Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the 2020 election aftermath, analyzing Supreme Court rulings on mail-in voting in Pennsylvania and Texas while debating witness testimonies of alleged fraud. They critique the "democracy myth" justifying state power, compare unchecked voting to bailouts, and argue that permanent masking represents a "Faustian bargain" where citizens trade rights for normalcy. The discussion highlights the psychological toll of restrictions, questions vaccine efficacy, and concludes by noting how corporate relocations, like Tesla moving to Texas, may force governments to improve environments to retain wealth. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Heshy Socks: Heaven For Your Feet00:01:43
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Pennsylvania Election Legal Nightmare00:15:01
All right, let's start the show.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Heart of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith, and I am just thrilled to pieces.
Ludwig von Mises pieces, that I am joined by the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What is up, my brother?
Not the much man.
We're doing it again.
Another episode.
There you go.
I really kind of phoned this one in, Robbie.
What's going on?
Everything up here?
No, no, I'm good.
I'm good to go.
I even brought notes today.
I never bring notes.
Look at that.
My notes all on a legal pad.
It might be just the way the light was reflecting off of it, but from my screen, it looked like there was nothing on that piece of paper, which is even funnier for you to just have just a legal pad there that you got perfectly good stick figures here.
I don't know what you're talking about.
All right, you got notes.
Well, I'm guessing that some of your notes involved the court cases that are going on.
So the Supreme Court struck down a case that would prevent Pennsylvania from certifying the results of the election.
So there is no, at least as of right now, Pennsylvania has not been impeded in their efforts to certify the election for Joe Biden and give him Pennsylvania's Electoral College votes.
So that certainly is a loss for the Trump team, who is still bitterly fighting this with everything they have.
Although Donald Trump was tweeting that this was fake news and the case wasn't really from his people and other stuff like that, you still got to think this wasn't good for them that they lost this case.
But there are some other cases that you were just telling me about that are being pushed by the states.
So what have you noticed?
What have you been following about all this stuff?
Yeah.
So to start with the Pennsylvania one.
So just to recap, what was interesting was the court case finally got to the Supreme Court, but all the voter fraud, all of that stuff, none of those things that you saw in like these hearings, nothing about the voter dumps, none of that was discussed.
The only thing that was discussed was that I think everyone's agreeing that they created this Order 77 and it was unconstitutional, which expanded mail-in voting.
I think that's somewhat agreed upon that they did something that's against their state constitution and they expanded the mail-in voting.
The question that was being brought to the court, basically what the court did was they threw it out and they said that this should have been contested at the time of creation.
You can't lose the election and then void every single one of these votes, which that does seem somewhat reasonable, but it also doesn't seem so reasonable that they weren't looking at any of the voter fraud.
So big picture, you basically have unconstitutional law was created, right?
And now they're saying you can't contest this after the fact, which sounds reasonable, but I was thinking about it and I can make the argument the other way.
You ready for this, Davey Smith?
I'm going to have my Charlie Day lawyer moment here.
So the argument that says that it basically you didn't contest a new rule.
So it's like both sides were in agreement.
We're having a contest here.
And so since you didn't contest the new rule, both sides said, hey, we're going to play the game this way.
I think what's not fair about that, like you really want to go to the extreme on that, before the election, if both presidents to say, hey, we're going to decide this thing by playing rocks, paper, scissors, shoot, would we, would we be okay with that?
Like, no.
So awesome.
It would be a boxing match, wrestling match.
Any of those things would be cool.
But if they were to do it, we'd say, no, there's a legal process here.
You're not allowed to decide as the two people that we're going to do the contest differently.
So if there was a violation of law, even if both sides agree to it, there might still be a case to be made.
Well, that's not the way that this thing is supposed to be run.
It's not up to the candidates to decide, hey, this is the way we're going to run the contest.
Like if we don't agree to that as the public, then that's not what the contest is.
You can't just make up, okay, we're going to decide this by boxing.
The other thing I was thinking about in football, you know, when there's a flag down on the play, there's like an offensive, you know, and then they play out the play because you get a free play.
That's the way it works.
The other side broke the rules, but you don't just call it a play.
You see it through.
And if you end up getting the ball down the field, you decline the penalty.
In this case, I could see why the argument's being made where beforehand, we didn't know that we needed to contest this.
But by you guys expanding voting, you weren't able to actually maintain for voter fraud.
So these two things really tie in together where it's you guys expanded it, and then it turns out that it didn't work out in my favor.
So yes, now I'm going to play that card.
It's not really being a sore loser because it comes back to the fact that the other side did make the violation at the outset.
So that gives you the leverage to then decide, okay, well, let's see how it plays out.
Oh, you know what?
I am going to use that card.
It's not really being a sore loser because the other side, the outset of it is that they actually did make the violation.
Yeah, okay.
So I can, I can understand that argument, and that seems fairly reasonable to me.
It seems like no matter what is decided here, some people are going to get screwed over.
Like there's no way, there's no way to kind of parse this thing out with the exception of like having a re, you know, a revote, not a recount, but actually having like a re-vote where you're verifying things or something, which just doesn't seem likely to me.
And honestly, look, if I'm being honest, it seems impossibly unlikely that Donald Trump is going to find an avenue to success.
That's just how it seems to me.
I could be wrong about this.
I'm far from an expert in the law.
But it was, you know, I was watching the other day, just watching more and more of these witness testimonies and in various different settings, you know, testifying before state senators, some were like in preliminary hearings.
But, you know, as we were kind of talking about just, I believe on the last episode, where, you know, the one testimony of that drunk crazy chick goes viral and everyone's talking about it.
But you're looking at, you know, I'm hearing so many of these other testimonies of people who are saying, look, I saw this fraud going on.
