Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Flynn Gets A Win
Aired: 2020-05-12
Duration: 01:06:40


=== Watching Connor Ferguson (05:19) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:08]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:10]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:12]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:15]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:21]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:26]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:30]  Here's your host, Dave Smith.
[00:00:34]  Hey, what's up, everybody?
[00:00:35]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:40]  I am, of course, the most consistent motherfucker you know, Dave Smith, the voice and soul of Liberty.
[00:00:45]  And he is the fire with the fire right over his left shoulder, the king of the caulks, Robbie Bernstein.
[00:00:54]  How are you, sir?
[00:00:55]  You know, I was doing okay.
[00:00:57]  I was getting through quarantine, but then when I had to see Tony Ferguson lose a fight, I don't think I can handle that.
[00:01:03]  My heart can't handle.
[00:01:05]  So I fucking, my goddamn internet went out on Saturday, which is a real disaster for me during quarantine, especially when I make my money podcasting.
[00:01:19]  So I missed skanks and I missed the fights, but then I fucking watched them earlier today.
[00:01:27]  We had to get a new box in and they won't fucking set it up for you.
[00:01:31]  They just like fucking, they fucking give it to us.
[00:01:34]  Yeah.
[00:01:35]  And I have to figure it out.
[00:01:36]  But somehow, through the grace of God, I was able to figure it out.
[00:01:40]  And it's working.
[00:01:42]  So for now, I'm back up and running.
[00:01:45]  But I watched it.
[00:01:46]  I like ordered it and watched the whole thing, even though I had already had the two, the main co-man spoiled because I couldn't avoid seeing it on social media.
[00:01:54]  But I was just like, this is the fucking first UFC events.
[00:01:57]  It's the first live sporting event since all this shit.
[00:01:59]  I got to sit down and watch it.
[00:02:00]  And I watched it.
[00:02:02]  And man, it was like great to have a UFC event on.
[00:02:07]  And I didn't know the results to any of the other fights.
[00:02:09]  So it was all, it was like fun to watch.
[00:02:12]  But man, it was weird, huh?
[00:02:14]  Really weird.
[00:02:15]  Something kind of eerie about it.
[00:02:18]  I could watch UFC without the crowd.
[00:02:20]  There's something about really hearing them and the staleness of it.
[00:02:24]  It's like a different energy.
[00:02:25]  I could do it.
[00:02:26]  That part I could, I could deal with, but I got to say, and I've heard other people say that as well.
[00:02:32]  I like the fucking crowd.
[00:02:33]  I like the fucking energy of people going nuts.
[00:02:35]  I like people hearing a knockout and be like, bah!
[00:02:38]  I just like all that.
[00:02:39]  The thing that's so weird is it's like, like, okay, so all these people are in masks, but then there's two people fighting and a chick in a thong holding up a ring girl sign.
[00:02:54]  It's just so bizarre.
[00:02:55]  There's something so strange about that.
[00:02:57]  Like just like the optics of it were so weird.
[00:03:00]  Well, they have to make the effort and just go, hey, we're doing everything we can, but we can't run this without an asshole out.
[00:03:06]  Yeah, so you just got this like chick's ass out while everyone else has masks on.
[00:03:12]  I just found something about that to be so strange.
[00:03:15]  And then, of course, they couldn't put a mask on her because that would just look ridiculous.
[00:03:19]  You can't be in a fucking brawn thong and a mask.
[00:03:22]  Like that's just too crazy.
[00:03:24]  And then, of course, everyone in the ring, you know, can't have masks on.
[00:03:27]  But anyway, it was, yeah, it was cool.
[00:03:30]  It was better than nothing.
[00:03:31]  Sad to see Tony Ferguson go out like that though, man.
[00:03:33]  Ooh, Justin Gaci.
[00:03:35]  No joke.
[00:03:36]  That guy is, that guy is scary, man.
[00:03:40]  I just feel like Ferguson's been so great for so long.
[00:03:43]  And he's going to be, I hope he climbs back up and he gets his championship and all the money and all that stuff.
[00:03:49]  But if he goes out like with another loss or two, he's going to be the most robbed UFC fighter ever.
[00:03:54]  Yeah, it sucks because he really deserved the Connor fight or the Khabib fight.
[00:03:59]  He really deserved that big fight.
[00:04:02]  And then after Connor lost, it was like he really deserved the Khabib fight.
[00:04:05]  And, you know, I think in MMA, matchups make fights.
[00:04:12]  And he caught a really tough matchup.
[00:04:14]  For Connor, though, I would step up.
[00:04:16]  This is like, you just saw, hey, I can beat Ferguson.
[00:04:19]  He doesn't want to go to the ground.
[00:04:21]  That's a better fight for a connector.
[00:04:22]  I think it's a different, I think it's a completely different matchup.
[00:04:25]  And I'll tell you why.
[00:04:27]  Number one, Connor does not have nearly as good wrestling as Justin Gacey does.
[00:04:33]  And I know Tony wasn't trying to bring him to the ground, but part of that is because he knew it was going to be very hard to wrestle this guy.
[00:04:41]  Connor is different.
[00:04:43]  The other big, big thing is I don't think Connor has five strong rounds like that in him.
[00:04:48]  And Gacey did.
[00:04:50]  So that's, I think it's a very different matchup for, you know, for those reasons.
[00:04:55]  And as long as I've hijacked the show to talk television, because really that's all that is left of life.
[00:05:00]  Are you watching The Last Dance?
[00:05:02]  I haven't.
[00:05:02]  I have not watched it.
[00:05:03]  I am going to jump into it and catch up with it.
[00:05:06]  I'm a 90s kid who was a huge basketball fan.
[00:05:09]  So I'll love it, but I just haven't had a chance to sit down and fucking watch it.
[00:05:13]  It makes me miss stand-up so much because you're just watching Jordan's competitive edge and how much like he outpracticed and how it worked, everyone.

=== The Flynn Narrative (10:37) ===

[00:05:20]  You're like, man, I got it, but, you know, the quarantine, what are you going to do?
[00:05:24]  Missing stand-up comedy is really starting to get to me.
[00:05:27]  Really starting to fucking get to me.
[00:05:29]  Where it gets to me is like, you know, I guess in the evening hours, I'll be out doing stand-up, whereas now I just drink and watch television.
[00:05:35]  So it's like a whole chunk of time that I would otherwise be productive.
[00:05:39]  Because even if you're drinking and doing stand-up, you're still doing it.
[00:05:42]  Yeah, that is true.
[00:05:44]  But there's just something about like having a great set that's just so much fucking fun.
[00:05:52]  And it's just, it's like a release.
[00:05:54]  It's kind of hard to describe to people who don't do it.
[00:05:57]  But it is, I, I really fucking miss that.
[00:06:00]  Like just fucking hitting like you're fucking figuring out your jokes and when they really fucking work well and having a great set.
[00:06:07]  Just, it's just great.
[00:06:09]  And it is like I'm going through a little bit of stand-up withdrawal at this point.
[00:06:14]  But, you know, hopefully soon we'll get back out there.
[00:06:18]  Okay.
[00:06:18]  So.
[00:06:20]  By the way, I'll let you talk, but we might as well plug the two dates we have, assuming that they actually happen.
[00:06:24]  But you're doing, you got Vegas, which is the real big one, the libertarian thing.
[00:06:30]  I'll let you plug that.
[00:06:30]  Freedom Fest.
[00:06:31]  I'm emceeing Freedom Fest.
[00:06:34]  I'm hosting the entire thing.
[00:06:35]  It's a huge festival in Vegas with a lot of like really great liberty-minded people.
[00:06:40]  And I'm going to be hosting the whole thing.
[00:06:43]  Thrilled to do that.
[00:06:44]  It's my first time ever there and I'm hosting it.
[00:06:46]  So, you know, the plan is we're going forward with that.
[00:06:50]  As of now, it's in July.
[00:06:51]  So if you can come out to that, it's going to be a fucking great time.
[00:06:56]  Great celebration of freedom in these unfree times that we live in.
[00:07:00]  And then we got the Rochester Day, which I don't remember off the top of my head, but I think it's the last weekend in June.
[00:07:05]  Does that sound right?
[00:07:06]  That sounds like.
