James Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect the unforeseen consequences of pandemic lockdowns, linking them to surging crime in New York and Chicago while critiquing wasted resources like makeshift hospitals. They analyze the firing of Jeffrey Berman as a loyalty purge and contrast Trump's avoidance of new wars with neoconservative demands for strikes on Iran, which John Bolton deems a failure. Ultimately, the hosts argue that avoiding conflict was Trump's greatest post-9/11 achievement, exposing the pro-war bias of critics like Bolton and Mattis who view restraint as weakness. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Death to Tyrants Podcast00:01:55
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gas Digital Network.
Hey guys, today's show is brought to you by the Death to Tyrants podcast.
I love this podcast.
I just recently found it.
It's got to be one of the best libertarian and cat podcasts out there.
It's hardcore, hosted by longtime musician and libertarian Buck Johnson.
Buck played drums with the great Jimmy Vaughan at many of the Ron Paul rallies back in 08 and 2012, and he's been a libertarian for two decades.
He comes right out of the Rothbardian, Miscesian wing of the liberty movement.
He's interviewed many of the greats, Lou Rockwell, Tom Woods, Jeff Dice, Scott Horton, Mark Thornton.
I'm going to be going on there soon.
Just got to work out the details.
But I love this show.
If you're looking for another great libertarian podcast, this is the one to go to, the Death to Tyrants podcast.
Buck is a huge proponent of secession and decentralization, as are we.
He regularly discusses these topics as well as foreign policy, the police state, leftist authoritarianism, and many other interesting topics.
So make sure to check out the Death to Tyrants podcast.
We're going to play a clip at the end of the show.
All right, let's get into it.
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 Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm the most consistent motherfucker you know, but you already knew that because you're pretty damn consistent yourself.
And he is my life partner, the apple of my eye, the fire, the king of the cocks, Robbie Bernstein.
What's up, my brother?
Backyard Comedy Shows00:02:09
I'm doing pretty good.
Enjoy my weekend.
Now we're getting cooking.
It's the work week again because everything, it's a clear differentiation when I got to show up to my nice office.
And that's about it.
Yes, that's right.
We have stage three lockdown at this point, right?
What is it?
Phase stage?
Phase three.
I think we're in three.
I'm not going to pay attention until I get to stage 4.75.
That's when things really start happening.
That's when lap dances at strip clubs are back or something.
I think they are back.
I went into Astoria the other night to clear out my apartment.
And when I passed the local strip club, I mean, there were people coming out the doors with satisfied faces.
They're giving like lap dances with masks and gloves on or something.
I think they opened up the side of the, it looked like they opened up most of the clubs and they're pretty crowded, but I think they've opened up the doors that there's a lot of open air.
And maybe dudes have to come and already rec so they can get them in and out pretty quickly.
You know, it's funny is I don't like I'm if I wasn't, you know, if this whole lockdown shit had happened like five years ago or something like that, or five or 10 years ago or something like before I was married, before I had a kid, I feel like I would know a lot more about this stuff.
But I've heard a lot of stories of like bars opening illegally during the fucking like the height of it and just being like, you know what I mean?
Like almost speakeasy style, just letting people in.
I'm real lucky.
I practiced not getting laid before this all happened.
So I'm okay.
Well, I didn't even mean it as a result of trying to get laid or not.
I just mean like going out.
Like I feel like if this happened, the way like to in my life, 10 years ago, when this was going on, I'd have been like, I'm going to get out there and see what's going on.
Like see, oh, I heard you can have a drink at this place.
Just like do something, you know?
But yeah, I don't know.
But I've heard rumors that there were bars in a few places got in trouble and ticketed and stuff like that.
There is something about that that's kind of awesome and beautiful.
Just, you know, the government having these ridiculous rules and being like, you can't do this.
Speakeasy Style Rallies00:06:07
And I'm going, no, fuck that.
We're just going to do it.
I always root for that.
I root for the rebel entrepreneurs.
Yeah.
Well, once July comes around and I'm not in my parents' house anymore, I'm going to explore all these speakeasies.
I'll become your speakeasy guy.
I'll let you know who's drinking, where they're drinking, what's going on.
You'll be like the part of the problem on the scene correspondent.
We go now to Robbie the Fire who's down there and goes, Dave, I'm pretty hammered down here.
I want to just start setting up backyard comedy shows.
That's what I want to do.
Summer Ports Tour 2020 with Backyard Comedy Shows.
Hmm.
I like that.
All right.
Let's fucking do it, man.
Let's do it.
So, as I know you are aware, Donald Trump had his first rally yesterday, his first post-COVID lockdown rally.
Did you watch any of it?
No, but apparently the numbers were even better than his Washington inaugural.
Well, there's a lot being made of this.
CNN is thrilled that he did not fill up an entire stadium.
It looked like the top part of the stadium was fairly empty.
The bottom part was filled up.
I feel like Trump's people have now worked with him for too long that apparently he kept hitting up the coordinator, and the coordinator's like, there's going to be so many people down here.
It's going to be a packed house.
But did you see the story?
Some kids, I don't know the accuracy of it, but some kids on Zoom sounds like they pulled a good old Howard Stern prank where they put in for all the tickets.
Did you see that story?
I did not.
That's interesting.
So I don't know the accuracy of it, but kids claim that, you know, it's funny, even though Donald Trump, he's the first, you can call him kind of social media president, you know, fucking Twitter, social media really helped him get out there.
And it's like the new technology and the way that the wheel keeps turning.
So I guess even though he would be on the forefront, like I don't, I don't mess around with the what's the new one?
Not Zoom, the one that the kid, the TikToks.
All these kids and their TikToks, they're dancing, they're doing choreography and, you know, all that fun stuff that we missed out on as kids because we didn't have the technology to be doing choreographed dancing online.
