Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect the "Media Cult," arguing that liberals view Trump supporters as cultists akin to disappointed Seventh-day Adventists rather than addressing their grievances. They critique Bill Maher's comparison of these voters to QAnon theorists, noting how mocking them fails to extract them from narcissistic leader dynamics similar to Keith Ranieri's Vanguard group. Drawing parallels between Ranieri and Trump regarding bankruptcies and sexual misconduct, the hosts advocate for "hating the cult, loving the cultist" to help believers like India Oxenberg return to reality, suggesting that liberal condescension only deepens the divide. Ultimately, the episode posits that understanding these grievances is essential to dismantling the polarization fueling modern American politics. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Consolidating Power Without Authority00:15:24
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am, of course, Dave Smith, and of course, he is the king of the cocks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
As the nation is still in a state of purgatory, we're here to chop it up with you guys.
How you doing, Robbie?
Doing good, man.
How was your weekend?
Very good.
Very good.
Can't complain.
Hung out with the fam.
Did a lot of super spreader events.
Takes a lot of random, you know, chairs and light poles and just get gearing up for Thanksgiving, trying to get those immune system as strong as possible.
How about you?
What'd you do?
Just working on my end-of-year thing, got it all memorized, got my slides put together.
I'm good to go, man.
I'm excited.
Oh, that's fucking cool.
I'm bummed I can't be there.
I'd be interested to see what you do with it.
I think you're going to have a lot of fun.
And no shortage of things to talk about this year.
And it seems to me that the state of the election is about where it was last time we spoke, a little bit worse for the Trump team.
They had a court case thrown out in Pennsylvania.
It was dismissed by the judge.
That was seemed from what I'm following of all of this, that seemed to be one of the big ones where they were actually moving to get a few million votes thrown out.
And that would obviously be something that would, you know, put the state right back in play.
That the judge dismissed it.
That did not work out, claimed that the Trump claims were frivolous and all of that.
And then there was the statement by the White House that Sidney Powell lady is not an attorney for the president or representing the White House in any way.
That one I was a little more confused by.
I saw there were basically two schools of thought that I saw floated out.
One was that she was making claims that they couldn't back up and therefore they wanted to disassociate from her.
The other one was that this is some type of legal technique so that she's not bound by being a White House lawyer.
I don't really know.
We'll see.
But I do know that if some way Trump is going to pull this out, some things are going to have to start happening pretty soon.
And so that'll be interesting to see.
Of course, as I've made the point that I've made before, no matter what happens, and I will say at this point, and I know there are some Trump supporters who listen to this show, I will say at this point, I'm pretty confident that Joe Biden will be installed as president on January 20th.
Now, I don't, that's not to say I'm confident he won the election or I'm confident that the, you know, there will be a fair legal process or any of that shit.
I think basically, I just, I'm saying I have no confidence that if Donald Trump was, you know, if this was stolen from Donald Trump and it is the, you know, conspiracy, I don't use that word in a, in a, in, like, as a pejorative.
I'm just saying if what, you know, these lawyers are claiming is true, then it would be nothing short of a conspiracy.
If that's the case, I have zero confidence that the courts or the media, which I think you would all need to be somewhat fair in order for him to pull this off.
I have very low confidence that that is the case.
And I think that Trump supporters have good reason to have little to zero, probably more realistically, zero faith in any of those institutions.
So I don't know what's your thoughts on the latest.
I'm just ready for Trump to start his TV station, RNN, the real news network, or presidential news network, your real president on the news every night.
Yeah, you know, I think that I saw the last episode we did got a little bit of a pushback, a little bit more than usual, although not anything crazy.
But I wasn't surprised by that.
I think that when you're not in a tribe at the height of the most tribalist moment, that tends to bother people and that it's not, you know, like I understand there are people who are like all in for Trump and all in against Trump.
And that's, and I'm trying to sit here and be like, okay, listen, let's like fucking analyze exactly what's going on here and try to give.
And, you know, and that's not to say that maybe I didn't get, you know, it wrong.
I'm, I'm certainly capable of that, although it's exceedingly rare.
But I think that one of the things that I saw from a few different people who were messaging me or tweeting at me or stuff like that, that I think maybe I didn't make clear, but just to be clear about what I was saying in the last episode and what both of us were saying at points, it's not, you know, people would message me back things and they'd say, oh, you're blaming Trump for not wielding this power, but he doesn't have all of the authority to do this.
He doesn't have the authority to stop the Democratic governors from shutting down their states.
And he didn't have the power to control the election.
That's the state legislators who have this power.
And he didn't have the power to do blah, blah, blah.
And that's kind of missing the point of what I was trying to get at.
My point was that if Donald Trump doesn't have the power to do all of these things and isn't able to influence others who do have the power, isn't able to consolidate this power, then that's an important thing to be aware of.
And to then ask yourself, how valuable is it really having Donald Trump in the White House?
I think that from my perspective, there was tremendous value in Donald Trump winning the presidency.
There was tremendous value in Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office, sitting out on the White House garden and just ruthlessly dunking on the press.
I think there was tremendous value in that.
I think there was tremendous value in Donald Trump triggering the left and the corporate press and the deep state in such a manner that they exposed their position in a way that nobody else has ever been able to draw out of them.
So I think there's tremendous value in all of those things.
I'm not so sure that there's tremendous value in Donald Trump remaining the president of the United States for the next four years.
I don't know.