I saw, you know, 50 boxes that held a thousand ballots each being delivered and none of them were traced and they were all made out to, and it's people who, now, I'm not saying I know that these people are telling the truth.
I have no idea, you know, I have no idea.
I wouldn't put it past, especially with the way the culture is right now, where there's not a lot of, it's not like it's 1954 and you kind of trust that the average person puts country first and it's not that bitterly divided, you know, on a partisan level.
Like you may like your guy more than the other, but you don't look at the other guy as a Nazi and look at the other guy as a commie or, you know, whatever.
In today, in 2020, I could easily see any Trump supporter lying to get Donald Trump in.
And I could easily see any anti-Trumper lying to get Trump out because people have convinced themselves, whether rightly or wrongly, that the stakes are that high between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
We're in the middle of a culture war.
There's not too much just respect for institutions and things like that.
So anyway, just disclaimer, I don't know that they're telling the truth.
But I'm seeing like dozens of people testifying who have signed written affidavits, who sound like serious people.
I mean, I don't know, but they present themselves fine, not like that woman, who are saying like, I saw this stuff.
Like I saw this happening and I'm willing to put like, you know, myself in legal jeopardy to, you know, swear that I saw this.
And you kind of sit there and you wonder and you're like, how can, so, okay, in one situation, if they were to overthrow the, you know, results or not certify the results or something like that, I understand the argument that that's disenfranchising some people of votes, certainly.
But do we do nothing about this?
Like, do we, I mean, I mean, this whole system just sucks so much, but do you see these people swearing, willing to sign their name on affidavits saying they saw all of this shady shit going on?
And then like, it's just like, eh, too bad.
This is the way we do it.
So we're not going to be able to look back.
And in many of these situations, I actually think it's impossible to look back and trace the ballots at what are you going to go through every one of them and verify them to, you know, where they came from, where they origin, where they originated.
Seems impossible.
Like I was saying, the only thing that seems possible is like to just redo the election.
But even then, you'd have to figure out like, okay, what rules are we going to go with now?
Are we just doing in-person voting?
Because we couldn't do that the first time, evidently.
So I don't know.
The whole thing just seems so crazy.
And it seems so highly unlikely to me that Trump is going to pull this off.
Yeah, I agree.
And just to tell you what's going on now with the Supreme Court case is basically Texas is bringing a case against the other states that they expanded mail-in voting and that that allowed for fraud.
They're trying to say that that should be thrown out because Texas like has no claim against these other states.
I don't agree with that because if Texas voted for Trump and they think that these other states are robbing the Texas voters of their presidential elect because of a fraudulent system, it makes sense why they should be able to bring that case.
And what's interesting is the Supreme Court, unlike when a state brings something to the Supreme Court, it bypassed bypasses all the other courts, which means unlike the Pennsylvania ruling, which got like the earlier court that the Supreme Court just goes, we're sticking with that.
This one, I think they can still throw out pretty quickly, but they at least need to look at it.
But to your point, no matter how much fraud was here, do we really see the Supreme Court overruling the election at this point?
I just don't see the Democrats accepting that in any capacity, especially if we know that they're throwing out legitimate votes.
That's what they did, which was so slick.
Like you said, they combined everything together.
So the only way to overturn this is knowingly to throw out legitimate, what we know to be legitimate votes because they were mixed in with illegitimate votes.
I just don't see it happening.
Yeah.
So, so I agree with you.
And that has kind of been the assumption that we've been operating under on this show: that this is that, look, there certainly is some evidence of shenanigans.
We don't know exactly to what level, but what's going to happen here is Joe Biden is going to be installed as the president on January 20th.
That's kind of the assumption we've been operating under.
And I've spent a decent amount of time talking about how interesting that is that you have this situation that's really unlike anything else where a huge percentage of Trump supporters.
I think there was a recent poll that showed it was over 90% of Trump supporters straight up believe this election was illegitimate and stolen from him.
And so that's a really interesting dynamic going forward in the country.
But I suppose it's worth at least just taking a few minutes to think about what the implications, if by some Hail Mary, which I, you know, I don't see happening, but if by some thing that we don't see coming, by some stroke of good legal fortune, the Trump team wins.
Like, I don't even know how that would happen.
Texas takes this suit to the Supreme Court.
They side with Texas.
They say, you know what, this whole election is bullshit.
All of these states, whatever.
They, you know, don't allow enough states to certify that Joe Biden doesn't get over the mark.
Just try to imagine what does this country look like if now this thing is given back to Trump.
I have a tough time even picturing how insane the left would go.
And the truth is that I thought before election day, I was saying, where I thought Trump had a really good shot of winning.
I thought there will be riots if Donald Trump wins this.
But now, if you tell the whole country that Donald Trump lost and then courts step in and hand it to Donald Trump, I mean, I know you can say that the left has lost their mind over the last four years, eight years, whatever.
But holy shit, it would be a storm that I don't know if this country could survive.
Yeah, I think the only way in my head that it could possibly happen is if you have that moment in court, like you've seen in the movies, where someone from the Democratic side high up actually flips and rats them out.
And you have the moment where it's like, Joe Biden is going to jail.
We know for a fact that these people cheated.
And then it's undeniable.
I think anything shy of like literally Hillary Clinton or John Brennan or someone getting on the stand and going, yes, we did this.
Here's how it was done.
I'm admitting to it.
Unless you have that moment where everyone's got to go, fuck.
And then Joe Biden goes to jail and serious people go to jail and there's accountability.
I think it's exactly what you're describing.
Everybody knows that we can't live in this quasi-space of government can't admit, like, yeah, maybe there was an election stall here or it looks like there was fraud.
We're just going to go with Trump instead, even though we announced they're not going to do that.
They need to stay the business of government needs to stay open.
