James Medic and Robbie Fire Bernstein dissect the Libertarian Party's presidential race, criticizing Justin Amash for adopting bland Democratic rhetoric instead of challenging federal lockdowns or exposing Federal Reserve money printing. They argue that failing to cite constitutional limits on movement or address bailouts for corporations like Boeing and Citigroup missed a crucial opportunity to "wake people up" from government overreach. Ultimately, the hosts contend that without radical free-market principles, a Libertarian victory would be futile, suggesting the party must reject traditional political norms to truly defend liberty. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Government Too Big00:14:08
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 Medic.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Another fireside chat for you good people.
I recorded an episode of the Tom Woods show earlier today, and then I recorded an episode of You're Welcome with Michael Malice after that.
And now I get to round out a nice day of podcasting with my life partner, my soulmate, the one and only, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
How are you, sir?
Oh, it's a pleasure to be here and to bring down the intelligence factor on your day, you know?
Yeah, well, that's what I looked to you for.
There was a little bit of a delay there.
What are you?
Fucking, did you move to Japan and set up shop?
What's going on here?
I actually kept the exact background.
This is a green screen now.
I'm in Japan, but same background.
And now there wasn't a delay that time, which makes me think the first time I asked you a question, you were just like thinking for a long time about what you were going to say.
You know, I'm out of practice.
We're not doing this as often.
So, you know, I really need a couple of seconds to think of responses here.
All right.
The question was, how are you?
And you're like, I'm not sure.
Your honor, your honor, I'm going to need counsel here.
You're like, how are you?
There's a lot of different ways I could play this one.
Shit.
I don't know what to go with.
All right.
Hey.
Well, it looks like things might be starting to open back up.
I just saw that Gavin Newsom said there's going to be a partial opening in California.
It looks like New York might partially open in the next couple of weeks.
Are you excited to get back to the new normal?
Well, what is going to be the new normal?
I'm convinced that, you know, after two weeks, they're going to go, whoops, everyone slow down.
I'm not going to be convinced it's open until I'm back doing stand-up.
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about that lately.
And it's going to be weird if they're like 50% capacity rules and this stuff.
Stand-up is a thing where you can't really have the audience completely separated.
It just doesn't give you that feel of everybody laughing together, you know?
So I wonder what this is all going to look like.
Yeah, when are I guess I haven't seen too much about the restrictions being lifted?
I'm in my house.
We don't get any news here.
So you tell me, what does it look like they're going to be doing in the city?
Well, it does, it's not clear, but it looks like that.
I think de Blasio said something like he's open to in the next couple weeks, starting to do like a partial opening.
Let me see if I can get a date here.
Let me look up real quick.
Yeah, it looks like May 15th is what they're targeting.
But we'll see.
There's been a lot of problems in New York with the subways and with other stuff.
And they're talking about closing off a lot of roads so that people can walk while social distancing, which if you know anything about New York City, it's just a ridiculous idea.
There's no way that can work.
Then plus the fact that they've had all these problems with the subways.
And if you don't have full subway service and you're closing roads, the traffic is just going to be like insane.
And so it's hard to see exactly how this is going to work.
Have you seen that stuff about the homeless people taking over the subways?
You mean just every day I've ever been in New York City?
Yeah, I think you're just describing the subways.
Yeah, I think it's just when they got all the normal people out of the way, they realized how many homeless people there were in the subways.
This is a goddamn insane.
And you're like, I know all three of those guys.
I see them every day.
No, but it was pretty, it was pretty wild.
I saw like some footage, like it's homeless people all over that shit.
Well, the e-train late at night is basically every cart.
Somebody's using that as a hotel room.
Because the e-train is the longest train in New York City.
So that's that they sleep in that thing every night.
So I imagine, yeah, if no one's there all day, why not camp up?
I tell you, it is a weird thing.
With a lot of people have been asking, and I don't know that there's a really great answer to it, but they've been asking why there aren't more homeless people dying from the coronavirus because these are they haven't been social distancing and Lysoling everything down and using Purel, if you would believe that.
And there really hasn't been like an overwhelming number of them dying.
New York City subway people are like rats.
They're immune to anything, dude.
If there was like a SARS and AIDS and I don't know, you name the virus in New York City.
They're going to be them and the roaches are going to be the people to survive it.
Yeah.
Well, it's true.
You know, Bill Maher had a piece on this the other day that I thought was pretty interesting.
And he, you know, he was basically just talking about how people like we can't all become germaphobes.
And actually being a germaphobe is like a psychological disorder and it's also unhealthy.
Like you're not supposed to avoid germs.
That this is how you build your immune system up.
But one of the points he made that I thought was something that it was a fairly common sense, obvious point.
But with all the craziness that's been going on, it's something that deserved to be mentioned.
And you don't really hear other people mentioning it.
But for as many people that were saying, like at the beginning of this, I remember this, you know, hearing this from a lot of people that because this is a novel virus and human beings hadn't seen this before, that there was no way our immune system was not prepared to deal with it at all.
Like we have no immunities to this virus and therefore our immune system can't handle it.
And as a factual matter, that is not true.
The vast majority of people who get this virus don't die from it.
They recover, like the vast majority.
And that's because your immune system is able to fight it.
So it's not true that your immune system cannot deal with this.
It does seem for some people whose immune systems are compromised, they're unable to deal with it.
But I don't know.
It's an interesting, it's an interesting observation.
And there's so many things about the virus that really still are unclear.
And I really think if China's going to make another virus in its lab, it should be something that will get rid of the homeless people.
If we're already going to shut down the economy for a couple of months, at least clean things up a little bit.
Yeah, they're not trying to help us, Rob.
They're not our friends.
They would never get rid of our homeless for us.
That's what we'd end up thanking the Chinese.
Even Trump would thank the Chinese after that and be like, hey, listen, I've never been the biggest fan of China, but they did a pretty good job cleaning up the A-train, let me say.
So John McAfee, my go-to news source, but he tweeted this out.
And I did think this was kind of interesting.