And people can, you know, it is a fair point to say that, well, Donald Trump himself, you know, he doesn't have the authority to, you know, whatever, make sure that Cuomo doesn't have a lockdown in New York or make sure Gavin Newsom isn't telling people what they can do on Thanksgiving.
Or you could say that he doesn't have the power to, you know, make force the signature verifications in Georgia or something like that.
And okay, I mean, like, there is a legitimate point to that, but Donald Trump ran on draining the swamp.
And he has, in my opinion, proved utterly incapable of even knowing how to start the attempt at draining the swamp.
As I said before, he's great at provoking them.
But I just see this over and over again, where, okay, it's true that he doesn't have absolute authority, but it's also true that he's used the authority he has in a completely incoherent way.
And, you know, you can talk about how, okay, Donald Trump doesn't have the authority to stop Cuomo or Gavin Newsom from, you know, going crazy with this lockdown shit.
It's like, yeah, that's true.
But he did kind of give them all political cover by declaring a national state of emergency, invoking the Defense Authorization Production Act, all of this stuff.
He gave them a lot of political cover for doing it.
And that was not an effective way to wield power.
He really damaged himself and his chances of re-election with doing that.
You know, this is the guy.
You know, it's like someone else was tweeting recently about how Flynn was completely fucked over, because I believe this Sidney Powell lady, she represented him as well.
And it's like, yeah, no question.
I mean, who's talked about that more than us?
Flynn was absolutely the victim of a deep state.
You know, he was one of the pawns in the deep state attempted coup against Donald Trump, and he was the first one who they took out.
Completely unfair, what they did to him.
But Trump fired him.
Don't forget that.
Trump is the guy who actually fired him.
Like Trump never had the fucking, I don't know if courage is even the right word, or it's just a matter of vision, understanding of how to wield his power.
But he never had enough to, Trump could have, in the middle of all of this shit, he could have said, Flynn's not going anywhere.
He could have brought in Douglas McGregor as an advisor, like he just did a couple of weeks ago, could have had that team there who was ready to, you know, like carry out his foreign policy.
And he could have, during the Mueller investigation, just started declassifying all of it.
Just started being like, no, no, no, we're not.
You can investigate me all you want to, but we're not, we're not hiding behind any of this stuff.
We are letting the American people see all this shit.
He could have done several different things, but I think that in many ways, the right wing in this country, and this is a problem that the right-wing statists have, is that they don't understand how much this whole structure cannot be used in their favor.
And I would just say to a lot of the right-wingers that this is why a lot of really good principled right-wingers, even not libertarians, but people like Pat Buchanan, people like, you know, basically the whole paleoconservative crowd, there's a reason why they understood that smashing the state was a big part of what needed to be done.
You're not going to get into state power and be able to wield this thing the same way that Democrats and leftists are going to.
It's just not, it's not going to happen by the very nature of it.
It's designed to tear down everything that you love.
And the answer is probably not going to be how can you wield power more effectively, but how can you destroy the power?
That's what's going to happen.
That's when right-wingers actually really get their power is when the state power is rolled back because what comes in and fills its place?
Well, pretty much religion and family and tradition.
That's what, you know what I mean?
Like that's the other private source of power, which is highly preferable from my perspective.
And, you know, that's something that they're going to have to come to grips with.
I also would just challenge Trump supporters to try to, in an open-minded way, because I sure as fuck can't count on Biden supporters to be open-minded.
So I would ask some of the Trump supporters who listen to the show, try to be open-minded to the possibility, as counterintuitive as this may sound, that from your own by your own goals, things might be better with Biden in the White House.
Just try to think if maybe that is possible, that the way this whole thing is unfolding might actually be better for you from your perspective.
I'm not trying to force my perspective on you and say it's better.
I'm saying like from the Trump perspective, look, a lot of people said this to me about the election when the topic of the legitimacy of the election came up.
And they say, there's just no way that Joe Biden got that many votes.
There's no way that Joe Biden got more votes than Barack Obama.
And I will certainly grant, yeah, that doesn't sound right.
Like there's something to that that just doesn't sound like it possible.
And as I've said many times, I am completely open to the idea that there was crazy levels of fraud in the system.
I don't trust anything the government does.
You know, I don't know for sure one way or the other.
I'm just being honest about that.
I don't fucking know.
But maybe, maybe there was.
If I saw some evidence that convinced me of it, I'd immediately be like, yep, I'm convinced.
And I've seen enough evidence that's made me think there was some shady shit going on, but I don't know.
I don't know to what level.
But the point I would make to people are like, there's no way Joe Biden got these many votes.
And I think that maybe part of why I have a little bit of insight into this is because I do, you know, I'm from New York City.
I know the comedy scene very well.
I know, you know, I know the other half.
And I think that if you're a Trump supporter in a red state, you might underestimate the powers of Trump derangement syndrome, how much he motivates people, that he really is.
I mean, he is so intensely hated by left-wing people that they're really, it is possible that to some degree, that's a huge motivator for them to get out and be active in ways that they wouldn't otherwise be, like with the Joe Biden presidency.
Now, if you understand that Donald Trump being the president doesn't actually drastically change the nature of the power structure, it just doesn't.
And that's been proven.
And that's actually what some of the Trump supporters were arguing with me about.
Then you realize that having Donald Trump as the president creates a narrative for left-wingers that doesn't exist without him there.
And I'm not saying you got to root for Trump to not be successful in these legal challenges or anything like that.