No, they started a Zoom thing where they told people to go in and put in for all the tickets.
And they're claiming that a lot of people that they thought that they had a sold out event, but a lot of the people just were eating up the tickets, which is like the old Howard Stern bit.
I don't know.
ONA used to do this too, where everyone would call into like the other radio shows, and every time they picked up, it was just the fan from OA yelling at them.
Yeah, well, it turns out that's who knew they were practicing on bringing down a president right before them.
I mean, I don't know.
Look, it's Donald Trump still, you know, he drew thousands of people.
If it wasn't Trump for a regular politician, that would be a pretty good turnout.
It never looks good when you don't fill up the venue.
This is something true from our level of performing all the way to people performing in stadiums.
Whatever you, you want to sell out whatever venue you have.
So if you had, you know, 30,000 people coming to listen to you speak and you put it in a, you know, like 80,000 seat football stadium, it's not going to look good.
It looks like you're empty.
I was shocked that they didn't just turn it and go look at how well we social distanced at the event.
Right.
Well, I'm not even kidding.
I really thought they were going to do that and just go, look, yeah, we only put that many tickets available to make sure there was space.
Yeah.
I mean, I suppose the thing is that, look, it makes sense that his numbers would be down.
From what I heard from people who were there, they said the audience was much younger than your average Trump rally.
And it makes sense that older people are more concerned about the virus and stuff like that.
There's also probably my guess is a decent amount of people travel for these things.
It's probably a little bit more difficult to travel these days.
But also, I really think that with all the... the violence in so many of these protests, if you want to call them that, I would understand where some people would be a little bit nervous to go to a Trump event.
I mean, if you're going to throw on your MAGA hat and walk to an area where a bunch of Trump people are meeting, I'd understand being a little concerned that there might be some people out there who are going to harass you or something like that.
So I don't know, but I think all of these things are possible.
But it's being spun in the media as a big failure for Donald Trump.
I don't know how much of that you, how much stock you can really put in any of that.
But he went there and from what I saw of the clips, he was Trump.
He was just Trump doing the same thing that he does.
Trump only has one speed.
And that's he's going to be Trump.
And so that's what we're going to get.
And we'll see if the media and the Democrats, but I repeat myself, can figure out a way to deal with that.
But, you know, go ahead.
The current climate does not suit Trump that well because what Trump had going for him is that the media kept going, hey, the whole country hates him.
And then he could throw these rallies and he could go, holy shit, people really like this guy.
And that if people see Biden, they would realize that he's half retarded.
And so Trump's got the problem now that he both can't put on the big rallies and Biden doesn't have to get on television for everyone to realize that I don't think he realizes he's still on planet Earth.
Yeah, isn't it funny that we used to say, because, you know, we've been talking about this election for quite a while, that we would say over, and it was funny because we almost always disclaimed it, where we were like, I think Trump is on his way to a reelection barring some type of huge event or barring something major in the economy happening.
And now to look back at over the last three months, you're like, well, the major event certainly happened.
Yokratom Kratom Deals00:02:26
I mean, I don't know what this does.
I really, to me, making a prediction for November right now is so difficult because we just have no idea where everything is going.
We didn't think we could come up with someone more unelectable than Hillary Clinton.
I mean, if the Democrats sat around and said, how can we make sure that we put up the only candidates that can't beat Donald Trump?
They managed to do it.
Yeah.
And it's particularly striking given the, you know, the moment, the national conversation that you've got this guy, Biden, who, I mean, he can try, but it is such a force to try to position Biden as the one who cares about police brutality and systemic racism or whatever, you know, like whatever the narrative of the day is.
I mean, this is a guy who bragged about co-sponsoring the 94 crime bill, who's always been a tough on crime Democrat.
It's just, it just doesn't work particularly well with this moment.
That being said, we are just, you know, we're just now starting to get into the tip of feeling the ramifications for the lockdowns.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
You can't, you know, we used to, us libertarians, from since I've been a libertarian, we've always talked about unintended consequences of government policies.
This is a big thing that libertarians have always, you know, liked to focus on.
And I think for good reason, that you, you, there are these government policies that oftentimes have consequences that nobody would have seen coming.
Systematic Racism Concerns00:15:33
Now, sometimes they are predictable.
Sometimes they might even enact the policies for these reasons and just lie about it.
But quite often, there are just, you don't know where this energy is going to go.
And there's, you know, like Milton Friedman made the argument, and I think a very convincing one, that the government indirectly created crack cocaine because they made cocaine illegal.
It drove the price of cocaine through the roof.
And then people came up with crack as a cheaper alternative to, you know, snorting cocaine.
And, you know, who the fuck would have predicted that that would end up happening?
But it really is directly related.
And of course, you know, all types of this happens all the time in foreign policy in different areas.
But we just did such a major thing in shutting the country down for months that it's hard to say where this all goes.
You can make some reasonable predictions like, okay, this is going to devastate the economy.
But as I've been saying for a while, I just think so many of these protests and riots and things like that are a result of people of shutting down everything.
Not just like shutting down all the jobs and stuff like that, but just shutting down everything.
There's no sports, no bars, no nothing.
And now all of a sudden, it's like, you know, this is the game in town.
There's all this pent up rage and there's nothing else to do.
I thought the riots and protests were going to come a lot earlier.
And I actually thought that they'd be from a more diverse audience.
But oddly enough, it got triggered by, you know, the cops, the CNN reporting about all the systemic racism because of the one occurrence of this and they're non-reporting on other incidents.
So, you know, that protesting gave the looters the cover.
And I'm, and also the looting turned out, at least in New York City, I don't know about in other areas, but it turned out it was mostly like kind of organized gangs.
