.
I mean, how you follow up the issues that Steve Bannon just rattled off with, but he used words like scum.
Yeah, that's funny.
You know, like that's what you, that's your counterpoint to all of these like very important issues that Steve Bannon's brought up.
He used words like scum.
And I got to say, by the way, this is the thing that I think is maddening.
And it's what I was talking about before.
It's this bubble that particularly someone like Bill Maher, who really is like, you know, he's like a Hollywood star.
He's not just some comedian.
And they're in this bubble where, first off, they feel like they can get up and, you know, talk about like they use these words as if anyone believes that like people in Hollywood are what?
Like conservative Christians behind the scenes?
Like you've never, you don't use these words.
But it's also just the blatant hypocrisy.
I mean, it's like, yeah, okay, you use words like that.
Like Trump uses words like that, like scum.
And all you've done in this interview already is compare him to Adolf Hitler.
But he uses scum.
Isn't that dangerous?
It's like, well, it's also kind of dangerous to start calling, you know, comparing someone to Nazis.
That's also pretty dangerous.
It's also pretty dangerous to like, like, if you want to like go by this standard, like maybe there's, listen, I'm not completely unsympathetic to this.
I will say that I did.
And I've, I've struggled with this issue before because there's something about Trump that like I like the fact that he stripped some of the dignity of the office.
I don't believe in this, like the government should have this dignity.
And what about them being role models to our children?
Like, I have no interest in any president being a role model to my child.
I got that.
Don't, don't worry about it.
Please stay the fuck away.
But I did, look, when at the State of the Union, for example, I did think that Trump snubbing Nancy Pelosi, not shaking her hand, Nancy Pelosi, like looking off and doing all those weird faces and then ripping up the speech.
I was a little bit just like disgusted by the whole thing.
You're like, this is just so childish.
Like, can you guys just be fucking adults?
I would be, if, if at a gas digital network company meeting, people were acting like that with each other, it would be very quick to be like, you guys got to grow the fuck up.
Like, you're working together, whether you like each other or not.
Like, like, be an adult.
You know what I mean?
So I thought that was disturbing.
And even, I even had a little tinge of when Nancy Pelosi was tearing up the speech and rolling her eyes.
You're like, hey, it's the president of the United States of America.
And I almost never have that type of feeling, but I had a little, like, you know, show a modicum of respect.
So I get the idea of saying a president shouldn't be just so, you know, maybe we want someone who's a little more refined and we want someone.
Okay, fair enough.
There's an argument to be made there.
But to do it in the same conversation where you're calling the guy a fucking Nazi is like mind-boggling.
Like, okay, fine.
Yeah, it's kind of dangerous to label some people as scum and traitors.
It's also really dangerous to label people as fucking racists and Nazis.
I mean, what do you think that leads to?
Like, all of this stuff is kind of, you know, a little bit crazy.
And sure, I'm sure I'm guilty of that too.
But like, the hypocrisy of it is just astounding.
All right, let's keep playing.
House style before.
When you talk about people like that, when you're a cult leader like that who has thousands, millions of people, wait a second, he has millions of people who would obviously do anything for him, and now we only have loyalists in the government.
Okay, so when you're talking-that's not true.
Well, that's where people, that's where people, that's where people were terminated today.
Many of the people on that list like remember, a commander-in-chief has the rights.
The whistleblower and other guys like that were on the list that people that worked around me put together in April of 2017.
These detailees, a commander-in-chief, whether it's Bernie Sanders, AOC, or Donald Trump, have the right to have a lot of people.
There's people around them that believe in their policies and their programs.
It's not about loyalty.
Okay, these are people who he didn't even know existed.
They were deep state people.
Deep state, meaning competent people who actually make the government work, who are not, who are non-believers, Jesus Christ, Bill Maher.
It's just painful.
It's just painful.
Deep state people, meaning competent people who make the government work.
Okay, that's it.
That's just what's why we shouldn't have elections because the unelected officials, by virtue of being unelected, are the real ones.
So those are the competent ones.
I mean, it's so funny with all the same people who are so, and Bill Maher was one of these big people.
It's so like, Russia interfered with our democracy and all this shit.
But you basically like that there's a deep state just in case the guy you don't like gets in, they can just kind of control him and actually make the government work.
Exactly how well our government is working.
The competent people.
I mean, like, what does the government do that works?
Like, like really basic things, balance our budgets or win our wars or protect our borders, anything like that?
Does the government actually do any of this with like in any way that's not like a tragic fuck-up?
Um, so I don't even know what to say to that.
But this is uh, the idea.
So, Bill Maher says, right, like, I don't know, this is so stupid it's hard to even take apart.
But the deep state are just nothing but good people who make the government work.
We're supposed to just believe that.
I mean, I don't know, you know, when exactly did the CIA and the FBI and the NSA become just good people who make our government work?
Are you saying that's been true throughout their history?
Because if you want to spend five minutes looking up the history of any of those organizations, they've actually done a lot of really, really fucked up things.
