Dave Smith argues Donald Trump capitulated to pressure rather than pursuing dictatorship, acting like a bully who flees when challenged. He contends deplatforming Trump by corporate entities sets a dangerous precedent for state-influenced censorship, while challenging listeners to apply the non-aggression principle equally to January 6th and Black Lives Matter riots regardless of political goals. Smith critiques the "religion of the state," prioritizing mom and pop businesses over government buildings, and concludes that judging actions by violence rather than intent exposes flaws in both corporate narratives and traditional media assumptions about power dynamics. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Justifying The Trump Video00:14:11
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Here's your host, Dave Smith.
Well, they finally got Donald Trump, but he sure scared the bejesus out of them.
Donald Trump has officially conceded what we all kind of knew for a while now, which is that Joe Biden will be the president of the United States of America on January 20th.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What's up, my brother?
Donald Trump's a bitch.
You said you said it pretty well.
Not bad.
It really is like it's hard to kind of get around that point.
What's funny is that so many people, and I've talked about this quite a bit, right?
Like this is in many ways my, you know, my biggest takeaway about Donald Trump is that, as I've said for forever, he's not what the left projects onto him.
He's not what the right projects onto him.
He's just Trump.
He's that guy.
He's not literally Hitler.
He's not your savior.
He's not a warrior.
He's just the guy you see.
But one of the things that both the left and the right project onto Donald Trump is strength.
And when it really comes down to it, I've never really seen that from Trump.
You know, he's strong in the way that a fourth grade bully is strong.
You know, he looks strong when he's just picking on the Twerp and he'll really go at him, you know.
But as soon as someone throws a punch back at him, Donald Trump always, always capitulates every time.
Whether it's, you know, there's a million examples, but whether it's like when he's going to pull troops out of Syria and then all of a sudden there's bad press for a week and we end up leaving the troops in Syria or even, you know, on things that I don't necessarily like so much, but, you know, he signs that like zero tolerance, or maybe he didn't sign it, but he pushed Jeff Sessions to push that zero tolerance about immigration.
And then they're like, oh, there's kids in cages and he backs off it immediately.
Donald Trump never really, and this is ultimately why the left wing was so wrong to have so much fear over Donald Trump's authoritarianism and all of this shit.
You know, I've been reading people saying basically since the election that Donald Trump was going to declare martial law and install himself as the dictator, that he wouldn't, you know, all these fears that Bill Maher has been talking about for years, that he just wouldn't leave, even if he lost.
And I've just laughed at all of that the whole time.
I mean, there's just no way that Donald Trump actually had the balls or the conviction to do that shit.
Not that he should have.
Just saying this fear is completely unfounded.
Like he's going to do this.
And this is exactly what he did.
The pressure campaign came on.
He immediately went, oh shit, okay, I concede.
And that's that.
Of course, it was a result of this whole thing of, you know, his protesters storming the Capitol building.
But let's just get it right from the horse's mouth.
Here is the video that Donald Trump put out.
It did, I will admit it felt a little bit surreal after all this time and all these kinds of you know, trust the plan.
This is going to work out.
This is going to work out.
Here's go ahead.
But he didn't, it's not just that he did these people dirty.
I mean, he really did them dirty.
First, he goes, Hey, listen, there was total fraud.
We're going to prove it.
Hey, I'm releasing the crack.
And hey, I promise you this thing's going to be overturned.
Hey, if it doesn't get overturned, we're going to make a show, you know.
And then finally, people show up to support him.
And then shit turns real and he goes, Oh, what they did was really, really wrong.
We can't remember any violence like this.
Look, you said on our last uh live stream or last episode, whatever it ends up being put out as, um, but when we were just recording uh two days ago, um, and you said the like, you know, the hypothetical of Donald Trump negotiating something, you know, like being like, Hey, listen, if you just don't prosecute all of my people who storm the building, I'll concede and do all of this.
And you see, Donald Trump has no interest in making a deal.
It's what I said there.
Donald Trump would throw every one of them under the bus if it meant helping his image one inch.
And that's what you see.
Donald Trump, and it's a shame because, in many ways, and I feel this oftentimes with left-wing people and with right-wing people, they're just so mistreated by the system.
But they almost develop this like Stockholm syndrome.
And, you know, it's like you're willing to put your neck out on the line.
I mean, Donald Trump has people who will literally die for him.
Like, they'd be willing to die for him.
And he won't scuff up his shoes to save your life.
He doesn't care about his people at all.
And it's sad.
It's sad to see that, you know.
And it sucks.
There are a lot of people.
Okay.
There are some people that probably punched through cops to get into the Capitol building.