And there's just, it's another one of these anomalies where everybody wants to pretend they have some degree of certainty over what's going on with the virus.
And this is why things are like this or like that.
No one has an answer for this that I've seen.
And that itself is worthy of mentioning.
But so John McAfee tweeted, the 10 largest cities, which are like Tokyo, Mumbai, Cairo, Mexico City, Delhi, Beijing, Sao Paulo, Osaka, and Shanghai, have a combined population of 231 million.
Their combined deaths from coronavirus is 930.
That's it.
New York City has 8 million people and 11,000 deaths, a death rate 200 times the average of these top 10 largest cities.
Now, why is that?
Especially with better healthcare.
It must be we're reporting non-coronavirus cases.
Well, that is one possibility.
But all of the people who are like supporting the lockdowns and get angry at you for questioning any of the shit, none of them really seem to have a great answer.
And I don't know that there is one other than what you just threw out there.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm open to ideas, but it does as the dust settles more and more.
It just seems like looking back at this thing, we have no evidence that this lockdown did anything to slow down the spread of this virus.
And man, we got definitive proof that it devastated a lot of people's lives.
So I don't know.
We'll see what happens here.
I think I've gotten the feeling that more and more people are starting to be over this.
And that even though there was an emotional connection from so many people who were like, yes, you have to take this virus seriously.
We have to lock down all the celebrities telling you to stay home and all the people listening to them and all of that stuff.
It's like, yeah, yeah, that's nice.
We're now like two months into it.
And people are like starting to recognize that this is a profoundly anti-human way to live.
And they want to go outside and they want to see their friends and their family and be near each other and get back to work and all of the stuff that makes us human beings.
And I'm starting to sense in the air that people are just like, look, whatever, man, we're going to get back to normal.
I don't know if it's like completely that way, but I'm sensing things trending in that direction.
After a certain amount of time, you just got to like, look, there's some risks involved in life, but you have to live.
Or you need some piles of corpses.
You know, if you had a big old pile of corpses, everyone would go, oh, shit, this is the real deal.
But without some big old piles out there, you're going to get some questions.
Did you see Ben Shapiro getting, he got in trouble for something he said that, and I'm not a fan of Ben Shapiro, but he was like dead on.
And people are giving him shit because he basically said that old life isn't as valuable as young life.
I mean, he said it.
He didn't say it in such blunt terms, but that was more or less the message.
And he was like, look, if we saw, if this virus was killing babies and little kids and we saw a whole bunch of little kids dying, you wouldn't have to convince people to stay inside.
They would be like all down for a lockdown.
But it's not.
It's killing 80-year-olds.
And he goes, let's get real.
Like an 80-year-old's life is not as valuable as a kid's life.
And people got outraged with him and were like, oh my God, he doesn't value like seniors' lives or something like that.
But I just, I couldn't believe that that was even a controversial thought.
Like, of course, a five-year-old's life is way more valuable than an 85-year-old's life, right?
My friend said this to me the other day, and I think there's probably some truth to it, but the boomers are fairly selfish.
And when you have a disease on your hands that's going to prevent, you know, 55 and 6 year olds from showing up to work, they're not going to go, okay, you guys go work.
And, you know, I guess we can't work right now.
That wasn't going to work for them.
And they control a lot of things.
So they shut the whole thing down.
The thing that's infuriating about the boomers is that they literally like the freaking country like fell apart on their watch.
I mean, I'm not saying I blame everybody for what their government did, but then they turn around and point the finger at the younger generations, which they raised, and talk about how they have no morals and no ethics and they're so selfish.
And it's like, well, first of all, you guys are the ones who raised this generation.
It's a reflection on you if the millennials are so shitty or the Zelennials or whatever.
You're the parents, so you should have done something.
But it's really funny that the generation, the boomers that came up with, you know, easy, no-fault divorce, credit card debt, real estate bubbles, like all of this other stuff that they just kind of like the way they lived in their generation.
And then they have the nerve to point at like a 20-year-old today and go like, oh my God, this kid is so selfish.
Like, where did they get it from?
From you dirty hippies.
Also, they spent all of our money, you know?
Yeah.
No judgment calls about us.
You guys rode the greatest wealth expansion ever and it's all just debt and our money.
So thanks for that.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's like the story of the boomer.
And obviously, I realize I'm generalizing a little bit, but this is more or less the story of the boomer generation is that they grew up in a two-parent household in some like, you know, working class, middle class environment.
They had like good, a good school system, a good healthcare system.
They went to college and paid for it with a summer job that they fucking worked at, came out debt-free, got a decent job right away, bought a house for $40,000, watched the equity in that house turn from $40,000 to $400,000 over, you know, a decade.
Democrats Lecturing States00:05:41
And then they sit around and lecture everybody else.
The story of some 20-year-old today is like, you know, fucking growing up through fucking, you know, like the 2000s with divorced parents, you know, a shitty school system.
Fucking, they go to college, they come out ADGs in debt.
They have to go take a job at Starbucks.
They'll never be able to afford buying a house in their fucking life.
They look at it, they're like, dude, I make fucking nine bucks an hour and this house is $400,000.
There's no fucking chance I could ever own my own home.
I never own my own car.
I will literally never be able to pay back the debt I already have on my books at this point in life.
No prospects for getting married, having kids.
Forget all that shit.
They're just happy they can stay on their parents' health insurance till they're 26 years old.
And then they're going to be lectured to by that previous generation who inherited all that and squandered it away.
I don't know.
Just seems like so fucked up.
And while we're on this topic of fucked up and being lectured to, these Democrats lecturing the federal government that their states need a bailout, that is the ultimate in, guys, we need to see some of these policies fail so that people don't continue to vote for you.
It's fraud.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
Oh, we are, we are in the era of the bailout.
So anyway, it's just, it's been, yeah, the whole thing, watching this whole thing go down has been something.
It's, you know, sometimes I've said on the show before, like I remember with the whole Mueller investigation and all of that shit and different topics where like, man, this is a historical moment.