Not just good people, a lot of really, really bad people, you know, murderers, torturers, liars, criminals of all different sorts.
And then he actually said there's now nothing but loyalists in the government.
I mean, I suppose he meant to say the executive branch, right?
Because he couldn't actually say there's nothing but loyalists in the government.
I mean, the Congress just impeached the president.
So certainly there were some non-loyalists there.
And, you know, the judges have sided against Donald Trump in numerous different instances.
But if he's saying just within the executive branch, well, I mean, Donald Trump's been undermined by the executive branch in many different cases.
So all of this just seems like this is just, again, a great example of just the religion of the state.
Like, we're just supposed to believe that, well, all the deep state people are good, noble people, not like people me or you know, like noble, selfless people who just make everything work.
And the executive branch is nothing but loyalists now because Trump's in there.
I mean, I don't even think Pence is a loyalist.
Like, I don't know what fucking, by the way, you know, if you remember back, right, like at the very beginning of this whole deep state coup, what Andrew McCabe admitted on 60 Minutes that the FBI or the FBI and the Justice Department were openly talking.
It was like McCabe and Rod Rosenstein were talking about invoking the 25th Amendment, right?
I mean, the 25th Amendment would put the vice president in the presidency.
So it seemed like they had some degree of confidence that Pence would go along with this.
I mean, right?
Like, why would you even start having that conversation if you didn't think Pence would be for that?
I mean, that would be a deal breaker right there.
Well, obviously, we can't do that.
I mean, Pence is fucking a Trump loyalist.
I think there's some reason to believe that maybe he's not.
He's always been beloved by the Republican establishment before Trump.
You know, that would be my guess.
Just speculating.
But the idea that it's all Trump loyalists is just fucking absurd.
I remember back when I was on an Essie Cup show.
She used to talk about this all the time.
It was like a constant theme on her show was that the Republican Party is now the party of Trump and they're all just Trump loyalists.
And I would say like several times on the panel, I'd be like, do you remember that the RNC was meeting and openly discussing the ideas of changing the rules to deny Trump the nomination?
And it's the same people there.
Like at the time, it was like Reince Priebus and all these other people were around him.
And I was like, so why, when did they become Trump loyalists?
It's like, oh, yeah, when he won a dominant victory.
And there was like, oh, yeah, I guess we're on Team Trump.
They're just, they're just pretending.
Like, it's obvious that they're not.
These aren't true Trump loyalists.
Like, you know, like, yeah, when Mitt Romney supported Donald Trump, he was a Trump loyalist.
Was he, was Mitt Romney ever a Trump loyalist?
Of course not.
Anyway, let's let's keep playing from the video.
The question too.
Because we only have so much time.
Okay.
We've seen this in other countries.
When you talk about people like they're scum and they're evil, we've seen it in Rwanda, cockroaches.
We've seen it in Germany, vermin.
You don't think that when you talk about people like that, your side, the people who hear those words, you don't think eventually it translates into action.
They see people on our side as less.
Pause it one more time.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to just keep making the same fucking point over and over again.
But okay, look, first off, it's a very loose argument to be like, he says mean things.
You know where else they said mean things?
Rwanda.
Like, well, okay.
I mean, there's also been lots of places where people say mean things and they don't have a genocide, but like, okay.
But even if you want to play that game, right.
So then what's calling people Nazis?
I mean, what did we do to the Nazis?
When we called those people Nazis, we fucking firebombed Berlin, right?
So what does it mean when you just like I, a fucking Jewish anarchist who believes in the non-aggression principle, have been called a Nazi and a Nazi sympathizer over the last three years countless times.
That's how loose the fucking term is being used.
All right.
So what does that mean when you start fucking calling people those names?
It's like, yeah, why do you think there's like this Antifa violence and things like that?
Because when you start calling your enemies fascists and we live in this mythology where the only evil that's ever existed was the fascists and the Nazis and they're the greatest evil to ever exist, even though, you know, the fucking communists killed more people or whatever.
But when you call them that, then it's just a way to dehumanize the fucking enemy.
And then you feel these Antifa guys feel justified hitting some guy over the head with a bike lock because he's got a MAGA hat on.
Because it's like, well, whatever.
He's fucking Hitler too.
He's Hitler's supporter, you know?
So, okay, fine.
Maybe there is some argument that when you just fucking label people with really horrible names, it like dehumanizes them and you can fucking then go be violent to them.
But you are on the hook for that too, Bill Maher.
You're on the hook.
All you guys who call Trump and his supporters racists, what is that?
Like, what does it mean?
Like, I don't know.
You see these, these like incidents where, you know, and you've, if you go online, I mean, there's just like, there's just thousands probably of videos at this point of like Trump supporters being assaulted and shit like that.
And it's like if you're, you know, like, I don't know, like I saw one video recently of a fucking black guy who came over to a kid, who was like at a diner or something like that, who was in a MAGA hat and he fucking like stole his hat and hit him and like threw a drink at him or something like that.
And it's like a kid, like 15-year-old kid, some grown black guy just like attacks him like that.
