Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the election, criticizing Kamala Harris's reliance on identitarianism over policy specifics regarding socialism and Medicare for all. They defend Ron Paul against racism accusations while exposing Michael Bloomberg's influence in Florida and contrasting Trump's unedited 60 Minutes release with perceived media bias. Ultimately, the hosts argue politics is purely about power and winning, dismissing genuine democratic process as secondary to electoral victory. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Stamps.com Shipping Savings00:01:24
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Trump Re-election Confidence00:11:32
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.
I am the Libertarian Tupac, Dave Smith.
He is the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
We are one week out.
Actually, eight days as we're recording this, but by the time you guys are hearing it, probably about a week out from the presidential election, the biggest election of our lifetimes.
Getting down to the nitty-gritty here.
And we've got some stuff to talk about in regards to all of this.
So, how are you doing, Rob?
I'm doing pretty good.
And I'm still waiting on that kitty porn.
I feel like maybe it's the wrong term, but you know.
Doesn't sound great taken out of context.
Well, maybe they didn't blow their load early enough here.
There's 60 million mail voters.
Also, not the best line to use when referring to kitty porn, but sure.
Sometimes, you know, you got to get it out there early.
People are excited for it.
If you got it, you got to release it.
I don't know what they're waiting for at this point.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know what's going on.
It's like part of me says that nothing like this is going to come out at this point.
It's a week left.
If there's any type of FBI investigation, it's going to take a long time or it'll probably just get buried.
But I'll refer back to that thing Jake Tapper said when it really seemed like he was priming his audience for some of this shit to come out.
Who knows?
We will see.
I'll say right now, I still, how I feel about the election, I probably haven't changed in my recent prediction.
Like I said, gun to the head.
I'd bet Donald Trump gets reelected.
But no gun to the head, I probably wouldn't bet because it's pretty, I think it's pretty close.
And I think that all the votes by mail, it's quite possible we're not going to know who the president is and it'll go to lawyers and all of this stuff.
But I'd say I might be getting just a little bit more confident that Donald Trump's going to get re-elected.
Maybe from like 51 to 52, 53%.
Sure, Donald Trump's going to get re-elected.
What are your thoughts?
If you had to make a prediction a week out, how do you see this going?
You know, it's so odd to me that your confidence in Trump is growing.
So I don't know.
I really thought that I'm surprised that Biden has gotten through this as well as he has.
And there was a great gaff today of him making some.
Did you see that?
Yeah, we're going to play the video.
Okay, sorry.
So we'll get to that soon enough, but I can't believe he got through the debates without a major gaffe.
I just, I can't.
I'm who the fuck knew Corona was coming to be able to hang out in his basement as long as he did.
Who knew that there was going to be so much mail-in voting so that even if there's an October surprise, like maybe they didn't get that out soon enough?
So there aren't enough voters.
Also, I'm really curious to see how the whole thing's going to play out with Bloomberg, who bought basically a million votes in Florida.
I don't know if you saw that, but he paid up the debts of a lot of felons that they could able, which to me, it's kind of bribery because you've now really literally paid off their debts so that they'll go and vote.
So I don't know how that might affect things.
The answer is, dude, I'm also, I'm also just for some reason, I don't see Trump losing, but Biden seems to have a little more momentum.
I don't know.
I can't call it.
Well, it is funny, but the Bloomberg thing where he was basically paying off all these felons' debt so that they'd be eligible to vote.
And all of a sudden, you know, you just hear silence from the left about billionaires buying election influence and stuff like that, which is just pretty funny that it's one of these things like democracy where nobody really believes in any of it.
And that's, look, this is the truth, right?
Politics and government is about power.
That's what it's about by its very nature.
And people try to spin all of these kind of webs about what they really believe in and to try to convince you that this game is something other than what the game is.
But so the reason why, like, obviously, this even needs to be said, but the reason why you won't hear any outrage from the left about billionaires having unequal access or unequal influence, I should say, in the election process.
Well, why is it?
It's because he's supporting their guy.
That's it.
That's as simple as it's as simple as that.
It's like, oh, well, we don't care about that because it's on our side.
This is why you'll hear, you know, one group of people ranting about the Koch brothers and a different group of people ranting about George Soros.
But you'll pretty rarely hear people coming out against their own billionaires who are influencing elections because they like that influence.
It's just like democracy.
If anybody on the left who tells you something about how great democracy is or Russia undermining our democracy or anything like that, who of them have ever complained about the fact that gay marriage was crammed down 20-something states by the Supreme Court?
I don't interested in having a vote on gay marriage because they won.
It's about getting, it's about winning and losing.
It's not about the process of how you get there.
And that's something that a lot of people don't like to think about, particularly a week out from a big election.
But that is the reality of the situation.
Politics and government are about power.
It's about winning and losing and really very little else.
And people pretend otherwise, but that's the reality.
Okay, so I did want to quickly mention before we get into stuff about the presidential election and other news of the day, there was a bit of a libertarian Twitter.
Wait, before that, you said you see momentum for Trump, but then you didn't tell us what you see.
Well, look, I'll say it like this.
And you know, Anthony Kumia said this to me.
We were talking the other day when he came into film Legion of Skanks.
Said this, and I thought it was an interesting point.
Uh, he said, by he asked, I suppose, by what other metric than the corporate press polls do you see Joe Biden winning?