So that even, even that wasn't that much of just like the, hey, we're taking over this target in Walmart kind of thing.
Yeah, no, there's that, that's, that's true.
And it's, look, it's just with all of this stuff that's already happened, we're really only at the beginning phase.
We're at phase one of feeling what the fuck just happened.
And right now, very few people, certainly like just about nobody in the corporate press, and a few people, maybe independent journalists online and stuff like that.
But we're really not good at a country at sizing up what just happened, what went wrong, and what's going on.
You know, like it's really something that there was never a moment where any, you know, there seemed to be like almost no one who is in a position of leadership or, you know, whether in the press or in the government, who goes like, okay, well, listen, what just happened here?
So in New York City was the epicenter of COVID.
We were all told that the hospital systems were going to be overwhelmed to the point where we're bringing in naval ships and setting up makeshift hospitals at the Jacob Jabbitt Center.
And none of them were needed.
None of them.
Now, a lot of times when these are government resources, people just feel like there's kind of no costs to that.
It's like, oh, better safe than sorry.
But no, this is a tremendous waste of resources to just set up all these hospitals and then tear them down.
But none of that was needed.
There was all this talk about how there wasn't enough ventilators.
New York City ended up giving away ventilators to other people.
But there's never like a conversation about this.
There's never like, okay, why did we get that wrong?
Let's acknowledge we got that wrong.
Let's move forward from that.
There's none of that.
And right now, we're about to go into the time of people really feeling the economic hardship.
And this can have lots of different effects.
I've said from the very beginning of this COVID thing, what was really scary was not so much the virus.
I mean, the virus is scary.
Viruses in general are scary.
You know, it's scary that you could fucking catch the flu and get very sick.
It's scary that little kids can die from the flu or old people can die from it.
And COVID is a scary virus.
But I was always much more scared of what the response would be.
And my big concern was, you know, like state authoritarianism, crime, looting, you know, civil unrest.
And it does seem like all of those things are happening to one level or another.
The thing that's that's been happening that is getting some coverage, but it really just does not seem to get the proportional coverage that it deserves is the crime across the country.
Crime is really up.
And it's not up across the board around the country, but in certain areas it really is.
In New York City, crime is up.
I think there were, I don't have the exact numbers offhand, but I think there were 12 shootings at this time, this week last year, and there were 55 this week.
Now, it's not like enormous numbers, but if you look at the trend, the increase is certainly troubling.
And people like myselves, like myself, who lived in New York in the 80s and 90s, even though I was a kid, I was here.
There's a big difference between New York in the 80s and 90s and New York City in the 2010s and now in 2020.
It's a very big difference.
And most sane people don't want to go back to the high crime days.
It's really, what is that?
Here, I have the numbers here.
In Chicago, there were 104 people shot on Father's Day weekend.
14 of them died.
Five children were amongst the 14 people.
Really, you know, said, now, this was down from, so there were 104 shootings.
14 of them died over Father's Day weekend.
The weekend before that, there were 85 people shot, 24 of them died.
So the deaths were actually down, but it doesn't seem like from anything other than people being a bad shot because more people were shot.
But this is, you know, just going on the last two weeks.
Gets very little coverage.
And I must say, at the risk of sounding like some Fox News host, but sometimes they make good points and sometimes they don't.
But, you know, we're having this like Black Lives Matter, you know, movement across the country.
And it's really kind of shocking how little anybody cares about these Black lives.
They're dying in much greater number.
Like this is a much bigger problem, if your concern is Black lives, than the nine unarmed Black people who were killed by cops last year.
Probably about five or six of them were, you know, justifiable homicides.
But that certainly is troubling.
Rob, thoughts?
Do you care about Black Lives?
No?
Well, you don't care about Black Lives Matter.
I guess I'd prefer not to weigh in on the issue.
You know, I think they're probably moving in the right way.
You defund the police, and then probably those 109 people a day that are killing each other will just realize we got nothing to prove anymore.
There's no cops out here and they'll lay off it.
Yeah, well, I'm not quite sure.
Is it mostly all the Chicago deaths and mostly gang violence?
Yeah.
Well, it's not, it's not, you know, all gangbangers who die, but pretty much all of the violence is from gang members.
It's hard to get exact numbers on this.
But I mean, there was a three-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl who were killed in separate shootings, and they're not gang members.
I don't think so.
Someone's got to get all their dads back so that they can just have a barbecue on Sundays.
Well, it is, you know, it's, I think I mentioned on the last episode, I believe we were talking that I mentioned the thing about Elmo, that there was this Elmo video of him talking about Black Lives Matter issues that just really, oh my God, it felt, I literally felt like...
Do they have the count like counting out?
Not one, not two, but four black deaths.
But so, but no, it's like Elmo and his dad, and Elmo's like, why are the protesters so angry?
And Elmo's dad is like, well, son, people of color have been treated unfairly for a long time.
It's like, oh, God.
That's why does Elmo have a dad propaganda?
Oh, Elmo has a dad.
What does Delmo's dad look like?
His big red guy.
Oh, is that new?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I got to catch up on my Sesame Street.
I'm like seasons behind here.
Yeah.
Elmo wasn't even really big when I was a kid.
When I was big, Elmo, I think he was there.
It was Big Bird and Oxford Crouch.
Those were the key squads.
Burt and Ernie.
Those were the guys.
You know, they were the shit.
Cameo by Kermit the Frog every now and then.
No one really cared about Elmo.
We didn't respect him at all.
But then by the time my little brother was a kid, it was like, it was Elmo's world.
That was the shit.
And that's anyway.
I feel like I even perfectly.
That show lost its way.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Grover was the shit.
And now Grover, like, they don't even speak of Grover anymore.
