Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - 911/, Conspiracies, And The Culture War
Aired: 2020-09-12
Duration: 59:32


=== Post-9/11 Division and Growth (11:04) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You are listening to the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:07]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:09]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:11]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:14]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:20]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:32]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:33]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:37]  I'm Dave Smith, and I am just thrilled to pieces to be joined by the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:45]  How are you, my brother?
[00:00:47]  I'm just honored that you would have me.
[00:00:50]  Well, come on.
[00:00:50]  I mean, it's 9-11.
[00:00:52]  It's the 19th anniversary of the day that us Jews pulled off the greatest terrorist attack ever and better yet, blamed it on the Muzzies.
[00:01:01]  So how could I not have you on to talk about this?
[00:01:06]  Yeah, and we managed to topple Iraq and still be in Afghanistan.
[00:01:09]  So we're doing pretty good off of those two towers.
[00:01:12]  Yeah, no, no, no question about it.
[00:01:14]  It is, it's, it's, uh, aside from all of the other, you know, important aspects of 9-11, which happened 19 years ago today.
[00:01:24]  The fact that it's almost 20 years since 9-11 just serves to make me feel old.
[00:01:29]  That's my biggest takeaway.
[00:01:32]  Huh?
[00:01:33]  Well, yes, I guess that's true.
[00:01:35]  It doesn't feel like it should be that long ago, but that's in part because we still haven't moved on or evolved from it.
[00:01:40]  We're still in Afghanistan.
[00:01:42]  It's not like over and settled.
[00:01:44]  Yeah, well, I wonder.
[00:01:46]  I mean, I suppose perhaps COVID will end up becoming this thing.
[00:01:51]  We'd need more time to look back on it.
[00:01:54]  But there's really no question for people my age.
[00:01:57]  I mean, I'm 37.
[00:01:58]  I was 18.
[00:01:59]  Yeah, you're so old.
[00:02:01]  All right.
[00:02:01]  Let's be nice.
[00:02:03]  But anyway, I'm only a few years older than you, Rob.
[00:02:07]  No, you're so much older than me.
[00:02:08]  How old are you?
[00:02:10]  32.
[00:02:11]  Yeah, I'm five years older than you.
[00:02:12]  All right, whatever.
[00:02:14]  So you were young.
[00:02:15]  You were young when 9-11 happened.
[00:02:17]  Eighth grade.
[00:02:17]  Eighth grade.
[00:02:18]  Okay.
[00:02:18]  Well, for me, you know, I guess that's probably a different perspective in a way because you have a different, you know, like you're still not completely aware of the world around you at 18, but you're a lot more aware than you are at 13.
[00:02:32]  There's a pretty big difference.
[00:02:34]  But it seems pretty clear to me if there was one marker like that divided the country into a before and after, it was 9-11.
[00:02:44]  That really changed everything, not just in terms of like government policy, but in terms of how the country felt about itself.
[00:02:54]  And it was right at the beginning of the 21st century.
[00:02:57]  It really set the tone for what the 2000s were going to be like.
[00:03:01]  And it was nothing like what the 90s felt like.
[00:03:04]  The 90s was a different time.
[00:03:07]  In the 90s, they were worried about very different things.
[00:03:12]  They were worried about whether Bill Clinton got a blowjob in the Oval Office type shit.
[00:03:17]  And by the year 2004, we were worried about this bloodbath in the Middle East and were terrified of another terrorist attack.
[00:03:27]  And then, you know, like all the other issues of like government corruption and debt and all of these things started, you know, really gaining traction.
[00:03:36]  And it's just interesting to think that was 19 years ago and we have just mishandled almost everything in the response to it since then.
[00:03:44]  Well, let me ask you, since you, so you were in eighth grade, maybe I've asked you this before, but what was your 9-11 story?
[00:03:50]  What were you doing the day?
[00:03:52]  Besides celebrating on a rooftop.
[00:03:54]  This is gonna, I mean, this is gonna bother people, but I was in eighth grade and we were sitting in math class.
[00:04:00]  And I still don't really remember how this happened, but news somehow got to our classroom that someone flew a plane into, you know, the World Trade Center.
[00:04:09]  And we thought that was the funniest thing we ever heard.
[00:04:11]  We're like, who the hell are these fucking idiot pilots?
[00:04:13]  They're flying into buildings.
[00:04:15]  And then when we heard that a second pilot was that stupid, we fell out of our seats laughing.
[00:04:20]  We're running around like airplanes acting it out.
[00:04:22]  I never heard anything so funny in my entire life.
[00:04:25]  And then our math teacher like lost on us, like, this isn't funny.
[00:04:27]  This means she really like shamed us out of like thinking the joke was funny.
[00:04:32]  But then I remember I went home and I just watched the news on repeat.
[00:04:36]  Like I could not stop watching the footage of it.
[00:04:39]  And I thought for sure I wasn't going to have to do homework.
[00:04:41]  Like there's no one, no one's doing homework.
[00:04:43]  There's a terrorist attack going on.
[00:04:44]  But then I got in trouble the next day for not doing my homework.
[00:04:47]  Apparently, even when the country's under attack and I'm trying to understand who's coming for me and how I can defend myself, they still think you got to do your dumb homework.
[00:04:56]  Yeah, that was the real tragedy of 9-11.
[00:04:58]  The real, it was just how unfair the whole thing was.
[00:05:02]  You know, it's weird to me, just thinking about, like, I've said before that I think it was, it was the 90s until 9-11.
[00:05:14]  I mean, I know it was in September of 2001, but it was still, it was just felt like the 90s up until that moment.
[00:05:21]  And then that kind of changed everything that became, you know, what the 2000s was.
[00:05:27]  But what's what's weird to me to think about is how much different of a country we were 20 years ago.
[00:05:35]  And that's a that's a weird thing.
[00:05:37]  It's it's weird when you start getting old, as you pointed out, um, but you start having this thing where you can go back 20 years and be like, oh, the country was like this 20 years ago, and now it's like this.
[00:05:52]  Like you can actually watch these changes.
[00:05:55]  But it really was a different country.
[00:05:58]  I did a an interview yesterday with Jeff Dice from the Mises Institute that he interviewed me for.
[00:06:06]  It should, I think it'll be up on the Mises website today.
[00:06:11]  But so after, I think this was after the conversation.
[00:06:16]  I think it was after we stopped recording, but we were just kind of talking about some of this stuff.
[00:06:21]  And Jeff Dice made such a good point.
[00:06:23]  And he's, as he always does, but it's just a really interesting way to think about things.
[00:06:27]  But he was saying, you know, he was basically talking about, we were talking about New York City and what's been happening to New York City and, you know, how sad I am about it and how tragic I think the situation is.
[00:06:41]  And he was talking about a dynamic that actually me and Michael Malis talked about a couple times when me and him were doing a bunch of crossover episodes where we were saying that there's kind of like you see like a lot of kind of callousness from red state America toward what's happening in some of these big cities.
[00:06:59]  And don't get me wrong, I understand why.
[00:07:02]  But a lot of them are kind of like, all right, well, you voted for de Blasio.
[00:07:05]  You liked all these policies, you know, so enjoy it.
[00:07:08]  Enjoy your crumbling cities, you know, and like kind of fuck you.
[00:07:12]  And you, you understand why, I mean, we're in the middle of a culture war and there's all this shit going on.
[00:07:20]  And to be fair to those red staters, you know, the left has been basically calling them racist, awful people nonstop for the last 20 years.
[00:07:30]  So if someone's basically calling you a racist who voted for literally Hitler and you're everything wrong with the world, and then their home starts falling apart, you understand where people's reaction is like, ah, all right, well, enjoy that.
[00:07:43]  But Jeff made the point that, you know, 20 years ago, 19 years ago today, when New York City was attacked.
[00:07:52]  There was no hesitation from any red state in the country to be like, Yeah, we're at war now and we're at war for New York City.
[00:08:00]  You attacked New York City, you attacked our country.
[00:08:02]  That's it.
[00:08:03]  We're at war.
[00:08:03]  And of course, red states disproportionately sent young men to go fight and die in these wars.
[00:08:10]  Of course, you know, not obviously, all these wars were fucking bullshit, but still, you know, from their perspective, like they were ready to go fight and die for someone attacking New York City.
[00:08:21]  And it almost makes you wonder: would Red State still have that feeling today if someone attacked New York City?
[00:08:29]  Or, you know, like, how much less of a country are we really than we were 20 years ago?
[00:08:38]  And I don't know exactly what the answer to that is, but it's certainly less.
[00:08:42]  We're not as, you know, even just in our loose identity, we don't, I think, have as strong an identity as a country.
[00:08:50]  Again, I'm not even like passing judgment on that.
[00:08:52]  I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it does seem like it's a pretty big change in the country.
[00:08:58]  I think that both go ahead.
[00:09:01]  No, I think if someone attacks us here, it doesn't matter if it's New York, California.
[00:09:08]  I think the people who have their guns and are like, America, they're like, fuck no, that's not happening.
[00:09:14]  You're not doing it.
[00:09:15]  The kicker to that is if for some reason we got attacked, and I'm not talking about like what they claimed, oh, they attacked us because they hate us and they sold that lie pretty good.
[00:09:24]  If somehow a liberal city got attacked by somebody else for some really dumb, specifically for a dumb liberal policy, then I think the middle of the country would go, well, you brought that upon yourself.
[00:09:36]  Like, as a totally, I like if Muslims, no, because even if they attacked like a city for being gay, I feel like Red America would be like, no, you can't, like, we can criticize them for being gay.
[00:09:48]  You can't tell us, you can't tell the gays they can't be gay.
[00:09:50]  But like, imagine if even 9-11 in this current environment, I'm just saying totally theoretical.
[00:09:56]  If somebody pulled off that stunt and then they said we were specifically attacking Wall Street for this specific reason, you might actually get like division within the country where there are so many people against what the banking sector is doing that you actually couldn't rally the support.
[00:10:12]  But you would have to have whoever was attacking an area making it very specific: hey, we're doing it for this reason.
[00:10:18]  And if enough of the country is actually opposed to that reason, I think you'd end up with what you're describing where some people go, oh, I can actually identify with what these terrorists are trying to achieve, which is different than 20 years ago.
[00:10:31]  But I think blanket, you just invade New York or you do something in California.
[00:10:35]  I don't think the country's turning their backs on those people.
[00:10:38]  Yeah, no, I think you're probably right about that.
[00:10:40]  It is, it does seem though that like the response to 9-11 policy-wise, really the disaster of all of it, just all of it, does seem to me like it's had a lot to do with how we've grown to be so divided as a country.
[00:11:01]  I don't think the things are unrelated, you know?
[00:11:04]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second.