We're really living through something pretty incredible, but you don't have to, you don't really have to convince people of that these days.
This is something that we will be telling our grandkids about.
Okay, so speaking of this whole crazy moment, one of the things that we've been talking about for the last few weeks has been the prospects for liberty and for a liberty movement in all of these crazy times.
And God, I got to say, I really think we need one now more than ever.
I don't know how that's even a hard sell, but we live in an environment where the government is robbing people at a rate that we've never seen before.
There's going to be a record high deficit this year when it's all over.
We'll have the highest deficit ever recorded in the history of the world, piling that on top of the already historic national debt.
We've got cops arresting people for not social distancing.
We've had government enforced lockdowns, tens of millions of people booted out of their jobs by the state.
So it would seem like if there was ever a need for a liberty movement, now would be the time.
So for a libertarian, it really shouldn't be that hard to just point out the things that I just pointed out and say we are against that.
And talk about good opportunity.
I'm pretty sure Trump's got a pretty low approval rating, and he's about to run against a child sniffer who can't remember basic details and pretty clearly has dementia.
So you want to talk about an open opportunity to run somebody.
This is it.
And he's not just a child sniffer.
He's also now a woman fingerer against her will.
Nothing wrong with that if it's all consensual.
But so anyway, we might get into that a little bit more in a second.
But the news, I guess, for the prospects of a liberty movement over the last few days is that Justin Amash has entered the race for presidency under the LP.
So he is now a nominee.
Although I talked about this with Tom Woods earlier on his show, it's, you know, it's this weird thing that they always do in politics where he goes, Justin Amash has formed an exploratory committee to run for president.
That always means you're running for president.
And when they say they suspended their campaign, that always means they've dropped out.
For some reason, that's just, that's the way you do it.
So anyway, he's running for president.
So he's running for president.
He's hoping to be the libertarian candidate for president of the United States.
And I will say that I understand to some degree why there's some excitement about that.
You know, certainly he's a national figure in a way that nobody else in the LP presidential race this year is.
He's a sitting member of Congress.
And so you can get a lot of attention that way.
And in fact, he's already gotten a lot of attention.
So one of the things that's interesting about this is that he is a guy who probably very few people could get this, but he has already had some really high profile interviews.
So he was on Meet the Press the other day with our favorite Chuck Todd.
And what's interesting about this is that we get to see now, so libertarians and particularly members of the LP, you get to see what you will get out of a Justin Amash candidacy pretty early on.
You get to see this is what he's got to say to the world if he can grab them by the ears and tell them, well, this is the libertarian alternative to what's going on.
And I'll tell you that even for me, I was right away like, well, let me see what he's got to say because My big desire out of this whole thing has always been to convince more people to be libertarians.
Libertarian Alternative Vision00:02:04
That's what I'm doing with this show.
It's like a big focus of my work, besides making people laugh, convincing people to be libertarians.
That's what I do with my life.
I can't support the guy until he calls and asks for the king's grace and sends me a sandwich.
That's another one.
Yeah, he hasn't done that yet.
So until that happens, he can't possibly get the endorsement of the caucus.
That's as far as I'm concerned.
Yes.
And the listen, the Mises caucus are the kingmakers of the LP, and Rob is, of course, the king of the caulks.
So all of that makes sense to me.
Robbie Fire cutting in here, I want to tell you guys about Yo Kratom.
I'm a big fan of Kratom.
I take this stuff every once in a while, not all the time.
If you've never heard of Kratom before, just ignore this.
It's like that scene in Dewey Cox when they open up under the stairwell and they're partying and they're like, you don't want no part of this, Dewey Cox.
Get out of here, Dewey Cox.
This is like that.
Never heard of Yo Kratom before, totally ignore this ad.
If you know what I'm talking about, then you got to go check out yokratom.com.
This is the only place you're going to find $60 kilos.
That's unheard of.
Anywhere else, it's like $100 for a kilo.
You go to your gas station to pick this stuff up.
It's probably not as high quality as the Yo Kratom stuff.
You got to drive around to find a gas station.
Also, who knows what kind of quarantine hours gas stations have?
You're up late at night.
You don't have this stuff.
You're driving around.
You're looking for it.
So just go stock up now.
That way you got even more time to sit in your house and watch Netflix or listen to part of the problem.
I'm not judging you how you're spending your quarantine time.
And we spend too much time in this ad read.
So let's wrap it up.
Real simple.
If you're a fan of Kratom, go to yokratom.com.
That's the only place you're going to find $60 kilos.
And they'll ship you a ton of this.
You can load up on kilos.
They got no problem shipping you kilos.
They don't care if it's quarantine.
They'll keep shipping this stuff out.
60 bucks, send you a kilo.
You got another 60 bucks?
They'll send you another kilo.
It's that simple.
One more time.
Thank you for supporting the show.
If you're a current user of Kratom, quit wasting money, quit looking for gas stations.
Just go to yokratom.com, home of the $60 kilo.
Let's get back into it.
I do say, I'll just make a brief case.
New Approach to Governance00:15:18
And I made this case a bit on Tom Wood's show, but I just think that if you're a libertarian and you actually care about seeing a more libertarian world, like you actually want to see more human beings free in our lifetime or the next lifetime, the obvious step is to convince more people that this is the way to go.
And if we don't do that, it's not going to happen.
Now, that seems like a pretty obvious point, but I think it needs to be restated.
The amount of people right now that are libertarians is not enough.
Okay.
We need more.
We need more people who agree with our way of thinking.
And so to me, if you have a presidential candidate, that's the goal.
I mean, look, the odds that the Libertarian Party nominee is going to be sworn into the White House in 2020 are, let's say, low, like non-existent.
Very, very, very low.
The idea of the Libertarian nominee getting the 60 million votes or whatever it would take to get in is just incredibly low.
That is probably not going to happen.
And even if it did, on some lightning striking you five times in a row, crazy luck that it did end up happening.
If we haven't convinced more people to be libertarians, then what difference does that make?
What difference does it make that they get in there?