[00:07:07]  In the show notes.
[00:07:08]  Okay.
[00:07:08]  Yeah, we'll throw that in the show notes.
[00:07:09]  But yeah, this is the one that was rescheduled that we were supposed to do in May.
[00:07:13]  But, you know, as you know, some things got changed around in that time.
[00:07:20]  But yeah, so we're coming out there at Rochester.
[00:07:23]  We're looking forward to this shit.
[00:07:24]  We're assuming everything will go forward and be okay with that.
[00:07:28]  I don't know exactly.
[00:07:29]  It's unclear what's going on.
[00:07:31]  Some states are starting to reopen.
[00:07:33]  Most of them are reopening in phases.
[00:07:36]  New York and New Jersey, there's really no end in sight.
[00:07:42]  New York City, at least, and New Jersey.
[00:07:45]  New Jersey just pushed it another month.
[00:07:47]  So they're locked down until at least June 15th.
[00:07:51]  And New York basically is giving no indication of when this is going to happen.
[00:07:57]  De Blasio said perhaps sometime in June, but as he said, but the science has to dictate when we do this, which is really just so bizarre, considering that the justification for all this was to flatten the curve, which has clearly been flattened.
[00:08:16]  And we're on the other side of the curve.
[00:08:19]  So anyway, it's all pretty insane, but that's where we are.
[00:08:23]  So the big news, since the big news, Brzezinski, since last time we spoke, is what's going on with Flynn.
[00:08:33]  And this is what we were talking about the last time me and you spoke over the computer.
[00:08:41]  Flynn, all charges dropped by the Justice Department.
[00:08:46]  Fascinating turn of events.
[00:08:48]  What were your thoughts, Robbie Bernstein?
[00:08:51]  Well, firstly, take a big fat victory lap because we were right.
[00:08:55]  And hopefully, because more of the stuff's being exposed, that original, I think it's a 302 form, they can't find it.
[00:09:02]  Also, they confirmed that the steel dossier was paid by the Clintons.
[00:09:06]  I think that's all like that's formally confirmed now.
[00:09:10]  Shift, that's beauty.
[00:09:11]  They got all those testimonies and all these people that were on the news saying, hey, there's a, when they were actually under testimony, we're like, yeah, there's no evidence.
[00:09:20]  We got nothing.
[00:09:21]  There's no reason to think it.
[00:09:22]  And yes, just to be clear, this is what they were saying when they did not think the world was going to hear this.
[00:09:28]  So this is what they were saying.
[00:09:29]  You know what I mean?
[00:09:30]  Testifying behind what they thought were closed doors.
[00:09:34]  Very different from what you heard on cable news.
[00:09:38]  But clearly, just trying to make a charade of the thing and keep it as a story for as long as they possibly could.
[00:09:43]  And if anything, the checkmate was that they were hoping to get Trump to testify and then get him for lying, like the same as they caught Flynn.
[00:09:51]  But absent of being able to do that, they just wanted to keep it in the news as much as possible to reinforce it.
[00:09:57]  And we know that Mueller was doing that because, like, I mean, you said a million times that he came out to clarify some things and he wouldn't come out to clarify other things.
[00:10:05]  And then at the end of the whole thing, it turned out to be baloney.
[00:10:08]  But then it went, oh, well, he couldn't come to a full determination to say that he was fully exonerated, which is just bullshit.
[00:10:16]  Yeah.
[00:10:16]  And I suppose they did leave them just enough wiggle room to still have a narrative for the other side.
[00:10:26]  But if you, I just don't understand how anybody, if you're going to look into the details of this case with an honest, open mind, how you wouldn't come to the conclusion that obviously this was a setup from the beginning and that Flynn was one, not small, but just one piece of this whole operation to take down Donald Trump.
[00:10:52]  That's what this was.
[00:10:54]  And you don't, it doesn't, you know, you don't have to be a fan of Donald Trump in order to acknowledge that.
[00:11:00]  But as you see, there obviously is a narrative from the other side.
[00:11:05]  And it goes something like, you know, well, Barr has politicized the Justice Department because that's the problem.
[00:11:12]  Barr politicized the Justice Department.
[00:11:14]  Not that it was politicized under Obama.
[00:11:16]  You know, it's Barr who did it.
[00:11:19]  And that's why they let this guy off.
[00:11:21]  And, you know, you can.
[00:11:23]  What does that mean to politicize the Justice Department if you're exposing truth or investigating?
[00:11:30]  That was the most important thing that could happen was just investigating to find truth.
[00:11:34]  Whatever happened to all those talking points.
[00:11:36]  Just trying transparency and truth.
[00:11:38]  Yeah, that's all out the window now.
[00:11:41]  Now it's just, you know, it's politicized or whatever.
[00:11:45]  Look, I mean, I guess the claim is that, you know, Donald Trump's attorney general let off Donald Trump's, you know, former national security advisor who was convicted, you know?
[00:12:00]  Like I always said throughout the Russia thing, the whole collusion hoax, they did a reasonably decent job of creating a narrative for someone who's not following closely to be like, yeah, this kind of stinks.
[00:12:17]  I mean, you can see where if you have, first off, they're going to say, well, Russia interfered in the election and 17 intelligence agencies are all agreed that they interfered in the election.
[00:12:31]  Now, of course, this was brilliant because the terminology is just brilliant because interfered in the election sounds like some serious shit.
[00:12:44]  And if you just say, and all 17 agencies agree on this, then it's like, oh, well, there's obviously overwhelming evidence that they interfered with our democracy.
[00:12:53]  I mean, you know, this is like an act of war, as many people said.
[00:12:59]  Of course, interfering in an election and like buying ads on Facebook, like that doesn't exactly seem like what you're talking about when you say interfere with an election.
[00:13:12]  That interfere with an election kind of makes you think like hacking into voter machines or something like that, you know?
[00:13:19]  But so they say that, and then they go and we're investigating whether Trump colluded with Russia in their interference in an election.
[00:13:26]  So already you have the narrative that they're flipping votes and Trump's helping them flip votes.
[00:13:33]  And of course he would because they're flipping votes to Trump, right?
[00:13:36]  So of course he would want to help them.
[00:13:38]  And then we go, we're having a special investigation about this.
[00:13:41]  And you see, you know, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and all these different high-ranking Democrats coming on going, oh, there's all this evidence.
[00:13:49]  And they're seeing, you know, classified material.
[00:13:53]  So they're telling you there's all this different evidence.
[00:13:55]  And then you see like five or six members of Trump administration being indicted and ultimately convicted from this investigation.
[00:14:02]  And that is enough.
[00:14:04]  And I understand why.
[00:14:05]  That's enough for the layman who's not paying attention, who's not looking deeply into this and who's already a Democrat.
[00:14:13]  So they kind of want to believe this.
[00:14:15]  Like it's confirmation bias for them for them to go, well, obviously where there's smoke, there's fire.
[00:14:21]  This whole thing stinks.
[00:14:23]  And so, yeah, I mean, look, they're getting all these people around him.
[00:14:26]  So if that's your level of understanding of this, and then you see that Trump's guy drops the charges against fucking Trump's other guy, sure, I could see where you would be like, oh, yeah, there's a politicized justice department or whatever.
[00:14:41]  But I don't understand where anybody could be honest and actually look into the details of what happened and not realize that this was absolutely a setup.
[00:14:51]  And Flynn, I mean, I hope he sues the shit out of the fucking FBI and gets something out of it.
[00:14:59]  I mean, he really should.
[00:15:00]  There's no justice if he doesn't get something back.
[00:15:03]  You should also take the approach.
[00:15:05]  Yeah, it's politicized, and that's why we shouldn't have these departments because whoever's in control of them just puts it to work.
[00:15:10]  And, you know, there is no law.
[00:15:13]  It's a function of who's enforcing it.
[00:15:15]  Yeah, and everything is politicized in the government.
[00:15:18]  And, you know, it kind of reminds me of, I don't know if you ever saw when Jack from Twitter was on Rogan's podcast with Tim Poole, and he was saying that they don't have a political bias at Twitter.
[00:15:32]  They just have like, you know, their terms of service and it doesn't discriminate against left or right-wing people.