=== Collective Identities and Underwear (05:38) ===

[00:11:05]  I want to thank our awesome sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear.
[00:11:10]  My favorite pair of underwear that I've ever owned in my life.
[00:11:14]  It's the summer.
[00:11:15]  This is the time you need sheath underwear when it's hot and sweaty.
[00:11:18]  You might be walking around dealing with some sticky issues downstairs.
[00:11:23]  Listen, you need to go get yourself a pair of sheath underwear.
[00:11:27]  It will change your life.
[00:11:28]  If you're sick of boxers that are too loose or briefs that are too tight, let me tell you about sheath underwear.
[00:11:35]  It's the softest, most comfortable boxer brief I've ever worn by far.
[00:11:39]  Sheath is going to help you beat the summer sweat and thigh chafing.
[00:11:43]  The fabric has a silky feel to it that keeps everything cool and comfortable.
[00:11:48]  What makes sheath underwear unique is that they've got a pouch that kind of separates all your parts downstairs.
[00:11:53]  I was a little skeptical of this going in, but it is a game changer.
[00:11:56]  It's great for the summer heat, especially if you're working out or you're outside.
[00:12:01]  But if you're not into the whole pouch thing, too, it doesn't matter.
[00:12:03]  You can just wear them like normal underwear, and it'll just be the most comfortable pair of boxer briefs you've ever owned in your life.
[00:12:09]  One more thing: they look good.
[00:12:11]  They make you look like you're doing a little bit better than you are, if you know what I mean.
[00:12:14]  So go to sheathunderwear.com, get a pair of the most comfortable underwear you will ever own.
[00:12:20]  And if you use the promo code problem20, you'll get 20% off your order.
[00:12:24]  That's sheathunderwear.com, S-H-E-A-T-H underwear.com.
[00:12:30]  Use the promo code problem20 for 20% off your order.
[00:12:34]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:12:36]  Well, I think we're now collectively like collective identity.
[00:12:40]  We're kind of losers.
[00:12:41]  Like, if you think about it, it used to be America, we're the greatest country in the entire world.
[00:12:45]  We're the most moral country.
[00:12:46]  Like, there was a lot of stuff that we all kind of intrinsically believed in being pretty, pretty awesome.
[00:12:51]  And that's not true anymore.
[00:12:52]  Think about how much money was eroded by the wars.
[00:12:55]  We're not like the same financially solvent country in the same way.
[00:13:00]  We've lost a lot of our footing to other countries, like, you know, with technological development, but also just morally, we all know that we tortured random people.
[00:13:08]  We know what they lied to us about.
[00:13:10]  So we don't have the same moral footing.
[00:13:11]  We don't have the same, hey, we're America.
[00:13:13]  We're fucking awesome.
[00:13:15]  So collectively, we now have a different identity of like, oh, we kind of suck.
[00:13:20]  Yeah, I wonder.
[00:13:22]  I really think there is something to that.
[00:13:24]  And in the same sense that I think if you looked at the kind of cultural unraveling of the 60s, particularly the late 60s, really, you can't really completely remove it from the war in Vietnam.
[00:13:39]  I mean, they're related.
[00:13:40]  And obviously, that was one of the biggest energizing factors in like the hippie movement and the counterculture in general.
[00:13:48]  But I think you're right.
[00:13:49]  And I think there's something like in World War II, you didn't have it as much.
[00:13:55]  And I think part of it was just how cartoonishly evil the Nazis truly were.
[00:14:01]  And so even, you know, even if there is like war propaganda all over the place, well, right, but I mean, even if there is war propaganda to demonize the Nazis, you didn't need that much to really like sell that one to people.
[00:14:15]  And this was a legitimate, like, this wasn't just, oh, okay, there's some bad guy in a third world country in a sea of bad people.
[00:14:24]  And okay, he's doing some marginally bad things.
[00:14:27]  This was like an industrial powerhouse.
[00:14:30]  Germany was taken over by this madman and he's taking over huge swaths of Europe.
[00:14:35]  And this is a real threat.
[00:14:37]  And it was just a lot easier to kind of sell that as we're the good guys.
[00:14:40]  It was short.
[00:14:41]  It was brutal, but we won.
[00:14:44]  We won, you know, and like, I think it's a little bit easier to, you know, you had a war that basically engulfed pretty much all of Europe.
[00:14:55]  We were attacked, whatever the funny business with FDR and Pearl Harbor was.
[00:15:00]  We were attacked.
[00:15:02]  And Germany did declare war on us after we were attacked.
[00:15:07]  So because of the Nazis being so bad, because we were attacked, because Germany declared war on us, I think it was just easier to sell.
[00:15:14]  It was over and we won, you know, and it was a war within the civilized world.
[00:15:21]  At least that would have been the attitude at the time.
[00:15:23]  And it just, it was easy to sell us as being the good guys.
[00:15:29]  But in Vietnam, it was just so obvious that we weren't the good guys.
[00:15:34]  Like, what?
[00:15:35]  You're telling me we got to go over and fucking slaughter people in a third world country with no clear mission and all this fucking just horrific war crimes being committed.
[00:15:46]  And it made it very easy.
[00:15:47]  Like if you don't, you know, it's an interesting thing, particularly for like an anarchist like myself to think about.
[00:15:54]  But the truth is that, you know, civilization is fragile.
[00:16:00]  And on a personal level, identity is such an important thing.
[00:16:05]  And I think there is something to collective identities as well.
[00:16:10]  That's human beings, you know, if we're just analyzing how human beings act, they group into collective identities all the time, even when they're really silly, pointless ones.
[00:16:20]  People really like collective identities.
[00:16:22]  I mean, you see people walking down the street.
[00:16:24]  And if someone's got a cowboy's hat on and they pass someone with a cowboys jersey, they're like, oh, what's up?
[00:16:29]  Let's go, boys.
[00:16:30]  You know, like it's that's people like to group up.
[00:16:33]  And I wonder shattering that collective identity that we're Americans, we are the good guys, we're this, what, what role that has.

