Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect Donald Trump's impeachment acquittal, contrasting it with Joe Scarborough's elitist dismissal of working-class grievances and analyzing the legal distinction between incitement and protected speech regarding election fraud. They critique Democrats' selective application of standards, comparing Trump's actions to Bill Clinton's perjury while highlighting Joe Biden's defense of China's policies in Hong Kong and Xinjiang as potential genocide. Ultimately, the hosts argue that true accountability requires consistent moral judgment rather than political convenience or moral relativism. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Heshy Socks Promo Code00:01:34
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Taco Stand Insults00:16:10
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.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am the most consistent motherfucker you know, libertarian Tupac Dave Smith, and I am joined by the king of the caucs, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
How the fuck are you, my brother?
I'm pretty good, man.
How are you?
Oh, you know, doing good, doing good, living life, enjoying the ride.
There are a few things that I wanted to talk about on today's show.
I wanted to give some reactions to the impeachment acquittal.
There's a couple other things floating around in the news, but I want to open up with a little clip from one of the mainstay shows in the corporate media that is, you know, one of the bigger deal shows out there.
And every now and then, there is a moment in cable news that is just so delicious, so revealing, so refreshing.
I've talked about these moments throughout the years where the curtain kind of slips a little bit.
And you get these rare moments of honesty where some of these people, whether it's the pundits or the politicians, they actually tell you how they really feel.
You know, they just let it out.
If you remember, one of the greatest moments in cable news history, in my opinion, which we played on the show a couple times, I believe, was when Chuck Schumer was on Rachel Maddow and she actually, you know, goes off script and she tells him, she goes, hey, I know this wasn't, you know, like planned, but I just, we just got this tweet from Donald Trump.
What do you think about this?
And it was Trump tweeting something about how the CIA are a bunch of dumb whores or something.
I forget exactly what he said.
And Chuck Schumer, just in real time, has this real reaction.
Goes, is he challenging the intelligence community?
Because they have six ways to Sunday to screw you over.
I mean, poof.
And Chuck Schumer just admits it.
He just goes, You don't go after the CIA.
What are you nuts?
They'll just move.
It was a moment of honesty.
It was a moment of truth.
Like these things don't happen.
And every now and then, you have these moments where they reveal a lot about who they are, how the system really works, how they really see the world.
And for this delicious moment, I want to thank our hero for today's episode, who is Joe Scarborough.
Of course, the host of Morning Joe, who has hosted this cable news show for quite a long time.
Joe used to, I used to watch the show regularly.
It used to be a much better show.
They used to have Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson on regularly, and they'd have Dylan Radigan on regularly and like some of these other guys who were at least, you know, whatever you might say about any of them, somewhat interesting voices.
Like, okay, there's a different perspective.
There'd be some argument, some grown-up conversation.
Joe Scarborough used to talk about often.
He was a former congressman, and he used to often talk about how he left Congress, even though he really loved it and he was so successful and everything was incredible, but he left it because one of his kids was struggling with some type of, I forgot.
And he wanted daddy to make more money as a propagandist.
That's what he said.
He said, Daddy, we need more money to pay for all these treatments.
He's going to lie on the TV for me.
That's not exactly how he put it, but that does seem like a more realistic version.
No, but he used to say that he just had to spend more time with his family.
And so that's why he left because he was just such a great family man that he loved his kids so much and he loved his wife so much that he had to come back and be with them.
And then him and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, who's also married, by the way, they started banging and they both left their families.
Well, that's how much of a family man he is.
He wanted more family.
He figured one's not enough.
Let's do two.
I really am a family guy.
That is the most generous interpretation of events I've ever heard in my life.
That's pretty incredible, Rob.
You're right.
Such a family man.
Why limit yourself to just one?
Just one family.
Why can't you be good to multiple families?
That's a very, that's a very good point, Rob.
So, of course, now Mika and Joe were both friends with Donald Trump and they would go to parties with him and they thought it was really cool that they know him.
And then, and they were very friendly to him throughout the primaries.
They'd have him on.
He'd call in all the time and they'd have these great conversations.
And then they just started relentlessly trashing him once it was like once he won the nomination.
And so then like he turned on them and they had a fun little feud.
But anyway, just a little bit of background on Joe Scarborough.
But here is Morning Joe himself just the other day talking about the Capitol riot.
And of course, how Pelosi, to be clear, how Pelosi now says that we need a quote, 9-11 style commission to investigate the deadly Capitol riot.
Just so people understand, this will never end if the Democrats have their way.
The impeachment process failed.
What should we move to next?
A 9-11 style commission.
Are these two banging now?
Yes.
Oh, nice.
Okay, cool.
Now we're into it.
All right, let's listen to Joe Scarborough.
I'm going to go to the new channels that will say, well, you know, this mom and pop store was vandalized during the summer riots.
And that's just as bad as the United States Capitol being vandalized.
No, no, actually, no, no, jackass.
It's not.
The capital of the United States of America is the center of American democracy.