[00:15:40]  And Tim Poole made the point that he was like, but you guys don't realize because you're all left-wing people, that's your perception, but you will kick people off for misgendering somebody.
[00:15:52]  And he was like, well, yes, we believe that that's hate speech to misgender someone.
[00:15:55]  And he's like, that's a left-wing perspective.

=== Oral Health with Quip (02:53) ===

[00:15:58]  Like that is itself.
[00:16:00]  But you just look at that as the correct answer.
[00:16:02]  So it doesn't seem like a left or right thing to you, but that clearly is like a fucking, you know, a point of view because a lot of like right-wing conservatives would say that calling Bruce Jenner Caitlin Jenner is misgendering, but you're saying calling him Bruce is dead naming or whatever the fuck they call it, you know?
[00:16:22]  But that, so a lot of times, even if they're not being as fucking devious as they were in this situation, a lot of times you're going to be politicized just by your own bias because you think that's just the correct answer or the correct outlook or procedure or whatever.
[00:16:41]  All right, guys, let's take a quick break from today's show and thank our sponsor, which is Quip.
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=== False Information on YouTube (15:03) ===

[00:18:51]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:18:54]  Anyway, so, okay, you know, speaking of that, there's something else that's been on my mind that I've, you know, me and you have been talking about for a few years now.
[00:19:06]  And of course, a lot of people have been talking about this, which is tech censorship.
[00:19:11]  And that's, there's been a lot of stuff going on.
[00:19:16]  I've had, just in our little experience, Bad, excuse me, I've in the part of the problem inner circle, and I believe you and Brian are both also moderators on our private Facebook group.
[00:19:31]  I've been getting more and more stuff than ever before where I'll get these notifications like so-and-so posted false information and therefore it's been removed.
[00:19:44]  So we're not even deciding whether or not we can have this information shared in our own little group.
[00:19:53]  Facebook is just letting me know that this information was false and therefore it's gone.
[00:20:00]  But they're nice enough to let me know.
[00:20:02]  Oh, hey, someone's sharing false information in your group.
[00:20:05]  You know, it'd be an interesting study.
[00:20:06]  And you and I are both too lazy to do it.
[00:20:08]  But if we could somehow get a chart, like label all like these little things that they say are false information, and then two years from now, see what percentage of them turned out to be 100% true.
[00:20:18]  Yeah.
[00:20:20]  And pretend like they're not editorializing at the moment when they're just going with whatever the government's talking points are.
[00:20:26]  We had a crazy, firstly, I mean, you've, you've been the most affected because you've had an LOS page been taken down more than once.
[00:20:32]  So that's really direct.
[00:20:33]  But I'm starting to notice, I feel like on Twitter, sometimes when I'm, if I'm just talking real, just goofy nonsense, it seems to get more views than when I'm linking in articles that I'm commenting on.
[00:20:44]  I feel like they've got some sort of a way of filtering how many people are actually seeing your tweets.
[00:20:49]  Yeah.
[00:20:50]  But one of the most direct ones that we saw was we did an episode on global warming and YouTube felt the need to editorialize by putting a little thing on the bottom linking to the Wikipedia and whatever the formal view on global warming is, which is kind of outrageous.
[00:21:04]  Yeah, no, absolutely.
[00:21:06]  And, you know, I know this has happened right like I've talked with Ari Shafir about like he had like some real shit like like being like shadow banned or something with his Twitter handle where after he had Milo on his podcast, all of a sudden all of his tweets were just getting way less interaction than they were before.
[00:21:26]  And so it's like they have these little mechanisms to kind of, you know, stifle dissenting views.
[00:21:34]  But by the way, when I was talking about the Facebook notifications that false information has been shared in our group, all of them were related to COVID.
[00:21:46]  Every single one of them.
[00:21:48]  It was someone posting an article, someone posting an opinion, you know, something that was not of the, you know, the exact same opinion that fucking, you know, Andrew Cuomo's press briefings have or something like that.
[00:22:03]  So there's something particularly interesting in this situation when the science is what we're following to have crazy government overreach and unimaginable infringement on civil liberties that if you have science that contests the accepted science, this is all being silenced.
[00:22:26]  So, you know, we've been talking about this for years as something that, you know, it's like this is a really big threat and this is a really big concern.
[00:22:35]  And libertarians, as I've been saying, who just go, well, they're a private business.
[00:22:40]  They can do whatever they want to.
[00:22:41]  It's like, I'm sorry.
[00:22:43]  That's not fucking good enough.
[00:22:44]  And that is really, really ignorant.
[00:22:48]  And just like, I don't know.
[00:22:52]  I don't know how else to express what an awful take that is.
[00:22:57]  Even if you don't advocate government doing something about it, it certainly shouldn't be.
[00:23:04]  You know, like, again, I know I've made this point before, but if some fucking, you know, like restaurant or something like that or something, you know, some lunch counter put up a whites only sign, all those same libertarians would say, this is horrible.
[00:23:17]  Let's boycott them.
[00:23:18]  Let's set up something else.
[00:23:20]  Let's blah, blah, blah.
[00:23:21]  Let's find some way to solve this problem.
[00:23:24]  I don't think most of those same libertarians would say, well, it's a private business, so they can do whatever they want.
[00:23:28]  And that's their right, you know?
[00:23:30]  And then in some cases, actually start defending instances when they ban people.
[00:23:35]  And the latest example of this has been this plandemic video, which I watched part of.
[00:23:48]  I think I only watched part of it.
[00:23:49]  I'm not sure if there's more or not.
[00:23:52]  Which is basically this doctor, this lady, a very highly slick. produced video of this doctor who is very accredited, who worked with Fauci and a bunch of these other people.
[00:24:07]  This really is her.
[00:24:08]  She's not lying about who she is.
[00:24:10]  She's written for prestigious journals before, and she's talking about how these guys, Fauci and a bunch of the other people, the current head of the CDC, like ruined her, and that she's basically saying there's a whole lot of bullshit going on with this whole COVID-19 situation.
[00:24:28]  Now, is she right about everything she's saying?
[00:24:33]  I certainly don't know.
[00:24:34]  I think there are things that she got wrong and things she got right, but that's not even really the issue at hand.
[00:24:42]  What happened is she was kicked off of YouTube and Facebook.
[00:24:46]  And Twitter, I think at this point, she has been kicked off.
[00:24:49]  The video, I'm not saying she's been kicked off.
[00:24:51]  The video has been taken down.
[00:24:52]  It keeps getting re-uploaded, but they keep taking it down.
[00:24:55]  And it had tens of millions of people who are watching this thing.
[00:24:58]  And then when you turn into the news, they were all furious that Twitter wasn't taking the video down because Twitter initially said this didn't violate our terms of service.
[00:25:11]  So the mainstream corporate press approach to this is like, well, look, this is fake news, so it's got to be taken down.
[00:25:19]  And I don't care if you're a libertarian or left or right or whatever.
[00:25:25]  Everybody should see what the problem with that mentality is, that dissenting views should be silenced because we've determined that they're false.
[00:25:39]  Well, is that really how you want to do science and medical advice?
[00:25:46]  That dissenting of views are false?
[00:25:49]  Like, okay, what about the times when the consensus is wrong?
[00:25:55]  I mean, it's a guarantee that that will happen eventually.
[00:25:59]  It's not even like there's a good track record of the consensus being right.
[00:26:03]  I mean, I don't know.
[00:26:03]  As a kid who grew up with the food pyramid being fucking, you know what I mean?
[00:26:08]  Like labeled as the thing to look at.
[00:26:11]  Are we really just going to say that if doctors or scientists disagree with the consensus?
[00:26:18]  And this doesn't even seem to really be a consensus, what we have right now.
[00:26:22]  But really, we're just going to say that needs to be silenced.
[00:26:25]  We need to take the access away from people to see this.
[00:26:29]  And like libertarians got to find a way to deal with this because like it or not, these private companies, YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and Google, I guess that is Google, Facebook, or whatever.
[00:26:43]  Not Facebook.
[00:26:44]  Wait, which one is Google?
[00:26:45]  YouTube.
[00:26:47]  So, you know, these companies are where conversations are happening.
[00:26:53]  And now more so than ever because people can't even fucking leave their homes in half the country.
[00:26:58]  So there's a real problem there.
