Dave Smith and Rob Bernstein dissect the 2020 RNC, contrasting its forceful condemnation of Kenosha riots with the DNC's silence. They critique Rand Paul for omitting debt and Fed critiques while endorsing Trump, yet praise Jim Jordan's appeal to average voters on crime and border security. The hosts analyze the Covington Catholic student incident as proof of media bias and lament Ron Paul's refusal of a 2012 speaking role due to anti-war principles. Ultimately, they argue that while ideological purity matters, effective messaging requires balancing libertarian ideals with pragmatic political realities to challenge mainstream narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Heshy Socks and Impunity00:11:16
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Let's start the show.
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Jay Smith.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am the libertarian Tupac, the most consistent motherfucker you know.
He is the fire, the king of the caulks.
Rob Bernstein, it's good to be with you.
And it's really good to see your face.
Look at you with internet, like a real person.
We'll see how long it lasts.
I'm still in a war against Optimum.
They've pulled some real shady shit this week.
They were supposed to send out technicians.
They're supposed to come over with sandwiches.
None of those things happened.
They made big promises to keep me as a customer.
I'm pretty sure you just imagined that sandwich part.
I don't think I've had Optimum.
I don't think they've ever.
No, they said an attractive lady was coming over and she was going to fix my internet and help whatever other issues I was having around the house.
And that they really wanted to have me as a customer.
That's what they said, but they haven't made good on it.
So I might flake out on you.
There's some shady people.
But your internet is working.
There seems to be some improvement from last week.
At this very moment, I have working internet, but you never know.
These optimum people, they like to keep you on your toe and sometimes they pull out the rug right when you're doing something important.
All right.
Well, let's hope.
Let's hope and pray to the optimum gods.
I hope you get that sandwich.
I hope you get that hooker.
But at least I'll settle for an internet connection that allows us to do these episodes.
All right.
So there's a few things to discuss today.
I want to talk a little bit about the RNC so far and what's been going on.
But before we do that, I did want to talk a little bit about what's going on in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where there's been mass riots, or as the media calls them, protests in response to this recent police shooting that we talked about on the last episode.
So what I just saw as I pulled this up, you were just telling me about it, actually.
I was out doing skanks last night and didn't see this news.
And then I was just paying attention to the convention.
So two people were killed.
I got ADD and I got to know it.
How was the Jay dosing after the episode?
Was he furious about that?
Was he cool?
Was he having a party?
Jay's not happy.
Let's just say that.
Jay is not pleased.
And I'll let him tell the rest of the story.
But he's not pleased, and rightfully, rightfully so.
That was not cool.
But it's, you know, it's one of those things.
Anyway, that's all I want to say about it, but not cool.
I don't stand behind that.
Okay, so two people were killed.
One was injured and one was dosed.
No, that's not, that was a separate incident in New York City.
But two, two people were killed, one was injured as shots rang out.
This is according to NBC.
I mean, this stuff just has to make you laugh after a while.
This is the actual NBC news line.
Okay.
Two people were killed and one was injured as shots rang out during protests.
I mean, just like you almost want to ask them, at what point do you not consider it a protest?
Like, can we just start describing?
You remember, you know, in 1863, America was in the middle of a civil protest.
Like, at what point is protest not the appropriate word?
I think around the time shots start ringing out, that's probably when you wouldn't call it a protest anymore.
You would call it like some type of violent uprising.
Perhaps riot would be the correct term.
But that's anyway.
So that's what's going on there.
I did, you know, I got a bit of pushback from some libertarians, and not just like the lefty libertarian loser brigade types.
Like some people in the Mises caucus and stuff didn't like my take on the police shooting.
And so I wanted to just kind of respond a little bit to that, maybe go a little bit more in depth from the libertarian, like philosophical position, why I think I'm on solid ground here.
And then we could talk more about the riots and the RNC and that stuff.
But listen, as I said when I posted in the Mises Caucus Facebook group the other day, I think I made this clear on our podcast last time, but I am not a big fan of rushing to judgment in these situations to begin with.
This is very similar to what me and you said.
If you go back and listen to the Garrett Foster episode that we did after that guy got shot in that Austin protest, me and you both said that we were like, look, I could envision a scenario here where the driver is guilty of a crime.
I could envision a scenario where he's not.
I don't know exactly what was going through everyone's head, but here is what we know.
And here's why it's kind of silly to jump on a narrative.
This happens so often today, where a very short video will come out.
This has happened so many times over the last five, six years, where a short video will come out.
People immediately jump on a side, always conveniently, the side that confirms their previous bias.
And then more information comes out and you see what actually happened.
So my first thing is just that I don't think it's a good idea.
Forget what your ideology is.
I don't think it's a good idea to just jump on the side of something based off very limited evidence.
Now, that being said, from the libertarian position, right, I certainly like it is the case that we are against the state monopoly on police.
You can make a million arguments that I've made a million times on this podcast, and I still believe in.
I mean, look, police are funded by taxes.
They're funded through theft.
They have kind of borderline impunity to do things to people that are not okay.
And they are essentially the enforcement arm of the state.
