Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the 2020 presidential debates, labeling Donald Trump a "uniquely evil" figure while criticizing Joe Biden's insulation from hostile questioning. They condemn the Supreme Court appointment following Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death as a "naked power grab," exposing partisan hypocrisy regarding democracy and the Electoral College. The discussion further analyzes new Kyle Rittenhouse footage suggesting self-defense against a mob, arguing he faces no murder charge and should sue corporate press outlets for defamation over false white supremacist labels. Ultimately, the episode reveals how political actors weaponize principle rather than upholding it. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Biden's Difficult Debate Day00:15:05
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You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
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All right, let's start the show.
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, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Of course, I am Dave Smith, and I am just thrilled to pieces to be joined once again by my partner in crime, the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How are you, my friend?
I'm doing pretty good.
How about you, Davey Smith?
Doing good.
Can't complain.
Getting excited for the political season to really kick into high gear, which it does feel like, you know, it's so weird because we're a week out from the presidential debate, the first debate.
I almost can't even believe Biden, I can't believe Biden somehow got this nomination.
I can't believe he's actually going to show up to one of these debates.
There's still part of me that's like, hey, he's going to find some excuse not to do it.
But I'm excited for that.
You know, there's this weird thing, particularly this year in 2020, where, you know, presidential election seasons have become longer and longer.
Like they start earlier and early.
This is why last year at this time, we were already talking about the presidential elections.
There were already debates on the Democratic side.
And we had been talking about it way before that.
And then because so much crazy shit happened this year, it kind of fell to the back burner.
And now it's coming back.
And you're like, oh shit, we're fucking less than a month and a half out from a presidential election that's going to, you know, I know people make fun of saying this is the most important election of our lifetime and all that shit, but it really does feel like this is a big one.
And I don't just mean in terms of like, oh, the policy that'll get decided if a president wins, just in terms of like how actual people in the country are going to feel about this, it's going to be a big one.
And I'm ready.
I'm ready to watch this first fucking debate.
I was just saying with the three of us before we started recording with our producer Brian that it's this like contradiction in me because I hate politics, but I love politics.
And Brian said, I think that put it very well.
He said, I hate death, but I love car crashes.
And that's kind of how I feel about all of this.
So anyway, you excited to watch the debates, Robbie?
Hell yeah, man.
Now it's actual really happening.
Up until now, it's just been kind of conversations, people hiding in basements, not sure if they're reading off teleprompters.
I know Biden's a dumbass.
When do we get to see it live?
That's what I'm here for.
And it's finally going to happen.
Oh, let me just say, I meant to mention up top that I do apologize.
We missed an episode on Monday.
I'll make that up for you guys.
That's my fault.
I recorded an episode of Michael Malice's podcast, and then I went over to Ari Shafir's studio and recorded this year's State of the Union.
Went for about three hours, and we decided at the end of it that we just, even in the three hours, we didn't cover nearly enough stuff from the year.
So we're going to do a two-parter this year.
The first time we'll do a two-parter this year required a double dose of State of the Union.
Super State of the Union.
Yes, that's right.
That's right.
Which, by the way, spoiler alert, not great.
So the State of the Union is not doing so great.
But so I recorded Malice's show.
I did three hours with Ari and they did Legion of Skank.
So I literally had no time to get a part of the problem out.
But I will get a makeup episode for you guys out.
I also just recorded an episode of the Scott Horton show, which is up on scotthorton.org now.
So I've been putting out a lot of content this week, but I'll make that one up to you guys.
So anyway, saying you care about skanks more than part of the problem.
That's what I'm hearing.
Literally, Rob, nice try.
But I took a lie detector test and proved not only that I'm not racist and I don't resent my baby, but also that I care about part of the problem more than any other show that I do.
So yeah, this cannot be questioned by the people.
Lie detector tests are 100,000% accurate.
We all know that.
So the thing about the debates next week, right?
There's just a weird, perverse level of excitement that Joe Biden being in a debate adds.
You know, when Hillary Clinton in 2016, you know, she kept having these coughing fits.
Do you remember?
She kept, it was like a major problem.
She had some type of throat issue.
And every, like, you know, every week you would see an example where she's giving a speech and she just has a coughing fit.
And it would go on for like 10 minutes and she couldn't stop herself from coughing.
She couldn't get through a speech.
And people were like, whoa, what if she has one of those at this, you know, debate?
But if she didn't have a coughing spit or a coughing fit or pass out, you kind of knew Hillary Clinton would be able to string sentences together.
Joe Biden's a different story.
They really, they've got, he's going an hour and a half with no commercial breaks.
And this will be an interesting test for Joe Biden.
I mean, they're going to pump him full of fucking cocaine or Adderall or whatever the hell they can get into him.
And they're going to try to get him ready.
But he's going to have to sit there and take questions for an hour and a half.
And it's going to be fucking interesting to see how he does.
And not just that, but he's got to go against the bull that is Donald Trump.
The first debate is going to be moderated by Chris Wallace.
So it's not as easy as a, you know, a CNN or MSNBC debate or something like that for Joe Biden.
So I'm excited to see how it goes.
They did.
Chris Wallace released the.
Did they usually do that?
What?
Did they usually release the topics of the debate?
I know sometimes I've seen like for the second or third debate, they'll do a theme debate.
I've seen that, but I don't remember that for the presidential election.
I thought that was part of what made it difficult was you showed up.
And I mean, you've got a general idea of, hey, they're going to want to talk about healthcare, foreign policy, but you don't go in with like, I mean, firstly, I'm going to guess that Biden's going to go in with questions because they cheat.