I'm just saying that maybe this is like a silver lining or a consolation prize or something like that.
The Absurdity of Feeling Resistance00:03:57
When Donald Trump is the president, the left feels like the resistance.
They will tell you that.
They claim that they are the resistance.
Now, that's fucking absurd.
It's absurd that they get to feel like the resistance when they control.
Like Donald Trump doesn't even control the executive branch of the federal government.
Where's it like a few million people who work for the executive branch?
I think Trump's got like 15 loyalists.
Okay.
He doesn't even control the executive branch, let alone the fucking, you know, the military or anything like fucking that.
I mean, he's, you know, he's got some power, but as I said before, he's not that good at wielding it.
And he's much better at fucking, you know, trolling the enemies and inserting new ideas into the national conversation than he is at actually wielding power.
So the left feels like they're the resistance because look, Orange Man is up there and he's the fucking, you know, literally Hitler.
We have a fascist takeover of the government.
The truth is that the fucking progressives control the vast majority of the government apparatus.
And I mean Republican progressives and Democratic progressives.
Progressives control Hollywood.
They control the corporate press.
They control the universities.
They have tremendous control over the system.
So I'm sorry, progressives, you are not the resistance.
And if Trump is out and Joe Biden is in, then the right-wingers get to feel like the resistance, which is much more accurate.
And then you get to look at this whole system as being against you, which it is.
And maybe that's the only shot we have is a real resistance where people are actually going to resist what seemed to be the beginning of the second lockdowns that are that are coming around right now.
And so possibly that's going to be a little bit easier if we take a little bit of the juice out of the left's engine and put that into the right wing in America.
I'm just saying, consider the possibility that maybe that will actually end up being better for your own goals.
I'm not claiming that I know it is.
I'm just thinking about it.
There are certainly some things that would have been better if Trump was in than if Biden's in.
But you never know.
Life is complex.
It's possible that there could be some things that actually work out better.
I always saw Donald Trump, that best case scenario, I thought Donald Trump was like, you know, like there's this huge barricade and that Donald Trump could ram through it and destroy everything.
And then maybe a good leader could walk in behind him now that there's all this destruction.
And so that's kind of what I'm hoping for, one way or the other, whatever ends up happening.
But I also do think that, you know, in order for all of this to work, the media and the state apparatus has to be completely discredited.
And I think that Trump has done a really good job at that.
And one of the real silver linings, more now from my perspective and Robbie's perspective, is that, you know, you look around at this and you go, okay, I mean, the country was really united under George W. Bush.
And that's why they were able to sell us these wars and the Patriot Act and all this shit after 9-11.
The country was united when Barack Obama first got in.
And that's how a lot of the awful shit Obama did, you know, started.
This is now a situation where I have a really hard time imagining that they could sell this country another one of these disastrous wars right now.
If you have, you know, 50% or 49.5% of the voting population believing the entire system is fraudulent, I don't know how you're going to convince them we need to go do some big, awful thing.
Maybe that's a silver lining in all of this.
I don't know.
Any thoughts on any of that, Robbie the Fire?
Texas should secede.
Why Republicans Hold Their Money00:12:15
We should make Joe Rogan our leader.
We should get cabinet positions and Alex Jones should be the only media source.
Yeah, that's, man, goddammit.
You really came with that.
Were you reading off a piece of paper?
That was an excellent fucking plan.
I don't know if Rogan can officially be the leader of the new country of Texas.
He hasn't been naturalized yet.
He's only been there for so long, but he's got my vote.
I don't know if I can vote in Texas' new country.
I don't think they're just going to be taken outside ballots.
But if Texas seceded and made Rogan their president, I might have to move the wife and kids to Texas.
I may not even tell my wife.
I would just be like, well, we're going on a long trip.
It's a surprise, but pack everything.
Pack everything you need for like the quick comedy and just open up a barbecue, dude.
Sandwiches all day.
You'd be the funniest barbecue guy there is.
All right.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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Okay, so I was watching the other night real time with Bill Maher, which I very rarely watch these days.
I haven't watched it in quite a while.
But I was just kind of like, I don't know.
I was kind of curious to see where the liberal mind is at in everything that's going on now, because I've been, you know, kind of not living in that space as much as I used to.
And I, you know, I've said this before on the show when we've played clips of Bill Maher and it's always me, you know, arguing with him and shit.
But it was like Bill Maher had a huge influence on me.
And I probably, there's a few people out there that'd be like, I probably wouldn't be where I am right now without that guy's influence on me.
But Bill Maher, when I was in high school, as I've told this story before, when I was in high school, I had a sweet ass TV VCR and you know, I don't remember.
But, and I didn't have cable, so I just had like the five channels.
This is for you younger people.
This is a before time.
There was no internet.
I mean, there was internet, but you couldn't do shit with it.
And I had to go yell at my mom and stepdad to not be on the phone if I wanted to use the internet.
But so there was, you know, I only had a few channels, but on ABC at night, real politically incorrect, Bill Maher's old show would come on.
And I watched and I just thought it was so awesome.
I thought what he was doing was so awesome, just a comedian making fun of politics and tearing them down and making some really good points.
And I just, I was like, that is so fucking cool.
And it always had an effect on me.
And also, I think, you know, at the time I was like 16 or whatever, and he was, you know, like, oh, and he smokes weed and bangs hot chicks.
This guy's awesome.
