Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique Joe Biden's first press conference, highlighting stutters and the contradiction between his 2014 withdrawal promise and current Afghanistan policy. They dismiss claims about unaccompanied minors' family contacts and condemn HR1 as a power grab while analyzing Georgia's restrictive voting laws. The discussion shifts to big tech hearings, which they view as government shakedowns forcing censorship, arguing that disparate outcomes in free markets do not prove racial discrimination. Ultimately, the episode asserts that voting is a means to an end rather than a natural right and warns against blurred lines between private enterprise and authoritarian state power. [Automatically generated summary]
If you live in like a seasonal area, I don't know.
I mean, there's some places where it's pretty much the same weather all year round.
But if you live in a place like where we are in the Northeast, you get a real winter and a real summer, you know, and a little bit of fall and spring too.
But you get like very different.
There's something about that first day that feels like a summer day.
Leaving Afghanistan Prematurely00:10:27
And there were like a few nice ones, but today was the first 75-degree beautiful day.
It's just great.
Went out, took the family out, walking around, having fun.
No one's wearing masks, spitting on people who are wearing masks, just enjoying, you know, out there promoting liberty, trying to get us up to herd immunity as best I can.
Anyway, beautiful day.
Have a couple of beers.
It's a nice time.
Anywho, so there's a few things, I suppose, that are on my mind.
Let's start rolling them off.
I guess the big news of the last couple days is that Joe Biden delivered his first press conference.
This is the longest any president has gone in modern times before delivering a press conference.
And once you saw the press conference, you're like, probably should have waited a little bit longer.
Probably wasn't quite ready for it.
It was, look, let me say this, and I'm curious to get your thoughts.
First up, before we get into specifics of anything that was, you know, particularly interesting that was said, there really, in my opinion, wasn't that much interesting that was said.
But so just general comments on the press conference.
He did not, we always have to grade these things on a Joe Biden curve.
You always feel like it could go way worse for him.
Like with Joe Biden, you feel like this could end the way it could end with like an Alzheimer's ridden 90-year-old.
Like he could just at one point say, I don't know who any of you are or where I am and have to be let off by his handlers.
That didn't happen.
He didn't collapse into himself.
He didn't collapse literally onto the ground.
He had some moments that were bad.
You know, he had some Joe Biden stutters.
The thing that Joe Biden does that I've never seen any other, forget politician.
I've never seen a leader in any capacity.
I've never seen a boss or a manager or just anybody who's, you know, whatever, like in any position of somewhat an authority position.
I've never seen anyone who does this thing that he does where he'll start a thought, realize he's incapable of finishing it and bail on it.
You remember we were talking about this during the debates when he would do this?
Like, no, like he'd just be in the middle of the thing.
He goes, and then they're going to, they're going to do the with the anyway, forget it.
And you're like, what the fuck is that?
So he did that like three times during the press conference, which was weird.
But the overall takeaway for me was that even though he did not have this devastating collapse, it was just, it's unbelievable how unfit for the job he seems.
And I'm not saying this in a way like I call every president a criminal because they are.
I point out all their war crimes.
I have problems with all of them.
I've commented before on president's intelligence, like George W. Bush comes to mind.
I've commented on Donald Trump being a buffoon, lots of other things you could say about presidents.
I've never seen anything quite like this, where the guy actually seems like you're just not up to the task of doing a high pressure job.
So I don't know.
What were your broader takeaways from the press conference?
Well, he had the one really bad moment with the filibuster, which is what you're describing, where he started to ramble and he completely lost his words on what the hell he was trying to talk about, which I can be sympathetic to.
That happens to me when I podcast.
I get where he's coming from.
My takeaway is actually a little bit different than yours.
And maybe it's that I'm being fooled by the Joe Biden scale, but he seems to kind of get it together for these big moments where he can actually show up and lie.
He's pretty good at spinning his story and on the big stage, throwing those lies out there.
It's kind of like the debates where we thought he'd been sitting in his basement so long and he seems to be working off the teleprompters to the point that you really don't think he's going to be able to swing it.
But I don't know what drugs they're giving him or how they get him together for the big stage.
But for the most, like he did have that one really bad moment.
He also said when he'd been in the center for 100 years, he got busted on the notes.
We can go through a lot of the things that are off and maybe this is the Biden scale, but he does a pretty good job of kind of getting his fake compassion story across.
And he does a decent job of, you know, spinning his lie.
It's not, you know what I mean?
It's not a total F grade.
No, I agree with you.
It's not a total F.
But it's just, I don't know.
It's something that there's something about him when not grading on the curve, like when you're not expecting the worst of Joe Biden.
I just, to me, I'm blown away by how frail and weak he comes off.
But, you know, that's just my perception on it.
Okay, let's get into some of the substance of what was said and anything that maybe stood out to you.
To me, the okay, the most consequential and the biggest thing was him casually mentioning and casually mentioning it that, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not going to get out of Afghanistan this year.
That's just not going to happen.
I mean, it's just not practical, you know?
So it's like maybe next year.
So he already said maybe next year.
Not a firm next year.
Just to keep this in mind, firm withdrawal dates for Afghanistan have been given many times.
Many times.
One was given by this random guy.
You probably don't know him.
It's a former vice president.
His name is Joe Biden.
I actually, I retweeted it just recently because it was like an old tweet that it resurfaced.
But Joe Biden, well, here actually.
He was calling even less shots then than he is now.
Well, that's exactly right.
So here is a tweet from Barack Obama on and it was on October 11th, 2012.
And he said, VP Biden on Afghanistan.
We are leaving in 2014, period.
So that was his attitude about 2014.
We're leaving in 2014, period.