And so, at this point, it's damage control for how do we keep this illusion alive?
And the answer is: Supreme Court looks at it and goes, Yeah, there was some fraud, but not enough to overturn it.
And they just throw it out.
The best we can hope for is, in my opinion, is that they run a little bit of an investigation and you see some heads roll and they unwind it a little bit so that they can at least pretend that the next election is going to be legitimate.
Which, who knows?
Maybe we're just done with the facade of legitimate elections, Dominion, baby.
Well, yeah, I mean, the thing that's so fascinating about it is that the democracy myth, the democracy ritual, the religion is like right at the center of the entire indoctrination about statism.
Like, this, this is what, to the normie, or at least what's pushed out there by the establishment, is that this is what justifies the state, you know.
Justifying The Tyrannical State00:03:23
And there's been different things throughout history that have been used to justify state rule.
Um, there's a lot of times it's a more blatant, you know, historically, and still to this day in other countries.
A lot of times, it's more of a nakedly religious appeal.
So, you know, like whatever, like, you know, the pharaohs in ancient Egypt were considered godlike.
There's still a lot of, you know, theocratic dictatorships where the basic claim to the people is that these your rulers are closer to God than you are.
And so they kind of will tell you what God's laws are and all of this stuff.
Kings were oftentimes treated this way, but often it was just kind of asserted that the kings owned this kingdom.
And so basically, you know, they were the property owners, and you're, you know, you're lucky that they let you have what they have, you know, like that's the that's what the king's domain is.
Um, but in the West, in modern times, the myth, certainly post-World War I, the myth has been that, well, no, no, no, all of those other things are barbaric and evil.
Everyone, every one of our enemies would grant us that if there isn't an election, then government is illegitimate.
Basically, that government is everything we say it is if there isn't an election.
So, so democracy is almost like their get out of anarchist argument card because they would certainly agree that if the people got no vote, right?
Like, this is our founding myth at this point: taxation without representation.
If you don't have the representation, then yeah, taxation is theft.
But if you have the representation, then it's not.
That's kind of their argument, more or less, even if they'll never say it in these terms.
This is like what's implied: that sure, a government would be tyrannical if they just imposed their will on you.
But if we give everyone a vote, then it's okay because the government is us.
Now, this myth has been smashed to pieces by Murray Rothbard and some other great thinkers.
Murray Rothbard, probably in the most entertaining way.
I love the example that he gave his, I mean, he gave a few, but he said, you know, if the government is us, then I guess all those Jews in Nazi Germany committed mass suicide.
I mean, because you know, right, they did it to themselves.
So, it's not, you know, so as soon as you look at this, you realize that, well, even if 90% of the people vote to enslave the other 10%, that doesn't change anything with the moral dynamic of enslaving 10% of the people.
Like, it's, it's morally speaking, it's no different if some dictator just took over undemocratically and enslaved 10% of the people than if people voted in the guy who enslaves 10% of the people.
Like, why should that make a difference?
But regardless of all of that, this is at the core of the modern mythology that this is what legitimizes everything else.
And so it's really a profound development.
I mean, I don't claim to know exactly how it's all going to shake out, but it's a profound development for people to lose faith in this kind of central ritual that justifies everything else.
Losing Faith In Democracy00:15:59
And of course, you know, if the courts were to give it to Donald Trump, then everyone on the left, the left half of America would lose faith in that.
And the way it looks like it's going to go, it's going to be pretty much everyone in the right half of America.
But either way, this is something really big and really profound.
Yeah, there's going to be that campaign from Republican senators afterwards.
Well, now that like, obviously this was bad, but we still need a function and we're going to investigate and make sure the next election's legit.
And then hopefully Trump starts the Trump Party and the Trump TV network.
And then it just, you know, let's turn it to shit, baby.
Who knows?
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All right, let's get back into the show.
It's really interesting to see what Trump's post-presidency is going to look like.
And, you know, as I've been saying for a while now, and really, as I've been saying for years, Trump was never that good at being president.
Like even from his own, you know, perspective or his own stated goals, he was really never that good at it.
He was never that good at wielding power.
But he was very effective at being Trump.
And being the president gave him more of a platform and a bully pulpit and all of that.
But being the ex-president still has a lot more than, you know, anything before he was elected.
And so Trump can kind of essentially keep doing what Trump does that pisses off the establishment after being president.
And in some ways, even more so.
Because yeah, sure, Donald Trump could go around on TV and say, you know, there's questions about Obama's birth certificate to undermine Obama, but that's nothing like what he can do to Joe Biden, right?
He can actually go around and say, Joe Biden lost to me.
I'm the president.
And there is at least enough there to sell it.
You know, there's enough there now at this point, because probably what's going to happen, as we were both indicating, is that, you know, this will get nowhere in court and Joe Biden will be president on January 20th.
And if that's the case, what we're left with is what I was saying before.
Just seeing anyone who's actually looking into it and paying attention to this, just seeing all of these people swearing under oath that they saw all of this shady shit happen.
You have all of these people talking about statistical irregularities with the voting outcomes, the voting dumps, poll watchers claiming they weren't allowed to watch the ballots being counted, people saying boxes were coming in, all this shit.
And that's it.
We'll just be left with that.
No one will ever get to the bottom of it.
Nobody's going to go like, okay, well, this guy is saying this and he signed an affidavit.
And you know what?
There's fucking dozens of them who signed one.
So we're going to get to the bottom of this and figure out what happened.
None of that.
So you just leave that alone.
And then Trump also just has the optics.
However you feel about vote by mail, there is something that you have to acknowledge about the optics of saying like, well, in the way we always did voting, Trump dominated.
In this new way that we switched up this year, he lost.
So even if it's all legitimate, there's still something about the optics of that that look really good for Trump.