[00:27:00]  And something is really creepy as shit when they can just remove these videos that a whole lot of people, tens of millions, find valuable.
[00:27:09]  Well, now more than ever, they got to control the narrative.
[00:27:12]  But that brings us to, we got to call ourselves out or at least kind of explore what the sale is here because we're both content creators that really contribute to this platform by putting our content there and engaging with our own audience.
[00:27:27]  And so that's kind of, you got an issue that if you're trying to find new audience, it's very, they kind of, I guess that's what they bring to the table.
[00:27:34]  They bring to the table that they have, firstly, I guess, good software that you can post pretty easily.
[00:27:39]  They got the compression software that you can just endlessly upload all your content and they never charge you for it.
[00:27:45]  And then you also have the biggest potential to be found by new fans who seem to refuse to even just go to your own website for the exact same content for free.
[00:27:54]  Yeah, no, you're absolutely right about it.
[00:27:56]  And we certainly are caught up in this because we use all of these platforms.
[00:28:01]  But there's, you know, look, I'm not saying I have all the answers to it, but this is a very big problem that needs some solving.
[00:28:10]  So we'll, you know, I don't know, but there's no question that, look, this is a time right now when every different perspective on this issue should be heard and every single question should be asked.
[00:28:29]  I mean, look, the fucking, the, the World Health Organization has recently praised Sweden.
[00:28:39]  Just last week, they said Sweden's response to COVID was great.
[00:28:44]  So they went from initially praising China's response.
[00:28:49]  Now, China's response was to lock people up, lock people in their houses till they starve to death.
[00:28:56]  That was the Chinese model to contain this.
[00:28:59]  It's like, oh, yeah, you're sick with this, fucking basically kill that person.
[00:29:02]  Who cares?
[00:29:03]  And they were like, oh, that's a really great job.
[00:29:05]  And Sweden's response was to do nothing.
[00:29:08]  And they went, oh, yeah, that's a really good response now.
[00:29:11]  That's pretty, that's pretty different from what they were saying at first.
[00:29:14]  And, you know, Sweden, if you really look into the numbers there, right?
[00:29:18]  No, Sweden's government basically did nothing.
[00:29:21]  I mean, they issued some directives, like some suggestions, but that's about it.
[00:29:25]  Like they were like, hey, you got, we trust you to do the right thing, but you guys should social distance and isolate yourself if you're sick and if you're vulnerable, isolate yourself, all that stuff.
[00:29:34]  But they didn't shut anything down.
[00:29:35]  All the businesses are open.
[00:29:37]  And, you know, they've had, they've, they've certainly had some issues with COVID and they've had some deaths.
[00:29:41]  But if you look at it, like half the deaths in Sweden have been in nursing homes.
[00:29:47]  And they have like a crazy high rate of old people in nursing homes because it's fucking Sweden and it's all paid for by the taxpayer and all that shit.
[00:29:56]  So they fucking, they push a lot of people there.
[00:29:58]  So that really came back to bite them.
[00:29:59]  But if you take that out of the equation, they've really, they haven't really been hit any harder than than your average European country.
[00:30:08]  So again, you know, I said, I tweeted the other day.
[00:30:12]  I was like, you know, I was a little snarky about it or whatever, but I said like, I was like, you know, I always trust the science and the experts know everything.
[00:30:19]  Of course, I blindly trust them.
[00:30:21]  But can someone point me to some like fair, like some strong evidence that the lockdowns have had a huge impact on slowing down COVID?
[00:30:34]  Like, can someone actually, is there evidence to that?
[00:30:36]  I would really love to hear that.
[00:30:38]  And you're just, it's like a barrage of people who just avoid the question and answer with something else.
[00:30:45]  So I get a whole bunch of people going, you know, oh, yeah, yeah, fucking, you're an idiot.
[00:30:51]  Like, of course, social distancing helps not spread this.
[00:30:55]  And I was like, yeah, but I didn't ask about social distancing.
[00:30:57]  I asked about the lockdowns.
[00:30:59]  Those are different things.
[00:31:00]  They're not the same thing at all.
[00:31:03]  Standing six feet apart from somebody is not the same thing as telling someone they can't go to work.
[00:31:08]  Sorry, that's just not the same thing.
[00:31:10]  They're different.
[00:31:12]  And then people will, you know, just respond as if I'm denying that COVID exists.
[00:31:18]  Oh, you don't think the disease is real?
[00:31:19]  Then how come deaths are up from last year at this time?
[00:31:22]  Like, again, not at all what I'm saying.
[00:31:25]  I'm saying that you have taken this unprecedented, unimaginable, a couple months ago step of shutting down the whole fucking first world.
[00:31:38]  And I'm asking, what's the evidence that it helped anything?
[00:31:43]  And really, there's fucking crickets because no one really has any strong evidence that the lockdowns did anything to slow down the spread of the virus.
[00:31:52]  Yeah, the only evidence might be, but I've only seen the headlines of everything that's going on with the Tyson food plants because they've been labeled essential and I think they have a high rate.
[00:32:00]  So it would be interesting to look at because basically, Connie, kind of the theory you're positing is that although people aren't going to work, you're still going to the supermarket.
[00:32:09]  And so maybe the little bit that you're going out, you're still getting sick.
[00:32:12]  So you might as well just go going to work because no one's totally isolated from potential illness.
[00:32:17]  So I guess the only question would be in the current essential industries, if there's a higher rate of infection, which should be a number that you can easily get.
[00:32:27]  Yeah, but the issue there is that then you would have to look at the rate of infection of people who aren't going to work.
[00:32:33]  And if it's drastically lower, I mean, there was just the other day, Cuomo said that 66% of the new COVID cases were people who were at home and who were locked down.
[00:32:44]  He was baffled by that.
[00:32:45]  But my point is just that, look, obviously, or at least it seems to me like reasonable to say like, okay, like, you know, social distancing, staying apart from people six feet apart or whatever, like, you know, like these kind of common sense things.
[00:33:01]  But really, would it be that much worse, if any worse, if we did that and let the economy open?
[00:33:07]  If we had the Sweden model and just suggested to people, hey, we suggest you wear a mask.
[00:33:12]  We suggest you stand six feet apart from people.
[00:33:15]  Would it be worse?
[00:33:16]  Now, maybe it would, but would it be drastically worse?
[00:33:20]  Because what we're looking at for this is the devastation is just going to be unreal.
[00:33:27]  And of course, you know, the like deaths of despair and all that type shit, that's all going to go going to go up.
[00:33:33]  And, you know, you're talking about tens of millions of people being out of work over this shit.
[00:33:39]  This is, this is the point is if it's only like the onus is on the proponents of the lockdown to demonstrate that there is a huge benefit to the lockdown, because obviously we can all see the very real costs.

=== Smoking CBD Joints (02:45) ===

[00:33:55]  I agree with everything you said.
[00:33:56]  And the absolute scariest part about all this is that we reach the breaking point and they finally say, listen, we're willing to let everyone get back to work, but we need to have social tracing.
[00:34:05]  And so we got this new, this new government division of social tracing.
[00:34:09]  We partnered with Facebook, Amazon, AT ⁇ T and everyone else who's in your phone.
[00:34:13]  And we're going to be tracking everyone.
[00:34:15]  Everyone goes, all right, well, you know, we got to get back to work.
[00:34:17]  So sure, government.
[00:34:19]  That's what's scary to me.
[00:34:21]  Yeah, no, I think that's where we're going.
[00:34:25]  And so, yeah, that is pretty creepy.
[00:34:29]  Pretty creepy indeed.
[00:34:30]  All right, guys, cutting in here for a second.
[00:34:32]  I got to tell you about my newest favorite thing in the entire world.
[00:34:35]  It's Cushy Dreams.
[00:34:36]  This is probably if you're over the age of 21.
[00:34:39]  It's smokable CBD.
[00:34:41]  They sent me these pre-rolls.
[00:34:42]  I'm walking around my block smoking these fat CBD joints.
[00:34:45]  They're relaxing as all hell.
[00:34:48]  Their slogan is smoke your CBD because you can.
[00:34:51]  And what more reason do you need for this?
[00:34:54]  I don't really smoke weed all that often anymore.