His attitude in 2021 is that it would just be premature to leave this year.
So his attitude is next year, maybe, not next year, period.
Now, when he said 2014, period, evidently he meant 2023.
So when he says 2022, maybe, he means we'll be there forever.
Now, that is the plan here.
And it's unbelievable, just unbelievable that even the bought and paid for corporate press, which of course are the enemy of the people, that even they don't feel a little bit of a pressure to pretend more that they're journalists and to go, but you said we were leaving in 2014, period.
So why would this year be rushed?
What has not been accomplished in the last seven years that will be accomplished with one more year?
That's the obvious question that anyone who can rub two brain cells together would be asking.
What are we going to accomplish now that we couldn't accomplish for a decade with tens of thousands more troops than we have now?
What is it?
What are the conditions that you will then say, okay, we can leave?
The longest war in American history.
It's because we got seven more years of stuff over there.
You've moved out of an apartment.
You know how annoying it is the longer you stayed?
That's seven more years of troops and soldiers and tanks.
And you're like, we bought a sectional.
That's going to be, it's just, it's the way, the way the doors work in Afghanistan and the way this sectional works, it's like you really, you have to get it at an angle.
It's a three-man job, but then the third man is kind of in the way of the door.
It's tough.
We got files.
We got opium fields.
There's just a lot of stuff that we got to move out of Afghanistan.
To that point, he didn't actually talk about that there was anything more to accomplish.
From what I remember, he basically said, there's just, there's a lot of people there.
It's going to take us time to make the arrangements to get them home.
No, that's just what they're saying.
As if we can't, as if my favorite thing that Ron Paul used to say back in the 2008 campaigns, when people would ask, he goes, he's like, I want to get out of Iraq.
And he's like, but they're like, you want to leave prematurely, you know, and all this stuff.
And he would go, well, we just marched in.
We can just march out.
Like the same way we got there.
Remember how we went there?
We didn't go, okay, we're going to Iraq.
This will take us 10 years to get there.
We just went there, right?
So the same way we can just go there, we can just leave.
It's the same technology that brings you to a place can bring you away from a place.
This idea that we have to sit there, we have to keep killing people.
We can't stop killing people.
We could slow down killing them and then maybe stop.
But it's like, no, this is all just complete bullshit.
You can leave.
You can just leave a place.
And it's unbelievable with everything else going on and the fact that there's just, you know, the majority of the country, the majority of the military, the majority of everything just wants us to leave Afghanistan.
And we can't get this one simple thing accomplished.
Just leaving this war.
It's just so to me, that was like one of the biggest things that he's blown off President Trump's timeline.
Jordan Harbinger Show00:02:43
And I suppose that amongst the corporate press and amongst the Democratic base, the fact that it was Trump's timeline is enough to justify not doing it on that timeline.
Well, that's Trump's thing.
So we're going to not do it on Trump's thing.
But it sure sucks for the people in the country and for our military people who still have to worry about getting sent over there and those who are over there.
So that's, there you go.
Yeah.
And there was, like you said, there was no follow-up question on that.
From what I remember.
No, they just kind of let it go.
Yeah.
They're just, they're really just not that concerned about it.
That's all.
It's just not.
The corporate press is just not that interested in the war question.
Never have been.
I mean, I suppose they were kind of interested in it.
I mean, they're certainly interested in selling wars.
And I suppose they were kind of interested in opposing them when it was going to help get Bush out and Obama in.
But aside from that, they just don't really care.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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Lost City Discovery00:15:52
All right.
So any other takeaways from you from the press conference of what you thought were interesting moments?
Well, firstly, it's incredible to me just how boring he is.
It really is homework now to follow these things where shows coming up.
I got to watch this and see what happens.
And just beginning to, you're like, just let him go to bed.
Let Kamala come out, say some dumb shit.
At least she's pitchy and there's an angle here.
He didn't know, Kijaya.
You spin the immigration thing fine to say the crisis is because of some of what Trump did and some of the facilities he unwound.
And I, of course, and of course I don't want this.
Like that's all, you know, he did a great job of going, you're upset.
I'm upset.
That was like his big angle is you think Europe's about this.
Just think about I'm the compassionate guy.
No one's more upset about this than I am.
I thought it was, you know, one of the stark things, which I guess would be one of the bigger takeaways from the whole thing was it was, and perhaps they needed to wait.
Maybe this is part of why the press wasn't hounding him about how long he had gone without a press conference.
You would think the press would want a press conference.
Even our, you know, bullshit, corrupt press would be like, well, we want the thing where we're a part of it.
And I'm on TV, you know, like they, but I think they almost needed to wait a little bit so that the contrast wasn't so stark between what a Trump press conference was like and what a Joe Biden press conference was like, not just in how entertaining Trump was compared to how boring Biden was, but in just the nature of the questions.
I mean, they really were.
They would ask him questions about immigration and go, now a lot of people think that more immigrants are coming because you're such an empathetic, caring, decent person.
So what do you say to those accusations?
I mean, like, literally, these would be the questions they were asking.
And he'd go, well, that's very nice, but I don't think it's because of me.
I think it's just because of blah, blah, blah.
It's interesting.
One of the things that I thought was interesting was that he is now, right?
Like you've seen this pivot in Joe Biden from early in the campaign into the thick of the presidential campaign and now into being the president where he has to kind of go from, you know, appeasing the left and being like, oh yeah, what Trump's doing is horrible.
We're going to let everybody in.
We're going to give them all health care.
We're going to do all this.
And now he has to go, no, no, no, no.
They're not just coming because I'm a nice guy.
I'm telling them not to come.
I don't want them in because the truth is that it is not a winning popular position to say, open the doors up and we'll just pay for everything.