Now, I'm not taking the responsibility off of that guy.
That guy committed a criminal act and should be like, you know, prosecuted and all that shit, obviously.
But yeah, I mean, okay, if you want to make this argument, is there something to, if you keep calling Trump a racist and basically say, well, he is trying to fucking ruin black people's lives, if that's true, then it makes it a much more appropriate response for some black guy who sees someone in a MAGA hat to be like, well, you're basically saying fucking, you should fucking, you know, like threaten, like you're basically supporting threatening me.
So I'm going to respond with force.
Like, you know, like, okay, sure, like, words can inspire fucking violence, but that's not just on one side.
And you've already compared Trump to the Nazis in this fucking interview.
All right, let's keep playing.
Absolutely not.
Why?
Because we have the precedents I just mentioned.
Why is it not like that?
You don't see anything.
Cockroaches, scum.
No, no.
Listen, you'll see anything.
You don't see any actions of the deplorables or people doing that.
Listen, for the last three years, Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party said.
By the way, that is a fucking, Steve Bennett really is a sharp fucking guy because he goes, because he snuck that in, but he knows exactly what he's doing.
He goes, you don't see any action from the deplorables doing that.
Because it's just reminding you, it's like, oh yeah, that's right.
That's what your fucking nominee said that half of Donald Trump's supporters were deplorable.
So, okay, scum is a nasty thing to call someone.
What is deplorable?
A compliment?
That's also something nasty to call someone.
And like, okay, so two can play at this game.
And maybe there is an argument.
I don't know.
There's an argument to be had.
By the way, there's an argument on the other side, too, that like maybe we do, like if you really think someone's policies are horrible, you need to fucking call them out for that.
But there's an argument to be made that, man, maybe the rhetoric should be toned down.
Okay, fine.
But don't act like only Trump's playing this game.
All right, let's keep playing.
We have to protect the country.
Donald Trump's a clear and present danger against Russian oligarchs.
The Democratic Party today is looking to be saved by an oligarch.
This thing is total hypocrisy.
I'm talking about Bloomberg.
I'm talking about Bloomberg, an American immoderate Republican mayor.
$71 billion, a super rich guy.
And he's going to put billions of dollars to destroy Donald Trump.
Don't run against him.
He's not running against him.
He's not running against him.
What is he doing?
It's a leverage body of the Democratic Party.
He's already said, I will put $2 billion of capital in back of any candidate to defeat Trump.
Okay, one side always has more money than the other.
This is not about more money.
It's not about more money because the last time Trump had way less money and he won.
Absolutely.
You know why?
Because Trump.
All right.
It's that mentality that has you in this place today.
And the place today is Trump is about to run the table.
You have a totally divided.
Oh, I agree with that.
Capitalism vs Politics00:15:27
No, because nobody sat there after 2016 and said, why do we lose?
The same arrogance you saw in the people in Brooklyn that would not send Hillary Clinton to Michigan.
Remember, Michael Moore always makes the point.
I think there's 70,000 down ticket votes in Michigan that didn't vote for a president.
The reason is Trump reached out to these working class people and connected with them.
Okay?
And Clinton did.
It's the same arrogance you see in Iowa about this app.
Yes, there is that.
But we mostly lose because a senator in Wyoming represents 290,000 people and a senator here represents 20 million.
That's mostly why we lose.
The electoral college.
It's called a republic, sir.
It's called a republic with a very flawed foundation.
Is it really Democratic for one person to run?
What I love about you guys.
You've got to whine about everything.
Why?
The game, hey, the game is.
Hey, it's match play, not metal play.
No, when it matches.
I understand what the rules are.
No, you know what the rules are and you can't win.
You're right.
You've had a lot of people.
Hillary should have gone to Wisconsin because it's an electoral college game.
I've admitted that many times.
That's not the point.
You said, why do you win?
You win because the game is rigged for you.
I get it.
It's absolutely not electoral.
Okay, so firstly, statistically, I don't know.
Is there a significant more Republican presidents that have governed in this country to Democratic presidents over, like if you look at the 100-year statistics, is it true that it's rigged to favor Republicans over Democrats?
Well, certainly.
Let me try to think about this for a while.
I mean, if you're going over 100 years, I mean, FDR had many terms.
But if you're going to be, if we go in the last 50 years, right?
So 50 years ago from today would take you back to 1980.
So there was two terms of Reagan, followed by one term of George H.W., followed by two terms of Bill Clinton, followed by two terms of George W.
And then two terms of Barack Obama.
So what do you got?
Four to four to five or something.
What did I just say?
So it's not, I mean, you know, and then and then Trump in now.
But look, I guess their argument would be here's what their argument would be, that two of the last three Republican presidents, so Trump in 2016, or no, or the last two Republican presidents, Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016, lost the popular vote, but won the election.
So, okay, there is an argument to be made that there are, that senators, there's no question that if you believe in that we are this one nation that should one person, one vote, that would favor Democrats at this point currently.
I don't know if it always would have.
You have to remember that a lot of these high population states, I mean, California was carried by Ronald Reagan.