What other metric is there in terms of the amount of people that Donald Trump's drawing to speeches in terms of enthusiasm, energy, all of this stuff?
And I really look around and I don't see all of the signs seem to be pointing toward a Trump reelection to me.
Again, I think it's really close, and there's so many variables in this election.
I just see, I think Donald Trump has been coming on stronger over the last few weeks.
And Joe Biden's been basically using the Biden strategy, which is kind of what you got at before: hang on, don't blow it, don't go outside too much.
You know, go outside the least amount you possibly can, take the least amount of questions.
Listen, it is somewhat remarkable, as you said, that he's managed to not blow it.
And I don't know if he could have gotten through a campaign, a traditional campaign where he actually had to go campaign.
But I just, my gut tells me when it, when it comes down to it, Trump's going to outperform the polls.
And if he outperforms these polls, he ends up winning and getting re-elected.
I could be wrong.
It's very close, but we'll see.
Yeah, I think that's no, it's funny.
I think that's fair because the last time around, we saw how disingenuous the polls are.
And a lot of that is that they know that people want to play for the winning teams.
They're trying to convince you that Biden is the winner, so that more people want to go and vote for Biden.
I think that's part of the game.
And the only thing that I might say against that, and I also think about that, am I buying into the propaganda that all I see on the news is saying basically Biden's winning, Biden's winning.
So you start just feeling that way.
But I think a lot of people will just show up and vote against somebody.
And I think the longer in office, the harder it is to win for the most part, because people just want to go out with the old, in with the new.
So the question in here, if you see how thin of a margin Trump won by, are some of these people just going to be fed up with what's going on and vote against him versus has Biden done something so stupid that they're more afraid of Biden, even though they don't like Trump?
Yeah, that's really kind of the core.
You know what I mean?
That's the core individual.
Are they flipping because they think Biden's going to lock them in their homes, which I don't know that we did a great job of exposing, or are they just going to vote against Trump because they're like, I really don't like what's happened over the last four years?
So who knows?
I think you're probably right that I still kind of feel Trump, but it's a close one.
Yeah, no, for sure.
I mean, I certainly think that Donald Trump has not run a fantastic campaign.
Like, I just, again, not saying, just analyzing the politics of it, not even whether I like what he's saying or don't like what he's saying.
But I'd give him like a B minus on his reelection campaign, whereas he ran an A campaign in 2016.
This is, it just seems to me like he did not, he should have gone, from my perspective, like just run hard against the lockdowns and hard against the riots.
And he really didn't do that.
And he had a big opportunity in the second debate to make it about that stuff.
And he didn't.
And, you know, the riots have kind of fizzled out.
I mean, there's still some crazy shit going on in Portland or whatever, but the riots have kind of fizzled out.
Coincidentally, right around the time when it started hurting Democrats in the polls, just kind of started to fizzle out.
But, you know, Donald Trump, I mean, they were asking about like, you know, race and police, and it was an easy pivot to make, and he didn't do it.
I also think that, you know, there's this stuff all over the place.
And Trump is, Trump is ill-equipped to actually take on the COVID hysteria.
He's, Donald Trump, in order to take it down, you actually have to like know a little bit about science.
Uh, you have to kind of be well read and know how to go chapter and verse, a little bit of like why this is wrong and why.
And he doesn't do that.
Donald Trump speaks in slogans, you know, like he and I mean there were things like here.
Let me pull this up because I saw this uh just recently because uh, the great TOM Woods uh retweeted something about this.
But okay, so they, so the THE LA Times right, they said um, let me see if I can see the date on this uh, but so they they, breaking California is expected to have an 89 increase uh, in hospitalization.
Protect Yourself With IP Vanish00:03:01
Hold on, one second.
Let me just pull this up so I have the uh the date there as well.
Um, so they said uh, a month ago, september 25th, so one month and one day ago, breaking California is expected to see an 89 increase in covid, 19 hospitalizations over the next month, amid growing signs that the spread of the coronavirus may be intensifying again.
State officials announced friday, okay, so a month ago they said, over the next month, they're expecting an 89 increase in covet, 19 hospitalizations.
That's, that's serious, you know, almost 90 increase in hospitalizations over the next month.
Well, it's been a month since they made that prediction and it's been a 14 decline.
There are there are little bits of information like this all over the place, where the experts who we're supposed to be trusting and listening to are getting it wrong, could be an honest mistake.
You know what I mean, but it's just.
It seems to me that, especially over the last week, you're now, as we're going into the election season, seeing a lot of covet hysteria come back and a lot of.
I mean Joe Biden himself said we're going to go into a dark winter and all of these things, and it's bullshit.
Like it's, it's almost all bullshit, and Trump has not been able to effectively uh, make that argument, in my opinion.
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Flawed Pandemic Predictions00:03:14
What Donald Trump, you know, what Donald Trump still has going for him is that he is still the biggest middle finger that you can throw at the establishment, the kind of left-wing cultural dominance, all of that stuff.
You know, he's still the big middle finger, but he hasn't run, I don't think, nearly as effective a campaign.
Yeah, there's some, there's something about this issue that for all other issues where he was able to say fake news, for some reason on this one, it became, well, you can't say that, like even on global warming type stuff, you go, all right, well, that's not all the scientists.
But when it came to this one, for some reason, where he was able to beat them and go, no, you're the ones that are lying.
He wasn't able to do that here.