But I thought part of it was that you're not really prepped on what you're talking about.
And specifically, here, the topics that they're going in with almost strike me like it's the um, I think Trump will come out on top, but it's a liberal propaganda piece.
They want to just talk about COVID, which is the hardest issue for Trump.
Well, they said, let me take a look at this because what was officially said was that Wallace said that the following topics will be for the first debate will be the Trump and Biden records, the Supreme Court, COVID-19, the economy, race and violence in our cities, and the integrity of the election.
All right.
So, you know, the list is more comprehensive than I thought, but integrity of the election and COVID.
Well, I understand why those are on those lists, but those are going to be, those are already like within a liberal framework.
So, integrity of the election, you're now kind of forcing Trump to address something that is a, you know, a liberal facade.
And then also the COVID-19 thing, Biden gets to play the card of, well, I wasn't there making these decisions, so it could have been, it could have been better.
So it's an opportunity just to criticize Trump for something that really I don't think he's at fault for or has all that much even necessarily to do with him.
Yeah, look, I'll tell you that in terms of the topics, I can't really argue with any one of those topics being like an important thing to talk about.
You know, you had to talk about COVID, the economy, and race and violence.
I mean, that's probably going to come up in the economy, but Biden's got some tax plans that will be very unfavorable.
So if Trump is smart, I guess I'll pivot the economy conversation to, hey, look at what's going on in the stock, which all, by the way, we've been saying for years he shouldn't take credit for, but he's going to go, look at the recovery we're having.
Experts are saying it's going to be V-shaped.
It's because of me, we got this under control.
If it's your tax policy, here's what's going to happen.
Sure.
Listen, there's arguments that Trump can make.
He's going to say that, look, we had the best economy ever before this virus came through.
He'll probably blame the Democrats for destroying the economy.
On the flip side, Biden will try to take credit for the Obama administration being responsible for the economy.
I'll tell you, there's the interesting quality about this debate is not really what the topics are, even.
It's just how much Biden can handle the pressure.
Honestly, like, can he handle being pressured?
And Chris Wallace, you know, it's an interesting situation where, like, even when you just said before, you're like, oh, I wouldn't be surprised if they're cheating for Biden.
I think to a lot of just casual observers of politics, they'd be like, but what are you talking about?
I mean, this is Fox News, and Fox News is the Republican channel, which is, you know, there's some truth to that.
But in reality, Donald Trump, and this is one of the things that's really interesting about this presidential year, is that despite the fact that Donald Trump has really played ball with the establishment in terms of his policies, the establishment is really against Donald Trump still.
And if you look at the money that Joe Biden's pulling in from Wall Street, from, you know what I mean, from pharmaceutical companies, from all this up, way, way more than Donald Trump is.
And of course, you have all of the fucking neocons, you know, they fucking hate Donald Trump.
Most of them are lining up with Joe Biden.
And so even at an organization like Fox News, they never really were on board the Trump train.
They fell in line because the vast majority of their viewers are on board with Trump.
And also they want to, you know, they don't want to lose complete relevance.
But I agree with you.
I mean, if they were going to try to help one candidate or the other, I would expect them more to be trying to help Joe Biden than Donald Trump.
But Chris Wallace at least has to, you know, he's got to come back and face his audience on Fox News.
So he has to at least kind of be able to pretend that he's being hard on both of them or being somewhat fair.
And so they're, you know, this is not going to be an easy day for Joe Biden.
I mean, if I had to predict what happens here, I think it's on a range of this goes bad for Biden to this is a disaster.
You know what the bet is?
The bet is at which, you know, like they go which round knockout, it's which debate ends Biden's presidential run.
Like he's not going to get through three without saying something so incredibly stupid.
Everyone's just going not him.
And by the way, not just stupid, but possibly so offensive to minorities or to women.
Like it's not just dumb.
It could also be a gaff that is, you know, sold as being horribly offensive.
Well, right.
And so Joe Biden here, his, his job, it's not a matter of like, right, which round he gets knocked out.
His job is to not get knocked out.
Yeah.
That's what he's trying to do.
Just survive the night.
Survive the night without something that you're like, well, that's it for you.
Joe Biden, man, it's really amazing.
I was just watching the other day a speech Joe Biden gave in 2008.
And you just can't, you can't overstate how much the guy has deteriorated in eight years.
Or what is it?
Since 2008?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, 12 years.
Right.
2008 to 2020, 12 years.
So, but the 12 years have been a really rough 12 years from.
I mean, he just looks old and confused and like he's just not, you know, he was much more lucid back then when Obama was running for president.
So anyway, it'll be interesting.
We're going to watch it.
We'll have a recap episode here for you.
I'm excited.
I'm excited for the theater of all of it.
And yeah, it should be fun.
So everything has been nonsense up until this debate because Biden hasn't had to, the country hasn't had to face how much of an idiot Biden is.
This has all just been theoretical.
Can he swing this?
And now we're actually showing up to the debates and I'm saying, I don't think so.
Yeah.
Well, look, there's never been, and this is, I mean, without competition, there's never been in modern American history a presidential candidate who's been as hidden as Joe Biden has been.
Trump's out there.
I mean, he's the president of the United States of America.
He's doing press conferences.
He's doing events.
He's doing all the shit you would expect someone to do.
Okay, a little bit less than you would expect someone to do because of like COVID and the lockdowns and all this shit.
But he's out there.
Joe Biden has basically not, I mean, he's taken you could count on both your hands the amount of questions that Joe Biden has taken in the last three months.