So it's a fairly new thing that that's just a given for the Democrats to win.
But it is a given for the Democrats to win right now.
And Hillary Clinton did get millions more votes than Donald Trump.
So firstly, I just think, and we've said a million times, this idea that 51% can rule the other.
It's a stupid system.
But also, you just look at the maps in this country and its rural areas vote for Republicans and cities vote for Democrats.
And it's this crazy thing that people living very different lifestyles should impose a government on the other one at all.
It's stupid.
The entire thing is stupid.
But what he's complaining is, listen, this system doesn't work in my favor and I want to impose my will on the other group of people.
And that's actually when they constructed the government, from what I understand, that's exactly what, like, they didn't want large states to just be able to impose their state, their will on smaller states because it's just anti-that's the issue is that like I think it was the big thing was like Jersey and like they just wanted to force Jersey like running you know goods through the state or whatever and And they're like, well, we're our own state.
We're our own group of people.
Well, look, just think about it like this, right?
There were states before there was a United States, right?
There were these colonies and they were independent colonies.
And then they teamed together to fight a revolutionary war.
And after the Brits were defeated, the question was: do we want to be 13 different independent states or do we want to be one, you know, like union?
And they settled on what became the United States.
Like the idea is that these states, now you have to ask yourself, why would any smaller state want to be in the union if the agreement was just that the bigger states rule you?
Right.
So I understand.
Now, listen, like you touched it at the beginning, the whole idea of democracy is stupid and flawed and ineffective in every way.
But if you believe in democracy, I understand that there is an argument to like, well, one person won't vote.
But you also would have to understand that then there's a strong argument for like, why would Iowa want to be a part of the United States of America?
If they're basically just saying, well, we have to do whatever California tells us to do, but we don't want to do what California tells us to do, right?
So there's also obviously a counterside to that.
So yes, I think this argument for the popular democracy is stupid, but, or at least they oversimplified at best.
But also the bigger issue to me with this Bill Maher thing is just like everything he's saying.
It's like, like, how do you not see how weak your argument is?
Like, this is all you have now?
Like, this is what you're reduced to?
He says mean words and also the Electoral College isn't fair.
Well, oh, okay.
But you guys were saying that this guy was going to be a disastrous president.
You guys said the stock market was going to implode.
Bill Maher, by the way, is still openly talking about how if Donald Trump loses, he'll just refuse to leave.
This is a major theme on Bill Maher's show.
He keeps talking about this.
It's just these fucking goofy conspiracy theories that are not based in reality at all.
I was arguing with a guy, like fucking another comedian on Twitter the other day because he was saying basically, I mean, he did exactly say it, but he was like, you know, he tweeted something out.
Like, he goes, he goes, you know, a lot of people are suspecting that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are the reason the Iowa caucuses were such a disaster, which is reasonable because they both hate democracy, but so far there's no proof.
Like that was kind of like his take on it.
And I was like, dude, this is a level of self-parody that I couldn't even imagine anybody would have reached at this point.
I mean, it's not, oh, it's reasonable to think this, but there's no proof.
There's not one shred of evidence.
Forget even evidence.
There's not even one like indication that would lead you to believe that there might be a shred of evidence.
This is just what, like the idea, there is no reason for Bill Maher to think that Donald Trump would lose the election and just refuse to leave.
Like, what are you talking about?
But all of this stuff, it's just like this is all they have left.
This is, they've, they've gone to this place of like, it's actually just madness.
And it's, it's, you know, right when they should be getting serious, you know, they go to this place.
So anyway, they say all these things.
Donald Trump, you know, he's basically Hitler-like and he's he's leading us down this kind of Nazi route and yet we still can't win an election against this guy.
And the real problem is because the system is the same system we've had our entire lives.
So, I mean, okay, you know, make your argument that you're against the Electoral College, which is, again, going to be a tougher argument than you think.
But isn't there a little bit more to it than that?
Isn't there a little bit more to it?
And the truth is that you've, you know, the Democrats, like, like, I'm sorry, Steve Bannon is just right about this.
I have a ton of areas of disagreement with both of these guys, Steve Bennon as well, as Bill Maher.
But of course, he's right, just purely in terms of politics, that your problem is that you're stuck in this mindset and you're whining about the rules of the Electoral College, and none of you actually want to deal with what happened.
Like, why?
I've been saying this for years now.
Why did Donald Trump win?
What was his pitch to these people?
You know, by the way, there's a lot of these issues that I don't agree with Trump on.
Like, I'm a free trade guy.
I completely like free trade.
Trump's like big on this tariff and, you know, trade deficits.
I think this is the stupidest shit ever.
The idea that we have a big trade deficit, and that's a big problem.
A trade deficit is meaningless.
It's like if I, you know, like I shop at a, you know, like the supermarket and I go, you know, last year I had a $10,000 trade deficit with the supermarket.
You're like, yeah, but you got food.
It's not like I just gave them money.
I bought stuff from them.
What does this mean?
This is just a stupid made-up thing.