=== Bush Era Bubbles and Power (05:17) ===

[00:16:43]  And in the response to 9-11, I mean, like, I remember, again, no, I was, I was young.
[00:16:48]  I was 18 when it happened.
[00:16:49]  So this is the next couple of years.
[00:16:50]  I was like 19, 20 years old.
[00:16:52]  But I remember when George W. Bush made that big thing about getting Osama bin Laden and they were put the dead or alive thing.
[00:17:02]  He was like, you know, back in Texas.
[00:17:04]  Back in Texas, we used to say, want it dead or alive.
[00:17:06]  And I remember just thinking, well, the U.S. military will have him like that.
[00:17:12]  I mean, just no question.
[00:17:13]  And I remember as the years went on, being kind of like, oh, I guess we can't just get him.
[00:17:19]  And then ultimately, George Bush said the thing about not caring.
[00:17:22]  And that's when I hated George W. Bush forever, still to this day.
[00:17:25]  Also, even as a kid, the Afghanistan thing, I remember I was out riding my bike, went into my friend's house, dad's sitting there watching CNN.
[00:17:31]  They're reporting, hey, we're going to war with Afghanistan.
[00:17:33]  And on screen, they're showing you the different planes that we're taking to go over there.
[00:17:37]  And I remember sitting there going, fuck yeah, we're going to fuck these people up.
[00:17:41]  They thought they were coming over here.
[00:17:42]  Hell yeah.
[00:17:43]  And then even as a kid or whatever, maybe it was in by ninth grade, they say we're going to Iraq.
[00:17:46]  I'm like, what?
[00:17:47]  What the fuck does that have to do with this?
[00:17:49]  And then we didn't win in any of those places.
[00:17:51]  But then the real story here, or at least where I think you kind of really, the country gets fucked is if like, look at government as being a power addict.
[00:18:00]  That's what they are.
[00:18:00]  And think about how much they expanded power.
[00:18:02]  The first biggest expansion is they start spending more money than anyone's ever spent.
[00:18:06]  And that goes, that just ramps up and up.
[00:18:08]  You get Bush.
[00:18:09]  He spends more than anyone's ever spent.
[00:18:11]  Then Obama goes, man, look at what we can spend.
[00:18:13]  And he does even more.
[00:18:14]  And then you start with the executive orders.
[00:18:16]  Where did that come from?
[00:18:16]  And then all of a sudden, that's like the new normal.
[00:18:18]  We're going to have executive orders.
[00:18:19]  And then I don't know what news was like prior to eighth grade, but I'm going to assume that the fear-mongering and the general we can control people through propaganda, that has to have been expanded with Bush and Cheney lying us into a war and the people with power realizing like, oh, we can really fucking turn this machine.
[00:18:39]  So the government that we're looking at now is just radically different than what, I mean, all the stuff before me, it pre-exists me.
[00:18:46]  I wasn't, you know, Clinton.
[00:18:47]  I was a kid, whatever.
[00:18:48]  I guess there was an economic boom that shattered and it, you know, was going to happen either way because it was a credit asset bubble.
[00:18:55]  But nevertheless, government- Yeah, but they were, they were very related.
[00:18:59]  I mean, there's no question there was a bubble under Bill Clinton.
[00:19:03]  I mean, primarily it was the tech bubble was the, was the really big one, which burst right away on George W. Bush.
[00:19:10]  But there's no question that they kept interest rates very low after 9-11 because they needed, they knew they needed to borrow a bunch of money to fight these wars.
[00:19:23]  And in keeping interest rates low, that further fueled the housing bubble.
[00:19:29]  So it's there, they're all interrelated and no question about that.
[00:19:34]  I mean, this really, you know, it kind of blew up everything.
[00:19:37]  And those were like, you know, the, so the wars and the financial bubble are related, and they all kind of become this big mix of goo and like it makes people question the country that they live in.
[00:19:55]  And like, you know, it's funny.
[00:19:58]  I see on social media and stuff, there is this real push by the blue check marks out there to reinvent the Bush legacy.
[00:20:10]  And you see people even up there showing like that pitch that he threw out in the first game.
[00:20:14]  It's like, oh, remember how much people loved him right after 9-11 and all of this?
[00:20:18]  And it's like, yeah, dude, all of this shit that we're dealing with in this country right now is a direct result of the failure that was Bush chaining.
[00:20:30]  And, you know, the point you made before about the wars, it was like, oh, we went in and toppled Saddam's government real easily.
[00:20:37]  And they were given the mission accomplished, you know, speeches and stuff like that.
[00:20:42]  But then we realized, oh, but we're kind of here now.
[00:20:46]  And now what do we do?
[00:20:47]  And oh, it's a disaster.
[00:20:48]  And oh, what's that?
[00:20:48]  Iraq is still a disaster all these years later, you know?
[00:20:52]  And so I do think that it had a tremendous effect on, you know, even if you're going to say there was all of this, like, like if you want to talk about the left-wing craziness on college campuses, you could say, oh, there was all of this stuff existed already.
[00:21:09]  But the question is also what allows it to spread?
[00:21:13]  What made this something that everybody could get on board with?
[00:21:17]  Or so many people could get on board with.
[00:21:19]  And I think the failures.
[00:21:21]  Also, at the top, the government's now in more of a falsehood machine and printing dollars.
[00:21:27]  So it's like, if that, you know, if there's money in phony academia, like that's going to premiate all of society.
[00:21:35]  I'm sure, like, I'm not sure that that's to what extent they are responsible for that, but there's definitely some responsibility on government for, well, you can even look at it this way.
[00:21:43]  They're trying to force everybody into school and they've made all this money available for school.
[00:21:47]  A lot of that's pretty government-based.
[00:21:49]  And then once there's all that funding in those areas, you know, we're all forced to be there.
[00:21:53]  Like we would have, imagine if all the government incentives to go to college didn't exist.
[00:21:59]  Rothbard's got the best piece on this in For a New Liberty.