There's some people that went inside, did some damage.
There's probably a lot of people that did bad things and should be prosecuted.
I bet 90% of those people kind of got caught up and like, oh, we're walking into the building and walked inside.
And some of those people I think are going to end up facing some consequences.
And the fact that Trump just threw them under the bus and said, what you did was horrible and violent.
A lot of those people weren't being horrible and violent.
Like they just were there.
People started walking into the building.
They got caught up and like, all right, I guess we're walking in here.
So I tweeted the other day, and we'll play the video in a second, but I tweeted something the other day that I wanted to put out there, particularly because I saw so many libertarians, you know, just outraged about the storming of the Capitol.
And I just threw it out there and I said, you know, I think an interesting question to ponder if you're on the left or the right, but especially if you're a libertarian, is when do you think it would be justified for angry citizens to storm the Capitol building?
Now, I'm not asking you when you think it's strategically a good idea or anything like that.
I'm just saying, since you're so outraged about this, is there any situation where it would be justified?
What would that be?
What would it look like?
You know, and I got a lot of interesting responses from it.
And then, of course, some, you know, re-outrage.
But it's like what a lot of people ended up responding with was it would have to be for this reason or for that reason or something like that.
And that might be fair enough.
You know, there's something to that point, but then it almost like it leads you down this interesting next thread where you're like, okay, so it's not the act itself that you think is so outrageous.
It's that they were doing it in support of Donald Trump.
That's what you're outraged by, because that kind of changes the dynamic of how outraged you can be, right?
Like if there was, say, like a tyrannical government and someone wanted to overthrow them, you're saying that is justified if you want to replace them with the correct government, but it's not justified if you don't want to replace the, you know, it's, I'm not saying the argument falls apart, but it certainly gets a little bit weaker than just this is never justified.
And of course, if you look at like, you know, what the government has done to its own people this year, like literally locking people in their houses, taking away their livelihood, you know, bailing out corporations, robbing people while they have no jobs because the government forced them out of work.
I mean, you know, it's kind of hard for a libertarian to argue that if they were doing it for the right reasons, it wouldn't be justified, right?
So that's kind of the position you're in.
And now, okay, again, you can still say it's strategically a bad idea.
That's a completely separate conversation.
And I'm not advocating, you know, anything like this.
I'm just, it's an interesting philosophical question to me.
And so, so the other, once you start like kind of like, you know, pulling the threads out of all of this, what you realize is that from the Trump supporters' perspective, if what they're being told was true, and I'm not saying it is, I'm really not convinced one way or the other about election integrity or fraud in the election.
And if I was, you guys know me, I'd fucking tell you.
But they're basically being told, and, you know, from talking and seeing some of the interviews with a lot of the Trump supporters who were down there, it wasn't just about Donald Trump.
I mean, they were upset about lockdowns.
They were upset.
You know, they feel like the government is fucking over the people, you know, and is no longer accountable to the people and all of this.
But they also very much believe that this election was stolen from Donald Trump.
Now, if that were true, if that were true, would it be justified to storm the Capitol building?
If the Democratic election had just been stolen, like Donald Trump really won, but because from the highest levels of government all the way down to the most local levels of government, there was a conspiracy to steal it and give it to Joe Biden.
If that were true, then would it be justified to storm the Capitol building?
And I got to say, I think you can certainly disagree with the premise, but if you grant the premise, I think you have a very tough time arguing that it's not justified.
So Donald Trump is telling his supporters that this is what happened.
Okay.
So he's telling them something that would justify what they're doing.
And then when they do that, what does Donald Trump do?
Well, here, let's play the video.
Just to that point, you got to wonder, well, what's Trump's plan here?
Where did he think he was going to put it?
There's never a plan.
But I mean, that part almost seems to like when he starts with the, hey, no, but when you say there's no plan, he has some sort of a vision in his head where, hey, I'm just going to say this thing.
Maybe other people will prove it.
Maybe they won't.
I'll just get everyone ramped up and then I'll just keep running on this narrative.
So in his mind, he doesn't actually see anybody taking action.
Well, I think I don't know.
I mean, I think Scott Horton said something about this when we were doing the legacy of Trump episodes.
And I think it was something like, you know, it's like the middle part's fuzzy.
So it's like, it's something like he's like, insult voter fraud, insult vote by mail, tell everyone they're stupid, something, something, something.
I win the presidency.
And you're like, yeah, but what's that something, something, something part?
Like you, he really seemed to have no actual concrete plan.
It was just kind of like, well, I'm a winner and Joe Biden's a loser.
So make sure you figure out how that happens.