As we've already seen with Donald Trump, you know, the idea that the executives, you know, like what they ran on is just going to go through is not at all a foregone conclusion.
If you were to get in there and you're actually like, oh, okay, well, I found a way to sneak without really convincing anybody to be a libertarian.
I was able to get all these votes.
Just let's say I was just like, hey, I'm an alternative to Trump and Biden.
They both suck.
Maybe I suck a little bit less.
And people vote for you and you get in.
And now you're like, okay, we're going to disband the most powerful organizations that have ever existed.
Well, you don't really have any popular support for it because you haven't convinced a whole lot of people to be true libertarians.
And you know, they're going to fight back against you.
You'll probably just be impeached quickly or fucking set up or, you know, like, or maybe fucking the JFK rap.
Who the hell knows what's going to happen?
But it's certainly not going to be easy.
So in order to do it, you'd probably need to elect a whole bunch of people in the Congress and a whole bunch of people in the House and a whole bunch of people there and win a whole bunch of local races and all this shit.
And now you're talking about a 200-year strategy that is still very far-fetched, that it could possibly work.
So the more practical thing that you could do is be like Ron Paul.
And when you get up there, just fucking tell the truth, present a radically different view of the world than what everyone else is used to seeing with politicians.
And by the way, luckily for you, you have the correct of the world right.
All you have to do is tell the truth.
And then you inherently do that.
And you could at least maybe double the size of the liberty movement.
You know, there's a whole bunch of people like the two of us who are talking to you right now who were once not free market libertarians.
We never even thought about this shit.
And then we were presented with these views and we changed our mind.
And a lot of people out there still haven't been presented with these views.
So you want to present them with the views in the most compelling way that you can.
Okay.
So to me, that's the goal.
And that's how I look at this shit.
So I will say the one thing that I almost, it perks my ear up a little bit that Justin Amash is running is that Justin Amash can get a really big audience.
And as much as anybody else, I want that because this is the whole goal, right?
Is to get the huge audience and then convert them.
So Justin Amash was on Meet the Press the other day.
We're going to take a look at his interview there.
And me and Rob are going to grade him on how we think he did with, and while maybe giving some constructive criticism or some compliments.
All right, let's check it out.
Welcome back.
Let's turn now to a little bit more of 2020 politics, presidential election, which in any other time would probably be the top story on this show most nights.
Well, today the race for the White House could be getting a bit more crowded.
Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, who left the Republican Party less than a year ago when he came out in support of President Trump's impeachment, now says he's exploring a run for president on the Libertarian Party line.
And he joins me now, Congressman Amash.
It's good to virtually see you in social distance with you.
Let me simply start with the basic question.
Why do you want to be president?
Well, thanks for having me on, Chuck.
I think Americans need honest, practical leadership.
They need someone capable in the White House.
And what they're getting right now from both Trump and Biden is the same old, same old.
And on the Republican side, you have an increasingly nationalist party.
On the Democratic side, you have a party that hasn't really reached out to a broader coalition of Americans.
I think they're reaching out to the same people on the coast and not identifying with most Americans.
And I think you need someone in there who's going to present an honest, practical approach to things, who's willing to trust the people, who respects our system of government, and will find a way to bring people together through that system of government.
We have a system that's designed to moderate things and to bring people together, and we don't use that system very well.
Yes, that is true.
The whole point of the system was to try.
All right.
So.
Can I first, I like that he shows up with the batwing eyebrows to let everyone know that he stands with the coronavirus.
That's good.
But other than that, get the fuck out of here, dude.
You've just opened up your mouth on why you're going to run for president, and you're not mentioning a single problem having to do with the debt or the overreach of the federal government and how freedom can be a better path for the American people.
And if you can't say that in one sentence and talk to the spirit of freedom, get out of here.
We don't, no, we're not going to reach out to more Americans than the Democratic Party.
Like, oh, we need something that's going to reach out to even more people.
And that's why we're going to get rid of the Fed because most of mainstream America can understand the value of us needing to get rid of the Fed.
Well, of course, most of mainstream America doesn't even know what the Fed is.
And that's what your job is.
Your job is to teach them to be outraged.
Your job is to teach them that they love liberty and hate oppression.
That's your job.
And when you get, this is, I think so many people, man, and I used to say this when I was trying to give advice to Tulsi Gabbard, and I'll say this with Justin Amash and other people too.
And I do say this to some degree from a place of love.
Like, it's not that I'm rooting against you.
I'm rooting for you.
I want you to do well here.
But time on Meet the Press is precious.
This is a big platform.
This is the longest running show in news.
It might be in America.
This is like the Sunday morning news show on NBC.
And when he says, why do you want to be president?
That's a lob.
That's you can talk about anything you want to talk about.
Pick the three most hard-hitting issues that you have that you can just slam on people.
The government just put 30 million people out of work.
And while they're doing it, they fucking gave trillions to the bankers, the people who need it the least.
Or you can talk about how they blew the whole coronavirus thing.
You can talk about how there's the longest wars in American history going on right now.
And we haven't gotten anything to show for them.
How we're leaving debt to our grandchildren who never agreed to this anyway.
And it's, you know, there's so many things you can talk about.
Like, this is your opportunity.
This is precious time and you need to knock this out of the park.
And he said nothing.
Nothing.
It was all meaningless.
What he said, ego, is, all right, it's just, it's a two-fold argument.
Trump's incompetent, so we can't have him.
And the Democrats have to appeal to a wider base.
Sounds to me like you're trying to run as a Democrat.
That's what the Democrats have been saying.
Hey, I'm the guy who's going to reach the widest base and that guy's incompetent.
So we need someone else who can beat him.
Great.
Run as a Democrat.
And you said, exactly.
You're making the Democratic argument.
And also, you're saying nothing different than what everybody all day on NBC is saying or CNN or MSNBC or any of this stuff.
So just, oh, here's another guy who also doesn't like Trump and also thinks our system isn't working.
Oh, we're not as together as we need to be.
Like, okay.
What has this, like, how would you not get?
Okay, listen.