One of the best examples was with the hydroxychlorine.
He even got, he got, that was the first Twitter censorship.
He got censored for retweeting a video.
It turned out that the news article that all like the news media outlets were saying that you're not allowed to talk about hydroxychlorine, it was totally falsified.
Well, the study actually got retracted by the people who did the stalls.
Here's the other thing.
And you could look at this from one or two ways.
The initial health model that got everybody to close down because it predicted like 2.2 million deaths in the United States, that guy lost his job because he broke quarantine in the UK and to have an affair.
And so he lost his job and he had predictive models for everything before this that all turned out to be wrong.
Now, that predictive model, Trump turned that one around because now he likes to use it that, oh, well, they were saying $2.2 million deaths.
So what do you, I'm 2.2 million deaths.
So clearly I did a good job in terms of prevention because that's what you guys were talking about.
That thing was flawed from the outset.
So at every step of the way, while they've been yelling, you have to listen to the experts.
You can't question the scientists.
They've been consistently wrong, which is why you should have free speech and you should be able to question these people because they're lying.
These models have been wrong every step of the way.
Yeah, you know, the truth is that the idea, right, like look in Sweden, they were predicting when they didn't lock down their economy that they were going to have this drastic spike in cases.
There were predictions of close to 100,000 COVID deaths as a result of it.
None of this came true.
None of this.
There are around 6,000 deaths, not 98,000 or whatever was predicted.
You know, it's like they're not, they weren't off by a little bit.
They were off by a ton.
And I think what's become clear is that the initial, the justification for lockdowns, the initial justification of like, well, we just got to hold this thing off for 15 days so we don't overwhelm the hospital systems may have like in theory, there might be some justification for that.
But what we're realizing is that, listen, this isn't going to eliminate COVID as soon as you open up.
It's going to spread anyway.
It's not even that clear since it's not a true quarantine that it's really slowing down the spread of COVID in the meantime.
But yeah, I agree with you.
Trump has never really been able to prosecute this case.
And Fauci's been terrible.
And the media, that's why the media keeps playing him up as being like, oh, the loved doctor by the entire country, the world's foremost expert.
Paul And Libertarian Views00:15:10
Go see him sparring in these little videos with Rand Paul where Rand Paul's eating him alive and he keeps having to bell.
I've never said that.
I would never say such a thing.
We just make predictions and it's like, no, you're on the news every day and people are looking to you as the world's foremost health expert.
You're not allowed to be wishy-washy on these things.
You got to either stand by what you're saying or not say it.
Yeah.
And the moments when he said, you know, the one that was the craziest to me was when he was asked, I think it was Rand Paul who asked him, how do you feel about protesting?
No, it wasn't, I don't think it was Rand Paul.
Anyway, he was asked by some congressman whether he would condemn the protesting.
And he said, well, that's outside of my area of expertise.
It's like, but you've condemned everything else.
I mean, like, what?
All of a sudden, you were the one saying that you can't go to religious services and you can't go to all these other things, but protesting you can't comment on.
And that just proves what a hack he is and what, like, what a, um, that you're a political creature, not a medical creature.
Um, uh, you know, there's the point you made, which again is something, you know, that Trump is just not, and I understand because it's not as easy a case to prosecute as some of these other issues are.
Um, but the guy who did the modeling in England, who got caught going out to, you know, try to have an affair, um, there's been lots of examples of this all over the place and in different ways, whether, you know, the mayor of Chicago going to get her hair cut when she had banned everyone else from doing it, Nancy Pelosi not wearing her mask in the beauty salon.
Um, the, you know, Diane Feinstein was caught without a mask on as well.
Um, there's something about that that's really powerful that you'd have to find an effective way to express, you know, in a political campaign.
But there, there is this, it's like the old, uh, you know, the old Messesian praxeological argument was basically that you can deduce things from human action, that you can, you can look at what people do and deduce understandings of human beings from that, right?
And like, so the old like, you know, Missesian like train of logical thought, like from human action, like, okay, so if you, if you buy a hat for $10, Mises would say that you can deduce that you wanted that hat more than you wanted your $10, and that the guy selling it to you wanted your $10 more than he wanted the hat.
If you guys make this voluntary exchange, then it is reasonable that we can draw from that that you both wanted the other thing more.
Otherwise, why would you take this action?
Why would you exchange this, right?
And so what someone does oftentimes indicates more about what they really believe than what they say, you know, so like you could go buy a hat for $10 and tell me, I don't think this hat's worth $10.
But if you just went and bought it for $10, that kind of tells me on some more important level, you do believe it's worth $10, or otherwise you wouldn't have purchased it, right?
So in the same sense where you have this guy, if you're, you know, it's like, if you really believe that this virus is so deadly and this awful, why aren't you behaving in a way in accordance with that belief?
If Nancy Pelosi really believes it's so important to wear masks, why would she?
I mean, she's 186.
Why would she not be wearing a mask when she's out at the salon?
So there's something there that could be put into a powerful populist argument that I just think Donald Trump failed to make.
Again, he still might get re-elected despite all of that.
But the campaign certainly, I thought, left a lot to be desired.
On the other hand, I think honestly that Joe Biden has run about as good a campaign as he could.
That's not to say it was a great campaign, but as far as if you're working with Joe Biden, that's about as good as you can get out of Joe Biden.
He didn't have the major flubs.
There's been many minor ones.