You know, they give him a leg to stand on and being like, well, if we had done things the way we always did them, I'm the president.
And this is literally the way we've done, you know, voting from 2016 since forever.
And so this is all completely changed up.
And that's the only reason why I'm out.
So he's going to have like a really, you know, he's going to have an aura about him amongst his followers that he really is the president of the United States.
And he's just going to be fucking, oh, he's going to be such a thorn in their side.
I almost can't wait to watch it.
Yeah.
Also, government lacks an accountability for that.
Their claim is that they can offer us goods and services.
And when they are unable to do so, there are no consequences.
In this case, if you're the government, let's just call the government agency of voting.
I don't think that's what it's called, but let's just say you're the government agency of voting and you go, hey, listen, we're going to expand mail-in voting, right?
That's a new, like, that's a new technology or a new service.
It's your responsibility to ensure that you can actually offer that service.
Like, if I decided to make a new car engine for you that didn't work, I would be responsible because the engine doesn't work.
So I think there's a very valid claim that if you can say, hey, you expanded this and you expanded in a way that you could not guarantee that it could be done safely.
So the fault is on you that we now have a questionable election.
I think what probably would make the most sense, it's not happening, would be to redo it.
It's not happening.
That's not going to happen.
But I do think that they're like, I get at the moment, the burden of proof is on people to approve, like prove that there was fraud.
I almost think that there should be a little bit of government accountability to prove that the election was legitimate, specifically when it comes to the mail-in voting, because they were the ones that basically said, hey, we can expand to mail-in voting and have a legitimate election.
And there certainly is proof to say that, well, I don't think we can.
And we did flag beforehand that we thought it was a bad idea.
So it's kind of almost like, in my opinion, the burden of proof should be on them to prove that with the mail-in voting system, they were able to have a legitimate election, which I think you could, you know, there's enough evidence to say you can't.
Sure, sure.
I also just think that even if mail-in voting, if there were no questions about it, just theoretically, if there were no questions about the legitimacy, like we somehow we knew for sure, which obviously we don't, but if somehow we knew for sure that every ballot came from the person who was voting and, you know, like they were all what would be called legitimate votes.
There's still something to me that I just see as really problematic about mail-in voting.
And of course, as everyone who listens to this show knows, I mean, I've talked about this a million times.
I'm not a fan of democracy.
I don't care about democracy.
I care about freedom.
Democracy means nothing to me.
You know, I mean, democracy is, in my opinion, like truly a vessel.
I mean, it is whatever the people make it.
You could vote for really great policies.
If 90% of the people all believed in the correct policies, then yeah, democracy would be great.
But if they don't, then it's terrible.
And that's closer to the world we're living in.
And I don't care if, you know, two people vote to rob the third person.
That's no more legitimate than if nobody votes for it or if everybody votes for it.
It doesn't matter.
So, you know, I'm not speaking from the position of being a fan of democracy, but it does seem to me that it's a little bit better if you have to at least do something.
Like just do like the easier you make it for people to vote, the more of a problem I think it becomes.
And in the same way that like, you know, like it's in comedy clubs, you know, for comedians who can't draw, like in headliner clubs, for comedians who can't draw, they'll sometimes paper the room.
That's what it's known as papering the room, which basically means they give away a bunch of free tickets.
So a bunch of people just get free tickets.
It's almost like they're asking them to come.
You're like, hey, can you, will you come to this show?
And as every comedian will tell you, it's never as good of a crowd.
It's never as good of a crowd when it's free tickets.
Even if the tickets aren't that expensive, it means something that people pay something for it.
If I'm sure almost everyone listening has had this situation before, but if someone offers to do a job for you for free, you know, you have a friend who's a plumber or something like that.
He'll help you out for free.
Many times you'd almost prefer to pay them something, you know, because just when someone's doing something for you for free, it changes the dynamic.
They're not working for you anymore.
They're not doing a job for you anymore.
They're doing a favor for you.
And it's hard to be demanding of someone who's doing a favor for you because then you're a dick.
But if someone's doing a job for you, then it's very easy to be, hey, I paid for this.
I expect this to be done.
And in the same sense, when it comes to voting, it's important that there's at least something that they have to put in, some type of skin in the game, even if it's as simple as I have to go to a place.
I just have to go there.
I have to at least care enough to go there.
I can't vote in my underwear on my couch.
You know what I mean?
And there's something about letting people vote who like whatever.
Let's say, you know, your polling place is like, you know, 20 minutes from you and it's going to take 20 minutes to vote.
Okay.
Whatever.
It's like just hypothetically.
Okay.
So you got to drive 20 minutes there, wait for 20 minutes, drive 20 minutes back.
So it's an hour out of your life that you have to sacrifice to vote.
One hour that you don't get to earn income or you don't get to spend with your family or you don't get to, you know, whatever, watch a movie, whatever it is you would do with that time.
It's one hour of your time that you have to sacrifice in order to vote.
Okay.
Now, the person who is not willing to sacrifice that, but will vote sitting on their couch, that person should not be allowed to vote.
You get what I'm saying?
Like the person who wouldn't even be willing to put an hour in, now we still want to hear from that person about what system of government the rest of us have to live under.
I just don't see how that's a good thing.
And of course, the mythology about democracy is that, of course, it's good.
Democracy is just inherently good.
And the more people voting, the better it is.
But really, if we stop and think about this a little bit, is it good that the person who would have just not voted because of the tiniest inconvenience that they still vote?
This person who cares so little is so uninformed, has so little skin in the game that they would just not do it if it cost a little bit of a sacrifice.
Now we found a way for them to have to sacrifice nothing and still be able to vote.
There's just some nothing about that seems good to me.
That seems only like a negative.