And while I am a fierce believer in people's right to defend their private property, I'm not going to confuse a taco stand with the United States Capitol.
I'm not going to confuse the selling of tacos with actually moving through a constitutional process that is laid out in the United States Constitution.
I know they're idiots.
So.
It's happened to me, by the way.
I've gone riding outside of a local taco stand to change legislation and the taco guy's like, I think you're confused.
I'm just the taco stand.
And I'm like, no, I don't get confused on these things.
Oh, yeah.
No, if you want to attack the source of real power, it's big taco money that's been funneling into our government for years.
That's really where people, that's what you need to focus on.
But I just thought this, imagine, this is what I've been telling people for years.
And it's not just that I'm like, I fucking follow this shit.
It's also just I have a unique experience where I'm this like, there's not too many people who fall into the box that I fall into, where I am this like passionate anti-government, anti-corporate media person.
I know my shit pretty damn well.
And I've also appeared on a lot of corporate media shows.
Like there's not too many people who fall into that category.
And so I've, as I've told you guys about this stuff for years, these people are in such an elitist bubble that they don't even hear how they sound.
Like he doesn't even hear how he is going.
First off, taco stands was something he just pulled out of his ass to be as degrading and as to minimize what a small business is as possible.
Like, yeah, I'm not going to confuse a fucking taco stand with the Capitol.
Like you're just some low life peasant hawking tacos.
What do you do for society?
You know what I mean?
But the Capitol, this is, you know, this was the Constitution.
He actually said at one point that these fucking elitists who are so goddamn unimpressive, he goes, it was a constitutional process as laid out in the Constitution.
You're like, well, yes, Joe, that is how a constitutional process would work.
It probably was laid out in the Constitution.
The fuck cares?
Who cares if it was laid out in the Constitution?
But like, dude, first of all, I tweeted out at this, I said, it is so incredibly insulting to disrespect taco stands and the fine people who work at them to even compare them to the blood-soaked criminals that occupy the Capitol.
I mean, like, as if like, oh, I mean, who really cares about, you know, destroying some taco stand?
Well, probably the owner of that taco stand, he probably cares a lot about it.
And of course, we weren't talking about a taco stand.
We were talking about billions of dollars worth of property damage in the riots over the summer.
But no, you're a jackass if you even compare that, if you even bring it up.
Because after all, the windows were smashed at the Capitol.
And how are they going to replace that?
Oh, that's right.
They have a tax base where they involuntarily extract wealth from the American people.
And all of these things have already been replaced mere days later.
And of course, a huge wall has been erected in front of it.
And, you know, whatever.
But that's beside the point.
But Joe Scarborough will actually just look down his nose at regular people.
They see that they're so removed, so removed from the people who they're supposed to be representing that it's just like, yeah, I'm not going to confuse moving tacos with democracy, because of course that is so noble.
And selling tacos out of a stand, that is so, I mean, just beneath even caring about or even the nerve of you to compare these two things.
And if you have a government, the one function you want it to do is police private property.
So his argument is kind of the symbolism that the pinnacle of our democracy can be rated.
What about the symbolism that government won't protect your private property?
That if you have a business and you're paying taxes to the cops, they will do nothing to protect it if trouble actually comes along.
How about that symbolism?
That's what the entire foundation of society should be based on.
And government's turning its back on its primary, you know, at least on paper, what its primary purpose should be.
Dude, I mean, you can't, first off, it's like more people were killed in the riots over the summers by far.
I mean, the amount of damage, it's like, you know, hundreds of thousands of times more damage.
And the bigger thing than that is just that the people who were terrorized, I mean, almost every major city in this country had boarded up stores.
People were terrified of what was going to happen to them.
And then to just look at that as like, oh, it's just some taco stand.
We're not concerned for minority business owners.
That's not something that our democracy cares about.
It really was.
I thought that was an amazingly revealing moment about how they look at and now understand something too, like just draw out, like, draw one, one like kind of point away from where he is in this train of thought, right?
So if you like one degree of separation from the wonderful, noble, you know, cathedral that is the Capitol building.
So he's saying basically like, look, a taco stand, I don't know, what do you sell a guy a taco?
He's hungry and now he wants a taco, whatever.
He'll get something else to eat.
Who really cares?
But the Capitol building and the people who work in the Capitol, them being terrorized, that is, you can't even compare these things.
I mean, let's get real.
I mean, if he were to drag a guy selling tacos out from behind his stand and beat him to death, I mean, whatever.
Don't you dare compare that to AOC making up a story about being terrorized, right?
Like that's a, and then I wonder what's Joe Scarborough, keep in mind now, is a former congressman.
So he probably looks at himself as a little bit more important than that taco stand guy too, right?
Because he used to be one of those people.
I mean, this is democracy after all.
This is what's really important.
Okay.
So taco stand guy, you're nothing like Joe Scarborough.
He used to be in the in the cathedral, right?
He was like a saint, basically, or at least a high priest of some sorts.
And now he just hosts a show on MSNBC that covers politics.
So obviously that's also a lot more important than Mr. Taco Stand guy.