=== Government Printing and Kratom (04:32) ===

[00:22:01]  And this is true.
[00:22:02]  I learned more in a one-week sales training class and I did it all college.
[00:22:06]  And that one week class made me more money than anything I did in college.
[00:22:09]  And they gave me a nice seat.
[00:22:10]  They gave me a cup of coffee.
[00:22:12]  They were very nice to me.
[00:22:13]  You know what I mean?
[00:22:14]  Versus in college, the kind of, you know, I would love if corporate training is great.
[00:22:19]  And you never like, if you got rid of the whole college structure, corporations would be paying to teach you what you needed so that you could work and that they can make money off of you.
[00:22:26]  That's the reality of the situation.
[00:22:28]  So think about just how much money exists in the current system and that's all formulated by government.
[00:22:34]  Yeah.
[00:22:34]  No, and there's a, I think one of the silver linings to this whole, the whole craziness over the last four months is that it's possible that it's going to force people to rethink a lot of the kind of the, let's just say, the educational model that's become the norm in America now.
[00:22:54]  And we'll see.
[00:22:55]  I mean, again, we're going to need more time to see all of that stuff.
[00:22:59]  But anyway, it'll be interesting.
[00:23:03]  9-11, you know, as I said before, 9-11 was kind of the moment, at least up till now in my life there.
[00:23:10]  There's like a before and after.
[00:23:12]  But it does feel like, and again, I said, we'll need more time to know this, but it does feel like this, what we've been through this year, might actually be bigger.
[00:23:24]  And that, you know, the whole, I mean, look, if you look at the number of people who have died from COVID and from the lockdowns, it's much, much higher than 9-11.
[00:23:37]  If you look at the effect that it's had on Americans' civil liberties, it's much, much higher.
[00:23:43]  Not to say that 9-11, the response to it didn't infringe on liberties.
[00:23:49]  It certainly did, but it's much, much higher.
[00:23:52]  I mean, with the exception of people who like went and fought in the wars and the exception of the people who lived in these countries.
[00:23:58]  But here in this country, this has been a much bigger deal.
[00:24:01]  And you start to wonder, right?
[00:24:03]  Like, obviously, after 9-11, there was a huge fear of another 9-11 style terrorist attack.
[00:24:11]  This was something that, like, it's almost easy to forget this now, but this was very present in pretty much all American minds that we were constantly like, oh shit, what was that?
[00:24:21]  Yeah.
[00:24:22]  No, but really.
[00:24:23]  And that was something we were always aware of.
[00:24:26]  And that fades slowly.
[00:24:28]  But as Milton Friedman once said, there's nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.
[00:24:34]  But what doesn't fade is the Department of Homeland Security, the wars in the Middle East, the TSA, you know, like all this shit.
[00:24:42]  This is all, and not to mention just the other, you know, kind of like financial regulations and stuff like that.
[00:24:47]  Like the, you know, you still, I think, can't, you know, like withdraw $10,000 from an account without getting some type of write-up under the Patriot Act.
[00:24:56]  And of course, all of this other stuff, like the NSA spying programs and all of this other stuff, they were all, you know, it was all like dominoes from the Patriot Act and the original response to 9-11.
[00:25:10]  All this stuff, you know, Obama's secret kill list and all of these things.
[00:25:14]  The justification they use for all of them is the 9-11 response stuff.
[00:25:18]  So all that's still there.
[00:25:20]  And it makes you wonder how much of this, you know, the stuff from this year will just kind of be part of the American experience now.
[00:25:28]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
[00:25:30]  I want to thank our sponsor for today's show, which is yokratom.com, home of the $60 kilo.
[00:25:38]  If you've never heard of Kratom before, just ignore this ad.
[00:25:41]  We're not talking to you.
[00:25:43]  Don't try Kratom if you're not familiar with it.
[00:25:45]  But if you're currently a fan of Kratom, then go check out yocratum.com.
[00:25:49]  It's the best price in the business, the $60 kilo.
[00:25:53]  It's unheard of.
[00:25:54]  Yocratum.com is one of the biggest sellers of Kratom nationwide, and they made yokratum.com so you can buy directly at wholesale prices.
[00:26:02]  This is quality Kratom.
[00:26:03]  We've heard feedback from fans.
[00:26:05]  They say it's solid stuff.
[00:26:07]  And like I said, this is the only place where you can get the kilo for $60.
[00:26:11]  You don't have to go around and look for some random gas station that sells the stuff.
[00:26:14]  It comes right to you.
[00:26:15]  YoKratom.com, home of the $60 kilo.
[00:26:19]  All right, let's get back on the show.
[00:26:21]  I was talking about in the last podcast that the progressive era gave us all of these policies.
[00:26:29]  Now, the actual progressive era has been long over.