You know, the stuff that as you grow up, you look back at and you're like, okay, this is just, it's actually kind of lame.
But still awesome.
I don't know what the fuck is talking about.
Rob, give a few years.
But so anyway, I have like a warm place in my heart for him, but it's interesting.
By the way, he's also the first time I ever heard the word libertarian was out of Bill Maher's mouth.
So that's that has something.
But, you know, obviously, I think his politics are fucking dog shit, but it is what it is.
But so I was watching the show and there were a few moments that kind of stuck out to me.
Like I was like, man, this is a little bit of a glimpse into the liberal mind about what's going on in this country.
Now, of course, Bill Maher doesn't represent everybody.
He's not a hard leftist and he's not, you know, like he's a democratic establishment guy, but he's wildly popular, has millions and millions of viewers, and he represents some chunk of them.
So it was, I said, I thought it was interesting to watch.
And then there were a couple of moments that I was like, okay, we're going to have to play this on the podcast and kind of go through it.
So here, the first one was at the table where he had Alex, oh shit, I'm blanking on a fucking name.
Alex so-and-so, who used to work at MSNBC, who works at The Atlantic now, and John Meacham, the historian who's like secretly was working for the Biden campaign and got in trouble at NBC because he was like praising a speech that he wrote himself and not disclosing it.
But anyway, so this was them, they're chatting it up, the three of them, and talking about the state of the country.
And, you know, it's again, it's just one of the things that stuck out at me as interesting is that it's, you know, we're all looking at the same thing, but we have like very different, you know, understandings of what's going on.
And so it was interesting to see where they're coming from, put that up against where we're coming from and see what makes more sense.
So let's play.
I'm reading as the returns come back and we get the more detailed analysis of what happened in the election.
Trump won in places where people are suffering and Biden won in places where things are going great.
It should be the opposite, shouldn't it?
That's how fucked up this country is.
I don't think policy matters anymore.
I don't think they should ask that question.
Are you better off than you were four years ago?
It doesn't matter to them.
Well, it's just not what they're voting on.
I mean, all right, let's pause it right there.
So already, so this moment, as I was watching it, I was like, oh man, we're going to have to fucking play this and talk about it.
So this is Bill Maher in what I think is a somewhat, like, I think this is a genuine attempt by Bill Maher to understand what's going on.
And I, you know, I don't know.
I don't know what's in someone else's mind, but I think this is a genuine attempt to understand what's happening here.
And I think that Bill Maher is just in some ways too removed both in his economic position, his life, and his with his ideology.
He's just too removed from being able to understand it.
So he repeats that, you know, I'm looking at all this election data, and it seems that people where things are going really bad are supposed are supporting Trump.
But where things are going really good, they're supporting Biden.
And that's so messed up that it's like, that's how screwed up the country is.
This doesn't even make sense.
And I mean, just try to think that through.
So why is that?
Is the answer to that just like, oh, everything's retarded?
Because his thing is basically that Joe Biden was selling you, we can save the soul of this country.
And Donald Trump was selling you, everything is great the way it is.
You know, so why would anyone be?
And it's like, well, just, I don't know, try out a few different premises and see which one fits, which one fits better there.
Why would it be that where people are hurting, they were supporting Donald Trump?
And where people were doing really well, they were supporting Biden.
Isn't there an obvious answer that would just jump out at you, which is lockdowns?
That's why.
Because those people need to be able to fucking work.
That's it.
Because Democratic governors have been fucking praising the fucking lockdowns.
And Joe Biden is praising the lockdowns and the follow the science crowd.
And Donald Trump's like, we got to get back to work.
So, of course, right there, right there, you've got a huge part of it, but they're like incapable of seeing this.
So their conclusion is just, well, this is the whole fucking system stupid.
That's it.
So anyway, that's all right.
So let's keep playing from this video.
I think that's when you ask the question about what is the Republican Party, the sort of polite establishment Republicans who are still in bed with the party that hosts QAnon supporters, they're there because they think they're going to be able to hold on to more of their money at the end of the day.
And they are willing to basically make a deal with the devil on literally every other front because they think their tax rate is going to stay low.
I mean, I truly think that is the tie that lines at this point between the establishment, upper class, educated Republicans and the base of people who have jumped so far down the conspiracy rabbit hole that they can't see their face.
Well, we know about taxes here in California, don't we?
I wouldn't say we were undertaxed.
All right, let's pause that point to me.
All right, I'm sorry.
I just, it's pretty enjoyable to watch this woman, you know, the Alex, I can't remember her last fucking name, but Alex Witt, I think maybe.
But that she's there, like, you know, and all they care about is their taxes being lowered, which is just, you know, that's reducing everything about those people that just they want their taxes lower.
And even Bill Maher has to go, taxes are pretty goddamn out of control, but it's pretty funny.
Yeah, Bill Maher is a rich guy in California.
Believe me, you're probably not going to get too much sympathy from him on the idea of people being like, yeah, these taxes are fucking pretty goddamn high.
So look, this Alex woman is going to say, well, you know, it's basically like, this is the caricature.
This is the best attempt to understand the other side.
It's a marriage between people who care about nothing else other than their taxes being lower.
Literally not another thought in their head.
They're not even really what you could consider a human being.
They're basically a programmed robot who says, what keep my taxes lower?
That is all that motivates them.
Them and the QAnon people.
There you have it.
There's your Republican voters.
That's as deep as they're prepared to think about this.