And so that's in some ways, even if hypothetically we were able to clean up the threat of voter fraud from voting by mail.
I think you're still left with this really fundamental problem, which is that this is much worse for society going forward if this is the way we do things, which I do think the Democrats are going to push for forever.
I don't think there's no reason why the Democrats would ever want to go back to traditional voting because voter turnout usually favors the Democrats.
And of course, the other thing is that it's much, you know, it's much harder to confirm the legitimacy of the votes.
No, I think that's fair.
Like, why are we letting the laziest give them more power to make decisions about what's good for all of us?
That doesn't make a ton of sense.
And what you were saying on the expanding of mail-in voting, just thought experiment.
Imagine you had that ministry of votes I was talking about in each town.
There was one person responsible for legitimizing the election, but we say election is the most important thing.
It's the fabric of our entire society.
So this person that is going to be accountable, we're going to pay him $200,000 for just the election season.
But if there's over a thousand fraudulent votes, we're hanging him.
Let's just say, right?
Because this is the most important thing in the world.
Someone's got to be accountable.
You think there's any chance that that guy is going to allow for mail-in voting?
That's a really interesting thought experiment, right?
Yeah, yeah.
If someone really cared and was accountable, this would not be the system.
There's no question.
So don't pretend like it's the most important thing or we really care.
You know, that's a really, that's a really great way to put it.
That's a really great way to put it, just as, as a thought experiment to realize that if you really had skin in the game, if your life was on the line or, you know, whatever, you were going to lose your house, you know, like something really major was going to happen to you.
Would you ever really do it this way?
You know, like it goes, this speaks to a lot of different things where like, if you could imagine, like, let's say that the execs and the CEOs of big banks were going to lose everything.
Like you were going to lose your house, lose your kids' private school, lose your boat, lose everything.
You're left with the shirt on your back if your bank fails.
And there's no FDIC.
There's no, you know what I mean?
None of this shit.
Like you were going to lose everything if your bank went under.
Do you really think they'd be playing in the subprime mortgage the same way they were?
Do you really think they'd have 10% or less reserve standards?
My guess is it might be like, hey, you know what?
Maybe we should hold a little bit more in reserves because we're actually worried about this.
But when you know the federal government's going to come in, when you know the Fed's going to give you free money, when you know you'll get bailouts if you need it, then it's like, yeah, whatever.
Let's fucking roll the dice.
And more importantly, to the point you're making, when you know that your house, your boat, your kids' education, your, you know, like all that stuff is completely protected and can never be, you know, can never be gone after, then yeah, let's fucking gamble.
Let's roll the dice because you're not even gambling.
You're basically playing a rigged game.
So that's an interesting way to think about a lot of things.
And it's certainly, it certainly makes sense to think about vote by mail in that way.
If nothing else, just as a thought experiment, you know, just to realize that you're like, yeah, no, there's, this is obviously not the way you would do it if you were really concerned that you could lose something over it.
So I don't know.
I mean, so you're with me, I guess, in just saying that you probably, if you had to predict, think these suits are going to go nowhere.
Dude, like I said, government's in the business of staying open and being government.
So, do you really think that based off of everything that's going on, the Supreme Court's going to go, well, looks like there was fraud here?
You're going to have to quantify X amount of fraud, gave these votes to Biden instead of, and with all the stuff being mixed together, how do you possibly?
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe they can, some expert comes in here and shows the exact amount of Dominion votes that got changed on the back end.
And so Trump really won.
But even that, like, do you see the general public accepting it?
Like every Biden fan after all this media coverage, it's going to be, it'll be a bloodbath.
COVID Craziness And Masks00:06:45
It'll be crazy.
Maybe it'll go to some crazy thing where some wacko judge determines that Trump and Biden have to split the presidency and live together in some odd couple type situation.
Like they have to sleep in the same bed.
They have to do everything.
I mean, I'm just trying to spit ball the most hilarious results that we can get out of this whole thing.
Especially if every time Biden comes back to the room, Trump's just plowing his wife.
Again, the odds of this being the outcome, I think, are fairly low.
But you know, you never know.
You never know.
Today, in 2020, you don't rule anything out.
Everything's possible.
I think some Jew was saying there's aliens exist and Trump knows about it.
Maybe he's right.
I don't know.
Did you hear about this?
This is really good.
Yeah, there's definitely aliens.
You keep me?
Come on.
All of coronavirus was just an experiment of alien compliance.
That's what's really going on here.
That you know what?
Sometimes these crazy things make more and more sense in the year 2020.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay, so let's transition.
Speaking of COVID craziness, there was here, let me just pull this up on my phone so I can take a look at it as I tell you.
But this stuck out to me.
There's a New York Times piece about coronavirus.
The headline is: Here's why vaccinated people still need to wear a mask.
And the subheadline is: The new vaccine will probably prevent you from getting sick with COVID.
No one knows yet whether they keep you from spreading the virus to others.
And then there's a whole piece on it, but that's basically the gist of it.
You know, we don't know if this vaccine will actually stop you from spreading the virus to others.
So vaccine, you still got to wear a mask.
This is really now the New York Times, although it's been largely discredited to normal people, is still the center of the corporate press.
This is still what the rest of the corporate press looks to where they get their cues from.
And so when the New York Times says something, no matter what it is, you are well advised to take it seriously.
Now, that doesn't mean to believe it because they're full of shit, but it means something when they tell you that.
If the New York Times tells you we're going to war in Iraq, we are going to war in Iraq.
You know, like they, this is the, you know, the main boss.
If you were like, you know, trying to, you know, defeat the corporate press in a video game, the New York Times would be the three-headed monster that, you know, if you kill all the other, you know, all the other ones die.
What was that?
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie where you have to, anyway.
Yeah.
Okay.