[00:34:56]  Or if I do, it's usually like one hit from a Vape pen.
[00:34:59]  So it was just a thrill to be rocking this giant joint.
[00:35:02]  And then it's not like you're getting, firstly, it tastes exactly like delicious weed.
[00:35:06]  This is like a well, and I'm not good at rolling.
[00:35:09]  I don't know if you're good at rolling.
[00:35:10]  I'm terrible at rolling.
[00:35:12]  So it's great just to have the pre-roll in a tube.
[00:35:15]  You open it up and you're ready to smoke it.
[00:35:17]  And I'm just telling you, the thing smokes great.
[00:35:19]  And then you're not crazy stoned.
[00:35:21]  I don't know.
[00:35:22]  come back to my room and I get more work done because I'm clear-headed.
[00:35:25]  And that's the other part that I'm a big fan of CBD products, all of them.
[00:35:28]  You give me a CBD, I'm into it.
[00:35:30]  I'm a crazy, anxious person.
[00:35:32]  I find them calming.
[00:35:33]  I find that they're good to help me get some work done, get some focus going.
[00:35:38]  But the nice thing about I found with the smoking it, it's like instant.
[00:35:42]  You know, like sometimes when you're doing the dropper, it's a little bit more passive.
[00:35:45]  It's like 45 minutes later, you realize like, oh, I'm kind of in the zone.
[00:35:49]  With this thing, it's just instant.
[00:35:51]  You know, you rock the giant joint, you go for a nice walk, you come back, and you're like, holy shit, I'm actually pretty relaxed right here.
[00:35:59]  So go check it out.
[00:36:00]  It's called Cushy Dreams.
[00:36:01]  Simple slogan here: smoke your CBD because you can.
[00:36:04]  Also, you could probably roll it with your weed.
[00:36:06]  That's the first thing I'm going to do when I get back to my apartment.
[00:36:09]  I'm going to roll a giant like spliff of CBD.
[00:36:12]  Maybe you'll even throw tobacco in there.
[00:36:14]  It'll be a whole salad.
[00:36:15]  All right, Cushy Dreams, delicious CBD joints.
[00:36:19]  All the benefits that you know of CBD, except that you can smoke it.
[00:36:23]  So go to cushydreams.com.
[00:36:25]  If you use the promo code problem20, you're going to get 20% off your first order.
[00:36:30]  So once again, that's cushydreams.com, promo code, problem 20, 20% off your first order.
[00:36:38]  Smoke your CBD because you can.

=== Criticizing Ron Paul (15:21) ===

[00:36:41]  The Falkey guy, I got to start doing a little bit more reading on this, but I've heard a bunch of people comment on, I wasn't, you know, I guess old enough to remember this, but you were, you even talked about as a kid the way they blew up AIDS.
[00:36:52]  So apparently he was really involved in that at that time.
[00:36:55]  And then the one thing that just cues me into, hey, there's something weird going on here is that you're starting to see a ton of praise.
[00:37:01]  Like two weeks ago, there was just so much praise for this Falkey guy.
[00:37:04]  And like, they're already trying to make the newspaper that he's the proof of how incompetent Trump is.
[00:37:09]  And now you even have that like in the White House, I guess there was some exposure and Falkey's like, well, we all need a quarantine now.
[00:37:15]  And Trump and Pence are still like, well, I'm working.
[00:37:17]  And it just seems like they're once I see the media start building someone up, you just realize like, all right, that's probably an evil guy.
[00:37:24]  That's probably a no-good guy.
[00:37:26]  So that's a pretty good rule of thumb.
[00:37:29]  That's you're you're almost always right if you uh if you operate under that uh that belief.
[00:37:35]  Um okay uh all right.
[00:37:37]  So one other thing that I wanted to talk about, I guess we'll spend the rest of the show on this, is that I saw somebody wrote an article about me and Tom Woods.
[00:37:52]  It's a Bob DiCostanzo.
[00:37:56]  It's a nice last name.
[00:37:57]  I like that.
[00:37:58]  DiCostanzo.
[00:37:59]  Bob DiCostanzo over at the Libertarian Republic wrote an article and it is titled Opinion, Tom Woods and Dave Smith are wrong about Justin Amash.
[00:38:12]  So I figured we would respond to that.
[00:38:15]  I'm not wrong.
[00:38:16]  He hasn't acknowledged my kingship or sent me a peaceful sandwich offering.
[00:38:21]  So I'm still in the right.
[00:38:22]  Yeah.
[00:38:23]  So what do you think about that, DiCostanzo?
[00:38:26]  All right.
[00:38:27]  Write an article responding to that one, mister.
[00:38:31]  Well, listen, I if I'm also boring.
[00:38:35]  He was definitely boring.
[00:38:36]  I called him boring, and that is not even circumstantial evidence.
[00:38:40]  Well, to be fair, the article doesn't say Robbie the Fire is wrong about Justin Amash.
[00:38:45]  So it's almost like he's kind of tacitly admitting that you nailed all that shit.
[00:38:51]  But he does say me and Tom were wrong.
[00:38:53]  So obviously, I did a podcast on this with Tom Woods on his show.
[00:38:56]  Me and you did a different podcast, probably hit on a lot of the same critiques.
[00:39:01]  So maybe he is indirectly calling you wrong.
[00:39:03]  But look, if we're wrong, then I think it's important that we be notified of this and we can change our opinions.
[00:39:13]  The thing is that I'm very, very rarely wrong about anything.
[00:39:18]  I'm wrong like maybe once a decade.
[00:39:20]  And I've already been wrong twice this decade.
[00:39:23]  So I'm not due to be wrong again for like at least 15 years.
[00:39:27]  So it's just, it's not likely that we're wrong.
[00:39:30]  But I'll try to approach this with you.
[00:39:32]  You get your wrongness out when it comes to calling UFC fights.
[00:39:35]  That's the way you do it.
[00:39:37]  Oh, boy, do I. All right.
[00:39:40]  Let's read from the article.
[00:39:42]  All right.
[00:39:43]  I have great respect for Tom Woods and Dave Smith.
[00:39:46]  They are both smart, talented, and have interesting things to say.
[00:39:50]  All right.
[00:39:52]  Good, good start.
[00:39:53]  Let me say, this piece, it's off to a roaring start.
[00:39:56]  I doubt I'm going to find any issue with that.
[00:39:58]  In fact, that's all we're going to read.
[00:40:00]  It's been a great show, everybody.
[00:40:01]  Thanks for coming.
[00:40:02]  Wouldn't it be great if I just responded to that and go, I agree with you.
[00:40:05]  These are excellent points.
[00:40:06]  All right.
[00:40:07]  Good start.
[00:40:08]  However, I already don't like where he's going with this now.
[00:40:12]  Don't throw however in there.
[00:40:13]  Just fucking say your thing about us being smart.
[00:40:16]  Interesting things to say.
[00:40:17]  All right.
[00:40:18]  However, their recent conversation on Woods podcast about the problems with Justin Amash's candidacy was not very persuasive.
[00:40:25]  Woods and Smith focused a great deal on Amash's temperament and how he conveys his ideas in public.
[00:40:32]  For example, Woods took issue with Amash's arguments regarding the right process for going to war.
[00:40:38]  I found this criticism odd because it's a point Ron Paul has made consistently over the years.
[00:40:44]  Only Congress can declare war.
[00:40:49]  So let me first just respond to this point about saying only Congress can declare the wars.
[00:40:58]  That is what is written in the Constitution.
[00:41:01]  And I have no problem with somebody mentioning that.
[00:41:06]  Okay.
[00:41:06]  And I'm sure Tom Woods doesn't have a problem with somebody mentioning that only Congress can declare the wars.
[00:41:13]  The problem is if that's all you have to say, it's not very persuasive.
[00:41:20]  Okay.
[00:41:20]  If all you have to say about the war is Congress is supposed to declare the wars, it's like, all right, so are you saying that if Congress had declared these wars, then that would be fine?
[00:41:31]  Then we wouldn't have a problem.
[00:41:33]  Like, I wouldn't have a problem with the genocide in Yemen if only a bunch of Republicans and Democrats had voted for it.
[00:41:40]  Like, would that change anything?