He's wrong.
But I would be stupid to not notice that that appealed to a lot of people.
Oh, a lot of people are really like, they hear this message.
Oh, China's ripping us off.
So you got to try to fucking talk to them and go like, oh, okay, well, I see why you think China's ripping you off.
Hey, can I make an argument that here's who's actually ripping you off?
You know what I mean?
It's actually, the Federal Reserve is ripping you off a lot more than China is.
And here's what, you know what I mean?
But you're like stupid if you don't realize that this is effective and then go, well, it's kind of our job to like sell the message a little bit better, not just call these people idiots.
But if they were doing that, it's like, oh, yeah, well, then Hillary Clinton should go to these places and campaign.
The truth is she didn't want to because the more she went, the more her fucking poll numbers fell because she was awful and had nothing to say to them.
You go to these places and start saying we're going to put a lot of coal miners out of business.
Oh, your numbers aren't doing that good.
But it's just like, Jesus fucking Christ, like he's just, I don't know.
Danny, to me, was just dominating this thing.
Like, even if you're a left-wing guy, I feel like you would look at this and be like, yeah, he's just making way better points.
But there's still some more.
So let's keep playing.
All right, Steve.
Hold on.
Hold on.
With this attitude, if you don't know the beauty, we're going to keep winning.
No, we're going to keep winning.
I love this.
I know you do.
I know you do.
How can you sit here?
How can you sit here and have an oligarch, a Republican oligarch that is going to be the salvation of the Democratic Party?
Okay, it's outrageous.
You guys have screwed.
Well, Bernie's been screwed by the Democratic Party.
Look at the last week.
They wouldn't allow the poll to be released where he was up for.
Okay.
Then they do this thing as soon as the whole debacle about the count.
As soon as he starts closing in, the Democratic Party says, hey, let's have a recanvas.
Okay.
The Bernie voters are to do what they did in 216.
We've had a belly full of the Clintons come either don't vote or come vote for Trump.
I understand why you're against Bernie.
Yes.
I mean, too much socialism.
I like Bernie.
Really?
You want socialism?
No, no, no, no.
He's a populist.
He's a socialist.
I don't agree.
I don't agree with his solutions.
I think a lot of, I think a lot of people.
That's kind of a big part of politics.
No, no.
The biggest part, one of the biggest parts is identifying the problem.
I think Bernie's identified this problem.
Trump and Himlu shared some voters because they both kind of go after the same problem.
You're right.
Exactly.
I'm just saying.
The Bernie people are going to help make Trump president president again.
Even by the Democratic Party.
I don't want that amount of socialism.
I agree we need, well, not agree.
I think we need some amount of socialism.
I call it capitalism plus.
We already have a lot of socialism.
But we don't have a good form of capitalism.
Okay, but oligarchs and social media.
Serfs.
That's true.
The millennials are like Russian serfs.
They don't own anything and they're not going to own anything.
We have to redefine that.
But who?
That's the central part that we have to do.
But whose policies are responsible for that?
This bait and switch you guys pull all the time.
Just let me say, it's no.
It isn't possible.
Yes, it is.
No, no, wait a sec.
This idea, like, you're pulling a bait and switch here.
What?
What is the problem with what he just said?
Like, you're the one who's going to try and make the argument now that it's all Republican policies that we now have.
Right.
Well, here's, and here's the thing that really, and I know like every libertarian probably hearing, like, already.
But well, the thing that's frustrating about what Bill Maher says, right?
And I actually give him some credit because he says, first off, he tries to set this up in a way that, like, to fit his standard worldview, but I think he just doesn't quite understand the animal that Steve Bannon is.
Steve Bennon goes, now I know you're against Bernie Sanders.
And he goes, I like Bernie Sanders.
Like, he's like, no, I like the populism.
I like the rise of populism, both on the left and the right, because he wants the right-wing populism to win.
But he's basically his main concern.
And this is what I respect about Steve Bennon, and I respect about some of the paleoconservatives and people like that, is that they'd go, even if I don't agree with them on everything, they'd go, the most important goal is to smash the managerial state.
We need to smash this current dynamic and then we can try to win.
You know, like we can try to figure out who's going to win and take it over.
But if you hate the status quo, and I think I hate it as much as anyone, then you're like, well, the goal is to smash this thing and then fucking try to win.
Now, I do think that's a little bit of a scary game because you may not win.
But so Bill Maher tries to set this up with like, oh, you hate Bernie Sanders.
He's like, no, I actually kind of like Bernie Sanders.
I think he's getting screwed and I like his populist message and I think he identifies a lot of the correct problems.
I would probably agree with that.
But I just don't, you know, obviously his solutions are horrific for the most part, economically speaking.
But Bill Maher then goes, look, even Bernie Sanders is a little too much socialism for me.
I'm for, you know, capitalism plus.
And then he says, but we have a lot of socialism already.
Now, I give him a lot of credit for admitting that.
We have a lot of socialism already.
Okay, sure.
Yeah.
What are we talking about when we talk about this like capitalism versus socialism debate?