Pretty good flick.
So the New York Times saying this means something.
And this is, I don't know how exactly to express how insane this is, that this is actually what we've gotten to now.
We went from 15 days to flatten the curve to being like, oh no, we have to continue to see, you know, hospitalizations plummet, deaths plummet.
We have to see no new cases or whatever, you know, it became.
Then it was just these arbitrary measures.
Well, if it's 3%, we close the schools.
If it's 5%, we do this and that, you know, just all of this insanity.
And then, you know, for a while, it was until we get a vaccine.
We have to give up our lives until we have a vaccine.
And this was at a point where we had no idea if we were going to get a vaccine or not.
You know, there's lots of viruses.
Most viruses don't have a vaccine.
So, but then look at this.
You know, Trump says a vaccine is right around the corner.
Everyone mocked him and laughed at him.
But now Pfizer and that other company also have announced they have vaccines coming.
But now look at this.
One more time, it seems like they're changing the game.
Now it's even after a vaccine, we still think you might be able to spread it.
And so the title there says you still wear masks.
But what's the implication if they're saying you can still spread it?
So you still have to wear masks.
The implication is everything, all of it, all of the restrictions, all of the lockdowns, everything is still on the table.
Even if the vaccine comes out and it's being distributed, doesn't matter.
You still got to socially distance.
You still got to wear a mask.
And of course, even though they don't say this, the implication is that you still got to do everything that we've been doing.
And it really, you know, it's at a certain point, man, the American people really need to ask themselves how long they're willing to do this over a virus with a 99% survival rate, 99% or higher in most groups of people.
And, you know, Tom Woods, the great Tom Woods, who's always done nothing but incredible work, but man, over this last year, he's just been on fire, just dismantling the COVID hysteria.
Dismantling The Virus Hysteria00:14:10
He posed this question at one point, which I may not get exactly right, but it was a really interesting question, really interesting thought experiment to think about.
And he said, more or less, I might be, you know, not getting this exactly right, but more or less, the question was, if you could save a thousand people's lives, but you had to give up music, would you do it?
And not just like you have to give up music, like humanity has to give up music.
There's no more music for the rest of time, but you save a thousand people's lives for doing it.
Would you do it?
And all I'll say is to pretend that that's an easy question is wrong.
It's actually not that easy because right away you're like, man, a thousand lives that means a lot.
I mean, that's somebody's parent or child or friend or whatever.
You know, that really means something.
But giving up music forever, that is a huge part of meaning in existence.
You know, like music is really something.
It's a force that's hard to describe.
It's hard to put into words what music means.
You know what I mean?
Or just give up art, you know, to make it more general or something like that.
That's a, in fact, the more you think about it, it would almost seem kind of insane to save those thousand people.
And then the rest of humanity just gives up music or gives up art.
You know, I mean, like, you know, a thousand people are, you know, that's horrible, but we've lost lots of people in the history of humanity and we always bounce back.
But to give up like art, I don't know.
Look, I don't know.
I don't even know what the answer is.
But the point is that it's something to think about.
And you, you really start to, as you see them now, starting to let you know that we are not going back ever, which is basically what this New York Times article is saying.
You're never going back.
It doesn't matter.
People really got to ask themselves if they're willing to do that, if they're willing to live this way.
They're willing to rob us in the same sense of giving up art, rob humanity of basically 90% plus what makes life meaningful.
And what does make life meaningful?
It's like being able to see the people you love, being able to pursue your dreams, you know, protect your livelihood, provide for your family, going to, you know, a concert or a play or a sporting event or like all of these things that are just like always been taken for granted as just part of the human experience that you, you know, you get to enjoy.
The idea of just giving, that's it.
Even after the vaccine, doesn't matter.
We still have to give up all of that is about the creepiest thing ever.
They're going to let us go back when you have to carry an identification card that you've been vaccinated, and we allow for contact tracing so that government can let us know who's a risk and quarantine them immediately.
So once we voluntarily give up all of our basic rights because there's a boogeyman and a virus that will kill us if government doesn't help us out, then we'll go back to our normal lives.
And well, government, who did us the favor of creating these new technologies that allow us to live a normal life because otherwise we'd be stuck in our houses wearing masks forever.
Thank you, government.
Do you ever hear like, um, so I remember Ron Paul used to say things like this, like where he'd be like, you know, the, you know, whatever it was like, the tax that the British imposed on the American colonies, I think it was like a 25% tax rate or something like that, which I believe was also the same as indentured servitude.
Something like a 25% tax was imposed on you.
And people were willing to fight and die over that.
And then you'd be like, today, Americans are taxed at higher rates and they just kind of accept it.
Then it would, you know, it'd be like an example of just how docile the population has become.
But man, this isn't like, this is a whole new stratosphere.
I mean, the idea that people are just still willing to accept this, it really kind of blows my mind.
And of course, I am, I'm really happy to see the people who are resisting it.
And I think those people are engaged in an act of heroism.
But the fact that people would even consider this, would even consider just going on living this way when we're approaching a year of it, you know?
And not just go, you know what?
We're just going to deal with it.
We're just going to deal with the risk of a virus with a 99% survival rate.
We're just going to deal with it.
It sucks.
No one likes it.
But you know what?
You can't give up everything in life.
The fact that we don't have the strength to have a super majority of the population feel that way is, I don't know.
It's to say disturbing is just a huge understatement.
It's like devastating.
But that really is.
There's something so creepy to me about this article.
And then just letting you know, because it's not even just what you're saying that, oh, if you have a card showing that you've been vaccinated, now you can go on with your life.
Because I've actually seen a lot of people, even people who are sometimes government skeptic or sometimes vaccine skeptics being like, I'll take the damn vaccine if I can just be normal again.
Like whatever.