If the state gives them bad orders, they will go out and enforce those bad orders.
And that means harassing people, locking people up for crimes that they shouldn't be locked up for, all types of things like that.
People in general do not do well with power, and they really don't do well with power and a lack of accountability.
And that's what you deal with quite often when you deal with police officers.
On a more personal level, I've had dozens of bad exchanges with police officers in my life, not really a big fan of the cops.
That's an understatement.
Okay.
That being said, from the libertarian perspective, I look at things like this.
And to me, this is basically the libertarian business.
All right.
I think that the fundamental, well, like the fundamental libertarian principle is basically believing in private property rights and the non-aggression principle.
When it comes to judging the state, my rule of thumb is basically that I judge the state the same way I judge private individuals.
Because if we're talking about what's right and wrong, we're all just people.
And there's no, you can't like, if morality is a thing, if you accept that, like I'm not going to get into the debate about whether or not morality exists, but if you accept that morality exists, then you can't say we just made up a new class of people that don't play by the same moral rules as the rest of people do.
That's bullshit.
And so if the state taxes people and starts a war, I judge it the same way I would if some private person taxed people and started a war.
We would say, oh, that person is stealing from people and murdering people.
So I don't have a, now, my point is basically that in these examples, I judge the cops in the same way I would judge, well, how would I feel about private security doing this same, you know, the same act, the same thing.
Now, you could say, well, I don't care because they're not private and they're funded by taxes.
They're funded by taxation.
So they're the bad guys.
And it's like, okay, yes, that is true to one level.
However, I think it's pretty reasonable for most libertarians to say that if as long as we have a state monopoly on police, we're not against them defending people and property.
You know, as long as we have, so in other words, if a cop showed up and there was a guy with a gun and he's about to shoot a pregnant woman in the face and the cop shoots that guy and saves this pregnant woman's life, I don't think to, you know, and libertarians were like, this is police brutality, you know, just a crazy example.
And you were like, no, it's not.
This guy did the right thing.
I don't think it would be a reasonable response to say, yeah, but he's funded through taxation.
It's like, yes, okay, I agree with you, but let's judge this specific act.
We're all together on the fact that that's wrong, but let's judge this specific act.
And in the scenario I just painted, you would be like, no, that's completely justified.
So I'm not saying the cops are justified in this situation.
I don't know.
I'll have to wait for more facts to come out.
And it sure is bullshit that the people who are going to do the investigating are the state.
Burt Walker's Novel Pitch00:02:04
That is absolutely bullshit.
And in any private situation like this, you would absolutely insist that this should be investigated and it should be investigated by a neutral third party, not a different department of the same corporation.
Nobody would accept that in a private situation, right?
Like it wouldn't just be like, oh, don't worry, we'll have our other wing of our office handle this investigation.
We'd be like, no, now there's a conflict of interest there.
That's not how we're going to do this.
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Unclear Riots and Threats00:16:10
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All right, let's get back into the show.
In this situation, let's just like what's being claimed right now, okay?
I don't know if this is true, but what's being claimed is that the guy was wielding a knife, that he was threatening people.
He had a warrant out for rape of, I believe, a teenager.
There's all information that has come out in the last few days.
That he was ordered by cops several times to drop the knife and to get on the ground.
The protesters must be anti-women.
Well, or just not a very big concern.
This is a rapist out on the loose that the cops are trying to apprehend.
And now they're protesting to ensure that rapists can remain in the wild.
Right.
So I guess that's one angle, just as reasonable an angle as some others that I've heard.
Now, they say that he said he was going to the car to get his gun.
Now, again, I don't know if any of this is true.
But if all of that is true, it's not so crazy that things went down the way they did.
And so I just say, I'm going to wait.
I'm going to reserve judgment until more information comes out.
I don't think it's as simple as just saying, well, the cops are wrong because they shot him in the back.
Like, if we had a libertarian society and someone was, you know, doing like, let's say this is the scenario, I don't know that I would judge a private security company for acting this way.
Now, I would certainly think it needs to be investigated and it needs to be investigated by a third party.
But I don't know.
Like, situations like this would still come up in a libertarian society, hopefully a lot less of them.
Hopefully, there'd be better training on de-escalation and things like that.
But it's not always so simple.
Now, the other piece of information that's come out, again, this is just what is being claimed.
We haven't heard the audio.
He might very well have said, ah, shit, I brought a knife to a gunfight.
You guys got guns.
Let me grab my gun.
And then go, yeah, who the hell knows?
We don't know.
Well, listen, you also got to think: if someone's waving a knife around and disobeying cops' orders, what state of mind is that person in?
And what might they be saying in that situation?
Now, again, it's also being claimed that they did tase him and the taser didn't work.
Not as if PCP'd up, dude.
Yeah, it's not as if, I mean, look, who the hell knows?
But all these things are possible.
But do you kind of at least see why I'm saying we shouldn't jump to conclusions here and that it kind of makes us look bad if we're just reflexively, oh, no, we're against the cops, even in a situation where they may have been justified.
Again, within the confines of that situation.
Not to say the broader, you know, agency is justified, but we don't know what happened here.