Harry's Razors Shave Review00:02:22
He's not taking hostile questions.
There were a couple.
They're all from corporate press, you know, the establishment news outlets.
And he's done very, very limited events.
Now, you could, you know, you can, as they are trying to, use COVID as the excuse.
Well, this is why, you know, we have to be very safe.
But there's really no reason why he can't be on Zoom calls, taking tough questions, doing all of this shit.
And of course, they don't want him to.
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Politicians Avoiding Real Issues00:15:18
All right, let's get back into the show.
You know, there's a dynamic that Joe Biden also has that's true for a lot of people in the establishment.
And something I've noticed a lot, you know, we were briefly mentioned before we started recording that Nancy Pelosi moment where she spurged out.
What was she with Stephanie Nicholas?
Good morning.
Yeah.
Sunday morning.
It was very weird.
And I'll be honest, I don't know exactly what happened.
You know, our producer Brian was saying some people are speculating that her teleprompter reset or something like that, which who the hell knows it's possible.
But what it seemed like to me is that she was getting not what you could call tough questions, but she was getting not softball questions enough that it pissed her off.
And this is a dynamic that you see with a lot of these guys.
It's something that's really interesting.
Like a really interesting dynamic of politics in America over the last few years, where people, the establishment is so insulated that they are not used to people being disrespectful to them or what they even perceive as a slight, you know, like anything that's perceived as not praising them.
And they get frustrated with that.
Like they do not like that.
And Joe Biden's always been this way, always been this way.
He does not like when people, and this is why there's all those videos when, you know, it's like, forget like ABC News or something like that interviewing you.
They always ask you fairly easy questions.
But, you know, like the videos even before the lockdown stuff, where Joe Biden's at an event and one guy's like, you know, you're going to come for our guns or you're, you know, you sent my brother to go die in war or something like that.
And he like snaps and freaks out.
Like, he's not used to that shit.
Everywhere he goes for decades and decades, people have been kissing his ass.
And he's like, what the fuck is this?
You're not supposed to like fucking the nerve of you to be asking me a tough question or be pissed off at me.
And Trump, for all of his flaws, doesn't have that.
Trump just doesn't have that thing.
Trump's a New York guy who's just kind of like, yeah, whatever.
Come at me.
I don't give a shit.
He kind of enjoys the fight.
A lot of these other guys don't.
And that's going to be an interesting test of Joe Biden.
Biden's funny also when he does that because he's a thin, brittle old man and he gets in people's face, like, oh, you think you're so tough, man?
And it's like, no, I think you killed my brother.
Like, it's like, and no one's physically intimidated by you.
Yeah.
Like, what are you going to fucking do?
But he does.
He gets very in people's face.
He puts their hands up on a lot, chest up.
Yeah.
Very, like, that's his thing.
And the other thing that's that's all like kind of related to this dynamic.
And this is why I remember talking about this back with, you know, back in the day with like right-wingers debating like social justice warriors and stuff like that.
Even the stuff where like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson or whoever, you know, the Charlie Kirk types would go to college campuses and just like all if you remember back in like 2016, 2017, the social justice warrior owned videos were huge,
you know, and you would see this like you had these kids for the most part, 20-year-olds, you know, and they're in this world where like they're in a college campus and opposing ideas to their own are pretty much labeled as violence.
You know, like this would, you know, be something that would be protested.
They would shut down dissenting voices.
If anyone was ever going to talk about a dissenting voice, like a professor or something like that, even if they were going to mention the dissenting voice in a really disparaging way, like they were going to be like, look at this awful person who disagreed with you.
They'd probably have to have a trigger warning before they got into disparaging this dissenting voice.
And so they're so insulated that there's this tremendous atrophy of their arguments.
You know, as if like somebody was like, you know, we're going to create a situation where your muscles can never, you know, experience any pain.
And like, okay, but then you come out of that pretty weak.
Like you're not going to come out of that a strong guy.
The way you get strong is your muscles, you know, feeling pain.
So they would just get destroyed.
I mean, because they're not used to like nobody's ever confronted their arguments before.
And the only way you get really good at defending your positions is to constantly be, you know, dealing with the counter arguments.
And so they just had none of that.
And then, of course, those guys, the weird dynamic is those Ben Shapiro types, their arguments got really weak because they were only beating up, you know, children.
And so they couldn't really defend them against strong people.
But there's something to that whole dynamic with establishment politicians.
And it's something they've really struggled with.
Like Hillary Clinton basically thought she could scoff her way out of all of the arguments against her.
Well, obviously, I'm the serious person and this guy's just an idiot.
It's like, well, why are you the serious person?
And it's like, well, because look at him.
And then you'd be like, wow, she really doesn't have much of an argument.
And another, you know, so this is a big dynamic, whereas Donald Trump, someone like Trump, is just every single day bombarded with arguments against him.
And whether you agree with him or agree with the reporter who's in his face trying to make him look bad, Donald Trump is fighting.
He's constantly in the ring.
Every time Donald Trump does a press conference, and he's done so many since he's been president, it is a more hostile experience than anything Joe Biden's ever had in his political career.
Joe Biden's never had an experience as hostile as one Trump press conference.
You've never seen that before.
Show me a video that's a fraction as hostile, where there's just reporters from all around the room all attacking Joe Biden.
Now, Trump has battled with that over and over again.
And this becomes his advantage in these types of situations that he's constantly, you know, I mean, it's just like, it's like sparring, you know?
It's like if two people are about to get into a fist fight and one of them has been in a boxing ring sparring every single day for the last year and the other one has never been in a fist fight, that's a pretty big advantage to the guy who spars a lot, like a huge advantage.