=== Biden's Rule and Political Reckoning (16:08) ===

[00:26:34]  And it's not as if those people are still around or every idea that they had is still around.
[00:26:40]  But we got things out of the progressive era, like public schools, the income tax, the Federal Reserve, World War I, the national security apparatus, the FBI, later the CIA.
[00:26:55]  I mean, all of these things, this like defines the American government.
[00:26:59]  You can't even imagine what a modern American government would look like without an income tax and a Federal Reserve and public schools and the CIA and all this stuff.
[00:27:09]  It's just this is who we are.
[00:27:12]  And so you wonder how much, what type of permanent effect this will have.
[00:27:17]  The other thing that's really hard to not think about, because I'm kind of in the mindset, I'm just transitioning out of 9-11 talk, but that the thing that you're in the mind state of like, what are these big moments that kind of really affect the country and not just the government, not just laws and policies and stuff like that, but the country, the people, something kind of deeper than just the state.
[00:27:44]  And I know what a douchebag you sound like when you say this is the most important election, you know, of our lifetime.
[00:27:52]  But isn't it hard to not kind of feel like this election with Biden and Trump really means something?
[00:27:58]  And not just something about like what policies, the policy differences between them are there more than your typical Democrat and Republican, but it's really not even that extreme.
[00:28:09]  It's more of a kind of a question of national identity and how we feel about ourselves and who we're going to be going forward.
[00:28:18]  And I really wonder what effect that's going to have.
[00:28:23]  And I also, like I said a couple episodes ago, and I've gotten some shit from some people for saying this, but I don't care.
[00:28:29]  Everyone always, you know, almost every presidential election, I get a little bit of fucking shit from people.
[00:28:36]  You know, it's like, oh, you got to vote.
[00:28:37]  What do you mean you're saying you might not vote or this or that?
[00:28:40]  Or you're sitting on the sidelines and shit.
[00:28:42]  But I'm just saying, and I'm asking the question, I'll repeat this one more time for people, just so I'm crystal clear on this.
[00:28:48]  I think that the Democrats deserve to lose more than the Republicans.
[00:28:53]  I also, for some fairly petty reasons, would like to see Trump get re-elected.
[00:29:02]  Like I like to see the meltdowns of the journalists and I like to see, you know, all the left-wingers who lecture everybody get so upset.
[00:29:09]  It's fun.
[00:29:10]  But Trump's just been too bad on too many policies I care about for me to vote for him.
[00:29:16]  But what I said that kind of got some people pissed off at me, but I stand by it is that it's actually not clear to me what will ultimately be worse or better for the country.
[00:29:29]  And me and you talked about this a little bit and went back and forth.
[00:29:32]  And there's certainly arguments that Trump winning is better for the country.
[00:29:36]  But I wonder if maybe, you know, something like here's the potential positive in Biden winning, is that there might be like a reckoning that finally hits if Biden wins.
[00:29:52]  You know, the thing that the Democrats say, and this is, it's a really weird dynamic because Democrats and the Democrat media, so like MSNBC, which is basically just, you know, if the Democrats owned a cable news network, it would be no different than MSNBC.
[00:30:09]  They will openly brag about the demographics, the Browning of America, how Democrats are just going to win every national office going forward.
[00:30:21]  They have no problem bragging about that.
[00:30:23]  However, it's an alt-right, you know, like evil talking point to say like demographics are destiny and that we need to be concerned about these demographics.
[00:30:32]  So like you're allowed to talk about it and address it if you're for it.
[00:30:37]  But if you're against it and you address it, then you're a Nazi.
[00:30:41]  Those are kind of the rules.
[00:30:42]  Now, I don't know if I even agree with any of, I don't know that I don't really think demographics are destiny necessarily.
[00:30:49]  But if this is the case, that, okay, the Democrats have basically been importing future voters for decades now, and it's reached a boiling point where it's about to spill over.
[00:31:00]  You know, you see things like Texas being in play.
[00:31:04]  So if that is the case and the Democrats end up winning the presidency, especially if it comes down to some funny business, which I'm starting to think more and more is what's going to happen, you might see this reckoning where red America realizes it's over.
[00:31:25]  Like this is over for you.
[00:31:26]  You can't compete anymore in this.
[00:31:29]  And then it would be interesting to see what ends up happening.
[00:31:34]  You know, I mentioned recently on the podcast that Hans Hermann Hoppe, the great Hans Hermann Hoppe, he said recently in an interview with Jeff Dice that he was like, basically, the culture wars are going to end in one of two ways.
[00:31:50]  And it's going to be either with like a right-wing dictator taking over the country or massive decentralization.
[00:31:59]  And he was like, and I'm hoping for the latter.
[00:32:03]  And I think, you know, that's almost like the reckoning of the right is going to have to deal with.
[00:32:08]  But is it possible that if Joe Biden wins in a way that is perceived, if not actually is, him kind of stealing the election?
[00:32:16]  Like there's 80 million mail-in ballots, a whole bunch of them get lost.
[00:32:20]  It comes down to a fight with lawyers, and then they fucking decide Biden won.
[00:32:25]  Maybe you'll just start seeing some real right-wing, disobedient nullification type shit.
[00:32:33]  Jeff Dice said the other day, he goes, what if there's like a, maybe there's just like some public school in, you know, in the South just starts teaching prayer in school again.
[00:32:44]  Just start doing it.
[00:32:46]  You know what?
[00:32:46]  It's like, this is what most people who live here want to do.
[00:32:49]  This area is 90-something percent Christian.
[00:32:52]  They want prayer in school.
[00:32:53]  Just start doing it.
[00:32:54]  What's the federal government going to do?
[00:32:56]  Are they really going to send troops in to take all of the Bibles out of the school?
[00:33:00]  Like maybe you'd start to see a different type of revolt that would be a more peaceful form of it.
[00:33:09]  Maybe it doesn't have to be with militias meeting in Portland.
[00:33:15]  It could just be like something like that.
[00:33:17]  No, we don't like Obamacare, so we're not going to pay into it.
[00:33:20]  And that's that.
[00:33:21]  And we don't, you know, whatever.
[00:33:22]  So I don't know, just a thought, but we'll see what happens.
[00:33:26]  All right.
[00:33:27]  So I've, excuse me, let me get a sip of water.
[00:33:29]  I'm getting choked up.
[00:33:30]  By the way, I fucking chipped my tooth.
[00:33:32]  Oh, it's the worst.
[00:33:33]  Which one?
[00:33:35]  It's this one right here, but it's not, you can't really see.
[00:33:39]  Luckily for me, it doesn't.
[00:33:40]  It's kind of just like the front of it chipped.
[00:33:43]  How'd you chip it?
[00:33:44]  On a sourdough pretzel.
[00:33:46]  Ooh, all right.
[00:33:47]  Which are my favorite pretzels.
[00:33:49]  They're just the best, the real thick sourdough ones.
[00:33:53]  I like a, well, unless you're getting like, and not like super pretzels because it would suck, but if you go to Philly and you get like those, the pretzel facts, the soft pretzels, you can't beat those.
[00:34:02]  But if you're not in that category, I like the thin roll doll ones.
[00:34:05]  That's what I like.
[00:34:06]  Oh, yeah.
[00:34:07]  No, you're crazy.
[00:34:09]  But yeah, I agree with the soft pretzels are great.
[00:34:11]  But then after that, I like a nice sourdough.
[00:34:14]  Anyway, so a little bit of a conspiracy theory, not even a conspiracy theory, just something that's been floating around in my head.
[00:34:23]  But I've found it odd for months now, maybe even a year, but that I've seen a lot of people on the left floating out the idea that Donald Trump won't leave even if he loses the election.
[00:34:43]  I don't know.
[00:34:43]  Have you seen people?
[00:34:44]  They've been saying that since before he got elected, that if he goes in, he's never leading.
[00:34:49]  They've been trying to run this dictatorship line for a while.
[00:34:52]  Yes, but it's really, it seems to me like it's ramped up a lot.
[00:34:56]  I've seen a lot of people in the corporate press, like a lot.