He was able to avoid the media and not embarrass himself further.
Exactly like your grandfather.
He wants to drive to work every day, but you manage to keep him at home in the basement where he's safe and can't hurt other people.
That's exactly right.
And, you know, he's America's granddad.
Well, yes, he really is.
And obviously, if you're Joe Biden, what you'd want to do is make the election a referendum on Trump and not a choice between you and Trump.
And he's done to the best of their campaign's ability a decent job at doing that.
We'll see.
We'll see what happens.
I do have a feeling that it's going to be a wild week and that there'll be a lot of, you know, just like, you know.
Show me the kitty porn.
Not to me.
Don't actually show it to me.
I don't want to see it, but put it out.
Someone else look at it and confirm for me that it is, in fact, kitty porn.
Please don't give me too many details.
Do not show it to me.
Do not send it to me.
But aside from that, yeah, we'll see what happens.
Okay.
So, all right, well, let me let Just, since I kind of brought it up before a little bit, the, there was, so I was on Austin Peterson's radio show this morning.
I called in and we chatted for a few minutes about this Twitter drama that went down over the weekend.
Look, I know that a lot of people have a view of me that I enjoy libertarian infighting.
And okay, maybe there's some truth to that.
Maybe there is part of me that kind of enjoys this.
But I've tried my best to not start any of it.
I really have.
I don't go out of my way to attack other libertarians.
I've certainly, you know, I'm obviously critical of, say, like the Jorgensen-Cohen campaign.
But to me, that's a different thing.
That's like when you're running as the standard bearer of the liberty movement, I'm going to criticize you if I think you're not doing a good job spreading the message because I want to see it spread more effectively.
So I suppose you could point to that.
But in terms of like going after libertarians, you're not going to see a lot of that out of me.
I'm not here like trashing Reason Magazine or the Cato Institute or anything like that on a regular basis.
You know, if there's something in the news, I might criticize them if they did something I disagree with.
But in general, I try to not really go at people, but I just refuse to not play defense.
Like if we're attacked or good people around us are attacked, I will stand up for them.
Anyway, I think that that's fair.
So what happened was Austin Peterson tweeted that let me see if I can actually find the original tweet, just so I don't read it in the wrong way, recalling it from memory.
But it was something about Ron Paul supporters preferring Trump and Gary Johnson supporters preferring Biden.
Now, I don't know that that is 100% true, but here's what, so he said his tweet was Ron Paul libertarians prefer Trump.
Gary Johnson libertarians prefer Biden.
Now, I don't know if that's, it's certainly not 100% true, but that overall, he's probably got a point.
You know what I mean?
They're certainly, I would not support Donald Trump.
I'm not voting for Donald Trump.
But you could argue that I prefer him.
I certainly, the way I phrase it is I say, I think the Democrats deserve to lose more than Donald Trump does.
So that's, you know, whatever.
Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but to be fair to Austin, he didn't say Ron Paul libertarians support Trump or Ron Paul libertarians are voting for Trump.
And I think he chose his words intentionally.
He said they prefer Trump.
Now, he was somewhat vindicated when a day later, Bill Weld posted a long Twitter thread about how he voted for Biden and Kamala Harris.
Because he likes war.
So that's a better place to vote.
Well, that's right.
Just like all of these neocon hawks, that's who they're voting for.
And so, yeah, it's, you know, if he's saying Gary Johnson libertarians support Biden, it kind of makes him look somewhat vindicated that the guy who ran with Gary Johnson is bragging about how he voted for Joe Biden.
So there's that angle.
Now, what happened was Elizabeth Nolan Brown, who is a senior editor at Reason Magazine, who I do not believe I've ever met.
It's possible.
I've been to several Reason events and I've been to a lot of libertarian things.
So it's possible that I'm just not remembering and that we've met at some point over the years, but I don't think I've ever met her.
I don't think I've ever had a conversation with her.
I don't have anything against her.
Like I don't, I've read a few of her articles.
Some of them I like, some of them I didn't.
But I don't know.
I don't have a problem with her.
I don't have a problem with Reason Magazine.
I really, really like Matt and Nick.
I think they're both really good guys.
They've both been good to me and I appreciate that.
I've done several TV panels with Matt.
I enjoy having conversations with him.
I've grabbed a beer with him several times.
A good dude, really smart guy, really interesting guy and a nice person.
Nick, I know a little bit better.
And we've done a lot of stuff together.
He's been on the show a couple of times.
We've done other shows together.
He's at like every Soho forum debate and we always hang out and have a beer there and a good dude.
And they've been good to me.
I mean, like Nick interviewed me for Reason TV when my special came out and helped give me some promotion for that.
And I really am like, I'm a very loyal person.
And the fact that they've been good to me, I really appreciate that.
And so that, which, by the way, I think is where a lot of this, me having little libertarian beefs comes from is that I'm a very loyal person.
And if somebody goes after my friends or goes after my heroes, I tend to take that personally.
Now, so anyway, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, she's a senior editor at Reason Magazine.
She responded to Austin Peterson and said a whole lot of quote Ron Paul libertarians were never libertarian in the first place, which I didn't care for.
But I probably wouldn't have said anything if she hadn't made the second statement.
And she said, Ron Paul brought libertarians a wave of racist dingbats who like liberty in only a few areas from which we are still digging ourselves out.
Good the fuck riddens.
Keep crying, assholes.