[00:41:42]  Now, it's, again, it's fine to make this point, but here's what Ron Paul did, right?
[00:41:47]  What Ron Paul did was he led with blowback.
[00:41:52]  He went, the reason we have this terrorist problem is because we're slaughtering all of their people and they have the same response we do, where they want to come over and kill us for killing some of their innocent people.
[00:42:05]  Okay.
[00:42:06]  And then he would talk about the human toll of war and then he would talk about the financial toll of war.
[00:42:11]  And then he would mention, oh, and by the way, none of these wars are declared.
[00:42:16]  You see where there's a little bit of a difference there, right?
[00:42:19]  If that's your argument, I have no problem with you throwing in that these are also, by the way, illegal wars that are undeclared and unconstitutional.
[00:42:29]  That's fine.
[00:42:30]  But if you're not making those other things, it's just not very persuasive, is it?
[00:42:35]  And really, to libertarians, was there ever really a question with Ron Paul of why he opposed the wars?
[00:42:43]  Why did Ron Paul oppose the wars?
[00:42:45]  Everybody, everybody listening to this knows why did he oppose the wars?
[00:42:50]  Because it was killing innocent people.
[00:42:52]  And we're spending trillions of dollars to kill innocent people.
[00:42:56]  It's the worst thing ever.
[00:42:57]  That's why Ron Paul opposed the wars.
[00:43:00]  He didn't oppose them because they hadn't been declared, but then if they were declared, he'd stop opposing them.
[00:43:05]  Of course not.
[00:43:06]  Now, my point is that from Justin Amash, I'm not saying he's never said anything good about the wars, but you just, he'll come out and just say, oh, we need to declare the wars if we're going to fight them.
[00:43:18]  It's not the same thing.
[00:43:19]  So that's the issue.
[00:43:20]  The issue is that when you talk about war, your problem with it isn't a procedural problem.
[00:43:25]  Your problem is, you know, the killing.
[00:43:30]  Okay, back to the article.
[00:43:31]  Does that mean that Amash and other libertarians shouldn't emphasize the barbarism of war?
[00:43:37]  Absolutely not.
[00:43:38]  But even insisting on a declaration of war and promising to bring troops home in the absence of a declaration sets Amash apart from the vast majority of people in Congress.
[00:43:48]  Additionally, Amash recently tweeted the U.S. should only get involved in just wars.
[00:43:54]  Woods and Smith likely missed this tweet given the timing of their conversation, but nonetheless, it demonstrates Amash's commitment to a rational and constitutional foreign policy.
[00:44:07]  Again, okay, yeah, that tweet came after we had the podcast.
[00:44:11]  Good.
[00:44:11]  I'm glad that he tweeted that.
[00:44:13]  I said in that podcast and in our podcast about it that, yeah, of course, he's one of the better members of Congress.
[00:44:18]  There's no question about that.
[00:44:21]  But anyway, maybe I'll hold off on this and we'll get to this central point in a second.
[00:44:26]  But let me read one more paragraph from here.
[00:44:28]  Woods and Smith also criticized Amash for not coming out forcefully enough against the lockdowns, claiming he has focused too much on procedure.
[00:44:36]  But procedure is important.
[00:44:38]  Following the proper legislative process can preserve liberty, not always, of course, but more so than a governor or president unilaterally making decisions.
[00:44:47]  Still, Amash has criticized the lockdowns as demonstrated by his opposition to the Michigan governor's absurd abuse of power in response to COVID-19.
[00:44:57]  More recently, in an interview with Reasons Nick Gillespie, Amash questioned the need for mandatory lockdowns, pointing out that people voluntarily isolated when the threat from the virus was apparent.
[00:45:07]  Could Amash have been more strident in his criticism?
[00:45:10]  Sure.
[00:45:10]  Would it have been politically wise to do so?
[00:45:13]  Probably not.
[00:45:14]  And I see this as one of the dividing points amongst libertarians.
[00:45:17]  Amash is temperamentally a moderate.
[00:45:20]  He doesn't throw verbal bombs.
[00:45:22]  His style isn't in your face.
[00:45:25]  All right.
[00:45:26]  So I think that kind of gets to what my criticism, your criticism of Justin Amash has been.
[00:45:34]  What's a great way to describe a Snooze Fest?
[00:45:38]  Well, yes.
[00:45:39]  But look, it's not that we're saying necessarily you have to be in your face or throw verbal bombs.
[00:45:49]  That's not exactly the point.
[00:45:51]  And I think this is really important to understand.
[00:45:54]  And this is what this guy in this article is missing.
[00:45:57]  And this is why we're not seeing things in the same way.
[00:46:01]  What do you think the odds are that the libertarian nominee wins the presidency?
[00:46:11]  Just ask yourself that question honestly.
[00:46:15]  These guys, the fucking Nick Sarwalks of the world, were thrilled, thrilled that Gary Johnson got 4 million votes.
[00:46:23]  They were like, this is the best fucking presidential run we've ever had.
[00:46:27]  We got 4 million people to vote for us.
[00:46:30]  And that was against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the two candidates with the highest negatives in the history of polling.
[00:46:38]  And that's what they got: 4 million.
[00:46:40]  Now, Donald Trump got less votes than Hillary Clinton did, right?
[00:46:45]  But he got in from the electoral map.
[00:46:48]  But so Gary Johnson got 4 million votes.
[00:46:51]  Donald Trump got, I believe, 63 million.
[00:46:55]  So in your best showing, in the best opportunity, you were about 60 million votes shy of what you needed to get in there.
[00:47:06]  So I'm just asking you: what are the odds that you're actually going to win?
[00:47:11]  Let me ask you another thing, just for a thought experiment.
[00:47:14]  If you did win, what do you think would happen then?
[00:47:18]  I mean, we've just seen how much the fucking deep state and the press and Hollywood and the establishments of the two parties did to work to undermine Trump's agenda.
[00:47:29]  So let's say you get in there and it's not from, you know, like making a whole bunch of people re-question the role of government and converting a bunch of people to libertarianism, but somehow with this bland style of being temperamentally moderate, you get in there.
[00:47:47]  What do we get for that?
[00:47:49]  What does any of this actually do?
[00:47:51]  So the point is, once you recognize that it's not very unlikely, it's extraordinarily unlikely that the LP candidate is actually going to win, let alone win and get something done.
[00:48:06]  I mean, the LP has never gotten a congressman elected.
[00:48:10]  Justin Amash is the first libertarian to ever be in Congress, but he just switched parties after being a fucking Republican and then an Independent.
[00:48:19]  They've never gotten a congressman elected.
[00:48:21]  They've never gotten a governor elected.
[00:48:23]  They've never gotten a senator elected.
[00:48:25]  What are the odds that they're going to get a president elected in 2020?
[00:48:29]  Probably astronomically low.
[00:48:31]  Okay?
[00:48:33]  So what is the point of all of this?
[00:48:36]  And I think that the point is to try to wake as many people up as possible.
[00:48:43]  This is what we were saying on our show.
[00:48:45]  This is what I was saying on Tom's show.
[00:48:46]  Now, if you understand that, it's not that you have to be in people's face or even necessarily throw verbal bombs.
[00:48:54]  The point is you want to say something that grabs people, that's interesting, that's different from what they've heard from anybody else.
[00:49:04]  This is the type of thing that makes people go, ooh, this guy has a whole different perspective.
[00:49:11]  And so you can say it's not politically wise to come out with a strong position against the lockdowns.
[00:49:18]  Let me just make this so could he have been more strident in his criticism of the lockdowns?
[00:49:23]  Sure.
[00:49:23]  Would it have been politically wise to do so?
[00:49:26]  Probably not.
[00:49:27]  What does that mean?
[00:49:29]  Politically wise.
[00:49:30]  You're saying it would have been less likely that he'd win?
[00:49:34]  Really?
[00:49:35]  Less likely than 0% chance?
[00:49:39]  No, of course it would be politically wise in the sense that it would get him a lot more coverage.
[00:49:44]  It would get a lot of people like talking about him, even if to attack him.
[00:49:49]  All right, that's fine.
[00:49:51]  Understand the moment we're living in right now.
[00:49:53]  Tens of millions of people have been kicked out of work and they're looking around and starting to feel like it's bullshit.