[00:35:01]  My old boss, SE Cup, was tweeting about this.
[00:35:04]  And a lot of the kind of like anti-Trumpers in the corporate press are taking this line.
[00:35:09]  And it just seemed like a kind of, at first, it was just, it was almost just ridiculous to me.
[00:35:14]  Like, it was like, oh, this is odd.
[00:35:17]  Why would they think this?
[00:35:18]  I mean, you're basing this off nothing.
[00:35:20]  Obviously, if Trump loses an election, he's not going to be able to just decide he's a dictator and can stay there.
[00:35:27]  I mean, Donald Trump's barely been able to get things done that he wants to when he is the duly elected president.
[00:35:34]  The idea that he's not like this seems all so ridiculous.
[00:35:38]  But there's kind of a mix of a few things, right?
[00:35:41]  So I started.
[00:35:43]  If you've been listening to the podcast for the last couple of weeks, you'll see this kind of develop.
[00:35:47]  Like I started to figure this out.
[00:35:48]  And I actually feel stupid for being late on this.
[00:35:52]  When I really started to realize, like, oh, what we're coming up to this huge election.
[00:35:57]  And probably, you know, like for the last year, I've been talking about like, okay, well, this is why I think Trump's going to win.
[00:36:02]  This is why Trump's in trouble.
[00:36:03]  Now I'm back to like, okay, well, I think the riots are going to help Trump and this is why he was going to win.
[00:36:08]  And I missed the whole story, which is that no one's going to win on election day.
[00:36:13]  No one's going to win.
[00:36:14]  This is going to be a shit show.
[00:36:15]  It's going to be much worse than the year 2000.
[00:36:17]  You got these, they're saying 80 million people are going to vote by mail.
[00:36:21]  This is, Trump was right when he's talking about the fraud that is possible with all of this.
[00:36:26]  And it's going to be a shit show.
[00:36:27]  It's going to be decided by lawyers.
[00:36:29]  It's going to take weeks to figure this out.
[00:36:32]  And one of the things that really fucking dawned on me that I was talking about a couple episodes ago was the Hillary Clinton statement when she said, I believe Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances and that he's going to win with the lawyers weeks after.
[00:36:48]  This is so weird for the last nominee to be saying at this point in time, a couple months before an election.
[00:36:54]  And then you realize you're like, okay, so this is going to be a shit show.
[00:36:58]  And they're saying they're worried that Trump won't leave.
[00:37:01]  And then you've seen all of these stories coming out about how Trump disrespected the military.
[00:37:09]  And they're trying to make this a big story, like driving a wedge between Trump and the military.
[00:37:14]  And it's starting to all come together to me to go, well, maybe, maybe the plan here is to try to cheat Trump out of the election.
[00:37:25]  And they're worried he won't leave if they cheat him out of the election.
[00:37:30]  And they're going to need the military to step in and be on their side.
[00:37:34]  And maybe that's how all these dots connect.
[00:37:36]  Just a thought.
[00:37:37]  That's how real coups work.
[00:37:39]  Whoever the military backs, that's who's in charge.
[00:37:42]  When it really comes down to it, if the military goes, we're back in Biden, then all of a sudden, like that, that's really the way democracy works.
[00:37:49]  Is if the military buys into a candidate or if they want another candidate, well, that's who we really have.
[00:37:55]  Oh, yeah.
[00:37:56]  This is, and this is true all over the world.
[00:37:58]  It's more nakedly obvious in like third world countries.
[00:38:02]  You know, like you can, because they'll just come in and overthrow somebody if they don't like them.
[00:38:06]  But yeah, of course.
[00:38:07]  I mean, but in that situation, you're looking at, I mean, real dictatorship rule until people are willing to accept, and then it kind of will adjust back to a little bit of a normal.
[00:38:21]  But then you're looking at like serious propaganda and you're not going to have freedom of speech anymore.
[00:38:26]  Because just to kind of gameplay what that looks like, let's say Trump goes, Hey, I'm not like it's in the media, Democrats won.
[00:38:32]  And then Trump goes, Okay, I'm not leaving.
[00:38:35]  Military ends up going, We're backing Trump.
[00:38:37]  We think that there needs to be this investigation.
[00:38:39]  So the military comes into Washington.
[00:38:42]  You get a lot of liberals who are very upset about this.
[00:38:44]  And then they actually do try and violently take over Washington, which doesn't work.
[00:38:49]  Then you end up with the military and cities making sure that everyone's trying to function as normal.
[00:38:54]  And that becomes a while.
[00:38:55]  You're saying the liberals would be upset that the military kicked Trump out?
[00:38:58]  No, no, no.
[00:38:59]  saying if the if if the military were to support Trump, if you flip it the other way, either way, in that kind of a situation where the military is stepping in and going, we're back in this candidate.
[00:39:10]  That's now the candidate.
[00:39:11]  That is now rule by force of by, I mean, it's already rule by force.
[00:39:16]  It's not, it's just not that transparent.
[00:39:18]  This is the military saying we're stepping in and this is now the way government's going to work.
[00:39:22]  And we're, you know, that's a different, that's a different lifestyle.
[00:39:27]  Yeah, it would be, that would be a really crazy thing to see happen.
[00:39:30]  But just to be clear here, what's going to happen, and I'm almost certain of it at this point, I really do believe, forget the polls, the national polls mean nothing anyway.
[00:39:41]  And if you actually look at all of the battleground state polls, Joe Biden's not doing as well as Hillary Clinton was in 2016.
[00:39:48]  And I think Biden has yet to show up to a debate.
[00:39:52]  Well, that's another.
[00:39:52]  It's just one debate.
[00:39:53]  It does.
[00:39:54]  The polls right now mean nothing.
[00:39:56]  Well, that is a thing that is so different about this election from any election I've ever seen in my life is that Joe Biden is a candidate that realistically, any time he opens his mouth or does a public event could lose the election right there.
[00:40:19]  There's just this kind of X factor with Joe Biden, where he's always like, he's thrown out a lot of things that were just like bananas, but you never know when he might give you, you're not really black if you vote for Donald Trump times 10.
[00:40:36]  You know, like he might give you a really, really bad one.
[00:40:39]  He might like this is, and by the way, he's having a live town hall next week on CNN.
[00:40:45]  So there's opportunities for this to happen.
[00:40:48]  Scripted with every question vetted and him having an answer with the teleprompter written out in front of him and filmed at the proper and appropriate angle.
[00:40:56]  Even in that situation, you're like, he might just blow this.
[00:41:01]  Now, all I'm saying is that Joe Biden, there's no way Joe Biden is going to get through the next two months with at least five opportunities to have a Joe Biden meltdown.
[00:41:12]  And we'll see.
[00:41:13]  I mean, did you see the other day, by the way, there's these little ones that just haven't quite been the one yet?
[00:41:18]  But did you see when he was reading off the teleprompter and he said, end quote, like he read, he said out loud, he said, end quote.
[00:41:28]  That's crazy.
[00:41:29]  Oh, man, it's just too.
[00:41:31]  Yeah, there's, so there's still a lot of this shit happening there.
[00:41:34]  But I think if you were having a normal election right now, I think Trump would win.
[00:41:39]  Trump would be the favorite to win.
[00:41:42]  But with all of this shady shit with the mail-in ballots, and then if it comes down to a fight with lawyers, I mean, number one, the Democrats are really and have always been the party of lawyers.
[00:41:53]  I mean, that's kind of their deal.
[00:41:56]  They are the party of litigation and they have an advantage if that's where you're fighting the fight.
[00:42:03]  But on top of that, Trump is just Trump.
[00:42:08]  And I suppose you could blame him partly for this, but it's also just the nature of the swamp is that Trump, you never know who's around Trump who you can trust to actually be a Trump loyalist.
[00:42:21]  So many of these people will stab him in the back at any opportunity that they have.
[00:42:25]  And I just see it going down.
[00:42:30]  I think that's a dangerous game for Donald Trump.
[00:42:33]  And they'll probably, after all the recounts and all the grabbing of mail and all of that, I have a feeling they're going to declare Joe Biden the president.