And he upgraded his life.
How many taco stand people get to do that?
Well, that's true.
Not too many.
That's, yeah, you can't afford to go.
It's not like you have some chick at a taco stand next to you who you end up becoming friends with and then banging and then leaving your family over, right?
But just imagine like, you know, being the type of person that would that looks down their nose like that, because obviously, right, implicitly, as a former congressman and a current cable news host, he is really letting you know what he thinks about himself compare to taco stand guy, right?
Like that's how he feels, that he's that much above them.
I mean, look, if something bad happens to you, that's kind of whatever.
But, you know, like, look, this shit happens all the time, right?
I remember talking about this a couple years ago when that guy, what was his name?
Khashoggi, the journalist who got killed by the Saudis.
Do you remember the reaction in the press?
I mean, that got a lot of coverage.
That got a lot of coverage.
Now, them starving children to death in Yemen, it's like, eh, that's just Yemen, you know?
Like, who really cares about?
And beheading the women, they're women.
Yeah.
Well, that, yeah.
Okay.
I'm not saying they're wrong about everything.
They make a solid point on that one.
But no, but you know what I mean?
Like, it's like, those are just, right.
Those are just like peasants.
Who cares about them?
But a journalist?
You killed a journalist who actually worked with an American newspaper for a while?
Like, whoa, how dare you?
That's like a real person of value.
Not like just these fucking poor kids in Yemen, not like these poor old people or whoever the hell they're slaughtering in Yemen now.
I think it's the babies and old people who are the most susceptible to cholera and some of the other, you know, diseases and stuff.
But like you see this.
You see how there's like this different reaction.
It's like, whoa, you're not supposed to hurt one of those people.
Now, just imagine, right?
How they would treat, say, when there were those like bomb threats at the CNN building compared to how they treat a fucking taco stand, which by the way, again, isn't even a taco stand.
They were taught, he was starting by talking about mom and pop businesses.
He just inserted taco stand to make it like the lowest, most like petty thing he could think of, which was taco stand.
But that's how they look at things, right?
That's how they look at things.
I also remember talking about this way back in the day on the show when that woman, fuck, what was her name?
Gifford, the one, the congresswoman who got shot.
Remember her?
It was like this.
Oh my God, this is a national nightmare.
I mean, a congressperson was shot.
Whereas like, I'd be looking at that and I'd be like, yeah, like Americans, tens of thousands of Americans are shot every year.
Why am I supposed to like think, oh my God, royalty was shot?
Respect for Tough Jobs00:03:16
Like they look at their lives as being more valuable than yours.
That is their outlook on life.
And that's what Joe Scarborough just told you right there.
You're like fucking bitch ass taco stand guy, and they are the center of a constitutional process and yada yada.
It's really, it's unbelievable to fucking watch.
Of course, to any normal person, you'd be like, taco stand guy just, you know, gives people who want tacos tacos.
That guy does nothing but contribute to society.
Probably a pretty hard job, by the way, working at a taco stand all day.
Joe Scarborough would probably have a real rough time.
I doubt he could get through it.
Okay.
But that shows something about who you are as a person and how you view others.
I mean, like the idea that you like, I don't know about you, Rob, but if I look at someone who does like hard manual labor, I respect that person.
Like I'd be like, yeah, that guy's got a tough fucking job and he shows up every day and does it.
God bless him.
I'm a little envious of the kind of like, I don't even know how to put it.
I'm a little envious of the kind of like the ability to do that.
And I have nothing but respect for people who do that.
It's like fucking my, you know, my father-in-law is a is a trucker.
It's like, it's a fucking tough job.
It's a tough job.
You know, you're fucking loading.
You're in the car all the time.
He's older.
He fucking, you know, has to sit in the fucking car and drive all throughout the country.
You got to sleep in like the sleeper in the back of the truck.
But you know what?
This whole fucking world that we all just sit back and enjoy so much of does not work without truckers.
Like it does not work.
Things got to get, you know, ever get up on the highway, ever have like a road trip where you're driving all day long.
You know what you pass a lot on the road?
Trucks.
They're all over the place, bringing shit everywhere.
You can't even get the gasoline into your car unless some trucker brought like the gasoline and the additives and all the different things that are required to be there.
Your store shelves would be empty if truckers weren't bringing stuff to that store every single day, or at least a couple times a week.
And it's like, yeah, you, Joe Scarborough, when you have a job, and I'm conscious of this as someone who has a job like this, right?
Where I get to like crack jokes for a living.
I get to sit in a comfortable, heated or air-conditioned room and do what I love to do and just talk into a camera and all of this stuff.
Recognize that that only exists because so many other men and through history, you know, millions of other men have done grueling, backbreaking work, far harder than being a trucker, by the way, you know, like grueling, backbreaking work.
That's why we're able to be at where we are.
Now, I'm not making some like socialist Marxist argument that like you owe them your money or some dumb shit like that, but when you think about them, hey, a little bit of respect, a little bit of fucking respect.
Joe Scarborough, who is a fucking cable news man, right?