He's gone.
He makes an occasional appearance, but he's not.
I never see kids like rooting on Grover, like all about Grover.
Not enough.
And that's what's wrong with this country.
Anyway, there's, you know, I fucking, what's it?
Me and my wife were playing around.
You ask Alexa.
I mentioned this on the last show.
I don't even need to say all this anymore.
But, you know, she's like, you go, do, you go, hey, Alexa, do Black Lives Matter?
And they're like, yes, Black Lives Matter.
You can make a contribution at blacklivesmatter.com, blah, And then you go, do all lives matter?
And she goes, well, all people deserve humanity.
Black people are disproportionately targeted by systematic racism.
And you're just like, is this device just spitting out buzzwords to me?
It's very, just the whole thing is very strange.
And I must say, like, if you really do care about Black Lives, like, well, let's, why don't we talk about this Chicago thing a little bit more?
Like, this is really what fucks over black people.
I mean, I'm not saying cops don't at all, but not on these numbers.
I mean, this is, you know, and now I do think there are government policies that certainly could be addressed that could be changed that might help some of this.
But ignoring it certainly isn't going to help anyone.
And I just don't, I don't know.
I've also seen, God damn, I really am.
I know I've beaten this drum a bit before over the last few weeks, but I really am like disappointed in so many libertarians.
Again, not libertarianism, but just libertarians.
And sometimes I look around and see a lot of libertarians and I'm like, man, you guys really are not, like, you don't deserve this beautiful philosophy that you have.
There's, you know, I see libertarians posting about systematic racism and things like this.
And it's like, yeah, what?
Could you like define that?
Instead of just using this buzzword and feeling like you don't have to provide an argument after that, like, can you tell me what systematic racism you're referring to?
I mean, I don't know.
It's this is, can you, you know, can you imagine if there were laws on the books that said that black kids who score a certain amount on a test will not get a job or will not get enrolled in admitted to universities.
They're going to be passed up for somebody who scores lower on the test than them.
I mean, that would easily, you know, be systematic racism.
You would, everybody would be happy to say that this is, this is absolutely systemic.
There is no question that, you know, this is, you know, just horrible.
But then that is the situation, except it's affirmative action and it's, you know, promoting Hispanic and black kids over white kids, Asian kids, Jewish kids.
But we're not allowed to talk.
Like, why is that not systemic racism?
What's the issue there?
Like, it's just so many of these things are like, ah, it's actually a lot more complicated than you're making it out.
And repeating leftist buzzwords is, I don't think is the best strategy for achieving liberty.
Call me crazy.
All right.
So anyway, other things going on.
There's been a lot made of this dust up between the Attorney General Barr and this lawyer, Berman, who now it looks like was fired by Donald Trump.
I know you've been following this a little bit, Rob.
What were your thoughts?
I think what will be very interesting to me or what I'd like to know is, I guess, well, firstly, I'd like to get the official report on why he was fired.
And what's fun about government jobs is, and I even read this, he might have been fired because Trump's friends with that guy at the SEC.
They were playing golf.
And he's like, hey, let me get you this better job.
And that's kind of the funny thing about working in government is that it's not always about being really good at what you do.
It's about being a bureaucrat.
And sometimes that means, hey, I'm friends with the guy in charge now.
So I get to get the cushy job.
And that's the way the system works.
You guys can all scream, yell, and holler and whatever and get upset about it.
But I hate to break it to you.
It's probably a lot of government jobs because this guy, I mean, there's a lot of jobs in life because this guy knows that guy, but it's definitely More apparent in government.
Now, what probably is happening here is this guy was investigating members of Trump aggressively, like Giuliani and people from that camp.
And so, for the president to fire somebody because maybe they're rightfully investigating his team, I would say is a violation for justice and probably not a good look.
If, however, he's specifically only looking at the president when no one else would be getting an investigation and they're just, hey, let's go try and get some dirt on that guy.
So, then to fire him absolutely makes sense.
And just the fact that every team is trying to just tear down the other one is proof of the fact that this system is just completely corrupt, that it's just a function of who has power, using whatever power you have to investigate the other team.
And if you're powerful enough, then you can remove those people.
Banana Republic shit.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
Well, the story that we're being given, at least what's being reported, and I tend to agree with you, there's probably more going on behind the scenes, but is that this guy refused to sign on to a letter that Barr wanted him to sign on to condemning de Blasio for basically for enforcing social distancing against religious groups,
Mob Dismantling Statues00:15:31
not allowing them to have their religious services, but then accepting it from the protesters?
I haven't even read that.
Where did you read that?
There's an article on WallStreetJournal.com.
It says Jeffrey Berman, the former top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, refused to sign a letter criticizing Mayor de Blasio for enforcing social distancing rules to block religious gatherings, but not protests.
Does that happen a lot that the head of the AG sends out letters that we want to condemn an individual?
I would think you guys have enough power if someone does something illegal, just fucking pull them to court.
Well, my guess is that it's something more, the reality of the situation looks more like what you were describing.
This is kind of the story that's coming out.
Either way, there is no question that there is something, regardless, I think this is a bullshit reason that's being given.
But if we're looking at this reason, there is something really quite incredible about the fact that you had a mayor who was breaking up religious services and then giving the all-clear to protests.
This is obviously a theme that we've touched on before, but it really is something, I mean, it's cartoonish that you're seeing the videos of protests of tens of thousands of people just gathering around each other, and that's not a concern.
But a few dozen people want to go worship at a temple or something like that.
And that we, you know, there's this huge COVID concern.
So we have to shut that down.
I also think now that a lot's being made, you're seeing a lot of stories about numbers of COVID going up.
Now, if you really, you know, peel the onion and look at this, most of this is just that testing is going up.