And so I'm just, I'm going with like, let's wait for more information to come out.
Let's see what actually happened here.
And I think that that's, I think that that's fine, a fine position for a libertarian to take.
Again, like I said, there are other, there are scenarios you can imagine where it wouldn't be fair to condemn the cops.
My point basically is this, right?
If the cops, again, this is back to my libertarian business as I see it.
If a cop saw someone snatch a lady's purse and start running and he tackled that person, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
And my test for it is very simple.
If, Rob, if you saw that same thing and did that, I wouldn't see anything wrong with that either.
That's it.
I don't believe anyone has any special, you know, like moral status where they can get away with something that someone else can't.
However, in this situation, it seems like it's at least unclear what exactly happened.
And that's, so that's more or less my position.
Maybe that clears some things up.
The other thing that I just can't stand is the, like, I just don't even buy into 1% of the notion that these riots and looting are happening because people are outraged by the cops.
I think that's bullshit.
I think this is an excuse for fucking people who basically were just looking for an excuse to go do this shit.
And I don't think there's any reason to apologize for savage behavior, which is exactly what you're seeing.
There were dozens of videotapes that came out from this area in Wisconsin.
It's just, it's just terrible.
It's a terrible thing to go do to innocent people, destroy their cars, destroy their businesses, assault people, kill people.
This is awful.
And I really, I don't even understand how it takes courage to say that.
But I guess in the climate we're in, that's even that's considered like a brave stance.
I don't know.
It all just seems crazy to me.
But fuck these riots.
I am over this shit.
And I really, I can't believe anybody at this point, when we're months into these things happening all over the country, still have any like sympathy for them whatsoever.
I just think it's crazy.
Per that on the riots, I think some of this is reactionary to, I think you're right that people kind of want to get out there.
And these are people that it's an opportunity to break shit.
Like I saw some people just in a parking lot smashing cars.
They're having fun.
I could see why that's a fun time.
It's not something I would do anymore in high school.
Maybe you could have convinced, you know, something about your brain just kind of flips.
You're like, I'm just being an asshole.
It's not that funny to wreck some guy's car window.
But I do think that there's a little bit of a notion that these people have to create consequences for cops behaving in this way.
And like, it's a little bit of a, oh, hell no, not in my community.
Like you want to shoot cops.
I mean, you want to shoot people out in some other city, but it's not happening here.
We're going to create consequences and go nuts.
I think there's a little bit of a mix of people being bored want to get out there and this is an opportunity to be an asshole.
But I definitely think the starting point is like, no, we're not just going to let them shoot someone and not have any consequences.
By the way, the consequences aren't fair.
Why are you wrecking like go try and fuck up the cop station or take it up with the cops?
There's no reason to ruin private businesses.
And then I saw footage of them blocking like a guy just trying to fill up his car.
And then once he gets through them, they start yelling at him.
He's a domestic terrorist that was threatening their life by not going to fill up his car with gas.
And the craziest thing about all this to me is, I mean, none of this has happened in my area.
There's none of this in my area, but I can tell you, lucky for me, I'm a renter.
And if there was a lot of this in my area, I'd fucking move.
I have no interest in living in areas where there's escalating tension because people are asking, acting like fucking dummies.
I have no interest in that.
Of course you'd move.
And the sad thing about that is that the people who can't move are the ones who don't have the economic means to.
Those are the people who are really fucked over, who are trapped in these areas.
But even the people without economic means, you got to look at if all of a sudden property value in your entire town starts to erode, it's going to affect people on the bottom also when all of a sudden there aren't people in your area spending money.
There aren't the investment.
Like, oh, no, my point is all of a sudden worst.
Yeah.
Yeah.
These poor people, it's like, if all of a sudden all the people with money want to leave your area because it's a tough place to live because you've made it a bad place to live, that's going to affect you as well.
It's a really dummy mentality to destroy your own town and destroy like the richer people are, the better customers they are.
That's what we're experiencing in New York right now.
You've just chased out the people who are footing 90% of the, like, you know how much we should cater to the wealthy people in New York City?
We should be thanking them.
They're the customer base.
Yeah.
I mean, even as we've said before on the show, even if you're like an Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders type, you'd think that maybe you'd throw these billionaires a thank you after you're insisting that they pay for everything.
But yeah, I agree with you.
But of course, the kind of like painful irony of all of this is that what these left-wingers are apologizing for really does fuck over poor and working class people more than anyone else.
And nobody really seems to stand up for them.
Anyway, it's actually not a bad transition into the RNC.
So let's talk a little bit.
We'll get into a few of the specific speakers in a second.
But overall, so far in the RNC, which is, what is it, two nights in or is it was it three?
It's two.
Two nights in.
We're on day three of the convention.
So far, I will say, you know, what we predicted has to some degree come true.
The riots were not discussed at all at the DNC.
We're just going to make believe, pretend we don't live in a world where this is happening.
As I said before, I found it particularly disgusting that Obama wouldn't bring it up.
I thought Obama was a guy who actually might have some pull still with that crowd, not like he used to, but enough pull that it would be helpful, like legitimately helpful for the country for him to just, again, he doesn't, he can still blame Trump for everything.