Remember when I said the other day when we were breaking down that dummy's video about me?
They have a really tough time telling you what the other side believes.
It's much easier for us to tell you what, you know, it's much easier for me to tell you what a right-winger believes, what a left-winger believes, what a liberal believes, what a socialist believes.
Much easier than it is for these guys.
So it becomes this thing.
Now, I don't know how big the QAnon thing is.
To be honest, I don't know that much about QAnon.
I don't think it's nearly as big as they're making it out to be.
But isn't it a funny thing to sit around and be like, I mean, the Republican, the people supporting the Republicans are literally these wacko conspiracy theorists.
And meanwhile, you just have like the governor issuing edicts about how far away from your grandmother you have to be at Thanksgiving.
Like, how much of a conspiracy theorist do you need to be to be like, yo, there's some fucking really weird shit going on here.
The government is really trying to take absolute control of our lives.
It's just, I mean, just go through the information on MSNBC and you could come to that conclusion.
So anyway, it's just, you know, it's a struggling attempt so far to reconcile with the information that's right in front of them.
Two Cults and Comfortable Underwear00:03:02
It's an interesting premise that they're basically saying it's clear-cut that Biden would be better.
No matter who you are, you're better off with Biden.
And the poorer you are, the more you need Biden to step in and make the country better, which really overlooks the fact.
I mean, even from these people's perspective of let's just say being pro-socialist, they're pro-government coming in and redistributing wealth.
Trump is probably redistributing more wealth to red states via farm bills, you know, all of those tax breaks, being pro-coal.
Who the fuck knows just to what extent Biden's going to completely get rid of fracking or make it an EPA thing that it can't exist?
So even within their liberal framework of, hey, government should come in and redistribute wealth, the idea that Biden is a better advocate for the poorest people or the people who are really poor in red states.
He, that's not his demographic.
That's not who he's trying to appeal to.
That's not who he's offering benefits to.
That's not who he's trying to win for or make a part of his winning coalition.
So I mean, the premise of this is just absurd.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's keep playing.
I think, and this could be a cause for you, partisanship has essentially become religious, right?
We have structural parts that you have your own holy books, you have your own saviors, you have your own view of the world, your own cosmology.
You have people who are, you know, hard, hardcore.
You have people who show up on Christmas and Easter, you know, tax day and whatever.
And so the C and E Christian is the tax day vote, Trump voter.
Losing Your Country to Darwinism00:08:17
And we pause for a second there for.
I'm sorry, this is an ADD question.
Is this YouTube that someone has re-edited the show?
I guess.
No, no, no, no.
This is not the actual feed of the video.
But don't you find it kind of interesting to see him almost coming around to our conclusion?
Just as they're trying to think this thing through, they're like, yeah, you know, this is kind of like a religion.
It's kind of like almost like these are two different cults, the Democrats and the Republicans.
And they have their books and their holidays and all of these rituals.
That's almost the way people are treating them.
Now, of course, after kind of realizing this, they'll snap right back into their like, but, you know, their religion is the bad religion, of course.
But I just, anyway, thought that was kind of fun to see him, you know, almost searching blindly and almost finding the point that we make regularly on this show.
Let's keep lying rationality that is that is working through the data is been shoved to the side.
And I think this is much more about culture and identity than economy and health right now.
Well, there's also demographic change afoot.
And I think we're at a hinge point demographically, right?
Where one tribe, white patriarchy, is on the downslope and an ascendant brown tribe is at the gates.
And I think Trump has successfully stoked a lot of fear around that change, which is happening, which is existential, which is Darwinian in a lot of respects.
And this is the after effect.
That sounds very racist.
It's Darwinian that a race of brown people are going to overtake white people.
That's a huge to say that.
So, so, and that's it for uh for that clip.
That's basically what I uh I wanted to play.
But isn't that really just it's it's always so amazing when you, um, especially when liberals get into an environment where it's all them, you know, there's nobody else.
So there's not this natural force of kind of pushback and and it creates a um an environment.
This is true for everybody, by the way, but it creates an environment when there's no pushback.
Uh, you know, like if you're three liberals talking with a liberal audience on a liberal show, you don't guard what you say as much because you're not prepared for somebody to try to pick it apart.
So you just kind of like let out some of these things.
Um, and for as much as you know, like some like hard right-wing alt-right or whatever, you know, type of position that these people would flip out about hearing.
It's amazing when they just let it out themselves.
So, this is what it's all about.
The fact is that you have these tribes, and one of them's going down, and that's you, white people, and one of them's coming up, and that's the brown people at the gate.
And we're about to let them in.
And this is an existential crisis that's going to drastically change the country.
And it's what's funny to me, right, is that you're having this conversation, which is basically centered around trying to understand what just happened.
You know, like that's what Bill Maher introed with.
Well, what happened?
Why did these people support Donald Trump?
Who are the people who support Donald Trump?
Who are, which is, you think, an important question to ask yourself.
And to Bill Maher's credit, he is trying throughout this show.
He's trying to ask himself that.
I think he's coming to the realization.
We're going to play another clip in a second, where he's coming to the realization that these 70 plus million people who voted for Donald Trump are still going to be here at the end of January, no matter who is occupying the Oval Office.
But so you're trying to ask yourself, like, what's going on here?
What is this question?
And then she comes out with this.
Well, here's what I think is going on here.
You know, white people are losing.
They're losing their country.
And the brown people are coming in and they're taking this bitch over.