And so there is just this dynamic where like there's a lot of the establishment politicians don't know how to fight anymore.
And they haven't practiced.
Also, something that's really changed, and I think that this is a big part of why like a big part of everything that's wrong in our country right now is that establishment politicians.
And when I say this, I mean like, you know, liberal Democrats or neoliberal Democrats, neoconservative Republicans, there's, you know, the basic party establishment types.
None of them ever want to talk about issues anymore.
And part of this is because the establishment has failed.
They've failed in every conceivable way.
I mean, what would you want to talk about?
I mean, Joe Biden's got a long track record.
He's got over three decades of being in Congress and the vice president.
These are like, you know, he was a senator and the vice president.
These are powerful positions.
And he's got a long track record.
Well, what about it does he want to talk about?
Does he want to talk about his foreign policy track record?
Where he, you know, was a like loud supporter of the war in Iraq.
He probably doesn't want to talk about that.
Does he want to talk about Obama's foreign policy?
Does he want to talk about surging troops in Afghanistan and overthrowing Gaddafi and Libya and entering a civil war in Syria, really starting a civil war, but they'd say entering a civil war.
Does he want to talk about Yemen?
He doesn't want to talk about any of that shit.
Does he want to talk about his crime bill in the 90s?
Does he want, I mean, even that stuff that they would brag about back then, you can't really talk about anymore.
And so a lot of these things are, they're just, there's nothing really there that they can bring up.
Biden wants to talk about evil forces, Trump's lack of compassion, and because since he's such a nice guy who can relate to the common man, that's going to solve everything.
Yeah, but there's right, exactly.
But part of the reason why he wants to talk about shit like that is because there's no real issues that he can bring up where he feels like he has a win.
Now, there will be some issues that he could say, oh, Trump did a really bad job on this.
But one of the things that I thought was interesting in 2016 at the debates with Hillary Clinton was that Hillary Clinton would be saying, I mean, she would say this, but it would just be the general spirit of her pitch that everybody, all her surrogates would say, was basically like, well, Donald Trump's a buffoon.
Hillary Clinton knows what she's talking about.
I mean, Hillary Clinton is actually, and there was some kernel of truth to that.
Like there was, look, no one really doubted that Hillary Clinton had a deeper understanding of how public policy works than Donald Trump.
Like Hillary Clinton, for all the things you would accuse her of, she's read the briefings.
You know what I mean?
Like she knows what's actually going on here.
But then when it would get down to the debates, Donald Trump was actually more interested in talking about issues than she was.
And she would do a lot of these.
I remember her just being asked questions like, well, how do you solve the problem of, you know, whatever, police brutality or something like that?
And she'd be like, better training, bringing in the community.
You know, it's like all her answers would be like better jobs with higher wages.
And it'd be like, yeah, yeah, but how are you going to do that?
And even if you think Trump was wrong, Trump was like, had an answer to that.
Mexico will pay.
Mexico will pay.
We're going to pull out of the trade deals with China.
We're going to build a wall so immigrants won't come in and lower your wages.
We're not going to fight these wars.
Like he wanted to talk about these policies.
Now, he'd also get distracted and get into other bullshit, but it's hard.
Like I noticed very clearly when Bernie Sanders was competing with Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.
One of the things that jumped out to you right away was that Bernie Sanders really wanted to talk about issues and policies.
Now, anything that had to do with economics, he was terrible on, but you have to at least credit him that he wanted to talk about stuff.
Like if you asked Bernie Sanders why he should, you know, why he should have the nomination and not Joe Biden, he would very clearly be like, look, Joe Biden voted for the war in Iraq.
I voted against that war.
I believe in universal health care.
Healthcare is a human right.
Joe Biden doesn't believe in that.
I believe in raising the minimum wage to $15.
Joe Biden doesn't believe in that.
I believe in forgiving all student loan debt.
Joe Biden doesn't believe in that.
Like it was, whether you agree with the issues or not, it was like issue, issue, issue, issue.
And for the most part, Bernie Sanders' issues were more popular with the Democratic base than Joe Biden's issues were.
That's just the reality.
Joe Biden, if you ask him what, you know, why he should have the Democratic nomination, he'd be like, it's a war for the soul of America.
And Donald Trump, who's the guy who can win?
And who's the guy who it's like, doesn't really seem to want to talk about issues.
Now, this is also something that's changed in my lifetime.
I mean, I remember a time when establishment politicians did want to talk about issues and they would brag about that.
Like there was a time when Joe Biden would brag about his 90s crime bill.
You know, he'd be like, look, we reduced crime with this bill or look, whatever.
There was a time actually right after Libya where Hillary Clinton wanted to brag about Libya.
Like right after Gaddafi was overthrown, Hillary Clinton and her people were out there bragging about it.
Like, look, you idiot George W. Bush, this is how you do regime change.
You don't fucking send in the army and spend a trillion dollars.
You fucking go in there.
You fucking, you know, take the guy out.
And boom, we got the result we wanted.
And we don't even have this disaster on our hand.
This is, there were articles written about this.
This was smart regime change and this is how it works.
Now, why did Hillary Clinton not want to talk about that by 2016?
Well, because it had been a fucking disaster.
You know, it had been a fucking disaster.
And there was like slave markets in the country.
So she could hardly brag about what a great thing it was.
It's like the country was a failed state.
There were, you know, floods of refugees pouring into Europe.
And there's fucking slavery in the country.
So, yeah, she stopped talking.