Keep crying about or creep crying about this assholes.
Your growing irrelevance is delicious to the rest of us.
What's a ding bat?
I think a stupid person.
She was like the Joe Biden school of disses.
Yeah.
Well, it wasn't, it wasn't great.
Now, this I thought was like good ways.
Way uncalled for and shitty and just completely unfair.
I mean, like, number one, I don't even know how racist entered the conversation because Austin Peterson said that he thinks Ron Paul supporters prefer Trump.
That just seems to be the go-to insult of the cathedral.
But it seemed like all of it just seemed so crazy to me and really rubbed me the wrong way.
So I did respond.
By the way, I thought Bob Murphy, the great Bob Murphy, had the best response because, you know, the thing she said about we're still digging ourselves out from the hole Ron Paul gave us or whatever.
And Robert Murphy replied, he said, you guys had the welfare warfare state on its knees circa 2008 before Ron Paul set you back decades.
Look, the idea that Ron Paul set the liberty movement back or brought in a bunch of ding bets, he's objectively the most successful person the liberty movement has ever had.
There's just no arguing that.
I don't care what anyone says.
Even Ron Paul's critics know that that is the truth.
But it really bothered me that she referred to Ron Paul's supporters this way.
And so I'm sorry.
I mean, like, I'm not looking to get into feuds with libertarians for no reason, but I also don't think it's fair to expect me to just sit there while a senior editor at Reason slanders the Ron Paul movement as a wave of racists.
Like, that's completely unfair.
Now, I'm not suggesting that there's nobody who ever supported Ron Paul who was racist, whatever exactly the definition of racist means.
It seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
You know, there's lots of people who support Trump who are racist.
There's lots of people who support Biden who are racist.
I don't know.
You know, we're all a little bit racist, if we're being honest with ourselves.
Of course, it does seem to me that there is this game that is played where the left does not exactly play by the same rules of what's considered racist that the right does in general.
And Ron Paul, in these people's eyes, gets thrown into the right wing, even though I don't really think that's a fair way to characterize him.
But, you know, Joe Biden, you know, they'll be like, well, look at what, you know, Ron Paul wrote in his newsletters or what other people wrote under Ron Paul in Ron Paul's newsletters in the 90s.
And it's like, the 90s is like when Joe Biden was drafting the crime bill.
So I don't, you know, if you want to go back to the 90s, let's take a look at what like, you know, Joe Biden was actually doing.
Are you responsible for your YouTube comments?
Well, right.
Yeah.
That's that's not that far off.
But to me, it's like, I don't know.
I mean, if what you have on Donald Trump really are comments that he's made, they'll be like, oh, he said the thing about Charlottesville, which is pretty much bullshit.
Oh, he said the thing about Mexican rapists, which is the least generous interpretation of it, but whatever.
They say the birth certificate thing with Obama or, you know, I don't know.
Bizarre Senator Accusations00:15:36
What were the other ones?
The Central Five, the Central Park Five thing or something like that.
I mean, I don't know.
Joe Biden has said a whole bunch of shit like that.
He called integrated schools racial jungles.
And he fucking, you know, he recently said, if you vote for Trump, you ain't black.
They said they're going to put you back in chains about the Mitt Romney's campaign.
So, again, it's like you'll never have Ron Paul saying anything like that.
They have no quote from Ron Paul that was anything.
Ron Paul's quotes would be things like, oh, it's like, racism is just collectivism.
I'm an individualist.
I judge people as individuals.
So there certainly was nothing racist about Ron Paul, but to be fair, she's not saying that.
She's saying he brought in a wave of racist people.
It's just, I don't know, for a libertarian to criticize the Ron Paul or to characterize the Ron Paul supporters in this way.
You know, Ron Paul had 20-year-olds chanting end the Fed.
He had kids like really excited about monetary policy.
Ron Paul was the only presidential candidate in 2008 and 2012, and probably since, who opposed every last one of the wars that have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of last I checked, non-white people.
He was opposed the war on drugs, opposed all of the right, had all of the right policies, even by Reason Magazine standard on policing, opposed civil asset forfeiture, opposed SWAT raids, opposed nonviolent, you know, victimless crimes, all this stuff.
And so to just say that the people who were all getting behind him to dismiss them all as racist, I thought was really just really gross.
And I was quite offended by that.
And then she followed it up the next day by saying something that this, this just really drives me fucking crazy.
And it is now, I will say that, to be fair, I called her a left libertarian at one point.
And I said, what a shock, a left libertarian using the boring, played out, meaningless accusation of racism.
Who else brought a wave of anything to the liberty to the liberty movement?
And she responded by saying, quote, left libertarian, and then like a laughing emoji, like, because that's, I guess, ridiculous to call her a left libertarian.
So I said, my apologies, a very not at all left, pro-sex work, feminist libertarian who calls Ron Paul supporters racist.
Is that better?
And she said, yes, better.
So anyway, by point is that's what I mean when I say left libertarian.
I'm not referring to Noam Chomsky.
We're referring to libertarians today who have left cultural sensibilities.
But she tweeted out the next day, and this just really drove me crazy.
But so after her, you know, smearing the Ron Paul movement, she tweets out the next day because she got a lot of heat from that because there's a lot more of us than there are of her.
She said, there are clearly some people threatened by a more inclusive liberty movement because they've built their brands on the politics of resentment.
Unlike them, I believe libertarian ideas are strong enough to stand on their own.