=== Trump's Shutdown Strategy and Lies (11:32) ===

[00:42:42]  At least that's where my gut's leaning right now.
[00:42:44]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
[00:42:46]  I want to thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Blue Chew.
[00:42:50]  If you like sex, you're going to love Blue Chew.
[00:42:53]  Blue Chew.com.
[00:42:54]  That's where you go to get the first performance enhancement for the bedroom that's a chewable.
[00:43:00]  At bluechew.com, you can get the first chewable with the same active ingredients as Viagra and Cialis.
[00:43:07]  Now, chewables can work faster than pills, up to twice as fast.
[00:43:11]  And the chewables from bluechew.com can be taken on a full or empty stomach.
[00:43:15]  The online physician consultant is free, so it's cheaper than those other two.
[00:43:18]  And it only takes a few minutes to connect with a bluechew.com affiliated physician.
[00:43:23]  If you qualify, you get prescribed online quickly.
[00:43:26]  That means there's no in-person doctor visit, no awkward conversation, no waiting in line at a pharmacy.
[00:43:31]  It ships directly to your door in discrete packaging.
[00:43:34]  The chewables from bluechew.com are prescribed online by a doctor and made in the USA.
[00:43:40]  Blue Chew gives you the confidence in the bedroom every time.
[00:43:43]  You and your partner will love it.
[00:43:45]  And here's a great deal for you guys.
[00:43:46]  If you go to bluechew.com, you can get your first order free when you use the promo code problem.
[00:43:52]  You just pay $5 shipping, but the order is free at B-L-U-E-C-H-E-W.com promo code problem.
[00:44:00]  All right, let's get back on the show.
[00:44:02]  One way or the other, there's to me, with all the mail-in ballots and how crazy this election is going to get, there is no way.
[00:44:14]  There's no, in my mind, there's no conceivable way at this point, and also just at this point with where the culture is, there's no conceivable way that whoever wins, the other side will look at it as a legitimate victory.
[00:44:26]  And I suppose you could say that's already true about Donald Trump, that generally speaking, the left never looked at 2016 as a legitimate victory because Hillary won the popular vote and because of the nonsense fantasy of Russian interference or whatever.
[00:44:44]  But there is, you know, there is not going to be an accepted legitimate outcome of this election.
[00:44:51]  And I just think it's interesting between these stories about Donald Trump insulting the military.
[00:44:57]  And then there's this story about Donald Trump, you know, they're regurging up this old, this bullshit story about how Donald Trump, you know, didn't care that soldiers were being targeted by Putin in Afghanistan, which is, by the way, just all 100% nonsense.
[00:45:13]  But it does seem like there's this concerted effort to try to drive a wedge between Trump and the military.
[00:45:21]  And you're like, well, that's a little bit strange that that's happening two months before an election.
[00:45:26]  Just seems like odd timing.
[00:45:29]  And one of the other things that I said on the last episode when you weren't here is that I also do think there'll be an October surprise.
[00:45:36]  I don't know what it will be, but I think the media's got something on Donald Trump.
[00:45:40]  They wouldn't play it yet.
[00:45:43]  The Bob Woodward thing, I do not think is their last hand.
[00:45:47]  Although it is interesting, right, that this was from months ago and it's just coming out now.
[00:45:52]  But I think they're going to hold on to something before October.
[00:45:57]  We'll see what they have.
[00:45:59]  But my guess is that there is something.
[00:46:01]  What did you, I wanted to ask you, because I think you had a slightly different take than me on the Bob Woodward thing.
[00:46:07]  I didn't think it was that bad or that it was going to hurt Trump that much, but what were your thoughts?
[00:46:11]  Yeah, I think, I mean, he's still running against Biden, so you just never know.
[00:46:16]  But this one's pretty bad.
[00:46:18]  To give the bigger picture framework, I know you like big pictures here.
[00:46:22]  The bigger picture framework is that Trump's playing a losing game.
[00:46:25]  He knew at the beginning of this thing that it was going to be bad, but I don't think he wanted to take the shutdown the economy approach.
[00:46:32]  I just don't think that's what he wanted to do.
[00:46:33]  I think he wanted to go, hey, we're going on life as normal.
[00:46:36]  This thing sucks.
[00:46:37]  It's not that bad.
[00:46:38]  We're going to get through it.
[00:46:39]  I think that was the route he wanted to go.
[00:46:41]  This thing somehow spriled out of control into complete fucking, hey, we're all going to die.
[00:46:46]  If you go outside, you're going to die.
[00:46:47]  You're killing your grandparents.
[00:46:49]  And he somehow, in a very not Trump way, got suckered into, okay, we got to be safe.
[00:46:54]  If we got to be careful, and then having to play along with that thing, I don't think he ever wanted to go in that direction, and I don't think that direction was ever right.
[00:47:02]  I think people that are of high risk should have stayed home and everyone else should have gone about their lives, and we would have gotten over this thing.
[00:47:09]  That narrative, he didn't win that war.
[00:47:11]  I think even if you watch back what was going on originally, he was trying to kind of walk that line and he lost the mental battle in this country: you're killing your grandparents, and everyone has to stay home, and we got to beat this thing.
[00:47:23]  All right, fine.
[00:47:24]  He lost that.
[00:47:25]  But now, since that has lost, since he lost that, the result is we've made it a reality that COVID was a really big deal.
[00:47:32]  Now, not from a life and death standpoint, it just affected all of our lives because it turned out that we mostly quarantined ourselves.
[00:47:39]  And people, this turned out to be a really, really big deal.
[00:47:42]  And now they have Trump lying to people at the beginning of it saying, Hey, this isn't going to be that big of a deal.
[00:47:47]  So he kind of got suckered into this framework because the reason why it turned out to be so bad is because we made it all really bad.
[00:47:54]  We shut ourselves down.
[00:47:55]  We stayed indoors.
[00:47:56]  This became, you know, probably one of the worst experiences for a lot of people financially.
[00:48:01]  Like, this turned into a really big deal.
[00:48:03]  Now, Trump, who we've always kind of known, hey, is a liar, this, that, or the next thing, when on situations like this, where he comes out and goes, hey, I've got him under control and Royally doesn't, it looks really bad.
[00:48:14]  And in this case, I mean, he flagrantly, firstly, he's not even covering for it that well because he's like, well, if Bob Whitmer knew I was lying, he should have gone out and whistleblowed that and like, that's totally ridiculous.
[00:48:25]  You got to take ownership for this.
[00:48:26]  This was your policy decision.
[00:48:28]  Now he's playing within a losing framework because I don't think he ever wanted to shut down.
[00:48:32]  And this shouldn't have been as big of a deal as it was.
[00:48:35]  But it doesn't change the fact that now on paper, it looks like Trump knew that this was going to be a huge deal.
[00:48:40]  And he told people at some point in time, hey, go about your lives.
[00:48:43]  Everything's fine.
[00:48:45]  Theoretically, if you had better warning, maybe you could have saved some lives.
[00:48:48]  Or theoretically, if you had better warning, you could have made better adjustments for what your life was going to look like for the last couple of months.
[00:48:56]  So on paper, the guy knew that this was going to be horrible.
[00:48:59]  And just because of his own incompetence, he came out and said, Hey, guys, I don't think this is going to be that big of a deal because he wanted everyone to stay calm.
[00:49:07]  But it was the wrong time to stay calm because it actually turned out to be a total disaster.
[00:49:12]  Yeah.
[00:49:13]  See, I think my take from the actual audio recording is the fact that he says, I didn't want to create a panic and that's why I was playing it down kind of covers his tracks.
[00:49:25]  Not that it's great, but that I don't think it's going to be the hugest issue for him.
[00:49:31]  I also think if you can hit him on that on the debates, hey, man, you knew before that this was pinning Trump in a debate.
[00:49:38]  Good luck.
[00:49:39]  Do you remember the debates?
[00:49:40]  It's still one of my favorite debate moments ever, but the Rand Paul thing when Rand Paul called him out for he was going off about yes.
[00:49:51]  So he was going off about how TPP was the Trans-Pacific partnership was terrible because it didn't address China's currency manipulation.
[00:49:59]  And he goes, if you don't address China's currency manipulation, then what are you doing with the TPP?
[00:50:04]  And he just gave a speech and then no one said anything.
[00:50:06]  And then Rand Paul goes, Should someone point out that China's not involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
[00:50:12]  And Donald Trump, with no hesitation, just goes, Rand Paul, what are you at?
[00:50:16]  Like 1% in the polls, you loser.
[00:50:19]  Anyway, I moved out of the whole crowd.
[00:50:22]  And you're like, I guess Trump won that exchange.
[00:50:24]  Like, it's, it's, I don't think that's the same thing.
[00:50:26]  This is the first time I've not seen him swing it all that way.
[00:50:30]  Well, listen, I think you are onto something that Donald Trump is caught in this in-between place that he doesn't want to be.
[00:50:36]  Now, I'll tell you what gives Trump some cover in terms of the downplaying of COVID, even though this was a little bit later.
[00:50:43]  I believe this was in March when this tape came out.
[00:50:46]  But everybody was downplaying it until they were, this is the end of the world.
[00:50:52]  Is a really weird switch, but Nancy Pelosi was out inviting people to come down to Chinatown in these huge gatherings, no one wearing a mask.
[00:51:01]  Fauci was out there saying this isn't anything Americans have to worry about.
[00:51:05]  I buy kid blood from here.
[00:51:07]  You guys can join me and be healthy.
[00:51:08]  Yes, that's right.
[00:51:09]  So Nancy Pelosi was out drinking the blood of live fetuses on television.
[00:51:16]  The truth is that Donald Trump, look, I don't know what the best way to play this politically would have been, but I could tell you that the correct response would have looked very different from what Donald Trump did.
[00:51:32]  What Donald Trump really fucked up was when he declared a national emergency.
[00:51:37]  And once he did that, he gave cover to any of the Democratic governors who wanted to take these draconian measures.
[00:51:45]  I don't mean legal cover.
[00:51:46]  I mean just like he gave them political cover.
[00:51:49]  Like they could say, you know, certainly none of it was constitutional or legal.
[00:51:54]  I repeat myself, but none of it was legal.
[00:51:58]  But it was like, well, Trump declared a national emergency.
[00:52:02]  So this now gives you the political cover to go and do this and not make it a democratic issue.
[00:52:07]  What Trump should have done was never declare a national emergency, never invoke the National Defense Authorization Act, any of that shit, or what's it called, the Production Act.
[00:52:20]  Never any of that.
[00:52:21]  By the way, none of it was necessary.
[00:52:22]  It was all just a waste of resources.
[00:52:24]  The companies like GM were already helping out.
[00:52:28]  They would have done, they were doing it without the federal government making them.
[00:52:31]  And half the shit, like all those ventilators weren't even needed.
[00:52:34]  They didn't, it was all, everyone was full of shit and didn't need it.
[00:52:37]  And if he had just not gone on board with that and let the dust settle, it would have been easier to expose it.
[00:52:43]  What Donald Trump should have done is say from the very beginning that he is against the shutdowns.
[00:52:52]  He should have said, look, this is a virus.
[00:52:53]  It's a nasty virus, but human beings have made it through far worse than this virus.
[00:52:58]  And we don't destroy the economy for our children and destroy their future.
[00:53:03]  We're not shutting anything down.
[00:53:05]  And then let the Democrats do the shutdowns if they want to and own it completely.
[00:53:10]  This is the Democrat Party and the Republicans stand for freedom.
[00:53:14]  The Democrats stand for ruining the economy.
[00:53:16]  I think that would have been the way to handle it.
[00:53:19]  But he didn't do that.
[00:53:21]  And instead, he found himself in this squirmy middle position where it was like, well, we're going to shut down, but I'd like to reopen by Easter.
[00:53:32]  It's funny to be discussing this now in September, but he was like, yeah, you know, we want to open up by Easter.
[00:53:38]  It's like, well, if you're already conceding that we have to shut down till then, why open up now?
[00:53:42]  I mean, look, cases are still going up or blah, blah, blah, whatever evidence they can find.
[00:53:47]  So he got himself in a bad position.
[00:53:49]  And it certainly doesn't help to have this tape of him kind of admitting that he's being less than honest with the public about it.
[00:53:58]  I just don't really think this is the one.
[00:54:00]  I don't think this is the thing that's going to have a big impact on Donald Trump.
[00:54:04]  And truthfully speaking, I think in many ways, politically, the riots have been a gift for Donald Trump because people are really upset about that shit.