And that's the same reason why the establishment politicians have nothing to talk about now, because it's all been a failure.
It's all a big fat failure.
What's Joe Biden going to say?
Oh, yeah, look, we ramped up the police presence and we started throwing people in jail for victimless crimes.
And look how well it worked out.
And you'd be like, there's fucking protests and riots all throughout the country because people hate this so much.
So he can't own any of that.
And so this is why the essence of why Charlottesville is what Joe Biden's talking about.
He's still talking about it, which is the most hypocritical thing ever.
It was years ago, and the basis was, hey, look, there's going to be this violent revolution of racists or look at how many racists are.
Meanwhile, you got fucking liberals in every, you know, major city, not every major city, but in some of the biggest cities in America burning it literally every single weekend and actually causing violent protests and a violent trend towards socialism without comment.
It is like, that is like the hypocrisy of our lifetime.
Dude, to talk about an event, and look, there's no question, like Charlottesville was a shit show.
I mean, it was horrible.
Like a woman died there.
You know, she was hit by this car.
The guy was convicted of murder.
There were lots of fights and people were assaulted and pepper sprayed.
And the truth is, there were three groups involved.
There were the alt-right guys, there were the Antifa guys, and there were the cops.
And, you know, like, whatever.
It's a little bit more complicated than they want to make it, but whatever.
This is in 2017.
It's 2020 and there are events far worse than this going on all over.
And you're talking about the one from 2017.
Like, oh my God, it was this terrible thing.
And to your point, that one didn't spread.
You know what I mean?
Like these are spreading all throughout the country.
So it's really like fucking.
That was a proof.
Like that was a false narrative that they tried to ran with and had success for about two years.
But now it's as certifiably false as the Russia collusion thing.
Charlottesville Violence Explained00:02:48
Like we went through that.
You dominated the news with it.
It was propaganda.
And after two years, we found out like it was certifiably false.
The same with Charlottesville.
It is certifiably false that there's some racial tide in this country that Trump is leading the charge on and is going to drastically change the fabric of our country because there's so many evil racists.
You tried playing that card and for two years you went.
You won.
You got that on the news on a nightly basis.
You got to call Trump horrible for being racist.
You might have even flipped some of the Congress on account of that kind of a narrative.
You guys play, but now it's just false and you're still running with it, which is funny, especially considering the fact that there are liberal people you won't condemn that are currently burning down cities.
Yeah.
And, you know, so it's, and of course, like I'd have to imagine.
Oh, there's Optimum.
Chiming in.
And of course, I'd have to, you know, imagine that for a whole lot of voters in this country, like this shit, that just doesn't matter to them.
Like they're much more concerned with things like, you know, the future of the economy.
Like what's going to happen with my job?
What's going on with my kids' school?
Why are my health care bills so high?
You know what I mean?
Like why?
And they are concerned about the violence that's actually, you know, might be spreading into where they live.
It's funny.
Even black people would agree with that.
They'd be like, yeah, I don't care about the thousand racists in Charlottesville.
Can I go back to work?
Yeah.
You can get me healthcare.
Like even them, I don't like, you know, the only people that are concerned about that are the same people that are using that as the example for why they get to be in Tifa and in cities working on account of other people while both doing violence in the name of anti-violence.
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
And so, of course, now there's this.
So what they try to do, the establishment type politicians like Joe Biden, is now they try to have a mix of talking about how horrible Donald Trump is and then vague assertions that they will make life better for you.
You know, they don't really want to get into the details of policies, but they want, you know, it's like, well, we'll fix healthcare.
We would have done better with the pandemic.
We'll do this and that.
But look how uniquely evil Donald Trump is.
And it just leaves them in a position where it's hard to make a very compelling argument.
And this is one aspect.
It's part of the reason why the figures like Bernie Sanders are able to get so much traction and figures like Donald Trump, obviously.
The outsiders usually really want to talk about policy issues.
Say whatever you want to about even the really, really dumb ones.
Like AOC wants to talk about policy.
Trump's Power Grab Excuses00:17:24
She does.
Our policy would probably starve half the country, but she wants to talk about the Green New Deal.
Get rid of electricity and like everyone can have money, but without electricity, and it'll be green.
It'll be so green.
Right.
But I mean, say, say whatever you want to about that wing.
They're not just talking about, you know, like nonsense.
Like, AOC isn't just going to talk about Charlottesville for a half hour if she gives a speech.
She's going to talk about like, you know, abolishing police or whatever, you know, like it'll be something else.
So anyway, it's going to be interesting to see what happens at these debates.
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All right, let's get back in the show.
One of the other things, of course, is that, you know, the politicians in general tend to just be vague and make promises.
So you just, it becomes weird when they have to meet with Donald Trump.
And of course, Donald Trump, for whatever, you know, whatever weird recipe of fucking genetics and, you know, experience Donald Trump has had that has led to the creation of this extraordinarily weird human being, which Donald Trump really is.
It's just a bizarre human being.
We all need to buy ourselves beautiful European women because maybe it's just smashing that every night just really makes you feel like a winner.
I don't know what it is, but Donald Trump is a truly unique person.
Like he just isn't like anyone else you've ever met.
He doesn't look like them.
His skin, his hair, the way he walks, the way he dresses, the way he speaks, it's all different and unique and just bizarre.
But he is tough to grapple with in these things.
He's got this weird combination of shamelessness, confidence, and viciousness that make it very hard to take him on in a debate.
And as I've talked about before on the show, Joe Biden ends up getting stuck in this tough position that everybody who debates Donald Trump is stuck in.