Who's supposed to be, his job is supposed to be informing the people.
He just let you know what utter contempt he has for the average working person.
Lost Jobs vs Million Dollar Homes00:07:00
And they wonder why people loved Trump.
Like they just, they still just don't get it.
They are so goddamn removed.
They just don't get it.
And they're so insulated.
Joe Scarborough probably makes, I guess, at least 10 mil a year.
I think it's a banging that blonde chick.
So he's doing it.
Banging that blonde chick.
She is, by the way, Zbignou Brzezinski's daughter, who was basically, he was Carter's Henry Kissinger.
Like he was his, you know, like guy.
I forget his title.
I forget what was he, the Secretary of State?
Whatever.
He's, he's the guy who came up.
That's profiting off war money genetics.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That's real money.
He's actually the guy who came up with the plan to lure the Saudis into Afghanistan by arming Osama bin Laden's Mujahideen.
So he's, we got a lot to thank him for for all of this shit, all of the, of 9-11 and the whole war on terror and all that shit.
It's really all started with him, or at least a big part of it did.
But so she's got money on top of money, on top of money.
He's got tons of money.
They ride around in limousines.
They fly private.
They go to their fucking, you know, $20 million home or one of probably several homes.
They are completely removed from the life of Taco Stand guy.
And they look down their nose at him.
They believe his suffering is irrelevant.
And to even compare it to what happened at the Capitol is somehow wrong.
Like, no, I'm sorry.
By any true, consistent, like principled, ethical worldview, it is objectively worse to destroy a small business than it is to destroy a government building.
I'm sorry.
Just, that's just a moral, objective truth.
It's like they just, and this is, but this attitude, this worldview, this kind of like insulated echo chamber, this disconnect that so many of these people in the corporate press, so many of the big shots in the corporate press have, is what really hinders their ability to understand what's going on.
This is why none of them understood why people supported Donald Trump.
None of them got it at all.
And it was simply that Donald Trump, whether he really did or didn't, you know, like who knows what's in Donald Trump's heart, you know, I'm not projecting anything good in there.
But Donald Trump did not demonstrate that.
That's why they love Donald Trump.
When Donald Trump talked to the average working class guy or talked about the average working class guy, he talked about how great they were and how they were going to win.
And if they supported him, they were just wonderful and they were keeping the country going.
And, you know, listen to when Donald Trump talked about coal miners or like anything like that.
It was always just like he did not demonstrate this utter contempt and disregard for their suffering.
That's the issue.
That's what they don't get.
Just picture, right?
Nancy Pelosi, think about how this is perceived by the average working class American, where you have been through a god-awful year, just a god-awful year.
You have, you know, quite possibly lost your job or your wife's lost her job.
Even if you haven't lost your job, your income has quite possibly been largely reduced.
You know, you're, you maybe, you know, I don't know, maybe you were making like 70K a year and that job's gone now.
And maybe you were able to go figure out a job that's like 30, 40K a year.
Your wife used to pull in 30, 40K a year, but now she lost her job and she's got to stay home because your kids aren't going to school anymore and your kid's doing this online learning.
So someone's got to be home with your kid and then yada yada, like all these other things happening.
But this is, I know I'm just kind of like making a hypothetical story, but this story represents millions of Americans over the last year.
Okay.
You're sitting there.
You're, what is it?
What did they end up getting?
Like a $1,400 stimulus, you know, check agreed to.
I think it was Time magazine or one of those publications that said, that's supposed to hold you over till June or something like that.
They're like, hey, you got to just really, really be, you know, be really frugal with that $1,400.
You know, it's like no one's doing anything for you.
The government's destroying your life while you see that they're giving trillions away to big corporations.
But don't worry.
Don't worry.
Nancy Pelosi has just let you know, hey, guys, everything's okay.
After this impeachment didn't work out, we will be starting a 9-11 style commission to look into what happened on January 6th.
That's so does that 1400 bucks feel a little bit better now?
This is what, this is what's going on that the American people are seeing.
And these people are so fucking removed that they don't even know that they should pretend to care.
It's like Joe Scarborough doesn't even know that he should pretend to care about taco stand man.
Yeah, okay, Scarborough, you don't really care about him.
Fucking lie, dude.
You're a professional liar.
Lie.
Get up there and say you care about him.
Are you insane?
Like, this is what's so bananas to me.
It's like, you want to keep your cushy job, right?
You want to not be dragged out of your penthouse apartment and like hung by an angry mob in the street.
Not saying they should do that.
I'm just saying if you want to avoid that happening, lie and pretend that you care about taco stand guy.
That's all you got to do.
Okay.
That's all Trump had to do is fucking lie and pretend.
Lie and pretend.
I care about these people.
He was going back to his gold plated house afterward anyway.
He didn't care, but he told him he did.
And he just didn't show contempt for them.
That's how desperate they are.
I think you forget that Biden ran on saving the soul of the country.
And it's not about economics or making sure that people are provided for.
It's that there's this small amount of racist tie that grow with Trump and by Trump being in office.