He can still blame the police for everything, but he could at least throw out one line about how you need to stop doing this.
You could say, hey, Obama's pro-violence.
The same way that they said of Trump, the fact that he didn't call out what happened in Charlottesville, how come Obama can't stand up and say something against all the violence that's happening in the streets?
Yeah.
Yes.
And I mean, you could easily play that narrative.
But even regardless of that, it's just like this is a, this was an opportunity to actually be a leader and actually do something that could help the country.
You can still keep it within your narrative.
Just one thing that like, hey, you are hurting our cause.
This is wrong.
Don't do this.
If you're looting, if you're assaulting people, don't do this.
Don't terrorize citizens.
You know, take up your problem with the people who you have a problem with.
One thing would have been.
But at the DNC, they pretend this doesn't exist.
The Republican National Convention, you know that this exists.
They've talked about it quite a bit.
Most of the speakers who I listened to brought it up and pretty forcefully.
And I got to say, it's good politics and it's also the right thing to do.
It's the right thing to address an actual crisis situation in the country where innocent people are being victimized.
And so this was like, again, which is almost like the story of Donald Trump's political career is like they just leave these pocket aces on the ground for him to play.
And they're like, hey, anyone want to play these cards?
We're not really interested in these cards.
And then Trump's like, oh, yeah, those are pretty good cards.
I'll play those.
Okay.
And so they did.
And so that's been effective.
Overall, my thoughts on the convention, there's a similar theme to with the Democratic National Convention, where it's kind of like, I just feel like this whole thing doesn't work that well outside of its normal environment, which is like huge crowds losing their mind.
And when you take that away, it just adds this element of like uncomfortability.
Like it's just not natural.
I don't know.
I thought that thread a lot of them.
I thought that the DNC really didn't flow.
Trump just seems to understand television a little bit better.
Yeah.
They had a better setting with like the epic columns.
They're switching up the camera angles a little bit more to like cover for that you're not hearing, like the way it kind of moves and sways.
So I thought that it didn't have quite the stale flavor that the DNC had.
Obviously, you know, thunderous applauses would make a big difference.
It's kind of like hearing a comic with laughter.
Right.
I didn't.
It's a very good comparison.
Yeah, but I do think that the RNC didn't have the same staleness just in presentation that the DNC did.
Yeah, I'd probably agree with you on that.
Although it affects both of them.
There's like this thing, and you actually, that's a great example, but there's a different thing.
Like the way you deliver a joke, the way a stand-up comedian delivers a joke to a crowd where you're drawing laughter out of that crowd, and the way, say, like Larry David delivers a joke on curb your enthusiasm is a very different thing.
It's just a very different way that you present it.
And some people adjust better than others to this format.
The worst speech that I saw, and again, not from a perspective of like the worst things were said, just purely doing my best to objectively judge it.
Martin Luther King itch.
Kimberly doing a Martin Luther King impression out there.
Guy Foil.
I don't even know how you say her name, but it was, oh my God, it was so bad.
It was so bad.
Like it was actually, I was like feeling bad for her.
You know, like that thing, like if you watch someone singing way off key or something and you're like, oh, stop.
I mean, she's like, listen, this passionate, rousing type of speech, first off, she's not good at it.
So she shouldn't be doing it anyway.
But with no audience there, it does.
It's like your example is perfect.
It reminds me of a stand-up comedian doing the timing, but a really bad job even of it, but with no audience.
And they're like, and then I said, see her.
I basically was her.
And like, there's no audience.
And you're just like, oh, God, like, what are you doing?
This is fucking brutal.
So she's like yelling, giving this impassioned speech to no audience.
It was really rough, really, really rough.
I just thought it came off terribly.
She got roasted online for it.
And deservedly so.
It was a very, very bad speech.
Okay, who else?
Um, I guess let's let's talk about the one first that I'm or second.
I guess we just did this one, but uh, the speaker that, of course, interested me the most was Rand Paul.
And uh, you know, by the way, before we get into individual speeches, I think there's something to be said for the general themes that they were running with, and they're really compelling.
One of them is they're kind of going Christian America, they're putting that up first.
They're going, Hey, we've been a great country, we've done great things, and there's opportunity here for everybody.
Let's make sure it's safe and let's not blow it up.
That's basically what they're saying: hey, look at look at what Biden's trying to do, look at what the crazy left's trying to do, look at how much they're lying in the media, look at the changes that they're looking for, and let's understand that this has been a pretty great Christian country.
Let's build off of it.
Here are some ideas to build off of it, let's not blow this thing up.
And especially with all the stories they were able to put forward of how the media has lied, how people haven't been able to protect their own homes, all the ways that just good, honest people are being attacked by whatever those policies are.
Hey, that's really threatening.
Let's keep what America is supposed to be alive.
And I thought that general vision was compelling.
They ignored debt, they ignored the coronavirus, they ignored some very important things that are going on.
But in terms of a sales pitch, I mean, it was very compelling and pretty damning for the Dems.
Yeah, I agree with you on that.
I thought that was smart.