This is the United States of America.
You're running for president and you don't have a D or an R next to your name.
You're not a Democrat or a Republican and you want to be president.
Well, obviously, you have to say something that's going to make people go, whoa, who's that guy?
You can't just say the same old bland thing and think you're going to get into the White House that way, right?
And luckily, you're a libertarian running on the Libertarian Party who has some pretty interesting, different things to say.
So it's all right there for you.
But, you know, and look, I'll say to Justin Amash, like, obviously, I did not like his whole thing on impeachment.
I thought that was a stupid hill to die on.
And no libertarian should be siding with the CIA and the FBI.
But Justin Amash has a pretty solid voting record.
He's been pretty good on not wanting to get into these wars.
I mean, he did support sanctions on Iran, which I thought was not good.
But, you know, he's pretty good on the budget.
He's pretty good on the war on drugs.
Like, there's some good qualities about this guy.
But say that.
I mean, talk about some of this stuff.
When they ask you why you want to run for president, it can't just be this nothingness.
And that's it.
And you just go, you know, our system was designed to come to consensus and to moderate.
And we don't use that system very well.
Okay.
All right.
Let's keep playing.
Yes, that is true.
That the whole point of the system was to try to figure out a consensus, even when consensus isn't there.
Well, let me ask you this.
You say you're exposing it now because you want to.
That's also not the point of the system.
Like that, that wasn't the point of the American experiment.
Come to consensus is like, what is that?
Like democracy?
Like just the idea of like whatever the will of the people is, we should do.
That's not the idea of the system.
That's like the whole point of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is that it doesn't even matter what the people say.
These are like God-given rights that can't be infringed on.
And this is the role of government in a limited constitutional republic.
It doesn't matter.
Like all the people could vote for congressmen or something like that.
And then all the people could vote for some president because they want some issue.
And even if they all get in there, then the Supreme Court can just be like, nope, that's unconstitutional.
Sorry, you don't get that.
Even if 90% of people wanted it, you still don't get that.
At least that's in theory the way the system is supposed to work.
It doesn't actually work that way.
But anyway, just a point of just making a point of see if there's a path to victory.
You're not, this isn't supposed to be seen by some vanity project.
So what metrics are you looking for to prove your path to victory?
Because look, I think in this day and age, it's easy to get the name recognition.
I could picture that.
But in a pandemic, you're asking the country a lot by electing somebody from a party that has never run the country before.
Yeah, well, the point is that parties aren't supposed to run the country.
So we elect officials who are supposed to represent us.
And the thing I'm going to do is represent the people.
When you look at this pandemic, for example, you look at the type of relief that was offered by the two parties, it was the type of relief that went to people at the top and went to those who were most well connected.
And those people who are most struggling are actually being left behind.
So you need a different approach to governance.
You need an approach that respects the people, that respects the process.
And I believe that if I spend the next several months talking to the American people about my ideas, talking to the American people about the kind of principles I would bring to the job and the kind of practical approach I would bring to the job, a lot of Americans are going to be excited about this.
And they're going to be excited, especially during this time where there's a lot of uncertainty and they're looking for something to, so for someone to operate differently, not for the same old system we've had.
Yeah, pause it.
Okay, go ahead.
He's talking about getting excited about principles.
I took three naps during that speech.
I got three in three rounds of REM, deep napping, sleep, because there's some great principles down the line that it'll have for us.
I can't wait to talk to people about my principles, like one-on-one when I'll see them.
Well, Justin, you're on Meet the Press right now.
What are the principles?
I think his principle is bailouts.
We're going to be the party of bailouts to the people.
That's what he wants everyone to know.
That's what the Libertarian Party's about.
Can I tell you, though, that it didn't, that answer didn't start off terribly.
That was a good response to Chuck Todd saying, well, why should some other party run the country?
And he said, well, none of the parties should run the country.
That's not the idea.
By the way, quick side note, think about how crazy this is.
When, you know, we talk so much about the show about the religion of the state and authoritarianism and things like this.
I mean, think about the mentality that Chuck Todd, moderator for Meet the Press, just refers to the president as running the country.
I mean, that's like some real authoritarian mentality shit right there.
He runs the country.
I mean, the president presides over the executive branch of the federal government.
That's very different from running the country.
He doesn't even run the government.
He doesn't even run the federal government.
But like the idea that there isn't like, anyway, if you really just parse that out, it's a pretty bananas way to look at the world, that the president runs the country.
Like, okay, I will grant you that Kim Jong-un runs North Korea, but that's not supposed to be the way this shit works in a professed free society.
Anyway, so that was a decent response.
And I thought it was good to point out that the relief has gone to the top and the politically connected.
I mean, he could have made that point a little more forcefully, but that was decent.
Inserting Liberty Narrative00:11:05
But then to just go in to say, well, I'm going to represent all the people and I'm going to tell them about my principle and how it's pragmatic and all this.
Again, this is like, it's goo.
There's nothing there.
You're not actually saying anything.
What principles?
Well, and guess what?
You're not going to represent all of the people.
That's just not, it's not practical in today's culture to say you're going to represent all the people.
People are diametrically opposed, okay?
On issue after issue after issue.
You know, there's like one side of people who thinks that the most fundamental right women have is the right to an abortion.
And there's another group that thinks it's murdering a baby.
Tell me how you represent all of them.
Because he's going to go around the entire country and give everyone a hug, Dave.
Right.
Right.
Everyone's going to get a hug.
Well, but you know what I'm saying?
Like there are so many of these issues that there is no, like you can't represent both sides.
You have to have an opinion on these things.
Like half the country thought that we put a fucking rapist on the Supreme Court and the other half thought an innocent man was railroaded.
Yeah.
And the other half wanted to fucking have a beer with him.
Now, which half are you on here?
Are you on beer half or rape half?
Make up your mind.
Right.
So it's just, you know, if you have these principles, then that's different than just, I want to represent everybody.
What are your principles?
And this interview would be a good time to give us some of them.
And by the way, I actually think Justin Amash does have some principles.