That's just how that's going to go, you know?
And so it's interesting to see him, you know, walk that back.
The other thing that just became evident to me through all of this is just kind of the stuff we've been saying for days now, that it's just like nobody's got a plan because this whole situation is just unworkable.
And nobody's really got an answer for what you're supposed to do.
You know, you can disagree completely on moral grounds or whatever other grounds you want to with Trump's theoretical idea that he ran on in 2016.
Now, I would certainly disagree with large parts of it.
For whatever reason, the wall became the big thing that everyone was like, oh, you want to build a wall?
That's the worst thing ever.
I don't like have very strong feelings one way or the other on that.
Trump ran on deporting all illegal immigrants.
That I always thought was, first of all, I thought it was crazy and would never happen.
But the implications of that, like I think people never even like thought it through.
Like, what do you think that looks like?
I mean, like, that's just insane.
You're going to create an American Gestapo to go run around and round everybody up.
And what if you don't have your papers?
Like, what, you know what I mean?
Like, this is like bananas.
There's so many businesses.
There's so many homes.
So how would you possibly do this?
But the plan of we're going to build a wall, kick people who are illegal out of here, and that's it, is at least in theory, a workable plan.
What they have right now is not in theory or in practice a workable plan.
And that's just, that's the problem that you're seeing so much is that, you know, you can say like, oh my God, this is so horrible separating, you know, under Trump.
Oh, this is so horrible separating children from their families.
It's like 100%.
It is.
What do you want to do?
What do you want to do with the kids who are here?
All of a sudden, when you start asking people, what do you want to do?
Things get a lot more complicated with the immigration issue.
And this is true with like all, you know, it's like all the fucking like Democrats, they're basically scared to say open borders because it's a, it's a losing position.
Open borders is like around 80% of the population.
Last polling I had seen, which was like a few years ago, it might be even lower than that.
The approval might be even lower than that now, given the pandemic and the economy and all this shit.
But it's like, what do you want to do?
You know, they'll be like, this is so horrible.
We should let more of these people in.
You'd be like, okay, we let a million people a year in.
How many should we let in?
And they'll be like, more?
It's like, okay, how many?
What's the number?
You know, like, it's very hard once you have this like, like, this, this, just like any government program.
And the borders are just a big government program, right?
And so you have this problem of like, okay, well, how many people do you give access to?
What facilities do you give to them?
Where do you take the people who don't have anything?
And it's very, like, it's very difficult to work these things out.
And just like with every government program, there's really no good answers where somebody's rights aren't violated one way or the other.
And so that's it.
Hell of a lie.
And I'd love to see some fact checking on this one: that most kids coming over the border have a wristband that has a telephone number.
And if you just call the telephone number, their mother or father are already living here.
No, no explanation whether or not they're living here legally.
But according to Biden, their mother, father, grandmother are apparently living here legally.
And so they crossed over the border because illegally, because that was the only way that they could be reunited with their mother, father, grandmother who has a home waiting for their phone call after illegally crossing the border.
This is just ridiculous.
I mean, did you catch that part?
He was talking about the wristband and that the Trump administration just didn't call the numbers.
And most of the time, there's a grandmother or mother waiting for them.
This is this is absolutely ridiculous.
Just, yeah.
And if that's true, then why are you holding them in the center?
Then you're really being cruel.
If all of these kids have a wristband and you can just call them and deliver them to their relatives, man, that's pretty crazy.
And they're apparently not that concerned with COVID that you got them in cells right on top of each other.
Right.
Well, I think that in general, and certainly Trump is guilty of this, Obama's guilty of this, but all politicians are.
But politicians try their best to make very complex problems seem as if they have very simple solutions.
As long as we're just nice to people, you know, the predecessor wasn't nice.
But if we just show up every day and we're nice, it all goes away.
That's right.
They always want to act like all we have to do is this, that, and that.
And then for some reason, none of them ever solve these problems.
You know what I mean?
Even though they always were telling you, all we have to do is this, this, and that.
But the reason why is because he never did 100-day reviews.
As long as we keep doing these 100-day reviews and exploring the options, we can solve everything.
That's right.
So overall, I guess I guess we both agree that like Joe Biden, he didn't fail.
He was able to Biden his way through this.
I do get left with the feeling that I think a lot of people have about Joe Biden, and I've certainly had for quite a while, that you just start to wonder how long he can make it through like this.
You feel like with everything he did, like, okay, he survived that one.
He survived that one.
But it does feel like he's just trying to survive.
And I wonder.
And, you know, one of the questions they asked him, which I thought was so in a way revealing, right?
Because if you listen to the corporate press, and this is one of the things that we knew from the beginning would be one of the best aspects of Joe Biden being president is you're like, so here is this guy who anyone can look at and just see.
It's just too ridiculous to not pretend that everyone can see this.
That he's too old for the job, and he's not 100% there.
I'm not saying he's completely senile, but he's not completely not senile.
And he's, you know, he's just not up to this task.
But they have to pretend like he is, right?
They, they, oh, this isn't even a story.
What are you talking about?
What?
What are you talking about?
Joe Biden too old?
Not capable?
No, no one thinks that.
That's ridiculous.
But then their first question at his first press conference, or one of the first questions at his first press conference, is, Are you going to run for reelection?
So already they're kind of acknowledging, like, pretty old, dude.
I mean, we're all praying you can make it through Ford years, but eight.
I mean, let's not be ridiculous here.
Eight?
Eight years, Joe Biden.
You're going to make it till you're what, pushing 90?
That's what you're going to be in the fucking office for?
What was it?
79 years old, I think he is now.
So eight years puts him at what?
87?