And then she said, the paleocon crowd might be louder, but we've got numbers and sanity on our side.
Now, I asked at one point by what metric she says she has numbers on her side, but isn't it really something that you could, this is such a fucking cathedral leftist tactic to come out and call a group of people racist.
And then when they get upset at you, say, well, there's clearly some people threatened by a more inclusive liberty movement.
Like, what's inclusive about attacking, impugning the character of a huge portion of the liberty movement?
You're the inclusive one now?
Like, how do you get to do that?
Is such a left-wing thing to be like, oh, these people are basically horrible, deplorable, awful people.
And then they go, fuck you.
You go, oh, I guess you're just afraid of inclusion.
I remember when people were boycotting the creek in the cave because we had Milo on one of our podcasts, and they would actually say, with no sense of irony, they go, The creek is supposed to be an inclusive environment.
You're like, you are boycotting over someone you don't like being allowed in the venue.
You can have that opinion if you want to.
You have a right to boycott if you want to, but don't give me any shit about inclusion.
Like, you are by definition being exclusive, which like is fine, but let's call a spade a spade here.
And uh, the other thing is this comment about built their brands on the politics of resentment.
It is just such a cathedral like statement.
I don't know, it just makes my skin crawl.
So, anyway, I just wanted to mention that briefly and explain why I felt the need to go at her.
Um, I'm not gonna sit back while someone who is a senior editor at Reason attacks the Ron Paul movement in that way.
I thought it was unfair and uncalled for and just wrong.
Um, but I did say if Elizabeth Nolan Brown wants to come on the show, I'm happy to have her on.
And we could, we could discuss uh these things and where you know our differences and you know what we think about the liberty movement or whatever.
I know Austin Peterson invited her on his show today and she she didn't uh or she didn't respond, I think.
So, anyway, just wanted to mention that uh briefly, and that's all.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's get back in the show.
Um, okay, so Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump all had 60-minute interviews.
Uh, the Kamala Harris, Joe Biden ones just came out.
Um, Pence did not because Donald Trump called it after uh his interview.
He goes, That's an F. We're done here.
And they were like, What about Pence?
And he goes, You don't need to talk to Pence, um, which I think was actually a smart move on Trump's part.
Trump also put out the full unedited version of the interview.
Did you see any of that, Rob?
I saw his, but I saw it like a week ago, so I don't remember it that well.
But then today, I saw the video that they put out of him walking out.
And honestly, she was being nasty.
Like, I thought he handled it perfectly where he was able to call her out, and you could see her kind of getting uncomfortable because she kind of knows what she's doing.
And I don't know, good for him for being like, Yeah, you guys are being unfair.
We've done it.
I'm leaving.
Yeah.
Well, it was something that was really funny and just revealing was when, so Trump decided to do this, right?
He goes, Well, he had a copy of the video too, like his people videoed it as well.
And he was like, I'll just put out the whole thing unedited.
So you can see that because they, cause he, he was like, they're going to try to edit this up to make me look bad.
So I'm just going to put the whole thing out.
And 60 Minutes was pissed.
They tweeted about it and they were like, this is outrageous that Donald Trump is doing this.
60 Minutes has always interviewed presidents and blah, blah, blah.
We've always been fair and this, that.
And he goes, Are you actually upset that he's putting out an unedited version of your interview?
So we can all see it, but that pretty much tells you everything you need to know right there.
So I watched it and I watched the Biden and Kamala Harris ones.
And look, there is no question.
It's just, it's pretty blatantly obvious how dramatically harsher they are on Trump than on Biden and Harris.
But of course, they are doing this thing where they have to try to cover for that.
And so they can't be seen as just completely giving soft, cushy interviews.
So they ask a few questions to try to give them pushback and stuff like that.
But overall, it was pretty puffy.
But I did want to play, there's this Kamala Harris clip that's going super viral from this.
And it, you know, you wonder why Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have done so little campaigning over the course of this election.
And then you see a clip like this and you kind of get it.
So here is Kamala Harris in her 60-minute interview.
You're very different in the policies that you've supported in the past.
You're considered the most liberal United States senator.
Somebody said that, and it actually was Mike Pence on the debate stage.
Yeah.
Well, actually, the nonpartisan GovTrack has rated you as the most liberal senator.
You supported the Green New Deal.
You supported Medicare for all.
You've supported legalizing marijuana.
Joe Biden doesn't support those things.
So are you going to bring the policies, those progressive policies that you supported as senator, into a Biden administration?
What I will do, and I promise you this, and this is what Joe wants me to do, this was part of our deal.
I will always share with him my lived experience as it relates to any issue that we confront.
And I promised Joe that I will give him that perspective and always be honest with him.
And is that a socialist or progressive perspective?
No.
No, it is the perspective of a woman who grew up a black child in America, who was also a prosecutor, who also has a mother who arrived here at the age of 19 from India.
Just pause it right there.
I cannot overstate how awful this woman is.
I forget even like her policies or anything like that for a minute.
She's just so intensely unlikable and so bizarre.
I actually can't believe that nobody on her team has been able to be like, Kamala, you got to stop bursting out into these weird cackles at things that are not at all funny.
It's not like she's, there's something that's not that funny that she's, you know, laughing at that you're like, that wasn't really that funny.
Like there wasn't even a kernel of funny here.
There's nothing that a human being would laugh at about what you just said.