You know, I don't know the guy, but okay, so tell us about some of them.
All right, let's go.
Let's keep playing.
You know, it's interesting.
Obviously, a pure libertarianism, you know, small government approach.
We are in a time where there is some demand for a big government answer.
Maybe these are from the same people that claim sometimes they want a small government.
How would you be using the levers of power?
You talked about this issue of the bailouts, and so far it's only seemed to help those with connections.
There's some out there, an idea on the right and the left, of the government picking up the tab of all payrolls for a period of time.
What do you make of ideas like that?
Is that too intrusive of the government, or is that in line with where your head is at?
Well, we know the government's going to be involved in this process.
There's no doubt about that.
There's going to be federal government relief.
So the question is how we structure that relief.
And the way it was structured was the most big government way possible, which is to get a lot of people involved, a lot of bureaucracy involved, put the banks in the middle of it, get the Federal Reserve involved with big corporations, give the Secretary of the Treasury a lot of random power.
These are exactly the kinds of things that make the system difficult to operate and actually hinder economic recovery.
So if you want to have stability and recovery in the future, you have to give people the freedom to make decisions for themselves.
You have to give businesses the freedom to make decisions, of course.
But most importantly, you have to protect individuals right now who are struggling.
So what I would have done is offer direct cash payments to the people.
Instead of what we're doing now, I would have said, take this money and give a universal monthly cash payment to the people during the course of this pandemic.
And you could have Congress renew it every three months, for example.
So it only lasts for three months and then it's renewed.
This would have helped people immediately.
They wouldn't have had to wait for unemployment to work out for them or for the PPP system to get up and running.
And then on top of it, with this convoluted system Congress created, you have PPP cutting against the unemployment system where the unemployment system is encouraging people not to work by enhancing it to the point where the benefits are more than the pay that they get from work.
And then you're telling employers at the same time, please rehire these employees.
And it's created a clash where in some cases, employees aren't interested in coming back to work to a less safe environment when they could be at home and getting unemployment in the meantime.
Of course, everyone in the long run wants to get back to work.
But in the short run, you can see the problem.
Rob, we lost you for a second, but you're back.
Sorry, I'm back.
And it was just as he was getting not interesting.
So, man, oof, that was rough.
That was really rough.
I mean, look, I will say I can understand even a libertarian feeling that people should be compensated in some way during this time.
Because, look, it has been the government forcing people not to be able to work.
You can make an argument.
I'm not saying I agree with it, but you can make the argument.
But when Chuck Todd starts off by saying, you know, there's a lot of people who claim to be libertarians and don't want intrusive government, but now they kind of, everyone seems to want government, you know, and he sets you up with that.
And then your comeback to that is basically like, well, this was mismanaged and we should have had a better relief package than that.
How have you differentiated yourself from everybody else?
This is what everyone will say.
There is nobody out there who will go on a cable news show, or in this case, a network news show, and say, you know, I thought this relief package was perfect.
And the fact that big corporations got bailed out was great.
And I think it's really great that the bankers got bailed out.
And, you know, if some of the money trickles down into regular people's hands, then that's good enough.
And I support the mechanism by which this happened, right?
No one says that.
Nobody takes that position.
Everybody takes the position that Justin Amash just took, which is that we should be helping people more and not bailing out corporations, right?
This is no different from what Bernie Sanders has been saying.
This is no different from what Andrew Yang has been saying.
This is no different than anybody that you, anybody, even the ones who don't believe it at all, they wouldn't say it, you know, they would pretend that that's what they believe.
But what the libertarian insight should be is that this is how it will always work when it's run by the government.
There's never going to be a time when Joe Sixpack has as much political power as Goldman Sachs does.
That's just not practical.
Of course, the politically connected are always going to benefit when you're looking for a government solution.
So that's the point that libertarians should be inserting into the narrative.
And then I got to say, first of all, you could have turned that around on Chuck Todd.
You could have said, like, oh, okay, well, there seem to be a lot of people who are always calling for government solutions, and you guys don't seem to be so happy with the government solutions right now.
You know, you can talk about all the government failures leading up to this thing.
If you're actually like a passionate libertarian, there's a whole lot.
I mean, there's so much to talk about.
But then I got to say, if you're talking about the coronavirus and the only take you're going to have is that, I just don't like the way the bailouts were structured.
Not that, and he had one little throwaway line about the Federal Reserve, like, oh, the Fed working with corporations.
You got to explain this to people.
People don't know what you're talking about.
They don't even know what that means.
You have to explain it to them so that they can be outraged with you.
And if you just explain it, they will be.
Okay.
Yes, the Federal Reserve, which is basically the government's department of money, which operates in secrecy and gets all of the protection of a private company, even though it's a public company.
These guys are printing money out of thin air and giving it to bankers.
And then the bankers loan the money to you.
That's the system.
It doesn't take much before someone would go, well, that's kind of an outrage.
Who the fuck would agree that that's a good system?
So they just make money off nothing while devaluing our currency?
Right?
It's not that complicated.
It's, you know, it takes like three steps, but you can get people mad.
But I got to say that I just think libertarians are missing a huge opportunity.
If you won't, look, we've had a lockdown now for two months.
There's a lot of people who are over the lockdown.
There is no sound scientific evidence that the lockdown has done anything, that it's been helpful at all.
And it has kicked tens of millions of people out of work.
Oh, by the way, limited government constitutionalist types, please direct me to the portion of the Constitution that gives the authority to tell people they can't leave their houses.
So here's the answer, libertarian.
You're against the lockdown.
Don't you see how right away, see, here's the thing is, you have to have a sack in order to make this argument.
But guess what?
If you want to win the presidency and you're not a Democrat or a Republican, you're going to need some balls to do that.
But see, so here's the bad side, right?
You're going to take some heat.
You're going to get criticized for this position, okay?
That's the reality.
By the way, he's already going to take heat even right now.
He's already taken heat from Biden people who are like, well, he's anti-Trump and every anti-Trump vote needs to go to Biden.