I'll do whatever I have to, which is in its own way disturbing because it's kind of like this Faustian bargain.
It's like a, you know, almost like you're being bullied into something.
Like, okay, if I, if I just take the shot that you told me to take, can you stop doing all this other stuff to me now?
You know?
But now, according to this New York Times article, it's like, no, even you, even you who take the vaccine, no, we still think that we're going to just have to live like this, presumably forever.
I mean, there's, it's not as if there's an end date to this anymore.
It's not as if they're saying 15 days to flatten the curve or anything like that.
At this point, they're just telling you, I mean, there's, it's not like anyone thinks that COVID's going to go away.
Not like anybody's telling you, like, well, you know, this, this virus is about to die out and then it'll be over.
It's just life now.
Life is just being masked up all the time.
Like all of these things.
And that's not, you know, people will mock the mask thing.
You know, but I mean, obviously I'm more concerned about people's lives being destroyed and people not seeing their families and things like that.
But even just the masks, it's so fucking creepy.
It's like, so that's just life forever that people don't see each other's faces, that you're constantly just like inhaling your own hot breath and this fucking like, what a weird, like profound psychological change to the way humans interact with each other.
And people are fucking weird about it, man, particularly in the city.
In New York City, man, people are fucking weird about the masks.
I saw, you know, like out in the burbs, no one gives a fuck.
I mean, like, I, like, personally for me, I wear masks when I go into businesses because I just, I respect the property owners and the businesses' rights.
And I don't want to get them in trouble.
I don't want to give them a hard time.
So you're kind of like, okay, whatever.
You know, I'll do it.
If that's what you ask, I'll do that.
But I don't wear masks outside.
I don't believe in that.
I think it's stupid.
I think it's fucking gross.
And there's no science to back up that wearing masks outside is necessary or does anything.
Now, in the burbs, that's everyone's like that.
And they're just like, yeah, of course, whatever.
It's also a lot easier in the burbs to not walk right on top of each other.
But in New York City, man, people are fucking weird.
I was walking down the street the other day in the city and didn't have a mask on.
And this woman who's, I mean, I don't mean to be rude, but I think a 400-pound woman, I would guesstimate, was just giving me the dirtiest look ever.
Like as I walk.
And you're like, lady food.
Yeah, like what?
I got nothing here, right?
Like, there's a throw a salami.
It's throw a salami and run away like you're treating like a dog attacking you or something.
But it's like this weird fucking thing where you're like, yes, I know, obviously, lady, I am really damaging your health, which you were so serious about before I walked down the street and you could see my face.
I know, but like, you know, it's, it's, you're just so outraged that anyone would put your health at risk.
It's, you know, I don't know at what point can we just say what seemed kind of obvious to everyone who was paying attention to this by the, let's say, the end of April, what was obvious to everyone is that, hey, if you're at high risk or if you're so concerned about your health, then you follow these rules.
Then you stay home.
You mask up.
Wear the goggles.
Wear the face shield.
Do whatever the fuck you want to do.
I don't care.
But it's just fucking time to stop imposing this on the rest of us.
And like, I do think it in many ways, and this, this is a dynamic that happens a lot, is that they play on people's decency.
They use your decency against you.
But for the rest of Americans, it's like, hey, we have all sacrificed a lot in the name of trying to not get other people sick.
And I think we got to say we're done.
Like we're just done with this.
And I'm hoping, I'm hopeful that maybe this will be the breaking point.
And when I say this, I mean the, hey, we have a vaccine, but you still have to keep living like this.
Maybe this will be a point where people say like, yeah, you know what?
No.
Okay.
If we have a vaccine, then we're moving forward.
And that's it.
We're going, we're living regular lives.
We're going to be normal, free people.
And I don't even mean free in the libertarian sense of the word.
I just mean free in the what last year was considered everyone's sense of the word.
I mean, I think it's fucking time.
I think it's time for that.
And the other thing is that, you know, this vaccine has been developed very quickly.
And I've already seen some doctors kind of blowing the whistle and being like, we really don't know how safe this vaccine is.
And they're making arguments that it hasn't been properly tested on the groups that need it the most.
And, you know, so I don't know.
We'll see.
I'm going to dig into that and do a little bit more research on that going forward.
But yeah.
Anyway, I don't know.
You're going to get the vaccine, Robbie?
No, I'm hoping everyone else takes it and then all their dicks fall off and then I get to fuck everyone because I'm the only one who still has a dick.
That's what I'm hoping.
Last man with a dick in America.
That would be a cool position for you, Rob.
You would really, I think, I think it would be too much power for you, to be honest.
I think it would go right to your head.
No, I would eat distribution.
I would be very nice about it.
We're deploying the military to distribute Rob's dick to everybody.
Military is going to bring Rob around.
No, I honestly like, unless you're in a category that for some reason needs to take it, you might as well let other people guinea pig it first.
Yeah, I tend to agree with that.
I just, you know, from what I understand, what I've read of it so far is that it does, it makes you sick.
And for people who are in a very low risk position, I mean, for someone like, there's no way.
I mean, I suppose I'll be open-minded and see what happens in the next years, but like, there's no way I'd give my daughter the vaccine.
I mean, she's two years old.
She is almost guaranteed to not be affected by the virus.
All of the evidence seems to suggest that she's very unlikely to transfer it to anybody else, like highly, highly unlikely.
No, there's no way.
I'm making my daughter sick for some political correctness.
Also, there's a part of this vaccine that I don't understand, which is usually with vaccines, you got to get them beforehand in order for them to be effective.
This one, and I say this based off of Trump and the fact that they've been using it for emergency care, it doesn't seem to operate.
They're calling it a vaccine, but it seems to more operate that once you get sick, you can take it.
Is that true?