You know, there's if we're just talking general, the broader themes first before getting into Round Paul, which actually is a good idea.
Um, I would say the broader theme that I saw was kind of like what you are saying.
Um, it was, listen, like this has been a pretty great country.
Damning Sales Pitch for Dems00:02:23
The other side represents wanting to destroy everything.
The other side represents wanting to tear down our history, tear down our statues.
They love socialism, they hate police, they hate the whole system, and this was kind of their pitch, which does seem to me again.
I know that 2020, you know, we're like a different country than we have been for the 37 years I've been alive.
But knowing what is likely to play well to the country in the 37 years I've been alive, you'd have to think like, Yeah, that's a that's a message that will probably win over the you know opposite, like we're a horrible racist country.
Um, but you know, the things have changed a lot, so who the hell knows?
Um, but that seemed to be a major part of their of their theme.
And then great attacks on Biden: hey, we've made some mistakes in this country, one of them is the wars that we've been in.
We're trying, I'm trying to get out of them, we're trying to be an anti-war party.
Look at Biden's record, that guy's going to get us into war.
And then we're also look, we want to keep the country safe, but we also want criminal justice reform, we want opportunities.
Well, that was another that was another major theme that it wasn't, you know, it's which is kind of interesting.
But the response is it's not like they're going, look, the Democrats are going hard left, we want to go hard right.
That's not what they're presenting.
However, you feel about the policies, that's not what they're presenting.
What they're presenting is the Democrats want to go hard left.
We're going to go moderate and say, oh, like there were a bunch of people mentioned, yes, we do think police brutality is a problem.
Yes, there have to be consequences for cops who, you know, act in horrific ways.
We're proud of the criminal justice reform.
We should scale back the amount of people who are locked up for bullshit reasons.
We should scale back these wars.
That was now feel however you feel about the policies of the administration.
This is the pitch that they're presenting to the American people.
In fact, I saw a lot of more hard right-wing types on social media who were very upset about this because they're kind of bragging about the loving immigration and they're bragging about criminal justice reform and things like that.
And a lot of those types are, you know, are not pleased with that.
But I'm fine with it.
And I think actually that there's some, in many ways, it's a smarter pitch.
And in many ways, a better one.
Ron Paul vs Rand Paul00:15:01
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So, all right.
Also, for a racist, trying to put forward as inclusive of a flavor as possible: hey, the American dream is available for all people.
And here's some of the minorities we've helped.
Here's some of the criminals that we've helped.
Also, putting forward a lot of black speakers, a lot of young charismatic black Republicans.
So I just thought, in the face of calling Trump a racist for all these years, that was a very interesting way for him to present himself and the party.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I agree with you on that.
Okay, any other broad themes?
No, I think mostly covers it.
So Rand Paul was a speech I was interested in.
Of course, Rand Paul, you know, is my hero's son.
He's also the guy I was hoping would kind of carry forward the torch of the liberty movement and all of that.
And somebody who, you know, I have very mixed feelings about.
I mean, I really do, I admire Rand Paul.
And first, a big part of that is just because I have so much admiration for Ron Paul and he's his kid.
But then also, if you, you know, in some ways, I think what might be unfair is that a lot of my disappointment or frustration with Rand Paul comes from the fact that I just can't separate him from the Ron Paul movement and from wanting him to be Ron Paul, which is, you know, look, if you put that on anybody, a libertarian, you're probably going to be a little bit disappointed.
If you just judge Rand on his own record, he's probably the best senator we've ever had.
There's probably no better senator in the history of the country than Rand Paul.
However, if I'm being honest, my initial reaction to the speech, it just made me sad.
I just, I wish he would be his father or at least a little bit more like him.
And for me, this is the problem of trying to go the Rand Paul approach and saying, I'm going to support Donald Trump, go all in for him and try to get, try to have his ear.
Like that's, that's the, the route that Rand Paul is trying to go down.
And when you do that, when you give a convention speech, they're not going to let you really point out.
You know, he got one line in where he said, I don't always agree with the president, but here's why he's great.
And here's why I support him.
And we all have to support him.
But they're not going to let you actually get into what you don't agree with him on because this is a convention.
It's a rah-rah event to drum up support for Trump.
And I'm sure Rand Paul can justify that in his mind in some way.
I mean, it's not that hard to think about how you would justify that.
You can say, like, okay, well, Donald Trump is at least good on these four issues I care about, and I have his ear, and Biden will be terrible on these issues, and I won't have his ear.
So I'd rather this guy win.
Okay.
The issue is that, like, you lose your purity and you lose your moral high ground when you endorse the system that you oppose so much of.
You know, Ron Paul, I remember this.
Rand Paul, before he got into the Senate, he was campaigning for Ron Paul, he was campaigning for his father.
And Rand Paul used to be a lot more hardcore back then.
He would really just let it rip.
And that's one of the things that's frustrating with Rand Paul.
He's not like some of these other guys.
It's like, like, Rand Paul has read Ludwig von Mises, like a lot of him.
Like, he's read Rothbard.
He knows this stuff.
He's not like, and every now and then you'll see glimpses of this, and you see, like, he really does know his shit.