What, I mean, come on, man.
Just anybody could tell you what is the most powerful government that's ever existed in the history of mankind?
What is it?
We all know the answer.
It's the one we're living under right now.
That's it.
Okay.
But then not half a sentence later, he pivots to, well, whose policies are responsible for all of these, for all of this mess?
And it's like, okay, well, you just admitted we have a lot of socialism already.
So let's just look where the problems are.
Like, what problems are you talking about?
And what sector is that in?
And is that the one where we have a lot of socialism already?
Or is that the one where we don't have too much socialism?
Like, go across the board.
Show me any area where you've got a pretty relatively free market.
Like, the government pretty much stays out of this shit.
Okay.
You're going to be hard pressed to find that area where there's a ton of problems in it.
Okay.
Really, really hard pressed.
I mean, I think the like, you know, whatever, electronics or fucking shoes or clothes or, you know, whatever the fuck you want to talk about, food, anything like that.
That's pretty much left to the free market.
That's, you know, pretty much everything's working fine.
No one really has major complaints.
Now, there is some government intervention in all of these sectors.
Like, no, we don't live in an ANCAP society.
I wish we did.
But pretty much every one of those, you know, areas are functioning pretty well.
Poor people have an abundance.
Prices are reasonable.
Rich people have a crazy abundance of these things.
Then you start looking at areas like healthcare, education, fucking voting, like all of these things.
And you're like, wow, that's a real nightmare.
Oh, yeah, that's where the socialism is.
Free Market Functioning00:13:38
That's where the government interference is.
So that's the thing that's frustrating from the libertarian perspective.
It's like, well, if you admit we have a lot of socialism, just tell me where that is.
How are those areas of our economy working out?
How's the VA doing?
You know, like, how are these parts of our now?
If you were looking for a free market area where the fucking, you know, there is real problems, it's like, I think the best one you could come up with maybe is like social media, like tech companies or something like that.
But really, I mean, there's been a tremendous amount of government intervention in those areas.
And they're also, you know, their fucking leaders are being hauled in front of fucking Congress to pressure them to keep doing all the shit that you don't like them doing.
And basically, all of their activity is revolving around the world of politics.
It's not like they're just kicking people off for fucking like, you know, because they don't like something else about you.
It's for having the wrong politics.
And that's all about controlling elections and voting.
So it's still really an example of politics kind of poisoning everything.
But anyway, that's to me what's frustrating about Bill Maher's take on that.
All right.
Anything else?
Ed?
All right.
Let's keep playing.
Just let me say one thing.
Just let me say one thing.
Please spare me.
Your Democratic Party is owned by Wall Street and the corporate interest.
Look where they're going to be.
Oh, God.
God forbid the corporate efforts ever get their tentacles into the Republican Party.
That would be a bad day.
Okay, but let me ask you this.
Who's the real socialist?
He had four years.
Who's the real problem?
Who's real divided?
Who's the real socialist?
Trump's bailout of the farmers, $28 billion.
Obama's bailout of the auto industry was $12 billion.
Why is it socialism when Obama does it, but not when Trump does it?
And why is Trump has run up a much bigger debt, much bigger deficits than Obama when the Tea Party was out there?
What happened to that?
I think that the solution to the rising debt is a white president.
Excuse me?
I think the solution to the rising debt is a white president because it was a terrible problem when Obama was president.
Now it is no problem.
When the Democrats get interested in deficits or debt, if you look at the modern monetary theory that underpins Warren, underpins Bernie, underpins AOC.
Trump's doing worse.
Trump's doing worse at it.
Trump's doing worse at it.
But here's the point.
Hang on.
With no, no, with no protestation from the right.
Where's the growth over time is going to bring down the deficits?
The growth over time.
I've been hearing about that in pets on the bottom.
So let's pause again.
I got to give more of this one.
Oh, well, no question.
I mean, Steve Bennon's just so full of shit.
And I think he even knows he's full of shit, but Steve Bennon is a political animal.
So at the end of the day, he'll say, you know, things like this and just be utterly full of shit.
This is the reason why me or you will never be successful as a political animal because it's just like you just have to be able to say these things that you just know are bullshit, but you'll fucking say them anyway.
But there is this thing that's what's frustrating about this whole line of conversation, right?
Is that then they start, first off, here's what I won't give more because it's such a stupid reach to go, well, Trump's farm bailout was bigger than Obama's auto bailout.
Therefore, the claims of Obama being a socialist were just because he's black.
It's like, what?
Okay.
I mean, first off, you just picked one random policy from each one of them and then are just from that deducing that race must be the issue when there's all of these other factors that are involved.
Like, okay, you could just be like, the more reasonable one is when Democrats do that than Republicans.
But here's the fucking truth of the matter, that spending has gone up with every single president in my lifetime.
So it's not just that, like, well, Trump's doing worse than Obama.
It's like, right, but Obama was doing worse than Bush, who was doing worse than Clinton, right?
So that's, and it's not, don't, don't worry about like deficits and debt.