And that's that you can't, you kind of have to walk this tightrope.
And it's not even a tightrope.
You have to go one way or the other.
You can't, obviously, it's not an option to not be hostile to Donald Trump.
You can't like Joe Biden couldn't get up there and just be like, look, I respect the guy.
I think he's a good guy.
We just have a different vision for how we should govern the country.
He'd collapse in the polls if he said that because his entire base is like, what?
No.
The whole point is that this guy is uniquely evil, literally Hitler.
You know, like you got to, you can't like debate Hitler and say, well, I think he's a good guy, but I just, we have different policies on the Jews.
You know what I mean?
Like you have to call him out as uniquely evil.
So then you have to do that.
But if you do that, then you open the door for Trump to fight you.
You know, like, I mean, not physically, obviously, but like you open the door.
If you go up and go, hey, you're a fucking evil person.
Well, then that person kind of has now the green light to be like, no, fuck you.
You're an evil person, you know, and go for it.
And then it's like, you actually have to argue that he's a uniquely evil person.
And it's pretty tough.
I mean, it's like, and Donald Trump, once it gets into a nasty exchange, he can always be more vicious and more nasty.
And so, you know, there's something, this is part of the reason why Donald Trump was able to, you know, do have such good performances in all of those debates.
And when I say good performances, you may not even, you know, if you were judging it like academically as a debate, you might say he did terrible.
Or if you were like, you know, if you don't like Donald Trump, you say he embarrassed himself.
But my point is just that he had performances and then went on to win elections after, you know, like in the primary and in the general election.
And part of it is because once you get into a nasty fight with Donald Trump, you're now in Donald Trump's realm.
And you have no other option except to get into this nasty fight with Donald Trump.
But once you're down in the mud, slinging mud at each other with Donald Trump, well, now you can't really have this like, well, Donald Trump's down in the mud and I'm up here.
You know what I mean?
Because you're down in the mud with him too.
And that's where he makes sense being down in the mud.
As I always remember, it was one of the most interesting moments and just insane and hilarious moments in presidential debate history.
But when he finally got Marco Rubio, who was running as like, you know, okay, well, Jeb Bush was supposed to be the guy.
He collapsed, but I'm the serious, you know, guy who the establishment likes.
I'm a real politician and I know my stuff or whatever his campaign was about.
And when he said the thing about Donald Trump's tiny hands and he goes, oh, if he has tiny hands, you know what that means.
And you're kind of like, oh, what are you doing?
Marco Rubio?
Are you making little dick jokes?
And then Donald Trump's there and he's like, oh, you think these hands are literally look at his giant hands.
And, you know, he said, my dick smelled too.
And I assure you, I've got a big, huge cock that I'll slap down on the table right now.
Not exactly those words, but it was more or less, that's more or less what the president of the United States said at a debate.
So part of you is like, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening.
But it's kind of like that type of conversation is about where you'd put Donald Trump.
You're like, yeah, that's about right.
Donald Trump's the guy who goes on Howard Stern and brags about banging models.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's who Donald Trump is.
But Marco Rubio, you're not supposed to be that guy at all.
So now all of those arguments about I'm the serious one and Donald Trump is just a child.
It's like, well, you're all children.
So I might as well listen to what the child has to say.
You know what I mean?
Like that's, and so Joe Biden is, I don't know how, what the antidote to that is.
Like, how do you avoid getting down in the mud with Donald Trump?
And then you're just as bad as him, or at least that's the way the perception is.
So Joe Biden has his work cut out for him.
All right.
So one other thing.
So let's move on because I wanted to get your thoughts because I did an episode on the whole Supreme Court justice shit.
That's going to be one of the topics at the debate, of course.
Um, uh, I haven't really heard from you about it yet, but I'm curious.
What do you think about uh um this this fight for SCODUS now?
RBG is Arby dead, and uh, now I'm surprised they didn't pretend she was alive for two months more.
I mean, that's all it would take.
How is there no conversation about how is she keeping that post half half alive for like the last is that really supposed to be a part of it?
Where if you can't do the job, you hang around.
It's such political that like you're not supposed to flip the seat, you gotta, you gotta live a miserable life and not leave if you got cancer and can't do the job.
No one's talking about that part of this, yeah, no one.
Oh, no, it's true.
That's also I put this up on Twitter and I stand by it, but now Trump's got to put up a lady.
And if the Democrats are uh looking or auditioning people to claim that she sexually abused them, I'm game.
I'll get I'll get up on that stage.
Yeah, what does that gig pay?
You get up there and cry and make a whole thing.
I'll talk about how bad my life's been since it happened.
There's plenty of things to point to.
I can paint a picture.
I lost my hair for God's sake.
They're just going to come up there with a box of dominoes pizza and just eat it.
Yeah, fucking life's pretty rough.
Yeah, I guess, you know, the thing that really stands out to me, right, and that I've been thinking about later lately, and I was tweeting a little bit about this.
I kind of talked about this in the last episode, but is just how much, and I've talked about this a lot with respect to democracy, like how people who claim to love democracy really don't believe in democracy.
And even like some hardcore democratic socialist, you know, who's like really hangs their hat on democracy.
Now, we're socialists, but we believe so much in democracy.
And that's why we're better than the other authoritarian socialists and all this stuff.
It's like, okay, but let's just say that you had one candidate running who wanted to universal health care and was going to protect union rights and go down the list, all the great things you want.
And then one other candidate who was going to, you know, abolish universal health care, privatize like half the government's property, is going to shred, you know, collective bargaining and all this stuff.