I mean, like, no, Joe Biden is not going to run for reelection.
It's not possible.
The part I love about Biden's age is: do you remember when Trump came into office and how much they talked about our image to the rest of the world and the importance of meeting with the world?
And that was also, if I remember correctly, that was a big thing at the beginning of his presidency: meeting with all the other world leaders.
Biden has yet to meet with anybody, and he's got to look like an embarrassment to the rest of the world.
There's no question about that.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
But do you remember how much of that was the Trump thing?
We're going to look like an embarrassment to the other countries.
It's about our image.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I know.
People are hysterical about it with Donald Trump.
And, you know, okay, not completely unfairly, I suppose, because, you know, Donald Trump is kind of a buffoon.
People are like, well, now we look like buffoons or something.
But Joe Biden is a frail, weak old man.
And so there's an issue with that as well.
But yeah, he's the yeah, there's, there wasn't much pressure about that.
When he was talking about the phone call he had with the, what's his name?
The Chinese dictator.
He's, it was all just so ridiculous.
He's like, and I told him, I told him on the phone.
I told him we were, listen, we're, we're going to, we're going to keep you honest, but we're going to produce, we're going to invest in America.
We're going to do this.
And you're like, dude, did you really say it to him like this?
Because you sound like very embarrassing right now.
So anyway, so that was what do you think about the filibuster comment?
I thought, I mean, it was the most kind of pathetic political kind of weaseling you could envision.
I don't know.
What do you think?
Well, that was the one time where he really just got lost in his train of thought.
And that was the only time where he kind of showed his cards.
But the filibuster topic, I seem to recall in school that I learned about the filibuster in the way that Biden's explaining it.
Like, I actually think historically, can you correct me if I'm wrong here?
But I thought historically that's actually the way the filibuster worked was that you could get up there and waste time talking.
And I remember, doesn't Rand Paul have the record for going on?
It's the Mr. Smith goes to Washington, you know.
But there's different types of filibustering.
So they're talking about the rules that you need to like filibuster the filibuster proof majority or whatever and that type of stuff.
But yeah, it was the idea that you could stop something from being crammed down, like crammed through Congress.
By talking, though, I thought that was so does it not function that way now?
That I, there's some technical here that I'm not quite following.
So the filibuster, and I'd have to pull this up to have it right in front of me to refresh on it.
I actually, maybe I'll pull that up in a second and we can like go through it.
But the filibuster results to how many votes you need to cram something through is what they're referring to with that.
Not just whether Rand Paul can get up and speak about Brennan being confirmed and talk about drone bombing and all that shit for fucking hours.
But what's interesting is that Joe Biden has flipped from what his whole career was on this issue.
So I think he's just confused over how to like... how to spin this now.
Filibuster, the informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action.
So there's numerous different procedures that you can offer in the filibuster.
But the most famous kind of from, I think Mr. Smith goes to Washington and Rand Paul and all that stuff is that if you're in the Senate, you can get up there and just talk and just say, I'm filibustering this motion and basically talk until you can't talk anymore.
But there's other delaying and obstructive measures that you can take.
Anyway, I want to.
Ted Cruz, I saw him somewhere going with the extreme on it saying that he thinks that if they get rid of the filibuster, they're going to start adding some states like Puerto Rico.
And I think he mentioned one other one, trying to get some more Democratic senators and then pack the Supreme Court and then just game over for conservatives.
Well, it's possible.
You know, it is, you know, we'll see.
Who the hell knows?
I mean, I don't know if they're like what their plans are.
You know, people keep saying it's like, you know, these things.
A lot of like more right-leaning conservative types are like the Democrats are really got, they've gone radical and they're trying to push this like radical agenda through.
And I'm just sitting around looking at the country like, yeah, I think they've done it.
Like, I don't know what, like, what do you mean?
Everybody's masked up and not allowed to be close to each other.
Like, I don't know.
You know, I think they'll, you know, they want to consolidate power any way they can.
But I do think that the big elephant in the room that the Democrats have been talking about for years are the voter demographic issues.
And I think that however you feel about demographic changes in America, whether you think it's great that the country is going to be a majority Hispanic country in the next few decades, or you think it's awful, or you're completely indifferent and just don't care about it.
Whatever your thoughts on it are, the Democrats, Democratic operatives see this as a huge, huge moment for them, a political shift where they are going to maintain power now going forward.
They will openly talk about this.
All you have to do is turn on MSNBC, which is Democratic cable news, and they will talk about this, how this is what they call the brown wave.
And they've been talking about this for years.
Now, they talk about it in this way where the rules are you're allowed to talk about it if you're celebrating it.
If you bring it up and so much as question it, then basically you're Adolf Hitler for bringing it up and question.
But if you want to bring it up and celebrate it, and the funny thing, so I remember tweeting this like years ago, and I tweeted it at one of the MSNBC hosts.
Democrat Power Grab00:04:26
I think it was at Joy Reid.
She was saying, she was like, hey, the brown wave is going to create a situation where Republicans can never win another national election.
And I responded with something to her where I go, well, if that's the case, how can you demonize someone who doesn't like the Democrats not liking the brown wave or something along those lines, right?
So like if you're openly saying that this demographic shift will lead to this political outcome, well, what if someone doesn't like those that political outcome?
Can't they, aren't you by implication saying that they should be against the demographic shift?
No, I mean, that seems logically consistent to me.
But this is something that they're there, they've been counting on for a long time.
And even though this whole voting overhaul of the 2020 presidential election was in large part about Trump and COVID and all of this stuff, don't think for a second that this isn't in their minds as well.
This is something that they've been, they've been focusing on this for years, but they've made a major push in this direction.