If you look at hospitalizations and deaths, it's very hard to see any trend of them actually going up anywhere in the country.
But if you're still playing the we're really concerned about COVID game, but racism is just so bad that it's okay to protest racism and spread COVID around, but nothing else, literally nothing else is acceptable.
Going to church, going to temple, going to work, visiting family, protesting the lockdowns, none of that is valid, just protesting racism.
You'd think that those people would at least start to realize that, you know, like understand that if your concern is COVID being spread still, that when all of the experts said it was okay for these people to protest, this had an effect on the rest of the country.
And it really did.
From my perspective, I think it might be one of the few positive effects that this stuff had on the rest of the country is that people went, well, we're over this COVID thing then.
I'm sorry.
Like, if you guys can all link arm in arm by the hundreds of thousands, I'm going to go see my family.
I'm sorry.
And I know a lot of people who have been in that situation and you kind of understand where they're coming from.
You're like, wait a minute, we just saw all this and numbers aren't spiked.
Well, okay.
Then I guess maybe this whole thing was bullshit and we're going to go do our thing.
And that's that.
So that's what's going on.
We'll see.
We'll see where it all goes.
Well, I guess the only reason there isn't a spike is because we got some over some magical threshold of time here that we've all been indoors long enough.
And even though there's no cure, the risk just isn't as bad as it was four months ago.
You got to realize keeping us all inside flattened that curve.
And it was only because they did all that that it was a manageable situation.
Everyone being out now, that's a magical time-related function that, you know, the hospitals aren't being overrun now.
Well, it seems like, okay, like even if that is their bullshit, you know, justification, it seems like they can't even get on the same page about that.
Like they're kind of like, well, the lockdowns work.
So we flattened the curve.
So it's okay to protest racism.
But also numbers are going up and we're not ready to get back to work yet and we can't do this.
And it's just all so confused.
Like what?
And then meanwhile, after all this shit, there's still, you know, they're still like, well, we're in phase three.
You can go to a restaurant if you have outdoor seating only and all this shit.
It's like, whoa, what, what the fuck?
Anyway, this is what's starting to happen now is that the, you know, the government checks are starting to dry up.
And the, you know, like the rent forgiveness and all that stuff, that's starting, that's all going to end.
And now we're going to see what's really up.
And, you know, the fact that crime has gone up already to me is a really bad indicator of where crime's going to be when the economic effects are really felt.
And that's why I was saying before, it's just very hard to predict what's going to end up happening in November because you're really going to have to see where the economy is.
What they're going to need to do is get the police out there aggressively.
But in the first few months of like aggressively policing crime, they just got to really beat the shit out of white people and get it on tape.
Like they really got to let it know.
Well, it's funny because I've actually, I mean, I've had this thought before, which I, you know, you can't really prove because you just see random videos and stuff here and there.
But I've seen cops being super aggressive with white protesters and then being super hands off with like black looters.
And I do think there is something to like where a white guy gets in a cop's face and is like, you guys are all Nazis, blah, blah, blah.
And they're like, oh yeah, Whitey, okay.
Well, I'm not going to be on the news for beating the shit out of you.
So I'm like, they're almost going harder at them.
And then when it's black dudes, it's like, oh, well, I don't know.
I know this is off topic, but I saw footage of people pulling down a statue.
And I was surprised by how organized of an event it was, that there were rows of people, ropes around the thing.
How does that not get broken up?
And how do those people not get prosecuted?
And then most of all, I really was wondering, like, who gets the statue pieces?
Do those go up for sale at some point?
Like, I'm really surprised that people aren't profiting off of this one.
Yeah, I just, Well, it is, to your point, there is a lot more organization on the ground with a lot of these groups than some people realize.
These are not just spontaneous gatherings.
There's funding, there's direction, there's a whole, you know, like set of communications.
And it's hard to know exactly, but there is, there's coordination that goes into this stuff.
But I'm saying part of the coordination has to be on the police side, that they're not very aggressively rounding up.
Like, if I'm watching footage of people at the event, it can't be that hard to start figuring out who those people are, especially if there's a ton of communications.
I'm like, I got no police experience, but I've stalked some women down on Facebook to look at old photos.
You don't think I'll find some protesters?
I'll do it.
Yeah, well, it'll be interesting to see what happens with all of this stuff going forward.
As of right now, it seems like police departments across the country have basically, for the most part, given over control to the mob.
And they're like, we're going to allow this to happen.
I just find it like, I really got to say, I find it very disturbing.
And of course, you know, like, it's not as if I'm somebody who like worships so many of these figures, but they are our history, whether we like it or not.
I mean, tearing down statues of like George Washington, you're like, you know, he was the first president of the United States of America.
It's not to say he was a great guy.
I could give you a long list of, you know, criticisms of George Washington, but he was the general who led the military defeat of the British Empire.
It's a pretty big historical moment.
He did some great things.
You know, a lot of people wanted him to be a king and he gave up that.
You know, I mean, I don't know.
I don't really care about statues one way or the other.
90% of the time, I don't even really notice them.
Like some of those nice statues, even like on the Upper West Side by the parks, if you took them down, I wouldn't go, oh, there used to be a statue.
I wouldn't fucking know.
But just these decisions shouldn't be decided by mob.
Like that's just not as society.
Yeah.
No, I actually really agree with that.
And then there was, you know, so the speaking of the Upper West Side statues, one of the more famous ones is the statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside of the Museum of Natural History, which is literally around the world.
Oh, no.
That is mostly.
And that is mostly just a museum of animals that he killed.
That is a weird museum.
It is his, I'm telling you, it's his fucking statue exhibit of exotic animals that he went around the world killing on taxpayer dollars.
That's what the museum is.