But it's funny because they made all the really anti-Trump people right because they were saying, hey, your way of approaching this is going to get people up in a frenzy and it's not going to work out.
And then basically that's actually now the end of his run is that he worked everyone into a frenzy.
And then the second they got into the frame, he goes, oh, no, no, we can't be having a frenzy here.
You know, well, you know, but the other thing to that, and I do want to play this video in a sec, but the other thing, just no, you make good points.
And, but if you are going to look at this situation honestly, that's a fair point.
Like it's not an unfair point to be like Donald Trump is telling his supporters something that if it were true, would justify them behaving in this manner.
And then he's just going to pull the rug out from under them.
And also he hasn't really provided any conclusive evidence that this is true.
There's been little pieces of evidence here or there, but you know, like elections are never like completely sound.
But if you're going to go down that path and start looking at what created the environment that led to this, Trump is not the only person who should share some of the blame there.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second and thank our brand new sponsor for today's show, which is a brand new podcast called Pauls to the Wall.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
What's infuriating is, as I've said many times, I hate the term whataboutism.
Not just that I hate, like I hate the actual term.
I think you sound like a 12-year-old when you say whataboutism, like this fucking dumb, weird, made-up word.
But almost every time, I'd say about 95% of the time that someone uses the term whataboutism, it's in response to a really fair point.
And then you, someone makes a fair, thoughtful point, and then you just use a buzzword to negate their argument in your mind.
And I just hate it.
Why Whataboutism Fails00:02:26
So it's a great way.
Like there is a logical fallacy where if you're, you know, if you're like using other people's an example of someone else to justify your own behavior, that is a fallacy.
So like if I, if I were to say like, hey, Rob, like I caught you, you know, shoplifting and you're like, yeah, but these other people are murdering people.
That doesn't make you any less guilty of shoplifting, right?
Like that is not a legitimate defense for you in what I'm accusing you of doing that other people did other things.
However, if there's a bunch of people murdering people and I'm the news media and I just run stories every day about Rob shoplifting and someone comes in and goes, you know, there are these other murderers that you're not talking about at all.
They're not saying it to justify you shoplifting.
They're just making a point that you're focusing on the shoplifter when there's murders being committed.
That is an excellent point and an absolute fair point that puts everything into context and lets you know you guys are missing the forest for the trees and you're ignoring the really big story here.
And anytime you do that, you'll be met with the claim of what aboutism.
Anytime you try to put things into historical context, they can claim that's whataboutism.
Anytime you try to call out hypocrisy, you can claim that's whataboutism.
So, anyway, it's hard to talk about a riot at a Trump rally and not put into context that there have been like massive riots all over the country this year that were downplayed by the corporate press, were you know called fiery yet peaceful when they're burning cities down to the ground.
You have these ridiculous arguments like, well, did you know the protests were 92% peaceful and only 8% murderous or whatever, you know?
And so, yes, it is, if you want to understand what's going on here, it is a fair and necessary point to make that if one side uses a political tactic that is effective, don't be shocked when the other side also uses that tactic.
And rioting became extremely normalized over the last, you know, eight months.
The only difference is when you are actually going against the federal government, well, it's just it's different.
Now, now they care.
Now this is, yeah.
Yeah, no, there's no question about that.
Throwing People Under The Bus00:05:34
Okay, now let's play Donald Trump.
It's a couple minutes long.
Let's listen to what he said.
I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack on the United States Capitol.
Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness, and mayhem.
I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders.
America is and must always be a nation of law and order.
The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.
To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country.
And to those who broke the law, you will pay.
We have just been through an intense election and emotions are high.
But now tempers must be cooled and calm restored.
We must get on with the business of America.
My campaign vigorously pursued every legal avenue to contest the election results.
My only goal was to ensure the integrity of the vote.
In so doing, I was fighting to defend American democracy.
I continue to strongly believe that we must reform our election laws to verify the identity and eligibility of all voters and to ensure faith and confidence in all future elections.
Now Congress has certified the results.
A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th.
My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power.
This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.
2020 has been a challenging time for our people.
A menacing pandemic has upended the lives of our citizens, isolated millions in their homes, damaged our economy, and claimed countless lives.
Defeating this pandemic and rebuilding the greatest economy on earth will require all of us working together.
It will require a renewed emphasis on the civic values of patriotism, faith, charity, community, and family.
We must revitalize the sacred bonds of love and loyalty that bind us together as one national family.
To the citizens of our country, serving as your president has been the honor of my lifetime.
And to all of my wonderful supporters, I know you are disappointed, but I also want you to know that our incredible journey is only just beginning.
Thank you.
God bless you and God bless America.