And so we got to put all of our resources into getting rid of that little unquantified amount of racism.
Yeah.
You're right.
It really is about the soul.
But I think what you're ignoring, Rob, it's a solid point.
But I think what you're ignoring is that the center of Joe Biden's campaign, like if you were to look at the core issue he ran on, we both know that it was all about the bucket people.
And Joe has done nothing for the bucket people since getting in there.
Look, Joe, are the kids still in cages?
Whatever.
We can get past that.
Okay.
Are we not getting out of Afghanistan?
Whatever.
How has the life of the average bucket person improved since Joe Biden's been president?
The Bucket People Argument00:02:50
Have more, I might, listen, I'm open.
This isn't like a rhetorical question.
Maybe they have, it has gotten better.
Do you think more people have been going up and thanking him for being a bucket person?
I think it's got to be rough.
If you're up alone in that bucket, you're trying to work on electrical wires.
Now you got to wear two masks, even though there's no one around you and try and keep your cool while working on wires.
He can't be helping anybody out.
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Oh my God, dude, by the way.
So I tweeted something the other day, and it was really interesting to see some of the replies.
But like, I said just something along the line.
I was like, the same people who were lecturing you about, quote, following the science are still the same people who think you need to wear a mask while you're passing by someone outside.
And like, there are all these people just kind of like going like, yeah, well, here's this evidence that masks do work.
And here's this thing that masks do work.
And you like click on the article that they sent and it's like people recommend wearing masks in hospitals or like new study shows that like you should have an N95 mask in a hospital or something.
You're like, well, yeah, of course.
Like obviously, if you're a nurse working on a COVID positive patient, you should put a mask on.
But the idea that like when Tom Brady was walked from his limo to the stadium and didn't have a mask on and they were like, he's not wearing a mask.
Like it, there has not been one documented case that has ever been demonstrated to be spread outside by someone who's far away from you passing by you without a mask on.
Inciting Violence Claims00:14:11
That just doesn't happen.
And seeing Tom Brady's face is healing.
We all know that.
That's a pretty face.
Dom Brady doesn't have his face.
All he's got left is that arm.
You know what I mean?
He's face and arm.
You got to have both of them.
You got to have both of them or you got neither.
There's on the Nancy Pelosi thing.
So first, there's an inherent contradiction that they just impeached Donald Trump or tried to on the basis that his speech caused it.
So if his speech caused it and you believe that, why do you now need to run into an investigation into the cause?
You've all just voted that you believe that the cause was Donald Trump's speech.
So if you honestly believe that, there's no reason for an investigation.
That's a contradiction.
Now, the real problem with, and this goes back to that Bill Maher video that we showed a little while ago, the guy from the FBI saying he wants a domestic terrorism title.
What is really going to come out of this is a potential.
And I don't want to fear monger too much, but it does look like this might be a vehicle for the left to really police the right and to create a domestic terrorism title and that even just for.
I guess sharing ideas online, you might be proliferating violence, domestic terrorism, and need to go away.
Will it go that far?
I don't know, but this does look like it's somewhat within the playbook of what they're looking to kind of accomplish.
I don't think they'll get there, but it's not beyond what I think they're looking to do.
Yeah, let's pray they don't.
And I agree with exactly what you just said, that you don't want to be like, we're not fear-mongering here, but we're just saying, hey, look at what's going on.
Okay.
You've got a former director or assistant director or something like that of the FBI, very, very high level guy at the FBI talking about this.
You've got deep state people like the former CIA director, John Brennan, just openly talking about domestic terrorism.
You've got all types of pundits all over the corporate press just talking about how, you know, what we really need here is Dick Cheney's war on terrorism facing inward against what they now label domestic terrorists.
And domestic terrorists mean all of the people who went into the Capitol on January 6th.
Like no matter what you were doing in there, you're a domestic terrorist now.
And then kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and really everyone else who voted for Donald Trump too.
And all of this talk about domestic terrorism, domestic extremism, all of it, it's not like one or two people.
It's like a whole slew of very powerful people all making comparisons between al-Qaeda, insurgencies, and the Trump movement here at home.
So yeah, there's really dangerous potential to all of this.
And I hope that you're right, that I doubt they will get there.
But when this many powerful people are talking about something like that, you'd be crazy to not take them at their word, like listen to what they're saying and take it seriously.
So you mentioned the impeachment, or I guess we both mentioned the impeachment there.
So I figured we should talk about that a little bit because I haven't addressed this since Donald Trump was acquitted.
You know, this is a pretty big deal.
Like I say often on this show, it's hard nowadays to like almost separate the wheat from the chaff.
Is that the saying?
Okay.
But it's hard to, you know, there's so much going on and it's everything's spinning out of control.
And there's always a crazy new story that it's hard to almost like find the ones where you go, oh, you know, that's actually a big one.
That's like a really big story.
But Donald Trump is only the third president in American history to be impeached.
And he's the first president in American history to be impeached twice.
And so that's kind of a big deal.