And then she's breaking out into laughter.
And then even as she's answering the question, she's talking in this voice like you're holding back laughter.
You know what I mean?
Is this kind of like, there's nothing that I, it's like, what?
She's asking you a real question.
What the hell are you doing?
So you, you know, you were rated the most liberal senator.
I think it was Mike Pence who said that at the debate.
What?
What is this?
It's so incredibly bizarre.
And, you know, the other thing about it is just that I don't even know what they mean by most liberal senator.
She is certainly not the most left senator, if that's what they're saying.
I mean, there's no, I don't know exactly how they measure this thing, but Bernie Sanders is far more to the left than Kamala Harris is.
I don't know what they mean by the most liberal, if signing on to the Green New Deal and stuff like big government socialist type shit.
No, Bernie Sanders beats her at that.
But it's, you know, so anyway, my first thought was just like that, that's stupid, that she's awful and the most unlikable, uncharismatic human being I've ever seen.
I think she actually beats Hillary Clinton out after watching this.
I think she's less charming than her.
The other thing is just, I got to say, and I guess this is where sometimes I get in trouble or get called names by the more left-leaning crowd.
But I just intensely hate this, like the woke Democratic identitarianism.
It's just, I find it so repulsive that like right away, she goes, like, she's talking to her about her voting record.
And she's like, okay, so you're like a very liberal senator.
You know, you support the Green New Deal.
You support Medicare for all.
You support legalizing marijuana, like all of these, you know, things.
Are you going to push Joe Biden a more socialist, progressive, you know, thing?
And what's her response immediately?
It's like, well, I'm black.
Like, I'm black.
I'm a woman.
My mother's Indian.
Like, this is literally her pitch to the American people.
Like, can you, can you wrap your head around that?
Like, being such an identitarian that this is how you describe yourself and your, you know, like what you bring to the table?
Well, I'm a man.
I'm white.
I'm the like, what?
This is so bizarre.
So it was black woman, Indian mother, immigrant.
I think those are like the three qualifications.
Wouldn't it be funny to find someone?
She's like a machine gun of identitarianism.
This is what I have.
It'd be great to find someone with those exact three same things and bring them up.
Like, we're going to just replace this person for vice president because they got the same exact credentials.
The same lived experience.
And then it's so weird, like there's just empty, fluffy, nothing things that they say, where she's like, well, the deal that we made with, that I made with Joe Biden was that I would always tell him my lived experiences.
And it's like, what?
That's, that's your deal?
It's like, all right, we could do this.
We could run together, but we got to really work out a deer, a really serious deal here before we run together.
All right, here is the deal.
I'll tell you what I think.
What?
I always just assumed that was a given.
Like, yes, you would probably give your two cents on that.
If someone asked you, you'll tell them what you think.
Okay.
But no, but the pitch here is, I'll tell him what I think as a black woman, daughter of an immigrant, yada, yada, yada, like all the identity points.
And this is, I think, in many ways, still like one of Donald Trump's best, you know, things going for him to get re-elected is that he's still the best middle finger to this.
You know, say it really is funny.
It's so like, it's so incredibly bizarre that we, you know, we're in this situation in this society where Donald Trump, or I guess in some cases, Ron Paul supporters are the ones who get labeled as racist or as all of this shit.
But you can imagine a situation where like Donald Trump was asked a question about something and his answer was his identity.
Absurd Right-Wing Talking Points00:07:34
His answer was, well, as a white, you know, guy of Irish descent from Queens, from this family, that's what I bring to the table.
Like you just can't imagine it.
Yet the other side, the anti-racist side, that is literally their argument.
It's, well, how, you know, what do you say that to the, you know, the fact that you were rated by a nonpartisan group the most liberal senator in the Senate today?
She's, well, I'm black.
That's my response.
I'm black.
And a woman.
Did I mention woman?
Mother from India.
So let me just throw that one in there as well.
That's the extent of the argument.
The South Park, Kamala Harris, would just drop her pants on every meeting and go, I have a black vagina.
Do you see that?
Black.
It's a vagina.
I'm right.
Okay.
It's a, it's really unbelievable to watch.
Unbelievable to watch people.
Like, I don't know.
I mean, okay, I'm not saying like your identity, you know, your racial identity or your sex or something like that doesn't play some part in your life and your worldview and your outlook and your experiences.
But for it to be the central thing, and like this is my answer to a tough question, tough question after awkwardly laughing.
Which, you know, a lot people have said it's a nervous laugh.
I don't actually think it is a nervous laugh.
I think it's a sociopathic laugh.
That's my gauge on it.
I think it is.
Yes.
Well, it's trying to figure out how to present as a normal human being to a group of people.
Well, here's what I won't seem hostile and nasty and all of this.
I'll laugh and then I seem friendly and we're all laughing together.
I actually think it's a cheap maneuver to be so dismissive of what they said, which is a reasonable question that you're laughing it off.
And so it's kind of the harsher the question is, the more you just laugh it off like this is absurd.
That must be a joke.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is so stupid.
It's absurd.
What?
I think the vice president said this, you know?
Anyway, so let's play the rest of the clip.
Likes hip-hop.
What do you want to know?
I want to give you the opportunity to address this because at the Republican National Convention, President Trump made the case that Joe Biden is going to be nothing more than a Trojan horse for socialist policies for the left wing of the Democratic Party.