All right.
So there is President Donald Trump finally acknowledging that Joe Biden is going to be the president of the United States of America.
And as you said, Rob, I mean, one of the major takeaways from that has to be how much he threw his own people under the bus.
I just, you know, you can think it's the right thing to do ultimately, but given what he worked them up, the state that he worked them up to to then do this, I mean, I don't know.
It just, to me, it just, it's like he went out of his way to throw those people under the bus and then let you know that he really isn't the bad guy.
He's like, I was always challenging this election because I love democracy, because I'm such a fan, but those guys attacked democracy, you know, and I just couldn't help but find something about that despicable.
Donald Trump is not the guy you want to put your ass on the line for.
He is just not the guy.
All these people who have his back so much, he does not have their back.
And it's, I don't know, I just find that disgusting.
It's like they it seems that they finally got to him.
I don't know what happens when he leaves or what they threatened him with or how they said that they were going to play this out, but it seems like they finally got to him where at least for a little while, he's going to be like, no, Biden's in charge, you know, one country.
I thought when he went out, it would be a little bit more fiery.
And, but it seems like he's actually, you know, toning it down.
Oh, yeah.
No, no question about that.
This is Donald Trump is in the final chapter.
He's just going to go along.
And basically, it almost seems like he's begging for forgiveness from the establishment.
That he's kind of like, hey, you know, if I do this, will you not throw me and my kids in jail?
Maybe that'll, you know.
No, I think he's protecting his own ass is what he's doing, which I think is what he always does.
And yeah, so there you go.
Donald Trump, after all of this, kind of like, you know, trust the plan.
This is going to happen or that's going to happen.
You'll see in the courts, all of this.
None of this is going to happen.
Joe Biden is going to be president.
And Donald Trump supporters, the ones who storm that building, I have a feeling are going to, you know, face serious punishment.
Sheath Underwear Sponsorship00:03:02
Yeah.
Also, he could have just a little bit more clarity before the day to go, hey, guys, we're going to peacefully stand outside to let them know that we're here and that we don't agree with this.
Just a little bit more direction to all these people that he got out there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I do think that as we said on the live stream, that this was, this wasn't just awful.
It wasn't just an awful idea because, you know, of the horrible things that happened.
I mean, like, first and foremost, it's like people died over this, you know, like that's, um, and it's just terrible.
By the way, the fucking video I saw of the chick who got shot was fucking crazy, dude.
Like, I don't understand what the cop or whoever it was, the Capitol Police who like shot her, they shot, there were like other cops right behind her and stuff and just shot into this crowd.
It seemed like very hard to understand why it went down that way.
And we'll see if that's investigated at all.
But, you know, it's horrible because like people die.
People are in the hospital.
And then on top of that, what did you even get out of this?
All you got out of that, I mean, you, you hurt your cause infinitely more than you helped it.
So the whole thing was just a fucking shit show.
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Social Media Market Power00:14:47
But anyway, yeah, so there's there's Trump and his reaction.
Just in case anyone thought after, you know, whipping them up into a frenzy, Trump was going to stand by his people.
Nope, that's not what you're going to get out of this guy.
Donald Trump, he, it was an interesting presidency, man.
It's a real interesting presidency.
He sure scared the hell out of the establishment.
He fucking really exposed a lot about our country.
But in the end, what got Donald Trump to the dance was his brash personality and the fact that he was willing to be enough of a dick to call everybody out on their bullshit, you know?
But that was also kind of his greatest weakness.
There's something like poetic and ironic about all of it.
But that also was what, you know, the fact that he was, he was just a brash dick.
That's really what, you know, the whole thing was.
And you kind of see that in his final.
Now, my question for you.
So now that he's kind of finally toning it back, which usually Donald Trump, zero give.
Now we're seeing all give.
Hey, guys, you know, we shouldn't have took it too far.
We shouldn't have done that.
So now when he leaves, I mean, can he throw these rallies and still scream and yell?
Do you think people still have to?
I have a feeling he'll tone it back up once he's out of office.
I think he'll still, if he can help from being prosecuted, because I really do think like, I think he, he went at the establishment too hard.
And I think they have to ruin him now.
But if he's allowed to talk and he's a free man, I think he'll still be talking about how he really won.
You know, I just think that's that's that's Trump's style.
Um, he has been when this is something that I did predict.
And I think, um, you know, obviously I didn't, I didn't predict the Capitol building being stormed.
And this is the reason they're using, at least right now.
But I did predict that I think Donald Trump is going to be deplatformed across social media.
And so far, I believe he's been kicked off Facebook and Instagram.
His Twitter account was, I think, temporarily suspended.