[00:50:00]  Maybe speak to those people.
[00:50:04]  It's not like Ron Paul's style would have been ever described as in your face.
[00:50:09]  He would just very calmly and politely say the most radical thing you've ever heard.
[00:50:14]  Just that's it.
[00:50:16]  We don't need an income tax.
[00:50:18]  We should repeal the whole thing.
[00:50:19]  Repeal the income tax and replace it with nothing.
[00:50:22]  That's not in your face, but it's saying something that makes people go like, wow, that's a whole different way to look at the system.
[00:50:30]  Yeah, fair enough.
[00:50:33]  Anything you want to add, Rob?
[00:50:35]  No, you're killing, man.
[00:50:36]  This guy sucks.
[00:50:39]  Well, I don't want to be this.
[00:50:40]  He was very respectful in that first sentence, so let's be nice.
[00:50:44]  And listen, I'll extend an open invite.
[00:50:47]  If Bob wants to come on the show, I'd be happy to have him on and we could discuss these things.
[00:50:51]  But this, since he wrote a piece about me, I'll give him a little response to it so he knows where I'm coming from.
[00:50:59]  Okay, so Woods and Smith are concerned about his approach because they feel, given the times, someone needs to stand in stark contrast to Biden and Trump.
[00:51:10]  However, in the past, both Woods and Smith have defended the strategy of meeting people where they are and not leading with radical suggestions like abolishing the CIA, because many people aren't ready for that.
[00:51:24]  And I agree with them.
[00:51:27]  I don't know exactly what he's referring to, but I mean, I think obviously anybody who knows me knows like, no, I'm pretty radical.
[00:51:37]  And I let that be known.
[00:51:38]  That meeting people where they are is a lot different than saying, tone down the radical positions, right?
[00:51:48]  So meeting people where they are just means that you know how to talk to someone on the left or talk to someone on the right and convince them why they should be this radical on this issue.

=== Convincing the Shot Guy (14:38) ===

[00:52:02]  That's all.
[00:52:03]  So I never, like if somebody asked me if we should abolish the CIA, say no, because I want to meet them where they are.
[00:52:11]  So I'm not, you know, I'm not exactly sure what he means by that.
[00:52:15]  So back to the article.
[00:52:17]  However, I do feel Amash strikes the right balance between being principled and politically savvy in how he presents libertarian ideas.
[00:52:26]  I think Woods and Smith are overly critical of the latter and don't give Amash nearly enough credit for the former.
[00:52:32]  To be fair, Woods and Smith did acknowledge Amash as being one of the best people in Congress during their conversation.
[00:52:37]  That's why so many people are excited about Amash's candidacy.
[00:52:43]  Are they, though?
[00:52:45]  Are they really?
[00:52:46]  I've seen parades.
[00:52:48]  Yeah, I mean, like, that's the thing.
[00:52:50]  It's like, look, man, believe me, if there were a libertarian candidate who was actually getting people excited about him, I would be more excited about it.
[00:52:58]  The issue is that Justin Amash isn't getting anybody excited about anything.
[00:53:03]  And I'd say, look, again, I'm not just trying to bash Justin Amash.
[00:53:08]  That's why I said he is one of the best members of Congress.
[00:53:11]  I do think he has some good principles.
[00:53:12]  He is absolutely better than Trump and Biden.
[00:53:17]  Okay?
[00:53:18]  Like, but go listen to his Meet the Press interview.
[00:53:22]  Listen to his MSNBC interview.
[00:53:24]  Listen to this stuff.
[00:53:25]  It's not getting anyone excited about it.
[00:53:28]  And even if he is getting libertarians excited, that's not the challenge.
[00:53:33]  The challenge isn't just to get us who already have all the right opinions excited about how we have all the right opinions.
[00:53:40]  The issue is, can you convince more people who aren't libertarians to be libertarians?
[00:53:47]  Otherwise, what's the point?
[00:53:49]  What's the point of any of this?
[00:53:52]  Now, I'm doubtful that you'll be able to convince enough people to win the presidency, but you're not winning the presidency even if you don't convince people.
[00:54:00]  And if you win the presidency without convincing people, it's meaningless.
[00:54:03]  So the only path is to convince people.
[00:54:06]  Try to convince enough to win, sure.
[00:54:08]  But if you're not converting, convincing, whatever word you want to use, then you're not doing anything.
[00:54:15]  Okay.
[00:54:16]  It's also the reason why admonishing Amash about his positions on something like the Paycheck Protection Program is unfair, given his record, not to mention the fact that we're in the middle of a pandemic and many libertarians, at least initially, were divided or hesitant about offering a solution for dealing with COVID-19.
[00:54:36]  Okay, even if that's true, it's not initially anymore.
[00:54:41]  So I don't know what to say.
[00:54:42]  Yes, even if some people in the first two weeks of this thing had different opinions, that's over.
[00:54:47]  We're two months into the lockdowns now and you should have your opinion worked out.
[00:54:51]  You're also not just some libertarian.
[00:54:53]  You're running for president.
[00:54:54]  So you should have your opinion worked out and it's fair to criticize somebody when they present libertarianism as, hey, what's your take on COVID?
[00:55:02]  Well, here's my take.
[00:55:04]  We should expand the welfare state in a smarter way.
[00:55:09]  That's more or less what he offered in that Meet the Press interview, at least.
[00:55:13]  Finally, on the impeachment issue, Woods and Smith went after Amash for being complicit in the coup because Amash supported impeaching the president.
[00:55:23]  Smith and Woods took issue with the impeachment process, which is interesting considering they criticized Amash for emphasizing process problems on the issues earlier in the conversation.
[00:55:35]  Smith even went so far as to suggest Amash shouldn't be the Libertarian Party nominee because he sided with the CIA in trying to impeach the president.
[00:55:45]  Yet, if we turn this argument around, it would place Smith and Woods on the side of Trump, whose libertarian bona fides are lacking, to say the least.
[00:55:55]  Of course, Smith and Woods are solid on pretty much every issue.
[00:55:58]  So to try to label them as Trump supporters would be laughable.
[00:56:01]  Likewise, Amash has his own reasons for impeachment, some of which could be described as libertarian.
[00:56:08]  The fact that he found himself on the same side as some U.S. intelligence officials does not mean we should label him as a supporter of the deep state.
[00:56:20]  All right.
[00:56:21]  Well, we can label him as a guy who doesn't read the room right.
[00:56:24]  You and I, you know, we were able to tell that that was a deep state thing and he got right behind it.
[00:56:29]  Yeah.
[00:56:30]  I read it wrong.
[00:56:31]  That's kind of like saying, if I'm trying to think of an analogy, if the cops just like murdered some unarmed guy who wasn't a threat to them, like it was a straight up murder.
[00:56:47]  You know what I mean?
[00:56:47]  He didn't do anything wrong and the cops just like lit someone up because they, you know, I don't know.
[00:56:52]  He was reaching for his wallet and they thought it was a gun or something like that, which has happened before.
[00:56:58]  So let's say that that happens.
[00:57:00]  And then somebody, you know, comes out.
[00:57:04]  Like if I were to come out on the side of being like, these cops are criminals and they should be locked up.
[00:57:12]  Or if you were to come out on the side of being like, well, this guy did reach for something and there's some procedural rule that the cops have that says if you reached for that, then they're allowed to shoot you.
[00:57:23]  So I support this guy being shot.
[00:57:27]  That's not the same thing.
[00:57:29]  It's not like I'm saying like, oh, well, you're basically siding with the fucking murderers.
[00:57:33]  And you'd go, okay, but at the same time, I could say that you're siding with the guy who got shot.
[00:57:38]  And there's a lot of things that aren't great about the guy who got shot.
[00:57:41]  It's like, no, that's not the same.
[00:57:43]  I'm sorry.
[00:57:44]  A crime was committed against this guy.
[00:57:47]  I'm not saying I agree with every view of the guy who got shot.
[00:57:50]  I only have to agree with one, which is that he shouldn't have gotten shot.
[00:57:54]  So it doesn't make me a Trump supporter to say that unelected spies and bureaucrats, the same ones who lie us into war, did not have the right to remove a duly elected president.
[00:58:06]  It's not just a procedural argument.