Well, look, I am no fan of Theodore Roosevelt.
I think he was horrible, a horrible person and a horrible president.
But does it make sense that I still found something disturbing about them announcing that they're taking the statue down, clearly capitulating to the mob and going, hey, hey, hey, okay, we'll take this statue down.
Just please don't come here and rip it down.
Let us do it.
I just don't like that.
I don't like that being the method by which it's decided that we're going to tear these statues down.
And I also, I'm just not big on tearing statues down.
As I said in the last episode, it just to me, it feels like one step removed from book burning or like destroying cultural, you know, like monuments and things like that.
It's, this is weird.
Like, this is kind of anti-civilized.
I'm all for building a better society.
I'm all for recognizing what evil presidents of the past have done, spend quite a bit of time on it.
I mean, I focus mostly on the more recent ones, but I just, something about tearing it down, it's like, I don't know.
And what are we replacing this with?
Mob justice?
Like, okay, is that actually any better?
Can we work this through?
You know, it would be more fun is to just build other statues next to the statue, like of you know, them like taking it in the ass or something.
Like, I'm just saying, there you go, let's be pretty, yeah, we can make it an educational opportunity.
Yeah, well, we'll see anyway.
I guess this is this is where we're going forward with this.
It's just kind of like, um, if some if the mob says racism or you know, whatever one of their buzzwords, uh, you know, systemic oppression or something like that, uh, then we're just gonna give in to them and start ripping things down, or like even that Roosevelt statue.
So they say the issue is like he's on a horse, and then you got the uh Indian.
I don't know who, I don't know who's on the other side, but it's like they both look like they're below them.
So, like, we put them up, you know, raise them up so that all of a sudden Roosevelt is looking back and he's like, shit, I was supposed to be the boss in this picture, or like you put them on even bigger horses, you know, there you go, or you let them ride Roosevelt, they get right on top of him, he is their horse.
Maybe that's not, let's get creative with this, just pulling down a statue.
They all ride the horses together to show that they were really friends.
All right, look at Rob's just a pile of ideas over there.
Um, so anyway, uh, okay, so the other uh story that caught my eye, and I know it caught your eye as well, is um, this, uh, uh, that, that quite possibly the worst human being in the country, John Bolton, has a has a book coming out.
Uh, there's there's a lot of controversy around this book.
The uh, the Justice Department was trying to hold it up for a little while, saying that there's classified material in there.
I don't know exactly how clear that is, but um, there anyway, there's a lot of different levels.
What have you, what were your thoughts on John Bolton's book?
So, clearly, some interesting bombshells in it, but um, in the interviews, he's so clearly a liar.
I don't think that it's gonna hold a lot of weight for anybody.
Um, the biggest lie that they're giving him shit for is that he's basically saying that he had first-hand testimony of the fact that the Ukraine deal was quid pro quo.
And so they were hammering on it.
Well, then why didn't you come like why didn't you come forward and say something if you're now saying that Trump is the worst thing that ever happened to any of us and there's all this quid pro quo and you're someone who should be trusted?
Why wouldn't you come forward and kind of make that claim?
And he goes, Well, it wouldn't have helped.
The evidence wouldn't have helped that the Republicans had decided that they weren't on his side.
And so me coming forward wouldn't have done anything.
And it's so obvious that at some point, like he's just clearly a liar.
Either that evidence didn't really happen, or you know what the real story probably is?
If I showed up and I gave testimony, you can't really lie when you're giving testimony, but you can put in a book that sells pretty good.
Why would I give away this information for free?
And in the less exaggerated version, when I'm under testimony, when I could hold it, or how about because I don't have any integrity and I was still playing for that team at the time, but since I got fired and I'm angry, now I'm going to tell you all the information that I wouldn't because I have no integrity.
I don't really think that it's going to hold a ton of weight.
Yeah, it's always so weird when people claim they have this really important information and you'll get it as soon as you purchase my book.
It's like, do you remember that Corey Feldman said there were these major pedophiles in Hollywood?
And he goes, these are really big, well-known A-list people in Hollywood and their pedophiles.
They have pedophile rings going on.
And I will name names in my documentary that you can get for $6.99 on my website or whatever.
You're like, wait, what?
So you're just telling me there are people attacking children, but you're not going to call them out until I cut you a check and then watch your do your stupid thing.
And then I can, like, that just seems weird.
It makes it very hard to believe that you are sincere with this.
And this happens all the time in Washington.
Well, then, and then, of course, they're going to write their book and make big money.
Did you Feldman name names in the end?
I don't think so.
From what I understand, the documentary ended up like crashing his site and no one ever saw it.
So we don't know what the hell is going on still.
That sounds suspicious.
Well, yeah, listen, maybe it, maybe it is.
Maybe it was all done by the Hollywood elites.
Maybe he's telling the truth.
It's just hard to believe someone when they're like, I have this big piece of information.
I could say it now to the world, but I want to go make my money.
Now, with Bolton, it's particularly strange because this was, it's not as if he's saying, oh, this was like an impeachable offense.
There was an impeachment hearing over this, and he didn't come forward with this information at the time.
And now is saying, oh, you know, go buy my book and you can find out why Trump should have been impeached.
The thing that I found, and there's a few other things in there.
I don't know if you saw it, like I forget the name of the position, but it was some high-ranking military South Korean was basically like that he completely like bullshitted about the nature of the peace talks with North and South Korea.
Trusting Negotiations Again00:10:52
And he was claiming things that were inaccurate.
I forget his exact words.
Actually, maybe I can find it.
You know, at the end of the day, Simon Schuster, while somehow working for the military-industrial complex, has to backpedal some money to core individuals.
So they got to put out some.
Well, that's right.
Well, here we go.