And then Jack Dorsey said something about how like they were looking at possibly permanently suspending his Twitter account.
And that's something that I thought.
I thought for a while they are not going to allow this guy to have a huge, you know, megaphone or whatever.
Like they're not going to allow this guy to be able to reach tens of millions of people.
It's just, it's too upsetting to the established order.
So that'll be interesting to see where that goes.
And you got to realize how much these companies prefer censorship over profits because they are in the business of engagement in users.
That's what they do, right?
If you're Facebook and Twitter, you want as many users spending as much time there as possible.
You've got the most famous person in the entire world, most news on a daily basis about this person, and you're removing him from your platform.
What does that say about how much these care, these people just want censorship?
It's not or what their long-term assessment of what will be profitable is, you know, that they think that they're better off appeasing the powers that be than they are in getting the short-term.
Right.
Which shows you the power of the fucking Fed over the power of the market that, you know, yeah.
No, absolutely.
I knew a friend of mine who was like a business major and he said, and he was a libertarian too.
And he said at one point, he said that one of the first, he got taught by some like business expert.
He went to school at NYU and he's got taught by like some fucking, you know, like some business course of some guy who's like a huge business guy.
And he said the first lesson he taught him is he goes, he goes, what can shut down your business in a day?
And he was like, the government.
And that's, that's rule number one.
You never open yourself up for a lawsuit.
Never open yourself up for the government to shut you down because anything else you can almost get past.
But what can shut your business down in a day is the government.
And so not that the government's about to shut Twitter down, but you understand where like the power of the government is something you always want to have on your side.
You know, I've seen a lot of libertarians defending the social media companies for deplatforming Donald Trump.
A lot of the types who were, you know, very outraged and appalled about the Capitol being stormed.
And we could talk a little bit more about that in a moment.
But I just really, I don't know, man, like I just really don't see it that way.
And I think this is a incredibly dangerous precedent to set the idea that they can silence the sitting president of the United States of America.
I'm not saying that like, believe me, it's not that I don't understand any of the basic libertarianism 101 arguments, which a lot of those types tend to repeat back to you as if you've never heard it before.
You know, well, it's freedom of association.
Oh, they're a private company.
They can do what they want to.
It's like, yeah, yeah, that is all true.
But let's take a look at the bigger picture here and what's really going on.
Understand the system that we really live in and how it's created and how these ideas bubble up and how power is really allocated in today's society with all of the technology we have while still having a corporate press, a state, all of these things.
It kind of reminds me of like, you know, it's one of the things that's it's funny to like have people repeat libertarianism 101 talking points to me as if I have not heard of these, you know, as if like of all people, as if I have never, you're right, I've never really thought about how private companies have a right to, you know, to fire who they want to or work with who they want to.
But it's kind of like to me, just for like in an analogy, not that it's a perfect analogy, but let's say you had a society where, you know, you had, as we have, government runs the schools, right?
So government's educating kids from, you know, five years old to 18 years old, you know, K through 12.
And they're just propagandizing students about whatever.
Let's say it's just like racism or something, you know, hate black people.
Black people are awful.
They're subhuman.
They're violent.
They're all of the things that, you know, this is what the government's saying.
Oh, that's going to get clipped out of context.
But, you know, so that's what the public schools are saying.
And they're just propagandizing kids their entire lives.
And then, you know, you've got like some libertarians in this society and you look around society and people like won't hire black people, are treating black people shitty, are doing all of these things.
And then you just sit there and say, well, that's that business's right to not hire that person.
Or that's those people's right to treat them shitty.
Like we're fine with that.
It's like, well, yes, on the most basic level, yes, that is their right.
But if you really get down to the belly of this, this is not like just an organic market development that there's the state is involved and propagandizing people.
And then you, so just using that as an example, is I'm just saying that the libertarian 101 position is not always really dealing with how society is today and all of the different dynamics.
And so people being like cancel culture in general is something that's really been pushed by academia, the corporate press, government, all of these things that are not organic market institutions.
They're all either directly or indirectly government programs.
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All right, let's get back in the show.
You know, I think about, I remember, I've mentioned this before on the show, but Bob Murphy did this video once, the great Bob Murphy.
He did this video once.
It's like years ago.
I mean, it might have been back in like 2013 or something like that.
I think, do you remember me talking to you about this?
Or I might have showed you this video, but it was basically Bob Murphy was playing the role.
He was doing like, you know, like a kind of skit type thing.
And he was playing the role of advisor to the Illuminati.
Like they brought him in to like give advice about how they're doing.
And he starts off and he's like, all right, first of all, you guys are killing it.