[00:58:08]  There's a moral argument in there.
[00:58:10]  What they did to him was wrong.
[00:58:12]  It was a crime against the country.
[00:58:14]  Like that's that's a different thing.
[00:58:17]  It's not that that's not to say that I agree with everything that Trump's done.
[00:58:21]  However, if after this criminal attempted deep state coup, you say Trump should be impeached, that is kind of siding with the murdering cops, if that makes sense.
[00:58:34]  It's not the same thing.
[00:58:35]  They're not equal opposites.
[00:58:37]  To be on one side or the other means you support that side.
[00:58:40]  And no, to say he had his own, what did he say?
[00:58:44]  He had his own libertarian reasons for supporting impeachment.
[00:58:50]  What?
[00:58:51]  That Trump obstructed justice?
[00:58:55]  That's libertarian to say that as we now know with all this stuff, but let's get real.
[00:59:01]  We've known this shit for fucking years.
[00:59:03]  It's just now been proven, but it was the evidence was overwhelming.
[00:59:07]  But they targeted people who they had no reason to be investigating.
[00:59:12]  They had nothing.
[00:59:14]  All based on fabricated opposition research from the Democratic campaign.
[00:59:20]  Okay?
[00:59:21]  So they targeted people and had nothing and then like misrepresented it to keep it in the news that they were investigating them.
[00:59:29]  And you're saying because Trump thought about firing Mueller, that he should be impeached for obstruction?
[00:59:37]  I'm sorry, there's nothing libertarian about that.
[00:59:40]  There's nothing libertarian about being targeted by the state and doing whatever you can to get them off your back.
[00:59:48]  Even if Trump did obstruct the investigation, which he clearly didn't, it's not libertarian to support him being impeached over that.
[00:59:58]  Certainly a gray area at best.
[01:00:02]  All right.
[01:00:03]  Though I'm not a fan of the Libertarian Party, if Amash gets the nomination, I will vote for him because he represents a radical on issues, departure from the bipartisan consensus committed to increasing the size and scope of government.
[01:00:18]  I know libertarians will continue to disagree, but we need to give Amash some grace.
[01:00:22]  It's not necessary or even advisable that he always come across as a Rothbardian when given the chance.
[01:00:30]  Again, look, and I'll just, and we can end on that, but I'm not suggesting you have to come across as a Rothbardian on every issue.
[01:00:42]  I don't really care about that.
[01:00:43]  We don't have to get into the weeds of anarchism versus minarchism or anything about that.
[01:00:48]  The point is that you want to ask yourself, why are we here?
[01:00:54]  What's the point of any of this?
[01:00:57]  What's the point of the LP existing?
[01:01:00]  What's the point of running a presidential candidate?
[01:01:03]  What are we doing?
[01:01:05]  And to me, the answer to that question, and this is why I do think it's worth doing, the answer is to wake people up, to change the narrative, to get our issues inserted in there.
[01:01:19]  What we want to do desperately, and this is what I want to do, this is the whole purpose of the show, is we want to, if we have this philosophy, if we have this set of ideas that we believe is correct and is moral and will lead to a better, more just world with more prosperity and less injustice,
[01:01:45]  if we believe that, but there's a really small number of us who believe that, and a much larger number of people who believe in things that are wrong, lead to less prosperity and more injustice.
[01:01:59]  What we want to do is wake people up.
[01:02:04]  We have to persuade people that we are right.
[01:02:08]  And I very much believe that we are.
[01:02:10]  That's what this is all about, is persuading people.
[01:02:14]  It has nothing to do with being a Rothbardian or being in your face.
[01:02:18]  It's anything you can do to persuade people.
[01:02:22]  And I don't think that Justin Amash, from what I've seen of him, is doing a very good job of that.
[01:02:30]  And it makes me seriously wonder whether he will persuade anybody if he's the nominee.
[01:02:37]  So that's what it's about.
[01:02:38]  And that's what you're not addressing in this article.
[01:02:42]  It's again, it's not like, I remember when I debated Nick Sarwak, there was one point, you know, where I was kind of talking about this.
[01:02:52]  And people will say, you know, like, oh, well, Dave just wants more of a purist or he wants more of a radical or something like that, which is only half true.
[01:03:03]  But so at one point, Sarwak brought up that there was, I'm blanking on the guy's name.
[01:03:10]  I do, I do know him.
[01:03:11]  He was a pretty good libertarian, but I'm blanking on his name, but he ran for president.
[01:03:15]  He was trying to get the LP nominee nomination when Gary Johnson got it.
[01:03:20]  And he said, he goes, well, look, we had this guy, and he's like the most radical guy you can get.
[01:03:25]  He was running on abolishing driver's licenses.
[01:03:29]  He was saying you shouldn't need a driver's license to drive a car.
[01:03:32]  That's how pure he was.
[01:03:34]  That's how radical he was.
[01:03:35]  And they voted for Gary Johnson.
[01:03:36]  The delegates liked Gary Johnson over him.
[01:03:39]  And it's like, yeah, okay, because that's radicalism in a stupid way.
[01:03:46]  License is my number one issue.
[01:03:48]  That's kind of my biggest problem with the government is I don't have a license in my wallet.
[01:03:53]  So you could focus like you could run a campaign on privatizing the sidewalks and be like, I'm the most radical, purist libertarian there.
[01:04:01]  And yeah, that's not going to get any traction.
[01:04:03]  That's not going to fucking, you know, like do anything because who cares?
[01:04:06]  It's kind of a trivial issue.
[01:04:08]  It's the least bad thing that the government does.
[01:04:12]  So whatever.
[01:04:12]  You know what I mean?
[01:04:13]  So it's not just radicalism for the sake of radicalism.
[01:04:17]  It's radicalism in the smartest, best sense of the word.
[01:04:21]  A radical position that can actually rally a lot of people to you and make them completely rethink their whole inner, you know, working philosophy.
[01:04:31]  That's what we're looking for.
[01:04:33]  What you want to say is that we've been lied into every one of these wars and these weapons companies are making hundreds of billions of dollars off of them.
[01:04:42]  This is a fucking evil racket of murder that's ripping you off, that you have to pay for.
[01:04:49]  That's what's going on here.
[01:04:51]  Things like this, you want to be radical where it matters.
[01:04:54]  And, you know, like we, you know, people like me and Robbie and Tom Woods, we believe that in this moment, there's a huge opportunity to, you know, sell freedom to a whole lot of people.
[01:05:10]  And being moderate in tone and saying that we should follow, you know, the Constitution's procedure when it comes to war and we should have UBI instead of unemployment benefits.
[01:05:23]  This isn't going to wake anybody up to anything.
[01:05:27]  So that's the problem.
[01:05:28]  And I don't think you address that in this article at all.
[01:05:33]  So I'll just leave it at that.
[01:05:36]  And as I said, I'll give an open invite to Bob DiCostanzo.
[01:05:47]  By the way, my wife's Italian.
[01:05:49]  My daughter's half Italian.
[01:05:50]  So don't take this the wrong way.
[01:05:51]  I love the Italians.
[01:05:53]  Best food out there.
[01:05:54]  Robbie, some of those Italian sandwiches?
[01:05:57]  They're my favorites.
[01:05:58]  Meatball parm?
[01:05:59]  Come on.
[01:06:00]  And Italian bakeries and breads.
[01:06:02]  Those guys know what they're doing.
[01:06:04]  Yeah, fuck yeah.
[01:06:05]  They sure do.
[01:06:05]  Anyway, open invite to Bob if he wants to come on the show.
[01:06:08]  We could set that up and we could have a discussion about Justin Amash and other things libertarian.
[01:06:14]  And I do, I appreciate writing the article.
[01:06:17]  I understand to some degree your perspective, but I don't think you're quite getting where we're coming from on this one.
[01:06:26]  All right.
[01:06:26]  That's going to be our show for today.
[01:06:28]  Thanks, everybody, for listening or watching.
[01:06:30]  Stay safe.
[01:06:32]  Stay COVID free.
[01:06:34]  Stay AIDS-free.
[01:06:35]  That last part was just for you, Rob.
[01:06:37]  Thanks, Bob.
[01:06:38]  All right.
[01:06:39]  Talk to you guys soon.
[01:06:40]  Peace.