The impeachment went the way that I thought it would go.
This is what I said was most likely that Donald Trump would be acquitted.
I thought that after Rand Paul got the votes, that the process was unconstitutional.
It seemed like it was going to be very hard for them to not impeach Donald Trump.
Like, how would they even do that?
You know?
So, so that's, that's the situation there.
He got, he got, you know, he, he got off.
I'll say this.
I'm glad Donald Trump was acquitted.
I think the impeachment was nonsense.
Now, there's, I'll say this, and then I'm curious to get your thoughts on it.
There's a couple different ways you can look at the impeachment process, right?
You can say that, well, look, in terms of impeachment, and they say this often, and I'm not sure exactly how I feel about it, but they'll go like, well, an impeachable crime is anything that Congress says is an impeachable crime, which is like technically true, right?
But in the same sense, A criminal charge is or a criminal conviction is anything that 12 jurors say.
You know, if 12 jurors say you're guilty, it doesn't matter how good of a case you had, you're guilty now.
That's how that works.
But that doesn't mean that that's what we would say.
Like, you know, if you're discussing it, you're like, well, no, the correct answer is supposed to be that something is, you know, a crime is proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
That's what the standard is supposed to be.
In practice, it's whatever the jury says, or in some cases, whatever the judge says.
Okay.
But in theory, what it's supposed to be is that the case was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
High crimes and misdemeanors against the Constitution.
Yeah, in practice, it's whatever Congress says.
However, you know, what is it really supposed to be?
You know, I don't know.
I think probably something, some type of crime, something like that.
Now, you could argue, and in fact, it's there's a strong argument, I think, philosophically, to saying that there are some things a president could say that you would just say, we got to impeach him over this, you know, like if, you know, just like with any company, right?
Almost any like company can fire you for pretty vague reasons.
Now, not all companies can fire you just over anything.
You might have a contract when you, you know, first start there and there's like arbitration and things like this.
And they can't just say, hey, I didn't, you know, I was in a bad mood.
So I fired you.
Like most companies, especially big companies, have to give a reason.
Otherwise, they're going to have an HR problem on their hands.
But most of them will include in the contract something along the lines of like, if you represent the company in a horrible way or something, you know, like that, that's fairly vague.
That like, if you just, you know, if there's a video that comes out of you just like shouting the N-word at black people on the street, most people are going to get fired from their job for that, you know?
And I think in general, most of us are kind of okay with that.
Like, yeah, okay, you can't behave like a fucking horrible person, you know?
Now, if the president was out there just shouting the N-word at black people and Congress was like, we just want to, we're going to impeach him for that.
You can't be president doing that.
I understand.
There's, you know, yeah, okay, I get that.
And so they can just say, you said stuff that's just so awful to say that we don't want you to be, we want you to be impeached and barred from running for office again or whatever like that.
Okay.
And that is a then, so if that's the case, then your standard has to become, what's such an awful thing to say?
What's worse than other things to say?
Why would this one meet the standard?
Because a lot of presidents have said a lot of fucked up things.
Why is Donald Trump saying this election was fraudulent and I want to march peacefully on the Capitol?
Why is that the worst thing ever?
But my biggest problem with the impeachment and what I really hate about it is that what I'm happy about Donald Trump being acquitted for is just this, as I've said a couple of times on the show.
They were using criminal language.
They were claiming that he incited violence, okay, which is a crime.
And then I'm on Kennedy with a lawyer.
He's a Democrat and he's going to say whatever the Democrat Party wants him to, basically.
And he goes, oh, no, Trump incited violence.
And I said to him, I go, you're a lawyer.
You know, he didn't incite violence.
He goes, no, he did.
He did incite violence.
So now they're claiming that he committed a crime.
You know, like this lawyer on television is claim claiming he committed the crime of inciting violence.
And if you set up the standard that what Donald Trump did is criminally inciting violence, you are destroying the concept of free speech.
Donald Trump, legally speaking, he has, you can like it or not like it.
He has every goddamn right to say that election was stolen from me and I want to protest about it.
Every right.
And there's not, there's not a court in the nation that could convict him of incitement to violence over that.
It's just not.
If he had said, and I want you guys to go at 12 o'clock and storm the Capitol and knock people over and break windows and all of this, okay, then yes.
But he didn't say any of that.
And so I just think it's like, it's a dangerous, slippery slope to have this cultural event where we call this inciting violence.
Because by that logic, then it's just a matter of you could take anybody out you want to, you know, you could take anyone out that you want to and they're just going to choose to do it to their enemies.
So I was happy to see him acquitted.
What are your thoughts on the so on the first thing you said of it, I think the point you made about the jurors is interesting.
And I think that, I mean, you got to read the exact line of the Constitution, but what is it?
It's bribery, treason, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
That doesn't seem open to interpretation.
It seems like they've categorically said that you have to do something really, really terrible.
It doesn't mean that if there's a bunch of senators that don't like you, to me, I mean, the simple reading is not, hey, the guy sneezed.
We're going to bring him in here because we don't like him and we're going to impeach him for sneezing.