=== LeBron's Privilege and Race Talk (04:44) ===

[00:54:15]  And I think that the more that the Black Lives Matter movement is associated with the riots and the more that the Black Lives Matter movement seeps into everything that is pop culture, you know, like it seeps into all of Hollywood and all of sports and things like that.
[00:54:36]  Like we were seeing, me, you and Brian were talking before we started the show about the NFL, you know, players getting booed the other day.
[00:54:45]  I think there's like, I think all that shit really helps Donald Trump.
[00:54:49]  People get sick of it and they don't want to constantly be lectured uh to about race.
[00:54:54]  I also think that for most people my, my feeling is that most people in America don't really want to talk about race that much, like most of the time, they don't want to always be thinking about it, which also to me, at least in my mind, is kind of the antithesis of what the best message from the Civil Rights Movement era should have been, which was, like the best of the civil rights era was basically summed up in Mlk's,
[00:55:24]  judge a man not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character, like that kind of idea and basically what that um, but if you're white, you're not allowed to have an opinion.
[00:55:33]  Well right, that's what it's turned into, but basically what that should like kind of indicates that really race isn't that important and it's not something you need to be thinking about all of the time and and that.
[00:55:44]  But that uh I I, I actually think that that's where most Americans are.
[00:55:48]  I don't care about this, this song doesn't not even that bad of a song, but I just think it's so funny watching these.
[00:55:54]  You know, these manly men.
[00:55:56]  They're gonna go out there and they're gonna kick the shit out of each other, but part of their job is how dramatically they can display their care.
[00:56:02]  For I guess you know racial tensions in this country and you see the white guys, the blah.
[00:56:06]  They're both out there, they're hugging arms, but some of them won't even come out onto the field.
[00:56:11]  The other one's kneeling over there looking at the floor.
[00:56:14]  Well, i've just play football, I.
[00:56:16]  I look, I think that it's um, as we were saying, the last podcast that we were on together uh, and we were kind of talking about the populist energy in America, and I think that, largely speaking um the, the establishment, if you will, you know, corporate America politicians Hollywood, people like that are very out of touch with this kind of populist energy which, by the way, those people, they're out of touch by nature.
[00:56:46]  Um, that's what it is to be an elitist or to be an elite.
[00:56:49]  You're, you know, you're out of touch by nature.
[00:56:51]  You're not with.
[00:56:52]  You're not hanging out with a trucker drinking a Miller light, you know what I mean.
[00:56:56]  You're hanging out in the luxury high-rise with, you know.
[00:56:59]  So you're a little out of touch with by nature uh, with what the average Joe six pack is thinking.
[00:57:05]  But I think that there is something to you know, the Nancy Pelosi uh video of her in the hair salon is what we were talking about when, when we were getting into this stuff like the idea that they're making rules for everybody else and they have no intention of following them, and then they'll turn around and lecture you about how immoral you are if you don't follow the rules, and empowering a female business owner as they put her out of business right right, exactly.
[00:57:31]  And then there's there is something that I think people really I think they're almost oblivious to.
[00:57:39]  But when you have, you know, like someone like LeBron James put, you know, talking all about how oppressed black people are in the country, I think to a huge portion of the country, this comes off as what it is, which is just like an incredibly privileged.
[00:58:01]  lucky, multi-millionaire trashing the country that's made him so successful and lecturing.
[00:58:08]  You know, it's like LeBron James is, I don't know what his current contract is.
[00:58:14]  It's tens of millions of dollars, I'm sure, for just this season of basketball.
[00:58:20]  He's talking to an audience, the people who watch basketball, who have had like the worst year financially ever.
[00:58:27]  You know, they're more, you know, there's more economic anxiety in the country than there's been at least since 2008, probably more than there was then.
[00:58:38]  And he's lecturing all of them about how unfair the country is.
[00:58:41]  And it's just, it's a recipe to breed resentment.
[00:58:46]  I mean, who the hell wants to be lectured to by a millionaire half your age about how unfair the system is when they're like, you know, bringing in 30K this year and they're worried about if they'll have anything next year, you know?

=== Economic Anxiety and Lectures (00:33) ===

[00:58:59]  So I just, I think all of that stuff ends up playing into Trump's hands.
[00:59:05]  But as I said before, I think the more I'm looking at this now, this election is going to be decided by lawyers.
[00:59:12]  And that's going to be quite a shit show.
[00:59:15]  Quite a shit show.
[00:59:17]  And speaking of shit shows, that's where we're going to wrap up this shit show right now.
[00:59:22]  So thank you guys for listening.
[00:59:23]  Go check out Rob Bernstein's podcast.
[00:59:25]  Run your mouth.
[00:59:26]  Follow Robbie on Twitter at RobbieTheFire.
[00:59:29]  Thank you.
[00:59:30]  We love you.
[00:59:31]  We'll talk to you soon.