Are you going to push those policies when you're vice president?
I am not going to be confined to Donald Trump's definition of who I or anybody else is.
And I think America has learned that that would be a mistake.
So just to button that up, because you have fought for Medicare for all.
That's not something that Joe Biden supports.
If you become vice president, would you say to a President Biden, you know what?
We should really be pushing for Medicare for all, not a public option.
That's just not going to do it.
That's not my value.
I would not have joined the ticket if I didn't support what Joe was proposing.
And so our plan includes expanding on everything that Joe, together with President Obama, created with the Affordable Care Act.
By contrast, you have Donald Trump, who's in court right now, trying to get rid of a policy that brought health care to over 20 million people, including protecting people with pre-existing conditions.
And he's doing it in the middle of a pandemic that has killed over 215,000 Americans.
Okay, so there she goes back to pivot back to, you know, basically their central campaign point.
All these people died, pre-existing conditions.
But it is really, it's unbelievable.
And you're right.
You really nailed it when you said the laugh is to dismiss these questions.
But this has been a Democratic tactic for a long time.
There's nothing new.
This has been happening my entire life.
But it's certainly been going on this whole election season.
If you remember, Bernie Sanders scoffing at the debate moderators for asking how you're going to pay for all these spending proposals.
And he said this is a right-wing talking point.
So she asks if, you know, look, you're on record supporting the Green New Deal and Medicare for all.
Joe Biden's trying to distance himself from that.
Are you going to push him towards supporting these policies?
And she says, I'm not going to be confined to Donald Trump's narrative of us.
So, in other words, much like the court packing, you don't have a right to know.
So, I'm not, I'm not going to be.
This is a right-wing talking point.
You want to know what my policies are going to be?
This is Donald Trump's, you know, confining me.
So, did you get an answer out of that?
Nope, we didn't.
Are they going to try to pack the Supreme Court?
Are they going to try to push the Green New Deal, Medicare for All?
Your guess is as good as ours.
But Donald Trump's really bad.
So, vote for us.
And that's that's what they're, that's where they're going with this.
Um, all right, we got to wrap up soon.
But there was, you had mentioned that, uh, that gaffe, um, the Joe Biden one.
Um, so let's uh, let's play Joe Biden with his wife.
Um, and this is a little glimpse as to why Joe Biden likes to stay in the basement.
What kind of country are we going to be?
Four more years of George.
Uh, George, uh, he uh gonna find ourselves in a position where if uh Trump gets elected, uh, we're gonna be uh we're gonna be in a different world.
What kind of country are we gonna?
My favorite part of it, Rob, is just watching his wife's face.
No, she's so well trained.
She doesn't even blink.
She's yeah, but you can see you can see her fighting it in her thing.
Like, you can see the realization.
Now, listen, to be fair to Joe Biden, I also don't want to see four more years of George Bush in office.
No one wants to see that.
The guy was a disaster.
Um, but it is, and then he mentions Trump's name later to pull him back.
But that is the excitement of Joe Biden: he is always on the verge of that, you know, and it's just, I don't know, it's pretty entertaining.
I will say, and maybe this is a thought in closing that I really, and I could be wrong about this.
Look, full disclosure, I did not see Joe Biden winning the nomination.
I didn't, I was very skeptical that he would make it to the debates.
I, I, you know, like, I've, you know, I'm on record.
You can go back and listen to any of the episodes over the last year.
I, I, I was, you know, not big on Joe Biden.
He's done better than I thought he would.
The fact that we're even at this point is he's done better than I had predicted.
But I just do not see, like, if Joe Biden wins, I don't see how it's possible that Joe Biden serves four years as president.
I think there'll be something.
And, you know, the truth is that he can hide in his basement now, but if he's the president, he's going to have to be out there quite a bit.
And that's that's a whole other angle to think about is if Joe Biden is president, how many of these like moments are we going to just have like on a daily basis?
This is going to be something for years to come.
And I don't think it's unreasonable for people to think that Kamala Harris could end up being president if Joe Biden is elected.
I don't know.
That seems like a very real possibility.
Very real possibility to me.
Fun December Design Plans00:01:17
All right.
That's going to wrap it up for our show today.
We are down to crunch time, a week, a week out from presidential election.
Should be fun.
Should be a lot of fun stuff to cover.
We got some plugs.
Yes.
All right.
So, first is everyone out in Rochester that bought tickets.
We got to talk to the club to confirm a new date.
It will most likely be December 26th.
You come out for a very jewy Christmas.
Me and Dave Smith.
That date will be up soon and confirmed.
I got some personal dates.
I'm doing November 28th up in New Hampshire.
Got some other comics.
I'm running like an end of year thing.
That's going to be at one of the libertarian clubhouses.
Those free state project guys have.
That's going to be a lot of fun.
And then December 5th near Philly out in a backyard.
We already did a show there.
That was a ton of fun.
And then last is, I'd said jokingly on an earlier episode that I was going to build a website, globalsafespace.com, and a coder hit me up.
And then we came up with a much better idea for what's going to be, we're going to change the world with this news platform, but I need a designer.
So if you're out there, you got design skills, hit me up on social media.
We're building something really cool.
And if you can, you know, design it, that'd be helpful.
All right.
That's it for me.
Thanks, guys.
All right.
Very good.
Go listen to Run Your Mouth and follow Robbie on Twitter at RobbieTheFire.