And this is a complete change to our, you know, country and our way of life.
But it's like they don't pause to ask themselves the follow-up question, which would be, why wouldn't there be resistance to that?
I mean, if you're claiming that this is Darwinian, Well, why wouldn't you fight for survival?
Why would what you just said be true?
And white people would get on board with it.
It when you put it like that, it's almost shocking that so many white people supported Joe Biden.
You know, like, why would you, you know, you're saying, like, well, there's this, you know, this white tribe that's going down and this brown tribe that's taking over, and they're waiting at the gates, and this is going to fundamentally change the country.
Like, well, are you allowed to be against that?
What if people don't want that?
Did they choose that?
Did they vote for that?
Did like, just let me know from like from your own, you know, liberal perspective.
Why exactly would you think that's going to be celebrated?
It's one of the weirdest parts of the kind of liberal and left mindset throughout the last decade or so.
And the fact that they got Donald Trump still doesn't seem to have woken them up to it.
But, you know, like there's so many of these policies that you, if you just ask yourself, why would white people be for that?
That seems like an important question.
And there really doesn't seem to be much of an answer.
I mean, other than like for virtue signaling reasons, I don't know.
I guess like the, you know, like the ones who are making millions of dollars off talking about this on Bill Maher, maybe they're into it.
I don't know why.
You know, it's like when you see, you know, even if you, if you were selling something like, you know, the civil rights movement or something like that, it's a lot easier to sell to white people.
It'd be something that sells kind of like, well, look, it's the right thing to do.
It gets fucking wrong to have segregation.
It's wrong to fucking treat black people like second-class citizens.
And it doesn't hurt you at all to stop doing that.
Like it just, it's not going to hurt you and it's a lot better for them.
So just do the right thing.
But that's, you know, whether you agree with that or not, that's a much easier sell.
But this stuff where you're like, you're basically saying you are losing your country.
This is not going to be your country anymore.
You're going down and they're going up.
And by the way, it's a really great thing whenever we see any non-white man in a position of power.
We want more of them in college, more of them in the workforce, more of them in government.
And isn't that great?
Why is a white guy supposed to root for that?
Wouldn't it be great if you had less of a chance of getting the job that you wanted and your kid had less of a chance of getting the job that they want?
And like your country isn't really yours anymore.
Wouldn't you love that?
Is it really surprising that a lot of people's response would be, no, I don't.
I just found it really bizarre and kind of, you know, I don't know, revealing.
I try to get into this mindset of how you could say that and not think right after that, oh, yeah, no, it kind of makes sense that they'd be against that.
You know, like I, even if I was on the other side of some issue like that, like if I was like, oh, there's one group of people and I'm representing this other group of people who's knocking at the door and this is like a Darwinian clash where they're on their way down and we're on our way up.
And then you asked me a follow-up question and you said, do you think the ones on their way down are going to be happy about this?
I think I'd be like, well, of course not.
Why would they be anyway?
So part of her logic is that since it's racist, which is the worst thing in the entire world for them to oppose this, they don't have a right to oppose it.
Right.
And so, yeah.
Yeah.
No, I think that's pretty much it.
Of course, there's nothing racist in her mind about what she just said, which to, I think, most normal people is like the most racist shit you've ever heard.
Like, what?
The fuck is wrong with that?
And also, it kind of flies in the face of the facts, which are that Donald Trump actually did better with the Latino vote.
did better with the black vote than he did in 2016.
So anyway, like, I don't really think anything she's saying is accurate.
It's just if it is accurate, why would you not expect a backlash against this?
All right.
Bill Maher's Final Disappointment00:08:01
So the next thing I wanted to go to was Bill Maher's final monologue, which I guess this was the final episode of his season.
And so this was his final monologue.
So I thought we'd play that and discuss.
Hey, it's our last show of the season.
Screw the rules.
Tonight I'd like to tell tonight I'd like to tell you a tale of Dr. William Miller, the American preacher whose teachings spawned the seventh day Adventist religion of today.
In the 19th century, Miller grew an enormous following by telling anyone who'd listened that he could, by reading the Bible and then applying his own math, predict the exact date for the second coming, Jesus' big return to show business.
Which, good news, bad news, also meant the world would be coming to an end.
So peaking in the early 1840s, William Miller's rallies attracted thousands of people, all focused on this one idea, that the world was going to end on his predicted date of October 22nd, 1844.
That is the day the world would come to an end.
Spoiler alert, it did not.
Christ totally blew them off.
He was supposed to show up and just flaked.
Typical.
Now, when you stake your whole religion on one all-important prophecy that doesn't come true, the logical reaction from followers should be, well, I guess that was a bunch of bullshit.
But no, this sect doubled down and to this day refers to October 22nd, 1844 as the Great Disappointment.
Because of course it's disappointing when the world doesn't end, but the important thing is that you didn't let your faith be shaken in the guy who got it dead wrong.
Okay, so by now you're saying, Bill, what the fuck does this have to do with what's going on in the world?
All right, let's pause it right there.
So full disclosure, I've watched this whole thing before, but as I watched it the first time, I thought it was really, it's like when he paused, he goes, now, Bill, you might be wondering, what the fuck does this have to do with what's going on?
I mean, isn't it obvious to everybody the point that he's making already?
No one's wondering what this has to do with anything going on.
It's like, yeah, I get it.
Trump supporters are the fucking dummies who believe Trump as a God, that he isn't really.