If they got, if that bad candidate got 55% of the vote and the other one got 45%, wouldn't you kind of just like that guy to get in anyway?
Like, really?
Do you care so much about the will of the people, the democratic process, and all this?
And it's just to me, for anyone who isn't just like blindly locked into partisanship, isn't it just so obvious?
Like, could anyone really deny that if roles were reversed and Ruth Bader-Ginsburg died and there was a Democratic president and a Democratic-controlled Senate, that they wouldn't push this forward?
Does anyone really deny?
Like, could anyone doubt that?
And vice versa, what would the Republicans be saying in that situation?
This is an outrage.
We should wait till the election.
They would so easily just adopt the other one's talking points because it's a naked power grab.
That's all this is about.
There's no principle involved.
And they just use principle to the extent that it's a tool to grab more power.
And this is true all around.
And I think it's something that really disgusts a lot of people.
But look, if Donald Trump had won the popular vote and Hillary Clinton had gotten in through the Electoral College, about 99% of the people making arguments on one side or the other would just flip.
They would simply adopt the other one's arguments.
You would have Republicans arguing for why the Electoral College has to go because the will of the people has not been, you know, impacted, like, has not been heard or felt or whatever.
The Democrats would be defending the Electoral College.
They would simply take the other one's argument and just use it for themselves.
It's truly a revealing moment of how full of shit they all are.
And that's fine.
You can have whatever feelings about that that you have, but at least be honest about it.
This is all bullshit and they are lying through their teeth in the most obvious ways.
Specifically in regards to the Supreme Court, it should be outside of politics and that the point is supposed to be that there's like these are experts that are going to interpret the law in terms of like the way the Constitution intended.
And so that's going to keep kind of the idiots of the voting public in check or, you know, the politicians in check.
But if it just comes down to gamemanship and, you know, luck, then it really isn't some independent thing where it's like, well, we're going to have this other thing that's really just going to tell us what the law was supposed to be.
Well, they're going to interpret the law based on the polit, like, to some extent, the political party that managed to get them in.
You know what I mean?
So it's like, it's not a very, it's, it's a really dumb framework.
It doesn't allow for this other thing to exist.
Like either they should almost just be voted in because then they reflect the voters and then maybe we have more control over that or it becomes the same freak show.
So it's stupid.
Or it really, the politicians shouldn't have that much influence over it because it should be objective law.
It should be this different thing, which clearly it isn't.
So, you know, just more of why our democracy is fucking dumb.
Yeah.
Well, there's, you know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dying really has exposed for those people who are not in the cult, how much of a cult this whole thing is.
It's a very strange man.
Like people really just project all types of emotions and feelings onto these leaders and then will fucking die to defend those views that they have.
But I've seen so many people who are like saying things along the line of like, they go, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was so great because she always voted her conscience or something like that.
And you're like, yeah, but that's not what the job is.
Like that's, it's not at all what the job is.
You're supposed to be upholding the Constitution.
You swore an oath to this.
You know, I could just vote how you feel.
And then all this stuff where one of the things that's really disturbing is where you see these protests and even like some mini riots over Ruth Bader Ginsburg dying.
And you're like, guys, so is this just what we do now as a country?
There's anytime something happens that you don't like, we're going to be out in the streets over it.
You know, I've earlier this year kind of questioned the whole idea of protesting and whether or not, not that it shouldn't be legal.
I mean, you know, people have a right to fucking march around and say what they want.
Violence certainly shouldn't be legal.
But just like feeling like this is just stupid, like in the technological age, aren't there better ways to get your message out there?
And like, what exactly are you doing here and all this?
But look, I'm sure there are some situations where I'd be like, oh, a protest here is good or something like that.
But can't we accept that the answer to everything can't be protests?
Like the like, it can't just be like we're getting out in the streets over every single issue that we disagree on.
This is not something crazy or shocking.
This was a nearly 90-year-old sick woman dying.
It's like, oh, okay.
And all this stuff about like her final wish being to fucking, like, this is a legitimate argument that people are making.
Not legitimate.
This is a, this is an argument that people are actually making.
That her final wish was to wait for a new president.
So we must honor her final wish.
And of course, this also just falls into the same category of what I was saying, just bullshit justification for power grabs.
Do not tell me for one second if fucking Anthony Scalia's final wish was that, you know, a Republican fucking appoint the next judge, that they would have been like, okay, yeah, let's honor this guy's final wish.
Like, you don't fucking care.
And also, it's a good idea.
That final wish is that offspring should get money and blowjobs.
Yeah, right.
Oh, by the way, that's a more noble final wish.
I mean, like, you would really think that it is truly sad if your final wish was about politics at all.
Like, I would think your final wish would be about family.
They've been in and tried to hang on for dear life just so that they could get another Democrat in there.
Yeah.
I mean, that's been her existence now for five years.
It's sad.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
So anyway, that'll be, you know, there'll be another circus distraction and then something else for them to talk about in fucking in the debates.
But, you know, the truth is they're all fucking hypocrites.
They'd all be saying the exact opposite thing if roles were reversed.
And obviously the Merrick Garland situation when Obama nominated him was in exactly the same situation.
It was earlier before the election.
But they didn't control the Senate.
They didn't have the Senate.
That's all it came down to, yeah.
That's it.
That's it.
Player didn't have the Senate.
And the Senate was like, yeah, well, look, we're not going to confirm this guy, so we're not even going to bother hearing this.
We're going to wait till the election.
Now, if the Democrats had the Senate at the time, Merrick Garland would be on the Supreme Court right now.
It's that simple.
That's all this comes down to.