So he's going to get Donald Trump re-elected.
And he'll take heat from Republicans because he's pulling fiscal conservatives or whatever.
So he's going to get Biden elected.
He's going to take heat.
But if you were to come out here and say there is no constitutional authority to tell somebody he can't go to work, every job is essential.
If you have a job and you got a family to support, that's a pretty damn essential job.
We libertarians believe in liberty.
We are against the lockdown.
You just made national news.
Now everybody has to talk about you.
Everybody's got to take that position on.
Now someone's got to be like, well, where is now?
They've got to argue it.
Where's the actual evidence that the lockdown's working?
Where's the constitutional authority to allow people to suspend freedom of religion?
Okay?
This is what you have to do.
If you want to, number one, have a shot at this thing.
And number two, to me, more importantly, actually wake some people up.
That's what the goal should be here.
Bail People Not Corps00:06:57
It's like the fucking Matrix, right?
Like your goal isn't just going like, all right, so we got five of us on this ship.
Let's go destroy all of the fucking robot aliens.
What was it?
It was robots.
It was AI, I think.
Anyway, the job isn't just to go kill all the machines because there's like five of us.
So we're not going to be able to fucking beat all the machines.
What's the fucking plan here?
It's to wake people up, to pull them out of the matrix one by one.
And you have to find people who are ready to be woken up.
Remember, that was the whole thing where they're like kind of scouting out Neo at first and they offer you the red or the blue pill.
Like they're like, hey, do you want this?
Do you want to fucking know what's really going on?
Do you want to wake up from your slumber?
Because here's what's really happening.
Here's the red pill.
Everything in your life that you've been told is bullshit.
That's what giving someone the red pill is, right?
It's letting them know that this whole thing is bullshit.
And it is.
And the Federal Reserve is a great one.
It's a great red pill right there.
There's a bunch of them.
But if you're not going to do either, if you're not going to try to fight the machines or wake people up, then humbly I have to ask you, what are you doing here?
What's the point?
Is this just about you?
Is this just about like, oh, well, you can get yourself some more notoriety by fucking running for president?
You just got to ask these questions.
All right, let's go back to the video.
Industries.
On one hand, there's your basic philosophy, hey, pure free market capitalism.
Hey, you're on your own.
But this is a unique situation.
Where are you on helping the casino industry, helping the airline industry, some of these that are right now sort of they can't run their business?
Well, if they can't run their business, then their biggest cost right now is that they've got some overhead and you can take care of their employees by offering direct payments.
So what I would have said is you guys limit your costs.
Also, big corporations have more access to capital.
They have better relationships with banks and other people who can provide them the loans in the meantime.
But we can take care of a big portion of your costs by covering for your employees.
So if these employees aren't getting benefits, aren't getting the same level of pay from your business, then we, the government, can pay them.
Then in the meantime, we have to get through this crisis.
When the crisis is over, demand will come back and these companies can get back up and running.
But I don't think we should have the government selecting which industries are most important, which ones are taxpayers going to bail out.
Let's help out the people and not bail out the corporations.
All right, so let's pause it right there.
This is just really bad.
I don't know how else to say it.
I don't know how anybody who is a libertarian who's like, you're already on this guy's side.
I don't know how you could be impressed with this.
So he acknowledged there at the end: let's not have the taxpayers bail out these big companies, right?
Chuck Todd starts with, and this is, you can't let them get away with this framing, but he goes, listen, I know that you're like a pure free market guy.
Basically, you're on your own.
So that's his framing of what it is to be for free markets.
You're on your own.
Now, of course, that is wildly inaccurate.
Nobody, no libertarian would ever say that's what we're for.
You're on your own.
Fuck you.
But then he turns around and says, Well, you know, what about these big corporations that need help from the government?
And since Amosh recognizes that it comes from the taxpayers, that's who's going to be bailing them out anyway.
Wouldn't you say, like, well, yes, I do believe that big banks and big corporations should be on their own.
The taxpayers are worse than on their own.
They're on the hook for bailing out big corporations.
Like, resources are finite.
And we can't just bail everybody out.
Obviously, that doesn't work, right?
Because someone's got to be doing the bailing out.
And in this case, we're asking the average working person to bail out Boeing and fucking GM and Delta and all of these huge companies, not to mention Citigroup and Chase Bank and Goldman Sachs.
You have to give them something.
There's so many different ways you can go with this, but to just say, well, I don't think we should bail out that way, but we should bail out this way.
Man, I mean, I just, I can't believe that in such a moment that calls for somebody to be standing up for liberty.
This is the message.
We got to purge out some trash.
You don't purge out some trash.
You don't take the opportunity to take it out.
We're just going to be living in a fucking sewer, man.
Some of these are bad actors.
Just talk to that.
Yeah.
Some of these corporations have robbed us of our wealth and they've left us in a situation where we can't certain things.
It's really not that complicated.
I don't know what the specific examples were that what's his name just mentioned in the bailouts, but let's go industry by industry.
I mean, Democrats themselves have already talked about how they used money over the last couple of years for stock buybacks.
And like for the airlines, the amount of money that they're being given is equivalent.
Like, I don't need Delta Airlines to exist.
I need to be able to fly from here to California.
And guess what?
If Delta Airlines didn't exist tomorrow, there would be a way for me to get to California on an airplane.
It would be a different company that was more fiscally responsible and offered a better goods and service.
I don't need AMC Lowe's Theater to exist tomorrow.
I don't even really like going to movie theaters, but guess what?
Netflix will get me the fucking movies for my house.
I won't even have to go there.
I don't need like these department stores.
I need your couch store that market whatever's been around for 100 years and sells shitty couches.
I don't need it.
Take it industry by industry.
Let's get rid of all of them.
They're shitty services.
I think it was Tom who said, but maybe it was someone else.
I can't remember.
But they said, like, when people think of companies going bankrupt or going out of business, it's like you almost have to explain that that is itself a process.
Like you realize the airplanes aren't going to disappear.
Like they'll still be there, even if Delta goes bankrupt.