He was like, you know, you control the banks, you control education, you can start wars, you can propagandize people.
You got the media in your back pocket.
Like, you guys are just unbelievable.
This is like great.
First off, kudos, great job, you know?
And then he's like, okay, but you have this problem, and it's this internet thing, and it's social media.
And it's the fact that now people can circumvent your whole like gatekeeping and they can just go give whatever message they want.
And that message could be that, you know, the ruling elite are full of shit.
And then not only can they give that message, but now people can also look right underneath it and see how many people agree with them.
Like they can give this message that you guys are full of shit.
These are my words, not Bob Murphy's, but they can give this message that you guys are full of shit and then go, oh, wow, 25,000 people liked that.
Well, there's a whole lot of other people who also agree with this.
And it almost is like this chink in the armor.
Like you guys have your whole narrative controlled, but now you have this weakness.
And if you're a libertarian, right?
I just don't get how you don't like see that this is the dynamic, that the corporate press is obviously in bed with big government.
So they are never going to be in the business of exposing the nature of the state.
But we have this other path now.
We have this other avenue where we have all these, you know, you can get out there and speak directly to people.
And then you have Donald Trump.
Now, you don't have to like Donald Trump or agree with anything he's ever said.
But the fact of the matter is that the entire corporate press was against Donald Trump.
And he was able to go over their heads and around them and underneath them directly to people using Twitter and using social media.
This is how he communicated with people.
It's a huge part of how he won.
There's never been any president who's used social media the way Trump did.
And of course, they all, it's one of the things that the corporate press relentlessly mocks about him.
That's not a coincidence that they're always like, oh, he's up at three in the morning tweeting.
But if you think about that, it's like, what does that really mean?
He's communicating directly to people and not through you.
You could see where they're kind of incentivized to not really appreciate that.
And so whether or not you enjoy the way he's using that or what he's saying on that, the fact that they can now silence you through that is to me a creepy development.
And it lets you know that it's almost like they're laying out the blueprint.
They're laying down the precedent for how they would silence a really great leader who wanted to go over the corporate press and speak directly to people.
So I don't think this is something that should be cheered on.
I don't think it's good.
It may not be a violation of the First Amendment.
It may not be a violation directly of libertarian principles, but what does it do for the prospects of libertarian principles ever really getting out there?
So that's a whole nother issue that you have to think about.
And it's just like, look, like this is the, at this point, social media is the public square.
This is where ideas are, you know, put out there.
And to have people taken off of there, I really don't think are good for the prospects of liberty.
And yeah, so there's that.
I mean, what, you know, like we've talked about before on the show, but what level would you be comfortable taking this to?
I mean, maybe it's not just Trump.
Maybe it's Trump's supporters who need to be punished and shut down off all of these channels.
Maybe the bank shouldn't work with them anymore.
Maybe, you know, if you own a gun, you should be, you know, silence.
Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to work for any major corporation or you shouldn't be allowed to bank with any bank or any of these things.
I mean, this is there's a creepy, slippery slope that we're going down.
And we're not that far from like the more really scary aspects of it.
And I just don't think it's anything that should be cheered on for sure.
Just the alternative is that perhaps Trump goes to parlor and they lose a lot of market share.
I don't know.
Perhaps Trump starts his own cable news network and all of a sudden they lose a lot of market share.
Even on like even on the banking example, I mean, we talk about how you create black markets.
So the fact that, you know, bankers wouldn't process like, you know, marijuana stuff, I'm sure some other businesses have gotten a lot of that.
I think square, like square payment processing, I think they're somewhat marijuana friendly more than the banks.
Or like, think about how like Venmo, how did Venmo come around?
I'm sure because banks, they didn't want us to be able to just text each other money.
You know what I mean?
They didn't think that they wanted to do that.
They've lost market share.
So the free, you know, unless the government comes in with force that you can't start new things to compete.
At the end of the day, if these companies keep making decisions where, you know, they don't want this ultra famous person on their platform.
Black Lives Matter Debate00:12:31
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know if that works out for them forever.
No, I mean, it might, but I hope, I hope you're right.
And perhaps things have to get worse before they get better in a way.
And like you said, look, Donald Trump, Scott Horton said this on the show too, and it kind of stuck with me because I was kind of thinking about it and saying he might be right because it is quite possible that Donald Trump is the most famous human being who's ever lived.
I don't know if anyone's ever been more famous than Donald Trump.
And he's, you know, infamous as well, but like he is that guy.
I mean, literally his silhouette, like you know who Donald Trump is.
He's the most famous human being in the world.
And that really puts things in perspective when you realize that so many of these companies still wouldn't want that guy on their platform.