And that, as we talked about a few episodes ago, the bill that I think, I'm not sure if it went through the House, but it hasn't been signed into law yet.
But the voting overhaul, that with the HR1 bill, I believe it was called.
I could be wrong.
Double check me on that.
But that bill, this is the type of stuff that they're trying to do.
What they want to do is have a mix of floods of new immigrants, both legal and illegal to the country, easier and easier voting.
Okay.
And this they think is going to be a recipe for permanent democratic control of the country.
So this is a big part of the, I'll tell you for years now, right?
If you look at in the corporate press and particularly amongst Democratic politicians, which are basically the same thing, there's been an incredible amount of demonizing of anybody who's pushing for strict border control and anybody who's pushing for strict voter ID, which ironically, in a way, right?
You would think if you had any sense about you, if you were going to demonize one, you couldn't demonize the other, right?
Like if you were going to say, hey, we don't have to crack down on illegal immigration that much, then you would at least say, but granted, we have to make sure everyone who votes is a citizen, right?
You wouldn't say we're going to demonize both of them because that's just like, so then you're basically saying that people from other countries can just come in here and vote in our elections.
I mean, how does that make any sense?
Not just to like a libertarian like myself or you, but like to anyone.
How does that make any sense other than a naked Democrat power grab, you know?
But they've demonized both and they demonize both of them under the same thing.
You're a racist.
You're a bigot, maybe fascist Nazi if they want to have fun.
But that's the whole game right there.
This is what they see as the handwriting on the wall.
And so this is the after this last year and what they've done with the voting craziness, this is what they're pushing for now.
You see a huge effort, right?
There's a whole lot of red states who are now trying to be like, well, look, we cannot keep voting the way we did in 2020 forever.
This is crazy and it's ripe for fraud and all of this other stuff.
And also I think they just think it's too easy to vote.
Now, they can't say that last part, right?
They can't say it's just too easy.
They just have to focus on the ripe for fraud.
But the truth is that what they think is that it's just too easy to vote.
And they can't say that, but that's the truth.
Now, as me and you have talked about several times here, this is what's an interesting position to be in as a libertarian and for doing a show like this one where it's actually for people who want to think a little bit.
This isn't just like, oh, we're going to repeat dogma that sounds good.
This is actually to think a little bit.
Comfortable Sheath Underwear00:02:54
But I've said many times that I think I don't see why I am required to support it being easier to vote.
I mean, I'm not saying I have to support every type of restriction on voting.
I certainly don't.
But like, for example, if you have to, you know, register and they go, no, no, no, you don't even have to register.
We'll make it automatic registration.
Why am I supposed to support that?
Why do I have to support the person who couldn't be bothered to simply register to vote?
Voting.
Why do I have to support the person who can't be bothered to get an ID?
Voting.
I mean, do you think those people tend to be very high information voters who really understand politics and are going to be voting to advance human liberty?
I doubt it.
So why do I have to support that?
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Anyway, the newest thing that's really getting a lot of attention on Twitter and in the press is this new law that was passed.
The new law was passed in Georgia.
Harder Votes and Laws00:11:40
It's what they're calling a sweeping law, but essentially it's there to crack down on the new voting norms that have been established in 2020.
So the new law, it makes it basically makes it harder to vote absentee, makes it harder to vote by mail, makes it harder to vote without registering.
There's here, I'll read, here's from a Rolling Stone article on it.
And this article was written, let's see, was it?
Okay, it's from today.
The article says, it's a potpourri of odious measures designed to make it harder for Georgians to vote and register and easier for fringe groups to challenge their registration.
So basically what it seems to be doing is a bunch of different things.
I mean, they're painting this out as being really evil.
But there's a bunch of different things that just make it, yeah, a little bit harder to vote.
You know, harder to vote by mail, harder to vote absentee in general.
Um, and so they're trying to rein back in the voting system where there's some type of process that you have to go through before you vote.
Now, there were a few things in the bill that I thought were just like weird and stupid for PR reasons and wrong.
Um, like they banned, I don't know if you heard this well, but they banned you can't bring people drinks and food while they're online waiting to vote, which is like that seems like uh insane to me.
Um, but as far as when you say you can't bring food or like you can't bring it, like if you have a friend waiting online, you can't can't bring why why bother with that, like why have that law?
Why it just big problem of deliveries to the line?
I don't know.
I mean, that literally just seems like they're just trying to make it harder, you know what I mean?
But they're just you could maybe you can make the argument that they feel that there's been vote bribing going on where people are waiting in these long lines and someone comes by going, Hey, you want to wall?
You're going to vote for this guy?
Like, perhaps that's their argument that people are going, Hey, come here, vote, vote for this guy, we'll give you a free lunch or something like that.
So, that's I don't know.
I don't know.
That one did stick out to me as like I was like, So, what's actually in this bill looking through it?
And I was like, Well, that one's pretty goddamn weird.
Um, you know, but this is uh, um, what you know, anyway, that's in there.
Perhaps that's the argument of why they want to add that to the bill.
But I, I, I, I would say this, right?
And this is what I think is kind of interesting about it.
Now, I will, uh, okay, you know, there were claims in the last election of uh like homeless people without addresses voting.
That's the only time I could see that as kind of coming into play is like an announcement of if you're in this line, we're bringing food and water, and maybe homeless people are, you know, coming along for that.
But or perhaps it's just out of my ass.
Yeah, who knows?
Yeah, perhaps it's just another way of kind of like letting, I don't know, um, uh, you know, letting fucking people who feel like they're they're trying to get people out there to vote, kind of bribing them, kind of pushing them into voting.
Oh, we'll give you this and that if you go.