Chung Yoo-Yong, South Korea's national security chief, said in a statement on Monday that much of the claims made by Bolton in his book does not reflect the exact facts and are greatly distorted.
He also said about Bolton's book that it violates the basic principles of diplomacy and can seriously undermine trust in future negotiations.
So he's basically saying that you can't, you know, you can't be doing international diplomacy and then to brag, go write a book about everything that was said and everything that was done.
It's kind of like, this is now, how the fuck are we supposed to trust the next person we're negotiating with if you think there's a possibility that what you said is going to end up distorted and then publicized in this guy's book when he gets out.
So all of this, it doesn't make Bolton look too good.
Also, if you write a book and the title is The Rumor It Happened and by the end someone isn't getting molested, I want my money back.
That is not a fair title.
You're really building it up.
That holds up to me.
I think Rothbard covered that in For a New Liberty.
You're entitled to a refund for sure.
Well, the thing that really stuck out to me was one of the excerpts that was released from the book.
And this was, you know, I've said this before when it was, there was, I don't know if you remember this, Rob.
This was a couple years ago when there was the New York Times op-ed in secret by a bunch of what they called high-level executive branch employees.
They didn't reveal any of their names, but they said there were a bunch of them who signed off on this letter of how terrible Donald Trump is.
And there'll be like these like four vague things.
Like, you know, Donald Trump is, you know, I don't know, whatever.
It's like he's mean.
He's a jerk, you know, like in fancier language, but it'll be like, you know, he doesn't respect the dignity of the office.
He's degraded and insulted other people, blah, blah, blah.
These kind of like vague personality things.
And then like the fifth thing will be like, and he's undermined the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, blah, blah, blah.
And you're like, oh, yeah, that's what it is.
That's what it is.
Again, this is what I've been saying for years here.
It's like, feel however you want to feel about Donald Trump.
We were just in our last episode very critical of Donald Trump.
And I think there's lots of reasons to be.
And I'll be honest, I am getting more and more over it.
Like, I thought I would get over how funny the Trump thing is and how entertaining it is much sooner.
But now I am really getting over it.
It's like, now it's like we got really serious problems in this country.
And to just have a clown up there as the head guy, it's just it might have been useful at one time.
I'm saying it undermines the dignity of the office.
No, I'm saying it doesn't help us.
No, listen, that's the only good thing about Trump, but I'm saying he's already done that.
Mission accomplished.
The dignity of the office has been undermined.
I appreciate that.
The press has been mocked.
I appreciate that.
But now it's kind of like that's really not enough anymore.
And we actually need something closer to a leader.
What does it matter?
The next person is just going to spend equal or as much money and get us into wars.
Unless someone's going to not do those things, it does not matter.
Well, I agree with you.
And here's the thing that this is almost what may, like, just when you're ready to turn on Donald Trump, these people will almost make you're like, eh, maybe there is some value to him after all.
But I'll say this.
This is what the Bolton excerpt that I'm beating around the bush trying to get to is what he said.
Because you start to get down to like, why does he really hate Trump so much, right?
What is it really?
Because all these other things that you're talking about, these were all true.
And you signed on to be his national security advisor.
The stuff with the Ukraine, you knew about and you stayed in the job.
So it's not all the, here's what it is.
And he says in his book that the most irresponsible thing he's ever seen a president do was Trump calling off those strikes on Iran.
That's what it is.
That's what John Bolton has.
He had a chance to get us an award.
Yes.
And he didn't.
There is, dude, really sick people.
Really sick people.
The only thing that Donald Trump can actually like the only thing that he can really, from our perspective, like hang his hat on, that is something pretty great.
And even for this, you have to grade it on a Bush-Obama curve, right?
But he's the only president since 9-11, which is almost 20 years ago now.
And this is, you know, this is the 21st century America.
This is the game that we have, whether we like it or not.
But he's the only president since then who has not gotten us into a new disastrous war.
That is something, okay?
Now, he hasn't pulled out of the ones that he said he would pull out of.
He hasn't, you know, dealt with the budget the way he said he would.
There's a million other things, but he didn't start a new disastrous war.
He flirted with it in Venezuela.
He flirted with it in Iran.
He flirted with it in North Korea before going the diplomatic route.
But he didn't get us in one.
And people like me and you look at that and go, man, well, at least thank God for that.
You know, you had Bush, who gets us into Iraq and Afghanistan, these nightmare wars that cost trillions of dollars and kill, you know, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands in Iraq of people, disasters.
Obama gets us into a war in Libya, destroys that country, gets us into a war in Syria, destroys that country, gets us into a war in Yemen, destroys that country.
I mean, these are real fucking disasters.
And Trump hasn't done that.
So you got to give him some credit for that.
And here's how sick it is.
That is what these people, the John Boltons of the world, hate about him.
They hate him for this.
Like, what the fuck are you doing that you haven't?
You had opportunities to get us into another disastrous war, particularly this one in Iran that probably would have been worse than all the ones I just named.
And they're furious that he won't do it.
They're furious that when an unmanned drone was shot down, Trump didn't take that opportunity to bomb the shit out of Iran.
I think there's one more thing that we got to give Trump credit for.
And it almost goes unnoticed because it's like we almost miss sight of how bad the alternative would be.
But I think he does kind of keep the PC nonsense in check.
And that I can only imagine culturally where we'd be and how much preaching there would be to us about what the country likes and what etiquette is.
Trump kind of did come back around and go, no, it's not as important as you all say it is.
There's a lot of people in the country that don't give a shit.
And I think, especially for me and the people I interact with and the lifestyle I'm trying to live and the comedy I'm trying to do, there's a tangible benefit there.
Yeah, perhaps.