He's not like a Gary Johnson type who's just like, I don't know, no idea.
He knows all this shit.
And so he used to say, I remember Rand Paul saying this at Ron Paul campaign events, where he goes, and I just loved this.
He goes, Did you know that my father, Ron Paul, when he was in the House at the time, he was one of the first, I think it was the first three congressmen who endorsed Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan was running on this like small government platform.
And, you know, the Ronald Reagan government is not the solution.
Government is the problem.
The free market, blah, blah, blah, all this great shit, anti-socialism, all that stuff.
And he goes, he was one of the few congressmen who supported him when he was like this outsider guy.
And then Rand Paul would say in this speech, he goes, Do you know how long it took my father to renounce Ronald Reagan?
And he goes, his first budget is his first budget proposal came in, and Ron Paul bailed on him.
And Ron Paul was like, fuck this.
You're raising spending.
I'm not on board.
This is not what we signed up for.
Like, I'm sticking to my principles.
And I couldn't help think about Rand Paul bragging about this point while he's up there.
Rand Paul, a guy who came in on the Tea Party wave and always said that his biggest issue was that we're bankrupting the country, that the spending is out of control.
And to see him there cheerleading for the guy who bragged when they passed that $2 trillion spending bill, bragged that it was the biggest.
Like this, Donald Trump was like, oh, no one's gotten a bigger bill done than me.
And to just see that, you know, in a year where we're going to spend, I mean, I don't know, what are we going to end up spending when this year is said and done?
At least at least six, seven trillion, right?
I mean, there's no way we're going to be under that in terms of spending for the year.
They're going to spend more money than any government in the history of the world has ever spent.
We're going to dwarf Obama's biggest spending year.
And to see Rand Paul cheerleading for the guy who's presiding over that and signing this into law, it was hard to watch.
You know, maybe this is the purist in me, and I just don't understand the compromises it takes to get things done politically, but I don't know.
It really, it was hard to watch that.
And I got to say, there was a lot of apologizing for Donald Trump that I didn't think was fair.
And I just don't like what I'm sure there are some small victories, but what exactly has Rand Paul having Donald Trump's ear actually gotten for us?
I'll give you an answer on that, and I could be dead wrong, but I really think Rand might have been the guy who changed Trump's mind on Syria.
If you just kind of look back at what was going on there, I really think.
But on what?
On what aspect of Syria?
I think.
On wanting to pull out?
No, putting in more troops or ramping up.
It's possible.
I really think Rand might be the guy in his ear kind of keeping us from ramping any of these things up.
Well, I could be wrong.
There's no way of knowing what's going on behind closed doors.
Yeah, you might be right.
You might be right.
It's possible.
I mean, not even possible.
It's highly probable that a lot of people were looking for additional troop increases and perhaps even new wars.
And Rand Paul was able to talk to him and stop him from doing that.
That is certainly possible.
It just seems to me like, you know, it seems like Rand Paul gets his ear.
He comes out and says some really great shit.
He says, we're going to pull troops out of here.
We're ending this war.
And then before it can happen, some other people get Donald Trump's ear and convince him not to do that.
And so it's just, you know, again, like you said, we're kind of speculating here.
We don't know exactly what goes on in these conversations.
My guess is that Donald Trump, well, I think when Donald Trump and Rand Paul talk, Donald Trump is like, dude, I'm with you and I want to end these fucking wars.
And Rand Paul really likes that.
That being said, it really hurt when Rand Paul was saying the thing about how Donald Trump really wants to end this war in Afghanistan.
And if we re-elect him, he will end this war in Afghanistan.
Like, dude, this should be the easiest one of all the wars to end.
We're fighting empty caves.
Yes, you have this undeniable talking point that no one can argue with you about, which is that, guys, this is the longest war in American history and we're getting nothing.
And everyone agrees there's no military solution.
And the vast majority of the public want it over.
So just, come on, if you can't get that one done, what war are we ever going to end?
Now, I'm fine with congratulating Trump on not getting us into a new war, but we got to end one.
And to tell me if I vote for him and he is re-elected, then I know he's going to end these wars.
I just, I don't know.
I don't see it.
It seems like such a stretch.
The truth is that Donald Trump, you can make an argument, a very strong argument, that Donald Trump's foreign policy has been better than Obama's and George W. Bush's, that he has better instincts, that he actually really doesn't want to expand wars.
Look, both of them, George W. Bush started two wars, two horrible wars, and Obama took it from two to seven.
Okay.
So he's better just by not starting another war.
However, to compliment Donald Trump's foreign policy, Donald Trump's foreign policy has been schizophrenic level confused.
Like it makes no sense.
He's like, I want to end all the wars, but we're going to surge in Afghanistan.
I want to pull out of Syria, but we're not going to pull out of Syria.
I want peace in the Middle East, but I'm going to walk away from a peace deal with Iran.
I want to shake up the foreign policy establishment, but I also want to be more in bed with Saudi Arabia and Israel than any previous president.
This is just, this makes no sense.
It's incoherent.
Now, that might incoherent might be better than, you know, consistently awful.