Well, because the way that this one works is usually, dude, I'm not a doctor.
So I might have this, but it's very wrong.
Usually, vaccines, from what I understand, you get exposed to a very small amount of the virus or a different kind of virus.
Your virus, your body knows how to fight it off.
This gets like your tea or whatever proteins to start fighting the virus so like it can't duplicate or something.
Like Trump already had Corona and then they gave him Regeneron or whatever the fuck these other ones were.
So it seems to be more something that helps your body fight the virus.
So it sounds to me like you wouldn't need to be like, it's not like an inoculation or immunity or whatever fuck word I'm trying to look for where it's like you need to get the HPV thing beforehand because once you get HPV, you're fucked.
I might be totally wrong about that.
Well, I probably already know my dick's clean, everybody.
Well, it doesn't matter.
It's the last one left.
So you'll take what you can get.
Take it or leave it.
Ladies, dudes, this is all you got.
Okay, so before we wrap up today, I did want to also mention briefly, because this was this put a smile on my face.
And I thought it was kind of a white pill moment, give a little bit of hope to those who might be in doubt.
But I thought it was pretty cool.
Elon Musk Moves States00:03:06
And I know you saw this as well, that Elon Musk announced that he is moving Tesla from California to Texas.
And that's pretty interesting.
He's also, he's not the only one.
A few other big companies, I believe Hewlett-Packard as well.
Honestly, it's been so many years since I had an HP, I didn't even know they still made computers.
But yeah, so, you know, it is nice to at least within the little bit of freedom that still is left in this country.
Thank God, we at least have the ability of companies to move states and can at least put some pressure on states to not make such an uninhabitable environment for business.
Elon Musk also, I mean, he was a gentleman about it, but he definitely took a few shots at California on the way out.
And that is something that I got to say is kind of nice.
It's pretty amazing to see California chase out Tesla of all companies.
You know, like Tesla.
The electric car.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, their whole, the whole company is about sustainable energy.
That's like with everything they do.
Like it's, they, they do a bunch of shit.
I know they do the electric cars.
They do the fucking like a bunch of shit with solar panels and stuff, but everything about the company you would think would be like a left, a lefties like dream company.
Like, oh my God, here's a guy getting fucking rich, making this huge company off exactly what we want society to look like.
And yet they still don't like Elon Musk because he's, he's really just a free thinker who won't be told to, you know, say exactly what he's told to say.
It's how dare you not let us tax and regulate you out of existence.
We both need these goods and services in the marketplace, and we believe in entrepreneurs that go do it.
But how dare you not let us ruin your company?
Yes, for the crime of creating energy efficient or sustained stuff that we want.
Cars and power sources or whatever the fuck Tesla's doing.
But, you know, Elon Musk, it's, and it really shows you something about what the kind of, you know, that this kind of progressive establishment, you know, order demands.
And it's not Elon Musk.
It doesn't really matter that his whole company is about building, you know, sustainable energy shit.
That doesn't really matter.
He's still the type of guy who's going to just go smoke weed with Joe Rogan and say what he wants to say.
And they, that does not work for them, which is, I actually think that's much more what it's about.
Only great men smoke weed with Joe Rogan.
Those are the best.
I actually haven't smoked weed with Joe Rogan in fucking years, but anyway, but I have.
It's on my track record.
But so, you know, it's anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting.
De Blasio And Cuomo Tax Base00:03:15
And perhaps this might be something that actually really helps the country going forward is that, you know, you have to imagine as until they can either get uniform policy from the federal government that makes it equally hard in all 50 states, in which case that's no longer an option, or there's some type of laws clamping down on people being allowed to move businesses and pull their wealth out, that perhaps, you know,
some wealthy people are going to start pulling their money out of some of the more tyrannical states at the moment.
And I think that's that would be really fantastic if it does happen.
Government looks at it backwards.
Rich people, if you're government, they're your best customers and you better treat them nicely or they're going to go elsewhere.
Like in New York and California are both going to suffer for it.
Oh, for sure.
They already are.
And it was an interesting, that was a really interesting divide.
I think Seattle lost Boeing or some major airline manufacturers out of their area.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
Do you remember when it was interesting because you saw the difference between the like the level of progressive between Cuomo and de Blasio?
So you have Cuomo, who is an establishment Democrat, you know, down with the whole program.
But then you have de Blasio, who's like, you know, several steps further out than he is.
So there were all these rich people leaving New York City, of course, because why the fuck wouldn't they?
And this is all over the place.
I mean, I used to live on the Upper West Side and the Upper West Side basically since March has been at a, I'd ballpark it at like 50% capacity.
About half of it's just gone.
They're just not in the city.
And of course, because like, you know, most of these people have like, you know, the rich people of the upper west side, they have, you know, probably like a $2 million apartment in the Upper West Side.
And then they have, you know, I don't know, like a million dollar, beautiful vacation home somewhere, you know, maybe in the Hamptons, maybe in Connecticut, maybe in, you know, wherever.
And so what are you going to do when you're locked in your home?
And they're like, well, I'll go to the big, beautiful home, you know, and so rich people have been fleeing from the beginning.
And Cuomo said, he was like, hey, come back to New York.
I'll buy you dinner.
You know, let's hang out.
You got to come back.
We need your help here in the city.
And de Blasio said, we don't even want you back.
And that kind of showed you the difference between the two of them.
That at least Cuomo has the fucking brains, you know, for what a piece of shit, you know, liar, hypocrite he is.
At least he has the brains to go, yeah, yeah, no, we need them.
We do need our tax base to be back here in the city.
And de Blasio is just like, screw you.
We don't even need you.
You're the problem to begin with.
Like, oh, okay.
Oh, let's see.
Let's see what your economy looks like when everyone with money leaves.