It lets you know that there's other forces at work.
Anyway, so that's that.
So ding dong, Donald Trump is gone.
You know, one other thing that I did want to mention is that I also tweeted because it just it did obviously the we talked about a little bit on the last show that the libertarian party, the Twitter handle condemned the storming of the Capitol like a few minutes into it going on.
Like people were still in the Capitol building as they were condemning.
And I mentioned that the only time, at least that I know of, that they ever condemned the riots this summer was when I pushed them to do so.
And so that's, I actually, someone shared it because I hadn't fucking found it, but someone, someone shared it.
And I, what they said to me was I had, they, they've since unfollowed me on Twitter.
But what they said after I was like, okay, why don't I was challenging them with something I was like, why don't you guys have some courage and like actually condemn the violence associated with Black Lives Matter instead of just, you know, praising them all the time.
And they were like, yeah, okay.
I think they, the Libertarian Party, the third biggest political party, tweeted back at me, LOL.
And I was like, that's a little weird.
And then I tweeted back.
I said, okay, so prove me wrong right now, condemn it, you know?
And this is what they said.
They said, riots are obviously wrong.
Violence, theft, assault, and physical harm to others and their property is fundamentally wrong.
That goes without saying.
So I finally did get them to say it.
There's my contribution of 2020 to the Libertarian Party messaging.
But they also added in that it goes without saying, you know, it goes with that.
But of course, storming the Capitol building being wrong, that does not go without saying.
And in fact, that's got to be said.
The chair of the Libertarian Party just wrote a big thing about how wrong it is after they tweeted at that thing about how wrong it is.
So that doesn't go without saying.
It's interesting what goes without saying and what doesn't.
It's also pretty funny that they were demanding, they were demanding a few years back that everybody sign a pledge against fascism and Nazism, which evidently doesn't go without saying that you're not a Nazi.
That must be affirmed.
But opposing, you know, like the longest riots, while your candidates are praising Black Lives Matter, that evidently doesn't need to be said.
That's something we should all just assume.
But so I tweeted recently and I was, I thought this was an interesting thing to ask.
I mean, that's why I asked it.
But some of the responses I got really were less than satisfactory.
But I said that, hold on, let me just find the tweet so I can get exactly what my point was.
So two, two, two.
Sorry, one second.
I said, I still have not seen one good argument for why I should be more outraged about the Capitol than months-long rioting this summer.
All I'm getting is Black Lives Matter stood for good and Trump's supporters stand for bad, which is weak to say the least.
So that was my tweet.
Just, you know, I'm just asking, like, why is it?
Why should I be?
Why should the ones this summer go without saying?
But this one, obviously, we all have to be outraged.
Like, why should I be as a libertarian?
Why should I be more outraged about the Capitol building being, you know, stormed and windows being broken and stuff like that than months-long riots over the summer?
And even though I put in the tweet, the only answer I'm getting is Black Lives Matter good, you know, Trump supporters bad, that ended up being the overwhelming response that I got back.
I mean, put in different words.
But so, just to my point, I don't think it's unfair to compare two different events, especially when what we're getting outraged about is rioting and property damage and assaults and things like this.
Way more people were killed during the riots this summer.
Way more property was damaged.
So, in terms of the amount of damage, they're not even close.
But also, the fact that it was directed at, you know, primarily at random people, at just innocent people.
It wasn't like they took their issue solely to the cops.
And you didn't really hear me, you know, outraged when police stations were being burned down.
That's not what I was focused on.
What I was outraged over was like, you know, when a woman was trying to defend her store and gets hit with a two by four, or when a guy tries to defend his store and is getting soccer kicked on the ground after he's already unconscious.
Like, that's the stuff that I was getting, you know, outraged about.
And overwhelmingly, the response was, well, Black Lives Matter stood for racial justice, and that's something libertarians are for.
And Trump supporters stand for installing a dictator, and that's something we're against.
And so that was more or less the overwhelming response.
Well, Black Lives Matter stands for good, and Trump supporters stand for bad.
Therefore, we're more outraged about this.
Now, there's a major problem with that from a libertarian perspective.
The first one is even granting that, even if you were to grant Black Lives Matter stood for good and Trump supporters stand for bad, which I'm not granting, but even if you were to grant that, there's still a major problem from the libertarian perspective, which is that none of that really matters to us.
What matters is the non-aggression principle, whether you're initiating violence against people.
It doesn't matter.
I mean, it just, it just doesn't matter if you go out and punch somebody in the face because, you know, you, for whatever reason, want to send a message to the world that you're so fed up with the central bank that you'll punch this random person in the face.