You know what I mean?
But it's still incoherent at best.
And it's just, I don't know.
Now, that being said, those hits aside, Rand Paul did make some good points.
He did say, look, like we, Donald Trump got criminal justice reform done.
No pure libertarian like me or you thinks that it went far enough.
None of us think it was perfect, but it was better than not doing it.
And there were like real human beings whose lives were saved by signing that.
And he goes, look, he signed this criminal justice reform.
Joe Biden bragged about writing the bill.
That was a really, you know, like a really fair point that to me is pretty undeniable.
And so, you know, it was, they also only gave him like eight minutes, you know, as a short speech.
But an early time slot.
Yeah.
An early time slot?
Yeah, I mean, it was like around 8.30 or something.
I feel like there was another hour and a half of programming after him.
Yeah, yeah.
No, whatever.
I was okay with that.
At least it was like in the prime time of things.
But anyway, so that's that was Rand Paul's speech.
I don't know.
Any other thoughts on Rand?
Well, I thought, kind of along the lines of what you're saying, I thought it was a little bit like he got bitched out and was praising Trump a little like he was playing that card.
And then also just the total absence of conversation about debt is a little crazy.
Yeah.
But if you, I guess if you want to take the framework of neither party's going to do anything to do less spending, that's not an option.
That option's not on the table.
Both are going to spend like crazy.
So once I, I guess, give up what to me is the biggest issue, but once I give that up, at least these guys are talking about not going to war and criminal justice reform.
And so on that note, I thought Rand Paul hammered on some of the biggest points of like, hey, we're keeping us out of war.
We're making these reforms.
Then he had, he slammed Biden for one other thing.
I don't remember, but that was kind of my takeaway.
Yeah.
Look, I guess we all just have to accept that Rand Paul is playing a completely different game than Ron Paul was playing.
I liked Ron Paul's game better.
I don't think I think you're better off leading a movement and being ideologically pure than thinking that one decent senator is going to be able to like play the game and change the whole system.
It's just, it's not going to happen.
But it's just hard.
It hurts my pure libertarian heart to see a Paul up there and there's like no mention of the debt and the Fed when this is like the year.
I mean, like Ron Paul would never speak and not mention the debt and the Fed.
And did you know that in 2012, they made Ron Paul a deal that they said they would give him a prime speaking role.
So we're talking like a half hour speech on a prime night because he had done very well in 2012 if he would endorse Mitt Romney.
And the other part of the deal was that he had to tone down the anti-war stuff.
Like they were like, you can rail against the debt and the Fed and all that stuff all you want, but just like nothing on the wars.
But we'll give you like a prime speaking role for that.
And he was like, no, no.
Jim Jordan as a Shark00:07:51
He was like, absolutely not.
He goes, that's the whole, he goes, then what's the point of me if I'm not railing against the wars, you know?
And like, I just, I'd like to see more of that.
You know, I just, I just think, I think if we're thinking about the long game, that's just better.
It's just a better strategy and just the right thing to do.
Okay.
Let's move on to some other speakers.
Okay.
It was interesting that Trump had the Covington Catholic kid.
And that was the highlight of the whole thing.
Yeah.
The Covington kid.
Oh, absolutely.
Are you kidding me?
For years, Trump's been saying fake news and he has the best example talking about, hey, here's what propaganda looks like.
Here's the way in which they're lying to you.
Legally, it was found out that I was right.
You can look at the evidence that this was bullshit in effect in my life.
And then pivoting that.
And they've been trying the whole thing, they've been trying to do this to Trump the entire time.
Like, so, I mean, that is.
You know what I've seen?
What I've seen on Twitter, again, not that Twitter represents all of life, but I've seen just left-wingers mocking the kid's appearance and how he's like a nerd and stuff like that, which is like really, I mean, like, it really shows you how low they will stoop when they have no other argument left.
It's like, oh, now all of a sudden, you know, shaming.
See, someone was fought with its pants down.
I mean, they've been lying to us for years, and now you have a pure example of exactly how their machinery works and what they're willing to do.
If you're not consumed by hate, you know, and you watch that, it literally is a child telling you the story about how he's just, he's like, I don't know, I'm just like a Catholic kid who's against abortion.
And so I got this hat for the president because he's against abortion too.
And then basically this event, I just sat there and smiled.
I didn't really know what else to do.
I didn't want to like embarrass anybody or do the wrong thing.
And this event will now define my life because the entire media decided to make me a villain to convince you that Trump is that bad.
And I don't know, man.
Like if you don't know, like to hear some teenager tell this story to me was pretty powerful, even if he isn't a professional and like a great public speaker.
But that's kind of what made it more powerful.
It was just like some kid telling this story.
Any reasonable Christian person in the entire country seeing that, if you weren't convinced that CNN and these other companies are lying to you and trying to grab power and, you know, take stuff away from your life, there's as pure of a pitch for the fact that that's true as you're ever going to get.
Yeah, I 100% agree.
100%.
And that, so I thought that was a powerful person to have.
The other powerful person to have was that couple or person people to have was that couple who you know got vilified for defending their property.