Like, okay, it's obvious the point that you're making.
The issue is that it's like, okay, as they said earlier in the show, this could also be applied to the Democrats just as easily.
And the thing is, right, this is what's so, it's been such a major theme throughout Trump's administration.
And it makes me like, I don't even know what the word is.
You know, like when you watch like a, if you watch a really bad singer and you hurt for them, you know, like a really bad performer, you watch a comic bomb and you hurt for them.
Like he's, you know, like you've been in a show, Rob, and like you're, maybe you're going up next, although not even like you're going up next.
Maybe you're, you've already been off.
So it's not about you, but you just watch someone eating a dick and you're like, oh, yeah, Brian, you're cringing for them.
But you're almost, it's this feeling of like, oh, on behalf of you, you're like, come on, dude, get out of this.
Like you can do better.
It's like to watch people, and this has been happening all oh my god, through the last four or five years since Donald Trump's been on the political scene.
Where while they're sitting there going, Why would these people support him?
Right?
Like, that's that's the at the core of what Bill Maher is saying here.
Why would you believe this guy, this seventh day Adventists in 1844, whatever, who says Jesus is coming back, but then Jesus doesn't come back?
Why would you keep believing him?
So, the question is: Why are you supporting Donald Trump?
And the answer is what you just did.
Like, that's pretty much why.
Like, why do you support Donald Trump?
It goes, I don't know, Bill Maher, because people like you look at them as backwards 1840s cult members.
That's not that's your thought about them.
So, why are they supporting the guy?
Like, it's you know, why would all these Christians support Donald Trump?
Well, I don't know because you clearly hate their guts and he's against you.
There's your answer, at least a big part of it.
How do you not see that?
How are you searching for this the answer to this question and you can't see the one staring you in the face?
Oh, yeah, you know, it's like if I were going, like, there's some group of people who hated me, and I was like, Why do these fucking retard little dick faggots hate me so much?
You're like, Oh, maybe it's because I think they're retarded little dick faggots.
Like, that might be that might have something to do with it, right?
That could probably inspire some hatred.
All right, anyway, let's keep playing.
Well, recently, there's been another large group of people who had a great disappointment and will not accept their loss.
And the challenge for us is: how do you get people out of a cult?
Especially when every time you present evidence of what is obvious reality, they take it as proof of you being in on a conspiracy to destroy them.
All right, here, pause it, right?
So, this is like it's like, how do we get these people out of a cult?
Well, okay, here's the thing: it's tough when you start from the position that they're in a cult and you're not.
Now, when he cuts, this is just such tribal partisan bullshit.
When he cuts a well, someone else also had a great disappointment.
Okay, so there's the thread, the bringing them all together that they were also disappointed.
And then he cuts to the picture of like MAGA hat people in the audience goes crazy.
Like, all right, you want to do that for when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016?
Do you remember the videos of people literally having emotional, like fucking meltdowns, like straight up nervous breakdowns in the middle of a public street?
Like, okay, so that this is the problem.
This is why you can't bring them out of a cult because you look at them as cult members.
You're unwilling to even listen to where they might be coming from and entertain that maybe they're right, at least about some of this shit, which they are about some of it.
Um, and then, of course, it's the you know, dismissing all of them as part of a cons, you know, if you say anything, uh, if you give them the truth, then they say you're part of the conspiracy.
Well, I mean, maybe some of them, uh, and I get where some of them feel that way, or maybe they just think you're wrong.
Maybe you have to actually demonstrate that you're right and not just call them all cult members.
That's a thought.
All right, let's keep playing every time you present evidence of what is obvious reality.
They take it as proof of you being in on a conspiracy to destroy them.
And for the answer to that question, we must turn to, and I'm sure many of you have already guessed who I'm going to say now: Catherine Oxenberg.
Yes, Catherine Oxenberg, actress, star of dynasty, European royalty, and lady in front of you at Whole Foods.
Catherine Oxenberg, because she got somebody out of a cult, and I know about 70 million other Americans I'd like her to talk to.
Now, if you don't know what I'm referring to, Catherine Oxenberg was recently featured in not one, but two documentaries about a cult called Nexium that brainwashed her daughter India.
The Vanguard Name Game00:08:04
Nexium was led by a con man now serving 120 years named Keith Ranieri, aka Vanguard.
It's the name he gave himself, Vanguard.
And as I was watching this documentary, I couldn't stop thinking that Rani, I mean Vanguard, reminded me of someone.
But I couldn't put my finger on who.
For example, like most cult leaders, Vanguard had an extraordinary need to be surrounded by asslickers telling him how great he was.
Has your being a part of my life enhanced my life?
I don't have words to tell you how much it has.
A heartfelt tribute to Vanguard.
You make it possible for us to grow ourselves every day into the people that we want to be.
A very amazing man in many, many, many ways.
Who did that remind me of?
I don't know that I've ever been more proud to be standing next to you bits.
Thank you, President Trump, for allowing us to have you as our president.
You're living up to everything I thought you would.
You're one heck of a leader.
Oh, yeah, that guy.
That guy.
That's right.
The one who is also always bragging about what a genius he is.
But I'm smarter than him.
I'm smarter than anybody.
I'm a very stable genius.
Donald Trump's very, very large a brain.
Okay, pause it right there.
Pause it right there.
This is a moment that is fucking so funny to me.
When Donald Trump goes, my very large brain, the audience starts cracking up.