And I, I, I, look, I honestly think it's just that it's their, they're trying to make it not so easy.
Now, I do not feel, so let me say this, okay?
So, the Libertarian Party official handle, and I, you know, this is what they do.
You know, I've criticized them so much for the fact that they won't, uh, you know, they just recently got on the messaging of the lockdowns are bad and it's like it takes them a couple days when uh um when after joe biden bombs Syria to come out and condemn it, just all these things that are like really important really speak to the moment we're living in that they'll kind of take their time and drag their feet.
But they came right out to condemn this law as racist, um, and it's racist because it's discriminating against black people.
This is anytime you want to have any uh restriction on voting, anything that makes it a little bit more difficult to vote.
This is the angle that they take.
Well, this is going to this is designed, it's a racist law.
It's been compared by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to Jim Crow openly.
They said this takes us back to Jim Crow.
And that's and like as a libertarian, I'm supposed to sit there and pretend that that makes any sense.
That makes any sense.
That even if there's a few more steps you have to go through to vote, that that is anything comparable to the government saying you can you have to not like allow people in stores and businesses and hotels.
Like, I mean, anyway, so the, you know, the LP was quick to post that this is the LP platform.
We oppose, you know, Denying, we oppose laws that effectively exclude alternate candidates and parties denying ballot access and government and gerrymandering districts.
So they oppose that part of their platform.
They condemn that we condemn bigotry as irrational and all of this stuff.
And like the thing that no one will say is that this is not a law that says black people need to do X, Y, and Z in order to vote.
This is a law that says this is what you have to do to vote.
That's a very different thing.
And I think a very slippery slope for libertarians to start going down.
That if something, because essentially what you're saying is that disparate outcomes equal discrimination.
That if something ends up being harder for one group, that's basically the same thing as if you intentionally make it harder for that one group.
This is like, I look at it like this.
And this isn't the first time I've said it, but I look at it like this.
I'm a libertarian because I believe in self-ownership.
I believe in private property rights.
I believe in the non-aggression principle.
That's why I'm a libertarian.
Voting is not a natural right.
Voting is not a good in and of itself.
Voting is not noble just for voting.
And I refuse to participate in the state religion that tells you that it's just noble on its own, that democracy is just this good, just because.
You know, it's like those people who will, they do those like the get out the vote campaigns and they say, it doesn't matter who you vote for, just vote.
Like, what?
How does that make any sense?
How does that make any sense to anyone?
It doesn't matter who you vote for, just vote.
So if there's like, I don't know, if Mother Teresa is running against Adolf Hitler and you vote for Adolf Hitler, is that better than not voting?
They were like, at least you voted.
At least you exercised your democratic right or something.
No, like, I'm sorry.
Voting is a means to an end.
It'd be fun if to vote for Hitler, you have to push the lever up.
That would be pretty great.
Yeah, that would be pretty great.
You got to bring it all the way down and then all the way up.
But you know what I'm saying?
Like, voting is a means to an end.
If you vote for good candidates who have good policies, then that's good.
And if you vote for bad candidates who have bad policies, then that's bad.
And so I don't see any, I do not see it as a right to vote.
It's certainly not a natural right.
You have absolutely no right to vote on anybody else's rights.
You don't have a right to, you know, I mean, like, so gang rape, someone said this, I forget who.
But so gang rape could pass the democratic test, right?
There's 10 men who want to rape a woman, a woman, you could have a vote in that room and she is outnumbered.
It doesn't change the morality.
It doesn't change the character of the action.
So as a libertarian, I am perfectly free to be, I could say, Machiavellian about how I feel about voting laws.
In other words, I can support or be against voting restrictions wherever I think it will help my cause the most.
I don't care.
I don't care.
It's not a right, so I don't care.
If making voting easy were going to lead to more human liberty, then I will support that.
And if restricting voting will lead to more human liberty, then I'd support that.
And I don't care.
I don't care who has this made up right because it's not a right.
So it's just interesting that I see all of these people, the Libertarian Party platform, other libertarians on Twitter, just like, yeah, this is awful.
It's, you know, it's discrimination and it's all this.
And you're like, okay, well, first off, it's making it harder to vote.
Is your position just that there should be no obstacles in the way of voting?
And if so, explain to me and speak slowly so I understand why that is a good thing.
Why it is a good thing to say that somebody who couldn't be bothered to register to vote should be automatically registered to vote.
Why do I want that to be easier for them?
Why?
How does that lead to more human liberty?
Please explain that to me, why I should care about that, okay?
And if somebody is going to say, well, it's discrimination, then explain this to me.
Does discrimination mean that the law is actually discriminatory?
That the law actually says this group of people can't vote and this group of people can vote or this group of people, it's harder for them to vote.
Or are you doing this thing where you're saying, well, in effect, it will end up being discriminatory against this group.
You know what I mean?
So like if they go, oh, well, if you require IDs, well, that's basically you're a racist because less black people have IDs than white people or something like that.
Because that's a whole different type of argument.
It's a whole different thing to say that like, well, this will end up in the same way that what is, look, and libertarians should be wise to this.
What is the big argument against tax cuts from the Democrats always?
What is the, what is the, what is, what, what did Joe Biden say at his press conference the other day that they always say, well, this tax cut disproportionately gave money to the rich, right?
Every tax cut you have, they always say, well, disproportionately, this money, this, this money went to people who have money.
Well, of course, because that's who pays the taxes.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's just, that's going to be the reality of any tax cut.
If you're going to say, if you're going to accept that a disparate outcome proves racism, you see how you're going to have a tough time arguing for any type of free market, right?
Because in the free market, there will always be disparate outcomes.
Delta 8 Discount Code00:03:22
That's just the nature of the game.