We would all still say, no, that's still an assault.
It doesn't matter.
First off, that person has nothing to do with the central bank.
And it doesn't matter if your intentions are noble.
You can't just assault people for it.
Or if you just went out and punched someone in the face because you think the central bank needs more control, you know, like to a libertarian, it doesn't matter what your intention or stated goal or how noble your heart is.
That doesn't matter.
What matters is, are you initiating violence against peaceful people?
And if you are, then we're against you.
So that's, you know, whether or not Dick Cheney and George W. Bush were bombing Iraq because they really wanted to liberate Iraq and see democracy sweep through the region, or they were doing it to drive up, you know, the stock price of Halliburton or whatever, that, or, you know, Raytheon or something.
It doesn't matter, really.
At the end of the day, they're killing innocent people, and that's what our problem is.
So that already is kind of a bullshit argument.
But I also just thought it was interesting that so many people just took it as a given that what Black Lives Matter stood for was, you know, being against police brutality or racial justice or whatever.
And what Trump people stood for was installing a dictator.
And I just think that it's like, you know, maybe we should in some way scratch the surface a little bit more.
And maybe you can't deduce what people stand for simply by the corporate press slogans that are attached to them.
So obviously, you know, like it's being pretty generous and kind to say that Black Lives Matter just stood for justice, or certainly any libertarian conception of justice.
I mean, you could take what some of the people giving speeches in the middle of the summer were saying, and it seems like, oh, they might have stood for a little bit more than that.
And maybe some things that aren't so great.
And then if you wanted to give the Trump supporters the best, most charitable interpretation, you could say that they were standing up against stolen elections.
Or you could say that, you know, like, oh, so if you're against stolen elections, do I have to stand for them now?
No, because you can be like, well, I don't think this election was stolen and I don't think your tactics are justified based on that, right?
So in the same sense that you could say you're against police targeting minorities, but then you could also say like, yeah, but I don't know that George Floyd was targeted for being black.
I haven't seen any evidence to back that up.
That doesn't mean I think it's okay the cop put his knee on his neck like that, but I don't, I haven't seen any evidence that that was a racially motivated, you know, incident.
As I said to someone on Twitter the other day, I said, like, I was like, you know, I'm starting to think maybe that's not as simple as it is.
I'm also starting to think maybe North Korea isn't really a people's republic.
You know, like just because someone calls themselves something, that doesn't mean that that's what they are.
So anyway, I don't know.
I just thought that was kind of worth bringing up and mentioning that, yeah, I don't know.
I think as libertarians, maybe we shouldn't get into the business of any of that shit and we should just focus over the acts that are being committed.
And, you know, in that case, you know, it seems to me that I would be more outraged by The amount of violence, if it's much higher.
And also, as I said on the live stream the other day, I'm sorry.
I just, I don't think the, I don't believe any of this, you know, I'm sure you've seen some of this, but the religion of the state, which is always a major theme on this show, was really out in full force over the last two days, where I've just heard all of these terms like sacred.
You know, even Trump in his speech, of course, this was an attack on the heart of democracy, the sacred building, and all of this like kind of religious language.
Like, I don't know.
I don't, I'm a fucking libertarian.
I think a little fucking mom and pop business is far more sacred than the Capitol building to me.
And so I don't know.
At least if you attack the government, you're attacking people who certainly have blood on their hands.
You attack some random store.
You're just hurting like Jim and Susan.
You know, you're not doing anything for anyone.
I don't know.
Any thoughts?
Davy Crockett and Yeezy 2024.
Yeah, you think that's it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gonna win.
Independent Party ticket.
All right.
Yeezy, that's Kanye, right?
Yeah, and David Crockett's that guy who's wearing the horn hat.
I mean, he's gonna have to get himself out of jail, but he'll break out.
It'll be cool.
A very Adolf Hitler type story: get arrested by the regime, but then break out and lead the resistance.
Did you see the video of him just like going off about he's like the central banks control the world?
Oh, so he's actually kind of cool.
They have, well, that was the cool part, but then he's like, they have deep underground bunkers where they've developed technology that we don't know about and like all these crazy conspiracies.
But like by the end of hearing it, you are like, at least he's talking about the central banks.
Like, that was pretty cool.
I mean, you know, no one brings it up, but it's a really important issue.
But yeah, I don't know.
Kanye's Kanye and Kim are splitting up from what I heard.
So he's getting her out of his life.
She had negative energy.
He's trying to be a good Christian man.
She's got that big juicy ass.
It doesn't work.
All right.
There you go.
You heard it a first from one of the biggest Kanye supporters around, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.