I mean, it's really like the...
Also, if they won the election, did they win the election?
I don't remember now.
What election?
Like, did they win the next presidential election?
No, that was Trump.
Oh, yeah.
This was leading into 2016.
So they all thought it'd be Hillary Clinton, but, you know, they were wrong.
And that's what happened.
Self-Defense Lawsuit Questions00:06:10
Okay, so we're coming up toward the end of time, but I did want to just discuss for a few minutes the new video footage in the Kyle Rittenhouse case that came out.
It's pretty interesting.
I got to say, I feel kind of justified in taking the position, which I, you know, I was justified immediately, but when we took the position that you're like, you just can't make a clear, you know, decision about these things.
And basically what we were saying is that it seemed like there was a pretty strong argument that there was self-defense in the last two people who he shot, but we didn't really see what led to the fucking shooting to begin with.
Kyle Rittenhouse's team of lawyers put out more video that's been found that was from before that.
And it seems to me that this was really good for his defense.
Is that just the guy chasing after him and throwing the bag?
It's more than that.
What you see is before the whole incident, you see before he starts running, he's surrounded by a bunch of people in the mob.
There are shots fired from somebody in the mob that are not coming from him.
And then he's, you know, they start kind of surrounding him and stalking him.
He fires.
He starts running.
He gets hit as he's running, actually punched by some guy, then runs trips and falls and all the stuff that you've already seen.
So what you have now in this case, I got to say this.
This would be my guess looking into it.
And it's funny where these other cases where people jump in right away with little information and people have no problem with you.
Like, you know, look, the Garrett Foster case where you have the Libertarian Party saying he died protecting people while pushing his handicapped girlfriend.
And you're like, I don't know.
He ran up to a car with a gun.
He was on camera earlier that day saying, yeah, these pussies aren't going to do anything about it.
He wasn't pushing his girlfriend across the street.
I mean, maybe he was trying to protect other people.
Who the fuck knows what's in this guy's head?
Maybe that was it.
Or maybe it was like, I'm going to go fucking get me some.
Maybe that's what was in his head.
We don't really fucking know.
But in this case, I got to say, listening to the video of this kid earlier in the day where he's saying, hey, I'm coming out here to just try to help people.
I've got this medical kit.
I've got this other stuff.
Now you've seen photographs of him wiping off spray paint on the side of businesses.
Now we said another thing you saw in this video was that there's a fire set at one point.
And you see one of the guys setting the fire is one of the people who was involved in the altercation with him.
He runs over with a fire extinguisher.
So he's going to put out a fire, quite literally, putting out a fire here.
And then you see the fact that there are other people shooting, that he's surrounded, that he tries to run away, that he's chased by this mob.
Now, I don't know.
Again, this is why you have to have a whole trial over these things.
But I got to say, here's how I'm leaning on this.
Number one, I think the fact that he's charged with murder one is insane.
And there's no way they're going to be able to convict this guy for murder in the first degree.
The idea that this was premeditated and that he went there to kill people, I think is going to be next to impossible to prove.
And number two, I think there's a very good chance that this kid has quite a defamation lawsuit on his hands against many members of the corporate press who called him a white supremacist, basically said he was guilty of murder, all of these things seems very unclear.
Look, the environment was basically a mini war zone.
And that's not a good environment to be in.
Certainly, as we said before, I don't think it's smart for a 17-year-old to go there without some backup.
But it doesn't, it seems to me from all the evidence that's come out right now, murder one would be very hard, very hard to convince a jury of.
But who knows?
We'll see.
One of the other things that's interesting is that there was so much social media censorship about people defending him, people trying to raise money for him, all of this other shit.
And how much the media, you know, it's like one more example of where people in the media are just like they're just looking to push their narrative and they don't seem to care if actual human lives are like destroyed in the process.
It's at the at the very least, you know, you'd have to say it's like the guy was in a crazy situation.
He was clearly threatened.
He was assaulted.
He was running away.
It's not until he falls on the ground and fucking other people come in like attacking him that he ends up like, you know, shooting that one guy and killing the two others.
It's unclear.
You know, there's certainly, it's certainly not clear that he wanted to be in that situation, that he wanted to kill anybody.
And the people who were running at him were like convicted of like fucked up shit.
And, you know, just seems like, seems like there's a pretty strong argument there.
That's also an interesting potential Facebook lawsuit that lets like, let's say he totally gets off the hook.
So then what grounds did, like retroactively, what grounds did Facebook have to censor funds for his lawsuit if he turns out to have been right?
And they did.
I wonder if they can be held responsible.
I mean, they own the platform, so perhaps not, but it seems.
Yeah.
No, I don't know enough about the law, but that is an interesting question.
But I do know, you know, that defamation lawsuits, suing for libel in this case is, you know they're not easy to win, but the fact that he's 17, I think, makes it a little bit easier.
Facebook Censorship Liability00:00:54
And that is pretty.
You know, when you're, if you're uh on trial for murder and you have uh newspapers calling you a white supremacist and basically saying that you went there for this reason, you know that that could be pretty damaging and uh they're, they're spreading it publicly.
It it does seem at this case to be false uh information and, believe me, i'm not a big fan or a fan of uh, uh libel and slander uh laws to begin with.
But just saying that kid uh the um, what's his name?
Sandman guy, he settled out, uh settled with these companies.
So that might be next.
We'll see um.
But anyway, that's our uh, that's our show for today.
Thank you, fine people, very much for listening.
Go check out Rob's podcast, Run Your Mouth, and follow him on Twitter at RobbyTheFire.