And then even Bill Maher starts cracking up.
Like he can't stop laughing at it.
This is another thing that's been so fucking bizarre to me through this whole, like all the Trump years is that even the fucking ones who hate Donald Trump knows what he's doing is fucking hilarious.
Like they know it.
And don't think Trump doesn't know when he goes, my very large brain.
Like he knows what he's doing too.
It's fucking hilarious.
But anyway, I don't know.
So Bill Maher is here trying to figure out how we talk to Trump supporters, but he's calling them cult members.
And the connection he's got is that these people said great things about their cult leader and people have also said great things about Donald Trump.
Now, if your point is that Trump is narcissistic, is that supposed to be a unique thought?
Like of obviously.
But you know what?
So is Joe Biden making up stories about, you know, whatever the fuck, how great he was throughout all the years, lying about his fucking, you know, his past and his jobs and his college performance and all this shit.
This is all like the funny thing is like what John Meacham said at the beginning, he got it right.
This is all a cult.
It's not just the Trump side.
This is all tribal cultish behavior.
That's the whole nature of government and politics.
But anyway, so that's, you know, what he's missing.
But all right, let's just keep playing a few more minutes and then we'll wrap up.
Vanguard's followers believed he was the demonstrably single smartest person in the world because he told them.
He told them he spoke in full sentences when he was one and also that he invented his own math, just like Dr. William Miller.
And both Trump's and Vanguard's status as cult leaders sprang from their creation myths as off-the-charts business savants, when in reality, Vanguard's consumer byline business was a pyramid scheme shut down by the state of New York and about as successful as the three casinos Trump drove into bankruptcy in the 90s.
Oh, and they both started fake schools.
And then there's the fact that both men were such unrepentant sex creeps that they literally could not stop themselves from bragging about it.
If we conquer a woman, if we grab the thing we want to fuck, whatever it is, and fuck it, and if we do whatever we want, and they like it.
And when you're a star, they let you do it.
You can do anything.
Whatever you want.
All right, one quick pause right here.
Vanguard seems pretty badass.
Just saying.
Vanguard's Robbie the Fire's new hero.
That's the point.
Yeah, you didn't notice that?
Okay.
It seemed rather parallel to me.
And like all cult leaders, they had to have that one queen bee around them who they deputized to recruit others into their sick games.
Vanguard had smallville actress Alice and Mack.
Trump has Lindsey Graham.
And, you know, when you're fighting a cult, you're not just fighting the leaders, but all the enablers who see you as an enemy.
Truth is a threat to them.
That's why what Catherine Oxenberg did was so instructive.
You've heard the phrase, hate the sin, love the sinner.
Well, she practiced hate the cult, love the cultist.
She didn't scream at her daughter that she was stupid.
She didn't cut her off.
She just kept trying to remind her of who she used to be.
I think we need to try that on QAnon.
You know, the ones who believe that rich liberals are running a massive pedophile ring and eat babies and in some cases are really lizard people wearing a human mask.
And they were as sure that Trump was going to win re-election as Dr. Miller's followers were that the world was going to end in 1844.
They were told to trust the plan that Trump would get a second term devoted to busting the Democratic sex trafficking ring.
But now on message boards, we can see they have doubt and despondency.
One of them wrote, my faith is shaken.
I followed the plan.
Trump lost.
What now?
What now?
Opportunity to lift the scales from their eyes.
But it's not going to happen from mocking them or calling them stupid or making smart remarks like, if Kamala Harris really is a lizard person, why didn't she eat that fly on Mike Pence's head?
Don't do that.
I'm saying don't do that.
Really?
All right, we can pause it there.
And that's basically what I wanted to get to.
Because that's essentially the point he's making.
And so on one hand, I do almost feel the need to like appreciate that Bill Maher in his own way is saying that, yeah, you know, these 70 million people, they still are part of this country.
And maybe we need to not just mock them and we need to actually talk to them and try to, you know, bring them back into the fold.
But of course, there's this obvious contradiction between him saying we don't need to mock these people after doing six minutes of comparing them to cult followers and just basically saying they're a bunch of idiots who have been completely duped, who don't know anything.
I would say that if Bill Maher was sincere in his efforts, what you might want to do is listen to people and their concerns and see if maybe they're getting something right that you're getting wrong.
And again, I don't know what this whole thing is of making QAnon representative of all Trump supporters.
I do not believe that there are 72 million QAnon conspiracy theorists out there.
And again, I don't even know if you... if Bill Maher is prepared to fucking really take on any of their arguments.
I don't know, to be honest.
But so anyway, so that's the kind of state of a lot of liberals in this country right now, where they understand so little about what the other side believes.
Listening to Concerns on December 5th00:01:12
But I think there are some of them who kind of want to, want to understand it a little bit more.
And I don't know.
We'll see how that all fucking plays out.
Anyway, I just wanted to play that.
Any final thoughts, Rob?
Did the 1845 guy give a rain date?
I don't know.
You know what?
There's a homework assignment for you, Rob Bernstein.
I want to know everything that there is to know about how he handled that situation.
That must have been awkward.
He was just sitting there and he's like, everyone's gathered around.
He's like, be here any minute.
He's going.
I just got a message from Jesus said he's running like 20 minutes late.
So there's refreshments out if you guys want to hang out for a while.
And they're just staying out there all night and at a certain point being like, so let's go home and regroup and we'll come back tomorrow and whatever.