But there's also, and this isn't necessarily Trump's fault, but there's also a response to that that makes the social justice wokeism even crazier because now they've got an enemy.
You know, I wonder sometimes, like, if Biden was in there, would they lose energy to some degree?
Because they don't have this kind of focused bad guy anymore.
So I get your point.
Like, remember the high they had with Obama of like, look, it's, it's our moment and everything's, I don't know.
It seems like they didn't.
Well, have they gone away?
Yeah, but they haven't gone away under Trump.
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know.
I feel like it came around.
It'd just be worse.
It'd be like preaching to us.
Like, that's actually, because they pretend like that's the norm and just isn't.
Like, you know what I mean?
It's like a thought control thing.
No, listen, I get your point.
I don't, I just don't know.
I get your point.
I'm just not sure.
I'm not sure that it would be better or worse, but there is something enjoyable about someone giving a middle finger to all of those people.
There's something there.
But it really is.
The Bolton thing was just amazing.
And don't forget, I mean, he's far from the only one.
Like, you know, Mattis left because he was talking about pulling troops out of Syria.
There are these people there that like ending a war is the worst thing you could do.
And starting a war is the greatest thing you could do.
And the crazy thing about it is that Bolton is saying this, you know, over a year after this happened.
And what exactly is the disaster?
You know, like if Trump had gotten us into a war and people were dying by the tens of thousands right now, Bolton would be happy to stay on.
But because he didn't, and everything's relatively fine, he's writing this book and he's furious at him.
What is the problem with not being at war in Iran?
Oh, what you can say the Iranian government is bad because of X, Y, and Z.
It's like, okay, well, Saddam was bad.
Gaddafi was bad.
Look how much worse it is.
Look how much worse it is now.
So don't tell me that you don't know whether it would be worse in Iran right now.
There's very good reason to think it would be.
But so that's it.
And I will say, I'm actually, I'm kind of interested to read this book because as much as I hate to give any money to this sociopath, I kind of do want to get a little bit of the information about a guy like John Bolton.
And look, the other thing is, before we'll wrap up here, this is Trump deserves a lot of blame for this because whatever you want to say about how evil Bolton is, everybody knew who this guy was.
And Trump should have too.
And he made this fucking sociopath, this blood-soaked monster, his national security advisor.
And that is still to me, even though he eventually fired him and he avoided that war, that is really unforgivable that he would bring this guy in at all.
I mean, how, like, I don't even know how fucking stupid, how just like uninformed is Trump that he would bring this guy in who stands for everything, the opposite of everything he claims to stand for on foreign policy, and then would just have this whole shit show.
It's like, I don't know.
I don't know what exactly he's thinking or where his head is at, but he's in many ways, he deserves the embarrassment of all this shit because he fucking picked this guy and he didn't have to.
Left Pushes Lockdowns00:03:16
All right, that's our episode for today.
Thank you guys very much for listening.
We will see you on the next one.
Peace.
All right, guys, thanks for listening to the show.
Like I said up top, we're going to play a clip from the Death to Tyrants podcast.
The podcast drops every Monday and can be found on any podcast platform out there.
Go check it out, the Death to Tyrants podcast.
Hey, what's up, you guys?
Welcome back once again to the Death to Tyrants podcast.
As always, I am your host and humble narrator, Buck Johnson, coming to you out of Austin, Texas, where, man, it's not here necessarily, but all over the states, it's a wild time right now.
And we're seeing police brutality up in Minnesota.
And we're seeing a lot of people pushing for police action in shutting down businesses and keeping people out of work and economies locked down.
And it's interesting that a lot of people don't see the similarities in those things.
And, you know, you see a lot of the left really upset by a man dying at the hands of a police officer.
And we agree.
I believe that, you know, most libertarians are horrified at what we saw with that cop up in Minnesota.
But it's interesting because a lot of the left are the ones pushing to keep things locked down.
And I think they don't understand that the end game of what they're pushing is the government boot on your neck.
And it's really interesting that once they see it on camera, when a cop's caught doing it, well, then they're horrified.
Yet, how do you think these lockdowns should be enforced?
I've seen leftist friends saying stuff like, why aren't the cops enforcing this lockdown?
There's no point having it if they don't go around and enforce it.
We should have drones flying over and see who's leaving their house.
Well, what's the end game when that happens?
Because what if I own a clothing boutique and I said, I'm not locking down?
The government can't tell me to do that.
This is my property.
It's my business.
And you can't tell me not to operate it.
Well, guess who comes to shut you down, guys?
It's the jackbooted thugs like the one kneeling on the man's head in Minneapolis.
That's the endgame of that political philosophy.
And you know now the left, they're the pro-war faction, along with the neocons, of course, which have basically moved back to the left where they started.
And then they're the ones that question you if you dare, dare speak out against the CIA or the security state, the deep state will call it.
Well, that's that's treason if you speak out against.
How could you not trust your own CIA?
And then all of a sudden, when a cop's caught doing something horrible, everyone just freaks out.
The left doesn't like that.
Well, look, guys, that's the authoritarian philosophy that you're pushing.
That's what it looks like in its purest form.
And, you know, as libertarians, we're consistently against anything like that, against the war, against the CIA, against the FBI.
I mean, we can narrow it down if you want against state police forces, against government police forces.
Clashing with the Deep State00:00:29
And, you know, once again, I feel like we're the only philosophy that sees this for what it is.
You can't split in fucking half, cause I call them the holograph rap.
But I am the center inside the presenter of past.
You clash with cyanide guys and die fast.
Rhythmical equivalent of solids, liquids, and gas.
We smash and signage with the power of Lord Titus.
But I am the virus inside of the iris of Cyrus.
Subscribe to the Death to Tyrants podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and catch a new episode every Monday.