And it seems pretty clear that Trump, by inviting them there, wants to put his chips in on you'll defend the largely peaceful protests.
I'm going to call them riots and stand up with the people who want to defend their property.
And that is, you know, pretty compelling.
Also, how scary was that?
That, I mean, I think they were saying that the lady who led the march into their neighborhood just got elected to office in the area.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That was a reason.
I didn't know anything about that.
That was a really bad thing.
Of course, that wasn't covered.
Of course, that wasn't in the news.
Oh, my God.
I mean, it's really funny, like, just the, you know, like double standard of it all.
But like, can you imagine?
I mean, it's almost ridiculous to even imagine.
Can you imagine if there was like a violent right-wing movement like that and one of those people got elected to Congress?
That would be the national story, you know, like all anyone would be focused on.
But of course, because it's a crazy left-wing socialist, it's like not even big news.
But that was really interesting to tell them and to hammer home the point that it's like, look, these people are not content to just have mob violence.
That is not their endgame here.
They really want to transform this country.
And it's likely going to be something you really don't want to see happen.
So yeah, I thought that was powerful as well.
Now, you, did you, you sent Brian the Jim Jordan clip?
Yeah.
So this one I didn't see.
I'm going to watch for the first time with you.
Just like the last minute starts getting a little bit more emotional.
And I think it's a true story, but it's a little bit more of like the political, hey, Trump has empathy and he's great.
The first two minutes of what he has to say is everything we've been saying the Libertarian Party should be pushing forward.
Like you want to see how you can give a focus on the important issues and not get into this leftist nonsense and just be the most reasonable person.
Here's what we should be doing and saying.
All right.
This is my first time seeing it.
Let's hear it.
Good evening.
I'm Congressman Jim Jordan, representing the 4th District of Ohio.
The Republican Party is the pro-America party.
President Trump is the pro-America candidate.
This election is about who can preserve the values, principles, and institutions that make America great.
Don't believe me?
Look at what's happening in American cities.
Cities all run by Democrats.
Crime, violence, and mob rule.
Democrats refuse to denounce the mob and their response to the chaos, defund the police, defund border patrol, and defund our military.
And while they're doing all this, they're also trying to take away your guns.
Look at the positions they've taken in the past few months.
Democrats won't let you go to church, but they'll let you protest.
Democrats won't let you go to work, but they'll let you riot.
And Democrats won't let you go to school, but they'll let you go loot.
President Trump has fought against each of their crazy ideas.
He's taken on the swamp, all of the swamp.
The Democrats, the press, and the Never Trumpers.
And when you take on the swamp, the swamp fights back.
They tried the Russia hoax, the Mueller investigation, and the fake impeachment.
But in spite of this unbelievable opposition, this president has done what he said he would do.
Taxes cut, regulations reduced, economy growing, lowest unemployment in 50 years out of the Iran deal, embassy in Jerusalem, hostages home from North Korea, a new U.S. MSCA agreement.
And of course, he's building the wall and rebuilding our economy as we speak.
I love the president's intensity and his willingness to fight every day in Washington for our families.
But what I also appreciate about the president is something most Americans never get to see.
All right, you can pause here because this is where it starts getting more emotional.
And granted, there are parts of that pitch that we don't agree with, like, you know, the military part.
But I'm just saying, if you want to pull out the potential.
I don't agree with everything he's saying, but Jim Jordan's a fucking beast.
He's the guy you'd want giving a speech for you.
I mean, this was like an excellent pitch.
And the truth is, even though we disagree with several things that he said there, there's not a single thing he said there that I went, that's not a pretty good pitch to average Joe Sixpack.
Like, that's a much stronger argument than anything I heard made at the DNC.
All right, let's play the rest.
Well, the rest of it, I mean, we can listen to the rest.
It's more of an emotional thing.
That's more of the, you want to see a concise thing.
That's what we wanted to attack the left for and things that you could focus on that would win over the country to being reasonable.
There it is.
You can shift that to being slightly more libertarian by just dropping what he said about the military, basically.
I would love to see one libertarian who was nearly as talented as him just presenting a libertarian message in that way.
I mean, it would just be, it would be fucking wonderful.
But yes, at 100%.
And as we were talking about on the last show, there is plenty of red meat that a libertarian could be going after right now.
But yeah, look, Jim Jordan, he's a shark.
You want that guy on your side, no question about it.
RNC Speeches and Next Episode00:00:44
Okay, we're up toward the end of time.
Was there any other speaker who you think was worth mentioning?
Or pretty much that was it?
I think Donald Trump Jr. gave a decent speech.
Nothing fantastic, but he was pretty good.
Hit like a lot of good issues.
Huh?
Melanie looked pretty.
His daughter looked like a slut bag.
Yeah, you know.
I didn't see the daughter's speech, but Ivanka, I missed that one.
But anyway, was it Ivank?
No, it was Tiffany.
Oh, no.
Tiffany.
I'm sorry.
That's right.
It was Tiffany.
Vonk is the good looking one.
Tiffany's the slut bag.
All right.
So I suppose on our next episode, we'll cover the big nights of the RNC and maybe some other stuff.