It's about spending.
That's the fucking issue.
We only have a spending problem.
Like, you know, when they'll talk about Trump's, this is just a demonstrably false talking point that Democrats like to use, is that they'll say the reason why Trump's so bad on the deficit and debt is because he had these tax cuts, right?
So that's why the fucking debt's ballooning so much is because Trump had these big corporate tax cuts.
So they say they care about the debt, but you just gave these fucking multi-million dollar companies big tax breaks, and that's why the debt's skyrocketing.
Well, the problem with that is you can just go check the numbers.
And actually, revenue went up slightly, but it went up after the tax cuts.
So the problem was not the tax cuts.
More revenue came in after the tax cuts were given.
So that didn't create any debt.
But what else happened?
Spending went up.
So that's the issue.
It's a spending problem.
It's not a fucking revenue problem.
And it's just that simple.
And the government grows.
And by the way, Bill Maher is absolutely, it's absolutely fair for Bill Maher to point out the hypocrisy that when the Democrats have this huge spending, huge deficits, huge debt, the Republicans are like, oh, you're all a bunch of socialists.
But then they get in power and they just keep the spending, the deficits, the debt going.
I agree with him.
Fair is the outrage.
Fair enough.
Yes.
And the Tea Party guys are like, it's crazy that they would then just be silent when Republicans do it.
Fair point.
But then Steve Bannon also has a fair point to say, since when do Democrats care about deficits and debt?
Right?
So they've all got kind of fair points.
Like, but the problem is that you just have two people calling the other one a hypocrite while they're both being hypocrites.
So, okay, can somebody come in here and just say, like, look, if you could, if you wanted to come in and say, it wasn't really a problem under Obama and it's also not really a problem under Trump, you're wrong, but you're at least not a hypocrite.
Or someone else could come in and say, it was a big problem under Obama and it's a big problem under Trump and you'd be right and not a hypocrite.
But both of you guys are hypocrites in your own way.
Now, as far as Steve Bannon's retarded argument that we're going to grow our way out of this fucking debt, well, I mean, I don't know.
Like, the economy has grown faster under Trump, right, than it did under Obama.
And the debt has grown faster as well.
So there's no evidence.
And by the way, the economy has grown quite a bit since, say, like the 1970s, and the debt just keeps growing and growing and growing.
So the idea of saying that if the economy grows, it's like, no, what seems to be obvious to me is that no matter how much revenue the federal government can possibly bring in from the American people, they're going to spend all of that and then as much as they can possibly borrow on top of that as well.
So don't give me this bullshit that we're going to grow our way out of this.
No, we have a real spending problem and the only way to deal with it is to cut spending.
Of course, Bill Maher would be the first one to start credit.
This is what's infuriating about them is that if Donald Trump actually ever proposed spending cuts, and don't get to it, they're saying he's proposing these fucking, it's like, well, he's proposing cuts in Medicare or Medicaid.
This is all a bunch of bullshit.
None of this are real cuts.
But if he was ever to propose spending cuts, Bill Maher would be slamming him for that.
So this is what the Democrats, the game they play when a Republican's in office is that they slam them if they spend, like, oh, what a hypocrite you are.
You're a big spender too.
And then they slam them if they cut, like, oh, you want to throw grandma off a cliff.
So you can't possibly win with these people.
But fair enough, he is, like you said, he is right to point out that hypocrisy.
There's no question about that.
And that's at least fair.
I think we're almost done.
Let's just play the very end.
Pay for these tax cuts and pay for these taxes.
But you guys are always trying.
You're trying to change the topic.
Let's get down to the basics.
You taught Trump all these tricks.
Like to always turn it right around.
Yes, you did.
No, I knew you got him all.
You taught him a lot.
You taught him the word populist.
You know, people who are against elites, like he did.
Well, look at the Democratic Party's done to the populist.
Look what they've done to the populist stuff.
Steve, let me ask you this question.
I read today some of the things that he said about you over the years.
Just scathing.
I mean, like, you know, The word dog figures into a lot of that.
And we see this.
Look, I come from an Irish Catholic family with five kids.
I've been called a lot worse around the dinner table.
Okay, but this is what he has to say.
It's the signal in the noise.
That's all the noise.
Really?
Look at the signal.
Look at the signal of what he's done.
He's because he does this constantly to people.
He just says the worst things about him.
They come back and eat his dog bowl.
No.
Why do they?
Because he's a transformative figure.
I see.
And his story.
Well, he is that.
He is that.
We're going right into dictatorship.
It's a very true.
It's true.
That's why the progressive left in 18 won a big victory because you went door to door.
They understand that Donald Trump, between changing the federal judiciary, deconstructing the administrative state, is going to be in their personal lives 10, 20, and 30 years from now.
That is why the left, that is why the left goes door to door to beat him.
And he's achieving his objectives.
He said, now comes the hour of action in his inaugural address, and you see the actions coming together.
And that's why we're sitting in February of 2020.
He's united his party.
He's got the economy on his side.
And if you get.
It's his best week ever.