I mean, I don't know.
Does the NBA prove, but the fact that black people are so successful at it prove that they're an anti-Asian league?
No, it doesn't.
It doesn't prove that the policy of just taking the best players is discriminatory.
I mean, it is discriminatory, but not racially discriminatory.
You know what I'm saying?
So I just don't like, I'd be asking some of these people on Twitter, or they'd be like, this law is racist.
And I'd be like, okay, cool, how?
Just show me.
I haven't read the entire thing.
So show me the clause that's racist.
No one's been able to produce it yet.
So I don't know.
I don't believe that I blindly have to just support making voting easy just because it helps the Democrats and they claim you're racist if you're against it.
I'm open to arguments on this one, but I don't see it.
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All right, let's get back into it.
Anyway, Rob, as a non-voter, how do you feel about all that?
Get a fucking ID, dude.
You can't fucking buy beer without it.
Like, this is so ridiculous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the other thing that I can't stand is that it's like, you know, there are this whole group of libertarians who I got to say, a lot of them, there's a lot of overlap, let's just say.
In the Venn diagram, there's a big overlap area of the ones who are who push open borders and are critical of me for being like, well, I'm for private borders and I'm not really for open borders under current situations.
They're critical of that.
And they're like, no, no, no, even with all of the other state policies that exist, you have to be for open borders.
And then there are also some of the same ones who are going to say that like any attempt at voting, voting restriction is racist.
So it's like, okay, well, like, what's really more reasonable here?
If you want to say you want to have open borders and anyone can come in, well, then, okay, are you saying anyone can vote?
Like, because that doesn't seem like it's going to work very well.
So then if that's not the case, you have to have some measure of enforcing that.
And if the answer is like, well, we can't require IDs because, you know, there's more black people who don't have IDs, then the answer to me to that isn't like, oh my God, that's so incredibly racist.
It's like, well, then they should get ID.
Tech Platform Control00:12:47
I don't know.
I mean, I don't, by the way, I don't believe in government IDs.
I hate the idea of like, show your papers and shit like that.
But if you're trying to work within the confines of reality of where we are right now, then...
Also, your government, and if it's so hard to get an ID, then fix that.
Like, it sounds like there's another branch of government that must be pretty racist if the application is that certain individuals can't get a hold of a desired item to function in society.
Well, it sounds like you got another department.
We're anti-racist, so we better address this other department that's really racist.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Yeah, right.
You would think.
Okay, so the other thing I wanted to talk about before we wrap this one up is the, I don't know if you saw there was a congressional hearing the other day where all of the heads of the big tech companies were grilled in front of Congress.
Did you happen to catch that?
I watched some highlights.
Yeah.
I mean, I've watched this four times now, and it's the same, it's always the same bullshit.
Yes or no, maybe well, I'd have to investigate the particulars.
By the way, I actually don't think these people care about politics.
I think they want to make money.
I actually don't think they're as powerful as we all think they are.
I think what's really going on is they're being fucking muscled where it's like, you guys are going to use your platforms the way that us in power and government want you to use it, or there's going to be a continuous shakedown here, especially Dorsey.
He's sitting there with his Bitcoin clock.
Dude, I'm telling you, I don't know that much about Dorsey, but he's ahead of the curve in terms of like financial tech stuff with PayPal.
And now with, I think, is he PayPal or just Square?
Was he initially?
I don't think he was initially PayPal.
I don't know.
No, maybe I'm wrong on that one.
But anyways, I don't think that guy is really into tech censorship.
Wasn't Peter Thiel the original PayPal guy?
Anyway, I think that he, listen, he was better than the others.
And he actually at one point said, I don't think Twitter should be determining what the truth is and what isn't.
And I don't think the government should be either.
Now, unfortunately, he also went off on a whole Orwellian thing at the beginning where he said, I am completely for free speech, but I'm completely against disinformation.
And that was like just like, oh my God, like, do you not even see that you are something out of a dystopian novel right now?
He goes, oh, yeah, you have all the free speech you can possibly have, but you have to tell the truth.
And of course, we have a committee to determine who tells the truth and all this shit.
But look, to your point, because I think you really hit on something important there.
This is, I was watching it the other day.
And look, obviously, we've been talking about tech censorship for a few years now.
And we have been one of the libertarian platforms, one of the larger ones, that has really, you know, because even within the libertarian world, there's a lot of people who are like, well, they're a private company.
And then there's the real extreme crazies who are like, you know, this is just good because we're getting rid of bigotry or we're getting rid of misinformation or something like this.
And we've been the ones who are out there like, no, this is really troubling.
This is a really big threat to our society.
And I think that at like for me, as I was watching the hearing, I go, yeah, man, look, this is just a slam dunk against any libertarian who is making this bullshit, they're a private company argument.
Now, I'm not saying you have to accept any type of particular government solution to all this, but just watch what happened right there.
This was a bunch of CEOs from private companies getting exactly as you said, a shakedown, an hours-long shakedown with a very implicit threat, an obvious threat, not even that implicit.
At certain points, I think it was explicitly threatened that we will do this to you or we will do that to you.
That this is it.
It's the government bringing these people in to tell them, we want you censoring more people.
We do not like, what the hell are you guys doing?
You've created these platforms where Americans are just free to speak to each other and don't have to go through any of our channels.
Well, what the hell are you doing to crack down on that?
I mean, just imagine, think about it.
Congress concerned about cracking down on lies.
Politicians worried that regular people out there don't always tell the truth.
That's just beyond absurd.
But that's what's going on here, that these people are being, the companies, they're being pushed.
And look, I am not defending any of the tech giants, okay?
Like any of the people who run those things.