Then why would it be like, that's just not the language of the Constitution?
No, I think there should be some, I mean, there won't be, but to me, there should be some accountability because now you basically had every single Democrat voted to impeach for, as you just said, what is not legally like a viable way to impeach somebody.
Like very clearly, the legal standard of inciting violence didn't exist here.
And every single Democrat just along the party line said, well, we're impeaching them anyways.
I don't know.
We got, we need, not that I want to expand government, but you need some sort of a fourth or fifth branch to just go, no, that's not.
And it should be the Supreme Court, I guess, to just go, no, that's not the law.
Like you guys don't get to reinvent the way law works.
Like, you know what I mean?
It's just there's some logic that's just not existing here that the party can just exist outside of reasoning and then or like make them eat their words.
Then that's their standard.
You know, if that's going to be their standard, then it should at least be enforced on them.
Let them have some character.
If they really think that that should be the standard by which it's inciting violence, then at least then it should be then for you.
You've now volunteered yourself to live by that standard.
If that's what you think it should be, right?
Then at least live by it.
Live by it.
Set the example and never violate this standard because by your own terms, that's inciting violence.
Like there needs to be some sort of a repercussion that if you're trying to say, by me, I think that this should be law, then you got to fucking live by it.
Yeah, I agree with you.
And I think that I don't know.
Did you actually watch a decent amount of the impeachment?
Well, I thought finally they got rid of Giuliani and Trump has some good, just boring lawyers who can actually just speak reasoning without their face melting.
Well, I got to say, I mean, look, it's like I saw a whole lot of people, you know, blue check marks on Twitter and people in the corporate press and like Saturday Night Live or whatever, you know, all kind of making fun of Trump's defense.
I thought they had a really solid defense.
And I thought that that video compilation of all the Democrats basically by their standard being just as guilty as Donald Trump was of inciting violence, I thought that was like a really powerful point to just demonstrate that you've created a standard that could be applied to just about anyone and certainly could be applied to half the Democrats and half of the corporate press pundits.
I mean, he went through all of these things where people, I mean, you know, the stuff where like Maxine Waters and Chuck Schumer and Corey Booker and all these people are talking about fight and resist and get in people's faces.
This is the thing the great Chris Cuomo quote when he's like, where does it say that protest has to be peaceful?
Like, really?
I'm pretty sure it's in the First Amendment, but like, oh, okay.
Like, you know, like, so it was, that was really powerful.
And the other thing that was really just unbelievable was that they just busted the Democrats for manipulating evidence.
Like they, they straight up like literally like.
I think you're referring to just a check and a date and nothing that could possibly influence anything, Dave.
Right, right.
Yeah.
No, there was actually quite a bit more than that.
But that, but even that in itself, as the guy said, as the lawyer said in that interview, he's like, wait, so that's okay?
Forging evidence is okay if it's just a little bit, if it's just a little bit.
Like they just added a blue check mark to someone who didn't have one.
Like, no, I'm sorry.
Like even in a court of law, that's like a really big deal.
You can't just forge evidence, even if it's like just a tiny piece of evidence.
You're like, yeah, it was just a little forge.
Like, no, sorry.
That's a big problem.
And ask them why they're forging things that won't have an impact.
Apologizing for Genocide00:09:05
Ask them why you do that.
Like, why are you cheating if it's not going to help you win?
Why are you doing it?
Yeah, really, right?
Like, it's just, it's, it's unbelievable that that would even be the angle that they would come at it from.
But so I thought to me, it was, it was pretty decisive.
And I think that, you know, whatever, again, like I always say with these things, I'd be happy to see a president impeached for the right reasons.
I'd be happy to see Trump impeached for the right reasons.
You know, I think that Bill Clinton getting impeached, you know, certainly was not for the reasons I would have liked to see Bill Clinton getting impeached for, but at least with Bill Clinton, there was a crime that was committed.
And, you know, I don't even know.
Like, I'm, you know, I'm a fucking radical libertarian.
Like, I don't, I don't really like the idea of seeing people go to jail for perjury or something like that.
But there is something about when you're the president, like if you're in government, as I almost try to think about how I'm going to say this the right way, but I almost feel like, so, okay, so I don't think anyone should go to jail for pot, right?
But if you're a cop who's been arresting people and throwing them in jail your whole life for pot and you smoke pot, I think you should go to jail.
Does that make sense?
Because it's like, if you would throw someone else in jail for this, like that's what you've been doing your whole life, but then you do it too.
No, you should go to jail for that.
And so if you're kind of the head of the government who will put other people in jail for perjury and then you commit perjury, like fuck you, if that makes sense.
Like I kind of feel like, no, you, you're the one supporting this whole fucking system and you would ruin someone else's life over this.
And look, however you feel about it, it is a crime.
They had a crime on Bill Clinton.
Like he committed a crime.
He admitted he committed a crime.
There's no, it's not a controversial or in dispute claim.
That's it.
Now, whether that crime, yes, it was in the greater scheme of things of what the government does.