That's what I said.
Okay.
I wish we had someone on our side as evil as you, Steve.
It's great to see you.
Thank you for doing this.
Marr takes the loss.
Yeah, that's the end of it.
I mean, it's not just a loss, but like a fucking blowout.
And really, I mean, I don't know.
Maybe some people see this different than I do.
But it was kind of shocking what Marr's reduced to.
I mean, he starts off with, you know, after Steve Bennon makes all of these kind of significant arguments, however you feel about him.
And I, like I said, I disagreed with several points that Steve Bennett made.
But Marr's reduced to starting with, but he's saying these mean things.
And then he closes with, but he said mean things about you.
And doesn't it just come off so much better for Steve Bennett to be like, yeah, you know, he's said shitty things about me.
You know, makes the Irish Catholic joke.
I've heard, I've, you know, had shitty things said about me before.
But he goes, look, the guy's a transformative president who's really doing like all of this stuff and like kind of challenging the status quo.
He's going to, you know, do all these things, which I don't really think he's doing.
I don't think he's been the transformative president he could have been in many ways.
But how does that not come off better than if you were to just go like, oh, no, he said mean things about me, so I hate him.
I'm on your side too, because he said these mean things.
And okay, look, I'm actually kind of open to the argument and to there being some validity in the argument that you don't, you know, you don't, you want a president to have a little bit more class than Donald Trump has.
I get where people are coming from.
Now, I also see the other side to it, but, you know, I get where people feel that way.
And it is, there is something, you know, kind of funny about a lot of the kind of like right-wing types who talk a lot about like, you know, the decaying culture in America who support Donald Trump, where you're like, okay, well, you talk about these kind of like, you know, traditional family values.
And then your guy is Trump, who's like had multiple wives, cheated all over him.
You know what I mean?
Like all this shit and curses and grab him by the pussy and all this stuff.
And that, is that really the guy to ush?
You know, I get that.
There's an argument there that maybe any serious person in any serious position should be a little above that stuff.
Like, fair enough.
But you won't understand.
Like, you have to understand.
Look, I'm a guy who, like, I really loved Ron Paul.
That was my guy.
It's like a country doctor who's like, you know, married to the same woman for 50 years, a Christian.
I'm not sure ever said a curse word in his life.
Definitely never tried a drug in his life.
Like, there's something about a really clean-cut, noble, honest guy that I find appealing, you know?
But you got to look at the Republicans who support Donald Trump.
And a lot of them, you know, they were trying that for years and years and years and just losing every single fight.
And then eventually they kind of wanted a fighter on their side.
And the thing is that in the same way that Bill Maher is able somehow, like he's got this cognitive dissidence or whatever, where he's able somehow to in the same conversation, essentially call someone a Nazi or compare him to a Nazi or call him a dictator and liken him to the rise of the, you know, the National Socialists in Germany.
And then go, but he says scum.
Like is, you know what I mean?
And there's like, it's like, oh, he's fucked up for saying these words, but I can say whatever I want to.
That's kind of the whole bigger picture.
So as Republicans have been trying to nominate the kind of Mitt Romney types or whoever, you know, like they kind of always go for the most Christian candidate or something like that.
And then the media calls you racist, sexist, homophobe, fascist, all of these things.
It's like, well, eventually, if you're in a fight and the other side's throwing punches and you're not throwing punches back, like, I don't think we're going to win this fight.
And I think that's why a lot of them went with the fighter.
That's what I've gotten from talking to a lot of Trump supporters.
That's what almost all of them seem to say is that that's what they loved about him.
That they feel like they've been getting punched from CNN in the New York Times for years and they'll never, you know, punch back.
It's like, you know, CNN punches somebody like Mitt Romney in the face.
They go, you know, he's as a war on women and he's torturing his dog.
And Mitt Romney goes, no, I swear I'm not.
I love women.
Binders full of women, please, please.
If you remember, the binders full of women comment was actually him trying to convince the left.
No, I wanted to hire women.
I really, really wanted to hire women.
Binder's full of women.
Binders Full Of Women00:01:09
I asked them to bring it to me.
And they're like, binders full of women.
Who would say such a thing?
And then it's like, that was always the game.
They're calling you racist.
They're calling you sexist.
And you're going, no, I swear I'm not.
And then eventually Trump came along and they were like, you're racist, you're sexist.
And he was like, you're criminals, you're fake news.
You're all a bunch of fucking liars.
And they were like, ooh, that's a whole new way to play this game.
When you get punched in the mouth, you throw a punch back at their fucking nose.
Oh, that's kind of fun.
That's something you could actually win.
You know, you start playing this out.
It's like, in the other game, I'm going to get beat up, but in this game, I've got a shot.
And that's it.
It's so obvious.
I don't know how anyone can't see it.
Anyway, that's our show for today.
Thank you guys so much for listening.
Do not forget February 21st, Frankie Bradley's Philadelphia live podcast, live stand-up show.
Me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be there.
We'll be hanging out afterward, take pictures and grab a drink and all that fun stuff.