I think they're all fucked up and have done some really, you know, they've built some great platforms and then managed them in really shitty ways.
But the truth is that these guys built these platforms that allowed so much more speech and so many more people to have access to so much more information.
And for that, Congress is bringing them in and putting serious pressure on them to crack down on that and make sure that only the approved narratives get out there.
Now, if after that happens, they start cracking down on that, I'm sorry.
That's not a free market action anymore.
That is like under direct threat from the government.
Even if they don't pass a law or a regulation to force them to crack down on that shit, that is government interference in the marketplace.
That is not the free market anymore.
And so you are, you are, hey, libertarians, you are completely free with a clean conscience to oppose all of that tech censorship because it's coming as a direct result from threats from the government.
So that was like my major takeaway from the whole thing that I was like, okay, so get the fuck out of here with any of these arguments that, well, there are private companies.
No, they're really not.
They're not private companies.
They're hostages to the goddamn government.
Okay.
And that's what they want from them is to crack down on misinformation, the most fucking, you know, authoritarian or Wellian fucking term you could think of.
Misinformation.
Oh, okay.
Where's the misinformation?
You know, and it's unbelievable to see, you know, like you have these, you know, Eve Jack Dorsey and all these other guys who will sit there and be like, we're all for free speech.
We just don't like misinformation.
It's like, you motherfuckers like kicked the sitting president of the United States off of your platform.
You froze one of the biggest newspapers in the country for the crime of reporting information that damaged Joe Biden.
No, actually, maybe you're not for free speech.
But you do have to start to ask yourself, how much of this is that Jack Dorsey really wants to do this?
And how much of it is the fucking pressure that he's getting from all these guys?
They're saying Trump's going to launch a social media company.
Yeah, that's what he says.
We'll see.
For some reason, I just don't believe it, but we'll see.
His biggest problem is if he doesn't execute it well, he really just showcases the fact that he cannot manage any or execute on anything.
Look, my thing that, and look, I don't know that much about the details of what they plan to do.
If they have the right people running it, I suppose maybe it could do something.
Trump is a celebrity.
That's what Donald Trump is.
He's very, very, very good at being a celebrity.
Like incredible.
Like Michael Jordan in the 90s at being a celebrity and all that comes with that.
Knowing what to say to keep his name in the headlines, knowing what to say to, you know, really please his audience, really piss off the other side, get everyone obsessed with him.
He's the best self-promoter who's ever lived.
But it takes a lot more than that to build a successful tech company.
So if he doesn't have the right people around him who are going to do that, I just don't see it working.
But I don't know.
I don't, you know, the other stupidity to me, and this is true of all these congressional hearings, is that they ask unqualified questions.
So for example, it'll be like, does Twitter have some responsibility for the capital?
Well, some is unqualified.
Technically, yes.
I can't say that it's zero, but how much of an impact to be substantial?
And what evidence do you have that there was an impact?
Like, so I can't just give you a yes or no answer.
And they insisted, that guy insisted on a yes or no answer.
Right, because if I say no, yes, I am lying.
On some level, the size of my penis is because of the aliens in space.
On some level, sure.
I don't know.
Maybe they infect the tides.
I have no fucking aliens out there.
But it also does seem to me like you are kind of asking this question of like, well, like, does the guy who invented the telephone have some responsibility for someone calling someone and threatening to kill them?
You're like, well, I mean, yes.
In some sense, in some sense, they are responsible for that, but in any like morally culpable sense, no.
I mean, we wouldn't blame him.
How could they possibly know or possibly do this or any of that shit?
You know what I mean?
So it's like, yeah, it's a very weird, like you said, I think that's a good way to put it, an unqualified question where you're just like, you're trying to get this answer out of them.
But of course, this goes to the point that you were making and that I was making as well is that they're trying to get the answer out of them that's yes.
So then they can go, aha.
So you are somewhat responsible for domestic terrorism.
So then I guess we really have a right to crack down on you.
I mean, did you see the one part where there was one female congresswoman who was having the an exchange with them where she said, you know, you guys do a really good job of shutting down international terrorist activity on your platforms.
But you don't do such a good job of cracking down on domestic terrorist activity.
And she just floated out the idea that, well, you know, the government has all these lists of international terrorists.
But what about the lists?
What if we made lists of domestic terrorists?
Could you kick them off too?
And I mean, come on.
Like, so if, you know, again, this is what I remember thinking as I was watching this.
It's like, okay, so that's it.
As far as I'm concerned, the libertarian angle on this is over.
There's really no more debate to be had.
Now, I shouldn't say no more debate.
There is debate on how best to solve this problem.
But the idea that like, oh, well, they're just a private company.
It's like, no, They are talking to the government about making lists of American citizens who shouldn't be allowed to express themselves on their platforms.
That is, they're the government now.
I'm sorry.
It's the exact same thing in the same sense that if the government, you know, told, you know, some business that they have to stop doing business with someone else, you don't go, well, they're a private company.
They have a right to stop doing business with them.
It's like, no, no, no, that's the government robbing you of the business you could have done with those people.
That's what we're dealing with right now.
Tech companies and the government should be viewed as one of the one and the same at this point because they're in the process of a shakedown.
And, you know, that's just, it was on public display.
It's not like a conspiracy theory.
You can go watch it.
It's up on YouTube.
All right.
That's our show for today.
Thank you guys very much for listening.
Come check us out at Porkfest this year.
Me and Robbie the Fire are going up to Porkfest.
We'll be doing a stand-up comedy show and a live podcast.
I will be hosting Freedom Fest the entire festival.
Robbie the Fire Bernstein will be at Childeberg.
And of course, check out his podcast, Run Your Mouth.