There's still airplanes.
then some capitalists can come buy up the company, restructure it, reorganize it.
If there's planes that still exist and there's still a demand to fly on them, somebody will be selling you tickets to go fly on that plane.
This happens all the time throughout the economy.
Third Party for Liberty00:07:19
But I just, you know, to me, it's like, look, man, you're running for president on the Libertarian Party ticket.
You're the one who's for liberty.
There has never been a crackdown of liberty on such a large scale in this country in any of our lifetimes.
Nothing like it, you know?
So talk about that.
Talk about how you're for liberty.
If you are in fact, if not, get the fuck off the Libertarian Party ticket.
But like, anyway, it's just like, obviously to me, this is the moment for a radical.
This is the moment for somebody to really present the fucking, you know, the vision of a free society.
And man, there's just nothing here.
All right, let's play, I guess, the rest of it.
I don't think there's much more of interest.
All right, two sort of hardcore political questions.
Number one, the Libertarian Party needs to petition to get on approximately 14 or 15 states, depending on how much sites you believe about how many states.
Yeah, he just gets into questions about like getting ballot access and stuff like that.
And then it's basically over after that.
So that's it.
So, okay, I'll just say this, and I'm trying to be fair to Justin Amash here, because I don't, I do think that Justin Amash is better than Gary Johnson Bill Weld.
He's not Bill Weld.
Bill Weld was just terrible and less charismatic, if you can believe that.
And Gary Johnson was just not prepared for the moment, the job, any of that shit, you know?
So he is a little bit better.
He's got a decent voting record.
Believe me, I think if there were 535 Justin Amashas in Congress, we'd be in a better country.
I really do believe that.
But if your argument, if the reason to be excited about a Justin Amash presidential run is that he can get this national media coverage, okay.
But if that's what you're going to give us when you have that moment, what was I supposed to be excited about again?
Listen, you had just recently, right?
I saw a blue check mark Democrats on Twitter who were saying that they believe Tara Reid, but they're still going to vote for Joe Biden.
That's what you've got on how committed the never Trumpers are to just supporting Joe Biden blindly.
Donald Trump's loyal following is hardcore committed to Donald Trump.
If you're going to make some noise in this, you got to present something.
You can't think you're just going to show up and go, well, I just, you know, I believe in common sense and bringing people together and representing everyone.
Okay, so now what you're positioning yourself for is basically what Gary Johnson did, right?
You're saying, I'm a protest vote.
You know, vote for me if you're like, hey, I don't like this whole system.
I think we should have a third party.
And okay, you know what?
You might even get some votes that way.
I mean, I don't know how many you're going to get.
I doubt it's going to be too many this year.
And that's probably true for whoever the LP nominee is.
I don't think they're going to get a lot of votes this year.
I don't think they're going to get four or five million votes out of the LP this year.
But maybe you'll get 2 million votes by doing that.
But the question you have to ask yourself is: what does that matter?
What is gained by that?
Who cares?
Who cares if you get 2 million votes?
If they were just voting for a protest vote and they didn't, and they weren't convinced, like, oh my God, free markets are the way to go, or oh my God, limited government is the way to go, or we need to end these wars.
We need to end the drug war.
If you haven't changed their minds at all, then they vote for you.
One of the other guys wins and everything stays exactly the same.
And that's what Gary Johnson did.
Whereas you could do what Ron Paul did and change people's lives, at least bring a lot more people over to the cause of liberty.
That's something that we can practically do.
And what Ron Paul was able to do is create these like, hey, who the fuck is that guy moments where he'd say something?
You're like, wow, no one ever said anything like this before.
And then he could really argue it and really defend it.
And then that sparks the people who are interested.
You're still not going to get everybody, but you want to find those people you can unplug from the fucking Matrix because that's what this is all about.
And I just got to say, I mean, that was like, I'd give it a D if I had to give it a grade.
I mean, he didn't like ruin his candidacy in the interview.
So I guess I'll hold off from an F, but there was not one moment.
I mean, I can't imagine it.
Like, I couldn't, I would be shocked if you, Rob, were on Meet the Press and they were just like, tell me why I should be a libertarian or why people should vote for a libertarian or whatever.
If you didn't have at least three moments where you were like, that was a fucking, like, that was a really good point.
Just a few moments.
N-zero.
Well, Chucky Boy, you know, I tune into this program every once in a while.
I see the way you lie to the American people and I just want to stand it up, make sure that they can get real information, get the truth, understand how corporations are robbing them of their wealth so that we can start being prosperous.
How do you like that, Chucky Boy?
There you go.
That was better.
There you go.
Something.
I'm just saying something.
One point about how government has mismanaged this entire system.
One point about how the Federal Reserve is just robbing the American people when they're at their greatest moment of need.
Something about the government doesn't have the constitutional authority.
You have governors going on on cable news shows saying they're not thinking about the Bill of Rights.
Well, excuse me, Mr. Governor.
It is your job to think about the Bill of Rights.
You don't have the authority to ignore the Bill of Rights.
I mean, these things write themselves.
Listen to one episode of this fucking show.
I'll give you a million talking points for a libertarian to say, fine, ditch the shit about me you don't like.
You know, cut out the F-bombs and the anarchism.
Fine.
Just take a few of a few of the golden nuggets that I drop on you people every goddamn episode.
All right.
I guess that'll be our show for today.
So Flynn, we're going to save Flynn.
Let's save it.
We'll do another one.
Let's do another one like tomorrow or something like that.
And we'll talk Joe Biden, sexual assault, and Flynn and all that other stuff.
He is allegedly fingering people.
I think he's been fingering his own brain through his ear because he ain't fucking, he ain't talking so good.
Wouldn't that be great if they were like, he just met, he mixed up the dipple.
You know, he was just trying to go for chip and dip.
He just, he messed up.
An old man.
He gets confused.
All right.
So why don't we say that?
Are you good to do another one tomorrow?
All right.
So tomorrow, we'll do an episode.
We'll talk Biden, Flynn, a couple other things in the news.