It was not like a fucking major thing to get him for.
So I like, I would have taken the Ron Paul approach on that if I was in Congress.
Ron Paul said, I'll unenthusiastically vote to impeach.
But let me tell you, I'd much rather he was being impeached for like lobbing bombs into Iraq without congressional authorization than I would over this.
Okay.
Donald Trump never committed a crime in either of his two impeachments or anything even remotely close to a crime.
There is absolutely nothing criminal about Donald Trump getting on the phone with a Ukrainian politician and saying, I'd really like to see these things investigated.
It's just not.
Now, you can say that there was a wink and a nod and you're not going to get military aid unless you do this, but he didn't do it.
And he got the military aid and he actually got far more aid than Obama gave them.
So really, no, I just, there's nothing there.
There's nothing even close to a crime.
And there's nothing even close to a crime here.
It's just nothing he did was a crime.
You cannot like it.
You can think it was irresponsible.
You can think he went out like a bitch.
You can think he was wrong.
And you can think he was lying.
All of those are very debatable.
Like there's arguments for all of those, but it sure as fuck isn't a crime.
Like Donald Trump has the First Amendment right to go out and to say, I think this election was stolen from me and I would like people to peacefully protest it.
And that's what he did.
That's not a crime.
Now, if you're going to go with the other standard that I mentioned before and say, well, I just think there's something so shitty and reckless and awful that a president could say that they should get impeached for that.
Okay.
Now that's a different angle to take.
I still don't think you should call it inciting an insurrection because that's a legal term and he didn't do that, legally speaking.
So I think you should call it something else.
You know, we're impeaching him for saying things we really don't like.
But if you're just going to impeach someone for saying really awful things, then the next logical question from that is like, well, what standard is that?
What, you know, constitutes a really awful thing?
And then I'd like you to think about this from Joe Biden's town hall just the other day.
I think either yesterday or the day before.
Let's play this clip from Joe Biden and tell me if you think this is a really horrible thing to say.
The central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China.
And he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that.
I point out to him, no American president can be sustained as a president if he doesn't reflect the values of the United States.
And so the idea, I'm not going to speak out against what he's doing in Hong Kong, what he's doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China and Taiwan trying to end the one China policy by making it forceful.
I said, and by the way, he said he gets it.
Culturally, there are different norms in each country and their leaders are expected to follow.
So just to be clear, what he's doing there with the Uyghurs is a genocide.
And what he's doing there with the one China policy is locking up dissident voices for the crime of speaking against China's culture.
It's China's culture.
He just says that.
Some cultures like the genocide.
That's no big deal.
Like when the Nazis were around, that was like their thing.
Who are we just saying?
Criticize.
Right.
So if you are going to say that there's just terrible things a president could say, like my example of shouting the N-word at someone or something, there's just terrible things a president could say that you think they should be impeached for.
Just talk me through this and talk really slow.
No, it's really simple words so I can understand how somehow apologizing for a genocide as a cultural preference is not a far more horrific thing to say than I believe there was widespread fraud in the last election.
You got anything for me, Rob?
You got an argument on that on how that's not a just like 10 million times more heinous thing to say?
I think he's just making observations.
It's like the English like tea and the Chinese like killing the Uyghurs, you know, each their own.
That's why you get your own country.
I think that Joe Biden is inciting a genocide.
I think he should be, I think he should endorsed it.
He endorsed it as a cultural cultural norms.
That's right.
He's apologizing for it.
Is that an impeachable offense?
Joe Biden, pro-genocide.
Let's get those stickers out there.
Well, it's already getting quite a lot of views on Twitter.
If there's one thing, though, when Joe Biden says all of these awful things, like there is like an excuse that you can give him that actually.
Well, he's dementia.
Yes.
Like he really doesn't know what he's saying.
He has no idea what he's talking about.
He's just like, he's going to get off there and go over to his wife and be like, Jill, did I do it?
Did I say stuff?
Did I say stuff good?
And she's going to be like, okay, hold on.
That almost doesn't sound off the cuff.
That almost sounds like they were just.
I mean, he definitely got the questions beforehand.
You know, they're in it together and producing propaganda.
The official Joe Biden position on how to justify his relationship with China.
We're just going to push all this stuff under the rug.
Now, by the way, just to be completely clear, as all you guys who listen to the show know, I'm not really in the business of lambasting every other country for their human rights violations.
We got plenty of our own.
If we want to talk about genocides, I'm going to get much more outraged over the genocides we've committed in the Middle East than the genocides that China's committing because you know what?
My tax dollars are funding that one, not the other one, you know?
But if the topic comes up, do you really want to sit there and have a president who's going to defend locking an entire ethnic group of people in work camps simply for being the religion that they are?
You're going to say that that's a cultural preference.
That is like the worst, most egregious example of moral relativism that you could possibly think of.
Literally saying that a genocide is just a cultural, well, that's just a cultural difference.
So we can't really judge that, you know?
China's paid Biden really good money to say things like that.
So, you know, at least they're getting their money's worth.